We would like to think that we can eliminate COVID-19, but doing so is far from certain. The medical system has not been successful in eliminating HIV/AIDS or influenza; the situation with COVID-19 may be similar.
We are discovering that people with COVID-19 are extremely hard to identify because a significant share of infections are very mild or completely without symptoms. Testing everyone to find the huge number of hidden cases cannot possibly work worldwide. As long as there is hidden COVID-19 elsewhere in the world, the benefit of identifying everyone with the illness in a particular area is limited. The disease simply bounces back, as soon as there is a reduction in containment efforts.
Figure 1. One-week average new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Israel, Spain, Belgium and Netherlands. Chart made using data as of August 8, 2020 using an Interactive Visualization available at https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ based on Johns Hopkins University CSSE database.
We are also discovering that efforts to contain what is essentially a hidden illness are very damaging to the world economy. Shutdowns in particular lead to many unemployed people and riots. Social distancing requirements can make investments unprofitable. Cutting off air flights leads to a huge loss of tourism and leaves farmers with the problem of how to get their fruit and vegetable crops picked without migrant workers. If COVID-19 is very widespread, contact tracing simply becomes an exercise in frustration.
Trying to identify the many asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 is surprisingly difficult. The cost is far higher than the cost of the testing devices.
At some point, we need to start lowering expectations regarding what can be done. The economy can protect a few members, but not everyone. Instead, emphasis should be on strengthening people’s immune systems. Surprisingly, there seems to be quite a bit that can be done. Higher vitamin D levels seem to be associated with fewer and less severe cases. Better diet, with more fruits and vegetables, is also likely to be helpful from an immunity point of view. Strangely enough, more close social contacts may also be helpful.
In the remainder of this post, I will explain a few pieces of the COVID-19 problem, together with my ideas for modifications to our current strategy.
Recent News About COVID-19 Has Been Disturbingly Bad
It is becoming increasingly clear that COVID-19 is likely to be here for quite some time. The World Health Organization’s director recently warned, “. . . there’s no silver bullet at the moment and there might never be.” A recent Wall Street Journal article is titled, “Early Coronavirus Vaccine Supplies Likely Won’t Be Enough for Everyone at High Risk.” This article relates only to US citizens at high risk. Needless to say, creating enough vaccine for both high and low risk individuals, around the world, is a long way away.
We are also hearing that vaccines may be far less than 100% effective; 50% effective would be considered sufficient at this time. Two doses are likely to be needed; in fact, elderly patients may need three doses. The vaccine may not work for obese individuals. We don’t yet know how long immunity from the vaccines will last; a new round of injections may be needed each year.
A new report confirms that asymptomatic patients with COVID-19 are indeed able to spread the disease to others.
Furthermore, the financial sector is increasingly struggling with the adverse impact shutdowns are having on the economy. If it becomes necessary to completely “write off” the tourism industry, economies around the world will struggle with permanent job loss and debt defaults.
Shutdowns Don’t Work for Businesses and the Financial System
There are many issues involved:
(a) Shutdowns tend to lead to huge job loss. Riots follow, as soon as people have a chance to express their unhappiness with the situation.
(b) If countries stop importing migrant workers, there is likely to be a major loss of fruits and vegetables that farmers have planted. No matter how much money is printed, it does not replace these lost fruits and vegetables.
(c) Manufacturing supply lines don’t work if raw materials and parts are not available when needed. Because of this, a shutdown in one part of the world tends to have a ripple effect around the world.
(d) Social distancing requirements for businesses are problematic because they lead to less efficient use of available space. Businesses can serve fewer customers, so total revenue is likely to fall. Employees may need to be laid off. Fixed costs, such as debt, become more difficult to pay, making defaults more likely.
Shutdowns cause a major problem for the economy, because, with many people out of the workforce, the total amount of finished goods and services produced by the economy falls. Broken supply lines and reduced efficiency tend to make the problem worse. World GDP is the total amount of goods and services produced. Thus, by definition, total world GDP is reduced by shutdowns.
Governments can institute benefit programs for citizens to try to redistribute what goods and services are available, but this will not fix the underlying problem of many fewer goods and services actually being produced. Citizens will find that some shelves in stores are empty, and that many airline seats are unavailable. They will find that some goods are still unaffordable, even with government subsidies.
Governments can try to give loans to businesses to help them through the financial problems caused by new rules, such as social distancing, but it is doubtful this approach will lead to new investment. For example, if social distancing requirements mean that new buildings and vehicles can only be used in an inefficient manner, there will be little incentive for businesses to invest in new buildings and vehicles, even if low-interest loans are available.
Furthermore, even if there might be opportunities for new, more efficient businesses to be added, the subsidization of old inefficient businesses operating at far below capacity will tend to crowd out these new businesses.
People of Many Ages Soon Become Unhappy with Shutdowns
Young people expect hands-on learning experiences at universities. They also expect to be able to meet possible future marriage partners in social settings. They become increasingly unhappy, as shutdowns drag on.
The elderly need to be protected from COVID-19, but they also need to be able to see their families. Without social interaction, their overall health tends to decline.
We Are Kidding Ourselves if We Think a Vaccine Will Make the Worldwide COVID-19 Problem Disappear
Finding a vaccine that works for 100% of the world’s population seems extremely unlikely. Even if we do find a vaccine or drug treatment that works, being able to extend this solution to poor countries around the world is likely to be a slow process.
If we look back historically, pretty much all of the improvement in the US crude death rate (number of deaths divided by total population) has come from conquering infectious diseases.
Figure 2. Crude mortality rates in the United States in chart from Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century, Armstrong et al., JAMA, 1999.
The catch is that since 1960, there hasn’t been an improvement in infectious disease mortality in the United States, according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Society. As progress has been made on some longstanding diseases such as hepatitis, new infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS have arisen. Also, the biggest category of infectious disease remaining is “influenza and pneumonia,” and little progress has been made in reducing its death rate in the United States. Figure 3 shows one chart from the article.
Figure 3. Mortality due to influenza or HIV/AIDS, in chart from Infectious Disease Mortality Trends in the United States, 1980-2014 by Hansen et al., JAMA, 2016.
With respect to HIV/AIDS, it took from the early 1980s until 1997 to start to get the mortality rate down through drugs. A suitable vaccine has not yet been created.
Furthermore, even when the US was able to reduce the mortality from HIV/AIDS, this ability did not immediately spread to poor areas of the world, such as Sub-Saharan Africa. In Figure 4, we can see the bulge in Sub-Saharan Africa’s crude death rates (where HIV/AIDS was prevalent), relative to death rates in India, where HIV/AIDS was less of a problem.
Figure 4. Crude death rates for Sub-Saharan Africa, India, the United States, and the World from 1960 through 2018, based on World Bank data.
While the medical system was able to start reducing the mortality of HIV/AIDS in the United States about 1996-1997 (Figure 3, above), a 2016 article says that it was still very prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2013. Major issues included difficulty patients had in traveling to health care sites and a lack of trained personnel to administer the medication. We can expect these issues to continue if a vaccine is developed for COVID-19, especially if the new vaccine requires more than one injection, every year.
Another example is polio. A vaccine for polio was developed in 1955; the disease was eliminated in the US and other high income countries in about the next 25 years. The disease has still not been eliminated worldwide, however. Poor countries tend to use an oral form of the vaccine that can be easily administered by anyone. The problem with this oral vaccine is that it uses live viruses which themselves can cause outbreaks of polio. Cases not caused by the vaccine are still found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
These examples suggest that even if a vaccine or fairly effective treatment for COVID-19 is discovered, we are kidding ourselves if we think the treatment will quickly transfer around the world. To transfer around the world, it will need to be extremely inexpensive and easy to administer. Even with these characteristics, the eradication of COVID-19 is likely to take a decade or more, unless the virus somehow disappears on its own.
The fact that COVID-19 transmits easily by people who show no symptoms means that even if COVID-19 is eradicated from the high-income world, it can return from the developing world, unless a large share of people in these advanced countries are immune to the disease. We seem to be far from that situation now. Perhaps this will change in a few years, but we cannot count on widespread immunity any time soon.
Containment Efforts for a Disease with Many Hidden Carriers Is Likely to Be Vastly More Expensive than One in Which Infected People Are Easily Identifiable
It is easy to misunderstand how expensive finding the many asymptomatic carriers of a disease is. The cost is far higher than the cost of the tests themselves, because the situation is quite different. If people have serious symptoms, they will want to stay home. They will want to give out the names of others, if they can see that doing so might prevent someone else from catching a serious illness.
We have the opposite situation, if we are trying to find people without symptoms, who might infect others. We need to:
- Identify all of these people who feel well but might infect others.
- Persuade these people who feel well to stay away from work or other activities.
- Somehow compensate these people for lost wages and perhaps extra living expenses, while they are in quarantine.
- Pay for all of the tests to find these individuals.
- Convince these well individuals to name those whom they have had contact with (often their friends), so that they can be tested and perhaps quarantined as well.
Perhaps a few draconian governments, such as China, can handle these problems by fiat, and not really compensate workers for being unable to work. In other countries, all of these costs are likely to be a problem. Because of inadequate compensation, exclusion from work is not likely to be well received. Quarantined people will not want to report which friends they have seen recently, if the friends are likely also to lose wages. In poor countries, the loss of income may mean the loss of the ability to feed a person’s family.
Another issue is that “quick tests” are likely to be used for contact tracing, since “PCR tests,” which tend to be more accurate, often require a week or more for laboratory processing. Unfortunately, quick tests for COVID-19 are not very accurate. (Also a CNN report.) If there are a lot of “false positives,” many people may be needlessly taken out of work. If there are a lot of “false negatives,” all of this testing will still miss a lot of carriers of COVID-19.
A Major Benefit of Rising Energy Consumption Seems to Be Better Control Over Infectious Diseases and a Falling Crude Death Rate
I often write about how the world’s self-organizing economy works. The growth in the world’s energy consumption since the advent of fossil fuels has been extremely important.
Figure 5. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects, together with BP Statistical Data on 1965 and subsequent
The growth in world energy consumption coincided with a virtual explosion in human population.
Figure 6. World Population Growth Through History. Chart by SUSPS.
One of the ways that fossil fuel energy is helpful for population growth is through drugs to fight epidemics. Another way is by making modern sanitation easy. A third way is by ramping up food supplies, so that more people can be fed.
Economic shutdowns lead to reduced energy consumption, partly because energy prices tend to fall too low for producers. They cut back on production because of unprofitability.
Figure 7. Weekly average spot oil prices for Brent, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.
Given this connection between energy supply and population, we should not be surprised if shutdowns tend to lead to an overall falling world population, even if COVID-19 by itself is expected to have a small mortality rate (perhaps 1% of those infected). Poor countries, especially, will find that laid off workers cannot afford adequate food supplies. This makes poor members of those economies more susceptible to diseases of many kinds and to starvation.
Epidemiologists Based Their Models on Diseases Which Are Easily Identifiable and Have High Mortality Rates
It is clear that an easily identifiable illness with a high mortality rate can be easily contained. A difficult-to-identify disease, which has a very low mortality rate for many segments of the population, is very different. Members of segments of the population who usually get only a light case of the disease are likely to become more and more unhappy as containment efforts drag on. Models based on very different types of pandemics are likely to be misleading.
We Need to Somehow Change Course
The message that has been disseminated has been, “With containment efforts plus vaccine, we can stop this disease.” In fact, this is unlikely for the foreseeable future. Continuing in the same direction that has not been working is a lot like banging one’s head against a wall. It cannot be expected to work.
Somehow, expectations need to be lowered regarding what containment efforts can do. The economy can perhaps protect a few high-risk people, but it cannot protect everyone. Unless COVID-19 stops by itself, a significant share of the world’s population can be expected to catch COVID-19. In fact, some people may get the disease multiple times over their lifetimes.
If we are forced to live with some level of COVID-19 (just as we are forced to live with some level of forest fires), we need to make this situation as painless as possible. For example,
- We need to find ways to make COVID-19 as asymptomatic as possible by easy changes to diet and lifestyle.
- We also need to find inexpensive treatments, especially ones that can be used outside of a hospital setting.
- We need to keep the world economy operating as best as possible, if we want to stay away from a world population crash for as long as possible.
We cannot continue to post articles which seem to say that a spike in COVID-19 cases is necessarily “bad.” It is simply the way the situation has to be, if we don’t really have an effective way of containing the coronavirus. The fact that young adults build up immunity, at least for a while, needs to be viewed as a plus.
Some Ideas Regarding Looking at the Situation Differently
(1) The Vitamin D Issue
There has been little publicity about the fact that people with higher vitamin D levels seem to have lighter cases of COVID-19. In fact, whole nations with higher vitamin D levels seem to have lower levels of deaths. Vitamin D strengthens the immune system. Sunlight raises vitamin D levels; fish liver oils and the flesh of fatty fishes also raise vitamin D levels.
Figure 8 shows cumulative deaths per million in a few low and high vitamin D level areas. The death rates are strikingly lower in the high vitamin D level countries.
Figure 8. COVID-19 deaths per million as of August 8, 2020 for selected countries, based on data from Johns Hopkins CSSE database.
