What's In a Name?

 In my last post, I noted that anyone who's 85 years old with multiple co-morbidities (morbid obesity, untreated hypertension, diabetes, COPD, etc.) ought not to buy unripe bananas. A friend of mine shared the post, and one of his friends commented that what I said was "cavalier."

Actually, I believe the use of that word, in that context, was cavalier, so let's unpack it.

Webster's definition of the word includes, "lacking proper concern." When it comes to mortality - from the virus or anything else - nothing could be further from the truth, as it applies to me. Anyone who knows me well would confirm that. I care deeply for those susceptible to any illness, to those with any frailty. I care for the least of these, in any regard.

This was my point, and I use it as it relates to me. I'm 62 years old. I'm overweight. I have hypertension, controlled by medication. My diet is less than optimal. My exercise regimen is regular, but not as consistent as I'd like.

I'm a football fan. In the game of life, I'm in the fourth quarter. I'd like to think that it just started, but the reality is that the difference between money and time is that we always know how much money we have, but we never know how much time we have. I could be past the two-minute warning, for all I know.

When I'm 85 - in other words, when I've spent another roughly 37% of the time I've already spent on this earth - I expect to be counting every day God gives me as a blessing to be richly savored. I won't have high confidence that I'll see 86, or 87, or 90, or 98 (as my Grandma did), or 100 (as one of my great uncles did). Each birthday celebration will be a "phew - thank you, God!" moment.

And I care deeply about that. So no one should believe that my comment was in any way related to lacking proper concern. I'm concerned deeply, and I will continue to be, for my own and others' mortality, long after this virus is but a faded memory, which it will be, sooner than you think (unless you allow the media to keep it front and center in your life, in which case, I can only feel sorry for you).

Here's the thing: when it comes to "covid," I have a choice. I can risk losing the 62nd year of my life, or I can risk losing the 85th year of my life. If this thing is still around - or if it, or something like it, comes back - when I'm 85, I'd rather lose that year to it than this year. This year, I'm still relatively young. I'm still relatively vital. I can still work out at the gym, I can still take my dogs on a brisk walk, I can still enjoy my grandkids. At 85, my grandkids will be out of college, maybe married. I doubt I'll belong to a gym. I may be in a care facility.

So I'm not going to stay home this year, and I haven't. My wife has taken six trips with me, more than she has any other year in quite a long while. I've lived life. I've dined out, gone to church, met with friends and family, taken my dogs to the park, flown, gone to the store, and traveled; all since the virus scared everybody into their basements.

And when I am 85, if this or another virus comes along - if I am in a care facility, I hope my family will respect my wishes, and force the facility to allow me out to be with them. I'd rather risk infection, from any disease, no matter its consequences, in order to be in community with those I love, however briefly, than risk dying after many months of not being able to see them, hug them, hold them.

So do I lack proper concern? On the contrary; I am very concerned. When I say that, at 85 and with multiple co-morbidities, I would not buy unripe bananas, it is not a trite statement. It is a testament to how I wish to live my life: as if every day is precious. As if, whatever my age, I won't take an expiration date for granted. That I won't buy a package of meat that expires in ten days taking for granted that I'll be around to enjoy it.

If I can manage to live my life like that - well, I'll have lived a life well-lived.

The Day We Turned the Corner

I wanted to post this so that, when things are completely back to normal (and yes, Dr. Fauci, they will be), and covid is but a fading memory, we’ll all remember the day we turned the corner and began to put it behind us.

But first, a few inconvenient facts.

I know of a person whose relative was dying. While in the hospital, the relative was tested for the viru$, and the test result was negative. When the relative entered the phase of actively dying, hospital officials informed the family that they were going to move her into the covid wing. The family asked why, since her test was negative, and were told, “We move everyone who’s dying into the covid wing.”

Fortunately, this family pushed back. Another relative was traveling to be with her in her final days, and he wouldn’t have been able to see her if she was in isolation in the covid wing. So they insisted she not be moved, and she wasn’t. How many families would not push back, would just follow the direction of the hospital authorities?

This is an actual story, from a reliable source who has no motivation to make it up. It happened. “Ah,” you say, “but it’s just one person.” Pay attention: “We move everyone who’s dying into the covid wing.” Everyone. You know how many people die every day, in any given hospital in the U.S.? You know how many hospitals are doing this?

And why move them into the covid wing? So that it can be classified as a covid death. And that puts the $ in viru$, because the CARES Act provides a 20% premium for Medicare payments to hospitals for covid patients.

Now, numerous online “fact-checking” sources (all with a liberal bias) have asserted that there is no evidence that covid numbers are being inflated for the purposes of hospitals cashing in on that premium. But they admit the premium is there, and that is undeniably an incentive. So if those numbers aren’t being inflated …

Why is a hospital moving every dying patient into the covid wing, even if they have a negative test result?

