Independent Voters of Brown County IN

Current Events

If you take this drug, you will not get Covid! – ‘I CAN’T KEEP DOING THIS’: Doctor pleads for review of data during COVID-19 Senate hearing

HE SAYS WE HAVE A CHEAP TREATMENT FOR CORO.  VIRUS AVAILABLE NOW…

• Atlas may be having an ‘I told you so’ moment. The Great Barrington Declaration, spearheaded by epidemiologists from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, recognizes the ‘devastating effects’ of lockdowns, particularly on the working class, and argues that the ‘cure’ has likely been worse than the disease. A top WHO official also flipped the organization’s position on lockdowns in an interview with Spectator TV, warning that they should be used as a ‘last resort’ and that their effects on the world economy should not be underestimated.‘All of the things that I have said — that were all based on the data and my ongoing conversations with epidemiologists for months, almost on a day-to-day basis — have been finally openly agreed upon by many of the top scientists and epidemiologists from all over the world,’ Atlas says. ‘This policy is the science…and it’s common sense and logic.’

After The Great Barrington Declaration, No One Can Honestly Say ‘Science’ Demands Lockdowns  Federalist.  By Helen Raleigh  OCTOBER 12, 2020While left-leaning media and pundits claim that evidence and science guide their decisions, the Great Barrington Declaration proves their ignorance and dishonesty.

Backflip: W.H.O. Condemns Coronavirus Lockdowns, Just ‘Doubling’ Global Poverty

It’s now October. We are starting to get an evidence-based picture of how school reopenings and remote learning are going (those photos of hallways don’t count), and the evidence is pointing in one direction. Schools do not, in fact, appear to be a major spreader of COVID-19.

Thousands Of Health Experts Sign Declaration Calling For End To Lockdown, Warn Of ‘Irreparable Damage’ By  Tim Pearce  Oct 7, 2020   DailyWire.com

• “The Great Barrington Declaration”
• Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings, and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice,” it continues.

Oct 5, 2020. Against FearPresident Trump’s handling of his coronavirus diagnosis models positive masculinity—rational and unbowed.  Heather Mac Donald  , City Journal, Covid-19  Politics and law

Chinese Bioweapon May Be Playing a Very Devious Game  Posted at 3:30 pm on September 17, 2020 by Michael Thau

Timeline – Background

Vaccines:  Untested short cuts to treatments

• Urgent information on Covid Vacc!ne by Dr. Carrie Madej

A “headline” on Feb 24, 2020. Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal. U of M disease expert: Coronavirus won’t be contained, so here’s what to do With vaccines still months away, Osterholm — who before his U of M job was chief epidemiologist for the state of Minnesota — says a broader outbreak is likely. So he and Olshaker have some advice for coping:

Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance. Medium. What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time by Tomas Pueyo

This may be the most comprehensive article on the issues that provide the insights on strategies and expected results.

• “If you agree with this article and want the US Government to take action, please sign the White House petition to implement a Hammer-and-Dance Suppression strategy.”
• “If you are an expert in the field and want to criticize or endorse the article or some of its parts, feel free to leave a private note here or contextually and I will respond or address.”

Mar 24, 2020.  Inside Hook. How South Korea Flattened the Curve – Can the United States follow suit? BY BONNIE STIERNBERG

Mar 25, 2020.  Atlantic.  How the Pandemic Will End The U.S. may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world … and  One could easily conceive of a world in which most of the nation believes that America defeated COVID-19. This is how it’s going to play out by Ed Yong

• A global pandemic of this scale was inevitable.
• Veterans of past epidemics have long warned that American society is trapped in a cycle of panic and neglect. After every crisis — anthrax, SARS, flu, Ebola — attention is paid and investments are made. But after short periods of peacetime, memories fade and budgets dwindle. This trend transcends red and blue administrations. When a new normal sets in, the abnormal once again becomes unimaginable. But there is reason to think that COVID-19 might be a disaster that leads to more radical and lasting change.
• One could easily conceive of a world in which most of the nation believes that America defeated COVID-19
• The 2020 Presidential Elections will be a signficant indicator regarding the future direction of the U.S. 

Sources of Guidance and Data:

• Presidents 15 day Guidelines 03.16.20_White_House_coronavirus-guidance
• White House COVID Task Force Briefings
• Center for Disease Control (CDC)
• Worldometer :  Our sources include the United Nations Population Division, World Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank.
• Indiana (ISDH) 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)
  • Map IN COVID-19 Cases
• Brown County COAD – Community Organizations Active in a Disaster

• South Central Indiana, Covid-19 Resources. Find the information and resources you need to navigate the COVID-19 outbreak

Assessments:

• Triple board-certified M.D., Dr. Zach Bush, joins Del in an evolutionary discussion on why Coronavirus is here, what it’s trying to tell us, and how we emerge from the darkness.
  • Website – Dr. Zach Bush
• BlueDot protects people around the world from infectious diseases with human and artificial intelligence.  PILLARS:  DETECTION, DISPERSION, DISRUPTION, DISSEMINATION OF KNOWLEDGE
  • Interview on the system by Newt Gingrich (May 10, 2020)
    • BlueDot – Early warning 10 am, Dec 31, 2019, Jan 8, 2020 article – peer review;  – predicted breakout in Bangkoch; saw the 360-degree dispersal – China, to Europe, to U.S (San Francisco, LA, NY – non-stop flights)
    • Solutions over the life-cycle of the outbreak, transmissions within a community, population movements, addressing concentrations
    • Third world impact? Not sure it is not happening …  would be surprised if there are not outbreaks – predicts it gets worse – yet to be seen – May and June probably
    • Second wave – 6-9 months?  What can we do?   Most of the population still susceptible … need to also look past COVID-19 – anticipate the next outbreak … (Panic neglect cycle) – Anticipate, Mitigage and Blunt

  • How this Canadian start-up spotted coronavirus before everyone else knew about it Published Tue, Mar 3 202010:27 AM ESTUpdated Fri, Mar 6 20201:40 PM EST by  Cory Stieg

• Is there an overreaction?   Grassroots Conservatives enews #387and#388
  • Part 1 Will the Coronavirus Hysteria Lead to a Great Depression_  Is it Overblown_ Overreaction_ Irrational_  Is the Panic Necessary_  Threat to our Freedom_
  • Part II Why Is Shutdown a Huge Mistake_  Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than The Disease_  Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say_
• Mar 23, 2020. AI News.  AI vs COVID-19: Here are the AI tools and services fighting coronavirus By Ryan Daws
• Mar 16, 2020. Imperial College, U.K. Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand
• Mar 16, 2020. Medium. The Sober Math Everyone Must Understand about the Pandemic By Jason S Warner
• Mar 16, 2020.  LinkedIn. Array Advisors’ Model Validates Fears of ICU Bed Shortage, Predicts Dates for Imminent Bed Deficits in Key States by Neil Carpenter
• Oct 18, 2019. Event 201 – Pandemic Simulation
  • Event 201 was a 3.5-hour pandemic tabletop exercise that simulated a series of dramatic, scenario-based facilitated discussions, confronting difficult, true-to-life dilemmas associated with response to a hypothetical, but scientifically plausible, pandemic. 
  • The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, World Economic Forum, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation jointly propose these recommendations.
    

