From the YGBFKM department comes this…this…thing. No words.
Beyond parody: CNN taps Greta Thunberg for expert coronavirus panel
by Brad Polumbo, Washington Examiner
The brave, hard-hitting journalists over at CNN are hosting a town hall Thursday evening on Coronavirus: Facts and Fears. Our First Amendment warriors are only bringing viewers the best of experts, such as former CDC Director Richard Besser, former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and … teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg.
You literally cannot make this stuff up. This would be a masterful parody. It could have been one of the Babylon Bee’s finest works. Yet no, this is actually the reality of CNN in 2020.
…
The same liberal journalists who have scolded people for so much as questioning the wisdom of the federal government’s top coronavirus experts, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, are now literally telling people to get their scientific analysis from Greta Thunberg.
FULL STORY HERE
They picked an ideal panelist for Fears.
It’s ironic. She’s from Sweden, which never actually locked-down or followed a quarantine, but they won’t actually have Sweden’s chief epidemiologist or epidemiologists on this controlled panel. It would be much more insightful to hear from the medical experts who using the science that everyone ever talks about wouldn’t ruin their own country than a panel of political experts who perpetuated a panic that ruined “theirs”. If this doesn’t page every Republican governor in America to follow the lead of Georgia governor Kemp and reopen their states NOW, then I don’t know what will.
There was a time when this would have been considered as fodder for a great SNL parody
Was there a time when SNL parodied the Dems as well?
Many people have commented on the similarities of fake climate science and the manufactured COVID crisis.
If you still had any doubt, wheeling out St Greta of Thunderberg as someone even vaguely relevant to this issue proves the point perfectly.
Not only did you STEAL my childhood, you STOLE my job, you STOLE my life savings, you STOLE my pension fund, you STOLE my old age.
HOW DARE YOU !!
I’m sure she will be there , speaking truth to power for us all !
I personally think those behind the curtain use Sweden to experiment this virus in a different set up.
I don’t see how these Socialist who are on any other socialist/fascist/progressive bandwagon would otherwise choose a different approach.
Kjell Stefan Löfven (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈstěːfan lœˈveːn]; officially Löfvén; born 21 July 1957) is a Swedish politician serving as Prime Minister of Sweden since 2014 and Leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party since 2012.[1]
After leaving school and completing his mandatory military service in the Swedish Air Force, Löfven qualified as a welder[citation needed] and subsequently began a career as an active trade unionist. He rose to be elected as an ombudsman within the Swedish Metalworkers’ Union (SMU) and was eventually elected as the first Chairman of IF Metall in January 2006, a major new trade union formed from a number of smaller unions, including the SMU, voting to merge.
After the resignation of Håkan Juholt, in January 2012, Löfven was unanimously selected by the executive board of the Social Democratic Party to replace him as the party’s new leader. This also made Löfven the Leader of the Opposition, despite the fact that he did not have a seat in the Riksdag at the time.[2][3]
Löfven led the Social Democrats into the 2014 election. Despite initial opinion poll leads, the party only gained a single seat, but due to the poor performance of the governing Moderate Party, who lost 23 seats, Löfven was able to form a minority coalition government with the Green Party. He was appointed Prime Minister of Sweden on 3 October. He secured a second term in the aftermath of the inconclusive 2018 election, which saw both main parties suffer losses; after a months-long impasse that set a new record for government formation, Löfven was able to secure abstentions from MPs belonging to the Centre Party, the Left Party and the Liberals, and was re-elected by the Riksdag in January 2019.
Never think Sweden is a free country.
So, one of the qualification for the panel wasn’t having a high school diploma…
All you need to qualify is…. OK. I’m stumped.
Potty trained? Maybe that’s the minimum. At least Greta is a few years past that milestone… I think.
CNN’s polls must have showed that only 83% of children were sufficiently frightened about the pandemic, so they’re bringing in the big guns to crank it up to the full 100%.
Is Pee Wee Herman still alive?
Salute!
+10 Scissor
Surely there are hundreds of experts willing to have their few seconds on TV to promote their next study we taxpayers “donote” to them.
While we’re at it, I predict a very minimal “basic flu” season this fall and early winter in the NH. It will all be the dreaded corona critter striking back at those silly states and towns that value freedom more than a 100% probability of not catching a cold.
I flew about 400 combat missions ( while taking the “terrible” malaria pill the whole time) and the advertised, documented loss rate for us on every mission was higher than for this bug even if you become infected. Just run out the probabilities for one warrior flying 100 missions at a loss rate of 0.05 for each one.
I’ll take every precaution I can, being old and having COPD, but it should be my choice to leave the house and wear a mask when buying my frozen pizzas, huh?
rant/
Gums sends…
Wow, Gums, I bet you have some stories to tell. Thank you, Sir!
