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A Few Brief Updates on Minnesota and Elsewhere

By October 21, 2020Commentary

Traveling again today, so catching up.  There is definitely something happening with the Danish mask study.  Here is a link (I think) to a tweet from Alex Berenson about a headline in a Danish newspaper and a story saying that the study is being censored by journals.  (tweet)   It is pretty obvious at this point that this well-designed, randomized trial does not support the idea that masks stop transmission.  Those results will come out sooner or later.  Here is another tweet from someone in Denmark, identifying the journals, which should be ashamed of themselves.  (tweet)  If their peer review indicated some issues, they should publish the trial and publish the issues peer reviewers identified.

The coronavirus briefing was another somber affair, with 35 new deaths reported today.  Just like the 2300 case day, those deaths did not occur yesterday; in fact you can be certain that a bunch of them occurred weeks ago.  Just another example of the misleading data put out by the state.  They know the actual date of death, they give it to the CDC, who does report it.  I did the updated comparison just a week ago or so and you see that deaths per week have actually plateaued and stayed plateaued.  It is part of the whipping up fear tactics of the state to intentionally not clarify this.  Based on their reporting method, we won’t know how many deaths actually occurred this week for months.

A reporter did ask about dates of death, finally, and here Chris just lied, really, I don’t know how she could give the answer she did.  Since a couple of months after the epidemic began here, the state has been reporting deaths on a daily basis that actually occurred weeks and months ago.  They continue to do that, as I stated above.  She has the dates of death.  States like Oregon and Florida give the actual date of death.  She said the deaths were all recent, that is definitely not true.  I am going to start pulling the CDC data every week and show what a lie that is.  I would be very surprised if at least some of the deaths reported today were not from long ago, because that shows up every week in the CDC reporting.

Not only did we get the full guilting and shaming trip from the state today, they sent out a special email re-emphasizing it.  I will say again, what the case rise actually shows is the futility of most measures to slow transmission, short of locking people in their houses, which is what China did, and welded the doors shut.  Out of the deaths today, the vast majority were in LTC again.  One reporter pointed this out and asked if the battle plan was actually working.  The battle plan is worthless, the mask mandate is worthless, the state’s excessive testing and contact tracing effort is worthless.

If the state thinks protecting people in LTC is important and that staff is bringing the virus in, are they doing daily testing of staff, and if not, why not?  If they are and cases are still appearing, it just shows again the futility of trying to stop spread.  Stop being so nebulous, if you believe people are bringing the virus into LTC, show us the data that proves that, with your supposed so-great contact tracing efforts.  And the explanation they give for seeing cases in staff now instead of residents, is totally bogus.  They weren’t testing staff in the spring, so they can’t say that there weren’t cases among staff at that point.  Somehow it spontaneously arose in the LTC facilities in the spring but now staff is bringing it in?  As I have noted before, I am inclined to be sympathetic to the difficulty here, but when you proclaim your wonderful battle plan and it fails, and you lie about mask research and won’t deal with testing that leads to false and low positives, the sympathy disappears.  The reality is that it probably takes a very low dose of virus to infect these frail elderly persons, and for all we know the virus could literally float in on the air.  I am very serious about that.  So stop blaming people in the community and admit the impossibility of the situation and do the best you can to limit spread in LTC facilities.

Someone also asked about “Covid fatigue”.  The state said it was real.   As ye sow, so shall ye reap.  If you had been more honest and calming about the real risks, maybe people wouldn’t be “fatigued” of being terrorized now.   And I am very fatigued of the constant failure to provide truly full, accurate and transparent information, like the death and case reporting.

 

Join the discussion 7 Comments

  • Matt R says:

    I seriously doubt China’s tactic of house arrests actually worked. Simply put their data should be entirely disregarded; it cannot be trusted, and might just as likely be intentionally distorted to create havoc in the west.

  • Ryan Dowhower says:

    Thanks again for your commentary. You mentioned the state reports actual dates of death to the CDC. Does the CDC provide that information by state somewhere on their website? If so, would you be able to provide a link? The credulity of the local media is truly depressing.

  • Dan Smith says:

    Like Diogenes the cynic, you carry a lantern searching for an honest public health official. Keep on fighting!

  • Harley says:

    For most people, the consequences of lying are enough to prevent it from being a regular habit. The risk of embarrassment, or shame, or loss of your boss’s confidence or trust, or damage to a relationship or loss of a job, or, in some cases, depending on the position of who is lying, legal sanctions, litigation, or fines.

    In other words, don’t do it!

    Apparently this is not a belief practiced by governmental authorities in important positions. Like health commissioners, infectious disease officials, or the like. We have all come to get used to lying and BS, maybe even expecting it regularly from politicians. But I always thought government officials subscribed to a higher standard.

    I was wrong.

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