HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
Michael Ejercito wrote:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1fasuje/always_check_the_denominator_no_the_risk_of/
Always Check the Denominator
No, the risk of critical Covid disease is not 4% among healthy children. >>>
Kelley K
May 30, 2024
I’ve been very busy lately with my actual job and some other things, so
I haven’t been writing much lately. I paused paid subscriptions for the
summer to try and get caught up. I’m not taking the summer off - I plan
to start writing again even while payments are paused. Hopefully you’ll
be hearing more from me soon! Today seemed like a good day to start…
I woke up to this outrageous claim from CIDRAP in my Twitter feed:
This is not the first time that I’ve written about CIDRAP amplifying
misleading claims from a Covid study to amp up fears about Covid and
kids. They also misreported a study about Long Covid, claiming that 84%
of Covid survivors had Long Covid symptoms 2 years later. Like that
ridiculous Long Covid claim, the claim from their current tweet and
article on Covid risks among kids just doesn’t pass a basic sanity
check. Michael Mina did some basic math to show how absurd this claim is: >>>
Unfortunately, the reporters at CIDRAP (along with many other Covid
journalists and even some scientists) seem to lack the common sense to
do these kinds of sanity checks on the data — because this keeps happening. >>>
A Meta-Analysis of “Risk Factors for Pediatric Critical COVID-19”
The study, “Risk Factors for Pediatric Critical COVID-19: A Systematic
Review and Meta-Analysis” is primarily about which comorbidities are
risk factors for severe Covid — it’s focused on severe cases and kids
with comorbidities. However, the study does include the 4% claim cited
by CIDRAP. I can’t access the full text of the published paper from the
Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, but the study’s
abstract does state: “In previously healthy children, the absolute risk
of critical disease from COVID-19 was 4% (95% CI, 1%-10%).” I wanted
more details of the underlying data, so I found the pre-print of the
study, and the following section of the Results is where this 4%
statistic comes from:
Figure 4 from the study
This small section is the only mention of outcomes in children without
comorbidities, and it doesn’t include nearly enough caveats about the
underlying data. It is a poor conclusion to draw and shouldn’t have been >>> included in the abstract at all in my opinion. The abstract even says
that “the absolute risk for critical COVID-19 in children and
adolescents without underlying health conditions is relatively low,”
which doesn’t seem consistent with a 4% “absolute risk of critical
disease” from their results. In reality, the absolute risk among
previously healthy children is at least an order of magnitude lower than >>> that.
Underlying Study Data
It should be obvious to the casual observer that the 4% was calculated >>>from a population that doesn’t represent typical healthy children. So I
looked up each of the 6 studies included in this subset of studies from
the meta-analysis. Of the 6 studies that looked at medical complexity, 4 >>> were among hospitalized children (3 of the 4 in Brazil)1, one was among
12-17-year-olds with symptomatic Covid recorded in medical records2, and >>> one was a large study of children with documented Covid in Mexico3.
Outcomes for Children without Comorbidities (data extracted from Figure
4 above, population descriptions from underlying studies)
Also, all of the studies were from early in the pandemic (2020 and part
of 2021), so they were primarily first infections, they were primarily
pre-vaccine, and all were pre-Omicron. So they don’t tell us much about
the current situation, even among children who may be hospitalized with
Covid in 2024.
The large study in Mexico included over 130,000 children and found 0.3%
of children with documented Covid infections and no comorbidities died
between March 2020 and mid-June 2021. And that is still biased to more
severe cases, because many asymptomatic and mild infections aren’t
documented in medical records. Despite the overwhelming findings from
this large study of children from the broader community (not just
hospitalized children), the study authors calculated an absolute risk >>>from a small subset of children from these 6 studies (less than 16,000
patients). They don’t provide any further details the subset that they
used for their calculations, but clearly the studies of hospitalized
children and symptomatic teens skewed the results significantly.
Denominators Matter
There’s been much discussion about the importance of denominators
throughout the pandemic, but scientists, journalists, and others keep
making the same mistakes. When we use percentages to talk about Covid
outcomes or other things, we’re talking about a fraction of the
population. But it’s super important to understand WHICH population
we’re talking about. Outcomes among hospitalized patients, or among the
elderly, differ greatly from outcomes in the general population.
