Ivermectin and the African Enigma

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Double-click to enlarge image.

This post provides a synopsis of the PubMed paper COVID-19: The Ivermectin African Enigma. by R. Guerrero et al. (2020 Dec 30) Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Overview

1) Why was this study conducted?
Ivermectin has been used since 1995 for the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC). Currently, it is being considered as the possible target drug for SARS CoV-2. The low frequency of cases and deaths from the SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 virus in some countries of Africa prompted us to assess the possible influence of this community-based strategy. (Note Onchocerciasis is commonly referred to as “river blindness.”)

2) What were the most relevant results of the study?
APOC Countries with a Community-directed treatment with ivermectin strategy show 28% lower mortality (RR= 0.72, 95% CI: 0.67-0.78) and 8% lower rate of infection (RR= 0.92, 95% CI: 0.91-0.93) due to COVID-19; compared with non-APOC countries.

3) What do these results contribute?
Our data suggest that a mass public health preventive campaign against COVID-19 may have taken place, inadvertently, in some African countries with massive community ivermectin use. Additional studies are needed to confirm it.

APOC is a partnership programme including 19 countries with active involvement of the Ministries of Health and their communities, several international and local NGDOs, the private sector (Merck & Co., Inc.), donor countries and UN agencies. The World Bank and WHO acted as Fiscal Agent as Executing Agency, respectively. A Community-Directed Treatment with Ivermectin was the delivery strategy of APOC. With the purpose of achieving sustainability, local communities were empowered to administer and distribute ivermectin in their own villages. The programme which was extended until 2015 intended to treat over 90 million people annually in the 19 countries, protecting an at risk population of 115 million, and to prevent over 40,000 cases of blindness every year 1,2. In 1998 the Program was expanded to some Asian countries to combat lymphatic filariasis and APOC countries continued to use ivermectin, in association with albendazole, in this program 3

We used generalized Poisson regression models to obtain effect estimates of APOC status on SARS-CoV-2 cumulative infection and mortality rates. The models included country characteristics to adjust for socioeconomic differences between countries that could affect their response capacity and quality to the pandemic. To measure the impact of confounding variables like health, education, and standard of living we decided to control them by using the Human Development Index (HDI)5. HDI is a geometric mean of normalized indices of the three key dimensions of human development: health, assessed by life expectancy at birth; education, measured by mean of years of schooling for adults aged ≥25 years and standard of living measured by gross national income per capita. Although it does not reflect poverty, security, empowerment, or inequalities, we consider that it is the best indicator that represents the global situation of a country.

Striking differences in the evolution of COVID-19 mortality are observed Figure 1B and APOC countries appear to have lower rates. Analysis of raw data, as shown in Table 1, indicate that APOC countries had lower infection (as indicated by lower case detection) and mortality rates due to COVID-19 (p <0.001). The ratio of mortality rates was 0.12 (95% CI: 0.12-0.13) and the ratio of infection rates was 0.16 (95% CI: 0.16-0.16), indicating that the APOC group was associated with lower mortality and infection rates compared to non-APOC countries, that is 88% and 84%, respectively. In addition, the APOC countries also had a lower number of detected cases and a lower frequency of tests.

Mortality, detection of new cases and number of tests performed were positively and significantly associated with HDI. The Figure 2 shows the COVID-19 Cumulative Mortality Rate per million in APOC countries compared with non-APOC countries.

Death rates were directly associated with HDI in all African countries, while number of infections were inversely associated in APOC countries, that is the higher the HDI the lower the expected number of infections. In African regions with HDIs above Z-score means, the expected number of deaths and infections was lower in APOC countries. In contrast, in the regions with the lowest HDI Z-score (less than 0), the estimated number of deaths and infections was lower in the non-APOC countries compared to APOC countries  (See Figure 15 at top).

No country knows with certainty the total number of subjects infected by SARS-CoV-2 within its territory, only an approximate number provided by the people who are tested; then, the number of tests performed largely determines the count of confirmed cases of the disease. In developed countries the number of tests performed can reach larger proportions of the population, like Iceland that had almost half of its population tested, 483 per thousand people7, however, on the African continent the tests performed per million inhabitants can be as low as in South Sudan 1,072 and Egypt 1,311 4.

A high HDI indicates longer life expectancy, better education and a higher standard of living. Our results coincide with others that show higher infections and death rates associated with high HDI 10,11. This can be explained because the component “life expectancy at birth is associated with a higher percentage of population >65 years. Our non-APOC group had a larger population in the >65 category and larger life expectancy (9 years) than the APOC group. That is why it is crucial to control for this confounding variable.

Mbow et al.12, analyzed the low morbi-mortality by COVID-19 in Africa compared to European countries and US, concluded that it is unlikely that it may be due to race, quality of reporting and death registration, different population age composition, lockdown stringency or other sociocultural aspects. Mbow mentions that studies of African COVID-19 patients show clear differences in the activation, proinflammatory and memory profiles of the immune cells compared not only versus Europeans but also among Africans with high and low exposure to microorganisms and parasites. Also suggest, that the virus may be spreading differently and with an attenuated outcome in Africa.

It is not known if a residual ivermectin effect increases the number of asymptomatic in the APOC countries. It is also unknown whether there are differences in susceptibility between populations of different African countries or regions. The ivermectin is considered a drug of choice for various parasitic and viral diseases and shown to have in vitro effects against SARS-CoV-2 13-16.  Although there have been suggestive clinical studies 17,18, and >50 trials are currently in progress worldwide 19. There is the need of good designed clinical trials to conclusively ascertain its benefits in humans.

Overall, the reasons are not clear, yet present data suggests that a mass public health preventive campaign against COVID-19 may have taken place, inadvertently, in some African countries with massive community ivermectin use.

For a more recent update on Ivermectin Covid effectiveness see Ivermectin Invictus: The Unsung Covid Victor

Covid The New State Religion

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Tim O’Brien explains the rites and rituals in his American Thinker article COVID: A New State Religion?  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

What started as a virus quickly became epidemic and then a global pandemic. The spread of a contagion laid the groundwork for what has become an industry, and it’s now morphing into a religious ideology with all of the familiar trappings.

That’s a total of $55.5 billion in vaccine sales for 2021 just from the three biggest providers of vaccine in the U.S. And this does not include a wide range of products, services, and industries that have cropped up to service the nation’s and the world’s COVID needs.

From makers of masks, cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer and ventilators, to major pharmacy companies paid millions to distribute vaccines, COVID has become a major industry.

Politicians and bureaucrats at the local, state, and federal level have seized on the COVID crisis to achieve unprecedented levels of power through vaccine mandates, lockdowns, restrictions, and of course, overnight changes to election procedures.

Then, there is the public health sector. These are its glory days. . .COVID is a new field of study, complete with federal grant moneys to analyze every aspect of COVID, so long as the research does not detract from the approved narrative.

COVID is an industry. It’s here and it’s not budging. But it’s more than that. It’s also an ideology with all of the accoutrements of an established religion.

The Baptism of Vaccination

The COVID vaccines are widely understood to be ineffective at preventing the spread of the virus. So, why the relentless emphasis on turning society on its head over flawed vaccines?

