Coronavirus: Debunking The Hydroxychloroquine ‘Controversy’ (Dr. Chris Martenson) (4/22/20)
https://youtu.be/dLSYRqcg0wo
I will speak in general terms since this is a public forum and I am a firm believer in anonymity in cyberspace ( I have a relative who is an IT security geek at Google). He would actually be appalled that I am even here.
My statement about the US was not intended to convey any regret. I am a citizen of the universe who happened to be born inside the territory called the US. I owe no allegiance to any government. I submit by threat of force to the requirements to maintain a residence here. I am actually quite glad the empire is crumbling.
Since the subject of the South came up I will say I adopted the south over 45 years ago. I started preparing for this eventuality in 1968. I owned 142 acres with copious water, pasture, and timber. I had cows, horses, (draft horses we worked) chickens, ducks, rattlesnakes, copperheads and water mocassins. I divorced and gave it to my ex and daughter. I now have 4 acres. Like the Nearings 4 acres and independence. I have a large garden with raspberries,blueberries,pears,and tons of veggies. I grow bamboo and shitakes. I have lived communally and decided that Amerikaans in general are incapable of doing that successfully. The country is littered with those failed efforts from the back to the land movement of the 70’s. My experience has brought me to the conclusion it is best to have a lot of friends in the community to share ideas and resources with rather than being in a committed relationship with them. I can build whatever out of wood. I can plumb and wire and run heavy equipment. I was a farmer for a long time. The one thing here some might find interesting is I no longer own a gun. I left them with my ex. In the 70’s we had a very vibrant community.We would talk about all of the issues now being discussed here. We all had the food and water side of the equation down. The discussions were really pretty good and invariably it always came down to having to defend what you had. I decided that if I had to have a gun to defend my garden from somebody who needed food it really wasn’t a world I was too interested in living in. You have to sleep sometime. If someone is that desperate then I will invite them in and give them what they need.
So bottom line I can take care of myself and don’t need a government to do it for me. The collapse just took a hell of a lot longer than I thought.
One last story, when we bought the land we were looking around quite a bit and found a place in Tennessee. It was a nice place but the guy would only take gold. We didn’t have gold so we kept looking. He planned on buying a place in Alaska with no road and no power lines.The reason being that is how "they"were going to find you. We did not realize it at the time but he was WAY ahead of the curve. I hope that answers your questions
My prayers are with you in dealing with this. All 4 of our parents are gone now. Last one passed last november. I can’t imagine dealing with my father in law in assisted living right now with all this going on. He was a handful even with us visiting on a regular basis. Being isolated from family would make ii infinitely worse. Even as they are dying, being able to say goodbye, as hard as it is, is not available in today’s environment.
…as you know we have soy free milk, cheese, eggs and meat, all the time. Gotta get up early to milk and get the chores done.
settle your mare!
kelsey has been exposed to a giant jack, may have a world class mule?
Quinn, the mighty,has a womb reserved for Suffolk’s.
robie,husbandfatherfarmeroptometrist
if you’ve the time this is a world class moment of resurrection.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a_O0BDoKDhI
There was a joke back in the 70’s among marijuana growers. Grow three plots: one for the thieves, one for the police, and one for me, lol.
You definitely want more than one garden.
I have not yet filed 2019 taxes. I received a direct deposit of the stimulus payment last Wednesday.
O, Robie! Thank you for sharing this jazzy version of a favorite Wendell Berry poem. Right backatcha with a familiar poem desperately needed in this hour. It’s particularly poignant to me because I live on a large pond where herons and ducks abound:
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry (1968)
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Best to all.
The peace of wild things
neither a typist nor a poet, however, I am a suthrener and agrarian. Have memorized all of the above as have my children. We lack for nothing and have a “place on earth”.
“I for one always appreciate a different perspective.”
Are you sure? I may be imagining things but your post didn’t come across as 100% sincere to me.
“I was wondering if you might give examples of what data was “cherry picked””.