• Mar 27, 2020, National Geographic. How some cities ‘flattened the curve’ during the 1918 flu pandemic. Social distancing isn’t a new idea—it saved thousands of American lives during the last great pandemic. Here’s how it worked.

• CDC. 1918 Pandemic Influenza: Three Waves
• Coronavirus and the Sun: a Lesson from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic by Dr. Richard Hobday, Medium.
•  How U.S. Cities Tried to Halt the Spread of the 1918 Spanish Flu.   How U.S. city officials responded to the Spanish flu played a critical role in how many residents lived—and died by Dave Roos
• RealClearPolitics. Limbaugh: Remember The Swine Flu Panic? 60 Million Americans Infected, 300,000 Hospitalized
• Remembering the 1957 Asian flu pandemic by  Clark Whelton
  

Worst-Case Plans: Newsweek,  Exclusive: Inside the Military’s Top Secret Plans if Coronavirus Cripples t

TIMELINE

SHOCK REPORT: This Week CDC Quietly Updated COVID-19 Numbers – Only 9,210 Americans Died From COVID-19 Alone – Rest Had Different Other Serious IllnessesBy Joe Hoft  Published August 29, 2020 at 7:45pm

MORE EVIDENCE THAT SHUTDOWNS ARE USELESS

• Hardly anyone has been wearing masks in the Scandinavian countries, according to news reports.Mortality attributed to covid-19 hit a peak value of 11.38 deaths per day per million population on April 8, 2020. … For all practical purposes, the covid-19 epidemic is over in Sweden. Almost certainly herd immunity has been achieved in Sweden irrespective of any antibody test results. … Whether covid-19 will reappear this next fall or winter remains to be seen.

Hoover Institution senior fellow joins Trump administration as a COVID advisor   By Ujwal Srivastava and Anastasia Malenko on August 12, 2020, Stanford Daily

• In the past, Atlas has advocated for the reopening of schools and claimed that COVID-19 lockdowns should be ended.
• “Public policy is supposed to be taking into consideration not just stopping COVID-19 at all costs, but understanding the impact on people of what you do and what you say,” Atlas said. “We need to live in a rational world and show our children that we use critical thinking and there’s been a lot of sloppy thinking on this issue.” 
•  “The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation.” by BY DR. SCOTT W. ATLAS,

Forced Isolation May Be the Only Way to Stop Resurgence of Virus  Bloomberg News  Aug 14, 2020  

• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 40% of Covid-19 infections are asymptomatic.

• But the size of the response in most of the world (not including Sweden) has been totally disproportionate to the size of the threat.
• Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long.

Cancer diagnoses plummet in pandemic; Experts fear could mean worse disease later…  By Sarah Gantz The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS),  Aug 6, 2020

The land with no face masks: Holland’s top scientists say there’s no solid evidence coverings work and warn they could even damage the fight against Covid-19By IAN BIRRELL IN AMSTERDAM FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY  PUBLISHED: 17:05 EDT, 1 August 2020 

The Key to Defeating COVID-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It | OpinionHARVEY A. RISCH, MD, PHD , PROFESSOR OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, YALE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

• I am referring, of course, to the medication hydroxychloroquine. When this inexpensive oral medication is given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control, it has shown to be highly effective, especially when given in combination with the antibiotics azithromycin or doxycycline and the nutritional supplement zinc.

Four Months of Unprecedented Government Malfeasance May/June 2020 • Volume 49, Number 5/6 • Heather Mac Donald  Heather Mac DonaldManhattan Institute

• Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She earned a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. in English from Cambridge University, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. She writes for several newspapers and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Criterion, and Public Interest, and is the author of four books, including The War on Cops: How The New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe and The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

In struggle against pandemic, populist leaders fare poorlyBy JOHN DANISZEWSKI Associated Press JULY 23, 2020 — 6:25AM

July 23, 2020. Sweden hoped herd immunity would curb COVID-19. Don’t do what we did. It’s not working.  25 Swedish doctors and scientists, Opinion contributors  1 day ago

July 22, 2020.  The Big Surge In Coronavirus Deaths Is A Media-Fed Myth I & I Editorial Board

July 21, 2020. Charlotte Observer. What did people say about wearing masks in the 1918 pandemic? It sounds familiar  BY CHARLES DUNCAN

July 21, 2020. Russia Says Its Chinese Coronavirus Vaccine Is Ready by Tsarizm Staff

Friday, 10 July 2020  COVID Con: Doctor Says Virus Is “Dying” — but Media Keep It Alive Written by  Selwyn Duke

July 7, 2020. Breitbart. Fauci Downplays Lower Coronavirus Death Rate as ‘False Narrative’ by  NATE CHURCH

Dr. Scott Atlas disputes COVID-19 fear mongering tactics from our health official: July 2, 2020  KUSI Newsroom

• SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – As coronavirus cases continue to increase across the United States, health officials and Democrat politicians seem to be using that statistic to fear monger and justify closure orders.
• Dr. Scott Atlas of the Hoover Institute, discussed why we don’t need to be scared of the increase spread of coronavirus on Good Morning San Diego with KUSI’s Paul Rudy.

June 27, 2020.  Reopening Is Not a Failure By THE EDITORS, National Review

June 26, 2020. Avik Roy, Twitter. If you want to understand what’s going on with #COVID19 right now, the best place to look is Florida, because they do the best job of anyone in terms of data transparency. Note the different age distributions of cases, hospitalizations, & deaths in their regular report.

MEDIA IGNORES 90% CORONAVIRUS DEATH COLLAPSE IN COUNTRYby CLAY TRAVISabout 20 hours ago updated about 20 hours ago

EXCLUSIVE: Coronavirus Mortality Study in Sweden Is Consistent with US Study – Confirms Overall Mortality Not Much Different Than a Bad Seasonal Flu  By Joe HoftPublished June 21, 2020 at 8:45am

June 17, 2020. Just the News.   Erosion of trust: 10 things public health establishment got wrong about coronavirus By Michael Fumento

Jun 14, 2020. WSJ. Governments May Revisit Postwar Playbook as They Tackle Huge Debts. Financial repression worked after WWII, but it isn’t without costs and risks

• “You’re talking to a very fiscally conservative person,” said Ms. Reinhart, the World Bank’s newly appointed chief economist, in response to a question on the wisdom of borrowing so much in response to the pandemic. “But this is a war. In a war, you worry about winning the war, and then you worry about paying for it.”

