The CDC is once again beginning to publish guidelines although it has not yet returned to holding press conferences to announce new policies. The story is in the New York Times for November 13.
As I posted yesterday, the CDC has finally published a guideline that recommends wearing face masks for the protection of the wearer as well as others. This is based on relatively new research that reinforces previous positive studies and confirms the informed guesses that have been made for months by scientists.
There is now hope among the rank and file in the CDC that it can return to apolitical, science-based work without the interference of the current administration. First of all, there are about 67 days before the current administration has to leave and the Biden administration can take over. This leaves only a few days for anyone to be fired or transferred in retaliation for ignoring directives from the current administration.
What is happening now? Well, the Times says that 181,194 new cases were reported yesterday, along with 1,389 deaths. During the next week, chances are that new cases will exceed 200,000 a day by Friday. Deaths are likely to increase as well, but just when they will exceed 2,000 a day is open to speculation.
At the same time, the distribution of a vaccine (assuming that it is the Pfizer vaccine) will be fraught with difficulties. The main problem is lack of money. States will need money to develop a distribution and monitoring system. The federal government will need to step up and provide the money, because the states are already strapped due to increased expenses and reduced revenue over the last eight months.
So far, nothing is forthcoming from the current administration. We hope that the Biden administration has the will to appoint logistics specialists and provide money for the job– this is the quickest way to stop the pandemic and stem its economic and human costs. The issue will come to a head as the vaccine is approved in January.
In addition, sequencing many more samples of the virus will help contact tracing. Many more people must be put on the job to trace contacts and to follow the flow of virus mutations as it jumps from one person to the next– this will be the best way to follow the spread and pin down how the virus gets from person to person.
Since the murder of George Floyd, the police in Milwaukee have abdicated their responsibilities. Over a hundred policemen have taken sick leave or resigned. There are nominally about 750 policemen in the city of Milwaukee but they are no longer responding reliably to 911 calls.
Milwaukee in grip of violent spasm
Some 500 shootings have been perpetrated and over 140 people killed this year, as of October 6. The local public radio station, WUWM, announced a shooting dashboard on October 6, run by the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW).
The WUWM announcement links to a site that calls itself the “Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission” (MHRC)– and says it is “a collaborative effort between the MHRC and the Milwaukee Police Department.” The site is run by the MCW.
The dashboard shows fatal and nonfatal shootings in the city of Milwaukee broken down by day of week, time of day, and year and month. According to the yearly count, the previous peak year (in the 2010-2019 range) was 2015 with 119 homicides. This year so far there were apparently over 140 homicides.
The shootings appear to cluster between midnight and three AM, on Saturdays and Sundays. There are also broad increases in the evening hours every night. There are few shootings between four AM and ten AM on any day, but especially Saturdays.
This is interesting but hardly comforting to the residents of certain parts of the city. A map shows the incidence of shootings in each district of the city, and four stand out particularly– Old North Milwaukee, Harambee, Park West, and North District are worst affected. The map is illuminating.
These shootings suggest that it may be time to call out the National Guard to patrol those sections of Milwaukee– and remove the local police department. So many of the police officers are complaining of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms that there must be a unifying factor that explains why they killed George Floyd and why they are afraid to return to work.
Could it be that their attitudes and their violent reactions to encounters with civilians could be related to their response to their jobs with PTSD?
Whatever the root cause of the police response, it is time to remove them all from the situation and replace them with National Guardsmen. Someone needs to call the Wisconsin governor and the president-elect and press this issue with them.
A thousand National Guardsmen could do the work of the entire police force in patrolling the violent areas. It could relieve the police of their stress and relieve the civilians of their exposure to violence. What has happened is a power vacuum since the police have withdrawn from their responsibility, and the vacuum has been filled by people with guns who are settling their disagreements in the only way they know how: by shooting each other.
The only way to stop this is to put heavily armed, armored troops on the streets walking around. Then unarmed civilians will be able to come out of their houses and live more normally.
A precursor to today: Molson Coors.
On February 26, 2020, a man who worked as an electrician at the Molson Coors plant in Milwaukee came to the plant and shot five people to death, then shot himself. The motive has not been officially explained. Why this happened– before the pandemic, before the death of George Floyd– needs to be examined.
It turns out that the shooter was an “African-American” who was a gun collector and who had developed paranoid ideas involving his co-workers. Apparently he felt that he had been discriminated against during the many years that he worked at the plant. This is revealed in this USA Today article from March 2, a week after the shooting:
[Anthony] Ferrill worked in the utilities department in the building. He had worked at the brewery for about 17 years. Ferrill was African American and accused the brewery of discriminating against him. Ferrill complained that employees came into his home, bugging his computer and moving chairs around.
