“One Million Deaths: The Hole the Pandemic Made in U.S. Society” (Wall Street Journal, 1/31/2022):
Covid-19 has left the same proportion of the population dead—about 0.3%—as did World War II, and in less time.
So Covid is only about twice as bad as fighting World War II on two fronts? (same number of deaths in half the time) No.
Unlike the 1918 flu pandemic or major wars, which hit younger people, Covid-19 has been particularly hard on vulnerable seniors. It has also killed thousands of front-line workers and disproportionately affected minority populations.
According to the journalists, the 1918 flu and “major wars” weren’t that bad because they killed “younger people” (who are annoying and we are better off without them?) rather than “vulnerable seniors” (median age of a Covid-19 death in Maskachusetts was 82 (and 98.2% had “underlying conditions”)). World War II also killed white people, apparently, who are overly numerous and expendable, unlike “minority populations” that we want to preserve because they are precious.
By saying that Covid-19 has done more damage than Adolf Hitler, is this Wall Street Journal article an illustration of Godwin’s Law?
Separately, if Covid-19 is actually killing more Americans and more valuable Americans (the vulnerable elderly and minorities) than those who were killed in World War II, why are there so many frivolous stories in the same newspaper? Look to your left and look to your right. One of those neighbors will soon be dead from Covid-19 (best to budget for a 40% increase in rent even as this viral neutron bomb depopulates the U.S.). The same newspaper that urges you to wait apprehensively to see who dies next also wants you to check out Rihanna (the birthing person photo below shared the home/front page with the story about 1 million precious Americans who died):
Also on the front page, a football team will play in a football game, which football fans probably didn’t realize from watching football on TV:
We’re about two years into the war that we declared against Covid-19. What did an American newspaper look like two years after Pearl Harbor? Every story is about the war except for one about a union strike against New York City’s public schools.
Related:
- “Across regions: Are most COVID-19 deaths above or below life expectancy?” (Germs, March 2021): The reported age of those suffering from COVID-19-related deaths was evaluated across eight countries (United States, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, South Africa, Sweden, and Switzerland). … COVID-19 differs from recent pandemics of the 21st century because it disproportionately targets individuals over 65 years of age. … Given this dataset, the findings revealed that ∼65% of COVID-19 deaths occurred above life expectancy.
- Cost of all U.S. wars versus cost of coronapanic (adjusted for inflation, we have spent more than 2X on Covid compared to World War II)
- Memorial Day Thoughts: One sobering statistic is that only about 25 percent of the early B-17 crewmen completed their 25 missions and came home in one piece.
The WSJ article is preposterous. It is encouraging to see that the majority of people in the WSJ comment section no longer believe the mainstream narrative.
The globalists, like Justin “blackface” Trudeau believe that opponents of virus rituals are Nazis and are responsible for the casualties. Perhaps that is the origin of the Godwin comparison. Trudeau accused the truckers of being white supremacists, while their spokesman Ben Dichter is Jewish and Tamara Lich is a minority. Dichter reminds me of Lech Walesa, who led the movement of shipyard workers in Poland who were instrumental in dismantling the communist tyranny.
It is interesting to watch real people talk about the truckers in an unfiltered press conference (I do not endorse the channel, but this video is just an uncut recording):
The link above was incomplete: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B362cCy-kWo
The propaganda outlet with the title “Democracy Dies in Darkness” reports desires to use the military against peaceful protesters, instead of just backing down and allow solitary truckers to remain unvaccinated and refrain from tracking them with sketchy apps:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/03/ottawa-freedom-convoy-military-intervention/
The Ottawa police thinks that protests against the Dear Leader Trudeau are “intolerable”. The Dear Leader now has the chance to get his/her/zir/their Tiananmen moment.
Trudeau was so terrified of the filthy Canadian Misérables (and unsure of his own security apparatus and their ability to protect him) that he and his family were moved to a secret location.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, so far there have been no arrests, and the unwashed masses of Canuck Deplorables were raucous at times, and some invoked a Nazi symbol – in protest of what they saw as the Nazi government they were subjects of:
“Michael Cooper, who represents a district in oil-producing Alberta, gave a TV interview Saturday afternoon while a protester behind waved an upside-down Canadian flag with a swastika scrawled on it. (Cooper later issued a statement saying he was unassociated with the protester and unaware of the flag.”
They were protesting Nazism, but that was twisted into them being supporters of it.
https://www.livemint.com/news/world/canada-truckers-anti-vaccine-protest-continues-pm-justin-trudeau-moved-to-a-secret-location-11643596587263.html
Yes, the press also managed to dig up a tiny group of people with a confederate flag. The pictures and videos I saw show thousands of normal people. There should be some journalistic standard that a) mentions the ratio of people with and without these symbols and b) seriously tries to establish if the symbol carriers are splinter groups who abuse the demonstration or are agent provocateurs. To me it looks like there were literally 10-20 people out of 10,000 with those flags.
Certainly the protests are more peaceful than BLM. The only issue I have is that the frequent honking might actually be dangerous to people living in the area who don’t get rest for several days. They should stop that or restrict it to the time of parliamentary sessions.
@Anonymous, the media is one sided and wants to make a doomsday news out of anything.
Have a look at this reporting from CNN “Video shows Afghans clinging to outside of US military plane as it takes off” [1].
Watch the video and listen to the reporter. The reporter uses strong words such as “desperation”, “petrified”, “risk everything”, etc. to describe the situation. But yet, I also see in the video Afghans waving and smiling to the camera and making victory sign as they run with the airplane. They are young men, running with an airplane.
There is another media reporting on the story, showing the same video but zoomed in to cut-off the guy waving to the camera. I cannot find it now.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/08/16/kabul-clinging-to-airplane-taking-off-tarmac-afghanistan-ward-vpx.cnn
> “One Million Deaths…”
Someone in the UK made an FOI request for the number of deaths definitely from (not with) covid. Surprisingly, the national statistic bureau obliged, with one caveat*. According to their reply, the number of deaths in England and Wales from covid was 6,183 to December 31st 2021.
OWID has 148,535 “covid deaths” to Dec 31 2021, but that’s for the whole UK. England and Wales’s share of the UK population is 89%. So of the 148,535 “covid deaths”, the E&W share is approximately 132,000.
By my arithmetic, the *with* covid figure (6,183) is therefore 4.7% of the “covid deaths” (132,000).
