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While coronavirus projections have ranged from ‘just a flu’ levels to a ludicrous two million Americans dead, a new study from the University of Washington’s School of Pharmacy has concluded that the number of Americans who will die after contracting the novel coronavirus will more than triple by year-end, even if current social distancing habits are maintained for months to come.

“COVID-19 infection is deadlier than flu — we can put that debate to rest,” said Anirban Basu, University of Washington health economist who authored the study which found that based on the infection fatality rate, 1.3% of those who show symptoms of COVID-19 die, which makes it 13x more deadly than a bad influenza season.

Of note, the infection fatality rate (IFR) is different than the naturally higher case fatality rate (CFR), in that it measures outcomes for those assumed to have contracted the virus (IFR), vs. only counting deaths divided by cases confirmed via nucleic acid testing. Skewing the results of course are vast numbers of people who have never been tested because their symptoms were mild – those most likely to recover quickly and completely.

If the infection fatality rate is accurate, and if the coronavirus continues spreading at current rates even before most states open their economies and relax social distancing restrictions, COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, could claim between 350,000 and 1.2 million American lives by the end of this year, Basu found. –The Hill

“This is a staggering number, which can only be brought down with sound public health measures,” said Basu in a press release announcing the study, which tracked case counts and outcomes in 116 counties across 33 states in order to estimate the infection fatality rate – which widely varies across county and state lines. Basu also noted that the IFR is a dynamic figure by nature which is subject to revision.

The World Health Organization had previously estimated the infection fatality rate as high as 3.4%, however other estimates have pegged it as low as half a percentage point, which would still make it deadlier than any flu pandemic in the last 100 years, according to the report.

According to the report, if the coronavirus spreads as widely as a typical flu – which infects around 10% of the US population every year, nearly 500,000 Americans would die of the coronavirus at a 1.3% IFR.

As of Tuesday morning, more than 1.5 million people in the United States have contracted the coronavirus, and 90,000 have died, according to data maintained by Johns Hopkins University of Medicine. Both of those figures likely undercount the true spread and toll the virus has taken, Basu said.

But the study’s author pointed to another key difference between the coronavirus and a seasonal influenza: The coronavirus is more infectious than a typical flu, meaning more Americans are likely to contract the virus than would otherwise come down with the flu.

Even as states begin reopening, many are experiencing a rapid increase in the number of new cases. States like Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina and North Dakota have seen their numbers of cases spike by more than 25 percent over the last two weeks, according to data collected by a group of researchers in a collaboration called the Covid Exit Strategy. –The Hill

According to the Covid Tracking Project, the US is confirming around 20,000 new coronavirus cases every day – which is an improvement over the last several weeks, when around 25,000 new cases were being counted per day.

Meanwhile, Michael Osterholm – Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Prevention, estimates that between 60% and 70% of Americans will eventually become infected with the disease. He calls Basu’s estimate ‘conservative’ – in that she assumes just 20% of Americans would contract the novel coronavirus by the end of the year.

“The infection fatality ratio estimate is itself dynamic in nature,” said Basu. “The overall estimate can both increase or decrease in the future, depending on the demographics where the infections will be spreading. It is possible, as the infection spreads to more rural counties of the country, the overall infection fatality rate will increase due to the lack of access to necessary health care delivery.”

A 2017 Inauguration Day email that former national security adviser Susan Rice sent to herself documenting a January 5 Oval Office meeting discussing the case against her successor Michael Flynn was done so at the direction of White House counsel, according to Fox News.

The meeting documented in Rice’s memo included Obama, former VP Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey, who – according to Rice, “does have some concerns that incoming NSA Flynn is speaking frequently with Russian Ambassador Kislyak.”

“Given the importance and sensitivity of the subject matter, and upon the advice of the White House Counsel’s Office, Ambassador Rice created a permanent record of the discussion,” Rice’s attorney Kathryn Ruemmler wrote to senators in 2018. “Ambassador Rice memorialized the discussion on January 20, because that was the first opportunity she had to do so, given the particularly intense responsibilities of the National Security Advisor during the remaining days of the administration and transition.”

Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell declassified the previously redacted section of Rice’s email and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., made it public on Tuesday.

