Evidence proves lockdowns bad; Democrats scream, “We must have more lockdowns!”
How Democratic Party policy makers interpret data!
Almost a year and a half since the Wuhan panic swept across the world, the evidence continues to show that the policy decisions by our so-called “intellectual” class of experts to impose mandates and lockdowns were almost all stupid, producing disaster after disaster while completely failing to achieve any of their goals.
First we have Sweden, which refused to impose any lockdowns and now has practically no COVID-19 deaths at all.
An Imperial College model suggested that 85,000 people would die without a lockdown, and an Uppsala University team projected that 40,000 people would die from COVID-19 by May 1, 2020 and nearly 100,000 by June.
But by May, Sweden reported roughly six deaths for every one million people, according to the Financial Times, with 48.9% of its initial coronavirus deaths taking place in nursing homes, according to an analysis by the Swedish Public Health Agency. More than a year later, Sweden recorded 1.1 million coronavirus cases with 1.07 million people having recovered from the virus, and 14,620 coronavirus-linked deaths, according to woldometers.info as of Aug. 8, 2021.
Of the currently 12,248 people who have tested positive for COVID-19, 12, 219 are experiencing mild symptoms (99.8%) and 29 (0.2%) are in serious or critical condition, according to woldometers.info.
In other words, the models were so ridiculously wrong they weren’t even in the same galaxy as the results in the real world. Sweden’s population very quickly reached herd immunity and is now relatively immune from the virus and its later variants.
Moreover, Sweden’s economy has suffered little during the epidemic, and is doing nicely. Not so much in the U.S., where power-hungry politicians with their lockdowns have caused the destruction of 40% of all small businesses.
Nor is Sweden the only data point. A new study of 43 countries as well as all 50 U.S. states has found that lockdowns were worthless.
[W]e use data from 43 countries that implemented SIP [shelter-in-place] policies and all 50 U.S. states. We estimate the effect of SIP policies using an event study approach. We also examine the change in excess deaths following the introduction of SIP policies separately for each country and U.S. state. We also compare differences in excess mortality based on the timing of SIP policy implementation.
In both settings, we fail to find that SIP policies saved lives. To the contrary, we find a positive association between SIP policies and excess deaths. We find that following the implementation of SIP policies, excess mortality increases. The increase in excess mortality is statistically significant in the immediate weeks following SIP implementation for the international comparison only. At the U.S. state-level, excess mortality increases in the immediate weeks following SIP implementation and then trends below zero following 20 weeks of SIP implementation. [emphasis mine]
The story at the link also notes that this is not the only study that has looked at the data and come to the same conclusion. Lockdowns were bad policy. They did nothing to ease the epidemic, and actually resulted in more deaths while creating poverty and debt that will take years to overcome.
Has any of this evidence influenced the Biden administration and the Democrats running many Democratic Party controlled states like New York, New Jersey, and California? Nah. No matter that the evidence from the beginning said lockdowns were a bad idea. No matter that the evidence now says the same thing. Democrats throughout the country continue to call for draconian mandates, lockdowns, and the elimination of freedom.
One wonders if maybe their motive was never to stop the virus. Maybe it was power they were really after, and the Wuhan flu gave them the lever to obtain it. And they are using lever, with all their might.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
How Democratic Party policy makers interpret data!
Almost a year and a half since the Wuhan panic swept across the world, the evidence continues to show that the policy decisions by our so-called “intellectual” class of experts to impose mandates and lockdowns were almost all stupid, producing disaster after disaster while completely failing to achieve any of their goals.
First we have Sweden, which refused to impose any lockdowns and now has practically no COVID-19 deaths at all.
An Imperial College model suggested that 85,000 people would die without a lockdown, and an Uppsala University team projected that 40,000 people would die from COVID-19 by May 1, 2020 and nearly 100,000 by June.
But by May, Sweden reported roughly six deaths for every one million people, according to the Financial Times, with 48.9% of its initial coronavirus deaths taking place in nursing homes, according to an analysis by the Swedish Public Health Agency. More than a year later, Sweden recorded 1.1 million coronavirus cases with 1.07 million people having recovered from the virus, and 14,620 coronavirus-linked deaths, according to woldometers.info as of Aug. 8, 2021.
Of the currently 12,248 people who have tested positive for COVID-19, 12, 219 are experiencing mild symptoms (99.8%) and 29 (0.2%) are in serious or critical condition, according to woldometers.info.
In other words, the models were so ridiculously wrong they weren’t even in the same galaxy as the results in the real world. Sweden’s population very quickly reached herd immunity and is now relatively immune from the virus and its later variants.
