11th July 2020
Having published the guest article by ‘Bob’ there have been a lot of comments. I have not replied, as it was not my article. However, Bob has put together a kind of generic reply to people’s posts which I think may be useful and informative.
Hello Everybody – I wrote the article and have read your comments. First, I want to thank Dr. Kendrick for publishing my thoughts in his esteemed blog. I started following Dr. Kendrick’s blog around 2015 and am a devoted reader. My favorite single post is the one titled “Salt Is Good for You.”
I was introduced to the wonderful world of Vitamin D in 2010 when a physician directed me to the Vitamin D Council website, now defunct. John Cannell’s articles on influenza, and on autism, were compelling for me. I started taking 5000 IU per day in December 2010 (at age 60) and I noticed that I no longer got colds or influenza in the winter. Before 2010 I would get one or two colds every winter, with the usual sore-throat – head cold – chest congestion sequence. Since then I have had exactly 5 colds, all very mild. I now take a higher dose but I think people should look at the advice provided in the Grassrootshealth article and make up their own minds as to appropriate dose.
My article sketches out a theory that yields a series of hypotheses which can be tested. Thus, one notes a general pattern, and scratches one’s head over exceptions. Hence my discussion of Ecuador and South America.
I propose that an underlying difference in susceptibility to coronavirus arises from the fact that the New World was epidemiologically isolated from the rest of the world until about 500 years ago. Before then the indigenous populations of the New World and the Old World were exposed to and therefore developed adaptive mechanisms to ward off different groups of pathogens.
This is illustrated by the well-known susceptibility of New World populations to Old World pathogens like measles and smallpox. The higher death rates in many South American countries suggests that the indigenous New World genome has not yet fully adapted to Old World coronaviruses. Thanks, Terry Wright, for the Guayaquil reference.
Thank you, John Stone, for the reference to the Stadler article observing that there is a significant level of immunity to Covid19 already present in the population. We had another clue to this fact early in the pandemic with outbreaks on two ships, the cruise ship Diamond Princess, and the US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. Both occurred before people took protective measures, and it can be argued that the close quarters of shipboard life are ideal for the transmission of the disease. On both ships, everybody was tested for Covid19. Results were remarkably similar. On both ships, 17 percent of the people tested positive for the virus, and of those, 50 percent were asymptomatic. It looks like 83 percent of the shipboard populations were immune to the virus. Why?
Several of you have pointed out that death rates from various countries are inconsistent with the sunshine theory. First, do not confuse cases with deaths. Case totals are the creatures of testing programs, which vary from place to place. Deaths are a much harder statistic.
That said, country-specific factors come into play. In comments, Andrew Larwood and Simon C pointed out Finland’s vitamin D supplementation program would reduce deaths. Their death rate per million is 59, which seems very low for a country in the winter at such a high latitude. Now I know why. Another factor may be fatty fish, a dietary source of Vitamin D, which is consumed in quantity in Scandinavia. Håkan, your comment about Sweden is relevant.
Many people attribute the higher rate of Covid19 deaths to the lack of a lockdown. However, an equally good case can be made that the dark-skinned immigrant population in Sweden is more deficient in vitamin D and thus more susceptible to the illness. See this article by Dr. David Grimes where he notes that 1 percent of the Swedish population may be responsible for 40 percent of deaths: http://www.drdavidgrimes.com/2020/04/vitamin-d-and-immunity-important.html and this one: https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m1101/rr-10 If you have read Dr. Kendrick’s last blog post, “Distorting science in the COVID pandemic,” you would know that the very low death rate (7 per million) in Morocco may be due to their use of hydroxychloroquine to treat sick patients.
Does implementation of hydroxychloroquine treatment explain the abrupt decline of coronavirus deaths in the UAE on May 12? https://www.palmerfoundation.com.au/preliminary-injunction-sought-to-release-hydroxychloroquine-to-the-us-public-studies-show-benefits/ If you look at the death rate graphs for a number of Muslim countries, there is a distinct uptick in cases at the end of May. Does this have something to do with Ramadan, which was April 23 to May 23 this year?
David Bailey, your comment is spot-on. Look at the seasonality of acute myocardial infarction. In the higher latitudes one gets daily doses of sunshine in the summer, but not in the winter, and it is the dailiness of the dose that is key to protection of the endothelium. This is also why randomized clinical trials of vitamin D tend not to show a strong protective effect against CVD, because most do not use a daily dose, rather, dose intervals are weekly or longer (and the dose is usually too small and the duration of the trial too short).
Thank you all for your comments.
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 
Thank you
Immunologic Effects of Vitamin D on Human Health and Disease
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/7/2097 New stufdy in..
Thank you!
What a great paper!
I a supplement D3 1000 iu as recommended. Is it safe to double it?
Sent from my iPhone
Hello Tony. You should look at this Grassrootshealth blog post for information on dose. I am not a doctor and am reluctant to hand out what amounts to medical advice. Many of your fellow commenters on this blog recommend or report use of higher doses.
https://www.grassrootshealth.net/blog/current-recommendations-low/
I supplement 3000iu daily, but I also take K2 mk7 and magnesium . I researched taking D3 and found that these supplements help your body to direct the calcium that is better absorbed from your food( the vitamin D levels are optimal) to be directed to your bones and teeth rather than your soft tissues such as arteries.
I need this amount of vitamin D3 throughout the year, regardless of sun exposure to main Tain a healthy level.
I also re-test my vitamin D levels at least twice a year to ensure I’m not taking too much.
hi tony; those who get midday sun; to just before without burning; (called sub-erythemal doses); can show they have made up to 20,000 IU when tested 48hrs later: so if you can make 20 times the pathetic dose “authorised” by UK dis-health authorities … all by yourself … just minding your own business … sitting in the midday sun without sunblock for a short time … sort of helps see what the truth is? Bruce Hollis did the work; you can google on him and his Vit D work.
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Thank you “Bob”…very informative and it all makes sense.
Just keep in mind that the 40% of all Covid deaths in Sweden were Somali people is from a point in time when we had only 15 deaths in total, so don’t draw to far-reaching conclusions from this number. I would like to see a new analysis of this, now when we have 5500 deaths.
Hello Håkan – Agree, but I can find no statistics for Covid19 deaths in Sweden that separate out cases by immigrant status.
And you won’t, either, Bob. From time to time I come across informative snippets of news from around the world which often make it clear that BAME people are overwhelmingly bearing the brunt of Covid-19. But governments and media have done their absolute best to conceal that fact.
I suppose that they don’t want white people to realise that they are in very little danger (if any). Also, the reporting restrictions reinforce the politically correct idea that no one must ever mention any difference between people’s ethnic origins or skin colour. Perhaps there is magical thinking going on: if we never mention it, it cannot exist.
God help nations who are in the power of such malicious imbeciles.
In the UK hospital I work in, the BAME issue is being pushed quite strongly at the moment, but not particularly with regard to the virus, more in terms of equality etc. Certainly vitamin D is never, ever mentioned. There are so many missed opportunities. Providing all healthcare workers with vitamin D supplementation would have been a really worthwhile thing to do and could have taught us a lot.
Thank you for the information that is logical and all hangs together. I wish that the stuff that was being thrown at us by so much of the media was as lucid, questioning, and believable as what I have just read.
If a large proportion of people are immune to the virus, this might mean Covid19 or something like it is nothing new.
Like other diseases, Covid19 might have hit humans over thousands of years,and people with a genetic mutation which protects them have passes the protective gene to their descendants.
Population movement in Eurasia and Africa might have spread the virus but also spread immunity to it.
Maybe that’s why indigenous Americans, separated from all other populations until 500 years ago, have been hit so hard, they have developed no immunity
Or if some of these “new” viruses have only recently appeared, perhaps that is because they had to wait for scientists to help them infect and attack humans. Or give them “enhanced capability”.
I used to pooh-pooh the idea that such viruses were the product of biological weapons research.
But the truth is even worse than I could ever have imagined. “Ordinary”, respectable virus “research” has become indistinguishable from biological weapons research.
Thank you
A very important but not mentioned yet point is genetics – I am Asian – from Sri Lanka (have lived in the UK for over 50 years) – therefore have darker skin and thus do not absorb Vit D from the sun on my skin as effectively as someone like as my husband who is English and fair skinned. The compounding problem for me and I suspect many many others is that I have a polymorphism on my VDR receptor gene – as discovered recently through a genetic test that I did as I was puzzled as to why although taking a daily dose of a good quality oil based Vitamin D supplement and sitting out in the sun for a while whenever possible with no sun cream would not cause my Vitamin D to reach an optimal level for good health. This “defect” on the Vitamin D receptors makes it even more difficult for my cells to absorb vitamin D – which means I have to take a rather larger amount of Vitamin D than I was taking to get my blood level to a decent health promoting/immune protecting level.
I do wonder how many people in the so called BAME community who appear to have disproportionately higher incidences of COVID have a similar VDR genetic polymorphism making them even more susceptible to low vitamin D levels and therefore poorer immunity. ? This would be very interesting to research …..
Do look at the work of Dr Cicero Coimbra.
Hello Fleur – The range of responses to a standard dose of Vitamin D3 is large. The Grassrootshealth blog post https://www.grassrootshealth.net/blog/current-recommendations-low/ has a very good graph “Serum level vs Vitamin D Intake” that illustrates this issue. That is why testing is important.
Thanks, “Bob.” Very useful information.
Fleur, how many IU (or mcg) and what level of ‘D3’ (ng/ml or nmol/L) do you then get?
Hi Bob
I very much enjoyed your reply – very authoritative in addressing some of the comments generated by your article.
As such, you may wish to remain anonymous but would you care to share any details on your background e.g. are you a healthcare professional, vitamin D researcher?
Hello Charles – I have no medical training or background. Many years ago I got a degree in anthropology. I started reading the literature about Vitamin D in 2010 and read the Vitamin D abstracts on PubMed nearly every day. I am retired so I have more time to do this than many people.
And right away we can see one very good reason for Bob to have concealed his identity. Now those who wish to belittle his conclusions can pile on with talk about how he is “unqualified” and “has no medical experience”.
Lest anyone misunderstand me, I find such criticisms unacceptable. They would be laughable if their consequences were not so bad.
Charles Darwin had no “qualifications”; he dropped out of a medical degree course at Edinburgh. Isaac Newton had no “qualifications” in either maths or science. Nor did Archimedes, nor Euclid, nor Leonardo da Vinci, nor most of the great discoverers and inventors. Even Einstein never went to university, although he obtained a teaching siploma in maths and science.
Any intelligent and thoughtful person can master the facts and figures about any topic, especially nowadays when so much information is publicly available. And such a person is far more useful to society than a fossilised professor with a string of degrees and posts who never has an original idea.
This is not a correct statement in the response: ” On both ships, everybody was tested for Covid19. Results were remarkably similar.” These “shipboard illnesses” were long before any testing was available, and even now (mid july 2020) there still is no accurate way to test for this. So that information is bogus. We’ll need to find another “theory” to work from, I suspect.
Hello Sundancer – read these:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-26/coronavirus-theodore-roosevelt-aircraft-carrier-outbreak
Hi sundancer55
“These “shipboard illnesses” were long before any testing was available,” … come on; they were doing PCR tests then; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_Diamond_Princess
“So that information is bogus. ” I am not sure which information you are referring to: a wonderfully sweeping statement.
What folks have suggested about the DP episode: was what % of those were symptomatic; and how many died; considering they shared one air-conditioning system; and were in the main elderly;
“We’ll need to find another “theory” to work from, I suspect.” ….. so just what theory are dismissing, with such a grand sweep of your arm? I do concede to being suitably chastened by your authoritative dismissals, and greatly fearful of questioning you.
The open secret which can bedevil such arguments is that there still is not – and never has been – any satisfactory way of testing whether a given person is “infected” with SARS-COV-2. Indeed there is some doubt as to whether such a distinct virus even exists.
The PCR process has been thoroughly discredited as a diagnostic test, notably by its inventor Kary Mullis who won the Nobel Prize for that invention.
“Kary Mullis… is thoroughly convinced that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. With regard to the viral-load tests, which attempt to use PCR for counting viruses, Mullis has stated: ‘Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron.’ PCR is intended to identify substances qualitatively, but by its very nature is unsuited for estimating numbers. Although there is a common misimpression that the viral-load tests actually count the number of viruses in the blood, these tests cannot detect free, infectious viruses at all; they can only detect proteins that are believed, in some cases wrongly, to be unique to HIV. The tests can detect genetic sequences of viruses, but not viruses themselves”.
http://transmissionsmedia.com/the-ebola-tests-inventor-says-the-test-is-unreliable/
Considering how easily Norovirus and similar pathogens spread on cruise ships, if this virus were as virulent as we’ve been told, I’m sure we would’ve seen a far worse outcome than we did, regardless of the ‘tests’…that aren’t terribly reliable, by all accounts.
This is all very interesting. I appreciate the additional information about vitamin D and the immunity issues of indigenous populations. I also really enjoyed the Stadler article. I wonder though how he would explain what’s currently happening now as the virus explodes elsewhere such as the US. It is the summertime, yet the virus is spreading rapidly in the southern and western states. Is it because of poor health, numerous brown and black Americans … or is the virus merely exploiting a gap in immunity Of some of the population and will taper off when it hits a « wall » of previous immunity to similar coronaviruses in the majority of the population ?
If my relatives in Houston are anything to go by it could also be because at this time of year, they spend a great deal of time indoors to escape the oppressive conditions outside.
They also have a tendency to set the a/c very low which I don’t suppose is helpful.
Btw, thank you Bob for taking the time to help us all!
My Son & his Family live in Florida…the Sunshine state! trouble nobody every walks anywhere. Hence they are never actually in the sunshine so I would imagine their levels of vitamin D are very low. Fortunately I explained the benefits of Vitamin D & they take supplements.
As many Americans, amongst others, slather themselves in sun blockers, it may well contribute to D3 deficiencies. I’ve seen recommendations that UV protection be worn year round, and it is almost considered abuse to allow a child outside without sun protection.
It would have been wiser, with hindsight, never to have peopled those parts of the world that are dangerously hot. Some of them would be literally uninhabitable without electricity, air conditioning, etc. (I know; I have been in New orleans when the temperature was over 100 F and the humidity 99%. I was young and fit, yet it was all I could do to walk a hundred yards from my hotel to whatever other lusciously cool building we entered.
Frederica – the daftest advice I have seen regarding VitD (can’t remember where) is “make sure you get out in the sun but be sure to cover up and wear sunblock.” Doh.
I observe uv blocking swimsuits for kids today in my local Ldil. In Aberdeen! I really despair sometimes.
UVB rays are what’s needed for vitamin D production in the skin, and anything, even glass, will block those rays – unlike UVA rays which cause a tan (and sunburn), which can pass through glass and thin fabrics. So UV-blocking swimsuits will only be to offer protection from sunburn, as any kind of swimsuit will block the UVB rays anyway.
anglosvizzera, UV-A also stimulates nitric oxide formation in the skin, so we’re back to the idea of – repeated – ‘Natural Sun exposure’ to maintain both NO and Vit D.
https://rosemarycottageclinic.co.uk/blog/2014/11/02/human-photosynthesis-beyond-vitamin-d/
And we need the other end too.
https://rosemarycottageclinic.co.uk/blog/2016/08/25/red-light-phototherapy-13-the-skin/
One wonders if *Cardiac Disease correlates with a decrease in sun exposure / sunscreen promotion…
*Cardiac Disease, – what the Doctor was discussing before we distracted the poor fellow… 🙂
Alicia, the “case” numbers are meaningless because there is no reliable test for the presence of the given virus.
