Monday, November 15, 2021

Is vaccine efficacy a statistical illusion?

Just a twitter-ish one liner:


Insight delivered on a plate. A clear explanation of the John Dee's Almanac concept. Look how the sizes of populations shift with time on a fixed death rate giving the illusion of efficacy. And also of apparent waning efficacy with time. So elegant, so neat, love it.

Peter

Addendum if it helps:

EDIT Just to clarify, there is no need for the "vaccine" to do anything, you can even assume it's a placebo injection. The effect still occurs. END EDIT

After a chat with Raphi on twitter this might make it clearer. Campaign starts at day one. No results are collected for a week 'cos that's how long it takes. No one know exactly when a given person died because mortality stats are like that and this is not a controlled study situation we're talking about.

The numbers of deaths collected a week after the campaign started are attributed to week two because that's when they are recorded. This is the source of the error.

If 15 people a day die during week one but are recorded as week two they will be put in to incorrect population sizes because the vaccinated population is rising rapidly and the unvaccinated population size is falling rapidly. A week is a long time in a vaccine roll out.

So the small number of deaths in the initially tiny vaccinated group of week one will be attributed to the significantly larger vaccinated group found in week two. Very few deaths from a very small population are now spread out over a now larger population.

The much larger number of deaths from the much bigger unvaccinated population of week one will be attributed to the now smaller unvaccinated population of week two. The population is smaller because vaccines have been given, which rapidly reduces the size of the unvaccinated population.

In the vaccinated group too small a number of deaths is spread through too large a number of people, hence a low incidence/person days. Vaccine appears to work.

In the unvaccinated too many deaths (it was a very big group in week one) are attributed to a population reduced by the number who have been vaccinated by the rollout. So a much higher figure per person days is found.

Don't start me on how this makes being unvaccinated intrinsically dangerous and how the 'rona vacc appears to protect agains all cause mortality. Just more artifact.

The graphs come out as in the linked blog post.

The need for graphing mortality curves by date of death vs date of reporting is well known from plotting peaks of waves from peaks of deaths. If a study uses date reported rather than date of occurrence, it's possibly junk. It can take months to get death numbers by date of occurrence vs reported in the real world. Some mortality data from the UK ONS will be delayed by the time needed for a coroner's inquest.

Peter

179 comments:

altavista said...

It was a science-communication issue, you see? lol

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-11-12/cdc-shifts-pandemic-goals-away-from-reaching-herd-immunity

Peter said...

Haha indeed. I guess it depends more on what you mean by "immunity" than by herd!

Peter

xgo.rogue said...

Indeed https://twitter.com/RandyDEasley/status/1456093294765776896

Peter said...

Hi xgo.rogue, having a vaccine which stops people getting infected/transmitting has top be the first step. Sadly a bit of a booboo there.

Peter

Malcolm said...

Lies, damn lies, and statistics!

Or to be more charitable, some problems are just hard.

This shows how important it is to verify with simpler data where possible, e.g. the body count: Euromomo (scroll to the bottom for z-scores by country and choose the ones you want). The first wave was clearly bad, and the second perhaps about the same in total, although much more spread out in time. Will the third one even be visible?

cavenewt said...

Malcolm beat me to it with "Lies, damn lies, and statistics!" As we have seen over many years of reading Hyperlipid, interpretation of data can be twisted into unrecognizable forms to support almost any desired conclusion. One has to wonder if this particular illusion was intentional or not. Seems to me people who are professional statistic wranglers would be aware of the dangers.

cavenewt said...

altavista, above, linked to an LA Times story headlined "CDC shifts pandemic goals away from reaching herd immunity." That article includes the sentence

"But it’s become clear that neither vaccination nor natural infection confers lasting protection,"

and the phrase "confers lasting protection" is a link to another LA Times story entitled "Study shows dramatic decline in COVID vaccine effectiveness" at https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-11-04/study-shows-dramatic-decline-in-effectiveness-of-covid-19-vaccines

I just read that entire second story and it does not anywhere refer to natural immunity; it's ONLY about vaccination. The word "infection" only appears when referring to breakthrough infections and vaccinated people.

So that statement is a very misleading implication. Not being a subscriber, I can't post an outraged comment about that bit of misdirection. I know this kind of thing is not unusual, it's just another example of groupthink assumptions accepted as fact.

Passthecream said...

"people who are professional statistic wranglers would be aware of the dangers."

A statistician's fate: drowning in a lake, the average depth of which is 1/2".

Passthecream said...

Malcolm, in general that is interesting data at Euromomo but there is something strange in the weekly graph of excess deaths -- the numbers at the end of eg 2020 are discontinuous with those at the start of 2021. This suggests there is some number wrangling going on that I don't have the patience to unravel!

Malcolm said...

Pass, are you looking at e.g. Excess Mortality, set to Weekly, All Ages? If so, I think I see what you mean. Perhaps the initial zero is the error, if we ignore that one, the last value for 2020 is reasonably close to the second data point for 2021.

Malcolm said...

Pass, also the Daily Deaths graph on https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ looks like a falling trend. That could just be a fall since last Jan's peak and maybe this Jan will be similar or worse, we can't tell at the moment. Hopefully half the population having had covid by now (wild guess) means that any future waves will be much lower and we are over the worst of this thing.

Jay said...

Interesting. I was reading that blog article yesterday, which I found via Twitter and then 'switched over' to check your blog, Peter, and snap! found you reporting on Norman Fenton's work.
Interestingly in Ireland they are trying to exploit (whether deliberately or not who knows) that kind of effect by reporting all their statistics on deaths and ICU admissions as cumulative totals from 1 April 2021 to a given date (weekly reports). This has had the effect, until recently, of making it look like unvaccinated were dominating both categories. They further 'replace' all weekly reports when the next one arrives and it is only due to various independent data analysis people on Twitter that any light is being shed on the true numbers at all!

altavista said...

We should know in 2076 lol

https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/fda-asks-federal-judge-to-grant-it?justPublished=true

cavenewt said...

Yeah, it only took the government 108 days to grant an emergency use authorization based on that evidence, yet it's going to take 55 years to Xerox everything.

Robin said...

Hi there,
I'd appreciate some analysis/thoughts on this study (https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/9/2127/htm#app1-nutrients-11-02127), which compares the effect of different fats on weight gain in mice fed diets 60% in fat. The fats studied are lard, corn, beef, hydrogenated coconut oil, linseed, olive, soybean and cocoa. Unfortunately, all the diets are 4% soybean oil by weight, which equates to approx. 6.7 % of calories for the high fat diets and 10% of calories for the control diet. I still find the results a little surprising though. Apparently mice have trouble absorbing the stearic acid in cocoa butter and it may bind to minerals in the gut causing lower bone density, which I read in this twitter thread (https://twitter.com/matthewjdalby/status/1310966867566178307).

Could it be possible that the alpha linolenic acid content of the soybean and linseed oil diets somehow makes them less obesogenic? Should we be getting all of our fat from grass-fed dairy for the 1:1 omega 6 to 3 ratio?

cavenewt said...

Robin—Tucker just put up a long post about different fats and a lot of studies, which I am slowly plowing my way through. Maybe it's helpful toward the question at the beginning of your comment. http://yelling-stop.blogspot.com/2021/11/does-linoleic-acid-induce-obesity.html

The Twitter thread you referred to is very interesting. I've peripherally looked at positions of fatty acids in triglycerides but never knew that much about it. It's rather dizzying on top of everything else. I never heard of that Tweeter before, but I see George follows him.

Passthecream said...

Cavenewt: The more I read, the more convinced I am that the human industrialised "food" chain is utterly whacko from top to bottom.

Depending on the source and conditions of growth, various fatty acids can be almost randomly positioned on their glycerol backbone in raw fats and oils (with a few modal exclusions). However I recently discovered that many processed fats are "dismembered" ie the fatty acids are ripped off the backbone then carefully reassembled with different FAs attached at the 1,2,3 position of the glycerol to give fats with more predictable or "desirable" properties. Eg an extra pufa might be attached where there originally was an sfa or a mufa, or an extra mufa attached similarly. I'm pretty sure that some of the spreadable "butters" are built this way. All of the fatty acids involved might be derived from butter but some of the waxier ones are removed and replaced with less waxy or in such a way as to give a less waxy fat overall. The leftovers would be fed to stock or used to make other food chemicals. Nothing is wasted.

The cacao solids in most chocolate are "dutched" to make them more palatable. This is a polite way of saying: treated with alkali, in other words made into soap-like substances. It makes them less bitter and more easily emulsified when the fat components are blended back in.

On the mouse versus stearic acid position I guess it's obvious that mice <> men. It's worth pointing out an interesting chemical distinction between calcium and sodium when combined with any fat by whatever pathway : the result is a soap or a grease but calcium being divalent (Ca++) as opposed to sodium being Na+, calcium binds two fatty acid molecules into a boomerang shaped calcium soap molecule but sodium only binds one to make a classic soap. Thus the calcium soap is less soap-like, less able to bind fats to water because of the stereochemistry. Calcium soaps are hardly water soluble but they do dissolve in oily non-polar solvents.

Cows versus mice: mice don't seem to be equipped to deal with them but cows can digest the calcium soaps of fatty acids in their rumen which is why intensive dairy cows are fed great quantities of dehydrated calcium soaps of linoleic acid. This works to our detriment since milk and cheese made from these cows contains a much higher level of linoleic acid. It's not just the grains in feed that lead to this.



Hmmmm, could be useful, that might save some additional processing when making those spreadable butters. I'm sure that if it's possible then some agro-industrial chemist already has it going through a reactor. These people are a long way ahead of us!

Peter said...

Hi all, I think that in 2020 all governments basically f*cked up. They have now had some time to work out how best to do the impossible, ie hide this. They do the best they can using the public health officials available but ultimately people who get to be government advisors tend to be the excrement which floats upwards, so they lack ability in all fields (other than that of rising through the civil service, see any episode of "Yes, Minister"). Also the people who want to "run" countries seem to have been revealed as intrinsically sociopathic, which you could have guessed but it's fascinating to see it displayed so publicly. Like looking in to a bucket of offal and seeing the maggot population seething.

Jason, yes the position of a given fatty acid in the glycerol backbone undoubtedly matters. See "interesterification" as an alternative to partial hydrogenation. ALA appears to be much better at uncoupling than LA. I have to agree with Matthew Dalby that position may well explain the cocoa butter vs beef fat but would need some time to think it through. I've read snippets from Matthew Dalby before, he thinks well.

cave, I need to read Tucker's opus. I suspect he, Brad and I are the most anti PUFA people currently active on t'internet (and Ray Peat?) but we fundamentally diverge on mechanisms for obesity generation. Less so on (eventual) toxicity. I think we all agree on "Just say NO". And I don't mean nitric oxide.

Peter

Peter said...

Oh! Clarification: "Like looking in to a bucket of offal and seeing the maggot population seething". The difference being that the maggots are doing something useful on a biological basis. Please don't think I'm anti maggot!

Peter

cavenewt said...

Passthecream, here's how to home-process a spreadable butter: 1. Take butter out of the fridge. 2. Let it come to room temperature. 3. Spread.

cavenewt said...

Peter—"...in 2020 all governments basically f*cked up. They have now had some time to work out how best to do the impossible, ie hide this."

You've put your finger on it. I know experts have pooh-poohed Jon Ronson's wonderful book "The Psychopath Test", but it made a big impression on me. Accuracy of numbers aside, I don't think there's any question that the percentage of sociopaths in corporate leadership and politics is much higher than the general population. (My personal theory is that the number of naturally occurring sociopaths in any given human population makes us unable to sustain living in groups of more than about 50 – a certain critical mass of sociopaths will upset whatever system of government is created.)

Yes, Minister has been in my mind a lot lately and I am grateful somebody finally mentioned it. You've inspired me to dig out my DVDs, of which I have the whole collection, for a re-watch.

It's very interesting how we've been conditioned toward polarization. I looked at all of Matthew Dalby's recent Twitter feed, observing my reaction dispassionately on running across his pro-vaccine tweets. It made me less inclined to accept his observations about triglycerides. Looking in from the outside, I was thinking 'Hm! Why? That has nothing to do with vaccines, really.'

cavenewt said...

"A Fantasy of Virus-Free Air" introduced to me a wonderful phrase: "safety worship". https://stemplet74.substack.com/p/a-fantasy-of-virus-free-air

Excellent piece, especially the way it touches on the hygiene hypothesis. For those who are interested, also look up Helminthic Therapy.

We have amazingly complex and efficient immune systems that have developed over millions of years. Yet we insist on cudgeling and browbeating our immune systems rather than working with them.

Peter said...

cave, back in the day when I accepted all Faceache friend requests I accumulated a lot of people from across the political spectrum. Some of those have gone to become absolute vaccinophiles. It's amazing to see how far an intelligent person will commit to an incorrect paradigm. Generally there appears to be some convergence between insight in to metabolism and insight in to vaccine assessment. But not always. George Henderson seems quite hopeful of the vaccine but I can't share his point of view. NZ should end up much like Israel. Israel's first vaccinated autumn wave went very badly and their second, true winter wave, is due about now. We will see. I still respect his point of view and realise he views certain issues differently from myself. I think this is helped by having been aware of his overall thinking for some years.

But yes, spill over of categorisation of a person from one field to another can be hard to avoid, especially if you don't know them very well. Opposite to confirmation bias I guess...

