Wu Flu is off topic for this blog. But the corruption of science is on topic. Hostile and treasonous elite conduct is on topic. And we are seeing no end of both in the Wu Flu crisis.
The big question is: Is Wu Flu just yet another new flu, worse than most, less bad than some, with a death rate around 0.1% or less, or is it something considerably more serious, with a death rate around 1% or more?
And we are seeing a pile of compelling evidence, for example New York City, that it is 1% or more, and a pile of compelling evidence, for example most of the rest of America, and a great many countries around the world, that it is 0.1% or less. We also see that the elites are not happy with the evidence that it is 0.1% or less – for example they took down the Dr Erickson video. They want it to be 1% or more.
so what explains this mysteriously massively discrepant evidence? Why is it so?
When a dangerous disease is going around the normal response is to lockdown the sick, not the healthy, that you quarantine those infected or suspected of infection and turn away strangers and outsiders. The sick and travelers temporarily lose their civil rights, but life goes on as normal for everyone else. That was the spontaneous mass response to Ebola. It is what people have always done for over a thousand years, because it works. Peoples, elites, and authorities have often responded to extremely serious plagues with extremely severe travel restrictions but no one has ever locked down the healthy, even in response to very serious diseases such as Ebola that were obviously far more deadly.
Some governments responded to the disease by imposing quarantine on carriers and plausibly suspected carriers. The East Asians simply locked them up, the Australian and New Zealand government imposed “voluntary” quarantine – and if you do not “volunteer” with sufficient enthusiasm, they lock you up even if you are a big star and very important person and have very important things to do.
Places that impose quarantine on carriers have only a minor problem. But strangely in many places, we are seeing drastic measures imposed on the normal population, while carriers are free to cough all over the subway and are forced into old people’s homes. Where governments have acted vigorously and effectively to quarantine and treat the sick, where governments do what has been done for well over a thousand years in response to plagues, Wu Flu has caused very little sickness and death, irrespective of whether they imposed lockdown or not, South Korea being the most dramatic example.
We have had millenia of travel blockades and quarantines in response to pandemics, and they have worked. We have never had a lockdown of the healthy, and it is not working.
And where governments do not very much want the death rate to 1% or higher, we are not seeing anything like 1% or higher.
Exhibit number one for an extremely seriously death rate is New York city, where the government forces Wu Flu patients into old folks homes, and people with a fever are free to cough all over the subway. In much of the world, there is a guard at the door of every major shopping center who points a thermometer gun at your head to check you for fever, but in New York City, which is exhibit A for Wu Flu being a serious disease with a high death rate: We saw Cuomo deliberately send coronona virus into old people’s homes, knowing the death rate is more like 70% in an old people’s home – but not however for old people being cared for by their families.
The CEO of a hard-hit Brooklyn nursing home, where 55 patients have died from the coronavirus, told The Post last week that he’d been warning state Health Department officials for weeks he had staffing and equipment issues — yet received little help.
“There is no way for us to prevent the spread under these conditions,’’ the head of the Cobble Hill Health Center, Donny Tuchman, wrote in an e-mail to the department on April 8.
He said he asked to move some patients to the makeshift wards at Manhattan’s Javits Center and aboard the city-docked USNS Comfort amid the pandemic, only to be told those two spots were receiving only patients from hospitals.
Hydroxychloroquine is being widely blocked. To be effective, has to be given before the lungs are adversely affected. Impaired lungs can lead to low oxygen levels of which the patient is unaware, resulting in cascading organ failure if some of his other organs are a bit on the marginal side and even if the corona virus goes away before he dies, which it often does. If you have two marginal organs, and then you have a third marginal organ, you are apt to get cascading organ failure. And if you have several marginal organs, you are a lot more likely to get cascading organ failure in an unpleasant and hostile alien environment where you have no control, than in a pleasant and supportive home environment where you have substantial influence and control.
And, similarly ventilators. If someone has a bunch of marginal organs, and you stick him on a ventilator, he will very likely die from the ventilator, irrespective of oxygen levels. We know that oxygen masks are way better for people that are conscious and alert.
It is absolutely obvious that some people very much want this to be a dire crisis, and are prepared to take drastic action to make sure that it actually is a dire crisis.
Remember the much promised alarming shortage of hospital beds. Notice that we have quarantine for the healthy, not the sick. The USNS comfort was intended as a hospital and quarantine center and it is not being used because Cuomo wants people who are coughing up corona virus to ride the subways.
New York is indeed having a death rate closer to 1%, and we see ample evidence that the New York government wants a death rate closer to 1%.
That is what explains the discrepancy.
When someone is already frail, and you would prefer that they died, it is easy to make sure that they do. With the best will in the world, iatrogenic death is a huge problem, and we have been seeing a great deal of the worst will in the world.
Rt over all America has been dropping independent of lockdown, which seems to have small effect, probably for the reasons given in the Dr Erickson video. Therefore, except perhaps in Wyoming, we are getting a significant fraction of the population immune, at least among the superspreader subpopulations, such as homeless and subway riders, and we have not been getting 1% of a significant fraction of the population dying, except in states and cities where it is absolutely obvious that the the government wants a significant fraction of the population to die. We have a plague of state sponsored iatrogenic deaths, not a plague of yet another new flu.
The old and the frail are most at risk, partly because flu always kills the old and the frail, and mostly because old people separated from home and kin are extremely vulnerable to iatrogenic mistreatment. Some years ago I was detained against my will in a very unpleasant hospital, on the grounds that my vital signs needed to be continually monitored, until I managed to arrange to have myself transferred to a much nicer hospital, where I actually received useful and effective treatment in a pleasant environment while my vital signs were being monitored in a polite, pleasant, respectful, and unobtrusive fashion. If I had been frail, would have been at risk of iatrogenic injury or death in the unpleasant hospital.
If we look at who is dying and where they are dying, the big risk factor is a state system that wants you to die, and health problems that make you vulnerable to being killed iatrogenically. The distribution of deaths indicates the primary cause of death is not disease, but the biggest killer of the twentieth century: Government.
San Francisco has the same risk factors as New York City; crowding, dirt, public transport, and homelessness; and yet there is an enormous difference in the death rate. Both have comparable levels of Wu Flu among superspreader subpopulations. One place is generating stats consistent with a 1% death rate and grossly inconsistent with a 0.1% death rate, the other place is generating stats grossly inconsistent with a 1% death rate, and consistent with a death rate considerably lower than 0.1%.
Why does the the New York government send old people sick with corona virus into old people’s homes, when the USS Comfort sits empty?
The government want to atomize, to “socially distance” groups that it hates and fears: Observe white get busted for surfing and going for a walk in the park, while non asian minorities have no problem throwing big parties. Observe orthodox Jews get the stick, while progressive Jews and Muslims are fine.
Wu Flu is an opportunity and justification for locking down people you fear and dislike, and, in some places such as New York City, an opportunity for killing off groups you fear and dislike, hence the seemingly discrepant facts on death rates. Cuomo is refusing to send people to facilities that he does not have authority over, where he cannot make sure that they will die.