Just like the percentage of adults who ride mountain bikes is much
higher among attendees at a mountain biking race than among all adults,
the percentage of children with critical Covid is obviously much higher
among children who are hospitalized for Covid than among all children.
We see this same error with Long Covid studies, where the findings are
percentages among patients at a Long Covid clinic, or among patients who >>> already have Long Covid, but are often reported as if they are
percentages among a representative sample of the population.
The percentage of children with critical Covid outcomes is obviously
much higher among children who are hospitalized for Covid than among all >>> children.
The Sad State of Covid Science and Journalism
The authors of this study were irresponsible to include the claim that
“the absolute risk of critical disease from COVID-19 was 4%” among
healthy children without comorbidities, without explaining that their
data was heavily biased toward patients already hospitalized with COVID. >>> Without that caveat, the 4% claim is a gross misrepresentation of the
underlying data. And this study isn’t from some obscure scientist at a
no-name institution — the senior author, Dr. Carlos Oliveira, is an
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Biostatistics, and Biomedical
Informatics & Data Science at Yale! Surely he knows that 4% of American
children didn’t have severe Covid outcomes. Why include that misleading
statistic in the paper?!?
I also think the writers at CIDRAP needs to do a better job of
understanding and vetting the studies they report on to make sure their
reporting is accurate. They are a trusted voice for many people, and
their studies often get amplified by the Zero Covid crowd on Twitter. It >>> is profoundly unhelpful to continue scaring people with these misleading >>> and unrealistic statistics. Journalists need to understand the harm they >>> cause by publishing these irresponsible claims.
By the way… I’m already seeing this same error with H5N1 (bird flu) in
the media as well, and will probably write more on that later. Many news >>> reports refer to a 50% “fatality rate”, but that’s only among known
cases that were previously documented. Among the 3 cases identified so
far in the US (one in 2022 and two this year), none have died. The two
known cases this year have only experienced eye infections.
UPDATE: The moment I published this, I saw that another case of H5N1 has >>> been identified in the US. That patient did have respiratory symptoms
but is recovering. (5/30/24)
Thanks for reading Check Your Work! Subscribe for free to receive future >>> posts.
Type your email...
Subscribe
1
(A) Ward JL, Harwood R, Smith C, Kenny S, Clark M, Davis PJ, et al. Risk >>> factors for PICU admission and death among children and young people
hospitalized with COVID-19 and PIMS-TS in England during the first
pandemic year. Nat Med. 2022 Jan;28(1):193–200.
(B) Oliveira EA, Colosimo EA, Simoes ESAC, Mak RH, Martelli DB, Silva
LR, et al. Clinical characteristics and risk factors for death among
hospitalised children and adolescents with COVID-19 in Brazil: an
analysis of a nationwide database. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2021
Aug;5(8):559–68.
(C) Hendler JV, Miranda do Lago P, Muller GC, Santana JC, Piva JP, Daudt >>> LE. Risk factors for severe COVID-19 infection in Brazilian children.
Braz J Infect Dis. 2021 Nov-Dec;25(6):101650
(D) Horta M, Ribeiro GJC, Campos NOB, de Oliveira DR, de Almeida
Carvalho LM, de Castro Zocrato K, et al. ICU Admission, Invasive
Mechanical Ventilation, and Mortality among Children and Adolescents
Hospitalized for COVID-19 in a Private Healthcare System. Int J Pediatr. >>> 2023;2023:1698407.
2
Campbell JI, Dubois MM, Savage TJ, Hood-Pishchany MI, Sharma TS, Petty
CR, et al. Comorbidities Associated with Hospitalization and Progression >>> Among Adolescents with Symptomatic Coronavirus Disease 2019. J Pediatr.
2022 Jun;245:102–10 e2.
3
Sanchez-Piedra C, Gamino-Arroyo AE, Cruz-Cruz C, Prado-Galbarro FJ.
Impact of environmental and individual factors on COVID-19 mortality in
children and adolescents in Mexico: An observational study. Lancet Reg
Health Am. 2022 Apr;8:100184.
In the interim, we are 100% prepared/protected in the "full armor of
GOD" (Ephesians 6:11) which we put on as soon as we use Apostle Paul's
secret (Philippians 4:12). Though masking is less protective, it helps
us avoid the appearance of doing the evil of spreading airborne
pathogens while there are people getting sick because of not being
100% protected. It is written that we're to "abstain from **all**
appearance of doing evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22 w/**emphasis**).
