P(D|T) = (1 × 0.001) / 0.05095 ≈ 0.0196 or about 1.96%
Therefore, the chance that a person who tests positive actually has the disease is only about 1.96%, despite the test having a false positive rate of just 5%. This illustrates the base rate fallacy - when the disease is rare, even a test with a low false positive rate will produce many more false positives than true positives.
Assuming that the test administrators believe all of these false positives, they have inflated the actual rate of disease by a factor of almost 20. Then they subtract (incorrectly) the 5% false positive rate from the total, and they still overestimate the rate of disease by a factor of almost 19. I have to assume that those people that I saw falling asleep in the statistics classes were pre-med.
I’m pretty good at math but this is a conceptual question. My senior year of high school, when my male friends were all taking prob and stat, I took my fourth year of Latin. I have often rued that choice.
Statistics is a little more difficult because it requires you to implement the correct statistical process for that particular problem. It’s not intuitive unless you spend a lot of time doing statistics.
Yes, this calculates the Positive Predictive Value of a test. The prevalence is the thing that the Covidians ignored completely in their push to test (and thus scare) everybody.
I learned how to calculate the PPV early in the Scamdemic using the method shown in a video by the Medcram guy. He's a very mainstream doctor, but this video is pretty good:
It's probably not possible to know the FP rate, because there were dozens (maybe hundreds?) of PCR tests being used, and they all had a different Cycle Threshold, which is the number of amplifications. When the Ct got big, like over 35, the false positive rate got ridiculous.
The fraud wasn't the cycle threshold, it was that they didn't have a sample of the "virus" to test for. All they had was their in silico sequence. And they never proved that there was a SARS Cov2 causing disease. It was ALL false positives.
I've got it archived somewhere but there was data based on testing at a UK university (I think it was Oxford or Cambridge) which basically determined this.
It's great that you broke this down. Gato can do this in his head, I could as well if I had a mind to, but this brings to mind a seminal anecdote from my childhood.
My dad "teaching" me long division.
I have to admit at times in math class being lost. It was almost as if I had been flown overseas and was sitting in a class where they were all speaking in Chinese. Part of it was just not wanting to understand, not at all curious how things work in terms of math.
Growing up, my mom helped me with English at times, correcting my spelling and to this day, I think of myself as a horrible speller. I can still hear her pronouncing words like "Californ-i-aye in my mind. But for some reason, my dad was dispatched to teach me Long Division. My dad also helped out some with Geography.
We did it in the living room as there was no TV in the family room to distract me. The living room had a distinct feeling of not being lived in. It had a baby grand piano in it, so it was for practicing. It had a table in it, so it was also for eating on special occasions, but for everyday living, that was left to the family room. This room was education. business, and decorum. And it was here I spent what felt like hours and hours.
My dad got very frustrated. It was like trying to teach a crow how to talk; this was teaching me Long Division. To this day, I don't recall what all the anger/frustration was about. Probably, he had clarity on division, and I didn't, not was I keen on really understanding.
I wish that it had been used in terms of restrictions, probabilities, and threat assessments. Like determining the likelihood I could get a food borne illness, or what the most likely way I could suffer injury (probably jumping a home made bike ramp).
You mean the same base rate fallacy that was thrown in our faces when we tried to determine those who got Covid who were completely without injection and those who had one, two, and. three injections? "You see of course more people got Covid that were injected because far more people were injected."
I’ve followed Dr. Bhattacharya early on when he was a sole voice against the lock downs. Then after the Great Barrington Declaration being dissed by the media, and him being censured along with Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, I knew he was someone to listen to and follow. So happy he will head up the NIH!!!
Jay was and is amazing. He was exactly the opposite of Fauci and Collins throughout the pandemic: data driven, principled, and courageous. He could have easily played the "go along to get along" game like the majority of his peers, but his willingness to speak up was inspirational.
The only bad thing about his appointment is that it comes five years too late. The country would have been far better off if he had been in charge of the NIH at the beginning of the pandemic.
5 yrs ago the nation was UNWILLING to listen to anyone other than the "EXPERTS." Today is very different in that people are DEMANDING change, truth and accountability.
There were plenty of people willing to fight, but the problem was that they were not supported by anyone in a position of power. Someone like Jay at NIH would have broken the illusion of consensus of the "experts". That illusion, reinforced by politicized corporate media, was why the US had one of the worst pandemic policies in the entire developed world.
Just look at Sweden & Florida: Anders Tegnell, at great personal cost, singlehandedly managed to keep Sweden from falling for the lockdown hysteria of every other Western country. DeSantis did the same thing for Florida by actually following the data and quickly taking the state out of lockdown. A single leader can make a massive difference.
True - dr Tegnell helped to keep a lid on media hysteria.
An anecdote about that: while Trump was still in office, our media (having given themselves full-blown TDS) downplayed Covid as a big nothing unless you belonged to a risk-group (HIV-patients f.e.).
DN, Sweden's wannabe NYT morning paper even sent a group of people to Italy to meet and talk with the first groups of Italians and Chinese that had fallen ill, just to prove how much of a nothing-burger Covid was.
Then came Jan 6, and Trump was out, and they all flipped on a dime and Covid was the new Black Death according to the media.
That dr Tegnell could stand against that speaks volumes of his character. Sadly, his reward was to be unpersoned late in the "pandemic", when delegates from the EU/WEF, such as Ursula von der Leyen held an emergency summit with our government, all under secrecy. Immediately after that meeting, dr Tegnell was replaced and he went from being in the press daily, to not being seen at all.
Currently, the WEF and the pharmaceutical capitalists are lobbying hard for Sweden to amend its laws on pandemics/epidemics. My guess is, *they* don't want to risk a repeat of the embarrassment we became to the Covidian narrative.
Actually, I had measles back in 1967 or 68. And the way it was viewed in the that Brady Bunch video is exactly the way I viewed it at the time. In fact, I still view it that way . . .
