Unaccounted Excess US Deaths in the Time of Covid

Science Matters

Eyal Shahar writes at Brownstone Institute The Mystery of Unaccounted Excess Deaths in the US.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

By April 2022, the number of reported Covid deaths (993,739) had accounted for almost all of the CDC estimate of excess deaths (about 1,080,000). The official narrative will tell you that most of the difference is missing Covid deaths – people who died from Covid but were not diagnosed.

That’s a simpleminded summary.

First, flu returned last winter (Figure 1) and its share in excess mortality is unknown. A comparison of Covid deaths with excess deaths must be truncated in September 2021, before the beginning of the flu wave.

Second, Covid deaths might have been missed early on, but it is absurd to assume that they continued to be missed throughout the pandemic. On the contrary, liberal coding rules, financial incentives, extensive testing, and a Covid-oriented mindset must have…

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Yes, NIH Funded Gain-Of-Function

PA Pundits International

By Thomas Gallatin ~

Three experts testify the NIH was indeed engaged in funding gain-of-function research, calling Fauci’s claim “untruthful.”

The nature of a lie is that it never ends with just one. It has a tendency to snowball, getting bigger and bigger. But also like that snowball, it quickly starts to fall apart as it grows. This phenomenon appears to be what we are witnessing regarding Dr. Anthony Fauci’s claims about COVID-19’s origin and the potential role the National Institutes of Health played in it through gain-of-function research.

In May 2021, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) accused the NIH of funding gain-of-function research, specifically at biolabs in Wuhan, China. At the time, Fauci vehemently denied the charge: “Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect. … The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

However, months…

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When Institutions Turn Against Individuals

Science Matters

These days, marxist theory is camouflaged as “Critical Theory”, AKA Critical Race Theory, Critical Gender Theory, etc. But the thrust remains the same:  every social identity and relationship is redefined as a power struggle between oppressor and oppressed.  Thus everything is politicized and civil society is reduced to a jungle where might makes right.  Those who seize cultural control of social and economic institutions imperil each individual’s inalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Last month Peter Robinson conducted an Uncommon Knowledge interview with Jordan Peterson on the topic The Importance of Being Ethical.  The video link is below, followed by my transcription with light editing to produce from the captions a text for reading.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds. (PR is Peter Robinson, JP is Jordan Peterson)

PR:  If you’re the prime minister of Canada the man is a villain, but if you’re a conservative…

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Reduced Risk of SARS CV2 Infection: IVM vs. VAX

Science Matters

A year ago it was already evident that Ivermectin provided superior protection against SARS CV2 infection compared to Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. Bruce Sanders sent me the following analysis in pdf.

Improving Covid 19 Outcomes:  A Comparison of Prophylactic Measures

•  Ivermectin (IVM) for humans is safe and improves the health of those that contract SARS CoV 2

•  Absolute Risk Reduction for Ivermectin when used as a prophylactic measure varies from 0.7% to 66%.

•  Pfizer and Moderna messenger RNA (mRNA) injections, which are also prophylactic measures, have a 0.7% and 1.1% absolute risk reduction respectively.

•  Relative Risk Reduction for Ivermectin when used as a prophylactic measure varies from 38% to 100%.

•  Pfizer and Moderna mRNA injections, which are also prophylactic measures, have a 95% and 94% relative risk reduction respectively.

IVM Studies

•  The basis for this work is taken from the ivermectin meta analysis…

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Society Damaged by Surge of Narcissists

Science Matters

Ross Pomeroy writes at Real Clear Science What Are the Effects of America’s Narcissism Epidemic?Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

There’s a strong case to be made that since the end of World War II, Americans have grown increasingly narcissistic on average – more entitled, with an inflated sense of self-importance.

Psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell are most responsible for collecting data and creating a narrative to support this claim. According to the duo, the rise began with the Baby Boomers, who grew up in an era of relative ease and plenty after their grandparents endured a Great Depression and their parents soldiered and sacrificed through World War II. By the time they were college-aged, Boomers eschewed the collectivist mindset of their elders in favor of individualism.

