Thunderbolts Forum v3.0

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Too bad we can't combine the two threads to discuss the pandemic etc. Or maybe we can?

JacMac said:
[quote]So, if we use the same standards for assigning death to the Covid-19 as we do with Influenza then the number of Covid-19 deaths in the US have been ABOUT 15 times that of the Flu ( 30 x 15 = 450)
(We are over 550,000 deaths now but that has been more than one year. I don't have time to find the correct figure.)
Did the US government have a serious public discussion about the problem....NO.
Did the Flu cause many places to store dead bodies in refrigeration trucks because morticians could not keep up...NO
Did my primary care Dr. , who also works in a hospital ER, report that he was exhausted watching people die from Covid-19 every day....YES[/quote]

[color=#FF0000]1. WHERE OR HOW CAN WE GET ACCURATE DATA ON COVID DEATHS?
2. WHAT ARE THE DATA ON HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS FOR COVID?[/color]

JackOkie said:
[quote]Medicare reimbursement for Covid-19 was higher than other rates, creating an incentive to come down on a Covid-19 diagnosis[/quote]

I hadn't heard about that game before. I've heard about some others.

[color=#FF0000]3. LET'S GATHER A LIST OF ALL THE GAMES THE AUTHORITIES HAVE BEEN PLAYING WITH THIS PANDEMIC, SHALL WE?[/color]

JP used sarcasm.

[color=#FF0000]4. IS EMOTIONALISM APPROPRIATE IN SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION? HOW SHOULD IT BE HANDLED SCIENTIFICALLY?[/color]

[quote=jackokie post_id=4887 time=1617298837 user_id=1000000111]
"safetyism" became the order of the day
[/quote]

And now for the dumbest words ever uttered in the history of the world:

[quote="Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, et al"] The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stark and painful reminder that [i]nobody is safe until everyone is safe.[/i][/quote]
[url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/03/29/no-government-can-address-threat-pandemics-alone-must-come/]World Pandemic Treaty[/url]

No agenda at work here. None whatsoever. Nope. (end sarcasm)

They can shove their 'safety' where Birkeland currents don't shine.

jacmac

There are at least two problems when comparing the flu with Covid-19:

1. The raw data and methods used for the statistics, and
2. The politicization of the problem.

First , the statistics - there were several opportunities for the data to be compromised. Remember that the original test from the CDC was seriously deficient. The tests developed in response varied widely in their accuracy. The standards for screening and entering the data varied across the country. Medicare reimbursement for Covid-19 was higher than other rates, creating an incentive to come down on a Covid-19 diagnosis (I worked in hospital IT for over five years - I know the games that are played). The article at [url]https://www.city-journal.org/deadly-cost-of-lockdown-policies[/url] , while from last year, illustrates that lockdowns have significant costs their proponents ignore or minimize.

Second, the politicization. The website C19hcq.com aggregates study results for hydroxychloroquine and other drugs used to treat Covid-19. HCQ clearly demonstrated efficacy, especially when combined with zinc and/or azithromycin. You used anecdotal evidence from your doctor (was he treating nursing home patients in New York City, by any chance?), so here's another one: [url]https://kyma.com/news/2020/07/24/local-doctor-sees-success-treating-covid-19-patients-with-hcq-cocktail/[/url] . HCQ has proven effective if given early and in combination with the drugs mentioned above; the more the disease has progressed the less effective it is. But you wouldn't find that truth anywhere in the national media's "reporting". HCQ is just one example of the skewed coverage. Another is the scant coverage given to the disease' impact by age group.

So Brigit is correct when she said

[quote]It was an absolute disaster and a total failure for a supposedly literate and numerate country not to have demanded to know the fatality rate of this disease before allowing governments to assume emergency powers.[/quote]

We were stampeded, "safetyism" became the order of the day, and certain governors wildly abused their powers. The chance of transmission of Covid-19 from pupil to teacher is vanishingly small, yet the teachers (unions) are still dragging their feet. One good thing about Covid-19: It exposed a lot of the supposed "good guys" as morally challenged.

