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New Study Demonstrates How Low Coronavirus Fatality Rate Is Outside Nursing Homes

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We no longer need to rely on unicorn simulation models to predict the threat level of COVID-19. After millions of global cases, we now have reams of hard data. In recent days, two things have become clear: 1) The overall death rate is dramatically inflated with people who died only with COVID-19 – not because of it – especially in nursing homes; 2) Outside nursing homes, the fatality rate is low even for most seniors and shockingly low for younger and healthier people. This destroys politicians’ reasons for pushing the irrevocably harmful actions taken by our government rather than a more strategic and targeted approach.

To begin with, the media and politicians are still promoting high overall infection fatality rates (IFR), such as the World Health Organization’s estimate of 3.4%. But we’ve seen enough random sampling from serological antibody tests, corroborated by hard data from prisons and navy ships, to demonstrate that the virus spread earlier, wider, and more asymptomatically than previously thought, thereby driving the fatality rate much lower. A new analysis averaging all the major antibody tests indicates that the average overall fatality rate (including nursing home deaths) is 0.2%. Why have our policies not been updated to reflect that reality?

This week, Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis published a preprint (before peer review) analysis averaging the fatality rates reflected in the extrapolation of all the serology tests with a sample size larger than 500 and that were randomly sampled (as opposed to health care workers). These tests measure the seroprevalence – the prevalence of antibodies for the virus in a given population – through some degree of random sampling.

Based on these random samples, the Stanford professor of medicine, epidemiology, biomedical data science, and statistics concluded that the fatality rate ranges from 0.02% to 0.40%. That is a range of seven times less deadly or 2.8 times more deadly than seasonal influenza.

The mean IFR is 0.2%, right around the result we saw from the first U.S. serology studies in Santa Clara, Los Angeles, and Miami Dade Counties. That is 17 times less deadly than what the World Health Organization originally predicted and 4.5 times less deadly than the Imperial College study assumed!

The study included data from 12 antibody tests conducted in different countries, from the U.S. and Brazil to China, Japan, Iran, and several European countries. They collectively show that the virus is exponentially more prevalent, often presenting asymptomatically, than the confirmed case tally indicates. Ioannidis further notes that most of these surveys likely understate the number of infections (and therefore overstate the fatality rate) because several of them were of blood plasma donors, who tend to be healthier people.

Also, the virus seems to be particularly widespread in nursing homes, in prisons, and among disadvantaged minorities, which Ioannidis believes were underrepresented in these samples. He noted that this was especially true in the Santa Clara study conducted by his Stanford colleagues, which seemed to disproportionately attract wealthy volunteers.

Nonetheless, he concludes:

Interestingly, despite their differences in design, execution, and analysis, most studies provide IFR point estimates that are within a relatively narrow range. Seven of the 12 inferred IFRs are in the range 0.07 to 0.20 (corrected IFR of 0.06 to 0.16) which are similar to IFR values of seasonal influenza. Three values are modestly higher (corrected IFR of 0.25-0.40 in Gangelt, Geneva, and Wuhan) and two are modestly lower than this range (corrected IFR of 0.02-0.03 in Kobe and Oise).

Ioannides observes that two of the three antibody studies with the higher range were in cities with super-spreading events in the lead-up to the infection peak, and Wuhan had a situation where hospitals were overrun.

Obviously, New York’s experience was an outlier, so the antibody test conducted by the state (which indicates an IFR of at least 0.6% for New York City) was not included in his analysis. He chalks up the more severe outcome in places like New York City and northern Italy to an amalgamation of factors that fed on each other, including: hospitals reaching capacity, large numbers of medical providers becoming infected and spreading it in the hospitals,

use of unnecessarily aggressive ventilation treatment, and in the case of NYC, in particular,

“an extremely busy, congested public transport system that may have exposed large

segments of the population to high infectious load in close contact transmission and, thus, perhaps more severe disease.”

Of course, public transportation was the one thing that was not shut down, even as officials closed outdoor parks and beaches, where every single published study as shown nearly zero transmission.