* About that caveat. The FOI request asked for the number of autopsies performed after of-covid deaths. That number was not provided. So as far as I know there is still no known case that combines all of the following features:
– a previously healthy person caught covid
– died while ill with covid
– an autopsy confirmed covid as the cause of death.
re: “According to their reply, the number of deaths in England and Wales from covid was 6,183 to December 31st 2021.”
That is *not* what was reported. The actual document you link to states it is: “where covid is the only cause of death listed on the death certificate”. If covid caused some heart or lung condition or something which is the direct cause of death: that would be on the death certificate also even if they logically really did die because of covid. So whats reported is merely sub unknown subset of the deaths from covid. Its an utterly useless figure which unfortunately is spread around by those that don’t bother thinking things through clearly.
Unfortunately its not possible to come up with a good figure at the moment for the number who truly died *from* covid rather than “with” covid: but attempts like this merely lead the covid paranoid to confirm their bias that anyone who dares disagree with them must be apriori spreading misinformation.
> If covid caused some heart or lung condition or something…
R.E., thank you for your confirmation of the meaning of “following the Science”: make any assumption you like so long as it exaggerates the danger of covid.
re: “make any assumption you like so long as it exaggerates the danger of covid.”
You provide no actual logical dispute to what I wrote. You in no way provide any logic explaining how I supposedly made an assumption that exaggerates the danger of covid. The issue is that I didn’t make the absurd assumption you do (that people who die of covid magically are guaranteed to have nothing else fail in their body worthy of inclusion on the death certificate) that strains credulity in an attempt to exaggerate the mildness of covid as you did.
There is flawed data out there: but unfortunately in the real world people often need to make decisions based on flawed data.
The real situation is likely somewhere between those who try to find any way they can to play up the dangers and those like you that appear to be willing to believe anything no matter how little sense it makes if lets you rationalize that covid isn’t a concern.
R.E., I disagree that expecting evidence for covid’s claimed danger is “willing
to believe anything”. But thanks for your second confirmation.
re: ” I disagree that expecting evidence for covid’s claimed danger is “willing to believe anything””
What I was referring to was the utterly absurd link you posted regarding the claimed number of deaths from covid being only a minuscule fraction of the official figures. Its likely the official figures are too high due to the issue of “with covid” vs “from covid”: but the idea that only deaths certificates with covid as the *only* cause of death is a meaningful indication of the number of actual deaths “from covid” shows a lack of applying fairly basic critical thinking skills (making the presumption the person has them, but isn’t applying them for some reason since they are willing to believe anything that meshes with their desired conclusion, rather than attempting to seek to actually understand whats going on).
I think any attempt to convince folks that Covid is not the world’s deadliest disease is doomed. It goes against everything they read in the media daily.
I personally will accept any estimate of the badness of Covid because it is irrelevant to policy decisions. Do you want to order people to wear cloth masks? Since they are ineffective against, probably, any respiratory virus, the decision isn’t based on how bad a virus is. Similarly on schools. You can close schools for 10 years hoping that it will save just one life.
@philg – maybe just change your tagline to “The death of one man from Covid is a tragedy, the death of a million from Covid is a Libertarian success story.”
Craig: An aspiring Stalinist central planner, of which we have many right now, might use that quote in order to project his/her/zir/their own failures onto the Libertarians.
Central planners can say “hoc est corpus”, and a piece of bread literally becomes the body of Christ. Central planners can say “this is a woman”, and a man becomes a woman. Central planners can multiply 5 loaves of bread and two fishes into food for 5,000 (modern monetary policy?). Central planners can say “this measure defeats the plague”, and the plague is defeated.
In the beginning there was the word, and the word was with the Progressives.
Craig: Thanks for your comment regarding Libertarianism. It is interesting because it shows how the term has changed in popular usage. It shows that we’re going to see the same kind of shift that we’ve seen with “Socialism,” which in the 20th century described Soviet Russia and Red China in which everyone had to work (or be imprisoned for parasitism), but now in the 21st century is used to describe Democrats’ proposals to ensure that nobody has to work (e.g., universal basic income, means-tested public housing, free health care, etc.)).
In your usage, a society where it is illegal to educate children in a school (Maskachusetts Spring 2020), illegal for people to go to work without express government permission (Maskachusetts 2020), illegal to leave the house without wearing a mask (Maskachusetts at various times), illegal to go to a restaurant without showing medical records (Boston right now for 12+, for age 5+ starting March 1), is an example of a society in which citizens enjoy a huge amount of “liberty” and therefore any deaths tagged to COVID-19 are “Libertarian deaths”.
@philg – I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to respond – I don’t get to discuss these kinds of issues with many others.
I’m not knowledgeable or nuanced enough to understand what meaningful shift in beliefs have happened over the past 5o years among the political parties. I think Libertarianism today as I understand it, is a party of limited government and individual rights supremacy. I believe Libertarianism is ascendant – especially recently. Based on your writings I believe you are a Libertarian. I don’t know if you have ever said that, and will take the correction if offered.
As practiced by you, I believe that you would prefer that a somewhat deadly respiratory virus that you believe has little likelihood of being conquered by government action, be able to run its course, even if we have to accept the crushing deaths of 1 Million (or more) unfortunate victims. According to Libertarianism (and you) this sacrifice must be made in order to preserve individual freedoms.
The poorly constructed aphorism that I presented to you was intended to highlight the position I believe Libertarians are taking. I didn’t mean to imply the Covid deaths to date are Libertarian deaths.
Libertarians have very fortunately not had an administration and a chance to execute pandemic policy. I can’t quite imagine how Rand Paul could have a fireside chat at the beginning of the next pandemic and tell people – “we are going to just ride this one out.”
As to the past two administrations who have had a chance to set Covid policy (plus various state governments) – mistakes have been made. Some have been very expensive mistakes. We all need to learn from those mistakes. Yes, many have over-reacted, and yes, a pandemic cancel culture has come out in full force.
Regarding your list of lost freedoms, the U.S. has been well to the freedom side of the continuum in terms of pandemic response. We can compare ourselves to Sweden, but we should also compare ourselves to Australia or even China.
What’s interesting to me is that no matter what Country, there is always somebody who gets to make those critical decisions in an emergency. Somebody in Sweden had to say there isn’t going to lockdowns. Some government person is ultimately in control of your immediate fate even if the probability of ever needing to exercise that power is very low. Many officers of the Government take an oath to exercise that power if necessary to do so.
In an emergency (even if we don’t all agree that one exists) the Federal Government (and States) can curtail individual freedoms for a short period of time, as we have seen. Although I believe it to be an overreach, and in some cases ill-advised, I don’t see anything too sinister about this short term loss. That being said, we must always be on-guard for permanent encroachment of individual liberties. I just don’t see your list meeting that standard.
