Things That Make Me Go "Hmmm ..."

 America is certainly not suffering from an irony deficiency these days. If irony could cure the 'rona, in fact, everyone would be back to work and unemployment would be under 3% again. Herewith, some things that make me go, "Hmmm ..."

We were told that if everyone wore a mask, everywhere in public, for just two weeks, the 'rona would disappear. (Even though many Asians have been wearing masks during flu season for years, and the flu hasn't gone anywhere - and that's with a vaccine.) My alter ego conducted a decidedly unscientific survey on Facebook recently regarding individuals' observation of mask-wearing in public places. While the sample size was admittedly small, all of the respondents were people who, for the most part, have been getting out and about since things re-opened in early May, so there were plenty of data points. Their observations?

Since the mask mandates went into effect (which varies by jurisdiction, but it's generally been a couple of months or more) - whether mandated by jurisdictions or by businesses - everyone has been wearing masks to grocery stores, big box retailers, small retailers, restaurants when not seated, financial institutions and service businesses like salons. Some people are wearing them when waiting to pick up food curbside, or when walking between their cars and stores or restaurants. As far as I know, pretty much all churches are requiring them for indoor worship. Sporting events that are open to fans require them. Airports and airlines require them. Hotels require them in public places. The only place that few people have been observed wearing them is when outdoors - walking, biking, etc.

So why is the 'rona still around? True, new cases are down, and all of the really meaningful numbers - new deaths, hospitalizations, ICU bed use, etc. - are very positive, and have been trending in the right direction for many weeks. (You may not be aware of these facts. The media doesn't report them.) "Ah," you say, "that just proves the masks work!"

No, it does not.

The story was that masks would stop the spread of the virus. Not death if you caught it. Not the need to be hospitalized, or be in the ICU. Stopping the spread would have meant a significant decline in new cases.

"Ah," you say, "it's those college kids, gathering en masse at their frat parties!"

Please. That sounds like a Buddy Hackett stand-up routine: "These kids today ..." (If you weren't around in the '70s, look him up - he was a funny guy.) New weekly cases are highest among the 18-24 age cohort, so it's true that those parties are likely leading to a larger number of infections. But even among that age group, new weekly cases are much lower than they were in early July, and they've been generally falling since then. And we all know that the concern is that those darned kids will go home and visit grandma and grandpa, and hospitalizations, ICU bed use, and deaths will all spike, right?

You know which age cohort has the lowest number of new weekly cases? The under-18 crowd, followed very, very closely by those 65 and older. And new weekly cases have been declining sharply since July for all age groups. Plus hospitalizations, ICU bed use and deaths are falling, as noted above.

So the question remains: if widespread mask use could eradicate the virus in a short time, and their use has been widespread since May, why is it still around? Anybody who believes masks are the reason we're seeing declining cases now is either being disingenuous, or doesn't understand statistics, or both. And, they're the same people who are screaming that cases are spiking.

A related thing that makes me go, "Hmmm ..." is the Sturgis motorcycle rally. It happened the second week of August, and about 450,000 people converged on the little burg of Sturgis, SD (population 7,000). In other words, the rally increased the town's population by more than 64-fold. Hardly any of the bikers wore masks. The media warned in advance it would be a "super-spreader event."

So how many cases have been reported related to the rally? Less than 250, from ten states. The total cases from any one of those states represents a lower infection rate than the state's overall, pre-Sturgis infection rate. And 250 cases out of more than 450,000 people is about a .05% infection rate. Without masks. Hmmm ...

Maybe the Sturgis rally was actually a protest. After all, we know the virus doesn't spread during protests (or riots).

Probably the thing that has made me go, "Hmmm ..." the most in 2020 is the fact that, with every bit of positive data related to the virus, the goalposts get moved. No, the goalposts don't just get moved, they get replaced with new measures of a goal. We go from goalposts to soccer goals to billiards pockets to golf holes.

Herewith: Remember "flatten the curve?" The idea was to shut down the economy and become hermits, so that while the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths would be the same as if we didn't, they would occur over a longer period of time. Thus the need for hospital rooms, ICU beds and ventilators would overwhelm the capacity of those resources, forcing doctors to pick and choose who gets those resources, and who dies without them, as they had to do in Spain and Italy.

I'm going to repeat, a little louder for the people in the back (or on the left): the acknowledgement was that the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths would be the same as if we hadn't shut down. They would just occur over a longer period of time, so the curve would be flatter. It was never about preventing infections altogether. The keys were to wash your hands, cover your coughs and sneezes, and stay at home. (The first two should always be done, so that you don't spread colds, flu, norovirus and other nastiness, so remember that when the 'rona is finally behind us.)

Mission accomplished. We flattened the curve, albeit at a cost very dear, as we flattened a lot of businesses and retirement accounts, too. (We even flattened much of the health care system, as that sector shed millions of jobs, due in part to the cessation of elective procedures and preventive care - which is bearing, and will continue to bear, its own cost - and in part due to the very simple fact that we did not need all the health care workers we thought we'd need to respond to COVID, other than in the NYC metro. And that was due to mismanagement by leadership there.)

So, the time came to re-open. The White House Task Force's health care professionals established "gating criteria" to safely re-open, based on 14-day declining trends in symptoms and cases, as well as adequate critical care capacity and "robust" testing. (Note that the criteria related to symptoms were based on reported symptoms, and could include symptoms of influenza. Hmmm ...)

Many states began re-opening in early May. Cases began to rise everywhere, and continued to rise into July. However, so did testing. (It's curious: federal and jurisdictional health care officials release information that allows us to create handy graphs of new cases per day and new deaths per day, but we can't get data on new tests per day to plot against the cases. And they still aren't reporting confirmed recoveries, which would be useful to see overall and by age cohort. Hmmm and hmmm ...)