Police declined to comment on a possible motive for one of the deadliest shootings in Wisconsin history.
Ferrill, a self-described gun collector, brought two handguns to work, one with a silencer.
All but one of the men he confronted had been with the company six years or more. They all knew each other.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/02/milwaukee-molson-coors-shooting-miller-brewery-anthony-ferrill/4928061002/
Thus, the mass shooting that occurred long before any of the current violence was part and parcel of the current situation: the Black population of Milwaukee has been treated in a discriminatory fashion, especially by the police, for many years. Anthony Ferril suddenly exploded at work, but his rage had been building for 17 years. That is why the police are so afraid and suffering PTSD– they expect Black people to hate the police for what the police have done to them over the years.
The root problem is racism– so ingrained that even the victims don’t realize their hatred of themselves and are killing each other with weapons they have bought from their oppressors.
Mask wearing protects the wearer and others from SARS-COV-2: CDC finally publishes recommendations.
On November 10, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published a recommendation for public to wear cloth masks, both for protection of the wearer and for other people in proximity to the wearer. This publication is detailed and contains references to multiple observational studies and investigations that show masks are at least moderately effective.
My only question is: why did it take so long to publish this advice? Masks have been advised by experts or mandated by politicians since last spring. The delay could only be due to political opposition.
The evidence in the publication is mostly from several months ago. There are new preprints, however, including this one from MedRxiv that was first published October 7 and was revised as of November 11:
We used a cough aerosol simulator with a pliable skin headform to propel small aerosol particles (0 to 7 µm) into different face coverings. An N95 respirator blocked 99% of the cough aerosol, a medical grade procedure mask blocked 59%, a 3-ply cotton cloth face mask blocked 51%, and a polyester neck gaiter blocked 47% as a single layer and 60% when folded into a double layer. In contrast, the face shield blocked 2% of the cough aerosol. Our results suggest that face masks and neck gaiters are preferable to face shields as source control devices for cough aerosols.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.05.20207241v2
Clearly, an N95 respirator is preferable for very small particles but a medical grade procedure mask is also better than nothing; face shields are completely inadequate. Larger particles (greater than 7 microns in size) are more readily blocked.
With the daily count of new cases in the US exceeding 150,000 this week, now is definitely the time for everyone to start wearing masks in public. Now is also the time to prohibit public dining and drinking (these being the highest-risk public activities found.)
The most likely source of new infections at this time (assuming the public doesn’t go out) is intrafamily transmission. Thus, the word has gone out to people to not gather in person for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I don’t think it will help– less than half of all family gatherings will be stopped.
The only thing that will stop the novel coronavirus now is rapid immunization of everyone. Unfortunately, widespread shots will not begin until next spring, so we are in for a very bad winter.
I came across this article in “Futurism” today. It’s dated June 3, 2019, which is several months ago, but it just appeared to me today. I’ve been following the “Apple” news feed since last spring, when I got a new phone, which happens to be an Apple XR. So I don’t know why I wasn’t alerted to this sooner, but it doesn’t make any difference because it’s already too late.
Quoting from the article, again: “A distressing Australian climate change analysis has some bad news: human civilization is set to collapse by 2050 if [we] don’t grapple with the imminent threat of climate change.” By “grapple” the author means “take effective (and drastic) action to reverse the increasing level of CO2 (and methane) in the air.”
As you may (or may not) know, CO2 concentrations in the air have been going up since roughly 1750 or 1800, and as a result, average temperatures have been going up since the early part of the twentieth century. Before humans, CO2 levels in the air varied between about 200 and 280 parts per million (ppm) for the last couple of million years. Never, at least in the last 800,000 years, has CO2 gone above 280 ppm. CO2 levels have been closely related to average temperatures; low CO2 means colder averages, and higher CO2 means hotter temperatures. Sea levels have also gone up and done in close relation to CO2, with very low levels resulting in freezing more ice at the poles and lowering sea levels; now the sea is rising and swallowing coastal areas.
Average temperatures have gone up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the last couple of hundred years, and now it seems that every year sets a new record for the hottest average in human experience. People are noticing. There are droughts on land, especially near the Equator, and people are leaving those areas because they can’t successfully farm.
Human movement is experienced as “refugee crises”. The government, especially the US government, has reacted negatively to these movements. Our president has made his reputation as a cruel proponent of limiting migration. On top of his attempts to prevent illegal immigration, he has drastically limited legal migration. A few years ago, it was common to allow 100,000 people a year to legally (after years of delays and red tape) enter the US; this year, the president has set a goal of 18,000 legal refugees. Because of increased “vetting”, he may succeed in reducing that number simply by delaying processing.
