Tag Archives: Pandemic

Statistics, Thought Manipulation

Massachusetts Reports ‘Significant Overcount’ of COVID Deaths

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Chris Lisinski 
March 10, 2022

EDITORS NOTE: The following article comes from a local NBC channel.

When state public health officials publish Monday’s report about the latest COVID-19 impacts on Massachusetts, the cumulative death toll through two years of the pandemic will suddenly stand about 15% lower.

The Baker administration will start using a new public health surveillance definition next week, narrowing the window of time between a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis and death required for the fatality to get attributed to the highly infectious virus.

Saying the Bay State’s earlier methodology led to a “significant overcount of deaths,” officials said Thursday they will adopt a new system recommended by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.

And in a step that could reshape understanding of the pandemic’s impact on Massachusetts, the administration will apply the new method retroactively, resulting in 4,081 deaths once linked to the virus being recategorized as stemming from other causes and roughly 400 others newly being labeled as COVID-19 deaths.

“We think this is an absolutely critical step in improving our understanding of who COVID has impacted most significantly during the pandemic,” said state epidemiologist Dr. Catherine Brown. “We believe that this will provide us a much more accurate picture of who has died associated with a COVID infection in Massachusetts, and it will also improve our ability to compare our data with data from other jurisdictions.”

For the duration of the pandemic, state officials have deemed a fatality COVID-related if it met at least one of three criteria: if a case investigation determined the virus “caused” or “contributed” to the death, if the death certificate listed COVID-19 or an “equivalent term” as the cause, or if state public health surveillance linked a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis to a Bay Stater’s death.

The first two measures remain unchanged since the earliest days of the crisis, but the third has already been updated once and is set to evolve again on Monday.

From March 2020 to March 2021, DPH counted the death of any person who had previously tested positive for COVID-19 as a COVID-related death, regardless of how much time elapsed between those two events.

Even if someone contracted the virus in March and died in a car crash in July, they were added to the ongoing tally of pandemic deaths for that first year.

“This strategy worked well at the beginning of the pandemic, and in fact, a paper was published last summer in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which lauded our efforts here in Massachusetts in counting deaths that occurred during the first wave of the pandemic as opposed to several other jurisdictions,” said Public Health Commissioner Margret Cooke. “But over time, our approach proved to be too expansive and led to a significant overcount of deaths in Massachusetts. People who had gotten COVID earlier in 2020 and died for other reasons ended up still being included in COVID-associated death counts.”

The department updated its approach for the third criterion in April 2021, officials said Thursday, keeping the death investigation and death certificate triggers in place. Under that method, officials counted only those who died within 60 days of a COVID diagnosis as deaths related to the virus, unless their death was clearly linked to another cause such as trauma.

That system remained in place for most of 2021 and will be replaced in Monday’s daily report by the new definition, recommended in December by the national consortium of state public health leaders after months of study.

The new method suggested by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists calls for counting deaths within 30 days of a COVID-19 diagnosis where “natural causes” is labeled on a death certificate as attributable to the virus, half as long a timeframe as under the most recent definition in Massachusetts.

Brown said the update will “make sure that what we are capturing is the acute impact of COVID.”

“People who are seriously ill and hospitalized for longer and end up dying after that 30 days have almost invariably had COVID listed on their death certificate, so they end up being counted under another method,” Brown said.

As has been the case throughout the pandemic, if an official death investigation determined the virus caused or contributed or if a death certificate lists COVID-19 or an equivalent term, that fatality will add to the pandemic death toll.

Brown said the vast majority of the 4,081 deaths that will no longer be deemed COVID-related, about 95%, occurred between May 2020 and May 2021, covering the tail end of the state’s first surge and its second surge that winter. Most of the roughly 400 deaths that will acquire a COVID label also happened in that span, Brown said.

Taken together, the removals and additions net out to a reduction in the cumulative COVID-19 death toll of about 3,700 people, more than the entire population of Provincetown.

DPH does not expect to have a new tally for the number of COVID-19 deaths in Massachusetts until it publishes new data on its COVID-19 dashboard around 5 p.m. on Monday. Back-end work to merge datasets will take place over the weekend, according to Brown.

It also remains unclear if the change in Massachusetts will send out ripple effects across the country.

