I've likened masking to rosaries. A truly devout person could in all sincerity say, "Wear this rosary; it will protect you from covid." Yet few, even Catholics will believe that.
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.
Check out the Project Veritas video with the NYT reporter from yesterday. It seems that there might be some sanity still there, but as you said they are afraid to say it and get attacked by the crazies there that drive policy.
There has to be outdoor transmission if wild deer have tested positive for covid. Unless the deer are silently breaking into cabins and sneaking around hunter's bedrooms and sneaking out again.
This is where both viral loading (miniscule outside) and the immune system come into play. Leonhardt can't comprehend how the first part works and won't really acknowledge the second, so he simply parrots known covid misinformation, such as masks work, vaccines substantially reduce transmission, etc. his whole understanding of covid is wrong.
To which I say, "Please continue to boost yourself. Good luck with that 28 pound heart!!"
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”.
I'm not really sorry to admit to you that I will not forgive this. Not at all... quite the contrary: I will do all I can to seek out punishment for these people. In the midst of this mania, a 15-year old boy shot himself... the son of my pastor. Another friend within my circle of friendships, in his 50s, shot himself in his backyard. The stories of depression, drug use, loss of savings, loss of family businesses, divisions between family members and friendships lost... all of it the consequences of not-so-tiny tyrants who have used this opportunity to puff themselves up. No... I'll never forgive these people. From Fauci all the way to the parents at the playground who themselves are unmasked though their 8-year old daughter is all covered up as she climbs the monkeybars. No... no way. Never forgive these people for the destruction they have wrought. Never ever forgive them.
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.
this is exactly my theory of mask failure. you‘re naked in a -40° C cave. here is a candle for heat. it works! it emits heat! but you still die after a few hours, because it‘s just not enough to matter. being infected / dying of hypothermia is a binary thing. there is a threshold; helping a little bit is no help at all
Precisely! I've seen people at the movies wearing an (optional) N95 mask which they then lift out of the way to shove popcorn into their mouth-- with a bare hand of course. Because viruses respect your space while you're chewing? They obviously believe the air is harmful, but that harm cannot compete with the utter deliciousness of popcorn? I can't fathom what they are thinking -- if they were in a situation where exposure to the Harmful Thing was deadly, they'd be dead. I guess they've never worked with hazardous chemicals or pesticides.
My family has had two theories. Originally, we thought that covid stays above about four feet but realized that we must be wrong since small children were also wearing masks while walking in restaurants, movie theaters, etc... Then we realized that covid only senses larger movement like walking which is why you need to wear it while walking in a restaurant but are safe once seated. See.... easy peasy to understand.
And another: Imagine you've been swimming in the backyard pool all afternoon and as you exit the pool you turn and look at the water. You believe that you can identify and know which water made you wet.
Mar 10, 2022·edited Mar 10, 2022Liked by eugyppius
It's also been shown that cloth masks stop zero percent of actual virus particles (virions), while "surgical" masks stop about 12 percent (which was an insignificant result statistically in the study, meaning that it cannot be stated that this was not a null result; in other words, it was within the margin of error), while a properly fitted, brand new N95 stops all of half of the virions, and that drops over time. Note that this represents approximately 0 percent of N95s worn by lay-people, as a properly fitted N95 is so tight that it it is painful and causes bruises, and no untrained person is going to tolerate that all day. The filter media on N95s is so restrictive that a small air leak will cause a significant drop in effectiveness, since the air in either direction will seek the path of least resistance.
And even worn so tight that it causes bruises, so tight that the user cannot smell a lighted cigarette only inches from the nose, it's only stopping half of the virions.
The study used actual virions for the testing, in this case harmless bacteriophages that were chosen because the particle size is the same as COVID virions, about 100nm in diameter (0.1 micron).
It had previously been assumed that N95s would stop ~95% or more of any size particle, as that 95% rating is based on what was the most penetrative diameter of latex nanosphere test media, at 300nm (0.3 micron). Larger particles would be more likely to be trapped mechanically in the filter media, while smaller ones would be more likely to be trapped by the electrostatic treatment applied to the filter media.
That's with tiny globules of latex rubber, though. Turns out that virions aren't that much like latex globules after all.
