Shark Attacks and 38% Infection Fatality Rate
Fear in Australia has been dialled up way past 11.
Let me start of by saying that Chris Kenny is a rare creature in Australia.
A journalist in the truest sense of the word, standing up for me and my fellow citizens against the MGM Triad (Medical-Government-Media). I have nothing but respect for what he is doing, if Australia had 100 Chris Kenny’s (or even 20) over the last 18 months, it would be a different place today. Chris recently (3rd July 21) wrote a great piece in The Australian:
Coronavirus: We’re being held hostage by fear and lies
(Sorry about the paywall. The Australian thinks its paper is worth $500 pa, it’s not. But they do occasionally have a good piece worth reading, less so lately).
38% Infection Fatality Rate
This is the most important excerpt from Chris’s article:
Research company True North tested perceptions of the virus this week and found that two-thirds of respondents (67 per cent) believed the Indian, or Delta, virus was both more contagious and more deadly than earlier strains – the reality is that it is more contagious but less deadly (only 26 per cent got that right).
The survey also asked respondents to rate their chances of dying if they were infected with the Delta variant. Older respondents rated the risk slightly higher, and the young a little lower, but the average response was an astonishing 38 per cent.
That is an extreme case fatality rate – approaching that of Ebola – which is ironic because my throwaway line on television for more than a year has been to remind people, we are not dealing with Ebola. Yet this is the intensity of threat that much of the population thinks we face.
Chris makes the mistake of describing an answer to an IFR question as a CFR, a mistake he shouldn’t be making by now, but forgiven he is.
The absolutely STUNNING number that blew me away was that Australians think the virus, and specifically version Delta, will kill 38% of those infected with it. If you had asked me to guess I would have said the public fear had been dialed up to an IFR of 15% (actual global IFR is 0.15% and lower still in Australia), but I would have been wrong.
I have no words really.
I must sit in awe of the MGM Triad’s ability to dial the fear up to 38% (way past 11). I didn’t think that degree of manufactured societal disconnect with reality was possible. But it is, and it explains everything currently happening in Australia and specifically in NSW at the moment.
Shark Attacks
I live in Australia, so I want to talk about shark attacks a bit.
This is a great recent headline from our wonderful, click baiting, fear mongering, press:
Australia deadliest country in world for shark attacks in 2020
It’s hard to imagine how anyone could get into the water with a headline like that.
But, if you bother to read the article, it turns out:
In 2020, shark attacks decreased for the third consecutive year, falling to 57 unprovoked bites worldwide, compared with 64 bites in 2019 and 66 in 2018, according to the annual summary issued by the University of Florida's International Shark Attack File (ISAF).
But 2020 proved to be the deadliest year since 2013, with 12 bites resulting in fatalities, up from the average of four per year.
So, apparently there were 57 “unprovoked” attacks IN THE WHOLE WORLD, and it was a ONE THIRD REDUCTION from 2019. I do wonder though, who goes around “provoking” sharks, but I digress.
12 deaths in the whole world and 8 deaths in Australia in 2020, compared to ZERO the previous year and 1 each in 2017 and 2018.
So, 10 deaths in Australia over 4 years, or 2.5 per year. Looks like the running average is about in line with previous years. I wonder if locking down the country and preventing people from going to work, meant they spent a lot more time at the beach, and hence the jump in attacks. I wonder whether these attacks are from or with Covid…or maybe it’s due to climate change…just riffing out loud…
So, an average of 2.5 deaths pa in Oz is 1 per 10m people. Although not everyone swims in the ocean, so the death rate would rise based on “Swimmers”, but then those that swim do so multiple times which would make the death rate collapse against “Swims” rather than “Swimmers”. This from The Australian again on 30 April 2020:
There are few figures available on the surge in popularity in ocean swimming — it's a loosely organised sport with informal groups of enthusiasts and no national body. Swimming Australia says five million Australians swim regularly and 3.1 million of them hit the water at least weekly for fitness or recreation.
I am going to be pedantic, but please humour me.
If 3.1m swam weekly, and 1.9m swam 6 times a year, that is a total of 172m SWIMS pa in Australia. So, death by shark attack would be 1 death per 69m SWIMS.
But let’s do the maths based on SWIMMERS, of which we have 5m. So, the death rate by shark attack in Australia is 1 death per 2m SWIMMERS.
You will see now why I am labouring the point.
253x Amplification
The IFR of Covid is 0.15% (less for version Delta). That is 150 per 100,000 infections. But the public have been led to believe that the IFR of Delta is 38%, which would mean 38,000 deaths per 100,000.
So, let’s pause here for a moment.
The truth (that the MGM Triad know) is that out of 100,000 infections you can expect 150 deaths (average age of death in Oz is 85, and almost all are in high dependency aged care), but they have disassociated the public from reality and led them to believe that it’s 38,000 out of 100,000. That is a 253x amplification and distortion.
If you amplified shark attack deaths by 253x you would take the 2.5 deaths pa average and end up with 632 deaths per annum.
Now, please pause here again.
Imagine a world where 12 people actually died EACH WEEK from shark attacks in Australia. Imagine what that level of fear would look and feel like.
· How many people would go to the beach?
· How many tourists would travel to Australia to visit our “Beaches of Death”?
· How many surfers would the country have?
· How many surf boards would get made and sold?
· How many nippers’ programs for the kids would there be?
· How many…? I could go on and on…
What a barren world that would be.
Now imagine a world where you realise the MGM lied to you and it wasn’t true. That only 2.5 people died, not 632).
· How would you feel about the liars?
· Would you feel any shame for being sucked into the lie?
· Would you feel any regret for allowing yourself to be a fear transmitter to your kids, your family, and your friends?
· Would you feel any grief for the opportunities and memories lost because you didn’t take your kids to the beach, you didn’t teach them to swim and surf, you didn’t make sandcastles or have them dig a hole and bury you in it.
· Would you apologise to yourself or anyone else for falling for it?
· Would you believe anything the liars said, every again?
Fear is real and has real consequences. It is as real as the chair you are sitting in right now and reading this. Don’t be conned into thinking that invisible things are not real.
You have an obligation to yourself first and foremost to be grounded around truth. To know the shape of it at least. Lies, and their variants, that float in the air, need to die with you, not to be echoed and amplified to others.
Thanks Frank - another great piece - here is the Kenny article for those who could get behind the paywall
Coronavirus: We’re being held hostage by fear and lies
CHRIS KENNY
Police inspect cars at a Border Check Point on Indian Ocean Drive, north of Perth. Picture: Getty
12:00AM JULY 3, 2021514
The nation has Stockholm syndrome. And we have it bad. Pandemic emergency powers, unnecessary lockdowns and restrictions are empowering politicians, bureaucrats and police, who have been stymieing businesses, creating trauma for families and stifling communities. Yet they are cheered on by many of their victims.
Premiers are applauded for confining millions of people to their homes, deliberately fomenting fear and loathing in response to handfuls of infections – or even one – and chief health officers are lionised for telling us not to sing, dance, or drink while standing up. And the people whose lifestyles and livelihoods are being sacrificed cheer loudly – next, they will bob up robbing banks with the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Fear is the driver, and it is exploited mercilessly. The premiers and health officers talk about a “beast” of a virus, they say we risk “catastrophic” consequences, the virus could “run wild” and they insist our country is a “tinderbox” waiting to be ignited by Covid-19.
Long queues of people are seen at the NSW Vaccination Centre in Homebush in Sydney. Picture: Getty
Long queues of people are seen at the NSW Vaccination Centre in Homebush in Sydney. Picture: Getty
Media lap it up. They lead bulletins with daily infection counts, without stressing the lack of symptoms in most cases, the low numbers of hospitalised patients, the absence of fatalities, or the fact that virtually all the vulnerable have either had at least their first vaccine jab or opted not to, and that the virus poses only a mild threat to everyone else, even as they, too, are steadily vaccinated.
