June 10, 2021
Arguing with Idiots - Covid Lies Edition
Timothy Birdnow
On Watts Up With That's Facebook Page an argument erupted between a troll and, well, a number of us. Here is the thread:
Todd Huffman:
Well, you guys think science is political. And it isn't actually. Not a good idea to throw out data you don't like.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debunking-the-false-claim-that-covid-death-counts-are-inflated1/?fbclid=IwAR12H92yits9WQXdZVerdOHK7VgC-b6yj-fGwGG5yMmg5GtVAEvjD4SphS8
Bridgit Hudig says:
I have a question. Why is the USA all cause mortality not anything unusual? As of Dec 23rd deaths for the year are: 2,851,438
2019 was 2,854,838 all cause mortality (Edit: citation found)
2018 was 2,839,205 all cause mortality
2017 was 2,813,503 all cause mortality
2016 was 2,744,248 all cause mortality
Todays number:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
2018
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
2017 and 2016
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_06-508.pdf
Edit: 2019 citation found
2,854,838 registered deaths.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db395.htm
Oh and just for reference the first link if you scroll down takes you to "comorbidities", quote:
"For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.9 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of mentions for each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups."
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
Willis Eschenbach adds:
Recently two people in Colorado were listed as COVID deaths.
In fact, they died of gunshot wounds.
Another person died in Florida, another COVID death.
In fact, they died in a car crash.
THAT is how insane the CDC guidelines are ... it doesn't matter what the person dies of. If they die of a gunshot and they test positive for COVID, they are recorded as a COVID death.
So I'm sorry, but the SciAm article is bull. But that's no surprise, they went political a long time ago.
w.
https://www.kmov.com/news/colorado-coroner-calling-out-how-state-classifies-covid-19-deaths/article_297e3550-4131-11eb-9f01-ffe3e11d0f46.html
So we should ignore people killed by gunshot that are claimed as COVID deaths?
You're not considering that everyone in a hospital is tested, and if they have one positive COVID test from tests that are known to have lots of false positives, NO MATTER WHAT THEY DIE OF, be it heart attack, stroke or whatever, the CDC says to count them as COVID deaths ... the gunshot deaths are only the tip of the iceberg.
Heck, the CDC said to count them as COVID deaths if the doctor even SUSPECTS that COVID is involved ...
Here's the CDC Guidance:
===
"In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a death certificate as "probable†or "presumed.â€
===
And of course, these are also put on the list of "COVID deaths".
Samuel Collins adds:
Todd HuffmanI am laughing because the arguments of the American Council of Health and Science writer Alex Berezov PhD remain unchallenged by you - under the profile of a " University of Oxford professor - and your assertion " you guys think science is political ..it isn't actually " is manifestly absurd ...Science is politicized in certain sectors and the Scientific American is a disgraceful exemplar ...What did I say " was all a complete hoax " in February last year Huffman ? ...Who are these 'deniers' and what precisely is 'denied ? .. ....
" the scientists all got it wrong "?......All of them ?.......Another
Todd Huffman Puffs:
Well, Anyone who thinks that over 500k excess deaths were mostly flu cases for one. That's a "denier" in my book...because you would have to deny that Doctors and hospitals, en-masse, are truthful in their reports.
Did I misunderstand the assertion?
Fine - mea culpa - take that victory if you must.
It won't change the simple fact of substance.
over 500k people died in the last year from a pandemic science identified as COVID-19 that was a great deal worse than anything experienced in about 100 years.
Even better, the science of vaccines looks like it's actually effective at battling this virus.
Like I said, there is a hole the size you can drive a truck through between the statements "Science is poiticized" and "COVID was dramatically over-reported to make hospitals money".
Sam retorts:
The problem is that it is hard to explain all those excess deaths if, as has been touted by many on here, there actually isn't anything going on. The jump in excess deaths points out both the direct and indirect effects of something happening. It could be that someone dies of, say, heart disease when they otherwise wouldn't have because they didn't get medical treatment as soon as they otherwise would have. But as one unpicks such explainations the nagging problem is - Why THIS year? Why is this year so special? The excess deaths are an over-count if your concern is the mortality rate of this specific agent - COVID-19, this is bracketed from below by the deaths directly attributed to COVID-19 as multiple independent sources who better understand this data report that those numbers are undercounts. The true answer would be between those figures (excess deaths and deaths directly attributed to COVID).
As for the big-money argument. It's an attractive argument to be sure. The problem is though that nurses aren't really that well-paid. And they are worked really very hard. And they are cracking under the strain of something that is filling up ICU beds all over the USA (and the world). Also, countries with fully socialized medicine, where there really isn't a profit motive, are also being strained to their limits at the same time. They might not be as terrible at dealing with the problem as the USA, but the strain is still there.
