The symbol of the year 2020/CDC graphic
Eight months into the global disaster of a lifetime, maybe it is time Americans stop hating on each other and accept that no one has the perfect answer for how to deal with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Seven months ago, Sweden was being condemned for refusing to play follow-the-leader in the quest to isolate and kill the newly emergent pathogen.
Today the per capita death toll in the U.S. has surpassed that of Sweden, and the Nordic country – though faring worse than its Scandinavian neighbors – doesn’t look to have done that bad on the global scale.
Early on, writes Richard Smith at BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), “the New York Times called Sweden ‘a pariah state,’ and Sweden has had higher death rates than most countries in Europe, although lower than Britain. But, as I write this on 20 September 2020, the difference in the number of cases in Sweden and most of the rest of Europe is striking. Most countries in Europe have a rapid rise in cases, whereas Sweden does not. Spain, which had one of the most severe lockdowns, has one of the steepest increases.”
Sweden, the Journal’s former editor noted, recognized early on that the pandemic was going to last for a long time, and Swedish chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said “that ‘it would be in the autumn when it became more apparent how successful each country had been.’ As Britain looks close to going into another national lockdown, some are arguing that Sweden seems to have adopted a better strategy. But all judgements must be provisional as pandemics are unpredictable, and Tegnell does expect local spikes in cases.”
Tegnell looks now to be wrong on the date of the judgement day. It might be well into next year or longer before it becomes clear how successful various strategies have been.
He has guessed better on the the disease’s unpredictable nature. The number of cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, are creeping up in Sweden although deaths do not seem to be following in line.
At that rate, COVID-19 doesn’t even make the list of top-10 killers in the Nordic country. On average, 77 Swedes per day die from heart diseases, 63 per from cancers, 18 from problems linked to mental health, 17 from already established respiratory diseases like pneumonia.
But Sweden is nowhere near free of the scourge of COVID-19 because almost no country appears free.
Civil war
Across the Atlantic, the pandemic has become nothing but another reason for residents of the increasingly tribal United State to loathe each other.
On one side are those who believe the government knows all and should control all. On the other side are those who see the most dangerous pandemic disease in 100 years as nothing but a government scam designed to provide leverge with which to control the masses.
Progressives point to the now soaring infection rates in red states and claim the problem is that the people living there are stupid.
No matter the state, stupidity might indeed play some role in catching the newest infectious disease. It’s obvious with SARS-CoV-2 as with other respiratory viruses that the more time you spend around the infected and the closer you get, the better your chances of catching their disease.
And some aren’t doing much to protect themselves.
“Hand hygiene is one important measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other pathogens,” the study noted in one of several mixed messages coming out of the CDC.
As part of a push to get people to wear face coverings, CDC has until now made a big deal of how SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted “mainly through exposure to respiratory droplets.”
French scientists reporting in the Journal of Emerging Infectious Disease reported their laboratory experimentation with the virus led them to a slightly different conclusion.
The conflicting reports coming from scientists who all generally profess to be ultimate authorites has certainly not helped to bridge the partisan divide between those in this country or others.
“For the public is slowly turning against those who have sought to guide the political response to COVID-19. As countries face a resurgence of coronavirus transmission, scientific advisers are recommending further restrictions to our liberties. There is now a palpable public reaction against these mandates. Whereas in March people were ready to stay at home to protect their health and health systems, the growing economic emergency that has followed national lockdowns is leading politicians to resist similar measures being applied once again.”
The lockdowns made perfect sense initially. After SARS-CoV-1 broke out in 2002, it was isolated in the places where infections appeared and as a result disappeared in 2004.
That was a bit of a surprise as was the appearance of the deadly virus itself.
Unlucky us
With luck, SARS-CoV-2 would have disappeared, too. It actually looked to be disappearing in Alaska.
Only a case or two per day – and some days none – was reported through most of May, but infections started rise rapidly in June and are spiking again now as in many other states and Europe.
What to do next is the subject of debates that often degeneration into divisive arguments. There is no sure fire path forward. Some scientists are now even questioning whether lockdowns really worked as well as it first appeared.
In other words, the lockdown did a great job of flattening the curve – something obvious in the Alaska data – but increased the carnage. Still this is the view of only one trio of scientists with one model.
There are plenty of others with opposite views. They count millions of lives saved with lockdowns though calculating those that didn’t die is inherently speculative.
