MedPage: What You Need to Know About That ‘Johns Hopkins’ Lockdown Study

From Medpage.com:

A paper being touted as the “Johns Hopkins study” that suggested lockdowns didn’t reduce COVID deaths has serious flaws and is being misinterpreted, experts said.

Fox News has charged that there’s been a “full-on media blackout” of the paper, but science and medical experts argue the real reason for not covering the paper is because of its limitations.

First, the paper is a “working paper” that hasn’t been peer-reviewed. Also, it was published on the website of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences in Baltimore.

Study author Steve Hanke, PhD, is the founder of the institute. He is an applied economist, not an epidemiologist, public health expert, or medical doctor. Hanke is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Hanke’s co-authors are Jonas Herby, MS, a “specialist consultant” at the Center for Political Studies in Copenhagen, and Lars Jonung, PhD, professor emeritus of economics at Lund University in Sweden — a country that famously opted out of lockdowns and only recommended masks in public. Again, neither of Herby nor Jonung are medical or public health experts.

The trio are “highly regarded economists who have also been extremely anti-lockdown since March 2020,” tweeted Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, PhD, an epidemiologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia, who posted a thorough critique of the paper.

Its key conclusion was that lockdowns only reduced COVID mortality by 0.2% on average, but several researchers said that number is unreliable.

For starters, experts commenting for the U.K. Science Media Centre warned about the paper’s questionable definition of “lockdown.” Samir Bhatt, DPhil, a professor of statistics and public health at Imperial College London, said in that statement that the study’s “most inconsistent aspect is the reinterpreting of what a lockdown is.”

“The authors define lockdown as ‘the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention [NPI].’ This would make a mask-wearing policy a lockdown,” Bhatt stated.

Neil Ferguson, PhD, also of Imperial College London, said in the same statement that by that definition, “the U.K. has been in permanent lockdown since 16th of March 2021, and remains in lockdown — given it remain compulsory for people with diagnosed COVID-19 to self-isolate for at least 5 days.” Ferguson is the director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and the Jameel Institute at the college.

Questions also have been raised about the quality of the included studies. Of the 34 papers ultimately selected, 12 were “working papers” rather than peer-reviewed science. And 14 studies were conducted by economists rather than public health or medical experts, according to Forbes.

Meyerowitz-Katz highlighted his concerns with the paper’s inclusion criteria, as it doesn’t include “modelled counterfactuals…the most common method used in infectious disease assessments” which excludes “most epidemiological research from the review,” he tweeted.

He added that the “included studies certainly aren’t representative of research as a whole on lockdowns — not even close. Many of the most robust papers on the impact of lockdowns are, by definition, excluded.”

“All of this adds up to a very weird review paper,” he tweeted. “The authors exclude many of the most rigorous studies, including those that are the entire basis for their meta-analysis in the first place. … They then take a number of papers, most of which found that restrictive NPIs had a benefit on mortality, and derive some mathematical estimate from the regression coefficients indicating less benefit than the papers suggest.”

“All of this together means that the actual numbers produced in the review are largely uninterpretable,” he tweeted.

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Nationalism & Multiculturalism

In his 2015 book, Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations, Andrew Heywood wrote:

* One key source of multicultural thinking stems from the attempt to refashion liberal beliefs to take into account the importance of communal belonging. In this view, individuals are seen as being culturally embedded creatures who derive their understanding of the world and their framework of moral beliefs and sense of personal identity largely from the culture in which they live and develop. Distinctive cultures therefore deserve to be protected or strengthened, particularly when they belong to minority or vulnerable groups. This leads to an emphasis on the politics of recognition and support for minority rights, which, in the case of national minorities, or ‘First Nations’, may extend to the right to self-determination. However, a more radical strain within multicultural thinking endorses a form of value pluralism which holds that, as people are bound to disagree about the ultimate ends of life, liberal and non-liberal, or even illiberal, beliefs and practices are equally legitimate.

* Only enforced assimilation or the expulsion of ethnic or cultural minorities will re-establish monocultural nation-states.

* The most common criticism of multiculturalism is nevertheless that it is the enemy of social cohesion. In this view, shared values and a common culture are a necessary precondition for a stable and successful society.