Like Christian baptism, the vaccine is the baptism into this new faith. The waters of baptism don’t physically clean one’s soul of sin any more than the vaccine can completely prevent contraction of COVID. In the ideological context, it’s a symbolic rite of passage into the faith.

Once injected, you can count yourself among the faithful, unlike the “unvaccinated” who are the COVID ideology’s equivalent to atheists circa 1400 A.D. It’s okay to shun them, demonize them, discriminate against them, even deny them life-saving healthcare. In fact, you have an obligation to do so, so they learn their lessons and step in line. Otherwise, they will be made an example.

It doesn’t matter that they may have their own religious objections, they may have personal medical histories, or they may even have natural immunity from the virus which is much more effective at preventing spread. What matters is that they can be dubbed “anti-vax,” a term that coincidentally or not sounds uncomfortably similar to “anti-Christ.”

To the faithful, if you’re unvaccinated for any reason, you’re selfish, you don’t care about others. You’re putting yourself before the majority, before the faith.

The Rites of COVID Ideology

Just as Catholicism has its rites in the form of seven sacraments, the COVID ideology does, too. One is the booster shot. If you were vaccinated a year ago, but have not yet gotten your booster shot, you are at risk of being labeled “unvaccinated” once again. Do you want to risk that?

Of course, once boosted, you have the privilege of knowing you are ‘born again.’

This new ideology even has the rite of confession. Were you asked by your employer, or the front office at the football stadium or basketball arena to disclose your vaccination status? How much different is that from the Catholic rite of reconciliation?

The practice of faith often involves sacrifice. The COVID ideology is not without sacrifice. Since adverse effects of the “safe and effective” vaccine are “extremely rare,” the burden is on you to take the risk. If you are one of those who contract chronic heart problems, permanent neurological disorders, or some other life-altering condition, that’s the sacrifice you must be willing to take for the good of the ideology.

COVID’s High Priests

Of course, no faith would be complete without its high priests, the most visible one being Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is routinely asked by leaders and journalists to bless one activity, behavior, or medical treatment over another. A legion of people seeks his final approval or disapproval on behaviors that until now were considered un-sinful. Some may even regard the pontifical bureaucrat as infallible.

He’s not alone. There is an army of COVID clergy with titles like “public health director,” “governor,” “mayor,” “human resources director,” “Silicon Valley billionaire,” “editor,” “producer” and “reporter” all of whom are the keepers of The Word when it comes to COVID. Each has front-line authority to make decisions on enforcement of COVID ideology.

To counter The Word or the narrative of this new faith is to be guilty of the sin of “misinformation,” punishable by banning, censorship, and denial of “communion” in the word’s most literal sense. The only way to regain access to the congregation is to recant.

If you belong to an established faith that holds dear the original Ten Commandments as handed down to Moses from God, you may recall the first one, which says, “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me.”

Keep that in mind, because you may be asked to choose. The God of our fathers, or the god of COVID? Just know that the god of COVID is a jealous god.

 

Media Ignore Worldwide Revolt Against Covid Tyranny

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Brownstone Institute compiled videos from around the world showing citizens protesting irrational restrictions imposed by Covid despots.  The article is Protests and Rage Against Lockdowns and Mandates All Over the World

As deadlines loom for mandatory vaccines, and the more lockdowns come to many countries of the world, people have taken to the streets in protest. In the typical case, local media either neglects to report on this or improperly characterizes them as “right wing” or “anti-vaxx.” It is likely that most people who get their news only from mainstream TV or The New York Times know nothing about what is happening.

The videos below, carefully chronicled by our friend Aaron Ginn, document what the media has neglected, even though this is the largest global protest movement to appear in decades. Keep in mind that this is only footage from select places from the last week. There are many more not appearing here and such protests have been building for more than a year.

These videos indicate the arrival of a turning point. Governments can continue to press these lockdowns and mandates against all scientific evidence and good public health or they can listen to the pains and anger of their own people.

Genova, Italy

Tbilisi, Georgia

London, England

Vancouver, Canada 

Melbourne, Australia

Northern Ireland 

Switzerland 

Vienna, Austria 

Linz, Austria

New Zealand 

Budapest, Hungary

New York City 

Croatia 

The Netherlands 

Toronto, Canada 

Denmark 

Oslo, Norway ​

Finland 

Manchester, England 

Milan, Italy 

Rome, Italy 

Turin, Italy 

Naples, Italy 

Florence, Italy 

Perth, Australia 

Brisbane, Australia 

Paris, France 

Nice, France 

Montpellier, France

Guadaloupe, Caribbean 

Greece 

Prague, Czech Republic 

Slovakia 

Germany 

Iran

Spain 

Oregon, USA 

Colombia 

To be continued…

Why You Need Mucosal Immunity

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Paul Hunter, Professor of Medicine, University of East Anglia explains at The Conversation COVID-19 vaccines are probably less effective at preventing transmission than symptoms – here’s why.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Countries where COVID-19 vaccines have rolled out quickly, such as Israel and the UK, are starting to give an indication of how well they work. Their early results suggest the vaccines are highly effective at preventing people from being hospitalised or dying from the disease.

However, it’s less clear how good the vaccines are at stopping people from spreading the virus. But given what we know about how they work, we shouldn’t be surprised if they are less effective at stopping people transmit the virus than preventing them becoming ill. This is because the type of immunity they generate is likely to be better at fighting off severe rather than mild infections.

How immunity is created

There are a number of distinct phases in the course of a coronavirus infection. Usually the virus starts with what’s known as a “mucosal infection” because it infects the lining of the nose and throat, the nasopharyngeal mucosa.

This is the asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic phase. Mild symptoms such as cough or altered taste or smell may then develop. However, in a proportion of people, the infection then spreads down the respiratory tract to the lungs, causing more serious problems. Some may develop very severe illness, leading to respiratory and other organ failure. At this point, with the virus moving around the body and causing problems in multiple areas, the infection is “systemic”.

People are most infectious during the early stages of infection, when the virus is largely restricted to the nasopharyngeal mucosa. Indeed, it’s possible for people to be highly infectious without the virus spreading to other parts of the body or causing severe illness.

Importantly, the immune system responds differently to mucosal and systemic infections.

A systemic immune response, which works across large swathes of the body, is associated with creating one type of antibody, IgG. Immunity generated in the mucosa (also called secretory immunity) is associated with creating another, IgA. As a result, immunisations that focus on generating systemic immunity – which is what injected vaccines do – rarely induce mucosal immunity. This likely applies to all the COVID-19 vaccines currently available.

And yet, the nasopharyngeal mucosa is ground zero for most coronavirus infections. So while COVID-19 vaccines may generate a response that’s highly protective against systemic disease in the lungs and other organs, the vaccines are less likely to generate strong mucosal immunity that’s effective against the mild but infectious early stage of infection in the nose and throat. We should therefore expect some difference in the vaccines’ effects on preventing severe disease and blocking infection and transmission.

We don’t yet know if there’s a difference in the development of systemic and mucosal immunity for COVID-19. Emerging evidence suggests there might be, but it isn’t conclusive, and much of this research still needs to be fully reviewed.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that even if these vaccines don’t end up blocking infections to a high degree, that doesn’t mean they won’t make a major contribution to suppressing viral spread. Even if people still get infected, COVID-19 vaccines are likely to reduce the amount of virus generated during an infection, lowering what can be passed on.

