I will make no claim other than I am using science to display how COVID 19 may be fading fast, at least in most developed countries. The jury is still out on Brazil, India, and Russia, but the statistics show that what we have seen in the early countries that were hard hit by the coronavirus, the worst seems to be over, with the caveat that perhaps there could be a second wave, even though there has yet to be a substantial second wave that equaled the first.
Based on CDC and WHO data from June 2, 2020, and in looking at daily deaths (the only real number that counts), we can see a downward trend almost uniformly.
Starting with the U.S.:
(note the six-day cycle where there is a brief peak and then it drops down for five or six days, decreasing in intensity in each cycle:
Sweden, the sole developed European country that did not go into lockdown, but instead, had faith its citizenry would follow social distancing guidelines, they too, seem to have peaked:
And then there’s Belgium, per capita the hardest hit country:
The UK, which is still reeling from an intense month of high death counts, is finally easing:
Italy can finally breath a sigh of relief:
The French are almost ready to start kissing again:
Hotspots like Brazil and India are worth watching. Brazil is still seeing triple digit deaths but its peak was two weeks ago:
We’ll know by late June where India is heading because if the peak remains May 29 for a sustained period, that could be good news while the country tries to adhere to strict lock down measures to “flatten the curve.”
113 countries have had less than 100 deaths from COVID (assuming the records are correct), and 39 countries have reported no deaths. The virus has been circulating since (we think) January, perhaps even early December, which makes the stronger case that community spread is what is happening with the SRS-CoV-2 virus as it makes its way around the world.
Drugmaker Moderna has obtained clearance from the Food and Drug Administration to run a larger trial of its CCP virus vaccine candidate.
The state of the phase two trial is “imminent,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. The trial will include 600 participants.
The biotechnology company hopes start a phase three study as early as this summer.
Developed in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, Moderna’s vaccine uses a messenger RNA and contains none of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus from China, instead carrying a sequence of the virus.
The mRNA, or genetic molecules, are supposed to trigger an immune response by having the body’s cells express a virus protein.
The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, is helping speed up development of the candidate. BARDA in April awarded Moderna up to $483 million to support later clinical trials and scaling up manufacturing. Moderna has in the past received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Moderna, based in Massachusetts, said it was hiring up to 150 new employees this year to support the project. It also partnered with Lonza, a Swiss drugmaker, to boost production of the experimental vaccine, with a goal of making up to 1 billion doses.
Manufacturing could start as early as July and approval could come as early as next year.
There are no vaccines or proven treatments for the CCP virus or the disease it causes, COVID-19.
The virus primarily causes severe illness in the elderly and those with underlying health conditions such as obesity, heart disease, or cancer.
A significant portion of people who become infected never show symptoms while others experience mild or moderate symptoms and recover at home through rest and symptom treatment.
Symptoms include fever, fatigue, chills, and aches and pains.Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieber
Treating COVID-19patients with zinc in addition to hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin led to a higher rate of discharge from hospitals and a lower likelihood of dying, according to a new study.
Researchers at New York University’s School of Medicine reviewed records from roughly 900 patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
About half received zinc sulfate in addition to hydroxychloroquine, a treatment typically used against malaria and lupus, and azithromycin, a common antibiotic. The other half received the two treatments without zinc.
Patients receiving the triple-drug treatment were 1.5 times more likely to recover enough to be discharged from hospitals and were 44 percent less likely to die, when compared to the other group.
“We found a statistically significant decrease in mortality among patients who received zinc as part of their treatment regimen. This is the first study, to our knowledge, that showed a clinical difference in patients with COVID-19 who received zinc,” Joseph Rahimian, one of the researchers, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The coronavirus infection fatality rate is lower than initially predicted, perhaps similar or even lower than the seasonal flu’s 0.1 percent for some segments of the population, a couple of doctors confirmed in testimony before a Senate panel on Thursday.
Breitbart News has highlighted some studies that took into account mild or asymptomatic infections and found that the ongoing pandemic is more widespread but less deadly than early estimates.
One of those studies placed the coronavirus illness’s (COVID-19) infection mortality rate as low as 0.1 percent, similar to that of the flu.
A death rate that takes into account the estimated number of mild or asymptomatic infections is known as the infection fatality rate.
At least two medical experts testified about the coronavirus infection mortality rate during a hearing held Thursday by the Republican-led Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Thursday
In written testimony, Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said, seemingly referring to the infection death rate:
By now, multiple studies from Europe, Japan, and the US all suggest that the overall fatality rate is far lower than early estimates, perhaps below 0.1 to 0.4%, i.e., ten to forty times lower than estimates that motivated extreme isolation.
@SWAtlasHoover to @HSGAC: “By now, multiple studies from Europe, Japan, and the US all suggest that the overall fatality rate is far lower than early estimates, perhaps below 0.1 to 0.4%, i.e., ten to forty times lower than estimates that motivated extreme isolation.” 1/2Edwin Mora@EdwinMora83
“Smart, safe re‐entry cannot be delayed by fear or hypothetical projections, because we have direct data on risk and experience with managing it. The goal of the strict isolation has been accomplished.”
Echoing Atlas, Dr. John Ioannidis, a Stanford University professor of medicine, epidemiology, and population health, as well as of biomedical data science and statistics, explained the difference between “infection fatality rate” and “crude fatality rate” in his written testimony, noting:
Shelter-in-place and lockdown orders were justified initially, when announcements declared a new, contagious virus with 3.4% fatality rate and no asymptomatic infections. Prospects of 60 million deaths worldwide led to comparisons against 1918 influenza. However, currently we know that asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic infections are very common. The numbers of people infected are far more than those documented to-date with [the laboratory analysis technique known as] PCR [Polymerase Chain Reaction] testing. Infection fatality rate is accordingly much lower than the crude fatality rates derived from dividing the number of deaths by the number of documented [confirmed] cases.
…
The fatality rate from COVID-19 is highly dependent on age and modulated by the presence of [underlying medical issues]. For children and young adults, it appears that infection fatality rate is lower than seasonal influenza, and for middle age adults it is about the same.
Dr. Ioannidis did warn of a potential second wave and a possible rise in the infection fatality rate among vulnerable segments of the population, namely people in nursing homes and on the frontlines of the battle against coronavirus.
He testified:
Of course, a second wave cannot yet be excluded. Its occurrence and potential magnitude can only be speculated with mathematical models, but models have not been very successful so far in COVID-19 predictions. Therefore, we need to proceed with caution in lifting lockdown and monitor the impact of any changes in policy measures with real data, as opposed to just using models.
…
Infection fatality rate can increase sharply, however, when nursing homes are massively infected and when unprepared hospitals are overwhelmed and the infection spreads to hospitalized patients (nosocomial infection). This explains the paradox why COVID-19 is typically a very mild, benign infection, but it also has the potential to become devastating in specific settings.
