I walked away feeling notably enlightened after listening to one of my favorite podcast hosts, Steven
Levitt (Co-Author of Freakonomics) interviewing Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed (the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine program). Highly recommended. The show is called “People I Mostly Admire.” This episode was released on Dec 11, 2020.
KU did a study of Kansas counties which implemented masking requirements versus those which did not. As one might have expected, the counties which had mask mandates had half or less of the transmission rates of corornavirus than those which chose to not order masks to be worn.
I contacted the study’s author at KU and proposed the analysis offered below and she confirmed the efficacy of my analysis, I am comparing apple to apples where S. Korea nationally took all expert-recommended, science-based measures to suppress the pandemic and we did none.
We and S. Korea had our first confirmed COVID-19 cases on January 20, 2020.
We did nothing. S. Korea did everything.
At 7:55 a.m. CDT, 12/15/2020, U.S. population was 330,710,938. The Census Population Clock put S. Korean population at 51,250,000.
At 7:26 a.m. EDT, today, we had 16,520,408 COVID-19 infections and 300,494 COVID-19 dead. S. Korea had 44,364 and 600, respectively, per Johns Hopkins’ COVID-19 Map.
Divide the respective numbers of infections and deaths by the relative populations of both nations to arrive at both the infection and death rates from COVID-19 for the U.S. and South Korea.
Multiply the U.S. population by the derived infection and morbidity rates of S. Korea so we may compare them. The S. Koreans adopted all national measures to suppress the pandemic, we adopted none, and both nations had their first confirmed cases of COVID-19 on January 20, 2020.
Multiply U.S. population by S. Korea’s COVID-19 infection rate to compare numbers of expected U.S.COVID-19 infected, yielding 286,263.39 or 286,264, not 16,520,408.
Multiply U.S. population by S. Korea’s COVID-19 morbidity rate to compare numbers of expected U.S. dead by COVID-19, yielding 3,867.99 or 3,867, not 300,494.
Subtract expected numbers from the actual numbers to get 16,234,144 avoidable COVID-19 infected U.S. citizens and 296,626 avoidable COVID-19 dead U.S. citizens due to U.S. officials’ refusals to implement national, expert-recommended, science-based measures like S. Korea’s!
Nationwide testing, tracing of contacts, isolation, treatment, social and workplace distancing, universal mask-wearing and washing or sanitizing hands, and 14-day quarantine on persons traveling here from foreign nations would have prevented over 16.2 million infections and saved over 296,600 lives.
S. Korea did and is doing it. The U.S. refused.
S. Korea did not close its economy for a single day.
Now is the time for immediate compassionate, caring leadership to stop the out-of-control COVID-19 pandemic!
U.S. COVID-19 TIMELINE-12/15/2020
by Tim Hogan
We were specifically warned of an impending “unexpected” pandemic that would hit the U.S. during Trump’s term.
In February 2017, Dr. Fauci decried the lack of U.S. preparedness and U.S. inability to respond, and urged more funding and resources to be directed to fight any such an epidemic!
https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-warned-trump-infectious-disease-pandemic-danger-2017-2020-4
2.Trump and Republicans gutted the budget for such preparations, canceled Obama era contracts for machines to make 1.5 million N95 masks daily, and moved people away from emerging or flu disaster preparation to chemical and biological WMD prep and response.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-pandemic-trumps-stockpile-chief-put-focus-on-biodefense-an-old-client-benefited/2020/05/04/d3c2b010-84dd-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html
https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/robert-kadlec-the-trump-administrations-top-official-for-addressing-biological-threats-awarded-a-2-billion-contract-to-a-company-he-used-to-advise/articleshow/75548334.cms
The U.S. and S. Korea had their first confirmed COVID-19 cases on January 20, 2020.
In the 330 days that have passed since the first confirmed U.S. case of COVID-19, we could have made 495,000,000 N95 masks.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191
January 2019 – September 2019, HHS gamed out “Crimson Contagion,” where a bird flu-like virus from Chinese open food markets hit the U.S.
The “Crimson Contagion” after-action report of October 2019, reported we were unprepared, would suffer millions of infections or deaths, and that the N.E. and upper-Midwest would be hit first and hardest. (pp. 46-51).
