Corona-zona

  Over the weekend, the Department of Energy changed its assessment of the origin of the pandemic. It had said the origin was inconclusive, but now according to an article in the Times   the agency now thinks  it was a lab leak from a Wuhan lab. The change was based on new intelligence (they won't say what) that "was relatively weak and that the Energy Department’s conclusion was made with 'low confidence,' suggesting its level of certainty was not high." DOE shared the same info with other agencies, none of which changed their assessments. The article outlines the diverging views among different intelligence agencies: In addition to the Energy Department, the F.B.I. has also concluded, with moderate confidence, that the virus first emerged accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that worked on coronaviruses. Four other intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council have concluded, with low confidence, that the virus most...

  About a month ago I blogged about the latest efforts of the anti-vaxxer asshats, who've been trying to claim that any unexplained, sudden death is because of vaccines. Today I learned that this effort is a lot more organized than I thought. According to an AP investigation , the trend is being driven by a dark web film that features a montage of headlines found on Google to falsely suggest they prove that sudden deaths have “never happened like this until now.” The film has amassed more than 20 million views on an alternative video sharing website, and its companion Twitter account posts about more deaths and injuries daily.  An affiliated Twitter account has been flogging the hashtag #diedsuddenly, posting new cases as it finds them. The problem is that the film and posts are straight-up lies.  AP uncovered case after case where the cause of death was unknown or attributable to other known medical conditions. They even list people who died but were unvaccinated as vic...

 The anti-vaxxer deplorables are at it again—or still. I have two recent incidents to tell you about.   The first is an article published by a outlet that I won't name here because I don't want to promote it (if you must know, you can find the name in the first link below). The outlet has published vaccine disinformation multiple times. This time, they used the headline: “Secret CDC Report reveals at least 1.1 Million Americans have 'Died Suddenly' since the COVID Vaccine roll-out & another Government Report proves the COVID Vaccines are to blame.” As USA Today reports , this is 100% Grade AA bullshit. As is usually the case with these asshats, there is  a report, but it doesn't say what they claim. The data in question come from a CDC report on excess deaths during the pandemic.  They get that number by comparing death rates during the pandemic to death rates when there was no pandemic (studies I've seen compare 2020-2021 to 2018-2019).  It's like...

  Governor Ron "Florida Man" DeSantis, no doubt ginning-up for a presidential run, has decided he needs to do some pandering to extremists who don't think he's conservative enough. So he's turning to his superpower, spreading pandemic disinformation. DeSantis's COVIDiocy has been  well-covered  in this blog. Who can forget his  lying about case numbers in this state? Or his refusal to preorder pediatric vaccine? Or his hiring a guy as State Surgeon General who distributes pandemic misinformation? I could go on at length. Now he wants to empanel a grand jury to investigate "'wrongdoing' linked to the Covid-19 vaccines, including spreading false and misleading claims about the efficacy of the doses." His petition to the Florida Supreme Court says: "the pharmaceutical industry has a notorious history of misleading the public for financial gain,” and asks for a grand jury to probe “the development, promotion, and distribution of vaccine...

  A recent thread on Reddit's r/facepalm list claims that the Premier of Alberta Province in Canada, Danielle Smith, is taking Ivermectin. In the video that accompanies the thread she shows a box among other medications. She is coy about what it is, but it has to be Ivermectin given the things she is saying: It's a prescribed drug, that's all I can tell you. A prescribed drug. And there are some doctors who prescribe certain kinds of drugs. But as you saw the College of Physicians and Surgeons and pharmacists have said they're going to fire any doctor who tries to prescribe anything for treatment of symptoms. So maybe I got the last prescription in Canada that was available. But here I am in the United States taking an illicit drug. Can you believe it? In Canada you can take pretty well whatever you want. Go to a safe injection site an inject yourself with heroin. But you only break the law if you try to take something that will mitigate against blood clots in case you...

  I used to do these roundup posts more frequently, when pandemic news was coming in so fast and furious that even my (then) daily posts couldn't keep up. As it happens, the last couple of weeks has produced several tidbits that are too limited for their own post, but still worthy of sharing.  One Cable News Outlet (Guess Which One) Causes Vaccine Hesitancy A recent study  published in in Nature looked at how watching a certain cable news outlet causes increased vaccine hesitancy. The researchers used exogenous (i.e. not study related) geographical variation in the channel lineup to tease out the causal effects. They controlled for differences in partisanship, local health policies, local COVID-19 infections/death rates, and consumption of other major television networks.  The network in question is—wait for it—Fox News. I for one am shocked. SHOCKED!  Every one additional hour watching Fox News per week for the average household reduced the number of vaccinati...

A new study is out comparing excess death rates of Democrats and Republicans during the pandemic. The results are not good for Republicans. The Republican party has lost its collective mind and (among other things) is rife with anti-vaxxers.  Consequently, its members are the most resistant political group to getting vaccinated, with 30% saying they plan to never get vaccinated. Of those that are vaccinated, only 11% say they plan to get the new bivalent booster anytime soon.  It is abundantly clear—at least for those willing to look at evidence—that vaccines are safe and effective. They keep people from getting seriously ill and dying.  So it comes as no surprise that researchers have found more excess deaths in a party whose members refuse to accept this. It's hard not to think of this as natural selection. "Excess deaths" are determined by comparing death rates during normal periods with those observed during some special period like a pandemic. It's how public h...