Not all witnesses agreed that the infection fatality rate was similar or lower to the flu’s 0.1 percent.
Dr. Tom Inglesby, the director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, testified that the infection fatality rate is higher than the flu’s, noting in his written testimony:
Most studies that have been done calculate the infected fatality rate to be in the .5 to 1% range. For example, this Lancet analysis concluded that there was an infected fatality rate of .66% in China. If .5% of 233 million people were to die from this illness in the US, that would be 1,165,000 deaths.
Dr. Inglesby also appeared to disagree with the assessment by Atlas and Ioannidis that lockdowns have achieved their intended purpose.
Atlas, the former chief of neuroradiology at the Stanford University Medical Center, told Senators:
We also know that total isolation prevents broad population immunity and prolongs the problem. … Smart, safe re‐entry cannot be delayed by fear or hypothetical projections, because we have direct data on risk and experience with managing it. The goal of the strict isolation has been accomplished.
Dr. Ioannidis added:
While lockdowns were justified initially, their perpetuation may risk many lives. Mental health can be affected with increases in depression, suicides, domestic violence and child abuse. Gun sales have increased. Famine is becoming a global threat.
Meanwhile, Dr. Inglesby spoke against allowing the disease to spread relatively unencumbered until the population achieves “herd immunity,” an approach followed by Sweden.
Inglesby testified:
Epidemiological estimates are that it will require on the order of 70% of the population to be infected to achieve herd immunity. 70% of the US population is about people 233 million people. … It is likely that the infected mortality rate would go up substantially under conditions where the virus were allowed to spread rapidly in the US with no social distancing.
Inglesby’s colleague, Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist Caitlin Rivers told a Democrat-led House Appropriations Subcommittee on Wednesday that not one U.S. state should be reopening at this time.
Washington (AFP) – Gilead Science’s remdesivir, one of the most highly anticipated drugs being tested against the new coronavirus, showed positive results in a large-scale US government trial, the company said Wednesday.
“We understand that the trial has met its primary endpoint and that NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) will provide detailed information at an upcoming briefing,” the company said.
Though it is difficult to precisely quantify the finding in the absence of results, it represents the first time any drug has been shown to improve outcomes against the COVID-19 illness, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives globally and brought the world economy to a grinding halt.
There have been mixed results for the intravenous antiviral in recent weeks. A summary of results posted on the website of the World Health Organization showed it failed in a smaller Chinese trial, but days before that, Stat reported it had shown significant efficacy at a Chicago hospital.
However, this trial, begun in late February and overseen by the US government, is the largest and technically most robust.
According to a data sheet, its estimated enrollment was 800 patients, a portion of whom received the drug while the rest received a placebo.
Neither the patients nor their physicians were aware of which group they belonged to, in order to eliminate unconscious bias.
It is a Phase 3 trial, the final stage before any medication can receive regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Remdesivir, which previously failed in trials against Ebola, belongs to a class of drugs that act on the virus directly — as opposed to controlling the abnormal and often lethal autoimmune response it causes.
It mimics one of the four building blocks of RNA and DNA and gets absorbed into the virus’s genome, which in turn stops the pathogen from replicating.
The antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are also being widely used against COVID-19 on a so-called “compassionate basis” pending results from large trials, with early studies decidedly mixed.
Other therapies that are being studied include collecting antibodies from COVID-19 survivors and injecting them in patients, or harvesting antibodies from genetically-engineered mice that were deliberately infected.
Turnabout is always fair play. As a new narrative spins up about the political price President Trump needs to pay for COVID-19 related deaths, I have a different question. What price should the corporate media play for preventable non-COVID-19 related deaths among those who are too scared to seek care because of the panic they have created?
It seems if someone dies, the only thing that matters is whether not they had COVID-19 in their system at the time. Yet doctors nationally are sounding the alarm about the unintended public health consequences of the shutdown and the risks associated with significant reductions in healthcare utilization. There will be an increase in death and disability that accompanies this media-fueled fear and any history of this pandemic should include their role in the negative consequences.
Dr. Erickson and Dr. Massihi of Accelerated Urgent Care in southern California held a press conference to express their concerns. The visits to their clinics have dropped dramatically with the shutdown. They even highlighted the fact that their capacity to test for COVID-19 is only being utilized at about 50% because patients are too worried about exposure to come in for testing.
In an opinion piece for Fox News, Dr. Manny Alvarez notes thankthe procedure delays and routine medical care that were stifled during the epidemic. He asserts that priority should be placed on restoring these services as soon as possible. He notes that up to 42 percent of solo medical practices have laid off workers and that 20 percent of independent practices may be lost. Access to primary care physicians is critical for public health and these losses will cut deeply.
Today, emergency room physician Dr. Daniel G. Murphy chimed in. His perspective as a doctor on the frontlines of the epidemic that hit the Bronx should carry more weight than a talking head at CNN. However, he would likely not be invited on as a guest.
He asserts that the decline in new COVID-19 patients was an abrupt and noticeable event. His clinical experience tells him this had more to do with the natural course of the outbreak that the lockdown. That would not be a permissible opinion. Dr. Murphy also notes the uptick in the number of people dying at home, which he believes is due to non-COVID-19 related causes:
A large share of those staying home surely have emergency medical and surgical conditions not related to the novel coronavirus. The growing numbers dying at home during this crisis must include fatal myocardial infarctions, asthma exacerbations, bacterial infections and strokes.
This is accompanied by declines in pediatric visits, missed vaccines and a significant decline in 911 medical emergencies which all have a negative impact on public health. Then he really goes full apostate when he says:
Finally, COVID-19 is more prevalent than we think. Many New Yorkers already have the COVID-19 infection, whether they are aware of it or not. As of today, over 43 percent of those tested are positive in The Bronx. We are developing a significant degree of natural herd immunity. Distancing works, but I am skeptical that it is playing as predominant a role as many think.
He will definitely not be asked to appear on MSNBC.
This is despite health experts having grave concerns over the number of canceled well-child visits due to parent fears during the pandemic. And Texas oncologists sounding the alarm about cancer screenings missed due to restrictions during the pandemic and fear of going to the doctor’s office. And while chemotherapy was still permitted to be given, patients are skipping appointments or having them canceled due to fears of contracting the virus.
This does not account for the impact of missed routine care and screening for people with chronic illnesses. How many angiograms will not find an arterial blockage? How many patients are suffering from unneeded pain and immobility due to fear of seeing their orthopedic surgeon?
A dancer in New York made headlines because of an amputation credited to a COVID-19 related clot. Will the diabetic who leaves a foot ulcer untreated due to COVID-19 fear and loses a leg get the same coverage? Of course not. You only need to know about the other to make it clear bad things can happen to anyone who gets COVID-19. It is designed to make the infinitesimal number of young and healthy people who become seriously ill or die with COVID-19 seem like the norm.
