Stay skeptical. Come to your own conclusions.
How is it that our national strategy of making COVID-19 decisions based on data, when all of our data is dubious at best, and seems sub-optimal?
It would be great if scientists and computer modellers hadn’t blown all their credibility over the past few decades with global warming hysteria.
An example is the updated NYC Covid-19 numbers. Note the cases with no underlying conditions:
The NYC numbers are cooked so that “if it died, and it tested positive for Covid-19, book it”.
Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, “…the mistake is being made worldwide to report virus-related deaths as soon as it is established that the virus was present at the time of death – regardless of other factors. This violates a basic principle of infectiology: only when it is certain that an agent has played a significant role in the disease or death may a diagnosis be made. The Association of the Scientific Medical Societies of Germany expressly writes in its guidelines: In addition to the cause of death, a causal chain must be stated, with the corresponding underlying disease in third place on the death certificate. Occasionally, four-linked causal chains must also be stated.”
This is the IMHE_UW model for COVID-19, the new US standard. It was put out several days ago (post lockdown). It projects New York State will have 50,000 hospitalizations as of March 30. Instead, NYS has 12,000. Wrong by 4x in under a week: http://covid19.healthdata.org/projections .
Note: Here is a Model: -2.2 million could die in US because of coronavirus (1 week later) -100,000-200,000 could die (1 week later) Fauci: “I’ve looked at all the models, I’ve spent a lot of time on the models. They don’t tell you anything. You can’t really rely on models.” Facts: -10 million Americans unemployed -Socialist government takeover -Google creating an app to track people and enforce social distancing -Police shutting down private businesses/fining citizens who don’t obey -Surfers being arrested in the Pacific Ocean -Huge uptick in suicide hotline calls
The President of Germany’s Koch Institute confirmed test-positive deceased people are counted as “corona deaths” regardless of the real cause: “We consider someone with a coronavirus infection to be a corona death”.
According to Professor Walter Ricciardi, only 12% of the test-positive deceased in Italy considered the coronavirus as a causal factor, which corresponds to a few dozen people per day. The normal all-cause mortality in Italy is around 1800 people per day. The situation in Italy has less to do with coronavirus than with local risk factors such as extreme air pollution, mass panic, collapsed health system, curfews. The median age of the deceased is around 80 years, 99% had previous illnesses.
How, then, is a distinction to be made between genuine corona-related deaths and accidental virus present at the time of death?” This seems critical to forming a more refined response.
Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, Departments of Medicine, of Epidemiology and Population Health, of Biomedical Data Science, and of Statistics, Stanford University published a paper: Coronavirus disease 2019: the harms of exaggerated information and non-evidence-based measures, ” “It is important to differentiate promptly the true epidemic from an epidemic of false claims and potentially harmful actions”. Here is the link to the paper:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/eci.13222
Is the most important indicator for judging the danger of COVID-19 reported number of positive-tested persons/deaths, or of persons actually/unexpectedly developing/dying from pneumonia (excess mortality).
A healthy population can expect to experience mild/moderate Covid-19 disease symptoms. An accurate breakdown and understanding of actually caused of death are critical to a more nuanced response.
Paul Plante says
CDC
Provisional death counts are based on death certificate data received and coded by the National Center for Health Statistics as of April 3, 2020.
Death counts are delayed and may differ from other published sources (see Technical Notes).
The provisional counts for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths are based on a current flow of mortality data in the National Vital Statistics System.
National provisional counts include deaths occurring within the 50 states and the District of Columbia that have been received and coded as of the date specified.
It is important to note that it can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), processed, coded, and tabulated.
Therefore, the data shown on this page may be incomplete, and will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods.
Death counts for earlier weeks are continually revised and may increase or decrease as new and updated death certificate data are received from the states by NCHS.
COVID-19 death counts shown here may differ from other published sources, as data currently are lagged by an average of 1–2 weeks.
The provisional data presented on this page include the weekly provisional count of deaths in the United States due to COVID-19, deaths from all causes and percent of expected deaths (i.e., number of deaths received over number of deaths expected based on data from previous years), pneumonia deaths (excluding pneumonia deaths involving influenza), and pneumonia deaths involving COVID-19; (a) by week ending date, (b) by age at death, and (c) by specific jurisdictions.
Future updates to this release may include additional detail such as demographic characteristics (e.g., sex), additional causes of death (e.g., acute respiratory distress syndrome or other comorbidities), or estimates based on models that account for reporting delays to generate more accurate predicted provisional counts.
Pneumonia deaths are included to provide context for understanding the completeness of COVID-19 mortality data and related trends.
Deaths due to COVID-19 may be misclassified as pneumonia deaths in the absence of positive test results, and pneumonia may appear on death certificates as a comorbid condition.
Thus, increases in pneumonia deaths may be an indicator of excess COVID-19-related mortality.
Additionally, estimates of completeness for pneumonia deaths may provide context for understanding the lag in reporting for COVID-19 deaths, as it is anticipated that these causes would have similar delays in reporting, processing, and coding.
However, it is possible that reporting of COVID-19 mortality may be slower or faster than for other causes of death, and that the delay may change over time.
Analyses to better understand and quantify reporting delays for COVID-19 deaths and related causes are underway.
The list of causes provided in these tables may expand in future releases as more data are received, and other potentially comorbid conditions are determined.
Technical Notes
Comparing data in this report to other sources
Provisional death counts in this report will not match counts in other sources, such as media reports or numbers from county health departments.
Death data, once received and processed by National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), are tabulated by the state or jurisdiction in which the death occurred.
Death counts are not tabulated by the decedent’s state of residence.
COVID-19 deaths may also be classified or defined differently in various reporting and surveillance systems.
Death counts in this report include laboratory confirmed COVID-19 deaths and clinically confirmed COVID-19 deaths.
This includes deaths where COVID-19 is listed as a “presumed” or “probable” cause.
Some local and state health departments only report laboratory-confirmed COVID deaths.
This may partly account for differences between NCHS reported death counts and death counts reported in other sources.
Provisional counts reported here track approximately 1–2 weeks behind other published data sources on the number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. (1,2,3).
Nature and sources of data
Provisional death counts are based on death records received and processed by NCHS as of a specified cutoff date.
National provisional counts include deaths occurring within the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
NCHS receives the death records from state vital registration offices through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program.
Provisional data are based on available records that meet certain data quality criteria at the time of analysis and may not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period especially for more recent periods.
Estimates of completeness are provided.
Therefore, they should not be considered comparable with final data and are subject to change.
Cause-of-death classification and definition of deaths
Mortality statistics are compiled in accordance with World Health Organization (WHO) regulations specifying that WHO member nations classify and code causes of death with the current revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD).
ICD provides the basic guidance used in virtually all countries to code and classify causes of death.
It provides not only disease, injury, and poisoning categories but also the rules used to select the single underlying cause of death for tabulation from the several diagnoses that may be reported on a single death certificate, as well as definitions, tabulation lists, the format of the death certificate, and regulations on use of the classification.
Causes of death for data presented in this report were coded according to ICD guidelines described in annual issues of Part 2a of the NCHS Instruction Manual (4).
Coronavirus disease deaths are identified using the ICD–10 code U07.1.
Deaths are coded to U07.1 when coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 are reported as a cause that contributed to death on the death certificate.
These can include laboratory confirmed cases, as well as cases without laboratory confirmation.
If the certifier suspects COVID-19 or determines it was likely (e.g., the circumstances were compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), they can report COVID-19 as “probable” or “presumed” on the death certificate (5).
Pneumonia deaths are identified using underlying cause-of-death codes from the 10th Revision of ICD (ICD–10): J12–J18, excluding deaths that involve influenza (J08–J11).
Estimated completeness of data
Provisional data are incomplete, and the level of completeness varies by jurisdiction, week, decedent’s age, and cause of death.
Until data for a calendar year are finalized, typically in December of the following year, completeness of provisional data cannot be determined.
However, completeness can be estimated in a variety of ways.