Asked if other states planned to adopt the national council’s recommended methodology as well, Brown said that the new definition planned for rollout in Massachusetts is “actually much more consistent with what many other jurisdictions are already using.”

“This is a recommended guidance definition, and it is designed to help improve comparability across jurisdictions, across states. But we have also heard from a few jurisdictions that they are not planning on updating the way they count deaths,” she said. “What’s really important is that this change to the definition will actually increase the ability to compare the counts in Massachusetts with other jurisdictions because it will be more similar to what most other jurisdictions are using.”

The U.S. Center and Disease Control’s online tracker on Thursday listed 959,533 total COVID-19 deaths across the country since Jan. 21, 2020. Massachusetts had the 13th-most total deaths among states and the 11th-highest rate of deaths per 100,000 residents, both of which will likely change when the updated death toll is published next week.

As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, Massachusetts health officials had recorded 23,708 confirmed and probable COVID-19 deaths since the outbreak first began, so that figure is likely to drop to around 20,000 on Monday.

The new methodology will also apply to weekly reporting about COVID-19 cases in vaccinated individuals, the next version of which is set for publication on Tuesday.

Brown added that preliminary analysis did not show any significant changes to the distribution of deaths by age group, sex and race or ethnicity once the new definition was applied.

“While we absolutely acknowledge that we’re moving to a more accurate and appropriate way to count deaths, it doesn’t change our understanding, it does not alter our understanding, of who has died from COVID and where the most disproportionate impacts have been,” Brown said.

The Baker administration appears not to have made as public an announcement about the first change to its statewide COVID-19 death definition as the latest update. Officials said in April 2021 that they would change how deaths were counted specifically in long-term care facilities to align with the CDC’s national definition, but made no mention in that press release of the broader change imposing a 60-day limit on the span between an infection and death to count in some cases.

Health, Interesting Development, science, Study

So, What Was the Point? Masks Allow 90% of Particles To Filter Through Giving Them Little Ability To Prevent C0VID Transmission, Study Finds

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MANSUR SHAHEEN
U.S. DEPUTY HEALTH EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 15:20 EST, 1 March 2022 |

Cloth masks do little to prevent the spread of COVID-19 or other airborne diseases, a new study finds.

Researchers from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom found that 90 percent of particles could get through cloth masks, making them effectively useless during the pandemic.

Cloth masks have been popular in the U.S., as they are easily reusable after washing and at some points were the most accessible due to shortages and high prices for surgical or N95 masks.

Now, though, experts have discovered that these masks were doing little if anything to actually stop the spread of the virus, and likely contributed to spread as people who believed they were acting safely were not doing so.

Researchers found that cloth masks only block an estimated 10 percent of all particles from getting through. Because cloth masks are made of tightly woven yarn (top) unlike surgical and other kind of masks that are made to filter particles (bottom) they are not as protective against Covid

Researchers found that cloth masks only block an estimated 10 percent of all particles from getting through. Because cloth masks are made of tightly woven yarn (top) unlike surgical and other kind of masks that are made to filter particles (bottom) they are not as protective against Covid

Researchers do not recomend surgical masks either because they are not well fitting and often leave gaps that allow should-be filtered particles to escape

Researchers do not recommend surgical masks either because they are not well-fitting and often leave gaps that allow should-be filtered particles to escape

Researchers, who published their findings Tuesday in Physics of Fluids, built an airflow simulation using 3d imaging to gauge how well different masks were used during the pandemic filtered particles.

They note that unlike N95 or surgical masks, cloth masks are not built using material made to filter out particles.

Cloth masks are made out of tightly-woven fabrics. While not visible to the eye, small gaps in the fabric are enough to allow for a vast majority of particles to get through.

‘Masks are air filters, and woven fabrics, such as cotton, make for good jeans, shirts, and other apparel, but they are lousy air filters,’ Richard Sear, co-author of the study and physicist at Surrey University, said in a statement.

KN95 masks are built to filter out particles and have a standard filtration of 95 percent.

‘The filtering layer of an N95 mask is made from much smaller, 5-micrometer fibers with gaps that are 10 times smaller, making it much better for filtering nasty particles from the air, such as those containing virus,’ Sear said.

