What it is ain’t exactly clear; and that’s an understatement. In the past national emergencies brought the country together, at least a for awhile. From the reaction to 9/11 to the legions of people conducting water rescues after Houston flooded a few years back, we have always come together as a people to face down a threat. When the COVID-19 virus was discovered it appeared to bean an existential threat. Based on modeling from epidemiological experts we expected millions, then hundreds of thousands, then tens of thousands of deaths and this with the extreme lock down measures included in the modeling.
The models were not just wrong they were not even close. We now know, based on COVID -19 antibody testing in California, Boston, and Iceland that the infection fatality rate (IFR) is somewhere between 0.1 and 0.3 percent. The more testing we do the lower the IFR drops as the number of positives (the denominator) increases.
Last week a trio of Silicon Valley legends (T.J. Rodgers, Joe Malchow, and Yinon Weiss) conducted a regression study to determine if the rate of lock down in each state had a statistically significant effect on the number of reported cases. They found the correlation coefficient on early vs late (or no) lockdowns was 5.5%. That number is so low that it is essential no correlation. The lockdowns had no effect on the outcome in each of the 50 states.
One of the most eminent Professors of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Population Health, John P.A. Ioannidis, MD, DSc has again warned, we are making high-stakes decisions without reliable data. Yet the narrative marches on with the media and authorities using the case fatality rate (CFR), not the infection fatality rate (IFR) to justify their caution.
So what now?
Unfortunately there is no what now; instead there is a deeper polarizing division within the population. A good percentage of the population would agree with my timeline and assessment. But it is also apparent there is a large percentage of Americans who believe there is a deadly virus out there that will scythe through the population if we lift the various lockdowns affecting 43 of the 50 states.
There is no way forward if we cannot, as a nation, agree on or define the threat. The problem now is defining the threat becomes a threat to the reputations of the leading scientists running our public health system, powerful academic institutions like John Hopkins and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, as well as powerful philanthropists like Bill Gates and, of course, the legacy media.
The failure to adopt to the virus as it has presented itself is, according to physicians on the front line, costing lives. John Hinderocker from the Powerline blog explains the details in this post. He quotes from Dr. Paul Marik, Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Eastern Virginia Medical School, Critical Care COVID Management Protocol
It is our collective opinion that the historically high levels of morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 is due to a single factor: the widespread and inappropriate reluctance amongst intensivists to employ anti-inflammatory and anticoagulant treatments, including corticosteroid therapy early in the course of a patient’s hospitalization. It is essential to recognize that it is not the virus that is killing the patient, rather it is the patient’s overactive immune system. The flames of the “cytokine fire” are out of control and need to be extinguished. Providing supportive care (with ventilators that themselves stoke the fire) and waiting for the cytokine fire to burn itself out simply does not work… this approach has FAILED and has led to the death of tens of thousands of patients.
As Powerline further notes:
The systematic failure of critical care systems to adopt corticosteroid therapy resulted from the published recommendations against corticosteroids use by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the American Thoracic Society (ATS) amongst others.
It appears the most effective treatment for COVID-19 is a combination of very inexpensive, readily available drugs. This will prove catastrophic for reputations of those who continue to insist that mass testing and a proven vaccine or effective drug targeting the virus like remdesivir, the antiviral medicine from Gilead Sciences , are required before the lockdowns can end.
The lockdowns are going to end and they are going to end soon. Shelter in place type orders have proved an incredibly destructive policy, and the harms have not been distributed evenly across the United States. Some people are suffering much, much more than others.
Yet the lockdown continues here in Texas with the Kabuki theater of partial openings. Restaurants cannot turn a profit when they are forced to run at 50% capacity. I’m not sure why you would open movie theaters but keep gyms closed given the co-morbidity associated with lifestyles of the large and lethargic.
Getting the population out into fresh air and sunshine to bolster their immune systems with some exercise would seem to be what public health officials should want to do. But what they are doing is pretending they can calibrate the economy to limit exposure to a nasty bug despite the fact that “science” in the form of epidemiologic studies and regression analysis would tell you these steps are not helping – they are hurting.
As Texas and other states come out of lockdown there will be more positive tests because there will be more tests. What we will not see is a giant wave of critically ill patients needing ICU beds. That hasn’t happened yet and it is not going to happen now or in the future. When what is not going to happen, happens, what are the elites and the press and all the politicians who have been crying wolf for months now going to do? Who know? Owning up and admitting their mistakes is not part of their DNA so we can rule being honest out.
The great and powerful Texas historian T.R. Fehrenbach once wrote that America is a land so great that even fools cannot destroy it. We are in the middle of seeing his thesis tested. Let’s hope he was right.