However, whether we go with a top-line IFR of 0.2%, 0.6%, or even the 0.9% of the Imperial College projection, it fails to account for the most salient characteristic of this virus – that its threat is extremely lopsided. In most countries and states, more than half of all deaths are in nursing homes, and in some states, upwards of 70 percent are – with many of the decedents having already been placed in hospice or end-of-life care. Most of the deaths are tragically within a tiny cohort of the population with a 5%-10% IFR, which is 25-50 times higher than the median.

Take Pennsylvania, for example. Roughly 68 percent of all deaths statewide occurred in nursing homes. At the same time, 58 percent of all deaths were among those over 80 and 70 percent were over 75. In fact, there were more deaths over age 95 (a rare slice of the population) than those under age 60. So how many of those over 75 or 80 who died were outside nursing homes? No state has published such data, but if you do the math and assume that most of the nursing homes deaths were among seniors (a pretty solid assumption), it means that more than 90% of senior deaths were in nursing homes. Thus, the fatality rate even for seniors outside nursing homes is dramatically lower than the top-line numbers suggest.

As I’ve noted before, the nursing homes have appallingly high numbers because of several factors, including a likely overcount of the numbers, the disastrous decision to send positive patients back into the senior homes, and the fact that the median stay of anyone who dies in any nursing homes is just five months. Most seniors outside these homes, while facing an elevated risk over younger people, are much better off than those in these facilities.

What about those younger than 60 or 65? Their death rate is so remarkably low that the risk does not rise above the level of any normal daily activity. In fact, in Sweden, the number of all-cause deaths for those under 65 from mid-February through April was actually down slightly over the past few weeks. And Sweden didn’t implement a lockdown.

Also, almost all deaths are among those with known cardiovascular and neurological diseases or who had diabetes or other serious conditions grave enough to be placed on the death certificate. Even in New York City, only 0.6% of recorded deaths where comorbidities were confirmed did not have any existing comorbidities.

The overwhelming majority of those who are at risk are not in the workforce, and the majority of them are already somewhat “locked down” in senior care facilities. We could have shielded them much more effectively with a healthy economy and hospital system with staff and cash from performing other procedures. Yet rather than learn from this simple data, mayors are pre-emptively canceling all summer events and colleges are altering schedules even for the fall!

The refusal of our government and media to more broadly publicize this information, broken down by age group, is going to accelerate the disproportionate degree of panic. This has real consequences for many other patients who are too scared to seek medical care because they wrongly fear death by COVID-19 more than their existing dangerous illness.

In the coming days, the public will be utterly shocked by how deeply we were lied to about the underlying premise and threat assessment behind the lockdown. (For more from the author of “New Study Demonstrates How Low Coronavirus Fatality Rate Is Outside Nursing Homes” please click HERE)

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Study: Here’s How Much a Face Mask Can Reduce Coronavirus Transmission

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Researchers have found that wearing surgical masks can significantly reduce the rate of airborne COVID-19 transmission, according to a study released on Sunday.

The study, conducted by a team of scientists in Hong Kong, found the rate of non-contact transmission through respiratory droplets or airborne particles dropped by as much as 75 percent when masks were used.

“The findings implied to the world and the public is that the effectiveness of mask-wearing against the coronavirus pandemic is huge,” said Dr. Yuen Kwok-yung, a leading microbiologist from Hong Kong University who helped discover the SARS virus back in 2003.

It was released by the department of microbiology at the University of Hong Kong and comes as world leaders, including the World Health Organization (WHO), have questioned the effectiveness of face coverings outside of medical settings.

The study, described as a first of its kind, placed hamsters in two cages, with one of the groups infected with COVID-19 and the other being healthy. They placed the animals in three different scenarios to analyze the effectiveness of the face coverings. (Read more from “Study: Here’s How Much a Face Mask Can Reduce Coronavirus Transmission” HERE)

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Air Travel Is Ticking Upwards in May, Remains Near Record Lows

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The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reported a steady increase in traveler screenings throughout the month of May as life begins to take shape in the era of the Wuhan coronavirus.

Screenings have gone up more than 200 percent since mid-April at the height of state and local lockdowns but remain a mere fraction of daily screenings from pre-pandemic times.

