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Great Barrington Vs independent SAGE

Covid
#1

Just a thought that occurred to me while looking through the articles on Cuba this evening.

Sweden is a close approximation to the Great Barrington model for dealing with covid, while Cuba has been a good approximation of the Indy SAGE recommendations.

They have the same population, so in some sense this is a nice experiment to run. No comparison is perfect, and there will be plenty of other factors to take into consideration, but for interest’s sake it’s worth a look.

What have been the results?

Sweden: 800,000 cases and 13.5K deaths
Cuba: 70,000 cases and 400 deaths.

The Great Barrington approach seems to have led to 10x the number of cases and 33x the death rate.

This is why I support the Indy SAGE approach. Or maybe I just want to live in Cuba…

PS: the UK govt and the SAGE efforts are far worse in terms of infections and deaths than either.

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#2

Sorry PP. In my humble opinion, you really seem to be grasping at straws. If you want to make comparisons, make them between similar populations. Here is a key reason why Sweden and Cuba are completely different other than their approach to the dreaded flu.

Average sunlight hours per year (remember vitamin D?)
Copenhagen 1,780
Havana 2,980

Now I could go on but I know this is a debate where we will never agree so I’ll just pose a few more possible areas of difference.

1 Unemployment rate
2 % consumption of organic foods
3 No of doctors per capita
4 Alligence to the WHO, World Bank, and NWO
5 Average per capita income

If you are going to compare groups, at least compare those with other factors (outside of vaccine/lockdown/treatment protocols) that are similar or even remotely comparable.

Try Sweden and Germany? They at least have some similarities.

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#3

Well, the point is to try and find examples of countries who followed what Indy SAGE is suggesting - Cuba is one example there are others. As far as I can see wherever they try the Indy SAGE approach, they get far better results.

As I mentioned, and you point out, there are indeed other factors. Although some items on your list are a bit strange to me. Sweden has one of the highest doctors per capita in the world, Cuba is similar. I don’t think of Swedes as particularly unhealthy in their dietary or exercise habits, and there have a lot of space to practice social distancing. And Sweden’s per capita income is certainly much higher than Cuba.

Your point about vitamin D is a good one, but what was stopping Swedish doctors prescribing high dose vit d for their population? The fact that they were following the laissez faire Great Barrington approach. They were a pretty good example, I think, hence the comparison. It is a possible choice, it’s just a failure in comparison to the Indy SAGE approach, in my opinion.

PS - on the sunlight hours per year, I don’t think Cuba is better than, say, Brazil (which didn’t even rise to the low bar of Great Barrington). Sunlight can’t be the only factor - it’s the steps that took to protect their population

PPS - I just checked and Sweden had one of the highest rates per capita of eating organic food in the world… Again making this a pretty fair comparison. Hardly grasping at straws, eh?

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#4

And all of this debate is preceeded by a belief in the figures. I for one do not believe any of it, so any debate around results is (for me anyway), meaningless.

We know:

a) The PCR test to get the number of “cases” is dependant on the primer and the cycles that change all the time and are not necessarily the same in both countries
b) The counting of deaths is at very, very best sus. Even our own supehero Mr Hancock admitted that the UK had miscounted and as for Italy, need I say more?
c) And as we know, the death rate is very dependant on the treatment protocol

That said, even if you are right on every point, correlation does not prove causality!

Dr. Lee Merritt with some interesting suggestions (understating slightly!)
#5

Indeed. No data can shake your faith.

It’s worth something though, that every country that has tried to implement the policies of the Indy SAGE team has had remarkably lower cases and deaths than those who didn’t.

It’s also worth noting that Swden’s only land border neighbours - Norway and Finland - which implemented useless lockdowns have had a far, far lower death and economic toll than Great Barrington Sweden did.

But that’s data. Probably meaningless…

PP

#6

According to mortality analyses published by The John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre (Mortality Analyses - Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center), The United Kingdom has one of the highest mortality rates from COVID-19 in the world. In spite of all the restrictions imposed on us in the UK, we have a far higher mortality rate than countries which have few restrictions, or none at all.

You’re right. Nothing can shake my faith!!

Dr. Lee Merritt with some interesting suggestions (understating slightly!)
#7

Yes, as I pointed out myself in the first post. Notably, the UK conspicuously didn’t implement the policies of Indy SAGE. Or Great Barrington for that matter, choosing the worst of all possible worlds instead…

That, at least, we agree on!

PP

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#8

I can see merit in both sides to this debate but do tend to regard the official stats with a great deal of distrust, especially given the PCR test as the starting point.

The key principle for me is that relatively autonomous populations should be free of top-down directives, be they from transnational (but state-captured) entities like WHO, from national/provincial governments, and from neighbours keen to shame nonconformity.

