Professor Ehud Qimron: “Ministry of Health, it’s time to admit failure”
swprs.org
swprs.org
The whole substack is great, but people from all over the globe talk about the hygiene theatre and pushing of optics during the past 2 years.
"It’s been nearly two years now and my confidence in publicly funded science is completely destroyed. I don’t believe anyone reasonably intelligent can read the COVID literature and come out the other side without concluding that universities and governments cannot tell the difference between science and scientism. Our society is completely in the grip of people who have effectively evolved under selection pressure to strongly resemble scientists without actually being scientists. Their work looks roughly right from a distance - there are data tables, charts, equations - but when you sit down and read it the scientific method has gone AWOL. I am now explicitly open to counter-narrative claims I’d never have previously considered."
Can you elaborate on why you think it's an effective treatment?
Living meta-study of 300+ likely non-pretend control studies on 400k+ patients:
(Edit to add: And this was apparent early-on. Nothing much has changed with HCQ's profile since it was first identified as an effective, safe therapeutic in early 2020.)
[0] https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/lancetgate-why-was-this-m...
Initial impression is that taking the average of every published paper across different metrics makes you vulnerable to publication bias (and probably other stuff), but I'd need to make a funnel plot and check out the opinions of actual trained scientists to know whether that's true here. I'm guessing that some studies on each side are probably going to have suspicious or outright false data, too (like the one you mention).
Edit: here is his Google Scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ejRFmsYAAAAJ
What's wrong with the Barrington Declaration? Thousands of scientists and doctors say there's a better way.
* Identifying those "at minimal risk of death" is not at all simple. There seem to be as yet poorly understood genetic factors in play that determine who is and is not at risk at a younger age, and rolling the dice seems like a poor strategy.
* Even WITH precautions (and eventually vaccines), more than 50,000 people under 50 and more than 200,000 people under 65 in the US died of COVID. Under the Barrington strategy, the outcome would have been far worse.
* There are other adverse outcomes than death, and those seem to disproportionately affect healthier patients.
* The strategy they advocated would have led to the health care system being flooded with cases, with adverse consequences for level of care.
* Every extra patient is giving the virus more lottery tickets to develop new mutations. You don't want to give away extra lottery tickets.
* And the whole strategy is predicated on achieving an "immunity" which pretty obviously does not exist to the extent propagated in the declaration. People can and do get reinfected.
The strategy was a bad idea even in 2020. In 2022, advocating for people to get infected when vaccines are available can hardly be characterised as anything but an utter crackpot notion.
No lockdowns. No vaccine passports. No vaccine mandate. No mask mandate.
Literally nothing.
Outcome: lowest incidence and lowest mortality in the world.
Seems like they've managed to protect the vulnerable without unnecessary panic attacks. Why?
Sweden also had no lockdowns, and two years in, has lowest excess mortality in Europe, and average on all other measures. Why?
Please show us with numbers how Japan and Sweden did much worse by refusing draconian measures.
Thanks.
Japan may not have mask mandates, but it is my understanding that they had very high levels of non-mandated mask wearing.
> Literally nothing.
If you're implying that they had Great Barrington style mass infection parties, I would certainly like to see more evidence of that.
> Sweden also had no lockdowns
"Lockdowns" is a red herring. Very few places in the world had complete lockdowns, and very few places in the world were completely without restrictions. Notably, Sweden closed universities for some time and instituted domestic and international travel restrictions and assembly restrictions — exactly the kind of measures that get described as "lockdowns" in other countries.
> and two years in, has lowest excess mortality in Europe
Lowest, other than… Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Norway. Notably, they did MUCH worse than any of their immediate neighbours, which should be their natural peer group to compare against: https://elifesciences.org/articles/69336
And Sweden's particular way of "protecting the vulnerable" was to simply euthanize the elderly if they caught COVID: https://bioedge.org/uncategorized/questions-raised-about-swe...
I encourage you to read up on the whole history of Barrington, and what Leavitt, Ionnides and Battacharya were saying early on the epidemic.
Lowest incidence and lowest mortality in the world from COVID.
What does this mean?
