Phil Magness was present at the conference that led to the Great Barrington Declaration. We asked him about lockdowns, focused protection, liberal illiberalism and what Donald Trump should have done last year.
Last year saw the largest annual rise in childhood obesity since records began. This brings to mind one of Martin Kulldorff's principles: “Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single disease.”
In a fascinating new report, Philippe Lemoine argues that models have done so badly because they ignored population structure. His analysis suggests that the 'R number' might be meaningless at the aggregate level.
October's age-standardised mortality rate was about equal to the five-year average – slightly lower in fact. This suggests that many of the non-Covid 'excess' deaths we've seen recently are due to population ageing.
At the start of 2020, the Guardian and New York Times ran articles describing China's lockdown as "terrifying" and "without precedent". Fast forward to March, and both papers were calling for national lockdowns.
A new study tracks the frequency of woke jargon like 'diversity' and 'inclusion' in scientific research proposals. It finds that usage of these terms has increased massively, including in the physical sciences.
A new study looks at vaccine effectiveness against severe outcomes among people who had Covid. While effectiveness against death was marked in those under 60, it was small and non-significant in those over 60.
New figures from the ONS show that, between January 2020 and June 2021, Sweden had *negative* excess mortality. This constitutes a complete vindication of Anders Tegnell's "trust-based" approach. Well done, professor!
A recent CDC study found that non-Covid death rates were higher among the unvaccinated, indicating that people who get vaccinated are less likely to die for any reason. This could be bad news for vaccine effectiveness.
In a recent study, respondents were asked about 18 different symptoms. With the exception of anosmia, believing that one had had Covid was associated with reporting symptoms, but actually having had Covid was not.
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