We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Just a reminder… what are your risk figures for Covid-19(84) Just to point people back at an earlier samizdata article… I urge people to not only see what their risk estimate is, please also share that link with as many others as possible, so they too can get some idea of the true magnitude of what has underpinned the last year of state action, i.e. shutting down civil society.
So remember, it does not matter how many people get infected, it only matters who gets infected, because this is a very discriminating disease.
Addendum: some perspective from Germany.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
My risk turns out to be 0.0142%, which seems like good odds.
This is why I think the governmental response to covid has been decadent. In previous times, there was no way government would have shut down society and the economy for a disease such as this. We know this for a fact, because twice before, in 1957 and 1968, flu came from Asia and killed about 30,000 people each time, and society went on.
The difference between now and then was that there were limits to government spending, by which I mean borrowing. When Bretton Woods operated, the pound was linked to the dollar, and the dollar was linked to gold. Governments simply could not borrow 100% of GDP at the drop of a hat, it was not possible. Of course, today governments do not really “borrow” sums like that, they pretend to borrow them from the central bank, which pretends that it thinks that the bonds will one day be repaid. We are well into the realm of debt monetization, and hence a governmental Ponzi scheme. Apparently counterfeiting is legal when the government does it.
So because the government finds it can create money from thin air, it also finds it can lock down the economy and lock us all up for a year. It can destroy lives and livelihoods, and for what? Because they can? And that’s what is so decadent about it.
Am I totally in the wrong here, or am I the only person on the planet who appreciates the enormity of what has been done? Right from the beginning it has been known that there has been inexpensive, safe and effective, readily available treatment for this disease. Those in authority, aided by the mainstream media, have managed to convince the masses that this is not the case. By doing this, they have effectively murdered hundreds of thousands of people. I’m genuinely baffled as to why nobody is getting even a little bit cross about this. Is it that it isn’t really true and I am just another loon with a tinfoil hat on?
I’ve already sent the risk calculator to a number of people. The problem I’m finding is that after a year of house arrest and bombardment by behavioural psychologists and the media, a large swathe of people I’m encountering would probably if told so crawl up the M1 motorway stark naked with a dildo up there arse wearing a Cherie Booth mask braying like a donkey if they thought it meant they could get back to “normal”.
Many haven’t worked out yet that Bobby Ewing isn’t going to be stepping out of the shower.
Outside of specific circles there is little sense or reasoning left out there, sadly.
You are in the wrong. Something in his comments hints to me that Paul Marks also knows it. And so do many others. Regrettably, few of those many have the ears of any government, still less are in charge of one.
Kudos for using the word ‘enormity’ in its correct sense.
John K
The difference between now and then…
I think we had adults in charge then, i.e. folk capable of making a judgment, not panicked by profoundly ignorant journalists, and whose sense of proportion had probably benefited from exposure to one (in many cases two) world wars. Now, we have decadent nobodies in thrall to the next ‘opinion poll’.
This is part and parcel with the passage of the Age of Abundance. Our forebears had to struggle to put food on the table. Then, circa WWII, our technology and mostly market approach to problems finally overwhelmed those problems, and it was white picket fences for everyone, stretching into a benign and fruitful future. The culture that was America depended on striving, thrived on striving, but when striving at that intensity was no longer a prerequisite for survival, it became feasible for people to depart that striving culture in favor of… not striving. This culture of decadence, apparently historically common, has completely undermined the old striving culture to the point that people no longer feel it is necessary to put up with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. With the tattered remains of the momentum that striving earned us, they cry at the rude possibility that personal responsibility might still be required for individual survival.
Niall Kilmartin: “Something in his comments hints to me that Paul Marks also knows it. ”
Actually lol’d reading that, Niall. Thank you.
I am male, old, fat, have massively compromised lungs and (what we are not supposed to mention) may well have genetic markers that (by a total coincidence) are more common in people who are not of Chinese and Far Eastern origin. Not that this virus was designed to be more likely to kill Europeans – oh dear me no, what a terrible thought, as-I-said it is a total coincidence.
I still do not support lockdowns and so on. Because they do not work – and even if they did work (which they do not), keeping me alive is not worth destroying the Western World.
I repeat the points that have often been made – keeping a high Vitamin D. level will reduce your risk of becoming seriously ill by about 50% and Early Treatment with a Combination of existing (and long standing) medications will reduce your chance of being hospitalised by about 80%.
For some reason neither of these two facts is stressed by the international establishment – reducing deaths does not appear to be a priority for them (quite the contrary).
I didn’t mean am I wrong about being the only person in the know. I meant am I wrong about safe and effective treatment having been deliberately ignored. That I am wrong about that is the only explanation that I have been able to come up with for the total lack of outrage from everyone else.
As with the stealing of the US election, so with the both the lying-in-silence and the lying-out-loud parts of the propaganda against early treatment, it is not that there is a total lack of outrage. There is a lack of outrage in two groups: those made powerful by the policy and those unwise enough to get their information about it from the MSM alone.
The existence of the latter group has the usual knock-on effect. You will not persuade any member you meet by instantly ranting and raving and foaming at the mouth about it. A calmer and more informed approach achieves more. Hence Perry’s promotion of the viral risk assessor, for example: most people love to talk about themselves and the conversational gambit, “What’s your virus risk? Let’s look on the web and find out”, may end up telling them more than just the number – especially if you come to the conversation equipped with a knowledge of the annual risk of death from car crash, lightning strike, etc.
(The really honest and prepared will come to the conversation with a customised knowledge of those risks too, of course: men are several times more likely than women to die of lightning strikes, for example.)
