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Government response to Covid-19 explained in a single video
Addendum: Suitable narrative courtesy of “Bell Curve”:
Government: We must lockdown due to this terrible disease!
Data literate people: Hey, good news, this is a nasty disease if you fit certain profiles but for most people, this is not that big a deal.
Government: We must lockdown again due to this terrible disease!
Data literate people: Guys! Please! Listen, not only is this not that big a deal, we now know early treatment means this is REALLY not a big deal.
Government: We must lockdown yet again due to this terrible disease!
Data literate people: Oh for fuck sake…
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Mrs Moore’s interpretation of this delightful video was to offer a comparison with a family we know. The parents are wise and accomplished and the (now adult) children are all, well, how can I put it, something more in the nature of a reversion to the mean. All the parental help they have had is entirely and eternally a waste of effort.
Government: We must lockdown due to this terrible disease!
Data literate people: Hey, good news, this is a nasty disease if you fit certain profiles but for most people, this is not that big a deal.
Government: We must lockdown again due to this terrible disease!
Data literate people: Guys! Please! Listen, not only is this not that big a deal, we now know early treatment means this is REALLY not a big deal.
Governmentt: We must lockdown yet again due to this terrible disease!
Data literate people: Oh for fuck sake…
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Yeah, the video is perfect.
Give the sheep guns and armor and the analogy is closer.
Government: We must have more lockdown because this terrible disease causes Tourettes!!!
[…] From Government response to Covid-19 explained in a single video. This is the relevant text: […]
When sheep are born, their immediate instinct is to die. Whether it’s drowning, walking in front of moving vehicles or getting tangled in wire – they seem to seek death. I live in a sheep farming region, and witness it.
No wonder people get termed ‘sheep’ or ‘sheeple’. The short video is stunningly accurate in its analogy.
Completely unrelated to the post, but I owe a few people here a mea culpa relating to some old debates we had.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/brian-sicknick-death-strokes/2021/04/19/36d2d310-617e-11eb-afbe-9a11a127d146_story.html
I was wrong. Astonishingly, an otherwise-healthy guy in his early 40s seemingly did have two strokes the day after being in a gigantic riot, all seemingly by coincidence. I still have something of a hard time believing this, but if I’m going to use references that back up my side of things, I should admit when I’m apparently wrong, as well.
(Also, relating to an even older discussion on here – the bank I work for, who promised to add diversity training sessions almost a year ago? I still haven’t seen any diversity training on our internal learning platform. Indeed, I’ve seen nothing on this front whatsoever aside from possibly the quarterly CEO emails being about 5% fluffier than they already were.)
re Alsadius’ comment, I recall a few years back a UK criminal case where a chap died of a heart attack a few hours after being hit on the noggin by a thug. On medical advice the court concluded that there was no evidence that the noggin blow had caused the heart attack. So the thug was convicted of assault not manslaughter.
Alsadius, your comment is appreciated.
As with George Floyd, so with Brian Sicknick, it was (IIRC) a timely remark of bobby b’s that first alerted me – and this blog generally – to the possible falsity of the PC narrative.
I researched that useful hint and updated my post a long time ago – but left my original text visible, for honesty and to show, as I said in my updates,
It is interesting that even the WaPo has now wholly abandoned the fake narrative. I will not hold my breath waiting for them to abandon the pretence that they did not know it was fake while they were pushing it.
how someone cautious of the MSM can still be deeply deceived by them
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
Amen.
It strikes me that the conversation in the OP sort of propagates the great liberal lie, the idea that the government are there to help you, that their motivation is to benefit others. You know the whole notion that they anoint themselves “public servants”, while ruling over us. Somehow it has become widely accepted that government is the only organization (aside perhaps from charities) that act only in the interest of others and not their own self interest. Which plainly isn’t true. Everything a government does is driven by their two key goals — getting re-elected, and growing the power and budget of government departments. Politicians and governments are SPECTACULARLY successful at these sorts of goals, and Covid has been unbelievably useful to the worst sort in advancing these goals for themselves.
Everyone (excluding the truly mendacious) who advocates a government program does so under the delusion of this great liberal lie.
It is not clear that those nations that did not lockdown do not have a higher Covid Death Rate than ourselves – indeed they have a lower Covid Death Rate (in proportion to their population). Not just Sweden, but even very poor countries such as Belarus and Nicaragua.
It is also clear that Early Treatment for vulnerable people with a combination of existing medications, can reduce Covid deaths by about 80%.
