Marty Makary

Leading Cardiologist Went From Booster To Critic Of COVID Vaccines

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager reads from a JUST THE NEWS article about a cardiologist who was “pro-mRNA vaccine,” until his father inexplicably died after getting one.

Here is some of the JUST THE NEWS article:

….a British cardiologist who once promoted COVID vaccination on TV will go before Parliament to argue the opposite.

Aseem Malhotra, who recently wrote an unusual first-person medical paper calling for a “pause and reappraisal of global vaccination policies for COVID-19,” has become increasingly vocal in his skepticism of the jabs since his healthy father’s inexplicable cardiac death six months after vaccination.

In a phone interview with Just the News, he called COVID vaccines “one of the worst pharmaceutical interventions in the history of medicine” whose harm is so thoroughly documented that “it shouldn’t even be worthy of debate” to pause vaccination campaigns.

The only explanation in his mind is “the increasing unchecked power of Big Pharma over the last two decades” and “willful blindness” of policymakers and regulators. 

That’s one reason he published in the Journal of Insulin Resistance — it doesn’t take money from corporate interests. “I want a good rebuttal” to the paper, but most criticism has consisted of “character assassinations,” Malhotra said. 

He’s testifying on COVID vaccine damage before the All-Party Parliamentary Group in the House of Commons Thursday. “The British government must announce an immediate halt to the UK’s Covid-19 vaccine programme and launch a public inquiry to fully assess the risks and benefits associated with new mRNA vaccine technology,” Malhotra wrote.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will undertake “recommendation votes” for the adult and child/adolescent immunization schedules and COVID vaccines, according to the Federal Register notice for the meetings Thursday and Friday. 

This is despite the fact that vaccines for younger children are still under emergency use authorization. The FDA itself warns healthcare professionals not to use Pfizer’s fully approved Comirnaty vaccine “interchangeably” with its EUA vaccine for children 5-11.

Malhotra, who previously campaigned to tax sugary drinks and against overprescription of statins, told Just the News he never faced censorship before COVID.

Facebook locked him out of his account for 24 hours after he shared Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s controversial assessment of post-vaccination cardiac deaths in young men, Malhotra told GB News. Twitter briefly censored Ladapo’s tweet thread as well.

Facebook extended the lockout another few days, Malhotra said, after finding a two-week-old video where he called for a pause on COVID vaccination until “all the raw data” on trials “has been released for independent analysis.” He accused Facebook of “trawling through” his account “looking for misinformation.”

It’s not Malhotra’s first tiff with social media, he told Just the News. Facebook censored him last year for sharing a Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics study, later retracted, that found dangerously high carbon-dioxide intake in masked schoolchildren. Facebook threatened to penalize users for sharing the paper even before its retraction.

LinkedIn permanently suspended him last year for sharing his appearance on GB News discussing a possible link between mRNA vaccination and heart attacks, Malhotra said.

[….]

This week, the journal Science said “several new studies suggest” these heart injuries can take “months to heal,” with unknown long-term consequences, and that doctors are divided on the risk-benefit calculus for boosting young people. FDA advisor Paul Offit is well-known for his skepticism of boosting young people and voting against so-called bivalent vaccines that include Omicron subvariants.

[….]

Pfizer’s human data showing “an increase in circulating antibodies seven days after the dose” say little about protection against severe disease or the duration of elevated antibodies, Nicole Saphier, assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, wrote for Fox News. 

“To put this plainly, there are no data on the bivalent booster shot in kids,” safety data for their age group or effect of the new boosters on previously infected or boosted children, she said.

“I’d love to see the data on the Omicron vaccine in children but the Biden admin will not release it,” Johns Hopkins medical professor and National Academy of Medicine member Marty Makary tweeted. “Why can’t it be made public?”

Dr. Makary on “The High Cost Of Ignoring Natural Immunity”

Published by Papa Giorgio

This was an excellent interview by Clay Travis and Buck Sexton of Marty Makary about his WALL STREET JOURNAL article

Here are some other articles worth noting:

  • Youngkin Appoints Fox News Contributor Marty Makary as Head Of Virginia Medical Advisory Team (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)
  • 146 Research Studies Affirm Naturally Acquired Immunity to Covid-19: Documented, Linked, and Quoted (BROWNNSTONE)
  • Natural Immunity Superior to Vaccine Immunity, CDC Study Finds (DAILY SCEPTIC)
  • Hospitals Should Hire, Not Fire, Nurses with Natural Immunity (BROWNSTONE)

Here is the WALL STREET JOURNAL article reproduced in full:

The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity to Covid: Vaccines were wasted on those who didn’t need them, and people who posed no risk lost jobs.

Public-health officials ruined many lives by insisting that workers with natural immunity to Covid-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated. But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear. By firing staff with natural immunity, employers got rid of those least likely to infect others. It’s time to reinstate those employees with an apology.

For most of last year, many of us called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release its data on reinfection rates, but the agency refused. Finally last week, the CDC released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination.

Yet the CDC spun the report to fit its narrative, bannering the conclusion “vaccination remains the safest strategy.” It based this conclusion on the finding that hybrid immunity—the combination of prior infection and vaccination—was associated with a slightly lower risk of testing positive for Covid. But those with hybrid immunity had a similar low rate of hospitalization (3 per 10,000) to those with natural immunity alone. In other words, vaccinating people who had already had Covid didn’t significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization.

Similarly, the National Institutes of Health repeatedly has dismissed natural immunity by arguing that its duration is unknown—then failing to conduct studies to answer the question. Because of the NIH’s inaction, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I conducted the study. We found that among 295 unvaccinated people who previously had Covid, antibodies were present in 99% of them up to nearly two years after infection. We also found that natural immunity developed from prior variants reduced the risk of infection with the Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the two-dose Moderna vaccine against infection (not severe disease) declines to 61% against Delta and 16% against Omicron at six months, according to a recent Kaiser Southern California study. In general, Pfizer’s Covid vaccines have been less effective than Moderna’s.

The CDC study and ours confirm what more than 100 other studies on natural immunity have found: The immune system works. The largest of these studies, from Israel, found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic illness.

None of this should surprise us. For years, studies have shown that infection with the other coronaviruses that cause severe illness, SARS and MERS, confers lasting immunity. In a study published in May 2020, Covid-recovered monkeys that were rechallenged with the virus didn’t get sick.

Public-health officials have a lot of explaining to do. They used the wrong starting hypothesis, ignored contrary preliminary data, and dug in as more evidence emerged that called their position into question. Many, including Rochelle Walensky, now the CDC’s director, signed the John Snow memorandum in October 2020, which declared that “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.”

Many clinicians who talk to other physicians nationwide had have long observed that we don’t see reinfected patients end up on a ventilator or die from Covid, with rare exceptions who almost always have immune disorders. Meanwhile, public-health officials recklessly destroyed the careers of everyday Americans, rallying to fire pilots, truck drivers and others in the supply-chain workforce who didn’t get vaccinated. And in the early months of the vaccine rollout, when supplies were limited, we could have saved many more lives by giving priority to those who didn’t have recorded natural immunity.

The failure to recognize the data on natural immunity is hurting U.S. hospitals, especially in rural areas. MultiCare, a hospital system in Washington state, fired 55 staff members on Oct. 18 for being out of compliance with Gov. Jay Inslee’s vaccine mandate—and that was in addition to an undisclosed number of staffers who quit ahead of the vaccination deadline. The loss of workers contributed to a full-blown staffing crisis.

It got so bad that the hospital summoned staff who were Covid-positive to return to work even if they were sick, according to an internal memo obtained by Jason Rantz of KTTH radio. The memo stated that “positive staff with mild to moderate illness” could work, so long as they wear appropriate personal protective equipment, don’t take breaks with others, and agree to stay home “if symptoms worsen.” Managers were recommended to assign Covid-positive staff to Covid-positive patients and vaccinated patients, but not immunosuppressed patients.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services took the hospital mandate national by decreeing that all medical facilities under its jurisdiction require vaccination for employees, including those with natural immunity. The Supreme Court upheld the rule on Jan. 13, the same day it issued a stay against a similar mandate from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which OSHA formally withdrew Tuesday.

Connecticut has suspended its vaccine mandate for state employees, and Starbucks is rehiring employees fired for being unvaccinated. Other states and businesses should follow their lead. Politicians and public-health officials owe an apology to Americans who lost their jobs on the false premises that only unvaccinated people could spread the virus and only vaccination could prevent its spread. Soldiers who have been dishonorably discharged should be restored their rank. Teachers, first responders, and others who have been denied their livelihood should be reinstated. Everyone is essential.

Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and author of “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care and How to Fix It.”

Here is the other article I opted to reproduce in full in case it disappears behind a pay-wall, via the BALTIMORE SUN

University Of Maryland’s ‘Heavy-Handed’ Booster Mandate Not Warranted By Science | Guest Commentary

When historians look back at the COVID-19 pandemic, one of many confounding details will be the enthusiasm with which colleges and universities imposed ever-expanding draconian measures on their low-risk student body. Hundreds of U.S. colleges required all faculty, staff, and students to be vaccinated upon Emergency Use Authorization of COVID vaccines. Yet students remain masked indoors (and sometimes out), subject to random asymptomatic testing and limited in their social life.

When weighing policy options with regards to the pandemic, it seems that universities have abandoned rigorous evidence appraisal in favor of memetic signaling to political peers, regardless of how the illness itself manifests among its highly vaccinated student body.

Onto this backdrop, the omicron variant appeared in early winter. The extreme contagiousness of this new variant makes uncertain whether any measure will truly “stop the spread.” One reaction to the highly contagious variant (even among the vaccinated) might have been to focus less on extreme measures to tamp down cases, and instead focus on empowering students to take action to avoid severe outcomes based on their individual risk factors and risk tolerance.

Given lower risk of severe outcomes compared to prior variants, particularly among vaccinated young people, the situation on campus could take the shape of a bad respiratory virus season. The way forward could be as simple as: if you’re sick, get tested and stay home. If you’re well, go about your business. If you’re high risk or otherwise worried, discuss a booster or other means of protecting yourself with your health care provider, and consider wearing a properly fitted N95 mask. By messaging confidence in vaccines, a college may weather the surge with outcomes indistinguishable from schools that took more restrictive measures, without the collateral damage to community cohesion, trust in public health or institutional credibility.

But this evenhanded approach bumps up against unfashionable values concerned with civil liberties. And it doesn’t relieve the anxieties of adults who are persuaded less by the efficacy of interventions than by the moral imperative of imposing any restriction deemed virtuous by the chattering class. In fact, on Jan. 7, our state’s flagship academic institution announced that all students, faculty and staff were required to receive a COVID booster shot by Jan. 24. This measure goes beyond the University System of Maryland’s mandate by including off campus students and employees.

After nearly two years of restrictions intended to reduce the toll of this intractable disease, many may dismiss this mandate as one more inevitable imperative. But we — society and institutions of higher learning, in particular — must look critically at the necessity of such a heavy-handed intervention, and carefully evaluate the evidence supporting it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still consider an individual who has received the primary vaccine series to be fully vaccinated. Yet the university employed a new turn of phrase, requiring a booster to be “up-to-date,” indicating the initial vaccines are somehow deficient. Yet abundant evidence indicates that the primary vaccine series continues to prevent severe illness and death — an outcome worth celebrating.

Boosters are available to all, including those who are high risk or otherwise eager to take any measure to avoid infection. Emerging evidence indicates that reduction in infection due to boosters is uncertain and likely short-lived. As the efficacy of boosters in preventing infection is not clear, many are satisfied with their reduced risk of severe disease without additional shots.

Many experts reject the idea that boosting young and healthy individuals is an appropriate strategy at this stage of the pandemic. In September, the FDA’s external vaccine review panel voted 16 to 2 against blanket approval of boosters. The FDA decided internally to ignore these recommendations and approve boosters for all. Amid this process, two senior members of the vaccine review committee resigned. Both contributed to a Lancet opinion piece arguing against universal boosting. Among other points, they argue that unnecessary boosting impedes global vaccine equity, and may broadly reduce vaccine acceptance.

The available vaccines are based on the original strain of SARS-CoV-2. Many members of the campus community recently recovered from COVID, and now have immunity to the currently circulating strains. They will gain no benefit from a booster, meaning the risk, however minuscule, of an adverse event outweighs the benefit. It is widely accepted that myocarditis is an adverse event related to mRNA vaccines administered to young men. While these events are rare and typically mild, some are severe, and even mild cases may require limiting activity for an extended period. One may argue that this risk is justified before the initial vaccine series based on the risk of severe outcomes from COVID infection. However, vaccinated young men required to get yet another dose are being subjected to this risk with no evidence of benefit, particularly if they are recovered from COVID.

Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a vaccine developer, recently went on record to say that the benefit of boosting is not worth the risk to the average, healthy young adult male. He advised his own 20-something son against getting a booster.

Students want and deserve a normal, in-person spring semester. However, the university’s will to reassure students, parents, and faculty that the university is taking measures to reduce the burden of the disease on campus must not overpower the will to appraise whether the chosen intervention is effective, necessary, and without harm. The booster mandate does not meet these criteria.

I made the choice to be vaccinated as soon as I was eligible. I strongly encourage all adults to be vaccinated, and to discuss boosters with their physician. I am unlikely to suffer ill effects from a booster, and I may achieve some minor benefit in a temporary delay of infection. I am concerned, however, that the University is engaged in a dishonest exchange with its community by issuing a heavy-handed mandate whose necessity is not sufficiently supported by science. As an alum and a current faculty member, I wish to uphold the credibility of the university by insisting the booster mandate be suspended.

Chrissa Carlson (chrissacarlson@gmail.com) is a senior faculty specialist at the University of Maryland Extension.

 

A Facebook “Covid Meme” Examined (“Experts vs Dummies”)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is something I saw pop up on my FB in slow traffic yesterday and I thought it worthy of a “quick” retort.

A couple things going on here. First, no one I listen to or have read (other than the kooky “Alex Jones fringe,” has said it’s “not dangerous.” For instance, I myself argue it is as dangerous as the 1957-1958 and the 1968-1969 outbreaks — when the numbers are tampered down with the CDC’s change to how death certificates are written:

SOME EXAMPLES TO SUPPORT THE CONTENTION

  • Last month Alameda County, Calif., reduced its Covid death toll by 25% after state public-health officials insisted that deaths be attributed to Covid only if the virus was a direct or contributing factor. — Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School. (Wall Street Journal)
    1. Alameda County has changed the way it calculates deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a 25% drop this weekend. The official total fell from 1,634 to 1,223 on Friday after the county changed its methodology to align with narrower guidelines used by California and U.S. health agencies. According to a news release from the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency, the new number includes only people who “died as a direct result of COVID-19, or had the virus as a contributing cause of death as well as people for whom COVID-19 could not be ruled out as a cause of death.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

(FLASHBACK VIA RPT) And as states are going over death certificates, they are dropping by at least 25% in deaths by Covid-19. And some independent groups are helping “catch” the inflated number, like Pennsylvania’s “Wolf administration was caught this week adding up to 269 fake deaths to the state totals on Tuesday” (CITADELPOLITICS). Or this short example (PJ-MEDIA)

  • On Thursday, the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) confirmed a report by the Freedom Foundation that they have included those who tested positive for COVID-19 but died of other causes, including gunshot injuries, in their coronavirus death totals. This calls into serious question the state’s calculations of residents who have actually died of the CCP pandemic.
  • Last week, after it was reported that, like Washington, Colorado was counting deaths of all COVID-19 positive persons regardless of cause (which had resulted in the inclusion of deaths from alcohol poisoning), the Colorado Department of Health and Environment began to differentiate between deaths “among people with COVID-19” and “deaths due to COVID-19.”

Just one more of the many examples I could share is the New York Times getting 40% wrong of their “died from Covid-19 under 30-years old” front page news story. Mmmm, no, they didn’t die of Covid.

  • This Sunday morning, The New York Times has devoted their front page to the nearly 100,000 U.S. victims of COVID-19. The text-only cover lists 1,000 names and excerpts from the obituaries of people who have succumbed to the dreaded virus. The only problem with this lovely memorial is that at least one of the victims did not appear to have died from the coronavirus and his was only the sixth name on the list. [….] But others were quick to point out that Haynes was only the sixth name on the list. One replied, “He was one out of 5 under 30 on the list. Another in that group had a condition that doctors told him he would not live to 18. Did not test positive for COVID but still ruled a COVID death. That’s 40% of the under 30 age bracket.” (Red State)

[….]

APRIL 8TH (2020):

APRIL 19 (2020):

So, I am saying as an example, that a good portion of the deaths being attributed to Covid are not in fact Covid deaths.

