In which I de-Endorse Donald Trump for President

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

I have been at least a luke-warm supporter of Donald Trump for years.  Heck, there are over 200 posts there, mostly talking up  his virtues.  Go, read, if you don't believe me.

But I am no longer comfortable posting about how Donald Trump would make a good President, because I do not any longer think that he would.

The Donald has come out against Ron DeSantis, not that this is surprising - after all, they are opponents for the Republican nomination.  I don't have a problem with that.  What I do have a problem with is the dishonest way that this opposition has come out:

Donald Trump's people attacked Ron DeSantis for (a) not slavishly following The Donald's massively damaging lockdown recommendations and then for (b) being entirely correct in doing so.

Let me be clear: Ron DeSantis saved Florida's economy by ignoring advice from Donald Trump's administration.  I was here.  I saw this.  I had just moved here from The Democratic People's Socialist Republic of Maryland and know people whose lives were destroyed by the Covid lockdowns imposed by a Republican Governor there.  So where are the "Trump War Room" objections to the Covid-19 lockdowns from (Republican) Governor Larry Hogan?

[crickets]

Go ahead.  Amaze me.

[I'm waiting]

Yeah, that's what I thought.  Someone who was all up The Donald's butt is a-OK, but someone who did something positive for his State (even though it went against your flunky's advice) is the Worst Thing Ever.  Quite frankly, I'd have more respect for this if (a) their advice was worth a plug nickel and (b) if your flunkies weren't trying to undermine you at ever step and if (c) you had had a damn clue about (b).

You didn't, and still don't seem to.  Quite frankly, this is the biggest knock against you - you brought your enemies into your inner circle, and you won't recognize allies if they don't kiss your butt.

To The Donald (as if he'd pay attention); We thought you were on our side.  We trusted you.  Like Bluto in Annimal House, wef**ked up.  And now we see that someone who actually earned that trust is in your cross-hairs.  

And so while I think you accomplished a lot in your first term, I don't think you are earning a second one.  Your ego is too big to allow someone actually accomplished to join you in the Oval Office.  And so, adieu.  Good luck, because you're going to need it. 

You are in an election.  You are facing adversity.  Remember that Adversity does not build character, it reveals it.  You are revealing more than you should like.  Stop doing that, or keep losing supporters.

Sorry, you've lost a supporter here.  Don't come calling after the nomination.  You're not Presidential material.

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

At Mom's funeral

It's been 2 years and 8 months since she passed on, but Covid threw a monkey wrench into having the ceremony.  But now the clan has gathered and she will finally join Dad today.

Blogging has been light since travel is a pain in the keister. 

The Christmas Cold

That would be mine.  We had to cancel Christmas dinner with friends - anyone who's had the good fortune to eat one of her banquets can imagine just how disappointed they must have been.  Tomorrow I hardly got out of bed at all.  Poor Wolfgang hasn't had his proper walks but since he's in his Golden Years he wasn't bouncing off of walls like he would have a few years ago.

It wasn't the 'rona - I did a home test which came back negative.  Not sorry about that - it wasn't a lot of fun a year ago.

But it seems to be a cold - 48 hours later I'm on the uptick.  Blogging should be back to normal soon. 

Vince Gill - One More Last Chance

So some Covid Karen tells us we all need to forgive and forget about the damage, deaths, and pain inflicted by the Covid lockdowns.  Lots of folks are talking about this - I particularly like Aesop's. Better people than I have written eloquently about the death and destruction, and about how forgiveness requires repentance.  I really don't have anything more to add about that, either.

But one thing struck me about Karen's (actually Brown University Economist Emily Oster) article.  Specifically, this:

The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward. [My emphasis - Borepatch]

Whoa, slow down Cowpoke.  There wasn't any luck involved at all.  Case in point, Borepatch, March 22, 2020 - a week after lockdowns were imposed:

There are three very interesting Coronavirus narratives emerging in just the last day or two:

1. The virus looks to be less bad - and perhaps much less bad - than we had feared.  As we learn more, we learn that the worst case scenario that had been put forward is much less likely.
2. Government actions have been a factor in making the outbreak or response worse or of using the outbreak to cover up their failures.
3. The government response is strangling the economy.  By their own admission (i.e. bills being discussed in Congress), there is at least a Trillion dollars of damage so far.