Jun 13, 2020. ‘Expert Models’ + Fear = Stress Pandemic  COMMENTARY  By Thomas W. Smith

• Here is what John Kay of the Financial Times has written about science: “The objective of science is not an agreement on a course of action but the pursuit of truth. … Science is a matter of evidence. … The route to knowledge is transparency. … The route to truth is the pluralistic expression of conflicting views. … There is no room in the process for any notion of scientific consensus.”
• That was a question explored by respected medical researchers Scott W. Atlas, John R. Birge, Ralph L. Keeney, and Alexander Lipton. The headline on their essay reveals a stark conclusion: “The COVID-19 Shutdown Will Cost Americans Millions of Years of Life.” They calculate the shockingly high cost of the Shut-Down-the-Economy Stress Pandemic, not just to the mental and physical health throughout the country — and not just to the economy — but to living standards for years to come.

Jun 4, 2020.  Investigative Issues: Here’s an Excerpt From My Covid E-Book That Was Quarantined by Amazon  By Alex Berenson

May 30, 2020. National Review.  Sweden’s COVID Death Rate Now Ten Times Higher than Norway’s By JOHN MCCORMACK

May 30, 2020. RealClear Politics. U.S. COVID-19 Death Toll Is Inflated  COMMENTARY By Timothy Allen & John Lot

May 27, 2020.  Mandatory Masks Aren’t About Safety, They’re About Social Control  By Molly McCann. To those looking to benefit politically from emergencies, COVID presents an opportunity to advance plans targeted to transform American freedom and the American way of life.

• The “experts” have admitted that masks’ efficacy is usually negligible. 
• In short, cloth masks are largely symbolic. The science hasn’t changed, but the agenda has. … Implementing mandatory mask policies across a society of 300 million because it makes some people feel better is absurd on its face. But the policy makes a lot of sense if you understand its purpose and usefulness to shift the American mindset.
• Last week, a doctor in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that cloth masks—the type worn by the overwhelming majority of the population—are not very effective, echoing Fauci’s earlier admission. The WSJ author noted that even the N95 masks fall short: “They’re considered effective at blocking coronavirus particles only when they’re form fitted and tested to make sure there isn’t any leakage.”

May 27, 2020. CJ.  Let the Sun Shine In. Florida has proven that a measured, evidence-based response to reopening works by Michael Hendrix

• Florida’s response to Covid-19 focused on nursing homes. More than a third of the nation’s Covid deaths have occurred among the residents and staff of long-term-care facilities
• Each state’s experience differs, with each paying its own price in lives or livelihoods. Governors should be judged by their own state’s record going into and coming out of this crisis. It’s a standard that surely elevates governors like Ron DeSantis and Bill Lee—and likely condemns Andrew Cuomo.

May 27, 2020. RealClearPolitics.  Americans Don’t Get Ruled  By Judge Michael McHaney

May 27, 2020. RealClearPolitics. The COVID Guidance Muddle: No Wonder We Stand Divided By Kalev Leetaru

May 27, 2020.  New Yorker. How Mask Mandates Were Beaten Down in Rural Oklahoma By Victor Luckerson

May 23, 2020 How Germany contained the coronavirus  Jens SpahnFederal Minister of Health, Federal Ministry of Health of Germany

• First, it is critical that governments inform the public not just about what they know, but also about what they do not know. That is the only way to build the trust needed to fight a lethal virus in a democratic society. No democracy can force its citizens to change their behavior – at least not without incurring high costs. In pursuing a coordinated, collective response, transparency and accurate information is far more effective than coercion.

May 23, 2020.  COVID-19 Data – KEEP IT SIMPLE By Dr. Tony Burns

May 22, 2020. The Federalist.  Our Coronavirus Response Is Making Us Lose Our Humanity By Abby Johnson

• We parted ways and I just felt a pull to get a couple cans of formula for him, which I purchased, then went to find him. When I gave him the cans, he broke down in tears. He said he had been contemplating how to steal those cans because he’s on a fixed income and couldn’t afford the formula to help his daughter.Then he embraced me. We didn’t have masks. There was no Centers for Disease Control-recommended distance between us at all.All we had was our humanity. And that’s exactly what is being lost during this pandemic.

May 22, 2020. CR. Horowitz: The CDC confirms remarkably low coronavirus death rate. Where is the media? Daniel Horowitz

• New CDC Figures Show Fauci’s Dishonest COVID-19 Projections Were Garbage , May 23, 2020 by Michael Thau

Linkedin – Discussion on Risk and Priorities.

May 21, 2020.  How Fear, Groupthink Drove Unnecessary Global Lockdowns  By Yinon Weiss

• A much more rational strategy would have been to lock down nursing homes and let young healthy people out to build immunity.  

May 20, 2020. DISRN.  “Mass casualty incident”: 600 doctors sign letter to Trump calling for end to lockdowns over health concerns  by Adam Ford · 

May 20, 2020.  Pandemic Is Shining a Light on the American Character  By Mackubin Owens 

• The coronavirus crisis is real, but the effects on public health are just part of the problem. The long-term health of the economy matters as well. Political actors should be looking at the opportunity costs, trade-offs and risks associated with various courses of action. But that’s not the way of the tyrannical government official, the moral narcissist, or the anonymous informer. They know they are right, and that is all that matters.

May 20, 2020.  Daily Mail, UK. More than 5 million Americans will be infected with coronavirus and 290,000 will die by the end of July if social distancing isn’t adhered to, according to COVID-19 model

• Forecast from University Of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School model
• Meanwhile, a separate model from the UMass Influenza Forecasting Center of Excellence is projecting that deaths will surpass 113,000 by mid-June 
• Currently, there are more than 1.5 million cases and over 92,000 deaths across the United States 

May 20, 2020. Bloomberg.   The Results of Europe’s Lockdown Experiment Are In  By Elaine He

• The Covid-19 experience has taught us that it’s far better to respond quickly and smartly, with the right technology and mass testing and tracing, rather than only relying on the crudest of shutdowns. If there are second waves of the virus, we shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the first.

May 15, 2020. RealClearPolitics.  Two Americas: Lockdown Left vs. Re-open Right  By Tom Bevan – RCP Staf

• The political divide among the public is stark. According to a CBS News/YouGov poll released Thursday, 88% of Democrats believe the top priority of America is to “stay home, slow virus spread.” Only 12% said the top priority should be “back to work, get economy going.” Sixty-two percent of Republicans, on the other hand, favored getting the economy going as the top priority, while 38% felt staying at home is the top priority. Put another way, the net difference between Democrats and Republicans on what the top priority of the country should be is 50 percentage points.

• According to historians, pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes.“When people ask, ‘When will this end?,’ they are asking about the social ending,” said Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins.

How will Covid-19 end?

•  One possibility, historians say, is that the coronavirus pandemic could end socially before it ends medically. People may grow so tired of the restrictions that they declare the pandemic over, even as the virus continues to smolder in the population and before a vaccine or effective treatment is found.
• “I think there is this sort of social psychological issue of exhaustion and frustration,” the Yale historian Naomi Rogers said. “We may be in a moment when people are just saying: ‘That’s enough. I deserve to be able to return to my regular life.’”
• The challenge, Dr. Brandt said, is that there will be no sudden victory. Trying to define the end of the epidemic “will be a long and difficult process.”

