Tag: coronavirus

The cult of mask-wearing grows, with no evidence they work

A century ago, during the Spanish flu pandemic, authorities in many cities in this country passed mandatory mask ordinances, just like the ones we have now. Many Americans accepted them, but many others did not. In California, citizens rebelled. In January of 1919, 5,000 members of the newly formed Anti-Mask League of San Francisco gathered to call for the mayor’s resignation if he didn’t repeal his mask order. Five days later, the mayor complied.  Science vindicated that decision in the end. A year later, a study found that compulsory mask use likely had no effect on curbing the Spanish flu.

We live in a very different time. American society, of course, is far less cohesive than it was one hundred years ago, and Americans seem far more passive. Those who disagree with the prevailing orthodoxy have less power than they’ve ever had. Mass communications are now controlled by a tiny number of people, all of whom have identical agendas. There is no modern Anti-Mask League. There couldn’t be a modern Anti-Mask League. Facebook and Google would shut it down the first day. The governors of Michigan and New Jersey would indict its leaders.

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Biden’s son-in-law advises campaign on pandemic while investing in Covid-19 startups

At the same time that Joe Biden’s son-in-law, Howard Krein, has been advising Biden’s campaign on its coronavirus response, Krein’s venture capital business has been running a special initiative to invest in health care startups that offer solutions to the pandemic.

In March, as Covid-19 began spreading in the United States, the investment firm, StartUp Health, unveiled a new coronavirus initiative soliciting pitches from entrepreneurs with products that addressed the outbreak.

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Massive WHO Study Shows Remdesivir Doesn’t Lower COVID-19 Mortality

Another speedbump has emerged in the drive to produce reliable COVID-19 therapeutics as a highly anticipated WHO drug trial called Solidarity found that Gilead’s COVID-19 treatment, remdesivir, had no substantial effect on a COVID-19 patient’s chances of survival. It also found that three other therapeutics were similarly ineffective.

The FT called the data a “significant blow” to efforts to find a drug that could help save late-stage COVID-19 patients. What’s more, none of the drugs “substantially affected mortality” or reduce the need to ventilate patients.

Other drugs examined in the trial included hydroxychloroquine, lopnavir and interferon regimes. All of them had “little effect” on hospitalized patients.

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New York hospitals ‘were never overwhelmed’ at peak of COVID-19, Cuomo claims

New York’s hospitals “were never overwhelmed” at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Andrew Cuomo claimed Wednesday, continuing his apparent rewrite of history in defense of a state Health Department mandate that barred nursing homes from turning away sickly seniors.

Cuomo made the claim during an interview on CNN promoting his new memoir “American Crisis,” which touches in large part on New York’s pandemic response.

“Hospitals were never overwhelmed,” the governor told host Alisyn Camerota. “We always had excess capacity in hospitals, we always had excess capacity in emergency hospitals that we built. So we were never in a situation where we had to have a nursing home accept a COVID-positive person.”

But in the five boroughs, hospital capacity was a daily source of worry at the pandemic’s height in the spring, with Cuomo telling facilities to prepare to cram in 50 percent more patients than normal and beseeching the federal government for additional beds, including a field hospital in the Javits Center.

While the Javits Center and the USNS Comfort hospital ship sent by the feds were largely underutilized, traditional hospitals were often short on beds and even shorter on ventilators and personal protective equipment.

As for nursing homes, the state Department of Health in March issued a mandate prohibiting the facilities from turning away patients on the basis of a positive coronavirus test, even as Cuomo publicly acknowledged that seniors are among the most susceptible to the disease.

Several homes reported interpreting the guidance as leaving them with no option but to accept sick patients.

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WHO Joins Top Epidemiologists in Emphasizing Harm Caused by Lockdowns

“We’ve got to follow the science,” we’re repeatedly told during the COVID-19 pandemic, usually by people arguing for the strict measures included in the broad category of “lockdowns.” But what happens when scientists disagree with one another and don’t adhere to one true faith in their recommendations for battling viral infection?

While there has been disagreement among scientists since COVID-19 appeared on the scene, opponents of the most restrictive measures have largely been sidelined. But now, insisting that “science” speaks with one voice is much harder, with a World Health Organization (WHO) official and the Great Barrington Declaration objecting to the pain inflicted by lockdowns and calling for less-draconian public health policies.

“We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” David Nabarro, WHO special envoy for Covid-19, told Britain’s Spectator magazine last week. “The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

He pointed to the devastating worldwide elevation in rates of poverty and hunger as a result of restrictions imposed to fight the pandemic, saying that “lockdowns just have one consequence that we must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.”

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