The trend continued with Boomers’ kids. As Dennis Shen wrote for the London School of Economics’ Phelan…

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Natural Covid19 Immunity Is Real (Fauci Admits, Finally)

Science Matters

Jeffrey Tucker writes at the Brownstone Institute  Fauci Finally Admits Natural Immunity.  Excerpts in italic with my bolds.

Yes, Fauci has never worried about consistency or even contradicting himself one day to the next, often without explanation. Too often his doling out “the science” has felt like performance art. Still, the record is that Fauci and all his compatriots either downplayed or denied natural immunity for two years. That has been the source of vast confusion.

In fact, this might have been the most egregious science error of the entire pandemic. It amounted to giving the silent treatment to the most well-established point of cell biology that we have. It was taught to every generation from the 1920s until sometime in the new century when people stopped paying attention in 9th-grade biology class.

There’s no question that this effort to deny natural immunity
was systematic and pushed from the…

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How Public Health Canceled Herd Immunity

Science Matters

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David Robertson writes at Stat News How we got herd immunity wrong.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Herd immunity was always our greatest asset for protecting vulnerable people,
but public health failed to use it wisely.

In March 2020, not long after Covid-19 was declared a global public health emergency, prominent experts predicted that the pandemic would eventually end via herd immunity. Infectious disease epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, who advised President Biden, opined in the Washington Post that even without a vaccine, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, would eventually “burn itself out as the spread of infection comes to confer a form of herd immunity.” The best strategy, he reasoned, was to “gradually build up immunity” by letting “those at low risk for serious disease continue to work” while higher-risk people sheltered and scientists developed treatments and, hopefully, vaccines.

Experts…

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Challenge Your Covid Fear Factor

Science Matters

John Tierney writes at City Journal Understanding the Covid Odds.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

If you’ve been vaccinated and still feel mortally threatened by the virus, please read this.

It’s obviously not easy to give up fear of Covid-19, to judge from a recent survey showing that the vaccinated are actually more frightened than the unvaccinated. Another survey found that most Democratic voters are so worried that they want to make it illegal for the unvaccinated to leave home. But before you don another mask or disinfect another surface, before you cheer on politicians and school officials enforcing mandates, consider your odds of a fatal Covid case once you’ve been vaccinated.

Those odds can be gauged from a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, published by the Centers for Disease Control. They tracked more than 1 million vaccinated adults in America

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Omicron is Pooping Out

Science Matters

Tyler Durden reports at Zero Hedge Sewage Surveillance Reveals Omicron Arrived In US Even Earlier Than Believed (And Is Disappearing Fast).  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Shortly after the start of the COVID pandemic, scientists at Yale University started testing wastewater collected from the sewers of New Haven for any insights it might convey about the spread of COVID among the local population. It didn’t take long for researchers in other parts of the country (and the world) to follow suit by testing their own wastewater.

More than a year later, wastewater testing has caught the attention the of the national media, as scientists and journalists search for more comprehensive ways to measure the prevalence of COVID infection within a population now that the emergence of home testing has made it more difficult for the authorities to track the number of positive tests.

But even before that, we…

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Hooray For Antibodies

Science Matters

Yesterday I gave a blood sample for SARS CV2 antibody testing and today I got back encouraging results.

Background

In Canada (and elsewhere including US and UK) Roche provides a panel of two serum antibody tests.  First developed was the N test to identify antibodies against the Nucleocapsid protein. This test will accurately detect responses to natural infection, but not an immune response trigged by a vaccine.

The S test seeks antifbodies against the S (Spike) proteins.  The Elecsys® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 assay characteristics are described at Roche diagnostic website.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

A positive result means that you have developed protective IgG antibodies to the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Our report will also provide you with a numeric count of these antibodies which is standardised and allows you to compare with other available tests and published WHO standards.

This test will detect antibodies amongst…

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