Author: William

Yep, here is third study in a third area of the country showing once again that a large portion of the population has had Covid-19 and most never knew it. This one from Chicago.

A phlebotomist working at Roseland Community Hospital said Thursday that 30% to 50% of patients tested for the coronavirus have antibodies while only around 10% to 20% of those tested have the active virus.

Sumaya Owaynat, a phlebotomy technician, said she tests between 400 and 600 patients on an average day in the parking lot at Roseland Community Hospital. Drive-thru testing is from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m. each day. However, the hospital has a limited number of tests they can give per day.

Owaynat said the number of patients coming through the testing center who appear to have already had coronavirus and gotten over it is far greater than those who currently have the disease.

“A lot of people have high antibodies, which means they had the coronavirus but they don’t have it anymore and their bodies built the antibodies,” Owaynat told Chicago City Wire.

Antibodies in the bloodstream reveal that a person has already had the coronavirus and may be immune to contracting the virus again.

If accurate, this means the spread of the virus may have been underway in the Roseland community – and the state and country as a whole – prior to the issuance of stay at home orders and widespread business closures in mid-March which have crippled the national economy.

Roseland Hospital phlebotomist: 30% of those tested have coronavirus antibody

Also, in the article is this mention of a fourth study in Germany that agrees with the three in the US that I have cited over the last week.

A recent study of 1,000 people in the Heinsberg District of Bonn, Germany found that 15% of the population had contracted the virus, many unknowingly and without symptoms.

Of those, only 0.37% died from COVID-19, a figure much lower than those previously cited.

Folks, the stay at home order is a failure and this virus is way less dangerous than advertised by the experts—of course basing actual public policy on data from China has been one of the big failures of this whole exercise.

Let’s reopen America for business.

Around a third of participants in a Massachusetts study tested positive for antibodies linked with coronavirus, according to researchers.

The Mass. General study took samples from 200 residents on the street in Chelsea, MA. Participants remained anonymous and provided a drop of blood to researchers, who were able to produce a result in ten minutes with a rapid test.

Sixty-four of the participants tested positive – a “sobering” result, according to Thomas Ambrosino, Chelsea’s city manager.

“We’ve long thought that the reported numbers are vastly under-counting what the actual infection is,” Ambrosino told the Boston Globe. “Those reported numbers are based on positive COVID-19 tests, and we’re all aware that a very, very small percentage of people in Chelsea and everywhere are getting COVID-19 tests.”

He added: “Still, it’s kind of sobering that 30 percent of a random group of 200 people that are showing no symptoms are, in fact, infected.”

One third of participants in Massachusetts study tested positive for coronavirus

Ok, so one in three random people in Chelsea, MA test positive for Corona, so what does the city manager conclude? “It’s all the more reason for everyone to be practicing physical distancing.”

Dude, this guy isn’t a medical person, he’s a bean counter and budget nerd; and therefore, he concludes exactly the opposite of what he should. If one third of everybody has had it, we know three things:

• Corona (Covid-19) is not the boogeyman that people claim is.
• It’s not nearly as lethal as the regular flu and its also unstoppable.
• Lots of people already had it and never knew it.

Remember, flattening the curve is not about stopping the infection, its prolonging it over a period of time to lessen the impact on the medical system so we don’t overload the acute care centers of hospitals—something which has not happened anywhere in this country.

Folks, the so-called experts cried “wolf” and the political class listened and shutdown the economy for nothing. Think what would have happened if all the gloom and doom forecasts of Y2K were listened too instead of ignored and this is what would have happened twenty years ago (albeit only for a week not months on end.)

We got played. Period. Let’s get America working again.

Folks, first for context, please check-out this infographic of every pandemic in recorded history. Covid-19 is literally a blip on the screen. For those of you that remember astronomy, think how many planets the size on Mercury can you cram into the sun?

This headline tells you that something is wrong with the 24/7 news coverage (as if we needed any further proof).

Coronavirus antibody testing finds Bay Area infections may be 85 times higher than reported: researchers

A team of researchers in California found that the number of coronaviruses cases in one county may actually be up to 85 times higher than the what health officials have tallied, and say their data may help better estimate the virus’ true fatality rate.

