Dr. Fauci and the Scarf Lady are not the
only Virus Patrol miscreants spreading the Covid Hysteria and thereby
empowering the authorities to keep suffocating everyday economic life and
personal liberty in America.
In fact, there is a whole camarilla of current
and former health officials, purported disease experts, all-purpose talking
heads and other Washington apparatchiks who continue to appear on mainstream
media, peddling the hoary tale that coronavirus is some kind of horror flick
monster: It purportedly just keeps springing from its Lockdown grave –
whack-a-mole fashion – the instant officialdom relaxes its quarantine edicts.
Call these people the “groomers” of Big
Pharma, and their job is to keep public fears on the boil so that the demand
for high-priced treatments, cures and preventative vaccines becomes
overwhelming. And given that the Covid is now rapidly succumbing to the
exhaustion of its infection cycle and the summertime sun, their exact current
mission is one of bridging the gap.
That is, finding and publicizing
local outbreaks and “hot spots” during the months just ahead so that the Virus
Patrol will remain in full control of policy and the narrative until the Covid
makes its forecasted second wave rebound during next fall’s flu season.
After
all, they desperately need these hot spots to keep the aggregate narrative
alive because it is visibly collapsing by the day.
Back
in early May, for instance, the NYT breathlessly
carried a leaked study from the Trump Administration that projected a massive
surge of new infections and a near doubling of daily death rates by early June
relative to levels than extant:
As
President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his
administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of
coronavirus cases and deaths over the next several weeks. The daily death toll
will reach about 3,000 on June 1, according to an internal
document obtained by The New York Times, a 70 percent increase from the current number of about 1,750.
The
projections, based on government modeling pulled together by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases
each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases a
day currently.
The
numbers underscore a sobering reality: The United States has been hunkered down
for the past seven weeks to try slowing the spread of the virus, but reopening
the economy will make matters worse.
Needless
to say, that one went down the memory hole ages ago (i.e. around Memorial Day).
As of June 10, in fact, actual daily averages for the month to date were:
- 827 deaths per day, representing
a 53% decline, not a 70%
increase;
- 20,694 new cases per day,
representing a 17% decline,
not an 8X increase;
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In
other words, these Washington modelers (this one was prepared by FEMA) couldn’t
hit the broadside of a barn with the antiaircraft guns Chairman Kim uses to
dispatch his adversaries. So
to keep the Covid-Hysteria alive, they send out the hot spot “groomers”.
One
of the most mendacious of these groomers is Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who was the
Donald’s first FDA commissioner and is an alleged pedigreed “conservative” with
a berth at the American Enterprise Institute to burnish his numerous sinecures
with Big Pharma.
Gottlieb
is also a CNBC regular, and yesterday, sitting astride a screen crawler which
read “Texas reports second day of record hospitalizations”, he was busy
promulgating the “hot spot” news about two red states, whose merely semi-craven
GOP governors have belatedly attempted to get their economies back in business:
When you look at hotspot regions like Arizona and Texas,
they have to be concerned, particularly areas around Houston right now. They
could lose control of this very quickly,” says @ScottGottliebMD on
balancing re-opening with public health.
We call
bullshit!
Gottlieb
was peddling a pimple on the elephant’s ass because, apparently, cable TV
audiences generally and bubble vision’s especially, were born yesterday. That
is, they are infantile victims of recency and confirmation biases and will
apparently believe anything served up in a context-free modality.
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The truth is, there is nothing
worrisome whatsoever going on in Arizona and Texas beyond the fact that the
coronavirus started its inexorable spread in these interior states later than
on the East and Left coasts, and is therefore cresting slightly later, as well.
But
as of June 8, the count of infected cases and WITH Covid deaths in Arizona
stood at 27,678 and 1,047, respectively. Those figures a hot spot do not make,
nor do they offer any reason for not getting the state’s boot-heel off the
economy ASAP.
Relative
to the USA as a whole and the New York epicenter, Arizona’s figures per 100,000
population compare as follows as of June 8:
- Infected cases Arizona:
375;
- Infected cases USA:
596;
- Infected cases New York:
1,963
- WITH Covid deaths Arizona: 14.2;
- WITH-Covid deaths USA:
32.3;
- WITH-Covid deaths New York: 126.0;
In other
words, Arizona’s mortality rate is less than half of the US average and only
11% of that for New York. So why is it a worrisome “hot spot” by the lights of
Virus Patrol shills like Gottlieb?
