The 'Ventilator Crisis' Hoax Explained

Ventilators are useless anyway. Up to 90% of those put on them die.  Those who survive would probably not have died anyway

Once upon a time a long time ago (2 months), state governors were weeping about the piles of dead bodies they were going to have on their hands because there was a severe shortage of ventilators.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stood in front of cameras in March and solemnly told the media that his state would need 30,000, maybe 40,000 ventilators to avoid a catastrophic loss of life. When the president pointed out that New York had thousands of ventilators it hadn't even placed yet, Cuomo agreed that Trump was right but said he still needed them.

It became clear that many governors didn’t know how many ventilators their states had, and they were driven by early models that were “doomsday scenarios,” as one senior administration official puts it. Governors were also acting on the normal impulse to want to be safe, and have more than enough ventilators on hand, just in case. “If you are a governor, which is natural, you are going to over-ask because you want to be over-prepared,” the official explains.

That didn't stop the tsunami of vitriol flung at the president by Cuomo and other governors whose "overasking" for supplies was portrayed in the press as Trump's failure.

So what did the administration do? While the governors got hysterical, the White House approached the problem rationally.

A data team drawn from various government agencies and at the White House was created to get to the truth on the ground. It used hospital billings at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to estimate how many ventilators were in each state and how many were being utilized on any day, giving administration officials a more granular picture of what was happening in states than many governors had themselves.

Another important realization was that FEMA could do just-in-time delivery. It could get states and hospitals ventilators within 24 or 48 hours. This created a lot of flexibility. The administration could wait to see how things really played out rather than making decisions based on models that forecast what the demand might be two weeks in the future. “When you started looking at it like that,” the official says, “the numbers went down dramatically.”

A creative solution was found; instead of giving states everything they ask for -- which FEMA usually does in a natural disaster -- states were sent what they needed at the moment.

Of course, the "optics" of that strategy were horrible politically. And Democrats took full advantage.

This also meant that much of the press coverage get it exactly backward. The media portrayed as an inherent failure the fact that the administration gave states a portion of their requests. (“Trump sent Arizona a fraction of the ventilators it sought,” a  Vox headline said. “Republicans still framed it as a big win.”) In reality, not giving governors what they wanted was integral to the success of the overall operation.

Eventually, New York and New Jersey together got 8,000 ventilators from the government. Now, Cuomo has pledged to send Massachusetts 400 ventilators from the state's unused stockpile. Thanks, Andy. No apology is necessary.

SOURCE  





DHS Study Shows Potential of Heat, Humidity to Kill Coronavirus

A new Department of Homeland Security study shows that heat, humidity, and sunlight could help to kill the coronavirus, offering a potential literal ray of hope against the pandemic as summer nears.

“Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus both [on] surfaces and in the air,” Bill Bryan, the head of the DHS science and technology directorate, said Thursday at the White House press briefing. “We’ve seen a similar effect with both temperature and humidity as well where increasing the temperature or humidity or both is generally less favorable to the virus.”

Bryan pointed to displayed charts that showed on surfaces with temperature between 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit, and 20% humidity, the half-life of the coronavirus was 18 hours.

When humidity was cranked up to 80%, the half-life dropped to six hours. With temperature at 95 degrees and 80% humidity, the half-life of the virus was only one hour. It even worked with no sunlight.

Bryan said the test was done on nonporous surfaces such as door handles and stainless steel.

“As the temperature increases, as the humidity increases, with no sun involved, you can see how drastically that half-life goes down on that virus,” Bryan said. “The virus is dying at a much more rapid pace just from exposure to higher temperatures and just from exposure to humidity.”

Bryan stressed that this is not a reason to stop social distancing in summer months, and that continued testing will be done.

President Donald Trump was enthusiastic that outdoors might be preferred to indoors.

“I think a lot of people are going to go outside all of a sudden. People that didn’t want to go outside, they’ll be going,” Trump said.

Even before Bryan’s presentation, Vice President Mike Pence said the White House coronavirus task force looked forward to early summer.