So look at this situation: things are not as bad as we feared, governments are to some extent demonstrably incompetent and untrustworthy, and the draconian crackdown/overreaction is destroying businesses, jobs, and people's lives.

Man, I sure was lucky in that analysis, wasn't I?  But I guess that I'm particularly lucky because a month later I wrote this:

Most importantly of all, we're not tracking (well, modeling) how many of the Kung Flu deaths are people who had severe health problems and would likely have died soon anyway.  Sure, there are stories about young healthy people keeling over from this; we know that this is a vanishingly small minority of the total deaths.

But we know that we are putting the population of the country under severe strain, and that this has very real consequences.  Aesop left a comment from the health care front lines that illustrates this:

And yes, in one night, three of the traumas we had were domestic violence.

Normally, we see one of those a month; at worst, one a week. Not three in one night.

But it hasn't been that way every night. Yet.

Man, that's two in a row for Borepatch!  How lucky can you get?  But wait - there's more!  Posted here September 3, 2020:

A groundbreaking new study commissioned by Revolver News concludes that COVID-19 lockdowns are ten times more deadly than the actual COVID-19 virus in terms of years of life lost by American citizens.

Up until this point there had been no simple, rigorous analysis that accurately and definitively conveys the true costs of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Accordingly, Revolver News set out to commission a study to do precisely that: to finally quantify the net damage of the lockdowns in terms of a metric known as “life-years.” Simply put, we have drawn upon existing economic studies on the health effects of unemployment to calculate an estimate of how many years of life will have been lost due to the lockdowns in the United States, and have weighed this against an estimate of how many years of life will have been saved by the lockdowns. The results are nothing short of staggering, and suggest that the lockdowns will end up costing Americans over 10 times as many years of life as they will save from the virus itself.

Bold in original.  That's some medical response, right there.

In all honesty, this really isn't controversial at all.  We've studied the health effects of unemployment for decades and decades.  We know what happened to employment, and how many people lost their jobs.  Applying known health impacts to those people allows us to quantify mortality due to the lockdown.  It's just math.

What is interesting here is the analysis of age at death.  For virtually all (90%) of Covid deaths, the patient was very old.  This means that there were few "life years" left for that patient.  However, for unemployment caused mortality the age at death was much younger, and so there were many more years for each of these people.

The process of higher mathematics gives the result that is in boldface in the quote.

It's hard to see a more counter productive government response.

Man, I must be the luckiest man on the face of the earth, stringing these analyses and predictions together like that.  I'd better buy a Powerball ticket for tonight!  [/snark]

So what is it that makes me so much smarter than a Brown University Professor?  I wrote about this in the April post linked above, specifically:

Once a government executes a particular power, they will want to do it again.  Most of the country in under house arrest; where does that lead in the future?  To SiG's point that people will answer this by saying that people will die and isn't it heartless to let them die over a hypothetical, let me reply by asking how many people?  Because we don't know the number because we're not measuring the factors that would tell us the answer: how many are very sick and would die within the next 6-12 months?  Sure their lives are valuable but do we wreck 50 million lives to give them and extra 6 months?  That sounds harsh, but that's exactly the tradeoff that we are making.

It's the Unseen.  And the costs are Unseen, too, because no Governor in the land wants to make it explicit to the voters just what are all the many miseries that have been unleashed on them by said Governor.  That it is Unseen is not by accident.

And so our policy makers see the situation poorly, looking through a glass darkly at only a portion of the situation.  Of course the resulting public policy is hideous.  Interestingly, the misery is concentrated on Trump voters (the hourly wage class), not the governing class (who work from home via videoconference).  You can't get to your factory job that way, but the salaried class are doing fine.  No doubt this is all a coincidence.