Peter

Peter said...

cave, we live in a sea of bugs from 6 raw fed cats, two goats and 15 chickens. I don't spend all my life (outside of work) washing my hands!!!!!!

P

Puddleg said...

Again, in the raw data NZ reports, we get daily death updates from people dying the day before, and if they died of say gunshot wounds, as has happened, or with trauma we are told this too. Also the vaccine roll out even at speed was a bit slower than that and it's relatively easy to take its history into account while interpreting the data here.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/450874/covid-19-data-visualisations-nz-in-numbers

Gyan said...

All kinds of alarming reports/pteprints circulating in dissenter sites about mRNA causing hike in all-cause mortality. There was link to Telegraph paper about 9000 excess mortality in UK a couple of days back.
Now today Swedish study linked by Dr Eades in his newsletter about 20 percent increase in mortality following vaccination.
Is it possible? Happening?
Is on-field deaths among football players/athletes really 60 times this year?

Peter said...

That’s great George. What I can’t un-see is that Israel successfully *completely* vaccinated itself out of any PCR positive test results by April 29th 2021, after having had ICUs full of the “non vaccinated” during rapid vaccine roll out in the previous mid winter. This success lasted until June 21st 2021. I am expecting NZ to similarly eliminate/reduce PCR positives during the summer of 2022 until your next autumn. I keep thinking that seasonality has finally arrived in NZ but I see today number are back at 204, a plateau but no drop yet…

Peter

Peter said...

Gyan, I have written to my son's headmaster specifically to point out that I absolutely do *not* give permission for him (14y old) to receive the 'rona vacc. But the dead footballers are certainly coincidence. In Israel there are no/minimal side effects from the vacc. Phew.

Peter

Passthecream said...

CN --- I just leave it out on the bench until about this time of year when temps go above the low 20C's but hard butter is my favourite, I slice it and use it like cheese. Also only ever buy organic butter from boutique cows.

Kevin FST said...

Don't you just love statistics. There is a strong possibility that none of the research, whether showing vaccines to be effective or useless, is really worth a fig (this would have come as no surprise to my MSc Stats tutor who prided himself on being able to destroy the stats used in any paper!). Norman Fenton explains: https://www.normanfenton.com/post/paradoxes-in-the-reporting-of-covid19-vaccine-effectiveness

cavenewt said...

Passthecream—my helpful comment was for those who feel the need for spreadable butter. If you don't eat bread or bagels, you have no need for spreadable butter. I mostly just cook with it.

Kecin FST—"Lies, damn lies, and statistics" seems more relevant now than ever. Thanks to my decade of LCHF training in unraveling (to some extent at least) the abuse of statistics, in nutritional research and with statins, etc., I have attempted to scrutinize more skeptically what's presented in the mainstream, and reading various criticisms of the interpretation. My conclusion is to throw up my hands and say Well, it will be interesting to see how it all comes out.

cavenewt said...

Oops. sorry Kevin.

Kevin FST said...

cave, I do not spread butter on breast or bagels, only on broccoli, carrots, and ... cheese, but only on hard cow's cheese (which really does need spreadable), not on sheep or goat!

Captain Sunset said...

@ Kevin/Cave, This discourse is getting... interesting.

Kevin FST said...

Captain Sunset, I've just spotted a typo in my last comment. What could I possibly have been thinking of? I use a PC, not 'smart'phone, so it wasn't predictive, although it does remind me of some things I may have got up to 50 years ago!

Passthecream said...

This is an interesting animation fwiw.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2021/nov/23/australias-covid-pandemic-in-60-seconds-victoria-and-melbourne-map-video

Notice how the cases vanish as you go west over the border from Victoria to SA? Thats about to change today. They're lowering the barricades. We will see a great deal of red dots cropping up here now.

Captain Sunset said...

@ Kevin FST... Ha, ha! You devil you!!
Anyway, a good article on Omega-3's and BPD. Could there be other co-morbidities? My go-to favourite foods are Brown Crab, Mussels (Mytilus edulis), and Pandalus borealis shrimp/prawns in the shell (can't get enough of them!), and steak, of course! On which, I seem to be doing very, very well. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/955369?uac=370826HJ&faf=1&sso=true&impID=3819292&src=mkm_ret_211123_mscpmrk_psych_bpd#vp_1

Eric said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Eric said...

Just to chime in on butter, in my experience, the texture and taste of the butter will depend on the feed and the processing. I prefer butter that is pretty light in color, is made from milk that has been allowed to go slightly sour, has an incling of cream in taste and can be spread with some effort straight out of the fridge.

Of my preferred brands in Germany, one comes from a chain of organic supermarkets and is derived from pastured cows from the Alpine region. Two other, more upmarket (in that they are not the captive supermarket brand and get some advertising) brands of Alpine organic butter are harder out of the fridge and don't have that creamy taste and texture.

My other preferred brand is not organic and comes from a local dairy farmers' association in the Northern marshlands. Given the topography of the land, one can be pretty sure that the cows are mostly pastured. The butter is even a tad creamier than my preferred organic brand, and I know several other Northern coops that make a very similar butter. Danish silver Lurpak is also very similar except it is salted.

Now, Irish butter should be much the same if pasturing in a sea climate were key, however, I keep buying Irish brands and getting disappointed (hard, brittle or yellowish and turning into a tasteless mush when warm). Similarly, butters from Normandy are all over the place, from exactly to my taste to some farm or coop butters that are brittle and have an off taste.

Yet another aside: should I worry that olive oil that does not turn fully solid in a fridge has been adultered?

Captain Sunset said...

@ Eric, Sadly, bespoke butter is a bit of a rarity in the UK, and if you can get it a bit expensive, but my youngest daughter delights in the flavour of this butter from Estate Dairy:- https://www.theestatedairy.com/new-page-1

Years ago, in my pre-Aquaculture days, I worked for a small-ish Engineering Co., in Whitchurch, Shropshire, that sadly is no more, but it got its start waaaay back when in making blue cheese vat's for Cheshire Blue cheese. Cheshire Blue actually comes from Shropshire, and so I can attest to the wonderful milk and butter from that region. I envy your range of choices!

cavenewt said...

Eric—I recently read or heard where Tucker Goodrich said that test has been debunked. It may have been a podcast. I can't find it on his blog.

On the face of it, it certainly seems to make sense.

Passthecream said...

I'd much rather talk about butter but a recent yt video from John Campbell about the Japanese situation is interesting --- Japan only 76% vaccinated 126 million pop, cases have dropped way, way down near zero and delta variant just about extinct. (?)

https://youtu.be/E1GF0H9V_1g

He discusses some possible causes. I think it shows that we still don't have much of a clue about how this all works.

Just in time for this new African variant, wooohoooo!

Passthecream said...

Btw Captain, we are well supplied in Aus. with gourmet butters including some very good biodynamic varieties. We can also get the Kerry gold and Lurpak etc types but they can't hold a candle to the local produce. Or to the New Zealand butters. I'm more concerned that some of the budget cheeses from the supermarket might be a type of high protein linoleum.

Gyan said...

Negative vaccine efficacy in UK?
https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-vaccine-surveillance-week-46

Eric said...

Captain, these aren't marketed as besopke butter. It's just that every grocery store will have between 3 and 20 different kinds of butter. I'm sure this is similar in the UK. There's organic and regular, sweet, semi-sweet and sour cream butter, salted and unsalted, local and from other regions.

The only thing that is different is that about 90% of retail butter sold in Germany is Markenbutter which would naively translate as brand butter but really means that it has received a quality mark from a local food standards and safety authority (each state runs at least one of these). Markenbutter must be made from fresh milk or cream and must not be made from whey cream or centrifruged or recombined cream. It has to pass monthly tests for physical and microbiological parameters as well as a tasting panel. I had a mate in uni who came from the Holstein region who as a student intern at such a local authority had to perform a round robin qualification on an apparatus that measured how fast a wire would cut through a block of butter at a certain temperature.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterverordnung
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter#Buttersorten

The German butter grading system is stricter than the EU regulations, similar to the French AOC system, but different in that it does not require a particular origin. Even imported butter can be certified. Austria and Switzerland have a similar system, so maybe German speaking countries do obsess a bit about butter :)

As for bespoke butter, I have tried various farm butters from the Normandie and Franche -ComptƩ regions available through French supermarkets or cheese shops and sometimes German gourmet shops and found them lacking. I suspect they use whey cream leftover from cheese making, and one needs to acquire a taste for them. That being said, there are specialty butters by big brands like Isigny which I like even more than my preferred German brands.

Eric said...

Edit: there are also some specialty butters from local coops in the Alto-Aldige region of Italy which are excellent. I buy them at a market stall that specializes in Italian and French cheese.

Eric said...

Pass, the late Wolfram Siebeck had a gourmet column in the weekly Die Zeit. I remember a piece from the 90s where he wrote that real cheese was a world apart from the rubberlike factory Ersatz produce people habitually buy in German supermarkets.

Eric said...

"Gyan: Negative vaccine efficacy in UK?
https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-vaccine-surveillance-week-46"

About infections, that could mean a lot of things, such as that we are seeing real vaccine fade, that the AZ vaccine used predominantly in the UK is causing this or the longer interval used between first and second vaccination - or that the vaccinated engage in riskier behavior. It could even be worse than the first graph shows if unvaccinated are not tested as often as unvaccinated. I am not sure who gets tested and if symptoms are required to count as infected.

In Germany, where most received a mRNA vaccine and where the interval was lowered from 12 to 4 weeks in July, we still have between 1:5 and 1:20 rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, depending on state. It is certainly skewed both ways. Vaccinated can and do dine in jam packed full restaurants which they can enter without an antigen test whereas unvaccinated can no longer enter restaurants even with a fresh PCR test in most states, so we probably have a higher chance of infection as well as a lower chance of detection in vaccinated. On the other hand, my kids (10th and 12th grade) get tested every day (pooled PCR test every day and additional antigen test on Monday morning as they don't want to take chances). 90+% are fully vaccinated, so this is picking up quite a few infections among the vaccinated that are completely without symptoms. Similarly, GPs are ordering PCR tests for headaches and sniffles now even if patient is vaccinated and just wants a certificate for a sick day. On the other hand, unvaccinated who do not go to school, work in person (rather than home office), want to use public transport or shop for more than groceries and other daily needs probably can go months without the need for even an antigen test, so all these sort of statistic should be taken with a grain of salt.

The second graph about death rates shows just that, vaccines still prevent death.

I don't know what the sinister secret is that Eugyppius says the third graph unveils. People will still die from other causes, and if 90% in the 70+ bracket are vaccinated, the absolute number of deaths in the vaccinated will be higher. One would have to compare to pre-Covid, and then one could still argue that Covid culled the frail so death rates for non-Covid causes should be lower now. Very hard to prove anything here.

Eric said...

More stupidity from Germany:
A new federal health law was passed last week and came into effect this Wednesday. It sets the framework and minimum standards that the states and counties use to set their local rules.

It requires that all medical personal and visitors (but not patients) to hospitals, care homes and doctor's offices must have an antigen test not older than 24 h. Antigen test kits (that were about € 2.50 for a set of 5 in summer) are running scarce now, and visitors require it to be certified by an official test center. Doctors may certify for themselves and their staff, but they have a hard time finding test kits and they are almost all triple vaxed because they were past the 6 month interval. The states have vowed not to enforce this rule for medical personel until the law has been amended. Pediatriacians argue that parents accompanying their kids are not visitors but the law is not clear about this. Pure stupidity, as this will keep parents from seeing a doctor with their kids!

Workplaces and public transport are now 3G, so you have to be recovered, vaccinated or have a certified antigen test not older than 24 h. This will not prevent unvaccinated from catching Covid from an untested vaccinated person, which is what you'd want to do when hospitals are at capacity and beyond.

In our state, as of this week, venues like cinema, theater, fairs, discotheques are 2G+, so you need to be recovered or vaccinated and you need a certified antigen test. There is growing anecdotal evidence that antigen tests have a false negative rate in the 10s of % for vaccinated (as opposed to low single digits for unvaccinated). But what this deluded approach misses is that you really want vaccinated to be exposed to live virus because it enhances immunity and will likely not result in additional load to the hospitals. There are no unvaccinated around, so what better opportunity to get on with real immunity?

I'd argue for strict testing (maybe double vaccinated + PCR) for clubbing, as your chance of inhaling a large dose and hence getting seriously ill there are increased, but certainly not in a movie theater.

Eric said...

The only reason I am posting this (from today's Spiegel) is that so far most experts have assumed that mortality rates post Covid will be somewhat lower than usual because the vulnerable have died. This gentleman seems to imply we will see a higher mortality for years to come because of persistingly poor health in survivors:

Turkey expects drastically higher mortality rate due to covid late effects
11.32 a.m.: Turkey's Health Minister Fahrettin Koca expects the mortality rate from late complications of Corona disease to increase significantly in the coming years. In the next three years, he expects an increase of three to four times in Turkey, Koca said. That is why it is especially important to get vaccinated, he said.

The Turkish statistical office has not yet published any figures on last year's death rate - and has received criticism for this, especially from the political opposition. Politicians of the pro-Kurdish HDP, for example, suspect that this is an attempt to cover up the actual extent of the Corona pandemic in Turkey.



According to official figures, about 73,000 people have died in Turkey so far in connection with Covid-19. By comparison, more than 100,000 deaths have been recorded in Germany so far. Both countries have similar populations.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

karl said...

This is no longer a partisan issue - only the authoritarian left - not liberals..