Meanwhile, the only *perfect* (Matt 5:47-8 ) way to eradicate the
COVID-19 virus, thereby saving lives, in the US & elsewhere is by
rapidly (i.e. use the "Rapid COVID-19 Test" ) finding out at any given
moment, including even while on-line, who among us are unwittingly
contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic) in order to
"convince it forward" (John 15:12) for them to call their doctor and
self-quarantine per their doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic.
Thus, we're hoping for the best while preparing for the worse-case
scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations and others like the Omicron,
Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations
combining via slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like "Deltamicron"
that may render current COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no
longer effective.
Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry (
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/6ZoE95d-VKc/m/14vVZoyOBgAJ >> ) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.
So how are you ?
I am wonderfully hungry!
HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
Michael Ejercito wrote:I am wonderfully hungry!
https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1fasuje/always_check_the_denominator_no_the_risk_of/
Always Check the Denominator
No, the risk of critical Covid disease is not 4% among healthy children. >>>
Kelley K
May 30, 2024
I’ve been very busy lately with my actual job and some other things, so
I haven’t been writing much lately. I paused paid subscriptions for the
summer to try and get caught up. I’m not taking the summer off - I plan
to start writing again even while payments are paused. Hopefully you’ll
be hearing more from me soon! Today seemed like a good day to start…
I woke up to this outrageous claim from CIDRAP in my Twitter feed:
This is not the first time that I’ve written about CIDRAP amplifying
misleading claims from a Covid study to amp up fears about Covid and
kids. They also misreported a study about Long Covid, claiming that 84%
of Covid survivors had Long Covid symptoms 2 years later. Like that
ridiculous Long Covid claim, the claim from their current tweet and
article on Covid risks among kids just doesn’t pass a basic sanity
check. Michael Mina did some basic math to show how absurd this claim is: >>>
Unfortunately, the reporters at CIDRAP (along with many other Covid
journalists and even some scientists) seem to lack the common sense to
do these kinds of sanity checks on the data — because this keeps happening. >>>
A Meta-Analysis of “Risk Factors for Pediatric Critical COVID-19”
The study, “Risk Factors for Pediatric Critical COVID-19: A Systematic
Review and Meta-Analysis” is primarily about which comorbidities are
risk factors for severe Covid — it’s focused on severe cases and kids
with comorbidities. However, the study does include the 4% claim cited
by CIDRAP. I can’t access the full text of the published paper from the
Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, but the study’s
abstract does state: “In previously healthy children, the absolute risk
of critical disease from COVID-19 was 4% (95% CI, 1%-10%).” I wanted
more details of the underlying data, so I found the pre-print of the
study, and the following section of the Results is where this 4%
statistic comes from:
Figure 4 from the study
This small section is the only mention of outcomes in children without
comorbidities, and it doesn’t include nearly enough caveats about the
underlying data. It is a poor conclusion to draw and shouldn’t have been >>> included in the abstract at all in my opinion. The abstract even says
that “the absolute risk for critical COVID-19 in children and
adolescents without underlying health conditions is relatively low,”
which doesn’t seem consistent with a 4% “absolute risk of critical
disease” from their results. In reality, the absolute risk among
previously healthy children is at least an order of magnitude lower than >>> that.
Underlying Study Data
It should be obvious to the casual observer that the 4% was calculated >>>from a population that doesn’t represent typical healthy children. So I
looked up each of the 6 studies included in this subset of studies from
the meta-analysis. Of the 6 studies that looked at medical complexity, 4 >>> were among hospitalized children (3 of the 4 in Brazil)1, one was among
12-17-year-olds with symptomatic Covid recorded in medical records2, and >>> one was a large study of children with documented Covid in Mexico3.
Outcomes for Children without Comorbidities (data extracted from Figure
4 above, population descriptions from underlying studies)
Also, all of the studies were from early in the pandemic (2020 and part
of 2021), so they were primarily first infections, they were primarily
pre-vaccine, and all were pre-Omicron. So they don’t tell us much about
the current situation, even among children who may be hospitalized with
Covid in 2024.