And the “death” numbers are also meaningless because so many other diseases have symptoms that overlap with those attributed to Covid-19.
It is far from certain that there even is such a disease at all. Other pathogens such as those that cause TB and pneumonia – even flu – cause far more deaths. And every single year, not just for a few months in 2020.
I’ve got a better answer for you Alicia. It is due to the media and the agenda they promote. There is good reason to be suspicious. Truth is not easily found. There are many reports, not just from Tanzania – of people getting positive result letters who never got tested. The line was too long so they left without the test. And of course the test is somewhere around 50-80% accurate anyway, so massive testing will give the results they want, which is an ongoing epidemic. So far as I understand, no epidemic in history has ever behaved this way, with a bell curve that stops going down but levels off or even has recurrent spikes. The media have been caught in many lies and fakes as well as gross bias and inconsistencies. Why do people continue to take them seriously?
Maybe because without them we wouldn’t know what to think?
Anna and Terry: I think you are right–the media loves to hype up a good story and to whip everyone into a panic. It sells. Yet, the hospitals are filling up a bit with people with coronavirus type symptoms in the South and West, so it’s not all imaginary. Death rates attributed to coronavirus are inching up in Texas as of the past few days, but only time will tell if it’s really due to the seemingly increased cases.
However, deaths per 1,000,000 are still pretty low compared to other states and even countries. Under 200 last time I checked.
Hard to know what’s true anymore.
Alicia,
The lies now have become so extreme that I would be wary of believing that more people are sick. “They” have lost so much credibility that we can’t just believe them. And, what’s more to the point, it really is easily treatable but our doctors are being lied to and not informed. See my post way down at the bottom. That article lists 3 very effective treatments. There really is no more reason to be scared of this. The only reason to be scared is that the big money is perfectly willing to kill people to prevent you and your doctor from knowing how to treat it.
My top choice would be hydroxychloroquine with zinc. The zinc is essential. I have read that in a pinch quercitin might work instead of hydroxy. Quercitin is a supplement that I even have in my house. Many people take it. I already take zinc.
Hi Alicia; you say “the virus is spreading rapidly ” … that is just the media trying to scare everyone to hold attention. Cases just means positive test results; many are likely to be false positive: ie the person doesn’t have the bug; have a lot at the chart in the link below: hospital admissions and deaths are important numbers: deaths are unchanged in southern states: it is being diabetic and having heart disease that is far more likely to cause death; don’t listen to the media; they just promote fear and screeching;
In terms of spread, there is speculation that Covid 19 is not primarily spread by aerosol but is more akin to Norovirus / polio as a contact foecal contamination spread virus.
Susceptibility is determined by Vit D but initial spread patterns do not support Covid as being aerosol spread primarily as all other Corona viruses decline with increases in summer humidity.
Karl Denniger has written extensively in it here:
https://market-ticker.org/cgi-mt/akcs-www?post=239747
Could lack of Vitamin D be one of the reasons for the high death rate in care homes? Most care home residents are indoors all the time and never exposed to sunlight. And they don’t get vitamin supplements unless prescribed by their doctors.
Yes and even worse the UK RDA is between 600 and 800 (for the over 70s), this dose in my opinion is very low to the extent that someone who is very deficient would benefit from a 10x RDA dos at least to get their levels somewhere near. This is even more critical in the BAME’s
Thanks for the update. I’m 75 and have been following your advice in taking Vit D3 4000 IU per day since you first suggested it. Almost coincident with your email today was the one below received from the BHF earlier. I feel fine and am continuing to cycle an average of 10 miles a week in the hope of keeping any potential underlying conditions (which I’m not aware of having) at bay for a long as possible. At what point can I contemplate meeting up with my three sons and wives and six grandchildren, one of whom was born in May and whom we haven’t met yet?
https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/behind-the-headlines/coronavirus/coronavirus-and-vitamin-d?utm_campaign=14685
Kind regards
Mike Ramsay FI&FoA
Pick a number. Any number . . . Of IUs of D3. Take the dose regularly for a few weeks.
THEN get a 25(OH)D blood test.
Only then will you know to increase or decrease that dose. (At 5,000 IU, my wife was still low in her blood level, while I was a bit high at the same dose.)
JD, if you are in the UK where do you get the blood test done? Or can anyone else tell me? Thanks.
ShirleyKate.An NHS lab in Birmingham does a Vitamin D test for £29.www.vitamindtest.org.uk
Thank you Steve, most helpful.
ShirleyKate – I buy my d3 sublingual spray from BetterYou and got my test through them too. The test was done at City Hospital. Birmingham, WM, the kit sent direct to me by the hospital and the result emailed to me about a week or so later. It was very efficient. It cost approx £34 and included a bottle of the d3 spray with advice about dosage given the test result. I shall do it again in the Autumn to see where I am, levels-wise.
Thank you Janet, I plan to use that lab.
ShirleyKate – 👍🌞🌞🌞🌞
Shirley,
I guess Steve knows.
Here in Massachusetts you could go to any GP and tell him the “dangerously high” dose you’re taking and he’ll do the test right away. Many GPs have not gotten the news about D yet – too busy. They’re still concerned by the “research” done years ago that caused an overdose scare. Faulty research. So, if that happens to you, stand your ground. Maybe bring along printouts of recent pertinent D research articles from pubmed. I educated my doc in exactly this way. He expressed his gratitude. How about that??
Hi JD, We’ve got a different system here in the UK as you know. I’ve been taking 4,000 ius of Vit D3 for a few years now, but I’d like to check if it’s ‘getting through’. If I took printouts of research to show my GP, to ‘educate’ him, the response would not be an expression of gratitude! Other UK patients might agree? I’ll cough up the £29 to pay for the test then make my own decision. Stay safe.
Yes, you’ve no chance of getting a test done on the NHS pertaining to vitamin or mineral levels. In fact, in my experience it’ll take several visits to get anything done at all unless you have an obvious growth of some sort.
That’s the difference between here and the USA. Its in the interest of the doctor to order volleys of tests straight away and milk the insurer in the USA. Over here, it’s in the interest of the doctor to look after the precious practice funds.
That’s not a criticism by the way, just the nature of the beasts.
Since snow is a very good reflector of ultraviolet B light and can almost double a person’s exposure levels, shouldn’t analysis include this effect when studying countries and their populations’ potential for vitamin D manufacture by the body?
Good thinking, Tish! In some cases one can venture abroad in light clothing when snow lies on the ground. I remember learning to ski and being astonished to find that all my specially-bought heavy clothes were unbearable on the slopes.
Tom Welsh: Ah, yes. Skiing in a t-shirt. I well remember!
Tish: Interesting idea, but both latitude and altitude would have a direct and major impact, high latitude decreasing its availability, but high altitude increasing it.
Nah. It’s the steep angle through the atmosphere that does in the UV before it even gets to the snow.
“Bob”: Thank you very much. Both posts thought-provoking.
Back to heart disease:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200706113955.htm
Thanks Gary.
Totally off-topic, but interesting. Best species name ever.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/july/human-ancestor-homo-erectus-had-stocky-chest-of-a-neanderthal.html
This is good (John Ioannidis interview):
https://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2020/07/09/a-conversation-with-john-ioannidis/
Thank you for that. This part is a bit of a worry:
“I was unable to publish my essay about nosocomial spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes and hospitals. I submitted to many outlets. I suspect the editors feared social media backlash against my raising an uncomfortable issue.”
I have also noticed low levels of Vitamin D in my dark-skinned patients. They have a harder time converting the levels they need. I have them on at least 10,000 IUs a day.
Race is a social construct.
dearieme: Right you are, and can be a very destructive one, as it is today in the U.S., where politicians and the media play the “race card” whenever it suits their needs (votes for the former, revenue for the latter).
Race may (or may not) be “a social construct”.
But melanin isn’t.
Thank you, Bob for explaining why it is so important to take D3 daily; I’ve previously read that bolus doses are not as effective. The only time I’ve taken 50,000iu is to ward off an incipient cold.
may the virus gets away.. Is there any updates regarding vaccine production?
healthvector,
Try this. Find several updates when you scroll down a bit:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/
aw thank you so much. i would like to check it later.
And this:
Thank you Ben for your helpful contribution. Just a little fussy query re.
“because most do not use a daily dose”
I can see that a daily amount of Vitamin C is necessary because it is not stored in the body but as Vitamin D is stored in fat I wouldn’t have thought that a daily dose was quite so important, although it might be desirable. As long as good levels are maintained intake could vary without compromising health?
Also, if people were to rely on a Vitamin D supplement during the summer months and believe the sunshine to be less important for them, they could be missing out on other important (if less known or unknown) features of the sun’s rays and the cosmos.
Ben:
I of course completely accept that studies/trials would have to be very longterm if the doses were not given daily and that they would need to be of a significant amount. My comment was really considering self-medicators.
So sorry, Bob not Ben!
On this subject I would just like to remind everyone of this astonishing study, whose implications have been studiously ignored for 55 years:
“A year without food”
https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/07/24/3549931.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast
“Features of a successful therapeutic fast of 382 days’ duration”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/
Among the many interesting and very surprising aspects of this marathon fast is that the subject did not run out of protein or any vitamins or minerals. The supervising doctors monitored those levels but did not give him any substantial supplements.
To my mind the biggest questions is why he did not die of muscle wastage, since rothodoxy tells us that an average adult needs about 100 grams of protein per day to maintain muscles and other structures. For 382 days he had virtually no nutrients except his own fat; yet I don’t know of any way in which the body can convert fat to protein.
Moreover, one might have expected scurvy and other deficiency diseases. But there was no sign of those.
Regarding the absence of scurvy. i”m told there are some species of gut bacteria which are able to converts glucose into vit. C. Not every body is blessed with these blighters. He may well have been one of that rare (?) group.
A reasonable idea, Janet – but although the number of people who have survived on such a diet is small, it is large and varied enough to rule that out.
I could mention Vilhamjur Stefansson and one or two of his associates, Bear (Owsley Stanley), and all the members of Shackleton’s expedition.
Plus, of course, the whole Inuit and other tribes who lived in the Arctic for thousands of years while rarely eaten any non-animal food. And the Masai. And…
Professor Bruce Hollis PhD studied vitamin D for about 40 years and states that you need absolutely on a daily basis vitamin D suppletion.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Bruce+W.+Hollis+PhD
Oorspronkelijk gepubliceerd in:
J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2013 Dec;98(12):4619-28, door Bruce W. Hollis PhD
(Medical University of South Carolina) en Carol L. Wagner MD
[2] https://youtu.be/QrU1yrmNIqc
“Results of a Prostate Cancer/Vitamin D Trial: Effectiveness, Safety,
Recommendations”. De voordracht duurt 39 minuten plus nog 8 minuten
voor vraag en antwoord (met Engelstalige ondertiteling).
De video is opgenomen op 12 september 2014.
[3] https://youtu.be/O0elnh4D08g
“The Vitamin D Requirement During Pregnancy and Lactation”.
[4] persconferentie Hollis maart 2015: https://youtu.be/pQ54FG0V7mg
(met Engelstalige ondertiteling) Duur: 14 minuten.
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Bruce+w.+Hollis
Hollis: “the bottomline is, there’s really massive changes happening in these
tissues due to this vitamin D treatment, with only 4000 units with minimal
changes in 25 D, but huge changes in vitamin D itself, so that leads us to the
fact of the 25 D circulating -and some of these is not the only thing, it’s
important, -especially from the skeleton- but it’s really important also to have
adequate vitamin D, something that wasn’t appreciated prior to these
studies, and the only way you can make that happen is you take vitamin D
every day. You can’t take it once a week, you can’t take it once a month, you
can’t take it, (Hollis is hier geëmotioneerd) you know, every two months,
because the vitamin D disappears (in that case it gives a spike and then it
goes down, it’s gone), wherever it goes, it doesn’t come back into the
circulation, it’s gone. And so you have no more parent compound and you
have no more of those compounds that can diffuse into tissues that would
require it to, without the machinery to take it all the way to the end.
I’m coming back on the diagram, to show you the importance of simple
diffusion of these compounds into tissues that do not have the active ability
to move the whole complex in”.
Hello Wim. I am no expert on the subject of Vitamin D and only have questions.
If a person is in real need of this hormone and takes in a very large single dose, wouldn’t that dose be utilised in the body immediately and not get to be stored or circulated in any great quantity? So how long each dose lasts would depend on the body’s need of it. Also, the body could be low in Vitamin D but be functioning pretty well because it has just finished using up its stored supplies. So a starting base-line level of circulating Vitamin D might be expected to have different effects or outcomes according to the body’s state of health, depending on the prior availability and usage? How much of the hormone does the body need to be circulating if the various parts that use it have already been well supplied? Would any excess go into storage and not the circulation? Do we have answers?
This link shows a different point of view to a short circulating half-life:
https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2013/10/30/Vitamin-D-has-longer-than-expected-half-life-Tests-may-not-show-true-plateau
Perhaps this graph can help to determine which level (niveau) you would like, because in my opinion thát is the goal and not the dosis per se: https://www.clinicaleducation.org/wp-content/uploads/Disease_Prevention_chart_uk1.pdf
I think that the maximum daily amount of vitamin D a person can obtain from the sun is about 30,000iu maximum even if you’re in the sun all day and it has a half-life of somewhere between 20 and 30 days, depending on what you read. The body has vitamin D receptors all over the place, so even if it is stored in fatty tissue, it is being used up all the time and in the UK we don’t have enough sunny days to necessarily rely on being able to produce it sometimes for several days or even weeks in a bad summer. So that’s why a daily amount would be advisable although not as essential as water-soluble vitamins. And yes, the sun has plenty of other benefits apart from vitamin D production – we surely didn’t evolve to live under its rays by accident!
The Swiss Doctor https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ has noted that IgG and IgM are created in far lower numbers in Covid patients than IgA, which he suggests is responsible for the main effect at suppressing/defeating the virus (in the mucosa before it reaches the vasculature).
Googling about IgA throws up loads of hits on IgAN (nephrology) and further hits on IgA Vasculitis (https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/kidney-disease/iga-vasculitis) which sounds a lot like Covid-19 in terms of symptoms.
It appears that IgAN is common in certain sub-groups of humans who create a galactose deficient form of IgA which is attacked by their IgG and IgM to form ‘clumps’ that clog the kidney glomeruli and capillaries anywhere. Interestingly is seems to also be a childhood disease.
Could the stimulation of galactose deficient IgA production by the SARS-CoV-2 infection be giving rise to some of the Covid-19 symptoms – including kidney damage?
This leads to speculation that a vaccine that does not produce loads of IgA may be ineffective at stopping the infection before it reaches the vasculature, but a vaccine that does produce loads of IgA will put at risk of IgA vasculitis and IgAN those people in whom the IgA is galactose deficient.