I know somebody is going to read this and remind me about the ultimate remedy for absolute government tyranny, but to me, those days hopefully disappeared in the 19th century.
Craig: The central tenet of the Church of Sweden is that government action, short of a Chinese-grade lockdown, has a minimal effect on a respiratory virus. Therefore, no human, regardless of political party ID, can take credit for a low or a high position on https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ or https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ (remember when looking at these that they aren’t adjusted for the age distribution within the respective populations, which can vary enormously).
A “short period of time”? MA, CA, NY, et al., have been under various forms of restriction for two years. Consider a 4-year-old child. That’s half of his/her/zir/their life that he/she/ze/they has been required to wear masks, refrain from playing with other children, not attend school or attend some degraded form of what had been considered appropriate schooling for that age, etc. I’m going to guess that you don’t live in public housing with three children sharing your apartment. In that situation, you might not have felt two years to a be short lockdown. (See https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/01/02/the-social-justice-of-coronashutdowns/ for how a friend told me that he didn’t think the lockdowns were a big deal; it turned out he was living in a $9.6 million 8,000 square-foot house.)
@philg – I think you repeatedly claim no government action has an effect on the outcome of the pandemic. Or are you only arguing lockdowns have no effect?. If the former, that claim is 100% false. If operation warp speed hadn’t occurred we would be without a vaccine. Vaccines do prevent death due to Covid – this is clear. See: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/vaccine-benefits.html#:~:text=COVID%2019%2Dvaccines%20are,get%20COVID%2D19
Let’s say Sweden decided that nobody is allowed to use a vaccine. Sweden would then be responsible for the additional deaths compared to some cohort. In fact, although you believe all countries will have the same pandemic terminal outcome, the purpose of the dashboards is to help communicate an understanding of how various Covid responses by country affect case and death rate. This seems obvious.
It is unfortunate that the burden of the lockdowns aren’t distributed equally. I can see why you might not give credence to a lockdown supporter who lives in a large house. However, the “plight” of those living in cramped quarters existed before Covid. I would argue that although it sucks, the less fortunate are sucking that egg like they always have. Maybe the $1200 payments are the opiate of the masses that have prevented riots about lockdowns.
Specifics aside, I believe you are arguing a position based on Libertarian principle that would be the same for any future virus – no lockdowns – no matter what the cost/benefit ratio. Or is this situational for you?
Craig: If you can’t see the difference between being in a public housing apartment with kids 24/7 versus being in a public housing apartment with kids who are around when (a) they’re not in school, (b) they’re not at the public library, (c) they’re not at friends’ houses, (d) they’re not doing organized sports, etc., then nobody will ever be able to convince you that lockdowns have a cost. Since lockdowns are a cost-free intervention it therefore would make sense to do lockdowns forever (cut down on influenza, Covid, common cold, misc. respiratory viruses, etc.).
The MD/PhD priests of the Church of Sweden made pronouncements in February and March 2020 regarding lockdowns and masks, not vaccines (since they assumed it would be years before an effective vaccine was developed and thoroughly tested and they also failed to appreciate that Americans would be content to sit at home next to their fridges for over a year). They did not say that “all countries will have the same pandemic terminal outcome”, I don’t think, but that there would be significant convergence among European nations that were, at the time, divergent.
I am not sure why you reference libertarianism. The Americans who are anti-lockdown are generally not libertarian (since hardly any Americans are libertarian and even fewer are Libertarian). They seek the rights explicitly promised to them in the Constitution, e.g., their First Amendment right to assemble, and/or the rights that have been implicit, e.g., the right of children to attend school.
Finally, I am relieved to hear you point out that there were no riots in the summer of 2020 after the first batch of lockdowns were eased! It would have been upsetting if we had not enjoyed a mostly peaceful 2020.
Craig! Vaccines are a great point. I don’t know if they had any impact on the pandemic. First we were supposed to take 2 doses then 3 and in some countries 4. The vaccine was supposed to stop transmission of the virus but now we know it doesn’t do that so public health officials just say now you don’t get as sick as you would with no vaccine. But is this even true? More people have died from covid since we got the vaccines. More people have gotten covid since the vaccines. Can we really say operation warp speed had any impact of the pandemic?
@philg – I certainly understand there are costs associated with any choice. That’s somewhat of an axiom. Everything in life is a tradeoff of some sort. And although I can remain empathetic, at this point in my life I can’t put myself in the shoes of someone less fortunate experiencing lockdowns. Maybe though those families benefited from lockdowns while the vaccines were being produced. If a single parent household loses that parent due to Covid I would imagine it to be devastating.
As much as we can discuss costs, are there any second order benefits caused by the lockdowns? Those may be harder to discern, but might be out there. I think corporations recognizing that they can operate with a good chunk of their workforce being home will be liberating for many. Not sitting in a car sucking exhaust fumes for an hour each day may make up for the proximity of the refrigerator!
I understand that Libertarians are few and far between. I believe your writings are most aligned with the Libertarian philosophy (in a good way). I don’t want to presume to label you, so blink your right eye three times if you are not a Libertarian.
The triple/quadruple vaccinated Israel has this to say regarding vaccination impact:
‘80% of serious COVID cases are fully vaccinated’ says Ichilov hospital director. Vaccine has “no significance regarding severe illness,” says Prof. Yaakov Jerris.
The 80% number roughly reflects the proportion of fully vaccinated in the overall population, hence the Prof’s conclusion.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/321674
@Toucan Sam – I would have a hard time believing an argument that the vaccines have not saved significant lives to this point. I haven’t seen much in the way of data that says this is not the case. At worst, I believe that the vaccines have provided some benefit for relatively little risk. We may find out otherwise, but that’s my current position. Long term, I’m not sure if there are side effects that change the current equation. I’m personally hoping the vaccines long term cause longer more powerful erections.
Craig it’s nice to hear you are a true believer! “At worst, I believe that the vaccines have provided some benefit for relatively little risk.” Why do you believe the vaccines have provided any benefit at all? More people have gotten covid and died from it since the vaccine was created. As Ivan pointed out the Israelis said it didn’t work. Why do you believe the vaccines had any effect?
@Toucan Sam – I have no reason to distrust the CDC and their assessment of the efficacy of vaccines. See: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/vaccine-benefits.html
I believe the CDC is highly credible (not always 100%) and will weight their data and conclusions about Covid19 higher than most any other organization.