Good job Gums – a bit high-risk – are you saying you lost the equivalent of one air crew for every 20 missions?
I remember an elderly gentleman here is Calgary – a hell of a nice guy – who piloted 34 Lancaster bomber missions over Germany in WW2 – when the average lifespan of an air crew was less than ~10 missions.
He could have gone home after 25 missions, but elected to stay on. Must’ve had a girl.
Sounds like you had even better luck than he did. Horse shoes. 🙂
I have followed some of the analysis discussions related to air operations and how fine the line between sustainable and failure actually is.
You would think based on tales of bravery that you could battle your way in and battle your way out, shrugging off the loses because there was a war to be won. The reality I have been offered is that far from ‘losses don’t matter’, anything over 5% loss rate would shut down air operations within a week.
During the RAF night bombing 3-4% was considered acceptable. 5% wasn’t and the raids where losses hit 8% were enough to cause panic. If we take these numbers, remove them from the impersonal balance sheets and place them back onto to the actual aircrew the numbers are terrifying.
Sure, you may have a 97% chance of returning from a raid, but remember you need to do 30 raids for a tour and if I have my maths correct you only have about 40% chance of doing a .97 30 times in a row.
What is worse when you consider it was the fact that experience did very little to improve your odds. The German night fighters developed the tactic of attacking from below with upward firing cannon. It was so effective that basically you ever got shot down, or you didn’t get intercepted in the first place. So few crews were surviving attacks to return and report it that for a massive part of the night bomber war the RAF crews had no idea what to attempt to defend against.
Remember people, war is about people. It is (and should be – if you are prepared to go to war you need to be prepared to brutally and pragmatically win it) violent and brutal, which is why you should ensure you go to great lengths in ensure you never have to actually fight one. Parabellum.
Salute!
You are correct, Craig. I was thinking about fractions of a percent.
I left out a zero. WW2 was much worse for the buffs until the Allies got fighter cover all the way. You have the statistical Monte Carlo loss probabilities about right for repeated exposure.
So think about the health care folks’ odds of becoming infected. And that was one thing I was directing my numbers at using my only real world high risk endeavor.
Gums sends….
Scissor asks if Pee Wee Herman is still alive. I think so, and he was available to appear as the “celebrity” climate expert, but his agent told him not to appear before an audience of less than a dozen.
“Jump the shark” comes to mind.
The way they pick is more indicative of early onset dementia. So sad.
Too bad the real expert on immunology, fear and stupidity is no longer with us:
https://youtu.be/JSbT7JVNEU4
OMG, talk about pushing the kid closer to the edge – it would be best to just have Fredo Cuomo or Don Le-moan on – this way they can market it as a comedy. Right now it’s under the tragedy category.
https://cheezburger.com/9484239616
What edge is “the kid” being pushed to. There is nothing wrong with her and she is fully cognisant of what she is doing. Who started saying that there was anything wrong with her in the first place? She is just a member of a family determined to profit from everyone elses brainwashing and now imprisonment
Yes, “Peak Stupid” is here.
Never underestimate the stupidity of journalists… my guess is that we’re quite a ways away from peak stupid…
Okay but traditionally claims of peak this and peak that have multiple peaks like Peak Oil.
Yes, just when you think you have hit peak and it’s all downhill from now on, someone digs a bit deeper and hits a whole new level of Brent quality stupidity.
News is all about ratings. These people are entertainers. Their jobs and salaries depend only on getting viewers. That’s the whole ball of wax, for them.
Probably some video bean-counter calculated a 35% increase in viewership if Greta Thunberg were aboard. So, they got her.
Watch Anderson Cooper listen grave-of-face to Greta’s traumatized rants. She’s for real, he’s acting.
My favorite Anderson Pooper was him with waders standing in a ditch full of water talking about flooding while the camera crew and everyone else was high and dry.
Never underestimate ratings.
FFS, you can’t see that she is acting as well ?? Go look at “HOW DARE YOU” again and all the breathless huffing an puffing. She’d been practicing in front of the mirror all week.
Well she can see that evil gas in the atmosphere so she should be able to see the evil virus as well. So maybe that’s her expertise. /sarc
Greg I have to say I thought exactly the same thing. During the “How dare you” speech she slipped out of ‘character’ every time she paused to look down at her notes. Her father is an actor and her mother an opera singer, she is well trained playing each particular part but does not have her own voice. It would be interesting to see how she responds during an interview.
The whole Greta persona has been orchestrated right from the start. I do feel sadness for her however, they have lead her to believe that she has this profound ‘greatness’ that she can personally change the world. She is nothing more than a marketing tool for the left, she is being used. And Pat Frank is right, the ratings will go through the roof. More from a voyeuristic desire to see what she can possibly come up with that is any way meaningful.
