Scott Morefield Reporter May 19, 2020 1:43 PM ET
YouTube defended its removal of a video of a prominent epidemiologist explaining his view on coronavirus and “herd immunity.”
The video featured Dr. Knut Wittkowski, the former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University. In it, he was critical of lockdown and social distancing measures, arguing they are counterproductive to achieving “herd immunity” from the virus. The vide was removed for purported “misinformation” after reaching over 1.3 million views.
“With all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity,” Wittkowski said in the video, according to the New York Post, which first reported the story on Saturday. “About 80% of the people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they were infected.”
Responding to the Daily Caller’s request for comment on the video’s removal, YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said in a statement:
We quickly remove flagged content that violates our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of global or local health authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance. We are committed to continue providing timely and helpful information at this critical time.
YouTube came under fire in April from Fox News host Tucker Carlson and others after the company removed a video by Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi criticizing California’s lockdown measures. The video had reached 5 million views. (RELATED: Tucker: WHO ‘Admitting’ Sweden’s ‘Model’ Is Working But US Policy Makers Won’t ‘Abandon A Sweeping Power Grab’)
“When this is all over, it’s likely we’ll look back on this moment, what YouTube just did, as a turning point in the way we live in this country, a sharp break with 250 years of law and custom,” Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller, said in an April “Tucker Carlson Tonight” monologue. “The doctor’s video was produced by a local television channel. It was, in fact a mainstream news story. The only justification for taking it down was that the physicians on-screen had reached different conclusions than the people currently in charge.”
Facebook needs to learn that the scientific method is the opposite of consensus. In the immortal words of Dr. Richard Phillips Feynman: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says ‘science teaches such and such’, he is using the word incorrectly.” WuWHOFlu has shown those sage words never more true and telling.
Exactly. Consensus is social (e.g. political, religious). Science is observation, replication, and deduction in the near-domain.
As for herd immunity, some people will always be at risk, ineligible for a vaccine or disinfectant, and the virus, in one form or another, will surely find sanctuary bodies.
Facebook needs to learn
What Facebook needs is competition. Foxbook if you will. A competing service which will feature all the content that Facebook suppresses. As long as there is no alternative for hosting videos, they’ll do whatever they think we should be looking at in their judgment. As soon as there is an alternative that saps their revenue, they’ll become more interested in profits than in what content they can decide people can watch.
Other video sharing services exist, but YouTube enjoys near monopoly, both from being early and from belonging to a monopolistic company.
For whatever reason, a freer combination of social media services hasn’t arisen to challenge the dominant leaders.
I totally agree. Facebook, Youtube, and Google have the power of countries and they are using that power to push/pick sides and more importantly to stop facts that do not agree with their narrative.
What we are talking about is not hate speech. It is intelligent and scientific speech. The problem is big brother does not support it. We live in a democracy.
What needs to be done is to split Facebook into two competing companies who both must compete for customers.
The same needs to be done with Google and there needs to be legislation to stop Google from generating fake searches that give paid ads.
There needs to be legislation to stop Google and Facebook from getting all of the ad money. Limit the number of ads or something else.
William Astley – I am not sure we “[need] legislation to stop Google and Facebook from getting all the ad money” or stop them doing anything, for that matter (except acting illegally). We have legislation guaranteeing us freedom of speech – that, of course, works in their favour also.
But I most certainly agree that this sort of authoritarian censuring is ominous and frightening. This whole Covid 19 craze is yet to fizzle out – and surely will. The World Health Organisation now states that it is practically certain that the virus will become endemic – and join several other similar corona viruses that are forever rampant in the world. So, when all this is history in about a year’s time, we will be able to judge it all intelligently – and be ashamed.
I believe we will come to agree that enforced industrial lock-downs and their accompanying inhumane, cruel restrictions on free citizens’ rights are wholly unethical and inequitable – and should never have been enacted by decent, rational, charitable governments.
And we will run out money to pay people not to work. So we need a solution that takes into account, stuff like GDP.
Tax revenue is down say 50% and expenditures are up 200%. Companies are going bankrupt in real time. That is not sustainable. Our GDP is dying.
The longer we isolate the more difficult the restart and the greater the permanent loss.
85% of the covid virus patients have mild symptoms. We need to change that number to 99.5%.
We need to drastically reduce the covid death rate, to enable people to go out in crowds, without masks.
42% of the general US population and 82% of the US black population are ‘Vitamin’ D deficient.
It has been shown regardless of age or sex, those who are ‘Vitamin’ D deficient, are 20 times more likely to die and have serious symptoms from covid, than those who are ‘Vitamin’ D normal.
We are also deficient in Zinc, particularly the Elderly, vegetarians, and poorer people who eat hamburger.
We are also deficient in Magnesium. Our foods have half as much Magnesium in them as compared to 100 years ago. The plants and animals we eat, absorb the minerals, we eat the food, and our excrement goes to the oceans.
Over time the soil becomes depleted of the key ‘minerals’ which we need which explains the Zinc and Magnesium deficiencies in the general population.
Zinc has been shown to stop the covid virus from replicating. To do that a tiny amount of Z+2 ion needs to get into our cells. The Zinc +2 ion makes the connector in our cells ACE-2 that the virus must connect to replicate, slightly positive which stops the virus from replicating.
Correcting our Vitamin D deficient has been shown to reverse prostate cancer growth and Vitamin D has been shown to turn on a gene that stops inflammation, which is how the prostate cancer grows.
Finally, Missing link between vitamin D prostate cancer
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141022164052.htm
Prevalence and correlates of vitamin D deficiency in US adults.
https://tahomaclinic.com/Private/Articles4/WellMan/Forrest%202011%20-%20Prevalence%20and%20correlates%20of%20vitamin%20D%20deficiency%20in%20US%20adults.pdf
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150323142839.htm
Zinc deficiency linked to immune system response, particularly in older adults
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25327758/
Patterns of COVID-19 Mortality and Vitamin D: An Indonesian Study
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561
Vitamin D Insufficient Patients 12.55 times more likely to die
Vitamin D Deficient Patients 19.12 times more likely to die
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2973827/
Zn 2+ Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity In Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture
Chloroquine Is a Zinc Ionophore
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/pdf/pone.0109180.pdf
William Astley –
You write : “We need to drastically reduce the covid death rate, to enable people to go out in crowds, without masks.”
No. we need a change of paradigm about the whole issue. We need to divest ourselves from the illusion (bordering on delusion) that Covid 19 represents any unusual danger, other than what humankind has faced since time immemorial, namely the risk of dying prematurely from accidents, wars, famines or illnesses. Covid 19 is a very ordinary, not even particularly dangerous corona virus – similar to several others that are endemic and rampant with us at all times.
We are running around, scared out of our wits about this illness; and governments are under pressure to pass legislation to “conquer” it, the harsher and the more inclusive the better. I wonder, just wonder whether this sort of legislation would be enacted anywhere in the world if each and every legislator knew with certainty that as a consequence of the new laws he/she would immediately become personally insolvent and be queuing up for charity food parcels.
You see – if you (like all politicians) have a secure job, income, roomy home and plenty of assets, industrial lock-downs can be positively enjoyable. But just and fair legislation must be equitable. It must under no circumstances favour some population groups over others.
Therefore, industrial lock-down legislation is unethical and unjust.
Andy.
Covid is not unusual or dangerous for those who do not have serious symptoms.
The problem is the people how are dying and get organ damage due to covid. We stop all most all serious covid cases.
We need to fix the reason why twenty times more people are dying of covid because they are deficient, in basic supplements that are available in any drug store for less than a dollar per day.
As I noted above, our population is deficient in ‘Vitamin’ D, Magnesium, and Zinc.
“Deficient’ means our bodies do not function optimally at a microbiological level because we are deficient. We get cancer, multiple sclerosis, type 1 and 2 diabetes, and so on.
There is a direct correlation of each of those deficiencies with the severity of the Covid symptoms.
Correcting the “Vitamin’ D deficiency 4000 UI/day per person…. has been shown to reduce the incidence of breast cancer by more than 70% and the reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes by 50%, in addition to a weigh loss without dieting of 20 to 40 pounds, and those taking the ‘Vitamin’ D supplements noted a significant reduction in depression, and in general body pain.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076015300091?via%3Dihub
Incidence rate of type 2 diabetes is >50% lower in Grassroots Health cohort with median serum 25–hydroxyvitamin D of 41 ng/ml than in NHANES cohort with median of 22 ng/ml
This is a chart that shows the diseases (cancers) that have been found to be caused by Vitamin D deficiency. The source of the chart is an organization that was formed by women’s group to research ‘Vitamin’ D, as the government would not initially fund ‘Vitamin’ D research.
https://www.grassrootshealth.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/disease-incidence-prev-chart-051317.pdf
https://www.grassrootshealth.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/McDonnell-2018-breast-cancer-GRH.pdf
Better to remove legislation – the legislation that gave them immunity from lawsuits. (Although, perhaps, a law could be written that allows class actions to allow all censored parties to share the costs – if any, I’m sure there are many lawyers just itching for another billion dollar plus payout to take the major chunk of.)
Is there a legislation that prohibits class action? Why not just remove that?
No one is forcing you to use their services. Use a competing search engine. Consume other entertainment than YouTube. Use different, or for my preference, no social media.
Amen.
“No one is forcing you to use their services. Use a competing search engine. Consume other entertainment than YouTube. Use different, or for my preference, no social media.”
This does not help reduce the influence of the dominant services, which in turn, determines how ALL of us live. Only sufficiently competitive services can help counter the dogma.
And how do you expect to get “sufficiently competitive services” if you keep choosing to use the dominant services instead of it’s competitors? Lead by example. seek out and use the competition instead, try to persuade others to do the same.
Nobody was forcing anyone to buy oil from Standard Oil.
Yet Standard Oil got too big and was busted up. For good reasons. You couldn’t buy oil from anyone else.
Needs to happen again.
So you would argue that because one “couldn’t buy oil from anyone else,” that therefore we have an equivalent scenario here because we can’t “git our vids or social media on fer free” anywhere else?
I analysed and called this lockdown UNNECESSARY on 21March2020.
Contagion is not my expertise, but I was correct. So was Willis E.
WTF?
IS THIS TRUE? ANY OF IT?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-cruelty-universal-lockdown/5710798
[excerpt]
First comes the farce, an (almost) universal government lie around the globe about a deadly virus, WHO named COVID-19. The decision for a global lockdown – literally for the collapse of the world economy – was already taken at the WEF conference in Davos, 21 – 24 January 2020. On January 30, WHO declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). At that time, there were only 150 known COVID-19 cases outside of China. No reason whatsoever to declare a pandemic. On March 11, Dr. Tedros, DG of WHO converted the PHEIC into a pandemic. This gave the green light for the start if implementing “The Plan”.
The pandemic was needed as a pretext to halt and collapse the world economy and the underlying social fabric.
There is no coincidence. There were a number of preparatory events, all pointing into the direction of a worldwide monumental historic disaster. It started at least 10 years ago – probably considerably earlier – with the infamous 2010 Rockefeller Report, which painted the first phase of a monstrous Plan, called the “Lock Step” scenario. Among the last preparatory moves for the “pandemic” was Event 201, held in NYC on 18 October 2019.
new zeeland disagrees, so does hawaii.
vietnam disagrees. Any number of places who knew how to do a proper lockdown
QUICKLY, disagree with you .
Now crappy lockdowns, down slowly, and incompletely. Ya.
done correctly, takes 15 days.
Need to agree with Steven Mosher here. His contributions to the virus debate have been much more progressive and informative than his terse and less than helpful interventions on WUWT core subject. Give him a break!
But question is – if you miss the boat on early and effective action, as US / UK and nearly all of Europe did, what to do next? That’s much more difficult to be dogmatic about, and we should be a little more understanding of the pressures faced by those who have to decide.
We may or may not be wiser next time.
Taking the world as a whole, and using the Oxford University country “lockdown stringency” indices, the null hypothesis of lockdowns having no effect cannot be rejected.
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/05/21/peter-forsythe-are-lockdowns-effective/
Thank you for your comments, but that was not my question.
My question was:
IS THIS TRUE? ANY OF IT?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-cruelty-universal-lockdown/5710798
Covid-19 was a moderate-to-bad flu, less dangerous than several we have seen in past decades. That was clear by mid-March. The full-Gulag-lockdown was a huge over-reaction. The low-risk population was over-protected and the high-risk population was under-protected and the economy was destroyed and many young people and low-wage earners were too. Valid (or at worst harmless) medicines were vilified and medicine was politicized.
What is really going on? Is this just colossal government incompetence? Or what else is happening?
“What is really going on? Is this just colossal government incompetence? ”
Allan, that “incompetence” thingy depends on whether one is a “BIG winner” or a ”BIG loser”.
Now my personal thinking has been ……..
Excerpt from above article:
I’ve already been “looking back” on this moment and my thinking has been pretty clear on it, to wit:
And here I was thinking that the greatest tragedy ever perpetrated on the American public by our elected Politicians and Academic Professionals was their pseudo claim of cancer-causing cigarette smoke. The
Politicians loved/love it because it has been the greatest ever “Cash Cow” success.
But years later I had to revise my thinking when a new candidate was selected to be the greatest tragedy ever perpetrated on the American public by our elected Politicians and Academic Professionals when they began their “junk science” claims that anthropogenic CO2 emissions was causing irreversible Global Warming Climate Change. CAGWCC was/is loved by both Politicians, Academic Professionals, Flim-Flammers and investment personnel because it has proven itself to be “the greatest ever Cash Cow success stor”.
But, … wrong again, ….. I was.
It is becoming obvious that our elected Politicians and Academic Professionals have selected the “new” greatest ever self-inflicted tragedy which they have forcefully/lawfully perpetrated on the American public which has resulted in an almost 98% shutdown of the American socio-economic “engine”. What the Politicians and Academic hope to gain from their actions, other than their ego appeasement, I doubt anyone knows.