More than 250,000 people passed through airports on Sunday, compared to more than 2.6 million flyers who were screened on the same day last year. Contrast this month to about the same time in April, when fewer than 100,000 individuals passed through TSA checkpoints on 11 days. On April 14, screenings hit a record low of about 87,500 travelers.

(Read more from “Air Travel Is Ticking Upwards in May, Remains Near Record Lows” HERE)

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COVID-1984: The Criminal Is the Victim and the Victim Is the Criminal

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“I’ve never asked for anything my entire life – no welfare, no unemployment benefits. I just want to open my barber shop; I’ll abide by any restriction they make.”

Those were the words of my local barber in Baltimore County, who teared up when I asked him if he was open. He sorrowfully told me he had to close due to the dictatorial and illegal mandates of the governor of Maryland and county executives. “Just open up your shop and if the police come around, tell them you are not the owner; you are simply looting the cash register and you are even wearing a mask,” I suggested to the man, who has cut my hair for 20 years. He thought I was joking. I had to explain to him that I was dead serious.

We are now living in times when even hyperbole, parody, and absurdity don’t fully capture the illogical, illegal, and immoral actions taken by our government. Baltimore County has released 400 criminals from jail, the city has released many more, and both are easing off arresting dangerous criminals after a year of record murders in both jurisdictions.

In March, Albert Peal, 52, was accused of raping two women in Baltimore County. Police had multiple videos of him committing the acts and were in the process of searching for more potential victims. Yet the judge released him under the false premise of stopping the spread of the virus in jail because he felt he was no threat to the community!

Men like this are under the same degree of house arrest as the rest of us, and in fact, if my barber were to get caught simply opening his shop with one customer at a time (while hundreds are streaming into local Home Depots and Walmarts), he could get sent to jail! Where is the U.N. Human Rights Council?

The same trashy politicians who wrongly assert that too many people will die in prisons, thereby justifying release of dangerous criminals, are wrongly asserting that small businesses are a threat of spreading the virus, thereby justifying the arrest and imprisonment of business owners. Somehow, if you are a peaceful and productive citizen, they are not concerned about you getting killed by the virus in jail.

Baltimore isn’t the only place where sex offenders are being let off the hook. Oakland, California, police have closed their sex offender registry unit, where those on the list are required to check in. Naturally, they are now focusing their surveillance on you and me instead.

There is no bottom to the decayed values driving the release of criminals at all costs. Tens of thousands of criminals have been released early or pardoned, and we will be feeling the effects of it for years to come, as we will feel the effects of so many other unfathomable and impetuous decisions made without any democratic input.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 79% of criminals released from state prison reoffend within six years and 83% recidivate within nine years. Yet many of them don’t wait a single day. Daniel Orozco, 28, was released from the Monterey County, California, jail despite being arrested for driving under the influence of drugs and driving the wrong way. No, of course a man like this was not a danger to the public, according to the judge. Well, just 10 minutes after his release, Orozco was accused of carjacking a woman and chocking her 11-year-old son in order to convince her to hand over the keys.

In California, roughly 700 inmates are being released every week for the past two months. Six of the seven high-risk sex offenders released from Orange County jail have already been rearrested. In Fresno County, 12.5% of all criminals released under coronavirus jailbreak have been rearrested. The sheriff warned that they typically see a 70% recidivism rate within three years statewide. And how many criminals are not being caught because Gov. Gavin Newsom is too busy using the police to spy on and arrest people going to the beach?

As if that weren’t enough of a stab in the back to the average citizen, Newsom is now proposing cutting prisons even more in order to alleviate the budget crisis stemming from the shutdown. So, this man shuts down everyone’s business and then complains about the revenue loss. His solution? Abolish incarceration!

In fact, the joining of the immoral and perverse policies of placing peaceful Americans in bondage while setting criminals free has come full-circle in California, with criminals now taking advantage of the mandate to wear masks. Police in Santa Ana, California, say robberies in the city have risen by 50%. Not only are there more criminals on the street, but they can now use the universal mask mandate as the perfect cover to commit crimes before people know what hit them. “We’re seeing more and more suspects wearing the mask and using that to their benefit,” said Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna.