Does anyone remember Steven Colbert testifying before Congress on immigration? He (mostly) stayed in Colbert Report character and was hilarious. He even proposed entering a copy of his colonoscopy into the “record.” And why was he invited to testify before Congress on immigration? My vote is it was purely for entertainment.
Weapons-Grade Stupid. Literally. That’s the point – weaponizing the virus narrative with the specific intent to scare people into keeping the economy in the tank through the election.
Peak Stupid? You grossly underestimate the ability of the left to be stupid. They are just getting started. This current wave of stupidity hasn’t resulted in tens of millions of dead bodies…yet. Give them time.
The “experts” plugged Little Greta’s name into a publicity “model” and discovered she was the ONLY name recognized on their board of proposed “experts”. She’s the perfect spokesmodel for keeping capitalism’s industries SHUT DOWN. Thank you models!
Kenji: “The “experts” plugged Little Greta’s name into a publicity “model” and discovered she was the ONLY name recognized on their board of proposed “experts”.”
+ a lot
I think you have hit on the truth of the matter; name recognition as an activist. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.
A minor thing you left out, though it’s obvious and didn’t really need to be included, is that she is already “on sides” and if that wasn’t good enough, she can be bought.
If CNN brings in a dart throwing Chimp, then they will have all bases covered. But who watches CNN anymore? Greta has special powers…she can see in the infrared spectrum and visualize CO2. Perhaps she has other special powers that can see the Wuhan Coronavirus and warn people to quit breathing for a few minutes here and there. Just hold your breath as long as possible and then breath through your elbow.
New meaning for “Waiting to Exhale”
The alleged ability of Greta to literally see carbon dioxide is just that – alleged. In the book written (mainly) by her mother, it is explicitly stated that Greta cannot realiteten “see” CO2. Sorry about this, but such is the risk involved when going to the sources (Swedish text)
OK, so what does the book say ?
Where is the origin of this claim saying that the book is the origin of the allegedly false claim.
I recall seeing something to the effect of “when I see all that CO2 belching out of those chimneys…”.
This probably means that she fell for the typical propagandistic shots of condensing water vapour pouring out of a “smokestack” shot against the setting sun to make it look black and menacing.
It does not mean she has super natural powers , it means she is an ignorant teenager who skipped skool and know nothing of the subject they foolishly thinks she is qualified to lecture the rest of us about.
Hey, that’s why no one takes much notice of teenagers when seeking scientific expertise.
So, Trygve, please give us the full quotation in Swedish, with your prefered translation and you best shot at where this got “allegedly” misquoted / misrepresented and that this was a reference the book ghost-written by her mother.
thanks.
Ok – I shall dig out the book and give you the text segment, but I feel a bit sorry for being mistrusted. I have been the elected leader of Climate Realists of Norway, and my attitude to Greta is that she is a deluded teenager. But it is unnecessary to spread non-documented “quotes” to her.
Tryve Greta strikes a raw nerve on this site. There are scientists that comment here on this site who cannot contribute to their field of research, their theories have been shut down, some have even lost their jobs. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a lifelong career upended because of political opinion.
Consensus science is the way of things today, the scientific method kept scientists honest. Policies have been made on dishonesty and fudged figures and journalists have no scruples, if it’s not a leftist agenda it’s not published.
Greta is being used and what is really sad is that she doesn’t even know that, she actually thinks that she is important. Her whole persona was orchestrated, and on the whole she delivers her scripts reasonably well, she is an excellent marketing tool. She serves the leftist/socialist push very well. ‘They’ stole her childhood.
Can’t you see how hard it is for people once respected in lifelong careers, to watch a child who didn’t even finish high school take the world stage? They have important things to say that could make a difference in the world and they have been shut down.
They’re going to lash out Trygve, and right now she’s enjoying the limelight and the lifestyle her parents have provided for her. And it’s the planet that’s going to pay for her rants if someone doesn’t wake up to the fact that she’s is a child and in reality actually ‘knows’ nothing about science. To put Greta’s name and the Nobel prize in the same sentence is offensive to the extreme.
She’s not a ‘deluded’ teenager. She suffers from foetal alcohol syndrome, due to an abusive mother. Staying out of school is irrelevant, as she can’t progress any more.
Doesn’t she believe to have had Covid-19 ?
Than, if true, she is a specialist, as for climate too, as she is able to see CO2.
CNN isn’t wrong, really 😀 /sarc.
Greta is dying mediawise and this is a last gasp of publicity oxygen.
Yup revenue must be down for her to take this CNN gig, pretty soon we’ll see her on the game show circuit.