But all that is beside the point. Even if the president were the greatest humanitarian in the world, he/she would not be able to achieve a significant improvement in the overall status of the human race. Even if he were to wake up tomorrow with a changed heart, he would still not be able to change the minds of the one-third of the American public who don’t believe that climate change is even happening, much less that we should do anything about it.
He’d have to start by changing Fox News, which daily spouts malicious propaganda against the scientists who have been warning us for the last fifty years. He’d have to change the hearts of at least fifty-three senators who follow the Republican party line that insists oil is good for us and coal can somehow be made “clean”.
Worst of all, the only really effective measures are so drastic that it seems unlikely that a democratic society could enact them. The most likely nation to be effective, if they were to join in battle against the climate apocalypse, is the totalitarian society of China (People’s Republic of). That is because they have, first, a long-term view of their existence that clearly countenances the challenge of climate change. There is no short-termism in Chinese politics because the government has eliminated term limits for their leader (the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, among other titles he holds). The leader is relatively young and has plenty of close relatives to be concerned about, so he is more likely to think about survival past 2050.
The second reason that the Chinese have a better chance than we do is because they have a highly developed propaganda apparatus along with an intense censorship system– thus, they are more likely to be able to shape public opinion about the necessity for drastic changes. I’m not saying this is a “good” thing, but I am saying that it is more likely to lead to survival for a larger number of Chinese people and a larger proportion of Chinese civilization relative to “Western” civilization.
The third thing the Chinese have going for them is an intense focus on manufacturing in their economy. The “free trade” agreements enacted over the last thirty years have stimulated Chinese manufacturing and led to an export-oriented economy. One of the things we will need a great deal of is certain manufactured goods: electric cars, photovoltaic cells (that convert sunlight directly to electricity), and the infrastructure that will distribute that electricity.
So, in conclusion, the future looks bleak. Especially for Western freedoms, which under these circumstances look like the freedom to starve, roast, and drown as a result of climate change. China will take over the world and force everyone to live under a system of totalitarian government. Places that don’t adapt to Chinese control will be in continual conflict with the Chinese or will simply be wiped out.
I don’t like this prediction. I like freedom, the freedom to express your own opinion, the freedom to do things that you want to do, the freedom to be sad or upset or frustrated or just plain depressed. But freedom in this situation is simply the freedom to become extinct.
In order to survive, we must be “gung ho”– a Chinese or Japanese expression which means “work together”– literally “gong”: ‘work’ and “he”: ‘together’. Currently the phrase has the American meaning or “overenthusiastic” or “overzealous”. According to Wikipedia, gung ho is a shortened version of “gōngyè hézuòshè ” which means “Chinese Industrial Cooperatives”. Wikipedia says that the term is an Americanism, borrowed from the Chinese during WW II by the commander of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion, Major Evans Carlson. He used the term to refer to the working spirit of the Chinese during their defensive war with Japan, when they made up for a lack of equipment and machinery by using human-power. He tried to imbue the same spirit into his troops and used it as a sort of battle-cry: “Gung ho!”
Perhaps we should say, “We are free to criticise and discuss issues up to the point where a final decision has to be made. After that, we need to work together and avoid propaganda and lies that prevent us from seeing our challenges clearly.” That’s not how the Chinese government sees it, but we don’t have to agree with them. We do, however, have to adapt to survive or we will be dead, permanently, replaced by a people controlled by a totalitarian government that tells everyone what kind of car they have to drive and what kind of light-bulb they can use.
Seriously– can you believe that the right-wing propaganda outlets and the president himself are trying to reverse decisions made by the previous administration to promote vastly more efficient, and hugely longer lasting light-bulbs? The promotions were not unconstitutional nor a pinch on anyone’s freedom to waste money on inefficient, short-lived incandescent light bulbs. It gets worse– can you believe that the president is trying to reverse standards on flush toilets that reduce the amount of water wasted with each flush? “Because you have to flush ten or fifteen times.”
And worst of all: and this is not made-up, it is a direct quote from our unloved leader’s lips: “The noise from windmills causes cancer.” At this point, every human with an eighth-grade education should be able to stand up and say: “That’s utterly ridiculous and an obvious lie. What other lies is our so-called president telling us?”
Update: this post was written before the pandemic. Now we know that: The president-elect must first suppress the virus with a vaccine and masks, plus contact-tracing by RNA sequencing (an essential innovation not previously widely discussed.) Then he must face the global warming crisis that is still ongoing– possibly without the help of the Senate. Stay tuned for further discussion.