This points to an overstatement of mortality due to the viru$. Lest you doubt that, recall that the state of Colorado had to adjust their death count downward several months ago, as attending physicians’ diagnoses of cause of death (COD) differed from what state officials recorded. How big was the adjustment?

Twenty-five percent. And Colorado is just one state.

Even the CDC has acknowledged that in only 6% of cases, covid was the only COD factor listed. Six. Percent. In other words, only about 15,000 deaths.

Now, the CDC is clear that this doesn’t mean that the viru$ wasn’t a contributing factor in all those other deaths, and I’m not suggesting that, either. It may have accelerated death in someone that was teetering on the brink anyway, due to age, co-morbidities, or some combination thereof. We do know that the vast majority of deaths in Italy last spring, for example, were patients age 85 or older with multiple co-morbidities. The kind of people who shouldn’t be buying unripe bananas anyway. Whose death could be accelerated by the flu or a sinus infection.

I’m just very suspicious of the actual, covid-caused death count, based on this and other information.

Enough about mortality. On to reported cases, and positivity rates.

I now know of three instances – having occurred in two different places, hours apart – where the people involved signed up to get a PCR test for the virus, provided their contact information, and went to the test site. Once there, they found the line was more than an hour long, so they left. Went home or back to work. Didn’t get tested. And –

Were later notified that they had tested positive.

I have relayed this to other people that I know, and they have also heard of some such instances from people they know. Trustworthy sources who have no incentive to make up such things. (I’m tempted myself to sign up to get tested and not show up, just to see how prevalent this is. If I do, I’ll record the whole thing.)

Isn’t it interesting that there are no anecdotal stories of someone signing up for a test, showing up, and going home because the line is too long, then receiving notification of a negative test result?

Elon Musk, of Tesla fame (the car, not the rock band), recently tweeted that he received four of the rapid covid tests (not the PCR). Same day. Same nurse. Same facility. Same machine producing the results. And –

Two positive. Two negative.

The point of these stories is that the tests are woefully unreliable. And the process is apparently skewed to report more positive results. Even for people who never got tested, but provided their contact information so that they could be notified of a positive result.

The testing problems don’t end there. The most widely-used test, the PCR test, amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles. The fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or the viral load, in the subject. The greater the viral load, the more likely the subject is contagious. But –

By running a larger number of cycles, the test results in finding more genetic matter. Why is this significant? Because, over a larger number of cycles, the test may find dead fragments of the virus in people that were previously infected and didn’t know they had it, but still remain in their body. These dead fragments are incapable of infecting anyone else – in other words …

Run enough cycles, and you’ll get more positive results, but the people testing positive are not at all contagious.

According to the NY Times: “In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus.”

That’s three different locations. Three studies. And this was published in the very left-leaning NY Times.

A Harvard epidemiologist said it’s like finding a hair from a serial killer’s head in a room weeks after that person was there, and concluding that the killer must still be in the room, and is thus a threat.

How many cycles are enough, and what constitutes too many? A University of California-Riverside virologist has said that any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive – in other words, run more than 35 cycles, and you’ll get too many false positives; positive readings from people who can’t infect anyone. She went on: “I’m shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive.” She suggests a cycle threshold of 30-35. The Harvard epidemiologist would set it at 30 or less.

So how many cycles are typically used? North Carolina uses 37. New York uses 40. In my home state of Kansas, neither the Governor’s office nor the health department will disclose the threshold, but it’s said to be 42. (And why won’t they disclose it? This is the same state that suppresses other key viru$-related data, and whose health director has used data mining and graphic sleight-of-hand to mislead people regarding the efficacy of mask use in preventing viral spread.)

At a threshold of 35 vs. 40, these experts estimate that 63-90% of positives would be negative. So if we apply that to the recent nationwide one-day record of 185,000 cases reported, that means the actual positive case count would be just 18,000-68,000.

Another problem that the Harvard epidemiologist noted is the CDC’s recommendation that only symptomatic people be tested. He noted that this really tells us nothing about the infection rate, because someone with symptoms is already more likely to test positive. Why, you may ask, is this a problem, since they’re testing positive with symptoms?

It’s a problem because it drives the positivity rate, which is the rate of positive test results divided by the number of tests administered. And the positivity rate is being used as a key gating criterion for opening or keeping open schools and colleges, in places like my home state of Kansas. Why use this metric? It wasn’t used early on. It’s another example of moving the goalposts to manipulate the score.

