Variant Panic & Lady Hormones Given To Men -- Coronavirus Update LVIII
HORROR MOVIE
This is for men who have sired children only. Ladies, avert your eyes.
This, the shortest horror film ever made, explains mask mandates, lockdowns, injecting female hormones to cure the coronaodoom (discussed below), everything.
https://twitter.com/AmericanKrogan/status/1373123583187111940
Anybody who criticizes me for commenting on this video is judging me and attempting to impose their beliefs on me.
Update. See what I mean.
https://twitter.com/JoshLekach/status/1374884861123522560
YEE HAW!
Remember how Texas allowing liberty was boldly predicted by experts to have doomed the state? Didn't happen. Left column, lockdowns and mask mandates. Right column, liberty. The NY spike was the government "solution" of moving sick people into nursing homes.
There is no evidence anywhere---outside theoretical models---that lockdowns and mask mandates work. There is plenty of observational evidence they do great harm.
Below we'll see that weekly all-cause deaths are dropping faster than women soldiers in battle. Nothing but good news everywhere---except from governments, that is.
DEADLY VARIANTS!
This is the paper that caused Taleb to go into a closet and cower. He has been a shivering leaf since the beginning of this, barking at those not as frightened as he.
The latest panic is about "variants". Would the vaccines work against these new horrors!?
To those who have never read about viruses before, when mutations were inevitably discovered for the coronadoom, they come as a shock, and became a reason to keep punishing and useless "solutions" in place. So that they can feel safe.
Here's the paper.
Efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 Covid-19 Vaccine against the B.1.351 Variant.
This is the AstraZeneca vaccine, and B.1.351 is the South African variant.
The paper tells us this vaccine doesn't do well against this variant. Which set off Taleb and other fearful. Yet here is a here is an explanation why the paper is good news.
Just over 2,000 HIV-free people in South Africa were given the vaccine or placebo.
First good news: "there were no cases of severe disease or hospitalization in either group" 3 weeks after the second dose. "No" as in none, nada, zippo. As in nobody had worse than a cold.
Results: "23 of 717 placebo recipients (3.2%) and in 19 of 750 vaccine recipients (2.5%)", a total of 42 people, got no-treatment-needed coroandoom, "for an efficacy of 21.9% (95% confidence interval [CI], ?49.9 to 59.8)".
Second good news: The infection rate is thus only about 3%.
First good news repeated: The mortality rate in this group was 0%. Hospitalization rate was 0%.
It's true the vaccine did very little to nothing to protect against mild infection. Of the 42 who got the doom, 39 had the SA variant. Yet we immediately see that the SA variant is not that deadly. At least, it wasn't in this group.
We also see that the vaccine efficiency is non-existent in this group. Which is good but not conclusive evidence it cannot protect against the mild SA variant. To be conclusive we'd need to do the same study in folks without the SA variant.
Recall that I said months ago the real-life efficacy of the vaccines would be lower than reported in their clinical trials. Because this always happens for drug companies one their creations are in the general public.
Third good news: low adverse events. Interruption But see this: AstraZeneca may have used outdated info in vaccine trial.
Two tables of adverse events are given in the supplementary appendix. Mild adverse events were just about equal in vaccine and placebo group. Major were about the same, with vaccine being a tad higher. E.g. Gastrointestinal disorders: 2 placebo, 4 vaccine. Injuries: same. Nothing terrible in either group.
As predicted by the non-fearful, this variant is milder than the original. Which often happens. True, the vaccine didn't protect, but then it didn't need to, since nobody got seriously sick.
Again, this means we should not use the metric "cases" to panic ourselves. "Cases" are only positive tests and are not a measure of illness!
TRANSGENDER DOOM
We also saw last week the media reporting giving female hormones to men cures their coronadoom, or words like that. The reporting was based on this weak paper
Gist: don't buy it; the evidence way too thin.
Here's what happened: 22 hospitalized coronadoomers received standard care (SOC), 18 got progesterone with SOC, 2 were supposed to get progesterone but did not, but were left in progesterone group for analysis. Meaning any improvement they had would not be due to drug.
The drug was open label; no placebo. SOC was variable, and up to doctor discretion.
Later, 9 (nine!) control patients were moved to progesterone group because why not? These were left in control group for analysis.
Study time was 15 days. Best part is next.
The outcome was not in the least straightforward, and was this weird numerical scale. Which is obviously not linear, but treated as such. Yes, this mistake is made all the time, but that doesn't excuse it.