The vitamin D issue may explain why dark skinned people (such as those from Southeast Asia and Africa) tend to get more severe cases of COVID-19 when they move to a low sunlight area such as the UK. Skin color is an adaptation to different levels of the sun’s rays in different parts of the world. People with darker skin color have more melanin in their skin. This makes the production of vitamin D less efficient, since equatorial regions receive more sunlight. The larger amount of melanin works well when dark-skinned people live in equatorial regions, but less well away from the equator. Vitamin D supplements might mitigate this difference.
It should be noted that the benefit of sunlight and vitamin D in protecting the immune system has long been known, especially with respect to flu-like diseases. In fact, the use of sunlight seems to have been helpful in mitigating the effects of the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918-1919, over 100 years ago!
One concern might be whether increased sunlight raises the risk of melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. I have not researched this extensively, but a 2016 study indicates that that sensible sun exposure, without getting sunburn, may decrease a person’s risk of melanoma, as well as provide protection against many other types of diseases. Non-melanoma skin cancers may increase, but the mortality risk of these skin cancers is very low. On balance, the study concludes that the public should be advised to work on getting blood levels of at least 30 ng/ml.
(2) Other Issues
Clearly, better health in general is helpful. Eating a diet with a lot of fruits and vegetables is helpful, as is getting plenty of exercise and sunshine. Losing weight will be helpful for many.
Having social contact with other people tends to be helpful for longevity in general. In fact, several studies indicate that church-goers tend to have better longevity than others. Churchgoers and those with many social contacts would seem to have more contact with microbes than others.
A recent article says, Common colds train the immune system to recognize COVID-19. Social distancing tends to eliminate common colds as well as COVID-19. Quite possibly social distancing is counterproductive, in terms of disease severity. Epidemiologists have likely never considered this issue, since they tend to consider only very brief social distancing requirements.
A person wonders how well the immune systems of elderly people who have been cut off from sharing microbes with others for months will work. Will these people now die when exposed to even very minor illnesses? Perhaps a slow transition is needed to bring families back into closer contact with their loved ones.
People’s immune systems can protect them from small influxes of viruses causing COVID-19, but not from large influxes of these viruses. Masks tend to protect against large influxes of the virus, and thus protect the wearer to a surprising extent. Models suggest that clear face shields also provide a considerable amount of this benefit. People with a high risk of very severe illness may want to wear both of these devices in settings they consider risky. Such a combination might protect them fairly well, even if others are not wearing masks.
Conclusions – What We Really Should Be Doing
Back at the time we first became aware of COVID-19, following the recommendations of epidemiologists probably made sense. Now that more information is unfolding, our approach to COVID-19 needs to change.
I have already laid out many of the things I think need to be done. One area that has been severely overlooked is raising vitamin D levels. This is being discussed in the medical literature, but it doesn’t seem to get into the popular press. Even though the connection is not 100% proven, and there are many details to be worked out, it would seem like people should start raising their vitamin D levels. There seems to be little problem with overdosing on vitamin D, except that sunburns are not good. Until we know more, a level of 30 ng/ml (equivalent to 75 nmol/L) might be a reasonable level to aim for. This is a little above the mean vitamin D level of Norway, Finland, and Denmark.
Social distancing requirements probably need to be phased out. A concern might be temporarily excessive patient loads for hospitals. Large group meetings may need to be limited for a time, until this problem can be overcome.
We do have very effective, very inexpensive drugs to prevent an to cure Covid-19 – and we did haven them since the beginning of the pandemic. The problem was and still is, that these drugs are by far to inexpensive AND to effective AND to safe. That is to say, using these drugs to prevent and to cure Covid-19 would kill most of the pharmaceutical industry of Germany, France, Switzerland, the USA and Russia.
To really understand the problem, the book “Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime” from Peter C. Gøtzsche should be known. As Gøtzsche, who has been a professor for the design of medical studies, explains with many examples and sources, the health care system, including the FDA, as well as most of the research departments and many politicians, are corrupt.
Then it is important to understand, that all known viruses, most bacteria and many parasites can be deactivated with oxidizing agents. Some of these oxidizing agents are already effective against viruses and most bacteria at concentrations and doses which are safe for human tissues, not matter whether they are applied by drinking a solution, or by direct injection into the blood stream.
One of these oxidizing agents is chlorine dioxide. This is a very simple molecule, which is known for almost 200 years. It is widely used by several industries. In 1996, the american engineer Jim Humble discovered by accident in an emergency, that chlorine dioxide can cure malaria. Since then he and many others experimented with medical applications of this disinfectant. To circumvent legal issues in the USA, they founded a “church”.
However, the problem with chlorine dioxide is, that it is a very universal, effective and inexpensive drug to prevent and cure most infections as well as several other diseases. Curing Covid-19 or flu with chlorine dioxide costs just a few cents per patient per day. If it would become an officially allowed medicine to cure Covid-19, it would destroy most of the pharmaceutical industry as well many cash flows and jobs in the FDA, at research institutes and elsewhere.
In fact Covid-19, with all its implications for the economy is the result of the corruption in the FDA, in politics and in the health care system, which prevents the official application of inexpensive, while highly effective medicines like chlorine dioxide (which is only an example).
One should change this, since in a world with much less cheap energy, these inexpensive, while highly effective medicines are one of the possible ways to decrease the drop of real wealth and standard of living.
chrbecker, good post! You would be correct, ethically and even “logically” speaking, in your last paragraph, if the point were conservation. Unfortunately, that is not the goal of the exercise.
It is especially *because* we are in a collapse phase—with little surplus energy and few prospects for “honest” profit—that we will be even more sorely beset by predatory mechanisms of the kind in which Big Pharma and Big Education/Research and Big Governments are currently colluding.
It’s a feedback loop in which, once discretionary spending becomes constrained, there will be an appetite… there will be pressure… for forced spending, even if it is entirely nonsensical. At least that’s how I see it.
Peter C. Gøtzsche has his own website: https://www.deadlymedicines.dk/
Interesting video by Gøtzsche:
One thing I know is that drug companies are big sponsors of medical conventions. Doctors are expected to get continuing education. Needless to say, the continuing education they get is on what new drugs are out and why they should use them. There is also the benefit to the doctor that usually follow-up appointments are required, to get prescription refills. So the more prescriptions, the more follow-up appointments can be added.
I also know that studies always show that “iatrogenic injury” (health care system related injury) is a leading cause of death. I hadn’t thought about it, but drug mistakes could be a big part of this. This doctor is probably including all of the recent problems with pain killers, including overdoses, and deaths related to them as well.
From “Pseudo-epidemics – Why COVID-19 is guaranteed to never end,” by Mike Hearn:
The whooping cough ripped through the hospital like wildfire.
It started with an internist and spread from there, with a severe cough quickly developing in other healthcare workers. Whilst not deadly for healthy adults the disease can be fatal for the elderly, the frail and very young children, so the health system moved quickly. There was no time to lose — within weeks over 1,000 staff were furloughed and quarantined. 142 people tested positive for the disease, thousands of people were given antibiotics and ICU beds were closed. It was a swift and effective response by highly trained public health professionals, armed with the best tools modern medicine could provide.
Only one thing went wrong.
None of it was real.
Gina Kolata’s story in the New York Times about what happened in 2006 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center makes for astonishing reading…
Not a single case of whooping cough was confirmed with the definitive test, growing the bacterium, Bordetella pertussis, in the laboratory. Instead, it appears the health care workers probably were afflicted with ordinary respiratory diseases like the common cold… specialists say the problem was that they placed too much faith in a quick and highly sensitive molecular test that led them astray… At Dartmouth the decision was to use a test, P.C.R., for polymerase chain reaction… their sensitivity makes false positives likely, and when hundreds or thousands of people are tested, as occurred at Dartmouth, false positives can make it seem like there is an epidemic.
There are no national data on pseudo-epidemics caused by an overreliance on such molecular tests, said Dr. Trish M. Perl… but, she said, pseudo-epidemics happen all the time. The Dartmouth case may have been one the largest, but it was by no means an exception, she said. There was a similar whooping cough scare at Children’s Hospital in Boston last fall that involved 36 adults and 2 children. Definitive tests, though, did not find pertussis.
“Because we had cases we thought were pertussis and because we had vulnerable patients at the hospital, we lowered our threshold,” she said.
“If we had stopped there, I think we all would have agreed that we had had an outbreak of whooping cough and that we had controlled it,” Dr. Kirkland said.
“It’s a problem; we know it’s a problem,” Dr. Perl said. “My guess is that what happened at Dartmouth is going to become more common.”
https://blog.plan99.net/pseudo-epidemics-7603b2da839
Thank you, Azure Kingfisher. This article brings up many of the same points I made early in the epidemic. False positives are a huge problem in mass testing of asymptomatic patients for any infection. In the case of COVID, the many slippery criteria make the test results dubious in any normal scientific context. These slippery criteria include varying PCR targets [including some for common cold coronaviruses], varying cycle numbers, absence of viral sequencing as a sort of validation, and lack of transparency or even description of test procedures. Contamination of samples during collection and analysis is also a likely problem given the ease with which contamination occurs and the inexperience of the many new specimen collectors and lab personnel. The burden of proof is on those who claim a patient is infected with SAR-CoV-2.
I noticed one quick test where the person himself is supposed to take the sample. It seems like there would be a lot of room for error (false negatives) to come in with this approach. Did the person read the directions correctly and follow them?
But most tests for SARS-CoV-2 are not self-administered. They are done in mass testing situations, where the potential for contamination is enormous. I’m not aware of any other mass testing effort involving PCR, at least nowhere near the scale as currently. Labs must take extreme precautions to prevent contamination in testing for genetic material in scientific contexts. The standards for collecting specimens for SARS-CoV-2 are not even close. Here’s the first Google result on “contamination PCR”: https://www.idtdna.com/pages/education/decoded/article/could-your-pcr-be-affected-by-contamination. These steps are just for _after_ a sample has arrived at the lab.
When the genetic material of interest is from an airborne respiratory virus, it may be very difficult to design a collection environment and approach to avoid contamination. Airspaces and surfaces likely have detectable virus present.
In science, someone claiming something must demonstrate it with evidence and address questions about procedures and alternative interpretations. None of that has occurred with SARS-CoV-2 testing (or for many other aspects of this epidemic).
Relating Covid- Spanish flu and early 20th century building design in NYC.
Summary: make the radiators and heating plant sufficiently large such that on the coldest day, all the windows can be open and still have a comfortable temperature. This is a nation with surplus energy, having windows which open and let in both sunlight and fresh air. All rooms had large windows, much light, much heat.
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=QUFFLUhqa19jNmJFb0kzM0hva3BfZHZGVUsyOEdCRjMyUXxBQ3Jtc0tuQTZROWlWNkx0V0dxNU51MkExV2VfenUwWktra21LbF9PMGswSmtVV3drbmpkSEZnV2g0MzN1Y1l6bV9Ld25rNXhNMEo4MEJhVVB0ek50NmZObXNQZmtrZTA3NDBvNDRndlBmeDV4TzZ6cTA2eVVHcw%3D%3D&stzid=UgyLWeBnP6y9Mh6z9jx4AaABAg&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloomberg.com%2Fnews%2Farticles%2F2020-08-05%2Fthe-curious-history-of-steam-heat-and-pandemics&event=comments
Dennis L.
Surplus energy????? Hmmm I guess you are contradicting everything that Gail has mentioned over the last 10 years!!
Dan,
Sorry, I should have written more clearly, the nation which engineered buildings that could be heated in the winter, with the windows open to get rid of the “bad” air was one with surplus energy.
Modern buildings are sealed and tested with blower doors to insure no air loss, air exchange is done mechanically, windows are triple glazed, an open window does not stop UV radiation which is in itself germicidal.
Not sure if it is in the link above, but there were sinks in the vestibule of tenements so the residents could wash their hands before entering. We were a cleaner society then
It was a simple solution.
Thanks,
Dennis L.
When I visited China, I was amazed at the windows that were wide open, even when it was very cold outside. I think that it at least in part had to do with the many men who smoke. But it probably was also a tradition. They had steam heating. People wore coats inside, too.
I remember as a child, when my parents built a home with central air conditioning, the people who installed the air conditioning said that some of the windows should be left open when the AC was on. It struck me as a strange thing to say, back then. I am not sure why it was one of the things I have remembered.
Gail, too bad you are not running for office….Joe Biden is looking for a Vice President candidate and perhaps you can submit your article here for consideration.
Well thought out reasoning and conclusions. Perhaps it can be published elsewhere in a mainstream media format, like …..🤗💥😃.
Will what you advise be done? I doubt it, the conversation is not receptive and the damage has be mostly been done. From what I see 😅, the Airline Industry will never be the same
This year and the next will be a wash. How our financial system holds together from it all
Is anyone’s guess. The Federal Reserve Jerome Powell pretty much warned those of us with Dollars….they will continue to be diluted.
How those that are displaced going to survive? Oh, Maybe a Payroll Tax elimination will work? We can borrow to tie us over with negative interest rates!
At least in the U.s they can print money…
Countries that can’t print money definitely have a problem.
Of course, printing money hasn’t really helped Venezuela, either.
