The New York Times is reporting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was relying on a faulty study in declaring a 10 percent chance of the transmission of Covid-19 outdoors. After using the “miscalculation” to support outdoor mask mandates for over 300 million Americans, the CDC now says that it is more like one percent. It is astonishing that such a key and controversial component of our Covid policies was not just based on a miscalculation but never actively questioned or reexamined to discover the error.
The Times’ Leonhardt noted “There is not a single documented Covid infection anywhere in the world from casual outdoor interactions, such as walking past someone on a street or eating at a nearby table.”
The outdoor risk has been a major source of disagreement with many contesting mandatory mask rules for those walking or working or recreating outside. It turns out that, according to the Times, the 10% benchmark is based “partly on a misclassification” of virus transmission in Singapore at various construction sites. Those sites were incorrectly described as outdoor but now appear to have actually taken place in indoor settings. Singapore also classified settings that were a mix of indoors and outdoors as outdoors, including construction building sites.
The real risk is one percent or less. Yet, cities like Chicago closed whole parks — magnifying the isolation and depression for citizens. Various cities like New York closed playgrounds despite being outdoors and used by the lowest risk population for Covid. States closed parks and trails that could have been key areas of release for people during lock downs. When Washington, D.C., issued its mandatory outdoor mask in July 2020, the city stressed:
Dr. Robert Redfield, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the World Health Organization, and the District of Columbia Department of Health are all agreed that wearing masks when social distancing is impossible to maintain can reduce the spread of the disease dramatically.
We spent trillions on this pandemic and the issue of masks and curtailing outside movements was continually in the news. Yet, there appears to have been little time or money spent on the basis for this key component of the mandatory policies supported by the CDC and mandated by many states.
I can understand the reliance on an article in the prestigious Journal of Infectious Diseases. I cannot understand the failure to closely examine its basis since it appears to have been the primary basis for the policy. Hundreds of millions of Americans were impacted as well as the economy. Yet, CDC is only now noting that the article appears to have been fundamentally flawed in its underlying assumptions and calculations.
Grow up! It’s called an over abundance of caution! I bet you’d be complaining about having a turn your lights off if you live on the coast during World War II! Bunch of crybabies. It’s a national emergency grow up and sacrifice and we will all get through this. We will be speaking German and Japanese if we had you schmoes around back then.
Ugh. This isn’t helpful.
It’s a flu virus.I know I had it and I hadn’t been out. My son caught it from a co worker who was vaxxed and brought it home to me. Staying hone doesnt keep you from gettjng it.
I fo not wear a mask and I won’t I have survived Covid. CDC beeter stop lying or I am going to sue them.
They gave money to Wuhan kab along with Dr Fauci who also is a liar. The shoukd be arrested for crimes against humanity.
I hate liars.
That’s the whole point, this is an unnecessary national emergency. We’ve known since March 2020 99% will be unaffected physically or only mildly affected by Covid.
We shut down parks because people with more than three comorbidities could die of this. We did the maximum damage without helping the vulnerable.
You are part of the problem. Your emotional response to deny the science has led to more death and disruption of lives than a science backed, objective, rational response to the virus would result in.
Speaking of China, why didn’t the Trump administration identify China as the source of the cyberattack on the Microsoft Exchange Servers?
Dunleavy’s not exaggerating. He described the runaround he’s gotten from government agencies:
“A spokesperson for the National Security Agency told the Washington Examiner to reach out to the National Security Council. The NSC did not provide a comment. A spokesperson for DHS said to ‘please contact the FBI for help with this inquiry.’ The FBI spokesperson said that ‘unfortunately, we do not have a comment.’ A DOJ spokesperson said they ‘don’t have anything to share with you on this at this time.’ A spokesperson for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that ‘we do not have a comment on attribution.’ And the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to a request for comment.”
At a March White House media briefing, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was asked if China was responsible for the Microsoft attack.
According to an official White House transcript, Sullivan replied, “I’m not in a position, standing here today, to provide attribution, but I do pledge to you that we will be in a position to attribute that attack at some point in the near future. And we won’t hide the ball on that. We will come forward and say who we believe perpetrated the attack.”
Except that no one has. No individual or agency within the administration will acknowledge the obvious.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/biden-suspiciously-left-china-big-cybersecurity-order
Oh, sorry, that happened this year under the Biden administration.
“Following the Science” is one of the most senseless statements of our age. The vast majority of the science going on right now is being brutally suppressed to prop up the official narrative dressed up in scientistry.
“the CDC now says that it is more like one percent.” Even that is a gross exaggeration – 10 times higher than what has been proven. The CDC is simply incapable of transparency. The revised guidance is based on a study in Ireland that found the rate of outdoor transmission is one-tenth of 1 percent (or 1 of every 1000 cases). https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/outdoor-transmission-accounts-for-0-1-of-state-s-covid-19-cases-1.4529036
Obviously CDC is not to be trusted. What will replace them? That will be interesting to see.