Even in my own community, we are seeing these effects. Dentists are canceling routine appointments. A friend who works in a neurologist’s office has been cut to two days a week due to a drop in office visits. Her husband, who works in radiology, is seeing a lot of “presumed COVID-19” notations on patient charts. He is not seeing a lot of confirmed tests or what he calls “obvious and unique changes to lung scans” accompanying the diagnosis. He believes this is because hospital utilization is so low that facilities are seeking the full payment from insurance companies and government programs associated with a COVID-19 diagnosis. And the parking lots in front of our local pediatrician and other medical offices are near empty every time you drive by.
So, the media is asking if President Trump should be held accountable for deaths related to COVID-19. This is despite an unprecedented mobilization of public and private resources through the Coronavirus Task Force and early actions to ban travel from hot spots. No politician should pay a political price for a virus we knew very little about forced on the globe by China’s Communist Party. Not Trump, the nation’s governors or local officials of any party. They are all building the plane while they a flying it.
However, I have no problem blaming the fear-mongering corporate media for deaths related to people avoiding healthcare services. The malpractice of misrepresenting the risks of COVID-19 to broad majorities of the population will have untold negative effects on the public health. Whether it is a measles outbreak because of avoided vaccination visits or the patient who ends up severely ill with peritonitis because they didn’t seek care before their appendix burst, it is all based on an outsize panic created by the media desperate to oppose this administration all costs.
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More than 100,000 residents in Miami-Dade County, Florida, may have been infected with the CCP virus, according to new results from antibody testing done by the county.
Two weeks of testing showed 6 percent of participants had antibodies against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus that emerged from mainland China last year.
Extrapolated countywide, 165,000 residents would have been infected with the virus, which causes a disease called COVID-19. If true, the actual number of infections is 16.5 times higher than the number of cases confirmed through testing sites and local hospitals.
“We believe that our data sheds new light on what is happening in our community,” Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Giménez said during a press conference on Friday.
Miami-Dade County officials said they’re 95 percent certain the true amount of infection is between 4.4 percent and 7.9 percent of the population, or between 123,000 and 221,000 residents.
About 1,800 people have been tested so far through the testing program, which is ongoing. The initial 400, tested during a pilot phase, were not counted in the total. Along with testing on new people, officials plan on conducting follow-up tests on people who tested positive for antibodies.
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine researchers are working with the county on the program.
Antibody tests measure proteins in the body that are produced when people are exposed to the CCP virus. If people have antibodies, they were infected with the virus but have since recovered. They may be immune to reinfection. That is still being explored by researchers.
The results from Florida are similar to recent antibody testing conducted elsewhere, including in New York.
More than half of the people who tested positive to antibody screening showed no symptoms in recent weeks, Giménez said. According to a growing body of evidence, a number of people who contract the CCP virus show no symptoms but can still transmit the illness to others.
The mayor said social distancing measures will need to remain in place during phased reopenings, such as maintaining 6 feet of distance from others and using masks or other face coverings.
“We want to get back to normal, but we can only do so if people take personal responsibility and follow the rules,” he said.
The mortality rate of COVID-19 patients who have been put on ventilators is a staggering 60-80%. According to experts, high-pressure ventilation to treat complications caused by the disease can be damaging to the lungs.
In X-rays, you can see the lungs of COVID-19 patients deteriorate after the procedure.
So, what’s going wrong? Experts say doctors are treating patients according to the protocol established for Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). But COVID-19 Adults Respiratory Distress Syndrome (CARDS) may be an entirely different disease.
“It’s something we’ve never seen before,” Dr. Stuart H. Ditchek, MD, who is part of the Pandemic Task Force Working Group and an attending physician at NYU-Langone Medical Center in New York City, tells Newsmax. “In ARDS patients, when we take X-rays of their lungs after they have been ventilated, their lungs improve. Not so with most of the COVID-19 patients.”
Ditchek’s colleague, Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell, MD, who is board certified in critical care medicine, puts it bluntly:
“We are treating the wrong disease,” he says in a video for Global Research. “This is not classical ARDS and we’re using a false paradigm to treat COVID-19. I feel that continuing to use misguided treatment will lead to a tremendous amount of suffering in a very short time.”
Ditchek says that several radiologists suggest that the serial radiographs of COVID-19 patients resemble the pattern of premature infants’ respiratory syndrome (RDS) rather than ARDS.
“Should we start to view COVID-19 patients as suffering from a similar pathology to infant RDS and attempt the successful interventions used in those children?” asks Ditchek. “Clearly we need to be trying something else and by using these proven interventions on even some of the patients we can actually be conducting our own trials right here, right now.”
What Ditchek proposes has already rocked the academic community, which wants clinical trials before changing protocol.
“We are kind of flying by the seat of our pants, so we don’t have time to follow the old rules,” he counters. “We do know that high-pressure ventilation seems to be further damaging the lungs and causing a cytokine storm, which attacks and limits oxygenation. So, we need to try other methods to safely save these patients.”
Here what the doctors recommend:
Use High-Frequency Oscillatory Ventilation (HFOV), which is a gentler approach and more likely to be lung protective. It’s been used successfully in infant RDS for many years.
Employ noninvasive positive pressure ventilation (NIPPV) techniques such as high-flow nasal canula (HFNC), helmet masks, and BIPAP and CPAP devices for as long as possible
Initiate surfactant therapy, which helps with oxygen exchange either through intubation or in a nebulizer.
Use treatment options like hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, and convalescent plasma treatment, among others, and include them in medical trials.
“A mortality rate of 60% to 80% in ventilated COVID-19 patients is simply not acceptable and should trigger an immediate review and changing paradigm,” says Ditchek. “Centers should consider adopting any or all of these recommendations or at least start having important conversations for novel disease management.”
Following new CDC guidelines: “As of April 14, 2020, CDC case counts and death counts include both confirmed and probable cases and deaths. This change was made to reflect an interim COVID-19 position statement issued by the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists on April 5, 2020. The position statement included a case definition and made COVID-19 a nationally notifiable disease.
A confirmed case or death is defined by meeting confirmatory laboratory evidence for COVID-19. A probable case or death is defined by i) meeting clinical criteria AND epidemiologic evidence with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID-19; or ii) meeting presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence; or iii) meeting vital records criteria with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID19″ [source]
This change is afurther exampleof one of the many reasons why the label “confirmed cases” (used by some to designate total cases) is incorrect (see definitions for more details). The US CDC (and Worldometer) has always used the label “Total Cases.” Canada is another example where the “total number includes publicly reported confirmed and probable cases [source]
On April 14, New York City reported 3,778 additional deaths that have occurred since March 11 and have been classified as “probable,” defined as follows: “decedent […] had no known positive laboratory test for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) but the death certificate lists as a cause of death “COVID-19” or an equivalent” [source].
From April 14 onward, New York City has provided – and will continue to provide – the updated number of probable deaths in its daily reports.
