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Home » Looking back at COVID

Looking back at COVID

The New Neo Posted on by

Certain things about COVID should have been obvious early on to anyone who did any research about it and thought about it. For example, take a look at this post from February 27, 2020:

I’ve read that for infectious diseases, lethality and ease of contagion are ordinarily (not always) somewhat in opposition. That makes sense, because if a disease is quickly and highly lethal, the sufferer will have much less opportunity to be walking around with it in his or her most contagious stages, and therefore will tend to infect fewer people.

That’s why many illnesses that are highly widespread – take the common cold, which is called “common” for a reason – are usually mild (although tell that to the cold sufferer). And yet even such seemingly innocuous illnesses have some lethality, in that (for example) a cold can lead in the susceptible to pneumonia, which is far more likely to kill…

Most estimates I’ve seen so far about the death rate in COVID-19 are that it’s around 2.5% of people who are infected (not of the general population). However, there are several possible problems with this. One is that doctors may be missing a large number of mild or even asymptomatic cases, which would make the actual death rate much lower than that. Another is that it’s not just the death rate but the pattern of deaths that’s important. Most of the deaths have occured in the elderly and especially the very elderly…

Despite rumors and even reports of transmission when people are asymptomatic, there’s no hard evidence of it so far.

I think that last sentence is still true, although I’m not 100% sure.

But the most powerful data we had back then was the stricken cruise ship Diamond Princess. I discussed that on February 29, 2020:

…[T]he situation of the Diamond Princess cruise passengers offers an opportunity to learn about both under a sort of worst case scenario, which is confinement of healthy with ill passengers in a closed system, and an especially susceptible population because of a high percentage of people of advanced age…

The total number of people on the ship was 3,711. So the final number testing positive represented about 19% of the whole, or a little less than a fifth. Of that number – in the month since the first person from the ship was diagnosed – 6 have died, which is .16% of the whole, and .86% of those who tested positive. Both figures are under 1%. That only represents a months’ time, of course, two weeks of which involved quarantine on the ship. But it’s a fairly low figure, especially considering the advanced ages of so many of the passengers. Time will tell whether there will be any more deaths of people who were on that ship.

There were more, but not all that many – the total ended up being 13.

I then quoted the fact that only about half of those on the ship who tested positive were symptomatic, and remarked, “That’s…even less morbidity – than has commonly been reported.” I added:

The first two [ship passengers who died of COVID] were 87 and 84, both with underlying pre–existing health issues. The next two were also people in their 80s, and it’s unclear what their previous health status had been. The fifth person was in her 70s, and the sixth was of as-yet unreported age. This is further indication that advanced age is a big factor, just as it is in pneumonia deaths and deaths from most varieties of flu (although not the 1918 flu, where the majority of deaths were of younger adults ).

And I concluded that, “COVID-19 has been hyped by the press and the Democrats, the better to get clicks and/or sell papers, and to criticize and blame Trump.” But it didn’t occur to me at the time that additional reasons would be to kill small businesses, to make people more fearful and dependent on government, and to break down the fabric of society in general.

I did think that COVID would end up hurting Trump’s re-election chances, and I believe it did (whether you think substantial fraud occurred or not, I think it’s clear that his vote total would have been much higher but for the use made of COVID by the left). But I did not foresee the extremes to which Democrats would go to keep us locked up for such a long time, and how meekly so many people would acquiesce to it, driven by fear.

Comments

Looking back at COVID — 40 Comments

  2. Griffin:

    No. I can think of worse errors. One would be not nipping the takeover of education by the left in the bud. That is responsible for a great many more errors that have rippled out in concentric circles from that basic error. I include the COVID response as a consequence of that earlier error, by the way. This would not have happened but for what happened to education.

    There are various errors that led up to the Civil War, which was a terrible terrible thing, worse than the COVID response. More errors involve the turn the US took towards the left during the Great Depression – I don’t think we’ve ever recovered from that turning.

    These errors are far more basic than the COVID reaction,. We could recover from the COVID reaction (or would have had a different COVID reaction) if it weren’t for those other things.

    In addition, there isn’t just one COVID reaction. Some states have been essentially open since June.

  4. This “response” has been an utter travesty. We should have all been in church last Easter.
    As the days pass and the EOs stack up, having the stage set to have the D candidate “win” the election—which is what the response was all about–is clearly a huge loss to this country. The mass migration to our border, the loss of jobs and energy sufficiency, and the loss of our foreign policy gains are enormous costs.

