We Are Fucked

With the powers that be pushing complacency, vaccine boosting falling, and a public health establishment that does not believe in public health, is it any surprise that this season's Covid surge is the worst since ……… ever?

Every push to return to normalcy has resulted in an upsurge in cases and made a return to normalcy less likely:

There’s no question a winter coronavirus wave is washing over the United States. How big of a surge is a far murkier question.

The dramatic scale-back of coronavirus surveillance data has made it harder to grasp the magnitude of coronavirus surges.

This is a feature of our dysfunctional political culture.

Rather than trying to address the disease and its harms, they minimize the disease and its harms, because they think that it's too much trouble to keep people from death and disability.

………

Some experts and advocates of heightened coronavirus precautions are citing wastewater tracking to declare that we’re in the second-highest surge of the pandemic. It’s a disputable claim, but not baseless, for reasons we’ll outline below.

They are quoting best evidence, because better evidence has been suppressed.

It is the data driven equivalent of that old Sherlock Holmes axiom, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

When the data has literally turned into shit, you have to use shit data.

And those shit numbers, courtesy of the New York Times, are grim:

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The CDC’s examination of surveillance sites nationwide shows coronavirus levels in wastewater now exceeding last winter’s peak, though the agency official monitoring the data described the levels as comparable. Other institutions tracking wastewater, including Biobot Analytics and WastewaterSCAN, also show levels slightly higher than they were a year ago. 

Once again, the CDC is attempting to apply PR spin to reality, and as Richard Feynman once pithily noted, "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

Of course, the CDC is not trying to fool nature, they are trying to fool us.

Here is the kicker:

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Hospitals no longer test everyone for the coronavirus, which could explain some of the decrease. But people admitted with respiratory illnesses are typically tested. CDC officials, the American Hospital Association and other experts say this change in practice makes the data more accurate.

One final data point that we all need to know, that Johns Hopkins has reinstituted a masking requirement at all its medical facilities in Maryland, and a real one, so, "Patients, staff and visitors are not allowed to wear bandanas, gaiters or masks with exhalation valves. Clear, shield-like face masks are also not recommended."

Unfortunately, public health, and people, are being sacrificed on what William Jennings Bryan called, "A cross of gold."