Charles House: Stop rewriting history to downplay the pandemic
The lunacy continues. Now the demented head of HHS, clearly beset by his own brain worm, has decided for all of us that we basically should not have free rights to the Covid vaccines unless we are over 65 with other unspecified underlying conditions.
Have we lost sight completely of what America meant only months ago in terms of personal freedom? How Americans can tolerate the ridiculous, dangerous, anti-scientific leadership in Washington, D.C., is stunning to any rational observer.
You all recall the Covid-19 hysteria of five years ago, right?
The first Oregon Covid-19 case was announced Feb. 29, 2020, in Washington County. Two days later, another case in Washington County was reported, along with one in Umatilla County. ‘
By end of day on March 7, three more cases were reported — one in Washington County, one in Jackson County and one in Klamath County.
My own case was identified on March 6 in a small rural town in Central California. I was the first one in our county and 231st in America.
Though honored to be among the first, after five trips to the hospital in a month, I realized that this could kill me, that it wasn’t just a bad flu. It took three months before I could walk to the mailbox.
That began a three-year research project, which led me to start a new company, write a book and describe some significant findings the medical world needed to know. Maybe News-Register readers might find it interesting as well.
In a mere four weeks, by the end of March 2020, Oregon had logged 698 cases, 18 of them fatal.
Yamhill County had 16. Three proved fatal, giving Yamhill County the highest per capita death rate in Oregon.
What happened? And why?
What did Yamhill do as a county? What about Oregon and the nation?
Yamhill County residents had wildly differences of opinions, as did other Oregonians and other Americans.
Some felt the danger was overblown, maybe even fabricated by conspirators. Others felt this was a frightening human pandemic, and draconian measures were needed to stop it.
Mutating variants of COVID kept the story alive for three years.
All told, Yamhill County endured 17,722 confirmed cases and 211 deaths through November 2022. Case and death rates ran roughly the same across the state, at about 70% of the national average.
Local readers sounded off on the News-Register’s website:
Katie2: “I want to commend Lindsey Manfrin for doing an amazing job as the H&HS Director for Yamhill County during this pandemic. She is level-headed, and has a good grasp on how to react and proactively plan for the next steps. Thank you Lindsey!” (June 27, 2020)
tagup: “Not sure a victory lap is in order... Access to testing is a weak spot in the county and the infection numbers continue to grow...” (July 1, 2020)
spicy_t: “When are you @newsregister going to stop reporting and posting on covid stats? The numbers are meaningless. I’m sure there are many great and positive things happening around the county.” (March 10, 2022)
In retrospect, some terrific work was done. Health workers did heroic things while exposed to high personal risk. Not surprisingly, some big mistakes were also made.
Two of the great health watchdogs for years have been the national Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and international World Health Organization in Geneva. But sadly, both failed in key roles.
Each endorsed the notion that Covid was spread by human contact, and thus emphasized masking, handwashing and sterilization. The CDC held to this stance for nearly a year and WHO persisted for two years. But most evidence from the first outbreaks said spread was due to small airborne droplets, too small to be screened by masks sold at the time.
Stopping these small droplets required N-95 masks to be effective. Those were both expensive and scarce, plus a bit uncomfortable. Employers disdained them, even ordering employees not to wear them.
Worse, the CDC made four consecutive mistakes with testing kits:
First, it ignored the test kits available from multiple other countries, including Germany, South Korea and Australia, preferring to develop its own. Second, it vetoed testing at major universities, ordering them to send swabs to a CDC lab for official “verification.” Third, its test kit release after a month of development was quickly branded “untrustworthy” by independent labs. Fourth, after passage of another month, it released a kit missing one of the three necessary reagent ingredients.
Ten weeks went by before the CDC finally allowed independent labs to undertake testing on their own.
On March 26, the News-Register reported:
“The number of cases in Oregon has more than doubled, in less than a week; on Friday, March 20, the county stood at 114. Since then, the state has been able to increase the number of people being tested.”
But it was way late for testing by then. The U.S. already had recorded 76,153 cases and 996 deaths.
Another major mistake was committed by the media, which persisted in telling sensational “major outbreak” stories, focusing on a Kirkland nursing home in Washington, the Mardi Gras spread in Louisiana and the New York City disaster, when much more meaningful per capita data showed the pandemic to be very widely spread.
So naturally, when then-Oregon Gov. Kate Brown issued a statewide stay-at-home order on March 23, many people were incredulous.
The figures tell an interesting story.
In terms of 100 or more cases per county, the four states depicted in Figure 1 in the accompanying graphic had only a combined total of six, four of them stemming from “outbreaks,” as of March 23 of 2020. But using a per capita count of 5 cases per 100,000 residents, 78 of the states’ combined 203 counties displayed that level of infection, as shown in Figure 2.
So, was it a case of 3% should be worried, or 40% should be worried? Television and newspapers emphasized the 3% number, as did Donald Trump.
It didn’t help when local officials turned a deaf ear to residents. Two days after the governor issued her stay-at-home order, the News-Register reported:
“Numerous residents have pleaded on Facebook and other venues for the county to release more information about where the cases are occurring. Public Health reiterated that it does not intend to do so.”
A month after the first lockdowns, Figures 3 and 4 show 61 counties, or 30%, up from just 6 or 3%, had more than 100 cases, and a much more dramatic 188 of the 203 or 92% were reporting at least 5 cases per 100,000. That was as of April 23 of 2020.
Any question that this was serious?
Yet Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had the audacity and idiocy to allege recently that vaccines probably killed more than the virus. Why are we allowing this lunacy in Washington, D.C.?
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