- deception
- mandates, especially fake indirect ones
- arbitrary emergency powers
- inconsistent enforcement
- "temporary" rights suspensions
- forfeiting responsibility and accountability
- internal passports
- lockdowns
- class hate narratives
Among a few other things. This professor's letter is a symptom of an inflection point where the fabricated narratives around the pandemic are popularly no longer tolerated. I would advise policymakers to take the opportunity to cut their losses and walk their bullshit back, as if they just double down, I would go so far as to predict internecine conflict on a level unheard of in decades. Maybe that's what they want, but I would be surprised.
I'm just not persuaded the chattering classes apprehend what regular working people are prepared for right now. Imo, our "civilised" societies have about 6-8 weeks of opportunity for the people who are behind the above litany of issues to stand down and walk some of this back. If they don't, I'd place my bets on a summer of utter bedlam that turns into several years of hot conflict. I'd even speculate there are probably about 20 people in America who if they just said the word, they could mobilize a real armed insurrection that was thousands if not tens of thousands strong in a matter of days. It's that nuts.
I don't think most people get what a volatile tinderbox we're sitting on right now, and I'm not sure someone who still watches TV at all can appreciate the severity of how young working class men are interpreting all this.
This letter signifies a change in popular sentiment that has been underway for months, and I sincerely hope policymakers take heed of it.
It's easy to put down a rebellion of tens of thousands. Imagine how many decades of complete control they'll have out of that one useless act of rebellion.
Also...
> If they don't, I'd place my bets on a summer of utter bedlam that turns into several years of hot conflict. I'd even speculate there are probably about 20 people in America who if they just said the word, they could mobilize a real armed insurrection that was thousands if not tens of thousands strong in a matter of days. It's that nuts.
Wow.
It's to the point it seems worth mentioning.
Vaccinating kids to go to school is normal, as is getting vaccinations for travel between countries. The issue I have personally is leveraging the pandemic using the disingenuous issues above to implement an internal passport system for participating in culture. It's a "papers please" society that historically ends one way.
The professor's letter is really a good sign, as this stuff needs to come out and become part of the discourse, as it's an alternative to a cascade into something much worse, imo.
The author argue that the ups and downs of infection is more of a innate dynamism of covid spreading, than any society wide policy. Is that suggesting there should not have been society wide intervention to covid? Like just keep things as normal.
Although I agree with the conclusion that the covid policy in US definitely has not been effective.
They have lowest mortality from COVID. What if the right policy all along was to do nothing?
But my question still remains, what exactly does the author suggest?
https://jp.usembassy.gov/covid-19-information/ There is also travel restrictions. Nothing is not the right word to use for Japan's covid policy.
So when the obedient Puritan people coming to this land. They are very cooperative in helping maintaining the community.
Through some indoctrination, they learned to stand up with their own wills. Turns out coins indeed always have 2 sides, right? When the individuals learn to stand up coercion with their own wills, they would stand-up against facial masks, vaccines, quanrintaines, etc.
The government did not order this. The citizens did it voluntarily when asked to by their government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Israel#Pe...
I believe tourism is blocked for a couple of months? Citizens can still fly out to almost all destinations and return with no/minimal/2 week quarantine
Statistics say about 1 out of 5 infected was found positive in the airport PCR test.
>Two years late, you finally realize that a respiratory virus cannot be defeated and that any such attempt is doomed to fail.
Is he just saying that that all precautions for respiratory viruses like masks, vaccines and distancing are useless and should be stopped? Is he suggesting that we stop using the flu vaccine as well?
> You refused to admit that the infection comes in waves that fade by themselves, despite years of observations and scientific knowledge.
Is he arguing again that vaccines, masks and other measures have no impact on covid infection numbers? Is there another explanation for why the covid death rate varies so much from place to place regardless of population statistics? Why does Mississippi for example, have a death rate so much higher than places like California or New York, which are much more heavily populated? Is there a good explanation for why Sweden was so hard hit that doesn't reference their total lack of response?
>You refused to admit that mass testing is ineffective, despite your own contingency plans explicitly stating so (“Pandemic Influenza Health System Preparedness Plan, 2007”, p. 26).
