Vexxine Harms , Deaths & Passports; Mask Madness; More! — Coronavirus Update LXX & Heading To Infinity!

The CDC’s || Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) || data (which BRIGGS cites above), anomalously neglects to tabulate ALL Deaths in those who “received the vaccine” as CAUSED BY THE VACCINE – in a manner fairly and equally coordinate with how ALL Deaths in those testing-positive for “the VIRUS” get attributed to “the VIRUS” and NOT to motorcycle accidents, or parachutes failing to open.

I was at a conference in the 1970’s where a young MIT professor (who eventually became the head of the department of chemistry) was challenged by a real expert at Bell Labs. The speaker’s response was, “I don’t know how you do experiments at Bell Labs, but at MIT …” Another scientist from Bell Labs, who was sitting next to me, leaned toward my side and quietly said, “MIT … QED.” With a few exceptions, a good rule of thumb is to never take anything from MIT too seriously.

This BS about “flu disappeared” is starting to drive me crazy.

Flu did not disappear. We just stopped looking for it about a year ago and now, when we accidentally find it, we just call it something else, because calling it what it is would be inconvenient to the political narrative.

It’s all so ridiculously transparent.

Societies, where one COVID death is “OMFG unacceptable!!!”, but deaths from COVID vaccines are “meh, just collateral damage”, are societies that have gone completely off the rails.

This vaccine worship is a new cult. They really think the vaccine is going to make everything go back to normal (using the same quantum mechanical magic Mr. Briggs mentioned above). We’re not voting, spending, restricting, vaccinating, borrowing, or masking our way out of this. The people in charge have lost it, and are willing to sacrifice people to the vaccine gods.

It all reminds me of that last scene in Lord of the Flies, where the adults show up, the kids stop playing little gods and break down crying. Except, we are the kids, and I cannot think of any adults who can step in to end the insanity.

JR: “It’s all so ridiculously transparent.”

A fox wearing a chicken mask snuck into the henhouse and screamed “the sky is falling!” over a megaphone and while the panicked chickens scattered the fox stole all their eggs. And then ate the chickens, one by one.

Nicolas Wade’s medium site is defunct since days. Does anybody have a link to a copy of his article?

Kenan:

This worked for me:
https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038

“But I’ve really not wanted to at all. I’m still ordering everything online. It’s not like me, it’s strange: I’m normally a sociable person and like going to festivals but it feels like too much risk at the moment.”

Briggs calls this cowardice, the “experts” call it Covid anxiety syndrome and the WEF calls this The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Seriously, this is their ideal outcome, a feature of the New Normal.

Kenan: Wade’s site work’s fine for me: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038. Something goofy in your browser causing it not to load? Maybe flush cache and/or cookies.

That MIT article was really bizarre:
“Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.” Duh!

“Indeed, anti-maskers often reveal themselves to be more sophisticated in their understanding of how scientific knowledge is socially constructed than their ideological adversaries, who espouse naïve realism about the ‘objective’ truth of public health data.” – No sh*t.

“For these anti-mask users, their approach to the pandemic is grounded in more scientific rigor, not less.” – Science vs. “The Science”!

etc. etc. And yet, they still basically conclude that these “anti-makers” should just shut-up and get with the program! Pure totalitarian cheerleaders unworthy of the professorships they hold.

“Those are much more speculative than the partially immune from natural infection and vaccine-induced immunity group, which I think is probably the lion’s share of the difference that we’re seeing,”

Our experts in Canada blame the lack of immunity for the continued lockdown…as opposed to the immunity success in Florida/Texas.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/do-lockdowns-not-work-why-florida-and-texas-are-doing-better-than-ontario-and-alberta

LOL, Aaron’s National Post article link.

“It has the potential to become fuel for anti-lockdown protesters.” Oh no! God forbid!

One can sense the fear and desperation just oozing from the article – a perfect embodiment of the “Can’t Quit Lockdown” mentality.

There’s a pattern where the powers that be lie about something, and then their defenders rush to say that they weren’t lying by defending a different statement than what was made.

For example, various “fact checkers” use the phrase “COVID-19 vaccine devel­opment was accel­erated without impacting safety.” Now this is implausible on the face of it: if development can be accelerated that at least four different vaccines can do it without impacting safety in the slightest then why was it never done in the past? Furthermore it is clear that no matter what safety studies were done, the long term safety of the vaccines is unknown because there simply has not been enough time for long term effects to develop. And if you dig into reports of vaccine side effects and it becomes clear that they are more common for these vaccines than previous ones, with several governments even stepping in to take action against certain vaccines.

If you point this out you will have people say that the statement is still true, because the vaccines are less likely to kill you then a COVID-19 infection does. But the claim made was that the vaccines are just as safe as previous vaccines. Saying that they are more dangerous but still safe enough to be better than getting sick does not actually defend the claim, it actually refutes it.

And even that defense becomes false when applied broadly. In particular, it’s not true (at least from what we know) that the vaccine is less deadly to children than COVID-19. Using the best estimates from the numbers available (i.e. from the VAERS reports and the reports of COVID-19 deaths) if the vaccines are as deadly to the children as the existing vaccinated population, then mass vaccination of children will kill about 10 times more children than COVID-19 has. And of course it is very possible that the vaccine could be more deadly to children since that has happened for other vaccines and children were not included in the initial testing.

But if you say that “it is more dangerous for children to be vaccinated than to get COVID-19” that will be “debunked” by saying that the risk of a child dying from the vaccine is still very low, and that in any case having them be vaccinated is (supposedly) essential for achieving herd immunity and saving others. Again, that defense has nothing to do with the relative risk for children from the vaccine versus the Wuhan flu.

Part of Medium is a pay-site- you get a limited number of free reads for certain writers. It is possible that you are not getting through to Wade’s long essay because of a paywall.

A fascinating paper:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07993.pdf

The “data visualization” stuff isn’t very informative. However what is interesting is that throughout the paper it is argued that “coronavirus skeptics” are described in terms that, at least five years ago, would be seen as positive. For example:

“In other words, anti-maskers value unmediated access to information and privilege personal research and direct reading over “expert” interpretations”

“Anti-maskers have deftly used social media to constitute a cultural and discursive arena devoted to addressing the pandemic and its fallout through practices of data literacy. Data literacy is a quintessential criterion for membership within the community they have created. .

“Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.

“This study forces us to see that coronavirus skeptics champion science as a personal practice that prizes rationality and autonomy; for them, it is not a body of knowledge certified by an institution of experts.

But the language used makes it clear that much of this (and especially the refusal to blindly follow the “experts”) is meant to be seen as a bad thing. And if there was any doubt, there is this paragraph in the conclusion:

Calls for media literacy—especially as an ethics smokescreen to avoid talking about larger structural problems like white supremacy— are problematic when these approaches are deficit-focused and trained primarily on individual responsibility. Powerful research and media organizations paid for by the tobacco or fossil fuel industries [79, 86] have historically capitalized on the skeptical impulse that the “science simply isn’t settled,” prompting people to simply “think for themselves” to horrifying ends. The attempted coup on January 6, 2021 has similarly illustrated that well-calibrated, wellfunded systems of coordinated disinformation can be particularly dangerous when they are designed to appeal to skeptical people. While individual insurrectionists are no doubt to blame for their own acts of violence, the coup relied on a collective effort fanned by people questioning, interacting, and sharing these ideas with other people. These skeptical narratives are powerful because they resonate with these these people’s lived experience and—crucially— because they are posted by influential accounts across influential platforms.

We are definitely seeing a transition of science as nothing more than regurgitating the party line. (It’s been effectively that way for decades due to grant control, but we are entering the phase where this will be how science is explicitly defined.)

Now our gov in KY has pulled a magic date of June 11 out of his ass as the date to lift his lawless face muzzle mandate. Apparently we all need to be very afraid until the clock strikes midnight the night of June 10! It all magically disappears June 11.

Local grocery store still enforcing full mask requirement even if vaxxed (not even going with new CDC “guidelines”), though reports some stores and gyms have taken down previous “mask required” signs in windows already and probably won’t bother to enforce Governor’s unscientific mandate until June 11.

Complete clown show country.

Oh and speaking of “Vexxine Harms”: “REPORT: Pfizer Vaccine Confirmed To Cause Neurodegenerative Diseases (https://nationalfile.com/report-pfizer-vaccine-confirmed-to-cause-neurodegenerative-diseases/)

But, definitely worth the risk if you can get a free lottery ticket or burger & fries coupon from your local government, eh?

Dennis,

“The burden of proof is on those who have been destroying society for the last 14 months to prove their actions justified.”

The burden of proof is on anyone making a claim, such as you, with your ridiculous claim that people have been trying to destroy society.

“Oh and speaking of “Vexxine Harms”…”

Your source is a blog. Meanwhile, COVID19 has put some people in ICU for more than a year, and is likely to have any number of longterm health consequences.

Yep, I think I’ll avoid getting vaccinated. I don’t care how well-intended and crafted the vaccines are or not, there will always be a risk of negative side effects regardless like any kind of medicine out there. People should be allowed to make their own choices on medical care and no one should be required by governments, schools and companies to take a vaccine.

Swordfishy writes “Your source is a blog.”

Oh so I guess that’s absolute proof that Dennis’ source is wrong. If the info comes from a blog then it must automatically be wrong. Wow, what a way of proving someone to be wrong!

Swordfish, you sound like someone that’s been blue-pilled with a lot of mockingbird lamestream media. And if you ever doubt that the democrats ever intended to cheat on the election, you ought to look up the Hr1 bill. That says it all.

“Your source is a blog.” It’s an article like any other which links to a scientific study on the matter at hand. Unless one has immediate first hand knowledge of every issue under the sun, one would never be able to discuss anything reported in the news according to your criterion (“Your source is just…” a journal/magazine/blog/podcast/newspaper article/TV report, etc. etc.).

And if you don’t see the extent to which there is a very deliberate controlled demolition of society in so many aspects by the Left/Woke…you are just plain blind.

The methodology for attributing death to a flu disease was reversed in early 2020.

People in nursing homes, there because of some serious illness, have died WITH the flu before 2020.

But the pre-2020 death certificate would blame a heart attack, for example, and flu might be listed as a contributory factor, or not listed at all.

The same person dying after March 2020 would have had COVID declared as the cause of death, with heart disease as a contributory factor.

In 2020, declaring that the deceased had COVID was an inaccurate guess. It could be based on a PCR test, with many false positives. or a doctor merely stating the deceased had flu-like symptoms (which could have been influenza, bronchitis, or a cold).

Similarly, the methodology for declaring a flu case changed in 2020. Prior to 2020, a flu “case” was never declared if the patient had no symptoms. In 2020, a positive PCR test, with far too many cycles for accuracy, and no symptoms, was enough to declare a COVID “case”. As a result, many people were told they were infected, but had no symptoms, when the truth was they were NOT COVID infected at all. As the number of tests increased, the number of false positives increased too.

A study in Wuhan China last year, with 10 million subjects, found that COVID was not spread from anyone who had no symptoms. I understand you may have doubts about a Chinese study, but a study with 10 million participants is a big deal.

In summary, the COVID death counts and case counts can NOT be compared with flu death counts and case counts in past years. In addition, the alleged and unprecedented low rate of “influenza” deaths in 2020 strongly suggests many deaths attributed to influenza were falsely attributed to COVID. There were financial incentives to encourage that.

To complicate matters further, CDC estimates of flu deaths prior to 2020 were based on a computer model. Most doctors think their estimates were consistently too high. Once again, there was the argument of dying WITH flu, versus dying FROM flu.

I double-checked these statement with two of my doctors last year. One of them was angry at having to declare a COVID “case” based only on a PCR test, when his patient had no flu symptoms at all.

Dennis,

“It’s an article like any other which links to a scientific study on the matter at hand.”

The study you mention is of extremely poor quality. It’s sole author is an MD who has made other baseless claims about Type-1 Diabetes being caused by vaccines, it wasn’t peer-reviewed, was published in a junk journal, contains no actual experimental data, and is little more than baseless speculation.

To quote PolitiFact (who you’ll no doubt complain are biased, even though their article is based on actual facts)

“Classen’s paper presents no evidence other than a three-sentence methods section that summarizes an unspecified analysis of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have not been linked to neurodegenerative or prion diseases.”

Richard Greene,

“In addition, the alleged and unprecedented low rate of “influenza” deaths in 2020 strongly suggests many deaths attributed to influenza were falsely attributed to COVID.”

