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Some Coronavirus Fun, Courtesy of Twitter

By March 5, 2021Commentary

Social media is a killer, it has a memory that lasts forever.  Here are a couple of twitter items.  One is from comedic actor Rob Schneider, of all people (Hot Chick has to be one of the funniest movies ever), retweeting the surgeon general’s tweet from last spring.   I completely agree with this and it is consistent with the science.

The second is OmnipotentMoralBusybody’s take on a podcast from Dr. Osterholm.  I am tempted to remove him from the Axis of Evil and instead put him in the bumbling, over the hill, professor category.  This is also an incredibly accurate assessment of what he has said.  Of course, we are now more than halfway through his prediction that the next 14 weeks would be the worst yet.  Hospitalizations are down a mere 60% in that time.  Hospitals probably aren’t happy about this turn of events, but patients are.

Join the discussion 4 Comments

  • Rob says:

    “I am tempted to remove him from the Axis of Evil and instead put him in the bumbling, over the hill, professor category. ”

    A distinction without a difference. Both are purveyors of doublethink.

  • SteveD says:

    I wonder how the experts explain the lack of a Super bowl-related spike?

  • Ann in L.A. says:

    So, it boils down to: “I have no clue! Listen to me!!!”

  • TedL says:

    “Mother Nature is doing stuff we don’t understand.”

    Let’s try to make sense of the coronavirus pandemic using two variables – innate immunity of Minnesota’s population, and pre-existing acquired immunity. Go here in the comments to find my discussion of the role of innate immunity in warding off the coronavirus https://healthy-skeptic.com/2021/01/15/a-head-full-of-coronavirus-research-part-91/ In summary, functional innate immunity substantially reduces the incidence and severity of the coronavirus and is directly dependent on Vitamin D.

    Looking at the curve of coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths, https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/covidweekly09.pdf, pages 17, 18 and 20, we see the initial outbreak – a rise from the first case into May – after which both curves decline and levels stay low until the beginning of October. The outbreak began in late winter, when everybody’s innate immunity was poor due to lack of sun exposure. People get outside into the sunshine in April but because it takes a while for Vitamin D levels to build up, the anti-coronavirus effect is not manifest in the general population until the end of May. At the end of the summer, as the days shorten and the weather cools, Minnesotans wear more clothes and spend more time indoors, reducing sun exposure and Vitamin D production. With the consequent decline in innate immunity, coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths ramp up again heading into the winter.

    But hospitalizations and deaths stopped rising and began a steady decline at the end of November. This trend is contrary to the innate immunity/Vitamin D theory of coronavirus, which suggests that incidence should remain high throughout the winter. What happened? We can’t attribute it to vaccination because the decline started in the last week of November and first jab was December 15. I submit that it is because most Minnesotans are already immune.

    Early in the pandemic there were two shipboard outbreaks, one on the Diamond Princess cruise ship (January), and one on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (March). This was before anybody took any precautions, so one could argue that shipboard life was an ideal place for the rapid spread of the virus. On both ships, everybody was tested, and on both ships, about 82 percent of the people tested negative. The simplest explanation is that they were already immune, perhaps due to cross-immunity from other coronaviruses. That two quite different shipboard populations show the same level of infection is more than coincidence, it tells us something about the general population they come from. It points to a similar level of immunity in the general US population. Here are data for both ships. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/11/20-1165_article and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33001200/

    Here in Minnesota, we have tested 3,499,299 people (many, more than once) and found 487,374 positive cases. https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/situation.html 4 March 2021. That’s 14 percent, approaching the 18 percent incidence of shipboard infections.

    Covid19 is running out of susceptible people to infect, here and across the country. The vaccine is too late. We are mostly vaccinating people who are already immune.

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