SOURCE 






Our Dress Rehearsal for a Police State

Dennis Prager

All my life, I have dismissed paranoids on the right (“America is headed to communism”) and the left (“It can happen here”—referring to fascism).

It’s not that I’ve ever believed liberty was guaranteed. Being familiar with history and a pessimist regarding the human condition, I never believed that.

But the ease with which police state tactics have been employed and the equal ease with which most Americans have accepted them have been breathtaking.

People will argue that a temporary police state has been justified because of the allegedly unique threat to life posed by the new coronavirus. I do not believe the data will bear that out. Regardless, let us at least agree that we are closer to a police state than ever in American history.

“Police state” does not mean totalitarian state. America is not a totalitarian state; we still have many freedoms.

In a totalitarian state, this article could not be legally published, and if it were illegally published, I would be imprisoned and/or executed.

But we are presently living with all four of the key hallmarks of a police state:

No. 1: Draconian laws depriving citizens of elementary civil rights.

The federal, state, county, and city governments are now restricting almost every freedom except those of travel and speech.

Americans have been banned from going to work (and thereby earning a living), meeting in groups (both indoors and outdoors), meeting in their cars in church parking lots to pray, and entering state-owned properties such as beaches and parks—among many other prohibitions.

No. 2: A mass media supportive of the state’s messaging and deprivation of rights.

The New York Times, CNN, and every other mainstream mass medium—except Fox News, The Wall Street Journal (editorial and opinion pages only), and talk radio—have served the cause of state control over individual Americans’ lives just as Pravda served the Soviet government.

In fact, there is almost no more dissent in The New York Times than there was in Pravda. And the Big Tech platforms are removing posts about the virus and potential treatments they deem “misinformation.”

No. 3: Use of police.

Police departments throughout America have agreed to enforce these laws and edicts with what can only be described as frightening alacrity.

After hearing me describe police giving summonses to, or even arresting, people for playing baseball with their children on a beach, jogging alone without a mask, or worshipping on Easter while sitting isolated in their cars in a church parking lot, a police officer called my show.

He explained that the police have no choice. They must respond to every dispatch they receive.

“And why are they dispatched to a person jogging on a beach or sitting alone in a park?” I asked.

Because the department was informed about these lawbreakers.

“And who told the police about these lawbreakers?” I asked.

His answer brings us to the fourth characteristic of a police state:

No. 4: Snitches.

How do the police dispatchers learn of lawbreakers such as families playing softball in a public park, lone joggers without face masks, etc.? From their fellow citizens snitching on them.

The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, set up a “snitch line,” whereby New Yorkers were told to send authorities photos of fellow New Yorkers violating any of the quarantine laws.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti similarly encouraged snitching, unabashedly using the term.

It is said that about 1 in every 100 East German citizens were informers for the Stasi, the East German secret police, as superbly portrayed in the film “The Lives of Others.” It would be interesting, and, I think, important, to know what percentage of New Yorkers informed on their fellow citizens.

Now, again, you may think such a comparison is not morally valid, that de Blasio’s call to New Yorkers to serve a Stasi-like role was morally justified given the coronavirus pandemic. But you cannot deny it is Stasi-like or that, other than identifying spies during World War II, this is unprecedented in American history at anywhere near this level.

This past Friday night, I gathered with six others for a Shabbat dinner with friends in Santa Monica, California. On my Friday radio show, I announced I would be doing that, and if I was arrested, it would be worth it.

In my most pessimistic dreams, I never imagined that in America, having dinner at a friend’s house would be an act of civil disobedience, perhaps even a criminal act.

But that is precisely what happens in a police state.

The reason I believe this is a dress rehearsal is that too many Americans appear untroubled by it; the dominant force in America, the left, supports it, and one of the two major political parties has been taken over by the left.

Democrats and their supporters have, in effect, announced they will use state power to enforce any law they can to combat the even greater “existential” crisis of global warming.

