Lockdown Lunacy.

[Captain23]

https://thewallwillfall.org/2020/06/05/lockdown-lunacy-the-thinking-persons-guide/

[jim360]

Fact: preceding a point with the word "fact" doesn't make something a fact.

I'd be more inclined to take this seriously if the information weren't presented so aggressively. I also seriously dispute any assertion that the IFR for Covid-19 is the same as seasonal flu, which the excess mortality figures would rather serve to undermine given that they seriously outnumber flu deaths.

[jim360]

It is, perhaps, worth pointing out that, in a cunning and probably deliberate sleight-of-hand, the article compares the IFR of Covid-19, which does indeed look like it's in the region of 0.1-0.5%, with the CFR of flu, which is around 0.1%. These are different measures and cannot and should not be compared, and it is deliberately dishonest of the authors of the article to do so. A typical flu is responsible for about 200,000-650,000 deaths annually, where crucially this figure is obtained from estimates after the fact by looking at excess mortalities; Covid-19 has already accounted for about 400,000 deaths even *before* the full excess mortality rates have been collated and estimated. A typical flu season has an estimated IFR of around 0.02%*, which is ten times lower than the estimates given in your source.

Any article that argues that Covid-19 is no worse than flu is fundamentally broken from the start.

*Based on data from https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/suppl_1/S75/499147 . The range of IFR is about 0.01%-0.04%, which is an order of magnitude less than the estimate for the IFR of Covid-19.

[jim360]

A few other points:

The stuff abotu Farr's Law is interesting but doesn't stack up. For example the article uses data from Oregon but it's out-of-date, see:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/oregon-coronavirus-cases.html

This shows that there was a downwards trend in late April, but a second peak in May, and indeed there's evidence of a third bump coming in the data for early- to mid-June. Separately, as I have said elsewhere, a good fit for the NHS England Hospital deaths data is not a bell curve but something called a split Voigt distribution, with a long and drawn-out tail. Farr's Law was an interesting and pertinent observation for smallpox but cannot and should not be relied on.

I could continue to pick apart this article -- but, in short, it's misleading, and needlessly patronising, and just broken. There's a lot we don't yet understand about Covid-19, and I am not going to claim that there was no hint of panic in the global reaction. But articles like this don't help anything. The entire tone is also troublesome. Present the data and the evidence, and let them stand or fall on their own merits.

Oh, yes, and one final point: the author of the article advocates the idea that vaccines cause autism. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

[fiction-factory]

I'm puzzled as to why anyone with the ability to write an article and form an argument would choose to argue such a lost cause. Do they really believe it? Or do they think it will convince those who want to be convinced or have already convinced themselves. As jim has shown the lunacy is in trying to make a case for something when the case just doesn't stand up to any sort of scrutiny

[tomus42]

Tinfoil hat alert.

[naomi24]

And yet elsewhere we're told that modelling predictions from science are in a sense always expected to be wrong. Just who to believe?

[jim360]

Whom*

[naomi24]

That too.

[New Judge]

//Whom*//

A bit debateable, Jim. I see the "who" in Naomi's statement as an interrogative (one of the "Five Ws"). She is effectively saying "just who do I believe?". That "who" is not the object of the verb (when "whom" would be appropriate). You wouldn't say "just whom do I believe?"

[tomus42]

Thread deviation alert.

[jim360]

Debatable*

If Naomi wants she's welcome to go to the thread she's lifted that quote from and I'll put it in proper context.

[royfromaus]

Jim started it.

[naomi24]

The context was clear the first time, Jim.

[Jackdaw33]

\\You wouldn't say "just whom do I believe?"//

I would!

[jim360]

Evidently not, if you think it in any sense is relevant in this thread.

[naomi24]

Don’t go to the trouble of getting yourself into more verbal gymnastics, Jim. I can read.

[jim360]

Indeed? And yet once again you've read without understanding, evidently.

Any comment on the myriad errors in the source posted by Captain23?

[naomi24]

I've commented.