“It’s just the flu” was right March 30, 2021
Posted by Graham in covid-19.
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Firstly, I’d like to extend a big thanks to those of you who have sent me donations and words of encouragement. I appreciate it very much.
Today, the Irish government has been leaking
its ridiculously destructive plans to the mainstream press. The decimation of the economy, mental health, civil rights, and so on, continues apace.
Meanwhile, in the world of research, the “it’s just the flu” people (such as myself) have received another tacit endorsement from Stanford University Professor John Ioannidis.
In the
European Journal of Clinical Investigation, Ioannidis estimates that Covid has an average global Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of
~0.15%. This is on the basis of surveying global seroprevalence data, i.e. statistics relating to the presence of Covid-19 antibodies in human blood samples.
The calculation of IFR in this way is murky – true Covid-19 deaths are uncertain (wildly exaggerated, I suspect), true seroprevalence is difficult to ascertain (e.g. because antibodies fade), and humans have other ways of fighting off infections, besides the creation of antibodies.
Even so, if this IFR is approximately correct, then I’m going to claim a win in the prediction that SARS-CoV-2 is a mild and uninteresting virus that poses no threat to the vast majority of people, and with rare exceptions is capable of nothing more than very slightly bringing forward the deaths of extremely frail individuals,
à la the flu.
The paper by Ioannidis also includes some remarks on the work done by the
Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team consisting of Neil Ferguson and his colleagues, who
helped to create this global disaster with their doomsday predictions. I recommend that you read the entire thing (Appendix 1), but here is the conclusion:
Overall, ICCRT seems to consistently violate basic evidentiary practices in order to defend at all cost its original narrative of very high IFR and need for draconian lockdown measures.
Unfortunately for us, the logical, scientific and ethical problems with the pro-lockdown narrative are of no interest to governments (thinking of the UK, Ireland, the US Federal Government, etc.).
Instead, they will plough ahead with their destruction of health, wealth and freedom.
The agenda is pretty clear at this point: to achieve the grisly political objective of mandatory vaccine passports, and
continued human rights violations for the unvaccinated.
If we are cautious about consuming Phase 3 trial drugs that we don’t need, but we also want to enjoy some basic human dignity, I think we are running out of ways to do that while also staying on the right side of the law.
Whatever we do, we must retain our sanity. Even if some of our fellow citizens have gone mad over a flu-type illness, and even if governments are causing the maximum amount of destruction that they possibly can, none of this can excuse us if we lose our own grip on reality. Stay strong.
