I realize that given current cases are over 300,000 that there will be more deaths in the coming weeks. However, the information provided in the image below should help to put the Covid-19 virus in perspective. So far, even though the first case was 4 months ago, there are only 8,500 deaths. That makes Covid-19 milder then the mildest flu season in 10 years. While is is likely that deaths will top the low of 12,000, will deaths outpace the worst flu year of 2018 with more then 61,000 deaths (reported at 80,000 in other sources)? At this point it does not appear that is going to happen. So once again, does the collective economic suicide of the entire world make sense when the world largely went on without even noticing the 61,000 deaths of 2018? Data from https://www.ocregister.com/2020/02/08/how-influenza-is-much-more-of-a-threat-to-americans-than-coronavirus-right-now/
From EUSSR on Zerohedge.com – A very good explanation is given why Italy is impacted. The most important point is that each flu season more people in Italy died than in any other European country.
1.Italy always had a disastrous health care system, in 2018 nothing was different
2. Can you imagine, during the main flu season over 34,000 people in Lomdardia, the main COVID problem county in Italy, were vaccinated against Meningokokkenbacteria that alone is a huge challenge for the immune system
An Open Letter from Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, to the German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel. Professor Bhakdi calls for an urgent reassessment of the response to Covid-19 and asks the Chancellor five crucial questions. The letter is dated March 26. This is an inofficial translation; see the original letter in German as a PDF.
The doctor’s comments in brief:
“This is the incredible tragedy, because all these measures are actually senseless.
“[The government measures] are grotesque, absurd and very dangerous.”
“The life expectancy of millions is being shortened.”
“The horrifying impact on the world economy threatens the existence of countless people. The consequences on medical care are profound. Already services to patients who are in need are reduced, operations cancelled, practices empty, hospital personnel dwindling. All of this will impact profoundly on our whole society. ”
“All these measures are leading to self-destruction and collective suicide over nothing but a spook.”
Open Letter
Dear Chancellor,
As Emeritus of the Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz and longtime director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology, I feel obliged to critically question the far-reaching restrictions on public life that we are currently taking on ourselves in order to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
It is expressly not my intention to play down the dangers of the virus or to spread a political message. However, I feel it is my duty to make a scientific contribution to putting the current data and facts into perspective – and, in addition, to ask questions that are in danger of being lost in the heated debate.
The reason for my concern lies above all in the truly unforeseeable socio-economic consequences of the drastic containment measures which are currently being applied in large parts of Europe and which are also already being practiced on a large scale in Germany.
My wish is to discuss critically – and with the necessary foresight – the advantages and disadvantages of restricting public life and the resulting long-term effects.
To this end, I am confronted with five questions which have not been answered sufficiently so far, but which are indispensable for a balanced analysis.
I would like to ask you to comment quickly and, at the same time, appeal to the Federal Government to develop strategies that effectively protect risk groups without restricting public life across the board and sow the seeds for an even more intensive polarization of society than is already taking place.
With the utmost respect,
Prof. em. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi
1. Statistics
In infectiology – founded by Robert Koch himself – a traditional distinction is made between infection and disease. An illness requires a clinical manifestation. [1] Therefore, only patients with symptoms such as fever or cough should be included in the statistics as new cases.
In other words, a new infection – as measured by the COVID-19 test – does not necessarily mean that we are dealing with a newly ill patient who needs a hospital bed. However, it is currently assumed that five percent of all infected people become seriously ill and require ventilation. Projections based on this estimate suggest that the healthcare system could be overburdened.
My question: Did the projections make a distinction between symptom-free infected people and actual, sick patients – i.e. people who develop symptoms?
2. Dangerousness
A number of coronaviruses have been circulating for a long time – largely unnoticed by the media. [2] If it should turn out that the COVID-19 virus should not be ascribed a significantly higher risk potential than the already circulating corona viruses, all countermeasures would obviously become unnecessary.
The internationally recognized International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents will soon publish a paper that addresses exactly this question. Preliminary results of the study can already be seen today and lead to the conclusion that the new virus is NOT different from traditional corona viruses in terms of dangerousness. The authors express this in the title of their paper „SARS-CoV-2: Fear versus Data“. [3]
My question: How does the current workload of intensive care units with patients with diagnosed COVID-19 compare to other coronavirus infections, and to what extent will this data be taken into account in further decision-making by the federal government? In addition: Has the above study been taken into account in the planning so far? Here too, of course, „diagnosed“ means that the virus plays a decisive role in the patient’s state of illness, and not that previous illnesses play a greater role.
3. Dissemination
According to a report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, not even the much-cited Robert Koch Institute knows exactly how much is tested for COVID-19. It is a fact, however, that a rapid increase in the number of cases has recently been observed in Germany as the volume of tests increases. [4]
It is therefore reasonable to suspect that the virus has already spread unnoticed in the healthy population. This would have two consequences: firstly, it would mean that the official death rate – on 26 March 2020, for example, there were 206 deaths from around 37,300 infections, or 0.55 percent [5] – is too high; and secondly, it would mean that it would hardly be possible to prevent the virus from spreading in the healthy population.
My question: Has there already been a random sample of the healthy general population to validate the real spread of the virus, or is this planned in the near future?
4. Mortality
The fear of a rise in the death rate in Germany (currently 0.55 percent) is currently the subject of particularly intense media attention. Many people are worried that it could shoot up like in Italy (10 percent) and Spain (7 percent) if action is not taken in time.
At the same time, the mistake is being made worldwide to report virus-related deaths as soon as it is established that the virus was present at the time of death – regardless of other factors. This violates a basic principle of infectiology: only when it is certain that an agent has played a significant role in the disease or death may a diagnosis be made. The Association of the Scientific Medical Societies of Germany expressly writes in its guidelines: „In addition to the cause of death, a causal chain must be stated, with the corresponding underlying disease in third place on the death certificate. Occasionally, four-linked causal chains must also be stated.“ [6]
At present there is no official information on whether, at least in retrospect, more critical analyses of medical records have been undertaken to determine how many deaths were actually caused by the virus.
My question: Has Germany simply followed this trend of a COVID-19 general suspicion? And: is it intended to continue this categorisation uncritically as in other countries? How, then, is a distinction to be made between genuine corona-related deaths and accidental virus presence at the time of death?
5. Comparability
The appalling situation in Italy is repeatedly used as a reference scenario. However, the true role of the virus in that country is completely unclear for many reasons – not only because points 3 and 4 above also apply here, but also because exceptional external factors exist which make these regions particularly vulnerable.
One of these factors is the increased air pollution in the north of Italy. According to WHO estimates, this situation, even without the virus, led to over 8,000 additional deaths per year in 2006 in the 13 largest cities in Italy alone. [7] The situation has not changed significantly since then. [8] Finally, it has also been shown that air pollution greatly increases the risk of viral lung diseases in very young and elderly people. [9]
Moreover, 27.4 percent of the particularly vulnerable population in this country live with young people, and in Spain as many as 33.5 percent. In Germany, the figure is only seven percent [10]. In addition, according to Prof. Dr. Reinhard Busse, head of the Department of Management in Health Care at the TU Berlin, Germany is significantly better equipped than Italy in terms of intensive care units – by a factor of about 2.5 [11].
My question: What efforts are being made to make the population aware of these elementary differences and to make people understand that scenarios like those in Italy or Spain are not realistic here?
[7] Martuzzi et al. Health Impact of PM10 and Ozone in 13 Italian Cities. World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. WHOLIS number E88700 2006
[9] Croft et al. The Association between Respiratory Infection and Air Pollution in the Setting of Air Quality Policy and Economic Change. Ann. Am. Thorac. Soc. 2019, 16, 321–330.
[10] United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Living Arrangements of Older Persons: A Report on an Expanded International Dataset (ST/ESA/SER.A/407). 2017
A Swiss medical doctor provided the following information on the current situation in order to enable our readers to make a realistic risk assessment. (Daily updates below)
According to the latest data of the Italian National Health Institute ISS, the average age of the positively-tested deceased in Italy is currently about 81 years. 10% of the deceased are over 90 years old. 90% of the deceased are over 70 years old.
80% of the deceased had suffered from two or more chronic diseases. 50% of the deceased had suffered from three or more chronic diseases. The chronic diseases include in particular cardiovascular problems, diabetes, respiratory problems and cancer.
Less than 1% of the deceased were healthy persons, i.e. persons without pre-existing chronic diseases. Only about 30% of the deceased are women.
The Italian Institute of Health moreover distinguishes between those who died from the coronavirus and those who died with the coronavirus. In many cases it is not yet clear whether the persons died from the virus or from their pre-existing chronic diseases or from a combination of both.
The two Italians deceased under 40 years of age (both 39 years old) were a cancer patient and a diabetes patient with additional complications. In these cases, too, the exact cause of death was not yet clear (i.e. if from the virus or from their pre-existing diseases).
The partial overloading of the hospitals is due to the general rush of patients and the increased number of patients requiring special or intensive care. In particular, the aim is to stabilize respiratory function and, in severe cases, to provide anti-viral therapies.
(Update: The Italian National Institute of Health published a statistical report on test-positive patients and deceased, confirming the above data.)
The doctor also points out the following aspects:
Northern Italy has one of the oldest populations and the worst air quality in Europe, which had already led to an increased number of respiratory diseases and deaths in the past and is likely an additional risk factor in the current epidemic.
South Korea, for instance, has experienced a much milder course than Italy and has already passed the peak of the epidemic. In South Korea, only about 70 deaths with a positive test result have been reported so far. As in Italy, those affected were mostly high-risk patients.
The few dozen test-positive Swiss deaths so far were also high-risk patients with chronic diseases, an average age of more than 80 years and a maximum age of 97 years, whose exact cause of death, i.e. from the virus or from their pre-existing diseases, is not yet known.
Furthermore, studies have shown that the internationally used virus test kits may give a false positive result in some cases. In these cases, the persons may not have contracted the new coronavirus, but presumably one of the many existing human coronaviruses that are part of the annual (and currently ongoing) common cold and flu epidemics. (1)
Thus the most important indicator for judging the danger of the disease is not the frequently reported number of positively-tested persons and deaths, but the number of persons actually and unexpectedly developing or dying from pneumonia (so-called excess mortality).
According to all current data, for the healthy general population of school and working age, a mild to moderate course of the Covid-19 disease can be expected. Senior citizens and persons with existing chronic diseases should be protected. The medical capacities should be optimally prepared.
