Category: health care Page 12 of 35

So, American excess deaths as of October 3rd, were at 299,028. By today they are well over 300,000. In a population of 328 million, the US is at about .1%. The final number of deaths is hard to determine, because the course of the US epidemic is being determined by human decisions, and there’s some question of what Biden would do, as well as the matter of how effective the first vaccines would be. While the percentage seems small, it is more than all US war casualties since WWII.

Of, I think, greater concern to most people is the Covid damage phenomenon. For example, a recent study of 100 Covid survivors found 78 had heart damage (and the heart isn’t the only organ it damages.) There are going to very long and significant knock-ons. Current total cases are over 8 million. Assume 16 million by the end, and that 78% rate, and you’re looking at twelve and a half million people with heart issues they wouldn’t otherwise have had. Many of those people are young.

Opening universities has been a huge problem. Wisconsin’s cases, for one data point, are now more than half concentrated at universities. Data on schools is harder to find, but the UK data indicates a lot of infections, with them split about evenly between primary and secondary schools. Reopening schools and universities was a huge wrong doing (I originally called it a mistake, but I think decision makers understood the consequences.)

The reports I have are that the financial sector in England has not re-opened physically: the “City” is empty. The same pattern seems to exist in the US: the commons have been made to go back to work and their children to school, most of the elites still work from home. Watch what they do, not what they make you do.

In my own residence of Ontario cases started rising over 6 weeks ago, and the government waited till they exceeded the first peak to put in restrictions less onerous than at the first peak, while children are at school and most ordinary people working. We reopened too soon, and re-shutdown too late and meanwhile supports from the government have been cut back.

As other countries have proved, following epidemiology 101 can indeed break the back of the epidemic (there are packed pool parties in Shanghai, New Zealand is fine, etc…) However, the way Covid has been handled in the US, Canada, Britain and probably elsewhere where I haven’t dug up the data has made the rich richer. The rich have access to on the spot testing with results in  5 minutes and are tested every day. They work from home. Covid has been a huge windfall for them. (This is why I wonder if Biden will really change much, his donors are getting rich too.)

So we wait for vaccines, wonder how much they will cost and how many of us will get Covid. Most will survive at this point, but not unscathed. Tens of millions will be ruined economically.

This epidemic should have been mostly over by summer, with occasional outbreaks dealt with by local shutdowns. Instead it will crank on till sometime next year.

The reason, again, is that the rich and powerful are mostly not at risk (if they do get it due to bad luck, or like Trump, due to extremely stupid behaviour, they get care not available even to normal people in the hospital); are making a lot of money and are gaining control over a larger percentage of the population.

If you’re rich and not very very unlucky, Covid has been a huge blessing. The rest of us can just wait for vaccines.

So, it’s been a while since we talked about Covid. The United States has been in a long slow decline, which you can see in the graphs below (both based on CDC numbers, which will be understatements.)

Cases:

Deaths:

As the charts show, the death rate was highest at the start. This is both because the initial cases blew through old folks homes and because we have become better at treating cases.

The trend looks good, but a lot will depend on how school and university re-openings go. My guess is that we’ll see a spike in cases in about 2 to 3 weeks, then a larger spike about 2 to 3 weeks after the universities send their students home. It is also true that I’m seeing a lot of states starting to have an R over 1 (each case infects more than one person.)

The fundamental issue here is that the shutdowns were never done properly in most cases. Here’s an exception:

https://twitter.com/Cleavon_MD/status/1303164731092381696

The key to defeating this was always to do a hard shutdown, with no one but actual essential workers. Doing so in a widespread would have required actual income support, a cancellation of all mortgage, rent and and other payments, and actual organization to get people the food and medicine and other supplies they needed to genuinely shelter in place. Mandatory masks on leaving the house, etc, etc…

This has been done successfully by multiple countries, it’s not an unsolved problem, but it was never done in the United States and the result is an endless misery of cases, never ending. Openings from such shut downs as were put in place were done too soon, as well, and there are going to wind up either being reversals of many of those openings or a decision made to just suck it up and live with the cases.

Doing the latter, of course, means that America will be a pariah nation, with Americans unable to travel to other countries until there is an effective vaccine and Americans take it.

There are multiple causes for why the US has performed this way, but the simplest is that rich people aren’t scared any more (the truly rich get tested every day, and so do the people who interact with them, plus they can stay isolated) and Covid has thus been mostly affecting poor people and minorities, with some middle class folks getting hit. (Middle class to actual rich is poor, however,  you aren’t human to them.)

(Chart from Bloomberg. Now imagine the number for those who really matter, who earn, say, five million or more.)

In addition, the rich have become much richer during Covid as small and medium businesses shut down, they have consolidated.

So it’s all good to those who rule America, in fact it’s a once a decade opportunity to consolidate their wealth and power (the last one being the financial crisis, which, yes, did leave them richer.)

The rich were bailed out, you weren’t, they’re getting richer, and that will continue.

Keep wearing masks, take vitamin D3 every day, and hunker down, this is going to go on for quite a while yet. and there’s a good chance of another bad wave.

I’m sorry if you’re American and not rich. Your elites kill you for money, and there is nothing I can do about it but what I’ve been doing for a couple decades now: warn you so you can try and prepare for the next way their depraved greed will endanger your life, health and prosperity. To be sure, there are countries where the citizens have it worse, but few where it is more needless.

OK, full argument incoming, but for the folks who only read the first paragraph: if you’re American outside of a very few Northeastern states and  can avoid sending your children back to school without going to jail, you probably shouldn’t.

