For a while now, Leonhardt has been trying to walk his pearl-clutching audience back from the COVID terror ledge; this is just the latest salvo. Unsurprisingly, he invariably commits, for the benefit of his audience and for the umpteenth time, the same univariate error of comparing deaths in Trump/Biden counties. The fact that case rates and deaths are decoupled in these counties *should* tell him that his analysis is incorrect. But, you know, politics.
Leonhardt has been doing this dance, to his credit I guess, for a while now. Over a year ago he admitted that there had yet to be a casual outdoor transmission in the literature anywhere in the world in a piece called COVID absolutism. He probably sees the light but doesn't want to get fired, so he has to temper all truthful statements. Berenson knows him from his NYT days.
I quote here from a comment on Daily Sceptic. I am heart sick.
We have all read the facts. The data was fudged, the tests were useless, the statistics artificially inflated, and many deaths were intentionally caused through institutionalized medical negligence. Hospitals received funding bonuses as payoffs.
None of that had anything to do with bad data, or pessimistic models. They did it all on purpose, all of it.
Every life lost, every business destroyed, every penny wasted, every child traumatised. Every moment of anxiety and fear – every single one – entirely intentional.
They ruined lives and countries and the global economy as a deliberate policy on the back of a vast web of lies, and last act of the deception will be to claim it was a “mistake”.
For the full effect, you have to follow him regurgitate this story on a monthly basis the last year, each iteration, inching slowly to the obviousness of it all. [1]
I feel bad for the guy, because the final piece of the puzzle is right in front of him... if only he should for a moment re-run his "Trump counties have slightly higher mortality than Biden counties" for, say, 2019 or 2009 and discover the same pattern was there all along. He is SO CLOSE....
Or maybe he can just google "why do people die at slightly higher rates in rural areas compared to urban areas" and maybe he will find the answer all along, right from his favorite institution:
You say " You need to inhale 5000 virus particles to have a good chance at infection. An infected cough releases 1 million virus particles. An effective and tightly fitted mask may stop enough droplets to keep all but 100k of those particles out of the air." And then: "these numbers are hypothetical..." Is this the kind of thing that can be quantified? Or is it something that will always be hypothetical?
I keep thinking about it in terms of poison. If you need to ingest X amount of poison to be killed and a filter takes some out but the amount left in a glass of water is still more than X, it's not true that "every little bit helps." The filter was no help at all, even though it worked (in the sense of removing some of the poison). If the amount you need to ingest is very small and there's a lot in the water, then a filter could take MOST of it out but you'd still die. The amount needed to kill you (or in the case of Covid, infect you) is the part that needs to be known before you can decide whether or not a filter or mask is useful.
"and vaccines substantially reduce the chances of infection" He actually put this in print?? I thought even the CDC had openly admitted this was false. How can people still be so ill-informed on this topic?
"If a new variant emerges, and hospitals are again at risk of being overwhelmed, then reinstating Covid restrictions may make sense again ..."
Again? They never were overwhelmed! And here we go again with "ifs" and "risks" being used to advocate for massive societal damage to supposedly benefit one sector of that society. Hospitals are always at risk for something. Heck, we're all at risk for something every time we wake up.
I honestly don’t believe they’ll give up this easily. A more virulent &/or deadly “variant” will magically appear by Fall. As for the masks, they are talismanic & virtue signaling in order for the like-minded to identify each other, IMO. I still see dopes walking around alone in the open air, wearing them.
Thanks for your continued intellectual commentary. It’s sorely needed in this never-ending nightmare. Some logical debate on paper. If I didn’t have your regular newsletters I think I would go mad.
Eugyppius: “It seemed impossible even three months ago, but it’s true: Corona is ending. It’s not over with everywhere, but it will be soon, it’s just a matter of time. “
What it's like on the ground in AUSTRALIA:
Just to let you know, here in Australia on March 10th there is a renewed push for booster vaccination on TV, all across mainstream media and state run TV news (ABC News 24). The unvaxxed are still locked out of certain industry sectors, unvaxxed are still unemployed and ignored. In some states (such as QLD and WA) you still can’t get a meal in a restaurant or a drink in pub unless you are vaccinated, still. And they have no plans to remove this. They want to torture the unvaxxed.
We just had massive floods in Qld and NSW. The State Emergency Service has denied volunteers who are unvaxxed from helping with the rescue effort, all whilst people are drowning in water up to their roofs. This is where Australia is right now. And no one’s questioning it, and media won’t mention it. So instead, people die and have reduced assistance in clean-up.
The media are now scaring us with, “Get boosted for the new sub-variant of Omnicron, BA.2 -more bullshit- which is apparently 25% more contagious than standard Omnicron.” – ABC Evening News 7pm March 10th. Meanwhile most people have had Covid already and it seems from my research that the vaxxed got it much worse than unvaxxed, regardless of how many shots they have had. I had it, it was mostly over in 6 days. I hit up Ivermectin as soon as I had symptoms, which I had to import because it’s banned here. It fixed me quick. It was the mildest cold I've ever had, all upper-respiratory, no deep lung infections, just a headache on the first day, then a cough for a couple of days, then loss of smell for a few days. And to think we continue to destroy people's livelihoods over this. It's no black plague.