I here publicly apologise for not denouncing the “a couple of weeks to flatten the curve” lockdown of March 2020. Essentially I just looked at my own bellybutton, for months, unable to really grasp what most governments were doing.
I also publicly apologise for not supporting Early Treatment with a combination of existing medications for months – I kept waiting and waiting for the establishment to act, and they never did. Indeed they actively SMEARED effective Early Treatment.
Meanwhile the lies continue – just now the BBC were blaming rising unemployment on “the pandemic”, not telling the truth that the rising unemployment (and everything else) is due to the RESPONSE of Western governments, their lockdowns and controls.
My local health authorities here in Oregon are STILL stressing Washing Your Hands Often.
Because it was The Official Truths a year and change ago (and already looking like it wasn’t important, if you looked closely).
Now even the WHO has finally abandoned caring about fomite transmission, but the county and state will … never change their guidance on that, I imagine.
Paul Marks,
To the contrary, it IS clear the that those nations that did not lockdown do not have higher Covid death rate than lockdowners.
Linear regression analysis of Deaths/1m vs Lockdown Stringency (per BSG at Oxford) shows a positive, NOT negative, correlation between higher lockdown stringency and higher death rates.
Now, correlation is not causation, and the Rsquared value is quite low.
I believe the path of causality is likely to be:
Reported Covid Deaths —> Panicked Politicians * Excited Epidemiologists getting their 15 minutes of Fame * Hysterical Media Doomnfearmongering + Other Unknown Factors —> Higher Stringency
The Bottom Line is: More Stringent Lockdowns DO NOT reduce death rates
Big demonstration in London on Saturday apparently. If you are interested in joining, the details are on the telegram app. Search for ‘official voice’, or you can stroll through Laurence Fox’s twitter feed for better directions than this (I’m not familiar with the app). Not much info yet. I suspect their approach is to be vague at first then give more specific info once everyone is in the general area. Even if you don’t want to go yourself maybe you share the info with others.
mmacg – could you send a link?
Paul Marks – is it smearing to read the studies on early treatment (including HCQ Early) and conclude that I do not think that early treatment is so effective as you?
After all, there are a lot of preprints without peer review, and a lot of retrospective trials – cut them out and the reviewed double-blind randomised control trials (the gold standard) do not show significant effects of the treatments, or only minimally so.
For all those who will say that good retrospectives are as good as DB RCTs, and that we should include preprints – would you be happy to have a covid vaccination that had not had a peer-reviewed DB RCT?
As for Sweden, here’s The Lancet
On Dec 20, 2020, COVID-19 deaths in Sweden had reached more than 8000
or 787 deaths per 1 million population, which is 4·5 to ten times higher than its neighbours.
The same authors, in April:
As of April 16, 2021, more than 13 700 people have died from COVID-19 in Sweden. The country has one of the highest infection rates in western Europe according to Our World in Data COVID-19 statistics, with 606 new infections per million per day, while its neighbours Denmark, Finland, and Norway reported 115, 62, and 112 new infections per million per day, respectively (April 15, 2021).
Our World In Data, cases/million, shows a first wave that was as bad as the UK, a peak in June 2020 that the UK missed, and a winter 20-21 peak almost as bad as the UK. Norway and Finland were far better, Denmark almost as bad as Sweden.
Deaths show a similar pattern.
You say that like its a bad thing. I could not care less about infection rates (but in general principle, the more the better), only things that matters is who is getting infected. Sweden did great by not locking down, but did not do so great regarding protecting the genuinely vulnerable demographics. This is a very discriminating disease. You just keep asking the wrong questions, old chap.
Gingerdave,
I haven’t seen it published, I did it myself. You should too.
Very straightforward.
1. Copy the Death rates from Worldometers (or your preferred source).
2. Stringency index data from https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/covid-19-government-response-tracker
3. Download the data, open in MSExcel and run a pivot table to get the average Stringency index from start for each country to date.
4. In a table, match up Country, Death Rate., Stringency Index. Watch for differing country name spelling.
5. If you don’t have it already, install the Data Analysis Excel Add-In from File-Options.
6. From the Data Analysis menu, select Linear Regression and analyse. Make sure to tick the boxes to plot output.
7. View results, there is correlation between higher lockdown stringency and higher death rates.
Takes maybe half an hour.
The truth is revealed: More Stringent Lockdowns do not deliver lower death rates.
My suspicion is more targeted measures (i.e. protecting diabetics & people over 70) would lead to lower death rates. In other words, if only the world’s governments had listened to the Great Barrington Declaration.