The three co-chairs, according to Washington Post November 9: Vivek H. Murthy, surgeon general during the Obama administration; David Kessler, Food and Drug Administration commissioner under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; and Marcella Nunez-Smith, associate dean for health equity research at the Yale School of Medicine.
Here are some others, according to WaPo:
The group includes several other prominent doctors:
· Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
· Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School who is a prolific author.
· Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
· Eric Goosby, global AIDS coordinator under President Barack Obama and professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine.
· Celine R. Gounder, clinical assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
· Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropy focused on health issues.
· Loyce Pace, president and executive director of the Global Health Council, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to global health issues.
· Robert Rodriguez, professor of emergency medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine.
Rebecca Katz, director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center, and Beth Cameron, director for global health security and biodefense on the White House National Security Council during the Obama administration, are serving as advisers to the transition task force.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/09/biden-coronavirus-task-force/
Everyone mentioned for the task force is an expert in epidemiology or public health or has executive experience as an administrator as well as being an MD. All of these people bring experience and education to the table.
Deborah Birx has said she has not been contacted by Biden’s transition team, and we hope that she will not be an integral part of the response– based on her track record of causing anguish among the present task force’s members. Anthony Fauci has refused to say whether he will be involved, but insists that he will continue in his job (which has continued through multiple administrations of both parties.)
Robert Redfield has apparently not been mentioned in relation to Biden’s task force. It should be noted that both Redfield and Birx have publicly stated their disagreement with the current favorite on the current task force, Scott Atlas. Redfield was overheard on a plane saying, “Everything he says is false” with reference to Atlas.
Unfortunately, both Redfield and Birx have serious shortcomings in their organizational abilities. We hope that they will be returned to less visible work, not leading any major groups in the anti-virus effort. Both are expert scientists, but neither is able to lead.
According to the Washington Post, Redfield has stated that he plans to “step down” in January. They seem to imply that [redacted] may try to fire him during the lame-duck period, along with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn. In fact, a number of people may be forced out, including the FBI director, the heads of the CIA and NSA, and the Director of National Intelligence, decapitating our national security apparatus at a critical time of transition.
There are two news items here: first, Joe Biden plans to hit the ground running to fight the novel coronavirus pandemic. Second, [redacted] intends to burn his government to the ground before he leaves on January 20.
This woman is Emily W. Murphy. She was appointed to be the head administrator at the General Services Administration by [redacted] on September 2, 2017 and approved by the Senate by “unanimous consent.”
Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that she had no plans to sign a letter that would authorize the Biden administration to officially begin work on a transition that would take final effect on January 20, 2021.
Her excuse, apparently, is that the Electoral College will not certify an official winner to the presidential election until December 14, when the Electors actually vote. Of course, she could wait all the way until January 6 of next year, when the House and Senate meet to count the Electoral votes.
Her refusal ties up millions of dollars in revenue ($9.9 million) for the transition as well as office space, computer time, equipment, and access to officials in the current administration. In addition, agency heads will probably be told not to talk to Biden administration people.
This is all a result of the current president’s refusal to read the handwriting on the wall. Even the legal challenges that have been filed over various voting issues don’t have the potential to change the vote totals enough to overturn the results announced by all the news agencies and acknowledged by even some (four so far) Republican senators.
These senators do not include McConnell, who has announced a position that accepts the results of the election that are positive for the Republicans: retention of Senate seats by his friends and picking up House seats as well. Those very same ballots, however, were not accepted as showing that Biden had won the election. This makes one wonder which parts of the self-same ballots are unacceptable to McConnell? The ones he likes or the ones he doesn’t like?
Pfizer and BioNTech today (November 9) announced early Phase III trial results that showed their mRNA vaccine is more than 90% effective against COVID-19, with no serious side effects (yet.) The Pfizer vaccine was developed without direct support from the US government, although they have pre-sold 50 million doses for delivery by the end of this year.
The vaccine will be delivered in over 1 billion doses next year. Unfortunately, prior to administration, it must be stored at -100 degrees Fahrenheit. This will make it much more cumbersome to distribute than some other vaccines.
The Emergency Use Approval (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will soon be forthcoming. We also hold out hope that easier-to-store vaccines will be approved, especially because widespread distribution in poor countries worldwide will depend on less cumbersome material.
You can peruse this New York Times article for further information. Here is an article from Stat news as well. Here is Pfizer’s press release. Finally, here is an Associated Press item.
MSNBC has also stated on television, with a graph to illustrate, that we are in the third wave of infections. The first wave was in April. The second wave, twice the height of the first, was in July. The third wave, heading up now, is already triple the height of the first. Here is an article from Vox.com explaining the “third wave” or “surge.”
