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From the New Statesman:
How Covid-19 vaccines could rapidly reduce the UK’s death rate
There is a very real possibility of Britain largely eliminating the fatality risk of the virus by early spring.BY HARRY LAMBERT
… As the graph below shows, vaccinating small portions of the population will have outsized effects: vaccinating the 2 per cent of Britons most at risk could, for instance, cut the risk of Covid-19 deaths by about 40 per cent. (I’ll explain why in more detail below.)
The first wave of 800,000 Pfizer doses will soon be supplemented by more waves of supply. A total of four million doses of the Pfizer vaccine are, according to UK health chiefs yesterday, due in the country by the end of this month – enough to vaccinate two million people.
Those two million vaccinations should almost halve the UK-wide risk of death. This is evident from the Office of National Statistics’ Covid-19 fatality data. As the data reveals, 42 per cent of coronavirus deaths in the UK have been among those aged 85 and over. There are about 1.65 million people in the UK of this age, or around 2 per cent of the population. The four million Pfizer doses due across the UK in the final weeks of 2020 will be enough to vaccinate them all. Assuming a 95 per cent effectiveness rate, that would cut the fatality risk of coronavirus by 40 per cent.
The next stage will be to vaccinate all those aged at least 75. There are 5.7 million Britons in this category (or 9 per cent of the population). Those aged 75 or over happen to account for 75 per cent of fatalities of Covid-19 so far. In other words, vaccinating everyone aged at least 75 could cut 71 per cent of the UK-wide risk, again assuming an efficacy of 95 per cent.
This level of vaccination will require 11.4 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine – or as little as 8.6 million doses of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, if its experimental 1.5x dose is approved by regulators.
There are two further key stages to keep in mind. First, vaccinating everyone aged at least 65 will further reduce the UK’s Covid-19 fatality risk, potentially resulting in an 86 per cent reduction in risk, as this age group and above has accounted for 90 per cent of deaths. This will require just under 25 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine in total.
The UK has ordered 40 million doses of the vaccine, with the “bulk” of those expected to be available and administered in January and February. By that point, Covid-19’s fatality risk may have reached a level comparable to flu.
Finally, a further 25 million doses will take the cut in risk to 94 per cent, by vaccinating everyone aged at least 50, as well as those most at risk between 16 and 49 (accounting for 99 per cent of Covid-19 deaths so far) – this is the government’s plan.
The British have a vaccine prioritization philosophy and a plan. I don’t know if it’s the right philosophy, but at least it’s an ethos.
It’s important to distinguish between the short run when vaccine supplies are constrained and the long run when they aren’t. Although I’m not convinced that the only metric of interest is deaths, that is definitely the one that gets people’s attention. When vaccines are rare, we can get more bang for the buck by inoculating the most at risk. Later, if the vaccines prove to reduce infections, we can go for herd immunity.
The CDC, in contrast, seems confused about this long vs. short run distinction, allotting tens of millions of doses to Frontline Essential Workers early in honor of St. George Floyd when they will still be a drop in the bucket toward herd immunity.
Notice that the Brits have the strategy advocated 9 months ago by the libertarian right: shelter the vulnerable, and go for herd immunity, partly through infection of the less vulnerable plus, increasingly, vaccination of the less invulnerable. But now we have a way to get there.
Which would be a good idea, because of the problem of Fisherian Acceleration: when there are a large number of cases of a virus, the more chances there are for malign mutations, such as this new British one that is more infectious.
It may be a good plan, but I wouldn’t call it “British”. Having in mind ethnic composition of Johnson’s cabinet, I don’t see too many people whom I would call “British”.
Just an insignificant observation.
https://youtu.be/XC8qrH3Zwog
Oh, they don't look like how YOU think they should?
Thank goodness that people don't think like you.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Reg Cæsar
Johnson’s cabinet had a reassuring look to it - even if they got Vietnam all wrong:http://www.lbjlibrary.net/collections/quick-facts/lyndon-baines-johnson-cabinet.html
And after that, they’ll declare war on Germany to save lives in Poland. Yes, the British have a plan.
But seriously, folks, this plan does make sense, and the curve proves, once again, that SARS-CoV-2 is dangerous to the elderly and infirm, and that the rest of us should have gone on with our lives instead of destroying livelihoods and further concentrating wealth into big hands.
I really want to read Steve's reply to this. Maybe he thinks he has, adequately.
Ever since April, every lay person with a bit of common sense has been asking " . . . um . . . why don't we just quarantine the 2% of the population at risk instead of the other 98%." To my knowledge, not a single person in the media or public health establishment has ever deigned to answer that universal and obvious question.Replies: @BB753
It’s time to split up the United States.
The fatality risk was going away anway, so we can go back to the 150 to 200 or so persons in the UK who died daily from respiratory diseases.
Seriously, Steve, you can have my place in line if you are that worried.
Are the British taking into account the new strain of the virus (e.g. how serious the new strain potentially will be) will directly impact their plan and perhaps derailing it from reaching herd immunity, etc. by early Spring 2021?
As biologists use the term, there's no evidence it's a new "strain," that would among other things imply the existing vaccines and vaccine candidates against the spike protein might or would no longer work.
As The Last Real Calvinist notes above, there's very little evidence, and none shared so others can check the work as of yesterday, that it's a significant variant. It could be, but we've been through this goat rodeo many times before this year.Replies: @The Alarmist, @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia
So the vaccine plans don't need to change and if anything, we get to herd immunity faster because more people will be "vaccinated" by having the disease itself.Replies: @Jack D, @Art Deco
OT: A new article about the “Skeleton Lake,” Roopkund, in India
Incl. interview with David Reich.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/14/the-skeletons-at-the-lake
It is notable how much of this article involves telling the reader what to think, what is Good and what is Bad.
It is Bad if “white supremacists” can find any support for racialist theories in evolutionary genetics.
Conversely, it is Good specifically to point out as our paradigm of understanding bones in an Indian lake that white European male predations are directly responsible for Y-chromosome displacement in South America and in slave descendants.
Deaths would drop if they shifted from categorising any death from any causes from someone who tested positive from the deeply flawed PCR tests within twenty eight days of their death to just people who died from covid, we would then find there are almost no deaths. Then again that is why the definition was changed in the first place.
https://twitter.com/MichaelYeadon3/status/1341182904450297858?s=20
“New mutation of the virus”, right on cue. And in time to justify further lockdowns, even with a “95% effective” vaccine.
I mean those globalist are not very imaginative, are they? Do they take their ideas from stupid Hollywood movies?
Or perhaps it’s the opposite, they put all these dumb ideas in the movies so that people will believe them more readily (priming).
Covid Johnson is the proof that a fake conservative or cuckservative is worse than a liberal.
It’s hard out here for a ho!
She’s a black woman! It says so right there.
A couple of notes about the British situation:
1 It’s interesting, and somewhat impressive, that the Brits are so clearly aiming to save as many of the elderly as they can. Their deep cultural investment in the role and maintenance of the NHS led them to really push the ‘save the NHS from overload and collapse’ narrative in the early days of COVID, and with that in mind, they could have conceived of a vaccination implementation plan that would have made ‘saving the NHS’ their priority. It’s not that they’ve forgotten this, but it doesn’t seem to be dominating their thinking now.
2 It’s notable that the current global freakout over the ‘UK mutation’ version of COVID may be mostly the work of one man, i.e. Herr Doktor Professor von Rumpy-Pumpy, aka Neil Ferguson. He’s the Imperial College academic bigshot who was pushing an extreme doom-and-gloom scenario for the UK back in the spring, and who was instrumental in getting the UK to go into total lockdown. He was then caught sneaking out to have trysts with his married MILFy mistress. He resigned from his government role in disgrace, and was supposed to be out of the loop. Well, it turns out he didn’t really go away, and has maintained a presence and influence over UK policy throughout the year. And now he’s back in the news preaching the apocalypse because of this new mutation. For example, see here:
Look who’s back! Professor Lockdown Neil Ferguson – who broke the rules to see his lover – had key role in PM’s dramatic U-turn on Christmas
Reminds me also of this guy Jeffrey Sachs who screwed up millions of people in Russia with his "shock doctrine", and still he is considered a "leading expert" and having extremely well-paid government jobs or in think tanks...
It's almost as if their real job is to create panic or kill or impoverish millions of people, and they are handsomely rewarded for it. So they are not incompetent, they are really evil.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Mr. Anon
We’ve finally arrived at the time when only one group isn’t memorialized on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Unless perhaps you count the ones devoted to the million or so war dead..
Oh boy!
MORE jibber jabber about vaccines.
Must be the Irish in me but…….fuck the English!
Just an insignificant observation.Replies: @Mike Tre, @Tiny Duck, @Paul Jolliffe, @BenKenobi
Excellent observation. In fact, here’s what I imagine the cabinet meeting discussing their plan went like:
Do they ever? Their “Disgraced and Disappeared” act is only in effect for a few days, until the media circus has moved on. Then it’s back to doing every single thing they were doing before. It’s almost as if they enjoy some kind of immunity…
My morning paper says that the new strain may not be all that new, it’s just that the UK puts a big effort into following the genomics of the virus (a Harvard epidemiologist was quoted as opining that the UK is the world leader at this game). Therefore the mutation may already be all over the Continent (as I guessed immediately – why else would its UK point of initiation be in Kent?) So President Micron’s panic-stricken behaviour may be fruitless.
A sane chap whose views I have followed for years anyway questions whether the new strain is more infectious.
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen/2755354/hugh-pennington-new-covid-variant/
Still channeling Cochran? Did he broker a deal for the two of you to become influencers? I mean, sure, mere blogging is so 2005.
Anyway, why is everything we don’t know about a new member of a known class of virus presumed deadly while everything we don’t know about new member of a new class of vaccine is presumed benign?
Meanwhile, Wuhan is partying. https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/one-night-in-wuhan-covid-19s-original-epicentre-re-learns-how-to-party
Most normal people, after something like this, would not only lost their job but remain unemployable for years. But these guys they keep coming and coming and never really go away. There is not even an acknowledgement that they did anything wrong!
Reminds me also of this guy Jeffrey Sachs who screwed up millions of people in Russia with his “shock doctrine”, and still he is considered a “leading expert” and having extremely well-paid government jobs or in think tanks…
It’s almost as if their real job is to create panic or kill or impoverish millions of people, and they are handsomely rewarded for it. So they are not incompetent, they are really evil.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/05/05/19/28041732-8289921-Ms_Staats_is_believed_to_have_visited_the_scientist_shortly_afte-a-24_1588704954668.jpgReplies: @Jack D
Apparently, Jo Walker of the CDC left out the fact about the elderly death rate in order to come up with numbers which put the essential workers within ballpark of vaccination impact vs elderly.
What is enraging about all of this is how dishonesty in the personal life, which is what trans is, dishonesty, which goes so far as forcing other people into the lie, becomes habitual and affects the professional life.
Which in turn affects us all and will result in a less optimal vaccine rollout. Increased deaths among the elderly is a result of the trans agenda.
I have no quarrel with the intent of the plan but it does rely on the same sort of assumptions that Public Health ‘experts’ have offered before.
The 95% efficacy of the vaccines to begin with. That figure was based on clinical trials of people in good health and whose average age was considerably less that 85 plus or even 75 plus. It doesn’t take much to kill an elderly immuno compromised person so the vaccine side effects alone could kill many in these age cohorts. Still worth a try but the elderly aren’t the ones spreading the virus since they are not out ‘clubbing’ or interacting with the general population to any great degree.
As we are now seeing in states like California, Tennessee and North and South Dakota when this virus gets out of control it gets out of control fast. People may not die but they do get sick and become infectious.Meat packing plants get shut down and farm workers infected in wholesale numbers. The economic impact of this kind of problem is, forgive for saying so, a helluva lot more severe than an outbreak at a nursing home. That we’ve manage to limp by so far without food shortages is no guarantee that future outbreaks won’t generate that problem. Then what?
And, surprise, surprise, you want to see a lot of old folk dead.Replies: @Corvinus
Important details:
As biologists use the term, there’s no evidence it’s a new “strain,” that would among other things imply the existing vaccines and vaccine candidates against the spike protein might or would no longer work.
As The Last Real Calvinist notes above, there’s very little evidence, and none shared so others can check the work as of yesterday, that it’s a significant variant. It could be, but we’ve been through this goat rodeo many times before this year.
One would hope serious discussions of “cancelling Christmas” and threatening to arrest people trying to flee Lockdown London to be the “Let them eat cake” moment of our times, but the modern day Brits don’t seem to have the pluck of the French ... at least not yet. I guess it could be that TPTB figure they have the technology and sufficient coercive power so that this time it really will be different.
Hopefully the new strain will exhibit the transmission-virulence trade-off and will be weaker in its effects.
Usually happens, not always.
But seriously, folks, this plan does make sense, and the curve proves, once again, that SARS-CoV-2 is dangerous to the elderly and infirm, and that the rest of us should have gone on with our lives instead of destroying livelihoods and further concentrating wealth into big hands.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @stillCARealist, @Hypnotoad666
Agree, and …
Funny how now that they have a supply of vaccines, they are admitting, indeed trumpeting, that this was only ever really a problem for a small minority of the population.
Facts are always in the far back seat to narrative with these people.
Imagine that we had a sane country and at the beginning of the pandemic we developed a scheme to isolate the elderly and leave everyone else alone. We could have cut deaths by 3/4 or more without completely destroying the economy. Even putting up everyone over 70 and not already living in a senior facility in a 5 star resort would have been vastly cheaper than the trillions that this has cost us.
I'm sure that our race obsession had something to do with this - the elderly are disproportionately white. The people who work with the elderly are disproportionately not white. So all policy decisions have to be made thru the lens of racial politics. How can we ask Maria to isolate herself to save a bunch of old white people if she needs to go home every night to care for her 7 children and her abuela?Replies: @Travis
Nice looking graph. Models don’t predict virus behavior very well. Will the strategy change if reality doesn’t match up?
But Steve, aren’t you overly concerned about the biggest story of the year? Obsess much?
Gee weren’t flu strains and mutations always the reason given for flu shot failures? Couldn’t this be an excuse that is being seeded in real time in Britian for anticipated failure of the Covid vaccine? I know science is science, and it is always settled because of science.
As biologists use the term, there's no evidence it's a new "strain," that would among other things imply the existing vaccines and vaccine candidates against the spike protein might or would no longer work.
As The Last Real Calvinist notes above, there's very little evidence, and none shared so others can check the work as of yesterday, that it's a significant variant. It could be, but we've been through this goat rodeo many times before this year.Replies: @The Alarmist, @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia
A pilot would call what Boris & Co. are up to “testing the limits of the envelope,” in ways that USSR’s NVKD and the DDR’s Stasi could only watch and admire. Now that they’ve figured out how to govern without the express consent of the governed, they are naturally going to explore how far they can take things.
One would hope serious discussions of “cancelling Christmas” and threatening to arrest people trying to flee Lockdown London to be the “Let them eat cake” moment of our times, but the modern day Brits don’t seem to have the pluck of the French … at least not yet. I guess it could be that TPTB figure they have the technology and sufficient coercive power so that this time it really will be different.
I think the lockdown is payback for Brexit, rather than a sanitary measure.
Just an insignificant observation.Replies: @Mike Tre, @Tiny Duck, @Paul Jolliffe, @BenKenobi
How are they not British? They are in Britain and are citizens.
Oh, they don’t look like how YOU think they should?
Thank goodness that people don’t think like you.
Is Corvinus spotting for you tonight?
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/12/11/1355240075471/A-giant-50-foot-rubber-du-012.jpg?width=700&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=e1e3ba34fc8c274a9cad9792639e5c07
As biologists use the term, there's no evidence it's a new "strain," that would among other things imply the existing vaccines and vaccine candidates against the spike protein might or would no longer work.
As The Last Real Calvinist notes above, there's very little evidence, and none shared so others can check the work as of yesterday, that it's a significant variant. It could be, but we've been through this goat rodeo many times before this year.Replies: @The Alarmist, @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia
Right. But why should the “media” approach the issue with circumspection and care when breathless negative possibilities are out there to trumpet?
But I also blame the pseudo scientists like Fauci and, frankly, the entire virology community who, apparently, never met a reporter’s call they DIDN’T take. Case in point: this article from The New York Post. on this “new strain.”
https://nypost.com/2020/12/22/fauci-says-new-covid-19-strain-from-uk-is-likely-in-us/
Here’s a select series of locutions from the great St. Anthony.
“Assumptions, suggestions, seems, should.”
Yeah, I get it — he’s trying to downplay the whole thing. But still I want to take an unmasked plane ride to DC, walk into the office of Fauci at the NIAID, and beat this guy up to within an inch of his already too long life.
He’s a shrimp, so it wouldn’t hard. Anybody wanna join me?
Ah, yes, the Internet Tuff Guy routine. So, why not actually do it? Otherwise, you are just one of the guys at their Saturday night bowling league raggin' on their old lady, bolding pronouncing on how you all are going to put her in her place, and then come Sunday morning, her comeuppance is nothing more than a headache on your part from a hard night's drinking.Replies: @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia
To anyone reading this:
Google “journalist pharma bro” and read about a woman named Christie Smythe.
Kraken is going to be released.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1340996686257254403
How do we know that this strain of SARS-CoV-2 is more contagious? After all, scientists aren’t clear about the viral load necessary for infection.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30354-4/fulltext
As official unz.com pitchman for the vaccine Steve I am curious if you will be supporting mandatory vaccinations if it comes to that .
It does not exist.
The libertarian right conducted itself with a lot more dignity and level headedness during the pandemic than has the boomer paleo right. Thankfully the pitiful reaction of the boomer paleos has sped up the development of a youth oriented alt right that isn’t obsessed with equity in their house, memories of the space race, and superannuated complacency. Boomer HBDers were especially prone to idiocy because they are so high on their own supppy of soi disant scientific rigor and status anxiety that the cathedral might as well have them on a string.
Beginning to seem more and more like the boomer right is just people who resent blacks for keeping them off the varsity basketball team but otherwise share most of the cathedrals POV.
Pretty chart, but based on what? The 90% claimed effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was based, was it not, on mild cases, not deaths. Reducing sniffles and coughs over a very short trial period doesn’t prove long-term effectiveness against severe illness and death. Psycho Bill Gates himself has said that you’ll need multiple injections, perhaps several each year, to be “safe.” Consider too that the former editors of the two most prestigious medical journals have admitted that half the trials they published were trash, the results largely determined by the drug manufacturers that paid for the trials (manufacturers whose advertising and reprints are also the main source of medical journals’ incomes).
Pfizer/BioNTech, I grant you, as of November 20th when they filed their application for a FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), didn't have enough serious cases to draw useful conclusions from, but Moderna ten days later had 30 on the placebo arm, none on the vaccine arm (and it was smaller than Pfizer/BioNTech's, 30,000 vs. 43,000 subject Phase III trials so those numbers have more strength). There's also serological (blood) studies that are used from the very beginning of human testing to see if a vaccine is producing an immune system response that's like a wild type virus one.What possible relevance does anything he says have to do with all this?? For that matter, Citation Needed, he's smart enough he should have picked up by now enough information about how "active" vaccines work, and that plenty of them are "eternal." Or was this based on an hypothetical of immunity not lasting long, before we knew that it does last quite some time for COVID-19?
This makes way more sense than anything the CDC has rolled out. I work as an emergency management consultant to a large state public health department in the US, hoping that they take this approach. One thing to keep in mind is that the reopening of the state (it’s currently on “lockdown”) depends on one metric: availability in the ICU. So even if essential workers are vaccinated and transmission comes down, the state cannot reopen because the ICUs are still full of very acute elderly and vulnerable COVID+ patients. It’s impossible from a legal standpoint to go back to “normalcy” if the ICUs are overflowing.
I wish it was the case that we could seal off the elderly and vulnerable population, but this pandemic has shown that COVID unfortunately gets in everywhere (healthcare workers have to come and go at each facility).
So I’d advocate the UK approach – inoculate the most vulnerable, improve the ICU situation, and go for herd immunity among the healthy. We’ll be reopen then by summer 2021.
There’s a lot of talk about how to prioritize vaccine distribution, and sure, the British plan doesn’t look half bad. And yes, we should also prioritize direct-contact health care providers and nursing home workers, both because they are at risk of contracting, and also of high risk of spreading, the virus.
But here’s another angle: maybe we should be prioritizing people who travel long distances a lot? The massive global pandemic was really lit off by a relatively few people who took airline flights long distances to conferences etc. Eliminate long-distance spread, and outbreaks will be local and much more readily contained.
And while the libertarian in me is aghast, perhaps we really should require people traveling long distances to provide proof of immunizations. But here’s something that never gets talked about: these rules don’t apply to the super rich. They can go on their private jets and fly whenever and wherever they want, using ‘private’ terminals (paid for by the general public of course) no security checks, no health checks, often I am told even no passport checks (!). Have they been a source of spread during these lockdowns? Maybe not, they probably don’t mingle all that much with the masses. But something to think about, though the mainstream press will NEVER bring this up
Just an insignificant observation.Replies: @Mike Tre, @Tiny Duck, @Paul Jolliffe, @BenKenobi
Oh, I dunno.
Johnson’s cabinet had a reassuring look to it – even if they got Vietnam all wrong:
http://www.lbjlibrary.net/collections/quick-facts/lyndon-baines-johnson-cabinet.html
As far as anyone can tell (and it’s really too soon to know for sure, but the following is very likely) the new strain is more infectious (spreads even more easily – that’s how it won the evolutionary race) but not more deadly and is probably covered by the existing vaccine.
So the vaccine plans don’t need to change and if anything, we get to herd immunity faster because more people will be “vaccinated” by having the disease itself.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9078579/Is-mutant-Covid-ripping-UK-REALLY-70-infectious-Britain-just-testing-more.html
(BTW, the Daily Mail is a great news source - I like it much better than the NY Times. Not only do they have 1,000x as many pictures of women in bikinis, but the hard news coverage is also better.)
The article speculates that the increase in infectiousness of the new strain may be accompanied by a reduction in lethality, which is the classic pattern for viruses. The virus that wins the evolutionary race is the one that is best able to spread itself. If the virus leaves you on your feet and able to go about your daily business you are much more likely to be able to spread it to other people vs. a virus that sends you to the ICU or kills you in a short time.Replies: @ic1000
OT: Black diversity recruiter at Google says Google is racist
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-fired-employee-diversity-recruiter-baltimore-accent-was-disability-2020-12
She would appear to have been a contemporary of James Damore if she started in 2014.
I don’t think that is Fisherian selection, though it is certainly true. In a way, our half-assed lockdowns may end up doing more harm than good. Consider 2 opposite situations.
In both cases the virus starts with a 1% Infection Fatality Rate.
A few people get the coronavirus and infect everyone on Earth themselves. The virus has an Ro of 1,000,000,000. Then there may be lots of mutations in individual genomes, but there won’t be a lot of (functional or neutral) mutations in in any one particular genome. Nor will there be enough create a functional genome that produces proteins that escapes enough neutralizing antibodies and CTLs to kill anyone. The result is that the epidemic ends, having killed 1% of population, plus however many die from hospitals being overwhelmed.
The second scenario, the virus infects one person, and has an initial Ro of 1.1. Each person originally who gets it passes it 1.1 on average, who pass it to 2.2 who pass it to 4.4…The virus grows exponentially, though slowly. This is much better right? Maybe not. The virus has very long transmission chains, and variants that can infect more than 1.1 new cases (on average) have an advantage. Chances are, these variants do so by reproducing better, better evasion of the immune system, and longer infections. In short, they are almost certainly deadlier than the original 1% rate. It is quite possible that more people die in this second scenario, especially because it does not take a huge percent infected at once to overwhelm hospitals, and the hospitals are overwhelmed for a much longer time.
