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2020-04-17 Science & Technology
Israeli Professor Shows Virus Follows Fixed Pattern
[Townhall] Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University, who also serves on the research and development advisory board for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, plotted the rates of new coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
infections of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italia, Israel, Switzerland
...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell...
, La Belle France, Germany, and Spain. The numbers told a shocking story: irrespective of whether the country quarantined like Israel, or went about business as usual like Sweden, coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way. In the exact, same, way. His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week.

Continued from Page 4



The Wuhan Virus follows its own pattern, he told Mako, an Israeli news agency. It is a fixed pattern that is not dependent on freedom or quarantine. "There is a decline in the number of infections even [in countries] without closures, and it is similar to the countries with closures," he wrote in his paper.

"Is the coronavirus expansion exponential? The answer by the numbers is simple: no. Expansion begins exponentially but fades quickly after about eight weeks," Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel concluded. The reason why coronavirus follows a fixed pattern is yet unknown. "I have no explanation," he told Mako, "There are is kinds of speculation: maybe it's climate-related, maybe the virus has its own life cycle."

But what about Italia and their staggering 12% mortality rate? "The health system in Italia has its own problems. It has nothing to do with coronavirus. In 2017 it also collapsed because of the flu," Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel told the news agency. Indeed, Italia’s exceptionally high coronavirus mortality rate is eerily reminiscent of their unusually high flu mortality rates. Supportive of this theory, Germany, has low flu infection and mortality rates and similarly low coronavirus rates.

Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel concludes in his analysis summary paper that the data from the past 50 days indicates that the closure policies of the quarantine countries can be replaced by more moderate social distancing policies. The numbers simply do not support quarantine or economic closure.

On the reasonableness of Israel’s unprecedented quarantine and closure, he commented to the news agency, "I think it's mass hysteria. I have no other way to describe it. 4,500 people die each year from the flu in Israel because of complications, so close the country because of that? No. I don't see a reason to do it because of a lower-risk epidemic."

While the American policies remain less restrictive than those of Israel, it is important to understand the origins of our own "mass hysteria" response. President Trump urged a strong coronavirus response after consulting with Dr. Fauci and his team, who relied on a British model predicting 2.2 million deaths in the United States and 500,000 deaths in the U.K. But that model was developed by Professor Neil Ferguson, who had a history of wildly overestimating death rates through his prediction models. Professor Ferguson was not known for his reliability, and his 2001 disease model was criticized as "not fit for purpose" after it predicted that up to 150,000 people could die in the U.K. from mad cow disease (177 deaths to date). Ferguson’s U.K. coronavirus deaths prediction is now down to 20,000 people, 4% of the original prediction.
Posted by trailing wife 2020-04-17 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11131 views ]  Top

#1 "The numbers simply do not support quarantine or economic closure."

We saw this from the very beginning, with the ONLY reliable data set that's been produced to date, the "ideal incubation environment" that was the self-imposed 24-day ship-quarantine on the Diamond Princess.

17% infection rate (iirc, 636 out of 3,711 passengers & crew) - exact same as the Germans recently found in their sample

A grand total, from these 636 infections, of 4 lab-confirmed (by WHO and CDC) deaths i.e. a 0.63% case fatality rate (95th percent confidence interval) - which is more or less what we're seeing now, again and again, around the world.

A "spike" - and then subsistence. As has has happened again and again with every Chinese-sourced virus over the past two decades. Rapid spikes, and equally rapid declines.

Based on this solid, unimpeachable data set, there was never any reason to believe that the US fatality rate would exceed 35,000 deaths under any reasonable scenario or 88,000 deaths under the most dire / doomsday scenario.

And yet we have allowed our leaders to cast aside any kind of balanced, judicious consideration and wantonly destroy the sustenance of 60 million of our brothers and sisters. Madness.

When will we bring an end to this gross incompetence?
Posted by Lex 2020-04-17 00:38||   2020-04-17 00:38|| Front Page Top

#2 A look at stats at worldometer shows that the perfessor cherry-picking his data.

p.s. There are no "Yitzhak Ben Israel" on the lists of TAU faculty. There is Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel who is Maj. General (ret), head of Israeli Space Agency & professor in the Pol. Sci. faculty.

The only other Ben Israel is Ruth who's emeritus professor in Law Faculty.

😜
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-17 02:38||   2020-04-17 02:38|| Front Page Top

#3 Well, don't think my hogs and chickens care what
pattern it takes.
Posted by crazyhorse 2020-04-17 02:49||   2020-04-17 02:49|| Front Page Top

#4 The link in TownHall article is to an article in Hebrew (which could've been written by Isaac Ben-Israel) which "proves" that coronavirus infection growth is not exponential. We know it's not exponential - it has an exponential phase.
To summarize: there's no bigger shitshow (😎) than an expert who doesn't realize he's outside his area of expertise.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-17 02:57||   2020-04-17 02:57|| Front Page Top

#5 BLUF: NYC authorities' incompetence accounts for most of the damage we have seen in this country. First, they're very likely overcounting COVID as the cause of death. Second, they have almost certainly caused about 75% as many ADDITIONAL DEATHS -- ca. 3,000 total -- in NYC through April 11 by neglecting other urgent care needs during this time. Note that even with overcounting, COVID deaths account only about 55-60% of the increase in NYC fatalities vs prior years.

Longer version:

The CDC helpfully benchmarks each state's total 2020 fatalities vs its average total fatalities at the same point for the 2017-2019 period. Not one state shows a significant increase above the benchmark percentage of '100' for its year to date total deaths.

How can this be happening during a pandemic? Is the CDC instructing hospital pathologists to re-classify pneumonia deaths as COVID?

Also, the CDC helpfully breaks out New York City separately from the rest of New York State. There we do indeed see a spike vs the three-year benchmark: 163% of average or ca 7,000 additional deaths. But COVID only accounts for 4,000 deaths.

So that means NYC, in fighting COVID, has caused an additional 3,000 deaths -- most likely because, per Columbia's Dr Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, “[People] may be dying because of reduced care for other non-COVID diseases” like diabetes, heart attacks or other chronic conditions. “Those to me, should be somehow tallied as we’re looking at the death toll of COVID.”

IOW, NYC's panicked and incompetent response to COVID has almost certainly caused almost as many deaths from neglect of other conditions -- 3,000 additional deaths from non-COVID vs 4,000 COVID.

Also, we know that NY State health authorities in December 2019 were predicting an enormous rise in flu cases and flu deaths in NYC in 2020 vs 2017-2019. How many non-COVID influenza deaths have been wrongly coded in NYC as COVID?

CDC itself notes that "COVID-19 deaths may ... be classified or defined differently in various reporting and surveillance systems. Death counts in this report include ... deaths where COVID-19 is listed as a 'presumed' or 'probable' cause.")

Are the NYC authorities over-counting COVID as a 'presumed' cause?

Also look at California, which should be the epicenter given its 100,000+ travelers to and from China throughout December-February and its enormous homeless population and creaking urban hospital system, per CDC has registered a grand total of ... 354 deaths.

In a population of ca. 40 million, not even 1,000 deaths. For this the economy of California has already been cratered. Millions of California families are facing ruin now.
Posted by Lex 2020-04-17 07:24||   2020-04-17 07:24|| Front Page Top

#6 I'm with Sam Clemens on this - "Lies, damned lies and statistics"... oh, and computer models.....
Posted by Vespasian Ebboper2947 2020-04-17 17:29||   2020-04-17 17:29|| Front Page Top

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