She’ll get the upper left-hand corner of Hollywood Squares. I think Wally Cox used to have that spot.
Sales of her mother’s book about her haven’t gone well.
Great. A child with a developmental disorder / mental condition gets a seat at the table on CNN special on climate change. She has Asperger’s syndrome which is similar to maybe even related to Autism / autistic savant disorder. Asperger’s syndrome patients have difficulties with social skills and tend to be obsessively focused (robotic) on a single idea performing the same behaviors over and over, again and again again (remember Dustin Hoffman in The Rainman). http://www.agnesian.com/blog/aspergers-disorder-and-savant-syndrome So sad, or I would say sick and embarrassing that such as CNN / cable news, climate change events etc. exploit a child like her for purely political reasons.
Danley
And what does this say about people at CNN when they think that someone like Greta has something to offer to the public? It is truly a sad commentary on the state of the Fourth Estate.
What’s even sadder is that there’s still about half of the country who are the useful idiots for a political party and its flawed ideology that will do nothing but cause harm while their motivation for acceptance is blind hatred that’s largely fueled by CNN’s politically biased talking heads spouting lies and misinformation about Trump, his administration and his supporters.
This whole nightmare started as the Obama administration pointed the Democratic party and America down a path towards Socialism which it now seems Obama wanted to assure would continue past the end of his administration by overseeing the so called ‘insurance policy’ of using false pretenses to direct the full force of the security apparatus of the United States against Trump and his administration.
The good news-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/05/13/computer-modelled-scaremongering-aint-going-to-cut-it-anymore/#more-44754
Em-pathetic appeal to select scientists, models/hypotheses without demonstratable skill, religious/ethical urgency, and a heterosexual teen girl (i.e. feminine female not on the transgender spectrum). That said, the latest guidance from Wuhan is physical distancing of 3 m, 6 if you follow the precautionary principle, or full body condom, which is a segue to the “Green New Deal” and [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate cooling… warming… change pandemic. It’s all politically reconcilable or congruent. Save the planet, dehydrate.
We have thought we were at leak stupid in the past.
Only to find out we were amazingly incorrect.
I think Albert Einstein got it about right.
We keep creeping up on Idiocracy. Day by day
I totally understand. If she can see CO2, she is easily able to see the coronas floating around. I’m sure this gives her amazing insight into the behavior of the virus.
Yes, she can see the virus floating around on CO2. She’ll probably be saying that SARS-CoV-2 rides CO2 like a horse, although I doubt that she will call it “SARS-CoV-2”, since that’s probably too complicated a word. She’ll just call it the boogie man-woman-questioning-trans thing (although that’s pretty complicated too, but she’ll try harder to remember this one, because it’s more politically correct).
Former acting CDC director Richard Besser, former HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius …
Does this mean that Besser and Sebelius are on par with Greta.
“For our entertainment today, we have a panel of intellectual peers. They all got to this place in life through differing means, but in our view, they are all three equals … Ms Sebelius, how do you feel about sitting here next to young Miss Gretta?”
I think the appropriate phrase here would be: “CNN jumped the shark.”
William
Did you mistakenly type a “j” where you meant an “h?”
The CNN promo for this sounds like an April Fools Day parody. CNN seems to sink further each day that goes by.
Take two Obama era political appointees, Dr. Gupta and Grete Thunberg and what could go wrong?
I wonder if Anderson Cooper will ask Besser how the CDC could have such an alarming lack of a quality assurance program that they could cross contaminate most of the SARS-COV2 test kits that the CDC produced early on in this pandemic. That utter failure of the CDC caused testing in the US to be delayed by 6 weeks or more. A lazy person would just blame this on Trump, but the glaring lack of quality assurance must be an endemic problem at the CDC and therefore did not arise recently. I wonder is Cooper will ask Besser about the sad state of CDC data.
There is no such thing as “peak stupid”. Peak stupid is a physical impossibility. Stupidity has no limits.
I think the operative phrase would be boundless stupidity.
Einstein thought so. Infinite stupidity.
Well, they can push us to behavior-forced extinction. I don’t know if that’s ‘peak’, but it ought to finish things.
CNN is propaganda messaging. Greta is a propaganda tool.
It will certeainly be a great “CON – FERENCE”.
I can see no other reason to have Greta Thunberg on the panel other than to link coronavirus to CAGW.
She saw two CO2 molecules bond and land in the snow on her lawn in Sweden. A palm tree popped out.
She immediately thought of that old Corona beer commercial where a palm tree lights up with Christmas lights.
I’m betting she will just sit there silently and defer to others if asked a direct question about #19 (other than if she really tested positive). If there is a relationship between #19 and CC is asked of her she will only say “yes” without any supporting dialogue, facts, or valid citations. It’s criminal what they are putting her through.