We were made to go play with whatever neighbor kids caught the latest thing. I was sent across the street specifically to catch the Mumps and the German Measles. I remember seeing Peter Pan on TV in my darkened bedroom and getting allowed to watch it was like getting a papal dispensation. I remember this clearly because under normal circumstances I was not allowed to play with these specific neighbor kids. Unclear if it was because of the BB gun incident or the rope a kid off their bicycle like Roy Rogers situation. Things were different in the mid 1960s. Latchkey kids would be shocked into a therapy session lol
In 1957-59, my cousins lived next door and my mother took my brother and me to play with them when they had chicken pox. We were all sick for a few days and got over it. Same with measles.
My vaccinated son got whooping cough. It's a horrible sound. But it was the waking point for me. Why was he vaccinated if it didn't prevent him from getting it? I was told it was 85% effective.
I never had chickenpox but I remember when my mom did, I was allowed to drink a whole 16 ounce bottle of Pepsi all by myself and without any negotiations! It was the first and last time too. Mom was sick as a dog and I took as much advantage of it as humanly possible
I remember a girl at college telling me that when she was a kid there were parties to help kids get one of those ailments - but I didn't see that in my childhood.
I can add, by the way, that when I had measles I wasn't watching anything on TV, because we didn't have a TV. (And strangely enough, about 30 years ago, I decided I didn't want one and have not had one since. A good way to maintain sanity.)
I remember the measles specifically because of that little TV, or “idiot box” as it was called in our house. It was good while it lasted and that wasn’t for very long lol
Holy Cow - what did that do to you - play with sister's dolls?
Heathy JQ caused me to play with dolls - GI Joe.
He never survived more than a few days because of fiery deaths - his plastic bag and string parashoot would get covered in gasoline and lit on fire and thrown off a cliff near house, or shoe-box spaceship soaked in gas and so imitate a too rapid entry into atmosphere and burn and melt ..
.. then I'd look for my sister's Ken, she never knew the exciting deaths her Ken's went through - but Ken didn't seem to enjoy them as much as GI-Joe.
Light in loafers? Whatever - not willing to charge into dragon's fire with lance to save the Lady, .. he had too much fear of death, no-matter how much I explain that we all die, and today is as good a day as any.
Since my divorce-rape I've had no TV either. That was maybe .. near death 3 coma was a few days before Huracan Katrenia hit. While dead I knew of it coming and that the world would see that FEMA was a paper department where all the yearly cash went somewhere else, and that was same situation through most Federal Gov.
I wuz born in 66, got the measles around 71, back then, nobody channeled their inner 'karen' to protest the treatment recommendations (Thanks for that!!) and we all got better in a few days and went back to school
The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.
Yep. Had chicken pox circa '69 and measles maybe a year or so later. My sister and I probably caught it at school from the other students who all had their turn to be out of classes a few days.
A lot depends on your personal experience, my grandma got measles meningitis, almost died, missed almost a full year of school being basically bed ridden. She did eventually fully recover but it was far from a sure thing. She was pretty darn excited to be able to get her kids a measles shot. I don’t think that panic over measles is the answer but it’s not always benign either, studies vary but it seems the fatality rate for measles is somewhere between
1 and 3 in 1000 (measles cases) with the encephalitis/meningitis rate being approximately 1 in 1000 measles cases.
Gato, giving credit where credit is due, we should remember that Jeffrey Tucker (now of Brownstone) was the guy who had the chutzpah to publish the GBD -- otherwise it would have moldered unrecognized forever. Taking nothing away from Jay and his two co-authors, Tucker published, lost his job, and was otherwise repeatedly punished for doing the right thing. It takes all kinds of bravery to fight the system. In this case it required both free speech and broad reach.
Lol...no one's fanboi. But too little credit given to some folks who should be recognized. Many beyond Tucker, but when one talks about GBD, there is not one without him -- he organized the meeting, helped the document come together, and published it when prohibited from doing so. You don't need to be a fanboi to realize that should be recognized. This seems a decent place to do so.
also just yesterday finished reading the Brownstone review of the Covid response five years on. Really very good summation and for many people would be full of new information, maybe not so much gato's crowd. But well worth the (long) read. The first part is here
Yes, Fauci was the fall guy in Covid, and we know some of his money came from the DARPA sources. The “jail Fauci“ narrative seems misdirected (a limited hang?) because insiders have long identified Birx and the intel/military as orchestrating the operation from the beginning.
And let's not forget the pandemic priming excersizes like Dark Winter, event 201, pacific rim job etc. also the fact that like Monsanto was compelled by US emergency law to make Agent Orange we have the Pharma companies including Pfizer who benefitted financially but were nonetheless compelled (forced) to manufacture 'Gene therapies' under OTA for the Emergency Use. The military DoD ran the whole thing from my research. Latypova and Watt have all the receipts as well as Debbie Lerman amongst many others
But, with all due respect, why did Dr. Bhattacharya repeatedly recommend that the elderly should get the injections, even continuing to do so not too long ago, if I'm not mistaken? If the Covid injections are not safe for younger cohorts, what makes them OK for the elderly crowd, especially when we have known for quite some time now that they are neither safe nor effective?
It really does boggle the mind but the injections seem to have fooled dozens and dozens of super smart, otherwise sensible people "on our side".
I have several friends IRL who got fooled. They were vehemently anti-lockdown but lined up to get jabbed -- one even became a volunteer vaccinator and told me he did it "so we could be done with the whole thing and move on".
I've never understood this position. How could you see the lies so clearly (I'm talking from early March or thereabouts) and correctly assess the (lack of) danger faced, but then also go on to see the vaccines as a net good? Or even to be neutral about them and shoulder-shruggingly submit to a couple doses for the sake of "ending it quicker" or being able to go abroad or what-have-you? (I'm telling you, I got flustered and teary-eyed when a close friend who had defied all the lockdown rules and was a real lifeline to me in spring 2020 casually texted in late spring 2021 to say she'd had the shots because "it's just easier" -- it felt like such a betrayal even though I know, rationally, that it wasn't personal.)