What I've been talking about -
https://freeworldnews.tv/watch?id=619daea08153a665791f3fb6

- I think over half a million people died due to denying early treatment - blocking repurposed drugs - this is genocidal.

https://odysee.com/@PANDA:3b/trustednewsinitiative:d?r=AmQ8Y7oC6S5SHw1f3TcoruFEPz2eNyhu

- As far as taking something to block the hazards of the vaccine - it is pure speculation - they would need to do real safety studies - and that is NOT going to happen with Fauci holding the purse strings. My best estimate is now that the vaccine no longer works to prevent spread - there is no need to take it - I would do early treatment instead or if I was at high risk I would do the prevention protocols at FLCCC.

Why? I think the 41x multiplier is the best number we have to see the risk - https://openvaers.com/covid-data

No way it makes sense anymore..

Cooked data:
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/peter-doshi-u-s-senator-ron-johnson-holds-panel-in-dc-on-covid-19-vaccine-mandates-and-injuries_LWTWpHPVdy2Ye6U.html​

Increase in excess deaths due to heart attacks :
https://odysee.com/@HacKerSonS:2/Heart-Attack-Data-Withheld:b


This insanity - fueled by the "worth the risk"Fauci team - has killed millions now - worse than Vietnam.

Captain Sunset said...

@ Karl, I concur. It's all something of a total crock of shite. But what to do? Filthy lucre does seem to run this shitty (side) show today. The corridor creepers do seem destined to be winning out, and if nothing else by force of (...cheap political) habit alone. Essentially, they, and their ilk, have no shame. None. It's a thing. I do get a bit angry, but more so, I get very frustrated as folk seem to want to walk, shoulder-to-shoulder, toward oblivion, and clap along loudly as they do so. I saw a post recently... 'Vaxx Macht Frei'. Kinda grim after all these years, but a bit on the button nevertheless. As a 50's & 60's BFPO forces brat I visited many of the hellholes of the Third Reich on 'educational' trips, and it did leave a lasting impression on me, but it's now all coming back to a place very close to us all. Edward Bernays should be churning in his grave.

cavenewt said...

I'm still an idealist because I search for a way to encourage people to use some critical thinking skills. This seems to mean avoiding anything contentious like side effects, ideology, or suspect motivations.

In the US, I would point out that the CDC acknowledges vaccinated people are getting infected; vaccinated people are just as infectious as unvaccinated; and there is evidence that vaccination can prevent disease severity. To a person who has bought into mainstream groupthink, referencing the CDC confers a degree of perceived credibility. Then pose this question (and this is where hopefully the critical thinking can engage): exactly what harm are the unvaccinated doing to anyone except themselves? And the further question: how can this justify vaccine mandates?

Of course, often than boosters are brought up. After that things get messier.

cavenewt said...

"high protein linoleum." Perfect description. Here in the US, almost all commonly available foods are some form of linoleum!

Here, unless you have access to a friend with a farm, about the best you can get in terms of butter is Kerrygold. I really envy you Europeans/Australians/NZers (is "kiwi" acceptable?) your happy cows.

I'm lucky enough to live in a rural area and have regular access to raw goat milk. From which it is difficult if not impossible to make butter, AFAIK.

Gyan said...

Eric,
If Germany is 90% vaccinated and vaccination does reduce disease severity and mortality, then why is Germany going to all this trouble -- daily testing, mandates and what not.

Passthecream said...

Cavenewt, if you have an old (or new?) Separator you can set them to run a bit faster and separate out the goat cream. They do scream a bit (the motors not the goats). It doesn't separate out at cow milk settings. I used to help out at a local goat dairy where he cracked the technique and sold goat cream which could be turned into other cream derivatives. They used to make a really tasty goat version of camembert, and ice cream. I think the difficulty stems from the fact that the micelles are smaller in goat's milk so the centrifuge effect needs to be increased. A larger diameter separator would work also I guess but the force increases as angular velocity squared as opposed to simply by diameter.

Gyan said...

Are there restrictions on unvaccinated in UK?
If not, then disparity in covid rates must have different causes than in Germany.

Passthecream said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Eric said...

Gyan, Germany in not 90% vaccinated, that number was was for my kids' classes. According to our world in data, 68.1% of the total population are double vaccinated, compared to 68.8% for the UK. In surveys, the numbers keep turning out about 5% higher. It seems that due to data privacy issues and a number of different paths to get vaccinated (vaccination centers, mobile vaccination teams, hospitals, private practices, company doctors), the RKI has not been able to count all vaccinations, whereas the UK excels at having one national register that probably can keep track. So vaccination rates in Germany might even be higher than in the UK. Our state is actually a few percent below the national average.

The infection rates are remarkably similar: 63 per 100,000 and day in Germany, 65 in the UK according to NYT corona map, Spiegel is much the same.

Average deaths per day according to Spiegel are 260 in Germany and 130 for UK. Mulitply with 84/68 to adjust for population and you get 161. This might reflect a better job at getting the elderly vaccinated or more natural immunity as the UK has been running high incidence rates throughout the summer when numbers were extremely low in Germany.

It is more interesting to compare Germany to Denmark (76.6% according to our world in data though I seem to remember a far higher percentage) or Portugal (86.6%). These countries were doing very well until recently but now:
Denmark 69 infections per 100,000 and day according to NYT (higher than UK and Germany) and
Portugal 26, so still lower but increasing faster than either country.

Deaths in Portugal are 13 * 84/10.3 = 103 after adjustment for Germany's size. This presumably reflects the higher vaccination rate and the fact that the increase was very recent and deaths tend to occur after four weeks. Still, surprisingly high if both methods of counting deaths are equivalent (which might not be the case). Denmark is at 8 * 84/5.8 =
116. The huge push in incidence in Denmark was 3-4 weeks ago, in terms of two week growth, their rate is very similar to Germany's. One would have to look at vaccination rates in the higher age brackets to tell whether higher vaccination translates straight into fewer deaths. It might between Denmark in Germany but doesn't look to be the case for Portugal.

Peter said...

Pass, cmd D. Goats came home from the billie last w/e. Hoping to be making cream and cheese next spring!

Eric and Gyan, to me the difference between the UK and Germany is wholly explained by the spring of 2020. Germany got lucky, weather-wise. The UK had virus friendly weather in February which was combined with the active infection of long stay residential care homes with virus positive people being discharged, untested, from hospitals in to said care homes. There was this guy called Matt Hancock, remember him? We know it happened because he said it didn't, and his lips moved. There are only so many people in any population able to be killed by the 'rona. Matt killed most of ours. Now we have a pseudo epidemic of testing on top of an endemic respiratory virus. There will be some rise of deaths through the winter because it's winter but people can only die once, so we'll never find enough to get up in to 1000s per day.

Currently world leaders say things which are grammatically correct but don't make any sense. "Mandatory vaccines are our only way out of this pandemic..." would make sense if the vaccine stopped infection and/or stopped transmission. The fact it even blunts disease requires faith in Pfizer which I lack. My bad.

Peter

Gyan said...

By UKHSA report, prevalence of S antibody is 98% in UK and prevalence of N antibody is 20%
Which gives 78 percent of adults in uk as vaccinated (at least once). I don't see why we must only count only double vaccinated as vaccinated

Gyan said...

Given that many having N antibodies are also vaccinated, the fraction of UK adults that are vaccinated would be higher than 78 percent.

Justin said...

I just finished breeding my Nigerian does. Use the buck that came from the best dairy line out of the three I keep. Nigerian are supposed to have higher bf content, so I'm excited to start stealing some next spring. Just need to find someone with separater.

Now I'm getting all of the ewes bred. I have a bottle raised ewe that the local university gave me and I'm finally getting around to breeding her. Hoping she has a single so I can steal some from her as she should be the easiest milk. Anyone here ever had sheep's milk? Should be interesting to compare the two.

Jay said...

Hi Justin, Not had sheep's milk but have had sheep's yogurt. A small farm in Ireland was selling it via my local (upmarket) supermarket under the name of "Velvet Cloud". I tried it then it disappeared. It has that distinctive 'lamb fat' taste, which luckily I don't dislike, but I guess many people do (including the entire rest of my family). Am exploring goat and sheep dairy because bovine triggers inflammatory arthritis now.

cavenewt said...

Passthecream, thank you so much for the cream separator tip. That's what I get for believing the local goat owners!

Eric said...

Jay, do you also get the idea that someone is stalking you to see what you fancy and then have it delisted? :)

Jay said...

Eric, yes, sometimes!
My late mother-in-law was a great letter writer to supermarkets on that very topic.
Even more strikingly, recently in Ireland an entire yogurt factory burned down thus removing my access to the only readily available goat yogurt! (You can look it up, about a month ago, Glenisk - producer of organic milk and yogurt suffered a real disaster when their yogurt factory was destroyed by fire - it produced regular (cows milk) yogurt too and makes things very difficult for organic producers until they get it rebuilt.)

Justin said...

Jay, I remember seeing the sheep milk derived yogurt back in the day when I used to shop at the high end grocery stores. Kick myself for not buying it. I may try and see what I can dig up. My wife has been hounding me to start making kefir again and would love to try and make some with sheep's milk if I'm successful at milking this girl. We are in the process of clearing more property so we can run cows too. I always wanted to keep miniature jerseys. Would be the perfect size for a family. I

Justin said...

Pass, I just found an elecrem separator for goats milk near me for $425 obo on Marketplace. Never been used and still in box. I might just have to splurge. Lol

Justin said...

Couple of articles related to the omicron variant. My wife has an office in SA and they recruit a large number of employees/engineers from there. Should be interesting to see how her company is impacted due to this debacle.

https://m.timesofindia.com/world/rest-of-world/south-african-medical-association-says-omicron-variant-causes-mild-disease/articleshow/87949404.cms

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/26/south-africa-b11529-covid-variant-vaccination

Justin said...

This is my lamb ram crop from this year. Have my appointment for the 17th of December. He's going to hang them for a week and a half. I think I need to get another freezer. Lol

https://youtu.be/xhZ7QRMfy50

Eric said...

Regarding the Times of India article, if true, this is exactly what we've been waiting for: a rather harmless variant that crowds the earlier variants out. Isn't this what viruses do when they become endemic?

Sisifo said...

Seems easy enough, doesn't it?

When my nutritionist FB was still active (I'm permanently banned for the sin of linking Australian of the Year Dr. James Muecke opinions about carbs and diabetes) one of the most frequent questions was where to buy burgers made with only mince and no fillers.

My answer was "make them, just grab a handful of mince and press it down on the pan", but invariably the reply was "too difficult" or "I don't have the time".

Sad times.

Peter said...

Eric, wow, milder than delta. Cooool. Let's shut down the world. Again. Oh and face nappies, yes, that's good. Lockdown before or after Christmas? Hmmmm. Then vacc passes for a vaccine which doesn't stop infection, transmission or probably even severe disease. Might stop a sniffle for 8 weeks in healthy individuals. No effect on all cause mortality. Yes please! Thanks Boris.

Has Wayne the COVID marshal already taken over from Bojo but his abilities are too awesome/terrifying for this to be made public yet?

Sisifo, hmmmm. I like my burgers well squished so I do actually spend 30-60 seconds flattening/balling/flattening before putting in the pan. I also waste a few seconds washing my hands before turning on the cooker. Definitely too much trouble for many........ 500g 20% fat beef mince = two burgers.

Peter

Peter said...

Here we go Gyan:

"Leading cardiologist says cluster of collapses in footballers likely to be 'coincidence' | Daily Mail Online"

Daily Mail, has to be true!!!!!!!!!

Peter

Eric said...

I couldn't help but notice that the reported Omicron symptoms are myalgia and fatigue - much like the vaccine. So if it proves to be mild in elderly or frail folks, that's nature showing us how do do a vaccine right.

cavenewt said...

Eric—

Uh. Um. Huh?

Sisifo said...

I'm highly skeptical of official figures. After all, they come from the same institutions that say men can menstruate, omicron will kill us all and saturated fats are bad.

And cow farts will melt the poles, let's not forget the cow farts.

Sisifo said...

Even the supermarket's home brands in Australia are still excellent, I knew a few managers of one of the biggest cheese factories in the country and I wouldn't touch their "cheese" with a barge pole, but butter is great.

The only concern is that I'm not sure if they remove the lactoferrin from the milk before making butter, they certainly do before making cheese, and just in one factory, the income from lactoferrin is over $1 million per week.

Sisifo said...

Sheep milk is excellent for cheese making, not only the resulting cheese is very tasty, but the yield is fantastic, much higher that cow's or goat's.

And then you haven't had ricotta until you try sheep's milk ricotta...

Eric said...

Cave: if (and that's a big if) we now have a virus that is even more contagious but essentially harmless, that is like a natural super-vaccine. It will crowds out previous variants like Delta by spreading faster and conveying some immunity to these, too. Kind of like a vaccine, only curtesy of nature.

On a side note, just saw that the official incidence rate for our county is 666.6 now. That will set some people off.

Passthecream said...

I have heard that this O variety has no new mutations, just all of the previous mutations rolled into one package. I'm sure that isn't 100% accurate however recently I have been wondering, for zoonotic viruses which jump from one species to another, are they inherently more unstable?

I'd like to know if this O variant also has the Japanese error correcting enzyme flaw? Or can we agitate for some loss-of-function research to make sure that this is engineered to happen ... ...

Eric said...

Do you have a link on Japanese enzyme flaw?