KF-94 masks are considered to be very effective as well, with the ability to filter out 94 percent of particles.

Filtration efficiency is not the only two benefits of those masks, though. Fit is very important as well.

A mark should fit tightly around a person’s face, almost hugging their nose, cheeks, and chin.

This is to avoid leaving gaps above or below the mouth and the nose where air can escape. 

Even if a person does have a mask that can filter up to 95 percent of particles if the mask isn’t well-fitting then the particles could just escape out of the side anyways.

This is why Sear also does not recommend the use of surgical masks. 

‘Surgical masks fit badly, so a lot of air goes unfiltered past the edges of the mask by the cheeks and nose,’ he said. 

While this is only one study, based on a computer model, the implications are major when looking back on two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Many Americans wore cloth masks, almost exclusively, throughout the pandemic believing they were doing their part to stop the spread of the virus.

Wearing a mask also may have made people feel more comfortable about going out in public, believing the face coverings would protect everyone around them from the virus.

It could be the case that the cloth masks were providing little to no protection at all, and people believing they were taking proper virus mitigation measures were not doing so.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends KN95 masks as the gold standard to stop the spread, but still recommends cloth masks as a valid face covering on its website. 

Academia Corruption, corruption, Health, Independent Media, Investigative Journalism

After 48,299 COVID-19 Cases at 37 US Universities – Only 2 Hospitalizations and ZERO Deaths

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Jim Hoft
September 22, 2020

There have now been 48,299 coronavirus cases reported at 37 universities in the United States.

Of those cases there have been ONLY 2 hospitalizations.

And there have been ZERO DEATHS!
They couldn’t even sneak in a cancer victim into their counts because no one died!

Via Dr. Andrew Bostom:

Academia Corruption, big pharma, censorship, corruption, Crimes Against Humanity, Independent Media, Independent Research, Notable Occurrence, Uncategorized

Multiple Studies Predicted Governments Become Authoritarian in Response to Pandemics

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Derrick Broze
AUGUST 21, 2020

Over the last eight months we have seen many governments around the world enacting authoritarian practices in the name of preventing the spread of COVID-19. All the way back in January, the Chinese government began welding people in their homes to stop them from potentially contaminating others. As the panic spread around the world eager politicians now had the excuse they needed to push policies which restrict freedom of movement and speech.

The authoritarian measures have now grown to include the following:

– checkpoints (asking about travel, checking temperatures)

– temperature screenings at some airports

– contact tracing apps cataloging all your movements and contacts

– emergency orders/executive orders supporting forced vaccinations, isolation, and quarantine

– involuntary quarantine centers/camps

– thermal drones watching people from the sky

– talk of mandatory vaccines (or making it difficult to live without vaccination)

–face recognition tech to fight covid19 (by tracking people violating lockdowns)

– discussion of immunity passports/digital certificates to travel

– censorship of alternative viewpoints

– raiding of businesses for not closing

– arrests of people violating lockdown (and this, and this)

– ankle monitors for those violating quarantine orders

– roving cops searching for people not in the “proper” places

While the rise of authoritarianism as the result of a declared global pandemic may seem an unusual response to such an event, there is actually decades worth of research describing why we are witnessing this growth of tyranny.  For example, the study Pathogens and Politics: Further Evidence That Parasite Prevalence Predicts Authoritarianism, provides a deeper understanding of how humans react to perceived threats and how that relates to the type of government the people will accept.

The study focuses on the “parasite stress” hypothesis which proposes that when a species faces parasites and diseases their values are shaped by the experience. In this context, “parasite” is used to refer to any pathogenic organism, including bacteria and viruses. The theory states that depending on how a disease stresses people’s development it can lead to differences in mating preferences and changes in culture. Proponents of the parasite stress theory also note that disease can alter the psychological and social norms of societies.

“According to a “parasite stress” hypothesis, authoritarian governments are more likely to emerge in regions characterized by a high prevalence of disease-causing pathogens,” the researchers write. They define authoritarian governance as “highly concentrated power structures that repress dissent and emphasize submission to authority, social conformity, and hostility towards outgroups.”

Due to the invisible nature of “disease-causing parasites,” attempts to control the spread of a disease “historically depended substantially on adherence to ritualized behavioral practices that reduced infection risk.” The researchers also found that society tends to promote a collectivist worldview, favoring obedience and conformity from the population, in response to parasites.