How could such people not see compliance with the mass vaccination programme as basically propping up the lockdowns and NPIs that they so despised?
The need to believe and the need to belong are among the strongest human desires. See: religion, nationalism, racism, etc. we submit to these things often to our own detriment.
I trust your judgment and your math. Jay sounds like he is the perfect candidate for the position. We’ve been waiting for a Jay to come to the rescue and we finally got him.
Aha!! If I drank wine I'd be able to do math! Just needed to be buzzed in third grade...
Heck only kidding. Sometimes with people you just need to go by their faces. Jay has an earnest sweetness and even (or more especially) the young Fauci looked ruthless.
So long ago, it seems, I read the Great Barrington Declaration and couldn't understand the absolute rabid reaction to it from our certified experts.
My only concern about Jay has been, you know, that he took the vax early on. I've said from the start and will never stop saying that it doesn't take anything more than the common sense of a HS graduate to know that anything just rolled out *cannot have been proven to be safe and effective.*
But OK. Anyone can do something dumb now and then. Decency of character trumps that.
Well, you will really laugh at this: I got the damn jabs. Why? I simply was fed up with the local Menard's lumber store insisting I wear a mask. AND: I had been brainwashed by MSM for 60 years and believed there was no downside to vaccines; they had just said a month before that it was 95% effective with no downsides mentioned, so why not?!
The irony: They still kicked me out for refusing to mask up after I got the damn jabs!
NOW, I refuse ALL vaccines even for my pets and am volcanically angry at the system that has done this to America and the whole world.
So, I made the decision regardless of my engineering degree and critical thinking . . . Just imagine being a Phd working in academia where 95% of your peers are liberal Lefties? Your brainwashing would be complete; no chance at turning around. You will take every single booster you can get.
Well, I might be older than you are and was born and raised in NY and all of my jobs were in liberal organizations and until this past November had never voted for a Republican and I confess I voted for Obama twice. And I have barely a year's worth of college credits.
But with all those demerits except one, I've read labels all my life and made careful decisions on which vaccines I thought appropriate for my child and which I did not.
And every single person dear to me has taken the vax, one fatally.
I'm no prescient genius. I just used my common sense. Of course I did have the freedom to do so, being retired and not needing to satisfy anyone else's demands.
You make a valid point, the peer pressure can be great, but there are times when you must RESIST. And this was one, and yes, I lost my employment. In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Watch their hands, watch their eyes. Read eyes. No matter what a man is saying to you, it's not as important as what you can read in his eyes. The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he's not telling you; the most important thing he has to say is what he's trying not to say.
Yes, I too remember measles and mumps as a child. Had them both as did my siblings. Don't remember ever hearing of a death associated with either one. We also played hardball in open fields, kept our guns under the bed to use unsupervised, fished out of canoes and boats without life jackets, left home without a way to contact us all day (gasp!) and rode around in cars without seatbelts. Not saying things can't be improved upon but come on. The loud minority has been using "safety" to control, tax and abuse us for far too long. Enough is enough. Grow up, take a chance and live outside in the real world.
To that I would add riding in the bed of a pickup! Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!
Did you drag along giant sippy cups of water with your explorations? I figured not. Unless it was a Boy Scout canteen I’m thinking. Early Boomer here. We would go down in the winter thaw where a huge gush of water went through a culvert and played around. I kind of shudder when I think about it now. Plus skate on socks on our empty haymow covered in slippery old linoleum where there was a drop down to a hay bailer below. We were obviously under the care of the Farm Kid Angel team.
If you weren’t still alive it would be pretty hard to comment on Substack about your experience. FWIW I’ve known two people who fell out of the back of pick ups and they went from normally functioning to very brain damaged to the point that they would unfortunately never be able to type their stories on Substack. Just because it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Survivorship bias is a thing.
This was one thing I tried to shout from the rooftops, in 2020, and nobody listened: NOBODY GETS THE BASE RATE FALLACY.
The base rate fallacy is what is going on in the posted question, and it's why you are NEVER supposed to give a medical test to someone unless you have a reason to already believe they have, or are likely to have, it. If you give a medical test to a broad section of the population who you do not have a reason to believe are at acute risk of getting the condition, false positives will dramatically outnumber true positives.
The example I used at the time was California's risk system. At some point during covid, California had a risk categorization system based on the number of cases detected the previous day. The lowest risk category required less than 2 cases detected (read: positive tests) per 100,000 people. However, given the published false positive/negative rates of the tests in use at the time, and the number of tests that people in California were taking per day, even if covid _**literally did not exist**_, the measured positive test rate in California would be 3/100k, meaning that even if the disease was fully eradicated, California's risk system would assess the risk of catching the disease as 'moderate'.
And the thing is, this isn't me, an amateur, doing 'independent research' or anything. This is me reading what all those public health officials were saying about public health policy up until March 2020. Our authorities didn't screw up. They lied. They did a complete 180 on most established global public health policies, policies that had been in place and taught for decades, without even acknowledging that they had done so. They should all hang.
Years before covid I watched some news that showed Chinese cities with people walking and a significant number wore those masks. At first, I thought they were germ-phobic, but after a few times I decided to check. I learned that those masks were useless for viruses and that pollution in cities was a heath danger and many people outside wore those masks.
Fast forward a few years and Authorities were recommending those masks to prevent wearers from getting covid.
Right the F-k then I stopped believing and trusting anyone about it. Watched and heard about every death was a covid death - motorcycle accident, covid, and each covid death would bribe the institutions something like $35,000, and I learned of the respirators killing people and knew most of the doctors were killing them on purpose - corp Hospitals likely kick-back $10 - $15 thousand for each murder, and don't act surprised - I used the medical system since 1980 with sports surgeries and the last 20 years those places are filled with man-hating lying nurses, psychopathic doctors, and money grasping administrators. ..
..When they went from 'do no harm' to 'torturing our unborn silently screaming babies' was the day every F-ing hospital and any other building that murdered babies should been burned to the ground with those Witches and Satanic minions locked inside.