I actually posted in this thread when I meant to post in the “Don’t Fall for the hype” thread. In that video Chris picked on one study - the Stanford one - and highlighted the potential issue of false positives. However there are many random sample PCR studies, and many of small scale serological antibody studies which do not all suffer from this same problem. Small antibody studies in Boston and Chicago for example have shown antibodies in excess of 30% in some towns. Random sampling in Iceland using PCR tests (which have much, much lower rates of false positives) have indicated current infection rates of close to 1% at a time when that would have indicated IFR of ~0.2%. That was just from the first few minutes of this video. Chris does this all the time. It’s also worth noting that in order to come up with 80% false positives Chris basically used a bunch of highly questionable assumptions himself.
“You said this is nothing more than a bad flu.” No I didn’t say that. I said that “this virus’ virulence is in the ballpark of a bad ‘flu”. “Virulence” has a specific meaning. My guess is that the IFR is between 0.1% and 0.5%, and likely between 0.2% and 0.4%. Seasonal 'flu is often estimated as 0.1% with 0.2% beaing a bad year, although I have seen some experts estimating that seasonal 'flu might actually be more than twice those numbers with a bad year being 0.5%-0.6%. So what I’m saying here is that the virus, if you are exposed to infection, is about 2-3x as likely to kill you as the ‘flu as best I can estimate.
Chris’ graph of Sweden was another typical piece of propaganda designed to make the Swedish decision not to lock down look terrible. But I look at Sweden very differently. I see a country that suggested sensible, voluntary measures that did not throw vast swathes of the population out of work. Yes it had more deaths from Covid-19 than some of its neighbors, but:
- its hospital system is not overwhelmed
- its case numbers have clearly levelled off and are now declining, with deaths starting to level off now too
- so far fatalities are under 2,000 (a fraction of what Chris would have predicted back when he was busy fear-mongering about dangerous Italian mutations, and fatality rates of 3-4%, and blithely ignoring numbers from any country that was doing even a halfway decent job of testing).
- those extra deaths have almost certainly not been dodged by the other countries, just delayed by a few weeks or months - at the expense of massive human suffering
- at least one of its neighbors (Denmark) has looked at Sweden and decided that Sweden made the right choice and is now abandoning its own lockdown.
- it has not seen massive unemployment, and stands a chance of avoiding mass bankruptcies amongst its small businesses.
“This site mostly relies on data. IE. the best available data.”
No it doesn’t. This site looks for data to support what Chris wants to believe and largely ignoring or belittling other data. Chris spent weeks looking at crude fatality rates, early on even implying that they were understating the possible fatality due to time lag, and implying that this disease was orders of magnitude more deadly than it was/is. He continued to assert a fatality rate of 3-4% even when it was blindingly obvious that it was clearly under 1% and probably under 0.5%.
I didn’t even bother to watch the whole video as I got fed up with Chris inventing facts like - the number of deaths in China being at least ten times the official number (where did Chris get this “best available data” from, or did he just make it up?)
- the lockdown reducing deaths from other causes citing things like car accidents which are an insignifcant percentage of overall fatality (I know that because I bothered to look it up even though I don’t make videos purporting to provide evidence based scientific analysis. It turns out that some experts are now suggesting that lockdowns actually increase fatalities rather than reduce them.
If you want a different perspective go to this site: https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
In my opinion, it tends to cherry pick in the other direction - but there’s lots of good data there too.
Mohammed,
I enjoyed reading your post, and wanted to add an article on this subject I read yesterday…
“…said this is nothing more than a bad flu. Can you define bad flu for us? Is it based on number of total cases (worldwide? US?) , total hospitalizations, total deaths? Does a bad flu require intubation? Does a bad flu cause damage to virtually every organ in the body? Does a bad flu have a R0 of over 2?
I look forward to your answers. This site mostly relies on data. IE. the best available data. I will acknowledge that there is a lot of data still unknown, this is after all a “novel” virus, whereas the flu virus is a pretty well known commodity with slight mutations from year to year.”
“Not Like the Flu, Not Like Car Crashes, Not Like… It’s about the spike.”
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/not-like-the-flu-not-like-car-crashes-not-like
From the website (there are some good charts too, and I’m going to include one at the bottom which caught my breath when I looked at it):
“The Deaths in Context
Even with the limits of the available data, we can still draw some reasonable conclusions about how Covid-19 compares to other causes of death — and about what these comparisons often miss:
Different time scales: We are still early in this pandemic. It has only been a few weeks since the first reported U.S. deaths. Comparing these deaths to, say, an entire year of deaths from car crashes or influenza is not meaningful.
