I read this Newsweek article, and I was initially shocked by some of its claims, although I do track cases daily – like many of you. I decided to dig a bit into the mechanics behind what Florida (and some other states) are now seeing.
I would preface all my comments below by saying that Newsweek is a RADICAL Progressivist publication. Their mission for the past 4yrs has been destroying Trump and the GOP. It is not what it once was, so you must appreciate the narrative they are attempting to set before you read the publication. That said, I like to see biased leftist propaganda, because it allows me to rebut it...so bring it on!
The New Reality?
We always knew cases would increase as reopening began (I will explain precisely why). That said, Florida re-opened May 4 (over 7 weeks ago), and there was NO meaningful change in infections until about 2 weeks ago. On May 4th, the 7day avg of new infections was 680, today it is 3100+ (all time peak) - but that is after a 25% daily drop yesterday. In any case, nobody would argue, that is definitely a meaningful increase!
When did it change? Well the moving avg. broke over 800 on June 3 (not particularly meaningful) and broke over 1400 (double the pre-opening baseline) around 10 days ago. (extremely meaningful).
We need to explore WHY the cases are rising (What external events may have triggered this spike).
We need to explore the Demographics related to the rise (Median age of those infected).
We need to understand if there were significant differences in the testing regime over the past few weeks vs. prior. This pertains to WHY someone gets tested. For months, the main motive to get a test was because you had symptoms or you were over 65.
We need to understand how serious these NEW infections are. Hospitalizations, Prognosis, etc. We also need to bear in mind that with a contagious disease like this, we always knew re-opening would bring far more cases. We closed down for ONE reason (most have forgotten that reason). The reason was to ‘flatten the curve’ and prevent the total collapse of our hospital system. This made sense to me, and I was supportive... However, re-opening would take place at a time when we were prepared for what was coming. This does not mean that anyone expected infections to DROP, but we totally expected them to rise again, and from full lockdown - they were going to rise dramatically. The key was to protect those who were at risk of serious infection, secondary infection, and death. We also needed to prepare the healthcare system with more capacity. We have done a ton to protect those seriously at risk. Thus, I would be shocked and humbled if we see Death rates spike dramatically again (they may increase based on simple arithmetic, however). Again, there is no cure for COVID19, and full permanent lockdown with its resulting economic peril, IS NO CURE.
Here are the details
1. The fact that on May 27 (immediately after Memorial Day), leftists all across the USA flooded the streets en masse - 100's of thousands in most major cities - every day and night for 14+ days - surely didn't help matters. Florida went to Phase 2 re-opening on June 5. However, this EXCLUDED 3 of the biggest (and oldest) counties. Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties. [As an aside - I KNOW THIS AREA OF FLORIDA VERY WELL. I have been to this area almost every single year of my life]. Thus, any increases as a result of Phase 2 - should not be seen in those 3 counties...which didn't change (Inter-city Travel could be a wildcard). Therefore, government measures should not have impacted these counties – in theory. We do know that in these densely populated counties 100s of thousands, if not millions of people flooded the streets for a 2 week period - in VIOLATION of the government restrictions. The timing lines up perfectly, because the uptick didn't begin until 1-2 weeks after the 'protests' began. It has been 3.5 weeks since the protests first started (they are still ongoing but in exceedingly small numbers).
2. Testing statistics have revealed that the Median Age of EVERYONE testing positive has shifted downward from 60 (before re-opening) to 37 currently. The most recent data from this week shows the median age of NEW positives is 33! Interesting! This leads us to ask WHY younger people are being tested and WHY are younger people being infected. Well I will answer the former in part C, and the latter now...Young people may be infected in higher numbers due to events since May 27th...Who was out protesting? How old were they? Mostly under 40... As much as I want to totally blame the leftists and their insane 'protests', I cannot do that. But I do believe it is an accretive factor. They took no care and caution - and violated the RULES we have all followed for 3 months. That should piss you off...
