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@sisyphus, @arizonapatriot, @caroljoy, @rhfabian, @asquared, @kedavis, @susanquinn, @marcin
The view of a highly respected commentator, in my view at least:
There is also the fact that when COVID 19 was named, it was listed as being inside the class and category of a corona virus illness,which many people have understood for decades to be a flu or cold virus. So if you don’t make a suggestion that it is in the category you are a science denier, and if you do, you are a science denier.
I was so pleased to see Mr Prger take this stance on the situation. No wonder so many admire Prager University. And it is one institution we can assume will be forever free of “donations” from Bill Gates.
I do not think history will judge your assessment as being correct. In places where there was a tremendous need for stay at home, it was a good policy. But for much of the country it has been ridiculous and besides that the economic fallout will cause more loss of life than the actual COVID would have.
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I have just watched the now famous video of the two ER physicians in Bakersfield and it is impossible for me to recommend it too highly or to describe adequately how powerful it is in the face of all the madness which has been inflicted on us and on our Nation by the Faucis and the other powerful bureaucrats who are holding such inexplicable, to me at least, power over the President. Their arguments are so clearly and soundly logical that I would have to say it is well-nigh impossible to fully understand the enormity of the mistake which is being foisted on us every day without paying close attention to this invaluable presentation. I won’t even try to quote from this extended discussion, the only “lowlights” of which, surprise, surprise, were the sometimes inane questions asked by the members of Fraternity and Sorority Row who call themselves “journalists”, and although it is quite long –an hour and 3 minutes – it is the best short course I know of for a much fuller understanding of what is going on, and it is, as they had to emphasize over and over again for the “journalists”, based purely on data and science. They refused to get into politics at all, but they sure asked some probing questions – like why can I go to Costco with hundreds of people all around me but I can’t go to Church? Why is Home Depot and Walmart open but the little coffee shop across the street from their hospital had to close down? Please view this video – as an old friend was fond of saying when he urged his pals to have another drink—“you owe it to yourself!”
I wish I knew the context of this. Is he saying efforts to suppress the virus were never needed? He’d be completely ignorant if he is.
Rather a fair question. here is the text of his column on the matter. It is worth noting he probably wrote this column before the Stanford Random Survey hit the viral-promotion aspect of social media, as well as before the Bakersfield Calif doctors offered up their decent presentation:
https://www.dennisprager.com/column/has-the-lockdown-worked/
Two paragraphs from his column:
But on what grounds are we to believe that millions would die without ruining the American — and the world’s — economy? Without our being told by an omniscient God, there is no way to know the definitive answer.
But here are some data that cast doubt on those assumptions, based
entirely on the only metric that matters: deaths per 1 million. The number
of confirmed infected people is meaningless, since so few people anywhere
ave been tested for the virus, and we don’t know how many people already
had the virus and never knew it. (Moreover, asymptomatic or minimally
symptomatic carriers of the virus constitute the majority of those infected.)
It was a bit of fun for me when the supposedly intelligent woman journalists stated, “Well maybe the death rate is low because sheltering at home worked.” And Erikson had to point out the whole reason for his solioquy on Sweden and Norway was exactly to show that there is a statistical reason based on those countries opposing policies to believe that Sweden was actually smarter: only a minor difference in deaths above Norway’s, and that difference is eliminated when a person realizes that other deaths came about in Norway from the unintended consequences of a lockdown: suicides, domestic abuse, alcohol and drug abuse soaring and on and on.
Sweden. And Sweden. Oh, and Sweden. Yes, NYC needed a lock down. They went right to the edge. No argument. Laredo, Texas, not so much. Kansas City, no. New Orleans, probably. DC, okay. Butte, Montana? Seriously? This is a continental nation. One size fits all is stupid on stilts. When the medical community was pushing Xi’s line that lethality was out of the ballpark, okay. A month later when Xi and his WHO lackeys stood disgraced for active hostilities against Xi’s trading partners, not so much.
Lock down 20-30 million in hot spots and stop trying to destroy and beggar the entire republic. And if half of the connections alleged between Fauci and Xi and Wuhan bear out, there are more qualified candidates (and few less qualified candidates) to take over that function. I’ve met epidemiologists, we have more than one.
