SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 Evening Update 2/24/2020 — Public Health Institution Credibility Collapse Proceeds A-Pace

32 thoughts on “SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 Evening Update 2/24/2020 — Public Health Institution Credibility Collapse Proceeds A-Pace”

1. The stock market response to COVID and Bernie might just be enough to elect Bernie.

   Ironies abound. The Democrats are largely owned by China, especially Bloomberg, but they are all compromised. One purpose of the Russia Hoax might have been to divert attention from China. Ukraine was low hanging fruit for the corrupt politicians.

2. Odd story of the day–both UAE and Kuwait banned travel to and from Thailand, which is not on anyone’s list of countries with a major outbreak. Why? What do they know?

3. Per wikipedia front page, there was a big shooting in Thailand. Doesn’t look to be anti-Muslim.

4. Mike K: “The stock market response to COVID and Bernie might just be enough to elect Bernie.”

   Indeed! And is it not possible that China’s rulers might consider getting rid of President Trump to be a significant Victory for their side?

5. Gavin, probably a bit too costly for that. It is probably as likely that they will use it to get rid of dissidents.

6. Mike – it goes without saying that those scenarios are not mutually exclusive!

7. Looks like Public Agencies in the US are both fully “diverse” and uselessd. The Department of State was so concerned about its paperwork that it was willing to allow the return of confirmed Corona cases without any quarantine or travel restrictions.

   Obviously, President Trump waited too long to begin culling the deadwood, traitors, and “Resistance”. They have the potential to get a lot of Americans killed while they squirm to protect their empires.

   Blood for blood……. Remember their names.

8. Wait, you honestly think this is all a Chinese plot to get rid of Trump? In the words of a certain senile old crook we won’t have to kick around much longer-c’mon man. That’s cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

9. This video absolutely has to be seen to be believed:
   https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1232276183305400320
   BREAKING: Iran’s deputy health minister tests positive for coronavirus; he had previously looked unwell during a press conference

10. >>Wait, you honestly think this is all a Chinese plot to get rid of Trump? In the words of a certain senile old crook we won’t have to kick around much longer-c’mon man. That’s cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

    This.

11. Filed this under “Do not tempt the fates”

    Yesterday Iran’s Deputy health ministry spoke on state tv in a press conference alongside Government spokesman says that if the number of dead is half or one quarter the MP of Qom is claiming (50) he will resign

    He then added total number of coronavirus cases in Iran was at 64.

    Today Iran’s deputy health minister tests positive for coronavirus and Iran’s health ministry is telling Iranian to stay indoors and don’t travel is you can help it.

    https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1232276183305400320

12. It seems the day for bad things to be happening to national Public Health institutions.

    The ROK civil servant in charge of the new COVID-19 infection emergency safety planning office in charge of national emergency and crisis management. in the ROK Dept of Justice committed suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Han river.

    This will not give the ROK public any warm fuzzy feelings.

    See:
    ——–
    Ministry of Justice in Corona 19 launches on Han River
    Reporter Oji
    2020-02-25 11:03:07

    Ministry of Justice in Corona 19 launches on Han River
    Dongjak Bridge, Yongsan-gu, Seoul. /yunhap news

    A male civil servant in his 30s from the Justice Department died on a bridge over the Han River.

    According to the Ministry of Justice on the 25th, Mr. A from the Ministry of Justice’s Emergency Safety Planning Office was killed at Dongjak Bridge at 5 am on the day. Mr. A was in charge of the new coronavirus infection (Corona 19) at the emergency safety planning office in charge of national emergency and crisis management.

    When the police checked the closed-circuit (CC) TV, Mr. A drove off and bumped into the railing of the Dongjak Bridge, and then reportedly got out of the car and jumped under the bridge. Mr. A was discovered by the Banpo Rescue Rescue Team at 9 am but was said to have died.

    The police and the Justice Department are investigating how Mr. A came to extreme choices and their links to work.
    / Oh Ji Hyun Reporter ohjh@sedaily.com

    https://www.sedaily.com/NewsView/1YZ25XSKC3

13. Trent – do you have any feel for the reliability of that text message from Dr Messonnier? I’m not seeing any news feeds picking up on it. If it’s true, I would think the media would be mentioning it, if for no other reason than sensationalism drives clicks and ad revenue.

