Omicron, Ontario and Lying With Statistics by Francis Turner

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Omicron, Ontario and Lying With Statistics by Francis Turner

Note: You are strongly recommended to go and look at the source data at the page below

So there’s a graph going around social media that is more or less a classic example of how to lie with statistics. The graph is this one (or close relatives) as publicized by Alex Berenson, a journalist who has been increasingly skeptical of vaccine effectiveness

If you look at it uncritically it shows a huge spike in cases amongst those vaccinated against the wuflu while those unvaccinated are staying more or less constant. So you look at it and think that the current omicron variant is more infectious for the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.

However there’s some critical information that’s being missed. That is that the number of fully vaccinated is over 80% of the population while the unvaccinated consist of about 14% which means there are 5-6 times as many vaccinated as unvaccinated.

So if the wuflu were equally bad for both you’d expect roughly 5x as many whereas actually you have (at the peak) between and 3x and 4x. When you go to the website and click on the rater per 100k button you get the above graph.

And there’s plenty to comment on with that graph. Specifically it shows that the current (omicron) variant is not particularly bothered by the wuflu vaccines when it comes to infecting people. This is potentially bad and certainly suggests that optimistic people like me a year ago were overly optimistic in our reading of the trial results for the various wuflu vaccines. Bluntly the last few months have shown that protection against infection wanes rapidly and/or is very specific to earlier mutations of the wuflu and is far less effective against newer ones. Hence the frantic “get a booster”, “get another booster” messaging from the people who want to keep everyone scared

It also certainly suggests that, as should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain, the idea that the world would eradicated the wuflu was completely misguided.

So if you want to be skeptical of vaccine mandates you have quite enough evidence from that second graph and you aren’t in fact being misleading. In fact what it shows is that the wonderful new mRNA vaccines are no better than the traditional flu vaccines. You get some months of protection then the virus mutates and all that protection dissipates. Only unlike flu vaccines the mRNA ones have plenty of nasty side-effects.

But wait, there’s more and it’s more complicated. From the same Ontario site there’s this

Looking at that and you see that vaccination still seems to help against severe infection. Although 14% of the population are unvaccinated they make up ~55% of the not seriously hospitalized and about 66% of the ICU patients.

But wait… there’s (even) more.

When you do the sums about the population of Ontario (14.8 million) and the number of hospitalized (total 331) you realize that the wuflu is no more dangerous than the regular flu and way less so if you’ve had your wuflu jab.

So if the anti-vax people want to get their point across without using misleading statistics they would just take the graphs of cases and hospitalizations and put them against the population of Ontario. Or they’d just use the aarph per 100.000 produced by the Ontario health people and point out that even amongst the unvaccinated the rate of cases is 25/100,000 or 0.025%, hospitalizations are about 10% of cases and deaths (elsewhere, can’t see the Ontario numbers) are under 10% of hospitalizations (or <1% of cases).

They could also usefully look at the UK numbers and see that while cases are at record highs, hospitalizations and deaths are less than 10% of what they were at the last peak, a year ago.

And that of course ignores the number or people worldwide who have died from the current scary omicron strain (as opposed to with it), which appears to be roughly the number of people shot by Alec Baldwin (plus or minus one). 

178 thoughts on “Omicron, Ontario and Lying With Statistics by Francis Turner”

  1. the scaaaaary omicron strain that is less severe less lethal and apparently in healthy unvaccinated people also tends to not last as long….

    1. A non lethal variant that leaves those infected with immunity. Maybe omicron is the cowpox of covid.

  2. Honestly, I have a strong feeling that Omicron will turn out to be about equivalent to a bad cold for the vast majority of folks.

    1. We’ve already shut down a bunch of stuff ‘preventing’ a cold two or three winters back.

    2. Deaths from Omicron–zero (the one in Texas appears fake)…and we’re saupposed to be scared?

      1. They’re faking COVID19 deaths, they’re faking ‘hate crimes’ — what else are they faking?

    2. And how much gaming has been done to differentiate vaxxed from unvaxxed?

      One of the few folks in my husband’s office who didn’t have any issues with the COVID vaccinations, or boosters, is also the one that’s tested positive four times this year…..

  5. At this point it’s being used to make people do all those “for their own good” things that bureaucrats have been tryouts NG to impose on everyone since the beginning of time.

    If I’m reading it right, NY is setting up to make even flu shots mandatory with violation subject to indefinite detainment, ‘for the greater good. ‘

    1. I’d love to see someone decide that since they’re not infected, they don’t need to be detained, and willing to use lethal force to prove it.

    2. One of my colleagues informed me that the “quarantine camp” bill was pulled from NY state legislature consideration. Here is a report on this:

      https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/12/22/new-york-bill-to-create-internment-camps-for-the-unvaccinated-pulled-by-sponsor-n437085

      Apparently there is one legislator who has been obsessed with this for a while (at least SIX YEARS – well before WuFlu, starting with Ebola), and keeps re-introducing it as a measure to advance the “greater good”.

      Which of course, is NOT government’s job … “THAT TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS, governments are instituted among men, deriving their JUST powers from the consent of the governed.”

      JUST powers, by definition, do not override those first five words, as government’s reason for being. Quarantine camps with the open-ended qualifying criteria proposed in the bill, are anything but just on this basis.

      1. True. And in such a case, armed lethal resistance to remove the power of the government to use force, and to remove those people in the government from being able to order it is the only viable action. The legality of such an “insurrectionist” action is irrelevant. (Waves at the government snoops – “Hey guys and gals, who are YOU going to support when the SHTF? Tyranny or Liberty?”)

      2. Nowhere in the Constitution is the government granted any power to enact laws which punish people for what somebody else is afraid they MIGHT do.

        A whole lot of the Democrats’ agenda consists of just that kind of laws.
        ———————————
        Candidate Joe Biden, August 2020: “We have assembled the most extensive, comprehensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”

  6. “optimistic people like me a year ago were overly optimistic in our reading of the trial results for the various wuflu vaccines.”

    And as we’re finding out, a number of bureaucrats and vaccine makers were, shall we say, shading the truth on those. But then again, the dishonesty on this has been pervasive. Note the date.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/17/influential-covid-19-model-uses-flawed-methods-and-shouldnt-guide-us-policies-critics-say.html

    1. Oh, and when I posted that link on my Facebook page, a guy I’ve been gaming with for 40 years dropped by to say that anyone spreading doubts about the government line should have their house burnt to the ground. When someone tells you that, and you’ve seen instances stretching back to the 1960s where that’s been done whenever they thought they could get away with it, waiting to be hit has even less appeal.

      My attitudes have been shaped by what actual events show me.

      2. When you say, “dropped by,” do you mean he said that in your house? Because if someone made a comment like that in my house, he would leave in a body bag.

        1. Oh no, on my Facebook page. I started out gaming in person, and when I had to move to Plano, the group shifted to Fantasy Grounds.

              1. I meant, in terms of being what’s left of Fantasy after all the flavor has been leached out. 😛

                Like the Left is doing to most of publishing.

          2. I knew a kid from Plano Tx. Poor guy had a nasty immune system problem: psoriasis and a body funk that no amount of washing or deodorant could solve. Lost track of him about 20 years ago. Hope he got either cured/controlled or medically retired; but odds are the military probably tossed him out and blamed the problem on him.

