Coincidence? I think not.

So, I was trying to understand the huge increase in coronavirus hospitalizations in Texas. And thought I would try to set up a timeline.

We know when and about how many people were involved in the George Floyd protests in Texas.  In Houston it was about 60,000 . If you included all the other cities, we're looking at maybe 65,000-70,000 total protesters along with thousands of police and sheriffs across the state.  Wikipedia did the yeoman's work of cataloging the numbers with dates.

There are a couple of things we can say about all of this from looking at the photos of the protesters: 1) not all were practicing safe distances and 2) not all were wearing masks.  So, you have a veritable viral minestrone soup mix with the coronavirus the chicken broth.  

Under normal situations, I wouldn't have thought twice about the consequences of such actions. And I'm sure many people who attended didn't really care.  It was the moment.  You had to live in the moment.  I completely understand.  But regardless of our feelings, the coronavirus doesn't give a rat's rear end. 

Viruses will do...what viruses will do.

So, to set up the timeline, this is what we know:

Statewide demonstrations started on or around June 2.  We use this date since this was the date of the gigantic protest in Houston.  There were others a few days earlier, some later. But Houston was Ground Zero.

Now we set up the timeline for the development of the coronavirus once infected:

a. June 2. Infections begin on day 0

b. June 6 Symptoms begin on day 4

c. June 12. Person with severe symptoms is hospitalized on day 10. 

The progress looks to be fairly rapid.

The data I am using is directly from the Texas government website that is tracking the spread of the virus. They conveniently have an updated spreadsheet that anyone can access and do their own analysis.

But here are the results.  And it is plain for everyone to see. The dates match up fairly closely to the inflection point of when the disease spread really started to take off in Texas.

 

Many protests started as early as May 30.  But it wasn't my objective to track all protests.  Just the major one here in Houston. 

I won't go into the other issues that this brings up.  My only objective is to show you that the protests were most assuredly the cause of the gigantic surge (dare I say wave?) of hospitalizations in Texas.

If there is one saving grace in this, it is that the protesting has most likely accelerated herd immunity in the state.

A New Discrimination Route: The COVID Hoax

 Extremely well written essay.

California, breaking through 10,000 COVID deaths, recently reported its first death of a “young person” with the passing of a 17-year-old male. Like most, he suffered from a preexisting health condition. Approaching six hundred thousand cases, yet only one confirmed school-age death, disingenuous teacher’s union’s and politicians miraculously deflect “safety of children” as one justification to keep schools shuttered.

....

Back in California, with cameras rolling, Dr. Rais Vohra, Fresno County’s interim public health officer, tearfully recounted the 17-year old’s death. “It’s a huge trauma for everyone…., including the hospital workers who are still coping on this case. I am speechless when it comes to anything that I could say to the family……It just brings home the reality that this is not sparing even the youngest members of our community.” 

Really. One dead of over 8.5 million California kids 17 or younger. While nothing can equal the catastrophe of losing a child, the doctor’s tone sounds as if COVID confers exponentially more tragedy than death by mundane seasonal flu, cancer, or getting hit by a city bus.

Would a cancer death have warranted an equally hyperbolic and apocalyptic press briefing highlighted with sensationalized melodrama? A politicized COVID end translates to being victimized by the willful malfeasance of wicked Donald Trump. Liberals narrate that without the White House bungling, all of this cataclysm and economic destruction would have been avoided. Yet when Trump announced the very early January 30 China travel ban, Joe Biden and ilk were swift with stale cries of “xenophobia and fear-mongering.”

Dying by coronavirus becomes a symbol, a logo of martyrdom to rid our country of the real virus, Trump. Hence, leftists and media collaborators promote ideas of “second waves,” tacitly cheer rising fatality counts, and demand ever more economic lockdowns.

Sweden's battle with Cornoavirus? IT'S OVER. SWEDEN WON!

 What I wrote should be the world wide headlines everywhere.  Sweden beat the CCP virus.  No shutdowns.  No arresting people for wearing masks. No "Karens" running around yelling "I HOPE YOU DIE!!!!" at people not wearing masks.