That section says Comey suggested to Obama that the National Security Council [NSC] might not want to pass “sensitive information related to Russia” to incoming national security adviser Flynn.

The email pointed to what were apparently widespread concerns about Flynn’s Russia contacts. Multiple sources confirmed to Fox News that what initially put Flynn on the radar was the number of interactions he had with senior Russian government officials in 2016, as laid out in various intelligence reports viewed by Obama White House officials. –Fox News

Damage control?

For those who aren’t buying the given explanation for the email, ‘Sundance’ of The Conservative Treehouse has an interesting theory that it was written to cover up the fact that Obama knew all about the Flynn investigation.

2) The position of President Obama and Susan Rice is that the White House was unaware of any FBI investigation of Flynn (or the Trump campaign); nor did they have any involvement in directing it to take place.

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

4) When James Clapper walked directly into the White House with “intelligence cuts”, from the FBI to share with President Obama, it’s likely the legal team around Obama -specifically including Kathryn Reummler- went bananas.

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

6) Worse… if anyone should later question FBI Director Comey about it, Comey would say (honestly) he knew Obama was briefed on it because he provided a paper trail.

WH counsel Ruemmler would have immediately identified the White House exposure.

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

8) The problem at that point (post meeting) was the risk of it being Obama’s word -vs- James Comey.

Comey had records, a paper trail, for his escape; the White House did not.

It’s a he said/he said risk.

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

Addendum: The framework and purpose of the Rice ‘memo to file’ was obvious in the 2018 Rice/Ruemmler response to the Senate. pic.twitter.com/2IQxIyFwuK

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

page 2 pic.twitter.com/tJ5CyqGsPb

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) May 20, 2020

Real Vision’s senior editor Ash Bennington and managing editor Roger Hirst analyze the latest developments in markets. Bennington and Hirst discuss the implications of fiscal burden-sharing in the European Union within the framework of French President Macron and German Chancellor Merkel’s recent joint proposal for a €500 billion aid fund. The pair also unpack the technical and supply and demand dynamics driving oil markets, the concentration risk in the largest stocks of the S&P 500, and key technical levels in US equity markets. During the intro, Real Vision’s Nick Correa discusses the reopening of Spain, and the unique hurdles the Spanish will face as they begin their journey to economic recovery.

Ford was forced to temporarily shut down production at two of its plants – one in Dearborn and the other in Chicago – because of workers testing positive for COVID-19, according to the Detroit News. The Dearborn Truck Plant, where Ford assembles the F-150 and Raptor pickups, halted production Wednesday after an employee there tested positive for the virus, Kelli Felker, Ford’s global manufacturing and labor communications manager, said in a statement. Production is expected to resume Wednesday night.

“When a Dearborn Truck Plant employee who returned to work this week tested positive for COVID-19, we immediately began to notify people known to have been in close contact with the infected individual and asked them to self-quarantine for 14 days,” Felker said. “We are deep cleaning and disinfecting the work area, equipment, team area and the path that the team member took.”

In Chicago, two employees who returned to work this week tested positive for the virus. The same protocols were applied in those cases, and Chicago Assembly now is running again. Due to the known incubation time of the virus, Ford said “we know (these employees) did not contract COVID-19 while at work.”

The cases illustrate the potential perils of restarting production amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has claimed more than 5,000 lives in Michigan. Autoworkers employed by Detroit’s automakers returned to work Monday following an eight-week shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

At facilities operated by all three companies, employees must follow stringent health and safety protocols that are designed to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in plants. Those protocols include wearing personal protective equipment, having their temperatures checked before entering, and daily health self-certifications. 

While COVID-19 testing is not available to the entire workforce of any of the automakers, all are making testing available to employees who are experiencing symptoms of the virus or who believe they have been exposed to it. Ford, for example, has contracts with health systems in major metro areas where it operates. In southeast Michigan, the Blue Oval is partnering with Beaumont Health on testing. 

General Motors and Fiat Chrysler said Wednesday they have not been forced to stop production at their plants. Starting and stopping production is costly and something automakers would prefer to avoid — except for potential health and safety concerns.

