Is germophobia
the real disease?

Hope rises as Covid exposure is found widespread

A Stanford study was carried out in Santa Clara County, Cal., and may not be representative of the rest of the country -- but there is a good chance that it is representative, since one would not expect the virus to behave differently in Santa Clara than elsewhere.

The good news is that this tells us that the death rate for the overall population is very low (though it remains much higher for the infirm and the aged). A further piece of good news is that, at least in California, we may be seeing the beginnings of herd immunity, whereby so many people are immune to the virus that it has little chance of reaching someone who is not immune.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1

Abstract of the study

COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California

Eran Bendavid, Bianca Mulaney, Neeraj Sood, Soleil Shah, Emilia Ling, Rebecca Bromley-Dulfano, Cara Lai, Zoe Weissberg, Rodrigo Saavedra, James Tedrow, Dona Tversky, Andrew Bogan, Thomas Kupiec, Daniel Eichner, Ribhav Gupta, John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya

doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463

This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

Abstract

Background Addressing COVID-19 is a pressing health and social concern. To date, many epidemic projections and policies addressing COVID-19 have been designed without seroprevalence data to inform epidemic parameters. We measured the seroprevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in Santa Clara County. Methods On 4/3-4/4, 2020, we tested county residents for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 using a lateral flow immunoassay. Participants were recruited using Facebook ads targeting a representative sample of the county by demographic and geographic characteristics. We report the prevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in a sample of 3,330 people, adjusting for zip code, sex, and race/ethnicity. We also adjust for test performance characteristics using 3 different estimates: (i) the test manufacturer's data, (ii) a sample of 37 positive and 30 negative controls tested at Stanford, and (iii) a combination of both. Results The unadjusted prevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in Santa Clara County was 1.5% (exact binomial 95CI 1.11-1.97%), and the population-weighted prevalence was 2.81% (95CI 2.24-3.37%). Under the three scenarios for test performance characteristics, the population prevalence of COVID-19 in Santa Clara ranged from 2.49% (95CI 1.80-3.17%) to 4.16% (2.58-5.70%). These prevalence estimates represent a range between 48,000 and 81,000 people infected in Santa Clara County by early April, 50-85-fold more than the number of confirmed cases. Conclusions The population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Santa Clara County implies that the infection is much more widespread than indicated by the number of confirmed cases. Population prevalence estimates can now be used to calibrate epidemic and mortality projections

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Covid lags far behind killersthat have never shut down U.S.

As a killer of Americans, Covid lags far behind heart disease and cancer, according to CDC data.

Assuming that Covid has been highly active in the United States for about two and a half months (February, March and half of April), we can get a fairly good estimate of the total number of deaths to be expected in that period based on 2017 and 2018 figures.¹ We get that by 2.5(2810000)/12 = 583000 for 2017 and 2.5(2840000)/12 = 592000 for 2018. Taking the average, we have 587,000 deaths as a very plausible number for a 2.5-month period.

The number of Covid deaths in America so far is 26,000. And 26,000/587000 is about 4.4 percent. That is, Covid is among the top killers of Americans, placing just ahead of flu/pneumonia with a 2 percent rate. The following percentages come from Medical News Today¹, which gleaned them from the CDC's 2017 data.

Covid lags far behind heart disease, which accounts for 23.5 percent of deaths yearly in America, and cancer, which accounts for 21.3 percent. Accidental deaths, at 6 percent, outpace Covid. Also ranking ahead of Covid is chronic lower respiratory disease (COPD, bronchitis, emphysema, asthma) at 5.7%, and stroke and cerebrovascular disease at 5.2 percent.

Covid appears to nudge ahead of Alzheimer's, with its 4.3% rate. It also outpaces diabetes (3%), kidney disease (1.8%) and suicide (1.8%).

It is reasonable to believe that the Covid percentage is not exactly as calculated. But, there is no chance the actual percentage is anywhere near the percentage for the top  killers of Americans: heart disease and cancer.

So there is a serious question as to whether a disease that is far less of a killer than other causes of death ought to be viewed as a threat so menacing that society must be shut down. Society doesn't close down for any of the other top killers of Americans.

