FakeDemic ScareNotes

[Marco]

Americans like Cristopher Columbus discovering american continent...

A huge exaggeration

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines last month for mask wearing, it announced that less than 10 percent of Covid-19 transmission was occurring outdoors. Media organizations repeated the statistic, and it quickly became a standard description of the frequency of outdoor transmission.

But the number is almost certainly misleading.

It appears to be based partly on a misclassification of some Covid transmission that actually took place in enclosed spaces (as I explain below). An even bigger issue is the extreme caution of C.D.C. officials, who picked a benchmark 10 percent so high that nobody could reasonably dispute it.

That benchmark seems to be a huge exaggeration, as Dr. Muge Cevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews, said. In truth, the share of transmission that has occurred outdoors seems to be below 1 percent and may be below 0.1 percent, multiple epidemiologists told me. The rare outdoor transmission that has happened almost all seems to have involved crowded places or close conversation.

Saying that less than 10 percent of Covid transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) Its both true and deceiving.

This isnt just a gotcha math issue. It is an example of how the C.D.C. is struggling to communicate effectively, and leaving many people confused about whats truly risky. C.D.C. officials have placed such a high priority on caution that many Americans are bewildered by the agencys long list of recommendations. Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina, writing in The Atlantic, called those recommendations simultaneously too timid and too complicated.

They continue to treat outdoor transmission as a major risk. The C.D.C. says that unvaccinated people should wear masks in most outdoor settings and vaccinated people should wear them at large public venues; summer camps should require children to wear masks virtually at all times.

These recommendations would be more grounded in science if anywhere close to 10 percent of Covid transmission were occurring outdoors. But it is not. There is not a single documented Covid infection anywhere in the world from casual outdoor interactions, such as walking past someone on a street or eating at a nearby table.

Todays newsletter will be a bit longer than usual, so I can explain how the C.D.C. ended up promoting a misleading number.

The Singapore mystery

If you read the academic research that the C.D.C. has cited in defense of the 10 percent benchmark, you will notice something strange. A very large share of supposed cases of outdoor transmission have occurred in a single setting: construction sites in Singapore.

In one study, 95 of 10,926 worldwide instances of transmission are classified as outdoors; all 95 are from Singapore construction sites. In another study, four of 103 instances are classified as outdoors; again, all four are from Singapore construction sites.

This obviously doesnt make much sense. It instead appears to be a misunderstanding that resembles the childhood game of telephone, in which a message gets garbled as it passes from one person to the next.

The Singapore data originally comes from a government database there. That database does not categorize the construction-site cases as outdoor transmission, Yap Wei Qiang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, told my colleague Shashank Bengali. We didnt classify it according to outdoors or indoors, Yap said. It could have been workplace transmission where it happens outdoors at the site, or it could also have happened indoors within the construction site.

As Shashank did further reporting, he discovered reasons to think that many of the infections may have occurred indoors. At some of the individual construction sites where Covid spread like a complex for the financial firm UBS and a skyscraper project called Project Glory the concrete shells for the buildings were largely completed before the pandemic began. (This video of Project Glory was shot more than four months before Singapores first reported Covid case.)

Because Singapore is hot year-round, the workers would have sought out the shade of enclosed spaces to hold meetings and eat lunch together, Alex Au of Transient Workers Count Too, an advocacy group, told Shashank. Electricians and plumbers would have worked in particularly close contact.

Are schools outdoors?

How, then, did the Singapore cases get classified as they did?

When academic researchers began collecting Covid data from around the world, many chose to define outdoors spaces very broadly. They deemed almost any setting that was a mix of outdoors and indoors to be outdoors.

We had to settle on one classification for building sites, Quentin Leclerc, a French researcher and co-author of one of the papers analyzing Singapore, told me, and ultimately decided on a conservative outdoor definition. Another paper, published in the Journal of Infection and Public Health, counted only two settings as indoors: mass accommodation and residential facilities. It defined all of these settings as outdoors: workplace, health care, education, social events, travel, catering, leisure and shopping.

I understand why the researchers preferred a broad definition. They wanted to avoid missing instances of outdoor transmission and mistakenly suggesting that the outdoors was safer than it really was. But the approach had a big downside. It meant that the researchers counted many instances of indoors transmission as outdoors.

And yet even with this approach, they found a minuscule share of total transmission to have occurred outdoors. In the paper with 95 supposedly outdoor cases from Singapore, those cases nonetheless made up less than 1 percent of the total. A study from Ireland, which seems to have been more precise about the definition of outdoors, put the share of such transmission at 0.1 percent. A study of 7,324 cases from China found a single instance of outdoor transmission, involving a conversation between two people.

Im sure its possible for transmission to occur outdoors in the right circumstances, Dr. Aaron Richterman of the University of Pennsylvania told me, but if we had to put a number on it, I would say much less than 1 percent.