May 14, 2020. CR.  Horowitz: One chart exposes the lie behind universal lockdown By Daniel Horowitz 

• What is the true infection fatality rate of COVID-19, broken down by age and health status? This is a simple question for which the CDC should have a clear answer by now, accompanied by a readable chart – a chart showing everyone’s demographic risk assessment so that we can better target our infection mitigation efforts. Yet it’s the one thing our government hasn’t done. Wonder why?

May 14, 2020. USA Today.  Why coronavirus cases flatten, while deaths rise by John Bacon.

• The national curve finally appears to be flattening – for now.

  The Johns Hopkins dashboard, which provides data on the coronavirus outbreak, shows the rise of confirmed cases and daily deaths in the U.S. may be slowing, even as the national death total approaches 100,000. Worldometer statistics, run by the data company Dadax, hint at steady declines.

May 13, 2020. AP.  Whistleblower: US could face virus rebound ‘darkest winter’ By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

May 13, 2020. FiveThirtyEight. Without A Vaccine, Herd Immunity Won’t Save Us  By Kaleigh Rogers, Julia Wolfe and Laura Bronner

May 12, 2020, Foreign Affairs. Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy Will Soon Be the World’s. Herd Immunity Is the Only Realistic Option—the Question Is How to Get There Safely By Nils Karlson, Charlotta Stern, and Daniel B. Klein

• There are good reasons for countries to begin easing their restrictions. It will take several years to tally the total number of deaths, bankruptcies, layoffs, suicides, mental health problems, losses to GDP and investments, and other costs attributable not just to the virus but to the measures used to fight it. It should already be obvious, however, that the economic and social costs of lockdowns are enormous:

May 12, 2020. Purdue President Mitch Daniels shares an update to West Lafayette campus faculty and staff

May 5, 2020. AP.  Virus-afflicted 2020 looks like 1918 despite science’s march By CALVIN WOODWARD

May 4, 2020.  The Army Wants a Wearable COVID-19 Detector By Aaron Boyd,
Senior Editor, Nextgov

May 4, 2020. NYT.  She Predicted the Coronavirus. What Does She Foresee Next? By Frank Bruni

• “Just as we come out of our holes and see what 25 percent unemployment looks like,” she said, “we may also see what collective rage looks like.”
• The problem, Garrett added, is bigger than Trump and older than his presidency. America has never been sufficiently invested in public health. The riches and renown go mostly to physicians who find new and better ways to treat heart disease, cancer and the like. The big political conversation is about individuals’ access to health care.
• But what about the work to keep our air and water safe for everyone, to design policies and systems for quickly detecting outbreaks, containing them and protecting entire populations? Where are the rewards for the architects of that?

May 4, 2020.  NYT. The COVID-19 Riddle: Why Does the Virus Wallop Some Places and Spare Others? by  Hannah Beech, Alissa J. Rubin, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Ruth Maclean

• The coronavirus has touched almost every country on earth, but its impact has seemed capricious.
• The question of why the virus has overwhelmed some places and left others relatively untouched is a puzzle that has spawned numerous theories and speculations but no definitive answers. That knowledge could have profound implications for how countries respond to the virus, for determining who is at risk and for knowing when it’s safe to go out again.
• There are already hundreds of studies underway around the world looking into how demographics, preexisting conditions and genetics might affect the wide variation in impact.

May 3, 20202. NY Post. FDA approves coronavirus antibody test that boasts near-perfect accuracy By Jackie Salo

• Schinecker said the tests are an important step in determining whether someone may have immunity, but acknowledged that more research is required to determine whether antibodies protect people from being reinfected.

 May 3, 2020 CNN.  What happens if a coronavirus vaccine is never developed? It has happened before By Rob Picheta

• But if previous outbreaks have proven anything, it’s that hunts for vaccines are unpredictable. “I don’t think any vaccine has been developed quickly,” Offit cautions. “I’d be really amazed if we had something in 18 months.”

May 2, 2020. RealClearPolitics.  As We Mull Leaving Lockdown, Is Sweden Model the Way Forward?  By Christina Ramirez, Ph.D., is a professor of biostatistics at the Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles.

Apr 28, 2020.  Bennett & Leibsohn: Coronavirus response — compare Florida with New York, and look at the results so far  By William J. Bennett, Seth Leibsohn | Fox News

May 2020. The New Criterion.  The scab & the wound beneath by Victor Davis Hanson. On painful realities in the age of the coronavirus.

Apr 24, 2020.  RealClearPolicy. Five Facts about Epidemiological Models.  By No Labels

Apr 23, 3030. Federalist.  Instead Of ‘Flattening The Curve,’ We Flattened Hospitals, Doctors, And The U.S. Health Care System  Across the country, hospitals shut down ‘non-essential’ procedures in preparation for a surge of coronavirus patients that never appeared.

Apr 21, 2020. The Flaw in Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy  by  Nathalie Rothschild, Foreign Policy

• The government expects citizens to freely follow its advice—but not all ethnic groups have equal access to expertise.

Apr 20, 2020. The Spectator.  The Swedish experiment looks like it’s paying off By Fredrik Erixon

• ….   that between 25 and 40 percent of the Stockholm population have had the virus and that the region will reach herd immunity in late May. 
• The vast majority of people think Sweden broadly opted for a balanced and effectual policy and current trends support that view.

• Swedish Epidemiologist Johan Giesecke: Why Lockdowns Are The Wrong Policy Posted By Ian Schwartz,  April 18, 2020

Apr 17, 2020. Daily Caller.   ‘I Believe In Our Freedoms And Liberties’: South Dakota Governor Responds To Critics Of State’s Coronavirus Response by Scott Morefield

• “What I’ve seen across the country is so many people give up their liberties for just a little bit of security,” she continued. “And they don’t have to do that. If a leader will take too much power in a time of crisis, that is how we lose our country. So I felt like I’ve had to use every single opportunity to talk about why we slow things down, we make decisions based on science and facts and make sure that we’re not letting emotion grab a hold of the situation.”

Apr 16, 2020. Chicago Tribune. Why Michael Savage is blasting Sean Hannity and the right-wing media on the coronavirus  By JEREMY W. PETERS

Apr 16, 2020. Bloomberg. This Isn’t the Flattened Curve We Were Promised, by Cathy O’Neil

• If people stick with measures to contain the virus, death rates will eventually trickle down to zero, but only after almost everyone has been infected, assuming they are then immune. If we’re lucky, we’ll slow things down enough to never truly overwhelm the hospitals, and if we’re really lucky we’ll slow things down long enough to benefit from a vaccine or a treatment.

Apr 12, 2020. American Greatness. The Thin Façade of Authority As we continue to debate about numerators and denominators in determining the real impact of this virus, one common denominator remains certain about the elites advising, crafting, and developing our response:  they aren’t touched by the impact of their decisions. By Victor Davis Hanson 

• So far in this crisis, our elite have let us down in a manner the muscularly wise have never done. Botched Models, Bad Advice

Apr 12, 2020.  Herd Immunity vs. Herd Mentality Although we do not yet know every detail of the end of our infatuation with the coronavirus, it’s clear that the historian of this episode will include a chapter called “Mistakes Were Made.”

