We’re in the middle of 2024, and the ‘experts’ still won’t give up their ridiculous defence of Covid mandates.
By now, the evidence against the effectiveness of Covid policies and so-called ‘interventions’ is overwhelming. Mask mandates were a spectacular failure, with the most heavily masked populations often seeing worse results than cities, counties or countries with little to no masking.
Vaccine mandates and passports were an unmitigated disaster; coercion created mistrust, and resistance and in some cases may have led to unnecessary, damaging side effects.
School closures, as we have clearly learned, were a tremendous, world-changing disaster. And it was made all the more frustrating by the fact that we had examples across the globe showing that they weren’t needed.
None of that’s stopped those committed to maintaining the fantasy of Covid mandates from desperately seeking to validate their belief system. And that desperation just led to one of their most absurd claims yet.
Covid Social Distancing and Vaccines Saved 800,000 Lives, Don’t Ya Know?
Two researchers from formerly reputable institutions, the University of Colorado, Boulder and the University of California, Los Angeles, just recently published a paper claiming to have cracked the fantastical code on just how effective the social distancing, lockdowns, mask mandates and Covid vaccines were at saving lives during the pandemic.
And what do you know? They found that the policies they supported were tremendous, highly successful interventions! Who would have ever guessed?
According to the headline, they claim that: ‘Mitigating behaviour and vaccines saved around 800,000 American lives.’
How did they arrive at this awe-inspiring conclusion? With a model, of course!
Mechanism: Around 68% of Americans got vaccinated before first infection
First Covid infection much less dangerous after vaccinationBack of the envelope estimate of lives saved
Full structural model of epidemic with behaviour and vaccines
This is what we’re dealing with here; a model based on a “back-of-the-envelope” estimate of lives saved, with their esteemed educated guess as to how many Americans were vaccinated before becoming infected.
Well, ‘guessing’ might not be accurate… completely guessing is more like it. According to their methodology, they used serology data on the timing of infections and vaccinations, though, of course, without direct links between individuals who were infected and those who were vaccinated, there’s little we can learn from population-wide serology data.
Not to mention that to create their model on the benefits of vaccination, they examined data from just 30 states on “COVID-19 deaths by vaccination status”.
Serology data on timing of infections and vaccinations
30 states: COVID-19 deaths data by vaccination status
But as anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Covid data knows, this type of data is hopelessly corrupted.
Thanks to public health experts and their pharmaceutical company allies, most jurisdictions only count individuals as being vaccinated starting 14 days after their second dose. Those with just one dose are effectively viewed as ‘unvaccinated’ for purposes of data collection. This type of counting skews the reliability of deaths by vaccination status, as does the fact that there were mountains of mistakes made by public health administrators and jurisdictions regarding data collection throughout the pandemic.
But especially when it comes to deaths by vaccination status. Not to mention that the supposed efficacy of Covid vaccines is highly reliant on when the data were measured. Even the CDC’s own data in late 2023 effectively acknowledged that the original vaccination series had waned to reach zero efficacy.
Regardless, the poor methodology used to create this model is evidenced by one of their first examples of measuring combined and infection seroprevalence.
The blue dots in this photo represent “cumulative percent infected plus vaccinated without infection” while the red and yellow are “cumulative percent ever infected”.
First, these numbers rely on seroprevalence estimates, which while useful are hardly definitive. Secondly, the researchers apparently ignore that the percentage of infected skyrockets starting in late December 2020, accelerating significantly after the vaccines were introduced.
They also then suggest that behavioural modifications were responsible for saving nearly 800,000 lives because they delayed infections until after vaccination.
This though is nonsense.
The charts below use the blue line as the estimate of what would have resulted if behaviour had remained the same, with no vaccination. The red line is the actual course of the pandemic.
But these charts assume as a given that behaviour was responsible for lowering the curve of deaths in 2020 and early 2021, then use a faulty assumption of vaccine efficacy based on corrupted data from 30 states to suggest that there were hundreds of thousands of lives saved.
Their model relies on their assumptions being accurate when we know for a fact that they aren’t. How do we know? Because states and countries that did not have similar behavioural modifications often had better results.
They ignore this fact to create the model. Literally.
“Behavioural response had a lot in common across U.S. states,” they say. But we know that’s not true. People living in California, particularly in 2021 and 2022, had very different experiences than those living in Florida or Iowa. Mask mandates and vaccine passports continued in California and New York deep into 2022, while Florida banned vaccine passports and had virtually no masking by spring 2021.
They claim that behavioral modifications were responsible for “delaying deaths”, but there’s no evidence that that’s true since different areas with different responses often had similar results.
Somehow, they also then claim that people “would have gotten infected without protection of vaccines”, a nonsensical fantasy given we know that the vaccines provide zero protection against infection.
So they both credit behaviour with reducing infections and delaying deaths, based on nothing, but also credit vaccines with reducing infections, and thus deaths. Also based on nothing.