And surprise surprise https://bmcnephrol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12882-016-0378-4 IgAN is inversely correlated to vitamin D3 sufficiency.
thanks Steve-R: this all comes back to the concept; that I advance to prompt reflection; that antibodies are a sign of failure; the invader has got in. If I re-quote this article https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29 that Dr K pointed us to all those weeks ago;
it details we have an immediate immune component: the innate
and a slower and lumbering response system: the adaptive
the innate is key to keeping invaders out: so it protects our gut; and our nose and our respiratory tract: it has chemicals that attack “foreigners” without having met them before; (see the article)
the slower, adaptive .. will release cytokines and develop IgG and IgM antibodies.
Crucially Vit D UP-regulates the innate: ….. and Vit D calms and DOWN-regulates the adaptive;
So those exposed to flu aerosols in summer don’t get fevers; don’t produce antibodies; and they stay well …… so they quietly repel the invader on the mucosal surface; less flashy I agree, but actually more effective; and less “collateral damage” as happens, where invaders are killed inside. So a strong innate comes from good Vit D levels.
in contrast, when exposed in winter, more fever and illness: all where the adaptive is taking more of the load; bugs penetrate; you get house to house fighting; so cytokines produced; and antibodies finally kick into gear. Houses get blown up and shelled to kill invaders.
So again if I provocatively say: antibodies are a sign of failure: good Vit D levels should ensure an effective innate system: no Vikings get ashore! If I add, if you eat very low-carb, and keep clear of a diabetic profile, we know what is much more “anti-infection” as well.
It is like the best crisis management: ironically it is when there has never been an in-your-face crisis, because the system anticipated it; and steered a good pathway around the potential issues; good crisis mgt anywhere is keeping clear of trouble.
Terry, I’m liking the idea that my chronic congestion, cough and mucus may be protecting me against infection! Maybe my upper respiratory tract is like a Tiger tank – too heavily armoured to penetrate. 😎
Please don’t worry or advise me to stop smoking – I gave that up 50 years ago. Chronic bronchitis runs in my family, but my mother died at 82 and my grandfather at 81 – both suffered from it all their lives.
If it’s due to a virus, better still – it has never made me ill let alone been life threatening, and I now learn that it’s virtually impossible to be infected by two viruses at the same time.
“chronic congestion, cough and mucus” – Help, I have the same. And a flipping nuisance it is to. Had it for years, triggered by a heavily bacteria contaminated carpet (not mine !) = settled in my lungs (Aspergillosis) and been coughing ever since. Don’t know IF causal, but now have severe flares of dysphonia – worst flare lasted two years. Sigh.
Very glad to learn that it is ‘protecting’ me, though it didn’t stop me from contracting pleurisy a few years ago. Ho-Hum. Can’t invent ‘stuff’ can one
Sorry to hear about your trouble, mmec7. But it sounds quite different from mine. As I said, chronic bronchitis has run in my family for three generations, so I doubt if it is bacterial (or probably viral). And I have had it since I was a young child.
I used to run middle distances at school, and trained over long distances. I can still remember the strong taste of blood in my breath and the burning feeling in my bronchi if I ran fast in cold air. I never saw any actual blood though, and I could run through it.
I trust my auto mechanic because he tells me when I don’t need something done even though I’d believe him and he could make money on it. I’ve seen him do the same for first-time customers. I’ve seen him refuse to do work for a customer who insisted that something needed to be done but the mechanic knew wouldn’t fix the problem. My mechanic also tells me when he doesn’t know something or will refer me elsewhere if elsewhere could do the job better.
I like the feeling it gives me. Coming here makes me feel the same way. Thank you Dr Kendrick.
I felt very honoured to be mentioned by Bob above – because I am utterly removed from the discipline of medicine.
I have decided to increase my dose of Vitamin D from 1000 IU to 2000 IU, for the rather frivolous reason that it has two important jobs to do in the body!
Vitamin D has far more than just two important jobs in the body; a deficiency is implicated in many conditions such as depression, dementia, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and no doubt a host of others!
The correct dosage of vitamin D is hotly debated. A recent report of a US citizen who developed nephrotoxicity from 10,000 units a day plus copious sunshine exposure underscores the need for prudence.
Dr Stasha Gominak, a US neurologist found that in her practice of monitoring blood levels of patients that for most patients 10,000 to 20,000 units daily was optimal, and that 2% require only 2000 units daily for the blood level she has found to be therapeutic for sleep disorders, her primary area of interest (as the purported ethology of many neurological disorders).
As a family doctor I found her article on vitamin D worth reading.
Rob; “A recent report of a US citizen who developed nephrotoxicity from 10,000 units a day plus copious sunshine exposure underscores the need for prudence.” where was that reported please: we see so many fabricated stories these days; most of us believe NOTHING the media says; all lies and rubbish they promulgate; with so many diabetics about, most of the US adult population seems pre-diabetic or T2 diabetic: not good for your kidneys.
Hi Rob; “most of us believe NOTHING the media says; all lies and rubbish they promulgate;”
please see this
https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/10/nbc-contributor-reveals-he-never-tested-positive-for-covid-after-network-followed-his-alleged-recovery/
Rob Pankratz MD wrote
“A recent report of a US citizen who developed nephrotoxicity from 10,000 units a day plus copious sunshine exposure underscores the need for prudence.”
If that is as stated, I’d ask, should policies be set based on extreme outlier medical cases? I mean in other areas common sense seems to apply – everyone isn’t advised not to eat peanuts because they can be deadly for a few.
Besides, that is 10 times the recommended dose of supplemental Vitamin D of 1000 IU per day – which sounds as if it is definitely too low in the winter, and too low for some in the summer depending on life style.
The other question I have, is should the dose be better specified per kg weight, rather than an absolute number?
Perhaps Dr K can field this one?
When I was small our mothers used to feed us all Cod Liver Oil. Could that have had the effect of boosting our Vit D levels? Googling finds:
One teaspoon (5 ml) of cod liver oil provides the following:
Vitamin D: 113% of the RDI
I suppose it helped a bit.
P.S. We were also all given California Syrup of Figs but for a different purpose.
OT: My mother was also a believer in California Syrup of Figs. It was a very successful product in its day, so much so that a competitor came up with a rival product also called Syrup of Figs and sold in similar packaging.
Worden v. California Fig Syrup Co., 187 U.S. 516 (1903) was the very first court case dealing with commercial piracy. The defendant’s argument was that they could not be accused of copying syrup of figs because there were in fact no fig products in the so-called syrup of figs! It was merely an infusion of senna pods with some additives to make it more pleasant tasting and a misleading name to make it more acceptable to the public.
The court was having none of it and prohibited the defendant from selling a similar product in similar packaging.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/187/516/
…but a higher court reversed the decision, on the grounds that because the California Fig Syrup Co. was defrauding the public as to the nature of their product, it was not entitled to the protection of the court.
“Then, as now, the operative laxative element was senna, and the addition of fig juice was at the best, experimental, and apparently was intended to attract the patronage of the public by holding out the name of the medicine as “Syrup of Figs.” However that may be, it is now admitted that the use of figs was found to be deleterious, and their use, as a substantial or material ingredient, was abandoned.
… our conclusions are that the name “Syrup of Figs” does not, in fact, properly designate or describe the preparation made and sold by the California Fig Syrup Company, so as to be susceptible of appropriation as a trademark, and that the marks and names used upon the bottles containing complainant’s preparation and upon the cartons and wrappers containing the bottles are so plainly deceptive as to deprive the complainant company of a right to a remedy by way of an injunction by a court of equity.”
The same fate met Angostura Bitters “which purported to have been prepared by Dr. Siegert at Angostura, Trinidad, and where it appeared that Dr. Siegert was dead, and had never lived at Angostura”
https://www.noagendashow.net/listen/1259
Look at “1259 Do The Work” at about 5 mins
All testing labs in Florida report 100% positive tests.
Toby Young at Lockdown Sceptics has just published the most shocking interview I have seen this year – bar none.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/2020/07/13/latest-news-72/
I recommend reading the whole interview at https://www.thebernician.net/nhs-consultant-says-staff-are-being-silenced-over-covid-19/ although the font and colours make it rather hard to read.
What I do in such cases is Ctrl/A to select the whole page, Ctrl/C to copy, then Ctrl/V into your favourite editor or (if you really must) Word. That gives you a nice legible copy. (It’s also a good tip for newspapers, etc. that won’t let you email pages to yourself – my usual technique).
“In my opinion, and that of many of my colleagues, there has been no Covid Pandemic, certainly not in the Surrey region and I have heard from other colleagues this picture is the same throughout the country. Our hospital would normally expect to see around 350,000 out patients a year. Around 95,000 patients are admitted to hospital in a normal year and we would expect to see around a similar figure, perhaps 100,000 patients pass through our A&E department. In the months from March to June (inclusive) we would normally expect to see 100,000 out patients, around 30,000 patients admitted to hospital and perhaps 30,000 pass through A&E. This year (and these figures are almost impossible to get hold of) we are over 95% down on all those numbers. In effect, the hospital has been pretty much empty for that entire period”.
What do those of you who work for the NHS make of that? If true, it is devastating.
Tom,
That second link is to the same content (different site) that johnplatinumgoss posted on July 10, 2020 at 8:18 am in the previous topic comments. In a comment to his contribution, I stated that the primary source for the content appeared to be:
911keeptalking@googlegroups.com
I e-mailed the following to him/her:
“I first saw this as a post to the website run by Dr Malcolm Kendrick. Research took me to Tapsnewswire, which listed their source as The Truth Seeker (UK) site – that last site quotes the source as being you. I’m assuming that the unnamed consultant could be in touch with you directly.
I have to say that, although I find the account plausible, without a name it is not going to achieve any results, other than to end up as a conspiracy theory that will be ignored by the MSM.
If you are aware of the author, could you bring the following tweet by Simon Dolan to his/her attention (delete the *):
htt*ps://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1281886517061984257?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
This is a copy and paste:
“Simon Dolan #KBF
@simondolan
·
11 Jul
There is a post going around claiming to be a from a Consultant at a Surrey hospital, who is whistleblowing. Could I ask that if anyone knows who this person is they get in touch with me via DM? Very important we speak to him for the case
Please RT”
Simon Dolan is the driving force behind trying to achieve a judicial review of the Government’s lockdown policy. He failed in his first attempt but is now going to appeal. The website with all the details is (delete the *):
htt*ps://www.crowdjustice.com/case/lockdownlegalchallenge/
If your contact does decide to contact Simon Dolan, his legal team would be able to advise on protection under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1988.
It does not take much thought to understand that the consequences of a contribution by your contact and his/her colleagues would be of enormous significance to Dolan’s application and would be in the best interests of all of us.
Regards,
Nick Turner”
The e-mail did not bounce but I received a message from ‘Mail Delivery Subsystem’ to say that I was unable to post and giving me several possible reasons, plus a link to some FAQ’s that were not that helpful. I decided to post the message content to the Truth Seeker comment section for the article (where this story first appeared), with a request that it be forwarded to the sorce. The request was definitely in the pre-moderation stage but has since disappeared. It may have been forwarded but we shall only know if the consultant in question agrees to become part of Simon Dolan’s action. Only then will we know that the story is genuine.
As possible confirmation of the story, Simon Dolan posted the following this morning:
“Simon Dolan #KBF
@simondolan
I have now seen official NHS staff guidance:
No media allowed on site
Not allowed to talk to any journalists
Strict info governance
Refrain from commenting or posting on social media
Report any ‘inaccurate’ statements to comms team
Personal Social Media is monitored
Why???
7:28 am · 13 Jul 2020”
htt*ps://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1282562641198821377 (delete *)
As I noted previously, someone in the know will have to come forward before anyone with influence will take notice, no matter how widely the story circulates.
Tom, the Grand Jury link – https://www.thebernician.net/grand-jury-finds-prima-facie-evidence-of-pandemic-fraud/ – is downright terrifying.
Let me guess, NO mainstream media has shown the slightest interest, or is ever likely to.
I am dubious about this source as I believe grand juries were abolished in the UK in 1948
shirley3349: They are still in use in the U.S.
OK, that does it. The “Grand Jury” article is nonsense, so I suppose that also discredits everything else from that source.
Not necessarily, but the writer, writing about a legal case in the UK, has not checked his facts about the procedure for a private prosecution over here. So I wonder what else he/she has not checked.
I believe you folks here have misunderstood this article. It used the word virtual grand jury. I don’t think it was meant to be taken literally, and read in that light it is a pretty good summation of how things have proceeded.
If this was a satire, why was the tone so completely wrong?
It’s difficult enough to to distinguish truth from fiction at the best of times. In performance, one has other cues, but on the page, one has to be more careful.
Hi Tom. Yes it is pretty obvious that the steps taken will cause tremendous collateral damage. My NHS lab has virtually no samples in, although its picking up now. People have obviously not stopped needing genetic results. I agree with most of what you post with the exception of your take on PCR. We use it diagnostically and it is as accurate as our other tests.
With reference to the fictional legal case mentioned above, I believe there may be a group of people in the UK trying to raise the considerable funds needed in order to mount a private prosecution for fraud of the various people in authority concerned.
The most relevant part of the case in our present situation, seems to be as follows: that the RT-PCR test for Covid-19, though it may have some use in the clinical situation in the absence of a definitive diagnostic test, does not provide sufficient proof of the presence of active infection to justify imposing criminal sanctions on healthy individuals who wish to go about their normal lives unmolested, and to pretend such proof exists amounts to fraud in a criminal sense.
Do any readers of this blog have any more information, as I cannot remember where I read this?
The problem with the rtPCR test is that it fails to demonstrate active infection. In the absence of that you don’t have a ‘case’ of Covid in the way we have always counted such disease ‘cases’ in the past – think measles chicken pox – because those diseases were identified on symptoms by a GP or similar medical practitioner.
But we now have to be our own doctor and decide whether we have Covid-19.
Then we report it and get no practical useful advice because the ‘help’ is as ignorant and impotent as we are, so neither of us can prescribe the successful treatments e.g. Didier Raoult uses (a zinc ionophore basically to halt viral replication before it ‘takes off’ around day 6).
And following the advice to ‘not bother the NHS unless…’ if we are very unlucky and put off going to get proper medical help until it is too late, and if then put on a ventilator- yes they still do that – we have a 40% chance of dying, and at that stage survival may not be preferable to ‘just slipping away’ for many previously active people.
“We use it diagnostically and it is as accurate as our other tests”.
I’m not sure I understand how PCR can be considered accurate when used to diagnose Covid-19. If a disease has well-defined symptoms, then a test can be calibrated. For example, whem I had mumps, measles and chickenpox as a boy, the doctor was in no doubt that I was sick or what disease I had. The symptoms spoke for themselves. There was no need for a test, but if one had been run it could have been checked against the symptoms.
With Covid-19 this is hopeless, as the disease has no symptoms that cannot occur with other diseases. So if a person has symptoms that might be flu or pneumonia, and PCR identifies Covid-19, how can anyone be sure the patient is not suffering from flu or pneumonia while retaining some RNA fragments left over from the last coronavirus cold?
As someone remarked in a comment on a different blog recently, “Imagine a disease so deadly that you need a test to tell you whether you’ve had it”.
Agree. I was meaning QFPCR testing in some circumstances is excellent.