Not sure what you mean by loss of function research. Something like releasing gene-manipulated/sterile mosquitoes to reduce population of harmful mosquitoes? In theory, in might be a good idea to release a gene manipulated Corona virus but this is really a can of worms.

Passthecream said...

Loss of function research is my sarcastically framed reversal of "gain of function", now so popular with conspiracy theorists everywhere. However an attenuated poliovirus based vaccine could genuinely be viewed as the product of loss of function research. Ditto the mosquitoes you mention.

Here's hoping the virus does it's own function lossing --- that's how it will all eventually die away.

The repair enzyme mutation was mentioned on a recent youtube talk by Dr. John Campbell. I think I linked it earlier but if not, it is easy to find.

Justin said...

I would love to hear some opinions on deploying antipyretics, especially in the early stages of infection. I've never been a fan.

cavenewt said...

Justin: since the whole point of a fever is to try to cook the bad bugs, I've always felt that pharmaceuticalizing a fever is counterproductive, as long as the fever doesn't reach dangerous levels. I did observe one instance of a friend's child approaching this dangerous level and they put him in a tub of cool water. He didn't like it but it brought the fever down. Of course that was in the barbaric 80s.

Ariadne R said...

Just wanted to post a link to this video, since it seems it is being almost completely ignored. (Only ~1600 views, according to the counter on the page.) The NIH allowed Matthew Memoli, a top scientist who has major concerns about vaccine mandates, to give a presentation in a roundtable session. (His is the first, followed by another NIH person giving the same old "safe and effective" propaganda presentation, and then a law professor discussing the legal questions.)

Unfortunately, Memoli's talk was only about 12-13 minutes and there was no debate nor time to dig deeper. The issues he raises will be quite familiar to readers of this blog--but I think what is useful about this is that it's an example of a very senior person in the NIH disagreeing with the mainstream position. He's too high up for the media, etc., to dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist antivaxxer or whatever.

Probably the mainstream folks want this to just disappear; probably they're hoping it won't get much attention and everyone will move on. And so far that looks to be the case :-(

https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=44165

cavenewt said...

Ariadne R, thank you for that link! The most important point about all this is that it's an official National Institute of Health government agency event, and one of their highly credentialed scientists is actually speaking *against* mandates. A little glimmer of silver lining in the censorship context.

There are three speakers. They each get about 15 minutes. The first guy is actually arguing *against* mandates using almost exactly the same arguments I have distilled for myself. The second speaker is deploying statistics in a completely disingenuous and misleading manner (note that she only uses relative risk rather than absolute risk, which greatly exaggerates risk to layman's eyes). The third speaker makes some gawdawful arguments at the beginning – 'we already have imperfect vaccines mandated therefore it's OK to do it with this one' — and then gets into legal and ethical stuff that I didn't feel like mentally engaging with. There is no discussion after that to speak of.

cavenewt said...

Today's Bad Cat post about Germany versus Sweden https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/germany-vs-sweden precipitated some thing I've been thinking about that's relevant to Hyperlipidity.

IIRC, Sweden was famously, among low carb/high fat circles, the first country to stop officially demonizing saturated fat. To us lipophiles, it means that Swedes are less metabolically damaged. The metabolically damaged (overweight, obese, diabetic, heart disease – it's all on the same spectrum) are those who suffer more severe cases of Covid.

There is that big spike of excess Swedish deaths at the beginning of the pandemic. However, the previous year Sweden had a lower than average overall all-cause mortality, so 2020 was doing some catch-up; and I think in any country, the virus picked up the elderly and the sick who would have died soon in any case. So maybe that initial spike is not as significant as it might seem at first.

Anyway, in the arguments about whether non-pharmaceutical interventions are effective or not, I wonder how much a nation's overall metabolic health might be muddying the waters, pretty much overlooked by almost everyone.

Eric said...

Not sure that you can chalk it up to eating habits. Haven't been to Sweden in 15 years, but what I remember is that almost everything is sweetened, even meat dishes, and that they do like gooey sweet cakes made of emulgated vegetable oils and lots of marcipan. Might also be interesting to look at Italy, which used to have very healthy eating habits but now has high obesity rates which is quite visible on beaches etc. Almost everything contains sunflower oil instead of olive oil or palm oil these days. Sunflower oil pesto? Come on!

I was going to say this paragraph from bad cat was the key: "where we DO see variance is that sweden had a lot more covid in early 2020. thus, one might expect cohort depletion and greater acquired immunity from exposure and recovery." until I realized that last winter's peak was the same between Sweden and Germany and that Austria had a huge peak in the fall of 2020 that easily caught up with Sweden's spring 2020 peak and look where Austria is now.

Then look at Belgium and the Netherlands. The Netherlands are big on fried foods (fried in vegetable oil, of course) and artificial sweeteners. Even sodas have had half of their sugar replaced by sweeteners as mandated by law there. Anyway, they have been running high infection rates through most of 2021 (2-20x the rates of Germany), likely owed to early relaxation of mask and gathering rules, and their fall peak has been 2x worse so far in terms of infections, while vaccinations are virtually the same as in Germany, yet their fatalities remain surprisingly low.

Take Portugal, with pretty healthy eating (meat, fish, olive oil), much less vegetable oil laden products in supermarkets than anywhere else in Europe that I am aware of. They had terrible waves throughout but have then mounted the most effective vaccination campeign anywhere in Europe. Infections were very low until lately but have been creeping up in recent weeks and are now at 50% of Germany's rates. Their death rate is also at about 50% of Germany, which really should not be the case given that deaths usually occur about 4 weeks after infection an their rates have only recently gone up and that vaccinations should prevent deaths and their vaccination rate is about 20 percentage points higher.

So when you do pairwise comparisons of two countries, there will be correlations that make sense (historical infections, NPIs, vaccination rates, eating habits) but you can always find a third country that trashes this. The numbers have a frustrating way of wiggling out of any hypothesis you can come up with.

LeenaS said...

Nice idea that I've been wishing to share, while looking at our dear western neighbour. However, the scandinavian countries should probably be compared to one another, instead of the more densely populated European countries. This is even more interesting, since all the four countries in question (Sweden, Norway, Denmark and us Finns) have had somewhat different strategies, all of which all are now melted into one very similar strategy in all: vaccinations with only limited, local restrictions.

With all my high respect to the founder of LCHF I cannot see any success in Swedish way to doing it... exept for now. After the vaccinations all the four are finally following same low mortality trend, in spite of very, very different mortality rates during the first 14 covid months.

Also, we have our eastern and Balticum meighbors to look at, and situations there are very, very worrying...

Cheers,
LeenaS

Captain Sunset said...

I’m 70, unjabbed, and due to my youngest unjabbed daughter (still breast-feeding an 8-month-old), getting Covid, and confirmed positive on 27th Nov, I went along and got PCR tested on 28th. It came up negative 18-hours later. However, I developed an itchy throat 24 hours later, and then an annoying dry cough. The cough and throat issue died down 24/36 hours later, but I then got terrible back pain (myalgia). And, so much so, that I went back for another PCR on 3rd Dec. It came back positive just over 18 hours later. My daughter's Covid seems to be classic Delta, whereas my Covid appears very much more in line with the Omicron variant (...I’m in London, UK), but I was never informed which it is - despite asking to be informed. I take 10,000 iu Vit D3 in winter (5,000 iu in summer, on occasion), and daily winter liposomal Vit C. I also do a twice per day Neti pot type protocol with some salt, sodium carbonate, H2O2, and some DMSO (which I have done so for about 2 years, and mostly for rhinitis/sinusitis). I just snort it up my nose. Doing this has had a hugely beneficial effect on my health, as historically I more often was a mouth breather. Sleeping is bliss. I cannot recommend it enough. Anyway, despite feeling a little bit washed out, and having the $%^&*”! nagging backache, it is now 5th Dec. and I’m back to 100% me. I play golf at least 3 times per week and so get plenty of exercise and of course Vit D3 in the summer. I had thought that Vit D3 had fully protected me from Covid for the last 18 months, but seemingly no. However, I do believe that it has greatly helped alleviate my Covid symptoms. I have had far worse colds than this spell of Covid. I’ve had flu at least twice in my life. I have been LCHF for the last 2 ½ years. My BP, LDL/HDL, Trigs etc., etc. are all thankfully brilliant.

cavenewt said...

Just wanted to point out that I was wondering if national dietary habits could simply be a confounder, not a cause.

Also, I don't consider case rates at all because of the testing. Hospitalization and death are more relevant.

A common report among low-carbers is less susceptibility to respiratory infections in general. I'd be curious about how the Scandinavian countries compared to others in terms of respiratory infection frequency pre-Covid.

Ariadne R said...

Cave:
I keep hoping that if enough highly credentialed people speak up to offer divergent opinions, maybe it will embolden some others who have kept their mouths shut due to fear of reprisal. Maybe it will nudge things in a saner direction. ... And in the mean time, Memoli is another expert whom I can reference and be like, "Yo, I'm not spouting conspiracy theories over here--look, there's an NIH researcher raising these very concerns!"

Captain Sunset:
Thank you for sharing your covid experience! I hope things continue to look good for you and that your remaining symptoms clear up soon. I really do appreciate your sharing, since I am very interested in gathering anecdotes from low-carbers on how covid affected them. (I'm pretty sure I still haven't been infected, so I'm in suspense as to how it will turn out for me. I suspect I've been around people who had the ro, though not in close/prolonged contact, and it seems as though exposures often do not lead to infection--even of the asymptomatic variety.)

Eric said...

Cave, do you have any numbers what kind of a percentage in Sweden have gone low carb or at least lowish carb and doing their damn best to avoid vegetable oils? I suspect it'll be in single digits and might not make much of a difference on a population level.

As hospitalizations, these are difficult to compare. Some countries have health or short term nursing centers that may not count as hospitals but do much of the same thing as a "regular" hospital ward elsewhere. I am also not sure ICU classification and admission criteria are the same everywhere. Germany has a crazy number of ICU beds (more than 30,000), even if you only look at those that can be staffed considering things like burn-out and the fact that Covid patients need more nursing (25,000 in December, as per DIVI).
https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/panorama/intensivbetten-reduzierung-gruende100.html

We are approching 5,000 Covid patients in ICU for a population of 86 million, and the system is aching, with patients being transferred within Germany in military planes. Other countries have much fewer ICU units, have a similar or larger percentage of Covid patients in ICU yet have similar or lower fatality rates. So either the German population is exceptionally vulnerable, hospitals suck or things are not being counted comparably.

Same thing for fatality rates. As I have pointed out before, the Netherlands have been running much higher infection rates with, from anecdotal evidence, less testing and their fatality rate has been lower than Germany's for much of this year.

Comparing the Scandinavian countries, we have a daily average of 4 deaths in Sweden, 7 each in Finland and Norway, 10 in Denmark, with Sweden having nearly double the population of any of the other three. Do these numbers even make sense? There is a certain mortality sans Covid, and so many people are testing positive and some are going to die of other causes within 6 weeks but will be counted as Covid deaths in most countries. So if you want to compare fatality rates, you have to know how much testing is going on, whether hospitals do standard testing on admission and what the criteria are for being counted as a Covid fatality.

It seems trying to compare statistics is a fool's errand.

Sisifo said...

Eric, regarding ICU beds and movement of patients, just a few days ago the Italian media reported that Dutch patients were transferred to Germany because a lack of beds, but German patients (from Bavaria) were transferred to Italy for the same reason, and in Italy there weren't enough beds for cancer patients because all the sick unvaccinated.

All in the span of two days of news.

Colour me skeptical about any figure or statistics released by governments and media.

Peter said...

Justin, good point. I avoid antipyretics if I get a sniffle. They have a role if the pyrexia looks to be life threatening.

Captain Sunset, thanks for the input, hope you are doing well.

Re fatalities. I think there are a certain number of people in a given population who cannot survive COVID. In the UK we lost them early plus many in the vaccination roll-out wave. We're at endemic levels now despite massive testing of the young and healthy.

Germany missed out seasonally in spring 2020 and still has a lot of people unable to survive COVID. Sad but true. Given the nature of the vaccines all cause mortality in all countries should end up similar, how long it takes will depend on the effectiveness of the theatre we put in place. I really do think lockdowns slow the spread a little, extending the agony and the risk of a triple vaccinated care worker contracting COVID from a triple vaccinated social contact and giving it, fatally, to a triple vaccinated care home resident.

Critical to protecting the elderly, as much as is practical, are care workers who have recovered from field infection. These are gold dust. It just need 40% of them in a care home to protect the inmates. That could actually reduce the overall mortality rate.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.04.442699v1

Peter


cavenewt said...

Eric, I have no idea of the numbers of Swedish low-carbers. I just remember that Sweden was maybe the first country to officially stop demonizing saturated fat. Now you might not think that might lead to more people being "low carb", but that wasn't really my point. I just wondered if the incidence of respiratory infections in a population, which may or may not be a result of eating more saturated fat (Incidentally a tendency of low-carbers), might have some effect on the Covid resilience of that population. And therefore may act as a confounder when comparing statistics between countries.

Of course as you point out variations in criteria makes comparisons difficult if not fruitless. In my earlier post I meant "EXCESS all cause mortality" which is not really subject to much nuance. Dead is dead.

"It seems trying to compare statistics is a fool's errand."
"Colour me skeptical about any figure or statistics released by governments and media."

I agree wholeheartedly with both of these comments.

Eric said...

