We're always being told to listen to experts. So listen to this one:
Noting that he was also an expert in virology, Hodkinson pointed out that his role as CEO of a biotech company that manufactures COVID tests means, “I might know a little bit about all this.”
“There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians, it’s outrageous, this is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public,” said Hodkinson.
The doctor said that nothing could be done to stop the spread of the virus besides protecting older more vulnerable people and that the whole situation represented “politics playing medicine, and that’s a very dangerous game.”
Hodkinson remarked that “social distancing is useless because COVID is spread by aerosols which travel 30 meters or so before landing,” as he called for society to be re-opened immediately to prevent the debilitating damage being caused by lockdowns.
Hodkinson also slammed mandatory mask mandates as completely pointless.
“Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever,” he said.
“Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue signalling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous. Seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people – I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense – seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge base to put the mask on their face.”
The doctor also slammed the unreliability of PCR tests, noting that “positive test results do not, underlined in neon, mean a clinical infection,” and that all testing should stop because the false numbers are “driving public hysteria.”
Hodkinson said that the risk of death in the province of Alberta for people under the age of 65 was “one in three hundred thousand,” and that it was simply “outrageous” to shut down society for what the doctor said “was just another bad flu.”
“I’m absolutely outraged that this has reached this level, it should all stop tomorrow,” concluded Dr. Hodkinson.
Showing 11 out of 11 comments, oldest first:
Comment on Dec 2, 2020 at 15:24 by Joe Data
When he says 'the risk of death in the province of Alberta for people under the age of 65 was “one in three hundred thousand,”' that's pretty bizarre. If they are low in Alberta, that's not a measure of how serious a disease it is. In the United States so far, 49,249 people under the age of 65 have alreadydied of COVID (CDC figures as of 2020-11-25). The population under age 65 is approximately 274 million. That's about one COVID death for every 5,500 people. That's 54 times deadlier than Hodkinson implies. And the number is still going up, of course.
The evidence for masks as source control is actually good. The evidence that masks protect the wearer is weak. But if everybody wore a mask, it would have a large impact. And it's much cheaper than lockdowns, for example.
When he calls it "just another bad flu", take a look at this graph of death rates: /files/Pic0998.png
The crude death rate will be at least 11.5% higher than last year and probably
more than 12.5% higher. The only year the death rate has jumped more than that
is 1918, when it rose 29.3%. In second place (until this year is counted), we have 1936 when the death rate jumped 6.4%
Since World War II, the highest one-year increase is 3.5%.
So, no, this is not "just another bad flu". It is the worst epidemic since 1918 by far.
That said, I don't know how much damage—human, economic, health— lockdowns do compared to other policies. It is very possible that other policies have better cost/benefit ratios.
Comment on Dec 2, 2020 at 23:04 by denisbider
No, misconception! They're doing these tests with 40+ cycles. From a pseudonymous lab source (CNN uses anonymous sources, therefore this is epistemologically impeccable), I have it that 35 cycles equates to no target present. 40+ cycles is ridiculous - it means guaranteed and very high false positives.
Unknown: In the United States so far, 49,249 people under the age of 65 have already died of COVID (CDC figures as of 2020-11-25).
They died with Covid, which is completely different.
Just recently, the Johns Hopkins News-Letter published an analysis by Genevieve Briand, Assistant Director for MS in Applied Economics. The analysis found there was no increase in total number of deaths in the US in 2020 compared to previous years, and no difference in age profile of deaths that occurred.
This article got traction a few days after it was posted, and then within a few hours it was removed. When I link the Archive link on Facebook, it of course gets the disclaimer:
"Missing Context. Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people."
This is the fucking propaganda we have to deal with. You are not seeing this, but the misinformation you're getting on Covid is on the same level as misinformation you were getting about the Iraq invasion.
It is dwarfed, of course, by the misinformation you are getting about the "complete absence" of election fraud.
Information is being suppressed. This is being done overtly and on purpose. If the suppression was only about Covid, you could argue it's a scientific disagreement, but the same kind of info suppression is happening about the election.
This is on purpose. You are receiving curated news meant to make you believe things that are not true.
If you're going to keep spreading the propaganda, please do not post further. I will not allow it.
Comment on Dec 3, 2020 at 09:23 by Joe Data
The PCR tests are extremely sensitive but obviously they are not guaranteed to be positive since most come back negative. They may be a false positive in the sense that you may not be infected or infectious, but they do, except for the rare case of contamination, indicate exposure to the pathogen.