The problem of money in Medicine is a huge one, and one you won't solve with a private medical industry, ever, because that is exactly the POINT of priviatized medicine....mak
I reply:
Todd Huffman, you say "But as one unpicks such explainations the nagging problem is - Why THIS year? Why is this year so special? The excess deaths are an over-count if your concern is the mortality rate of this specific agent - COVID-19, this is bracketed from below by the deaths directly attributed to COVID-19" but the death rate for influenza and other such illnesses has dropped off, while Covid rates are up. What does that tell us? Seems to me it says Covid is being blamed for deaths from influenza and other such illnesses. I'm not saying there is no disease, nor do I think are most people here. Just that it's being padded. I believe that once adjusted for population growth and inflation rates this is no worse than the '57 or '68 pandemics. What is different is the way we responded to it (with panic). I would point out I've been waiting for eye surgery for months now, and other people have had to wait for surgeries for more serious things. There is a lot less treatment going on these days. I can't get in to see my lung doctor, for example. I know a lot of nurses and most of them have been laid off by Covid, not are being overworked. Most of them tell me they aren't worried much about it. Yes, some in key spots - mainly ICU's where anyone suspected of Covid is sent, are over busy but the others are not busy at all. I did a stint in the hospital in October and they thought I might have it. I was told I'd be shipped up to ICU if I did. THAT is guaranteed to fill up a unit. Talk of overcrowded ICU's doesn't really speak to this for that reason; it's natural they are full if we are putting anyone with a positive test there. You also say "Also, countries with fully socialized medicine, where there really isn't a profit motive, are also being strained to their limits at the same time. They might not be as terrible at dealing with the problem as the USA, but the strain is still there." These countries have a completely different approach to the problem yet are at the same time busting at the seams with it. That suggests the approach itself is bad. I get your point, but when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail. Everybody is following the guidelines from the WHO and other central authorities, and are getting the same results. On the other hand you had Sweden, which did nothing at all and yet is not seeing the high numbers of earlier. In fact Sweden has done better without any precautions than a number of other European countries. (It is often compared with Norway and Denmark, nations quite dissimilar in terms of the age of the population and the fact that a lot of Swedes visited Italy early on.) In point of fact there does not appear to be any real correlation between masking and lockdowns and the infection rate. IF any of this stuff were valid then it would be obvious. I think this speaks volumes about the claims being made - and puts the whole thing in doubt. Socialized medicine perhaps has no profit motive, but it works as if it does as it's funding comes in the same way. America's system is not laizzes Faire, after all, but rather a quasi socialized entitity, so I don't know if there is much distinction. Certainly government is intimately involved in both, which undoubtedly influences how these entities count the cases and assign death causes. Bear in mind, private medical research is what has given us the vaccine in the first place, and why the United States has been a leader in all medical research. Bureaucrats would still be arguing about what color the vaccine should be. Money in medicine itself isn't a problem. It's money directed in the service of the few. When government is paying they get what they want. And they want a lot. And in this instance they want to use this as a tool to promote greater power and authority and more money. Just look at this latest "Covid Relief" package! That was a godsend to government because they could never have squandered so much money had they not had this "crisis" to allow them to do so. At any rate, thanks for a courteous reply. We just disagree.
Huffman keeps digging:
Timothy BirdnowYou make an assumption right at the first hurdle. Basically that doctors throughout hospitals are lying about the causes of the diseases they report. Or at best that en-masse, they have forgotten how to diagnose any flu-like conditions other than COVID. If you unpick the reporting I'm afraid the incentives to tell the truth far outweigh any incentive to lie about those numbers. Here's a more nuanced and fact-related view: https://
So basically, hospitals might well be getting more COVID money, but they are and were losing money because of all those lucrative elective procedures that they had to forego in order to handle the absolute FLOOD of new patients coming in who needed very expensive ICU care.
If I am to take your financial argument seriously I would conclude that the incentive is to Underreport COVID cases, and indeed, deny them care in favour of plastic surgery, tummy-tucks, Laziks.... I don't know, the list of elective surgeries is probably legion....where
All that is, of course, setting aside another simple fact. How many doctors to you know who are THAT unethical? In order to over-report more than 1/2 a million COVID deaths we are talking about ethical violations that quite a LOT of good people would have needed to witness and then keep schtumm about....for a year....
This is why lawmakers always get caught when they are corrupt. There's ALWAYS some pesky ethical person who won't keep their mouth shut when they see wrong-doing.
Oh sure, you CAN head off to Earth II, where the whole "Establishment"
I retort:
Todd Huffman your argument is full of holes:
"Basically that doctors throughout hospitals are lying about the causes of the diseases they report"
Doctors were following CDC guidelines and diagnosing Covid without an actual antibody test. And it got so bad with the CDC that the Trump Administration had to ask hospitals to send them the data because the CDC was unreliable.
And CDC director Robert Redfield actually admitted they were incentivizing hospitals to overdiagnose Covid. https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/08/02/cdc-director-admits-hospitals-medical-folks-have-perverse-incentive-to-falsely-count-covid-deaths-954633/
Your claim that hospitals lost other electrive treatments sounds good but you forget that they COULDN'T perform those treatments, were not allowed to, and yes, they were losing money. So they had to make it up somewhere. You destroy your own argument bringing it up; this was just another part of the incentive.
Also, how do doctors diagnose anything without proper testing? In the early days it was being diagnosed based on symptoms - many of which are the same. In case you haven't figured it out yet, influenze is different every year too.
