What it is ain’t exactly clear; and that’s an understatement—in the past, national emergencies brought the country together, at least for a while. 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 to face a threat. When the COVID-19 virus was discovered, it appeared to be an existential threat. Based on modeling by epidemiological experts, we initially expected millions, then hundreds of thousands, and subsequently tens of thousands of deaths, with the extreme lockdown measures included in the modeling.
The models were not only wrong but also far from accurate. Based on COVID-19 antibody testing in California, Boston, and Iceland, the infection fatality rate (IFR) is approximately 0.1 to 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 lockdown 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 there is no correlation. The lockdowns did not affect 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 that 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, the population has a deeper, polarizing division. Most of the population would agree with my timeline and assessment. But it is also apparent that a large percentage of Americans 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 agree on or define the threat as a nation. The problem now is that limiting the threat threatens the reputations of the leading scientists running our public health system, powerful academic institutions such as Johns Hopkins and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, influential philanthropists like Bill Gates, and the legacy media.
According to physicians on the front line, the failure to adapt to the virus as it has presented itself is 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 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.
The most effective treatment for COVID-19 is a combination of very inexpensive, readily available drugs. This will prove catastrophic for the reputations of those who continue to insist that mass testing and a proven vaccine, or an effective drug targeting the virus, such as remdesivir, the antiviral medicine from Gilead Sciences, are required before lockdowns can end.
The lockdowns are going to end soon. Shelter-in-place orders have proved an incredibly destructive policy, and the harm has 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’s 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 comorbidity associated with the lifestyles of the large and lethargic.
Public health officials should encourage the population to get outdoors and enjoy fresh air and sunshine to bolster their immune systems through exercise. However, they are pretending they can calibrate the economy to limit exposure to a nasty bug, although science, in the form of epidemiological studies and regression analysis, would tell you these steps are not helping—they are hurting.
As Texas and other states emerge from lockdown, there will likely be an increase in positive test results, as more tests are conducted. What we will not see is a giant wave of critically ill patients needing ICU beds. That hasn’t happened yet and won’t happen now or in the future. When what is not going to happen, happens, what are the elites, the press, and all the politicians who have been crying wolf for months now going to do? Who knows? Owning up and admitting their mistakes is not part of their DNA, so we can rule out being honest.
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 currently testing his thesis. Let’s hope he was right.
