Was this Biden’s secret plan to combat COVID?
More Americans have died from COVID-19 in the first three weeks of Joe Biden’s presidency than during the entire Vietnam War, a grim milestone for a leader who vowed to make ending the pandemic “the first priority, the second priority, and the third priority” of his administration.
The COVID-19 death count since Biden took office on Jan. 20 surpassed 60,000 over the weekend. That is more than the 58,220 American soldiers who died in the Vietnam War between 1964 and 1975.
But surprise, surprise. It’s not big news – unlike a similar milestone under Trump:
Numerous media outlets marked the occasion when COVID-19 deaths surpassed Vietnam War deaths under former president Donald Trump…
…[T]he Washington Free Beacon appears to be one of the only media outlets whose dedication to the truth compels us to diligently track COVID-19 deaths under Biden, the milestone has received far less coverage this time around.
To equate war deaths with deaths from a disease that is taking a worldwide toll in ways that are as yet poorly understood but that don’t follow a strict adherence to the policies or lack thereof laid down by the leaders of each country is to be logically inconsistent. So Trump – whose policies seemed quite reasonable to me – and Biden (whose policies on COVID so far don’t seem much different, except for some jawing about federal mask mandates on public transportation) shouldn’t be blamed for those deaths. Nor can they rescue us, except economically by lifting most of the restrictions, and physically by helping make the vaccine readily available.
So, why am I writing this post? To point out the absurdity of Biden’s suggestion that he had some master plan to combat COVID. Anyone who believed that was deep into wishful thinking and gullibility. And yet I would wager there were a lot of people who did believe him. They were the same people who believed the rhetoric that Trump had murdered everyone who died of COVID (or with COVID, as the case may be).
I’m already running into people who casually assert that the vaccine is going to be easier to get now that Unca Joe is on the job. Reality doesn’t figure in at all on matters like this.
ABC recently posted the results of a possibly worthless poll suggesting that two-thirds of Americans supposedly approve of Biden’s so-called “handling of COVID-19.” Meanwhile, many conservatives are warning of the very real possibility of a “forever pandemic” with more and more arbitrary and irrationally draconian control by the state, and almost no-one in the MSM seems to care about all the evidence pointing to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (with its risky gain-of-function research partly funded by our own NIH, and with very lax safety protocols) as the likeliest source of the China-virus.
What is even more frustrating to me is how the number of new active cases is in complete free fall. We are now at a level equivalent to 5 months ago in mid-September before the late fall large surge. I plot new active cases/day, which is really a “velocity”. A plot of cases/day vs days is thus an “acceleration” plot; cases/day^2. For the past month that yields an acceleration of -4500cases/day^2. Using the standard kinematic equations from high school/first year college physics, it’s an easy calculation to determine how long until the current 9.8 million active cases reaches zero…..it’s around mid-April at the current rate. Biden is correct, he doesn’t need to do anything. The virus is disappearing on its own, yet no one in the press, right or left, are generally reporting on this good news. The ONLY article I’ve found was on the Daily Mail site 3 days ago:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9230699/COVID-cases-Midwest-drop-QUARTER-seven-day-average-peak.html
and the article understates what is really happening.
All this makes me think the assertion that “they” intend to keep us masked up and locked down forever is a very real possibility. They’ve already stated that after receiving the vaccine a person still has to follow all protocols to “protect” other people. Which, of course, goes against, some 70 years of biology/medicine on the efficacy of vaccines and viruses.
I really wish I could post some my graphs here.
physicsguy:
Might it be in free fall because most health care professionals are now vaccinated?
Its still a secret, C’mon Man.
Neo, the free fall started over 30 days ago; well before many were vaccinated. While there are around 16M health workers, given their PPE and other precautions, I doubt that can explain a drop of new active cases from a peak of about 110k cases/day at the beginning of January to essentially zero now. The 10 day smoothed average of new active cases as of this morning was -181; yes negative.
and you’re all taking your numbers from statistics supplied by the government
can I sell you a bridge in Brooklyn – cheap?
My data for almost a year now has been from worldometers for the overall national numbers. For the states I use each state’s own data.
I understand the politicization of the pandemic. However, when states such as Florida run by DeSantis are also showing the decrease, then that makes me suspect this is real.
