Is US intentionally flying blind with respect to COVID-19?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

08 April 2020

 

 

We are about five months into the COVID pandemic — and still have no workable data

 

No one has a proportional grasp on what COVID-19's morbidity and death rates are.

 

Countries are "locked down" (or not) and draconian economic consequences are on the way (or not).

 

All because Homo sapiens is (apparently) too unmotivated to go out and seek a statistically somewhat accurate picture, regarding the zoonotic's characterizing numbers.

 

 

We cannot make "proportionate" responses to phenomena . . .

 

. . . if we do not know what the Whole — and its pertinent proportions — look like.

 

 

A succinct mini-example

 

The British Medical Journal just published this blurb:

 

 

Chinese authorities began publishing daily figures on 1 April on the number of new coronavirus cases that are asymptomatic, with the first day’s figures suggesting that around four in five coronavirus infections caused no illness.

 

Many experts believe that unnoticed, asymptomatic cases of coronavirus infection could be an important source of contagion.

 

A total of 130 of 166 new infections (78%) identified in the 24 hours to the afternoon of Wednesday 1 April were asymptomatic, said China’s National Health Commission.

 

Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist and honorary research fellow at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said the findings were “very, very important.”

 

“The sample is small, and more data will become available. Also, it’s not clear exactly how these cases were identified. But let’s just say they are generalisable.

 

"And even if they are 10% out, then this suggests the virus is everywhere. If . . . the results are representative, then we have to ask, ‘What the hell are we locking down for?’”

 

© 2020 Michael Day, Covid-19: four fifths of cases are asymptomatic, China figures indicate, BMJ 2020; 369: m1375, doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1375 (02 April 2020)

 

 

Notice two glaring negative points to the BMJ data — small numbers and no context

 

This tiny and very probably unindicative 166 person sample number has no statistical, scientific or epidemiological value. It is virtually anecdotal.

 

Only one hundred sixty-six people — out of, for example:

 

 

a 1.4 billion person Chinese population

 

a 331 million United States populace —

 

not to mention

 

the 445 million-peopled European Union.

 

 

Five months into this pandemic . . .

 

Why is this meaninglessly small sample of cases arguably the best data that we have?

 

Rhetorically speaking, is no one on this planet capable of thinking scientifically and proportionately?

 

 

This what I mean by "intentionally flying blind"

 

The people and COVID cases are out there.

 

We are just too lazy, too unresourced or too unscientifically minded to go and see what's really going on with them.

 

Instead, "Government" seems content to blast economies to smithereens to "save lives" — without knowing:

 

 

what proportion of lives we are saving

 

and

 

which competing (probably much larger) portion of lives we are economically screwing forever.

 

 

One would think that achieving an arguably "cost-effective" balance would be desirable

 

Here, please don't give me the "lives are invaluable" BS that political lefties like to trot out.

 

No one believes that in practice. Even lefties don't, when they have to pay for it.

 

There's a cost attached to everything. Even Uncle Fred and Grammy Marti.

 

 

Voluble nonsense everywhere

 

If we listen to the blathering Mainstream, it is filled with pseudo-statistics and personal anecdotes:

 

 

A thousand dead here.

 

Another such, there.

 

Citizen X, who was 23, got COVID and died.

 

Her 52 year old mom also passed.

 

Their cat has COVID — did you know?

 

And the zoo's checking its tigers.

 

Up close and personal — let's zoom in and talk to CNN's Chris Cuomo, who is ill, but still alive.

 

It's just so horrible, y'all.

 

Have we spoken yet of the ventilator shortage?

 

 

Pertinent to ventilators

 

Very limited data from China indicates that only about 14 percent of ventilated COVID patients survive.

 

For that, see:

 

 

Silvio A Ñamendys-Silva, Respiratory support for patients with COVID-19 infection, Lancet Respiratory Medicine 2020 Apr; 8(4):e18, doi: 10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30110-7 (05 March 2020)

 

Dr. Mike Hansen [MD intensivist, pulmonologist], Do Ventilators Save COVID-19 Patient's Lives?, YouTube (04 April 2020)

 

 

Based on this 14 percent estimation, one can question the societal merit of massively and expensively trying to fix the ventilator shortage.

 

Especially so, at the cost of limiting the attention that we pay to arguably much more effective endeavors. Like keeping our medical people suitably protected.

 

 

All this "flying blind" on purpose proceeds . . .

 

. . . as if people do not die in droves all over the planet — every day — and nobody cares.

 

 

The moral? — Promptly getting data should have been among the first responses to COVID

 

Instead, it seems to be our unintelligent last response.

 

Homo sapiens should be born with "I'm inclined to be silly" stamped on our foreheads.