Clinical status was assessed on a 7-point ordinal scale, similarly used by Goldman, as follows: 1. Death; 2. Hospitalized, on invasive mechanical ventilation or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO); 3. Hospitalized, on high flow oxygen devices; 4. Hospitalized, requiring supplemental oxygen; 5. Hospitalized, not requiring supplemental oxygen; 6. Not hospitalized, limitation on activities; 7. Not hospitalized, no limitations on activities.
What is the distance between "1" and "2", and "2" and "3"? It is the same? Obviously not.
Result? "There was a 1.5-point overall improvement in median clinical status score" in the female hormone group, recalling 2 in the group were really controls and 9 in the controls were really drug group.
What do the results even mean?
There is nothing solid in this paper. It is far too weak to use to make any clinical judgments.
OVERTHROW EXPERTS
England has been leading the way in expertology. First we had the serially wrong, but never fired, Neil Ferguson and his forecast of 56,000 people dying per day of the coronadoom. Then we had their leaders believe the models, because those models were made by experts.
The models promised lockdowns and mask mandates would work, which of course they did, since they assumed these things. All models only say what they're told to say. But England's boss got the box, and it turned him into a shivering blob of jelly, unable to comb his hair or see a path to freedom.
Now we have even more experts with credentials in expertology saying "masks and social distancing rules could stay in place for several years until the world returns to normality".
This is from a "leading epidemiologist". Why is she "leading"? Because she tells the government what it wants to hear, and it wants to hear it can't allow its citizens liberty.
It's the leaders and easily frightened doing this. Some people rebelled. There were massive lockdown protests this past wee---in the UK and elsewhere. The police bravely responded by arresting many.
My favorite example of tyranny from that article: "The Metropolitan Police Service said it had made 36 arrests, most for breaching months-old virus regulations that outlaw leaving home except for a limited number of reasons."
House arrest. "[E]xcept for a limited number of reasons."
England slaps 5,000 pound fine on most travel abroad.
Lockdowns spread disease more effectively, which is why the UK has done so poorly. But they refuse to abandon their experts.
https://twitter.com/Chrissy_2697/status/1374098769910849539
A vaccine so safe you need a barrage of propaganda to sell it.
It isn't only in England, of course. Tyrants are everywhere. Michigan pizzeria owner arrested for 'willfully' violating 'public health orders'.
Our litany:
There is no disease but coronadoom. All deaths are coronadoom. Bless the coronadoom, destroyer of worlds.
BOOK
From our publisher:
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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.
Daily tests:
Tests are dropping, thank God. Not as quickly as I'd hope, but they're still slowing.
Every positive test the media falsely calls a "case", when it is only an infection with varying degrees of seriousness---and most are not serious.
Positivity rate of the tests.
Notice carefully that this is not dropping because tests are dropping. If anything, and all things equal, fewer tests mean larger positivities, because it's more likely only the sickest are being tested. And, depending on the kind of test, those who are vaccinated might show as positive (antibody test, say).
This is a clear indication of the fading into summer we see every year.
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. 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 2020 because CDC stopped separate reporting on flu. The suspicion is some flu and pneumonia deaths are being attributed to COVID.
Like last week, there is nothing but good news in that plot.
Here is the CDC deaths "involving" COVID.
The panic still grips many, but that is because they, quite insanely, look for "zero COVID". This is like requiring "zero heart attacks" before allowing liberty. It is not sane.
Here is another way to look at all deaths, the week-of-the-year all-cause deaths. This is big.
Just like last week---go and compare!---look at those deaths plunge! This chart should amaze you.
You can see the black dots on the green line, which indicate the late counts. But before that, even with some late counts coming in, this is still low. Way low.
This is the fairest measure because there is no politics in it at all. It's a body count and nothing else.
MOST IMPORTANT: the 2020 excess deaths are not all COVID deaths! They include deaths from the "solution" to COVID, too. Plus increased suicides, septicemia and other iatrogenic kills, cancers, heart attacks, and everything else due to lockdowns. Like car crashes, as we saw above. Plus, there were over 80,000 drug overdose deaths last year. This point cannot be over-emphasized.
Flu is still missing. Here is the WHO's global flu tracker:
Flu is still gone the whole world over.
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).
POPULATION FATALITY RATES
Age COVID OtherCause
1 Under 1 year 0.0000130 0.00560
2 1–4 years 0.0000018 0.00024
3 5–14 years 0.0000020 0.00015
4 15–24 years 0.0000170 0.00093
5 25–34 years 0.0000730 0.00170
6 35–44 years 0.0002100 0.00270
7 45–54 years 0.0006000 0.00480
8 55–64 years 0.0015000 0.01100
9 65–74 years 0.0036000 0.02200
10 75–84 years 0.0090000 0.05200
11 85 years and over 0.0240000 0.16000
You're sick of hearing it, but 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. Leave the Cult of the Mask.
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