  Blake Masters is a candidate for Senate from Arizona. He is also a knuckle-dragging right wing extremist . During his primary campaign he claimed that black people are responsible for gun violence, said he thinks Ted Kaczynski had some great ideas, pushed the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, and complained about the immigrant "invasion." There's only one problem: The "full MAGA jacket" is not a good look for a general election where about two-thirds of Arizona voters are not Republican cult members. So he is furiously peddling toward the middle by focusing on "cultural issues"  (link could be paywalled). Chief among them is the government's pandemic response: They locked down and we can never forget this. These Democrats, they shut down their states. They shut down businesses. They shut down schools. They gave up on our children, of course, and they locked people inside for no reason. The Unabomber fanboy went on to complain that ...

  The recent Republican primary nominated people like Qrazy Qari Lake for governor and goat roper Mark Finchem for Secretary of State. This makes it tempting to conclude that they have drunk the Kool Aid and gone all-in to nominate the most extreme MAGA crazies they could find. But there are at least some exceptions. Ron Watkins (another goat roper) came in last in the District 2 primary.  They also rejected   Shiry Sapir (link may be paywalled) as their candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction. The latest results I can find show Tom Horne leading her by 9%. Sapir is a Scottsdale real estate broker/investor who became a "parent activist" after she became enraged at school closures and mask mandates during the pandemic. Besides wanting to expose kids to more disease, her ambition was also to prohibit a list of topics like slavery and LGBTQ rights from being taught in schools.  I'm unable to find Horne on-record about pandemic measures. But he  s...

  Image by  cytis   from   Pixabay Last week most people were focused on hearings about the former president's (FP's) corruption and malfeasance with respect to a plot to overturn then 2020 election (until the Supremes cancelled a constitutional right on Friday). But there was another hearing going on. On Thursday the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis held a hearing on the FP's corruption and malfeasance in the pandemic domain. It featured Dr. Deborah Birx, his lead on the pandemic response. I blogged about Dr. Birx earlier this year on the anniversary of the FP's inject-them-with-disinfectants  comment. I noted how she was soldiering when she failed to call-out his crazy ideas and suggested this is a good reason not to have ex-military people in positions like hers.  That notwithstanding, she was very qualified for her job. She coordinated responses to other epidemics, including AIDS, Ebola, and Avian Flu. The hearing made it clear she k...

  A couple weeks ago, I blogged about some pro-pandemic laws passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. They were "do overs" of the legislature's failed attempt to attach similar measures banning mask and vaccine mandates to a budget bill last year. Last Friday (classic timing to limit news coverage) the governor signed another bill tying the hands of his successors (but not himself!) with respect to pandemic emergencies. This one would limit the duration of an emergency to 120 days unless extended by the legislature. That doesn't sound so bad, I suppose. They could have passed a law—which Ducey would probably have also rubber-stamped—prohibiting future governors from declaring any public health emergencies.  But you've got to wonder what these politicians are thinking by passing this and the previous measures. They amount to constraints on what the government can do to combat a disease outbreak.  These measures are reactions to the current emergency...

  Will Humble, former AzDHS Director and current Arizona Public Health Association Director, recently  tweeted  an analysis showing that Arizona has extremely high COVID-19 death rates. It is first among states in increase in observed deaths by all causes during the pandemic for both 2020 and 2021. Earlier this week there appeared an article in the Arizona Republic  (paywalled; you can get a copy here if you don't mind a non-encrypted link) asking why this is so. It cites a CDC ranking that puts us at number three for COVID-19 deaths, but I'm unable to find it.  Here is one from the Kaiser Family Foundation that puts us second behind Mississippi. The Republic reporter asked state officials for an explanation, and they tried to create uncertainty about the comparisons. For instance, the AzDHS Assistant Director for Public Health Preparedness said:  I think it's really difficult to say whether we are third-worst in the country just based on the variability...

  Just when you think people can't get any crazier, there's this. Mask-hole parents are bombarding schools with fake notices of claim, threatening to file them against their surety bonds if the schools don't do what they want. This includes ending masking policies and various other things. They're being egged-on by a website and Telegram group called "Bonds for the Win." The website is run by this fruitcake woman in Scottsdale named Miki Klann who thinks the Earth is flat and that AIDS is a hoax. Here is an example of one of their documents served in Michigan. It lists 15 violations of state, federal, and international law—including the Nuremberg code, naturally—that the school has supposedly committed. All legal experts agree that these claims are 100% bullshit. This type of bond fraud   is a form of paper terrorism and was innovated by the sovereign citizens movement . They flooded courts with invalid pseudo-legal documents claiming they are not subject t...