Maybe selection between hosts favors reduced virulence, right. Probably doesn’t matter much. Intrahost selection favors faster reproduction, immune evasion, and longer infection. Slowly reproducing virus genomes are a smaller percent of all genomes every viral generation. Unlike bacteria, which merely double (at most) each generation, a virus that infects a cell can produce hundreds of progeny viruses. Genomes that are well eliminated by the system are a smaller proportion of genomes every generation. Genomes that can infect you for longer have an obvious advantage inrahost. In the limit, even if inteahost transmission were the dominant selective pressure, within a host, viruses that were more virulent would have an advantage, and might evolve to enough to kill you, even though you are a dead end evolutionarily for them HIV may well work this way. Certainly late stage AIDS patients don’t get laid much. Virus still kills them.
We don’t think of colds as being deadly, and they aren’t. That is, if you have a functioning immune system. In nursing homes, a cold can have a 10% IFR. People with severely compromised immune systems die of things that don’t even make normal people sick. Colds aren’t deadly not because they evolved to be mild, but because you evolved to resist them.
Long transmission chains can kill a lot of people.
Reducing the Covid-19 fatality risk and reducing the fatality risk are not the same thing.
Seriously, Steve, you can have my place in line if you are that worried.Replies: @Anonymous
Why?
What were the numbers under Covid?
You can poke around the site to find earlier years’ data for comparison.What’s interestin about 2020 is that respiratory deaths were highest before COVID became a thing ....
The thing I don’t get about the CDC is how it apparently refused to consider the fine grained approach to reducing deaths. I simply can’t believe that it did not occur to any among them that this was an important angle to work through. Such an oversight would, I think, represent a gross incompetence not possible even in a government agency. Certainly in the UK and in the EU, which adopted their very different plans, it was considered — would it not be communicated among epidemiologists? Does globalism not induce even this positive effect?
Obviously, the CDC epidemiologists should have put together a model like the UK plan, and pitted it against the extreme coarse categories that the CDC in fact entertained. Instead, they stuck with their coarse categories and, supposedly, found little difference in reduction of death rates between scenarios in which those above 65 and all those who were essential workers were vaccinated first.
Now, I have to say I frankly don’t entirely believe that the results even for the coarse categories are being fairly represented by the CDC. I wonder how many checks they have on the reporting of the results. So far as I know, the CDC has not released the software that they use to do the simulations. I simply don’t trust the results given that the person who claims to have been responsible for generating them is a radical “non-binary” SJW.
At this point, my trust in the CDC has plummeted to a new low. There’s not even the ghost of an excuse for their failure to do their job here, given the stakes in tens of thousands of human lives.
And epidemiologists, as a profession, have much to answer for here as well. It was left entirely to outsiders to point out the obvious defects in the CDC analysis. Can no mistake, however consequential, impel them to criticize, even gently, their colleagues? How worthless are they?
Looking at the situation, it’s hard not to wonder if the whole point of the CDC’s otherwise incompetent modeling was to justify what they wanted to do in the first place: make sure they could favor minorities at the expense of whites — the Summum Bonum for our elites.
Someone needs to do some serious FOIA on the processes of the CDC to get to the bottom of this. And we need to get the CDC to be open about how it does things like simulations, by releasing software.
The behavior of the CDC here, by any reckoning, is a disgrace. It must be exposed and corrected if we are to have any reasonable trust in them going forward.
It would be shocking if the blue haired trannie that they put in charge DIDN'T hate white people. In a sane world, such a person would be placed in an institution for the mentally ill, not put in charge of important policy decisions. I wouldn't trust such a person to drive me in an Uber car, let alone make policy decisions of national importance. We are literally at the stage where the inmates are running the asylum.
OT - here is a hilariously clueless, wrong end of the telescope view of black recruitment by Google from a fired Google recruiter:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9078173/April-Christina-Curley-black-diversity-recruiter-Google-claims-Baltimore-accent-disability.html
Speaking of delusions, blacks suffer from the delusion that America needs them a whole lot more than we actually do. Everyone else thinks that Google is honoring them by making them a job offer, but blacks think that they are honoring Google by agreeing to grace them with their magnificen' talent of which Google is not worthy.Replies: @Art Deco, @kaganovitch
Right – if VACCINATING 10 or 20% of the population eliminates 70 or 80% of the risk, then ISOLATING 10 or 20% of the population would have done the exact same thing. But instead we did the exact opposite – Cuomo sent the infected to nursing homes and no effort was made to prevent Jose and Maria from bringing the ‘rona from the barrio into the facilities where they work. Zero.
Imagine that we had a sane country and at the beginning of the pandemic we developed a scheme to isolate the elderly and leave everyone else alone. We could have cut deaths by 3/4 or more without completely destroying the economy. Even putting up everyone over 70 and not already living in a senior facility in a 5 star resort would have been vastly cheaper than the trillions that this has cost us.
I’m sure that our race obsession had something to do with this – the elderly are disproportionately white. The people who work with the elderly are disproportionately not white. So all policy decisions have to be made thru the lens of racial politics. How can we ask Maria to isolate herself to save a bunch of old white people if she needs to go home every night to care for her 7 children and her abuela?
“when there are a large number of cases of a virus, the more chances there are for malign mutations, such as this new British one that is more infectious.”
Lol! Yeah, the coronasniffles are so terribly infectious that in fakevax trials involving 30,000 volunteers, just a couple hundred of them got the sniffles over 10 weeks. I fear this awfully infect’o’licious British mutant might very well infect over 1% of the population 😰🤧😰
But CASES! CASES! CASES! Oh Lord, how will this stop the CASES??
Will we be able to eliminate the test giving all these false positives?
vaccinating those over 85 years-old may not be effective. The Pfizer study only included just 220 participant over the age of 79 and none over the age of 85. We really have no evidence that the vaccine will work well in people over the age of 80. Only 800 people between 75-85 received the vaccine in the Pfizer study, and just 5 in the placebo group contracted COVID, not enough to do an effective study. We really have no idea how well this vaccine will work for those over the age of 79
For people 65 to 74, while the average efficacy number (92%) is very good, the confidence interval is not. It says that the efficacy is between 53% to 99%. This kind of confidence interval says that didn’t have enough cases in this group and so the confidence range is very wide.
Back at the end of the summer I was predicting – in venues including comments on theUnz Review – that the establishment needed to end the Rona Panic, which they had manufactured, either by late this year or by early next year, once the Panic served its purpose and/or the concommitant collateral damage from the establishment’s War Against Rona became too great. I suggested that there were two obvious strategies for achieving this end:
(1) The establishment could stop cooking the books, assign causes of death appropriately, and announce that as a result of mask wearing, lock downs, and other stupid and destructive policies they’d won the War Against Rona.
(2) The establishment could announce the miraculous discovery of a vaccine against Rona and use this deus ex machina as an excuse for ending Rona Panic and their War Against Rona.
It would appear they’ve chosen option (2).
I personally do not plan on being vaccinated with an entirely novel type of vaccine whose efficacy has received only the most basic testing and whose long term safety remains entirely untested.
As a retired epidemiologist, I am aware of prior vaccines, based on standard models of action and production, which had to undergo several years of testing for safety before their widespread use was authorized. During this testing serious side effects were common enough that further research on these vaccines was discontinued.
Evidently, this long term testing of Pfizer’s, Moderna’s and other Rona vaccines will now be conducted in the population at large, another novel aspect of these vaccines and their development, manufacture, and testing. That our political establishments have chosen to legally exempt both Big Pharma manufacturers and governments from any responsibility for adverse consequences does not reassure me.
Obviously, the CDC epidemiologists should have put together a model like the UK plan, and pitted it against the extreme coarse categories that the CDC in fact entertained. Instead, they stuck with their coarse categories and, supposedly, found little difference in reduction of death rates between scenarios in which those above 65 and all those who were essential workers were vaccinated first.
Now, I have to say I frankly don't entirely believe that the results even for the coarse categories are being fairly represented by the CDC. I wonder how many checks they have on the reporting of the results. So far as I know, the CDC has not released the software that they use to do the simulations. I simply don't trust the results given that the person who claims to have been responsible for generating them is a radical "non-binary" SJW.
At this point, my trust in the CDC has plummeted to a new low. There's not even the ghost of an excuse for their failure to do their job here, given the stakes in tens of thousands of human lives.
And epidemiologists, as a profession, have much to answer for here as well. It was left entirely to outsiders to point out the obvious defects in the CDC analysis. Can no mistake, however consequential, impel them to criticize, even gently, their colleagues? How worthless are they?
Looking at the situation, it's hard not to wonder if the whole point of the CDC's otherwise incompetent modeling was to justify what they wanted to do in the first place: make sure they could favor minorities at the expense of whites -- the Summum Bonum for our elites.
Someone needs to do some serious FOIA on the processes of the CDC to get to the bottom of this. And we need to get the CDC to be open about how it does things like simulations, by releasing software.
The behavior of the CDC here, by any reckoning, is a disgrace. It must be exposed and corrected if we are to have any reasonable trust in them going forward.Replies: @Jack D, @That Would Be Telling
Of course it was considered. But you already know the answer – racial considerations are MUCH more important than saving lives, especially the lives of old white people. It’s bloody obvious. They didn’t really even try to conceal it.
It would be shocking if the blue haired trannie that they put in charge DIDN’T hate white people. In a sane world, such a person would be placed in an institution for the mentally ill, not put in charge of important policy decisions. I wouldn’t trust such a person to drive me in an Uber car, let alone make policy decisions of national importance. We are literally at the stage where the inmates are running the asylum.
OT – here is a hilariously clueless, wrong end of the telescope view of black recruitment by Google from a fired Google recruiter:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9078173/April-Christina-Curley-black-diversity-recruiter-Google-claims-Baltimore-accent-disability.html
Speaking of delusions, blacks suffer from the delusion that America needs them a whole lot more than we actually do. Everyone else thinks that Google is honoring them by making them a job offer, but blacks think that they are honoring Google by agreeing to grace them with their magnificen’ talent of which Google is not worthy.
James Baldwin once uttered some nonsense about 'If I hadn't build the railroads for nothing'. Why do you attribute to Yolanda Jefferson, CNA the idiot sentiments of the black word-merchant sector?
It's indeed amusing. The dynamic of Google propitiating the wokeness gods by hiring Blacks and those Blacks making out like bandits thereby , is normally understood by all parties involved. Every now and then you get one of these clueless hirees who is high on their own supply and takes it at face value.
Old Jerusalem Jewish joke;An elderly Arab man is trying to take his siesta nap and a bunch of children outside are playing and making noise so he goes outside and says ” Foolish children, here you are playing outside and you don’t even know they are giving out sweetmeats at the Nablus gate in honor of the sultan’s birthday!” So the kids run off and as he’s getting back into bed he says to himself “They’re giving out sweetmeats at the Nablus gate and I’m sleeping here?” and he runs off to get his share of the fictional sweets.
The comparison is of course somewhat inapt as ms. curley appears to have been a true believer all along, not someone taken in by their own rhetoric....
Obviously, the CDC epidemiologists should have put together a model like the UK plan, and pitted it against the extreme coarse categories that the CDC in fact entertained. Instead, they stuck with their coarse categories and, supposedly, found little difference in reduction of death rates between scenarios in which those above 65 and all those who were essential workers were vaccinated first.
Now, I have to say I frankly don't entirely believe that the results even for the coarse categories are being fairly represented by the CDC. I wonder how many checks they have on the reporting of the results. So far as I know, the CDC has not released the software that they use to do the simulations. I simply don't trust the results given that the person who claims to have been responsible for generating them is a radical "non-binary" SJW.
At this point, my trust in the CDC has plummeted to a new low. There's not even the ghost of an excuse for their failure to do their job here, given the stakes in tens of thousands of human lives.
And epidemiologists, as a profession, have much to answer for here as well. It was left entirely to outsiders to point out the obvious defects in the CDC analysis. Can no mistake, however consequential, impel them to criticize, even gently, their colleagues? How worthless are they?
Looking at the situation, it's hard not to wonder if the whole point of the CDC's otherwise incompetent modeling was to justify what they wanted to do in the first place: make sure they could favor minorities at the expense of whites -- the Summum Bonum for our elites.
Someone needs to do some serious FOIA on the processes of the CDC to get to the bottom of this. And we need to get the CDC to be open about how it does things like simulations, by releasing software.
The behavior of the CDC here, by any reckoning, is a disgrace. It must be exposed and corrected if we are to have any reasonable trust in them going forward.Replies: @Jack D, @That Would Be Telling
Exactly. Maybe I should shout this time: THE US PUBLIC HEALTH COMMUNITY DOES NOT CARE ABOUT INFECTIOUS DISEASE CONTROL!!!
Thus the CDC’s long running gross incompetence in the subject, see their Ebola response which was directly responsible for those two nurses getting it due to not even African state of the art recommended healthcare isolation procedures, and fast forward to COVID-19. While a lot of the latter seems to be incompetence, for example only getting 4,000 people tested for COVID-19 through February, this is simply their doing what they really want to do, it’s not in the least incompetence.
Let me use a favorite example to try to pound this in, “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” You and the CDC are working off different scripts!!! These people come from the same group our ruling trash does, and if you’re white, they literally want you dead.
I know this is hard to believe, let alone accept, but the sooner people do it, the fewer will die from their machinations.
Yep, you don’t get it. The CDC is working exactly as our ruling trash wants it to, first helping to get rid of the BAD ORANGE MAN, now working to get rid of as many whites as possible.
We--sane people, traditionalists, nationalists--must be fully cognizant of how deep the minoritarian mental rot is in our ruling class.One can show the utter idiocy of these people scientifically ... does not matter. Anyone can point out that blacks are a much larger percentage of murderers than victims of cop shootings ... does not matter. We can point out that George Floyd OD'd ... does not matter. One can debunk hate hoaxes out the wazoo, point out that there are no lynchings in the US and that Kamal Harris is just blood-libeling white people ... does not matter. I can point out that basic 6th grade math demands immigration forever turns your nation into a shithole no one else wants to come to... does not matter. There is no logical argument with these people. Their minoritarian world view is a religion. Facts, math, logic are irrelevant.
For all of your measured responses and thoughts on COVID, this statement is just as nutty as those who insist that it is simply the flu caused by Chinese agents. You literally debase yourself by impugning men and women who work for a government agency by automatically assuming to be the devil incarnate.Replies: @Jack D, @That Would Be Telling
So the vaccine plans don't need to change and if anything, we get to herd immunity faster because more people will be "vaccinated" by having the disease itself.Replies: @Jack D, @Art Deco
Here is a helpful article:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9078579/Is-mutant-Covid-ripping-UK-REALLY-70-infectious-Britain-just-testing-more.html
(BTW, the Daily Mail is a great news source – I like it much better than the NY Times. Not only do they have 1,000x as many pictures of women in bikinis, but the hard news coverage is also better.)
The article speculates that the increase in infectiousness of the new strain may be accompanied by a reduction in lethality, which is the classic pattern for viruses. The virus that wins the evolutionary race is the one that is best able to spread itself. If the virus leaves you on your feet and able to go about your daily business you are much more likely to be able to spread it to other people vs. a virus that sends you to the ICU or kills you in a short time.
* "Beneficial" from the virus' point of view -- better able to escape therapy and to spread.
I read (somewhere) that this could be how the new UK strain originated. Reinforces a point you've made, that reducing the number of people getting infected will, in and of itself, slow the emergence of new variants and make it easier to control the pandemic.
Imagine that we had a sane country and at the beginning of the pandemic we developed a scheme to isolate the elderly and leave everyone else alone. We could have cut deaths by 3/4 or more without completely destroying the economy. Even putting up everyone over 70 and not already living in a senior facility in a 5 star resort would have been vastly cheaper than the trillions that this has cost us.
I'm sure that our race obsession had something to do with this - the elderly are disproportionately white. The people who work with the elderly are disproportionately not white. So all policy decisions have to be made thru the lens of racial politics. How can we ask Maria to isolate herself to save a bunch of old white people if she needs to go home every night to care for her 7 children and her abuela?Replies: @Travis
it is not that easy to isolate those in nursing homes. The workers have families and often take public transportation to get to work. Banning family visits and isolating elderly people from their families results in a significant reduction in the their quality of life. The majority of nursing home residents who died from COVID would have been dead before Christmas even if COVID never existed.
In a study of elderly Americans who moved to a nursing home for their final months or years of life, 65% died there within one year. Men had shorter lengths of stay before death than women, with a median of just 3 months before death. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2010/08/98172/social-support-key-nursing-home-length-stay-death
men in nursing homes have a median stay of 3 months. Seems strange that we are suddenly so concerned with men in nursing homes getting a vaccine since half of them are expected to die before March, even if they are immune to COVID. The 120,000 Americans who died in nursing homes this year were never going to survive to Christmas, regardless of how well we isolated them.Isolating them from family may have sped up the death rates of nursing home residents this year.
Meanwhile, there are lots and lots of group senior living facilities or residential care facilities. where people mostly pay their way. They go by a variety of names, like assisted living, etc. People live a few years in them.
The point being that they don't have obvious, well understood names. But all senior group living are called nursing homes for the vaccine, for simplicity.
SNF's have a long and politically controversial history. It is rather hard to figure this stuff out, but I spent some time looking into it when looking at REIT investments.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
“The British Plan” Anyone remember the Imperial College Plan by Neil Ferguson? “Another nice mess you’ve gotten us into” – Oliver Hardy to Stan Laurel.
Is it possible the new mutation is less lethal, or less whatever measure you like, than the previous? For example the virus is trying to optimize reproduction over lethality. I am shocked PM Boris Johnson got to shut down London and the, shockingly, trade with Europe over this.
As far as the warp speed stuff, I don’t get why it has to be 2 identical vaccines from US makers when there are multiple vaccines out there. Why not approve the use of the other vaccines too? I also don’t see the vaccine as the end, more like the beginning of constant vaccinations every six months for the virus of the day.
Congrats for subscribing to yet another (((highbrow news outlet))).
So the vaccine plans don't need to change and if anything, we get to herd immunity faster because more people will be "vaccinated" by having the disease itself.Replies: @Jack D, @Art Deco
Knock on wood. There’s been an abrupt spike in infections recorded and in the hospital census since 4 December, but, so far, no spike in deaths.
In my county, after the big initial wave, both the number of cases and the number of deaths really settled down from July to October - most days there were no covid deaths and on others, one. This for a county of over 800,000 people. But starting at the beginning of November, both the # of cases AND the # of deaths spike up and now we are back up to as many as 15 deaths/day. Roughly speaking both the case count and the death count are up by a factor of 15x from their summer lows.
As far as I can tell, the average case fatality rate, which is somewhere around 1.8%, has not really changed in the US yet. No one really knows what the infection fatality rate is. However, the case fatality rate varies greatly by age, from almost zero risk for those under 40 to perhaps a 15% risk for those over 80 so the blended 1.8% number is almost meaningless unless you happen to be in the band where that is in fact the CFR (roughly the 60-69 group). For all other age groups the risk is either much lower or much higher.Replies: @AnotherDad, @Travis, @res
It would be shocking if the blue haired trannie that they put in charge DIDN'T hate white people. In a sane world, such a person would be placed in an institution for the mentally ill, not put in charge of important policy decisions. I wouldn't trust such a person to drive me in an Uber car, let alone make policy decisions of national importance. We are literally at the stage where the inmates are running the asylum.
OT - here is a hilariously clueless, wrong end of the telescope view of black recruitment by Google from a fired Google recruiter:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9078173/April-Christina-Curley-black-diversity-recruiter-Google-claims-Baltimore-accent-disability.html
Speaking of delusions, blacks suffer from the delusion that America needs them a whole lot more than we actually do. Everyone else thinks that Google is honoring them by making them a job offer, but blacks think that they are honoring Google by agreeing to grace them with their magnificen' talent of which Google is not worthy.Replies: @Art Deco, @kaganovitch
Speaking of delusions, blacks suffer from the delusion that America needs them a whole lot more than we actually do. Everyone else thinks that Google is honoring them by making them a job offer, but blacks think that they are honoring Google by agreeing to grace them with their magnificen’ talent of which Google is not worthy.
James Baldwin once uttered some nonsense about ‘If I hadn’t build the railroads for nothing’. Why do you attribute to Yolanda Jefferson, CNA the idiot sentiments of the black word-merchant sector?
“but at least it’s an ethos”
Donny you’re out of your element.
From WSJ:
But seriously, folks, this plan does make sense, and the curve proves, once again, that SARS-CoV-2 is dangerous to the elderly and infirm, and that the rest of us should have gone on with our lives instead of destroying livelihoods and further concentrating wealth into big hands.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @stillCARealist, @Hypnotoad666
You put so much common sense into one sentence and then the experts will spend 20 pages with tons of fancy graphs to explain it all away into a plague of epic proportions. Maybe it’s the conjunction? Is that the real problem?
I really want to read Steve’s reply to this. Maybe he thinks he has, adequately.
thanks for the graph ‘New Statesman’. couldn’t have figured out that analysis without it. whoever referenced james bond hit it on the head. this is not WWII Britain in its finest hour, it is Cold War, Olympics-style competition nonsense, stevo playing with his model rockets as he technologically dominates the russkies. the ‘new’ mutation of the virus has been known of since September, and, according some people, is likely more easily transmissible, but less dangerous, because that’s what some respiratory viruses do to propagate, they become weaker so as not to kill the host. but never mind that, let’s reenact 28 Days Later or Children of Men for the holidays. thanks Boris.
Along the lines of the graphs from an analyst friend that Steve posted last week, here is Weekly Deaths per Million Population: 2020 compared to the past 5 years, posted on 12/19/20 by Reddit user anonymouswritings. Image:
Note that the Y-axis runs from zero to 500 for every graph, allowing apples to apples comparisons.
By this measure, the US comes across as doing pretty well. But this is misleading, as the NYC Metro area was pounded in April, while most parts of the country got off very lightly. 2nd wave hit different places, 3rd wave (mostly not shown), different again. Likewise, Lombardy’s first wave excess deaths would be off the scale used here. But such complaints aside, this is really nice work that puts the pandemic in context. Not the flu.
One thing that is striking about those graphs is that the largest increase in deaths above background were in those countries that imposed the most draconian lockdown measures: Italy, Spain, Belgium, the UK.
The author of the graphs added an entry for NYC -- that, too, is off the charts.
Everything is converged. It’s hopeless.
Of course you must understand that the “battleground states” would become battleground states……ok,a Gettysburg redo.
Sweden did better than most. California getting massive wave of CV despite lockdowns and masks mandated for months. Further evidence that the Lockdowns were a complete failure. Thankfully treatments have gotten better, but not much can be done to stop the spread of an airborne respiratory virus except herd immunity. The results are in. Counterintuitive though it may be, statistical analysis shows that locking down the economy didn’t contain the disease’s spread and reopening it didn’t unleash a second wave of infections. The vaccines will help us get to herd immunity faster , as 100 million Americans have already recovered from COVID. But most survivors of COVID never knew they had it, since they had zero symptoms.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9078579/Is-mutant-Covid-ripping-UK-REALLY-70-infectious-Britain-just-testing-more.html
(BTW, the Daily Mail is a great news source - I like it much better than the NY Times. Not only do they have 1,000x as many pictures of women in bikinis, but the hard news coverage is also better.)
