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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
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WTF??? You think Trump had clarity of vision on "many" issues? There wasn't much clarity at all unless you're a racist or a homophobe or a misogynist. Trump got 70+ million votes for two basic reasons: 1. the wealthy and near-wealthy loved him because he was filling their pockets with cash, and 2. the U.S. is full of white, under-educated, racist, beer-swilling assholes like the 'people' who stormed the Capitol. Dilip if your comments are representative of your clarity of vision and you're touting libertarianism, then I'm not going to waste any time checking it out.
Hey Peter, you should give American Trump supporters more credit..... some of them are sophisticated enough to swill Jack Daniels instead of beer!
But seriously, in Dilip's defense, I think he might have meant that Trump was at least clever enough to realize that his (Trump's} racism and misogynism and anti-NATO stand and all the rest would resonate with a huge number of Americans at that point in time. I think Trump was weighing a presidential run for many years, even decades, and he chose exactly the right time to do it. I doubt it would have worked in the year 2000 election, for example, if Trump went up against Bush, he might not have even gotten the nomination.
WTF??? You think Trump had clarity of vision on "many" issues? There wasn't much clarity at all unless you're a racist or a homophobe or a misogynist. Trump got 70+ million votes for two basic reasons: 1. the wealthy and near-wealthy loved him because he was filling their pockets with cash, and 2. the U.S. is full of white, under-educated, racist, beer-swilling assholes like the 'people' who stormed the Capitol. QUOTE]
Truer words were never spoken, Thanks
WTF??? You think Trump had clarity of vision on "many" issues? There wasn't much clarity at all unless you're a racist or a homophobe or a misogynist. Trump got 70+ million votes for two basic reasons: 1. the wealthy and near-wealthy loved him because he was filling their pockets with cash, and 2. the U.S. is full of white, under-educated, racist, beer-swilling assholes like the 'people' who stormed the Capitol. Dilip if your comments are representative of your clarity of vision and you're touting libertarianism, then I'm not going to waste any time checking it out.
WTF??? You think Trump had clarity of vision on "many" issues? There wasn't much clarity at all unless you're a racist or a homophobe or a misogynist. Trump got 70+ million votes for two basic reasons: 1. the wealthy and near-wealthy loved him because he was filling their pockets with cash, and 2. the U.S. is full of white, under-educated, racist, beer-swilling assholes like the 'people' who stormed the Capitol. Dilip if your comments are representative of your clarity of vision and you're touting libertarianism, then I'm not going to waste any time checking it out.
Take a deep breath, Peter. Read Pargat's post about what I meant, and remember that the psychopaths of the world are amongst the most charming and successful people...clarity of vision does not equate with goodness of heart....
Somehow, I didn’t notice this discussion, and paid attention to it when it was already on page 110. I would like to add my 2 cents here, but forgive me if this was already discussed on previous pages.
From my point of view, the concept of “excess mortality” is not the best criterion for assessing the impact of lockdowns on COVID-19 mortality in individual countries. “Excess mortality” is the difference between actual mortality and expected (predicted) mortality; the project of expected mortality is a very rough estimate with a margin of error, usually within the range of at least 15% (despite use of Farrington surveillance algorithms, etc.). Not to mention the fact that different countries use completely different methodologies for predicting mortality.
A much more informative criterion (for assessing the effectiveness of lockdowns) is the death rate per million population, which is very accurately reported on the Worldometer website for each country (the error hardly exceeds 0.1%).
When using this criterion, we should not forget that mortality from the COVID-19 in a single country significantly depends not only on the severity of lockdowns, but also whether the population of this country was mandatory vaccinated against tuberculosis with the BCG vaccine.
Almoust a year ago the first scientific articles appeared with the hypothesis that BCG vaccine, vaccinated in infancy or in early childhood, significantly reduces a person’s risk of dying from COVID-19. In the vast majority of developed countries, BCG vaccination was mandatory at birth or early childhood from 1950s – 1960s to 1980s – 2000s (in some countries it is still mandatory). These countries include Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, some Eastern European countries, Russia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, etc. However, in some developed countries BCG vaccine has never ever been mandatory: Canada, US, UK, Italy, Belgium, and, probably, few more.
