News to keep you locked up in the family cave with two boulders at the entrance:
The focus on young coronavirus positive patients comes as nearly half of states are reporting a rise in new positive cases and some continue to break records in their daily reported cases. Florida on Monday surpassed 100,000 total coronavirus cases, according to data released by the Florida Department of Health.- CNN yesterday
Imagine, 100,000 suffering Floridians, hospitals overloaded, patients treated on the sidewalks, doctors and nurses flying in from across the country.
That’s the picture painted by CNN and other media, as they recently reported 30,000 “active” cases in one state or another.
The only problem is that the 100,000 cases in Florida includes everyone who has been positive since they began testing in March. It also includes the 96% of folks who tested positive and never went to the hospital, because they had mild or – in most cases – no symptoms.
The media, including NYT and WAPO, are also obsessed with danger, danger, danger in California, Arizona and Texas.
CNN gets its cues from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), which has offered frightening prediction of virus deaths in the U.S.
For example, on May 5 a Johns Hopkins study had to be clarified:
Analysis included in leaked government documents that showed the U.S. could see up to 3,000 deaths per day (on June 1) from coronavirus was not meant to be used for official forecasts, JHU claimed.
The university said researchers at its school of public health produced the study for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist planning, as states begin loosening their restrictions intended to slow the spread of the virus.
But Hopkins was completely wrong with its 3,000 deaths-per-day prediction..
Deaths fell to 865 on May 17, and then to 353 on May 24, almost 1/8th the scary projection.
The JSU study also showed the U.S. reaching 200,000 new cases daily by June 1. By May 24 cases had fallen to 26,000, also about 1/8th the Hopkins’ forecast.
About 2,357,000 in the U.S. have tested positive since the beginning of the pandemic. The test total is 28,500,000, so about eight percent of those tested were positive, but only four percent of those have been hospitalized, which means that 320 of every 100,000 tested actually required hospitalization.
Despite all the reports of overwhelming deaths and serious illnesses, the total coronavirus hospital cases across the nation was 16,000 on Sunday.
The chart in today’s blog is sorted by the rate of deaths per million residents. New York is the worst – 1,605 deaths per million.
What about the states that CNN points out as danger spots?
Florida is one/11th the New York death rate (1,605) with just 147 per million. California is 140. Arizona is 184 .
Compare that not just to New York’s 1,605, but also: New Jersey – 1,463, Connecticut – 1,195, Massachusetts – 1,140 and dozens of other states with much higher death rates.
But what about CNN’s dire view of Texas? It was too low to fit on my chart, but their death rate per million was 76. You are 20x as likely to have died from the virus in New York than in the Lone Star state.
What you won’t see on CNN is a report on why there are suddenly more than usual new cases in those particular states.
All have a common problem – current heavy influxes of legal and “undocumented” farm workers, primarily from Mexico, and they are being heavily tested.
Our neighbor south of the penetrable border is in trouble with 1,044 deaths yesterday, versus 363 in the entire U.S., and its hospitals are filling up fast – another reason for their residents to seek jobs and virus medical treatments here.
The most deadly states are Northeast coastal, but the media is now focusing on places that have done an excellent job in keeping death rates low. A fair Press would ask why deadly nursing home policies, plus unrestricted air travel in the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions, have led to the unnecessary deaths of so many.
Another wrinkle in reporting the extent of the virus revolves around the principal source quoted by media – Johns Hopkins.
Here again, let’s follow the money and the politics.
Hopkins is advocating testing every contact of every person tested positive every day, which means isolating those exposed, and those exposed to those exposed.
If 10,000 folks tested positive tomorrow, virtually all without symptoms, each of their contacts (estimate 40) in the past two weeks must be found and isolated. Forty times 10,000 equals 400,000, which leads to 400,000 times 40 equals 16 million – all to be placed under quarantine.
Imagine then contact tracing the 40 contacts of the 16 million quarantined?
This might have worked early in the spread when there were 50 cases total, but to even attempt it today would require many hundreds of thousands of contact tracers, and even then it seems an impossible task in a country so large without forcing major privacy violations.
Despite the insanity of such a plan, tv talk show phenom Dr. Anthony Fauci fully endorses the concept of contact tracing and attempting to eventually test each of our 330 million residents.
And what Fauci isn’t advertising is that you may be negative one day, but an hour later you can test positive. Daily testing – at the least – seems necessary in this idiot-savant fantasy.
If nothing else, the companies who make the tests will get rich and the folks administering them will be very busy.
What is the source of the enthusiasm for contact tracing at Johns Hopkins?
It comes from Fauci’s associate, multi-billionaire and Trilateral Commission member Michael Rubens “Mike” Bloomberg.
On April 30 Bloomberg sketched out his plan to team up with Hopkins to develop mass coronavirus contact tracing in New York and eventually across the country.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo agreed and said to stop the spread of COVID-19, his state will need 6,400 to 17,000 workers to trace the contacts of those who test positive in New York.
Cuomo, whose state had the most deaths in the nation per thousand from the virus, wants to increase diagnostic testing, and trace contacts of those who test positive and isolate those who have been in close contact with affected people.
If New York needs 17,000 tracers for its 20 million residents, initiating the program for 330 million across the nation (20x as large) would require 330,000 tracers.
“When you get a positive, you talk to that person and trace back who they have been in contact with. Then test those people. You then isolate those people, so you don’t increase the rate of infection,” Cuomo said. “That’s what tracing is. The faster you trace, the better.”
And then there’s that Bloomberg-suggested smartphone app that knows when you contact someone who has tested positive. Does a drone suddenly appear overhead and shout – “Report to the virus camps immediately, or else?” The other choice would be sirens wailing as police rush you into a van that takes you to railroad cars that lumber into camps surrounded by barbed wire.
What a goofy plan.
And you have to wonder why such a prestigious university would go along with Bloomberg’s impossible dream.
VOX reported in November, 2018:
Former New York mayor (and potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate) Michael Bloomberg has given $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, to use for financial aid.
For a lot less than $1.8 billion, I would wear an “I LIKE MIKE”
But, I don’t think I would go on television every week and lie about how we need to test every soul in the U.S., and then be obliged to quarantine tens of millions, destroying the country in vain pursuit of absolute perfection, while pleasing my billionaire buddy.
You can fool nearly all the people... 