Covid would be nearly over by now if not for government interference. For example, Rt values below 1 don't cure virus, instead prevent natural acquisition of herd immunity which is the only thing keeping 50 state dictatorships in power-BBC, 6/8/20

"The [Imperial College] model also predicted that the outbreak would be nearly over by now without lockdown, as so many people would have been infected” leading to herd immunity.”…6/8/20, BBC 

“With values of R_t below 1 in all countries, the rate of acquisition of herd immunity will slow down rapidly.“ 6/8/20, Imperial College Nature study 

June 8, 2020, “Coronavirus: Lockdowns in Europe saved millions of lives," BBC, James Gallagher, Health and science correspondent 

“Lockdowns have saved more than three million lives from coronavirus in Europe, a study estimates. 

The team at Imperial College London said the “death toll would have been huge” without lockdown. 

But they warned that only a small proportion of people had been infected and we were still only “at the beginning of the pandemic”.… 

The Imperial study assessed the impact of restrictions in 11 European countries…. 

Lockdown saved around 3.1 million lives, including 470,000 in the UK, 690,000 in France and 630,000 in Italy, the report in the journal Nature shows…. 

The model also predicted that the outbreak would be nearly over by now without lockdown, as so many people would have been infected. 

More than seven in 10 people in the UK would have had Covid, leading to herd immunity and the virus no longer spreading.”…
……………………………… 

Added: Imperial College Nature Study linked in above BBC article 

June 8, 2020, “Estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe," Nature 

“Seth Flaxman,

• Swapnil Mishra,
• Axel Gandy,
• H. Juliette T. Unwin,
• Thomas A. Mellan,
• Helen Coupland,
• Charles Whittaker,
• Harrison Zhu,
• Tresnia Berah,
• Jeffrey W. Eaton,
• Mélodie Monod,
• Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team,
• Azra C. Ghani,
• Christl A. Donnelly,
• Steven Riley,
• Michaela A. C. Vollmer,
• Neil M. Ferguson, 
• Lucy C. Okell and
• Samir Bhatt”

“Discussion” 

“With values of R_t below 1 in all countries, the rate of acquisition of herd immunity will slow down rapidly.”…[parag. two] 

“Acknowledgments" [include Bill Gates] 

“S.B. acknowledges the NIHR BRC Imperial College NHS Trust Infection and COVID themes, the Academy of Medical Sciences Springboard award and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. L.C.O. acknowledges funding from a UK Royal Society fellowship. Initial research on covariates in Supplementary Table 2 was crowdsourced; we thank a number of people across the world for help with this. This work was supported by Centre funding from the UK Medical Research Council under a concordat with the UK Department for International Development, the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Modelling Methodology and Community Jameel. We thank F. Valka for creating our website, and A. Gelman and the Stan team for helpful discussions. We acknowledge the resources provided by Cirrus UK National Tier-2 HPC Service at EPCC (http://www.cirrus.ac.uk) funded by the University of Edinburgh and EPSRC (EP/P020267/1), and cloud compute time donated by Microsoft and Amazon.”



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Faulty science believed by MLB: Up to 90% of positive US Covid tests should be classified negative and not contagious. PCR test caused massively damaging government policies, CDC says will examine use of tests ‘for policy decisions’-NY Times, 8/29/20

“In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.”…Most carrying insignificant amounts of virus are not likely to be contagious.... 

8/29/20, “Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be.” NY Times, Apoorva Mandavilli (Print ed., Sunday, August 30, Sec. A, page 6, NY ed.) 

“Some of the nation’s leading public health experts are raising a new concern…over coronavirus testing in the United States: The standard tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus. 

Most of these people are not likely to be contagious.… 

The most widely used diagnostic test for the new coronavirus, called a PCR test, provides a simple yes-no answer to the question of whether a patient is infected…. 

In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found…. 