On April 15, in the daily press briefing, New York Governor Cuomo said that “we will begin reporting all categories of fatalities pursuant to new CDC guidelines and are contacting facilities to get updated numbers.” He also added that there may be additional people who died that have not been counted because not in a hospital. In the April 15 update, the New York State Department of Health official website had still not included (nor reported separately) the additional “probable” deaths reported by New York City the day before. On April 16, when asked about the issue, New York State officials commented on their decision to not add the New York City probable deaths in the official State count saying that probable deaths have been reported by New York City in a new and separate category, without adding the two numbers (confirmed and probable) together into a single category.
Worldometer is following the new CDC guideline of including both probable and confirmed in the total case and death counts [source]
As with similar instances in the past (with other countries), we have added the additional data on the day it was reported. If and when the historical distribution is provided, we will make the needed adjustments. Alternatively, we are considering modeling the distribution on the progression of confirmed deaths in New York City from March 11 to April 14.
Finally, since every probable death necessarily implies a probable case, logic mandates that the adjustment be made to both deaths and cases, and not only to deaths. We have now adjusted April 14, April 15, and current data for New York State and the United States accordingly.
At an infection rate (RA) of 3 persons per day exponentially (doubling each day), it would take just 33 days for nCoV-19 to spread to 6.5 billion people, which is essentially covering the entire population of the planet.
Assuming that the mortality rate is .3 percent, this would be the equivalent of 216,666,666 people who will eventually die of COVID19. Spread out over 185 countries, 1.17 million people will die of Covid-19 related illness, on average per country. Or you could simply divide .3 by the population of any country and that will tell you how many deaths to expect over the course of a year. In America we may see 1.6 million deaths related to COVID-19. As it stands right now, there are 2.7 million deaths a year in the U.S. from all causes. This should provide context, and perhaps some relief.
While every death is tragic, people die. Under the scenario above, this means you might know one more person per year who might fall ill because Covid-19 accelerates the process. Most people do not die from Covid-19 alone, but rather, from what it does to aggravate pre-existing conditions.
It could be a higher percentage in some areas more than others. Nutrition, underlying health issues, the kind of medical care available and age are all factors, but in the end we can probably predict 216 million people will die per year when things settle and the virus has moved ‘round the world,’ which it probably already has considering we are well past 33 days.
One of my favorite lines from, of all TV shows, the Walking Dead (season 1 episode 4) when that doctor at the CDC leans into Rick Grimes ears and says “we’re all infected’, implying that when everyone dies they will become Walkers.
It might not be this week or even this month, but eventually all people will be infected. Mitigation (safe hygiene practices) and access to healthcare will determine outcomes and these variables will determine rates of death in each country or region. That being said, we will all eventually become infected, but 99.7 percent of us will develop an immunity, or, more likely, we’ll have a vaccine within two years MAX.
What we are seeing is that when you live in condensed areas and no one practices safe hygiene measures, people get sick very quickly from new viruses your body has no immunity against. But eventually we will develop resistance because this is what immune systems do when they are well-fortified by the vitamins and minerals we get from proper diet.
We are watching the virus spread with our nicely done Johns Hopkins Red-blob maps but the cases don’t really tell us the extent of the spread. The deaths do. When one person dies in an area you can expect that probably 100,000 people have already been exposed. This was not true in the beginning, but it is true now. The deaths signify the virus has entered the general population and found a few weak souls, what they call community spread.
We are over 140 days since “patient zero” in Wuhan. I believe that all of Asia is already infected, probably most of Europe as well, and probably 70 percent of the U.S. is infected excepting those remote areas with low population density.
The reason more people aren’t dying?
Because you have get bombarded by this virus. This is why medical workers get ill. They get bombarded, like radiation, or similar to getting an x-ray; with each scan your immune system gets weakened like a force field being weakened.
Think Superman and Kryptonite. The longer you are exposed the greater chance COVID-19 will find an entry point or weakness in your immune system.
Being isolated with someone who has coronavirus may not always result in getting sick, but being exposed constantly with a high volume of exposure to this virus increases the likelihood of getting sick. Your immune system determines when the breach occurs.
It is a shame the media aren’t asking the right questions of our doctors and scientists. We stay focused on the wrong data, testing and cases; recoveries and mortality rates per 100,000 are what matter. From there you can deduce actual risk.
It is also a shame that most people don’t understand the power of the immune system and the role a good diet plays in helping you resist diseases in general. No one ever talks about the fact that people who get sick the most usually have the poorest diets. Simply eating a handful of blueberries or fresh strawberries everyday for a few years decreases the chances of having a stroke by 30%. Eating an orange a day will help your gums keep from bleeding, improve bone strength and ward off a cold all at once. That is one powerful fruit!
There is a sense of irony in that I noticed the absence of toilet paper and potato chips during my last visit to the market, but yet there remained a high abundance of oranges. No one was buying the oranges, the one fruit that provides the greatest boost to our immunity.
As the guy said, we’re all infected, but a very small number will get sick and die, and we already know how to mitigate. I will say that we could all go back to work tomorrow if:
We all wore face masks
Avoided all body contact with the general public
Self-isolate if already elderly or sick and stay that way until there is a vaccine or good therapy available.
Eat some fruit fresh vegetables every single day
Wash our hands as we are now doing at least three to four times per day and practice safe distancing when possible.
A drug used around the world to treat malaria has been rated the “most effective therapy” in treating CCP virus patients, according to a new survey.
Sermo, a healthcare polling company, asked 6,227 physicians across 30 countries which therapy they’d list as the most effective. More than one out of three, or 37 percent, chose hydroxychloroquine.
The most commonly prescribed treatment given to patients with COVID-19, the disease the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus causes, was analgesics, followed by azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine.
“This survey of frontline doctors shows the value of critical information sharing between countries. That is the only way that a new insight from one country can rapidly save lives around the world,” Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University School of Medicine and a scientific adviser to Sermo, said in a statement.
Two preprint French studies have shown hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, an antibiotic, are effective in treating COVID-19 patients. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says both hydroxychloroquine and the closely-related chloroquine can be used to treat COVID-19 patients under an emergency use authorization.
India, Hungary, and the United Kingdom have banned export of hydroxychloroquine while doctors in a number of countries, including France and Bahrain, were known to be prescribing the drug.
Hydroxychloroquine usage was most prominent in Spain, followed by Italy, Brazil, Mexico, France, the United States, Germany, and Canada, according to the global survey.
American doctors mostly prescribed hydroxychloroquine to high-risk patients, while outside the United States the drug was used equally for patients with mild to severe symptoms.
The most common treatment regimens both included 400 milligrams twice daily on day one, but some doctors then went to 400 milligrams daily for five days while others prescribed 200 milligrams twice daily for four days.
The survey contained “a treasure trove of global insights for policy makers,” Sermo CEO Peter Kirk said.