This is not the one I was referring to, but the numbers are similar. This study used droplets of olive oil of 1 micron diameter, or ten times larger than the 0.1 micron bacteriophages in the other study I am trying to find, so the numbers are a tad better, but still very much in the ballpark.
"Nevertheless, high-efficiency masks, such as the KN95, still offer substantially higher apparent filtration efficiencies (60% and 46% for R95 and KN95 masks, respectively) than the more commonly used cloth (10%) and surgical masks (12%), and therefore are still the recommended choice in mitigating airborne disease transmission indoors."
I am trying to find it. I always save such things locally as stuff on the web tends to be quite ephemeral, but I haven't been able to find it just yet, nor on the web. I will keep looking.
Your questions are at the heart of the issue and something I've been asking the whole time --how many virus particles are enough for infection? how many are we likely to encounter on our trip on the subway? Is what makes us sick the number of particles, or our "terrain?"
The mask proponents act like the virus is the size of literal bat, and that there's just five or six flying around, so if you can just avoid that ONE bat --- by ducking your head, sitting down before you eat, avoiding caves and underpasses, replacing your mask right away if you see a bat coming... you'll be spared--it's all so ludicrous.
It's the obsessive, caring, intimate – even slightly pornographic – way that they describe the fabric, fit, artistic designs, personalized prints, safety profile (e.g., no impact on comfort, even in a N95 while engaging in intense effort), and, especially important, ease with which one can spot and perhaps even connect with other clean and compliant cult members.
Or maybe what makes us sick is not at all whom we contact or the environment around us, but our own condition of susceptibility. If I'm immune, I'm immune everywhere. If I'm susceptible, I'm susceptible no matter where I am... whether a crowded room or visiting one infectious person in their bedroom. Throughout this ordeal, I've been frustrated with (this was not communicated by you, btw)... I've been frustrated with the Fauci-ish presentation that what makes the difference is where we go, who we meet, how many people will be there. None of that matters, but you'd never know by listening the Faucists.
"The Faucists," great label! I agree -- Their entire "theory of contagion" is just straight out of the Middle Ages and the "Consorting with Witches" nonsense combined with the instinctive American Puritanical notion that "more fun=more danger." So shopping at Costco for the bare necessities is "safe" but put one item of clothing in that cart, and BAM! INFECTED!
I believe now more than ever that whether or not we get sick depends on our bodies and how well that system is working. I believe in "staying out of the body's way" as much as possible. I rarely get sick at all (knock on wood) but when I do it's because I've weakened myself through prolonged stress and lack of sleep. The people I know who constantly "chase health" through endless medications and interventions just get sicker and sicker. I'm not even convinced that "early treatment" of cancers is even beneficial in the long run. For me personally, the stress of "becoming a cancer victim" and all the medical treatments that would involve, the visits, the tests, the driving around, the traffic, the constant exposure to the dead and dying in hospitals, the cold, faceless doctors and nursers (masked forever?), the brutal surgeries, which, less face it, are grievous bodily injuries, the lack of sleep, the depression, the constant worry of medical malpractice and hospital bills, the sudden decline in quality of life while you struggle to "defeat" the cancer so that you can "return" to "living".... unbearable for me.
I wonder how many people die "with" diagnosed cancers? How many die with untreated cancers? There are very people who would be the type to get tested for cancer and then refuse treatment, so I suspect these numbers are very low that we know about it. The people who avoid all tests and doctors, might get diagnosed with a very late stage cancer and die quite quickly, but how long have they "lived with" that cancer, happily going about their life? many many years. Who's to say?