Practical Implications of Mucosal Immunity

What happened in Central Europe on Oct 10-13 so that many people started to become ill?

Nothing significant happened on Oct 10-13. But the nights turned cool and heating was needed everywhere overnight from Oct 9.  Along with the temperature drop, absolute humidity of the air also dropped. It dropped almost by half within a couple of days, it dropped to the level where it had not been since the spring.

The air arriving to the lungs should contain 35 g/kg of water. In summer, the air contained about 10 g/kg and the epithelium had to add 25 g/kg. From October 9 on, 20% more water was needed from the epithelium overnight

20% increase in any burden is tough even for a short period. Replace a 75 g racquet by a 90 g one and ask a good badminton player to play his standard play. He will need a rest very soon or be broken. Epithelium would also need a rest but it can’t. Mucus covering the upper respiratory epithelium is responsible for moisturizing the inhaled air, acting as a barrier between the environment and the epithelial cells. The mucosal microbiome also turns the inhaled viral particles harmless.

When absolute humidity drops, the water supply to the epithelium should be increased but do we know how fast such change can take place? And is there a limit to the water supply? How many have no idea of the importance of mucosal hydration of the air at all? In the winter 2020/21, Estonia had two major drops of absolute humidity. From average 8 g/kg to average 5 g/kg on Oct 14-20, triggering the rapid increase in infection. Average humidity then gradually decreased to average 4 g/kg by December, population acclimatized…

The waves of COVID-19 have broken when the absolute humidity has increased and not dropped back below customization level for a while. It happened so in the spring 2020, in the spring 2021, and also in the autumn 2021 in all Baltic countries simultaneously.

People in moderate climate have been suffering from infectious diseases from every autumn till spring and the epidemiological pattern is very similar each year. Diseases start with the beginning of the school and peaks in the second half of each winter. Since the emergence of centralized heating, the problem of indoor humidity has only become worse. Modern HVAC systems are aimed at supplying fresh air at low energy cost but these systems are still failing to address indoor humidity and maintain its healthy level.

It has been long known that the incidence of viral diseases is higher in very dry and very wet air, i.e. in nordic winter with and in tropical heat, both causing body to dehydrate. (Fig from Tamerius, Shaman et al. 2013)

My Comment:

1. The superiority of natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity is not mentioned.  Dr. Robert Clancy explains: 

Another issue is the recognition that genetic vaccines have limited value. While doctors support the current vaccine roll-out, reported “danger signals” must be clarified. Both the DNA-vector vaccine (AstraZeneca) and mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) behave as predicted by biology relevant to airways’ protection (something not understood by the vast majority of “experts”): short duration of protection limited to control of systemic inflammation, with little impact on infection of the airways.

Israel was used as a laboratory for the Pfizer vaccine. Six months after vaccination, there was essentially no protection against infection or mild disease, although protection against severe disease remained at 85-to-90 per cent. Thereafter came a rapid and progressive loss of protection against more severe disease. Infected vaccinated and unvaccinated subjects have similar viral loads and transmission capacity.

Immunity following natural infection is better and more durable than that induced by vaccination, so there is no sense in immunising those who have had COVID infection in the preceding six months.

2.  Ivermectin Effectively Blocks viral entry at ACE-2 receptors in the nasal and oral cavity. 

Article is High expression of ACE2 receptor of 2019-nCoV on the epithelial cells of oral mucosa

It has been reported that ACE2 is the main host cell receptor of 2019-nCoV and plays a crucial role in the entry of virus into the cell to cause the final infection. To investigate the potential route of 2019-nCov infection on the mucosa of oral cavity, bulk RNA-seq profiles from two public databases including The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Functional Annotation of The Mammalian Genome Cap Analysis of Gene Expression (FANTOM5 CAGE) dataset were collected. RNA-seq profiling data of 13 organ types with para-carcinoma normal tissues from TCGA and 14 organ types with normal tissues from FANTOM5 CAGE were analyzed in order to explore and validate the expression of ACE2 on the mucosa of oral cavity. Further, single-cell transcriptomes from an independent data generated in-house were used to identify and confirm the ACE2-expressing cell composition and proportion in oral cavity. The results demonstrated that the ACE2 expressed on the mucosa of oral cavity. Interestingly, this receptor was highly enriched in epithelial cells of tongue. Preliminarily, those findings have explained the basic mechanism that the oral cavity is a potentially high risk for 2019-nCoV infectious susceptibility and provided a piece of evidence for the future prevention strategy in dental clinical practice as well as daily life.

Fig. 1 A schematic of the key cellular and biomolecular interactions between Ivermectin, host cell, and SARS-CoV-2 in COVID19 pathogenesis and prevention of complications.

Ivermectin; IVM (red block) inhibits and disrupts binding of the SARS-CoV-2 S protein at the ACE-2 receptors (green). The green dotted lines depict activation pathways and the red dotted lines depict the inhibition pathways.

Ivermectin also had the highest binding affinity for TMPRSS2. By binding so well to all three — the spike, the ACE2 receptor and the TMPRSS2 secateurs that prune or prime the spike, ivermectin makes it much harder for the virus to get inside a cell.

See How Much Does Ivermectin Fight Covid19? The Count is 20 ways.

 

 

2021 Update: Climate Reductionism

Posted on by Ron Clutz

19170447-global_warming_1.530x298In the aftermath of Glasgow COP, many have noticed how incredible were the pronouncements and claims from UK hosts as well as other speakers intending to inflame public opinion in support of the UN agenda.  No one in the media applies any kind of critical intelligence examining the veracity of facts and conclusions trumpeted before, during and after the conference.  In the interest of presenting an alternate, unalarming paradigm of earth’s climate, I am reposting a previous discussion of how wrongheaded is the IPCC “consensus science.”

Background

With all the fuss about the “Green New Deal” and attempts to blame recent cold waves on rising CO2, it is wise to remember the logic of the alarmist argument.  It boils down to two suppositions:

Rising atmospheric CO2 makes the planet warmer.

Rising emissions from humans burning fossil fuels makes atmospheric CO2 higher.

The second assertion is challenged in a post: Who to Blame for Rising CO2?

This post addresses the first claim.  Remember also that all of the so-called “lines of evidence” for global warming do not distinguish between human and natural causes.  Typically the evidence cited falls into these categories:

Global temperature rise
Warming oceans
Shrinking ice sheets
Glacial retreat
Decreased snow cover
Sea level rise
Declining Arctic sea ice
Extreme events

However, all of these are equivocal, involving signal and noise issues. Note also that all of them are alleged impacts from the first one.  And in any case, the fact of any changes does not in itself prove human causation.  That attribution rests solely on unvalidated climate models.  Below is a discussion of the reductionist mental process by which climate complexity and natural forces are systematically excluded to reach the pre-determined conclusion.