A spike: Perhaps the most noticeable feature of both graphs is the Covid-19 spike — the rapid growth in deaths since the pandemic began. Car crashes, by contrast, show little variation week to week. And even compared to past flu seasons or pandemics, the rate of increase in Covid-19 deaths is markedly faster.
The number of new deaths reported in the U.S. in the week beginning March 16 was 678 percent higher than the previous week. In New York State, the number grew thirty-six-fold the same week. By comparison, the worst one-week increase in new flu and pneumonia deaths during the 2017-18 flu season was 26 percent, and during the 1957-58 Asian flu was 48 percent. Although the growth in Covid-19 deaths is now slowing, the number of new deaths for the week ending on April 5 was still more than double that of the week before.
A leading cause of death in the United States: Several weeks ago, coronavirus deaths were few in comparison with other causes. But last week, reported U.S. Covid-19 deaths were just shy of the normal rate from heart disease, usually the leading cause of death.
More than all typical deaths in New York: Strikingly, in the state of New York, the number of people who died with coronavirus last week was more than any other cause of death — in fact, 76 percent more than the average number who die in a week from all causes combined.
In the worst week of the 2017-18 flu season, New York saw 445 deaths from flu and pneumonia and 3,481 total from all causes. Last week, the state saw 4,694 reported Covid-19 deaths alone. These figures must put to rest the “dying with but not of” line of skepticism. The idea that this many people would have died anyway even without Covid-19 is simply not credible.”
Linda
Mohammed raised a strawman argument which you have doubled down on. I did not say that this is nothing more than a bad flu. I said its virulence was in the ballpark of a bad 'flu which is a different thing.
I have always maintained that a high R0 has exactly the effect of compressing the outbreak into a much shorter timeframe than the 'flu (or would if we didn’t lockdown) which would result both in
- more people getting it much faster
- (if left alone) the outbreak also peaking and subsiding much faster
The overall fatality as a percentage of the entire population would depend on what percentage became infected (probably around 25% - 50% with a decent heterogenous model) and might be as much as 10x (or possibly even 20x although this is now looking unlikely) higher than the 'flu; my best guess though is 4-6x higher than the 'flu.
Given the average age of people dying (over 80), and an estimate that a 6% reduction in GDP leads to an average 3 month drop in life expectancy for everyone - this would imply that the lockdown is over 80x worse than the cure purely in terms of life years lost, before you factor in the loss of liberty, shattered dreams and lost livelihoods.
According to a study in Italy about the village of Voo, the researches didn’t find a link between the viral load in the infected persons and the lykelyhood to show any symptoms. With other words someone could be tchockfull of virusses and experience nothing bad about it. Original segment from the article “Opmerkelijk: de onderzoekers vonden géén verband tussen de virale lading van een geïnfecteerde en de kans om wel of geen symptomen te hebben. Met andere woorden: iemand die tjokvol virus zit, kan daar evengoed niets van voelen.” Source in national Belgian journal: https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20200421_04930197?articlehash=CE99DAAE2BC14463326E7A1CF35EF6AD44D2D0CD98505B9D2892D482306C4678C00FBCEE7DC2CD93D641F559CF8794F4FCB6B9B2D3023AE4DD5C9040FC5D5598&fbclid=IwAR3qJLIw2j1n4kFa9iBkfiUJyCm-WzmSt8kyhiUPVpluwVVaO8wvYNeaEXs
If this is confirmed it will raise a lot of questions about the etiology of Covid19 and maybe more in general on the etiology of “infectious diseases”. The viral load seems to “live in peace” in one host and not in another…
According to french professor Raoult it is still possible that the virus will be seasonal and totally fade away in a month. Seasonality according to him is still unexplained and has more to do than only with temperature and humidity. https://covidinfos.net/covid19/le-pr-didier-raoult-estime-possible-quil-ny-ait-plus-de-cas-du-tout-dans-un-mois/387/
Well, let’s see if we can keep this to the data. I am doing my very best to parse through all the available data as best I can, free from bias again, as best I can.