Their assumptions prove their results, a classic failure of modeling.
It also ignores the importance of more transmissible, less virulent variants. Omicron resulted in an explosion of infections, though with lower mortality rates. Testing also exploded in 2021 and 2022, meaning that more people could test positive and thus be counted as ‘Covid deaths’ without it being the underlying cause.
Of course, this also doesn’t account for the harms these policies caused: the increased deaths from lockdowns, despair and substance abuse and addiction, and the harms from increased obesity and learning loss, or physical abuse suffered by children no longer in schools.
This model is a farce; a politically motivated tool for media outlets to use to justify their advocacy and the activism of people like Fauci and organisations like the CDC. “Covid vaccines and masking and behaviour saved lives, because we assumed they did,” would be an accurate headline for the research paper.
Even though all the evidence suggests a much more complicated picture.
You’d think these efforts would have ended by now, given that we’ve reached the middle of May in 2024. But as long as there are researchers committed to upholding their ideological biases, we’ll continue seeing poorly reasoned, misleading publications.
And boy oh boy are there researchers committed to upholding their ideological biases, almost as if they’d put in place yet again the mandates for their next pandemic.
Ian Miller is the author of Unmasked: The Global Failure of Covid Mask Mandates. He writes a Substack newsletter, where this article first appeared. It was also published by the Brownstone Institute.
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The National Trust appears to be run by the BBC and some Americans with the odd accountant, management consultant and conservationist thrown in for diversity.
The National Trust is the largest private landowner in the United Kingdom. The Trust’s land holdings account for almost 250,000 hectares (620,000 acres; 2,500 km2; 970 sq mi).
Given the amount of acres of Britain over which they hold sway, one might have thought that the odd agricultural college graduate, some proper country folk with, say, practical experience of running a farm, might have come in handy?
When we lived in England in the mid-/late-2010s, we bought NT and English heritage family passes every year and thoroughly enjoyed many sites, including Woolsthorpe. We noticed many families enjoying a lovely day out in the park areas outside the grand homes, which cost just a few pounds for parking fees. What a shame. If I were living there now, would I boycott NT?
This may help you decide that:
https://www.restoretrust.org.uk/
I have not been to an NT property for many years. I always found them a bit soulless.
If you move the properties further and further away from their original roles and change the atmosphere to that of some kind of faintly disapproving school room, the visitor experience becomes increasingly enervating, in my view.
What’s with the the dyslexia? Is it a shield against being seen as stupid?
I thought the addition of Dyslectic people on the judging board was strange. I have had the privilege of having worked with some people who were dyslectic, brilliant mathematicians, but B useless at reading and writing. So how in all concepts of common sense are any of these people going to able to understand a single word of what may or probably not be presented?
Further more, new ideas come from thinking from outside of the box, not from within. That in itself excludes any new concept for entry. What a waste of time and money,
“Dyslexia” is very similar to Dianne’s get out of jail race card.
For the lefties who are a bit thick but who believe they belong in the higher reaches of the non-working world of academie a card such as Dyslexia is an essential passport to a life of comfort. Sometimes those amongst this group also like to bolster their places with the addition of an alphabet card.
When in danger of being found out just pull out your Dyslexia card and your troubles melt away. Any suggestions that the card holder might be talking out of his / her arse are easily refuted and if the inquisitor persists there is always ‘hate crime against a persecuted minority.’
A faultless modus operandi which might even lead to enoblement in the future.
Always have your persecuted minority card to hand.
So wrote Sir Isaac of his Principia. I wonder how any of the candidates for the NT prize would get on if they put that in their abstract.
I think we can guess!
Reported to the police for hate speech would be my guess.
Another day and another mad scheme, whilst the NT continue losing volunteers, members and visitors.
Surprisingly, NT membership in 22-23 was 5.73 million up from 5.71 million in 21-22, more than the population of Costa Rica as the NT proudly declares.
It stood at 5.6m in 18/19 so there must be plenty of woketards joining.
I suspect some have hoped against hope that it was beginning to come back from the grave.
I think that Newtonian optics is the most exclusionary brach of physics, dealing as it does with the properties of white light.
Thermopdynamis has a lot more going for it as it includes the concept of black body radiation.
Astrophysis/quantum theory caps it all with the all consuming black hole.
They say that Newton was the last alchemist… that presumably includes trans-mutation?
Ah yes, Newton – and his universal law of attraction F = Gm1m2/r2.
I would like to propose the universal law of repulsion with the same essential formula. This pertains to divide and rule, so the stronger the force the more division and conflict.
Two strongly-held views are encouraged, e.g. woke and non-woke, of effective mass m1 and m2. They are deliberately put in close proximity, so r is small.
Then we are all F’d.
awesome comment
‘I would like to propose the universal law of repulsion with the same essential formula.’
Coulomb has beaten you to it: : F=kq1q2/r2.