The CDC has introduced a new ICD code, “to accurately capture mortality data for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) on death certificates.”

(Note: ICD stands for International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. It is a medical classification list by the World Health Organization (WHO).)

The new ICD code for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is U07.1. The CDC email says that the WHO has added a second code, U07.2, for instances “where a laboratory confirmation is inconclusive or not available. Because laboratory test results are not typically reported on death certificates in the U.S., National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is not planning to implement U07.2 for mortality statistics.”

The problem with the new codes is that it may result in an inflated number of coronavirus deaths….

(RED STATE)

And this is what I [for example] have argued. Do these changes made in April of 2020 impact previous outbreaks? Would this change also increase the 1957-1958 and the1968-1969 outbreaks? I think so.

A couple more examples to support the contention

(Story about a May 2020 death cert)

…. Jack Dake, an Oklahoma man who lived an admirable life as a veteran, a lifelong blue-collar worker and a loving dad, died on May 6 after contracting COVID-19.

There’s just one problem with his cause of death, his family says: Jack Dake did not die from the coronavirus.

The man barely had any symptoms, his family told The Oklahoman, and he died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

But, the family insists, that didn’t stop a coroner from labeling Dake as a coronavirus statistic on his death certificate on May 14.

Dake’s son, Jack Dake Jr., told the newspaper that his father’s death had absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic.

“Alzheimer’s was the cause of death, and COVID-19 was not even a contributing condition,” Dake Jr. told The Oklahoman. “Yet it’s recorded as the only cause of death.”

Dake apparently contracted the coronavirus at an Oklahoma City assisted living center and tested positive on April 17.

[….]

But the elder Dake was in one of the final stages of his battle with Alzheimer’s and had quit eating and drinking, which is common for end-stage sufferers of the degenerative brain disease.

Dake Jr. also said his father was never again tested for the coronavirus, but the family did request that he be put on hospice care, as he was not eating and was dehydrated.

Dake was listed as being terminal with COVID-19 by hospice workers, and when he died 20 days after testing positive, his death was recorded as one of the state’s coronavirus fatalities.

[….]

According to USA Today,  a provision in the Coronavirus Aid, Relieve and Economic Securities Act provides a “20% premium or add on” to Medicare reimbursements to health care facilities. (More information about that provision from the American Hospital Association.)…

(WESTERN JOURNAL)

  • The Montezuma County Coroner’s Office is disputing the state’s claim of a third fatal case of the coronavirus in Cortez, saying the person died of alcohol poisoning. County Coroner George Deavers said the person tested positive for COVID-19, but an investigation by him and the pathologist determined the cause of death was ethanol toxicity. The person’s blood-alcohol content was 0.55, or almost seven times the legal driving limit of 0.08 in Colorado, Deavers said. A BAC of 0.3 is considered lethal. (DURANGO HERALD)
  • CBS 12 News examined medical examiner’s reports on COVID-19 deaths and found eight examples where a person was listed as a coronavirus death but had actually died from something else. This includes a 60-year-old man who died from a gunshot wound to the head, a 90-year-old who fell and broke a hip, and a 77-year-old who died of Parkinson’s disease. (CBS)
  • A woman is left with “no peace” after her father’s death certificate stated he died of the coronavirus despite previously testing negative and an MRI test showing he suffered multiple strokes. Jay Smith died on July 12 in San Antonio, Texas, after an MRI showed brain damage from enduring multiple strokes. Kayla Smith, however, said last week that her father’s death certificate listed him as a coronavirus victim. “They put him as COVID. He didn’t have COVID. He had a stroke,” she said. “The MRI showed that he had multiple strokes in the brain, and also he had a blood clot. Those multiple strokes caused so much damage in his brain that it caused damage in his body.” Jay Smith was first taken to the hospital on July 6, where he tested negative for the coronavirus and was transferred to a non-COVID floor on July 7, according to local outlet KATU. (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)

I have argued from the very get-go [or pointed to] stuff like: that (a) the PCR “cycle test” was too high, (b) that deaths attributed to Covid shouldn’t have been (here as well) that (c) the numbers of unknown – asymptomatic – cases lower the infection percentages/rates, i.e., the Infection Fatality rate, Etc., Etc.

The other contention in the “meme” is that “no experts” agree with portions of the above. Just high-school dummies.

Here is an older post:

List of “Dummies”

Dennis Prager interviews the co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, Jay Bhattacharya. Dr. Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the health and well-being of populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics. Most recently, Bhattacharya has focused his research on the epidemiology of COVID-19 and evaluation of the various policy responses to the epidemic. He is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a document proposing a relaxation of social controls that delay the spread of COVID-19.

A worthwhile interview.

Here are some of the signatories of Great Barrington Declaration:

  • Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
  • Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
  • Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
  • Alexander Walker, principal at World Health Information Science Consultants, former Chair of Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, USA
  • Andrius Kavaliunas, epidemiologist and assistant professor at Karolinska Institute, Sweden
  • Angus Dalgleish, oncologist, infectious disease expert and professor, St. George’s Hospital Medical School, University of London, England
  • Anthony J Brookes, professor of genetics, University of Leicester, England
  • Annie Janvier, professor of pediatrics and clinical ethics, Université de Montréal and Sainte-Justine University Medical Centre, Canada
  • Ariel Munitz, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel
  • Boris Kotchoubey, Institute for Medical Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany
  • Cody Meissner, professor of pediatrics, expert on vaccine development, efficacy, and safety. Tufts University School of Medicine, USA
  • David Katz, physician and president, True Health Initiative, and founder of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, USA
  • David Livermore, microbiologist, infectious disease epidemiologist and professor, University of East Anglia, England
  • Eitan Friedman, professor of medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
  • Ellen Townsend, professor of psychology, head of the Self-Harm Research Group, University of Nottingham, England
  • Eyal Shahar, physician, epidemiologist and professor (emeritus) of public health, University of Arizona, USA
  • Florian Limbourg, physician and hypertension researcher, professor at Hannover Medical School, Germany
  • Gabriela Gomes, mathematician studying infectious disease epidemiology, professor, University of Strathclyde, Scotland
  • Gerhard Krönke, physician and professor of translational immunology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
  • Gesine Weckmann, professor of health education and prevention, Europäische Fachhochschule, Rostock, Germany
  • Günter Kampf, associate professor, Institute for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine, Greifswald University, Germany
  • Helen Colhoun, professor of medical informatics and epidemiology, and public health physician, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Jonas Ludvigsson, pediatrician, epidemiologist and professor at Karolinska Institute and senior physician at Örebro University Hospital, Sweden
  • Karol Sikora, physician, oncologist, and professor of medicine at the University of Buckingham, England
  • Laura Lazzeroni, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of biomedical data science, Stanford University Medical School, USA
  • Lisa White, professor of modelling and epidemiology, Oxford University, England
  • Mario Recker, malaria researcher and associate professor, University of Exeter, England
  • Matthew Ratcliffe, professor of philosophy, specializing in philosophy of mental health, University of York, England
  • Matthew Strauss, critical care physician and assistant professor of medicine, Queen’s University, Canada
  • Michael Jackson, research fellow, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  • Michael Levitt, biophysicist and professor of structural biology, Stanford University, USA.
  • Recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
  • Mike Hulme, professor of human geography, University of Cambridge, England
  • Motti Gerlic, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel
  • Partha P. Majumder, professor and founder of the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani, India
  • Paul McKeigue, physician, disease modeler and professor of epidemiology and public health, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Rajiv Bhatia, physician, epidemiologist and public policy expert at the Veterans Administration, USA
  • Rodney Sturdivant, infectious disease scientist and associate professor of biostatistics, Baylor University, USA
  • Salmaan Keshavjee, professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, USA
  • Simon Thornley, epidemiologist and biostatistician, University of Auckland, New Zealand
  • Simon Wood, biostatistician and professor, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Stephen Bremner,professor of medical statistics, University of Sussex, England
  • Sylvia Fogel, autism provider and psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School, USA
  • Tom Nicholson, Associate in Research, Duke Center for International Development, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, USA
  • Udi Qimron, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel
  • Ulrike Kämmerer, professor and expert in virology, immunology and cell biology, University of Würzburg, Germany
  • Uri Gavish, biomedical consultant, Israel
  • Yaz Gulnur Muradoglu, professor of finance, director of the Behavioural Finance Working Group, Queen Mary University of London, England

Ben Shapiro Discusses Vaccines and Kids

Published by Papa Giorgio

Some Covid Fodder (Reason) via Ben Shapiro

This comes by way of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

The Flimsy Evidence Behind the CDC’s Push to Vaccinate Children | The agency overcounts Covid hospitalizations and deaths and won’t consider if one shot is sufficient.

