Category: Science

Remember How Everybody Was Going to Die Because Georgia Ended Lockdowns?

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The headlines last month were scary:

Georgia’s dangerous coronavirus experiment
— Joel Mathis, The Week April 21

Georgia’s Kemp neglected to warn people
about his dangerous gamble
— Steve Benen, MSNBC, April 22

Kemp poised to lift restrictions,
despite warnings of renewed outbreak
— Alan Judd and Greg Bluestein, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 29

It was a “gamble,” an “experiment,” and the media all agreed it was “dangerous” for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to do this “despite warnings.” You would have thought, based on the coverage, that Kemp’s plan was so reckless and irresponsible as to guarantee a “renewed outbreak” that would kill thousands. But what actually happened?

Georgia’s daily COVID-19 deaths had already peaked by the time Kemp announced he would begin re-opening the state’s economy. On April 16, Georgia recorded 52 deaths from the virus, concluding a week (April 10-16) in which the state recorded 205 deaths, an average of 35.7 deaths daily for that week. For the seven day period ending Thursday (i.e., May 8-14), Georgia recorded a total of 105 coronavirus deaths, an average of 15 daily. In other words, comparing these two seven-day periods, there was a 58% decrease in Georgia’s COVID-19 deaths. The number of daily new COVID-19 cases reported has likewise declined more than 50% since April, even as the number of tests performed has increased.

COVID-19 is a new disease. Everything we know about this virus, we’ve learned in the past six months. However, something Michael Fumento remarked last month bears repeating: Epidemics are always subject to Farr’s Law, in which cases rise and fall in a bell-curve pattern. The death toll peaks and then recedes because, in the early stages of the outbreak, the disease “grabs the low-hanging fruit” (the most vulnerable population), but eventually runs out of such victims. While quarantine policies can “slow the spread” and “flatten the curve,” ultimately no human intervention matters more than the effect of Farr’s Law.

By the time Governor Kemp announced his “gamble” in the third week of April, the number of COVID-19 deaths in Georgia had already peaked. While the number of reported cases was still continuing to rise (it did not peak until April 27, when 937 new cases were reported), this was an artifact, the result of more widespread testing, which identified asymptomatic or mild cases. Throughout the course of Georgia’s coronavirus outbreak so far, there have been 1,557 deaths and, with the daily death toll still decreasing steadily, it seems unlikely the state will experience the “renewed outbreak” that Kemp’s critics warned about.

As of 10 a.m. today, Georgia’s per-capita death rate from COVID-19 (measured in deaths per million residents) was 150, which was 88.5% lower than the state of New York’s death rate of 1,417.

Oh, and just for your information, the daily number of U.S. coronavirus deaths nationwide peaked at 2,683 — on April 21, which was 25 days ago. The highest daily number of deaths in the past week was 1,772 on Wednesday (May 13), and that number was 34% below the April 21 peak.

UPDATE: Earlier this week, Stacey Lennox said, “Dear Media, Governor Kemp Will Accept Your Apology Now.” Don’t hold your breath.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Hope you will remember that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!




 

COVID-19: Numbers That Really Matter

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Among the dishonest games that the media have played with coronavirus is their habit of reporting cumulative totals of reported cases and deaths as if this is the only metric of the pandemic. Anyone with a functional brain, however, must realize that this is misleading and nearly useless in terms of understanding how the outbreak is actually progressing. The cumulative total always goes up, and periodically crosses certain thresholds which can be treated as “news,” for example when the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 passed 2,996, the death toll of the 9/11 attacks: DISEASE KILLS MORE THAN AL-QAEDA!

This is a game, I say, and a dishonest one, because this disease is a worldwide pandemic, and not an isolated event. What matters, if our goal is to comprehend the disease as a public health concern, is whether it’s getting worse or better, and how rapidly this change is happening. As I mentioned in my column today, epidemics tend to follow a certain bell-curve pattern, ascending to a peak and then declining. If we can accurately track new cases and deaths on a daily basis, these numbers will give us an idea of which direction we’re heading and how fast we’re going. Without that kind of measurement, we’re lost, and merely reporting cumulative totals doesn’t help us. So why is the media addicted to this? Because the useless number is effective as anti-Trump propaganda, especially when presented without appropriate perspective.

