Category Archives: COVID

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Oh, noes! #COVID19 is surging in California! But still, few people are actually getting sick

The news is horrifically frightening, and Taylor Lorenz must be going absotively, posilutely bonkers: almost everyone in the Pyrite State has a cold.

COVID surging in California, nears two-year summer high. ‘Almost everybody has it’

By Rong-Gong Lin II | Monday, July 29, 2024 | 3:00 AM PDT

If it seems like many people around you are getting COVID-19, you’re not alone.

Federal data show coronavirus levels in California’s wastewater are surging to levels not seen in summertime since 2022, indicating a wide and worsening spread of COVID.

“We are seeing … a definite, definite surge,” said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious disease at Kaiser Permanente Southern California.

The surge is clearly apparent in doctor’s offices and clinics where people are seeking outpatient treatment, Hudson said. But, thankfully, not many people are having to be hospitalized because of COVID-19 at this point.

That’s from the Los Angeles Times original, but if readers are stymied by a paywall, the story can be accessed for free from Yahoo! News.

This ‘surge’ of COVID-19 isn’t being measured by actually testing of individuals, but by testing sewage to detect traces of infectious diseases circulating in a community, even if people don’t have symptoms. People infected can shed pieces of the virus when they use the toilet, bathe, or launder their clothing, and samples of the wastewater are taken and tested before the sewage is processed. The CDC are still testing for Monkeypox, though they now call it Mpox, because they don’t want to offend the poor dears who are most prone to contract it.

In particular, one of the FLiRT strains, known as KP.3.1.1, “has really taken off,” Hudson said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that that strain accounted for 17.7% of coronavirus samples nationwide for the two-week period that ended July 20, up from 6.8% for the prior comparable period.

At that rate of growth, that strain is likely to become increasingly dominant in the next few weeks, Hudson said. “So, unfortunately, I think we are going to see a lot more cases.”

Coronavirus levels in California sewage are considered “very high” for a third consecutive week, the CDC said Friday. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia — home to nearly 3 in 4 Americans — have either “high” or “very high” coronavirus levels in wastewater.

For the seven-day period that ended July 20, the most recent data available, coronavirus levels in California wastewater were at 93% of the peak from the summer of 2022. They’ve already exceeded last summer’s height.

Naturally, the newspaper is reporting that some people contracting the FLiRT variant are feeling the worst symptoms yet:

“I’ve had COVID a few times but this is the worst I’ve had it,” wrote one person on Reddit. The person reported recurring fever, being so congested they couldn’t breathe out of their nose, “terrible sinus pressure and headache … and I can’t stand up for too long without feeling like I’m about to pass out.”

Another person wrote that their “throat feels like razor blades” and that they feel like they’re “in living misery.”

Naturally, the Democrats are not going to grossly overreact by ordering the stupid and unconstitutional restrictions of 2020-21, because there’s an election approaching! No one’s really going to call for universal masking, regardless of how much they might wish, because it’s so politically damaging.

In Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, there were an average of 286 COVID-19-positive people in hospitals for the week that ended July 20. That’s flat from the prior week’s figure of 291, and about half as many as last summer’s peak and one-quarter as many as the peak of summer 2022.

Yet we were also told that California has already exceeded the 2023 summer peak, which can mean only one thing: if serious cases of COVID-19 are fewer, despite a wider spread, then COVID-19 in 2024 just isn’t as bad as previously. “Almost everyone has it,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases expert at UCSF.

But if almost everyone has it, and we aren’t all dropping like flies, it simply cannot be serious anymore. It will be for a few people, but a few people die from the flu or measles as well.

COVID-19 has lost its ability to scare, and few believe the people who try to ramp up fear.

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Are you quaking in fear over the new COVID-19 variant?