Sisifo, the part about patient being transferred is true. It's all about local cooperation of health services that also happens in normal times. Along the borders of France or the Netherlands and Germany, there are many places where you have a sparsely populated county on one side and a bustling university hospital on the other. Guess where the ambulance with the accident victim goes or a patient requiring dialysis. Or hospitals needing to shift patients will consider competent hospitals on either side of the border.

Especially in the Alpine region, it is perfectly normal for rescue helicopters and hospitals to cooperate, especially in the skiing season. Same thing for other services. Kleinwalsertal is an Austrian valley that is accessible by land only from Germany. The German postal service does their mail delivery.

Last year, patients from Bergamo were transferred as far north-east as Saxonia. This year, Dutch hospitals are transferring patients to the North Rhine region, and Bavaria, Saxonia and Thuringia are transferring to northern Germany. And yes, one patient each from the Munich region was transferred to Bolzano and Merano. Munich - Bolzano is a 45 minute helicopter flight whereas DĆ¼sseldorf or Hamburg are out of range and require a jet.

Captain Sunset said...

@ Peter & Adriane R & Eric: I’m good thanks, however, the back pain was a real sod, but I managed to get it under control just with 2 x 500 mg paracetamol, and 2 x 300 mg dispersible aspirin 3/4 x day. Of my family here in London, there is me, 70 (m), 2 daughters & their partners, and 4 grandkids 8 (m), 5 (m), 8-months (m), and 4-months (f). We believe Covid got going with the 8-month old (probably picked up from the 5-year-old's school - it’s rife!). In all, 3-adults got Covid and 3-kids. We are all coming out of the end of it now, OK. I picked it up from the 8-month old (...we are best mates!) as I was called out very, very early one morning to help my youngest daughter as her partner was filming in Wales, and she had a terrible migraine relapse (...15 years!) and was in a bit of a bad way. I stay in a complex of 200 apartments where all folk are over 65, and so I have to be very, very careful health-wise, but we have been quite lucky with Covid, however as Peter mentioned to Eric in the UK we lost a lot of folk early on in the pandemic and, vaccination of the frail did push those figures. I run top-rated short-term Service Apartments / Holiday Lets in York, and we are now getting many cancellations due to Covid. Back to golf on Monday!

Peter said...

Glad you're doing well Captain Sunset. Covid regs are a bugger if you're trying to earn a living!

Peter

Passthecream said...

A snip from today's Grauniad --- whatthehell is going on in the UK. It seems totally bonkers, more than ever before.

third jabs will be opened up to those in their 30s from Monday in England. Those who had their second jab three months ago or more will be eligible.

" a warning from leading scientists that failure to impose tougher Covid restrictions to limit the spread of the Omicrom variant could lead to a further 25,000 to 75,000 deaths over the next five months. The researchers, based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, predicted that a massive wave of infections was likely to sweep the nation in January. At best, this could lead to about 175,000 hospital admissions and 24,700 deaths by the end of April next year."

Sounds like tinfoil hat territory.

Every report I've heard coming from both official and anecdotal South African sourcess says that the big O variant is relatively mild and the Captain's story above seems to confirm. Also likely that everyone one will catch it if exposed no matter what their existing status. If it does really turn out to share some characteristics with a common cold coronavirus, well, even with full face-nappy/nose-sweat protocol and all the other trimmings here in my part of Aus, we have had no alpha,beta,gamma,delta or lambda until recently but colds always spread around like wildfire. Omicron will be unstoppable.


Working our way through the Greek alphabet, how do you actually spell omicron? Is it omicron-mu-iota-kappa-rho-omicron-nu? Or does omicron start with omega? Curious minds. Alpha to omega would be a good metaphoric outcome.

Peter said...

It's interesting here. There is quite high compliance with the shopping mask mandate but there doesn't appear to be any enforcement. I not masking this time around and supermarket security leave me completely alone. In B and Q I was offered a mask but just politely said "no thank you" and was left alone. A large swarth of people know it's bollocks, realise SAGE are invariably wrong and look to Bojo for an example of appropriate behaviour (shockingly).

Rumour is that full lockdown is planned for Jan 5th, delayed due to the Bojo party leaks. They'd better hurry up or omicron will be gone by then, judging from the South Africa reports. Compliance on that will be interesting.

Every time you put a mask on someone in Downing Street or Whitehall sniggers at you.

Peter

cavenewt said...

"a warning from leading scientists that failure to impose tougher Covid restrictions to limit the spread of the Omicrom variant could lead to a further 25,000 to 75,000 deaths over the next five months. The researchers, based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, predicted that a massive wave of infections was likely to sweep the nation in January." Because it works so well and all.

Speaking of news, or more specifically lack thereof, here's a vintage article about news suppression at the CDC, which has been going on since AIDS. Read at your own risk — this came from a footnote in Robert F Kennedy Jr's new Fauci book. http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/beeis.htm

Peter said...

I think I've read that the group at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is a splinter of Ferguson's Sim City group at Imperial College. As enthusiastic followers of Ferguson they like to be out by multiple Fergusons rather than the single (massive) Ferguson that Ferguson is always out by.

Peter

Captain Sunset said...

SARS2 & Covid-19: Dr Peter McCullough https://unityprojectonline.com/news/dr-peter-a-mccullough-on-the-joe-rogan-experience/ Nearly 3 hours worth and every minute of it on the button.

Eric said...

Use your translator of choice if my summary is not sufficient:

https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/uebersterblichkeit-im-november-sind-20-prozent-mehr-menschen-gestorben-a-e9496f15-2d5d-4c7e-9100-53acd99d476b

20% excess mortality for all of Germany, no assignment of causes such as Covid, flu, delayed surgery.

However, those states with the lowest vaccination rate and highest nominal incidence also have the highest excess mortality (40%). Still does not tell us whether this is real Covid deaths or because the hospitals are straining.

The state with the highest vaccination rate and lowest incidence rate (Bremen) also happens to be he only one without excess mortality.

cavenewt said...

Eric—so now I'm trying to figure out how to reconcile your statement with Peter's from another thread:

"All cause mortality for the unmitigated pandemic year of 2020 looks better than for the vaccinated year of 2021. How many lives were actually saved? I would laugh but it's not funny."

You're looking at separate German states, with no reference to timeframe, and I assume Peter is referring to globally; and, now that I look at it, Peter doesn't specifically say *excess* mortality. Maybe that's the difference. Either that or Germany is having a really really bad time!

Eric said...

Cave, while I haven't bothered to locate the quote, so I don't know if Peter was speaking about the UK or Europe (however comprised).

I don't really see a contradiction, mortality at least in Germany is higher this year.

It is true that Germany had lower than average mortality through most of 2020, by luck of being hit with a delay and having time to lock up, the hospital system not getting overwhelmed, fewer traffic fatalities, not having any kind of a flu wave that spring (but having had a bad flu wave the previous year). This held true until the fall of 2020 when the brakes were put on too late and in a half-hearted way, leading to a slow burn epidemic well into May of 2021, recovery in summer and a nasty fall owing to Delta and somewhat lower vaccination rates among the elderly than the UK.

Here's a Deepl translation of some of the pertinent paragraphs of that article (I'm still in awe of how good auto translations have become, saving me tedious work):

In November 2021, there were 92,295 deaths in Germany. This value is 20 percent above the mean value, the so-called median, from the years 2017 to 2020. In absolute figures, this means 15,612 more deaths. In October, excess mortality was still at about 9 percent. This is the result of a projection by the Federal Statistical Office.
...
It is also possible that the pandemic is having a further effect: because hospitals and intensive care units are being stretched to the limit in some cases, scheduled operations are currently being postponed in many places in Germany and preventive medical checkups are being suspended. This, too, could have an impact on the mortality rate, it was said. However, the contribution of individual effects cannot currently be quantified in concrete terms.

...

The largest deviation was observed in Thuringia: a deviation of plus 43 percent. Saxony followed in second place with a 37 percent increase. Third place went to Bavaria, where 30 percent more people died.

The deaths reported by the RKI explained about half of the additional deaths in the three states mentioned.
[those would be the official Covid death count by the German equivalent of the CDC, meaning either Covid deaths are undercounted or deaths for other causes such as delayed cancer surgery or insufficient ICU care for accidents begin to pick up]

Only in Bremen - the state with the highest vaccination rate in Germany - were the death rates in line with previous years, according to the report. "The findings on excess mortality are thus clearest in the states where the incidence of infection was also highest in the preceding weeks," the statisticians reported.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Malcolm said...

Interesting graph of vaccinations vs cases in the Grauniad:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2021/dec/17/vaccine-rollout-data-by-country-shows-who-has-vaccinated-faster-and-why-exposing-the-global-covid-19-divide

Ariadne R said...

As it turns out, I didn’t have much longer to wait to get immunity to covid! I tested positive last week. Guess I won’t be needing to go bar-hopping in North Dakota after all … though it would have made a great story.

It was so mild that it took me a while to even realize I had it, which wasn’t ideal; e.g., I went to work the day before testing positive. Oops. Certainly would not have done that had I known. —Such a rude virus, refusing to defer to our human enterprises!

Anyway, here’s a bit about myself, so that the curious may speculate on how my diet influenced the course of my illness: I am 37 years old and have no comorbidities nor any other serious health conditions. I’ve been following a HFLC, low-PUFA diet for nearly nine years. Back in 2008, I discovered Hyperlipid, and Gary Taubes, and others, and ended up adopting "the Peter diet" (as it stood at that time). I’ve been a long-time lurker on the blog, but I’d never commented until recently. Regarding covid, I suspect that being long-term low-PUFA protected me from any of the inflammatory overreactions that the virus triggers in many people.

Day 1: First symptom was a slight scratchiness in my throat. Because I was being hypervigilant, I immediately took a lateral flow test. It was negative—definitely negative, despite me swabbing my nostrils very thoroughly and then shining bright lights on the test card. So I assumed since I didn’t have anything that seemed like covid symptoms that it was just a little cold, sinus drainage, something like that. Those tests are supposed to be fairly good, and I figured the false negatives would be almost entirely in asymptomatic cases—surely if I had any sort of symptom at all, the test would be able to detect covid, if I had it … or so I thought.

Day 2: Throat still scratchy. Thought nothing of it. That night: Low-grade fever & body aches; temp not high enough to cause chills, though.

Day 3: Not scheduled to work, so I got up late and lay around watching videos on my laptop. In the afternoon, I was like, “Hmm, this is odd. I do seem to have gotten kinda sick here, and that’s unusual for me.” Still no telltale covid symptoms, so I still thought it was just some random bug. But I took a second lateral flow test, just out of an abundance of caution, expecting it to be negative again. It wasn’t. I had covid after all! By evening, however, the fever and achiness were gone, and I was already feeling a bit better. That night: Nasal irritation; up to this point, it hadn’t felt like there was much if anything going on in my nose.

Day 4: Felt quite a bit better than the day before, but sometime after breakfast, suddenly lost most of my sense of smell—not completely gone but greatly diminished. Inflamed feeling in nose, throat, and bronchial tubes started going away; replaced by excess mucus production.

[continued in next comment; sorry this got a bit long]

Ariadne R said...


[continued from previous comment]

I’m pretty sure that by day 4, I had just about cleared the infection. I got a PCR test done on this day in order to have an official record, and it was of course positive, but as we know, that doesn’t necessarily mean the virus bits it detected were viable.

A few days later, I still have a bit of excess mucus production in my airways. It’s been making me cough some (whereas I hardly coughed at all while the infection was active), but is gradually clearing up. Sense of smell started returning right away; almost back to normal now.

My understanding is that when one is immunologically naĆÆve to a virus, it takes the adaptive immune system 4-6 days to learn how to produce antibodies. Assuming I had 1-2 days before the sore throat started in which I was utterly pre-symptomatic, then by the time the fever started, I was already at day 4-5 of infection and antibody production was just about underway. That would be consistent with the fever lasting <24 hours. It seems my innate immune system did a great job keeping the virus in check until adaptive immunity kicked in.

I’d made sure to get sun exposure this summer and started taking vit D when the colder months arrived. Added zinc a few weeks ago. I had acquired a lactoferrin supplement, which I cracked open once I tested positive—but by that point, the viral phase was already almost over, so I doubt it had a chance to do much. For symptom relief and to help me sleep better, I took a grand total of 7 baby-aspirin (81 mg), 3 decongestant pills, and 1 Mucinex (expectorant) … all in all, I’m afraid Big Pharma didn’t get to cash in on me.

In summary: Boy, am I ever glad I didn’t take the vax.

Thank you, Peter! Once again, information you’ve shared has helped me to live my best life :)

Captain Sunset said...

@ Airadne R. Wow! Thanks for sharing! Your Covid progression was much the same as mine, but I guess at 70 for me it dragged on a bit more. The only BIG diff was my continuous back pain (hypersensitive skin, fascia, muscle, and some skeletal aches), and then a wee bit of nausea toward the end (...any protein tasted like a mix of liquorice and petrol. Uugh!). I've had shingles 3 times (waist, right leg, and left arm) spanning 20 years (an over-training issue!), and I was a bit bothered it had come back, but I've only read of Covid-shingles due to Vaxx reactions. I had thought I had Omicron, but am now pretty sure it was Delta. It would have been nice if I had gotten hold of some Ivermectin early-doors. Onwards and upwards! Take care

cavenewt said...

Ariadne R—shoot, and I was making plans to go in mid-January, when the North Dakota weather is best.

;)

LA_Bob said...

"It was so mild that it took me a while to even realize I had it, which wasn’t ideal; e.g., I went to work the day before testing positive. Oops."