I know personally of a couple of cases so misdiagnosed. I also know of cases where people went to get tested, didn't wait, and were later told they tested positive for Covid. I know several personally. And there are others. https://www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/people-never-tested-covid-19-report-calls-saying-theyre-infected/CRJSXJC6EFD5TAC6AFWZFFQYP4/
and https://kprcradio.iheart.com/featured/the-pursuit-of-happiness/content/2020-08-03-600000-people-who-never-took-a-covid-test-were-told-they-have-the-virus/
And they were also misdiagnosing Legionella as Covid, in all probability.
https://www.gpb.org/news/2020/08/04/how-legionnaires-disease-resembles-covid-19-and-how-the-pandemic-may-result-in-more
And we know that Alameda County had 25% more deaths listed from Covid than they should have. https://www.foxnews.com/health/california-county-cuts-covid-death-toll?fbclid=IwAR1pp37unCLUNu1nGszj0rarPaoL21GtPl47TfrvmBRlzTkLZLp_aQzQJUI Multiply this around the country and what do you get?
Uh, Fact Check is not a "more balanced" view; it is a propaganda sight. And who is doing the fact checking? What makes them more qualified than any here?
You return to your argument that pressures and incentives from the CDC and other government agencies is not an issue. Uh, tummy tucks and lasik surgery was not allowed! Hell; my wife had to wait months to get in to get her retina reattached, and I still haven't had my membrane peel surgery on my eye. The hospitals had no choice. You seem incapable of grasping that fact.
Kindly explain to me how Covid "killed" the flu. If one is transmittable so too is the other. If what you say is true that means they have been lying to us about the dangers of covid (well, they have been.)
Your argument holds nary a drop of water.
Todd Huffman you say "On the other hand, the scientists all got it wrong too, they were predicting only a couple hundred thousand deaths at the time." Wrong; Neil Ferguson, of London's Imperial College, the guy who started the panic on this, was predicting three million deaths in Britain alone. You need to at least get your facts straight. This pandemic is not as bad as everyone led us to believe, and when adjusted for population growth and the obvious inflation of numbers it is comparable with the '57 pandemic, where we did not lock down, nor facemask, nor do any of the rest of this stupidity.
This isn't a matter of ethics, it is a matter of following CDC and WHO guidelines and diagnosing Covid where they are uncertain. When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. These doctors are doing what they are told. They are going to use tests, which may show antibodies for Covid 2 or even a cold bug and that was sufficient to call it Covid. It didn't matter, because the treatments were going to be the same anyway. You seem incapable of grasping so simple a fact.
Uh, corruption goes on unreported all the time dude. Bill Daley was king of Chicago for years and was not caught for anything. Do you really think that Pelosi or Schumer or any of those guys are not corrupt. Man, you are naive.
So you think you are someone who uses evidence? REALLY! I guess it was evidence that informed the New York Mayor to put Covid patients into nursing homes? Yeah; your kind of evidence is brilliant! You followed Neil Ferguson and Fauci and the others off a cliff, and we will be trying to recover from the damage done by those oracles of dufi for years to come. I hate to inform you but it is we who are following the science and the evidence. You don't because you don't like where it leads, or you are just so lazy you will let a journalist or a government bureaucrat tell you something and you accept it as Gospel. We are the ones who are actually digging into this.
Todd Huffman you say "Like I said, there is a hole the size you can drive a truck through between the statements " No my friend; the hole is between your ears. Nobody said all the deaths were flu but listed as Covid. You are indulging in Reductio Ad Absurdum. You know it too.
Todd replies:
OK fine, then why were ICU units overwhelmed? And that's not happened before. In fact if you look here: https://
At the beginning, I can believe there was no viral test, they'd have to diagnose on the basis of symptoms. But the deaths climb anyway. Then in the fall we get more deaths again, in a worse way, but this time diagnoses keep pace.
I remember there were more tests and more experience identifying the cases. So either the diagnoses were vastly under-reported from April through June 2020 or they were over-reported from November onward....maybe
So rather than me do this, why don't you guys do some science. Pick one of the MANY countries in the world that has a health care system that does NOT reward hospitals for covid patients. The UK is one. They were worried mainly about the number of ICU beds rather than how much it would cost because it's a wholly socialist medical system. What is the ratio of diagnoses vs. reported deaths in the UK compared to the USA for the same time periods?
You can pick those numbers off that web site just like I could.
And I am curious of the country-to-coun
I retort:
Oh, and Mr. Huffman, why were so many of the emergency facilities put in place empty? https://
I did a stint in the hospital last fall and the nurses all thought Covid was pure horsepoop. They didn't deny it was a disease but thought it horribly overblown. They are the ones who actually are seeing this day after day. But who will report their views? Do you think NBC or CNN is going to report what they have to say? And why not? Because it's freaking political and this has been a godsend to certain political groups. In politics there are few coincidences, especially happy ones. Trump would have sailed to an easy political victory without the pandemic. Shoot, even Jane Fonda called it God's gift to the left. https://
Huffman puffs:
Timothy BirdnowThen what percentage were flu mis-diagnosed? I argue the excess deaths figure prove that it wasn't flu, we've seen flu before, year after year....nothing
What are your numbers? 1%? I'd find that plausible.
50% - sorry, no way....point to excess deaths again. So what, exactly, are you saying? How many Hospitals over-reported COVID deaths and to what level...how many OTHER virus deaths contributed to those truly horrific excess death figures? Just how big does this run? Is it the odd honest mistaken diagnoses? or is it a massive tax fraud that you seem to imply with your posts?
I reply:
We have no way of knowing that and you know it, Todd Huffman. How do you catalogue misdiagnoses? Especially when the symptoms and treatment are similar? Cut the crap; you know this argument is totally bogus.