A tremendous number of government and private policies affecting kids are based on one number: 335. That is how many children under 18 have died with a Covid diagnosis code in their record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the CDC, which has 21,000 employees, hasn’t researched each death to find out whether Covid caused it or if it involved a pre-existing medical condition.

Without these data, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided in May that the benefits of two-dose vaccination outweigh the risks for all kids 12 to 15. I’ve written hundreds of peer-reviewed medical studies, and I can think of no journal editor who would accept the claim that 335 deaths resulted from a virus without data to indicate if the virus was incidental or causal, and without an analysis of relevant risk factors such as obesity.

My research team at Johns Hopkins worked with the nonprofit FAIR Health to analyze approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with Covid in health-insurance data from April to August 2020. Our report found a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia. If that trend holds, it has significant implications for healthy kids and whether they need two vaccine doses. The National Education Association has been debating whether to urge schools to require vaccination before returning to school in person. How can they or anyone debate the issue without the right data?

Meanwhile, we’ve already seen inflated Covid death numbers in the U.S. revised downward. Last month Alameda County, Calif., reduced its Covid death toll by 25% after state public-health officials insisted that deaths be attributed to Covid only if the virus was a direct or contributing factor.

Organizations and politicians who are eager to get every living American vaccinated are following the CDC without understanding the limitations of the methodology. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky claimed that vaccinating a million adolescent kids would prevent 200 hospitalizations and one death over four months. But the agency’s Covid adolescent hospitalization report, like its death count, doesn’t distinguish on the website whether a child is hospitalized for Covid or with Covid. The subsequent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of that analysis revealed that 45.7% “were hospitalized for reasons that might not have been primarily related” to Covid-19.

Hospitals routinely test patients being admitted for other complaints even if there’s no reason to suspect they have Covid. An asymptomatic child who tests positive after being injured in a bicycle accident would be counted as a “Covid hospitalization.”

The CDC may also be undercapturing data on vaccine complications. The CDC’s risk-benefit analysis for vaccinating all children used rates of complications extrapolated from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database, known as Vaers, which contains raw, self-reported data that is unverified and likely underreports adverse events. The CDC or the Food and Drug Administration should expeditiously assign doctors to research each of the thousands of vaccine complications reported to Vaers.

Authorities should also consider whether a single-vaccine dose is a safer option for healthy kids. Researchers at Tel Aviv University reported that a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine was 100% effective against infection in kids 12 to 15. Not only has the CDC refused to examine the possibility of a one-dose regimen for minors; Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff told me he was kicked off the advisory committee working group on Covid-vaccine safety after he expressed a dissenting opinion.

The CDC’s poor performance isn’t limited to kids or vaccine safety. Early in the pandemic the CDC left us all flying blind by not reporting the medical conditions of those who died of Covid. Collecting this information early would have made it easier to protect nursing-home residents and patients with renal failure or diabetes. It took until March 2021 for the CDC to report that 78% of Covid hospitalizations were among overweight or obese patients.

Most striking, the CDC has never systematically collected and reported the No. 1 leading indicator of the pandemic—daily new hospitalizations for Covid sickness. Instead, the CDC offers the lagging indicator of hospitalization for anyone who tests positive for Covid.

The CDC data on natural-immunity rates is similarly disappointing. The CDC reports this measure in fragments on their website, but it’s outdated and some states are listed as having “no data available.” The low priority given to this indicator is consistent with how public-health officials have played down and ignored natural immunity in their drive to get everyone vaccinated.

Given the tremendous resources of the CDC and FDA, which together employ 39,000, these agencies ought to be able to report the statistics needed to make informed policy decisions. If the data are incomplete or flawed, so too will be the decisions derived from them. The vaccine’s benefits may outweigh its risks for healthy kids, but the government shouldn’t try to push that conclusion based on faulty data.

Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School. He is author of “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care—and How to Fix It.”

Infection Fatality Rate Percentages of The Wu Flu (Updates)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Jump To

June 27th

June 19th

May 24th

STANFORD has released a new paper where they look at their own studies as well as “23 studies with a sample size of at least 500 have been published either in the peerreviewed literature or as preprints as of June 7, 2020.” In this they find confirmation to strongly say:

…In the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, Ioannidis surveyed 23 different seroprevalence studies and found that “among people <70 years old, infection fatality rates ranged from… 0.00-0.23% with median of 0.04%.” 

The median fatality rate of all cases, he writes, is 0.26%, significantly lower than some earlier estimates that suggested rates as high as over 3%. 

In the paper, Ioannidis acknowledges that “while COVID-19 is a formidable threat,” the apparently low fatality rate compared to earlier estimates “is a welcome piece of evidence.”

“Decision-makers can use measures that will try to avert having the virus infect people and settings who are at high risk of severe outcomes,” he writes. “These measures may be possible to be far more precise and tailored to specific high- risk individuals and settings than blind lockdown of the entire society.”

(JUST THE NEWS)

MY NUMBERS

Keep in mind in March I noted that the rates would be from 0.03% to 0.25% — not to brag or anything, but I am in the 23-studies lane-lines. I just couldn’t differentiate between age groups, but that was assumed as the average age of deaths.

And as states are going over death certificates, they are dropping by at least 25% in deaths by Covid-19. And some independent groups are helping “catch” the inflated number, like Pennsylvania’s “Wolf administration was caught this week adding up to 269 fake deaths to the state totals on Tuesday” (CITADELPOLITICS). Or this short example (PJ-MEDIA)

  • On Thursday, the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) confirmed a report by the Freedom Foundation that they have included those who tested positive for COVID-19 but died of other causes, including gunshot injuries, in their coronavirus death totals. This calls into serious question the state’s calculations of residents who have actually died of the CCP pandemic.
  • Last week, after it was reported that, like Washington, Colorado was counting deaths of all COVID-19 positive persons regardless of cause (which had resulted in the inclusion of deaths from alcohol poisoning), the Colorado Department of Health and Environment began to differentiate between deaths “among people with COVID-19” and “deaths due to COVID-19.”

Just one more of the many examples I could share is the New York Times getting 40% wrong of their “died from Covid-19 under 30-years old” front page news story. Mmmm, no, they didn’t die of Covid. As states figure this out, the inflated counts (like when Colorado did this — fell by 25%: lots more on this below).

CONTRACTED TWICE?

In a recent conversation two items came up that are worth updating for friends and family. The first deals with if a person can get the WuFlu twice. FORBES has a good article on this:

…Whenever I lecture on the Covid-19 outbreak, someone always asks me, “Can I get infected twice?” This is a natural concern. After all, if someone suffers through the prolonged fever, hacking cough, and profound weakness and misery caused by the virus, one small positive aspect might be not having to suffer through it a second time.

Such fears were ratcheted up after there were reports in Korea about people who had recovered from illness and tested negative, only to have a later test come up positive again. This prompted fear of new spread, even from recovered victims. Back in early March, a mayor in Texas, blasted the CDC for releasing a recovered patient from isolation, only to have that patient test positive again after release.

As a health care provider, the last thing you want to do is tell someone they are cured and release them back into the community, only to learn later that they started a whole new chain of virus transmission. Fortunately, a new study from the South Korean Center for Disease Control helps to answer part of the question. They studied patients who tested negative upon recovery, but in later tests became positive again. Could they spread the virus again?

It turns out, despite the positive test, they found that none of them were secreting live, infectious virus. It was a quirk of the rapid tests, which sample for low levels of genetic material, not whole virus. They concluded that the recovered patients had residual genetic fragments that still triggered the tests to turn positive. Those individuals were no longer contagious.

This was a relief. In other good news, a new draft paper reports that monkeys that were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus developed antibodies and were protected from illness when exposed to the virus a second time. It’s a small study, but it offers a glimmer of hope that once infected, there is immunity to re-infection….

The second issue was regarding animals being able to contract the virus.

ANIMALS

CNN has a good short response to this:

Q: Could I infect my pets with coronavirus, or vice versa? Can someone get infected by touching an animal’s fur? Should I get my pet tested for coronavirus?

