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How to understand - and report - figures for 'Covid deaths'

Dr. John Lee
The Spectator
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 18:03 UTC
coronavirus world map
Every day, now, we are seeing figures for 'Covid deaths'. These numbers are often expressed on graphs showing an exponential rise. But care must be taken when reading (and reporting) these figures. Given the extraordinary response to the emergence of this virus, it's vital to have a clear-eyed view of its progress and what the figures mean. The world of disease reporting has its own dynamics, ones that are worth understanding. How accurate, or comparable, are these figures comparing Covid-19 deaths in various countries?

We often see a ratio expressed: deaths, as a proportion of cases. The figure is taken as a sign of how lethal Covid-19 is, but the ratios vary wildly. In the US, 1.8 per cent (2,191 deaths in 124,686 confirmed cases), Italy 10.8 per cent, Spain 8.2 per cent, Germany 0.8 per cent, France 6.1 per cent, UK 6.0 per cent. A fifteen-fold difference in death rate for the same disease seems odd amongst such similar countries: all developed, all with good healthcare systems. All tackling the same disease.

You might think it would be easy to calculate death rates. Death is a stark and easy-to-measure end point. In my working life (I'm a retired pathology professor) I usually come across studies that express it comparably and as a ratio: the number of deaths in a given period of time in an area, divided by that area's population. For example, 10 deaths per 1,000 population per year. So just three numbers:
  1. The population who have contracted the disease
  2. The number dying of disease
  3. The relevant time period
The trouble is that in the Covid-19 crisis each one of these numbers is unclear.

Comment: Two other clear-headed reports by Dr. John Lee can be read here:

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Take 2

FAKE NEWS: Media fear-mongering reaches new low as CBS uses footage from ITALIAN hospital to describe conditions in New York City

Jim Hoft
The Gateway Pundit
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 00:04 UTC
cbs footage italy hospital
Emergency Room Footage on CBS Matches Footage from Italian Hospital!

This is footage from SKY News on March 22 from Italy.
italy hospital
And here is footage from CBS News during their New York City report on March 25.
italy hospital
CBS News painted a dire picture from New York City this week in their coronavirus coverage.

On Wednesday morning CBS aired this footage from a New York hospital.


The footage matches SKY News video from inside an Italian hospital from Sunday March 22.


UPDATE: ALX posted the video comparison from the two news outlets.
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Fireball

Massive explosion leaves giant crater in Akure, Nigeria, dozens of buildings damaged - UPDATE: Expert suspects METEOR IMPACT


SouthFront
Sat, 28 Mar 2020 20:24 UTC
crater nigeria explosion akure

The crater caused by the Ondo explosion in Nigeria
On March 28 morning, a massive explosion rocked a suburb of the city of Akure, the capital of the southern Nigerian State of Ondo.

According to Nigerian sources, the explosion split Akure-Owo road and inflicted serious damage on dozens of houses, 50 to 100, as well as a school and churches.

Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, revealed that the explosion was a an accident. According to the governor, a fire broke out in a vehicle within a convoy transporting explosives to a storage facility in a neighboring state, which caused the explosion.

Comment: There are conflicting reports. According to some reports, the crater was caused by a meteor impact!
The explosion that rocked Akure, Ondo state capital, on Saturday, was caused by a giant rock from space known as meteors, a team of experts have concluded.

A meteor is what happens when a meteoroid - a small piece of an asteroid - burns up upon entering earth's atmosphere, creating a streak of light in the sky.

The experts led by Adepelumi Adekunle, a professor of geophysics and earthquake engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University, said the meteors impacted the location from "an angle of 43 degrees".
[...]

Rotimi Akeredolu, governor of the state, had told journalists the blast occurred after a truck conveying explosives to a quarry exploded.

"I have been briefed by the security chiefs that in the early hours of Saturday March 28th, a vehicle in a convoy transporting explosives to a storage facility in a neighbouring state developed a fault while in transit along the Akure Owo Road about 2km from the Akure Airport," the governor had said.

But Adekunle said findings by his team suggest the explosion was caused by a natural phenomena, thereby contradicting the governor.

He added there was no evidence of a buried vehicle, buried ordinance or explosives from the site, and that "foreign rocks and strange metallic objects" were found within the crater crated.

His report read: "My Research group carried out a detailed analysis of the impact site. A circular impact crater with 21m diameter and 7.8m depth was found which suggest a natural phenomenal.

"Water was found oozing out from the edges of the crater. A preliminary in situ vibration, noise, seismicity, water analysis, radioactivity studies, rock and soil investigation were carried out.

"Our findings suggest that the impact of the blasting covers 1km radius of the surroundings of the crater. No evidence of fire or Burning of anything was found within the vicinity.

"No evidence of radioactivity radiation was found within the crater and immediate vicinity. The field evidence point to a conclusion that a meteoric from an asteroid belt that travels at a great speed from space impacted the location at an angle of 43 degrees created an ejecta at South-Western part."


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Bullseye

"This is what a police state is like": UK's ex-supreme court judge lambasts policing, 'collective hysteria' and the lockdown

Lisa O'Carroll
The Guardian
Mon, 30 Mar 2020 15:33 UTC
Lord Sumption
© Supreme Court/PA
Lord Sumption said Derbyshire police had 'shamed our policing traditions' and had turned themselves into 'glorified school prefects'.
A former supreme court justice has heavily criticised Derbyshire police for stopping people exercising in the Peak District saying that such behaviour risks plunging Britain into a "police state".

Lord Sumption warned that police had no legal power to enforce "ministers' wishes" and that the public should not be "resigning their liberty" to over-zealous citizens in uniform.

"The behaviour of the Derbyshire police in trying to shame people in using their undoubted right to take exercise in the country and wrecking beauty spots in the fells so people don't want to go there is frankly disgraceful," he said.

Comment: And here is a warning police have been leaving on the cars of those who were enjoying their countryside walk, possibly while being tracked and filmed on one of the police's drones:

why are you here
See also:

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Stormtrooper

Mass suicide of the West: UK plans to keep entire population in isolation for at least 6 MONTHS - US extends lockdown to May - Italy to July

Holly Ellyatt
cnbc.com
Mon, 30 Mar 2020 10:24 UTC

Comment: It's as if we're all in Jonestown, and the cult leaders are trying to drive us all so mad we start killing ourselves.

'Social isolation' is willful economic destruction.


prison planet

The lockdown in the U.K. to stop the coronavirus outbreak could last for up to six months, government officials warned Sunday, as the U.S. and other European nations also announced prolonged restrictions on public life.

Speaking at the U.K.'s daily press conference on the latest coronavirus news, the U.K.'s deputy chief medical officer said a lockdown could last, in some form, for months.

"Over time, probably over the next six months, we will have a three week review," Jenny Harries said, "We will see where we're going."

"We need to keep that lid on and then gradually we will be able to hopefully adjust some of the social-distancing measures and gradually get us all back to normal. So I think three weeks for review, two or three months to see whether we've really squashed it. But about three to six months ideally, and lots of uncertainty in that, but then to see at which point we can actually get back to normal."

Comment: We're ruled by megalomaniacal terrorists.

The bad news is they can't be stopped. Notice that Trump, Putin and other 'sovereign leaders' all bow before their diktats.

The good news is they'll cause so much suffering, the cosmos/planet will likely intervene.

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Attention

Bolsonaro questions need for COVID-19 lockdown, says deaths exaggerated for political purposes - UPDATE: Twitter CENSORS Brazilian president


RT
Sat, 28 Mar 2020 08:32 UTC

Comment: Update 30 March 2020

Twitter, like the good hive mind app that it is, has begun deleting Bolsonaro's efforts to break the Corony spell his country has been put under.
In an unprecedented move, Twitter has yanked two posts by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, in which he took aim at coronavirus lockdowns as part of his controversial campaign to avoid a shutdown of the economy.

Bolsonaro has become the first ever head of state to have his tweets censored by the platform under recently-updated guidelines, requiring users to remove content that defies "global or local health authorities recommendations" aimed at halting the spread of the deadly disease that has already taken hold in the Latin American country.

The Brazilian leader, who has been adamant that economic damage from lockdowns is a price too high to pay for lowering health risks, made a trip to a street market on Sunday, mingling with crowds and chatting with street vendors.

The videos, posted by Bolsonaro in the wake of the visit, apparently ran afoul of the Twitter guidelines. In one of them, Bolsonaro assures a street seller that he was "not going to die" due to the measures to combat the pandemic.

"What I have been hearing from people is that they want to work," the president, dubbed the "Trump of the Tropics," reportedly said.

bolsonaro covid-19

Bolsonaro: 'This is BS'
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has waved off the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, insisting that life goes on. He suggested the death toll in his own country has been overstated for political purposes.

The Brazilian leader has been locking horns with many of the country's governors, who have imposed bans on non-essential commerce and continue to accuse Bolsonaro of prioritizing the economy over the lives of his citizens.

"I'm sorry, some people will die, they will die, that's life," Bolsonaro said in an televised interview on Friday. "You can't stop a car factory because of traffic deaths."

He remarked that in the state of Sao Paulo the reported fallout from Covid-19 - 1,223 cases and 68 deaths - seemed "too large."

"We need to look at what is happening there, this cannot be a numbers game to favor political interests," Bolsonaro said.

Comment: Multiply that figure by 10, at least. Which means this is basically a nothing-burger.

Politically, this is unsustainable. World leaders are going to break ranks as people begin to really suffer from shortages, depression, and death from neglect of normal medical treatment.

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Attention

Covid-19 derangement syndrome: A world gone mad

Percy Carlton
The Saker
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 06:50 UTC
coronavirus
© Pixabay / enriquelopezgarre
The whole world has gone mad with what I call Covid-19 Derangement Syndrome (CDS). I define it as an acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in response to the Covid-19 Corona Virus pandemic. The infection is particularly prevalent among the media and the government officials of the world. Human beings fear what they do not understand and that fear causes them to behave in irrational and destructive ways. The current Covid-19 pandemic is a perfect example of that. I don't need to describe the paranoia and economic destruction to you because you can see it with your own two eyes everywhere you look. Both the media and the world's governments are fueling the panic - the media with their hysterical 24/7 coverage and the governments with their draconian police state actions.

I feel like the man in the following cartoon.

history meme cartoon
I am doomed to helplessly stand by and watch the entire world commit economic suicide for no good reason. At first glance this may seem like a shocking and callous statement but do not mistake this as support for the view that the government should stand back and let the private sector take care of the problem. I have no problem with a strong authoritarian central government response as long as it is reasonable and wise. The current government response is neither.

Comment: See also:

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Yellow Vest

Trouble on the horizon: Locals in Sicily take food and tell cashier they cannot pay, armed police move in to protect supermarkets


Naharnet
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 15:14 UTC
sicily food loot
Police with batons and guns have moved in to protect supermarkets on the Italian island of Sicily after reports of looting by locals who could no longer afford food.

The novel coronavirus has claimed more than 10,000 lives across the Mediterranean country, about a third of the world's total, creating the worst emergency Italians have known since World War II.

Simultaneously, it has eroded the economy, which had been the third-largest in the European Union before the new illness reached Italian shores from China last month.

A lockdown designed to curb contagion has shut almost everything across the country since March 12, depriving millions of steady incomes.

Comment: And so it begins? UK's empty supermarket shelves: Panic is not the problem

Good job, Globalist Managers of Earth. You have broken the system that feeds people and thus you.

Soon they're going to turn on YOU.

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Bad Guys

Coronavirus as a substitute for world war

Valentin Katasonov
Stalker Zone
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 12:00 UTC
biowarefare crash
90 years ago, in October 1929, the global economic crisis started with a panic on the New York Stock Exchange. By the end of the year, the panic had spread far beyond the New York Stock Exchange. Businesses were shut down, tens and hundreds of thousands of employees were laid off, and American companies, not only small, but also giants, went bankrupt...

By 1930, the economic crisis had engulfed Europe, Latin America, Asia, and became the global one. The decline in production (recession) continued everywhere until 1933. America's national income fell from $87.8 billion in 1929 to $40.2 billion in 1933. More than 135,000 commercial, industrial, and financial companies failed. During the three years of the crisis, almost half of American banks went bankrupt.

Then the fall stopped, and a phase of stagnation began. In different countries, the authorities made titanic efforts to pull their economies out of the swamp of stagnation. The ideas of the English economist John Keynes, who advocated active state intervention in economic life, became popular.

Comment: As is clear in the histories of both communism and capitalism, it's not so much that one system is better than the other because both, in the end, fell to psychopaths in positions of power.

See Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes

See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Attention

Former Israeli Health Ministry chief Yoram Lass: Lockdown will kill more people from depression than the virus

Hadas Magen
Globes.co.il
Sun, 22 Mar 2020 09:50 UTC
Yoram Lass
Former Ministry of Health director-general Prof. Yoram Lass has been regularly interviewed by the Israeli media since the coronavirus outbreak first started. But in contrast to the prophets of doom and deep concern shown by most medical professionals, he has presented a somewhat different and controversial opinion. Prof. Lass feels that it is wrong to shut down the entire country because of a virus that is ultimately less of a killer than the flu. In other words, he is saying that taking into account the cost benefits, it is preferable 'to sacrifice' the elderly so that daily life can go on as normal. This is an outlook that has antagonized many and has made him a 'persona non grata' in the TV interview studios.

Lass is at peace with himself over all this and with the voices calling him 'deluded." "I didn't invite myself to the studios," he told "Globes," "and I'm prepared to give my opinion to everybody who is ready to listen."

Do you think you are being excluded because you presented an unpopular position?

"I can tell you that several days ago I heard with my own ears, after I was interviewed on the radio by Nissim Mishal, the deputy director of the Ministry of Health Prof. Itamar Grotto tell Mishal that I shouldn't be brought into studios. And last Friday, I was invited to the studio by Ayala Hasson. Some three days beforehand, they called me and ask not to go anywhere else, and then the day before they cancelled. And who did they replace me with on the program? The futurist David Passig, who told the people of Israel that in the best case scenario 40 million people would die, and in the worst case scenario 300 million people would die. That shows you how the media is only trumpeting hysteria. Because it was clear that if I was sitting next to him, I would only have told an amazed Israeli people that every year 17,000 Italians die of flu while in Israel only 126 dies of flue last year.
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