* A cultural nation (such as the Greeks, the Germans, the Russians, the English and the Irish) has a national identity that is rooted in a common cultural heritage and language that may long pre-date the achievement of statehood or even the quest for national independence. A political nation (such as the British, the Americans and the South Africans) is bound together primarily by shared citizenship and may encompass significant cultural and ethnic divisions. Similarly, political thinkers may advance rival civic and organic views of the nation. The ‘civic’ concept of nationhood, supported, for example, by liberals and socialists, is inclusive in the sense that it places heavier emphasis on political allegiance than on cultural unity, and stresses that the nation is forged by shared values and expectations. The ‘organic’ concept of nationhood (advanced by conservatives and, more radically, by fascists) is exclusive in that it gives priority to a common ethnic identity and, above all, a shared history.

* For over 200 years the nation has been regarded as the most appropriate (and perhaps the only proper) unit of political rule. Indeed, international law is largely based on the assumption that nations, like individuals, have inviolable rights, notably the right to political independence and self-determination. The importance of the nation to politics is demonstrated most dramatically demonstrated by the enduring potency of nationalism and by the fact that the world is largely divided into nation-states… Supporters of the national principle portray nations as organic communities. In this light, humankind is naturally divided into a collection of nations, each possessing a distinctive character and separate identity. This, nationalists argue, is why a ‘higher’ loyalty and deeper political significance attaches to the nation than to any other social group or collective body. National ties and loyalties are thus found in all societies, they endure over time, and they operate at an instinctual, even primordial, level.

* There are two contrasting views of the nation-state. For liberals, and most socialists, the nation-state is largely fashioned out of civic loyalties and allegiances, while for conservatives and nationalists it is based on ethnic or organic unity.

* The nation-state is widely considered to be the only viable unit of political rule and is generally accepted to be the basic element in international politics. The vast majority of modern states are, or claim to be, nation-states. The great strength of the nation-state is that it offers the prospect of both cultural cohesion and political unity. When a people who share a common cultural or ethnic identity gain the right to self-government, community and citizenship coincide. This is why nationalists believe that the forces that have created a world of independent nation-states are natural and irresistible, and that no other social group could constitute a meaningful political community. This view also implies that supranational bodies such as the European Union (EU) will never be able to rival the capacity of national governments to establish legitimacy and command popular allegiance. Clear limits should therefore be placed on, in this case , the process of European integration, because people with different languages, cultures and histories will never come to think of themselves as members of a united political community.

* Internally, nation-states have been subject to centrifugal pressures, generated by an upsurge in ethnic and regional politics. This has meant that ethnicity or religion have sometimes displaced nationality as the central organizing principle of political life.

* Those who criticize the nation-state ideal point out either that a ‘true’ nation-state can be achieved only through a process of ‘ethnic cleansing’ – as Hitler and the Nazis recognized – or that nation-states are always primarily concerned primarily with their own strategic and economic interests, and are therefore an inevitable source of conflict or tension in international affairs.

* Nationalism can broadly be defined broadly as the belief that the nation is the central principle of political organization. As such, it is based on two core assumptions: first, humankind is naturally divided into distinct nations, and second, the nation is a political community in the sense that it is the most appropriate, and perhaps the only legitimate, unit of political rule.

* Liberal nationalism assigns to the nation a moral status to the nation similar to that of the individual, meaning that nations have rights, in particular the right to self-determination. As liberal nationalism holds that all nations are equal, it proclaims that the nation-state ideal is universally applicable. Conservative nationalism is concerned less with the principled nationalism of self-determination and more with the promise of social cohesion and public order embodied in the sentiment of national patriotism . From this perspective patriotic loyalty and a consciousness of nationhood is largely rooted in the idea of a shared past, turning nationalism into a defence of traditional values and institutions that have been endorsed by history.

* It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of nationalism to modern politics . For over 200 years nationalism has helped to shape and re-shape history in all parts of the world, making it perhaps the most successful of political creeds. The rising tide of nationalism re-drew the map of Europe in the nineteenth century as autocratic and multinational empires crumbled in the face of liberal and nationalist pressures.

* A fear of disorder and social instability has been one of the most fundamental and abiding concerns of Western political philosophy. Order has, moreover, attracted almost unqualified approval from political theorists, at least in so far as none of them is prepared to defend disorder. However, there are deep differences regarding the most appropriate solutions to the problem of order. The public/natural order divide has profound implications for government and reflects differing views of human nature. At one extreme, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) argued that absolute government is the only means of maintaining order because the principal human inclination is a ‘perpetual and restless desire for power, that ceaseth only in death’.

