You have commented 340 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
They Keep Moving the COVID-19 Goalposts: Will the Next Step Be Masks to Protect From the Flu and the Common Cold?
2020-07-27
[PJMedia] How did we go from "flatten the COVID-19 curve" to "shut up and wear the mask—or else" in just a few short months? Back in March, we were told that lockdowns were necessary to ensure COVID-19 cases would not overwhelm hospitals and, in particular, intensive-care units. In most parts of the country, hospitals were not only not overwhelmed, many were forced to lay off nurses and other employees because elective procedures were put on hold — a move that likely cost lives as people postponed health critical screenings and avoided going to the hospital when they had chest pains for fear of catching COVID-19.

Before we go any further, please hear what I am not saying. I’m not denying COVID-19 is a serious and sometimes deadly illness. It is, and many families are grieving the loss of loved ones who’ve died of it. And many families are grieving the loss of loved ones from the flu, from auto accidents, and from cancer. Death catches up to all of us eventually.

I’m also not denying that masks can slow down the spread of disease. They can.

But at the beginning of the pandemic, we were assured that once hospitals had things under control we could go back to our regularly scheduled lives, with the understanding that as things reopened and testing increased there would be a spike in the number of cases. Now it seems the goalposts are moving again and we’re being sent into further lockdown —in some cases more stringent lockdowns than before — by governors and other mini-tyrants who are in panic mode because people are catching a contagious (but not very deadly for most people) disease that is, you know, contagious.

Case in point, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who on Wednesday announced a statewide mask order that came with a threat: We’d all better obey him if we want schools to open in the fall....

But while the number of diagnosed cases of COVID-19 has risen in Ohio over the last month, hospital admissions haven't kept up and the number of deaths has plummeted...
[Graphs in link.]
You have to dig around the Ohio Dept. of Health website to find these numbers. When you land on the site you're greeted with a graph showing the cumulative number of deaths and hospitalizations, which make it appear there's been a huge spike, when in fact it's showing the growth of the cumulative total over time....

You have to dig around the Ohio Dept. of Health website to find these numbers. When you land on the site you're greeted with a graph showing the cumulative number of deaths and hospitalizations, which make it appear there's been a huge spike, when in fact it's showing the growth of the cumulative total over time....
Posted by:Clem

#47  Poison, well.
Posted by: Lumpy Mussolini7603   2020-07-27 22:29  

#46  I am done with RB for now. The shitstirrer fucktard that goes by the nic gromgoro can rot in hell. Bye troll.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike   2020-07-27 21:22  

#45  
Posted by: Woodrow   2020-07-27 19:02  

#44  I'd take Homer Van Meter's word first.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-07-27 17:47  

#43  "Who ya gonna believe The Worldometer Me? Or your own lying eyes?"
Posted by: Frank G   2020-07-27 17:14  

#42  Yep
Posted by: Frank G   2020-07-27 17:10  

#41  "And all" would be First Church of World-o-Meter?
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-07-27 16:04  

#40  #37 - understood. Magic numbers and all
Posted by: Frank G   2020-07-27 15:52  

#39  "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breeze."

Gen. "Buck" Turgidson predicting deaths from all out nuclear war with the Soviet Union in Dr Strangelove..

One wonders what Kubrick would do with COVID. And who do you get to play Fauci now that Heath Ledger is dead?
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-07-27 15:36  

#38  *Quote is from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when they are brainstorming how to scare people.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2020-07-27 15:20  

#37  Re; #10. Frank, it's a religion. It's a waste of time trying to bring fanatics around.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-07-27 15:01  

#36  Everyone must wear a mask to get into Walmart here. Once inside a noticeable percentage of people take them off. Walmart staff aren't saying anything, would you stick your neck out on what they are being paid?

It's a dance. Some people dance better than others. Some people refuse to dance. There are still places in the world where dancing is outlawed (unless you are a young boy wearing makeup.)
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-07-27 15:00  

#35  #32 Well put. "Adapt, improvise, overcome. Just stay away from the screaming Karens directing the effort with 'overkill' in how we conduct our lives." I see the Karens everyday. Biting tongues and verbal harangues. Just a small few of men but overwhelmingly women. Good to be a single man these days.
Posted by: Dale   2020-07-27 14:30  

#34  A disease SOOOO deadly you need a test to work out if you had it, is not a modern version of bubonic plague...
Lockdown was a mistake, and the current below normal rate of mortality shows it was not an especially high risk virus.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2020-07-27 13:48  

#33  Strong words, P2k.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-07-27 13:43  

#32  Argumentum ad absurdum?