Monday’s resumption of production was the first time that the entire global automotive supply chain and major automakers all came back online at once, posing a major test to the industry. After a two-month shutdown in which the automakers bled billions of dollars, the goal has been to make the restart process as smooth as possible.

Submitted by Alan G. Futerman and Walter E. Block

How would a libertarian limited government deal with a pandemic, such as the one we are now living with COVID-19? By promoting liberty, not by calling for the death of capitalism and the free market as we hear all too often. Economic freedom is most needed precisely when we have to deal with a serious crisis.

If no big government is expected to bail out businesses and private individuals during a disaster, people will engage, during good times, in precautionary activities. For example, they will act more like the proverbial ants, than grasshoppers. The cognoscenti sneer at people who prepare, the preppers, but the latter are far better prepared to protect themselves and their families. Tail hedging is not only advisable for trading, but for all aspects of life.

Bail outs and their effect, moral hazard, create the opposite incentive. If companies knew there would be no subsidies forthcoming, they would pay better attention to their bottom lines. Take, for instance, an airline. Would they operate normally and fill their planes to maximum capacity, or serve fewer customers on each plane with more distancing, while also requiring protective masks? They would do this for the same reason: if a customer gets infected during a flight, the airline could get sued. This would not be justified on libertarian principles, given caveat emptor, but that would be the legal regime under which they would likely have to operate.

If streets were private, would the company that own them allow people to walk without masks? Not likely, and for the same reason. The same considerations would apply to every other business, particularly shops, malls, cinemas, natural or themed parks, or any other services that require physical presence, particularly under crowded circumstances. And customers, at the same time, would feel safer and therefore more intensively attend those places that take more precautions. Airports would not wait for political decrees to shut down flights from areas where the virus is hitting hard: its future cash-flows depend on it.

Medical insurance companies would also be guided by incentives. When there is a bank run not everyone can get their money. The same happens if we all want to access the hospital at the same time. An insurance company, then, can deal with a class of events that usually follows a normal distribution. But a pandemic, with a new virus, has an unknown distribution (which may be asymmetric to the left, fat tailed, etc.). In which direction do incentives lie in such unusual circumstances? To prevent people from taking risks by not ensuring this type of event, or charging extra fees if infected, or heavily investing in R+D to find a cure or treatment? The answer: all of the above. Moreover, insurance companies and private hospitals would likely take on the task of mass testing. Then, prevention (before and during pandemics) would be a key role of such companies, their business depends on it.

Pharmaceutical companies could innovate faster to find new and better treatments and tests, or a cure, without having to comply with stultifying regulations of the sort promulgated by the Food and Drug Administration, while private certification companies would rush these to trial. The market, not difficult to remove bureaucrats, will judge if they fail to provide safety.

Think of a person who wants to leave his house. If medical insurance does not cover his infection, he will think twice. If he can infect someone else, and will be liable for it, he will more seriously consider the risk. If a restaurant is not insured in case someone becomes infected while eating dinner, then it will likely take measures to prevent it. It may close altogether, seat diners far away from one another, or offer only take out meals. Some governments have already mandated such changes of course, but these orders might well have been superfluous. In the free society, responsibility is not only a moral ideal, but has concrete consequences insofar as one’s pocket is concerned. It is the people themselves who have now taken precautions before governments mandated them.

The bottom line is that a libertarian society would not operate as a chaotic jungle where everyone does as he pleases on other people’s property. It would rather function as a system where incentives are aligned with behavior so as to reduce costs as identified through the price mechanism.

In today’s world, governments own public transportation, roads, public services, etc. How can they know what is the optimum amount of social distancing or how long businesses can be in quarantine until the economy completely collapses? They cannot, they lack the knowledge. Moreover, in the absence of tax postponements, companies are more focused in paying taxes instead of working as fast as possible to changing their business practices. With big bailout government, they are more focused in asking for subsidies than in innovating.

A free market would not be able to solve the crisis automatically, but it would have the mechanism to identify mistakes through losses and correct them as fast as possible. Moreover, a localist approach to society assures that different business models and prevention measures can compete and be compared. This would take us to better solutions, faster. A centralized response, on the other hand, renders us blind to alternatives, concentrating ignorance. And time, these days, cost lives.