Important reference values include the number of annual flu deaths, which is up to 8,000 in Italy and up to 60,000 in the US; normal overall mortality, which in Italy is up to 2,000 deaths per day; and the average number of pneumonia cases per year, which in Italy is over 120,000.
Current all-cause mortality in Europe and in Italy is still normal or even below-average. Any excess mortality due to Covid-19 should become visible in the European monitoring charts.
Winter smog (NO2) in Northern Italy in February 2020 (ESA)
Updates
Regular updates on the situation (all sources referenced).
March 17, 2020 (I)
The mortality profile remains puzzling from a virological point of view because, in contrast to influenza viruses, children are spared and men are affected about twice as often as women. On the other hand, this profile corresponds to natural mortality, which is close to zero for children and almost twice as high for 75-year-old men as for women of the same age.
The younger test-positive deceased almost always had severe pre-existing conditions. For example, a 21-year-old Spanish soccer coach had died test-positive, making international headlines. However, the doctors diagnosed an unrecognized leukemia, whose typical complications include severe pneumonia.
The decisive factor in assessing the danger of the disease is therefore not the number of test-positive persons and deceased, which is often mentioned in the media, but the number of people actually and unexpectedly developing or dying from pneumonia (so-called excess mortality). So far, this value remains very low in most countries.
In Switzerland, some emergency units are already overloaded simply because of the large number of people who want to be tested. This points to an additional psychological and logistical component of the current situation.
March 17, 2020 (II)
Italian immunology professor Sergio Romagnani from the University of Florence comes to the conclusion in a study on 3000 people that 50 to 75% of the test-positive people of all ages remain completely symptom-free – significantly more than previously assumed.
The occupancy rate of the North Italian ICUs in the winter months is typically already 85 to 90%. Some or many of these existing patients could also be test-positive by now. However, the number of additional unexpected pneumonia cases is not yet known.
A hospital doctor in the Spanish city of Malaga writes on Twitter that people are currently more likely to die from panic and systemic collapse than from the virus. The hospital is being overrun by people with colds, flu and possibly Covid19 and doctors have lost control.
March 18, 2020
A new epidemiological study (preprint) concludes that the fatality of Covid19 even in the Chinese city of Wuhan was only 0.04% to 0.12% and thus rather lower than that of seasonal flu, which has a mortality rate of about 0.1%. As a reason for the overestimated fatality of Covid19, the researchers suspect that initially only a small number of cases were recorded in Wuhan, as the disease was probably asymptomatic or mild in many people.
Chinese researchers argue that extreme winter smog in the city of Wuhan may have played a causal role in the outbreak of pneumonia. In the summer of 2019, public protests were already taking place in Wuhan because of the poor air quality.
New satellite images show how Northern Italy has the highest levels of air pollution in Europe, and how this air pollution has been greatly reduced by the quarantine.
A manufacturer of the Covid19 test kit states that it should only be used for research purposes and not for diagnostic applications, as it has not yet been clinically validated.
Datasheet of Covid19 virus test kit
March 19, 2020 (I)
The Italian National Health Institute ISS has published a new report on test-positive deaths:
The median age is 80.5 years (79.5 for men, 83.7 for women).
10% of the deceased was over 90 years old; 90% of the deceased was over 70 years old.
At most 0.8% of the deceased had no pre-existing chronic illnesses.
Approximately 75% of the deceased had two or more pre-existing conditions, 50% had three more pre-existing conditions, in particular heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
Five of the deceased were between 31 and 39 years old, all of them with serious pre-existing health conditions (e.g. cancer or heart disease).
The National Health Institute hasn’t yet determined what the patients examined ultimately died of and refers to them in general terms as Covid19-positive deaths.
March 19, 2020 (II)
A report in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera points out that Italian intensive care units already collapsed under the marked flu wave in 2017/2018. They had to postpone operations, call nurses back from holiday and ran out of blood donations.
German virologist Hendrik Streeck argues that Covid19 is unlikely to increase total mortality in Germany, which normally is around 2500 people per day. Streeck mentions the case of a 78-year-old man with preconditions who died of heart failure, subsequently tested positive for Covid19 and thus was included in the statistics of Covid19 deaths.
According to Stanford Professor John Ioannidis, the new coronavirus may be no more dangerous than some of the common coronaviruses, even in older people. Ioannidis argues that there is no reliable medical data backing the measures currently decided upon.
March 20, 2020
According to the latest European monitoring report, overall mortality in all countries (including Italy) and in all age groups remains within or even below the normal range so far.
According to the latest German statistics, the median age of test-positive deaths is about 83 years, most with pre-existing health conditions that might be a possible cause of death.
A 2006 Canadian study referred to by Stanford Professor John Ioannidis found that common cold coronaviruses may also cause death rates of up to 6% in risk groups such as residents of a care facility, and that virus test kits initially falsely indicated an infection with SARS coronaviruses.
March 21, 2020 (I)
Spain reports only three test-positive deaths under the age of 65 (out of a total of about 1000). Their pre-existing health conditions and actual cause of death are not yet known.
On March 20, Italy reported 627 nationwide test-positive deaths in one day. By comparison, normal overall mortality in Italy is about 1800 deaths per day. Since February 21, Italy has reported about 4000 test-positive deaths. Normal overall mortality during this time frame is up to 50,000 deaths. It is not yet known to what extent normal overall mortality has increased, or to what extent it has simply turned test-positive. Moreover, Italy and Europe have had a very mild flu season in 2019/2020 that has spared many otherwise vulnerable people.
According to Italian news reports, 90% of test-positive deceased in the Lombardy region have died outside of intensive care units, mostly at home or in general care sections. Their cause of death and the possible role of quarantine measures in their deaths remain unclear. Only 260 out of 2168 test-positive persons have died in ICUs.
Italy test-positive deaths by prior illnesses (ISS / Bloomberg)
March 21, 2020 (II)
The Japan Times asks: Japan was expecting a coronavirus explosion. Where is it? Despite being one of the first countries getting positive test results and having imposed no lockdown, Japan is one of the least-affected nations. Quote: „Even if Japan may not be counting all those infected, hospitals aren’t being stretched thin and there has been no spike in pneumonia cases.“
Italian researchers argue that the extreme smog in Northern Italy, the worst in Europe, may be playing a causative role in the current pneumonia outbreak there, as in Wuhan before.
In a new interview, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, a world renowned expert in medical microbiology, says blaming the new coronavirus alone for deaths is „wrong“ and „dangerously misleading“, as there are other more important factors at play, notably pre-existing health conditions and poor air quality in Chinese and Northern Italian cities. Professor Bhakdi describes the currently discussed or imposed measures as „grotesque“, „useless“, „self-destructive“ and a „collective suicide“ that will shorten the lifespan of the elderly and should not be accepted by society.
March 22, 2020 (I)
Regarding the situation in Italy: Most major media falsely report that Italy has up to 800 deaths per day from the coronavirus. In reality, the president of the Italian Civil Protection Service stresses that these are deaths „with the coronavirus and not from the coronavirus“ (minute 03:30 of the press conference). In other words, these persons died while also testing positive.
As Professors Ioannidis and Bhakdi have shown, countries like South Korea and Japan that introduced no lockdown measures have experienced near-zero excess mortality in connection with Covid-19, while the Diamond Princess cruise ship experienced an extrapolated mortality figure in the per mille range, i.e. at or below the level of the seasonal flu.
Current test-positive death figures in Italy are still less than 50% of normal daily overall mortality in Italy, which is around 1800 deaths per day. Thus it is possible, perhaps even likely, that a large part of normal daily mortality now simply counts as „Covid19“ deaths (as they test positive). This is the point stressed by the President of the Italian Civil Protection Service.
However, by now it is clear that certain regions in Northern Italy, i.e. those facing the toughest lockdown measures, are experiencing markedly increased daily mortality figures. It is also known that in the Lombardy region, 90% of test-positive deaths occur not in intensive care units, but instead mostly at home. And more than 99% have serious pre-existing health conditions.
Professor Sucharit Bhakdi has called lockdown measures „useless“, „self-destructive“ and a „collective suicide“. Thus the extremely troubling question arises as to what extent the increased mortality of these elderly, isolated, highly stressed people with multiple pre-existing health conditions may in fact be caused by the weeks-long lockdown measures still in force.
If so, it may be one of those cases where the treatment is worse than the disease. (See update below: only 12% of death certificates show the coronavirus as a cause.)
Angelo Borrelli, head of the Italian Civil Protection Service, emphasizing the difference between deaths with and from coronaviruses.
March 22, 2020 (II)
In Switzerland, there are currently 56 test-positive deaths, all of whom were „high risk patients“ due to their advanced age and/or pre-existing health conditions. Their actual cause of death, i.e. from or simply with the virus, has not been communicated.
The Swiss government claimed that the situation in southern Switzerland (next to Italy) is „dramatic“, yet local doctors denied this and said everything is normal.
According to press reports, oxygen bottles may become scarce. The reason, however, is not a currently higher usage, but rather hoarding due to fear of future shortages.
In many countries, there is already an increasing shortage of doctors and nurses. This is primarily because healthcare workers testing positive have to self-quarantine, even though in many cases they will remain fully or largely symptom-free.
March 22, 2020 (III)
A model from Imperial College London predicted between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths in the UK „from“ Covid-19, but the authors of the study have now conceded that many of these deaths would not be in addition to, but rather part of the normal annual mortality rate, which in the UK is about 600,000 people per year. In other words, excess mortality would remain low.
Dr. David Katz, founding director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, asks in the New York Times: „Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease? There may be more targeted ways to beat the pandemic.“
According to Italian Professor Walter Ricciardi, „only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus“, whereas in public reports „all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus“. This means that Italian death figures reported by the media have to be reduced by at least a factor of 8 to obtain actual deaths caused by the virus. Thus one ends up with at most a few dozen deaths per day, compared to an overall daily mortality of 1800 deaths and up to 20,000 flu deaths per year.
March 23, 2020 (I)
A new French study in the Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, titled SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data, concludes that „the problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably overestimated“, since „the mortality rate for SARS-CoV-2 is not significantly different from that for common coronaviruses identified at the study hospital in France“.
An Italian study of August 2019 found that flu deaths in Italy were between 7,000 and 25,000 in recent years. This value is higher than in most other European countries due to the large elderly population in Italy, and much higher than anything attributed to Covid-19 so far.