The article speculates that the increase in infectiousness of the new strain may be accompanied by a reduction in lethality, which is the classic pattern for viruses. The virus that wins the evolutionary race is the one that is best able to spread itself. If the virus leaves you on your feet and able to go about your daily business you are much more likely to be able to spread it to other people vs. a virus that sends you to the ICU or kills you in a short time.Replies: @ic1000
This Nov. 5 Cell paper shows that immunocompromised people who harbor the virus for long periods of time provide an opportunity for new beneficial* mutations to accumulate: Avanzato et al., Case Study: Prolonged Infectious SARS-CoV-2 Shedding from an Asymptomatic Immunocompromised Individual with Cancer.
* “Beneficial” from the virus’ point of view — better able to escape therapy and to spread.
I read (somewhere) that this could be how the new UK strain originated. Reinforces a point you’ve made, that reducing the number of people getting infected will, in and of itself, slow the emergence of new variants and make it easier to control the pandemic.
I assume you are talking about the UK?
In my county, after the big initial wave, both the number of cases and the number of deaths really settled down from July to October – most days there were no covid deaths and on others, one. This for a county of over 800,000 people. But starting at the beginning of November, both the # of cases AND the # of deaths spike up and now we are back up to as many as 15 deaths/day. Roughly speaking both the case count and the death count are up by a factor of 15x from their summer lows.
As far as I can tell, the average case fatality rate, which is somewhere around 1.8%, has not really changed in the US yet. No one really knows what the infection fatality rate is. However, the case fatality rate varies greatly by age, from almost zero risk for those under 40 to perhaps a 15% risk for those over 80 so the blended 1.8% number is almost meaningless unless you happen to be in the band where that is in fact the CFR (roughly the 60-69 group). For all other age groups the risk is either much lower or much higher.
One would think "public health authorities" knowing that was coming--i knew it--would have spent the summer getting everyone prepared:
-- Vitamin D
-- Vitamin C
-- Zinc and an ionophore (quercetin for me)
-- Humidification
-- Indoor air filtration
Just think, public health authorities could actually work to make sure the nation/their community is prepared and give people sound medical advice.Replies: @Jack D, @vhrm
https://i.redd.it/o2rf1j7qo7661.png
Note that the Y-axis runs from zero to 500 for every graph, allowing apples to apples comparisons.
By this measure, the US comes across as doing pretty well. But this is misleading, as the NYC Metro area was pounded in April, while most parts of the country got off very lightly. 2nd wave hit different places, 3rd wave (mostly not shown), different again. Likewise, Lombardy's first wave excess deaths would be off the scale used here. But such complaints aside, this is really nice work that puts the pandemic in context. Not the flu.Replies: @Jack D, @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia, @Mr. Anon, @HA, @Kratoklastes
What did Denmark/Finland/Norway do or not do and can that be emulated in the US?
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/12/06/why-did-sweden-have-more-covid-deaths-than-its-neighbors/
These three countries had earlier holidays than Sweden. Swedes returning from later holidays brought the disease back with them and seeded Stockholm with it. The article also mentions that Swedes normally travel 80% more than their Nordic neighbors. So reducing foreign travel during an epidemic would help.
These three countries have fewer immigrants. According to the above article, 19% of Swedes are foreign born versus 14% for Norway and Finland and 8% for Denmark. Immigrants are less likely to follow good health procedures. Even more important here, Sweden had a program to give jobless immigrants jobs in nursing homes and many of them brought the disease into those nursing homes. The article mentions that the Nordic countries other than Sweden have fewer people in nursing homes. So the lessons here are cut back on immigration and isolate your elderly population when you have an epidemic. We can see the importance of keeping the disease out of nursing homes by looking at what happened in states like New York that didn't do that.
Lockdowns probably have higher costs than you get for benefits received. Anders Tegnell, chief Swedish epidemiologist, has said that even though Sweden didn't have an official lockdown like its Nordic neighbors, people in Sweden voluntarily self-isolated. The variations in Nordic countries weren't primarily due to lockdowns versus no lockdowns. There is mixed evidence on mandatory masking. At least they don't cause economic disruptions since people can go about their daily business wearing them. Encouraging people to wear them might be a good idea but draconian punishments for those who refuse may be a bad idea.Replies: @HA, @utu
Lockdowns when the infection rate was still low. Followed with effective contact tracing. Protection of vulnerable.
Other countries like Slovenia, Czechia and Poland also did great with lockdowns because their infection rates were low at the point of lockdowns introduction but then they failed to maintain the infection rate below the manageable level during summer with contact tracing and were hit with catastrophic second waves.
This Deutsche Welle article constants Finland with Germany. Keep in mind that Germany did very well. Germany is 19th in Europe in terms of deaths per capita. Though they did not react to the surge in November when they knew already they lost control of the second wave and waited too long to introduce the lockdown.
No.
The American Plan – pass a Covid19 spending bill that provides $50,000,000 for “Women’s Leadership” in foreign countries:
https://i.redd.it/o2rf1j7qo7661.png
Note that the Y-axis runs from zero to 500 for every graph, allowing apples to apples comparisons.
By this measure, the US comes across as doing pretty well. But this is misleading, as the NYC Metro area was pounded in April, while most parts of the country got off very lightly. 2nd wave hit different places, 3rd wave (mostly not shown), different again. Likewise, Lombardy's first wave excess deaths would be off the scale used here. But such complaints aside, this is really nice work that puts the pandemic in context. Not the flu.Replies: @Jack D, @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia, @Mr. Anon, @HA, @Kratoklastes
Very interesting charts, following good information display practices, particularly, as you noted, keeping the Y axis consistent.
While, yes indeed, it is NOT the flu, it is not so bad that we have to bring our lives to a screeching halt.
If you zoom in on those charts, you can see some very interesting things.
–Since June, the weekly deaths per million for the USA appears to be around 30 to 50 deaths more than the 5 year trend, kinda sorta. So, yep, we’re doing OK relative to everyone else. Our nominal deaths are high, which gets everybody into a panic, but we are a BIG country. Again, it’s ANOTHER data point — one that’s a bit more reliable than our ACTUAL Wuhan deaths , data which is almost certainly unreliable to one degree or another — confirming we are totally overreacting.
–Up until November, Sweden was tracking at or below its 5 year levels.
–In Scotland and Northern Ireland, there have been troughs this year below the 5 year lines, suggesting that deaths have been pushed forward.
–Some continental Euro countries are spiking after a flatish period. Spain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium. In contrast, Germany and Denmark are more or less tracking with the 5 year lines. These trends strike me as providing additional evidence that this pandemic is stochastic — all you need are just a few completely randomized pockets of intense spreading to skew the numbers. It’s why all the SIR modeling like that done by the IHME guys is just a complete waste of time.
In addition to their lack of Ebola response, their reaction to the Anthrax scare of 2001 was abysmal. CDC seems to be just another group of reasonably well educated folks whose main interest is maintaining their position at the public trough.
https://i.redd.it/o2rf1j7qo7661.png
Note that the Y-axis runs from zero to 500 for every graph, allowing apples to apples comparisons.
By this measure, the US comes across as doing pretty well. But this is misleading, as the NYC Metro area was pounded in April, while most parts of the country got off very lightly. 2nd wave hit different places, 3rd wave (mostly not shown), different again. Likewise, Lombardy's first wave excess deaths would be off the scale used here. But such complaints aside, this is really nice work that puts the pandemic in context. Not the flu.Replies: @Jack D, @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia, @Mr. Anon, @HA, @Kratoklastes
Not the flu. Not the Black Death either. You are correct that is a nice display of data. However, it only goes back five years. How about 50 years? Or 70? Or 100? What would really be useful would be to put current death numbers in the context of past pandemics. That would better allow people to see whether what has been done over the last year were reasonable public-health measures or, as I have always maintained, bat-shit crazy headless-chicken insanity and/or a sinister plot by globalist oligarch f**ks and their technocrat toadies to – not to put too fine a point on it – enslave the entire World.
One thing that is striking about those graphs is that the largest increase in deaths above background were in those countries that imposed the most draconian lockdown measures: Italy, Spain, Belgium, the UK.
It is facinating that both you and Jack D. (and J. Ricke too at this point) agree on what you described, because what you described is a very serious, evil, cruel, cut-and-dry case of attempted genocide against the broad set of all White Americans.
A conspiracy it is, if what you say is true. You have clearly proven your facility here with matters of public health, medicines, etc. (as I well know!) so one is inclined to take your comment, and the “• Agrees,” seriously.
Still, it is hard to believe. Such things require the personal investment of many human beings, and for them to do what you say they are doing would require them all to be psychopaths. Are you being literal, or metaphorical?
Psychopathy is not required, although that helps, especially for certain groups and tasks, although I think much less so now that the US isn't really base Christian, with it's universal respect for life. What's primarily required is to not view your opponents as being human, and if you can't see a great deal of explicit dehumanizing happening, now literally literally at the Nazi level, well, I suppose that's why you made this "do you really mean it?" comment.
And experience tells us that Jack D, don't recognize J. Ricke, and myself are wasting our time replying to people like you, because as a class, literally literally nothing less than a bullet smashing into you head will break you out of your mindset.
Side note, it's an autoconspiracy, a group of like minded people working towards a large set of shared goals. Very open, not a secret to anyone who pays the slightest attention to them, they're not hiding anything. You just studiously refuse to see it, and only you can explain to us why, except of course by definition you can't see it in yourself to explain why. People like you also must be ruthlessly kept out of movements against our literally literally genocidal ruling trash, because you don't want to believe in the essential truths about our opponents, are primed for defection at the drop of a hat.Replies: @Jack D, @vhrm
This scenario assumes that the vaccines will be effective in the elderly. The flu vaccine is notoriously ineffective in the elderly for the same reason that viral illnesses are more deadly: immuno-senescence. The aged immune system is anergic and produces a weaker immune response than the youthful one. The response to a vaccine is similarly weaker and often does not produce an antibody response sufficient to ward off disease. A better response would have been to sequester the vulnerable and treat incipient cases with cheap but effective drugs, vitamins and minerals to prevent disease progression (hydroxychloroquine, zinc, vitamin D3, vitamin C, methylprednisolone, azithromycin, etc.). The former was not done (quite the opposite in states like NY) and the latter was actively suppressed by the medical establishment and their media stooges.
OT – This is the CDC National Vital Statistic System’s homepage. Look at the picture on the block in the upper left for “Births”. What do you think the CDC is saying there?
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/
The British Plan sounds a lot like Steve’s moderation of comments. By the time it is finally applied, it has no relevancy anymore… 😀
Anyway, there is no “new mutation”, there is no “increasing of cases”, there is no need for masks or lockdowns or even a vaccine, it’s all a lie.
It’s weird to notice that TPTB keep lying about immigration, race, transgenderism, IQ, 9/11 etc, but still believe that somehow they are telling the truth about Covid.
They are trying to kill us in so many ways, and yet we refuse to believe them.
https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1341399120360198148
Same thing as Japan – have a monoethnic population with a IQ over 100.
Denmark 184 (deaths per million)
Finland 92
Norway 74
Japan 23
South Korea 14
Malaysia 13
Sri Lanka 9
New Zealand 5
Thailand 0.9
Vietnam 0.4
Taiwan 0.3Replies: @utu
According to the following article part of it was just luck:
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/12/06/why-did-sweden-have-more-covid-deaths-than-its-neighbors/
These three countries had earlier holidays than Sweden. Swedes returning from later holidays brought the disease back with them and seeded Stockholm with it. The article also mentions that Swedes normally travel 80% more than their Nordic neighbors. So reducing foreign travel during an epidemic would help.
These three countries have fewer immigrants. According to the above article, 19% of Swedes are foreign born versus 14% for Norway and Finland and 8% for Denmark. Immigrants are less likely to follow good health procedures. Even more important here, Sweden had a program to give jobless immigrants jobs in nursing homes and many of them brought the disease into those nursing homes. The article mentions that the Nordic countries other than Sweden have fewer people in nursing homes. So the lessons here are cut back on immigration and isolate your elderly population when you have an epidemic. We can see the importance of keeping the disease out of nursing homes by looking at what happened in states like New York that didn’t do that.
Lockdowns probably have higher costs than you get for benefits received. Anders Tegnell, chief Swedish epidemiologist, has said that even though Sweden didn’t have an official lockdown like its Nordic neighbors, people in Sweden voluntarily self-isolated. The variations in Nordic countries weren’t primarily due to lockdowns versus no lockdowns. There is mixed evidence on mandatory masking. At least they don’t cause economic disruptions since people can go about their daily business wearing them. Encouraging people to wear them might be a good idea but draconian punishments for those who refuse may be a bad idea.
https://i.ibb.co/YQdsp6p/Nordic-dec22.png
Sweden could not have an effective contact tracing system because it was running at too high infection rate. But even when the infection rate dropped to the manageable level in Summer Sweden could not prevent the second wave in Fall which clearly means that their laissez-faire approach has consequences even at low infection rates when contact tracing is manageable.
All the arguments formulated by Sweden apologists can't account for more than 10% of the 10-fold difference.Replies: @BenKenobi, @MGB, @Mark G., @AnotherDad
What did Denmark/Finland/Norway do or not do and can that be emulated in the US?
Lockdowns when the infection rate was still low. Followed with effective contact tracing. Protection of vulnerable.
Other countries like Slovenia, Czechia and Poland also did great with lockdowns because their infection rates were low at the point of lockdowns introduction but then they failed to maintain the infection rate below the manageable level during summer with contact tracing and were hit with catastrophic second waves.
This Deutsche Welle article constants Finland with Germany. Keep in mind that Germany did very well. Germany is 19th in Europe in terms of deaths per capita. Though they did not react to the surge in November when they knew already they lost control of the second wave and waited too long to introduce the lockdown.
They’re not readily accessible by land and they turned off the valves before the virus was established there. If I’m reading the map correctly, there are about 18 border crossings connecting Finland and its neighbors and about 10 connecting Norway and it’s neighbors. Their principal neighbors are (1) each other, (2) Russia, which saw a low caseload until this fall, and (3) Sweden, wherein the cases were concentrated around Stockholm. There are seven border crossings into Denmark. They lead to Germany, which was for some puzzling reason spared last spring (but which is suffering a rapid upsurge right low).
The Ebola thing was flat out blood boiling. Pompous, supercilious, know-it-alls who had absolutely no interest in protecting the US from infection, dismissing the most obvious common sense precautions. Their only concern was … Africa. They were quite happy to have the US infected if that meant a “global response” and “helping Africa”.
I can’t see how this Xi virus debacle could be any surprise to anyone after Ebola. “What we have to watch out for is xenophobia” and “go hug a Chinaman” are standard “public health” dogma.
We–sane people, traditionalists, nationalists–must be fully cognizant of how deep the minoritarian mental rot is in our ruling class.
One can show the utter idiocy of these people scientifically … does not matter. Anyone can point out that blacks are a much larger percentage of murderers than victims of cop shootings … does not matter. We can point out that George Floyd OD’d … does not matter. One can debunk hate hoaxes out the wazoo, point out that there are no lynchings in the US and that Kamal Harris is just blood-libeling white people … does not matter. I can point out that basic 6th grade math demands immigration forever turns your nation into a shithole no one else wants to come to… does not matter. There is no logical argument with these people. Their minoritarian world view is a religion. Facts, math, logic are irrelevant.
It would be shocking if the blue haired trannie that they put in charge DIDN'T hate white people. In a sane world, such a person would be placed in an institution for the mentally ill, not put in charge of important policy decisions. I wouldn't trust such a person to drive me in an Uber car, let alone make policy decisions of national importance. We are literally at the stage where the inmates are running the asylum.
OT - here is a hilariously clueless, wrong end of the telescope view of black recruitment by Google from a fired Google recruiter:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9078173/April-Christina-Curley-black-diversity-recruiter-Google-claims-Baltimore-accent-disability.html
Speaking of delusions, blacks suffer from the delusion that America needs them a whole lot more than we actually do. Everyone else thinks that Google is honoring them by making them a job offer, but blacks think that they are honoring Google by agreeing to grace them with their magnificen' talent of which Google is not worthy.Replies: @Art Deco, @kaganovitch
OT – here is a hilariously clueless, wrong end of the telescope view of black recruitment by Google from a fired Google recruiter:
It’s indeed amusing. The dynamic of Google propitiating the wokeness gods by hiring Blacks and those Blacks making out like bandits thereby , is normally understood by all parties involved. Every now and then you get one of these clueless hirees who is high on their own supply and takes it at face value.
Old Jerusalem Jewish joke;An elderly Arab man is trying to take his siesta nap and a bunch of children outside are playing and making noise so he goes outside and says ” Foolish children, here you are playing outside and you don’t even know they are giving out sweetmeats at the Nablus gate in honor of the sultan’s birthday!” So the kids run off and as he’s getting back into bed he says to himself “They’re giving out sweetmeats at the Nablus gate and I’m sleeping here?” and he runs off to get his share of the fictional sweets.
The comparison is of course somewhat inapt as ms. curley appears to have been a true believer all along, not someone taken in by their own rhetoric….
The British strategy of vaccinating first those with the highest IFR is the fastest and most optimal strategy to reduce the fatality risk
https://www.unz.com/isteve/bloc-based-vs-individual-based-thinking/#comment-4354906
however it is only valid for the model where everybody has the same probability of infection which obviously is not true. 40 years old medical worker with IFR=0.03% who has many contacts with infected may have higher risk of dying than 70 year old with IFR=2% who lives in secluded area with almost zero contacts with infected.
So the probability of getting infected should be included in assigning the score that determines the priority on the vaccination list.
And it's not just that the 40 year old could conceivably have a greater risk because of greater contacts, but also that those greater contacts mean more potential for spreading it, as well. So you do want to knock out the "nodes" with high connection counts.
I think everyone understands that medical workers--with patient contact--are nodes with high connection counts to vulnerable people and ergo really are the people who should go first.
Beyond the connection issue, the 40 year old's life is--all else being equal--simply more valuable. They are in the midst of life, having/raising their children. The 70 year olds are in my bucket: their life's work and direct child raising done--though still giving advice--just enjoying the ride. We want to live--at least as long as we're healthy. But no way we can claim to be as valuable--fewer years of lesser importance left.
All these factors need to be in the mix. But--the great thing about this plague--the risk for "prime of life" folks who haven't abused their bodies with obesity/diabetes is ridiculously low.Replies: @utu
I’m not sure how much more clear I can be than in my previous comment; to repeat the most concise part:
And I’m old fashioned and refuse to recognize lying case law, when I say “literally,” I mean “in a literal manner or sense; exactly,” the words just as they are, with their plain meanings.
Psychopathy is not required, although that helps, especially for certain groups and tasks, although I think much less so now that the US isn’t really base Christian, with it’s universal respect for life. What’s primarily required is to not view your opponents as being human, and if you can’t see a great deal of explicit dehumanizing happening, now literally literally at the Nazi level, well, I suppose that’s why you made this “do you really mean it?” comment.
And experience tells us that Jack D, don’t recognize J. Ricke, and myself are wasting our time replying to people like you, because as a class, literally literally nothing less than a bullet smashing into you head will break you out of your mindset.
Side note, it’s an autoconspiracy, a group of like minded people working towards a large set of shared goals. Very open, not a secret to anyone who pays the slightest attention to them, they’re not hiding anything. You just studiously refuse to see it, and only you can explain to us why, except of course by definition you can’t see it in yourself to explain why. People like you also must be ruthlessly kept out of movements against our literally literally genocidal ruling trash, because you don’t want to believe in the essential truths about our opponents, are primed for defection at the drop of a hat.
You're well versed in lab bio and reasonably reasonable on all that stuff, but now you're insisting now that the CDC is literally trying to kill people because that's what they do?
wut?
I'm no fan of the CDC's models, recommendations, response or much else, but where's the evidence this is anything but slow government bureaucracy moving at a snail's pace a few decades behind the times, as usual?
Whiteness/scandi compliance/border control.
No.
In my county, after the big initial wave, both the number of cases and the number of deaths really settled down from July to October - most days there were no covid deaths and on others, one. This for a county of over 800,000 people. But starting at the beginning of November, both the # of cases AND the # of deaths spike up and now we are back up to as many as 15 deaths/day. Roughly speaking both the case count and the death count are up by a factor of 15x from their summer lows.
As far as I can tell, the average case fatality rate, which is somewhere around 1.8%, has not really changed in the US yet. No one really knows what the infection fatality rate is. However, the case fatality rate varies greatly by age, from almost zero risk for those under 40 to perhaps a 15% risk for those over 80 so the blended 1.8% number is almost meaningless unless you happen to be in the band where that is in fact the CFR (roughly the 60-69 group). For all other age groups the risk is either much lower or much higher.Replies: @AnotherDad, @Travis, @res
It’s almost like Montgomery County had summer, last summer, then in the late fall when everyone retreats indoors was hit by … let’s call it “cold and flu season”.
One would think “public health authorities” knowing that was coming–i knew it–would have spent the summer getting everyone prepared:
— Vitamin D
— Vitamin C
— Zinc and an ionophore (quercetin for me)
— Humidification
— Indoor air filtration
Just think, public health authorities could actually work to make sure the nation/their community is prepared and give people sound medical advice.
The excess deaths are coming from somewhere. If they are not coming from nursing homes then it is even worse.
Covid cured the flu. Wondermous virus!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Epvg16fXcAAGnsL?format=jpg&name=900×900
One would think "public health authorities" knowing that was coming--i knew it--would have spent the summer getting everyone prepared:
-- Vitamin D
-- Vitamin C
-- Zinc and an ionophore (quercetin for me)
-- Humidification
-- Indoor air filtration
Just think, public health authorities could actually work to make sure the nation/their community is prepared and give people sound medical advice.Replies: @Jack D, @vhrm
Just think of how many lives could have been saved if they had given all low income individuals a free humidifier and air cleaner along with a voucher for a supply of supplements. That’s a program that we could all get behind – low income individuals, virtue signalling whites, humidifier, air cleaner and supplement manufacturers, appliance and drug stores…
The measures that you mention are all good but I don’t know whether they would really be totally effective. It appears that indoor transmission is much higher than outdoors and in a cold climate people spend more time indoors every winter. There is only so much you can do with humidification and filtration when people are confined in a room and all breathing the same air.
But you’re right that we didn’t even try. Everyone was so caught up in the whole evil Trump / mask/ no mask/ lockdown business that there was no energy left to actually implement useful measures before winter weather set in.
BTW, the PA Secretary of Heath, “Rachel” Richard Levine, is a trannie who went to Harvard:
Has any country in history had a WORSE leadership class? Horses in the Senate are starting to look good right about now..
In my county, after the big initial wave, both the number of cases and the number of deaths really settled down from July to October - most days there were no covid deaths and on others, one. This for a county of over 800,000 people. But starting at the beginning of November, both the # of cases AND the # of deaths spike up and now we are back up to as many as 15 deaths/day. Roughly speaking both the case count and the death count are up by a factor of 15x from their summer lows.
As far as I can tell, the average case fatality rate, which is somewhere around 1.8%, has not really changed in the US yet. No one really knows what the infection fatality rate is. However, the case fatality rate varies greatly by age, from almost zero risk for those under 40 to perhaps a 15% risk for those over 80 so the blended 1.8% number is almost meaningless unless you happen to be in the band where that is in fact the CFR (roughly the 60-69 group). For all other age groups the risk is either much lower or much higher.Replies: @AnotherDad, @Travis, @res
Furthermore, the WHO reported that the CFR of the H1N1 influenza virus is also 2–3%, similar to the unadjusted 2–3% CFR of the coronavirus reported in Congressional testimony back in September. https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/clarifying-the-true-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-same-as-the-flu-8148e38b9ab5 . More recent data by the CDC and WHO, however, estimates that Covid-19 has an IFR of 0.65% and a case fatality rate of 0.5-1%.