Moreover, Sweden’s economy has suffered little during the epidemic, and is doing nicely. Not so much in the U.S., where power-hungry politicians with their lockdowns have caused the destruction of 40% of all small businesses.
Nor is Sweden the only data point. A new study of 43 countries as well as all 50 U.S. states has found that lockdowns were worthless.
[W]e use data from 43 countries that implemented SIP [shelter-in-place] policies and all 50 U.S. states. We estimate the effect of SIP policies using an event study approach. We also examine the change in excess deaths following the introduction of SIP policies separately for each country and U.S. state. We also compare differences in excess mortality based on the timing of SIP policy implementation.
In both settings, we fail to find that SIP policies saved lives. To the contrary, we find a positive association between SIP policies and excess deaths. We find that following the implementation of SIP policies, excess mortality increases. The increase in excess mortality is statistically significant in the immediate weeks following SIP implementation for the international comparison only. At the U.S. state-level, excess mortality increases in the immediate weeks following SIP implementation and then trends below zero following 20 weeks of SIP implementation. [emphasis mine]
The story at the link also notes that this is not the only study that has looked at the data and come to the same conclusion. Lockdowns were bad policy. They did nothing to ease the epidemic, and actually resulted in more deaths while creating poverty and debt that will take years to overcome.
Has any of this evidence influenced the Biden administration and the Democrats running many Democratic Party controlled states like New York, New Jersey, and California? Nah. No matter that the evidence from the beginning said lockdowns were a bad idea. No matter that the evidence now says the same thing. Democrats throughout the country continue to call for draconian mandates, lockdowns, and the elimination of freedom.
One wonders if maybe their motive was never to stop the virus. Maybe it was power they were really after, and the Wuhan flu gave them the lever to obtain it. And they are using lever, with all their might.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The city of Austin, Tx and Travis county just sent every resident a Covid “Code 5 Alert”..basically your going to die. On August 8th they had one covid death with a rolling 7 day average of 2.
I forgot to mention that Travis County has 1.3 million people.
“Never let a crisis go to waste”
—former Obama Chief of Staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel
One thing – among many things – I’m curious about is who is validating and how are they validating the variants? Has any reporter asked anyone (Fauci maybe), “what about the structure of the Delta Variant makes it different than the original Covid 19? Can you show me the different variants in an image? Are you running each positive case through a DNA analysis to prove which variant it might be?”
I’d bet the answer – from Fauci – to the first question would be something like “my team has determined the differences and it would be too complicated for the layman to understand.” And, “I don’t have those images at my disposal.” And “experts in the field have documented how wide spread the Delta variant is.” And that would be it. I suspect there are variants. Viruses mutate after all. But I’d bet there’s very little being done to actually document the mutations. “Trust us. We’re experts.”
I am told (a missionary friend) Nicaragua did no lock-downs and folk are going back to jobs.
” it would be too complicated for the layman to understand.”
It’s happened before and a gullible press swallowed it whole
It was the Enron collapse, twenty years ago. A financial reporter at a news conference with the company brass asked some questions that amounted to “Just how are you making money?” and was given a reply amounting to “It’s too complicated for you to understand”. She looked around the room and saw all her mesmerized colleagues in the press corps, nodding their heads in agreement and was stunned. She went back to the office (remember offices?) and wrote a column saying that her suspicions had been ignited and explaining why.
“In March 2001 an article by Bethany McLean appeared in Fortune magazine noting that no one understood how the company made money and questioning whether Enron stock was overvalued”
Enron responded by saying, “She’s obviously too dumb to understand our advanced financial methods”. Of course, Enron was a house of cards and was lying about being a profitable company, just like she thought.
“At the end of 2001, it was revealed that Enron’s reported financial condition was sustained by an institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known since as the Enron scandal. Enron has become synonymous of willful corporate fraud and corruption. ”
Speaking personally, as someone with an MBA with a concentration in Finance and Accounting, who was working in corporate finance at the time, following my retirement from the Army, I was sickened by the conduct of my financial peers at Enron and appalled at the conduct of the supposedly knowledgeable financial press.
The Democrats jumped on Covid because it was the ONE issue they were able to gin up over 4 years of trying every deceitful trick they could think of against Donald John Trump that made a dent. And beating him was the sole priority above the health of their constituents, our economy, and even our national defense (even forcing the withdrawal of an entire $10B+ carrier strike group from service in the pacific at one point because a few sailers got sick (but no deaths))!