Polling underscores how this scaremongering has created public perceptions that are dramatically at odds with reality.
Research company True North tested perceptions of the virus this week and found that two-thirds of respondents (67 per cent) believed the Indian, or Delta, virus was both more contagious and more deadly than earlier strains – the reality is that it is more contagious but less deadly (only 26 per cent got that right).
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The survey also asked respondents to rate their chances of dying if they were infected with the Delta variant. Older respondents rated the risk slightly higher, and the young a little lower, but the average response was an astonishing 38 per cent.
That is an extreme case fatality rate – approaching that of ebola – which is ironic because my throwaway line on television for more than a year has been to remind people we are not dealing with ebola. Yet this is the intensity of threat that much of the population thinks we face.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman
Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman
Covid-19 case fatality rates are about 3 per cent in Australia, where the virus has been contained, and in developed European and North American countries that have been hit hard. But the chances of a vaccinated elderly person or unvaccinated young adult dying from a Covid-19 infection now is about 1 per cent, or less – but political and media posturing has convinced us that the threat is at least 38 times worse than reality.
No wonder the politicians are being cheered for lockdowns and border closures. No wonder their claims to be keeping us safe are not mocked more widely.
This ill-informed paranoia leads to lockdowns of millions of people on the back of a case or two, as we have seen three times in Perth, as well as in Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. At the time of writing more than 12 million Australians were locked down with small clusters of infections around the country amounting to fewer than 350 active cases (including about 100 in hotel quarantine), mainly asymptomatic, or with mild symptoms, and only two patients in critical care beds.
Yet politicians continue to heighten fears to justify their responses and strengthen their standing. Never mind that previous lockdowns were demonstrably superfluous, South Australian Premier Steven Marshall said people in his state should be relieved when he resisted the temptation to impose a lockdown this week based on five infections from a known source, in one family, in isolation.
Over the following two days there were zero infections. Health workers were relegated to handling a family dog as a possible positive case.
This is not absurdist theatre, it is real life, and given I write from Adelaide this week I can tell you that people are not gathering in the streets to overthrow such embarrassing, panicky and heartless governance; rather, they acclaim it, and exalt a chief health officer who describes the vaccination threshold at which lockdowns are put behind us as a “minor point” and denies that Covid-19 is only a mild threat to healthy adults outside vulnerable categories.
These people locked down the whole state last November based on some nonsense about a contaminated pizza box yet still the local media hang on their every word as gospel. My questioning of the Premier and his chief health adviser was described by a local radio host as a “verbal assault” – media peddling panic but eschewing scrutiny.
Apart from the politicians and bureaucrats, clearly the main problem is media. Most media, especially free media, provides mainly Chicken Little versions of the pandemic. Large swathes of the population would not even know that esteemed experts have a much more benign and practical assessment of the medical threat, and pragmatic ideas about how to deal with it.
More people need to hear sober analysis from the experts that provide insights in media such as this newspaper or Sky News. This sounds like self-promotion, and in a way it is, but it is an undeniable reality that most media have taken an alarmist position on the pandemic from the start, denying crucial information to audiences and failing to scrutinise over the top responses.
Expert dissenting opinions are what the public needs to hear, such as Perth’s Dr Clay Gollege, an infectious diseases physician who bells the cat on superfluous lockdowns. “I think we’ve become a country that is so plagued by irrational fear, we are so scared of the virus, we’re scared of the vaccines, or at least one of the vaccines anyway, I think we’ve lost perspective on things,” he told me this week.
Gollege said this week’s lockdown in Western Australia was an “over-reaction” that could have been dealt with by contact tracing. “I just think it is not necessary to take draconian measures that we keep on doing,” he said. “We can do it in a more scientific, controlled way and stop being so frightened of a virus that really isn’t killing people, and we can just get on with things.”
Likewise Australian National University pathologist Peter Collignon has been a beacon of cautious and practical analysis for the past 18 months. “The available evidence is that it is not more deadly,” Collignon said of the Delta variant this week, “if you actually look at the figures from the UK it’s got a lower mortality rate.”