There are some other countries which did well too:
Denmark 184 (deaths per million)
Finland 92
Norway 74
Japan 23
South Korea 14
Malaysia 13
Sri Lanka 9
New Zealand 5
Thailand 0.9
Vietnam 0.4
Taiwan 0.3
(1) The establishment could stop cooking the books, assign causes of death appropriately, and announce that as a result of mask wearing, lock downs, and other stupid and destructive policies they'd won the War Against Rona.
(2) The establishment could announce the miraculous discovery of a vaccine against Rona and use this deus ex machina as an excuse for ending Rona Panic and their War Against Rona.
It would appear they've chosen option (2).
I personally do not plan on being vaccinated with an entirely novel type of vaccine whose efficacy has received only the most basic testing and whose long term safety remains entirely untested.
As a retired epidemiologist, I am aware of prior vaccines, based on standard models of action and production, which had to undergo several years of testing for safety before their widespread use was authorized. During this testing serious side effects were common enough that further research on these vaccines was discontinued.
Evidently, this long term testing of Pfizer's, Moderna's and other Rona vaccines will now be conducted in the population at large, another novel aspect of these vaccines and their development, manufacture, and testing. That our political establishments have chosen to legally exempt both Big Pharma manufacturers and governments from any responsibility for adverse consequences does not reassure me.Replies: @Je Suis Omar Mateen
“(2) The establishment could announce the miraculous discovery of a vaccine against Rona and use this deus ex machina as an excuse for ending Rona Panic and their War Against Rona.
It would appear they’ve chosen option (2).”
Perforce TPTB chose option (2) because “”cases”” skyrocketed concomitant with universal Facediapering™ and Lockdowns 2.0 and 3.0. If diapering and Lockdowns work, then cases drop proportionally to rate of diapering and Lockdowns. Viz this disclaimer printed on every Facediaper™:
This product is an ear loop mask, this product is not a respirator and will not provide any protection against COVID19 or other viruses or contaminants.
Yet 95% of the imbeciles here in Oregon diaper up obsessively, even at my local park – 85% today were diapered and huffing their own assbreath rather than enjoy the bracing, pristine winter air of the Pacific Northwest.
Psychopathy is not required, although that helps, especially for certain groups and tasks, although I think much less so now that the US isn't really base Christian, with it's universal respect for life. What's primarily required is to not view your opponents as being human, and if you can't see a great deal of explicit dehumanizing happening, now literally literally at the Nazi level, well, I suppose that's why you made this "do you really mean it?" comment.
And experience tells us that Jack D, don't recognize J. Ricke, and myself are wasting our time replying to people like you, because as a class, literally literally nothing less than a bullet smashing into you head will break you out of your mindset.
Side note, it's an autoconspiracy, a group of like minded people working towards a large set of shared goals. Very open, not a secret to anyone who pays the slightest attention to them, they're not hiding anything. You just studiously refuse to see it, and only you can explain to us why, except of course by definition you can't see it in yourself to explain why. People like you also must be ruthlessly kept out of movements against our literally literally genocidal ruling trash, because you don't want to believe in the essential truths about our opponents, are primed for defection at the drop of a hat.Replies: @Jack D, @vhrm
All you need to do is to put together a few simple principles, which all Woke people agree upon and it all follows:
1. If you are not anti-racist then you are racist.
2. Older white Americans are for the most part not anti-racist and in many cases are explicitly racist. They were the ones who implemented and perpetuated our current system of white privilege and systemic racism. They continue to vote for Evil Trump. Some of them literally killed Emmett Till.
3. Racists do not deserve our support. Although we are not going to line them up and shoot them (we are against the death penalty) neither should we go to go out of our way to help them. They are no friends of ours. They do not help to elect progressive candidates. We have attempted to persuade them to see the light and vote for progress and against racism and they refuse. Let Jesus or Fox News or whoever it is they pray to help them. We owe them nothing, especially since they already have all the wealth which they have stolen using systemic racism and redlining.
4. The resources of the government are limited, especially since Republicans will not allow us to tax the rich as much as they deserve to be taxed. Such limited resources must be allocated to the people who are in the greatest need and who have been most affected by systemic racism. This means People of Color. This does not include old white people.
See for yourself…
https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fbirthsdeathsandmarriages%2fdeaths%2fdatasets%2fweeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales%2f2020/publishedweek502020.xlsx
You can poke around the site to find earlier years’ data for comparison.
What’s interestin about 2020 is that respiratory deaths were highest before COVID became a thing ….
Psychopathy is not required, although that helps, especially for certain groups and tasks, although I think much less so now that the US isn't really base Christian, with it's universal respect for life. What's primarily required is to not view your opponents as being human, and if you can't see a great deal of explicit dehumanizing happening, now literally literally at the Nazi level, well, I suppose that's why you made this "do you really mean it?" comment.
And experience tells us that Jack D, don't recognize J. Ricke, and myself are wasting our time replying to people like you, because as a class, literally literally nothing less than a bullet smashing into you head will break you out of your mindset.
Side note, it's an autoconspiracy, a group of like minded people working towards a large set of shared goals. Very open, not a secret to anyone who pays the slightest attention to them, they're not hiding anything. You just studiously refuse to see it, and only you can explain to us why, except of course by definition you can't see it in yourself to explain why. People like you also must be ruthlessly kept out of movements against our literally literally genocidal ruling trash, because you don't want to believe in the essential truths about our opponents, are primed for defection at the drop of a hat.Replies: @Jack D, @vhrm
For lack of a better phrase, what’s your deal?
You’re well versed in lab bio and reasonably reasonable on all that stuff, but now you’re insisting now that the CDC is literally trying to kill people because that’s what they do?
wut?
I’m no fan of the CDC’s models, recommendations, response or much else, but where’s the evidence this is anything but slow government bureaucracy moving at a snail’s pace a few decades behind the times, as usual?
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/12/06/why-did-sweden-have-more-covid-deaths-than-its-neighbors/
These three countries had earlier holidays than Sweden. Swedes returning from later holidays brought the disease back with them and seeded Stockholm with it. The article also mentions that Swedes normally travel 80% more than their Nordic neighbors. So reducing foreign travel during an epidemic would help.
These three countries have fewer immigrants. According to the above article, 19% of Swedes are foreign born versus 14% for Norway and Finland and 8% for Denmark. Immigrants are less likely to follow good health procedures. Even more important here, Sweden had a program to give jobless immigrants jobs in nursing homes and many of them brought the disease into those nursing homes. The article mentions that the Nordic countries other than Sweden have fewer people in nursing homes. So the lessons here are cut back on immigration and isolate your elderly population when you have an epidemic. We can see the importance of keeping the disease out of nursing homes by looking at what happened in states like New York that didn't do that.
Lockdowns probably have higher costs than you get for benefits received. Anders Tegnell, chief Swedish epidemiologist, has said that even though Sweden didn't have an official lockdown like its Nordic neighbors, people in Sweden voluntarily self-isolated. The variations in Nordic countries weren't primarily due to lockdowns versus no lockdowns. There is mixed evidence on mandatory masking. At least they don't cause economic disruptions since people can go about their daily business wearing them. Encouraging people to wear them might be a good idea but draconian punishments for those who refuse may be a bad idea.Replies: @HA, @utu
“According to the following article part of it was just luck”
Article? It’s a blog post written by the same “expert” who was crowing in October that (based on what had happened in the prior month) Sweden had reached herd immunity, just a few weeks before a surge in new cases led the Swedes to finally admit the herd immunity approach was a failure. You know that joke about the difference between an MD and God? Despite that, this guy has yet to learn that the Hippocratic Oath isn’t some spell out of a Harry Potter novel whose incantation magically transformed him into an epidemiologist.
This guy is right up there with poor, hapless Hail who first alerted us to the suspiciously flat excess mortality graphs right before they turned into the debacle the ic1000 linked to above. Who told us that (only 10,000 dead!) Wittkowski was “the hero of the hour” and that Sweden was the “champion of Western man”. All in all, just a shade less embarrassing than Irving FIsher’s infamous prediction right before the ’29 Crash that stocks had reached a “permanent plateau”.
If you thought Ferguson must have nine lives now that he’s somehow managed to crawl back into the limelight, you haven’t heard about any of the COVID denialists like Wittkowski and this character. The more wrong they are, the more their reputation soars in these comment sections.
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/12/06/why-did-sweden-have-more-covid-deaths-than-its-neighbors/
These three countries had earlier holidays than Sweden. Swedes returning from later holidays brought the disease back with them and seeded Stockholm with it. The article also mentions that Swedes normally travel 80% more than their Nordic neighbors. So reducing foreign travel during an epidemic would help.
These three countries have fewer immigrants. According to the above article, 19% of Swedes are foreign born versus 14% for Norway and Finland and 8% for Denmark. Immigrants are less likely to follow good health procedures. Even more important here, Sweden had a program to give jobless immigrants jobs in nursing homes and many of them brought the disease into those nursing homes. The article mentions that the Nordic countries other than Sweden have fewer people in nursing homes. So the lessons here are cut back on immigration and isolate your elderly population when you have an epidemic. We can see the importance of keeping the disease out of nursing homes by looking at what happened in states like New York that didn't do that.
Lockdowns probably have higher costs than you get for benefits received. Anders Tegnell, chief Swedish epidemiologist, has said that even though Sweden didn't have an official lockdown like its Nordic neighbors, people in Sweden voluntarily self-isolated. The variations in Nordic countries weren't primarily due to lockdowns versus no lockdowns. There is mixed evidence on mandatory masking. At least they don't cause economic disruptions since people can go about their daily business wearing them. Encouraging people to wear them might be a good idea but draconian punishments for those who refuse may be a bad idea.Replies: @HA, @utu
It is really amazing how far the anti-countermeasures doctrinaires go in trying to explain away the fact that Sweden has 10 times higher deaths per capita than its Nordic neighbors which had lockdowns and afterwards better contact tracing than Sweden.
Sweden could not have an effective contact tracing system because it was running at too high infection rate. But even when the infection rate dropped to the manageable level in Summer Sweden could not prevent the second wave in Fall which clearly means that their laissez-faire approach has consequences even at low infection rates when contact tracing is manageable.
All the arguments formulated by Sweden apologists can’t account for more than 10% of the 10-fold difference.
I wonder how many Swedes were raped, acid attacked, or blown up with grenades by wonderful diversity during this time? But you don't care about them.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/Replies: @HA
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/sweden-s-economy-posted-record-slump-during-pandemic-peak
Doesn't an economic decline indicate they were reducing economic activity and self-isolating? Whether the government has an official lockdown and people are forced to stay at home or people voluntarily stay at home, you still have the same level of lockdown don't you?
I agree with you that very early lockdowns and travel bans may work. They worked in New Zealand. The timing of the lockdown, though, is more important than the length or harshness of the lockdown. Sweden had the misfortune of large numbers of vacationers coming back and spreading the disease. Nursing homes were not properly protected. Sweden tried to save money by hiring cheaper immigrants to work in them rather than natives who might have done a better job.
Once the disease spreads out into the population, lockdowns don't work. Studies show disease transmission rates to be low in public places like restaurants and is mainly transmitted in personal settings like family visits. When you have harsh lengthy lockdowns, the population starts suffering from lockdown fatigue and stops complying with the lockdowns. This may be the cause of the big case increases in California even with its lockdown as is described in the following article:
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-COVID-lockdown-cases-deaths-businesses-15819841.phpReplies: @utu
That said, on the nursing home issue--and infection of the elderly is critical to how these stats come out--the Swedish apologists have a solid point. Sweden simply has more of their elderly in state provided group home care. And as in the US--i'd bet, don't know--they likely have lots of immigrants as carers. In any case, the Swedes failed to adequately protect those homes--not intentional destruction like Cuomo, but a failure nonetheless--and they acknowledge that failure.
But i think you are simply missing that the salient aspect of the debate is about values.
You go on and on about how dreadfully terrible the Swedes are. Yet, they have the same 10% elevation in death rate as the US. It's not any kind of "disaster". And to some people the balance of liberties--and especially not having government bossing people around for what is a fairly mild killer.
This epidemic just happens to sit in this range, and with a demographic profile where people's reactions are all over the map. Make it 10x less--it really is "just the flu, bro" and no one gives a flying rats ass. Make it 10X worse and you have a serious ass kicking and pretty much everyone would be on board with strong countermeasures. (And even so it would still be another order of magnitude less severe than smallpox.)
People hyperventilate about this epidemic and/or the measures. Truth is ... they don't matter. Nothing your beloved Norway did or your nemesis Sweden did not do is going to matter one bit down the road.
What's killing the West is not a physics virus it's a mental virus--minoritarianism; killing nations through immigration.Replies: @utu
https://www.unz.com/isteve/bloc-based-vs-individual-based-thinking/#comment-4354906
however it is only valid for the model where everybody has the same probability of infection which obviously is not true. 40 years old medical worker with IFR=0.03% who has many contacts with infected may have higher risk of dying than 70 year old with IFR=2% who lives in secluded area with almost zero contacts with infected.
So the probability of getting infected should be included in assigning the score that determines the priority on the vaccination list.Replies: @AnotherDad
Agree with you here utu. (And your numbers are reasonable as well.)
And it’s not just that the 40 year old could conceivably have a greater risk because of greater contacts, but also that those greater contacts mean more potential for spreading it, as well. So you do want to knock out the “nodes” with high connection counts.
I think everyone understands that medical workers–with patient contact–are nodes with high connection counts to vulnerable people and ergo really are the people who should go first.
Beyond the connection issue, the 40 year old’s life is–all else being equal–simply more valuable. They are in the midst of life, having/raising their children. The 70 year olds are in my bucket: their life’s work and direct child raising done–though still giving advice–just enjoying the ride. We want to live–at least as long as we’re healthy. But no way we can claim to be as valuable–fewer years of lesser importance left.
All these factors need to be in the mix. But–the great thing about this plague–the risk for “prime of life” folks who haven’t abused their bodies with obesity/diabetes is ridiculously low.
One would think "public health authorities" knowing that was coming--i knew it--would have spent the summer getting everyone prepared:
-- Vitamin D
-- Vitamin C
-- Zinc and an ionophore (quercetin for me)
-- Humidification
-- Indoor air filtration
Just think, public health authorities could actually work to make sure the nation/their community is prepared and give people sound medical advice.Replies: @Jack D, @vhrm
Laying it out like that it occurs to me that that would have been a comparatively male response where we use our machines and stuff to fix our problem. Same with the vaccines.
Instead we got the rather female response about distancing, managing our relationships and cutting people off.
(hey, it’s unz.com; I can be “out there” too)
https://i.ibb.co/YQdsp6p/Nordic-dec22.png
Sweden could not have an effective contact tracing system because it was running at too high infection rate. But even when the infection rate dropped to the manageable level in Summer Sweden could not prevent the second wave in Fall which clearly means that their laissez-faire approach has consequences even at low infection rates when contact tracing is manageable.
All the arguments formulated by Sweden apologists can't account for more than 10% of the 10-fold difference.Replies: @BenKenobi, @MGB, @Mark G., @AnotherDad
Remember the six thousand!
I wonder how many Swedes were raped, acid attacked, or blown up with grenades by wonderful diversity during this time? But you don’t care about them.
https://i.redd.it/o2rf1j7qo7661.png
Note that the Y-axis runs from zero to 500 for every graph, allowing apples to apples comparisons.
By this measure, the US comes across as doing pretty well. But this is misleading, as the NYC Metro area was pounded in April, while most parts of the country got off very lightly. 2nd wave hit different places, 3rd wave (mostly not shown), different again. Likewise, Lombardy's first wave excess deaths would be off the scale used here. But such complaints aside, this is really nice work that puts the pandemic in context. Not the flu.Replies: @Jack D, @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia, @Mr. Anon, @HA, @Kratoklastes
“the NYC Metro area was pounded in April…Likewise, Lombardy’s first wave excess deaths would be off the scale used here.
The author of the graphs added an entry for NYC — that, too, is off the charts.
Denmark 184 (deaths per million)
Finland 92
Norway 74
Japan 23
South Korea 14
Malaysia 13
Sri Lanka 9
New Zealand 5
Thailand 0.9
Vietnam 0.4
Taiwan 0.3Replies: @utu
While I am sure it is somewhat easier to assure adherence and compliance to government required and coordinated countermeasures in high cohesion mono-ethnic society having a well thought countermeasures in the first is what makes a difference. New Zealand has 15% Maori population. Denmark, Norway and Finland have similar percentage of foreign born as Sweden.
It is possible that white libertarians contributed more to the failure of countermeasures in some places than uneducated ethnic minorities. Nobody is more responsible for the lack of societal cohesions and inability to participate in efforts requiring coordinated and concerted actions than libertarians.
Malaysia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan all have multiethnic/diverse populations. I am sure plenty of those people are less than 100 IQ too. What is interesting is, if you look at any random shot of photo or video of any of those places, it is rare to spot a person outdoors without a mask. Even though many of those places are more crowded than U.S., they ended up with a death rate One Hundredth of U.S.
The 95% efficacy of the vaccines to begin with. That figure was based on clinical trials of people in good health and whose average age was considerably less that 85 plus or even 75 plus. It doesn't take much to kill an elderly immuno compromised person so the vaccine side effects alone could kill many in these age cohorts. Still worth a try but the elderly aren't the ones spreading the virus since they are not out 'clubbing' or interacting with the general population to any great degree.
As we are now seeing in states like California, Tennessee and North and South Dakota when this virus gets out of control it gets out of control fast. People may not die but they do get sick and become infectious.Meat packing plants get shut down and farm workers infected in wholesale numbers. The economic impact of this kind of problem is, forgive for saying so, a helluva lot more severe than an outbreak at a nursing home. That we've manage to limp by so far without food shortages is no guarantee that future outbreaks won't generate that problem. Then what?Replies: @That Would Be Telling
From the advisory committee briefing papers, Pfizer has 850 subjects for each arm of the Phase 2/3 study >= 75, 4,300 >= 65. Of the 43,000 total Phase 2/3 participants 8.4% have diabetes and 7.8% pulmonary disease. Moderna has 3,500 subjects for each arm of their Phase III trial > 65 years of age. Of the 30,000 total Phase III participants, 9.4% have diabetes, 4.8% “chronic lung disease,” 4.9% “significant cardiac disease,” and 6.5% “severe obesity.”
I’m hard pressed to think of a statistic that could be more useless than the average age of the clinical trial participants. What’s relevant is how many from the various cohorts of interest were enrolled in the study.
Yet, somehow that didn’t happen, and while recipients are told to tell their caregivers if they have that condition, it’s not a contraindication. Can you suggest a mechanism by which a short term self-limiting hijacking of a small set of cells would seriously harm, let alone kill someone who’s immuno compromised?
And, surprise, surprise, you want to see a lot of old folk dead.
Oh, they don't look like how YOU think they should?
Thank goodness that people don't think like you.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Reg Cæsar
And it's not just that the 40 year old could conceivably have a greater risk because of greater contacts, but also that those greater contacts mean more potential for spreading it, as well. So you do want to knock out the "nodes" with high connection counts.
I think everyone understands that medical workers--with patient contact--are nodes with high connection counts to vulnerable people and ergo really are the people who should go first.
Beyond the connection issue, the 40 year old's life is--all else being equal--simply more valuable. They are in the midst of life, having/raising their children. The 70 year olds are in my bucket: their life's work and direct child raising done--though still giving advice--just enjoying the ride. We want to live--at least as long as we're healthy. But no way we can claim to be as valuable--fewer years of lesser importance left.
All these factors need to be in the mix. But--the great thing about this plague--the risk for "prime of life" folks who haven't abused their bodies with obesity/diabetes is ridiculously low.Replies: @utu
All these factors need to be in the mix. – Absolutely not. You should not think of people instrumentally including of yourself. See Kant’s 2nd Categorical Imperative. The decisions should not be based on what somebody, including yourself, thinks about the value of your life. Saving life and preventing death should be the only criterion.
Sane people know the difference between death at 90 and death at 30. Sane people know the difference between the death of a criminal and the death of say a vaccine research scientist.
Traditionally people understood a the basic rhythm of life. Birth, childhood, marriage, having children, getting old, dying. They understood that *everyone* eventually dies and that it is in fact normal for old people. Seeing your parents die is normal, but--hopefully--your children (most of them) live on after you. And traditionally people understood that some people--criminal--may even lead lives of negative value. I.e. deserve to die.
But then traditionally people understood that having your nation invaded is bad and that there were two sexes.
So don't worry your confusion about very--ridiculously--basic aspects of life, like growing old and dying not unique. Confusion about very basic aspects of life is rampant.Replies: @utu
What fraction of U.S. population is libertarian?
Malaysia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan all have multiethnic/diverse populations. I am sure plenty of those people are less than 100 IQ too. What is interesting is, if you look at any random shot of photo or video of any of those places, it is rare to spot a person outdoors without a mask. Even though many of those places are more crowded than U.S., they ended up with a death rate One Hundredth of U.S.
Lies starting with the effeicy estimate, but that’s no surprise in a conversation that’s more and more dominated by people who are making no bones about their desire to see more elderly dead. Which of course isn’t going to be a valid endpoint on Phase III trials of usual sizes.
Pfizer/BioNTech, I grant you, as of November 20th when they filed their application for a FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), didn’t have enough serious cases to draw useful conclusions from, but Moderna ten days later had 30 on the placebo arm, none on the vaccine arm (and it was smaller than Pfizer/BioNTech’s, 30,000 vs. 43,000 subject Phase III trials so those numbers have more strength). There’s also serological (blood) studies that are used from the very beginning of human testing to see if a vaccine is producing an immune system response that’s like a wild type virus one.
What possible relevance does anything he says have to do with all this?? For that matter, Citation Needed, he’s smart enough he should have picked up by now enough information about how “active” vaccines work, and that plenty of them are “eternal.” Or was this based on an hypothetical of immunity not lasting long, before we knew that it does last quite some time for COVID-19?
For people 65 to 74, while the average efficacy number (92%) is very good, the confidence interval is not. It says that the efficacy is between 53% to 99%. This kind of confidence interval says that didn’t have enough cases in this group and so the confidence range is very wide.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
So you’re saying Pfizer/BioNTech never bothered to do serological studies of people this old??
https://i.ibb.co/YQdsp6p/Nordic-dec22.png
Sweden could not have an effective contact tracing system because it was running at too high infection rate. But even when the infection rate dropped to the manageable level in Summer Sweden could not prevent the second wave in Fall which clearly means that their laissez-faire approach has consequences even at low infection rates when contact tracing is manageable.
All the arguments formulated by Sweden apologists can't account for more than 10% of the 10-fold difference.Replies: @BenKenobi, @MGB, @Mark G., @AnotherDad
i won’t speak for other sweden apologists, but my concern is a comparison of ‘covid deaths’. i don’t ever trust cross country analyses. (when i was in graduate school, i read many ‘continental’ criticisms of US crime stats, which Europeans uniformly thought were shit, what with all the horse trading, plea bargaining, and other ‘market of the court’ wrangling going on.) if you just look at total number of deaths per year for all causes, sweden is on target for a normal year statistically, maybe even a little lower than the ten year average. how do you account for that? no idea.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/
Why is that such a stumbling block? In a reasonably well-behaved society, Sweden's lockdowns -- however voluntary -- reduced bar-hopping, reduced elective surgeries, and decreased deaths in a number of ways so that even after the added COVID deaths, the death toll was average.
Sadly, in a LESS well-behaved society, where people issue death threats to their health experts instead of willingly doing what they recommend, the lockdowns wind up being less voluntary, and the increase in suicides, drug overdoses, child abuse, on top of the COVID cases can push the excess mortality beyond the reductions in elective surgeries and what not, resulting in a higher-than-average death toll. There's no particular mystery there.
