COVID-19 Much Less Deadly Than Previously Thought, Major Study Finds
BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 17, 2022
COVID-19 is much less deadly in the non-elderly population than previously thought, a major new study of antibody prevalence surveys has concluded.
The study was led by Dr. John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Stanford University, who famously sounded an early warning on March 17th 2020 with a widely-read article in Stat News, presciently arguing that “we are making decisions without reliable data” and “with lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake”.
In the new study, which is currently undergoing peer-review, Prof. Ioannidis and colleagues found that across 31 national seroprevalence studies in the pre-vaccination era, the average (median) infection fatality rate of COVID-19 was estimated to be just 0.035% for people aged 0-59 years people and 0.095% for those aged 0-69 years. A further breakdown by age group found that the average IFR was 0.0003% at 0-19 years, 0.003% at 20-29 years, 0.011% at 30-39 years, 0.035% at 40-49 years, 0.129% at 50-59 years, and 0.501% at 60-69 years.
The study states that it shows a “much lower pre-vaccination IFR in non-elderly populations than previously suggested”.
A breakdown by country reveals the wide range of IFR values across different populations.
The significantly higher values for the top seven suggest some of the difference may be an artefact of, for example, the way Covid deaths are counted, particularly where excess death levels are similar. Note also that the antibody studies date from various points during the first year of the pandemic, most of them prior to the large winter wave of 2020-21, when levels of spread and numbers of deaths were more varied than later in the pandemic as subsequent waves caused countries to converge.
The reason some countries had much lower values and some much higher is not completely clear. The authors suggest that “much of the diversity in IFR across countries is explained by differences in age structure”, as per the plot below.
However, the age breakdown by country suggests that the IFR differed for each age group in each country, casting doubt on that suggestion. (In the chart below, note the logarithmic scale, and ignore the zig-zag lines, which are due to small countries having low numbers of deaths.)
Why are countries seeing differing IFRs even for the same age groups? The authors suggest a number of explanations, including data artefacts (e.g. if the number of deaths or seroprevalence are not accurately measured), presence and severity of comorbidities (for example, obesity affects 42% of the U.S. population, but the proportion of obese adults is only 2% in Vietnam, 4% in India and under 10% in most African countries, though it affects almost 40% of South African women), the presence of frail individuals in nursing homes and differences in management, healthcare, overall societal support and levels of drug problems.
Prof. Ioannidis has previously published a number of papers estimating COVID-19’s IFR using seroprevalence surveys. He and his team conclude that their new estimates provide a baseline from which to assess further IFR declines following the widespread use of vaccination, prior infections and evolution of new variants such as Omicron.
FDA Just Approved Kids Covid Booster — with ZERO Testing!
Testing it on 8 baby mice was too much work for Pfizer
By Igor Chudov | October 12, 2022
Pfizer just reported FDA’s decision to approve a bivalent Covid booster for “emergency use” for children 5-17 years of age.
What is amazing is that the approved bivalent vaccine was NOT tested on children or even on baby mice, at all!
For each of the bivalent COVID-19 vaccines authorized today, the FDA relied on immune response and safety data that it had previously evaluated from a clinical study in adults of a booster dose of a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine that contained a component of the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and a component of omicron lineage BA.1. The FDA considers such data as relevant and supportive of vaccines containing a component of the omicron variant BA.4 and BA.5 lineages. In addition, the FDA has evaluated and considered immune response and safety data from clinical studies of the monovalent mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, including as a booster dose in pediatric age groups. These data and real-world experience with the monovalent mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, which have been administered to millions of people, including young children, support the EUA of the bivalent COVID-19 vaccines in younger age groups.
May I ask, why no testing? The FDA and Pfizer had plenty of time: they were testing bivalent boosters on adults since the beginning of the year. No testing on children was done with any bivalent booster.
Could Pfizer at least purchase 8 baby mice and try their booster on 8 mouse babies? They surely could do that along with the adult dose testing.
An added touch of ridiculousness here is that the FDA also chose NOT to consult “FDA advisors” and thus did not convene the VRBPAC committee. That committee would, of course, approve anything. So, what is the reason for not convening it? The reason is that the FDA did not want to have any votes — even one vote — against this vaccine and did not want to have a public hearing about this travesty.
