Category Archives: Science

Barely-A-Blog’s Coronavirus News (4/29): Clarity In The Age Of Chaos

Conservatism, COVID-19, Healthcare, Republicans, Science

Very few of my Followers on social media, most of whom are on the Right (for some reason), seem to care about this number: 61,349 Americans dead from Coronavirus. On March 31, it was 3,900 deaths! This is Cancel Culture!

But I care. American deaths account for a fourth of the world’s deaths, including the undeveloped world. Without making you more weary than you already are, I’ll get to the data I find useful amid the white noise—provide some periodic clarity in this age of chaos.

From Barely A Blog:
http://barelyablog.com/:

1. Here Is What Canada’s Outbreak Scientists Knew About WuFlu By December 31 (And The US Was Too Callous and Incurious To Find Out)
http://barelyablog.com/what-canadas-outbreak-scientists-knew-about-wuflu-by-december-31/

2. If you get COVID, and it’s not the mild kind, you want a good outcome. Listen, then, not to the Just-The-Flu cohort, but to the brilliant, heroic, Dr. Richard Levitan:

Dr. Richard Levitan, an airway[s] [pulmonary] specialist who has practiced emergency medicine for over 30 years, is well aware of the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the virus began to overwhelm New York City at the end of March, he rushed from his home in New Hampshire to volunteer at Bellevue Hospital.

The Levitan interview is one of the clearest presentations I’ve watched. I’m honored to share this humble man’s wisdom and intelligence: “Patients Should Be Going to Hospitals Sooner.” You want to avoid the ventilator. And it’s a good time to acquire an oximeter. Listen:

https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/amanpour-co/why-covid-19-patients-should-be-going-hospitals-sooner-2a6jq/

As someone who has a daughter who suffered severe asthma as a child, I recognize the overcompensation Dr. Levitan describes so poignantly. Like the asthmatic, COVID patients compensate to the point of irreversible, dangerous, breathing difficulties. They can be blue around the mouth, yet still walking and talking.
I will never forget my daughter’s South-African pediatrician scolding me, then a young mom: “You waited too long to bring her in! Do you know how heroic these kids are! They learn to function with low oxygen levels.” What passion. The same passion for his patients I detect in Dr. Levitan.

3. Pulmonary specialist and ICU physician Vin Gupta, out of my state of WA, mentioned that COVID-19 is present for 21 days at least in the nasal tract. He noted that, while saliva tests are promising; antibody tests are inconclusive. Why not impart such practical data at the White House briefings?

Stay safe,

More later,

ilana

NEW COLUMN: From Wuhan to Washington State With ‘Love’

China, Globalism, Healthcare, IMMIGRATION, Science

A NEW COLUMN, “From Wuhan to Washington State With ‘Love,’” is on Townhall.com. No wonder the CDC prefers no to discuss what the genetic sequencing of viral RNA reveals.

An excerpt:

U.S. travel restrictions came too late for the poor residents of the Life Care home in King County, Washington State.

Patient Zero, who very likely infected Washington State and beyond, arrived in my state, from Wuhan, China, on Jan. 15.

Thanks to the patient’s own diligence, he was tested on Jan. 20 and diagnosed with COVID-19. However, CDC contact tracing fell woefully short. As is done in South Korea and Israel, the man’s whereabouts—not his identity—ought to have been made public. In this way, anyone who had come in contact with the Man from Wuhan could have been quarantined and taken the necessary precautions to prevent further transmission.

Genetic sequencing of virus extracted from infected patients allows scientists to pinpoint the virus’ origins and the timing of the “seeding event.” That the virus that continues to kill poor old people in homes for the aged and the infirm in King County, WA, came from Wuhan is indisputable.