It will all be scripted so all answers will be known long before the panel sits
Whatever way looked at…
Clearly the problem is not Greta.
cheers
Still feeling that peak stupid was picking Lord Christopher Monckton to be the Covid-19 lead author at this web site.
CNN picking Greta follows their audience in general.
Watts Up With That picking the listen to the experts, we have to follow the models, the government knows best with respect to Covid-19 Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley makes a mockery of the basis for which this web page seems to have grown and the audience it serves.
Then when you censor people who make reasonable arguments against such blindfolded opinion pieces, it makes one want to give up on this site altogether.
It would be as if you decided to give Michael Mann a daily journal here to spew his hatred.
Christopher Monckton honestly argued the data astonerii. Something you haven’t done.
Christopher was definitely in the lock it all down camp. Opinion many share 🙁
Some people are stupid. Cannot fix that. But the opinions of people are based on the information they are fed, which in this case, people like Monckton preferred to feed them false scary lies to keep them scared and helpless.
Monckton is not stupid. So it is really disappointing how easily this guy who when faced with models and “science” fought back against global warming scams, but when faced with the same garbage here, decided to support and even promote the scam.
WHY?
What lies did Chris Monckton tell, astonerii?
You’d best be specific in presenting your evidence. Otherwise you’ll show yourself to be the dishonest one.
All you’ve done is accuse and opinionize.
Gee, interesting way of putting it. Christopher argued the data and got it completely wrong and I argued what? Yet I seem to be being proven completely correct by the facts. Facts are data, are they not?
Is died with the virus SARS-COV-2 the same as being killed by Covid-19? Does argued the Data Christopher seem to know the difference between the two? His arguments did not seem to show he did. He took government numbers at face value even though the government itself was telling everyone who would pay attention that the death statistics were lies. “Died with Covid-19” was what they claimed and what the deaths were, except for the ones that were also simply deemed covid-19 related without testing done.
Is case fatality ratio the same as infection fatality ratio? Did Christopher, argued the data, know the difference even after he was confronted with the information showing they are not the same multiple times? Way to be fact based. Much easier to scare people using case fatality ratios rather than infection fatality ratios.
Is deemed to have died from Covid-19 the same as having been killed by Covid-19. Does argued the data Christopher know they are not even remotely the same? They added thousands of deaths to the rosters sans data, also known as a test…
Anyways, I am being proven right. Christopher is being proven wrong. Which is why I think that the daily briefings on why we should be locked down changed to maybe it is time our politicians started opening up and finally to, where in the world is Carm— I mean Christopher Monckton?
The infection fatality ratio is proving to be a fraction that of the common flu we have every year.
The added deaths we are experiencing are proving out to be caused by the fear and the lock down rather than by the virus. People who have life threatening health events that do not want to go to the doctor because they are scared of the covid-19 or have trouble getting in touch with their shut down doctor’s office seem to die.
In the United States 805,000 Heart Attacks happen every year, 795,000 Strokes happen every year. Data stuff, you know about that stuff. Even during the flu season. Emergency rooms are saying there is a 70% drop in admissions for these critical events. Here again, data… but I argue something else, right? What is it I argue? How many people do you think are going to excess die because they did not get treated for a heart attack or stroke? Maybe 80%? I would guess that is a reasonable guess. It is not data, but it is reasonable? No? That comes out to a potential death toll of 2,400 deaths per day, per day, from failure to go to the doctor for just 2 of hundreds of reasons people typically go to the doctor for.
Now, maybe my estimate of 80% is high. Something that can be argued. I have no idea what it might be, as in America, people typically go to the doctor and that is what estimates of survival are based on.
At the end of the day, the difference between died with covid-19 (actually SARS-COV-2) and died due to Covid-19 is probably about a 7:1 difference.
The Infection Fatality Ratio will end up closer to 0.025% than 0.9%.
astonerii– I really want to read what you are writing but there are so many typos, grammatical errors, and a swarm of disjointed ideas that I cannot make heads or tails of your argument.
The simple argument is.
The government is lying about the numerator, the number of deaths. They are also lying about the denominator, the number of infections.
The top number is between about 1/4 and 1/10th the number they claim.
The bottom number is between 50 and 200 times what they claim.
Between the two, the final infection fatality ratio is about 0.01% and 0.07% which is less than the flu is said to be.
My best estimate comes in at around 0.025%.
Here, is this any more readable for you?
Christopher got just about everything about the virus and lock downs wrong. Evidence to date continues to prove that I got just about everything about the virus and the lock downs right. If I did not use data, how did I get better results, and if he did use data, how did he get things so very wrong?
