That’s Anthony Fauci he is discussing. Also about this matter of “false positives”. Saw this as a comment here.
Bayesian conditional probability is being completely ignored. Let’s say a COVID-19 test is 90% accurate and 1 out of 100 people have COVID-19. You test positive for COVID-19, what’s the chance the test is correct? 100-1=99 people don’t have COVID-19 but 99×10%= ~10 will falsely test positive. The probability that you actually have COVID-19 is only 1/(1+10)= ~9%. ~90% of positive cases/deaths are FALSE!
Meanwhile there is so much money being made out of curing us that this is one disease that will never go away. False positives are all just part of ths story.
This is virtually the entire text from Doctors, Lawyers & COVID. There is no moral sense in any of this.
The Drug that Cracked Covid may be the most important article you’ll read this year. There’s a lot of information there, but at its core is the story of Judy Smetkiewicz, an active 80-year-old who lives near Buffalo, New York.
Three days before Christmas, Judy tested positive for COVID-19. A week later, an ambulance transported her to hospital. By New Year’s Eve, she was on a ventilator in ICU. Her family was advised that 80% of people in her position never recover. They were told she’d likely remain that way – sedated and unresponsive, in a facility they were barred from entering – for a month before she fully succumbed and died.
But Judy’s family was pushy. They watched a video of Pierre Kory testifying before a US Senate committee a few weeks earlier (see above). He’s an ICU doctor who has treated hundreds of COVID patients in New York City and elsewhere. In the video, he discusses Ivermectin – a safe, cheap, generic drug that has potent anti-COVID properties. This drug, he testified, is saving lives wherever it gets used.
When Judy’s family asked her ICU physician to give her Ivermectin, he refused. It hasn’t been explicitly approved by health agencies as a COVID-19 treatment, he explained, and “we don’t experiment on our patients.” Not even when they’re at death’s door, almost certain to perish anyway.
Judy’s family kept pushing. A hospital administrator finally relented, approving a single dose of Ivermectin. Less than 24 hours later, Judy no longer needed that ventilator. Shortly afterward, though, she began to decline. Her family asked for another dose of Ivermectin. The hospital refused. That’s when they hired a lawyer.
How bizarre. In the middle of a pandemic, a group of experienced, accomplished, respected physicians for whom Kory is a spokesperson say they’ve found an effective treatment. But hospitals refuse to dispense that treatment. Which compels already-traumatized families to hire lawyers.
A judge ruled in favour of Judy’s family, ordering the hospital to dispense four more doses. It refused to carry out the judge’s order. Another hearing was held. The hospital finally agreed to dispense additional doses if Judy’s family doctor wrote the prescription.
This looks, of course, like old-fashioned butt-covering. The hospital appears to have been OK with Judy dying. But not OK with using a drug off-label, even though a US government website explains this happens all the time:
Off-label prescribing is when a physician gives you a drug that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved to treat a condition different than your condition. This practice is legal and common. In fact, one in five prescriptions written today are for off-label use. [bold added]
After spending a month in a rehab facility, Judy returned home.
We close down much of the economy for more than a year and this is where we supposedly now find ourselves: Economy back in record recovery. And looks who the star of the recovery has been.
Australia’s economy is larger than before Covid-19 triggered the worst recession in a century, with GDP lifting by 1.8 per cent over the first three months of the year to confirm the most rapid recovery from a downturn in peacetime history.
National accounts figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show quarterly economic activity reached $501 billion in real GDP terms, 0.8 per cent above the pre-pandemic peak of $497 billion in the December quarter of 2019.
The economy grew by 1.1 per cent over the year.
Victoria was the best performing state, with its final demand jumping 2.3 per cent in the quarter as the momentum from its delayed reopening late last year carried into early 2021.
If you would like something a bit more realistic so far as the economy is concerned, there is this chart below on seasonally adjusted growth in wages between September 1998 and March 2021. A very dismal story and these have not even been adjusted for movements in the price level.
The National Accounts are an absurdist Keynesian form of misleading indicator that never tells you what you really want to know, unless you know where to look and how to interpret what you read. Despite what that GDP stats might say, living standards are falling and are only going to get worse, assuming they ever get better again.
For more on just how much of a junk science Keynesian economics is, I invite you to have a look at THE GEEK IN PICTURES: KEYNESIAN CRIME WAVE EDITION from Steve Hayward at Powerline. I will only take in one of his graphs which is this: The Number of Democrats relative to Republicans for Each Academic Discipline. Even economics has 5.5 Dems for every Republican – a left-right balance of 5.5:1 – which is why Keynesian economics remains the standard issue nonsense that it is.
