The Athena Foundation Scottsdale Project

08/03/2024

Gretchen Jacobs. How Freaky Is She? She's a super-freak.

The Fake Electors who've been indicted have started to roll over. They're naming names in an effort to save their own hides.

Jacobs is a name we will hear often. She was in the middle of that felonious scam to destroy voters' rights.

Her Slate's Motto? Just Be Honest. So let's be honest. Gretchen Jacobs was a participant in the scheme that led to the January 6, 2021 Insurrection and the indictment of the fraudulent Electors.

That's honest talk.

A prominent Arizona lobbyist said former White House press secretary and veteran Arizona politico Stephanie Grisham told her that the fraud rumors that gained traction after the 2020 election were false.

12/20/2023

Looks like something from 'Alice in Wonderland' 😱

09/05/2022

Every . . . single . . . time. . . we have opened up classrooms, with or without masks, childhood infections have disconnected from all the rest of the population and become worse, sometimes monstrously worse, than everyone else.

Every . . . . single . . . . time, infections among their adult household members rose within 2-3 weeks of classrooms reopening.

That cycle is repeating again. And, of course it is. We put a few hundred thousand Maricopa County kids in closed quarters with limited ventilation, no masks and the lowest vaccination rate in the State, what exactly would you expect?

There is a LOT of noise in this data. Testing consistency was long ago forgotten. Districts that were providing sharply focused reports re: COVID have quietly abandoned that practice.

BUT . . . until we get 80%+ kids vaccinated, every time we open classrooms we cause a problem that could have and should have been solved.

Arizona remains at the top of the COVID Death List. We have consistently achieved the most ignominious records imaginable. And we will do it again this year. This time because we don't vaccinate our kids.

07/26/2022

PREPARE FOR YET ANOTHER SERIOUSLY DISRUPTED SCHOOL YEAR
Hospitalization and Death Rates are down, but infection rates are again approaching records. Our kids, staff and teachers are going to suffer another year of extraordinary levels of infections, absences, and the resulting deterioration in normal learning achievement.

The small Athena Foundation group that continues to do data analysis accurately forecast the late 2022 school year surge in infections. That surge started in late March and continued through the end of the school year. If we had forecast when that surge would plateau, we would have been wrong.

The March/April Omicron 4 & 5 Surge has never slowed down. In fact, it has become worse every single week including the week most recently reported. Positivity rates are now close to the January record.

WASTE WATER ANALYSIS - Few people still use certified lab tests. Either they've stopped testing completely or use home kits. But even those who don't test, flush toilets. The waste water plants that track COVID report 60-100% week over week increases in the levels of COVID found locally.

Arizona stopped reporting waste water levels, but CA, NV, UT, CO and TX data shows that the Southwest is the hotbed of COVID infections once again.

07/21/2022

AS WE SEND OUR KIDS BACK TO SCHOOL, BRACE FOR THE CONSEQUENCES. They will be different than last year - they're always different. In some ways not as bad. In other ways, far worse.

IN TERMS OF RISK OF INFECTION - THIS IS THE LONGEST LASTING AND BROADEST COVID SURGE IN THE HISTORY OF THE PANDEMIC. We naively thought that Omicron One had to be the worst. We should permanently dispel ourselves of that silly notion. COVID Gets Better at Infecting Humans every single time it mutates.

WE ACCURATELY PREDICTED A LATE 2022 SCHOOL YEAR SURGE. What we never dreamed would happen, however, did really happen. The surge not only continued through the summer, it is still building right now as our classrooms open yet again.

FIRST BIG SURGE - 49 days May and June 2020
SECOND BIG SURGE - 90 days - October through December 2020
THIRD BIG SURGE - 42 days 12/05/2021 through 01/16/2022
THIS SURGE: 101 DAYS AND STILL CLIMBING 04/21/22 - today

Because the vaccines were developed during the first COVID variant, they no longer protect you from becoming infected as well as they did in Spring 2021 when so many of us celebrated.