The variations in the number of positives matches, with a delay, the surges in hospitalizations and deaths. This is obviously influenced also by the number of tests done, but there is a signal with the rate of positives.
The official count for COVID deaths under the age of 65 is now up to 50,698. However, if you look at the figures for deaths from all causes, they are more than 84,000 higher in the first 40 weeks of 2020 compared to recent years. Although some of the increase is due to other causes, there's little doubt that it's mostly COVID.
When you look at all excess deaths and subtract the official COVID deaths, the shape of the curve of the non-COVID deaths still matches the COVID surges and they are proportionally the same ages and mostly in the same places as COVID deaths.
Graph: /files/Pic0982.png
The Johns Hopkins article is based on Dr. Briand's YouTube presentation, which is still up. You can watch it. I have.
The article says: "Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same." (Emphasis added.)
That's true, the percentages hardly changed at all. Here's a table of the number and percentage of deaths by age group from just before the epidemic hit and the height of the epidemic:
/files/Pic1004.png
Do you see how what Dr. Briand said is right, yet the total number of deaths increased a lot?
That's from this Google doc spreadsheet, which I made a few days ago to check up on what she says. It has since auto-updated, so the numbers are *slightly* different from the graphic above.
You're a programmer. You can check the numbers. If you don't believe me, I urge you to do so. Don't call what I write propaganda unless you check it.
I don't know what the best policies are, but there are people lying about "dying with" vs. "dying of", COVID deaths being exaggerated, and it being "just a bad flu". It's the worst epidemic since 1918, by far.
Look at the numbers.
You may also be interest in spreadsheets:
U.S. deaths by Week and Year
Weekly counts of deaths by select causes (still working on this one)
Comment on Dec 3, 2020 at 10:37 by Boris Kolar
If this level of coordinated misinformation happens globally, I wonder what's next. What is their end goal? To get rid of disobedient people? If so, do you have any idea how can we resist?
Comment on Dec 3, 2020 at 21:40 by denisbider
That is nice and I do appreciate it. You must also understand that the relationship is not fully reciprocal for reasons that are your choice and not mine.
What I mean is that I'm being very open about the things I share. By reading this blog, you can know a lot about me. I do not get to know anything about you. You even comment with the name "Unknown". To me, this could be a long-time reader, a random person, or someone who's paid to post comments to shape opinions. I do not know.
Unknown: I have been shocked by your last few posts.
If that's the case, then you have not been following the seriousness of what's currently happening in the world.
China is a country with 1.4 billion people who live under authoritarianism where the Party decides what is true, and the Party is basically the autocrat that currently rules it.
China regularly commits cultural genocide, and actual genocide, against multiple minority groups, in actions that are well-documented. They tell the rest of the world to mind their own business. They can do this because we made the mistake of becoming dependent on them to manufacture everything - and also because they have nukes.
We, the so-called "free" world, comprise fewer than 1 billion people living in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. We are governed and told what is true by corporations who are actively in the process of selling us out to China, by corporate leadership which has more in common with Xi Jinping than it has with the principles on which the United States are founded.
These corporations are currently, as we speak conducting an actual coup in the United States of America. They are pretending they have elected a clown president and are pretending they stand for unity by saying "fuck you, you don't matter" to over 50% of the population.
IF THIS SUCCEEDS, not only is the United States over as a free country, but there is in fact no liberty left in the world.
If this succeeds, the entire world will be reduced to the level of freedom that they currently have in China.
This is how serious this thing is, and if you do not realize this, then I can see how you would be shocked by my recent posts. What's happening right now is shocking. People must see how shocking it is while the course can still be changed.
At this point, it is clear that Covid is definitely part of the corporate propaganda toward totalitarianism. It is a real disease in the same way that the flu is a real disease, but as a threat to humanity that justifies a 100% lockdown in Los Angeles that started just today it completely lacks any legitimacy.
Covid is being used as a pretext. Information about Covid is being manipulated. The science is being filtered so that you only see doom and gloom, but none of the information that would dispel fears is allowed to get to you.
The science that's being used is not scientific. A precondition for scientific inquiry is free communication, and communication is definitely not free. There are things about Covid, as well as things about the election, about which we are not allowed to speak.
