It was most heartening to read this, someone is standing up to Governor Gavin Newsom . “After his county landed on the state’s COVID-19 watch list and was forced to close many indoor business over the weekend, Sn Mateo County health officer Dr. Scott Morrow lambasted the watch list and its criteria in a Thursday message to the community. I wish to apologize to all of business that were closed this week” he wrote. “ am not supportive of these actions, and for San Mateo County, I believe they are misdirected and will cause more harm than good.” Do you not love the word lambasted? It is like music to my years. Dr. Morrow went on to say”This action is a bit like looking for your lost keys under a streetlight even though you lost them miles away. If you have read my previous statements, you know I put important balance. We have to minimize spread while not destroying everything in the process.”
Dr. Bela Matyaa, the county health officer of Solano also spoke out. Solano has been on the list since June 29, 2929 and said that it may be impossible to get off the watch list, citing the fact that 95% of the country’s new cases are coming from social gatherings and not reopened businesses.
So what is Newsom doing except posturing – he is not concerned with the people, he is concerned about numbers – a politician’s only focus. It is the votes they want – they are numbers men in a different way than accountants are.
What does the watch list consist of? You shall not believe it. It has nothing to do with nothing. It is illogical, inconsistent and meaningless. Here goes. There are six different indications that can land a county on the watch list.
A seven-day average of fewer than 150 tests conducted per 100,00 residents.
More than 100 cases per 100 000 residents over 14 days.
More than 25 cases per 100,00 over 14 days a seven day average of testing positivity over 8%
A 10% increase in the three day average for hospitalizations.
- Having less than 20% of ICU beds available.
- Having less than 25% of ventilators available.
This is fact, and not fiction. Very, very few people who are infected need ventilators. Very very few people who are infected need to go to anICU. Very, very few people who are infected need to go to the hospital and it is not advised.
This from the Washington Post. “When researcher Monica Gandhi began digging deeper into outbreaks of the novel coronavirus, she was struck by the extraordinarily high number of infected people who had no symptoms. A Boston homeless shelter had 147 infected residents but 88% had no symptoms even though they shared the same living space. Tyson Foods poultry plant had 481 infections and 99% were agysymtomatic . Prisons in Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia counted 3,277 infected people but 96% were asymptomatic. During its seven-month global rampage, the coronavirus has claimed more than 700,000 lives. But Gandhi began to think the bigger mystery might be why it has left so many more practically unscathed.”
Excellent question! For one thing, there has probably not been 700,000 deaths as the statistical means of counting deaths is flawed. Deaths by anything or anybody are often blamed on the virus. practically unscathed. What was it about these asymptomatic people, who lived or worked so closely to others who fell severely ill, she wondered, that protected them? Did the “dose” of their viral exposure make a difference? Was it genetics? Or might some people already have partial resistance to the virus, contrary to our initial understanding? What was it about these asymptomatic people, who lived or worked so closely to others who fell severely ill, she wondered, that protected them? Did the “dose” of their viral exposure make a difference? Was it genetics? Or might some people already have partial resistance to the virus, contrary to our initial understanding?
So let us now travel to the New Yorker to receive some truths which will shed more light on the inappropriateness of the imposed county watch list. A recent article by Carolyn Kormann queried “How Did I Catch the Coronavirus? The article asserts: For the majority of the nearly five million COVID-19 cases across the United States, the point of infection is unknown. She discusses her personal experience but also provides valuable statistical data. She also reports that Plenty of data suggest, however, that they all might have had the virus. Between forty and forty-five per cent of infected people are asymptomatic.
The U.S., with only four per cent of the world’s population, has more than twenty-five per cent of the world’s known covid-19 cases. As the Times recently noted, by the end of July, that translated to fifteen times as many confirmed covid-19 cases, per capita, as Canada, and twelve times as many as Europe. On July 23rd, the covid-19 Tracking Project estimated that nearly sixty thousand people were hospitalized, almost equal to the number on April 15th, at the first peak of the pandemic in the U.S. “It takes some time to get to those big numbers,” Justin Lessler, an associate professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University, told me. “Particularly if it’s just a subtle increase in how much over-all transmission is happening, due to a relaxation of controls.”
“Problems exist as it takes many days, even weeks before test results are known. “After social-distancing measures were loosened, various national outbreaks took four to six weeks to register with public-health officials. Infected individuals first have to develop symptoms, which, according to existing data, takes an average of five and a half days, then get tested and get the results. A single generation of transmission—the time between becoming infected and infecting someone else—takes about a week.”
There are greater problems. “Even though testing has been made a priority in the national response, in many regions, especially those with the largest case surges, there are still long delays in turning around results, as much as a week to ten days. “I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to be back in the same place,” Gurley said. “We’ve got to be screaming about this again.” With test-result delays, contact tracing becomes somewhat futile, since the point is to reach an infected person’s possible contacts and ask them to quarantine before they start shedding virus. People, on average, pose an infectious risk roughly two days before symptoms start. “
So this is a huge problem as, to repeat, “people pose an infectious risk roughly two days before symptoms start.” Newsom’s “Number One-“ the imposition of testing makes matters worse as it will take longer to get text results. Did he take science in school, does he have any common sense, is he remotely intelligent? The answer appears to be no.
I personally do not suffer from the restrictions imposed by the Watch Test. I do not own a business, arbitrarily shut down even though most infections are caused by private gatherings. I do not have a child who will be unable to go back to school unless the watch test is lifted. In the words of an idiom: My ox is not getting gored. The idiom’s meaning? Who is suffering or losing out in a given situation. Not me, but it is irritating as two conditions infuriate me: stupidity and victimhood. That is what is going on here. Fight back, confront Newsom, please.
I shall get off my virus rant. The photograph attached to this blog is a painting called “Hope” – it did not look terribly hopeful to me. I set out to tell the story and did. More about that in an upcoming blog. The other photographer a sign should bring you laughter.
