Tag: healthcare

This would be almost Biblical if it were true:

The Vatican has confirmed in a statement that Pope Francis and two of his aides have tested positive for the novel Coronavirus. The three new cases add up to the over 400 cases confirmed in Italy under a week. Pope Francis missed a planned Mass with clergy in Rome yesterday after showing Coronavirus-like symptoms.

However, I haven’t seen any mention of this in the Italian media or from the Vatican press office site, so I’m highly dubious.

As large quantities of deaths fail to appear in Italy or anywhere else outside of China, there is some reason to at least begin to suspect that the potential danger from Corona-chan has been significantly exaggerated:

An editorial published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine speculated that the coronavirus currently causing panic in world markets could turn out no worse than “a severe seasonal influenza” in terms of mortality.

Citing an analysis of the available data from the outbreak in China, the authors note that there have been zero cases among children younger than 15; and that the fatality rate is 2{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} at most, and could be “considerably less than 1{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3}.”

Those who have died have been elderly or were already suffering from another illness — as with ordinary flu. The underlying data suggest that the symptoms varies, and fewer than one in six of the cases reported were “severe.”

The authors note that coronavirus looks to be much less severe than other recent outbreaks of respiratory illnesses:

[T]he overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3}) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} and 36{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3}, respectively.

The vast majority of patients recover, and among those who are hospitalized, the median stay thus far is 12 days.

Alternatively, the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine may be heavily invested in the equity markets and are looking for a dead cat bounce to shed the remainder of their stocks. At this point, virtually no one outside of China actually knows anything.

Bill Gates is still trying to make people think that he’s trying to STOP infectious disease rather than spread it:

Billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said the coronavirus that has killed at least 2,859 people and infected more than 83,700 globally may be the “once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about.”

“I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise,” Gates wrote in an article published Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Gates and his wife, Melinda, founded The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 to help improve world health and combat extreme poverty. The foundation announced Feb. 5 that it would donate $100 million to help find treatments and expand testing for the virus, particularly for poorer populations.

According to Gates, COVID-19 poses a serious threat to the world because it’s far more deadly and contagious than many other deadly viruses.

“First, it can kill healthy adults in addition to elderly people with existing health problems,” he wrote. “Second, Covid-19 is transmitted quite efficiently. The average infected person spreads the disease to two or three others — an exponential rate of increase.”

Let’s not forget, we’re talking about a ruthless billionaire who advocates radical depopulation and just two weeks before news of the coronavirus news broke, ran a simulation of a deadly pandemic originating in China.

It’s when the globalists are modifying the meaning of a clearly defined term in order to protect their financial interests:

A little known specialized bond created in 2017 by the World Bank may hold the answer as to why U.S. and global health authorities have declined to label the global spread of the novel coronavirus a “pandemic.” Those bonds, now often referred to as “pandemic bonds,” were ostensibly intended to transfer the risk of potential pandemics in low-income nations to financial markets.

Yet, in light of the growing coronavirus outbreak, the investors who purchased those products could lose millions if global health authorities were to use that label in relation to the surge in global coronavirus cases.

On Tuesday, federal health officials at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that they are preparing for a “potential pandemic” of the novel coronavirus that first appeared in China late last year. The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that an estimated 80,000 worldwide have contracted the disease, most of them in China, while more than 2,700 have died.

However, some have argued that the CDC’s concerns about a likely pandemic have come too late and that action should have been taken much earlier. For instance, in early February, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, had told the New York Times that the novel coronavirus is “very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic,” while former CDC director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden had echoed those concerns at the time, stating that it is “increasingly unlikely that the virus can be contained.”

Despite those warnings, among many others, the CDC waited to announce its concerns that the virus could spread throughout the United States. Their Tuesday announcement riled markets, wiping out $1.7 trillion in stock market value in just two days. The CDC’s warning has reportedly angered President Trump, who accused the agency of needlessly spooking financial markets.

Notably, WHO officials have taken an even more cautious approach than the CDC in their recent comments, stating that it is still “too early” to declare the coronavirus outbreak a “pandemic” while also asserting that “it is time to do everything you would do in preparing for a pandemic.”

The refusal to label the outbreak a pandemic is odd, since it refers to an epidemic or actively spreading disease that affects two or more regions worldwide. This currently describes the geographical spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus, which has now resulted in significant clusters of cases far from China, namely in Italy and Iran. Countries closer to China, like South Korea, have also recently experienced an explosion in novel coronavirus infections.

Given that the disease is actively spreading in at least FOUR different regions, the term “pandemic” is obviously the correct one. It doesn’t appear to be a particularly lethal pandemic, fortunately, but the term is entirely appropriate at this juncture.

I will be having a News Conference at the White House, on this subject, today at 6:00 P.M. CDC representatives, and others, will be there. Thank you!
– Donald J. Trump

I don’t think the god-emperor will be declaring martial law just yet. But we can hope!

As usual, the Official Story is admitted to be false, and promptly forgotten:

We found it fascinating that none other than China’s nationalist propaganda mouthpiece, the Global Times, published a report overnight which dramatically changes the narrative, namely that a “New Chinese study indicates novel coronavirus did not originate in Huanan seafood market.”