@Craig – you have no reason to doubt CDC because you never bothered to look at the actual research and actual databases and prefer to place your trust in words of some career bureaucrats.
I think you should have as many boosters as you can.
@averros – I don’t remove my own appendix, and I don’t do complicated data collecting and analysis of this magnitude on my own. That’s why I pay my taxes – so experts can be hired to do it for me.
@dumb dumb Craig. Nobody is asking you to do complicated research. The simple facts are more people have gotten covid and died from it since the vaccine came out. Do you dispute this? If not why would you just blindly trust the CDC?
@averros – more people have gotten in car accidents and died since seat belts were made mandatory – what is your point exactly?
Sorry @averros – the previous comment was for @Toucan Sam
@ dumb dumb Craig. Now you are just giving us fake news. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
@Toucan Sam – that’s good – you understand the distinction between a mortality rate and absolute numbers. I wasn’t sure from your previous comments.
Can you supply some references for your claim that vaccines aren’t effective? This will help me refute the CDC’s conclusion about vaccine efficacy.
@ dumb dumb. I fixed it for you. “Can you supply some references for your claim that vaccines are effective? This will help me confirm the CDC’s conclusion about vaccine efficacy.”
No I cannot.
@Craig and to folks with similar mindset about COVID.
This whole COVID epidemic was mishandled from the get-go. Thanks to a president who likes to be on the front page with a big mic (Trump), a chief medical advisor (Dr. Fauci) who didn’t understand COVID but treated it as a doomsday, and a president who wanted to be seen as the savior of the nation from everything (Biden) placed all his eggs in one basket, COVID.
To top this off, the complete mismanagement of COVID in NYC in July 2020 (do you guys remember nursing home fiasco? here is one link [1]) was the *spark* that scared hell out of everyone of COVID, gave Fauci’s amination and gave the media the headline to feed on.
From here on, COVID went into hyperdrive and as a nation, we lost focus. All the mandates that followed and those that we still have today were the side effect of the COVIDfear, not COVID. None of the mandates had any scientific backing or proven to be effective but yet we accepted them with open arms thanks to COVIDfear.
So here we are today, with booster after booster, lockdowns after lockdowns, and billions of dollars and resources spent, you are still believing that we can win over COVD and that our government is the savior and know it all?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/nyregion/nursing-homes-deaths-coronavirus.html
Craig: I think that you’re supporting my “lockdowns forever” position.
You write: “I can remain empathetic, at this point in my life I can’t put myself in the shoes of someone less fortunate experiencing lockdowns. Maybe though those families benefited from lockdowns while the vaccines were being produced. If a single parent household loses that parent due to Covid I would imagine it to be devastating.”
You’re sitting in your luxurious single-family home feeling empathy for the 28-year-old “single mom” trapped in a Boston Public Housing 3BR with three kids whose school was closed for more than a year by Covidcrats following CDC guidance? Then you posit that the 28-year-old woman has a significant risk of being killed by COVID-19 and therefore the lockdown is really for her own protection, as well as for the benefit of the kids. With this kind of reasoning, there is no situation in which it would ever make sense to reopen schools. Your argument isn’t new, I don’t think. It has been used for almost two years by unionized school teachers. They argue that the only way to protect 10-year-olds from a disease that kills 82-year-olds was to keep schools closed. At various points since March 2020, there are those who have disagreed with you and the teachers. For example, some haters have said that 10-year-olds in Maskachusetts don’t need protection from a disease that has killed Maskachusetts residents at a median age of 82 (with comorbidities as well in 98% of the cases; see https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2020/08/13/maskachusetts-when-people-arent-scared-enough-change-the-covid-19-dashboard/ ). But these are garden-variety anti-Science Deplorables, not libertarians.
Your idea, above, that “we should also compare ourselves to Australia”, is also a good argument for my infinite lockdown plan. Australia achieved near-zero Covid-19 via lockdowns so why can’t we? Our border policy is a little different from theirs. People who haven’t been tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19 are free to walk across our southern border, for example, and live here for at least a few decades while their asylum claims are being processed. In Australia, by contrast, would-be migrants are generally detained on remote Pacific islands (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Solution ). But we can assert that this is a minor difference and, just as we assume low-skill migrants make us all richer and a larger population relieves traffic congestion, stress on hospital capacity, etc., safely assume that low-skill migrants are free of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
[A Floridian recently: “Why does Biden want to defend the Ukrainian border when he won’t defend our own border?”]
You write “I don’t see anything too sinister about this short term loss” (can we infer from this that you don’t have school-age children and also that you’re already done with college?). If a college student has lost 2 years of what was supposed to be a 4-year experience and that can be characterized as a “short term loss” to him/her/zir/them, nobody should object to my plan of closing colleges until cures for all viral infections are developed. Maybe it takes 20 or 30 years, but that’s at worst a “medium term loss”.
Finally, your general line of reasoning seems to be “if there is uncertainty regarding a respiratory virus, the most sensible thing to do is the opposite of what humans have been doing for hundred of thousands of years.” Via this reasoning, all kinds of interesting policies can be created. In light of https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35007072/ (“Cannabinoids Block Cellular Entry of SARS-CoV-2 and the Emerging Variants”), we can mandate (not “order”) that every American smoke marijuana (“Ivermectin for Democrats,” as one reader put it) at least once per hour. #AbundanceOfCaution (The marijuana mandate will be purely voluntary, but anyone who doesn’t smoke his/her/zir/their daily quota of anti-Covid cannabis will be excluded from schools, restaurants, airlines, non-essential stores, theaters, etc. and subject to fines.)
Craig, have you considered moving to the safety of Australia?
https://7news.com.au/news/wa/community-furore-after-police-stop-st-bernadettes-glendalough-church-service-to-check-masks-c-5567846
“Police halted the service at St Bernadette’s Glendalough church midway through the priest addressing the congregation following a tip off that people were not wearing masks.”
@philg
>> Finally, your general line of reasoning seems to be “if there is uncertainty regarding a respiratory virus, the most sensible thing to do is the opposite of what humans have been doing for hundred of thousands of years.” <> Then you posit that the 28-year-old woman has a significant risk of being killed by COVID-19 and therefore the lockdown is really for her own protection, as well as for the benefit of the kids. With this kind of reasoning, there is no situation in which it would ever make sense to reopen schools. <<
Leaving aside whether lockdowns were an over-reaction, they were intended to benefit everyone. They started at a time of great uncertainty in the pandemic, and I do believe *at that time* to be a decent decision that attempted to balance risk across the entire population. Of course if you believe ensuring the safety of our population is not an inherently governmental function then you will never agree with this.