  7. The Diamond Princess remains the test case and all that follows was political. I wonder if the nation can survive this disaster, nit the virus, the politics of the response?

  8. Neo over a year ago:
    Most estimates I’ve seen so far about the death rate in COVID-19 are that it’s around 2.5%

    The most recent calculation for the US is 2.6%. That estimate has held up remarkably well. (I haven’t kept my calculations over the months, but I believe that at one time it was around 3%, and has been trending down.)

    Which brings up the question: why are we getting our knickers in a twist over a virus that has a death rate under 3%?

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

  9. Despite rumors and even reports of transmission when people are asymptomatic, there’s no hard evidence of it so far.

    I saw a piece several weeks ago (I didn’t save it) that made the distinction between pre-symptomatic spread and asymptomatic spread.

    I believe they claimed that there is some significant probability that a person can spread the disease for about 24 or 36 hours before they feel sick. And that they hadn’t seen any (many?) cases where a person spread the disease and never got sick.

    One would hope that the CDC or others would not confuse those two scenarios for political purposes, but at this point I have zero confidence that this is the case.

  10. Flu tends to kill younger victims, many from a cytokine storm. The Covid kills the elderly. I spent my 83rd birthday with my kids and grandkids at a dinner for 10 indoors in Orange County CA. Nobody wore masks.

  11. neo,

    Yes, but we knew about or had a good idea about a lot of the issues with education, deep state bureaucrats etc. before the response and they happened gradually and weren’t all done in about a two week timeframe.

  12. The politicization of the HCQ + zinc controversy, astoundingly, continues….
    This one is somewhat on the entertaining side.
    https://twitter.com/jpkiekens/status/1367558253052391428
    H/T Ron Coleman twitter feed.

    How many people could have been saved?
    We will never know.
    CDC and WHO flip-flopping continually, beset by contradictions.
    The politicization, the “scientific” posturing and “research”.
    Politically-driven smear campaigns to squelch the scientific debate….

    As for taking responsibility, Democratic Party thugs such as Cuomo doesn’t seem to be bothered in the least, and he most certainly isn’t the only one.

    The liberal machine, led by the Democratic Party and buttressed by its media goons has shown time and time again that it is perfectly prepared to sacrifice (and destroy) the lives of American citizens in order to achieve absolute power and suppress political enemies.

    This much should be acknowledged.

    Moreover, the violence of Antifa / BLM and the destruction of private and public property are merely “ideas” (though perhaps “Biden” meant “ideals”?) that the Democrats believe will help them to achieve the power they crave; the power that they’ve convinced themselves they must have.

    Evil times.

  13. Mike K:

    Flu overwhelmingly kills the elderly. It also kills more younger victims than does COVID, but it is still a small percentage of the whole. About 70 to 85 percent of flu deaths are in people over 65. Many flu-caused deaths end up being from pneumonia, also.

    For pneumonia and influenza causes, the proportions of average deaths overall were 1.5%, 10.6%, and 87.9% for persons aged <19 years, 19–64 years, and <65 years, respectively. For respiratory and circulatory causes, the proportions were 0.5%, 10.1%, and 89.4%.

    All those stats are for regular seasonal flu. The 1918 flu had a very different pattern. It caused deaths in all age groups, but there was also a big spike in deaths of young adults. That was very atypical of most flu.

  14. Griffin:

    Yes, but I don’t see the relevance of that.

    What’s more, if the COVID response had just lasted 2 weeks, it wouldn’t have been more than a little blip on the radar screen.

    In addition – as I believe I wrote at the time – the response was already happening even without the government, pushed by corporations and sports leaders. The NBA was one of the first, I seem to recall. A lot of big concerts, etc., were canceled even before the government got into the act, and some companies (Silicon Valley being among the first) instituted early work-from-home policies that continue for the most part to this day.

  15. neo,

    But that’s the thing it was never going to last just two weeks and anybody paying attention could see that.

    I don’t see how a conservative/libertarian can’t see how this was the biggest mistake since Vietnam at least. It enabled all the things and more that we have been worried about to be put into action.

  16. Nor is the “Biden” administration slacking off on the resumption of the toxic foreign policy witnessed between 2008 and 2016.
    https://twitter.com/AcrossTheBay/status/1368701359143452674
    H/T Lee Smith twitter feed.