Oh, and it's not fraud if they are being instructed by the government to do it, now is it.
Huffman won't let it go:
Timothy BirdnowYou should re-read that article. There are perverse incentives all over the USA, that doesn't mean most people actually do them. It would be even more perverse if this incentive actually convinced most hospitals to commit fraudulent diagnoses on a grand scale. The excess deaths numbers indicate this didn't happen at a level that matters.
I retort:
Huffman you can puff all you wish but in the end logic is not on your side. I gave you the CDC director's own statement to show even she is forced to admit this is a problem (otherwise she wouldn't have said anything.) If you don't understand that you are hopeless. The fact is there is great incentive to do this. You say "The excess deaths numbers indicate this didn't happen at a level that matters". BUT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THE EXCESSIVE DEATHS you dope. The hole point is we can't trust any of the numbers. We know they are inflated but can't say by how much. This mirrors the vote fraud denier claims that there was no fraud and if there was it didn't matter; we don't know in either case how much or if it mattered. You sir are a Covid Inflation denier.
Huffman just won't give up:
Timothy BirdnowWas that not a prediction based on the "do nothing" hypothesis? I think it can be argued that prediction might well have come true. He also predicted that an early, draconian, lockdown and travel restrictions would keep UK deaths down to 20k or so....Australia
But ICU units were full.
What you post here makes no sense because an ER handled cases OTHER than COVID when the pandemic raged. COVID patients were dealt with separately precisely to try to prevent secondary infections of the kind that scared people into staying away from the ER.
My reply:
Huffman you can puff all you wish but in the end logic is not on your side. I gave you the CDC director's own statement to show even she is forced to admit this is a problem (otherwise she wouldn't have said anything.) If you don't understand that you are hopeless. The fact is there is great incentive to do this. You say "The excess deaths numbers indicate this didn't happen at a level that matters". BUT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THE EXCESSIVE DEATHS you dope. The hole point is we can't trust any of the numbers. We know they are inflated but can't say by how much. This mirrors the vote fraud denier claims that there was no fraud and if there was it didn't matter; we don't know in either case how much or if it mattered. You sir are a Covid Inflation denier.
He responds:
I reply:
Todd Huffman you say "Yes, we DO. because there was a specific test
that people could give to a person, by the time June or July rolled
around, that checked for the COVID virus" The fact is all the test
showed was weather someone had been exposed to Covid, or had Covid 2 or
even a cold at some point and produced antibodies. It did NOT show
anything more and it was presumed they were sick with Covid. Nice try.
And of course the European countries had an incentive to do the same as did we. A lot of power and money flowed out of this. I guess you think it was all purely about the public health.
Oh, and the fact is there has been little difference in Covid cases and mortalities based on whether they locked down or not, and even between states here in America. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12210173/coronavirus-lockdown-no-difference/ In fact, states in America that did not lock down did better. https://sentinelksmo.org/covid-update-states-not-locked-down-have-better-outcomes/
On Watts Up With That's Facebook Page an argument erupted between a troll and, well, a number of us. Here is the thread:
Todd Huffman:
Well, you guys think science is political. And it isn't actually. Not a good idea to throw out data you don't like.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debunking-the-false-claim-that-covid-death-counts-are-inflated1/?fbclid=IwAR12H92yits9WQXdZVerdOHK7VgC-b6yj-fGwGG5yMmg5GtVAEvjD4SphS8
Bridgit Hudig says:
I have a question. Why is the USA all cause mortality not anything unusual? As of Dec 23rd deaths for the year are: 2,851,438
2019 was 2,854,838 all cause mortality (Edit: citation found)
2018 was 2,839,205 all cause mortality
2017 was 2,813,503 all cause mortality
2016 was 2,744,248 all cause mortality
Todays number:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
2018
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
2017 and 2016
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_06-508.pdf
Edit: 2019 citation found
2,854,838 registered deaths.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db395.htm
Oh and just for reference the first link if you scroll down takes you to "comorbidities", quote:
"For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.9 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of mentions for each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups."
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
Willis Eschenbach adds:
Recently two people in Colorado were listed as COVID deaths.
In fact, they died of gunshot wounds.
Another person died in Florida, another COVID death.
In fact, they died in a car crash.
THAT is how insane the CDC guidelines are ... it doesn't matter what the person dies of. If they die of a gunshot and they test positive for COVID, they are recorded as a COVID death.
So I'm sorry, but the SciAm article is bull. But that's no surprise, they went political a long time ago.
w.
https://www.kmov.com/news/colorado-coroner-calling-out-how-state-classifies-covid-19-deaths/article_297e3550-4131-11eb-9f01-ffe3e11d0f46.html
So we should ignore people killed by gunshot that are claimed as COVID deaths?
You're not considering that everyone in a hospital is tested, and if they have one positive COVID test from tests that are known to have lots of false positives, NO MATTER WHAT THEY DIE OF, be it heart attack, stroke or whatever, the CDC says to count them as COVID deaths ... the gunshot deaths are only the tip of the iceberg.
Heck, the CDC said to count them as COVID deaths if the doctor even SUSPECTS that COVID is involved ...
Here's the CDC Guidance:
===
"In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a death certificate as "probable†or "presumed.â€
===
And of course, these are also put on the list of "COVID deaths".