But listen bastards - don't get me going or your Vag-feelies might get to quivering.
"even if covid _**literally did not exist**_, the measured positive test rate in California would be 3/100k" - you are getting closer to the truth. I argue I could create Covid-25 right now, just with testing, and iatrogenic protocols.
I appreciate your thoughts and experiences. I was sure about Jay. I’m more educated & confident now.
The grant game is why I wouldn’t pursue formalized science 40 years ago. I was crystal clear to me that it was/is corrupt. I do however love asking questions & do experiments.
I love the scientific process. It has been murdered. I’m not sure what the answer is.
Those involved in the Alzheimer scam should be prosecuted. Drugs for a cure that doesn’t exist. The side effects of these drugs are horrible.
The Alzheimer's grift is still going on. The Senate ordered an investigation into the FDA approval of one of the more recent drugs to come to market (the name escapes me at this moment).
Basically there is very weak evidence that this drug slows down the progression of the disease but it was approved on the basis of a questionable proxy (kind of how covid vaccines were approved not on the basis of whether they reduced disease burden or mortality, but on whether they generated an antibody response in recipients).
My dad was a PhD Botanist who worked for universities all his career but the last ten, after he retired from the last state university and he created a little consulting business from his home office. Published over 300 books and professional articles that are still being quoted since he died in 2009. He had professor friends when he was at University of California. One developed the big, sweet California strawberry. The university owned the patent. Dr Royce Bringhurst never got a dime or recognition for that discovery and many more. Dr S Yermanos discovered the healing properties of jojoba. Same thing - not a dime and no recognition. As it should be. You work for someone, your work is owned by that employer. I am an attorney. That is how it works. Except for these corrupt scientists at the federal trough. It needs to end now.
Excellent portrayal of science in government/government in science. There's an old adage that "what you pay attention to you get more of" - so the more potent the microscope the higher on the anxiety scale we go.
Loved to see the 1970s version of measles vs. today's version. Life was so much more laidback then. *sigh*
The constant fear generation really screws women's ability to judge and think, and these days, so many of the fatherless female-raised feelie-thinkie mind-raped castrated-psycho dog-males also. You saw the later woman scientist, acting like measles will kill 6 in 10 people. She might as well of been screaming "Grab your gonads and run Run RUN!"
Sure, you know a woman EMT that can think under pressure - I do, I'm alive because of one - but most women and a lot of men can't think their way out of a large paper-bag if they farted and wanted to avoid smelling it. Panic and brain-lock.
All of warped-covid reality old women would ask aggressively why I wasn't wearing a mask, or all upset telling me to wear one. Some overweight soy boys did that also. Those young men were too young to live in a time where I or others might have punched him in face for such behavior, but then if he was older he would be wise enough to fear enough not to risk it, because someday you might run into some man having a real bad day and he goes to town breaking arms and kicking teeth-in for that kind of crap.
After the 3rd person acts that way, I would daydream of a law that allowed you to carry a short baseball bat and to break an arm or leg in Loving correction, because she or he might run into someone like me with a bad day and then have to deal with another F-ing corpse .. but since they died of covid for that $35,000 they couldn't charge me. Death certificate says he-she died of a virus .. do I look like a virus Judge?
Great piece and I wish I was more positive but when government has power and learns it can sell it to buy votes and lucrative industry positions, it will.
Anarcho-capitalism is the only system that ends such outcomes...
Given information:
- Disease prevalence: 1/1000 (0.1%)
- False positive rate: 5%
- No other information about the individual
Step 1: Let's define our variables.
- P(D) = probability of having the disease = 0.001
- P(T|D) = probability of testing positive given the disease (sensitivity)
(I'll assume this is 100% since it wasn't specified)
- P(T|¬D) = probability of testing positive without the disease (false positive rate) = 0.05
Step 2: Use Bayes' theorem to calculate P(D|T) - the probability of having the disease given a positive test:
P(D|T) = P(T|D) × P(D) / P(T)
Where P(T) = P(T|D) × P(D) + P(T|¬D) × P(¬D)
Step 3: Calculate each component:
- P(¬D) = 1 - 0.001 = 0.999
- P(T) = 1 × 0.001 + 0.05 × 0.999 = 0.001 + 0.04995 = 0.05095
Step 4: Calculate the final probability:
P(D|T) = (1 × 0.001) / 0.05095 ≈ 0.0196 or about 1.96%
Therefore, the chance that a person who tests positive actually has the disease is only about 1.96%, despite the test having a false positive rate of just 5%. This illustrates the base rate fallacy - when the disease is rare, even a test with a low false positive rate will produce many more false positives than true positives.
Assuming that the test administrators believe all of these false positives, they have inflated the actual rate of disease by a factor of almost 20. Then they subtract (incorrectly) the 5% false positive rate from the total, and they still overestimate the rate of disease by a factor of almost 19. I have to assume that those people that I saw falling asleep in the statistics classes were pre-med.
I used to think they weren't poisoning our food to make us sick..."𝐛𝐮𝐭" this changed everything.... https://t.co/4NWnqxRjgM
I’m pretty good at math but this is a conceptual question. My senior year of high school, when my male friends were all taking prob and stat, I took my fourth year of Latin. I have often rued that choice.
Statistics is a little more difficult because it requires you to implement the correct statistical process for that particular problem. It’s not intuitive unless you spend a lot of time doing statistics.
Yes, this calculates the Positive Predictive Value of a test. The prevalence is the thing that the Covidians ignored completely in their push to test (and thus scare) everybody.
I learned how to calculate the PPV early in the Scamdemic using the method shown in a video by the Medcram guy. He's a very mainstream doctor, but this video is pretty good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSRK41UbTEU&t=140s
That was some ravishing math ya did there
I really, really glad there are people who can do that. I need a calculator to calculate restaurant tips.
AI on think mode
nah, regular mode.
I would love to know what the false positive rate was for the PCR test used during covid. . .
Imagine what the numbers would show when the calculation was run?!