Recently, in a 3 day summer overnight camp, 44% of attendees got Covid-19. They didn’t do everything perfectly: staff wore masks, students didn’t, and they didn’t leave doors and windows open to ventilate cabins.

The attack rate was 44% in just 3 days. Forty-four percent got the virus.

Now schools aren’t as bad as overnight camps. However, we can assume that mask compliance will be less than perfect, especially with younger children. Seven or so hours a day are spent inside, with bad ventilation.

And children will be there for months, day after day.

Now, the US Covid map for today, August 3rd, at 1 AM.

If you send your kids back to school in most of these states (there will not be a turnaround by September), there is very good chance they will get it. It may not kill them, though it may give them problems for the rest of their lives, but they will bring it home. You, not being young, then stand a good chance of getting it and dying. If you don’t die, there is reason to believe many people suffer permanent health issues from it, even if they live.

Then, of course, there are cases like this.

"More than a quarter of our students live with grandparents. These kids could easily catch this virus, spread it, bring it back home. There’s no way it can be safe.

If you think anything else, I’m sorry, but it’s a fantasy. Kids will get sick, or worse. Family members will die." https://t.co/4niKmtW1vi

— Bob Morris🌵☀️ (@polizeros) August 2, 2020

Grandparents? Prime death chance.

This isn’t just about killing kids, it’s about killing parents, teachers and grandparents.

This is either sheerest insanity (if you think elites are completely clueless) or a deliberate measure meant to kill hundreds of thousands more Americans.

Anyway, I know there are laws, and you should look into them. But I’d think twice before sending my kids back to school under these circumstances. Maybe you’ll dodge the bullet, but you may not, and a lot of people won’t.

And so, what has happened is that the (mostly) blue states which got hit hard at the start got Covid-19 numbers down (in a fumbling, incompetent and delayed fashion which cost tens of thousands of lives.) Meanwhile other states reopened early or never properly closed and a new wave is hitting.

On April 21st I wrote:

So, right now we have five states in the US that never bothered to self-isolate.

We have the Governor of Georgia announcing he will allow gyms, barbers, and fitness clubs, among others, to reopen on the 24th.

We have the Governor of Florida reopening Florida’s beaches. Good thing Florida doesn’t have a lot of old people!

There are astroturf protests asking for an end to isolation. “Let us die, let us die, let us DIE!” (Also, let us kill others.)

Then on May 11th:

So, the numbers seem to be in decline, and there will be removal of restrictions, and then the numbers will start increasing again in two to six weeks. Because infection rates will be moving off a larger base, they will create a second wave where people start dropping like flies–much larger than the first wave.

Well, that’s where we are now. Enjoy. Multiple states, including Florida (always obviously going to be a problem) have increasing numbers and no sign they intend to reimpose social distancing, let alone track and trace and mandatory mask use.

This is going to go on and on and on, made worse by the fact that the Federal Reserve and Congress have chosen to bail out the rich and give peanuts to everyone else. Riots and protests will continue, because why not? People don’t have enough money, are going to lose their housing, the jobs to go back to don’t exist. Provocations which before were barely tolerable now set off firestorms.

The rich don’t care: they were scared at first, because a lot of them got infected in the first wave. Rich people have a lot of social contacts and travel a lot, BUT now that they know there’s a problem, they can self-isolate and protect themselves, and if they do get sick they receive the best care. Most poor people can’t self-isolate: they live in group housing, their jobs are often physical and usually put them around other people.

So there’s little incentive for Covid-19 to be handled properly: the rich are fine and pretty much safe, they just have to stay home a lot, in their big houses and multi-bedroom condominiums. They’re fine financially. What happens to other Americans is of little concern to them, so why not make them go back to work?

Something like a quarter to a third of small businesses are likely to be destroyed by this crisis. Whatever’s worth buying will be bought up for cents on the dollar by the rich, and they’ll consolidate further control over US real-estate.

Crises are good if you have cash money, and the rich are salivating. Let this drag out, let them take further advantage.

So, the second wave is starting.

If those states which did, in their fumbling and laggardly way, manage to reduce numbers want to keep those numbers down, they will need to find a way to close their borders to all non-essential visitors from out of state. That’s probably unconstitutional, but do it anyway to buy time while it winds thru the courts.

As for everyone else, just know that the second wave is here: it’s a second wave in states other than the ones that were hit hardest the first time BUT it will mean that no states will be able to actually eliminate Covid, because there will be out of state people constantly re-spreading the disease.

It’s going to be a long hot summer and autumn won’t be any better.

Understand that this is a chosen fiasco. All that was required was reasonable subsidies, a moratorium on rent, mortgage and other loan payments, track and trace, mandatory masks and shelter in place orders.

Once your lords and masters realized they were mostly safe, they stopped caring about the crisis. Some states dealt with it acceptably, but on a national level, this is a totally forseeable, and thus essentially planned clusterfuck.

Sorry if you lost or lose people you care about. Or even people you don’t know, but since you aren’t a sociopath, think shouldn’t die.

It’s you, or your elites. Until you remove them from power, by whatever means necessary, they will kill you and let you die whenever it is convenient to them, or just inconvenient to keep you around. (You may have thought it was only brown foreigners like Iraqis they were willing to kill hundreds of thousands of. Wrong.)

As the country reopens, our benefactor has other work to occupy them, so this will be the last Covid-19 data post. Of course, I’ll keep a weather eye on Covid in the US and write if anything significant happens, including a change in trend.

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