Clinical trials of Ozone Therapy as a Covid-19 treatment in Italy and Spain appear to have produced positive results
“Nuestra Señora del Rosario Polyclinic
“In Spain, only we have begun to administer it with the mandatory authorisation of the Quality Committee of the hospital centre, and the results have been spectacular,” says Dr. Alberto Hernández, Assistant Physician for Anaesthesia and Resuscitation at the Nuestra Señora del Rosario Polyclinic in Ibiza. “We have registered a clinical trial, but we need to tell the world that Ozone is a very effective and beneficial therapy in these patients and that we must immediately incorporate it into the treatment of these patients.”
Dr. José Baeza, President of the Spanish Society of Ozone Therapy and Vice President of the World Federation of Ozone Therapy, states that “given the absence of an effective treatment or a vaccine and in the context of the current health emergency ‘All hospitalised patients should receive Ozone therapy as the clear benefit is evident, and Ozone therapy has no significant side effects.'”
https://theibizan.com/ozone-therapy-proving-successful-in-covid-19-patients/
Since the treatments can’t be patented and thereby allow for recouping the costs of large scale, double-blind trials (as used for pharmaceutical drug approvals) while also holding out the possibility of creating large revenue streams for corporations, it would be an uphill battle to get the treatment recognized.
Why is it that even well-educated “smart” people, especially scientists and medical researchers, it seems, are unable to connect the dots. What does a planet like ours in climate chaos (at least), depleted not enough “nutrition”: from too much food, global migration to escape drought and political violence (often exacerbated and or “caused” by the decaying US Empire), pollution in all three bottom-of-the-Maslow-pyramid vital necessities (food, water, and air), an accelerating homeless crisis, an inhumane imbalance between the wealth (and power) of a handful of rich and the lower half of the economic food chain ,,,, and the internal tension from all the political boondogling dysfunction / incompetence of our leader class, etc etc…which can no longer be contained in the face of a pandemic and its collective over-reaction to its relationship to “premature” death…? Beginning in earnest, perhaps, with the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s (if not recognized before) we are it seems to me, witnessing first hand what a global collapse in not just economic terms looks like. We have crested and crossed tipping points in many many environmental players — and I include human behavior (anger rage and rebellion , among them) and economics in the environmental along with military aggression, etc — which suggests a general weakening of the planet’s and its peoples’ collective immune systems. If we are, in fact, experiencing a global ecological collapse, all of these elements emerging much faster than all of the discordant discoursing about Green New Deals and similarly hopeful fantastical thought, are merely occupying our time like any dystopian Netflix flick as they distract us from preparing for what we cannot hope to stop let alone “manage” ~~> much death and destruction due to this pandemic (and others to come) and the cumulative outrage that has been suppressed (YAY!, anger management) with only relatively minor tho no less painful pressure-releasing outbursts now and then. In short, if we are going to shit in our own nest, we will end up eating shit on our way outta here. We should be talking about resilience –improving our individual and collective immune systems as mentioned in the posting — cuz the chips are going to fall wherever they may.
It is a worrying time. There has been a long time during which many people sort of knew of the problems we were facing, but didn’t want to tell anyone about them. Instead, they gave out money for scientific models to try to “prove” that one or another scheme would save us.
I just leave this one here.
https://youtu.be/72ZHSwEXKcw?t=442
E.O.D. 😉
Suitable here.
https://thediplomat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/sizes/td-story-s-1/thediplomat-48269530096_3012b75b50_k.jpg
🇹🇼🇺🇸
I won’t post about it ad nauseam but we’re seeing an uptick in unrest around the world. Displays of popular anger are ongoing in nations like Bulgaria, Russia, Israel, Thailand and of course Lebanon.
There is a strong anti-mask/anti-lockdown movement in Germany. The disputed election result in Belarus has resulted in two nights of violence. And there is a resurgence of anger in Bolivia, which was one of last year’s hotspots:
“Demonstrators in Bolivia have dynamited Andean passes, scattered boulders across highways and dug trenches along rural roads to protest against repeated delays to a rerun of last October’s deeply contentious election, which led to the downfall of the long-serving leftwing president Evo Morales, bringing the country to a standstill for six days.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/09/bolivia-protesters-bring-country-to-standstill-over-election-delays-covid-19-evo-morales
“There is a strong anti-mask/anti-lockdown movement in Germany.”
what?!!
it’s not just Americans?
https://www.newsmax.com/marekjanchodakiewicz/germany-bulgaria/2020/08/11/id/981564/
“US Inspires Summer of Un-Love in Germany, Bulgaria”
Agree with all your suggestions in this post Gail. As we all know, Gates, Fauci et al have other plans.
It is clear that when one plan might make money for vaccine makers, that is the one that will be recommended.
The powers that be are attempting to bring in a steady state economy which will involve degrowth and a stabilized population that is why lockdowns in the developed countries are here to stay.
This is not a well thought through plan. Sustained global de-growth collapses the financial system and all the supply chains that rely on it. Perhaps it is somewhat moot though, as this is where we are ultimately headed anyway.
“Eric Knight of fund manager Knight Vinke argues that reinvestment risk may turn out to be the single most destructive risk now facing long-term investors — the risk that investments providing a good return today cannot be replaced by equally attractive investments tomorrow when the existing ones reach maturity.”
https://www.ft.com/content/b7288334-49e4-4bb7-aeb8-400daa7877db
Germans asking for freedom. No masks. Lots of people.
Great isn’t it?
(Frail people need not attend.)
Angela is getting the hurt. That’s how the lebensraum project ends. Good riddance. 🤮
The reaction of the World Governments is quite astounding. There is quite obviously a complete over reaction by politicians and those Governments who have an agenda in taking away the rights of citizens and frankly committing treason.
It is unprecedented that Governments have agreed to allow a World Body to dictate actions against the citizens of other countries who did not elect them. The Governments supporting this UN body have overreached their powers.
It is insanity to destroy the economies and livelihood of over 99% of the citizens because of the fear and hysteria of maybe 1%. This is life, stop panicking.
What, so having a overarching super government to control the population as the slide down the Seneca cliff accelerates. Well, we already know how that will end.
No; the only way to divert a globalist dystopia managed by deeply corrupt sanctimonious hypocrites desperately trying to make their offspring survive the bottleneck is to go small-scale and robust distributed systems.
Anyone disagreeing with me have to accept being wrong and stop using the Internet, because it works.
And now, your moment of Zen: SciManDan vs. Pastor Greg Locke on masks
Aaand… It’s gone.
Yeah, YouTube took it off for violating their guidelines. Strangely, Locke’s original rant was left up. Maybe Locke himself flagged SciManDan? That’s too bad, because this was one of the best episodes. Greg Locke is an American pastor who drinks 4 Dunkin’ Donuts coffees a day (each with five sugars and two creams), and has exactly the sort of crazed, hyperactive personality that you would expect from that. He thinks masks are a conspiracy to turn Christian Americans into sheep, and recounts his arguments with a clerk at Dunkin’ Donuts (which was inside a Wall-Mart, I think) over whether the new mask requirement applied to him. It was a thing of beauty, and captured well the reasons why the United States is in so much trouble.
Masks still might be more about control then health though …
*than*
Yes, its about controlling a planetary pandemic.
The anti face mask narrative is simply deep state 101: Keep the pandemic perpetual. Anyone arguing against face mask will by default be considered a deep state stooge by any reasonable person.
Oil price spike looming to puncture our gargantuan debt bubbles?
“…the retrenchment and lack of capital investment the industry has seen the past five-years would lead to shortages of crude eventually… Supplies of crude oil are going to drop, just as demand is on the increase.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Heres-How-Oil-Could-Skyrocket-By-138.html
“We’ve had plenty of economic shocks since coronavirus struck. Jobs figures, GDP stats and companies going bust. But if there’s one measure to show the state we all find ourselves in then look no further than the Saudi Aramco results which came out yesterday.
“The company’s income dropped by 73% over April, May and June this year as the world’s oil consumption ground to a halt.”
https://www.standard.co.uk/business/saudi-aramco-s-results-economic-shock-this-year-a4521201.html
“The world’s five largest oil companies collectively cut the value of their assets by nearly $50 billion in the second quarter, and slashed production rates as the coronavirus pandemic caused a drastic fall in fuel prices and demand…
“Fuel demand at one point was down by more than 30% worldwide, and still remains below pre-pandemic levels.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-majors/oil-giants-production-cuts-come-to-1-million-bpd-as-they-post-massive-writedowns-idUSKCN255063
But Saudi Aramco is continuing its dividend, because the Saudi Government needs the money.
“When it comes to buying food for daily meals, Chinese consumers are increasingly being forced to swallow unaffordable prices for two staple products – so-called flying pigs and rocketing eggs. Supply-side problems have sent the price of pork surging this year…
“Last month, pork prices rose by 85.7 per cent on-year and expanded 10.3 per cent from June, new data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. The price of pork has more than doubled in the first seven months of the year from the same period in 2019.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3096777/chinese-consumers-grapple-flying-pigs-and-rocketing-eggs
“The flooding that walloped Bao’s farm and 13 million more acres of cropland — about the size of West Virginia — is the worst that that China has experienced in years….
“The disaster is bad news for the world’s second-largest economy, which is already in a fragile state because of the coronavirus pandemic.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/08/economy/china-food-economy-flooding-intl-hnk/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0bZ2pY9J9cCuywV9qJzG0HpOCbcLXbJuPjaAGn4b7MZgt6Dwd2l583MdU
““It only takes one downpour to press me back into a poor street beggar,” said 58-year-old Yang Cheng, whose grocery shop was ruined in a flood last month.
““The less-developed regions will sacrifice for more social-economically-important cities or industrial regions when the floods threaten the latter,” said Ma Jun, director the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, “The poor regions are damaged worse from natural disasters and have more difficulties in developing. It becomes a vicious circle.””
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-10/inequality-gap-widens-in-china-after-flood-waters-diverted-green-insight
I notice,
Also, the article says, the “worst flooding since 1998.” Flooding is nothing new. It is the worst since the Three Gorges Dam was completed.
“China’s banking industry earnings slumped the most in at least a decade in the second quarter as bad loans climbed and the government told lenders to sacrifice $211 billion in profit this year to alleviate the worst economic slump in 40 years…
“The industry’s soured loans climbed for the sixth straight quarter, to 2.7 trillion yuan, the highest in more than a decade.”
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/china-bank-profits-slump-after-state-order-to-bail-out-economy
“Baoshang Bank, the centrepiece of Chinese oligarch Xiao Jianhua’s Tomorrow Group, will be forced into bankruptcy…
“Baoshang Bank was put under the Chinese government’s ward in May 2019, part of an onerous process by the financial and banking regulators to clean it up, recapitalise and resuscitate it to avoid a whole scale collapse in China’s financial system.”
https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3096443/chinas-central-bank-declares-baoshang-bank-bankrupt-it
China clearly is a place to watch for growing problems.
“UK businesses are in more debt than at any point during the past 13 years, as struggling firms continue to borrow a “staggering amount” to survive the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Business lending is expected to grow by more than 14% in 2020, according to economic forecasters at the EY Item Club — significantly more than the 2% increase seen in 2019.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-uk-business-debt-levels-highest-in-13-years-075104583.html
“Struggling UK companies have warned they will be pushed closer to collapse by the resumption of business rates collection by councils after months of forbearance.
“A number of councils have started chasing businesses for unpaid rates bills, as well as residential tenants for council tax, without which they say they may struggle to deliver their services.”
https://www.ft.com/content/e692bc6d-942f-439f-a4ff-ca8cb3d5e464
“Company payrolls have fallen by 730,000 since the start of the coronavirus crisis lockdown…
“Data released by the Office for National Statistics showed a leap of 81,000 last month alone, despite continuing support for employers via government loan vehicles and the furlough scheme.”
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-730-000-have-lost-their-job-since-lockdown-began-12046850
“As many as a third of UK employers expect to cut jobs by October, according to a survey that suggests that the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic will accelerate in the coming weeks…
“The poll suggests the UK is likely to experience a wave of job losses across the economy as the government starts to withdraw the coronavirus job retention scheme.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/10/one-in-three-uk-firms-expect-to-cut-jobs-by-autumn-poll-finds
“As government support schemes are withdrawn and borrowers start to come up short on their loans, banks may have to sacrifice their prized role as the good guys.
“So far, they have been willing conduits for trillions of government support and largely sympathetic to customers in distress, but that will change.”
https://www.ft.com/content/b0b241d9-7c94-4b91-b727-d39245005d07
The UK seems to have put off a significant part of the impact of the slowdown. In fact, quite a bit of Europe has done the same thing. The is not good for a V shaped recovery.
“As of August 6, 79.3 per cent of US households made a full or partial rent payment… property executives noted that the proportion of renters who used credit cards to make their payments was increasing, one sign of growing financial strain.”
https://www.ft.com/content/94d4c81f-1d35-4487-93ee-888550a3380d
“Although the US has added more than 9 million jobs over the past three months, many readers have told CNN that they are being offered only part-time shifts.
“Others say their employers have cut their pay. In July alone, when the economy added a total of 1.8 million jobs, the number of people working part-time rose by 803,000 to 24 million.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/08/economy/part-time-work-coronavirus/index.html
Part time work and lower pay go together.