Original Post:  Climate Reductionism


Reductionists are those who take one theory or phenomenon to be reducible to some other theory or phenomenon. For example, a reductionist regarding mathematics might take any given mathematical theory to be reducible to logic or set theory. Or, a reductionist about biological entities like cells might take such entities to be reducible to collections of physico-chemical entities like atoms and molecules.
Definition from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Some of you may have seen this recent article: Divided Colorado: A Sister And Brother Disagree On Climate Change

The reporter describes a familiar story to many of us.  A single skeptic (the brother) is holding out against his sister and rest of the family who accept global warming/climate change. And of course, after putting some of their interchanges into the text, the reporter then sides against the brother by taking the word of a climate expert. From the article:

“CO2 absorbs infrared heat in certain wavelengths and those measurements were made first time — published — when Abraham Lincoln was president of the United States,” says Scott Denning, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. “Since that time, those measurements have been repeated by better and better instruments around the world.”

CO2, or carbon dioxide, has increased over time, scientists say, because of human activity. It’s a greenhouse gas that’s contributing to global warming.

“We know precisely how the molecule wiggles and waggles, and what the quantum interactions between the electrons are that cause everyone one of these little absorption lines,” he says. “And there’s just no wiggle room around it — CO2 absorbs heat, heat warms things up, so adding CO2 to the atmosphere will warm the climate.”

Denning says that most of the CO2 we see added to the atmosphere comes from humans — mostly through burning coal, oil and gas, which, as he puts it, is “indirectly caused by us.”

When looking at the scientific community, Denning says it’s united, as far as he knows.

earth-science-climatic-change-Climate-System-3-114-g001

A Case Study of Climate Reductionism

Denning’s comments, supported by several presentations at his website demonstrate how some scientists (all those known to Denning) engage in a classic form of reductionism.

The full complexity of earth’s climate includes many processes, some poorly understood, but known to have effects orders of magnitude greater than the potential of CO2 warming. The case for global warming alarm rests on simplifying away everything but the predetermined notion that humans are warming the planet. It goes like this:

Our Complex Climate

Earth’s climate is probably the most complicated natural phenomenon ever studied. Not only are there many processes, but they also interact and influence each other over various timescales, causing lagged effects and multiple cycling. This diagram illustrates some of the climate elements and interactions between them.

Flows and Feedbacks for Climate Models

The Many Climate Dimensions

Further, measuring changes in the climate goes far beyond temperature as a metric. Global climate indices, like the European dataset include 12 climate dimensions with 74 tracking measures. The set of climate dimensions include:

  • Sunshine
  • Pressure
  • Humidity
  • Cloudiness
  • Wind
  • Rain
  • Snow
  • Drought
  • Temperature
  • Heat
  • Cold

And in addition there are compound measures combining temperature and precipitation. While temperature is important, climate is much more than that.  With this reduction, all other dimensions are swept aside, and climate change is simplified down to global warming as seen in temperature measurements.

Climate Thermodynamics: Weather is the Climate System at work.

Another distortion is the notion that weather is bad or good, depending on humans finding it favorable. In fact, all that we call weather are the ocean and atmosphere acting to resolve differences in temperatures, humidities and pressures. It is the natural result of a rotating, irregular planetary surface mostly covered with water and illuminated mostly at its equator.

The sun warms the surface, but the heat escapes very quickly by convection so the build-up of heat near the surface is limited. In an incompressible atmosphere, it would *all* escape, and you’d get no surface warming. But because air is compressible, and because gases warm up when they’re compressed and cool down when allowed to expand, air circulating vertically by convection will warm and cool at a certain rate due to the changing atmospheric pressure.

Climate science has been obsessed with only a part of the system, namely the atmosphere and radiation, in order to focus attention on the non-condensing IR active gases. The climate is framed as a 3D atmosphere above a 2D surface. That narrow scope leaves out the powerful non-radiative heat transfer mechanisms that dominate the lower troposphere, and the vast reservoir of thermal energy deep in the oceans.

As Dr. Robert E Stevenson writes, it could have been different:

“As an oceanographer, I’d been around the world, once or twice, and I was rather convinced that I knew the factors that influenced the Earth’s climate. The oceans, by virtue of their enormous density and heat-storage capacity, are the dominant influence on our climate. It is the heat budget and the energy that flows into and out of the oceans that basically determines the mean temperature of the global atmosphere. These interactions, plus evaporation, are quite capable of canceling the slight effect of man-produced CO2.”

The troposphere is dominated by powerful heat transfer mechanisms: conduction, convection and evaporation, as well as physical kinetic movements.  All this is ignored in order to focus on radiative heat transfer, a bit player except at the top of the atmosphere.

There’s More than the Atmosphere

Once the world of climate is greatly reduced down to radiation of infrared frequencies, yet another set of blinders is applied. The most important source of radiation is of course the sun. Solar radiation in the short wave (SW) range is what we see and what heats up the earth’s surface, particularly the oceans. In addition solar radiation includes infrared, some absorbed in the atmosphere and some at the surface. The ocean is also a major source of heat into the atmosphere since its thermal capacity is 1000 times what the air can hold. The heat transfer from ocean to air is both by way of evaporation (latent heat) and also by direct contact at the sea surface (conduction).

Yet conventional climate science dismisses the sun as a climate factor saying that its climate input is unvarying. That ignores significant fluctuations in parts of the light range, for example ultraviolet, and also solar effects such as magnetic fields and cosmic rays. Also disregarded is solar energy varying due to cloud fluctuations. The ocean is also dismissed as a source of climate change despite obvious ocean warming and cooling cycles ranging from weeks to centuries. The problem is such oscillations are not well understood or predictable, so can not be easily modeled.

With the sun and the earth’s surface and ocean dismissed, the only consideration left is the atmosphere.

The Gorilla Greenhouse Gas

Thus climate has been reduced down to heat radiation passing through the atmosphere comprised of gases. One of the biggest reductions then comes from focusing on CO2 rather than H20. Of all the gases that are IR-active, water is the most prevalent and covers more of the spectrum.

The diagram below gives you the sense of proportion.

GHG blocks

The Role of CO2

We come now to the role of CO2 in “trapping heat” and making the world warmer. The theory is that CO2 acts like a blanket by absorbing and re-radiating heat that would otherwise escape into space. By delaying the cooling while solar energy comes in constantly, CO2 is presumed to cause a buildup of heat resulting in warmer temperatures.

How the Atmosphere Processes Heat

There are 3 ways that heat (Infrared or IR radiation) passes from the surface to space.

1) A small amount of the radiation leaves directly, because all gases in our air are transparent to IR of 10-14 microns (sometimes called the “atmospheric window.” This pathway moves at the speed of light, so no delay of cooling occurs.

2) Some radiation is absorbed and re-emitted by IR active gases up to the tropopause. Calculations of the free mean path for CO2 show that energy passes from surface to tropopause in less than 5 milliseconds. This is almost speed of light, so delay is negligible. H2O is so variable across the globe that its total effects are not measurable. In arid places, like deserts, we see that CO2 by itself does not prevent the loss of the day’s heat after sundown.

3) The bulk gases of the atmosphere, O2 and N2, are warmed by conduction and convection from the surface. They also gain energy by collisions with IR active gases, some of that IR coming from the surface, and some absorbed directly from the sun. Latent heat from water is also added to the bulk gases. O2 and N2 are slow to shed this heat, and indeed must pass it back to IR active gases at the top of the troposphere for radiation into space.

In a parcel of air each molecule of CO2 is surrounded by 2500 other molecules, mostly O2 and N2. In the lower atmosphere, the air is dense and CO2 molecules energized by IR lose it to surrounding gases, slightly warming the entire parcel. Higher in the atmosphere, the air is thinner, and CO2 molecules can emit IR into space. Surrounding gases resupply CO2 with the energy it lost, which leads to further heat loss into space.