It gets worse, of course. Only 30% of children 5-11 years of age are Covid vaccinated.
Should the parents of the 70% of unvaccinated children decide that they want their child to receive a bivalent (updated with Ba.5 formulation) shot, they would have to first give that child two shots of a three-year-old monovalent Wuhan-based vaccine (primary series), and only then they would be allowed to give their children the new and updated shot. Why? The FDA is not telling us.
The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent is authorized for administration at least two months following completion of primary or booster vaccination in children down to six years of age.
If someone asked me three years ago, whether it is possible that the FDA would approve a children’s vaccine with ZERO testing on children, I would of course laugh the question off as ludicrous. Now it is reality. Even worse, schools and camps may start requiring it.
I thought that the reputation of our health authorities could only bottom at zero. Clearly, though, they want to drive it down to the negative territory.
What do you think?
50% increase in miscarriages; 50% decrease in fertility after COVID vax
But Eric Topol says there is “no evidence” that the vaccine causes harm. That’s reassuring. So Eric, if it isn’t the vaccine, what IS causing it?
By Steve Kirsch | October 15, 2022
Watch this exclusive 30 second video of Kimberly Biss, MD an OB/Gyn in Tampa Bay, FL explaining what they’ve observed in their large practice:
However, Dr. Eric Topol, who is an expert on the COVID vaccine, says this isn’t caused by the vaccine:
I’d love to know what IS causing it, but Dr. Topol blocked all of my accounts on Twitter and Twitter has banned me for life twice, so I am not allowed to ask that question.
It cannot be COVID since the problem only surfaced after the vaccines rolled out. So his explanation just doesn’t fit the observation.
So maybe you can ask Eric for me?
Please share my posts (and follow me):
Facebook suspended British Cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra for sharing report by Florida’s Surgeon General
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 14, 2022
Esteemed British cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra called Facebook an “enemy of democracy” after he was suspended by the Big Tech platform for three days for sharing a post by Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo alleging Covid vaccines elevate the risk of cardiac-related deaths in men between the ages of 18 and 39.
Dr. Lapado was himself censored by rival platform Twitter over his post.
Malhotra was initially suspended for 24 hours for sharing Ladapo’s post. The suspension was extended to three days after Facebook flagged a post from two weeks ago, where Dr. Malhotra said that COVID-19 vaccines should be “suspended until all the raw data (from the trials) has been released for independent analysis.”
Speaking to GB News, Malhotra said, “Facebook is an enemy of democracy.”
He added: “The fact checking only goes in one direction.
“Think of the number of commentators who told us that vaccines stopped transmission during the rollouts. Where were the labels of ‘medical misinformation’ then?”
About the suspension being extended to three days, he said: “This post is two weeks old. They’re trawling through my Facebook looking for misinformation.
“They are clearly following an agenda here.”
Children’s Health Defense Calls for States to Release COVID Vaccine Data for Analysis, Following Florida’s Lead
The Defender | October 13, 2022
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) calls for state officials across the country to immediately request their state’s COVID-19 vaccine data and conduct an analysis to be released to the public using Florida’s model of a self-controlled case series, a technique developed to evaluate vaccine safety.
CHD also calls for an immediate suspension of the recommendation of mRNA COVID-19 vaccinations across the nation until further analysis and safety is proven.
CHD’s appeal comes after the Florida Department of Health released new guidance last Friday recommending against mRNA COVID-19 vaccines for males ages 18-39 due to an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death within 28 days following mRNA vaccination. Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, concluded that the risk of vaccination outweighs the benefit for males in that age cohort and now recommends against the COVID-19 mRNA vaccination.
“Data released from the UK and Israel are showing escalating cases of myocarditis in young people. These findings from Florida, our nation’s third-largest state, are extraordinarily concerning and could have devastating repercussions nationwide,” said CHD president and general counsel Mary Holland. “We need this data and analysis from all states in order to determine just how great the risk is for both children and adults.”
Previously published research connecting myocarditis to the COVID-19 vaccines coincides with this analysis.
“The cardiac signal out of Florida is hardly an isolated issue. Earlier this year, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an investigation that discovered an increased risk of myocarditis in adolescent males and young men after receiving mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, especially after the second dose,” said CHD chairman and chief legal counsel Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “Even CDC recognizes the same association. Florida’s analysis revealing cardiac-related deaths after vaccination should alarm all Americans.”