“Physicians should have more of a voice in how we deal with this pandemic and be able to quickly share information with one another and the world,” he added. “With censorship of the media and the medical community in some countries, along with biased and poorly designed studies, solutions to the pandemic are being delayed. We invite global physicians to contribute to help inform policy makers, their colleagues, and the public.”
The daily uptick of confirmed coronavirus cases is scary, and yet, in the very real sense, they almost don’t matter at this point. We have to assume every human being will at some point breath in this nasty coronavirus. The good news is that most people won’t even notice, the better news is that no matter how many confirmed cases there are, the real number worth watching is the mortality rate. It’s the only number that matters.
Most people who get it won’t know, many who get it and feel sickly will recover, and people with weak immune systems will suffer the most. Par for the course when it comes to influenza.
This virus is a wimp as it goes. It shares 75% of its genetic structure with SARS, but has far less potency, even though it does have the ability to ‘hang around’ for a long time in a host. It just doesn’t do anything unless the immune system is so challenged that even a wimpy virus can’t resist the temptation to make itself at home. It’s like an annoying in-law who shows up one day and decides to stay, but because you might be too weak to challenge him, he stays until all of your food is gone. The analogy might be silly, but COVID19, considering the reaction, is not as scary as it appears to be if you watch the numbers and apply context to the wave theory of how it is spreading.
Consider for a moment the Wave theory.
Based on several reports, it appears COVID-19 showed up in early December. December 1st, 2019, is when first cases were reported, and this is the first wave of people infected and then spread it to others.
By December a few doctors in Wuhan began noticing patients with COVID-19 symptoms, only they didn’t know until a few weeks later that it was aggressive and spreads easily. It also lingers for up to 3 weeks before becoming symptomatic. What started out as 11 cases became 30, then 300. The first “wave” of superspreaders (who didn’t even know they were sick) were busy infecting others who would get sick because of the sheer numbers of people being exposed.
Every 3 weeks is a ‘wave” and by the 2nd wave, which would have been around December 21st, more people were getting sick in Wuhan proper but the CCP was busy denying the problem, which allowed the virus to spread very quickly in a city of 11 million people and in an area three times larger than Los Angeles. But, because so few people were showing sickness between December 1 and December 21, the first wavers (people who were asymptomatic at this point), were busy getting on planes and traveling to places like Iran, Italy and South Korea, not to mention other large cities in China.
Then the explosion came in Wuhan by the beginning of the 3rd wave, around January 17th, 2020. That’s when the exponential death curve kicked in. First-wave and second-wave carriers had infiltrated Hubei and the hospitals became overwhelmed, but still to come, the third wavers (people who were contaminated between January 17 to Feb 01) were also showing signs of critical illness.
And it wasn’t until January 20 when China announces the virus.
December 1, 2019 – 1st Wave (a few hundred falling sick)
December 22, 2019 – 2nd Wave (3,000 sick, dozens dead in Hubei, thousands of super-spreaders leave Hubei)
January 2, 2020 – 3rd Wave (signs of contagion in South Korea, Japan, Iran)
January 17, 2020 – 4th Wave (major explosion, lockdown in Hubei, Trump ends all Chinese flights into to U.S.)
February 1, 2020 – 5th Wave (Iran and Italy now seeing exponential confirmed cases, some deaths)
February 17, 2020 -6th Wave (Europe now seeing initial cases, South Korea a hotzone)
March 01, 2020 7th Wave (italy and Iran now hot zones)
March 16, 2020 – 8th Wave (confirmed cases grow from 400 to 3,000 in the U.S. but deaths under 100)
DAILY DEATH RATES BY COUNTRY
(SOURCE: CDC AND WHO)
The reason we see saw a huge uptick in Iran, Italy and South Korea was directly tied to people who were the first to be contaminated and theN spread in these countries where there is a huge inflow and outflow from China. These three countries had the most 1st and 2nd wavers, in essence super-spreaders who simply overwhelmed the system.
In America, the death count matters not the cases.
The communal spread is coming mostly from later 3rd generation or 4th generation people who have the virus and don’t know. It’s just like a germ and it goes from host to host until it finds lodgment (a place to hang around), and – if the conditions are right, takeS over the host until the host or virus dies.
And since most of us in America are now aware of this wimpy, opportunistic bug, social distancing, good hygiene and a temporary recession from “being normal consumers,” will abate coronavirus spread until the northern hemispheres are warmer and more humid, which, according to a recent study published by the NIHC (National Institute of Health of China), seems to hold just as warm weather was bad for its half relative SARS.
The death count is what you watch. The number of cases is an eventuality, but the mortality rate, if it stays under 2% (and it will as the confirmed cases grow, but deaths do not exponentially follow), then we will have dodged a bullet.
Thus far, and despite coronavirus being in the U.S. since late January, no exponential growth has occurred in the number of U.S. deaths.
Europe and the U.S. probably got exposed at about the same time, but unlike the U.S. which stopped flights from China on January 21, Europe did not, allowing super-spreaders to infiltrate, mostly nationals returning home and who had traveled abroad to places like Italy, China, Japan, South Korea and other early hot zones. The same thing happened in the U.S., but in far less numbers.
For context, even though there are now almost 4,000 confirmed case in the U.S. is (as of 3/16/20), 70 have died, and 12 people right now are considered serious. Relatively low compared to Italy or Iran, and as we are seeing in Germany and Switzerland.
To be continued, but be hopeful and watch the mortality rates, confirmed cases is not red flag, how sick people are getting is, and so far, the numbers are reassuring.
Worst case scenario predictors say 1 million people could die in the U.S with COVID-19. This would be roughly 3 thousand people a day for 18 months.
In China there have been thus far only 5 days where more than 3,000 deaths reported, and this was the epicenter, a place where 90% of male adults smoke, 11 million people in an area the size of Los Angeles and San Diego with air quality issues to boot, and a medical system that was not prepared to deal with a crisis that was being swept under the rug while it festered. Factoring in all of these circumstances the U.S. is clearly in a much better and robust position to “smooth out the curve.”
More context. It took three weeks between the first 259 deaths were reported until the big day on February 12 where 14,000 deaths were reported. In the U.S. it is now 17 days since the very first death was reported, and the most deaths we have ever had was 11 deaths in one day (March 14); a very far cry from 14,000 that occurred in Hubei around the same time
If we follow CDC guidelines, we can beat this thing, and that’s the point. We can’t look at confirmed cases online, the real tell-tale sign of our containment efforts will be a lower mortality rate, period.
I am not buying this new thing they do in weather called the “Heat Index”. I think the media is sensationalizing the weather and using false science to do it, probably as a way of convincing people the planet is getting warmer (which it is NOT).
