Was I infected?
ASTORIA, NYC- I got the test results back from the Covid-19 antibody test that I took a few days ago:
Looks negative; unfortunately.
I was counting on that piece of paper coming back positive. It was to be my “health passport.” Recent research on Covid-19 — and conventional medical knowledge — say that recovering from viral infections leads to a certain degree of protection against getting it again. Herd immunity is essential for getting back to normal, and those who can demonstrate such immunity should be the first ones out of the gate … if such distinctions actually become relevant.
NYC is currently doing the most exhaustive antibody test yet, including 140,000 people across the city to get a clearer picture of how many people have already been infected and how deadly the virus actually is. A preliminary survey in NYC showed that nearly 25% of the city were already infected, hinting at an infection fatality rate (IFR) of roughly 0.5%. Stanford University and the University of Southern California have done similar surveys, albeit with smaller sample sizes, and came up with an IFR of 0.1-0.2%, which is in the ballpark of “flu-like” infections.
At any rate, Covid-19 is way, WAY less lethal than was previously touted. Under no circumstance is it looking as if we are going to have mass deaths, overloaded hospitals, or run out of room to bury the bodies. The burden on the medical system will probably come more from the fact that hospitals are severely backlogged with procedures that were postponed because of Covid-19 measures than from Covid-19 itself.
And that Imperial University study that predicted 2.2 million deaths in the USA from Covid-19 that reportedly changed the Trump administration’s mind on the issue … well, they ended up being monumentally wrong … about as monumentally wrong as the models that predicted mass deaths from mad cow disease or the ones that said that 200 million people would die from bird flu.
All three of these grossly erroneous predictions, it turns out, came from the same guy.
Neil Ferguson is perhaps the most wrong man on planet earth. Each time there’s a new health crisis he jumps into the limelight with doomsday scenarios that governments gobble up, following his recommendations to the detriment to their respective economies and populations — like the time he got the UK to needlessly cull six million heads of cattle because of mad cow. He has been wrong time and time again, but that didn’t stop him from being able to influence the UK and US governments to lockdown their countries, put millions out of work, and destroy their economies.
Ferguson’s Covid-19 models didn’t pass the eye test of even lay individuals — they were the reason why I wrote this post — and, no matter how hard they tried, other researchers couldn’t replicate his findings. Under mounting pressure in the UK Ferguson eventually revealed the code his models were based off of … and the world rollicked in a colossal belly laugh: we had been duped, the well-respected professor’s cutting edge mathematical systems turned out to be outdated, nonsensical garbage. The professor was a fraud:
Furthermore, when analysing the validity of the staggering death estimates, scientists have claimed that it is almost impossible to reproduce the same results from the same data, using the same code as Imperial, The Telegraph reported.
University of Edinburgh researchers reportedly found bugs when running the model, getting different results when they used different machines, or even the same machines in some cases.
“Professor Lockdown” is what Ferguson has now comically been dubbed in the UK media, and he recently stepped down from his post on Johnson’s coronavirus response team after being caught violating the lockdown that he played a fundamental role in creating.
As a side note, that erroneous Ferguson coronavirus report, entitled “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality” was funded by, you guessed it, Bill Gates.
This take me to the main reason that I was hoping for a positive antibody result: it would be documented evidence that I could potentially have used to stave off the coming C19 va.c-c*ine should it become mandatory.
I’m reminded of the classic Chinese story Outlaws of the Marsh where the rebels had faith that the emperor was good while his advisers were the ones who were evil. Our elected government officials are generally not experts in epidemiology, so they rely on others with titles and distinction for direction. Unfortunately, those who are being relied on during the Covid-19 pandemic happen to be wicked little jerks with skin in the game. Where’s Wu Song when you need him?
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About the Author: VBJ
I am the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. I’ve been traveling the world since 1999, through 91 countries. I am the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China and have written for The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. VBJ has written 3723 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.
VBJ is currently in: New York City
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May 22, 2020, 4:04 pm
It’s quite early in the game to say that we won’t get two million deaths in the US. I’ve been following this closely since January and I’ve been modeling the data as well…though I stopped about a month ago. I really don’t interact online about the data (except on your page) because I find it rather pointless.
We have been lied to and gaslighted from both sides of the political spectrum and there continues to be way too much misinformation from both sides. I expected this thing to blow up but not really into the Fall/Winter of 2020/2021. I expected there to be multiple waves of this thing. It’s a political game all the way around.
Anyways, I’ve been figuring 30 to 40% asymptomatic rate since early February. I’ve pegged the death rate at about 0.75%(between 0.5% and 1.0%) with good access to hospitals. It will go lower where there isn’t clustering and higher where there is clustering. The early serological studies out of New York push the CFR closer to 0.7% so close to my prediction just from a simple excel sheet in February.
But if you take the 330 million people in the US and give them a CFR of 0.75%, you get 2.5 million people dead. That’s the simple math of it. If the hospitals are overwhelmed, the CFR can double and then you look at 5 million or more dead. That’s assuming everyone gets infected. Not really going to happen. Even with 50% infection rate in an overwhelmed hospital system, you get your 2.5 million dead.
I think a lot of people expect this to be a one wave and done kind of thing. I hope it is, but I’m not banking on it. I’m hoping that we get our window of travel in the late summer/early fall. Right now everything is up in the air. It’s frustrating.
Can I vent? I’ve been level headed, but I want to vent right now. The mfers running things blew their load. This thing is dangerous and can kill, but it should have been allowed to run its course in the spring. Based on historical data, we would have had clusters and deaths, but it wouldn’t be much different than it was anyways. We would get the gap in waves in the summer and then if another wave appeared in the fall, we could be prepared for it and people who saw the dangerousness in the Spring would take it seriously. If we have a second and multiple waves in the fall/winter (and more deadly than the Spring one), no one is going to take them seriously. The mfers running things used their bazooka in the Spring and now they ain’t got anything left to use. They blew their load and ain’t got anything left.
The conspiracy theorist in me says that they have done this on purpose. I have seen them (both sides) make horrendous mistakes at each turn that could only be done on purpose.
TLDR; Politicians and scientists are playing games and blew their load. This thing is either ending or just getting started. I lean towards it just getting started and the US will get its 2 million deaths before it all ends.
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May 22, 2020, 4:43 pm
What are your thoughts on a potential vaccine? I am not a an anti-vaxxer per se (I have all my vaccines), but I don’t trust a COVID 19 vax produced by Bill Gates. Something seems way off to me. I also think it will be mandatory to travel again…or maybe I am paranoid.
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January 5, 2021, 7:29 pm
A: No. An antibody test does not detect the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to diagnose COVID-19. These tests can return a negative test result even in infected patients (for example, if antibodies have not yet developed in response to the virus) or may generate false positive results (for example, if antibodies to another coronavirus type are detected), so they should not be used to evaluate if you are currently infected or contagious (ability to infect other people).