            1. It has a trailer. 😀

              With the understanding that our groups went with Roll20 instead, it looks like at best it would be good for a group collaboration in someone’s personal world, but not so much as a social area.

              I’d say Discord is the place for a writer’s group, but again I am biased. ^.^

            2. I’m not sure. What it is is a remote tabletop app for running any of 2-3 dozen RPG systems. It gives you on-line rule books, a mechanism for implementing the game mechanics on dice rolling, and finally an area where you can show maps to the players and you all place “tokens” to show what the characters and monsters are doing on a physical battleboard.

    1. Yes and I consider that to be bordering on lying with statistics. It’s annoying when the people doing it don’t need to because it makes it far easier for their opponents to criticize them and avoid the underlying point

  8. I appreciate the clear reporting.

    Without knowing the outpatient treatment protocols for those in the hospital, the charts seem meaningless to me. Doctors here refuse to administer Ivermectin, HCQ, or any other valid outpatient treatment. We’re told to go home, and if we get worse, go to the hospital, where they still refuse Ivermectin et al.

    Also, how obese are the people in the hospital, regardless of shot status?

    It’s all a lie, a distortion, a push for communism as far as I can tell.

    1. You’ll be able to get Pfizermectin any day now — at 10 times the price. All those CDC alumni on the pFizer board have to be good for something,

      1. Just remember, the people ensuring that treatment of the CCP is expensive are the same people screaming that the entire healthcare system has to be nationalized and run by the government like the British NHS “in order to reduce costs”.

      3. And a lot less anti viral acting. Cause they can’t mimic it too close or they can’t get a patent. So it works but it doesn’t. For the price it should bring people back to life. But no.

  9. I trust the government as much as I trust Buzzfeed, Vox, Slate, CNN, the New York Times, Wikipedia, …

    Well, you get the picture. The only thing stopping me from being more expressive is my dislike of cattle cars ans camping in parks labeled Arbeit Mach Frei…

    1. At least we still know what happens in camps like that, and will refuse to go. Too bad the Jews, et. al. didn’t know that going into the Holocaust.

      1. I figure they know that and so will disguise the true purpose. Be prepared to not leave your house.

  10. How to Lie with Statistics ought to be required reading.

    I saw that first graph earlier and wondered if a Berenson, who has been doughty through the crisis, had been misled by the Faucibots. Too bad, because it tends to discredit him and the vast majority of evidence from The Pacific Princess forward has been consistent and supports his position.

    There was a report that the Sage group, who does the modeling in the UK, has been deliberately suppressing all positive outcomes from their modeling and giving this very biased data to the politicians. These are the same people who tried to ban kitchen knives because people cut them selves.

    I don’t trust Scientists because they’re not trustworthy.

    2. > I don’t trust Scientists because they’re not trustworthy.

      99% of “scientists” are academics with research grants.

      I don’t trust academics at all.

      1. Academics with research grants given by either politically motivated government agencies or by politically motivated foundations, all of whom have a particular narrative that they have declared in advance must be the outcome.

      2. Now, TRX, you know that’s not true!

        There’s also “kids in college that threw together a study the media thinks is shiny.”

        That has to be at least 10% of “Scientists”!

    3. You note they’ve pretty much stuck to using percentages because they can hide the actual numbers that way.

      If I pick up a penny and I only had a penny then I’ve increase my wealth by a 100%!!!.

  11. My problem with all of the ‘numbers’ is, at this point, the numbers cannot be trusted. Add on the shifting, and sometimes misleading, definitions of what is unvaccinated or vaccinated, and it only doubles the unreliability of the numbers whatever they may allege to say. Not useful or reliable. That is all I have to say. Thank you.

  12. I would point out that with Covid over 50% of infected persons are asymptomatic and I’m sure this is the case with Omnicron … what that means is that the vaccinated cases of Corona are people who GOT SICK … while the cases of unvaccinated are a mix of sick and asymptomatic (because the unvaccinated are tested at a MUCH higher rate than the vaccinated ) … and this was true for the Delta variant as well …

    so if we double the vaccinated cases (to count the asymptomatic) and we add 50% to the unvaccinated cases … we end up with unvaccinated at 39/100k and fully vaccinated at 34/100k and partially vaccinated at 32/100k … the total of vaccinated is 66/100k vs 39/100k of the unvaccinated … yes, so maybe lying with statistics again but it cuts both ways …

    the shot is a vaccine in name only (VINO), it is a treatment that frankly may reduce deaths but does NOTHING to reduce the spread of the virus (i.e. no herd immunity unlike all vaccines before Covid) …

    The only thing that counts towards herd immunity is natural infection … period … we can’t count the vaccinated in the herd immunity count … and herd immunity is the only way this ends …

    1. A few weeks ago Sainted Fauci said there was no such thing as “asymptomatic COVID.”

      Has the CDC changed its story yet again, or are we still at war with Eastasia?

      1. At this point, Fauci could say water is wet, the sky is blue, and the sun shines on cloudless days; and I wouldn’t believe anything coming out of his mouth.

  14. Alex Berenson was a NYT reporter for something like ten years. An outbreak of sanity was always suspicious as being a temporary ruse, as part of a wider disinformation campaign.

    There is no particular reason to think that fussing around with outdated pathogen signatures was ever going to do more than waste the body’s resources, and leave people more vulnerable to newer current strains of pathogens.

    It is possible that UK aligned are still falling for that Government’s disinformation strategy.

    Americans may be starting to really see through it. Allegedly, Trump was booed recently for pushing Vax crud.

    1. We live in a sea of pathogens. Your body maintains signatures for… by one estimate, millions of them. Your skin is a perpetual war zone of both old and newly-encountered would-be invaders, increasing the list daily. One pathogen signature more or less is not a burden.

      1. So called vaccination is explicitly designed to make the body pump out stuff relating to an old signature.

        It isn’t the signature being in the body that is the issue.

        It is the effers who are insisting that a lack of active response means that the stored signatures are not present, and push shot after shot.

        Resulting in people in frail health having less available to fight off other exposures.

        1. It Depends.

          Vaccinated immunity can be a few months (eg. leptospirosis) or for life (eg. smallpox). Immunity conferred by ordinary modified-live-virus vaccines is typically about four years, then falls off fast. Jury is still out on duration for the newer types of vaccine; being too specific may indeed be a problem.

          However, even worst case, the duration of “your immune system is working overtime due to vaccine” is only about two weeks.

          But what they’re doing with the covid mandates and boosters is just flailing around based on random globs of data that may or may not mean anything. And that was inevitable once it became politicized.

          I’m still croggled that there’s been no examination of whether the canine coronavirus vaccine has any effect. (I’m tolerably sure there’s cross-immunity.)

          1. A lot of your background with this stuff, IIRC, is as a dog breeder.

            I’m pretty sure that there is even less information on weird frail immune compromised old dogs than there is on weird frail immune compromised old humans.

            1. Hm.. maybe.

              On the other hand, it’s less ethically .. uh… fraught… to experiment for that kind of things on old immunocompromised dogs, so maybe the data’s better.

