Tag Archives: health care

No Clue

Posted on by
Reply

And doesn’t care. That’s Dr. Anthony Fauci, as he made clear in his…testimony…before the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis last Thursday. Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH) questioned Fauci regarding when Wuhan Virus (my term, not Jordan’s or Fauci’s) situation would be ending and CDC guideline restrictions lifted.

Fauci insisted that the restrictions would begin to be relaxed

When we get the level of infection in this country low enough that it is not a really high threat[.]

Despite repeated questions from Jordan to define “low enough,” Fauci remained evasive, repeatedly refusing to be specific, to identify the number…what metrics, what measures, he would use to define “low enough.”

The clear meaning is that Fauci has no idea at all of when or under what conditions the CDC would recommend the Biden administration stop usurping Americans’

ability to go to houses of worship, a curfew in Ohio last fall, and restrictions on having guests at their homes.

Nor does Fauci care that he has no idea.

Jordan’s time for questioning in the hearing was five minutes (per House rules for hearings), and that’s how long the video at the link lasts. It’s well worth the hearing; it’ll give a clear understanding of Fauci’s uselessness in government.

Biden to State: Drop Dead

Posted on by
Reply

That’s President Joe Biden’s position vis-à-vis Michigan as that State experiences an increase in Wuhan Virus infections, particularly via the UK Variant. Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been trying to get President Joe Biden (D) to increase the number of vaccine doses allocated to her State. Biden says, “No.”

Here’s Biden’s CDC Director Rochelle Walensky:

The answer is not necessarily to give vaccine. The answer to that is to really close things down, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer, and to shut things down.

Never mind that lockdowns, empirically, don’t work. Never mind Michigan’s Supreme Court has already ruled that Whitmer has no authority to close the State down—the legislature must agree.

Just…drop dead. Not fiscally as then-President Gerald Ford said to New York City unless it corrected its spendthrift ways. Drop dead literally unless Michigan shuts down altogether—resulting in far more deaths and disabilities and damage to children and economic damage to the State than the UK Variant, or the Wuhan Virus generally, is capable of inflicting, with or without the vaccines.

A Thought on the J&J Vaccine

Posted on by
Reply

A couple of nuggets in a Tuesday Wall Street Journal editorial prompt this in my pea brain. The editorial itself concerns [t]he issue [of] how best to address public anxiety over rare blood clots seemingly associated with the J&J anti-Wuhan Virus vaccine.

The nuggets are these:

six US cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) [in] 6.8 million who have received J&J’s vaccine

and

This particular brain blood clot is extremely rare in the general population—five individuals per million per year….

The J&J association—if it is more than coincidence—works out to less than one incident of this particular brain blood clot per million getting the J&J vaccine, if my third-grade arithmetic is any good.

The question that occurs to me (and that I’ve seen no evidence is being considered) is whether the J&J vaccine has the happy side effect of providing a measure of protection against this already extremely rare type of clot.

A bonus question from my pea brain. The clots seemingly associated with the J&J vaccine have all occurred in women in the age range of 18 to 48. Assuming the clot-vaccine association is more than coincidence, is there something in the metabolism of women, or in some other factor particular to women, that leaves them susceptible to the clot, even if less so than the general population for having had the vaccine? Alternatively, is there something in the metabolism of men, or in some other factor particular to men, that makes them proof against the clot for having had the vaccine?

A Couple Errors about to be Reversed?

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s one, maybe.

President [Joe, D] Biden on Tuesday announced that all adults will be eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccination by April 19, which is even earlier than the May 1st date that he announced last month.

That pretty tightly coincides with the predicted achievement date the prior administration made months ago and that until very recently Biden and his Progressive-Democrats had derisively pooh-poohed.

Here’s another.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told department employees he may restart border wall construction to plug what he called “gaps” in the current barrier.

OK, that’s only a partial correction that may be in the offing, but still….

Hmm….

Panic-Mongering and the Wuhan Virus

Posted on by
Reply

Here are some examples of that panic-mongering. They are far from an exhaustive list, but they are illustrative.

New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo estimated that, based on the epidemiological curve at the time, “in 45 days [the state] could have up to an input of people who need 110,000 beds that compares to our current capacity of 53,000 beds, 37,000 ICU units, ventilators, which compares to a capacity currently of 3,000 ventilators.”

Yet,

COVID hospitalizations in the state peaked roughly a month later, coming in at just under 19,000…. Total ICU COVID patients peaked shortly thereafter at 5,225, or at just 13% of the governor’s forecast.

And this one:

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom estimated that, on top of its existing 75,000 hospital beds, the state would require “an additional 50,000 beds in our system.”
“Our new modeling suggests 50,000 is the new target number[.]”

Yet,

California data show that the state’s current peak in hospitalized patients came in early January of this year and totaled just under 23,000….

And this one:

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington predicted on March 31 of last year that Michigan would see peak COVID-19 hospital usage on April 10, topping out at about 14,000 COVID patients in beds.

Yet,

Data from the COVID Tracking Project shows that on that date hospitalized patients in the state totaled just over 3,800. That number plummeted in the weeks that followed, and though it rose again during the fall/winter spike, its peak on December 2 was still just 4,300, significantly less than IHME’s springtime projection.

And this one:

[From] New Jersey, an analysis out of Rutgers University in mid-March 2020…determined that, with about 23,000 hospital beds statewide, the state might face a peak shortfall of over 300,000 beds in a worst-case model positing minimal action to curb the spread of COVID.

Yet,

Hospital usage…peaked in the state on April 16 at 8,224 before falling sharply. During the fall spike, the COVID hospital census there plateaued around 3,600.

It’s hard to believe that such learned persons could be so far wrong—and not move quickly to correct their errors.

Maybe it’s time to look at their motives for making those projections. Maybe that time has come, especially, against the naked power grab that is the Progressive-Democrats’ American Rescue Plan, which they masqueraded as a Wuhan Virus relief bill, even though less than 10% of that nearly $2 trillion bill has anything even remotely related to the virus.