Global capitalism's representative COVID Maoists — WHO, CDC and Big Pharma — Governors Whitmer and Newsom — with a guest appearance by Doctor Fauci

21 November 2020

COVID ridiculousness had better amuse us

Otherwise, we'll lose our minds.

Consider first, The BMJ's medical and epidemiological (editorial) deconstruction of the vaccine deceptions that Big Pharma and Big Government spouting:

Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said, “Ideally, you want an antiviral vaccine to do two things . . . first, reduce the likelihood you will get severely ill and go to the hospital, and two, prevent infection and therefore interrupt disease transmission.”

Yet the current phase III trials are not actually set up to prove either . . . .

None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths.

Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.

Part of the reason may be numbers.

Severe illness requiring hospital admission, which happens in only a small fraction of symptomatic covid-19 cases, would be unlikely to occur in significant numbers in trials.

Because most people with symptomatic covid-19 experience only mild symptoms, even trials involving 30 000 or more patients would turn up relatively few cases of severe disease.

Hospital admissions and deaths from covid-19 are simply too uncommon in the population being studied for an effective vaccine to demonstrate statistically significant differences in a trial of 30 000 people.

The same is true of its ability to save lives or prevent transmission: the trials are not designed to find out.

The BMJ editorial goes on to point out that . . .

. . . population subgroups comprised of different ages and vulnerabilities — including the elderly and various demographics — are not being included in the vaccine trials in large enough numbers to detect quantitatively rare positive, negative or no-effect trends.

The BMJ's parallel statements about influenza vaccines are scientifically illustrative

Randomized flu vaccine trials, BMJ asserts, have never examined whether the vaccines save lives among the community-living elderly.

Furthermore (and tellingly):

Only two placebo controlled trials in this population have ever been conducted, and neither was designed to detect any difference in hospital admissions or deaths. Moreover, dramatic increases in use of influenza vaccines has not been associated with a decline in mortality . . . .

Notice (in all this) that . . .

. . . concealed profit motives prevent us from investigating whether these overall costly interventions work to any appreciably important degree.

Recognize that nothing prevents us from doing post vaccine-release follow-up reports on vaccines' effects upon the elderly. Yet, nobody does them. Why spend money doing the tracing, when the vaccine has already been approved and is raking in money?

This pattern of approval — with virtually no truth-finding follow-up — exemplifies the United States' approach to medicine generally.

If it is profitable, it is good. Little else matters. Including finding out whether the intervention actually works better than something else or nothing at all.

This disingenuousness about COVID-19 vaccines was predictable

That's why I was skeptical about the US government's Warp Speed vaccine plan's ability to deliver anything both safe, effective and adequately tested — within the ridiculously short time frame and low population testing numbers that everyone involved was aiming at.

Enter the COVID Maoists

Let's lead with that great dissembler — Anthony Fauci:

“I would recommend to people to not to abandon all public health measures just because you’ve been vaccinated,” Fauci told CNN anchor Jake Tapper on the Sunday show State of the Union.

Fauci insisted that masks and social distancing were here to stay.

In other words, because there is a statistically miniscule chance that most of us might die (or be maimed) by COVID-19, we should all wander around masked and physically far from one another — for the psychic equivalent of Eternity — no matter what.

Fauci's credibility — as something other than Fearmongering's cheer leader — vanished completely with that moronic perspective about what is actually societally workable.

Point to Trumpists, deluded though they often are.

Now the governors.

I have addressed Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer in the past. Intrusive meddling based on nothing scientific, other than her need to demonstrate her instinct for being both arbitrary in capricious regarding what the public was allowed (and not) to do.

California's Governor Gavin Newsom is similarly inclined. He's notable, too — like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also from California — for combining hypocrisy with being a Creature of Privilege.

Two days ago, Newsom decided to curfew almost the entire state between 2200 and 0500 hours on the grounds that this would save lives.

Nowhere is there any epidemiological research that demonstrates that this curfew measure will do anything other than irritate the public.

The curfew tactic fits in with the equally (so far) scientifically unproven closing of bars, restaurants and other (generally small) businesses across much of the nation. The few overviews that exist include too many confounding variables to be persuasive.