          2. The thing that gets me is how the mRNA glop is called (and considered) a “vaccine”. What’s being pushed is more of a genetic therapy, where parts of the body is altered to push out the spike protein, in hopes that the rest of the body will develop an immunity to them.

            Judging by the explosion in VAERS reports (and whistleblower reports that a lot of those were suppressed during the trials), what we have here is a failure to vaccinate. You can take the shot (plus boosters), and you still aren’t “vaccinated”, at least by the definition that TPTB published before the WuFlu not-vax was introduced.

            Dammit, thinking of it as a vaccine gets you in the wrong rabbit hole. And I’m damned sure that’s intentional by those calling it so.

            /rant

            1. That’s what I was looking for.

              “Okay, you want to inject me with this mRNA right?”

              “Yes”

              “And it’s supposed to enter my muscle cells.”

              “That’s right”

              “And it makes the muscle cells produce a protein that causes an immune response?”

              “Yep.”

              “So how much does this injection weaken those muscle cells?”

              “Huh?”

              “You’ve hijacked muscle cells to make them into fake glands to produce a protein. They’re NOT going to function optimally as muscle cells anymore.”

              “Aahh…”

              “How long do the cells continue to manufacture this protein? Is it permanent?”

              “We’re not sure. We think the immunity drops off rapidly after a couple months.”

              “That’s not the question. How long are these cells going to continue to manufacture this protein?”

              “We can’t tell you.”

              “And if this injection gets into the blood stream it can cause an immune response, i.e. inflammation in the heart, lungs or brain?”

              “Yeessss.”

              Does anyone else see a problem with this?

              1. At least one of my doctors saw a problem and advised against the shot(s). The clot-shot booster who’s my primary care physician demanded to know who told me. Nope. Not gonna. Not with threats (loss of medical license is the worst one) against doctors who violate the narrative.

                IIRC, the PC physician is a runner.. If he gets a serious heart attack (since not-vaxxed athletes seem to be dropping like flies), the schadenboner will be glorious.

              2. I’ve a suspicion about people who’ve gone through American military intake between 1960 and 1980.

                Brain bleeds, stroke, loss of mental function, and a lot of urine after the vaccine.

                Perhaps worse loss of muscle condition on getting sick with covid after the immediate vaccine fall out?

              3. The whole idea of making your own tissue manufacture a protein that your immune system is going to attack seems like a really bad idea. It’s almost like someone didn’t think it through. Or there is another agenda, but that would be paranoid….

                1. What do you think the accidental risk is of making the immune system say ‘no, those are not foreign proteins, those are proteins we should ignore’?

                2. “The difference between a conspiracy theory and reality is currently about 6 months.”

                  A “vaccine” promoted by someone (*cough* Bill Gates *cough*) who thinks the world would be a lot better place if 80% of the current inhabitants shuffled off and died is not something I’m eager to put in my body.

  15. There is no reason to think that testing numbers and hospital case numbers haven’t been diddled with.

    1. They don’t have to be diddled with. The tests aren’t very accurate and you have people continually testing themselves with these inaccurate tests. The re-testing stops when there’s a positive reading, false or otherwise. I’m at the point where I don’t believe there is much, if any, asymptomatic wuflu.

      1. I think the asymptomatic “cases” are people who were exposed but not to enough virus to make them sick. So their immune system hangs out “wanted–DEAD” posters and you have some protection for next time. Meanwhile the overclocked PCRs were pumping up the “case” numbers to include people who would never have been counted during a flu epidemic.

        1. Also a lot of the tests look for RNA strands of the virus; which means that if are vaccinated with one of the MRNA vaccines, which work by injecting you with virus RNA, a virus test that looks for RNA is going to find virus RNA; in fact, it better find the RNA soon after vaccination or else the vaccines are even less effective than being claimed.

          So if you get tested, like many people were and are, shortly after getting a vaccine does, it would be surprise if the test was NOT positive. Doesn’t mean that you have CCP Virus or can transmit it, but adds to their “the world will end unless you give us absolute power narrative”. Which is the exact same narrative they are pushing for climate and dozens of other things, that all have the same theme; the only “solution” is to give absolute total power to a small select group of people. Funny how their “cure” for every problem is totalitarian socialism.

          2. RNA doesn’t just float into a cell. It’s got to have something to carry it in. Either antibodies binding to it and then getting engulfed by white blood cells, or it has to be inserted into a viral coating to get inserted into a cell. Now, coronaviruses ARE RNA viruses. So is the common cold, and influenza. So what did Pfizer and Moderna use as their cellular transport for the RNA to enter muscle cells??? A viral coating???

            1. One of these days the mad scientists are going to create something that is real dangerous, like the Krippen Virus in “I Am Legend”.

          3. To complicate matters, some entities (CDC maybe, Oregon “Health” Authority for sure) will use 28 cycles of PCR enhancement for those who got the not-vax. For the Deplorables who aren’t shot (I love the term Purebloods, though I haven’t been using it), the required cycle number is 40.

            Remember the Covid+ papaya? 40 cycles.

      2. They wouldn’t have to be particularly inaccurate for this to become a problem. If you have a test that gives only 5% false positives, which is actually considered pretty good, and you use it daily on someone who is never exposed, you should get a false positive or two per month.

        1. …and then those are added to the ‘case count’ and never removed. If somebody tests positive ten times, that’s ten ‘cases’. I’m amazed they haven’t claimed there are 600 million ‘cases’ in the U.S.

          1. Coin flips are nowhere near as bid. Flipping a coin (without cheating when doing so) is a true 50/50 toss-up that is pure chance. The testing regime is at best grossly misguided with the not “at best” case being with malice aforethought. The Democrats themselves said that they considered the CCP Virus a blessing because it gave them an opportunity to pursue things that “they would never otherwise be able to do”.

  16. I’ve come to the conclusion that reporters TRY to obfuscate statistics. It is very rare to read an article that uses one set of units or one presentation format. 10% have X. 1 in 7 have Y. Umm. Pulls out calculator… Is that 14% with Y or 14% of 10%. Or is it 1 in 7 of 1 in 10. Or what? It’s dreadful.
    Lying with graphs is even easier. For some reason, people think graphs are trustworthy. It’s same “it’s in print, it must be true” bias I’ve ranted about before, but much worse – if it’s in print, it must be true; if someone graphed it, it’s super-true. Visualization without the thinking reading requires! Suck that bias right into the brain!

    Thanks for a clear explanation of the issue.

    1. The media are capitalists. Don’t be deceived. They *are.* But they are really, really bad at it.

      They consider but one audience. They market to that audience, they focus group for that audience, and they are of that audience. What gets more ad revenue? Ragebait brings the clicks. What keeps attention from their one, singular target audience? Orange Man Bad. Codividiocy (subset of OMB). Red People Bad. The rage button brings in more moolah.

      Thus they have The Narrative. It’s a story, a simple minded one, that they’ve been telling themselves over and over again for generations now. “Give us power, and everything will be perfect. If things aren’t perfect yet, we don’t have enough power. We need that power to protect you from teh evuls of OMB, Red People, and TEA parties.” They divide, because a divided people cannot unite and threaten The Narrative. They lie, because the truth does not fit The Narrative. They take over schools, media, bureaucracy because that’s what they think they need to create The Narrative. And all of that goes back to getting them more power.