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6824-2019-10-key-findings-and-after/05bd797500ea55be0724/optimized/full.pdf
In November 2019, U.S. intelligence briefed Trump on the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China and its threat to the U.S. No travel restrictions were imposed at the time.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/intelligence/491712-us-intelligence-warned-in-november-that-virus-spreading
The U.S.’ first confirmed case of COVID-19 was on Jan. 20, 2020.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191
U.S., Chinese, and WHO doctors in China and Geneva warned the U.S. in January, 2020 about the spread of the novel coronavirus.
https://www.who.int/news/item/30-01-2020-statement-on-the-second-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-outbreak-of-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)
HHS issued an 01/31/2020 national Public Health Emergency declaration on the novel coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.
Trump issued a partial travel ban on Chinese travel from Hubei, China but, no restrictions on U.S. citizens’ traveling to and from China.
Some 40,000 non-U.S. citizens traveled to the U.S. via air at that time and another 300,000 plus citizens traveled to and from China with little attention paid to their health statuses.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/presidential-proclamation-coronavirus.html
https://apnews.com/article/d227b34b168e576bf5068b92a03c003d
The January HHS declaration of a national Public Health Emergency was extended for another 90 days, and again most recently, renewed on October 2, 2020 for 90 more days.
https://www.phe.gov/emergency/news/healthactions/phe/Pages/default.aspx
Trump’s first national action to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic was on 3/21/2020, by sending out self-promoting postcards to all U.S. households and small businesses.
The postcards did contain helpful guidelines to follow to avoid infection by COVID-19.
Trump followed NONE of the guidelines to avoid COVID-19 infection, later making the White House and environs a “hotspot” for COVID-19 infections.
Trump and his family all were infected as were over 50 persons at various White House “super spreader” events where no masks were worn, no social distancing was practiced, and DC crowd-size restrictions were ignored.
Trump stiffed the USPS for mailing the postcards.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/03/27/trump-faces-criticism-coronavirus-mailing-featuring-his-name/2925379001/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/14/coronavirus-trump-admin-usps-march-covid-19-postcard/5797364002/
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-white-house-covid-hotspot-unsafe-workplace-workers-rights-safety-2020-10
We have lost an average of 910.59 innocent Americans killed by COVID-19 each of the 330 days since January 20, 2020 ( # of U.S. deaths/330) , including 400.49 children (# of U.S. infections x .008 child morbidity rate/330)!
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
https://www.census.gov/popclock/world
https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/children-and-covid-19-state-level-data-report/
Trump’s second national action on COVID-19 was the May 2020 issuance of more “voluntary guidelines” on a CDC website for what steps for businesses and schools to take before safely re-opening.
Business interests complained the guidelines were too restrictive and they were only up on the CDC website for a day.
Businesses and schools later re-opened, but no state nor any locality met a single “voluntary guideline” metric before re-opening as Trump claimed a false choice between the economy and the public’s health and well-being saying the “cure can’t be worse than the disease.”
https://www.courthousenews.com/trump-squelches-cdc-guide-to-reopen-country/
Nations that successfully suppressed the COVID-19 pandemic imposed immediate national mandates for testing, contact tracing and isolation, and treatment when necessary, social AND workplace distancing, and mandatory mask wearing, as well as frequent had washing or sanitizing, and quarantine of travelers from abroad.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/03/12/china-and-south-korea-models-seem-like-only-way-to-contain-covid-19/?sh=16176f8047d3
No nation that ordered immediate national, expert recommended, science-based measures to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic was forced to close their economy as we did.
We lost trillions in GDP, wages, and shutting down most small businesses resulted in record numbers of jobless and record numbers of unemployment claims when we completely and avoidably shut down our national economy.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/26/821688981/how-south-korea-reigned-in-the-outbreak-without-shutting-everything-down
Trump and Republicans refused to take any prompt, nationally mandated action to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’ve had 16,520,408 COVID-19 infected and 300,494 COVID-19 dead as of 7:26 a.m. EDT today.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
As of 7:55 a.m. today, we could’ve had only 286,264 total COVID-19 infections and only 3,868 total COVID-19 dead if we’d done as S. Korea did.
Comparison of the infection and death rates of both nations, show we could have prevented 16,234,144 COVID-19 infected and prevented 296,626 COVID-19 dead had we taken action like S. Korea.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
https://www.census.gov/popclock/world
Trump and the Republicans’ “do nothing” policies gave us a COVID-19 infection rate of 57.51 times and a death rate of 77.58 times those of S. Korea!