We have heard that a lot of hospitals have reduced staff. I was told that Mayo clinic reduced wages of doctors by 20%.
The report covered in the link about asymptomatic infection (https://www.sciencealert.com/all-carriers-of-sars-cov-2-have-high-levels-of-the-virus-regardless-of-symptoms) only looked at virus levels. It did not follow-up asymptomatic carriers to discover whether they spread infections.
What are the chances that they do spread them? Not high. Without coughs, sneezes and runny noses wiped with fingers, the virus is deprived of all of its most potent forms of liquid-borne transmission.
From the virus’s viewpoint, an asymptomatic carrier is like a coffee pot without a spout.
“From the virus’s viewpoint, an asymptomatic carrier is like a coffee pot without a spout.”
That is a good point. There are a lot of things we really don’t understand very well.
There are sometimes the asymptomatic probably do spread, however. Singing from deep in the lungs is one of them. Shouting is another, perhaps in a bar where the background music is loud. I wonder if running on a treadmill and breathing deeply is another.
“The main driver of the sharp rise in international migration is a very severe contraction in the developing economies around the world.
“From India to Latin America and passing through Africa… The UN estimates that close to half a billion people will be or have already been pushed below the poverty line.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1716931
“The COVID-19 pandemic is making the world worse in lots of ways. One of the more unexpected ways is that the already difficult task of ending modern slavery is even more challenging…. desperate workers will be more likely to accept risky job offers or high-interest loans to survive, only to end up trapped in exploitative situations.
“Companies, anxious to ramp up production after months of lost income, may be more willing to hire the cheapest labor available, including from unethical recruiters, and to skip labor inspections and other oversight measures—thereby enabling human traffickers to thrive.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/10/as-the-global-economy-melts-down-human-trafficking-is-booming/
I think the topic of slavery making a resurgence with less energy of other types has been discussed in the comments on Our Finite World.
“Forests have been razed at an alarming rate across Asia, Africa and Latin America during the coronavirus pandemic… Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, forest loss alerts have increased by 77 per cent compared to the average from 2017-2019…
““In some parts of the world there has been a collapse in the local economy and people are turning to the land around them to find what they need to survive,” said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF-UK.
““And, far more sinister than that are those parts of the world where we’re seeing deliberate attempts to use the cover of the pandemic to deforest.””
https://www.ft.com/content/b72e3969-522c-4e83-b431-c0b498754b2d
“In an interview by Successful Farming from his office in Rome, Italy, Ambassador Tom raised an alarm that he’s calling the “crisis after the crisis: warning that the number of food-insecure people – they feed 130 million people a day today – could double in the next year.”
https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/crisis-after-the-crisi-of-world-hunger-looms
Wood is the renewable energy that people really use.
Thank you, Gail, for an excellent article. What you say is largely common sense, which of course guarantees it is a course of action few governments will follow.
The economic news is a bi-polar blend of optimism and pessimism right now with strengthening manufacturing in many places and some solid-looking data from China fuelling the former.
“Between the US-China trade war, Brexit, the coronavirus and global recession, the world has entered a dangerous fusion of risk. If global leaders are lucky, the illusion of perpetual policy plenty can last long enough for sustainable recovery to finally take hold. If policymakers are unlucky, the show could come apart, with ugly consequences. There is no turning back.
“Global capitalism is reaching its limits and our future prosperity is on the line. Hopefully, there are still tenable backup options just in case. If not, we are all in trouble.”
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3096703/signs-recovery-are-welcome-global-economy-still-course-crash
I am afraid we are in trouble.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/10/past-peak-florida-reports-lowest-single-day-coronavirus-case-increase-june/
“New positive cases of the virus are continuing to fall in the Sunshine State, which reported 4,155 cases on Monday — the lowest single-day increase since June.”
Great article Gail! At this point in time most people seem to be able to think for themselves. Every topic is politicized as either correct or evil. Im afraid your very honest and accurate assessment would not be met with acceptance in certain quarters.
Many of the topics you have written about over the years come into play. Complex systems. Networked economies and supply chains.
I recently told a friend it would be good to get some bottled water. He replied water has always flowed from the tap why would it stop. He sees the default state as water coming from the tap. I see the default state as no water coming from the tap. I think most people think that BAU is the default state. Money is regarded as synonymous with resources. If there is a perceived problem with resource distribution then its a problem with money distribution if they are synonymous.
There doesnt really seem to be a plan. The left seems to advocate shutting things down very hard until such time that a vaccine is available. Valuing production of things is characterized as heartless.
Frankly I dont see people changing their perception about the default state being BAU with any problem fixed by money even after problems start to develop. It seems clear to me problems are coming with our present course of action regarding this virus. The way things are I wouldnt be surprised if the vaccine is hailed as a complete success regardless of results.
Glad you liked the article!
You are right about BAU being regarded as the default state. People don’t understand the complex systems in place to maintain this normal state.
Regarding a plan, it is hard to have a plan, when no course of action really works very well. Trying to suppress COVID-19 cases leads to a lot of unhappy people. Letting the disease naturally occur leads to a lot of deaths, in part because our modern healthcare system is focused on providing high cost solutions for a few, rather than low-cost prevention and partial solutions that might suppress the death rate somewhat. The healthcare systems’ default operation is BAU. There is a need to develop more high cost drugs and a bias against looking for inexpensive at-home mitigations.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/anders-tegnell-sweden-immunity-lockdown/2020/08/10/id/981462/
“Almost a third of Sweden’s population could now be immune to COVID-19, Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency and the architect of the country’s lockdown-free coronavirus strategy, told The Observer.”
Another good “Highwire” show here:
https://www.pscp.tv/w/1BRJjYANXXjGw
Some takeaways:
• Moderna insiders sold off lots of stock (some chief medical people on the BoD own zero shares).
• Frontline doctors themselves (not anti-vax docs) do not want to take the vaccine under an accelerated release program (as they are being set up to do).
• Re-adjustment of expectations coming out in the press re. a vaccine: may only be 50% effective (or 10%, I think one story said?); won’t prevent you from getting covid but may just lessen symptoms (which for 98% of people are zero already.. how can you have less than zero symptoms?); won’t prevent you from transmitting the disease (so where is the real benefit?).
I wonder if it would be helpful to take the 50,000 ft. view of what this is all about (and I don’t just mean money and politics, though it surely is to do with that, even to an offensive degree). Perhaps this is playing out the way it is for the same reasons that schools no longer educate and our military no longer defends us. These enterprises have been turned on their head into just a waste pump. Where waste and counter-productivity can find a home, it will. We cannot root it out without taking drastic measures, perhaps destroying the entire enterprise completely (the way the UK has granted itself the power to seize a citizen’s house and bulldoze it if someone thinks it’s too Covid-y).
the HIV graph is interesting.
the death rate plunged about 70% in just a few years, and has continued to decline.
perhaps covid-19 will follow a similar scenario: no vaccine, but greatly enhanced treatment.
though the situation with the economy and resources was better in the 1990s.
comprehensive article by Tim Watkins about hydroxychloroquine:
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/08/06/why-do-we-even-know-this/
it’s been used for decades and there have never been large amounts of heart issues.
and of course, it’s inexpensive, which could raise sussspicions that some powerffful lobbbies don’t want it to be known to work.
there is a strong case that the drug is probably an effective treatment for covid-19.
https://www.facebook.com/messenger_media?thread_id=100000900349653&attachment_id=3533186720026348&message_id=mid.%24cAABa8xJSh7l5xqVCTVzlV_5S-1nu
When I have dreams in the night, there is always a lot more people than in the current reality, as the dreams are based on the past experience.
The falling incomes and the deteriorating health of the people due to a better healthcare and ageing mean that there is more and more people who are actually a burden. We come to the point when a higher population of the human species is undesirable.
I expect that there will be a far severe infectious disease than the coronavirus which will be a part of a natural elimination of the overmutated human species.
All these measures against coronavirus constitute an increased energy expenditure from the human individuals. In the end, the humans will be eliminated by coronavirus or other diseases because of being too weak from the increasing energy expenditure and lowering energy that they have.
An increasing polution of the environment inhabited by humans means an increasing potential for mutations.
Covid and influenza are seasonal virusses, they only spread in winter. If I were of a risk group, I wouldn’t rely on government measures that are always a compromise (on whatever). I’d go in a private lockdown in winter, get me a job without too much contacts, use video and phone, avoid public transport and get professional masks and hygiene equipment and training. Après ski would be over. In summer I would enjoy more personal contacts and travels.
To avoid infection means to avoid people with symptoms, there are no asymptomatic spreaders, even the WHO had to admit that. But what makes sense with family members hugging grandma is a problem going 5 hours in a Greyhound bus. The simple paper mask will not protect from the neighbour having a severe influenza with fever.
I want to see those that could calculate my risk, the virus load through the standard paper mask, travel time, the efficiency of the air condition and the tolerance of my immune system.
I dont belong to a risk group and so I dont avoid infections. In the beginning of the year I had a strong influenza probably with a covid strain. It started before the covid hype. I had 5 days with 40°C fever and a non-bacterial lung infection typical for covid. I love fever and felt good and denied hospital care of course. But it was really strong and I am not yet like before. No family member got any symptoms. I had had a very demanding job the months before perhaps that fuelled the illness.
But I dont wish that to anyone with a severe chronic disease. It felt like the complete body was shut down. I was just heart, lung, sweat and drink. I could not read nor listen nor think. I am a strong guy but if I were 90 or with diabetes or a heart attack I dont think I could have made it. Official diagnosis was influenza. I was given Paracetamol against the fever and Cortison against the lung infection, I threw both into the rubbish (you know me already) as I did not understand why I should shut down my immune reactions. The controlling doctor said afterwards that was a doubtable medication. I took kilos of Vitamin C tablets, I was so hungry on them.
For me all those panic stroken reports about people that feel some throat scratching are just absurd.
What evidence do you have that Covid-19 only spreads in winter? I thought that myth was well and truly busted by now.
On Earth, it is raging out of control:
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
(John Hopkins)
There was some hope that it would subside in Summer, but reality quickly intervened.
“On Earth, it is raging out of control:”
in my region, it was raging in March and April but it has now diminished to such an extent that it is unreasonable to call it a pandemic here, though we know that could change within months or even weeks.
but yes, it didn’t subside in Summer everywhere equally evenly all at once.
it’s with us for the long haul.
Jim Bianco recently said in a Podcast that it seems to be an “indoor” virus. It spread in the East during winter while most people were inside where it is warm. It started to spread in the South/Southwest during the summer when most people were inside with the AC turned on full blast.
Seems like reasonable hypothesis.
“All identified outbreaks of three or more cases occurred in an indoor environment, which confirms that sharing indoor space is a major SARS-CoV-2 infection risk.”
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1
Wow!
Yep, that Covid-19-only-spreads-in-winter trope just reeks of white supremacy patriarchy. 🙂
Seriously though, logic dictates, as Mr. Spock liked to say, that if high Vitamin D levels are major factor in maintaining a strong immune response to viral infections, then viral infections should spread less and be less troublesome in summer than winter, all other factors being equal, which of course they seldom are.
And yet, do we not agree that a population crash is inevitable?
If so, might it be better to undergo such a crash sooner rather than later?
I think the worst possible scenario is a “slow crash,” which leads to “boiling frog syndrome.”
With CoViD-19, ordinary people are beginning to think the unthinkable. They are beginning to consider that our growth-based economy cannot continue forever.
Case in point: we sold more seeds and baby plants this year than ever before. People looked up from their consensus trance, and though, “Gee, I better figure out how to take care of myself!”
The more people who begin to contemplate the fallacy of our economy the better. CoViD-19 measures are bringing people to their senses. I say, “Bring it on!”
Jan, I agree sooner is better than later.
But after I’ve already died of old age.
Yes, I couldn’t believe (in my area of interest) how many people were growing food!
“… jobs that ultimately destroy them and all life around them.”
But I don’t want to bring on people dying all around. That would come with a lot of unwelcome panic and craziness. Norm pinned down behavioral patterns that could change if people are indeed ”waking up.” Increase in self-sufficiency as mentioned here, is such a “change.”
Other “changes” that are seemingly baked into the current drift of things:
– Working from home, and a resulting drift toward introversion
– Less travel, and a drift toward forming small, local governance organizations
– The potential to end large gatherings (major sports and concert events, etc.)
– The potential to end real estate development as we know it
– The possibility of the two points immediately above galvanizing change like…
– Putting students to work
For argument’s sake, if the above were to provide 40% survival value to replace (alternate for) what the “shutdown” is causing to be lost, then the other 60% of a survival economic system could be provided from a messy process of muddling through–sort of like we have now. It’s that 40% that I’d like to bring on.
I think the shutdowns may be making the crash worse than COVID-19 would provide. The fact that we think we can “fix” the situation leads to a situation where we more or less invite the infection to come back over and over again. Of course, if it has a short immunity cycle, this may be an inevitable result.
“Fixing” Covid is not the main issue. It’s more that COVID is a Trojan Horse for attempted fixes for much bigger issues. Who wants to drive two hrs each way to do a job they dislike? On buses arriving at 6 AM (like in my village) what’s the point of sending kids to schools to study foolishness? What’s behind ever more sprawl bringing humans and wild creatures into close enough contact to spread ever weirder viruses? What’s the point of disempowering women so they can be baby mills in an already vastly overpopulated world? What’s wrong with thinking outside the box for a change?
