I can't remember exactly when, but I realized it was a nothingburger sometime in 2020 just by looking at the Canadian government's own covid statistics online and realizing the CFR was something like 0.6. I realized even that was likely to be overblown since many cases probably weren't tested or reported. It took me a lot longer to realize it was a deliberately manufactured crisis, though. I just thought politicians had panicked and were being overly cautious and all they needed was to be exposed to the actual data to change course. Much later when it became clear they were ignoring the data I finally caught on, and now I call it the greatest fraud ever perpetuated in the history of humanity.
I wonder that many public officials did panic ... not because of the prospect of a pandemic per se, but because they worried that they had to give the appearance of "Doing Something."
I wonder if that's what happened to Trump. His first instincts were to let the matter blow over, but then he and his people went all in on COVID theater. Hmm ...
As I recall my wakening was about the time I had to consider boosters. I needed to do something as the illness seemed to rise up in my area, again. That's when I seriously looked at data and concluded that the vaccines were failing. At 82 with issues I was cautious and simply had been avoiding crowds which was getting more difficult. I latched onto using diluted Betadine gargle & nose swabs. I thought my routine use of Vit D, C and NAC along with Q & Zinc would help my immune system. So far so good. My 89 year old neighbor agrees as well - no more vaccines.
Thanks for another interesting article. I have a question which is slightly off-topic but is to do with life expectancy and covid. I'm in the UK I should say. There has been something in the news over here regarding an article published by The Kings Fund, a body which looks at health trends. The article says that life expectancy at birth fell by about a year in 2020 due to covid after a more or less continuous rise since about 1850 up until 2019. But how do you calculate the life expectancy at birth for someone born in 2019 or 2020? Here is a link to the article -
You question anticipates the fact that I had to take some care in the passage in which I make contact with "life expectancy." One reason is that we could imagine mean and median age of death declining after a severe episode that concentrates its toll on the oldest among us. A virus burns through the population; takes away many of the immuno-suppressed (who tend to be older); we end up with a younger and healthier population. But, in the next year the mean and median age of death could conceivably /decline/ notwithstanding the fact that the population is healthier. Indeed, life expectancy might not change at all. But, then how do we measure life expectancy?
So, we pose a "survival model". For example, we may have a very good model for the survival of light bulbs. Some light bulbs will burn out early. Others will last a long time. But, if we have a good model instantaneous rate at which, at any given time, a light bulb will burn out, then we can get data on actual performance of light bulbs and then calibrate that instantaneous rate. We might call that rate the "hazard rate".
Depending on the phenomenon we're looking at, that rate may be constant over time. A constant hazard rate might be a good model for the decay of radionuclides. But, for other phenomena, history might matter. Are older light bulbs more likely to burn out at any given time than a newer light bulb? Does age matter?
Obviously, with people age matters. I'd have to look up exactly how actuaries model hazard rates, but, once we have a good model of underlying hazard rates, we can figure out all types of life expectancies conditional on individual attributes. For example, given someone is age X and does or not have certain health conditions, how much time might they have left in this world? Granted, a person can be really healthy, in which case the likelihood of dying the next day may be almost vanishingly small (the hazard rate is low), but that doesn't mean that someone won't yet pull a really bad card from the deck. It can happen.
To recount: A virus may burn through the population. It may be concentrate its toll on certain age cohorts--or not. Either way, it's not obvious that life expectancy would necessarily change. But, evidence that life expectancy has declined would indicate that something more insidious and long-lasting than a bad episode with a virus is at work. It's evidence that the kids are not alright. But how, why, and what can we do about it?
Usual suspects would surely include the "vaccines," the consequences of lockdowns, proliferation of drugs coming across open borders ...
Thanks for your reply. I need to digest that. My wife and I decided not to take up the offer of a booster last Autumn. We are both 70. The odd thing is that our kids think we are crazy and they can't understand why we turned it down.
I presumed COVID was no worse than a bad flu before it even arrived here in the US (by "arrived" I don't mean the first actual cases, but rather the media's declaration of its arrival.) My reasoning required no particular knowledge of virology or epidemiology, merely a recollection of recent history: if media and academic/bureaucratic scoundrels like Ferguson and Fauci were wrong about SARS, MERS, BSE, Ebola, West Nile.... what sense is there in concluding that *this time*, finally, they got one right?
Ah, well. Not that politicians of any one party would politicize such issues! Right?
Even the Republicans endeavored to exploit the SARS business. Our friends at the CDC suggest that anywhere between 40-some million and 12- million Americans had been infected with it. (Their point estimate, I think, was 89 million-and-change.) But, they only credited a little over 5,000 fatalities to SARS. And I will bet that the median age of fatalities attributed to SARS matched the median age of fatalities attributed to old school flu.
And then the Ebola business. Do you remember that nurse returning from West Africa who ended up being forced to quarantine in a tent at the airport? She was irate. We get it.
I will admit that the hemorrhagic fevers with their extremely high fatality rate do concern me a bit - - again, without knowing anything about virology, I have assumed that part of the reason that they inhabit the quadrant of infectiousness / fatality rate that they do is because people who get them die before they can infect too many others. Given our modern transportation capabilities, where you could be literally sitting on the banks of the Ebola River one day, and less than 48 hours later be in London or New York City, might have an effect on that trade-off.
FWIW we lived near Maridi, Sudan (now South Sudan) for 5 years, arriving just one year after the 2nd documented outbreak of Ebola there, so Ebola was certainly in the back of our minds the whole time...