Let's apply a bit of societal practicality

I could have lived with all the hysteria and its accompanying wild social and economic experimentation at the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

But here we are, 11 months down its road now — and still no one is researching whether any one of these economically draconian measures produces valid results.

Even regarding cloth face masks . . .

. . . which may be a legitimate measure, if widely worn by everyone, there are no genuinely persuasive studies upholding their worth.

See, for instance, the World Health Organization's hand-waving — based on almost no evidence — and evidently not updated since June 2020:

World Health Organization, Advice on the use of masks in the context of COVID-19, WHO.int (05 June 2020)

Similarly, examine the United States' equally empty-of-proof advice at:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Scientific Brief: Community Use of Cloth Masks to Control the Spread of SARS-CoV-2, cdc.gov (20 November 2020)

The CDC attaches 45 supposedly mask efficacy-supporting citations to their "brief".

I have read those citations' linked summaries — and sometimes the whole study, for those that appeared to be on point — for all 45.

Only five of the 45 citations actually tried to demonstrate the worth of cloth masks in under real world COVID conditions.

Most of the others consisted of simple mechanical lab simulations, which demonstrated a reduction in droplet transmissions through the masks.

One study even said that cloth masks should be a last resort during an influenza pandemic.

Another's abstract ventured that cloth masks "may provide marginal protection". Obviously, "may" and "marginal" hardly support the blanket mask-wearing mandates prevalent today.

One citation takes us to a meta-analysis (meaning a review of multiple previous studies) that implicitly contradicts the utility of the CDC's simple cloth mask recommendation.

That study compares the superior utility of N95s with the inferior utility of surgical and 12 to 16 layer cloth masks under viral conditions:

Our search identified 172 observational studies across 16 countries and six continents, with no randomised controlled trials and 44 relevant comparative studies in health-care and non-health-care settings (n=25 697 patients).

Transmission of viruses was lower with physical distancing of 1 m or more, compared with a distance of less than 1 m . . . protection was increased as distance was lengthened . . . .

Face mask use could result in a large reduction in risk of infection . . . with stronger associations with N95 or similar respirators compared with disposable surgical masks or similar (eg, reusable 12–16-layer cotton masks . . . .

Eye protection also was associated with less infection . . . . Unadjusted studies and subgroup and sensitivity analyses showed similar findings.

Robust randomised trials are needed to better inform the evidence for these interventions . . . .

© 2020 Derek K Chu, Elie A Akl, Stephanie Duda, Karla Solo, Sally Yaacoub and Holger J Schünemann, Physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection to prevent person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Lancet, volume 395, issue 10242, pages 1973-1987, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31142-9 (01 June 2020)

After all these point-missing misfires . . .

. . . we are left with only five — mildly real world retrospective overviews — out of the deceptively cited total of 45. But even these five studies stray from public masking persuasiveness.

One, from Canada, retrospectively reviewed the worth of masking healthcare workers inside medical environments. Well, duh.

Another study, from early COVID in Germany, involved far too many assumptions and data manipulations to be scientifically persuasive — of anything but its authors' speculative creativity. (See, for example, that report's pages 12-13.)

A third "study" examines COVID spread in the USA between 08 April and 15 May 2020. And posits that a reduction in rate of spread, via the use of masks, occurred. But it fails to take into account the probably confounding influence of Springtime warming and its accompanying outdoor distancing.

A fourth paper, from Canada, suffers from the same winter-spring into summer confounding.

Keep in mind that we see a huge drop in detected infections that shows up in all graphs of American COVID rates, during the Northern Hemisphere summer as compared to the previous winter-spring and following fall seasons.

The fifth pertinent study, from warm year-round Arizona, is mildly persuasive. But it also suffers from myriad confounding variables and interpretational retrospectiveness:

[D]ecreases in daily COVID-19 cases were observed after widespread sustained community mitigation measures that promoted social distancing, limited large gatherings, paused operations of businesses where mask use and social distancing were difficult to maintain, mandated and enforced mask wearing, and promoted voluntary resident actions to stay at home and wear masks . . . .