Even a private University like Brown cannot exist without the generous support of the Government.  Professor Oster has a financial incentive to follow the government with respect to this policy, and when a person's dinner depends upon their support for a particular policy they tend not to see any evidence that runs counter to that policy.

Oh, and no doubt Professor Oster did just fine during the lockdowns while working class people in Providence lost their businesses.  No doubt this was all a coincidence, too.

Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve.

Student test scores have shown historic declines, more so in math than in reading, and more so for students who were disadvantaged at the start. We need to collect data, experiment, and invest. Is high-dosage tutoring more or less cost-effective than extended school years? Why have some states recovered faster than others? We should focus on questions like these, because answering them is how we will help our children recover.

Many people have neglected their health care over the past several years. Notably, routine vaccination rates for children (for measles, pertussis, etc.) are way down. Rather than debating the role that messaging about COVID vaccines had in this decline, we need to put all our energy into bringing these rates back up. Pediatricians and public-health officials will need to work together on community outreach, and politicians will need to consider school mandates.

The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.

Point of order, Professor Oster: it wasn't the pandemic that caused all this damage.  Rather, it was the government imposed lockdowns (supported by "experts" such as yourself) that did.  Some of us called this very, very early: April 21, 2020 to be specific:

There is simply no rational, science-based justification to keep the lockdowns in place anymore.  We see this recognized by Governors (who are starting to end the lockdown) and by the population in general (who are starting to willfully violate the lockdown).  Everybody but the "experts" is starting to recognize this, and the "experts" may be refusing to recognize it so that they don't get blamed.

We knew this from the very beginning, but dim-bulb "Experts" like Professor Oster got this public policy wrong all the time.  They got it was catastrophically wrong. Yet somehow the "experts" keep wanting another chance to get things catastrophically wrong again.  And again.  And again.

Professor Oster wants us to give these same "experts" one more last chance.  There's a Country music song about that.

(Best country music cameo ever)

One More Last Chance (Songwriters: Vince Gill, Gary Nicholson)

She was standing at the front door
When I came home last night
A good book in her left hand
And a rollin' pin in the right
She said you've come home for the last time
With whiskey on your breath
If you don't listen to my preachin' boy
I'm goin' to have to beat you half to death

Give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through
I know I drive you crazy baby
It's the best that I can do
We're just some good ol' boys, a makin' noise
I ain't a runnin' 'round on you
Give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through

First she hid my glasses
'Cause she knows that I can't see
She said you ain't goin' nowhere boy
'Til you spend a little time with me
Then the boys called from the honky tonk
Said there's a party goin' on down here
Well she might've took my car keys
But she forgot about my old John Deere

So give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through
I know I drive you crazy baby
It's the best that I can do
We're just some good ol' boys, a makin' noise
I ain't a runnin' 'round on you
Give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through

Shamelessly stolen from Glen Filthie

Because it's awesome:

 

He has more, so get you on over there.  I love the guy who put a couple of plastic eyeballs on his suppressor.

Florida leads the way again

I ranted about the Covid lockdowns, back in October of 2020:

So what does it take to make sure a death is not reported as from COVID?

When the death is caused not by the virus, but by the government's reaction to the virus.  COVID didn’t kill Rita at age 95, despair and loneliness did:

Rita Thomas was a victim of COVID-19, but she never had the disease.

The vivacious and outgoing 95-year-old, who lived independently until last year and celebrated her most recent birthday in February with friends at a Pasco County diner, willed herself to die two weeks ago because she could no longer handle the pandemic-imposed isolation.

“She said to me: ‘Linda. I’ve had a good life. I am ready to die. I don’t want to live this way anymore. I stopped eating,’ ’’ her daughter Linda Gardner said, recalling the conversation she had with her mother in August. Weeks later, her mother was hospitalized for complications from malnutrition.

 Remember, Florida had some of the least restrictive lockdown policies in the nation.  But this steamed me at the time, and it seems that I wasn't the only one as the Florida Legislature has passed a law prohibiting this in the future:

A Florida bill that would require the right to in-person visits at hospitals was sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis from the state legislature on April 5. He signed the bill, the “No Patient Left Alone Act,” on April 6.