I’m pretty sure that I will be long dead before the “Phoenix” ever rises from the Covoid-19 ashes. ☹
Steven Mosher
As a resident of New Zealand, and good local knowledge, and international travel at that time, I suggest that you are confusing success of the lockdown, with an extremely low level of virus contamination prior to and at the time of the lockdown.
New Zealand success was highly influenced by luck, there was minimal spread, and that will be again confirmed by a very low increase in cases after the lockdown ceases.
William Astley
Thank you for your well-informed comments.
Best personal regards, Allan MacRae
What they need to do is equitably share their earnings with their content providers. These platforms are a content delivery mechanism. The community provides the content that is its true value. YouTube in particular has been steadily modifying how content provider earnings are calculated. To no one’s surprise, their content provider’s earnings always decrease after each modification. If find it execrable that these companies can be swimming in money whilst withholding well deserved revenue from their content providers – the ones who have actually provided the value. How can a piece of vermin like Logan Paul be remunerated like an oil baron but Chris Broad or Matthew Cremona or mustie1 cannot?
There many scientific discussions about things such as sex, incidence of violence comparing ethnic groups, etc. that are considered hate speech.
Hate speech isn’t against the law in the USA. It’s just speech someone doesn’t like, true or not.
Don’t give the banners a free pass by implying that banning hate speech is okay. It’s not.
We have a long tradition in Common Law about what is legal speech or not. It’s not the time to redefine it based on a cultural shift that is only about 25 years old and is a bad culture shift in many people’s judgement. (Whose judgement is considered hate speech)
“Hate speech isn’t against the law in the USA. It’s just speech someone doesn’t like, true or not.”
Not just “someone”, …… but a specific person didn’t like it.
But for everyone that doesn’t/didn’t like said “speech”, ….. there are surely 3 or 4 persons that did like it.
Peter Sable, sorry bout that. …. but “hate speech” has nothing whatsoever to do with “what a person says”, ……………. but everything to do with “the person that said it”.
Iffen a female really, really, really likes a male acquaintance, he can say bout anything and she will “luv” it.
But iffen she doesn’t like a particular male, he best avert his eyes and never ever say “hello”.
“Hate speech isn’t against the law in the USA. It’s just speech someone doesn’t like, true or not.”
Not just “someone”, …… but a specific person didn’t like it.
But for everyone that doesn’t/didn’t like said “speech”, ….. there are surely 3 or 4 persons that did like it.
Peter Sable, sorry bout that. …. but “hate speech” has nothing whatsoever to do with “what a person says”, ……………. but everything to do with “the person that said it”.
William
“We live in a democracy”
Do you have any evidence to support this theory ?
Take a look at MeWe…
Also, there oughta be a law, as they say:
If a corporation achieves a status as a public information source, perhaps based on market share, individuals should be able to sue such a company for restraint of freedom of speech. This would be in line with anti-trust law, where market dominance of a certain degree exposes a corporation to anti-trust action if the corporation engages in restraint of free trade.
Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Google come to Mind.
They’ll just get sued from the other direction for allowing “disinformation” and harming the planet, or something.
It’s much more effective to just use something other then twitter/youtube/facebook/google.
People use those platforms because reach people and have the best opportunity for making money. The reason these corporations got so big so fast (relatively) was because of how commercial financing is controlled and managed by the government and federal bank. It’s not a ponzi scheme, but it’s not too far off. In the 2008 housing crisis the vast majority of “printed money” goes to the big lenders that control the Federal bank and to brokerages. The money was not directly released to the public. What it ended up being spent on was stock market purchases and ultra-low corporate loans. As a result these massive social media corporations became flush for money.
And, increasingly, the large national banks (that effectively control the Federal banks) are tying money into politics. Businesses that don’t tow the party line are going to see increasingly more and more difficult time getting significant financing.
More so then that the actual customers of Google/Facebook/Twitter et al. are advertisers.
When you are on facebook you are not a customer. _You are the product._
They sell your data and views and other things to advertisers.
And as a hard and fast rule for capitalism is ‘The customer is always right’. Interlocking corporate directorships ensure that people that pay Google for their services and advertising are closely tied to the defense industry, medical industry, and other ‘industrial military complex’ type businesses that have close ties to Washington DC and Democrat/Republican party leadership.
So even if they pass ‘free speech platform’ laws… it isn’t going to make any difference.
Politicians are not on your side. Washington DC doesn’t care about your interests. They have their own agenda and any laws they pass controlling platforms is going to be for their benefit, not yours.
Sorry, but you don’t get to pick the type of oppression you get.
Instead the most effective approach is to ‘drop out’ and use alternative systems for communication. These companies are not going to last for ever. Passing laws just gives the government more control and with enough control they will ensure that google/facebook/twittrer/etc will never die and never get punished (financially) for the idiotic shit they are pulling.
“Minds” is good, but nothing links to it.
Has Youtube flagged or removed any of Greta’s Green Papal edicts or video? Can You tube not flag content as possibly being contrary to more common expert opinion? When did anybody ask Youtube to be their mother? It’s disgusting, it’s political, and Youtube needs a competitor working to a more transparent design.
“Facebook needs to learn”
Doesn’t look to me like they need to learn anything…
…they are perfectly adapted to pushing their agenda
If they don’t get it, there will be a price to pay if the GOP regains the House and holds onto the Senate and WH. Unless becoming a government-regulated utility is what they want.
” becoming a government-regulated utility”
BINGO !!!
Regardless of which party is in power, the government is run by professional bureaucrats and 90% of those are the kind that think framing a three star general is just fine.
What government activity that needs to be done is to have Facebook/Youtube be defined as either a publisher or a platform. Different legal standards for each.
and what about three star generals who plead guilty to the charges? If they were framed
then do you really want a general with no backbone who gives in the opposition and lies to a federal judge?
You’ve never been harrassed by government agents have you Izaak?
Once you see that they have the power to ignore the law and invent whatever evidence they need, you learn why so many are willing to plead guilty to lesser charges, rather than continue the years long fight and risk much worse penalties.
Izaak Walton May 21, 2020 at 12:40 am:
Congrats !!!!
You just demonstrated that you have zero knowledge of the case.
Just to make one quick point and that’s all I’m going to spoon feed you.
The DOJ threatened to destroy his son’s life.
That’s why he pleaded guilty.
Indeed MarkW. It takes a lot more than backbone to fight against government agents that have no compunction about destroying your life and the lives of your loved ones. It’s a fight that few can hope to win, and winning it takes more time & resources and does far more damage to ones life and the lives of those they love than just accepting the deal on a lesser charge and quietly serving some time behind bars to put an end to the living hell they’ll put you through.
Izaak Walton
May 21, 2020 at 12:40 am
and what about three star generals who plead guilty to the charges? If they were framed
then do you really want a general with no backbone who gives in the opposition and lies to a federal judge?
——————–
Izaak,
Let me put it in away you may not agree with.
“There is no murder in self-defence”
Kinda of sanctity of life.
The said general was in the position of facing a personal real threatening problem.
Innocent of the implied fake guilt… illegally charged with.
If the last resort to defend himself from the injustice happening in a federal court,
was lying to a federal judge in a federal court, even under oath,
so be it.
Any means of defending the own family and the self, from injustice and escalating uncalled for] harm, as the last and only resort remaining,
stands under self-defence.
Miscarriage of justice can not be justified or sold as righteous, in the proposition of
“one lied under oath”, when one facing the real harm of such injustice.
cheers
Apparently Feynman wasn’t a true scientist. He would never have been invited to contribute to IPCC proceedings.
He would have had the good sense of refusing to participate in that circus even if he were invited.
“Facebook needs to learn”
I think that view is no different than telling a wolf that he should respect the feelings of rabbits.
If something is contrary to the basic makeup and purpose of an organism, it is rather unlikely that the organism can be taught that said something is the right viewpoint for it.
Let’s keep in mind this bit of fill-in the blank:
If YouTube existed during the scientific debates of _________
If YouTube existed during the scientific debates of “the earth is round” it would have been removed due to it being misinformation and not consensus.
If YouTube existed during the scientific debates of “Eisenstein’s of General Theory of Relativity” it would have been removed due to it being misinformation and not consensus.
If YouTube existed during the scientific debates of “Plate tectonics” would have been removed due to it being misinformation and not consensus.
The folks at YouTube sure do not seem be progressive, scientifically. Very un-Woke in fact.
Add to this list helicobacter causing stomach ulcers. IIRC there was strong opposition to the hypothesis until the doctor concerned infected himself with helicobacter and then cure himself with an antibiotic.
While their attitude and action may be reprehensible, is there any reason to believe “they” should not do exactly as they wish (and accept the consequences if enough people dislike their policy to drop their service)? None of us should have any power over other people’s dress in the world at large but if you want to demand that anyone coming into your house (for instance) remove their shoes, or put some pants on, doesn’t your right, inside your house, override everyone’s else’s right to do as they please elsewhere?
Yes, there is a reason why they cannot do exactly as they wish. See this article about the difference between a platform and a publisher.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/platform-or-publisher-15888.html
I think legally they should be defined as an internet printing press. That the content publisher own the content and indemnifies YouTube.
That they are a service. Neither a platform or publisher.
I thought that Eisenstein was a film director.
Here is the text of Dr Wittowski’s interview:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/15/we-could-open-up-again-and-forget-the-whole-thing/
The data presented by the CDC Director Robert Redfield is staggering :
– no more hospitalizations for COVID-19 than for a flu and a sharp decrease since mid March towards the baseline in a few weeks,
– the lockdown has been useless since it has been applied almost two weeks after the infection peak was reached.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4869626/user-clip-dr-robert-redfield
PB wrote:
The data presented by the CDC Director Robert Redfield is staggering :
– no more hospitalizations for COVID-19 than for a flu and a sharp decrease since mid March towards the baseline in a few weeks,
– the lockdown has been useless since it has been applied almost two weeks after the infection peak was reached.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4869626/user-clip-dr-robert-redfield
_____________________________
Excellent points and video, thank you PB – my conclusion was the same – peak infections occurred mid-March.
Lockdowns were too late to be effective – “the horse had left the barn”.
I wrote on 21Mar2020 that the full lockdown was an error – too much and too late.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/12/lockdown-fail-in-one-easy-graph/#comment-2992943
Much of the data for Covid-19 is poor quality – the one stat that is difficult to mess up is “Total Deaths From All Causes.”
Whatever the number is that creates “herd immunity” in a given population, whether it is deemed to be 20% in one case or 80% in another, just examine “Total Deaths From All Causes” and when it peaks, and it peaked in 2020Week14-15 across Europe, regardless of full lockdown or minimal lockdown.
From infection to death takes ~2-3 weeks, so peak infections happened 2-3 weeks prior, about mid-March2020. That is when most lockdowns started.
I therefore conclude the lockdowns were too late and had little or no effect on mortality but they sure did a great job of destroying the economy and impoverishing the young and the poorly paid and wasting trillions of dollars.
Attaboys all around!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/21/to-save-our-economy-roll-out-antibody-testing-alongside-the-active-virus-testing/#comment-2943724
[excerpt- posted 21Mar2020]
LET’S CONSIDER AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH, SUBJECT TO VERIFICATION OF THE ABOVE CONCLUSIONS:
Isolate people over sixty-five and those with poor immune systems and return to business-as-usual for people under sixty-five.
This will allow “herd immunity” to develop much sooner and older people will thus be more protected AND THE ECONOMY WON’T CRASH.
https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2020/03/21/end-the-american-lockdown/comment-page-1/#comment-12253
[excerpt- posted 22Mar2020]
This full-lockdown scenario is especially hurting service sector businesses and their minimum-wage employees – young people are telling me they are “financially under the bus”. The young are being destroyed to protect us over-65’s. A far better solution is to get them back to work and let us oldies keep our distance, and get “herd immunity” established ASAP – in months not years. Then we will all be safe again.
40,000 censured videos can now be found here:
https://www.altcensored.com/
yeah maybe
but after looking at 4 differing “topics” theyre pretty much all germanic stuff and not exactly worth watching anyway
few covid ones fair enough the rest
oh deary deary me
How about the null hypothesis in Covid 19. Is sars cov2 guilty until proven innocent?
It seems like the scientific principle of disproving the null hypothesis has been thrown completely out the window. It seems really heretical to suggest disproving the null hypothesis in covid 19. The argument seems to be: People are dying, we have to act, we cannot sit around and do good science.
The null hypothesis is that the sars cov2 has no effect on the population. Innocent until proven guilty. If we don’t use this principle in science, we could in principle imagine that bad spirits were behind the flu symptoms we see. If we should react like we do now, it would be the task for scientists to find out what could stop the bad spirits from moving from person to person.
Is the virus hypothesis falsifiable? Do we have any way of proving that the pneumonia’s or kidney problems or heart problems don’t come from sars cov2?
Not really. Now it seems like the virus can give any kind of problem or absolutely no problem. As long as we find some sars cov2 virus in the organs, we may say it is covid 19. But if we had tested for other corona viruses or adeno or rhino or flu, we would have found those too.
1933 world-wide
No. 1984 now
The “progressives” don’t debate ideas, they purge them.
As has been said before on here, “progressivism” is like a visitation from the future. Future Amish people.
Plus, it’s a phony subverted word too, along with “liberal” aka totalitarian-wannabe, but good luck with all of that hippy totalitarian twits. The kids aren’t listening.
Different [secular] sects, different religions, and variable practices. In fact, there was a Progressive schism not long ago, where members of one prominent sect attempted to cancel members of another for denying the viability and their Profits (sic) of [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate cooling… warming… change.
And if they can’t purge the ideas, they’ll start thinking about “purging” the persons thinking them.