I understand that for you, among all the calamity and catastrophe in the world, the idea that elementary school children have had to take zoom classes for one year of school, and that many $60,000/year university students lost two years of normal on-campus life is the absolute worst thing in the world. I'm just not buying it.
Since you somewhat asked, we did have our 10 yo Grandson taking zoom classes from our house, so I understand that isn't optimal.
I'm not sure I understand the point about Australia. I was pointing out earlier that the U.S. was not as locked down as many other countries. This was a counterpoint to the idea that the U.S. at the extremes at loss of freedoms, especially compared to the canonical Sweden.
I have repeatedly said that there have been over-reactions, mistakes made, and believe that we as a nation should lead the way in re-opening based on understanding of the data. You should get credit for consistently pointing this out. I don't think any serious person is arguing for "forever lockdowns" as your slippery-slope argument suggests. Certainly I'm not.
I think I understand now too that you are a self-described Deplorable vice Libertarian. I'll keep that in mind.
Anon: Thanks for that story about the responsible citizen in Australia with his/her/zir/their mobile phone doing the right thing by tipping off the police. We’re now more than two years into the global pandemic, however. Why did the police need to be tipped off? Shouldn’t they have had a real-time video feed from every place where more than 2 people could gather, including churches? (and maybe some software to detect a gathering of the unmasked)
Craig: “they were intended to benefit everyone”
The Americans who supported our role in the Vietnam War had the same fine intentions. Those good intentions did not turn fighting an unwinnable war for 15 years into a good idea. (Unlike the coronapanic orders, fighting the Vietnam War was not explicitly contrary to WHO guidance regarding the management of a pandemic; see https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/02/23/who-guidance-on-pandemics-then-and-now/ )
Your belief that elementary school students were taking Zoom classes and learning from them suggests that you are blessed with white privilege (and that you missed the most recent Spiderman movie, in which audiences learn “With great power comes great responsibility”). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/us/covid-schools-at-home-learning-study.html says that students who are not privileged either did not attend the Zoom classes or did not learn from them. “Students who attended schools that were majority Black or Hispanic were six months behind where they normally would have been in math, compared with four months for white students. Similarly, students who attended a low-income school ended the year seven months behind their typical performance in math, compared with four months for schools where families were financially better off.” (7 months behind doesn’t sound so bad until you reflect that a school year is 9 months.)
In this last comment we learn that you’re old enough to have a 10-year-old grandson. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that you’d want young people locked down indefinitely if there is even a 1% chance that the lockdown will deliver the promised savings of the lives of those 50+. It has never surprised me that people who are old enough to be killed by COVID-19 want to lock down those too young to be at serious risk of dying. (As opposed to the young running free while old people are forced to hide in bunkers.) Nor did it surprise me that old rich people had sufficient political power to make this happen and impose their will on the young/invulnerable. What still surprises me, however, is that old rich politically powerful people have been to claim that the arrangement that they managed to impose was necessitated by Science and is a humanitarian measure intended for the benefit of the young.
(Separately, those who Follow the Science might want to read https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf (Jan 2022)
“An analysis of each of these three groups support the conclusion that lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality. More
specifically, stringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average. SIPOs were also ineffective, only reducing COVID-19 mortality by 2.9% on average. Specific NPI studies also find no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality. … While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted.”
Note that the last sentence is inconsistent with everything that is known about the relationship between economics and health. A society that makes itself poorer (“enormous economic costs”) will typically make itself less healthy. So a lockdown that has no effect on COVID-19 death rate will still have an effect on public health (a negative effect).)
@philg – enabled with perfect hindsight (and data collected by our master planners) you are a veritable genius. Can you go on record as saying what your policy decisions will be for the next similar circumstance? Not policy six months in when data is available, but from zero to six months? All I can discern is that you would do nothing, but please make this perfectly clear for your readers.
The fact that the Vietnam war was unwinnable is another example of perfect hindsight. I guess since good intentions have failed in the past we should therefore always do nothing in the future.
>>Therefore, it makes perfect sense that you’d want young people locked down indefinitely if there is even a 1% chance that the lockdown will deliver the promised savings of the lives of those 50+. <<
In spite of everything I said, you still try to create a strawman argument that I support forever lockdowns, or somehow it's inferred from my responses to date. What will it take to disabuse you of this notion?
Craig: I think that you’re saying that nobody could have envisioned a sensible response to SARS-CoV-2 in February 2020. Yet the Swedish plan, which was essentially the WHO pandemic guidance plan from 2009, was developed in February 2020 by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Tegnell and team. And that team of MD/PhDs conceded that China, with its more powerful government, would be able to execute effective lockdowns. If you search for “Tegnell” here in this blog, you’ll see that I began writing about the Swedish approach in March 2020 and had fully converted to the Swedish church by April 2020 (i.e., about 1.5 years before urban American schools fully reopened, albeit with mask requirements that were never imposed on Swedish schoolchildren).
By March 2020, when the U.S. lockdowns and school closures were imposed, it was already known that COVID-19 killed old, sick, and/or fat people and that it was less hazardous to children than influenza. You’re saying that this knowledge makes it obvious to order schools closed and marijuana stores open (the Science-informed Maskachusetts and California responses) and you’re entitled to that belief. But I don’t think that you should expect a slender healthy 30-year-old who is not a habitual consumer of healing cannabis to share your belief.
If you thought that lockdowns were a good idea in March 2020, you should agree that lockdowns are a great idea for 2022. See https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/harvard-medical-professor-says-its-time-to-move-on-from-pandemic-.html for example.
One such person is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, who said this week that the United States may be heading into a new phase of the pandemic. But, he cautioned, it isn’t there yet. “I have said, and continue to say, that currently we are still at war with the virus,” he said Monday on “The Daily,” a podcast published by The New York Times. “We have 2,300 deaths a day, 156,000 hospitalizations, and we have the danger of new variants occurring.”
——————-
We don’t know what these new variants might bring. Fauci is America’s leading scientist. The only sensible way to keep everyone safe is school closure and shelter-in-place order except for essential workers such as those who are in the marijuana industry.
@Craig, it looks to me that you want us to unconditionally believe and accept that our central planners are our savior and that we *all* must scarify — regardless of age or condition — and no one can question orders and mandates because we are all-in-it-together.
This would have worked, if our central planners applied logic, use sensible orders and adjusted as things developed. A flat out across the board orders and mandates, a one-size-fits-all fix is not a strategy that can work, anywhere, anytime. In fact the vaccine mandate order is flawed because the order from our central planers will let you skip vaccination by providing a religious exemption.