But worst of all they were able to manipulate Covid to scale up mail in voting by 2-3X or more the historic norm AND dilute the acceptance criteria of same in many key districts such that the rejection rate was an order of magnitude or more lower than the 100 year historic average.
THAT is how they gained power, and now that they have it these policies are what they crave to retain. Just look at California who has just instituted new digital ballot distribution just in time for the Newsom recall for anyone on the basis of Covid fear, using a system that appears extremely difficult if not impossible to accurately audit. Just what the doctor ordered with support cratering and recall actually looking likely.
Gary wrote: …how are they validating the variants?…Are you running each positive case through a DNA analysis to prove which variant it might be?
Not each positive case but a significant fraction of them. The delta variant has been sequenced over 30,000 times in the United States and over 300,000 times worldwide.
what about the structure of the Delta Variant makes it different than the original Covid 19?
There are 13 mutations in the delta variant. The four most concerning are:
L452R — leucine (L) is replaced by arginine (R) at position 452
T478K — threonine (T) is replaced by lysine (K) at position 478
D614G — aspartic acid (D) is replaced by glycine (G) at position 614
P681R — proline (P) is replaced by arginine (R) at position 681
I suspect there are variants. Viruses mutate after all. But I’d bet there’s very little being done to actually document the mutations.
You’d lose that bet. We know the exact genetic sequence of every variant and sub-variant of the virus and are beginning to have a pretty good idea of what each of the mutations does (e. g. the L452R mutation confers stronger affinity of the spike protein for the ACE2 receptor, which is how it gains entry into human cells).
It really is science.
“Doctor calls out CDC and school board at school board meeting”
August 8, 2021
https://youtu.be/X7v_0K3kV60
6:30
–>the key phrase is “antibody mediated viral enhancement,” which happens when vaccines “work wrong.”
“No vaccines actually prevent infection(s), you get infected and you shed pathogen. You just don’t get symptomatic from it.”
Leaving any heated argument on previous threads aside…
Some “boots on the ground” reporting from Sweden.
During the first wave of covid, it was pretty rough, some people died, others got very sick indeed. People I know.
And that’s about it. For a while masks were “recommend” on public transport, that recommendation is no longer in place. Life is pretty much back to normal, but it has never been that far from normal. We have been to bars, eaten out, gone shopping, done our thing. And the company I work for had its best year in its 63 year history last financial year.
I am traveling to England to see my family for the first time in two years in a couple of weeks. I am double vaccinated, yet ( due to UK rules ) I have to take a test 2 days before travel, and one after being in the UK 3 days. At around $130 a time!
Then I can return to Sweden. I’m vaccinated, so no tests required,.I just get on the plane and come home.
There are a lot of people making a lot of money out of this virus. There also seems to be an awful lot of bullcrap regarding the vaccine, ( subject for another thread ), I’m VERY much an advocate for vaccination in general, but this one… It don’t stop you catching covid, it don’t stop you spreading it… What is it for?
I don’t understand why the “Swedish model” is not accepted by the scientific community as proof that most models are wrong. Models are just that… Myself and my friends and neighbors and workmates are genuine proof that said models are wrong.
( Sorry to agree with our leader here, and most posters, but sometimes the truth will out. I was wrong in my initial thoughts on this virus, experience has changed my mind. )
mkent, thank you for the info. Couple of questions. Where did you access this? Do you happen to know the size of their sample in the randomized sampling. I have followed pretty closely and I haven’t seen this kind of information in the mass media. Serious reporters, should be asking Fauci these kinds of questions both to get the info out and to measure how close the man who is the public face of the pandemic response in the in US is following the research.
@mkent
I don’t doubt that the actual study of the virus is scientific. It’s the scientific basis of the public policy implications (the job Fauci actually does) that is questionable. If you use Sweden as a control for instance, it would suggest lockdowns are less than helpful. Then there is the masks are useless, wear a mask, wear a mask even if you are vaccinated pronouncements. The skepticism Fauci is facing is well earned.
“” it would be too complicated for the layman to understand.”
It’s happened before and a gullible press swallowed it whole”
So, you continue to believe that the press is interested in reporting facts and if they miss the mark, it was an innocent mistake. I realized years ago that many things drive reportage, but facts do not play a factor, unless fact support the reporting agency’s agenda.
Science? Or science fiction?
Or more likely political science pretending to be Real science… like the authorization of an untested experimental DNA modifier with unknown side effects (like death), approved by “political” authorization against the wishes of nearly every virologist in the world.
