Vaccine Side Effects, Inefficiencies & Corporate Greed: Coronavirus Upate XLIX
VACCINE
The hope of the vaccines (there are, as you know, many flavors) was that it would calm people down---never mind all the other considerations, which are important but which we'll skip here. Those that wanted to get it could do so, gain some peace of mind, thus helping to end the panic.
There turned out to be---surprise!---three problems associated with this idea: side effects, government idiocy, and greed.
Side Effects
Norway put the breaks on the Pfizer vaccine.
Norway expressed increasing concern about the safety of the Pfizer Inc. vaccine on elderly people with serious underlying health conditions after raising an estimate of the number who died after receiving inoculations to 29.
..."There are 13 deaths that have been assessed, and we are aware of another 16 deaths that are currently being assessed,” the agency said. All the reported deaths related to “elderly people with serious basic disorders," it said. “Most people have experienced the expected side effects of the vaccine, such as nausea and vomiting, fever, local reactions at the injection site, and worsening of their..."
Another: "Fifty-five people in the United States have died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, according to reports submitted to a federal system".
"Deaths have occurred among people receiving both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, according to the reports."
This is all preliminary, and not unexpected, as this news report proves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quBemFzabG8&list=FLnK3qgNPHupWlzFo5TlhRTw&index=1
The alternate view, backed by the data below, is that those who died were old and sick and were near the end anyway. Just examine the population fatality rates at the bottom for confirmation. Don't forget the average age of attributed COVID death is about 80, and the CDC reports an average of almost 3 serious comorbidities for these folks. Meaning it might not be the vaccine killing people---though that is a serious possibility---but their age and illnesses doing it.
This is a kind of side effect, also not unexpected. To non-experts, anyway.
https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1351276313441521665
Government boondoggle
You've already heard from other sources that our most beneficent government can't efficiently get vaccines to people in some states, like in New York, with its award-winning mayor.
Greed
Item: Microsoft, Big-Tech Coalition Developing Rockefeller-Funded COVID Passports
A coalition of big tech companies, including Microsoft is developing a COVID passport, with the expectation that a digital document linked to vaccination status will be required to travel and get access to basic services...
The idea is now a familiar one. Anyone who has been vaccinated will receive a QR code that can be stored on their mobile phone in the wallet app. Those without phones will have access to a printed version.
We have previously reported on the development of this so called 'CommonPass', which also has backing from the World Economic Forum, and now more details have emerged.
I believe the other altruistic companies are Oracle and Salesforce. That they'll stand to make billions for this useless, painful, asinine boondoggle of an idea certainly plays no role in their thinking, surely. It'll be tough on those with the communicable HIV, for which there is no vaccine. No travel for them. Sad.
You do recall, don't you, that mandatory vaccine papers started as a wild far-right conspiracy theory, moved to open discussion, and is progressing to the implementation phase. In record speed, too.
Update From BMJ: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data.
BOOK UPDATE
The book is back in stock! The Price of Panic.
The price is still $12.99 for the hardback. You can't afford not to buy.
Incidentally, all our predictions have come true.
Website of similar name: price of panic.
THE NUMBERS
Sources: daily tests, CDC official toll number one, number two (the old weekly file, now suspect). Deaths by age. Covid & flu. WHO flu tracker. All current as of Monday night.
CDC weekly ALL CAUSE death counts, or the Perspective Plot, from late 2009 until now. The late drop off is late counting: it takes up to eight weeks to get all data, but most are in by three. We need to look at all cause deaths because we can't quite trust the attributed COVID numbers.
The black line is deaths of any kind. The red is COVID. The blue line is flu+pneumonia (it's the pneumonia that kills most flu patients). The blue is estimated starting mid year because CDC stopped separate reporting on flu. The suspicion is some flu and pneumonia deaths are being attributed to COVID.
You can see the initial peak in 2020, when the virus first hit in the northeast, and then a smaller bump when it spread south. The bump now is in line, and perhaps a bit higher, with what we expect to see this time of year on average.
DEATHS ALWAYS PEAK IN MID JANUARY. DO NOT BE ALARMED. PLEASE PASS THIS INFORMATION ON!
This is all seen in the same plot, but shown PER CAPITA:
2021 and 2018 are similar in magnitude; 2020 is higher. But notice deaths per capita are still increasing in general, to reflect, most likely, an increasingly older and unhealthier citizenry. Curious, too, we get larger numbers about every other year. Some sort of feedback?
