France Update: VAERS Suggests As Many Kids Dying From Vexxine as Coronadoom; Another Paper Shows Mask Mandates Don't Work; Being Fat Is Bad; More! -- Coronavirus Update LXXIX
FRENCH FARCE
https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/1414668383316938752
The French nation has descended into Effeminacy. No man may buy or sell with the Mark of the Vex.
NEOLOGISM
Hyperpole, n: extravagant exaggeration by politicians in service of the noble lie.
Headline: "‘Potentially a death sentence’: White House goes off on vaccine fearmongers The administration has shifted to a head-on strategy to dispel fear-mongering over its door-to-door efforts."
VEXXINE UPDATE
From Open VAERS (which is a snapshot of VAERS, but put in easier-to-read format; the snapshot I used was made Monday morning of a period through 7 July):
The age distribution of deaths (available at the link) aren't too surprising, except for the number of unknown ages---25% of the total. This is ridiculous for medical data. You can report a death but not something as basic as age or sex?
This implies at least some of these unknowns are in the young.
Now VAERS says 9 aged 15 and younger had deaths "associated" with the vexxine. This is at least 7 because of all those unknown ages. The CDC says 236 kids had deaths associated with the coronadoom.
We know there are about 60.57 million kids this age in the US. So the coroandoom associated death rate is 0.0000039. Most would say this is a small number.
The corresponding deaths associated with the vaccines would be (9 + something) / (number of kids vexxinated). It's hard to find good numbers on the number of vexxinated kids. One report says 4 million, but that was two months old. However, a CNN (yes) report says 4% of those under 17 were "full" vexxinated. It's probably less for those 15 and under. Call it 3.5%.
That makes 0.035 * 60.57 million = 2,119,950. So the associated death rate for vexxines is (9 + something) / 2.12 million = 0.0000042 + something. (Or 0.0000037 + something if a full 4% of kids 15 and under are vexxed.)
In other words, there is good evidence the vexxine is associated with death in children at the same or greater rate than the coronadoom.
Now the vexxine isn't supposed to be for kids younger than 12, so the deaths listed in VAERS might be for other vexxines. On the other hand, many kids 12-15 have got the doom vex. If it's only 12-15 year olds, then that 60.57 is far too large, and should be about half that. Meaning the rate of associated deaths for kids is roughly double the 0.0000042.
I agree this is a crude analysis with much uncertainty. All the data are loose and somewhat unverified, and VAERS itself is not terribly reliable or complete. I don't know how many vexxinated kids died of the doom, so I don't account for overlap. We don't know the comorbidities of anybody.
Even with all this, there is at least prima facie evidence that vexxine harm is on the same order as coronadoom harm.
Anyway, how about this?
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1414647737577086979
INTERNATIONAL TOUR
I warned earlier they were juicing the panic---have doctors/Experts no morals in the UK?---by switching from "hospitalizations for COVID" to "in hospital with COVID", and pretending they were the same.
Headline: "Up to 40% of 'Covid hospital patients' infected with Delta variant may have been admitted for a different illness, official figures suggest".
Then we come to the "cases" hersteria, and the dishonest attempts to continue the panic:
https://twitter.com/PeaceisBeing/status/1413081820191727617
It seems, as scientists of old expected, the virus has mutated in less virulent forms. Continuing to track "cases" (positive tests) is silly and incompetent.
Ahem.
https://twitter.com/RealCarlVernon/status/1412757747863543814
Nevertheless, this:
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1413602479443427329
It's not like the citizens of the UK hate this. They love and adore their newfound illusion of safety and loss of liberty.
https://twitter.com/mattholehouse/status/1413155464632836100
This is madness. There is no other word for it. Madness.
Those countries that did not break free of the English yoke are the craziest (see Canada last week).
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1413738547023163392
Gross intellectual indecency.
Australia is worst among all. Sheer panic over the Dreaded Delta, even though all evidence is that it is not a great killer. They are reacting solely to positive tests, mistakenly called "cases", and will settle for nothing less than no positive tests. Which is insane. One article summarized:
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian again warned lockdown would likely be extended, telling reporters, “the only conclusion we can draw is that things are going to get worse before they get better”.