CHD calls on all medical freedom advocates to join in the campaign to demand all states analyze their COVID-19 vaccine data to determine if cardiac-related events and other signals are identified and follow the science to protect their citizens.
Additional references:
Acute myocarditis following a third dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccination in adults
# # #
Children’s Health Defense is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Our mission is to end childhood health epidemics by working aggressively to eliminate harmful exposures, hold those responsible accountable and establish safeguards to prevent future harm. For more information or to donate to CHD’s ongoing lawsuits, visit ChildrensHealthDefense.org.
Corona is a Flat Circle
For the third autumn in a row, the German press screeches about overwhelmed hospitals, and there’s no reason to think they’ll ever stop.
eugyppius | October 15, 2022
It’s virus season, and the headlines are already here: Many New Corona Infections: Hospitals Demand Indoor Mask Mandate — Lauterbach Already Hopes for Corona Restrictions — High Covid Incidences: Medical Association Wants Compulsory FFP2 Masks Indoors — Corona: Baden-Württemberg Health Minister Considers Mask Mandate Possible. I could add a dozen more, but you get the idea. It’s the same reheated pablum from last year. Hospital staff have their backs against the wall; a new tide of Corona patients threatens to overwhelm their meagre resources; the Apocalypse threatens if we don’t immediately return to indoor plastic face coverings.
If you look at hospitalisations, though, you’ll have a hard time finding any crisis at all. Here, for example, are hospitalisations for severe acute respiratory infections since 2017, as published last week by the Robert Koch Institut:
The red dot is where we are right now. Admissions are totally in line with the pre-pandemic era. The ICU admissions tell exactly the same story:
Nor is anybody really dying at the moment:
To the extent that there is any crisis at all here, it’s of our own making. Hospital patients with Corona diagnoses have to be treated according to strict isolation protocols, in special wards. These rituals are staff-intensive, and they effectively reduce across-the-board hospital capacity. It’s the same as our quarantine laws, which induce worker shortages by forcing millions of otherwise healthy Germans into isolation whenever they test positive. We could declare a rhinovirus pandemic tomorrow and suffer all the same problems from the common cold, and by the same token we could end all of this ourselves in an instant, by abolishing our foolishness and choosing to ignore SARS-2. Instead, we insist that this virus is dangerous and through our own behaviour we make it so.
The most onerous part of all this, is the inability of the German press to find a new narrative, ask new questions, or to change their reporting in any way at all — despite the totally different behaviour of Omicron and the near-universal levels of immune exposure to SARS-2. I know some of you complain that I repeat the same themes and arguments overmuch, but Germany has descended into some kind of purgatorial alternate reality, where it’s always March 2020, and our hospitals are always on the verge of melting down, and we never have enough information, so we just have to try masking and social distancing and hope for the best. They’re wrong about everything and they just keep telling the same lies over and over.
EU opens probe into vaccine deals
Samizdat | October 15, 2022
The European Union prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into the bloc’s procurement of billions of Covid-19 vaccine doses, amid allegations of corruption and secret backroom dealings from several members of the EU parliament.
EU officials announced the probe in a brief statement on Friday, confirming an “ongoing investigation into the acquisition of Covid-19 vaccines in the European Union.” They added that the case follows “extremely high public interest” around the issue, though declined to share any other details.
While prosecutors were tight-lipped about the exact nature of the probe, the announcement follows allegations from MEPs that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen conducted vaccine negotiations with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in secret. Despite requests from journalists, lawmakers and an EU watchdog, von der Leyen’s office has failed to produce personal text messages sent to Bourla during talks for nearly 2 billion vaccine doses, prompting accusations of corruption.
Croatian MEP Mislav Kolakusic noted the new investigation later on Friday, saying the decision was made thanks to pressure from lawmakers. Though he was unable to shed additional light on the probe, Kolakusic has been highly critical of the EU’s vaccine procurement process, claiming deals for billions of doses were marred by “corruption” and secrecy.
“Today, 10 of us MEPs asked [von der Leyen] the following question: when will she present to us… the communication she had with Pfizer during the procurement of 4.5 billion doses of vaccines at a time when there was absolutely no proof of the effectiveness, and especially not of the harmfulness, of that product?” he said in a tweet earlier this week, calling the issue the “biggest corruption scandal in the history of mankind.”