They examined two different studies, which themselves were analyses of previous works on the parasite stress theory and the implications for authoritarian tendencies in government and individuals.

The first study shows that “parasite prevalence” strongly predicted the likelihood for individuals to express authoritarian personalities. The second study focused on “small-scale societies” and found that parasite prevalence “predicted measures of authoritarian governance, and did so even when statistically controlling for other threats to human welfare.”

The researchers concluded that “these results further substantiate the parasite stress hypothesis of authoritarianism, and suggest that societal differences in authoritarian governance result, in part, from cultural differences in individuals’ authoritarian personalities.”

The research also indicates that individuals who dissent from or fail to comply with the aforementioned “ritualized behavior” are seen as a health threat to society.

“At a psychological level of analysis, empirical evidence reveals that the subjective perception of infection risk causes individuals to be more conformist, to prefer conformity and obedience in others, to respond more negatively toward others who fail to conform, and to endorse more conservative socio-political attitudes,” the study states.

Additionally, a “societal level of analysis” reveals that in countries and cultures with a historically higher prevalence of diseases, “people are less individualistic, exhibit lower levels of dispositional openness to new things, are more likely to conform to majority opinion.” These cultures strongly endorse moral values that emphasize group loyalty, obedience, and respect for authority.

Simply put, where there is a high prevalence of parasitic diseases the resulting stress on human health is likely to result in the emergence of authoritarian forms of governance. The researchers note that this effect is consistent with previous research which also found “pathogen prevalence” was uniquely linked to conformist attitudes and personality traits. The researchers examined the effects of malnutrition, warfare, and famine, finding that only the threat of famine and pathogens correlate with authoritarian governance.

 “This conclusion is consistent also with psychological evidence showing that, while other threats can also influence individuals’ conformist and ethnocentric attitudes, the perceived threat of infectious disease has effects that are empirically unique,” the researchers write.

Another study referenced by Pathogens and Politics delves further into the psychology behind perceived threats and conformity. The study, Threat(s) and conformity deconstructed: Perceived threat of infectious disease and its implications for conformist attitudes and behavior, found that the threat of disease “may trigger conformist attitudes” in the population at large.

For this study the researchers used two methodological strategies to examine the effects of disease threat on conformist attitudes and behavior. First, they examined the impact on individuals by focusing on chronic individual differences in Perceived Vulnerability to Disease (PVD). To do this they tested whether individuals who felt more chronically vulnerable to infectious disease also exhibited more strongly conformist attitudes and behavior.

“Importantly, we also tested whether these predicted correlations remained when statistically controlling for individual differences in concerns pertaining to other (disease-irrelevant) threats,” they write.

What they discovered was that when the threat of infectious disease was prominent the population expressed “greater liking for people with conformist traits and exhibited higher levels of behavioral conformity.” However, there was no comparable increase in conformist attitudes as a result of a temporary threats that were not related to disease.

Disturbingly, the study found that an individual’s perception of vulnerability to infection does not necessarily need to be rooted in reality to produce a profound psychological effect. If an individual perceives they are vulnerable to infection they tend to prefer conformity and accept authoritarian measures, even if they are not actually under threat. “Our experimental manipulation focused on perception, not reality,” the researchers note.

When it comes to society as a whole, the researchers found there may also be consequences that impact entire populations.

A disease epidemic, or even the perceived threat of an epidemic (such as the H1N1 outbreak of 2009), may lead to temporarily higher levels of conformity within populations and may dispose individuals within those populations to respond more harshly to normative transgressions.

This field of research clearly indicates the empirical evidence for authoritarian governance and conformist mindsets in response to a perceived threat of infection from a disease. If one takes a step back and examines the results of these studies and the events currently playing out around the world, it’s clear the hypothesis is being proven during the COVID-19 panic.

In part 2 we will further examine the parasite stress theory, the authoritarian response from governments, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Lock Step scenario. 

Question Everything, Come To Your Own Conclusions.

Academia Corruption, big pharma, Crimes Against Humanity, Health, Independent Media, Independent Research, science, Uncategorized

COVID-19: Why You Can’t Compare US Stats to Other Countries’

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JUNE FAKKERT 
July 22, 2020

The COVID-19 outbreak is dynamic, hitting some places and some people hard and others less so, then tapering off and sometimes resurging.