I do have one solid bias - when I see the media or a prominent person misuse data, or make a big, fat logical error, I go on a hunt to find the data to disprove them. That leads to a bias.
Oh well, doing the best I can given the circumstances. So far I’d rate myself at the top of the pack in terms of seeing all the sides.
On to Rebel Yell’s latest comment:
I actually posted in this thread when I meant to post in the “Don’t Fall for the hype” thread. In that video Chris picked on one study – the Stanford one – and highlighted the potential issue of false positives.No, that wasn't a "cherry pick" that was by far the most cited study that splashed the farthest across the media. By a very wide margin. And the authors went on a very misleading media tour to tout their "results" which made them a necessary target.
However there are many random sample PCR studies, and many of small scale serological antibody studies which do not all suffer from this same problem. Small antibody studies in Boston and Chicago for example have shown antibodies in excess of 30% in some towns.Have you actually bothered to look at those tests in detail? I have. The Boston test in particular was using an antibody test manufactured by Biomedonics of NC. After some sleuthing I found the specificity and sensitivity of their test: Holy crap! 88.66% and 90.63%(!) Those are unacceptable levels for both spec and sens. At least for low incidence pop testing. Maybe okay for some clinical diagnostics if the tests are run several times per patient, especially for a + result. Similar findings for Chicago. As always, I highly support actual data, and so you might want to look into these a bit more deeply before forming any particular conclusions.
Chris does this all the time. It’s also worth noting that in order to come up with 80% false positives Chris basically used a bunch of highly questionable assumptions himself.No...just math. Bayesian math, but just math. I also linked back to three sources that all ran the math and came to similar conclusions.
Chris’ graph of Sweden was another typical piece of propaganda designed to make the Swedish decision not to lock down look terrible. But I look at Sweden very differently. I see a country that suggested sensible, voluntary measures that did not throw vast swathes of the population out of work. Yes it had more deaths from Covid-19 than some of its neighbors, but: – its hospital system is not overwhelmed – its case numbers have clearly levelled off and are now declining, with deaths starting to level off now too – so far fatalities are under 2,000 (a fraction of what Chris would have predicted back when he was busy fear-mongering about dangerous Italian mutations, and fatality rates of 3-4%, and blithely ignoring numbers from any country that was doing even a halfway decent job of testing).Hmmm... I definitely have access to very different data for Sweden, so perhaps point me to yours? Here's mine from Worldometers:
Try as I might, I can't see the deaths as "leveling off." So doesn't seem like the assertion of "propaganda" is warranted?
“This site mostly relies on data. IE. the best available data.” No it doesn’t. This site looks for data to support what Chris wants to believe and largely ignoring or belittling other data.Happy to have you point out any case where I am belittling other data. But if I could request, please bring examples instead of assertions? Thanks in advance. Always open to having a fact-based discussion.
Well Chris got here first and it was certainly his place to respond.
I will add that every country is approaching this a different way. EX. the UK initially was going with let it burn through and develop herd immunity. I think Boris Johnson just might have a different take on that strategy today. Of course China imposed what is believed to be the strictest measures of all. Supposedly they basically not only leveled the curve they crushed it.
S. Korea and Singapore both did very well with testing and tracing. India so far is doing relatively well with the lockdown considering a population of 1.37 billion.
Sweden is vastly different from the US in terms of population, population density, education, health care, size of the country, number of large cities etc… So any comparisons to Sweden need to take all of those factors into consideration.
Your original post was bereft of any sort of data. It came across as an hysterical rant, that might be offered by one of the protesters wanting to open up the economy. In the future you would certainly have more credibility if you refrained from that approach and offered data that everyone could look at. As stated here and elsewhere we are in the very early stages of a very dangerous pandemic. We will not have all of the facts ever. We will have better data as time goes on. BTW the Stanford ahem study was retracted, but clearly the damage was done as intended.
I don’t know where you came up with " this virus’ virulence is in the ballpark of a bad flu"? None of the numbers I have found come remotely close to equating this in any way with the flu. What size ballpark are we talking about? Yankee stadium? A little league field, Jerry’s world?
