when even “pravda on the hudson” is now cottoning on to the fact that covid fears, especially for a post vaccine world, are massively overblown and irrational, perhaps the endgame is finally arriving. they cite a wonderful thought experiment called “calabresi’s fable” with which i was not familiar but that sounds an awful lot like something i was discussing HERE the other day and speaks to the same end: humans are lousy at quantifying and assessing risk. it goes like this:

Guido Calabresi, a federal judge and Yale law professor, invented a little fable that he has been telling law students for more than three decades.

He tells the students to imagine a god coming forth to offer society a wondrous invention that would improve everyday life in almost every way. It would allow people to spend more time with friends and family, see new places and do jobs they otherwise could not do. But it would also come with a high cost. In exchange for bestowing this invention on society, the god would choose 1,000 young men and women and strike them dead.

Calabresi then asks: Would you take the deal? Almost invariably, the students say no. The professor then delivers the fable’s lesson: “What’s the difference between this and the automobile?”

obviously, car crashes kill far more than 1000 young americans annually. we’re just accustomed to the risk. so does the flu. we are so used to the flu killing 40-60,000 americans every year that no one even notices it. (and if we counted flu the way we count covid, tested for it, reported it, tested every death for it, and counted any death with a positive genetic flu trace as a “flu death” we’d up that number by 5-10X) yet as it is, flu is barely even comment worthy, most never comment on it at all, and few of us alter our lives in any way to avoid or avert it beyond “stay home when you’re sick, avoid people showing symptoms of illness.”

we certainly never cowered at home, closed the national economy, cancelled everything, and forced masks and distancing on people. we’ve never even considered “zero flu” because doing so is absurd. yet flu, even using the conservative death count of “flu as proximate cause” (death from, not death with as in covid) 0.016% of americans die every year from flu (using 50k est). that’s one in 6400. remember that number.

now let’s look at vaccinated covid cases. per the CDC (as of april 15th) 5800 fully vaccinated people have caught covid. this sounds like a scary number. it’s not. it’s a FANTASTIC number.

let’s do some math: 5800 out of 77 million = 0.0075% = 1 in 13,275.

that is very low. but these are really just people that had a positive PCR test. most likely did not even have symptoms. only 7% needed hospitalization.

so the rate of hospitalization post vaccination is 1 in 189,655. that is vanishingly low.

but this gets better still. only 74 have died. 74 out of 77 million.

so the chance of getting vaccinated then dying of covid is 1 in 1.04 million, and this is in the oldest and highest risk populations in the US because that is who we vaccinated first.

based on the sort of of relative death risk by age and risk, this group is ~10X the risk of the population and probably 100X that of the young and fit. so we are going to get into REALLY low numbers for population as a whole. nothing is ever 100% effective, but this is getting so close as to make little difference.

even if we take this high risk cohort and multiply risk by 10 to annualize this data, they are at 1 in 100,000 risk of death and 1 in 18,966 risk of hospitalization.

now do you all remember the number i asked you to remember? it was 1 in 6,400. that is the historical annual risk of flu death for america as an average. this is the risk EVERY YEAR. we’re comping it to a one time covid risk as those who have had it and recover almost never get it again.

so the risk of death even among the highest risk of covid post vaccination is 93% below the risk of flu death.

the risk of even being hospitalized is is 67% below the risk of flu death.

we’re way, way below any risk level humans have historically been shown to care about.

so what on earth are we playing at here with this “vax then keep masking and distancing” nonsense? vaccination appears to have rendered people far safer than they are and historically have been from flu. death risk is more than an order of magnitude lower. this is like telling people it’s too dangerous to drive but that it’s OK to hang glide.

it makes zero epidemiological sense and anyone pushing it is either a full fledged idiot or a liar pushing some other agenda. neither seems a sound qualification for being in charge of we the people.

this is not science, it’s scientology. a young, healthy person might well chose not to vaccinate and that might be a risk minimizing choice for them when faced with an experimental vaccine that does have some risks. an older, higher risk person might look at those same vaccine risks and find them, quite rationally, to be easily worth it. that’s between y’all and your health care advisors.

BUT, and this is a massive but, if idiots like fauci and the clown chorus at CDC keep acting like vaccine deniers and telling everyone that a vaccine does not make you safe and is not a path to leading your life again, no one is going to want one even if it makes sense. why bother? it gets you nothing. you vaccinate then lock back down despite being at lower risk from covid that you ever were from flu?

these people are acting like 100% is a normal standard and like vaccines that look to be highly effective do not work. this is anti-science and vaccine denial, especially from the same people who all along claimed we needed to lock down until we got a vaccine out. it discredits then and public health. fauci is an admitted liar and he’s STILL at it. the man is a plague and he’s undermining vaccine rollouts as aggressively as he can because he wants to keep getting interviewed on TV.

this is just manipulation of perception run riot. the media and health officials have been such relentless purveyors of panic and outright lies that public perception of covid danger is 10-50X the reality. reality is ~1 or even sub 1%. 1/3 of americans think half of people who get covid wind up in hospital and half think it exceeds 20%.

this is madness and it’s being used to twist people into thinking that they are at far more risk than they are. it is not an accident. this is the confluence of budget and influence seeking by health agencies and ratings bonanzas for media. US media was 87% negative on covid last year vs about 51% for international. this has been full blown panic pushing. and it worked. and they do NOT want it to end because they still have all the same incentives. vaccination ends the fear, ratings die, budgets dry up, fame fades. they’re not going to go gently into that goodnight; they are going to rage against reason and sanity to keep it going.

american perceptions of covid risk are so distorted that most are unable to make sound decisions and a year of cowering has left people reeling and trapped in a perpetual state of fear.

amusingly, it seems most profound among the over educated. every plumber and tradesman i have met was never afraid and was dying to “get back to normal and end this stupidity.” watching the self-alleged elites who never missed a paycheck and thrived on the panic all get the vapors now about “ooh, it’s so hard to go outside. #SoBrave” is past cringe worthy. it’s flat out “we did this to you and now we want to make it about us as plucky heroines!”

re-entry is not brutal unless you’ve become outright deranged and lost all perspective. (though, clearly, many have) but my sympathy for this gang is extremely limited. they pushed this, they did it to us. they cheer led for MOAR FEAR and even now seem unable to let go and realize that covid risk is now FAR below flu and always was for the young and healthy and especially for children.

get past the derangement and get to the facts.

• even high risk people for covid are at lower risk to it that they are to flu once they are vaccinated.

• many of us were lower risk to it all along.

• treatment is now far better and far easier.

this is LONG since over guys. wake up and realize it. wake up and smell the freedom and if it not given to you, take it. it was always yours, not theirs. you’re a citizen, not a subject.