See all the latest videos and articles patriots need to watch and read at Discern.tv.
I get the New York Times’ daily free newsletter in my email. You can save your rotten tomatoes. I refuse to pay for anything they print. But sometimes it’s useful to stay in contact with the other side.
The NYT May 27 letter discusses the history of the COVID lab-leak theory, and includes “The best mitigation strategies — travel restrictions, testing, contact tracing, social distancing, ventilation and masking — are still the best mitigation strategies.” My parsimony has once again been proven correct. Let’s break it down.
Mitigation is “the process or result of making something less severe, dangerous, painful, harsh, or damaging.” That means that anything that makes getting COVID less likely is a form of mitigation. Ditto for making the bug not so nasty if you should happen to get it. All of the NYT measures fall into the first group. And, as they like to trumpet, we should “Follow the Science!”
Travel Restrictions
These have a level of plausibility, but once the bug is in-country, limiting travel between the US and UK becomes meaningless. The old saw about closing the barn door after the horse is gone comes to mind. After the Allies created a foothold in Normandy, Germany didn’t have a choice. The fight was now in the hedgerows, not on the beaches. Closing our borders made intuitive sense early on. But once it was clear that the virus was “in the wild,” all travel restrictions lost their meaning.
“In the wild” is a crucial term. It means that, for practical purposes, the virus is everywhere. There will be more of it near a sick person, but not having anyone spreading it in your house doesn’t mean that it isn’t being spread at your workplace, grocery store, or gas station. And you will have no way to avoid it, because you have no idea who is infectious.
By March of 2020 I noted that the Wuhan Flu was already in the wild. The five million people allowed to travel worldwide from Wuhan during their outbreak made that a certainty. And pop-up hot spots closed the case. People with no apparent connection to known carriers were getting sick. This meant that any sort of mass “quarantine” was doomed to fail. It was like trying to stop mosquitoes with a chain link fence. Yet our “betters” insisted.
Testing
Many people have written about the problems with the PCR test for COVID. In short, it was never designed to diagnose a disease and has no standards about how many multiplication cycles should be used. With enough cycles, everyone will test positive. In short, it’s unreliable. But the CDC pushed it, changing its definition of a “case” to mean “a positive test, by whatever means.”
Prior to the passage of the CARES Act, a case meant someone was ill with characteristic signs and symptoms. A test might be done to confirm a diagnosis by distinguishing between multiple possible causes of those signs and symptoms. After COVID bonuses to hospitals became law, this proper definition of a case was discarded in order to get as much money from Uncle Sugar as possible.
Put bluntly, testing has been worthless, paying $13,000 extra dollars for the appendicitis patient who happened to have been near a COVID patient somewhere in recorded history. It has inflated the power of petty tyrants, such as New York Governor Cuomo, who was living large in the limelight of frequent “COVID Emergency” press conferences. My local county mayor demonstrated his love of power by complaining when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ended his regular TV face time by cancelling the “emergency.”
Testing is also largely worthless when a virus in the wild. Positive tests all over become meaningless noise. Did I mention that COVID has been in the wild for over a year?
We’re LIVE and everything is on sale for a limited time! Whole Cows has launched offering freeze-dried beef for long-term storage. Don’t wait for food shortages to get worse. Stock up today. Use promo code “launch15” at checkout for 15% off!
Contact Tracing
This is a piece of standard epidemiology. If you have a localized outbreak of a disease, you can track all the contacts of the index patient, possibly identifying the source and limiting its spread. But when the virus is in the wild, contact tracing is simply wasted effort. You aren’t likely to find the source, and you won’t stop the spread, because the bug is everywhere. But we’ve known that that is the case for over a year.
Social Distancing
The CDC recently changed its six foot distancing rule to three feet. But it’s based on – drum roll please – zero data. That’s right. If you talk, you release droplets, which are heavy enough to fall to the floor in a few feet. Six feet was related to droplets, which don’t spread the virus. It’s spread by aerosols, which stay suspended for hours. You breathe them in, the virus makes contact with the cells in your airways, and infection takes hold.
Aerosols are borderline impossible to stop. Just stand on one side of one of those Plexiglas dividers at the checkout line. If someone on the other side is smoking, you’ll know it because the smoke – an aerosol, goes right around it. The Guangzhou restaurant and Skagit Valley Chorale cases clearly show that social distancing has no effect. Most people who got infected were far more than six feet from the index patient.
Ventilation
This is actually true! If you open windows or doors, allowing fresh air into a room, any aerosols will be diluted. Enough ventilation will prevent almost all infections. The same thing can be done by using a fresh air inlet for the air conditioning system. I guess the NYT can’t get everything wrong.