To track it, we use data, but even the most robust counts have limitations.

The Oxford-based nonprofit Our World in Data explains the conundrum: “Without data, we can not understand the pandemic. Only based on good data can we know how the disease is spreading, what impact the pandemic has on the lives of people around the world, and whether the countermeasures countries are taking are successful or not.

“But even the best available data on the coronavirus pandemic is far from perfect.”

It may seem obvious that no single graph, figure, or stat is sufficient to give a meaningful picture of the situation, yet some circulate the internet with little explanation, as though they are capable of this.

For example, in early June, some media mentioned, without any explanation or context, the fact that the United States was reporting the highest number of COVID deaths of any country. This fact was true. But without context, one might infer that thus the United States was doing a poorer job handling the crisis.

The first and most obvious mitigating factor is that the United States has a larger population than other developed countries. Those countries closest in population size—India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria—are third world nations, and thus their governments won’t have the resources to test and track to the same extent as the United States. It’s common sense that we wouldn’t compare the United States to them.

So is it fair if we compare disease rates in other developed countries to the United States? Somewhat, as long as differences in testing and data are taken into consideration.

Media reports in early July compared the number of cases in the United States to the number of cases in the European Union (EU) due to their somewhat comparable population sizes: 328 million in the United States, and 446 million people in the 27 countries of the EU.

The Our World in Data website on July 5 shows that the United States had counted 2.9 million cases of COVID with 132,000 deaths, while the EU reported 1.3 million cases and 134,000 deaths.

Although the United States has reported more than twice as many cases, it has only a slightly higher rate of death: 0.04 percent in the United States, compared with 0.03 percent in the EU.

There are a few factors behind these numbers to consider.

One is who/what is being counted in test numbers. There is no international standard of testing for the pandemic, and different countries are following different methods. Some are counting the number of people tested, while some are counting numbers of tests given. And some countries, as in the case of Italy and France, changed their reporting criteria midway.

A second factor is scale of testing. According to Our World in Data, most EU countries (19) are only testing people with symptoms, while the United States is testing asymptomatic people.

The United States also is testing more aggressively than EU countries. Of the 27 EU countries, only Luxembourg, Denmark, and Portugal have conducted more tests per capita (1,000 persons) than the United States.

More testing will, of course, uncover more cases. In the United States, the number of daily tests given is still rising, whereas the tests in Europe are flat.

Case Fatality Rates Don’t Necessarily Indicate Mortality

Case fatality is the number of known cases compared to the number of known deaths.

A common misconception is that the case fatality rates indicate how severe a disease is. This isn’t necessarily the case.

To give a hypothetical example: If two people come to a hospital with a strange new disease (both somehow test positive) and both then die of the disease, in this sample, the case fatality rate is 100 percent.

So this number is relative to the number of positive tests. In countries where many tests have been conducted, the case fatality rate will be low, such as in the United States.

The case mortality rate in the United States is around 4.6 percent (Johns Hopkins University calculated the U.S. case fatality rate at 4.2 percent on July 12). Case mortality in the EU was 10.3 percent as of July 5.

Mortality Assessment Differences

Then, there’s the criteria for classifying a death as being from COVID-19.

In the first week of April, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said at a press conference, “I think in this country, we’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality.”

She said that in other countries, if someone had a preexisting condition and came to the hospital and died of COVID, it might not be counted as a COVID death, while in the United States, it might.

Additionally, deaths classified as COVID-19 in the United States “can include … cases without laboratory confirmation,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC acknowledges that this lack of testing will introduce some error for mortality figures for COVID-19, flu and flu-like illnesses, and pneumonia.

“Deaths due to COVID-19 may be misclassified as pneumonia or influenza deaths in the absence of positive test results, and pneumonia or influenza may appear on death certificates as a comorbid condition. Additionally, COVID-19 symptoms can be similar to influenza-like illness, thus deaths may be misclassified as influenza. Thus, increases in pneumonia and influenza deaths may be an indicator of excess COVID-19-related mortality.”

In hard-hit EU countries such as Italy and France, lab confirmation is required.