Surveillance systems that rely on weekly monitoring of provisional mortality data, such as CDC’s FluView Interactive mortality surveillance (6), estimate completeness by comparing the count of deaths in a given week of the current year to the average count of deaths in that same week of the previous 3 years.
These estimates can be generated for specific causes of death, jurisdictions, and age groups, and updated on a weekly or daily basis.
For the purposes of COVID-19 surveillance, completeness is approximated by comparing the provisional number of deaths received to the number of expected deaths based on prior years data.
Percent of expected deaths provided in this data release are based on the total count of deaths in the most recent weeks of the current year, compared with an average across the same weeks of the three previous years (i.e., 2017–2019).
These estimates of completeness are calculated by week, jurisdiction of occurrence, and age group.
It is important to note that the true levels of completeness are unknown, and the estimates provided here are only a proxy.
In cases where mortality rates are increasing rapidly, particularly when excess deaths due to a novel cause are occurring, values for completeness for recent weeks may exceed 100% even when NCHS has yet to receive all available data.
Conversely, if the number of deaths was elevated in prior years due to a severe flu season, for example, estimated completeness in the most recent weeks may be lower than the true value.
To avoid relying too heavily on comparisons to a single week of a single prior year, estimates of completeness included in this release are based on the average counts in a given week across 3 prior years (e.g., the 12th week of 2017, 2018, and 2019).
Percent of expected deaths provided in this release are shown to provide context for interpreting provisional counts of COVID-19 deaths and deaths due to related causes.
Where estimated values are high (e.g., greater than 100%), this suggests that mortality is higher in 2020 relative to the same weeks of prior years.
Where estimated values of completeness are low, this could indicate that data are incomplete due to delayed reporting, or that mortality is lower in 2020 compared with prior years, or some combination of these factors.
Delays in reporting
Provisional counts of deaths are underestimated relative to final counts.
This is due to the many steps involved in reporting death certificate data.
When a death occurs, a certifier (e.g. physician, medical examiner or coroner) will complete the death certificate with the underlying cause of death and any contributing causes of death.
In some cases, laboratory tests or autopsy results may be required to determine the cause of death.
Completed death certificate are sent to the state vital records office and then to NCHS for cause of death coding.
At NCHS, about 80% of deaths are automatically processed and coded within seconds, but 20% of deaths need to manually coded, or coded by a person.
Deaths involving certain conditions such as influenza and pneumonia are more likely to require manual coding than other causes of death.
Furthermore, all deaths with COVID-19 are manually coded.
Death certificates are typically manually coded within 7 days of receipt, although the coding delay can grow if there is a large increase in the number of deaths.
As a result, underestimation of the number of deaths may be greater for certain causes of death than others.
Previous analyses of provisional data completeness from 2015 suggested that mortality data is approximately 27% complete within 2 weeks, 54% complete within 4 weeks, and at least 75% complete within 8 weeks of when the death occurred (7).
Pneumonia deaths are 26% complete within 2 weeks, 52% complete within 4 weeks, and 72% complete within 8 weeks (unpublished).
Data timeliness has improved in recent years, and current timeliness is likely higher than published rates.
Comparing deaths from different states
Death counts should not be compared across states.
Data timeliness varies by state.
Some states report deaths on a daily basis, while other states report deaths weekly or monthly.
Furthermore, health departments and state vital record offices may be affected by COVID-19 related response activities, which could further delay death certificate reporting.
Currently, 63% of U.S. deaths are reported within 10 days of the date of death, but there is variation within states.
Twenty states report over 75% of deaths within the first 10 days, while three states report fewer than 1% of deaths within 10 days.
Why are pneumonia deaths included in this report?
Pneumonia deaths are included to provide context for understanding the completeness of COVID-19 mortality data and related trends.
Deaths due to COVID-19 may be misclassified as pneumonia deaths in the absence of positive test results, and pneumonia may appear on death certificates as a comorbid condition.
Thus, increases in pneumonia deaths may be an indicator of excess COVID-19-related mortality.
Additionally, estimates of completeness for pneumonia deaths may provide context for understanding the lag in reporting for COVID-19 deaths, as it is anticipated that these causes would have similar delays in reporting, processing, and coding.
Source
NCHS, National Vital Statistics System. Estimates are based on provisional data.
Carla Jasper says
Thank you for getting real information out. It is so critical. There are few trustworthy outlets. You are definitely one of the few in my opinion.
Sara says
The media has hyped the virus for sure. They will not speak of the patients that are on the mend, ones that made recovery. The media wants to hype it all. Yes, the virus is dangerous. So is the dam flu. Wake up people. The media could care less what they tell us.
Paul Plante says
Medical News |
PHYSICIAN’S FIRST WATCH
March 22, 2020
COVID-19 Outcomes Detailed Among Critically Ill U.S. Patients
By Amy Orciari Herman
Edited by Susan Sadoughi, MD, and André Sofair, MD, MPH
The mortality rate among critically ill patients with novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at Evergreen Hospital in Washington state reached 67%, according to a research letter in JAMA.
Researchers studied 21 patients (age 43–92) with confirmed COVID-19 admitted to the ICU.
Roughly 85% had underlying health conditions, like chronic kidney disease and congestive heart failure.
All but one patient had abnormal findings on chest radiographs at admission.
Overall, 71% required mechanical ventilation for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and half of these progressed to severe ARDS by day 3.
As of mid-March, two-thirds of the patients had died, and 24% were still in the ICU.
Of note, one-third of the patients developed cardiomyopathy.
The researchers write, “It is unclear whether [this] reflects a direct cardiac complication of SARS-CoV-2 infection or resulted from overwhelming critical illness.”
“Others have described cardiomyopathy in COVID-19, and further research may better characterize this risk.”
Paul Plante says
Are the books being cooked here to make this COVID thing sound worse than it actually is?
Here in New York I would say they were.
There is huge money involved, afterall.
But let’s go to the expert in the NPR story this morning entitled “Fauci Says U.S. Coronavirus Deaths May Be ‘More Like 60,000’; Antibody Tests On Way” by Bill Chappell on April 9, 2020, to wit:
The final toll currently “looks more like 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000” that U.S. officials previously estimated, Fauci said.
end quotes
The more important question arising is how many people New York’s Democratic Socialist governor Andy Cuomo, a lawyer with no medical or public health credentials or training, has killed by ordering patients put on ventilators, most likely to pad their hospital bills, since New York state right now is the MOTHER of all MEDICAID SCAMS in the world.
More importantly is Cuomo’s order to put two patients on one ventilators, which takes us to an article in Becker’s Hospital Review entitled “Is ventilator-sharing a good idea? Pulmonology experts weigh in” by Gabrielle Masson, Mackenzie Bean and Anuja Vaidya on March 25th, 2020, where we have as follows:
Jesse Roman, MD. CEO of the Jane & Leonard Korman Respiratory Institute-Jefferson Health (Philadelphia):
Mechanical ventilation is instituted in patients with respiratory failure who need support for their breathing and oxygen needs.
The amount of support required is dependent on the size of the patient, the extent of lung injury and other factors.
These factors affect the ‘stiffness’ of the lung, among other variables, thereby leading to different requirements of volume, oxygen, and pressure requirements provided by the ventilator.
Since no two patients are identical, these differences represent the main challenge when attempting to support two or more patients with a single ventilator, as current technology does not allow for a single ventilator to deliver distinct supporting strategies.
If this were to work, the patients would have to be matched for size and lung stiffness, heavily sedated or paralyzed, and should be hemodynamically stable.
Additional, separate circuits would be preferable to avoid cross-contamination of gases.
Bruce Levy, MD. Chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston):
If you were to [use one ventilator for two patients] though, you’d have to be careful about matching the patients you’d partner — they would have to have a similar degree of illness, lung injury, similar course of illness.
There are two ways to deliver air to lungs via ventilator, and in this case, you’d have to use pressure mode, not volume mode.
Patients would have to be heavily sedated so they don’t fight the ventilator.
[They] might even have to be paralyzed, which would significantly increase risk for complications.
You could underventilate/overventilate if you based it on how one partner was doing — which overventilating can cause lung damage itself.
