First, the problems that all the professional sports leagues are having are directly representative of the dilemma we have created in regard to CV-19 and how if we don’t change the testing and quarantine paradigm, we will never get out of this. Despite extremely high vaccination rates across all these sports, teams are having high numbers of players and staff test positive and be quarantined and are then testing other players and staff and quarantining them and so on. Almost all these “cases” are asymptomatic. I simply don’t have a big enough audience, because I explain repeatedly, and this is just common sense, that if you keep using PCR tests the way we have been, we are going to keep finding non-case “cases”. And that is what is happening in professional sports. The only solution is to stop any testing of asymptomatic persons. Period. And to take positive tests of symptomatic persons and retest them immediately, regularly culture a random sample of positives, and define an infectiousness threshold that only isolates persons who are actually likely to be infectious. And quarantining asymptomatic persons is similarly dumb policy, especially if the person is vaccinated. We have to stop this, and maybe because professional sports is big business, they can draw some attention to how stupid these policies are, as we watch fifth string quarterbacks play in meaningful games.
The second is that occasionally the woke, Democratic party press slips up and tells the truth. The Atlantic has become schizophrenic or bipolar. Most of the time it is a bastion of far, far, far left wokist bullshit. But on CV-19, every now and then it publishes an article that makes perfect sense. And then gets crucified by its audience, which is truly batshit nuts. You may recall the Arizona masks in school study published by CDC that was so bad I didn’t even waste much time on it. Well here is an Atlantic piece just ripping this to shreds, which will be very useful with school boards, many of whose members are the woke religionists who read the Atlantic. (Atlantic Article)
The author’s points are all accurate, and it is a dreadful study, but his description of the CDC process and how it has been corrupted or infested with corruptness are more important. And the really, really important thing is that maybe we are seeing the far left Democrat Party media turn, we have seen editorials in several of the house organs like the NY Times and the Washington Post that challenge the orthodoxy. Now I think this is politically motivated to help the Dems get out of the quicksand they have put themselves in. But it doesn’t matter as long as we get a policy change. And no one should have any doubts that the CDC is anything more than an arm of the White House and the teachers’ unions right now, and no one has any reason to trust anything coming out of the CDC.
Whoever is behind the mask messaging needs an award of some kind. The quotes from this article straight up shocked me.
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/anoka-hennepin-schools-to-remove-mask-mandate/89-8b3187ff-6657-4ab8-a76c-48bb5d0f746a
“It says wear a mask even if you’re vaccinated,” the Blaine resident said.
A daughter in sixth grade and a son in second, Schwen says her kids are vaccinated and don’t mind wearing masks. Their district, Anoka-Hennepin Schools, currently requires masks for grades K-6.
“I was like, ‘Surely our school district will now actually make everyone wear masks after seeing this,'” Schwen said. “Then we got the message saying no grades now. I was like, what? I was shocked.”
“We told my daughter last night … and she started to cry,” Schwen said. “She said, ‘Well because I want to keep wearing the mask, because I know it’s the right thing to do, I know that I’m going to get made fun of and I’m going to be one of the few kids wearing them now and I think I’m going to lose friends.'”
This is a classic results of no plan. “Cases” were never data-driven and false positives create upheaval, then are dismissed. “Cases” could have been an indicator, it should never have been a driver. They made such a deal of “cases” that they do not know how to exit. It’s because there never was criteria establshed. No plan, no exit.
The only way this stops is we vote them out of office because they will never change course since they’d have to admit the were wrong. Let’s go Brandon is now blaming inflation on companies getting greedy! I saw a comment about this on a Strib article with lots of likes which shows how many idiot voters we have in this state.
It’s been hard for me to take pro sports seriously since this started, mostly because of masks and the lack of fans in 2020. But the positive test quarantines continuing gives you another reason to not pay attention.
Let’s just back up a minute here. The CDC wants kids as young as two wearing masks? Are all in the CDC single or childless couples? A mask will stay on a young kid for about, say, 30 seconds, if it stays on at all. Even if a young kid wears a mask, they won’t wear it in place for longer than a minute or two.
I’m in Florida where masks are a rarity, except as required by business owners for their employees. As for children, there have been 503 thousand cases reported for kids under 16, with 31 (thirty-one!!!) deaths. I don’t want to see any deaths among kids, but that is a small number.
the dems and the global elite created/unleashed this monster in 2020 to beat Trump thinking they could gradually ease up this year … but this monster has a life of its own now and will not go back into the closet so easily … the monster is made up of the medical authoritarians and the surprising number of previously closeted precautionary principal Karens who were given free reign last year and LOVE the power … the power hungry politicos thought they were riding this beast in 2020 … turns out the beast is now riding them …
as soon as the medical establishment allowed the use of the word “cases” to define a positive PCR test the fight was almost over … had they stuck to the previous definition of cases (symptomatic people with a positive test or diagnosis) we would not be in this pickle … but when they allowed Death with Covid to replace Death from Covid it was really over … the combination of those 2 changes doomed us to this nonsense … but then again without those changes Trump would have been re-elected and they couldn’t allow that …
Kevin, your statement: “And quarantining asymptomatic persons is similarly dumb policy, especially if the person is vaccinated.”
Of late I wondered about whether there is a difference between asymptomatic person who was not vaccinated and tested positive and a vaccinated asymptomatic person who tested positive.
Do you believe there is a difference between the two?
Totally agree what you say about the constant testing being dumb.
I doubt there is much difference, maybe a vaxed person has an average lower viral load, but that isn’t clear. I just think it is absurd this emphasis on asymptomatic cases.
Thank you Kevin. This is a marathon and most of us only trained for a 5k. Keep up the battle. We support you. You offer us a strong sane voice.
This…episode has been good for the country.
It has shown us that the Swamp is real.
It has given us all a good idea of what life is like without free enterprise.
And it has exhausted our seemingly inexhaustible capacity to worry about every god-damned thing on earth.
I hope…
FJB
So, if a person tests positive, the MN DOH reaches out with numerous texts asking the person to divulge all kinds of info. Is the positive test person at risk of jail for failure to comply with MN DOH? Asking for a friend….
no, they can’t force you to respond
My quick look at the news tonight says that much of Europe is locking itself down. Sheesh.
the world has gone insane, we have doing this for almost two years and it is like people never learn
The problem since Day 1 has been asymptomatic “cases” and testing of healthy people and treating those positive results as if there is a wildfire plague on our hands. They over counted the prevalence of disease and similarly over counted deaths by using similar tactics.
Sports leagues assented (or freely volunteered) to regular testing of everyone as a condition of getting back onto the field. It is very possible that the sports entertainment industry will be responsible for finally breaking down the asymptomatic testing regime nationwide (and worldwide). It costs money to postpone and cancel these games, it damages the product when playoff races and standings and bowl games are influenced by this stuff with no clear benefit and no players are actually sick or dying or whatever, and the leagues (including college football here) and their sponsors are rich and powerful enough – and influential enough – to eventually effectuate a common sense change across the country.
As the saying goes, “Something that can’t go on forever won’t” and the news as of last night is that the NFL looks to have finally had enough of the charade.
As Dark Lord, said above, 95% of the Covid Panic (panic, not the actual disease, which is real) was a contrived election year scheme to get rid of Trump and it ended up getting out of control. Mass asymptomatic testing and made up asymptomatic spread (i.e. we should wear masks and show fear because we might not know if we are sick) were used to make this look a lot worse than it was so that people would be scared and election laws could be loosened. Biden should be hung out to dry for his “You can’t be president and let _______ thousand people die” but it will just be swept under the rug.
FWIW, the whole universal “vaccine” nonsense goes along with this. For most at-risk people, vaccines make a lot of sense, but for the rest of the population they are unnecessary, either because of less inherent risk or previous infection, especially considering the risk of side effects. Universal vaccination is required to allow the panic pushers to walk it all back and save face. They can’t admit that not everyone needs a shot because that would ultimately undermine the premises for their contrived emergency.
Question for you:
In percentage terms, what is the genetic difference between covid variants compared to one another and different flu strains compared to one another? I know they are different types of virus with different types of biological mechanisms, so maybe they can’t be compared, but are covid variants more or less different from one another than flu strains are from one another?
In other words, we don’t panic from year to year over different flu strains, we just tell people to get this year’s flu shot that is supposedly tailored for it. Why is there all of the panic over the variants but the advice is always to go out and get the same old mRNA vaccine? My gut tells me that flu is older and more evolved and therefore the differences between the strains are more significant, and therefore the “VARIANTS!!!!” panic is just that, but I have no technical expertise to base that assumption on.
I keep thinking I had a second question, too, but I can’t remember it right now. 😀
I can’t really answer on a percent basis but it isn’t a lot. Every replication likely has some differences. It is more where they are functionally that matters. The moronic variant apparently has changed sequences in the spike protein that may improve binding to receptors. I completely agree that we need to accept that there will be constant variants that we have little ability to anticipate and we need to stop freaking out about them.