In Switzerland, a medical doctor with “divergent” views concerning the lockdown was interned in a psychiatric institution by a local authority until his lawyer got him out again (after a few days)…
Because ‘Communist’ has such negative connotations, Communists have bee calling themselves Democratic Socialists and Progressives for about a century or so. The have, relatively recently, co-opted the term Liberal. Anyone that claims to follow a Progressive Agenda is stating, knowingly (Fellow Travelers) or not (Useful Idiots), they are promoting Communist Ideals.
The sad irony is that is was the censorship by Chinese authorities of those in Wuhan early on in the outbreak that stopped an early response, and likely made others afraid to speak out against the party line. I am sure the communist party authorities were confident that they were just stopping anything that was outside “recommended guidance”. This is a very serious problem and only a free and open exchange of thoughts by all kinds of experts can help.
Following the Diamond Princess outcome and with that being confirmed and reinforced by the progress on the various aircraft carriers CdG and FR, I early came to the conclusion that we were not witnessing anything near as grave as Spanish Flu of 1918.
What we have is a media fuelled hysteria feedback loop with an irresponsible press and cowardly government (yes, even DJT) driving poor policy decisions.
The even sadder irony is that this feedback loop started in China, the CCP tried to “put a lid” on it but failed, not a little bit because of international alternative news interference and manipulation.
Had the CCP lived up to its past reputation, we would not be where we are now.
Perhaps XP is feeling that the west sowed the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind; certainly we will when the economic crisis hits.
Paul,
Exactly right. When I read comments like yours I really wish we had a voting system so I could just hit the + button.
As I am saying often…WWIII is upon us and the powers that be are “burning” the books as we speak. A concerted effort will be required to maintain any freedoms at all or we can go forward and live 1984 , Farenheit 451, etc. despite all the warnings we have had. I fear for my children’s future due to the control of information being asserted by various agencies and forces throughout. My country is leading the way with our minority government led by the weakest PM in the history of our once great nation pushing hard to have all media government licensed- imagine that slippery slope to green hell!
Well, I don’t appreciate censorship, but Wittkowski is a crackpot, and if his approach to the disease were adopted in the United States the result would be five to ten million dead Americans.
The math is easy: herd immunity, if it is even possible, would require that about 90% of the population get the disease. That’s about 297 million people.
Here are approximate herd immunity thresholds for several other infectious diseases:
Additionally, we know that, under the best of circumstances (with early diagnosis and high quality care), the disease has a fatality rate of nearly 2.5%:
https://sealevel.info/COVID-19_fatality_rate_calculated_from_S_Korean_data.html
297 million cases times 2.5% = 7.425 million dead Americans.
What’s more, that’s optimistic. You see, we don’t know whether herd immunity is even possible without a vaccine, because we don’t know how long the antibody response to having had the disease confers immunity. If it only lasts a few months, then herd immunity is impossible.
What’s more, having 297 million cases would drastically accelerate the rate at which mutations of the virus appear, with the potential for even worse problems trying to control it, or develop a vaccine for it.
If that many Americans were infected, the death rate would be in the hundreds of thousands, not millions.
In a representative age, sex, ethnicity and medical condition population, the Infection Fatality Rate is a fraction of one percent. You’re confusing Case Fatality Rate with IFR and using way too high a CFR.
At present, the global IFR can’t be known because we don’t know how many infections there have been. We do know from ship and local, regional and country test survey data that the infection rate is less than 100%, even among those exposed to the WuWHO virus. The vast majority of those who are infected enough to form anitbodies don’t get sick at all, or develop only mild symptoms.
But assume that every American was infected. At IFRs of 0.1 to 0.3%, 330,000 to 990,000 US residents and citizens would die. Fatality rates to date have been skewed by the sick and old being disproportionately infected, thanks to the idiocy and insanity of governors and mayors of metropolitan states and their biggest cities.
But not all Americans will be infected before a vaccine is developed. Meanwhile treatments procedures are improving.
No, John, I have not confused the total fatality rate with the CFR. The current naively-calculated CFR for the U.S. is 94,902 / 1,589,366 = 6%, not 2.5%.
That is not the true fatality rate. The true fatality rate, or “infection fatality rate,” cannot be accurately calculated from the U.S. figures, for two reasons:
1. because we don’t know how many infections we’ve really had (probably 3 to 5 million), and
2. because 77% of our cases are still unresolved, so we don’t know how many of them will die.
(The 1st of those two reasons causes an overestimate of the fatality rate, and the 2nd causes an underestimate of the fatality rate.)
But in South Korea, they’ve found nearly all the cases, including the asymptomatic cases, and 93% of their cases are already resolved (10,066 recovered and 263 died). So, from their data we can calculate their true fatality rate, and it is about 2½ percent, with early diagnosis and excellent medical care.
I encourage you to check my math:
https://sealevel.info/COVID-19_fatality_rate_calculated_from_S_Korean_data.html
Better yet, update the figures using the latest data:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/
Furthermore, it is not true that, “The vast majority of those who are infected enough to form anitbodies don’t get sick at all, or develop only mild symptoms.” Estimates of the number of infected who never develop symptoms, or develop only mild, cold-like symptoms, are based on small, well-studied populations, like prisons, nursing homes, and ships, where everyone was tested, and the estimates range from 25% to 60%. So it might be a majority, barely, but it certainly is not the “vast majority.”
Mr. Burton, your math may be correct, but your assumptions are likely not.
Early cases and fatalities are disproportionately from the most vulnerable of those exposed. So, fatality rates calculated on various subsets of population are pessimistic, or at least overestimate the impact on the more healthy general population.
Your table of herd immunity thresholds are for very infectious diseases in an unprotected population. Therefore your 90% requirement for the population to get the disease is overly large by a large margin. Even without lockdowns, individuals are self distancing and practicing better hygiene than an unprotected population. This will drop the threshold number for herd immunity. In addition, an earlier post proposed, herd immunity is reached with much lower prevalence of infection.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/11/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/
Before I would calculate an expected outcome for the U.S., I would want to have a better idea of age demographics and the proportion those with underlying medical conditions. Then I would use rate data for more heterogeneous western populations.
Scissor wrote, “Early cases and fatalities are disproportionately from the most vulnerable of those exposed. So, fatality rates calculated on various subsets of population are pessimistic…”
I doubt it. Strenuous efforts have been made to try to ensure that the opposite true: to keep the most vulnerable from being exposed.
In a “herd immunity” scenario (unless achieved by vaccination), those efforts would be wasted. In a national population in which perhaps one-third have “risk factors,” simple arithmetic says you cannot get to the approximately 90% infection rate needed for herd immunity without most of the “at risk” people being infected.
Moreover, the simple fact is that all of the people with risk factors interact with people who have no known risk factors. So if the latter are infected, then the former will be exposed, as well. There just is no way to avoid it.
Scissor wrote, “Your table of herd immunity thresholds are for very infectious diseases in an unprotected population. Therefore your 90% requirement for the population to get the disease is overly large…”
COVID-19 is an extremely infectious disease, comparable to measles, and, the public is believed to be entirely unprotected (unlike flu). It is possible that some people have at least a partial immunity, due to previous infections with other diseases, but, if so, that’s not been proven.
We know that from the many examples of populations into which a single case has very quickly mushroomed out of control, despite the best efforts to contain it, that this disease is extremely infectious.
However, even if it were not an extremely infectious disease, that wouldn’t affect the arithmetic very much. A less infectious disease might require only an 80% immunity rate in the population, to achieve herd immunity. That would result in 8/9-ths as many deaths as a 90% infection rate.
Scissor wrote, “Even without lockdowns, individuals are self distancing and practicing better hygiene than an unprotected population. This will drop the threshold number for herd immunity.”
They are, indeed, but that does not reduce the threshold for herd immunity. That just slows the spread of the disease until the social distancing practices are abandoned.
I doubt it.
Then look at the data. Deaths are disproportionately among the sick/elderly. According to the CDC, the death rate increases the older the patient (ie your chance of dying increases with age) and increases with underlying condition (ie your chance of dying is greater if you have comorbidities). Nearly half of all deaths are among the 75+ age group. between two thirds and three quarters (one report from the CDC puts it as high as 80%) are aged 65+, over 90% are aged 45+ (less than 10% of deaths come from those below 45) and the vast majority of those deaths at every age bracket involve people with underlying conditions.
John Endicott wrote, “Deaths are disproportionately among the sick/elderly.”
We’re talking about infections, not deaths. If infections are disproportionately high among at-risk populations, then that would, indeed, inflate the overall fatality rate. I suppose that could happen because a lot of elderly people are in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, environments which might accelerate disease transmission.
But strenuous efforts have been made to try to keep infections out of those communities, and protect at-risk people from infection. Unless those efforts are a complete failure, we should expect that the infection rate is disproportionately lower among those people.
Deaths are disproportionately among the sick, elderly & obese, but that is probably because the fatality rate is much higher for those folks. Is there evidence that the infection rate is higher among them?
Unless those efforts are a complete failure, we should expect that the infection rate is disproportionately lower among those people.
Just looking at the numbers on new cases my county puts out every day, there’s no sign the infection rate is disproportionately lower for the elderly (there’s disproportionately more elderly in those numbers than non-elderly, though not as disproportionate as with the death numbers). Of course, not everyone is being tested so we don’t know what the real rates of infection are. It could be that because this disease hits the sick and elderly hardest, they’re more likely to develop symptoms bad enough to warrant getting tested whereas the young and healthy who get very mild or no symptoms simply don’t feel the need to get tested as they don’t even realize they have it (or don’t meet the requirements for getting tested even if they do suspect they have it). so again, you are running with flawed assumptions.
REPENT! THE END IS NIGH!!!
Repent, and thin (the herd) no more.
The problem iz assumptions. Sample tests from New York suggest the real infection rate is on the order of t0 times reported. Your numbers above assume 2-3 times underreported. Your numbers are too pessimistic.
Prisons are likely vitamin D deficient, other studied populations are elderly. Not representative.
Why aren’t the deaths in Sweden following what you have presented? They appeared to follow the crackpot’s theory.
The “crackpot” appears to be correct, at least concerning Sweden.
So far Sweden is at 380 deaths/million, i.e. higher than the US with a much less dense population.
The number was millions for the USA, so transferred to Sweden, we should be seeing hundreds of thousands. Not happening. Crackpot was right. Dave replied and said Sweden is equivalent to 130,000 in the USA. That is not millions. I don’t believe there is a significant difference between the USA and Sweden.
North Dakota is denser than Sweden? How about Montana, South Dakota?
Density is important locally, not nationally. Stockholm is 4 times the density of Atlanta. At 13,000 per square mile, about 65% more than Las Angelas and about the density of Philidelphia.
Overall the density of Sweden is about 60 per square mile, and the USA is about 90. Are either of these numbers relevant?
The Swedes are using “social distancing” to try to slow the spread of the disease, and many Swedish businesses are closed, or severely curtailed. Swedish authorities are asking their citizens to be prudent and responsible. Universities and high schools are closed, but they are not “locking down” as strictly as most places.
However, they are not following Wittkowski’s advice, either, not by a long shot.
Unfortunately, the Swedish restrictions have proven insufficient. As disastrous as the situation is here in the USA, it is even worse in Sweden.
In the USA we’ve had 1,590,561 known cases, and 94,889 COVI-19 deaths, from a population of 330 million.
In Sweden they’ve had 31,523 known cases and 3,831 deaths, from a population of only 10.3 million.
If the U.S. COVID-19 death rate were as high as Sweden’s, we’d have 122,740 deaths, rather than 94,889.
My conclusions are similar to those of statistician Matt Briggs – and we reached these conclusions 100% independently.
THERE IS NO EVIDENCE LOCKDOWNS SAVED LIVES. IT IS INDISPUTABLE THEY CAUSED GREAT HARM
By William M. Briggs, Statistician
https://Wmbriggs.Com/Post/30833/
As Steve Mosher stated earlier look at NZ and many other countries for plenty of
evidence that lockdowns work and save lives.
Izaak, unless you are planning to have permanent lockdowns, lockdowns are not designed to save lives, they’re designed to “flatten the curve”. The same amount of lives are expected to be lost, just spread out over a longer timeframe so as not to overwhelm the hospitals are mortuaries.
Isaak – you and Stephen are wrong – unless you maintain the lockdowns indefinitely or the virus dies off, which could take years.
Herd immunity is the best defense, and that should be obtained quickly, as long as the hospitals are not overwhelmed – which they were not.
The full lockdown was a very costly, destructive debacle. Suggesting that it worked on a few small islands is incorrect – that only delays the inevitable.
Izaak demonstrates classic climate science thinking.
Any evidence that supports his position is conclusive.
Any evidence that doesn’t support his position is either a coincidence or didn’t actually happen.
Izaak is correct, and the proof is in the numbers: countries which have relied on mild or tardy “social distancing” restrictions have had much higher death tolls than the countries which took drastic action quickly.
The key to saving lives is to quarantine everyone who has the disease, so that they won’t spread it to other people.
Lockdowns do that, by effectively quarantining people regardless of whether they have the disease. It is a very blunt instrument, but it does work.
The key to ending lockdowns without unleashing the disease is to identify the people who have the disease, so that they can be quarantined, without also quarantining everyone else. Then, and only then, is it safe to end the lockdowns.
We need testing and contact-tracing. To identify the people have the disease requires rapid, efficient testing of everyone who suspected of having the disease, and also of everyone who might have been exposed to it. To identify those who might have been exposed to it requires rapid, efficient contact tracing.
Lockdowns are useful, but as a stop-gap measure, until efficient testing and contact-tracing systems are deployed, and the carriers of the disease are identified and quarantined.
It should not be necessary to keep lockdowns in place for months! It is inexcusable that 2½ months into this thing, the necessary testing and contact-tracing capabilities still have not been deployed, in the U.S.
Dave – your assertions are just not true.
See Matt Briggs analysis.