Many people say: "It's just like the flu"
From your reference:[quote]https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20180927/80000-americans-died-from-flu-last-year[/quote]
[quote]Influenza was deadlier last season than it has been for at least four decades, killing 80,000 Americans. [/quote]
[quote] 80,000 deaths is more than double the number expected in a typical "bad" flu season.[/quote]
[quote]In recent years, the annual flu death toll has ranged from 12,000 to 56,000 deaths, the CDC said.[/quote]
That shows the average flue deaths are about 30,000 a year. (in the US)

Many people say "Covid didn't kill all those people; most had co-morbidity conditions".
You said:[quote]Unfortunately with viral respiratory ailments, the most vulnerable are those with serious co-morbidities,[/quote]
Then you figured out that very low "death rate".
Webmed says:
[quote]The flu typically kills by triggering other deadly conditions such as pneumonia, stroke and heart attack. [/quote]

So, which way is it ?
The Flu is a TRIGGER, but the Covid can't be counted that way.
If Covid didn"t kill all those with underlying conditions, then the flue didn't either.
So, if we use the same standards for assigning death to the Covid-19 as we do with Influenza then the number of Covid-19 deaths in the US have been ABOUT 15 times that of the Flu ( 30 x 15 = 450)
(We are over 550,000 deaths now but that has been more than one year. I don't have time to find the correct figure.)

Did the US government have a serious public discussion about the problem....NO.
Did the Flu cause many places to store dead bodies in refrigeration trucks because morticians could not keep up...NO
Did my primary care Dr. , who also works in a hospital ER, report that he was exhausted watching people die from Covid-19 every day....YES

Jack

On the contrary, it is a [b]new insight and mad idea [/b]for governors to unilaterally declare an emergency by utilizing a computer simulation -- especially one produced by [i]Neil Ferguson. [/i]

by jacmac » Sat Mar 20, 2021 11:44 am
[i]"It is not necessary to know "THE fatality rate" to call the worldwide rapid spread of a disease a PANDEMIC."[/i]

It was an absolute disaster and a total failure for a supposedly literate and numerate country not to have demanded to know the fatality rate of this disease before allowing governments to assume emergency powers.

We already assign a .1% fatality rate to annual influenza seasons, but we do not quarantine the healthy or shut down the livelihoods of millions of people. And early on, various medical doctors [i]did [/i]carry out county and city tests for antibodies. These found a 3-4% infection rate in the population, which gave the proper denominator for the reported fatalities, and reflected a 0.1 - 0.2% fatality rate for cl9. When all is said and done, there is a 99.9% chance of recovery for most people. In fact, 2017 saw a particularly bad flu season and over 79,000 people died from it in the US. It was up about 10,000 from the year before. There [i]is always some risk[/i].

Unfortunately with viral respiratory ailments, the most vulnerable are those with serious co-morbidities, and [i]perhaps[/i] the very aged -- perhaps, but not always. For cl9, there was an average of 2.6 additional causes or conditions per death. And, as pointed out, the cdc had changed the requirements for reporting on death certificates to include "tested, assumed, or [i]suspected cases[/i]" of cl9.

Now taking a step back to see the entire picture, I suggest that the use of the Precautionary Principle in this case gave power to a small cadre of expert epidemiologists to calculate the risk of one threat, and contrary to all good sense, advise policies which reset the [i]entire society[/i] -- all to avoid a simulated outcome.

By the way, although it is always nice to think of the poor as jacmac has, I simply don't think that to save "the poor" (or anybody else for that matter) you radically increase unemployment across the entire world. Their emergency food supplies ran out long ago, they have slipped even further below the poverty level, and the government promises of help don't always come.


ref: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/sensible-compassionate-anti-covid-strategy/
ref: https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20180927/80000-americans-died-from-flu-last-year
ref: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/31/stunning-cdcgov-update-on-covid19-us-deaths-overestimated-by-177/

Brigit:[quote] The fact is, this was announced as a pandemic before any one knew anything about the fatality rate. [/quote]
It is not necessary to know "THE fatality rate" to call the worldwide rapid spread of a disease a PANDEMIC.
There are many factors causing death rates. The higher death rates among minorities in the U S being one example.

The overflowing parking lot of a local tavern at 11 am on St Patrick's Day where I live,
along with the very loud raucous sounds of people drinking while being packed inside,
is factual evidence that those people were NOT following The Precautionary Principle.

:lol:

Now putting aside the public's and the media's complete trust in and total abandonment to a few select
expert epidemiologists and the computer simulations,

I would like to point out that it did not improve after this.

It would have seemed logical that any attempts to close businesses and put people on house arrest would have caused at least some of our fellow countrymen to ask some simple questions. The fact is, this was announced as a pandemic before any one knew anything about the fatality rate. The fatality rate must include the comparison of the diagnosed cases with the fatalities. Fatalities alone told us very little.