Vitamin D3 and BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic)
Fleur’s comment touches on this and the (possible) genetic aspect and, coincidentally, both cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Ivor Cummins discuss the enhanced/increased Covid 19 risk among the BAME community in this new 32 minute podcast:
https://thefatemperor.com/ep88-the-racism-built-into-our-viral-issue-how-do-we-fix-this/
Dr Malhotra is one of the authors of a new paper on this issue. I’ll give a brief guide to the 1st third of the discussion:
1 to 6 mins: Poor metabolic health in BAME, metrics (for BAME) and tests
6 to 12 mins: (1) diet and genetic disposition (2) activity (3) vit D3 status – data suggest BAME deficient.
The rest: the discussion covers racism in NHS and medical literature, social class, shocking D3 levels (but caucasians too), D3 supplementation, social stress, the govn’t (and all of us too) need to act and much more e.g food industry, pharma.
Some strong language here (I don’t mean swearing) and passion, especially for people in the medical community to speak up.
In a previous Ivor Cummins podcast with Dr John Lee, Dr John Lee spoke of 2 types of censorship:
(1) Mainstream e.g. Facebook and youtube taking down/censoring anything which didn’t accord with the mainstream narrative and
(2) self censorship – those in the medical/scientific community who agreed with the science but were too scared to speak out due to employment and family worries.
Tricky one.
If you believed everything in the UK papers and the experts they quote (oops – “top” experts), it’s just down to mask wearing.
Anyway, an excellent discussion covering a lot of ground.
P.S. further to my D3/BAME comment
I’ve emailed a link to the podcast to the Rt Hon David Lammy MP – Shadow Secretary of State for Justice.
David Lammy came to my attention a few weeks back – he was being interviewed by the BBC and he discussed the BAME community and vit D3. I posted a brief comment on this at the time.
I’ve received the automatic response and note that he is extremely busy and gets hundreds of emails a day. Fair enough.
If I get a response I’ll let you know. You never know!
David Davis MP of all people seems to have got a handle on vitamin d and covid and has sent letters to Hancock, seemingly without response.
I’ve been battering all and sundry on twitter but naturally I’ve been ignored.
Yes, public health England dribbled out a missive recommending 1000iu a day back at the end of April (or May?) but it was with no fanfare and gained little traction.
Why so few people want to get on the right side of this I’ve no idea.
Clinical trial looking at the potential use of convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19 https://healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2020/72957a-eng.php
Hi Randall; I think this must vie for one of the stupidest “brilliant ideas” that scientists who warn; have come up with. Having plasma infused; from a whole pile of other souls; amazing
Here now we have people frightened out of their wits at breathing in a common or garden virus; and then happy to have pints of a whole pile of other peoples’ blood infused into them; totally bypassing our defence mechanisms: brilliant! Bring on “scientists who warn …..”.If “scientists who warn” advocacy madness, everyone seems to surrender critical thought.
Terry, if you are in the UK, it’s ok, we wouldn’t have a plasma supply as nobody ever recovers. If you have ever tested positive, then your death certificate will state “covid” even if you die years later from what everyone might think was something completely different.
The high death rate in Latin America is interesting. It is even more striking when you conpare it to tropical Africa. My pet theory is that has something do with the chronically high levels of Malaria in these countries, where if you survive to adulthood you will almost without exception carry the Falciporum parasite. And while Malaria exists in Brazil, it’s prevalence is far below that of Africa. And we’ve all heard about the common treatment for Malaria recently!
What a cracking article and response, thank you “Bob” and Dr. K for this one.
I am very fearful now for the compulsory masks that our governments are forcing on us. I just know that the mandatory vaccine is coming and I really don’t want it.
Mask wearing will advance like science — one funeral at a time. ;o)
“across 22 countries, there’s an 80% correlation between non-wearing of masks and number of deaths-per-million. That correlation is higher than for the percentage of elderly and the percentage with high body-mass index.” — https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc200712/
A belated Thank You ‘Bob’.
DownUnder here we have the s State of Victoria becoming a pariah to the other States, with a significant area of Melbourne (suburbs) in a new lock-down.
Over here in the West, we’re quite happy to poke fun at them all ‘over there’ but the reality being another round will only add to our National, economic woes.
How ? – Because some amateur “security” guards in a quarantine hotel practised the opposite of Social Distancing… No news media dare mention ethnic origins….of the offenders or the newly infected.
Back on 10 July, they had a day’s jump of… 288 new CASES. Note the language, “case” implies sickness etc, yet as we now know, a “positive PCR result does not prove active infection, merely presence of RNA fragments, not necessarily of The intact, undamaged Virus.
It will be interesting to wait & see how many of those develop hospital-standard symptoms…
More from good old Simon Dolan
https://www.keepbritainfree.com/so/98ND8q8U_?cid=6d91f31f-9379-4478-b1e4-1f5f645d29f6#/main
It is interesting to ponder that the result of the various rules are that people have been deprived of sunlight, oxygen to breathe and human contact. Is this a soft kill?
anna m: And small children have become traumatized to the point of being terrified of other people (see Cathy Jameson’s post on Age of Autism from Sunday, July 11th). God help us.
Anna, shrt answer, ‘Yes’. a.k.a. ‘ Thinning the herd ‘
I get my D from working in the sun, lightly clad–NO SUNSCREEN!–eat lots of high-Q fat:
I can’t recall when I had a cold or flu, last.
I
Good for you, Robert!
I forget whether it was Dr Kendrick who pointed out that the two occupations with the lowest rate of skin cancer are construction and farm labouring. Both, of course, keep one outdoors most of the time.
Apologies if it wasn’t Dr Kendrick, but I am sure it was someone reliable – maybe Tom Naughton.
And let’s give three cheers for the dopey medical science establishment that makes no use of that information at all!
My wife reminds me that the only two she knows with melanoma is a farm worker and a laborer.
As for me, my working in sunshine is only a couple hours a day and not every day.
So I guess it works for me, can’t project it to others; sorry
Robert
On Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 2:37 AM Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Tom Welsh commented: “Good for you, Robert! I forget whether it was Dr > Kendrick who pointed out that the two occupations with the lowest rate of > skin cancer are construction and farm labouring. Both, of course, keep one > outdoors most of the time. Apologies if it wasn’t ” >
Actually, those two occupations have the highest risk of skin cancer.
https://life.spectator.co.uk/articles/builders-farm-workers-highest-risk-skin-cancer/
Vitamin D is great, but it’s not going to protect you if you’re squirelling about on a roof for eight hours a day over the summer months – sometimes topless – with no shade.
Simon C.”squirrelling about on a roof for eight hours a day……….sometimes topless”.At least you’d be hiding your nuts.
There are many skin cancers. Malignant melanoma is the rarest. Beware of such statistics.
Simon, did you actually read beyond the headline you quote? Here are the opening paragraphs:
“Two per cent of deadly skin cancer cases in Britain come from working outdoors, according to research published in the British Journal of Cancer.
“Researchers estimated that there were 48 deaths and 241 cases of melanoma skin cancer each year caused by ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun at work.
“The study, at Imperial College London, found that construction workers accounted for the largest proportion of these cases (44 per cent of deaths), followed by agriculture workers (23 per cent of deaths)”.
1. Two percent of “deadly skin cancer cases” from working outdoors! So preumably 98 percent – rather more – came from other causes.
2. Obviously there could be no way for researchers to be sure that the UV rays of the sun were directly responsible for any given death. No doubt there are assumptions and, yes, even computer models in the mix.
3. And – yes!!! – the study was done at Imperial College, London. Which has recently cemented its reputation for world-class epidemiology and computer modelling.
One would not expect The Spectator to differ from any establishment view.
For those who are feeling disillusioned with The Spectator’s boring and unreliable content, may I recommend an excellent alternative: The Hectator? https://hectordrummond.com/
I recall seeing a study that showed outdoor workers have much lower melanoma rates than indoor workers. Another study showed that those with the most sun damaged skin had the least melanoma.
Dr J, down here older GP’s equate the number of times a person is seriously sun-burned in youth, with risk of skin-cancer in later life. They also find the odd melanoma between toes !
My Father-in Law, ex-submarines, had a primary melanoma removed from behind his knee. He is a person always covered in long trousers, day & night…
I’m inclined to wonder about the term “sun damaged skin”.
One of the handicaps that bedevils modern medical research (IMHO) is the completely unwarranted assumption that average Westerners living today are “normal”.
On the contrary, I think that if any human being should be accepted as “normal”, it should be a hunter-gatherer. Our ancestors lived that way for millions of years (at least 1 million anyway) and that we are here to talk about it shows that it was a viable way of life.
Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia won the 1960 Olympic marathon, running barefoot. After his win, which brought much glory and some material benefits, one of the big shoe manufacturers gave him the first shoes he had ever worn to run. The expert who fitted the shoes said that they seemed rather unnecessary, as Bikila’s soles were very much like those of running shoes. The skin had turned to thick, impervious leather so that he could run across gravel and all sorts of rought surfaces without feeling discomfort, let alone pain.
Now I ask: shouldn’t we consider Bikila’s feet “normal” – rather than the soft, pallid extremities of “civilised” people, which are such a disastrous handicap if one is forcded to do without shoes?
By the same token, perhaps “sun damaged skin” should be considered normal. If it doesn’t cause any harm, and if it is a result of a healthy outdoor life with ample Vitamin D, why should it be avoided? In modern society, soft smooth skin is valued – but not necessarily for health reasons.
Simon Dolan, today, retweeted the result of an important scientific experiment to test the filtration efficacy of a standard face mask. (Delete the *)
htt*ps://twitter.com/redpillmonster/status/1283100887012040704
Whilst it is probably correct to assume that large droplet projection would be inhibited, the test medium demonstrate that smaller particles will find an alternative route to the nearby person who assumes he/she is ‘safe’.
I bet the smoke particles are a little bit bigger than viruses. If so the demo is flawed.
I assume you mean “flawed” in the incorrect modern sense of “utterly useless”.
I wasn’t being quite that harsh, but the description might apply.
One of many https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/flawed
It’s one of the lesser of the inexact usages that I see all around nowadays. As I have always understood it, the main meaning of “flawed” is “almost perfect, but spoiled by some small defect”.
So it’s grating when one sees it used to mean everything from “completely useless” to “grossly disfigured”.
Just this morning I came across this:
“But now, surrounded as we are by this ‘invisible enemy’, all too often hope has been substituted for fear, even terror”.
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/covid-19-phase-1-of-the-permanent-crisis/
Almost incredibly, the writer is trying to say, “all too often hope has been replaced by far, even terror”. He has wound up saying exactly the opposite of what he means.
Anyone who has tried on the type of mask in the video will be aware that very little air exits through the front, almost all of it enters and leaves round the edges.The experimenter in the video is using vaping exhalation to show the airflow, in which, it is assumed, virus particles will be present. If so, those particles will not preferentally stick to the inside of the mask but will exit round the edges in the exhaled air. That contaminated air will enter the ‘protected’ person in the vicinity by entering round the edges of their mask with inhaled air – or via their unprotected eyes.
The video is simply demonstrating the obvious. For any real (inbound) protection, a hood with a positive-pressure, filtered air supply would be required. I’ve not seen any around so far.
Scans Reveal Heart Damage in Over Half of COVID-19 Patients in Study https://www.newsweek.com/scans-reveal-heart-damage-over-half-covid-19-patients-study-1517293
“The team noted that COVID-19 largely affects the respiratory tract, and existing research suggests patients with cardiovascular disease or who are at risk of developing it seem to be more susceptible to the disease and have a worse prognosis”.
In other words, it’s possible that the headline finding reported was due to most of the Covid-19 patients having existing heart conditions.
Now if they had had the corresponding scans for the patients, say, a year ago…
===============================================================
There was a derisive laugh from Alexandrov.
“Bloody argument,” he asserted.
“What d’you mean ‘bloody argument?”
“Invent bloody argument, like this. Golfer hits ball. Ball lands on tuft of grass – so. Probability ball landed on tuft very small, very very small. Million other tufts for ball to land on. Probability very small, very very very small. So golfer did not hit ball, ball deliberately guided on tuft. Is bloody argument. Yes? Like Weichart’s argument”.
– Fred Hoyle, “The Black Cloud”
That Newsweek article threads with other scare stuff, all very MSM, big worse plague coming from China direction, playing down testing as reason for increase in US “cases” – Trump wrong and CV attacks the brain. All OTT stuff, pattern there.
Tripped over following which is amusing:
“Gonna start taking processed meats and soda out of people’s carts at the store. Tell them they can’t buy it because it lowers their immune system and makes them more vulnerable to disease. When they say they can eat what they want, I’ll say: “It’s not about you, it’s about others.””
That person has left out a lot of “bad” foods. Anything containing any trace of any grain, however small. Anything containing any trace of vegetable, seed or nut oil. Anything containing refined carbohydrates.
Personally I’ll take my chances with the processed meats. Eggs are great, but even better with bacon or salami.
May I point out that olive oil is OK (though no better than OK). Olives are fruit, not vegetables.
Amusingly, olive oil contains almost exactly the same proportions of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats as beef lard.
Tom Welsh: I don’t know where you got your information, but the actual percentages of saturated (SFA), monounsaturated (MUFA), and polyunsaturated (PUFA) for beef (tallow), olive oil, and butter (from Mary Enig) are: beef 45% SFA, 51% MUFA, and 4% PUFA; olive oil 14% SFA, 77% MUFA, and 9% PUFA; butter 66% SFA, 30% MUFA, and 4% PUFA. I suspect that the relative percentages of SFA and MUFA in foods have little impact on their healthfulness, but that foods with high percentages of PUFA are not healthful with long term consumption, and there is good evidence that this is the case. Our ancestors certainly didn’t eat any industrial seed oils, and the Chinese didn’t begin to consider the soybean as a suitable food for humans or livestock until they learned to ferment them.
Gary and everyone else: please accept my apologies for having misinformed you. I have not checked Gary’s figures, just as I did not look up the facts before I posted.
It’s embarrassing and instructive. I posted the statement about olive oil and beef fat in full confidence that it was correct. I had definitely read it in a source I usually trust; and perhaps in two or three such sources. So I accepted it as true.
When time permits I shall track down those sources and see if I misunderstood, or if they are wrong. The third possibility is that senility has at last overtaken me, and I cannot be sure of anything.
Tom Welsh: Your mind is functioning perfectly well. I meant no offense, and I’ve certainly made my fair share of errors. Olive oil likely is perfectly OK as a food, although a relatively modern one. My own current bias is toward excluding all plant-derived fatty acids in favor of animal-derived fatty acids in my diet. Not completely, though. I like my daily cup of coffee, and a bit of chocolate from time to time, garlic and onions and an occasional garden tomato. A glass or two of wine in the evening. I certainly feel better having eliminated cruciferous and starchy vegetables. But to each his own. There has been too much nonsense about food peddled in recent decade. I do recommend Dr. Saladino’s “The Carnivore Code.”
Not just heart (damage) in recovered patients, but brain injury / cognitive damage. Causal suspect are tiny clots in the vasculature, like microscopic(?) strokes compromising oxygen supply and knocking off a few brain cells… – except a LOTS of clots.
