On Date April 27, 2020
(Link)
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: The study from New York you just heard about is a remarkable new development in what we know about the Wuhan Coronavirus. One in four New Yorkers may have already contracted the illness and not known they had it. That’s not even close to the result we expected. And it’s not the only study to find stunningly widespread infections. There are many such studies, from around the world. This new evidence means that the virus is far less deadly — a full order of magnitude less deadly — than authorities told us it was. At the same time, the same research also suggests that the virus is incredibly easy to spread between adults — which is another way of saying, the Wuhan coronavirus is nearly impossible to control. We know that because we haven’t managed to control its spread. Our national mass quarantine hasn’t worked.
You’d never know that from listening to the people in charge. Given the suffering and disruption their policies have caused, you’d think our politicians would be staying up late double checking their assumptions. They’re doing the opposite. They’re ignoring the science, because it indicts their judgements. A recent analysis published in the Wall Street Journal found virtually no correlation at all between how quickly a state locked down and how deadly that state’s coronavirus outbreak was. You’d think that would be breaking news on every channel. Needless to say, it’s not.
From Australia, meanwhile, we have new evidence that for huge segments of the population, this virus poses no meaningful risk. Researchers there tracked 18 students and staff who contracted the coronavirus, across 15 different schools. They concluded that about 850 people had come into close physical contact with the virus carriers. Yet they found only two cases of secondary coronavirus infections at school. None of them involved students infecting adults. In other words, this strain of coronavirus is extremely mild in children: It's hard for kids to get, and hard for them to spread. If they do get it, their risk of dying is, mathematically, almost zero. Keep in mind, this is all in dramatic contrast to ordinary influenza. Children contract and spread the flu very easily. The annual flu is much more dangerous to young people than the coronavirus is.
Why is this relevant? Because we’ve shut down education nationwide. Many schools are considering staying closed next fall. For kids and their families, it’s been a complete disaster. Who exactly has been saved by doing this? They don’t even bother to tell us. “Shut up and lock down. You’ve saving lives. People will die if you don’t.” But those are political slogans. They’re not science. Increasingly, people fluent in the actual science of epidemiology are asking hard questions about what we’re doing. Here’s a physician and researcher from California called Dr. Dan Erickson. He and a partner just delivered a 50-minute briefing on the latest numbers in their state. The video has since been viewed millions of times online. After looking carefully at the data, they’ve concluded that California should end its shelter-in-place order:
Dr. Dan Erickson: "We've seen 1,227 deaths in the state of California, with a possible incidence or prevalence of 4.7 million. That means you have a 0.03 chance of dying from COVID-19 in the state of California. 0.03 chance of dying from COVID in the state of California. Does that necessitate sheltering in place? Does that necessitate shutting down medical systems? Does that necessitate people being out of work?"
In other words, are the lockdowns worth it? What’s the answer of that? Many politicians couldn’t seem less interested in asking. Just today, the San Francisco Bay area announced it will be extending its lockdown until the end of May, five weeks from now. What’s the scientific justification for doing that? None. There isn’t any.
You may remember what they first told us, back in February and March: We’ve got to take radical steps in order to quote, "flatten the curve." Six weeks later, the curve has been flattened, but not because of the lockdowns. The virus just isn’t nearly as deadly as we thought. Hospitals never collapsed. Outside of a tiny number of places, they never came close, at least not from an influx of patients. Instead the opposite happened: thanks to the lockdowns, hospitals have begun to collapse from a lack of patients. Politicians who couldn’t pass ninth-grade biology decided that practicing physicians shouldn’t be trusted to calculate the risk of transmitting the virus. So they banned so called “non-essential” procedures, many of which are in fact essential. The result: In many hospitals, entire floors have been mothballed. Doctors and nurses are being furloughed. In the middle of a pandemic. This is insanity. How long will we have to live with it?
Earlier this month, Doctor Anthony Fauci, whom we’re required by law to respect no matter what he says, suggested that, in fact, we may never be allowed to resume normal life:
FAUCI: if back to normal means acting like there never was a corona virus problem, I don't think that's going to happen until we do have a situation where you can completely protect the population. (edit) if you want to get to pre corona virus, you know, that might not ever happen in the sense of the fact that the threat is there.
Other "experts" on TV warned that full-blown lockdowns will be necessary until a vaccine or treatments are found. What they didn’t mention is that scientists have never produced a single approved vaccine or anti-viral drug for any other strain of Coronavirus. So it could be a while. That seemed to please frequent television guest Zeke Emanuel.
EMANUEL: Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more. We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine or effective medications. (edit) Is all that economic pain worth trying to stop COVID-19? The truth is we have no choice.
When a political operative like Zeke Emanuel, someone with a long history of lying, begins a sentence with the phrase, "the truth is,” you ought to be on guard. When he ends that sentence with, “we have no choice," you should to be terrified. In fact we've always had a choice. Other countries made different choices. They’re not waiting for a vaccine to open their societies. Why should they? There’s no precedent for doing that. We spent millions of dollars and more than 15 years trying to develop a vaccine for the SARS virus. Scientists never found one. Did we halt life in the United States? Of course not. You may not even remember it happened. The science hasn’t changed much since then. Unfortunately, American politics have changed a lot. And that’s the difference.