I haven't read the quoted document, but is there a particular reason why it is the final word on the subject and can't be changed or updated with respect to new information?
>You refused to admit that recovery is more protective than a vaccine, despite previous knowledge and observations showing that non-recovered vaccinated people are more likely to be infected than recovered people.
What is he reading? This only came out conclusively in the past few months, and isn't much of a gotcha. The vaccine is far safer than covid, so giving the vaccine to millions is much safer than giving covid to millions. Not to mention that being recovered and vaccinated offers even better protection. Given the lower opportunity cost of vaccinating and the policy complications of exceptions to vaccination requirements, what's his argument that justifies the problem of making an exception program and managing it?
> You refused to admit that the vaccinated are contagious despite the observations.
I have no idea where he's getting this from.
> Based on this, you hoped to achieve herd immunity by vaccination — and you failed in that as well.
There were very clear vaccination levels necessary for herd immunity that were calculated early on, and few places in the world have even come close to them. Most places have 15-20% to few people vaccinated to even test the herd immunity predictions.
>You insisted on ignoring the fact that the disease is dozens of times more dangerous for risk groups and older adults, than for young people who are not in risk groups, despite the knowledge that came from China as early as 2020.
Just wrong. And what is he trying to say here? Is this a repeat of the "everyone over 60 should just die" line that went around the US in 2020?
> You have not set up an effective system for reporting side effects from the vaccines
Maybe this is true in Israel, but the US figured out pretty quickly that there was a 7 in 1,000,000 chance for the J&J vaccine to cause blood clots. Is he suggesting that some vaccines have been monitored for side effects and others have not? What's his data?
> Reports on side effects have even been deleted from your Facebook page
Ummm, moving right along.
The rest is just rambling. The most generous interpretation of his stance seems to be that maybe vaccines and masks are okay, but any further steps like widespread testing, are bad and vulnerable people should just expect to die. It would be nice if he had expressed his argument a little more coherently. Maybe then people could actually respond to this letter instead of blowing it off.
At this stage it is misinformation to claim that Sweden was hard hit:
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2022/01/12/checking-in-on-...
>Is he just saying that that all precautions for respiratory viruses like masks, vaccines and distancing are useless and should be stopped? Is he suggesting that we stop using the flu vaccine as well?
Prefer steelmanning this. We know cloth masks are not effective, yet we force them rather than alternatives. We never mandated flu vaccines (is/ought problem?), and why would he suggest stopping the flu vaccine? This seems like a needless dig. Distancing is basically theatre this point with the prevalence of Omnicron.
>The vaccine is far safer than covid, so giving the vaccine to millions is much safer than giving covid to millions.
Not for certain age groups. Even if they're equivalent, mandates should not be a thing when the risk between the virus and the vax is so close.
> I have no idea where he's getting this from. The vaccinated still spread COVID at a high rate, especially with the prevalence of Omnicron.
>Is this a repeat of the "everyone over 60 should just die" line that went around the US in 2020?
I agree some may have said this, but realistically there was a 90%+ survival rate (IFR) pre vaccine for 60+. (Figures not exact)
The letter author brought up the flu when he stared talking about respiratory viruses.
To date, all data states that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine is safer than covid for every age group that has sufficient data. I would assume many other vaccines are similar.
Looks like I accidentally deleted a section before I posted. I was referring to his claim that people are arguing that vaccinated can't spread covid. This is ridiculous because it's been know for a while that vaccinated can probably still spread covid. The CDC has had this on it's FAQ for a while: "Early evidence suggests infections in fully vaccinated persons caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 may be transmissible to others". Which is basically science speak for "yes it happens, but we don't have a good idea of exactly how much."
There are almost a billion people in the world in the 60+ demographic. That's a lot of dead people. Covid also kills a fair amount of people in the 35-54 range. This paper(https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsob.200213) estimates ~1% but it's from 2020 so the numbers may have changed a bit. The number of people in the age group 35-54 is several billion, so that's also a lot of dead people.
> Is he just saying that that all precautions for respiratory viruses like masks, vaccines and distancing are useless and should be stopped? Is he suggesting that we stop using the flu vaccine as well?
