Patrick was kind enough to have me on his podcast.
Here’s his show notes (his title too):
#223: How You Can Tell They’re Lying About Covid—Dr. William M. Briggs
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Thus famously spake Mark Twain. The plandemic has offered plenty of evidentiary fodder for Twain’s observation.
The mix-up causation with association. They (The Experts, I mean) toss off fallacy, half-truth, and presupposition, secure in the knowledge that MSM viewers are not terrible equipped to detect the lies.
Enter Cornell Ph.D. statistician William M. Briggs, co-author of The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic into a Catastrophe. If you’ve wondered how to spot the messy math and the decimal deceptions, this is the interview for you. Briggs breaks down the pie graphs and the colored charts for the nonmathematician set.
In this episode, you will learn
- How to prove all the models have been wrong about Covid-19 death estimates and can rightly be called stupid
- The difference between case-fatality rate (CFR) and infected-mortality rate (IFR)
- The average age of those who succumbed to Covid 19
- The popular confusion about the concept of probability
- How Covid-19 rams among world pandemics since 426BC
- Why no one panics when a bad flu season rolls through the population, despite killing over 650,000 around the world
- Why most of your friends on Facebook are wrong about the true lethality of Covid-19
This is off topic, but I was delighted to learn Patrick does old school magic. Knew some of the masters, who trained him. My interest was always in mentalism, the tricks “psychics” use to fool people they have special powers.
Long time readers will recall I am official magician, as I performed once in Las Vegas at a strip casino. One trick for one audience. But it counts.
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Excellent. But how few are those susceptible to the truth. For most the MSM is truth. Truth and courage are brothers/sisters.
How you can tell they are lying? Their lips are moving. Works on all experts and politicians, dictators and lawyers and most of Hollywood.
People only panic when told to do so. That’s how incredibly braindead stupid Americans are…..Anything not reported as scary when it really is deadly will kill millions. Deserving millions.
Hard to get used to Patrick’s style (almost reminiscent of NPR type folk)
A lot of pregnant pauses and such a low slow quiet voice
I DO appreciate Patrick compared to that one podcaster who walked all over you as he darted from one thought to the next anticipating your responses before you were able to get them out of your mouth
Briggs ==> Almost Semi-Professional Magicians of the world unite! I was a junior professional magician as a very young man — meaning a real long time ago. I sometimes use what I learned in the field of stage magic in my science and health writing.
“For most the MSM is truth”
This is the key to it all. Yes, the Democrats are debased and the true spawn of Hell. Or something like that. But most only know what the MSM tells them, and apply not even a whiff of critical thinking to it. It has to be true, right? They aren’t allowed to lie.
Any deviation…and I mean ANY deviation from the MSM narrative is automatically termed right-wing conspiracy and rejected as a matter of common practice.
All of which is no news to anyone here….well, most anyone…..but it is the religious zeal that most folks have to this practice that never ceases to astound me. And, the total uselessness of trying to convince them otherwise, in even the most trivial matters.
“How You Can Tell They’re Lying About Covid”
Their lips are moving.
According to the government CPI and inflation indices, a Bic Mac meal should cost about $2.25. It’s $5.99 today now out here in the real world. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Jerry: Which means we are hopelessly toast.
This is completely off-topic and irrelevant but I can’t help asking the host the following question, since I just noticed that your Ph.D. is from Cornell:
Does the date 5/8/77 mean anything to you?
Marisa,
It do.
Can anyone tell me where Dr Brigg’s gets to 200k flu and pneumonia deaths per yes in the US?
I can.
From the CDC’s old files, such as:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/data/NCHSData38.csv
Sum up the flu+penumonia by year.
So is our host a Dead Head?
This is perfect. I really appreciate it.
I’m confused why the cdc posts conflicting information.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/pneumonia.htm
David,
You and me both, brother.
Hello Dr Briggs.
I am glad that I found your website. It has been about two months. I have learned a lot about Statistics and their limits. E.g. that P values mean little. I am in a field where people bang on about how the P value is less than 0.05 and therefore something has happened. I never got why did it mean something. And now I know – it doesn’t.
Also did you know about the reproducibility and replicability crises in the social sciences?
Please carry on doing this work and educated people about the misuse of Statistics.
So you’re saying the next pandemic will be a rogue rhinovirus? Spread by large droplets, or aerosols, or fomites? Interesting that it is killed by snapping fingers. Why is it called a rhinovirus? Did it come from rhinos, or does it look like a rhino? Any pics of the thing? o_o
Briggs, there’s lies, lies and damed lies by statisticians claiming they don’t like the other guy’s model.
Briggs you’ve never been to England, you don’t know what your’e talking about and you’re constantly misquoting and misrepresenting what’s actually happening. Where do you get your information from?
Try being interviewed by someone who isn’t a jerk? Take an interview from someone who DOESN”T agree with you.
As for Christian spirit? I’ll be t both of you men haven’t stepped foot in England. You speak from a position of complete ignorance. Such phoney sadness Patrick pretends, how sad he is to see people in masks! Th horror!
I challenge Briggs to actually critique what is actually said and claimed as opposed to straw manning all the way along.
Jay’s lead you astray! Solutions to a non problem.
Nobody thinks it’s as bad as you think we think it is, Briggs.
It is what it is. Not more nor less. Those claiming otherwise are lying.
Watching the numbers coming from China and the footage of the hospital’s and overflow hospitals etc, it was obvious that this was not a normal flu year or anything like it. The Chinese called the virus a “demon”, it is. So was the flu when it first arrived.
On March 5th (and an earlier session), Sir Chris Whitty spoke of the expected fatality rate. He was careful to define and clarify what they mean, always. Nobody intelligent enough to understand basic concepts in England would have a credible claim that they were misinformed deliberately alarmed by the scientists and government advisors. Only those relying on tabloid newspapers and other dodgy sources might think other impressions were given at the time.
Coronavirus is a deadly virus. That was true then and is true now. THAT other deadly viruses exist is irrelevant. It is this epidemic that’s being fought, not another disease.
The fatality rate was estimated as far less than 1%. Chris Whitty estimated “FAR less”. That was not the entire point and never was. So that’s another false claim made by those who haven’t heard what was said at the time. I’ve posted this point several times and yet I note many repeating the blatant untruth that something else was going on. That somehow there was deliberate fear mongering from on high. In your country perhaps? Not here.
The WHO spoke wrongly and Chris kicked over the traces to save them embarrassment? He did correct their estimate though and quite clearly. It’s not the done thing to trounce your colleagues when they blunder. It shouldn’t be the first response.
Listen:
https://youtu.be/IfJcwDaZrsA
At 17:28 to about 21:00.
I had come to the same number with the use of simple imagination and division.
~~~
What he says afterwards remains an unknown. We still do not have all the truth from China.
That also ought to be obvious to anybody watching China’s numbers together with their story.
The Chinese Dr’s in a televised conference noted very early on that Children and young adults were almost completely spared from serious illness and death.
That clip is cold hard proof that our government advisors and chief medical officers were measured and truthful in their analysis, contrary to claims made on this Patrick interview.
There have been hours and hours of publicised discussions of varying degree of scientific depth. This is not a matter of opinion, it is what happened. It takes only one example to show that Patrick and Briggs are wrong in their assertions.
In defence of Neil Ferguson.
@ 0:40 ~
Reason for recording of contemporaneous thinking and methods of decision making, regarding planning of public (and private) health care provision for what was then, the early stages of the epidemic.
He doesn’t seem like an alarmist, very laid back, without guile.
https://youtu.be/jSW8U-EGIYc