Bit of a slow night, a few news items and research summaries.
Most interesting research piece is from a Cell study on cancer patients. (Cell Paper) The most useful finding is that viral load was highly correlated with in-hospital mortality in both cancer and non-cancer patients. In the general population, those with a high viral load had a 39% mortality rate versus 15% for those with a low viral load. The difference was even starker for cancer patients, 45% versus 12%. And how did they estimate viral load? The used cycle threshold values from two separate PCR assays. High was a cycle number less than 25. Medium was between 25 and 30. Low was above 30. Patients with cancer were more likely than non-cancer ones to have a high viral load on admission, which makes sense given that they likely have weaker immune systems. The authors stress the need to give treating physicians this information, which is rarely done now.
Dr. Scott Atlas, from Stanford University, now on the federal coronavirus task force, has been pilloried for refusing to join the panic brigade. YouTube has even tried to take down some of his videos. Here is a link to one so you can see his far-out views. (Atlas Video)
Nic Lewis has given his perspective on the research regarding children being in school. (Lewis Paper) He summarizes recent work from Europe indicating how low the risk is not just to children but of them transmitting to others.
This article from Virginia, on how that state reports deaths, reminded me that it is unclear what Minnesota does in this regard. (Va. Article) Apparently a number of states do a process where they have someone go through death certificates that do not have CV-19 on them and attempt to match the dead person to a CV-19 positive test. Obviously this is another attempt to boost CV-19 death numbers to the highest possible and is completely unprecedented. If the certifier didn’t think CV-19 was involved why should a state bureaucrat get to say it is? The more things you learn, the more insane our treatment of a pretty mild epidemic seems. In any event, I am trying to find out if Minnesota does something similar. It would account for the constant stream of reported deaths that go back weeks or even months.
Bill Gates is up to his billionaire antics again, Mr. Lockdown forever, doesn’t matter to me in my palace with servants. He is complaining about the US’ virus response. Unfortunately Bill is another one who hasn’t been right about anything in this epidemic. But he gets lots of money from drug companies, who in turn make lots of money off of vaccines, so he wants to be sure we do lots of testing, find lots of marginal cases, and get everyone in a frenzy til a vaccine is available so his drug company pals can pick up a few billion dollars. And now Bill has the unbelievable gall to whine about how the shutdown of the global economy is reversing all the wonderful progress his guilt-alleviating foundation made in fighting hunger and getting people vaccinated. Take a look in the mirror.
A study looks at the CV-19 experience among homeless shelters. (Annals Article) You may recall a number of studies early on looking at prevalence in these facilities and finding very high infection rates, but almost all asymptomatic or mild. This study found only 29 cases in over 1400 tests in 5 homeless shelters in the Seattle area.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at 
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Why are the various govts around the world trying to artificially inflate case and death numbers. ? What’s in it for them…. unless its justification for massive removal of civil liberties and economic destruction and perversion. .? Time to remove the super rich world puppeteers…eg. bill and george and co….
The homeless here in San Francisco (& you know we have quite a few) also haven’t been adversely affected by CV-19. Maybe living in densely packed outdoor areas, without masks, isn’t that bad for them, despite the many life challenges they face. As for Bill Gates, all I can say is International Criminal Court.
The homeless study points out something I’ve been trying to tell people for months – Social Distancing (for more than a two-month outbreak period) is a bad idea, too.
The reason old people are more susceptible isn’t because they are old, it’s because their immune systems are weaker because they don’t get exposed to other humans as much as they used to. My example is my dad. He stopped smoking when he was 50. He worked in a large research lab for about 40 years. When he retired at 61, he and my mom (housewife) moved to a rural area. Then my dad started getting severe colds about three times a year.
That understandable considering the sudden changes in his life. Instead of going to a large lab and cafeteria 5 days a week, out to eat 3 days a week, visiting friends and family weekly, and being in a suburban community, he was home most hours of the day, out to eat twice a week, visiting friends and family every other month, and being in a rural community etc. His immune system had to have been affected by the lifestyle changes. My mom on the other hand had very little of a lifestyle change. She shopped twice a week like always, she bowled once a week like always, went to church once a week like always, played cards in the old neighborhood once a month like always (she would stay overnight at her daughter’s house) – much less of a change to her immune system exposure. She slept in the same bed as my dad but never got colds at any different rate than before.
I’m not saying age is a minimal factor, I’m saying that researchers ignore the drastic lifestyle changes older people often undergo without thinking that it may affect their immune system.
My dad, now 83 and in overall good health, announced at a family gathering a couple of years ago that he was going leave his city apartment to put himself into a partial care facility because he had been putting money into a type of insurance that would cover those costs. Luckily my son was home from college, where he was studying economics, and said “Grandpa, that’s a sunk cost”. A few months later, we sealed the stay-put deal by getting him a cat, and he’s still the president of his apartment complex board, goes shopping a couple a days a week, has dinner w/his girlfriend regularly, plays golf w/the old guys, and gets visits from us all the time. He’s been quite healthy these last 6 months, despite living 100 yards from a full-time nursing home that some of his neighbors are deathly afraid of. That insurance may go unclaimed.
1. DDT was invented in 19?? and found to be very effective in killing mosquitos.
2. Rachel Carson published “Silent Spring” setting of a wave of hysteria about bird deaths (actually thin shell bird eggs), cancers, and other maladys.
3. Like dominoes toppling, governments and health organizations around the world banned DDT.
4. Years later, Carson’s claims were reexamined and DDT was found to be safe. Many also tallied the lies in Carson’s book.
5. In 2006, even the World Health Organization recanted and said DDT was safe for its intended use.
6. About that time, Bill Gates took up a crusade to end the thousands of Malaria deaths in Africa. His cure: mosquito nets distributed by the Gates Foundation.
7. 2009 finds Scientific American still advocating dangers of DDT.
Exercise for the reader: Follow the money. Find the intersections between contributors, donors, and board members of the Gates Foundation and Scientific American.
References:
https://spectator.org/48925_ddt-fraud-and-tragedy/
https://www.straightdope.com/21343558/was-rachel-carson-a-fraud-and-is-ddt-actually-safe-for-humans
https://www.acsh.org/news/2016/02/11/how-poisonous-is-ddt
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ddt-use-to-combat-malaria/
As far as I’m concerned Bill Gates is Public Enemy #1. I’ll stop here lest I say something I will regret. I believe this is a family blog.
‘Obviously this is another attempt to boost CV-19 death numbers to the highest possible and is completely unprecedented.’
Does it work? Do we have any idea how many additional CV-19 cases this makes? My guess is that so long as the process is done honestly (and there is not guarantee that it is), they probably can’t find too many.