14. The Prime Minister of Slovakia has been hospitalized with “acute upper respiratory tract infection accompanied with high temperature”. But it’s totally nothing to do with coronavirus, and to speculate so would be grossly irresponsible.

    Just out of curiousity, how many senior Chinese leaders have appeared in public in the last few weeks?

15. “Iran’s MP Mahmoud Sadeghi said he had tested positive for the coronavirius, telling supporters: “I don’t have a lot of hope of continuing life in this world”.”
    Totally normal stuff for a healthy 57 year old to say when diagnosed with the flu.

16. China and its allies respond to the epidemic and its failure to cope.

    The WSJ had a column on it:

    The likeliest economic consequence of the coronavirus epidemic, forecasters expect, will be a short and sharp fall in Chinese economic growth rates during the first quarter, recovering as the disease fades. The most important longer-term outcome would appear to be a strengthening of a trend for global companies to “de-Sinicize” their supply chains. Add the continuing public health worries to the threat of new trade wars, and supply-chain diversification begins to look prudent.

    The reaction:

    This somehow could not stand. China’s Communist rulers took offense to the column — allegedly to its headline, but also, we may assume, the substance of the column itself. Kimmy Yam reported for NBC News “The Wall Street Journal criticized for op-ed with derogatory reference to China in title.”

    And not just China’s rulers! Yam consulted Catherine Ceniza Choy, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Choy opined: “The consequences of publishing an opinion like this by mainstream media include stoking more fear and anxiety, and increasing hostility against Chinese and other Asians throughout the world. This is extremely harmful and wrong.”

    UC Berkeley has been an outpost of China for years. California residents are routinely denied admission in favor of Chinese students who pay full tuition.

17. A new post of advice from Ian MacKay:
    https://virologydownunder.com/so-you-think-youve-about-to-be-in-a-pandemic/

    He is very much a stay-calm-but-prepare guy, and no one can honestly accuse him of being a fear-monger, so hopefully his perspective will start to spread.

    I have to object somewhat to his main takeaways though:
    “REMEMBER: As long as the virus circulates, and as long as you have never been infected, you are susceptible to infection resulting in COVID-19. This will be the case for the rest of your life until you have been infected which should protect you from severe disease. COVID-19 is mostly a mild illness but can cause severe pneumonia in approximately 20% of cases, leading to hospitalization for weeks and in a portion of these cases, to death.”

    1. So far as I know, to this point there is zero evidence that getting infected once protects you from subsequent reinfection. None.
    2. If 20% of cases are that severe, we are screwed. The health system has no chance to hold up under those conditions.

18. Right now, at 11:30am Eastern time, the CDC is giving a live update. It’s actually reasonably good. They’re saying PREPARE NOW, expect a wide outbreak, expect public event cancellations, expect school closures, etc. It’s all a month late, but the main problem now is that we don’t have a functional media or political system–the very first question wasn’t about anything practical, but was if the CDC has enough money, clearly going for a political angle. So frustrating.

19. Brian asserted: “That’s cuckoo for cocoa puffs.”

    Yes, and those radar blips could not possibly be Japanese bombers approaching Pearl Harbor, could they?

    These posts are getting rather repetitive, so look back to an earlier one where I laid out four possible explanations of what we all agree has been a Chinese government over-reaction to a disease which is milder than the flu. Remember that the WHO reports the ordinary flu kills 290,000 to 650,000 human beings across the globe every year.

    Something else to check out would be Michael Pillsbury’s book “The Hundred-Year Marathon” about China’s long-range plan to restore the Middle Kingdom to its proper place of global pre-eminence. The US is the primary impediment to that plan. We all know that the Chinese slipped some money to President Bill Clinton and (surprise!) got access to missile guidance technology. Some of us remember Charlie Trie and Chinese money being used to influence US politics. We are now learning how much advanced US industry has already been shipped to China. With an increasingly hollowed-out US economic base, China has been successfully neutralizing the US without firing a single shot. Then President Trump surprisingly got elected, and tried to call a halt to the process.