Last month, the European Court of Auditors said it had asked the commission to provide information on “preliminary negotiations” for the EU’s largest Pfizer purchase – including “scientific experts consulted and advice received, timing of the talks, records of the discussions, and details of the agreed terms and conditions” – but added that “none was forthcoming.” The European Commission still has yet to make the information public, fueling corruption allegations from MEPs.
As the Climate Refuses to Break Down on Cue, the Pseudoscience of ‘Attribution Studies’ Rises Up to Plug the Holes
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 14, 2022
The last few years have seen the climate alarmist industry go all in on ‘attributing’ bad weather to humans causing the climate to change. As global warming goes off the boil and the climate resolutely fails to break down on cue, an entire industry of pseudoscience has sprung up to scour the world and catastrophise every unusual natural weather event or disaster. It will not come as a surprise to discover that such attribution is based on climate models. As we shall see, the models do nothing more than produce worthless guesses.
When Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT noted that the current climate narrative is “absurd”, but trillions of dollars says it is not “absurd”, he was undoubtedly thinking of the product of climate models. Roger Pielke, a noted science writer and a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, is particularly scathing about attribution work: “I can think of no other area of research where the relaxing of rigour and standards has been encouraged by researchers in order to generate claims more friendly to headlines, political advocacy and even lawsuits. But there you go.”
It is simple to explain what ‘attribution’ models do. First they simulate a climate with no human involvement that does not exist, and then compare it with another simulation that is supposed to reflect the involvement of humans burning fossil fuel. Any weather event at a local level that is magnified in the second is, abracadabra, said to be due to human-caused climate change.
To take such results seriously it must be assumed that the models have correct information in the first place. An inability over 40 years for climate models to predict an accurate temperature would seem to indicate they are work in progress. Ignorance of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) number – the amount the Earth will warm if carbon dioxide is doubled in the atmosphere – would be considered another handicap. In addition, it is interesting to observe some academics attempting to produce a perfect model capable of such precision when they are mapping a climate system that is non-linear with numerous, only partially understood, powerful forces at work. How anyone can take the results seriously, with all the inevitable ‘garbage in-garbage out’ possibilities, is a mystery. Measuring cats in a sack might be considered a marginally easier task.
Attribution studies fail the falsification principle outlined by the science philosopher Karl Popper. This is held to be the test that differentiates real science from pseudoscience. Any hypothesis must be testable and conceivably proved false. Unless a suggestion can be tested in this way, it is opinion, guesswork, or, more uncharitably, crystal ball-gazing. Stating, for instance, that a bad storm was caused by humans when a natural explanation is also available, or calculating that wildfires will consume so many more acres than before, is unprovable. It therefore fails the test to be termed science.
Of course, the attribution claims are all over the popular prints. Within just a few days of last July’s U.K. brief heatwave, the Guardian was reporting: “Climate breakdown made U.K. heatwave 10 times more likely, study finds.” Of course there was a natural explanation for the soaring summer temperature, caused by southern winds being supercharged by an adjacent intense low pressure system. Friederike Otto from the Grantham Institute at Imperial, an operation partly-funded by the green billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham, said the 10 times finding was worrying, and if carbon emissions were not rapidly cut it could be “even worse” than previously thought.
According to Roger Pielke, the rise of individual ‘event attribution’ studies coincides with frustration that the IPCC has not ”definitively concluded” that many types of extreme weather have become commonplace. In his view they offer “comfort and support” to those focused on climate advocacy. Since they fill a strong demand in politics, Pielke suggests they are “here to stay”.
Friederike Otto is at the forefront of such studies and is the co-lead of World Weather Attribution (WWA), a body that specialises in near-instant weather attributions. On her Grantham CV, Otto claims WWA provides “timely scientific evidence” on single events, “paving the way for new sustainability litigation”.
Meanwhile any scientific work that, by suggesting the climate is not breaking down, is inconvenient for those promoting the command-and-control Net Zero political project, is be suppressed. Otto was one of four “experts” used by state-owned Agence France-Presse in a footling ‘fact check’ of a recent paper from four leading Italian scientists. They argued that a climate emergency is not supported by the data. She said the authors, including two physics professors, were “of course” not writing in good faith. “If the journal cares about science they should withdraw it loudly and publicly, saying that it should never have been published,” she demanded.