Again, from the Far East, a look at (yet another) “old” medicine tested for efficacy in COVID tretment. “Persantine”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339597445_Therapeutic_effects_of_dipyridamole_on_COVID-19_patients_with_coagulation_dysfunction
and dipyridamole can be helpful for cancer; (tut-tutted by orthodox medicine) but discussed in detail by patients who seem to have rid themselves of their cancers, exploring old drugs.
With so many folks these days at the pre-diabetes and T2 diabetes levels; (some say 65% of US folks over aged 45 are in this category); we know these folks have elevated inflammatory levels; so they are essentially walking time bombs; having chronically elevated cytokine levels; not surprising they get micro-clots if cytokines activated by each and any perturbation.
The latest US dietary guidelines are just out: fomenting the usual rubbish they promote: eat lots of grains from inflammatory wheat; and load up on carbs; and get your insulin levels up way high; go the US Dept Agriculture!
Meanwhile, driving past a small country hospital the other day, I saw one of those lighted signs which said “Feel sick? Stay Home!”
Hmm.
Reading some of my parents’ letters from the 1960s, I saw that my father reported feeling deathly ill. He took some sulfa pills (there was a lot of unwarranted trust in antibiotics in those days), got into bed with a couple of hot water bottles, and sweated it out. A few days later he was up and about and able to work, although he felt congested and thick-headed for another week.
So we really don’t need surgeries or hospitals, do we?
Which leads to the obvious question: why do we have them? And why are we taxed so heavily for the NHS?
Gatekeeper functionaries – many on this blog know enough to know what tests/drugs they ‘need’ but cannot access them unilaterally.
Just off to source some Quercetin dihydrate to help zinc into my cells if SARS-CoV-2 strikes.
indeed Tom; the UK 999 data shows a huge decrease in calls; staff are fiercely admonished to stay quiet and not talk to the press; however it seems departments are eerily empty. It will be truly fascinating if the predictions of huge increases in deaths (from not being “treated”) shows up; we must dispassionately await some data on this extraordinary experiment; that could not have been contemplated six months ago: which was: let’s totally stop offering treatment to all; big question: does meddlesome medical treatment help or hinder? Let us dispassionately address this. We have now done the experiment, without patient consent.
Excellent
The worst fears of epidemiologists have been realised: Covid-19 has mutated, and the strain now dominating the world is up to six times more infectious. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12347304
But maybe less deadly … one hopes.
People in the UK may wish to read this website on the legal challenge to the government’s right to deprive us of our liberty for over 3 months
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/lockdownlegalchallenge/
As far as I can tell, the Japanese government has not restricted what its citizens can do. All the measures are voluntary, including mask wearing.
Randall; do you actually believe anything these people write; or say?
We are just being bombarded by lies; rubbish and propaganda.
We must not let the screechers destroy everything.
Hi Randall; just listening to an excellent Ivor Cummins podcast https://thefatemperor.com/ep89-viral-impacts-explained-the-panda-pandemic-data-analytics-group/
.. 2 very capable SA data analysts talking; at 18mins in, one says a SA paper claims a new strain of corona is TEN times stronger than something else; sort of like a new washing-up powder; so the SA paper has upped the nz one: maybe someone else can say .. their new strain is 14 times as strong; pah; you think your new strain is strong; mine is 20 times as strong; pah, call that strong, my strain is 24 times as strong …..
Dr K published “Doctoring Data” about misuse of data; I commend the above podcast: it all increasing stinks of the cholesterol ideology: one has to be loyal to all the Party beliefs on our chum the Rona; lockdowns work; second wave; masks; anti-social distancing; bla, bla, bla. When predictions are not borne out, the hypotheses they represent remain unchanged; it is a new religiont. The almighty have spoken; judge ye not their word; they are the word; challenge it not, ye heathen.
So more will get it and get over it quicker – except those totally unaffected – ?
What, they released a new strain?
“they released a new strain?” .. that requires a bit of effort Anna; they now have simpler ways: one just makes up a story; and releases that; and everyone believes it; wonderful days these are, to fabricate nonsense and have endless poor souls believe it all;
Terry,
But as you can see from this fun video, people are losing the faith. And that is in California, which has one of the worst governors.
Anna M: A new strain of fear mongering.
Surely, the virus is just doing what viruses do. Especially single strand RNA ones which are, I believe, chemically far less stable than their DNA cousins. A successful virus seems to be one which mutates until it can be found everywhere, living in healthy harmony with its hosts. Let’s hope this is what is happening.
Would there be a coincidence with six times the amount of testing?
Actually, Randall, I think “the worst fears of epidemiologists” would be that people stop paying attention to their absurd predictions, after which they might even lose their cushy jobs.
I don’t think we really need modern-day witch doctors to frighten us with fantastic terrors.
well said Tom; these teflon tin-gods of quasi-epidemiology; who can make mad predictions that are so wrong; and never be called to account; after Fergoid’s mad predictions in 2001 over FMD, he was made FRS I understand; how terrible.
this article https://marketmonetarist.com/2020/05/19/why-have-epidemiological-forecasts-been-so-wrong-and-what-to-do-about-it/ suggests these folks need “skin in the game” and some tilting of the odds.
Very true, Terry. I think the epidemiologists do have skin in the game; but not in the obvious sense that they are rewarded according to the accuracy of their predictions.
They are probably rewarded according to how far their predictions meet the wishes of those who have the money and power.
This year, the movers and shakers wanted predictions that would justify panic measures. So the epidemiologists probably got lots of brownie points, which will sooner or later turn into money and preferment. Which, in turn, is why the “leading” epidemiologists will go on making grotesquely wrong predictions – they get rewarded, in a sense, for failure.
I am reminded of a sour joke I saw recently. A patient asks a doctor “How long will this pandemic last?” To which the doctor replies, “Don’t ask me – I’m not a politician”.
OK my friends, the following is really an excellent short article about the available and effective treatments for covid and why we are being lied to:
https://www.unz.com/article/the-great-covid-19-deception-and-what-you-need-to-know-to-survive/
Seems my first attempt to post this disappeared. Very good, not too long, how and why these 3 effective and simple treatments are being kept from you and your doctor.
https://www.unz.com/article/the-great-covid-19-deception-and-what-you-need-to-know-to-survive/
Anna, I have noticed that when you post a comment it usually appears immediately (to you, anyway) with a message to say it is pending moderation. Then, before appearing as an approved comment, it sometimes disappears completely.
So don’t be worried if you post a comment and, later that day for a while, you can’t see it. They are usually published the same day.
I want to echo Tom Welsh’s experience. I’ve seen that sort of thing as well. I think it’s just the way WordPress handles the comment while the moderator is actually…moderating.
My apologies if this has already been posted, but I found the information fascinating:
https://unherd.com/thepost/prof-carl-heneghan-can-we-trust-the-covid-19-death-numbers/
Key quotes:
There was “massive confusion” about different Covid data between England’s health bodies. “Public Health England figures are about double the ONS figures because PHE are reporting anybody who has had a positive Covid death in the past… This will get increasingly confusing as we go into the next Winter because there could be a new outbreak and new deaths while also still reporting on historical deaths… This is a problem for epidemiologists and media… ”
Even a “28 period cut-off is still not ideal for accurate death numbers because there is “immediate cause and underlying cause… Immediate cause means you’ve had Covid within 21 days but outside of that, it becomes the underlying cause — something that contributed to your death but wasn’t a direct cause. A 21 day cut-off would be helpful because it gives a clearer understanding of that distinction”
“We follow excess deaths which is the most accurate information about what’s going on at that moment, but it can’t tell you what those deaths are caused by” (i.e. people not coming forward with heart attacks etc)
“There’s an important distinction between lives lost and life years lost. One of the things we’ll be watching very closely over the next six months is how many people would have actually died in the next six months… That’s where the excess deaths really matter. If we start to see it trend significantly under for the next few months, we’ll start to come forward with information that suggests there was a group of vulnerable people that any respiratory infection would have shortened their life.”
“In the media you’ll always hear about catastrophe and the consequences of that. One of the things we notice is that when you don’t hear anything that usually means there’s good news happening. So when Sweden looks worse you hear about it but when it’s not so bad, like now, you never see it in the media.”
If the report into the magic Coronavirus infection of 61 Argentinian fishermen who left port free of Covid, spent 35 days at sea, then returned to port and practically all tested positive, is true there is something fishy going on – no pun intended.
It is possible that viruses can be wafted around the world on the winds – at all levels of the atmosphere – and come to earth anywhere at any time. Then the amount of harm they do would depend on the terrain – how healthy are the people infected. If this is true, there is hardly any point in taking measures to prevent virus spreading.
Interesting, isn’t it, that no scientists can say for certain just how viruses get around? There’s been plenty of “research”, but no one seems to know whether viruses spread through contact, or in the air – and if so whether individually or in globs of gunk – or through water and food, or if all of the above, in what proportions.
The more I learn about these things (and it still isn’t much) the clearer it becomes that there has been a truly massive amount of bluffing going on. After all, if one can get paid for bluffing, that’s a lot more cost-effective than doing actual work.
“…I thought that the formula, Man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion, should bear the name of Epstean’s law”.
– Albert Jay Nock, “Memoirs of a Superfluous Man”
thanks Steve-R; “61 Argentinian fishermen”
in the fine traditions of cholesterol science, we could just call it a “paradox”: look bewildered; quickly glance around to see if anyone else has spotted we have no idea; then tut, tut and tell everyone to move on; there is nothing to see here.
Perish anyone would reflect on what it all might mean:
The Cannell paper Dr K pointed us to weeks ago: https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29 introduced the work of Dr Hope-Simpson (HS), a GP in Cirencester for many years, who studied flu in detail, amongst his patients. Ivor Cummins has repeatedly now referred to the work of Dr HS: the pdf is available on his twitter feed. HS pointed to the distinct seasonality of these viruses (including the rona); and really suggested these viruses “embed” in the previous summer and autumn; and from the profound and abrupt eruption of “the epidemic” suggested the previously dormant virus had so erupted; folks seem to carry the virus till Vit D levels fall enough; that an eruption can occur; it is notable that this Argentinian outbreak has occurred in their winter, just at the time the temperate regions of the Southern Hemisphere get their short flu outbreaks. Again, Ivor frequently cites a chart of HS on his twitter; demonstrating this clear and cyclical behaviour around the world. The above article describes much of this in detail.
if anyone listens to the excellent Ivor Cummins podcast cited above, talking to 2 thoughtful SA guys; they have repeatedly asked for evidence for house-arrest; (aka LD). This has been a chant of the “protect the elderly” mantra; for strong actions; for conviction; for solitary confinement for the elderly; lock them in their rooms for weeks on end … isn’t that what you meant by “protect the elderly”: .. well, what did you mean then? please explain; … allow them to sit together in groups in a sitting-room, where they can talk to each other? That would not do: that is intolerable, not up to the high standards of a caring society. No, seal them in their rooms; pass food through hatches, isn’t that a high standard of protection? We can feel proud of ourselves; we are protecting them better than anyone else.
This interesting twitter feed compares death rates in 2 elderly cohorts; matched against the substantial population rise in those cohorts;
sadly, some would say we all have to die some day, and hopefully it will be with loving family and familiar faces around; we could alternately choose to die in a much higher level of care environ, where we can see no souls, meet no-one and talk to no-one thereby ensuring we are being protected.
Terry
I am hoping that one positive thing comes out of this, and that is a society debate about how to respect and look after the old. If they have so called comorbidities and are unfit, how to help them.
Instead of not taxing people who live on islands in the Caribbean, this might be a more useful and respectful use of resources.
BTW 1 I am not holding my breath
BTW 2 everyone will be old one day
“BTW 2 everyone will be old one day”
If they’re lucky…
Karl Denniger has posted extensively on the primary transfer vector of Covid 19 being hand contamination / foecal contamination like Norovirus or Polio and not aerosol. ( Note primary not only)
He uses Singapore as an example of how to bring it rapidly under control by rabid insistence on handwashing.
https://market-ticker.org/cgi-mt/akcs-www?post=239747
Malcolm, I am sorry this is a bit of a rant, and partially off-topic, so won’t hold a grudge if you don’t let it appear!
For a long time I have felt that there is something going badly wrong with science itself. Nowhere is this better illustrated than by the sorry story of COVID-19. Theoretical scientists, such as
Neil Ferguson, are permitted enormous freedom to develop ideas with almost no check to ensure they match reality. Perhaps part of the reason they are given that freedom, is because people like Bill Gates shower them (and thus their institutions) with ludicrous amounts of cash. Of course, science properly done, should be blind to such monetary considerations… Maybe when the COVID-19 saga ultimately ends, scientific institutions will take the beating that they richly deserve, and which is perhaps the only thing that will restore the reliability and honesty of science.
Theorising abstractly is always a dangerous game, I mean what theorist would have come up with the notion of the placebo effect? OK, the mind has some influence over the body, but how could it know how to heal itself, and even if it had that knowledge, how could it exert the detailed control needed to do it? Medical science has come grudgingly to accept the placebo effect because it had to – not because it was theoretically sound.
When theorists get the upper hand, they can make awful mistakes which are subsequently airbrushed over. For example, theorists seized on the discovery of the function of DNA, to predict (or rather insist) that body characteristics acquired after conception (adaption to famine, for example) cannot be passed on to their offspring. Even now, many people assume this is true, even after the concept of epigenetics has become well established.
Theory always involves assumptions, and back in the 1970’s, nobody suspected that DNA molecules could be tagged in ways that affected their frequency of transcription.
We all know how medical science ignores things it does not like – the medical value of
vitamins, for example – but does science in general ignore evidence that would seriously dent its
world view? I suspect it does, and medicine provides one piece of the evidence.
Sometimes people get very close to death, undergo cardiac arrest, and yet are revived. The very strange thing is that while most remember nothing from this experience (as you would expect), a few percent of those who undergo this experience, report a Near Death Experience (NDE).
They report that they find themselves outside their body – often actually observing their lifeless body from above. Their consciousness is very clear, and they subsequently accurately describe all kinds of details of their resuscitation procedure. A few percent of those who get resuscitated, is nevertheless a very large number of people!
A number of doctors, Dr. Sam Parnia have written papers and books about this phenomenon.
It rather looks as if the mind can do theoretically impossible things, but theory trumps observation, and this phenomenon is pretty much ignored.
Good rant
Dr Kendrick,
Praise. Fine. As long as you’re praising the rant and not the content. I wish you’d specify more clearly more often.
Much of the commentary here would border on the dangerous if taken to heart by the naive, entertainment value notwithstanding.
JDP
Slightly disagree about entertainment value of much of the comment on here. You have to wade through a lot of dross for the occasional nugget
Right, Mr Chris,
It’s those in the dross feedback loop who’d perceive entertainment.
Which commentary would that be exactly? For example would it be the statements that masks will be protective against a virus, and have no detrimental effects on the wearer?
JDPatten,
I am genuinely a bit confused by your response. If you are criticising my ‘content’, I’d like to know what exactly you feel is wrong, or on the other hand maybe you mean that what I wrote is correct, but you lament the fact that scientific research has sunk so low – in which case I obviously agree with you.
David,
The phenomenon you describe certainly represents thinking “outside the box”. Kudos for that. But, since, by it’s nature, this phenomenon cannot be examined outside the subject’s experience, nothing can be gleaned from discussing it –– other than musing over how fantastical regions beyond the box can become.