Masks
I have written on this extensively, and demonstrated that masks are useless. Aerosol scientists have tackled the question, showing basically that you can have a mask that’s easy to breathe through but doesn’t filter worth a crap, or you can have one that filters well, but is difficult to breathe through. That means that you breathe around it. And if the total area of that leak around the mask adds up to the size of a quarter, you’ve lost two thirds of the filtration.
Of course, all the science in the world is meaningless if you don’t measure the ultimate effect on disease transmission. And the verdict is in. Masks have had zero effect on the rates of COVID. It’s not even certain that the vaunted N95s are much help in keeping health care workers safe. The reasons there are complex, but negative pressure rooms (ventilation) and UV sterilization (artificial sunlight) seem to be the most effective methods.
So what should we do with anything the NYT says about COVID? Get informed about the facts from reliable scientific sources, not echo chamber pundits. And as Jimmy Buffet sings, I’m looking for my lost shaker of salt.
Ted Noel MD posts on social media as DoctorTed and @VidZette.
‘The Purge’ by Big Tech targets conservatives, including us
Just when we thought the Covid-19 lockdowns were ending and our ability to stay afloat was improving, censorship reared its ugly head.
For the last few months, NOQ Report, Conservative Playbook, and the American Conservative Movement have appealed to our readers for assistance in staying afloat through Covid-19 lockdowns. The downturn in the economy has limited our ability to generate proper ad revenue just as our traffic was skyrocketing. We had our first sustained stretch of three months with over a million visitors in November, December, and January, but February saw a dip.
It wasn’t just the shortened month. We expected that. We also expected the continuation of dropping traffic from “woke” Big Tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, but it has actually been much worse than anticipated. Our Twitter account was banned. Both of our YouTube accounts were banned. Facebook “fact-checks” everything we post. Spotify canceled us. Medium canceled us. Apple canceled us. Why? Because we believe in the truth prevailing, and that means we will continue to discuss “taboo” topics.
The 2020 presidential election was stolen. You can’t say that on Big Tech platforms without risking cancellation, but we’d rather get cancelled for telling the truth rather than staying around to repeat mainstream media’s lies. They have been covering it up since before the election and they’ve convinced the vast majority of conservative news outlets that they will be harmed if they continue to discuss voter fraud. We refuse to back down. The truth is the truth.
The lies associated with Covid-19 are only slightly more prevalent than the suppression of valid scientific information that runs counter to the prescribed narrative. We should be allowed to ask questions about the vaccines, for example, as there is ample evidence for concern. One does not have to be an “anti-vaxxer” in order to want answers about vaccines that are still considered experimental and that have a track record in a short period of time of having side-effects, including death. One of our stories about the Johnson & Johnson “vaccine” causing blood clots was “fact-checked” and removed one day before the government hit the brakes on it. These questions and news items are not allowed on Big Tech which is just another reason we are getting canceled.
There are more topics that they refuse to allow. In turn, we refuse to stop discussing them. This is why we desperately need your help. The best way NOQ, CP, and ACM readers can help is to donate. Our Giving Fuel page makes it easy to donate one-time or monthly. Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal as well. We are pacing to be short by about $3700 per month in order to maintain operations.
The second way to help is to become a partner. We’ve strongly considered seeking angel investors in the past but because we were paying the bills, it didn’t seem necessary. Now, we’re struggling to pay the bills. We had 5,657,724 sessions on our website from November, 2020, through February, 2021. Our intention is to elevate that to higher levels this year by focusing on a strategy that relies on free speech rather than being beholden to progressive Big Tech companies.
During that four-month stretch, Twitter and Facebook accounted for about 20% of our traffic. We are actively working on operating as if that traffic is zero, replacing it with platforms that operate more freely such as Gab, Parler, and others. While we were never as dependent on Big Tech as most conservative sites, we’d like to be completely free from them. That doesn’t mean we will block them, but we refuse to be beholden to companies that absolutely despise us simply because of our political ideology.
We’re heading in the right direction and we believe we’re ready talk to patriotic investors who want to not only “get in on the action” but more importantly who want to help America hear the truth. Interested investors should contact me directly with the contact button above.
Preparedness Resources for “Late Preppers”
* Subscribe to The Late Prepper newsletter
* Purchase preparedness supplies
* Inquire about precious metals
As the world spirals towards radical progressivism, the need for truthful journalism has never been greater. But in these times, we need as many conservative media voices as possible. Please help keep NOQ Report going.
Bitcoin: 32SeW2Ajn86g4dATWtWreABhEkiqxsKUGn
Covid variant BA.5 is spreading. It appears milder but much more contagious and evades natural immunity. Best to boost your immune system with new Z-Dtox and Z-Stack nutraceuticals from our dear friend, the late Dr. Vladimir Zelenko.