      People respect the scientific method? Make science political, and only our pawns will totally effin’ love science. Value traditional marriage and families? Destroy the families, indoctrinate the children. Just want to be left alone? You can’t be, because that doesn’t fit The Narrative- you might become a threat.

      But the Narrative is very fragile. It reacts poorly to innovation and examination. When you dig into it, you find circular reporting, misleading (and outright false) statistics. Obfuscation is the word of the day. That also destroys trust. If people trust each other locally, they might become a threat.

      Fortunately, this country was founded by goats, not sheep. There are enough of us around that see beneath the poorly fitting mask. If you bear up under the burdens of your daily work, take your responsibilities seriously, and keep your word when given, that makes you one of us.

      2. Facts and mathematical principles would just get in the way of the Message. Their heads need to be as empty as possible.
        ———————————
        Mollari: “Perhaps it was something I said?”
        G’Kar: “Perhaps it is everything you say.”

    3. I knew Globull Warmening was bunk at the time of An Inconvenient Truth when it popularized the Hockey Stick graph. They showed the 11 PPM rise over the last couple of dozen parts of that million for dramatic effect. When you expand the view to cover the entire million parts, you end up with a squiggle the equivalent of the width of a mechanical pencil lead on a graph the size of two football fields with end zones. Even if the data upon which the graph was based weren’t bunkum, it would get lost in the noise.

      One of my High School classmates produced that travesty. I once congratulated him on his Oscar-winning very impactful SciFi film. He was not amused.

  17. If *cases are positive (and false positive) results, then *cases has very little informative value. IMO, one cannot count on hospital admissions, either, as the symptoms of Red China virus seem so variable, as in,”Iit might be a bad cold, it might be ‘flu’, say, you’re positive, let’s call it COVID”. However, if one must use admissions, one must distinguish between precautionary admissions (you weigh 320#, you’re diabetic, you smoke, let’s not take a chance), and those admitted with distress and some specific set of symptoms.

    1. The NYT published a list of Omicron variant symptoms. Modulo the sore lower back (which I get regardless of infection), the list was indistinguisable from the common cold. I seldom get the flu, so I’m not sure about the back issues…

      1. Sore lower back? I get that from visiting my mother-in-law. (Her furniture is all incorrectly sized for me, and there generally isn’t much to do, so I get a lot of sitting around.)

  18. Media presented suspiciously phony numbers from the get go, back in the day of “2 weeks to flatten the curve”.

    Would be nice to be able to filter out carrot-stick influences on all the numbers (covid financial incentives to hospitals, political/pharma pressures on people and organizations in health industry, lies and psyops creating fears and panic).

    The world-wide environment of the government desire to promote fear and dependence, and the willingness of those accepting the tyranny, is much more dangerous than the beer flu.

  19. First CDC changed cause of death reporting requirements to basically read; no matter what kills them if they test positive for covid or ever knew anyone with covid, then you must write dyed of covid.

    Then the “vax” makers got a hold harmless clause, what ever happens, t’ain’t our fault and you can’t sue us, na, na, na na, na, na!

    The basic definition of vaccines was changed.

    Misleading stats? If we were talking about, say, small pox, polio or any real vax protection we’d be surprised to see any vaccinated catching said illness, passing it to others or hospitalized.

    On the other hand we’ve got to give covid, masking, distancing, huddling in place, vaxxing, giving up living to keep from dying, our beloved leaders careful shepherding their just due; After all 2020 was, for practical purposes an absolutely flu free year!

      1. Impossible. After all our brightest and best medical professionals all took their hypocritical oath. Did I spell that wrong, after all in my post above I had many people dyed, colored by covid instead of died from? Naw, hypocritical is what I said and hypocritical is what I meant. Primum Non Nocere, sadly they’re doing an awful lot of harm. So yes, of course flu deaths were mis-catagorized as covid deaths, as were some motorcycle accident deaths.

        1. And the knife and bullet holes in some of them were just unusually extreme COVID19 symptoms.

        2. They no longer take the Hypotrathic oath AT ALL. Now they take oaths they write.
          The last one I heard was about making a difference in the community and practicing racial equity.

          1. ‘Make a difference in the community’ huh? Charles Manson ‘made a difference in the community’.
            ———————————
            Major Strasser has been shot! Round up the usual suspects!

  20. If you want to see a great example about how coastal media is trying to drive fear and panic, see the below:

    https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2021/12/are-my-symptoms-omicron-variant-of-covid-or-a-cold.html

    Note while nothing is strictly false, they misrepresent by omission; for instance noting that the most common cause of common colds are rhinoviruses, but OMITTING that the SECOND most common cause are coronaviruses-thereby implying that coronaviruses are inherently more dangerous and related to the CCp virus. They basically want anyone who gets the sniffles to get tested for the CCP Virus regardless of circumstances.

    They intend to turn this into the Forever Virus.

  21. As several have already noted, the main problem with statistics of this kind is the assumption that all other factors are equal – when it is very unlikely that they are. In time series like the first two, there is also the most likely false assumption that all other factors are constant.

    In most cases, I think that the issue is not so much that people are lying with statistics, but that they are ignorant of real statistics. Which, when applied to small samples (as in less than 10^15), is more complex than quantum mechanics.

    1. Mom got the vaccine. Because she is 87 and didn’t want to stop doing what she wants to do. Her attitude if it’d had gone south? “Well Crap”.

      Hubby and I got the vaccine too. Again. Willing to be the test cases. He hasn’t had the virus. Suspect I did have. I had more of a reaction than he did. But then I react more to the flu vaccine too. Again, had this been the wrong choice, at 70 and 65, we might have said “Well double damn and double crap”, or “That could have gone better.” OTOH we’re not particularly fond of getting the booster either, at least until after a year. Annual booster, like the Flu shot, that I can get behind, kind of (not like I’m good about getting the annual flu shot either). Whooping Cough vaccine, definitely, before due, and I know that fails. But not convinced that is going to help a bit. FYI. Looks like this years Flu Vaccine is a bust too; 100% miss on a particularly nasty variant.

      100% apposed to having anyone Forced To Have The Vaccine, or Showing Vaccination Proof. Oh, and hearing of a requirement to show proof of flu vaccine too. Said it before (maybe not here) that both result in Cattle Cars and/or Segregation Camps. Tired of getting my head patted. Now I can say “Australia!!!!!” I pray that the Cattle Cars are an over the top statement. IF they come after our child … Well I’ll be either DOA or joining Rittenhouse on the defending of the 2nd amendment for defending another (assisting him defend himself). Will also back him if he so chooses to get vaccine. Right now data doesn’t support it helping worth a dang, and is more dangerous to his demographic.

      Know of others who aren’t getting the vaccine. All are 68 – 90.

      1. My family has a pretty standard health profile, so we got vaccinated so that others don’t have to. But they’re not giving medical exemptions when it comes to mandates.