When people are recovering, you wean off the ventilator, and that would be very difficult to do in a paired way.
I think you’d have to separate them for that phase.
Also, [you] have to consider infection control issues if patients are not carefully separated, etc.
Tisha Wang, MD. Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles:
This could work in theory, but it is far from simple, and many COVID-19 patients have very sick lungs that require frequent changes of their ventilator settings.
This makes them poor candidates for “ventilator-sharing.”
To effectively share a ventilator, patients would have to be very similar in size/ideal body weight and ventilator needs, as both patients would have to be on essentially the same ventilator settings.
It would be extremely hard to coordinate and adjust settings that may be needed for one of the patients but not the other.
Paul Currier, MD. Pulmonary and Critical Care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston):
First of all, [ventilator-sharing] is definitely not ideal, just because different patients have different needs; their lungs are different.
[Ventilator-sharing] would require a lot of sedation or paralysis likely, so that you don’t have patients trying to trigger the ventilator on their own.
There would also need to be filters to ensure there is no transmission of viruses.
Even if both have COVID-19, they could have other [viruses] that could get transmitted and bacterial infections even.
Richard Castriotta, MD. Pulmonary Critical Care Physician at Keck Medicine of USC (Los Angeles):
This was done in real life only during the emergency response to a mass shooting in Las Vegas at the suggestion of the first author of that paper.
Neither of those situations reflect the problems that would be encountered in attempting mechanical ventilation in COVID-19 patients with fulminant viral pneumonia, respiratory failure and acute respiratory distress syndrome.
The COVID-19 patients will have lungs full of fluid filling alveoli, severe inflammation and very stiff lungs with very low compliance, that is, the lungs will be stiff and hard to inflate.
Any two patients attached to the same ventilator would have to have exactly the same lung compliance and airway resistance in order to share the ventilator with a ‘Y-tube,’ as done in the above cases.
If the four lungs being inflated do not all have the same mechanical characteristics, there will be excess pressure and volume exerted to some parts with barotrauma, and the risk of rupturing the lung, called pneumothorax.
end quotes
So how many people have been killed by Andy Cuomo?
And the answer is we will never know, because this is New York, and all of that will be well covered over.
Stuart Bell says
The Airlines are to blame for this. They spread the chinese flu all over the world. Then they begged for a bail out and when they received it, they purchased their own stock with our tax dollars. Now want another 50. They have yet to admit what they have done, yet to apologize, and yet to thank us for the money. You cant make this shit up.
tokenny says
Biology class was my favorite but I’m pretty sure viruses are spread by people/animals and not airplanes.
Note: There may be a point in here somewhere. Probably not.
Ray Otton says
Nope.
Pointless.
And a tinsy bit pedantic to boot.
Stuart Bell says
How the hell do you think those people got here from China?
Damn, you are ignorant.
Paul Plante says
VECTORS, tokenny!
Surely you must remember the term from your high school biology class.
VECTORS are disease carriers, like those people coming back from China on airplanes were, and the airlines made the spread of the disease more rapid by carrying the vectors to here, so the disease could then spread through the nation.
Typhoid Mary was such a vector.
So yes, tokenny, by carrying those VECTORS from China to here, the airlines were in fact spreading the disease.
tokenny says
Wrong as usual – a vector is an organism. Example: a tick, a flea, a bat. I repeat, not an airplane. Why do you try to make yourself relevant to every conversation?
I understand that I just pulled the pin out of Mr Hand Grenade, my apologies .
Paul Plante says
tokenny, remember when Jethro Tull was singing about “thick as a brick?”
That song was about yourself, tokenny, but actually, I think it is a guise you take on in here to see if the rest of us are as stupid as you want us to believe you are, to see if we are asleep at the switch.
Vectors are living organisms that can transmit infectious diseases between humans or from animals to humans, tokenny.
Human beings are vectors precisely because human beings are living organisms that can transmit infectious diseases between humans.
Google the question, tokenny, “Can a human be a disease vector?” and the answer you will get is as follows:
A disease vector is any living organism that transmits an infectious disease to humans.
And my goodness, tokenny, you have to remember this seminal paper on the subject from your public health engineering days entitled “The Role of Human Movement in the Transmission of Vector-Borne Pathogens” by Steven T. Stoddard, Amy C. Morrison, Gonzalo M. Vazquez-Prokopec, Valerie Paz Soldan, Tadeusz J. Kochel, Uriel Kitron, John P. Elder, and Thomas W. Scott, where we learned as follows:
Abstract
Background
Human movement is a key behavioral factor in many vector-borne disease systems because it influences exposure to vectors and thus the transmission of pathogens.
Human movement transcends spatial and temporal scales with different influences on disease dynamics.
Conclusions/Significance
Human movement is a critical, understudied behavioral component underlying the transmission dynamics of many vector-borne pathogens.
Author Summary
Vector-borne diseases constitute a largely neglected and enormous burden on public health in many resource-challenged environments, demanding efficient control strategies that could be developed through improved understanding of pathogen transmission.
Human movement — which determines exposure to vectors — is a key behavioral component of vector-borne disease epidemiology that is poorly understood.
A Framework: Movement and Scale
Historically epidemiologists have viewed human movement from the perspective of populations of susceptible hosts moving into high risk areas or infected hosts moving into susceptible populations as explanation for disease occurrence and spread.
Indeed, across different scales and diseases, movements of hosts affect pathogen transmission in a variety of ways.
end quotes
Surely you must remember all the arguments we had on this exact subject, with you being and remaining indifferent, as I recall.
Now you can see what your intransigence on the subject of human beings indeed being vectors has wrought.
Ray Otton says
God, this is fun!
To quote the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control:
“At the beginning of the influenza A(H1N1) pandemic in 2009, air travel was the cause of the introduction of this new virus into countries not primarily affected, and airplanes are likely to be a major…………..VECTOR………… when the next pandemic occurs”
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/all-topics-ztravellers-health/infectious-diseases-aircraft
tokenny says
Wow, you found it in an article – it must be correct!! Would this be the same article you’ll quote later claiming this virus is a hoax? Since when do you read an article for the definition of a word?
Ray Otton says
Your pedantry is getting the best of you.
For instance:
“Wow, you found it in an article – it must be correct!!
An article from a world renowned organization that directly refutes your statement MUST be untrue? Hmmmm.
or this:
“Would this be the same article you’ll quote later claiming this virus is a hoax?”
Projection, one of the big tools in Saul Alinsky’s belt.
And finally:
“Since when do you read an article for the definition of a word?”
Ummm, all the time?
Another tool in Alinsky’s belt?
Ridicule.
Wear it.
Ray Otton says
Bro, take the “L” and move on:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22444826
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050326002458.htm
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0361198118799709
Paul Plante says
tokenny, dude, and I mean “dude” in the sincerest sense of the word being a true honorific, what a distinct pleasure it always is for me to open up the latest edition of the Cape Charles Mirror to see your signal broadcasting, as it were, through time and space from your pen to my ears!
How I treasure this colloquy!
