Old cases and new cases of Covid-19 all counted as new cases in CDC test tallies.

Old cases and new cases of Covid-19 have been counted as new cases by the CDC and many states. This is just being acknowledged now, even though this screwed up data was being used to plan state openings.  The jaw-dropping error results in over-stated bad news.

There are viral tests to find out who has active virus in their system.  There are antibody tests to find out who has recovered from or begun to recover from the virus.   A big difference but the results of these tests have been dumped into a single bin.  In some cases, people weren't even aware they were doing it.    Story at The Atlantic which has been changing the conversation, not just writing stories.

Favourite quote:

Before and After are Different

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ashish Jha, the K. T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told us when we described what the CDC was doing. “How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess.”

KISS or Complicate?: A simpler view solves problems. So does complication.

E=mc2 simplifies so much but looking for a simple statement is ruinous when the facts are not simple.  The example explained to me the other day is the random number generator in the computer game, Minesweeper. 

It places hidden mines on a board and looks random but isn't quite. When the code is used to pick a "random" point in a many-dimension grid, patterns emerge but you'll never see them if you just apply the code to a single row of numbers.  The non-random element is that each new iteration starts from the last one.

Immunoglobulin molecule

People great and small  (like myself), like to simplify and reduce the random messiness of life.  A delightful line showing this tendency:  "The (French) Academy, founded in 1635, is the official guardian of the French language and therefore is charged with the daunting task of defending the language from its own speakers."    Less savoury examples include blaming all bad things on Donald Trump,  equating weather with climate, and despising all nation states.

Each of us finds a simplifying shortcut, a TOE  (Theory of Everything) to make sense of confusion.  A little kid may go with "Mom says so".    Men five thousand years ago may conclude that stars and stones are people and build a culture around it.

I end with Richard Feynman's thought which handles complexity well:

"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong".

Decide for yourself if a mask helps. Look at this picture of a cough.

Only the mask on the coughing and sneezing person is the mask that makes a difference..  The photo (with special lighting) of a cough makes it plain.    My takeaway:  Medical people want masks because they are up close to sick people.   Coughing and sneezing people protect their neighbours by wearing a mask but should be at home.  Healthy people who aren't coughing and sneezing and standing right up close to other people probably don't need a mask.  To put one on is kabuki theatre.

Crazy Talk About Ventilators Has Disappeared. Think Oxygen

Hardly a month has passed since we were being told the ventilator stock of a state was the only hope to survive the yellow peril, covid-19.  It drove me crazy seeing this in extremis measure being treated as the foundation for public health.  There were umpteen different models.being patched together from other technologies, high and low tech.  Worldwide, few places are equipped to use ventilators well and trained staff is in short supply.   Breathing has to be suppressed, a hazardous move, to allow the ventilators to function better.  Worse  yet, ventilators were killing some people.

Bonnie Glick, Deputy Administrator for USAID comments near the 28 minute mark of this American Thought Leaders Video:     We help supply ventilators but only to countries with hospitals and staff that can use them.  More important is shipping oxygen.  Even poor countries have ways of supplying oxygen.  The bonus oxygen doesn't require suppression of autonomic breathing or the use of forced air.  "We know that oxygen will save even more lives than ventilators".

As the saying goes, "I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV".   The expert communicated by video and some of that intelligence was picked up here.

By The Numbers: Taking away your liberty didn't save lives. Update: Europe too

Wallethub charted all states by the liberty they took away in the name of safety and the number of covid-19 deaths they had to date.  I added "Has Democrat for Governor".

Takeaways:
1.   The states that took away the most liberty with the hardest lockdowns did no better than the others, maybe a little worse.
2.   The states that took away the most liberty were almost all headed by a Democrat governor.

Comment on chart:  The information was released May 19 but is changing rapidly by state moves to restore liberty .  The colour coding is just meant to highlight four corners of the graph:  Green is low death and high liberty.  Red is high death and high liberty.   Blue is low liberty and low death.  Gray is low liberty and high death.      The observation about Democrat governors is taken from Breitbart's article here.