Samuel Collins adds:
Todd HuffmanI am laughing because the arguments of the American Council of Health and Science writer Alex Berezov PhD remain unchallenged by you - under the profile of a " University of Oxford professor - and your assertion " you guys think science is political ..it isn't actually " is manifestly absurd ...Science is politicized in certain sectors and the Scientific American is a disgraceful exemplar ...What did I say " was all a complete hoax " in February last year Huffman ? ...Who are these 'deniers' and what precisely is 'denied ? .. ....
" the scientists all got it wrong "?......All of them ?.......Another
Todd Huffman Puffs:
Well, Anyone who thinks that over 500k excess deaths were mostly flu cases for one. That's a "denier" in my book...because you would have to deny that Doctors and hospitals, en-masse, are truthful in their reports.
Did I misunderstand the assertion?
Fine - mea culpa - take that victory if you must.
It won't change the simple fact of substance.
over 500k people died in the last year from a pandemic science identified as COVID-19 that was a great deal worse than anything experienced in about 100 years.
Even better, the science of vaccines looks like it's actually effective at battling this virus.
Like I said, there is a hole the size you can drive a truck through between the statements "Science is poiticized" and "COVID was dramatically over-reported to make hospitals money".
There is a HUGE space between "Science is politicized" and "All these excess deaths were something OTHER than COVID-19".
You guys treat the world like an on-off switch.
It never is.
Of COURSE there is politics in science. Just the decisions on what to fund and what not to fund in research is a political decision.
it does NOT then follow that all science is political. or that the research that is funded is all wrong.
Even funnier to me is that when you DO cite instances when science really DID get it wrong...inevita
Gosh...so science can actually uncover it's own mistakes?
Wish more people would do that, don't you?
You guys treat the world like an on-off switch.
It never is.
Of COURSE there is politics in science. Just the decisions on what to fund and what not to fund in research is a political decision.
it does NOT then follow that all science is political. or that the research that is funded is all wrong.
Even funnier to me is that when you DO cite instances when science really DID get it wrong...inevita
Gosh...so science can actually uncover it's own mistakes?
Wish more people would do that, don't you?
You
laugh, but then, you rely on Youtube and blogs. Tell me, what were you
saying at the end of Feb. Last year....wasn't it all a complete hoax?
How did that work out?
On the other hand, the scientists all got it wrong too, they were predicting only a couple hundred thousand deaths at the time.
What they couldn't predict is how bad it can get when deniers run the politics of science.
How did that work out?
On the other hand, the scientists all got it wrong too, they were predicting only a couple hundred thousand deaths at the time.
What they couldn't predict is how bad it can get when deniers run the politics of science.
Sam retorts:
Todd Huffman" Well you guys think science is political . And it isn't actually "
...Oh yes it is ..Don't take it from me that the Pseudoscientifi
ACHS , Scientific American Endorses Biden and Risks Losing Whatever Readership it Has Left " https://
Todd Huffmanyou declared science is not political [ unequivocally ] - not your opponents here - and no one argued 'all science ' is political or that 'research that is funded is all wrong " ...That is your sneaky post hoc insertion .Even this statement is another evasive distortion of the truth : " there is politics in science . Just the decisions on what to fund and what not to fund ...Bulls**t. .The Lysenkoist American endorsing an American presidential candidate [ and one as scientifically illiterate and cognitively impaired as Joe Biden ] for the first time in its 175 year history is indisputably politicization of science .Those ACHS articles you refuse to discuss disprove your rationalization
I add:
Todd Huffman science was politicized when government took over most funding of it in the late '70's. Money is king everywhere, but especially in science where you either are funded or you fade away. The end result is funding goes to those who produce work pleasing to big government which means there is a built-in bias in all modern science. He who pays the rent is the boss. Governments want to acquire more power, more control, and more money. Produce "science" which aids that and you will get funding. And of course there is bias in how science is promoted. If two different studies contradict each other the one predicting doom will get all the attention while the one that says "well, yeah there's a problem but it's not that bad" will be dismissed. Everyone wants to make a big splash. Nobody wants to come up with negative data, for example.I would point out that George Floyd may well have been classified a Covid victim had his case not been so heavily publicized; he had Covid and he died of not being able to breathe.Oh, and any science article which refers to those with whom it disagrees as "fantasists" is nothing but propaganda.
Huffman goes back after me:ACHS , Scientific American Endorses Biden and Risks Losing Whatever Readership it Has Left " https://
Todd Huffmanyou declared science is not political [ unequivocally ] - not your opponents here - and no one argued 'all science ' is political or that 'research that is funded is all wrong " ...That is your sneaky post hoc insertion .Even this statement is another evasive distortion of the truth : " there is politics in science . Just the decisions on what to fund and what not to fund ...Bulls**t. .The Lysenkoist American endorsing an American presidential candidate [ and one as scientifically illiterate and cognitively impaired as Joe Biden ] for the first time in its 175 year history is indisputably politicization of science .Those ACHS articles you refuse to discuss disprove your rationalization
I add:
Todd Huffman science was politicized when government took over most funding of it in the late '70's. Money is king everywhere, but especially in science where you either are funded or you fade away. The end result is funding goes to those who produce work pleasing to big government which means there is a built-in bias in all modern science. He who pays the rent is the boss. Governments want to acquire more power, more control, and more money. Produce "science" which aids that and you will get funding. And of course there is bias in how science is promoted. If two different studies contradict each other the one predicting doom will get all the attention while the one that says "well, yeah there's a problem but it's not that bad" will be dismissed. Everyone wants to make a big splash. Nobody wants to come up with negative data, for example.I would point out that George Floyd may well have been classified a Covid victim had his case not been so heavily publicized; he had Covid and he died of not being able to breathe.Oh, and any science article which refers to those with whom it disagrees as "fantasists" is nothing but propaganda.