Even if your figures were true, which is not known because not everyone has been tested, what do you expect will happen if lockdowns are kept, even forever? The virus will still spread, so the number of infected won’t be less, it will just be slower, and herd immunity will take longer to establish.
It could be argued that the lockdowns will result in more deaths by preventing herd immunity and allowing the virus to continue. It’s certainly clear that anything but a total lockdown will not reduce overall deaths.
Zig Zag wrote, “Even if your figures were true, which is not known because not everyone has been tested…”
You don’t need to test everyone, if you test everyone who could have been exposed. That’s why the testing + contact tracing strategy works so well.
The key is that you have to find everyone who has the disease. If you have unidentified carriers, you’ll have outbreak clusters wherever those people come in contact with others.
Even if a carrier is asymptomatic, you’ll still find him by contact tracing, either from the person who infected him, or from the people who he infects.
Zig Zag continued, “what do you expect will happen if lockdowns are kept, even forever?”
Lockdowns are not needed once everyone who has the disease is identified and quarantined.
That’s what South Korea, Taiwan, Iceland and New Zealand have done, with great success.
Zig Zag continued, “It could be argued that the lockdowns will result in more deaths by preventing herd immunity…”
Indeed, Wittkowski is an “existence proof” that it is possible to make such an argument. But it is not possible to make such an argument well, because of the overwhelming evidence that it is utter nonsense. Wittkowski is a crackpot.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
Live in your basement forever, I don’t care. But iIf you think the IFR is 2.5% you haven’t been paying attention.
Bob Johnston wrote, “iIf you think the IFR is 2.5% you haven’t been paying attention.”
No, in most countries, where diagnosis is often tardy, it is almost certainly higher than that.
But I encourage you to check my math:
https://sealevel.info/COVID-19_fatality_rate_calculated_from_S_Korean_data.html
Better yet, update the figures using the latest data:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/
(You could also add the cases & deaths from the other countries which have identified nearly all their infections, and were the great majority of the cases are resolved: Taiwan, Iceland & New Zealand, but it won’t affect the results much, because those countries all have much smaller numbers.)
Please be sure and report back the result of your calculations.
another way at looking at this is there just aren’t that many people over 80 years old with underlying conditions left to be killed by c-19 in nursing homes. thus herd immunity comes sooner then later.
don rady wrote, “…there just aren’t that many people over 80 years old with underlying conditions left to be killed by c-19 in nursing homes.”
Yes, there are. Fortunately, most nursing homes and assisted living facilities have managed to keep COVID-19 out.
In fact, some nursing which had a case or two have managed, by the use of testing and isolation protocols, to keep it from spreading.
Here’s a surprisingly excellent article about how a NC nursing home stopped the spread of COVID-19. It also mentions that “More than 1 in 4 nursing homes in the country have had at least one case of coronavirus, according to data compiled from the states by The Washington Post.”
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article242862351.html
(I call it “surprisingly excellent” because I’m not used to high quality journalism from that fishwrap.)
The math is maybe easy, but the assumptions of the model are not. Judith Curry made the hypothesis of an inhomogeneous population where the Herd Immunity Threshold (HIT) could be much lower than 90%: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/11/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/
A few countries have loosened their lockup measures without any surge of infection rates…
Just saw your post, Mr. Viera. You explain it better, but it is basically what I attempted to say.
Other comments, I think that Sweden is going to be knocked out of the top 25 in cases by Bangladesh and some other country (maybe even Singapore but more likely UAE).
Brazil will pass Russia as #2 in just a day or two and if it can’t get things under control could eventually surpass the U.S. India’s cases will accelerate and could challenge for number 1 eventually.
China’s numbers are basically fiction and can’t be trusted at all.
Oh for gaaaaawd’s sake.
You can get to herd immunity without killing millions of people. We know who the at risk people are, it is a very small part of our society, we can easily isolate them while the virus runs rampant in the rest of the population. Herd immunity arrives, the spread of the disease is checked, and you can remove the isolation measures for the at risk population.
No strategy is all or nothing. Framing it that way is misleading.
Yes, for some reason, people have difficulty with that concept.
davidmhoffer wrote, “You can get to herd immunity without killing millions of people.”
Only if you have a vaccine.
davidmhoffer wrote, “We know who the at risk people are, it is a very small part of our society…”
It’s well over one-third.
About 21% of Americans are over age 60. About 30% of Americans are overweight, and 70% of of them (21% of the population) are considered obese. And many people have other risk factors.
davidmhoffer wrote, “we can easily isolate them while the virus runs rampant in the rest of the population.”
1. That’s impossible. You don’t understand how “herd immunity” works. If you have large unexposed populations (like retirement communities and nursing homes), then by definition you do not have herd immunity.
2. What’s more, in a national population in which over one-third have “risk factors,” simple arithmetic says you cannot get to the approximately 90% infection rate needed for herd immunity without most of the “at risk” people being infected.
3. Moreover, the simple fact is that all of the people with risk factors interact with people who have no known risk factors. So if the latter are infected, then the former will be exposed, as well. There just is no way to avoid it.
davidmhoffer wrote, “Herd immunity arrives, the spread of the disease is checked, and you can remove the isolation measures for the at risk population.”
Wrong. You don’t understand how herd immunity works. If you’ve managed to protect at-risk segments of the population (or any other substantial segment of the population) from infection, then you have not achieved herd immunity.
Yup DaveB, if you spread your definition of “at risk” thin enough, you can make yourself right.
BTW, in my suggestion, you achieve herd immunity in the not at risk population, that’s the strategy, not the whole population. Then you can introduce the at risk population back in a controlled manner while ALSO seeking effective prophylactics and treatments. See how fast definitions change when you’re willing to compromise? So you’ve managed to make my point for me. By casting everything as all or nothing a solution becomes impossible to find. In your world, there is NO solution short of a vaccine, so keep everyone locked up until there is one. Sorry, that’s impractical to the point of being absurd.
davidmhoffer wrote, “In your world, there is NO solution short of a vaccine, so keep everyone locked up until there is one.”
No, although a vaccine would be useful it is not the solution. As I already wrote:
The common-sense measures which have enabled [South Korea, Iceland, Taiwan & New Zealand] to stop the disease are the use of intensive testing and aggressive contact-tracing of patients, to find and quarantine everyone who has the disease, including asymptomatic carriers. That’s it.
Those measures aren’t complicated, nor even terribly expensive. If we implement them, then we can bring both the daily new case number and the daily death toll rapidly down, and we can then lift the lock-downs and reopen the closed businesses.
If we don’t implement those measures, then it will be a long, brutal summer, with widespread human and economic devastation.
Here are two articles about how South Korea succeeded spectacularly, while most other nations, including the United States, are failing spectacularly:
1. WUWT: Boris Johnson in intensive care (starting around the 15th paragraph) — thank you, Chris Monckton & Steve Mosher!
2. Business Insider: South Korea controlled its coronavirus outbreak in just 20 days
On March 3rd, S. Korea reported 851 new cases.
Over the last month they’ve averaged just 13.5 new cases per day.
That means they’ve reduced their daily new infections by >98%.
The only question I have is WHY every country isn’t trying to emulate that success. Instead, we have idiots like Wittkowski blathering on about nonsense like “herd immunity.”
There is no excuse for the fact that still, after about ten weeks of “social distancing” and lock-downs in the United States:
● America’s big city mayors and governors STILL have not shut down their disease-spreading mass transit systems,
● most American drugstores STILL do not have COVID-19 testing at their drive-through windows, and
● when American patients test positive, there STILL is not a well-oiled machine that springs into action to interview them, quickly identify their likely contacts, and find and notify all of them to self-isolate and get tested.
If we don’t implement those measures, then it will be a long, brutal summer, with widespread human and economic devastation.
Yes, because in your world there is only one solution to a problem, yours. We’re not even allowed to talk about alternatives.
● America’s big city mayors and governors STILL have not shut down their disease-spreading mass transit systems,
Because there are vital services delivered by people who have no other way to get from where they live to where they need to be to deliver those services. So there has to be a balance between providing vital services and limiting virus spread. Its not black and white in the real world.
● most American drugstores STILL do not have COVID-19 testing at their drive-through windows, and
I’m in Canada, our drugstores don’t even have drive through windows. But we have drive through testing. There’s more than one way to do things. Except in black and white worlds.
● when American patients test positive, there STILL is not a well-oiled machine that springs into action to interview them, quickly identify their likely contacts, and find and notify all of them to self-isolate and get tested.
Agreed 100%. I’ve been saying that since the beginning of this mess, I also advocated for contact tracing apps that can run on phones and alert users if they have been in contact with someone who tests positive but without compromising personal info. You see DavidB? The world is not black and white. You’re not always wrong.
If you have large unexposed populations (like retirement communities and nursing homes), then by definition you do not have herd immunity.
You contradict yourself, if lockdowns work, like you claim, than locking down just those at risk communities should work just as well while letting the rest of society get on with their lives and acquire herd immunity amongst themselves (the “at risk” communities would no longer be a factor as they’re in one of your lockdowns that work so well, unless lockdowns don’t work like you claim, but then that’s crackpot talk)
John wrote, “if lockdowns work, like you claim, than locking down just those at risk communities should work just as well while letting the rest of society get on with their lives and acquire herd immunity amongst themselves…”
I didn’t realize I was being unclear. Let me try again:
“Herd immunity” for this disease is a suicidal goal (unless a vaccine or effective treatment is developed). To reach herd immunity in the USA without a vaccine or effective treatment would require the deaths at over 7 million Americans — and that’s with the optimistic assumption that only an 85% infection rate is needed (90% would probably be required), and the even more optimistic assumption that the fatality rate would be only 2.5% (it would probably be between 3% and 4%).
The goal of lockdowns, quarantines, testing and contact-tracing is not “herd immunity.” The goal is to protect people from contracting the disease.
That’s how the countries which have stopped this disease have done so: not by achieving herd immunity, but by using testing, contact-tracing to find and quarantine everyone who has the disease.
What’s more, it would be impossible to “lock down at-risk communities” while letting everyone else get the disease. Who do you think runs the nursing homes?
Virtually every at-risk person has frequent contact with young, healthy people, and the great majority of young, healthy people have contact with at-risk people. So if the disease runs amok among the general public, it will certainly run amok in the at-risk communities — and decimate them.
To reach herd immunity in the USA without a vaccine or effective treatment would require the deaths at over 7 million Americans
Bullshit! You can keep toss out ever bigger fantasy numbers (it was 1.5 million before, now its 7 million) doesn’t make it so. crawl back under your bridge, no ones buying your nonsense.
And in case Bullshit wasn’t clear enough, using the latest estimates from the CDC (35% of infected will be asymptomatic, and their “best estimate” that 0.4% of infected that show symptoms will die): if every man, woman, and child in the US were to get infected (which is way more than needed for herd immunity) we’re talking 214.5 million with symptoms (approx. 330 million -35% that are asymptomatic) of which only 0.4% will die, which is at most 858 thousand – not even a million. Even if you wrongly apply the 0.4% to the full 330 million it’s only 1.32 million at the max – far, far, far less than your bullshit fantasy number of 7 million. And neither 858k or 1.32 mil are realistic numbers either, because 100% infection of the population is unrealistic (not even the flu infects 100% of the population). So don’t try pushing your fantasy 7 million numbers if you want to be taken seriously.
John wrote, “(it was 1.5 million before, now its 7 million)”
No, it wasn’t. “at least 1.5 million” is the expected American COVID-19 death toll from only 61 million COVID-19 cases. That would not get us to “herd immunity.”
61 million infections is only 18.44% of America’s population. Herd immunity for a disease this infectious, if it is even possible, would require about a 90% infection rate, unless a vaccine is developed. Even Wittkowski says 80%.
Nobody thinks you can get herd immunity with only 18.5% of the population infected.
Why are so many people unwilling to do a little bit of simple arithmetic? The arithmetic is simple. Using Wittkowski’s optimistic 80%, (80%/18.5%)×1.5 million = at least 6.5 million dead Americans. With a more realistic “90%” it’s at least 7.3 million dead Americans. (Click the link to see the calculation.)
The only reason those death tolls are not going to happen is that America’s leaders, for all their failings, are not suicidally idiotic, so they will not follow Wittkowski’s advice of seeking “herd immunity” to COVID-19 without a vaccine.
I believe there is one way of increasing herd immunity and keeping down deaths at the same time. Even with a heathy diet there’s one vitamin most people are short on and that’s vitamin D3.
Run a massive media campaign getting people to take vitamin D3 and perhaps any others deemed necessary like vitamin C and possibly also hydroxychloroquine and dish them out free of charge. With hydroxychloroquine it would be simple to test for efficacy. Red-pilled people would take it and the rest would refuse. Keep a record and you’d soon see from the stats if HCQ works.
This should be done very quickly so the US can end the lockdown. That way the UK could too.
YouTube’s censorship of Wittkowski’s nonsense will probably have the effect of promoting it, via the Streisand Effect. It took me about five minutes to find a copy — which I, of course, immediately downloaded. (It’s low resolution, but that doesn’t matter for an interview.)
It’s an odd video, which seems to be a composite of several interviews, spliced together in many small pieces. In it, Wittkowski says many, many obviously ridiculous things, but it is possible that he said them a long time ago, when it wasn’t so obvious. For example, he gives the U.S. death toll from the disease as 10,000, when it is now nearly 95,000. The U.S. reported COVID-19 death toll first exceeded 10,000 on April 4, which was 6½ weeks ago.
There are several things that everyone needs to realize about COVID-19:
1. The COVID-19 “best case except for Iceland” 2.5% fatality rate is about twenty times as deadly as typical seasonal flu. So this disease is no laughing matter.