For example, they say if the humidity is at 40% and it’s 100 degrees, then it will “feel” like 109 because of the way we sweat, and in particular, how we “feel.” But feeling is relative. How I feel is not the same as how you feel and if we attach an estimate, or in this case, an “index,” you are quantifying a subjective feeling that, by nature, is relative to the person feeling it and not a fixed value.
We have no idea what a person senses at 100 degrees or 120 degrees, this is our assignment to the number. What we do know is that when a thermometer increases from 75 to 100 degrees the mercury goes up to reflect the actual temperature of the environment. If that same thermometer were in a room with much higher humidity, the mercury would remain unchanged or unaffected by the humidity. It is fixed and the number designation is consistent. A mercury thermometer doesn’t feel the humidity, it only registers the actual temperature of the air, but even still, it remains 100 degrees in the room, no matter what the humidity level is.
What about a fat index? What if I weigh 300 pounds, won’t I feel even hotter than someone who might only weigh 120 pounds, or even fifty pounds. How can we possible know that a kid feels hotter than an adult, or vice versa.
If we go back to historical highs and lows spanning 200 years, are we now supposed to factor in the heat index and include the humidity on said date?
The conversion table they use is not arithmetically consistent, and therefore is not scientific, which means it’s baloney and completely subjective.
The only reason I believe they have come up with the so-called heat index is to make hot weather seem hotter, and this is probably tied to being alarmist about global warming or some other agenda they want to push having to do with climate change.
What do you think? Do you believe in the so-called “heat index? or is it just more false science meant to provoke fear and confusion to an already dummied society produced by an ineffective public educational system that failed to teach critical thinking?
People now believe it’s now hotter because of human activity. People also believe when it is really cold, this too is caused by human activity. The average dummy on the street, (as far as the media is concerned) accepts that man-made climate change is a fact. It makes me ill to know that people are so gullible.
The media carries the message, faulty science promotes the mantra, our educational system has been infected by this massive untruth, and the common man, without his knowledge, has been convinced through decades of propaganda pushed by profit driven so-called scientific research, that all extreme weather we experience now is because of human beings producing carbon, enough of it to effect the weather. How many times have you been in conversation when someone starts talking about the “freaky weather,” and the words “climate change” are thrown on, like, “well, you know, its that climate change…”
We have been convinced that we are paying for our sins of luxury and human activity.
It’s because we suck that sweet crude out of the ground for almost nothing and can pump it into our nice driving machines that we have unbridled freedom to move about, and it is this same sweet oil that can power our homes, including every cell-phone, battery charge, 4k big screen TV and computer monitor in it, including my washer, dryer, fridge and air conditioner as well.
Ah, the luxuries we enjoy – all because moss settled under the earth eons ago and was pressed into sweet, precious, life saving fuel.
God is good.
Just last night on our local news, as they were forecasting a pending heatwave (which is normal), they went to a connected news piece were local mayors are reportedly banding together along the central coast of California to “fight climate change,” (central California has some of the strictest land use regulations in the State, has among the highest municipal taxes than any other part of the country, and the weather is also among the most pleasant in the country). One wonders if these mayors getting together was funded by tax dollars (which pay their salaries) and were these meetings about climate change considered “work?” Is that what we pay our mayor to do, go to meetings and discuss climate change?
The punchline was of course that the mayors, in order to fight climate change, need federal dollars. It’s always about the dollars. These dollars are used, of course, to create projects and form new committees that will cost money, all of it of course, to fight climate change.
We have been convinced we can fight climate change (raise and lower the earth’s temperature) by raising money, forming committees, doing studies, and creating liberty-sucking legislation. Let us not forget that regulation always ends up costing the taxpayer. But for all of this to work, we all have to “buy in,” to climate change.
I’ll end with this, and fact is 100% confirmed by science. Man accounts for 0.3% of all of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Our earth produces 99.7% of the carbon in its atmosphere.
If you think about that number for a long time, 0.3%, which is less one third of a penny that makes up a dollar bill, you start to understand that you have been lied to. This woke feeling will be followed by your awareness that every time the word man-made climate change is use, a dollar figure is attached to it.
And then you will realize that this has always been about money. It is simply not possible for 0.3% of anything to effect any system, including our atmosphere, when the earth is the main culprit of carbon production.
More likely, as scientists are now starting to suspect, the earth is going through a warming cycle. Warm and cooling cycles last for about 50,000 years, and we are at the tail end of this cycle. It began when the last ice Age ended about 40,000 years ago.
We are at just under 445ppm of Carbon. This is up from 220ppm sometime around 1750 (though how they were measuring this remains speculative). During the last Ice Age, carbon molecules in the atmosphere, according to tree circles and ice entrapment of air molecules measure in the polar regions, were as high as 1500ppm. Makes no sense. If there is more carbon, shouldn’t there be warmer temperatures?
That is the current theory. Maybe the theory is wrong.
Again, man makes makes us 0.3 of all carbon produced. It’s a very small number, and certainly not enough for us to believe this almost negligible impact could make us scorch in the middle of July, when it happens to be the middle of our Summer season. The whole argument, if presented in a court of law, hinges on the theory that more carbon means warmer temperatures. The second part of the argument is that if humans are producing more carbon and more carbon is making the earth warmer, then producing less of it, one would think, eans cooler temperatures. But, as new discoveries now reveal show, a) more carbon does not necessarily mean warmer global temperatures, and b) man produces so little of it, it effect is almost non-exsitent. Case closed.
In a sense of irony, if we were to switch to renewable energy right now, we would only be able to power 7% of all of the earth’s air conditioners to keep us cool in July. That means 93% of us of would not have air conditioning. Thanks to fossil fuel (and because it is very cheap), you and I can debate this issue in July without breaking a sweat.
We learned today that an 11 hundred foot asteroid will be arriving close enough for us to see on Friday, February 13, 2029.
The asteroid, aptly named Apophis, for the Greek God of destruction, will come within 19,000 miles of earth. This means that if the scientists are correct, it will come closer than many of our satellites positioned in earth’s orbit.
That’s pretty damn close.
In fact, if I remember my Newtonian principles, I seem to recall the law about how mass attracts mass, and if the scientists are wrong and the asteroid comes close enough to us that our gravity actually pulls it closer, there is a much greater chance that, in 2029, we will be hit by a rather large asteroid that could have devastating global effects.
Let’s assume (and pray) it just zooms right by us. After all, we trust our scientists – don’t we?
And if it misses us in 2029, what about the next pass by in 2036? NASA says the 2036 flyby track puts it much farther away from the earth, but there are concerns the 2029 flyby could be somewhat unpredictable. Why? Because asteroids are unpredictable. We only know now, ten years out, that it will come as close as 19,000 miles. To give you perspective, the Moon is 240,000 miles from Earth. This puts Apophis about close enough for us to see with the naked eye in daytime.
Not comforting.
Here is what I would look for in the coming years:
1) Over-the-top denial that we have anything to worry about (which we see today in the news)
2) An increase in underground construction near certain large cities along the east coast, or military training exercises for unknown reasons.