It also strongly suggests that the lockdown measures reduced ‘flu deaths as well as COVID-19 deaths, exactly as you’d expect. Taking your claim at face value, in an average year there are 36,000 ‘flu deaths: even if 100% of them were falsely attributed to COVID-19, that would only reduce the COVID-19 total from 580,000 to 544,000, which my wobbly maths says is only 6% less.

Swordfishman — thanks for picking on the one sentence in my comment that had a typing error that I saw right after I posted it, and could not go back to revise !

I was trying to write the unprecedented small number deaths attributed to influenza probably means many deaths with influenza were falsely attributed as COVID deaths.

I think it is illogical to assume that lock down measures reduced influenza deaths. First of all, there were only partial lock downs. Even here in Michigan, where “rules; were harsh, we still went to supermarkets, dollar stores, gas stations and big box stores every week.

My stewardess friend reported that she could not eat at any NYC restaurant, on a layover there, but strangers on her Paris to NYC flights were allowed to sit six inches from each other, while both were eating meals, with no masks on while they were eating.

And foreigners were allowed to fly into the US from nations with severe COVID outbreaks — how is that a real lock down?

People don’t die directly from the flu — they die from major organ failures, such as the lungs, that may be linked to the flu. It is rare that flu leads to the death of otherwise healthy people. That is also true of COVID.

Flu was never listed as a cause of death on a death certificate before 2020, except in rare cases with no comorbidity, and even then pneumonia would probably be listed as the cause of death, with influenza as a contributory factor.

I think you missed the main point of my prior comment;
A new methodology for attributing deaths, starting in March 2020, completely changed the death counts for COVID, compared with using the pre-2020 CDC death attribution methodology.

That makes it impossible to compare 2020 deaths attributed to COVID with deaths attributed to influenza in any year (especially in 2020).

Without the new 2020 methodology, CDC would have had to wild guess COVID deaths, using a computer model, just as they have done for influenza deaths in the past.

I have no idea what the CDC guess would have been — perhaps similar to the 400,000 deaths reported from COVID in 2020, or perhaps much different.

With the new 2020 methodology, the 2020 death certificates would NOT have listed COVID flu as the primary cause of death for people with no known comorbidities (almost all flu deaths have known, or yet to be discovered, comorbidities).

I do know that most doctors believe the prior CDC flu death estimate methodology, using computer models, overstated flu deaths by a large percentage.

Almost all government advice and data about COVID was either wrong, not following science, or a brand new methodology for counting cases and deaths.

There was no science to support lock downs of healthy people.

There was no science to support mask wearing for flu (masks obviously could not help, because the virus passes through in both directions). And wearing a mask might encourage the wearer to reduce their social distancing, which would be counterproductive.

There was no science to justify six foot social distancing. There was science to justify three foot social distancing, but that study was not done with a flu virus. Of course common sense says social distancing is smart, but six foot was not based on any science. Why not ten feet? Or twelve feet?

Science has now proved only that a tiny percentage of people with no flu symptoms APPEAR to have spread COVID. The Wuhan study had 10 million participants !

Science proved COVID spread outdoors is rare, if it exists.

Science proved COVID spread from surfaces is rare, if it exists.

Science proved partial lock downs were ineffective.

Science proved masks had little, or no, measureable effect.

The COVID advice, statements and rules from politicians, claimed to be based on “the science”, were not based on science at all.

Richard Greene,

“The COVID advice, statements and rules from politicians, claimed to be based on “the science”, were not based on science at all.”

Pretty much all your claims are false according to a quick google search. There are multiple studies supporting lockdowns, mask wearing, and social distancing.

Imperial College Lockdown Study:

“The Imperial study analysed the impact of lockdowns and social distancing steps in 11 European countries and found they had “a substantial effect”, helping to lower the infection’s reproductive rate, or R value, below one by early May.”

Berkeley College Lockdown Study:

“A second study by scientists in the United States, published alongside the Imperial-led one in the journal Nature, estimated that lockdowns in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France and the United States had prevented or delayed around 530 million COVID-19 cases.”

Nature Surgical Mask Study:

“Our results indicate that surgical face masks could prevent transmission of human coronaviruses and influenza viruses from symptomatic individuals.”

Lancet Social Distancing and Mask Study:

“The findings of this systematic review and meta-analysis support physical distancing of 1 m or more and provide quantitative estimates for models and contact tracing to inform policy.”

So you haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.

Anyone who believes those claimed numbers of “cases prevented” by lockdowns from Berkeley College, Imperial College (employers of the infamous and disgraced Neil Ferguson, whose models for every disease of the last 25 years have been off by many orders of magnitude), or The Lancet (publishers of the fraudulent paper last year by some porn-funded pseudo-science org attempting to discredit HCQ use), is so brainwashed by the Narrative as to be beyond reason or redemption at this point.

Like Rachel Maddow wondering aloud how she’ll ever be able to “re-wire” her brain so as not to see maskless people and ordinary human interactions as a grave threat to her health and safety, these people are suffering from serious psychological impairment due to what their governments have inflicted them over the pat 14 months. The sad part is, like victims of a Stockholm Syndrome, they seem to have come to love their captors, their lockdowns, their fear, their muzzles, and are terrified that any semblance of normal life and freedom might ever return. Hail Big Brother! Hence also the big push to try to keep up the terror and fear porn over “variants”.

Speaking of Vexxine BS, from a recent study on relative versus absolute risk reduction of the Covid vaccines:

“Vaccine efficacy is generally reported as a relative risk reduction (RRR). It uses the relative risk (RR)—ie, the ratio of attack rates with and without a vaccine—which is expressed as 1–RR. Ranking by reported efficacy gives relative risk reductions of 95% for the Pfizer–BioNTech, 94% for the Moderna–NIH, 90% for the Gamaleya, 67% for the J&J, and 67% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccines. However, RRR should be seen against the background risk of being infected and becoming ill with COVID-19, which varies between populations and over time. Although the RRR considers only participants who could benefit from the vaccine, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a vaccine, considers the whole population. ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs: 1·3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1·2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·2% for the J&J, 0·93% for the Gamaleya, and 0·84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.”

Less than 2% for all of them. Absolute joke. Yet we’re still being told everyone must absolutely rush out and get these Big Pharma concoctions with unknown long-term side effects (and already proven very serious short-term ones for many) in order to have our lives back to normal and not wear a muzzle to protect us from a supposedly very dangerous virus that 99.98% survive. From The Lancet, so swordfishbone should approve: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00069-0/fulltext

Swordfishererman

You throw out red herrings left and right, and then attempt (but fail) to refute things I never said.

You believe studies based on computer model projections create truth. Such as the studies that claimed millions of American would die from COVID. Computer models used for “studies” predict whatever their owners and programmers want to predict — they control the assumptions and the output. The output is a personal opinion, not real data. Worship of computer models makes you appear to be a fool.

You use Google, oblivious to the fact that they censor information that opposes “official” government policies and claims. You will rarely find any contrary information on the first page of a Google search. Getting listed on the first page of a Google search does not create truth.

The Imperial College study seems to include lock downs and social distancing.
Does it separate the effects of lock downs versus the effects of social distancing?
I doubt it. So how can you say it supports lock downs?

Concerning “surgical face masks” :
I was commenting on the masks worn by the general public, and they were rarely surgical face masks. So a study of surgical face masks has little value for everyday people. Not to mention there were plenty of hospital employees wearing surgical face masks who caught COVID.

Prior social distancing studies were for three feet, or one meter. I did not oppose social distancing at all. The ONLY criticism I had of social distancing was the arbitrary six foot rule. You seem to imply I opposed social distancing, which is not true

Any study that claims lock downs prevented 530 million cases is just a computer game wild guess not based on any real data. You obviously have no clue.

In almost every subject, there are studies supporting more than one conclusion.

You can cherry pick some studies that say CO2 enrichment does not accelerate plant growth, for one example, even when 95% or more say the opposite. I’ve been reading them for 24 years.

And greenhouse owners around the world use CO2 enrichment for their crops, at their own expense. But what could greenhouse owners know about plants, when a tiny percentage of scientists say they are wrong?

Roughly half of studies can not be replicated.

Studies that make predictions of the future climate are almost always wrong.

There were obviously no COVID studies in early 2020, when the disease struck.
So any decisions on COVID had to be guesses,

I defend every statement that I made in my comments, and will ignore your childish character attacks.

If masks really worked to prevent the spread of COVID, there would have been no pandemic. Everyone wearing the usual 50 cent to one dollar mask would have been safe.

You might want to do some thinking, and research, before character attacking.
Read the actual studies, like I do, not just an abstract or a Google one paragraph summary.

Then you finished your comment with a mean spirited generic character attack.
That is despicable behavior even when attacking under a moniker to hide your true identity.

Richard Greene
Bingham Farms, Michigan

Richard Greene,

“You believe studies based on computer model projections create truth.”

I believe that the scientists who have studied this know more about it than you. All scientific studies necessitate modelling – a theory is a model.

“Such as the studies that claimed millions of American would die from COVID.”

WOW! Isn’t 592,000 close enough for you? The millions projection was based on no lockdown measures being put in place, so it appears to have been broadly accurate.

“You use Google, oblivious to the fact that they censor information that opposes “official” government policies and claims.”

Sure. If you search for ‘evolution’, most of the first few pages of links are to creationist sites full of antiscientific lies and misinformation. I suppose creationism is official government policy?

You then indulge in pointless criticisms of the studies I quoted, which you almost certainly haven’t read, and an irrelevant attack on climate science.

“If masks really worked to prevent the spread of COVID, there would have been no pandemic.”

Masks HELP reduce the spread. No one has claimed that they would prevent the pandemic. You claimed earlier that a study looking at surgical masks didn’t count because most people aren’t wearing such masks, yet you’re claiming now that masks don’t work anyway – what is your actual claim?

“Then you finished your comment with a mean spirited generic character attack.”

You could have an admirable character yet not have a clue what you’re talking about. I don’t count that as a character attack.

Sorry Swordfisher,
but you don’t get it, and never will.
Computer models of what might have happened with no lock downs merely represent the personal opinions of the computer owners / programmers.

The numbers they promote are not real data.

They are personal opinions.

And personal opinions tend to be wrong, especially with COVID, where there was no long term data on prior COVID outbreaks, as a starting point for a model.

You seem to think that getting a study published, and promoted, creates truth.

It does not.

And you have a lot to learn about life.

Especially when a study based on computer model predictions that can never be verified.

Sorry to disappoint you, but you do not have sufficient intelligence for independent thought and common sense.

You are locked into the appeal to authority (and computer models) logical fallacy, and I can’t help you.

Richard Greene
Bingham Farms, Michigan

The mask cultists really are in a quandary now, with no good options for them – surely causing some brains to short-circuit:

1. Wear a mask and risk looking non-gene therapied; or

2. Don’t wear a mask and risk people thinking you’re not a fully paid up member of the cult and might even be a Trumpist/Republican!

Wat do? Which is greater evil?

Swordfish, It’s fascinating isn’t it?

So much projection and it’s not just in the model outputs

When asked the question which you asked about the death figure, a pleasant, reasonable response was offered, elsewhere, about the CDC being unreliable at data Collection, before covid…thus flu figures are cancelled as evidence of unusual mortality figures

The ONS data and our NHS data appears to be reliable, however…

“Died having tested positive for Covid 19 within 28 days”
(No confusion there, no sleight of hand).

The red herring is in rejecting the models as if that’s only where evidence of disease is to be found!
The evidence is in the mortuaries, hospital wards, the empty beds in care homes and the grieving families who don’t know or give a fig about models.

The physical evidence of deaths occurring in an unprecedented number for modern times OR normal winter pressure times, isn’t enough for those in denial that there’s been and still is, a genuine problem.

I always said this kind of thing would happen after climate change debate had brought science into disrepute, (not sure where you stand on that but anyway).

There’s a curious refusal to take the opinion of clinical staff all over the world explaining the urgency to control the epidemic, having done so calmly and without the panic that was claimed.
Instead:
Just Ten Little Indians”
“There are no pyres in India”,
“Drs are putting patients on ventilators because they coughed”…
”It’s all a hoax “,

GP’s should be sacked for wear masks”,
“Wearing a mask means you’re an ‘x’”,
“I’m not scared of dying”, as if Death cares,

They, NONE of them, have a clue what they’re talking about Re respiratory disease or the normal ebb and flow of patients in hospitals. Those who do keep clear of all the bs

“deaths occurring in an unprecedented number for modern times”

LOL. It’s not even as deadly, adjusted relative to world population, as the 1957 Asian Flu or 1969 Hong Kong Flu.

