| Absent strong public health measures, we would expect it to kill something like 0.5% to 1.0% of a nation’s population, and whether or not that’s a large number is a matter of personal opinion. |
So declared Ron Unz, publisher of the Unz Review.
That claim is far from the truth as the case of Sweden demonstrates. There, in the absence of "strong public health measures" there have been 5,846 reported Covid deaths, or about 0.06% of the population. That must be close to the final toll, as Covid deaths in Sweden peaked in March and are now at or close to zero.
Why would a scientifically literate person such as Ron Unz make such a false claim? Mere confusion, perhaps*.
One way in which Covid death rates have been greatly exaggerated has been to confuse, deliberately or otherwise, two measures of the death rate; namely, the "Case Fatality Rate" and the "Infection Fatality Rate."
The Covid19 Case Fatality Rate (CFR) is a measure of deaths among confirmed Covid19 cases, the latter being mainly cases of serious illness, which thus came to the attention of the medical profession and were identified as due to Covid19 by a more or less reliable diagnostic methods.
The Covid19 Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is a measure of deaths among all those infected with Covid19, whether they were seriously ill or not, or whether they were ill at all. The IFR can only be determined if there is population-wide testing for past or present Covid19 infection, for example by means of a reliable serological test for Covid19 antibodies.
Evidence currently available suggests that the the IFR is only about one tenth of the CFR. Therefore, to mistake the CFR for the IFR will result in an exaggeration of the actual IFR by a factor of around ten.
But even a ten-fold error does not explain Ron Unz's claim that "absent strong public health measures" Covid19 will "kill something like 0.5% to 1.0% of a nation’s population." To explain that, assuming it is not a straight lie, one must assume that Ron Unz confuses the Infection Fatality Rate with the Population Fatality Rate (PFR). Such confusion assumes a Covid death rate among the population as a whole equal to the Covid death rate among those made sick by a confirmed Covid19 infection, which is nonsense.
But perhaps Ron Unz's claim is a straight lie, which would be consistent with the fact that, when I pointed out the error on his Unz Review post, my comment was deleted.
______* Cf. Ronald B. Brown, 2000, Public Health Lessons Learned from Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation.
Related:
Zero Hedge: "It's Like Using A Hammer To Kill A Fly" - Architect Of Sweden's COVID-19 Anti-Lockdown Strategy Finally Vindicated
In March and April nearly all the internet sites I frequent that discuss public affairs were going all out in promoting the COVID fraud. I knew it was fraud by mid March by just looking at the public figures of the death rates for those infected, as you noted you really have to torture the numbers to get that figure above 1%. This was particularly true of every left and left-of-center site except for Off Guardian and Jon Rappaport's site (though both have done excellent work on this), and websites in this category are still supporting the fraud. More right-wing sites were also pretty bad, but less enthusiastic and over time have been asking more questions. But in March and April I had to include a lot of shape-shifting-lizard-aliens-rule-the-world sites in my internet habits just to get somewhat accurate news.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I really don't know where to classify unz.com. Normally the site falls somewhere between standard right-leaning and light conspiracy theory, though he publishes some left-wing commentators too. Unz himself and his most popular writer, Sailer, promoted the COVID 19 is a plague narrative, though Unz also pushed it was a biowarfare attack on China example. But he has published columnists since who are in the fraud camp. Since he features columnists who state that, I don't know why he is censoring commentators. And he has so far published all of my comments.
So I really have no idea what is going on there. But to name another site as a contrasting example, on naked capitalism not only do the normal bloggers push the narrative, all the skeptical commentators have either been censored or have abandoned the site (I just saw my first skeptical comment there in months today), so the site has much fewer and lower quality comments in the past. Maybe Unz was hedging.
People distort the truth for many reasons, more often than not to deceive themselves. But I cannot allow that to justify Unz's clearly false narrative. Not only has he aspired to the governorship of California, but he has claimed an IQ of 214, which makes him the most intelligent man who has ever lived or ever will. Clearly, then, he must be held to account for what he says.