It's probably not possible to know the FP rate, because there were dozens (maybe hundreds?) of PCR tests being used, and they all had a different Cycle Threshold, which is the number of amplifications. When the Ct got big, like over 35, the false positive rate got ridiculous.
The fraud wasn't the cycle threshold, it was that they didn't have a sample of the "virus" to test for. All they had was their in silico sequence. And they never proved that there was a SARS Cov2 causing disease. It was ALL false positives.
There were multiple frauds, for sure.
I've got it archived somewhere but there was data based on testing at a UK university (I think it was Oxford or Cambridge) which basically determined this.
I was about to post a similar analysis from Grok.
It's great that you broke this down. Gato can do this in his head, I could as well if I had a mind to, but this brings to mind a seminal anecdote from my childhood.
My dad "teaching" me long division.
I have to admit at times in math class being lost. It was almost as if I had been flown overseas and was sitting in a class where they were all speaking in Chinese. Part of it was just not wanting to understand, not at all curious how things work in terms of math.
Growing up, my mom helped me with English at times, correcting my spelling and to this day, I think of myself as a horrible speller. I can still hear her pronouncing words like "Californ-i-aye in my mind. But for some reason, my dad was dispatched to teach me Long Division. My dad also helped out some with Geography.
We did it in the living room as there was no TV in the family room to distract me. The living room had a distinct feeling of not being lived in. It had a baby grand piano in it, so it was for practicing. It had a table in it, so it was also for eating on special occasions, but for everyday living, that was left to the family room. This room was education. business, and decorum. And it was here I spent what felt like hours and hours.
My dad got very frustrated. It was like trying to teach a crow how to talk; this was teaching me Long Division. To this day, I don't recall what all the anger/frustration was about. Probably, he had clarity on division, and I didn't, not was I keen on really understanding.
I wish that it had been used in terms of restrictions, probabilities, and threat assessments. Like determining the likelihood I could get a food borne illness, or what the most likely way I could suffer injury (probably jumping a home made bike ramp).
You mean the same base rate fallacy that was thrown in our faces when we tried to determine those who got Covid who were completely without injection and those who had one, two, and. three injections? "You see of course more people got Covid that were injected because far more people were injected."
"Use Bayes' theorem"
I don't Believe it.
bayes rate fallacy.
LOL
You're wrong Pi, Bayes theorem is real!
You just made A/I look even more retarded than it already is. Thanks!
Nice work. I can never remember Bayes theorem
And this is exactly why I won't mail my poop to Kaiser. From what I have read, their testing is kicking back at least 10% false positives.
They missed my sister's cancer!
Grok rocks !
THANKS!
I’ve followed Dr. Bhattacharya early on when he was a sole voice against the lock downs. Then after the Great Barrington Declaration being dissed by the media, and him being censured along with Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, I knew he was someone to listen to and follow. So happy he will head up the NIH!!!
Jay was and is amazing. He was exactly the opposite of Fauci and Collins throughout the pandemic: data driven, principled, and courageous. He could have easily played the "go along to get along" game like the majority of his peers, but his willingness to speak up was inspirational.
The only bad thing about his appointment is that it comes five years too late. The country would have been far better off if he had been in charge of the NIH at the beginning of the pandemic.
I'm not sure that's true.
5 yrs ago the nation was UNWILLING to listen to anyone other than the "EXPERTS." Today is very different in that people are DEMANDING change, truth and accountability.
He is just the man to deliver. May it be so.
There were plenty of people willing to fight, but the problem was that they were not supported by anyone in a position of power. Someone like Jay at NIH would have broken the illusion of consensus of the "experts". That illusion, reinforced by politicized corporate media, was why the US had one of the worst pandemic policies in the entire developed world.
Just look at Sweden & Florida: Anders Tegnell, at great personal cost, singlehandedly managed to keep Sweden from falling for the lockdown hysteria of every other Western country. DeSantis did the same thing for Florida by actually following the data and quickly taking the state out of lockdown. A single leader can make a massive difference.
True - dr Tegnell helped to keep a lid on media hysteria.
An anecdote about that: while Trump was still in office, our media (having given themselves full-blown TDS) downplayed Covid as a big nothing unless you belonged to a risk-group (HIV-patients f.e.).
DN, Sweden's wannabe NYT morning paper even sent a group of people to Italy to meet and talk with the first groups of Italians and Chinese that had fallen ill, just to prove how much of a nothing-burger Covid was.
Then came Jan 6, and Trump was out, and they all flipped on a dime and Covid was the new Black Death according to the media.
That dr Tegnell could stand against that speaks volumes of his character. Sadly, his reward was to be unpersoned late in the "pandemic", when delegates from the EU/WEF, such as Ursula von der Leyen held an emergency summit with our government, all under secrecy. Immediately after that meeting, dr Tegnell was replaced and he went from being in the press daily, to not being seen at all.
Currently, the WEF and the pharmaceutical capitalists are lobbying hard for Sweden to amend its laws on pandemics/epidemics. My guess is, *they* don't want to risk a repeat of the embarrassment we became to the Covidian narrative.
Actually, I had measles back in 1967 or 68. And the way it was viewed in the that Brady Bunch video is exactly the way I viewed it at the time. In fact, I still view it that way . . .
We were made to go play with whatever neighbor kids caught the latest thing. I was sent across the street specifically to catch the Mumps and the German Measles. I remember seeing Peter Pan on TV in my darkened bedroom and getting allowed to watch it was like getting a papal dispensation. I remember this clearly because under normal circumstances I was not allowed to play with these specific neighbor kids. Unclear if it was because of the BB gun incident or the rope a kid off their bicycle like Roy Rogers situation. Things were different in the mid 1960s. Latchkey kids would be shocked into a therapy session lol
In 1957-59, my cousins lived next door and my mother took my brother and me to play with them when they had chicken pox. We were all sick for a few days and got over it. Same with measles.
I got all 3 - measles/mumps/chknpox, not in that order, but all within a 3-5 year span when I was around 6 (71-72ish)
Missed out on mumps. Sister had whooping cough. Hearing her upstairs with that particular cough was scary. She always got everything.