Consider, for example, that the U.S. coronavirus death toll is, as far as we know (because China is lying) the largest in the world. Yes, but our population (about 327 million) is much larger than any European country. America has more people than the combined total population of Germany (81 million), France (66 million), the United Kingdom (65 million), Italy (61 million) and Spain (46 million). Calculating COVID-19 statistics on a per-capita basis is the only reasonable measurement. Here are the 10 countries with the highest coronavirus death rates, expressed in deaths per million population, with the number in parenthesis showing the “confirmed case fatality rate”:

Belgium ………………………. 631.0 (15.44%)
Spain ………………………….. 503.4 (10.25%)
Italy ……………………………. 446.4 (13.53%)
France …………………………. 341.2 (14.10%)
United Kingdom …………… 311.8 (13.56%)
Netherlands …………………. 262.2 (11.81%)
Ireland ………………………… 227.1 (5.61%)
Sweden ………………………. 223.3 (12.02%)
Switzerland …………………. 192.6 (5.62%)
United States ………………. 171.6 (5.62%)

You see that in terms of the per-capita death rate, nine European countries are worse than the United States, with four countries at least twice as bad as us, and yet our media won’t mention this, because all they care about is blaming Trump. What has Trump done that was worse than what has been done by the leaders of Belgium, Spain, etc?

The people at CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and other major media establishments don’t want Americans to ponder that question, because these “news” organizations are actually political organizations, devoted to a partisan project of electing Democrats and enacting a liberal agenda.

Another question the media don’t want Americans to think about: Exactly how dangerous is COVID-19? You might think, given that more than 50,000 Americans are already reported to have died from this disease, that the answer to that question is self-evident. But if we don’t know how many people are actually infected with this virus — and we don’t, because many infected people are asymptomatic — then we don’t know what percentage of those infected eventually die from the disease.

This is important, because our economy has been devastated by lockdown orders which are continuing because it is feared that easing restrictions on business activity would result in untold thousands of unnecessary deaths. We cannot even begin to estimate the risk, however, if we don’t know how deadly the virus really is, as a percentage of all infections. Five physicians, led by Tennessee anesthesiologist Dr. Jonathan Geach, have written an article about this problem and you should read it.




 

Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo: The Media’s Favorite Scientific Geniuses

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Watching MSNBC today (so you don’t have to) and it’s amazing how laser-focused they are on the blame-Trump narrative of COVID-19. The MSNBC viewer is given the impression, for example, that Joe Biden was presciently warning about this Chinese disease in January, when what is being quoted is not what Biden himself said, but campaign statements issued on the candidate’s behalf. Likewise, Joe Scarborough passes over as inconsequential the fact that Nancy Pelosi, who now presumes to lecture the president about “science,” was in January and February leading an impeachment effort in Congress that might have distracted the president from keeping up with the latest developments in the pandemic.

And what about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo? The media, which relentlessly attacks Trump at the White House coronavirus briefings, has nothing but praise for Cuomo, despite the fact that Cuomo has presided over the worst outbreak in the country. The most insulting part of the media’s coverage of COVID-19, however, is that they claim for themselves the authority of scientific experts — and expect to be taken seriously:

A virus is not magic, epidemiology is not voodoo, and the credentialed experts are not a priesthood. Yet the reporters, anchors, and commentators on cable TV news — most of whom have no more claim to expertise in such matters than you or I — exhibit a cult-like faith in the ability of the Pandemic Priesthood to predict the future. Previous failures by these experts to predict the course of the COVID-19 outbreak are ignored, as the television preachers of “science” encourage their viewers to regard the priesthood with religious reverence. Most amazing of all is how the media has conferred expert status on certain politicians, as if New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were qualified to deliver scientific lectures on preventing the spread of contagious disease.
All of this, of course, has little or nothing to do with actual science, and very much to do with political bias. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.