The problem is that it is hard to explain all those excess deaths if, as has been touted by many on here, there actually isn't anything going on. The jump in excess deaths points out both the direct and indirect effects of something happening. It could be that someone dies of, say, heart disease when they otherwise wouldn't have because they didn't get medical treatment as soon as they otherwise would have. But as one unpicks such explainations the nagging problem is - Why THIS year? Why is this year so special? The excess deaths are an over-count if your concern is the mortality rate of this specific agent - COVID-19, this is bracketed from below by the deaths directly attributed to COVID-19 as multiple independent sources who better understand this data report that those numbers are undercounts. The true answer would be between those figures (excess deaths and deaths directly attributed to COVID).
As for the big-money argument. It's an attractive argument to be sure. The problem is though that nurses aren't really that well-paid. And they are worked really very hard. And they are cracking under the strain of something that is filling up ICU beds all over the USA (and the world). Also, countries with fully socialized medicine, where there really isn't a profit motive, are also being strained to their limits at the same time. They might not be as terrible at dealing with the problem as the USA, but the strain is still there.
The problem of money in Medicine is a huge one, and one you won't solve with a private medical industry, ever, because that is exactly the POINT of priviatized medicine....mak
I reply:
Todd Huffman, you say "But as one unpicks such explainations the nagging problem is - Why THIS year? Why is this year so special? The excess deaths are an over-count if your concern is the mortality rate of this specific agent - COVID-19, this is bracketed from below by the deaths directly attributed to COVID-19" but the death rate for influenza and other such illnesses has dropped off, while Covid rates are up. What does that tell us? Seems to me it says Covid is being blamed for deaths from influenza and other such illnesses. I'm not saying there is no disease, nor do I think are most people here. Just that it's being padded. I believe that once adjusted for population growth and inflation rates this is no worse than the '57 or '68 pandemics. What is different is the way we responded to it (with panic). I would point out I've been waiting for eye surgery for months now, and other people have had to wait for surgeries for more serious things. There is a lot less treatment going on these days. I can't get in to see my lung doctor, for example. I know a lot of nurses and most of them have been laid off by Covid, not are being overworked. Most of them tell me they aren't worried much about it. Yes, some in key spots - mainly ICU's where anyone suspected of Covid is sent, are over busy but the others are not busy at all. I did a stint in the hospital in October and they thought I might have it. I was told I'd be shipped up to ICU if I did. THAT is guaranteed to fill up a unit. Talk of overcrowded ICU's doesn't really speak to this for that reason; it's natural they are full if we are putting anyone with a positive test there. You also say "Also, countries with fully socialized medicine, where there really isn't a profit motive, are also being strained to their limits at the same time. They might not be as terrible at dealing with the problem as the USA, but the strain is still there." These countries have a completely different approach to the problem yet are at the same time busting at the seams with it. That suggests the approach itself is bad. I get your point, but when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail. Everybody is following the guidelines from the WHO and other central authorities, and are getting the same results. On the other hand you had Sweden, which did nothing at all and yet is not seeing the high numbers of earlier. In fact Sweden has done better without any precautions than a number of other European countries. (It is often compared with Norway and Denmark, nations quite dissimilar in terms of the age of the population and the fact that a lot of Swedes visited Italy early on.) In point of fact there does not appear to be any real correlation between masking and lockdowns and the infection rate. IF any of this stuff were valid then it would be obvious. I think this speaks volumes about the claims being made - and puts the whole thing in doubt. Socialized medicine perhaps has no profit motive, but it works as if it does as it's funding comes in the same way. America's system is not laizzes Faire, after all, but rather a quasi socialized entitity, so I don't know if there is much distinction. Certainly government is intimately involved in both, which undoubtedly influences how these entities count the cases and assign death causes. Bear in mind, private medical research is what has given us the vaccine in the first place, and why the United States has been a leader in all medical research. Bureaucrats would still be arguing about what color the vaccine should be. Money in medicine itself isn't a problem. It's money directed in the service of the few. When government is paying they get what they want. And they want a lot. And in this instance they want to use this as a tool to promote greater power and authority and more money. Just look at this latest "Covid Relief" package! That was a godsend to government because they could never have squandered so much money had they not had this "crisis" to allow them to do so. At any rate, thanks for a courteous reply. We just disagree.
Huffman keeps digging:
Timothy BirdnowYou make an assumption right at the first hurdle. Basically that doctors throughout hospitals are lying about the causes of the diseases they report. Or at best that en-masse, they have forgotten how to diagnose any flu-like conditions other than COVID. If you unpick the reporting I'm afraid the incentives to tell the truth far outweigh any incentive to lie about those numbers. Here's a more nuanced and fact-related view: https://
So basically, hospitals might well be getting more COVID money, but they are and were losing money because of all those lucrative elective procedures that they had to forego in order to handle the absolute FLOOD of new patients coming in who needed very expensive ICU care.
