Tuesday, August 23, 2022

COVID misinformation ... #1

Last update: Wednesday 8/24/22 
In a previous note on this blog, the editor suggested that the nation's pandemic managers had overloaded us with medical and bio science information. As normally used, the word "information" denotes assertions that are valid statements of facts. Unfortunately, our pandemic managers and their sympathizers in the mainstream media have also packed a lot of misinformation into their messages, i.e., assertions and/or implications that are not valid. 

For the purposes of this discussion, it will be useful to distinguish between the blatant lies propounded by right wing media, e.g., Fox News, and the misdirections embedded in mainstream media, e.g., the New York Times.

Conservative pundits, e.g.Tucker Carlson, seem to know they are lying; whereas mainstream pundits don't seem to be aware that that they are misdirecting and that their misdirections are undermining the attainment of the goals that they are hoping to achieve ... an unconsciousness that extends back to the CDC, the FDA. and the nation's other pandemic managers who are the ultimate sources of the mainstream's misdirections. The following discussion focuses on the CDC because, as per its name, it has primary responsibility for the control and prevention of infectious diseases.

Plausible pandemic strategies
Minimal foresight would have demanded that our pandemic managers answer the following questions before they developed any strategies for managing the pandemic. Interim strategies developed before these questions were settled should have been regarded as tentative and replaced by more appropriate strategies as soon as the first two questions had been answered. 
  • What are the worst consequences of COVID-19?
    Some viruses, e.g., monkeypox, rarely kill; but the experience of China and other countries rolling westward towards Europe made it crystal clear by the beginning of 2020 that this coronavirus was a highly transmissible killer.

  • Who does it kill?
    In the early months of 2020 it was reasonable to assume that everyone was vulnerable, that any infection might proceed to the death of the person who had been infected. We were all in this together

    However, by the beginning of the summer of 2020, our own experience showed that COVID-19 rarely killed children, but was more lethal with older age groups, with the most deaths per 100,000 by far among those who were 65+. Indeed, over 70 percent of all COVID deaths were inflicted on this oldest age group, despite it representing less than 20 percent of the total U.S. population.

    By the summer of 2020, it was also known that the virus killed disproportionate numbers of other persons in lower age groups, who had other health liabilities, e.g., they were immunocompromised, diabetics, morbidly obese.

  • What  mitigation strategies should we have followed before vaccines became available?
    By the beginning of the summer of 2020, our highest priority should have been the suppression of infection among the most vulnerable groups ... and among those who cared for them, i.e., their family, close friends, and professional caregivers who might otherwise have passed their infection on to the vulnerable persons they cared for.

  • What criteria should we have provided for the developers of vaccines and treatments?
    Developers of vaccines and treatments should have been required to demonstrate the effectiveness of their products in reducing hospitalizations and deaths among the population segments most vulnerable to COVID. Members of the youngest age groups, i.e, from 0 to 30, who did not have health liabilities, should have been excluded from clinical trials for the initial "emergency use" versions of the vaccines and treatments.
Unfortunately, the CDC did not develop plausible, goal oriented strategies. It did not because it could not. As per the recent announcements by its current director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC needs extensive reform in order to overcome its deeply dysfunctional culture, an organizational culture that was prevalent long before Dr.Walensky became its director and long before Donald Trump became president. 

In other words, the CDC employs about 10,000 staff, most of whom are highly educated, highly paid experts in the medical and bio sciences. Unfortunately, its culture is so dysfunctional that the collective competence of the CDC as an organization is far below the sum of the professional competencies of the individual members of its staff.
  • "CDC, under fire, lays out plan to become more nimble and accountable", Lena H. Sun and Dan Diamond, Washington Post, 8/17/22 
  • "Walensky, Citing Botched Pandemic Response, Calls for C.D.C. Reorganization", Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weiland, NY Times, 8/17/22
  • "In an effort to address its missteps during Covid, CDC plans an ‘ambitious’ agency overhaul", Helen Branswell, STAT, 8/18/22
Dr. Walensky was not the first to determine that the CDC was not up to the job it had been designed to address, for example:
  • "The CDC Waited 'Its Entire Existence for this Moment.' What Went Wrong", Eric Lipton, Abby Goodnough, Michael D. Shear, Megan Twohey, Apoorva Mandavilli, Sheri Fink and Mark Walker, NY Times, 6/3/20
  • "COVID proved the CDC is broken. Can it be fixed?", Jeneen Interland, NY Times, 6/16/21