A: There have been some reports of animals infected by coronavirus — including two pets in New York and eight big cats at the Bronx Zoo.

Most of those infections came from contact with people who had coronavirus, like a zoo employee who was an asymptomatic carrier.

But according to the CDC, there is no evidence animals play a significant role in spreading the virus to humans. Therefore, at this time, routine testing of animals for Covid-19 is not recommended.

As always, it’s best to wash your hands after touching an animal’s fur and before touching your face. And if your pet appears to be sick, call your veterinarian.

More “known” examples from the CDC:

  • A small number of pet cats and dogs have been reported to be infected with the virus in several countries, including the United States. Most of these pets became sick after contact with people with COVID-19.
  • Several lions and tigersexternal icon at a New York zoo tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 after showing signs of respiratory illness. Public health officials believe these large cats became sick after being exposed to a zoo employee who was infected with SARS-CoV-2. All of these large cats have fully recovered.
  • SARS-CoV-2 was recently discovered in mink (which are closely related to ferrets) on multiple farms in the Netherlands. The mink showed respiratory and gastrointestinal signs; the farms also experienced an increase in mink deaths. Because some workers on these farms had symptoms of COVID-19, it is likely that infected farm workers were the source of the mink infections. Some farm cats on several mink farms also developed antibodies to this virus, suggesting they had been exposed to the virus at some point. Officials in the Netherlands are investigating the connections between the health of people and animals as well as the environment on these mink farms.

(The below is from June 19th)

COMPARED

MAROON numbers are death rate, and the BLUE numbers are hospitalization rates. Rated by placement as well. This is merely for comparison to decide if $1.1 trillion lost for every month of the economic shutdown and the long-term damage on the U.S. economy, shrinking it by $7.9 trillion over the next decade.

  • [1] The 1918-19 “Spanish Flu” Pandemic — 675,000 died in the United States, some victims died within mere hours or days of developing symptoms.
  • [2] The 1957-58 “Asian Flu” Pandemic — 116,000 deaths were in the US. Most of the cases affected young children.
  • [3] The 1968 “Hong Kong Flu” Pandemic — 100,000 deaths occurred in the United States
  • [12](9) The 2009 H1N1 Pandemic — About 80% of those deaths are believed to have been people younger than 65 — which is unusual. During typical seasonal influenza epidemics, 70-90% of deaths occur in people over 65. 274,000 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths in the United States due to the virus.
  • [9](7) 2010-2011 flu season — 290,000 influenza-related hospitalizations and 37,000 flu-associated deaths
  • [6](3) 2012-2013 flu season — 56,000 deaths is the CDC estimate. 571,000 influenza-related hospitalizations
  • [8](6) 2013-2014 flu season — 347,000 influenza-related hospitalizations, and 38,000 flu-associated deaths
  • [7](2) 2014-2015 flu season — 591,000 influenza-related hospitalizations, and 51,000 flu-associated deaths 
  • [11](8) 2015-2016 flu season — 280,000 influenza-related hospitalizations, and 23,000 flu-associated deaths
  • [8](4) 2016-2017 flu season — 500,000 influenza-related hospitalizations, and 38,000 influenza-associated deaths
  • [5](1) 2017-2018 flu season — The CDC estimates that between 46,000 and 95,000 Americans died due to influenza during the 2017-18 flu season. This resulted in an estimated 959,000 hospitalizations and a middle-ground of 61,099 deaths.
  • [10](5) 2018-2019 flu season — 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza 
  • [4](10) Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) — With the adjusted numbers that I believe the flu (a bad influenza season assumed to be novel influenza on untested patients), I would bet we are at about 80,000 or less deaths from The WuFlu. US Coronavirus Hospitalizations is at a current level of 229,212.

Steven Crowder takes to the streets of Dallas to have real conversations with real people. In this installment, Steven discusses the COVID19 death count and the fake news surrounding it.

Crowder is posted above as an UPDATE to support my contention below:

(The below is from May 24th, 2020)

Here are some updated numbers, from CONSERVATIVE REVIEW — and I will post a portion of an older post [recently updated] underneath this (also, if the graphics are not linked to ENLARGE, I will link to the Twitter accounts associated with the graphics):

The CDC just came out with a report that should be earth-shattering to the narrative of the political class, yet it will go into the thick pile of vital data and information about the virus that is not getting out to the public. For the first time, the CDC has attempted to offer a real estimate of the overall death rate for COVID-19, and under its most likely scenario, the number is 0.26%. Officials estimate a 0.4% fatality rate among those who are symptomatic and project a 35% rate of asymptomatic cases among those infected*jump, which drops the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) to just 0.26% — almost exactly where Stanford researchers pegged it a month ago.

(Ethical Skeptic)

Until now, we have been ridiculed for thinking the death rate was that low, as opposed to the 3.4% estimate of the World Health Organization, which helped drive the panic and the lockdowns. Now the CDC is agreeing to the lower rate in plain ink.

Plus, ultimately we might find out that the IFR is even lower because numerous studies and hard counts of confined populations have shown a much higher percentage of asymptomatic cases. Simply adjusting for a 50% asymptomatic rate would drop their fatality rate to 0.2% – exactly the rate of fatality Dr. John Ionnidis of Stanford University projected.

More importantly, as I mentioned before, the overall death rate is meaningless because the numbers are so lopsided. Given that at least half of the deaths were in nursing homes, a back-of-the-envelope estimate would show that the infection fatality rate for non-nursing home residents would only be 0.1% or 1 in 1,000. And that includes people of all ages and all health statuses outside of nursing homes. Since nearly all of the deaths are those with comorbidities.

The CDC estimates the death rate from COVID-19 for those under 50 is 1 in 5,000 for those with symptoms, which would be 1 in 6,725 overall, but again, almost all those who die have specific comorbidities or underlying conditions. Those without them are more likely to die in a car accident. And schoolchildren, whose lives, mental health, and education we are destroying, are more likely to get struck by lightning.

[….]

To put this in perspective, one Twitter commentator juxtaposed the age-separated infection fatality rates in Spain to the average yearly probability of dying of anything for the same age groups, based on data from the Social Security Administration. He used Spain because we don’t have a detailed infection fatality rate estimate for each age group from any survey in the U.S. However, we know that Spain fared worse than almost every other country. This data is actually working with a top-line IFR of 1%, roughly four times what the CDC estimates for the U.S., so if anything, the corresponding numbers for the U.S. will be lower.

(Read Horowitz’s full article)

FURTHER TWITTER DEBATE

I wanted to expand the Twitter graphic and link above a bit, I spent some time going through the comments and many of the conversational offshoots. I figured this collection (ending with my comment) sums up the issue in a lot less time:

(Click once to get large graphic, click again to blow it up)

There is a fascinating “official” continuation of this convo with more detail (linked in below Twitter graphic):

Great, great stuff. All this vindicates my own early numbers,

…all the “anti-body” studies,

…this more recent stuff,

…as well as all the Facebook discussions/debates between myself, friends, family, and complete strangers.

...AND,

…as I show below, this number will get lower upon investigation of common sense assumptions if never investigated.

REASON has their article discussing the issue of IFR and America compared to Europe (see also BLOOMBERG’S article):

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current “best estimate” for the fatality rate among Americans with COVID-19 symptoms is 0.4 percent. The CDC also estimates that 35 percent of people infected by the COVID-19 virus never develop symptoms. Those numbers imply that the virus kills less than 0.3 percent of people infected by it—far lower than the infection fatality rates (IFRs) assumed by the alarming projections that drove the initial government response to the epidemic, including broad business closure and stay-at-home orders.

The CDC offers the new estimates in its “COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios,” which are meant to guide hospital administrators in “assessing resource needs” and help policy makers “evaluate the potential effects of different community mitigation strategies.” It says “the planning scenarios are being used by mathematical modelers throughout the Federal government.”

The CDC’s five scenarios include one based on “a current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States.” That scenario assumes a “basic reproduction number” of 2.5, meaning the average carrier can be expected to infect that number of people in a population with no immunity. It assumes an overall symptomatic case fatality rate (CFR) of 0.4 percent, roughly four times the estimated CFR for the seasonal flu. The CDC estimates that the CFR for COVID-19 falls to 0.05 percent among people younger than 50 and rises to 1.3 percent among people 65 and older. For people in the middle (ages 50–64), the estimated CFR is 0.2 percent.

