Epidemiology is the medical discipline that is keeping
the world and more specifically the American economy on lockdown. From Wikipedia: Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution
(who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease
conditions in defined populations. It is a cornerstone of public health, and
shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk factors
for disease and targets for preventive healthcare. Governments throughout
history have distorted and destroyed economies thru war, regulation and sheer
incompetence. The more typical problems are created by laws and regulation
designed for some policy goal like full employment, lower interest rates etc.
This is the first time in history where governments have deliberately cratered
their own economies on purpose. The stated goal this time around is to halt the
spread of the novel coronavirus called ‘covid-19’. Epidemiology is a medical
specialty and this essay will discuss what is missing in this data that is
presented non-stop by the mainstream media everywhere on the planet.
All animals die that
is mortality. Morbidity are conditions that take an animal from the normative
healthy state to a state of illness. Some illnesses are recovered from
completely like a common cold, some are always fatal like Amyotrophic Lateral
Sclerosis. Some diseases have full recoveries and also derive future immunity
such that the particular disease will be prevented in the future. If we
consider the human body to be a computer then the acquired immunity is the
software programming telling the hardware what to do. We program our immune
system by getting sick and then recovering. Any parent of young children is all
too familiar with this software paradigm.
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Modern science has sought to improve on the human immune system
by providing vaccinations. Vaccinations seek to trigger the immune response but
without the often unpleasant step of getting sick first. Wikipedia provides a
good introduction to vaccine science:
A vaccine is a biological preparation that
provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease. A vaccine typically contains
an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from
weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface
proteins. The agent stimulates the body’s immune
system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to
further recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that
agent that it may encounter in the future. Vaccines can be prophylactic (to prevent or ameliorate the effects of a future infection by a natural or “wild” pathogen), or therapeutic (e.g., vaccines
against cancer, which are being investigated).
The administration of vaccines is called vaccination. Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing
infectious diseases; widespread immunity due to vaccination is largely
responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the restriction of diseases such as polio, measles, and tetanus from much of the world. The effectiveness of vaccination has
been widely studied and verified; for example, vaccines that have proven
effective include the influenza
vaccine, the HPV
vaccine, and the chicken pox vaccine. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that
licensed vaccines are currently available for twenty-five different preventable infections.
The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived
from Variolae vaccinae (smallpox of the cow), the term devised
by Edward Jenner to denote cowpox. He used it in 1798 in the long title of his Inquiry into
the Variolae vaccinae Known as the Cow Pox, in which he described the
protective effect of cowpox against smallpox. In 1881, to honor Jenner, Louis
Pasteur proposed that the terms should be
extended to cover the new protective inoculations then being developed.
Vaccines work at
various levels of efficacy. Some like polio and measles work extremely well,
but other like the annual flu or other viruses that mutate quickly have various
levels of efficacy. Any chemical introduces to the sterile interior of the body
may cause problems that are called contra-indications. In a population of seven
billion people and no two people share the exact same chemical makeup except
identical twins there will be someone who reacts negatively to almost anything.
In college one of my professors told me about a strain of white rat that has
been developed by genetic selection to be very susceptible to almost anything,
to which he added writing on the skin with a graphite pencil can induce
lesions. The point here is that there are trade-offs in choosing vaccines.
Should we vaccinate school age children against the measles which can be a
devastating illness to many at the risk of the rare death of a few. Yes, I
would say, but as the efficacy wanes and the negative reactions increase the choices
become less than yes or no. I sent all of my children to college vaccinated
against meningitis which is rare but devastating largely based on how dirty I
remembered college dormitories to be. This was my choice. How and when to force
vaccination is a grey area and the subject of intense debate. My point here is
that flu/coronavirus efficacy may very well fall into this area. At age 50
would I get the vaccine? No, should I live to 80 probably, but this is my
choice not public policy.
There is a great deal
of medical information, ideas and conjectures spewed by the mainstream media
24×7. Much of it is scientistic:
information that looks scientific but in fact is not. The importance of this
cannot be overemphasized because this sad occurrence may be causing a great
deal of harm.