“We’ve been using one type of data for everything, and that is just plus or minus — that’s all,” Dr. Mina said. “We’re using that for clinical diagnostics, for public health, for policy decision-making.”… 

The Food and Drug Administration said in an emailed statement that it does not specify the cycle threshold ranges used to determine who is positive, and that “commercial manufacturers and laboratories set their own.” 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is examining the use of cycle threshold measures “for policy decisions.” The agency said it would need to collaborate with the F.D.A. and with device manufacturers to ensure the measures “can be used properly and with assurance that we know what they mean.” 

The C.D.C.’s own calculations suggest that it is extremely difficult to detect any live virus in a sample above a threshold of 33 cycles. 

Officials at some state labs said the C.D.C. had not asked them to note threshold values or to share them with contact-tracing organizations. 

For example, North Carolina’s state lab uses the Thermo Fisher coronavirus test, which automatically classifies results based on a cutoff of 37 cycles. A spokeswoman for the lab said testers did not have access to the precise numbers…. 

“It’s just kind of mind-blowing to me that people are not recording the C.T. values from all these tests—that they’re just returning a positive or a negative,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York…. 

Officials at the Wadsworth Center, New York’s state lab, have access to C.T. values from tests they have processed, and analyzed their numbers at The Times’s request. In July, the lab identified 794 positive tests, based on a threshold of 40 cycles. 

With a cutoff of 35, about half of those tests would no longer qualify as positive. About 70 percent would no longer be judged positive if the cycles were limited to 30. 

In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Dr. Mina said. 

“I would say that none of those people should be contact-traced, not one,” he said. 

Other experts informed of these numbers were stunned. 

“I’m really shocked that it could be that high — the proportion of people with high C.T. value results,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “Boy, does it really change the way we need to be thinking about testing.”… 

The number of people with positive results who aren’t infectious is particularly concerning, said Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. “That worries me a lot, just because it’s so high,” he said…. 

The F.D.A. noted that people may have a low viral load when they are newly infected. A test with less sensitivity would miss these infections. 

But that problem is easily solved, Dr. Mina said: “Test them again, six hours later or 15 hours later or whatever,” he said. A rapid test would find these patients quickly, even if it were less sensitive, because their viral loads would quickly rise…. 

Dr. Mina and other researchers are questioning the use of PCR tests as a frontline diagnostic tool. 

People infected with the virus are most infectious from a day or two before symptoms appear till about five days after…. 

Highly sensitive PCR tests seemed like the best option for tracking the coronavirus at the start of the pandemic.”…

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Herd immunity could be 20% or less in NY City. Retreat of virus in Brazil’s Amazon “stuns” front line doctors, scientists, public health officials. No lockdowns, virus was allowed to run its natural course in Manaus-Washington Post

"European cities that were pummeled by the disease have begun to reopen without crippling second waves. In Guayaquil, the Ecuadoran metropolis...scientists have cautiously speculated that collective immunity has been reached. Some researchers are now suggesting the same about New York City....“You would have expected the cases to start growing very soon after interventions were lifted,” she said.  But they didn’t. And in most cases, they continued going down. It was quite unexpected.…Herd immunity could be lower than 20%…A paper published in Science in June…shaves the coronavirus herd immunity rate to 43%. Others say it might be lower.” 

Aug. 25, 2020, “Virus’s retreat in Brazilian Amazon upends notions of herd immunity,” Washington Post, Terrence McCoy, Heloisa Traiano


















“The hospital system was coming apart. Coronavirus patients were being turned away. Basic necessities – beds, stretchers, oxygen – had run out. Ambulances had nowhere to take patients. People were dying at home. Gravediggers couldn’t keep up. 

The human destruction in the Brazilian city of Manaus would be “catastrophic,” physician Geraldo Felipe Barbosa feared. 

But then, unexpectedly, it started to let up – without the interventions seen elsewhere. 

Hospitalizations of coronavirus patients plummeted in the state from a peak of more than 1,300 in May to fewer than 300 in August. Excess deaths in Manaus fell from around 120 per day to practically zero. The city closed its field hospital.   