U.S. COVID-19 infections today are 22.53% of the world total and U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 18.54% of the world total, leading all nations.
Today, we have 4.290% of the world’s population.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
https://www.census.gov/popclock/world
In June, 2020 Trump and the Republicans ordered only 100 million vaccine doses from Pfizer. The vaccine takes two shots to be effective so there are ONLY 50,000,000 complete dosages for the 330,710,938 Americans as of 7:55 a.m. 12/15/2020!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/08/coronavirus-pfizer-vaccine-doses-united-states/
https://www.kltv.com/2020/11/16/biden-team-ponders-vaccine-plans-trump-stalls-handoff/
https://www.census.gov/popclock/world
It is expected as early as 12/16/2020 another vaccination made by Moderna will be available for COVID-19 which has advantages over the Pfizer vaccine by not requiring it to be preserved by super-freezing, not available to many rural hospitals, and it appears it may prevent transmission or “shedding” of the virus by those exposed and having been vaccinated by the Moderna vaccine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/health/covid-moderna-vaccine.html
Tim – There is a lot in your comment. I’ll respond only to one thing here. Perhaps you didn’t hear the entire podcast. Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed (the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine program) indicates that the U.S. has bought the 1st 100 M doses, but has options to buy many more, at last 200 M additional doses, from each of the pharmaceutical makers.
I have not yet been able to verify the ordering nor the time of any delivery of any additional vaccines or quanties from any other source. If true, and I would assume the possibility, that makes only one paragraph possibly incomplete as to its scope and current information. I have included that paragraph for purposes of editing and propose it be elininated or I will repost with it deleted, as per your comment.
“In June, 2020 Trump and the Republicans ordered only 100 million vaccine doses from Pfizer. The vaccine takes two shots to be effective so there are ONLY 50,000,000 complete dosages for the 330,710,938 Americans as of 7:55 a.m. 12/15/2020!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/08/coronavirus-pfizer-vaccine-doses-united-states/
https://www.kltv.com/2020/11/16/biden-team-ponders-vaccine-plans-trump-stalls-handoff/
https://www.census.gov/popclock/world“
A thorough review of HHS/Warp Speed releases and press reports shows only one update on any information about future vaccine purchases by HHS, included in the release mentioned in the url below. I have changede the paragraph 19 to reflect the most current and current accurate information. The person in the podcast apparently is misinformed, or lied like a big rug! Hmm, 21,000 lies and counting from Trump, I am not surprised!
It is expected as early as 12/16/2020 another vaccination made by Moderna will be available for COVID-19 which has advantages over the Pfizer vaccine by not requiring it to be preserved by super-freezing, not available to many rural hospitals, and it appears it may prevent transmission or “shedding” of the virus by those exposed and having been vaccinated by the Moderna vaccine. However, the Trump administration has only purchased an option for 100 million doses which would be available June 1,2021 at the earliest.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/health/covid-moderna-vaccine.html
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/12/11/trump-administration-purchases-additional-100-million-doses-covid-19-investigational-vaccine-moderna.html
Tim Hogan,
Your jeremiad on what did and did not happen is fascinating and should inform our conversation. It should not be taken at face value, however. In February 2017, Dr. Fauci did indeed warn of the danger of a novel disease and lobby for more funding to prepare for it. A new administration had recently taken office, and literally thousands of government offices were warning of the dangers against which they heroically struggled and lobbied for more funding to bolster their efforts. This happens not only when a new administration takes office, but throughout the year, morning, afternoon and night. It is the nature of government bureaucrats to proclaim the importance of their work, warn of the dangers of failure to support that work properly, and insist that added funding is needed. There is non-stop rivalry for assignment of resources in government. It’s how government works. I expect other institutes within NIH lobbied for added resources at the same time, and offered a stark view of the future were their own heroic efforts not adequately supported.
