Just curious, anyone have a plan, or preps for global pandemic?

[Saul]

Hi ALL!

I've been in the Pfizer stage 3 clinical trial starting in mid-August, when I received my first shot (of vaccine or placebo), and blood was drawn.  On Sept. 1, I received my second shot, and (I think) more blood drawn  One month later, on Oct 1, my third visit, blood was drawn.  My next meeting time ("the six months visit") is scheduled for Feb 2, 2021.

Since the Pfizer vaccine has received approval for emergency use, in certain classes of patients, in the UK, US and Canada, Pfizer has sent an email today that all volunteers in the Pfizer study will, at their six months visit, be told whether they received vaccine or placebo.  At that time, all in the study who had received placebo will be given the option of transitioning to the active vaccine group.  Study participants who elect to do this, will receive their first dose of the vaccine at that time, being re-entered into the study as active vaccine recipients.

So:  On Feb 2, I'll learn if I received vaccine or not.  If not, of course I'll elect to transition into the active vaccine group.

(BTW, I'm nearly certain that I received vaccine -- the reason, I had the unexpected side effect of extreme fatigue -- something that's never happened to me before after a vaccination.  But, I'll find out for sure in a little over 6 weeks.)

😀

  --  Saul

[mccoy]

On 12/14/2020 at 9:59 PM, KHashmi317 said:

More about the COVID vaccines from two evolutionary biologists (highly recommended podcast or you can search YT for their Dark Horse channel):

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS80MjQwNzUucnNz

I listened to the podcast, it is sure unbiased but, taking aside all the interesting details, the conclusions are that we absolutely cannot know the long term effects. The mRNA vaccines might even be safer than traditional vaccines. Or not. The greater risk is potential autoimmune effects.

Edited December 16, 2020 by mccoy

[Saul]

No.  mRNA vaccines are likely to have less autoimmune problems than traditional vaccines.  That's because they aren't proteins -- just instructions, when taken up by a cell, to manufacture a protein.  

However, long term effects of any vaccine aren't known until they've been around for a long time.

Coronoviruses are rna viruses -- meaning that they have an RNA nucleus, rather than a DNA nucleus.  In general, RNA viruses mutate more easily than DNA viruses,  making it harder to create a long lasting effective vaccine against them -- e.g., flu vaccine usually isn't very long term (flu are rna viruses).

But, fortunately, Coronoviruses, although rna viruses, mutate slowly, unlike most other rna viruses (such as flu).  So it's actually likely that any vaccine that is effective against Covid-19 is likely to have longer lasting effectiveness,

My advice: skip the videos.  Read papers.

  --  Saul

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Saul
Correct an error

[KHashmi317]

High Dose Ivermectin And COVID-19: High Doses, Systemic Concentrations, And SARS-CoV-2 Viral Loads!

 

Quote

In this video we will discuss an article in pre-print that studied high dose ivermectin and COVID-19 viral loads. Ivermectin has a growing body of literature suggesting efficacy against COVID-19. That all started with a study done in cell culture that treated cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus with Ivermectin and found more than 99% inhibition of viral replication. With this being said though, the dosing that was used in that in vitro study was reported to be very high as compared to what is considered safe in humans. These authors took that information and tested whether high dose Ivermectin (.6mg/kg/day) decreased viral loads in COVID-19. What they found was quite interesting. Initially, they found that the viral loads did not differ significantly between the control group and Ivermectin group. They took this a step further though and tested systemic concentrations of Ivermectin in the study subjects. What they found was that in study subjects with higher concentrations of Ivermectin, there was a significant decrease in SARS-CoV-2 viral loads! Check out the video for all the details.

 

[corybroo]

No wonder there is so much confusion about covid-19, Politifact has announced its Lie of the Year:  Coronavirus downplay and denial

It does seem to have been an international effort.  How Russia, China, and other governments use coronavirus disinformation to reshape geopolitics

[Ron Put]

22 hours ago, corybroo said:

No wonder there is so much confusion about covid-19, Politifact has announced its Lie of the Year

There is a boatload of (unintended) irony in that sentence, of course.

 

22 hours ago, corybroo said:

It does seem to have been an international effort.