That “best estimate” scenario also assumes that 35 percent of infections are asymptomatic, meaning the total number of infections is more than 50 percent larger than the number of symptomatic cases. It therefore implies that the IFR is between 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent. By contrast, the projections that the CDC made in March, which predicted that as many as 1.7 million Americans could die from COVID-19 without intervention, assumed an IFR of 0.8 percent. Around the same time, researchers at Imperial College produced a worst-case scenario in which 2.2 million Americans died, based on an IFR of 0.9 percent.

Such projections had a profound impact on policy makers in the United States and around the world. At the end of March, President Donald Trump, who has alternated between minimizing and exaggerating the threat posed by COVID-19, warned that the United States could see “up to 2.2 million deaths and maybe even beyond that” without aggressive control measures, including lockdowns.

One glaring problem with those worst-case scenarios was the counterfactual assumption that people would carry on as usual in the face of the pandemic—that they would not take voluntary precautions such as avoiding crowds, minimizing social contact, working from home, wearing masks, and paying extra attention to hygiene. The Imperial College projection was based on “the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour.” Similarly, the projection of as many as 2.2 million deaths in the United States cited by the White House was based on “no intervention”—not just no lockdowns, but no response of any kind.

Another problem with those projections, assuming that the CDC’s current “best estimate” is in the right ballpark, was that the IFRs they assumed were far too high. The difference between an IFR of 0.8 to 0.9 percent and an IFR of 0.2 to 0.3 percent, even in the completely unrealistic worst-case scenarios, is the difference between millions and hundreds of thousands of deaths—still a grim outcome, but not nearly as bad as the horrifying projections cited by politicians to justify the sweeping restrictions they imposed.

“The parameter values in each scenario will be updated and augmented over time, as we learn more about the epidemiology of COVID-19,” the CDC cautions. “New data on COVID-19 is available daily; information about its biological and epidemiological characteristics remain[s] limited, and uncertainty remains around nearly all parameter values.” But the CDC’s current best estimates are surely better grounded than the numbers it was using two months ago.

A recent review of 13 studies that calculated IFRs in various countries found a wide range of estimates, from 0.05 percent in Iceland to 1.3 percent in Northern Italy and among the passengers and crew of the Diamond Princess cruise ship. This month Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis, who has long been skeptical of high IFR estimates for COVID-19, looked specifically at published studies that sought to estimate the prevalence of infection by testing people for antibodies to the virus that causes the disease. He found that the IFRs implied by 12 studies ranged from 0.02 percent to 0.4 percent. My colleague Ron Bailey last week noted several recent antibody studies that implied considerably higher IFRs, ranging from 0.6 percent in Norway to more than 1 percent in Spain.

Methodological issues, including sample bias and the accuracy of the antibody tests, probably explain some of this variation. But it is also likely that actual IFRs vary from one place to another, both internationally and within countries. “It should be appreciated that IFR is not a fixed physical constant,” Ioannidis writes, “and it can vary substantially across locations, depending on the population structure, the case-mix of infected and deceased individuals and other, local factors.”

[….]

If you focus on hard-hit areas such as New York and New Jersey, an IFR between 0.2 and 0.3 percent, as suggested by the CDC’s current best estimate, seems improbably low. “While most of these numbers are reasonable, the mortality rates shade far too low,” University of Washington biologist Carl Bergstrom told CNN. “Estimates of the numbers infected in places like NYC are way out of line with these estimates.”

But the CDC’s estimate looks more reasonable when compared to the results of antibody studies in Miami-Dade County, Santa Clara County, Los Angeles County, and Boise, Idaho—places that so far have had markedly different experiences with COVID-19. We need to consider the likelihood that these divergent results reflect not just methodological issues but actual differences in the epidemic’s impact—differences that can help inform the policies for dealing with it.

IMMUNITIES

Of course there is another twist in the whole story morning glory… even with the vaccine, the virus itself is disappearing naturally as more and more people are naturally getting immune to it through contact (most react with no or minor symptoms), the vaccine will be useless by the time it is produced. (Which is why they will in the end FORCE this on us, to vindicate the monies spent and a need to recoup costs.)

This is because the HERD IMMUNITY rate may be much lower that some have been saying:

Why Herd Immunity To Covid-19 Is Reached Much Earlier Than Thought (JUDITH CURRY)

… In my view, the true herd immunity threshold probably lies somewhere between the 7% and 24% implied by the cases illustrated in Figures 4 and 5. If it were around 17%, which evidence from Stockholm County suggests the resulting fatalities from infections prior to the HIT being reached should be a very low proportion of the population. The Stockholm infection fatality rate appears to be approximately 0.4%,[20] considerably lower than per the Verity et al.[21] estimates used in Ferguson20, with a fatality rate of under 0.1% from infections until the HIT was reached. The fatality rate to reach the HIT in less densely populated areas should be lower, because R0 is positively related to population density.[22] Accordingly, total fatalities should be well under 0.1% of the population by the time herd immunity is achieved. Although there would be subsequent further fatalities, as the epidemic shrinks it should be increasingly practicable to hasten its end by using testing and contact tracing to prevent infections spreading, and thus substantially reduce the number of further fatalities below those projected by the SEIR model in a totally unmitigated scenario.

Herd Immunity May Only Need 10-20 Per Cent Of People To Be Infected (SPECTATOR UK)

…The usual health warnings apply. Gomes’ work is theoretical modelling and, in common with a lot of material on Covid-19 that is being pre-published at the moment (including Ferguson’s paper of 16 March), it has not been peer-reviewed. But it is interesting that it gives an estimate for herd immunity of between 10 and 20 per cent, because that echoes real-life experience. The closest we have to a controlled experiment on the spread of Covid-19 was the cruise ship Diamond Princess, where the disease was able to spread uncontrolled in January, and almost all were later tested for the disease. Out of the 3,711 passengers and crew, 712 – or 19 per cent – were infected.

If herd immunity really is achieved at between 10 to 20 per cent it could mean that many parts of the world are approaching it – or are there already. A study of 1,000 residents in the North West German town of Gangelt in early April suggested that 14 per cent had already been infected (many without even knowing it). A study of 1,300 New Yorkers in late April suggested that 21 per cent have been infected.

Some other posts of mine noting herd immunity:

% Asymptomatic Expressions %

* I also believe the CDC to be waay off in their assessment of the asymptomatic expressions of this virus. They say it is 35%, I say this is way too low. I would posit the lowest is 50%, whereas the highest is between 80% and 86%. My guess is closer to 80%. Here are some examples to support my statements:

[/color-box]

When an outbreak of coronavirus in a Boston homeless shelter prompted officials to do more testing, the results caught them off guard. Of the 146 people who tested positive, all of them were considered asymptomatic.

“These are larger numbers than we ever anticipated,” said Dr. Jim O’Connell, president of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. “Asymptomatic spread is something we’ve underestimated overall, and it’s going to make a big difference.”…

(CNN)

…Dr. Michael Para with OSU said the mass testing was a critical step.

“A large number were positive, but what is amazing is how many people were positive and had no symptoms at all. They were feeling fine,” he said.
Mass testing at the Marion Correctional Institution, for example, revealed that approximately 96 percent of inmates who tested positive for COVID-19 were asymptomatic, Chambers-Smith added.

Para said clinicians looked at what they had found and they are now testing the people who were negative to see if they have turned positive.

“Going forward we are going to test specific individuals who are showing symptoms, who are being released, etc.,” he said. “By testing inmates on release, we can notify local health departments whether or not a person is COVID-19 positive.”…

(FOX19)

MORE

from an old post of mine

[1] “There are probably 25 to 50 people who have the virus for every one person who is confirmed” — Dr. Marty Makary

Here is my uploaded (truncated) video of Dr. Makary (John Hopkins) being interviewed by YAHOO FINANCE (see their FULL video at YouTube HERE):

[2] 86% of infections went undocumented — Science Journal

Here, the NEW YORK POST (March 17, 2020) notes the journal article by saying:

“Stealth” coronavirus cases are fueling the pandemic, with a staggering 86% of people infected walking around undetected, a new study says.

Six of every seven cases – 86% — were not reported in China before travel restrictions were implemented, driving the spread of the virus, according to a study Monday in the journal Science.

“It’s the undocumented infections which are driving the spread of the outbreak,” said co-author Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University Mailman School, according to GeekWire.

Using computer modeling, researchers tracked infections before and after the Chinese city of Wuhan’s travel ban.

The findings indicated that these undocumented infections with no or mild symptoms — known as “stealth” cases — were behind two-thirds of the reported patients.

