Two very long months ago, back when most Americans still had jobs and virtually no one was walking around with a jockstrap over their face claiming that it protected them from Wuhan virus, the CDC and some partner groups made this announcement:
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UCLA and Princeton University examined how long COVID-19 survives in the air as well as on copper, cardboard, plastic and stainless steel and then compared it with SARS, the coronavirus that emerged in late 2002 and killed nearly 800 people.
They found that COVID-19 was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper and up to 24 hours on cardboard. The new coronavirus can also last up to three days on plastic and stainless steel, the scientists concluded, adding the amount of the virus left on those surfaces decreases over time. Aerosols are solid or liquid particles that hang in the air, including fog, dust, and gas commonly used in medical procedures like ventilation and nebulizers.
The results suggest “that people may acquire the virus through the air and after touching contaminated objects,” Dr. Neeltje van Doremalen, a scientist from NIH and a lead researcher on the study, said in a press release announcing the findings Tuesday evening.
For the record, I’d just note that Dr. van Doremalen is in the Laboratory of Virology at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, just so you know this is not just some rando doctor.
This set off a frenzy of people wiping down fruits, vegetables, canned goods, and packaging and generally panicking.
For those of you still wiping down groceries and other packages amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, breathe a sigh of relief: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now says the novel virus “does not spread easily” from “touching surfaces or objects” — but experts warn that doesn’t mean it’s no longer necessary to take “practical and realistic” precautions in stopping the spread of COVID-19.
Although when the change was made is not currently clear, the federal health agency appears to have subtly shifted its guidelines from March which simply said it “may be possible” to spread the virus from contaminated surfaces.
“It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes,” the CDC said on a now-archived page from March 28. At the time, however, the CDC did note that this possible method of transmission “is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”
Even so, the CDC now includes “surfaces or objects” under a section that details ways in which the coronavirus does not readily transmit.
Other ways in which the virus does not easily spread is from animals to people, or from people to animals, the federal agency said on its updated page.
This new guidance follows by a month a similar announcement from the Food and Drug Administration:
The news comes after The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in mid-April issued a statement saying that there’s no need to wipe down food packaging after you’ve returned home from the grocery store.
“We want to reassure consumers that there is currently no evidence of human or animal food or food packaging being associated with transmission of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19,” the FDA said at the time.
If you are thinking the scientific advice given to the nation’s political leaders comes from a cabal of the kakistocracy, you would not be alone. Last Sunday, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was on Meet the Press and he unloaded on CDC…and got a surprising amount of support from non-CDC people:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “let the country down” early in the nation’s response to the Covid-19 crisis when it failed to scale diagnostic testing across the country, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said on Sunday.
“Early on in this crisis the CDC, which really had the most trusted brand around the world in this space, really let the country down with the testing,” Navarro told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Not only did they keep the testing within the bureaucracy, they had a bad test, and that did set us back.”
When asked whether the White House still has confidence in the CDC to lead the country’s response to the pandemic, Navarro said that “you should ask the president that question, not me.”
In April, The Washington Post reported that the CDC’s coronavirus testing kits were delayed due to “a glaring scientific breakdown” at the agency’s central lab. The error was “devastating to the country” and “really a terrible black mark on the CDC,” James Le Duc, a former CDC officer, told The Post.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration later confirmed with CNBC that the “CDC did not manufacture its test consistent with its own protocol,” according to a spokeswoman. The agency “was not able to determine from information provided by the CDC whether the test issues were due to a design or manufacturing issue,” the spokeswoman said.
Speaking with CBS on Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the CDC, which is an agency under HHS, has had to “literally build this from the ground up” and that it was the private sector’s role to expand the CDC-developed test. He said the initial contaminated tests that the CDC developed prevented some of the scale up “for a couple of weeks.”
Sadly, this kind of stupidity is par for the course for CDC. CDC has and does some great things but it is a failed organization that is currently living on its old press releases. What it would rather do is be a Karen-esque nanny brigade that tells you how to live and deal with political issues like health disparities, and obesity, and guns than deal with disease. When it does get put on the spot in an infectious disease crisis, it fails. If you go back to the response to the anthrax attacks that happened around 9/11, particularly the attack on the Brentwood (DC) USPS facility, you find blinding incompetence is the order of the day. (Making as much disclosure as I can comfortably make, I was in CDC, in a Center that was directly tasked with responding to the anthrax at the time and had a ringside seat at this particular circus.)
From the start, this crisis has been driven by fanciful models hawked to credulous reporters and pushed by people who wanted to damage President Trump in an election year. The actual scientific knowledge on this virus was minimal in all aspects but people who should know better saw personal and institutional gain in acting as though this was Armageddon. We know that face masks do nothing to prevent catching the virus. In fact, Dr. Fauci explains why face masks are actually detrimental on this 60 Minutes segment from March:
And yet, we are now forced to wear them in many states in order to shop and buffoons claim that if you don’t wear them then you are a bad person.
When this is all over, we’re going to see that the people we relied upon to advise policymakers were idiots…on a good day. The sad thing is that because they are scientists, they will be immune from all the consequences of their imbecility and hubris and when the next crisis happens, we’ll see these same morons calling the shots again.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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