Covid Updates 1/31/22

There were a number of informative articles out over the weekend that I want to draw attention to.

The first is a fairly comprehensive review of what we can learn from the Covid responses of each of the 50 states:

Grading the Governors: Who Locked Down and Who Opened?

The purpose of this review is summarized:

We were granted the greatest scientific experiment COVID-19 could offer (except for the cruise ships, which provided the original scientific experiment and was ignored). Many states had (and have) wildly different policies during the pandemic. The question we need to ask and data we need to study is, if the tight restrictions worked, did they result in fewer COVID-19 and moreover total excess deaths?

You can read the whole article and see where your state fits in, but the overall findings probably aren’t going to be very surprising. The answer to the central question is a simple, No. Tight restrictions offered no discernible benefit—although they had many readily discernible and serious negative effects.

For starters, one rough and ready correlation jumped out right away. Generally speaking, state by state death rates correlated with the obesity ranking of states. The correlation isn’t ironclad, but it is striking. Notably, all the lowest death rate states were, in fact, ranked low in obesity. States ranked near the top of the obesity charts suffered far more deaths.

Overall:

The least restricted states throughout the pandemic include (no cherry picking here, these are the least) include the Dakotas, Florida, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. Not one of those states are in the top fifteen in COVID-19 deaths per capita.

The takeaway from all of this is that tight restrictions had no measurable impact on COVID-19 deaths.

The author does discuss in some detail the difficulties encountered in reaching these conclusions. Here’s a paragraph that’s a fair summary:

The data around COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths had wild margins of error, up to 40% inaccuracies in some places. A White House data advisor told me it was up to 50%. The working number in this research is 30%. The inaccuracies spawned from mostly two things: the inclusion of untested probable hospitalizations and deaths; including those who died after testing positive within weeks or months but died of something else. Yes, the stories you heard about the gun or car accident victim counted as a COVID-19 death are outliers. What aren’t outliers are the tens of thousands of people that died from real health issues, including issues like cardiac arrests, cancer deaths – things that had nothing to do with COVID-19 but were counted as such.

Notably, the author includes a comprehensive chart comparing and ranking all fifty states. Here are some key takeaways.

Political alignment was a key correlating factor for policy—duh!

The seventeen least restricted states were Republican-led, as were 22 of the first 23 states. There is no doubt restrictions correlated more to the party of the state governor than anything else. … Five of the eight states with over 20% all-cause excess deaths were Republican-led, three Democrat-led.

Hospitalization:

A hospital is supposed to run at near capacity, like a hotel, in order to sustain. During the pandemic, outside of a four-to-six-week surge, most ran closer to 70%; during the spring 2020 lockdown, nationally most were almost completely empty and going broke. Had the CARES Act not bailed them out, many would not have made it, nor would most smaller healthcare providers. The healthcare industry would have gone broke during a pandemic without government bailouts.

Only seven states out of fifty-one (including DC) ever had more than five weeks of hospital beds occupied with over 20% COVID-19 patients.

Six of those seven states were among the most restrictive states.

Schools:

There was no correlation between more in-person learning and more people getting sick in communities. Hard data shows that tight restrictions did not result in any better results than light restrictions. Closing schools didn’t matter. Closing restaurants didn’t matter. Wearing masks didn’t matter.

The author then grades the governors. The concluding paragraph is one I particularly liked:

Complete Fails

Governors Andrew Cuomo (NY), Phil Murphy (NJ), Gavin Newsom (CA), Gretchen Whitmer (MI), J.B. Pritzker (IL), and Tom Wolf (PA). There’s a special place for governors that locked kids out of classrooms for a year and a half, ordered sick COVID-19 patients back into nursing homes, did not practice their own orders, shut down tens of thousands of businesses and still couldn’t beat the U.S average in COVID-19 deaths or excess all-cause deaths.

I’m not a scientist, so I can’t offer a verdict on this next article, but I did find it fascinating:

No one would ever accept permanent fever... So, why accept permanently high antibodies? It's a "Death Zone"!

High Antibodies Myth - Evolution has pruned out those with constant high levels of antibodies, isn't that a sign we should heed? - Covid Myth Buster

When the author refers to the “Death Zone” he’s drawing a comparison to mountain climbing at extreme altitudes. The basic idea behind the article is as follows.

During an infection the body will tolerate an imbalance in order to fight the disease:

1. high fever1 to damage as many virions as possible,

2. temporary invasion of T-cells to prune out every single infected cells,

3. and a huge count of antibodies to neutralise and evacuate the rest of the viral debris.

But, once the infection is on the run:

a regiment of sentinels is left in the mucus to guard the entrance for the remainder of the epidemic, a few roaming sentinels with lifelong memory are set, and the rest wanes back down to bring peace and balance. It’s called homeostasis. The fever dissipates. T-cells self-destruct2 rapidly. And antibodies wane progressively.

That’s how a normally functioning organism deals—very effectively—with infection. The author’s contention is that continual injections that affect that natural balance place the organism within a “Death Zone”:

Today, I would like to underscore the absolute lunacy of delivering these products to an entire population every 3-4 months. It’s nothing short of criminal.

In my earnest opinion, repeated vaccine injections can only lead to one outcome: generalised illness and death. Permanently high antibodies are a “Death Zone” equivalent: a very high risk of accelerated auto-immune disorders development: Parkinson, Kawasaki, multiple sclerosis, demyelinating disorders…

In particular, the author predicts a huge increase in auto-immune disorders as a direct result of the artificially induced high level of T-cells and antibodies. It is, he says, an unnatural and dangerous condition in which to maintain the body—just as artificially maintaining a fever would be. I can’t judge this, but the following passage (there is more) made an impression on me:

To show this is not partisan, but factual. I am not an anti-vaxxer. I will quote an article that pre-dates this pandemic, and states: “As history teaches us, vaccines, instrumental as they are in modern medicine, are subject to possible flaws in the same manner that all man-made developments are.”.

Thus, the author maintains:

If some doctors are afraid of the possible consequences of viruses in the creation of auto-immune diseases, they should be terrified by the scale and the duration of this “Death Zone” generated by repeated injections.

Finally, I’m sure many of you have read about the testimony that attorney Thomas Renz and his DoD whistle blowers gave to Senator Ron Johnson within the past week. The Blaze offers a very complete account by Daniel Horowitz:

Whistleblowers share DOD medical data that blows vaccine safety debate wide open

Here’s the key behind Renz’ testimony that explains how he obtained this information:

According to the military, DMED is the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch’s (AFHSB) “web-based tool to remotely query de-identified active component personnel and medical event data contained within the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS).” In other words, it contains every ICD medical billing code for any medical diagnosis in the military submitted for medical insurance billing during any given period of time. Three military doctors have presented queried data to Renz that shows a shocking and sudden spike in nearly every ICD code for common vaccine injuries in 2021.

Read the whole article for more information and additional links. CTH has a handy table of the findings:

The research took five-year averages of medical conditions and then compared the track record to the results after the mandatory military vaccination program was initiated.  The results are alarming:

Heart Attacks +269%
Pericarditis +175%
Myocarditis +285%
Pulmonary Embolisms +467%
Cerebral Infarction +393%
Bell’s Palsy +319%
Guillain-Barre +250%
Immunodeficiencies +275%
Menstrual Irregularity +476%
Multiple Sclerosis +487%
Miscarriage +306%
HIV +590%
Chest Pain +1,529%
Labored Breathing +905%

CTH also has more relevant links.