 

A Curse Be Upon Them: NY Times Blames America’s Christianity for #Coronavirus

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The New York Times is published by atheist perverts who hate America, and who have covered themselves in disgrace for decades. They forfeited whatever credibility they still had when they refused to return the Pulitzer they got for Walter Duranty’s Stalinist propaganda during the Soviet “show trial” era, and their irresponsible reporting about the Duke University rape hoax helped incite a campus firestorm that, among other things, radicalized Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

Now, however, the New York Times has blasphemed against the Most High, and has viciously attacked God’s people, in an op-ed column blaming Christians for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak:

The argument, by journalist and author Katherine Stewart, is that because religious voters supported Trump, that means he governs without regard for science.
Stewart also claims that Republicans, more than Democrats, are likely to deny science.
In her op-ed, titled “The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals,” she writes:

Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown.
At least since the 19th century, when the proslavery theologian Robert Lewis Dabney attacked the physical sciences as “theories of unbelief,” hostility to science has characterized the more extreme forms of religious nationalism in the United States.

She then goes on to provide several quotes from pastors who pushed back against the idea of closing their churches.
Stewart admits: “By all accounts, President Trump’s tendency to trust his gut over the experts on issues like vaccines and climate change does not come from any deep-seated religious conviction.”
But she adds: “But he is perfectly in tune with the religious nationalists who form the core of his base.”

 

Putting aside, for now, the partisan bias involved — Ms. Stewart and the New York Times are only against religion when it gives them an opportunity to attack Republicans — what of their effrontery in defaming the 19th-century Presbyterian theologian R.L. Dabney? They might as well have dragged down in the mud the names of Knox, Calvin and Luther, and indeed all of the Apostles, as no honest student of the Bible could ever have disputed Dabney’s faithfulness to the Gospel.

You would never see the New York Times smearing Muslims this way, and indeed they would be the first to scream “Islamophobia!” at anyone who dared mention the many Muslim beliefs and practices that liberals might otherwise find objectionable. Likewise, you won’t find any criticism of the (alleged) Catholicism of Andrew Cuomo or Nancy Pelosi in the New York Times. It is only those Christians who vote Republican whose faith is routinely impugned by the New York Times.

By the way, do you know how it was that Katherine Stewart came to be an “expert” on the Religious Right? A Boston native, she moved to California where the local public school had a Bible study club, as approved by the Supreme Court in its 2001 decision Good News Club v. Milford Central School. Stewart became so angry that such a club existed that she wrote an entire book about this vast right-wing conspiracy “to convert children to fundamentalist Christianity.”

There is a specific set of “fundamentalist” beliefs that the Left finds objectionable. To believe in Sola Scriptura — the authority of the Bible — is objectionable to the Left, since a Bible-based faith contradicts the moral relativism and man-made authority the Left prefers.

Supposedly, the Bible is “anti-science,” and therefore Christians are to blame for the spread of coronavirus in the United States. This argument fails to explain, of course, why the Chinese in Wuhan were eating bats, a practice specifically condemned by the Bible (Deuteronomy 12:18).

This column by Katherine Stewart (@kathsstewart on Twitter) is the point of no return. By publishing this column, the New York Times has finally — unmistakably and irrevocably — declared war on God. Let us pray that the Almighty will pour out His undiluted wrath upon them. Let them go bankrupt and be utterly obliterated. Pray to God that this destruction should come upon them suddenly, “as a thief in the night.”

Selah.




 

‘Threatened Species’

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In May last year — late fall in the inverted seasons Down Under — an official of Australia’s National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) in New South Wales (NSW) wanted the public to know that it was a crime for them to collect firewood for the winter:

NPWS Central West Area Manager Fiona Buchanan said the warning to residents around Condobolin, Bathurst, Dubbo, Forbes and Grenfell is timely as it follows a man being fined $30,000 for illegally collecting firewood in the Murrumbidgee Valley National Park.
“We are getting the message out there that removing firewood, including deadwood and fallen trees, is not permitted in national parks,” Ms Buchanan said.
“We want people to know the rules around firewood collection, particularly during the school holidays when more people are visiting national parks. . . .
“Many ground dwelling animals and threatened species use tree hollows for nesting so when fallen trees and deadwood is taken illegally, it destroys their habitat.
“This fallen timber is part of these animals’ natural ecosystem,” Ms Buchanan said.