And we have an election coming up with a clear decision to make.
He’s being willfully ignorant here. This stuff is well understood. We have a good understanding of how pandemics develop and can make reasonably accurate predictions about them. The COVID-19 predictions of the Imperial College group have been amazingly accurate so far.
We already knew that, but he seems to be taking it too far. Asymptomatic cases are no more than 4% of the general population, at least in California.
It seems that whether one is a left winger or a right winger one’s attitude toward the science depends almost entirely on whether or not it supports one’s predetermined political agenda.
If the science doesn’t support one’s ideas then it’s all murmurings of dark forces and conspiracies to destroy what we hold dear, and the scientists are all tools of the other side.
Some conservatives judge me wrong already, and for nothing having to do with the merits. Their view of the matter is based almost entirely on falsehoods. I never thought that people on my own side politically could be so willfully ignorant. It’s discouraging. Am I as ignorant as they when it comes to issues I don’t understand as well as medicine?
States with fewer COVID-19 cases were on the same track as New York City. They’d have ended up the same way or worse if nothing had been done. That’s the way these diseases spread. So thank God that strong measures were taken early in those states!
True, but it is the differences in the definition (or understanding) of what “science” really is between the two sides that generally destroys the false equivalency you draw here. Sorry.
Am I wrong in my understanding that the spread in NYC correlates very highly with the subway system?
How many states/cities have NYC’s density and mass transit situation?
Maybe, maybe not. The many variables involved make just about any such proclamation seem a bit ignorant.
When the Cassandra like projections turn out to be false, the Cassandras can always say “That’s because I warned you before it was too late.”
When people die as a result of following the Cassandra’s advice, they can say “Not my problem, I didn’t care about putting 50 million people out of work, I only cared about the disease.”
It doesn’t matter what the outcome is, they are never wrong. It’s a beautiful world-view that have constructed in their own heads.
Correct. No state, other than maybe NJ, was ever on the same “track” as NYC. Not even close.
I watched the video, and it was terrible. I agree with the conclusion. Their methodology is completely wrong, embarrassingly so. I addressed this at length here (comment #31). Apart from the bad methodology, the doctor also made a glaring mathematical error in his comparison of Norway and Sweden — multiplying 5.4 million by 4.9% and getting 1.3 million supposed cases in Norway, wrong by a factor of 5 even under his flawed methodology.
I will say again, I completely disagree. The ICL predictions are not amazingly accurate. They are wildly and absurdly all over the place, with estimates ranging from about 80,000 to about 2.6 million, if I remember correctly. No need to debate it again, Roderic. I just note my complete disagreement.
According to what survey conducted when? The CDC announced 26 days ago it was vigorously pursuing both infection and antigen surveys, then crickets. Minor surveys have been conducted by universities in infected areas and decried as fake science, often by the officials who have been vigorously and relentlessly not releasing findings for 26 days and counting.
Perusing the CDC Covid pages on the data, the work is at best high school level, but not talented high school level. Colored maps indicating the severity of the infestation are not adjusted anywhere by population, being based entirely on the raw number of reported cases. So every populous state appears as a hot zone and, if an less populous state were seeing severe conditions, well, it’s not like anyone lives there. And reported cases is a meaningless number in any event. Nice job. How many more billion would they need to do a remotely competent job, one wonders.
And there is the wonderful precision. My little city lost one person to date, he passed the week before the lockdown and his wife was subjected immediately to forced quarantine in their home. We are reported in the CDC line item as “<20” deaths.
I feel so protected and taken care of. Thanks for everything, CDC!
Science requires that observations occur, freely and without blinders on.
From the observation, a hypothesis may be set forth.
Then using accepted parameters for the following a methodology, a survey, some experiment(s) and/or examination(s) will be started.
Determining the best method for collecting and examining the data should lead to a reasonable conclusion.
Then the conclusion must be examined in light of benefit to risk.
So my study on skin moles might indicate certain types of skin moles will lead to cancer four to ten years down the line. But my idea of a solution that amputating someone’s entire leg because a mole on their little toe is now apparent violates the principle of having a solution be subject to a risk to benefit analysis.