Yes, but not quite as described in that rather misinformed article.  The destruction of the economies of the liberal democracies will have a long-term geopolitical impact and it will make it harder for the West, and the US in particular, to counteract Chinese soft-power grabs and possibly military-backed sphere expansion.  But it was precisely fear-based politics from the Left which pushed the "Chinese model" that drove us into this. And then there is the social disruption fomented by the radical Left and promoted and supported by both China and Russia.

[Ron Put]

Swedish mortality in 2020 – It’s a lot better than you might think

"Every death is tragic and Sweden has certainly been hard hit by Covid-19. However, when we take a closer look at Swedish overall mortality in 2020 it is also clear that 2020 hardly is the kind of disaster that some pundits would like it into being.

Covid-19 is not “just a flu”. It is certainly more deathly for particularly the elderly. However, in terms of the impact on total Swedish mortality it has more or less been on a comparable level to the ‘bad flu-years’ 2012, 2017 and 2018."

This is exactly what epidemiologists like Sweden's Tegnell and Stanford's Michael Levitt have been maintaining.  Levitt was "canceled" and silenced by both the media and the gaggle of Twitterati, and was disinvited from giving a speech at the First International Biodesign Research Conference, because of pressure from the post-modernist zealots who have successfully adopted Covid-19 as a weapon to affect societal changes and in the process have destroyed careers and suppressed free speech in ways unimaginable only a decade ago.

[Todd Allen]

1 hour ago, Ron Put said:

"Every death is tragic and Sweden has certainly been hard hit by Covid-19. However, when we take a closer look at Swedish overall mortality in 2020 it is also clear that 2020 hardly is the kind of disaster that some pundits would like it into being.

Covid-19 is not “just a flu”. It is certainly more deathly for particularly the elderly. However, in terms of the impact on total Swedish mortality it has more or less been on a comparable level to the ‘bad flu-years’ 2012, 2017 and 2018."

This is exactly what epidemiologists like Sweden's Tegnell and Stanford's Michael Levitt have been maintaining.

I'm surprised to say I'm in agreement.  I always thought lockdowns were a poor tool for controlling the spread of a respiratory virus. But given the circumstances in the spring when we were caught flat footed due to delay, limited data and poor testing the justifications of potential worst case scenarios and the desirability of flattening the curve to avoid widespread overload of hospitals and the need to buy time to better understand the virus, the path taken struck me as an acceptable lesser evil compromise.  Those justifications are much weaker now and I'm left scratching my head at ongoing problems of data quality such as pushing out a vaccine without having good tests for things like degree of immunity, who is infectious and who has actually died from the virus.  And I find censorship of critical thoughts on major media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter inexcusable.  The ACLU defended the right of Nazis to march in Skokie when free speech rights were believed essential for all.  It appears the belief in free speech is yet another victim of covid-19.

[TomBAvoider]

All that be as it may. But. At least here in LA County, the ICU care is at a breaking point. It's not so much that no beds are available, because after all you can always set up more cots. The issue is that there are not enough healthcare professionals (doctors and nurses) to take care of more patients. It seems the system is operating at its absolute limits.

The concern is not simply about more COVID cases coming to ICU in the coming days/weeks. The concern is that with capacity this stretched, the ICUs cannot accommodate *other* patients, such as victims of heart attacks, strokes, accidents and other emergency situations. When you have ambulances that are waiting 4-8 hours to move patients into hospitals, you are going to impact ALL emergency healthcare. 

So you may not get super high COVID mortality from all those ICUs, but the resources being overwhelmend by COVID cases will raise the overall mortality from other causes when patients can't access emergency care.

At that point you are pushing up overall mortality, even if it's not directly connected to COVID simply because healthcare facilities are overwhelmed. 

Now X-mas and the holidays are coming around with high odds of family gatherings - similar to what happened with Thanksgiving - and that might result in another massive spike within the next couple of weeks after that, and with ICU's at capacity, it will not be a pretty picture.