Such concern for “ground dwelling animals” — $30,000 fines! — may be implicated in Australia’s current wildfires, says Tim Blair:

Those natural ecosystems are now, across thousands of hectares of national parks in New South Wales, nothing but cinders and ash. Enjoy your protected habitat, little ground-dwellers.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

Remember, despite the arrest of some 200 arsonists implicated in the Australian fires, the media insist that it is a “conspiracy theory” to doubt that “climate change” has caused this disaster. Those who call attention to facts that don’t fit the climate-change narrative are “exaggerating the role of arson in the ongoing bushfires . . . feeding a right-wing conspiracy theory,” we are told by activist Ketan Joshi. Arson is “a moot point, anyway,” he tells us, because “climate change makes fire spread quicker and through a larger area, rather than igniting blazes.” But his argument begins by embedding an assumption (“climate change” is to blame) as its first premise, so that if drafted as a syllogism, this is what Joshi is saying:

A. Climate change makes wildfires worse;
B. There are wildfires in Australia;

ergo

C: The wildfires in Australia were made worse by climate change.

This is a tautology, rather than an actual argument. And if you are familiar with the myth-making machinery of “climate change,” you will not be surprised to learn that when MSNBC needed an “expert” to explain the Australian wildfires, their guest was Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann, who will sue you if you suggest he’s engaged in massive fraud.

 



 

The Cult of Climate ‘Science’

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Ugly facts can never disprove their beautiful theory:

The signs at Glacier National Park warning that its signature glaciers would be gone by 2020 are being changed.
The signs in the Montana park were added more than a decade ago to reflect climate change forecasts at the time by the US Geological Survey, park spokeswoman Gina Kurzmen told CNN.
In 2017, the park was told by the agency that the complete melting off of the glaciers was no longer expected to take place so quickly due to changes in the forecast model, Kurzmen said. But tight maintenance budgets made it impossible for the park to immediately change the signs.
The most prominent placards, at St. Mary’s Visitor Center, were changed last year. Kurzmen says that park is still waiting for budget authorization to update signs at two other locations.
But the glacier warning isn’t being removed entirely, she told CNN. Instead, the new signs will say: “When they will completely disappear depends on how and when we act. One thing is consistent: the glaciers in the park are shrinking.”

Notice the slight hedge — “computer models indicate” — in the wording of the now-replaced sign. This kind of language is a deliberately deceptive propaganda tactic. To say “X indicates Y” is different than saying “X predicts Y” or “X proves Y,” but the average person is not likely to notice the difference, especially when he is incessantly bombarded with similar messages from every direction (repetition is a basic propaganda technique). Notice also how the source of this assertion is described: “Computer models indicate,” as if some impersonal machine had produced this prediction. These “models” must be objective, because machines can’t be biased, right? And yet these models were actually developed by human beings like Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann, who has made a habit of suing his critics in an effort to silence them.

“Computer models indicate” is one of those phrases like “according to scientists” which can be made to function as a form of argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate), a fallacy that anyone who has taken an introductory course in logic should recognize. Climate-change cultists are attempting to impress people with the authority of scientific “experts” and their supposedly infallible computer models.

Effective propaganda can completely overwhelm common-sense skepticism, causing people to believe the most wildly implausible claims. One obvious example is the “ancient astronauts” myth, most famously promoted by Eric von Däniken in his 1969 bestseller Chariots of the Gods. Supposedly, various ancient archaeological sites — the Egyptian pyramids, etc. — are so sophisticated in design that they could not possibly have been constructed by mere human beings using pre-modern technology; ergo, visitors from outer space must have been responsible. The History Channel series Ancient Aliens has become a running joke by using deceptive language, e.g., “Some scientists believe . . .”

The idea of space creatures arriving via UFOs to build Pyramids near the Nile is so ludicrous that every intelligent viewer laughs at the suggestion and yet there is an audience for Ancient Aliens. This suggests that our education system has failed so disastrously that many people can’t see through the methods by which the most absurd assertions are made to seem possible, as the narrator soberly intones: “We cannot be certain that Leonardo da Vinci was visited aliens, but . . .”

The flat assertion that the Montana glaciers would melt by 2020 was offered with scientific certainty, thus to make it seem “smart” to agree with the claims of the climate-change movement. We see a similar tactic used by transgender activists, who use pseudo-scientific jargon phrases and other propaganda tactics to advance their agenda. To agree with them is the sophisticated, enlightened and progressive thing to do, their rhetoric suggests, and next thing you know, people are allowing convicted sex offenders to perform for children at public libraries.