Contacted by the Daily Sceptic, she added that the paper was “bad science”. She obviously feels able to try to cancel professorial physics authorities since she has a “diploma” in physics from the University of Potsdam. Otto’s doctorate was in the philosophy of science, and before joining Grantham she spent 10 years teaching in the School of Geography at Oxford University. “I am not trying to ban anyone and I do not think it is relevant whether their first degree is in art history or physics,” she explained
Otto is also behind a WWA guide for journalists titled: “Reporting extreme weather and climate change“. In a foreword, the former BBC Today editor Sarah Sands bemoans the time when the former U.K. Chancellor Nigel Lawson managed to suggest there had been no increase in what she called extreme weather. I wish we had this guide for journalists to help us mount a more effective challenge to his claim, wrote Sands. These days , she enthused, attribution studies have given us significant insight into the horsemen of the climate apocalypse.
“In this way we are able to move from anecdote and conjecture, from superstition and wishful thinking, to science. We have evidence and we have facts. They are a secure foundation for news,” she said.
Science? Unverified guesswork would be more accurate. Popper must be turning in his grave.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
CA DOCTORS FIGHT BACK AGAINST ‘MEDICAL MISINFORMATION’ BILL
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | October 14, 2022
Dr. Jeff Barke, a founding member of America’s Frontline Doctors, joins Del to discuss California’s new law enacted with the passage of AB2098, which effectively makes it illegal for doctors to disagree with politicians.
Featured Video
Thomas Fazi: NATO’s Hybrid Warfare – Deception & Permanent War
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Book Review
The Zeolite Book — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
The volcanic mineral medicine will not patent — for the toxic burden medicine will not name
Lies are Unbekoming – October 30, 2026
Zeolite is old. It is in Roman concrete that has held for two thousand years. It’s in the water filters of ancient cisterns. It’s in the stomachs of Pacific livestock whose keepers knew, somehow, that this grey crumbling rock made the animals healthier. It’s in Soviet clinical protocols from the 1960s. It’s in the standard emergency response to the Chernobyl explosion.
In 1986, after the Chernobyl reactor failure, the Soviet Union manufactured and distributed natural zeolite at industrial scale — for soil remediation, for livestock feed, for human consumption, for the cleanup itself. Karl Hecht, who had been director of the Institute for Experimental and Clinical Pathophysiology at the Charité of Humboldt University Berlin, spent the six decades after that building the clinical research base — on silicon’s role in human health, on zeolite’s clinical safety, on its applications in ageing. In 2018, Pavelić and colleagues published a comprehensive clinical safety review of natural clinoptilolite in Frontiers in Pharmacology. In 2019, Mastinu analysed its binding affinities. In the Western medical literature, these works sit largely uncited.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a volcanic mineral with six decades of Soviet clinical work behind it, two major peer-reviewed Western reviews, and ongoing clinical use across the former Eastern Bloc, remains almost entirely absent from Western medical practice — and what the toxic burden it’s meant to address actually is.
The Zeolite Book gathers the Soviet clinical record, the Western peer-reviewed studies, three contemporary practitioner voices, and three serious counterviews into one honest treatment. That’s why the book runs to seven appendices. 288 pages, four parts, three practitioner voices, three counterviews, seven appendices. The honest treatment is the argument.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- UAE security forces tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization: Report
- They Compared the Spice to the Drug. The Spice Won — Again. (Part 2)
- Thomas Fazi: NATO’s Hybrid Warfare – Deception & Permanent War
- Wrong, AP and NPR: Europe’s 50,000 Heat Deaths Are a Computer-Model Estimate, Not a Real Body Count
- Questioning Your Doctor Is Now Considered A Psychological Problem (Seriously)
- London tourism expo promotes Israeli agency linked to theft of Palestinian land
- Dockworkers launch global strike against Israeli and US military shipments
- Europe facing gas price shock – Gazprom chief
- Ukraine continues recruiting people with disabilities
- Weaponized Journalism: 2021 Sayer Ji Interview with NPR
- If Americans Knew
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- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