I can't remember exactly when, but I realized it was a nothingburger sometime in 2020 just by looking at the Canadian government's own covid statistics online and realizing the CFR was something like 0.6. I realized even that was likely to be overblown since many cases probably weren't tested or reported. It took me a lot longer to realize it was a deliberately manufactured crisis, though. I just thought politicians had panicked and were being overly cautious and all they needed was to be exposed to the actual data to change course. Much later when it became clear they were ignoring the data I finally caught on, and now I call it the greatest fraud ever perpetuated in the history of humanity.
I wonder that many public officials did panic ... not because of the prospect of a pandemic per se, but because they worried that they had to give the appearance of "Doing Something."
I wonder if that's what happened to Trump. His first instincts were to let the matter blow over, but then he and his people went all in on COVID theater. Hmm ...
As I recall my wakening was about the time I had to consider boosters. I needed to do something as the illness seemed to rise up in my area, again. That's when I seriously looked at data and concluded that the vaccines were failing. At 82 with issues I was cautious and simply had been avoiding crowds which was getting more difficult. I latched onto using diluted Betadine gargle & nose swabs. I thought my routine use of Vit D, C and NAC along with Q & Zinc would help my immune system. So far so good. My 89 year old neighbor agrees as well - no more vaccines.
Thanks for another interesting article. I have a question which is slightly off-topic but is to do with life expectancy and covid. I'm in the UK I should say. There has been something in the news over here regarding an article published by The Kings Fund, a body which looks at health trends. The article says that life expectancy at birth fell by about a year in 2020 due to covid after a more or less continuous rise since about 1850 up until 2019. But how do you calculate the life expectancy at birth for someone born in 2019 or 2020? Here is a link to the article -
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/whats-happening-life-expectancy-england
Excellent question!
You question anticipates the fact that I had to take some care in the passage in which I make contact with "life expectancy." One reason is that we could imagine mean and median age of death declining after a severe episode that concentrates its toll on the oldest among us. A virus burns through the population; takes away many of the immuno-suppressed (who tend to be older); we end up with a younger and healthier population. But, in the next year the mean and median age of death could conceivably /decline/ notwithstanding the fact that the population is healthier. Indeed, life expectancy might not change at all. But, then how do we measure life expectancy?
So, we pose a "survival model". For example, we may have a very good model for the survival of light bulbs. Some light bulbs will burn out early. Others will last a long time. But, if we have a good model instantaneous rate at which, at any given time, a light bulb will burn out, then we can get data on actual performance of light bulbs and then calibrate that instantaneous rate. We might call that rate the "hazard rate".
Depending on the phenomenon we're looking at, that rate may be constant over time. A constant hazard rate might be a good model for the decay of radionuclides. But, for other phenomena, history might matter. Are older light bulbs more likely to burn out at any given time than a newer light bulb? Does age matter?
Obviously, with people age matters. I'd have to look up exactly how actuaries model hazard rates, but, once we have a good model of underlying hazard rates, we can figure out all types of life expectancies conditional on individual attributes. For example, given someone is age X and does or not have certain health conditions, how much time might they have left in this world? Granted, a person can be really healthy, in which case the likelihood of dying the next day may be almost vanishingly small (the hazard rate is low), but that doesn't mean that someone won't yet pull a really bad card from the deck. It can happen.
To recount: A virus may burn through the population. It may be concentrate its toll on certain age cohorts--or not. Either way, it's not obvious that life expectancy would necessarily change. But, evidence that life expectancy has declined would indicate that something more insidious and long-lasting than a bad episode with a virus is at work. It's evidence that the kids are not alright. But how, why, and what can we do about it?
Usual suspects would surely include the "vaccines," the consequences of lockdowns, proliferation of drugs coming across open borders ...
Thanks for your reply. I need to digest that. My wife and I decided not to take up the offer of a booster last Autumn. We are both 70. The odd thing is that our kids think we are crazy and they can't understand why we turned it down.
I presumed COVID was no worse than a bad flu before it even arrived here in the US (by "arrived" I don't mean the first actual cases, but rather the media's declaration of its arrival.) My reasoning required no particular knowledge of virology or epidemiology, merely a recollection of recent history: if media and academic/bureaucratic scoundrels like Ferguson and Fauci were wrong about SARS, MERS, BSE, Ebola, West Nile.... what sense is there in concluding that *this time*, finally, they got one right?
Ah, well. Not that politicians of any one party would politicize such issues! Right?
Even the Republicans endeavored to exploit the SARS business. Our friends at the CDC suggest that anywhere between 40-some million and 12- million Americans had been infected with it. (Their point estimate, I think, was 89 million-and-change.) But, they only credited a little over 5,000 fatalities to SARS. And I will bet that the median age of fatalities attributed to SARS matched the median age of fatalities attributed to old school flu.
And then the Ebola business. Do you remember that nurse returning from West Africa who ended up being forced to quarantine in a tent at the airport? She was irate. We get it.
Yes I remember.
I will admit that the hemorrhagic fevers with their extremely high fatality rate do concern me a bit - - again, without knowing anything about virology, I have assumed that part of the reason that they inhabit the quadrant of infectiousness / fatality rate that they do is because people who get them die before they can infect too many others. Given our modern transportation capabilities, where you could be literally sitting on the banks of the Ebola River one day, and less than 48 hours later be in London or New York City, might have an effect on that trade-off.
FWIW we lived near Maridi, Sudan (now South Sudan) for 5 years, arriving just one year after the 2nd documented outbreak of Ebola there, so Ebola was certainly in the back of our minds the whole time...
The Sudan.... ever a dangerous place.
My reading of The Mahdist State in Sudan (Holt, 2nd ed. 1970) was illuminating.
Ebola (named after the Ebola River, evidently) is dangerous and puzzling stuff.