This third pathway has a significant delay of cooling, and is the reason for our mild surface temperature, averaging about 15C. Yes, earth’s atmosphere produces a buildup of heat at the surface. The bulk gases, O2 and N2, trap heat near the surface, while IR active gases, mainly H20 and CO2, provide the radiative cooling at the top of the atmosphere. Near the top of the atmosphere you will find the -18C temperature.

Sources of CO2

Note the size of the human emissions next to the red arrow.

A final reduction comes down to how much of the CO2 in the atmosphere is there because of us. Alarmists/activists say any increase in CO2 is 100% man-made, and would be more were it not for natural CO2 sinks, namely the ocean and biosphere. The claim overlooks the fact that those sinks are also sources of CO2 and the flux from the land and sea is an order of magnitude higher than estimates of human emissions. In fact, our few Gigatons of carbon are lost within the error range of estimating natural emissions. Insects produce far more CO2 than humans do by all our activity, including domestic animals.

Why Climate Reductionism is Dangerous

Reducing the climate in this fashion reaches its logical conclusion in the Activist notion of the “450 Scenario.”  Since Cancun, IPCC is asserting that global warming is capped at 2C by keeping CO2 concentration below 450 ppm. From Summary for Policymakers (SPM) AR5

Emissions scenarios leading to CO2-equivalent concentrations in 2100 of about 450 ppm or lower are likely to maintain warming below 2°C over the 21st century relative to pre-industrial levels. These scenarios are characterized by 40 to 70% global anthropogenic GHG emissions reductions by 2050 compared to 2010, and emissions levels near zero or below in 2100.

Thus is born the “450 Scenario” by which governments can be focused upon reducing human emissions without any reference to temperature measurements, which are troublesome and inconvenient. Almost everything in the climate world has been erased, and “Fighting Climate Change” is now code to mean accounting for fossil fuel emissions.

Conclusion

All propagandists begin with a kernel of truth, in this case the fact everything acting in the world has an effect on everything else. Edward Lorenz brought this insight to bear on the climate system in a ground breaking paper he presented in 1972 entitled: “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”  Everything does matter and has an effect. Obviously humans impact on the climate in places where we build cities and dams, clear forests and operate farms. And obviously we add some CO2 when we burn fossil fuels.

But it is wrong to ignore the major dominant climate realities in order to exaggerate a small peripheral factor for the sake of an agenda. It is wrong to claim that IR active gases somehow “trap” heat in the air when they immediately emit any energy absorbed, if not already lost colliding with another molecule. No, it is the bulk gases, N2 and O2, making up the mass of the atmosphere, together with the ocean delaying the cooling and giving us the mild and remarkably stable temperatures that we enjoy. And CO2 does its job by radiating the heat into space.

Since we do little to cause it, we can’t fix it by changing what we do. The climate will not stop changing because we put a price on carbon. And the sun will rise despite the cock going on strike to protest global warming.

Footnote: For a deeper understanding of the atmospheric physics relating to CO2 and climate, I have done a guide and synopsis of Murry Salby’s latest textbook on the subject:  Fearless Physics from Dr. Salby

mRNA Covid Vax Highly Effective . . .For Aborting

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law paper Spontaneous Abortions and Policies on COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Use During Pregnancy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The use of mRNA vaccines in pregnancy is now generally considered safe for protection against COVID-19 in countries such as New Zealand, USA, and Australia. However, the influential CDC- sponsored article by Shimabukuro et al. (2021) used to support this idea, on closer inspection, provides little assurance, particularly for those exposed in early pregnancy. The study presents falsely reassuring statistics related to the risk of spontaneous abortion in early pregnancy, since the majority of women in the calculation were exposed to the mRNA product after the outcome period was defined (20 weeks’ gestation).

In this article, we draw attention to these errors and recalculate the risk of this outcome based on the cohort that was exposed to the vaccine before 20 weeks’ gestation. Our re-analysis indicates a cumulative incidence of spontaneous abortion 7 to 8 times higher than the original authors’ results (p < 0.001) and the typical average for pregnancy loss during this time period. In light of these findings, key policy decisions have been made using unreliable and questionable data. We conclude that the claims made using these data on the safety of exposure of women in early pregnancy to mRNA-based vaccines to prevent COVID-19 are unwarranted and recommend that those policy decisions be revisited.

The study indicates that at least 81.9% (≥ 104/127) experienced spontaneous abortion following mRNA exposure before 20 weeks, and 92.3% (96/104) of spontaneous abortions occurred before 13 weeks’ gestation

We question the conclusions of the Shimabukuro et al.[4] study to support the use of the mRNA vaccine in early pregnancy, which has now been hastily incorporated into many international guidelines for vaccine use, including in New Zealand.[1] The assumption that exposure in the third trimester cohort is representative of the effect of exposure throughout pregnancy is questionable and ignores past experience with drugs such as thalidomide.[38] Evidence of safety of the product when used in the first and second trimesters cannot be established until these cohorts have been followed to at least the perinatal period or long-term safety determined for any of the babies born to mothers inoculated during pregnancy.

Additionally, the product’s manufacturer, Pfizer, contradicts these assurances, stating: “available data on Comirnaty administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine- associated risks in pregnancy”, and “it is not known whether Comirnaty is excreted in human milk” as “data are not available to assess the effects of Comirnaty on the breastfed infant” (page 14).[39]

Pfizer, it was noted, says on its vaccine’s label that the available data on the vaccine “administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy.”

Comment: 

It would be great if there was a central source for factual information that isn’t tainted by political opinions and government agencies or elected leaders, including those who benefit from financial contributions made to them by big pharma that stands to make billions on the production and sale of their COVID vaccines. No wonder Americans no longer trust our government or the DNC’s corporate media.

African Covid Miracle

Posted on by Ron Clutz

(AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

Update Nov. 25, 2021
See also Post Ivermectin and the African Enigma

Hot Air reports An African mystery: Where did COVID go? Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

There’s something strange happening in Africa which, according to the Associated Press, has scientists “mystified.” The curious situation is particularly prevalent in Zimbabwe. It’s a nation with a population of 14.8 million people and a vaccination rate of less than 6%, a fact that the World Health Organization lectures us about endlessly. And yet in the past week, they recorded a total of 33 COVID deaths. How is this possible? The AP interviewed a number of people who were shopping in a township outside Harare, almost none of whom were wearing masks. One man declared that the virus was “gone” and asked the reporter, “when did you last hear of anyone who has died of COVID-19?” He said that he carries a mask in his pocket because the police demand bribes from people without masks or they are threatened with arrest, but he rarely puts it on. Doctors have a few theories they are tossing around, though many are simply stumped. But I bet some of us who aren’t medical professionals could make a guess.

When the coronavirus first emerged last year, health officials feared the pandemic would sweep across Africa, killing millions. Although it’s still unclear what COVID-19’s ultimate toll will be, that catastrophic scenario has yet to materialize in Zimbabwe or much of the continent.

Scientists emphasize that obtaining accurate COVID-19 data, particularly in African countries with patchy surveillance, is extremely difficult, and warn that declining coronavirus trends could easily be reversed.