Called the “No Patient Left Alone Act,” the bill would require hospitals, nursing facilities, hospices, assisted living facilities and care centers for the developmentally disabled to allow in-person visits.

I'm not sure if the lockdown restrictions were imposed by Florida (probably not), by the CDC (likely), or by someone else.  But it's good to see the Florida Powers That Be recognize just what a Charlie Foxtrot this all was. Better late than never, I guess.

The Queen Of The World and I have not regretted our move here for a microsecond.

A plague of politicians

It's a deadly plague and the media is using the Ukraine crisis to sweep it under the carpet.  From the UK.Gov:

The latest data published by the UK Health Security Agency confirms deaths are rising dramatically among the triple vaccinated population whilst declining steadily among the not-vaccinated population in England.

With the most recent figures showing the fully vaccinated accounted for 9 in every 10 Covid-19 deaths over the past month; and the triple vaccinated accounted for 4 in every 5 of them.

This is a very interesting and information-rich post, and you should take the time to read it all - including the tables of data from the UK.Gov.  This is pretty damning:

Neither The Queen Of The World nor I have been vaccinated as I have been skeptical for some time as to whether the vaccines are effective (they are pretty clearly not, as the repeated moving the goalposts demonstrates).  I've also wondered whether they are safe - and quite frankly this has been the key determinant for us.  I mean, if they're safe then why did Congress prohibit lawsuits against the pharmaceutical companies for adverse effects?  The graph above suggests pretty strongly that the vax is neither safe nor effective.

Don't listen to what the politicians say.  Watch what they do.

Now I'm pretty nasty and suspicious but Peter lays out the problem with blood clots after the vax.  It's a big problem, one that isn't being reported.  Just like the problem of professional soccer players dropping dead.  Or High School students dropping dead or needing heart transplants.

So what do you do when they stop reporting Covid deaths?

The Fed.Gov is going to stop asking hospitals to report deaths from Covid.  Since all that will be reported is case counts (and possibly hospitalizations, although that is far from clear), what do you do over the next few months?

Retired ER doctor Tim Wolter has an outstanding summary of the current - and likely last - set of actual data and what it means.  I recommend that you read the entire information-dense post and bookmark it.

In particular, the data he shows from Florida are extremely interesting: 7 day moving average of cases in January: 60,000.  7 day moving average of deaths in January: 9.  That's a case fatality rate of 0.015%.

And this is particularly telling:

Digging deeper into [Minnesota] stats you find that the average "case" is 36 years old, the average ICU hospitalized patient is 63 and the average age of those dying from Covid is 80. That stat caught my eye. To have an average age of 80 there must be some real oldsters in the sample set. Indeed, deaths were recorded in patients ranging from age 1 to age 109.

Remember, this data will no longer be reported so it will no longer be possible to use actual death data to show that Covid is a disease that is dangerous almost exclusively to the very old and very sick.  Remember to get your 2 year old quadruple vaxed and always masked up - never mind that she's not yet talking because she's developmentally stunted.  Got to protect those sick Boomers!

It's getting very hard indeed to avoid straying into the fever swamps when you look at the crude propaganda coming from our health care institutions.  Qui bono, indeed?

Note: it's been a while since I've tagged a post with my tag "evil".  But here's an excerpt from that last post which seems more and more to apply to the CDC and other "elite" institutions ostensibly tasked with keeping the population safe:

The ancient Romans were said to make a land into a desert, and then call it peace.  I mean, there were no more folks opposing their rule after they had killed most of the folks, amirite?

The Fed.Gov will make a desert and then call it "health".  This is the end game.  Don't let a crisis go to waste.

* It's not The Virus From Hell.  You want to see a disease from Hell?  Here you go.

Yeah, this is a bit ranty.

Interesting stories that the (US) Press is ignoring

Both of these are about the virus, and neither is being reported here on these shores.

Item the first: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is done - stick a fork in him:

Nigel Farage has slammed Boris Johnson over the Prime Minister's attempts to defend a series of parties in Downing Street while the rest of the UK was under Coronavirus lockdown. The former Brexit Party leader has suggested Mr Johnson would have been best owning up to the parties.

...

"When you are clearly lying to the nation that I'm afraid is what's done for him," he added.

"I can't tell you whether he's going to last a week, a month or four months.

"But I can tell you, Boris is toast."

Farage is the man most responsible for BREXIT, and is former head of the BREXIT political party in the UK.  Rumors have it that Johnson may get dumped by the UK Tory Party as early as Friday, but we will have to see.  Whether that happens or not, this story represents the rage of the common voter against an arrogant, out of touch elite that is smothering them with COVID restrictions that they exempt themselves from.

[UPDATE 26 January 2022 15:44]  Canuck Glen Filthie says the truck convoy is 70 km long.

Item the Second: Canadian truckers aim to shut down Parliament on Friday:

The number of truckers involved is huge. As in “that’s gonna leave a mark” huge. Now just figure that to the extent a Truck and Trucker are in this event, they are not delivering the goods on time to somewhere else. This will be felt fairly fast. There is one guy in one video who says he’s not vaccinated, but is delivering “medical supplies”, and appreciates the irony of it ;-) So some of the trucks may just be “slow rolling” their delivery elsewhere along the route.

Just how much support are Canadian citizens giving them?  The truckers set up a Gofundme campaign to raise money for fuel (they're driving from the Pacific coast to Ottawa).  Right now the campaign has raised $5M (CAD).  That's a lot of gas.  And just what do those normal Canadian citizens feel about the Canadian.Gov?

“Everyone is Essential”. “It’s time for the Lions to start eating those Hyenas”.

Friday is shaping up to be an interesting day, despite the complete lack of coverage here in the US.  The "elites" are trapped in a Twitter bubble, spending their time only talking to themselves - while the 80% of the country that counts is moving on without them.  Smartest kids in the class, right there.

Monoclonal antibodies - a report from the field

So our doctor said to go get them.  Actually, she was kind of lukewarm on the subject - our Internet digging said that they may or may not handle the new variant, but the test doesn't tell you what you have and the doc said that it wouldn't do any harm.  So off we went.

Remember last fall when President Biden cut off monoclonal antibodies to Florida?  This looks like one of the many shoot-from-the-hip and then backtrack policies from this Keystone Kops administration.  You can get them, although we had to drive a bit.  There's actually a pretty nice web page to find the location nearest to you.

And so off we went.  It was the better part of an hour drive which wasn't too bad.  This was a pop-up clinic in a community center.  There were a bunch of folks there as walk-ins; we were glad that we made reservations.

The procedure can be given two ways - an infusion (The Queen Of The World got this) or a set of four injections (I got these thinking it would be quicker - it was, but they keep you for an hour after the procedure "just in case" so it really wan't).  Then we drove back.

A couple hours later I started feeling worse - not a ton worse, but I had felt like I was on the mend before and then I didn't.  Even today it feels like I took a step backwards, although this is pretty impressionistic.  TQOTW doesn't seem to be much different.

So, did it do any good?  Beats me.  What I think I learned from this is that all the panic porn has an effect - I'm kind of glad that I took TQOTW because she wasn't doing great - but this is an emotional side of me that has been manipulated for two years.  The logical side of me thinks that maybe it didn't do anything.

Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag on penalty of law.  Oh, and the Biden Administration can suck it.  Thanks for nothing, guys, you vindictive pricks.

UPDATE 25 JANUARY 2022 13:10:  Aaaaand they're gone.  The FDA removed the Emergency Use Authorization for monoclonal antibodies in Florida.  Looks like it's the only State subject to this restriction.  I'm glad we got ours last week.  Man, the Democrats suck.

Let's go, Brandon!

Oh noes! Covid cases are going up!

Well, they are here in Florida.  More specifically, they've gone up by two - one for me, one for The Queen Of The World.  It feels like a really bad flu, or how you feel at the onset of bronchitis.  It isn't any fun at all.