2. COVID-19 is much more contagious than typical seasonal flu, in part because there’s no vaccine for it.
3. This epidemic is not unstoppable. The proof of that fact is that several countries have already stopped it.
I think that we need to be doing what the countries have done which successfully stopped the epidemic. Obviously!
Those countries are South Korea, Iceland, Taiwan, and New Zealand. (And maybe China, but I’m not confident about the quality of the information about from that country.)
Contrary to Wittkowski’s lies, those countries did not stop it with “herd immunity.” The common-sense measures which have enabled those countries to stop the disease are the use of intensive testing and aggressive contact-tracing of patients, to find and quarantine everyone who has the disease, including asymptomatic carriers. That’s it.
Those measures aren’t complicated, nor even terribly expensive. If we implement them, then we can bring both the daily new case number and the daily death toll rapidly down, and we can then lift the lock-downs and reopen the closed businesses.
If we don’t implement those measures, then it will be a long, brutal summer, with widespread human and economic devastation.
Here are two articles about how South Korea succeeded spectacularly, while most other nations, including the United States, are failing spectacularly:
1. WUWT: Boris Johnson in intensive care (starting around the 15th paragraph) — thank you, Chris Monckton & Steve Mosher!
2. Business Insider: South Korea controlled its coronavirus outbreak in just 20 days
On March 3rd, S. Korea reported 851 new cases.
Over the last month they’ve averaged just 13.5 new cases per day.
That means they’ve reduced their daily new infections by >98%.
The only question I have is WHY every country isn’t trying to emulate that success. Instead, we have idiots like Wittkowski blathering on about nonsense like “herd immunity.”
There is no excuse for the fact that still, after about ten weeks of “social distancing” and lock-downs in the United States:
● America’s big city mayors and governors STILL have not shut down their disease-spreading mass transit systems,
● most American drugstores STILL do not have COVID-19 testing at their drive-through windows, and
● when American patients test positive, there STILL is not a well-oiled machine that springs into action to interview them, quickly identify their likely contacts, and find and notify all of them to self-isolate and get tested.
Please distiguish between mortality rate for symptomatic cases and infections. As “cases” grow thanks to testing of the asymptomatic, the IFR keeps dropping.
This study found the highest US CFR yet, ie 1.3%, although its sample jurisdictions (counties in 33 states) were not representative:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-covid-staggering-death-infected-symptoms.html
However, we don’t know how many asymptomatic infections there might have been until large, random samples of the whole country are gathered. If, as seems likely, asymptomatic infections outnumber symptomatic by 5:1, then the IFR will be 0.26%, or one tenth your assumption. This figure is at the high end of best estimates.
John Tillman wrote, “Please distiguish between mortality rate for symptomatic cases and infections.”
I did. The current naively-calculated CFG is 94,902 / 1,589,366 = 6.0%. I suspect (and hope) that that is higher than the total fatality rate for all infections, including asymptomatic infections. But 71% of identified U.S. COVID-19 cases are still unresolved, and we don’t know how many of them will die.
The 2.5% total infection rate is calculated from South Korea’s data, because they identified nearly all the cases, including asymptomatic cases, and because >90% of their cases are resolved (either recovered or died).
John, I encourage you to check my math:
https://sealevel.info/COVID-19_fatality_rate_calculated_from_S_Korean_data.html
Better yet, update the figures using the latest data:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/
(You could also add the cases & deaths from the other countries which have identified nearly all their infections, and were the great majority of their cases are resolved: Taiwan, Iceland & New Zealand. But it won’t affect the results much, because those countries all have much smaller numbers.)
Please be sure and report back the result of your calculations.
John wrote, “This study found the highest US CFR yet, ie 1.3%,…”
That’s not the CFR, that’s an estimate of the IFR, including asymptomatic cases, based on the (much higher) CFR.
John wrote, “If, as seems likely, asymptomatic infections outnumber symptomatic by 5:1, then the IFR will be 0.26…”
1. Your arithmetic is wrong. 6% of the U.S.’s 1,589,366 cases have already died, and another 71% remain unresolved. Of the resolved cases, 20.4% have died, and 79.6% recovered.
If ALL of the remaining 71% recovered, and if unidentified infections outnumbered identified infections by 5:1 (as you believe), then that would mean the true fatality rate is 6.0% / 6 = 1.0% (i.e., 8× more deadly than the typical seasonal flu). Not 0.26%.
2. However, the ratio of unidentified to identified cases cannot be as high as 5:1, because we know from isolated patient populations that far more than 18% of infections have symptoms serious enough to require medical attention; those cases will rarely remain unidentified. The ratio of unidentified cases to identified cases is probably between 1:1 and 2:1.
That means that even if the remaining 71% active cases ALL recovered (which obviously won’t happen), the true U.S. fatality rate would still be between 2% and 3% of all infections, including asymptomatic cases.
Plus, if only 5% of the remaining 1,126,106 active cases die (which is very optimistic, considering that >20% of the resolved cases have ended in death!), then that will add another 56,305 deaths, raising that “2% to 3%” figure to “3.2% to 4.8%”.
So, you see, that 2.5% true fatality rate estimate for the U.S. is very optimistic. It’s probably at least 3%, and it might be as high as 5%.
CORRECTION:
I wrote: “That [1.3%] is not the CFR, that’s an estimate of the IFR, including asymptomatic cases, based on the (much higher) CFR.”
That’s wrong. Their “1.3%” is a projection for a “symptomatic CFR” which they call “CFR-S,” which they estimate to be about 20% higher than the true fatality rate
Sorry about that!
Mr. Burton, I like that your arguments are well thought out, you include relevant information and that you even admit mistakes and make adjustments.
I don’t agree with all of your conclusions, nevertheless. I also appreciate that you don’t engage in name calling. Cheers
Thank you, ✂️.
I hate making mistakes, but I hate even more making them and not discovering it.
Link to Basu’s work:
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00455
Why is YouTube playing “mother”? There are dozens of Flat Earth videos and YT isn’t getting their panties in a twist about those! Are you saying FE videos have comic relief value while one from some pandemic crackpot does not? I haven’t seen that distinction in YT’s terms of service!
Obviously anything that dissuades from the panic and economic destruction the deep state needs to rid themselves of that rascal Donald Trump must absolutely be eliminated! Once you realize how much power and money are at stake, that’s the only logical conclusion!
‘Why is YouTube playing “mother”’
Because the progressive worldview and loyalty is more closely aligned with China than the US.
Good point. YT features all kinds of antiscientific videos, to include Expanding Earth and Electric Universe nonsense, violating not just a consensus, but objective reality. FB is happy to accept ad revenue from such errant garbage. Because, no political angle.
Burton
You said, “… those countries did not stop it with ‘herd immunity.’” That’s true. And, if it comes back, they may wish they had. It isn’t over until the “morbidly obese” lady sings, to paraphrase a well-known senator.
Not a chance in the world.
Iceland’s per capita COVID-19 death tool is 10.217% of the U.S. per capita COVID-19 death toll, and only 7.726% of Sweden’s per capita COVID-19 death toll.
South Korea’s per capita COVID-19 death tool is 1.794% of the U.S. per capita COVID-19 death toll.
New Zealand’s per capita COVID-19 death tool is 1.519% of the U.S. per capita COVID-19 death toll.
Taiwan’s per capita COVID-19 death tool is 0.102% of the U.S. per capita COVID-19 death toll.
They would have to be as crazy as Wittkowski to regret their use of testing, contact-tracing and quarantine of infectious individuals to stop the disease.
quarantine of infectious individuals is a different beast to quarantine of uninfected individuals. Almost no one is against the quarantining of infected/infectious individuals (or testing or contract tracing for that matter) what people are arguing against is the mass quarantining (“lockdowns”) of healthy, uninfected individuals. (as for Wittkowski, not having sought out the deleted video, I can’t speak to where he stands on the quarantine of infectious individuals, though it certainly seems clear from the article that he’s against the mass quarantining of healthy, uninfected individuals (IE “lockdowns”).
Burton
Are you sure that you have enough significant figures in those percentages?
John wrote, “quarantine of infectious individuals is a different beast to quarantine of uninfected individuals.”
Agreed. What should happen is that a brief lockdown is used to slow the spread of the disease, while the drive-through testing sites and contact-tracing bureaucracies are deployed.
Testing and contact-tracing should be used to identify everyone who is infected, including the asymptomatic carriers. Once all, or nearly all, of the infected people are identified and quarantined, general lockdowns are no longer needed, though temporary local lockdowns might occasionally need to be deployed to deal with new outbreaks.
John wrote, “as for Wittkowski, not having sought out the deleted video, I can’t speak to where he stands on the quarantine of infectious individuals…”
Wittkowski is against quarantines and lockdowns, period. He thinks that quarantines and lockdowns are counterproductive, because they slow down the process of reaching herd immunity.
He said, “it’s very important to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible.” [1:45]
(Yes, he really said that.)
He also said, “If the government, if there had been no intervention, the epidemic would have been over, like every other respiratory disease epidemic.” [5:22]
(Appropriately, the interview was apparently conducted on April Fools Day [and April 2].)
He also said, “Of all symptomatic cases. 2% of all symptomatic cases will die. That is 2% of the 250,000 a day. So that is 500 people a day, and that will happen over 4 weeks. So, that could be as high as 10,000 people. Now, that compares to the normal numbers of flus during the flu season, and we have in the United States about 35,000 deaths due to flu every year during the flu season.”
(Note: the U.S. has had 96,354 known COVID-19 deaths so far — nearly 10× Wittkowski’s prediction. The last day we had fewer than 500 deaths was 497 on March 29th.)
He also said, “There are no indications that this flu is fundamentally different from every other flu.” [11:01]
(Of course, COVID-19 is not flu, and even between flu strains there are huge differences. The 1918 flu, which is estimated to have killed about 2% of the world’s population, had an estimated mortality rate of over 2.5%. That is similar to COVID-19. But the mortality rate from typical seasonal flu averages only around 0.13%, in the U.S..)
He also said, “Going outdoors is what stops every respiratory disease.” [12:10}
(That’s obviously nonsense, though I do not dispute that fresh air can be helpful. Trivia: my grandmother, as a young woman, spent a summer living outdoors in a tent, as treatment for “consumption” [tuberculosis]. That treatment was unsuccessful for most consumption patients, but it was successful for her — otherwise I wouldn’t be here.)
Anyhow, if you want a copy of Wittkowski’s nonsense, email me.
Clyde Spencer asked, “Are you sure that you have enough significant figures”
Shucks, I could have gotten almost that many with a slide rule. 😉
Isolation obviously works but is easier said than done. Once it’s loose from multiple points of entry this becomes more difficult.
Naturally isolated countries/places, mostly islands, found this task to be easier. I’m rooting for Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
As for the U.S., it would be best to isolate nursing homes and similar facilities. Encourage people to take vitamin D, C, zinc and possibly selenium supplements.
why is Elderberry always left off of the must take supplement with no side effects?
Thanks Dave Burton for persistently posting sensible comments containing reasonable arguments and evidence. (And Steven Mosher as always). Your first comment covered all of it adequately, and your further attempts to persuade many others on here of the validity of your views are/were probably a waste of your time unfortunately.
Those who’ve disregarded the clear evidence of what’s happening and formed views which are in direct conflict with that evidence won’t be persuaded from their distorted views no matter how you package it. They see what they want to see; believe what they want to believe.
The only issue I’d differ on is the overall fatality rate. It won’t remain constant as the disease progresses and will trend down towards 1% or perhaps fractionally under I suspect, as the number of elderly and vulnerable affected is reduced, and medics become more capable of dealing with it.
It’s also been argued by some reputable epidemiologists that a 60% infection rate might be enough to achieve effective HI (though I doubt it), but of course that only applies if any immunity generated has persistence – an unknown at this point. That, combined with a 1% fatality rate still points towards a wholly unacceptable death toll of 2 million souls or thereabouts, without common sense mitigating measures.
Masks, distancing, hand washing, surface cleaning, and reduced face touching (every little helps) should drastically reduce the risk and the toll, but not enough. Those simple measures combined with a massive test, trace and isolate campaign, all worldwide, should make eradication possible, if challenging. That should be the clear and resolute objective across the world, and all nations should be working together towards that common end without delay. Whether enough members of certain western nations (US and UK in particular) are willing to think about/of others enough to make minor sacrifices such as masking up and distancing is another issue.
There’s always typos.
Thank you, Jim.
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku
If you are under 14, you have more than a 7 times higher likelyhood of dying from influenza and an even higher probability of succumbing to pneumonia, especially infants.
People 55 and younger represents about 7% of all CV deaths and about 4.5% of all deaths in that group. Those over 85 represent nearly 1/3 of all CV fatalities, yet this only represents about 6.5% of all deaths in that age group.
Yes, this disease disproportionally affects the elderly, but so does death.
Your numbers and reasoning are nonsense because they ignore all of the mortality caused by politicians/bureaucrats ordering nursing homes to accept infected persons and clueless doctors who didn’t know what the hell they were doing. Both of those together are quite significant.
Quebec has been having the worst time in Canada. Just 2.3% of deaths are in those under 60, with the under 60’s being about 60% of confirmed cases. 73.4% of deaths were in those over 80. Median for BC this week is 85, all of 5 deaths, and 2 new cases since yesterday in a population of 5 million. This disease is not going to make much of a blip in longevity statistics.
However, there is a strong tendency for those who were scared silly to stay scared silly, and to need to justify their fear. Unfortunately this includes BC’s health administration. If I were to catch the WuFlu, I would buy a lottery ticket, yet in the grocery store masked people cringe if I get to 6ft of them.
The issue is not if Wittowski is right or wrong, but if he has the right to present his case. If they think he is wrong, they should debate him, to point out his errors for all to see. Don’t silence him. That settles nothing.
Agreed.
The Wittkowski video is chock-full of patent nonsense, which is very easy to refute. But not only did YouTube remove the video, they also removed whatever comments had been posted on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg
The video itself is easy to find. (It took me about five minutes.) But whatever rebuttals had been posted in the YouTube comments on it are now gone, as far as I can tell.