JDPattern wrote
“But, since, by it’s nature, this phenomenon cannot be examined outside the subject’s experience, nothing can be gleaned from discussing it –– other than musing over how fantastical regions beyond the box can become”
Well in several respects NDE’s can be tested. For example, a patient’s recollection of the details of their resuscitation – which doctors were involved, what they did, or said etc – can be quite extraordinary, and medical studies have been done in which those who did not experience an NDE were asked to imagine the scene. The NDEers did way better by describing what they ‘saw’.
Probably little of relevance to this discussion about COVID can be gleaned – which is why I warned that my ‘rant’ was partially off topic – but I’d say the subject of NDE’s is definitely worth anyone exploring a bit!
Well sure, David. We’re all interested in death. Particularly our own. If we can come back and tell the story . . .
But, with all due respect – I grant you that – horses can be taught to count and do simple math.
JDPatten: Bees and ants, too. Lots of animal species do math, including trigonometry (outfielders do this, too, in a quaint game we used to play called baseball). To forage and return to the hive unerringly bees employ trigonometry. Smarter than Mr. Ed?
Gary,
Not to spoil the fond reminiscences, (I was an outfielder back in the day!) but the point was (I presumed everyone knew) that horses are not that smart. Horses pick up cues too subtle for the audience to discern from the trainer (substitute carer[s] here) who is actually doing the counting and simple math. Stage act.
I cannot vouch for bees that have been to high school, but I, as the outfielder, never had trig.
JDPatten: No need to have taken a course (I didn’t have Trig until college). Outfielders (I was a right fielder, but a terrible one) do it intuitively, like bees and ants and bats, and a host of other species who need to navigate. By the way, I meant Clever Hans, rather than Mr. Ed.
Hi JD: “Much of the commentary here would border on the dangerous if taken to heart by the naive”
Indeed JD; a very good point; would you say that 95% of those reading the forum are naive? I suspect we should take measures to protect them; for the common good.
thank goodness we have a few with your discernment that can detect such things. Many would suggest it is much better for folks to be presented with an official viewpoint; many of us recognise it is very harmful to let folks reach their own judgements.
“I wish you’d specify more clearly more often.” …… um …. can we ask why please JD?
Terry, thank you for your excellent comment to comment on comment of rant post. I am thankful there are people about to protect me from my naivety should I stray into believing judgements from those who differ from the official, accurate, factual information such as can be found easily on the BBC website.
Terry,
It’s the very people who propagate the danger by freely expressing the products of their magical thinking in their their desperate need for affirmation of long-held biases that are the most naive. It’s a mutually self-supporting and walled-off culture. (There’s a word for that.)
Why did any of us come here in the first place?
Dr Kendrick broaches no magical thinking –– within himself or his own writings! Would that that followed through to comments and replies.
JDPattern,
“freely expressing the products of their magical thinking”
My aim was primarily to illustrate how theorists can get the wrong end of the stick, either by ignoring scientific results, excluding them because they don’t fit their paradigm, or because they simply assume that a mechanism such as the DNA/RNA/protein process is completely understood and has no important wrinkles left to be discovered (rather like Lord Kelvin at the turn of the century before last).
I used the evidence of NDE’s because I think they represent part of the biggest hole in the current scientific theoretical framework – rather like those blurry interference patterns from double slit experiments – and we all know where that led!
“Maybe when the COVID-19 saga ultimately ends, scientific institutions will take the beating that they richly deserve, and which is perhaps the only thing that will restore the reliability and honesty of science”.
There is nothing I would like better. But I fear, David, that you are unduly optimistic.
As I see it, most of the great breakthroughs in science and technology were accomplished by people who were motivated by curiosity, a desire for renown, and sometimes the wish to help others. Even a certain amount of narcissistic pride may have impelled Plato and other scholars of classical and Renaissance times; they sought knowledge in order to perfect their own minds and souls, and perhaps thus to become closer to God or The Good.
Archimedes, Euclid, Bacon, Newton, Leibniz, Darwin… you could list hundreds of great scientists who studied and experimented for the sake of knowledge itself.
Modern industrial society, in contrast, revolves around money. Every year universities spill out thousands of science and technology graduates looking for paid work. Who has the money? Essentially, corporations and governments – sometimes working through supposedly charitable or non-profit organizations set up as a “front” to conceal the motivation for the research they fund.
Today, especially in some fields such as medical research, science has become almost a part of the corporate and governmental marketing departments. Work that supports corporate goals is readily funded and published; other work is not funded, found not to be of publishable quality, or otherwise got rid of.
Moreover, replication – one of the fundamental guarantees of scientific work – has almost completely ceased. If a paper is published that says what a corporation or government likes, why try to replicate it? Successful replication would change nothing; and a failure to replicate would mean two lots of funding spent and the objective not achieved. So we see more and more papers published, but – as Dr Ioannidis remarked 15 years ago – hardly any of them can be relied upon. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
None of this is accidental. It is all quite deliberate, and it is exactly what one would expect when science stops being a disinterested search for the truth and becomes just another form of corporate and government propaganda. As always, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
You may be right about my being too optimistic – my mind seems to run slightly on the optimistic side – fortunately in the modern world!
However, I have always thought that some branch of science will ultimately do something so gross that people will call on politicians to defund science. I’d actually like to see a serious defund – perhaps even a moratorium on taxpayer funded science while the mess can be sorted out. If the truth ever really comes out, I am pretty sure the COVID-19 story will be adequately gross.
I appreciate your optimism, David. It is a light in darkness. But I cannot suppress my doubts.
“perhaps even a moratorium on taxpayer funded science while the mess can be sorted out”.
That would leave no significant funding except from corporations! Oh dear.
I guess you would need a moratorium on adopting new drugs (with possible exceptions in extreme cases) at the same time.
It must have looked bleak at the time of the witch trials, and other times in history. If history is a guide, evil only triumphs for so long.
Tom,
One way to give your optimism a boost, is to ask tradespeople that you come into contact with, what they think about the COVID problem. I have found extreme scepticism from almost all of them. If you ask a supermarket assistant if they know of anyone who has suffered from the virus, you will find that none have (even though working in such an environment must bring them close to many people every day). There is tremendous scepticism about this story.
A GP I know also expressed similar doubts.
David, I am a trades people, me? A sceptic? What an accusation. I meet customers who are just as sceptical, and I meet those who are somewhat worried about catching something. “There’s something out there and we have to be careful”. I hope to reassure them, (the 77th brigade would say “misinform”) that nutrition is the key and providing they eat proper food, and get enough vitamins, the chances of becoming ill are very small, and that masks are more likely to be detrimental than beneficial, and the reasons why.
ahNotepad,
I think my point was that people who do physical things like build houses, fix plumbing, work in a shop or whatever, meet more people than many of us and in theory they expose themselves to greater risks of catching CV19, yet they are extremely sceptical about this pseudo panic
If “tradespeople” had the wrong vibes to you, please suggest an alternative!
Actually, I think “tradespeople” generally have their heads screwed on more securely than those of us who work more abstractly.
David, nothing wrong with the term “tradespeople”, I had intended my reply to be humorous. That’s the problem with written communications, sorry. I agree that it is more a “theory” that we are exposed to greater risk of catching anything. It’s the terrain, Bechamp, not the germ, Pasteur, though apparently Pasteur admitted he may have got it wrong as he was on his way out. So if you look after your self, you are likely to avoid diseases.
Interesting response to an article in the DT today re cholesterol reduction & benefit for CV19 sufferers. A debate shifted on whether the Virus fed on fat or cholesterol moving on to suggestions that threre was no genetic feature to the death toll which prompted the following response from an exasperated reader,
“In a recent PHE report on the impact of the virus on ethnic minorities, right off the bat they pointedly declared they would not be looking at a potential genetic influence. This was a massive report, and a massively useless report, but with an agenda – it was aimed at hardship and the influence of racism.
You can’t be serious, I thought . . . with the same astonished and angry tone as the man who famously coined the phrase.
No genetic influence . . . when 93% of NHS Doctors who have died were of Asian or African origin?!!
And there’s no genetic influence when 63% of NHS deaths were of people who made up 16% of the NHS labour force?!! Doctors and nurses, some of the most respected people within our community”
Jerome wrote
“A debate shifted on whether the Virus fed on fat or cholesterol ”
Unless my knowledge of biology is weaker than I though, viruses don’t ‘feed’ on anything!
Generally the DT comments are well informed about COVID.
BTW, since the DT is by far the best paper to read for facts about this crisis and many other subjects, I suggest you supply the link for those of us that also buy the online version of the DT.
Apologies. I usually do. The above is in the comments.
https://www-telegraph-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/19/cholesterol-lowering-drug-could-see-coronavirus-treated-like/amp/?amp_js_v=a3&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASDYAQE%3D#aoh=15953539768480&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2020%2F07%2F19%2Fcholesterol-lowering-drug-could-see-coronavirus-treated-like%2F
a very interesting article: https://www.nature.com/news/infectious-disease-tough-choices-to-reduce-ebola-transmission-1.16298
a C Whitty; in 2014; writing with N Ferguson (of IC, to help jog your memory).
….. predictions …… models …….. the science ……. listen to the experts …… sheep … do what you are told …….
what a world of chaps; chaps need chaps that chaps can trust .. otherwise, where would a chap be? .. talk to a chap one knows, when a chap needs a spot of advice ……. why of course , says spitty-Whitty …….. chat to old Fergy … he knows his stuff ……. good chap, solid chap ……..
Thank goodness for UK foreign aid. How else would these impoverished people in Sierra Leone gey by. Perhaps there is another side to this https://youtu.be/yHEccFSpc3k, which might make Whitty’s name rhyme with fan powered substances.
and little Patty Vally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Vallance head of research at GSF famed makers of vaccines …… according to this tweet, still working for big pharma
https://twitter.com/SpeddingCharlie …… great that all these chaps know each other … and still keep drawing big fat salaries, whilst others are ruined ……
fearful epidemic sweeps the land …………. https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1278675557165731840
Official ONS statistics ….. from … “Scientists who warn ..”
confirms what Dr K quoted last week: 1 in 2500 people test positive;
so in this tweet, where pubs are described as “hot-beds”, the person comments you would need to visit 60 pubs; each filled with 40 people; to come across ONE person testing positive;
thank the Lord for experts like Patty Vally; who “warn ………”
beware out there everyone: death stalks you at every corner ………..
Surely, the actual infection rate is now much less than that quoted?
The best estimate I have seen gives the false positive rate for PCR tests for SARS-Cov-19 as 1%. Many authorities say it is actually far higher than that. But assuming a low false positive rate of 1%, one would expect to see on average 25 false positive results for every 2,500 people tested, even if there were no significant amounts of this virus around. Are such results discarded before any figures for positive tests are announced? If they are, what false positive rate is now assumed? if they are not, will the epidemic go on for ever?
Great question!
Dr Kendrick has suggested a false positive rate of 3% (July 5, 2020) which is considerably lower than all other estimates out there and on the good doctor’s own admission, probably an underestimate.
In new Zealand as of today 20th July.
Number of confirmed and probable cases 1,554
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-current-situation/covid-19-current-cases
But – Total tested to date 443,169 22 Jan to 19 July 2020
At a rate of 3% we might suggest at the very least 14,700 NZ positives based on the most conservative false positive calculations and based on the almost half million tests. And that would in theory be the minimum in a zero infection population.
What am I missing? Or should I post this in morning when my head is a bit fresher ? Too late !
you are not missing anything Jerome: you are just calling out one of the biggest frauds that has perpetrated; there has been no discussion of False-Positive Rate;
Friends in NZ sent me some calculations of reported positive results, divided by number of tests; it quickly started running at less than 1%, indeed falling to 0.3% or less; goodness only knows what was being detected;
The disease was circulating there from December it seems, from anecdotes; indeed, hospital admissions for “pneumonia” in a very hot summer, but at that stage, no terror. The first attributed death was an elderly, housebound lady with bad lungs, on the isolated west coast of their S Island. Seemingly no-one thought to say: if the disease got there, surely it was all through the country? If one applies the fact that respiratory viruses erupt in temperate zones; in the late winter/spring, it was clearly madness to anticipate a widespread viral eruption in nz in the middle of seemingly a very hot and sunny summer; the disease spreads then, but does so quietly, amongst a resistant population, likely because of a very hot summer; Vit D etc, and the inherent behaviour of respiratory viruses; they stage their eruptions in winter/spring. They lay the seeds in other parts of the year. Well and resistant folks will throw the virus off and keep going.
Call me naive Terry if you will but are we saying that the infection rate was deliberately suppressed in NZ and if so to whose advantage might that be ? Is Mr Bonkers at play ?
thanks Jerome. The “official narrative”, so lovingly nurtured by the world MSM, is clearly that the rona only arrived in NZ 2 days before house-arrest was instituted; so magically it was slain; (like St George and the dragon); by house-arrest. The contrary … observation … was that there were 5-6000 visitors from China all through spring 2009 and summer. Folks were reporting signs and symptoms (in retrospect) fully consistent with the rona quietly moving through the population; (after all in a northern hemisphere, where would you go from China, for some sunshine?) … but as Dr K and others have so pointed out: good Vit D levels up the innate immune system; so resistance is good; (I use that phrase instead of immunity); and intruders are slain in the nasal mucosa. So there were a whole pile of anecdotes of folks having bad chest infections over what was seemingly the hottest and sunniest summer for a long time: those understanding Vit D would recognise the benefit of the population breathing in virus; that had travelled from the N Hemisphere. Cases (PCR tests) were reported in nz; some were symptomatic; some were not. It is the official narrative that the world media has so embraced, that denies an alternate view. Official narrative=bug arrived 2 days before house-arrest. In the UK, you can similarly find on various twitter feeds a whole pile of UK folks who report illnesses so consistent with the rona, back from about Nov in the UK; again, the official UK narrative is: nothing to see, move on; same in Italy and France: French service personnel returning from the World Military Games in Wuhan (Oct 2019) reported much respiratory illness.
Dr K first pointed us all to this article https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29 and Ivor Cummins has taken up the lance, and focussed on the profoundly seasonal nature of these respiratory viral waves: so much of rona’s behaviour seems flu-like. So rona erupted as a wave on almost the same date across Europe, and the US; (discussed in detail in the above article). These respiratory viruses seem to embed summer/autumn; go dormant; and erupt later in a seemingly very coordinated way; (according to a seasonal stimulus, as Hope-Simpson called it). Ivor Cummins has made available a PDF of HS’s wonderful book.
So Australia and NZ could never have a wave of simultaneous, serious illness when it was prevalent in northern Europe; (as they could not have snow at that time); the virus does’t behave like that; it is a winter creature. Mmany will have natural immunity from being exposed to coronaviruses all their lives; Victoria seems to be an explosion of “Case-itis”; they could equally be finding asymptomatic adenovirus, rhinovirus, parainfluenzae, coxsackievirus …… and screeching about that too.
Terry, viruses were able to get about well before we had mass transport for people, so I think this disease vector is possibly false, but appears true because if you do lots of testing, you find lots of cases, and many false cases.
Terry Wright
Thanks for taking time & effort to respond. Troubling.