I wouldn’t be surprised if mortality rates are more strongly linked to hospital cleanliness, capacity etc., than they are to the stringency of lock downs. I wouldn’t want to visit a hospital right now. Might be an idea to deep clean the hospitals before restarting cancer treatments etc.
Sweden vs. Norway. The un-pc answer to this is that Sweden has a much larger immigrant population, most of whom live in big blocks of flats in the suburbs of the bigger cities. For reasons of religion many immigrant women suffer from Vitamin D deficiency. Also diabetes.
mmacg – I meant to type “it is now clear” it came out as “it is not clear”.
Yes of course the lockdowns did not reduce the death rate over the full period – neither did the mask mandates.
That is quite clear now.
As for the worst death rate country – that is the Czech Republic, which the BBC held up as the poster child of correct (i.e. Collectivist) policy.
The worst States in the United States are New York and New Jersey – places which “did everything right” according to that totalitarian clown Tony Fauci.
As for disease spread – Taiwan basically kept the disease out, but Japan did not.
The Japanese thought they had really controlled the spread – but then did a study that showed that most people (at least in Tokyo) had been exposed to the virus.
Japan had a vaster lower death rate than ourselves because, PERHAPS, East Asians are less vulnerable to the virus than people of European genetics.
I remember one of the very few people who got seriously ill with Covid 19 in Vietnam was a visiting British airline pilot.
China may even be telling the truth when it says it has only had a few thousand dead out of a population of over a BILLION people.
To the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship such low casualties would be irrelevant – measured against the vast damage done to their enemies.
Gindgerdave – you continue to lie.
You know perfectly well that a combination of existing medications would have reduced the deaths by about 80% – but you do not care.
You are scum. Total and absolute scum.
Paul Marks,
Hate typos, too easy and common in hasty comments.
Have you seen this paper published last October?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full
“Results: Higher Covid death rates are observed in the [25/65°] latitude and in the [−35/−125°] longitude ranges. The national criteria most associated with death rate are life expectancy and its slowdown, public health context (metabolic and non-communicable diseases (NCD) burden vs. infectious diseases prevalence), economy (growth national product, financial support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate.
Conclusion: Countries that already experienced a stagnation or regression of life expectancy, with high income and NCD rates, had the highest price to pay. This burden was not alleviated by more stringent public decisions. Inherent factors have predetermined the Covid-19 mortality: understanding them may improve prevention strategies by increasing population resilience through better physical fitness and immunity.”
andd
“Variables of Interest
The studied outcome was the death rate due to Covid-19. Its association was tested with environmental [temperature, humidity, ultra-violet (UV) index]; demographic [life expectancy (LE), progression of LE]; health (CVD death rate, cancer death rate, infectious diseases death rate, obesity rate, sedentary, or inactive lifestyle); GDP and with each government response (containment and health index, stringency index, and economic support index).”
mmacg – thank you, I ran the numbers and while deaths/million did increase with stringency, the r2=0.0447 and the p-value=0.558.
Obviously that’s not significant, so we can’t associate deaths/million with stringency of lockdown.
What r2 and p-value did you get?
I like the Frontiers paper you linked. It would be interesting to group the countries based on their “stagnation or regression of life expectancy, with high income and NCD rates” and then run the same stringency/deaths analysis.
I’ve read plenty of papers that conclude lockdown worked (and have linked them here before) so perhaps the most that can be said is “answer hazy.”
There may well be too many variables to get an accurate answer.
Perry – did you miss the part about Sweden having 4.5-10x as many deaths as their neighbours? I don’t think that’s a good outcome.
Paul – which of my statements was a lie?
If you go to Ivmmeta you will see that there are 5 peer-reviewed early treatment DB RCT. I’m sure an educated gentleman like you understands risk ratios, confidence intervals and statistical significance.
Chowdhury (RCT)0.19[0.01-3.96]
Ahmed (DB RCT)0.15[0.01-2.70]
Chaccour (DB RCT)0.47[0.19-1.16]
Babalola (DB RCT)0.36[0.10-1.27]
López-Medina (DB RCT)0.33[0.01-8.11]
None of these show statistically significant effects of early treatment with IVM. Yes, the pooling of studies in the meta-analysis may show some effect, but nothing like the 80% you quote.
Why does this 80% cure not show up in the RCT?
The numbers are bollocks, but that said, as I previously said, they did a bad job of isolating the vulnerable, which is what *everyone* should have been doing. Isolating anyone else makes no damn difference at all, unless the objective is destroying civil society & buggering up the economy.