Indeed, the WITH-Covid mortality rate
in Arizona stands at nearly rock bottom, clocking in at just
one-fifth to one-half of the mortality rates in much as European Christendom.
To wit, current rates per 100,000 include:
- Belgium:
83.1;
- United
Kingdom: 60.2;
- Spain:
58.0;
- Italy:
56.3;
- Sweden:
47.5;
- France:
44.9;
- Netherlands:
35.3;
- Arizona: 14.2;
But when context doesn’t matter, of course,
any pimple can be depicted as a large boulder. Thus, the number of
new cases in Arizona is allegedly soaring, suggesting that the state has jumped
the gun letting its citizens out of house arrest too soon.
In
fact, during the first 8 days of June, Arizona reported 7,742 new cases – a
figure which is sharply higher than the 2,189 new cases reported for the last
eight days of April, for example.
But that gain is entirely a function of
the testing rate and then some. Thus, during the June 1 to June 8 span,
the state reported 62,825 new
tests, implying an infection rate of 12.3%.
By
contrast, during April 22 to April 30 the state reported only 15,185 new tests (one-fourth of the June
figure), implying an infection rate of 14.4%.
So the state is testing a lot more, as
it has been instructed to do by Washington, and such accelerated testing is
generating a falling infection rate!
And
that’s not the half of it. By now there are more than enough antibody tests of
different US populations to be reasonably certain that in a state like Arizona
with a population of 7.38 million that there have been far more infected cases
than the 27,678 cases reported
through June 8.
Generally,
antibody tests show infection rates of 5-20% in the general population, which
would imply total cases – most of which remained asymptomatic or resulted in
mild illnesses – of between 370,000 and 1.5 million for Arizona.
likely, it actually means that what is
already there is being slowly discovered after the fact;
it’s stale, irrelevant old news, not an alarming new development, to say
nothing So, actually, higher reported cases daily may mean nothing at all as to
the current status of the virus among the population. More of evidence of a hot
spot.
Indeed, the latter is a meaningless but
loaded term, honed for TV talking points, but is incapable of conveying any
meaningful information about context at all. That is, the real test is how does
what’s happening with the coronavirus now compare with year-in-and-year-out
illness, hospitalization, disease and mortality trends?
Self-evidently,
you do not empower the state to put its citizens under house arrest and destroy
the livelihoods of millions of workers and tens of thousands of small businesses
on account of a bad run of seasonal illnesses that leaves more people than
usual home in bed or even heading to the hospital for treatment.
To
the contrary, this whole Lockdown Nation thing is about the modern equivalent
of the Black Death – the presence of a virulent killer that can takedown the
young, the old, the healthy, the sick and all categories between with equal
alacrity.
But, again, there is nothing to support
that Grim Reaper notion in the data, and most especially not the “hot spot”
flavor of the week in Texas and Arizona.
The mortality rate from all causes for
Arizona for the four months from January through the end of April (latest
available) is shown below.
Naturally,
the total mortality rate surmounts the cause
of death attribution and coding issues; and it means that unless these total
death rates are significantly elevated from the norm, then nothing unusual – or
at least worthy of drastic quarantine policies–is actually going on.
On a
per 100,000 basis, the Arizona’s total mortality rates for the first four
months of the year have been as follows:
- 2016:
293;
- 2017:
277:
- 2018:
297;
- 2019:
285:
- 2020: 301;
The above does not indicate the Black
Plague at loose. The tiny elevation in 2020 relative to the previous four years
is just statistical noise!
Moreover,
there is no new signal coming out of this “noise” owing to the higher testing
and infection rates being reported in recent days. Again, the evidence for that
is in the state’s own published data on hospitalization rates, among others.
Between
March 23 and June 1, Arizona consistently reported new WITH-Covid
hospitalization cases of between 40 and 60 per day on a statewide basis.
During
June 3 through June 8, however, the number of new hospitalizations daily has
dwindled to 34, 19, 17, 10, 4 and 5,
respectively.
The last few days, in fact, have had
the lowest new hospitalizations since before the Donald’s malpracticing doctors
triggered the Covid Hysteria on March 13.
So,
hot spot my eye!
In
this connection, they also keep trotting out the hoary old claim that the
hospitals are in danger of being overrun with new cases – per the crawler on
the screen yesterday during Gottleib’s appearance on bubble vision.
Alas,
it never happened previously in Arizona and is not remotely in danger of
happening now. Even during the peak of new hospitalizations between April 20
and May 8, the utilization rate of hospital intensive care beds rose from 72%
to 78% and has remained at that level ever since.