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1. CDC: In 2018, a total of 2,839,205 resident deaths were registered in the United States—25,702 more deaths than in 2017.

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2. Top causes of death in America
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929#kidney-disease

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WPost scaremongers with bad stats

The Washington Post, using weekly, rather than the annual and adjusted annual figures that I used, ranks Covid as the Number 2 killer of Americans.

The Post's method is, I suggest, less accurate than mine because it is focused on an aberrational Covid death spike rather than likely longterm results. Curious that this "liberal" paper is seeking scary, sensationalist interpretations of data.

Liberal bias? Why the scare tactics?
https://archive.is/xCiox

Interstate commerce clause is citedas giving Trump high hand -- analyst

Constitutional scholar Mark Levin argues that President Trump has a great deal of power to restart the economy, despite what some governors say.

Those governors cite the federalism argument, which says that states have a certain amount of sovereign power as specified in the 10th Amendment, which asserts, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

But, says Levin, the Constitution's interstate commerce clause takes precedence in a situation where the decisions of governors are having a massive affect on the nation's commerce, as shown by the fact that 10 percent of the nation's workforce has been made jobless. The commerce clause -- Article 1, Section 8 -- says,

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

That is, Congress -- not state governors or legislatures -- has power to regulate commerce among the states. As the person appointed to ensure enforcement of federal law, the President has power to see to it that states do not impede interstate commerce.

Levin pointed out that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was made possible by expansive interpretation of that clause by the Supreme Court, and he asserts that those precedents still hold.

So, insists the lawyer and television commentator, the current situation of heavy-handed shutdowns bespeaks a "one-way federalism" that does not exist under law. As a consequence, Trump has much more authority than the "federalist" governors seem to realize to overrule their shutdowns on the basis that they are interfering with the national economy.

Antiviral said to knock out Covid fast; experts assail 'flawed' computer model

From Statnews:

A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week, STAT has learned.

Remdesivir was one of the first medicines identified as having the potential to impact SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in lab tests. The entire world has been waiting for results from Gilead’s clinical trials, and positive results would likely lead to fast approvals by the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies. If safe and effective, it could become the first approved treatment against the disease.

The University of Chicago Medicine recruited 125 people with Covid-19 into Gilead’s two Phase 3 clinical trials. Of those people, 113 had severe disease. All the patients have been treated with daily infusions of remdesivir.

“The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We’ve only had two patients perish,” said Kathleen Mullane, the University of Chicago infectious disease specialist overseeing the remdesivir studies for the hospital.

The mortality rate of 1.6% is close to the rate for those who die in hospital of flu, though the figures are not precisely comparable.

In another Covid development reported by Statnews, many epidemiologists are harshly criticizing the Covid model used by White House experts, arguing that it has proved highly unreliable and hence dangerous for use in decision-making. White House experts had been using Covid death projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which terms itself an "independent global health research center at the University of Washington."

This reporter, citing years of journalistic experience, can attest that epidemiologists tend toward iconoclasm, not being highly prone to agreement in their statements to the public.

Antiviral looks like a wonder drug
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/16/early-peek-at-data-on-gilead-coronavirus-drug-suggests-patients-are-responding-to-treatment/

Flawed Covid model slammed
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/17/influential-covid-19-model-uses-flawed-methods-shouldnt-guide-policies-critics-say/

The big lie: 'We don't know the denominator'

I suppose Aristotle or Bertrand Russell might say that the statement "We don't know the denominator" is true, when referring to the actual Covid mortality rate. But in the real world, that claim is a lie.

It may have been true in the first few days of the U.S. epidemic, but any official who claims that no one can know the percentage of their populace that is infected because of too few tests is either incompetent or lying.

Anyone who has taken a statistics course knows that we can get a pretty good bell curve with as few as eight random samples.

Ideally, we might like to have several hundred people selected pretty much at random for testing. Depending on the size of the sample, the confidence in the estimate of the number of people with the Covid virus can range from fairly sure to virtually certain.

The last I looked, 2,000 random samples would give a near 100 percent confidence level for the entire U.S. population. It's curious that the press uses popularity polls all the time that use that scientific method. But most in the media seem clueless here. They should be asking what these figures are. How do they change from week to week, whether nationally, or by state, county or metro region?