Besides, if you want a REALLY flat death toll, look at Sweden's neighbors, as utu has noted. That's what a number of Swedes are doing.
As for the US, we gave up having nice things like high-trust societies a long time ago, though maybe in some places close to Canada (e.g. Maine, Vermont) they might have pulled off something somewhat similar.
https://i.ibb.co/YQdsp6p/Nordic-dec22.png
Sweden could not have an effective contact tracing system because it was running at too high infection rate. But even when the infection rate dropped to the manageable level in Summer Sweden could not prevent the second wave in Fall which clearly means that their laissez-faire approach has consequences even at low infection rates when contact tracing is manageable.
All the arguments formulated by Sweden apologists can't account for more than 10% of the 10-fold difference.Replies: @BenKenobi, @MGB, @Mark G., @AnotherDad
As I said, Tegnell stated that Swedes self-isolated voluntarily. The following article says Sweden had an 8.6% economic contraction in the second quarter:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/sweden-s-economy-posted-record-slump-during-pandemic-peak
Doesn’t an economic decline indicate they were reducing economic activity and self-isolating? Whether the government has an official lockdown and people are forced to stay at home or people voluntarily stay at home, you still have the same level of lockdown don’t you?
I agree with you that very early lockdowns and travel bans may work. They worked in New Zealand. The timing of the lockdown, though, is more important than the length or harshness of the lockdown. Sweden had the misfortune of large numbers of vacationers coming back and spreading the disease. Nursing homes were not properly protected. Sweden tried to save money by hiring cheaper immigrants to work in them rather than natives who might have done a better job.
Once the disease spreads out into the population, lockdowns don’t work. Studies show disease transmission rates to be low in public places like restaurants and is mainly transmitted in personal settings like family visits. When you have harsh lengthy lockdowns, the population starts suffering from lockdown fatigue and stops complying with the lockdowns. This may be the cause of the big case increases in California even with its lockdown as is described in the following article:
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-COVID-lockdown-cases-deaths-businesses-15819841.php
There rest of your litany about vacationers, nursing homes, foreigners are the old worn out Swedish apologetics. If Sweden went on lockdown nothing of that would have mattered.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/Replies: @HA
“if you just look at total number of deaths per year for all causes, sweden is on target for a normal year statistically, maybe even a little lower than the ten year average. how do you account for that? no idea.”
Why is that such a stumbling block? In a reasonably well-behaved society, Sweden’s lockdowns — however voluntary — reduced bar-hopping, reduced elective surgeries, and decreased deaths in a number of ways so that even after the added COVID deaths, the death toll was average.
Sadly, in a LESS well-behaved society, where people issue death threats to their health experts instead of willingly doing what they recommend, the lockdowns wind up being less voluntary, and the increase in suicides, drug overdoses, child abuse, on top of the COVID cases can push the excess mortality beyond the reductions in elective surgeries and what not, resulting in a higher-than-average death toll. There’s no particular mystery there.
Besides, if you want a REALLY flat death toll, look at Sweden’s neighbors, as utu has noted. That’s what a number of Swedes are doing.
As for the US, we gave up having nice things like high-trust societies a long time ago, though maybe in some places close to Canada (e.g. Maine, Vermont) they might have pulled off something somewhat similar.
“These people come from the same group our ruling trash does, and if you’re white, they literally want you dead.“
For all of your measured responses and thoughts on COVID, this statement is just as nutty as those who insist that it is simply the flu caused by Chinese agents. You literally debase yourself by impugning men and women who work for a government agency by automatically assuming to be the devil incarnate.
Google "journalist pharma bro" and read about a woman named Christie Smythe.Replies: @Brian Reilly
njguy, An interesting article, if you like that sort of thing. A confused woman with no obvious taste in men, a shithead. Oldest story ever, I suppose. Why did you think it worthwhile to call attention to it?
I'm surprised Whiskey hasn't chimed in.
For all of your measured responses and thoughts on COVID, this statement is just as nutty as those who insist that it is simply the flu caused by Chinese agents. You literally debase yourself by impugning men and women who work for a government agency by automatically assuming to be the devil incarnate.Replies: @Jack D, @That Would Be Telling
You’re missing the whole point. They are not the devil. They are just humans who sincerely believe that they are doing the right thing. Even the Nazis who ran death camps believed this, as unbelievable as this may sound. No one thinks of HIMSELF as evil – it’s always rationalized.
And as you say, even people who do things that seem obviously evil manage to convince themselves that what they're doing is unpleasant but necessary.
Even people who are motivated by greed find ways to rationalise it. People who are motivated by moral or physical cowardice will find rationalisations as well.
That's how you get elites doing terrible things - they either think they're doing good or they think they're doing what is necessary.
Even nutjob libertarians convince themselves that starving the poor will be for their own good.Replies: @Corvinus, @Wielgus
Hillary was stupidly as is her wont quite explicit about it, "irredeemable" is more a religious than a political concept, but in the end it amounts to the same thing, the Left is incapable of sharing a polity with some fraction of deplorables. A fraction which in virtue spirals grows ever larger until in theory the Left runs out of people to kill, but historically an internal or external force reigns them in.
Often a person or faction that realizes it's next on the block as happened with the modern, not religious per se beginning of the modern Left and the Thermidorian Reaction. But also see consolidated Vietnam using main-force in a full scale invasion and occupation to stop genocidal cross border Khmer Rouge raids; it was very odd for a lot of us to cheer the NVA AKA People's Army of Vietnam for stopping a genocide which had killed at least a quarter of the Cambodian population.Replies: @Corvinus
Greetings from the epicentre.
Here in Bridgend today, not shown on national news, there are now 90 ambulance drivers drafted in from the army. The local hospital is clogged. The 350 bed emergency hospital is being expanded with another 50 beds but there are no local staff. The explosion in cases is not happening in the, relatively prosperous and alienated town but at the mountainous end of one of the ex mining valleys in the county. Those people are poor and live in small terrace houses built from the 1880’s onwards, a few even the 1820’s. They are also very settled and have strong networks of relations in and between their villages. SARS-CoV-2 seems to have hit the accelerator pedal
Meanwhile on my well off housing estate, full of recent English settlers, no one knows anyone unless their children go to the same school. There is a low rate of transmission. Bridgend as a whole is #2 in the UK, itself currently #1. However the Llynfi Valley is breaking records.
All this said, death rates are far lower than in spring where the same area also suffered disproportionately.
Reminds me also of this guy Jeffrey Sachs who screwed up millions of people in Russia with his "shock doctrine", and still he is considered a "leading expert" and having extremely well-paid government jobs or in think tanks...
It's almost as if their real job is to create panic or kill or impoverish millions of people, and they are handsomely rewarded for it. So they are not incompetent, they are really evil.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Mr. Anon
Indeed. Well, on the bright side, although Ferguson’s mistress could be described as a blonde who’s much younger than him, in reality she appears to be a rather sour-looking woke ideologue who’s bent on saving the world through strident protests and general unpleasantness:
Usually happens, not always.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist
I’ve noticed that this common phenomenon is not even mentioned as a possibility by ‘experts’ and in media coverage of the so-called ‘mutant’ virus. At this point, nothing other than ‘case’ numbers matters.
Is the case rate higher in the Pacific Northwest, including BC? The UK (Western continental martime climate) has high infection rates. So does Victoria, The Cape and Patagonia (Eastern in the Southern Hemisphere). UK, Cape and Patagonia, insofaras it has people, all had more infectious strains too.
The hospital census began climbing around 4 December. What literature I’ve found noodling around consists of a literature review which contends that outside of China, the median hospital stay is 5 days and those who die of this illness tend to have the shorter stays. If that’s so, you’d figure the deaths would begin to spike around 8 December. So far, the hospital census has increased by 40% with no discernible increase in the daily death toll as yet.
More utter utu nonsense. No we are not unconnected random binary “life”/”non-life” atoms, we live lives of substance and value. Aspects that intelligent, moral humans have complex–non-binary– thoughts about.
Sane people know the difference between death at 90 and death at 30. Sane people know the difference between the death of a criminal and the death of say a vaccine research scientist.
Traditionally people understood a the basic rhythm of life. Birth, childhood, marriage, having children, getting old, dying. They understood that *everyone* eventually dies and that it is in fact normal for old people. Seeing your parents die is normal, but–hopefully–your children (most of them) live on after you. And traditionally people understood that some people–criminal–may even lead lives of negative value. I.e. deserve to die.
But then traditionally people understood that having your nation invaded is bad and that there were two sexes.
So don’t worry your confusion about very–ridiculously–basic aspects of life, like growing old and dying not unique. Confusion about very basic aspects of life is rampant.
If you have to ration (and we do) I suppose saving the greatest number of lives is a pretty good measure. At least it stops the politically connected, the fashionable, the pretty, and the favored from getting in the front of the line.
But don’t pretend that it is a great administration of justice. It is a blunt clumsy instrument that will condemn many good people to unnecessary death and save many scoundrels from the just rewards for their lives. It is just impossible to calculate who deserves the vaccine. It requires to much knowledge.
Undeserving people will get it and deserving people will not. Our fate in this imperfect world.
Focusing on stopping imminent deaths of older folks does ignore the (unproven, possibly fictional) Bret Weinstein “Covid knocks 10 years off the lives of young people who get it” scenario.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/05/05/19/28041732-8289921-Ms_Staats_is_believed_to_have_visited_the_scientist_shortly_afte-a-24_1588704954668.jpgReplies: @Jack D
There’s no fixing her brain but with a little diet and exercise and the right clothes and makeup and the right lighting in a photo (all of which are absent here) she might be a solid 5 on the outside.
What she doesn’t know is that her anti fossil fuel crusade was created, funded and directed by the electrical industry to replace fossil fuel with much more expensive and less efficient electricity. She’s a useful idiot for the electrical industry.
Any woman over the age of 12 who wears a short sleeved round neck men’s style T shirt anywhere but the house and yard is beyond help.
In this case the female response may have been the correct one, had it been implemented immediately. Now the only option is the vaccine, which may or may not be as effective as hoped. If the vaccine doesn’t work what options does that leave?
Natural or vaccine acquired resistance are the only end games and always were. This thing is too contagious to contain effectively. You basically end up like Australia where they freak out and lock down every couple of months.
In the US we're pretty well on the way to this anyway even before the vaccine. Note e.g. how NY isn't seeing a post Thanksgiving explosion of cases.
The US growth in cases is already falling most places with the notable exception of California but even here it's (maybe?) leveling off.
The hospitals have been about to collapse "in a matter of days" (but not really) here for oh a month or so according to the breathless news articles that seem to be cut and pasted every other day with no hint of irony.
Yes, thanks for this, Art.
In other Neil Ferguson news, he’s back at it today, having appeared in a press conference pushing yet another fresh new idea, i.e. that the new COVID strain infects children more easily, so say sayonara to open schools.
Turning to the ever-informative Daily Mail once again:
Is the mutant form of Covid REALLY more infectious to children? Top scientists who raised alarm over the fast-spreading variant say there’s not enough data to make the link
Some key quotations from Herr Doktor Professor von Rumpy-Pumpy’s conclusions follow. I ask, is this the language of ‘science’?
Prof. Ferguson, this mutated COVID infecting kids is a clear and present danger, right?
‘A hint’, okay. Well, then, you must have hard data showing much higher infection rates in children?
Yes, that’s certainly basing one’s conclusions on the scientific method all over, isn’t it? Ferguson assures us that his research group do indeed have lots of good, juicy data, although they don’t feel inclined right now to make them publicly available. But they have obviously performed rigorous analysis on those data, right?
Why is this man essentially setting COVID policy for much of the world right now?
But seriously, folks, this plan does make sense, and the curve proves, once again, that SARS-CoV-2 is dangerous to the elderly and infirm, and that the rest of us should have gone on with our lives instead of destroying livelihoods and further concentrating wealth into big hands.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @stillCARealist, @Hypnotoad666
You forgot rescinding the Constitution, imposing petty state dictatorships, and saddling future generations with trillions of debt. But you pretty much nailed it.
Ever since April, every lay person with a bit of common sense has been asking ” . . . um . . . why don’t we just quarantine the 2% of the population at risk instead of the other 98%.” To my knowledge, not a single person in the media or public health establishment has ever deigned to answer that universal and obvious question.
I agree, but it’s something that is very very hard for people to accept. People who do evil because they see themselves as evil and they enjoy doing evil are very rare outside of comic-book movies.
And as you say, even people who do things that seem obviously evil manage to convince themselves that what they’re doing is unpleasant but necessary.
Even people who are motivated by greed find ways to rationalise it. People who are motivated by moral or physical cowardice will find rationalisations as well.
That’s how you get elites doing terrible things – they either think they’re doing good or they think they’re doing what is necessary.
Even nutjob libertarians convince themselves that starving the poor will be for their own good.
The encounter also reminded me of a book I read about the murders by Reginald Christie. A prison psychologist who interviewed Christie said he was one of the few murderers he disliked immediately. (Christie, though a serial killer of women, tended to be quite sanctimonious in his personal interactions.) The fact that a psychologist did not typically find murderers immediately repulsive suggests that, like my guy, they do not have obvious horns on their head and a forked tail, in a manner of speaking.Replies: @Jack D
Just an insignificant observation.Replies: @Mike Tre, @Tiny Duck, @Paul Jolliffe, @BenKenobi
Actually, “The British Plan” is about equivalent to “A Serbian Film”
These are just raw “excess” death numbers. I think you’d have to drill down a bit more to at least see the rate of virus infections in these countries by date. Otherwise, you can’t tell if they are winning by avoiding infections, or by having more people survive the infections.
https://i.ibb.co/YQdsp6p/Nordic-dec22.png
Sweden could not have an effective contact tracing system because it was running at too high infection rate. But even when the infection rate dropped to the manageable level in Summer Sweden could not prevent the second wave in Fall which clearly means that their laissez-faire approach has consequences even at low infection rates when contact tracing is manageable.
All the arguments formulated by Sweden apologists can't account for more than 10% of the 10-fold difference.Replies: @BenKenobi, @MGB, @Mark G., @AnotherDad
Not a Sweden apologist. I wouldn’t have taken Sweden’s approach.
That said, on the nursing home issue–and infection of the elderly is critical to how these stats come out–the Swedish apologists have a solid point. Sweden simply has more of their elderly in state provided group home care. And as in the US–i’d bet, don’t know–they likely have lots of immigrants as carers. In any case, the Swedes failed to adequately protect those homes–not intentional destruction like Cuomo, but a failure nonetheless–and they acknowledge that failure.
But i think you are simply missing that the salient aspect of the debate is about values.
You go on and on about how dreadfully terrible the Swedes are. Yet, they have the same 10% elevation in death rate as the US. It’s not any kind of “disaster”. And to some people the balance of liberties–and especially not having government bossing people around for what is a fairly mild killer.
This epidemic just happens to sit in this range, and with a demographic profile where people’s reactions are all over the map. Make it 10x less–it really is “just the flu, bro” and no one gives a flying rats ass. Make it 10X worse and you have a serious ass kicking and pretty much everyone would be on board with strong countermeasures. (And even so it would still be another order of magnitude less severe than smallpox.)
People hyperventilate about this epidemic and/or the measures. Truth is … they don’t matter. Nothing your beloved Norway did or your nemesis Sweden did not do is going to matter one bit down the road.
What’s killing the West is not a physics virus it’s a mental virus–minoritarianism; killing nations through immigration.
Obviously countermeasures make difference and they matter. Countermeasures like lockdowns, social distancing, masking and contact tracing reduce infections and deaths rates. Sweden's Nordic neighbors were able to put off many deaths into the future by their actions while Sweden let die many people by its inaction. If the epidemic is stopped now, say by vaccination, the 10-fold difference between Sweden and its neighbors will remain unchanged.
If however there would be no way of stopping the epidemic then indeed in a long time scale a country that keeps the epidemic percolating on a very low level in the end would reach infection prevalence similar to the country like Sweden that did not try to reduce the infection rate. But in the meantime more people remain alive and some people die of natural causes that would have died sooner in the country like Sweden. So in the end the death rates in the two countries would be similar but the total of years of life lost would be lower in the first country than in the country like Sweden. So anyway you look at it, whether in short or long term, with or w/o vaccine the numbers of lives saved or the number of years lived are increased when you do somethings as opposed to the country like Sweden that doesn't do much.Actually not true. Norway has more over the age of 80 people in long-term care institutions other than hospitals and Finland is very similar. See Fig. 13
http://publications.europa.eu/resource/cellar/77551079-d3ee-11e7-a5b9-01aa75ed71a1.0001.03/DOC_2
And here Fig 11.22 shows that Finland and Sweden have very similar number of long-term care beds in institutions and hospitals.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/health_glance-2017-80-en.pdf?expires=1608708057&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=F85E856B9CE665FC8F615AD3ED819774The debate? You are not debate worthy. I am just correcting your errors. Values were invented by liberals because they were too squeamish and with anti-religion animus to talk about morals. To rationalize your actions that would result in unnecessary deaths of other people by invoking 'values' at best is childish. Obviously liberty is important. But in any civil society we agree that sometimes we need to sacrifice some of our liberties for a greater good. This is when the greater good can only be accomplished by a concerted effort like during national disasters, epidemics or wars. Understanding this comes directly from the moral core and in normal mature people it is an impulse, the same impulse that is responsible for stronger to sacrifice for the weaker, for more fortunate to help the less fortunate.
But don't pretend that it is a great administration of justice. It is a blunt clumsy instrument that will condemn many good people to unnecessary death and save many scoundrels from the just rewards for their lives. It is just impossible to calculate who deserves the vaccine. It requires to much knowledge.
Undeserving people will get it and deserving people will not. Our fate in this imperfect world.Replies: @AnotherDad
Very well said, scrivener3.
Note that no one in the media seems to object to referring to the new strain as British and that heads of government that didn’t dream of stopping flights from China until it was too late are now quick to stop flights from the UK.
What’s more likely, that these people have actually learned from their past mistakes or that they know there’s no British League for the Association of Anti-Defamation of Brits operating in their countries so they won’t get called racist?
The virus is a hoax. Cdc is juivcing the stats with the mortality numbers for illegal aliens.
Travis….SNF’s (skilled nursing facilities) are the places that people without money go. They can’t throw you out on the street. And there is always bickering over who pays the bill…but it turns out mostly medicaid. There are a couple of million beds. People tend to die in SNF’s.
Meanwhile, there are lots and lots of group senior living facilities or residential care facilities. where people mostly pay their way. They go by a variety of names, like assisted living, etc. People live a few years in them.
The point being that they don’t have obvious, well understood names. But all senior group living are called nursing homes for the vaccine, for simplicity.
SNF’s have a long and politically controversial history. It is rather hard to figure this stuff out, but I spent some time looking into it when looking at REIT investments.
Although I'm not sure these distinctions about elder care facilities makes any difference to the commentators, well, everywhere, but on Unz.com here on iSteve, too many of them are all too happy to see these people gone. These people include my parents, fairly early members of the Silent Generation who's genetic history and current health suggests they have fair number of reasonable quality years left in them. Getting constantly reminded of this common attitude in the Right is increasingly wearisome.
Now that the US short and probably medium vaccine situation has reached a point of clarity I'm going to largely withdraw from this Charlie Foxtrot of a "discussion."
We have Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech with FDA Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) and thousands, soon to be millions vaccinated with them, Phase IV of a drug or biologic's life cycle which lasts as long as its on market. As far as I can tell no one else is close to an FDA level Phase III trial EUA application point. We'll see what really happens when people get these vaccines, there's probably enough of the mRNA ones in queue for everyone who wants one; per ZeroHedge, we've arranged to procure another 100 million doses from Pfizer by the end of the second quarter, per that very short account it's implied that this time Pfizer is accepting help from Operation Warp Speed to deal with their supply chain issues.
I was going to say I hadn't heard anything more about Pfizer/BioNTech anaphylaxis cases, but a search just now found this which doesn't sound like the six previously known cases, because "Both people had a known history of severe reactions after receiving injectable medication." Yeah, from what we know, that'll do it.... So maybe it's mostly limited to people who we now know shouldn't be getting it, we'll be hearing more about this in due course, and hopefully Moderna's won't be causing the same problems, there are reasons to guess either outcome is possible.
And if not enough mRNA vaccine doses, sooner or later Janssen should have a one or two dose adenovirus vector vaccine based on an existing platform that's been used for an EU approved Ebola vaccine. It's not the same virus vector one that performed so well in the last African epidemic, that type of vector has to get its dosing right for the elderly, so probably not before the end of 2021, but Janssen has started Phase III trials, but their still recruiting subject. And maybe AZ/Oxford will get their act together with or without the help of the Sputnik V team. We'll see how it all goes, but the simple fact that effective and maybe safe vaccines are possible for COVID-19 is a good way to end this fairly wretched year.
Reminds me also of this guy Jeffrey Sachs who screwed up millions of people in Russia with his "shock doctrine", and still he is considered a "leading expert" and having extremely well-paid government jobs or in think tanks...
It's almost as if their real job is to create panic or kill or impoverish millions of people, and they are handsomely rewarded for it. So they are not incompetent, they are really evil.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Mr. Anon
Or deliver the wealth of another country into the hands of their co-ethnics.
She has that smug arrogant Puritan missionary expression I despise.
What she doesn’t know is that her anti fossil fuel crusade was created, funded and directed by the electrical industry to replace fossil fuel with much more expensive and less efficient electricity. She’s a useful idiot for the electrical industry.
Any woman over the age of 12 who wears a short sleeved round neck men’s style T shirt anywhere but the house and yard is beyond help.
That’s what I was wondering. From a layman’s perspective. It would seem that a vaccines job is to induce an immune response to a simulated virus. It would seem to follow that old people die more often from viruses because they don’t have strong immune responses to viral infections, so wouldn’t vaccines be less affective as well? I’d love an epidemiologist to chime in and tell me how and why I’m wrong to postulate that.
Covid is indeed a hoax. I knew it last February. Here’s how I knew. The NYSlimes and the rest of the media claimed there was a new plague named covid. If you want to know the truth, just read the NYSlimes. The opposite is truth.
The mRNA vaccines probably are less effective among the old, but not too much: Pfizer came out around 95% and Moderna around 85% effective among the elderly, so probably around 90% is the best guess vs. 95% for younger people.
The Pfizer study’s included only 800 people over the age of 75 in their efficacy study, with a median age of 77 in this age cohort..not enough people to confirm efficacy since only 5 people in the placebo group contracted COVID during the study. Pfizer recognized this in their FDA application, and the confidence interval reported to the FDA indicates they have no confidence in the efficacy of the vaccine among those over the age of 75 , because they had too few participants and not enough o firmed cases in the placebo group.
The Moderna study had even less participants , just 600 over the age of 75 , and similar low confidence in the efficacy of their vaccine among those over the age of 75. None of the participants were nursing home residents, which has been the hardest hit demographic.
There’s no reason to think that the half dozen vaccines we have now aren’t going to work though any of them may also turn out to have some serious but rare and as of yet undetected effects. Let’s hope not.
Natural or vaccine acquired resistance are the only end games and always were. This thing is too contagious to contain effectively. You basically end up like Australia where they freak out and lock down every couple of months.
In the US we’re pretty well on the way to this anyway even before the vaccine. Note e.g. how NY isn’t seeing a post Thanksgiving explosion of cases.
The US growth in cases is already falling most places with the notable exception of California but even here it’s (maybe?) leveling off.
The hospitals have been about to collapse “in a matter of days” (but not really) here for oh a month or so according to the breathless news articles that seem to be cut and pasted every other day with no hint of irony.
