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Watch: As Mask Mandate Looms, LA Hospital Officials Mock COVID "Media Hype"

Zero Hedge
MONDAY, JUL 18, 2022 - 04:11 AM

In a press conference dripping with a mix of exasperation and dry-witted sarcasm, two officials at one of the largest hospital systems in Southern California threw a bucket of cold water on media and government efforts to whip the public into a state of fear over the latest Covid-19 uptick.

Their remarks came on the same day that Los Angeles County health director Barbara Ferrer declared the county had moved into a "high" level of Covid transmission. Two consecutive weeks in that status would trigger the reimposition of an indoor mask mandate on the nearly 10 million people who still choose to live there.

The press conference featured Brad Spellberg, the chief medical officer of Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Medical Center (LAC + USC), along with epidemiologist Paul Holtom.

Spellberg kicked off the duo's ridicule of Covid fearmongering with an exasperated description of the Covid situation: "It's just the same. It's not changed. It's been the same. It's like...two months of the same."

He backed up his characterization with charts depicting county cases and the hospital's own Covid admission data.

"The numbers at [LAC+USC] Covid-positive tests have continued to go up, but this isn't because we're seeing a ton of people with symptomatic disease being admitted...we're seeing a lot of people with mild disease in urgent care and [emergency department] who go home and do not get admitted.

Of those who are admitted, they're 90% of the time not admitted due to Covid. Only 10% of our Covid-positive admissions are admitted due to Covid. Virtually none of them go to the ICU, and when they do go to the ICU, it is not for pneumonia. They are not intubated."

As for the worst kind of Covid-ICU case, Spellberg said, "We haven't seen one of those since February. It's been months." He said today's Covid patients in intensive care are more typically associated with conditions like electrolyte abnormalities or auto-immune attack of the nerves that may or may not be Covid-driven.

"It is just not the same pandemic that it was, despite all the media hype to the contrary...I mean - a lot of people have bad colds is what we're seeing," Spellberg concluded.

Epidemiologist Paul Holtom sarcastically chided Spellberg: "I would really have to work to burst that soothiness bubble...maybe we can turn to the media, which is trying to burst that bubble by talking about a new variant that was was described in India...[and is] 'sweeping' the country and now the United States."

He continued:

"Certainly, if the experience of our hospital is reflective of across the county, which I believe it is, we're just seeing nobody with severe Covid disease. As of this morning, we have no one in the hospital who had pulmonary disease due to Covid. Nobody in the hospital....NOBODY. Nobody who had Covid-19 disease as we would see it in the past. So I guess it is hard to get a little more excited."

The epidemiologist noted that Los Angeles County could soon reimpose an indoor mask mandate "based on numbers." However, he said, "certainly, there's no reason from a hospitalization-due-to-covid-push perspective to be worried at his point."

Holtom transitioned away from the Covid portion of the press conference by administering a final dose of humor: "I'm so tired about not being worried about Covid for week after week, the very least we could do is bring up another potential pandemic and get worried about it, because at least that way we have something to be worried about!"

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But the sheer number of reports, and their specificity, have the attention of concerned scientists and even some politicians like Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has invited people harmed by vaccines to testify before Congress and advocates compensation for them.

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advocates compensation for them.

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I'm imagining all of the money the taxpayers will be forced to spend on those who blindly took them.

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A new report on Substack on Thursday detailed a concerning trend among employees at U.S. public health agencies.

As the report explains, many doctors and credentialed experts are furious about what’s happening within their organizations:

“The calls and text messages are relentless. On the other end are doctors and scientists at the top levels of the NIH, FDA and CDC. They are variously frustrated, exasperated and alarmed about the direction of the agencies to which they have devoted their careers.”

It gets worse. One “senior FDA official” told the writers that the regulatory body is giving people “bad advice:”

“It’s like a horror movie I’m being forced to watch and I can’t close my eyes,” one senior FDA official lamented. “People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.”

That bad advice mostly relates to the relentless push to get young children vaccinated and/or boosted against COVID.

The case for vaccinating kids has never been particularly strong.

Despite the small sample sizes and discouragingly poor results from the mRNA trials, the FDA recently authorized the vaccines for toddlers up to 5 years old. The CDC immediately signed off as well.