And even if we could bring about much of the needed changes implied, the majority of workers will neither wish nor be able to pull out of the mainstream global system we have now. Too bad for them. Good for the rest of us who buy food at the store.So they’re taking one for the team. And we lucky ones need to be helpful through making our privileged way work. The longer we dilly dally the more suffering we invite onto ourselves and others.
Jan, I agree. A lot of people I know are now understanding why others save for a rainy day. It just may be too late for them…
If you are saying that you want the population to crash now, then 90% of the people you know need to die, and probably you.
Are you older generation going to die off for us younger folk? Probably not voluntarily.
Awhile back, I was hoping to visit Armenia in summer of 2020. Obviously this did not happen, but could it happen next summer? Armenia has about 7000 live cases (down from 9000 a couple of weeks ago), out of a population of 3 million, so it was badly hit but getting better. So conceivably next year it might be all right to visit.
But will airlines as we know them even be functioning? It used to be possible to fly Taipei (where I live) –> Dubai –> Yerevan on Emirates, and maybe that route will be open. But will Dubai be safe-ish? Will the airplanes? Otherwise, the remaining routes tend to pass through Moscow, which has always been a terrible place to transfer (there are 3 airports, and not much help if you don’t speak Russian), and now Russia is one of the countries hardest-hit by Covid. There are other possible routes–roundabout ones through Europe, mostly–but this tends to multiply the the number of transfers (and exposure points to the virus). Even if a suitable route exists, there is the economic question to consider–I can easily imagine ticket prices twice of three times higher than “normal.” Also, the airline may require me to present some sort of medical certificate, or if a vaccine exists, a certificate of vaccination.
Right now, arrivals to Armenia are required to quarantine for two weeks. There’s been some talk of lifting this requirement–originally for August (the end of what would have been the tourist season), but that didn’t happen. I assume it will happen sometime before next year, though. Coming back to Taiwan, I would have to quarantine again (in my home) for two weeks–and yes, they do check–and that requirement is unlikely to be lifted anytime soon.
Never fear, though–if I can’t fly to Armenia, then I hold out hope that it may still be possible to get there overland. (Okay, not all the way from Taiwan, but you see what I mean.)
I wouldn’t hold your breath.
This is just the start comrades.
Unless we get a very effective vaccine, and this being covid, it won’t last long, we are years away from herd immunity.
We haven’t had a pandemic for 100 years, however with a over populated planet in a mass extinction (last one 65 million years ago), it may become more frequent.
We have had a interesting 200,000 years, except for that near extinction 65,000 years ago.
It might be time to give another organism a chance?
Return of the Black Death.
During lock-down, with minimal human movement, noise and presence, one could sense even in this semi-urbanised place the relaxed air of other animals.
Deer just strolling about a much wider area, birds somehow more evident and lively – they’d all vote for our extinction, I’d say.
And I wouldn’t hold it against them.
“This is just the start comrades.” 🤣
We just passed 20 million cases, about 6.4 million of them “live”. Granting all the problems with data collection–these numbers absolutely have to be taken with big grains of salt–it seems to be a fact that over half of these cases are confined to the top three countries, and over one-third of the live cases (or over one-fourth of the historical ones) are coming from just one country, the USA. Latin America, India, and Russia are the other big problem areas. East / Southeast Asia and Western Europe seem mostly under control. On one hand, if we could just get the holdout countries to imitate the virtues of the “healthy” group, we might get somewhere. On the other hand, I doubt this will ever happen, so I guess we either have to quarantine the USA etc., find a vaccine, or forever be on the lookout for flareups.
I am really interested to contemplate the possible future effects of this very mild pandemic on the likely serious pandemics in our future. On one hand it could be a useful training exercise, a kind of societal vaccine, that enhances our ability to identify and react to the threats. On the other hand if we end up perceiving covid as a case of experts being clueless and society over reacting it might be like the boy who cried wolf, and populations will refuse to react at all.
Pompeo did call it a “live exercise”… 😉
I’m not yet sure it can be termed a “mild pandemic”. Certainly, the fatality rate may end up being only a few times the rate for influenza but there does seem to be a lot of long term internal damage. We probably won’t know the full extent of this for quite some time.
Part of the internal damage is self-inflicted by the shutdowns.
The fact our medical care costs are so alarmingly high is a big part of the problem, too. People in the US cannot afford the high costs. Even if they have health insurance, it often has a high deductible.
Of course, people worldwide can’t afford to be off work for a while either.
I think Mike was referring to the fact that even in mild cases, there are signs of lung and heart damage that may be permanent.
Then if that same person gets the disease again in a year or so, it could continue to damage your internal organs, until it kills you.
I’m not sure why lockdowns would affect the damage to internal organs. And it’s not just the US where bad internal damage has been seen.
You are right–my comment doesn’t really make sense. Perhaps I was thinking that the incidence of anxiety, depression, and suicide rises because of the shutdowns.
People who are depressed may not get treatment for other illnesses that they have either. The total number who die will be higher than the number of COVID deaths. But even if patients don’t die, the depression is likely to follow them later in life, especially if the situation doesn’t get better. Young people see their chance for good careers ruined, unless COVID goes away quickly.
Does anyone know the people in the US who are dying currently are they still people in nursing homes and people with pre-existing diseases over 70?
I though that FL and TX were reporting the usual high numbers of deaths in “care facilities” for old folks, something like 40+% of all deaths still.
treatments seem to have improved, but the fatalities are and always will be mostly older and unhealthier.
Also disproportionately Blacks and Latinos.
I’ve no doubt that Vitamin D levels are important for all sorts of health issues, including the risk from Covid-19. However, I don’t think your chart makes that case. Partly because some countries (particularly the US) cover multiple climates and so multiple populations of varying Vitamin D levels, so I don’t see how some of those can be categorised as low or high Vitamin D, and partly because deaths per million is not particularly indicative of anything until the virus has run its course; in some countries, the virus has been spreading much longer than in others so deaths as a percentage of resolved cases would be a much better metric.
The virus has been running for quite a while. The European countries are small and close to each other. Because of this, I think their data is fairly comparable. It may be that the US rates will be higher, as the virus gets to more people.
Japan’s low rate is amazing, given its proximity to China and trade with China. It may be that its use of masks is contributing to its low rate.
I don’t really have good data on US Vitamin D status. I found this chart online, when I went looking. There is a big disparity between white and black vitamin D levels. It may be that the percentage of black residents is an important variable in how susceptible populations are. Even Mexican Americans in the US seem to have lower vitamin D levels, if this chart is right.
https://www.cooperinstitute.org/vault/2440/web/images/Vitamin%20D%20Status%20of%203%20US%20Ethnic%20Groups%20-%20Fig%202.png
In a sense, what is important is what share of the population that is very susceptible because of low vitamin D levels, and the average doesn’t really tell a person that.
Chart is from
https://www.cooperinstitute.org/2017/09/22/vitamin-d-levels-in-the-us-population-are-getting-a-little-better-15776
Just an anecdotal example ie Japan. I have a friend that moved there 7 years ago. We keep in touch. He said Japan does very little testing. His good friend was sick as a dog for a month and they refused to test him. If he had died he would not have been counted as a Covid death. Seems to be the opposite of what people claim the USA is doing by marking anyone who dies and has Covid as a Covid death.
It is hard to know what data to trust from these government.
Gail’s reasoning makes so much sense to me, except for the determined conclusion to put people back to work at their meaningless jobs, jobs that ultimately destroy them and all life around them eventually.
Meanwhile, I know that I completely depend on those meaningless jobs for immediate survival. HOW IS THIS CONUNDRUM TO BE ADDRESSED?
One thought is that people don’t need to be coerced into meaningless jobs to do useful things. They can do useful things by means of stimuli such as education, or through other means for well being than being a good cog in the wheel. I guess that a good 20% of what makes for survival could be provided if all students were put to work. (Education of billions is currently wasted on the notion that people must be educated to do similar work in future to what was done in the past.)
The current pandemic is so crafty that there seems no way to deal with it by pushing ahead with same ol’ same ol’.
The system we survive on makes decisions based on centralized corporate and legislative power. We get the goods and lifestyles that they feel we should get. But we might have some small ability now with COVID to turn that around, organize ourselves differently, and pursue the goods and lifestyles that we at the bottom would rather have, cognizant of available energy resources.
I think meaningful jobs for many people are ones in which people work with other people. Putting masks on people and separating them is a good way to make meaningful jobs much less meaningful.
Subsistence farming has been the largest source of “jobs” over the ages. Digging in the ground with primitive tools wouldn’t seem to be very rewarding, except a person would have the opportunity to see the plants grow and perhaps also to work with others.
Raising a family, with cooking and childcare, has traditionally been the largest source of “employment” for women. This can be meaningful. But I know that often the biggest job is carrying water long distance, often in pots on top of a person’s head. This would not seem like a very “meaningful” job.
Covid is just the latest ‘pandemic’ to scourge humankind.
history shows many many more, most of them seem to be ‘zoonotic’– ie they evolve to transmit themselves between animals and human hosts.
Viruses can do that because humans intrude on animal habitats, —which leads to an interesting theory:
Life has existed on Planet Earth for 2bn years of so, and every species can communicate with its own, such communication is beyond our awareness. All species also have a form of defence mechanism against predators.
Human beings in modern form have evolved in an eyeblink of human history. Before we showed up, (barring the odd asteroid strike) nature pretty much balanced itself out.
Then we, (homo sapiens) decide to grab all of nature for ourselves. We convert the planet into property and set fire to it. It is ours to do with as we wish.
But suppose it isn’t?
Suppose there is ‘awareness’ that humankind is itself parasitic?
The 1918 pandemic was caused by thousands of pigs being closely confined in ways they were.
not intended to be. (no suggestion of ‘fake news ‘ there.)
Most previous plagues and infectious diseases can be traced to people and animals living in close proximity. Cities crowded and filthy.
We look back over a century to 1918, but suppose the virus defence mechanism has been building since humankind began its intrusion on established nature?
Every habitat has now been appropriated by us. We own it.
But maybe the critters who were here first want it back. And viruses are giving them a helping hand.
They’ve been here two billion years longer than we have, and evolved to make the place fit fot their own needs, yet we persist in our fantasy that we can control them and kill them
best of luck
Interesting way to think about the situation!
About time to stop eating animal products? Eh?
I notice that the Epoch Times has an article titled, Low Vitamin D Levels May Indicate High Risk of COVID-19 Infection: Doctors
This is a link to the study:
https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/febs.15495
Low vitamin D levels may be the direct result of being obese. It looks like weight loss is one of the best preventative measures most of us could benefit from.
https://www.livescience.com/26961-obesity-causes-vitamin-d-deficiency.html
That is not something I had heard before.
This is probably TEOTWAWKI. The elites will have access to the real vaccine cure, the rest of us will get a toxic blend designed to slowly kill.
I am wondering if there will be a big uproar about who gets the available vaccine. Is it the Black Lives Matter folks, for example?
Of course there’s a big group of anti-vaxxers (regardless of what vaccine it is, or will be), and c-theorists will be working overtime. There will be issues if the vaccine is temporary, like flu shots; if it becomes required for travel or work; if it costs money; if different countries come up with multiple vaccines based on different approaches; or if a vaccine has different effects on different population groups.
The anti-vaxxers is just another group of stooges run by the deep state. Because vaccines are cheap in comparison with the medicines needed for acute sickness therapy.
The vaccines should be intended for the vulnerable. The rest of us goes medieval combating the pandemic. Face masks, contact tracing, social distancing, good hygiene and antiseptics. Just like Taiwan did.
Urging people to stop precautions to prevent the spread is a way to accelerate the disease. You are making a political and psychological argument, not a public health approach. Yes, people have quarantine fatigue. Yes, it is damaging to the growth based economy. Yes, there are uncertainties about how effective any of the vaccines will be. But there is a reason why the US has handled this worse than any other wealthy country and has a long way to go until stabilization. “Herd immunity” is a failed promise, echoed mostly by Trumpers now, but the US may be the country that gets to test this concept since there’s not much national effort to stop it. Maybe if / when Trump is gone there will be a real effort to stop the pandemic here. (I’m not a Democrat either.)
As for vaccines, they were one of the great inventions of the 20th century. I’m glad that polio and smallpox and a bunch of other plagues are no longer problems here.
Sorry your state of Georgia is near the bottom for handling this (despite the presence of CDC!). Maybe in the aftermath more people will realize that biology matters more than opinions.
I think precautions probably need to be removed in steps. Young people will remove precautions, whether or not anyone says that they can.
Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, we will all be dead from starvation, if we shutdown the economy indefinitely. Starvation already seems to be becoming an issue in some of the poor countries that have tried to shut down their economies. Debt defaults and economic collapse will be other issues.
The U.S. Govt. has paid out over three billion dollars for vaccine related injuries through the VACCINE INJURY COMPENSATION PROGRAM (VICP) of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.