• It is not, as Surgeon General Adams suggested, like a nationwide series of Pearl Harbors or 9/11s. It is not, as the president has frequently said, “unlike anything we’ve ever seen.” It is a severe seasonal respiratory ailment that will, when all is said and done, probably claim fewer lives than the flu usually does, many fewer than bad years, when upwards of 80,000 die and hundreds of thousands are hospitalized.

Apr 11, 2020. Quillette. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: COVID-19 Shows We Can’t Have It All written by Zaid Jilani

Apr 10, 2020. Powerline.  THE PANDEMIC: WHERE WE STAND NOW BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CORONAVIRUS

Apr 7, 2020. Rush Limbaugh. We Have Much More to Fear from Economic Destruction Than the Virus

• the chances of recovery from the coronavirus is about 98% if you catch it.
• models show 50% of the population may have already had it.
• analysis shows in New York City 70% of the deaths are of those over age 65
• The majority of New York’s more than 5,500 deaths due to coronavirus were among men, and 86% of these deaths were among people who already had underlying illnesses like high blood pressure and diabetes,
• Of the 5,500 deaths in New York since the first on March the 14th, 61% were men, 39% were women. Sixty-three percent of the deaths were among those age 70 and older while 7% of the cases were those 49 and younger. Of the 4,089 of those who died had at least one other chronic disease, the record showed. The leading underlying illness was high blood pressure, which showed up in 55 of the deaths. Next, diabetes in 1,700 of the deaths, about 37% of the cases. Other top illnesses found in those who died from coronavirus were hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease, renal disease — that’s kidneys, for those of you in Rio Linda — and dementia.
• We don’t have a vaccine for HIV, and that was Dr. Fauci’s specialty.
• But do you know the odds of any American getting this virus?”  Do we have a one in 10 chance of getting it? One in five chance? What are the circumstances in which our chances or odds increase?
• 5,500 deaths, 138,000 cases. New York has a population of eight million. So eight-tenths of a percent of the population of New York have contracted the disease.

Apr 6, 2020.  Montana physician Dr. Annie Bukacek discusses how COVID 19 death certificates are being manipulated

• Dr. Birx explained (Apr 7, 2020 WH brief), that COVID-19 deaths in the United States have “very liberal” recording guidance, noting that anyone who tests positive for the virus and dies would be included in their numbers of coronavirus deaths.

Apr 6, 2020. Wired. The Asian Countries That Beat Covid-19 Have to Do It Again Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan had flattened the curve. Then travelers from the US and Europe began reimporting the virus.  By Adam Rogers

Apr 6, 2020. Quality Progress. Tracking Covid-19. How to let the data tell you what lies ahead By Donald J. Wheeler,  Al Pfadt. Kathryn J. Whyte

• The first three intervention models—case isolation, home quarantine, and social distancing of those at risk of severe disease—make up an optimal mitigation policy. 
  • “The fourth NPI model was social distancing of the entire population. This model assumes this will reduce contacts outside the household, school, or workplace. The fifth NPI model was the closure of all schools and 75 percent of all universities.”

Apr 6, 2020.  National Review.  Has Sweden Found the Right Solution to the Coronavirus?  By JOHN FUND & JOEL HAY

• Unlike other countries, it has so far avoided both isolation and economic ruin.

Apr 6, 2020. Daily Caller. Researchers Lower Fatality Projections In Coronavirus Model Used By White House By Chuck Ross

• The model, from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, now projects 81,766 deaths in the United States through Aug. 1, with most of the fatalities occurring by the middle of May. The IHME team projected a range of between 49,431 and 136,401 for the same period.

Apr 6, 2020. Overkill: The Purposeful Destruction of America’s Economy By Kelleigh Nelson|

• Our officials and media have warned us of 2 million deaths in the United States.  Then 200,000 deaths.  Then 100,000 to 240,000.  This needs to stop. There have been a total of 68,000 coronavirus deaths worldwide.  And we are told we will see, just in America, three to four times that number.  Does that even pass the plausibility test?

Apr 5, 2020. The Hill. Surgeon general: ‘This is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives‘ BY ZACK BUDRYK 

• U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams warned Sunday amid the coronavirus pandemic that the week ahead would be the “hardest and the saddest” of “most Americans’ lives.”
• “This is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives,” Adams said on “Fox News Sunday.”
• “This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized; it’s going to be happening all over the country,” Adams said.

Apr 5, 2020. Just The News. Tracking site suggests White House model is overestimating coronavirus hospitalizations.  True numbers of Americans hospitalized with coronavirus appear to be tens of thousands lower than model’s projections. By Daniel Payne

Apr 4, 2020.  USA Today. Stop the panic. Don’t let the coronavirus win.  COVID-19 is a public health emergency, but precautions must be proportionate to the risk. The cure can’t be worse than the disease. By Alex Berezow

• Obviously, a total economic collapse would tear at the fabric of society and also pose a threat to public health. And it raises the specter that our “cure” for COVID-19 may be far more harmful than the disease itself. 
• In addition to the annual flu death toll mentioned above, car accidents claim another 40,000 American lives each year. Though the comparison is imperfect because car crashes aren’t infectious, the point is that we accept these risks as a matter of routine. Why? Because the alternative — banning cars and shutting down everyday life — is unacceptable. As it turns out, dying is one of the risks of living
• COVID-19 is without a doubt a public health emergency. However, precautions must be proportionate to the risk, and the pros and cons of every policy must be carefully weighed. In the midst of what appears to be outright global panic, it seems as if few of our leaders are actually doing this. 

Apr 3, 2020. CHRON. Inside the coronavirus testing failure: Alarm and dismay among the scientists who sought to help by Shawn Boburg, Robert O’Harrow Jr., Neena Satija and Amy Goldstein, The Washington Post

Apr 3, 2020. Breitbart.  Study: COVID-19 ‘170 Times Less Deadly than Accidents’ as Cause of Death in U.S DR. SUSAN BERRY

Apr 3, 2020. Breitbart. Actual Hospitalizations for Coronavirus Significantly Lower than Projections in Model By MICHAEL PATRICK LEAHY

Apr 3, 2020. WSJ. The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World OrderThe U.S. must protect its citizens from disease while starting the urgent work of planning for a new epoch. By Henry Kissinger

• Now, in a divided country, efficient and farsighted government is necessary to overcome obstacles unprecedented in magnitude and global scope. Sustaining the public trust is crucial to social solidarity, to the relation of societies with each other, and to international peace and stability.
• The crisis effort, however vast and necessary, must not crowd out the urgent task of launching a parallel enterprise for the transition to the post-coronavirus order.

April 2, 2020.  New York Is the Epicenter of the World.  The hidden gift in this pandemic is that we learn how to prepare for the worse one still to come. By Peggy Noonan.

Apr 2, 2020. Media Matters.  Fox News and Facebook’s coronavirus town hall features Mike Rowe — who has spread misinformation about the virus on Facebook by MADELINE PELTZ

• They publish their own models of the virus spread. It shows how many people will need hospital care: the system, they say, can cope. And when asked, they say they don’t think Imperial College has made a better call.

