Covid bombshells drop !

And some are good bombs

The three most hated prefixes in the American language, in no set order, are Anti-, neo- and Donald. I have no data to back this up. No science or math can prove it but you have to accept it on faith because I’m divinely informed about such matters, as Bette Midler would attest to, if the Divine Miss M knew me.

Anti-science has its roots in religious orthodoxy. For example, aware that eating pork could lead to illness and death, as could certain shellfish allergies, pre-science church leaders were quick with the decrees, urging people to separate their foods or avoid them entirely, insisting that these rules were divinely inspired. Later, scientists came along, discovered the microbial life and allergies driving these illnesses. Antibiotics and proper meat curing techniques eventually solved the pork problem yet orthodoxy religions maintained their bans and separations in denial of science.

I won’t be discussing neocons, neoliberals, neolibertarians, or neoDonalds today as the hatred of each is universal so why bother? YHWH has so decreed.

But anti-vaxxers deserve a mention. People who hate the feel of a needle jab have turned their tears and fears into an art form with the same lack of reason that caused entire churches to denounce Galileo and Copernicus as heretics.

Scientists can err but science itself is a constant evolution of real knowledge. People learn more, report their findings, and when others conduct similar research with the same conclusions, the information is peer reviewed and typically accepted as fact.

In the absence of clear fact - when something new is being studied - scientists, like doctors, sometimes resort to best guesses about how to proceed, especially when new diseases and new symptoms arise. And in the case of pandemics, viruses are spread by airborne means, hard surface contacts or bodily fluid contacts, so it’s generally a safe best guess to suggest at the outset that social distancing, frequent hand sanitizing, and mask wearing are precautions worth doing while further data is gathered. That’s old science, old technology, but those methods offer clear life saving advantages.

Science, when left in the hands of politicians and political ax-grinders, can easily become unscience. Yet as we’ve witnessed over the past 16 months of this pandemic, lots of people confuse the two professions, assuming scientists are proposing fixes based on biases and motivations beyond the regular paths of scientific inquiry and discovery. Politicians can feed disinformation and baldfaced lies, trading their cred away on the strength of their celebrity. Scientists can, too. Bad scientists exist but they carry no weight in the larger scientific community if they can’t produce the data to support their claims.

Good scientists are capable of judgment errors but typically have no underlying motivation to do so. Good ones know that best guesses can miss the mark and usually don’t provide them to large audiences without disclaimers. Where the worlds of science and politics collide, though, best guesses are risky endeavors. Good political leaders understand and can overlook a misplaced guess, but crafty politicians with bad motives can drive an anti-science narrative to further their own aims by discrediting others. Just as bad politicians discredited UN inspectors in the lead-up to their launch of the War on Iraq, one guy in particular has done so repeatedly with epidemiologists employed by the government amid the current pandemic.

The political remoras attaching themselves to this Great White Stark rush in to demonize anyone in disagreement with the lying sack of snit, which so far includes a pretty long list. Democrats, liberals, women, POC, educators, scientists, celebrities from other entertainment fields, pollsters, poll workers, the majority of American voters, people who witness the facts that are transparent on many videos, scientists, historians, judges, international allies, members of his own party who voted twice for him, entire countries: all have fallen victim to the fickle finger of the whiniest blame-spreader in US history. The buck never stopped even to visit his Oval Office. Any time the facts showed a statement of his was wrong, either the media was victimizing him or he was just joking when he said it. As a jokester, he was notoriously bad because nobody ever laughed at his jokes except for the remora.

And now I’m open game, too, as I said I wouldn’t discuss neoDonald and now I have.

It’s pretty hard to discuss this pandemic without noting there’s a number of countries with authoritarian leaders acting in similar ways, pushing bullshit to escape the consequences of their bad decisions sometimes made with malicious intent.

My real intent in this newsletter is to discuss the science and present state of the current pandemic and to discredit anti-vaxxers - especially those with political pulpits with vast reach, no matter what their name is.

I’m not here to laud or demonize Drs. Fauci and Birx or any of the scientists, technologists and business leaders who produced the covid vaccines in such a short period. That’d be stupid. I try to reserve my stupid for lesser matters.

(My bias disclosed: I do lean towards trusting scientists with a long record of accuracy without demonizing them if they made a mistake along the way.)

One point of this newsletter: the state of the day in pandemic world.

1) In the US, the news is mostly good. Michigan shocked everyone with its rapid 4th wave rise, topping all its previous waves of new cases. But its new case numbers are now falling. Almost every other state displaying 3 and 4 week rises have also started seeing their new case numbers fall. Right now, the state displaying the steepest unrestrained rise is my own: Oregon, which has nearly tripled in the past 5 weeks. Conversely, NY, after its numbers plateaued for several weeks, is seeing its numbers drop again.