That led a CDC employee to express their disappointment and embarrassment at the obvious politicization of the organization:

“’There’s been a large amount of turnover. Morale is low,” one high level official at the CDC told us. “’Things have become so political, so what are we there for?’” Another CDC scientist told us: “’I used to be proud to tell people I work at the CDC. Now I’m embarrassed.’”

Political interference has become an increasingly major issue since the Biden administration took over. Their recent and premature announcement regarding the roll out of 4th shots being just the latest example:

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“Not only are [the agencies] bypassing the normal scientific process, but [the scientists] can’t really say anything, because if they do, they know that their jobs are at risk and they will be treated very differently,” said Makary, who is a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins.


One scientist told Makary that there is no transparency in how the top White House coronavirus adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, makes decisions. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, doesn’t even consult with the “real experts,” the scientist said.

To restore credibility, Makary said, public health officials need to display “more humility, less absolutism, more answers like, ‘We don’t know,’ when that’s the right answer, and less paternalism.”

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“It’s like a horror movie I’m being forced to watch and I can’t close my eyes,” one senior FDA official lamented. “People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.”

“’There’s been a large amount of turnover. Morale is low,” one high level official at the CDC told us. “’Things have become so political, so what are we there for?’” Another CDC scientist told us: “’I used to be proud to tell people I work at the CDC. Now I’m embarrassed.’”

“Not only are [the agencies] bypassing the normal scientific process, but [the scientists] can’t really say anything, because if they do, they know that their jobs are at risk and they will be treated very differently,” said Makary, who is a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins.

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Originally posted by rscalzo:
The DA and CDC are in disarray. They are leacving top people over vaccine policies rushed through for approval.

The US Food and Drug Administration announced the resignations of two top vaccine officials on Tuesday, and reports said the two were leaving in anger over the Biden administration's plan to roll out COVID-19 booster shots before officials had a chance to approve it.

Dr. Marion Gruber, the director of the FDA's Office of Vaccines Research and Review, and her deputy, Dr. Philip Krause, plan to leave the FDA in October and November. BioCentury first reported the news on Tuesday.

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A new report on Substack on Thursday detailed a concerning trend among employees at U.S. public health agencies.

As the report explains, many doctors and credentialed experts are furious about what’s happening within their organizations:

“The calls and text messages are relentless. On the other end are doctors and scientists at the top levels of the NIH, FDA and CDC. They are variously frustrated, exasperated and alarmed about the direction of the agencies to which they have devoted their careers.”

It gets worse. One “senior FDA official” told the writers that the regulatory body is giving people “bad advice:”

“It’s like a horror movie I’m being forced to watch and I can’t close my eyes,” one senior FDA official lamented. “People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.”

That bad advice mostly relates to the relentless push to get young children vaccinated and/or boosted against COVID.

The case for vaccinating kids has never been particularly strong.

Despite the small sample sizes and discouragingly poor results from the mRNA trials, the FDA recently authorized the vaccines for toddlers up to 5 years old. The CDC immediately signed off as well.

That led a CDC employee to express their disappointment and embarrassment at the obvious politicization of the organization:

“’There’s been a large amount of turnover. Morale is low,” one high level official at the CDC told us. “’Things have become so political, so what are we there for?’” Another CDC scientist told us: “’I used to be proud to tell people I work at the CDC. Now I’m embarrassed.’”

Political interference has become an increasingly major issue since the Biden administration took over. Their recent and premature announcement regarding the roll out of 4th shots being just the latest example:

quote:

“Not only are [the agencies] bypassing the normal scientific process, but [the scientists] can’t really say anything, because if they do, they know that their jobs are at risk and they will be treated very differently,” said Makary, who is a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins.


One scientist told Makary that there is no transparency in how the top White House coronavirus adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, makes decisions. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, doesn’t even consult with the “real experts,” the scientist said.

To restore credibility, Makary said, public health officials need to display “more humility, less absolutism, more answers like, ‘We don’t know,’ when that’s the right answer, and less paternalism.”

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Oh, no need to worry. The FDA & CDC can now fill those positions with people they want. Whether they're qualified or not.

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To restore credibility, Makary said, public health officials need to display “more humility, less absolutism, more answers like, ‘We don’t know,’ when that’s the right answer, and less paternalism.”

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Originally posted by parabellum:
...out of a cannon.

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Originally posted by parabellum:
...out of a cannon.

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Originally posted by RichardC:

Thank God, monkeys can't fly.