My vaccinated son got whooping cough. It's a horrible sound. But it was the waking point for me. Why was he vaccinated if it didn't prevent him from getting it? I was told it was 85% effective.
My sister had it. Way in the 50s. It is indeed a horrible, scary sound.
I never had chickenpox but I remember when my mom did, I was allowed to drink a whole 16 ounce bottle of Pepsi all by myself and without any negotiations! It was the first and last time too. Mom was sick as a dog and I took as much advantage of it as humanly possible
Hope you don't get it as an adult, it's horrible. If you hear of ny kids getting it, stay miles away from them.
I remember a girl at college telling me that when she was a kid there were parties to help kids get one of those ailments - but I didn't see that in my childhood.
I can add, by the way, that when I had measles I wasn't watching anything on TV, because we didn't have a TV. (And strangely enough, about 30 years ago, I decided I didn't want one and have not had one since. A good way to maintain sanity.)
Let's not forget the chicken pox parties. Went to one of those, too.
True herd immunity gatherings IMO
I remember the measles specifically because of that little TV, or “idiot box” as it was called in our house. It was good while it lasted and that wasn’t for very long lol
Oh, John .. no TV?!
Then you didn't watch Jonney Quest?
Holy Cow - what did that do to you - play with sister's dolls?
Heathy JQ caused me to play with dolls - GI Joe.
He never survived more than a few days because of fiery deaths - his plastic bag and string parashoot would get covered in gasoline and lit on fire and thrown off a cliff near house, or shoe-box spaceship soaked in gas and so imitate a too rapid entry into atmosphere and burn and melt ..
https://youtu.be/7gNBFmlNUfM?t=7
.. then I'd look for my sister's Ken, she never knew the exciting deaths her Ken's went through - but Ken didn't seem to enjoy them as much as GI-Joe.
Light in loafers? Whatever - not willing to charge into dragon's fire with lance to save the Lady, .. he had too much fear of death, no-matter how much I explain that we all die, and today is as good a day as any.
Since my divorce-rape I've had no TV either. That was maybe .. near death 3 coma was a few days before Huracan Katrenia hit. While dead I knew of it coming and that the world would see that FEMA was a paper department where all the yearly cash went somewhere else, and that was same situation through most Federal Gov.
Divorce was maybe a year or year+half later.
I heard about those "parties", but sadly never saw or attended one in person. Heard the parents talk about them though
I wuz born in 66, got the measles around 71, back then, nobody channeled their inner 'karen' to protest the treatment recommendations (Thanks for that!!) and we all got better in a few days and went back to school
We got ginger ale when we got measles. Huge treat for the early 50’s. My other memory was mom closing the drapes.
Yes! My brother and I wore sunglasses in the house when we had measles! Great memories:)
I would have loved a pair of sunglasses. Red ones. 😎😎.
The Transnational captured MSM, their main weapon against sanity, is not done yet.
The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.
Henry Adams
Yep. Had chicken pox circa '69 and measles maybe a year or so later. My sister and I probably caught it at school from the other students who all had their turn to be out of classes a few days.
I had measles in 1964 and i totalky agree with your view .... it was the standard ... amd I still believe it now!
A lot depends on your personal experience, my grandma got measles meningitis, almost died, missed almost a full year of school being basically bed ridden. She did eventually fully recover but it was far from a sure thing. She was pretty darn excited to be able to get her kids a measles shot. I don’t think that panic over measles is the answer but it’s not always benign either, studies vary but it seems the fatality rate for measles is somewhere between
1 and 3 in 1000 (measles cases) with the encephalitis/meningitis rate being approximately 1 in 1000 measles cases.
same
Gato, giving credit where credit is due, we should remember that Jeffrey Tucker (now of Brownstone) was the guy who had the chutzpah to publish the GBD -- otherwise it would have moldered unrecognized forever. Taking nothing away from Jay and his two co-authors, Tucker published, lost his job, and was otherwise repeatedly punished for doing the right thing. It takes all kinds of bravery to fight the system. In this case it required both free speech and broad reach.
jeffrey is another friend i made during covid and a stand up guy.
brownstone is the only outlet i allow to capitalize my pieces when they publish them.
One of my first sources of truth, but you came before that. 😸
Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.
George Orwell
Jeffrey Tucker fanboi
Lol...no one's fanboi. But too little credit given to some folks who should be recognized. Many beyond Tucker, but when one talks about GBD, there is not one without him -- he organized the meeting, helped the document come together, and published it when prohibited from doing so. You don't need to be a fanboi to realize that should be recognized. This seems a decent place to do so.
No - meant me. I'm the JT fanboi.
This is one my favorites: Sharyl Atkinson interviews Jeffrey Tucker about the new "improved" eco-friendly fan cans.
also just yesterday finished reading the Brownstone review of the Covid response five years on. Really very good summation and for many people would be full of new information, maybe not so much gato's crowd. But well worth the (long) read. The first part is here
https://brownstone.org/articles/covid-response-at-five-years-introduction/
there's a 27 minute voice recording if you can stand those canned voices.
I did not know that!
Thanks Dr K.
Brownstone became a beacon of truth to me.
Where was Tucker working at the time?
Not my country but if you guys could extricate your NIH from the military that would be cool with us and a bunch of other countries too.
Yes, Fauci was the fall guy in Covid, and we know some of his money came from the DARPA sources. The “jail Fauci“ narrative seems misdirected (a limited hang?) because insiders have long identified Birx and the intel/military as orchestrating the operation from the beginning.
The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
And let's not forget the pandemic priming excersizes like Dark Winter, event 201, pacific rim job etc. also the fact that like Monsanto was compelled by US emergency law to make Agent Orange we have the Pharma companies including Pfizer who benefitted financially but were nonetheless compelled (forced) to manufacture 'Gene therapies' under OTA for the Emergency Use. The military DoD ran the whole thing from my research. Latypova and Watt have all the receipts as well as Debbie Lerman amongst many others
I think it's more like extricating our military from our NIH and just about half of the other government departments.