3) Legislation being drafted that allows for large scale relocation of millions of people against their will (in the event of an emergency).
4) Lots of money suddenly being poured into Space Agency research projects (under the guise of so-called new Airspace Force, perhaps, for so-called “Climate-Change” projects?)
5) Silence from our political leaders about the subject to avoid panic and a constant reassurance that ‘all is fine.’
6) An unexpected run on gold in China, Russia, Japan, Korea or Europe (where scientist might have other data that shows impact is likely).
For the most part I think scientists would tell us if they thought there was a good chance we could be hit, but in the interest of national security, I could also see scientists being threatened with jail time if they open their mouths and create panic.
For the same reason the scientists could be wrong, they will not tell us unless they know for certain there will be a major impact, and so no announcement will be made either way.
Denial , at least for now, is probably better for everyone. After all, if there was going to be a major asteroid impact and millions of people, possibly tens of millions, would die, what could anyone do about it?
And this is why the wisdom of the elders have long taught us to value every minute of life, cause you never know when you are going to be hit by a bus – or an asteroid named Destruction.
For decades the term was global warming. Then it was changed to climate change, a lowering of the bar to include all major climatic events driven by man’s influence. Very soon, it will be climate crisis.
Soon, within a year, maybe two, when people say climate change they will instead say climate crisis because a few people in media working with a few climate activist groups, have decided there needs to be urgency since we only have, according to them, a few years left to change the climate and save the world.
Changing the climate involves everyone being concerned and allowing for the government to do its job by supporting whatever means are necessary to reverse the effect of this man-made climate crisis.
Mostly people will simply allow a carbon or ‘renewables’ tax. It will be included on almost everything that we buy or use. A surcharge is what it is, designed to help fight climate change. How exactly this new surcharge will be used to fight or curb climate change, oops, I mean, the climate crisis, is anyone’s guess. I assume it will go into a big pot and every person who shows up with an idea on how to fight the climate crisis will be given some of that money. That’s what the Paris Climate accord was about. It was about large amounts of money to help fund renewables and raise awareness of the man-made climate crisis.
And the people who willingly go along with this will feel better giving up some of their money for a good cause, saving our planet.
It’s a small sacrifice, and everyone does it because it’s “the right thing to do.”
Except that it is all built on a big, fat lie.
Someday, when people do finally figure out that the climate is NOT changing because of our carbon output, when people realize that carbon is natural, that clouds, wind, the oceans, the sun and seasons all play a much greater role in climate than us humans could ever conjure, Science will never be trusted again.
Are scientists really willing to sell their souls to the climate-scare gods just to make a few bucks?
Two weeks ago NASA issued a statement saying the evidence is conclusive that carbon output since 1800 has increased dramatically. Our carbon PPM (number of carbon molecules per million) has gone from 350ppm to 425ppm. They say it is most likely caused by our carbon output (cars, airplanes and coal factories, I assume).
They say that since 1800 the earth’s global mean temperature has increased 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
How long do you think people will realize that 1.7 degrees over a 220 year time-frame is a blip, It’s nothing. It’s less than a 1/10th of a degree change per year. It’s about the close as you can get to being nominal without being obvious.
And that’s when it’s going to hit people. It’s a fraud. This is why the news media that covered the NASA report focused almost slowly on the carbon number instead of the actual degree change. The margin of error is actually higher than the differential!
In statistics nominal difference is called normal.
Now go get some sleep, and rest easy knowing that man is NOT destroying our planet, after all.
“Students demand we address climate change,” or you hear about a ‘March on climate change,’ or you hear government leaders telling us they will “address climate change.”
Anyone who is against addressing climate change is a fool. Who could possibly be against addressing climate change, right? Even my kids look at me funny and say things, “geez, Dad, don’t you care about climate change?”
Meanwhile, mass media continues to pump out one story after another about the effects of climate change, furthering the argument that we all need to ‘address climate change’ and like the little foot soldiers we are, people are naturally concerned and push their leaders harder to “address climate change,’ or risk being booted out of office.
And the leaders just sit back and smile and say (with a tear of compassion in their eye), “we hear you , poor person of planet earth, how can we save you?”
And the crowd calls back, “we don’t care, just save us from climate change!”
The politicians, now emboldened, look to the well-funded researcher-scientist, who also agrees that climate change is very scary and ‘very real,’ and they believe they can address climate change simply by forcing us to reduce carbon emissions. The argument goes that if we can cut carbon emissions, we can keep the global mean temperature (GMT) from exceeding 2 degrees celsius, and this will be just enough to offset Mother Nature – should the global mean temperature exceed 5 or 7 degrees celsius due to that nasty greenhouse gas known as carbon.
Whew! That was close.
So how exactly do we cut emissions and ‘save the planet’ by ‘addressing climate change?
Oh, well, that’s the hard part, but we have no choice. All we have to do is charge a carbon tax, force people (and mostly rich countries) to stop using fossil fuels by half and convert to renewables, which will require billions of dollars in investments (taxes paid by wealthy countries who caused all of this), and scientists say if we do this, earth can be saved, the temperature will stay put, the oceans will lower and the bees will be ok. We will have finally ‘addressed climate change’ once and for all. The children will play again, moms and dads (and moms and moms, plus dads and dads) will make love again, and some will have gender-neutral or non-binary offspring. All will be well again in the world.
Except that no one knows if any of this will be true. We will never know cutting carbon emissions will have any effect on the planets temperature because we don’t have scientific precedent.
We assume, for example, that because man-made carbon emissions are up, the climate is warming, and therefore 1+1 = 2. This is the ‘hockey stick’ scenario taught to us by the Moses of climate change: Vice President Al Gore. This theory has been taught as a fact in our public schools since the 90’s, and this hypothetical premise has been embraced by most of non-science academia, in what is otherwise known as the Consensus Principle, which states that even though there is no proof, if enough people can be convinced a theory is true, then it must be true. Now that is really good science, isn’t it? Something I would not have expected in the year 2019; that Science no longer uses the outdated “scientific method,” but rather prefers “scientific consensus” as a way of deducing reality.
It’s the same principle now being applied to gender-science, and is quite popular.
So with this new and improved way of asserting facts, we take this climate change idea and move it over to energy consumption, and this is the really important part, so please stay with me.
The very notion of ‘addressing climate change’ can only mean one thing: make fossil fuel and coal so expensive or so restrictive that mankind will be forced to convert to energy that is 90% less efficient and fifty-times more expensive to produce. Windmills and solar panels are extremely expensive to produce, horribly destructive to land (and the environment), and both produce about 8 percent of what that dirty stuff in the ground produces.
Putting it another way, all of those people who are protesting, marching, pushing, screaming and begging for world leaders to “address climate change,” think they are saving the planet, but in reality, what they are really asking leaders to create is a permanent underclass of impoverished people, a new class of earthling: poor people everywhere.