I am thinking that the evidence continues to back up my position on the virus. My position is that it is not as deadly as the flu, and the only thing that makes it scary is that it is new and thus no one starts with an immunity to it. What evidence shows it is deadlier than the flu? Well, the way to calculate it is with data.
The flu kills between 0.1% and 0.2% of those who are infected with it. This is an estimate that is driven almost entirely by models. They model an estimate of flu cases out to around 35 million to 50 million per year. They also model out an estimate of deaths caused by the flu between 35,000 to a high of about 80,000. Most flu cases are never proven by a blood test. It is simply assumed to be the flu if the symptoms match flu like symptoms. Only very severe cases where it is critical to give the right medicine is a blood test generally taken. If a person dies with the flu, it is not always the flu that is determined as the cause of death. Most of the time in fact, it is usually an underlying health condition that is said to be the cause. Heart Disease, Lung Disease, Renal Failure, etc.
So, they take the number of deaths and divide by the number of infections. This gives them an Infection Fatality Ratio, and as I said above, it comes out to about 0.1% and 0.2% depending on the severity of the flu season and which particular virus strains are prevalent that year. And as I said, this is an estimate not based on cold hard numbers they collect.
So, is this how things are being done with the SARS-COV-2 virus which causes covid-19 symptoms? Can we compare the two? Sadly, this is not how they determine the number of deaths or the number of infections. Instead of using models and estimating, they use cold hard numbers which have almost nothing to do with the reality of what is going on. They are somewhat forced to do this because the information is not something that has been built up over decades of testing and evaluation. Testing is not widespread, so the number of infections is unknown, so they used test positives of a narrowly selected group of people and instead of Infection Fatality Ratio, they go to Case Fatality Ratio. This is somewhat a reasonable position to take when you do not have enough facts. But where they go terribly wrong is in counting the dead.
Instead of looking for the actual cause of death for people today, the people who die with an infection of SARS-COV-2 and even many who never tested positive, it is simply deemed that they died of Covid-19. This is a seriously flawed way of counting deaths and will dramatically increase the numerator.
The evidence to date is that between 80% and 90% of SARS-COV-2 infections never end up causing symptoms, and thus no disease to die from. There are also a large number of people listed as victims who never tested positive for the virus at all. Meaning that even a larger share of those claimed to be Covid-19 victims likely never had the disease. Between these numbers lies the truth of the deaths, since doctors are not doing the due diligence at the behest of the government, we should not give the government any benefit of the doubt about the numbers they present. For the CDC, they have listed to date 54,861 SARS-COV-2 positive test deaths, and the overall count for Covid-19 deaths per worldometer is 84,939, which means at this point in time as many as 30,078 of the deaths are simply deemed deaths, and should be completely ignored. That leaves the 54,861 as test positive deaths when the prevalence of symptoms is only 80-90%. Remember that many people die every day of other causes many of those will die with the virus in their blood. They are not all certainly killed by the virus. Perhaps only 10% were killed by the virus, or maybe 50%. Then again, the government is asking the doctors to doctor up the death certificates with Covid-19 deaths, and since there is no way of going back and figuring out who really died of covid-19 and who died of a heart attack or stroke or something else, no benefit of the doubt should be given. I say split the baby between the 10 and 20% and call it day. So 15% of 54,861 is 8,229 actual deaths due to covid-19.
Some of you are going to argue this is not fair and that we should take the government numbers at face value. No, we should not. WattsUpWithThat in general is a skeptical site that does not just let “experts” and “scientists” make up numbers and get away with it. The fact that only 80 to 90% of SARS-COV-2 infections ever present with the disease Covid-19 gives reasonable belief that only 10 to 20% of people who die in the hospital, where the disease spreads quickly and widely in short order actually have Covid-19 and not all Covid-19 illnesses end in death. So, if anything, this might be giving false higher deaths rather than false lower deaths.
There is the problem of excess deaths where people are deemed to have died of Covid-19, and I am willing to accept some are being undercounted just as some are being over counted. So, I say add 33% on top to take it to a near 11,000 total deaths.
Now that we have the deaths calculated to a reasonable amount, what about infections?
There are many studies out there that indicate much higher infection rates than direct testing has shown. Anywhere from 20 times as many to as high as 300 times as many. If we set it towards the lower end of spectrum at say 30 times, that gives the United States of America about 45,000,000 total infections to date. You can pick different numbers, but I think 45,000,000 is a low estimate for this late in the game period. This comes out to about 0.024444%. You can see why I picked 30 times, it gives me my preferred and likely correct Infection Fatality Ratio of 0.025%. And this is a reasonable person’s estimate of the IFR. Compare this to the supposed 2.4% or 0.9% of even the 0.35% they claim it is to scare you.