Also, historically, pandemics burn themselves out. The 1918 version had 3 waves with the largest the middle wave. This pandemic also appears to have had 3 waves now. Whether this 3rd and hopefully, final wave was really as large as it seemed is another debate bringing in politics and the misuse of the PCR test.
So, my mom’s facility got the second shot Saturday (2 days ago) but they are in the most strict lockdown since the beginning of this whole thing because one guy tested positive a couple weeks ago. Before going to the activity room for the shot Saturday my mom hadn’t left her apartment in 12 days. Now everyone has apparently had both vaccinations but they will still be totally locked down until they have two complete rounds of negative tests which at the speed they go will be early March.
Meanwhile her doctor says in two weeks when the second shot is fully in effect she will be of low risk but it doesn’t matter.
I’m convinced that red states may go back to normal soon but in blue states it may never happen.
physicsguy:
In my neck of the woods, the health care workers started being vaccinated in December. The first vaccination gives a fair amount of immunity. I have read that a lot of the spread of COVID is connected with health care workers (despite PPEs). So I think that the vaccine could be a big part of the reason for the drop.
It’s so interesting that we don’t hear much about how originally so many people said the vaccine would never be developed so fast, and how Trump said it would be.
And now we just found out that in the latest round of testing at my mom’s facility all the residents tested negative but ONE kitchen worker tested positive so the whole 28 day cycle starts over.
So you have a hundred or so fully vaccinated residents being held hostage by a bunch of healthy young people doing God only knows what out in the world. This is the kind of policy that makes this go on forever.
Griffin:
How awful.
Do you think it will get any better once 2 weeks or so have passed since the 2nd vaccination for all the residents?
I was one of the people who said that the vaccine would take years to distribute. That was based on what I read, and on the previous record of four years for the ebola vaccine.
But I was totally ignorant of mRNA vaccine technology, and that’s the primary reason I so misjudged the timeline. At Moderna, the vaccine was developed in two days. Astounding! (And I hate exclamation points.)
As far as I can tell, Trump also played an important role. He was the force behind “Operation Warp Speed.” Also, when the FDA was mired in procedural delays for vaccine testing and approval, he called the FDA leadership into his office and read them the riot act. Unfortunately, the FDA is taking out their revenge on AstraZeneca. They’ve run afoul of the FDA’s insistence on defining every detail of proper testing procedure. In fact, Americans may never be able to use this vaccine until we become infected with the next round of COVID-19 or its variants. Maybe next year, we can only hope.
Finally, if we take into account the prolonged difficulties with manufacturing and distribution, some of the original estimates of a multi-year timeline between the pandemic’s start and widespread vaccination may not be so far off. Bureaucracy, politics, and logistics are hard to overcome. It’s my view that Trump did well to get us this far.
It’s had a good year and a bit to do its thing, this virus. Most of us (no matter how extreme our precautions) have been exposed to it multiple times by now and have either had zero discernible or minor symptoms. Virus is slowly running out of ultra-morbidly unhealthy poppies to lop. I use the ‘ultra’ qualifier because if it killed morbidly unhealthy folks, 1/3 population of USA would be six feet under.
So will not be surprised if there is now some discernible tailing off.
PhysicsGuy: Worldometers data is better than nothing but given politics and perverse incentives… GIGO and all that entails. Have you looked at year on year *excess mortality*? You can put down everyone who dies of a gangrenous stubbed toe as ‘dying with COVID’… but death itself is a binary event and raw numbers are harder to fiddle with.
I’m certainly in favor of vaccinating health care workers. 1) let them be guinea pigs, and 2) they do have greater risks since viral innoculum magnitude is likely a factor.
neo,
At her facility I don’t think so because it’s clearly being led by fear of lawsuit because my mom’s doctor was appalled about this policy. But we have decided that in a couple weeks we will start having her visit us far more often if they are still doing this lockdown garbage.
The lack of physical activity is outrageous enough but it really is unbelievable because they have been pushing vaccine, vaccine, vaccine now they have been vaccinated and it’s more locked down than at any time. My mom was so excited about returning to some sort of normal life but nope. Cruel.
I saw a YouTube clip from I think it was talkradio in the UK with someone talking about their teenage daughter and her friends and how ‘what’s the point’ had become a common response to questions after a year of being locked down. Applied to college? ‘What’s the point’. Signed up for lacrosse? ‘What’s the point’.
The social cost from the response to this is truly incalculable.
Griffin:
It is good to be a King (Jay minion). Arbitrary, capricious, sons (and daughters) of bachelors.
If only Mario knew (York).
At this point what difference does another 5000, 10,000 make? He will have to circle back on that?
om,
The person in charge at my mom’s facility did tell me they are following the governor’s orders but that doesn’t seem to actually be the case because they are being even more draconian but even then if there was no vaccination then maybe I could see it but instead they are just pretending like it’s last April or something.
@Griffin:
I’m sorry for what your Mom has to deal with. It’s not just our Oligarchic Overlords who are capricious, cruel and lack empathy: it’s all the Little Buck-passing Procedure-following Eichmanns too.
I wish I could come back in a thousand years and read the Chinese Historians’ take on these times.
@Griffin:
Social Cost yes. Paying attention to the emoting of attention-seeking teenage girls, no.
Were it not for social media and over-feminization of society and female suffrage, there is no way this mole hill would have been made into a mountain.
I will note, however, that where I live there is now a plague of teenage male mountain bikers and skate boarders. Virus keeping expat spawn stuck in one locality for a year has done this to us. If I had a lawn, I’d be planting mines in it.
For the record, here’s the Beacon link.
Feel free to distribute it to your favorite whiny liberal family members LOL
https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/biden-covid-death-tracker/
Physicsguy wonders “ The virus is disappearing on its own, yet no one in the press, right or left, are generally reporting on this good news.”
Not really.instead, Bidenista officials simply decided to stop counting weak evidence of infections, and only the strong evidence — symptomatically obvious— only. And this began in January!
Ergo…bilateral! Lower “infection” rates. It’s a scam. And a calculated scam.
I agree with physicsguy that the virus was losing steam before the vaccine kicked in. The graphs show new infections peaking the second week in January. The now-common use of a 7-day average gives a 3-4 day delay, and in most cases the virus is not detected until a few days after being acquired. On top of that I suspect a lot of early January tests were delayed by the holidays. So the real peak may have been around New Year’s Day when few people had been vaccinated. Undoubtedly the vaccine is starting to accelerate the decline in new cases.
Re ‘What’s the point?’
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-kids-arent-alright
Not too far off topic, but a fascinating (and a bit long) interview with a highly qualified industrial hygienist.
https://www.brighteon.com/20ada7b2-0be9-43a8-bf38-3a7147c4bb20
Once that Reproduction Number ‘R0’ (the number of cases on average that an infected case causes in other people) becomes less than 1, then the virus is infecting people following a geometric progression of a fraction less than one. You probably recall from high school math how fast these diminish. Like 7/8×7/8×7/8…=
This becomes very tiny very fast. Then poof, the cases are gone.
Good point dnaxy. I saw this CDC web page for the first time yesterday. It has the state by state “seroprevalence” survey results, or stats for antibody testing. Interestingly, they just updated it today with data collated on Feb. 2.
Yesterday, the data was from a few weeks prior and it showed something like 7% immunity (partial or better) in CA and about 16% in Nebraska. For some reason, NE seems to be one of the best immunized (or most infected?) states. Those numbers struck me as a nice start but not very big.
Today’s updated chart shows CA at 10.4%, and NE at 23% and Wisconsin at 24%. At 20+% it should make a real difference. I wish I remembered the exact date on yesterday’s chart, but it would seem that the rate at which the seroprevalence numbers are increasing is very fast. Can we assume that lots of infections in Dec. means lots of immunity developed soon?
I could not copy text from a tricky little web drop-down describing the data collection. The above data comes from a CDC program that antibody tests blood samples in commercial laboratories taken for reasons unrelated to COVID.
So any vaccination immunization numbers should be added to the seroprevalence numbers. Although, if a vaccine is 75% effective then a 10% vaccination number would imply a 7.5% immunization number. OK, then there is also the possibility that previously immune people got vaccinated. On the positive side, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are supposed to be 95 or 96% effective ignoring a couple new strains.