Americans, as well as people I’ve met in foreign travel, are just plain over the COVID-19 panicdemic, the spelling of that word meant to indicate just how I saw the whole thing. Virtually no one other than Taylor Lorenz, who has told us that she is immunocompromised, wears a face mask these days. I will very, very! occasionally see someone in Kroger wearing a mask, but I don’t know their individual circumstances; any one of them could be sick himself, or seriously immunocompromised, and I do not judge them or take assumptions about their conditions.

Well, here they go again! From The New York Times:

There’s a New Covid Variant. What Will That Mean for Spring and Summer?

Experts are closely watching KP.2, now the leading variant.

by Dani Blum | Friday, March 10, 2024

For most of this year, the JN.1 variant of the coronavirus accounted for an overwhelming majority of Covid cases. But now, an offshoot variant called KP.2 is taking off. The variant, which made up just one percent of cases in the United States in mid-March, now makes up over a quarter. Continue reading →

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The CDC ends a recommendation no one was following anyway

In Friday’s mostly ignored news, the Centers for Disease Control, which told us that we were all doomed, doomed!, if we didn’t get fully vaccinated, and keep up with booster shots against COVID-19, are lowering recommendations again. Taylor Lorenz will be appalled!

CDC ending five-day COVID isolation guidance

By Nathaniel Weixel | Friday, March 1, 2024 | 1:11 PM EST | Updated: 2:22 PM EST

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is no longer recommending Americans stay home from work or school for five days after testing positive for COVID-19, a major shift in policy that comes as much of the country has moved on from the height of the pandemic.

The new guidance aligns COVID recommendations with other respiratory viral illnesses such as flu and RSV.

The simplified guidance recommends that even if they don’t know what virus is causing the illness, people should stay home when they are sick and symptomatic and resume normal activities if their symptoms have been improving and they are fever-free for at least 24 hours without any medication.

People who are at higher risk for severe illness who start to feel sick should seek health care right away, the agency said.

CDC officials said the change recognizes that the COVID-19 landscape has changed dramatically since the start of the viral outbreak in 2020 when businesses and schools ground to a halt and people stayed home.

There’s more at the original.

Can we tell the truth here? People long ago gave up on the scare tactics of the panicdemic, and with few people taking COVID tests when they feel sick, even those who did have a mild case of the Wuhan flu were integrating right back in with the population once they felt better. Very few self-isolated for five days.

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“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Democrats are in control.”

“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session,” is a quote attributed to both Mark Twain and Gideon Tucker, but, rather than the Legislature, I would amend it to say, “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Democrats are in control.”

We have recently reported on property rights not being protected from squatters in Philadelphia, and how Governor Maura Healey (D-MA) has asked, asked, mind you, residents to provide shelter for the influx of illegal immigrants in their homes. In older stories, we reported on how property rights are simply not respected by the left.

Then there was this:

Federal judge vacates CDC’s nationwide eviction moratorium

Court rules agency lacks legal authority to impose it

By Kyle Swenson, Staff Writer | May 5, 2021 | 3:11 PM EDT

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overstepped its legal authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium, a ruling that could affect millions of struggling Americans. Continue reading →

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#COVID19: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!”

Despite a very significant drop in serious COVID-19 cases, the fear-mongers have to ramp up the fear!

We reported, last Friday, on the actual numbers. Using statistics taken from The Philadelphia Inquirer, not exactly an evil reich-wing news source, we did the actual math:

In Pennsylvania, weekly COVID hospital admissions rose from 281 cases on Aug. 5 to 403 cases on Aug. 19, the most recent week for which data are available through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 1,453 weekly COVID hospital admissions reported in the same week of August last year, according to the CDC.

Naturally, the Inky didn’t do the math, but we did: 403 cases in 2023 ÷ 1,453 cases the same week last year = 0.27735719201651754989676531314522, or 27.74%. COVID cases serious enough to require hospitalization are just 27.74% of what they were last year! If “In Pennsylvania, weekly COVID hospital admissions rose from 281 cases on Aug. 5 to 403 cases on Aug. 19,” we have to ask: how many people live in Pennsylvania? According to the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 population guesstimate, there were 12,972,008 living in the Keystone State. 403 ÷ 12,972,008 = 3.1066894192479683947157602739684e-5. That means that 0.003107%, 3.107 people out of every 100,000, of the state’s population were sick enough with COVID-19 to be hospitalized, and most of those hospitalized will survive.