This School Year You Can And Will Get Infected:
- - Even if fully vaccinated - with up to date boosters
- - Even if you got hit during Omicron One's Winter surge
- - Even if you got hit once again last month

POSITIVITY RATES HAVE CLIMBED FOR FOUR CONSECUTIVE MONTHS: That has not happened before.

CDC MONITORED WASTE WATER PLANTS PROVE RECORD LEVELS OF COVID: Ignore the Lab Tests. Hardly anyone does that any more. But since almost everyone p**ps in a toilet, the p**p tells the story.

WHO'S DYING? Old people - including fully vaccinated and boosted old people. And including the senior teachers at your school.

WHAT CAN BE DONE? Again - you're on your own. The official Arizona State attitude is "rub some dirt in it, you'll be fine".

07/19/2022

Infection Rates:
* * coming out of 2021 Winter break - slammed by Omicron One.
* * finishing 2022 school year a new Omicron crisis erupted.
* * starting 2023 school year another Omicron crisis erupts.

If you get infected - you can still kill su Abuela and su Abuelo. Your Anti-Vax friends and relatives are still at great risk.

If you are vaccinated your risk of hospitalization or death is still better than that of those who didn't vaccinate - but the margin is shrinking.

WILL SCHOOL INFECTIONS SOAR AGAIN? I don't know why not. Every time we've opened the doors for schools, COVID infection rates have soared.

06/02/2022

"BUT THE KIDS DON'T DIE" . . . . We've heard that absurd refrain for two years. First of all, it's not true. Kids have died. Arizona especially has suffered far larger pediatric deaths than other states.

But at least as important, if not more so, putting kids in classrooms without precautions has been proven, repeatedly, to trigger surges throughout the rest of the population with elder citizens dying most often.

It is unfortunately and sadly true that grandparents (and older teachers) throughout the U.S., were the unnecessary victims of COVID due to contact with kids.

Early in 2022, we asked out loud on this page, if it was possible that so many kids had become infected with Omicron that there were no students left to get sick. Turns out that was a good hunch. In a recently published CDC report blood tests from throughout the U.S. were analyzed.

What we did not yet appreciate was that while Omicron wasn't killing nearly as many younger people as previous variants, it was super-deadly for those over 60. Sending kids back to school in January knowing that Omicron was surging turned out to be a death sentence for many of the senior citizens who came in contact with them.

From the moment schools opened last August, K-12 age children suffered skyrocketing rates of infections. In part because they were not vaccinated, but also because classrooms opened without precautions.

We now know that Omicron didn't go away - it simply burned up all the victims available. And, once again, Omicron version XX is surging (as we forecast three months ago it hit during the last month of school).

POSITIVITY RATES AGAIN APPROACHING RECORD LEVELS: Maricopa County hit 21% in the week most recently reported. And the rate is still climbing. Daily Positive Test rates quintupled during May. But since very few now get lab tests, there is no telling how many people got sick.

05/12/2022

MARICOPA COUNTY POSITIVITY RATES NOW MATCH THE DELTA SURGE AND ARE CLIMBING: Through the end of March positivity rates were

05/09/2022

POSITIVITY and CASE RATES: Positivity is up - how high? Depends on what database you access. The State's database says 8%, but it has not yet begun to report any of the May test data. (Yes, it is appropriate to say that the State no longer cares.)

Labs that operating in our County report much higher levels because those labs report as soon as their own test results become available. Some labs report 20% positivity or higher. But realize that their database is never going to be the same as that which the State reports, nor will anyone's database collect the results of home test kits.

Infection rates are clearly higher than they were in April and increasing through May. Daily hospitalization reports (while sketchy) are also rising.

THE SUSD REPORT: SUSD's reporting sets the standard for all other Districts. On a daily basis it updates for positive lab test reports, but only after they are confirmed by the County, which delays and dilutes that data. More accurate and far more timely are the report for children or staff sent home with symptoms and students who reported absent with COVID symptoms (or home test kit results).

Comparing the results from week to week throughout 2022, you can see that COVID is keeping huge numbers of kids out of SUSD classrooms while those kids choose not to seek certified lab tests nearly as often as in the past.