I read the cited business insider dot com article. It never claims the prediction of an impending unexpected pandemic. If you read the phrase out loud, slowly, you will understand that it is utter nonsense. One simply cannot predict something unexpected. It uses the term “surprise.” Dr. Fauci was correct this time; his predecessors had made similar doomsday claims with every new incoming administration since the NIH’s founding in 1887,
The Washington Post citation makes much of a sole-sourced contract for Smallpox Vaccine, claiming correctly that only one source was ever considered, and Dr. Kladec had consulted to the company at some unspecified earlier time. It then notes “Emergent is the only licensed maker of the vaccine,” If there is only one possible source, competitive bidding is a farce, The solution, of course, is to seize the intellectual property under eminent domain rules – precisely what was occurring with our trading partners that was costing the U.S. billions every year.If the government had a contract to acquire machines to manufacture N95 masks, it was a mistake. Government has no expertise in manufacturing other than nuclear weapons; what was needed were contracts to purchase manufactured masks. I can send you instructions on how to manufacture them in bulk if you wish.
Comparison of South Korea (38,502 square miles) to the US (3,800,000 square miles, two orders of magnitude greater) is inappropriate. South Korea has a single land border, the most secure land border in the world. Otherwise, it is an island. The US has a 1,954-mile long border with Mexico, with half the country condemning us for attempting to secure it. The best records have been established by Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. There’s a pattern there.
Much of the rest is well-documented but irrelevant. I’m not trying to justify the god-awful Trump record, I just want us to focus on those things that merit criticism.
Sir,
KU did a study comparing COVID-19 infection rates between KS counties adopting mandatory masking laws versus those which opted out and the results were unsurprising.
The masked counties had far fewer infections.
The Econ Dept. at KU did the study so I contacted them and made known the exact issues regarding the disparities between the U.S. and S. Korea you mentioned. Surprise, what was important was the date of the first confirmed case and the steps then taken by countries with a similar degree of development in medical and societal measures to suppress COVID-19! I asked if I were comparing apples to apples and I was told yes, I was. I confirmed the soundness of my methodology.
https://ipsr.ku.edu/covid19/
Obama bought the machine to reduce our dependency upon foreign souces for PPE and it was likely to be a leasing arreangement for a current U.S. manufacturer to be able to use the machine which would have made some 470,000,000 masks by today or whatever 1.5 million x 332 days since our first confirmed COVID-19 case. We still have shortages which could have been avoided.
As far as the smallpox and anthrax vaccines being mentioned, it was to illustrate the corruption and cronyism in the HHS purchasing process, and the wrong-headedness of the HHS ASPR, ret. AF Col. Bob Kadledc, M.D. Kadlec spent his entire career fighting chemical and biological weapons and completely discounted and derided any possibility of a COVID-19 bird flu-like pandemic and told Congress that in 2013. Kadlec unilaterally diarmed us right before the pandemic hit. “Crimson Contagion” even gave him another warning he was wrong, as did the intelligence community in 11/2019.
Emergent actually did one better, it bought the company which had the sole source of the vaccines as they were under patent, so no other supplier could be used if we wanted that vaccine.
Emergent then jacked up the price to over double what is was under the old contract and seller, which it had just purchased.
Emergent also got another $770 million in government contracts after the vaccine buy and became so reliant upon government contracts it was required to disclose the same to the SEC. Emergent’s CFO is a former boss, business partner, and client of Dr. Kadlec. Kadlec also canned Rick Bright when he balked at all the phony science from Trump over COVID-19.
So, I compared apples to apples and the numbers are correct as to what we could have had versus what we have IN INFECTIONS AND KILLED BY covid-19. .
There was vast corruption and lying and distortion around the Trump and Republicans’ “do nothing” plan to suppress COVID-19.
And now we know Trump’s chief advisor personally brought in by him from outside, wanted “herd immunity,” the functional plan Trump adopted, to be how the U.S. attempted to suppress or deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/12/16/we-want-them-all-infected-trump-appointee-repeatedly-pushed-for-herd-immunity-while-at-hhs/?sh=63df9d0b7a05
The upshot is we needed to do and still need to do what S. Korea did to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic, and Forbes agrees with me. Anything else is insanity.
Sir,
I will respond only to your final point. It is not possible to do in a country with 100x the land area and 6x the population, plus a million illegal immigrations per year, what South Korea did. When an unpopular President is helped along by the “loyal opposition” by calling him a racist for trying to close borders, mocked by his most vocal opponent who insisted that it was perfectly safe to visit San Francisco’s Chinatown, while she was unmasked and not observing proper separation, and instead of collaboration on a problem was faced with an impeachment, how did you expect things to turn out? Bernie Sanders was still insisting in April 2020 that there was no reason to close our borders, when nearly every other country was doing so. We may need to do what South Korea did, but there is one complication: we can’t do contact tracing effectively.