It is like some small town dude down in NYC for the first time going up the elevator of the Empire State building and finding himself in there for the ride up with none other than Clarence Darrow of Scopes Monkey Trial fame, and so it is only natural, tokenny, for me to gravitate, much like a societal leukocyte in many ways, to where your signal is broadcasting from, for the further opportunity to engage with yourself in this GREAT DEBATE the Cape Charles Mirror has been hosting now since at least 2018, if not earlier, on the seriously degraded state of our public health surveillance system in this country, when everybody else, tokenny, all the so-called main-stream media was sucking their thumbs while asleep at the switch, as we did in the now-classic Cape Charles Mirror thread “Come Here…or Not!”, a January 14, 2018 Special Opinion to the Mirror by Mary Strock, where @ January 25, 2018 at 9:04 pm, I was quoted in replying to your honorable self, as follows, and let me say, to Kenny, that up this way, where your oratorical skills are held in very high regard, it is said that your tongue is so silver and glib that you could bestow an apostolic blessing on the Pope himself, which would have him thanking you vociferously, which is why it is such a high honor for me to be able to engage in colloquy with yourself, to wit:
Paul Plante says:
January 25, 2018 at 9:04 pm
tkenny, dude, first of all, let me thank you on behalf of not only a grateful nation, but the candid world, as well, since we are live in CYBERSPACE, tkenny, as it is happening, and CYBERSPACE covers the world and beyond, both of whom need to hear about these vital background details you are bringing into this discussion as someone with inside knowledge of the political workings of the “Boss Murphy Era” saloon politics that still permeate Rensselaer County politics to this day, as you well know, this in your zeal as a loyal American patriotic citizen to do the right thing and stand up as you are doing in here by bringing in all of this now-discredited judicial bunkum and twaddle, which is a text book example of judicial corruption, to denounce and attempt to eradicate the evil of the judicial corruption in our nation that allows public corruption to flourish, for which I commend you, so they can understand exactly what it was Mario Cuomo was speaking about in 1986, when he climbed up to the dais and said the following, out of which came my marching orders to go into corrupt Rensselaer County and bring order out of chaos:
“TEN YEARS AGO, a study by the Joint House-Senate Subcommittee on Investigations estimated the costs of white-collar crime at MORE THAN forty-four BILLION dollars”.
“The incidence of white-collar crime has not abated in the last decade; instead, it has spiraled ever-upward as economic crime has become increasingly profitable and sophisticated!”
“The effects of major economic crime can be devastating: THE WHOLE SOCIETY suffers as crimes against business become crimes against consumers.”
“GREEDY, WHITE-COLLAR PROFITEERS WILL NOT BE STOPPED until we adopt strong measures to stop them!”
end quotes
That is quoted from the Governor’s Approval memorandum, New York State Legislative Annual -1986, p.236, tkenny, and when he talks about “strong measures to stop them,” he is there talking about me, tkenny – I was a strong measure against greedy, white-collar profiteers with a lot of political clout, given that they already controlled MORE THAN forty-four BILLION dollars by 1976, tkenny, right around the time both the New York State Department of Health and the Rensselaer County Department of Health went corrupt.
You’re an especially bright lightbulb in the four-pack, tkenny, (that is a compliment to his cognitive abilities, people) think about it for a moment as to why greedy, white-collar profiteers with a lot of political clout controlling more than forty-four billion dollars in 1976 would want to take control of a county health department, and the state health department, as well.
What do you do with more than forty-four billion in ill-gotten gains, tkenny?
How do you make that liquid?
You see the problem these greedy, white-collar profiteers with a lot of political clout and more than forty-four billion dollars in illicit funds were confronted with in 1976, tkenny?
They needed a laundry, which means land subdivisions and strip malls, and land subdivisions in New York State by law require health department approval.
So if you have to move a lot of dirty money, and you have a lot of dirty money you have to move, then control of as many county health departments as possible is a necessity, and that is what I was put in place to put an end to, tkenny, although as you well know, having been there when it was all going down, and as could be expected in a top-to-bottom corrupt county, as your bogus court decisions make clear, I failed miserably.
That the state Health Department was corrupt as of 1978 is made incandescently clear, tkenny, in a Report of Investigation by then-state health commissioner Dr. Axelrod, wherein was stated as follows:
Finally, the state Health Department has not exercised appropriate oversight of (Rensselaer) County performance.
Clearly, since 1978 the (state Health) Department has failed to identify the extent to which the (Rensselaer) County programs were deviating from its own standards.
end quote
Actually, that last statement about the state health department failing to identify the extent to which the Rensselaer County programs were deviating from its own standards is not factually true.
The state engineer with oversight responsibility was very much aware of how corrupt Rensselaer County had become, and he was putting on the hush, so as not to make waves, which put him in violation of § 29.3(a)(1) of the Rules which governed both his and my practice as licensed professional engineers in NYS, which section provides:
“Unprofessional conduct shall also include, in the profession of engineering, being associated in a professional capacity with any project or practice known to the licensee to be fraudulent or dishonest in character, or not reporting knowledge of such fraudulence or dishonesty to the Education Department.”
end quotes
The state engineer was guilty of both, tkenny, being associated in a professional capacity with practices known to the licensee to be fraudulent or dishonest in character, and not reporting knowledge of such fraudulence or dishonesty to the Education Department, and had I kept my own mouth shut so as to not make political waves, especially as Buono was gearing up for another election campaign based on a policy of anything goes in Rensselaer County, I would have been guilty myself of not reporting my knowledge of such fraudulent and dishonest practices involving professional engineers to the Education Department, and why would I do that, tkenny?
Why would I or any other rational and stable person put themselves in professional jeopardy to protect some corrupt politicians?
Only an unstable person would do that, but you know what, tkenny, in the “Boss Murphy Era” saloon politics of Rensselaer County, there are a lot of unstable persons involved.
Getting back to violations of the law in the Rensselaer County Health Department that I was put in place to put an end to in 1986, in conformance with the goal of then-NYS governor Mario Cuomo to crush public corruption in NYS, the March 1989 AXELROD REPORT provides as follows:
In some cases, plans were improperly approved/signed by the Public Health Director without input from a Professional Engineer.
end quotes
With respect to that, tkenny N.Y. Education Law § 6512, entitled “Unauthorized practice a crime,” provides as follows:
1. Anyone not authorized to practice under this title who practices or offers to practice or holds himself out as being able to practice in any profession in which a license is a prerequisite to the practice of the acts, or who practices any profession as an exempt person during the time when his professional license is suspended, revoked or annulled, or who aids or abets an unlicensed person to practice a profession, or who fraudulently sells, files, furnishes, obtains, or who attempts fraudulently to sell, file, furnish or obtain any diploma, license, record or permit purporting to authorize the practice of a profession, shall be guilty of a class E felony.
end quotes
Van Praag was guilty of a host of class E felonies for violation of that section of law, and had I been “Johnny Real Nice Guy Who Is Compliant” and aided and abetted him as Rensselaer County was demanding that I do, I too would have been guilty of a class E felony, and why would I want to do that, tkenny?
Why would I want to commit crimes to protect some corrupt politicians in the state of New York?
Give us your thoughts on that question, tkenny, and then I will come back to address the rest of your questions such as “Paul, what are you smoking??”
To which I reply, nothing, tkenny, why do you ask?
And yes, tkenny, it is entirely possible that you are insane, expecting as you are a different outcome from me, but you know what, tkenny, and this is something that should give you comfort, in America today, the insane are just as equal as anyone else, so in here at least, being insane is not something that I will hold against you.
I think the insane have as much right to express themselves in public as does anyone else.
And yes, tkenny, it is indeed unfortunate for the children in Hoosick Falls, N.Y. drinking water poisoned with the carcinogen PFOA because of continuing gross negligence in the corrupt to this day Rensselaer County Department of Health that I lost my job, but such it is, tkenny, such it is.
And what’s my endgame, tkenny?
Does citizenship have an endgame?
Isn’t citizenship about citizenship, tkenny?
The strong like myself standing up for the weak, like the poisoned children of Hoosick Falls who have no one else speaking out for them because they are poor?
Isn’t that the endgame, tkenny, you know, the price of freedom is ETERNAL vigilance?
When before one is dead does eternal vigilance end, tkenny?
And of course, I’m not going get my job back, tkenny, because licensed engineers do not have “jobs.”
We have duties and responsibilities to civilized society to keep it civilized, and some of us take those duties and responsibilities quite seriously.
So that is my endgame, I guess.
And who knows what will happen to Sonia Sotomayor, tkenny.
She is not my concern, and anyway, her bad karma appears to be overtaking her, eating her out from inside, so she might not be on the bench much longer, and she can go out saying it was because her health failed, which is cool with me.
What I am doing is showing people how it was that she became a supreme court justice in the first place, because to the common citizen, that is normally a closed process, what kind of deals the judge candidates are making with the various senators as they go from office to office pandering for the votes they will need to make it to the high court.