IN THE MOST RECENT WEEK, SUSD REPORTS COVID ACTIVITY AS HIGH AS SOME JANUARY WEEK SURGE LEVELS. Last week 1,271 children and staff missed all or part of the week due to COVID, the highest level in the last 10 weeks - double the level of just three weeks ago and matching the last week of January 2022.

COVID TRANSMISSION - SCHOOL ACTIVITIES TO HOUSEHOLDS: It is extremely difficult to make much sense of the County's age group demographic reports. Only a fraction of all infected people are using certified labs. But the rate of infection in seniors is rising rapidly. Whether senior citizens chose to drop all safeguards or they spent time around children who infected them is not known. But as we now dive deeply into the Omicron 4 and 5 variants, those vaccinated are getting infected far faster than in 2021.

Hospitalization data is also sketchy, but the data available shows hospitalization rates are increasing. Death rates have always been very late to post and are going to be tough to follow - but the data available also shows increases.
https://phdata.maricopa.gov/Dashboard/e10a16d8-921f-4aac-b921-26d95e638a45?e=false&vo=viewonly

05/05/2022

VIEW THE WASTE WATER TRACKING REPORT HERE:
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/ -surveillance

States still reporting show that COVID levels now range between 50% of the highest ever and 80% of the highest ever. Colorado and California both still report. Both have outbreaks.

AZ DHS data through the week ending April 6th now shows that positivity rates have risen by 260% vs. early March (at 8% and climbing consistently for four weeks). Until positivity rates decline, it is appropriate to believe that your chance of becoming infected is rising, whether vaccinated or not, since the 4th and 5th versions of Omicron continue to become more contagious than the first version which hit us in January and February.

Hospital data for Arizona is so inconsistent it tells us very little.

WEEKLY DEATHS UP 135% OVER PRIOR WEEK - Arizona's 2022 death rates never got back to the Summer 2021 levels. Based on the most recent weeks reported, Arizona is once again the 3rd most deadly State in the Nation, and rising.

From 2020 forward, Arizona currently ranks 2nd for Deaths/Capita, gaining on Mississippi where deaths have slowed as Arizona deaths continue to rise.

It takes a monumental number of really bad decisions for death rates to be so horrible for so long. Here is just one - We absolutely knew for certain that our State was in the early stages of Omicron 1 by late December. We also knew that Omicron 1 would peak in late January. Yet despite that knowledge we chose to do absolutely nothing to mitigate risk as we sent kids back to classrooms. During that period, Arizona led the Nation for infections among children, and particularly those 5-12 years old. Which in turn triggered skyrocketing household transmission.

Why do that? What is it about COVID deaths that we simply no longer care? One out of every 219 Arizonans have died from COVID since 2020. We remain in the top 5 for most deaths per capita each week. But not only do most no longer care, some even mock or hate those of us who raise to question how many deaths it takes before we do something?

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

05/03/2022

How to read MC PHD mumbo jumbo. County Health advises us that we have 6% positivity rates. It also tells us we have minimal infection rates. Could those two statements both be true?

Yes.

Through 2021, 6% positivity always correlated with well over 100 Cases/100,000/Week. After 2021, the Biden administration shipped hundreds of millions of home test kits to citizens, making it unnecessary to head to a lab when you felt sick.

Since just over 1 Billion home test kits hit the U.S., people quit going to labs. Which is a good thing. Since hanging around at labs was the single best way to assure that you got infected if you already weren't.

CDC is closely monitoring an outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel (new) coronavirus (termed “COVID-19”). This page has Maricopa County-specific updates and guidance.

05/03/2022

When positivity rates rise this quickly, really bad stuff is happening and more bad stuff is about to happen.

The deadly Delta variant didn't come close to looking this bad in its first three weeks. Omicron 1 looked worse.

So where are we? No one knows - actually lots of people know - and they're all elected or appointed officials who are supposed to warn us rather than hiding the data from us.

Welcome to bizarro world.