We are literally at a point where we either enter totalitarianism, or we do not. You must not buy the propaganda. This is how important this is!
Comment on Dec 3, 2020 at 22:04 by denisbider
- If Covid overwhelmingly affects the elderly, but age structure of deaths has not changed, then the total number of deaths could not have increased significantly because of Covid. This is an impossibility.
- The number of deaths can vary greatly from month to month due to seasonal variations. This is true each year.
What I can do quickly right now is link this:
/files/Pic1000.jpg
This shows the death rate is going up slowly and steadily, most likely because the population is aging. However, the increase in death rate in 2020 is entirely consistent with increases in past years.
Comment on Dec 3, 2020 at 22:27 by denisbider
I'm glad you liked it!
I agree about the comment by Dharmasena. ��
Boris: What is their end goal? To get rid of disobedient people?
Short-term: probably a soft totalitarianism showing tendencies that started under George W. Bush (overt media lying about external threats, a need to deploy the war machine in foreign invasions); incorporating additional tendencies developed under Obama and now against Trump (an increasingly dogmatic narrative of inclusiveness and social justice that goes beyond reasonable bounds; overt propaganda against whiteness; isolating white people, emphasizing white guilt, strengthening a narrative of righteous minorities against white oppression; dissolution of whiteness through mass immigration of non-white people who do not share cultural values and are expected to vote for those who support importing them).
The end goal is very prosaic, just power and money. That's it. There's no real ideology behind it, just a cynical, autocratic desire to rule.
The people who are perpetuating this are the leaders of corporations, and the leaders of corporations rule autocratically. The large corporations are basically their own little totalitarian regimes where the CEOs play the role of Xi Jinping, and the employees play the role of party members. The CEOs pretend they are insightful and visionary, like "Xi Jinping thought", and the employees must obediently praise this.
It's basically an exercise in egocentrism of the world's corporate elites.
Boris: If so, do you have any idea how can we resist?
Speak up about it and ensure that people around you know what's going on. The egos of these people are bloated with the conviction that they run the world, they don't understand they only run it with tacit consent of all people. If tacit consent is not given, they do not run anything.
It's possible for all to go well, and if it does, they will realize their powerlessness shortly. But we must speak up.
Comment on Dec 4, 2020 at 07:19 by Joe Data
If you look at the actual numbers (/files/Pic1004.png), you can see what happened.
Denis: /files/Pic1000.jpg This shows the death rate is going up slowly and steadily, most likely because the population is aging. However, the increase in death rate in 2020 is entirely consistent with increases in past years.
As that page says, "NOTE: All 2020 and later data are UN projections and DO NOT include any impacts of the COVID-19 virus."
We won't have a good estimate until March, but it looks like we are on track for a 9.7 to 10.0 death rate this year.
The numbers at macrotrends.net are also smoothed out from the actual numbers. I made a graph comparing the two series and adding a guess of 9.8 for the death rate: https://imgur.com/T5Fgx09
Comment on Dec 8, 2020 at 02:55 by denisbider
Fair enough, we'll see in March. :)
When Covid first started spreading from China, my estimate was that it might kill some 2% of the population, mostly the elderly. With only this estimate in hand, my policy advice at that time would have been to put the population in stadiums and have everyone cough on each other so that it spreads as fast as possible, so that we get it over with. I estimated the trauma would be less, but of course it was obvious that the chances of the people actually agreeing to something like this would be zero.
Subsequently it has turned out the virus is even less lethal, probably under 0.5%. You can imagine how that affects my policy recommendations.
Lots of people think this is a monstrous view. I think those are people who don't accept death as a part of life, and therein lies the conundrum.
Comment on Dec 8, 2020 at 03:04 by denisbider
We trade saving 0.5% of the population, almost all of them elderly with 1-5 comorbidities, in exchange for losing entire generations. Basically annihilating ourselves.
Even if the chance is low, I find this an abominable trade. Even more abominable that a large part of the medical profession and the politicians are keen on pushing it.
If something like this happens, we should go back and hang the people who promoted such a vaccine. The people who are promoting it now should keep this in mind.
Comment on Dec 9, 2020 at 19:30 by Boris Kolar
https://www.facebook.com/aljosa.rojac.5/videos/830702974120363
https://www.facebook.com/aljosa.rojac.5/videos/917730482084278
https://www.facebook.com/aljosa.rojac.5/videos/840367289820598