Here, we get an inside view of what that pandering really looks like in real life, and tkenny, as a loyal American patriot like yourself, I feel duty bound to make this story known to the American people, as contemporary history.
So there is another endgame, I would suppose.
(Are we limited to only one endgame in life, does anyone know, or can we have a bunch of them?)
As to generating some unwelcome scrutiny from other government entities, who might they be, tkenny?
The CIA?
The NSA?
The office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York?
Oh, but they already know about it, because as a GOOD American citizen, tkenny, I felt it my duty and responsibility as a loyal American citizen to bring it to their attention.
So what gives, tkenny?
Beats me.
What am I looking for?
I live in the moment, tkenny, so I personally don’t waste time “looking for things” like myself, like a new car, or big screen TV or that kind of stuff, but if I was looking for something, it would be environmental justice for the people of Rensselaer County in New York and an end to political corruption and judicial corruption in Rensselaer County and the state of New York, especially its Department of Environmental Conservation, along with the Department of Health and the Office of Professional Responsibility of the NYS Department of Education.
Life can be short, tkenny, as you say, if you are stupid about it, especially, as many are these days, what with this opioid epidemic killing people in droves, and of course, I let go from the past things I have no control over now, like whether the method that was used to potty train me was the right method or the wrong method, or maybe there was a better method, but we were too poor to afford it.
I’m in my seventies, tkenny, so why today would I be worrying about how I was potty trained?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/come-here-or-not/
Paul Plante says
I should imagine that the reference in the above post to the “Boss Murphy Era” of corrupt Rensselaer County politics which continue to this day is lost on many of the Cape Charles Mirror’s readers, especially the younger ones, which takes us to this following from a history on the subject by a famous author up this way named Jack Casey, who incidentally is also a famous country/western singer could probably play rings around Billy Strings on the guitar, and who is famous for penning that now-famous line in one of his songs, a lament, about “How much bull**** can one man take,” which in my case is not much at all, to wit:
TROY, N.Y., 1894—Boss Edward Murphy, a United States Senator, rules this upstate mill city from his brewery.
Thugs and repeaters emerge from ward saloons on election day to stuff ballot boxes and keep Murphy’s men in office.
When a posse of vigilantes turns out to stop the voting fraud, a young industrialist is gunned down.
The murder of Robert Ross sparks an explosive backlash.
Pious congregations cry for vengeance.
Suffragettes demand the woman’s vote to reform elections.
A secret society fastens on the murder to topple Murphy and seize power.
Stepping from the shadows, shrewd Yankee lawyer Frank Black accuses Bartholomew Shea of the crime, and then guides community outrage into channels of the criminal law.
But did Shea pull the fatal trigger?
From elegant mansions to immigrant slums, this drama of ambition and betrayal, of bigotry and oppression plays against the backdrop of industrial America while the Victorian age darkens.
THE TRIAL OF BAT SHEA recounts how a saloon thug set out to steal an election, and how a methodical, flag-waving mob then twisted the law to extract the last full measure of revenge, a life for a life, in the name of truth and justice.
end quotes
That is the same corrupt Rensselaer County today that tokenny and myself know so well, as is reflected in the above post from the now-classic Cape Charles Mirror thread “Come Here…or Not!”, a January 14, 2018 Special Opinion to the Mirror by Mary Strock, with its corrupt and inept county health department, which takes us to today and the following Albany, New York Times Union article titled “Rensselaer and Albany counties sort out COVID-19 communication issues – Delay in sharing information about positive cases raises concern” by Kenneth C. Crowe II and Steve Hughes updated April 15, 2020, where we see the incompetent, Keystone Cops meet Three Stooges Posing as Public Health Officials nature of what is called ?public health protection” in a corrupt upstate New York county with a worthless, patronage mill health department, to wit:
EAST GREENBUSH – Rensselaer County officials were angered when they found out Tuesday night that they weren’t immediately told that five people who work in the county – including at least two at a coronavirus hotspot and another who works at one of the county’s busiest stores – but live in Albany County where they tested positive for COVID-19 until long after the results came back.
Two of the five people work at Diamond Hill Nursing and Rehabilitation in Schaghticoke, where three residents have died from COVID-19, county sources said.
end quotes
There was a time when the Rensselaer County Health Department, formed in 1946 because of typhoid fever epidemics which killed hundreds of people in Troy was one of the best in the state, if not the nation, but since the mid-1970s, when the dismantling of the public health infrastructure began in earnest, those days are long gone, as we can see in this above story, which is an embarrassment, but true, nonetheless:
The third person is an assistant manager at the busy Walmart on Route 4, where a cashier who lives in Rensselaer County also tested positive.
It was not immediately known where the other two individuals work.
Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin said the county learned from a resident about the April 1 positive test result of a Walmart assistant manager who resides in Colonie.
This information was revealed only after the county announced Tuesday that the cashier, who lives in North Greenbush, had tested positive April 14 and issued a warning to county residents who shopped there.
“We are disappointed that Rensselaer County was not informed of this first case, as is both needed and required in these situations.”
“Valuable time was lost because notice was not given to our Health Department of this case from April 1 involving an employee at the East Greenbush Walmart,” McLaughlin said.
end quotes
What McLaughlin calls “our health department” was not given notice, because there really is nothing to give notice to.
It is as if they don’t exist.
Getting back tom that story of incompetence here in the corrupt Empire of New York under Andy Cuomo, whose father Mario supervised the gutting and dismantling of our public health infrastructure at the state level, we have:
This left Albany County officials to explain Wednesday morning why they had not followed the requirements to notify neighboring counties so health officials could seek to identify people who may have been in contact with the person who contracted COVID-19.
“We’re working in a partnership to get things done.”
“It’s a different time that we’re in.”
“We cross our Ts and dot our Is.”
“If something fell through the cracks, then it did and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future,” Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said Wednesday at his daily press conference on the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on the county.
“Everyone needs to take a deep breath and work together.”
“We don’t need fingerpointing at this point in time,” McCoy said.
end quotes
Which is BULL****, because right now is precisely the time when we not only need, but demand finger-pointing and accountability for this charade, otherwise, it will be as it always is, just another COVER-UP, while corrupt bidness as usual continues unabated.
Balls got dropped, and we demand to know why, but in truth, will never be told, because there will never be an investigation into what went so radically wrong here to cause those nursing home deaths.
This is what a third-world, fourth rate public health infrastructure that one would expect to find in a ****hole like Haiti looks like in real life.
That is how far down the ladder of civilization we have now come.
Not something to be proud about, at all!
Engines says
You fool, of course airplanes accelerated this entire debacle, without them we would not be in this situation. Your comment is ridiculous.
Paul Plante says
You’re so intent on attacking me on the slightest premise, tokenny, for reasons known only to yourself, that you are falling behind on your science in here with respect to COVID.
Human beings are VECTORS for COVID.
EMBO Reports
RESOURCE|4 April 2020
SARS‐CoV‐2 receptor ACE2 and TMPRSS2 are primarily expressed in bronchial transient secretory cells
Soeren Lukassen, Robert Lorenz Chua,Timo Trefzer, Nicolas C. Kahn, Marc A. Schneider, Thomas Muley, Hauke Winter, Michael Meister, Carmen Veith, Agnes W. Boots, Bianca P. Hennig, Michael Kreuter, Christian Conrad, Roland Eils
Although COVID-19 has a milder clinical impairment compared to SARS and MERS for the vast majority of patients, SARS-CoV-2 infection shows dramatically increased human-to-human transmission rate with the total number of deaths significantly exceeding those of SARS and MERS patients already within the first three months of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The emergent global spread of SARS-CoV-2 and its strong impact on public health immediately demands for joint efforts in bio-medical research increasing our understanding of the virus’ pathogenesis, its entry into the host’s cells and host factors facilitating its fast replication that explains the high human-to-human transmission rates.
One emergent question is why the human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is much higher compared to SARS-CoV or MERS-CoV.
