Secret photo of scientific research supporting lockdowns. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
News reports are emerging which explain the double-blind, peer-reviewed, easily replicated science behind various lockdown requirements is assumptions and guesses. Oh, and in Virginia the hard-core science supporting a curfew is the governor’s “common sense.”
Consider:
- Medical doctor on the White House coronavirus task force says there is no science behind concept of banning outdoor or even indoor dining.
- Research studies which are cited to prove restaurant dining is dangerous are seriously flawed.
- Only support for a midnight to 5 a.m. curfew in Virginia is the governor’s common sense.
- Senior WHO official suggests not using lockdown as primary tool to fight the virus becuase of the severe side effects.
(Might want to get a fresh cup of coffee – takes lots of words to deliver this double dose of ridicule)
12/9/20 – Red State – Video: CA HHS Secretary Admit Outdoor Dining Ban Is About Control, Not Science – Coverage of the story is a bit thin. My brief research shows major news outlets are not discussing it.
The point? There is no evidence to support the idea of shutting down outdoor dining. None.
12/8/20 – Fox News – White House Coronavirus Task Force members Fauci, Giroir at odds over California lockdowns – In the Monday meeting of the task force, Admiral Brett Giroir, Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services said it is important to limit indoor crowding but also said, as quoted, that he has not yet seen
“Any data that says you need to shut down outdoor dining or outdoor bars.”
The Admiral is also a medical doctor.
He also said:
“I think we need to do what’s necessary to turn the pandemic, but not more that’s not evidence-based – that’s going to be counterproductive.”
To repeat: he has not seen, as assistant secretary for HHS, any evidence supporting the shutdown of outdoor dining. He asserted that Dr. Fauci actually agrees with that statement.
In case anyone missed the point, he continued:
“The science does not support limiting indoor dining and bars.”
No science to support indoor restaurant shutdown either.
In a television interview on Monday, Dr. Fauci said he agrees with the new lockdowns in California. His comment to California officials was, quoting the article:
“I said, ‘you know, you really don’t have any choice.’… When you have a challenge to the healthcare system, you’ve got to do something about that.”
Even if the “something” has no scientific evidence to support the “something” and it will cause reasonably foreseeable severe side effects.
Oh yeah, remember the Admiral is a medical doctor.
12/7/20 – American Greatness – No Science Justifies Bans on Indoor or Outdoor Dining – You will hear loud demands that we must “follow the science!!!”
Based on science we must close restaurants, cancel Thanksgiving, cancel Christmas celebrations, and cancel New Year’s celebrations.
What is the science for this?
Assumptions and correlations.
Article describes some of the problems with the CDC study which is cited as proof positive that eating at a restaurant is going to give you Covid.
Instead of actually identifying where individuals became infected, the study uses recall surveys, asking people where they remember having been in the two weeks prior to symptoms appearing. Such surveys are weak. Consider for yourself – could you list every single place you were located between seven and 21 days ago?
In addition to relying on recall, the study assumes the relationship between all the places a person was and how they became infected. Thus, since a high portion of people recall having been in a restaurant at some point during the two week period that is assumed (without any evidence) as the source of infection. That practically everyone was in a grocery store or big box store, a large portion of people were in their work environment, and everyone was at home with loved ones, researchers have to make a guess where people got infected. Their guess of all those possibilities is restaurants.
Basically, the CDC study is an analysis of correlation. It does not identify any causation.
Yet that lack of evidence is cited as scientific proof for closing outdoor dining in the city of Los Angeles.
Article describes another study published in November. Problem with this study is again it looks at correlation, not causation. In addition, it is based on location information obtained from cell phone data during the timeframe of March 1 through May 2 of this year.
Do you remember what was going on during the last half of March and all of April?
Just about every restaurant, coffee shop, bar, and gym in the country was closed during that time. Back then we went from bed to living room with an occasional trip to standing in line at the grocery store or gathering a to-go order from our favorite restaurant or sitting inside a car waiting to order at fast food restaurant drive-through.
So based on location data while most restaurants, bars, and gyms were closed, the study concludes being in those closed places made people sick.
Actual statistics keep getting in the way of the analysis. Article points out that Florida and New Jersey are running with about the same number of Covid deaths per million population. That is at a time when restaurants in Florida have been completely open and restaurants in New Jersey have been operating with partial capacity.
Restaurants in Florida and New Jersey with completely different level of restrictions provides a natural experiment in whether restaurants are the cause of infection. If there was a causation between being inside the restaurant and getting sick that there should be far more deaths per capita in Florida than New Jersey. Yet that is not the case.
I checked the cases per hundred thousand on 12/9/20. In Florida, case rate is around 20% higher than New Jersey, while death rate in New Jersey is about 120% higher.
Another conclusion, since it is apparently acceptable to assume causation from unrelated data, is that it is far more deadly to be in a restricted New Jersey restaurant that in a fully open Florida restaurant.
12/10/20 – The Roanoke Times – Northam says “nothing good happens after midnight,” in instituting a curfew to combat Covid-19 – The governor of Virginia has issued a midnight to 5 AM curfew for all citizens subjects in the state.
He also banned social gatherings of more than 10 people and extended the existing indoor mask requirement to outdoors.
The governor had previously ordered bars to issue last call at 10 PM with mandatory close by midnight.
Multiple news reports explain the governor’s rationale for curfew.
The brilliant research scientist’s scientific support, quoting the article, when asked how a midnight curfew would reduce infections:
“… Northam said that it’s common sense.”
Article attributes this quote to him:
“I’ll also say something that my parents taught me when I was younger, and that is, nothing good happens after midnight.”
So the irrefutable, peer-reviewed, double-blind medical research supporting the theory that the virus is extra virulent after midnight consists of “common sense” and what his mom told him when he was a child.
We now have at least two states where the virus is extra deadly in the small hours of the morning.
The curfew in Virginia starts at midnight.
Here in California it starts at 10 PM.
The scientifically proven facts are we have an even more virulent mutation of the coronavirus here in California because it turns extra deadly at 10 o’clock. In Virginia the variation they have is a bit weaker because it doesn’t turn extra nasty until midnight.
Remember, all those restrictions are based on science.
10/11/20 – MSN – WHO official urges world leaders to stop using lockdowns as primary virus control method – This article is from MSN. After 24 hours most news outlets around the world have either rewritten the story or reprinted it verbatim so I could have picked just about any new source on the planet to cite as a source.
Speaking on behalf of the World Health and Organization, the “special envoy” on Covid-19 advised governments around the world to stop using lockdowns as the primary method of controlling the virus.
He mentioned there are a range of severe consequences. Two cited in the article are devastation of the tourism industry in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Also increased hunger and poverty around the world. The poverty rate could be doubled within a year he said. Child malnutrition could double in that time. Small farmers from around the world have been devastated.
Other studies cited by the article mention consequences in the United States include increased risk of suicide for young people, accelerating number of overdose deaths, increasing domestic violence, and possibly losing seven times more years of life from the lockdown as are potentially saved by the lockdown.
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