I am also of the opinion that the idea of an enemy, one that’s nurtured, an enemy to all, that is not seen to be the fault of government – an act of God in old biblical sense, a new devil, has to suit the political machinery as an increasingly cynical & sceptical public demanding an ever “improving” standard of living, driven by media hysteria – cannot be sated. A great distraction if you like. The mask or muzzle is window dressing, show boating, symbol of the new religion.
I console myself in that at best it’s an act of solidarity with the immune degraded, the elderly infirm – largely VIT D deficient.
I witnessed a gent lowering his mask to enjoy his smoke on Monday. Still struggling to make sense of it all.
I was in a supermarket today, and came out of the end of an aisle and stopped as someone may have been about to cross my path. I asked if she was going down the aisle or across to the rest of the shop. I couldn’t tell what the reply was, and I explained I couldn’t understand. The reason? She had a mask on which muffled her voice, and I couldn’t pick up cues by lipreading. I wonder how much of this will go on, or whether people will just stop communicating, as the powers that be seem to want.
No one seems to have even considered how difficult it is for those of us who can’t hear clearly. I rely a great deal on lip reading , and I am sure many others have to do the same. If I didn’t have the subtitles on when I watch the news I would understand it even less than I do already. It seems to me that the Government don’t care enough.
Jerome Savage: Not possible to make any sense of it, except through the lens of pharmaceutical industry control of the entire population through wielding the levers of power of government. We have witnessed the actions of some of the most incompetent political leaders I can recall. In Washington, D.C. there are three (1,500 total) pharma lobbyists for every member of Congress (435 total). In addition, while many doctors have learned to successfully treat those afflicted, in some places, such as Elmhurst hospital in Brooklyn, too many people have been killed by inappropriate treatment by doctors. And now, in some states, medical staff have been fully indemnified against malpractice claims despite the incompetent treatment. In California not a single child has died of the ‘Rona, despite the inflated numbers of “cases” and deaths, yet the state superintendent is calling for schools to be re-opened only to masked children sitting six feet apart and taught by a masked teacher. No social interaction; no recess. An entire cohort of children traumatized by colossal stupidity. Gargantuan stupidity. I say it’s time to throw all the morons out of office, and start with a new batch of morons.
An anecdote for sure, but maybe of interest. Here’s a broadly based story about how ERs are being overwhelmed.
https://apnews.com/b41b3eae4574d3630d6904261ad88871
Scary title: As virus surges in some US states, emergency rooms swamped
From the link: Around Seattle, which was the nation’s first hot spot for the virus that causes COVID-19, a new wave of patients is showing up at emergency departments, said nurse Mike Hastings.
My anecdote: Last week my wife woke up with chest pains and looked starkly white. She was panicking and I rushed her over to a central ER for North Seattle. (It turned out to be medication induced gastritis and ended routinely and rather quickly.) The ER itself was super calm, nurses chatting and joking at their station, no apparent overcrowding anywhere that I could see, and we ended up moving about in order to get a CT etc. No patients in the waiting room. A stark contrast to the picture painted by the story above.
T-cells. Immune response. Dosing. Boosters. Side effects.’
The latest on vaccines, with lots of links. Plenty of observations to bend to your own needs. Test how flexible this material is. (If you break it, try to see to it that you’re not out there on the limb.)
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/07/20/more-pfizer-phase-i-results-antibodies-viral-mutations-and-t-cells
I hope you have seen this “undressing” of “Covid hoax” by Dr Coleman.
Please, do if it is not taken down as has happened to several of his videos.
Very disturbing, and very funny at times. I’m going to find it on YouTube and press the thumbs up if it isn’t too late.
“The key to humor is often self-loathing or sarcasm. In a sense, that’s how self-loathing is made palatable.” James Gray
Very interesting, or as Alice in Wonderland might say “Curiouser and curiouser”. It’s getting quite fun trying to work out your meanings.
I like to roll out a weighty piece like this once in a while.
So gratifying when its inspiration walks right into its path.
a very nice tweet from Gabor Erdosi; who collaborates with Ivor Cummins, and is an inveterate reader of scientific papers. He talks of conversations with his grandmother.
a couple of lines down is this tweet https://twitter.com/urukanguro/status/1285122841260642306
with the same kindly and sensible ways in it; I find the mantra that has been chanted so often of “protect the elderly” ……. as crazy and lacking any insight into how it might be done, and what the effects will be on those so isolated; who just crave human contact with their families.
To fight COVID eat more greens and spend more time exposed to sunlight.
https://jcs.biologists.org/content/127/2/388
Light-harvesting chlorophyll pigments enable mammalian mitochondria to capture photonic energy and produce ATP
“Conclusion
Both increased sun exposure (Dhar and Lambert, 2013; John et al., 2004; Kent et al., 2013a; Kent et al., 2013b; Levandovski et al., 2013) and the consumption of green vegetables (Block et al., 1992; Ferruzzi and Blakeslee, 2007; van’t Veer et al., 2000) are correlated with better overall health outcomes in a variety of diseases of aging. These benefits are commonly attributed to an increase in vitamin D from sunlight exposure and consumption of antioxidants from green vegetables. Our work suggests these explanations might be incomplete. Sunlight is the most abundant energy source on this planet. Throughout mammalian evolution, the internal organs of most animals, including humans, have been bathed in photonic energy from the sun. Do animals have metabolic pathways that enable them to take greater advantage of this abundant energy source? The demonstration that: (1) light-sensitive chlorophyll-type molecules are sequestered into animal tissues; (2) in the presence of the chlorophyll metabolite P-a, there is an increase in ATP in isolated animal mitochondria, tissue homogenates and in C. elegans, upon exposure to light of wavelengths absorbed by P-a; and (3) in the presence of P-a, light alters fundamental biology resulting in up to a 17% extension of life span in C. elegans suggests that, similarly to plants and photosynthetic organisms, animals also possess metabolic pathways to derive energy directly from sunlight”
Lives exclusively from sun energy.
https://api-nationalgeographic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/animals/invertebrates/g/golden-jellyfish?amp_js_v=a3&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASDYAQE%3D#aoh=15953535874622&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s
A brief taste of Reality, not so very far from your own keyboard – just all the way. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2016293?query=RP#.XxYuuKyBp2h.facebook
JDP – Compulsive reading, yes but is not each.& every death no matter the cause potentially just as traumatic?
“…is not each.& every death no matter the cause potentially just as traumatic?”
With about 60 million dying every year worldwide, and about 600,000 in the UK (rough figures), that’s a lot of trauma. That’s about 160,000 per day worldwide and 1,600 per day in the UK.
Too much, indeed, for anyone but a god or a saint even to contemplate.
So most people go to the other extreme and ignore the deaths. Many people’s lives contain quite enough personal trauma without going to pieces over those 600,000 who die each year – and about which deaths most of us can do exactly nothing.
Exactly Tom – my point is there is no hierarchy of deaths.
That is one person’s perception and far from reality. Look at the CDC data.
Since 2/1/2020, 1.45 million people have died of all causes in the U.S. Deaths involving covid-19 have been 130K. Deaths involving pneumonia, influenza or covid-19 have been 217K.
In other words, 1.32 million people died of causes other than covid-19 that we never heard about. 87K people died of pneumonia or influenza, unrelated to covid-19, that we never hear about.
Chad S The panic spreaders will say that the 130k CV19 deaths are excess & I have neither the inclination nor energy to check 2019 I was going to say, but lo n behold I did. First Qtr 2019 deaths 920k, 2nd Qtr 836k Total = well in excess of your figure for 2020 assuming your figures are correct and assuming 1.45 million is to end of June.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/mortality-dashboard.htm
Tell me where I went wrong here Chad !
This is the link to the data I used: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
What is interesting is that the “Percent of Expected Deaths” (definition per CDC: % of expected deaths is the number of deaths for all causes in 2020 compared to the average number across the same period in 2017 – 2019) from 2/1/2020 – 7/18/2020 is running at 107% as reported by CDC. The “Deaths From All Causes” is 1,466,723. So if deaths from all causes is adjust to be in line with past expected death level, then we should be at 1,370,769 deaths from all causes. The difference between those two numbers is 95,954, whereas the number of covid-19 deaths is 130,250. In other words, 34,000 of the covid-19 deaths are part of expected deaths.
Thank you
We seem to act JD; as though no-one died of anything else; we are obsessed with this mono-maniacal obsession; it would be appropriate to have violins playing in the background; I greatly felt the lack of those. I really wonder if the author practised the speciality they write about; folks don’t last, going on like that; it seems written by a ghost-writer from a womens’ weekly. The epi-centres we heard about weeks ago; are empty of such cases; the left-wing MSM seems to have to keep this going; anyway, any how; (remember the NEJM published the false HOCQ article a few weeks ago? You believe everthing they say?) NY Times, WP … all propaganda fronts.
Terry Wright: Sad to say, you’re right. Certainly in the U.S., journalism has become a partisan political tool, and especially since Trump. And a tool of the pharmaceutical industry, whose advertising dollars keep them on life support, and in some cases, ventilators. I love newspapers! For fifty years I read our local paper daily, until I realized they were lying about Dr. Wakefield and vaccine injury, a topic forbidden of discussion in polite circles. I got fed up and cancelled. There are still good journalists, and good journalism, but only in odd pockets, and mainly on line.
Gary – the lobbying thing seems obscene and anti democratic. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seems willing to take it on & spells out her concerns in this video having a go at big pharma more than once, revealing few minutes & seems uncomfortable for those answering the questions.
With Ted Cruz she is promising to forego lobbying influencers in lawmaking process – it seems.
‘M not sure about Crazyo Cortez, she seems a bit of a wolf in sheeps clothing. She seems to care about people as much as most other politicians do.
AHN – Having read all the horror stories about Cortez & her ilk, ie the freedom busting Democrats in the palm of big pharma and other lobbyists/bribers, this defied the narrative & was a pleasant if hopefully not just a token nod in direction of good governance.
thanks Gary; I would agree; things have so changed as the years have passed; readers might enjoy this snap showing what the media (MSM) get up to ……….
shirley3349 “…will the epidemic go on for ever?”
Not here in the UK.
Last week BoJo was saying back to normal by Christmas and the several papers today saying the vaccine will be ready for Christmas.
Not sure what normal means: normal normal (i.e. pre covid) or new normal (i.e. post covid: will wearing face masks take its place alongside mandatory seat belt wearing and no smoking in public?)
Interesting look at UVA and the ‘Rona, independent of vitamin D production:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/07/21/coronavirus-uv-radiation.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20200721Z1&mid=DM600324&rid=921543833
I commend this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
Dr K detailed this one or two blogs back; but we could keep revisiting it, so important is it. The article looks at how if a disease has a high incidence, the ratio between false positive to true positive may be acceptable;
the lower the incidence of the disease becomes, the greater the imbalance becomes;
so in the above link, they contrast high incidence disease to low incidence: 40% infected then down to 2% infection;
at 40% infected the false: true ratio is about 1:13 … so for 14 positives, 13 are true ……
…….. at that 2%, the ratio of false:true is 5:2 .. so for 7 positives, 2 are now true ……
so that is at a 2% incidence; as Dr K said (ONS agree with him!!), about 1:2500 test positive in the UK at present; so that is many times less incidence … (0.04% by my calculations)..
Dr K’s calculations suggested (using 1:2000 incidence and a 3% FP rate)
that the ratio of FALSE:TRUE is 60:1 …….. so for every 61 tests trumpeted as positive;
1 is true, and 60 are false positives ………… but please keep screeching …………….
A deeply detailed thought experiment examining what causes the worst COVID cases, looking at the endothelium, endothelial pericytes, serotonin, platelet hypercoagulability, histamine, leucocytes, and vascular neogenesis creating alveolar capillary shunts making the lung coagulation go systemic, etc . . . and possible ways to address the causes – all with disclaimer ’cause the RCTs ain’t in yet.
40 minutes.
“A thought experiment” suspect most people have had enough of that pseudo science recently. “What if we did this?” “What if we did that?”
What about if we did nothing and stop causing so much unfounded fear?
AhNotepad,
Here’s another thought experiment:
A• You either get COVID-19 or you don’t.
B• If you get it, you either don’t know it or you do.
C• If you do know it, your symptoms are mild or they’re worse.
D• If worse, they take you to hospital or not.
E• If in hospital, you’re either worse or much worse.
F• If much worse you’re either treated with intelligence and caring or not.
G• With intelligence and caring or without it, you get better or you don’t.
H• If you don’t . . . you’re dead.
Make up your own rationalizations for each branching. After all, it’s not science.
Or, we could make it a true observational study and return here, same time & place, over successive June twenty-seconds to report letters• and compare findings. (No masks for you; no cheating. You’re only excused for a possible H• 🙂 )
I think that’s as real as we could make it.
Others would be welcome. Why not?
It would be interesting if all commenters here were to tell of their personal experiences with COVID-19, should they be that unlucky. Why not?
Um . . . July 22. Doh.
My partner and I have fortunately had no CV19 experience.
I think that rather than looking at a tree, it would be interesting to ask you and others to provide their best estimates for a set of probabilities.
1) You get tested for CV19 without any relevant symptoms, and it comes out positive. What is the probability P1 that you have the disease, or (1-P1) that it was a false positive.
2) You get some of the recognised symptoms of CV19. What is the probability P2 that you have CV19, or that you don’t (1-P2).
3) You go to hospital for some reason and are found to be positive for CV19, but don’t actually have CV19. What is the probability P3 that you get the appropriate treatment, or do not get the appropriate treatment (1-P3).
4) You are in hospital with symptomatic CV19. What is the probability that you get appropriate treatment P4, or that you don’t get treated appropriately (1-P4).
Given the fact that many get diagnosed with CV19 but show no symptoms, is it conceivable that some of these severe COVID patients, are in fact suffering from some other undiagnosed infection that is therefore not treated correctly?
It’s very possible. Many people have systemic inflammation of some sort without realising it.
And in this context, I’d consider vitamin d deficiency an underlying health condition.
Has anyone seen this yet? “Nurse on the Frontlines of COVID-19 Shares Her Experience” https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/06/27/elmhurst-hospital-coronavirus.aspx
There’s a lot more to this interview and commentary than the title suggests. I’m thinking about iatrogenic death and wondering whether to create some new words: “plutogenic” and “nomogenic”, meaning “caused by money” and “caused by laws”.
The interview is with a nurse from Florida who went up to New York for a few weeks to help. She was in the Elmhurst Hospital in Queens – described ad nauseam as “the epicentre of the epicentre”. One can see why New York had so many “cases” and “deaths” – unfortunately the deaths were real, so my quotation marks question whether they had anything to do with SARS-COV-2.
According to this apparently honest, reliable witness, Elmhurst and many of its doctors operated a policy of maximizing revenue. They recorded negative tests as positive and deliberately put positive patients in rooms with those testing negative. Medicare gives hospitals $13,000 for every Covid-19 patient, and $39,000 for every patient put on a ventilator; go figure.
Virtually no patient survived being put on a ventilator; nevertheless the doctors went right on putting patients on ventilators. Some of them stated openly that Covid-19 patients had a 90% chance of dying (so it didn’t make much difference how they were treated).
The article is well worth reading – and, if you have time, the interview. I kept wondering, at every turn, “Does this apply here in the UK?”