Burton
You said, “… herd immunity, if it is even possible, would require that about 90% of the population get the disease.” Nic Lewis has made a well-stated case that it is much less than even 80%.
[ https://judithcurry.com/2020/05/10/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/ ]
You provided a link supposedly making the case for the fatality rate for COVID-19 being 2.5%, using data from South Korea. The only thing that the article demonstrates is what the fatality rate for SK probably is. Currently, there are thought to be at least two major strains that have different virulences. The case for SK does not take into account the difference in age distributions between SK and other countries in the world, nor the differences in general health when it is known that in the US 80% of the deaths are people over age 65. Nothing is said about the differences in blood types between SK and other countries, nor the serum level of vitamin D. Nothing is said about the differences in co-morbidities. Nothing is said about cultural differences that contribute to transmission, such as bowing versus shaking hands, of the practice of removing shoes before entering a home. In short, there are many confounding factors that are not accounted for that would prevent a paper, based on your assumptions, from passing peer review.
I very much respect the work from Nic Lewis but he lacks biological understanding in this regard and makes unsubstantial assumptions for his model.
We know from other infectious diseases that this is not the case
There is absolutely no evidence that the strains have any difference in their biological properties in terms of deadliness. Even their proposed difference in contagiousness between population is in silico modeling and no direct evidence.
Yes, true.
But taking all these things into account would actually make things worse for the US prediction, not any better.
Agreed, though I would add that, “cultural differences that contribute to transmission, such as bowing versus shaking hands, of the practice of removing shoes before entering a home,” affect the spread of the disease, not its likelihood of killing those whom it infects.
The age profiles of SK and the U.S. are surprisingly similar.
According to Wikipaganda, in 2010 13.0% of U.S. population was age 65+, and according to the Census Bureau that number has increased to 14.9%.
According to Wikipaganda, in 2007, 9.6% of S.K. population was 65+, by 2016 that had risen to 13.53%, and their 2017 estimate is 14.12%.
So, S.K. apparently has a very slightly smaller percentage of their population over age 65.
Your numbers are crackpot, starting with 2.5% fatality rate. There is no basis anywhere fir that number. In fact, there is a growing understanding that we are instead looking at flu type numbers – at the very least an order of magnitude down.
The real crackpots are arrogant academic modellers who’s GIGO pseudoscience was used as advice by politicians- folks like Ferguson in the UK or Fisman in Canada – who decided to lock up the great unwashed and consequently cratered our economies.
If Wittkowski is a crackpot, so are former and current Swedish Chief Epidemiologists Giesecke and Tegnell, and they certainly aren’t.
Even if he is a crackpot, that is NOT a valid reason for disappearing him like YouTube has done. If you go down that path, anyone questioning climate establishment dogma or the existence of the deep state phenomenon is fair game.
tetris wrote, “Your numbers are crackpot, starting with 2.5% fatality rate. There is no basis anywhere fir that number.”
I showed you how it is calculated. I encourage you to check my math:
https://sealevel.info/COVID-19_fatality_rate_calculated_from_S_Korean_data.html
Better yet, update the figures using the latest data, and recalculate them for us:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/
You could also add the cases & deaths from the other countries which have identified nearly all their infections, and where the great majority of their cases are resolved: Taiwan, Iceland & New Zealand. But that won’t affect the results much, because those countries have all had much smaller numbers of cases (& deaths).
Please report back here with the results of your calculations.
tetris wrote, “we are instead looking at flu type numbers…”
The only sense in which the COVID-19 fatality rate numbers are “flu-like” is in their resemblance to the 1918 flu pandemic. COVID-19 is far, far more deadly than typical seasonal flu.
In the United States, where we currently have only 1,590,561 identified cases, and probably between 3 million and 5 million total cases, including unidentified cases, we’ve already have 94,889 COVID-19 deaths.
That’s 2,53× times the death toll in a typical seasonal flu, despite that fact that:
● 71% of the identified COVID-19 cases are still unresolved (and many of them will presumably die), and
● even five million total cases — a high-end estimate — would still be only about one-sixth the number of cases in a typical seasonal flu.
What’s more, even if this disease weren’t more infectious than typical seasonal flu, it still would have the potential to infect far more people, because there is no vaccine for it. On average, almost half of Americans get the annual flu jab, with higher percentages among especially vulnerable populations.
The only sense in which the COVID-19 fatality rate numbers are “flu-like” is in their resemblance to the 1918 flu pandemic.
Not true (at least so far, it’s obviously not over yet)
Hong Kong Flu killed about 100,000 in the United States in 1968 whereas the Spanish Flu took the lives of about 675,000 in the United States in 1918. So far, it’s much, much, much closer to the Hong Kong Flu than the Spanish Flu in terms of deaths.
True, but the U.S. COVID-19 death toll will exceed 100,000 within a week, with less than 1.8 million identified cases (and probably fewer than five million total cases).
For comparison, the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu had to infect at least 40 million Americans to kill that many. (Caveat: that’s a guess, I haven’t found any official estimate.)
H1N1 (2009-2010) is estimated to have infected about 61 million Americans, yet it caused only 12,469 known deaths.
If COVID-19 infects 61 million Americans, without an effective treatment being identified and employed, it will kill at least 1.5 million Americans (probably more).
Sorry but you don’t know that. For all you know 61 million Americans have been infected by now but were mostly asympomatic, but since they haven’t been tested you’ll never know if that’s the case or not.
And as other points out your 2.5% number is flawed for a variety of reasons (do I really need to repeat them here?). Building a 1.5 million fantasy number off of a bogus 2.5% doesn’t make it any less a fiction, no matter how many times you repeat it.
Also
but the U.S. COVID-19 death toll will exceed 100,000 within a week
But it’s will still be a long, long, long way away from 1918’s 675,000 to repeat myself ” So far, it’s much, much, much closer to the Hong Kong Flu than the Spanish Flu in terms of deaths” and that statement will still be true a week from now. I’d even bet that it’ll still be true a month from now, though it remains to be seen how true it is once all is said and done. (and that’s without even bringing up the fact that someplaces have had to revise downward their death totals for COVID-19 due to suspect counting practices, will other places have to follow? again we don’t know, but if so that’s one more factor that alters the percentages you use to build your fantasy numbers with).
John Endicott wrote, “For all you know 61 million Americans have been infected by now but were mostly asymptomatic, but since they haven’t been tested you’ll never know if that’s the case or not.”
That’s impossible. Here’s now we know.
With few exceptions, the unidentified cases are people who have either no symptoms or mild, cold-like symptoms, not severe enough to cause them to seek medical attention. (That’s because people with respiratory illnesses who seek medical attention are tested for COVID-19.)
Are you with me so far?
If 61 million people had been infected, but only 1.6 million cases identified, that would mean that 61 / (1.6+61) = 97.44% of the cases were unidentified, meaning that they had, at worst, only mild symptoms.
Right?
But we have estimates of the number of infected who never develop symptoms, or who develop only mild, cold-like symptoms, which require no medical attention, and those estimates are nowhere near that high. They are based on small, well-studied populations, like prisons, nursing homes, and ships, where everyone was tested, so even the asymptomatic patients were identified. The estimates of the number who never develop symptoms, or who develop only mild, cold-like symptoms, range from about 20% to as high as 60%.
Not 97%.
If we take the high end of that range, 60%, it would mean that the true number of U.S. infections is (1,616,714 identified cases) / (0.40 identified cases / total cases) = about 4 million cases.
We could increase that number slightly, to account for infections which have already occurred, and will be identified, soon, but haven’t been yet. If we approximate that by (seven days times 25,000 cases/day divided by at least 0.4) we get at most another ≈400,000.
So it is safe to say that there have been, at most, about 4.5 million U.S. cases, not 61 million, so far, including asymptomatic cases.
You can also arrive at almost the same estimate from a different line of reasoning. Start with the approximate 2.5% true fatality rate from South Korea, and assume that the U.S. is not doing any better than that. Since we’ve had 96,151 reported COVID-19 deaths, so far, in the U.S., that means we must have had at most (96,151 deaths) / (0.025 deaths/case) = at just under ≈4 million cases.
As before, you can add perhaps as many as 25% to that to account for the patients who have already been infected, and will die, but have not died yet.
The consistent conclusion, from two different lines of evidence, is the same: at most about 5 million Americans can have been infected with COVID-19, so far.
That’s impossible. Here’s now we know.
You know NOTHING. You GUESS and toss out bullshit apocalyptic scenarios that bear no resemblance to reality.
I didn’t guess, John, I calculated. That’s why those numbers are hyperlinks: so you can click the links and see how they are calculated. (It also makes it easy for you to adjust the assumptions and see how your changes affect the result.)
You calculated based on bogus guess numbers to come up with your fantasy apocalypse numbers. Calculations based on BS are BS. Garbage in Garbage out. And no one is buying your garbage.
Sorry Dave but this is Imperial Collage level stuff.
First up you are missing a basic point – Flattening the Curve is not prevention. It is delaying. Hence under Lockdown we are not preventing infections, you are delaying them with the intent of preventing the hospitals from being overwhelmed. Hence you are in effect comparing a scenario where everyone gets infected with a scenario where everyone gets infected.
You also quote 2.5% death rate. Ignoring the fact there are better case/death rates out there (Australia 1.4%) these numbers are calculated from known cases and known deaths. Now while known deaths are ‘reasonably’ easy to determine (more on that later) known cases are not.
As discussed we have the symptomless cases. We also have the cases where people with mild symptoms who probably had Wuhan Virus who, rather than risk forced hard isolation, took soft self isolation option. The figures are fuzzy. In Australia we have had 1.1m tests for 7079 cases. If we assume the majority of tests were done on people reasonably suspected to have Wuhan then we get 1.1m tests for 100 deaths, or 0.0089% death rate.
The other flaw in your dead bodies on street corners scenario is that you are assuming death rates transfer evenly across the population. Again quoting Australian figures (because I CAN), Australians under the age of 50 have literally more chance of dying in a shark attack for the simple if slightly flippant reason that there have been no deaths of Australians under the age of 50.
For those over 50 we also have the clearly observed collation between pre-existing health conditions and ‘Wuhan Based Death’. I would go as far as to call Wuhan a harvester but your mileage may vary and we digress from the core point. The core point is that morality has been accepted to not be universal across all age demographics which means you cannot then take the existing data and expand them to cover the entire population. Indeed I would go as far to suggest (aka – without hard proof but seems valid) that once all the ‘pre existing medical condition’ demographic are taken from us the overall morality rate with drop to insignificant.
Point being here is that simple models give simple results that do not and, in most cases, can not accurately predict future situations.
We are not Imperial College.
Sorry, Dave, but your argument does not hold up.
ICELAND COVID-19 DATA – AS OF 18MAY2020
https://www.icelandreview.com/ask-ir/whats-the-status-of-covid-19-in-iceland/
https://www.icelandreview.com/sci-tech/icelands-coronavirus-testing-global-pandemic-response/
Deaths/Identified Infections (Positive tests) = 10/1800 = 0.55%
Deaths/Total Tests = 10/58,000 = 0.02%
Deaths/Total Population = 10/364,000 = 0.003%
Infections Peaked on 5Apr2020 and have declined to near-zero. 4 cases remain in quarantine.
As of May 4, dentist offices, physiotherapy clinics, massage parlours, libraries, and museums were permitted to reopen. Swimming pools reopened on May 18. Gyms, bars, clubs, and slot machines remain closed but are set to reopen on May 25.
Schools at all levels are open and operating as usual. Workplaces and institutions are charged with applying and enforcing distancing and hygiene regulations.
____________________________
I am disturbed by this GlobalResearch article that I just read – can any of this be true? The GR article appears to be tin-foil-hat, but some things about the Covid-19 full-lockdown just make no sense..
https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-cruelty-universal-lockdown/5710798
My expertise is energy and climate, not contagion. However, I analysed and published that the full-lockdown was NOT NECESSARY on 21March2020 and I was correct. The cure was much worse than the disease.
Covid-19 was no worse than many bad seasonal flu’s, like that of 2017-18 and less severe than others. Death tolls have been increased by remarkably incompetent practices, such as deliberately returning contagious patients into old-age homes in the UK and New York. Valid (or at worst harmless) protective measures and cures such as Hydroxychloroquine(+…) have been falsely vilified. Medicine has been politicized.
Democrats are delaying the re-opening to try to deepen the economic crisis that resulted from the lockdown. It resembles another desperate coup attempt, like the fabricated Trump-Russia-collusion hoax.
There is probably a high degree of desperation among the Dems, because their global warming/climate scam is failing, and their Green New Deal has strong negative credibility. Global cooling is probably happening (or about to) due to a quiet Sun, as I predicted in a Calgary Herald article published in 2002. Crop planting was one month late across the Great Plains in 2018 and again in 2019, and in 2019 there was a huge crop failure due to a cold summer and very cold fall. Nino34 temperature have cooled sharply in the past month, and if this continues it portends a cold 2020 harvest season.
Apologies for this early morning meandering – but some things just make no sense – people (especially the Dems) seem to be losing their minds.
“Quarantine ain’t quarantine when everybody is quarantined.” You can quote me as an authority, I used to work in Quarantine Bay, Louisiana.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnscottlewinski/2020/05/18/penn-medicine-explores-reddit-for-peak-of-public-covid-19-interest/#5bef80b060a9
The PENN team proposes needed guidance could have gone out closer to the period of peak interest if there had been more monitoring of online discussions.” Sigma Xi advertised it as “Artificial Intelligence,” but the paper— [Public Priorities and Concerns Regarding COVID-19 in an Online Discussion Forum: Longitudinal Topic Modeling and “The study was considered exempt under University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board guidelines”] concluded “Real-time monitoring of online COVID-19 dialogue holds promise for more dynamically understanding and responding to needs in public health emergencies.” Might have added something about censorship and that we already knew about that. It is a sociological analysis worried and needing to “… minimize spread misinformation… ” and they only tracked one site with Twitter.