Most of these positive outcomes are because of the vaccines. We’re not close to herd immunity. My earliest projection when we might get there remains August. My ‘hoped-for’ target was June, but a few cases of side effects globally with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has given fresh fodder for anti-vaxxers to spread their fears via an old technology: bullshit.

And some of the same old political remoras push similar narratives by expressing ‘concern’ that the federal govt is pushing people ‘too hard’ towards getting vaccinated. Many of whom -of course - have been vaccinated already. “I’m pretty safe but screw you’ is a very imaginative way for those guys to get reelected. And it may work in districts or states where anti-vax sentiment is strong.

2) Death rates in the US have continued to fall, even in the states that saw a few weeks of rises this Spring. In many states, herd immunity has already arrived for the most at risk populations. While there may be some potential for those vaccinated to spread the virus, they are now unlikely to catch the virus, go to the hospital or die from Covid.

3) But in the world’s second largest population - India - the news is terrible. The US set a one day record of over 303,000 new cases back on January 8th. This week saw India setting new records for 3 days straight since Wednesday, reaching more than 345,000 new cases Friday. With no sign that its rise is abating at all.

(Source: Worldometers.info)


With numbers like that, global herd immunity could be one or two years away, if it ever comes. I listened to a doctor there explain how dire it is as he described how one hospital, utilizing an all-hands-on-deck plea to get businesses and the government to provide emergency supplies of oxygen that arrived less than 30 minutes after numerous intubated patients would have run out.

India’s also a classic case where a class based society is seeing the worst pandemic damages to the poorest and most marginilized. And its leader, Modi, is really really incompetent as regards his attempts to handle the pandemic. Many first world nations had the resources and foresight to lock in purchases of vaccines well in advance. Modi mismanaged his country so badly that there’s a current US embargo on shipping many things there, including some raw materials needed to make vaccines.

Modi requested to have that embargo lifted yesterday and the Biden administration refused indicating that US citizens would continue to be the highest priority. Soany embargo lifting is at least a month away.

That huge rise in cases will continue to threaten India and neighboring countries - and ultimately the globe until it’s reined in. Previously the US and Brazil led the way, but in recent weeks, even Turkey was recording higher numbers than the US currently is with its 75%+ drop in new cases from its peak. Several other countries, like Iran, have had fresh covid rises too.

The other major points in this edition are these: one’s a bombshell of sorts. Social distancing requirements are likely wrong. And the other: it’s time we compleely realign how we assess the costs of healthcare.

A report released yesterday from MIT researchers indicates that outdoors, social distancing limits may be smaller. Three feet may be enough to avoid coughs and sneezes where large bursts of large droplet carrying viruses can occur. As we’ve all seen, many outdoor large gatherings have occurred without much evidence of big covid spread. But I don’t think they’ve done the testing outside as completely as the indoors test since there are notable exceptions to the outdoor spreads that occurred in Tulsa or in the Sturgis SD motorcycle rally or at rallies held on the White House lawn.

The principal research was done on indoor covid spread and this research has been peer reviewed several times before its findings were released.

They found that 60’ away one might be exposed to the same amount of covid exposure as they would be at 6 feet away. And rather than major upgrades of ventilation systems, some of that could be mitigated by opening windows and using strong fans. Now of course big box stores often have few windows that can be opened, so there’s the caveat to that.

The main thing to avoid is duration. When you go indoors, wear a mask, go in and depart as quickly as you can. The longer you’re indoors, he higher your risk if someone in there has the virus. You’re collecting particles -mostly from asymptomatic people, and you can surpass your body’s immune thresholds the longer you breath that tainted air.

This will barely change my own shopping behavior as my browsing is minimal. I’m typically in and out of a store in under 20 minutes.

But a gathering that lasts longer indoors - a business meeting, a wedding or a church service could easily surpass that threshold and to mitigate that risk, move those events outdoors where the viral load dissipates faster.

As stated previously, science is constantly evolving which means it wasn’t 100% correct before. But that doesn’t mean scientists can’t be trusted. If you understand how scientific knowledge evolves the main thing is to check out the research done to make certain the practices were sound. And this development helps explain certain things we’ve seen like our worst wave occurring in Fall and Winter when cold wet weather was forcing more people to spend more time indoors.

Finally, the third point of this newsletter came from a point well made by a doctor yesterday whose name I did not catch. He stated that countries have gotten it wrong when considering healthcare. It should never be viewed as an expense. It should be viewed solely as ‘an investment in the future.’

In most cases, I rate that as true. The collective care of health - not just in preventive health measures - is an investment. The more people are healthy, the lower the risk of bad health exposures as we move about. And te odds go up with a larger group of healthier people that the talents and genius of each can be fully utilized to strengthen a country.

An argument may be made that end-of-life care isn’t quite the same as far as future rewards, though moral investment should not be overlooked either. But overall, I agree with that doctor. Take the argument in favor of universal access to healthcare out of the world of bottom line economics. Universal healthcare has major positive benefits for us all, not just those underserved.