“Addressing Climate Change,” means “making everyone poor.”
Imagine if people started protesting 7-11’s asking them to double their prices on everything they sell – or else!” Imagine if people were demanding Exxon Mobile cut fuel and double, even quadruple gas prices. Imagine if people started showing up at hospitals demanding said health facility to turn off half of its electricity and cut back on operations to save energy. Imagine if you protested fire departments and emergency services and told them to stop saving people and to use less water to put out fires and drive slower when taking someone to the hospital to reduce carbon. And lastly, what if every one of those people who is clamoring for climate change regulation were then forced to give up half of their income every week for the rest of their lives -all based on a theory?
And yet, this is exactly what people are doing when they demand that we “address” climate change. People are essentially asking for laws that would result in their own demise. No more cars, no long drives to the beach, no cheap abundant food at the store, or fire to relax in front of with your signifiant other during a winter storm, all of it gone!
And this is the stupidity of modern man, fueled by politicized science, brainwashed by altruistic – yet scientifically-illiterate public administrators, mislead by agenda-driven activists who are funded by corporations driven by shareholders who want to support climate change policies, because none of us are allowed to question the status quo, and are further misled into believing in the false science that states man can actually control the temperature of the planet, because, well, Al Gore and Barack Obama said so.
Think about that the next time you hear someone demand that we ‘address climate change.’
Be careful what you ask for because you might just get it.
________________________
Jim Watkins is an author and host of the wildly popular podcast Candidly Speaking
Kids are demanding “action” to fight climate change, to save the planet.
What action do they want?
Do they want to tax companies, fine energy producers, force people to use renewables, arrest deniers, any and all of the above?
And to what end?
When it comes down the very core point of climate change, what we are talking about is a 2 to 3 degree difference in the average global temperature. This is what the IPOCC report states, and it will be in the reduction of greenhouse gases that will bring down the earth’s global mean temperature.
It is important to remember this because what most people think of when they think of climate change are tornadoes, flooding, famine, rising seas, arctic warmth, dying polar bears and melting ice sheets. None of which, according to the IPOCC report reflects the current climate of the world, nor is anthropogenic climate change having any measurable effect on weather – at this point.
That is the core belief surrounding the whole “consensus” of climate change.
In fact, many studies seem to agree that a little warmth is actually good for the planet. Cold weather is actually much more deadly and requires much more energy. But that is besides the point.
The other day my wife asked me,”you don’t really deny climate change?”
My response was “of course I believe the climate is changing, but I am not convinced human beings have much to do with it. The science isn’t there yet for me.”
“The reason,” I started to explain, “was that we are only talking about a 2-3 degree variance, and if we can easily lower the temperature, then this must mean that man has immense power over nature.”
But it was enough for her to hear I was a “denier,” (in reality just a skeptic) and we moved on.
But this is my point. Anyone who actually looks at the evidence, or evaluates actual climate concerns, realizes that the real issue isn’t cooling or warming, it’s trash and waste. Man pollutes and that is the real issue, not whether or not the world will die because we killed it with overheating.
So when I see kids screaming for change, for “action,” I think our efforts are best directed at fighting pollution, improving access to drinking water, reducing air pollution, etc.
Our efforts at trying to control the earths temperature is almost ridiculous. If it were that simple and if man had that much power, then yes we could take action, but we can’t because well, we don’t know how.
We assume cutting CO2 would achieve our goal, but science shows C02 was much higher during the last Ice Age (1500 ppm) compared to today (350-400 ppm). Science also shows that decreased solar activity (what we are experiencing now) would bring on a small and temporary ice age in the coming decade, so the whole argument of global warming becomes moot.
What remains is the same problem that has nothing to do with the earth’s temperature, and is simply our trash.
We waste too much and we can improve this behavior, that is the action I would like to see taken.
Instead of carbon taxing the hell out of everyone, let us reduce plastic wrappers on products. Instead of switching to ineffective renewables let’s lessen our dependence on fossil fuels and switch to natural gas, which leaves no greenhouse gas when used and is easier to produce. Instead of pumping sweet crude out of Saudi Arabia, lets promote Shale, which is far lighter and much easier to refine.
And, instead of getting in our cars just to run to the store to get a can of cat food, let’s only drive when we need to, instead of every time we get bored.
And lastly, instead of pumping billions and billions of dollars into “scare” research and government bureaucracies let’s just be better and separating our trash and being less wasteful, and let’s not forget donating to worthy causes like Compassion International, organizations that do a good job giving poor villages water filtration systems so they can have access to clean water.
In other words, instead of climate “scare,” how about climate clean up. Instead of worrying about the temperature, of which we have little control over, let’s focus our energies into just cleaning up our messes. It’s far less expensive and the results are immediately understood to be beneficial.
The term “climate change” means different things to different people; it has become a term that signifies man-made destruction to the earth. And the research attached to it must remain scientifically sound, not politicized weaponized.
Most people will get behind a plan to clean up earth and make it a cleaner place, but once you start stepping into the notion that man is “killing the planet,” you start to scare off people who, with just a little bit of scientific understanding, recognize that consensus isn’t science, it’s popular opinion.
James Watkins is a climate researcher and host of the weekly podcast Candidly Speaking
I heard Elizabeth Warren make a comment the other day that I found unsettling.
Said she that ‘White Nationalism’ poses a threat equal to ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Said she that all Caucasian-Americans who are patriotic are as dangerous as the very people who brought down airplanes on 9/11, the same as with the Islamic State who have been torturing, burning and raping people across the plane for the last ten years.
If I saw Senator Warren and I had two minutes with her on an elevator I would say the following:
“Senator Warren, I fully realize you are pandering to minorities to get polling numbers up, but how dare you insinuate that white people, if they are patriotic, are also racists, and yet even more disparaging, terrorists!”
“I am white, why on earth you would you assume that because of my skin color, and because I love the principles of this country, that I am somehow a racist, or that I look down on other people because of their race – which is exactly what you are doing when you make such stereotypical statements.
And if the elevator was still moving and if Senator Warren had not yet grabbed her mace to spray me in the face with it, I would add the following:
“And dear Senator, with all due respect, if you are going to throw white people under the bus to earn points with minorities (along with the mainstream media), it’s pretty transparent and you are fooling no one.”
“I would hope Senator,” telling her as she was grasping for her breath praying the elevator would finally stop, “that you should review the history of Al-Qaeda and its atrocities, and ISIS and its atrocities, and ask yourself if you really think patriotic Americans would ever, for any reason, ever conduct themselves in such manner, as you have previously stated.”
Any American who is proud of his or her country, no matter race or culture, should never be seen as a threat by any elected official, much less a threat compared to the likes of Al- Qaeda or ISIS.
James Watkins is the Editor and host of Candidly Speaking.