But, with all due respect, why did Dr. Bhattacharya repeatedly recommend that the elderly should get the injections, even continuing to do so not too long ago, if I'm not mistaken? If the Covid injections are not safe for younger cohorts, what makes them OK for the elderly crowd, especially when we have known for quite some time now that they are neither safe nor effective?
substack does not allow me to "like". I like your post. In my circle I've lost many "Elderly" friends to that Warp Speed Concoction!
It really does boggle the mind but the injections seem to have fooled dozens and dozens of super smart, otherwise sensible people "on our side".
I have several friends IRL who got fooled. They were vehemently anti-lockdown but lined up to get jabbed -- one even became a volunteer vaccinator and told me he did it "so we could be done with the whole thing and move on".
I've never understood this position. How could you see the lies so clearly (I'm talking from early March or thereabouts) and correctly assess the (lack of) danger faced, but then also go on to see the vaccines as a net good? Or even to be neutral about them and shoulder-shruggingly submit to a couple doses for the sake of "ending it quicker" or being able to go abroad or what-have-you? (I'm telling you, I got flustered and teary-eyed when a close friend who had defied all the lockdown rules and was a real lifeline to me in spring 2020 casually texted in late spring 2021 to say she'd had the shots because "it's just easier" -- it felt like such a betrayal even though I know, rationally, that it wasn't personal.)
How could such people not see compliance with the mass vaccination programme as basically propping up the lockdowns and NPIs that they so despised?
The need to believe and the need to belong are among the strongest human desires. See: religion, nationalism, racism, etc. we submit to these things often to our own detriment.
I trust your judgment and your math. Jay sounds like he is the perfect candidate for the position. We’ve been waiting for a Jay to come to the rescue and we finally got him.
"I trust your judgment and your math."
Ahem - THE Maths™
Correction duly noted! Everybody and everything lies except the maths. Maths are dependable
Indeed they are.
Isn't that how we ended up with a $36T debt - trust "The Math"?
#TeamSnoutsInTrough
Aha!! If I drank wine I'd be able to do math! Just needed to be buzzed in third grade...
Heck only kidding. Sometimes with people you just need to go by their faces. Jay has an earnest sweetness and even (or more especially) the young Fauci looked ruthless.
So long ago, it seems, I read the Great Barrington Declaration and couldn't understand the absolute rabid reaction to it from our certified experts.
My only concern about Jay has been, you know, that he took the vax early on. I've said from the start and will never stop saying that it doesn't take anything more than the common sense of a HS graduate to know that anything just rolled out *cannot have been proven to be safe and effective.*
But OK. Anyone can do something dumb now and then. Decency of character trumps that.
Well, you will really laugh at this: I got the damn jabs. Why? I simply was fed up with the local Menard's lumber store insisting I wear a mask. AND: I had been brainwashed by MSM for 60 years and believed there was no downside to vaccines; they had just said a month before that it was 95% effective with no downsides mentioned, so why not?!
The irony: They still kicked me out for refusing to mask up after I got the damn jabs!
NOW, I refuse ALL vaccines even for my pets and am volcanically angry at the system that has done this to America and the whole world.
So, I made the decision regardless of my engineering degree and critical thinking . . . Just imagine being a Phd working in academia where 95% of your peers are liberal Lefties? Your brainwashing would be complete; no chance at turning around. You will take every single booster you can get.
Well, I might be older than you are and was born and raised in NY and all of my jobs were in liberal organizations and until this past November had never voted for a Republican and I confess I voted for Obama twice. And I have barely a year's worth of college credits.
But with all those demerits except one, I've read labels all my life and made careful decisions on which vaccines I thought appropriate for my child and which I did not.
And every single person dear to me has taken the vax, one fatally.
I'm no prescient genius. I just used my common sense. Of course I did have the freedom to do so, being retired and not needing to satisfy anyone else's demands.
You make a valid point, the peer pressure can be great, but there are times when you must RESIST. And this was one, and yes, I lost my employment. In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Thomas Jefferson
I completely understand. I am sorry you still had to wear that damn mask . . . and the poison shots
I thought the same. It doesn’t fit. I can’t explain it.
Sometimes good caring people are desperate for a remedy for a bad thing. But emotion is best kept out of scientific matters.
Watch their hands, watch their eyes. Read eyes. No matter what a man is saying to you, it's not as important as what you can read in his eyes. The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he's not telling you; the most important thing he has to say is what he's trying not to say.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Yes, I too remember measles and mumps as a child. Had them both as did my siblings. Don't remember ever hearing of a death associated with either one. We also played hardball in open fields, kept our guns under the bed to use unsupervised, fished out of canoes and boats without life jackets, left home without a way to contact us all day (gasp!) and rode around in cars without seatbelts. Not saying things can't be improved upon but come on. The loud minority has been using "safety" to control, tax and abuse us for far too long. Enough is enough. Grow up, take a chance and live outside in the real world.
To that I would add riding in the bed of a pickup! Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!
Hunter S. Thompson
...aaahhh, yes, riding in the bed of a pickup on a beautiful summer day!!
Did you drag along giant sippy cups of water with your explorations? I figured not. Unless it was a Boy Scout canteen I’m thinking. Early Boomer here. We would go down in the winter thaw where a huge gush of water went through a culvert and played around. I kind of shudder when I think about it now. Plus skate on socks on our empty haymow covered in slippery old linoleum where there was a drop down to a hay bailer below. We were obviously under the care of the Farm Kid Angel team.
all of that!
ME too. Somehow I still live.
If you weren’t still alive it would be pretty hard to comment on Substack about your experience. FWIW I’ve known two people who fell out of the back of pick ups and they went from normally functioning to very brain damaged to the point that they would unfortunately never be able to type their stories on Substack. Just because it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Survivorship bias is a thing.
> here’s a dozy:
This was one thing I tried to shout from the rooftops, in 2020, and nobody listened: NOBODY GETS THE BASE RATE FALLACY.
