Thomas Verduyn has written a startling, shocking essay for Panda that revisits Wuhan at the beginning of 2020. We all recall the shock and awe delivered to us. A new kind of respiratory disease emerging from a ‘wet market’. People dying on the streets. Bodies piling up. Hospitals full.
Can I respectfully suggest that in your extracts summarizing Panda’s position statement (which was mainly my work) you have left out a critical and in my opinion slam-dunk logical point which we made.
That is the fact that whatever it was it spread rapidly and widely for months without causing either excess deaths or clusters of unusual illnesses, both of which only commenced when the madness was started.
Otherwise, great summary of these 2 complementary articles, thanks.
In November 2019 my wife (43) became really ill with a respiratory disease, she had a cough that was an absolute beast, it was just relentless for a good 2 weeks, her blood oxygen was low, she was wiped out for a good six weeks.
Yet I, my son and my mother-in-law were not ill at all despite being in close proximity to my wife the entire time.
When visiting our local Doctor they said it was very early for the flu season and that lots of other people had been struck down at the same time.
I'm just grateful that she went through it early before they started putting people in intensive care on ventilators because they probably would have killed her.
If it hadn't been for seeing her so ill I would have thought the entire thing was a total hoax.
A pandemic is a transnational occurrence, while a epidemic is considered regional or local event. The 'outbreak' likely started in Wuhan although there's no direct evidence of "patient 0". Patient 0 may have only had mild/no symptoms or died at home without investigation. Transnationally, the outbreak first spread to Thailand ? The WHO's covid timeline starts Jan 2020. However in Western US, healthy patients were 'crashing' from respiratory failure in Oct 2019.
There are a few issues with Verduyn CFR data compared to the western world. US CDC of 0.2% and EU's ECDC 0.13% report influenza fatality rate, not the 0.7% that Verduyn claims. The 0.7% claim is 2.2x or 5.2x respectively different than long term tracking by CDC and ECDC. Possibly the numbers are higher in Africa, India and China, although there are questions pertaining to data quality in those areas.
I don't want to reopen a long discussion on lockdown efficacy. The bottom line was "lockdown' was to slow infection rates. Lockdowns are a mitigation based on influenza epidemiology, not corona virus epidemiology. In certain population densities, lockdowns did work. In high density areas, lockdowns only provided short terms results. We all need to accept the fact lockdowns were not a cure or a bulletproof barrier to infection. It was only intended to slow the infection and death rates until a medical or pharmaceutical treatment was found.
It doesn't matter what PANDA is trying to "sell" to their readers. There are no conspiracies, alternate explanations, or master plan. There is only marginally competent leaders attempting to save their jobs and ppl that do care who honestly tried to save other's lives.
It doesn't matter that if you or anyone else believes it was a "social pandemic". I'd like you to go to someone that lost their family member, their sole source of income to house and feed their families and tell them it was a social pandemic and the virus that killed dozens of pll they knew was in their imagination.
I truly wish everyone with "alternate explanations" could be in the room for days helplessly watch covid victims die. Their suffering was horrific. The best that could be done was keep them sedated until strokes, organ failure, heart failure, pulmonary collapse if they were luck. Others, had immune system failure that results in their brains rotting while going insane and suffering from untreatable pain, and having their skin and intestines liquify. While waiting for the end, opioids stop working and the unfortunate just suffered.
Ideas don't kill people. Actions and effects of agents (viruses, bacteria, fungi, ppl) do kill.
In a way, ideas are a type of pathogen. They have binding sites, psychosocial profiles that allow them to enter the psyche and adversely effect their survival. An example is how the hypocreales fungus takes control of ant behavior. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis#Natural_products
A covid example of adverse pathogen ideas is antivaxxers refusing vaccines and dying from covid.
Media outlets are infection vectors. Akin to other pathogen/host interactions, some are never exposed and survive, others that have an innate immunity become exposed and survive. Others are not so fortunate, again antivaxxers dying from covid. Shutting down content promoting adverse ideas is a form of social distancing and isolation. It is know to work, but self-destructive psychosocial profiles always seems to find ways to get infected.
I sometimes wonder if this is a broader, underlying "species self-limiting behavior", like war and increasing murder, suicide and rates of other self-destructive behaviors. Possibly the SARS/Cov2 virus itself has infiltrated ppls brains causing social conflict and confusion to prevent mitigations preventing it's spread.