From what I've been reading, there is a lot of COVID fatigue which is what's supposedly responsible for the terrible spike in CA. Allegedly Californians have been ignoring social distancing mandates and mask wearing and generally behaving unsafely. I don't know how true that is, but at this point the claim is that 1 in every 80 LA County residents is infected. From my anecdotal observations, there was a ton of concern and altered behavior at the beginning of the pandemic - March, April, May - but then people got tired, and today I see *a lot* of folks walking around with NO masks, exercising with NO masks, not social distancing and generally being fairly blase about the threat. People are tired of the restrictions.

At this point I just don't know what the economic impact is going to look like. There are just tons of people and small businesses barely hanging on. It looks like whatever stimulus is coming out of Washington is going to be very meager and states are broke. And you can't just mandate eviction moratoriums into infinity. A lot of renters are living in properties owned by small landlords (at least here in CA). The small landlords have mortages to pay - there's no moratorium on mortgages and no moratorium on taxes(!), so at some point they won't be able to hang on. You can't ask them to shoulder the burden indefinitely - there are some proposals for subsidies, but you can be sure it'll be too little too late. 

Then there's the bigger question of what you're going to do when the inevitable wave of massive evictions start. Sure, you evicted the non-paying tenant. But now the pool of good credit renters is much smaller and you'll have a lot of empty apartments after all those evictions - whom are you filling those empty apartments with? At least you'll be able to sell the property I guess, but if there's a wave of that, prices will crater. Meanwhile how are all those marginal renters surviving when they're often workers who have been displaced from collapsing businesses such as restaurants and stores and retail facilities - how are they making money and getting jobs so they can afford to rent again? 

A lot of small businesses won't be able to survive the next few months. That'll be a knock on effect on the greater economy. How are we getting out of this? It looks grim.

[mccoy]

And, I would add, all these consequences stem from a virus which is not so extremely vicious or deadly after all. This pandemic may be construed as a wake-up call. What's going to happen if another virus comes around with a tenfold mortality rate and about the same infectiousness? Preppers now have a realistic base upon which to work on the next emergency situation.

Edited December 20, 2020 by mccoy

[corybroo]

BBC has several articles about the new variant in Britain.  New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

From the article

Why is this variant causing concern?

 

• It is rapidly replacing together other versions of the virus
• It has mutations that affect part of the virus likely to be important
• Some of those mutations have already been shown in the lab to increase the ability of the virus to infect cells

[N.B.]  It has not yet been conclusively shown to be spread more easily.    CB

The virus that was first detected in Wuhan, China, is not the same one you will find in most corners of the world.

The D614G mutation emerged in Europe in February and became the globally dominant form of the virus.

Another, called A222V, spread across Europe and was linked to people's summer holidays in Spain.

 

There have been changes to the spike protein - this is the key the virus uses to unlock the doorway to our body's cells.

One mutation called N501Y alters the most important part of the spike, known as the "receptor-binding domain".

This is where the spike makes first contact with the surface of our body's cells. Any changes that make it easier for the virus to get inside are likely to give it an edge.

 

The other mutation - a H69/V70 deletion, in which a small part of the spike is removed - has emerged several times before, including famously in infected mink.

Work by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge has suggested this mutation increases infectivity two-fold in lab experiments.

Studies by the same group suggest the deletion makes antibodies from the blood of survivors less effective at attacking the virus.

 

All three leading vaccines develop an immune response against the existing spike, which is why the question [will the vaccines work?] comes up.

Vaccines train the immune system to attack several different parts of the virus, so even though part of the spike has mutated, the vaccines should still work.

 

Question:  Does the replacement shown in the graph above imply both that it’s more infective and that there is cross strain immunity?  If there is not cross strain immunity, then I think the graph above would show the blue share being additive to the orange instead of being replaced by it.

[mccoy]

AFAIK, the credible virologists all agree that the English variant (and the previous ones) are not going to pose any problem whatsoever to the vaccine functionality. The spike protein has not changed substantially. It should change in such a manner to be very different from the one whose blueprint is the mRNA inoculated by the vaccine.

In other words, variants are not different strains and the spike protein will most probably remain recognizable by the specific antibodies. Substantial mutations are called strains, and these may pose recognizability problems, in terms of difference from the spike protein in the new strain and the spike protein built by ribosomes after the translational process has been triggered by the mRNA vaccine.