Get over it. Covid theatre and paranoia are finished. More people every day are finally waking up. Even “Dr” Eric Feigl-Dingbat has moved on to UFO porn now.

(Funny how the Deep State and their proxies in mainstream media – good ol’ “60 Lies-a-Minute” – have trotted out a retro flying saucer narrative to try to change the subject just now, eh? – and, of course, will use this newly claimed “national security threat” to justify more gazillion dollar contracts for the military-industrial complex).

Briggs,

“Some people saying they don’t want to take off their masks lest they look like Republicans or unvaccinated:”

LOL I think you should accept at least some of the responsibility for creating this situation.

Dennis,
I almost completely agree with you, almost.
Particularly on the move on bit and the media’s mixing and vending of bad news even if it’s made up

The ‘deadliness’ is where you and I started exchanging views on this. When I asked fo *your definition you kind of declined to offer one

If I say,
“”wha do you mean by deadliness” as a generic definition?
would you be cross?

It’s not hard and we’ve been through this, but in the specific statement above, “deadliness” means – wait for this shocker! – the number of people who died. Estimates of the ’57 Asian flu, for example, range from 1-4 million. Adjusted relative to world population today, that would be between 3 and 12 million (the very lowest end about the same then as Covid – probably a bit more since we know Covid numbers have been greatly inflated – but the high end estimate some 4 times deadlier than Covid).

Meanwhile, let’s check on Joy’s beloved SAGE: “Independent Sage expert who warned against reopening is race adviser with no medical qualification” (From The Telegraph yesterday: https://archive.fo/HoLl0): “A member of Independent Sage who berated the Government on Tuesday for not delaying the easing of Covid-19 restrictions…has no medical, clinical, virological or epidemiological qualifications.”

It’d be hilarious but for the fact that people like this have been actually been listened to and given a platform for over a year, helping to cause such global social and economic destruction. This fraud and the many other such “expert advisors” around the world in other governments have blood on their hands and deserve to be punished severely and suffer for the rest of their pathetic lives.

Dennis
A definition of deadly In the context of an infectious disease, generally:

“The number of people who died? ” out of ANY given population?

