Date: 2020 August 11
How The Six Nations Of Covid Debunk The Virus Patrol Lockdowns, Part 1
Let us repeat. What is unfolding is not a normal recession or even depression. Nor is Washington’s response a case of extra special “stimulus” as usual.
To the contrary, we are in the midst of a full on public hysteria that has empowered that statist proclivities of present-day American politicians—impulses always lurking just below the surface—to erupt in a brutal attack on the economy, personal liberty and the very notion of government via constitutional due process.
The underlying predicate, of course, is that the Covid presents a Black Plague level threat to life and limb, and therefore that both economic function and personal liberty need be suspended to protect society from an alleged once-in-a-hundred-years existential threat.
Except the whole predicate is a vast exaggeration—even a Big Lie. The Covid is a serious health threat to 5% of the population and a flu-like nuisance to the rest. Accordingly, the overwhelming facts of its wildly differential incidence among age and health status cohorts debunks the one-size-fits-all Lockdown Nation strategy on its face.
The CDC’s own age-cohort mortality data are dispositive. We report the mortality rates through August 1 for the six nations of Covid below, but here’s the spoiler alert: The risk of death for members of Great-Grandparents Nation (85 years+) is 10,000 times higher than for those of School Kids Nation (0-14 years).
In fact, the School Kids Nation actually totals 60.9 million persons, but to date there have been just 45 WITH-Covid deaths reported by the CDC. That’s an infinitesimal mortality rate of 0.07 per 100,000.
By contrast, among the 6.54 million souls who constitute Great-Grandparents Nation, there have been 45,845 WITH-Covid deaths or 32% of the national total. That’s a rate of 701 per 100,000 and, hence, the 10,000X risk.
You don’t get ratio differentials like that by accident or from the wrong sub-sample or time period. The 10,000X differential has been essentially invariant since the CDC began publishing the Covid-counts in early February because it reflects the single most important fact about the Covid.
Namely, that the coronavirus is no match for the human immune system in most cases; the former has more than enough capacity and resilience to defeat the virus after a brief period of either asymptomatic infection or mild home-cured illness.
But that winning immune system capacity diminishes steadily with age or when compromised by life-threatening co-morbidities including heart, vascular, respiratory, renal and diabetic illnesses, especially.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the Covid mortality rate is an overwhelming function of age—both because immune systems inherently weaken with age and because advanced age brings on vastly higher incidence of the above mentioned co-morbidities, which are the Grim Reaper’s helpmate—or often the actual culprit— when the virus strikes.
Still, the rising mortality curve shown below does not indicate a material threat to 70% of the US population, which we have designated as the School Kids Nation, the Socializing Nation and the Prime Working Age Nation.
For instance, the WITH-Covid mortality rate for the 43 million members of the Socializing Nation (age 15-24) is a tiny 0.52 per 100,000. That’s just 4.6% of the annual mortality rate in this age cohort of 11.3 per 100,000 owing to homicides and 11.6 per 100,000 on account of poisonings, and it’s an even smaller fraction of the 15.6 deaths per 100,000 due to auto accidents.
That’s right. As disagreeable as these matters might be, when it comes to mortality, the risk of death from an auto accident is 30X greater among members of the Socializing Nation than of dying from Covid-19.
Yet we do not prohibit young people from driving, nor do we require all cars—regardless of the age of the driver—to limit speeds to 5 MPH owing to the elevated reckless driving proclivities of young people.
Likewise, the WITH-Covid mortality rate for the 129 million members of the Core Working Age Nation (age 25-54) is just 8.6 per 100,000.
Again, perspective is essential: According to the CDC, there are about 65,000 deaths due to poisonings each year in the US, and fully 46,300 are among the Core Working Age Nation. That’s a mortality rate of 36 per 100,000 or a four times higher rate than for deaths WITH-Covid in this population cohort.