According to the brand new study by Chinese researchers published on Feb 21,  the novel coronavirus may have begun human-to-human transmission in late November from a place other than the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan. Of course, we already knew that, but what is critical is that until now, Beijing was adamant in sticking to the official narrative that it was the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan where the disease emerged, despite not providing any information on what animal was the vector, or who was patient zero.

However, now that this narrative has been officially questioned and challenged in a media outlet of the communist party, it is safe to say that the theory of the Huanan food market being the source of the pandemic, is officially dead.

I haven’t really been paying attention, but is the Wuhan Institute Of Virology now the official source of the outbreak or is everyone just assuming that it will eventually be accepted as the official source? The most important thing to remember about conspiracy theorists is that they are a) almost always correct about what they believe did NOT happen and b) almost always incorrect about what they believe actually happened instead.

Besides, we already know the real culprit.

Dear President Trump,

The Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization declared on January 30, 2020 that the Coronavirus outbreak meets the criteria for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. As this is a global health emergency, it is undeniable that the national security interest of the American people leaves you no choice but to declare martial law in the United States.

Please do so at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,
The concerned citizens of the United States of America

PS: If martial law helps you Drain the Swamp, Build the Wall, and restore the 1965 demographic balance of the population while you’re at it, so be it.

Now that it is apparent that containment efforts, to the extent they were even made, have failed, it is perhaps worthwhile pointing out what the experts believe can improve your chances of making it through the next few months without excessive excitement:

• Try to get ahead on medical prescriptions when you can, in case of very predictable supply chain disruptions, and so you won’t have to go out to the pharmacy at a time when there may be long lines of sick people. 
• Start to stock up on enough non-perishable food to last your household through several weeks of social distancing at home during an intense wave of transmission in the community.
• Take your kids out of school and activities. There is no need to freak anyone out; what kid doesn’t enjoy a snow day? Handle it right and they’ll be happily saying “thank you, Corona-chan!”
• Cancel all unnecessary social engagements. As one friend said, it’s a good time to spend the evenings kicking back and having margaritas with your wife.
• Get permission to work from home. Most businesses will embrace this and those who are most proactive about it will get permission first.

I’d already reached the same conclusion about the legitimacy of the statistics after keeping track of the official Corona-chan numbers for a few days. The spread of the disease was far too smooth to be genuine. So, as usual, the one thing we can be certain isn’t true is the official story:

In terms of the virus data, the number of cumulative deaths reported is described by a simple mathematical formula to a very high accuracy, according to a quantitative-finance specialist who ran a regression of the data for Barron’s. A near-perfect 99.99{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} of variance is explained by the equation, this person said.

Put in an investing context, that variance, or so-called r-squared value, would mean that an investor could predict tomorrow’s stock price with almost perfect accuracy. In this case, the high r-squared means there is essentially zero unexpected variability in reported cases day after day.

Barron’s re-created the regression analysis of total deaths caused by the virus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of last year, and found similarly high variance. We ran it by Melody Goodman, associate professor of biostatistics at New York University’s School of Global Public Health.

“I have never in my years seen an r-squared of 0.99,” Goodman says. “As a statistician, it makes me question the data.”

Real human data are never perfectly predictive when it comes to something like an epidemic, Goodman says, since there are countless ways that a person could come into contact with the virus.

For context, Goodman says a “really good” r-squared, in terms of public health data, would be a 0.7. “Anything like 0.99,” she said, “would make me think that someone is simulating data. It would mean you already know what is going to happen.”

About the only thing we know at this point is that non-Chinese victims are not dying at anywhere near the same rate as Chinese victims. And Occam’s Razor strongly suggests that the manufactured numbers underestimate the actual ones.

Corona-chan at Johns Hopkins

02/15—67091—1527
02/14—64447—1384
02/13—60347—1369
02/12—45214—1116
02/11—43129—1018
02/10—40573—-910
02/09—37590—-814
02/08—34944—-725
02/07—31523—-638
02/06—28276—-565
02/05—24554—-492
02/04—20679—-427
02/03—17046—-362
02/02—14628—-305
01/02—11374—-259
31/01—-9821—-213
30/01—-8235—-171
29/01—-7783—-170
28/01—-6057—-132
27/01—-4231—-103
26/01—-2808—–80
25/01—-2117—–56
24/01—-1126—–41
23/01—–901—–26
22/01—–651—–25
21/01—–317——6
20/01—–219——4
19/01—–204——3

Spreadsheet image courtesy of Anonymous Conservative. There may actually be some good news here, as the current numbers out of Johns Hopkins, as of end of day 28/01/20, are 6,057 and 132, which, while still ahead of the predicted model, may indicate that the transmission rate is slowing down a little, from 22 percent over to 18 percent over, while the death rate has declined from 45 percent over to 25 percent over. However, it’s still too soon to reach any meaningful conclusion.

It’s important not to overreact to these statistical models, as you may recall that the Ebola outbreak of 2014 doubled every 4.4 weeks, but the infection rate finally declined and broke the curve in the 9th doubling cycle. So, to know when the coronavirus outbreak is beginning to burn itself out, look for the doubling rate to slow down from its current rate of just over two days.

Alternatively, if it picks up, you may do well to start paying attention to the possibility Corona-chan will be making an appearance closer to you than you might like.