Karen Gay is the Eastern Shore of Virginia Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Consider joining our ESVA Weston A Price Foundation Chapter Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/esvawapf/. For more information contact Karen at karengreergay@gmail.com. All are welcome!
Anyone here go to Woodstock? I remember when it was happening, but I sure don’t remember that there was a flu pandemic going on. The American Institute for Economic Research released an article on May 1, 2020 which describes the environment at the time. Here is an excerpt and link to the article in case you’d like to read the whole thing:
Reading this article got me thinking about this year’s pandemic and how it measures up to pandemics in the past in terms of data. Oddly, in looking across mainstream media news sources, I don’t see this data front and center which we should all be talking about because no matter where the viruses come from, we know, given time, that we’ll get another pandemic. Whether we should require people to quarantine themselves and businesses to shut down or allow people to exercise their judgement given that they know their susceptibility is a question that we need to debate with all of the data at hand.
Here are two charts that I put together from CDC and Departments of Health websites. The first one, Flu Deaths per Million by Pandemic, compares the 1957-1967, and today’s pandemic in terms of deaths per million. The deaths from Coronavirus represent a point in time, and more will occur as weeks pass. You can see that the flu deaths from the 1967 pandemic were 502 per million, while to-date, the U.S. has suffered 221 deaths per million from the flu/Coronavirus. Virginia has done much better at 96 deaths per million from flu/Coronavirus while New York has had a devastating 985 deaths per million. Sweden falls somewhere in the middle at 318 deaths per million and this country did not require its citizens to stay home.
There’s another way to look at this data, which is total deaths by week. This is useful because there have been many articles describing how deaths from Coronavirus are inflated. Even if we don’t record enough deaths from Coronavirus this chart takes all deaths from the United States from 2017 and 2018 and compares them to deaths in 2020. For 2017 and 2018, I divided the total deaths by 52. For 2020, I divided the deaths by 16. You can see that all-cause deaths are way down, no doubt because people are staying inside and are not subject to as many car and workplace accidents. This data comes from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm.
So, for once, I’m not going to spout off what I think about this data. You can look at it and decide for yourselves whether government intervention was warranted. There are other factors involved, like the virulence of the virus, the susceptibility of the aged and the fact that the quarantine did prevent some cases of Coronavirus. The question is whether it was worth the cost of lost income, lack of access to needed surgeries, and human contact.
You decide.
Daniel Burke says
I’ve looked at this before. I was packed and ready to go. I was friends with a record producer from Capitol Records. He had tickets for us. However, it was not called Woodstock. It was scheduled for a much smaller venue in upstate New York. The financing on that failed and it ‘devolved’ into Woodstock. My producer friend actually caught the virus and cancelled. I often wonder how things would have been if he did not get sick. I generally did not exercise good judgment in those days.
Rainbow Ron says
Woodstock was in 1969 you f’en idiots!
Blue Hoss says
Rainbow Ron??? Proud to be gay, are you? God is not proud of you.
Paul Plante says
What it is, Rainbow Ron, where’s it at, dude!
And yes, that is quite correct – Woodstock was in 1969.
I was in VEET NAM at the time and never even knew it happened.
They say Hillary Clinton was there having one last fling before entering the adult world, buck-naked and slithering around in the mud and having the time of her life, but like I say, I was ten thousand miles away slithering around in some different mud, so I can’t say if it was really her, and never having seen Hillary naked before, if I had been there, how would I have known it was her?
You see what I am saying?
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming where we have a new comedy duo from the Commonwealth’s own Cape Charles performing a brand new comedy skit destined for the big time called “Two Dummies Without the Ventriloquist” right after a word from our sponsors.
emily dickenson says
two thumbs up!
Ray Otton says
“we have a new comedy duo from the Commonwealth’s own Cape Charles performing a brand new comedy skit destined for the big time called “Two Dummies Without the Ventriloquist”
Hey, that’s my line, you blowhard, watchmaker, Vietnam vet, engineer, upstate NY put upon by bureaucrats, plagiarist.