The base rate fallacy is what is going on in the posted question, and it's why you are NEVER supposed to give a medical test to someone unless you have a reason to already believe they have, or are likely to have, it. If you give a medical test to a broad section of the population who you do not have a reason to believe are at acute risk of getting the condition, false positives will dramatically outnumber true positives.
The example I used at the time was California's risk system. At some point during covid, California had a risk categorization system based on the number of cases detected the previous day. The lowest risk category required less than 2 cases detected (read: positive tests) per 100,000 people. However, given the published false positive/negative rates of the tests in use at the time, and the number of tests that people in California were taking per day, even if covid _**literally did not exist**_, the measured positive test rate in California would be 3/100k, meaning that even if the disease was fully eradicated, California's risk system would assess the risk of catching the disease as 'moderate'.
And the thing is, this isn't me, an amateur, doing 'independent research' or anything. This is me reading what all those public health officials were saying about public health policy up until March 2020. Our authorities didn't screw up. They lied. They did a complete 180 on most established global public health policies, policies that had been in place and taught for decades, without even acknowledging that they had done so. They should all hang.
THAT is a really important point:
You don't even give the test to someone without strong symptoms.
AND,
result is "false conclusions" when you give the test "wholesale" to a population.
Years before covid I watched some news that showed Chinese cities with people walking and a significant number wore those masks. At first, I thought they were germ-phobic, but after a few times I decided to check. I learned that those masks were useless for viruses and that pollution in cities was a heath danger and many people outside wore those masks.
Fast forward a few years and Authorities were recommending those masks to prevent wearers from getting covid.
Right the F-k then I stopped believing and trusting anyone about it. Watched and heard about every death was a covid death - motorcycle accident, covid, and each covid death would bribe the institutions something like $35,000, and I learned of the respirators killing people and knew most of the doctors were killing them on purpose - corp Hospitals likely kick-back $10 - $15 thousand for each murder, and don't act surprised - I used the medical system since 1980 with sports surgeries and the last 20 years those places are filled with man-hating lying nurses, psychopathic doctors, and money grasping administrators. ..
..When they went from 'do no harm' to 'torturing our unborn silently screaming babies' was the day every F-ing hospital and any other building that murdered babies should been burned to the ground with those Witches and Satanic minions locked inside.
But listen bastards - don't get me going or your Vag-feelies might get to quivering.
Ok?
With you there, Steven.
"even if covid _**literally did not exist**_, the measured positive test rate in California would be 3/100k" - you are getting closer to the truth. I argue I could create Covid-25 right now, just with testing, and iatrogenic protocols.
I appreciate your thoughts and experiences. I was sure about Jay. I’m more educated & confident now.
The grant game is why I wouldn’t pursue formalized science 40 years ago. I was crystal clear to me that it was/is corrupt. I do however love asking questions & do experiments.
I love the scientific process. It has been murdered. I’m not sure what the answer is.
Those involved in the Alzheimer scam should be prosecuted. Drugs for a cure that doesn’t exist. The side effects of these drugs are horrible.
KUDOS! I remember those "Old School Docs". When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
H. L. Mencken
The Alzheimer's grift is still going on. The Senate ordered an investigation into the FDA approval of one of the more recent drugs to come to market (the name escapes me at this moment).
Basically there is very weak evidence that this drug slows down the progression of the disease but it was approved on the basis of a questionable proxy (kind of how covid vaccines were approved not on the basis of whether they reduced disease burden or mortality, but on whether they generated an antibody response in recipients).
My dad was a PhD Botanist who worked for universities all his career but the last ten, after he retired from the last state university and he created a little consulting business from his home office. Published over 300 books and professional articles that are still being quoted since he died in 2009. He had professor friends when he was at University of California. One developed the big, sweet California strawberry. The university owned the patent. Dr Royce Bringhurst never got a dime or recognition for that discovery and many more. Dr S Yermanos discovered the healing properties of jojoba. Same thing - not a dime and no recognition. As it should be. You work for someone, your work is owned by that employer. I am an attorney. That is how it works. Except for these corrupt scientists at the federal trough. It needs to end now.
yep, I worked for a large Fortune 100 company for 40 years:
THEY own my IP, period.
I get a plaque to hang on the wall.
My heart is so happy that the bad cat and Dr Jay are friends! And I agree with your assessments and advice.
Excellent portrayal of science in government/government in science. There's an old adage that "what you pay attention to you get more of" - so the more potent the microscope the higher on the anxiety scale we go.
Loved to see the 1970s version of measles vs. today's version. Life was so much more laidback then. *sigh*
The constant fear generation really screws women's ability to judge and think, and these days, so many of the fatherless female-raised feelie-thinkie mind-raped castrated-psycho dog-males also. You saw the later woman scientist, acting like measles will kill 6 in 10 people. She might as well of been screaming "Grab your gonads and run Run RUN!"
Sure, you know a woman EMT that can think under pressure - I do, I'm alive because of one - but most women and a lot of men can't think their way out of a large paper-bag if they farted and wanted to avoid smelling it. Panic and brain-lock.
All of warped-covid reality old women would ask aggressively why I wasn't wearing a mask, or all upset telling me to wear one. Some overweight soy boys did that also. Those young men were too young to live in a time where I or others might have punched him in face for such behavior, but then if he was older he would be wise enough to fear enough not to risk it, because someday you might run into some man having a real bad day and he goes to town breaking arms and kicking teeth-in for that kind of crap.
After the 3rd person acts that way, I would daydream of a law that allowed you to carry a short baseball bat and to break an arm or leg in Loving correction, because she or he might run into someone like me with a bad day and then have to deal with another F-ing corpse .. but since they died of covid for that $35,000 they couldn't charge me. Death certificate says he-she died of a virus .. do I look like a virus Judge?
Great piece and I wish I was more positive but when government has power and learns it can sell it to buy votes and lucrative industry positions, it will.
Anarcho-capitalism is the only system that ends such outcomes...
I am a big fan of Dr. Bhattacharya and wish him well. America needs guys like him.