“On October 1, 1988, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (Public Law 99-660) created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). The VICP was established to ensure an adequate supply of vaccines, stabilize vaccine costs, and establish and maintain an accessible and efficient forum for individuals found to be injured by certain vaccines. The VICP is a no-fault alternative to the traditional tort system for resolving vaccine injury claims that provides compensation to people found to be injured by certain vaccines. The U. S. Court of Federal Claims decides who will be paid. Three Federal government offices have a role in the VICP:” http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html
The above paragraph tells us that the U.S. Govt. must change all the rules of product liability in order for the vaccine makers to produce “an adequate supply of vaccines. Then the govt. must release them from all responsibilities for their actions. “We The People” are now underwriting the risk of damages from vaccines.
This begs the question of where the experts on risk stand on this issue. Professional underwriters, (aka…. The Insurance Companies…) have a several hundred year old tradition of looking at the risks in an endeavor and applying their actuarial skills to place a monetary value on assuming that risk. These experts put their money where their mouth is and they are well compensated. The Insurance industry has assets in the hundreds of billions of dollars because the underwriters are good at assessing risk.
When the Insurance Industry allowed the U.S. Govt. to assume the risk for vaccine injury we can assume that one of two things happened. Either the risk was so great that the price of the premiums was more than the pharmaceutical corporations were willing to spend,
Or the risk was too great at any price.
In the first case you would think that the underwriters would present their price for liability coverage and the pharmaceutical companies would add it to the price of their vaccine just like they do for liability with their other drugs. The Insurance Industry gets its cut of the action. It’s the American way.
This case of the federal government taking away the opportunity for an American insurance company to sell premiums is pure socialism. If the Insurance Industry had seen any way to make a profit underwriting the risks of vaccines you can be sure that the U.S. Govt. would not have taken their business.
There is no reason for the government to engage in the insurance business accept when it is the only alternative. Businesses cannot undertake unprofitable operations. Only the Govt. can do that.
Whenever it is brought up that “for profit health care” is not a particularly moral or efficient practice for a society, there is a big uproar about socialized medicine. The insurance industry spends millions “lobbying” to defeat any plan to create a publicly funded health care system that is health driven instead of profit driven. But they have shown to be perfectly willing to pass up the premiums that they could be charging for underwriting the risk of vaccines.
How can you explain that?
You have cherry picked two good examples of vaccines that worked well. There are others that have not worked so well. And polio is still an issue, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As millions of people throughout Europe and the USA lose their jobs and motivation, and start going hungry, and the national health systems begin to decline, I would not be surprised if polio and other diseases we thought were gone for good, came back.
Smallpox is not a 20th century vaccine. Variolation has been around since the 18th century. It required no vaccine. One simply inhaled powdered smallpox scab or scratched the skin with a pus-carrying pin.
No added mercury or aluminium or aborted fetus material required.
Opinions actually matter a great deal more than biology since they play a far bigger role in determining how people act and what choices they make. Indeed, opinions are commonly held to be sacred by their holders. Most people in my experience know very little and care less about biology but they value their opinions inordinately and express them with strength and passion.
As an invention, vaccination can be traced back to China, where smallpox inoculation was practiced one or maybe even two thousand years ago. Some trace it only as far back as Jenner’s pioneering work in the UK which began in 1796. The 20th century was a busy time for vaccine development, but the concept is way more ancient.
I agree that “herd immunity” is a failed promise for Covid-19. When did any coronavirus stop circulating because X% of the population was immune to it?
I’m glad that scarlet fever—for which there is no vaccine— is not as big a problem in most places as it used to be. At the same time I’m sad that Measles, Mumps and Chicken Pox are so much scarier now that there are vaccines for them than they used to be back in the good old days when a dollar was a dollar.
In America, prophylactic tonsillectomy, appendectomy, and circumcision have all been practiced by surgeons who had the opinion that it was beneficial to cut off part of the human anatomy in the interests of better health, regardless of the actual biological facts. In recent years, there have been reports of women who carry a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation undergoing prophylactic double mastectomies based on the opinion of medical professionals that this would drastically reduce their future risk of developing breast cancer.
This sort of opinion-based medical intervention is nothing new. In the course prior to his death, George Washington was relieved of 40% of his blood by his doctors based on their considered opinion that it might save his life after he developed a severe chill that went to his throat. These days they would have marked his death down to You Know What-19.
I think that Laura Croft actress married to Brad pitt removed both breasts for this prophylactic reason.
I regard myself as a cautious type but that seems to me excessive.
Croft had a strong familial history of breast cancer, she was highly likely to get it
appendictis can kill, if a surgeon is in there for another reason, it makes sense to remove it. The appendix has no actual function
Angelia Jollie
i just used the name Croft in rep[ly to the original comment
o dont think it affects anything
Polio was already in severe decline before the vaccine was even developed.
no it wasn’t
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/timeline/polio
Jenner was not much of a hero but was quite the model for Big Pharma. He tested his vaccine not on himself but on a local gutersnipe he had to hand. Nice guy.
First, uh, do no harm.
EGCG from green tea seems to help:
More Evidence that Green Tea + Zinc Might Be Able to Help Fight Covid
The Washington Post noted in May:
It is one of the many mysteries of the coronavirus pandemic: Why has the death toll from covid-19 apparently been lower in Asia than in Western Europe and North America?
Even allowing for different testing policies and counting methods, and questions over full disclosure of cases, stark differences in mortality across the world have caught the attention of researchers trying to crack the coronavirus code.
The BBC pointed out last month that Japan has a mysteriously low death rate from Covid.
Voice of America News asked in June: How Did Vietnam Become Biggest Nation Without Coronavirus Deaths?
And even though China is ground zero, it has experienced very low mortality compared to many Western nations.
Why are these Asian countries experiencing such low Covid mortality rates?
Correlation is obviously not causation. But as discussed below, there is some evidence that these Asian countries’ green tea consumption may be part of what is helping to prevent higher mortality (as it may also be doing with cancer and heart disease).
According to the World Green Tea Association, the biggest green tea drinkers are as follows:
Green Tea Consumption
Country
Annual Consumption Per Person
Annual Consumption Nationwide
Japan
650 grams
80,000 tons
Vietnam
380 grams
20,000 tons
China
320 grams
300,000 tons
Indonesia
200 grams
30,000 tons
Other countries drink a fraction as much green tea (all other countries combined drink approximately 170,000 tons a year).
An admitted problem with the theory is that Indonesia’s mortality rate from Covid is actually higher than the global average.
One possible explanation: Indonesia has a substantially higher zinc deficiency than Japan, Vietnam of China. Specifically, as of 2005, Indonesia had almost twice as much zinc deficiency as Japan, almost 3 times as much as Vietnam, and over 4 times as much as China:
Zinc Deficiency by Country (2005):
Country
Percentage of Population with Zinc Deficiency
Japan
16.40%
Vietnam
10.70%
China
7.50%
Indonesia
31.20%
Indeed, Indonesia has the 10th highest zinc deficiency in the world, out of 173 countries studied.
As I noted last week, zinc has strong antiviral properties, but zinc cannot easily get into your cells without hitching a ride with a “zinc ionophore”. And I pointed out that the active ingredient in green tea (EGCG) is a powerful zinc ionophore which helps get zinc into the cells.
Interestingly, green tea itself may have powerful Covid-fighting properties in its own right. And – coming full circle – zinc may help EGCG get into our cells.
Green Tea May Fight Covid
A group of Indian scientists have shown that – at least in a petri dish – EGCG can powerfully target numerous key structures in this coronavirus:
Various studies have been done for discovering the antiviral activity of tea polyphenols, especially EGCG.
***
As evident from the mechanisms of action of EGCG in various viruses, it is a wide spectrum antiviral agent with its mechanism differing from infection to infection.
***
In a study investigating phytochemical mediated inhibition of SARS-CoV 3CLpro, molecular docking and in vitro studies were performed to screen different naturally obtained flavonoids. It was observed that EGCG with a docking score of −11.7, showed the best in silico activity among all the compounds tested. In vitro studies showed that EGCG exhibited 85% inhibition of 3CLpro at a concentration of 200 μM and had an IC50 value of 73 ± 2 μM (Thi Thanh Hanh et al., 2012).
***
Tahir ul Qamar et al. showed that the 3CLpro structure of SARS-CoV-2 is highly similar to that of SARS-CoV, suggesting the validity of earlier studies in the present outbreak (Tahir Ul Qamar et al., 2020). Recently, another study recommended EGCG as one of the most potential inhibitor of 3CLpro among the phytochemicals found in nature on basis of molecular docking studies (Khaerunnisa et al., 2020). Hence on these foundations, we can expect EGCG to be a potential inhibitor of 3CLpro for the treatment of COVID-19.
***
EGCG showed a very high binding affinity and a low inhibition constant among all the phytoconstituents screened, especially in the case of 6vw1, which is a potential target of SARS-CoV-2.
***
EGCG exhibited better binding with the viral proteins and hence, is expected to show better antiviral activity than the reference drugs, remdesivir and chloroquine (Mf et al., 2020).
***
EGCG was found to inhibit the ATPase activity of GRP78, thus making it less flexible (Ibrahim et al., 2019). Inferring from the studies by Ibrahim et al. and Bhattacharjee et al., we can expect EGCG to be a potential inhibitor of COVID-19 S protein-GRP78 binding site (Bhattacharjee et al., 2015).
The Indian paper also documents that theanine – another abundant substance in tea – targets many key structural sites in Covid. The following graphic summarizes these concepts:
Fig. 2 shows possible mechanism of actions for tea polyphenols on different active sites:
Fig 2
Fig. 2
Depiction of role of tea polyphenols on druggable targets of COVID-19.
(“TF” refers to theanine compounds).
However, the authors note:
EGCG is unstable and when consumed orally has low bioavailability.
In other words, EGCG cannot easily be transported into your cells by itself.
Back to Zinc
Fortunately, there is some evidence that zinc can help make EGCG bioavailable, and transport it into your cells.
For example, Japanese scientists report:
UV-VIS spectrometry revealed that the absorption of EGCG increased and its peak became large by adding
zinc.
***
Zinc enhances the hepatoprotective [i.e. liver-protecting] activity of EGCG.
A team of Chinese scientists note:
Zn 2+ enhanced the growth inhibitory effects of EGCG on [prostate cancer] cells ….
***
EGCG permeated [cells] more easily in the presence of Zn2+ [a zinc cation]. These results imply that Zn2+ enhanced the influx of EGCG.
Another paper notes:
The amount of EGCG incorporated into the liposomes was increased in the presence of Zn2+ (Fig.(Fig.5b),5b), reflecting the balance of the affinity of these compounds for lipid bilayers of liposomes. We tested the effect of different ratios of EGCG to Zn2+ (2:1, 1:1, 1:2) on the amount of EGCG incorporated in the liposomes. It was noted that in the presence of Zn2+, the amount of EGCG incorporated into the lipid bilayers of the liposomes was significantly increased compared with EGCG alone (Fig.(Fig.5b).5b). Treatment of 1:1 or 1:2 of EGCG to Zn2+ did not display any significant difference in the amount of EGCG incorporated into the lipid bilayers of the liposomes, but a ratio of 1:1 of EGCG to Zn2+ gave the best results.
Indeed, some of these studies show little to no effect from EGCG in the absence of zinc. This may lend some weight to the theory that Indonesia is suffering higher Covid mortality than the other green tea drinking nations because zinc deficiency is so widespread.
And Professor Juan Bautista Fernández Larrea – a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, whose team showed that EGCG is a powerful zinc ionophore – told me:
We did not try to visualize or measure the entrance of EGCG into the liposome, helped by zinc … although it is obvious that EGCG must enter the liposome together with Zinc , or together with another metal, never alone by itself. Thus, if zinc enters the liposome, if follows that EGCG has also entered the liposome.
Zinc also has antioxidant properties. Therefore, zinc may help reduce the oxidation of EGCG before it is transported into the cells.
Therefore, there are several lines of evidence indicating that taking EGCG together with zinc may be a powerful combination in fighting Covid.
It is worth conducting bigger, better in vivo studies to determine the potential of EGCG and zinc in protecting against the worst symptoms of Covid.
Hydroxychloroquine and Coronavirus …
Zinc is a very powerful way to strengthen your body against viruses. The National Institutes of Health notes:
Zinc is found in cells throughout the body. It helps the immune system fight off invading bacteria and viruses.
Moreover:
An abundance of evidence has accumulated over the past 50 years to demonstrate the antiviral activity of zinc against a variety of viruses, and via numerous mechanisms.
***
Ionic zinc possesses unique and distinct antiviral properties against a number of human viruses …. Zinc has been shown to contribute to a number of innate and adaptive immune signaling pathways that have been comprehensively reviewed recently.
***
Upon recognition of microbial antigens … a rapid and transient influx of free zinc ions occurs.
***
Zinc plays a significant role in the response to [interferons] by modulating secretion, cytokine potency, and receptor binding, as well as influencing signaling intermediates and pathway inhibitors.
Harvard notes:
Zinc is a component of many enzymes and transcription factors in cells all over the body, and inadequate zinc levels limit the individual’s ability to mount an adequate immune response to infections. Multiple meta-analyses and pooled analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have shown that oral zinc supplementation reduces the incidence rate of acute respiratory infections by 35%, shortens the duration of flu-like symptoms by approximately 2 days, and improves the rate of recovery. The studies were conducted in the US as well as in multiple low- and middle-income countries such as India, South Africa, and Peru. The dose of zinc in these studies ranged from 20 mg/week to 92 mg/day. Dose does not appear to be the main driver of the effectiveness of zinc supplementation. [More on this below.]