The other day I ran across this opinion piece in The Guardian . In it a Columbia sociologist tries to explain why it's perfectly understandable that people would resist vaccinations against COVID-19. He repeatedly refers to "Left-leaning people" and "progressives," and practices whataboutism with respect to T****'s mishandling of the pandemic. So he has a right-wing agenda.  Another thing that makes me think that is the tone of the piece, which is condescending and smarty-pants.  He gives 13 reasons in all why people might reasonably resist vaccines. I won't go through these one by one, but rather address three categories into which they fall.   Several points focus on the novelty and speed of production of the vaccines. Several more focus on side-effects of the vaccines. While these might have been reasonable concerns a year ago, today they are nothing short of ridiculous.  Bloomberg estimates that more then 10.4 billion doses of the vaccines have be...

A recent study has concluded that lockdowns don't work. It is being bandied-about by conservative media as proof that other pandemic mitigation measures like masks don't work either. The study  is a meta-analysis, which statistically combines the results of other, smaller studies to gain  power to detect differences. It was done by some some economists—not epidemiologists.  It was published in a journal that is not peer-reviewed and was founded by a coauthor of the paper. That guy also happens to be a fellow at the arch-conservative Cato Institute. Talk about motivated reasoning. Public health experts criticized the study , saying it used an squishy definition of lockdowns. It also did not properly account for complex disease processes such as the wide variation in time it takes for infected people to die. Despite this, Rand Paul wasted no time taking the study at face value, claiming that lockdowns do more harm than good. He also said that masks don't work. Wait...wasn...

  Legislators in the Arizona House are pushing a law that would punish businesses that fire workers for refusing vaccine mandates. The bill is only 16 lines long, and the main part says: Notwithstanding any other law, an employee who is terminated for not receiving a covid-19 vaccine as a condition of employment shall receive either of the following: (1) Severance compensation paid by an employer in the amount of the employee's annual salary in one lump sum or installment payments over twelve months. (2) Reemployment with the employer at the same or similar position held on the date the employee was terminated and a reasonable accommodation provided by the employer to the employee. So basically if you require your employees to be vaccinated and they refuse, then if you fire them you have to pay them one year's salary as severance. The bill is retroactive to last November. This is obviously an anti-vax measure. I suppose they think it's necessary because the governor's ...

  Governor Ron "Florida Man" DeSantis is picking a new fight with the Biden administration over antibody treatments. Whereas before he was bitching about not being allowed to hog them, now he's bitching about not being allowed to waste them. Antibodies treatments for COVID-19 are a big deal in Florida. That state has a surplus of politically-motivated individuals who refuse to be vaccinated, and there is a huge overlap between this group and the group of people who vote for the governor. Last year DeSantis and other Lemon Socialist governors were hawking antibody treatments  as the perfect solution for saving their COVIDiot supporters. Florida was hoovering up all the Regeneron doses it could get, way more than its share. Then back in September the Biden administration took steps to ensure more equitable distribution of these doses among states. DeSantis promptly threw a hissy-fit . Fast-forward to the past week, when the FDA has rescinded its Emergency Use Authorization...

  Cochise County (CC) is in the Southeastern-most part of the state and encompasses Bisbee, Sierra Vista, and Wilcox. A story  recently published on tuscon.com about pandemic relief funds came to my attention the other day.  For a little context, CC was particularly hard-hit by COVID-19 over the fall. Its cases per 100K  exceeded those for Maricopa County (MC), according to the ASU dashboard .  Now, whereas case rates in MC and the state overall appear to have peaked , in CC they are still increasing. Today it has about 27% more cases per 100K (seven-day average) than the state's largest county. Against this backdrop the CC Board of Supervisors were considering an intergovernmental agreement with the Arizona Department of Health Services that would have provided them $1.9M in funds to help deal with the pandemic. The CC Health Services Director explained that the money was needed for things like additional personnel, equipment, mobile community health services,...

I've been doing this blog for just about a year now. The first regular post was January 6, 2021. I'll reflect on that in a few days. Meanwhile, what kind of a media outlet would this be if I didn't do a year-in-review post? Looking back over the year's posts, it's amazing how much has been going on, and how much there potentially is to review. I can't spend all day on a detailed summary.  So I will try to focus on a bird's eye view. Vaccines & Anti-Vaxxers Vaccines have to be the biggest topic on this blog over the past year. Vaccines were very hard to get this time last year. A lot of people wanted them and the distribution was just getting started.  People had to navigate really crappy systems, like one in Arizona , to make reservations. There were " vaccine tourists " who would travel from other states and even countries in an effort to get jabbed.   Then, around March last year, those who wanted the shots had largely gotten them, and incre...

  Arizona has earned a few ignoble distinctions lately. They relate to deaths, stressed care systems, and abysmal leadership. On the deaths front, we have two marks of shame. First, Becker's Hospital Review lists Arizona  as having the second highest death rate in the country. Over the course of the pandemic we've had 0.94 deaths per 100K residents, and averaged 68.4 deaths daily. We're exceeded only by Michigan (1.17 & 117.3). Second, over the last year COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in Arizona. It has killed more people than heart disease or cancer. Dr. Joshua LaBaer, executive director of Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, pointed out that this doesn't even include people who had conditions that went untreated because our medical system was overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients. Speaking of overwhelmed systems, the Arizona Public Health Association says our hospitals are now in "crisis standards of care." That's because they are f...