They don't MANDATE vaccinations, masks, and social distancing for the flu. SAYING I DONT WANT TO BE FORCED TO DO SOMETHING IS NOT THE SAME AS SAYING ITS USELESS.
> Is he arguing again that vaccines, masks and other measures have no impact on covid infection numbers?
They delay the inevitable, but with huge cost. The lie is that they were to "not overwhelm the hospitals", they changed it to that because they utterly failed at stopping the pandemic. hospitals got overwelmed too.... and if that was your goal, you'd think they would build more hospitals and graduate more doctors instead of canceling classes.
> Why does Mississippi for example, have a death rate so much higher than places like California or New York, which are much more heavily populated? Is there a good explanation for why Sweden was so hard hit that doesn't reference their total lack of response?
Its strange you picked New York when New York has the 6th highest death rate. 44 other states have lower death rates. Some of the southern states with higher african american populations really suffered, for many reasons. There was also the oasis effect where northerners getting away from lock downs brought covid south. California had many things going on, lockdowns definitely lowered their numbers, but at great economic cost.
source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
> I haven't read the quoted document, but is there a particular reason why it is the final word on the subject and can't be changed or updated with respect to new information?
new information didn’t come in, those guidelines were defined for real pandemics, the ones that kill 20% and yet we did this.
> What is he reading? This only came out conclusively in the past few months, and isn't much of a gotcha. The vaccine is far safer than covid, so giving the vaccine to millions is much safer than giving covid to millions. Not to mention that being recovered and vaccinated offers even better protection. Given the lower opportunity cost of vaccinating and the policy complications of exceptions to vaccination requirements, what's his argument that justifies the problem of making an exception program and managing it?
your argument makes no sense in the context of 'we need to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated' vaccine passport crowd. again, STOP THE MANDATES AND EDICTS
>> You refused to admit that the vaccinated are contagious despite the observations. >I have no idea where he's getting this from.
vaccine passports hysteria does not count being immune via previous infection as being immune. We were also told that being vaccinated would stop the pandemic by public health. the public policies around the world are as if once you are vaccinated you can't spread it (thats false) or less likely to spread it (thats probably false). it was based off of an untested assumption that it would lower the viral load and thus lower the chances of getting it. if you disagreed with this you were censored on all platforms and this was called science. The problem is, if I get really sick, I stay in and you get no viral load. or even if I am coughing outside, you will probably stay away from me and again get a low viral load. however if I am vaccinated but spewing covid like crazy with no symptoms and chat with you, you get a very high viral load. the problem with the assumptions is that they didnt take into account systems, and that humans have brains, and that science requires testing and discussion.
> There were very clear vaccination levels necessary for herd immunity that were calculated early on, and few places in the world have even come close to them. Most places have 15-20% to few people vaccinated to even test the herd immunity predictions.
False. the early calculations thought we only needed a very low herd immunity because of their hilariously low r0 estimation of covid classic. Its only now they are like 'well we need... higher vaccination numbers, more of the same and that'll fix it for sure'
>>You insisted on ignoring the fact that the disease is dozens of times more dangerous for risk groups and older adults, than for young people who are not in risk groups, despite the knowledge that came from China as early as 2020. >Just wrong. And what is he trying to say here? Is this a repeat of the "everyone over 60 should just die" line that went around the US in 2020?
we should have focued on protecting the elderly, and not blanket lock downs and mask/vax policies. We didnt. thats not refutable. Certain ethnicities are more effected than others, such as Chinese are least likely to die. What people not under the panicdemic have been saying is, give resources to the elderly so they can operate life without getting exposed if they dont want it. in the US, age was deprioritizes over skin color. The CDC said although the elderly are the most vulnerable, we need not protect them first because they are too white. they literally said that.
> Maybe this is true in Israel, but the US figured out pretty quickly that there was a 7 in 1,000,000 chance for the J&J vaccine to cause blood clots. Is he suggesting that some vaccines have been monitored for side effects and others have not? What's his data?
