Pain, Pain, Go Away!

I was sad to hear that southwestern Missouri, where my grandparents lived, is a delta variant hotspot. My mom and I used to go there every summer. It was hot and sticky, the water smelled like sulfur, and the ground was soggy. But it was leafy with orange sunsets, berries for the picking, and friendly neighbors with chickens and bright green homemade pickles. It had Grandma and Grandpa, too, and Aunt Annie. One reason I love Indiana is because it reminds me of there.  Route 66, Missouri. Photo from Pixabay . Going by Scotland's numbers, where the delta variant accounts for almost every COVID infection, I didn't think it was cause for concern. Then I checked Missouri's dashboard. How can different places have such different responses to the delta variant? It raged through India, where it originated, killing thousands more per day than the original virus. Then it descended on Scotland, where it infected lots of people, but didn't send many of them to the hospital. Now it&

Sebastian Rushworth, MD has been reading studies so you don't have to. He's a Swedish junior doctor whose blog was recommended by Malcolm Kendrick, MD and is the author of COVID: Why Most of What you Know is Wrong.  The book covers long COVID, masks, Sweden's handling of the pandemic, and includes a basic primer on scientific studies. It's a short book crammed with information.  Sebastian Rushworth MD.  His latest post is called " Is COVID a Danger to Children? " His conclusion based on statistics from Sweden and the US is that "Children do many things every day that are more likely to kill them, and we don’t bat an eyelid" and therefore "Since it is at present far from clear that vaccination is less risky to children than infection, it is deeply unethical to vaccinate them." Not all of his conclusions are popular with his entire readership. In a post on Vitamin C , Rushworth concludes, "The best available evidence at this point in ti

Happy Independence Day, and happy herd immunity. Yes, I know our betters keep harping on us to get a COVID shot, keep haranguing us about variants, and keep the hysteria going. They loved knowing better than the rest of us and telling everyone what to do. But going by all-cause mortality rates and actual science, their fifteen minutes of fame needs to fizzle out. Yes, a virulent new variant could emerge later, but it looks like it's time to enjoy some normalcy and have the coronabros go back into obscurity.  Hoping you're healthy as a horse! Picture from Pixabay . All-cause mortality rates are now at or below the 2015-2019 average for all age groups in the US. They've been close to that average for months in both the US and UK, even though the delta variant accounts for almost all cases in the UK. Click to enlarge images. Weekly number of deaths by age in the US. Source: CDC . The first chart shows deaths from all causes plunging from January 2021 on in the US. (It also sho

In the great push to get everybody jabbed with the experimental COVID vaccine, people in the wait-and-see camp have been painted as conspiracy theorists and anti-science morons--the sort of people you'd see at the recent Redneck Rave where 15,000 people came and some ended up impaled, choked or badly cut. Dozens were charged with crimes. Won't it be interesting to see Edmonson County, Kentucky's COVID stats in a few weeks. Surely the local hospital will be full of rednecks, and not just to have fingers sewn back on...right? Use this, plus your region's dashboard, to calculate your odds. Photo from Pixabay . Maybe not. Humans are inherently bad at estimating odds. Several news outlets report that 99% of COVID patients in the hospital are unvaccinated, so does that mean you're almost a hundred times more likely to end up in the hospital if you haven't had your shots? Not quite. Looking only at hospitalized people rather than the whole population is relative risk

It feels like Independence Day came early to Indianapolis: almost all COVID restrictions have been lifted here as of July 1. In a few days there will be fireworks downtown and the air filled with the smell of barbecue and gunpowder. Fittingly, the state of Indiana became a little freer as several laws went into effect today : The state or a local unit cannot issue or require a COVID-19 "immunization passport" (a document concerning an individual's immunization status). The state may not restrict the right to worship or to worship in person during a disaster emergency. The state may also not impose restrictions on the operation of a religious organization, or religious services that are more restrictive than the restrictions imposed on other businesses and organizations that provide essential services to the public. Facilities should allow patients who are in end-of-life situations, those with Alzheimer's disease, dementia, or a related cognitive disorder or other sit

There's a new article called " The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations--We Should Rethink the Policy ." While the methodology is kind of questionable (focusing on the European country with the most reported vaccine events, assuming that reported deaths were all caused by the vaccines, not considering herd immunity) and their results very imprecise, it does attempt to answer how much risk and reward the vaccines provide in the short term.  The European reporting system is even more unwieldy than VAERS in the US--but Germany and The Netherlands have their own reporting systems with events broken out by age groups. Malcolm Kendrick writes in Doctoring Data that he thinks the Germans have the most thorough vaccine event reporting system, while the article above says the Dutch have reported the most events for COVID vaccines.  Below are Google translations straight from these countries' websites on vaccine event reports, with some information highlighted. I've omitted mi

I was at the vet the other day and asked if my dog could get the COVID vaccine, since dogs can get COVID. Not yet, he said. He's still waiting for the human trials to finish.  Biggs, watching (too many) videos about COVID shots. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't give this vaccine to my dog because it has unknown long-term risks but no benefit to him. So I find it bizarre that some governments are recommending COVID vaccines for healthy kids, a group with million to one odds at most of dying of COVID. The only possible reason to vaccinate them is to protect adults...who themselves can get vaccinated or reduce some of their risk factors.  But not every country is allowing kids to get COVID vaccines. In the UK, a SAGE member and a committee of vaccination experts aren't recommending it.  Prof Calum Semple, a member of the [UK] government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), said: “The risk of death [from Covid in children] is one in a million. That’s not a figure