The large study in Mexico included over 130,000 children and found 0.3%
of children with documented Covid infections and no comorbidities died
between March 2020 and mid-June 2021. And that is still biased to more
severe cases, because many asymptomatic and mild infections aren’t
documented in medical records. Despite the overwhelming findings from
this large study of children from the broader community (not just
hospitalized children), the study authors calculated an absolute risk >>>from a small subset of children from these 6 studies (less than 16,000
patients). They don’t provide any further details the subset that they
used for their calculations, but clearly the studies of hospitalized
children and symptomatic teens skewed the results significantly.
Denominators Matter
There’s been much discussion about the importance of denominators
throughout the pandemic, but scientists, journalists, and others keep
making the same mistakes. When we use percentages to talk about Covid
outcomes or other things, we’re talking about a fraction of the
population. But it’s super important to understand WHICH population
we’re talking about. Outcomes among hospitalized patients, or among the
elderly, differ greatly from outcomes in the general population.
Just like the percentage of adults who ride mountain bikes is much
higher among attendees at a mountain biking race than among all adults,
the percentage of children with critical Covid is obviously much higher
among children who are hospitalized for Covid than among all children.
We see this same error with Long Covid studies, where the findings are
percentages among patients at a Long Covid clinic, or among patients who >>> already have Long Covid, but are often reported as if they are
percentages among a representative sample of the population.
The percentage of children with critical Covid outcomes is obviously
much higher among children who are hospitalized for Covid than among all >>> children.
The Sad State of Covid Science and Journalism
The authors of this study were irresponsible to include the claim that
“the absolute risk of critical disease from COVID-19 was 4%” among
healthy children without comorbidities, without explaining that their
data was heavily biased toward patients already hospitalized with COVID. >>> Without that caveat, the 4% claim is a gross misrepresentation of the
underlying data. And this study isn’t from some obscure scientist at a
no-name institution — the senior author, Dr. Carlos Oliveira, is an
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Biostatistics, and Biomedical
Informatics & Data Science at Yale! Surely he knows that 4% of American
children didn’t have severe Covid outcomes. Why include that misleading
statistic in the paper?!?
I also think the writers at CIDRAP needs to do a better job of
understanding and vetting the studies they report on to make sure their
reporting is accurate. They are a trusted voice for many people, and
their studies often get amplified by the Zero Covid crowd on Twitter. It >>> is profoundly unhelpful to continue scaring people with these misleading >>> and unrealistic statistics. Journalists need to understand the harm they >>> cause by publishing these irresponsible claims.
By the way… I’m already seeing this same error with H5N1 (bird flu) in
the media as well, and will probably write more on that later. Many news >>> reports refer to a 50% “fatality rate”, but that’s only among known
cases that were previously documented. Among the 3 cases identified so
far in the US (one in 2022 and two this year), none have died. The two
known cases this year have only experienced eye infections.
UPDATE: The moment I published this, I saw that another case of H5N1 has >>> been identified in the US. That patient did have respiratory symptoms
but is recovering. (5/30/24)
Thanks for reading Check Your Work! Subscribe for free to receive future >>> posts.
Type your email...
Subscribe
1
(A) Ward JL, Harwood R, Smith C, Kenny S, Clark M, Davis PJ, et al. Risk >>> factors for PICU admission and death among children and young people
hospitalized with COVID-19 and PIMS-TS in England during the first
pandemic year. Nat Med. 2022 Jan;28(1):193–200.
(B) Oliveira EA, Colosimo EA, Simoes ESAC, Mak RH, Martelli DB, Silva
LR, et al. Clinical characteristics and risk factors for death among
hospitalised children and adolescents with COVID-19 in Brazil: an
analysis of a nationwide database. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2021
Aug;5(8):559–68.
(C) Hendler JV, Miranda do Lago P, Muller GC, Santana JC, Piva JP, Daudt >>> LE. Risk factors for severe COVID-19 infection in Brazilian children.
Braz J Infect Dis. 2021 Nov-Dec;25(6):101650
(D) Horta M, Ribeiro GJC, Campos NOB, de Oliveira DR, de Almeida
Carvalho LM, de Castro Zocrato K, et al. ICU Admission, Invasive
Mechanical Ventilation, and Mortality among Children and Adolescents
Hospitalized for COVID-19 in a Private Healthcare System. Int J Pediatr. >>> 2023;2023:1698407.