You’d never know that from listening to the people in charge. Given the suffering and disruption their policies have caused, you’d think our politicians would be staying up late double checking their assumptions. They’re doing the opposite. They’re ignoring the science, because it indicts their judgements. A recent analysis published in the Wall Street Journal found virtually no correlation at all between how quickly a state locked down and how deadly that state’s coronavirus outbreak was. You’d think that would be breaking news on every channel. Needless to say, it’s not.
From Australia, meanwhile, we have new evidence that for huge segments of the population, this virus poses no meaningful risk. Researchers there tracked 18 students and staff who contracted the coronavirus, across 15 different schools. They concluded that about 850 people had come into close physical contact with the virus carriers. Yet they found only two cases of secondary coronavirus infections at school. None of them involved students infecting adults. In other words, this strain of coronavirus is extremely mild in children: It's hard for kids to get, and hard for them to spread. If they do get it, their risk of dying is, mathematically, almost zero. Keep in mind, this is all in dramatic contrast to ordinary influenza. Children contract and spread the flu very easily. The annual flu is much more dangerous to young people than the coronavirus is.
Why is this relevant? Because we’ve shut down education nationwide. Many schools are considering staying closed next fall. For kids and their families, it’s been a complete disaster. Who exactly has been saved by doing this? They don’t even bother to tell us. “Shut up and lock down. You’ve saving lives. People will die if you don’t.” But those are political slogans. They’re not science. Increasingly, people fluent in the actual science of epidemiology are asking hard questions about what we’re doing. Here’s a physician and researcher from California called Dr. Dan Erickson. He and a partner just delivered a 50-minute briefing on the latest numbers in their state. The video has since been viewed millions of times online. After looking carefully at the data, they’ve concluded that California should end its shelter-in-place order:
Dr. Dan Erickson: "We've seen 1,227 deaths in the state of California, with a possible incidence or prevalence of 4.7 million. That means you have a 0.03 chance of dying from COVID-19 in the state of California. 0.03 chance of dying from COVID in the state of California. Does that necessitate sheltering in place? Does that necessitate shutting down medical systems? Does that necessitate people being out of work?"
In other words, are the lockdowns worth it? What’s the answer of that? Many politicians couldn’t seem less interested in asking. Just today, the San Francisco Bay area announced it will be extending its lockdown until the end of May, five weeks from now. What’s the scientific justification for doing that? None. There isn’t any.
You may remember what they first told us, back in February and March: We’ve got to take radical steps in order to quote, "flatten the curve." Six weeks later, the curve has been flattened, but not because of the lockdowns. The virus just isn’t nearly as deadly as we thought. Hospitals never collapsed. Outside of a tiny number of places, they never came close, at least not from an influx of patients. Instead the opposite happened: thanks to the lockdowns, hospitals have begun to collapse from a lack of patients. Politicians who couldn’t pass ninth-grade biology decided that practicing physicians shouldn’t be trusted to calculate the risk of transmitting the virus. So they banned so called “non-essential” procedures, many of which are in fact essential. The result: In many hospitals, entire floors have been mothballed. Doctors and nurses are being furloughed. In the middle of a pandemic. This is insanity. How long will we have to live with it?
Earlier this month, Doctor Anthony Fauci, whom we’re required by law to respect no matter what he says, suggested that, in fact, we may never be allowed to resume normal life:
FAUCI: if back to normal means acting like there never was a corona virus problem, I don't think that's going to happen until we do have a situation where you can completely protect the population. (edit) if you want to get to pre corona virus, you know, that might not ever happen in the sense of the fact that the threat is there.
Other "experts" on TV warned that full-blown lockdowns will be necessary until a vaccine or treatments are found. What they didn’t mention is that scientists have never produced a single approved vaccine or anti-viral drug for any other strain of Coronavirus. So it could be a while. That seemed to please frequent television guest Zeke Emanuel.
EMANUEL: Realistically, COVID-19 will be here for the next 18 months or more. We will not be able to return to normalcy until we find a vaccine or effective medications. (edit) Is all that economic pain worth trying to stop COVID-19? The truth is we have no choice.
When a political operative like Zeke Emanuel, someone with a long history of lying, begins a sentence with the phrase, "the truth is,” you ought to be on guard. When he ends that sentence with, “we have no choice," you should to be terrified. In fact we've always had a choice. Other countries made different choices. They’re not waiting for a vaccine to open their societies. Why should they? There’s no precedent for doing that. We spent millions of dollars and more than 15 years trying to develop a vaccine for the SARS virus. Scientists never found one. Did we halt life in the United States? Of course not. You may not even remember it happened. The science hasn’t changed much since then. Unfortunately, American politics have changed a lot. And that’s the difference.