When I for the first time read about BCG hypothesis, I have made my own statistical analysis using the example of two parts of Germany (to get the maximum possible “purity of the experiment”). In West Germany BCG vaccination was mandatory from 1961 until 1975. In East Germany it was mandatory from 1951 until 1998 (despite the fact that Germany was united in 1990, in the territory of the former GDR BCG vaccination was still mandatory until 1998). Without going into small details, my statistical analysis showed that as at April 24, 2020 the death rate from COVID-19 in the former East Germany territory was 29.4 per million, however, in the former West Germany territory it was 76.9 per million, i.e. the death rate in former West Germany was 2.6 times higher (I took the initial data – for each of the provinces separately – from the official website of the German Ministry of Health; I have not updated the data since April 24, 2020, but the overall picture could hardly have changed dramatically). When I checked the death rate separately for Berlin, it was somewhere in the middle between former Eastern Germany and Western Germany rates. This can be explained by the fact that the current population of Berlin consists of the population of the former East Berlin and West Berlin, which until 1990 was a separate city.
Now – to my main point: comparing the death rate from COVID-19 in Sweden to the death rate in Canada (or in North Dakota) is the same as comparing oranges to apples. In Sweden the entire population between 45 and 80 years old (and part of the population between 34 and 45 years old) received BCG vaccinations in childhood. Therefore, the death rate from COVID-19 in Sweden, all other things being equal, would be significantly lower than in Canada or in North Dakota. To assess the consequences of the lack of lockdowns in Sweden, it must be compared not with Canada or North Dakota, but with neighbouring countries Denmark, Norway and Finland. In all of these countries, in addition to the general similarities between them, the vast majority of the middle-aged and older population received BCG in childhood. Therefore, the main reason for the differences in mortality rates from COVID-19 in these countries is precisely the severity of lockdowns. As of today, we have 116 death per million rate in Norway, 140 – in Finland, 410 – in Denmark, and 1286 – in Sweden. These numbers speak for themselves. In fact, they mean that from over 13,000 people who have died from COVID-19 in Sweden, at least 9,000 elderly people would have survived if Sweden had introduced lockdowns as most civilized countries did.
And if you want to estimate the death rate from COVID-19 in Canada or in North Dakota, then compare them with other US states, or with Belgium, Italy and UK, where the majority of population does not have BCG vaccination. This comparison will be of great advantage in favour of Canada (587 death per million vs 1,901 in North Dakota, 1,918 – in Belgium, 1,828 – in UK, 1,657 – in Italy, and 1,621 - average in USA). This means that it was not in vain that we experienced these lockdown inconveniences – it helped save thousands of lives.
This post, of course, does not purport to be a complete analysis. There must be other factors – apart from lockdowns and BCG shots – that affect mortality rates. One of these factors is the quality of healthcare in the country. For backward countries, this factor may be the most critical; but for developed countries, which were compared above, I neglected the difference in the quality of their health care.
Sorry for the long post. In short it didn’t work out.
Thanks Victor for a fascinating post - a great side benefit from an old vaccine!
Thanks Victor for a fascinating post - a great side benefit from an old vaccine!
it is an interesting post but as Victor pointed out there are way too many confounding variables to draw such a conclusion.
Here is an interesting paper published in Nature this month regarding the efficacy of lockdowns in reducing viral transmission.
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincey
"The Monkees? WITHOUT Jimmy Hendrix? That's preposterous!"
In the late 1970s I attended a Shakti concert and sat in the front row when John McLaughlin and his band all sat in lotus positions for two hours while they performed. Regularly I made eye to eye contact with McLaughlin while he was playing and I sought to propel him to madness.