“The majority of these infections are mild, with few symptoms at all,” Shaman said, Mercury News reported. “People may not recognize it. Or they think they have a cold.”…

This information likewise calls into question the “official numbers of deaths” being attributed to the CDC as well as supporting the idea that many more persons have the WU FLU, making the death rate percentages even smaller than being discussed above. I am repeating the below because I think it is crucially important!

Enjoy:

other PERTINENT information

MAY I ALSO NOTE that I believe the deaths from The Rona are a bit overstated, while Dr. Birx noted that the CDC may be inflating the death toll by 25%, I provide a couple other examples to support my claim.

UPDATED INFO – Real Quick 

On Thursday, the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) confirmed a report by the Freedom Foundation that they have included those who tested positive for COVID-19 but died of other causes, including gunshot injuries, in their coronavirus death totals. This calls into serious question the state’s calculations of residents who have actually died of the CCP pandemic.

(PJ-MEDIA)

First up, Dr. Birx setting the stage for this with how deaths are coded:

Another example comes from Dr. Ngozi, Director of public health Illinois. She explains how ALL deaths are counted as Covid-19 even if the patient was diagnosed to have die from another disease:

Adapted from the above video description is important (via 4 TIMES A YEAR)

“Should “COVID-19” be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test? COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death.” (CDC): “Deborah Birx, a physician who’s leading the White House’s coronavirus task force, said Alabama’s strategy conflicts with CDC’s approach to tallying Covid-19-realted deaths. “[W]e’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality,” she said. “[I]f someone dies with Covid-19, we are counting that as a Covid-19 death.” (ADVISORY)

As many have pointed out, there is a big difference between dying WITH the virus and FROM the virus.

Note Dr. Birx’s similar wording to what Italy was doing:

“‘We’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality….” “The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.”

Italy, unlike the CDC, corrected its error:

“The age of our patients in hospitals is substantially older – the median is 67, while in China it was 46,” Prof Ricciardi says. “So essentially the age distribution of our patients is squeezed to an older age and this is substantial in increasing the lethality.” 

A study in JAMA this week found that almost 40 per cent of infections and 87 per cent of deaths in the country have been in patients over 70 years old.

[….]

But Prof Ricciardi added that Italy’s death rate may also appear high because of how doctors record fatalities. 

“The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.

“On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three,” he says. 

[….]

If further testing finds more asymptomatic cases spreading undetected, the mortality rate will drop. 

(TELEGRAPH)

Here is more information from Daniel Horowitz over at CONSERVATIVE REVIEW:

1) The shocking inflation of COVID-19 death numbers: From day one, we were warned that states are ascribing every single death of anyone who happens to test positive for the coronavirus — even if they are asymptomatic — to the virus rather than the clear cause of death. Now, thanks to a lawsuit in Colorado, the state was forced to revise its death count down by 23 % over the weekend — from 1,150 to 878. The state is now publishing numbers of deaths “with” COVID-19 separate from deaths “from” COVID-19. As I reported on Thursday, county officials started accusing the state’s department of health of reclassifying deaths of those who tested positive for the virus but died of things like alcohol poisoning as COVID-19 deaths just to insidiously inflate the numbers. This revision in Colorado is a bombshell story that, of course, will remain unknown to most Americans. Every state needs to do this, and if they did, we would find an across-the-board drop in numbers by at least 25%, the same %age by which Dr. Birx reportedly believes the count is being inflated, according to the Washington Post. For example, in Minnesota, state officials are now admitting that every single person who dies in a nursing home after testing positive is now deemed to have died from the virus, never mind the fact that 25% of all natural deaths in a given week occur in nursing homes and that most cases of COVID-19 are asymptomatic, which means more often than not, they died exclusively of other causes.

(there are five other points made by Horowitz)

TO WIT… Dennis Prager’s guest is Dr. Joel Hay, who is a professor in the department of Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy at the University of Southern California. Both give examples of cancer deaths being coded Covid:

And my third evidence to support my contention a nurse is filmed commenting on the percentages of deaths at NYC hospital. In my posts point #2 (the video still up amazingly) notes that every death cert in NYC-hospital is coded as Rona. In fact, 99% of deaths from that hospital were coded Rona during a period — AN IMPOSSIBLE statistic (https://tinyurl.com/y9awsuor — my site)

A CLEARER PICTURE blog comments on the above indirectly:

….In New York City, around 12,000 people have supposedly died from COVID-19 at the time of this writing. That’s 22% of all alleged U.S. deaths.

Around 7,000 of the NYC deaths attributed to COVID-19 have been thoroughly investigated to determine if there was another serious life-threatening illness present

Take a deep breath if doing so hasn’t been outlawed where you live.

99.2% of those 7,000 New Yorkers who supposedly died from the virus had another antecedent life-threatening illness. For all intents and purposes, that’s all of them.

How is it even remotely possible that 7,000 NYC deaths attributed to COVID-19 were investigated and virtually every single one of them found to have involved at least one other life-threatening illness if the virus is in and of itself deadly?

Most strains of coronavirus that affect humans are common cold viruses.

In light of the apparent almost universal prevalence of at least one other deadly disease among the alleged NYC deceased…

And in light of all the factors massively inflating the bogus death tally we’re being fed every day…

What reason do we have to believe COVID-19 is actually killing anyone?

No one knows how many Americans have really died of COVID-19….

However, we are starting to find out that “pure” deaths caused by Covid-19 exclusivelt is low (DAILY WIRE):

On Tuesday, San Diego county Supervisor Jim Desmond said after digging into the data that he believes only six of the county’s 194 coronavirus-identified deaths are “pure” coronavirus deaths, meaning they died from the virus, not merely with the virus.

Desmond was seemingly ruling out deaths from individuals with preexisting conditions.

“We’ve unfortunately had six pure, solely coronavirus deaths — six out of 3.3 million people,” Desmond said on a podcast, Armstrong & Getty Extra Large Interviews, according to San Diego Tribune. “I mean, what number are we trying to get to with those odds. I mean, it’s incredible. We want to be safe, and we can do it, but unfortunately, it’s more about control than getting the economy going again and keeping people safe.”

Public Health Officer Dr. Wilma Wooten suggested Wednesday during a press briefing that Desmond was being callous, noting that their liberal identification of COVID-19 deaths is uniform with coding nationwide.

“Their life is no less valuable than someone’s life who does not have underlying medical conditions,” Wooten said. “This is not just San Diego. This is how this is done throughout the entire nation in terms of identifying who has died of COVID-19.”…

Also note that all the anti-body tests are showing a larger infected population than previously considered. REASON.COM previously noted the Stanford study that between “48,000 and 81,000 residents of Santa Clara County, California are likely to have already been infected by the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.” Stanford University has revised the numbers to better fit the assumption (via MERCURY NEWS):

…In a revised analysis of a startling study published last month, they now estimate that 2.8% of Santa Clara residents were previously infected by the virus but didn’t know it.

That implies that the county had up to 54,000 infections — many more than the 1,000 confirmed cases in the county at the time.

“This suggests that the large majority of the population does not have antibodies and may be susceptible to the virus,” concludes the research paper, published in the online report medRxiv….

MY COMMENTS FROM MY FACEBOOK ABOUT THE ABOVE

So, Stanford settled on a number in early April… when there were 1,000 CONFIRMED cases were known in Santa Clara, there were 54,000 infected. To REALLY understand the percentages you would have to follow those 1,000 KNOWN cases from that time and compare the 55,000 cases to those deaths. (BTW, Stanford took the lower path on stats; so there could be a larger number.) Here is part of the article… but know that with the flu shot, there are more deaths by the flu than The Rona, without a “Rona shot.”

UPDATE (trying to figure out deaths per infections): Okay, let us apply the 98% survive who are known to have it and are hospitalized stat I have heard for some time. So 2% of the 1,000 is 20. 20 deaths from that early April figure of 55,000. Right? Gives you… 0.036%

UPDATES!

A friend on FACEBOOK has been a light in the war-torn field of The Rona (Wu Flu) battle of infection rates. Here are two posts of his [combined with a response to a friendly comment from one of his peeps] followed by some recent articles (links to papers will be in graphics):

Here’s a new meta-study from Stanford of all of the antibody testing that’s happened.

This puts the Wu Flu anywhere between 7x LESS deadly than the flu and 2.8x MORE deadly than the flu (making it a little worse than a bad flu season like 2018). And that’s assuming that this doesn’t follow SARS 1 and just disappear.