If I am to take your financial argument seriously I would conclude that the incentive is to Underreport COVID cases, and indeed, deny them care in favour of plastic surgery, tummy-tucks, Laziks.... I don't know, the list of elective surgeries is probably legion....where
All that is, of course, setting aside another simple fact. How many doctors to you know who are THAT unethical? In order to over-report more than 1/2 a million COVID deaths we are talking about ethical violations that quite a LOT of good people would have needed to witness and then keep schtumm about....for a year....
This is why lawmakers always get caught when they are corrupt. There's ALWAYS some pesky ethical person who won't keep their mouth shut when they see wrong-doing.
Oh sure, you CAN head off to Earth II, where the whole "Establishment"
I retort:
Todd Huffman your argument is full of holes:
"Basically that doctors throughout hospitals are lying about the causes of the diseases they report"
Doctors were following CDC guidelines and diagnosing Covid without an actual antibody test. And it got so bad with the CDC that the Trump Administration had to ask hospitals to send them the data because the CDC was unreliable.
And CDC director Robert Redfield actually admitted they were incentivizing hospitals to overdiagnose Covid. https://www.bizpacreview.com/2020/08/02/cdc-director-admits-hospitals-medical-folks-have-perverse-incentive-to-falsely-count-covid-deaths-954633/
Your claim that hospitals lost other electrive treatments sounds good but you forget that they COULDN'T perform those treatments, were not allowed to, and yes, they were losing money. So they had to make it up somewhere. You destroy your own argument bringing it up; this was just another part of the incentive.
Also, how do doctors diagnose anything without proper testing? In the early days it was being diagnosed based on symptoms - many of which are the same. In case you haven't figured it out yet, influenze is different every year too.
I know personally of a couple of cases so misdiagnosed. I also know of cases where people went to get tested, didn't wait, and were later told they tested positive for Covid. I know several personally. And there are others. https://www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/people-never-tested-covid-19-report-calls-saying-theyre-infected/CRJSXJC6EFD5TAC6AFWZFFQYP4/
and https://kprcradio.iheart.com/featured/the-pursuit-of-happiness/content/2020-08-03-600000-people-who-never-took-a-covid-test-were-told-they-have-the-virus/
And they were also misdiagnosing Legionella as Covid, in all probability.
https://www.gpb.org/news/2020/08/04/how-legionnaires-disease-resembles-covid-19-and-how-the-pandemic-may-result-in-more
And we know that Alameda County had 25% more deaths listed from Covid than they should have. https://www.foxnews.com/health/california-county-cuts-covid-death-toll?fbclid=IwAR1pp37unCLUNu1nGszj0rarPaoL21GtPl47TfrvmBRlzTkLZLp_aQzQJUI Multiply this around the country and what do you get?
Uh, Fact Check is not a "more balanced" view; it is a propaganda sight. And who is doing the fact checking? What makes them more qualified than any here?
You return to your argument that pressures and incentives from the CDC and other government agencies is not an issue. Uh, tummy tucks and lasik surgery was not allowed! Hell; my wife had to wait months to get in to get her retina reattached, and I still haven't had my membrane peel surgery on my eye. The hospitals had no choice. You seem incapable of grasping that fact.
Kindly explain to me how Covid "killed" the flu. If one is transmittable so too is the other. If what you say is true that means they have been lying to us about the dangers of covid (well, they have been.)
Your argument holds nary a drop of water.
Todd Huffman you say "On the other hand, the scientists all got it wrong too, they were predicting only a couple hundred thousand deaths at the time." Wrong; Neil Ferguson, of London's Imperial College, the guy who started the panic on this, was predicting three million deaths in Britain alone. You need to at least get your facts straight. This pandemic is not as bad as everyone led us to believe, and when adjusted for population growth and the obvious inflation of numbers it is comparable with the '57 pandemic, where we did not lock down, nor facemask, nor do any of the rest of this stupidity.
This isn't a matter of ethics, it is a matter of following CDC and WHO guidelines and diagnosing Covid where they are uncertain. When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. These doctors are doing what they are told. They are going to use tests, which may show antibodies for Covid 2 or even a cold bug and that was sufficient to call it Covid. It didn't matter, because the treatments were going to be the same anyway. You seem incapable of grasping so simple a fact.
Uh, corruption goes on unreported all the time dude. Bill Daley was king of Chicago for years and was not caught for anything. Do you really think that Pelosi or Schumer or any of those guys are not corrupt. Man, you are naive.
So you think you are someone who uses evidence? REALLY! I guess it was evidence that informed the New York Mayor to put Covid patients into nursing homes? Yeah; your kind of evidence is brilliant! You followed Neil Ferguson and Fauci and the others off a cliff, and we will be trying to recover from the damage done by those oracles of dufi for years to come. I hate to inform you but it is we who are following the science and the evidence. You don't because you don't like where it leads, or you are just so lazy you will let a journalist or a government bureaucrat tell you something and you accept it as Gospel. We are the ones who are actually digging into this.
Todd Huffman you say "Like I said, there is a hole the size you can drive a truck through between the statements " No my friend; the hole is between your ears. Nobody said all the deaths were flu but listed as Covid. You are indulging in Reductio Ad Absurdum. You know it too.
Todd replies:
OK fine, then why were ICU units overwhelmed? And that's not happened before. In fact if you look here: https://
At the beginning, I can believe there was no viral test, they'd have to diagnose on the basis of symptoms. But the deaths climb anyway. Then in the fall we get more deaths again, in a worse way, but this time diagnoses keep pace.