        So I know an older gent who works for the federal government who got his medical exemption application turned down, as well as his offer to keep telecommuting, and in the interests of not becoming unemployed at his age, got the J&J shot (because his medical issues are heart issues, so the mRNA shots were not recommended.) Ended up in the VA hospital with blood clots in his lungs two weeks later. And it so happens that his particular docs are anti-mandate, and so did the COVID tests (negative) and documented thoroughly the highly suggestive correlation of his happening to get blood clots two weeks after a shot known to cause clotting issues.

        He’s not particularly mad about the issue (he’s still alive, and though he has to take it easy until his body deals with the clots, his long-term prognosis is good), but I am LIVID. This is exactly the sort of person that should have had a medical exemption.

        Or take another family I know, where they’re all allergic to trace amounts of random things, some of which are used in medical compounds. The mom wants a 100% full list of vaccine ingredients before giving the kids (some adult) the shots, because anaphylaxis is nobody’s friend. And they won’t give it to her. So her middle child can’t go back to college, because he won’t get a shot that might drop him dead on the floor before on-hand medical professionals could do anything. (He has asthma, and is allergic to albuterol. Guess how much fun that is for them.)

        Non-exempt mandates are the exact opposite of good medical practice. And the fact that these folk are treated as idiot anti-vaxxers because of their valid concerns also makes me angry.

  22. I have long maintained that statistics is lying with math. If you frame your query properly you can make stats say anything you want them to.

    I was horribly sick for about a week back in Feb of 2020. Haven’t had much more than sniffles since, despite refusing to wear a mask or declining to abandon my parents when they came down with the ‘rona about 2 months ago. I have also refused the jab after looking into some of the side-effect statistics for folks who’ve had the ‘rona and recovered naturally.

    The left is constantly pushing the notion that if you are refusing to take the not-a-vaccine it’s a political statement. I’m refusing because I really don’t like the list of negative side-effects for folks who’ve already had the virus. Also, ALREADY HAD THE VIRUS, which means that I’m actually better protected than folks who have only had the gene therapy.

    1. Why shouldn’t we refuse utterly to take the vaccine, as a political statement?

      There is a perfectly valid political question here. What forms of medical practice should the lay man allow?

      There are aspects of medical practice that require specialized knowledge to judge. There are aspects of medical practice in which few laymen have a compelling interest.

      But there are policy matters which every layman is qualified to judge, in which every layman has an interest.

      The core issue is acts of ‘medicine’ which exhibit no regard for the value of human life. Totalitarian regimes are not in the habit of allowing the independence and discretion in following a personal belief in human life. Research conducted by psychopaths, without regard for human life, often proves worthless for the purpose of improving patient welfare. See Eichmann’s twin studies.

      Laymen have an interest in not having psychopath driven malpractice performed on them. Yet, there is not a simple and undefeatable test for whether a doctor, bureaucrat, or scientist is a psychopath with no business whatsoever holding trust or responsibility over the lives of others. Psychopathy is a quality inside of a mind, and hence very hard to measure.

      However, there are several behaviors around the current situation which we can test for, that are suggestive of mental issues, and which perhaps should be treated as a proxy for psychopathy or other incompatibility with the practice of medicine. One, treating statements out of a totalitarian regime as being automatically credible. If someone, for example, thinks Eichmann’s twin studies are a good basis for research into a new therapy, they may be a psychopath, or otherwise of poor research judgement. Two, overconfidence in models or measurements, believing that the map so described /must/ be the same as the territory in every respect. Three, practicing medicine in a way that violates well tested behavioral safeguards, such as informed consent. Four, immediate and lockstep compliance with a governmental authority, especially an ‘authority’ that is over reaching in some obvious way.

      A number of bureaucracies associated with making money through the practice of medicine have violated these tests. It is now appropriate for the layman to rethink the terms on which medical bureaucracies are allowed to operate.

      Furthermore, if infectious disease is of pressing public importance, it is more, not less, important that we consider whether certain bureaucracies should be operating. In the practice of medicine, it is routine to handle samples of infectious disease. The obvious face of industrial safety is the formal policies centrally set by an organization. But, at least as important, is the ordinary workers on the floor having the intelligence, initiative, and personal motivation to address the holes within the formal policies. Totalitarianism squashes initiative, and employing only psychopaths hurts the motivation and to some extent the intelligence of the work force. The totalitarian pushes to only have ‘vaccinated’ medical workers, and to only have vaccinated workers more generally, is a case where compliant organizations should perhaps not be trusted to provide medical services or to handle samples of pathogens. In particular, medical schools are often associated with universities that are very dependent on federal funding.

      Political statements significantly more forceful may be appropriate.

      1. January/February 2020 for me; was just getting over what was certainly the CCP VIrus when the fact it was spreading around was made public.

        1. Most of December 2019. Finally felt like I might live just before Christmas. (Little bit of exaggerated. A tiny little bit. I was sick. Should have gone to the doctor or hospital sick, but I didn’t.)

        2. March 2020 for $SPOUSE and me.

          I had a mild case in March 2020. When it presented, I thought I was in deep shit and $SPOUSE drove me to get flu tested (Chicom virus tests were *not* available in the county, even for the two likely cases in the hospital.) I was worried enough to get my elderly nebulizer out, though I didn’t try to get a prescription for breathing juice. After about 3 weeks, I felt good enough to do errands.

          My wife presented a day or three later. That case laid her low for a month. Either I recovered faster, or (more likely) have a higher tolerance for doing stuff while feeling crappy.

          FWIW, both of us now have degraded sense of smells after the KungFlu.

          And my primary care doctor insisted that there were no cases in Flyover County until April. With no testing available, that’s a “curious” assertion.

          1. I know personally someone whose brother-in-law was at a conference in Wuhan in early December, came back from there, visited the family, and gave everybody “a nasty flu.” And they, being reasonable people, kept the kids home from school while everybody was sick, but the numbers of “nasty flu” cases at the school in December is interestingly suggestive.

    3. Er, no. Statistics is NOT lying with math. Unfortunately, many liars know just enough statistics terminology to sound like they are telling the truth. A genuine statistician will quite often, when asked “what’s the answer?” will reply “Beats the crap out of me!”. But politicians cannot accept “we don’t know” as an answer. They can’t base a plan of action on “we don’t know”. So they insist that the data be tortured until it gives the answer they want, and can justify taking the action they had planned to before asking the question. Who cares if it’s the right plan, so long as it advances they agenda. Don’t blame the statistics. That’s like blaming pistols for liquor store robberies.

      1. There’s also the good-will mistakes where people draw the wrong conclusion from the evidence. (That one works for all science, honestly.)

  24. I read an article on a similar topic a few weeks ago. This article was specifically looking at the differences between the Israeli and the CDC-cited studies regarding survivor vs vaccination immunity to SARS-2. The Israeli study found that survivor immunity was better than vaccination immunity. The CDC-cited study found the opposite.

    The article examined the two studies, and found that the Israeli study took more variables into account when studying the data. The CDC-cited study did not. In particular, the Israeli study factored in the age of those being looked at. Given that different age groups don’t vaccinate at the same rate, this largely accounted for the seeming discrepancies between the two studies.

    1. There have been a number of studies in various parts of the world that show that the natural immunity obtained from having been infected with the wuflu is better than vaccination. There has been (AIUI) just one that claims that vaccination is better and it does indeed have the flaws you mention.