Crimes Against Humanity, Health, Independent Media, Independent Research, Positive News, Uncategorized

The CDC May Stop Calling COVID-19 An ‘Epidemic’ Due To A Remarkably Low Death Rate

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Joe Martino,
July 11th, 2020

What Happened: The COVID-19 death rate across the US has now been confirmed to be so low that it’s on the edge of no longer being qualified as an epidemic, and therefore the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is poised to soon stop calling the virus an “epidemic” as it will no longer match the organizations definition.

The primary reason why confirmed death rates are so low is due to extreme amounts of testing in the United States.

Although most outside the box thinking people and health professionals knew a couple weeks in that the death rate was extremely low, it has taken up until now for the CDC to admit to this position.

The Cdc May Stop Calling Covid 19 An ‘epidemic’ Due To A Remarkably Low Death Rate

“Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 9.0% during week 25 to 5.9% during week 26, representing the tenth week of a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC,” the agency wrote on its website.

A spokesperson for the CDC stated “the percentage is currently at the epidemic threshold.”

One could assume that as more tests are completed, or even if common sense estimation was used, COVID-19 would not qualify as an epidemic according to the CDCs definition.

To the CDC, an “epidemic” is “an increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease above what is normally expected in that population in that area.

We’ve only been seeing sharp declines, and in most cases, any increase in cases are non-symptomatic.

There have even been multiple scientists who clearly illustrated this months ago but were ridiculed for it.

Media and government continue to report on ‘new cases’ every single day as testing continues. The challenging part is, they are not sharing how many of these cases are symptomatic or result in any form of hospitalization.

Therefore, simply reporting on how many new confirmed cases there are is doing nothing but rile the public up into fear for no reason.

The vast majority of “confirmed cases” are people who have no symptoms and have no idea they even had antibodies for the virus. Not to mention the likely inaccuracy of COVID testing.

Why it matters:

As many outside mainstream consensus spoke about since late February, testing results show that more people have likely contracted COVID-19 than testing data reflects.

This means even way back then, the mortality rate for COVID-19 was lower than any of the extreme estimates that came out of government and health agencies. All of which have been proven wrong along the way.

Those who have questioned the narrative, like us here at CE, have had to deal with shadow banning on social media, fact checking fallacies, and demonetization as a result of reporting on the facts instead of the hysteria.

The sad part is, everything we have reported on and suggested would soon happen did and yet we have been constantly ‘punished’ for it.

Death rates were not as high as thought, testing is not accurate, and this virus is not near as serious as it’s being made out to be – point blank, there was no need for a lockdown.

But given there was a lockdown, we can look to either complete government incompetency or the fact that there is likely much more going on here behind the scenes than many people want to admit to.

Further to that, and going deeper, we can ask how this lockdown and entire virus situation was actually serving the collective to see what’s really going on in our world and why it might be time to bring about some BIG change.

Remember, it’s not the people vs. the deep state, they simply play a role in pushing the evolution of consciousness. I cover this in great detail here.

The Takeaway

More statistics and events are coming to the surface showing that we have been misled greatly about the recent ‘pandemic’, and even though many people in alternative media and alternative health said since day 1 that this was fishy and made no sense, mainstream media and government continued on.

How is it that people with so few resources and access knew the truth before massive and ‘trusted’ sources did? Was it another catalyst for humanity to begin questioning why they trust these sources?

Was it another catalyst for people to begin listening to well backed and grounded ‘alternative’ or ‘conspiracy’ ideas as they consistently turn out to be true?

Given the fact our infrastructures collapsed so quickly, is it an opportunity for us to re-imagine our world?

Re-imagine what’s possible and truly question the type of world we wish to live in?

Is it time for us to activate self responsibility and begin setting aside the parent-child relationship we have with government?

It’s all been a catalyst.

Health, Positive News, Uncategorized

Herd Immunity For COVID-19 May Be Closer Than It Seems, New Model Shows

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Eric A. Blair,
June 30th, 2020

In herd immunity, enough people become infected with (and cured from) a virus, building antibodies that mean, at least for a while, they cannot catch the virus again. When enough people are included in that herd, the virus has few places to go and often dies off, or at least is greatly reduced.