Potential explanations comprise i) the binding of SARS-CoV-2 to another, yet unknown receptor on the host cell surface, ii) enhanced cleavage of the SARS-CoV-2 S protein resulting in higher efficiency of the virus’ entry into the cell, and iii) additional host factors increasing the virus entry into the cell, e.g. by facilitating membrane fusion.
end quotes
Human-to-human transmission means that humans are indeed vectors for COVID, and thus, the airlines facilitated the spread of COVID by rapidly transporting those vectors from China to here.
tokenny says
Strike 2 Again you’re wrong. Humans are “carriers” in human to human transmissions.
Paul Plante says
tokenny, dude, as a fellow American citizen, I have to say that it is my sincerest hope that the next time they hand out Medals of Freedom in this country, that you are the first in line, because frankly, I think it is through your diligence and determination and yes, sheer doggedness, that two years ago, in 2018, when there might still have been time to stop the downward trajectory of the public health infrastructure in New York state, if not the nation, you took such pains as you did to show just how pitiful and broken our public health infrastructure really was, which warning was a harbinger of what was to come, and unfortunately, your warnings largely fell on deaf ears, much like the third pig in the story trying to warn the other two pigs, the ones that wanted to spend their time partying and shopping, that there was a hungry wolf in the neighborhood and they better take pains to upgrade their personal protective gear, so to speak, if one considers their house as personal protective gear, and why not.
But at least today, thanks to yourself and the archives of the Cape Charles Mirror, as we prepare our After-Action Report of this COVID CLUSTER**** CIRCUS acting in our capacity of a citizen grand jury, we have your earlier warnings to go back to, which certainly now serves to make our job as citizens a bit easier as to where blame for this mess should be properly placed, as we can see in this following from that same CCM thread in 2018, thanks to yourself, as follows:
Paul Plante says @ January 24, 2018 at 7:51 pm:
tkenny, dude, you are not only awesome, you are practically if not totally amazing for your sleuthing ability that enabled you to sniff out and then dredge up that now-totally-discredited and frankly laughable New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division decision in Matter of Plante (that being myself) v. Buono (that being then-Rensselaer County Executive John L. “Smiling Jack” Buono, who was offered an $80,000 bribe in 1988 to get rid of me), 172 A.D.2d 81 (1991).
To be truthful with you, tkenny, I had actually forgotten about the travesty, because it is a discredited piece of crap not worth the paper it was written on, and as a result, we all owe you a real sincere debt of gratitude for finding it and bringing into here, because this is where the civil rights lawsuit that ended up before Sotomayor in 2005 can be said to actually have its roots, my inability to obtain justice in the courts of the state of New York.
To demonstrate that, tkenny, let’s do some parsing of your sentences in here:
tkenny says: In his position as Associate Public Health Engineer in the Rensselaer County Department of Health and Director of the Environmental Health Division, Paul Plante was required to enforce the Public Health Law and local and State sanitary codes in relation to environmental health matters under the general direction of Kenneth Van Praag, the County’s Public Health Director.
Paul Plante, who knows better, responds by saying tkenny, that is horse****, and you, of all people, know that as well or better than I, since you have full access to the whole record in that matter, which includes this line from my actual job description, placed in evidence before the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board by myself in support of a successful case of workplace harassment against John L. “Smiling Jack” Buono on March 5, 1993, fifteen (15) months AFTER your bogus decision on December 5, 1991, to wit:
Work is performed under the general direction of the Commissioner of Health and the Public Health Administrator with considerable leeway allowed for the exercise of independent judgment in overseeing the operation of the Division of Environmental Health.
end quotes
I answered to the Rensselaer County Commissioner of Health, tkenny, a medical doctor, not Ken Van Praag, who was a political hack who had been the executive secretary of the state Republican Party before being brought over to Rensselaer County to assume political control of the Rensselaer County Department of Health to turn it into a corrupt whore house.
I was there to put Van Praag in jail, not to answer to him, a point the politically-motivated Appellate Court chose to gloss over in that mockery of a court decision penned by YESAWICH JR., J., with WEISS, J. P., MIKOLL, CREW III and HARVEY, JJ., concurring, just as the other Supreme Court justices but one flocked around Judge Taney in the Dred Scott decision.
That the “firing” by Buono you’re cheering on here that was approved by the Appellate Court on December 5, 1991 was both unlawful and illegal, as well as unconstitutional pursuant to §18 of ARTICLE I, the Bill Of Rights of the New York State Constitution, in violation of my rights, is made crystal clear by a review of the provisions of New York Worker’s Compensation Law § 120, Discrimination against employees who bring proceedings, to wit:
It shall be unlawful for any employer or his or her duly authorized agent to discharge or in any other manner discriminate against an employee as to his or her employment because such employee has claimed or attempted to claim compensation from such employer, or because he or she has testified or is about to testify in a proceeding under this chapter and no other valid reason is shown to exist for such action by the employer.
end quotes
It shall be unlawful in New York State, people, for John L. “Smiling Jack” Buono to do what he did to me in early-1989, which was to fire me because I had claimed or attempted to claim compensation from such employer, and because I was about to testify in a proceeding under this chapter and no other valid reason was shown to exist for such action by the employer.
So tkenny is cheering on corrupt, unlawful and illegal actions by Rensselaer County in here as he tries and tries to convince us all that no, Rensselaer County is not corrupt, nor has it ever been, which is a crock of crap, big time.
That no valid reason was shown to exist for my firing was made incandescently clear on September 27, 1994, two (2) years and nine (9) months after the December 5, 1991 piece of judicial crap tkenny is trying to peddle in here as a legitimate judicial decision, as oppoed to what it really was, which is a political decision written by a handful of political judges, in Federal District Court for the Northern District of New York, as follows:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT – NORTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
EXAMINATION OF REPUBLICAN RENSSELAER COUNTY EXECUTIVE JOHN L. BUONO, BY ORDER, HELD AT THE CONFERENCE ROOM A, RENSSELAER COUNTY OFFICE BUILDING, TROY, NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 27, 1994
Q: Did there come a time in May 1993 when you were consulted about a WORKER’S COMPENSATION proceeding that Paul Plante had initiated?
BUONO: YES.
Q: ARE YOU AWARE THAT ON OR ABOUT JULY 18, 1993 THAT THE COUNTY HAD ENTERED INTO A STIPULATION THAT PLAINTIFF HAD SUFFERED A PARTIAL DISABILITY AS A RESULT OF A WORK-RELATED ILLNESS THAT WAS GENERATED DURING THE TIME HE WAS EMPLOYED AS THE ENGINEER FOR THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT?
BUONO: I’M AWARE OF THAT, YES!
Q: And ultimately, prior to the time that the stipulation was entered into, did you consent to it?
BUONO: YES.
end quotes
That swishing sound, people, is the sound of tkenny’s legs being cut out from under him.
WHUMP!
Down tkenny goes, hard, people!
Will he get up to fight again?
Will he find some other bogus court case to dredge up and drag in here to bolster his case, whatever that case might in the end be?
All I can say is the suspense has people right out there, at the very edge of their seats, so stay tuned!
And don’t touch that dial!
tokenny says
Ray, you should take this time to brush up on your reading comprehension skills. My first comment was that airplanes are not carries of disease that living things are, in this case humans. Airlines disbursed the humans to all corners of the world. Should airlines now deny you access to a flight if you have the sniffles? Should airline counter clerks have medical degrees? Do you think people should have a full medical checkup before boarding a flight? A question for another day.
Maybe you should pick up a pathology dictionary and look up some of this stuff. You keep throwing articles at me that link airplanes to vectors. The one I like the best is titled “Air travel and vector-borne disease movement” Do you know the definition of “Vector-Borne”? Vector-borne diseases are illnesses that are transmitted by vectors, which include mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas. The article describes how air travel sends these “vector-borne” diseases all over.
Vectors are living things. Not hunks of metal. So, if you want to think of the humans as vectors – go ahead but if you are going to think of airplanes as vectors then you need to add cruise ships, buses, cars, churches, grocery stores, work places and potentially your house.
Stuart Bell says
‘ Should airlines now deny you access to a flight if you have the sniffles? Should airline counter clerks have medical degrees? Do you think people should have a full medical checkup before boarding a flight? A question for another day.’