Instead of working out an actual fatality rate for this virus, reporting on death certificates became a very fluid situation. Within a short time, WH 0 issued guidelines for recording Cl9 on the medical certificate of cause of death. It said that Cl9 "should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for all decedents where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death."

I do believe this set of guidelines made the fatality rate of this strain of [blank] impossible for anyone to ever determine.

Have you ever seen a person not wearing a mask? These may be just a few of the reasons why.

Here is a question raised by a commenter:

"[Imperial College epidemiologist Neil] Ferguson was behind the disputed research that sparked the mass culling of eleven million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He also predicted that up to 150,000 people could die. There were fewer than 200 deaths. . . .

In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would likely die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from BSE.

In 2005, Ferguson predicted that up to 150 million people could be killed from bird flu. In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009.

In 2009, a government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a “reasonable worst-case scenario” was that the swine flu would lead to 65,000 British deaths. In the end, swine flu killed 457 people in the U.K.

Last March, Ferguson admitted that his Imperial College model of the COVID-19 disease was based on undocumented, 13-year-old computer code that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic, rather than a coronavirus. Ferguson declined to release his original code so other scientists could check his results. He only released a heavily revised set of code last week, after a six-week delay.

So the real scandal is: Why did anyone ever listen to this guy?"

All excellent points, of course! (:

In a way, I have nothing to add -- except in the chronological order of things.

The Precautionary Principle at first blush may appear to offer a bit of security in a time of extraordinary innovation, or in cases when we face a new problem. "Act now, and work out the details later," becomes the default policy. In other words, if something might be harmful to human health, it is better to err on the side of caution and quickly act to mitigate the threat.

The two most visible applications of the Precautionary Principle in science are GHG and C-l9, as has already been pointed out. And in both cases the science and predictions are reliant on and completely carried out with computer models. That is not a bug, that is a feature of the Precautionary Principle.

In both cases, there is a computer model that is central to modeling the scientific data. These models are then utilized to make projections of future events, and these projections are used by politicians to respond. And it happens that in both of the cases mentioned above, drastic changes to nearly every aspect of society are recommended to avoid the modelled outcomes.

Those of us who are more process-oriented are already experiencing some respiratory problems at this point in the argument! We are finding ourselves surrounded by people who are rushed to pull the trigger on some policy, but in most cases have either not understood, or, have not been honest about this fact: they and the politicians are using a computer model to guess at both the science and the future.

The computer model for the most recent global outbreak was produced by Neil Ferguson; it was immediately used by politicians world wide on c....actnow org to impose varying levels of societal Loch Downe. Overnight, emergency powers were appealed to by politicians, and, shockingly, quarantine was imposed not on the sick, but on the healthy. Responses ranged from governmental stay-at-home orders, applications for permits to leave home, and extremely high fines for violators in France, to milder restrictions within some states in the US. But all governments were using the same output from Ferguson's model.

Prof Robert Dingwall talks about the Precautionary Principle in relation to Covid in the UK (from about 8:00):
https://youtu.be/YHRwsBNKuM4

I agree JP.
In the Australian context, (and I'm sure this is true for many other countries), the average age of death with Covid is consistently 1.7-1.8 years above the normal life expectancy. In other words, people are living longer and fewer people are dying. This is borne out in the annual mortality statistics for the state of Victoria (Australia); total deaths in 2019 were 43,944. Total deaths in 2020 were down to 41,147 - a decrease of 6%. People died [i]with[/i] the virus and not [i]from[/i] it. In Australia Covid-19 has had no impact on mortality rates, and therefore meets no definition of “deadly.” You might argue that the lower death rate has been due to the lockdowns. The stats show that of the 25,279 'infections' in people under 70 years old, only 58 (0.2%) died. To put it simply; [i]for every 1000 people under 70 who get Covid, only 2 of them die[/i]. I'll bet those 'deaths' had serious underlying health conditions also.

And yet the government in Victoria continues to impose harsh lockdown measures, which have thwarted millions of young people's education, ripped families apart, increased the incidence of mental health problems and suicide, and destroyed small businesses. Governments benefit from people being dependent on the system, being uneducated and afraid, and doing what they're told.
Not only that, but governments have [i]prevented[/i] doctors from prescribing clinically proven cures such as ivermectin. Almost unbelievable. The reality is that the healthcare system doesn't benefit from people being healthy, [u]it benefits from people being sick[/u]. (Just ask big pharma).

The most grievous virus over the last 12 months has been the worldwide spread of deliberate misinformation and authoritarianism.

[quote=jacmac post_id=4667 time=1614007338 user_id=6230]
I am happily surprised at the rapid reduction of cases nationally since early January.
[/quote]

It was after the WHO [url=https://www.who.int/news/item/20-01-2021-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users-2020-05]issued a memorandum[/url], directing PCR testing laboratories to use cycle thresholds of 30 or less. Prior to this, cycle thresholds for RT-PCR testing was set between 38-45 cycles (depending on country). Remember that these tests are exponential; each cycle multiplies available genetic product by 2. The difference between 2^30 cycles and 2^38 is massive. To see why high cycle thresholds are a problem, see [url=https://lockdownsceptics.org/false-positives-in-pcr-a-primer/]here[/url]. The world's leading PCR experts have repeatedly said that cycle thresholds of 30 or more (even [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWNkJUDctdk]25 or more[/url]) result in [url=https://lockdownsceptics.org/the-pcr-false-positive-pseudo-epidemic/]majority false positives[/url], otherwise known in the media as [i]asymptomatic cases[/i] (people with a positive test but no symptoms of COVID illness whatsoever - they are just PCR false positives, nothing more nothing less).

It's a controlled clown show, sadly.

JP,
Yes we are both responsible for our own welfare.
[color=#0040FF]<moderator edit>[/color]
JP:[quote]One important story that was kept out of the news was that the percentages of covid cases and deaths were higher in the strict lockdown areas.[/quote]
That does not ring true to my memory. Early on the large urban areas had more cases; true. They initiated "lockdowns" partially because of the lack of Federal guidance and help, and because it was what they could do in the face of very active viral spread. I was aware of the lack of press discussion that the spread seemed to be high among household members. It is difficult to come up with a great plan when half the country is in serious denial.
When the virus did spread to the more rural areas ( thus the entire U S ) the death rates in the anti "lockdown" controlled states were about 3 to 4 times greater. For awhile my state, Arizona, was one of the worst places in the world.
I am happily surprised at the rapid reduction of cases nationally since early January.
Lets hope it continues.
Jack

jacmac

I'm two years older than you, and believe me, I understand your concern about Covid 19. But Cargo has an excellent question: "What happened to the science though?" We are each responsible for our own welfare, and I have no intention of criticizing your decision to get the vaccine, I'm going to wait to see how things shake out. The problem I'm looking at is the terrible job our institutions did in dealing with the crisis. The CDC is emblematic of these failures; the initial word from the CDC was there was little risk from Covid 19 . From

[url] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/09/16/how-cdc-failed-local-health-officials-desperate-covid-help/3435762001/[/url]

"The week America lost the fight against the new coronavirus, the nation’s premier health agency promised local officials it had the virus under control. It was the third week in February. Senior leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention repeatedly brushed off calls to take COVID-19 more seriously. They dismissed concerns from Minnesota to Hawaii that their plan to contain the outbreak by screening overseas travelers was riddled with inconsistencies."

"The CDC missed the early spread of the new coronavirus, blinded by its own decision to limit screening for the virus after its initial testing kit failed. That was one of the agency’s most consequential scientific errors."

Please read the entire article.

The other huge failure was the media's political bias, manifested in two ways: 1. Trumpeting the dangers of Covid 19 at every opportunity, while ignoring the dangers to life and health posed by the draconian measures imposed at the state level. One important story that was kept out of the news was that the percentages of covid cases and deaths were [i]higher[/i] in the strict lockdown areas. 2. There was a great deal of evidence that Hydroxychloroquine had the potential to alleviate Covid symptoms. Several doctors who treated Lupus and other auto-immune diseases, and thus had prescribed HCQ for their patients for years, reported great success in treating Covid symptoms. But because President Trump had touted HCQ there was major pushback that distorted the story.

Why bring all this up? First, because sooner or later we're going to face another crisis - another pandemic, or heightened solar flares with Carrington Event potential, or the Yellowstone caldera becoming active.... The potential loss of life, or even our survival, will largely depend on our institutions to identify problems and disseminate the necessary information. Second and more immediately, the disfunction we see in astrophysics and standard cosmology is abetted by the same lack of scientific rigor and pop-sci approach towards things celestial. We shouldn't tolerate it.