2020 — The Clownshow Year
The Gray Mirror is almost right about an intelligent 8 year old doing better. Thing is, there were scientists — even well known ones — advocating for policies of sanity that an intelligent 8 year old would go for. I was one of them. Like Moderna, I designed a COVID-19 vaccine in a day, then it was just about manufacturing. I didn’t design it as soon as Moderna did. I waited for more data, but I was done by end of January.
“…it would have been difficult in May to find a single credentialed epidemiologist, vaccine researcher, or public-health official recommending a rapid vaccine rollout.”
- There were actually quite a few, but voices were suppressed by journalistic and political kowtowing to the anti-vaxxers. Certainly the physicians who begged me for a vaccine were wanting it now — and understood they should and could have it. The editorial we wrote was finally published in Rejuvenation Biosciences as, “A Call for a Three-Tiered Pandemic Public Health Strategy in Context of SARS-CoV-2”
But first this editorial got axed by some worthy at Harvard, it seemed because it was too controversial — after being assured that we had a free hand. Then, it got viciously rejected by a silly woman at The Economist’s “Health Desk,” because she was offended to be told that her ideas shaped by the anti-vaxxer mommy wars were wrong. How dare I contradict HER! She’s an EDITOR at The Economist! I am just a scientist with an education. - The Economist’s Health Desk Editor young woman found a way to attack one of the authors through a back channel by scaring other academics into yelling at him. She threatened to ensure that nothing they would ever write would make it into The Economist again. In other words, this pandemic response was shaped by groupthink idiocy mired in a mound of mud heaved by the likes of “Dr Mercola” Andrew Wakefield, and RFK junior. (Those guys are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children because of their anti-vaccine bullshit. And yes, Dr. Mercola has attacked me before. I think he’s downright evil.)
- If the “Biohackers” were actually worth half a nickel we would have had a massive rollout of a do-it-yourself vaccine that ended the pandemic in the USA for all practical purposes. Could have happened by June, and it would have put them on the map. But, they aren’t worth a damn. With possibly one rare exception, they don’t care much about anything but appearing cool and getting publicity. It’s all about making money on youtube— or it was. Youtube is shutting down biohacker accounts now. (Whether that is warranted is another matter entirely. I don’t think it is.)
“…The event seared into the mind of every vaccine researcher is the 1976 swine-flu scare. 45 million Americans were vaccinated with an emergency vaccine for a pandemic flu strain that turned out to be a non-problem. 1 in 100,000 got Guillain Barr syndrome.True: giving 450 people a serious, even life-altering, even sometimes deadly disease, seems much smaller than letting 250,000 people die, forgetting even the crazy year it has given the rest of us. Or so an eight-year-old would think.”
- Good try, but … Guillain-Barre syndrome occurs all the time, and it happens regularly to people that get the flu. It isn’t exactly “given” to people. It’s an antigenic syndrome that isn’t understood yet. Normal incidence is 1–3 per 100,000 people, which is not too far from 4 per 100,000 people.
“…But, even though epidemiologists know coronaviruses are seasonal (but not why), it was only human nature for them to believe their good advice was working.”
- “Aerosol influenza transmission risk contours: a study of humid tropics versus winter temperate zone.” There’s a graph, and something along these lines works for Corona, it’s just a bit different curve. But both are enveloped viruses. There is this paper on aerosol transmission, and a set of them related to it if you click on it — just for instance.
- Ignorance in public health is common, but more than that, public health is always a political matter. For instance we don’t require tracking of HIV cases and in some states it’s not allowed. Because of that, all those 14–17 year old teens who get HIV that were screwed by an older man 5–7 years prior to them getting obviously sick — well they don’t get justice. Recently, California rescinded its law that allows prosecution for giving it to someone without their knowledge. Politics is the core of public health.
“…Covid doesn’t kill healthy young people, but young and even middle-aged people have organs with an enormous amount of surplus and regenerative capacity.”
- Plenty of young people died. Just not as many. But if you watch the old videos from Wuhan panning through the hallways stacked with dead, you will see that among those bodies, there are few older people. Almost all of them are young looking — unlined faces. Vitamin D status appears to be a, if not the, primary determinant of mortality. Low vitamin D was probably what set the stage for the Wuhan breakout.
“…when we look at the motivations behind the nonscientific decisions that our political system has entrusted to these scientists, we find again and again that they are very well-correlated with the political constraints on the scientists…”
- Yes! Nailed it! And I believe that in 2020 there was a powerful political motive to all this in the USA, from the delay in the vaccine, to the endless lockdowns. Lockdowns were enforced (if at all) down party lines, state by state. I note that the lockdowns hit the working class the hardest, who are mostly people that voted for Trump. The Democrats were hell bent that Trump not get any victory no matter the cost. So any attempt to “give Trump a victory” by quashing the pandemic early was, I think, doomed. However, given the current climate of rule by idiot (both parties are equal here) proposing this explanation is not necessary. Europe did the same thing. Even Russia did. (Headscratcher about Russia taking so long, but not as long as the USA.)