From Dr. Sebastion Rushworth's website:

Covid hit Stockholm like a storm in mid-March. One day I was seeing people with appendicitis and kidney stones, the usual things you see in the emergency room. The next day all those patients were gone and the only thing coming in to the hospital was covid. Practically everyone who was tested had covid, regardless of what the presenting symtom was. People came in with a nose bleed and they had covid. They came in with stomach pain and they had covid.

Then, after a few months, all the covid patients disappeared. It is now four months since the start of the pandemic, and I haven’t seen a single covid patient in over a month.

 He doesn't mean there are no CCP virus patients in Sweden.  But at the hospital he works at, the patients diagnosed with the virus has virtually stopped.

I am not denying that covid is awful for the people who do get really sick or for the families of the people who die, just as it is awful for the families of people who die of cancer, or influenza, or an opioid overdose. But the size of the response in most of the world (not including Sweden) has been totally disproportionate to the size of the threat.

Sweden ripped the metaphorical band-aid off quickly and got the epidemic over and done with in a short amount of time, while the rest of the world has chosen to try to peel the band-aid off slowly. At present that means Sweden has one of the highest total death rates in the world. But covid is over in Sweden. People have gone back to their normal lives and barely anyone is getting infected any more. I am willing to bet that the countries that have shut down completely will see rates spike when they open up. If that is the case, then there won’t have been any point in shutting down in the first place, because all those countries are going to end up with the same number of dead at the end of the day anyway. Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long.

....except the USA....

 The rest of the article is for sure worth reading.   

It's time to open up.  Let's stop the insanity.

‘The Biggest Monster’ Is Spreading. And It’s Not the Coronavirus.

 We are the masters of our own destruction.

From the New York Times:

It begins with a mild fever and malaise, followed by a painful cough and shortness of breath. The infection prospers in crowds, spreading to people in close reach. Containing an outbreak requires contact tracing, as well as isolation and treatment of the sick for weeks or months.

This insidious disease has touched every part of the globe. It is tuberculosis, the biggest infectious-disease killer worldwide, claiming 1.5 million lives each year.

Until this year, TB and its deadly allies, H.I.V. and malaria, were on the run. The toll from each disease over the previous decade was at its nadir in 2018, the last year for which data are available.

Yet now, as the coronavirus pandemic spreads around the world, consuming global health resources, these perennially neglected adversaries are making a comeback.

FEAR,  They call it FEAR.  This is what we have succumbed to.  Not to the disease.  I have never in my life understood FDR's famous phrase until this year.  It is the FEAR we must fear.  Not the disease.

“Covid-19 risks derailing all our efforts and taking us back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Dr. Pedro L. Alonso, the director of the World Health Organization’s global malaria program.

It’s not just that the coronavirus has diverted scientific attention from TB, H.I.V. and malaria. The lockdowns, particularly across parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, have raised insurmountable barriers to patients who must travel to obtain diagnoses or drugs, according to interviews with more than two dozen public health officials, doctors and patients worldwide.

Fear of the coronavirus and the shuttering of clinics have kept away many patients struggling with H.I.V., TB and malaria, while restrictions on air and sea travel have severely limited delivery of medications to the hardest-hit regions.

About 80 percent of tuberculosis, H.I.V. and malaria programs worldwide have reported disruptions in services, and one in four people living with H.I.V. have reported problems with gaining access to medications, according to U.N. AIDS. Interruptions or delays in treatment may lead to drug resistance, already a formidable problem in many countries.

In India, home to about 27 percent of the world’s TB cases, diagnoses have dropped by nearly 75 percent since the pandemic began. In Russia, H.I.V. clinics have been repurposed for coronavirus testing.

Malaria season has begun in Africa, which has 90 percent of malaria deaths in the world, but the normal strategies for prevention — distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets and spraying with pesticides — have been curtailed because of lockdowns.

According to one estimate, a three-month lockdown across different parts of the world and a gradual return to normal over 10 months could result in an additional 6.3 million cases of tuberculosis and 1.4 million deaths from it.

A six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy may lead to more than 500,000 additional deaths from illnesses related to H.I.V., according to the W.H.O. Another model by the W.H.O. predicted that in the worst-case scenario, deaths from malaria could double to 770,000 per year.

Texas Deaths and Cases of Corona Virus. Time to get rid of the masks. Who are more important?

It's time to stop the stupid mask wearing.  We're past the point of them helping....if they ever did.  Two countries in Europe have gotten rid of the mask requirement: Sweden and The Netherlands.  It's time we did the same.

With the horrid "soft shutdown" we are killing people (suicide) and driving more people to alcohol and drug abuse.  

So here is a chart from the latest numbers  (August 3rd, 2020) from the Texas Health Department.  They are now listing the deaths on the correct day.  Apparently, that wasn't a thing a couple weeks ago, if you can believe it!

I used a 5 day moving average to smooth out the jig/jags.  The deaths numbers are being revised as time marches on.  But most of the revisions occur mainly at fresh data.  

To be honest, I'm not even sure you can trust the cases.  From what I've read the false positives are very high.  The chart for Cases is on the uptick, but so what?  The deaths have plummeted to almost zero.  Also, by the time people start freaking out about a FAKE "Second Wave" they'll stop, look at eachother and say: "oh....it's now the flu season".

And then....they get to freak out all over again until July of next year!!

To me, the use of masks always seemed completely pointless.  And now I am vindicated.

The total number of deaths are 7,016.  So if we doubled it, we'd have a "bad flu season".  Yep.  That's it.  All the terrible running around like our hair was on fire for an effing bad flu season.  

In the 2017/18 flu season more people in Texas died than have died so far from the CCP Virus.  Did you know that?  Did you read about it?  Oh you didn't?  Then let me fill that blank spot in your brain:

In what was considered the worst season in years, the flu and related complications killed nearly 10,000 Texans in 2017-2018, according to state health officials.

Yeah, that's a lot of people to die of the flu.  And you didn't notice?  Were you that uncaring? Of course, you aren't that uncaring.  So why the hell is it so important now?

For the CCP Virus, to understand the breakdown of deaths by age: The age group from 60- 80+ account for 80% of the deaths.  80+ yeas alone make up 34.3% of the deaths.

Yep. And again early on I suggested to friends and family (who all thought I was stupid, ignorant and uncaring) that we should concentrate on making things safe for the elderly.

Also, early on I recognized that the deaths from the CCP virus were probably overstated by 30%.  Dr. Debra Birx a couple of weeks later confronted the CDC accusing them of overstating the deaths and positive cases by 25% 

Yeah.  It's time.  And unless people are dropping like flies from whatever new Apocalyptic Pandemic heads our way, don't EVER do this again.

The one important question I ask is this:  Who are more important:  The Americans of Today?  Or the Americans of Tomorrow?

In every thing we as Americans have done we have always answered this to be "the Americans of Tomorrow".  From our Founding Fathers, and the signers of the Declaration of Independence who risked their lives, honors and fortunes along with hundreds of  thousands of soldiers walking with bloody barefeet in the frigid snowy scenes, to the bloody body-strewn fields of the Civil War to rid our country of the Curse of Slavery, the Americans of Tomorrow were most certainly more important. From the blood soaked trenches of battle during World War One and then the horrid Bataan Death March of American Soldiers and the American lives slain on European battlefields, it was always the Americans of Tomorrow that were more important.  

It was President Kennedy who threw down the gauntlet to have us send a man to the moon.  Why?  Because it was easy?  Because...it was hard.  

And we as American are called to do the same today.  We want.....the Americans of Tomorrow to live and thrive.  And we do this not because it is easy but especially because it is hard.  

If we don't do this for them now.....

...there will be no Americans of Tomorrow.  

....and little is asked of us.  Stop the fear,  Take the mask off.  Get to work.