(Not speaking about specific disease for now)
So you don’t mean how likely a given individual is to die?
~~~
Neil Ferguson isn’t the last word on this. In any event, his specific specialty is the R number, according to the team working for Nerve Tag. I listened to him for a couple of fours being questioned a few weeks ago, and I don’t recognise the depiction of him as an alarmist.

Joy

Ferguson

Except he has erred on the high side of just about every medical “alert” out there

Maybe we shoult call him an “alertist”

😉

“‘The number of people who died?’ out of ANY given population?”

Yes, that was the clear reference in my statement above – number of total people who died worldwide as a result of each mentioned illness. We’ve been through “deadliness” in terms of IFR, etc., before. Instead of addressing the specific statement at hand you keep trying to change the issue to some petty carping over the definition of “deadliness” once again, when it is quite plain in context. Total people who died of each disease – it’s not hard, nor it is obscuring anything to use that metric in a general sense. If you want to get into specific “likelihood” of any individual dying, then of course one can parse the numbers for each demographic – age group, race, class, pre-existing conditions, etc., but that level of specificity is not necessary to make to the general point I made above.

And why bring up Neil Ferguson here? Perhaps you though he was the SAGE person the Telegraph article above was referring to? (He wasn’t). As for his “specific specialty”…it is actually alarmism and being catastrophically wrong by many orders of magnitude about every prediction he’s made for every disease over the past last 25 years, yet somehow managing to remain employed and be taken seriously as an alleged “expert” by government, media, etc. Nice scam he’s got going.

Ferguson’s a good distraction / side show, which is why he resigned, wasn’t fired! but where does your evidence for ‘what Neil said’
come from?

(rhetorical if you prefer)

He’s not the beginning or the end?
Is anybody else getting a bit dizzy with the flipping back and forth of topics yet?
It’s easier to talk about the principles, otherwise the politics creeps in.

If people are going to be quoted, then they must be quoted accurately and from His direct words, as the steakes, stakes? are quite high

“Instead of addressing the specific statement at hand you keep trying to change the issue to some petty carping over the definition of “deadliness” once again, when it is quite plain in context”

No, it is important to be clear about what you intend by the words you use when in fact your idea of the number of people who ‘died’ is not the measure of deadliness if you’re managing an epidemic, forget the modelling for a moment.

You’re speaking about what is known Now, in this instance, assuming we were to agree on the deaths themselves, finally.

It’s hindsight again
That is why each and every statement and claim is recorded bery carefully at t his end.

Just as in all healthcare, there’s always the medico-legal considerations as well as the most important, learning from the past for the next round of history.

Otherwise it’s guessing and gambling. In which case I’d ick someone other than a legal scholar or a statistician to make clinical judgements regarding the population. Call me old fashioned

“Instead of addressing the specific statement at hand you keep trying to change the issue to some petty carping over the definition of “deadliness” once again, when it is quite plain in context”

Johnbee, maybe there’s a reason for that,

According to “not neil” that is themethod used in planning for disasters or epidemics.
“one starts with the most reasonable worst case scenario and then works back from there’.

My guess is that media gets involved at that early juicy stage!

So what Neil WAS explaining was that the idea of the modelling is to draw pictures or make calculations of the state of the science so far. It is not to reduce uncertainty, he clearly stated that, or rather he means, presumably it is not to be ‘too certain’.

Can the public be trusted with this kind of information? I don’t think so.
It was better before Blaire introduced the freedom of information act

Johnbee, Sorry , that was weird, how did that happen? Thee’a also one missing, ‘awaiting moderation;”

Except he has erred on the high side of just about every medical “alert” out there

Maybe we shoult call him an “alertist”

?”
That was the quote, no Denis’s one, from the previous comment

What I “intended” by the words I used was quite clear in response to your hyperbolic claim above of “deaths occurring in an unprecedented number for modern times.” I merely pointed out two historically quite recent examples of “pandemics” that refute that overblown rhetoric (of the kind that has been all to common among Covid alarmists cutting a massive swathe of social and economic destruction across the world more deadly and damaging than the virus itself for the past 15 months). Nothing to do with hindsight, modelling, guessing, gambling, or “medico-legal considerations” of “managing an epidemic.”

Dennis Yes, that’s how I put it but now you’re talking about the number of dead? Not deadliness?
I’m not being obtuse here, promise, stop as soon as you like.

So do you think that the numbers stated for the uK are wrong? Or are you using Neil as a proxy for data collection quality in the UK? Talk about petty

Here, the data is reliable given the definition, where cause is not included or ‘all cause’ is included for analysis later.
…and in which case, it is in line with the ratio of deaths for the US compared with the UK

It’s why I wanted you to speak about your estimation of death per age a while back, it would have been helpful

“Anyone who believes those claimed numbers of “cases prevented” by lockdowns from Berkeley College, Imperial College (employers of the infamous and disgraced Neil Ferguson, whose models for every disease of the last 25 years have been off by many orders of magnitude),’
Maybe that kind of remark had something to do with bringing up the one who’s name dare not be mentioned.

I brought it up to compare his representation of HIS work compared with that of Gavin Schmidt on the use of climate models.

See what he actually says instead of saying he isn’t ‘predicting’, which as stated is not the point.

It’s plain untrue to say he is trying to read the future. That’s not the point and it’s been stated and repeated many times

In a missing comment which was removed for reasons of face saving, probably, I explained what Neil Ferguson and Chris Whitty said about the use of the models. On topic, contrary to the gossip though about overconfidence of modellers.

Joy For the US (BASED on Briggs death rate data above)

Under 1 yr . . . 250+/-
1 yr to 4 yr . . . . 30+/-
5 yr to 14 yr . . . 35+/-
15yr to 24yr . . 285+/-
25yr to 34yr . 1200+/-
35yr to 44yr . 3400+/-
45yr to 54yr . 9500+/-
55 to 64 yr . .23000+/-
65 to 74 yr . .56000+/-
75-84 yr . . .140000+/-
85 & older .370000+/-

Okay, so it’s Briggs versus the ONS? and the CDC?
We’re not even talking about individual perception here, Briggs is the gospel truth on this?

JohnB, Perhaps it was in response to the 600,00 remark.
That’s what happens when you have two conversations at once and each one has a different idea bout the thing
Thank you for taking the time to write out the numbers. You’ve done that before and I forgot to say thank you n

Dennis,
Put it another way, I asked someone else this question and was called evil and nasty,
“what is a number that you would define as deadly enough or bad enough?”
If the answer is no number, which I suspect, for many here is the case, then like Isaidmonths ago, there’s little point arguing because the numbers are irrelevant

Note that Joy has in past discussions dismissed the CDC as untrustworthy when their findings weren’t to her liking. (She’s also cited CDC data when convenient). Not to mention that the stats provided are derived from the CDC anyway.

The only reason she brings up the CDC now is because she thinks that she can use it to make our host look untrustworthy.

This post just now appeared to me though it apparently it had been sent before the last exchange: “Ferguson’s a good distraction / side show, which is why he resigned, wasn’t fired! but where does your evidence for ‘what Neil said’ come from?…If people are going to be quoted, then they must be quoted accurately and from His direct words, as the stakes, stakes? are quite high”

You’re the one who brought up Ferguson a couple posts ago (my brief mention of him many posts ago in response to swordfishbone was not germane to the issue you had just immediately responded to (my post comparing Covid to 1957 Asian Flu, and 1969 Hong King Flu).

In any case, the evidence for “what Neil said” to which I was referring in my last post – his having been wrong by many orders of magnitude in his predictions about basically everything for the past 25 years from Mad Cow to Covid – is not hard to find, and has been discussed by many over the past year. Google away. Ferguson, like so many “experts” thrust into the limelight by Covid, is a charlatan.

You are right about one thing: The stakes are indeed quite high – and the political, medical-scientific, and media establishments have failed miserably by every possible measure over the past 15 months, and everyone in the world will be paying the price for many years to come (probably decades, if not longer).

“what is a number that you would define as deadly enough or bad enough?”

Deadly enough or bad enough for what? To justify the insanely tyrannical and socially and economically catastrophic response to Covid by politicians, media, and the medical-scientific establishments?

I’d say it’d have to be something on the order of the Black Death of the mid-1300s (or perhaps even just 1/5th – hell even 1/10th! – that level of death across the whole population – which neither Covid nor any other pandemic of the last 100 years has come anywhere remotely close to; not even anywhere near 1%, never mind the estimated 30-50% of the entire population of Europe attributed to the Black Death).

Hugh?
Rudolph, you’re wrong, as usual.
I dropped talking about hte CDC because one of the more sensible commenters explained that is was unreliable and just worked out around a table or something similar. I’d fine the quote but take it or leave it. That’s the reason.
The other reason I don’t explore CDC is because it has never been easy to navigate.
Aside from that, I have no problem with numbers for reasons of talking principles of epidemiology as stated before. I asked Dennis for example about his own ‘estimate’ or ‘gleaning’ of the estimates for death per age.

I actually don’t care about the CDC because there’s more than US info out there.
If you’re saying now that the CDC IS reliable then why can’t we use the Flu numbers for an average year? *when discussing THAT matter of flu, which everybody loves so much?

As for making “out host’ look anything, forget it. He doesn’t need my help, evidently

Even the Spanish Flu where the US had 675000 deaths with a third of today’s US Population

Those numbers I gave above actually “assume” equal population in each category
Per 2019 US Census data it’s not far off for 5 yrs to 64 yrs (under 5 and over 65 throw us off a bit)

revised est (still back of envelope data)

.~170000

Best guess AND assuming 603000 +/-

With > 65 accounting for 480,000 deaths it’s very hard to believe it was only Covid as the complete cause

lost some data special characters screw me up?

Sorry

“Deadly enough or bad enough for what? ”
.
“To justify the insanely tyrannical and socially and economically catastrophic response to Covid by politicians, media, and the medical-scientific establishments?”
Yeah, that!

I do get it Dennis, I wonder why you think nobody understands the impacts of taking ANY action?

Joy

It takes about a half a year or more for the CDC to “tease” out the final flu data for the previous season

Since you can’t really envelope the Covid situation until its over (call it a year and a half season), CDC probably won’t close the books on Covid until mid-2022 if we’re lucky (they’ll probably wait til after the elections 2022 to keep it out of politics

Dennis,
“I’d say it’d have to be something on the order of the Black Death of the mid-1300s (or perhaps even just 1/5th – hell even 1/10th! – that level of death across the whole population – which neither Covid nor any other pandemic of the last 100 years has come anywhere remotely close to; not even anywhere near 1%, never mind the estimated 30-50% of the entire population of Europe attributed to the Black Death).”
So I respect the fact that you’re willing to say what is bad enough becaue you’re the first as far as I can tell who, when pushed, will ‘go thre’.
but, don’t get cross, for something to be that bad, it has to bel left, and if it’s left it does run away! If you have to wait to see ‘how bad’ you might as well do nothing. It would be more consistant for some to argue the latter. It’s just that it’s a difficult moral position to hold. (I’m not saying that any decision is easy or that there are any perfect outcomes, there aren’t).

“I do get it Dennis, I wonder why you think nobody understands the impacts of taking ANY action?”

“Taking action” (especially the “lockdown” mentality) and schoolmarmish safety-ism – the need to constantly “do something, anything!” – are what got us into such a mess.

Would indeed have been better off with “no action” – save limited measures to protect the most vulnerable elderly population as much as reasonable (many were, after all, on the way out already and are vulnerable anyway to ordinary flu and other illnesses for which we don’t shut down the world every year), and making HCQ, Ivermectin, zinc, and vitamin D widely available at little or no cost: Less social and economic destruction, less “collateral damage” in terms of other health impacts (especially mental) and deaths, and herd immunity would have been reached earlier and more naturally (without experimental and potentially very dangerous gene therapies being pushed on billions of people in order to further line the pockets of Big Pharma execs and their cronies while poo-pooing effective remedies already available that are cheaper and have less side effects – both immediate and potentially long-term).

“Would indeed have been better off with “no action” – save limited measures to protect the most vulnerable elderly population as much as reasonable”
That’s the cry from everybody including those who TOOK action in the Uk and in Sweden, for example

Many have quoted Sweden as having no lock downs but if you listen to their media they explain that they have had so many rules and regs that to say they didn’t have a shut down is splitting hairs.

The problem with your idea, which many here think is original, is that it won’t work! It DIDN’T work

That’s what most countries thought they could do.

It is the equivalent of sending troops into battle and saying “get on with it, there’s not enough ammo and you’re going to be shot too, but we need you just to do your job”

The staff couldn’t cope! Anywhere that the epidemic was allowed to take it’s course with minimal intervention
The reasonable worst case scenario was playing out here, and was not expected by any of the politicians or experts really. We thought we knew better than the Chinese, the Italians, who thought they knew better than Us! Had ing seven times the ITU provision that we have.

So what’s happened in India is what we were trying to avoid, same for Brazil.
Recall someplace in Spain or France? where the staff just abandoned ship, bodies were left piled up in a ‘shed”.

Recently in India there was a brilliant hospital manager maybe a Dr or senior nurse, who had to tell the Drs to take cover when oxygen ran out. They had already had public attacking them physically so she didn’t want that to happen again, this last few days when it occurred.

The relatives were outraged thinking Drs had “run away”. Which was not the case at all.
Imagine a city like New York or London, if things were really out of control?
BLM would look like child’s play, the public are already on edge as it is and ready for a fight

The Bank of England manager Andrew Bailey spoke early on in the epidemic and explained that this was not a time to be squeamish about the money.
The US is a different animal entirely. I accept that, just as with the gun debate.
different approach was needed for Aton of different reasons. Still, some non pharmaceutical measures wee required.
The US has a different welfare set up and I don’t pretend to understand that.
The public are like a herd of cats though.

Lastly, about your black death numbers are they reliable?
If so, if there was a third of the current population, (110,000,000)?
Your figure means that two thirds, roughly, of the entire population died!

I don’t believe that’s accurate but if it is, I wouldn’t ut you in charge of public health!
Dennis you exaggerate

“That’s the cry from everybody including those who TOOK action in the Uk and in Sweden, for example”

Who is the everybody making this cry? Most politicians, media, and public health officials are continuing to justify the course taken with lockdowns and muzzle mandates, and some are already setting the stage for more in the fall with the ramping-up of fearmongering about “variants” (Though I hope the people will see through it and won’t put up with any attempts to re-impose draconian restrictions next time around – Never Again! must be the global rallying cry, but I won’t hold my breath. The masses are hollow, soy-stuffed Last Men – fearful, weak, and pathetic, wanting only the barest creature comforts delivered to their doorsteps or streamed into their brains in exchange for real life and freedom so long as nanny-State keeps them “safe”).

“The staff couldn’t cope…The reasonable worst case scenario was playing out here.”

Couldn’t cope? What, too busy making tik-tok dance videos? The “worst case scenario” (Who’s scenario? Our old friend Fergie?) was playing out nowhere. The early plea of “two weeks to flatten the curve” has turned into a year and then some, but hospitals were never overwhelmed, there were many reports all along that most were in fact under capacity (the President of the largest hospital group in my city admitted they were operating under capacity all last summer and fall – How many cancers, heart disease, etc. went undiagnosed for months because a power-mad governor purported to ban non-emergency procedures for several moths, and scum like that hospital administrator and his doctors obeyed? All criminals who deserve the severest punishments imaginable). And how about the pop-up “field hospitals” built everywhere that went unused? They built one in my city at a football stadium…never once used it, and then quietly dismantled it a few months later (How much taxpayer money did they waste on that sh*t?”).

I’m not sure what the confusion is about the Black Death numbers. I never said “two-thirds” of total population of Europe as you claim above. I said – based on everything I’ve ever read about it – that most historians estimate between 30-50% of the entire population Europe died in the Black Death c. 1348-1352 (generally higher percentages in cities – Paris, for example, lost over half its population in those 4 years – hence the reason the 10 protagonists of Boccaccio’s “Decameron” fled Florence for the countryside). I believe this percentage range is still deemed broadly accurate by most historians (Though the last book I read about it was Norman Cantor’s about 15 years ago). If you have sources saying otherwise, let me know, but those are the approximate figures I’ve always read (a wide range, but obviously precise records from the era are a bit hard to come by; perhaps there is more info somewhere on this interwebs thingy ?????).

“I wouldn’t put you in charge of public health!”

A shame…with Benevolent Dictator Dennis ? in charge Covid paranoia would’ve lasted a couple months at most, and we’d have all been back to normal life by around this same time last year! ?

Weird…it appears to have jumbled my whole last comment into one run-on paragraph. ?

Joy and Dennis

I stand entirely corrected – since last year WoM was regularly only a couple of thousand ahead of CDC
I chalked it up to CDC “late” reporting
Now WoM is over 100,000 “ahead” of CDC!

under 1 … 68
1 to 4 … … .35
5 to 14 .. … 80
15 to 24 .. 739
25 to 34 .3144
35 to 44 .8299
45 – 54 .23160
55 – 64 .57755
65 – 74 .99509
75-84 .117531
> 85 . 171233

total . 481553

I believe CDC numbers have no where to go but down

Hmmm…now it appears altogether disappeared…I’ll see if it appears by morning, not sure I feel like re-writing. Took me awhile!

See Dennis? I wasn’t making it up
It’s done to make you look silly

Never mind writing it again, I’m posting overleaf if it works and then retiring
The comment box was moving y curser about and typing “N” instead of “i”
earlier this evening, so gave it a break

Dennis …
I know what you mean … happens a lot to me … I often write in wordpad expecting the worst but as nothing bad happens I get sloppy and compose in the comment area and blammo

Joy

Looks like you conflated my comment with Dennis’

I was talking about Spanish flu 1918-1920

(Latest research) New Worldwide estimates 17.5 million … US still at 675,000 abot 103 Million population in US
World population 1.8 Billion

Hong Kong Flu 1-4 million deaths worldwide pop >3 B
asian flu 1-4 million deaths worldwideb= pop < 4 B

Bubonic Plague
reduced the global population from 450 million to below 300 million. According to historians Black Death killed 60% of the European population at that time.

Dennis

What you wrote may have gone into moderation – Looks like one long paragraph

I thought that only happened when you screwed up user name or email but Briggs said if your IP gets changed for some reason you’ll also go into moderation

and if you “refresh”, your comment in moderation disappears until recovered (I’m assuming that it did)

I didn’t link my source but it pegged europe at 60% but world wide abot 33%

Hmm…yeah it did have an “awaiting moderation” notice when I first posted it (which I usually don’t get)…same IP so maybe I had accidentally mistyped email address or something.

Hope it reappears…I’d hate for you all to miss out on my latest impeccable take ??

Oh, duh…it did..up above at 9:07. ?

Though my emojis keep changing to question marks, losing some effect in my last line! …oh well..

To quote John Denver “Far out”

In 1977, H1N1 re-emerged for the first time since before the 1957 pandemic … it is suspected to have arisen from a laboratory accident … hmmm …

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5198166/

A lot of interesting info there

John B()
You’re trying to be helpful! Yes, WAS wondering how black Death suddenly did a time warp
Just took the numbers as they were presented. Elsewhere, a commenter claimed that 650,000 deaths from 1918 flu, (which is the worst recorded and therefore useful as a benchmark); was only bad WHEN the US had such a small population. The figure of one hundred million was mentioned. So it seems there’s a lot of conflation of numbers going on. It was offered in a response to the flu, previously, not black death, so I wasn’t surprised to see it again and ‘took it’ as usual misinformation even though in that instance it was a conflation error on my part. I DID think Dennis said it. With all the moving around of posts and interrupting of the timing of the conversation, the appearance may well be that there’s something to see here.

Dennis,
I read little further ups o the tin Tok remark and gave up, (full disclosure)
Is that the one which took you all the time?
~~~
I said,
“That’s the cry from everybody including those who TOOK action in the Uk and in Sweden, for example”
You said,
Who is the everybody making this cry? 
Include yourself if you think you’re one of them but it’s the running theme here at WMB and it’s the one you mentioned earlier about ‘just look after the elderly….” Etc
Where would we be without the help of the armchair intelligencer, with all the intellectual gear and no idea?
“Sweden didn’t lock down” , “just look after or shield the vulnerable”, “this is no worse than flu”, “….”,
(That) group, if the cap fits or should I say “cape”?
It’s totally over and done with, those saying there’s mistakes are claiming there should have been ‘more’ not less intervention. They’re wrong, too. The only solution would have been better information early on, which is unrealistic, more honesty from China at the beginning and a lockdown timed here, a couple of weeks earlier, for shorter. There would still be a plate spinning exercise torch the timing of the vaccine. Fewer would have died but nobody knew what they know now about the timing and nature of the virus except perhaps the Chinese authorities, not even their clinical staff.
See how we’re distracting? I was asking the questions!
~~~
The problem is a strong belief and mistrust, that health care staff are… In On It.…
It’s totally preposterous let alone cheeky

Joy said: “The problem is a strong belief and mistrust, that health care staff are…”

You’ve got the wrong end … our mistrust is not the health care staff
Our mistrust is the “experts” in charge of health care staff … AND
politicians who take those “experts” at face value, make ridiculous
mandates based on those “expert’s” OPINIONS. Don’t forget MEDIA
carrying water for everyone.

Even, taking expert opinion at face value, said politicians STILL screw
up because of Politics and MEDIA still doesn’t question.

Media said “no way” would the hospital ship be ready for the NY “crisis”
It was ready, … a sports arena in NY was ready, … (there was a tent hospital
set up by a religious ORG in Central Park of NY, … yet instead of utilizing
these things, NY put recovering patience into Nursing Homes. It doesn’t
take an armchair intelligencia to figure out things are wrong. I could be
a rube from the Midwest in US (which I am) and I’d stop and scratch my
head and say hmmm. (I don’t know if there’ve been equivalencies to this
story in the UK).

I DO think people who harp on that 6% number are missing some nuance.
That paper I referenced above puts it in perspective. They talk about how
most flu deaths include healthy people at about a rate of 30%. For Corona,
it’s 6% of deaths are otherwise healthy people, so about 30,000 people as we
now stand with latest CDC numbers (it does look like they’re already discounting
the “popular” death totals.

Looking at our last significant flu event in 2018 … 30% of 60,000 would be 18,000
I believe there were ~1800 children under 18 that died in 2018

Less than 200 children 18 and under

For the Spanish flu, 70% of deaths were otherwise young and healthy (for that time)

Another way to look at that 6%. If you correct for the 6% to equal 30%, your looking at an equivalency of 100,000 total deaths reasonably attributable to Covid.

So there’s your answer, all things equal the “Logan’s Run Sandman Virus” took 100,000 lives in the US.

JOhnBee,
Meanwhile, back on square one:
You stuck up for the medical staff but that’s not what happens when people accuse their Drs and or nurse practitioners / *they don’t dare tell the physio off!..about being all sorts of things bad and quackish, Dennis above, you didn’t notice, said they wee tooo busy on their tik toks!
Briggs elsewhere claimed hospitals were empty when THAT was the point!

The exaggeration and hyperbole has caused no end of trouble when, in my view, the ones who’re the cleverest know better and could have behaved in such a way as the HELP Trump, instead of encouraging him to carry on like a football fan at a choir rehursal!

New York’s management WAS poor. There have been spectacular goings on which could have been avoided. It’s this universe we’ve got though and not some imaginary situation.
So I don’t have the wrong end. People ARE exaggerating, throwing everything at the medical staff. They’re quite used to it, actually, but it’s on steroids this time. The attitude of the ungrtateful undead has been enough to make many question whether or not to choose a different path in life

Somehow the discussion switches between epidemiology in general back to who did what when and why before the point of principle are actually agreed.
Sorry for any offence
I genuinely have to go for a few days but am trying to think of the right question in the meantime

Thank you for all your serious efforts in trying to explain and clarify. This stuff does take time

Joy

“ungrtateful undead” ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!

I don’t believe his point was necessarily at the staff (I warrant that it COULD be), but his actual point was that the Tik Tok video belied the idea that staff was buried under the bodies of patients. I’m sure where there are no or little resources that was true.

If people ARE rude to staff (and I will warrant that they are), that’s because administrators are hiding up the chain.

Another sorry story from unfeeling unapproachable administration is that a woman I know of was kept from visiting her mother in HOSPICE care! I’m sure the only people she could complain to was the staff that had the horrible task of turning her away. She wasn’t allowed in until her mother had already passed!

So yes, I’m sure staff felt a lot of abuse that would otherwise be directed at the Administrator hiding behind a desk in a closed office.

I AM quite serious about specifying the final Covid count (if the CDC has the guts) at 250,000 when this is all said and done.

I meant to say LESS than 250,000 and the All-caps LESS is intentional and means what you might think it means.

“The problem is a strong belief and mistrust, that health care staff are… In On It.……” etc…

John has pretty much already made my reply for me on this issue already. Out of a long post, Joy seems particularly hung-up about a one line tik-tok joke. I never claimed the “health care staff” were “in on it” (whatever that means, as if they were in cahoots with Fraudci, Gates, CDC, hospital administrators, et al. making the disastrous policies under which health care workers were forced to operate under the Plandemic – see also what I and John said above about “pop-up” field hospitals, etc. that went unused). Nor am I saying they are necessarily bad nurses as such when they attend to patients. But the tik-tok line’s intent was simply to point out the absurdity of the various claims that hospitals and staff (with perhaps a few isolated exceptions) everywhere were generally overwhelmed by Covid cases even as “two-weeks to flatten the curve” turned into months and then a year worldwide.

Surely you must admit that the tik-tok nurse craze was a bad look at a time when people had their lives and businesses (and other health concerns, tests, procedures, etc.) put on hold and were meant to believe hospitals were being so deluged with Covid patients that nurses and staff shouldn’t have had time for such on-the-job frivolity, twerking for laughs and online likes while, for example, some mom was forced to sit at home seeing such crap shoved in her face on TV while her hairdresser shop or whatever was closed for months on end and she wondered how she’d feed the kids?

I actually thought the Black Death stuff would inspire more interest or comment (quite a fascinating period of history, and its effect on later European and world history is perhaps underappreciated by many), but maybe I’m weird. 🙂

Dennis

Black Death stuff would inspire more interest or comment

The Bubonic Plague purportedly started in China

There are five places that are candidates for the start of Spanish Flu : China, New York City and Spain

Hmmm…interesting all these bugs seem to start in China! Still love my weekly Cashew Shrimp at the takeaway down the street, though (and my dog really likes when I share fortune cookies with her!) 🙂

Here’s a prominent UK Covid Skeptic Suspect

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/05/19/guitar-legend-clapton-describes-his-battles-with-covid-tyranny/

Eric Clapton has spoken out about his bad experiences with the AZ vaccine, his despair with Britain’s leadership, and his personal rebellion against “tyranny and arrogant authority.”

Good to see a few old rockers (Johnny Rotten as well), celebrities, etc. go against the tide. So many in the US and elsewhere just seem to be regime-compliant minions mouthing the same tired, spoon-fed rhetoric as left-wing politicians in their Twitter feeds and IG/Tik-Tok videos about “Build Back Better,” mask and vax shaming those who refuse to fall in line with the regime agenda and Narrative, etc.

““Where have all the rebels gone ?
Hiding behind their computer screens
Where’s the spirit, where is the soul
Where have all the rebels gone”

Indeed. Can one imagine the reaction of musicians and fans in ’69 if politicians, media, and health bureaucrats then had tried with Hong Kong Flu what they have with Covid?:

“Dear Woodstock Organizers: I order you to cancel this concert you have planned on grounds that someone might get the flu; it’s a global health emergency. And wear a face mask at all times or face arrest and fines. Signed, Nelson Rockefeller.”

Media Headline: “Super-Spreader Concert Catastrophe Planned: Millions Expected to Fall Gravely Ill or Die in Months Ahead!!!”

Woodstock Organizers: “Dear Nelson and Media: [light up spliff and give collective finger to Governor and reporters…show goes on]”

Dennis

Be careful, Snopes’ll get after you

I Duck Duck Go’ed “How many people died during Woodstock” thinking there’d be OD’s and fights during the event.

One of the higher hits was a Snopes Fact Check about the flu event during Woodstock

I won’t link but if you really want a laugh you know what to search on

Hmm… nothing from Snopes comes up on DuckDuckGo when I type that…I do see a History Channel report saying 3 people died at the concert: 2 of ODs (though 800 “drug-related medical cases”), and one from getting run over by a tractor cleaning debris while he was in a sleeping bag – poor guy…what an absurd way to go!).

Dennis,

“It’s not even as deadly, adjusted relative to world population, as the 1957 Asian Flu or 1969 Hong Kong Flu.”

So what? The existence of worse pandemics isn’t a reason to do nothing about the current one. You have no argument.

You seem to be among the fearful soy-laden hypochondriacs – just do something, anything! – who wishes ruin everyone else’s life and liberty forever lest someone somewhere might get sick from something, and because of your paranoid fixation on this one seasonal flu-like illness. Stay home forever, then; cower in a corner in a muzzle afraid to breathe open air…if that makes you happy…but it’s long past time for the rest of us to move on and get on with Life.

The swordfish mentality displayed above also reeks of the “zero Covid” mindset. Which means it never ends, because such a standard can never possibly be met. A recipe for a permanently maimed and tyrannized world subjected to an endless cycle of lockdown and muzzle mania.

Dennis,

Your comments all resort to the same hysterical overreaction you’re accusing authorities (and me) of. Your overreaction to simply being asked to wear a mask, which could save someone’s life, being a case in point.

Incidentally, I’ve been going for walks every day since the start of the pandemic (and before) without a mask on, although I sometimes wear it from/to the supermarket, either because I’ve forgotten to take it off, or because it’s a cold day and it keeps me warm.

Valuing your own freedom to avoid trivial discomfort and/or inconvenience over someone else’s life strikes me as absurdly selfish.

“Your overreaction to simply being asked to wear a mask, which could save someone’s life, being a case in point…”

Proof you’ve still learned nothing about masks over a year into this (Here’s a brief summary in case you’re in a hurry: They do nothing to stop viruses. Purely about social/political control and virtue signalling). Fifteen months in, and you’re still a fully paid-up member of the Branch Covidian Mask Cult.

Far from being an “hysterical overreaction,” I’m being too nice…and I’m sick to death by now of playing nice with you Covid Cultists.

Dennis,

“They do nothing to stop viruses.”

You haven’t got a clue. Of course they don’t stop individual virus particles, but they do reduce the spread of droplets containing virus particles. It’s not rocket science!

“I’m sick to death by now of playing nice with you Covid Cultists.”

Don’t worry, you’re not in any danger of being too nice.

You accuse others of not having a clue, but demonstrate you’ve learned nothing about masks for well over a year now, despite overwhelming evidence that they do nothing beyond serving as a political-virtue signifier.

Sounds like you have that trombone shoved so far up your back end you can’t think straight.

Here, take the trombone out of your rear and work on educating yourself: “Case growth was not significantly different between mandate and non-mandate states…Mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level COVID-19 spread during COVID- 19 growth surges.”

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.18.21257385v1.full.pdf

0.65% died, In a population that was roughly 110’000’000… (not 60% or two thirds)
Nobody noticed, shows they’re not on the ball
~~~
What is the estimated annual mortality figure for flu in the US?
No links…no prevarication, what’s the number?