[Saul]

Yes.

It's to the virus' evolutionary advantage,

(1)  For it to be less deadly to people,

(2) To become more infectious.

And Covid-19 has been following this pattern.

As noted by the virologists, vaccines almost certainly will continue to work for these many minor variants.

  --  Saul

[KHashmi317]

Cheap and effective rapid-test COVID-19 home-pregnancy-style solution being politically ($$$) blocked by CDC/WHO?

https://youtu.be/L-RuvUkcyJI

[KHashmi317]

About potential dangers of mass vaccination in the "middle" of a pandemic:

https://youtu.be/L-RuvUkcyJI?t=619

[KHashmi317]

On 12/19/2020 at 8:03 PM, TomBAvoider said:

All that be as it may. But. At least here in LA County, the ICU care is at a breaking point. It's not so much that no beds are available, because after all you can always set up more cots. The issue is that there are not enough healthcare professionals (doctors and nurses) to take care of more patients. It seems the system is operating at its absolute limits.

About the overloaded ICUs ... well, that's what the mainstream media news keeps alleging in their reports. What is not shown is actual scenes from inside the supposedly overloaded ICUs. I have not seen any World-o-meter or Johns Hopkins type tools for stats such as these .... in ANY country.

About "enough healthcare professionals (doctors and nurses)" ... well, recall at the beginning of the pandemic, several hospital ships -- including the USS Mercy for the SoCal area -- were deployed. They were hardly used (see wiki article). And they are currently not being used, despite their capacity and skilled staffing and the best medical facilities.

[AlPater]

(1) is a pretty good summary of COVID asymptomatic infections.

Research early in the pandemic suggested
that the rate of asymptomatic infections
could be as high as 81%. But a meta-analysis
published last month1, which included 13
studies involving 21,708 people, calculated
the rate of asymptomatic presentation to
be 17%.
...
The review also found that asymptomatic
individuals were 42% less likely to transmit the
virus than symptomatic people. ...  They “are not
coughing or sneezing as much”.
... 
those without symptoms
had similar initial levels of viral particles in a
throat swab when compared with people with
symptoms. But asymptomatic people seem
to clear the virus faster and are infectious for
a shorter period.
...
people should continue to use measures to reduce viral spread, including social
distancing and wearing masks, regardless of
whether they have symptoms.

1. What the data say about asymptomatic COVID infections.
Nogrady B.
Nature. 2020 Nov;587(7835):534-535. doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-03141-3.
PMID: 33214725 No abstract available.
https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-020-03141-3/d41586-020-03141-3.pdf

 

Edited January 3, 2021 by AlPater

[Ron Put]

On 12/25/2020 at 8:36 PM, KHashmi317 said:

About the overloaded ICUs ... well, that's what the mainstream media news keeps alleging in their reports.

Yep, it's a narrative alright. ER get overwhelmed virtually every year in places like the Bronx, partially because a large portion of the public there uses them as their family physician. I am in a large metropolitan area and rather familiar with one of the busiest ERs here, and it's no different than last January or 2018.

But none of the past years received the coverage blitz we've been subjected to since last March when Covid was weaponized by the Left for political gain.

 

On 1/3/2021 at 8:29 AM, AlPater said:

1) is a pretty good summary of COVID asymptomatic infections.

Yeah, well. There is a lot of really bad science being trotted out in connection with this pandemic. It is highly unusual for a coronavirus to have such a high asymptomatic infection rate, so I'd take this with a large grain of salt. Reputably scientists can't even agree on the prevalence of asymptomatic influenza infections, yet nobody is forcing masks upon us or locking us down during the winter, even though on average 650,000 people die from the flu worldwide every year, and some years double that.

In fact, until politically motivated pressure was applied, none of the major world or US health bodies recommended masks for any healthy population, even in outbreaks of significantly more contagious viruses, such the measles (R0 >8). And definitely not outdoors.