Zinc was shown to inhibit viral replication in many other types of coronavirus, including in the original SarsCov coronavirus. Many common colds are actually mild coronaviruses, and as UCHealth points out:
A Cochrane review updated in 2013 summarized 18 randomized controlled trials involving 1,781 participants across all age groups found that zinc – particularly in lozenge or syrup form – “inhibits replication of the virus” that cause the common cold and shortens average duration of the common cold when taken within 24 hours of onset of symptoms at a dose of more than 75 milligrams a day.
A 2010 study led by University of Leiden Medical researchers in the Netherlands sought to understand how zinc inhibited that replication. The team reported that zinc inhibits a cousin of SARS-CoV-2: SARS-CoV, the original SARS of the 2003 outbreak.
And it could be very helpful in fighting this specific type of coronavirus, SarsCov2 (i.e. Covid):
Interestingly, most of the risk groups described for COVID-19 are at the same time groups that were associated with zinc deficiency. As zinc is essential to preserve natural tissue barriers such as the respiratory epithelium, preventing pathogen entry, for a balanced function of the immune system and the redox system, zinc deficiency can probably be added to the factors predisposing individuals to infection and detrimental progression of COVID-19. Finally, due to its direct antiviral properties, it can be assumed that zinc administration is beneficial for most of the population, especially those with suboptimal zinc status.
***
The fact that zinc deficiency is responsible for 16% of all deep respiratory infections world-wide provides a first strong hint on a link of zinc deficiency with the risk of infection and severe progression of COVID-19 and suggests potential benefits of zinc supplementation.
***
Infections with coronaviruses go along with damage of the ciliated epithelium and ciliary dyskinesia consecutively impairing the mucociliar clearance. It was shown that physiological concentrations of zinc increase ciliary beat frequency. Moreover, zinc supplementation in zinc deficient rats had a positive effect on the number and the length of bronchial cilia …. Improved ciliary clearance does not only improve the removal of virus particle, it also reduces the risk of secondary bacterial infections ….
***
Zinc is essential for preserving tissue barriers
***
Zinc … might decrease ACE-2 expression and thus viral entry into the cell.
***
As a virus, SARS-CoV2 is highly dependent on the metabolism of the host cell. Direct antiviral effects of zinc have been demonstrated in various cases …. Examples include coronaviridae [i.e. coronaviruses].
***
Zinc supplementation improves the mucociliary clearance, strengthens the integrity of the epithelium, decreases viral replication, preserves antiviral immunity, attenuates the risk of hyper-inflammation, supports anti-oxidative effects and thus reduces lung damage and minimized secondary infections.
Need to Catch a Ride
However, it is difficult for zinc to get into your cells unless it catches a ride from a “zinc ionophore”. An ionophore is just a substance which transports things across the lipid boundary of your cells.
Hydroxychloroquine is a zinc ionophore.
Another drug, clioquinol, is even more potent. One of the scientists who discovered that chloroquine is a zinc ionophore (Dr. Wei-Qun Ding from the University of Oklahoma) told me that he estimates that clioquinol is 10 times more powerful as a zinc ionophore compared to hydroxychloroquine.
Leslie Costello – an oncology professor at the University of Maryland – agrees that clioquinol is a more powerful zinc ionophore than hydroxychloroquine:
ZnClioquinol [i.e. clioquinol zinc ionophore] has a zinc-binding affinity of logKf=7-8; which is ideal for the competitive binding of most of the plasma zinc that exists in the exchangeable ZnLigands. In contrast, chloroquine zinc ionophore (ZnChloroquine) has a logKf=5-6. Consequently, it competitively binds with much less zinc that is delivered to the … site.
However, most scientists believe that clioquinol is much more dangerous than hydroxychloroquine.
Moreover, both clioquinol and hydroxychloroquine are only available in the U.S. by prescription. The science around hydroxychloroquine is so politically charged at the moment that it is difficult to obtain a prescription, and some have warned of dangerous side effects of hydroxychloroquine (I won’t give you my own opinion on this issue; make up your own mind). And hydroxychloroquine is important for people with certain conditions such as lupus, and so – if everyone took hydroxychloroquine – it would create a shortage for those people.
More importantly, even those who believe that hydroxychloroquine is helpful against Covid say that it is only effective if taken very soon after catching the disease. But many people are asymptomatic (at least at first), and don’t know they have Covid until it’s too late.
So how can you know to take something when you don’t even know you have a bug?
Fortunately, the main active ingredient in green tea, epigallocatechin gallate (“EGCG”) has been shown by a team of Spanish scientists to be 60% as powerful a zinc ionophore as clioquinol, which is the world’s most powerful zinc ionophore. Dr. Juan Bautista Fernández Larre – a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili – and his team have published several scientific papers on the topic.
The following graph summarizes their findings:
In the graph, “CQ” stands for clioquinol, “EGCG” is the ingredient in green tea, and “QCT” stands for quercetin, a common ingredient in certain foods such as capers, red apple peels and red onions.
Professor Fernández Larre explained to me by email:
Taking Clioquinol (CQ) as the standard, as its the most potent ionophore we have tested in our liposomal assay, and assigning a 100% value to the clioquinol ionophoric activity , then pyrithione (PYR), which is not a polyphenol, displays also almost a 100% activity relative to clioquinol, whereas epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) has 60% activity and quercetin (QCT) has only 30% the efficiency of clioquinol, on a equimolar basis. Nonetheless, this is a proof of concept assay, and exact ionophoric capacity of each compound will vary with the absolute and relative concentrations of the ionophore and of zinc; it will also depend on temperature, pH of the solution and lipid composition of the liposome (absolute and relative amounts of lecithin, other phospholipids, cholesterol, etc). It will also vary dependent on the fluorochrome used to detect zinc in the interior of the liposome (FluoZinc, Zinquin, etc) and on the concentration of the fluorochrome within the liposome, since different fluorochromes display different strengths to separate zinc from the polyphenol zinc complex.
In any case, in the exact standardized conditions used in our assay, we can conclude the relative ionophoric effect of the different compounds tested. It is, I think, important to remark that the liposomal assay allows to elaborate a scale or a standard of ionophoric strength or ionophoric capacity or potential; and that, once established through this assay that a compound behaves as an ionophore in a liposome, we can say that it will also be ionophoric in any type of cell, as this effect is independent of content of protein, glycoprotein, glycolipids, of the cell membrane, although of course it will vary according to the fluidity of the cell membrane, that depends on its exact lipid composition.
So what does this mean?
If professor Ding is correct that clioquinol is 10 times as powerful as hydroxychloroquine, and given that EGCG is .6 times as powerful as clioquinol, that means that EGCG could be a lot more powerful than hydroxychloroquine. In other words, EGCG could be 6 times more powerful than hydroxychloroquine as a zinc ionophore (EGCG =.6 times as potent as clioquinol which is times 10 as powerful as hydroxychloroquine … so .6 times 10 = 6).
And green tea is super healthy for you anyway. So, drinking it every day preventatively can only help you, and can’t hurt you. You’ll be maintaining a high baseline of zinc ionophores, and so, bathing your cells with zinc to help ward of viral infections.
How to Take Zinc and EGCG
The Mayo Clinic notes that zinc should be taken on an empty stomach:
Zinc supplements are most effective if they are taken at least 1 hour before or 2 hours after meals.
***
When zinc combines with certain foods it may not be absorbed into your body and it will do you no good. If you are taking zinc, the following foods should be avoided or taken 2 hours after you take zinc:
Bran
Fiber-containing foods
Phosphorus-containing foods such as milk or poultry
Whole-grain breads and cereals
Oysters and oyster extract are the highest food source of zinc, although many meats also contain good doses. (If you eat a lot of red meat, you’re probably getting enough zinc; but you still need a zinc ionophore to get it into your cells). If you take zinc supplements, don’t take more than the recommended daily amount (40 mg a day is the upper limit for long term supplement use; indeed, too much zinc can actually suppress immunity), and studies imply that it is best to dissolve the zinc in your mouth (i.e. zinc lozenges).
The same is true for EGCG … proteins bind with EGCG, so it can’t be absorbed very well by your body. (And some green teas are higher in EGCG than others.) If you take EGCG supplements, never take high doses. For example, studies show that 800 mg/day can cause liver damage.
I’m not talking about taking away anything from your diet. For example, I’m not saying quit drinking coffee and instead drink tea. I still drink plenty of coffee … but I just add green tea to my daily intake.
Note: I am not a health professional and this article is solely general information, and not intended to diagnose or treat. Please see your doctor before deciding to change anything you’re doing.
Postscript: Exercise may also be helpful.
You have tried to copy in an article from Zerohedge. This is a link to the original article on Zerohedge.
The article links to a research article called Antiviral activity of green tea and black tea polyphenols in prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19: A review
This is an article about tea alone. The Conclusion section says,
It sounds to me as if tea by itself tends to reduce diseases of many kinds. I drink a lot of green tea, myself.
The fellow writing the ZH article seems to have an interest in the role of zinc, and has been writing articles about the subject previously. He also links to a new zinc article. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12230108/
I am afraid some of the rest is over my head.
People who are interested in this subject may want to read the academic article involved.
Gail the Actuary!! Been following your BRILLIANT WORK FOR decades, back when the nick name came up! This is usual excellent work, BUT needs to be considered with the today factor of political and MEDIA manipulation for money which did not exist before.
Well documented that Gates is pushing for the vaccine, and gave Fauci $100 Million, and he and big pharma OWN the WHO. VERIFIABLE FACTS!
I did a search on the government payments for virus testing, and admissions to hospitals and put on ventilators. $90 for a virus test, diagnosis with virus at hospital, $13,000, put on a ventilator is $39,000. Government regulation.
“Anything the government subsidizes you will get more of!!”
Drive through tests, and now testing infants!!! MEGA “CASES” FOUND EVERYWHERE!!
These two articles linked below shed more light on the subject.
Many hundreds of Billions at stake for this massive coordinated effort.
Sweden can be left out for not being stupid. Bernays, master of Propaganda, is grinning.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/bretigne-shaffer/the-pharmaceutical-narrative-is-failing/
Sweden vs New Zealand, USA and rest of the world. Nine minute video with FACTS for Stupids vs Common Sense and Science.
Video: New Zealand has painted themselves to a corner, because the population will grow increasingly vulnerable to disease of many kinds, as immunity declines from long-term loss of contact of viruses of all kinds from outside..
Sweden is now experiencing lower deaths than average. Sweden has managed to get COVID immunity up. Stockholm is back up and partying. Modelers made all kinds of inaccurate assumptions.
I sort of agree with this assessment of the situation, although i am not yet sure that Sweden has really hit herd immunity. It may take two or three rounds of COVID-19 to hit herd immunity. By that time, the first round may have worn off.
Swedish data on Worldometers seems to be all over the place. The official picture seems to be that the daily case fall has now halted and could possibly be starting to tick higher again. There were many restrictions though some were not mandated. I’ve felt that it was a more sensible approach but we haven’t seen the end of that story yet.
Sadly, New Zealand has now had some possible community transmission and Auckland is going into what we term Level 3 lockdown (not as severe as the highest level, 4) for now. Damn it. I’ll have to get the masks out.
It is funny how Taiwan conveniently and always is being omitted. I’m beginning to spot a pattern here from the DS stooges: “Praising” Sweden and dissing NZ while “forgetting” Taiwan. It is pathetic.
Here an overview over the discussion within the German oppositional movement to the current Covid strategy:
The test detects immune people, not infected. Tested “cases” say, this person had anytime in the past contact with any virus of the corona family. The test is great as a search test but not for measuring epidemic infections. Infections need to be validated with other measures. The numbers published are fraud and contradict e.g. numbers of respiratory infections from other sources. Any idea to measure “virus load” will not help the situation.
People are not infectuous without symptoms. There is no asymptomatic carrier. The (unprofessional) mask does not help to reduce infections, there is not even one study to show this. The virus is similar to its fellow strains from the corona family and as such not any larger danger to healthy people. It can develop a severe danger to immune suppressed people or with diabetes or obesity and multimorbid patients that are very old. Vaccination will be of no advantage. What is needed is a protection of risk groups. There is a very secure treatment with Hydroxycloroquin (mind the dosis and favism!), Vitamin C, D, Zinc and eventually Heparin.
This is what more and more experts say. There are reputed lawyers speculating about the necessity of Den Haag trials.
There is no medical or scientific basis for any lockdown. As it seems big pharma is making big business here. The governments are not able to save us from criminal action.
For those who want to hear it from the mouth of a medical expert refer to this German/English video. Go to position 3:30:00 (3,5 hours) there is long German discussion before the interesting parts in English:
https://youtu.be/yiIVQoWYcrU
As you might have realized there has been a large demonstration in Berlin with huge masses of protestants. The Merkel government speaks of 20.000, the pictures look more like 500.000 or even 1 million (similar to the Loveparade), that would be in the category of the protestants against the German Democratic Republic, that brought down its Government. Lawyers are trying to make public the original police data.