@George A. – My understanding is that pandemic responses varied by State. If by central planners you mean state governments, I would say that some states performed better than others. Florida seems to have done a decent job with their response. Massachusetts seems to have over-reacted to some degree.
I do believe we are all in this together. We also need to challenge our elected officials and bureaucrats when necessary.
It’s unfortunate, but the hyper-political aspect of the pandemic is super damaging to any chance of having a reasonable discussion of policy options.
When the pandemic started and Trump was in office, the Trump haters would do anything to score political damage against him – even to say that vaccines should not be trusted. Now that Biden is in office the vitriol comes from the other side.
Craig: You’re implying that it is an accident that politics was involved in deciding what to do about a new virus. But the impact of the virus varied quite a bit among citizens (senior citizens who can vote were at risk; children who cannot vote were not at risk) and the impact of the lockdowns varied tremendously (rich white people got richer and whiter in their massive houses; schoolteachers didn’t have to work and were paid at 100%; many small business owners had their livelihoods destroyed; low-income BIPOC Americans got poorer). When you have different groups in a society whose interests are opposed, politics is inevitable. (In this case, policies that benefitted older, richer, and whiter Americans were implemented.)
@philg – I think I understand that your policy choices for the early phase of the pandemic would be to follow the Swedish model. You were already recommending that in March of 2020. Like I said, I believe you deserve credit for that. My understanding of the Swedish response is that there were a number of recommendations that were voluntary, and it wasn’t a completely hands-off approach, but was much lighter handed than what we experienced in the U.S. I thank you for clarifying your position to a large extent.
I haven’t read the whole document, but it’s interesting in the 2009 WHO pandemic response planning document the following:
>>An influenza pandemic, like any urgent public health situation, calls for making certain decisions
that will require balancing potentially conflicting individual interests with community interests.
Policymakers can draw on ethical principles as tools to assess and balance these competing interests
and values. An ethical approach does not provide a prescribed set of policies. Instead, it applies
principles such as equity, utility/efficiency, liberty, reciprocity, and solidarity in light of local context
and cultural values. While application of these principles sometimes results in competing claims,
policymakers can use these principles as a framework to assess and balance a range of interests and
to ensure that overarching concerns (such as protecting human rights and the special needs of
vulnerable and minority groups) are addressed in pandemic influenza planning and response. Any
measures that limit individual rights and civil liberties must be necessary, reasonable, proportional,
equitable, non-discriminatory, and not in violation of national and international laws.8<<
For me, it's good to see that the "Central Planners" have such insight into the multitude of factors that go into a pandemic response. This is exactly what I would expect good government to do. I don't believe our local government deserves the extreme criticism received in this blog, based on my understanding of the complexity of any potential decision.
@philg
>>You’re implying that it is an accident that politics was involved in deciding what to do about a new virus.<<
I don't know how I implied that Covid politics was accidental? I said it was hyper-political. This is due to it touching so much of our lives, correlated with its arrival during a presidential election campaign, and the increased political divisiveness of our times.
Craig: Why wouldn’t it be “hyper political” when there are old people wanting to close schools and lock down young people, in apparent disregard of the First Amendment? And when there are proposed government orders that will vastly enrich some companies while destroying (usually smaller) competitors? If government permission is required to leave the house, go to school, or work, won’t that get a lot of people suddenly interested in politics?
@philg:
>> Why wouldn’t it be “hyper political” when there are old people wanting to close schools and lock down young people, in apparent disregard of the First Amendment? And when there are proposed government orders that will vastly enrich some companies while destroying (usually smaller) competitors? If government permission is required to leave the house, go to school, or work, won’t that get a lot of people suddenly interested in politics? <<
I wouldn't put the First Amendment challenges in the realm of politics – that's more of a legal question. The politics come into play when people try to score points in order to gain or maintain power. You might look at the Covid response purely as a power grab – I don't.
As far as the hyper-politics being surprising – I guess some of us had hoped we as a nation could suppress the partisan divide due to a common enemy – the virus. Usually a common enemy brings us together for at least a little while.
A number of us are still surprised at some of the political acts occurring. A case in point is this blog post about Robert Malone being written out of history. I think you believe it's somewhat interesting/surprising too otherwise you wouldn't have spent the time writing about it.
Craig,
You write : “we as a nation could suppress the partisan divide due to a common enemy – the virus.”
I wonder, genuinely not to score debate points, what specifically your answer would be: let’s say we suppress ideological differences and then do what precisely ? Blindly trust the discredited CDC on mask efficiency and aerosol vs fomite spread (see the BRS publication) ? Blindly obey the government on compulsory lock-downs (see the recent JHU research) ? Blindly trust the experts on getting the Nth injection (see the Israeli current experience)? If none of the above, then what ?
I am sorry to say but without a concrete suggestion (e.g. follow the Swedish model or follow the Austrian newest model) your call to unity sounds rather hollow at best or self-serving/hypocritical at worst (let’s save some wealthy boomers, myself in the first place, by dooming the young and not so wealthy to miserable lives). I hope that is not the case and you just did not think the whole situation through.
If you are arguing that WWII was much worse than the pandemic, please keep in mind there were no WWII denialists and blog posters arguing that WWII was “not that bad” and we shouldn’t shut down the rest of society just because there is a war that’s not happening on our soil, or that it primarily affects young jobless males.
There were no people calling Roosevelt a traitor (at least in the U.S.).
There were no convoy’s protesting against rationing of rubber and meat.
Everyone was pulling together to end the war, which allowed us to limit the damage to 400,000 U.S. deaths.
Today we would probably lose WWII since there would be no way to get this country to pull together. Sadly those days look like they are gone.
> Today we would probably lose WWII […]
It seems to me that your leader just withdrew from Afghanistan and is staffing the military with 2SLBGTQQIA++. Indeed Chamberlain waving a rainbow flag would not have impressed Hitler.
“There were no people calling Roosevelt a traitor (at least in the U.S.).”
At least, not so many after Pearl Harbor. Even Lindberg wanted a go at the Japs.
Craig: As noted in the original post, the WSJ cogently explains how the World War II era was a much better situation than the present. As explained by the WSJ, mostly young white people, nearly all of whom had to be healthy enough to pass a military physical, were being killed. Also, there were no Trump supporters in the early 1940s.