“The most important implication of these findings is that the number of infections is much greater than the reported number of cases,” the researchers wrote, in a yet-to-be peer-reviewed study. “Our data imply that, by April 1 (three days prior to the end of our survey) between 48,000 and 81,000 people had been infected in Santa Clara County. The reported number of confirmed positive cases in the county on April 1 was 956, 50-85-fold lower than the number of infectious predicted by this study.”

Folks look at this paragraph in the story.

“This probably aligns with what overall national exposure may be, on order of about 5 percent once we do wide serology,” he tweeted on Friday. “Santa Clara was a hot spot and I would have expected exposure to be higher. Overall we’re probably diagnosing 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 infections.”

The current US population is north of 330 million, thus using the study’s conservative number of 5 percent national exposure, this translated to about 17 million people in the US have had Corona. These stats are based on numbers from 3 weeks ago (April 1) so presumably that number would be higher now.

Thus, this whole economic shutdown is overblown, and the Covid-19 fatality rate would be less than the common flu.

China’s newest gift to the world, the dreaded Corona virus, has finally caused a level of disruption in my life. It started on Monday as I stopped at the Save Mart grocery store located near my office. I happen to get there most days about 6 AM which is when they open. I typically buy one beverage item on my way to work. This week, I have been greeted with hoarders each day. As the week goes on, their numbers have increased. I estimate that today there were 60 to 70 people there to greet me. All self-check-out lines were purposely down to keep people from breaking the hoarding rules which are enforced at the cash registers. Last week, when they opened, there were only two or three folks in line counting me. I’ve never seen grown humans so excited about toilet paper in my life.

Also, in the last week, our church threw in the towel and cancelled all services. The church has many elderly members but good grief, this is ridiculous. They hope to hold services on Easter… like you better. Meanwhile, if you know a good set of catacombs anywhere, I’d be interested in going to their services. I thought we had faith not fear. See what happens when you get shaky on Predestination and Unconditional Election? Oh well, guess it wasn’t meant to be.

The last few days at work have taken a turn into the Twilight Zone. Note to self, don’t say, “it’s just a bad flu” in the presence of a room full of state workers that get their news from cable TV providers. It’s a most unpleasant feeling when they glare at you for trying to talk sense. Anyway, management is trying to implement “social distancing” by reducing the number of people in the office at any one time. Thus, they are having us work six hour shifts and then work from home for the remainder of our day. Please understand that logic and common sense take a back seat to this random directive. If you can imagine working in an accounting office with no access to your files or accounting program. We are given nothing to do at home but watch the email box for three hours at a time. No fears. We get a full check while all this going on.

The wife has it worse. Earlier this week her district cancelled school for the rest of the year. Today in a joint release, the district and their union not only told teachers that they can’t provide their children with learning opportunities—many of which are currently free on the Internet during this current social upheaval—but if any teacher knows of a fellow teacher that dares to try to help their students learn during this extended break, said teacher is to be reported by other teachers so the violator can be disciplined. Yep, we got it in writing. Teachers who try to continue teaching will be punished. Caring forbidden, conforming mandatory. Welcome to California. For those keeping tally, just another reason to leave the state.

Contrary to the instructions of the County of Sacramento and Governor, some of us boys met last night at a local “speak easy” to shoot the breeze. I think our group was below the current gathering size eligible for the automatic death penalty—currently set at ten individuals. The topics didn’t really matter, it’s just getting out of the house for our regularly scheduled gathering.

Short of the governor declaring martial law or California falling into the sea, the family will be taking a road trip in the coming months. We will get to see if the rest of the country is as worked-up about this illness as are people here in California. I have heard mixed reports on whether this is the case in other parts of the country.

Folks my most immediate gripe has been the difficulty of finding eggs and bread in the pillaged grocery stores in this part of Sacramento County. We’re not greedy, we just want our usual breakfast on Saturday morning. Last night, after half a dozen trips to various places, I finally scored a dozen eggs. Thanks, Chief for your personal recommendation and direction in guiding my quest. I’ve purposely not hoarded anything but try to buy only what I need and live life as normally as possible.

Panic and worry are not on my radar over this Corona virus. I think thousands of people are walking around with it and have no symptoms. I base that on the number of celebrities, sports figures, and politicians that are getting it. They only know because they have doctors that can use their patient’s station in life to get a test. Those of us with McDonald’s medical plans (talkin’ about you Kaiser) are just fighting over scraps. I think most folks will never know that they had it and that’s probably for the best.

