By Nancy Thorner & Ed Ingold –
If the COVID-19 situation were a chess game, Trump is playing the role of Kaspersky. President Trump opened the week of April 13, 2020, with a gambit, claiming he has the ultimate authority to decide when and how the economy will be restarted. The Democrats immediately responded by denying that authority and insisted that state governors take charge of the events, likewise assuming the inevitable political risks.
Trump and the Republicans asked for another $250B for wage and job protection for idled workers and small companies. The Democrats balked and walked away from the table, demanding support for state and local governments. Check. That’s $250B less money to print or borrow, and spendthrift Democratic governors are left with a powerful incentive to cut their losses and cooperate with the recover.
It was on Thursday, April 16, 2020, when President Trump outlined his plan to reopen the nation during his daily TV task force briefing.
The following was ascertained from the information Trump gave the public:
- Phase 1: Startups will commence after new infections decrease steadily for 14 days
There are no standards for counting new cases. The count suddenly spiked when NY and NJ changed their methods of counting. The count also depends on the number of tests given, which vary widely from day to day. - Based on real data, the number of new cases may drop to half the peak value in about one week, at which point about 80% of expected cases will have occurred. After that, the rate of decline will slow dramatically. Based on an exponential model, it could take another three weeks from that point to reach the 95% mark, etc.
- The criteria for shutting the economy down was to keep from overloading hospital capacity. The same criteria should apply to restarting it. Zero infections is not a real-world goal because it would require an additional 2-3 months of shutdown.
- Staying home when sick, hand washing and avoiding large public crowds (concerts and sports events) probably account for 90% of any prevention. Everything else has diminishing returns or is for appearance and display of authority.
- Predictions and evaluation of results are largely based on a discredited model. The model would be much more accurate if statistically valid samples were taken, but officials avoid asking or answering questions in that regard.
- We don’t know key pieces of data with any confidence. We don’t know what percentage has never been infected, been infected asymptomatically, actually died from rather than with the disease, nor how many have been infected then recovered. They’re all guesses based on hearsay and the discredited model. We don’t need 30 million tests, we need randomized tests for the answers.
- In order to anticipate any resurgence, we need good models and good data.
- Gloves don’t prevent infections. At best, the keep health care professionals from transferring the infection between patients, but only if used according to well-established gloving techniques. COVID-19 is not contracted by touch. It is transferred to the eyes, nose and mouth. A contaminated glove is just as likely to communicate the disease as the bare hand.
- Face masks alone don’t protect you from infection. You need full head gear and respirators for that. Face masks help keep a sick person from spreading the disease, but not as well as quarantine, self or otherwise. If you’re coughing and sneezing, stay home! For everyone else, face masks are a fashion statement.
- Doubling the normal separation to 6’ in restaurants and theaters will cut the capacity by a factor of at least 4 (square law), not 2.
- Customers in stores are more likely to infect clerks than each other. Where are the statistics?
- Compartmentalizing by area rather than demographics and occupation will require severe restrictions on travel. The act of traveling doesn’t spread disease. It depends on what you do at your destination.
- Why should movie theaters get special treatment (as proposed)? Is it a “California” thing, or do actors get more airtime to express their opinions? Does it matter whether you pay $15 for watching a first run movie at home, or the same amount to sit in a theater with sticky floors?
By establishing a broad-based recovery task force, Trump has bypassed the scientific “experts”, including Fauci, Birx, and various vested government agencies. WHO is neutralized and off the board for the foreseeable future — Bishop to QB5! The pawns are marching on the gubernatorial sanctuaries in Michigan and Minnesota (sans torches and pitchforks for the moment).
Beware of Game Playing
We are still playing games with statistics and inaccurate models. Democrats are calling for a major escalation in COVID testing, but representative data for modeling is consistently neglected. We know, pretty much, who is sick and dying. However, we need the models to determine the best course of action in the future, and the statistical tools to gauge our progress. Where is Gallup when you need them?
The closest we come to good data is that taken aboard our naval vessels. Nearly all the sailors have been tested, and about 60% are found to have asymptomatic infections. In two weeks, most of the crew will recover and be largely immune to the disease. If this were true in the general population, COVID-19 will shortly be in steep decline, due to what is called “herd immunity.” Unfortunately, some will become acutely ill, and some will die, but not for lack of care and needed facilities. Overall, wider infection would undermine the basis for continued shutdowns, and this endless game of “Simon Says” over the latest restrictions on our lives.
Time to get moving again?
An April 18, 2020, study in Newsweek shows COVID-19 rate of Infection may be 85 times higher than thought.
If a high percentage of the population has been infected, contact tracing is not only impractical but irrelevant. Those infected can’t be infected all over again. The risk of serious complications to those still susceptible is much, much lower than previously expected, and the chance of a serious resurgence if sanctions are lifted is greatly diminished.
This is the kind of data we need nationwide. The sample doesn’t need to be huge, but it does need to be representative of various regions and demographics.
Why haven't the so-called experts thought of this? Could it be because powerful people don’t want to know (plausible deniability)? Knowledge threatens their power and influence. It pokes holes in their assumptions and roasts their sacred cows. As noted in the Newsweek article testing in LA reveals that up to 60 percent of the population has been infected. This correlates with data from the aircraft carrier and data take data taken in Chicago.
Was the Lock Down Necessary?
Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist, in his column on April 20, 2020, Has the Lock Down worked?, questions "whether the lock down was even necessary rendering hundreds of millions of their citizens jobless, impoverishing at least a billion people worldwide, endangering the family life of millions (straining marriages, increasing child and spousal abuse, and further postponing marriage among young people), bankrupting vast numbers of business owners and workers living paycheck to paycheck, and increasing suicides?"
"It was on March 16, 2020 when a large swath of the "expert" community cloaked itself with unscientific certitude with a model from the Imperial College London — the source governments relied upon for the decision to ruin their economies — which projected about 2.2 million Americans and half a million Brits would die.
"But on what grounds are we to believe that millions would die without ruining the American — and the world's — economy? Without our being told by an omniscient God, there is no way to know the definitive answer."
Prager then offers data in his article that casts doubt on those assumptions, based entirely on the only metric that matter: deaths per 1 million. The number of confirmed infected people is meaningless, since so few people anywhere have been tested for the virus, and we don't know how many people already had the virus and never knew it. (Moreover, asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic carriers of the virus constitute the majority of those infected.)
The Left is blaming President Donald Trump for the coronavirus crisis, as if only this nation is affected, instead of blaming reliance of experts and modeling.