This is one reason why it spreads so fast in addition to its replicative virtuosity.

cavenewt, you needn't trouble yourself with North Dakota. Omicron has you in its sights as we "speak".

Cue Carole King: "Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall / Omicron is comin' for all..."

Ariadne R said...

Captain Sunset:
You know, at first I thought I must've had delta (probability-wise), but now there are suddenly reports that omicron is dominant in much of the US. Wild, how fast that happened. So now I wonder if I had omicron instead. Dunno.
I'm glad my tastebuds didn't go "off" ... that doesn't sound like any fun.

Cave:
I think now my January plan is to go to the protest in Washington, the "Defeat the Mandates" one. It looks like it'll be a major event, so I want to get out and show solidarity. Weather should be rather milder than a Dakota winter, I'm guessing.

Malcolm said...

To add to the Guardian graph not showing much link between vaccinations and case rates in different countries (to me anyway), there's this thread on reddit looking at different areas in the UK:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUK/comments/rm2zhf/vaccine_uptake_versus_case_rate_by_msoa/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Malcolm said...

I grabbed some data similar to that used in the reddit thread mentioned above, and tried creating some boxplots, see https://imgur.com/a/W2SMgGr
The case rates are from MSOA data, which is 400,000 different local areas within the UK. This data is grouped by the uptake of 2nd doses in that area (but I used larger areas (only 347) for this*, I don't think this is available for the msoa level). 2nd dose uptake starts at 53.7% and groups are labelled with the highest value in the group, so group 1 is 53.7-58.8, then 58.9-61.8, etc.

* maybe using only 347 ltla areas is a weakness? tough - will look at it if/when I update this

Eric said...

I believe there was an offhand comment, likely by Peter, here a couple of weeks ago about repeat vaccinations (boosters, 2nd boosters) leading to immune response fatigue. I just can't seem to find it again. Would any of you know where to find it or similar references?

Thanks

Peter said...

Eric, yes, it would likely have been me. I never kept the reference but from random memory it was simply noting that the spike in cases seen after dose 1 of Pfi$er was not replicated on dose 2 but was clear on dose 3. It's not surprising. I would also add that basic kiddie level immunology from the 1970's would suggest that a booster would probably work in a few hours if 6 month after the primary course (for real life functional vaccines). The two week delay after Pfi$er 3rd dose to "work" would just be to hide the immunosuppression.

Peter

Eric said...

Interesting. Why would you not have immunosuppression right after the second dose but after the third? And shortly thereafter, sport both antibody count and neutralization activity after the third dose at levels not seen after the second dose.

And yes, it is quick:
https://www.morgenpost.de/vermischtes/article233785883/booster-impfung-wirkung-schutz-corona.html
The Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), which is responsible for the licensing and control of vaccines in Germany, told our editorial board, "Based on current knowledge, booster vaccination elicits a memory response that achieves comparable protection to basic immunization after five to seven days."

There was an odd comment here or at Malcolm Kendrick's by someone who wrote he had a low lymphocite count after the second dose. Of course, that is n=1, and we cannot even be sure of that, for there are precious few who would get their lymphocite count measured after vaccination.

Peter said...

Eric, I don't really know. My assumption is that the immuno suppression is consumptive, ie the immune system sees a "catastrophe" in the deltoid muscle after the vaccine and there is a marked over-reaction leaving the lymphocyte population depleted. At the second dose 4 weeks later this deficit has been corrected or over corrected and there is no lymphopaenia. Plus there will be marked antibodies present which might "mop up" the deltoid muscle spike protein without needing to deplete lymphocytes. By the third dose the system is back to background levels and a consumptive deficiency can re-happen. It matters a lot because people dying of COVID contracted as a direct result of the vaccine's first or third dose will be classified as unvaccinated or un-boosted if you use a 14 day post-jab delay before people are labelled vaccinated. Infection rate increases to about 50% over background rate.

Of course for omicron everything is different.

Peter

cavenewt said...

Eric and Peter, re 1st & 3rd doses vs 2nd dose.

"When Israel rolled out boosters in August, they also saw spikes in infections and deaths. It is the same phenomenon we observed after dose 1. Only the second dose does not enhance infections, presumably because it is administered in the protective shadow of the first one..." https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/booster-doses-are-extremely-dangerous

"In exchange for these injuries, our novel pharmaceutical products reduce the severity of symptoms and the risk of severe outcome from Corona...but they do not have substantial effects on all-cause mortality. What is more, the vaccines cannot reduce transmission. On the contrary: They appear to suppress immune function for a few weeks after the first (and third) doses, kicking transmission upwards. This is one of their most obvious, robustly demonstrated effects – studiously ignored by the entire respectable establishment." https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/sars-cov-2-loves-the-vaccines

Peter said...

That would be the place...

Peter

Eric said...

Peter, that makes perfect sense, and is a lot less to worry about compared to the immune system simply failing to react to repeat stimuli.

I wonder if it is possible to get some more out of the data. Germany used six weeks between the first and second dose of Comirnaty into July and then changed to three weeks. I seem to remember the UK stretched the interval even more initially. So there should have been an increase in infections right after the second dose for those who had the longer intervals. I believe the propaganda said the opposite, but the study was kind of fishy.

Cave, thanks, I'll read up on those. I still take everything from Eugiyppius with a lump of rock salt.

Passthecream said...

Interesting times where I live, where we have hit 1000 cases a day from a standing start of zero in approx one month with a doubling time of 2 to 3 days, predominantly of the big O variety. In time honoured tradition of trying very hard to do more of the things which actually do not work, our politicians are still pushing vaccination via mandates and have dropped the booster time to 3 or 4 weeks. Everyone knows that vaccination has little preventive power against Omicron but what the heck, let's drop the vax availability age down to 5 years anyway. Sickening.


Those who are already double vaxxed will likely have some protection against any delta exposure and with any luck Omicron will have swamped everything and everyone and the whole CV show gotten back out of here before they can do much more damage.

That is capital O Optimism on my part however, there's always the potential for Pollies to do unexpectedly large amounts of damage, snatch defeat from jaws of victory etc.

Passthecream said...

Booster, 3 to 4 months, and mandatory for health workers, teachers etc

Peter said...

Pass, twitter "data" from what I consider reliable sources suggest there is marked dose response in the ability to get infected related positively to the number of vaccine doses received. This to me is ADE.

It just happens to have occurred with a minimally dangerous strain. Hard to say how many of the unvaccinated ever get infected because many of us, myself included, have never, ever taken a covid test. Antibody test, yes, once not related to any clinical signs. PCR or LFT no.

Clearly there is a sub population of the world who might well have a fatal outcome from any of a number of trivial (to most) viral infections. If you have ANY respiratory virus you could kill one of these people. If you are symptomatic for anything. It might make *you* feel better if you killed them with something other than SARS-CoV-2, but they would still be dead.

The answer seems to be: Party-on on NYE but don't visit granny in a care home if you have a streaming cold.

and

JUST.STOP.TESTING.

Peter

Eric said...

As for testing, here you suddenly need a LFT for going to a restaurant (I can see the sense in that) or museum or library (I don't see any sense there) if your second dose was more than three months ago and you haven't had your booster. Shops other than food/drugs/fuel/gardening have been for the twice vaccinated only since November. So you had a huge untested crowd in bookstores prior to Xmas but you need to be tested to visit a near empty museum. Oh well.

Peter, care to share links to those tweets?

According to PEI, they keep looking for ADE but don't see it:
https://www.pei.de/SharedDocs/FAQs/DE/coronavirus/sicherheit-wirksamkeit-impfstoff/23-coronavirus-impfstoff-covid-19-ade-problem.html;jsessionid=891B5A2661586F59D38024C1AC27D788.intranet222

Are infection-amplifying antibodies (ADEs) a problem with COVID-19 vaccines?
To date, there is no evidence of the presence of ADE-induced infection amplification in animal models of SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 recovered individuals, or SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals. Scientists, including those in the clinical field, continue to closely monitor SARS-CoV-2 infections in vaccinated and recovered individuals. From the beginning of COVID-19 vaccine development, the issue of ADE development had been under intense scrutiny because of evidence of ADE development during preclinical development of vaccines against other beta-coronaviruses - SARS-CoV-1 and MERS. There has been no evidence of ADE in COVID-19 vaccines licensed in Europe during either preclinical development, clinical trials, or post-licensure use.

Updated: 11/03/2021

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

cavenewt said...

Speaking of ADE...

"The bad news is that the changes in LYQDVNC (starting with Beta) appear to be related to disease enhancement - specifically, antibody dependent disease enhancement, from Beta to Delta, this motif is appears to biochemically allow easier opening of the spike protein, and changes the biochemistry of the attraction of the spike to the ACE2 receptor (all findings due to leviathan efforts of a French team led by Jacques Fantini).

"The good news is that the academic field of molecular evolutionary virology is all over this - they are not likely to forget their own studies..."

"Will Omicron Save Us from Vaccine Induced ADE?" (by an evolutionary biologist) https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/will-omicron-save-us-from-vaccine

Peter said...

Eric, I follow these on twitter. I no longer download the cited papers or the graphs. People like Joel Smalley are data analysts who can access and graph the individual excel spreadsheets of the NHS, which are freely available but incomprehensible to most. I rate them more than the Grauniad and they have been pretty consistently right all the way through. federicolois is another data scientist who makes predictions which can be verified from subsequent data with uncanny accuracy. Gompertz curves rule.

@jengleruk
@profnfenton
@ClareCraigPath
@mdccclxx (Joel Smalley)
@VPrasadMDMPH
@carlheneghan
@DrJBhattacharya
@MartinKulldorff
@federicolois


You might also enjoy

@CovidMarshall

I do. Might not translate in to German.

Re ADE, that’s my opinion. You just have to look at the numbers infected vs vaccine status. It’s also known as negative vaccine efficacy, which is unarguable. I couldn’t give a monkey’s what the p$cientists say (as always).



cave, nice to hear it. ADE is written right across the face of omicron, I’m surprised anyone is still thinking about OAS. There is a perfectly good broad antigenic response to omicron which is sterilising for delta. My guess there was some degree of ADE with delta which will be part of the vaccine problems but it is so clear cut with omicron that all I can say is that we have been very, very lucky that omicron in the unvaccinated is so mild that ADE in proportion to vaccine doses still gives just a mild head cold after three doses of ADE induction. It comes back to your comment about models. The models of ADE in feline coronavirus were set up to show lethality in a small number of experimental animals. Biology in the human population is far more heterogeneous. ADE may have increased the delta fatality rate a little but w/o detailed pulmonary post mortems no one is going to prove that. As I said, I think we have been very lucky with omicron. But perhaps that’s how all pandemics end, just delayed this time by Pfi$er and perhaps a little by the lockdowns etc.

Peter

cavenewt said...

"ADE may have increased the delta fatality rate a little but w/o detailed pulmonary post mortems no one is going to prove that." I was talking to someone just today about lack of postmortems. I think they stopped doing them around mid 2020, if not earlier. It's easy to feel suspicious about some of the motivations, although I'm sure staff shortages also factor in.

"But perhaps that’s how all pandemics end", [they just fade away]. I posted an article in the last week or two about how pandemics start as a biological thing, but the end of a pandemic is more of a social construct. To put it in literary terms, it'll be like the end of HG Wells' War Of The Worlds, which I always found very anti-climactic.

Meanwhile, there's this factoid. "As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK" by an official government agency, no less. They are essentially blaming the response on the WHO. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid

cavenewt said...

Peter, thanks to your mention of @CovidMarshall, today I learned about Poe's Law.

Peter said...

cave, off topic but try this one for Poe's Law!

@AnnLesbyPhD

Peter

Eric said...

Peter, thanks for those handles. Still chewing my way through cave's links.

Yeah, Covidmarshall was fun, a little like MontyPython but without the sneer.

Regarding ADE or OAS in Omicron, let me try to grasp this.

- We see negative efficiency and some selection for Omicron over Delta for double vaxed.

- Efficiency turns positive again for triple vaxed but among breakthroughs, we see an even stronger selection for Omicron.

- If we (naively) assume only one kind of spike antibody, ADE would mean even easier entry hance more negative efficiency for triple vax which is not the case. OAS would mean wrong antibodies produced which are marginally efficient but that might explain positive efficiency combined with stronger selection for Omicron.

- I don't think assuming different kinds of antibodies changes the story. What am I missing?

Eric said...

Does it necessaril< have to be ADE and/or OAS? If Omicron had (been) mutated to evade immune mechanims favored by vaccination, that might explain all of above observations, wouldn't it?

Eric said...

I think I was on the wrong track above. If Omicron is optimized for immune escape that would explain why we find a higher percentage of Omicron in the fully vaxed or boostered, but it does not explain the negative efficiency.

Peter said...

Hi Eric,

Right on time

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v1

I’ve just read the abstract and this is the core:

“Comparing households infected with the Omicron to Delta VOC, we found an 1.17 (95\%-CI: 0.99-1.38) times higher SAR for unvaccinated, 2.61 times (95\%-CI: 2.34-2.90) higher for fully vaccinated and 3.66 (95\%-CI: 2.65-5.05) times higher for booster-vaccinated individuals, demonstrating strong evidence of immune evasiveness of the Omicron VOC.”