But there is something “mysterious” going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University. “Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said.

As already noted, one of the most stunning statistics in that story is that the vaccination rate in Zimbabwe is only 6%. If you found a single county in the United States with a 6% vaccination rate, Joe Biden would probably already have ordered everyone to be shipped off to prisons. If it happened in Australia they would likely have started executing people by now. But in Africa, it’s just a fact of life.

Reading through the commentary provided to the AP by various medical experts, there seem to be three general theories being suggested to explain the absence of a COVID catastrophe in most of Africa except for the nation of South Africa where they have a significantly higher caseload. The first theory is that the COVID epidemic is just as bad as everywhere else but we simply don’t collect enough data to realize it. The second theory is that scientists should be studying the African people to see if they are somehow more naturally resistant to the novel coronavirus. The final theory is that the average age of people in Zimbabwe (for example) is roughly 20 because life expectancies are much lower. Younger people are less likely to die from the disease.

Let’s consider all of these ideas from the layman’s point of view. Is it possible that there are a lot more cases of COVID in Africa than are being reported? Of course. That only makes sense because most areas in countries like Zimbabwe simply don’t have the resources to be testing everyone. In many cases, the only people being tested are the ones who show up at a medical center displaying symptoms. But one thing they are fully able to record is the number of people who are dying. If deaths of all sorts aren’t rising significantly, then not that many people are dying from COVID.

The idea that Africans are somehow naturally more immune to the virus sounds a bit wacky, at least at first glance. In the United States we have plenty of African-Americans who should be essentially drawing from the same gene pool, right? And yet COVID rates in those communities (where vaccine hesitancy remains higher than the national average) have been quite high during surges in the pandemic. Something doesn’t add up here.

And then there’s the idea that a population with a much lower average age won’t produce as many deaths. While that should statistically be accurate, I would suggest that we can expand on that theory. Residents of Zimbabwe have lower life expectancies so their average age is considerably lower. That much is true. And their vaccination rate is in single digits. Now let’s combine those facts with the reality that almost nobody is being tested for the virus and add in the fact that the COVID survival rate for younger and otherwise healthy people is well over 99%.

Putting all of that together, isn’t it just possible that most of the people in Zimbabwe have already had COVID, developed their own antibodies, and just gotten on with their lives?

Dare we use the forbidden words that the American media refuses to speak and suggest that just maybe the people of Zimbabwe have developed herd immunity? We know the virus exists in the country because a few people died of it last week. We also know how contagious it is. Doesn’t it just make sense that COVID swept through the country and there are no large pockets of people who have never been exposed, so the damned virus is simply dying out on its own?

I’m sure I’ll be locked up in the COVID “misinformation” jail for suggesting this, and I will once again repeat the disclaimer that I have no formal medical training. But it’s something to think about. Perhaps the situation in Zimbabwe really isn’t all the much of a “mystery” after all. Maybe… just maybe… all we’re seeing is mother nature taking her natural course. The human body contains all sorts of marvels and surprises from time to time. We just recently learned of the second person confirmed to have completely recovered from HIV without any medical treatment. It makes me wonder how many other people have contracted HIV but were never tested for it and went on to fight it off on their own. When was the last time anyone tested you for HIV? I haven’t had a test since right before I was married, nearly 30 years ago. Just some food for thought for you on a Friday.

Footnote:

From Zimbabwe Independent (July 23, 2021): Sharpe donates US$50 000 for Covid-19 drug

Property mogul Ken Sharpe last Friday donated US$50 000 to government for the purchase of Ivermectin, which he said saved both his life and that of his wife after they contracted the Covid-19 virus.

The donation, which was made during an event held at the State House headed up by President Emerson Mnangagwa, was Sharpe’s way of giving back after missing death by a whisker.

Sharpe who is the chairperson for West Property said he would not have made it if he had not taken Ivermectin after contracting the virus .

Ivermectin is a broad spectrum anti-parasitic agent.

It is included in WHO essential medicines list for several parasitic diseases and is used in the treatment of onchocerciasis (river blindness), strongyloidiasis and other diseases caused by soil transmitted helminthiasis.

“It is a fact that I had been vaccinated and I believe, as you can see, I am a strong man in good health of just under 50 years of age. However, even having observed all the Covid-19 protocols of social distancing, without the assistance of the medicine that I took … I would not be standing here today,” he said .

He shared how he battled with the most severe symptoms until he started taking Ivermectin to which he owes his life.

Sharpe, however, said it was hugely unfair that currently the life-saving drug was pegged at a high price and yet a bit of research had proved that it could be sourced for a few cents.

This he said, would expand and widen access to many people who were currently failing to buy at the current prices.

Don’t Fence Us In!

 

Reasons to be Skeptical about Covid Vaccines

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Here are five reports raising concerns that these Covid vaccines are not what they are cracked up to be.

1.  Bureaucrat obsession with “silver bullet” vaccines

As Scott Atlas observes in his book about the US pandemic response:

Dr. Birx, Dr. Redfield and Dr. Fauci—often called “the nation’s top expert in infectious disease”—dominated all discussions about the health and medical aspects of the emerging pandemic. One thing was very clear: all three were cut from the same cloth. First, they were all bureaucrats, with a background in various government agencies. Second, they shared a long history in HIV/AIDS as a public health crisis. That was problematic, because HIV couldn’t be more different from SARS2 in its biology, its amenability to testing and contact tracing, its spread and the implications of those facts for its control.

Indeed, the three of them spent many years focusing on the development of a vaccine, rather than treatment, for HIV/AIDS—a vaccine that still does not exist.

Drs. Birx and Fauci commandeered federal policy under President Trump and publicly advocated for a total societal shutdown. Instead of focusing on protecting the most vulnerable, their illogical and extraordinarily blunt response—despite its predictable, wide-ranging harms—was instituted as though it were simple common sense.

How Panic Spread in the Early Days of COVID-19

As we all recall, the lockdowns were initially for two weeks to protect the health system, and then were perpetuated as being necessary until vaccines were available. That initial obsession with a vaccine-only solution has grown tyrannical with “No Jab, No Job” mandates.

HCQ or IVM + nutritional supplements fill the need for early home treatment whether people are vaccinated or not.

2.  Cancellation campaign against repurposing anti-viral medicines

Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson together with his Solicitor General and Assistant Attorney General issued their opinion in response to a request by Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services CEO, Dannette Smith. She wanted the AG’s office to examine carefully whether doctors could face legal action or be subject to discipline if they prescribed the meds for COVID treatment.

“Allowing physicians to consider these early treatments will free them to evaluate additional tools that could save lives, keep patients out of the hospital, and provide relief for our already strained healthcare system,” AG Doug Peterson wrote.

The Office of AG pointed to multiple medical journal articles, research, and case studies. They mentioned the study from Lancet that was later on retracted because of its flawed statistics regarding the use of HCQ.   Because of conflicting data on the treatments by the principal authors, “We find that the available data does not justify filing disciplinary actions against physicians simply because they prescribe ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to prevent or treat COVID-19,” the opinion said.

Office of AG also used the study from the Mahmud and Niaee research team and many more about Ivermectin’s role as prophylaxis.

The office of AG even attacked the company, Merck, on their agenda.