Would not recommend.  This is how I prefer my 'rona - with lime.

Tom Lehrer - A Christmas Carol

This is perhaps the most cynical Christmas Carol ever written.  Perhaps.  I have a different one - a redneck one - for tomorrow as a comparison.

But if you have local businesses, please patronize them this (never ending Covid) season.  Amazon makes so much money that they're branching out to space tourism.  Your local guy will keep the money here on Mother Earth.

 

The state of Coronavirus, a physician's view

Retired ER doc Tacitus muses about what we have learned about the virus.  His take is clinically rational, and highly recommended:

Right about now we are at the two year mark for Covid-19. There are so many things we still don't know for sure, despite spending time, money and other societal resources in unimaginable amounts, but I think it is fair to say that it started in the last few months of 2019.

I should note up front that there are things that you are not permitted to say in various versions of the Public Square. I'll try not to stumble close to any of them, but to be honest in some cases information has gone from Fake! to Misinformation, to Plausible, to Probable....and back again. I'm going to assume anyone who has bothered to read this far is not the mindless sheep that the Guardians of the Internet assume us to be, and is capable of weighing competing viewpoints and actually pondering them.

RTWT. 

The difficulty in calculating the benefit/risk of the Vax

We are bombarded with government-sponsored propaganda telling us to get (and possibly threatening us if we don't get) the COVID Vaccine.  I'm a firm believer that people who want to take it should, and people who don't want to shouldn't.  But as someone trained in the Scientific Method back at State U (Electrical Engineering, thanks for asking), it would be nice to have some better data to help make this decision.  What are the (quantifiable) risks, and what are the (quantifiable) benefits?

First, a discussion on quantifiability.  Isegoria (you do read him every day, don't you?) posts something that I'd never heard about but sure wish I had:

NNT is an abbreviation for “number needed to treat.” In other words: How many patients must be treated with the drug in order for a single patient to get the desired benefit?

When you read about drugs in the news — or even in most medical journals — you will almost never be explicitly given the NNT (which I will explain in more detail below). Instead, you’ll get relative risk reduction, a metric that a Michigan State med school dean once told me “is just another way of lying.”

[…]

Here’s a fictional example:

You read that a new drug reduces your chance of dying from Ryantastic syndrome by 40 percent. Here’s what that means in practice: if 10 in 100,000 people normally die from Ryantastic syndrome, and everyone takes the new drug, only 6 in 100,000 people will die from Ryantastic syndrome. Now let’s think about it from an NNT perspective.

For 100,000 patients who took the new drug, four deaths by Ryantastic syndrome were avoided, or one per 25,000 patients who took the drug. So the NNT is 25,000; that is, 25,000 patients must take the drug in order for one death-by-Ryantastic to be avoided. Ideally, you also want to know the NNH, or “number needed to harm.”

Let’s say that 1 in 1,000 patients who take the new drug suffer a particular grievous side effect. In that case, the NNH is 1,000, while the NNT is 25,000. Suddenly, the decision seems a lot more complicated than if you’re just told the drug will lower your chance of dying from Ryantastic syndrome by 40 percent.

So one patient in 25,000 will see a benefit and one in 1000 will see a harm.  Thank you very much, but I'll take a hard pass on this hypothetical scenario.

So what are the NNT and NNH for the COVID Vaccine?  The data are elusive here.  As far as I can tell the NNT data are entirely opaque - there doesn't seem to be any way at all to calculate this from published sources (please post links to sources you know in the comments).  But Peter shows that there are very troubling data on NNH.  Very troubling:

A recent analysis by researchers at Queen Mary University in London found that even in senior citizens, about 85% of deaths reported to VAERS were definitively, likely or possibly caused by the vaccine. Moreover, due to significant under-reporting, the true number of vaccine-related deaths may already be significantly higher, possibly in the range of 10,000 to 50,000 deaths in the US alone.

Indeed, despite very few covid deaths, there continues to be unexplained excess all-cause mortality in all US age groups below the age of 75, with all-cause mortality having reached record levels in age groups below 45 since the beginning of the vaccination campaign.

