Why Won't The Public Follow Bad Science, Part Deux

In a season of sport traditions extinguished this was monumental. Because California believes that the only way to end Covid-19 is to incarcerate its entire population— healthy ones, too— for an indefinite period, the pooh-bahs who run college football have transferred the NCAA semifinal from Pasadena’s historic Rose Bowl to Jerry Jones’ AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. 

Thus ends a tradition dating back to 1916. No football game, no parade, no Rose Queen. Californians will have to make do with turkey leftovers on the TV tray as the game between Alabama and Notre Dame, like so much in the Golden State these days, is exported to Texas. Because Covid can be spread by people who aren’t sick.( For perspective, California has 40 million people. Right now about 16,000 are hospitalized from/with #Covid. That’s 0.004)

Here in the True North, the health commissars rate the threat of asymptomatic transmission so grave that Canadian NHL teams might not play games with teams from other provinces in Canada. Imagine, no NHL games in Canada for just the second time since 1917 (Currently four percent of Canada’s predicted 280 K deaths in 2020 will be with/ from Covid-19). 

There is— as Monty Python used to say—hope for a constitutional settlement on the issue. But never underestimate how seriously asymptomatic spread— people with no symptoms passing on the virus— has taken hold as a grave threat. Or the intrusive powers of the Nanny state deciding what’s good for you (and better for them).

How often have you heard earnest friends concede through their three masks that, yes, many of those positive tests spat out by the PCR system are asymptomatic. Even if you wash hands, keep six feet away and wear a mask, it’s not enough. Seeming healthy folk can still be super-spreaders, killing old folks like they were Andrew Cuomo. Okay, they won’t use Cuomo, even if it’s apt. 

Remember how people gathering in Toronto’s Bellwoods Park this spring were labelled silent “killers” by the more unsettled elements of JohnToryStan? And the traceable impact was zilch? Asymptomatic spread remains the classic rebuttal, and it has worked through the various phases of the virus since February.

So bye-bye Rose Bowl. In Northern California, where the Covid-19 mania is of a 10X order, no contact sports are allowed, sending the San José Sharks to Phoenix for the time being. Sports leagues worried about bad press keep pulling asymptomatic people from competition based on PCR testing that, as we wrote in October, is highly unreliable. Anyone demurring was labelled a Trump fascist or Ford fanatic.

The problem is that the asymptomatic-spread theory is largely unsupported by real scientific data; the evidence has always been pointing in the other direction. As Jeffrey Tucker pointed out in November at the American Institute For Enterprise, the proof has been with us for a while. 

“On June 7, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, told a press conference that from the known research, asymptomatic spread was ‘very rare.’ ‘From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual.’ She added for emphasis: ‘It’s very rare.’”

Van Kerkhove was immediately rebuked for breaking ranks by those invested in Lockdown Inc. Soon, she was backpedaling like Deoin Sanders, watering down her statement lest she become a non-person in a health world that rewards groupthink over ingenuity. “It’s clear that both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals are part of the transmission cycle,” the WHO clarified. “The question is what is the relative contribution of each group to the overall number of cases.”

In the same way that MSM made Joe Biden’s pay-for-play scandals in Ukraine and China go away in the final weeks of the presidential election, this asymptomatic spread data was deep-sixed by the Stephen Colbert sheeple. Lockdown and wearing face diapers were again the order of the day (even if they didn’t show any measurable improvements.)

Then in November came a reinforcement of the WHO’s original contention. The folks who appear to have kicked off the Covid-19 event in Wuhan, China, released a massive study of 10 million people on the transmission of the virus. Even taking into account that it’s a Chinese study, it’s still stunning. 

Writes Tucker. “The study revealed something that hardly ever happens in these kinds of studies. There was not one documented case. Forget rare. Forget even (Dr. Anthony) Fauci’s previous suggestion that asymptomatic transmission exists but not does drive the spread. Replace all that with: never.“

The study concluded, “All city residents aged six years or older were eligible and 9,899,828 (92.9%) participated. No new symptomatic cases and 300 asymptomatic cases (detection rate 0.303/10,000, 95% CI 0.270–0.339/10,000) were identified. There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases.”

Okay, it’s the Chinese, right? Now, a Journal of the American Medical Association has done a meta-analysis of 54 studies with 77,758 participants. “It finds household secondary attack rate (chance an infected person will infect one or more people at home) is 18% if the index case is symptomatic and 0.7% if asymptomatic”.

In other words, the asymptomatic boogeyman used by defenders of the Covid-19 status quo is highly overrated— if not entirely fictional. Like so much of the consensus-driven research the asymptomatic spread theory seeks not to illuminate dark corners but to provide cover for health authorities who made disastrously wrong calls in the early going.

If you have not heard these studies in a media besotted with case numbers do not be alarmed. The medical authorities want them to go away. Their own claim on authority is predicated on creating obedience.

Why is this happening? Because the Covid-19 experience isn’t about Science anymore. It’s about politics, specifically identity politics. Using the pandemic to discredit enemies and buttress authority in the progressive culture.  (See: Trump) it’s about making sure all colours are accepted as long as they’re red. 

Too bad, then, they won’t have any red roses for the parade in Pasadena. Pity.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx