₿oogaloo
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@TimGroves
I agree that co-morbidities are certainly relevant to disease outcomes. But I have not seen any data suggesting that co-morbidities have any effect on infection rates.
Quite the contrary, from my understanding, we are all going to catch this sooner or later: young and old, rich and poor, fat and thin, healthy and unhealthy, vaccinated and unvaccinated. The co-morbidities become a factor in whether a person is likely to have a severe case.
I agree that obesity is one of the most important co-morbidities, and obesity is more prevalent in Western countries. Diet may be generally better in Asia, but Asia has its own co-morbidities, particularly Vitamin D deficiency, which is also closely linked to bad Covid outcomes. Another issue in Asia is air pollution, and which is terrible in Seoul — maybe not so bad in Tokyo.
@TDK Now we are starting to find common ground. I agree that this has gone on too long. From the beginning, the priority should have been to study repurposed drugs that might be used for early treatment. China was doing small chloroquine phosphate trials in January 2020! Favorable ivermectin studies were coming out in mid-2020. Once we had reasonable treatment protocols, economies should have started reopening. Instead, Western governments insisted on waiting for a vaccine and novel/expensive new treatments (and Korea being a US vassal state went along with it). The refusal to consider early treatments, and the persecution of physicians who spoke out in favor of early treatments: This was the crime against humanity. This is why Fauci and friends should be in jail.
Yes, it has gone on too long. It was not only mismanaged, but the response has been a criminal enterprise. But my point is that masks were never the problem, and it was always wrong to say “masks don’t work.” They were always part of the solution, especially in the beginning when we needed to slow the spread for the first six months, which was the time required to identify early treatment protocols.
Okay. My last post about masks because everyone’s mind is probably already made up:
@EoinW
You may recall that in the early days of the pandemic, the superspreader events were events with a lot of vocalization. Churches and choir practice, for example. In Korea it was often call centers with many people sitting in close quarters and talking all day long. It was never buses and subways where people sit in close quarters but usually do NOT talk . Here is the visual evidence of what happens when you speak without a mask, but for some people, I know, seeing is NOT believing:
Yes, we learned later that the virus also passes by aerosolized transmission, but that is in addition to droplet transmission, not instead of droplet transmission. Besides, areosolized transmission requires a longer exposure in a confined space with poor ventilation.@Absolute Galore
Japan never used Ivermectin on a wide scale, though the head of the Tokyo Medical Association made favorable comments about it in August 2021. And to the extent it was used, it was used primarily for treatment, not prophylaxis. Korea has its own co-morbidities. Obesity is not as big a problem, but Vitamin-D deficiency is more severe. That is why as recently as December, Korea had to go back to strict social distancing because the hospitals were full with only 7000 new infections per day — a drop in the bucket compared to the US. Finally, I don’t think there were a lot of unreported cases here. Track and trace remained in effect, so many people were sent for testing even if they had no symptoms. Several times my employer sent me for testing because someone in the office was a positive case.@TDK
Understood with the comment about the kids, but that speaks to a different issue. Speaking from personal experience, the kids here would rather be in school wearing masks than sitting at home without a mask and connecting by Zoom. The kids have plenty of time to play at home after school with other kids in a maskless environment. If the message from the parents is that it is normal and common sense to wear a mask in schools, the kids adjust just fine. If the message from the parents is that this is scarring you for life, then I fear it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
@jpbrichta
Again, there was some use of Ivermectin in Japan, but this was never widespread, and it was never used as a prophylaxis strategy.Bottom line: This is the real life clinical trial. There are 25 million people in greater Seoul, and almost all have complied with widespread masking. We never had a lockdown. People always went along with their normal routines, except that the size of gatherings in restaurants was limited. I am convinced that widespread masking is a big factor, and I have not heard a better explanation. I look at the other major cities in Asia, and compare those to the major cities in the West, and there is an obvious difference in behaviors and outcomes. I think that is undeniable, but I also recognize that nobody in the West wants to see what I see.
Are you based in Thailand now? As repressive as it may be, does it still seem repressive if you do not read the news?
Get out while you can; but, where to go is not clear…
I think the best bet is a non-Western country, where you don’t speak the language, and where most human interaction is with people you know personally. V. Arnold, I might join you down in Thailand. The Korean countryside would be OK, but city living here in Seoul is becoming too expensive, and living with 25 million neighbors is not good for the nerves. My first choice would be Nong Khai on the Laos border. Great memories of that hamlet . . .
@TDK re yesterday’s #101520
Yes, I still maintain that masks work, and I think the analysis in that link is some of the worst I have ever seen.
Following the principle of Occam’s Razor, masks are the best explanation for why Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, China, and Singapore have done much, much, much much much better over the last two years than the West. No, it’s not the kimchee. No, it’s not the sweet and sour pork. No, it is not the sushi. No, it’s not even the chili crab. It’s the masks.
Yes, cases have finally taken off in Japan and Korea. More than 90,000 cases in Korea today. Proof positive that masked never worked, right? Not so fast. This is all Omicron, which we all know is much more contagious. The masks were never expected to be a perfect shield to keep cases at zero. They were only intended to produce better overall outcome than what we would see if there had been no masks. Even though cases are way up, they are still much much lower per capita than we saw in the US, even though population density is much higher. Yes, the masks work. No, they are not perfect. But they the reason the numbers are better, obviously better, and why the numbers will very likely continue to better on a per capita basis in Korea and Japan than in Western countries.
I look at the overall picture, the biggest clinical trial on the effectiveness of masking that has ever been conducted, and I declare victory! I know this will not sit well with many here, but just look at the data!
What V. Arnold said was right.
These things go in cycles. Pretty soon boschorowitz will leave in a huff promising/threatening to never return. Daily messages will fall back under 80 so that everything can be read on two pages. It will get a little boring. Then deflationista will restart the insulting bot-like propaganda. Then boschorowitz will reappear, with just a couple messages per day in the beginning, but gradually increasing from there. It will eventually drive off deflationista. Then someone will say something that sets off boschorowitz and the whole cycle repeats.
I appreciate boschorowitz ‘s contributions. I would appreciate them more without the drama and the cycle.
It is one reason I rarely comment any longer…
It’s a Midwinter Night’s Nightmare in the northern hemisphere. I have started a couple of responses, but then deleted them before I finished. We are going through a phase that has become more closed to nuance and dissent.
“The lineup of speakers today at Ottawa’s trucker protest includes Maxime Bernier, head of the People’s Party of Canada, which includes in its formal platform a denial of climate change, advocates against immigrants and multi-culturalism, along with the usual pushing of the military industrial complex (overt focus on veterans and resource extraction).”
This has me scratching my head. Any mass protest is going to naturally attract people at the ends of the political spectrum. Those are the people most likely to show up. Those are the people with the most experience in organizing. To me, that is to be expected. The real test for any protest is whether people who are not at the ends of the spectrum also show up. A protest will be ignored unless ordinary people show up. They did for Occupy Wall Street (before it was co-opted). They did for Black Lives Matter (before it was co-opted). They are doing so for the Freedom Convoy. Will it be co-opted? I hope not. But it is natural for the usual suspects to try.
It is also natural for the authoritarians to try to discredit the message by infiltrating the demonstration and planting false flags — like the lone Confederate flag that was spotted and a lone Nazi flag that was spotted. If I were to bet money, I would bet that those came from people trying to discredit the protest. That’s just the way the government operates these days. Infiltrate and discredit.
The key to success is for the protest to remain mainstream as along as possible.
by freezing Givesendgo funds of course!
Yup. We need some uncensorable money, something that the courts and the politicians cannot enjoin or control. Something beyond the reach of the ruling class. Something like Bitcoin.
That was a good read. I am hungry for more good commentary on the situation in Ottawa and Windsor.
Best analysis I have seen — two well-spoken Canadians explain what’s going on, one on the ground in Ottawa. The interviewer, Peter McCormack, is English. (The relevance to bitcoin only comes in at the very end when they talk about the alternative that was set up to gofundme)
all that really mattered to me was the odds of dying if I became a case
I think this is a mistake. I think that Long Covid is a real thing. I think that short term thinking (do I die in the acute stage?) is too shortsighted, especially given that there is a possibility of reinfection. I think long term exposure to spike protein is a real risk. I think repeated exposure to spike protein vaccines, especially gene transfer vaccines that produce a different amount of spike protein in every person, is also a real risk. I think this is an unnatural bioweapon, and that the Chinese might have a good reason (other than national pride) to try to keep their people from catching this. But maybe I am just paranoid . . .
The woman, 22, was able to overcome the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus which causes COVID-19
The Epoch Times has an anti-China agenda. Fine. They also recognize that Fauci is a liar. Good. But why can’t they put these two together? For two years that have tried to rename the SARS-Cov2 virus as the “CCP virus.” It never caught on, not even with their own readers, which is why they have to remind the reader in every single article about Covid-19 that CCP virus stands for “Chinese Communist Party” virus. It’s become annoyingly pedantic. Not because they seek to assign responsibility, which the media should, but because they are giving Fauci a pass. Rather than “CCP Virus” they might try “FBF Virus” — as in “funded by Fauci”. Or maybe the CCP+FBF Virus.
this is the list of cowards (all invited) who were too chicken to go
There needs to be an investigation, and these people should be at the top of the list of those investigated. Those who suppressed early treatments must be held accountable. Those who subverted doctors who prescribed early treatments should be stripped of their licenses and should go to jail.
I enjoyed watching the two hour exchange between Bret Weinstein and Chris Martenson. Congratulations to both of them as they take a well-deserved victory lap. The official narrative has truly broken down, vindicating Malone, Kory, Marik, McCullough, Rose, van den Bossche, Lawrie and others. Although truth is on their side, truth is not as well funded as the now-discredited Fauci-Baric-Batwoman-Gates-Tedros-Walensky camp that has tried to destroy them. I really hope that some of them go to jail.
I liked today’s Sun Tzu. Superb! I got a good laugh out of that. But the snowfall comparison was even better.
It’s baaaaccckkk…. The village idiot bot. With another twitter cut and paste, right on schedule, just as expected, inhuman as ever.
“If the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication cuts ties with Russian banks, Germany would have no way of paying Moscow for its natural gas contracts.”
There is always a ₿ackup payment option to the SWIFT system.
Wow! What a totally amazing painting that is…The detail and it’s subtlety is fascinating…Just how does one embrace the totality of it?
First I look at the woman. Then I try to figure what’s going on in the painting behind her. Then I read the title. Then I notice the balance, which I probably would not have noticed for a long time if I did not read the title.
“nobody talks while they are on the subway or bus, and everyone wears a mask.” Yup. Sounds wonderful.
I forgot to add: Virtually everyone with eyes glued to their phone. To me that’s the creepy part. YMMV.
can anyone point me toward some reliable independent data on the safety profile of this particular vaccine.
All 15,139 participants who had received at least one dose of vaccine or placebo through the data cutoff date of the final efficacy analysis were assessed for unsolicited adverse events. The frequency of unsolicited adverse events was higher among vaccine recipients than among placebo recipients (25.3% vs. 20.5%), with similar frequencies of severe adverse events (1.0% vs. 0.8%), serious adverse events (0.5% vs. 0.5%), medically attended adverse events (3.8% vs. 3.9%), adverse events leading to discontinuation of dosing (0.3% vs. 0.3%) or participation in the trial (0.2% vs. 0.2%), potential immune-mediated medical conditions (<0.1% vs. <0.1%), and adverse events of special interest relevant to Covid-19 (0.1% vs. 0.3%). One related serious adverse event (myocarditis) was reported in a vaccine recipient, which occurred 3 days after the second dose and was considered to be a potentially immune-mediated condition; an independent safety monitoring committee considered the event most likely to be viral myocarditis. The participant had a full recovery after 2 days of hospitalization. No episodes of anaphylaxis or vaccine-associated enhanced Covid-19 were reported.
Two deaths related to Covid-19 were reported, one in the vaccine group and one in the placebo group. The death in the vaccine group occurred in a 53-year-old man in whom Covid-19 symptoms developed 7 days after the first dose; he was subsequently admitted to the ICU for treatment of respiratory failure from Covid-19 pneumonia and died 15 days after vaccine administration. The death in the placebo group occurred in a 61-year-old man who was hospitalized 24 days after the first dose; the participant died 4 weeks later after complications from Covid-19 pneumonia and sepsis.
More here:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107659is that what they do in africa?
Sounds like a reasonable comment. I am troubled by masks with holes 1000x the size of a virus, being able to stop it. “People in Asia eat more rice” sounds good too. Most people in the west practice social distancing. And Asians still get on subways and buses. Overall, not totally convincing.
I thought that Africa was doing better because of a combination of two things: (i) the widespread use of Ivermectin, and (ii) the much greater percentage of time people spend outdoors. That does not negate the effectiveness of masking and social distancing. It just shows that there are other variables that can also reduce transmission.
Yes, Asians get on subways and buses. But virtually nobody talks while they are on the subway or bus, and everyone wears a mask. People do not even wear N95 masks — nobody wears an N95 mask. But they are not makeshift DIY cloth bandana masks either. Although people crowd into buses, subways and elevators, people do not spend that much time in those enclosed spaces. Most of the aeresol transmission comes from people sharing the same unventilated air for several hours. Remember: a single virus particle is not going to cause disease. You need more exposure than that, a higher inoculum.
Hooray. Steve Kirsch got 4 out of 6 correct. He gets bonus points for getting the most important 4 correct.
The two where Steve missed the mark were where he dissed masks and social distancing. Why Steve, why? Look at the data! Look at the scoreboard! It is not even close! In Asia, where masking and social distancing are widespread, we are totally kicking your ass. It is mostly in the US, which has the worst statistics by a mile, and where there has been the most resistance from Day 1 to masking and social distancing, where there is a “blinders on” religious resistance to masking and social distancing. And just look at the numbers! Not even close!
I have my complaints against the pro-pharma kiss-the-ring vaccine-only slavish and mindless obeisance of the Korean approach. But give credit where credit is due. When it comes to controlling transmission, we are totally kicking your ass, and it is because of masking and social distancing.
Apart from these two blind spots, good work, and please continue the good fight!
“Both arguably WITH not FROM”
Or perhaps “WITH and partially FROM” — how do we categorize that? WITH? FROM? BOTH?
“The people still engaging with disruptive commenters at this point have equal responsibility for degrading the dialogue. What the hell are you trying to prove at this point. Fucking stop already.”
The bot version of delationista is only capable of cutting and pasting tweets and adding insults. No surprise there — the bot is designed to be divisive and to provoke a response. That’s part of its programming. That’s why there is no humility, no conceding a point, no empathy, and no appreciation for nuance — that’s not part of its programming. I sometimes respond, briefly, but without any expectation of honest engagement. Why do I do it? Some of these things should not go unanswered.
The sheep dog picture is the art of the day for me.
As far as today’s essay, I will repeat what I have already said several times. The “from/with Covid” distinction is a false dichotomy. We would like a world where there is a singular cause for all bad things that happen, but that is not how life works. Several days ago Ilargi asked for evidence of single Omicron death. I pointed out that one of the articles in the debt rattle for that same day referred to an Omicron death in Israel. I linked to an article noting two Omicron deaths in Korea on the same day. But now these do not count because the articles did not rule out any other contributing causes??? Does that make any sense? That’s not how we keep data. It never has been. Doctors have a choice for what to write on the death certificate. When there are multiple contributing causes, they often pick one. They do not list them all. They will often select the “last straw” that pushes the patient over the edge. We are moving the goalposts if we insists on making a from/with distinction at this stage.
Likewise, it may be a mistake to focus solely on death and ignore chronic disease. Omicron might not trigger a cytokine storm like the original strain and delta, but we can expect that it is binding to ACE2 receptors everywhere, and that cannot be a good thing. I have refused the gene transfer vaccines because of my concern about repeated exposure to the spike protein and its interactions with ACE2 receptors. For that reason, I am as wary of Omicron as I am of the vaccines, especially because we lack the long term data of immune protection. We do not have the data to dismiss Omicron as “one and done.” This is not a natural virus. It is a bioweapon. Omicron is not a naturally evolved strain, but appears to have been engineered with carefully selected mutations to enhance infectiousness. Maybe it was done with good intentions, but I see it as yet another grand mass scale experiment, just like the first round of vaccines.
Those who are responsible need to be held accountable.
“Well guess what! Today I found out on a financial website of all places, that the Germans were not fooled by the rubber Sherman tanks. Proving that Germans have a sense of humor, the Luftwaffe bombed some of these rubber Sherman tanks with wooden bombs!”
You mean woodies for the rubbers?
“And she’s outdone herself this time: Glyphosate causes COVID. Nope, not kidding.”
Not so fast. That is not what she wrote. Rather, in the early days of the pandemic, in May 2020, she wrote an article noting, correctly, that some people had a strong innate immune response, while others had severe cases. She hypothesized that Glyphosate might play a role in that. The original piece is here:
https://www.ashtarcommandcrew.net/profiles/blogs/connecting-the-dots-glyphosate-and-covid-19-by-stephanie-seneffThe article that Deflationista linked to is a hit piece that creates a misleading impression.
I am not saying that I agree with Seneff now, or that I ever agreed with her hypothesis. Only that I disapprove of Deflationista’s reliance on hit pieces full of ad hominem, strawman, and non sequitur logical fallacies to try to discredit people it disagrees with. I have no problem with researchers forming hypotheses and then testing them. That’s what science is. That some hypotheses turn out to be flat out wrong, or remain unproven, does not by itself discredit the person who made them.
Is it too extreme to suggest that those who violated the Nuremberg Code in 2021-2022 should face the same consequences as those who violated the Nuremberg Code in 1939-1945?
Mark Dolan’s prediction really nailed it:
“in a similar way to those who now claim never to have supported the Iraq war”Exactly!
A little like Germany after WWII, when everyone who had served in the army claimed: “I was the cook.”
“The best example I saw was in a local Greek paper -in English- that not just called every positive test a “case”, a widely accepted piece of nonsense …”
Not sure I agree with this. It makes perfect sense to me to define a positive test as a case. Doing that creates a bright line rule. It makes sense in countries that are still trying to track and trace, and have people who test positive stay at home, and have their family members quarantine at home too. I realize that tests can be problematic if the cycle threshold is too high, but that is a separate issue. As long as the cycle threshold is appropriate, a positive test tells you something that is relevant from a public health perspective.
What is the alternative? Defining a case as a person with symptoms? How do you measure that if many people with symptoms do not report? Defining a case as a doctor’s diagnosis? Again, how do you collect that data, and where do doctor’s draw the line? Does a case mean a hospitalization? If you move that far on the spectrum, and that’s the only data you are paying attention to, then you’ve pretty much given up on containment. For many countries that have given up on containment, a positive test might be an antiquated and useless data point. But for those that are still trying to track and trace, it is still the most relevant data point.
Same issue with the “with/from” distinction, whether talking about deaths or hospitalizations. Of course we can conceptually distinguish the person who goes to the hospital with a broken bone, and happens to have an infection that is not causing disease. But for other cases, the distinction might not be so easy to make? How to draw the line? Are health systems set up to collect and filter data that way? Is it practical to expect that? When disease has multiple contributing causes, how do you deal with that when you are compiling data? I don’t think we can simply dismiss all of the data as meaningless. Rather, it is better to keep collecting it according to the same parameters (for consistency), but to recognize that it will never be perfect.
Simon Johnson was doing great work back in 2009, and then he seems to have disappeared. For awhile he was doing a blog with James Kwak, but then Kwak basically took over. When that happened the blog lost focus and I stopped reading.
Barry Ritzholz also had a great blog back then, but he eventually threw in the towel and went back to making money in the corrupt system, toning down all of the criticism, even though the system remains rotten to the core.
“When can we stop talking about Covid? So much bullshit…so little time…”
I would love to resume the uplifting conversation about Bitcoin and the broken financial system. Did you see the recent Michael Hudson transcript over on NC talking about the Marten’s article about the Fed’s illegal loans, which have been unreported in the mainsteam press? Great stuff. An excerpt from Hudson:
Well, what happened, apparently, was that while the Dodd-Frank Act was being rewritten by the Congress, Janet Yellen changed the wording around and she said, “Well, how do we define a general liquidity crisis?” Well, it doesn’t mean what you and I mean by a liquidity crisis, meaning the whole economy is illiquid.
She said, “If five banks need to borrow, then it’s a general liquidity crisis.” Well, the problem, as she points out, is it’s the same three big banks, again and again, and again and again.
And these are not short-term loans. She points out that they were 14-day loans; there were longer loans. And they were rolled over, not overnight loans, not day-to-day loans, not even week-to-week loans. But month after month, the Fed was pumping money into JP Morgan and Citibank and Goldman.
But then she points out that, or at least she told me, that these really weren’t Citibank and Morgan Chase; it was to their trading affiliates. Now this is exactly what Dodd-Frank was supposed to prevent.
Dodd-Frank was supposed to protect the depository institutions by trying to go a little bit to restore the Glass-Steagall Act that Clinton and the Obama thugs that came in to the Obama administration all got rid of.
It was supposed to say, “OK, we’re not going to let banks having their trading facilities, the gambling facilities, on derivatives and just placing bets on the financial markets – we’re not supposed to help the banks out of these problems at all.”
So I think the reason that the newspapers are going quiet on this is the Fed broke the law. And it wants to continue breaking the law.
“I wouldn’t take any vaccine at this point in time if they offered a million $$$ per injection…”
Steve Kirsch also prefers to avoid all the Covid vaccines if possible, but here he explains why Novavax and Covaxin are better choices than the gene therapies currently available in the US:
WHO approves Novavax and COVAXIN