Britains scientific approach

I asked the C.D.C. how it could justify the 10 percent benchmark, and an official there sent this statement:

There are limited data on outdoor transmission. The data we do have supports the hypothesis that the risk of outdoor transmission is low. 10 percent is a conservative estimate from a recent systematic review of peer-reviewed papers. CDC cannot provide the specific risk level for every activity in every community and errs on the side of protection when it comes to recommending steps to protect health. It is important for people and communities to consider their own situations and risks and to take appropriate steps to protect their health.

Erring on the side of protection by exaggerating the risks of outdoor transmission may seem to have few downsides. But it has contributed to widespread public confusion about what really matters. Some Americans are ignoring the C.D.C.s elaborate guidelines and ditching their masks, even indoors, while others continue to harass people who walk around outdoors without a mask.

All the while, the scientific evidence points to a conclusion that is much simpler than the C.D.C.s message: Masks make a huge difference indoors and rarely matter outdoors.

The health authorities in Britain, notably, seem to have figured this out. They have been more aggressive about restricting indoor behavior, locking down many businesses again late last year and requiring masks indoors even as most of the country is vaccinated. Outdoors, however, masks remain rare.

It certainly doesnt seem to be causing problems. Since January, daily Covid deaths in Britain have declined more than 99 percent.

Source: NY Times.


Also, these days there's an over-celebration about vaccines, stating they are reducing infections. Last year they celebrated lockdown, saying it did the same thing.. What the fuck? I thought flu simply decreases during spring/summer time. The problem in our country is that from june on our ("our"... not mine for sure) government wants us to be all poisoned... err... I mean, "vaccinated" with no distinction of age.

[Ostap]

[Ostap]

[Ostap]

Dutch Parliament (couple of months ago)

[Ostap]

[Biohazard Dood]

"FakeDemic"

You're actually insane, please get help

[Ostap]

"FakeDemic"

You're actually insane, please get help

[red3ninja]

"FakeDemic"

You're actually insane, please get help

Only a madman can discover the present truth. Not like you, to bleat like a sheep.

[Biohazard Dood]

I'm not a sheep for wearing a mask and trying to get by in a pandemic.
I do agree the media is overblowing it and instilling mass fear, but it's still a fucking pandemic and there's no reason to call it a "fakedemic", that's too far.

Also, no, I'm not a lefty liberal, don't worry...

[red3ninja]

Then listen to one of my theories about masks. I guess you know that air has particles, organisms, and so on. When you wear a mask, your immunity becomes very low and prolonged wearing leads to a moment when you take off the mask and want to enjoy the fresh air you get sick. Because it takes time again to adapt and cleanse. Then you get a pseudo plague and you brag happily that this misfortune is true. Yes, you may not be a sheep, because today they live better than humans. I am a human being and that is why I walk with a radiant face and a free heart! I was sick - zero times for the pseudo-pandemic, because I refused to wear a mask.
My fear is that no matter what I say, you won't believe you don't need a mask.
Be alive and healthy! My insult was intentional and I have no excuse for that and forgive me anyway.

[Biohazard Dood]

Then listen to one of my theories about masks. I guess you know that air has particles, organisms, and so on. When you wear a mask, your immunity becomes very low and prolonged wearing leads to a moment when you take off the mask and want to enjoy the fresh air you get sick. Because it takes time again to adapt and cleanse. Then you get a pseudo plague and you brag happily that this misfortune is true. Yes, you may not be a sheep, because today they live better than humans. I am a human being and that is why I walk with a radiant face and a free heart! I was sick - zero times for the pseudo-pandemic, because I refused to wear a mask.
My fear is that no matter what I say, you won't believe you don't need a mask.
Be alive and healthy! My insult was intentional and I have no excuse for that and forgive me anyway.

I forgive you. I disagree with that theory, I don't think it's true, I have to wear masks multiple hours a day without taking it off, I have no issues, I can breathe easily under a mask.
Same way doctors wear masks almost every day most of the day, your immune system isn't so weak as to become weak because of a simple cloth mask. Stay safe and please wear your mask man, we're all trying to get by.

[Ostap]

[red3ninja]

Doctors are generally sick. Many of them are smokers, etc. They take pills and so on ... I haven't even been vaccinated in my life and I haven't had to take medication. Besides, I haven't been to the dentist, unlike the masked doctors. My lifestyle speaks more about health, and theirs about carelessness. I know that there are many good people among them and I have friends doctors who have renounced the medicine they have studied and practiced for years. The masks may also have been designed to hide another problem. That the food is sterile and the family who sell for it. I would advise any of you who know in your region preserved cultures of old people to get them. Because living food is life .... Sterile is a degradation for the body ... And it is very useful to grow it. The other thing they do is attack and replace the animals. They are ... with the Google translator I don't know if you will understand me and I will use the word - antennas. They are antennas and help us as we help them. I don't know if you know that a horse can raise a child better than school.
Even the concealment of something speaks of false things.
Even imprisonment speaks to something false.
Think about it ... Real things don't stop them. I'm talking about the real problems. Is there a Coke? There she is! Are they stopping her? No! Are there cigarettes in stores? There are them! Do they sell them? Yes!
I would list any product, be it cosmetics, even fruit. However, I prefer to focus on the vivid example that everyone understands. Why didn't anyone stop the Coca-Cola pandemic and their likeness? It has not been banned, on the contrary, even poor African societies have it. The infection has been on sale for a long time. I will be even more extreme. COV---ID-1984 has been on sale for a long time!