On the CNN website this weekend, in one of the most frightening and fanatical articles in an era of fanaticism, Bill Weir, CNN chief climate correspondent, wrote an open letter to his newborn son.

In it, he wrote of his idealized future for America: “completely new forms of power, food, construction, transportation, economics, and politics.”

You cannot get there without a police state.

If you love liberty, you must see that it is jeopardized more than at any time since America’s founding. And that means, among other things, that at this time, a vote for any Democrat is a vote to end liberty.

SOURCE 






The Economy Will Reopen Sooner Than You Think

There will likely be a reopening of our economy on the very near horizon. And this reopening will be much sooner rather than later, with full acceleration within just a few months, perhaps even weeks. Here’s why. Problematic coronavirus testing issues may fast disappear as critical preconditions to reopening the economy. Testing issues won’t go away; they are simply likely to be left largely unresolved.

In addition, new reports suggest that infections may be much, much more widespread than most had thought, which, in turn, means that there is a strong likelihood that we have much, much lower death rates from the coronavirus in all age groups. While most working people (not sheltered in place) may get the virus, the death rates for the entire population may turn out to be not much higher than the seasonal flu. For younger workers under the age of 60, mortality rates, which are already very low, will drop even lower.

Here’s the analysis supporting this reopening. According to a number of recent reports, the true infection fatality rate from the coronavirus for the entire population may well be much, much lower than had been previously thought, perhaps in the range of about 0.12 percent to 0.2 percent. At the high end in that range, if there’s an eventual infection rate of, say, 50 percent for the entire U.S. population, that’s a death toll of about 330,000 people. Most of these deaths, though, will likely to be of older Americans above 60 years in age. Older folks have much higher coronavirus mortality rates, perhaps 10 to 20 times higher than younger age groups.

Actually, data now show that Americans over 55 may account for well more than 90 percent of all deaths from the virus. Looking at comparative data on death rates by age, we are not actually “all in this together,” though that’s a nice sentiment. Of course, this isn’t a big secret, and awareness of this reality grows as each day passes. It’s evident every day on our streets, in our parks, and at the widespread protests across the country for reopening the economy.

Serious problems with testing portend a much earlier rather than later reopening.

Of course no one really knows what the ultimate rates of infection and death will be in this country. Also, we might find vaccines and treatments down the road. The future, of course, is very much uncertain. In the short term, though, the death rate is certainly likely to be much higher for our aging population and our younger virus-vulnerable populations. Our black population, young and old, might be particularly hard hit due to the high incidence of hypertension and diabetes.

Similarly, young and old Hispanics may be hard hit for those without the benefit of work-at-home jobs. Similarly, our less affluent workers seldom have the luxury of working at home and most live from paycheck to paycheck. They simply need to work. Older folks and these more vulnerable groups will be advised to continue to shelter in place and to wash their hands a lot. Those who can’t do so will either receive financial support or simply return to work and take their chances. That one’s a toss-up right now.

Serious problems with testing portend a much earlier rather than later reopening. This seems counterintuitive, but this is the situation now unfolding. There have been numerous reports in recent weeks on the unreliability of testing due to high rates of false negatives. Recent data also show an unexpected and increasing number of problematic “asymptomatic” infections (perhaps a large percentage of all infections in younger people). This is one reason virus infection rates appear to be rising. Another emerging testing issue is the potential for second, and perhaps even third, reactivated infections in persons who were thought to have recovered and who had previously tested negative for the virus. Reactivated infections are now showing up in South Korea, China, India, Japan, and recently in the United States. If unsolved, these testing issues portend very widespread infections. With this virus we always seem to be slightly behind the curve.

Think about the task of solving all those complex and related testing issues as a precondition to “safely” reopening the economy. We may likely go nowhere fast. The reality is that we now have a tsunami of complex and difficult testing questions on the table, and they may not be solvable in our near future, at least to the extent of preventing widespread infections in our communities. It’s possible that our big-tech innovators and biotech researchers might use their talents and data analysis skills to solve these testing problems. Anything is possible, but that seems unlikely in the short term of the next few months. Once these testing issues are widely perceived as not realistically solvable in the near term, there will likely be enormous pressure to reopen the economy.