“To date, no variants of high consequence have been identified in the United States”
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/variant-info.html
Can they test for a variant? They can’t even tell COVID-19 from influenza A or B. The symptoms are the same, the decision of what it is is political in nature. “What can bring in the most money for the hospital?”
The CDC admits the virus has never been isolated, therefore no test for the virus can be accurate.
https://principia-scientific.com/even-cdc-now-admits-no-gold-standard-of-covid19-virus-isolate/
“Dr. Derek Knauss: “When my lab team and I subjected the 1500 supposedly positive Covid-19 samples to Koch’s postulates and put them under an SEM (electron microscope), we found NO Covid in all 1500 samples. We found that all 1500 samples were primarily Influenza A, and some Influenza B, but no cases of Covid. We did not use the bulls*** PCR test.’
Then we all asked the CDC for viable samples of Covid. The CDC said they can’t give them, because they don’t have those samples.’
https://principia-scientific.com/laboratories-in-us-cant-find-covid-19-in-1500-positive-tests/
A letter dated June 7, 2021 from the CDC, they still do not have any isolated samples of COVID-19 that can be used to make an accurate (not diluted with other viruses) test.
https://www.johnccarleton.org/BLOGGER/2021/08/07/written-proof-cdc-has-no-isolated-purified-sample-of-sars-cov-2-virus-that-causes-covid-19/
Here’s a good informative article (with just right amount of sarcasm) about the CDC banning the PCR test because of invalid results beginning tomorrow? Next week? No, at the end of this year.
“Translation: We, at the CDC, did not have a specimen of the SARS-CoV-2 virus when we concocted the PCR test for SARS-CoV-2. Yes, it’s unbelievable, right? And that’s the test we’ve been using all along. So we CONTRIVED samples of the virus. We fabricated. We lied. We made up [invented] synthetic gene sequences and we SAID these sequences HAD TO BE close to the sequence of SARS-CoV-2, without having the faintest idea of what we were doing, because, again, we didn’t have an actual specimen of the virus.”
https://www.johnccarleton.org/BLOGGER/2021/07/29/cdc-fda-confess-they-had-no-virus-when-they-concocted-the-test-for-the-virus/
Here’s different article about WHY the CDC announcement;
““if someone is tested by PCR as positive when a threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used (as is the rule in most laboratories in Europe and the US), the probability that said person is infected is less than 3%, and the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%.”
https://www.algora.com/Algora_blog/2021/07/25/cdc-revokes-emergency-use-authorisation-to-rt-pcr-for-covid-19-testing
The fact checkers believe that the scientific method is no longer valid, but the only truth is whatever the “consensus of politicians” say it is depending on which way the winds blowing. (Just ignore the man behind the curtain…)
” So in summary, Covid-19 has been isolated, Koch’s postulates don’t have to universally apply for something to cause disease, and tests to identify the Covid-19 virus do work.”
https://fullfact.org/health/Covid-isolated-virus/
The real science deniers. Spinning the narrative to fool the people and calling it the truth.
If all 72 test providers will no longer be valid, what will be the replacement? Yes they have one. One PCR test to rule them all…
“CDC is urging clinics and hospitals around the country to immediately begin the process of using new tools better able to “facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses”
“Global access health initiative” owned, operated, managed for your safety and mine, by people that everyone trusts… George Soros and Bill Gates.(both are under a death sentence in various countries) What could go wrong?
https://nationalfile.com/cdc-declares-pcr-tests-must-go-immediately-after-george-soros-bill-gates-buy-covid-19-test-manufacturer/
The new and improved PCR test… Same as the old one.
If you expect to get the truth from the propaganda media, you’re worse than misinformed.
One of hundreds of examples where the media is instructed to lie, trash anyone including professionals and doctors that do not agree with the narrative. Leaked video, 4 minutes.
https://rumble.com/embed/vhjkw5/?pub=B8C3X
What will be your new normal? 50 changes that will be that “boot on your face forever” coming whether you like it or not.
