The Rockefeller University releases statement concerning Knut Wittkowski April 13, 2020 The opinions that have been expressed by Knut Wittkowski, discouraging social distancing in order to hasten the development of herd immunity to the novel coronavirus, do not represent the views of The Rockefeller University, its leadership, or its faculty.
Wittkowski was previously employed by Rockefeller as a biostatistician. He has never held the title of professor at Rockefeller.
At least they got his first name right, "nut."
He's just a number crunching dweeb and one of those mindless graphical pseudo-analyst type- meaning a totally worthless treeless ape for practical purposes.
Cursitor Doom is slowly sniffing his way towards the appropriate ideology for him, one in which de-regulated corporations are free to do whatever is in their financial best interest most of the time except in matters of interest to the State which enforces that whatever the leading Party's ideology is today ("herd immunity") always receives equal time and that the State may always overrule a market-based decision by a private entity if it is determined to be in the interest of the national security of the State and the Workers to do so.
Contrarian is one thing. Advocating silly idea that will - if taken seriously - kill a lot of people is another. Free speech doesn't seem to extend to shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre.
I am the relative that would never be seen again. I'm sure that will get a response from this group.
I am using my time usefully. I grew a beard... I mean a full, Jeb Stuart b eard. Still waiting for the mustache to get big enough to compete. There' s a mid length that is a real bother, getting in the way and straining your soup. Once it's long enough you stop eating soup. ;)
--
Rick C.
- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
Trouble is, the real measurement is how it plays into the long game. Both approaches have losses that may not be properly appreciated for years. The re's no doubt the economy has taken a hit, but how quickly can it spring ba ck, which businesses are gone forever that might have done well otherwise. On the other hand, as people talk about the disease culling the herd of t he weak and infirm, the same can be said for companies. Larkin's always go ing off about the startups in SF. How many of them can survive the loss of both investment and customers? Restaurants go out of business all the tim e, even ones that seem popular. So of course many won't reopen after this impact.
Survival of the fittest. I'm trying to get carry out from the ones I like. They need to be supported.
By definition achieving herd immunity is like Pickett's charge. Even if yo u reach your goal, you will be devastated by the losses. In the US it woul d likely be in the millions. Just the moral issues of such losses are stag gering. This is the type of outcome that would create huge discontent and very likely result in a new government. Something not too far from it is s till possible in the US.
Really??? So what value would that be? How many dollars have been/will be lost? How many lives does that equate to? You seem to be sure the number s add up, but you have no idea what they are.
Then there is the fact that the shut down was not entirely imposed by the g overnment. No small numbers started working from home before government or ders. I know I would have told an employer to ordered me to work in the of fice where to go. No job is worth my life. Hell, most of them aren't wort h a commute.
It's a fallacy that protecting the vulnerable is even an option. Nursing h omes are rife with deaths. A friend lives in a retirement community with i ndependent, assisted and medical living areas. They have had 15 deaths so far even with a shut down that happened weeks before any government orders. The virus doesn't care, once it enters it's hard to keep it from spreadin g.
Yes, but in a full shut down the chances of them being infected are much le ss because the disease is not rampant.
Seems to me things are pretty lax most places. But the real issue is why i sn't it working the way it should? Why are so many areas still spreading d isease faster each week? What can we do to drive the virus away and preven t infections? These are the important questions to ask, not how many dolla rs did you make last week.
0.05% fatalities is a BS number made up from BS data. Look at the ratio of fatalities vs. total cases resolved (fatalities + recoveries). For each c ountry you will see a curve that is dropping as the numbers add up, but not trending toward anything as low as 5 in 10,000. Many places already have that many deaths in the overall population with only a fraction being infec ted!!! Washington DC is 0.06%, Montgomery Co is 0.048%, Prince George's Co is 0.05%. Counties in GA have as high as 0.3%!!! Yes, six times more dea ths per capita than you are proposing in just those infected.
If the entire population was infected with your 0.05% number that would be
150,000 which we are headed toward right now! So clearly this is a complet ely bogus death rate! Or are you suggesting 2/3rds of the US has already b een infected???