Cult mentalities can only flourish, of course, by excluding dissent. A major reason Jim Jones took his Peoples Temple to the Guyana jungle was to isolate them from opposing viewpoints; similarly David Koresh isolated his followers in the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. The success of the climate-change cult can be attributed largely to our government-funded education system, which is controlled by left-wing Democrats to such an extent that middle-school students are subjected to propaganda videos like Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. Parents who object to this indoctrination will find themselves accused of being “anti-science,” in the same way they’re accused of “hate” for objecting to transgender propaganda in schools. Such accusations are a way of protecting the Left’s cult belief system (whether about “climate change” or “gender” or anything else) from dissent.

It was apparently a 2009 National Geographic article that first promoted the claim that the Montana glaciers would disappear by 2020:

Daniel Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist, warns that glaciers may be melting at an even faster rate than originally predicted, according to National Geographic. Fagre has been conducting research in the national park since the early 1980s.
In 2003, USGS garnered headlines by projecting a disappearance date of 2030 for the Montana glaciers. That was based on studies using 1992 temperature predictions from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Fagre’s current research reveals that temperatures in Glacier National Park have risen higher than was predicted in 1992. The Montana glaciers are now expected to be gone by 2020. And that will dramatically impact the park’s rare and sensitive plants and animals.

Do you see how phrases like “according to National Geographic” and “Fagre’s current research” function as arguments from authority here? The prestige of an important magazine and the “expert” qualifications of Fagre — “a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist . . . conducting research . . . since the early 1980s” — were invoked to suggest that no intelligent person could possibly disagree with this alarming prediction. 

You’re anti-science if you don’t accept the word of climate-change “experts,” and of course, we know that aliens built those Pyramids.



 

Lesbian Sues Sperm Bank After Learning Why Both Her Kids Are Autistic

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Layers and layers of irony here:

[Illinois lesbian Danielle] Rizzo’s children, ages 7 and 6, were at the center of one of the most ethically complex legal cases in the modern-day fertility industry. Three years ago, while researching treatment options for her sons, Rizzo says she made an extraordinary discovery: The boys are part of an autism cluster involving at least a dozen children scattered across the United States, Canada and Europe, all conceived with sperm from the same donor. Many of the children have secondary diagnoses of ADHD, dyslexia, mood disorders, epilepsy and other developmental and learning disabilities. . . .
When she first found out about their many half-siblings, she consulted a genetic counselor, who she says told her the odds of so many blood-related children with autism occurring spontaneously was akin to all the mothers “opening up a dictionary and pointing to the same letter of the same word on the same page at the same time.”
“It was the donor,” Rizzo remembered thinking. “It had to be.”
A quick online search for the donor’s profile showed that sperm from a man matching his description was still being sold by at least four companies. . . .
Rizzo turned to a sperm bank when she was 27 years old and a business banker at a JPMorgan Chase branch. She and her partner, who asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy, had been together for eight years. They met while Rizzo was attending community college on a softball scholarship. Rizzo was the team’s pitcher; her partner was an assistant coach. In June 2011, when Illinois began issuing civil union licenses to same-sex couples, they were the first in line at the Kane County courthouse.
Rizzo says they were eager to start their family and decided that Rizzo, younger by two years, would carry the baby. For months, the couple scoured online profiles to find just the right sperm donor.
Donor H898 from Idant Laboratories looked like a winner.
He was blond and blue-eyed, 6-foot-1, 240 pounds, and appeared to be smart and accomplished. His profile said he had a master’s degree and was working as a medical photographer. His hobbies included long-distance running, reading and art.
And most important, Rizzo says, he had a clean bill of health, according to his profile . . .
[B]oth boys were diagnosed with autism. She soon found herself thrown into the frenzied world of special-needs parenting. . . .
“The screaming, the hitting, the yelling, the pinching, the punching, the pulling my hair when I’m driving,” she said, describing her days. After three nannies quit, Rizzo left her job, and her relationship collapsed. . . .
The house went into foreclosure. Rizzo went on Medicaid, and in July 2018 she and the two boys moved into her parents’ basement. . . .
Donor H898?s sperm was offered through multiple sources. . . .
His profile stood out in many ways, women who used his sperm said, citing the thoughtful answers in his essays and audio interview. “I dislike dishonest and wasteful people,” he wrote in one statement. “I have my own garden and go to the Met when I can.”
Rizzo filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in July 2017. In her complaint, she alleged that his online profile was a lie and that he was not an “appropriate candidate for sperm donation.” . . .
She says in the complaint that research, based on public documents and calls to his relatives, showed that the donor had no college degrees, had been diagnosed with ADHD, and “went to a school for children with learning and emotional disabilities.” . . . Moreover, her attorneys wrote in the filing, “Donor H898 is a prolific sperm donor who has fathered at least 12 children through sperm donation, and that each of those children has either been diagnosed with Autism, or suffers from signs and symptoms associated with Autism.” In court documents, other mothers corroborated the story.