What we need is not more government intervention, but more freedom. Liberty, by itself, will not cure COVID-19, but is surely the system that will allow us to get there, or prevent a crisis such as this one happens again, when a new pandemic occurs.

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday handed the Trump administration a win – blocking a request by the House Judiciary Committee for grand jury material gathered by Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation. The court issued a stay while an appeal over the records plays out.

That said, the court put the case on a fast track, giving the Trump administration until June 1 to file its appeal, which Bloomberg infers to mean that the court will likely announce before the end of June or July whether it will hear arguments late this year.

Earlier this year, DOJ officials were ordered by two lower courts to hand over redacted portions of Mueller’s 448-page report at the request of the House committee chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) – who argued that they ‘urgently’ needed to see redacted materials.

The administration says a federal trial judge lacked power to unseal the information. Grand jury materials are normally sealed, but federal rules let a judge authorize disclosure for “judicial proceedings.” The key legal question is whether that includes House impeachment inquiries.

A federal appeals court ruled that impeachment proceedings qualified, saying courts had let lawmakers see grand jury materials during the impeachment inquiries of Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. U.S. Solicitor GeneralNoel Francisco asked the Supreme Court to put that ruling on hold.

“The government will suffer irreparable harm absent a stay,” Francisco argued. “Once the government discloses the secret grand-jury records, their secrecy will irrevocably be lost.”

House General Counsel Douglas Letter countered that lawmakers had already waited more than a year for the information. -Bloomberg

“The committee and the public continue to suffer grave and irreparable injury each additional day the district court’s order is prevented from going into effect,” wrote the House General Counsel, adding “The committee is being deprived of the information it needs to exercise its weighty constitutional responsibility.“

The records were originally sought as part of the impeachment inquiry last year, before Democrats hit a dead end and impeached Trump over his communications with the Ukrainian president regarding an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden. The impeachment effort was stopped in the GOP-controlled Senate.

At a moment in time when narrative-following “scientists” are lauded like unquestionably omniscient supreme beings enabling dumb-as-a-rock-partisan-politicians to play omnipotent overlords without fear of blowback, the world needs more people like William Haseltine.

The last two weeks have seen markets and politicians jump exuberantly at the hope of every press release from a biotech firm that proclaims one of their pet rabbits didn’t die when they fed it their latest DNA-reshaping test material (oh that is except if anyone dares say anything positive about hydroxychloroquine but that is a topic for another discussion).

Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy said it right – when did we shift from “flatten the curve, flatten the curve, flatten the curve” to “we have to fund a cure or everyone’s going to die.”

And that is where we find ourselves. Every talking head proclaiming the same malarkey – we will re-open carefully, with PPE, and social distancing, and whetever else is mandated from on-high “until we find a vaccine in 12-18 months” at which point the world will be made whole again and Kumbaya…

All of which brings us back to the man of the day in our humble opinion.

Former Harvard Medical School professor and founder of the university’s cancer and HIV/AIDS research departments, William Haseltine dared to speak out today about the high level of bullshit and damage that is being done to “trust” in “scientists” and even dared to break the one holy writ that shall go un-mentioned, throwing some shade a Dr.Fauci.

Reflecting on Moderna’s press release this week (which was immediately followed by massive equity raises across numerous biotech firms and upgrades from the underwriters, surprise), Haseltine said:

“If a CFO had tried to get away with such an opaque and data-less statement it would have bee treated with derision and possibly an investigation.”

The CNBC anchor desperately tried to guilt him into the official narrative of clinging to any hope as long as it lifts stocks – no matter its utter bullshittiness – but Haseltine destroyed her naive party line:

“we all know its an emergency, and in an emergency it’s even more important to be clear on what you know and what you do not know.”

Moderna did not follow the process:

“you don’t know what happened, we don’t know what happened, there is no data.”

But, but, but… the CNBC anchorette blubbered, “are you questioning Dr. Fauci who also said that this was encouraging news?”

“Whether [Fauci] shaded what should should have been done, I think is an important question. He’s obviously under enormous pressure for positive results but it was not the right thing to do if you can’t see the data.”

The full interview below is a must-watch by all who care about their freedom being controlled by a narrative directed by fearmongering elites in the name of “science” when the “science” is a) being ignored, b) being bastardized to meet a political need, c) being treated as if handed down on high from the man himself, or d) being manipulated explicitly.

Why this former Harvard Med School prof says Moderna’s vaccine trial ‘publication by press release’ from CNBC.

Haseltine’s interview is perfect lead into his opinion piece in todays’ Washington Post:

Faith in medicine and science is based on trust. But today, in the rush to share scientific progress in combating covid-19, that trust is being undermined.

Private companies, governments and research institutes are holding news conferences to report potential breakthroughs that cannot be verified. The results are always favorable, but the full data on which the announcements are based are not immediately available for critical review. This is “publication by press release,” and it’s damaging trust in the fundamental methods of science and medicine at a time when we need it most.

The most recent example is Moderna’s claim Monday of favorable results in its vaccine trial, which it announced without revealing any of the underlying data. The announcement added billions of dollars to the value of the company, with its shares jumping almost 20 percent. Many analysts believe it contributed to a 900-point gain in the Dow Jones industrial average.

The Moderna announcement described a safety trial of its vaccine based on eight healthy participants. The claim was that in all eight people, the vaccine raised the levels of neutralizing antibodies equivalent to those found in convalescent serum of those who recovered from covid-19. What to make of that claim? Hard to say, because we have no sense of what those levels were. This is the equivalent of a chief executive of a public company announcing a favorable earnings report without supplying supporting financial data, which the Securities and Exchange Commission would never allow.

There is a legitimate question regarding what Moderna’s unsupported assertion means. The scientific and medical literature reports that some people who have recovered have little to no detectable neutralizing antibodies. There is even existing scientific literature that suggests it is possible neutralizing antibodies may not protect animals or humans from infection or reinfection by coronaviruses.

Such “publication by press release” seems to be a standard practice lately.

The National Institutes of Health announced last month that the drug remdesivir offered a clear benefit to covid-19 patients with moderate disease, shortening the length of their hospital stay by several days. But did it really? Twenty days after the announcement, the supporting data has still not been published. Without the data, no doctor treating a patient can be sure they are doing the right thing.

Another paper, published the same day, found that remdesivir had no measurable effect on patient survival or the amount of virus detectable in nasopharynx and lung secretions. What then should a practicing physician do? Follow the unsupported advice of a news announcement or a medical report published in a leading scientific journal? This is not an idle question: The NIH announcement triggered a global stampede for limited supplies of the drug.

The case is more nuanced for the vaccine developed by the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, though the mileposts remain the same: It started with a public pronouncement of favorable results from an early study, this time in monkeys, well before any data was publicly released. An NIH scientist working on a trial of the Oxford vaccine gave an interview to the New York Times, claiming the drug was a success.

But the data, released as a prepublication version more than two weeks after the story ran, didn’t quite live up to the early claim. All of the vaccinated monkeys became infected when introduced to the virus. Though there was some reduction in the amount of viral RNA detected in the lungs, there was no reduction in the nasal secretions in the vaccinated monkeys. So the positive result reported by the Oxford group turned out not to be protection from infection at all, something most would agree is what a successful vaccine would do. Instead, it lowered only the amount of virus recoverable from the vaccinated monkey’s lung.

To the Jenner Institute’s credit, it does warn visitors to its website that there have been many false reports about the progress of its vaccine trial. Still, having a scientist working on the trial paint preliminary results in such a positive manner without having yet released the full data is cause for concern.

We all understand the need to share scientific and medical data as rapidly as possible in this time of crisis. But a media announcement alone is not enough. There are ways to share the data quickly and transparently: posting manuscripts before review or acceptance on publicly available websites or working with journals to allow an early view. Publishing in this manner allows doctors and scientists to reach their own conclusion, based on the evidence available.

The media also bears responsibility. Asking experts to opine on unsubstantiated claims is not useful. Medicine and science are not matters of majority opinion; they are matters of fact supported by transparent data. This is the backbone of scientific progress and our only hope to end this pandemic. We can’t give up on our standards now.

*  *  *

So, by all means, trust in “science” but choose your “scientist” well…