The number of COVID-19 cases stabilized and began to decrease approximately 2 weeks after local officials began mandating mask wearing . . . and enhanced sanitation practices.

Additional declines in case counts were associated with implementation of statewide limitations and closures sustained throughout July and extended into August.

The findings in this report are subject to at least four limitations.

First, the relationship between mitigation measures and changes in case counts are temporal correlations and should not be interpreted to infer causality.

Other factors that might have influenced the rate of change . . . travel restrictions, neighboring state mitigation measures, and individual choices to reduce movement before implementation of mandates . . . cannot be ruled out.

Second, health centers run by tribal entities and federal health facilities . . . in the state are requested but not required to comply with state reporting rules. Many of these health centers and federal health facilities complied with reporting, but the completeness of reporting by these entities is unknown.

Third, adherence to mitigation measures was not assessed, nor could the extent to which each individual measure affected the number of incident COVID-19 cases be established.

Finally, Arizona might not be representative of other U.S. states, and community mitigation measures might have a different impact in more populous or densely populated states; thus, these findings are not necessarily generalizable to other settings.

© 2020 M. Shayne Gallaway, Jessica Rigler, Susan Robinson, Kristen Herrick, Eugene Livar, Kenneth K. Komatsu, Shane Brady, Jennifer Cunico and Cara M. Christ, Trends in COVID-19 Incidence After Implementation of Mitigation Measures — Arizona, January 22–August 7, 2020, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (09 October 2020)

Overall, the CDC's 45 mask citations constitute . . .

. . . deceptively beside-the-main-issue bullshit. They only pose as support for the CDC's cloth-mask wearing proposition.

Like a bumbling high-schooler in search of faked intellectual clout, the CDC has voluminously padded its mask-wearing recommendation with almost completely irrelevant material:

Who cares whether a cloth mask should work to some degree?

The question is whether it actually does — under real world conditions — and across a wide range of societal constructs.

The concealed disingenuous of the CDC's list of supposedly proposition-supporting citations is scientifically and ethically ridiculous.

It is no wonder that millions upon millions of people, around the world, distrust the Government and Big Business machinery that are trying to run our "ordinary person" lives.

And curiously — two related phenomena

First, a recent Danish study provided weak ammunition for non-maskers. It found that wearing a cloth mask among people predominantly without them — does no good.

See:

Henning Bundgaard, Johan Skov Bundgaard, Daniel Emil Tadeusz Raaschou-Pedersen, Christian von Buchwald, Tobias Todsen, Jakob Boesgaard Norsk, Mia M. Pries-Heje, Christoffer Rasmus Vissing, Pernille B. Nielsen, Ulrik C. Winsløw, Kamille Fogh, Rasmus Hasselbalch, Jonas H. Kristensen, Anna Ringgaard, Mikkel Porsborg Andersen, Nicole Bakkegård Goecke, Ramona Trebbien, Kerstin Skovgaard, Thomas Benfield, Henrik Ullum, Christian Torp-Pedersen and Kasper Iversen, Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers, Annals of Internal Medicine, https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-6817 (18 November 2020)

One obvious question about this arises. Why would anyone research this issue in such an obviously backwards way? We all knew, going in, that cloth masks mildly protect the people around us, rather than ourselves.

But second, the Danish review — as well as reasonably numerous medical facility studies, as well as internationally shared health care practices — implicitly demonstrate that virus-filtering personal protective gear would work to slow COVID transmission.

Nevertheless, no American authority has prompted a leap into massively producing the N95 masks that would work to slow this pandemic.

Even health care workers are reportedly still often short of necessary personal protective gear.

Ask yourselves, why is this?

The moral? — Stupidity and Greed are the two norms governing US and European COVID responses

A sense of humorous irony is necessary in psychically coping with both.

Be happy. But do think occasionally about the purpose that Government should serve in allegedly free societies.

Do you think that ours is doing this?

Or do you think that we are Government-corralled sheep, waiting for Big Business's continual corporatist fleecing?

PeteFree.com

Global capitalism's representative COVID Maoists — WHO, CDC and Big Pharma — Governors Whitmer and Newsom — with a guest appearance by Doctor Fauci