36’000 is the number which our government advisers and scientists have been quoting for the Us

Re Tik-tok nurse: I have no idea what the (guessing) newspaper story was about but it’s entirely irrelevant
since the point was made that the staff could not cope with the numbers that would have ensued if no action were taken

This is where the point of contention is.

If you don’t want your soldiers to be sent to war, foreign or domestic, because the cost is too high, you must be consistent or loose all credibility

If Life matters when it is but a few cells, it matters when people are old, too.
If soldiers matter, so do those people saving lives

Those who are without merit who find themselves into positions of power or influence are irrelevant to the discussion of what is ac tally true. Not on internet blogs, though…

“0.65% died, In a population that was roughly 110’000’000… (not 60% or two thirds)
Nobody noticed, shows they’re not on the ball”

What numbers/illness are these even supposed to be referring to?

“…the point was made that the staff could not cope with the numbers that would have ensued if no action were taken”

So late in the day to be rehashing this Tik-Tok joke business. But, ah yes, that totally unsupported hypothetical of “what would surely absolutely without doubt have happened had we not done X”…offered with no proof whatsoever, though real world data demonstrates otherwise. No evidence anywhere – regardless of measures taken – of staff in hospitals worldwide being generally overwhelmed with Covid patients..but no matter…our hypothetical model says we saved 2000 million lives and hospitals would have been overwhelmed so it must be true.

Joy

Bubonic Plague : World Population from 450 Million to 300 Million (However the toll in Europe was up to 60% and maybe that was some areas).

(No one said the Spanish flu took 2/3rds … that number was about Bubonic plague and Europe specifically)
Spanish Flu: What was unusual about Spanish flu was that young adults were as affected as children and the old … yes .65 % of US Population

Yes … average flu deaths since 2012 … <39,000 with 61000 for 2017-2018 (30% estimated without co-morbidities)

For Covid 19 – ~600,000 over one and a half seasons (about 400,000 per "season")
Keep in mind 2017-2018 deaths original estimate at 80,000 … I'm guessing CDC may lower Covid to 300K per season)

For Covid, the CDC estimates only 6% of deaths were without significant co-morbidities compared to 30% for flu.

Joy

By-the-by

I provided another discussion re: US and the metric system:

https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/35514/#comment-197911

…..and?
the number is?
No more than twenty characters will be necessary to answer a ver straight question.
No more changing the subject or bringing up the black death or whatever else disease.

I want to talk about covid,
YOU want to talk about flu,
when I talk about flu,
YOU want to talk about black death!!!

When we went to penzig 25, someone left a black rat in our tent.
The Brits wee going around with black ribbons pinned to their medieval costumes. (garb)

The Americans thought it was in very bad taste since ‘aids awareness is a serious matter’,
so is history! In some American circles…

“…..and?
the number is?
No more than twenty characters will be necessary to answer a ver straight question”

Hardly, since no one seems to know at this point what number about what disease your referring to, or what your question is. Want Covid numbers? Plenty of sources on this interwebs thingy.

Dennis, number silliness?
The numbers that were ignored because it’s gocha’ blogging around here.

Johnby brought up black death.
A previous commenter, not you, but in high dudgeon, proclaimed that 650’000’000 was only bad in ye oldie days of nineteen eighteen flu BECAUSE, America only had a third of the population? Those silly numbers

Essentially because I pointed out that fourhundred (at that time) was already much worse than an average to BAD flu year.

So as population is the context in which deaths occur in populations….so too are the average yearly death figures

Yet no established figure has ever been conceded around here to my knowledge. Haven’t read every word of every post though, but have dcefinately asked a few times.

the silly number was six hundred and fifty thousand to be clear, in previous comment

Dennis,
I was asking Johnby
feel free to answer though.
I asked in my previous comment but apparently it was a very hard question

“0.65% died, In a population that was roughly 110’000’000… (not 60% or two thirds)

What is the estimated annual mortality figure for flu in the US?
No links…no prevarication, what’s the number?

36’000 is the number which our government advisers and scientists have been quoting for the Us”

Now you appear to be telling me what I told you, as it were.