. . .

Below a certain age, covid-related mortality is so low that covid vaccines are bound to kill or severely injure more healthy people than they save. In the US, this age threshold may be close to 40 years, while in some Western European countries, it may be as high as 60 years (for healthy people).

It has been argued that vaccination against covid may at least prevent “long covid” or multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS) in children and young adults; however, new reports from Israel and the US indicate that, to the contrary, covid vaccines may themselves cause MIS as well as “long covid”-like conditions, often lasting for months or possibly even longer

It is often said that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", but all of these sure point in the same direction, towards a higher NNH - and in particular, a higher NNH for age groups below 75.  The younger the age group, the seemingly higher the NNH.

I find the NNH concept to be extremely useful in making a benefit/riskdecision, even in the absence of solid NNT data because you are holding the (unknown) numerator (the NNT) constant while you increase the denominator (the NNH).  What you know with some certainty - at least if you have some confidence in the Harm data from the VAERS database is that the benefit/risk number is declining as you do this.  Likely it declines by a LOT, particularly for younger age groups.

Now, a note about NNT for Covid.  We have seen many studies comparing case rate between regions that had severe government-imposed lockdowns and regions that had none.  We saw this comparison between different US States as well as different member countries in the EU.  There was no correlation at all between lockdown harshness and case rate.  None.

I would love to see a similar comparison between vaccination rate and death rate.  My guess is that there is little or no correlation, and may in fact be negative.  That's a guess based on the elevated excess death rate but some or all of this could be due to non-Covid impacts from the lockdown: elevated suicide or overdose rates from people forced into house arrest.

I highly encourage you to read both Isegoria's and Peter's posts.  As I have been pointing out (for a dozen years) on Climate Change, the data will set you free but it can be some work to unpack the folded, spindled, and mutilated data sets.  The analogy with Covid is uncomfortably close: for both Global Warming and Covid the governments seem to be highly motivated to use these "emergencies" to increase their control over the economy.  In both cases the data are at least partially suppressed, and are certainly obfuscated.  In both cases the government's allies in Big Tech are actively censoring discussions deviating from the government's position.

But VAERS seems to be both hard to censor (and any censorship would be highly suspicious indeed) and extremely helpful towards calculating NNH.

UPDATE 27 OCTOBER 2021 11:24: More interesting data: Covid hospitalizations for children down 56% since schools opened.  This suggests pretty strongly that the vax NNT for children is a lot lower than Dr. Fauchi and the CDC are telling us.

The End Game of Covid is socialized health care

So what's driving all the insanity behind the Virus From Hell*?

I mean, "Two Weeks to Flatten The Curve and Save Our Health Care System" has turned into doctors and nurses being fired because they haven't been vaccinated.  This, when Covid deaths are down something like 75% from a year ago when NO health care workers were vaccinated (because there was no vaccine).

So what gives?  How can The Powers That Be be so, well, incompetent?

They're not.  None of this is by accident.  Let me expand on a comment I left over at OldNFO's place:

Doctors and nurses are being fired, leading to an unknown (more accurately: unreported) staffing shortage.  The New York National Guard is being called out to fill in.  Interestingly, you have two chances if a NatGuard doc kills your loved one: slim, and none.  You can't sue the NatGuard.  You might have a better lawsuit against a hospital who just fired 30% of their workers right before your Loved One died of neglect.  Call Morgan and Morgan**, who no doubt will be happy to take your case.

So you sue the hospital, and the hospital is run into bankruptcy.  After all, you are only one of many grieving families who lost loved ones to this reckless management decision, amirite?

So riddle me this, Healthcare Man: what happens when 40% of the hospitals in this Republic shut down?  I mean, it will be a crisis, amirite?  Someone with have to do something, amirite?  And who is ready to do something in a crisis?

Yup.  The Fed.Gov.

They'll take over all these "failed Hospitals", and the Fed.Gov will finally have the socialized healthcare that they've always wanted.  And all it will take is thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousand?  millions?) of dead Americans.