“Everyone was pulling together to end the war”? In addition to the NYT front page reproduced above regarding a strike against public schools, see https://research.library.gsu.edu/c.php?g=115684&p=752252
Thirty-one AFL affiliates barred black members, as did the railroad brotherhoods. Many unions, including CIO organizations, had segregated locals. The International Association of Machinists barred blacks from becoming members. … A series of strikes swept American industries during the early years of the war. Workers went on strike 2,970 times in walkouts that idled 840,000 workers in 1942. The country’s coalfields became hotbeds of discontent as miners, who watched conditions in already-dangerous mines decline in favor of high production levels, engaged in a wave of strikes. Congress responded with the Smith-Connally Act in 1943, a law that made it harder to strike and restricted the activities of labor unions.
See also https://blogs.shu.edu/ww2-0/1942/08/25/us-military-steps-in-to-halt-strikes/
In the six months between December of 1941 and June of 1942, there were 1,200 recorded strikes, 270,000 strikers, and 2.3 million work days lost. Looking at war industries only, the numbers decrease slightly, with 581 strikes, 250,000 strikers and 1 million work days lost
And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_transit_strike_of_1944
The Philadelphia transit strike of 1944 was a sickout strike by white transit workers in Philadelphia that lasted from August 1 to August 6, 1944. The strike was triggered by the decision of the Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC), made under prolonged pressure from the federal government in view of significant wartime labor shortages, to allow black employees of the PTC to hold non-menial jobs, such as motormen and conductors, that were previously reserved for white workers only.
@philg – If I changed my assertion to “Most everyone was pulling together…” would that satisfy you? Are you asserting that the nation in WWII was as divided about the war as it is about the pandemic response today? Do you disagree that our ability to prevail in WWII (and most likely reduce overall U.S. war deaths) was significantly helped by the majority of the population being willing to give up individual rights, i.e., participating in the draft, or tolerating rationing?
Craig still thinks that “fighting” a virus with rituals is the same as fighting a war with proven methods.
If you want unity in a hypothetical war, you would be well advised not to alienate the Deplorables, who would be the ones getting the coals out of the fire (as usual). Do you think pot smoking, cat grooming, Xanax and Estrogen consuming progressives would storm the beaches of Normandy?
If this is such a serious situation (worse than WW II), why did the transport minister take “parental” leave during a transport crisis. Why was AOC partying in Florida? Why is Trudeau hiding like a coward?
Craig: your hypothesis about unity leading to victory over a respiratory virus has been tested. Countries that were celebrated as examples of agreement regarding following Science (by trying stuff that had never been tried and that the WHO specifically recommend against through June 2020) ended up with world-leading death rates. See Slovakia, Slovenia, and Czech Republic for example.
We won in World War II because Americans were willing to make sacrifices? If that’s the secret, wouldn’t the Japanese and Germans have won? They were more unified and their populations made far more individual sacrifices.
@philg – my hypothesis isn’t that unity will lead to winning against the covid pandemic. My hypothesis is that “if” unity of effort was required we would not as a nation be able to provide it, since we aren’t the same nation as we once were. Maybe that’s for the good – I don’t know.
The outcome of WWII was of course uncertain. Certainly the Japanese and Germans sacrificed everything and lost. I’m sure you know too that those types of sacrifices – made by both sides – was a necessary but not sufficient requirement to prevail.
I’m thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
Let me attempt one of these: “Isn’t it true that if a unified group of people each drops an apple, they will all fall to the ground as governed by Newton’s laws? Should we therefore not unify and follow the science in fighting COVID-19? Please refute this argument!”
@Anonymous – I sure wish we had “proven methods” for fighting a war during my deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. I do remember a lot of quick learning to adapt to an adversary that was also quickly learning. We often received poor intelligence (and I unfortunately sometimes supplied it) , but don’t remember being allowed to give up because “we were lied to.”
As far as the virus, I believe in evidence based interventions and that the situation on the ground can change. I believe that kids should be allowed to go to schools without masks, businesses should be allowed to operate freely, and that people should get vaccinated with one of the two Covid vaccines approved by the FDA.
@Criag, seems like Afghanistan was lost (and should not have been started to begin with) due to the same idiotic political games what are being played with COVID. Seems like tough times actually helping human population by exposing idiotic rules/rulers.
“Even 1%:
According to the JHU study, the lockdowns arguably decreased the covid mortality rate by 0.2%:
https://www.scribd.com/document/556526991/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality#download&from_embed
I did not check, but I am sure there are a lot of “fact-checkers” working feverishly to dispute the number.
Ivan: Thanks for highlighting that part of the Hopkins study. 0.2% is sufficient for my infinite lockdown plan! “If it can save even one life” (of “If it can defer even one death by two weeks”).
Can we all agree Covid was an unknown threat that necessitated a strong response? Since that didn’t happen except for the vaccine push, “we” have been stumbling around like drunken med students wasting their tuition money.
There seems to be no faction able to take charge, calm and unify the country. Politically, one party is adrift and the other is deranged. (You decide which is which, not much to choose from.)
Donald: If there is an unknown threat, the only sensible response is to shut down schools for more than a year (e.g., Boston and Los Angeles), make it illegal for people to operate businesses (except marijuana and liquor stores!), borrow and spend $10-20 trillion, tell folks that Science proves a saliva-soaked bandana is effective PPE, etc.?
Also, once you know a little more about the threat it becomes obvious to respond in certain ways. If you find out that the virus attacks the obese then you necessarily close down gyms, make it illegal to walk outside without a mask, and order people to stay home next to the fridge. If you find out that the virus kills people who would otherwise have been expected to live for 6-24 months then you shut down most of the stuff that they might have enjoyed, e.g., social gatherings and visits from families, for 6-24 months.
“Can we all agree Covid was an unknown threat that necessitated a strong response?”
My S.O. is a molecular biologist. When the actual numbers regarding COVID appeared in late spring 2020 she looked at these and said that it’s going to be like bad flu. And that lockdowns and masks will be useless. She also said that there aren’t going to be any effective vaccines (and my back-of-envelope calculations when the jabs appeared said vaccines are going to kill and damage more people than the virus – I ended up being banned from most social media when I shared these results.)
That was based on her prior knowledge of coronaviruses (and my knowldege of statistics and epidemiological math). Basically, the public experts are full of shit. Those who aren’t were effectively silenced (like Prof. Ioannides who early on came up with a decently accurate estimate of IFR – which was in the same ballpark as mine).
The threat wasn’t “unknown” at all! Maybe only to such “experts” as Fauci & Co. But I would rather think that they are simply pathological liars. Fauci certainly is – it’s just a repeat of his performance with HIV/AIDS.