The Airlines should have been completely shut down in Jan or Feb. The focus at that time was Russia and Impeachment. So I will blame the Airlines and Liberals.
They both owe America an apology.
tokenny says
Stuart, yup all of government was concerned with Russia and the Impeachment. Go ahead and try to make a excuse for a total failure to handle a disaster.
Remember this? https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-defends-cuts-cdc-budget-federal-government-hire-doctors-coronavirus-2020-2-1028946602
Paul Plante says
tokenny, as always, to make your self sound as if you are the only one in here who knows what he is talking about, you are trying to attach specific meaning to the word, as if there were only your definition, when such is not the case at all as we all can clearly see from this philosophical treatise on the subject, to wit:
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2017 May 5; 372(1719): 20160085.
Published online 2017 Mar 13. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0085
PMCID: PMC5352812
PMID: 28289253
What is a vector?
Anthony James Wilson, Eric René Morgan, Mark Booth, Rachel Norman, Sarah Elizabeth Perkins, Heidi Christine Hauffe, Nicole Mideo, Janis Antonovics, Hamish McCallum, and Andy Fenton
Abstract
Many important and rapidly emerging pathogens of humans, livestock and wildlife are ‘vector-borne’.
However, the term ‘vector’ has been applied to diverse agents in a broad range of epidemiological systems.
In this perspective, we briefly review some common definitions, identify the strengths and weaknesses of each and consider the functional differences between vectors and other hosts from a range of ecological, evolutionary and public health perspectives.
We then consider how the use of designations can afford insights into our understanding of epidemiological and evolutionary processes that are not otherwise apparent.
We conclude that from a medical and veterinary perspective, a combination of the ‘haematophagous arthropod’ and ‘mobility’ definitions is most useful because it offers important insights into contact structure and control and emphasizes the opportunities for pathogen shifts among taxonomically similar species with similar feeding modes and internal environments.
From a population dynamics and evolutionary perspective, we suggest that a combination of the ‘micropredator’ and ‘sequential’ definition is most appropriate because it captures the key aspects of transmission biology and fitness consequences for the pathogen and vector itself.
However, we explicitly recognize that the value of a definition always depends on the research question under study.
end quotes
Are you comprehending that last statement, tokenny, about the value of a definition always depends on the research question under study?
In the case of COVID, those “carriers” as you call them, are in fact at the same time vectors from the public health standpoint that I cleave to, which I understand is vastly different from your viewpoint, which is far more libertarian than mine.
Especially when they are people with COVID who are being shipped out of New York City in medical ambulances to places where COVID would not otherwise be, but for Andy Cuomo shipping those COVID carriers from New York City all over the state, so that Andy can then justify his SUPER-MAX LOCKDOWN on the fact that there is now COVID in every county.
Getting back to that article, we have:
1. Introduction
Many parasites and pathogens responsible for some of the most important diseases in humans, agriculture and nature are routinely described as ‘vector-borne’.
These include emerging parasites and pathogens such as dengue virus throughout the tropical world [1], West Nile virus in North America [2] and Europe [3], Crimean–Congo haemorrhagic fever virus in Turkey [4], hantavirus in Europe [5], bluetongue virus in Europe [6], zika virus in South America [7], Lyme borreliosis in Europe [8] and chikungunya virus in the Caribbean [9].
Almost 20% of human deaths are caused by infectious diseases that are described as vector-borne, chiefly malaria, yellow fever, leishmaniosis, trypanosomiasis, Chagas’ disease and Japanese encephalitis [10], and such diseases are predicted to present a growing threat in the near future [11].
However, different definitions of a vector are used in different fields.
For instance, the term is universally applied to haematophagous arthropods, such as Ixodes ticks that transmit Borrelia burgdorferi or Aedes mosquitoes that transmit dengue virus, but the term ‘vector’ has also been applied to badgers transmitting Mycobacterium bovis [12–14], dogs transmitting rabies virus [15], snails transmitting Schistosoma flatworms [16,17] and rodents transmitting hantaviruses [18].
Clearly a large number of definitions of ‘vector’ are currently being used, and the question in any multi-host system should be to ask when and why a particular host in that system warrants designation as a ‘vector’.
end quotes
If a badger transmitting Mycobacterium bovis can be a vector, tokenny, then by God, so can a human being transmitting COVID-19.
Paul Plante says
tokenny, dude, supposing we all submit here and admit that you are the smartest one in the room when it comes to protecting and promoting the public’s health, and that your definitions are correct, and ours are wrong.
Tell us – what exactly does that change?
Here I am, a public health engineer, and I see an airplane full of plague carriers heading for an airport in my health district, just as if they were plague-infested rats on a ship coming into a port in my district.
Besides wasting time dickering with some know-it-all lawyer as to what name we should call these plague carriers by, what exactly is it that I am supposed to do, assuming I am not just another political hack holding the position, a “ten grander,” as they are called up this way, holding the position because they have a connection in the party and had the ten grand to pay for the title.
Am I supposed to call Trump to see what he thinks I should do?
Or Nancy Pelosi?
How about Mitch McConnell?
Should Ralph Northam be consulted, do you think?
Or Andy Cuomo?
Or should I open my public health manual to the section titled “communicable diseases” and read the guidance there which in New York state is thusly:
PHL § 2100 states:
1. Every local board of health and every health officer shall guard against the introduction of such communicable diseases as are designated in the sanitary code, by the exercise of proper and vigilant medical inspection and control of all persons and things infected with or exposed to such diseases.
2. Every local board of health and every health officer may:
(a) provide for care and isolation of cases of communicable disease in a hospital or elsewhere when necessary for protection of the public health and,
(b) subject to the provisions of the sanitary code, prohibit and prevent all intercourse and communication with or use of infected premises, places and things, and require, and if necessary, provide the means for the thorough purification and cleansing of the same before general intercourse with the same or use thereof shall be allowed.
end quotes
You’re the expert, tokenny!
What advice would you give me?
Let them in and don’t bother with them or disturb them or scare them, we’ll see what happens and deal with the problem after it develops?
Paul Plante says
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2017 May 5; 372(1719): 20160085.
Published online 2017 Mar 13. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0085
PMCID: PMC5352812
PMID: 28289253
What is a vector?
Anthony James Wilson, Eric René Morgan, Mark Booth, Rachel Norman, Sarah Elizabeth Perkins, Heidi Christine Hauffe, Nicole Mideo, Janis Antonovics, Hamish McCallum, and Andy Fenton
The study of vector-borne disease has provided theoretical frameworks and insights that can be applied usefully to other systems.
Hypodermic needles, for example, might be considered as vectors under definition #1, and pseudo-biological characteristics defined, such as rates of birth (entry of new needles into the population), infection (contamination) and death (removal or needle exchange), whereas the use and reuse of needles is analogous to biting rate.
This thought model has been applied to the problem of HIV transmission and supported needle exchange as part of harm reduction approaches to disease control [20].
Thus, decreasing proportions of needles positive for pro-viral DNA fell as increasing cumulative numbers of clean needles were provided, as a result of decreasing circulation time, an effect equivalent to that of decreasing vector survival rate [63].
In this case, therefore, considering inanimate objects as vectors was useful, whatever the legitimacy of that definition.
Creative use of vector theory should, perhaps, not be constrained too strictly by ontology.
J says
Hey tokenny,
Don’t waste your time attempting a debate with Paul. As shown here, and by other folks (myself included), engaging with Paul is a fruitless battle.
The gaslighting in the comment sections of the Cape Charles Mirror is amusing and hard to resist jumping into the fray. Nothing gets solved in the comments section. Debate is not welcome. And feedback is a kin to attack.
I think it is awesome Cape Charles Mirror strives for freedom of speech; so long as you agree with Paul. Then we are all morons.
J
Paul Plante says
J, let me tell you dude, how great it is to see you stepping up to the plate in here and throwing your in two cents while being neighborly and giving tokenny a needed helping hand to help him make it through the day.