When someone dies in
the United States a licensed allopathic physician (Medical Doctor or Doctor of
Osteopathy) must sign the death certificate stating the cause of death. If the
deceased is elderly and foul play is not suspected then an autopsy is not
performed. The Center
for Disease Control is the government agency that is charged
with monitoring health of the American and World populations. It also collects
and publishes the mortality data from death certificates. This data is
published on their website and other locations. The data always lags the death
events. In April 2020 the most recent data on their website is for 2017. From
the CDC Fast Facts page:
Deaths and Mortality
Data are for the U.S.
- Number of deaths: 2,813,503
- Death rate: 863.8 deaths per 100,000 population
- Life expectancy: 78.6 years
- Infant Mortality rate: 5.79 deaths per 1,000 live births
Number
of deaths for leading causes of death:
- Heart disease: 647,457
- Cancer: 599,108
- Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
- Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
- Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
- Diabetes: 83,564
- Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672
- Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 50,633
- Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173
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Coronaviruses are not
new. They like Influenza have been around a long time and like the flu also
change from genetic mutation, that is changes, in their genetic chemical
constituency. Some mutations result in a weaker disease vector, some stronger.
Influenza in particular varies significantly from year to year and the annual
flu vaccine attempts to guess based on previous year what this year’s vaccine
should be. As we can see from the above table Influenza killed more than
fifty-five thousand people in 2017. The CDC publishes retroactive data on flu
efficacy. It can be found here. Flu vaccines do not work 100% of the
time that is they fail to prevent the flu in some percentage that received the
vaccine. The retroactive data publishes the fact that this particular
government program failed and actually fails to some extent each and every
year. Radical! If only the Department of Defense or the Department of State, or
any other government branch admitted failure. Every day I hear reporters ask
the experts when will the vaccine be available to save us from the ravages of
the coronavirus. The clamoring is nearly continuous.
A superb best-seller
published in 1994 was titled ‘How We Die’. Each chapter explained a
different cause of death. The author made the superb point that we all
ultimately die of the same thing: lack of adequate oxygen to the brain to
maintain homeostasis which is a fancy word for health. He also explained how a
single disease like heart disease can affect other organ systems like the
kidneys and the downward spiral begins. Heart attacks can be very quick, other
diseases like Alzheimer’s very slow. A disease condition that has concomitant
other factors are called ‘co-morbidities’. Co-morbidities are veryvery important when considering the
Covid-19 pandemic.
Back to the 2017 data
we can see the along with Influenza there is an additional category title
‘chronic lower respiratory diseases’ that added an additional 160,000+
fatalities. These are things that can be known facts like a lifelong smoker
that develop chronic obstructive pulmonary, and others can be suspected but not
known for certain like tuberculosis, these could be just educated guesses. Some
of us just have more vibrant cardiopulmonary capacity than others. Training
like long distance running could certainly help, but judicious selection of
parents (genetics) could be another. The truth is there is no such thing as a
healthy eighty year old, not in comparison to a fifty year old. There will
always be co-morbidities creeping like in.
Bill Sardi has written
eloquently and at length about possible co-morbidities like tuberculosis
causing covid-19 fatalities. Bill is not a doctor or even a scientist. He is an
author, like yours truly, that reads, thinks, collates and presents
information. He has made the point that natural immunity gets a boost from
sunlight exposure and that Influenza is nearly wiped out every year when the
winter wanes, the day gets longer, temperatures increase, and those of us that
live in the Northern Hemisphere get out of the house and get some fresh air. He
also says that most Americans have a Vitamin-D deficiency that should be
boosted with supplements and sunlight exposure. Colds, flus, and viral
infection do seem to me to be a lot less frequent when things are warm.
Sunlight creates
vitamin-D in the skin which is supposed to boost immunity. Another factor is
increased sunlight in terms of hours per day and a thinner atmosphere to
pass-thru which means the intensity of ultraviolet (UV) radiation increases
dramatically. Radiation from the sun radiates from the sun and is called
radiation, it is not the same radiation from radioactivity which radiates from
a decaying unstable nucleus. This is ionizing radiation and while the sun does
produce some it cannot pass-thru the atmosphere. Ultraviolet radiation is just
a higher energy form of light that we cannot see. UV plays havoc with organic
chemical bonds which is why too much UV and we get sunburn! This also means
that it destroys viruses and bacteria on surfaces quickly. Old school
barbershops used to have a small device they left their scissors and combs in
overnight that used UV radiation from a lamp to do the sun’s work. Lamps that
produce invisible UV also produce some purple light which is visible light at
the highest energy we can see. This is what a ‘black light’ does. Nature
produces melanin which makes the skin brown; very brown in sub-saharan Africans
and lighter shades of brown in other areas closer to the equator. Melanin
protects the body from the ravages of UV to a significant degree. The body’s
DNA genetic replication system has a specific enzyme that walks along the DNA
molecule and repairs UV damage; without this animals would never have gotten to
the multi-cellular stage of life!
This author has looked
for data in parts of the world that are much warmer than North America. Mexico,
Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia have billions of people yet the detailed
statistics and status of their populations with respect to the Covid-19
Pandemic are notably lacking. This could certainly lend or remove credibility
from Bill Sardi’s opinions. It might also tell us about what our near future
could be.
The crux of this essay
can now be addressed quite simply that what is lacking in all the media data
about the Covid-19 Pandemic is a simple histogram of Covid-19 fatalities by
age. It is also quite possible that mortality statistics for lower lung
co-morbidities are now being thrown into the Covid-19 category pumping the death
statistics that CNN displays non-stop. The CDC has this data, yet it is not
presented. Every death certificate has an age of the deceased so all that is
needed to plot a graph of the number of Covid-19 fatalities by age. This is
called a histogram and most of us can interpret
one. This will tell a lot about the co-morbidity issue that is almost certainly
present, we do not die of one thing but many, it is just a race to the end.
Sadly, I believe this information is being withheld on purpose, but that is one
man’s opinion. However, at some point in the future if the CDC provides us with
this data if we see that during the periods of Covid-19’s pandemic that the
lower lung category goes down then we have our answer.
If the CDC presented
this data, it would tell whether the reaction to this pandemic is justified. If
80% of all fatalities were under the age of 18 then it would, in my opinion,
certainly be justified as protecting America’s future and the brutal economic toll
exacted. On the other hand, if 80% of all fatalities were in persons 65 or
older then it would certainly not be justified because most of us at that age
are no longer working and are socially distanced already. If 80% of the
fatalities are in persons 80 or older then we have punished ourselves mightily
for no justifiable reason. Like almost all other government actions it punishes
most those at the bottom of the economic pyramid, the poor. People without
significant savings, vacation pay accrual or ability to borrow. History is
clear that the human misery index of alcoholism, drug abuse, divorce and
suicide all rise dramatically in every economic recession/depression. If this
turns out to be the case this time around it is reasonable to see and hear Anderson
Cooper Vanderbilt and his ilk present this needless tragedy long, loud and with
lots of fancy graphics to make the point that the experts were wrong and to
express sorrow and apology for their part in this needless world-wide human
carnage. Only time will tell. Governments admitting fault to any extent do not
exist.
In closing I would like to make the point that every
doctor is considered a medical expert and their opinions are to be taken as
scientific fact and that this is very dangerous.
Thanks to my 20 years of working in academic and enterprise healthcare I
learned that the majority of doctors do not have PhD’s and have not done
published peer-reviewed research at the level of rigor of a hard scientist like
a physicist, a chemist, biologist or a mathematician. Most physicians use the
product of science but that does not make them scientists and they should not
be treated as such. Talking heads that blither ‘scientistically’ just need to
be ignored. If we as a society do not, then we do so at our own peril.
George
Giles spent 15 years working at an elite private University and Medical Center.
Mercifully he got early retirement for time served. In college in Detroit he
worked in the meat processing industry. If you like sausage/healthcare then you
do not want to see what goes on behind the scenes at the slaughterhouse.