2
Campbell JI, Dubois MM, Savage TJ, Hood-Pishchany MI, Sharma TS, Petty
CR, et al. Comorbidities Associated with Hospitalization and Progression >>> Among Adolescents with Symptomatic Coronavirus Disease 2019. J Pediatr.
2022 Jun;245:102–10 e2.
3
Sanchez-Piedra C, Gamino-Arroyo AE, Cruz-Cruz C, Prado-Galbarro FJ.
Impact of environmental and individual factors on COVID-19 mortality in
children and adolescents in Mexico: An observational study. Lancet Reg
Health Am. 2022 Apr;8:100184.
In the interim, we are 100% prepared/protected in the "full armor of
GOD" (Ephesians 6:11) which we put on as soon as we use Apostle Paul's
secret (Philippians 4:12). Though masking is less protective, it helps
us avoid the appearance of doing the evil of spreading airborne
pathogens while there are people getting sick because of not being
100% protected. It is written that we're to "abstain from **all**
appearance of doing evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22 w/**emphasis**).
Meanwhile, the only *perfect* (Matt 5:47-8 ) way to eradicate the
COVID-19 virus, thereby saving lives, in the US & elsewhere is by
rapidly (i.e. use the "Rapid COVID-19 Test" ) finding out at any given
moment, including even while on-line, who among us are unwittingly
contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic) in order to
"convince it forward" (John 15:12) for them to call their doctor and
self-quarantine per their doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic.
Thus, we're hoping for the best while preparing for the worse-case
scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations and others like the Omicron,
Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations
combining via slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like "Deltamicron"
that may render current COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no
longer effective.
Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry (
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/6ZoE95d-VKc/m/14vVZoyOBgAJ >> ) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.
So how are you ?
Michael
HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:
Michael Ejercito wrote:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1kn24i0/a_ragtag_group_of_covid_truthtellers_go_to/
A Ragtag Group of Covid Truth-Tellers Go to Washington
Kelley Krohnert, a wife and mother who lives just outside Atlanta,
started a website in 2020 to hold government agencies accountable for
their Covid data. (Kendrick Brinson for The Free Press)
During the pandemic, they were ostracized. Now, they’re influencing
public policy.
By Carrie McKean
05.14.25 — Health and Self-Improvement
--:--
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Upgrade to Listen
5 mins
Produced by ElevenLabs using AI narration
200
211
Earlier this week, we ran a collection of pieces by the new leaders of
American public health—doctors Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makary, and Vinay >>> Prasad—all of whom just happen to have contributed to The Free Press.
Five years ago, they raised serious questions in our pages about
lockdowns, shuttered schools, and vaccine mandates—questions for which
they were vilified. Now, all of them have been not only vindicated, but
promoted to some of the highest offices in public health. But these
leaders are only part of the story. Behind them is a ragtag group of
ordinary Americans who also asked questions during the Covid era, and
kept asking them, even though they were belittled, discredited, and
ostracized. In today’s piece, reporter Carrie McKean profiles these
individuals, and asks them: How can we move forward? How can these new
leaders restore our faith in public health?
—The Editors
Five years ago, Kelley Krohnert, a wife and mother who lives just
outside Atlanta and runs a small photography business, was, like most of >>> us, filled with dread and confusion. It was the early days of Covid. At
the time, the Georgia Health Department wasn’t keeping a public record
of the number of cases. So Kelley, who’s in her forties, began plugging
numbers she saw on the news into her own spreadsheet and started a
website, Covid-Georgia.com, to share her data, gaining a wide following
on Twitter (now X) under the handle @KelleyKGa.
It didn’t take long for Krohnert to start noticing statistical errors,
which grew only more common as time went on. The CDC’s own “unofficial”
Covid Data Tracker of cases from across the nation often reported higher >>> pediatric death counts than the official numbers on the National Center
for Health Statistics website. And the media often reported those higher >>> numbers. As time went on, the CDC reported that 4 percent of Covid
deaths were children, when their own data showed it was .04 percent. In
2022, she discovered that a frightening study cited by the CDC during
its push for a pediatric Covid vaccine vastly inflated the disease’s
risk to children; for example, it compared 26 months of Covid-associated >>> deaths to one year of deaths from other causes.