In a country devastated by the novel coronavirus, where more than 3.2 million people have been infected [often without knowing it] and over 105,000 killed, the reversal has stunned front-line doctors. Manaus never imposed a lockdown or other strict containment measures employed successfully in Asia and Europe. And what policies did exist, many people ignored.

In the spring, the Amazonian city became a global symbol of the devastation the disease can wreak in the developing world.

But now it has returned to near normalcy – far sooner than many expected – and scientists and public health officials are asking why. The question is part of a broader debate among scientists and public health officials over the mechanics of herd immunity and the level of transmission that must be crossed before the disease starts to recede. 

European cities that were pummeled by the disease have begun to reopen without crippling second waves. In Guayaquil, the Ecuadoran metropolis where bodies were left on the streets, scientists have cautiously speculated that collective immunity has been reached. Some researchers are now suggesting the same about New York City.
 
[Chart: Long ago flattened curve in NY City, began March 11, peaked in mid April. Covid related deaths recorded in NY City five boroughs, NYC Dept. of Health website, as of 8/24/20] 

The factors that are helping to keep the virus at bay in Manaus and other cities remain unclear. Changed behaviors and individual community characteristics surely play a role. Manaus is testing [for antibodies or just for active virus?] far more than it once did. But whatever the dynamic, scientists and health officials are starting to wonder whether early prognostications about herd immunity overshot the mark. 

It was initially believed that between 60 and 70% of the population needed to develop antibodies to reach collective immunity. But Guayaquil never broke 33%. Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, never got past 20. 

“Manaus is an interesting case, indeed,” said Jarbas Barbosa da Silva, assistant director of the Pan American Health Organization. “The hypothesis – and this is just a hypothesis – is that the peak we had in Manaus was very strong, and there was such widespread community transmission that it may have produced some kind of collective immunity.” 

Draconian restrictive measures [may temporarily] reduce the disease sharply, Barbosa said. But in Manaus [where the virus was allowed to run its natural course], the reduction has been gradual, with a steady progression of new cases [which may or may not ever experience symptoms] still arriving every day. That curve suggests the disease followed a “natural dynamic,” Barbosa said. 

 

Manaus, he said, “paid a very large price” to get there. During the spring, it suffered three times as many deaths as normal. In all, the city of 2 million along the Amazon River buried some 3,300 people more than usual…. 

The idea of herd immunity [by vaccine should one exist] has long been used to justify and explain the purpose of mass vaccination campaigns. Scientists would plug the disease transmission rate – or how many people one sick person infects – into a calculation to determine the percentage of people who should be inoculated [if a vaccine exists]. For particularly infectious diseases, such as measles, that’s as high as 95%. For others, it’s lower. 

But researchers say collective immunity works differently in a live outbreak. The disease doesn’t simply vanish when a magic number is crossed. Instead, as the pool of potential victims shrinks, transmission decelerates until it’s gone….Once the pool of potential victims reaches a critical mass, an explosive resurgence is unlikely. Too many people would have already contracted the disease [though may never have known it, may have had few or no symptoms]. 

“In Italy, it struck the Milan region very badly,” said Tom Britton, a mathematician at Stockholm University. “But not Rome very much. If I had to bet money that there was a second wave, I would bet all of my money on Rome, rather than Milan.” 

 

Britton and other researchers have been studying what’s known as “heterogeneity in susceptibility.” Early herd immunity models – and vaccination campaigns – have operated from the assumption that everyone’s the same. But individuals vary: Some people are more socially active, others are more physically vulnerable.

 

Heterogeneity, researchers say, reduces the percentage of infection at which herd immunity may be achieved. The people most likely to get the disease and pass it on – the most socially active, the most susceptible – catch it first. But once they’re out of the pool of potential victims, the risk is less for everyone else.
“The effect of their immunity will be bigger,” Britton said. 

In a paper published in Science in June, he and other researchers estimated that population heterogeneity shaves the coronavirus herd immunity rate to 43%. Others say it might be lower. 

 

Gabriela Gomes, a mathematician at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, has scrutinized European cities overwhelmed by the disease. In a paper she wrote with nine other researchers, which hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, she arrived at a striking conclusion: Herd immunity could be lower than 20%. 
.........

