Spanking Blogger's Thoughts on COVID-19

This COVID-19 thing has been bothering me. I'm sure all of you are just dying to get a slutty spanking blogger's perspective on it, so here we go. [And PS, if you prefer I just stick to the sexy stuff, I just did a post yesterday you may like: Trad Wife Spanked and Sexed]

As a caveat to all of the below, I know nothing of the below with any certainty at all, and feel we cannot trust conflicting experts and governments. Each of us must take their best guesses as to whom to trust more, based on whatever research and reading each of us can do. So all of this is just my opinion. I would be interested in where you think I may be off base. And Please Be Kind!

Where did it come from?

I believe the virus was bio-engineered, as scientists have still not stated with any certainty the animal from which it crossed over, and numerous scientists who have examined the protein structures say it has the hallmarks of being bio-engineered. It is also very close (they say 80% similar, whatever that means) to SARS, which means they likely started with that virus and modified it.

I believe it was being used as part of virus research, either for good purposes or for bio-warfare research, and it was released accidentally from the Wuhan lab. I do not know where it was first created. It could have been in Canada or the US or China, and then transported to Wuhan. The reason I think it was accidentally released from the Wuhan lab is that lab had a number of pre-existing red flags on its safety measures, and it is near where the first outbreaks occurred, and can even be traced back to workers from that lab as patient zero.

After it was accidentally released, China attempted to cover it up initially (maybe not the central government initially, maybe local officials), and once it became more widespread, used their influence in the WHO to downplay its seriousness in order to save face, and to blame others in order to avoid the blame themselves and avoid economic sanctions as a result.

Was it a grand conspiracy?

I do not believe it was a grand conspiracy.

Once it was spreading, I believe bad actors first tried to cover it up, and then took advantage of the spread to further their agendas, because that's what human beings do. Certainly China to ensure it was not left behind economically, and the US Democrat party to further their election chances, US Republican party to chant "muh freedoms!", and also left-leaning governments around the world seizing the opportunity to reshape social programs in its wake, something they have not been able to do democratically. I do not believe that it was bio-engineered and released for this purpose, just that people said to themselves "this bad thing is happening regardless, may as well make something good from it". As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

What was China up to?

Good question. I remember the initial reports out of Wuhan. People dropping in the streets and convulsing madly. Apartment doors being welded shut to contain the contaminated. People in hazmat suits walking down the streets spraying something in the air. None of this is consistent with our experience with COVID-19 since then. In retrospect it looks like "fear theater". Certainly no news reports get out of China that the central Chinese government does not want to get out. Tienanmen square was a notable exception and they won't let that happen again, hence kicking journalists and US CDC out to control the narrative.

I think the virus got out and it started spreading around the world before the central government knew about it. Wuhan has a direct connection to northern Italy as many of the garment workers in northern Italy are Chinese from Wuhan, and they returned home for the Moon festival in late September.

Once it was spreading, the Chinese central government thought this was an opportunity to cripple the rest of the world's economies by encouraging more fear of the virus than was justified. Hence the theater. Also consistent with the quite Chinese controlled WHO downplaying it giving it a chance to spread more widely and take hold.

As they say, "follow the money". The Chinese economy seemed much less impacted than other countries, but it might have backfired on them long run as western countries become less reliant on Chinese supply chains. Time will tell. If Biden gets in and starts encouraging investment in China again, they will have come out net on top.

Initial Days

The initial days were quite scary, with reports of very high transmission rates and very high fatality rates, plus news of people dropping like flies in the streets of Wuhan and fatally overcrowded hospitals in Italy. I was all-in for taking whatever measures might be needed to slow the spread in order to keep ICUs within capacity. In fact, I even received a punishment spanking for flouting some of the rules, and fully admit I deserved it (Julie Spanked for being Irresponsible - and Daddy knows...)

Over time it became clear that it did not spread as quickly as originally believed, and that the case fatality rate was low, comparable to seasonal flu, except for the elderly and certain people with co-morbidities, for which it was exceptionally deadly (like 5% death rate - dreadful).

But in the fog of war, this was not yet known, and nursing homes became a major source of deaths, and certain policies, forcing nursing homes to take infected elderly without proper precautions in place, made it much worse than it needed to be. Italy, New York, and New Jersey are amongst the worst offenders here, but it hit in nursing homes everywhere.

Democrats taking Advantage

I believe that once the worst had passed, Democrats cynically took advantage of the situation by fear-mongering. They saw this as a golden opportunity to pin a "poor response" on Trump in order to improve their Presidential election chances which was otherwise looking very grim before COVID hit. They then hit on the idea of using it as an excuse to impose mass mail-in voting, which they knew favoured Democrats by a huge margin.