Here is a much, much larger study than the above from Wuhan, take it for what it is. I believe that the extensive qualifications have been added since I first saw it elsewhere, likely because of woke complaints and subsequent editorial pressure:

Covid-19: Asymptomatic cases may not be infectious, Wuhan study indicates

The researchers conducted a screening programme using PCR testing for viral RNA among the 10 million participants who were aged between 10 and 89. Trained staff interviewed participants on their history of covid-19. Asymptomatic positive cases were those who had a positive result on screening with neither a history of covid-19 diagnosis nor any clinical symptoms at the time of the nucleic acid testing. The researchers found no “viable virus” in cultures from asymptomatic samples.

The asymptomatic positive rate was lowest in participants aged under 17 and highest in those over 60. Further swab testing of 1174 close contacts of the 300 asymptomatic positive cases were all negative. The study population included 34 424 people with a history of covid-19, 107 of whom (0.310%) had been re-infected.

 

[AlPater]

On 2/24/2020 at 8:08 PM, Ron Put said:

On 2/24/2020 at 8:08 PM, Ron Put said:
Just to keep it in perspective:

CDC: 80,000 people died of flu last winter in U.S., highest death toll in 40 years

That's for 2017, which was a bad flu season.

>>>>>>>>>>>

And 3 hours ago he said: "on average 650,000 people die from the flu worldwide every year".

 

Al adds:

There are currently 1,933,522 (3%) Deaths from COVID-19, despite widespread extreme meassures to curtail infections. 

I believe that this year's flu deaths were almost irradicated by the extreme measures to curtail COVID-19.

Edited January 10, 2021 by AlPater

[mccoy]

9 hours ago, AlPater said:

I believe that this year's flu deaths were almost irradicated by the extreme measures to curtail COVID-19.

Apparently so, even by the anecdotal recounts of pharmacists who are able to follow the trends based on their clients demands. If there has been a competition, among flu, common cold and other seasonal viruses the SARSCOV2 apparently won it big time.

Edited January 10, 2021 by mccoy

[corybroo]

Nature article on asymptomatic spread

What the data say about asymptomatic COVID infections

Now, evidence suggests that about one in five infected people will experience no symptoms, and they will transmit the virus to significantly fewer people than someone with symptoms. But researchers are divided about whether asymptomatic infections are acting as a ‘silent driver’ of the pandemic.

The issue with putting a reliable figure on the rate of asymptomatic COVID-19 is distinguishing between people who are asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic

Although there is a growing understanding of asymptomatic infections, researchers say that people should continue to use measures to reduce viral spread, including social distancing and wearing masks, regardless of whether they have symptoms.

The issue with putting a reliable figure on the rate of asymptomatic COVID-19 is distinguishing between people who are asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic

Research early in the pandemic suggested that the rate of asymptomatic infections could be as high as 81%. But a meta-analysis published last month¹, which included 13 studies involving 21,708 people, calculated the rate of asymptomatic presentation to be 17%. 

Evidence suggests that most people develop symptoms in 7–13 days

Byambasuren’s review also found that asymptomatic individuals were 42% less likely to transmit the virus than symptomatic people.

 researchers modelled viral spread among people living together. In a manuscript posted on medRxiv this month, they report that the risk of an asymptomatic person passing the virus to others in their home is about one-quarter of the risk of transmission from a symptomatic person.

Although there is a lower risk of transmission from asymptomatic people, they might still present a significant public-health risk because they are more likely to be out in the community than isolated at home … a sizeable portion of transmission events are from asymptomatic transmissions

But other researchers disagree about the extent to which asymptomatic infections are contributing to community transmission. 

 Some studies showed that those without symptoms had similar initial viral loads — the number of viral particles present in a throat swab — when compared with people with symptoms. But asymptomatic people seem to clear the virus faster and are infectious for a shorter period.

there is evidence that people with severe COVID-19 have a more substantial and long-lasting neutralizing antibody response

 asymptomatic people should continue to use measures that reduce viral spread, such as social distancing, hand hygiene and wearing a mask.

[Sibiriak]

An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19

 

Quote

A Framework for Considering the Evidence

The standard RCT paradigm is well suited to medical interventions in which a treatment has a measurable effect at the individual level and, furthermore, interventions and their outcomes are independent across persons comprising a target population.