In the US, the original VAERS reporting system is being ignored in favor of not casting doubt over the vaccines. so you have about as a good of guess at people having negative side effects as you know about the color of my socks. these effects were also ignored in favor of pushing vaccines to children that face very little danger from covid.
> Reports on side effects have even been deleted from your Facebook page > Ummm, moving right along.
Yup, you are the type of person who favors censorship and authoritarianism. I get that now.
All true and second point is good.
We don't mandate vaccination, masks, or social distancing for the flu but we should consider it, given that the WHO estimates 250k-500k deaths per year.
If we assume 5.5MM COVID deaths from Jan 1 2020 onwards (https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/bda7594740fd402994234...), and 250k-500k flu deaths yearly, that makes COVID 5.5-11 times deadlier than the flu.
>They delay the inevitable, but with huge cost. The lie is that they were to "not overwhelm the hospitals", they changed it to that because they utterly failed at stopping the pandemic. hospitals got overwelmed too.... and if that was your goal, you'd think they would build more hospitals and graduate more doctors instead of canceling classes.
It's not inevitable but it is difficult to tease apart cause and effect. Masks, vaccines, and other measures like social distancing definitely reduce the spread of COVID which reduces the burden on our healthcare system. Catching COVID isn't inevitable, neither is an overburdened healthcare system.
As much as I'd love to see us build more hospitals and graduate more doctors (I think it would reduce healthcare costs), we still operate based on capitalist principles and are fundamentally optimistic - COVID will go away one day and the excess capacity will end up wasted. No one wants to build today to lose tomorrow.
The reasoning behind cancelling in person classes in many regards wasn't mainly to protect the young, who tend to have better COVID outcomes than other groups (except for the very young and old). It was to prevent spread to teachers and other members of the household who were not young AND who were likely working or caregiving (or receiving care). I feel for all the parents during this time. What a nightmare.
>Its strange you picked New York when New York has the 6th highest death rate. 44 other states have lower death rates. Some of the southern states with higher african american populations really suffered, for many reasons. There was also the oasis effect where northerners getting away from lock downs brought covid south. California had many things going on, lockdowns definitely lowered their numbers, but at great economic cost.
Mostly true. NY def has high death rate, but that's largely due to NYC. My theory (with no research to back it up) is that population density has an outsized effect on death rate, for fairly obvious reasons.
There's been a large economic cost born by everyone, but California has done remarkably well considering the circumstances. Huge surplus, record productivity, continued increases in household income, manufacturing growth, investment, clean energy, etc. As of April of this year, they added 1MM+_people to non-farm payrolls YoY. Despite the "exodus", they still managed to grow GDP near the top quintile YoY.
I don't really have the energy to respond to everything else you wrote and I question why I even spent the time to respond to this.
Ultimately, people who don't get vaccinated and have no valid medical or religious exception are acting irresponsibly and are likely to behave irresponsibly in other areas. I imagine opposition to masking and anti-vax attitudes are highly corelated. Your assumption that people sick with COVID know they're sick, stay away from others, and prevent spread is wrong. We all know you can spread COVID with very very mild symptoms.
Your idea to not mask/vax and instead isolate the elderly and ethnic would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. It also just would not work.
VAERS is not being ignored. It's being super closely monitored not just by US health authorities, but by the vaccine manufacturers and developers. Trust that they have their profit margin in mind and don't want to kill future customers or lose EUA.
Not trusting Facebook isn't favoring censorship and authoritarianism. Heck, I'd hope a Hn reader would understand that. I definitely do not trust science or analysis that comes from Facebook.
I get you're mad - lots of missteps, bad/wrong communication, horrible few years, etc.
Don't lose sight of the fundamentals - vaccines work to prevent serious illness, reduce mortality, and lessen mutation.
Masks work to reduce spread as does social distancing.
No one is holding a gun to your head to force a vaccination. "If you don't believe in driver's licenses you should simply not drive"
And after all that, I should have just never read the comments...
And yes, a gun is being held to our heads. I am not allowed to enter a bar without 'showing my papers'. I am not allowed to work without 'showing my papers'. I am not allowed in restaurants without 'showing my papers'.
Where do you get off saying a gun isn't being held to my head?