Public officials, mostly Democrats, who hurl abuse at President Trump over the purportedly insufficient number of tests available are either ignorant (they slept through their college statistics course) or recklessly concealing information from the public. Those governors who say they will base decisions on restoring liberty to their citizens don't even release basic scientific statistical data so that the scientists in their states and elsewhere may evaluate it.

In any case, from what I can tell, a number of the computer models that project epidemic numbers are using the wrong input data. The most basic input data should come from the percentages of the populace infected at two points in time. Hospitalization rates and "confirmed" Covid case rates and other such data constitute useful secondary data. If health officials are not doing the type of random sampling outlined above, then the models are, pretty much, junk. As they say in computer land, "Junk in = junk out."

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In addition, the claim by the FDA and others that the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine could only be established by clinical trials is not altogether accurate. The best information would come from random trials. But here is a method that would give a pretty fair indication:

Poll a random sample of ICU chiefs with two questions. Do you routinely administer hydroxychloroquine for five or more days upon admission? What is the average ICU stay of your Covid patients -- regardless of chloroquine use? [In addition, it would be helpful to ask, Have you observed adverse side effects that you suspect result from use of hydroxychloroquine?]

One can then do a scatter plot and obtain a regression line showing whether there is a correlation between hydroxychloroquine use and length of stay in the ICU. One must quiz enough ICU chiefs in order to filter out specific local policies (by the tendency of minor causes to cancel) on ICU length of stay.

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Ron Paul on the mounting backlash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0OOqq29Ios

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Details of econ restart plan
https://www.scribd.com/document/456756096/White-House-guidelines-for-reopening-economy#from_embed

Question: Will we need ID to prove we aren't vulnerable?
In other words, suppose, in Phase 1 of the White House plan, I am ambling about. I am in the senior citizen age bracket, as is apparent from my craggy, saggy face. Will police officers be checking my ID in order to verify that I am permitted to be out and about? This should be a silly question, but in the current atmosphere, it isn't, especially because different governors will be deciding on how the plan is to work, if at all.

Answer: the White House says the vulnerable "should" avoid people. An ambiguous word leaving plenty of room for abuse of power by state and local penny ante dictators.

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Greenwald: Emergency powers rarely go away
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd7exbDzU1c

Covid lags far behind top killers that have never shut down U.S.

As a killer of Americans, Covid lags far behind heart disease and cancer, according to CDC data.

Assuming that Covid has been highly active in the United States for about two and a half months (February, March and half of April), we can get a fairly good estimate of the total number of deaths to be expected in that period based on 2017 and 2018 figures.¹ We get that by 2.5(2810000)/12 = 583000 for 2017 and 2.5(2840000)/12 = 592000 for 2018. Taking the average, we have 587,000 deaths as a very plausible number for a 2.5-month period.

The number of Covid deaths in America so far is 26,000. And 26,000/587000 is about 4.4 percent. That is, Covid is among the top killers of Americans, placing just ahead of flu/pneumonia with a 2 percent rate. The following percentages come from Medical News Today¹, which gleaned them from the CDC's 2017 data.

Covid lags far behind heart disease, which accounts for 23.5 percent of deaths yearly in America, and cancer, which accounts for 21.3 percent. Accidental deaths, at 6 percent, outpace Covid. Also ranking ahead of Covid is chronic lower respiratory disease (COPD, bronchitis, emphysema, asthma) at 5.7%, and stroke and cerebrovascular disease at 5.2 percent.

Covid appears to nudge ahead of Alzheimer's, with its 4.3% rate. It also outpaces diabetes (3%), kidney disease (1.8%) and suicide (1.8%).

It is reasonable to believe that the Covid percentage is not exactly as calculated. But, there is no chance the actual percentage is anywhere near the percentage for the top  killers of Americans: heart disease and cancer.

So there is a serious question as to whether a disease that is far less of a killer than other causes of death ought to be viewed as a threat so menacing that society must be shut down. Society doesn't close down for any of the other top killers of Americans.

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1. CDC: In 2018, a total of 2,839,205 resident deaths were registered in the United States—25,702 more deaths than in 2017.

---

2. Top causes of death in America
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929#kidney-disease

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