LET ME ADD: I probably shouldn’t buy into this since it will be misunderstood at every level but the question of my interest in rising real wages was mentioned in the comments. As it happens, I used to write the employer economic submissions to the National Wage Case from 1980 through until 2004 and even presented the employer submission from 2002 to 2004. And if you will note, during my time within the system, wages continued to rise, which was, in fact, the aim of every one of us who were party to wage fixation in those days. Real wage increases without inflation was the gold standard which was the outcome we all sought.
Alas, it has always been a mantra on the Coalition side of the fence that wages should be left to the market with no institutional interference of any kind, the sort of system that exists absolutely nowhere in any place on earth. In fact, Australia had, and may still have, the best wage fixing system in the world which is based on ensuring money wage growth is kept within the limits permitted by the growth in productivity. Of course, Labor has even less of an understanding of these issues, but was saved time and again by decisions of the centralised system which made the effort to encourage money wage restraint but higher output per hour worked.
It is a bad business that this ethos has disappeared from our wage system along with the outcomes which were not so long ago absolutely routine. There are probably a host of reasons but I have been away from it for too long to know what they are. But if anyone believes that higher government spending and an enlarged public service are part of the answer, they could not be more wrong. That is a large part of what has gone wrong with very little indication, given the deficits that are now being routinely run, that anyone will anytime soon figure out what needs to change, or will be able to put those changes into effect.
I see his point – attacking Jews outside Israel for acts of the Israeli government in defending itself from Hamas – is attacking people who have nothing to do with the Middle East or with Israeli policy.
Yet I find myself caring about the fate of Israel. And while I also care about Taiwan, the Uighurs, the murder of Christians in all kinds of places at the present time, I do particularly care about the fate and security of Israel. No doubt this is because I am Jewish and I am therefore aware of how precarious Jewish lives have often been over the past thousand years, and certainly over the past century.
We are an unusual people who have been guests in other people’s national homes for the past two thousand years so have become sensitive to certain issues, such as the persecution of foreigners. It has warped the social values of many Jews in ways I cannot support since I feel nationalistic towards the countries in which I have lived – Canada, the UK and now Australia.
Indeed, I feel a warmth and kinship towards Western Civilisation for which Jewish values are an integral part which has occurred via the incorporation of the Old Testament within Christianity.
Anti-semitism is a curse. As it is said, “first they came for the Jews”. Jews are the outsiders who often become the standard around which the oppression of others takes place.
Still the point made in the video is valid and important. And it is clear he has only jumped into this issue because he can see how close the latest version of the oldest hatred has entered into his own life just as it is entering into the lives of all Jews everywhere today.
The heading is what I thought of when I read this article: Red Lines by Michael Anton. This is the para that sets if off:
To recap briefly (but read the whole thing!), the book explains how every prominent and powerful American institution, including the federal government, has been taken over by a hostile elite who use their vast powers to attack, despoil, and insult about half the nation. In the sixth chapter (excerpted here), I outline what I think America will look like if the present ruling class refuses to moderate, cannot be forced to share power, and has the wherewithal to keep its regime going. In the seventh chapter, I sketch several possibilities—from secession to Caesarism to collapse—that might result if it turns out that our overlords are a lot less competent than they think. And in the final chapter (excerpted here), I offer policy and other ideas that might enable America to avoid those fates.
Every forecast is wrong, every prediction is false almost before it’s made. No one is ever in control. Things will fall apart before any kind of order is returned. Not just now, but always.
You will just have to infer from whatever is around to tell you. No one knows, and especially no one knows what we will know in the future. But this is the present, so let’s start here. CDC Looks into Heart Issues in Children After Covid-19 Vaccine. The first comment is on the money:
Thank you for your many enlightening investigations. I would love to see an investigation of the hospitals’ balance sheets prior-covid vs during-covid. It was widely rumored in my area that hospitals were paid an extra $13,000 per patient diagnosed with covid and an extra $39,000 per covid patients admitted to the intensive care unit. Is this still happening? There’s an old saying that you get more of those things that you reward…..
The study found “there is a probable link between receiving the second dose (of Pfizer) vaccine and the appearance of myocarditis among men aged 16 to 30,” it said in a statement. According to the findings, such a link was observed more among men aged 16 to 19 than in other age groups.
Absolutely denied, of course. Nor was it restricted to 16 to 19 year olds, just that there were more of them than in other age groups.
No escape! We are obviously being government by morons, which may be just what we deserve. This is the best bit:
Lockdown to be extended until at least early next week
New strain spreading between strangers who pass each other
Obviously the only answer is to keep everyone indoors forever.
As for Ivermectin, why do none of them ever bring it up in conversation?
I might also mention this comment at Andrew Bolt which seems apposite.
I am not terrified of Covid-19 just as I an not terrified of the Flu!
1255 Australians died of the flu in 2017 and we never battered an eyelid.
The events on the Diamond Princess provided a unique high load, confined space study for the Covid-19 infection.
On February 3, 2020, 10 people aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship tested positive for the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Each had developed the resulting illness, COVID-19. By February 4, the people with COVID-19 had been isolated from the rest of the passengers.
The case that prompted this onboard outbreak involved a person who had been aboard the ship between January 21 and January 25. Diamond Princess arrived in Yokohama early from a 14-day round trip itinerary, which departed from Yokohama (Tokyo) on January 20 and was scheduled to return on 4th February. There are 2,666 guests and 1,045 crew on board.
We know the initial host arrived onboard 14 days prior to the first detection of the disease which tallies with the incubation period. Therefore. the virus was being freely transmitted in a confined, densely populated vessel for 15days prior to the passengers were confined to their cabins.
Of those onboard there about 900 between the ages of 70 and 79, nearly 1000 between 80-89 and about 200 over 90. The total infection rate was about 17%. 83% either did not contract Covid-19 or exhibited no symptoms.
Below is the current status in respect to those who were onboard during its quarantine in Yokohama. Total Cases: 712, Deaths: 13, Recovered:699, Active Cases: 0
The USS Roosevelt provides an even more positive insight, with a crew of some 4200, less than 20% contracted Covid-19 while only 4 were hospitalized and than 5% of those 1 died of the infection.
Yes vaccinate the at risk and those who want to and let the rest of us get on with our lives.
Our governments have been taken over by terrorists.
These stories are related, and not just by their association with Quillette. First, from Claire Lehmann herself: Three false narratives about women and sex. The final paras:
Women are not passive sexual beings, nor are they sexless, and nor are they without predatory impulses themselves. The human condition is complicated, and sexuality in particular can be a Pandora’s box of contradictions. (We have thousands of years of art and culture reflecting this fact.)
Yet the narratives I have broadly sketched are currently ossifying into dogma because we are too scared to challenge them. Falsehoods are going unchallenged because nobody wants to be seen as a prude, nobody wants to be seen as a “victim blamer” and nobody wants to be seen as anti-feminist.
But we are not doing women, and young women in particular, any favours if we fail to speak honestly about sex. The fact is that young people are more confused than ever. Clearly, the messages we are sending them are not providing them with much clarity, confidence, or empowerment.
Courage, risk-taking, persistence, strength, and stoicism are normal characteristics of young male development. Instead of trying to re-engineer human nature, educators should acknowledge that such traits and proclivities are of value to all children, and that they are most important to the process by which young boys become men.
My granddaughters have all immediately taken to playing with dolls. My grandsons immediately took an interest in building sites and play with toy trucks as their absolutely first preference. No one guided them that way. That is just how they are. These traits are inbuilt, just as is female modesty, Germaine Greer notwithstanding.
Through intimate interviews and live performances, They Played for Their Lives artfully portrays how music saved the lives of young musicians during the Holocaust. Playing music in Jewish ghettos and concentration camps not only fostered spiritual strength within themselves and others, but often proved a bargaining tool that spared their lives. In this documentary by Nurit Jugend and co-producer Aaron I. Butler with illustrations by Ari Binus, follow the personal narratives of eight survivors—each with a unique story that illustrates the power of music to sustain the human soul.
No holocaust story should be presented as in any way uplifting. People do what they can to survive and this was one of the very narrow avenues that were available. Read Primo Levi for a more authentic account of what went on.
Accomplished, experienced ICU doctors say Ivermectin can end the global pandemic. But health authorities don’t want to hear about it, and journalists won’t report it.
You literally will never read this in the papers or see it on the news, not even discussed. Our “elites” are monsters of the most disgusting kind. If you can see what the agenda is, please let me know.
Law of Markets 