The Biden administration has announced today that it has appointed a coronavirus committee consisting of twelve experts in health and epidemiology. The new administration plans to hit the ground running. According to CNN, the coronavirus team will include Rick Bright, who was sidelined by the previous administration and has been designated a whistleblower.
This paper, published on November 2, 2020 in Science magazine, describes autoantibodies found in 172 patients in hospital with severe COVID-19.
From the abstract:
Here, we measured eight types of aPL antibodies in serum samples from 172 patients hospitalized with COVID-19. These aPL antibodies included anticardiolipin IgG, IgM and IgA; anti-β2 glycoprotein I IgG, IgM, and IgA; and anti-phosphatidylserine/ prothrombin (aPS/PT) IgG and IgM. We detected aPS/PT IgG in 24% of serum samples, anticardiolipin IgM in 23% of samples, and aPS/PT IgM in 18% of samples. Antiphospholipid autoantibodies were present in 52% of serum samples using the manufacturer’s threshold and in 30% using a more stringent cutoff (≥40 ELISA-specific units). Higher titers of aPL antibodies were associated with neutrophil hyperactivity including the release of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), higher platelet counts, more severe respiratory disease, and lower clinical estimated glomerular filtration rate.
https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/11/02/scitranslmed.abd3876
Thus, about half of patients with severe COVID-19 had at least short-term presence of auto-antibodies (antibodies that are aimed at normal parts of the patient’s own body) that promote blood clotting.
These auto-antibodies are the source of the widespread blood clots that form in severe virus disease: clots in veins and arteries that block blood flow to vital parts of the lungs, brain, kidneys, and other body regions.
Patients with severe infection are often killed or rendered permanently disabled by blood clots in the brain, lungs, and kidneys. Strokes (cerebrovascular accidents or CVA) appear suddenly in patients who are in the intensive care unit and cause permanent paralysis. Lung infarctions (due to blood clots in the pulmonary arteries) cause further lowering of blood oxygen levels in patients already suffering from pneumonia.
This explains why the patients with severe COVID-19 benefit from routine administration of anticoagulants (drugs that prevent blood clotting.) Cheap and effective anticoagulants are widely available: warfarin, coumadin, and the like. Newer anticoagulants are also readily available. Further study will probably reveal anticoagulant drugs that are more effective against auto-antibody-mediated blood clots.
This blog is primarily scientific, published by a trio of “academic ecologists”, including Jeremy Fox, who has a PhD from Rutgers and does research in population dynamics (etc.)– his grant was just renewed and expanded in September (congratulations to Jeremy Fox!)
The subjects covered in the blog are eclectic and philosophical. Some are interesting and controversial. The one which caught my eye posed the question “What’s the ‘greatest’ scientific fraud of all time?” published November 2, 2020, and referenced on “Retraction Watch” (another scientific blog, which has mushroomed over the last few years.) Sorry, comments were closed fairly quickly on that particular blog post– due to some controversy over the definition of “fraud”, “scientific”, and other basic words.
A personal note
I have been sick. No, it’s not the novel coronavirus, it’s one of the older ones– at least I have partial immunity to it. But I did have diarrhea, then a sore throat, followed by a runny nose and a cough. I also felt very tired and sleepy. This has been going on for two weeks now.
I don’t know, maybe it is the novel coronavirus and I just have a mild case. It’s not bad enough to bother any of our healthcare workers other than my wife. She told me to rest, take ibuprofen, and take an antibiotic. So I did, and I am. I’m starting to feel better, but I still have that persistent cough and runny nose.
Since I have had chronic sinusitis in the past, I have been particularly cautious about avoiding complications. Besides, I don’t feel like doing anything anyway.
Why am I even saying this? Because I was feeling much better this afternoon as the major news services have forecasted a Biden/Harris win in the election currently being contested. That makes me feel better, and it should make you feel better too. Especially if you are not a non-college-educated, male, conservative, narcissist, with a European background– if you are NOT identified with these things, then you should be especially feeling good. Even if you are most of those things, you should still feel good.
I’ll say it again: no matter who you are, he-who-must-not-be-named is better forgotten forever. If that person happens to be indicted by State of New York or even a federal Attorney General, then you can feel vindicated.
If you somehow identify with that person, you shouldn’t be reading this because it won’t suit you. This blog insists upon being fact-oriented, non-religious, appropriately skeptical, and other things like that. There might even be a slight whiff of socialism adjacent to this text.
So I admit it: I have been sick, and I’m feeling better because the Democrat appears to have won the election. I’m not happy because the Senate is not flipping to the Democrats, but we can deal with that later.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 