3. This is a biggie. You have to appreciate that under Phase 2 guidelines, MANY employers and other businesses can compel employees to produce Negative COVID tests to prove they are infection free. This is also a mechanism to identify asymptomatic cases proactively. Something that was RARELY done prior. Most of the people being tested prior to re-opening were those exhibiting symptoms, which is WHY the average age of a Positive test was 60! Because while people over 40 exhibit some symptoms, those under generally do not. The severity of symptoms appears to rise with age. These are facts we have uncovered over the past 3 months. A better understanding of the epidemiology and prognosis have helped immensely. In a nutshell, people who were 20-40 who MAY have had COVID - never knew, because they never had symptoms, and thus, never got tested! That does not mean they were not infected in Feb-Jun, it just means it was not reported, because we didn't know. I have ALWAYS assumed ~50% of cases were asymptomatic – this revelation has come from various sources, including CDC and WHO. We are now SEEING those emerge due to testing, whereas before we just didn't. Ironically, this will pull down the mortality rate drastically, despite appearing like a spike in new cases! The proactive nature of testing requirements in Phase 2 - means that Phase 2 States will naturally show a spike in new infections. THIS WAS EXPECTED. The FAKENEWS will not tell you this fact, but I followed every element of this from day 1, so I always knew it. There were countless stories about how Florida was killing people by re-opening Phase 1. That never happened. The media jumped the gun, thinking the spike would naturally occur during Phase 1. The spikes were going to happen in Phase 2 and 3...Notable that it was RED(GOP) states who entered Phase 1 and 2 first, due to far better crisis management in the early days of the pandemic. They kept seniors and LTC facilities safe and therefore deaths were a fraction of those in BLUE(Democrat) states.
The reason the major secondary spikes did not happen in Blue States yet - is because they screwed things up so badly - many are still not re-opened. Some are Phase 1 now, but far away from Phase 2. Thus, aside from accretive factors like Rioting, Protesting and Looting - I would not expect a massive spike yet. The massive spike is from IDENTIFYING those who previously would never be identified. As an aside, I can now visit my father in LTC for 30min - in the Courtyard - perhaps once per week. The catch is that I need to show a NEGATIVE COVID test when I arrive there. Well, I would NEVER have gotten a test prior to this revelation/requirement; however, now I must. So if I happened to be asymptomatically infected, I will be flagged, whereas before, I never would have. This is actually a good thing - think about it. If I am shown to be infected, I can lock down for 14 days and hopefully never have to worry again...ultimately, this mechanism helps build herd immunity while minimizing the damage to the economy. The other thing that will help is random surveillance testing, which will help public health experts figure out what the actual figures SHOULD look like. Then with actual testing they know if they are on target. I am nervous about the contact tracing aspect of things because that is a clear violation of my rights (This is a topic for another day). However, IF I test positive, I am fine with the government knowing, and I am fine to lock myself down for a short time. Do you know why Democrats have been screaming TESTING, TESTING, TESTING for months? Because with more testing, comes more infections reported (more infections = more fear and more cause to hammer Trump). Contrary to the FAKENEWS reports, the US has now tested 27MM people, averaging more than 500k tests per day! India (with a population 4x that of the US), has tested only 6MM. Russia (45% of US population) claims to have tested 17MM and would be the closest to the US, the next highest is UK with 7MM tested, many other major nations are still under 6MM.
Essentially, when you test 500k people per day, you are going to see LOTS more cases. They say you aim for positivity rates UNDER 10%, well currently the US is getting ~6% positivity rates. If you test 400k with positivity of 6% you get 24k cases per day, if you up that to 500k, you will see 30k, and if you go to 600k/day you will see 36k/day. GET IT? The issue is not necessarily NEW infections but IDENTIFIED infections.