“Without immunity, you would have expected the cases to start growing very soon after interventions were lifted,” she said. “That’s what we were saying at the time: ‘It’s premature to lift interventions. Cases will start going up.‘ But they didn’t. And in most cases, they continued going down. It was quite unexpected.”… 

 

Many researchers have been reluctant to say whether they believe the worst in some of the hardest-hit cities has already passed. No one knows how long immunity lasts. The virus could mutate. 

 

“In Manaus, maybe we’re done with it, and that’s it,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an environmental health scientist at Columbia University. “I would love that as well. But the reality is that it’s wishful thinking. It’s confirmation bias. We can’t pick evidence we hope is true. We have to be very careful about this because it could blow up in your face very quickly.”… 

 

Despite its physical remoteness in the rainforest, Manaus is one of Brazil’s most international cities. Drawn by a free-trade zone, companies from all over the world have put down roots in the Amazon. As the coronavirus spread worldwide, strains from China, Europe and the United States were soon circulating, unseen.   

 

It didn’t take long for the patient surge to overwhelm the hospital system. “People are dying in their houses,” Pinheiro Alves [a physician in Manaus] wept into the phone in early May, when things were at their worst. “They can’t get any help in the hospitals.”… 

People were still crowding the streets. Officials weren’t willing to impose a lockdown. In impoverished Manaus, where many already live on the brink, the mayor said it would lead to social chaos and violence. So Pinheiro Alves spent his off hours trying to jury-rig ventilators. 

Manaus Mayor Arthur Virgílio Neto said he “fought for social isolation.” 

“The attempt failed,” he said. “There wasn’t real social isolation. People still went out, and it wasn’t understood why. In the most difficult hours, I’d go to the field hospital, get stuck in a traffic jam and think, ‘Why aren’t people home? What are they doing out?'”

Every day, there would be a line of ambulances outside her hospital in central Manaus, each holding a patient in need of a bed. Sometimes they sat for hours, waiting for someone to die and relinquish their bed. 

At the height of the city’s outbreak, there would be three or four lined up. Then one day, it was two. Then one. 

“It was the first sign that the number of emergency calls were dropping,” [Physician Uildéia] Galvão said. 

Intensive care units started to clear. Emergency coronavirus calls slowed, dropping from 2,410 in April to fewer than 180 in July. The wail of ambulances quieted. Some scientists said victory was in sight. 

“Why Manaus will be the first Brazilian city to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic,” wrote a group of researchers from the Federal University of Amazonas. 

Street activity returned to pre-pandemic levels. People flocked to the river to swim and party. Appeals to wear masks: widely ignored. Private schools opened up. Then public. Cases continued to number in the hundreds every day, but far fewer were serious enough to warrant hospitalizations. 

“There isn’t a concrete explanation,” said Henrique dos Santos Pereira, a scientist at the Federal University of Amazonas. Maybe there’s an unseen biological immunity in the population. Or the city’s relative youth staved off the worst…. 

“We don’t know how many people are [may still be] susceptible,” dos Santos Pereira said. “In the beginning, we were thinking it was everywhere, but it doesn’t seem like the whole world is susceptible.…It is causing us to reconsider the theory of herd immunity.””…
……………………………….. 

Added: Underlying causes aren't mentioned above, but in NY City vast majority of deaths, 80%-89%, had underlying causes, per NY City government website, as of 8/24/20:
 

80%-89% of Covid deaths had underlying conditions, per chart: 

Age 18-44=80%
Age 45-64=89%
Age 65-74=89%
Age 75+=87%
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Covid self-defense kit based on zinc, quercetin and bromhexine for those at risk to discuss with doctors, since Autumn approaches in Northern Hemisphere and Western officials are silent on early treatment guidance-Swiss Policy Research

August, 2020, “Covid Self-Defense Kit,” Swiss Policy Research 

“Autumn is approaching in the northern hemisphere, coronavirus antibody prevalence is still low (less than 5%) in much of previously locked-down Europe and non-urban areas of the US, and authorities in most Western countries still aren’t providing any covid prophylaxis and early treatment guidance.

