By Nancy Thorner & Ed Ingold -
Stocks suffered their biggest one-day pull back in three months on Thursday, June 11, 2020, as traders grew concerned about the number of coronavirus cases increasing in some states that are opening up from lockdowns, over fear of a second wave of coronavirus in the fall. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 1,861.82 points, or 6.9%, to close at 25,128.17.
As Victor Davis Hanson wrote in his article, The Bitter Irony of Revolutions, on Wednesday, June 10, 2020:
Throughout history, revolutions often do not end up as their initial architects planned.
The ancient Greeks created new words like "paradox" and "irony" to describe the wide gap between what people profess and assume, and what they actually do and suffer.
The COVID-19 epidemic, the nationwide mass quarantine, and the massive protests, looting, rioting and arson that all followed the police killing of George Floyd have resulted in similar paradoxes.
Social distancing and mandated lockdowns for months have been the source of endless fighting between the people and their governments. Red and blue states often adopted diametrically opposite policies.
But the massive demonstrations and rioting saw hundreds of thousands of protesters jammed together and often without masks. That mass disobedience to quarantining will teach us, better than any university modeling, whether the virus spikes or is indifferent to thousands who congregate in the streets.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci speaks
On May 12, 2020 Dr. Fauci, acclaimed as the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, testified accordingly at a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions:
“What I’ve expressed then and again is my concern that if some areas, cities, states, what have you, jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently, my concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks.”
In a wide-ranging talk to biotech executives on June 9, 2020, Dr. Fauci warned that the Coronavirus pandemic is far from over, that it has inflicted global damage and has further exposed worrisome racial disparities.
Perhaps Dr. Fauci should read what Alex Berenson, former New York Times reporter, has to say about Coronavirus lockdowns taking a grim toll on mental health of Americans.
Berenson's book, Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1: Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates, provides a counterweight to media hysteria about coronavirus.
Amazon temporarily banned Berenson's COVID book, but Elon Musk fought back to defend Berenson.
Setting forth the “Beef"
Pursuant to the ongoing riots and protests, we hear every 15 minutes or so about the “spike” in COVID-19 infections from failure to observe “social distance”. Similar claims are also made regarding states which have re-opened businesses and lifted stay at home orders. From the beginning we were warned by health “experts” that we will experience a resurgence of infections if we lifted the restrictions or failed to impose them. “Remember what happened in 1918” is the key phrase. There’s one problem. It didn’t happen in 2020, nor did it happen in 1918. Details, details. The basic problem is that journalists are lazy, or reluctant to buck popular belief. Rather than consult the facts, they report what others say, including fellow journalists.
In 1918, the main wave of infections occurred in August, and a second, larger wave in November. November is when many of the troops came from Europe, where the close association of combatants resulted in wide spread infections. Then as now, most symptoms were mild, and only the debilitating cases were removed from the Front. While some of the deaths were a direct result of the Spanish Flu, most were cause by a secondary infection of bacterial pneumonia. Penicillin was 25 years in the future.
As you see in the attachment, new COVID infections, on a daily basis, emerged quickly but have evolved into a cyclical pattern with a 7-8 day period. For clarity, an 8-day moving average trendline has been added. Our health “experts” offer no explanation for this pattern, in fact nobody seems to have asked the question. To ask questions implies you are a doubter, and doubting is synonymous with heresy. The cyclical pattern is unlikely to be some mysterious property of the infection itself. More likely it is related to patterns in testing and subsequent confirmation in the laboratory. Data is listed by date of confirmation, not date of diagnosis. We are currently in one of those periodic upswings, which the news media interpret as a spike.
From a statistical point of view, there is no spike in infections outside of normal variations in the data. The 8-day trend line continues to go down, despite the fact that the protests (and re-openings) occurred more than 14 days ago. If we look at the onset of the disease, it started to rise to epidemic levels roughly March 1st. Restrictions were imposed on March 16. It is significant that there is no observable change in the slope which can be attributed to shutting down the country.
While the infection rates in several states increased roughly in the last week, there is no corresponding increase in hospitalizations. In Arizona, for example, there were 1654 new cases of COVID-19 reported on June 11, but only one was hospitalized. Testing patterns have changed. Through most of the Spring, only persons with signs of an active infection were tested, with 12% to 20% shown to have a COVID infection. Testing is now more widespread, especially subsequent to re-openings. Non-symptomatic cases outnumber symptomatic cases 9 to 1. Of those 10% with symptoms, very few will require hospitalization. In short, not all spikes are the same.
No more lockdowns!
A new study by five researchers published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found “no evidence that the repeal of [Wisconsin’s stay-at-home order” impacted social distancing, COVID-19 cases, or COVID-19-related mortality during the fortnight following enactment.
In other words, most people acted sensibly even though their governor wasn’t micromanaging their lives.
Is the Covid-19 Death Toll Being Padded? by Dennis Behreandt was published in The New American in it June 8, 2020 edition. As Behreandt wrote:
Data about the prevalence and severity of COVID-19 are revealing a disease that, while serious, is not as deadly as public-health agencies and the mainstream media have reported. while the virus that causes it is quite infectious, and is potentially deadly, especially for those with underlying health problems or who are more advanced in age, but neither should the dangers represented by the flu and other diseases be minimized. Yet for the coronavirus we have seen an end of freedom, the invigoration of the tyrannical surveillance state, the acceptance of rule by degree, and the impoverishment of many millions of people.
Even when a "a definite diagnosis of COVID-10 cannot be made," said Behreandt, it could still be listed as the cause of death. Medicare has also determined that a COVID-10 admission to a hospital was worth $13,000 and if a patient goes on a ventilator the hospital gets three times as much, $39,000.
In the same June 8, 2020 issue of The New American in another article by Dennis Behreandt, Dissenting From The Panic Attack, this powerful appeal was made by Dr. Knut Wittkowski, former head of Rockefeller University's Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design.
We already have developed herd immunity, despite social distancing, at least to some level that we have immunity in a quite relevant portion of the population. The worst things that could happen if we let's say have another 10-20,000 cases ...It's not the end of the world. We should go back to be a strong economy, to work, to have a social life, to let children be educated, do everything our society should do, and that lockdown is, there is no benefit, there is only negative effects.