Quality of Life Years is a major thing, yes indeed. I prefer your way, too! It has struck me, also from the beginning, that the average age of death from covid is higher than the general average age of death.... that the most typical person to have died from covid suffers from FOUR comorbidities. I've also learned a lot about the immune system these past couple of years... why, for example, here in my city where the mayor has shut down businesses, who last year forbade Mardi Gras parades, who has shut down bars and restaurants, who now requires 5-year olds to show their papers to have a meal with his family, why did the city not provide Vitamin D to every citizen? All the money spent... all the business not conducted because of the interventions, but no Vitamin D? No messaging from the mayor about reducing sugar intake? Getting sleep? Getting midday sunshine in a walk with your friends? No messaging about what you can do at the first evidence of symptoms? The answer is only "Avoid crowds, wear masks, and get three vaccine shots, or else!" It's a mess, and lives are at stake from the decisions made by these petty tyrants. I just can't reconcile myself to the harm that has been done. The lost years of childhood education... the loss of life savings, the loss of family businesses. It's been a crime so huge that it's hard to know where to start. But the Faucists are a place to begin, and the man himself deserves to be marched in front of a brick wall. I know that's extreme.... I get it... but killing hundreds of thousands of people is itself extreme. It's the most sad thing we'll ever witness. My Goodness.
I am still amazed at how few people seemed to care that home treatment regimens were ignored, discouraged ("don't take that, are you CRAZY???") or even banned, when the actual response of actual doctors and actual hospitals to a person actually sick with Covid was, "Go home and see if you get sick enough to be in danger of death, and then come back." That was IT. When I would point out that certain drugs are dispensed to everyone who has it in some countries, the response usually amounted to "the people in those countries are all stupid" (although of course not phrased that openly).
I think the combination of fear of death and the reality of most cases being mild led people to think they were each "one of the few lucky ones" instead of "one of the vast majority." So by the time the shots came out, people who got Covid anyway thought, "The shot saved me!" rather than, "I had the same case I would have without the shot, and come to think of it -- why did I get Covid if the shot was supposed to keep me from getting it and keep it from spreading?"
Exactly. I can't believe that this is something that isn't known. But I am not a virologist, maybe it is something that can't be known. I don't know how figuring out contageousness works.
Thanks! I hadn't heard that term before, but I'm familiar with the idea -- for instance, people with low Vitamin D levels are apparently FAR more prone to complications (and death) from Covid. But while giving people massive doses of Vitamin D can help them improve their levels, that is not the same thing as correcting whatever the reason is that they had such low levels in the first place, so they are not necessarily "healthy."
Exactly. This is an allopathic response to a wholistic problem. The allopathic mindset thrives on the one germ/cause, one drug solution. It then plays an endless game of catch up dealing with side effects.
The problem is with the mindset of the "I have an ailment, give me an easy solution". It takes more of an effort to sustain the terrain than to simply take the one cure offered.
The allopathic path lends itself to easy monetization, the wholistic takes effort on the part of the health care practitioner as well as the patient and is nowhere near as profitable, hence the size of the allopathic industrial medical complex in comparison to the smaller health promoting enterprises.
The UK challenge trials might have helped but were not conduced in a way to connect virons to illness. Given the variegates of the human immune system along with initial conditions, I'm not sure we can ever arrive at a quantified answer. Masking efficiencies are not adequate to prevent infection for any consumer device.
Somewhat like the belief that the vaccine protected against severe illness for a person who would have never had a severe illness anyway - or no illness at all.
"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?
This Lutheran, and every Lutheran in my church, does indeed have faith in "this is my body, this is my blood." There are many of us, still, who have faith.
"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.
exactly. hospitals run around collecting all of the health risks that there are. hospitals being at risk of accumulating too many risks is just a dumb thing to worry about.
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.
Cases are spiking in the UK right now and there is a deadly new variant in Hong Kong. It will be interesting to see how much steel the cult has in the next wave.
I could never understand that. To me, they might as well say "Slave in training" on them... how can something so humiliating and degrading ever be a virtue signal?
When mask mandates were lifted somewhere, David Hogg (moron) said he was going to keep wearing his so that no one would think he was a Republican! Obviously mask prevented O2 to his brain
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.
In NZ we suffer like this..I now see the PM is advised by a very narrow group of people and has determined and cannot be swayed that more vaccinations (the booster campaign is renlentless and soon to launch on kids) is our answer. They will not accept the absurdity of what is happening for instances fully vaccinated Australians can now enter. Er if I follow that logic what in the biology of an Australian makes them any different than a fully vaccinated Canadian, or Dane or Egyptian or….absurd
I feel so sorry for the loss of freedoms in nominally free Canada, New Zealand and Australia. I do hope when sensible people return, more restrictions on government will be on the list.
