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Comment by __blockcipher__ | Hacker News Reader

> If that is true, what is remarkable is the low death rate.

Not sure what the implied IFR of your scenario is, but FWIW John Ioannidis has the global IFR at .15%. Furthermore SARS-2 is so incredibly age stratified wrt risk (something we conveniently ignore in public health mandates) that non-1st-world countries can have incredibly low death rates since fewer people survive to old age (and there is relatively less prevalence of diseases of modernity). Whereas the data I’ve seen for the increases in global poverty, child starvation, missed medical appointments and missed [non-COVID] vaccinations is staggering. Yet another cost of a one-size-fits-all approach taken across the globe.

Take a look through a dataset of COVID deaths and you’ll notice something that gets lip service but isn’t talked about nearly enough:

https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/widgets/3trz-enys

Diseases of modernity.

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> John Ioannidis

Not a credible source.

Literally wrote one of the most famous evidence-based papers in the world about why most interventions don’t work. But Gibbon1 said he’s not a credible source because he doesn’t like his conclusions even though he works with the WHO to publish global SARS/2 IFR research. Got it, I’ll perform a bayesian update with this new info.

...Hmm, weird, my posteriors didn’t change at all.

His paper early in 2020 showing high levels of infection in Santa Clara County was hot garbage.

The man is a total and complete embarrassment.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-the-heck-happened-to-j...

Ioannidis has made claims of very low IFRs throughout the pandemic. If you go look at hard hit areas though, the population fatality rate is higher than his infection fatality rate. Just as one example, New Jersey has close to a 0.3% population fatality rate. If Ioannidis were correct, that would imply that every person in New Jersey had been infected twice.

Ioannidis may have had some very interesting ideas, but his data analysis on COVID has simply been shown to be incorrect.

You’re comparing global IFR to a specific region. Not the same claim. US mortality is worse because of our extensive diseases of modernity and decent proportion of elderly.

Furthermore you are assuming that the excess deaths are solely attributable to COVID-19. The truth is not even close.

No, I'm talking about confirmed COVID deaths.

Ioandis' original study was in Santa Clara County, CA, where they estimated 0.17%. I don't see how New Jersey, for example, materially differs in a relevant way in terms of population statistics from Santa Clara.

I would also note that New Jersey STILL has a high COVID case rate, even with 47% of the population vaccinated. They did not achieve herd immunity with their 0.3% death rate, because far less than 100% of the population has gotten COVID, so the IFR is very obviously significantly higher than 0.3%.

They made a prediction, the prediction was wrong. It's clearly motivated reasoning, because the authors on these studies have had policy prescriptions since the very beginning that depend on COVID not being very dangerous.

Unfortunately reality is not required to adhere to a particular set of political views, and arguing with a virus is not effective.

> I don't see how New Jersey, for example, materially differs in a relevant way in terms of population statistics from Santa Clara.

Yea clearly a science-minded person wouldn't be able to find a plethora of different variables between populations on opposite sides of the country.

Let's just assume they're homogeneous. /s

So what is the materially relevant difference then?

> Ioandis' original study was in Santa Clara County, CA, where they estimated 0.17%. I don't see how New Jersey, for example, materially differs in a relevant way in terms of population statistics from Santa Clara.

I doubt it emerged early enough for this to be specifically relevant to the study in question, but something like the more-transmissible-but-less-deadly California variant would be a pretty big differentiator between California and New Jersey.

It didn’t.

Ah ok!

The esteemed internet silhouette Gibbon1 informs us that the credentialed expert John Ioannidis is not credible.

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