In a new fact sheet, the World Health Organization WHO reports that Covid-19 is in fact spreading slower, not faster, than influenza by a factor of about 50%. Moreover, pre-symptomatic transmission appears to be much lower with Covid-19 than with influenza.
A leading Italian doctor reports that „strange cases of pneumonia“ were seen in the Lombardy region already in November 2019, raising again the question if they were caused by the new virus (which officially only appeared in Italy in February 2020), or by other factors, such as the dangerously high smog levels in Northern Italy.
Danish researcher Peter Gøtzsche, founder of the renowned Cochrane Medical Collaboration, writes that Corona is „an epidemic of mass panic“ and „logic was one of the first victims.“
March 23, 2020 (II)
Former Israeli Health Minister, Professor Yoram Lass, says that the new coronavirus is „less dangerous than the flu“ and lockdown measures „will kill more people than the virus“. He adds that „the numbers do not match the panic“ and „psychology is prevailing over science“. He also notes that „Italy is known for its enormous morbidity in respiratory problems, more than three times any other European country.“
Pietro Vernazza, a Swiss infectious disease specialist, argues that many of the imposed measures are not based on science and should be reversed. According to Vernazza, mass testing makes no sense because 90% of the population will see no symptoms, and lockdowns and closing schools are even „counterproductive“. He recommends protecting only risk groups while keeping the economy and society at large undisturbed.
The President of the World Doctors Federation, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, argues that lockdown measures as in Italy are „unreasonable“ and „counterproductive“ and should be reversed.
In Switzerland, despite media panic, excess mortality is still at or near zero: the latest test-positive „victims“ were a 96-year-old in palliative care and a 97-year-old with pre-existing conditions.
The latest statistical report of the Italian National Health Institute is now available in English.
March 24, 2020
The UK has removed Covid19 from the official list of High Consquence Infectious Diseases (HCID), stating that mortality rates are „low overall“.
The director of the German National Health Institute (RKI) admitted that they count all test-positive deaths, irrespective of the actual cause of death, as „coronavirus deaths“. The average age of the deceased is 82 years, most with serious preconditions. As in most other countries, excess mortality due Covid19 is likely to be near zero in Germany.
Beds in Swiss intensive care units reserved for Covid19 patients are still „mostly empty“.
German Professor Karin Moelling, former Chair of Medical Virology at the University of Zurich, stated in an interview that Covid19 is „no killer virus“ and that „panic must end“.
March 25, 2020
German immunologist and toxicologist, Professor Stefan Hockertz, explains in a radio interview that Covid19 is no more dangerous than influenza (the flu), but that it is simply observed much more closely. More dangerous than the virus is the fear and panic created by the media and the „authoritarian reaction“ of many governments. Professor Hockertz also notes that most so-called „corona deaths“ have in fact died of other causes while also testing positive for coronaviruses. Hockertz believes that up to ten times more people than reported already had Covid19 but noticed nothing or very little.
The Argentinean virologist and biochemist Pablo Goldschmidt explains that Covid19 is no more dangerous than a bad cold or the flu. It is even possible that the Covid19 virus circulated already in earlier years, but wasn’t discovered because no one was looking for it. Dr. Goldschmidt speaks of a „global terror“ created by the media and politics. Every year, he says, three million newborns worldwide and 50,000 adults in the US alone die of pneumonia.
Professor Martin Exner, head of the Institute for Hygiene at the University of Bonn, explains in an interview why health personnel are currently under pressure, even though there has hardly been any increase in the number of patients in Germany so far: On the one hand, doctors and nurses who have tested positive have to be quarantined and are often hard to replace. On the other hand, nurses from neighbouring countries, who provide an important part of the care, are currently unable to enter the country due to closed borders.
Professor Julian Nida-Ruemelin, former German Minister of State for Culture and Professor of Ethics, points out that Covid19 poses no risk to the healthy general population and that extreme measures such as curfews are therefore not justified.
Using data from the cruise ship Diamond Princess, Stanford Professor John Ioannidis showed that the age-corrected lethality of Covid19 is between 0.025% and 0.625%, i.e. in the range of a strong cold or the flu. Moreover, a Japanese study showed that of all the test-positive passengers, and despite the high average age, 48% remained completely symptom-free; even among the 80-89 year olds 48% remained symptom-free, while among the 70 to 79 year olds it was an astounding 60% that developed no symptoms at all. This again raises the question whether the pre-existing diseases are not perhaps a more important factor than the virus itself. The Italian example has shown that 99% of test-positive deaths had one or more pre-existing conditions, and even among these, only 12% of the death certificates mentioned Covid19 as a causal factor.
March 26, 2020 (I)
USA: The latest US data of March 25 shows a decreasing number of flu-like illnesses throughout the country, the frequency of which is now well below the multi-year average. The government measures can be ruled out as a reason for this, as they have been in effect for less than a week.
Germany: The latest influenza report of the German Robert Koch Institute of March 24 documents a „nationwide decrease in activity of acute respiratory diseases“: The number of influenza-like illnesses and the number of hospital stays caused by them is below the level of previous years and is currently continuing to decline. The RKI continues: „The increase in the number of visits to the doctor cannot currently be explained either by influenza viruses circulating in the population or by SARS-CoV-2.“
Germany: Decreasing flu-like illnesses (20 March 2020, RKI)
Italy: The renowned Italian virologist Giulio Tarro argues that the mortality rate of Covid19 is below 1% even in Italy and is therefore comparable to influenza. The higher values only arise because no distinction is made between deaths with and by Covid19 and because the number of (symptom-free) infected persons is greatly underestimated.
UK: The authors of the British Imperial College study, who predicted up to 500,000 deaths, are again reducing their forecasts. After already admitting that a large proportion of test-positive deaths are part of normal mortality, they now state that the peak of the disease may be reached in two to three weeks already.
UK: The British Guardian reported in February 2019 that even in the generally weak flu season 2018/2019 there were more than 2180 flu-related admissions to intensive care units in the UK.
Switzerland: In Switzerland, the excess mortality due to Covid19 is apparently still zero. The latest „fatal victim“ presented by the media is a 100-year-old woman. Nevertheless, the Swiss government continues to tighten restrictive measures.
March 26, 2020 (II)
Sweden: Sweden has so far pursued the most liberal strategy in dealing with Covid19, which is based on two principles: Risk groups are protected and people with flu symptoms stay at home. „If you follow these two rules, there is no need for further measures, the effect of which is only marginal anyway,“ said chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell. Social and economic life will continue normally. The big rush to hospitals has so far failed to materialize, Tegnell said.
German criminal and constitutional law expert Dr. Jessica Hamed argues that measures such as general curfews and contact bans are a massive and disproportionate encroachment on fundamental rights of freedom and are therefore presumably „all illegal“.
The latest European monitoring report on overall mortality continues to show normal or below-average values in all countries and all age groups, but now with one exception: in the 65+ age group in Italy a currently increased overall mortality is predicted (so-called delay-adjusted z-score), which is, however, still below the values of the influenza waves of 2017 and 2018.
March 27, 2020 (I)
Italy: According to the latest data published by the Italian Ministry of Health, overall mortality is now significantly higher in all age groups over 65 years of age, after having been below average due to the mild winter. Until March 14, overall mortality was still below the flu season of 2016/2017, but may have already exceeded it in the meantime. Most of this excess mortality currently comes from northern Italy. However, the exact role of Covid19, compared to other factors such as panic, healthcare collapse and the lockdown itself, is not yet clear.
Italy: Total mortality 65+ years (red line) (MdS / 14 March 2020)
France: According to the latest data from France, overall mortality at the national level remains within the normal range after a mild influenza season. However, in some regions, particularly in the north-east of France, overall mortality in the over-65 age group has already risen sharply in connection with Covid19 (see figure below).
France: Total mortality at national level (above) and in the severely affected Haut-Rhin department (SPF / 15 March 2020)
France also provides detailed information on the age distribution and pre-existing conditions of test-positive intensive care patients and deceased patients (see figure below):
The average age of the deceased is 81.2 years.
78% of the deceased were over 75 years old; 93% were over 65 years old.
2.4% of the deceased were under 65 years of age and had no (known) previous illness
The average age of intensive care patients is 65 years.
26% of intensive care patients are over 75 years old; 67% have previous illnesses.
17% of intensive care patients are under 65 years of age and have no previous illnesses.
The French authorities add that „the share of the (Covid-19) epidemic in overall mortality remains to be determined.“
Age distribution of hospitalized patients (top left), intensive care patients (top right), patients at home (bottom left), and the deceased (bottom right). Source: SPF / 24 March 2020
USA: Researcher Stephen McIntyre has evaluated the official data on deaths from pneumonia in the US. There are usually between 3000 and 5500 deaths per week and thus significantly more than the current figures for Covid19. The total number of deaths in the US is between 50,000 and 60,000 per week. (Note: In the graph below, the latest figures for March 2020 have not yet been fully updated, so the curve is slumping).
USA: Deaths from pneumonia per week (CDC/McIntyre)
Great Britain:
Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London now assumes that the UK has sufficient capacity in intensive care units to treat Covid19 patients.
John Lee, Professor Emeritus of Pathology, argues that the particular way in which Covid-19 cases are registered leads to an overestimation of the risk posed by Covid19 compared to normal flu and cold cases.
Other topics:
A preliminary study by researchers at Stanford University showed that 20 to 25% of Covid19-positive patients tested additionally positive for other influenza or cold viruses.
The number of applications for unemployment insurance in the US skyrocketed to a record of over three million. In this context, a sharp increase in suicides is also expected.
The first test-positive patient in Germany has now recovered. According to his own statement, the 33-year-old man had experienced the illness „not as bad as the flu“.
Spanish media report that the antibody rapid tests for Covid19 only have a sensitivity of 30%, although it should be at least 80%.
A study from China in 2003 concluded that the probability of dying from SARS is 84% higher in people exposed to moderate air pollution than in patients from regions with clean air. The risk is even 200% higher among people from areas with heavily polluted air.
The German Network for Evidence-Based Medicine (EbM) criticises the media reporting on Covid19: „The media coverage does not in any way take into account the criteria of evidence-based risk communication that we have demanded. () The presentation of raw data without reference to other causes of death leads to an overestimation of the risk“.
March 27, 2020 (II)
German researcher Dr. Richard Capek argues in a quantitative analysis that the „Corona epidemic“ is in fact an „epidemic of tests“. Capek shows that while the number of tests has increased exponentially, the proportion of infections has remained stable and mortality has decreased, which speaks against an exponential spread of the virus itself (see below).