* In modern politics, the conservative view of order links it closely to law, often viewing ‘law and order’ as a single, fused concept. Domestic order is therefore best maintained through a fear of punishment, based on the strict enforcement of law and stiff penalties, and on respect for traditional values, seen as the moral bedrock of society.

* The chief flaw of modernist thought, from the most postmodern perspective, is that it is characterized by foundationalism, the belief that it is possible to establish objective truths and universal values, usually associated with a strong faith in progress. Jean-François Lyotard (1984) expressed the postmodern stance most succinctly in defining it as ‘an incredulity towards metanarratives’. By this he meant scepticism regarding all creeds and ideologies that are based on universal theories of history that view society as a coherent totality.

* Realism, in its broadest sense, is a tradition of political theorizing that is ‘realistic’ in the sense that it is hard-headed and (as realists see it) devoid of wishful thinking and deluded moralizing. Key early thinkers in this tradition included Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Realism has nevertheless had its greatest impact as a theory of international relations. Realist international theory is, primarily, about power and self-interest. The realist power-politics model of international politics is based on two core assumptions. First, human nature is characterized by selfishness and greed, meaning that states , the dominant actors on the international stage, exhibit essentially the same characteristics. Second, as states operate in a context of anarchy , they are forced to rely on self-help and so prioritize security and survival. Realist theory can therefore be summed up in the equation: egoism plus anarchy equals power politics.

* Realism can claim to be the oldest theory of international politics. It can be traced back to Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bce), and to Sun Tzu’s classic work on strategy, The Art of War , written at roughly the same time in China. However, as a theory of international relations, realism took shape from the 1930s onwards as a critique of the then-dominant liberal internationalism , dismissed by some realists as ‘ utopianism ’. With the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, realism became the pre-eminent theory of international relations during the Cold War period. Among the reasons for realism’s dominance was that the Cold War, characterized as it was by superpower rivalry and a nuclear arms race , made the politics of power and security appear to be undeniably relevant and insightful.

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Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I

Here’s the conclusion of this 2014 book by Peter Ackroyd:

* The reformation of the English Church was, from the beginning, a political and dynastic matter; it had no roots in popular protest or the principles of humanist reform. No Calvin or Luther would have been permitted to flourish in England. Reformation was entirely under the direction of the king. The English Reformation had other unique aspects. In the countries of continental Europe that espoused Protestantism, all the rituals and customs of Catholicism were abolished; there was to be no Mass, no Virgin Mary and no cult of the saints. Yet Henry, in all matters save that of papal sovereignty, was an orthodox Catholic. The monasteries may have been destroyed, and the pope replaced, but the Mass survived.

* Those who supported the king’s cause were, in large part, of a practical persuasion; they wanted the lands and revenues of the Church for themselves. They were lawyers and courtiers. They were members of parliament, which voted in accordance with the king’s will throughout this period. Only for a few scholars and divines was the theology of the Reformation important. The archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was a man of piety rather than of principle; he was as much an ecclesiastical lawyer as a divine who saw his way forward through compromise and conciliation. The refining of Church doctrine under Edward, and the reversal of practice under Mary, serve only to emphasize the slightly incoherent framework of the religious polity.

The Elizabethan settlement created what Lord Burghley called a ‘midge-madge’ of contradictory elements that was soon to pass under the name of Anglicanism. It was as alien to the pure spirit of Protestantism, adumbrated in Zurich or Geneva, as it was to the doctrines of Rome. The English liturgy contained elements old and new, and the perils of religious speculation were avoided with a studied vagueness or ambiguity. The Book of Common Prayer is also animated by a spirit of piety rather than dogmatic certainty.

England therefore became Protestant by degrees, and by a process of accommodation and subtle adjustment. The people acquiesced in the new dispensation. Time and forgetfulness, aided by apathy and indifference, slowly weakened the influence of the old religion beyond repair. If, by the beginning of the seventeenth century, England had become a Protestant nation, therefore, the nature of that Protestantism was mixed and divided; we may only say, perhaps, that England was no longer Catholic. The passage of time had accomplished what the will of men could not work.

We may see the enduring effects of the Reformation in the emphasis upon the individual rather than upon the community. Private prayer took the place of public ritual. Manuals addressed to the personal devotional life abounded. Justification by faith alone, one of the cardinal tenets of the new religion, was wholly private in character. The struggles of individual consciences, with the constant awareness of sin, now became the material of the religious pamphlets of the period. We may suspect the influence of the reformed religion, too, on the conditions that made possible the birth of the modern state; the word itself emerged towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth. The Protestant calendar was devoted to the celebration of a new national culture, with such holy days as the queen’s birthday and the defeat of the Armada. It became a civic and courtly, rather than a religious, timetable.

* The belief in divine providence, one of the blessings of the Protestant spirit, led to submission and obedience to the secular authorities. Where once the monks had taken responsibility for the indigent, their place had been taken by parish officers; the overseers of the poor, and the workhouses, became the solutions to what was now regarded as a social problem rather than an ordinance of God. When the House of Commons took over the former royal chapel of St Stephen’s in 1549, it was the mark of a larger transition; the law of God ultimately gave way to the statutes of parliament. The idea of good governance emerges most fully in the sixteenth century, and the state itself was deemed to have a formative role in social and economic policy.

* The demise of the mystery plays and the whole panoply of religious drama, which had possessed so strong a hold over England for many centuries, led ineluctably to the secularization of the drama and the rise of the London playhouses. The great efflorescence of the English drama in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be regarded as one of the consequences of the Reformation. In literature, too, the translation of the Bible into English inspired writers as diverse as Shakespeare and Milton and Bunyan. In a more general sense the new place of the English language encouraged the growth of literacy among the population. This may in turn help to account for the great increase in educational provision through the period; in the 1550s forty-seven new school foundations were made, and in the following decade a further forty-two.

* William Cobbett once wrote that the wretchedness of the landless labourer was the work of Reformation.
The abandonment of public rituals in the streets and open places of the towns led in the course of time to social fragmentation. When popular pastimes were curtailed and despised, the richer sort tended to think of themselves as a class apart. Seats were soon supplied in churches for families of local stature. We may see the change from another perspective. It has been estimated that the number of alehouses doubled in the fifty years after 1580; with the demise of the guild fraternities, the pageants and the church-ales, there had to be an alternative source of refreshment.

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Goals, Symphonies & Loneliness (7-6-23)

01:00 Three teenage girls laugh at me when I struggle with pullups
03:00 Sydney was beautiful, but I was alone
04:00 I want a bitter sweet symphony
14:00 Dennis Prager is the leader of the band, https://lukeford.net/blog/?page_id=31620
16:00 No amount of Soylent will fill the hole in my soul
24:00 Man’s Search For Meaning, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySm3_7gQ8Kw
27:30 “Nudge” Part 1: A Simple Solution For Littering, Organ Donations and Climate Change, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nudge-part-1-a-simple-solution-for-littering-organ/id1651876897?i=1000611711937
32:30 It’s not unhumble to to recognize that you have special gifts
38:00 Elliott Blatt joins to talk about teenage girls
46:00 Exercising as you get older
51:00 Goals vs symphony
58:00 Imposter syndrome
1:00:00 Where do you get the power to make your life a symphony?
1:01:40 Every Woman in the World
1:02:20 Karen Carpenter appreciation videos
1:04:00 Madonna
1:06:00 Peter Zeihan
1:10:15 Deep Left Jokkul is a Peter Zeihan fan
1:12:00 Charles Johnson
1:13:20 Colin Liddell, https://neokrat.blogspot.com/
1:15:00 Art Bell
1:17:00 The three monotheist religions emerged out of the loneliness of the desert, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert

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Decoding Peter Zeihan (7-5-23)

01:00 Deconstructing Peter Zeihan’s Creator Biz, https://youtu.be/2FJ4ykYqFNM
22:10 Chris Kanthan: Peter Zeihan is the Jim Cramer of Geopolitics, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/peter-zeihan-is-the-jim-cramer-of-geopolitics/id1640917261?i=1000611075564
34:00 Peter Zeihan vs Ian Bremmer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Bremmer
42:00 Michael Beckley on why the U.S. will remain the world’s sole superpower, https://www.michaelbeckley.org/books
1:06:40 Peter Zeihan and the missing piece of public discourse, https://www.dailyevolver.com/2023/04/peter-zeihan-and-the-missing-piece-in-public-discourse/
1:11:30 Decoding Dave Rubin, https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus/posts

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