And the experts agree.
Ah, experts. That class of people who never have to pay for their mistakes.
PROPAGANDA PUSH
https://twitter.com/HotelLubyanka/status/1412723306961289219
There are many more of them (do a search), so the question is: who is funding them?
FAT AIN'T WHERE IT'S AT
A new paper confirms what we already knew, but added some quantification to it. In Lancet: Diabetes & Endrocrinology we have "Associations between body-mass index and COVID-19 severity in 6·9 million people in England: a prospective, community-based, cohort study" by Gao and others.
They looked through just under 7 million records and "found J-shaped "associations between BMI and admission to hospital... and death (1·04 [1·04--1·05])". That's a hazard ratio, and the 1.04 is multiplicative for every increase in BMI by 1 from a base (arbitrary) of 23. So, for example, a person with a BMI of 30 has a hazard rate of 1.04^7 + 1 = 1.3 + 1 = 2.3 times greater than a person of BMI = 23 (who have a hazard ratio of 1 by definition, which is where the "+ 1" comes from).
A hazard ratio is not my favorite measure, in that it gives you a comparison of the "instantaneous" probability of a thing, like dying or being admitted to ICU. These are always harder to interpret than plain probabilities, e.g. "Our model discovered a probability of dying with 30 days after a positive coronadoom test of 1.2% for those with a BMI or 30," or whatever, and another probability for every other BMI. What does it mean to have an "instantaneous" probability of dying right now? And again right now? And now now. And later now? Confusing.
They're used, though, because (a) they make the math easier, and (b) they provide a one-number summary so many crave.
They do give us the raw stats of those dying and so forth by BMI, so that's nice.
They had some models, "adjusting" for age and sex which didn't change the BMI signal much, or at all. All presented in terms of HRs.
The real proportions of croaking from corona for this population is this:
BMI, % < 18.5, 0.13% 18.5 to 25, 0.069% 25 to 30, 0.08% 30 to 35, 0.09% > 35, 0.1% Looks like the real fat ones died out at 1.4 times the rate. But nobody died at especially high rates.
DOOR-TO-DOOR MANDATORY HEALTH INSPECTIONS
We do the same for cows, and don't we love people more than cows?
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra says it's "absolutely the Governmen's business" to know your vexxination status. Look for him on your doorstep soon, with his anal thermometer in hand.
Knock knock
Who's there?
Becerra
Becerra who?
Your son's gonna Be Sarah unless I can vex him!
Well, it's not that funny. See if you can come up with a better one. Like this guy in New Zealand's howler.
https://twitter.com/ConspiracyCen/status/1412497791650308102
How about those variants?
https://twitter.com/Dr_TJRicks/status/1412489699218841600
A lady who glories in slitting the throats in children inside the wombs of mothers says this:
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1414272338800033797
Our bodies, her choice, apparently.
LOCK 'EM DOWN!
Apt title for article: Lockdown Effectiveness: Much More Than You Wanted To Know.
Much more. And (unless I missed it) he doesn't address the two main points: (1) it was always government burden to prove lockdowns and mask mandates worked, whereas we have no burden to prove they did not, and (b) the definition of "worked" is not a scientific one, but a moral one, and we never had a debate over what was moral. The government just charged in and shrieked "DO THIS!"
A complete cluster-youknowhat. I am working on a larger article on this, so will save the meat for that.
The Tablet's The War on Reality did a better job understanding this.
NO KIDDING DEPARTMENT
Headline: Ivy League Study Shows How US Media Created a Climate of Fear Over COVID-19.
We didn't need a study for this. The media's business is creating fear, because fear translates to dollars and prestige. It was always as simple as that. This is why the media---rightly---are said to be the enemy of the people.
I'm happy enough the write up included this well known quote: "'Fear is the mind-killer,' wrote Herbert [in Dune]. 'Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.'"
Amen.