The opening act was not Jimi Hendrix but rather a local female country and western singer whose name I never did take note of. Where was Max when we needed him?
it is an interesting post but as Victor pointed out there are way too many confounding variables to draw such a conclusion.
Here is an interesting paper published in Nature this month regarding the efficacy of lockdowns in reducing viral transmission.
The problem of the effectiveness of lockdowns is still ambiguous. The authors of this article themselves note that “The rationale we are looking for is the association between two variables: deaths/million and the percentage of people who remained in their residences. Comparison, however, is difficult due to the non-stationary nature of the data”.
I would probably believe their results if someone could reasonably explain the huge difference in COVID-19 mortality rates in four neighbouring countries – Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Why is it many times higher in Sweden than in other three countries? After all, these countries are so similar to each other in all respects. In my view, the only difference that could affect the high mortality rate in Sweden is the absence of lockdowns in this country. No matter how much I thought, I could not even come up with any other factor that could increase this rate so much in Sweden.
The problem of the effectiveness of lockdowns is still ambiguous. The authors of this article themselves note that “The rationale we are looking for is the association between two variables: deaths/million and the percentage of people who remained in their residences. Comparison, however, is difficult due to the non-stationary nature of the data”.
I would probably believe their results if someone could reasonably explain the huge difference in COVID-19 mortality rates in four neighbouring countries – Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. Why is it many times higher in Sweden than in other three countries? After all, these countries are so similar to each other in all respects. In my view, the only difference that could affect the high mortality rate in Sweden is the absence of lockdowns in this country. No matter how much I thought, I could not even come up with any other factor that could increase this rate so much in Sweden.
Do you have any guesses on this matter?
The main thing that affects deaths per million is how deeply ingrained the culture of therapeutic nihilism. Namely early intervention
in an outpatient setting pre-hospitalization. The lion's share of deaths was in elder care facilities and in Sweden no intervention was
forthcoming for these people.
So if you really want to get granular about what the differences were in deaths per million between countries or between States for that matter
elder care facilities and pre-hospitalization treatment policies are a good place to start. If you ask a bank robber why he robs banks a common refrain
is "because that's where the money is". The deaths are concentrated in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. Definitely, not among the general
population that is locked down.
I can show you very poor and crowded countries like Bangladesh that only show 50 deaths per million compared to ten times that in Western countries. Bangladesh adopted various early interventions country-wide way back in June. I can show you many east African countries among the poorest in the world that adopted early intervention with efficacious treatments and did far better comparatively to Western countries.
To really understand the rationale behind what I am saying this documentary just released gives a good overview from frontline Dr's in the US.
I got the AstroZeneca first shot yesterday. I have survived the the first 21 hours. :)
I guess four months will go by before I get the second shot.
The rollout is odd. People 60 to 64 are eligible for the vaccine which seemed to be gone everywhere before a few minutes had passed from the announcement of the new group eligible for vaccine. Lots of people over the age of 80 have still not received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
I got the AstroZeneca first shot yesterday. I have survived the the first 21 hours. :)
I guess four months will go by before I get the second shot.
The rollout is odd. People 60 to 64 are eligible for the vaccine which seemed to be gone everywhere before a few minutes had passed from the announcement of the new group eligible for vaccine. Lots of people over the age of 80 have still not received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
I am sure it is safe initially....for most. The issue I have is why we subject people to an experimental vaccine with no longitudinal data when
the virus treated early is easily treatable?
"Effective Early Treatment" - it seems many of the powers that be (Medicine/Government) believe it to be a fact, that there is NO effective early treatment, and thus they opt for a vaccine (Whether fully tested or not).
Does this seem true to you, that that is what they believe?
If yes, then the issue is WHY they do not accept your factual statement: There are effective early treatments.
One suggestion I give in these kind of parallel situations, is to follow the money trail - who is profiting financially or with political credits, due to the establishment factual decision? Then you may be able to answer the "Why" question - why do they find as a fact what they do, when there is some significant evidence to the contrary.
Do you have other explanations to the WHY question to add?
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