Ioannidis comes through again
Nothing hesitant or delicate about his latest publication, with two equally courageous and CURRENTLY EMPLOYED academic coauthors.

The core conclusion:

Experienced modelers drew early on parallels between COVID-19 and the Spanish flu [2] that caused >50 million deaths with mean age at death being 28. We all lament the current loss of life. However, as of June 8, total fatalities are ~410,000 with median age ~80 and typically multiple comorbidities.

Predictions for hospital and ICU bed requirements were also entirely misinforming. Public leaders trusted models (sometimes even black boxes without disclosed methodology) inferring massively overwhelmed health care capacity (Table 1) [3]. However, eventually very few hospitals were stressed, for a couple of weeks. Most hospitals maintained largely empty wards, waiting for tsunamis that never came. The general population was locked and placed in horror-alert to save the health system from collapsing. Tragically, many health systems faced major adverse consequences, not by COVID-19 cases overload, but for very different reasons. Patients with heart attacks avoided visiting hospitals for care [4], important treatments (e.g. for cancer) were unjustifiably delayed [5], mental health suffered [6]. With damaged operations, many hospitals started losing personnel, reducing capacity to face future crises (e.g. a second wave). With massive new unemployment, more people may lose health insurance. The prospects of starvation and of lack of control for other infectious diseases (like tuberculosis, malaria, and childhood communicable diseases for which vaccination is hindered by the COVID-19 measures) are dire [7,8].

The important part is median age 80 and typically multiple comorbidities. In plain English, as everyone knows by now, this epidemic is killing people who were ALREADY DYING. If this virus didn't finish them off, another virus or bacterium would, or just another month of trying to live.

In return for NOT SAVING these people who are ALREADY DYING and WOULD DIE ANYWAY, we've ruined 6 billion lives. Everyone on earth. Millions of people will die LONG before their scheduled times, as every system from food to medicine to business to education to immunity to plain old SANITY has been totally and permanently disrupted.

Is that a good deal? NOT saving people who were already dying, in exchange for CAUSING millions of premature deaths and ruining EVERYONE?

It's a good deal for Bezos and Soros, and it's a good deal for the presidents and governors and mayors and "public" "health" officials who are getting their rocks off every minute as they watch the mass deaths and mayhem and gross suffering. Biggest and longest mass orgasm in history.

Therefore it's a good deal. Nobody else counts.

= = = = =

Footnote: It's clear from scientific articles at the time that the 1918 flu was a mix of bacterial pneumonia and viral influenza. Viruses were not well understood at the time; we couldn't see them until the electron microscope was invented in the '30s. Bacteria were seen and understood, and scientists at that time were seeing lots of pneumococcus bacteria in the flu cases. They often treated the entire epidemic as bacterial. There's no way to guess in retrospect how many of the deaths were from each microbe and how many were mixed; but for sure the 1918 epidemic couldn't be a model for a pure virus epidemic.

Labels: #defundpublichealth, infinite infinite infinite infinite evil, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 8:54 AM