MASK MANDATES DON'T WORK
Paper: Mask mandate and use efficacy in state-level COVID-19 containment, by Damian and Daniel Guerra.
Abstract with my paragraphifications:
Background:...We hypothesized that statewide 15 mask mandates and mask use are associated with lower COVID-19 case growth rates in the United States...
Methods: We calculated total COVID-19 case growth and mask use for the continental United States with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. We estimated post mask mandate case growth in non-mandate states using median issuance dates of neighboring states with mandates.
Results: Case growth was not significantly different between mandate and non-mandate states at low or high transmission rates, and surges were equivocal. Mask use predicted lower case growth at low, but not high transmission rates....Mask use did not predict Summer 2020 case growth for non-Northeast states or Fall-Winter 2020 growth for all continental states.
Conclusions: Mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level COVID-19 spread during COVID-19 growth surges.
There's things to quibble about, but it's all at least in the direction of the uselessness of mask mandates.
Not that anybody cares, because it quickly became clear masks were purely performative and used as a means to force submission.
BOOK
Website of similar name: price of panic.
ALL CAUSE DEATHS
The week-of-the-year all-cause deaths.
Green line is 2021, red is 2020. The dotted line are all cause deaths minus COVID. That means the 2020 deaths that look out of place (above the mass of other lines but below the dotted line) are likely deaths caused by the panic.
The drop off at the end is late reporting. Those three black dots indicate the last three weeks. Three weeks from now, about 80% or so of all the deaths will have been counted. It can take, the CDC says, up to eight weeks to get a full count. So to be really sure, let's look at eight weeks ago and earlier. This is week 17 and earlier.
See the dotted green line? That's All Cause MINUS the COVID. Those numbers are way below where we'd expect them. You should be having a "Whoa, dude!" moment.
Why are the deaths so low?
Two most likely explanations:
(1) So many old people succumbed to COVID last year, that there were fewer people left to die this year. This likely accounts for some of the weird discrepancy.
(2) The CDC (and everybody else) is over-estimating coronadoom deaths. We're back to the early "dying with" and "dying from" controversy, juiced by the variant panic. This is the most likely explanation.
Look: if the doom was not with us, we'd expect that dotted line to be hovering above all the other yearly lines, just because of population increase alone. And then we'd add the doom deaths, making the thick green line even higher. So that when we subtracted the doom deaths from the thick green line, the dotted line would be hovering.
Some of the excess deaths must be deaths by "other causes", which took a sharp upward turn. Mysteriously.
THE NUMBERS
Sources: CDC State data (source), CDC official toll number one, number two (the old weekly file, now suspect). Causes of death (source). Deaths by age. Covid & flu. WHO flu tracker. All current as of Monday night.
Daily tests (not shown; see here from Johns Hopkins) has spiked. Back over a million tests a day again. Meaning propaganda about the Dreaded Delta is working. Many are rushing to get tested again.
And with testing comes "cases", i.e. positive tests. But not, in this case, deaths.
CDC deaths "involving" COVID.
Delta variant! Delta variant! Delta variant! Delta variant! The Delta variant rises! But, apparently, does not kill.
Here's more proof the crisis is over:
Strange, isn't it, that heart disease and cancer are on the decrease, even as the doom vanished?
And those unclassified deaths are curious, too. The codes indicate those times when the doctors aren't quite sure why the person died. For instance, "Ill-defined and unknown cause of mortality".
Notice the rise of these unclassifieds. Could they be related to the vexxines? The rise is certainly co-incident with rise in vexxines. This is a forbidden question on social media, so don't ask it, or they will ban you. That's how The Science works, by limiting uncomfortable questions.
Here's the standard state comparison:
Does your state still have restrictions, like Michigan, which had 210 deaths per 100,000? Or is your state free, like Florida, with its much older and sicker population had 178 deaths per 100,000?
Ask your state legislator today.
Flu is still missing, but it's always low this time of year, so I'll skip the plot.
About masks in more depth, see this article and this one and especially this one. Leave the Cult of the Mask.
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