Anyone who’s ever worked on a govt project knows numbers are fluid and subject to the point they’re being used to make. Statistics are essentially meaningless in these early stages and we knew this going in. We also knew going in that our immune systems were like muscles and they need exposure to germs to operate normally. Shut yourself off from germs like Howard Hughes and your immune system shuts down too. Isolated tribes can be wiped out by not being exposed to pathogens and virus as their immune systems have never learned to build defenses for them. Its a muscle. Use it or lose it. Yet suddenly even suggesting the long proven science of herd immunity could get your post blacklisted on social media, as could pointing out early on last year that the CDC had reported 80k deaths for 2019 from the regular flu, which killed up until Covid came along between 40 and 80 thousand Americans annually. Mention that however and you get blocked, or point out how the numbers of flu deaths suddenly almost disappeared with Covid. Suddenly he flu death numbers changed. As did statistics on Covid throughout the year in 2020. Percentages of deaths were likewise overinflated by conflating all sorts of other death causes, particularly the common flu with Covid. Pretty much anyone who got Pneumonia was given a “presumptive positive” listing and added to the Covid death toll. At least as a passive citizen who has no inside access that’s how it appeared based on the numbers reported by the CDC in Feb for Influenza deaths for the previous year which in February 2020 were being reported as 80k, then by December same year the number had mysteriously changed several times finally resting on about 30k. The other 50k must have magically recovered.
Numbers are fluid when these govt contract groups get together and are tasked with producing statistics to support a given position or goal. The numbers are what they want them to be, and its easy enough to move a decimal then later say “oops, we didn’t realize” after the made up number accomplished whatever goal it was designed to accomplish.
There was a video going around for a while last year about the ER Nurse on a Covid death wing and she video’d patients charts showing how patients who had tested negative for Covid were still being listed on their charts as “presumptive positive”. She purported that it appeared the hospitals were doing this as there was extra federal money and financial incentives for each Covid case they handled. So everything was listed Covid. Also she pointed out healthy patients were being put on ventialtors who then died because of the ventilators damage to the lung tissue. She pointed out people were drugged once they signed a release authorizing the hospital to sedate them and place them on assisted breathing apparatus, drugged to the point of chemically induced coma. Then left on the ventilators until quote “their lungs blew out”. Another Physician said this same thing, Scott Jensen I believe his name is, a State Senator and practicing physician who has treated covid cases. But you can’t read about this now because FB, Youtube, etc all censored it. They didn’t want us exposed to this “harmful information”.
I predicted then that sooner or later the truth would start leaking out. A little here, a little there. And it is. Covid was real in the sense it was a virus and it was harmful to elderly and the immune compromised. Like any disease or illness is. But I have a hard time believing it was the all out pandemic they sold it to us as.
I can’t get that very first British couples words out of my mind when I hear about the pandemic. You remember them right? The first couple they interviewed off that very first cruise ship that got infected back in Feb 2020. Remember what they said? Remember how they said “something didn’t seem right” and how half the medical experts sent in were wearing protective gear but so many were not. They said it just didn’t seem right and I will never forget the husbands words that they ended his interview with. He said; “we smell a rat”.
I use a mask. I social distance. I got both shots. I even wear gloves in public as an added precaution. I pay attention to the science.
I have also come to despise the CDC as overtly political. I wish I never heard of Fauci.
Anyone wearing gloves, wearing a mask in public is not paying attention to the science.
All the supposed science books, that have had their theories since refuted, would equal more that 32 miles if stacked one against another. This is in a museaum in DC. Imagine that.
Bless your heart.
Seems like the civil rights division of the Biden justice department is working against the civil rights of our citizens.
So Anonymous, aren’t I welcome to my own opinion just like you, The Quiet Man and every other commenter on this blog?
Please explain what you think is wrong with my comment Anonymous, it’s factual, it’s truthful and it’s sharing my genuine opinion. I don’t coddle to or enable internet trolls.
Uh Steve,
Maybe you should have posted everything and let our fellow commentators decide for themselves who the troll actually is in this case. I like the fact you selectively clipped my response to make me look bad. That is ok. However, for the record, your very first post was an insult to me and your second post had more insults and as a matter of fact, every post has had insults to me. Then you try and dismiss me?
All for what? I give the CDC a pass on this issue and you cannot stomach it? Instead of disagreeing, you had to try and denigrate me because you do not like my stand? You had an opportunity to be a gentlemen and yet did not take it. I stand by my statement. It was tough time and it was the fog of war. I also noted in my first post that I hoped the work would be done to prevent another occurrence like the one we are talking about now. Obviously trollish behavior.
You should have just not answered my bait, it would have been much more powerful. It would have left me with nothing. So this is the lesson to you. You get to have the last word because I am not going to reply. You just are not worth it. Once again I will get the last word.
Once again, be forewarned, if you respond I will not and you will be left with nothing and I prove my point. if you do not respond, then I get the last word,
Dilemma, dilemma.
You should have really quit when you were ahead. Yet you rushed in when Angels feared to tread.
it’s better to be thought the fool and remain “the quiet man” as opposed to start talking or writing and remove all doubt.
That was the end of your first post to me, you should have take n your own advice.