    The important thing to remember is that they will lie about anything and everything, while the media does its best to ensure that everything is “normal”.

    Yes, the opaque veil of “transparency”, misinformation and lawlessness—a joy for all those who look back on the Obama years with nostalgia (and hope)….

  17. Griffin:

    I obviously think it was a huge mistake, and an important one. We are arguing about whether it was the biggest, and I’m saying it was not.

    It was inevitable not because it was obvious the feds would make it more than 2 weeks. It was inevitable because it really didn’t matter what the feds did. Even if they’d pulled back at that point, too many companies and other institutions were already closing up shop as far as personal contact went. And it was a worldwide reaction and disruption. So I don’t see it as some decision that could have been magically reversed by federal action. It was an enormous number of decisions by an enormous number of people all going in the same direction, independent of the US federal government. It’s been an astounding worldwide phenomenon.

    But the lack of resistance to the Gramscian march is more important and more primary.

  19. If the corona virus had made it’s appearance during the Obama administration, who thinks the response would have been the same?
    Who thinks the economy would have been shut down?
    Who thinks the govt. and the CDC would have mandated wearing face masks?
    Who thinks the media would have been reporting on a daily basis , infection and death rates?
    Who thinks Obama would have had a corona virus “task force” to address the pandemic?
    Who thinks that any effort would have been made to produce a vaccine?

    If this virus made it’s appearance during the Obama admin, the virus would have been a minor news item; akin to the reporting of a severe flu season.
    That’s it.

    The ENTIRE covid reporting / response / faux panic was a political effort to destroy Trump.

  20. JohnTyler,

    Correct you are and the continuing mask garbage is to make sure nobody can escape from it all. It is virtually impossible to avoid even if you never leave the house and that is what they want.

  21. JohnTyler:

    The response probably wouldn’t have been exactly the same – and whatever Obama did would have been praised to the skies. But the response would still have been pretty strong, because this didn’t just happen in the US, the extreme response was pretty much worldwide. So although the US response was in part to get Trump, it wasn’t just about getting Trump. The entire world went rather nuts on this.

  23. The simple truth of the matter is that the Left has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in an attempt to gain permanent political power.

  24. For anyone with eyes to see — it has exposed a whole bunch of failure points in Western nations. For hedge funds and sufficiently sophisticated state actors with big data collection and AI capabilities it has given them a gold mine of material to work with.

    The Catheral/Clerisy/Chatting Classes, Goverment, Semi-Government and NGO Managerialists have had a year of being paid to ‘work’ at home while Joe Sixpack has been further beaten down and impoverished through Covid shutdowns and restrictions on trade. Never, ever underestimate the seductive evil power of being able to watch the Hated Other being dragged under while you sit back on the couch bingeing Netflix.. not necessarily getting richer… but just not being dragged backwards into the mire as is happening to Racist Joe is almost as good as doing a line of Coke. These @#$%ers LOVE this bit. It doesn’t get talked about, but believe me they get off on it big time.

  25. “The simple truth of the matter is that the Left has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans people in an attempt to gain permanent political power.” – Geoffrey.

    And it isn’t the first time.
    Although, up to now, most of them haven’t been Americans.

    However, if you add in the Democrat-KKK-slaveowner connection, it is possibly still true.

  26. It’s easy to see the mistakes at this point. Last April things were not so clear……except that those over 65 were the most likely to be hospitalized and die. I watched the daily COVID briefings from the WH and felt that DJT and Pence were doing a pretty good job. However, after the summer of politicization of it all, it was obvious that the Dems were using it to try to get rid of Trump. And they are still using it as a citizen control mechanism. Pond scum is too nice a name for them.

    I keep wondering why the medical community did not embrace therapeutics. If not HCQ, then why not monoclonal antibodies? If the goal was to keep people out of the hospital, all people over 65 who tested positive would have been treated. It’s a proven treatment, but only VIPs and a few others seem to have been treated with it. Why has that been ignored?