The data behind this is really solid, and the author is well-respected. Unlike those stupid models we were using, this is really real data.

We don’t do contact tracing, social distancing, mask-wearing, or lockdowns for the seasonal flu, and this looks like a watered down seasonal flu that got 100000000x more media attention and governors sending sick people to nursing homes to boost up the death rate.

The original post (OP) on this second strain was a graphic. I will link to the Kent County (Michigan site through it. Here is my FB description of the following: “A person named B.M. wrote on a friends Facebook wall the following regarding “contact tracing.” (The original post had to do with hiring government employees to trace citizens with Covid.)”

(See also this BRIDGE article)

  • [A reader of JP’s noted] Actually, contact tracing sounds like a legitimate work of government. Rather than quarantining the healthy, quarantine the sick and monitor those exposed to the disease.

JP responded:

Sorry in advance for the novel! Heh, I started thinking of other interesting things to add and just decided to run with it.

Contact tracing might work for illnesses that don’t spread very easily (it probably would have exterminated HIV, according to what I’ve read; I’m no expert but it seems reasonable), but for upper respiratory stuff like colds and flus (and the Wu Flu), it’s pretty much doomed, especially with up to 10% of the whole country already having the it.

The original point of the lockdowns (which don’t seem to have worked; lockdown and non-lockdown countries and states have almost identical statistics) was to slow the spread to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. It wasn’t to stop spread, since even the CDC admits that after about 1% of people are infected with a contagious disease, you can’t really close the door on it anymore. Contact tracing is a relatively invasive way of closing the door on a virus, so I don’t think it will work here**.

The data points to a much less lethal bug, though. Stanford’s meta analysis of all of the large-scale antibody testing shows an IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) between 7 times less than the seasonal flu and 2.8 times more. It’s probably in the middle, making it slightly less lethal than regular seasonal flus. And since we know it has been in the US at least since January (probably since December or earlier), the R? (Basic Reproduction Number or Rate) is also much lower than people originally thought. So it spreads like the flu and is as deadly as the flu.

The main difference seems to be the 24/7 media terrorizing of citizens, the complete ignorance most of us (that’s me, too) had in the real pneumonia/influenza deaths each year, and the downright evil policy of many Democrat governors of sending the sick to recover (while contagious) at nursing homes, boosting the deaths by up to 50%.

Sorry for the novel!! Reading every little bit about this thing has become an unfortunate hobby of mine. I’m of the mind now that the best strategy is to fight the fear instead of the virus and to get back to normal in virtually every way. If this is anything like it’s older brother SARS, it will die out in the next couple of months. But if not, keeping everyone from immunity just means extending the risk.

** I think contact tracing may -appear- to work because I think we are naturally bottoming out cases. Same, in my mind, for other measures.

One final bit: I’ve followed lots of different predictions to see who might get things most accurately to see what they did differently. This guy’s been right on (it’s been almost scary) using SARS as a comparison instead of the Spanish Flu (since this bug is SARS 2). This is a really good visual of the whole thing:

(Click to enlarge)

ALSO, a short bit from Bruce Carrol:

“If you are waiting for a “cure” for COVID-19, you’ll never leave your home again.

Even the flu vaccine (not vaccine, flu shot. There is a vaccine for the Polio, not HIV or SARS) results in 60-80,000 deaths every season.

We have to stop the fearmongering and start learning to live with a new virus in a string of new viruses that have emerged for tens of thousands of years.

Boomers and Millennials aren’t that special of a species.”

— Bruce Carroll (Co-founder of the gay Republican group GOProu, and founder of GAYPATRIOT)

TO WIT…

The SPECTATOR USA has an excellent article backing up the above conversation, entitled, “Stanford Study Suggests Coronavirus Might Not Be As Deadly As Flu: All their estimates for IFR are markedly lower than the figures thrown about a couple of months ago” (This was a SPECTATOR UK original piece –  FYI)

One of the great unknowns of the COVID-19 crisis is just how deadly the disease is. Much of the panic dates from the moment, in early March, when the World Health Organization (WHO) published a mortality rate of 3.2 percent — which turned out to be a crude ‘case fatality rate’ dividing the number of deaths by the number of recorded cases, ignoring the large number of cases which are asymptomatic or otherwise go unrecorded.

The Imperial College modeling, which has been so influential on the UK government, assumed an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.9 percent. This was used to compute the infamous prediction that 250,000 Britons would die unless the government abandoned its mitigation strategy and adopted instead a policy of suppressing the virus through lockdown. Imperial later revised its estimate of the IFR down to 0.66 percent — although the March 16 paper which predicted 250,000 deaths was not updated.

In the past few weeks, a slew of serological studies estimating the prevalence of infection in the general population has become available. This has allowed Prof John Ioannidis of Stanford University to work out the IFR in 12 different locations.

They range between 0.02 percent and 0.5 percent — although Ioannidis has corrected those raw figures to take account of demographic balance and come up with estimates between 0.02 percent and 0.4 percent. The lowest estimates came from Kobe, Japan, found to have an IFR of 0.02 percent and Oise in northern France, with an IFR of 0.04 percent. The highest were in Geneva (a raw figure of 0.5 percent) and Gangelt in Germany (0.28 percent).

The usual caveats apply: most studies to detect the prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the general population remain unpublished, and have not yet been peer-reviewed. Some are likely to be unrepresentative of the general population. The Oise study, in particular, was based on students, teachers and parents in a single high school which was known to be a hotspot on COVID-19 infection. At the other end of the table, Geneva has a relatively high age profile, which is likely to skew its death rate upwards.

But it is noticeable how all these estimates for IFR are markedly lower than the figures thrown about a couple of months ago, when it was widely asserted that COVID-19 was a whole magnitude worse than flu. Seasonal influenza is often quoted as having an IFR of 0.1 to 0.2 percent. The Stanford study suggests that COVID-19 might not, after all, be more deadly than flu — although, as Ioannidis notes, the profile is very different: seasonal flu has a higher IFR in developing countries, where vaccination is rare, while COVID-19 has a higher death rate in the developed world, thanks in part of more elderly populations.

The Stanford study, however, does not include the largest antibody study to date: that involving a randomized sample of 70,000 Spanish residents, whose preliminary results were published by the Carlos III Institute of Health two weeks ago. That suggested that five percent of the Spanish population had been infected with the virus. With 27,000 deaths in the country, that would convert to an IFR of 1.1 percent.

This backs up of course some excellent article by Daniel Horowitz:

A CLEARER PICTURE has a great post about this as well, I suggest if you like what you see you check out that blog weekly.

…For one thing, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx have both explicitly stated that anyone dying WITH the virus is counted as dying FROM it. Since 4/5 of COVID-19 infections are mild and 1/2 appear to show no symptoms at all, the official U.S. death tally is bound to include many in which it played little or no role.

The CDC has made matters much worse by insisting that doctors list COVID-19 on death certificates without a positive test confirming its presence and even absent any medical justification at all. A willingness to “assume” it was a factor is all that’s officially required. And hospitals now reap enormous financial rewards for making the assumption.

(Click To Enlarge)

Those in charge couldn’t have possibly shown less interest in determining the real number of Americans who would still be alive if not for having contracted COVID-19. It’s unlikely that ours is the only country in which the data has been turned into garbage by a perfect storm of inflating factors. As hard as it may be to accept, the odds are pretty much nil that we’ll ever know how deadly the virus we were made to spend months obsessively fearing really was.

Even on the inflated numbers we’re getting, however, it isn’t anywhere near 10 times deadlier than the flu; as Dr. Fauci claimed on March 11, while ginning up support for his novel public health strategy of extinguishing our rights and wrecking the economy. But, of course, a few weeks later, we learned that even Fauci didn’t believe a word of the lie he so effectively used to terrorize a nation of over 300 million people into suicidal obedience.

Though perhaps you haven’t heard. You see, on March 26, Dr. Fauci shared his true opinion with his peers in the pages of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine:

The overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%).

Dr. Anthony Fauci, March 26, 2020 New England Journal of Medicine

In case you’re wondering, the parenthetical remark is his, not mine. Moreover, when Sharyl Attkisson contacted the journal about the strange discrepancy between what Fauci was scaring the public with and the substantially less alarming take his learned colleagues heard, she discovered his article had been submitted “many weeks ago.”….

(READ IT ALL)