You mean until they realized the horror of what they were doing and repente d before God! Yeah, they saw their own deaths in front of them in a Jacob Marley moment.
Cheltenham is an example of what office work would be like. It's just too difficult to protect people working in common rooms. It's just not practic al.
Whatever. There is literally zero point in discussing the issues when peop le make up facts to suit their views. 0.05% deaths indeed!
--
Rick C.
- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
I wouldn't trust Boris to open a garden party never mind run a country.
But he is just a benign opportunist self entitled buffoon born with a silver spoon in his mouth. You don't get to be in the Bullingdon club at Oxford without being seriously rich, arrogant *and* stupid.
formatting link
If anyone is deliberately aiming for a cull of the poor and the weak it is Trump.
Various businesses that were perfectly sound prior to total lockdown are being destroyed as we speak. Aerospace engineering being one of the most obvious. Pubs and restaurants look to be in big trouble too.
Economists are now predicting a U or L shaped deep recession which could easily rival the Great Depression of the 1929-30 era.
I estimate that if you do it right in the USA it would be of the order of 200k to 500k at most and if you did it wrong then about 11M.
We have a very good idea how fast we are haemoraging money from the economy - it is shown clearly in the rapidly rising national debt.
Working from home was always a possibility anyway at least in the UK.
They didn't have to be but you do need careful testing an isolating to make sure that asymptomatic carers or new patients don't introduce it.
The NHS workers in hospital are surprisingly at no more risk than the general public. However, those working in UK care homes are at very significantly greater risk inadequate PPE and training for a start.
I have used the IFR data from the preprint by Verity et Al for age related risk of fatality once infected. It is the same data that was available at the time that the lockdowns all started. Table 1 on p17
formatting link
Later data seems to confirm these numbers - if anything it is now slightly better in the West since the Chinese men particularly tended to be heavy smokers in Wuhan and the city air quality not the greatest.
That is my point in a nutshell. If you are prepared to accept a relatively modest number of fatalities in the under 40's you can get close to herd immunity with about the same total fatality rate as we have already experienced. The difference is at present the vast majority of the deaths are in the elderly and infirm population.
The number of people who might die to reach herd immunity is about the same but their demographics are entirely different.
It didn't quite kill Boris, but it is bound to make him err on the side of caution now. He was pretty cavalier in the run up to the pandemic.
I have *not* made these figures up. They are taken from a reputable research paper that just about everyone is citing as reliable evidence.
There's a solution - google for "moustache soup spoon".
My moustache has never grown long enough to be much of a problem. But having a beard to pull is a good alternative for when the hair on your head is gone!
Riker from Star Trek TNG kind of had the optimum length that I like, but he often liked the upper "line" pretty low down in a "chin-strap" fashion which is a bit out of fashion these days (maybe not in the 24th century though style is cyclical) with anyone but tough-guys and hoodlums...
People that cite this paper, are they scientists or are they politicians? The data isn't very accurate on that issue, the data from China, for example, has very strong availability-of-testing problems. Germany comes in at 4%, my own locality 7%, and the 'age multiplier' doesn't adjust that down to .05% in any credible scenario.
Where, oh where, does 'later data' confirm those numbers?
Though 45 appears to be the break point if you want to keep the most economic activity and at the same time minimise avoidable fatalities.
In the youngest age group the UK fatality rate during lockdown has gone
*down* especially for young men. Teenagers are no longer able to crash their cars into each other, street furniture or trees at high speed.
The latest ONS graphs are now public - excess deaths in the younger age group 15-44 are essentially no different now to in previous years. I think I see the tiniest hint of a bump but only by the width of a line.
The work is an analysis by Prof Heneghan of University of Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine. He is somewhat more bullish about coming out of lockdown than I am but his graphs do speak for themselves.
formatting link
I'd like to see 45-60 and 60-75 age break down too.
Over 45 and things start to get a little tricky and even more so for the
75+ group. In both cases roughly double the norm at the time of year.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.