    Once it was clear that mostly elderly people were in danger, the nursing homes could have been protected by regular testing of the employees and tenants along with all the usual sanitation. Those over 65 who could stay home, should have been encouraged to do so. The rest of the population could have gone about their business with masks (Maybe they work, maybe they don’t – that’s not been proven one way or the other.), hand sanitizing, and being careful about social distancing. The other thing that should have been done was to implement the monclonal antibodies therapeutic treatment for those over 65. The virus would have spread but probably not much worse than it has. Using therapeutics might have reduced the hospitalizations and deaths. Sweden followed pretty much that plan (except for the monoclonal antibodies) and has not been notably worse hit than those countries that locked down. When the books are written about this, I think it’s going to be pretty obvious that lock downs were not very successful in containing the virus. It has done what viruses do – seasonal waves of infection and will probably either become less deadly or disappear like some other viruses have.

    I know a couple of people who have been traumatized by this experience. They have not been out of their homes in a year and are even worried about getting the vaccine. With the fear mongering that the MSM and health “experts” have engaged in, it’s been hard to keep an even mind. It’s been a horrid experience and has not been handled well by most governments.

  27. It really is shockingly terrible that we haven’t really learned much more about this virus since the Diamond Princess, and that some of the things that, and the Roosevelt experience demonstrated were “inconvenient” and forgotten.

    Like, 80% of people seem to be naturally immune – further supported by reports that people were immune to this Covid based on previous versions of Coronavirus.

    Honestly, the state of our institutions in this country today is ABYSMAL.

  28. Have you seen the coronavirus mortality rate? It’s not even a good killer.

    Almost like it was designed to incapacitate enough of a nation’s population to allow an adversary to exploit that crisis-not-to-waste, to facilitate another that more directly furthers its ends.

    It is sometimes considered a better tactic to wound enemy personnel than to kill them outright … for it takes resources and attention away from the fight, to protect and care for the wounded.

    If COVID was the product of design, the designer deserves the title of “magnificent b*****d” made famous in the movie Patton.

    The only thing that could have made it worse, is the Federal government over-reacting and imposing the full Cuomo on all 50 states. Fortunately, the President at the time had a greater respect for federalism than most, and wisely steered clear of that.

    Too bad for the plans of Pooh Bear.

  29. The politicization of HCQ ended up being one of the worse atrocities because experiences in other countries have shown it to be an effective treatment. This was done because Trump suggested it. The thing is that Trump didn’t dream this up by himself. Some doctor told him about it. It would be interesting to know who that was. I am suspicious that it might have been Fauci because he was in contact with Trump and he wrote a journal article about using HCQ to treat SARS 1.

  30. “This was done because Trump suggested it.”

    Well, yes; BUT it was also done for a reason far, far more sinister (where most “decent” people would prefer not to go?): simply…to rid the country of Trump—that traitor, that racist, that charlatan, that thief, that enabler of white supremacism, that total and utter disaster, that crass pig, that fascist, that ANTI-CHRIST (you don’t believe me? Just ask the Democrats and the media!!)—then the heroic patriots among us must steel themselves and, yea, even be prepared to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives, untold suffering and the economy and future of the country, causing still yet more suffering, sickness, depression and breakdown.

    And trample the country’s laws; and destroy its institutions of government…along with its historical memory.

    AND YET…THEY STILL HAD TO STEAL THE ELECTION.

  31. I concur with the comments that physicsguy has made on this particular thread. And anecdotally I share my own amazement that the CDC is still the entity in charge of the protocols. They were formed in 1947 to create a pandemic response. Trillions of dollars later they didn’t have one and still do not. My husband suffered a near-death experience because of this fact. Remember the first lock-down that was to flatten the curve and anyone presenting sick could be treated at the hospital? Because of pure fear, he was turned away on 4/2/2020 and there is every reason to believe that given fluids and oxygen (his untreated sleep apnea created hypoxia making it impossible for him to fight the virus without help) he would have recovered as he eventually did under very extreme circumstances. The best thing I’ve seen throughout this entire time was the interview of the 2 doctors (one from England, the other from Italy) that Neo posted early on. They have studied pandemics for 12 years. The #1 required response to a pandemic according to them is ARCHITECTURE. The response to our early positive SARS Co-V2 test should have resulted in people with a hazmat suit arriving at our home, putting tape around it and bringing us to a facility to be treated where no one leaves apart from being clean of the contagion. I recommend Alex Berenson’s publications that layout the CDC materials about possible pandemics prior to this. Lockdowns and masks were never on the roster as evidenced by the non-response to ebola earlier. As for antibodies, that article I posted the other day in the open thread proves the doublethink that is infecting science with regards to immunity. It seems that if you dispense with everything you ever understood about biology and health science and just follow the scientists with the microphone you will be OK. Dennis Prager has stated that everything the Left touches they destroy. The corruption of science with the climate-change scare was a good start, but this is more than could be imagined, at least for me. Because the N95 mask made me very sick with Covid though I was essentially over it in 3 days, I have an extremenly negative point of view of masks, personally. As a family (12 people) each of us wears the “theatre” variety and only when absolutely required. We have traveled and met for every family occasion without masks or distancing since May 2020 and none of us has suffered so much as a cold. I attribute this to the fact that we already incorporated proper hygiene in our normal lives and know how to respond to a possible infection. Only my husband and I have had it and no one intends to get the vaccine presently. Maybe some eventually will, if forced, in order to work. Our one child is planning to move his family out of California for this very reason as he has been unable to work in the manner he formerly has because of the Newsom shutdowns. This Governor early on, bought One Billion Dollars worth of masks from China and then mandated them. Nice work if you can get it. Last year my daughter made me a couple cotton masks but the other day I clicked on a mask ad out of curiosity. Stated right on the page are disclaimers about their medical benefit. Doublethink everywhere I go, apart from what I already knew prior to March 2020.