“An early consensus about how to manage the spread of the virus has disintegrated,” Horton wrote in that Lancet letter. “We see scientists splintering into factions.”
Of course, we do.
Any fan of American professional football can understand what is going on.”Winning cures all,” it has been observed there, and losing does the exact opposite.
Humanity ran into a viral hurricane in the form of SARS-CoV-2 and could do little more to control it than to control the wind. That so many who were severaly sickened were nursed back to health is a tribute to modern medicine.
Almost 1.1 million people are reported to have died of the disease to date. The Spanish flu of 1918-19 killed 17 million to as many as 100 million people at a time when the global population was about a quarter of what it is today.
Still, the vast majority of the population survived then as they are surviving today thanks to luck, genetics or lifestyle. The value of lifestyle is well illustrated in the case of COVID-19.
Obese people, according to one study, appear to have about a 40 percent greater chance of catching the disesase than the non-obese. And all studies agree the virus gravitates toward the obese.
Evidence is also growing that certain genes may make people more or less susceptible to the disease.
Reporting in a study on the medRxiv preprint server, scientists from Japanese and U.S. medcal centers suggested the much debated “herd immunity” might have been reached in Tokyo where 45 percent of the population appears to have been exposed to the virus.
Others scientists argue herd immunity will never be reached without a vaccine, and still others argue the most likely end to pandemic will come with the disease evolving into a milder form as did the flu.
From a purely evolutionary standpoint, a virus that sickens instead of kills has a much better chance of survival. It can go on forever as have the flu and the common cold, some versions of which are caused by CoV viruses.
Only time will tell, but more is being learned by the day. The problem is that much remains unknown.
The latter is unfortunately not a good thing in a digitially connected world now hardwired for instant gratification and instant answers.
Not to mention easy solutions.
Despite some government suggestions of a miracle vaccine by next year, the world is unlikely to find a quick an easy cure for COVID-19, which is sure to only add to the divisiveness going forward.
We have met the enemy, and he/she is us.
Categories: Commentary
Democrats ignoring science as usual..
Statistics involving 200,000 schoolkids from 47 states in the last two weeks of September yielded an overall coronavirus infection rate of just .13 percent among students and .24 percent for staffers, according to Brown University economics Professor Emily Oster and her team of number-crunchers.
The figures translate into what would be roughly 1.3 infections for a school with 1,000 kids in the two-week period, and 2.2 positive tests for every 1,000 staffers in the same time frame.
“I think it was thought the minute we get people together in schools, there would be these huge outbreaks — and that hasn’t come to pass,’’ Oster told The New York Post on Sunday.
Time and again we read headlines such as “32 new cases of Covid in Alaska”. or whatever.
Then, with a bit of research, one finds a new testing program or a renewed effort aimed at a particular segment of society.
Perhaps they suddenly decided to test a college or a village or a school system that had not been tested.
Perhaps they test 5000 people. Perhaps 32 of them test positive.
Isn’t it possible the people had been infected for quite some time? And that many others would have tested positive 2 weeks ago, but are now over it?
Is it realistic to proclaim 32 NEW CASES?
What would happen if you tested every person in Alaska on one day? Perhaps 300 would test positive. Can you imagine the hysterical headlines?
300 NEW COVID CASES IN ALASKA!!!!!!!!! Governor shaken, calls for federal help!!!! Priests alerted to prepare for mass deaths! Hospital ships sent north!!! Ventilators being located for quick flights at $20,000 a pop!
Population panics! Children afraid to go outside!
And all the while, nothing has really changed, other than more tests were done. Geeeeeeeesh!
You need to work on your talking points Ryan, we’ve been over 100 cases per day for 19 days straight. The last few we were well into 200+, if we were at 32 cases per day that would be great news at this point. Since yesterday there were about 250 positive tests and they came nowhere close to testing everyone in the state your numbers are too far away from resembling anything close to reality to discuss any further. The seven day rolling average for number of tests has been between roughly 2,000 and roughly 5,000 but it doesn’t really matter how many tests are done if a higher and higher percentage of those test come back positive When more testing is done and more come back positive, that is not a good thing. We are getting close to a seven day rolling average of 5% positive, and that’s not a good thing.
Things have changed, more people are testing positive on a percentage basis. We are seeing more than a 100 positive tests per day for almost 20 straight days, with the last few being over 200, all with roughly the same number of tests as we’ve seen the passed 4-5 months.