Frankly, unless you’re in a high-risk group, this whole thing is as overblown for most of us as Y2K. Lest you think I’m just saying crazy stuff, take a look at the Bloomberg news article about deaths in Italy. Over 99 percent of the people dying had preexisting conditions.

More than 99% of Italy’s coronavirus fatalities were people who suffered from previous medical conditions, according to a study by the country’s national health authority.

99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says

The new study could provide insight into why Italy’s death rate, at about 8% of total infected people, is higher than in other countries.
The Rome-based institute has examined medical records of about 18% of the country’s coronavirus fatalities, finding that just three victims, or 0.8% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost half of the victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fourth had either one or two previous conditions.

The average age of those who’ve died from the virus in Italy is 79.5. As of March 17, 17 people under 50 had died from the disease. All of Italy’s victims under 40 have been males with serious existing medical conditions.

Folks, people in Italy smoke like chimneys, so many had compromised respiratory systems. Italy is also the “Florida” of Europe. Many people choose to retire to this country. Italy has a climate similar in many respects to California.

Again, for the vast majority of us, this virus is just an inconvenience. I think we could have dealt with this without putting the economy on hold and citizens under house arrest.

Today, people at work were asking me if they should be afraid of the police stopping them and whether they risk going to jail just for being outside of their house or driving to and from work.

It doesn’t help when the guys on the radio during my morning commute were joking about being issued passes proving they work for an industry designated as critical in case police ask them for papers while commuting to work.

Are we really that far gone? I hope not.

Anyway, have a good weekend.

Yesterday, President Trump declared the Corona virus a national emergency. Now, Mr. Hannity you may properly compare Obama waiting six months from the time he declared a public health emergency on H1N1 to the time he declared a national emergency (April 26, 2009 and October 26, 2009 respectively) versus Trump doing it about six week later (January 31, 2020 to March 13, 200 respectively).

Folks, what’s bothered me is why did Trump do it? After consulting with my wife, I decided that its because Trump wants to solve this, get it behind us, and move on. He doesn’t want to leave this lingering but has chosen what basketball calls a “full court press.”

Knowing that I keep calling Corona “just the flu” (which it is) and saying I think these precautions are overblown, my liberal buddy wanted to know if I thought the declaration for a national emergency was right or wrong. My answer, in his eyes, was evasive. I said, some decisions are clearly right or wrong and sometimes we need some time to lapse to know if it was the right call. I said in this case, I think the decision is in the latter category. Trump made the call and that’s why he gets the big bucks. Let’s just wait and see.

A Whole New World

What I marvel at is the widespread shutdown of our way of life because of this virus. As I keep saying, its not Ebola. We have cancelled more air travel than during the 9/11 attacks. Stopped cruise ships, shutdown churches, concerts, baseball, football, soccer, basketball, hockey, golf, conventions, movie theaters, schools, etc. This decision has impacted a huge number of businesses and people’s lives. Those parts of society that have not shutdown have changed how they do business. We look with suspicion on strangers and are prone to avoid interacting with people.

If Trump had declared Martial Law and suspended, elections, Congress, and the Courts, would it look much different? Yet he not only has the support of Congress but the Courts and all 50 States. How did we get here? What really bothers me is how easy and willing we were to allow all this. Trading freedom for perceived safety is the stock and trade of Liberals.

The great irony in this disruption is that Trump is being praised by the very Democrats that have been fearmongering that he would suspend liberties and become the ultimate ruler, dictator, monarch, etc. In the last few days, Trump has been praised in glowing terms by California Governor Garvin Newsom and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Heretofore, both men have been adversaries of the Trump Administration on almost every issue.

So too, local and State governments and their agencies are looking eagerly to the Federal government for aid and leadership. They have set aside partisanship and are praising the federal response.

I guess when the niceties are over, you know that the crisis has passed.

Vaccine News

Meanwhile, yesterday Johnnie Does sent me word that one company says they have a vaccine for Corona ready to start testing.

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ +1.3%) unit Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies is collaborating with Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on the development of a preventative vaccine against COVID-19.

Preclinical testing is underway. The parties expect to identify a candidate by month-end and commence a Phase 1 study by year-end.

The vaccine will be based on Janssen’s AdVac and PER.C6 technologies.

J&J launches COVID-19 vaccine program

In addition, another company has announced a possible vaccine.