    Would the Chinese leadership like to see Trump removed and the US slip further down the path to its designated role as a low-tech provider of food & raw materials to China? Of course! Sometimes those blips on the radar really are incoming bombers; most of the time they are not. Time will tell.

    For the avoidance of doubt, my bet remains that China’s rulers over-reacted to this flu-like virus because of concerns about “face”, given international criticism of their earlier response to SARS. Bureaucrats in other countries are doing what bureaucrats always do — going along with the flow.

20. Gavin, sometimes your posts are insightful, but most of the time they are flaming nonsense. You can do better.

21. I feel like I’ve been talking to a guy who’s been saying, of course the mob didn’t kill Kennedy, that’s just nuts, knock off the craziness and calm down, and now he’s saying that ACTUALLY Kennedy was killed by space aliens, duh, it’s totally obvious, and I’m just slowly backing away now because he’s obviously totally crazypants.

22. Paranoia about PRC dishonesty and subversion is probably the only sane position.

    But the right way of addressing those concerns is not to pick a particular model of what PRC leadership intentions are, and commit to it. The Covid as bioweapon threads at esr.ibiblio.org have some excellent points made on this.

    These regimes do not have a secret set of true information, and cannot always be modeled by outsiders as rational. You cannot anticipate how crazy their thinking may be, you don’t know their information inputs, and you should not try to figure out where the truth is by reading the tea leaves of their actions.

    This illness should be considered separately from estimations of the PRC regime. Yes, they are coupled problems, but solve them separately as best you can.

    Three interesting possibilities with this Iran thing. 1) Bioweapons program 2) Higher than we were aware undisclosed economic contacts between China and Iran. 3) Public health impact of features Iran and China have in common.

    Could things be worse in totalitarian regimes than in the regular old Third World? Previously, Second World was used for the USSR. Perhaps we should look at the PRC and Iran as being Second World nations, and hence more of a public health hazard than Third World? On the other hand, both countries were in unrest, and expected to have greater than usual chance of regime failure. Historically, there have been many illness deaths in warfare. Could some social precursor of civil war make totalitarian regimes more vulnerable?

23. Tom H wrote: “sometimes your posts are insightful, but most of the time they are flaming nonsense.”

    We all make our own judgments, Tom. The “flaming nonsense” getting too much exposure on these pages is the idea that — Oh! My! God! — the world is facing an incredible health crisis and there will be dead bodies everywhere! Scare-mongering on a Climate Change scale. That is foolish, and there is no need for it.

    650,000 people around the world died in one year from flu — and the world took it in its stride. The +/-3,000 deaths from this coronavirus are individually sad occurrences — but even if the final total is 100 times larger, it will still only be equal to a normal flu year.

    The bigger risks we face are from an unwarranted disruption of the global economy. How many people in the West are going to die because the Chinese factories making medications for many other diseases are shut down? This is a time to keep open minds and take sensible precautions, not for scare-mongering.

24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

    “In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence.

    As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”

25. Very disappointing, Tom.

    Stooping to Ad Hominem attacks is usually more or less an admission that an individual has nothing worthwhile to say about the topic of discussion. And to do it by quoting from Wikipedia! Enough said.

26. Then let me stoop too. Gavin, you are either grossly ignorant or deliberately lying. You are the propaganda equivalent of the infected person who deliberately infects others. Nothing you say lines up with the known facts or makes any sense and I’d be glad if you stopped posting, as your garbage gets in the way of intelligent discussion between other posters.

27. Mr Black alleged: “Nothing you say lines up with the known facts”

    Please demonstrate the truth of that allegation, Mr. Black.

28. That anonymous of course was me.

29. I don’t waste my time trying to convince people who are full of themselves. Just be quiet and I’ll be content.

30. You’ve been voted off the island.

31. Mr Black and Tom: Really?

32. Mr. Black ducked and weaved: “I don’t waste my time trying to convince people who are full of themselves.”

    Well, Mr. Black. You made an allegation. You were unable to demonstrate the veracity of that allegation. You have lost all credibility.

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