The reason I'm looking at cases vs mortality is total cases are going to be higher at this point because more testing is being done. We're in the seasonal surge period (2nd wave) in the fall to Christmas period that epidemiologists have been predicting from early in the crisis.
This Wiki page aggregates national data for all countries individually and the entire globe totals. It seems to be reporting mortalities that are attributed to Covid and Covid related deaths as opposed to % above all cause mortality. I view the latter method as the more relevant, but the wiki page is easily accessed and tracked, and that's a good thing. The mortality rate speaks both to virulence and the progression of herd immunity. The country measures vary quite a lot, generally what we can expect to see, according to the focused protection advocates, is surges in cases due to seasonals and end of lockdown periods. The comparison of cases to mortality is instructive.
But mortality is staying low relative to cases, and most importantly, much lower than 1st wave stats.
Other countries in EU
France, again very high levels of new cases, much of which due to more measurement.
Mortality while quite high, tracking well below the 1st wave, indicating herd immunity is progressing.
Austria, cases and mortality are both quite high.
And here's the US, which, I think we can agree, didn't produce a viable version of either lockdown or focused.
Mortality up a bit, but considerably lower than the 1st wave, which is good, but not nearly low enough for an all clear.
The published science on pandemics is where the "focused protection" view is sourced. It seems to me that the primary motive for lockdown would be to delay herd immunity, the only rationale for which is "waiting for vaccine", but while releasing a "coiled spring effect" at lockdown end in the immuno naive population which is still quite numerous due to lockdown.
Going by the large % of commercials on standard TV by Big P and fast food it is reasonable to question the editorial influences on management. Much of the hysteria we have seen on standard channels were due to the understandable normal fears that occur in pandemics, but it certainly also seems to have been exacerbated by the media.
The focused protection approach negates considerably the "wait for vaccine" approach, which as we know in the case of a novel corona is quite long, even in accelerated development conditions.
The "old dog" Swedish epidemiologist Johan Giesecke predicted this "rolling lockdown" pattern and the additional difficulties produced by it in an interview dated April 17, which if you haven't seen is well worth a view IMHO:
Some folks seem to have the idea if they can identify those few plants with "special" qualities they are good to go. They're on the hunt for the "silver bullet". Hate to say it, but there ain't no silver bullet. The point isn't special plants, it's simply plants in general, in the variety that provides the body with optimal levels of macro nutrients (carbs, proteins, and fats), and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, etc).
That variety of plants is fruits and veg, whole grains, spuds, legumes, and some nuts and seeds. Leafy greens and beans for protein. There's a saying in the investing worldthe only free lunch is diversification. This variety is the dietary diversification that meets our needs for nutrition perfectly, in the least taxing way (does not drag energy down with digesting and detoxing).
This is the standard Whole Foods Plant Based Diet recommended by a growing group of MDs and Nutritionists. They recommend it because it works.
This group of foods has another advantage for people changing their diet, it's the foods we grew up eating, minus the animals. That makes the diet satisfying and familiar, which is important when changing life long habits.
Your taste buds will thank you, and it won't take long for your body to begin thanking you either.
A very lucid introduction to some of the basic concepts of focused protection are expressed in this 11 minute interview of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the authors of The Great Barrington Declaration:
First, an overview. Epidemics and pandemics are notable mostly for their lethality. The common cold virus can produce huge case numbers but low lethality, and generally we are not nearly as concerned.
Cases can go up while mortality goes down. As I understand it this is pretty normal toward the end of epidemics and pandemics. Reasons given are viruses are becoming less lethal due to better treatments, increasing herd immunity, viral mutations that decrease virulence, and the most vulnerable populations have sadly decreased in number.
CDC publishes the all cause mortality for the US...the red + marks above the blue bars signify above average all cause mortality rates. The bars are going down but we need to see a number of weeks with no red + marks, we have one now, so we seem to be getting there. If that keeps up it is good news. Many countries are publishing similar all cause mortality data that show the covid-19 pandemic is potentially over. But we cannot predict the future, meanwhile we are still in the period for caution with masks, distancing, and frequent hand washing.
The current CDC chart for US all cause mortality:
which can be seen full size and tracked at this page
The CDC has not posted new bars for the past few weeks. The disclaimer on the CDC page below the chart says this is normal. We can hope so. Other countries have been showing normal rates for some time now. A potential concern is the independence of the CDC from the influence of big pharma. Will the CDC publish data that essentially says the pandemic is over before we can get vaccines to the public? Would this have anything to do with the massive "rushed science" (and potentially unsafe) effort for covid-19 vaccine development?