German Virology professor Dr. Carsten Scheller from the University of Würzburg explains in a podcast that Covid19 is definitely comparable with influenza and has so far even led to fewer deaths. Professor Scheller suspects that the exponential curves often presented in the media have more to do with the increasing number of tests than with an unusual spread of the virus itself. For countries like Germany, Italy is less of a role model than Japan and South Korea. Despite millions of Chinese tourists and only minimal social restrictions, these countries have not yet experienced a Covid19 crisis. One reason for this could be the wearing of mouth masks: This would hardly protect against infection, but would limit the spread of the virus by infected people.
The latest figures from Bergamo (city) show that total mortality in March 2020 increased from typically 150 people per month to around 450 people. It is still unclear what proportion of this was due to Covid19 and what proportion was due to other factors such as mass panic, systemic collapse and the lockdown itself. Apparently the city hospital was overrun by people from the whole region and collapsed.
The two Stanford professors of medicine, Dr. Eran Bendavid and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, explain in an article that the lethality of Covid19 is overestimated by several orders of magnitude and is probably even in Italy only at 0.01% to 0.06% and thus below that of influenza. The reason for this overestimation is the greatly underestimated number of people already infected (without symptoms). As an example, the fully tested Italian community of Vo is mentioned, which showed 50 to 75% symptom-free test-positive persons.
Dr. Gerald Gaß, President of the German Hospital Association, explained in an interview with the Handelsblatt that „the extreme situation in Italy is mainly due to the very low intensive care capacities“.
Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, one of the early and vocal critics of a „Covid19 panic“, was provisionally excluded by the board of Transparency Internantional Germany, where he headed the health working group. Wodarg had already been severely attacked by the media for his criticism.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warns that governments are using the current situation to expand the surveillance state and restrict fundamental rights. The control measures currently put in place would not be dismantled after the crisis.
The increasing number of tests is finding a proportional number of infections, the ratio stays constant, speaking against an ongoing viral epidemic (Dr. Richard Capek, US data)
March 28, 2020
A new study by the University of Oxford concludes that Covid19 may already have existed in the UK since January 2020 and that half of the population may already be immunised, with most people experiencing no or only mild symptoms. This would mean that only one in a thousand people would need to be hospitalised for Covid19. (Study)
British media reported on a 21 year old woman „who died of Covid19 without any previous illnesses“. However, it has since become known that the woman did not test positive for Covid19 and died of a heart failure. The Covid19 rumor had arisen „because she had a slight cough“.
The German media scientist Professor Otfried Jarren criticized that many media provide uncritical journalism that emphasizes threats and executive power. According to Professor Jarren, there is hardly any differentiation and real debate between experts.
March 29, 2020
Dr Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology in Mainz, Germany, wrote an Open Letter to German Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel, calling for an urgent reassessment of the response to Covid19 and asking the Chancellor five crucial questions.
The latest data from the German Robert Koch Institute show that the increase in test-positive persons is proportional to the increase in the number of tests, i.e. in percentage terms it remains roughly the same. This may indicate that the increase in the number of cases is mainly due to an increase in the number of tests, and not due to an ongoing epidemic.
The Milan microbiologist Maria Rita Gismondo calls on the Italian government to stop communicating the daily number of „corona positives“ as these figures are „fake“ and put the population in unnecessary panic. The number of test-positives depends very much on the type and number of tests and says nothing about the state of health.
Dr. John Ioannidis, Stanford Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, gave an in-depth one-hour interview on the lack of data for Covid19 measures.
The Argentinean virologist Pablo Goldschmidt, who lives in France, considers the political reaction to Covid19 as „completely exaggerated“ and warns against „totalitarian measures“. In parts of France, the movement of people is already monitored by drones.
Italian author Fulvio Grimaldi, born in 1934, explains that the state measures currently implemented in Italy are „worse than under fascism“. Parliament and society have been completely disempowered.
March 30, 2020 (I)
In Germany, some clinics can no longer accept patients – not because there are too many patients or too few beds, but because the nursing staff have tested positive, although in most cases they hardly show any symptoms. This case illustrates again how and why health care systems are getting paralysed.
In a German retirement and nursing home for people with advanced dementia, 15 test-positive people have died. However, „surprisingly many people have died without showing symptoms of corona.“ A German medical specialist informs us: „From my medical point of view, there is some evidence that some of these people may have died as a result of the measures taken. People with dementia get into high stress when major changes are made to their everyday lives: isolation, no physical contact, possibly hooded staff.“ Nevertheless, the deceased are counted as „corona deaths“ in German and international statistics. In connection with the „corona crisis“, it is now also possible to die of an illness without even having its symptoms.
According to a Swiss pharmacologist, the Swiss Inselspital in Bern has forced staff to take leave, stopped therapies and postponed operations due to the fear of Covid19.
Professor Gérard Krause, head of the Department of Epidemiology at the German Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, warns on German public television ZDF that the anti-corona measures „could lead to more deaths than the virus itself„.
Various media reported that more than 50 doctors in Italy have already died „during the corona crisis“, like soldiers in a battle. A glance at the corresponding list, however, shows that most of the deceased are retired doctors of various kinds, including 90-year-old psychiatrists and pediatricians, many of whom may have died of natural causes.
An extensive survey in Iceland found that 50% of all test-positive persons showed „no symptoms“ at all, while the other 50% mostly showed „very moderate cold-like symptoms“. According to the Icelandic data, the mortality rate of Covid19 is in the per mille range, i.e. in the flu range or below. Of the two test-positive deaths, one was „a tourist with unusual symptoms“. (More Icelandic data)
The British Daily Mail journalist Peter Hitchens writes, „There’s powerful evidence this great panic is foolish. Yet our freedom is still broken and our economy crippled.“ Hitchens points out that in parts of the UK, police drones monitor and report „non-essential“ walks in nature. In some cases, police drones are calling on people via loudspeaker to go home in order to „save lives“. (Note: Not even George Orwell had thought that far ahead.)
The Italian secret service warns of social unrest and uprisings. Supermarkets are already being looted and pharmacies raided.
Professor Sucharit Bhakdi has meanwhile published a video (German/English) in which he explains his Open Letter to German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel.
March 30, 2020 (II)
In several countries, there is increasing evidence in relation to Covid19 that „the treatment could be worse than the disease“.
On the one hand, there is the risk of so-called nosocomial infections, i.e. infections that the patient, who may only be mildly ill, acquires in hospital. It is estimated that there are approximately 2.5 million nosocomial infections and 50,000 deaths per year in Europe. Even in German intensive care units, about 15% of patients acquire a nosocomial infection, including pneumonia on artificial respiration. There is also the problem of increasingly antibiotic-resistant germs in hospitals.
Another aspect is the certainly well-intentioned but sometimes very aggressive treatment methods that are increasingly used in Covid19 patients. These include, in particular, the administration of steroids, antibiotics and anti-viral drugs (or a combination thereof). Already in the treatment of SARS-1 patients, it has been shown that the outcome with such treatment was often worse and more fatal than without such treatment.
March 31, 2020 (I)
Dr. Richard Capek and other researchers have already shown that the number of test-positive individuals in relation to the number of tests performed remains constant in all countries studied so far, which speaks against an exponential spread („epidemic“) of the virus and merely indicates an exponential increase in the number of tests.
Depending on the country, the proportion of test-positive individuals is between 5 and 15%, which corresponds to the usual spread of corona viruses. Interestingly, these constant numerical values are not actively communicated (or even removed) by authorities and the media. Instead, exponential but irrelevant and misleading curves are shown without context.
Such behavior, of course, does not correspond to professional medical standards, as a look at the traditional influenza report of the German Robert Koch Institute makes clear (p. 30, see chart below). Here, in addition to the number of detections (right), the number of samples (left, grey bars) and the positive rate (left, blue curve) are shown.
This immediately shows that during a flu season the positive rate rises from 0 to 10% to up to 80% of the samples and drops back to the normal value after a few weeks. In comparison, Covid19 tests show a constant positive rate in the normal range (see below).
Left: Number of samples and positive rate; right: number of detections (RKI, 2017)
Constant Covid19-positive rate using US data (Dr. Richard Capek). This applies analogously to all other countries for which data on the number of samples is currently available.
Covid19 positive rate (Dr. Richard Capek, US data)
March 31, 2020 (II)
A graphical analysis of the European monitoring data impressively shows that, irrespective of the measures taken, overall mortality throughout Europe remained in the normal range or below by March 25, and often significantly below the levels of previous years. Only in Italy (65+) was the overall mortality rate somewhat increased (probably for several reasons), but it was still below previous flu seasons.
The president of the German Robert Koch Institute confirmed again that pre-existing conditions and actual cause of death do not play a role in the definition of so-called „corona deaths“. From a medical point of view, such a definition is clearly misleading. It has the obvious and generally known effect of putting politics and society in fear.
In Italy the situation is now beginning to calm down. As far as is known, the temporarily increased mortality rates (65+) were rather local effects, often accompanied by mass panic and a breakdown in health care. A politician from northern Italy asks, for example, „how is it possible that Covid patients from Brescia are transported to Germany, while in the nearby Verona two thirds of intensive care beds are empty?“
In an article published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation, Stanford professor of medicine John C. Ioannidis criticizes the „harms of exaggerated information and non-evidence-based measures“. Even journals had published dubious claims at the beginning.
A Chinese study published in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology in early March, which indicated the unreliability of the Covid19 virus tests (approx. 50% false-positive results in asymptomatic patients), has since been withdrawn. The lead author of the study, the dean of a medical school, did not want to give the reason for the withdrawal and spoke of a „sensitive matter„, which could indicate political pressure, as an NPR journalist noted. Independent of this study, however, the unreliability of so-called PCR virus tests has long been known: In 2006, for example, a mass infection in a Canadian nursing home with SARS corona viruses was „found“, which later turned out to be common cold corona viruses (which can also be fatal for risk groups).
Authors of the German Risk Management Network RiskNETspeak in a Covid19 analysis of a „blind flight“ as well as „insufficient data competence and data ethics“. Instead of more and more tests and measures a representative sample is necessary. The „sense and ratio“ of the measures must be critically questioned.
The Spanish interview with the internationally renowned Argentinian-French virologist Pablo Goldschmidt was translated into German. Goldschmidt considers the measures imposed to be medically counterproductive and notes that one must now „read Hannah Arendt“ to understand the „origins of totalitarianism“.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, like other prime ministers and presidents before him, has largely disempowered the Hungarian parliament under an „emergency law“ and can now govern essentially by decree.