Yes there is a disease. Yes it can kill. Yes it can kill any age group or race. What we hold questionable is the numbers and statistics being pushed and proclamations from 'experts' that fall flat too many times. Hell, we live with The Plague. Adapt, improvise, overcome. Just stay away from the screaming Karens directing the effort with 'overkill' in how we conduct our lives.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2020-07-27 13:32  

#31  Since you all agree covid is hoax, I must concede - vox populi vox blydei
Posted by: g(r)omgoru PB   2020-07-27 13:17  

#30  >The NHS was understaffed, overworked,

No the NHS is OVER-STAFFED and UNDER-WORKED.
They're all "busy" but serving patient needs is not what they're mainly up to.

Just imagine how poorly academia teaches, and imagine that as how the NHS treats.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2020-07-27 13:10  

#29  "What I need is something so scary it will clear 300 square miles of every living Christian soul."



Posted by: Skidmark   2020-07-27 11:51  

#28  “We get the most protection if both parties wear masks,” Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech who studies viral air droplet transmission, wrote in an email. She was speaking about transmission of COVID-19 as well as other respiratory illnesses.
Posted by: crazyhorse   2020-07-27 11:42  

#27  And when people wearing dirty masks start getting ill, they'll makes some more laws and decrees to protect our health.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2020-07-27 11:27  

#26  A cloth mask has zero efficacy stopping this virus. Zero. On the rare occasion that media addresses the issue they'll hedge and say something along the lines of 'it's better than nothing,' which actually overstates their utility. So what's going on? My view is that we are being told to physically manifest fear. Fear is driving this 'crisis,' not a disease. If we were to go about our normal lives, without wearing fear on our faces, then the constant stream of media FUD would quickly fade into the background. We'd forget about it.
Posted by: Iblis   2020-07-27 11:25  

#25  Of course they will. They will claim there is no way to tell the difference in public when people have a common cold, so just to be safe we need to mask up.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2020-07-27 11:08  

#24  "What I need is something so scary it will clear 300 square miles of every living Christian soul."
Posted by: swksvolFF   2020-07-27 10:33  

#23   Shouldn't the NHS be saving British people, not the other way around?

The NHS was understaffed, overworked, under-sanitized, and putting patients prematurely on a palliative care death path long before the coronavirus showed up. The NHS was already not saving the British people, so clearly that is not their intended purpose.
Posted by: trailing wife   2020-07-27 10:27  

#22  ‘Save the NHS’

Sacrificed for the bureaucracy...

Shouldn't the NHS be saving British people, not the other way around?

One of the reasons I trust the COVID rentocracy less even than the CAGW looters.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2020-07-27 10:15  

#21  Nurse brawls with ranting passenger on the Chicago subway who tried to blame health care workers for coronavirus
Posted by: Skidmark   2020-07-27 09:44  

#20  Chinese doctor who diagnosed early coronavirus cases in Wuhan says local officials covered up the scale of the initial outbreak
Posted by: Skidmark   2020-07-27 09:40  

#19  ^ This. Any damage done to Orange Man is considered a pleasant bonus by the bureaucrats.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-07-27 09:12  

#18  Think every other country in the World fakes Covid 19 data to influence your November elections?

No. I expect that in a world rampant with health and medical bureaucracy, dependent upon the state for funding, to do what any human organization does, use any opportunity to redirect funding to their fiefdoms.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2020-07-27 09:07  

#17  Hitchens: ‘Excessive COVID Fears Have Completely Changed the Country [UK]’

Have government and the mainstream media gone too far in amplifying the risks and dangers to public health over Coronavirus? First they ordered the public to stay at home in order to ‘Save the NHS’ and save lives, and now as the virus has almost disappeared from public health statistics, the government of Boris Johnson is ordering the nation to wear face masks in stores and public spaces in order to supposedly stop the spread of the virus – after previously giving advice that masks were not needed outside medical and care settings.