That said, on the nursing home issue--and infection of the elderly is critical to how these stats come out--the Swedish apologists have a solid point. Sweden simply has more of their elderly in state provided group home care. And as in the US--i'd bet, don't know--they likely have lots of immigrants as carers. In any case, the Swedes failed to adequately protect those homes--not intentional destruction like Cuomo, but a failure nonetheless--and they acknowledge that failure.
But i think you are simply missing that the salient aspect of the debate is about values.
You go on and on about how dreadfully terrible the Swedes are. Yet, they have the same 10% elevation in death rate as the US. It's not any kind of "disaster". And to some people the balance of liberties--and especially not having government bossing people around for what is a fairly mild killer.
This epidemic just happens to sit in this range, and with a demographic profile where people's reactions are all over the map. Make it 10x less--it really is "just the flu, bro" and no one gives a flying rats ass. Make it 10X worse and you have a serious ass kicking and pretty much everyone would be on board with strong countermeasures. (And even so it would still be another order of magnitude less severe than smallpox.)
People hyperventilate about this epidemic and/or the measures. Truth is ... they don't matter. Nothing your beloved Norway did or your nemesis Sweden did not do is going to matter one bit down the road.
What's killing the West is not a physics virus it's a mental virus--minoritarianism; killing nations through immigration.Replies: @utu
Are you upset? Your utterances are incoherent.
Obviously countermeasures make difference and they matter. Countermeasures like lockdowns, social distancing, masking and contact tracing reduce infections and deaths rates. Sweden’s Nordic neighbors were able to put off many deaths into the future by their actions while Sweden let die many people by its inaction. If the epidemic is stopped now, say by vaccination, the 10-fold difference between Sweden and its neighbors will remain unchanged.
If however there would be no way of stopping the epidemic then indeed in a long time scale a country that keeps the epidemic percolating on a very low level in the end would reach infection prevalence similar to the country like Sweden that did not try to reduce the infection rate. But in the meantime more people remain alive and some people die of natural causes that would have died sooner in the country like Sweden. So in the end the death rates in the two countries would be similar but the total of years of life lost would be lower in the first country than in the country like Sweden. So anyway you look at it, whether in short or long term, with or w/o vaccine the numbers of lives saved or the number of years lived are increased when you do somethings as opposed to the country like Sweden that doesn’t do much.
Actually not true. Norway has more over the age of 80 people in long-term care institutions other than hospitals and Finland is very similar. See Fig. 13
http://publications.europa.eu/resource/cellar/77551079-d3ee-11e7-a5b9-01aa75ed71a1.0001.03/DOC_2
And here Fig 11.22 shows that Finland and Sweden have very similar number of long-term care beds in institutions and hospitals.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/health_glance-2017-80-en.pdf?expires=1608708057&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=F85E856B9CE665FC8F615AD3ED819774
The debate? You are not debate worthy. I am just correcting your errors. Values were invented by liberals because they were too squeamish and with anti-religion animus to talk about morals. To rationalize your actions that would result in unnecessary deaths of other people by invoking ‘values’ at best is childish. Obviously liberty is important. But in any civil society we agree that sometimes we need to sacrifice some of our liberties for a greater good. This is when the greater good can only be accomplished by a concerted effort like during national disasters, epidemics or wars. Understanding this comes directly from the moral core and in normal mature people it is an impulse, the same impulse that is responsible for stronger to sacrifice for the weaker, for more fortunate to help the less fortunate.
Sane people know the difference between death at 90 and death at 30. Sane people know the difference between the death of a criminal and the death of say a vaccine research scientist.
Traditionally people understood a the basic rhythm of life. Birth, childhood, marriage, having children, getting old, dying. They understood that *everyone* eventually dies and that it is in fact normal for old people. Seeing your parents die is normal, but--hopefully--your children (most of them) live on after you. And traditionally people understood that some people--criminal--may even lead lives of negative value. I.e. deserve to die.
But then traditionally people understood that having your nation invaded is bad and that there were two sexes.
So don't worry your confusion about very--ridiculously--basic aspects of life, like growing old and dying not unique. Confusion about very basic aspects of life is rampant.Replies: @utu
What are you saying? That people are young and then they are old and then they die? And from this profundity you want to derive a system that assigns a numerical value to people so in case of some emergency you can order them according to that numerical value and decide who goes let and who goes right? Grow up.
I never claimed "people are young and then they are old and then they die" was profound as in insightful. It is important, but obvious and pretty much everyone else arguing about the Xi virus response here understands that. You are the one--darn near the only one--who just doesn't seem able or at least willing to deal with that reality.
Instead you rant that all lives are equally valuable and we can't make any distinctions. Basically like a ten year old--whose got this one idea and any complexity can not be tolerated.
Sorry, you are just ridiculous. In the real world resources are finite--like vaccine supplies in the next few months. They are less finite than they were 60 years back when i was a little kid. (The sort of care my dad's getting in the hospital today is not something we could have, would have tossed at dying old guys 60 years ago when i was a kid. But today a much richer America can do it.) But resources are still finite. Most people can not get the jab right away so you have to make choices. And intelligent and mature people don't run screaming from complexity and making judgments. Rather they try and get the most "bang" for the vaccine "buck"--including very obvious stuff like "suppressing the epidemic" and "years of life saved".
~~
I'll also note, that you pose yourself as some sort of communitarian, but don't seem to have any concept of what "community" means.
The last thing a communitarian should be doing is yammering that all lives are equally valuable. That's the atomism of today's "my life is my own special pearl" commercial life.
In any traditional community, people are not atoms but are tied together in an endless web from the past through the present to the future. Parents willingly make sacrifices for their children, because they are their children. People grow old and accept their coming death, knowing their children live on after them. And such old people--like myself--fully understand that their children and grandchildren's lives are now more important than their own, because they are the future of their family, race, civilization.
For a real communitarian the survival of your family, your community--your race and civilization--outweighs your own individual existence, actually adds meaning to it.Replies: @Mark G.
Oh, they don't look like how YOU think they should?
Thank goodness that people don't think like you.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Reg Cæsar
Subjects.
Is Corvinus spotting for you tonight?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-05/sweden-s-economy-posted-record-slump-during-pandemic-peak
Doesn't an economic decline indicate they were reducing economic activity and self-isolating? Whether the government has an official lockdown and people are forced to stay at home or people voluntarily stay at home, you still have the same level of lockdown don't you?
I agree with you that very early lockdowns and travel bans may work. They worked in New Zealand. The timing of the lockdown, though, is more important than the length or harshness of the lockdown. Sweden had the misfortune of large numbers of vacationers coming back and spreading the disease. Nursing homes were not properly protected. Sweden tried to save money by hiring cheaper immigrants to work in them rather than natives who might have done a better job.
Once the disease spreads out into the population, lockdowns don't work. Studies show disease transmission rates to be low in public places like restaurants and is mainly transmitted in personal settings like family visits. When you have harsh lengthy lockdowns, the population starts suffering from lockdown fatigue and stops complying with the lockdowns. This may be the cause of the big case increases in California even with its lockdown as is described in the following article:
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-COVID-lockdown-cases-deaths-businesses-15819841.phpReplies: @utu
“Swedes self-isolated voluntarily” – Everybody knew that. If they did not, the death toll would be much higher.
There rest of your litany about vacationers, nursing homes, foreigners are the old worn out Swedish apologetics. If Sweden went on lockdown nothing of that would have mattered.
The fatality rate from COVID – all diverse mutant ninja variants – is 0.1% in the UK. Reducing that by 40% can only matter to those quivering daily about asteroid strikes coinciding with eclipses. Vaccines are the cherry on the trifle of the most egregious international panic attack in history. If John Belushi were alive they’d be remaking ‘1941’ in sensurround.
Ever since April, every lay person with a bit of common sense has been asking " . . . um . . . why don't we just quarantine the 2% of the population at risk instead of the other 98%." To my knowledge, not a single person in the media or public health establishment has ever deigned to answer that universal and obvious question.Replies: @BB753
What’s worse, if you even dare raise the question among educated people they gang up on you, as if you were a monster. People are stupid.
So you think we live in a world of limitless resources rather than a world of limited resources where people have to make decisions on how to use those resources.
You’re entitled to your own opinions but not your own fact. The CFR for Covid in the UK is currently somewhere in the vicinity of 1.5%, same as everywhere else. The CFR for Covid is not at all uniform – it’s close to zero for the young and as high as 15% for those over 80, so it’s not really useful to talk about the average. If they can get everyone over 65 vaccinated then mortality should drop by 70 or 80%.
For all of your measured responses and thoughts on COVID, this statement is just as nutty as those who insist that it is simply the flu caused by Chinese agents. You literally debase yourself by impugning men and women who work for a government agency by automatically assuming to be the devil incarnate.Replies: @Jack D, @That Would Be Telling
Sorry if my prose wasn’t clear, “these people” are the US public health community as a whole that I denounced at the very beginning of my comment. They are a cohesive and self-policing group that’s been captured by the Left, see Robert Conquest’s second laws of politics, again I point out they demonstrably do not care about or are competent at infectious disease control, and if you want to claim Leftists are “the devil incarnate,” I will only quibble about details.
I appreciate your defense of your blog friend, but it is clear he is of the mindset that CDC employees, as well as health workers overall, are humans who are sincerely believing they are doing EVIL under the guise of doing the right thing without a shred of proof. It’s an emotional, rather than rational plea, on his part.
You can denounce anyone you wish, but it does not mean that your condemnation is predicated on fact. YOU are the one inferring they are the “devil incarnate” with your insistence that this group literally wants white people to die. So no matter what cogent defense or argument they may offer to counter, your mind is already made up–this group is incompetent and cares not a whit about public service nor public health. Now, that’s fine if you want to peddle that narrative, but it patently undercuts your credibility as coming across as measured against the hordes of posters here who believe COVID is manufactured.
And as you say, even people who do things that seem obviously evil manage to convince themselves that what they're doing is unpleasant but necessary.
Even people who are motivated by greed find ways to rationalise it. People who are motivated by moral or physical cowardice will find rationalisations as well.
That's how you get elites doing terrible things - they either think they're doing good or they think they're doing what is necessary.
Even nutjob libertarians convince themselves that starving the poor will be for their own good.Replies: @Corvinus, @Wielgus
It’s also very hard to accept people who designate other people as being “enemies” and thus “evil” are also convincing themselves their logic behind that categorization is based on sound logic and reason. So posters like That Would Be Telling craft a narrative to assure themselves and persuade others to rationalize their own confirmation biases. That is how you manufacture the notion that elites and their toadies such as the public health care profession work in concert toward the “Great Reset”. It is philosophical comfort food for you (and him and others).
A lot of Christians wonder about demonic influence all the way to possession, and I’m not sure they’re wrong.
Exactly, and thus my point about “a great deal of explicit dehumanizing happening, now literally literally at the Nazi level.” WTF do people think it means to “abolish whiteness,” how it can be accomplished without “abolishing” a whole bunch of whites who resist the Left?
Hillary was stupidly as is her wont quite explicit about it, “irredeemable” is more a religious than a political concept, but in the end it amounts to the same thing, the Left is incapable of sharing a polity with some fraction of deplorables. A fraction which in virtue spirals grows ever larger until in theory the Left runs out of people to kill, but historically an internal or external force reigns them in.
Often a person or faction that realizes it’s next on the block as happened with the modern, not religious per se beginning of the modern Left and the Thermidorian Reaction. But also see consolidated Vietnam using main-force in a full scale invasion and occupation to stop genocidal cross border Khmer Rouge raids; it was very odd for a lot of us to cheer the NVA AKA People’s Army of Vietnam for stopping a genocide which had killed at least a quarter of the Cambodian population.
And those same Christians would question how you arrived at the conclusion that the U.S. public health community, through their demonic ends, want to essentially neuter the white race. Essentially, this group is wholly or nearly entirely "Leftist" and are under the control of a "evil forces".
There is a level of cognitive dissonance on your part. We are to trust your judgement that COVID is real and that the pharmeutical companies have developed effective vaccines to stop its spread...along with the U.S. public health community openly conspiring, at worst, or being unconsciously complicit, at best, in ensuring that whites are "next on the (chopping) block". I mean, any country that engages in a mass immunization of its citizens ought to make us extremely nervous and skeptical, since "it is a clear sign [the elites] are preparing for a bioweapon attack on the rest of the world, [as it is an] old Cold War concept."
Basically, we are suppose to take your word for it because seemingly it is self-evident for everyone to see. And those who dare to question that narrative, well, they are deluding themselves since the "truth" is so blatantly obvious.**
So how would you respond to one or more members of the health profession who offer a rebuttal to your charge? Would you sincerely entertain the merits of their argument, or would you outright dismiss them because they are insidiously--and perhaps unwittingly--seeking the demise of the race you belong to?
**Interesting to note how Alt Right leader Vox Day characterizes the vaccines for COVID.To your credit, at least you have made an effort to inform his audience. But let us NOTICE how one poster there essentially put you in the category of "promoting evil" with your narrative peddling...Replies: @Jack D
Vaccines, including the new. COVID vaccines, are less effective among the elderly due to their weaker immune systems.
The Pfizer study’s included only 800 people over the age of 75 in their efficacy study, with a median age of 77 in this age cohort..not enough people to confirm efficacy since only 5 people in the placebo group contracted COVID during the study. Pfizer recognized this in their FDA application, and the confidence interval reported to the FDA indicates they have no confidence in the efficacy of the vaccine among those over the age of 75 , because they had too few participants and not enough o firmed cases in the placebo group.
The Moderna study had even less participants , just 600 over the age of 75 , and similar low confidence in the efficacy of their vaccine among those over the age of 75. None of the participants were nursing home residents, which has been the hardest hit demographic.
Meanwhile, there are lots and lots of group senior living facilities or residential care facilities. where people mostly pay their way. They go by a variety of names, like assisted living, etc. People live a few years in them.
The point being that they don't have obvious, well understood names. But all senior group living are called nursing homes for the vaccine, for simplicity.
SNF's have a long and politically controversial history. It is rather hard to figure this stuff out, but I spent some time looking into it when looking at REIT investments.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
Thanks for pointing out the differences between these and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), which are indeed grim all around, especially when politicians who’s budgets are being busted by Medicaid which as you indicate is the last resort payer for the indigent in SNFs show every sign of being willing to deal with that problem by sending the COVID-19 positive into them, with their public health directors formally enacting such policies? For example New York, New Jersey which I’ve read achieved an even higher per capita death toll, and Pennsylvania, but for the latter not before the thing that is their state public health director moving its mother out of one. And people wonder why I believe the US public health community is captured by the Left and axiomatically largely evil when not simply incompetent??
Although I’m not sure these distinctions about elder care facilities makes any difference to the commentators, well, everywhere, but on Unz.com here on iSteve, too many of them are all too happy to see these people gone. These people include my parents, fairly early members of the Silent Generation who’s genetic history and current health suggests they have fair number of reasonable quality years left in them. Getting constantly reminded of this common attitude in the Right is increasingly wearisome.
Now that the US short and probably medium vaccine situation has reached a point of clarity I’m going to largely withdraw from this Charlie Foxtrot of a “discussion.”
We have Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech with FDA Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) and thousands, soon to be millions vaccinated with them, Phase IV of a drug or biologic’s life cycle which lasts as long as its on market. As far as I can tell no one else is close to an FDA level Phase III trial EUA application point. We’ll see what really happens when people get these vaccines, there’s probably enough of the mRNA ones in queue for everyone who wants one; per ZeroHedge, we’ve arranged to procure another 100 million doses from Pfizer by the end of the second quarter, per that very short account it’s implied that this time Pfizer is accepting help from Operation Warp Speed to deal with their supply chain issues.
I was going to say I hadn’t heard anything more about Pfizer/BioNTech anaphylaxis cases, but a search just now found this which doesn’t sound like the six previously known cases, because “Both people had a known history of severe reactions after receiving injectable medication.” Yeah, from what we know, that’ll do it…. So maybe it’s mostly limited to people who we now know shouldn’t be getting it, we’ll be hearing more about this in due course, and hopefully Moderna’s won’t be causing the same problems, there are reasons to guess either outcome is possible.
And if not enough mRNA vaccine doses, sooner or later Janssen should have a one or two dose adenovirus vector vaccine based on an existing platform that’s been used for an EU approved Ebola vaccine. It’s not the same virus vector one that performed so well in the last African epidemic, that type of vector has to get its dosing right for the elderly, so probably not before the end of 2021, but Janssen has started Phase III trials, but their still recruiting subject. And maybe AZ/Oxford will get their act together with or without the help of the Sputnik V team. We’ll see how it all goes, but the simple fact that effective and maybe safe vaccines are possible for COVID-19 is a good way to end this fairly wretched year.
Of course, the REAL question is: “What is the threshold for the NEXT lockdown? The Third World Crap Holes have a combined FOUR BILLION human petri dishes, just itching to incubate the next somewhat deadly bug. And, that number includes just the most overpopulated handful of crap holes: China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, maybe Nigeria and a couple of others. There will be another pathogen, sooner rather than later. And, we know that the Elite’s won’t act to contain it by closing the borders of the First World nearly soon enough. It will get in. Will we torpedo the First World economy if it threatens to kill half a million very elderly? What about a quarter of a million? Fifty thousand? Where does it end?
Hillary was stupidly as is her wont quite explicit about it, "irredeemable" is more a religious than a political concept, but in the end it amounts to the same thing, the Left is incapable of sharing a polity with some fraction of deplorables. A fraction which in virtue spirals grows ever larger until in theory the Left runs out of people to kill, but historically an internal or external force reigns them in.
Often a person or faction that realizes it's next on the block as happened with the modern, not religious per se beginning of the modern Left and the Thermidorian Reaction. But also see consolidated Vietnam using main-force in a full scale invasion and occupation to stop genocidal cross border Khmer Rouge raids; it was very odd for a lot of us to cheer the NVA AKA People's Army of Vietnam for stopping a genocide which had killed at least a quarter of the Cambodian population.Replies: @Corvinus
“A lot of Christians wonder about demonic influence all the way to possession, and I’m not sure they’re wrong.”
And those same Christians would question how you arrived at the conclusion that the U.S. public health community, through their demonic ends, want to essentially neuter the white race. Essentially, this group is wholly or nearly entirely “Leftist” and are under the control of a “evil forces”.
There is a level of cognitive dissonance on your part. We are to trust your judgement that COVID is real and that the pharmeutical companies have developed effective vaccines to stop its spread…along with the U.S. public health community openly conspiring, at worst, or being unconsciously complicit, at best, in ensuring that whites are “next on the (chopping) block”. I mean, any country that engages in a mass immunization of its citizens ought to make us extremely nervous and skeptical, since “it is a clear sign [the elites] are preparing for a bioweapon attack on the rest of the world, [as it is an] old Cold War concept.”
Basically, we are suppose to take your word for it because seemingly it is self-evident for everyone to see. And those who dare to question that narrative, well, they are deluding themselves since the “truth” is so blatantly obvious.**
So how would you respond to one or more members of the health profession who offer a rebuttal to your charge? Would you sincerely entertain the merits of their argument, or would you outright dismiss them because they are insidiously–and perhaps unwittingly–seeking the demise of the race you belong to?
**Interesting to note how Alt Right leader Vox Day characterizes the vaccines for COVID.
To your credit, at least you have made an effort to inform his audience. But let us NOTICE how one poster there essentially put you in the category of “promoting evil” with your narrative peddling…
“But still I want to take an unmasked plane ride to DC, walk into the office of Fauciat the NIAID, and beat this guy up to within an inch of his already too long life. He’s a shrimp, so it wouldn’t hard. Anybody wanna join me?”
Ah, yes, the Internet Tuff Guy routine. So, why not actually do it? Otherwise, you are just one of the guys at their Saturday night bowling league raggin’ on their old lady, bolding pronouncing on how you all are going to put her in her place, and then come Sunday morning, her comeuppance is nothing more than a headache on your part from a hard night’s drinking.
And those same Christians would question how you arrived at the conclusion that the U.S. public health community, through their demonic ends, want to essentially neuter the white race. Essentially, this group is wholly or nearly entirely "Leftist" and are under the control of a "evil forces".
There is a level of cognitive dissonance on your part. We are to trust your judgement that COVID is real and that the pharmeutical companies have developed effective vaccines to stop its spread...along with the U.S. public health community openly conspiring, at worst, or being unconsciously complicit, at best, in ensuring that whites are "next on the (chopping) block". I mean, any country that engages in a mass immunization of its citizens ought to make us extremely nervous and skeptical, since "it is a clear sign [the elites] are preparing for a bioweapon attack on the rest of the world, [as it is an] old Cold War concept."
Basically, we are suppose to take your word for it because seemingly it is self-evident for everyone to see. And those who dare to question that narrative, well, they are deluding themselves since the "truth" is so blatantly obvious.**
So how would you respond to one or more members of the health profession who offer a rebuttal to your charge? Would you sincerely entertain the merits of their argument, or would you outright dismiss them because they are insidiously--and perhaps unwittingly--seeking the demise of the race you belong to?
**Interesting to note how Alt Right leader Vox Day characterizes the vaccines for COVID.To your credit, at least you have made an effort to inform his audience. But let us NOTICE how one poster there essentially put you in the category of "promoting evil" with your narrative peddling...Replies: @Jack D
I don’t think this is damning at all. It speaks more to the problems of our legal system than of our medical system. PI and class action lawyers (and increasingly State AGs) will go after any deep pocket, whether you are selling vaccines or something as harmless as soda pop or hamburgers. Ultimately the cost of funding the ghetto lottery falls to the taxpayers so it makes sense for the government to short cut this process (which would in any case culminate with any who dared to manufacture a vaccine of any kind ultimately driven into bankruptcy, so no one would be so stupid as to even try). There is a no-fault vaccine compensation board that offers fair but not excessive compensation for people who can prove that they have been injured by a vaccine.
I never stated otherwise. Thanks for your strawman. While I understand where VD is coming from on this single point, refer to his big picture argument, as well as the poster who essentially referenced that anyone who touts vaccines is a liar and is evil.
“I don’t think this is damning at all.”
I never stated otherwise. Thanks for your strawman. While I understand where VD is coming from on this single point, refer to his big picture argument, as well as the poster who essentially referenced that anyone who touts vaccines is a liar and is evil.
The latter we’ve learned really stands for Aspiring Governor….
And as you say, even people who do things that seem obviously evil manage to convince themselves that what they're doing is unpleasant but necessary.
Even people who are motivated by greed find ways to rationalise it. People who are motivated by moral or physical cowardice will find rationalisations as well.
That's how you get elites doing terrible things - they either think they're doing good or they think they're doing what is necessary.
Even nutjob libertarians convince themselves that starving the poor will be for their own good.Replies: @Corvinus, @Wielgus
I once met a murderer. At the personal level he was nicer to talk to than quite a few people I have met in life who had never killed anyone and probably never will. And yet I was aware that he might kill me if some interest of his might be served by doing so.
The encounter also reminded me of a book I read about the murders by Reginald Christie. A prison psychologist who interviewed Christie said he was one of the few murderers he disliked immediately. (Christie, though a serial killer of women, tended to be quite sanctimonious in his personal interactions.) The fact that a psychologist did not typically find murderers immediately repulsive suggests that, like my guy, they do not have obvious horns on their head and a forked tail, in a manner of speaking.
I figured it would bring out the “see, women only want douchebags” brigade.
I’m surprised Whiskey hasn’t chimed in.