Update May 22.  Europe is reporting the same, that lockdowns didn't mean lives saved. Bloomberg story.

China Legally Stole Sri Lanka's Only World Class Port for 99 Years.

We've heard tales China was entrapping small nations in infrastructure debt and then grabbing stuff.  Here's detail from USAID's Bonnie Glick:

"In Sri Lanka, the government signed on the dotted line without reading all the fine print and the fine print indicated that if Sri Lanka was not able to pay the debt servicing on the loan that it took out from the People’s Republic of China to build that port - that world class port - that port would be turned over on a 99 year concessionary lease to the Peoples Republic of China, and it’s –oh by the way – significantly situated for defense maneuvers as well. Sri Lanka bought this story that they would have ten thousand port calls a year. In the first year of operation, there were 37. And so, when it became clear that Sri Lanka would not be able to pay that debt servicing, China swooped in and has taken a 99 year concessionary lease possession of Sri Lanka’s largest world class port."

Transcribed from the opening remarks of the interview with Jan Jekielek of American Thought Leaders.  The supporting information below is copied from Wikipedia:

More info: Magampura Mahinda Rajapaksa Port - Wikipedia

ALSO DJIBOUTI: At the 17 minute mark in the same interview, Glick reports that China now holds all the strings there with the same play, also in a strategic position at the entry to the Red Sea.

No Wonder the Nova Scotia Police Were Hiding Shooter Documents

The police knew for twelve hours that the gunman was driving a fake police car and didn't tell the public.
I couldn't understand why documents were being withheld.  Now I do.  The RCMP didn't know how to deal with this, telling the public not to trust the RCMP.
Recently unsealed warrant.
Story and link extracted from theguardian.com  h/t  blazingcatfur.

"Susan Rice wanted it on record that President Obama had authorized her to lie, on advice from James Comey"

Writing this memo was the last thing Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice did, minutes before leaving office. You know it has to be important.    Succinctly summarized by John Hinderaker at Powerlineblog:     UPDATE below.

"She wanted it on record that President Obama had authorized her to lie, on advice from James Comey"

She lied to General Flynn who was coming in to occupy her position and the "Information ... as it relates to Russia" refers to information about their own improper Russia investigation into Trump people, not to giving secret information to Russians.

As usual, the best deep background and consistent source of original documents is from Sundance at TheConservativeTreeHouse.  The Hinderaker one-liner simplifies the takeaway.

UPDATE May 20:  White House counsel advised Susan Rice to write the CYA memo.

Wind Animation of Cyclone Amphan Landing in India and Bangladesh

Cyclone Amphan Making Landfall 6pm May 19 PDT.  India and Bangladesh threatened.  Sourced at Ventusky.com   Link to live tracker at Times of India.

"Downgraded to Category 3 from its previous Category 5 strength, Tropical Cyclone Amphan is expected to make landfall near India and Bangladesh border on Wednesday as a major storm, with catastrophic storm surge, high winds, and torrential rains."

Obama's Portrait in the White House: One version is Enemy Propaganda, one version is News.

The official President Obama portrait is ready to unveil in the white house.
Enemy propaganda reports that Trump Won't Unveil Obama's Official White House Portrait Any Time Soon, despite this being an amicable tradition in the past.
The news reports Obama's quote that Obama "has no interest in participating in the post-presidency rite of passage", despite this being an amicable tradition in the past.

Ugh.

Mouse Brain Has An Off Switch For Pain. Please Be True For People Too.

There is new hope for fixing chronic pain.  The mouse brain amygdala has a region that can profoundly damp the sensation of pain.  The amygdala harbors protocols for fight-or-flight and general anxiety.

Sufferers of chronic pain don't need to be reminded every minute of every day that something is wrong.  They got the message.  They deserve a break.