I remember there were more tests and more experience identifying the cases. So either the diagnoses were vastly under-reported from April through June 2020 or they were over-reported from November onward....maybe
So rather than me do this, why don't you guys do some science. Pick one of the MANY countries in the world that has a health care system that does NOT reward hospitals for covid patients. The UK is one. They were worried mainly about the number of ICU beds rather than how much it would cost because it's a wholly socialist medical system. What is the ratio of diagnoses vs. reported deaths in the UK compared to the USA for the same time periods?
You can pick those numbers off that web site just like I could.
And I am curious of the country-to-coun
I retort:
Oh, and Mr. Huffman, why were so many of the emergency facilities put in place empty? https://
I did a stint in the hospital last fall and the nurses all thought Covid was pure horsepoop. They didn't deny it was a disease but thought it horribly overblown. They are the ones who actually are seeing this day after day. But who will report their views? Do you think NBC or CNN is going to report what they have to say? And why not? Because it's freaking political and this has been a godsend to certain political groups. In politics there are few coincidences, especially happy ones. Trump would have sailed to an easy political victory without the pandemic. Shoot, even Jane Fonda called it God's gift to the left. https://
Huffman puffs:
Timothy BirdnowThen what percentage were flu mis-diagnosed? I argue the excess deaths figure prove that it wasn't flu, we've seen flu before, year after year....nothing
What are your numbers? 1%? I'd find that plausible.
50% - sorry, no way....point to excess deaths again. So what, exactly, are you saying? How many Hospitals over-reported COVID deaths and to what level...how many OTHER virus deaths contributed to those truly horrific excess death figures? Just how big does this run? Is it the odd honest mistaken diagnoses? or is it a massive tax fraud that you seem to imply with your posts?
I reply:
We have no way of knowing that and you know it, Todd Huffman. How do you catalogue misdiagnoses? Especially when the symptoms and treatment are similar? Cut the crap; you know this argument is totally bogus.
Oh, and it's not fraud if they are being instructed by the government to do it, now is it.
Huffman won't let it go:
Timothy BirdnowYou should re-read that article. There are perverse incentives all over the USA, that doesn't mean most people actually do them. It would be even more perverse if this incentive actually convinced most hospitals to commit fraudulent diagnoses on a grand scale. The excess deaths numbers indicate this didn't happen at a level that matters.
I retort:
Huffman you can puff all you wish but in the end logic is not on your side. I gave you the CDC director's own statement to show even she is forced to admit this is a problem (otherwise she wouldn't have said anything.) If you don't understand that you are hopeless. The fact is there is great incentive to do this. You say "The excess deaths numbers indicate this didn't happen at a level that matters". BUT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THE EXCESSIVE DEATHS you dope. The hole point is we can't trust any of the numbers. We know they are inflated but can't say by how much. This mirrors the vote fraud denier claims that there was no fraud and if there was it didn't matter; we don't know in either case how much or if it mattered. You sir are a Covid Inflation denier.
Huffman just won't give up:
Timothy BirdnowWas that not a prediction based on the "do nothing" hypothesis? I think it can be argued that prediction might well have come true. He also predicted that an early, draconian, lockdown and travel restrictions would keep UK deaths down to 20k or so....Australia
But ICU units were full.
What you post here makes no sense because an ER handled cases OTHER than COVID when the pandemic raged. COVID patients were dealt with separately precisely to try to prevent secondary infections of the kind that scared people into staying away from the ER.
My reply:
Huffman you can puff all you wish but in the end logic is not on your side. I gave you the CDC director's own statement to show even she is forced to admit this is a problem (otherwise she wouldn't have said anything.) If you don't understand that you are hopeless. The fact is there is great incentive to do this. You say "The excess deaths numbers indicate this didn't happen at a level that matters". BUT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT THE EXCESSIVE DEATHS you dope. The hole point is we can't trust any of the numbers. We know they are inflated but can't say by how much. This mirrors the vote fraud denier claims that there was no fraud and if there was it didn't matter; we don't know in either case how much or if it mattered. You sir are a Covid Inflation denier.
He responds:
Yes, we DO.
because there was a specific test that people could give to a person,
by the time June or July rolled around, that checked for the COVID
virus. It would not have registered as some other "flu". Maybe the USA
had a perverse incentive to misdiagnose on a colossal scale, but the UK
didn't, nor Germany, France, or Belgium...all of whom do not reward
hospitals for screwing up their diagnoses. So a measure (and I will
grant you it's imperfect) of how much over-diagnoses is going on would
be comparisons between countries that do NOT reward them.
I reply:
Todd
Huffman Willis Eschenbach provided the very CDC guidelines in another
comment: " === "In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot
be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are
compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable
to report COVID–19 on a death certificate as "probable†or "presumed.â€
And of course the European countries had an incentive to do the same as did we. A lot of power and money flowed out of this. I guess you think it was all purely about the public health.
Oh, and the fact is there has been little difference in Covid cases and mortalities based on whether they locked down or not, and even between states here in America. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12210173/coronavirus-lockdown-no-difference/ In fact, states in America that did not lock down did better. https://sentinelksmo.org/covid-update-states-not-locked-down-have-better-outcomes/
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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