The encounter also reminded me of a book I read about the murders by Reginald Christie. A prison psychologist who interviewed Christie said he was one of the few murderers he disliked immediately. (Christie, though a serial killer of women, tended to be quite sanctimonious in his personal interactions.) The fact that a psychologist did not typically find murderers immediately repulsive suggests that, like my guy, they do not have obvious horns on their head and a forked tail, in a manner of speaking.Replies: @Jack D
People (especially but not only women) are often attracted to murderous psychopaths. A psychopath has no feelings of guilt so they are absolutely fluent liars. Most of us, when we lie, appear nervous and even when we are not lying we express uncertainty (because life is in fact uncertain), but psychopaths possess absolute confidence and certainty that other humans find extremely appealing (see Hitler).
And, surprise, surprise, you want to see a lot of old folk dead.Replies: @Corvinus
“And, surprise, surprise, you want to see a lot of old folk dead.”
Just like the U.S. public health community desires to see white people die, right?
Gee, I wonder where I heard this from? –> What’s primarily required is to not view your opponents as being human, right? I probably am wasting my time replying to people like you who have this mentality, because as a class, literally nothing less than a bullet smashing into you head will break you out of your mindset. I mean, it’s an autoconspiracy, a group of like minded people working towards a large set of shared goals. You just studiously refuse to see it, and only you can explain to us why, except of course by definition you can’t see it in yourself to explain why.
This guy told no lies I could detect (he knew I knew he had killed someone and probably thought what was the point in lying). It is true that he projected an aura of confidence that I have rarely encountered elsewhere. Whether or not he was a psychopath I can’t say – what was striking about him was that he pretty much assumed only the strong and the cunning survive, and then only with the aid of luck. He was quite the social Darwinist.
https://i.redd.it/o2rf1j7qo7661.png
Note that the Y-axis runs from zero to 500 for every graph, allowing apples to apples comparisons.
By this measure, the US comes across as doing pretty well. But this is misleading, as the NYC Metro area was pounded in April, while most parts of the country got off very lightly. 2nd wave hit different places, 3rd wave (mostly not shown), different again. Likewise, Lombardy's first wave excess deaths would be off the scale used here. But such complaints aside, this is really nice work that puts the pandemic in context. Not the flu.Replies: @Jack D, @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia, @Mr. Anon, @HA, @Kratoklastes
These type of charts appeal to the semi-numerate, in the same way that teen-angst poetry and rap appeal to the semi-literate.
Firstly: why is the comparison period only 5 years? There is half-decent data in most developed countries that would enable 30- and 40-year comparisons for a subset of the countries covered. Better yet: get the death tolls (probably only by month for the first half of the 20th century) for some genuine pandemics, like 1918.
Second (and more important): each week’s death count is a variable with a random component; a seasonal component; some temporal connectivity (an AR/MA component) and a non-negative lower bound.
All this taken together means that Gaussian assumptions don’t do a good job of estimating the underlying distribution of the random bit; it would take a competent quant less than an hour to produce a half-decent Monte Carlo simulation of the distribution of each week’s death toll… so why wasn’t that done instead?
ANSWER: it hasn’t been done and promulgated, because it would tell a story that is far less consistent with The Narrative. The Narrative is still straight out of Doomer Central, because “The Sky Is Falling!!! ZOMFG EXPER-NENSHUL” gets innumerate people all agitated, and agitated innumerate people are easy to fleece.
Comparing a truncated history using invalid statistical assumptions is the sort of thing I might have expected to find in the promotional material produced by mutual fund managers … before they were subjected to more stringent regulatory oversight. (Don’t get me wrong: they still push the bullshit envelope, but they have to say “Past performance is not an indication of future performance“)
Lastly: we just came out of 2 mild flu seasons. A bunch of people who would have died 2018 and 2019 if the ‘flu was more virulent, didn’t die; those people were two years older and had 2 years’ more metabolic damage.
This is readily observable in the ‘negative excess deaths’ in prior ‘flu seasons. It has a name: the “dry tinder” effect. ‘rona was able to burn through the dry tinder like a California wildfire.
As I made clear in March/April: nobody would have been happier than me, if COVID19 was actually “The Big One” that sloughed away the metabolic dross from humanity. It isn’t, which is quite sad: we’re going to have to tolerate waddling obese tattooed fucktards for at least another couple of years.
And old people’s mortality will – as always – be more volatile (and have a naturally higher base level) than the GenPop. But without sounding too cold about it, when an 85 year old pops off, the next of kin are sad but not devastated. The same is only slightly less true if a 30 year old type-II diabetic 400lb landwhale shuffles off the mortal coil: it isn’t entirely unexpected.
The advanced age of the median victim shows that this COVID19 deaths-with are overwhelmingly the “You gotta die of something” variety.
The near-absence of mortality for the metabolically prudent… it’s almost like IQ might play a role in the victims <75yo given that we know that stupid people are much more likely to grow up to be obese, and to engage in other behaviours that are metabolically destructive.
*
OT: It would be great of Doomers were to read "Exposure“… it would give them a bit of perspective on relative risks.
Exposure is the backstory behind the now-established fact that the entire biosphere has accumulated contamination with PFOA/PFOS/C8 (industrial surfactants used to make Teflon and Scotchgard). These things are highly bioaccumulative and persistent – almost all human subpopulations in industrial countries, have blood concentrations that are 6x the level that DuPont claimed to be problematic.
During the period in which they were trying to prevent their PFOA sludge and effluent from being declared a regulated pollutant, DuPont’s internal research found that 0.6ppb was their best guess at a ‘safe’ concentration… pretty much any Western human you test, has a serum concentration above 4ppb. Afghanistan, Viet Nam and Peru are the only places with national average levels below DuPont’s own internal ‘safe’ estimate.
There’s no point being worried about it, because there’s fuck-all that any of us can do. There is a vast amount of this – and other – shit that has been dumped into the system.
Similarly, people have to be considerably more sanguine about viruses, and far more pro-active in controlling their own metabolisms to minimise the potential downside if a greeblie tries to get hold.
To put 1 part per billion in perspective, imagine a pile of 20 dump truck loads of dirt (500 tons) into which you mix 1/4 tsp. (1 gram) of the offending substance.
I wish it was the case that we could seal off the elderly and vulnerable population, but this pandemic has shown that COVID unfortunately gets in everywhere (healthcare workers have to come and go at each facility).
So I'd advocate the UK approach - inoculate the most vulnerable, improve the ICU situation, and go for herd immunity among the healthy. We'll be reopen then by summer 2021.Replies: @res
I thought we were going to use the time gained by “bending the curve” to increase ICU capacity. Via emergency tent-like facilities if necessary. What happened?
In my county, after the big initial wave, both the number of cases and the number of deaths really settled down from July to October - most days there were no covid deaths and on others, one. This for a county of over 800,000 people. But starting at the beginning of November, both the # of cases AND the # of deaths spike up and now we are back up to as many as 15 deaths/day. Roughly speaking both the case count and the death count are up by a factor of 15x from their summer lows.
As far as I can tell, the average case fatality rate, which is somewhere around 1.8%, has not really changed in the US yet. No one really knows what the infection fatality rate is. However, the case fatality rate varies greatly by age, from almost zero risk for those under 40 to perhaps a 15% risk for those over 80 so the blended 1.8% number is almost meaningless unless you happen to be in the band where that is in fact the CFR (roughly the 60-69 group). For all other age groups the risk is either much lower or much higher.Replies: @AnotherDad, @Travis, @res
Speaking of that, are the “experts” still claiming COVID-19 is not seasonal?
In the US, the traditional flu season is October through May, reaching an apex in February. In Australia, the flu season is considered to be May to October, peaking in August. So clearly there are seasonal influences. We don't know yet whether Covid will follow this pattern but my guess would be yes. People move indoors in the fall and schools are in session.Replies: @res
I thought we were going to use the time gained by “bending the curve” to increase ICU capacity.
Why did you think that? ICU capacity is expensive, and cannot be left just sitting around, because it would be a huge cost sink. It’s not just some fancy rooms, there’s extra trimmings and personnel that are part of the package.
A hospital admin I know mentioned that in a typical year the ICU gets pretty full in winter, what with flu, seasonal heart attacks, DUI accidents and so forth etc. but expanding it has to be done very carefully, else it becomes too expensive.
Via emergency tent-like facilities if necessary.
Those exist in some areas, generally courtesy of the DOD, however they are temporary facilities.
That's an overriding reason to vaccinate healthcare workers. In my local area, we've never been raw bed constrained, rather, at one point during our third wave peak which is now thankfully steadily tapering off, our hospitals had something like 100 of their staff out due to COVID-19. Get a whole bunch of them inoculated against it, you don't have to bend the curve for that reason (you of course still want to limit the number of people who get it who are willing to get vaccinated when you can get to them).
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/7/21201260/coronavirus-usa-chart-mask-shortage-ventilators-flatten-the-curve
Would you like me to give more links?Replies: @anon
Emphasis added. From what I’ve been reading, personnel is the very hardest to add, with the exception of now probably pretty rare nurse anesthetists like Bill Clinton’s mother you can’t take non-ICU nurses at their existing level of expertise and get them qualified with, from memory, a couple of years of training for this specialty and something like a year of apprenticeship.
That’s an overriding reason to vaccinate healthcare workers. In my local area, we’ve never been raw bed constrained, rather, at one point during our third wave peak which is now thankfully steadily tapering off, our hospitals had something like 100 of their staff out due to COVID-19. Get a whole bunch of them inoculated against it, you don’t have to bend the curve for that reason (you of course still want to limit the number of people who get it who are willing to get vaccinated when you can get to them).
Don’t know much about or could respect such claims, you can’t know until it or vaccinations have swept through populations and it settles down to whatever is a normal pattern for it. Given that the first two waves in the US were not in what’s normally flu season, isn’t evidence still lacking to come to any conclusion about this? Also note the most deadly 1918-9 wave started in August as I recall.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54966531
Notice how it dies out in late spring and fires right back up in fall.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/10580/production/_116044966_optimised-us_deaths-nc.pngIt supposedly started in August with troop movements.
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence
Here is UK data:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/bin/05-0979-F1.jpg
The article asserts:But the upsurge of that second wave seems at least somewhat in line with normal seasonal variation. The odd part is dying out in December for a few months. The paper also talks about the Southern Hemisphere having epidemics at the same time, which is odd.
Some US data:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/29/us-responses-1918-flu-pandemic-offer-stark-lessons-coronavirus-now
Seasonal does not mean zero in summer. It means significantly higher in winter than summer. Or else requiring more significant countermeasures to slow in winter than in summer.
I think the way to look at it is that for a disease with sufficiently high R0 (like COVID-19 or the 1918-19 flu, but not the typical flu) outbreaks can happen at any time, but seasonality will make them happen faster (and be harder to stop, e.g. even with lockdowns) and probably have more serious outcomes in winter.
Are you arguing that the COVID-19 behavior is NOT seasonal? Are you arguing that we don't know enough to assume it IS seasonal until proven otherwise? (notice where the burden of proof lies there when invoking "can't know")
P.S. I can see having arguments about this back in April/May (though I still think the high probability conclusion was obviously seasonality will be a factor even if we could not be sure), but IMO having them now is just stupid.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
4 parts per billion is a tiny amount. Individuals occupationally exposed to PFOA have had blood serum levels over 100,000 parts per billion without immediate effects (although possibly a higher long term risk of cancer). While no one knows what the safe level of PFOA is, .6ppb was a number that DuPont just pulled out of their ass, probably because they thought that they could meet it without disrupting their operations (while hopefully giving their competitors problems). There is no reason to believe that 4ppb or even 40ppb is going to have any effect on you. It’s a miracle of modern science that we can even detect substances in the 1 part per billion range.
To put 1 part per billion in perspective, imagine a pile of 20 dump truck loads of dirt (500 tons) into which you mix 1/4 tsp. (1 gram) of the offending substance.
Articles like this back in the spring. Were you following the news then?
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/7/21201260/coronavirus-usa-chart-mask-shortage-ventilators-flatten-the-curve
Would you like me to give more links?
I don’t know what “experts” are saying yet but it’s clear that in most places in the US, Covid settled down in the summer and picked up again in the fall.
In the US, the traditional flu season is October through May, reaching an apex in February. In Australia, the flu season is considered to be May to October, peaking in August. So clearly there are seasonal influences. We don’t know yet whether Covid will follow this pattern but my guess would be yes. People move indoors in the fall and schools are in session.
Do you not think the increase we have seen this fall (combined with the decrease in late spring) is enough to confirm "whether Covid will follow this pattern"? If not, what would you consider sufficient evidence?
Allowing for the summer of Floyd bump during summer, I’d say this makes the seasonality clear.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54966531
Notice how it dies out in late spring and fires right back up in fall.
It supposedly started in August with troop movements.
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence
Here is UK data:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/
The article asserts:
But the upsurge of that second wave seems at least somewhat in line with normal seasonal variation. The odd part is dying out in December for a few months. The paper also talks about the Southern Hemisphere having epidemics at the same time, which is odd.
Some US data:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/29/us-responses-1918-flu-pandemic-offer-stark-lessons-coronavirus-now
Seasonal does not mean zero in summer. It means significantly higher in winter than summer. Or else requiring more significant countermeasures to slow in winter than in summer.
I think the way to look at it is that for a disease with sufficiently high R0 (like COVID-19 or the 1918-19 flu, but not the typical flu) outbreaks can happen at any time, but seasonality will make them happen faster (and be harder to stop, e.g. even with lockdowns) and probably have more serious outcomes in winter.
Are you arguing that the COVID-19 behavior is NOT seasonal? Are you arguing that we don’t know enough to assume it IS seasonal until proven otherwise? (notice where the burden of proof lies there when invoking “can’t know”)
P.S. I can see having arguments about this back in April/May (though I still think the high probability conclusion was obviously seasonality will be a factor even if we could not be sure), but IMO having them now is just stupid.
In the US, the traditional flu season is October through May, reaching an apex in February. In Australia, the flu season is considered to be May to October, peaking in August. So clearly there are seasonal influences. We don't know yet whether Covid will follow this pattern but my guess would be yes. People move indoors in the fall and schools are in session.Replies: @res
Agreed. I am complaining about the resistance to this idea back in April/May.
Do you not think the increase we have seen this fall (combined with the decrease in late spring) is enough to confirm “whether Covid will follow this pattern”? If not, what would you consider sufficient evidence?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54966531
Notice how it dies out in late spring and fires right back up in fall.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/10580/production/_116044966_optimised-us_deaths-nc.pngIt supposedly started in August with troop movements.
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence
Here is UK data:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/bin/05-0979-F1.jpg
The article asserts:But the upsurge of that second wave seems at least somewhat in line with normal seasonal variation. The odd part is dying out in December for a few months. The paper also talks about the Southern Hemisphere having epidemics at the same time, which is odd.
Some US data:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/29/us-responses-1918-flu-pandemic-offer-stark-lessons-coronavirus-now
Seasonal does not mean zero in summer. It means significantly higher in winter than summer. Or else requiring more significant countermeasures to slow in winter than in summer.
I think the way to look at it is that for a disease with sufficiently high R0 (like COVID-19 or the 1918-19 flu, but not the typical flu) outbreaks can happen at any time, but seasonality will make them happen faster (and be harder to stop, e.g. even with lockdowns) and probably have more serious outcomes in winter.
Are you arguing that the COVID-19 behavior is NOT seasonal? Are you arguing that we don't know enough to assume it IS seasonal until proven otherwise? (notice where the burden of proof lies there when invoking "can't know")
P.S. I can see having arguments about this back in April/May (though I still think the high probability conclusion was obviously seasonality will be a factor even if we could not be sure), but IMO having them now is just stupid.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
Yes; for now, it’s a safe enough working assumption, although the start of the first wave was due to it starting to circulate in quantity in naive populations, and I’m sure people who focus on this domain like uta might argue over what stopped it. But to know, for some value of that word, I want to see what happens next year and probably 2022, although of course all this data becomes more dirty as people get vaccinated, starting 1-2 weeks after the first dose a degree of immunity will generally be achieved.
I would say by now it is clear that a combination of the countermeasures and the seasonal change are what tamed the initial growth. Witness how those same countermeasures are failing to contain it now.
If you don't consider the way the virus has picked up in November and December as compelling (if not 100.0% conclusive) evidence for seasonality being a factor here then I am not sure what to say. What do you think explains the most recent wave? The more interesting question is: which aspects of seasonality matter most? Some candidates: cold weather, people spending more time inside, lower indoor humidity, lower vitamin D status, any more?
To be clear, this is my take:
- Wave 1 - initial explosive growth in naive population during late winter/early spring--i.e. the end of traditional flu season. Seasonal. Think dropping a match in a fuel rich forest during drought. Dropping that same match during the rainy season gives a very different result.
- Wave 2 - summer of Floyd. Not seasonal, just stupidity and a political establishment invested in not calling people on it (e.g. not even asking if people with the virus attended protests).
- Wave 3 - another round of growth (more so than wave 2, with less of an explanation) during November and December--i.e. the start of traditional flu season. Seasonal.
This comment explains why seasonality is important for making decisions about lockdowns. Notice that I made it back in May (do you have any idea how frustrating it is to reference my detailed comments from then which virtually no one seemed to read/understand?). Sorry if I seem cranky, but people not being able to admit seasonality was (very) probably important have impeded effective response.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/how-exactly-is-herd-immunity-supposed-to-work/#comment-3897982
I quit commenting on this back in May because it became clear that idiots are in charge and we were just going to have to suffer through their bad decisions. But now that the same idiots are making the same bad decisions without seemingly having learned anything I feel compelled to start commenting again.Replies: @anon, @That Would Be Telling, @Wielgus
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/7/21201260/coronavirus-usa-chart-mask-shortage-ventilators-flatten-the-curve
Would you like me to give more links?Replies: @anon
vArticles like this back in the spring. Were you following the news then?
I remember articles and I was following the news, however I don’t believe everything I see or read.
Even when it’s in peer-reviewed, high-integrity, totally never wrong publications like vox.com…I still need evidence more than rhetoric. It’s a personal quirk, I admit. Call me names if it will make you feel better.
Would you care to further discuss the emergency ICU tents as well? Perhaps you’d prefer to argue over something else, like “how long does it take to train an ICU nurse”?
My question stands: why did you believe that stuff?
Do you believe everything you read in ultra-reliable Vox.com, or just some things?
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavirus-california-mobile-hospitals-ventilators
Are you denying that happened? Or that it mattered?
Here is some discussion on expanding ICU capacity from what I think is a better source (hopefully you agree).
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2020/expanding-icu-capacity-midst-pandemic
Are you denying that it is possible (if difficult in some ways) to expand ICU capacity during a pandemic? If not, why did we fail to do so over the summer? Was it not obvious that we were probably going to see a wave like this in the fall/winter?
Perhaps this time spend a bit more time responding to my points and a bit less time just being snarky? (FWIW, that is NOT calling names, it is an IMHO accurate description of your behavior)
Utu, with respect, you’re the one who needs to grow up.
I never claimed “people are young and then they are old and then they die” was profound as in insightful. It is important, but obvious and pretty much everyone else arguing about the Xi virus response here understands that. You are the one–darn near the only one–who just doesn’t seem able or at least willing to deal with that reality.
Instead you rant that all lives are equally valuable and we can’t make any distinctions. Basically like a ten year old–whose got this one idea and any complexity can not be tolerated.
Sorry, you are just ridiculous. In the real world resources are finite–like vaccine supplies in the next few months. They are less finite than they were 60 years back when i was a little kid. (The sort of care my dad’s getting in the hospital today is not something we could have, would have tossed at dying old guys 60 years ago when i was a kid. But today a much richer America can do it.) But resources are still finite. Most people can not get the jab right away so you have to make choices. And intelligent and mature people don’t run screaming from complexity and making judgments. Rather they try and get the most “bang” for the vaccine “buck”–including very obvious stuff like “suppressing the epidemic” and “years of life saved”.
~~
I’ll also note, that you pose yourself as some sort of communitarian, but don’t seem to have any concept of what “community” means.
The last thing a communitarian should be doing is yammering that all lives are equally valuable. That’s the atomism of today’s “my life is my own special pearl” commercial life.
In any traditional community, people are not atoms but are tied together in an endless web from the past through the present to the future. Parents willingly make sacrifices for their children, because they are their children. People grow old and accept their coming death, knowing their children live on after them. And such old people–like myself–fully understand that their children and grandchildren’s lives are now more important than their own, because they are the future of their family, race, civilization.
For a real communitarian the survival of your family, your community–your race and civilization–outweighs your own individual existence, actually adds meaning to it.
Ah, yes, the Internet Tuff Guy routine. So, why not actually do it? Otherwise, you are just one of the guys at their Saturday night bowling league raggin' on their old lady, bolding pronouncing on how you all are going to put her in her place, and then come Sunday morning, her comeuppance is nothing more than a headache on your part from a hard night's drinking.Replies: @kpkinsunnyphiladelphia
Yeah, you’re right, though believe me I don’t belong to a bowling league nor do I engage in the violent activity you describe.
All my wives can attest to that.
Besides, I’m sure the good Dr. Fauci has a very expensive security detail and one might be able to get in a rotten tomato or two before being hauled off to face Judge Emmet Sullivan.
But St. Anthony is still a morally bankrupt idiot, the election was stolen from Trump, and some people are delusional enough to quote mainstream media as though they were unbiased sources of knowledge.
I never claimed "people are young and then they are old and then they die" was profound as in insightful. It is important, but obvious and pretty much everyone else arguing about the Xi virus response here understands that. You are the one--darn near the only one--who just doesn't seem able or at least willing to deal with that reality.
Instead you rant that all lives are equally valuable and we can't make any distinctions. Basically like a ten year old--whose got this one idea and any complexity can not be tolerated.
Sorry, you are just ridiculous. In the real world resources are finite--like vaccine supplies in the next few months. They are less finite than they were 60 years back when i was a little kid. (The sort of care my dad's getting in the hospital today is not something we could have, would have tossed at dying old guys 60 years ago when i was a kid. But today a much richer America can do it.) But resources are still finite. Most people can not get the jab right away so you have to make choices. And intelligent and mature people don't run screaming from complexity and making judgments. Rather they try and get the most "bang" for the vaccine "buck"--including very obvious stuff like "suppressing the epidemic" and "years of life saved".
~~
I'll also note, that you pose yourself as some sort of communitarian, but don't seem to have any concept of what "community" means.
The last thing a communitarian should be doing is yammering that all lives are equally valuable. That's the atomism of today's "my life is my own special pearl" commercial life.
In any traditional community, people are not atoms but are tied together in an endless web from the past through the present to the future. Parents willingly make sacrifices for their children, because they are their children. People grow old and accept their coming death, knowing their children live on after them. And such old people--like myself--fully understand that their children and grandchildren's lives are now more important than their own, because they are the future of their family, race, civilization.
For a real communitarian the survival of your family, your community--your race and civilization--outweighs your own individual existence, actually adds meaning to it.Replies: @Mark G.
Comments such as those by utu have an almost exclusive focus on saving lives in the present while ignoring the future.
The following article discusses estimates by Professor Philip Thomas that lockdowns in Britain may end up costing an eventual 560,000 lives.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8925425/Lockdown-claim-equivalent-560-000-lives-health-impact-recession-cause.html
Generally speaking, wealthier people live longer. Thomas forecasts the lockdowns will result in the loss of 4 months of life for each person in Britain. I won’t go through all the math here since the article does that but he comes up with an estimate of 560,000 average lives lost from the lockdowns. In contrast, the disease itself may end up being the equivalent of 45,000 average lives lost there due to the fact the people who die of this are elderly and only have a few years left.
