- Back around early March, before it was politically incorrect to call it the Wuhan virus, the story was that it had either leaked from a Chinese lab, or it had jumped to humans from bats in soup or a market in China. But the bottom line was that people had no antibodies, because it was all new. This was a major reason why lockdowns were initially thought to be needed.
- However, almost immediately, it was being discovered that people in fact did have antibodies to the virus. But instead of there being no public rethinking of the original idea, it's just been dropped, and nobody mentions the Chinese lab or the bat soup any more. But what does that do to the original story that this is real, real dangerous?
- In any case, if the Chinese lab was trying to create a weapon, it was at best like the inflatable tanks and jeeps the US deployed in England before D-Day to spoof the German spy planes.
- But what about all the antibody tests? We're hearing of many thousands of tests conducted each day, which lead to skyrocketing "cases", which conflate active infections with the presence of antibodies.
- What are those antibodies, and where do they come from? I hear many conflicting stories, that they're only relatives of COVID but cause positive tests, or that the tests are false positives.
- And what of the reports from central Florida that "cases" are wildly overreported, or stories from elsewhere of people who went for testing, left before they got a test due to long lines, but still got a report in the mail of a positive test?
- What of the apparent continuing problem that deaths "with" COVID are reported in a bunch with deaths caused by COVID, most recently in central Florida (again) of a man who died from a motorcycle accident who was reported as a COVID death?
- The central Florida reports are due to investigation by a single TV station, which are not coordinated nationally, but ought to be. What other big problems are hidden in the national data?
- There is a near-universal consensus among politicians that wearing maks will stop the spread of COVID. But in states that mandate them, the "cases' are "skyrocketing". Why?
- Why have there been no specific studies of the correlation between social distancing measures and the spread of COVID, especially using reliable indicators?
"On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. . . . It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews." -- Annie Dillard
Sunday, July 19, 2020
Things That Don't Add Up For COVID
Here are some random notes on things I just don't see pursued seriously in the public forum: