The
Great Barrington Declaration
is statement from a group of infectious disease epidemiologists and public
health scientists who have come together to protest the Covid-19 lockdowns
and try to reduce the unwanted deaths and personal tragedies the lockdowns
are causing. Of course, last week, the
WHO
essentially kick started several stories about lockdowns and particularly about how countries with strong
lockdowns fared no better - and some times worse - than countries without
lockdowns.
I didn't start out going this direction. I was reading a FEE article on a thing the Federal Reserve is doing (incompetently, of course) but stumbled across some interesting things down this side road.
To begin with, FEE itself has a week-old article, “5 Charts That Show Sweden’s Strategy Worked. The Lockdowns Failed." Then they linked to an article invoking Elon Musk's bravado about opening the Almeda Tesla factory despite California lockdown rules ("Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.") Elsewhere in the article Musk said, "Sweden Was Right" and tweeted this plot:
It's pretty clear that the pandemic was over in Sweden by about mid to late June. According to other public records, the reason for the large number of deaths they had in the exponential growth phase around the start of April and through the first couple of months of decline was due to making the Cuomo mistake and putting active Covid cases into nursing homes.
I didn't start out going this direction. I was reading a FEE article on a thing the Federal Reserve is doing (incompetently, of course) but stumbled across some interesting things down this side road.
To begin with, FEE itself has a week-old article, “5 Charts That Show Sweden’s Strategy Worked. The Lockdowns Failed." Then they linked to an article invoking Elon Musk's bravado about opening the Almeda Tesla factory despite California lockdown rules ("Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.") Elsewhere in the article Musk said, "Sweden Was Right" and tweeted this plot:
It's pretty clear that the pandemic was over in Sweden by about mid to late June. According to other public records, the reason for the large number of deaths they had in the exponential growth phase around the start of April and through the first couple of months of decline was due to making the Cuomo mistake and putting active Covid cases into nursing homes.
Musk said this in a reply to Toby Young's Tweet about the Great Barrington Declaration.
Because I don't use Google or the Big Tech media (present blog excluded, of course), I had no problems finding the Declaration. I use Duck Duck Go and it was the first return in the search results. I tested Bing and it was the first return in those results, too.
Listen, if you're an adult with an IQ above room temperature, and haven't stopped using Google yet, you haven't been paying attention. You really shouldn't be using Google as your search engine; and you shouldn't be using Twitter or Facebook for your news feed. Instagram or Pinterest are for looking at pretty things or collecting pictures, not news or current events. Actually, scratch the limit about having an "IQ above room temperature." Nobody should be using Google or those others. These tech companies are too dishonest to reward with your eyeballs (which is what they're charging advertisers for).
I heard duck duck go sells your information to Google.. IDK..
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth you can actually look that up, and for the record they say they never keep any of your information nor do they ever sell it. They aren't funded that way. Which brings up the question of "if you Google Duck Duck Go, what page do they put the results on?"
DeleteGoogle, on the other hand, has been found to leave its trackers on millions of websites, just like Facebook. Facebook will have a profile of you even if you don't have an account.
But that's not the reason I say not to use Google. I say not to use Google because of the way they hide information and scramble the results to influence people. I want the most neutral display of information I can get. I realize they stack results to put ads and paid results at the top and I think all search engines do that.
A A federal judge ruled PA cannot lock down it's citizens denying them their Constitutional rights.
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for that notion to catch on nationwide.
Even Whitmer, here in Michigan, backed down from closing churches in the face of a Federal suit by a friend of mine.
I think I heard about Governor Whitless essentially channeling Stalin when he said, "how many divisions does he have?" about the Pope. As if she could send the police to kill the court officers. Thankfully, she seems to have acquiesced to the court having a say.
DeleteI avoid Google at all costs. I use "Yippy" as my search engine...it's from IBM.
ReplyDeleteUsing fiat declarations 8+ months into an emergency is simply tyranny wearing a face mask. If you can't get your idea past either the voters directly, or at the least a state's houses of legislature, it's simply a horsesh*t idea, and deserves to be crib-strangled.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, masks aren't bulletproof, and shooting tyrants in the face is always in-bounds, if everything else fails.
And Google is evil, as a given.
McDonald's isn't quite a burger either, but I still eat there sometimes.
As for the body of data, the problem (with Sweden, or anywhere else) is that unless they're doing real-time testing, their data is generally 14-21 days behind reality. Thus the pandemic was over there in mid-June, until it isn't. Considering that the SWAGuesstimated number of citizens even in Scandanavia with no exposure to it is running 90% or so, while there's no reason for lockdowns there now, that doesn't argue the wrongness of the idea going forward, nor in perpetuity.
The same caveat applies everywhere else.
Another spike there like they had in mid-April, and they'll be humming a different tune.
I'm a bit rusty on general science, but that seems to suggest a feedback loop and graduated responses are generally a good idea, and a much better one than kneejerk responses into either extreme of action or inaction.