Are you sticking with anual death figure for flu in the us @
36000? The accompanying verbiage isn’t necessary

co-morbidities are not flu. Let’s get clinical here, stop with the pretence that statistics proves cause. You all know better

So the figure is morel like
17 X as bad as average flu years
And counting

When it’s pointed out, we must talk about death per population back then!
Yet that number is far worse than all the wars put together!

So?
It’s not as bad as the abortion numbers is then the cry.

So at least now there’s a benchmark that two thirds of the population IS bad.

That narrows it down a bit, I suppose

I thought I had first mentioned The Black Death in regard to your question long ago about what level of death (“deadliness” – another word you got hung up on for a few posts) would be required to justify the extreme measures taken in response to Covid…which is why I was confused about what you were referring to a few posts ago with the 60%/110,000,000 figure above…

In any case…I don’t really care about any numbers any more with Covid…it’s all fearmongering now (and has been for quite a while), especially about “variants,” to try to justify continued suppression of life and basic rights and freedoms. That’s where the war is now – Covid itself is a minor seasonal flu-like illness…the real battle is with regaining liberties, avoiding further crackdowns in the name of alleged “variants” this coming Fall, vaccine “passports,” continued efforts at coercing people to get these experimental gene therapies, etc.

It’s is absolutely criminal that kids now are being pressured to have these jabs – oh, just a few “mild” myocarditis cases in otherwise healthy teens, nothing to see here! – for a disease of zero risk to them. Far, far more adverse reactions and deaths as a result of these jabs have been reported than have previously been needed to shutdown previous dangerous jabs unleashed on the public, yet the mainstream media and politicians and health officials continue to do what’s in the best interest of Big Pharma’s pocketbooks (and theirs too surely – many with conflicts of interest). Even as forced muzzling eases in most of the USA (first trip to the grocery in 10 months last week – yay!), the crimes against humanity being committed in the name of Covid continue to mount.

I saw the celebrated first UK jab-receiver – William Shakespeare, no less! (they must have searched far and wide and pick just this guy to be first) – has now died of a stroke. Totally unrelated, I’m sure.

Lastly – I think this obsession with flu comparisons is irrelevant. We have every reason to believe both “cases” and attributed Covid deaths have been inflated. And there was never such obsessive focus on flu – cataloging alleged deaths, “cases” and mass testing of asymptomatic people, etc., so we don’t really have clear numbers to begin with. If flu deaths in normal years were obsessed over, tracked, tested for, and counted on death certs the way Covid has been, I’m sure the “flu deaths” would be much larger than generally reported or estimated as well (especially if hospitals were getting kickbacks/govt subsidies for handling flu cases). Plenty of studies have shown total IFR of Covid is around .14-.15%, barely more than the estimated IFR for flu (though obviously, as Briggs often points out, it varies greatly by demographic, so plain IFR as such is kind of misleading since deaths are so heavily weighted toward people who are very old or already very ill with co-morbidities – those under 20, say have effectively 0.00% IFR).

Throw out whatever numbers you like for whatever virus. They are just beside the point now and really don’t matter. What matters now is people getting their lives and liberties back. Fifteen months and counting of this Covid insanity and obsession is enough.

Dennis,
YOU think the comparison with flu is irrelevant!!!!! are you doing it on purpose?

I was going where the arguments ended up.
Something can only be “bad’ compared to something else, can’t ti?
the comparison is tacit usually in the statement that something it bad.

A thing can’t be ‘tall’ without ‘short’ things?

Whether people care appears not to come into the conversation unless it’s to express a particular bias.

That’s true of everybody, I believe.
So it’s about value in the abstract, not numbers .

The numbers, it seems to me, are just there to justify the decisions or the objection to the same

At this point comparing Covid to flu is no more relevant than comparing it to cancer, heart disease, or any number of the many things people died from (often in far greater numbers than they do of Covid – or flu).

As I said, the true battle facing humanity now lies elsewhere than with Covid in and of itself.

Joy

okay I THINK I understand –
you want to know how we can compare Covid is to the “flu”

okay (this is my take – maybe Dennis’s – you explain how bad you feel it is)

You seem to feel 17, which looking at current raw data could be excused
36000 * 17 = 612000 (which is currently about right)

Please remember, flu numbers making upo that 36,000 are no longer raw values –
Covid #’s are raw

Back in 2018, raw flu deaths were 81,000 (the CDC eventually dropped this value to 60,000)
Maybe the CDC will re-evaluate the 600,000 value to 450,000 … it’s too early)
So not 17 times as bad but 12 or 13 times

ESPECIALLY consider that young otherwise healthy people accounted for 30% of flu deaths in prior years

20,000 youngish people without co-morbidities died from 2018 flu (almost 2000 children died)
(On average 12,000 per flu season)

CDC currently states 6% of Covid deaths are youngish otherwise healthy people (36,000 over 1 and a half seasons or 24,000)

So we can say that value will be between 2 to 12 times as bad – that’s what you get from a flu designed by scientists

36,000 youngish people without co-morbidities died during 1 and a half “seasons”
or
24,000 youngish people per season (<200 children per season)

JOhnby,
17 isn’t a matter of feeling it’s a matter of division

“Please remember, flu numbers making upo that 36,000 are no longer raw values –
Covid #’s are raw”
Please remember who you’re talking to and please remember that I didn’t just come u[ the river on a bike

WHY are you speaking about young or youngish people?
Some kind of preparation of ground for claiming that old peole die anyway? Really you are unyielding in obtuse misunderstanding.

You asked if I feel 17? I just look 17, I feel 4

Back to the point
why are ‘we’ shifting a conversation as to youth? This strikes me as a kind of mantra that’s been repeated too many times on the internet in false discussions where it’s a given that old lives don’t matter.

You did once concede this a while back so at least that’s consistent with notions of value for human life, though.

Saying people die anyway, or a variant of the same is a cop out, another dodge and a facile approach to the complex situation of serious epidemics. I’m allowed to call it serious? Or is that also off limits?

As I said, the true battle facing humanity now lies elsewhere than with Covid in and of itself.

Ahem, Dennis, that’s what I’ve been saying
There was every possibility that this epidemic and all that ensued without action would bring on what has been looming in geopolitics for years. The majority of the public didn’t try to make trouble over here and it is a big relief. Had we had the nightmarish rebellion of the right in the US things would have worked out a whole lot differently. That was a blessing. That you and your fellow ‘skeptics’ can’t see that is a shame but it will pass.

In spite of the right, the left, the Democrats, the media vendors!!! Even covid will run it’s course.
Your outcomes could have been better AND they could have been a lot worse. Perhaps your group just can’t see this rather glaringly obvious fact.

I say youngish because I’m not youngish
I’m not in favor of destroying the livelihood of youngish people to save my old ass

But OK, that makes Covid about ten times that of the regular flu

Puts Covid at about 1/4th to 1/5th, maybe a sixth that of the Spanixh Flu,

On par with the Asian and Hong Kong flus of the past

I guess those who think they know, here, are trying to work out the answer to the question that’s too soon to answer regarding all cause mortality? Trying to jump the gun, as usual

It’s snail racing, entertainment for some. Like sea ice extent arguments but not as charged

I say youngish because I’m not youngish?I’m not in favour of destroying the livelihood of youngish people to save my old ass”
Comendable, but I don’t believe you. You simply have done some maths and think it’s not gonna happen to you. Since you wound’t wear a mask because of fear of what it would do? Remember? You do care about your swearing behind.
Obsessed with flu, i’d say

“Puts Covid at about 1/4th to 1/5th, maybe a sixth that of the SpanNixh Flu,”?On par with the Asian and Hong Kong flus of the past?Erm, yeah?
You’re still missing quite a lot of information in that assertion which focusses only on numbers of dead bodies (whilst saying they don’t count). Talk about mixed up?
How about the infectiousness and transmissibility of this disease which is what has really caused much of the alarm? It’s not flu and doesn’t behave like it. It ‘feels’ like it when you get it, for some, for others it’s like nothing else they’ e ever suffered and a third set don’t know about it.
There’s a reluctance to face some simple medical facts of management and resources. Just more taken for granted as if everything happens by magic! The fairies manage the flu each year!

The other matter is that of thinking that your own actions don’t affect others, only your words, apparently, matter
Claims of personal freedom affects others when considering infectious disease

Just a fact of life

It’s not ideal to claim that asking for freedom is really about saving jobs when lives are being thrown down the pan

Saying it’s just like flu is really misleading and unhelpful
Flu doesn’t take off like champagne out of a bottle or a cheaper drink drunk by poor people

Controlling flu is easy not just because of vaccines. Flu does not have the same nature of transmissibility, silent infection, novelty to human immunity and treatment interventions, that Covid has

This means explosive numbers occur very quickly compared with that of flu.

Then there are the effects of leaving it unchecked, like India. If that’s the job description going forward, nobody’s going to sign up, nor should they bother

At bording school we know it all rug rats decided that the collection tin for the RNIB was misplaced in our school
The computer teacher, whom I respected very much, told us in no uncertain terms how spoiled and ungrateful we wee because we wrote:
“begging bowl”
On the side of the collecting tin
We were told that it’s not just people like you lot who have eyesight problems, it’s older nad less capable people you know?
He was right. He was also a Christian, which is probably why was wasting his time on us in the first place

I see this false pride about being old and brave is misplaced in a similar way
Consider yourselves dressed down

You may be heroes in the eyes of some of us, but you’re none of you perfect

“Ahem, Dennis, that’s what I’ve been saying.”

Mmmkay, if you say so. LOL. Sounds to me like you’ve mostly been obsessing over a Tik-Tok joke, the meaning of “deadliness,” and minutiae of Covid numbers compared to flu, quite apart from any big picture issues having to do with “the true battle facing humanity (which) now lies elsewhere than with Covid in and of itself.”

“There was every possibility that this epidemic and all that ensued without action would bring on what has been looming in geopolitics for years. The majority of the public didn’t try to make trouble over here and it is a big relief. Had we had the nightmarish rebellion of the right in the US things would have worked out a whole lot differently. “

I honestly don’t even know what to make of this, or what the real point is here. What precisely has been looming…and what particular “trouble” failed to be made over there to your relief? A real Rightist rebellion, not only here but worldwide, is what the world needs more than ever, and would lead to tremendous outcomes of great benefit to humanity in countless ways. 🙂

Dennis If I want your opinion I’ll give it to you

Joy

Still don’t know JohnBoy

That’s OK

“sounds to me like you’ve been obsessing about a tik tok joke”

You see? This is why I don’t believe you.
You made the comment, ignoring the point I made, then claimed because I referred to it and then explained, that (I) am in some way obsessed?
Like. I said, I don’t even know about the tik tok thing nor do I care?
Why can’t you therefore drop it, ifit is indeed a trivial joke, and move on to the point?

The point was about medical staff and their summary of the situation. How would it have been if they’d just said,
“we’re not doing this any more”
Yours and the attitude of pretty much all the others is rather taking everything and everybody for granted.
It’s tempting fate and it will have consequences going forward in countries where rebellion was strong and death tolls were high.

“Dennis If I want your opinion I’ll give it to you.”

LOL. Thanks, I needed a good chuckle!

“Then there are the effects of leaving it unchecked, like India.”

This might be the place to point out that Indian states which introduced widespread Ivermectin use have seen tremendous drops in “cases,” whereas they’ve risen in states that restricted or banned Ivermectin. The alternative was never between “leaving it unchecked”/doing nothing at all and tyrannical/destructive lockdowns, but between more effective, safe, cheap alternatives and tyrannical/destructive lockdowns, muzzle mandates, etc. People who refused from the start to buy the Narrative being sold by the media and politicians have known all along that there were cheap, readily available alternatives to destructive Lockdowns, muzzles, and rushed gene therapies whose main benefit is to create more Big Pharma billionaires. But you can’t get EUAs from the CDC and its global health bureaucrat counterparts if there are cheap and effective alternative treatments, so criminals like Fauci and others suppressed and smeared such knowledge with regard to HCQ and Ivermectin in favor of a far more destructive course (whose full effects we still await as long-term effects of the jabs come to the fore; I fear more than ever that real mass death is around the corner and the real goal of the jabs, and it will make Covid itself look very minor indeed – see French Nobel prizewinner Luc Montagnier’s recent interview for reference). Punishing criminals like Fauci, Gates, et al., truth commissions, and Nuremberg-style trials should be the next focus. At least Fauci’s defenestration appears closer each day.

“You made the comment, ignoring the point I made.”

I ignored nothing, but you keep circling back to the same things ever since – just as once before you kept repeatedly asking for “my numbers,” not liking the sources or references I did give. I answered quite clearly long ago, I thought (and as regards the original question about “what would be deadly enough” to justify the response we’ve had, i.e. lockdowns, forced muzzles, etc., you even said “So I respect the fact that you’re willing to say what is bad enough becaue you’re the first as far as I can tell who, when pushed, will ‘go there’”).

In any case, I’ll look forward to you giving me opinions for myself to have in future. 🙂

Dennis,
“when I say ‘you’ I don’t mean it in an accusatory or unpleasant matter”
It just looks like it from there!
~~~
Dennis,
If you think I’m going back to a certain point it’s because it was not adequately covered or was in some manner sidestepped, on response.

Regarding (your) tie Tok comment, do I really have to go back and cut and paste the conversation to prove my previous response about “obsessing” or are you going to concede that in this instance you did indeed ignore a relevant point even if to make a joke? It’s okay we all do it

If the smallest of tiny points of discussion aren’t even up for proper scrutiny how can a complex MedioLegoPolitical one proceed with any kind of veracity?

We’ve reached the Alice Horizon which is the intellectual equivalent of the event horizon only worse

~~~
Now, to India…

“Joy

Still don’t know JohnBoy

That’s OK”
That’s the trouble, I think I do! You’e like me, thinking you can run with the hare and the hound in every situation
Sometimes it would be handy to have a ‘whisper’ button when you don’t want others to see but that would alter the dynamic in a whole new way and cause more chaos
I am fond of Johnby and Johnby knows it

Dennis,
This might be the place to point out that Indian states which introduced widespread Ivermectin use have seen tremendous drops in “cases,” whereas they’ve risen in states that restricted or banned Ivermectin. “
It might indeed, at some point be a good moment, it might even be true and it might be significant or a correlation masquerading as something else
~~~
“The alternative was never between “leaving it unchecked”/doing nothing at all and tyrannical/destructive lockdowns, but between more effective, safe, cheap alternatives and tyrannical/destructive lockdowns, muzzle mandates, etc. “
Nobody sensible would claim a false dichotomy where only certain types of intervention were on the menu, EVERYTHING waS thrown at the problem in the end in most countries, even in Sweden which so many here like to think did something novel.

“the media and politicians have known all along that there were cheap,…”
Yes media are beyond any consideration of credibility. If there’s any conspiracy, it’s right there, along with their puppet politicians. Not all politicians are part of the branch of media though. Even in the US. Here, it’s just sliced or portioned slightly differently, same problem nevertheless.
~~~
“readily available alternatives to destructive Lockdowns, muzzles, and rushed gene therapies whose main benefit…”

The Pharma remarks aren’t entirely off the mark but it really is a can of worms to include that in matters about which we can agree. (We as in you and I.) The pharmaceutical debacle is the subject of many books going forward. The information here could not have been more monosyllabic and simple regarding the roll out and the effects etc. Yet ‘media’ has found a way to muddy the water, not just with the USA. Their TRICK is to split the camps that would otherwise be on the same page. Divide and conquer. It’s easy to be taken in because there’s more lies than truth going about in media these days.

~~~
You know I’m with you about Faudci, he’s been the worst of Trump’s since he began but looked like he was stuck with him from square one, (politically and administratively) or he would have fired him as he did with all the other swamp monsters.

“I fear…. see French Nobel prizewinner Luc Montagnier’s recent interview for reference). Punishing criminals like Fauci, Gates, et al.,

If I don’t see it, am happy with your summary.
Although fear is what is driving a lot o f people on both sides, even other emotions of similar magnetism. That’s one of the problems with mixing thing up and it’s the media’s main bow string.

The globalist agenda and the threat from the religion which dare not speak its name are the biggest threats. Not vaccines, or temporary, even drastic looking public health measures.

“You know I’m with you about Faudci, he’s been the worst of Trump’s since he began but looked like he was stuck with him from square one, (politically and administratively) or he would have fired him as he did with all the other swamp monsters.”

Hmmm…I had gathered you were as much a pro-Fauci-ite as you are a Whitty-ite. Trump inherited Fauci, and he was afraid to fire him or sideline him too much when this all started because the media had decided from day one (why? He was after all, just a career bureaucrat whom almost no one in the general public had heard of before then) that Fauci was the Expert-in-Chief and High Priest of The Science(TM), and any criticism of him from Trump or anyone else was by definition “anti-science.” And Trump bears responsibility for agreeing to help push through EUAs and rush these mRNA vaccines at “warp speed” (one of his greatest blunders).

Alas, it’s precisely Trumps failure to fire “all the other swamp monsters” that is one of his biggest failings overall. Despite his rhetoric, in practice (to some extent perhaps he had no choice, having no long-standing team of reliable people to go to in many cases to fill positions, he had to rely to various degrees on establishment types who were often actually hostile to his agenda – and he has a tendency to believe and support whoever he last spoke to on a given topic) he failed miserably to “drain the swamp” and come anywhere close to building a new culture in Washington. The PMCs and career-bureaucrats – and many never-Trump RINOs in Congress and elsewhere – were often working to undermine anything he did and were just biding their time for the 2020 election (the real Coup, which is why Democrats are obsessed with deflecting attention to the January 6 protests and pretending they were a “threat to the Republic and “our Dumbocracy”). The biggest mistake Trump made from the beginning was giving too much power to his nauseating son-in-law.

The Syria troops issue underscores just how much the establishment worked against him without fear or consequence. A top general openly admitted – while Trump was still President and could have taken action himself against this guy – that they simply lied to him a about troop numbers left in Syria after Trump had ordered troop removal. That guy and everyone else involved should have been court-martialed and tried for insubordination and treason for disobeying a lawful order of the Commander-in-Chief. Instead, absolutely nothing happened, and both he and the media and military establishment basically just snickered about how funny it was they’d pulled a fast one on Drumpf. Disgraceful.

Dennis,
You don’t read my comments!
“Hmmm…I had gathered you were as much a pro-Fauci-ite as you are a Whitty-ite.”
Total rubbish
Given enough time and effort, not that you’d read, it would be possible to prove you totally wrong on this assumption. Why does that not matter? Why does YOU~R ideas of what I think carry the weight and not what you’re told about what I think?
Hugh? So you don’t only read minds you know that those minds don’t even think what you say they think?

“You don’t read my comments!…’Hmmm…I had gathered you were as much a pro-Fauci-ite as you are a Whitty-ite…’ Total rubbish…”

I do. The general thrust of them has seemed to be that – however much you may occasionally criticize a few things at the margins – you seem largely on board with the mainstream Covid Narrative and general policies (lockdowns, masks, even the mRNA vax rush, etc.) that have been heavily promoted by the Faucis and Whittys of the world.

If you are now anti-Fauci – welcome aboard (though some of us were here before it was fashionable). 🙂

On the UK Covid news front, I saw today that a 44 year-old BBC presenter has died after getting the AZ vax – if nothing else rouses them, perhaps one of their own dying needlessly will encourage mainstream media to stop acting as the promotional arm of Big Pharma…but I won’t hold my breath (BBC gets too much Gates money).

That paragraph starting with “HMMMM”
( the caps monsters about, )
That paragraph, yes, your summary is what I gleaned without reading the internet simply by watching the dynamics on TV and knowing what I know about respiratory medicine, which is more than you’d dare to imagine.

Same reason whitty is a reliable witness. Like it or not
Disagree with decisions made but he’s proving the scientific facts in good faith.

There are ways in which Whitty’s ideas would diverge from mine but as far as this is concerned I have total confidence in his rightness for the role. hHe’s not there to be clairvoyant, nor is that the purpose of modelling.

Chris is a medical Dr, still practising

Dennis,
You’re being REAlLY naughty now
I had the AZ vaccine, both doses, early, due to being a ‘carer’!
Would have chosen the AZ even if given the choice and even after the silly neurosis about the thing

Don’t say “welcome” I was in the camp before you knew I thought what I think! You’re just pretending to be above error! Or you know how to wind people up from years of court shinanigins

Trump should have asked me… It was painful to watch a slow train crash knowing what I know.
Last election, he won despite the own goals from. the right.
Thought maybe he’d win again
I’m a big Trump fan, knew he’d win first time as so many here did! The dynamic is so similar that I would have thought you people could learn a thing or two about how to manage the media from our own mistakes with the progressive left? Liberal?
Alas, Churchill was right
“you can rely on America to do the right thing, after the’ve r=tried everything else.”
Sop true!

“You’re just pretending to be above error!”

Pretending? 🙂

Dennis,
You’re right about the lying to Trump, they did it over Covid.

I noticed that he was repeating things that he was being ‘fed’ which were not entirely accurate.
I won’t bore with the details but to do with covid management.
Even Birx, who isn’t as bad as faudci, noted that there was some bad information going around.

As the saying goes you can trust a murderer or a thief but you can never trust a liar.
Nobody in media carries the can and so nobody’s ever blamed for or pays for he evil

Swordfish,
You’re correct about droplets and masks.
There’s also the air eddies or disturbance of the flow of air through a mask which will also slow the speed of individual viruses. Particles of virus aren’t of any concern or interest, though they always seem to make an appearance.
See work at Imperial college by Wendy Barclay and her team during lock down last year.
Confirming what is already known regarding viral spread and surface contamination but still had to be done for skeptics and the media alike
There’s also the behavioural considerations which are way too reliant on accepting basic principles to even try convincing some about this. Luckily enough, it’s gong to be over soon. See how long it takes for the topic to be dropped on line. Like CNN with Trump. They ‘re out of ammo

So many still pushing pseudo-science about droplets and masks vis-a-vis Covid. Just cannot give up the cult.

https://www.thesmileproject.global/post/airborne-transmission-in-mean-masks-out

That chart should be permanently branded on the forehead of Fauci, Gates, Biden, and every other mask cultist in the world.

Too many people masquerading without masks as mask experts if you ask me

There are several charts on that link, which one? talk me through it, it looks like it’s from. a blog network and it takes a time to go through something one suspects is dodgy from the beginning. Rather take your summary and then go and check.
Red arrows and primary colours naming things with percentages doesn’t look like hard science to me.

Faudci, as said, is not of interest in anything but. apolitical debate. He added nothing and seriously detracted from the science as it developed last year nor from the beginning.

I take as much notice of faudci as I would an on line activist. If peole are so poles appart on something relatively straight forward in concept, I’m going to take notice of those who can speak from a position of knowledge of the matter. First hand experience, years in the making

Opposition to much of what happened last year was political not scientific debate.

the science is the best chance of being closest to truth. Nobody is prescient. Modellers don’t think they are no matter how many times people say they make think that way.

Most of the so-called “experts” are mainly expert at PR and getting their faces in front of a lot of TV cameras.

“I’m going to take notice of those who can speak from a position of knowledge of the matter. First hand experience, years in the making.”

Years of mask studies pre-Covid amply demonstrated they don’t work to slow spread of respiratory viruses, including the only RCT study done on Covid itself so far. Even Fauci and the Surgeon General – among others (much of the media as well) – said this and opposed masks in the very early days of Covid, only to reverse course when the mask was adopted as a political badge by the left to aid in overthrowing Trump. The mask cultists are not engaging in “science,” but politicized “The Science”(TM) for purposes of social control unrelated to actual public health.

Another question which isn’t answered or clarified is what you or anyone means by a mask.
Last year, when PPE was in global short supply, people were making their own or using fabrics of all kinds.
What you do with your mask afterwards is also important in controlling infection

None of these discussions clarified or specified what the discussion was about in any given situation
In pseudoscience, that’s what you do if you want to muddy the water and make things seem controversial that really are not

Politics is controversial. Viral kinetics isn’t controversial
Perfect information helps to ensure better decisions and action taken

Why play top trumps with papers. Why not prove the principles, or at least agree them and then go from there?
The claim that masks are not necessary in ITU is beyond proposterous. Are you in that camp too?

If a patient has a regular chest infection pre covid, minimal PPE is required beyond aprons and gloves, a mask was not used for every patient necessarily. *nor aprons or gloves for that matter.

However, if treating someone with TB, HIV or other designated diseases, various levels of Protective equipment were and are used.

So it’s really rather odd to then be told by people who really don’t have a clue, that PPE isn’t necessary.

With regards to Covid, the reason for controlling the infection in ITU as well as in other settings is so well understood that I’m baffled as to why people are so up in arms about it

Then, there’s masks out of ITU and in other clinical settings, which can be ore problematic and ‘dirtier’, such as on wards, in clinics in communities and in homes.
Then? public spaces indoors
Then? outdoors.
Really the simple principles are not tricky and there’s no certainty in any situation short of full HAZMat type suits.

Deciding for the masses deals not just with viral “load” but the general cussedness of people in all sorts of ways.
*forgetting deliberate defiance.

I want the others to not cough into the faces of innocent people, so I’ll wear a mask to join in.
That’s the attitude of most people.
zzz
re airborne virus: Just as with colds, infections are passed by direct contact but don’t forget that they do pass between individuals who are close enough, not necessarily in a family group. Remember the optometrist in China?
Surfaces are the other way that virus is spread, by the hands touching a surface.

What’s controversial about the above?

Is ITU what the Brits call an ICU?

Of course doctors and nurses in certain situations have always used masks (but even they never wore masks all day all the time in every situation. Never in my life have I walked into a hospital or doctor’s office and seen generalized masking of everyone, including the front desk receptionist, as well as all visitors and patients).

Yes, there are different types of mask. Mask of proper quality worn and fitted properly have specific uses and benefits in certain medical situations, hazmat areas, etc. This has nothing to do with the generalized 24/7 mask wearing being foisted on the public by tyrannical politicians. The vast majority of people in the general public are not wearing high quality masks (as you point out, many were just any old cloth, especially early on) for which they are properly fitted and trained and used in clearly defined or pristine situations – such as an operating theatre prepped for heart surgery.

This makes the mask cult theatre going on all around for the past year even more useless. Even the Denmark study involved people given a large supply of N95 masks and told to use only once and discard – and even that showed no statistical benefit to mask wearing! So people NOT using masks of a that high a quality and care standard – the vast majority in actual fact – would have even less benefit than those demonstrated in the Denmark study.

But quality of mask and care in use isn’t the point. The point of the mask theatre is to display one’s obedience by having something – anything at all! – covering one’s face, so it doesn’t matter if it works! Social control and conditioning and obedience to arbitrary decrees is the point! Masks are the most visible mark of the socio-political tyranny plaguing the world which must be smashed.

Dennis,
Your last paragraph is fair enough and isn’t telling me something I didn’t know already, strangely enough, so we agree.
Apart from whee you deviate off into talk about the left
That is not the reason that there was. achange of course on public mask wearing.
Don’t confuse what CNN aid or what Laura Kunzberg said, or Faudci, with why decisions were made elsewhere.

That’s where the disagreement comes in. You insist that the reasons vor certain choices were due to evil actors.

I disagree, certainly regarding the decisions at whiteHall
Some of the reasons, White Hall doesn’t even admit and that’s the elephant in the room. We don’t talk about it.

Regarding the “”RCT”” statistics can’t prove cause, only a correlation.
The wealth of information going forward will give people years to waste their time studying the matter.
Meanwhile, us clinical staff will be donning masks and gowns as and when it’s appropriate if it’s all the same to you.
The controversy is only problematic among those people who aren’t going into the danger zone.

Controlling a new epidemic is also quite a seaparte matter from controlling an endemic virus.
There will be people in a habit and wearing masks going forward I’m sure, but I won’t be one of them.
Endemic versus epidemic are separate considerations

~~~
The other way of viewing your claim of te “RCT” is that if there’s only one that passes muster in your eyes, is that enough? in such s massive scenario and of so many different epidemic types in different geographic areas?

That paper’s carrying a lot of weight, in my view.

“Regarding the “”RCT”” statistics can’t prove cause, only a correlation.”

Ah, yes…Randomized Control Trials – considered the Gold Standard for clinical trials, until 2020 apparently, and which I would think people interested in “The Science” might respect – are mere “statistics” which prove nothing.

Further evidence that The Mask is a religious cult, to be taken on faith with regard to Covid (whether the voodoo works on other diseases and viruses seems uncertain).

If you or others want to keep muzzling up in circumstances in which no one did until last year (often not even medical professionals), go ahead – but everyone else should also be free to go about their lives in peace without threats, pressure, and shaming for not joining this new cult.

Dennis,
I’m guessing you never wore a mask in your life before unless you were in some kind of clinical situation, in an engineering lab, or some other ‘clean space’ or ‘aseptic’ environment.

So saying nobody bothered before is rather pointless and kind of stating the obvious, known fact.

As for “slamming people” (that new media headline phrase, ‘gaffe’s the other one…), and the rest, nobody sensible says you should be “slammed”. But you WILL, if you adopt a certain position on any given argument, receive the counter argument. Same in any given debate. That doesn’t count as “slamming” or whatever else.

“Cult” and “muzzling up” get us nowhere except makes you feel better, in which case, I’m glad to be of service.

It does have the effect of boring your opponent into submission;

“Randomized Control Trials – considered the Gold Standard for clinical trials, until 2020 apparently, and which I would think people interested in “The Science” might respect – are mere “statistics” which prove nothing.”

Do you think one ‘RCT’ is enough? You say that’s all there is?
What is the quality of the trial?
The one true trial on which you place all the weight is somehow more valuable than all the experience and clinical knowledge of highly qualified staff all around the world! We’re not, her,
Speaking of those with handle down information from media outlets or fretful do gooders.

Now we’re reduced to talking about “the gold standard”? Sounds like Gupta from CNN or Faudci, they both think the US IS the gold standard in medicine!

It is simply bias on your part and that of others who believe that the matter is settled at this stage in all circumstances

Personally I don’t care if you wear a mask or not, however, if you’re asked to wear a mask by someone who owns a property or is the proprietor, manager of a certain venue, then refusing is just the same as demanding entrance without a Tie. In a private space or outdoors, you might have a point. I think there’s a lot fo conflation of what is considered reasonable with what is necessary and what is fair/right.

What interests me is the clinical matter, not the politics.
Having explained WHY some of the decisions were made regarding masks, you seem to think I have to defend ALL decisions regarding masks by All authorities in all places.
It’s that false dichotomy kind of thinking which will get you in trouble. There’s more than
“Them and us’. Or
“Your side”
and “mine”
Only when it comes to your own mask is the choice binary in each moment in time.

Joy: You seem to have misread my “shaming” above as “slamming”.

As for: “I’m guessing you never wore a mask in your life before unless you were in some kind of clinical situation, in an engineering lab, or some other ‘clean space’ or ‘aseptic’ environment.”

Should have just put the full-stop after “life.” 🙂

Nor will I ever wear one for political virtue-signaling purposes, which is all Covid masks are. Even Fraudci’s newly released emails make clear that he knew they were useless, but pretended otherwise publicly for political purposes. The entire Covid response spearhead by Fraudci and others has been from the beginning one huge scam, and the biggest collective crime against humanity ever perpetrated. But some of us with ears to hear and eyes to see already knew that, and have known it for 15 months now. At least some people are now starting to wake up.

Slamming? shaming? same point though, you still dodge

It is noted
Your protestations and outrage are every bit as political as those ‘shaming’ or slamming you for not wearing one
You pay your money you take your choice
Don’t complain when you’re on the side of the minority if you chose to make a stand
It sounds like wingdy

Re mask use, you clearly don’t know more than what you read in a paper ! One paper, apparently should make staff change their practice. The arrogance is quite out there to behold

I’d say that it is you who truly believes something very strange about this epidemic and you’ve joined a crowd of noisy on line activists who think politics and clinical decision making go together. That puts you right into the same camp as Faudci, CNN, Twitterati and the sjw’s of this world

Your responses always seem to trail off into a hail of “not never not nohow” talk
Masks are not a political statement, you say they are. Perhaps in the US they were used during the ellection as well, anything to de-mark8 one set from another, which is a feature of US politics turned facist

Masks do imply a physical manifestation of spoiling free speech in the literal physical sense.

They are also looking a little like those face covering worn by islamic women who are famous for being second class citizens

All that is true, they also spoil ‘the look’
They create an updraft so that as my Mum says,
I’ve long decided that I can either breathe or see but not both together

We keep a sense of humour about things here, don’t get up to ninety about things like masks.

One point that is missed as well is the fact that had your side taken a more grown up approach to this debate, you might have been able to call out some of he bad political actors for what they were.
Instead, it turned quickly into a food fight between two sides so there’s no room for discussion, one must pick a side, ‘any side’!

Previously missed the comment starting with the following:
Is ITU what the Brits call an ICU?

“Of course doctors and nurses in certain situations have always used masks (but even they never wore masks all day all the time in every situation. Never in my life have I walked into a hospital or doctor’s office and seen generalised masking of everyone, including the front desk receptionist, as well as all visitors and patients).”

There are ITU’s ICU’s HDU’s NICU’s CICu’s PICU’s, you get the idea

ITU is what is is called en england.
If you hear ICU it’s not a clinical person talking, generally, although the last year has probably altered the language. bit.
I always thought ICU had a better ring to it, shame

It stands for ‘Treatment’
We also used to call A & E casualty until someone with a pen who wasn’t afraid to use it decided it needed to be called something else…you can imagine they thought it would make patients more responsible when presenting for trivial things…didn’t work.
Geriatrics was changed to care of the elderly
Gynie’ to ‘women’s health’
and so on, picture the people with clipboards changing names of things and thinking they have a result!
We’re back to geriatrics now, as America didn’t change their name and it sounds posher

The other part of your quote above also reveals some confirmation bias about the conspiracy theory of covid.
The Receptionist is probably at more ‘risk’ than most staff since they do tend to wear masks for close work.
It’s the spitting and coughing that patients do while leaning over the counter to make their appointment and generally complain to the receptionist where much of the bugglys most likely landed

So if I were a receptionist initially I would have not bothered with a mask but then If I’d been going home to elderly parents or people at risk if infected, then I’d have worn a mask. Possibly avoided work for a while simply because I would have wanted to protect my nearest and dearest

Then, when it’s mandated for everyone, those kinds of dilemmas are rubbed out

People would have started butting their family ahead of their work in all sorts of areas. The mandate ensured that the careless or unaware carriers did minimal damage in multiplying cases

Putting not butting
If nobody’s booking appointments, nobody’s getting treatment
We had 17500 patients in our practice, now we have 21,000, since I left
It is partly the system that was already on the edge before covid.

What it has done in all sorts of ways is to show up weaknesses of nations and systems of government
Britain is treating the world and has been, for ‘free’ for a long time

The UK, international cash point machine and general mopper upper has thrown in her towel, taken her bat and ball home and now the world’s angry about it!

If only we could all push at the same time with a very long pole,, we could make it out into the beautiful big blue briny sea..taking Jersey with us, Hern, sark and the other thousand islands
We could drop the Scotts off on the way

“we’re just passing France, all Scotts may alight now, don’t rush back”
“move up Ireland, you know you want to”

I haven’t dodged anything. There was nothing meaningful to respond to that hasn’t already be re-hashed a thousand times.

“One paper, apparently should make staff change their practice.”

Ah, yes it’s only “one paper” that disputes the efficacy of face muzzles to stop a virus. Ignoring decades of evidence and studies.

But it’s a lovely 85 degree and sunny day, so I’m off to the park for a bit, then will stop by my niece’s high school graduation party – all maskless! A true super-spreader event in the offing – 100 people enjoying themselves on a late Spring day without muzzles and anti-social distancing! Call in the Covid-stasi and arrest them all!!!

Dennis, cheers, I trust you’ll be drinking something pink and cold?
(it’s summer in England, too!)

“Ah, yes it’s only “one paper” that disputes the efficacy of face muzzles to stop a virus.”
See? How vague.

“disputes the efficacy of muzzles to stop virus”
1 “disputes”
2 “efficacy of muzzles”
3 “stop virus”

3) would be a straw man… that the paper alters nothing that went’ already known
Nobody anywhere is claiming that virus can be “stopped’, except perhaps the Chinese, and they’re not telling the whole truth either. What does “stop virus” even mean?

2) It’s odd that you seem to think manufacturers and engineers don’t know how effective any given named filter is, at catching particles of various sizes.
B y insisting ‘stop virus’ the debate is effectively a false one.

1) Disputes? yes, because:
~~ Terms aren’t defined,
~~False claims are. made incessantly about the aims and purpose of mask use / recommendation. (what it is expected to achieve, to what extent ‘mandates’ are required in order to achieve a high degree of compliance as well as physically capturing droplets containing virus in individuals unaware of their disease status and those who potentially don’t care.)

Still no response regarding the Mickey Mouse paper, hope that’s not the one true paper because that would be very embarrassing for the skeptics who are also hoping people will believe them on climate change folly

They loose credibility over this covid business. Glad you’re over the mask thing, good on you and congratulations to your niece