Why would ivermectin’s original patent holder go out of its way to question this medicine by creating the impression that it might not be safe? There are at least two plausible reasons. First, ivermectin is no longer under patent, so Merck does not profit from it anymore. That likely explains why Merck declined to “conductI] clinical trials” on ivermectin and COVID-19 when given the chance.

Second, Merck has a significant financial interest in the medical profession rejecting ivermectin as an early treatment for COVID-19. “[The U.S. government has agreed to pay [Merck] about $1.2 billion for 1.7 million courses of its experimental COVID-19 treatment, if it is proven to work in an ongoing large trial and authorized by U.S. regulators.”

That treatment, known a “molnupiravir, aims to stop COVID-19 from progressing and can be given early in the course of the disease.” On October 1, 2021, Merck announced that preliminary studies indicate that molnupiravir “reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half,” and that same day its stock price “jumped as much as 12.3%.” Thus, if low-cost ivermectin works better than–or even the same as-molnupiravir, that could cost Merck billions of dollars.

Nebraska AG Frees Doctors and Patients to Use HCQ and IVM

3.  Covid vaccine-induced immunity is incomplete

THE FOURTH issue is the recognition that genetic vaccines have limited value. While doctors support the current vaccine roll-out, reported “danger signals” must be clarified. Both the DNA-vector vaccine (AstraZeneca) and mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) behave as predicted by biology relevant to airways’ protection (something not understood by the vast majority of “experts”): short duration of protection limited to control of systemic inflammation, with little impact on infection of the airways.

Israel was used as a laboratory for the Pfizer vaccine. Six months after vaccination, there was essentially no protection against infection or mild disease, although protection against severe disease remained at 85-to-90 per cent. Thereafter came a rapid and progressive loss of protection against more severe disease. Infected vaccinated and unvaccinated subjects have similar viral loads and transmission capacity.

Immunity following natural infection is better and more durable than that induced by vaccination, so there is no sense in immunising those who have had COVID infection in the preceding six months.

We Can’t Vaccinate This Pandemic Away

4. Pandemic policies driven by opinion polls

From zerohedge Jordan Peterson: Government Adviser Told Me COVID Rules Based On Opinion Polls, Not Science. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Jordan Peterson says he spoke to a senior government adviser who told him Canada’s COVID restriction policies are completely driven by opinion polls and not science.

“In relation to the COVID restrictions, I talked to a senior adviser to one of the provincial governments a couple of weeks ago,” said Peterson.

“He told me flat out that the COVID policy here is driven by nothing but opinion polls related to the popularity of the government,” he added.

“No science, no endgame in sight, no real plan, and so what that means is that the part of the population that is most afraid of COVID,” are driving the policy.

Peterson pointed to figures that prove people vastly exaggerate the risk of being hospitalized by COVID due to relentless government fearmongering campaigns.

The author said he found the conversation “extremely disheartening” because he had hoped lockdown policies were “at least driven by something remotely resembling a scientifically informed plan.”

Peterson said the government adviser was “irate at what had been happening, enough to consider resigning.”

5.  Under 60 unvaccinated have better life expectancy than vaccinated

A previous post reckoned that the drive to mandate 100% vaccination is motivated by the need to eliminate the unvaccinated as a control population for comparative evaluation.  That possibility is now allowing discovery of ground truth, as evidenced by the UK medical records, and also worldwide data.  From Gateway Pundit Shocking UK Study Stuns Medical Community: Vaccinated People 60 and Younger Are Twice As Likely to Die as Unvaccinated People  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Vaccinated people under 60 are dying at twice the rate of unvaccinated people in the same age group.

The original data is here.

This ought to be the death knell for the push for mandatory vaccines. Will it?

Via Alex Berenson.

The brown line represents weekly deaths from all causes of vaccinated people aged 10-59, per 100,000 people.

The blue line represents weekly deaths from all causes of unvaccinated people per 100,000 in the same age range.

I have checked the underlying dataset myself and this graph is correct. Vaccinated people under 60 are twice as likely to die as unvaccinated people. And overall deaths in Britain are running well above normal.

Now we know why the globalists want to hide the Pfizer vaccine results for 55 years.

See also at Daily Expose UK A Deadly Pandemic of the Fully Vaccinated – Worldwide data from 185 nations proves the highest Covid-19 Death rates are in the most vaccinated countries

White columns are age-adjusted

The charts and graphs show…

  1. The above shows that the incidence of cases increases fairly linearly with the percentage of vaccinated people at a rate of 800 cases per million per extra percentage vaccinated.
  2.  Heavily vaccinated countries (over 60%) have 3x the case rates of lightly vaccinated countries (under 20%) and have 7x the case rates of very lightly vaccinated countries (under 10%).
  3. Raw death rates from Covid-19 increase with vaccination percentage from 0% to 50-60% and then decrease thereafter. Heavily vaccinated countries (over 60%) have twice the Covid-19 death rates of lightly vaccinated countries.
  4. The death rates are very high for partially vaccinated countries and come down for highly vaccinated countries because the old are vaccinated first. This skews the early or partially vaccinated death rates against vaccination because the unvaccinated group have a lower average age.

But by the time 80-90% are vaccinated, everyone has had the chance to be jabbed and the age skewing will have almost vanished. So the age adjusted death rate will run in a straight line from around 120 deaths per million for unvaccinated nations to around 600 deaths per million for fully vaccinated nations.

On that basis this data shows that each percentage of vaccination increases the death rate by around 6 deaths per million

5.  This data shows that a 2nd Jab offers no significant benefit over a 1st jab.

The inescapable conclusion from all the data we have up to October 31 is that vaccines increase case numbers by 3x-7x and increase death rates from Covid-19 by 2x-4x..

This is not a representative sample of a few thousand cases or deaths from one nation. It is the full study of all the cases so far in every reporting nation. The results are in. There is a massive positive correlation between vaccination percentage and case numbers and deaths.

Covid-19 vaccination has been the largest experimental intervention in the history of medical science. The work of every Government statistics department in 185 nations collated by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has produced the largest cohort study ever to be considered. We include the full dataset used below for further analysis by interested parties.

 

 

 

Brits Run Con Game at Glasgow COP

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Doomsday was predicted but failed to happen at midnight.

Vijay Jayaraj explains in his Real Clear Energy article COP26’s UK Hosts Peddle Climate Misinformation.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

As hosts of the Glasgow COP26 climate conference, UK leaders were models for the meeting’s steady stream of misinformation and fearmongering that came from the likes of Barack Obama and Greta Thunberg.

“The clock on the doomsday device is still ticking, but we’ve got a bomb disposal team on site,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “They’re starting to snip the wires – I hope some of the right ones.” If the specter of catastrophic global warming is not sufficiently scary, how about the image of an explosion?

As for misinformation, Boris claimed that “India (is) keeping a billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere by switching half its power grid to renewable sources.”

Actually, India is increasing emissions, not reducing them.

The country is determined to raise coal production by 50 percent — from 700 million tons to 1 billion tons a year. The country has invested heavily in the coal sector and is asking coal utilities to implement fresh strategies to achieve the new target.