Apr 1, 2020. STAT. The coronavirus is washing over the U.S. These factors will determine how bad it gets in each community By ANDREW JOSEPH

Apr 1, 2020. The Nation. Exclusive: The Military Knew Years Ago That a Coronavirus Was Coming.  The Pentagon warned the White House about a shortage of ventilators, face masks and hospital beds in 2017—but the Trump administration did nothing. By Ken Klippenstein

Apr 1, 2020. Sacramento Bee.  Coronavirus is now the third leading cause of death in the US, doctor says BY MIKE STUNSON

• COVID-19 is now killing 748 people per day in the U.S., Dr. Maria Danilychev said, citing data from Worldometers.info. Only heart disease (1,774 deaths per day) and cancer (1,641 deaths per day) are killing more people daily than coronavirus, CDC data shows.

Mar 31, 2020. Boston Globe. The White House gave a detailed explanation of how the coronavirus outbreak may play out (with slides) By Jaclyn Reiss 

Mar 31, 2020.  Zero Hedge. Chinese Biological Experiments To Infect Humans With Coronavirus Exposed In 2015 By Italian State Media

• March 30, 2020, Washington Times. Chinese researchers isolated deadly bat coronaviruses near Wuhan animal market By Bill Gertz

Mar 31, 2020.  Questioning Conventional Wisdom in the COVID-19 Crisis, with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

• Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a senior fellow at both the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute. His March 24, 2020, article in the Wall Street Journal questions the premise that “coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines.” In the article he suggests that “there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.” In this edition of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson we asked Dr. Bhattacharya to defend that statement and describe to us how he arrived at this conclusion. We get into the details of his research, which used data collected from hotspots around the world and his background as a doctor, a medical researcher, and an economist. It’s not popular right now to question conventional wisdom on sheltering in place, but Dr. Bhattacharya makes a strong case for challenging it, based in economics and science.
  • Mar 24, 2020.  WSJ.  Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say? Current estimates about the Covid-19 fatality rate may be too high by orders of magnitude. By Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya

Mar 31, 2020.  Daily Mail Online. Fauci expects America will suffer another coronavirus outbreak in the fall but will be better equipped to deal with it when it strikes

• To help restore a sense of calm and normalcy, we ought to look at this disease at its center of harm and engage something like a more vertical strategy as Thomas Friedman recommended, “sequestering those among us most likely to be killed or suffer long-term damage by exposure to coronavirus infection … while basically treating the rest of society the way we have always dealt with familiar threats like the flu.”  The horizontal strategy of “restricting the movement and commerce of the entire population, without consideration of varying risks for severe infection,” is too blunt, too paralyzing — and too haunting.

Mar 30, 2020. IndyStar. How Indiana hospitals are preparing to handle the surge of coronavirus patients by Shari Rudavsky

• About 40% of Indiana’s intensive care unit beds are open, said State Health Commissioner Kris Box said, but that availability is expected to change dramatically in the next few weeks.

Mar 30, 2020.  Ford, GE plan to produce 50,000 ventilators in 100 days

Mar 29, 2020. USA Today. Fauci predicts up to 200,000 U.S. deaths as Trump weighs adjusting coronavirus guidelines. Here is what you should know. John Fritze

• Spiegle International, Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer“Absolutely Mission Impossible”  Drägerwerk is a world leader in the production of ventilators. In an interview, company head Stefan Dräger, 57, discusses the challenges of keeping up with current demand as the corona crisis accelerates.

• James Dyson designed a new ventilator in 10 days. He’s making 15,000 for the pandemic fight By Nada Bashir, CNN Business

Mar 29, 2020. The Daily Wire – Ben Shapiro.  Coronavirus with VP Mike Pence and Dr. Deborah Birx | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 88

Mar 28, 2020. VisualCapitalist.com The Math Behind Social Distancing.

• That said, I continue to believe that shutting down the U.S. economy was insane (also here, here, and here). I maintain, in retrospect, this episode will furnish ample material for an addendum to Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
•  Unfortunately, there is no arguing with insanity. As one friend of mine likes to note, arguing with such madness is like arguing with a hurricane. It is completely ineffective, indeed counterproductive, because making arguments at such a time is likely to distract one from taking precautions and making preparations.

Mar 26, 2020.  Mises Institute.    Why Taiwan Hasn’t Shut Down Its Economy by Javier Caramés Sanchez

• As the Austrian school of economics demonstrates in the calculation theory of socialism, no central planning body has the capacity to organize society based on coercive mandates …

• To conclude, with transparency and diligence the Taiwanese government has avoided many problems. The key is that the Taiwanese government and the Taiwanese people understand that the individual’s own responsibility and actions are essential to suppressing the coronavirus pandemic, not a mandatory massive shutdown. This is what the world needs to learn.

Mar 26, 2020. US News and World Report.   America Is Approaching a Deadly Tipping Point in the Coronavirus Pandemic, U.S. News Analysis Shows.  An examination of daily coronavirus deaths by country shows the U.S. is on a dangerous path that’s poised to worsen. By Steve Sternberg and Gaby Galvin  .

• Includes a control chart.  Viewing the data in its entirety and over time offers a clearer window into the trajectory of the outbreak, one that isn’t clouded by noise and can detect meaningful differences in patterns that can inform official public guidance and decision-making.

  “With all the talk of ‘flattening the curve,’ we think the approach we used and our analysis sheds light on early signals of when the increase in new deaths peaks and the curve begins to flatten,” Perla and Provost say.

Mar 26, 2020. Breitbart.  Fed Reserve Chair Powell Downplays Inflation Threat — ‘We Don’t Really See That’.  During a Thursday interview on NBC’s “Today,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell discussed the risks taken to help the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Mar 26, 2020.  RealClear Politics. Dr. Birx: Coronavirus Data Doesn’t Match The Doomsday Media Predictions Posted By Ian Schwartz

• Breitbart. Dr. Deborah Birx Steers Away from Doomsday Coronavirus Predictions
  • • “The predictions of the models don’t match the reality on the ground on either China, South Korea, or Italy,” she said. … Birx also addressed reports that raised the alarm of New York City hospitals running out of ICU beds, ventilators, and creating “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) policies for patients. … She revealed that she spoke with health officials in New York, that there were still ICU beds and 1000-2000 ventilators available, and that there were no DNR policies enacted. … “We don’t have evidence of that right now,” she said.

• Rebuttal by Neil Gerguson on Twitter
• British scientist Neil Ferguson ignited the world’s drastic response to the novel Wuhan coronavirus when he published the bombshell report predicting 2.2 million Americans and more than half a million Brits would be killed. After both the U.S. and U.K. governments effectively shut down their citizens and economies, Ferguson is walking back his doomsday scenarios.
• Ferguson’s report from Imperial College, which White House and other officials took seriously, said that if the U.S. and U.K. did not shut down for 18 months, and isolation measures were not taken, “we would expect a peak in mortality (daily deaths) to occur after approximately 3 months.” His “models” showed overflowing hospitals and ICU beds.

Mar 26, 2020. Atlantic. The Four Possible Timelines for Life Returning to Normal by Joe Pinsker

• TIMELINE ONE: ONE TO TWO MONTHS I should note that the experts I spoke with think this timeline is highly unlikely
• TIMELINE TWO: THREE TO FOUR MONTHS – In this timeline, Hanage speculated, “we learn some things about the virus that make us much more confident about being able to resume various activities.
• TIMELINE THREE: FOUR TO 12 MONTHS. One big unresolved question about COVID-19 is whether, like the flu, its spread will slow substantially during the summer.
• TIMELINE FOUR: 12 TO 18 MONTHS (OR LONGER). researchers around the world will have been scrambling to develop a vaccine. Spring 2021 is about the earliest anyone expects one to be available.

Mar 26, 2020.  Coronavirus Threat Downgraded by UK Government By Liberty Sentinel Staff 12 hours ago

Mar 26, 2020. USAToday. ICU doctor: Coronavirus frightens me. It’s severe, unpredictable and it has no cure. This disease is terrifying. I’m scared for my patients, my colleagues, my family, and my own health. Please don’t stop trying to ‘flatten the curve.’ By  Philip A. Verhoef

Mar 26, 2020.  Hospital Capacity Crosses Tipping Point in U.S. Coronavirus Hot Spots Epicenters resort to patient transfers and a makeshift morgue to cope as coronavirus infections mount

Mar 26, 2020. AFP/Yahoo News.  Coronavirus could become seasonal: top US scientist Anthony Fauci, who leads research into infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told a briefing the virus was beginning to take root in the southern hemisphere, where winter is on its way.

• We have to open up the economy by mid-April or the consequences will be a lost generation. It will be harder to do so when the news is counting deaths in the thousands, and possibly tens of thousands. There are steps we can and must take to re-open our economy in a careful and deliberate manner.
• Looking at data from Italy, the average age of patients who have succumbed to the virus is 78.5, not the age of the American workforce. A full 99 percent of those who have perished in Italy have a major pre-existing condition. We know exactly who the most vulnerable are, and we need to protect them.  
• First, we must quarantine and support the old and at risk. 
• Second, we ensure we have the capability to institute mass testing. This involves not only test kits but the temperature guns that are so ubiquitous to East Asia.  
• Third, if you are sick, stay home. If you are not sick, you can return to the labor force. Businesses should support flexibility for employees to work from home and care for sick family members.
• We will not be perfect in our steps to restart our economy. In fact, doing so will evoke the painful memories of a wartime economy. A vaccine for COVID-19 and a policy solution to our long-term growth and debt issues will come in time. But first, we must take the right steps to restart an American engine of prosperity that will make fighting present and future viruses exponentially more manageable.  

• In Germany, the government assumes that six or seven out of every 10 citizens could get it.
• The World Health Organization has estimated the case fatality rate to be 3.4 percent, meaning that about one in every 33 patients will die.
• Let us further assume that the true fatality rate turns out to be much lower than the current figures suggest—say, about one in 100—and that our hospitals somehow figure out a way to manage the flood of patients that would stream through their doors in need of lifesaving treatment. 
  • In that implausibly sanguine scenario, more than 1 million Americans would succumb to COVID-19 in the next few months. That is about as many people as the country lost in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II—combined.
• First, we need to ramp up testing dramatically.
• Second, we need to expand hospital capacity.
• Third, we need to research treatment options.

Mar 25, 2020. Quality Digest. The One Huge Mistake Quality Professionals Make in Preparing for Covid-19. Businesses need to think pessimistically in order to survive

• The current guidance assumes a highly optimistic scenario, where we get very lucky. That’s not good advice, at all. We need to prepare for a moderately pessimistic scenario if we want to protect quality in our organizations.

Mar 24, 2020.  An Easter rebirth for our economy? Hallelujah: Goodwin By Michael Goodwin

 Mar 24, 2020. Breitbart.  Exclusive–The Endgame: HHS Secretary Alex Azar Lays Out How Trump Will Defeat Coronavirus ‘Invisible Enemy,’ Reopen America

Mar 24, 2020. AFP/Yahoo News.  Pentagon sees coronavirus crisis lasting several months

• Washington (AFP) – The Pentagon is assuming the coronavirus epidemic in the United States will last at least several months, and that some countries are at risk of “political chaos,” its top officials said Tuesday.

Mar 24, 2020. InsideHook, Ford Is Already Working With 3M and GE to Build Medical Equipment. Ventilators, respirators and personal protective equipment are on the way

The Regulations—and Regulators—That Delayed Coronavirus Testing There have been three major regulatory barriers so far. By Alec Stapp   Mar 24, 2020, Audio of the key points – Tony Katz.

• The first coronavirus case in the U.S. and South Korea was detected on January 21. Since then, South Korea has effectively contained the coronavirus without shutting down its economy or quarantining tens of millions of people. Instead, the Korean government has pursued a “trace, test, and treat” strategy that identifies and isolates those infected with the coronavirus while allowing healthy people to go about their normal lives. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have also managed to contain the virus via a combination of travel restrictions, social distancing, and heightened hygiene.

Mar 24, 2020. Financial Times – UK.  Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population — Oxford study.  New epidemiological model suggests the vast majority of people suffer little or no illness

• If the results are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment, said Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology, who led the study. The vast majority develop very mild symptoms or none at all. “We need immediately to begin large-scale serological surveys — antibody testing — to assess what stage of the epidemic we are in now,” she said.
• The research presents a very different view of the epidemic to the modelling at Imperial College London, which has strongly influenced government policy. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” said Prof Gupta. 

Mar 24, 2020. RealClearPolitics.  Must We Kill the Economy to Kill the Virus? by Patrick Buchanan.

• Clearly, America was unprepared for this pandemic. …  And there will be time enough to assess responsibility for the lack of surgical masks, medical gowns, rubber gloves, respirators, ventilators and hospital beds.  The immediate imperative is to produce those beds and that equipment and get it delivered to doctors, nurses and hospital staff, the front-line troops in the battle to control the virus.

• While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, Levitt says the data simply don’t support such a dire scenario — especially in areas where reasonable social distancing measures are in place. … “What we need is to control the panic,” he said. In the grand scheme, “we’re going to be fine.”

Mar 22, 2020. USA Today. ‘Who lives and who dies’: In worst-case coronavirus scenario, ethics guide choices on who gets care by Ken Alltucker

Mar 22, 2020. WSJ. Jails Release Prisoners, Fearing Coronavirus Outbreak.  Experts say virus could spread quickly in crowded correctional facilities, which are also banning visitors and restricting inmates’ movements

• Jails in California, New York, Ohio, Texas and at least a dozen other states are sending low-level offenders and elderly or sickly inmates home early due to coronavirus fears. At other jails and prisons around the country, officials are banning visitors, restricting inmates’ movement and screening staff.