0.0099%… not bad given I have cancer and am on steroid medication as a result.
But then I’m not that old.
Also I’ve been vaccinated so I’m sure it’s even lower than that.
There’s probably a higher risk crossing a busy road.
Completely off-topic but for those who havent already seen it there is a fine essay about Thomas Sowell on Quillette.
As a resident of a prefecture of Japan with 0 deaths, a couple of hundred total cases and a couple of active cases (It’s probably 0 but maybe I missed a report or two, if so less than 10) I judge my actual risk of death from the wuflu to be essentially 0. If I were exposed to the wuflu I suspect my actual risk of death or serious illness is also very, very close to 0 because I have lots of vitamin D and my only risk factors are highish blood pressure and being over 50.
Anyway I filled the survey in with a location in the UK and got this:
COVID associated death 0.0062% 1 in 16129 0.007% 1 in 14286 0.8857
COVID associated hospital admission 0.0521% 1 in 1919 0.0593% 1 in 1686 0.8786
If I were in the UK I assume I’d be vaccinated by now though (or if not be in the queue) so I expect that my risk of death would be identical to what it is now i.e. 0
Mine comes out as 0.0134%
I’m disappointed not to see the question “Have you already had COVID-19?”
This, I’m sure, would have taken my risk to effectively nil.
“it has been known that there has been inexpensive, safe and effective, readily available treatment for this disease.”
It has not been KNOWN… it has been ARGUED.
“I am just another loon with a tinfoil hat on?” Maybe.
“Early Treatment with a Combination of existing (and long standing) medications will reduce your chance of being hospitalised by about 80%.”
Even without “Early Treatment” the chance of an infected person to be hospitalized is maybe 3%. (All other recover on their own, at home). That’s also about the chance of recipients of “Early Treatment”. …
“it has been known that there has been inexpensive, safe and effective, readily available treatment for this disease.”
To be clear: the “Early Treatment” dear to Paul Marks is NOT an “available treatment for this disease”. There is no known medicine that can cure the disease.
Not even Paul claims that.
Jacob – even keeping up Vitamin D levels (with supplements) can reduce the chance of serious development of the disease by 50%.
With the EARLY use of a Combination of existing medications, hydroxychloroquine, ZINC and (for non covid infections that may hit the body in its weakened state) azithromycin or doxycycline, the chances of hospitalisation and death are reduced by about 80%.
And that is taking account of the fact that most people do not go to hospital anyway – it is NOT “about the same” Jacob, for HIGH RISK people Early Treatment is very important.
Yes indeed 80% is not a 100% – but eight out of ten saved is worth having. Eight out of ten of the people who died would not have died had they got the correct Early Treatment.
As for “tin foil hat” and all the rest of it.
Well thank you kindly Sir. Your insults tell me all I need to know about you Sir.
It should be pointed out that someone who says that for people in High Risk groups the risk of death Covid 19 is “about the same” whether they receive the correct Early Treatment or not, is condemning large numbers of people to death – people who could have been saved by Early Treatment.
Dr Fauci is not a young man, but his old age gave him no right to smear Early Treatment in this way – and thus condemn hundreds of thousands of people (who could have been saved) to death.
Old age gives Jacob no moral right to do this either.
As for Dr Fauci’s own policies – the State that he said “did everything right” (i.e. did what he wanted them to do – at all points) was New York State, his home State.
I checked the New York State Covid Death Toll today – it has broken past 50 thousand dead.
Most of those people could have been saved. They are dead because of the smearing of Early Treatment by Dr Fauci and others.
I’m upset now not to peer the question “Have you already had COVID-19?”
This, I’m certain, could have taken my hazard to successfully nil.
Jacob,
Indeed, and there is no known treatment involving giraffe urine for TB, which is just as relevant. No one I know of has said that the early treatments are cures, but that they improve survival rates. The ultimate cure for a viral infection is for the virus to stop replicating and destroying the host’s cells. This is in the main, the job of the immune system, the treatments may act in various ways to impede the virus, which can help, but do not cure. You have raised a Straw Man, was that an honest mistake, or a dishonest act?
I am interested in the views of Dr Robert Redfield, formerly the director of the Center for Disease Control.
Now that he has retired, he has said that he can speak his mind. His opinion is that Covid 19 escaped from the virus laboratory in Wuhan. For what it’s worth, I agree with him. I suspect it is the “gain of function” research into bat viruses which has led to Covid 19 being such an infectious agent. The previous waves of Asian flu, in 1957 and 1968, were natural, and killed about 30,000 each time in Britain. Covid 19 is clearly far more lethal, and Dr Redfield is of the opinion that natural viruses which cross from one species to another would not exhibit these characteristics. He is the virus boffin, not me, but it certainly makes sense.
It’s only far more lethal to people in their 80s
I believe that the WHO has now reported to the effect that CV19 came to humans from bats via some other unkown animal. It certainly did not come from the Wuhan virus lab. No way. Forget that.
I think that clears it up for me. Dr Redfield is certainly right. It escaped from the Wuhan lab after “gain of function” experiments.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-56581246
More work needed to rule out lab leak theory says WHO
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.
So I think the most we can say is ‘answer hazy, more data needed.’ I’m more convinced by the Nature paper. At least they’ve published their work – though I’d be happy to read any other papers on it, if you have the links.
I am unconvinced by the lab leak theory (at least at this stage) but frankly the scandal is not where it came from but rather how the governments of the world have reacted to it.
0.0009%. The price for my freedom was cheap.