Question: How could the CDC deny its collective incompetence for so long?
Answer: The CDC didn't deny its shortfalls. It merely misdirected the public's attention, a diversion tactic that usually received unwavering support from the mainstream media -- e.g., the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN -- the fault-finding articles just cited in the NY Times being rare exceptions.


Three mainstream misdirections
This final section identifies three misdirections that the CDC achieved with the active cooperation of the mainstream media. The first was brilliant and profoundly ironic.
  • The CDC blamed President Trump
    Throughout 2020, the CDC (and its partner, the Trump Task Force) fumbled the ball again and again, yet managed to encourage the mainstream media to believe that it was Trump's fault. The mainstream media then gleefully published and/or aired daily reports that assured the public that the medical and bio science experts at the CDC were the "good guys" who were striving to issue guidance in the public interest that was based on "the science", whereas the "bad guy" in the Oval Office invariably distorted their noble efforts in order to serve his narrow political agenda.

    The irony, of course, was that Donald Trump really was an anti-science "bad guy", so his assigned role in this reality TV melodrama was classic type casting. Nevertheless, Trump was not responsible for the CDC's collective incompetence. He inherited it from the Obama administration, who inherited it from Bush, who inherited it from Clinton, etc, etc, etc. ... as Dr. Walensky has just admitted.
Whereas the first misdirection occurred way back in 2020, the next two are works-in-progress. The data is on the CDC's Website, but not in plain sight, and what you do see is misleading. 
  • What is the death rate per 100,000 for the largest and most vulnerable group, those age 65+ ???
    If saving the most lives has been our goal, reducing the death rate for the most vulnerable age group should be one of the most important metrics for our success or failure. As such, it should be readily accessible on the landing page of the CDC's COVID Data Tracker ... but it isn't.

    The Tracker's landing page only provides the total number of people who died. This reinforces the notion that "we're all in this together because we are all equally vulnerable to the virus" ... which is wrong-headed misdirection. COVID is not an equal opportunity killer. It greatly prefers to kill old people, and the older, the deader.

    However, if one patiently follows the links from the landing page to this page, one finds what looks likes a chart, but turns out to be the top layer of a pile of charts. Spacing down to the 8th layer in the digital pile, one finds the sought-after disproportionately high deaths per 100,000 for the 65+ age group chart. In other words, most people won't find this chart  

    That's why the New York Times created its "Your Coronavirus Tracker" page, to put the most important COVID data at our fingertips, right? Wrong. Lots of pretty maps and charts about cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, but no deaths by age groups ... because we are all equally vulnerable to the virus, right?

  • What percentage of the 65+ age group are up-to-date on booster shots?
    In late 2021, after we discovered the waning effectiveness of our vaccines, the percentage of the 65+ age group that was up-to-date on their booster shots should have become another crucial measure of our success or failure in protecting this vulnerable group, another measure that should be readily accessible on the landing page of the CDC's COVID Data Tracker  ... but it isn't ... nor does this measure appear on the NY Times "Your Coronavirus Tracker" page.

    Instead, the CDC Tracker's landing page is linked to a Vaccination Distribution & Coverage page that links to a COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States page that contains the booster percentage we are seeking in a cluttered bar chart. Unfortunately, the age 65+ percentage is afforded no attention grabbing features like a distinctive color, font size, or position, that would signal its greater importance than the other percentages on the chart, even though other percentages may be smaller or larger. So the editor of this blog will let his readers to discover for themselves the disturbingly low value of this crucial metric in the following screen shot of the CDC's bar chart, taken on 8/23/22 



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