ReplyDeleteUnz does publish people with views contrary to his own. The article I cite above concerning corona virus mortality overestimation I got from Pepe Escobar's current column on Unz.com. But having opted to draw readers to his web site by publishing other people, Unz must, of necessity, put up with those other writers' opinions, however galling he may sometimes find them.
* Cf. Ronald B. Brown, 2000, Public Health Lessons Learned from Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation.
ReplyDeleteRonald B. Brown must be a true gentleman and scholar, for he is very even handed as he suggests the very elementary mistakes and biases we witnessed our key public health "authorities" and "experts" making this go round can be chalked up to lessons learned.
Early on, I knew the difference between infection fatality rate and case fatality rate and I'm a doofus in my boxers not trying to tell anyone anywhere what to do. I also understood John Ioannidis early on pronounced this as potentially the greatest "evidence fiasco" of the 21st century. (What happened to Dr. Ionnidis? I mean after his public evisceration by "peers"?)
These men who perpetrated this mess, these murderers, were not mistaken. They knew what they were doing. I don't know about Unz, maybe he was mistaken, but if so his mistakes are more grave than a bias. Especially when we see Unz not responding to any intelligent criticism or assessment of his understanding of the ongoing disaster.
For some reason I have to add something about a recent article from Scientific American written by an ER doctor, Clayton M. Dalton, from June 5, 2020:
ReplyDeletehttps://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/so-how-deadly-is-covid-19/
In this article, Dr. Dalton criticizes Dr. Ioannides' idea there was overreaction on such a thin basis in fact and reality I find myself disgusted.
I am troubled Scientific American fails to understand Dr. Dalton's thinking is anything but scientific. What Dr. Dalton has is an argument from authority-- an argumentum ad verecundiam: he is a medical doctor and as an authority on matters of health, and a pandemic is a matter of health, he is therefore an authority on the pandemic. But argumentum ad verecundiam is, in an important way, precisely what science fights against, or should be fighting against, with the full force of its being.
Science emerged against the background of religious argumentum ad verecundiam where religious authorities believed they could reason about the nature of nature from religious scripture and so on. Now we have science lapsing into a new kind of medical authority believing they can reason about the nature of nature from medical knowledge not actually pertaining to the matter at hand. It seems significant we have this at precisely the moment we have a new medical martial law. As if medical doctors will be our new priests, not only attending to our health, but also directing how we live.
Dalton is saying, and you don't have to take my word for it, "we don't know exactly how deadly the virus is, but it is deadly enough." Imagine such an ignorant comment receiving respectful publication. There are so many ramifications to using faulty data to make decisions of such widespread and serious comment, that for someone to come forth and say, basically, "wild guesses are good enough" makes me cry for the creation of some sort of accountability for these people... The same accountability we would apply to someone who had shouted FIRE! in a crowded theater. (Even if someone had diobeyed signs, lit a match to smoke a cigarette and therefore gave a tiny basis in reality to FIRE! being a danger.)
CS, I hope you get a chance to look at this interview with Dr. Ioannides. It is incredible how right on the mark he is with his comments.
ReplyDeletehttps://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2020/07/09/a-conversation-with-john-ioannidis/
He is saying everything we've been saying. A little bit more precisely, I'd say, and that is nice. But hey, he's the pro and we're the amateurs.
Thank you for that link. An excellent discussion. Ioannidis thinks clearly about how to proceed in conditions of uncertainty. He weights all the facts and offers a rational way forward. And the interviewer does an excellent job directing the discussion. In the morning I will post a link to the interview at the top of this page.
DeleteFrom the bottom of my heart I thank you for doing that. I was afraid you'd miss this comment as it was posted to an article which wasn't current.
ReplyDeleteIn Ioannides we have an esteemed epidemiologist, an epidemiologists' epidemiologist, who, once he is not saying what the powers that be want to be said, is outcast and ignored, pilloried, smeared, and castigated. If what is happening to us was not intentional and part of a plan, there would have been a much better effort to understand Ioannides: it looks to me as if even the misunderstandings were deliberate. He literally couldn't be more calm, rational, well-informed and well intended himself.