COVID Resurgent: Of Hares and Foxes; Primer for Policy Makers, Part 2

We continue from COVID Resurgent: Of Hares and Foxes; Primer for Policy Makers, Part 1. Of relevance,

(CNN) Kazakhstan denies Chinese government report that country has ‘unknown pneumonia’ outbreak more deadly than Covid-19

(The Diplomat) China Missteps With Wild Allegation of a ‘New’ Deadly Pneumonia in Kazakhstan, Certain of total falsification, the article blames aggressive diplomacy.

So is  “unknown…more deadly pneumonia” reliably false? Quoting CNN,

In a statement later on Friday, the Kazakhstan health ministry acknowledged the presence of “viral pneumonias of unspecified etiology,” but denied that the outbreak was new or unknown.

Condensed and paraphrased, this is “We don’t know what they/it are but they/it aren’t new.”   But if they don’t know what it/they are, how can “authorities” authoritatively know it/they aren’t new? The political penalties of admitting or denying anything related to COVID-19 are huge. When we stir it all together, a disquieting soup emerges:

  • The existence of a  more deadly pneumonia in Kazakhstan cannot be completely discounted. China’s loudmouth ambassador may have actually noticed something. Anecdotal evidence is one of the doors to the scientific method.

Companion thoughts:

  • Whoever writes an article will focus on what they know. For The Diplomat, it’s diplomacy.
  • As  Dr. Fauci has remarked, we are still in the first wave of a pandemic.  (CNN) US is still ‘knee-deep’ in the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, Fauci says.
  • A second wave, which has not yet occurred,  has a very specific character: an initial geographic focus, spread along travel routes, with some change in symptoms and outcome.
  • Pandemics of the past had second waves of increasing virulence.
  • Kazakhstan has all the characteristics of a place where a second, more deadly wave would start.

While the medical community has learned a lot about COVID, there are still places in the halls of power where knowledge is scarce. So I’ve come up with a dramatic demonstration. We’ll need to rent the Houston Astrodome. It should be cheap, because it’s practically falling down. There is a phone number on the web. Also, pick up a few hundred hares or rabbits, a dozen foxes, lots of hay and loose underbrush, and a year’s supply of rabbit feed.

When you’ve got it all set up, with the lease signed, preferably by later today, get back to me and we’ll continue.

It should be most enlightening.