I forgot to ask when the indictments for murder and manslaughter will begin.
At a rough guess, never.
Tom Welsh – see this one then – bears out the nurse’s story – and yes, had read her account a little while back : appalling. Now, this from a patient – the ramifications – bloody scary :-
This is a real ‘Heads Up’ story – more shenanigans re Covid-19 ‘massaging’ the stats – permission has been given to share – This makes one so very angry, Miraculously the poster survived :-
“I have debated for days about sharing MY STORY. Only my family and my closest friends have known about me getting sick a few weeks ago. I have decided to let my all of friends and family know what I have recently experienced. I feel like many of us are torn between what we are hearing on the news about COVID-19. On June 20 all 9 of us went on vacation. I got sick the second night we were there immediately after dinner. I was the only one who ate a salad. (When I get sick and throw up it elevates my blood sugar.) My blood sugar would not go down so Scott made me go to the hospital. My husband (who has been trained by the BEST- Eells, Charlotte and WCH nurses) had to tell, let me rephrase, insist after 3 days being in the hospital that I needed IV fluids. I begged them to call my endocrinologist, Dr Eells or Charlotte. I told them what they do to get me well. They would not contact them and I never did receive that treatment. They knew we were coming home from vacation on Saturday. Ironically, I was discharged on Saturday. One of my three doctors came in my room that morning and told me she wanted to apologize to me that she was “wrong” about my blood work and I wasn’t in DKA the last time she said I was. This apology had costed me two more nights in the hospital. My husband had previously questioned why I was “back in DKA” after being out of DKA. In my 38 years of being a diabetic that has never happened before. So, so many things happened that I won’t go in to detail that had Scott and I questioning my care. I called our insurance on Monday to discuss my treatment and care. I quickly learn that the hospital had me down as a COVID patient. The insurance lady explained that my bill would be paid 100% because of this. She also told me the hospital received federal money for this and if I had died the hospital would have received an additional 13,000. (Thank GOD for Scott, right!)
This is what you need to know. I didn’t have COVID. NONE of my doctors had N95 masks or suits. This is what we are “hearing” that is happening to people we don’t know. My 91,000 bill is being paid in full because of that one thing on My chart. My paperwork sent home doesn’t mention COVID. That apology, was still billed to my insurance for an additional two night stay. I can’t prove my lack of care was on purpose but I’ll let you decide. I am a number on the news screen you guys are hearing about thinking the COVID cases are on the rise…I am not suggesting anyone take COVID less serious but I do believe with my experience we are getting a lot of fake news!”
Post shared with permission.
Yes I saw this interview – horrifying to say the least. It just reinforces my view of a totally corrupt and inhuman medical system.
Are we humans or not I wonder?
BTW, the nurse got fired at once when the management of the hospital found out that she was a “whistleblower”.
Tom Welsh: Error in my comment. You are correct; Elmhurst is in Queens, not Brooklyn. Now, to add insult to injury, in New York and elsewhere medical professionals have been fully indemnified against malpractice claims, but only for ‘Rona cases. A further incentive to classify everything as ‘Rona (in Florida they’ve added death by motorcycle crash to the ‘Rona statistics).
“National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act” (USA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act
To read Wikipedia’s account of the matter (which, as you will understand, is wholly objective and not in any way biased), there was some unnecessary fuss in the 1970s and 1980s when parents of children who were harmed or died sought to blame the good, beneficent, harmless vaccines they had received.
Now, get this for chutzpah:
“Because of this, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) in 1986, establishing a federal no-fault system to compensate victims of injury caused by mandated vaccines”.
So the official story is that:
1. A few children got sick or died, and their parents (quite wrongly) tried to blame the wholesome vacicnes they had been given.
2. It was conclusively proved that the vaccines did not cause the harm.
3. Therefore Congress passed a law making it impossible to sue or otherwise seek compensation from vaccine manufacturers or anyone else for alleged vaccine-caused harm.
That’s clear enough, isn’t it? Vaccines never cause any harm; therefore everyone associated with making and administering them must be given legal immunity against any comeback.
That’s also why, up to 2016, the US government paid over $1.7 billion to sufferers from alleged vaccine harm. (Of course vaccines never harm anyone, but the government paid those people $1.7 billion just to stop their embarrassing babbling).
Tom – there is an argument that we are living in a very litigious society. Plus my own contention would be that governments are profligate by nature.
Devils advocation speak at work here if you like.
Jerome, I think that the USA has gone crazy on litigation with the result that lawyers have far too much power, and all kinds of things are perverted as a result.
But the whole point of the justice system is to give recourse to those who would otherwise be powerless.
If vaccines are as harmless as we are told, why is it necessary to give their makers and administrators immunity from legal redress?
The way the American system works, suppliers take out appropriate insurance. If the risks are reasonably low, the insurance is affordable and sustainable.
Not only do vaccine supplier have legal immunity – victims are even forbidden to publish their stories. (If they want any compensation, anyway).
But, it gets better.
In the act there is a requirement on the NIH (I think) to carry out a biennial review of vaccine safety.
So over the intervening 34 years, 16 reviews should have taken place.
I’ll let you guess how many have actually taken place.
Then this Tom : Robert Kennedy jnr v. Dershowitz
Heated Vaccine Debate – Kennedy Jr. v. Dershowitz
268,002 views•Premiered Jul 23, 2020
No guesses for who the winner is… And, no, I would not call it ‘heated’. Gentlemanly, civilised.
Worth watching.
One of the best COVIDEO’S I’ve watched. Highly recommend!
I watched that video some time back – either here, or maybe the not-guardian website.
I just hope that very brave young woman has not suffered for making telling the truth.
There is also this:
“State-by-state breakdown of federal aid per COVID-19 case”
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/state-by-state-breakdown-of-federal-aid-per-covid-19-case.html
West Virginia currently holds the record, receiving $470,000 from Washington for every single “Covid-19 case”. That’s about ten years’ income (gross) for the luckier of working people, although to a politician it’s about enough to buy lunch (with suitable wines, brandy and cigars).
Could there possibly be any tendency, however slight, to “improve” those figures a little?
and this:
“State of Alaska receives $1.25B in federal COVID-19 relief”
https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/State-of-Alaska-receives-125-billion-in-federal-COVID-19-relief–569877881.html
“All of us making use of such data should be aware of our own confirmatory biases, avoiding groupthink and applying the same standards of scrutiny to findings that appear to support our prior beliefs or personal biases as to those which challenge them. In such circumstances, we all may need to make decisions based on “balance of probabilities” rather than “evidence beyond reasonable doubt”, and consider how it meshes with existing interpretations, values and priorities.”
From:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/07/22/managing-uncertainty-in-the-covid-19-era/
What’s the point here JD? It seems full of vague emollients, such as Sir Humphrey might have constructed in his prime, to weasel his way out of yet another fix ..
as a talk to bookmark, or actually listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmDng_uMCnY I thought this very good and engaging to followl
given in the US 2 yrs ago by an ENT surgeon, the guy talks of Vit D; how it is crucial; how the enzyme to make it is in the nasal mucosa; it shows the gradient of moving up to taking a decent intake: first you fix rickets at the lowest intake, then you fix … and on it goes.
I was struck by the survey of 47 Australian dermatologists, which found that 85% of them were deficient in Vitamin D. While 15% of them had levels associated with osteomalacia and rickets.
As the speaker observes, dermatologists have about as much affection for the sun as vampires.
thanks Tom; yes, Australian dermatologists hiding indoors and risking rickets! All this mad advocacy to ensure no sun exposure; all a sort of religious zealotry; in fact, most religions are quiet mild, compared to the medical tyranny which tries to stamp its boot on everyone these days.
On the subject of being told to stay out of the sun, our local water board put their quarterly magazine through the door the other day and, unusually, I actually read some of it. On page 3 they were telling people to drink more water during the hot weather, fair enough, but also to ‘stay out of the sun between 11am and 3pm’ or use a factor 30 sun screen.
I sent a ‘complaint’ via their website with a lot of information about the huge numbers of people with vitamin D deficiency and the impact on health (mental health too, of course) and the current issue regarding respiratory viruses. Haven’t had a reply as yet…
I wouldn’t hold your breath
This should settle the mask debate: The CDC says face masks do not work. Published May 2020.
“Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
They were wrong about cholesterol; they were wrong about statins; they were wrong about sunlight; they were wrong about vitamin D; they were wrong about vaccinations; they were wrong about saturated fat; they were wrong about hydroxychloroquine; they were wrong about ventilation and intubation; but by golly when it comes to face masks they got it absolutely right. /s
Martin – very important that contrary opinions are accommodated and thanks for this. The contents of Dr John’s contribution, just above your own deserves attention, more especially if its flawed. But it certainly carries weight given CDC connection.
I’ve been sharing facts and science about COVID with people, though most will only believe what the government and media tell them. To have a highly corrupt (I mean respected 🙂 ) organization like the CDC publish this I hope can go a long way in changing some minds!
Dr John – Mixed signals – we know the present director had a paper withdrawn before his CDC involvement (making his appointment controversial). But suggestions of corruption in the latter post takes away from the previous post. I took it that despite any leanings in CDC they managed to come clean on subject of masks.
An errant research team ?
Better things than masks to spend your money on:
https://www.keepbritainfree.com/so/42NDxxFQt?cid=6d91f31f-9379-4478-b1e4-1f5f645d29f6#/main
I tried to post a response to the British Government’s intention to vaccinate all over 50s and many school children against the seasonal flu this autumn/winter.
Wasted effort in the Guardian.
My issue with this intention to vaccinate double the number vaccinated last year is that ‘ Influenza vaccination and respiratory virus interference among Department of Defense personnel during the 2017–2018 influenza season’ in Vaccine volume 38 issue 2 notes ‘ The odds of testing positive for individual respiratory viruses by vaccination status were also examined (Table 5). The influenza vaccine was sufficient at protecting all influenza virus results tested for at a significant level except two (Influenza B Victoria and Influenza coinfections) (Table 5). Both Influenza B Victoria and Influenza coinfections had reduced odds in the vaccinated cohort, but not at significant levels (Table 5). Examining non-influenza viruses specifically, the odds of both coronavirus and human metapneumovirus in vaccinated individuals were significantly higher when compared to unvaccinated individuals (OR = 1.36 and 1.51, respectively) (Table 5). Conversely, all other non-influenza respiratory viruses had decreased odds in the vaccinated population, including significantly decreased odds ratios in vaccinated people with parainfluenza, RSV, and non-influenza virus coinfections (Table 5). Additionally, the odds ratio in the no pathogen detected cohort was significantly higher in vaccinated versus unvaccinated individuals (OR = 1.51) (Table 5).’
Given that we have an ongoing coronavirus ‘pandemic’, isn’t it grossly irresponsible to be carrying out a medical intervention that might lead to a third more coronavirus infections in the most healthy, and God knows how many more in the vulnerable?
“Given that we have an ongoing coronavirus ‘pandemic’, isn’t it grossly irresponsible to be carrying out a medical intervention that might lead to a third more coronavirus infections in the most healthy, and God knows how many more in the vulnerable?”
Yes. That’s why they are doing it.
The supreme imperative, it is clear, is to keep the numbers of “Covid-19 cases” and “Covid-19 deaths” high enough to justify the indefinite continuation of emergency measures. If they can hold out till the flu season, they can pass off a lot flu cases and deaths as Covid-19. And if enough people – especially the vulnerable elderly – can be vaccinated, there may be considerably more genuine deaths.
As Napoleon said, “You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs”.
Guardian has damaged its reputation via a vis impartial reporting due to its funding source. The telegraph facilitates readers’ commentary.
thanks Steve-R; I thought this interview from Tom Jefferson, from 2009 was very interesting
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-epidemiologist-tom-jefferson-a-whole-industry-is-waiting-for-a-pandemic-a-637119.html He works for Cochrane as I undestand it.
“”Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur.”
“Approximately 7 percent of influenza-like illness cases are caused by influenza viruses. It’s a very small percentage. What I know is that real influenza is systematically overestimated.”
And what about the 200 other kinds of viruses? So why aren’t researchers interested in them?
Jefferson: It’s easy: They can’t make money with it. With rhinoviruses, RSV and the majority of the other viruses, it’s hard to make a lot of money or a career out of it. Against influenza, though, there are vaccines, and there are drugs you can sell. And that’s where the big money from the pharmaceuticals industry is. It makes sure that research on influenza is published in the good journals.” …. a thoughtful commentary.
fascinating: “British Government’s intention to vaccinate all over 50s”
from their own documentation: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/flu-vaccine-effectiveness-in-2017-to-2018-season
effective? “10.1% in those aged 65 and over” .. UK data from the above.
from Tom Jefferson https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-epidemiologist-tom-jefferson-a-whole-industry-is-waiting-for-a-pandemic-a-637119.html
“Approximately 7 percent of influenza-like illness cases are caused by influenza viruses. It’s a very small percentage. What I know is that real influenza is systematically overestimated.”
What is not over-estimated are the profits to be made from vaccines; and the legal exemption from liability, for the manufacturers.
This https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/vaccine-debate-is-on-robert-f-kennedy-jr-vs-alan-dershowitz/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=b0614aa6-8672-46c7-861a-a9d0b8b08316 was flagged up by Robert Kennedy Jr’s organisation – not sure if anyone here has listened through it yet, but at one point Kennedy also raises this study into the flu vaccine and notes that it isn’t a lone study there being 6 other detailed examinations of the issue.
AhNotepad, and anyone else interested in transmissibility, masks, etc.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/87676?xid=nl_medpageexclusive_2020-07-24&eun=g42415d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MPTExclusives_072420&utm_term=NL_Gen_Int_Medpage_Exclusives_Active
“COVID-Positive Doc: ‘I Didn’t Wear a Mask and I Regret It’”
What else didn’t the doc do? Didn’t have sufficient vitamin D perhaps? Didn’t have adequate vitamin C perhaps? Didn’t manage their stress levels? (medics are known for being under pressure. Many confounders, to label one as being a cause is not epidemiologically sound.
I thought I would read it. It is the most confusing tale. I suppose what they found it that, no matter what you do, you can get infected. I didn’t wear a mask around infected patients for at least two months (there were no masks) and did not get infected. So, what does this prove? Nothing, would be my conclusion. It is simply more fear mongering. N=1. Funny how people are so keen to promote anecdotes when it suits their argument, and so unwilling to accept anecdotes when it does not.
Dr Kendrick.
Yeah, funny.
Keep in mind though, that it’s funny whatever argument is being suited – IF you base it on N=1.
There’s plenty enough shallow argument in comments and replies here to obviate need for a laugh track. I thought you’d be taking more responsibility for that since your name defines the blog.
My point in putting up that link was to show that NO ONE knows enough to reasonably have staunchly held convictions about this COVID phenomenon – WHATEVER “side” they might hope to bolster. Black swans seem to be everywhere.
Promoting anecdotes as argument is no joke.
Dear Doctor K
I begin to think all medical questions research etc is best summarised by the Simon and Garfunkel lines
All life’s a jest
T’il, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
The quotation is from memory
You look and listen mostly to what you you want to hear.
The Boxer first verse;
I am just a poor boy
Though my story’s seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises
All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
Even more relevant.
Steve R
I admit I was too lazy to look up the exact words. As you say even more relevant