“These were mistakes and errors a middle-school student wouldn’t make,”
Krohnert said of errors she found in CDC Covid data. (Angela Weiss/AFP
via Getty Images)
“These were mistakes and errors a middle-school student wouldn’t make,”
Krohnert told me. She didn’t start out with any inherent suspicion of
the government. She expected officials to be a trusted source of
information and to deliver level-headed guidance. But the more she
burrowed into the Covid numbers, the more problems she saw. And
remarkably, all the errors she identified made things seem worse and
more dangerous than they were.
Krohnert did get some recognition and vindication. After she alerted the >>> authors of the study about their errors regarding Covid’s risks to
children, they immediately made corrections, and the CDC eventually
stopped claiming Covid was one of the top five killers of children. Yet
Krohnert said the agency never responded to her directly. It also
characterized her as just “a person with a web page or a blog” in an
email that became public following an FOIA request to the study’s
authors. And it plowed ahead with approval of the childhood Covid
vaccine. After Krohnert replied to a post by Surgeon General Jerome
Adams that defended Covid vaccine trials, he posted a thread. “You trust >>> your electrician / plumber / tax preparer. You should trust your doc,”
Adams wrote.
As for the inflated case numbers? Eventually, the CDC quietly removed
72,277 misattributed deaths from the Covid Data Tracker, a data
correction attributed to Krohnert’s advocacy by The BMJ (formerly the
British Medical Journal).
Looking back now through the fog of Covid, it is easy to overlook the
data nerds, virologists, epidemiologists, and ordinary citizens like
Krohnert who, scattered across the country, doggedly fact-checked the
U.S. government. For their efforts, they were censored and shadow-banned >>> on social media, scorned by polite society, and discredited as
dangerous, science-denying conspiracy theorists by high-level government >>> officials and the mainstream media. But they persisted, and 40 to 50 of
them eventually connected on Twitter, creating an informal group they
dubbed “Rational Ground/Team Reality.”
In 2022, Kelly Krohnert discovered that a study cited by the CDC during
its push for a pediatric Covid vaccine vastly inflated the disease’s
risk to children. (Michael Nagle/Xinhua via Getty Images)
And since then, times have changed. Today, Team Reality is seeing their
recommendations adopted by the federal government.
One of the medical experts who broke with the consensus during the
pandemic and joined forces with Rational Ground, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a >>> professor of health policy at Stanford University School of Medicine, is >>> now the director of the National Institutes of Health. Two weeks ago, in >>> one of his first official actions, Bhattacharya announced that the NIH
will accelerate the rollout of a plan to make available to the public
all data gathered from taxpayer-funded NIH scientific research studies.
It’s a policy recommendation consistently put forth by members of
Rational Ground.
“I believe very strongly that the products and data produced by
scientific projects paid for by the public should be available to the
public,” Bhattacharya told me in an email. Just 26 percent of Americans
have a great deal of confidence that scientists are working for the
public good, a recent poll found. Bhattacharya said rebuilding that
fractured trust is at the core of what he must accomplish in his new job. >>>
“It was a kind of pinch-me moment,” said Justin Hart, a 53-year-old data >>> and marketing consultant based in San Diego, about a gathering a few
weeks ago with Bhattacharya near Washington to celebrate the appointment >>> of the “fringe epidemiologist,” as he was baselessly called by former
NIH director Dr. Francis Collins, to run the agency.
Just two years ago, Hart, his wife Jenny, their toddler daughter, and
Bhattacharya had walked the halls of Capitol Hill, passing out a
one-page Rational Ground advocacy sheet and fruitlessly seeking
conversations with lawmakers willing to consider their heterodox views.
Hart and Bhattacharya connected in the early days of the pandemic thanks >>> to mutual friends at Stanford. A small group gathered to meet after
reading an article by Dr. John Ioannidis, a Stanford statistician and
professor of biomedical data science. He said some of the same things
they had all been thinking, including his warning in March 2020 that
public-health officials were making consequential decisions without good >>> data and calling the Covid response a potential “fiasco in the making.”
From there, Team Reality grew. They became supporters of the Great
Barrington Declaration, a document written by Bhattacharya and two
colleagues, advocating for focused protection for those most vulnerable
to Covid, and a return to close-to-normal life for the rest of society.
The team plowed ahead with their advocacy, taking solace in their ragtag >>> community when they faced the scorn of the mainstream.