There are also the medical, and myriad other non-economic, costs of maintaining the lockdown. In places where the virus has spread, the overall death tolls are rising significantly, much more than the recorded coronavirus deaths, which may be due, in part, to an as-yet-unknown number of deaths resulting from the overburdening of medical facilities or people not seeking medical treatment. This view, of course, will just add fuel to the fire of the growing “herd immunity” call for a fast reopening of the economy.

Once these testing issues are widely perceived as not realistically solvable in the near term, there will likely be enormous pressure to reopen the economy.

In these circumstances, if the economy is aggressively reopened, infections will likely become widespread, but deaths in younger healthy workers (under 60) may be comparatively few. About 90 percent or more of coronavirus deaths will likely be among our aging and vulnerable populations. This one is easy. The argument here will be simply, “We all just need to get back to work and get the economy moving again. How long really can we wait?” I’ve heard that argument already, and so have you. And, frankly, I’m not sure I have a really good response.

If the emerging data continue to show very low mortality rates and if testing issues appear unsolvable in the weeks ahead, our choices may be constrained by the lack of other really good policy options. It seems inescapable that in opening our economy in the months ahead, our old folks and vulnerable groups will be our front-line troops in the battle. They are already. This all may become our country’s emerging policy reality, soon favored by the movers and shakers of our world as well as by our ordinary workers.

The policy certainly will have undeniable and widespread appeal to those not yet old or vulnerable. It also will have great appeal to workers, both young and old, who simply can’t afford to shelter in place without a regular paycheck. This one also is easy. The call to aggressively reopen the economy already is occurring (even without these new supporting data points), and looking ahead it seems likely that this view will carry the day. Soon, we may all be back (well, not really all of us) on the road to business as usual, no doubt riding high on the wave of an expanding economy. Older folks and our vulnerable groups won’t exactly be put out and left on the ice in January, but they will be largely left to take their chances sheltering in place or having to work while infections are widespread in their communities.

The costs of aggressively opening our economy will likely be viewed by the vast majority of people in the country as tragic and regrettable. The costs, nevertheless, will likely be weighed as acceptable under these circumstances. After all, we killed more people on our roads in automobile crashes than the number of all our soldiers killed in battle in all of America’s wars combined. We did it consciously by accident for years and all without so much as batting an eye.

This is an easy one again. We all know about how cost-benefit analysis works these days, and there seems to be a growing bottom line consensus that, to twist an old canard, “The business of America today is still very much business.” There will assuredly be some initial safeguards (amid, I suspect, a great deal of virtue-signaling), but the emerging reality will likely be that initial safeguards soon fall by the wayside — perhaps a final example for our less fortunate brethren of how creative destruction can work in a market economy.

This is the way the wind blows now, and our seemingly inexorable move to aggressively reopen the economy likely will soon fill its sails with the new emerging data points discussed above. It’s all a sticky wicket if there ever was one. But if we are not careful, and we play this one wrong, there surely will be hell to pay, and we will have only ourselves to blame. We now need, more than ever, some very good planning, good research studies, genuine respect for others, and common sense and enforceable safeguards for protecting our old folks and the vulnerable among us, along with hope, humility, and a lot of good fortune. God help us! That’s a long list.

We will, I think, be moving in the next few months toward a “full-steam ahead” reopening of our economy.  Lower death rates will fan the fire for reopening, and unresolved testing issues will be, if not actually ignored, at least put on the back burner — necessarily postponed for resolution another day. On the not-too-distant horizon, our economy may end up booming again. If and when that happens, it will be a time for joy and celebration in this country. Of course, if you are over 60 or a person vulnerable to the virus, you probably won’t actually be joining that party. Instead, you may want to start battening down those hatches and getting ready to hold tight. You’re probably going to be in for one (and perhaps more than one), long, wild, and crazy ride.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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