So far as we know, then, 100% of this donor’s offspring are autistic and the question arises: Could he ever have conceived children otherwise?

In other words, this guy might have been an “incel,” and so low-status that he was unable to form any real-life relationships with women. Yet by falsifying his sperm-donor profile, he convinced Danielle Rizzo and other women that he was “smart and accomplished,” a “winner.”

“Donor H898” perhaps never could have convinced any woman he actually knew to become the mother of his children, but he had certain traits — tall, blond and blue-eyed — that women seeking donor sperm considered desirable, and thus sired at least a dozen offspring, all of whom seem to have inherited H898’s neurological dysfunction. Oops.

Do you see why trying to evade Darwinian selection might be a bad idea? The idea that Science (with a capital S, to denote its quasi-religious status in the secular mind) can solve every social problem has a rather spotty record in real-life application. Traditional institutions like marriage and religion, we are told by the progressive intellectual elite, are oppressive remnants of a barbaric past. Why should our lifestyle choices be limited by obsolete prejudices and superstitions? And so we cannot expect that Danielle Rizzo, who was still only a teenager when she became the lesbian lover of her college softball coach, would heed anyone’s warning about the potential downside of her experiments on the frontier of social “progress.” No, you’re just a bigot and a hater if you think perhaps lesbian motherhood might produce negative outcomes.

Danielle Rizzo doesn’t believe in any of that “Thou shalt not” stuff. No, she believes in Science! Her children didn’t need a father. All she and her lesbian “partner” needed was a sperm donor, and Science would take care of the rest. What could possibly go wrong? Only everything, it turns out, so that “her relationship collapsed” and now she and her two autistic sons are on Medicaid, living in her parents’ basement.

This story was brought to my attention by Rational Male author Rollo Tomassi, who has a saying: “Hypergamy doesn’t care.” “Hypergamy prompts women to seek out ‘winners’, they don’t care how the man won, just that he won,” as Rollo has observed, and we see how this applies even with lesbians choosing sperm donors on the basis of online profiles. Being tall, claiming to have a master’s degree and a professional career — H898 seemed like a “winner,” and it never occurred to Danielle Rizzo to wonder about H898’s motives for becoming a sperm donor.

Did she imagine he a selfless humanitarian? If so, she was a fool, and now she’s stuck with two kids with this lying creep’s defective DNA.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings have an ironic sense of humor.



 

‘Brain-Eating Amoeba’

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Something else for hypochondriacs to worry about:

A North Carolina man has died after contracting an illness caused by a “brain-eating amoeba,” public health officials said.
Laboratory testing confirmed the man, identified by local media as Eddie Gray, was sickened by Naegleria fowleri after swimming at Fantasy Lake Water Park in Cumberland County earlier this month, according to officials with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and the Cumberland County Department of Public Health. Infections like Gray’s are rare but typically occur when it is hot for prolonged periods of time, according to the release.
“Our sympathies are with the family and loved ones,” said state epidemiologist Zack Moore. “People should be aware that this organism is present in warm freshwater lakes, rivers and hot springs across North Carolina, so be mindful as you swim or enjoy water sports.”

From the health department:

Naegleria fowleri, referred to as the brain-eating amoeba, does not cause illness if swallowed but can be fatal if forced up the nose, as can occur during diving, water-skiing or other water activities. . . .
Symptoms of Naegleria fowleri infection start with severe headache, fever, nausea and vomiting and progress to stiff neck, seizures and coma.
Local health officials are working with the water park to provide guidance and education about the presence of Naegleria fowleri and how to take precautions when in natural bodies of freshwater.

The world has so many ways to kill us. It’s a miracle any of us survive.