Think about the factors that influence the positivity rate higher, that we’ve just discussed:

·        You only test people who are likely positive anyway

·        You use a cycle threshold that produces an estimated 63-90% false positives

·        You report positive results from people whose information you have, but whom you’ve never tested

Combining these factors, can we conclude anything other than that the positivity rate is vastly overstated?

Finally, I’m a data guy, so let’s look at some data. Below is a graph using CDC data on total deaths per million population, monthly, going back to 1900. This captures the 1918, 1957-58, and 1968 influenza pandemics. Note that the data shows total deaths, including those illnesses, as well as the viru$ through August of this year.

Now, the current pandemic has been compared to the 1918 flu outbreak. We’ve frequently heard, “There’s been nothing like this for 100 years.” Well, the graph puts the lie to that notion. This year looks a lot like the 1968 flu outbreak, and is an order of magnitude lower than 1918. I’ll circle back to 1968 momentarily, but first, let’s look at those three previous 20^th-century flu pandemics compared to the current one. We’ll go in reverse chronological order, citing U.S. data only. The sources are the CDC and the U.S. census.

·        2020: 251,000 deaths, 331 million population = 758 deaths/million (we know that about half the deaths have been people 75 and older; 75% had co-morbidities; and 86% were 75 or older and had co-morbidities)

·        1968: 100,000 deaths (most over the age of 65, according to CDC), 200 million population = 500 deaths/million

·        1957-58: 116,000 deaths, 172 million population = 674 deaths/million

·        1918: 675,000 deaths, 103 million population = 6,553 deaths/million

From those numbers, this pandemic looks a lot more like the ones in the ‘50s and ‘60s than 1918. This year’s numbers are only 12% higher than ’57-58, compared with 1918’s, which were nearly nine times higher than 2020.

Back to 1968. I can speak to this, because I was alive then, unlike those earlier flu outbreaks (I was born in November of ’58, but that outbreak was over by then, and I don’t remember much about the first two months of my life anyway).

I clearly remember the day JFK was assassinated, in 1963. I was five years old. I came home from school and my Mom was crying. I asked her why, and she told me that President Kennedy had been killed. I remember wondering how she knew him, since she was crying over his death. Hey, come on, I was only five.

I remember the Civil Rights movement, from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, through the tumultuous times leading up to the 1965 Act.

I remember Dr. King’s assassination in 1968 – the same year of the flu outbreak. I remember where I was when I heard about it. Same with Bobby Kennedy’s assassination later that year.

I remember all of these significant events that occurred when I was between the ages of five and ten years old. They received heavy news coverage. (I remember other things from my own life that occurred during those years, let you think my memories are biased by recorded history.) But, you know what?

I don’t remember one single thing about the 1968 flu pandemic. Maybe I had it. Maybe someone else in my family did. Heck, maybe we all had it. But I don’t remember it. It wasn’t prominent in the news. (Of course, back then we just had the three non-cable networks, the news cycle wasn’t 24/7, and the news was merely reported, not opined upon. The facts were reported, not distorted, and the opining was left to us.)

You think there’s one 10-year-old kid today who won’t remember 2020 like I remember JFK’s assassination? If you believe that, look at the ceiling – someone painted “gullible” on it.

The numbers from that year look a lot like the numbers from this year. Yet it was a non-story. No shutdowns. No isolation. No masks.

So that was a fairly lengthy critique of COD reporting, testing, positivity rates, and covid data relative to other pandemics. The point of this post was supposed to be related to the date we turned the corner. If you’re still with me, I’ll present my prognostication.

January 20, 2021.

Sometime thereafter, states like Kansas and North Carolina and New York and Massachusetts and Nevada will quietly, and without transparency, reduce their cycle thresholds to a realistic level, and the number of positive test results will immediately fall.

The CDC will begin recommending that everyone be tested, including the asymptomatic, and that plus the reduced cycle threshold will result in a plummeting positivity rate.

Nobody who signs up for a test, but doesn’t get one, will be notified of a test result.

The 20% Medicare premium for covid cases will be eliminated, and COD reporting will become more accurate. Covid wards will empty. The mortality rate will drop.

The news media will cover nothing but how cases, positivity, and the death rate are dropping like stones.

The Pelosis and DeBlasios of the world will resume encouraging people to get out and live their lives.

The economy will be allowed to fully re-open in every state, and unemployment will return to February 2020 levels. The stock market will hit record highs.

Schools will fully re-open for in-person learning, and failure rates will decline.

And everyone who believed all the fear-mongering, will also believe the success attribution.

You see, all of the things I noted above can be easily manipulated to make a situation appear worse than it is, to make people fearful, to justify finger-pointing and blame-laying.

And all of those things can be just as easily manipulated to make a situation appear to have rapidly and dramatically improved, to allay the fears of the fearful, and to justify grand-standing and credit-taking.