In the story noting that First Lady Jill Biden tested positive for the Fauxi Flu, we quoted CNN’s report stating that there were “four new hospital admissions for every 100,000 people nationwide in the week ending August 19,” still a pretty low number, and a gross statistic which could mean anything from a range of 3.51 to 4.49 per 100,000. That was poor journalism, and our guess is that, if the number were any significant fraction over 4, CNN would have used that. But, even if it were in the higher end of that range, it’s still a low number.

Yet, once again, we get more media fearmongering! Continue reading →

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Jill Biden has #COVID19

So, how many booster shots has she had, and on what schedule? What variant of SARS-CoV-2 did Jill Biden contract? Was Mrs Biden waiting on the mid-September release of the next variant of the booster? I guess that she should’ve masked up, the way the worry-warts and panic-stricken have been saying!

First lady Jill Biden tests positive for Covid-19

By Mary Kay Mallonee and Donald Judd, CNN | Updated 9:22 PM EDT, Labor Day, September 4, 2023 | Updated 7:26 AM EDT, Tue September 5, 2023

“First lady Jill Biden tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday and is experiencing “mild symptoms,” the White House said. President Joe Biden has tested negative.

The diagnosis has upended the first lady’s plans to begin teaching the fall semester at Northern Virginia Community College on Tuesday. She is working with the school to “ensure her classes are covered by a substitute,” Vanessa Valdivia, the first lady’s spokesperson, said. Continue reading →

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#COVID19: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!”

My very good electronic friend, William Teach, from whom I stole borrowed the image to the right, noted on Thursday that the Usual Suspects and Fearmongers are once again calling for masking up!

Experts Start To Push Masking Again

By William Teach | Thursday, August 31, 2023 | 7:00 AM EDT

They can piss right off

Should we wear masks again? Covid guidelines experts recommend

The uptick of Covid transmissions this summer has raised questions about whether or not certain safety measures such as wearing masks should be brought back.

Several companies and schools nationwide decided to reinstate Covid mask mandates in light of the rising hospitalisations including Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Lionsgate headquarters in Los Angeles, Kaiser Permanente across all California locations, and several hospitals in the state of New York. Workers and attendees at these locations are now required to wear masks upon entry.

“It is ticking up a little bit, but it’s not something that we need to raise any alarm bells over,” Dr David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Seattle Times. Although many health experts like Dr Dowdy don’t believe people have cause to worry, some have expressed their concerns.

While many people have forgone wearing masks, UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert, Dr Peter Chin-Hong, cautioned the Los Angeles Times that swearing off masks for good would put people at higher risk of contracting the virus, elaborating: “Right now, when things are heating up all around the country with Covid, you might want to think about [masking at] public transit and airports.”

No. Just no. People aren’t buying this stuff anymore. Well, most aren’t, there’s always a few. We all know masks do not work. Study after study shows this. If the Powers That Be try this again, most will refuse.

There’s more at the original.

We noted, also on Thursday, the hypocrisy of The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz whining that everyone should wear masks, to protect others, while she attends Hollywood tea parties maskless, with other unmasked people.

Listen to the propaganda, and you’d believe that COVID Doom is headed for us again! But what happens when you look at the actual numbers?

Philadelphia sees slight rise in COVID hospitalizations

Case counts in 2023 remain well below COVID-19 rates this time last year.

by Sarah Gantz | Thursday, August 31, 2023 | 11:45 AM EDT

The Philadelphia Department of Public Health is urging people to take precautions against COVID-19 as hospitals see a slight rise in cases.