So we did quite a lot of traveling during that pandemic of stupidity (mostly in US, and including foreign travel to countries which didn’t go completely bonkers). Closing on United 1K status, LOL. I finally managed to catch C19 a month ago; it was no worse than a moderate cold – and I’m not exactly young and spend most of my time sitting in the office chair.
We are not vaxxed, will not be — both of us have sufficient expertise to read and understand research papers which we did, so we had a pretty good idea about ADE and S-protein toxicity (myo/endocarditis, Bell’s palsy, GBS – all of that has been seen as side effects of similar vaccination approaches before) as well as rapid mutations of coronaviruses which we estimated will render any vaccine ineffective within a year. The reality of C19 vaccines turned out MUCH worse due to clotting caused by S-protein’s competitive binding to heparan sulfate. (So, yes, heparin may be quite effective in preventing the worst side effects of C19 vaccines… I’m wondering why nobody’s talking about it.)
This pandemic brings many things to light. This week I learned that scientists at NIH receive royalties:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC545012/
“Patients who took part in clinical trials at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) had no idea that scientists at the institutes received $8.9m (£4.8m; €6.8m) in royalty payments and might benefit financially for the use of their discoveries by pharmaceutical companies and device makers, reports from Associated Press allege. This information was not made public until the press agency obtained the information after filing a request under the Freedom of Information Act.”
@averros
> I finally managed to catch C19 a month ago; it was no worse than a moderate cold – and I’m not exactly young and spend most of my time sitting in the office chair.
You and many, many others, including myself have probably caught COVID at some point in our lives. The difference is, prior to spring 2020, we didn’t have a test to flag COVID-19 or some other COVID “epidemic”.
Btw, when you tested positive, did you do the in-home based test or did you go to a testing center and did the full test? As I’m sure you know, those in-home testing kits do have false positive results. Not only that, we have this “Ellume Recalls COVID-19 Home Test for Potential False Positive SARS-CoV-2 Test Results” [1] and [2] “FDA Recalls 200,000 Unauthorized Flowflex COVID Rapid Tests”.
[1] https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-recalls/ellume-recalls-covid-19-home-test-potential-false-positive-sars-cov-2-test-results
[2] https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/fda-recalls-200000-unauthorized-flowflex-covid-rapid-tests/3496424/
@George A.
No, I only do tests when required for travel. The real-life FP/FN rates of the common C19 tests remain a closely guarded secret – I have yet to meet a doctor who can recite the numbers (they usually have a pretty good idea of FP/FN for most common medical tests). I actually dug out C19 test certification papers for one of these and discovered that the validation they are required to do has N=32, and within 95% confidence interval both FP and FN rates are anywhere from 0% to 11% assuming the test classified all samples accurately.
So, no, I didn’t do a C19 test, it’s as good as totally useless. My diagnosis relied on the unique features of C19 clinical presentation – pattern of chills and temporary loss of smell (lasted 2 days in my case; my step-daughter (who had to vaccinate due to her university requirements) got it at the same time and did test positive on NAAT test and still has anosmia (she is a biologist and is actually helping as a volunteer lab benchworker – they sequence samples to monitor strains). At least among my family and friends the pattern is clear – vaccinated have much worse illness from today’s strains than unvaccinated (the only C-19 related death in my social circle has been a 30-y/o daughter of my friends – she died from heart failure after Pfizer booster – she was a pro-vaccination activist, ironic as it was). The mechanism for that is also nothing new to the science – it has a colorful name of “original antigenic sin” or Hoskin’s effect.
@averros
>>>We are not vaxxed, will not be — both of us have sufficient expertise to read and understand
>>>research papers which we did, so we had a pretty good idea about ADE and S-protein toxicity..
I am curious, did you also study non mRNA vaccines like covishield & covaxin( https://www.bharatbiotech.com/covaxin.html)?
the on-street wisdom here was that they were ‘less risky’ as compared to the Pfizer one
News for the vaccine skeptics: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/europe/austria-covid-vaccine-mandate-intl/index.html (“Austria signs into law strict Covid-19 vaccine mandate”).
Austria’s sweeping measures will see those without a vaccine certificate or an exemption potentially slapped with initial fines of 600 euros ($680). Checks to see if the mandate is being adhered to begin from March 15.
Pregnant people and those who cannot be vaccinated without endangering their health are exempt from the law, according to the Austrian Health Ministry’s website.
The new law will last until January 31, 2024 and could see unvaccinated people face a maximum fine of 3,600 euros ($4,000) up to four times a year if they are not on a vaccine register by their assigned vaccination date.
—————————-
I am disappointed that Austria has not adopted my RFID chip proposal. Residents of Austria will be subject to a lot of hassles, e.g., showing phone screens at restaurant entrances, that could be eliminated with RFID chips in their necks and scanners on top of door frames.
For tonight, I’d like to ask a question:
Is it appropriate to refer to Rihanna as:
1) A Person of Color and/or
2) A Colored Person
??? What do you think? “Colored Person” is more concise but if it was acceptable, it would require changing the acronym from BIPOC to BICOP?
“Colored Person” is a little archaic and in one interpretation could imply that her skin color is inauthentic or merely painted on. But on the other hand, I’m confused since I thought white light contains more or less all the colors of the visible spectrum.
So should we call Colored People or People of Color “Restricted Spectrum” people, in which case the acronym would be BIRS? Inquiring minds want to know how this definition and acronym were constructed.
Crap, humanity have so much grief from the mother nature gift that gave it ability to distinguish light wavelength instead of intensity only….
Nope. The grief comes from coddling of idiots, which allowed idiots to proliferate and became a political force.
Methinks all “safety” regulations need to be abolished, so as to bring back the selective pressure necessary for maintaining mean IQ of human population at a reasonable level. (It is a well-established fact that traits not facing selective pressure will degrade with time.)
Interesting how even 79 years ago New York Times could not help itself but report made – up fake news, in addition to hiding Holocaust.
One can question on which side was NYT on in WII war in Europe.
The image shows headline “Red Army Slowed By German Blows. Only minors gains are made as foe trows fresh forces…” that could of being copied from Goebbels’s media communique.
That was printed in final weeks of Battle of Dnieper during which Soviet Army (Red Army name was discontinued post Stalingrad in January 1943) advanced on 900-mile wide front parallel to river Dnieper and in last weeks of Second Battle of Kiev in which Soviet Army crossed Dnieper and broke through German fortifications on hills over tall western bank on river Dnieper at blitzkrieg speed.