“We are currently on the precipice between freedom and serfdom and it is the responsibility of anyone with a conscience to expose the dystopia into which we are sleepwalking”
https://wrenchinthegears.com/2021/06/05/covid-cybernetics-and-the-new-normal/
(as a sidenote, the infrastructure bill has many changes to the normal in it’s 2000 page + that taxes you for carbon, the miles you drive, and does away with zoning. A contractor can literally buy a couple houses next to you, tear them down, and build high density housing in a small neighborhood)
If you’ve been watching the news or listening to the radio, there’s a big push to get everyone vaccinated. Washington is declaring that you cannot work in their state without being vaxed, and the military has announced that every active military person, against their will must have the jab by mid September, or sooner if emergency use authorization for an untested vaccine is given full authorization by the CDC (China) or Dr. President Biden’s Magic wand executive pen. (they expect the mass testing on the population to be complete by 2024)
And why not? The media declares it 99.99% effective… The only people in the hospital are the unvaccinated. If you dare say you don’t believe it, you will be made into a non-person…
A story that slipped through the cracks;
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/cdc-study-shows-74percent-of-people-infected-in-massachusetts-covid-outbreak-were-fully-vaccinated.html
And to think Obama had a birthday party with hundreds of people with no masks violating the new rules… if the shots worked, then the new requirement for everyone to wear masks again would not be necessary. As the study’s say, if you can smell a flower, smoke, or stinky gas with your mask on, then your mask will not prevent a virus. (As it says on every box of masks)
Shots, that work so good, that you have to force people to take it… for a disease, so terrible, you have to take a test to know if you have it.
Doctor bob also reports this last weekend, that the rise in hospitalizations are the vaccinated. He interviewed or commented on an interview of the creator of the MNRA vaccine. The creator claims that it’s not being used the way it was intended, that it has been Weaponized against the population.
https://doctorbob.com/
Blackrock was in the news again recently, they own nearly everything already including Wall street, nearly every major business, pharmaceuticals, and land… Their most recent purchase is information. Your health information. They own your health records.
https://www.thehealthcareinvestor.com/2021/05/articles/healthcare-services-investing/healthcare-life-sciences-private-equity-deal-tracker-blackrock-ltpc-acquires-transaction-data-systems/
They also just purchased the rights for asset management connection with China. When have you ever seen China take a minority interest? $9 trillion added for a total of over $30 trillion now in assets for Black rock.
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/blackrock-expands-china-footprint-with-wealth-management-license
They’re also the first people that The federal government called in a crisis.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/business/economy/fed-blackrock-pandemic-crisis.html
Supposedly the government cannot violate your rights. But a private omniscient entity like Black rock has no problem. The New World order is a technocracy corporation in whom we will all work for, or be broke. They will control our food, water, waste management, carbon usage, the extent of our freedoms… possibly on the condition of our continual worship in the form of a devotion like the mask. The dark age has arrived.
mkent, thank you for the info. Couple of questions. Where did you access this?
In this case Wikipedia has a pretty good write-up of the mutations behind the delta variant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Delta_variant#Classification
I don’t doubt that the actual study of the virus is scientific. It’s the scientific basis of the public policy implications (the job Fauci actually does) that is questionable.
Oh, I’ve taken no position on this or any other blog as to the advisability of lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine passports, or any other controversial public health policy. I’ve merely pointed out facts about the virus and the disease it causes.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.” I’ve come to the conclusion that discussing controversial policies in the absence of basic facts is pointless and just leads to frustration. So I’ve focused on the facts such as delta variant sequencing as discussed above.
The skepticism Fauci is facing is well earned.
I don’t deny that. I don’t really get the obsession with this man on either the right or the left. What he says is usually orthogonal to the facts, and I pay little attention to it. The truth is true whether or not a man named Fauci agrees with it.
And seemingly just to illustrate my point, while I was typing my response, in pops Max who posts….yeah.
“What he says is usually orthogonal to the facts, and I pay little attention to it.”
The problem is that people with the power to make policy DO pay attention to him.
Max wrote: “Science? Or science fiction?”
It could also be Lysenkoism.
“Shots, that work so good, that you have to force people to take it… for a disease, so terrible, you have to take a test to know if you have it.”
An excellent way to phrase it.
The tale is that the lockdown idea came from a model created for a high school science project. High expertise.
We need to keep in mind that models only say what they are told to say. When we create models, we include attributes and amplification factors for each attribute. The amplification factors inform the model how important each attribute is. Including or excluding attributes informs the models what to consider as an influence. All these determine what the model is supposed to say.
We are a species that depends upon predicting the future. If we plant our fields now, how much crop can we reap, and if we wait a month then how much? By baking at 350 Fahrenheit for 40 minutes, the pie will be tasty. A ten terawatt generation capability will keep the country with sufficient electricity even during a hot summer day. The spacecraft will rendezvous with the space station at time t.