[Ostap]

I forgive you.

I forgive you ? ...
I'm sorry but that reminds me this:



Du weißt, woher es kommt, nicht wahr?

[Marco]

These pics really do photograph the situation!

I'm not a sheep for wearing a mask and trying to get by in a pandemic.
I do agree the media is overblowing it and instilling mass fear, but it's still a fucking pandemic and there's no reason to call it a "fakedemic", that's too far.

Also, no, I'm not a lefty liberal, don't worry...

I forgive you. I disagree with that theory, I don't think it's true, I have to wear masks multiple hours a day without taking it off, I have no issues, I can breathe easily under a mask.
Same way doctors wear masks almost every day most of the day, your immune system isn't so weak as to become weak because of a simple cloth mask. Stay safe and please wear your mask man, we're all trying to get by.

Free to disagree about everything other people say. Just listen at what medias are saying about "new" delta variant of the virus and then wonder "Why the hell they want all of us to be vaccinated against something the vaccine can't protect us from?". Then, yes, the virus of course exists. But FalseDemic is about the propaganda and the lies they have been telling us for 15 months now.. just for the, i call it like that, Waltz of the Vaccines $$$peculation. Amereken pharmas have to sell...

I must wear the mask too when I'm outside, or else they won't let me in at market, petrol station, etc.. But open air, during this season and considering a study told there are 0,1% of chances to get the virus outside... It's more like a torture. Consider running after cows to move them from a land to another one a few kilometers far, and wearing the mask: it would be impossible to wear it all day long. I must wear it at public places, then I take it off as soon as I get in my car. And what when you are out and halfway you realize you forgot to take one? It is an annoying psychosis. Plus, we are producing unrecyclable junk (you may have seen how many masks are thrown on the road... once upon a time people used to throw cigarettes away from the car; now they throw away masks...).

Then listen to one of my theories about masks. I guess you know that air has particles, organisms, and so on. When you wear a mask, your immunity becomes very low and prolonged wearing leads to a moment when you take off the mask and want to enjoy the fresh air you get sick. Because it takes time again to adapt and cleanse. Then you get a pseudo plague and you brag happily that this misfortune is true. Yes, you may not be a sheep, because today they live better than humans. I am a human being and that is why I walk with a radiant face and a free heart! I was sick - zero times for the pseudo-pandemic, because I refused to wear a mask.
My fear is that no matter what I say, you won't believe you don't need a mask.
Be alive and healthy! My insult was intentional and I have no excuse for that and forgive me anyway.

Doctors are generally sick. Many of them are smokers, etc. They take pills and so on ... I haven't even been vaccinated in my life and I haven't had to take medication. Besides, I haven't been to the dentist, unlike the masked doctors. My lifestyle speaks more about health, and theirs about carelessness. I know that there are many good people among them and I have friends doctors who have renounced the medicine they have studied and practiced for years. The masks may also have been designed to hide another problem. That the food is sterile and the family who sell for it. I would advise any of you who know in your region preserved cultures of old people to get them. Because living food is life .... Sterile is a degradation for the body ... And it is very useful to grow it. The other thing they do is attack and replace the animals. They are ... with the Google translator I don't know if you will understand me and I will use the word - antennas. They are antennas and help us as we help them. I don't know if you know that a horse can raise a child better than school.
Even the concealment of something speaks of false things.
Even imprisonment speaks to something false.
Think about it ... Real things don't stop them. I'm talking about the real problems. Is there a Coke? There she is! Are they stopping her? No! Are there cigarettes in stores? There are them! Do they sell them? Yes!
I would list any product, be it cosmetics, even fruit. However, I prefer to focus on the vivid example that everyone understands. Why didn't anyone stop the Coca-Cola pandemic and their likeness? It has not been banned, on the contrary, even poor African societies have it. The infection has been on sale for a long time. I will be even more extreme. COV---ID-1984 has been on sale for a long time!

I'll tell you another one about the masks, especially surgical masks that medias tell us to wear just because we have to leave FFp2/3 to medical personnel only... Well, seems like Corona particles are 60x times smaller than mask's pores!! But you still have to wear a mask or you will get a discriminating star, like the pic Ostap posted above.

I'm glad to see that people from the countryside still exists. The problem, though, is mostly in the cities, actually metropolises! I still have my cows and I wouldn't live in those urban jungles!

Guess what now, about the indian/delta variant: they are preparing an excuse for closing everything in october (or maybe already august/september) and to impose a new shot of vaccine next year. "Everything is under control". Refrain from a song I heard back in late 2005.