Except the difference is if you are wearing a mask while opening your business, you will be deemed a criminal, whereas if you are looting the business … well, it’s just another “low-level” theft.

This would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. Last week, Heather Perry, a 21-year-old Denver woman, was allegedly murdered by Cornelius Haney, a man previously convicted of armed robbery who was released thanks to a coronavirus jailbreak order promulgated by Gov. Jared Polis.

Federal law (18 U.S.C. §242) states, “Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

Perhaps it’s time to use the empty space in the jails to house the politicians who are breaking the supreme law of the land. (For more from the author of “COVID-1984: The Criminal Is the Victim and the Victim Is the Criminal” please click HERE)

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DEFIANCE – There Are More of Us Than Them

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In April something was bugging me… a familiarity amid the COVID lock-down status & another time… I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until a dear friend reminded me.

Many U.S. states are acting like the early 1980s and the imposition of Martial law in Poland to target the Solidarity movement. Subsequently I wrote about it on a Twitter thread, because the parallels were really quite remarkable.

Both Poland circa 1980 and the U.S. friction in 2020, center around fragile economic issues. Both were an outcome of state control; and the key connection is government targeting control over the workers.

In both examples the state took exclusive control of the economic and social state of the citizens, and the courts provided no option for redress. In both examples the state locked down the citizens and would not permit them to interact with each other.

In 1981 the government in Poland initiated Martial Law and citizens were forced to communicate underground. In 2020 a considerable number of U.S. state governments locked-down citizens in similar fashion and banned citizen assembly.

In 1981 in Poland the communist regime used economic psychological pressure, selecting workers permitted to earn wages. Those workers identified as “essential” to the state. In 2020 many State governors selected workers to earn an income by designating them “essential” to the state.

In 1981 in Poland; communication amid the Solidarity Movement was forced underground. In 2020 many oppressive State governors demanded social media remove public content adverse to the interests of the Stay-at-Home confinement orders. Big Tech complied with the authoritarian dictate.

In 1981 Polish authorities arrested anyone organizing protests against the authoritarian state. In 2020 numerous authoritarian officials arrested citizens for non-compliance with unilateral dictates. From a New Jersey governor arresting a woman for organizing a protect; to an Idaho mother arrested for allowing her children to play at a park; to a Texas salon owner arrested for operating her business.

In 1981 Polish authorities had a program for citizens to report subversive activity against the state. Snitching. In 2020 New York City, LA and numerous state and local officials started programs for citizens to report non-compliant activity against the state. Similar snitching.

In both 1981 Poland and 2020 USA we also see media exclusively creating ideological content as propaganda for the interests of the authoritarian state (controlling citizens).

Interestingly, as we begin to see the American people saying “enough”, and openly defying the authoritarian state. There’s another parallel that is comparable, enlightening and quite remarkable.

Just before the authoritarian state in Poland collapsed there was a rapid movement for the citizens to take to the streets in defiance of state control. I remember watching with great enthusiasm as I saw a very determined Pole shout on television:

…”we take to the streets and today we realize, there are more of us than them”…

Fast forward more than thirty years later and those glorious voices are prescient. The power of the government comes from the people; or as we say in the U.S. “from the consent of the governed.” Thus the underlying principle behind our defiance.

If the people will lead, the politicians are forced to follow:

If one person refuses to comply, government can and as we have witnessed arrest them. However, if tens of thousands rebuke these unconstitutional decrees, there isn’t a damn thing government can do to stop it…. and they know it.

If one barber shop opens, the owner becomes a target. However, if every barber shop and beauty salon in town opens… there is absolutely nothing the government can do about it.

If one restaurant and/or bar opens, the state can target the owner. But if every bar and restaurant in town opens; and if everyone ignores and dispatches the silly dictates of the local, regional or state officials… there isn’t a damned thing they can do about it.

The power of the local, regional or state authority comes from the expressed consent of the people. As soon as the majority of people deny that consent, those officials and state authoritarians lose all of their power. Yes, it really is that simple.

Go live your best life.

You’re worth it.

PS. Another similarity – ultimately the key control issue, the heart of the battle in Poland, came down to an election finally held in 1989. Likewise the key control issue, the heart of battle in the United States will come down to an election in November 2020.