„The only means to fight the plague is honesty.“ Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)
Wolfgang
Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, claims swine flu scare
was a “false pandemic” led by drugs companies that stood to make
billions from vaccines.
Epidemiologist
here. The problem with swine flu was never how many people were getting
it or dying from it. It was who was getting it. The age distribution
was centered much younger than your average seasonal flu. This was the
cause for worry. Thankfully it turned out this strain while particularly
infectious wasn’t particularly fatal.level 2mikaelhg36 points · 10 years ago
Were
there actually indications that h1n1 would turn out to be more fatal
than other strains or was that just sort of assumed to err on the side
of “caution”?
Also do you have any
stats of the age distributions? I thought that it was still mostly old
people/very young people/people with previous conditions who died?Continue this thread level 2phanboy7 points · 10 years ago
They also planned on including it in the seasonal flu shot, but they were a few weeks too late.
Vaccines
aren’t the same high-margin expensive-research game as things like
Prozac, and there’s not really that much money in them.Continue this thread level 2judgej23 points · 10 years ago
Who was getting it, or who was being made most ill by it?level 2mpness3 points · 10 years ago
Hey, on a side note, what kind of schooling did you have to take? You should really do an IAMANlevel 2cojoco3 points · 10 years ago
There’s a lot wrong with your statement.
I tried to find stats on this on Australian government websites, and the fact of the matter is that for most people that die of respiratory illness, no test for Influenza is performed. Such deaths are categorized as “Influenza and Pneumonia”.
Any
statistics about the prevalence of swine flu after the big panic
commenced would seem to be suspect, as a lot more young people would be
presenting at emergency departments if they were showing any flu-like
symptoms.
As far as I have been
able to tell, the whole issue is immensely complicated, and any
differences between swine flu and other forms of Influenza are buried in
mountains of dodgy data collection.level 2kingius3 points · 10 years ago
It
was blown out of all proportion on almost day one. A couple of people
died and everybody panicked. An airport was shut down. The media
speculated that someone being taken out of it had the flu. People were
issued breathing masks. The media went crazy and said hundreds of
thousands would die by october. Drugs companies made a killing producing
vaccines that doctors since have said, don’t bother with.level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago
It would have been nice for them to determine that prior to cause a world wide panic over it…level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago
There
are reasons to worry as an Epidemiologist, but in my view, there was
never a reason to be worried as a layman in the first world. The
infectiousness was always obvious, but so was the relatively low
mortality for people without complications.
Frankly,
I think the panic made the job of folks like you harder, because a
well-implemented rollout of vaccine became much harder. Perfectly
healthy people were taking doses while at-risk people were being turned
away from clinics.
This should
never have been a panic, the media should never have pretended it was
anything other than a particularly contagious(yes, wrong word, but you
know what I mean — if you were exposed there was a higher chance of
contracting it because your immune system didn’t have any immunity
prepared), and a well-implemented roll-out in which groups at higher
risk of death from the disease should have taken place.level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago
I second the AMA. I think you have a particularly interesting job. What class of organisms do you work with?level 2phlux3 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago
I have a naive question, or I guess, more conspiratorial than naive perhaps:
Is
it possible that viruses can affect ones DNA – and change it? I thought
I saw an article that stated than X% (6 or 8%? maybe) of our DNA was
from bacteria…
If you wanted to
don a particularly thick tinfoil hat; maybe the ‘swine-flu’ could be an
attempt to affect the DNA of a larger population of future generations?
That would make for some good SyFy…..
EDIT:
virii->viruses for the pedant. However I now see that the in-box
spell-check noted my mistake, I was too lazy to notice when I typed the
original messagiiContinue this thread level 2I_divided_by_0-4 points · 10 years ago
From
my understanding, it’s important to note the flu itself wasn’t exactly
causing the deaths. Being a new strand of virus, it essentially
exhausted our confused immune system and consequently opened the door to
things that would have been normally be prevented.
Statistically speaking, children and pregnant women were afflicted most commonly.Continue this thread level 2Comment deleted by user10 years ago(More than 1 child)level 2[deleted]1 point · 10 years ago
Hope your company enjoys the profits :/level 2[deleted]1 point · 10 years ago
Yeah,
I have some doctor friends who have said pretty much the same. They
also said that we were really lucky it didn’t mutate and become a
deadlier strain because it easily could have. They also said we should expect another influx of cases over the next few months.Continue this thread level 2Comment deleted by user10 years ago(More than 1 child)level 1aecarol36 points · 10 years ago
And if N1H1 had turned out to be really bad the same people would be shrieking out “unprepared” the Government was.
Y2K
turned out to not be so bad BECAUSE billions were spent in advance to
fix the worst of the problems. Had it not been done, there would have
been anger about “how obvious the danger was” and how it was ignored.
Anti-vaccine
people fume about having to get their kids shots, because “measles is
so rare”. It’s “rare” because PEOPLE GET THEIR SHOTS.
It’s not fair to complain about the bother of the work to mitigate a problem using the excuse the problem turned out mild.
(i.e. Why are we wasting so much money on levy/dike maintenance, the town hasn’t flooded in years!)
When
H1N1 was first found it was frightening because it spreads more easily
than normal flu and it killed people that “ordinary flu” would not have.
It’s also related to the flu strain that killed 30 MILLION people 90
years ago.
It turns out to not be quite as bad as feared and lots of people were vaccinated which acted as a firewall.level 2ThePurpleAlien6 points · 10 years ago
This
is true. It’s impossible to prepare the “right” amount and people will
complain either way. But, the decision making process still matters.
Authority figures can make good decisions and bad decisions based on the
information available to them. And they can be influenced by outside
interests that don’t have the public good at heart. I would still like
to know if the pharmaceutical companies had any influence over the
decision making process as Wodarg alleges.level 2Kopias4 points · 10 years ago
The
question is whether or not people with monetary interests influenced
the decision or people with scientific data and human concern made the
decision to start a costly immunization campaign, not how people would
view it after the fact. I believe pharmaceutical companies like any
other industry would choose to modify the reality of the situation in
order to sell their products.Continue this thread level 2cojoco2 points · 10 years ago
Funnily enough, when the government are wrong, we complain.
When they are right, then we don’t
This seems like a great motivator to do the right thing!level 2G_Morgan2 points · 10 years ago
Comparing
to Y2K is pointless. There was no guessing about the dangers of Y2K. It
wasn’t an unknown. We knew with absolute certainty that the majority of
bank COBOL systems were using a 2 digit picture to store the year. We
knew with certainty that similar problems existed in how PCs stored
dates. It was not speculative spending to fix this because the problem
was not speculative to begin with.
H1N1
was entirely a gigantic guessing game. I could start a guessing game
about bloody anything. If I said that reddit puts out radiation that
kills narwhals should we invest billions in dealing with it?
The
appropriate response always depends upon a function of the dangers of
failure and the certainty attached to the underlying theory. Y2K was a
problem that was absolutely certain and would cost us trillions of
dollars world wide if we ignored it. The money was spent because of this
combination. GW is a problem which is less certain (but still strongly
suggested by evidence) but would result in incalculable costs which is
why we take a strong response. H1N1 was almost entirely unknown and
didn’t have as large a cost as either.level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago
Nobody
is angry that there’s a vaccine(the vast minority, at least). I’m
pretty sure plenty of people are angry that the threat the flu posed was
so out of proportion to the risk.
This
flu was sold as the next big terror, when nothing justified that. It
was slightly more virulent than previous instances of the flu, but the
symptoms and treatment have consistently been in line with the seasonal
flu.
There was an extremely deadly
H1N1 strain on a military base a few years ago. It killed everyone who
got it and killed itself off immediately because of it. There was
immediate evidence that it was a deadly strain. In this case, we’re
still treating H1N1 as somehow special, when it’s clear there’s no risk
over the risk that comes with a standard flu.level 2Tecktonik1 point · 10 years ago
When
H1N1 was first found it was frightening because it spreads more easily
than normal flu and it killed people that “ordinary flu” would not have.
It’s also related to the flu strain that killed 30 MILLION people 90
years ago.
There was
no vaccine for the first 6 months of the H1N1 vaccine, so where are the
piles of bodies due to this highly virulent strain that strikes down
ordinary people? Certainly 6 months was enough time, wasn’t it?
Yes,
some people died. And almost everyone who died from H1N1 had some known
or unknown underlying condition that made them more susceptible. If you
don’t know you have the type 2 diabetes and you get H1N1 you could die.
But this kind of thing happens all the time.Continue this thread level 1[deleted]10 points · 10 years ago
i
guess, and hey whatever im never getting a vaccine for it, but i still
know a couple of people, one of whom was hospitalized for quite a while
(a twenty-something, otherwise healthy male).
i
never felt threatened (despite living in new york, and, at the time,
working a few blocks from one of the schools that had a big outbreak)
but it’s not like they just made it up or something.level 2KevMike5 points · 10 years ago
I
had it for a couple of weeks, and I’m an athletic twenty something. It
was pretty mild, but it ruined my entire semester because of it.level 2G_Morgan2 points · 10 years ago
You still paid for vaccines for it via taxation.level 2flynnguy4 points · 10 years ago
I
don’t think anyone is saying they made up the swine flu, just that it
was completely over hyped. Like everyone who didn’t get the vaccine was
going to die.
I know a couple of people who probably had it (not sure if strain was tested) and they got sick but they certainly didn’t die.level 2akula-1 points · 10 years ago
Healthy
people get hospitalized with the flu every single year. The difference
this year is that they named the flu strain publicly, hyped the flu,
created a scare with their named flu and created a new vaccine for this
deadly flu. So the scare worked on many as they flocked to hospitals at
the first sign of the sniffles when normally they would just ignore. The
flu numbers were artificially inflated and still didnt hit numbers to
impress. Anybody that got any flu called it the swine flu. The CDC never
really had people tested other then the select “danger” group.
Diagnosis of H1N1 was mainly left to symptom diagnosis. And whats the
symptoms of H1N1? Flu like symptoms of course….because its the damn
flu.Continue this thread level 1ooermissus46 points · 10 years ago
Pretty
harsh article considering he was only saying a new type of vaccine was
not tested enough. I see words like “conspiracy theorist” “quack” and
“fake expert”. It’s not like the guy is antivax or anything like that.
So, is Steven Salzberg a shill or something?Continue this thread level 1fatmike8510 points · 10 years ago
I stopped reading when I got to, “UK tabloid The Sun reports”. Anyone have a more credible source? Perhaps from a newspaper without boobs in it.level 2florinandrei3 points · 10 years ago
In
the daily confusion and obfuscation that is the corporate-controlled
‘news’, always following an agenda for increasing money or power for
someone, fantasy was turned into an ‘appearance of reality’ published
and promoted for all to see and be manipulated by.
What
began as an idea, a suggestion of what ‘could happen’ in the future —
much like a theme for a sci-fi movie, turned into a speculation of what
might happen,and then quickly was morphed into a story of what IS
happening — so easily accomplished with bad journalism and with a
readership that is largely manipulated by fear and misinformation.
Naturally,
certain rich people, certain corporations and politicians stood to
increase their bank accounts significantly, while others, in
pseudo-academic circles, went along with the theme, providing the
bad-science to support wild speculation.level 1RightHereRightNow4 points · 10 years ago
I
managed to contract the swine flu (along with a couple of people at my
employer at the time). had some issues with breathing ok and felt like
crap, went to the ol dr got the tamiflu was better within one day. Some
people had it worse and some people never contracted it, a vaccine would
have been nice to avoid being bored out of my mind in quarantine but no
vaccine was available at the time. I seriously doubt it was a
conspiracy, some people over hypted it but thats to be expected by the
media, they sell more papers.level 2cazbot2 points · 10 years ago
That’s
pretty much my take on it too. Get the vaccine if you haven’t yet had
the flu and want to avoid the cough and congestion, but don’t worry
about any serious symptoms.Continue this thread level 1[deleted]29 points · 10 years ago
“It’s just a normal kind of flu. It does not cause a tenth of deaths caused by the classic seasonal flu,” Dr Wodarg said.
I seem to recall people on reddit saying this months ago and getting downvoted to hell because they were ‘endangering others.’level 2brufleth3 points · 10 years ago
Well
the point he’s making is a little misleading. Sure the regular flu
might kill more due to secondary infections. It might even take more
directly simply because of how many it infects. Swine flu has (or at
least could have potentially had) a much higher mortality rate due
directly to the virus itself. It is the difference between a deadly flu
that will actually kill you and a more typical flu that just makes you
more likely to get a secondary infection.
Ultimately
I kind of agree with him on this though. Flu vaccines are largely a
means for drug companies to fleece the population. They might
be helpful for high risk groups but many (maybe even most) people
getting them don’t really need them and will still get other bad colds
over the course of the season anyway.
People
will potentially get the flu vaccines every year for the rest of their
lives. If they can come up with some other vaccines and scare people
into getting them every year they score big obviously.level 2ricLP8 points · 10 years ago
One
honest question here (no irony intended): how did we know in the
beginning that this wouldn’t turn into a serious pandemic? As far as I
saw (and of course from the media) in the early stages there seemed to
big a rather big number of deaths when looking at the total number of
infected.
From what I learned in
the meantime (which might also be wrong) the virus evolves because the
objective is not to kill the host, but to spread as much as possible.
Therefore at the time (in the beginning of this ordeal) people would say
that later the proportional number of deaths would drop. But could we
be sure of that since the beginning?
As much as I’d like to agree with you, my own posts were fairly heavily upvoted for saying exactly this.[1]
Being correct against the tyranny of the majority would be really romantic and cool, but that’s just not what happened here.
On the other hand, reality rather proved me correct in this case — Wow, looks like the head of health at the council of europe is making my exact argument!level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago
Dr Wodarg needs to take a class in statistics.level 2krakow0577 points · 10 years ago
No you didn’t . Everyone said this, they all got upvoted.
People here on reddit seem to have amnesia.
99% of “multinationals are fooling the sheeple” gets upvoted.
Go back and find one extremly upvoted comment about how the swine flu was a big deal.Continue this thread level 2[deleted]5 points · 10 years ago
Yes! I made a post asking about who was choosing to not get vaccinated, and I was quickly down-voted into oblivion.Continue this thread level 2stmfreak1 point · 10 years ago
Humans are herd creatures and reflexively cast out those that go against the group-think.Continue this thread level 2[deleted]1 point · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago
I seem to recall people on reddit saying this months ago and getting downvoted to hell because they were ‘endangering others.’
They
were endangering others. My school has been giving out free H1N1
shots since October, and other places around the town/state/country have
been doing the same. Also, due the increased awareness about H1N1,
more people sought medical care for their flu than would have otherwise.
Both of these factored greatly into keeping H1N1 from having a high
death rate.
In other words, you
can come here and say that it wasn’t so bad because everyone else took
precautions. What the hell ever happened to erring on the side of
caution?Continue this thread level 2[deleted]-2 points · 10 years ago
I’ve
been accused, on reddit and elsewhere, of actively wanting to kill off
as many pregnant women as possible, due to my decision not to get this
stupid unnecessary vaccine. Well, I’m exaggerating of course, but lots
of impressionable twentysomethings on Reddit sure were a little too
engrossed by the concept of “herd immunity” they recently discovered
from Wikipedia and were very angry whenever someone questioned “The
Vaccine”.Continue this thread level 2cazbot-3 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago
I
was saying this months ago too but still downvoting all the idiots who
were using that to justify not getting vaccinated. Even getting mildly
sick sucks and it makes sense to get vaccinated to avoid it, plain and
simple.level 1rz200013 points · 10 years ago
The
operating principle behind this argument is that a catastrophic
pandemic cannot occur. The reason people believe this is because they
have not experienced a global pandemic within their lifetimes. We are
notoriously bad at understanding risk.
Additionally
people are likely to point to numbers for tragic diseases such as
malaria or point out that over 1 million children die each year from
diarrhea from poor water supplies. The third world could use more
resources for clean water and mosquito nets. However the numbers do not
displace eachother, and a few million added to these numbers would be
significantly traumatic to rich and poor countries. the 100-200 million
of a worst case scenario, might lead to a complete breakdown of trade
and many famines around the world.
We
will never know if the pandemic would have become more severe if the
vaccine had not prevented the vectors necessary for it to spread more
rapidly or even evolve into a more dangerous pathogen.
We
have such obvious examples of the unexpected occurring over the past 10
years that I am frankly surprised at the number of commenters here who
claim that “common sense” was a good guide for analyzing the risk level
of unlikely events, or who congratulate themselves on putting two and
two together despite a lack of any training or education.
Auto
accidents are extremely rare in the context of the number of car rides
you will take in your life. That does not mean that you are smart if you
complete a trip safely and were not wearing a seatbelt.
Similarly,
you always see the people congratulating themselves for not having
evacuated in front of a hurricane that ended up sparing their town.
While it is easy for an outsider to see that these people are fools, and
had less information to base their decisions than meteorologists
advising them to to flee, they really are proud of themselves and think
that they are wise.
It is also
worth pointing out that it was common sense that lead people who saw
fish flopping around, where the sea had just receded, to think it was
probably a pretty cool thing to go check out. If you’ve never
experienced a tsunami, how could you imagine something so foreign to
your personal experiences.
Considering
the tsunamis it would have been helpful if some of the less developed
communities had strong superstitions about the sea receding. As much as
people ridicule religion here it may have a beneficial effect on society
if the manifestations include superstitions that override the
pseudo-wisdom of: nothing can happen that I haven’t already experienced.level 2cwm442 points · 10 years ago
When
the people who develop the vaccine manage to convince a serious
majority of health practitioners who are qualified to evaluate such
things I will be more inclined to listen. At least in Britain the number
of doctors convinced of its value weren’t even a majority if I recall
correctly according to a guardian article I read at the time. That stats
were about 30/30/30. Also, better availability will work wonders in
getting people to take vaccines.
I’d
like to believe all scientists were perfect, and that people never
exaggerate the truth when they stand to make money, especially
politicians, but I don’t.
What
really worries me about the whole issue is the story of the boy who
cried wolf. If people keep flipping out about every avian or swine flu
that comes along what will happen when a serious mutation does occur?
All
in all it’s a great thing that quick largescale mass productions of
such things are being practiced now, but I’ll take my chances until
something dangerous comes along. Just enjoy the fact that people like
you can get the vaccine easier while people like me exist and stop
whining.Continue this thread level 2monolithdigital1 point · 10 years ago
but of a leap to the ‘religon’ part, but kudos nonethelesslevel 1thevoid27 points · 10 years ago
Cue loads of “Well duh, I knew it all along and was laughing at you idiots while you panicked” posturing. It’s sickening.
It’s Y2K all over again. People like to chuckle about how it turned out to be a storm in a teacup, forgetting that it was because
there were people prepared to take it seriously and do something about
it that it died out with a whimper. If everybody had sat on their hands
and laughed it off, Y2K would have been a disaster and swine flu could
have been the same.
Oh, hindsight. How the image-conscious with their rose-tinted glasses love thee.level 2ooermissus33 points · 10 years ago
Anthony Giddens – Reith Lectures 1999:
There
is a new moral climate of politics, marked by a push-and-pull between
accusations of scaremongering on the one hand, and of cover-ups on the
other. If anyone – government official, scientific expert or researcher –
takes a given risk seriously, he or she must proclaim it. It must be
widely publicised because people must be persuaded that the risk is real
– a fuss must be made about it. Yet if a fuss is indeed created and the
risk turns out to be minimal, those involved will be accused of
scaremongering.
Suppose,
on the other hand, that the authorities initially decide that the risk
is not very great, as the British government did in the case of
contaminated beef. In this instance, the government first of all said:
we’ve got the backing of scientists here; there isn’t a significant
risk, we can continue eating beef without any worries. In such
situations, if events turn out otherwise – as in fact they did – the
authorities will be accused of a cover-up – as indeed they were.
Things
are even more complex than these examples suggest. Paradoxically,
scaremongering may be necessary to reduce risks we face – yet if it is
successful, it appears as just that, scaremongering. The case of AIDS is
an example. Governments and experts made great public play with the
risks associated with unsafe sex, to get people to change their sexual
behaviour. Partly as a consequence, in the developed countries, AIDS did
not spread as much as was originally predicted. Then the response was:
why were you scaring everyone like that? Yet as we know from its
continuing global spread – they were – and are – entirely right to do
so.
This sort of paradox becomes routine in contemporary society, but there is no easily available way of dealing with it.