“They deliberately stirred up excessive fear at the beginning, which has completely changed the nature of the country,” says Peter Hitchens.

He adds that, “What we had before was a country that was used to the disciplines of work, used to the disciplines of commuting…that link has now been broken.”

In this episode, talkRADIO’s Mike Graham speaks with UK journalist Peter Hitchens about how the government has instilled “excessive fear” of a coronavirus ‘second wave’ which has fundamentally altered the way people feel about returning to work. The result has been an economic free-fall which has no end in sight. Watch:
Posted by: Clem   2020-07-27 08:20  

#16  Oops!;
Posted by: Dale   2020-07-27 07:14  

#15  You mean like the data we were fed from China and Italy? /rhet question

Look at the data now. Think every other country in the World fakes Covid 19 data to influence your November elections? 16.5 million infected, 0.65 million dead in the service of DNC?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-07-27 07:04  

#14  
Posted by: Frank G   2020-07-27 06:59  

#13  And, instead, look at the rest of the world

You mean like the data we were fed from China and Italy? /rhet question
Posted by: Procopius2k   2020-07-27 06:56  

#12  Scared Ostrich Burying Its Head In Sand Stock Photo, Picture And ...
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-07-27 06:50  

#11  San Diego County public health officials have reported 283 new COVID-19 cases and no new deaths, raising the region's total number of cases to 26,984, with the death toll remaining at 533.

The county reported 7,505 diagnostic tests Saturday, 4% of which returned positive. The 14-day rolling average of positive tests is 5.6%. The target set by California is less than 8%. The seven-day daily average of tests is 9,201. Of the total positive cases, 2,391 -- or 8.9% -- required hospitalization and 614 -- or 2.3% -- were admitted to an intensive care unit.


Out of 3.3 Million and who knows how many crossing from Mexico
Posted by: Frank G   2020-07-27 06:46  

#10  But some choose Catastrophe M@sturbation
Posted by: Frank G   2020-07-27 06:34  

#9  Con virus plain and simple. I as well as many others grow tired of this political posturing charade. Fearing ghosts in the darkness all forms of human interactions become questioned. The brown shirts live among us and they have never left. I see it every day. This I call the true herd mentality or mob mentality. All at any moment can look upon another with what I call the stink eye. Wear your mask of invisibility and pretend all is well. Fear defies logic and will provoke actions of any variety or severity.
Posted by: Dale   2020-07-27 06:20  

#8  Maybe you should stop thinking in terms of "they" and "USA" P2k. And, instead, look at the rest of the world - you might learn something.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-07-27 03:30  

#7  ...and my unending position is GIGO. They undermine the entire process by mislabeling from the beginning. Then they play games with what numbers they have.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2020-07-27 03:16  

#6  #4 Do you mean "herd immunity"?
Because all epidemiologists believe in herd immunity - that's what they were taught in school.
And all politicians listened to epidemiologists, until bodies started piling up.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-07-27 03:04  

#5  #3 I think NY, followed by NJ, have and will retain worst C19 stats

(a) I'm talking about current stats - not history.
Current active cases:
California = 309,531; Florida = 376,134;
New York = 125,571.

Resolved cases = 100*Death/(Death + recovery)
California = 5.7%; Florida = 12.27%;
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-07-27 02:56  

#4  shoulda been "attempt to do what can't be done - control a prevalent virus".
Posted by: Verlaine   2020-07-27 01:58  

#3  I think NY, followed by NJ, have and will retain worst C19 stats. Not sure what "sides" and in particular any ideology involved. All of the current radical departures from conventional epidemiological wisdom (masks, lockdowns for a prevalent virus, even almost all of the "mitigation") are experiments that have shown no results, apart from the disastrous side-effects.

Science and public health in the US seem to incompetent, politicized, and even corrupted to be fixed, plus there's an ignorant misled public and a dead political class and no real press, so that looks like it's the new sub-normal. Ironically the UK might have some accountability and consequences for the arrogant attempt what actual science and history have taught can't be done.
Posted by: Verlaine   2020-07-27 01:57  

#2  ^That's why California & Florida have the worse covid-19 stats in USA.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-07-27 01:04  

#1  Ideology trumps reality. On both sides.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-07-27 00:55  

00:00