This was their “shareable link.” https://rdcu.be/b4ixZ a clean copy of above, contact Daniel C. Stokes, MS; Penn Medicine Center for Digital Health, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. They also mentioned proper information about masks whatever that is, maybe kind of like if everybody wears a mask, it ain’t masking. Maybe they don’t know much about quarantine and masks in Digital Health.
Also
https://www.forbes.com/sites/civicnation/2020/05/11/building-an-empathy-engine-for-higher-education/#3160f9dd1fa3
“Research suggests that up to 40 percent of admitted college students never make it to the first day of class, often due to the complexities of navigating the enrollment process.” Again AI will fix it. “ A body of research indicates that AI technology may have a role to play in closing the access gap. ” Long ago a higher percentage was not prepared for college. I used to have empathy, told them that we would be happy to have them back when they were prepared. Education students were probably never told that and may have found out, if ever, too late. Also, no wonder kids are scared. –https://www.psypost.org/2020/05/study-suggests-negative-self-imagery-helps-maintain-social-anxiety-56791
God save us from experts!
Mark the “global health authority” in the YouTube reply.
I think it’s time to launch an independent, open-mind video platform, with wide spread owner- and leadership for preventing to be bought by
morons likegoogle, fb or whatever oligarch.I remember the times before social media when we had our own blogs and forums etc. WE controlled them.
Why don’t people post their messages some place that they control? The concept of a ‘link’ that can be published anywhere is pretty powerful and very well established. It’s just the social media barons that don’t want us to have our independence.
Leave social media to the cat video creators and lockdown style gurus!
Not my problem, I’m not on FB, Twitter. 😀
For videos, you need a lot of space for storing that not everybody has.
PS
I well remember FIDO network as “point” ,the 9600, later 14400 modem and the phone always locked down 😀 😀
ZZ
You asked, “Why don’t people post their messages some place that they control?” Well, we have the next best thing. It’s called WUWT.
Why don’t people post their messages some place that they control?
two reasons spring to mind
1) it costs money. In other words the bottom line *is* the bottom line. Setting up your own social media server (particularly for storing video) takes a good amount of money to set up and maintain (even more money if you have to hire people to set it up and maintain it for you because you lack the technical knowhow to do it yourself).
2) eyeballs. Yes, you could set up your own media server, But how many people will actually see its contents? The big social media (FraudBook, Twatter, YouAreCensoredTube) companies bring with them a huge potential audience for content creators. Your homebrewed media server, not so much.
That said, there are alternative platforms to the big social media companies that at least promise to uphold free speech principles (it remains to be seen how true their promises turn out to be). but their size and reach are still very small in comparison and it will take time for them to grow. In the meantime content creators are stuck dealing with the big social media companies if they want to hope to reach a big audience.
I don’t get why people act like Youtube is the only game in town. There’s Bitchute, Liveleak, Vimeo and several others.
Because they are, by far, the dominant player, the one that gets the vast majority of eyeballs. If it ain’t on youtube, people are not likely to see it.
Here’s n experiment for you: Once the lockdowns are lifted, walk down any street in any city and ask people if they’ve watched a video on youtube (prediction: most of the time the answer will be “yes”) then ask them if they’ve watched a video on bitchute or Liveleak or several others (prediction: most of the time the answer will be along the lines of “never heard of it/what’s that?”)
That doesn’t make sense to me. I never go to youtube to browse for videos. I only watch youtube videos when someone links to one. That link could go to any provider and the effect would be the same. The provider is essentially irrelevant.
Like I said, do the experiment (once you are free to do so). You are the exception (as you note people tend to send *youtube* links rather than links to those other services, have you ever stopped to wonder why?)
Some time ago I saw a film called “All But The Truth” about a journalist being forced to reveal her source in a government official case.
Once there was a Speaker’s Corner in London where you could say what you wanted, but that was fifty years ago.
We have been warned for decades with “1984”, “Enemy Of The State” and by “Yuri Bezmenov” in his 1983 interview (bX3EZCVj2XA). – Why did we allow it to come this far?
When I get bored and browse YT videos, I am amazed by the crab people put up there. “Free Energy” videos have loads of unhealthy and misleading science in them. Why are these film not pulled?
The Speakers Corner (NE Hyde Park) in London still functions, but police will intervene if there be valid complaints.
John
who defines what a ‘valid complaint’ is?
Carl
You asked, “Why are these film not pulled?” Perhaps because the powers-that-be see them as potential alternatives to fossil fuels and aren’t sufficiently scientifically literate to realize they are ‘snake oil.’
That is the danger of censorship. Even if it is done with the intent of acting as a benign autocrat, good things might be prevented from receiving critical reviews by those who understand, and bad things that have no basis in fact might be implicitly endorsed. Or, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
Well, that’s the First Amendment gone. Now for the rest…?
Many of us around the world don’t have the first Amendment we don’t live in USA :-).
well, that’s your problem. :p 😀
It is only a matter of time before the Elitist-Socialists who own Google, YouTube, Facebook come for Climate Change dissent blogs as well. The die has been cast for them to follow the orders of Left. We already see this from past calls for Climate Skeptics posting articles that debunk the Climate Scammers’ junk to be tried for Crimes against Humanity, and to use that as the excuse to block their content.
In the USA what is going to happen is that by these actions they are begging to be regulated as public utilities to ensure this Freedom of Speech is not censored. Call it an expected consequence of their actions. They know full well where it will lead. That is what Google and its YouTube want. Once the government controls them, their profits are secure forever. Their user data will be made available to government without warrant.
This was the real driving reason behind the Obama administration forcing the US Commerce Department to divest itself of controlling ICANN and its IANA services, since then the 1st Amendment would apply as long as the US Government was controlling it.
IANA is the global coordination of the DNS Root, IP addressing, and other Internet protocol resources is performed as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.
https://www.iana.org/about
Here is what Obama did in 2016:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jodywestby/2016/09/24/7-days-before-obama-gives-away-internet-national-security/#a27b18730d4e
They came for Climate Change dissent first.
Clearly “settled science”.
Rarely/never in my life have I seen such a biased and dishonest media. Just look at what they are saying about Hydroxychloroquine. Here is a quote from the CDC: CDC has no limits on the use of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of malaria. Does that sound like a dangerous drug? There is more: https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2020/05/20/the-truth-about-hydroxychloroquine/
HCQ is linked with ~60 dead people … out of tens of millions over decades.
It’s silly, but the argument can still be made … by ruthless people.
Phin
Do you have a citation that you can provide for your “~60 dead people?”
Not any more. Mainstream media has polluted Google.
All I can say is that in March I read that there were 62 deaths from ~35,000,000 administrations of HCQ.
Sorry.
All I can find now:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0735675701482520
“Hydroxychloroquine overdoses are rarely reported with 7 previous cases found in the English medical literature.”
7!
https://journals.lww.com/euro-emergencymed/Abstract/2008/02000/Hydroxychloroquine_overdose__case_report_and.4.aspx
“Hydroxychloroquine poisoning has rarely been reported in the literature, with only 18 cases being found on searching the literature.”
So that makes 7 in the English literature (previous post) and 18 overall.
“rarely been reported”
Because it rarely happens.
So we now know that deaths from HCQ are barely existant. This of course excludes deaths WITH HCQ, which is not a fair metric.
HCQ is probably one of the safest things out there.
Phin
“Because it rarely happens.” That doesn’t mean it isn’t an existential threat for some people. Unless you are willing to argue that it is acceptable to sacrifice some people in order to benefit many, the argument of the greatest good for the greatest number of people justifies slavery as long as the slaves are a minority of the population.
Clyde,
Right. Because some people can be overdosed, everyone else has to not take medicine that is mostly beneficial in our circumstance.
Because some people die in auto accidents, no one should drive.
https://twitter.com/Daneen38391733/status/1262496857835659267
I have a feeling the same thing has happened to the Swedish virologist Anders Tegnell.
I can no longer find him on YT.
Let me get this straight; YouTube has a problem with the opinion of a PhD in medical biometrics regarding how to properly deal with WuWHOFlu yet they have no concerns about a young woman who hasn’t completed her secondary education lecturing the world about the horrors of CO2 induced CAGW? Okay, makes sense to me! sarc/
John, thanks for the WuWHOFlu! Now I’m going to be torn when speaking or writing about the media induced Dem-panic whether I should call it ChiCom-19 or the WuWHOFlu! I can see the crowd at the DemoKKKrat National Convention chanting, “WuWHOFlu, WuWHOFlu…” as they make ongoing lockdowns part of their official platform along with voter-fraud-by-mail and open borders! That should really fire up their base in November!
You’re welcome!
I use ChiCom for the disease rather than the virus, as in ChiComVid-19.
Although of course, coronaviruses aren’t flu viruses. Here are their phylogenetic pedigrees:
Taxon: Coronaviruses Influenzaviruses
Realm: Riboviria Riboviria
Kingdom: Orthornavirae Orthornavirae
Phylum: Pisuviricota (+ssRNA) Negarnaviricota (negative-sense, single-stranded RNA viruses)
Class: Pisoniviricetes Insthoviricetes
Order: Nidovirales Articulavirales
Family: Coronaviridae Orthomyxoviridae
Subfamily: Orthocoronavirinae —
Genera:
Alphacoronavirus Alphainfluenzavirus
Betacoronavirus Betainfluenzavirus
Gammacoronavirus Gammainfluenzavirus
Deltacoronavirus Deltainfluenzavirus
— Isavirus
— Quaranjavirus
— Thogotovirus
To put the relationship in animal terms, flu is to protosomes as coronaviruses are to us deuterostomes.
YouTube also deleted medcram’s episode 71.
Just criticized the bogus VA study to get it booted.
They removed several of Medcram’s videos. They are all available on the Medcram site. Dr Seheult MD is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Care:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG-iSMVtWbbwDDXgXXypARQ
Yeah but Youtube knows better than this actual expert…
Youtube is going to die because of its political moderation. Personalities such as Joe Rogan leaving the platform (for Spotify) is another nail in the coffin. Being a behemoth, it will take a while to decline, but it is going the way of Facebook.
RE: “…it [Youtube] is going the way of Facebook.” Bulldust
Facebook is still growing. Did you mean to write MySpace?
Dan Kurt
Not a single governor’s quarantine order to his/her state healthy residents to “shelter in place” and only go out for essentials is constitutional. Not a single one. Granted they may be able to order certain businesses to close, close schools, order cities to cancel events permits for outdoor concerts and big gatherings needing permits, but their reach into churches, synagogues, mosques are all clearly unconstitutional and will be voided by any Federal court where a challenge is brought.
We have had 77 years of Civil Rights rulings from the Supreme Court that have smacked down abusive State governors and locals governments abusing and censoring individual liberties and civil rights of the People. Rights reserved to the People under the 1st Amendment and protected again by the 14th Amendment. To think a general quarantine order is valid from a governor is to ignore that.
Some have argued since they did it in 1919 or 1793 epidemics (quarantine whole cities) it must still be legal today. Whoever says that (or believes that) simply doesn’t understand how courts have to consider case law as it exists today, not 100 or 200 years ago. In 18793, slavery was legal. In 1919, no one was challenging successfully thecivil rights-abusing and liberty oppressive Jim Crow laws in the South.
So clearly in 2020, with the mountain of civil rights ruling from the Supreme Court since 1943, no quarantine order of healthy people is valid anywhere the US Constitution applies. None.
George Orwell coined the term DoubleThink in his 1984 dystopian look at our future.
From the Wiki definition: ”
dou·ble·think
/ˈdəbəlˌTHiNGk/
The acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time, especially as a result of political indoctrination.
You couldn’t find a Democrat today who would condemn the Civil Rights movement. A movement that at its heart was about stopping abusive State Governors and local officials . Think Gov George Wallace trying to use his control of the National Guard to stop bus loads of protestors from coming to Georgia protests.
But then on the contrary side, today’s Democrats seem to not have any problem with Governor trying to stop protests against their actions. To order people to stay home. To try to define what a protest is and how a protestor cannot get closer than 6 feet to another protestor without being arrested. Imagine how that would have gone over with the hand-holding throngs of hippy peace protestors being told to stay 6 feet apart for the “safety.”
It is simply classic DoubleThink to simultaneously embrace what the Civil Rights movement was and is, and to also believe these state governor-directed quarantine orders to healthy people en mass and to limit protests are also valid/constitutional.
So it will be no big leap of (il)logic for the Left then to also embarce Internet censorship in the name of the casue they believe in.
As another example of DoubleThink, we see this same kind of hypocrisy, as a double standard at play with the #Metoo movement and Joe Biden’s credible sexual assault accuser. They were eager to use it as weapon against Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, but when even more credible accusation is against one of their own, it is dismissed by the Left, simply because he is their guy, and only hope of replacing Trump.
So internet censorship by YouTube and Facebook is okay for the Left when it satisfies a belief they want to hold, but will be the a figurative “End of Times” calamity if it is used against them for things they want.
Gov George Wallace = Alabama
Not GA.
Those who are right don’t mind wrong information, because it makes them look good.
Those who are wrong can’t handle right information, because it makes them look bad.
The rush to censor must usually come from those that are wrong. And even if they are not wrong, they make themselves look that way.
Anybody can flag YouTube content and get videos taken down. They quickly review the notice and they do not give the creator much explanation or chance to argue their case. It’s very one-sided.
“violates Community Guidelines” is vague.
https://www.youtube.com/about/policies/#community-guidelines
Somebody tell me exactly which guideline the respected scientists and doctors are violating.
Remember when Google’s motto was “don’t be evil”?