In the election we saw that COVID response became the number one Democrat talking point, amplified by the media which blatantly supported them. Joe Biden was even so disingenuous to say that Trump was directly responsible for 250,000 deaths in the US, an absurd proposition.

Trump's Response

I know this will make some people's heads explode, but on balance, I cannot find terrible fault with Trump's response as many Democrats have.

He was very early on calling for travel bans, before anybody else. He accelerated manufacturing on ventilators and PPE in a way never seen before, and built emergency ICU facilities in numerous places which were never much needed. He also royally kicked the butts of everybody to come up with therapeutics and vaccines in record time. He quickly established a Coronavirus task force with experts on it and led by Vice President Pence, and they coordinated regularly and well with State governments where healthcare policy resides. Many even Democrat Governors were praising the Federal response at the time, including California Governor Newsom, and New York Governor Cuomo. Trump held press conferences daily and very much lead from the front. He also was instrumental in passing major stimulus relief packages.

Where he is criticized is not being enough of a cheerleader for mask-wearing. At no point was he against them, but he resisted wearing them himself, setting a bad example. To his defence, the initial word from the "experts" were that masks were of no help and should be reserved for medical workers.

While Trump did advocate for the initial lockdowns, later on he (correctly in my opinion) asserted that the cure cannot be worse than the disease, and did not after that encourage states to continue their lockdowns, although he did say that in selected "hotspots" it may be appropriate.

I think many are guilty of fixating on deaths attributed to COVID, and not taking into account the deaths due to suicide, drug overdoses, missed medical diagnosis, and domestic abuse; as well as the mental health issues we are causing for many, including drug and alcohol dependence, and especially the children; and the economic hardships of closed small businesses while allowing giant corporations to profit absurdly.

It is important to note that State Governors have all the power in this situation, and that the decisions were ultimately theirs. As well, the American people are particularly stubborn regarding infringement of their liberties, and were more inherently resistant than other citizenry would be to forced mandates.

US currently rates as 11th worst in the world in per-capita deaths attributed to COVID, and is currently 24th in the world in per-capita deaths over the past week as I write this. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/).

On balance, it is very difficult to compare one country to another, as there are many, many factors that differ amongst them (e.g. obesity and diabetes rates, population age, nursing home response, ...), and I can only imagine Federal leadership has a rather small impact. Would Joe have done better? I doubt it. He would not have shut down travel as early, and I doubt he had the wherewithal to kick butt the way Trump did to get a vaccine out within the year, as Trump promised to wide skepticism and delivered against the odds. I believe what Joe is suggesting at this stage, mandatory masks and lockdowns, is completely wrong headed as I will get into.

Is there a Second Wave?

I do not believe the rhetoric that there is a "second wave". Yes, people continue to die, and that is very sad, but is it anything that can any longer be called an epidemic?

To be clear, more geographically isolated places that were not hit at first may be experienced their "first wave" now, but there is no reason to believe that once a relatively well-isolated population has spiked and descended, that there is a second wave coming.

All the statistics are of course rising, but I believe this is explainable based on the over-sensitivity of the PCR tests used to detect COVID.

Official estimates have the false-positive rate of the PCR tests at just under around 1%, but that is in more ideal situations. Some have estimated the effective false positive rates, taking into account the inexpertise of those administering the tests and the physical conditions under which the samples are taken and tested, to be closer to 5%. This is because as governments implement more and more and more testing, even of healthy people, they are coming up against shortages of qualified technicians and surroundings. Contamination is the biggest source of false positives, and it is rife in this environment. And it only works one way, it only leads to false positives, not false negatives.

On top of this, the test can be positive a month or more after the virus has been defeated in the body (or when it was successfully fought off by the immune) when it is at too small viral loads to impact the person or be transmissible, and that is not included in the rates above. Plus many people with COVID will test multiple times, and that is not accounted for in the statistics as well.

It is not recommended that the PCR test be applied to healthy people to draw any conclusions. It is designed to test people who are showing all the other symptoms, to increase the conclusiveness of a COVID diagnosis. This is standard medical practice not being applied. A "case" has never historically ever been applied in medical science to somebody who is asymptomatic, yet is is being called that in the statistics.

These false positives not only impact the number of cases, but also impact the hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and death statistics as well (people are always going to hospital, going to ICU, and dying, and they are all being tested multiple times along the way, and if the false positive rate is significant, it will skew the statistics).

The PCR test amplifies RNA virus fragments that are unique to COVID-19, and binds fluorescent markers to them. The number of cycles of amplification before there is enough fragments to be detectable is the cycle threshold. The test protocol in many jurisdiction says you need to run at least 25 to detect it at all, and you are deemed positive if it hits at or before 40. Many experts believe that these thresholds are considerably too high. If detected only after about 30, most of the samples will not contain live virus, only the fragments. This has been tested by attempting to infect cells in a Petri dish. After 30, it is rare.