It’s creeping back. The BBC broke blanket coverage of war this evening to talk about how hospitalisation is going up again, but nothing to worry about as it’s no worse than the flu now the scientist they had on said. PM on BBC radio 4
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.
Yeah but look much worse they did than …*checks notes*…. Norway which had 4.2% more deaths than usual 2020-2021 compared to Sweden which had a whopping…. 4.8% more deaths than usual!
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this today.
I've likened masking to rosaries. A truly devout person could in all sincerity say, "Wear this rosary; it will protect you from covid." Yet few, even Catholics will believe that.
No, a rosary is not a talisman. It's a counter for your prayers.
I wonder what emergency is being planned to replace COVID? Ukraine doesn't seem to be quite doing it.
Cyber warfare and cyber security. Ukraine is just the lead up.
Nuclear war, no doubt. Or global depression. Or, for the optimists among us, perhaps both.
It must be close to finding out, after all there are elections in 6 months, time is running out
the collapse of western banking. Buy gold coins....
Y’all are so NEGative man…what’s a few more years or more or more in a bunker of your own making?
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.
The Trump/Biden stuff drove me nuts a few months back, https://inumero.substack.com/p/trump-voters-and-covid-deaths-part?r=tv61s&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Subscribed!
🙏
The narrative of trump fans dying from the rona is Jsut too juicy too give up. For now.
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.
Check out the Project Veritas video with the NYT reporter from yesterday. It seems that there might be some sanity still there, but as you said they are afraid to say it and get attacked by the crazies there that drive policy.
There has to be outdoor transmission if wild deer have tested positive for covid. Unless the deer are silently breaking into cabins and sneaking around hunter's bedrooms and sneaking out again.
This is where both viral loading (miniscule outside) and the immune system come into play. Leonhardt can't comprehend how the first part works and won't really acknowledge the second, so he simply parrots known covid misinformation, such as masks work, vaccines substantially reduce transmission, etc. his whole understanding of covid is wrong.
To which I say, "Please continue to boost yourself. Good luck with that 28 pound heart!!"
Don't forget the guava and motor oil that tested positive as well. And, of course, the guy that did that and publicized it mysteriously died...
He got the short version of long covid.
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”.
But people will still believe the virus was pure truth...
Those people have come to need the lies.
We are going to have to practice forgiveness.
I'm not really sorry to admit to you that I will not forgive this. Not at all... quite the contrary: I will do all I can to seek out punishment for these people. In the midst of this mania, a 15-year old boy shot himself... the son of my pastor. Another friend within my circle of friendships, in his 50s, shot himself in his backyard. The stories of depression, drug use, loss of savings, loss of family businesses, divisions between family members and friendships lost... all of it the consequences of not-so-tiny tyrants who have used this opportunity to puff themselves up. No... I'll never forgive these people. From Fauci all the way to the parents at the playground who themselves are unmasked though their 8-year old daughter is all covered up as she climbs the monkeybars. No... no way. Never forgive these people for the destruction they have wrought. Never ever forgive them.
I second this. Every time I hear someone say "I'm in no mood to forgive" I think: that's missing the point of forgiveness. It ain't about mood.
That's not to say "forgive and forget." It is too dangerous to forget the choices that people made these past two years.
Never forgive these killers. Seek out their just and due punishment!
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
fantastic comment, thanks. will update post :)
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.
this is exactly my theory of mask failure. you‘re naked in a -40° C cave. here is a candle for heat. it works! it emits heat! but you still die after a few hours, because it‘s just not enough to matter. being infected / dying of hypothermia is a binary thing. there is a threshold; helping a little bit is no help at all
Precisely! I've seen people at the movies wearing an (optional) N95 mask which they then lift out of the way to shove popcorn into their mouth-- with a bare hand of course. Because viruses respect your space while you're chewing? They obviously believe the air is harmful, but that harm cannot compete with the utter deliciousness of popcorn? I can't fathom what they are thinking -- if they were in a situation where exposure to the Harmful Thing was deadly, they'd be dead. I guess they've never worked with hazardous chemicals or pesticides.