It’s not hard to find this information out, with like you said “with a bit of research”. https://coronavirus-response-alaska-dhss.hub.arcgis.com/search?groupIds=41ccb3344ebc4bd682c74073eba21f42
Have fun going through the numbers and doing a bit of research.
Go tattle and get law enforcement, who you want to defund, to arrest us non-maskers. Get the firing squad out for your virus that is a non-pandemic.. The only pandemic that exist here are the people that have lost their marbles. Pick them up and go get a job.
The US govt last week updated the survival rates (i.e., IF infected) for Covid19:
0-19 99.997%
20-49 99.98%
50-69 99.5%
70+ 94.6%
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html
the survival rates for under 70s are very good. the problem is that with so many infected, the bodies still pile up quickly.
But, the bodies aren’t piling up. That seems to be the conundrum for some.
“It is a virus that is extremely dangerous for people in the last 10 years of their working life – it cannot be compared with influenza at all. And for people in their first 10 years of retirement, it must absolutely be avoided. These people must not get infected. This age group needs to internalize this and I don’t think that has happened to a sufficient degree yet.” –8 Oktober 2020, Christian Drosten, chief virologist at Berlin’s Charité University Hospital. He is one of the co-discoverers of the SARS coronavirus. His team developed the world’s first test for SARS-CoV-2
how to protect the old folks is an increasingly difficult problem to solve given that SARS-CoV-2 clearly looks to be transitioning from a pandemic disease to an endemic disease.
It could be that since we’ve been busy extending life expediency as humans using science, nature has decided, as it seems to do from time to time, to simply humble us just by doing what it does…the most simple and inevitable thing possible, death. We are creatures on this rock, just like the others. As this pandemic evolves it’s clear our science isn’t what we would like to think it is.
Steve-O, what you say is generally true. We have seen to much chicanery associated with this virus to be so naive.
There are low cost, moderately effective mitigations, such as masks, social distancing and contact tracing. There are also high cost, probably more effective mitigations, such as school closures, business closures and elimination of social intercourse. It appears that the cost of doing no mitigation is intolerable, but we dont really know that.
To the extent that we, as individuals and collectively, reject the low cost mitigations we either compell the government to require high cost mitigations or we get to find out how bad it is with no mitigation.
Considering all that, it completely confounds me that we haven’t universally agreed to aggressively pursue low cost mitigations.
Honestly,
POTUS who is 74 y/o & obese did just fine with the COVID and his message upon leaving the hospital was “Don’t be scarred of COVID” yet the entire media facade will continue to preach the “doom & gloom” narrative until big Pharma can make Billions off of an ineffective and possibly dangerous vaccine?
It is time to wake up and stop living in fear.
Why has not one MD suggested ways to strengten your immune system?
Instead of “masking” the problem, maybe we should deal with the obesity and chronic disease problem that is facing America?
94 % of COVID deaths had pre-existing medical conditions…this is what is really killing people across America.
This is not the plague…just a really bad strain of the flu and another opportunity for the media to sell their daily report of fear & uncertainty.
Steve,
Potus The Ignorant,had access to a cocktail that you or I can’t either afford, nor is available for our minion status as of yet.
Potus The Ignorant doesn’t believe in science,nor like many AK republicans, does he believe in math.Theres many Anti-Mathers in the legislative/executive branches of state govt.,they tend to be republicans.
The Roman Legionaries of old formed battle lines with fairly large shields.They covered the left half of there torso, and the right half of there mate to the left.The man to your right “had your shield.”
Where a mask, its not just for you
Its ironic, regardless of the potential lethality of Covid2,that after 100yrs of technology,the best we can do against an organism that technically isn’t alive, all we have($billions chasing a solution, not withstanding)is the same thing we had almost exactly 100yrs ago.
Interesting times we live in
Dave Mc, I am glad we both can finally agree with science in that there are only 2 genders right? See, we can find common ground because “Democrats The Ignorants” say there are 56+.
Bryan,
Maybe Im a bit dense, but I have no idea what your sayin, what gender politics has to do with a virus, just not getting the connection.
But several state side Anti-Mathers are coming up to bat.Should be an interesting legislative year as republicrats attempt more dangerous fiscal withdraws.
Your post #’s are losing steam, any reason for that?
Still waiting with my popcorn for the grand finale Giulane Biden dossier,when can we have a peek?
Perhaps at the final debate 😀
Inquiring minds and such