Here's another view, with average weekly death rates for years back to 1917 (using this source and CDC; the CDC has to be copied by hand, and is incomplete; view this graph as interim; thanks to David Boots and Baylor Eye for help finding sources):
2020 brought us to about 1980 levels; and it was worse before then. Don't misunderstand this graph. First, it's averaged over the whole year, so individual weeks can't be seen. Second, in 2020 and 2021 it's mainly much older people who are dying, whereas in 1980 and before the age of deaths was much more spread out. Meaning, as claimed, it was worse then, assuming younger deaths are less good.
Why, then, do we panic now and not then? As with rich people finding fault in their purchases, the better things get, the more we react and complain.
Here is a third perspective, looking at flu+pneumonia rates per 100,000 and COVID for 2020 (sources: Our World in Data, CDC as above).
There is always concern when mixing sources that differences in definitions exist. The CDC data, at least, is self-consistent. The years 1999-2009 are missing. The brown are CDC data. The red dot is COVID. These are annual death rates.
If all this is right (and I'll be checking more), we're about at 1940 flu levels with COVID. But 1980 levels in overall death rates. And, of course, COVID is dropping now.
Here is the CDC deaths "involving" COVID.
The January peaks are caused when we enter our voluntary lockdowns in winter, spreading bugs. This is also the "solution" governments hit upon to stop the spread of bugs. Lockdowns kill.
Besides the increasing deaths due to population and unhealthiness increase, notice that about every other year deaths are higher. Like this winter.
Here is another way to look at all deaths, the week-of-the-year all-cause deaths.
The number of deaths for each year are also given, except 2021, which are thus far still in the late-count category. I'll start showing these in about two weeks.
My simple "excess" deaths model, a year-on-year extrapolation, predicted 2.92 million deaths for 2020 absent COVID. So far, there have been 3.27 million registered deaths in 2020. This gives 356 thousand "excess" deaths for 2020.
Again, so far. Once the late counting comes in, this number will grow somewhat, so be ready for that. It won't go up by too much more now, since most 2020 counts are in.
IMPORTANT: these are not all COVID deaths! They include deaths from the "solution" to COVID, too. Plus increased suicides, cancers, heart attacks, and everything else due to lockdowns.
Just for one example (I learned this from PD Mangan, who you should all follow): Deaths of Despair and the Incidence of Excess Mortality in 2020. They're up, especially for men of working age.
Just one picture, but you can look at the others in the paper. This is Opiod overdoes for two large metro areas. They're up.
Daily tests:
This is the number of daily tests. Each positive test in the media (not real life) is counted as a new "case". These are almost all not cases, but merely positive tests, which indicate past infections, current by mild infections, asymptomatic infections, and even no infections at all. False positives.
Testing has peaked back up after the holidays, as expected. After "Death is coming" is inaugurated, it's likely to go higher still. Testing helps sustain the panic, because of all the false reporting on "cases". Flu is still missing, even into 2021. CDC found one pediatric death for flu this season. Here is the WHO's global flu tracker, which still shows flu has gone missing everywhere:
The new year is there, but still colored black: it's the tiny short black line. Flu is still not with us.
If we focus only on COVID deaths, we lose all perspective. We can see above that deaths peak every January, because of our self-enforced wintertime lockdowns, when we all hunker down inside and spread bugs among ourselves.
Here is the CDC official population mortality rates for the all causes other than COVID, and "involving" COVID (with and of; "involving" is CDC's word).
Here are the same population fatality rates in tabular form:
POPULATION FATALITY RATES
Age COVID OtherCause
1 Under 1 year 0.0000090 0.00480
2 1–4 years 0.0000013 0.00021
3 5–14 years 0.0000013 0.00013
4 15–24 years 0.0000120 0.00079
5 25–34 years 0.0000480 0.00150
6 35–44 years 0.0001400 0.00230
7 45–54 years 0.0003800 0.00410
8 55–64 years 0.0009100 0.00900
9 65–74 years 0.0022000 0.01800
10 75–84 years 0.0057000 0.04400
11 85 years and over 0.0160000 0.13000
No matter what age, there is at least about a 10 times or larger chance of dying from something else then COVID. If you're under 44, the COVID risk is tiny. Our level of fear is in not in line with the actual risk for the majority of the population.
About masks in depth, see this article and this one. I am also working on a comprehensive article about masks. Hint: they do not work.
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