This conclusion:

“Our findings confirm that the rapid spread of the Omicron VOC primarily can be ascribed to the immune evasiveness rather than an inherent increase in the basic transmissibility.”

is, as you can see, total bollocks:

Immune evasiveness implies that the immune response provided by any number of vaccine doses can be “side stepped” by omicron. If this was true the Pfi$er antibodies would do nothing (not that they ever did much) and so the infection rate in Purebloods, twice-spiked and multiple spiked should be absolutely the same. But there is no evidence of the infection rates bing the same. There is mildly enhanced transmissibility to the unvaccinated (omicron is a little more transmissible perhaps), increased transmission to the "merely" vaccinated and even more transmission to the triple vaccinated.

This is ENHANCEMENT of transmission, not evasion of antibodies/cell mediated immunity. We know full well that one of the many mechanisms of ADE (more correctly IDE, immune disease enhancement, it can be via CMI) is for non neutralising antibodies to actually facilitate ingress of the virus in to cells. More boosters -> more ingress -> earlier replication -> dominant strain -> fast.

We are bloody lucky that we didn’t have the Pfi$er-jab when the Wuhan strain was dominant. Omicron is a “cold of the vaccinated”. ADE on the Wuhan strain would not have been pleasant. For the vaccinated anyway.

So: Should we now be quarantining the triple vaccinated? Mandatory “health” camps for them? Perhaps at Nuremberg.

Personally I think civil rights actually matter and there should be absolutely no discrimination what so ever against the vaccinated. I hope it pans out that way.

Peter

Robin said...

I don't think it does show enhancement of transmission for the vaccinated compared to unvaccinated. Maybe you missed this bit "We found an increased transmission for unvaccinated individuals, and a reduced transmission for booster-vaccinated individuals, compared to fully vaccinated individuals".
What it does appear to show us that efficacy of the vaccines is much higher against Delta than it is against Omicron at preventing transmission. But maybe I'm misinterpreting it.

Peter said...

Thank you Robin, apologies Eric. I've been through enough of the results to see that I have clearly misread the meaning of the abstract. I still don't really understand exactly what they are saying in the section I got wrong.

I'll leave the comment up to embarrass myself and maybe make me be a little more circumspect in future.

Peter

cavenewt said...

Dunno if this helps, but it's the researcher's summary thread on the study results.
https://twitter.com/LyngseF/status/1308123179039289344

cavenewt said...

We can have academic quibbles about enhancement versus immune escape or whatever, but there's really no question that vaccination isn't doing a whole hell of a lot for anybody. Unless you buy into quarterly boosters or something. I figure if people want to get vaccinated, fine, but there's no good argument at all for mandates or for demonization of the unvaccinated. *Relative risk* of death (2x! 14x!) might make it look very scary, but in the actual numbers it's less than a 10th of a percent, whether you're vaccinated or not. And that was before Omicron.

Captain Sunset said...

@All, Confounders seem to be the rule with Covid. Nothing is as it seems. It's all pretty much a BIG, BIG rabbit hole (...a Badger's den?), and THEY desperately want you to go down into it. It fully suits their game... Chaos reigns. In all reality, THEY know but nothing of what to do, and are watching to get ahead of the game with HMG dosh. THEY just make it up as they go along. THEY are but High Priests of the absurd. Covid, with its unparalleled DNA 'jump' is a wild card writ large. Whatever 'error' you've got, it just plays upon it.

Eric said...

Robin, Peter, this is a pivotal point. Are the (double, tripe) vaccinated more susceptible than the unvaccinated or even the immonologically naive?

I have followed some of the paths outlined by Cave and Peter and the answer that some had wrangled fromt he published data seemed to be a resounding yes. The Norwegian study seems to be a clear no. We will probably have to wait for the dust to settle.

As an aside, while it may be possible to get hold of unvaccinated as a reference group, it gets a lot harder to find anyone who has not been in contact with the virus and prove it.

Eric said...

Edit: meant to write Danish households. Have now obtained the pdf and will digest it in due time

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v1.full.pdf

cavenewt said...

Taking a step back from thrashing around in the statistical bushes, here's a historical overview of some previous vaccines and how they have fared against viral evolution (I believe the author is an evolutionarily biologist of some kind). If nothing else, it serves as a cautionary tale about being hasty. It's always seemed to me a really bad idea for a vaccine to target only one epitope, i.e. putting all your eggs in one (mutable) basket. Also, the contractual obligation about the mumps vaccine was telling.

Also seems to do a good job of explaining concepts like ADE, OAS, etc. to humble civilians like myself.

https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-lifecycle-lead-to-vaccine

For example:

'“Transmission efficacy” is the ability of a vaccine to prevent a new infection leading to disease. This is a function of the level of infection expected in a vaccinated person (bacteremia for bacteria; viremia for viruses). When reading vaccine studies and reports (press releases) it’s important to know the actual definition of efficacy being used. Sometimes companies will initially report on prevention of transmission; then, as real-world studies are conducted, the focus will shift to prevention of death; then to prevention of hospitalization; then to prevention of serious symptoms. That’s when asymptomatic transmission can creep in.

'In the end-stage analyses, they may move to using “antibody production” (ideally neutralizing, but read carefully all reports), all the while the public is reading “efficacy” or “effectiveness” as one and the same. They are not. “Efficacy” is an estimate of the ability of a vaccine to do its job (whatever outcome measure is used) in an ideal population; that is, a sample group that is free of pre-existing infection or immunity, one free of comorbid conditions (for the disease), and, often unreported, one free from risk factors for serious adverse events.

'With a perfect antigen match, on an idealized population, Transmission Efficacy can look very high. Yet while that is not expected to translate to real-world high effectiveness, long-term large randomized trials including everyone to which the vaccine will be offered are rarely conducted. The incorrect generalization of real-world performance characteristics of a vaccine (in terms of safety and effectiveness) from ideal conditions known to lead to false high efficacy estimates is one of the gravest examples of translational failure seen in biomedical research, and it occurs on a routine basis in vaccine research.'

Peter said...

Yep

Peter

LA_Bob said...

Hi, cave,

The author of that very interesting piece you linked (James F Lyons-Weiler) has an interesting Wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lyons-Weiler

"He has made numerous false and misleading claims about COVID-19 and vaccines." Oh, dear! And he apparently had the temerity, in Feb of 2020, to claim Sars-CoV-2 was made in a laboratory. Tsk tsk.

Not quite ready to plunk down money for his substack, but he seems qualified to me.

Eric said...

Half way through Cave's link which so far was very informative. However, stumbled over this:

The advent of a so-called “miraculous” mRNA vaccine was touted as having the advantage of being upgradeable - an important attribute given that mRNA viruses evolve faster than DNA viruses and bacteria.

mRNA virus? Typo?

Eric said...

Bob, Cave,

I found the vaccine effectiveness article sane and reasonable but have not verified every statement and link.

Lyons-Weller also has other articles out that raise a red flag:
https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/pcr-proven-an-unmitigated-disaster

There he summarizes an Italian article that contains a lot of speculative musings and conjecture in a way that presents it as authoriative facts. I encourage everyone to actually read the Italian article and follow the links.

Seems to me that Lyons-Weller does exactly what he accuses "vaccine activists" of: resorting to transparent propaganda which leads to an erosion of trust.

Justin said...

Eric, probably a typo. Most likely forgot to leave off the m.

cavenewt said...

Justin and Eric re "mRNA virus". A very slight typo, he meant RNA virus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_virus

That blogger in particular, among so many others, could really benefit from some copy editing…(says this confessed former copy editor who notices every missplaced comma and abused apostrophe).

Eric said...

This study was cited in a regular newspaper article (Frankfurter Rundschau) as saying it takes 12 days for the booster to become effective. After looking at Fig. 2, I'd say that the booster is effective right away, it just takes 12 days to get to a factor of 10 or greater (mind you, this study is from summer, so it would be mainly Delta).

The effectiveness is slightly greater than 2 for all of the first week. There is no sign of immunosuppression (which I find surprising, to say the least), and effectiveness is greater on day 1 than on days 2 - 7. What is going on here? Some tricky definition of the baseline? Or is this a real effect, that the immune system is placed on high alert but not yet bogged down by mass produced spikes?

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114255

The same newspaper article linked to this study which was quoted as saying it takes only 7 days for the booster to become effective. I did a quick perusal but found nothing similar to Fig. 2 of the other study:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2821%2902249-2/fulltext

Captain Sunset said...

Peter, Probably old hat to you, but to me, and maybe some of your readers, a very interesting (Linked) short article on the possible origins of viruses... including some info on viral retrotransposons. Along with exosomes, retrotransposons offer up a fascinating phenomenon. Could such cellular interaction be akin to the symbiotic arrangement of a bacterium into mitochondria prokaryotic cells back in the day? Perhaps Nick Lane has done some work on this somewhere?


https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-origins-of-viruses-14398218/

A family Covid update: My youngest daughter and her young son have both tested positive (3rd Jan.) for Omicron (?) 5 weeks after having had Covid Delta. Her older 5-year-old son and partner seem to be clear. Further, my eldest daughter's wee girl (4 months old) also has Covid (Omicron?). None of them seems to be badly affected. Her mum remains clear. Seemingly, 15% of UK infections are reinfections. Here, where I stay (200 apartments of folk over 65), 20 have Covid. This of 5 days ago. It's probably doubled that number by now. No hospitalizations as yet, and so I assume that it too is Omicron.

Peter said...

Hi Captain Sunset,

I keep my most outrageous comments for twitter, not here. I accept that some elderly will die of omicron, probably the category of person who might have died of rhinovirus pneumonia after meeting someone with a rhinovirus sniffle. Beyond that omicron looks like a vaccine. Limiting it's spread, other than to the seriously compromised, is a big mistake. I never test and neither do the rest of the family unless unavoidable. Partly because mega testing will always produce mega positives and I don't want to fuel another lockdown and partly my children and their children will be paying for these tests for decades. They're not free, they have to be paid for eventually. You can't print "money", fake printed money just devalues future money, our children's... Think of it as Boris robbing their bank accounts.

Peter

Captain Sunset said...

Hi Peter, I don't Twit. Too dangerous! I'm already on my second FB warning, and I need to keep some contact with folk all over the world on something of a common platform. As regards testing, it's been kinda unavoidable. With some of the infirm within the larger family, their age's, professions, ethnicity (AZ blood clots!), and some serious cancer issues we have had to be a bit careful over the hol's. Anyway, I agree. In all, it is/has been a total cluster f&%k, and terrible for future generations, but I do think (...hope) a shake-down is coming. Also, I agree with you on the evolution of the vaccine toward protection. It's Nature's way eh?

Peter said...

Oh, and re viruses: I think Nick Lane talks about jumping genes in one of his books. This makes viruses very, very primordial. The impression I get is that chunks of RNA were routinely passed around between the protocells which were destined to be LUCA. This was probably an essential process to maintain viability of enough protocells in the original hydrothermal system. I guess this all changed when life found the ability to store RNA information as DNA and eventually, much later, managed to replicate that DNA. That makes the concept of RNA viruses more primordial than DNA viruses. Interesting.

I keep meaning to re read his books. There's a new one coming out in a few months.

Peter

Peter said...

Yes, horses for courses. Facebook is for sharing pictures of cats with family, mostly. Twitter I don't care about but currently I'm too small there to matter, I think, and there's always GETTR if the algorithm notices I've overstepped the mark.

Peter

Eric said...

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-study-finds-fourth-dose-covid-19-vaccine-boosts-antibodies-five-fold-pm-2022-01-04/

Fourth dose of Biontech increases antibodies that had waned four months after third dose 5x. I saw a news snippet that quoted the study leader saying that this was nice but not good enough since she suspected levels would drop back quickly. The Reuters piece does not contain this quote.

They are starting a new study this week where they use Moderna as a fourth dose after three doses of Biontech.

Is this immune response fatigue? I am amazed at the online comments in some German magazines like Der Spiegel. There are now quite a number of posters who say they are ready for a fourth, fifth and sixth dose, every couple of months if need be. Seems the Covid Marshall was only slightly exaggerating. Who's gonna educate people that repeating the same jab over and over can only end in tears?

Personally, I think the third one is debatable but can possibly be justified, but then it becomes pointless. I got mine a few days ago, reasoning was upcoming business travel which would be nearly impossible without and an upcoming family reunion with very elderly participants. I do hope the third dose will not keep me from picking up some Omicron which I consider the better booster.

Passthecream said...

Talk of ancient viruses reminds me of a close family member's work on DHBV, duck hepatitis b virus, a member of the extensive hepadnovirus family which has been used as a model for antivirals and etc against human hep B. I think some of the work on adefovir was done using this model. DHBV is fairly common in duck populations around the globe, more so in commercially raised birds but it doesn't have the same drastic effects on ducks as the human version does on humans which probably means it is more recently endemic in humans. The bird version specifically is thought to have evolved from dinosaur hep. B versions in the cretaceous era and more recent work suggests that the dinosaur version in turn descended from earlier types approx 200 million years ago in lizard and turtle populations. That is nowhere near as far back as the time of LUCA but certainly is antediluvian. Ante-several different diluvia.









Passthecream said...

A useful encyclopaedia but expensive.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780123744104/encyclopedia-of-virology



The abstracts are free.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123744104004143

Captain Sunset said...

@Passthecream Ouch! Now that is and expensive book!! Anyway, for those that may be more deeply interested in such a book. Abebooks has one in a good used condition going for £28.

cavenewt said...

This article was so long, I started out just skimming it, but rapidly became fascinated. I'd love to hear what other Hyperlipiders think.