SPR encourages people at high risk or high exposure to discuss with their doctor a prophylactic or early treatment strategy based on zinc, quercetin and bromhexine. Zinc blocks coronavirus RNA replication while quercetin and bromhexine block coronavirus cell entry. 

Already in May, US doctors reported a 45% reduction in mortality of hospitalized patients by adding zinc to standard treatment. In June, US doctors reported a rapid resolution of Covid symptoms, such as shortness of breath, due to early outpatient treatment with high-dose zinc. 

Cloth masks have failed to stop the pandemic because they cannot prevent indoor aerosol transmission; “contact tracing” has failed to stop the pandemic because of undetected four day pre-symptomatic and indoor aerosol transmission. 

Thus, to avoid a second round of chaos and devastating lockdowns, reducing hospitalizations and mortality by successful prophylactic or early treatment of covid is absolutely essential.”

EN: On the treatment of Covid-19 →
DE: Zur Behandlung von Covid-19 →

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Former 'hot spot' The Bronx is well on its way to herd immunity as 33% have Covid anitbodies, in Manhattan 19%. Further, Covid is almost meaningless without co-mobidities-NY City Health Dept., Patch

8/18/20, “Antibody Tests Positive For 13 Percent On Upper East Side: Data," Patch.com, Nick Garber, Upper East Side, NY, NY

[Image: Positive for Covid antibodies in 5 boroughs of NY City, Bronx highest with 33%, Manhattan 19%. See map posted below] 

“New data shows about 13 percent of Upper East Side residents who were tested for antibodies had previously been infected with COVID-19.” 

“About 13 percent of residents on the Upper East Side tested for antibodies showed signs that they were previously infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, according to new city data. 

Of the 57,828 residents tested in the five ZIP codes that make up the [Upper East Side] neighborhood, roughly 13.2 percent tested positive, according to data released by the [NYC] Department of Health on Tuesday.

The ZIP code with the highest rate of positive tests was 10075, which covers a narrow strip from East 76th to 80th streets and includes Lenox Hill Hospital. About 14.1 percent of antibody tests came back positive for residents in that area. 

The lowest rate of positive tests was in 10065, the neighborhood’s southernmost ZIP code, where about 12.6 percent of residents’ tests came back positive. 

Citywide, Manhattan had the lowest rate of positive tests out of all five boroughs, with about 19 percent of tests coming back positive. The Bronx had the highest rate, at about 33 percent. 

Percent positive antibody tests by Upper East Side ZIP code:

• 10065: 12.6 percent (8,492 tested, 1,070 positive)
• 10021: 13.1 percent (13,189 tested, 1,732 positive)
• 10075: 14.1 percent (7,203 tested, 1,019 positive)
• 10028: 13.6 percent (12,728 tested, 1,733 positive)
• 10128: 12.7 percent (16,216 tested, 2,065 positive)
• Total: 13.2 percent (57,828 tested, 7,619 positive)

The antibody tests, or serology tests, indicate whether a person may have been exposed to the coronavirus by measuring their bloodstream for signs that their immune system produced proteins, called antibodies, to fight off the virus. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday that the city’s website for coronavirus data would start including the results of antibody tests, but experts warn that such data should be taken with a grain of salt.”… 

[Ed. note: Re: “A grain of salt,” at least in the case of CDC antibody tests, CDC takes extra steps to ensure its antibody blood test data are as accurate as possible: “Our analysis adjusted the seroprevalence estimate to account for false positives and false negatives.”…CDC says random antibody blood tests shouldn’t be considered guaranteed proof of anything such as permanent immunity. However, by no means does it say to take its blood results “with a grain of salt.” Without knowing the particular details of the antibody tests discussed in this article, hopefully the “experts” Patch references are aware that many Covid diagnostic tests for active virus and the ways in which they’re reported are at best counterproductive. More on recent antibody studies: Aug. 16, 2020, “Scientists See Signs of Lasting Virus Immunity, Even After Mild Infections,” NY Times…Finally, as to “experts,” some “experts” were way off on NYC metro numbers: “Official city figures had estimated just over 219,000 cases as of July 23.” As it happens, “more than 2.8 million people“ [ten times more than officials had estimated] in NYC metro had already had the virus. This is what happens when you live and die by numbers from thousands of unsupervised sources]. 