Finally,
it is worth noting that Arizona’s WITH-Covid mortality data show the same
dramatic skew toward the elderly, as is true with the rest of the country.
Fully 77% of the Covid deaths in Arizona have been among the 65 and older
population, which comprises just 17% of the state’s overall population.
That
fact alone, of course, militates strongly against the across-the-board
stay-at-home and general quarantine orders in the first place.
The
Arizona WITH-Covid mortality rate through June 9 breaks out as follows by age
cohorts. That is to say, anyone under 55 years old driving to the Scottsdale
Fashion Mall would have had a greater chance of being killed in an auto
accident than being felled by the Covid:
Deaths
Per 100,000 population:
- <20
years: 0.1;
- 20-44
years: 2.1;
- 45-54
years: 7.5;
- 55-64
years: 14.9;
- 65+
years: 66.3;
With
respect to Texas, it’s the same story. There is no “hot spot”, period.
Its
reported cases and deaths through June 8 are actually far lower than those for
Arizona and in the sub-basement relative to the overall USA figures, to say
nothing of the nursing-home based disaster-data reported for New York and New
Jersey.
That
is, the number of infected cases in Texas amounts to 256 per 100,000 or 68% of the Arizona rate,
42% of the overall USA rate and just 13% of the rate of infected cases among
the New York state population.
Likewise,
the WITH-Covid mortality rate through June 8 in Texas was 6.2 per 100,000. That’s just 43% of the
Arizona rate, 19% of the USA average and only 5% of the New York state
rate.
So
Texas isn’t remotely a “hot spot” or some kind of warning about reopening too
soon, and is actually a thundering rebuke of the entire Lockdown Nation
narrative.
That
is, Texas was late and tepid about the lockdown, and among the first to begin
“reopening” in early May.
Yet
its reported infected case rate of 256 per
100,000 is just 10% of the real “hot spot” rate of 2,477 per 100,000 in the five boroughs of New
York City; and its mortality rate of 6.2 per
100,000 population is just 3% of New
York City’s 196 per 100,000 rate.
So for crying out loud, with that kind of
yawning gap and rock bottom absolute level, what is this clown, Scott Gottlieb,
doing on bubble vision warning about Covid dangers in Texas?
Answer: He’s grooming the sheeples in order
to keep the Killer Covid narrative alive and the money and legal immunities
flowing to the drug companies chasing cures and vaccines.
It
goes without saying, course, that the alleged surge in new cases reported in
Texas during recent days is just as bogus as the claims about Arizona.
Yes,
new cases reported during June 1 to June 8 averaged 1,416 per day or about 61%
higher than the rate of 877 per day reported for April 22 to April 30. Except,
the number of new tests also rose by about 60% from 113,500 to 168,500, leaving
the infected rate virtually unchanged at a very low 6.7%.
Again,
if you want to talk “hot spots”, try New York City. The infected rate per test
has run north of 20% in the
Bronx, for example.
So the question recurs. Why are people like
Scott Gottlieb out pimping the Killer Covid story in the face overwhelming
evidence that it is nothing of the kind.
Perhaps,
it might be noted that Gottlieb went straight from medical school to various
jobs at the FDA before becoming commissioner in 2017, and then heading out the
revolving door to Pfizer’s Board of Directors in May 2019.
And, yes, here’s the list of the top
five firms being supported by billions from Washington in the race for a Covid
vaccine, which may or may not happen, but whether safe or not will be of no
never-mind to Big Pharma.
After all, Washington has already
indemnified them against lawsuits; pretty much guaranteed that they can name
their charge per dose; and will be doing all it can to make getting a tap on
the arm from one or more of the Big Pharma competitors a mandatory duty of
citizenship.
Call it what you will, but don’t call
it honest capitalism. And chalk it up as still another blow to the idea of
limited government and personal liberty.
The five companies are Moderna, a
Massachusetts-based biotechnology firm, which Dr. Fauci said he expected would
enter into the final phase of clinical trials next month; the combination of
Oxford University and AstraZeneca, on a similar schedule; and three large
pharmaceutical companies: Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Pfizer.
Each is taking a somewhat different approach.
Reprinted
with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
Former Congressman David A. Stockman was Reagan's OMB director,
which he wrote about in his best-selling book, The Triumph of Politics. His latest books
are The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in
America and Peak Trump: The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA.
He's the editor and publisher of the new David Stockman's Contra Corner. He was
an original partner in the Blackstone Group, and reads LRC the first thing
every morning.
Copyright © David Stockman