The evidence has been coming in for months. The evidence well over a month ago showed the disease was not likely anywhere near as deadly as they claim it is. Back then I was using different paths to calculate the actual fatality ratio and coming to the same conclusion. Maybe it is bias. Then again, maybe it is just that it is the truth. This disease is ¼ to 1/8 as deadly as the common flu.
Prior estimates for the Infection Fatality Ratio used a combination of age, health, deaths and as current at the time estimates of the true multiple of infection rates compared to the death numbers.
Then the claim comes, but more people are dying that would die in an average year. It must be due to Covid-19! Yes and no. Kind of like how the disease causes your body to kill itself by causing your body to panic and overreact, the panic to Covid-19 in society is likewise causing our society to overreact and destroy itself. 36,000,000 Unemployed people, shut down, scared, Noncritical medical care being postponed. tens of thousands of people having heart attacks and strokes who never show up to the emergency rooms, increased suicides, maybe an increase in domestic murders, (fish tank cleaner killer). This will all lead up to an increase in risk of death which translates to actual increases in death.
A good rant needs more vertical space separation between the lines of type. In other words, make more paragraphs, so readers’ eyes can gleefully transition, with greater comfort, from one thought to the next.
The rant would be so much better with this one small adjustment.
I disagree with Monckton, but I think he is very bright and entertaining in his writing style. And I like rants, ………………… with good vertical space separation. (^_^)
astonerii
May 13, 2020
Like this ?
Here, is this any more readable for you?
Christopher got just about everything about the virus and lock downs wrong. Evidence to date continues to prove that I got just about everything about the virus and the lock downs right.
If I did not use data, how did I get better results, and if he did use data, how did he get things so very wrong?
I am thinking that the evidence continues to back up my position on the virus. My position is that it is not as deadly as the flu, and the only thing that makes it scary is that it is new and thus no one starts with an immunity to it. What evidence shows it is deadlier than the flu? Well, the way to calculate it is with data.
The flu kills between 0.1% and 0.2% of those who are infected with it. This is an estimate that is driven almost entirely by models. They model an estimate of flu cases out to around 35 million to 50 million per year.
They also model out an estimate of deaths caused by the flu between 35,000 to a high of about 80,000. Most flu cases are never proven by a blood test. It is simply assumed to be the flu if the symptoms match flu like symptoms. Only very severe cases where it is critical to give the right medicine is a blood test generally taken.
If a person dies with the flu, it is not always the flu that is determined as the cause of death. Most of the time in fact, it is usually an underlying health condition that is said to be the cause. Heart Disease, Lung Disease, Renal Failure, etc.
So, they take the number of deaths and divide by the number of infections. This gives them an Infection Fatality Ratio, and as I said above, it comes out to about 0.1% and 0.2% depending on the severity of the flu season and which particular virus strains are prevalent that year. And as I said, this is an estimate not based on cold hard numbers they collect.
So, is this how things are being done with the SARS-COV-2 virus which causes covid-19 symptoms? Can we compare the two? Sadly, this is not how they determine the number of deaths or the number of infections.
Instead of using models and estimating, they use cold hard numbers which have almost nothing to do with the reality of what is going on. They are somewhat forced to do this because the information is not something that has been built up over decades of testing and evaluation.
Testing is not widespread, so the number of infections is unknown, so they used test positives of a narrowly selected group of people and instead of Infection Fatality Ratio, they go to Case Fatality Ratio. This is somewhat a reasonable position to take when you do not have enough facts. But where they go terribly wrong is in counting the dead.
Instead of looking for the actual cause of death for people today, the people who die with an infection of SARS-COV-2 and even many who never tested positive, it is simply deemed that they died of Covid-19. This is a seriously flawed way of counting deaths and will dramatically increase the numerator.
The evidence to date is that between 80% and 90% of SARS-COV-2 infections never end up causing symptoms, and thus no disease to die from. There are also a large number of people listed as victims who never tested positive for the virus at all.
Meaning that even a larger share of those claimed to be Covid-19 victims likely never had the disease. Between these numbers lies the truth of the deaths, since doctors are not doing the due diligence at the behest of the government, we should not give the government any benefit of the doubt about the numbers they present.
For the CDC, they have listed to date 54,861 SARS-COV-2 positive test deaths, and the overall count for Covid-19 deaths per worldometer is 84,939, which means at this point in time as many as 30,078 of the deaths are simply deemed deaths, and should be completely ignored. That leaves the 54,861 as test positive deaths when the prevalence of symptoms is only 80-90%. Remember that many people die every day of other causes many of those will die with the virus in their blood.