(continuing): “Positive tests results could mean the person has antibodies from an infection with a virus in the same family as the coronavirus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…. 

The data also may not accurately reflect the prevalence of antibodies among all neighborhood residents or New York City residents, because people who have been ill with COVID-19 symptoms or were exposed to the virus may be likelier to seek out antibody testing, the city wrote in a disclaimer about the dataset. 

“We will be the first jurisdiction in the nation to present our antibody data this way,” de Blasio told reporters. “While there is still much to learn about the science of COVID-19 antibody testing, it is an important element to consider when understanding the epidemiology of COVID.”” 

“Patch reporter Maya Kaufman contributed to this report.”
………………………………………………. 

Added: Charts from NY City Health Dept., retrieved Aug. 21, 2020. One, an extremely “flattened curve” in NY City. Two, we learn Covid is almost nothing without co-morbidities:
 

.........
Above, NY City Covid deaths from March 11 to August 21, 2020


.....
Above, Most NY City Covid deaths occurred with underlying conditions: “Underlying conditions can include lung disease, asthma, heart disease, a weakened immune system, obesity, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease and cancer.” 

From chart, total who died in NY City without underlying conditions, March 11-August 21: 

Age: 

0-17: 1
18-44: 23
45-64: 85
65-74: 4
75+: 2
………………….. 

Added: Gov. Cuomo hailed April 2020 NY State government antibody test results: 2.7 million total “cases” in NY State, as high as 21% in “hot spots” like NY City, suggesting at least a positive step toward immunity: 

April 23, 2020, “Nearly 3 million New Yorkers have [already] had coronavirus, antibody study suggests," Fox News, Greg Norman 

“New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo revealed Thursday that preliminary results from a coronavirus antibody study show the statewide infection rate is 13.9 percent, which would mean around 2.7 million residents could have carried the disease. 

The 3,000 samples were collected from 40 sites in 19 counties, according to Cuomo, and suggested the [antibody] infection rate [had virus at some time and experienced few if any consequences] is as high as 21.2 percent in places like New York City. 

“These are people who were infected and who developed the antibodies to fight the infection,” Cuomo said. “They had the virus, they developed the antibodies and they are now ‘recovered’.”
…………………………….. 

Added: NY Times: Positive results regarding antibodies and immunity: “Even mild Covid-19 cases confer ‘durable immunity,’ new studies find.” 

Signs that Covid antibodies confer lasting immunity...“This calls for some optimism about herd immunity,” said Smita Iyer, an immunologist at the University of California, Davis. 

Aug. 16, 2020, “Scientists See Signs of Lasting Virus Immunity, Even After Mild Infections,” NY Times 

“Even mild Covid-19 cases confer ‘durable immunity,’ new studies find.”
…………………………………………… 

Added: Re: Reliability of antibody tests: CDC conducted two NY City metro tests for antibodies, one ended May 3, the other May 26. “The results reported by the CDC are adjusted for false positive and false negative results:” From website: “Our analysis adjusted the seroprevalence estimate to account for false positives and false negatives.” 

July 26, 2020, “Quarter Of NYC Area Residents Have Had Coronavirus, CDC Finds," Patch.com, Adam Nichols 

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested blood collected for routine screenings and sick visits for antibodies.” 

“Almost a quarter of New York City, Long Island and Westchester residents who had blood surveyed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were found to have had the coronavirus [in the past]. 

That equates to a little more than 2.8 million people [ten times more than officials had estimated]. Official city figures had estimated just over 219,000 cases as of July 23.