March 12, 2020 /CNW/ – Medicago, a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Quebec City , announced today that they have successfully produced a Virus-Like Particle (VLP) of the coronavirus just 20 days after obtaining the SARS-CoV-2 (virus causing the COVID-19 disease) gene. Production of the VLP is the first step in developing a vaccine for COVID-19 which will now undergo preclinical testing for safety and efficacy. Once this is completed, Medicago expects to discuss with the appropriate health agencies to initiate human trials of the vaccine by summer (July/August) 2020.

Medicago announces production of a viable vaccine candidate for COVID-19

Even more Test Kits on the way

Also, yesterday, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma said he is donating 500,000 Corona test kits and 1,000,000 face masks to the United States.

Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma said he will donate 500,000 coronavirus testing kits and 1 million masks to the United States and urged international cooperation to fight the health crisis.

Jack Ma to donate test kits, masks to U.S. in fight against coronavirus

In addition, Ma has made an even larger donation to the EU.

Testing… Testing… 1… 2… 3…

Lastly, I’m wondering what effect the declaration of a national emergency is having on FDA protocols and vaccine approval. One of the dumber things that our civilized nations do is not recognize each other’s testing methods of drugs and medical procedures. Here in the US, our FDA will not respect any testing done by the EU nations and vice versa. Ditto for other nations. I think that we need an international body, treaty, something, that allows a testing regime that is respected by everyone. It would also need some sort of patent and liability protection too. Curing people should not be so dependent on which country that you live in.

Also, it is clear that too many of our pharmaceutical eggs are in the Chinese basket and the Corona crisis is another opportunity to illustrate this.

Eighty percent of active ingredients in America’s pharmaceutical and OTC drugs — you know, the stuff that actually makes your medicine work — come from China and India, according to Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh, authors of the new book China RX: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine.

China is Quietly Becoming the World’s Pharmacy — and There Are Big Risks

Many of the drugs that Americans depend upon, including birth control pills, antibiotics like penicillin, vitamin C and even cancer drugs, are made in China with little regulation.

… Gary Cohn, then chief economic advisor to President Trump, argued against a trade war with China by invoking a Department of Commerce study that found that 97 percent of all antibiotics in the United States came from China.

U.S. Dependence on Pharmaceutical Products From China

While the Department of Defense only purchases a small quantity of finished pharmaceuticals from China, about 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) used to make drugs in the United States are said to come from China and other countries like India.

In order to address the growing security and safety concerns about Chinese-made pharmaceuticals, some suggest that the United States switch to India as an alternative API supplier. However, doing so would be no different from rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It is true that many Indian pharmaceutical firms are leading API manufacturers but India depends on China for sourcing nearly three quarters of APIs in generic drug formulations. The disruption in the supply chain notwithstanding, switching to India for the supply of APIs would only make the drugs sold in the United States more expensive: APIs and chemical intermediates from China are 35 to 40 percent cheaper than Indian ones.

Final Thoughts

Besides Disney which owns ESPN, theme parks, and 40 percent of Hollywood movies, the person getting most hurt by the Corona crisis is Bernie Sanders. States are moving or considering cancelling primary elections and cancelling further debates with he and Joe Biden. Bernie just can’t catch a break.

The biggest winner in all this besides the President is the Babylon Bee. They have done parodies of banning all travel to California and what will parents do if the government won’t raise their kids for them. Both of which are legit news stories this week. Is it any wonder that Snopes gets mad when people think their stuff is real news?

Fake news is now real news Example #1

Nation To Use Coronavirus As Convenient Excuse To Quarantine California

President Trump is not ruling out the possibility of travel restrictions to California.

According to the New York Times, the president said he could restrict travel to hard-hit states including California and Washington.

Pres. Trump Could Ban Travel To California, Washington To Slow The Spread Of Coronavirus

Fake news is now real news Example #2

Parents Worried They’ll Have To Raise Their Own Children As Government Schools Shut Down

Schools are closing their doors across the area sending a seismic shockwave for parents scrambling to find child care for the next few weeks.

Sacramento County public schools have a quarter-million students and 400 schools. Even if only half of those parents would have to stay home, you could see how it would impact our economy.

Coronavirus School Closures Leave Parents Scrambling To Find Child Care

Fake news on November Surprise?

Trump Cancels 2020 Election Over Coronavirus Concerns

Fake news that’s totally right on

Devout Atheist Playing ‘Minecraft’ Patiently Waits For Complex Structures To Build Themselves

Enjoy your weekend.