  32. I agree. The Left saw a golden opportunity to “fundamentally change America” with COVID-19. Also little doubt in my mind that Trump would have won re-election if not for the false propaganda and the draconian lockdowns. Look how even with the Gentleman from Madame Tussaud’s who inhabits the White House and control of both Houses, the Democrats still want to continue with lockdowns and a only a limited back to normalcy.

  33. “I did not foresee the extremes to which Democrats would go to keep us locked up for such a long time, and how meekly so many people would acquiesce to it, driven by fear.”

    That’s because for most people the fear *wasn’t for themselves*, at least not physically. Anyone with a brain could see it was only the unhealthy and elderly at significant risk. But most people have a beloved elder relative they don’t want to lose, and (this is the psychological but selfish part) didn’t want to be seen putting at risk for selfish reasons like merely making money.

    Totalitarian movements ride on the desire (in itself a perfectly reasonable one) to not be thought a monster by one’s fellows as much as any more obviously malevolent motive.

  34. neo
    As for Donald Trump, I think he and all of us would have been better off if Mike Pence did the briefings. I am pretty certain that Pence would have been far more disciplined and not have not fallen into the trap of being baited by the inept and vicious reporters.

  35. Cancer claims around 600,000 each year, same for heart disease. This happens year after year – no vaccine in sight. Covid deaths of 500,000+ are only for the first year and much less in the second. Life expectancy is around 79 years, less than for Covid deaths. All of us are much likelier to die from cancer or heart disease than Covid. The media is all about exaggeration.

  36. Fauci on asymptomatic spread:
    “The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person, … Even if there’s a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6koHkBCoNQ&t=2642s

    Also Fauci, “It is now clear that about 40%-45% of [COVID-19] infections are asymptomatic”
    https://www.pharmacist.com/article/fauci-about-40-45-infections-are-asymptomatic

    Hope that clears it up.

  37. Disease progression correlated with comorbidities correlated with age. Fat is beautiful is a comorbidity before, during, and after the disease is forgotten. Asymptomatic transmission is likely to occur through fecal transmission, where they have discovered viable viruses in patient rooms around the toilet and ventilation shafts. Otherwise, be aware of symptomatic transmission through coughs and sneezes, especially in spaces with a greenhouse effect. Wash your hands to mitigate cross-contamination. Be wary of wearing a petri dish and viral trap (“mask”). Oh, and don’t forget the goggles. The eyes are a window to viral and social contagion. Also, there are effective, inexpensive, low-risk early, and even late stage progression, treatments. The immune system and body don’t function in a vaccuum, watch you diet (e.g. Vitamin D) and habits (e.g. sunlight exposure). Otherwise, be merry and gay, life is an exercise in risk management.

  39. With markets hitting all time highs Dems just can’t stand it.

    Dems introduce bill that could kill millions of jobs.
    https://fee.org/articles/the-democrats-just-reintroduced-a-labor-law-that-would-destroy-uber-and-it-could-actually-pass-this-time/

    Joe Biden endorses the bill.
    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/biden-just-endorsed-a-law-that-endangers-57-million-jobs

    Keep the country locked down.

    Something has got to give or these idiots are going to kill the economy.

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