By contrast, the effect of masks on a pandemic is a population-level outcome where individual-level interventions have an aggregate effect on their community as a system. Consider, for instance, the impact of source control: Its effect occurs to other individuals in the population, not the individual who implements the intervention by wearing a mask. This also underlies a common source of confusion: Most RCT studies in the field examine masks as personal protective equipment (PPE) because efficacy can be measured in individuals to whom treatment is applied, that is, “did the mask protect the person who wore it?” Even then, ethical issues prevent the availability of an unmasked control arm (25).

The lack of direct causal identifiability requires a more integrative systems view of efficacy. We need to consider first principles—transmission properties of the disease, controlled biophysical characterizations—alongside observational data, partially informative RCTs (primarily with respect to PPE), natural experiments (26), and policy implementation considerations—a discursive synthesis of interdisciplinary lines of evidence which are disparate by necessity (9, 27).

The goal of such an analysis is to assess the potential benefits and risks, in order to inform policy and behavior. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization states that “when human activities may lead to morally unacceptable harm that is scientifically plausible but uncertain, actions shall be taken to avoid or diminish that harm” (28). This is known as the “precautionary principle.” It was implemented in an international treaty in the 1987 Montreal Protocol. The loss of life and economic destruction that has been seen already from COVID-19 are “morally unacceptable harms.”

In order to identify whether public mask wearing is an appropriate policy, we need to consider the following questions, and assess, based on their answers, whether mask wearing is likely to diminish harm based on the precautionary principle:

1) What could the overall population-level impact of public mask wearing be (population impact)?

2) Based on our understanding of virus transmission, what would be required for a mask to be effective (transmission characteristics)?

3) Do face masks decrease the number of people infected by an infectious mask wearer (source control)?

4) Do face masks impact the probability of the wearer becoming infected themselves (PPE)?

5) Can masks lead to unintended benefits or harm, for example, risk compensation behavior (sociological considerations)? 6) How can medical supply chains be maintained (implementation consideration)?

We will evaluate each consideration in turn.

 

Quote

 

Conclusion

Our review of the literature offers evidence in favor of widespread mask use as source control to reduce community transmission: Nonmedical masks use materials that obstruct particles of the necessary size; people are most infectious in the initial period postinfection, where it is common to have few or no symptoms (45, 46, 141); nonmedical masks have been effective in reducing transmission of respiratory viruses; and places and time periods where mask usage is required or widespread have shown substantially lower community transmission.

The available evidence suggests that near-universal adoption of nonmedical masks when out in public, in combination with complementary public health measures, could successfully reduce   Re to below 1, thereby reducing community spread if such measures are sustained. Economic analysis suggests that mask wearing mandates could add 1 trillion dollars to the US GDP (32, 34).e

Models suggest that public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high (39). We recommend that mask use requirements are implemented by governments, or, when governments do not, by organizations that provide public-facing services. Such mandates must be accompanied by measures to ensure access to masks, possibly including distribution and rationing mechanisms so that they do not become discriminatory. Given the value of the source control principle, especially for presymptomatic people, it is not sufficient for only employees to wear masks; customers must wear masks as well.

It is also important for health authorities to provide clear guidelines for the production, use, and sanitization or reuse of face masks, and consider their distribution as shortages allow. Clear and implementable guidelines can help increase compliance, and bring communities closer to the goal of reducing and ultimately stopping the spread of COVID-19.

When used in conjunction with widespread testing, contact tracing, quarantining of anyone that may be infected, hand washing, and physical distancing, face masks are a valuable tool to reduce community transmission. All of these measures, through their effect on   Re, have the potential to reduce the number of infections. As governments exit lockdowns, keeping transmissions low enough to preserve health care capacity will be critical until a vaccine can be developed.Re

 

 

Edited January 14, 2021 by Sibiriak

[Ron Put]

On 1/9/2021 at 5:26 PM, AlPater said:

Al adds:

There are currently 1,933,522 (3%) Deaths from COVID-19, despite widespread extreme meassures to curtail infections. 

I believe that this year's flu deaths were almost irradicated by the extreme measures to curtail COVID-19.