(For more from the author of “DEFIANCE – There Are More of Us Than Them” please click HERE)

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We Have Been Lied To: 6 Facts That Change Everything We Know About SARS-CoV-2

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James Madison once said, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.” The coronavirus fascists have succeeded in cementing their illogical, immoral, and illegal policies through the prism of false information about the timing of the virus, the specific nature and severity of the overall fatality rate, the number of actual deaths, and the utility (or perhaps harm) of lockdown policies in actually mitigating deaths – all the while obfuscating the much higher collateral deaths and damage caused by the lockdown itself.

Every day we learn new information demonstrating the lies driving lockdown. Here are some of the most important ones from over the weekend.

1) The shocking inflation of COVID-19 death numbers: From day one, we were warned that states are ascribing every single death of anyone who happens to test positive for the coronavirus — even if they are asymptomatic — to the virus rather than the clear cause of death. Now, thanks to a lawsuit in Colorado, the state was forced to revise its death count down by 23 % over the weekend — from 1,150 to 878. The state is now publishing numbers of deaths “with” COVID-19 separate from deaths “from” COVID-19. As I reported on Thursday, county officials started accusing the state’s department of health of reclassifying deaths of those who tested positive for the virus but died of things like alcohol poisoning as COVID-19 deaths just to insidiously inflate the numbers. This revision in Colorado is a bombshell story that, of course, will remain unknown to most Americans. Every state needs to do this, and if they did, we would find an across-the-board drop in numbers by at least 25%, the same %age by which Dr. Birx reportedly believes the count is being inflated, according to the Washington Post. For example, in Minnesota, state officials are now admitting that every single person who dies in a nursing home after testing positive is now deemed to have died from the virus, never mind the fact that 25% of all natural deaths in a given week occur in nursing homes and that most cases of COVID-19 are asymptomatic, which means more often than not, they died exclusively of other causes.

2) States with longer lockdowns had worse results: Kyle Lamb posted a solid analysis on Twitter, grouping states by how long they implemented a lockdown and averaging out the deaths per 100,000 people by each grouping. The results are stounding, as there is a perfectly inverse relationship between how long a state implemented a lockdown and how successful it was in keeping the deaths down. I independently cross-checked these numbers, and they appear to be accurate.

While this doesn’t necessarily prove that lockdowns cause more COVID-19 deaths (although they definitely cause other deaths), it’s nearly impossible to assert the other way around – that lockdowns prevent deaths – if we see zero correlation in the data. This is especially true given that Florida is the third most populous state and has the highest concentration of seniors, yet deaths and hospitalizations are way down since the state reopened on May 4. Florida is more densely populated than Michigan and Pennsylvania, yet has one-sixth and one-fourth of the deaths per capita, respectively. The same holds true for Georgia, which is a fairly densely populated state. Infections are down over 40% and deaths are down 31% since reopening. As Secretary of Health Alex Azar said yesterday, “We are seeing that in places that are opening, we’re not seeing this spike in cases. We still see spikes in some areas that are, in fact, closed.”

3) Outside nursing homes, the fatality rate never warranted such action, even if it would work: Every day we find more hard data showing that the overwhelming majority of cases are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, and outside nursing homes, the chance of dying is very low and very limited to a population we can more efficiently shield. For those who are younger and healthier, deaths are almost nonexistent. Spain was one of the hardest-hit countries and has a higher overall fatality rate than others, yet its age-stratified fatality rates mirror what we have seen in the Netherlands, Denmark, France, and elsewhere. One Twitter commentator has broken down the age-based fatality rates of the comprehensive Spanish antibody study, and the results are similar to what we’ve seen elsewhere:

He used public information to calculate the case data and the population age data, and I have spot-checked some data points and they all seem on target. It’s identical to what the Netherlands found.

Remember, Spain was one of the hardest-hit countries, but even there, 57% of all deaths and the overwhelming majority of deaths of those above age 80 were in senior care facilities. When you take them out of the equation, the death rates are shockingly low. Yet the same politicians who focused on locking up an entire country failed to care for those in nursing homes. . .

It’s essentially the same story in every state.

4) Outside New York, this is barely worse than bad flu seasons: While Europe is opening its schools, almost every U.S. state continues to keep schools shut. Yet according to the CDC’s latest weekly report, “For children (0-17 years), COVID-19 hospitalization rates are much lower than influenza hospitalization rates at comparable time points during recent influenza seasons.” Even the World Health Organization’s top scientist just admitted that children “seem less capable of spreading the virus.” As for everyone else, if you look at the bump in overall deaths for most states (outside the tristate area), they are either at, slightly below, or slight above the 2018 flu season. But at this point, everything is way below a typical flu season in the winter, yet you wouldn’t know it from listening to the media. According to the CDC, hospitalizations and deaths have been declining in all 10 designated regions for the past 3-7 weeks. Still, we are now being more fascist that even Italy in violating civil rights.

5) Excess deaths are from the lockdowns, not the virus: While there is zero evidence that lockdowns saved any lives of coronavirus patients, there is clear evidence they cost other lives. It has been observed in a number of states that there are excess deaths being detected, primarily from people dying at home. The CDC is predicting 21,462-40,097 excess deaths NOT due to COVID-19, likely from those too scared to come to the ER because of the exaggerated risk being associated with COVID-19. Also, a recent analysis of excess deaths in England shows that they are seeing thousands of people dying at home from other symptoms because of the lockdown.

6) Social distancing was invented by a high-school kid and politicians, not scientists: Jeffrey Tucker of the American Institute for Economic research reports that the origin of this cult of “social distancing” being used for totalitarian lockdowns was the brainchild of a high schooler’s sociology paper in 2006, promoted by the Bush administration during the avian flu. It was widely mocked by the epidemiological community, including by Johns Hopkins, for “causing the potential for a ‘serious adverse outcome,’” thereby ensuring that “a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

How have we allowed such an illogical approach to crush our liberties, economy, hospitals, education, and criminal justice? How have we lost our freedoms?

The answer is that the public is not getting the right information. This is why the political class is doing everything in its power to censor anyone who dares question the idolatry of this lockdown cult. YouTube has censored the videos of Knut Wittkowski, who was a top epidemiologist in Germany and then served as the head of biostatistics, epidemiology, and research design at Rockefeller University. One would think we’d want to hear his opinion, but there is only one view that is allowed to gain traction. Why is it that only one side is scared of the information of the other side?

As James Madison warned, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” (For more from the author of “We Have Been Lied To: 6 Facts That Change Everything We Know About SARS-CoV-2” please click HERE)

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Failures of an Influential COVID-19 Model Used to Justify Lockdowns

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Professor Neil Ferguson, who led the COVID-19 modeling team at Imperial College in London, resigned May 5 from his government advisory role after breaking the very same British lockdown rules that he had a role in influencing.

Ferguson led the Imperial College team that designed the computer model that, among others, had been used to justify the recent stay-at-home orders in England as well as in the United States. We now know the model was so highly flawed it never should have been relied upon for policy decisions to begin with.

Epidemiology—the study of the incidence, prevalence, and impact of disease—frequently calls upon models to forecast potential outcomes of diseases. Not surprisingly, once COVID-19 became a pandemic, policy experts from all across the world began relying on such models.

The Imperial College researchers ran one such model they had used in prior research and forecast a number of potential outcomes, including that, by October, more than 500,000 people in Great Britain and 2 million people in the U.S. would die as a result of COVID-19.

The model also predicted the United States could incur up to 1 million deaths even with “enhanced social distancing” guidelines, including “shielding the elderly.” Imperial’s modeling results influenced British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to impose a nationwide lockdown and influenced the White House as well.

I asked Ferguson and his colleagues for their model on multiple occasions to see how they got their numbers, but they never replied to my emails.

According to Nature, they had been “working with Microsoft to tidy up the code and make it available.” I also asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the codes it used to develop its COVID-19 forecasts, but got no response.

So, my colleague Norbert Michel and I decided to take a publicly available COVID-19 epidemiological model and forecast the prevalence and mortality of the disease under a variety of plausible scenarios.

The results varied, depending on the assumptions we made about mortality rates within hospital intensive care units, asymptomatic rates, and the specification of the R0 (pronounced R-naught) value, which measures how easily the virus spreads.

We found mortality rate predictions can be quite variable depending on the age and comorbidities of those contracting the virus.

Under varying assumptions regarding a mortality rate in intensive care units between 5% and 30%, we found that predicted mortality because of the disease could range from near 78,000 deaths to as many as 810,000 deaths in the U.S. by Aug. 1.

Recent testing data indicates that the asymptomatic rate for COVID-19 is likely not trivial, and data from Iceland indicates this rate can be as high as 50%. Assuming an asymptomatic rate ranging from 15% to 55%, one can project deaths in the U.S. of between 118,000 and 394,000 by Aug. 1.

Lastly, we looked at the model’s assumption about the virus’ basic reproductive number, the aforementioned R0 value. Popularized in the 2011 movie “Contagion,” the R0 value quantifies the average number of people who will get the virus from someone who is an infected.

Under assumptions of the R0 value ranging from 1.5 to 3.5—plausible estimates based on medical research as discussed in our paper—the model predicted from 44,000 dead to 1.1 million dead by Aug. 1 in the U.S.

According to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker, we are currently over 83,000 deaths, which exceeds our lower-end estimates. But the point our research made is that these types of models produce many plausible scenarios, depending on reasonable assumptions.

As we learn more about the new coronavirus, it is imperative to continue to update the assumptions used in these models.

After we had published our work, news surfaced that Microsoft had actually made some headway in making the Imperial College team’s model available. But the codes it released are a highly modified version of what the Imperial team actually used.

And, it turns out, the model has serious flaws, which a former software engineer from Google discusses at length in his blog.

The Imperial College code provides different answers using the same inputs. In particular, the same assumptions can provide results that differ by 80,000 deaths over a span of 80 days. The software engineer has noted there are apparently myriad other problems as well—including undocumented codes and numerous bugs.

This isn’t the first time bad models have made their way into policy. As we discussed in our work, statistical models can be useful tools for guiding policy, but they are only as credible as the assumptions on which they are based.

It is fundamentally important for models used in policy to be made publicly available, have assumptions clearly stated, and have their robustness to changes to these assumptions tested. Models also need to be updated as time goes on in line with the best available evidence.

Bottom line: The Imperial College model didn’t meet any of these criteria. And sadly, its model was one of the inputs relied on as the basis for locking down two countries.

The codes we used at The Heritage Foundation are available here. Our assumptions are clearly stated in our paper here. (For more from the author of “Failures of an Influential COVID-19 Model Used to Justify Lockdowns” please click HERE)

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Trump Tweets an Ultimatum to the World Health Organization

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By The Blaze. President Donald Trump sent a letter to the World Health Organization laying out their failures in the response to the coronavirus pandemic, and giving them an ultimatum. . .

The letter accuses the WHO of downplaying the pandemic and echoing propaganda from the communist Chinese government.

“You also strongly praised China’s strict domestic travel restrictions, but were inexplicably against my closing of the United States border, or the ban, with respect to people coming from China,” the letter read.

“I put the ban in place regardless of your wishes. Your political gamesmanship on this issue was deadly, as other governments, relying on your comments, delaying imposing life-saving restrictions on travel to and from China,” the letter claimed.

The president says that unless the WHO makes substantive changes, the U.S. may leave the organization and take away its funding permanently. (Read more from “Trump Tweets an Ultimatum to the World Health Organization Over Coronavirus and China” HERE)

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Trump Threatens to Keep WHO Funding Freeze in Place After WH Investigation

By Fox News. . .The White House has insisted that Beijing downplayed the virus’ threat in December, which led to the subsequent outbreak. China has denied the charge.

Trump announced in April that the U.S. would halt funding to the organization. He said at the time that his administration would undertake a 60-to-90 day investigation into why the “China-centric” WHO had caused “so much death” by “severely mismanaging and covering up” the coronavirus’ spread, including by making the “disastrous” decision to oppose travel restrictions on China.

