If there was ever any apolitical, neutral 'science" involved in the COVID response, it disappeared long ago.

From the “experts” claiming that mass BLM protests aren’t dangerous while Trump rallies and church services are, to Cuomo’s ordering that contact tracers specifically not ask interviewees about their participation in those same protests, to the media’s quick switch from hysterical coverage of hospitalization and death rates to hysterical coverage of new cases after death rates and hospitalizations have remained stable even as expanded testing revealed millions of asymptomatic cases, this entire charade has been tainted with political agenda from start, beginning with the predictions of 22 million deaths in the United States if the country wasn’t locked down.

I pointed out an example of this on Tuesday, writing about the minuscule rate of infection among CT’s prisoners tested for COVID — 832 out of 9,504, and the near-zero deaths of those testing positive: 2.

Today our local rag’s parent got around to the subject and inadvertently exposed exactly what’s going on here:

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, many believed the virus would sweep through prisons in the state leaving behind a trail of avoidable death and destruction.

But just seven individuals of the more than 12,000 who were incarcerated at the beginning of the pandemic have died from the virus. And mass testing of offenders completed by the Department of Correction this week revealed that while 12 percent of the population has contracted the virus, most of those infections have been asymptomatic.

Of the 832 who tested positive [out of 9,504 tested - Ed] during the mass testing, just two showed symptoms.

So how did the state contain the virus, avoid hospitalizations and mostly avoid death in a congregate setting like prisons?

In the view of one epidemiologist: they got lucky.

“Either they did something right or they got very lucky,” said Dr. Robert Heimer, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine who has studied the potential for outbreak in the prison system since the onset of the virus. “The 800 positive and limited number of deaths, those two statistics seem irreconcilable unless they were very lucky ... I wish I had a compelling and logical reason for these results.”

And here’s the kicker:

Heimer, who worked with several advocacy groups that urged the state early in the pandemic to release as many incarcerated individuals as possible, said he and other public health experts advised the Lamont administration to release as many of the “at risk for COVID and low risk for criminality as they could,” something Lamont declined to do.

It’s all about advocacy and pushing each scientist’s personal agenda. By the time this panic subsides the COVID experts will have been exposed as the frauds they are, just like their colleagues in the global warming business. I hold out little hope that the public will notice, and remember.

UPDATE: The WSJ editorialized on this subject this morning

Political leaders and health officials have often invoked “science” to justify decisions manifestly guided by their personal preferences. That costs them credibility. Restoring public confidence will require acknowledging their role in politicizing the pandemic, yielding to accommodations and sensible alternatives in the areas of greatest controversy, and focusing on the widely supported goal of not overwhelming hospitals, rather than less meaningful metrics such as increases in Covid-19 cases.