Is this part of a grand conspiracy? No. It is done in the interests of public health to reduce false negatives to a vanishingly small amount. Better safe than sorry. Better to quarantine someone even if they don't have the virus than to let someone who does have the virus roam free. This is the reasonable thinking behind the high cycle thresholds. But is does make it unsuitable for statistics.

In this phantom "second wave" we see higher and higher rates because the number of tests are high and growing, and the competence of those administering the tests is declining. We are seeing higher deaths because we always see higher deaths this time of the year from flus and pneumonia, and in fact many other diseases, likely due to confinement indoors, low vitamin D, and other facts that lead to lowered immune response. In fact, at this time of year ICUs are always being challenged from the aforementioned. Tellingly, the rates of deaths from flu and pneumonia have plummeted. I believe repeatedly testing these people with a test with a high false positive rate gets them misclassified as COVID deaths. There is nothing unique going on now, other than COVID statistics and continued media hype.

Are we reaching herd immunity?

Herd immunity is not a silly thing, it is literally the only way we ever beat a virus, sometimes with the help of a vaccine. There is reason to believe that many have T-cell immunity to COVID from things like the seasonal cold and the MERS and SARS viruses. This is why there are so many asymptomatic cases reported. People with pre-existing immunity are not getting sick from it, but they are tested as positive due to overly sensitive PCR tests.

This cross-immunity is why such an otherwise infectious disease is not running rampant. In many places there are sufficient numbers of immune people to dampen the spread.

Is immunity only temporary?

There is no reason to believe it is. Immunity from SARS, which is a very similar virus, has lasted 17 years now (it has been tested). It is likely lifelong based on everything virologists know about T-cell immunity.

Does COVID have extra nasty side effects?

All viruses leave a small proportion of the population with extra nasty side effects. We have heightened sensitivity to this one as every such case is breathlessly reported by the media and spread around by social media.

What is the correct response?

Knowing what we know now, the correct response is as follows.

1. Protect those at highest risk.
   The virus is deadly to high-risk populations. Let them self-confine and limit interactions with others as much as practical. If they go out, they should always wear a mask and face shield. The people they regularly interact with should be masked as well.
2. Boost the immune system, especially amongst the high risk.
   Encourage things that boost the immune system, especially for high-risk groups: sunshine and outdoors exercise. Healthy diet. Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium, C, Zinc, Quercetin, HCQ if available.
3. Make high-quality therapeutics and vaccines available to high risk groups
   Everything from HCQ treatment to steroids to antibodies. Just like Trump!
4. Quarantine the sick.
   As with all diseases, slow the spread by quarantining the sick. If somebody has symptoms, stay home and stay away from others, and have any caregivers wear a mask.
5. Let everybody else mingle.
   The virus is not deadly for low risk groups, which includes people under 50 without certain co-morbidities. Under 20 the risk is very tiny, even less risk than seasonal flu. Low risk groups should go about their regular business. Good for mental health. Good to keep the economy thriving. Not dangerous. Be careful around the elderly and self-quarantine with extra vigilance if sick.

Should you take the vaccine?

I must confess I am nervous about the vaccine. It is the first of its kind (mRNA vaccine) and testing has for sure been rushed through.

From the CDC site:

New Approach to Vaccines
mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine to protect against infectious diseases. To trigger an immune response, many vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies. Not mRNA vaccines. Instead, they teach our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies. [...] There are currently no licensed mRNA vaccines in the United States. However, researchers have been studying and working with them for decades.

Ok, that's strictly speaking scary. They're re-programming our cells to look like the virus and trigger an immune response. Some worry that it may make it more difficult to become pregnant because of the nature of the spike protein that the cells are being made to manufacture, and by their own admission this has not been tested for that.

I believe if we followed the approach above, we get through this without needing a vaccination, but I think the risk-reward is worth it to protect the high-risk groups, but not the low-risk ones (like me!).

But People are Dying!

Yes they are, and from COVID-19 for sure, and of all ages. And I feel a lot of empathy for people who have lost loved ones. It is a nasty virus.

But we need to be better skilled at risk management and comparing comparable things. For example, is this worse than having loved ones pass from missed heart disease or cancer treatments, or young people dying of suicide or drug abuse. We need to put this in perspective, and act responsibly, not like chickens with our heads cut off as we have been doing.

Special Thanks To

Dr. Michael Yeadon. His very expert, calm, fact-based discussion informed many of my views on the above (after researching it myself also).