Paul Plante says
And coming up next in the Cape Charles Mirror Comedy Series is a brand new act straight from Virginia’s East Shore that is headed for the big-time that features a ventriloquist having a hilarious, rambling dialogue on all sorts of subjects with an invisible dummy named “Dick,” much as Paul Winchell used to have fascinating dialogues with his dummy Jerry Mahoney on the Ed Sullivan Show back in the Golden Age of television in America.
“He is so good you can’t even see his lips move,” said one reviewer, “and even though you can’t actually see ‘Dick,’ you would swear he was right there in the room with you!”
Another reviewer said you would swear that “Dick” was talking from out of the ventriloquist’s pocket, so good is the ventriloquist at throwing his voice, so this sounds like a very dynamic show coming up, indeed, which is a testimonial to the creative talent Cape Charles and the Eastern Shore have to offer their fellow Americans.
Coming up on these same stations right after we pause for station identification and a word from our sponsors, so don’t change that dial, and if you need some munchies to enjoy during the show, make your dash to the refrigerator right now, because you don’t want to miss even a moment of this new comedy act starring the ventriloquist with the invisible dummy.
Paul Plante says
BioSpace
“Multiple Studies Suggest COVID-19 Mortality Rate May Be Lower Than Expected”
Published: May 07, 2020 By Gail Dutton
As the mortality figures for COVID-19 continued to rise, people are wondering where they will stop.
The actual death toll for COVID-19 won’t be calculable for some time, but there are early indications that it may be significantly lower than calculations of deaths per confirmed cases lead one to believe.
As an article in Lancet Infectious Diseases pointed out, calculating mortality rates based on the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed cases of infection is not representative of the actual death rate.
There are two issues, the authors said.
First, the denominator should be the number of people who were infected at the same time as those who died.
The second issue is that many people experienced very mild symptoms and so did not seek medical treatment and were not included in the calculation.
To get to the bottom of this, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched a 10,000 person study in mid-April.
It aims to determine how many adults in the U.S. who do not have a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 who have antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The results of this serosurvey will shed light on the spread of this virus throughout the U.S. and on which populations and communities are most affected.
*******
There are two possible inferences from all of these studies.
One possibility is that academics from our leading institutions – or the tests they employed – are error-prone.
Debates over methodology are ongoing, and questions swirl around error rates for tests that as yet are approved only under the FDA’s emergency use authorization.
Alternatively, these results may indicate the deadly COVID-19 pandemic – with mortality rates generally under 1% – is no more deadly than the seasonal influenza.
If that is true, the near-global stay-at-home mandates could have been an overreaction.
https://www.biospace.com/article/multip … expected-/
MJM says
How’s your memory ? In 69 The CDC didn’t have the agenda of screaming to be heard like they have now. Today they are screaming for attention to get more funding, and power, and t.v. and the press are pushing it because they are dying to make Trump look bad. We have 100 million more people in the U.S. now than in 69, and still the 100K deaths here back then hardly made the papers. The average American didn’t have time to notice anyway. It wasn’t sexy enough.
We were still reeling from some monumental events in a very short time frame. It was THE 60’s !!! Jack Kennedy shot in Dallas. The Pill and the sexual revolution, WOMEN’S LIB, The Beatles, The British invasion, Bobby, MLK, walking on the moon long before Michael Jackson or Sting. Oh, and lets not forget Viet Nam, Flower Power and all the protests going on. You think the newspapers and Walter Cronkite were talking about the flu ? Puh–lease !
In the midst of all that if you were 16 yrs. old and carried golf bags at the local country club for a job you could go to The Ticketron machine and pay $16 each for a day’s ticket to go to an “Aquarian Exposition” of 3 Days of Peace and Music near White Lake in Bethel N.Y. Jimi, the Who, the first appearance anywhere of CSN, Sha Na Na, Joe Cocker, Janis, I think Arlo, Santana and on and on…….
If you were staying in an all summer campground on The Delaware River named River Beach in Milford Pa, It was only a maybe 90 minute drive away. YAHOO ! Go in classic style, right ? My buddy Greg and I got tix, and his 2 year older brother Rick had the 57 Chevy convertible. I’m in the back seat using 4 cases of (somehow miraculously unopened) Budweiser in cans as an armrest. We cross into Port Jervis on Rte 209 and head up the road. Then somewhere along Rte 97 in Mongaup (40 miles from the festival) there are flashing cop lights in the middle of the highway. N.Y. State Troopers with the road closed. “Howdy boys. Where you goin? Oh you can’t go to the festival. It’s waaaay too overcrowded. You can’t even get close to it. Just turn around and go home”. Some people just don’t listen, and they always have a response. I’m guilty of that. I’m in the back seat and I immediately pipe in that “you can’t stop us. We have tickets. You gonna give us our money back?” As we all pulled out our tickets. He waved us through.
Yes we had fun. Yes the rain and the mud were a total pain in the ass. We couldn’t carry our tent all those miles so we slept on the ground in the open and we were cold and wet at night, or hot and steaming in the afternoon August sun. We had no change of clothes that never dried and food was real hard to come by. But I saw Richie Havens open the show, Jimi at 6 a.m. on Monday, and almost everything in between. God Bless America. Believe it or not, I didn’t talk with anyone about any flu virus that wknd. Would you at the party of the century ?
Paul Plante says
Did you happen to see Hillary Clinton naked and slithering around in the mud and having the time of her life before it became time to enter the adult world while you were there?
That would count for seeing everything, alright.
MJM says
The Mirror is obviously SERIOUSLY losing editorial credibility. Now it is failing to keep complete and total lying impersonators from writing here and pretending to be someone else. The REAL PAUL must be fuming. This submission OBVIOUSLY could not have come from Paul Plante, and this is obvious for 2 reasons. With all of the corrections to so many opinions that the real Paul Plante has submitted, we all know he would never speak of Hillary Rodham as Hillary Clinton at Woodstock. No such obvious simple mistake of spins of the earth could occur. Even more blatantly obvious is the fact that Paul can’t make a submission that is only 2 sentences long. Sorry Paul. I couldn’t resist. A little humor hurts no one.
Paul Plante says
Humor is very important right now, MJM!
Humor gets you over into the parasympathetic portion of your autonomous nervous system which is much better for your immune system than being frightened and scared, which raises your cortisol levels and lowers your immunity.
As a frail older person, I think laughing every day, even at ourselves, is a good thing.
CAPT Les Horn, USN (Ret) says
WHAT ALL AMERICANS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HILLARY CLINTON’S ALLEGED SAP COMPROMISE–MAJ ED COET, USA (RET)
[COURTESY: CAPT Les Horn, USN (Ret)]
My name is Ed Coet. I am a retired US Army Intelligence Officer. In my last job in the army I was the Chief of the Human Intelligence Branch for the US European Command in Stuttgart, Germany. In that capacity I was also the Designated Program Manager for a Special Access Program (SAP) like the SAP that Hillary Clinton is alleged to have compromised in the most recent State Department Inspector General report to congress and which has been widely reported in the news. Here is what I personally know about SAP’s and what I can attest to in an unclassified forum:
1. The names of each SAP are themselves classified Top Secret because the information within the SAP are far and above Top Secret.
2. SAP’s are so sensitive that even people who have security clearances giving them access to Top Secret Sensitive Compartment Information (TS SCI), an enormously high security clearance level, cannot have accesses to a SAP’s unless they receive a special indoctrination into the SAP based on an operational “must know” that exceeds all other “need to know” standards.
3. Being “read on” for a SAP is far more then acknowledging in writing that you have been briefed on the SAP. It is an in-depth “indoctrination” into the given SAP, and each SAP is itself compartmented separately from other SAPS. Having access to one SAP does not give you access to another SAP, and in fact rarely does. Only a tiny handful of people have knowledge of all SAP’s. SAP’s are the most stringently compartmented and protected information in the entire US government.
4. Unlike Top Secret SCI which is maintained in highly secure Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilitates (SCIF’s) managed by specially trained Special Security Officers (SSO’s) at various levels of command, every single SAP is managed by an individually designated Program Manager for each individual SAP covering an entire theater of operations. In other words, SAP Program Managers are far fewer in number than there is SSO’s. SSO’s are not cleared to even know about SAP’s or to maintain information about them in their already enormously secure SCIF’s. How SAP’s are secured cannot be discussed because of the sensitive beyond Top Secret nature in which it is done.
5. Unlike individuals with the highest Top Secret SCI access security clearances, who must undergo a special background information with periodic “bring-up” background investigation, those tiny few who have access to SAP’s must also endure periodic polygraph tests in addition to the most comprehensive of special background investigations. I used to have to schedule four-star generals and admirals to be polygraphed in order for them to maintain their access to my SAP. Many generals and admirals who obviously have the highest security clearances still did not rate being indoctrinated into my SAP. In fact, they didn’t even know the SAP existed.
6. Compromise of a SAP is the single most dangerous security violation that can ever happen to the USA. Even the enormously damaging revelations of the Edward Snowden’s TOP Secret SCI security compromise does not reach the level of a SAP compromise.
7. To put SAP information in to an unsecure sever like Hillary Clinton’s unsecure server is a class one felony that could, in some cases, result in life in prison. That is because such a compromise is so dangerous that it could and likely will result in the death of people protected by and within the scope of the SAP.
As a former SAP Program Manager I believe it is inconceivable that if it is verified that Hillary Clinton’s server actually had SAP information on it that she could possibly escape indictment and criminal prosecution. As hard as it is to imagine, that would even be worse then electing to not prosecute a mass murdering serial killer because even they could not inflict as much damage on our country as the compromise of a SAP. Compromise of a SAP not only could — but without doubt would — cause serious damage to our national security.
If it is true that Hillary Clinton had SAP information on her unsecure server, whether it was marked or not, you can be sure that the FBI will strongly recommend that charges be brought against Hillary Clinton and continue in an exhaustive investigation to trace back to every single person that had even the tiniest role in this unbelievable security compromise.
If the Attorney General, through “prosecutorial discretion,” elected not to prosecute this crime, I believe congress would have no alternative but to impeach her, and the FBI would then have no choice but to conduct a criminal investigation of her for a deliberate cover up –- so grave is this security violation.
If President Obama were to pardon Hillary Clinton for a compromise of this magnitude he would render himself in the historical record as an “enemy of the state,” and could himself face criminal prosecution –- so grave is such a security compromise. Nobody, not even the POTUS could gets away with something like this in our system of government. If anyone could escape persecution for compromising a SAP, we are deep trouble as a nation. No president who loves this country and is true to his oath would ever allow anyone, not even his or her closest and most loved relative, to get away with a SAP compromise. It is simply unimaginable that this could ever happen.
If the ongoing investigation finds that Hillary Clinton compromised a SAP, then we all should know with certainty, regardless of political persuasion, that she is entirely unfit to hold public office of any kind let alone President of the USA — and ALL Americans should never tolerate it. Compromising a SAP is an absolute “disqualifier” for public office and access to our nations most sensitive information – period.
ED COET
Major, US Army (Retired)
Paul Plante says
MJM, thanks for pointing out my very serious faux pas there, calling Hillary by her married name before she was even married!
Yes, I must admit I was hasty there, you know, the pressure of the moment what with all this COVID crisis going on, and by being hasty, I made a serious mistake, because even after she was married, she was still Hillary Rodham.
So, here I am, admitting to the whole candid world that yes, it was me and wrong I was, and thank you to MJM for so politely pointing that out to both me and the candid world, as well.
So, back to the essential existential question – did you see her naked as the day she was born slithering around in the mud at Woodstock, maybe pretending she was really in Viet Nam, where there was also a lot of mud to slither in, and having the time of her life before she went out into the world of adults to become a very, very, important person?
She was known for skinny-dipping in Lake Waban, the campus swimming spot, when she went to exclusive and elite Welleley College.
So for her, Woodstock would have been the last Hurrah!