Now, a new study from Nottingham and Stockholm Universities suggests that such immunity might be closer than many in the mainstream media say.

“According to their new mathematical model, far less people need to be infected with COVID-19 in order to reach herd immunity levels,” StudyFinds.com reported.

“Our findings have potential consequences for the current COVID-19 pandemic and the release of lockdown and suggests that individual variation (e.g. in activity level) is an important feature to include in models that guide policy,” professor Bell concludes.

But the study’s authors say that their “43% number should not be looked at as an exact value, or even the best possible estimate.”

Even if that number is correct, there still might be a ways to go.

“Generally, 60% has been proclaimed as the herd immunity level needed among populations to stop COVID-19. That percentage was agreed upon because it is the usually accepted percentage of a population that must be vaccinated against an infectious disease to stop an outbreak from occurring,” StudyFunds wrote. “So, that 60% figure is based on the assumption that every member of a community is equally likely to be vaccinated and therefore immune. Of course, that’s clearly not what would happen regarding COVID-19 herd immunity, since there’s no vaccine. Instead, herd immunity for the virus would have to happen due to the virus spreading throughout a population.”

Notable Occurrence, Uncategorized

$21 Million NYC Field Hospital Closes After Never Seeing a Single Patient

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HANNAH BLEAU
23 May 2020

A Brooklyn field hospital closed without seeing any patients, city officials confirmed this week.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced the construction of the multimillion-dollar field hospital at the end of March — the day after the USNS Comfort docked at Manhattan’s Pier 90.

“They are going to set it up rapidly and we’re then going to go to the next site, the next site, the next site to meet our goal,” de Blasio said, detailing the 670-bed plus site at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook. He also announced another overflow facility at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing. That 350-bed facility only saw 79 patients, according to THE CITY. However, the Red Hook facility never saw a single patient, and both locations ended up costing over $40 million combined.

THE CITY reported:

Earlier this month, the makeshift hospital at the tennis center closed after taking in 79 patients, according to City Hall officials. It cost $19.8 million to construct and revert back, the officials said.

The lower-profile Red Hook terminal hospital was slated to open in mid-April but wasn’t ready for service until May 4. By then, citywide hospital utilization had already fallen by half its April 12 highpoint, to about 6,000 patients.

City officials say the $20.8 million site, constructed by Texas-based contractor SLSCO under a no-bid emergency contract, is now being demobilized after seeing no medical activity.

Similarly, the USNS Comfort, which was originally slated to take pressure off New York hospitals by taking non-coronavirus patients, departed after seeing just 182 patients over its month-long stay. Even though ship agreed to designate 500 of its 1,000 beds for coronavirus patients, it never came close to reaching capacity.

The 1,000 bed USNS Mercy, which docked at Los Angeles Harbor March 27, departed May 15 after treating just 77 patients. It came prepared with 800 crew members “12 fully-equipped operating rooms, laboratories, a pharmacy, [and] radiological equipment … becoming the largest hospital in the city,” KTLA reported.

Similar occurrences have been reported in other areas of the country, as many of the doomsday scenarios touted by experts never came to fruition.

As Breitbart News reported:

Other areas of the country are telling similar stories — preparing for a surge that never came.

A 250-bed field hospital set up by the Army in Seattle’s CenturyLink Field Event Center, for example, shut down in April after just three days. It never saw a single patient. Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said they requested the hospital “before our physical distancing strategies were fully implemented and we had considerable concerns that our hospitals would be overloaded with Covid-19 cases.”

The McCormick Place field hospital in Chicago, Illinois, is also gradually reducing its presence, taking down half of its 1,000 hospital beds as medical centers in the region did not reach capacity.

“As part of our hospital surge, we expanded capacity at a breakneck speed, ensuring our hospital infrastructure would be prepared to handle the very worst. We did so only with a single-minded focus: saving lives,”  City Hall spokesperson Avery Cohen said, according to THE CITY.

“Over the past few months, social distancing, face coverings, and other precautionary measures have flattened the curve drastically, and we remain squarely focused on taking that progress even further,” Cohen added.

The news comes as the country slowly begins to reopen, state by state, following the peak of the Chinese coronavirus. It virtually halted the U.S. economy, resulting in 38.6 million of Americans reporting jobless claims in the last nine weeks.