Previous searches were for brain locations that turn ON pain, hoping to disable the ON switch. This report describes a region that actively turns OFF pain.  A stimulus instead of an antagonist may do the trick.

The source paper in Nature is linked here.  The research was into why general anesthesia works.  They found a population of cells in the amygdala that were stimulated by it.

Six Foot Distancing Rule Is A Made Up Number

Social Distancing at 6 feet is the new gospel in Canada and the United States.  The number is a by-guess-and-by-gosh contraption and not the result of research.
Have a look at this chart for other countries with the 2 metre rule,the 1.5 metre rule and the 1 metre rule.  Different strokes for different folks but the same virus.

Just to be picky, the six foot rule is a 1.82 metre rule.

UPDATE: The Daily Mail weighs in May 20th.  The science for 2 metres is missing and  Australia has the 1 metre rule which makes it much easier for restaurants to open.

Requires all the on-air talent at CNN...

Seen at Instapundit.

If Shoe Stores Sold Only Size Six ... Bosses Mandate One Lockdown For The City Crowd And The Same For Country Counties.

People die in crowded urban areas.  Covid-19 is more like a ripple out in the country.  Fine tune that for the 5% in nursing homes and serious pre-existing conditions.

In Missouri, death rates are
436/million in St Louis city and county,
129/million in nearby St. Charles County and 28/million in all the rest of the state.   And four more examples posted at Gateway Pundit:







– Wisconsin (Milwaukee Co., 271/million; rest of state, 42 per million).
– Minnesota (Hennepin Co., 365 per million; rest of state, 61 per million).
– Florida (Mami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach – 182 per million; rest of state – 56 per million).
– Michigan (Metro Detroit’s 3 counties, – 999 per million; rest of state, 168 per million).


What if Governors and Provinces advised the subregions to decide how to apply recommendations.  If the county doesn't want to handle it then the senior government will act for them.

UPDATE:  CDC stats for United States.  86,000 people die per million per year. 

Infectious Isn't Bad

An infectious bug is one that travels fast through its environment, host to host, and has nothing to do with whether it kills you, gives the sniffles, or even passes unnoticed to the next host.  The "R nought" number is about infectiousness, not about danger.   A viral bloom will generally spread through the world in four or five weeks before being overcome by an army of antibodies.  Less infectious ones take a little longer.   (Idea expanded from Dr Suzanne Cahill interview here.)

UPDATE:  The video was censored by YouTube and Facebook.
Available now here: (At Bitchute).

What kills people? Surprises in chart.

The Infographic covering deaths worldwide is easy to follow in three colors:  When we get TV and newspaper stories they cover the small (gray) fraction of deaths that are accidental.   That's human nature.


Covid-19 shows up in the red communicable disease section, temporarily of note but not overwhelming.

The biggest section is the blue one we consider so normal it isn't newsworthy: deaths that are not from accidents and not from communicable disease.

Lockdowns have bonus points for Blue States: No Trump Rallies Until November 3rd.

The saving lives narrative works but so does keeping Donald J Trump out of your state's stadiums until after the election.  How cynical is that?

China CCP Hides Coronavirus Facts. 100,000,000 on new lock down for a half dozen cases?

Coronavirus lies from China, as usual.  A couple days ago there were 1 case in Wuhan and five cases in Heilongjiang.  Today 108 million people were put into lockdown  in the north-east.   Baghdad Bob would have got pointers from this.  The scale of action reveals the falseness of the reported data.

From Mike Doran's twitter feed and from Balding's World twitter feed:

Daily Evidence That What's Good For The Communist Party And Truth are Strangers.

640,000 cases of COVID-19 show up in a leaked internal database from China, about eight times more than admitted to the world.   Chinese officialdom doesn't lie.  It simply presents the CCP in the best possible light, truth not relevant.   The best write up seems to be at Foreign Policy

The natives are restless.  Today in New Jersey.

And this from Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit:

  "People keep telling me that the long night of fascism is descending on America, but what I’m seeing is the biggest popular revolt against authority in my lifetime."