WITH-Covid mortality Rate per 100,000 as of August 1, 2020:
It is said that you can drown in a river that averages 2 feet deep if you stumble into a deep eddy current. And that’s the problem here. The total WITH-Covid mortality rate for the entire US as of August 1st as 43.4 per 100,000, but that average tells you exactly nothing about the incidence and severity of the disease by age and health status; and, more importantly, provides no justification whatsoever for one-size-fits-all Lockdown Nation.
The underlying point is that 92% of the WITH-Covid deaths to date have been among the last three categories above. And fully 80% have been among the Grandparents Nation and Great-Grandparents Nation, which account for just 16% of the total US population.
Yet the overwhelming brunt of the Lockdown Nation policies come to bear on the first three nations—the school kids, socializing and prime working age cohorts, which make up 70% of the population.
Indeed, when you look at their numbers alone, the whole idea of quarantines and lockdowns is revealed to be absurd. The combined WITH-Covid mortality rate for these 233 million citizens is just 4.9 per 100,000 or barely 1% of the annual mortality rate from all causes for this population.
Moreover, the death count is not the only measure of medical severity, obviously. Fortunately, many of the states publish age cohort breakouts of cases and hospitalizations, as well as deaths. Arizona is a typical example, and in light of its recent spotlight role in the so-called “second wave” in the Sun Belt, its age-based data for cases and hospitalizations is especially pertinent, as well as being typical.
Arizona has had 188,377 reported cases as of August 1, of which 19,292 have required hospitalization. Accordingly, for its total population of 7.28 million, its hospitalization rate has been about 10% of reported cases or about 265 per 100,000 population. Also, the total number of reported cases amounts to about 2,590 per 100,000 population.
Not surprisingly, these total population ratios are another case of the 2 foot deep river, but with a crucial twist. To wit, everybody gets infected. And with the exception of the under 20 years population, which generally have such strong immune systems as to nip the virus in the bud, infection or case rates do not vary by age; and, in fact, are lower than average for the elderly because they circulate less intensively in society.
Cases per 100,000:
Indeed, there is much logic in these ratios. The strong immune systems of the young result in lower infection rates; the high social mobility of 20-54 years old workers and consumers results in high exposure to the contagion; and the 65+ elderly cohort, who are largely out of the work force and the malls, have a lower rate of exposure—regardless of the public health control regime.
At the same time, there is absolutely no doubt that severity, as measured by hospitalization rates, is a steep function of age. Thus, in Arizona the rate of hospitalization per case among the 65+ cohort is 8X that of the under 20 years cohort, and the rate per 100,000 population is 10X higher.
Percent of cases hospitalized/ hospitalization per 100,000 population:
Needless to say, the mortality rates per 100,000 for Arizona do date track the national averages and are steeply graded with age, just as are hospitalizations.
WITH-Covid Mortality Rate Per 100,000 For Arizona Through August 1st:
In short, whether you use mortality rates or hospitalizations as an index of illness severity, there is no case for quarantines and lockdowns for the protection of the under 55 years population, which accounts for most of the work and consumption based social circulation among the US population.
Self-evidently, therefore, the existing policy of the Virus Patrol is to take the younger and healthier population hostage in order to protect the most vulnerable older and less healthy population by means of the blunderbuss objective of stopping the spread of the virus and shutting down the contagion.
Needless to say, that’s impossible, dangerous, economically devastating and unnecessary, as we will further elaborate in Part 2. The overwhelming evidence from around the world to date is that Lockdowns do not stop the spread or eliminate the contagion—they just spread out the time period during which the virus does what viruses do—-spread.
Moreover, even among the over 55 population, the vulnerability to severe illness or death from the Covid is a radical function of co-morbidities, which rise rapidly with age.
What that means is that targeted strategies of treatment and sheltering of the 5% of the population which is both high on the age and underlying illness scale is the proper policy strategy—the very opposite of what amounts to the regime of medical prohibitionism now being instituted with devastating collateral damage to economy and society alike.
Inevitably, medical prohibitionism leads to totalitarianism, as the British satirist and author CJ Hopkins made so clear in a recent post:
[The below was omitted to create the shorter, more focused excerpt above. -FNC]
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