BTW here is a definition of Virulence
Virulence. … In most other contexts, especially in animal systems, virulence refers to the degree of damage caused by a microbe to its host. The pathogenicity of an organism - its ability to cause disease - is determined by its virulence factors. The noun virulence derives from the adjective virulent.
According to that definition so far this is far worse than a “bad flu”
I have friends who have contracted it and they do not in anyway equate this with the flu.
Come back when you can stay a while and bring a different perspective.
Here is a moving discussion from a couple whose 63 yo father/father-in-law with no underlying health conditions passed away unexpectedly from Covid-19. It has some helpful observations and advice to others, as well as provides a human face to statistics and abstract debates.
We lost Dave to Corona virus, where do we go from here… (4/8/20)
https://youtu.be/NJZYWXaZ12g
Mohammed, Chris, and RebelYell,
Thank you Chris and Mohammed, I really appreciate your thoughtful replies today to RebelYell, and I had thought of replying last night to his comment to me (but felt both you and Chris had first dibs) which included:
“Linda
Mohammed raised a strawman argument which you have doubled down on. I did not say that this is nothing more than a bad flu. I said its virulence was in the ballpark of a bad ‘flu which is a different thing.”
I was so flabbergasted, and after reading and re-reading it, as well as Mohammed’s reply to him yesterday, I still felt he hadn’t addressed requests to him to provide data and evidence. Instead of doing so, he twisted it back around on me (and you) that I “double-downed”, well, in RebelYell’s words I’m double-downing again!
And, from one of RebelYell’s earlier comments yesterday “And it gets more and more obvious every day as the data from all over the world continue to pour in, hospitals sit empty, and the death counts remain at a small fraction of all the studies Chris touted along the way like some modern day pied piper.”
I’ve looked at numerous charts and pictures, read many articles, and watched Chris’ videos as well as MedCram videos too, and some of John Campbell’s videos too. I have seen pictures of piles of dead bodies in Ecuador, New York City’s refrigerated trucks to hold dead bodies, mass graves, etc. In addition, many healthcare workers saying that all of their cases are COVID and they’ve moved employees from other departments to help with COVID patients, they’re posting videos on YouTube talking about what it’s like and the stressed looks on their faces in addition to their tears as they break down… So, I don’t agree with the “hospitals sit empty, and the death counts remain at a small fraction…”
Linda
I have 2 friends that have received them direct deposit. Both in New York. We haven’t seen ours yet or know of anyone in state that has received one in South Carolina. The company I work for did just get news that they got their PPP approved. Small business of 15 people.
Chris, thank you so much for the interview with Loe Hornbuckle. His story about getting on the front side of the power curve early on (and the courage he kept when people were giving him flak about it) is very inspiring. I’m lucky enough to have my dad in pretty much the situation (also in north central Texas) Loe was describing: residential, semi-independent assisted living. He actually needs full care for his daily needs, but has his own apartment and a fixed number of caregivers who are allowed in. He’s allowed outside his apt to get some walking in, but the retirement facility works very hard to keep NPI’s in force - all personnel must wear masks, dining room seating is now one person per table, full meals delivered to the rooms, etc.
His facility went into lockdown on Saint Patrick’s Day, at which point I was no longer able to enter the grounds. Well before leaving however, I did as Loe mentioned and installed a 40-day supply of Costco-type food (for two), as well as stocked up on personal supplies (I don’t think I had ever purchased the amount of diapers and wipes as I did in March!). I was doing the same for myself of course (minus the diapers!), but it made me feel good I wasn’t abandoning my dad to the abyss.
One followup I would make on the technology comment is a shout out to Consumer Cellular and their “GrandPad” device. My sister and I decided to get him one of these for his 90th birthday on 2/7/20, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I held off on the purchase for a while since I was afraid it would be just another device he wouldn’t be able to figure out. Now we’re able to check in by video almost every day, and he’s built up a nice list of contacts he can check in with as well. It really turned out to be a Godsend, and I think it is key to his current mental state which is surprisingly good given how isolated he is. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to see him in person again, but it’s good to know he is in about the best situation he can be in given the circumstances.