4. Ok this is the one they MAY have an argument on - but based on the logic I have presented above, I would be EXTREMELY shocked if the spike in Hospitalization and/or Deaths follows the same trajectory of new infections. Unfortunately, for now, we cannot make ANY judgements about this. The only thing we can do is continue to monitor the data. Hospitalization statistics are VERY misleading. The reason is that as part of Phase 1 & to a greater extent Phase 2 reopening, hospitals (who were previously only open for life saving and emergency procedures) are getting back to normal. This means more people admitted, and with Phase 2 you also have more daily activity in society, meaning more incidents of trauma and accidents. That equals far more seriously sick or injured individuals, and that utilizes more hospital capacity. Thus, when they say hospital capacity is rising, that misleads you to believe it is ALL due to COVID but does not specify what % of capacity is a result of COVID. Florida has DOUBLED its hospital bed capacity since this began, in anticipation of a spike in hospitalizations. This allows the hospital system to treat regular flow (non-COVID), PLUS the new influx of those requiring care for COVID. Again, remember the goal of the shut down, to FLATTEN THE CURVE, such that our hospital system would not be overwhelmed. There is a fine balancing act here...keep people safe, minimize the risk of hospital collapse, and minimize economic carnage - which would lead to catastrophic poverty and massive unintended fatalities - if not the total collapse of the nation itself. You must appreciate that the Democrats want a TOTAL collapse (A future topic that I will address). I know it is hard to get your head around that...but once you do - things become a whole lot clearer... So let us go back to WHO is getting sick now - or more accurately put - WHO IS BEING IDENTIFIED AS BEING SICK. The most current testing data shows the MEDIAN infection age is 33 in Florida. That means that 50% of those testing positive are UNDER the age of 33, and 50% are above. However, if we assume the LTC and elderly community are taking extra precautions (as they are supposed to under the Phase 2 plan), then death and hospitalizations SPECIFICALLY RELATED to COVID should not spike meaningfully. Even if overall hospitalizations spike due to reopening hospital operations mostly to normal levels. You then need to look at what capacity statistics were for hospitals prior to the whole pandemic. Why is the media NOT showing you THESE stats??? I believe most hospitals operate at 75%+ capacity in normal times, but I need to research this a bit more... This chart shows that I am probably far more correct than the Newsweek article narrative.
In Florida, the average fatalities (7 day moving average) on the day of Phase 1 reopening on May 5th was 43, today that number stands at 33!!! How the hell is that possible?? The Media is telling us the cases are exploding in Florida and have been for almost 3 weeks now - yet - the daily deaths are still declining from the peak of 51 (May 8). I would note that NY state, who has a LOWER population than Florida by about 10% - had a peak daily death rate of 956!!! That means that at its worst point NY had 19x the daily COVID fatalities vs. Florida. To date, Florida has experienced only 10% of the total deaths that NY State has...
Final Comments...
Oh, there was one additional point about the article I wanted to make... "More than 12,500 people have been hospitalized with virus infections in Florida since the start of the pandemic, according to the state's Department of Health (DOH). The number accounts for all patients admitted to medical facilities, so Thursday's daily total is unclear." This statement is MEANINGLESS. It only tells us how many TOTAL people have been hospitalized - staggered over 4 months. It does NOT tell us the average daily NEW hospitalizations OR how many are currently hospitalized for COVID. It also does not tell us anything about how these hospitalizations are distributed throughout the state. Statements like these are meant for one purpose. PROPAGANDA & FEAR PORN.
Like most things in this world, only Time and Data will give us the Truth. However, thus far, the position I have just expressed looks to be truer than the media portrayal.
The good news is that IF I am correct – this ‘Pandemic’ and any fear associated with a ‘2ndWave’ may well be crushed within 2 weeks. This current prevailing narrative will be debunked, and more and more people will realize that they have been badly manipulated by the Media and Major World Governments – as well as the CCP controlled WHO.
In the aftermath of this, I will be spending a lot of time exploring WHY this all unfolded the way it did. Who pushed the narratives that changed our entire way of life and jeopardized the future of our children? Who served to benefit from these narratives? Precisely how did they expect to benefit? STAY TUNED!
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