(from Wikipedia)
That was before Google cooperated with censoring in China.
You Tube = No Clue Tube
Facebook = Face Crook
How many deletions of expert alternative views will it take, before members of these platforms ditch them?
Why hasn’t this already happened, Joel?
“In the USA what is going to happen is that by these actions they are begging to be regulated as public utilities to ensure this Freedom of Speech is not censored.”
Wait till Februay 2021 when the Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House…….
Google wages a war on the United States. This is Treason.
The minimum that the President should do is to freeze Google’s bank accounts, as well as those of its directors and executives, and to arrest a few of them – just to get their attention.
Yooper
You asked, “Why hasn’t this already happened, Joel?” I think that the answer is that most people saw the wisdom of social distancing and improved hygiene, and voluntarily complied. That suggests that compliance would have been nearly has high if a reasoned appeal was made in their own self-interest, rather than trying to enforce the behavior. While some may conclude that I’m being optimistic, I might suggest thinking about what happens if parents tell their teenagers that they can’t smoke or drink.
Google’s YouTube: “We quickly remove … including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of global or local health authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance.”
Thus, YouTube admits to specifically targeting and attempting to eliminate all accurate and helpful information about efficient treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19. Any such information falls under this description, including but not limited to hydroxychloroquine.
YouTube also admits that social distancing is an aim in itself. Notice that social distancing increases Google’s power and wealth, because most interpersonal communication happens over computer networks, and is dependent on Google Youtube, Google search, GMail etc.
Other Google units are guided by the same principles. Google similarly blocked access to the most impactful paper on hydroxychloroquine as an effective COVID-19 treatment. Even more shocking, the paper was on the author’s personal Google Drive.
Google is not yet guided by a malicious AI, but already acts as one. It intentionally withholds knowledge about and access to life-saving treatment in the midst of a pandemic.
This is the very reason I run my own servers with email, owncloud, apache, chat server, etc.
For those who find this too difficult, the alternative is paid email service, store your documents on a NAS drive in your home and and avoid public “free” cloud services.
A middle of the road suggestion is to go together in groups and hire a private server.
Be also careful which DNS you are using. There are some “open” DNS services out there you may be more likely to trust (can’t do any suggestions here).
If a service is free, I smell a rat.
The service organizations must earn money in some way, right?
Yes of cause, and they claim they only sell anonymous information about you. Sure, that was likely their original intention, but “1984” has been approaching for a long time now, so it will be worse that you thought!
We will listen to the experts!! (That agree with our opinion)
Why do people listen to this BS about Google’s Community Guidelines, Terms of Service etc.? We are a country of laws. So are other countries. Google has to provide its services in accordance with the laws. Google’s ToS & CG are invalid and illegal.
Anyway, interfering with efforts to prevent or cure an epidemic or pandemic disease is illegal.
– Sorry for the long link in the previous post.
Most of Democrat governors are not monsters to deny potentially life saving treatment to patients. Google, Facebook, and Twitter have driven them crazy. Imagine a governor (or a reporter, health care apparatchik, or staffer) who wants to learn other side’s opinion on HCQ. He searches in Google – and finds only negative opinions about it. He asks somebody to send a link to a video or document – and the document is deleted, as violating ToS.
Who could imagine that Google hunts down and removes useful & helpful medical information just because it is useful and helpful?
There are multiple class action suits in the making against the aforementioned because of the bias that you describe. A lot of lawyers will get rich.
They really have dropped the mask. They dont even pretend its anything but liberal censorship.
Google needs to be broken up. What they are doing is far more damaging to society than anything that triggered previous monopoly break ups.
RE your comment:
“They don’t even pretend its anything but liberal censorship.”
These people are not Liberals – they are Marxists – but they prefer the term “progressives”, “socialists”, etc.
Many countries that have fallen for their lies are now dictatorships – with a handful of despots living like kings, lording it over a country of poor peasants. Venezuela and Zimbabwe are great examples, but there are many more across South America, Africa, Asia and the Arab world.
This is what the Dems want for America and what Trudeau has underway for Canada – a Chinese style dictatorship.
YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi’s frank statement, the one not fit to print:
“We quickly remove any and all content that contradicts our World View, including content that explicitly disputes the scientific consensus on climate change and global or established local health authority propaganda, both of which may lead others to act as independent thinkers. We are committed to continue providing timely and what-we-view-to-be-helpful censorship at this critical time.”
Loose Change is still on YouTube…and monetized at $3.99. It is part of “YouTube Movies.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0skCyy7TObQ
How is that possible?
Video itself missing and comments off from Europe!
Is it the same as this one:
Note to the YouTube commissars: Thank you for your concern, but I can think for myself.
Chloroquine is likely as effective as chicken soup. Not sure why WUWT readers who are critical of quackery in climate science think that there is a place for speculative claims in medicine.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/03/25/study-shows-hydroxy-chloroquine-is-ineffective-against-covid-19—so-what-now/#ae38daf409be
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.07.20056424v2
Are there any studies of chicken soup? Is chicken soup quackery?
There had better be a place for speculative claims in medicine.
Shoot them down, disprove them, run trials, debate them as best you can, but do not censor them.
Thanks for the medrxiv study. From Brazil. Brazil needs all the help it can get; they are just getting started with covid as the northern hemisphere is finishing (cross fingers)
“Chloroquine diphosphate in two different dosages as adjunctive therapy of hospitalized patients with severe respiratory syndrome in the context of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection: Preliminary safety results of a randomized, double-blinded, phase IIb clinical trial (CloroCovid-19 Study)”
So all the cases were already severe. All 81 of them. They were divided into two groups. One “high dose” group got 12 g CQ while the “low dose” group got 2.7 g CQ.
Older patients (aged over 75) were only in the high dose arm.
From the discussion section:
“However, CQ, despite being a safe drug used for more than 70 years for malaria, might be toxic in the dosages recommended by Chinese authorities (high dosage 10g, for 10 days).”
It is quite possible that high doses are bad, and it’s possible that CQ is not the Lazarus solution.
From their discussion section:
“We recommend the following next steps: (1) trials evaluating its role as a prophylactic drug; (2) trials evaluating its efficacy against progression to severity when administered to patients with mild/moderate disease.”
Yes chicken soup is quackery. Lets do a study. Lets administer early cuz the usual chloroquine efficacy complaint is that it was administered late. Lets give Chloroquine to half. Lets give chicken soup to half. Geez, about 95% recovery rate for both chicken soup and chloroquine, dozens of studies of hundreds of patients required to determine any statistical difference, not piddly little studies on 8, or 28, or even a hundred people that were likely to recover anyway. Get over it, chloroquine is no “magic bullet”, and chicken soup tastes better.
Not a magic bullet, I don’t believe in magic bullets. A bullet to bring people back from the dead, nah. Even a metaphorical “bullet”. I’ll change my mind when you find the Holy Grail.
Chicken soup, I can believe in that.
Chicken soup contains ZINC. And zinc is the essential ingredient, not HCQ. HCQ delivers the zinc to where it is needed. And of course starting with a healthy zinc level is good.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/01/health/chicken-soup-food-drayer/index.html
There are more reasons to like CNS in that link. CNS is not quackery.
Toto,
Good point, and thanks for this study. Should I take it then that chicken noodle soup is better than chloroquine? I don’t think so, but some people might. On a related topic….Has anyone studied if there are more CoVid19 intensive care admissions during full moons ?
Oh heeellllppp me! I’ve become infected with whatever Zoe Phin has….
DM
More and more studies are finding problems with HCQ. On the other hand, I don’t think that there are any deaths that can be attributed to chicken noodle soup (CNS) and there is no shortage of anecdotal testimonials for CNS. I personally prefer the taste of CNS.
Don’t sell CNS short.
One evening, some years ago, I brought my friend’s elderly dog, “Boomer,” back from the very brink of death, with broth from Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.
I “got the call,” and rushed right over. When I arrived at my friend’s house, “to say goodbye to Boomer,” he was lying on a mat, “surrounded by family and friends,” as they say, in my friend’s living room. Poor Boomer was too weak to even lift his head.
So I went to the kitchen, found some Campbell’s CNS concentrate, mixed it with water, warmed it to “baby bottle temperature,” and then patiently squirted it into the near-comatose dog’s mouth with a plastic syringe, for the next hour.
After about an hour of squirting broth into Boomer’s mouth, and massaging his throat until he swallowed, over and over, to the amazement of all assembled, Boomer came back to life! He stood up and walked! It seemed miraculous (though he did not take up his mat).
The next day was an expensive one, for my friend. Boomer’s regular vet said he was too ill to be treated there — though he was doing enormously better than he had been the night before. So Boomer ended up at the NCSU vet school, which is very high $ care. But he made a good recovery (from what they ultimately decided was probably Ehrlichiosis). As I recall, he lived another 8 or 10 months, in reasonably good health.
CNS saved his life.
Your first link is to a Chinese study which didn’t distinguish between early use of HCQ in combo with azithromicin and zinc and use in already on death’s door patients of HQC alone.
Your second link is to the thoroughly discredited Brazilian study using absurdly high dosages of chloroquine, not HCQ.
Proper studies have found high effectiveness. Further full double blind clinical trials are underway.
Patients getting better is not speculation. Reports are coming in from all over from doctors who see marked improvement in their patients.
YouTube censors video in which medical doctors said hydroxychloroquine might help treat COVID-19
https://justthenews.com/nation/free-speech/youtube-censors-video-which-medical-doctors-said-hydroxychloroquine-might-help#.XsWNlPEbVOs.twitter
Chloroquine is likely as effective as chicken soup
bait and switch. Chloroquine is not hydroxychloroquine, a study of the one says nothing about the other.
Hydroxychloroquine has been safely administered to patients for decades, It’s a known drug so we generally know who it’s safe to give to and who it’s not and at what doses. There’s some anecdotal and preliminary studies that show it, along with zinc, is useful when used early on but not so much for those that are already badly affected by the disease. As such the downsides are minimal and the potential upside (when used early) great. The real question isn’t why Doctors are willing to prescribe it (because many Doctors have), but why certain individuals are so dead set against it that they use the deceptive practice of pointing to a study of Chloroquine to “disprove” the possible usefulness of Hydroxychloroquine.
I am generically lumping quinine derivatives and their various regimens with zinc and antibiotics under one name….”chloroquine” for brevity. Basically if these regimens are administered “early” they show about the same recovery rates as the “unadministered” group. If administered late, the “believers” say it didn’t seem to work because it was administered too late to help. So the improvement, if any, is difficult to quantify, without larger study groups better control trials….but we can say after 4 months of ad hoc small sample trials at various hospitals worldwide, that the results so far aren’t better than administering placebos. Which might still be useful for statistically challenged people who are panicking.
Some things work better if done in advance. Bullet-proof vests, seat belts, condoms, insurance, HCQ. If you could link to some studies of HCQ administered before the person entered the hospital we would all be grateful. HCQ has all the headlines now, but there are also other drugs which might be as good or better, when used as a prophylactic.
Usually Covid-19 hits the old much harder than the young. What is it that protects the young and what makes the old vulnerable? Is there a drug opportunity in the answer to that question?
How many studies have been done using the patients in care homes instead of hospitals?
“…. studies of HCQ administered before the person entered the hospital we would all be grateful….“
Well, countries where malaria is endemic have those very people…..and for a while, low CoVid19 rates in those countries was touted a possible example of how well quinine derivatives possibly worked…..except that recently they are “catching up“ in number of infections. Turns out countries with endemic malaria don’t have much equipment for PCR and antibody testing….If they do catch up, it will actually show that quinine derivatives aren’t effective for CoVid19…..
My money is on chloroqiney treatments being less beneficial than placebos, about half the time.
We will find out in due course. We will watch the countries with endemic malaria, but there are so many confounding factors, it is possible that we still won’t know for sure. It will take a properly designed study for that, in order to take into account age, health, comorbidities, other vaccines and immunities to other viruses, and other factors.
Including diet. Whether it’s chicken soup or not, what you eat has a huge effect on your health, and that has a huge effect on how susceptible you are to this and other viruses.
If it turns out that HCQ prevents deaths, the people who prevented us from using it or even learning about it should eat crow.
Diet is indeed extremely important, Toto. And the sad fact is that many people in the modern “western world” simply don’t eat a healthy diet. They eat all kinds of nutrient-lacking processed foods high in chemical preservatives and not nearly enough of natural unprocessed fruits and vegetables that are full of vital nutrients. In another post, DMacKenzie stated “and zinc will be….well….useless if you have an adequate diet”. but that’s the rub, many people don’t have an adequate diet, if they did, obesity (just to pick an obvious example) wouldn’t be nearly as prevalent in the “western world” as it is.
How long did it take fakebook and Youdope to remove the videos of the murders of Muslims in Christchurch, NZ?
Too many people have the foolish notion that YouTube is about spreading knowledge and information.
It is not!
YouTube, Google, and their controllers at Alphabet are all about their own commercial imperatives, and the money from the people who pay for them. So if YouTube is paid, or the board at Alphabet politically feel, that it is appropriate to censor the content of what goes online, then that is what they do.
They are after all in full editorial control just like every publisher (even though they lie to many tax authorities by claiming they are not a publisher), but what else should you expect from a company that lied to YOU saying they would do no evil, and then continuously attempting to spy on you 24/7.
Remember YouTube IS a publisher, it does make money from targeted advertising, and as an advertiser the phrase ‘Do No Evil’ is just a meaningless slick piece of advertising copy.
So far Sweden is at 380 deaths/million, i.e. higher than the US with a much less dense population.
Chloroquine is not the same as hydroxychloroquine, and hydroxychloroquine needs to be administered at the right time with a zinc supplement.
It almost seems as though studies were designed to fail. We already know the that journalists are biased.
BTW, several studies show that chicken soup helps to fight the common cold.
Chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, I prefer gin & tonic.