My family has had two theories. Originally, we thought that covid stays above about four feet but realized that we must be wrong since small children were also wearing masks while walking in restaurants, movie theaters, etc... Then we realized that covid only senses larger movement like walking which is why you need to wear it while walking in a restaurant but are safe once seated. See.... easy peasy to understand.
And another: Imagine you've been swimming in the backyard pool all afternoon and as you exit the pool you turn and look at the water. You believe that you can identify and know which water made you wet.
It's also been shown that cloth masks stop zero percent of actual virus particles (virions), while "surgical" masks stop about 12 percent (which was an insignificant result statistically in the study, meaning that it cannot be stated that this was not a null result; in other words, it was within the margin of error), while a properly fitted, brand new N95 stops all of half of the virions, and that drops over time. Note that this represents approximately 0 percent of N95s worn by lay-people, as a properly fitted N95 is so tight that it it is painful and causes bruises, and no untrained person is going to tolerate that all day. The filter media on N95s is so restrictive that a small air leak will cause a significant drop in effectiveness, since the air in either direction will seek the path of least resistance.
And even worn so tight that it causes bruises, so tight that the user cannot smell a lighted cigarette only inches from the nose, it's only stopping half of the virions.
The study used actual virions for the testing, in this case harmless bacteriophages that were chosen because the particle size is the same as COVID virions, about 100nm in diameter (0.1 micron).
It had previously been assumed that N95s would stop ~95% or more of any size particle, as that 95% rating is based on what was the most penetrative diameter of latex nanosphere test media, at 300nm (0.3 micron). Larger particles would be more likely to be trapped mechanically in the filter media, while smaller ones would be more likely to be trapped by the electrostatic treatment applied to the filter media.
That's with tiny globules of latex rubber, though. Turns out that virions aren't that much like latex globules after all.
oh interesting -- latex is inherently "sticky" right? but virons are perhaps more....slippery? Is the study on open view?
Do you know where to find this study?
This is not the one I was referring to, but the numbers are similar. This study used droplets of olive oil of 1 micron diameter, or ten times larger than the 0.1 micron bacteriophages in the other study I am trying to find, so the numbers are a tad better, but still very much in the ballpark.
"Nevertheless, high-efficiency masks, such as the KN95, still offer substantially higher apparent filtration efficiencies (60% and 46% for R95 and KN95 masks, respectively) than the more commonly used cloth (10%) and surgical masks (12%), and therefore are still the recommended choice in mitigating airborne disease transmission indoors."
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0057100
I am trying to find it. I always save such things locally as stuff on the web tends to be quite ephemeral, but I haven't been able to find it just yet, nor on the web. I will keep looking.
Your questions are at the heart of the issue and something I've been asking the whole time --how many virus particles are enough for infection? how many are we likely to encounter on our trip on the subway? Is what makes us sick the number of particles, or our "terrain?"
The mask proponents act like the virus is the size of literal bat, and that there's just five or six flying around, so if you can just avoid that ONE bat --- by ducking your head, sitting down before you eat, avoiding caves and underpasses, replacing your mask right away if you see a bat coming... you'll be spared--it's all so ludicrous.
If I have the heart to respond to any more mask fetishists, I'm gonna try to weave the bat-sized viruses into my response. Thanks.
Never thought of it as a fetish, but I think you’re right. Some people have just fallen in love with them.
It's the obsessive, caring, intimate – even slightly pornographic – way that they describe the fabric, fit, artistic designs, personalized prints, safety profile (e.g., no impact on comfort, even in a N95 while engaging in intense effort), and, especially important, ease with which one can spot and perhaps even connect with other clean and compliant cult members.
Or maybe what makes us sick is not at all whom we contact or the environment around us, but our own condition of susceptibility. If I'm immune, I'm immune everywhere. If I'm susceptible, I'm susceptible no matter where I am... whether a crowded room or visiting one infectious person in their bedroom. Throughout this ordeal, I've been frustrated with (this was not communicated by you, btw)... I've been frustrated with the Fauci-ish presentation that what makes the difference is where we go, who we meet, how many people will be there. None of that matters, but you'd never know by listening the Faucists.
"The Faucists," great label! I agree -- Their entire "theory of contagion" is just straight out of the Middle Ages and the "Consorting with Witches" nonsense combined with the instinctive American Puritanical notion that "more fun=more danger." So shopping at Costco for the bare necessities is "safe" but put one item of clothing in that cart, and BAM! INFECTED!
I believe now more than ever that whether or not we get sick depends on our bodies and how well that system is working. I believe in "staying out of the body's way" as much as possible. I rarely get sick at all (knock on wood) but when I do it's because I've weakened myself through prolonged stress and lack of sleep. The people I know who constantly "chase health" through endless medications and interventions just get sicker and sicker. I'm not even convinced that "early treatment" of cancers is even beneficial in the long run. For me personally, the stress of "becoming a cancer victim" and all the medical treatments that would involve, the visits, the tests, the driving around, the traffic, the constant exposure to the dead and dying in hospitals, the cold, faceless doctors and nursers (masked forever?), the brutal surgeries, which, less face it, are grievous bodily injuries, the lack of sleep, the depression, the constant worry of medical malpractice and hospital bills, the sudden decline in quality of life while you struggle to "defeat" the cancer so that you can "return" to "living".... unbearable for me.
I wonder how many people die "with" diagnosed cancers? How many die with untreated cancers? There are very people who would be the type to get tested for cancer and then refuse treatment, so I suspect these numbers are very low that we know about it. The people who avoid all tests and doctors, might get diagnosed with a very late stage cancer and die quite quickly, but how long have they "lived with" that cancer, happily going about their life? many many years. Who's to say?
Quality of Life Years is a major thing, yes indeed. I prefer your way, too! It has struck me, also from the beginning, that the average age of death from covid is higher than the general average age of death.... that the most typical person to have died from covid suffers from FOUR comorbidities. I've also learned a lot about the immune system these past couple of years... why, for example, here in my city where the mayor has shut down businesses, who last year forbade Mardi Gras parades, who has shut down bars and restaurants, who now requires 5-year olds to show their papers to have a meal with his family, why did the city not provide Vitamin D to every citizen? All the money spent... all the business not conducted because of the interventions, but no Vitamin D? No messaging from the mayor about reducing sugar intake? Getting sleep? Getting midday sunshine in a walk with your friends? No messaging about what you can do at the first evidence of symptoms? The answer is only "Avoid crowds, wear masks, and get three vaccine shots, or else!" It's a mess, and lives are at stake from the decisions made by these petty tyrants. I just can't reconcile myself to the harm that has been done. The lost years of childhood education... the loss of life savings, the loss of family businesses. It's been a crime so huge that it's hard to know where to start. But the Faucists are a place to begin, and the man himself deserves to be marched in front of a brick wall. I know that's extreme.... I get it... but killing hundreds of thousands of people is itself extreme. It's the most sad thing we'll ever witness. My Goodness.
I am still amazed at how few people seemed to care that home treatment regimens were ignored, discouraged ("don't take that, are you CRAZY???") or even banned, when the actual response of actual doctors and actual hospitals to a person actually sick with Covid was, "Go home and see if you get sick enough to be in danger of death, and then come back." That was IT. When I would point out that certain drugs are dispensed to everyone who has it in some countries, the response usually amounted to "the people in those countries are all stupid" (although of course not phrased that openly).
I think the combination of fear of death and the reality of most cases being mild led people to think they were each "one of the few lucky ones" instead of "one of the vast majority." So by the time the shots came out, people who got Covid anyway thought, "The shot saved me!" rather than, "I had the same case I would have without the shot, and come to think of it -- why did I get Covid if the shot was supposed to keep me from getting it and keep it from spreading?"
Terrain is the answer. There is nothing floating in the air making us sick except man made pollution...
Exactly. I can't believe that this is something that isn't known. But I am not a virologist, maybe it is something that can't be known. I don't know how figuring out contageousness works.
I don't know what you mean by "our terrain."
https://justinhealth.com/germ-vs-terrain-theory-could-everything-we-know-about-how-we-get-sick-be-wrong/
Thanks! I hadn't heard that term before, but I'm familiar with the idea -- for instance, people with low Vitamin D levels are apparently FAR more prone to complications (and death) from Covid. But while giving people massive doses of Vitamin D can help them improve their levels, that is not the same thing as correcting whatever the reason is that they had such low levels in the first place, so they are not necessarily "healthy."
Exactly. This is an allopathic response to a wholistic problem. The allopathic mindset thrives on the one germ/cause, one drug solution. It then plays an endless game of catch up dealing with side effects.
The problem is with the mindset of the "I have an ailment, give me an easy solution". It takes more of an effort to sustain the terrain than to simply take the one cure offered.
The allopathic path lends itself to easy monetization, the wholistic takes effort on the part of the health care practitioner as well as the patient and is nowhere near as profitable, hence the size of the allopathic industrial medical complex in comparison to the smaller health promoting enterprises.
Bingo!
Very true. It's much more complicated than we think. We can't even figure out why some people never get sick at all.
Mucosal immunity (of which vitamin D is a huge component)
Thanks. So is the answer "we can't quantify this" or "we can only estimate based on an average?"
Wow, that's fascinating.
The UK challenge trials might have helped but were not conduced in a way to connect virons to illness. Given the variegates of the human immune system along with initial conditions, I'm not sure we can ever arrive at a quantified answer. Masking efficiencies are not adequate to prevent infection for any consumer device.
Somewhat like the belief that the vaccine protected against severe illness for a person who would have never had a severe illness anyway - or no illness at all.
Let's stop for a moment. How much is immaterial.
Virus particles are MUCH smaller than holes in the mask fabric.
No amount of lipstick is going to make this pig a beautiful woman.
"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?
and with a weird link to state of Utah Covid dashboard, not even to any study. you can find a dataset anywhere showing anything.
Random links to prove - science.
"Vaccines" infect you...
This Lutheran, and every Lutheran in my church, does indeed have faith in "this is my body, this is my blood." There are many of us, still, who have faith.
"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.
exactly. hospitals run around collecting all of the health risks that there are. hospitals being at risk of accumulating too many risks is just a dumb thing to worry about.
Hospitals would go out of business if they weren't 98% full. Pitch a common cold tent during the winter seasons for the overflow. Sheesh.
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.
Cases are spiking in the UK right now and there is a deadly new variant in Hong Kong. It will be interesting to see how much steel the cult has in the next wave.
I could never understand that. To me, they might as well say "Slave in training" on them... how can something so humiliating and degrading ever be a virtue signal?
because they are sooooo brave. 😱
When mask mandates were lifted somewhere, David Hogg (moron) said he was going to keep wearing his so that no one would think he was a Republican! Obviously mask prevented O2 to his brain
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.
In NZ we suffer like this..I now see the PM is advised by a very narrow group of people and has determined and cannot be swayed that more vaccinations (the booster campaign is renlentless and soon to launch on kids) is our answer. They will not accept the absurdity of what is happening for instances fully vaccinated Australians can now enter. Er if I follow that logic what in the biology of an Australian makes them any different than a fully vaccinated Canadian, or Dane or Egyptian or….absurd
I feel so sorry for the loss of freedoms in nominally free Canada, New Zealand and Australia. I do hope when sensible people return, more restrictions on government will be on the list.
Five Eyes. Chosen.
https://www.google.com/search?q=five+eyes&rlz=1C1CHBF_enAU744AU744&oq=five+eyes&aqs=chrome.0.0i433i512j0i512l9.5504j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
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...
Did you see the comic where Putin gets the Nobel prize for science for ending the pandemic?
😂😂😂 that is funny, really haha
It’s creeping back. The BBC broke blanket coverage of war this evening to talk about how hospitalisation is going up again, but nothing to worry about as it’s no worse than the flu now the scientist they had on said. PM on BBC radio 4
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.
They should be sacked and replaced with people with integrity and talent.
Maybe the NYT will get around to looking at Sweden if they really want to see how pointless all the 'interventions' were.
Yeah but look much worse they did than …*checks notes*…. Norway which had 4.2% more deaths than usual 2020-2021 compared to Sweden which had a whopping…. 4.8% more deaths than usual!
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!