Ernie hilariously illustrates prevention paradox argument used by COVID cult

People like myself have been claiming the following (among other things) for over 2 years:Show more

1. The so-called new coronavirus is not a killer virus. It is 'only' about 2-3x as dangerous as the seasonal flu, which also kills people and causes hospitals (which have no or negative excess capacity) to fill up every flu season.

The seasonal flu is dangerous to the very young and also the very old and sick. In contrast, COVID is only statistically dangerous to the very old and sick.

Young people can and do get sick (especially if they're severely overweight and/or have significant underlying disease), but this is the exception to the rule. The COVID risk to these groups is not larger than everyday risks that we accept as part of life, such as traffic accidents, drowning, lightning strikes.

The disease burden is negatively influenced by a record percentage of elderly and an all-time low in population health (over the past century), due to unhealthy diet and lifestyle, resulting in record levels of obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

Very mild preceding flu seasons are also a factor, which increases the amount of the very vulnerable elderly which would normally have passed away (dry tinder / harvesting effect).

2. The measures of mass destruction (lockdown, curfew, mask mandate, testing/tracing/quarantine mandate, social distancing, etc.) have no benefit whatsoever, but cause enormous harm.

After some time, some members of the COVID cult have grudgingly admitted that the disease burden is in the order of magnitude of a severe flu season (and also that the measures are extremely harmful). Said differently, there are no crocodiles.

However, cult members claim this is due to the so-called prevention paradox: Had we not mandated the COVID measures, the results would have equaled the horror predictions in the models of Neil Ferguson et al. (which have consistently overestimated reality by at least 10x, thus belong in the category of horror science fiction).

Basically, cult members claim that there are no crocodiles because they have a banana in their ear (and face mask over their mouth and nose).

WHO IS RIGHT?

One way to determine who is right, is to compare the results in regions and countries with vast differences in strictness of measures, taking into account climate, season, demography and effective population density.

Sweden had very little measures, and did no worse than comparable countries with strict measures. Norway and Finland did even better than Sweden and had even less strict measures (although Norway may not be a great comparison due to its very low effective population density).

If the measures were necessary and effective, the absence of these measures in Sweden and Finland would have resulted in horrible outcomes. It didn't, which is a signal that the measures have no benefit.

Comparisons between North and South Dakota, and between schools in the same region with and without mandates, showed that the measures have no benefit whatsoever.

Johns Hopkins published a meta-analysis, and concludes the same thing that I just wrote: no benefit and severe harm. See:

A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality
https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/jhisae/0200.html

A second type is proof is correlation between measures and outcomes.

The COVID cult always interprets this in a self-serving and narrative-confirming way. If the introduction of an intervention is followed by a positive trend, it's due to the measure (and not due to other factors, such as changing seasons).

In the case of no difference or a negative trend, cult members say it's due to the prevention paradox (outcome would have been worse without measures) and/or it's because the stupid stubborn population didn't execute the measures correctly (e.g. didn't wash their hands often enough). They are never willing to consider that the measures might be ineffective and the 'experts' impotent.

If the measures were truly effective, we would see a significant difference in trend after the beginning and end of measures. This happens exactly nowhere.

A third way is to look at (preferably) randomized controlled trials on individual measures. All high quality evidence on face masks, for example, shows that they have no benefit against respiratory infections.

The COVID injections INCREASE your risk of getting COVID and all other infectious diseases (VAIDS), have very high known risks of severe and fatal complications, and also severe red flags of horrible future outcomes (turbo cancer, infertility, neurological disease).