In Australia, the fear porn never stops, and we as Australians are totally exhausted, bankrupted, mentally broken and socially separated with mass loss of friends and colleagues due to the vax/non-vax wedge that has been driven between us. Families have been destroyed and relationships forced apart all because of a different viewpoint within the family unit. The Govt pushed people to actively persecute the unvaxxed for almost 2 years through MSM and didn’t bat an eyelid when the damage was becoming apparent. They smirk and smile on TV as if they’re getting off on it. It’s disgusting. It's no different to Macron or Ardern publicly discriminating people and loving it.
If ANYTHING good has come out of Covid-19 (and not that it was wanted or warranted) it’s that it has shown people’s true colours, which has forced us all to subtract people from our friendship circles who are unwilling to debate or hear an alternate point of view as well as verbally attacking & locking out the unvaxxed from their social endeavours. For that, they don’t deserve our friendship. The anger is palpable on both sides and we have no recourse but to take it out on each other, because the Govt is untouchable and protests no longer have any effect. They just laugh at us from their corrupt ivory towers. I fear for this country, it has completely gone to dogs. Food shelves are intermittantly empty, imports are drastically reduced (hard to buy a new car at the moment), postage takes 3 months to get anywhere outside of Australia and petrol has doubled in price in the last three months to $2.25 a litre. It was $1.05 mid-2020. And if China gets involved in the Russia-Ukraine war, geographically we are done for.
It's just about survival now. Hopes, dreams are out the window. Many of us are already stocking up on long-lived supplies & mentally getting ready to bunker down when the power goes out and the food shortages become ridiculous. When Petrol reaches $3 a litre in the coming weeks, the country will grind to a halt. I don't think the majority of people in Australia have any clue about the precipice we are all standing on right now. Whether through ignorance or plain stupidity, there will be many shocked at the next stage. Hopefully it will at least wake some of them up.
You know I find it almost physically painful watching these overeducated morons slowly coming to conclusions that should have been glaringly obvious to them many months ago.
What pains me most are the mental gymnastics they employ to avoid any real critical engagement with just how wrong the narrative has been. Therein lies the seed of the next episode of mass idiocy.
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this today.
For a while now, Leonhardt has been trying to walk his pearl-clutching audience back from the COVID terror ledge; this is just the latest salvo. Unsurprisingly, he invariably commits, for the benefit of his audience and for the umpteenth time, the same univariate error of comparing deaths in Trump/Biden counties. The fact that case rates and deaths are decoupled in these counties *should* tell him that his analysis is incorrect. But, you know, politics.
Leonhardt has been doing this dance, to his credit I guess, for a while now. Over a year ago he admitted that there had yet to be a casual outdoor transmission in the literature anywhere in the world in a piece called COVID absolutism. He probably sees the light but doesn't want to get fired, so he has to temper all truthful statements. Berenson knows him from his NYT days.
I quote here from a comment on Daily Sceptic. I am heart sick.
We have all read the facts. The data was fudged, the tests were useless, the statistics artificially inflated, and many deaths were intentionally caused through institutionalized medical negligence. Hospitals received funding bonuses as payoffs.
None of that had anything to do with bad data, or pessimistic models. They did it all on purpose, all of it.
Every life lost, every business destroyed, every penny wasted, every child traumatised. Every moment of anxiety and fear – every single one – entirely intentional.
They ruined lives and countries and the global economy as a deliberate policy on the back of a vast web of lies, and last act of the deception will be to claim it was a “mistake”.
For the full effect, you have to follow him regurgitate this story on a monthly basis the last year, each iteration, inching slowly to the obviousness of it all. [1]
I feel bad for the guy, because the final piece of the puzzle is right in front of him... if only he should for a moment re-run his "Trump counties have slightly higher mortality than Biden counties" for, say, 2019 or 2009 and discover the same pattern was there all along. He is SO CLOSE....
Or maybe he can just google "why do people die at slightly higher rates in rural areas compared to urban areas" and maybe he will find the answer all along, right from his favorite institution:
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0112-rural-death-risk.html
Unbelievable.
[1] (one such iteration of his "journalism" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/briefing/covid-death-toll-red-america.html
You say " You need to inhale 5000 virus particles to have a good chance at infection. An infected cough releases 1 million virus particles. An effective and tightly fitted mask may stop enough droplets to keep all but 100k of those particles out of the air." And then: "these numbers are hypothetical..." Is this the kind of thing that can be quantified? Or is it something that will always be hypothetical?
I keep thinking about it in terms of poison. If you need to ingest X amount of poison to be killed and a filter takes some out but the amount left in a glass of water is still more than X, it's not true that "every little bit helps." The filter was no help at all, even though it worked (in the sense of removing some of the poison). If the amount you need to ingest is very small and there's a lot in the water, then a filter could take MOST of it out but you'd still die. The amount needed to kill you (or in the case of Covid, infect you) is the part that needs to be known before you can decide whether or not a filter or mask is useful.