The False God of Central Planning: The Mysterious Reappearance of the Flu, Natural vs Vaccine-Induced Immunity, the Inability of the Vaccines to Control the Virus, and Other Extraordinary Lessons About the End of the Pandemic

https://www.juliusruechel.com/2022/01/the-false-god-of-central-planning.html

Some main points:

• The return of the flu can help us understand what's going on with the Covid pandemic

• As with other seasonal respiratory viruses, natural immunity is not sterilizing but does reduce severity

• Vaccination doesn't appear to have much of an effect

• Lockdowns prevented widespread infection but were counterproductive — they're actually causing some countries to incur big immunological debts which will inevitably have to be paid

• This analysis really helps make sense of the otherwise mystifying patterns when comparing places like Sweden, Germany, South Africa, Brazil, and India.

• The mortality comparison between Canada (high mortality) and Kenya (low) in context of the comorbidities HIV and obesity are especially interesting. He draws the conclusion that vitamin D in equatorial Kenya, differences in social isolation of the elderly, and healthcare systems may be more significant factors

• The author makes some categorical statements, such as that the pandemic is over in Sweden; we should know in a few months if this holds up

• Enough graphs to satisfy Eric ;)

Eric said...

Cave, thanks, sound like an evening's worth of reading.

Meanwhile, NYT has run an article that reflects my thoughts. Clearly not a licence to keep boosting every couple of months:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/06/health/covid-vaccines-boosters.html?smid=url-share

Passthecream said...

Thanks Cavenewt, that is a great essay and it makes a lot of sense to me.

Except, here in S Aus until a month ago we were in a similar position to New Zealand but in spite of very few PCR detected cases of SCV2 we have had other colds continually cropping up, some of them quite nasty ones. We still do, in spite of our exponentiating Omicron outbreak. Assuming that the PCR tests have at least rough proportionality to what's going on this could make sense in that there has been little CV to keep them at bay via viral interference but it raises the thorny question of where the hell do they come from?????

There is a paper which has just been released about the phylogenetics of the Omicron variant which finds a high likelihood that it is the original Wuhan strain which has been re-adapting to a mouse population somewhere (but which mice??? ) before getting back into the human population. Viruses capable of easily infecting humans, carried by mice or other species with distinctive seasonal behaviour patterns, crossing back and forth might be another component of virus seasonality.

It's summer here now and nary a mouse in site but last autumn in Australia we had plagues of them in most places.

LA_Bob said...

Cavenewt,

Where on earth do you find these articles? I like this guy better than the Wylie (I think) fellow you linked before. But there is a lot to digest here. Most of his claims make a lot of sense.

I learned something new: natural antibodies. Never heard of them before, and I've begun checking them out (for example, https://www.jimmunol.org/content/194/1/13.long). One more straw on the camel's back of complexity that is immunology.

This statement is very bold:

"High vaccination rates don't stop the dying. Natural immunity does." Conventional wisdom on the sad-sack vaccines is that they reduce severe illness and death but not transmission. We'll see.

Great essay. I hope Mr Ruechel pans out as someone I can follow and trust for good analysis.

Eric said...

So how are those natural antibodies different? I can imagine antibodies against the capsule protein would be helpful as they would allow to neutraize the virus before it can enter a cell. Should a future vaccine contain hull decoys?

His presentation of epidemiolical data was suggestive in some graphs. Why does he compare absolute deaths over time for Sweden vs. Germany when he should be comparing population adjusted deaths?

Unintentionally, he makes an argument for lockdowns. A harmless virus was bound to emerge because that is how epidemics end. Maybe the ultra-isolationists like NZ were onto something, simly waiting it out until there is harmless virus they expose their immunologically naive population to?

Captain Sunset said...

Cavenewt, Thank you for that Link! It's so refreshing reading what Julius Ruechel has had to say on the matter of viruses and viral spread. It makes the clap-trap that SAGE, Prof. Neil Fuckitupson and Fauci et al trot out, look ever more like the alarming dumbed-downed-science nincompoop's that they are desperately trying to turn themselves into.

As terrible as this viral pandemic calamity has been the inescapable fact is that we have all suffered together, but also, in some manner, we have all been cheated out of many things, but in the end only the political consigliere can stand up and have the arrogance to think they BELIEVE they are the best judges of anything (can you hear me Australia?). Anyway, the ancient Greeks well knew as to how such matters have a habit of unfolding as they should. When I listen to what is broadcast, I have something of a deep satisfaction of seeing the inevitable pattern...

Koros ~ success, satiety, disdainful self-satisfaction
Hubris ~ arrogance, smugness, contemptuous pride
Ate ~ reckless, self-confident stupidity
Nemesis ~ punishment, retribution, downfall

The universal rider of course in all this is... "never send for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee".

cavenewt said...

LA_Bob, you find some interesting things reading the comments of substack articles. (I thought after Trump was gone I would get my life back and not spend half of every day reading news; sadly, this has not been the case! Hence at six years and counting, my house is still not finished.)

At any rate, thank you very much for that link to the article "Natural Antibodies Bridge Innate and Adaptive Immunity". Now I'm trying to figure out where natural antibodies figure in; they don't appear to be the same as natural killer cells. They aren't mentioned anywhere in the very interesting article "'The BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 reprograms both adaptive and innate immune responses'" which gives a pretty good overview of innate and adaptive immunity https://jessicar.substack.com/p/the-bnt162b2-mrna-vaccine-against

As someone who is drawn to concepts, I thought using influenza to help interpret how COVID-19 has progressed around the world was fascinating. While of course it's possible to disparage individual statements or arguments, that doesn't mean the whole thing is 100% wrong, any more than agreeing with one thing someone says makes them 100% right about everything else.

Eric, about New Zealand, you're not taking into account what he has to say about immunological debt. If you lock everybody down so tight for so long, when you do eventually open up, the people who have been teetering on the edge anyway—the old and the sick—will get covid, or the flu, or a cold, and you'll have a big surge of deaths. You can give them quarterly boosters against Covid, but something else could easily push them over the edge.

Captain Sunset, hubris indeed. I was a true believer at the beginning of all this, but my spidey-sense started quivering when they began disparaging natural immunity, and it's been mostly downhill from there. As Lord Sumption said in an interview Peter posted long ago, if a pandemic's death rate is severe enough, sure, extreme measures are justified. And things did look serious in the beginning; we all remember Wuhan, Italy, and New York City. They did a good job of scaring us. Italy has since reduced its official Covid deaths by 97%. That certainly indicates something else was going on, intentional or not. We're caught in the confluence of many powerful forces.

I just finished Doom, by (the other) Niall Ferguson, and according to him the COVID-19 pandemic is closest to the 1957 Asian flu. How many of us remember that? Well, I was only three. But I think I would've heard if family members had succumbed. My family still talks about a great grandfather that died in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Doom was published in fall of 2020—I sure hope he updates it someday.

The pandemic will probably end, as most do, with a whimper and not a bang (I always think of the anticlimactic end of The War Of The Worlds). Whether or not entire governments, public health agencies, and other powers self-immolate in a bonfire of hubris remains to be seen.

Captain Sunset said...

Cave, I and my younger brother had Flu in 1957/58 on returning to the UK from Seremban, Malaysia, to peasoup smog-laden London. It was all a bit grim. We were tucked-up in a double bed that never, ever seemed to warm up despite my grandmother wrapping up oven warmed-up house bricks (wrapped in old bed sheets) into our bed throughout the day and night. Anyway, we recovered. I got flu once again in 2001, and that too was bloody grim. My whole body screamed at me whilst I lay on the sofa for two weeks with intolerable neuralgia raging through me. It was only then that I grasped how old folk could actually die from flu.

Sisifo said...

Cavenewt,

Regarding the first few months in Italy, or to be precise in a very specific city in the North of the country, the fact that the ER medical director of the city hospital is currently in jail awaiting trial, accused of triple homicide of three of his patients probably should rise some alarms.

The Carabinieri (military police) started an investigation after two nurses admitted they were asked to inject drugs to kill the covid patients.

Eric said...

Cave,

yes, there is immunological debt. Some people got to live longer (albeit under conditions they probably did not wish for) and will now die of some bug other than Covid. My point was that, if you are lucky enough to be an isolated island, waiting it out until a new virus has mutated enough to be mostly harmless might constitute a smarter strategy than lockdowns and a vaccination spree.

And no, emphatically no, Italy has not reduced its Covid death count by 97%. The official count, as of today, stands at 138,881.

The report (and I'll probably have to find and read it) is quoted as saying only 3% deceased had comorbidities. But that doesn't prove anything. You can live for decades with hypertension or diabetes. There is noting in the article saying that the majority of the then 130,000 dead would have died within months in the absence of Covid19.


Here's the original Italian story and a deepl translation:
https://www.iltempo.it/attualita/2021/10/21/news/rapporto-iss-morti-covid-malattie-patologie-come-influenza-pandemia-disastro-mortalita-bechis-29134543/

Franco Bechis Oct 21 2021

According to the new report (not updated since July) of the Istituto Superiore di SanitĆ  on mortality due to Covid, the virus that has brought the world to its knees would have killed much less than a common flu. It seems an outlandish and no vax statement, but according to the statistical sample of medical records collected by the institute only 2.9% of deaths recorded since the end of February 2020 would be due to Covid 19. So of the 130,468 deaths recorded by official statistics at the time of preparation of the new report only 3,783 would be due to the power of the virus itself. Because all the other Italians who lost their lives had from one to five diseases that, according to the Iss, left them little hope. As much as 67.7% would have had more than three diseases together, and 18% at least two together. Now I personally know a lot of people, but no one who has the misfortune to have five serious diseases at the same time. I would like to trust our scientists, then I go to read the diseases listed that would be reason not secondary to the loss of so many Italians and some doubt as a layman begin to feed. According to the Italian National Institute of Health (Iss) 65.8% of Italians who are no longer there after being infected by Covid was sick with hypertension, that is, had high blood pressure. 23.5% were also demented, 29.3% had diabetes and 24.8% had atrial fibrillation. And that's not all: 17.4% already had diseased lungs, 16.3% had had cancer in the last 5 years, 15.7% suffered from heart failure, 28% had ischemic heart disease, 24.8% suffered from atrial fibrillation, more than one out of every ten was also obese, more than one out of every ten had had a stroke, and still others had serious liver problems, dialysis and auto-immune diseases.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Eric said...

Here's the weekly powerpoint from the ISS:
https://www.iss.it/documents/20126/0/csAggiornamento+EPI+e+valutazione+del+rischio_05+gennaio_2022%5B1%5D.pdf/6e886343-2d16-fc68-9785-d76a30123d16?t=1641576253101

Number of deceased 137,285 as of Jan. 5th, clearly not corrected.

I haven't yet found the July report quoted in the article. Sisifo, maybe you can help? I can read Italian, but slowly only.

Eric said...

Not looking good:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/01/09/us/omicron-cities-cases-hospitals.html

Apparently, the Omicron surges in big US cities are followed by exactly the same ICU admissions and deaths as previous surges. What is also surprising, given that vaccination does not seem to protect against Omicron infection, is that the vaccination gap in NYC has grown even larger, i.e. the vaccinated are much less likely to be hospitalized than they were for previous variants.

What I would like to see is how recovery from previous infection compares to vaccination with regards to hospitalization for Omicron.

It is also hard to imagine that you would find anyone in NYC who has not either recovered or has been vaccinated.

Eric said...

Have only read a summary of this study in Der Spiegel. Seems to be diametrically the opposite of what the graphs from the NYT for the current surge in NYC and Chicago say.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v1

cavenewt said...

"Seems to be diametrically the opposite of what the graphs from the NYT for the current surge in NYC and Chicago say."

Some possibilities:

1. Someone is interpreting the data incorrectly
2. Some of the data is wrong
3. Different species of "human" live in California versus NYC and Chicago [evidence of lizard people?]
4. Somebody's lying

Today eugyppius posted stories in response to a question of how people became lockdown skeptics. My favorite quote from one:

"Our society is completely in the grip of people who have effectively evolved under selection pressure to strongly resemble scientists without actually being scientists. Their work looks roughly right from a distance - there are data tables, charts, equations - but when you sit down and read it the scientific method has gone AWOL."

People with an interest in nutrition science are already familiar with this concept.

Eric said...

And here's a report from Kenia.
https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/omikron-variante-in-kenia-die-katastrophe-blieb-aus-a-ee02db9d-e98d-4301-8067-03d4b3391e1f

Apparently, everyone had "the flu" around Christmas, with much less consequences than the Delta wave before that.

Eric said...

Another tidbit:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.21268036v1

Dogs could detect Covid scent in 23/45 Long Covid suffers but 0 / 181 controls. Seems to suggest persistent infection.

If true, why doesn't PCR pick this up if it is usually insanely sensitive? Would PCR on serum samples pick it up? What can be done to clear this presumed infection? High dose Vit C? Keto?


On a technical note, Peter, thanks for approving additional comments in a timely manner. This entry seems to have dropped too low by now. Could you simply start a new entry called Covid playground? I value this place for an exchange of ideas and news.

cavenewt said...

LA_Bob: 'cavenewt, you needn't trouble yourself with North Dakota. Omicron has you in its sights as we "speak".'

Well, here it is almost mid-May 2022, and as far as I know I still have not managed to get the bug. I never wear a mask anymore. After being bamboozled into the original two Moderna shots in spring 2021, no boosters. I go to the local grocery store maskless, which is crawling with tourists from all over the world. What am I doing wrong?

Ariadne R: 'I think now my January plan is to go to the protest in Washington, the "Defeat the Mandates"'

Did you go?