They are not all certainly killed by the virus. Perhaps only 10% were killed by the virus, or maybe 50%. Then again, the government is asking the doctors to doctor up the death certificates with Covid-19 deaths, and since there is no way of going back and figuring out who really died of covid-19 and who died of a heart attack or stroke or something else, no benefit of the doubt should be given. I say split the baby between the 10 and 20% and call it day. So 15% of 54,861 is 8,229 actual deaths due to covid-19.
Some of you are going to argue this is not fair and that we should take the government numbers at face value. No, we should not. WattsUpWithThat in general is a skeptical site that does not just let “experts” and “scientists” make up numbers and get away with it. The fact that only 80 to 90% of SARS-COV-2 infections ever present with the disease Covid-19 gives reasonable belief that only 10 to 20% of people who die in the hospital, where the disease spreads quickly and widely in short order actually have Covid-19 and not all Covid-19 illnesses end in death. So, if anything, this might be giving false higher deaths rather than false lower deaths.
There is the problem of excess deaths where people are deemed to have died of Covid-19, and I am willing to accept some are being undercounted just as some are being over counted. So, I say add 33% on top to take it to a near 11,000 total deaths.
Now that we have the deaths calculated to a reasonable amount, what about infections?
There are many studies out there that indicate much higher infection rates than direct testing has shown.
Anywhere from 20 times as many to as high as 300 times as many. If we set it towards the lower end of spectrum at say 30 times, that gives the United States of America about 45,000,000 total infections to date. You can pick different numbers, but I think 45,000,000 is a low estimate for this late in the game period. This comes out to about 0.024444%.
You can see why I picked 30 times, it gives me my preferred and likely correct Infection Fatality Ratio of 0.025%. And this is a reasonable person’s estimate of the IFR. Compare this to the supposed 2.4% or 0.9% of even the 0.35% they claim it is to scare you.
The evidence has been coming in for months. The evidence well over a month ago showed the disease was not likely anywhere near as deadly as they claim it is.
Back then I was using different paths to calculate the actual fatality ratio and coming to the same conclusion. Maybe it is bias. Then again, maybe it is just that it is the truth. This disease is ¼ to 1/8 as deadly as the common flu.
Prior estimates for the Infection Fatality Ratio used a combination of age, health, deaths and as current at the time estimates of the true multiple of infection rates compared to the death numbers.
Then the claim comes, but more people are dying that would die in an average year. It must be due to Covid-19! Yes and no. Kind of like how the disease causes your body to kill itself by causing your body to panic and overreact, the panic to Covid-19 in society is likewise causing our society to overreact and destroy itself.
36,000,000 Unemployed people, shut down, scared, Noncritical medical care being postponed. tens of thousands of people having heart attacks and strokes who never show up to the emergency rooms, increased suicides, maybe an increase in domestic murders, (fish tank cleaner killer). This will all lead up to an increase in risk of death which translates to actual increases in death.
Here is Chris Monckton’s last post, astonerii. Suppose you point out the lies.
I note that your name does not appear among the commenters on that page. So, you didn’t feel any need to dispute CM about his facts and graphics.
Here is CM’s penultimate post. Your name does not appear there in dispute, either. Where are the lies?
Your name appears among the commenters in CM’s May 2 post about Covid-19, profiteers and CO2. There, you complained about economic suicide, and accused CM of currying the Chinese agenda.
You accuse CM of supporting lockdowns. But in his May 6 post, he says lockdowns should end.
CM replied to you here, but you didn’t engage him.
So here’s a suggestion. Argue your case, but suppose you desist with the contumely and assigning of dark motives to Chris Monckton.
“Argued” is an interesting term.
It is not the same as “discussed” or “debated”. Arguing is putting forward the answer you want with as much supporting data, references and also, Your Ethics May Vary, with as much deliberate misinformation as you think you can get away with and dismissing or ignoring anything that weakens your core premise.
An argument is not intrinsically correct. It is an argument. You can for example argue that Frank Forde was objectively the best Prime Minister Australia ever had by casually ignoring the other 29 office holders and discussing him in isolation, or you could offer debate his merits relative to the others. Debate, discuss, argue. Different words.
Never forget that criminal lawyers also put forward their arguments.
(also Forde didn’t technically do anything wrong while he was PM, so… Best PM Ever? 😀 )
Synonyms for argue. You’re just will have to apply context to interpret the word appropriately, Craig.
Still whining?
Need a bottle?
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣🤮🤮🤮
‘Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.’ – Napoleon
So, we also have Kathleen Sebelius, the former Governor of Kansas when the May 4, 2007 tornado hit Greensburg. While the citizens of Greensburg suffered, Sebelius refuse to allow FEMA in to help while at the same time criticizing then President Bush for not helping.