Al, you seem to be missing the point.  First, the main argument is not about the severity of Covid-19, but about the creation by the Left, and most of the media, of public hysteria, and the unprecedented suppression of open scientific and public debate. The lockdowns, which are the most dramatic peace-time public policy decisions in living memory (in the liberal democracies), were imposed based on bad data and those who challenged them, including many reputable scientists, were silenced by the media. They were bullied and threatened, their competency and reputation assailed, their jobs and book deals canceled under tremendous political pressure. If one does not see a problem with this, then they do not understand (or are simply opposed to) the basic tenets of liberal democracy. The pandemic was politicized and weaponized by the Left, with dire consequences, both economic and social, for most democratic societies.

Second, while Covid-19 has been deadlier than the 2017-2018 flu season in many places, there is no evidence that lockdowns or mask orders have any effect, other than destroying economies, promoting fear, and causing a significantly increased number of deaths from causes ranging from heart attacks to suicide. Even a cursory examination shows that often locales that imposed the most draconian measures curtailing civil liberties and destroying businesses have the highest death toll.

Sweden's mortality rate for 2020 is on par with past years, at about 92,000, while Belarus has less than 900 deaths - while this is exactly what Tegnell in vein maintained that their models predicted, neither is mentioned by most of the media, who pounce only when something fits their narrative. All this is despite the change in how deaths are counted to include all those who died "with" Covid-19, which is considerably more permissive than how flu deaths have been estimated and counted in the past. Even if we take such numbers at face value, the death toll from Covid-19 is still proportionately significantly lower than the deadliest flu waves within the lifetime of many on this forum, such as 1957 and 1969 -- both were barely covered at the time and no one even thought of locking down whole countries. In fact, if you ask those who were alive at the time, most do not have a clue that such pandemics even occurred.

[Sibiriak]

😈

[Ron Put]

Yes, and those protesting the unprecedented lockdowns, mask rules, censorship, and civil liberties violations are painted as "ignorant" and "conspiracy kooks," while those who burned and looted our cities a few months ago and violently took over government buildings and police stations, are incessantly described as "peaceful" and their violent acts justified in the name of "justice," whatever that may mean. 

Those responsible for crushing our economies and using a pandemic to grab political power are being hailed as "true leaders" and "saviors," and given EMIs. But anyone who questioned the Left's narrative and tried to provide evidence challenging the largely proven-wrong assumptions of the figureheads portrayed by the Left as the sole guardians and purveyors of "science," was silenced, fired, or otherwise canceled. I understand that history is often cyclical, but I never thought that I would see such an assault of liberal values in the heart of the liberal democracies within my lifetime.

 

18 hours ago, Sibiriak said:

An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19

 

Yeah, well.... "An evidence" review? As opposed to what? 

The obvious message by this purely political title is that any objection and any studies that contradict it are not evidence-based.  I guess all the studies serving as the basis for the well-established recommendations against healthy people wearing masks, held until last summer by virtually every world health authority, including the CDC, AMA and WHO, were all based on superstition and right-wing, racist ideology. It wasn't until the Left identified masks as a wedge issue with which to attack their political opponents that they, the woke media, and the wave of woke Twitteraties they summoned, were able to force the hapless health organizations to see the light of "critical science."

A lot of bad "science" has come to dominate over the last few years, some driven by commercial interests. But recently it's mostly driven by left-wing political ideology. Critical Theory has infected and destroyed not only liberal arts departments and school and administration, but it's rapidly spreading to the sciences and is entrenching itself within large corporate entities, which often support research financially. 

The current suppression of scientific discourse is not dissimilar to the darkest times for science in Sibiriak's current land, when Lysenko was the anointed embodiment of "the scientists" and Stalin himself wrote part of his speech denouncing and mocking Mendel. The modern version of critical scientific theory is nothing new.

Despite the presumptuous headline above, the study itself is heavily criticized:

Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19

and:

Experts Are Calling For A Top Science Journal To Retract A Paper On Face Masks And COVID-19

and on a broader note (which also applies to other parts of the world, including most of the Scandinavian countries):

The land with no face masks: Holland's top scientists say there's no solid evidence coverings work and warn they could even damage the fight against Covid-19

and:

These 12 Graphs Show Mask Mandates Do Nothing To Stop COVID

Edited January 15, 2021 by Ron Put