A total of 60 people are currently hospitalized with COVID in Philadelphia, marking the first time since the spring that more than 50 people have been hospitalized with the virus, according to the health department. Case counts remain “far below” illness and hospitalization rates this time three years ago, the department said in a news release.

In Pennsylvania, weekly COVID hospital admissions rose from 281 cases on Aug. 5 to 403 cases on Aug. 19, the most recent week for which data are available through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 1,453 weekly COVID hospital admissions reported in the same week of August last year, according to the CDC.

There’s more at the original.

President Biden was among the Fearmongers before the winter of 2021-22, when he said:

We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated – for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm. But there’s good news: If you’re vaccinated and you have your booster shot, you’re protected from severe illness and death.

Well, we didn’t have that “winter of severe illness and death” in 2021-22, or in the winter of 2022-23. And now, as The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, at least in Pennsylvania, despite a small uptick, hospital admissions due to COVID-19 are not just down, but way down, from the same period last year.

Naturally, the Inky didn’t do the math, but I will: 403 cases in 2023 ÷ 1,453 cases the same week last year = 0.27735719201651754989676531314522, or 27.74%. COVID cases serious enough to require hospitalization are just 27.74% of what they were last year!

Glenn Greenwald wasn’t talking about the virus when he made the statement:

Fear is crucial for state authority. When the population is filled with it, they will acquiesce to virtually any power the government seeks to acquire in the name of keeping them safe. But when fear is lacking, citizens will crave liberty more than control, and that is when they question official claims and actions. When that starts to happen, when the public feels too secure, institutions of authority will reflexively find new ways to ensure they stay engulfed by fear and thus quiescent.

but it applies anyway. The government are pushing fear, when there is no indication that there is anything reasonable to fear. Yes, COVID-19 cases have ticked up, but they’ve done so very slightly, and are still at much lower levels than they were even as the country was getting back to normal from the panicdemic.

More math: if “In Pennsylvania, weekly COVID hospital admissions rose from 281 cases on Aug. 5 to 403 cases on Aug. 19,” we have to ask: how many people live in Pennsylvania? According to the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 population guesstimate, there were 12,972,008 living in the Keystone State. 403 ÷ 12,972,008 = 3.1066894192479683947157602739684e-5. That means that 0.003107%, three people out of every 100,000, of the state’s population were sick enough with COVID-19 to be hospitalized, and most of those hospitalized will survive.

Feel free to check my math, because I already have!

President Franklin Roosevelt, in his inaugural address in 1933, in the depths of the Depression, said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” Well, fear is what so many on the left, what so many in the government, is trying to instill in all of us. We must resist that fear, we must resist those attempts, not only because they are unreasoning, but because they are a means by which the government is trying to control the people.

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Liberal hypocrisy: do as I say, not do as I do Or, what goes around, comes around!

We have previously reported on the very lovely Taylor Lorenz, who covers technology and online culture for The Washington Post. The image to the right is a screen capture, but if you click on it, it will take you to the original tweet.

Taylor Lorenz spent a lot of time investigating the Twitter account Libs of TikTok. LoTT’s schtick is to find the silliest things leftists put on the social media site Tik Tok, and snark them for sensible people on Twitter. Basically, LoTT is mocking people for their own exposed stupidity.

Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine

A popular Twitter account has morphed into a social media phenomenon, spreading anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and shaping public discourse

by Taylor Lorenz | Tuesday, April 19, 2022 | 6:00 AM EDT

On March 8, a Twitter account called Libs of TikTok posted a video of a woman teaching sex education to children in Kentucky, calling the woman in the video a “predator.” The next evening, the same clip was featured on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program, prompting the host to ask, “When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?”

Libs of TikTok reposts a steady stream of TikTok videos and social media posts, primarily from LGBTQ+ people, often including incendiary framing designed to generate outrage. Videos shared from the account quickly find their way to the most influential names in right-wing media. The account has emerged as a powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage among the right.

The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching. Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.