Writes Trevor Bedford, a sequencing scientist at the Fred Hutch Research Center: “The first case in the USA was … from a traveler directly returning from Wuhan to Snohomish County on Jan. 15.” But there was another traveler whose virus was related to that of Patient Zero, and who had,

exposed someone else to the virus in the period between Jan. 15 and Jan. 19, before they were isolated. If this second case was mild or asymptomatic, contact tracing efforts by public health would have had difficulty detecting it. After this point, community spread occurred and was undetected due to the CDC’s narrow case definition that required direct travel to China or direct contact with a known case to even be considered for testing. This lack of testing was a critical error and allowed an outbreak in Snohomish County and the surroundings to grow to a sizable problem before it was even detected.” [Emphasis mine.]

Colleagues confirm that the “genetic diversity of the Washington State outbreak … suggests a scenario in which an individual infected [from] Washington State travelled to California, and in particular to the Grand Princess cruiser, and instigated a chain of transmission there. The viral strain from a patient infected on the cruise ship off the coast of California is similar to the cluster circulating in Washington state.”

If only travel from China had been stopped earlier, the poor old people from the Life Care home might be alive, and the coronavirus would not be multiplying exponentially among us. …

… A NEW COLUMN, “From Wuhan to Washington State With ‘Love,’” is on Townhall.com.

* To its report, the AP appends an image of a “wet market,” adjacent to an up-market Chinese mall.

Finally, A Fox News Guest Stands Up To Laura Loud Mouth, Asserts His Expertise, Rejects Her Agenda

China, Conservatism, Healthcare, Neoconservatism, Science

“No, it’s not correct. It’s not correct to say that.”—Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., to Laura Ingraham

Finally, a Fox News guest stands up to Laura Loud Mouth Ingraham—who always ends up drowning out her guests.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, whose credentials are impeccable and apolitical-–I’ve followed him since he and his team tracked down “patient zero” in the HIV/AIDS epidemic—asserts his expertise, and rejects Ingraham’s agenda.

Chinese scientists are not to be equated with Chinese officials, Fauci explains to the ego in the anchor’s chair.

AND:

“No, you are NOT correct,” Fauci tells Laura Loud Mouth. “A World Health Organization group of respected scientists whom I know, and personally interact with, is in in China. The Chinese scientists and health officials I interact with and know personally are to be trusted. Their information is good.”

As to Laura and her rah-rah America shtick:  A pundit who uses the words “regime” constantly is a hop, skip, and a jump away from her neocon roots of regime change …

It’s fine to present your guest with your theory, succinctly. Tucker Carlson does that.

But learn from Tucker. Let the expert speak. People like me are not interested in Laura’s hackneyed views. But when she has an extremely knowledgeable guest on, we’d like him to get a word in edgeways.

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UPDATE II (3/6/023): China’s Disease-Breeding, Barbaric Wet Markets Are Hell On Earth For Animals

China, Conservatism, Culture, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Media, Science

China’s “wet markets,” set up by immigrants in the US too, are hell on earth for animals: They are tied up, stacked in cages and slaughtered on the spot for “freshness.”

UPDATE II (3/6/023): And no, Tucker Carlson, wet markets are not only for fish, as the host asserted in the first week of March, 2023.

A wet market (also called a public market[4] or a traditional market[5]) is a marketplace selling fresh foods such as meat, fish, produce and other consumption-oriented perishable goods in a non-supermarket setting

Here is an objective news report-–yes, these still exist—of the nature of the typical Chinese “wet market” scene, where filth and unfathomable barbarity combine to breeds diseases like the coronavirus syndrome, which came out of Wuhan Province.

AP: “Virus renews safety concerns about slaughtering wild animals“

The Wuhan market was also like many other “wet markets” in Asia and elsewhere, where animals are tied up or stacked in cages. Activists say it’s difficult to distinguish between those that were legally farmed and those that may have been illegally hunted. The animals are often killed on site to ensure freshness. The messy mix raises the tiny odds that a new virus will jump to people handling the animals and start to spread, experts say.

“You’ve got live animals, so there’s feces everywhere. There’s blood because of people chopping them up,” said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, which works to protect wildlife and public health from emerging diseases.

UPDATE (2/17): Where’s the moron US media?

Some ethical truths can’t be denied: However well-regulated and legal, abattoirs are also hell-on-earth for animals.

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