THE CDC claims to be politically and financially independent, but that may not be the case:
The number of CDC mandatory vaccinations has risen exponentially in the last two decades. Does that reflect corresponding exponential increases in the quality of science, or potential contamination by unconscious profit bias? A fair question, and one we can be reasonably sure is not going to be subjected to the scrutiny of studies by independent bodies anytime soon.
Health considerations finally prevailed over the tobacco industry, the Surgeon Generals warning appeared on all tobacco products, and ads like these disappeared overnight.
There were literally hundreds of ads like these.
Today the campaign against optimal health is orders of magnitude more profitable, insidious, and institutionalized. It was no accident that tobacco ads featured doctors. The tobacco industry knew their product was health destructive for two decades before the Surgeon Generals warning was issued. The best possible counter was the words of the trusted family doctor.
What are the corollaries today? Chemical companies that design and make the many pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides added to our foods. Foods designed by processed food conglomerates to fritz our instinctual circuitry and cause addiction to toxic "food like" substances. Factory farming of animals. Distribution channels for toxic "foods", including grocery chains and the fast food restaurant industry.
OK, so these megalithic industries have made zillions of dollars making us sick...now what?
Turn on the television and see that every other ad is for the latest and greatest pharmaceutical. We're not feeling too good and see one we think we might "need", and we make an appointment with our doctor (who has extensive training in administering pharmaceutical product). The multi faceted disease management industry (that goes by a misnomer as the health care industry) generates ungodly profits administrating solutions that are on average ineffective at best.
All of these industries put profit first, and have about as much concern for our health as the tobacco industry did: chemical, pharmacological, mono crop agriculture, factory farming of animals, food "science" conglomerates, grocery stores, restaurants, medical, "health care" insurance.
When cancer begins to become epidemic in children what do we do? Build pediatric cancer hospitals.
It's a complex picture that only begins to become clear when we add up the total profits made on production, consumption, and treatment of toxic food choices. The sum of those profits is probably the single largest source of revenues in history. And there is no "one bullet solution" as there was with the tobacco industry (with one bulletin from the Surgeon General). One wonders how it is we are collectively so unconscious and destructive to have generated a socio-cultural mess of this historic scale. Is it as simple as "following the profit"?
I think it should be said at the outset we don't get to see this alternate POV on conventional media sources. And we might also want to notice and keep in mind conventional media has been a little bit hysterical, and sometimes more than a little. When the alternate POV breaks through as it did with the Great Barrington Declaration, and if one is really familiar with what these virologists, epidemiologists, and public health scientists are saying, it quickly becomes obvious this POV is misrepresented.
As just one example, they do not say not to wear masks. They are not devoid of common sense...if the disease is respiratory we would obviously rather filter the air we breathe.
What they are saying is collective damage to human health from the virus is greatly exacerbated by lockdown. And they are insistent this POV is completely apolitical. It occurs to me if the pandemic had come at the beginning of a presidential term, with a president who was him or herself a calming influence, we would not have seen near the levels of hysteria about the pandemic. The virus doesn't care who the president is. We've conflated political hysteria, which was present before the pandemic, with a medical emergency, resulting in off the chart levels of "social hysteria disorder" (if I may coin a term).
Let's remember that "herd immunity" is not some kind of dirty word (as media would have us believe), it is simply the biological mechanism by which all epidemics and pandemics are eventually terminated. It can happen organically as people are exposed to the virus, and it can happen via the "viral mimics" in vaccines, and some combination of the two. We are led to believe the only mechanism by which pandemics are halted is via vaccines. If that were true it's very unlikely our species "sapiens" would have survived the 100,000 years of our time on the planet leading to the discovery of vaccine technology 200 years ago.
Let's also remember that cases can go up while pandemic mortality goes down. And as I write cases are going up, we have to continue to be careful and use good common sense: wear a mask in doors and close quarter out of doors, wash your hands frequently, and keep a social distance from others.
Here's a conversation between an emergency room doctor who was in the thick of it, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. Since it is literally impossible to find a fair and balanced consideration of these views in conventional media we may want to hear what at least one of the experts holding this point of view has to say.
Biology is seemingly infinitely complex. Here's a definition of the biological sciences: "Biological sciences encompasses all the divisions of natural sciences examining various aspects of vital processes. The concept includes anatomy, physiology, cell biology, biochemistry and biophysics, and covers all organisms from microorganisms, animals to plants."
We've been on a quest to discover and understand all of the interactive mechanisms that play individual and coordinated roles in life function, and an almost unimaginable amount of data has been compiled. Just think of the data that has been compiled in the process of discovery and mapping of the human genome alone.