      1. Recovering from an actual case of the Wu Kung Flu exposes your immune system to the whole virus, not just a few specific bits of it. The virus keeps multiplying until your immune system gets worked up enough to stop it, too. This builds up strong, wide-based immunity.

        They foolishly selected the virus bits most prone to mutating, so the inoculations quickly becoming less effective on the variants.
        ———————————
        Bring out yer dead!

        1. Thank you for that link. It will come in useful, trying to explain to folks who think I should still get “vaccinated” even though I have recovered from a case of Covid as shown by a positive result to the fast test.

    2. And now the New England Journal of Medicine came out and said that natural acquired immunity is better than vaccination. I’m tempted to rub that in our Chief Physician Executive’s face (He believes the CDC and the government.).

      1. Yeah, and FakeBook promptly had their “fact-checkers” label it as misinformation. NEJM has demanded a retraction and an apology, with the implication of lawsuit to come.

  25. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic

  27. I shared this post with a friend of mine who’s a doctor in Central/Eastern Europe. She gave me permission to copy/paste her thoughts.

    She’s ESL and we were speaking casually.

    but as for Omicron, I see a different issue here – Omicron spreads at much higher speed, and the percentages of samples that undergo genomic sequencing is small and insufficient, read: there are waaaaaaaaaaaay more Omicron cases than the labs can possibly catch
    therefore at the moment it’s completely impossible to say if it behaves better or worse in vaccinated people, when we have absolutely no idea how many cases are there, and who gets them

    so far everything I heard about Omicron was mostly positive
    there an Omicron outbreak in a nearby town and all cases are very mild so far

    ” You get some months of protection then the virus mutates and all that protection dissipates. Only unlike flu vaccines the mRNA ones have plenty of nasty side-effects.”

    heh … hate to break it to them, but flu shots have side effects, too
    and they aren’t that different from mRNA side effects

    https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-175015/flu-vaccine-quadrivalent-2018-19-6mos-uppf-intramuscular/details/list-sideeffects?fbclid=IwAR3gCiX2K4fmDzJQQXjBb3tWXqaV80D24SiloxJid8ZnsoX_34MDoZUEz7c

    RARE side effects
    If experienced, these tend to have a Severe expression i
    Decreased Blood Platelets
    Inflammation Of The Spinal Cord
    A Type Of Brain Function Problem Called Encephalopathy
    Guillain-Barre Syndrome
    Sudden Blindness And Pain Upon Moving The Eye
    Inflammation Of The Blood Vessels
    A Skin Disorder With Blistering And Peeling Skin Called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome
    Trouble Breathing
    A Significant Type Of Allergic Reaction Called Anaphylaxis
    A Type Of Allergic Reaction Called Angioedema
    A Hypersensitivity Reaction To A Drug
    A Serum Sickness Reaction
    Bell’s Palsy Paralysis Of One Side Of The Face
    Cellulitis
    A Disorder Of The Brachial Plexus, A Bundle Of Nerves In The Shoulder

    the problem is that flu doesn’t overwhelm the medical system and doesn’t lead to care being postponed, suspended or threatened
    when has it ever happened that surgeries were massively cancelled because of flu? never
    when wards were being closed because flu patients took up all available beds in the hospitals? never

    at this point it matters a little whether the mortality is smaller or bigger than in flu, it matters that covid cyclically results in insane spikes that leads to hospitals being overwhelmed with covid patiens for weeks-months

    during those weeks-months, all non-life threatening care needs to wait
    people have their surgeries cancelled, their chemotheraphy sessions cancelled…

    hell, this time, a local neurology ward which primarily serves people with strokes got refurbished into a covid ward
    got a stroke during those few weeks? bad luck, had you gotten stroke few weeks before or after, the care would be excellent
    but during those weeks? all procedures cancelled, physiotherapies cancelled

    I truly do hope that Omicron will be so mild that it won’t lead so such spikes like in the previous variants … but until we have more data, it’s just a hopeful thinking

    but like I said, there is an outbreak in the nearby town, and so far it seems like all common cold so I am hopeful

    https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-preprint-looking-at-an-early-assessment-of-the-clinical-severity-of-the-omicron-variant-in-south-africa/?fbclid=IwAR10YWptK1NRZr0UDQcsWHfXVcKpY5t-IkHb_WA6d6rLkmujWx_Or4dz1RY

    “The authors found that the adjusted odds ratio for admission was 0.2, roughly equivalent to about an 80% reduction in risk of hospital admission in omicron compared to delta.”

    unfortunately, the study isn’t peer reviewed, so the accuracy of the study cannot be verified

    but I am hopeful

    if omicron could be so mild and so contagious that it’d cease to create such insane spikes, then there would be little point in population-wide vaccination

    it omicron will still creates such insane spikes, then … I am afraid that at this time the only way to avoid healthcare system overwhelming is population-wide vaccination once or twice a year

    we need less viral pneumonias
    neither ivermectin, nor remdesivir, or regeneron, or other monoclonal antibodies can help with those

    1. The health care system was never overwhelmed. It still isn’t, except for laying off doctors and nurses.
      AND BTW it’s never population wide. 70% confers herd immunity. She’s confused.

      1. In many places, especially those run by Democrats, hospital capacity is severely limited by Certificate of Need requirements; hospitals must get government permission to add capacity, with all the massive red tape that entails. Needless to say, this results in there being insufficeint capacity.

        1. So, some box-checking government drone knows more about what the hospital ‘needs’ than the doctors and nurses working there.
          ———————————
          Nobody has so little that some asshole doesn’t want to take it. And the government is full of assholes.

      2. Her response:

        there is a big misunderstanding about overwhelmed hospitals
        they aren’t overwhelmed all the time, and everywhere

        it’s happening regionally and cyclically, the spikes are different in each region at each time, which has so far prevented nationwide collapses in countries (patients from one hospital or regions end up transported elsewhere), but as you can imagine it complicates things and it’s extremely costly to transfer patients in serious conditions hundreds of miles away

        hospital in this region also needed to transfer some of their regions away
        and in the past, it had helped other regions

        associated costs are still enormous

        staff getting fired for refusing the jab is stupid

        if the vaccine 100% prevented contagion, it … would make sense, I suppose, but since it does not, it makes no sense to fire them

        1. They aren’t overwhelmed. PERIOD. Not in the US. I have A LOT of contacts in medicine. The only overwhelming came with firing people for refusing vaccine mandates.
          Again, I don’t know what it’s like, or what koolaid they’re being fed in her homeland,but the very fact different countries have different stories should give her pause.