The U.S. was the WHO’s largest single donor. Trump said the United States contributes roughly $400 to $500 million per year to WHO, while China offers only about $40 million.

The WHO “consistently ignored credible reports of the virus” in December 2019. By the end of that month, it was clear at the organization that the virus was a “major health concern.” Taiwanese authorities told health officials at the organization about human-to-human transmission, but that revelation was not shared with the international community. . .

Dr. Rick Bright, a whistleblower who ran the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, blamed the Trump administration for its own slow response to the pandemic and said the administration was instead worried about politics instead of science. (Read more from “Trump Threatens to Keep WHO Funding Freeze in Place After WH Investigation” HERE)

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Neurosurgeon: Face Masks Pose Serious Risks to the Healthy

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Dr. Russell Blaylock warns that not only do face masks fail to protect the healthy from getting sick, but they also create serious health risks to the wearer. The bottom line is that if you are not sick, you should not wear a face mask. . .

With the advent of the so-called COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen a number of medical practices that have little or no scientific support as regards reducing the spread of this infection. One of these measures is the wearing of facial masks, either a surgical-type mask, bandana or N95 respirator mask. When this pandemic began and we knew little about the virus itself or its epidemiologic behavior, it was assumed that it would behave, in terms of spread among communities, like other respiratory viruses. Little has presented itself after intense study of this virus and its behavior to change this perception. . .

Now that we have established that there is no scientific evidence necessitating the wearing of a face mask for prevention, are there dangers to wearing a face mask, especially for long periods? Several studies have indeed found significant problems with wearing such a mask. This can vary from headaches, to increased airway resistance, carbon dioxide accumulation, to hypoxia, all the way to serious life-threatening complications.

There is a difference between the N95 respirator mask and the surgical mask (cloth or paper mask) in terms of side effects. The N95 mask, which filters out 95% of particles with a median diameter >0.3 µm2 , because it impairs respiratory exchange (breathing) to a greater degree than a soft mask, and is more often associated with headaches. In one such study, researchers surveyed 212 healthcare workers (47 males and 165 females) asking about presence of headaches with N95 mask use, duration of the headaches, type of headaches and if the person had preexisting headaches.

They found that about a third of the workers developed headaches with use of the mask, most had preexisting headaches that were worsened by the mask wearing, and 60% required pain medications for relief. As to the cause of the headaches, while straps and pressure from the mask could be causative, the bulk of the evidence points toward hypoxia and/or hypercapnia as the cause. That is, a reduction in blood oxygenation (hypoxia) or an elevation in blood C02 (hypercapnia). It is known that the N95 mask, if worn for hours, can reduce blood oxygenation as much as 20%, which can lead to a loss of consciousness, as happened to the hapless fellow driving around alone in his car wearing an N95 mask, causing him to pass out, and to crash his car and sustain injuries. I am sure that we have several cases of elderly individuals or any person with poor lung function passing out, hitting their head. This, of course, can lead to death. (Read more from “Neurosurgeon: Face Masks Pose Serious Risks to the Healthy” HERE)

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Republican Who Flipped California Congressional District: People Are ‘Underestimating’ Trump’s ‘Popularity’

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Republican Mike Garcia credited the power of President Trump’s popularity for his success in flipping a California congressional district — the first such defeat for Democrats since 1998.

“California’s 25th District — Northern L.A., parts of Ventura County, very purple district — and people are underestimating the popularity right now of President Trump,” Garcia, a former military pilot, said Saturday on “Cavuto Live.”

“And it’s not just among the Republicans, but also the middle third of Americans … who just want to be able to continue to afford to live in California and want to see jobs improve, wages go up, and this economy get back on its feet,” he told host Neil Cavuto.

“So when you look at who you trust to lead us through this recovery, it should be put back in the hands of the folks that got us to this thriving economy, the record-setting economy around the world, and that is this administration and the Republican Party,” he added.

Garcia won the district’s special election earlier this week, replacing former Rep. Katie Hill, a Democrat who resigned amid scandal after admitting to an affair with a campaign staffer. (Read more from “Republican Who Flipped California Congressional District: People Are ‘Underestimating’ Trump’s ‘Popularity'” HERE)

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