An increasing number of actual scientific analyses are emerging on coronavirus infection. There is so much information out that it is quite confusing. The trend my little brain is seeing is raising substantive questions about the official narrative we’ve been told.
Articles for you to consider today:
- Do your own research.
- Researchers run meta-study and find minimal spread from asymptomatic or presymptomatic people.
- Comparing 10 countries with lockdowns to 2 without, researchers find no clear benefit from shutdowns.
- Florida is running only slightly more hospitalizations per capita in fall of 2020 than compared to the first quarter of 2018.
- Researchers find no benefit from masks in Florida counties which require masks compared to counties without such mandates.
- Lockdowns come with horrible side effects. We can expect an additional 900,000 excess deaths over the next decade and a half because of the extreme unemployment of the last 10 months.
Do your own research. – Don’t want to believe actual science published by someone else? Resources are available to do your own research.
For starters, check out the CDC website CDC COVID Data Tracker. That page has data for each state including total cases and cases in last seven days. It also has tallies per 100,000 people, including cases/100k, deaths/100k, seven-day-cases/100k.
Pull some data, do a bunch of calculations, and think for yourself.
I’ve pulled data from that CDC site and have done some graphing. I’m struggling to see any beneficial correlation between infection rates in relation to mask mandates & shutdowns.
For example, Texas and Florida with light restrictions and requirements have about the same cumulative infections per 100K and deaths per 100K as do California and New York with strong restrictions and requirements. Currently, New York and California are experiencing far higher infection rates than Texas or Florida.
12/22/20 – Alachua Chronicle – University of Florida researchers find no asymptomatic or presymptomatic spread – Four researchers did a meta-study of 54 studies. They looked at secondary spread within households.
They found the current coronavirus is more contagious than MERS or SARS. Their calculation of secondary attack rate:
- 16.6% – SARS-CoV-2 (Covid 19)
- 7.5% – SARS-CoV (SARS)
- 4.7% – MERS-CoV (MERS)
Check this out though. Look at the secondary attack rate for symptomatic compared to asymptomatic and presymptomatic:
- 18.0% – secondary attack rate for symptomatic cases
- 0.7% – secondary attack rate for asymptomatic and presymptomatic
That’s telling us that people who are already sick but without symptoms or who have not yet shown symptoms are not making other people sick.
1/14/21 – Newsweek – Covid Lockdowns Have No Clear Benefit versus Other Voluntary Measure, International Study Shows – As an ongoing surprise to me, Newsweek is still around. Imagine that.
As an additional surprise, analysis by researchers at Stanford, whose study was peer-reviewed, looked at the development of Covid infections in 10 countries that had mandatory lockdowns and economic shutdowns. Results in those countries were compared to South Korea and Sweden, which had voluntary measures instead of closing the economy by fiat.
Results?
No difference. They did not find any beneficial impact from the mandatory lockdowns.
1/5/21 – The Blaze – Horowitz: With no lockdown or mask mandate, Florida has roughly same hospitalization level as 2018 flu season – There is no state-wide mask or lock down mandate in the state of Florida. Counties are allowed to add requirements if they wish. See next discussion.
One would think that means there’s a massive increase in total hospitalization since we’re in the middle of a horrid pandemic.
Author did some research (imagine that!) and determined the average number of patients hospitalized in the state in fourth quarter of 2020 and first quarter of 2018. He adjusted for the population in each quarter to determine the hospitalizations per million people, so the data is adjusted for population.
Why first quarter of three years ago? That was the peak of the last bad flu season.
So the results?
- 1,972 hospitalizations per million – first quarter of 2018
- 1,998 hospitalizations per million – last quarter of 2020
So, in Florida there are barely more people in the hospital on a per capita basis in the last three months of 2020 than there were during the three months of the recent worst flu season.
12/21/20 Town Hall – New Study Shows Mask Mandates Had Zero Effect in Florida or Nationwide, But the Lie Continues – Some counties in Florida have imposed mask mandates and others have not. Across the state, 22 of 67 counties have imposed such requirement at some point, with those counties with a requirement containing about half of the largest metropolitan areas.
This provides a natural experiment to test impact of wearing masks.
Researchers calculated the number of reported infections in counties with and without mask requirements. They adjusted the tally to allow a 14 day lag after imposition of mask requirement to allow time for the masks to affect the infection rates. They then calculated the number of infections per 100,000 people, which adjusts for size of population with and without mask requirement.
What did they find?
- 23 cases per 100,000 people per day – counties with a mask mandate in effect for more than 14 days
- 22 cases per 100,000 people per day – counties without a mask mandate
Conclusion? Counties with a mask mandate had slightly higher infection rates than the counties with a mask mandate. It sure would seem that if masks were working, there would be a lower infection rate in counties with such requirements. In fact, there should be a dramatic difference, not approximately the same outcomes.
A different study cited by the author looks at national numbers, comparing states with mask mandate to those without.
What did that study find?
- 27 cases per 100,000 people per day – states WITH mask mandate
- 17 cases per 100,000 people per day – states WITHOUT mask mandate
Conclusion? States with a mask mandate have far higher infection rates. The relationship should be reversed.
The severe lockdowns are having and will continue to have severe side effects.
1/4/21 – Washington Examiner – 900,000 excess deaths expected over next 15 years from pandemic raising unemployment – Three economics professors looked at the correlation between shocks increases in in the unemployment rate and increase mortality years out. They found shocks, meaning a rapid increase in unemployment, have a strong statistical correlation to increased mortality 15 years later. In other words a sharp rise in unemployment reduces life expectancy for the subsequent 15 years.
They extended their calculation to estimate the impact of the severe increase in unemployment during the pandemic.
They estimated there will be excess deaths of 900,000 people over the next 15 years.
More specifically they estimated a 3% increase in the mortality rate with a consequent 0.5% reduction in life expectancy on a 15-year time horizon. They predict worse outcome for African-Americans in the short term and worse outcome for white males in the long term. The point estimate is 0.89 million excess deaths spread over the next 15 years.
The research paper can be found here.