Why do we do this? Well part of the answer is simple - we are a species possessed of insatiable curiosity. But why? And the answer to that question is the topic of this blog - we want to achieve higher and higher levels of functioning.
To see examples of "the genetics solution", take a quick glance at this NIH (National Institute of Health) site for the National Human Genome Research Institute:
- Genetics and genomics both play roles in health and disease.
- Why are genetics and genomics important to my health?
After many years of discovery and research we've mapped the human genome with the overarching purpose of understanding and controlling disease processes. And not a moment too soon, health in the developed world has been getting worse for quite some time. So we've mounted great effort and resources to understand exactly, down to microscopic minutiae level, how to control our health for the better. Underlying all this effort was the belief that the answers lay in what is not yet known.
Newer and better drugs will be developed to that end. They will be expensive, probably very expensive, but no doubt worth every penny.
You may have noticed my tongue in cheek just there. There are subcultures among us that regularly achieve very high levels of health from birth to death, and longer happier lives in the process, with relative ease and at almost no cost. How is this possible? The answer is they have focused almost exclusively on the cause of health. Or, one might say, the energy input-output question.
I've been writing in this blog about this since discovering the importance of this question, which was finally made completely clear to me by my primary health educator Dr. Doug Graham. It's basically quite simple, but there are some puzzle pieces that have to come together for understanding. And there is a general thrust in this direction by other health educators and other similar schools of thought. Integrative medicine is one such, and the paleo movement is another.
I've looked carefully at the variations and have found the school of thought that goes under the broader name of "no oil whole food plant based" to be of the highest quality to the "input" side of the equation, and so the more efficient approach. The word vegan doesn't describe this approach sufficiently, but a particular approach to veganism can.
You may have guessed by now what the energy input-output question is referring to. It is simply this: the quality of the inputs (to the body) equals energy out. The computing phrase "garbage in garbage out" works. It is basically that simple.
The psycho-cultural problem we run into is that it is very difficult bringing ourselves to see the "normal" ways we've been eating and living our lives is garbage in garbage out. There are complexities here but the primary problem is the things we've learned in the formative years are very "sticky"... in other words we have come to unconsciously associate these things with our very survival. And survival is of course the prerequisite to health. So, ironically, we have come to unconsciously associate "garbage in" as health producing. And we've come to think of all sorts of toxic substances as "healthy" to "protect" these unconscious associations. But the problem of course is these toxic inputs are killing us en masse way too early. It is, as they say, one hell of a hoary conundrum.
Paleo and integrative medicine take steps toward resolving this conundrum by retaining as much of the old way as possible, while being considerably better than the old way. We get to keep our "anchor" comfort foods while improving the foods around the anchors, and improving lifestyle habits also.
But there is a revolution going on in the young that I believe will eventually overtake the less efficient ways, it is the vegan revolution. I don't consider this an idealistic fantasy, I'm well aware there will always be those who know full well that "smoking is bad for you" and smoke anyway. There is a curious relationship between what we may perceive as near term pleasure and long term pain. But that is a different issue for another time perhaps.
The scientific evidence for the more energy efficient inputs is being established as we speak, and in fact many consider "the weight of the evidence" to have already landed, and I agree with that view. But cultural change can happen slowly.
Meanwhile, we don't have to wait. But we first need convincing. The book that really convinced me in the early stage of my health education was a fast easy read about the foundational work in reversing heart disease by Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. This work resulted in published studies, and was followed by "Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease", the popular book referred to above.
The energy input-output question, properly addressed, fixes way more than heart disease, but heart disease is the leading cause of all death in the developed world, so Esselstyn chose it as the best thing to study.
What percentage of cardiologists still do not recommend this approach as the only known way to reverse heart disease? And instead prescribe comparatively ineffective drugs and surgery? These doctors either reject it out of hand, or "go along to get along" with "the standard of care". To be fair, it's not their job to teach health education, their job is to do the best they can under the circumstances. But it's not good enough, in fact it's not good at all. I question that it even reaches the level of "triage medicine".
But you better believe cardiologists have all heard about Dr. Esselstyn's work by now, it's a threat to their way of practicing medicine. Think about it...a proven way to reverse heart disease. An inconvenient truth for the medical system as it currently exists, and an incredibly convenient truth for the rest of us. It's completely free, easy to understand, and the only side effect is radiant health. Sound too good to be true? It's not. There are 10's of thousands of "anecdotal proofs" walking around now. Folks that would have been long dead following the standard of care. I know this because I'm one of them.
So I will heartily and happily recommend this book as an excellent starting place on a journey toward the highest levels of health. For a quick introduction to Dr. Esselstyn and his work, have a look at this recent talk he delivered to a Sentara Healthcare audience.