While cases rose from May through July, however, deaths declined (even in NYC, which had "won the war" against COVID, according to the ever-delusional and self-promoting Cuomo). And if cases continued to rise while deaths declined, that means that the mortality rate has continued to fall since states re-opened their economies. (That's another piece of data that health officials don't report as a time series.) Nationally, the mortality rate (deaths divided by reported cases, a flawed number in and of itself, as I've noted before) is about 3%. However, that's skewed by a number of states whose leadership mis-managed the response to the pandemic: NY, NJ, MA, IL, PA, MI ... I could go on. In most states, it's less than 2%, including many of the states that were criticized for their re-opening plans, such as FL. Here in KS, it's barely 1%.

Instead of reporting those trends, many states are justifying keeping things partly shut down, and mandating masks, at least until Nov. 4 (wink). How? They've come up with a new metric to replace the previous goalposts of hospital capacity, then cases:

The positivity rate.

This is the number of positive test results divided by the number of tests administered. It's being used by municipalities, schools, colleges and universities as a benchmark for when they shut things down or allow certain things.

Folks, if you took a statistics course in college, and can't immediately see the bias in this measure, demand your money back. I'll give you a quick lesson, and we can split the refunded tuition. Fair?

Who gets tested? Everybody? A random sample of the population at large? No. The statistically overwhelming majority (we're talking at least 99%) of people who get tested either a) present with symptoms, or b) have been in contact with someone who tested positive. In other words ...

They're more likely to have COVID than anyone not in one of those two categories. So of course more of them are going to test positive, hence a higher "positivity rate."

It means nothing.

"Ah," you say, "but some people are going to the free drive-thru test sites and getting tested just to be sure they don't have it." Really, my dear naif? Why would I do that, when I could test negative, and then get infected the very next week, and have to be tested again? Do you personally know a single soul who's done that? But for the sake of argument, let's say that a million Americans have done that. (That would be an unrealistically large number, but I'll humor the naive here.) That would be 1.1% of the total tests administered to date. Remember when I argued that at least 99% of those tested are symptomatic or have been exposed? There you have it.

In Kansas, the positivity rate, as reported, is 17.3%, and is being used by state health officials and the governor to scare the bejeebers out of the unwitting populace. (They've used some other statistical sleight-of-hand, too.) However, a Johnson County medical center conducted close to 8,000 tests to pre-operative patients who were required to be tested before admission, and found a positivity rate of 0.5%.

So now, schools are setting arbitrary numbers like a 5% positivity rate (why not 10%, or 3%, or 7.1264%?) as the criteria for re-opening. The statistic means nothing, and it totally ignores the extremely low severity rate of those positive tests, especially among the school-aged population.

One more thing that makes me go, "Hmmm ..." - people using nonsensical analogies as though they were iron-clad, pure common sense notions that should explain to anyone why they should agree to something. The best example is the ridiculous analogy that it took decades to mandate seat belts, and now they're the law and everyone wears them, thus no one who wears a seat belt should take issue with wearing a mask. This actually defies common sense.

First, there is no science that suggests that seat belts don't work. There is science - if you care to look for it and listen to it with an open mind - that suggests that masks are ineffective. Second, seat belts are the law, and there are probably people who wouldn't wear them if they weren't.

But where the analogy really breaks down is here: the argument is that you wear a mask not to protect yourself, but to protect others. It's the only morally right choice. It's ethical. It's compassionate. Even Jesus taught that we should wear masks, some churches tell us. However, seat belts are worn not to protect others, but to protect yourself. So, if we're using vehicles, here's the better analogy as it relates to protecting others out of a sense of selflessness.

Do you speed? Occasionally stray from your lane? Look at your phone while you're driving? If you do any of those things, you are endangering the lives of others. So if you do any of those things, fermez la bouche about masks, already.

Some other "Hmmm ..." moments:

• If Trump missed the boat on the virus, as Biden and now Cuomo (lmao on that one!) claim, why are cases, deaths, hospitalizations, and the mortality rate declining?
• If Biden has the answer to COVID, as he claimed in his DNC acceptance speech, why isn't he sharing it? Why is he using this valuable secret as a bargaining chip with voters? Isn't every death since his speech squarely on his shoulders?
• If the riots really are Trump's fault, why did the violence continue, and even ramp up, when Federal agents left places like Portland? And why aren't the riots happening on remotely the same scale, if at all, in red states and cities?
• If the polls are to be believed (hello, 2016?), and CNN and MSNBC are to be believed (hello, reality), and Biden really does have a lock on this thing, why do the Dems continue to throw widespread violence, false narratives, and conspiracy theories at Trump, hoping and praying for something that sticks?
• If Biden is the best choice for President, why can't anyone who's planning to vote for him articulate why, without mentioning Donald Trump? Even his own campaign is incapable of that. Oh, sure, they say "he has a plan" about this or about that. But when pressed (all too rarely) by the media to articulate it, they start invoking the "T-word."
• A reported 80% of voters believe that Biden won't live through a first term. Even more believe that he's not capable of making the decisions the office requires, regardless of how long he lives. That means that his choice of running mate should be someone palatable to American voters as the top of the ticket, since that person will likely be running the country, de facto or de jure, at some point within the next four years. So - why use demographic criteria to select somebody who couldn't get out of single digits in the Democrat primaries? Warren, Klobuchar and Mayor Pete all appealed more broadly to voters, and each of them ticked at least one woke identity politics box. When Harris dropped out, she was polling at 3.4%. The only way this pick makes sense is if we consider that the reason she was faring so poorly was because, as bloomberg.com reported, "she was unable to define herself ideologically and explain to voters what she stood for." That aligns perfectly with her running mate.