Thanks Chris.
Can I respectfully suggest that in your extracts summarizing Panda’s position statement (which was mainly my work) you have left out a critical and in my opinion slam-dunk logical point which we made.
That is the fact that whatever it was it spread rapidly and widely for months without causing either excess deaths or clusters of unusual illnesses, both of which only commenced when the madness was started.
Otherwise, great summary of these 2 complementary articles, thanks.
Thank you - I will cross post the Panda link to Jeff Childers "Coffee & Covid" substack, which is widely read.
In November 2019 my wife (43) became really ill with a respiratory disease, she had a cough that was an absolute beast, it was just relentless for a good 2 weeks, her blood oxygen was low, she was wiped out for a good six weeks.
Yet I, my son and my mother-in-law were not ill at all despite being in close proximity to my wife the entire time.
When visiting our local Doctor they said it was very early for the flu season and that lots of other people had been struck down at the same time.
I'm just grateful that she went through it early before they started putting people in intensive care on ventilators because they probably would have killed her.
If it hadn't been for seeing her so ill I would have thought the entire thing was a total hoax.
Great article Chris !!
A pandemic is a transnational occurrence, while a epidemic is considered regional or local event. The 'outbreak' likely started in Wuhan although there's no direct evidence of "patient 0". Patient 0 may have only had mild/no symptoms or died at home without investigation. Transnationally, the outbreak first spread to Thailand ? The WHO's covid timeline starts Jan 2020. However in Western US, healthy patients were 'crashing' from respiratory failure in Oct 2019.
There are a few issues with Verduyn CFR data compared to the western world. US CDC of 0.2% and EU's ECDC 0.13% report influenza fatality rate, not the 0.7% that Verduyn claims. The 0.7% claim is 2.2x or 5.2x respectively different than long term tracking by CDC and ECDC. Possibly the numbers are higher in Africa, India and China, although there are questions pertaining to data quality in those areas.
I don't want to reopen a long discussion on lockdown efficacy. The bottom line was "lockdown' was to slow infection rates. Lockdowns are a mitigation based on influenza epidemiology, not corona virus epidemiology. In certain population densities, lockdowns did work. In high density areas, lockdowns only provided short terms results. We all need to accept the fact lockdowns were not a cure or a bulletproof barrier to infection. It was only intended to slow the infection and death rates until a medical or pharmaceutical treatment was found.
It doesn't matter what PANDA is trying to "sell" to their readers. There are no conspiracies, alternate explanations, or master plan. There is only marginally competent leaders attempting to save their jobs and ppl that do care who honestly tried to save other's lives.
It doesn't matter that if you or anyone else believes it was a "social pandemic". I'd like you to go to someone that lost their family member, their sole source of income to house and feed their families and tell them it was a social pandemic and the virus that killed dozens of pll they knew was in their imagination.
I truly wish everyone with "alternate explanations" could be in the room for days helplessly watch covid victims die. Their suffering was horrific. The best that could be done was keep them sedated until strokes, organ failure, heart failure, pulmonary collapse if they were luck. Others, had immune system failure that results in their brains rotting while going insane and suffering from untreatable pain, and having their skin and intestines liquify. While waiting for the end, opioids stop working and the unfortunate just suffered.
Ideas don't kill people. Actions and effects of agents (viruses, bacteria, fungi, ppl) do kill.
In a way, ideas are a type of pathogen. They have binding sites, psychosocial profiles that allow them to enter the psyche and adversely effect their survival. An example is how the hypocreales fungus takes control of ant behavior. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis#Natural_products
and rabies alters human and animal behaviors. See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10483191/
A covid example of adverse pathogen ideas is antivaxxers refusing vaccines and dying from covid.
Media outlets are infection vectors. Akin to other pathogen/host interactions, some are never exposed and survive, others that have an innate immunity become exposed and survive. Others are not so fortunate, again antivaxxers dying from covid. Shutting down content promoting adverse ideas is a form of social distancing and isolation. It is know to work, but self-destructive psychosocial profiles always seems to find ways to get infected.
I sometimes wonder if this is a broader, underlying "species self-limiting behavior", like war and increasing murder, suicide and rates of other self-destructive behaviors. Possibly the SARS/Cov2 virus itself has infiltrated ppls brains causing social conflict and confusion to prevent mitigations preventing it's spread.
Brilliant journalism. Thank you