The ancient Romans were said to make a land into a desert, and then call it peace.  I mean, there were no more folks opposing their rule after they had killed most of the folks, amirite?

The Fed.Gov will make a desert and then call it "health".  This is the end game.  Don't let a crisis go to waste.

* It's not The Virus From Hell.  You want to see a disease from Hell?  Here you go.

** They are an ambulance chasing Law Firm who carpet bomb the Florida airwaves with their commercials.

Yeah, this about sums it up

 

(via)

Good on ya, Cobber

Interesting things are afoot down under.  The Oz.Gov is revealing itself to be even more incompetent than the US Fed.Gov.  Adam Piggott writes of the doings over the weekend:

Melbourne now holds the dubious distinction of being the most locked down city in the world. A condition that rests entirely with its rabid Marxist leader, known locally as Dictator Dan or Chairman Dan. But finally one group has stood up to the takeover. Construction industry workers, colloquially known as tradies in Australia, have today finally shown the backbone that has been missing down under for so long.

At 1159pm this Wednesday evening, all construction workers in Victoria need to be jabbed or they will be banned from traveling for their work. The largest of the construction unions in Victoria is the CFMEU. It is also the most powerful and militant union in the entire country. Today on the streets of Melbourne outside its large office, its members gathered to demand that the union boss, John Setka, stand up to the Victorian government on their behalf.

The Union management are, as you'd expect, as corrupt and incompetent as Dictator Dan, and blew them off.  When that happened, the tradies stormed their union HQ and trashed the place.  Well done, Mates!

Well, that was the cue for the Gov to dial the "Incompetent" meter up to 11.  They shut down all building construction for 14 days, "for public health" of course.  Now riddle me this, Big Gov Man: you have tens of thousands of really pissed off construction workers that you've just basically told to go sit quietly in the corner for a couple weeks.  What happens next?

What happens next is, well, what anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have seen coming from a mile away.  So yeah, the Oz.Gov was taken completely by surprise:

On Tuesday in Melbourne, authorities were forced to confront this blazing public anger as protesters executed an "extremely dangerous maneuver" by marching onto a busy freeway and blocking traffic in a tactic that some Americans might remember from last summer's BLM protests inspired by the killing of George Floyd.

Thousands converged on the city for a second consecutive day on Tuesday, with shocking footage capturing dozens moving onto the West Gate Freeway into the path of cars. Traffic on the freeway, which is the busiest stretch of highway in Australia, was forced to a standstill in both directions as police tried to disperse the crowd.

Footage circulating on social media showed protesters tossing glass bottles and flares toward police, while some approached officers with their hands up, chanting "you serve us".

Other chants that were reported included "Every day!"  Enjoy your lockdown, Dan.

One last thing: these are big, strong construction workers, not 70 year old grandmothers or 12 year old kids.  I expect that any of the Melbourne PoPo that try the same thing on them can expect a righteous beat down.

I look forward to an interesting fortnight down under.

But everything will be awesome when the Government runs your health care

 Biden orders HHS to cut of shipments of covid medicine to southern states.  But it's all good with socialized medicine, amirite?

What are your chances of dying from Covid?

Well, more specifically, how do you calculate your risk of dying from Covid?  Aesop has an outstanding overview of the latest actual medical info that you will need.  He approaches this from a "to vax or not to vax, that is the question" perspective but this is a fine breakdown of the cost/benefit calculation process.

The only thing that I would like to see is case fatality rates broken down by age and by co-morbidity presence, but The Powers That Be are not making it at all easy to get data on any of this.  Quite frankly, it looks like TPTB are actively trying to prevent citizens from making rational cost/benefit decisions based on their own current state of health, which makes you wonder what their motivations are.

Afraid of the 'Rona? Take up smoking

Seriously.  Quite frankly, I didn't expect that. Maybe smoking is healthy after all ...

UPDATE 5 August 2021 14:49:  It seems that Bear Bussjaeger posted data confirming this last December (!!!).  It seems an interesting media blackout that word just isn't getting around.  But the data are the data, and this looks legit.