And if debate is not welcome in here, then how come it is that you see myself and the venerable tokenny, who incidentally is never wrong, if you can believe that, engaging in spirited debate above here?
What’s up with that, pray tell?
Paul Plante says
And J, seriously, dude, it is not a case of me being right and tokenny being wrong
It is a matter of the science I present being sound, while tokenny is putting forth his opinions which are based on his emotions and fears which in turn are influenced by what tokenny had to eat yesterday and how well his digestion system happened to be working that day, which means what tokenny is putting forth at any given moment could be based on nothing more substantial than intestinal gas.
Paul Plante says
We have now reached a point in this nation of where everything about COVID in the mainstream media has to be treated with a great deal of suspicion as to its veracity, and here I am referring to the supposed COVID death count, as well as what these so-called “tests” are showing about who has been infected with COVID.
I personally have reached a point, based on my own daily researches, of where I truly think it is all a lot of hysterical and inflated BULL**** related to a variety of factors, all of them political, including the fact that this is a presidential election year where led by “Prince of Darkness” Andy Cuomo, the Democratic Socialist governor of New York who earned the sobriquet because there is no trick too dirty for Andy to use in the game of politics, which game he is playing to the hilt here, with his daily national television show where in his whiney, nasally, high-pitched and very irritating voice he is constantly attacking Trump and Mitch McConnell for “playing politics,” when it is Andy who is dominating that game, the Democrats are continuing their efforts to take over all three branches of our federal government to impose one-party rule on us, coupled with the fact that just months ago, Andy Cuomo was the leader of a state with a $6 BILLION budget shortfall due to Medicaid overpayments, read Medicaid fraud from New York City Medicaid Mills, and now we not only never hear another word about that, but Andy is expecting the federal taxpayers to bail him out, thanks to the aid and assistance of Nancy Pelosi.
So we needed a crisis that they could exploit to the max, and now we have one, and they are milking it for all it is worth, to the tune of $ TRILLIONS they have burned through in a matter of months, taking our national debt to over 100% of GDP!
We are now far enough into this BULL**** game that is being played on us by Cuomo and the Democrats and their sycophants and toadies and lackeys in the main-stream media, that the game becomes more and more transparent, as was the case just this morning with the Associated Press article “Health official says US missed some chances to slow virus” by Mike Stobbe, AP Medical Writer on 2 May 2020, to wit:
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. government was slow to understand how much coronavirus was spreading from Europe, which helped drive the acceleration of outbreaks across the nation, a top health official said Friday.
end quotes
Slow?
They were asleep at the switch, as we clearly see from a 2 March 2020 Rensselaer County Press Release, this being 54 days AFTER the CDC issued a public health alert about COVID to state and local health officers, state and local epidemiologists, state and local laboratory directors, public information officers, HAN coordinators, and clinician organizations, entitled “Rensselaer County Officials Working with State and Federal Officials on Coronavirus Issue,” where we were enlightened as to just how pathetically stupid the COVID response in New York state, the epicenter of COVID in the world, really was, to wit:
With confirmed cases of coronavirus in the nation and the state, Rensselaer County health officials took part in calls with the Centers for Disease Control and the New York State Department of Health regarding the issue.
At this time, there are no confirmed cases of coronavirus in the county.
Federal and state health officials have termed the spread of the illness nationally and in the state as “isolated” cases.
end quotes
Now, that was on March 2, 2020, 54 days or nearly two months AFTER the CDC issued a public health alert about COVID to state and local health officers, state and local epidemiologists, state and local laboratory directors, public information officers, HAN coordinators, and clinician organizations, that we were being told by Federal and state health officials that the spread of COVID nationally and in the state were “isolated” cases, and how pathetically stupid and incompetent that makes these so-called “experts” sound.
And now we are being told that, “ah, well, yeah, okay, so we blew it big time, and as a result, a lot, of people who wouldn’t otherwise have died are dying now, but we gave it our best shot,” which upon actually reading the written report which is on-line Centers entitled “Public Health Response to the Initiation and Spread of Pandemic COVID-19 in the United States, February 24–April 21, 2020” by Anne Schuchat, MD; CDC COVID-19 Response Team on May 1, 2020, comes across as a whitewash to me of gross negligence.
Getting back to that 2 March 2020 Rensselaer Counnty Press Release, which really serves to capture the incompetence and outright stupidity that has been driving this nation’s response to COVID, with people dying along the way as collateral damage, we have:
“We want residents to know that our team at the Health Department is monitoring this situation closely and working with state and federal officials to share information and get updates.”
“However, there is no need for undue concern or worry,” said County Executive Steve McLaughlin.
“We have been informed that New York State remains at a low risk for coronavirus.”
end quotes
And now New York state is the epicenter of the COVID crisis, and Rensselaer County is not only swimming in COVID cases, but now has older people dying alone in their homes, which is quite understandable from the perspective of an older person, because who in their right mind wants to spend their last days on earth as a science experiment in one of Andy Cuomo’s COVID hospitals, and older people in nursing homes are dying as well, as COVID continues to spread, because federal and state health officials simply blew off COVID as something to not have to worry about.
Getting back to that Associated Press article:
“We clearly didn’t recognize the full importations that were happening,” Schuchat told The Associated Press.
end quotes
And given what the CDC told Rensselaer County officials about not having to worry about COVID in New York, that is a true case of the excellent use of understatement to WHITEWASH a major-league ****-up here that has resulted in the needless deaths of countless Americans.
Getting back to the Associated Press article:
The CDC on Friday published an article, authored by Schuchat, that looked back on the U.S. response, recapping some of the major decisions and events of the last few months.
It suggests the nation’s top public health agency missed opportunities to slow the spread.
end quotes
Suggests?
No, people, it is an attempt to cover over those failures, which could well be considered gross negligence on their part, given the clearly erroneous information about COVID given to Rensselaer County officials before 2 March 2020, and after the CDC had issued an alert about COVID on 8 January 2020, which alert interestingly is not mentioned anywhere in the Schuchat Report which is the subject of the AP article above, which takes us back to the story, as follows:
Some public health experts saw it as important assessment by one of the nation’s most respected public health doctors.
The CDC is responsible for the recognition, tracking and prevention of just such a disease.
end quotes
And from the fact that on 8 January 2020, they put out a health alert about COVID to state and local health officers, state and local epidemiologists, state and local laboratory directors, public information officers, HAN coordinators, and clinician organizations, they were tracking COVID and warning about it.
So what went wrong after that, besides politics in the state of New York, where Andy Cuomo, the “Prince of Darkness” of New York who rules by fear, is reaping political benefit from the high COVID death toll which he is trying to blame on Trump?
The Schuchat Report doesn’t say, which takes us back to an interesting part of the Associated Press article, as follows:.
Asked about that during the interview, Schuchat said: “I think in retrospect, taking action earlier could have delayed further amplification (of the U.S. outbreak), or delayed the speed of it.”
But she also noted there was an evolving public understanding of just how bad things were, as well as a change in what kind of measures — including stay-at-home orders — people were willing to accept.
“I think that people’s willingness to accept the mitigation is unfortunately greater once they see the harm the virus can do,” she said.
end quotes
Yes, indeed, sit back on your heals and let the death toll soar, to get the justification you need to turn the United States into a third-world repressive police state, where people who ****** up big time have now become dictators with absolute authority over our lives and well-being.
Getting back to the AP story:
“There will be debates about should we have started much sooner, or did we go too far too fast.”
end quotes
Damn right there will be, and thankfully, we have the Cape Charles Mirror where that debate has begun, in earnest, as the hard questions not asked elsewhere are asked in here.
Getting back to the AP article:
Schuchat’s article still leaves a lot of questions unanswered, said Dr. Howard Markel, a public health historian at the University of Michigan.
It doesn’t reveal what kind of proposals were made, and perhaps ignored, during the critical period before U.S. cases began to take off in late February, he said.
“I want to know … the conversations, the memos the presidential edicts,” said Markel, who’s written history books on past pandemics.
“Because I still believe this did not need to be as bad as it turned out.”
end quotes
Amen, dude, amen!
My thoughts, exactly!