"and vaccines substantially reduce the chances of infection" He actually put this in print?? I thought even the CDC had openly admitted this was false. How can people still be so ill-informed on this topic?
"If a new variant emerges, and hospitals are again at risk of being overwhelmed, then reinstating Covid restrictions may make sense again ..."
Again? They never were overwhelmed! And here we go again with "ifs" and "risks" being used to advocate for massive societal damage to supposedly benefit one sector of that society. Hospitals are always at risk for something. Heck, we're all at risk for something every time we wake up.
I honestly don’t believe they’ll give up this easily. A more virulent &/or deadly “variant” will magically appear by Fall. As for the masks, they are talismanic & virtue signaling in order for the like-minded to identify each other, IMO. I still see dopes walking around alone in the open air, wearing them.
Thanks for your continued intellectual commentary. It’s sorely needed in this never-ending nightmare. Some logical debate on paper. If I didn’t have your regular newsletters I think I would go mad.
Eugyppius: “It seemed impossible even three months ago, but it’s true: Corona is ending. It’s not over with everywhere, but it will be soon, it’s just a matter of time. “
What it's like on the ground in AUSTRALIA:
Just to let you know, here in Australia on March 10th there is a renewed push for booster vaccination on TV, all across mainstream media and state run TV news (ABC News 24). The unvaxxed are still locked out of certain industry sectors, unvaxxed are still unemployed and ignored. In some states (such as QLD and WA) you still can’t get a meal in a restaurant or a drink in pub unless you are vaccinated, still. And they have no plans to remove this. They want to torture the unvaxxed.
We just had massive floods in Qld and NSW. The State Emergency Service has denied volunteers who are unvaxxed from helping with the rescue effort, all whilst people are drowning in water up to their roofs. This is where Australia is right now. And no one’s questioning it, and media won’t mention it. So instead, people die and have reduced assistance in clean-up.
The media are now scaring us with, “Get boosted for the new sub-variant of Omnicron, BA.2 -more bullshit- which is apparently 25% more contagious than standard Omnicron.” – ABC Evening News 7pm March 10th. Meanwhile most people have had Covid already and it seems from my research that the vaxxed got it much worse than unvaxxed, regardless of how many shots they have had. I had it, it was mostly over in 6 days. I hit up Ivermectin as soon as I had symptoms, which I had to import because it’s banned here. It fixed me quick. It was the mildest cold I've ever had, all upper-respiratory, no deep lung infections, just a headache on the first day, then a cough for a couple of days, then loss of smell for a few days. And to think we continue to destroy people's livelihoods over this. It's no black plague.
In Australia, the fear porn never stops, and we as Australians are totally exhausted, bankrupted, mentally broken and socially separated with mass loss of friends and colleagues due to the vax/non-vax wedge that has been driven between us. Families have been destroyed and relationships forced apart all because of a different viewpoint within the family unit. The Govt pushed people to actively persecute the unvaxxed for almost 2 years through MSM and didn’t bat an eyelid when the damage was becoming apparent. They smirk and smile on TV as if they’re getting off on it. It’s disgusting. It's no different to Macron or Ardern publicly discriminating people and loving it.
If ANYTHING good has come out of Covid-19 (and not that it was wanted or warranted) it’s that it has shown people’s true colours, which has forced us all to subtract people from our friendship circles who are unwilling to debate or hear an alternate point of view as well as verbally attacking & locking out the unvaxxed from their social endeavours. For that, they don’t deserve our friendship. The anger is palpable on both sides and we have no recourse but to take it out on each other, because the Govt is untouchable and protests no longer have any effect. They just laugh at us from their corrupt ivory towers. I fear for this country, it has completely gone to dogs. Food shelves are intermittantly empty, imports are drastically reduced (hard to buy a new car at the moment), postage takes 3 months to get anywhere outside of Australia and petrol has doubled in price in the last three months to $2.25 a litre. It was $1.05 mid-2020. And if China gets involved in the Russia-Ukraine war, geographically we are done for.
It's just about survival now. Hopes, dreams are out the window. Many of us are already stocking up on long-lived supplies & mentally getting ready to bunker down when the power goes out and the food shortages become ridiculous. When Petrol reaches $3 a litre in the coming weeks, the country will grind to a halt. I don't think the majority of people in Australia have any clue about the precipice we are all standing on right now. Whether through ignorance or plain stupidity, there will be many shocked at the next stage. Hopefully it will at least wake some of them up.
These people make my head hurt. There's so many things that they just don't seem to understand, basic numbers is one of them.
Amazing that "War" cured the covid...
You know I find it almost physically painful watching these overeducated morons slowly coming to conclusions that should have been glaringly obvious to them many months ago.
What pains me most are the mental gymnastics they employ to avoid any real critical engagement with just how wrong the narrative has been. Therein lies the seed of the next episode of mass idiocy.
Maybe the NYT will get around to looking at Sweden if they really want to see how pointless all the 'interventions' were.
The amount of mental gymnastics this author performed could earn him an Olympic medal.
Because I noticed that Republicans get sick less often, I changed from Dem to Rep LOL. What a nut!