Now these figures may not be accurate but at least there is an awareness here that the lockdowns themselves will result in years of life lost and tries to estimate their effect. A cost-benefit analysis can then be done to see if the costs of the lockdowns exceed the benefits. I don’t see lockdown proponents making similar calculations or even showing any awareness that the lockdowns themselves lead to lost lives.
And it was a complete coincidence the initial explosive growth happened in March and April.
I would say by now it is clear that a combination of the countermeasures and the seasonal change are what tamed the initial growth. Witness how those same countermeasures are failing to contain it now.
If you don’t consider the way the virus has picked up in November and December as compelling (if not 100.0% conclusive) evidence for seasonality being a factor here then I am not sure what to say. What do you think explains the most recent wave? The more interesting question is: which aspects of seasonality matter most? Some candidates: cold weather, people spending more time inside, lower indoor humidity, lower vitamin D status, any more?
To be clear, this is my take:
– Wave 1 – initial explosive growth in naive population during late winter/early spring–i.e. the end of traditional flu season. Seasonal. Think dropping a match in a fuel rich forest during drought. Dropping that same match during the rainy season gives a very different result.
– Wave 2 – summer of Floyd. Not seasonal, just stupidity and a political establishment invested in not calling people on it (e.g. not even asking if people with the virus attended protests).
– Wave 3 – another round of growth (more so than wave 2, with less of an explanation) during November and December–i.e. the start of traditional flu season. Seasonal.
This comment explains why seasonality is important for making decisions about lockdowns. Notice that I made it back in May (do you have any idea how frustrating it is to reference my detailed comments from then which virtually no one seemed to read/understand?). Sorry if I seem cranky, but people not being able to admit seasonality was (very) probably important have impeded effective response.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/how-exactly-is-herd-immunity-supposed-to-work/#comment-3897982
I quit commenting on this back in May because it became clear that idiots are in charge and we were just going to have to suffer through their bad decisions. But now that the same idiots are making the same bad decisions without seemingly having learned anything I feel compelled to start commenting again.
The cases and deaths are now on the decline, it would seem. This is after something like six weeks of lockdown. It may be due to the lockdown or it might have declined anyway - the lockdown has caused many bankruptcies and there is the usual debate over whether lockdowns combat the disease enough to justify the other effects they have. I would certainly say masks are ineffective - most Greeks have worn them for months, on public transport even in the summer when there were few cases and deaths, and this did not have a noticeable effect on the autumn upsurge.
The autumn upsurge has been worse in northern Greece than the south - since the north is colder, it again argues for seasonality in Covid.
A useful policy. Perhaps you were wondering why I asked if I should give more links? It was to forestall this type of evasive response. I guess I failed.
Interesting to throw that in there. Have I done anything like this to you? Why the preemptive shot? Projection?
Nope. That was why I said: “Would you like me to give more links?”
Sounds good. What is your opinion of California dismantling its mobile hospitals and ventilator stockpile?
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-27/coronavirus-california-mobile-hospitals-ventilators
Are you denying that happened? Or that it mattered?
Here is some discussion on expanding ICU capacity from what I think is a better source (hopefully you agree).
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2020/expanding-icu-capacity-midst-pandemic
Are you denying that it is possible (if difficult in some ways) to expand ICU capacity during a pandemic? If not, why did we fail to do so over the summer? Was it not obvious that we were probably going to see a wave like this in the fall/winter?
Perhaps this time spend a bit more time responding to my points and a bit less time just being snarky? (FWIW, that is NOT calling names, it is an IMHO accurate description of your behavior)
Also, why compare to a five year average? Yearly deaths graph looks like saw-teeth. Any peak year will be higher than the average. Just like any random days 3pm temp is higher than the 5 day average.
I would say by now it is clear that a combination of the countermeasures and the seasonal change are what tamed the initial growth. Witness how those same countermeasures are failing to contain it now.
If you don't consider the way the virus has picked up in November and December as compelling (if not 100.0% conclusive) evidence for seasonality being a factor here then I am not sure what to say. What do you think explains the most recent wave? The more interesting question is: which aspects of seasonality matter most? Some candidates: cold weather, people spending more time inside, lower indoor humidity, lower vitamin D status, any more?
To be clear, this is my take:
- Wave 1 - initial explosive growth in naive population during late winter/early spring--i.e. the end of traditional flu season. Seasonal. Think dropping a match in a fuel rich forest during drought. Dropping that same match during the rainy season gives a very different result.
- Wave 2 - summer of Floyd. Not seasonal, just stupidity and a political establishment invested in not calling people on it (e.g. not even asking if people with the virus attended protests).
- Wave 3 - another round of growth (more so than wave 2, with less of an explanation) during November and December--i.e. the start of traditional flu season. Seasonal.
This comment explains why seasonality is important for making decisions about lockdowns. Notice that I made it back in May (do you have any idea how frustrating it is to reference my detailed comments from then which virtually no one seemed to read/understand?). Sorry if I seem cranky, but people not being able to admit seasonality was (very) probably important have impeded effective response.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/how-exactly-is-herd-immunity-supposed-to-work/#comment-3897982
I quit commenting on this back in May because it became clear that idiots are in charge and we were just going to have to suffer through their bad decisions. But now that the same idiots are making the same bad decisions without seemingly having learned anything I feel compelled to start commenting again.Replies: @anon, @That Would Be Telling, @Wielgus
I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the state data graphics in the WSJ. It is clear to me that the surge has been a north to south seasonal thing. The MSM simply isn’t interested in anything remotely like good news and has ignored this, preferring to use countrywide figures fueled by California to ignore seasonality and emphasize the surge narrative. There is still bad news coming from lagging indicators, so there is plenty for them to write about. The CDC forecasting model finally shows a decrease in a week or two, using (correctly) 7 day averages. But it is still lagged a few days.
I would say by now it is clear that a combination of the countermeasures and the seasonal change are what tamed the initial growth. Witness how those same countermeasures are failing to contain it now.
If you don't consider the way the virus has picked up in November and December as compelling (if not 100.0% conclusive) evidence for seasonality being a factor here then I am not sure what to say. What do you think explains the most recent wave? The more interesting question is: which aspects of seasonality matter most? Some candidates: cold weather, people spending more time inside, lower indoor humidity, lower vitamin D status, any more?
To be clear, this is my take:
- Wave 1 - initial explosive growth in naive population during late winter/early spring--i.e. the end of traditional flu season. Seasonal. Think dropping a match in a fuel rich forest during drought. Dropping that same match during the rainy season gives a very different result.
- Wave 2 - summer of Floyd. Not seasonal, just stupidity and a political establishment invested in not calling people on it (e.g. not even asking if people with the virus attended protests).
- Wave 3 - another round of growth (more so than wave 2, with less of an explanation) during November and December--i.e. the start of traditional flu season. Seasonal.
This comment explains why seasonality is important for making decisions about lockdowns. Notice that I made it back in May (do you have any idea how frustrating it is to reference my detailed comments from then which virtually no one seemed to read/understand?). Sorry if I seem cranky, but people not being able to admit seasonality was (very) probably important have impeded effective response.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/how-exactly-is-herd-immunity-supposed-to-work/#comment-3897982
I quit commenting on this back in May because it became clear that idiots are in charge and we were just going to have to suffer through their bad decisions. But now that the same idiots are making the same bad decisions without seemingly having learned anything I feel compelled to start commenting again.Replies: @anon, @That Would Be Telling, @Wielgus
Seriously, I’m not looking for an argument. I agree your conjectures and hypotheses are solid, even compelling as you note, and I’m saving it in my file of COVID-19 clippings, but to be “sure” I’d like evidence from a couple more years of experience. I remember reading in 2009 a saying of those who study the flu, “If you’ve seen one pandemic, you’ve seen one pandemic,” my posture is one of scientific caution, while agreeing that absent contradictory future data we should base our policies on this year’s data and what you and others are drawing from it. BTW, if I didn’t previously make it clear, I’m not seriously studying what you and uta etc. are studying.
There’s lots of weird stuff going on, just read some stuff by “Aesop” of the Raconteur Report (again worth paying attention to now that he’s admitting vaccines will play a role in the pandemic) and he had some solid data on flu incidence that casts doubt on my conjecture that the CDC’s flu surveillance system simply broke down:
Although the abuse is not entirely misplaced, I keep coming across people who deny the germ theory of disease.
What I find remarkable is the willingness of people to put their trust in St. Fauci and crappy models like the one from Imperial College (when they have repeatedly lied and/or simply been wrong) with little or no burden of proof while ignoring points like the ones I have been making (seasonality and heterogeneity being two of the most important from me, along with the value of supplements from many people and the importance of humidity from DanHessinMD).
Which is it, wait for absolute truth, or just trust in St. Fauci? What actions do you recommend we take NOW?
Regarding flu incidence, it seems to me the explanation is simple (and I have said this multiple times here, including back in, wait for it, April and May, search my comments for Kinsa). Countermeasures which are sufficient to slow down COVID-19 with an R0 of 2.5-3.0 are also sufficient to stop ordinary flu with an R0 of 1.4-1.8 in its tracks. Do you disagree with that assessment?Replies: @res
I would say by now it is clear that a combination of the countermeasures and the seasonal change are what tamed the initial growth. Witness how those same countermeasures are failing to contain it now.
If you don't consider the way the virus has picked up in November and December as compelling (if not 100.0% conclusive) evidence for seasonality being a factor here then I am not sure what to say. What do you think explains the most recent wave? The more interesting question is: which aspects of seasonality matter most? Some candidates: cold weather, people spending more time inside, lower indoor humidity, lower vitamin D status, any more?
To be clear, this is my take:
- Wave 1 - initial explosive growth in naive population during late winter/early spring--i.e. the end of traditional flu season. Seasonal. Think dropping a match in a fuel rich forest during drought. Dropping that same match during the rainy season gives a very different result.
- Wave 2 - summer of Floyd. Not seasonal, just stupidity and a political establishment invested in not calling people on it (e.g. not even asking if people with the virus attended protests).
- Wave 3 - another round of growth (more so than wave 2, with less of an explanation) during November and December--i.e. the start of traditional flu season. Seasonal.
This comment explains why seasonality is important for making decisions about lockdowns. Notice that I made it back in May (do you have any idea how frustrating it is to reference my detailed comments from then which virtually no one seemed to read/understand?). Sorry if I seem cranky, but people not being able to admit seasonality was (very) probably important have impeded effective response.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/how-exactly-is-herd-immunity-supposed-to-work/#comment-3897982
I quit commenting on this back in May because it became clear that idiots are in charge and we were just going to have to suffer through their bad decisions. But now that the same idiots are making the same bad decisions without seemingly having learned anything I feel compelled to start commenting again.Replies: @anon, @That Would Be Telling, @Wielgus
My experience of it in Greece is that it is definitely seasonal. A small uptick in the spring and quite a harsh lockdown, then virtually no deaths until autumn. Then as the colder, wetter weather hit, a sharp uptick quite a lot higher than the spring, which might have had a “naive” population to affect but was also up against Greece’s increasingly hot and dry spring climate. The autumn uptick rose to the point that for a time it was averaging a reported death toll of about 100 a day, although two different government agencies in Greece measure Covid deaths and one gives lower figures than the other. It tends to be the one issuing higher figures that gets cited by the media.
The cases and deaths are now on the decline, it would seem. This is after something like six weeks of lockdown. It may be due to the lockdown or it might have declined anyway – the lockdown has caused many bankruptcies and there is the usual debate over whether lockdowns combat the disease enough to justify the other effects they have. I would certainly say masks are ineffective – most Greeks have worn them for months, on public transport even in the summer when there were few cases and deaths, and this did not have a noticeable effect on the autumn upsurge.
The autumn upsurge has been worse in northern Greece than the south – since the north is colder, it again argues for seasonality in Covid.
Yes. But the problem is we need to make decisions today (well, actually six or more months ago, but that ship has sailed). And people are using arguments (perhaps points or positions would be a less provocative word?) like yours to stop us from taking actions which would probably be helpful. Perhaps I am unfairly lumping you in with those people, but your points regarding need for absolute proof sure do seem awfully similar.
What I find remarkable is the willingness of people to put their trust in St. Fauci and crappy models like the one from Imperial College (when they have repeatedly lied and/or simply been wrong) with little or no burden of proof while ignoring points like the ones I have been making (seasonality and heterogeneity being two of the most important from me, along with the value of supplements from many people and the importance of humidity from DanHessinMD).
Which is it, wait for absolute truth, or just trust in St. Fauci? What actions do you recommend we take NOW?
Regarding flu incidence, it seems to me the explanation is simple (and I have said this multiple times here, including back in, wait for it, April and May, search my comments for Kinsa). Countermeasures which are sufficient to slow down COVID-19 with an R0 of 2.5-3.0 are also sufficient to stop ordinary flu with an R0 of 1.4-1.8 in its tracks. Do you disagree with that assessment?
Do you really have no substantive response to my multiple relevant questions? Or is all you have a feeble shot with a Troll flag?
Pathetic.Replies: @anon
What I find remarkable is the willingness of people to put their trust in St. Fauci and crappy models like the one from Imperial College (when they have repeatedly lied and/or simply been wrong) with little or no burden of proof while ignoring points like the ones I have been making (seasonality and heterogeneity being two of the most important from me, along with the value of supplements from many people and the importance of humidity from DanHessinMD).
Which is it, wait for absolute truth, or just trust in St. Fauci? What actions do you recommend we take NOW?
Regarding flu incidence, it seems to me the explanation is simple (and I have said this multiple times here, including back in, wait for it, April and May, search my comments for Kinsa). Countermeasures which are sufficient to slow down COVID-19 with an R0 of 2.5-3.0 are also sufficient to stop ordinary flu with an R0 of 1.4-1.8 in its tracks. Do you disagree with that assessment?Replies: @res
And I thought you (That Would Be Telling) were a serious commenter.
Do you really have no substantive response to my multiple relevant questions? Or is all you have a feeble shot with a Troll flag?
Pathetic.
He is. You used to be. Lately you are dealing more in snark and picking fights. Why?Replies: @res, @That Would Be Telling
Do you really have no substantive response to my multiple relevant questions? Or is all you have a feeble shot with a Troll flag?
Pathetic.Replies: @anon
And I thought you (That Would Be Telling) were a serious commenter.
He is. You used to be. Lately you are dealing more in snark and picking fights. Why?
for my Browningthe TROLL and IGNORE COMMENTATOR buttons. Life's too short to waste on trolls, genuine, or those who are effectively so, perhaps because the pandemic has made them "terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought."Replies: @res, @resHe is. You used to be. Lately you are dealing more in snark and picking fights. Why?Replies: @res, @That Would Be Telling
I’m pretty grumpy about the Covidiocy (at this point I think “if you are not outraged you are not paying attention” applies). And I’m tired of people sloughing off reasonable ideas with “but we are not 100.0000% sure.” While taking on faith St. Fauci and models which have far more questionable underpinnings than my statements. I also find it frustrating that my thoughtful and detailed comments back in April and May did not receive much response. Most people here seem much more interested in snark and fights. And I am not one to back away from a fight once it is offered.
Perhaps you can explain why the two of you aren’t answering reasonable questions though.
And there is no shortage of snark and fight picking in your (or his) comments to me. You really should look into that projection idea. It might also help to know I am a fan of tit for tat when it comes to snark and fight picking. If YOU can’t handle it then back off yourself.
P.S. It might help to remember I have been having people argue with me about COVID-19 since March (and frequently having multiple people ganging up on me, as here, which gets very old after a while). What was extra fun was when I was getting arguments from both sides (e.g. on my IFR estimate of 0.5-1.0% which I think is still looking pretty good now). For a fun exercise, go back and check whose points have aged better. I am a particular fan of the people who were arguing that the lockdowns weren’t going to be interminable until a vaccine arrived.
P.P.S. If you truly want serious conversation then consider picking a handle so it is possible to track conversations over time more easily. I think it gives people a bit more skin in the game to know we can revisit statements six months after they were made.
He is. You used to be. Lately you are dealing more in snark and picking fights. Why?Replies: @res, @That Would Be Telling
Exactly; I will tolerate someone ignoring what I say and trying to pick a fight based on a strawman, or similar reading comprehension or bad faith behavior no more than 2-3 times before I reach
for my Browningthe TROLL and IGNORE COMMENTATOR buttons. Life’s too short to waste on trolls, genuine, or those who are effectively so, perhaps because the pandemic has made them “terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.”If you are ignoring me now I suspect things will be more peaceful for both of us though.
P.S. This is starting to feel like gaslighting from you two. FWIW, that really pisses me off. Back up your statements.
P.P.S. Although I snark a fair bit I try to maintain a high signal to noise ratio (SNR). If anyone else is wasting their time reading this exchange then I ask you to consider how the three of us compare on that metric (alternatively, content/snark ratio) in this thread.
The terrified about the pandemic part makes it very clear you have not understood my comments on the Unz Review about COVID-19. Pissed off about the pandemic response on the other hand...
Not sure exactly what box you have slotted me into in your mind, but at this point it is clearly badly mistaken.
for my Browningthe TROLL and IGNORE COMMENTATOR buttons. Life's too short to waste on trolls, genuine, or those who are effectively so, perhaps because the pandemic has made them "terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought."Replies: @res, @resIf you honestly don’t see the reasonable parts of my comments in this thread (admittedly, there is a fair amount of grumpy snark too, but people who live in glass houses should consider holstering the stones) then I am not sure what else there is to say.
Where did I do that? Link and quotes please.
If I have done that please clarify your positions. I often pose QUESTIONS using extreme positions because I don’t think you can possibly hold such a view, but would like you to clarify how your view differs. I can see how that might be perceived as a strawman, but ASKING you if you agree with something is very different from claiming you hold that position. The latter is a strawman, the former is not.
If you are ignoring me now I suspect things will be more peaceful for both of us though.
P.S. This is starting to feel like gaslighting from you two. FWIW, that really pisses me off. Back up your statements.
P.P.S. Although I snark a fair bit I try to maintain a high signal to noise ratio (SNR). If anyone else is wasting their time reading this exchange then I ask you to consider how the three of us compare on that metric (alternatively, content/snark ratio) in this thread.
for my Browningthe TROLL and IGNORE COMMENTATOR buttons. Life's too short to waste on trolls, genuine, or those who are effectively so, perhaps because the pandemic has made them "terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought."Replies: @res, @resThat’s pretty darned inflammatory from someone who appears to be attempting to claim he is being a reasonable person here.
The terrified about the pandemic part makes it very clear you have not understood my comments on the Unz Review about COVID-19. Pissed off about the pandemic response on the other hand…
Not sure exactly what box you have slotted me into in your mind, but at this point it is clearly badly mistaken.
Comment of the hour.
This weekend I talked with a couple of nurses. Locally the ICU is full and most of the cardiac stent recovery area of one hospital has been converted to COVID temporary ICU, while one half of one floor of standard rooms is for less serious COVID cases. Elective procedures are still way, way down. The biggest hassle for the nurses is the endless gowning / ungowning / regowning almost HAZMAT-level stuff, and the overhead in time to do all that as part of a shift. Plus overtime work isn’t slowing down, leading to longer hours on the floor.
But the much bigger issue is pay. Because of the shortage of ICU nurses and even standard nurses, local hospitals are using travelers more and more. Traveling nurses are being paid 4X more than local nurses for the same jobs. This pay disparity on top of heavy shifts is wearing down the locals.
Some local nurses are quitting their local jobs in order to go as travelers to California and Florida, due to the huge pay upgrade. This is reducing local nursing staff, leading to admins bidding after more travelers. It’s a vicious cycle and one that just keeps racheting costs upwards. Sure, it can’t go on to infinity, not every nurse in the country can become a traveler…but it’s an exacerbating factor in the quality-of-care issue.
That’s the human resources side. Things should be different, but that’s not how they are.
On the infrastructure side, Local hospital admin still has no plans to expand the formal ICU once this crisis is over, but probably they’ll try to retain a larger bench of ICU nurses just in case. However given the human resources situation this will be an iffy proposition. It should not be this way, but it is.
Boomer Coof anecdote.
A couple of 60-somethings my family knows caught the coof a few weeks back. They self isolated, had family drop basic groceries off, increased their zinc, vt. D, vit. C and vit. B intake. Came through ok as far as anyone can tell. They plan to donate their plasma soon.
I see that 23andme is supposedly doing some kind of a study to see if there’s any genetic commonality between people who survive the Coof. That’s something that should have been started back in March, frankly, but our various governmental bodies were too busy trying to grab power they didn’t get around to using power constructively.
A couple of 60-somethings my family knows caught the coof a few weeks back. They self isolated, had family drop basic groceries off, increased their zinc, vt. D, vit. C and vit. B intake. Came through ok as far as anyone can tell. They plan to donate their plasma soon. I see that 23andme is supposedly doing some kind of a study to see if there's any genetic commonality between people who survive the Coof. That's something that should have been started back in March, frankly, but our various governmental bodies were too busy trying to grab power they didn't get around to using power constructively.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
That sort of epidemiology is as far as I know in the CDC’s remit, and as I stated above, the community they get their people from, their leaders in particular just doesn’t care about infectious disease control, it’s unfashionable, and that attitude shows every time we have an infectious disease crisis. I guess it’s a good thing this is still something resembling the USA, we don’t 100% depend on the government to do everything for us. Although I suppose 23andme might get some funding to do this work.
Yeah, that's for sure. Actual crisis has a way of revealing the fakes and scammers. Too bad nobody ever gets fired for that - when Fauci's face first appeared on CNBC I was stunned. Him? Again?
Sigh.
By the way, it appears that "asymptomatic spreader" does not exist. Evidence? Ah, glad you asked.
During the period May 14 - June 1 the Chinese tested about 10,000,000 people in Wuhan to see if their multi month long lockdown had worked or not.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w
Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China
Abstract:Maybe different strains of the virus do different things, but I'm skeptical. So much for another factoid.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
That sort of epidemiology is as far as I know in the CDC’s remit
Yeah, that’s for sure. Actual crisis has a way of revealing the fakes and scammers. Too bad nobody ever gets fired for that – when Fauci’s face first appeared on CNBC I was stunned. Him? Again?
Sigh.
By the way, it appears that “asymptomatic spreader” does not exist. Evidence? Ah, glad you asked.
During the period May 14 – June 1 the Chinese tested about 10,000,000 people in Wuhan to see if their multi month long lockdown had worked or not.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w
Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China
Abstract:
Maybe different strains of the virus do different things, but I’m skeptical. So much for another factoid.
Yeah, that's for sure. Actual crisis has a way of revealing the fakes and scammers. Too bad nobody ever gets fired for that - when Fauci's face first appeared on CNBC I was stunned. Him? Again?
Sigh.
By the way, it appears that "asymptomatic spreader" does not exist. Evidence? Ah, glad you asked.
During the period May 14 - June 1 the Chinese tested about 10,000,000 people in Wuhan to see if their multi month long lockdown had worked or not.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w
Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China
Abstract:Maybe different strains of the virus do different things, but I'm skeptical. So much for another factoid.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
Funny thing, at the very beginning of this, late January I think, he laid down a very strong marker on this concept:
Fauci also laid down a very strong marker about the utility of masks. Remember?
I am still trying to figure out why anyone took Fauci seriously after his comments over 30 years ago about the relative risk of AIDS for heterosexuals vs. homosexuals.
For those who like references:
Challenging Anthony Fauci
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13148
If you say opposite things at different times you can pretend to have been right later. That is a politician’s trick and that is what Fauci seems to be.
I am still trying to figure out why anyone took Fauci seriously after his comments over 30 years ago about the relative risk of AIDS for heterosexuals vs. homosexuals.
For those who like references:
Challenging Anthony Fauci
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13148