The governments are increasing their monetarian help to large companies like Lufthansa, Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank. On the other hand full industries are closed. The promised payments to workless or self-employed are not reaching their purpose.
From my point of view it is time to have a broader discussion.
From a macroeconomical point of view it does not make sense to strenghen the supply side, especially not with companies with an outdated business model, and shorten the demand side. Governments are fuelling deflation.
With Covid-19 the pharma and health industry is making big money. If the critics are right all this money spent now and in future for testing and vaccinations does not help human health. The economic contraction will reduce health and food opportunities. But people who are invested into pharma profit massively.
Is fraud-too-big-to-fail a consequence of too little better investment opportunities – as a result of peak energy? Have we reached the tipping point? Do the structures that helped to build up the capitalist advantages now accellerate the downturn? If that be right, peakoil will be a cliff and Hubbart was wrong.
I have been saying that peak oil will be a cliff. There is no reason to believe that Hubbert’s curve has any relevance, after the peak. The peak is brought about inadequate demand and failing supply lines. Pretty much all of the fossil fuels that seem to be left will remain in the ground.
I listened to part of the English discussion starting at 3:30.
She is saying that there was no reason for the lockdown, even at the beginning. Authorities should have known how damaging the lockdown would be. The disease had already spread, back when it started.
She says, “Somebody is trying to do something,” regarding the COVID-19 deaths. She thinks doctors were intentionally ignoring cheap solutions.
The publicized hydroxychloroquine tests were given at way too high a dose, too late in the course of the disease. A tiny dose was needed, much earlier in treatment. WHO recommended this crazy test. The low dose had been used successfully in Wuhan and also earlier with SARS.
In her view, WHO has lost credibility and honesty.
I don’t agree with her belief that coronavirus only causes illness from December to March. She thinks that the later illnesses just come distorted PCR tests. Again, I don’t agree.
Hi Gail,
I agree with “changing” the strategy and looking at things like Vitamin D – which is very strongly associated with death from all causes and also Covid-19 (if low).
One more overlooked topic is Vitamin C. Not 2 grams, not 20 grams – but 100 grams oder even 200 grams a day – in severe cases like acute viral influenza, acute polio, acute ebola and the like.
As tip for reading I can recommend Dr. T. Levy Book “Curing the incurable”: https://www.medfoxpub.com/medicalnews/product/S-CTI/Curing-the-Incurable/Amazing-results-in-the-treatment-of-disease-and-toxins/ – Blew my mind… had new idea… and the dimension wrong.
Also the books “Death by calcium”, “Magnesium: Reversing disease” and “Hidden Epidemic” from the same author are extremly noteworthy. I’ve read a lot of health books – but Levy gets his focus on the loverlooked topics of prime importance and ends with very practical suggestions and interventions which are backed by science and documented clinical evidence.
Hope that helps. Sorry
Best,
Hans
I looked up Levy’s “Curing the Incurable,” and it gets very good reviews on Amazon, too.
I thought about mentioning vitamin C in this post too, but I figured I was pushing my luck trying to get people to think about vitamin D.
One can short the whole story for most, if reduced to 4 things:
Magnesium (400+ mg elementar as Malat, Glycinate, …), Vitamin C (x grams if healthy and xx-xxx grams if sick), Vitamin D3 (depends… for most approx 3000-5000 IE) and K2 (as MK7, 200 µg and MK4, 1 mg) are oft prime importance.
And never-ever calcium as supplement – and limit your intake on milk products. Also be very cautious with iron and copper – even and especially if fortified (like many cereals which may even use iron fillings). Never Vitamin D fortified calcium products! Vitamin C makes the collagen-backbone of bones, D&K allocate the calcium there – the body is basically never missing additional calcium.
Best,
hans
I think your supplement recommendations and dosages are excellent, Hans.
Great !! No solution to virus. Economy Will sufer still not collapsed
It is hard for me to see a solution to the virus, other than that we are forced to pretty much live with it. Any shutdowns eliminate jobs and food supplies. Running away from the virus pushes us toward collapse.
I’m hoping someone here can help me out.
I was a member of a Slack group called “The Reset” that was deleted while I was on vacation last week. The discussions were based loosely around Cathal Haughian’s books. I’m guessing it was not actually deleted, but relocated.
I know some of the members often reference and even post on OFW.
If one of you see this, can you let me know if the site was relocated and possibly help me regain access.
let me know too please
There had been a group on telegram called „not reset“ what Obviously also was ended! Or I lost it somehow ?!
I was in it!
Hi El mar – were you PKWON in the Slack group?
I was able to get into the Telegram group – I tracked down Peter G. on Twitter. If you DM me your Telegram account name via Twitter @MH79127903 I can add you.
You can also click on my profile picture above and send your Telegram account name to my e-mail address.
“I’m guessing it was not actually deleted, but relocated.”
Reset, if you will.
So, what is it they propose to reset? Debt? Civilization?
I have those books, and I remember visiting Haughian’s “Before the Collapse” website, but I had not kept up with it. It’s gone, too, and *no* Internet archive (wayback machine) is available, that I can ferret out.
I guess someone is covering tracks.
I could never decide if Putrid was highly intelligent and informed, or just delusional and full of himself. Either way, he was entertaining to read!
Before we can move forward with a “live with it” kind of approach we need to much more fully understand the personal health situations that lead to serious cases of Covid-19 beyond vitamin d levels etc. Also we need to understand the full range of damage that the Virus can do to ones body even if you don’t die, or get a moderate case. Also, we need to understand if there are genetic makeups, or specific health situations that lead to certain young people getting serious cases. People need to be able to make a risk calculation in their own minds about their own situation before going back to normal activities.
Perhaps how we need to think of the situation is not that we “decide,” but that we are forced to do something different from what we initially chose to do. The cost of the initial decision is just too high in terms of unemployed people and in unplayable debt. The unemployed people start riots. Young people become very unhappy. We haven’t yet run into the missing food problem, but I expect that by next spring, quite a few place in the world will discover that food supplies are below normal levels.
We can see what is happening, in slow motion. But not exactly how.
By the way, Trump’s move to try to reduce taxes collected for Social Security will mean that Social Security is even more underfunded than before. I don’t know whether that leads to an attempt to cut Social Security benefits (probably not) or that there is some international currency crisis that causes a major problem. Banks will no longer want to do business with some other banks, for example. It is hard to understand how all this plays out.
Seneca,
Your comment reads like Covid-19 is the only issue we have to deal with, or the main one, if only. Echoing Gail’s comments, the other side of the coin is economic Armageddon and an increasingly likelihood that millions are going to starve (‘the plan’?), due to the past and current attempts to stop the spread of Covid-19, such as lockdown, anti-social distancing, limiting numbers who can be in an enclosed space (including work places). Personally, I think the economic damage is done and irreversible, but waiting until we fully understand everything about the virus is just going to cause more economic damage.
Regardless of a ‘forest for the trees’ outlook to move on from this pandemic before there is a vaccine, I’m not about to risk my lungs or any other vital organs on a roll of the dice with risky behavior. I’m wearing my mask & social distancing (although people walk right next to you in stores), until there is a vaccine. Even if the vaccine isn’t 100% effective, if it’s good enough to eliminate for the most part damage to vital organs, I’ll get the shot and still wear the mask until it seems much safer. I think a viable vaccine is likely and I’ll move forward to such time as it available. Good luck to those and those around them that toss caution to the wind.
It’s possible to be cautious without pining for a vaccine. (Gail made that point with regard to immune system health, for example.) Many of us steered clear of vaccines long before COVID-19 appeared, And now with Mr; Bloody Bill Gates and other nut jobs pushing vaccines, we see all the more reason to avoid them. But with so many independent thinkers on OFW, I’m happy that no one who advocates for and believes in vaccines will be impressed by what I have to say on the subject.
The germ theory of disease is still not universally appreciated. Facts matter more than opinions.
How about the territory theory of disease, Mark? That’s even less appreciated than the Germ one. Moreover, perceptions matter more than facts. Perceptions and not facts will dictate whether individuals will wear masks, maintain social distance, take vaccines, or bathe themselves in Holy Water.
There is no study to show decreased infections with a non-professional mask. If you belong to the risk group (immune suppression, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer – high age alone is not a risk) you should not rely on wearing a mask. It will not protect you.
Not even close to true.
My favorite examples.
Japan has had relatively few cases, in part due to the culture of mask wearing, which predates CV.
In May, masks prevented an outbreak in Springfield Missouri. There were two employees of a barber shop who were symptomatic and infectious. They were forced to work while sick – no paid sick leave for them. They cut about a hundred people’s hair. Since the new normal required customers to leave their contacts, the public health department followed up, tested everyone, and found that masks prevented transmission.
The poster child for the anti-mask campaign is former Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain, who made the fatal mistake to ignore public health. He attended Trump’s rally in Tulsa in June and spent a month in the ICU afterwards. RIP (even though I don’t share his politics). Viruses don’t care about opinions.
thank you for presenting reality to the conspiracy theory that masks do not help.
Taiwan had a spike recently, and is now up to 30 live cases (480 total, 7 deaths). All the live cases are supposedly imported (Taiwan citizens returning from the USA or the Philippines, for instance), and I think we’d know if there was domestic transmission going on. The thing is, we can’t relax until other countries have got their situations under control too. I’m not sure the USA ever will, and that’s one of the countries that Taiwan normally has lots of contact with.
Similar situation here in New Zealand. No community transmission for over 3 months but just over 20 active cases from returning citizens and residents. It’s hard to know what to do from here. Apart from tourism in and out of the country, life is pretty much normal but tourism is a big earner, so even if there are no leaks from border quarantines I’m sure we will get a new outbreak eventually as the pressure to reopen borders becomes too great.
Many hundreds of Billions at stake for this massive coordinated effort. Sweden can be left out for not being stupid. Bernays is grinning.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/bretigne-shaffer/the-pharmaceutical-narrative-is-failing/
Sweden vs New Zealand, USA and rest of the world. Nine minute video with FACTS for Stupids vs Common Sense and Science.
If you are both wearing masks, the combination seems to be protective, because the other person’s mask screens the outgoing viruses.
I think you get close to the same effect if you use a mask plus a clear face shield, like doctors and dentists use. You can buy the clear face shields online. They certainly do provide some extra protection. No one has actually tested this, but I heard one doctor saying that in his hospital, the combination seemed to be enough to get the cases transmitted with the hospital down to pretty much zero. Even if the combination is not enough to protect health care providers dealing with very sick patients, it would seem to be enough for a person wanting to protect himself from viruses floating around. It is a lot better than a mask alone, when others aren’t wearing them.
One of the things we should be doing is believing what we are being told. Many liberals in the alternative media, James Howard Kunstler being one of them has figured out this whole Covid 19 is a scam. It’s a scam being played to the benefit of the opposition who want to see the eCONomy go into a free-for-all so voters can put them in power in November. Pardon the pun but to me Covid 19 is a big sick joke and the losers are the Plebs for all the wrong reasons.
Economist and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts wrote a piece on why the opposition is playing the Covid 19 card and why with all the wealth of information from the Medical Community, Anthony Fauci is discrediting along with the Presstitute Media Hydroxychloroquine
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/08/06/tucker-carlson-announces-george-floyd-fatally-overdosed-with-fentanyl-and-a-lawsuit-is-brought-to-force-release-of-hcq-to-the-public/
“One of the things we should be doing is NOT believing what we are being told.”
covid19 is a scam?
kunstler is a liberal?
phew… did you lose your foil hat?
Yes it’s a scam and Kunstler has admitted he’s a liberal. No tinfoil hat needed. We shut down the world’s economy for this? How many have died “FROM” Covid 19 out of a population of 7.8 billion people?
That question (how many people have died) can only be properly answered once the virus spread has largely died out. If it doesn’t die out, the question can never be answered.
That question will *never* be answered because the dead *from* S-C-2 numbers can not be trusted at all.
PS) Sweden: The largest group of dead “with” S-C-2 is 80-90 years old, the second largest group is 90+ years old – what does that tell you?
https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/har-sprider-sig-coronaviruset/
It tells me that, in Sweden, the official numbers (which you don’t trust) suggest the largest group of dead “with” S-C-2 is 80-90 years old, the second largest group is 90+ years old.
The conclusion of the Swedish “experiment” is that even in extremely individualistic societies, people do care about their elderly. Wanna know why it died off? Once the abandoned and overly ripe old coots fell victims to the invisible enemy, that was basically it.
In more collectivist Taiwan, even that wasn’t allowed to happen. Which is kudos to them.
“covid19 is a scam?”
C-19 might be on par with a hefty flu maybe but everything else is just scapegoating, distracting etc.
I’ll start with what *you* tell me.
So the entire world is in a on a scam because of the USA election? That is a little USA centric, isn’t it?
No. it isn’t because of any election. It’s just because in a finite planet gowth forever is physically impossible.
No, it isn’t, it is because a centralized government will make mistakes and make the wrong decisions with catastrophic consequences. The proper response is to compare the actions and outcomes of independent regions, evaluate their effectiveness and copy the best strategies.
You know, it sort of reminds of evolution.
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/68378447.jpg