“We had people who were apolitical, people who were Democrats, people
who were very conservative Republicans,” said Hart. “It’s amazing how
unifying it can be when the government starts pushing around our kids
and impinging our freedoms.”
Matt Shapiro, who goes by the handle @PoliticalMath on X, describes
himself as a right-of-center, “insatiably curious”
artificial-intelligence engineer. (William DeShazer for The Free Press)
Matt Shapiro, who goes by the handle @PoliticalMath on X and lives
outside Atlanta, signed up early in the pandemic to process data for The >>> Atlantic’s Covid Tracking Project, the most complete data repository of
Covid’s impact in the U.S. Shapiro describes himself as a
right-of-center, “insatiably curious” artificial-intelligence engineer
with a background in data management, and he was eager to put his
data-mining skills to work for the common good. His work became a
“full-time Covid hobby,” he said. Shapiro joined other volunteers—“good
people trying to do an important thing”—to input data, analyze trends,
and make data-based recommendations to help shape public health.
But when the data told a story that contradicted the Centers for Disease >>> Control and Prevention’s recommendations, for example, that Covid spread >>> as quickly in places with mask mandates as it did in places without
them, his mostly left-leaning colleagues on the team went silent. “All
my data friends that I had made doing all this work together were just
like, ‘Not touching that,’?” he recalled.
Shapiro said he was mocked and isolated for questioning the predominant
narrative that shuttering schools and businesses was lifesaving. More
alarming to him were the massive implications such conformity had for
society. “That’s not the story we’re telling ourselves about who we
are,” he told me.
Tracking Covid data became Matt Shapiro’s “full-time hobby” during the
pandemic, he said. (William DeShazer for The Free Press)
It was different with Rational Ground/Team Reality. Members of the group >>> worked to provide data for Dr. Scott Atlas, a Covid adviser during the
first Trump administration, who used their findings to refute CDC
assessments at briefings. They advised governors and state-level Covid
task forces, like that of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and federal
lawmakers such as Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Dan Crenshaw of Texas, all >>> Republicans. They held regional gatherings and relentlessly pursued
grassroots campaigns to correct and call out errors wherever they found
them.
In such a diverse group, there was often sharp disagreement. “We’ve had
people rage-quit,” said Hart. “Like in any human endeavor, we definitely >>> have our moments where people don’t see things in the same way, but we
had an open forum where we felt like we could hash it out and discuss
things.”
Five years later, Team Reality is still advocating for institutional
reforms based on what they saw during the pandemic. Under the leadership >>> of Bhattacharya, some of those changes are already happening. They want
safeguards to protect the American people from overreaching government
authority, and they think that constraining power and increasing
transparency will ultimately help restore trust in public health.
To achieve this, they want public-health policy discussions to be
robust, with dissenting voices and a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis >>> of any public-health policy proposal before it becomes enforceable, even >>> in emergency situations.
“Government scientists do not have a monopoly on the truth,” NIH
director Jay Bhattacharya told The Free Press. (Andrew Harnik via Getty
Images)
“Public health policy decisions need a high quality of evidence
demonstrating a good amount of benefit for a small amount of
imposition,” said Krohnert. “With Covid, we got the opposite:
low-quality evidence demonstrating a small amount of benefit with
massive impositions and untold costs.”
They also call for radical transparency. Because CDC guidance during
Covid was often based on desired outcomes rather than actual data-driven >>> science, Shapiro said, data from any publicly funded study should be
publicly available. “If you collect data with our taxpayer money, it’s
our data, and you should have to show it to us, rather than only showing >>> it if it achieves some end-policy goal,” he said.
Bhattacharya agrees. “Government scientists do not have a monopoly on
the truth, which is most likely to be found by a spirit of open-minded
investigation, including by members of the public with access to the
same data as public-health officials,” he told me.
Humility is an uncommon virtue for top government officials, but
Bhattacharya knows better than most how the experts can get things
wrong. “On topic after topic. . . Rational Ground analysts outperformed
and corrected government agencies,” he told me. “Rational Ground often
relied on data that agencies like the CDC had made publicly available to >>> correct the CDC itself on its misinterpretations of its own data.”