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
Yesterday
the sky was falling when it came to our energy concerns and we were
asking why we weren’t thinking about it before. Now that oil prices have
stabilized those same people have forgotten about such questions. But
when the oil market becomes volatile once again, they will ask it again.
Right now if you ask it, they look at you as if you’re crazy and it’s
not a problem. People are stupid and don’t plan for the future is my
best guess as to what causes such sentiment.Continue this thread level 2[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago
“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”level 2G_Morgan2 points · 10 years ago
Logic
fail here. Just because two such crises ended up with similar minimal
impact does not mean there is any relation between them. It is, without
further information, possible that both were entirely over-hyped, both
were real and solved by real effort, one was real and one was
over-hyped. Your argument is equivalent to the Simpson’s bear patrol. I
don’t see any bears therefore the bear patrol is doing its job.
As
it stands we always had real reason to believe Y2K was a danger. There
was no speculation, the situation was a fact. Swine flu infection rates
were always uninteresting. FWIW I have a rock to sell you that can
defeat terrorists.level 1the_big_wedding3 points · 10 years ago
Reactions
are always overblown or sensationalized. People love to have shit to
worry about to distract them from the day to day.level 1CountRumford3 points · 10 years ago
of course it was. also the swine flu ‘vaccine’ damages your DNA.level 1[deleted]3 points · 10 years ago
[Any
trial run that helps you prepare for a real epidemic is a good thing,
look at the lessons learned, the USA would have been hit very hard by
their failures, managing the swine flu, if it had been something more
dangerous.]level 1[deleted]3 points · 10 years ago
It
was also a false pandemic led by governments who wanted to use it as a
way to eliminate civil liberties and inflate budgets in the name of
“public health and safety”. Unfortunately for the U.S. government,
nobody in this country really bought into it.level 1smek23 points · 10 years ago
Wolfgang
Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, claimed major firms
organized a “campaign of panic” to put pressure on the World Health
Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic, UK tabloid The Sun reports.
There’s a Council of Europe? That sounds scarier than swine flu…level 2mexicodoug2 points · 10 years ago
No shit. They might start exporting cradle-to-grave health care for all…level 1[deleted]6 points · 10 years ago
Any
of you that bought the swine flu scare and relentlessly pounded the
comment box with “GET YOUR SHOTS” need to learn from this event and stop
being such gullible sheep.level 1stmfreak8 points · 10 years ago
Swine flu is just seasonal flu with a name. In a few year’s it will be monkey flu, or dog flu, or LGM flu. MSM cannot sell a flu scare, but when you put a name on it, suddenly you have a brand.level 2phandy5 points · 10 years ago
Viruses
that came from animals are always more infectuous and deadly then those
that come from humans because our bodies have never seen them. Yes,
it’s true that the swine flu is a seasonal flu, but it’s a flu that has
passed from humans, to pigs than back to humans again. The structure of
the virus mutates and changes while in the pig and becomes an
especially virulent strain.
Yes,
the reaction against the swine flu was probably too much, but people
made decisions based on limited information and an overreaction is
preferable over an epidemic.Continue this thread level 2chakalakasp1 point · 10 years ago
Windows is just an operating system with a name. In a few years it’ll be OS10, or Linux, or BSD. MSM cannot sell an operating system, but when you put a name on it, suddenly you have a brand.level 1Jigsus9 points · 10 years ago
I
definitely thought that this swine flu thing was overdone. However, to
single out the drug companies as culprit is ridiculous. The government
and the media both did more than their share. They both love a good
“crisis”.level 2helleborus2 points · 10 years ago
to single out the drug companies as culprit is ridiculous. The government and the media both did more than their share
The lines between the drug companies, the media and the government are pretty blurry – so it’s not that ridiculous.level 1cabcaraway2 points · 10 years ago
Isn’t The Sun, cited as the source for this story, a rag like the National Enquirer, or the NY Post? Just asking.level 1Radico872 points · 10 years ago
Well people do tend to overreact just a tad, especially when it comes to things more people don’t understand.level 1gsfgf2 points · 10 years ago
It
wasn’t a false pandemic made by big pharma to sell vaccines. It was a
false pandemic made by the media to sell ads. Gotta give credit where
credit’s due.level 1EastYork2 points · 10 years ago
Who
here is not surprised? We’ve seen nations go to war over imaginary
threats for the purpose of getting richer. What’s a little flu-scare?
It’s a slippery slope.level 1EastYork2 points · 10 years ago
I for one, declined to get the vaccine. I never thought this was a big deal to begin withlevel 1azdavy2 points · 10 years ago · edited 10 years ago
In
the last couple of days I’ve heard and read reports that much of the
H1N1 antivirus is going to be wasted. Then I read new reports that say
it’s still crazy dangerous and everybody should still get immunized.
Then I read about mass H1N1 groups being immunized in CA, I believe it
was. That totally stinks of big pharma influence.level 1Valdus_Pryme2 points · 10 years ago
This almost seems reasonable… but isn’t the source the sun?
b) In
early May the WHO changed its definition of a pandemic. Before that
date there had to be not only a disease which had broke out in several
countries at once but also one that had very serious consequences with
the number of deaths above the usual average. This aspect was removed
from the new definition, to retain the rate of spread of disease as the
only criteria. And they claimed that the virus was dangerous because
people had not been able to develop immunity against it. global research
c) Now note that the first flu case was registered in April but:
In
January 2009 the United States Department of Health and Human Services
awarded Novartis a $486 million contract for construction of the first
U.S. plant to produce cell-based influenza vaccine, to be located in
Holly Springs, North Carolina. The stated goal of this program is the
capability of producing 150,000,000 doses of pandemic vaccine within six
months of declaring a flu pandemic. wikipedia
If
it is so profitable why have many drug companies stopped making the
vaccine? are we to believe that not “Big Pharma” but the few remaining
drug companies producing flu vaccine are behind this conspiracy?
Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to do like the rest and just not
make the vaccine in place of more profitable drugs they could be making?
Just doesn’t make sense.
The
shortage is compounded because the number of companies producing
vaccine has dropped significantly over the years because those companies
could not makes a MUCH profit as they thought they should. The
comapnies were profitably but not hugely profitable like they would be
making other drugs. That is greed pure and simple.
Much
of the news media is still smarting that we didn’t all die of Bird Flu
and SARS. They leapt on Swine Flu like hyenas at a corpse because
readers and audiences were so sick of hearing about the recession.level 1bjs31712 points · 10 years ago
look.
it’s good that government and news make a big deal out of things like
this. people can get sick, and it’s clearly better to be over-prepared,
but actual people need to learn to chill the fuck out. we have these
things called immune systems. If a bug isn’t killing hundreds of people
a day, chances are, most people will be fine. just wash your hands.
with regular non-anti-bacterial soap, and you’ll be fine.level 2will_itblend2 points · 10 years ago
But…but…there’s
big money, for certain people, in convincing everyone to get shot up
with a mix of detergents, mercury and pesticides.
The
real illness is characterized by a perceived lack of sufficient funds
by a super-rich people. You don’t expect them to actually work for their
money, do you?
Monsters like the
Rumsfelds of the world rely heavily on the drug and food additive
industries to perpetrate their ultra-profitable monstrosity!level 1Fleshflayer2 points · 10 years ago
A
friend of mine died from H1n1 during the Christmas holidays. He was in
his late 20’s but he’d had problems with his lungs previously. Still,
the disease killed him, so I don’t know how false it was.level 1AngryConservative3 points · 10 years ago
Isn’t this just as bad as Global Warming deniers?level 2G_Morgan2 points · 10 years ago
Uh…
I thought drug companies LOST money due to the vaccine being well…
free… and they were being compelled to make it extremely quickly.level 2helleborus2 points · 10 years ago
Uh… I thought drug companies LOST money due to the vaccine being well… free…
It
was free to some (by no means all) people who received the vaccine.
That does not mean that it was the pharmaceutical companies giving it
away. The US government purchased
hundreds of millions of doses. It may be true that the the profit
margin for vaccines is lower than for other drugs, but when you’re
talking about hundreds of millions of doses – well, just do the math.
Can you tell us where you got the impression that the drug companies lost money?Continue this thread level 1[deleted]0 points · 10 years ago
Anyone
who has the tiniest bit of common sense knew it wasn’t that serious. I
don’t know if I’d go as far as a conspiracy theory, but the media
certainly fanned the flames.
Breaking news: Young kids and old people can die when they get sick!level 2ooermissus2 points · 10 years ago
The question is when they knew it wasn’t that serious – and the answer to that is: when not many people died.
As
far as I know (and perhaps I don’t have enough of this magic ‘common
sense’ to rely on), there is no way of predicting beforehand what the
fatality rate from a pandemic will be.Continue this thread level 2mothereffingteresa2 points · 10 years ago
the media certainly fanned the flames.
The media usually gets a lot of help from PR firms deciding which flames to fan.level 2theeth2 points · 10 years ago
Anyone who has the tiniest bit of common sense knew it wasn’t that serious.
Should
we blame the media here? Yes, I think they overreacted to some things,
but we are adults here who should be able to discern the seriousness of a
story. We can’t blame the media for the idiots that overreact.level 1spamdefender1 point · 10 years ago
Conspiracy
theorists are sitting around patting themselves on the back for being
right all along. Unfortunately, they still have little to say about the
dozens of times they claimed Bush would cancel the elections and
declare Martial Law, the countless times we were going to invade Iran,
the FEMA death camps and that Diebold would rig electronic voting in
favor of McCain.
When you are always negative, you are bound to be right once in a while.level 2mexicodoug3 points · 10 years ago
Obama
is preparing most of that shit now for his own usurpation of power.
How do you know that the war profiteers didn’t buy off Diebold in
exchange for Obama’s promise to expand the Mid-East conflict into a
full-fledged world war? You heard about the seven new US bases in
Colombia, no doubt.
I’m being 75% sarcastic, 25% serious here.level 1[deleted]2 points · 10 years ago
In other news NO SHIT! I always had a good laugh at the sheeple lining up to get their GOVT approved serum.level 2will_itblend2 points · 10 years ago
It’s
times like this when i start to really love Reddit. Where are all you
good people of the truth really late at night (EST), when the friggin’
sheeple are running wild and posting all those lies?
I have to try to hold up the truth all by myself, and I get lots of down-votes for it. I hope y’all appreciate it! heh heh
(Why do I say y’all? I’m not even from the South!)level 1Comment deleted by user10 years ago(More than 5 children)level 1Athiesmo3 points · 10 years ago
Also the flu vaccine itself is a hoax,
given that it is manufactured nearly a YEAR in advance, and it’s only a
small chance that the type of flu it is meant to prevent is actually
the one that breaks out.