To help us with our predictions, we make models based upon our past experiences and our knowledge of the universe. The more that we put into our models, the more accurate and precise the predictions, the more skillful the model is at making its predictions. This is known as a skilled model. If we depend upon a high school science project for a model, we get our leaders to incorrectly and unnecessarily lock us into our houses, adversely affect our lives and livelihoods, and destroy our liberties.
Models are limited in their usefulness. They are designed to predict the future. They cannot help us make discoveries, because it is those very discoveries that are used to make the model
https://wmbriggs.com/public/Briggs.ModelsSayOnlyWhattTeyAreYoldToSay.pdf
One of the problems with models is that not everything is known. Assumptions are made. Unfortunately for us all, these assumptions are rarely listed in the output of the model, so we usually do not have a reference for determining the skill of the model. When the experts tell us that year-long lockdowns are good for us, they do not inform us that this was determined by using a model created for a high school science project. How many attributes were included in the model and what were they, and how many attributes were not included and what were they?
A model that is based upon the assumption that face masks work will always falsely predict that masks work, despite a century of studies by doctors and scientists who were desperate to find a way to prevent the spread of disease. Studies show that surgical masks barely prevent post surgical infections, the purpose for which they were designed, but a century of studies showed that they do not prevent the spread of disease, and in the winter of 2020-2021 we saw empirical evidence around the world that they did not prevent the spread of disease. Shelter in place, stay at home lockdowns did not prevent the spread of disease, either. The feared flu became worse that winter despite widespread use of these methods.
Also from the Briggs paper:
The simpler the model, the easier it is for us to see that it says what it was told to say. A model that counts seconds since midnight will always predict that at one AM 3,600 seconds will have passed. More complex models are harder for us to see that it says what it was told to say.
A model that predicts next Tuesday’s weather considers a great number of attributes and has a large number of inputs. The assumptions are still unknown to us, the end user, but the models are often skillful enough to let us know whether we will get rain or whether we should plan to water our crops.
Climate models have their own unstated assumptions, an important one being the assumption of how much the water vapor increases in the atmosphere due to temperature rise caused by increased CO2 in the air. Water vapor is another greenhouse gas, so an increase in water vapor further increases the atmospheric temperature. No studies have been performed to determine the relationship between increased CO2 and increased water vapor, so our climate models make an assumption. The lack of skill of these models suggests that the assumption is wrong, but the models have not been adjusted in any way as a result of their failure to predict today’s climate from the starting point of three decades ago.
Also from the Briggs paper:
Essentially, the climate models were created on the assumption of global warming, and they predicted global warming. When that warming failed to occur, the models were still assumed to be correct, but the climate was assumed to have been mismeasured.
Also from the Briggs paper:
NOAA and NASA, without announcement or explanation, modified historical temperature data in a way that better matched the model predictions, and the climate science community started using the term climate change rather than global warming. The model had become seen as the reality, so when reality did not match the model, it was determined that the reality must be wrong and had to be fixed.
Also from the Briggs paper:
Thus, models did not discover climate change or global warming, they assumed it and their reasoning was circular. The same goes for lockdowns, face masks, and orbital rendezvous. We got the solution to our orbital rendezvous problem, because we told our model to give us the solution. It said what we told it to say. In the case of orbital rendezvous, the necessary attributes and factors are well known.
Also from the Briggs paper:
My second paying job was doing exactly this with three dimensional airflow models. We had a wind tunnel with a spinning cylinder, and we compared our measurements of the airflow that was spun around that cylinder with seven models. We were searching for the model that best described what was measured. We did not assume that any model was perfect, just that one was better than the others, that it came closer to predicting three dimensional airflow than models had done before. Determining why that one was better and determining how to improve the predictions was the purview of others.
Climate change models and todays disease vector models have not been properly compared and judged against reality. Instead, reality was changed in order to match the models.
For a century, doctors and scientists have been desperate to find a way to prevent the spread of flus and disease, and over that time many research studies showed that face masks never fit the bill — until last year, when suddenly the government was able to tell us what to wear, even though the science said it didn’t work. If masks work, then why did we have another wave of Wuhan flu last winter? If lockdowns work, then why did we have another wave last winter? If masks and lockdowns work, why don’t they work? Maybe it is because our high school students are the assumed experts.
Max / Edward–
Good stuff.
Chris L-
excellent point.
Metallica –
“King Nothing” (1996)
https://youtu.be/Xz9DX_VMXdI
5:14
“Then it all crashes down,
And you break your crown.
And you point your finger, But there’s no one around….
Just want one thing, Just to play the king.
But the castle crumbled,
And you’re left with just a name.
Where’s your crown, King Nothing?”