      3. Also:

        everyone is an expert on herd immunity these days

        the truth is we don’t know when we’ll reach the heard immunity, if ever
        we haven’t been in such situation for decades

        for decades, we could only observe how herd immunity dissipated once the vaccination rates against children diseases fell fell under 95-85% (depending on the disease)

        so all the numbers, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% what ever are wild guesses

        1. “it’s possible all the 60% or 70% estimates were just hopeful guesses given to the public by the authorities in an effort to give them at least some hope”

          She doesn’t have a very high opinion of Fauci. Regarding his advice not to invite unvaccinated over for Christmas:

          no wonder people don’t trust the authorities when the authorities come up with such bullshit

          if he said “if you don’t want to risk it, don’t invite relatives without a negative pcr test done less than 24hrs regardless of their vaccination status” then he would be at least technically correct (still crazy recommendation but at least technically correct)

        2. “plus nobody knows if it’s possible to develop herd immunity against all diseases, or just some
          what we know all comes from the diseases we have successfully vaccinated against in the past, and we can see it rise or fall due to higher or lower rates

          “in all honestly I think covid had passed the contagement/eradication stage a long time ago

          “it’s time to learn to live with it, drop nonsensical restrictions and recommendations, promote vaccination not as a means to eradicate it but to lower’s one odds of complications, focus on vaccine updates and focus developing a real treatment to the viral pneumonia

          “if they continue in their delusional campaigns, they’ll lose the support of the people who realize there are benefits to the vaccines and other means of prevention”

          1. Sigh. Hits head on desk? What the hell do they teach mds in her country?
            YES YOU CAN HIT HERD IMMUNITY TO ALL DISEASES.
            In the case of viruses, they mutate, and they ALWAYS mutate to wider spreading and lower lethality. ALWAYS.
            It’s a law of evolution. THink about it.
            I knew this stuff in 12th grade advanced bio.
            KOOLAID.

            1. I got it in 10th grade bio, but it was a college prep private school.

              They aren’t concerned with facts.

        3. everyone is an expert on herd immunity these days

          No, more that the errors being made are SO FREAKING BASIC that they can and should be corrected by reasonably well informed 12 year old.

          1. But they’re the Experts! They only sound stupid to you because you don’t know any better. </ExtremeSarcasm>

            If you were as Educated as they are, they’d sound perfectly reasonable to you.
            ———————————
            There but one greater sin than to be right when those in power are wrong — proving it.

            1. :gets the giggles: Someone tried to pull that one on my mom.

              They didn’t know she had a bachelor’s, as well as nearly 50 years of experience….

            2. a) the correct judges of experts are the public, the lay man, and the customer
              b) Imagine me standing very sullenly when I say “this isn’t fair dealing”

      4. Our county’s hospital ireported being “at capacity” with 17 patients yesterday. I just went back to the stats on the hospital, and it has 170+ beds. When I was there in February, it looked like 50% of the ER rooms were closed (IIRC, that was a state mandate). However, now there’s a statewide mandate that healthcare workers must take the not-vax or be fired. A lot of nurses and other staff chose Option B. I gather that a fair number of doctors chose that one, too.

        The multi-clinic lab associated with the hospital complex has 4 slots, and usually 2 to 3 techs. The past few times I’ve been there, it’s one person.

        Our Dear Governor (Despicable Kate Brown, perscuter in chief of Oregon) extended her declaration of emergency until June, 2022. The fact that there’s no legal authority to do so hasn’t stopped her–she’s appointed too many judges, and the 9th Circus hasn’t been willing or able to intervene.

        Aristo, aristo, a la lanterne!

        1. I suspect that the staffing problems are due to a variety of factors:

          1. Hospitals that closed down anything other than Covid by state order then fired or indefinitely furloughed most of their staff, who went and got other jobs and are now not available for surges.

          2. Staff that quit from exhaustion back during the first wave. I’d be exhausted, too, if I had to put on full moon-suit Ebola-level bio-protection equipment every single time I saw a new patient. The fact that that requirement was driven entirely by paranoia not backed up by actual evidence is irrelevant.

          3. Staff that were fired due to the vaccine mandates. (Does nobody in charge wonder why health care workers were wary of the vaccines? Seriously, at least here in Seattle it’s inconceivable that all the fired ones are right-wing MAGA types, so it couldn’t have been politics.)

          1. Unlike most states, there’s a government mandate for healthcare workers to take the not-vax. Orignally, there was testing as an option to the shots, but Dear Leader (Despicable Kate Brown of Oregon) took that away. Kate could teach Wretched Gretchen Whitless something about overreach. Note where One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was set…

            My dental hygenist was upset when the testing alternative was in place; I figure she quit. *If* the practice is open, I’ll see who’s around in February. Before things settled down fully, about 30% of the nurses at the county’s only hospital/clinic complex were quitting. FWIW, there are now something like 30,000 openings for medical workers in the state.

            The other factors came into play (just about all non-emergency medical procedures at the hospital were shut down in favor of Covidiocy, and I’m sure there was a lot of battle fatigue, but the mandate was the last straw.

            There was a lot of protesting by medical pros, but Kate Knows Everything About COVID, and her whims outweigh reality.

          2. Bah, blew the comment. Repeating.

            Unlike most states, there’s a government mandate for healthcare workers to take the not-vax. Orignally, there was testing as an option to the shots, but Dear Leader (Despicable Kate Brown of Oregon) took that away. Kate could teach Wretched Gretchen Whitless something about overreach. Note where One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was set…

            My dental hygenist was upset when the testing alternative was in place; I figure she quit. *If* the practice is open, I’ll see who’s around in February. Before things settled down fully, about 30% of the nurses at the county’s only hospital/clinic complex were quitting. FWIW, there are now something like 30,000 openings for medical workers in the state.

            The other factors came into play (just about all non-emergency medical procedures at the hospital were shut down in favor of Covidiocy, and I’m sure there was a lot of battle fatigue, but the mandate was the last straw.

            There was a lot of protesting by medical pros, but Kate Knows Everything About COVID, and her whims outweigh reality.

  28. Regular reminder that everything has been turned inside-out and upside-down for a virus that 99% of people recover from. I shudder to think what our authorities would be doing if it were even slightly more lethal.

      1. Well, they have the exact same person who was in charge of the AIDS epidemic running this one too . . .

          1. Are you including a few gallons of Brain Bleach with that? A hundred yards of Mental Floss? 😀

  29. Relatedly, here in Japan they are starting to tie various travel-related government subsidies/discounts to whether you have been vaccinated or not. In other words using the carrot rather than the stick and only for people who are actually travelling and therefore potentially more likely to spread the wuflu.

    Of course in Japan right now there are essentially 0 cases anyway and vaccination rates amongst those most likely to use the discounts is almost 100% so this isn’t a great limitation on anything. It looks like all you need is to show the hotel/restaurant a copy of the printout you got at vaccination so if people want they can easily forge it. And I believe if you have a recent negative test result that also works.

    1. And when their ‘reasonable’ restrictions don’t do jack shit, they will claim it proves the need for unreasonable restrictions. Just like ‘reasonable’ gun control.

      1. Japan already has unreasonable gun control and the firebombing of a mental health clinic in Osaka last week shows that you can kill plenty of people without a firearm. The attacker just used kerosene.

        Admittedly the flawed design of the building helped (there was only one stairwell and that’s where the fire was started) but I suspect a determined lunatic could have done something to block other exits if there had been one.

        1. Obviously, Japan needs common sense electric vehicle control in order to restrict the access that lunatics have to exotic batteries.

        2. Another worthless sack of shit burned down Kyoto Animation Studio a few years ago, killing 33 artists.

          A pity the death penalty can only be applied once.
          ———————————
          The Democrats trust violent criminals and terrorists with guns more than they trust you.

