One World Government To End All Pandemics; The Canceling Of John Ioannidis; More! -- Coronavirus Update LX
YOU HAVE TO LAUGH
Earlier I said 2020 was the year experts pretended to forget all they knew about viruses. I have to correct. I now say 2020 and 2021 are the years experts pretended to forget all they knew about viruses.
https://twitter.com/rubiconcapital_/status/1377437484422889475
What's that, Washington Post? You have something to say about masks?
Good thing you said it before you knew Trump was against masks.
BAD HAIR DAY
Britain's bright boy Boris Johnson, a man reduced to a blubbering mess by his illness, suggests creating what amounts to a one-world government dedicated to finding him a comb.
Sorry, to "solving" future pandemics.
He and a fine group of other rulers signed an open letter about this. After hinting about a rather important war nobody wants to mention by name, Boris said we must come together "to dispel the temptations of isolationism and nationalism". No dispelling nationalism for Jews, Asians, and blacks, of course. For Europeans.
There will be other pandemics and other major health emergencies. No single government or multilateral agency can address this threat alone. The question is not if, but when. Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly co-ordinated fashion. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe.
A highly co-ordinated fashion, eh. Nobody is safe until everyone is safe, eh. Benjamin Franklin said "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." But he never had to deal with disease. Or the war on terror. Otherwise he never would have said that.
Ben would have known the modern need to feel safe outweighs all other considerations. "To that end," says Boris,
we believe that nations should work together towards a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response. Such a renewed collective commitment would be a milestone in stepping up pandemic preparedness at the highest political level. It would be rooted in the constitution of the World Health Organisation, drawing in other relevant organisations key to this endeavour, in support of the principle of health for all.
By this, he meant the treaty
would also include recognition of a “One Health” approach that connects the health of humans, animals and our planet. And such a treaty should lead to more mutual accountability and shared responsibility, transparency and co-operation within the international system and with its rules and norms.
The health of humans and animals considered jointly is a noble goal. We need to figure out which creature gets to eat which, and in what order, and who is picking up the tab. But the planet, a large rock in space, has health? Many volcanoes are the earth's anus. We could cram a thermometer into one and take the plaent's core temperature, a key indicator of health.
How do we make this "commitment a reality," Boris?
"We must be guided by solidarity, fairness, transparency, inclusiveness and equity," he answered.
Since he didn't mention Diversity, I'm not sure we can stand behind him in his effort. Though many did. Got quite a few Europeans rulers to sign, and even a handful of African rulers. Ukraine, of course, since our rulers are looking to use them as a casus belli.
Well, we all need to "build back better", eh? Where you will own nothing and be happy, eh?
BAD & GOOD GENES
Sub-Saharan black Africans did well with the doom, but American blacks did not. East Asians did well, and so did South Asians. Certain Caucasians did not. There would appear to be a clear genetic+environment signal to the deaths.
Which this article dispassionately examines: Taboo: Why Is Africa the Global COVID ‘Cold Spot’ and Why Are We Afraid to Talk About It?.
The second question is of course rhetorical. The first is answered, roughly: black Africans are a lot younger than American blacks, and the doom kills the aged, and American blacks are a lot fatter, and the doom kills the fat. Whites with Neanderthal genes appear to have different outcomes than whites without.
Though European whites are old, like American whites, they are not as fat. And so on.
Here's a self-explanatory picture they put together:
Read the article.
THROWAWAY THE KEY
Nice compilation of articles---even peer-reviewed! articles---contra lockdowns.
ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION
Saw some expert on Twitter take exception to John Ioannidis's infection fatality rate. He used just the US numbers, extrapolating them to the world, but did not try his trick using global numbers, which gave an answer an order of magnitude less, and which matched Ioannidis's guess.
This is important because they're trying to cancel Ioannidis now. Experts hate any kind of good news which might be used to show their worst fears aren't true.
Here's one out of many in the pile on: What the heck happened to John Ioannidis? From a place laughingly called "Science-Based Medicine."
I won't go into this in any details, because you already know all the facts. I make only one comment on how cancellations go. Ioannidis used to be loved. But now that he has sinned, they are discovering that not only is he bad now, he kind of always was, and which "we" always knew, but never said much about.
I quote the effeminate bits:
..before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I had long admired and whom, as a result of his publications, statements, and activities during the pandemic, I no longer do...Over the years, Prof. Ioannidis’ work has inspired posts by nearly all of the bloggers who’ve been regulars here at SBM...
Don’t get me wrong here. I don’t always agree with Ioannidis; for instance, I think he did exaggerate how often research is “wrong” and, in addition, took major issue with his argument that the NIH is...[blah blah blah].
Point is, if you think you have friends, wait until they have to defend you against the woke. Then you'll see.
TEXAS UNMASKING APOCALYPSE!
We're still waiting for the surge in deaths the media and experts predicted for Texas. Don't worry, it will come! They're experts!
Left column: mask mandates and lockdowns. Right column: liberty.
BOOK
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 fell slightly. The media and blue states are still trying to juice the panic, loathe to relinquish their "emergency" powers, so it's not falling as fast as we'd like.
Testing generates "cases". I wonder if testing is rising because vaccinations are also going up. "Come back in a week and let's do a test" kind of thing. A rapid test could easily throw a false positive. We'll have to wait and see. I don't have data to tell for sure. 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.
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).
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.
Deaths are way down from what we'd expect this time of year.
Here is the CDC deaths "involving" COVID.
There is in the daily data (not shown) do show a flattening this week, which will be picked up in next week's totals. But a flattening at very low numbers. There is no emergency. There is only panic.
Here is another way to look at all deaths, the week-of-the-year all-cause deaths. This is big.
I'm repeating myself---again!---but 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.
We are, from about Week 8, either where we'd expect all cause deaths to be, or lower. Our rulers and media have convinced themselves there is no death but COVID deaths. They don't even know how to look at others.
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. For almost a full year now. Yes. A year without flu. Astonishing.
Here's another way to look at it, which highlights the very first (Twitter) graph atop this post, by which I mean the spring "mini-bump" after the main flu surge and before summer:
You can see Swine Flu, which started at an odd time, and which caused a minor panic. And you can see where flu vanished into ... where exactly?
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 0.0000150 0.00590
2 1–4 years 0.0000020 0.00025
3 5–14 years 0.0000021 0.00016
4 15–24 years 0.0000190 0.00096
5 25–34 years 0.0000760 0.00180
6 35–44 years 0.0002200 0.00280
7 45–54 years 0.0006200 0.00500
8 55–64 years 0.0015000 0.01100
9 65–74 years 0.0037000 0.02200
10 75–84 years 0.0093000 0.05400
11 85 years and over 0.0250000 0.16000
A reminder that these are from totals, and so represent the closest thing to lifetime population fatality rates. Anyway, the risk is so small for the young there is no reason to panic. None.
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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