Matt Shapiro said he was mocked and isolated for questioning the
predominant narrative during Covid that shuttering schools and
businesses was lifesaving. (William DeShazer for The Free Press)
Opening the data to the public could help extremists misrepresent data
and take it out of context, but the benefits outweigh the risks, said
Krohnert. “Blocking access to data is not going to prevent bad actors >>>from spreading misinformation. If anything, it adds fuel to the fire,
because they can make up what they want and claim it’s from some study
the government ‘doesn’t want you to see,’?” she said.
Other hoped-for reforms go far beyond data reporting. It’s about what
gets studied to begin with. During the pandemic, policy decisions with
enormous effects, such as universal masking or standing six feet apart,
we now know were based on flawed research, or often just guesswork. But
according to Hart, the federal health agencies resisted funding studies
that might refute CDC recommendations.
Then there is the matter of institutional conflicts of interest. For
example, Hart was dismayed to learn that the same people who sit on NIH
grant committees to decide where funding goes also make policy
recommendations.
Such conflicts are a problem. After watching the CDC make so many
errors—and always in the same direction—Krohnert co-wrote a paper for
the open-access Social Science Research Network, with Dr. Vinay Prasad,
the new head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics
Evaluation and Research, calling for a firewall between the government
entities that gather statistics and those setting policy as a shield
against “real or perceived systematic bias.”
Krohnert also thinks there need to be better conversations about the
nature and efficacy of CDC recommendations, which can be overly cautious >>> and reflect a low tolerance for risk, such as its recommendation not to
eat raw cookie dough. As a result, the general public often ignores the
CDC’s advice.
“Blocking access to data is not going to prevent bad actors from
spreading misinformation,” Krohnert said. “If anything, it adds fuel to
the fire.” (Kendrick Brinson for The Free Press)
Since their recommendations can take on the force of law, official
recommendations by the CDC ought to include room for dissent—or at least >>> some wiggle room, depending on the circumstances, Krohnert said. For
example, a recommendation to wear masks to prevent the spread of disease >>> might come with a qualification that it might not be appropriate in
every situation, so that pediatric speech-therapy clinics and preschools >>> needn’t worry about getting sued for failing to follow the agency’s advice. >>>
And though they do want sweeping reform, Team Reality don’t want to burn >>> the house down completely. Krohnert said she doesn’t want to render the
CDC useless. Just the opposite. She believes that Americans need
entities they can trust, though government power usually should be
limited to the ability to recommend and not compel.
“Public-health enforcing isolation of very sick, very contagious people
is not particularly controversial,” she said. “But during Covid, we had
public-health enforcing quarantine of healthy individuals.
“We just seemed to skip over all the ethics of that.”
There is, understandably, some concern that, as the editors of The Free
Press wrote yesterday in an editorial about public health, “this
administration’s approach to reform often uses a hacksaw when a scalpel
is called for.” And yet, the people Trump has selected to lead the NIH,
CDC, and FDA are highly credentialed, well-respected, and extremely
competent, and they are advocating policies that are as careful as they
are radical. “These aren’t Robespierre lieutenants being elevated to
judge, jury, and executioner when the revolution was won,” said Hart.
“These are the people who should’ve been running things in the first place.”
In the interim, we are 100% prepared/protected in the "full armor of
GOD" (Ephesians 6:11) which we put on as soon as we use Apostle Paul's
secret (Philippians 4:12). Though masking is less protective, it helps
us avoid the appearance of doing the evil of spreading airborne
pathogens while there are people getting sick because of not being
100% protected. It is written that we're to "abstain from **all**
appearance of doing evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22 w/**emphasis**).
Meanwhile, the only *perfect* (Matt 5:47-8 ) way to eradicate the
COVID-19 virus, thereby saving lives, in the US & elsewhere is by
rapidly (i.e. use the "Rapid COVID-19 Test" ) finding out at any given
moment, including even while on-line, who among us are unwittingly
contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic) in order to
"convince it forward" (John 15:12) for them to call their doctor and
self-quarantine per their doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic.
Thus, we're hoping for the best while preparing for the worse-case
scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations and others like the Omicron,
Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations
combining via slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like "Deltamicron"
that may render current COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no
longer effective.
Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry (
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/6ZoE95d-VKc/m/14vVZoyOBgAJ >> ) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.
So how are you ?
I am wonderfully hungry!
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