Back in the early aughts, someone approached me with information on how Bill Gates was funneling large amounts of donations into two universities in Great Britain. One of the institutions was the Imperial College.
At the time, I did not see the overall function of how donations work in terms of colleges and universities. I grokked, as anyone would, that a big enough donation would of course guarantee that research done inside a university lab where the donation monies would be applied meant the outcome of the research would in fact benefit the donor.
But I did not realize the larger circuitry at hand. For instance: a donor offers the Imperial College monies. The donation is significant enough that the donor then has the influence comparable to the President of the Board of Directors for that school. They can be sure that their people have important irrevocable positions inside the school.
So Ferguson at the Imperial College comes up with the idea that Mad Cow disease is so extremely virulent that he can convince the entire government and society in Great Britain to destroy the cattle across the farms. End of Part One
Part Two
So if Ferguson is at the Imperial College at the bequest of someone who has made huge donations to the school, think about the financial benefits to the donor. They would have insider information about what is about to happen to the cattle in Great Britain. They can short their investments in Britain’s beef market. They can invest in stocks that will benefit from the mass slaughter of the animals.
When it turns out that Ferguson’s assumptions about the Mad Cow infections were flawed, Ferguson himself doesn’t have to worry as he still possesses the protection of that original donor. Which might explain how it is that Ferguson held on to his position and was then able to be at the center of the COVID 19 predictions. Where his new numbers on the new issue are not any more accurate than his last round of predictions.
It might interest people here to delve into the Clayton Act and the Sherman Act, which are pieces of legislation that are supposed to prevent this sort of thing, at least here in the US.
From wikipedia: Point Four about the Clayton Act, on the wiki page:
The Clayton Act prevents any person from being a director of two or more competing corporations, if those corporations would violate the antitrust criteria by merging (Act Section 8; codified 1200 at 15 U.S.C. § 19).
We have one man who is a grand puppet master, who has been able to bring about a massive change in the educational style of the school system in the USA, as my recent piece on the topic of Common Core education policies exhibits. This same man has two subordinates, who are currently placed in positions inside the US government in relationship to health policies: Birx and Fauci. Notice how both Birx and Fauci denounce hydroxcloroquine, as all good Bill Gates acolytes denounce this inexpensive and proven remedy. (It is interesting to note there are no recorded cases of lupus patients or rheumatoid arthritis patients who use HCQ daily having anything other than minor COVID cases. Not a single such patient has died of COVID! Meanwhile almost every other COVID patient has to wait on a vaccine not yet developed yet!)
So we have an educational system where young adults are programmed to lack critical thinking skills that occurred prior to Common Core’s introduction. Then since the eruption of COVID 19, this same puppet master has introduced the idea of the need for a multi leveled “protection scheme” that he desires for the good of all Americans: a surveillance program that will be able to track people with regards to whether they have maintained a shelter inside their homes or not; as well as focusing on their status with regards to their having been exposed to COVID 19, recovered from COVID 19, been vaccinated against COVID 19, and on and on. And who better than Bill Gates himself to develop and produce such a surveillance program?
Oh and BTW this same puppet master has the very thing that we need to comabt COVID: seven separate laboratories working on developing the vaccine for COVID. Meanwhile, his semi equal in the world of rich human beings, Mark Zuckerberg, has undertaken an alliance with Bill Gates, which Mark and his wife have announced over the last few weeks. This couple desire undertaking a role in providing America’s social media fans with being exposed to the truth, the whole truth and only the truth, as long as that truth does not compete with the truth that Mr Gates himself wishes established.
Continued into next comment:
As far as Zuckerberg helping Bill Gates establish what is truth and what is not about remedies for COVID:
For instance, should anyone post on Facebook about significant improvements in the health of those who suffered with COVID 19 but were put on a regiment of a properly dosed hydroxychloroquine, combined with zinc and azithromycin, then posting of such information will be deleted, with a message sent out to the FB user that such information is not in compliance with community standards as it poses a danger to the health and well being of human beings! (I know this as I am repeatedly having such posts deleted by FB.)
So Facebook has become a censorship org, per the “Help out our friend Bill Gates” design of Mark Zuckerberg.