Miss Lorenz mission was to dox the creator of LoTT, and in that, she accomplished her mission, in this paragraph from much further down:

Chaya Raichik had been working as a real estate salesperson in Brooklyn when, in early November 2020, she created the account that would eventually become Libs of TikTok.

Let’s tell the truth here: Miss Lorenz exposure of Miss Raichik’s identity for her previously anonymous account was intended to get her fired from her job. Whether Miss Raichik is still selling real estate I do not know, but she appears to have weathered the storm pretty well.

It wasn’t long after that that Miss Lorenz was aghast that President Biden’s proposed Ministry of Truth ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ in the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security failed as people saw it for exactly what it was, an attempt for the government to define what is, and is not, true. The very liberal Miss Lorenz apparently didn’t consider that the party she apparently favored might not be in power forever; would she really want Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis overseeing the Ministry of Truth?

One of Miss Lorenz’s biggest bugaboos has been COVID-19, because as she told us, she is immunocompromised, and that:

Disabled/medically vulnerable people also live in society. We have to go to work, to the doctor, we have to grocery shop and go to school, we ride the same trains and busses as everyone else. It’s terrifying how many ppl want sick & vulnerable people to die or be locked away

And she’s still at it. The image is a screen capture that Miss Raichik took of Miss Lorenz’s tweets from August 14th, in which Washington Post reporter said:

No, you should mask to protect others. It doesn’t matter if you personally have had 5, 6, 7 shots. You can still spread covid and are even more likely to be asymptomatic, which is a major way covid spreads. Also the vaxx doesn’t prevent long covid, which everyone is at risk for.

An interesting statement. She has basically said that the COVID-19 vaccines might make your symptoms less or non-existent if you do contract the virus, but that they do nothing to keep people from contracting or spreading it, which we have known for quite some time.

Then one of the people she hasn’t blocked — she doesn’t really like to hear the truth, so she has blocked me! — Jim Golab, who wrote, seemingly in support of her:

I was 4x vaxxed, and wore a mask while I went through 2 airports on a trip. I got Covid somewhere in there, but such a mild case that I did not really curtail my activities (or mask) because I did not know I had it until later after I tested. I am sure that I was a spreader.

A more polite person would have expressed some sympathy and hope that Mr Golub was now over the disease, and thanking him for at least wearing a mask — something he kind of implied but did not actually state — until after he was aware he had contracted the virus. That wasn’t Miss Lorenz’s response:

That’s horrific and you spread death and disability. That’s why everyone should wear a mask in public while transmission is high and we should demand free and easy testing, public transmission data, upgraded ventilation etc.

And that’s where the fun begins, as Miss Raichik completely destroyed Miss Lorenz’s meme! Dylan Mulvaney, the mentally ill male who thinks he’s a girl, attended a party at Kathy Griffin’s house, and posted a photo, a photo showing himself, seated next to Miss Griffin, who was seated next to, you guessed it, Taylor Lorenz!

Somehow, some way, there isn’t a mask in sight!

Now, we have no way of knowing how many of the ten women and one man male, plus a photographer, at this pretty party “have had 5, 6, 7 shots,” but it doesn’t really matter: the immunocompromised Miss Lorenz still believes that they could “still spread covid.” And if Miss Lorenz knew, or cared, she did not care enough to have worn a mask herself or insist that the others wear masks. It is, I suppose, possible that they were all masked except for the publicity photo, but let’s face it: wearing masks is a real downer, and who wants Debbie Downer at an afternoon tea party?

Miss Lorenz railed on Mr Golub that it was “horrific and (he) spread death and disability,” yet was apparently unconcerned enough at a Hollywood coffee klatch to both attend and not always wear a mask herself. Did she similarly berate the others?

In the end, it’s typical liberal hypocrisy: do as I say, not do as I do! Or, to paraphrase Jonathan Edwards, she can’t even run her own life, I’ll be damned if she’ll run mine!
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.