Mar 22, 2020. Jerusalem Post.  Israeli doctor in Italy: We no longer help those over 60

May 21, 2020. American Greatness.  COVID-19, the Elephant, and the House Cat The really scary thing about this latest health scare is not the disease but the unexpected depths of passivity it revealed. By Roger Kimball • March 21, 2020

Mar 21, 2020. DailyWire. FDA Greenlights Accelerated COVID-19 Test: ‘Results Within Hours Rather Than Days’ By  Frank Camp

Mar 21, 2020. AP. NY airports, hospitals under pressure as virus cases mount By MICHAEL HILL and MICHAEL R. SISAK

Mar 20, 2020. Medium Did You Have Coronavirus Without Knowing It?  Health experts say the virus has likely been in some U.S. communities for weeks and some people have surely had it without realizing By Markham Heid

• “In fact, symptoms for most people are quite mild,” says Dr. Sandro Galea, MD, a physician and dean of Boston University School of Public Health. He says that up to 80% of people who contract the virus have only weak symptoms — such as a low-grade fever or cough — and that they may have mistakenly attributed these to the common cold or some other minor ailment. “It’s definitely possible to have it and not realize it,” he says.
• Riley says that the only way to look for a past infection is with an antibody test, which may not be able to tell the difference between Covid-19 and other common varieties of the coronavirus. And, as of right now, this test doesn’t exist for the Covid-19. 
• Test or no test, if you think you may have had Covid-19, you may also be wondering if you can get it again. “Good question,” says Boston U’s Galea. “That remains unresolved, but there likely is some immunity once one has had Covid-19. Whether that immunity is complete or not is less clear.” That means if you get it again, you’re probably more likely to have a mild or asymptomatic case.

Mar 20, 2020. Huffington Post.  I’m A Doctor. The U.S. Response To Coronavirus Has Been Nothing Short Of Criminal.  “With every crucial delay, with every blunder and misstep, the toll is going to be measured in lives lost.” by  Dipti S. Barot

Mar 20, 2020. Breitbart. Coronavirus Report that Prompted Stronger U.S. Action: 1M Deaths Even with Extreme Prevention Steps

• The novel coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. will last at least 18 months and “could include multiple waves of illness,” prompting “significant shortages” for consumers and overwhelming the healthcare system, a federal government contingency plan leaked to the media this week warned.

• President Donald Trump’s anti-coronavirus plan, dated March 13 and delivered to policymakers, echoed the findings of a March 16 report by the U.K.’s Imperial College, which also found that the outbreak could “potentially” last “18 month or more” in the U.S. and strain the healthcare system “many times over.”

Mar 19, 2020.  HAARETZ., Israel News. Trump Is Right About the Coronavirus. The WHO Is Wrong,’ Says Israeli Expert.  Dr. Dan Yamin has developed models for predicting the spread of infectious diseases, and helped curb the Ebola epidemic. He says the coronavirus could take some 13,000 lives in Israel – but there’s cause for optimism By  Oded Carmeli

Mar 18. 2020.  DailyWire.com Stanford Professor: Data Indicates We’re Severely Overreacting To Coronavirus By  James Barrett

Mar 16, 2020. NYT / Upshot.  Could Coronavirus Cause as Many Deaths as Cancer in the U.S.? Putting Estimates in Context  By Josh Katz, Margot Sanger-Katz and Kevin Quealy 

• Although it’s impossible to say how many Americans will die because of the new coronavirus, under a reasonable set of assumptions the number of fatalities could be high — potentially in the hundreds of thousands or more.
• We’ve started with an estimate from a University of Nebraska public health researcher, Dr. James Lawler, that was recently presented to hospital executives: 480,000 American deaths over the course of the illness known as Covid-19.
• Leading causes of death in U.S.
  • Heart disease 655,381;  Cancer 599,274;  Coronavirus (estimate) 480,00

• • Extensive pandemic preparation plans exist on paper, but Indianapolis has not had to put them to the test — yet.
  • “The key thing is that there is ongoing modeling of this sort of thing and simulation so these are scenarios that have been contemplated,” Doehring said. “They just haven’t been reality.”

Example – Community Model and Simulation – Bozeman Montana

Mar 13, 2020.  nymag.com CDC’s Worst-Case Coronavirus Model: 214 Million Infected, 1.7 Million Dead

• • A recent CDC projection estimated that the U.S. coronavirus epidemic could infect between 160 million and 214 million people over a period of more than a year — and kill anywhere from 200,000 to 1.7 million people in the country. A top CDC disease modeler presented the estimates to CDC officials and epidemic experts during a conference call last month, the New York Times revealed on Friday. The scenario did not factor in the efforts now underway to address the epidemic, but rather what could happen if no action was taken to slow the spread of the disease.

Mar 12, 2020. AIER. South Korea Preserved the Open Society and Now Infection Rates are Falling

Mar 12, 2020. Opinion _ Is the Coronavirus Outbreak a Pandemic Yet_ – The New York Times By Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker.  Mr. Osterholm is an infectious disease expert. Mark Olshaker is a writer and documentary filmmaker. They co-wrote the book Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs.

Mar 11, 2020.  Michigan Health. Flattening the Curve for COVID-19: What Does It Mean and How Can You Help?  By Kara Gavin

History shows that taking strong steps now to slow the spread of coronavirus will help communities and individuals.

March 10, 2020.  Could Coronavirus Kill a Million Americans? By by Tom Frieden

Mar 10, 2020.  YouTube. How Serious is the Coronavirus? Infectious Disease Expert Michael Osterholm Explains | Joe Rogan

Mar 10, 2020. VOX. How canceled events and self-quarantines save lives, in one chart This is how we all help slow the spread of coronavirus. By Eliza Barclay and Dylan Scott   

Mar 5, 2020. Indianapolis Star. Coronavirus in Indiana: How Hoosiers should prepare, what to expect, what’s affected

IndyStar Live Updates – Coronavirus live updates

COVID-19: Things to keep in mind

• Most Americans have a low risk of being exposed, health experts say.
• Most who get sick will have a mild or moderate case.
• High-risk groups include the elderly or people with underlying conditions such as hypertension or diabetes.
• The Indiana State Department of Health hotline is 317-233-7125 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and 317-233-1325 afterward.
• Symptoms are fever, cough and shortness of breath, according to the CDC. Call your health provider before going to a clinic so health workers can prepare.

• Back to Jerusalem.  Why Dr. Drew is WRONG about the Coronavirus

• Protect health workers first: Supplies of masks and other protective gear are already running low in places, so health providers should get priority on the theory that if doctors and nurses get sick, it’ll put all patients — including those suffering from ailments other than Covid-19 — at risk.
• Don’t cut off trade: Many ingredients for important medicines come from China, and it doesn’t help anybody if, in seeking to prevent coronavirus infections, you run out of drugs to treat cardiac arrest.
• Don’t hoard medicines: It creates shortages
• Cross-train your employees so that an illness of a key worker doesn’t sideline your business.
• Oh, and wash your hands, but you should be doing that anyway