Around the same time, a group of 1,000 public health 'experts' signed a letter calling for authorities to let Black Lives Matter protests go ahead - on the grounds that "white supremacy" is a "lethal public health issue". As one epidemiologist put it: "In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus." Okay...
Those who supported the Black Lives Matter protests were in turn accused of hypocrisy by conservatives - given that only a few months before they'd been calling for lockdowns and bans on mass gatherings.
A new paper, published in the prestigious journal Nature Human Behaviour, suggests that all this consternation was misplaced (well maybe not the accusations of hypocrisy, but the rest of it). Eric Feltham and colleagues studied political mass gatherings in the United States, and found that they had no impact on the course of the epidemic.
While many papers have studied political mass gatherings, this one looks to be more rigorous than most. The researchers examined "essentially all" such gatherings that took place in 2020-21 (including Trump's campaign rallies and the Black Lives Matter protests) at the level of US counties. They focussed on daily deaths as an outcome measure, due to the shortcomings of cases data.
And they carefully matched each county where a gathering took place to a 'control' county that was similar in other relevant respects. In particular, they matched counties not only on socio-demographic characteristics, but also on the cumulative death rate up to the point where the gathering took place - thereby adjusting to a large extent for the size of the susceptible population (an inverse correlate of the cumulative death rate).
As noted, there was no evidence that political mass gatherings affected the course of the epidemic. This was true for all the types of gatherings they looked at, and for alternative outcome measures like daily cases.
As to why they had no effect, Feltham and colleagues speculate that it may be because attendees spent much of the time outside and/or engaged in social distancing, and because they were usually required to wear masks. Needless to say, I do not find the second of these suggestions very plausible. (And note: even the mass gatherings that involved indoor voting had no effect.)
The paper's findings would seem to have quite far-reaching implications: if even mass gatherings don't affect the spread of the virus, it seems difficult to believe that Western lockdowns had much of an impact. Indeed, the findings are consistent with a model where the course of the pandemic is determined by factors like population structure, with 'NPIs' making little or no difference.
Interestingly, the researchers themselves avoid this conclusion, noting that their null result "stands in contrast to the sizeable effects estimated for some other non-pharmaceutical interventions". Make of that what you will.
Reader Comments
For some people, entering the
voodoo priest's dendoctor's office alone is enough...In my Dad's case, he delayed seeing a doctor when he first developed symptoms that should have sent him immediately to the doctor, and when he finally went, the doctor imposed a series of delays with scheduling, getting the results, going on vacation with no one to follow up with my folks, and several other things that put off treatment for about 2 months because the type of cancer typically doesn't grow that fast. Then on top of that, turns out Dad had chronic depression he'd been "treating" by becoming a functional evening alcoholic and his body couldn't handle the sudden (for 77) withdrawals. Regardless, he went from stage 1 to stage 4 in less than 9 months with a treatable cancer.
Very similiar to your dad. Having had a cancer episode a decade ago, he was healthy and active before. Believing the indoctrination, he took the shot (one double-jab). After 6 weeks, he stopped walking his dog and riding his bike. A month later, he wasn't able to leave his house. Another month later, and he was driven to the city hospital twice a week for cancer treatment. And 8 month later, he was dead - barely above 60 years old.
Although that was iatrogenic, not a placebo effect ...
After all, they did manage to convince people that loss of sense of taste and/or smell was a totally new thing, even though this was documented as classic flu symptoms since forever.
Besides of of other obvious reasons for the ostensible "pandemic" (coinciding with so-called flu season) and less obvious one's (poisoning), fear of the white-coat-voodoo explains the rest reasonably well.
I've lost my sense of smell and taste from the cold or flu before. This is different. With every other illness my smell/taste have come back prior to feeling better.
I read some halfway decent explanation on the scent thing, but now I don't recall. I just remember I was satisfied with the explanation of how it worked.
Both my friends attempted scent-training and psilocybin mushroooms, since psilocybin can restore some sense of smell in the elderly and reset a number of things that may or may not be psycho-somatic. That didn't work for either of them.
The entire terrible debacle just showed there are no npi's that work in modern society to prevent or even slow transmission. You have to deal with what comes using repurposed tools you have while accepting inevitable losses. Only a handful of actual doctors did that. Most proved to be awful people incapable of problem solving and a slave to murderous "guidelines".
We didn't test positive for Covid until last year in October. The flu is worse. The disconcerting part of my illness was large muscle pain - the back, the quads, and hamstrings ached for 2 weeks straight. Respiratory part of illness was nothing. But who knows what the hell we had? Those tests don't tell you shit.
I'm with Dr. Vinay Prasad going forward. No testing, no telling. If I feel bad, I'll just stay home, like one should. I'll also be avoiding children during the winter since they snot on everything and never cover their coughs and sneezes.
I've always said the sentinel population to watch for truly deadly diseases are those 20-something aged chicks who work in child daycare centers. If they start dropping dead.... look out!