Also, the claim of India’s power grid being 50 percent renewables is misleading. While the total installed renewable capacity is around 40 percent out of the total installed power generation systems in the country, only nine percent of all electricity consumed comes from wind and solar because the so-called green technologies are available much less than are baseload sources. Seventy percent of all electricity comes from coal, followed by hydroelectric and nuclear. Even if wind and solar ever achieve 80 percent of total installed capacity, the actual generation from them would be less than 20 percent.

Also, there is no imminent threat from the climate as Boris so dramatically claims. Certainly not anything thing like a ticking bomb. Antarctica has been colder during the last four years, polar bears have thrived, islands are gaining land mass, and fewer people die from climate disasters than ever before.

Of course, understanding these realities requires unbiased research of data, which seems to be too much of a bother for Boris Johnson. Perhaps, the prime minister’s aides could read him page 256 of the United Nation’s special report, “Global Warming of 1.5°C.”

The report states that if we do nothing on climate, the subsequent theoretical increase of 3.66°C in temperature by the year 2100 will cost a meager 2.6 percent of the global gross domestic product — a loss that gives no reason to panic nor any justification to declare a climate emergency. And that is assuming UN projections are not overstated, which they often are.

To balance the scare tactics of the prime minister, UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak employed alluring cliches to promote the financing of climate polices. “We’re talking about making a tangible difference to people’s lives,” said the chancellor. “About cheap, reliable and clean electricity to power schools and hospitals in rural Africa. About better coastal defenses in the Philippines and the pacific islands to protect people from storm surges. About everyone, everywhere having fresher water to drink…cleaner air to breathe.”

Instead of real-world data, the chancellor uses high-sounding language as poetic musical prelude and endnote to sell his vision of spending money on climate policies for a supposedly better world. He ignores that more people in the world have better access to clean water than ever before in modern history. The share of global population with access to safe drinking water went up from around 60 percent in the year 2000 to around 73 percent in 2020 despite a rapid increase in population and growing groundwater problems in cities.

Our World in DataImage: Improvement in access to clean water globally, Source: https://ourworldindata.org/water-access

Western economies — Europe, UK, and U.S. — that have been dependent on fossil fuels boast some of the cleanest air in the world today. This is because fossil fuels provide the fastest creation of wealth, which can be spent on reducing pollution. Average life expectancy in the world went up from just 45 in 1950 to 71 in recent years. These are all markers of improvement, not degradation.

When it comes to extreme weather events, there has been no increase in the global tropical hurricane frequency, a fact that is conveniently overlooked by leaders like Sunak when they bemoan storms in cyclone-prone regions of the world.

Global Hurricane Frequency — 12-month running sums. The top time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached at least hurricane-force (maximum lifetime wind speed exceeds 64 knots). The bottom time series is the number of global tropical cyclones that reached major hurricane strength (96 knots+). Source: http://climatlas.com/tropical/

If the chancellor really intends to provide affordable and reliable energy to the poor in Africa, then fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro are the only probable solutions. Wind and solar are unreliable, and available battery technologies are simply not viable for on-demand baseload.

For those who care about facts, it is frustrating to have media-enabled leaders utter absurdities with few holding them to account. Billions of energy-starved people deserve better.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.

How Panic Spread in the Early Days of COVID-19

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Scott W. Atlas writes at Newsweek on the panic response instilled in the US from the beginning in his article with the same title.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

It was February 2020, and news accounts had been describing increasingly alarming information about a deadly new virus emanating from Wuhan, China. Apart from my general concern about the spread of the infection, I was confused about some of the basic numbers being aired. The overall message coming from the World Health Organization (WHO) seemed to have obvious flaws. The extremely high risk estimates seemed very misleading. Even worst—the reported fatality rates were based only on patients who were sick enough to seek medical care rather than on the undoubtedly much larger population of infected individuals. I was stunned that this basic methodological flaw was being overlooked by almost everyone, while the resulting fatality rate of 3.4 percent was highlighted throughout the media. Every legitimate medical scientist should have called that out. Their silence was puzzling.

In the United States and throughout the world, a naive discussion about statistical models ensued. To an extraordinary and unprecedented extent, these epidemiological models were featured front and center in news coverage, with no perspective on the models’ usefulness. Reminiscent of other legendary frenzies in history, like the tulip bulb mania or the tech stock bubble, hypothetical extreme-risk scenarios went seemingly unchallenged and were given absolute credence.

At the same time, common sense and well-established principles of medicine were being ignored. Every second-year medical student knew that the elderly were almost certainly the most vulnerable group of people, since they were virtually always at highest risk of death and serious consequences from respiratory infections. Yet this was not stressed. To the contrary, the implication of reports and the public faces of official expertise implied that everyone was equally in danger. Even the initial evidence showed that elderly, frail people with preexisting comorbidities—conditions that weakened their natural immunological defenses—were the ones at highest risk of death. This was a feature shared by other respiratory viruses, including seasonal influenza. The one unusual feature of this virus was the fact that children had an extraordinarily low risk. Yet this positive and reassuring news was never emphasized. Instead, with total disregard of the evidence of selective risk consistent with other respiratory viruses, public health officials recommended draconian isolation of everyone.

The architects of the American lockdown strategy were Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. With Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, they were the most influential medical members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

Dr. Birx, Dr. Redfield and Dr. Fauci—often called “the nation’s top expert in infectious disease”—dominated all discussions about the health and medical aspects of the emerging pandemic. One thing was very clear: all three were cut from the same cloth. First, they were all bureaucrats, with a background in various government agencies. Second, they shared a long history in HIV/AIDS as a public health crisis. That was problematic, because HIV couldn’t be more different from SARS2 in its biology, its amenability to testing and contact tracing, its spread and the implications of those facts for its control.

Indeed, the three of them spent many years focusing on the development of a vaccine, rather than treatment, for HIV/AIDS—a vaccine that still does not exist.

Most others on the task force were juggling several concerns or had no medical background. This was one more responsibility added to their portfolios, so they deferred to those deemed medical experts. Drs. Birx and Fauci commandeered federal policy under President Trump and publicly advocated for a total societal shutdown. Instead of focusing on protecting the most vulnerable, their illogical and extraordinarily blunt response—despite its predictable, wide-ranging harms—was instituted as though it were simple common sense.

Over those first several weeks, fear had taken hold of the public. Media commentators and even policy experts, many of whom had no expertise on health care, were filling the airwaves and opinion pages with naive and incorrect predictions. This misinformation was going unchecked, and was indeed repeatedly endorsed and sensationalized. Some whom I had previously considered among my smartest colleagues and friends expressed great confusion and a striking absence of logic in analyzing what was happening.

I asked myself time and again, “Where are the critical thinkers?”

After more than 15 years a health policy researcher and decades in medical science and data analysis, I had never seen such flawed thinking. I was bewildered at the lack of logic, the absence of common sense and the reliance on fundamentally flawed science. Suddenly, computer modelers and people without any perspective about clinical illnesses were dominating the airwaves. Along with millions of other Americans, I began witnessing unprecedented responses from those in power and nonscientific recommendations by public health spokespeople: societal lockdowns including business and school closures, stay-at-home restrictions on individual movements, and arbitrary decrees by local, state, and federal governments.

These recommendations were not just based on panic; they were responsible for generating even more panic. COVID rapidly became the most important health policy crisis in a century.

Scott W. Atlas, M.D. is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution.