What COVID-19 policies would be best now

By Kevin Roche

Coronamonomania is alive and well.  After over a year of dealing with this serious epidemic, you might imagine that we had learned how to minimize the overall toll from the epidemic itself and our response to it.  From the start the response has been marked by hysteria, panic, herd mentality and lack of rational consideration of the effect of actions.  While we could be presented with an opportunity for a reset, instead we are have the same bozos in charge, and some with even worse approaches, with two charter members of the Axis of Evil advising the new administration.

Here is my advice about the appropriate course of action. Number one is get the kids back in real school, every day, no masks or other pointless nonsense, and fully participating in extracurricular activities. The damage done is irreparable for many children, and it has to stop now. School boards, teachers, teachers unions, administrators and others who in any manner impede this return should be fined and imprisoned. For a country that supposedly cares about children, what we have done is disgraceful and inexcusable.

Focus vaccinations solely on the elderly, particularly in congregate living settings.  This is where serious illness and deaths are almost exclusively occurring.  Limiting those supposed CV-19 deaths will undermine the ongoing panic purveyors and enable a return to a more balanced and sane policy.  Do not vaccinate children unless and until there is a long-term, very large study of the vaccines in children that shows complete safety.  Given the effects in some adults and the extremely limited risks to children from CV-19, there is no basis for vaccinating children until we know it is completely safe.

Reopen businesses and workplaces.  We have done enough economic and social damage.

Stop the testing madness.  How completely fitting is it that on the same day we get a new administration, suddenly the World Health Organization discovers that there may be serious issues with PCR testing.  (WHO Notice)  Here is what the notice says: “careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed. The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load. Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.”   In other words, stop using high cycle numbers as an indication of positivity and if a person is asymptomatic, they probably aren’t really positive.

The notices goes on to state: “WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases. This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.”

Sound familiar?  These warnings have been sounded since the beginning of the epidemic by multiple sources.  They were ignored, leading to grossly inflated case and death counts.  If they suddenly begin to be followed,  we will see a dramatic drop in cases, which will also help remove the basis for media and politician hysteria, but should also alert the public to just how badly it has been misled.

So how about instead of spending billions more on pointless testing of asymptomatic persons, we return to the rational policy followed by the countries which have low case counts–only test people with symptoms or who have clearly had contact with a symptomatic person that could result in transmission.  That might allow actual useful contact tracing as well.

Tell the public the truth about the damage done by lockdowns and other responses to the epidemic.  Do the research and report results on missed health care, mental health issues, drug and alcohol abuse, child and domestic abuse, suicides, business closures and on and on.  Report those results as prominently as cases and deaths.

Do a full chart review of a large sample of cases and tell the truth about how many hospitalizations and deaths were actually caused by CV-19 as opposed to being associated with those unreliable PCR test results.

Stop the mask nonsense. It should be apparent to everyone that community masking makes zero difference, in fact maybe they are virus collection devices that exacerbate spread.

That would be my approach. The only reason any of these will be implemented is because the new administration will want to pretend that it has gotten everything under control and claim victory. Whatever the reason, a more sensible set of responses should be welcomed.