The CDC partnered with commercial testing labs to estimate infection levels for five states and a handful of large cities. It tested the blood of people who had come to doctors for routine screenings or sick visits, not just those whose care was related to the coronavirus. 

Around 23 percent of residents in the New York City area who had blood drawn in late May had antibodies for the virus, according to the CDC. The collection area included Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester counties alongside the NYC boroughs.

The survey was the second of its kind from the CDC. The first, which ended May 3, found a city infection rate of 6.9 percent. 

The second survey was conducted between May 21 and 26. A total of 1,116 samples were collected. 

The figure was much higher than anywhere else in the nation [as of May 26]. Of areas that had a second survey, Washington State had a 2.1 percent infection rate, Utah had 1.1 percent, Minnesota 2.2 percent, Missouri 2.8 percent, Philadelphia 3.6 percent and Connecticut 5.2 percent. 

The CDC notes the survey comes with some caveats. It isn’t random and relies on people whose blood was taken for routine screening or sick visits, which may not reflect the population as a whole. 

The results reported by the CDC are adjusted for false positive and false negative results. The CDC notes that it is possible that antibody levels may decrease over time and that people who previously tested positive for the presence of antibodies may at some point test negative. 

The CDC also warns that the survey shouldn’t be interpreted to mean people who tested positive for antibodies are immune to the virus. It is still unknown how long antibodies last and what level of protection they offer.”
………………………………… 

Added: At long last our 50 states, just like Communist nations, are free to rule by decree. It seems no US law exists requiring states to return our freedoms to us. For example, in NY State, a company waited patiently for NY State’s “phase 4,” to be able to re-open in Central Park, only to learn, no, you can’t re-open. This means they’ll likely have to close forever. For no reason except that Trump turned the US into a Communist nation with the excuse of UK computer models. NY City long ago “flattened the curve” as above chart shows. They can’t admit it’s over already, that the political class used something that mainly killed the elderly as an excuse to steal trillions of US taxpayer dollars and convert the US into a Communist nation, as it is today. 

Aug. 17, 2020, “Victorian Gardens In Central Park May Close Permanently,“ Patch.com, Nick Garber, Central Park, NY

“The summertime amusement park at Central Park’s Wollman Rink said Monday it would not open this year and may need to permanently close. 

“Victorian Gardens, the amusement park that has popped up in Central Park’s Wollman Rink each summer for more than a decade, will not open for the 2020 season and may need to permanently close, its owners said Monday. 

In a news release, the Zaperla family, Italian theme park manufacturers who also own the company that runs Victorian Gardens, said the decision was based on the “limited guidance and uncertainty surrounding when amusement parks will be permitted to open in New York State.” 

The park had been prepared to open with COVID-19 protocols in place when the state entered Phase 4 of its reopening plan, in which outdoor recreation areas were originally included, operators said. Once Phase 4 arrived, however, amusement parks across the state were told they could not yet reopen. The state’s business lookup tool still lists Amusement and Theme Parks as closed. 

“Regretfully, since Victorian Gardens’ normal operating season is coming to a close and New York State has not provided a re-opening plan for amusement parks, we are not able to open this season,” Zamperla said. 

Zamperla said it appears unlikely that the park could reopen for the summer of 2021, and may need to “cease its operations entirely.” 

Victorian Gardens first opened in the summer of 2003, according to the park’s website, after a group of private investors secured permission from the city to use Wollman’s 50,000-square-foot space while the rink was out of commission during the summer. 

“We have been privileged to provide family fun in the heart of New York City for the past 18 years and we are proud of the beautiful memories we created together,” Zamperla said in the news release.”
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Comment: The “emergency” that converted 50 US states into 50 individual Communist nations also enabled Trump to steal trillions of dollars from us, throw tens of millions out of work, destroy towns and cities for generations if not permanently. He could’ve taken steps through congress or agencies to limit state decrees and ensure an end date, but he didn’t. And for what? Not a single life was saved by actions of governments. Now what? Two choices. Accept life as a slave or work to free ourselves by breaking up the US into a few parts.

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