  30. The problem with official statistics on Covid is they are so heavily polluted with junk, they are useless. Most of the cases seem to be people with covid, but hospitalized for other reasons. The only question on this is the extent of the lies.

  31. Funny how NONE of this is making MSM… Just the usual OMG ‘PANIC’… sigh… Omicron is about down to the level of a bad cold, which has been expected as mutations normally work that way.

      1. As much as they try to hide that it is mild as the hysterically proclaim “record number of infections” and then bury the lede on the .0001 percent death rate which includes people who have underlying health issues that make an infected hangnail potentially lethal, more and more people are recognizing the BS that the statists are presenting. Best term I have heard for the leftist “expert” class is that they aspire to be and act is if they are Game of Thrones’ “wise masters”.

    2. Amazingly the BBC is now admitting that Omicron is not serious – https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59768366 – but still beating the panic drum about the wuflu in other stories.

      If you have a sore throat, runny nose and a headache there is a good chance it will be Covid, warn UK researchers.

      The Zoe Covid study team has been tracking the pandemic using feedback from the general public, and estimates half of people with cold-like symptoms actually have Covid.

      They describe an “explosion” of Covid cases over the last week, driven by the new Omicron variant.

      About 144,000 people a day are catching it and then feeling unwell.

      For most, Covid is a mild disease. Some get no symptoms at all.

  32. Okay, and my wife and I to the statistical database on COVID.
    We both tested positive, her last night, me this morning, with the OTC test kit.
    Both of us fully vaccinated AND boosted.
    She has the sniffles and a cough for the post nasal drip.
    I’m normal except for the 98.8 “fever”.

  33. I’m not anti-vax I’m anti-mandate.

    That said, for my age and profession an unproven pseudo-vaccine with potentially devastating side effects does not pass the cost:benefit analysis.

    Hard pass.

  34. It’s my belief that the numbers of unvaxxed in the hospital is primarily the fault of the current protocol of telling them when they first present to the hospital with mild emerging symptoms to go back home and wait until its’ worse then come back in so they can put you in a ward that they can now collect more money for. Instead of trying to treat you in the early stages as most disease is treated except this one.
    No ivermectin, no clonal bodies, no anti viral, no nothing just go home come back when you’re dying.
    We’re supposed to be the best medicine in the world. It is to laugh. We get charged 5 to 10 times more than any other country for the sole reason because supposedly we can afford it. What they mean is the gov’t is paying for most people medicine and they’ve got big pockets so let’s rob them. And we’ve got all sorts of life saving machines but we dole that out to those who can pay a premium and not the ones on medicare or medicaid cause we won’t get the big price for the treatment so well just tell them there’s nothing we can do and unless they find out somehow and complain we’ll get away with it.
    It makes me sick to see how people who are dying or very ill are forced to be treated like this. It’s worse than a 3rd world country because at least there the Doctors care about helping the patient. Here? It’s all bottom line baby and it’s driven by the office manager of the Drs. group cause most Drs practice in a group setting and they set protocols for everything and no Dr in the group can prescribe anything outside the protocols.
    I’m glad I had to treat myself earlier in my life and succeeded for the most part. Some things I can’t do anything about due to there requirement for machines or special taught talent. But if there is a physical regimen I’ve found it and used it and if it’s a drug I’ve bought it overseas and used it for a cure.
    But now that I’m old and have medicare and medicaid I can’t do that as I don’t have the money so I go into the medical providers and they’re nice but somehow I don’t get offered any of the new treatments for some of what I’ve got. I’m not told it exists. Nor do they volunteer to do any testing. Unless I ask for it and then boom I get it johnny on the spot. Isn’t that interesting. I wonder what else they’re not telling me that might make my life more comfortable? *spit* So it doesn’t surprise me to hear that Drs are all with people wearing masks even tho they know they have little effect. Or that there isn’t any early or prophylactic medicines that one could take that would limit the degree of symptoms of the virus. Of course they lie by omission and they’re used to it cause they do it all the time.

    1. Buying some of the actually effective medicines from overseas pharmacies is still possible and not terribly expensive, but it does take a month or so to get the pills.

    2. We get charged 5 to 10 times more than any other country for the sole reason because supposedly we can afford it.

      We pay more for medicine because our country doesn’t say “give us a massive discount or we will just steal the IP and make it ourselves.”

      Figuring out the actual amount we pay for medical vs what they pay elsewhere is hard, since they also pay through taxes and we have a ton of hardship discounts even for those who don’t flatly walk off and turn out to not exist on paper. (I got an earful about that during our first daughter’s birth.)
      It’s rather like the comparisons of infant mortality, where our good-will attempt to accurately identify all children showing any signs of life after any portion exits the womb is compared to other nations after they’ve removed “miscarriages” or “stillbirths” for being low weight, dying in the first day, etc.

      t makes me sick to see how people who are dying or very ill are forced to be treated like this. It’s worse than a 3rd world country because at least there the Doctors care about helping the patient.

      Considering how many of MY doctors ARE the doctors going to third-world countries to treat the locals, this is nonsense. That you seem to think it’s universal suggests you are not familiar with any of the outrageous behavior committed against third-world populations by their “caring” — but dehumanizing– doctors. Hint: the stuff you’re complaining about for not using treatments for political purposes? Is old hat.

      Yeah, there’s a worrying trend in medicine to neglect patients.

      THAT IS PART OF WHY THEY ARE TRYING TO PURGE THE DOCTORS WHO WON’T SUBMIT.

        1. There’s a long history of doctors being human; it has frustrated centuries of folks who are sure they can enslave them to their purpose, and it will continue to do so.

            1. While I can see how Texas taking forever to grow a brain with respect to stupid power games around COVID might make you even more prone to depression than usual, some states didn’t lose their heads and have been holding on to sanity the entire time.
              Our states aren’t going to get more agreeable as the wanna-be dictators get crazier.

    3. We DO have the world’s best medical care here in the U.S.

      Which tells you something about how shitty it is in the rest of the world.

      A patient in the U.S. waits about 3 hours for an MRI scan. A patient in Canada waits 3 months. If the patient dies on the waiting list, oh well. Before the Canadian government closed the border, Canadians were coming here in droves to pay for American health care, rather than rely on their ‘free’ socialized health care.

      Doctors and hospitals are not ALLOWED to treat early-stage COVID19 on pain of losing their medical licenses. Chloroquine and Ivermectin were effectively banned by the government last year. Today, doctors and nurses are being FIRED by government decree for refusing the retrovirus inoculations. When politicians and bureaucrats are punishing doctors and nurses over their own medical treatment, you know something is seriously F’d up.

      Most of your other complaints are also the results of government regulations. The government decides where hospitals can be built, how big they can be, how many doctors and nurses they can employ, how much they can charge for their services, what medical treatments they can provide and to which patients.

      After nine years of 0bamacare, we have fewer doctors and nurses, ruled by hordes more bureaucrats and administrators. And the Leftroids are wondering why health care costs have shot up. Bureaucrats make medical decisions, while doctors spend their time filling out piles of government forms. It’s a travesty.

      And STILL it’s better here than anywhere else on Earth.
      ———————————
      Under socialized medicine, each patient incurs expenses which end when the patient dies. In private practice, each patient provides profits which end when the patient dies. Which patient would YOU rather be?

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