Lastly,
people who are ill may have the swine flu virus present, but the amount
the have is NOT tested. In most cases it is not possible to truly
attribute the persons illness to swine flu, it is almost always a
pre-existing condition.
Wolfgang Wodarg is a politician, not a health expert, check his Wikipedia pagelevel 2Comment removed by moderator10 years ago(More than 1 child)level 1Reductive1 point · 10 years ago
“Pandemic”
refers to how widespread a pathogen is. It has nothing to do with the
virulence or even danger. “False pandemic” would mean we thought it was
global when it’s really not. H1N1 is indeed found throughout the
globe, so Wodarg is simply wrong.level 1mwarden1 point · 10 years ago
How is that possible when the people I saw warning about it were all from the government?level 1[deleted]1 point · 10 years ago
I was never afraid of the flu and laughed in the faces of people who were.
Distraction,
fearmongering, and more distraction. Governments deserve an A+ for
bringing out the stupidity of their populations. What’s going to
worry/distract us next? Another false-flag like the panty-bomber?level 2will_itblend2 points · 10 years ago
You
just gave me a weird vision of a TV game show on some alien planet,
where they watch the nutty antics of the Earthlings and try to guess
which kind of mass hysteria will happen next.level 1[deleted]-2 points · 10 years ago
Somehow,
I’m not surprised. I didn’t get a vaccination, because after putting 2
and 2 together, I realized it was NOT serious, and I was not at risk.
On
the other hand, I suspected this from the beginning, and it irks me
that pharmaceutical companies pushed for mass vaccination.
Who’s to say that H1N1 wasn’t also created in a laboratory?
They’ll just be infecting us with something more serious next time.
Well
if their aim was to make billions, then hopefully next time they’ll be
smart enough to make people pay for the vaccine and not have all those
free clinics.level 2helleborus6 points · 10 years ago
Well
if their aim was to make billions, then hopefully next time they’ll be
smart enough to make people pay for the vaccine and not have all those
free clinics.
Are you kidding? You think the pharmaceutical companies gave the vaccine away because the clinics were free? The government gave free vaccines, not the pharmaceuticals.level 1omaca0 points · 10 years ago
My
father in law was on life support because of Swine Flu. My niece (who
has cystic fibrosis) and her entire family caught it too. Many pregnant
women and their unborn children died here in Australia due to Swine
Flu.
Mr Wolfgan Wodarg can go fuck himself.level 2Comment deleted by user10 years ago(More than 1 child)level 1[deleted]0 points · 10 years ago
So…
if the media misreports an outbreak by over representing it, it’s
corporations trying to make money on vaccines. If the media misreports
an outbreak by under representing it, it’s corporations trying to stop
having to pay out insurance claims.
You left of center loons really think you can have your cake and eat it too that easily?More posts from the politics communityContinue browsing in r/politics
r/politics/r/Politics is for news and discussion about U.S. politics.5.9m
This will be my attempt to gather facts from logical thinkers with regard to Covid-19. It is my feeling that something is amiss about the reaction most countries are taking. There are two factors that are important for evaluating a virus. 1.) Is how easy does it spread, called the R-naught (R0). 2.) How deadly or damaging is the virus.
In the case of Covid-19 the R0 is estimated by the WHO to be about 2-2.2 as of March 30th, 2020. The seasonal flu in contrast is 1.3. So this suggest that Covid-19 is more contagious. However, this very interesting analysis of the actual USA data shows that using only existing data the R0 is actually equal to 1.4.
Given that the R0 is somewhere between 1.4 and 2.2, we can say that Covid-19 is contagious. However, there is no indication that it possess some “extraordinary” features that make it behave unlike any other virus we have ever encountered in the 1 million years that virus’s and human’s have coexisted. Occam’s razor suggests that more likely Covid-19 spreads just like every other coronavirus, which is via symptomatic individuals. Much fuss has been made over the fact that the virus is present in the respiratory tract of asymptomatic individuals. However, just because the virus could possibly be spread asymptotically, does not mean this is how the vast majority of people are actually catching it.
In a sense, you can’t have it both ways. If the virus was in fact very contagious and was spreading asymptomaticly, then we would expect to see a huge number of cases. While we do see a large number of cases, the number is still smaller then seasonal flu numbers. So, you can’t have it both ways. If Covid-19 is so special and so contagious, then why have millions not been infected before the “lock-downs” were put into place?
Next is the mortality of Covid-19. Currently it stands at 3.4% per the WHO (3/30/20). But this number can only go down as more people get infected. For example, the seasonal flu kills 290,000 to 650,000 people per year, but its mortality rate is only 0.1%! How can that be? The reason is because we have an accurate measure of the total number of cases of the flu, which stands at about 65 million per year. So right now we only have 0.5 million cases of Covid-19. in actuality, there are probably many, many more people who have been infected, had very mild symptoms and never were tested and confirmed. So assuming that the number of actual infected is closer to 50 million, then the death rate of Covid-19 would be much, much lower.
Here Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a prominent German pulmonologist and respiratory disease specialist, explains why Covid-19 is likely similar to the seasonal flu in terms of mortality and not 34 times more deadly as is being touted by people who are not thinking logically or have an agenda that benefits from fear (more on that later).
The important point is not to downplay death. Any death is one too many, however, the absurdity is that up to 650,000 people die from the flu every year. Year in and year out and no one bats an eye. So far 33,000 people have died from Covid-19 and the world is frozen in panic. How is that in anyway logical?
Much of the hysteria seems to be fueled by media headlines such as this “COVID-19 spread is fueled by ‘stealth transmission’ “. And it seems most of these headlines can be traced back to a single research paper (1a) led by Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University Mailman School, in a statement. “We find for COVID-19 in China these undetected infected individuals are numerous and contagious. These stealth transmissions will continue to present a major challenge to the containment of this outbreak going forward.” The paper uses documented cases from China, plus “travel restriction” data to extrapolate via a computer model that “Undocumented cases drove the transmission of the virus”in the early stages of the outbreak. Ok, so given that the virus was unknown to man prior to fall 2019, do we need a computer model to predict that the majority of cases would be undocumented? It seems to me this is another example where correlation does not imply causation. What is needed is more research on exactly how the virus is spread from person to person and in what numbers the virus must enter the body to truly take hold. Much like fertilization of a human egg it is a game of chance. One sperm can fertilize an egg, but under normal circumstances millions of sperm are needed to generate reasonable odds. The same is true of virus spreading. Several hundred virus particles on a doorknob, are not statistically likely to drive a pandemic.
I found that there were very few studies to help answer the question, “Does Transmission Occur from Asymptomatic Infection”. The most recent study was published in 2019 (Citation 2a). ) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6518513/ The conclusion was ” Among respiratory viruses, the role of asymptomatic infection is poorly understood. For influenza alone, the prevalence of asymptomatic infection has been estimated to be as low as 9.4% and as high as 90% depending on the virus type, study, season and definition of asymptomatic infection [15, 16]. There is also some evidence that viral shedding correlates with symptom severity and that the contagiousness of asymptomatic individuals is less than for symptomatic persons [17,18]. The rationale is that respiratory symptoms (coughing, sneezing, runny nose) help spread pathogens through droplet transmission, either inhaled or settled [ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894888/ ]. However, the absence of symptoms might bring asymptomatic infected individuals into greater contact with susceptible persons outside the home. This is particularly true for infants and toddlers whose behavior, hygiene habits and close physical contact typically favor the spread of germs, especially in childcare settings. Whether greater contact occurs and makes asymptomatic individuals effectively as contagious as symptomatic persons is not known. An additional difficulty is that a standard, accepted definition of symptomatic infection does not exist. Further, perception of symptoms is highly subjective, and it may be difficult to assess whether a symptom is caused by the pathogen. For example, chronic symptoms can occur – runny nose is a common sign in children that does not necessary imply viral infection – and allergies can cause sneezing. Fever, muscle pain and chills may also be caused by infections other than respiratory viruses. Our findings underscore the extremely high proportion of respiratory viral infections that are asymptomatic. Further analysis is required to capture the role played by asymptomatic individuals in outbreak transmission dynamics, specifically the relative infectiousness of asymptomatic vs. symptomatic infections. “
In other words, many respiratory virus infections are asymptomatic, but it is unclear as to their role in outbreak transmission dynamics.
Other Thinkers: Here is a collection of other thinkers who share a similar worldview as myself on Covid-19
This article makes many important and accurate points. For example, ” History will likely show that the current public policy response to Covid-19 will be one of the great mistakes of all times. The resulting financial and social calamity would have been obvious to almost anyone. The end result of this new, not one life lost to Covid policy, will be a monstrous Misery Index of deaths, divorces, financial and psychological damage directly and indirectly caused by … the initial knee jerk Covid public policy response. “
Brian Rose – London Real
Here is a personal evaluation of Covid-19. Much of what this person says makes a lot of sense in that Covid-19 is never going to go away. Society has no effective treatments for any respiratory virus’s and vaccines do not appear to be effective as we are always behind the curve on the mutation of virus’s. So “Herd Immunity” has been the way humans have dealt with vius’s for 1 million years and likely developing herd immunity will be the only true way to deal with Covid-19 as well.
Olibur’s comment from Zerohedge is spot-on. ” I just observed as relatives of my neighbor came by the car so they all stood in front of the house at a distance of about 10 meters talking. They never approached each other holding up this distance. We are fucked!!! Covitiotism elevated the old concept of divide and rule to its new ultimate high by literally distancing each other in a physical sense and it will backfire to all of us for years to come.
More excellent work from Germany. Videos of hospitals showing that they are not overrun with seriously ill patients as the media claims is the “real reason” we have shutdown the economy. Also more video interviews of medical professionals explaining that even when Covid-19 deaths are added to other deaths, the total death rate for phenomena deaths is quite normal for this time of the year. So it is more of a testing and measurement issue as opposed to being a real increase in deaths. The bottom line is that 300,000 have died from all virus’s in the last 5 months and only 30,000 have died from Covid-19. https://www.bitchute.com/video/XxeGUIBPVleu/
We need to watch how Covid-19 will impact ocean shipping. Everyone is dependent on the Global Supply Chain. If ocean shipping stops, the world will lack basic goods such as critical medicines, etc. So let’s hope they don’t begin to close the ports as that would be devastating.