Mutual aid can and does thrive in settings where authority has no writ. It all went wrong centuries ago here in Europe, but hey: enlightenment, science, rationality…

The quarantining of people who are not ill is as incomprehensible to me now as it was a year ago. But the looming requirement to ‘prove’ one is NOT a biohazard would have been a much tougher ask without this.

This is not an accident.

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#9

Interesting to compare, yes, but the such a study must take into account other crucial issues before concluding GB is worse than IS. There are big variations across continents with colder regions experiencing far worse numbers of deaths/infections (even if these are inaccurate). Comparing Cuba with Jamaica, Dominican republic, Haiti etc. makes much more sense. Haiti, with a similar population as Cuba has 1/6 of Cuba’s cases and 1/2 its death rate.

I agree with Pat that comparing Sweden with European neighbours makes far more sense. But even that’s also fraught with problems. For example:

  1. did they have mild flu seasons with few elderly deaths prior to covid?
  2. how sparse are the populations?
  3. how do they measure covid infections/deaths?

No. 3) in particular, is a potential minefield of misinformation. Some countries it’s anyone dying 60 days since they’ve tested positive. That would now give lots of deaths from vaccines if they counted this the same way!

Completely agree with KarenEliot; quarantining healthy people is incomprehensible and a massive attack on our freedom.

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#10

Hi folks, I watched a couple of Indie Sage videos and I came away with a feeling that the group were very establishment, case oriented, pro widespread vaccination and reluctant to examine:

  • treatment regimens, hcq, ivermectin, vitamin d and c etc
  • vaccine failures to stop infection and transmission
  • vaccine deaths and side effects
  • Mullis view on PCR test and recent guardian reported failures of LFT making test and trace like a coin toss.
    I liked their stance on passports but it should have been based on poor testing and poor vaccines to prevent infection and not just on ethical and practical grounds.

Like Sage they seem to just assume lockdowns work to stop transmission without examining other possibilities- cyclical patterns of all respiratory illnesses, policy and propaganda generating high levels of chronic stress before and during lockdown then the fall in stress as people adjust producing fewer infections leading to a positive circular self reinforcing pattern.

As to Cuba I noticed this:

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/cuba-early-hydroxychloroquine-potent-against-covid-19/1905650

and this on comparison of hcq using states:

image
image777×588 60.4 KB

cheers

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#11

Thanks @Willem . I’m reasonably confident that the answer to Q1 is yes, for Sweden. I am about to try and find a link to a video in which a senior health bloke (in technical parlance) confirms this. I’m afraid I can’t cite a timestamp.

The whole thing is good, runs 45 mins

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#12

Great thoughts here everyone - thanks. Sorry I’ve been offline all day today (a rare and beautiful thing). I’ll get back to it tomorrow

Cheers all

#13

Looking through the posts above, I’d make a few short comments:

@KarenEliot, on the subject of PCR tests. I think there is a “right” way to use these tests to combat the disease. That is, they get used in combinations with a smart track and trace system to identify who the most effective target test group should be. Those who are tested and show a positive result on less than 30 cycles, should then quarantine (with full support) for 14 days. Sure, in this way you will get some people who would not have developed the disease or might not have been contagious, but with this level of caution it has been shown that (a) the rest of society functions perfectly normally and (b) this will aggressively keep the virus in check. Personally I would have zero problems with this system, and it’s the one that IS have been recommending. Used in this way, the dreaded PCR would have been an excellent tool in the efforts to minimise the impact of covid. Unfortunately it wasn’t.

@Willem - you are right that this can only be an interesting side by side, not a scientific comparison. Other factors will obviously play a role, but I still feel the greatest impact will not be accidental, but will depend on what efforts the government had selected to protect the population.

Cuba made a huge effort to protect its citizens. Local track and trace, community health workers checking in daily, quarantine and effective treatments for anyone who got ill. This is the Indy SAGE policy. Sweden (and more generally Great Barrington) did almost none of that as the stated goal is to allow the virus to spread as fast as it can through the unprotected population, whilst trying to protect only the most vulnerable.

That factor must definitely have had the largest impact on the course of the virus through a population. Sure, there are many other factors, but the choice to protect or not is the primary. Others seem to be second order effects at best.

On the subject of Haiti, even some like myself who repeatedly uses highly dodgy data to support their arguments, balks at the Haiti data. Haiti is a totally collapsed country without a functioning health service. People there have to pay for covid tests, and the cost is more than the vast majority can afford. It might be true that Haiti has fewer cases/deaths than Cuba, but I seriously doubt it.

Comparing Cuba to Sweden is not as crazy as it sounds in terms of population, access to healthcare, healthy living etc. The biggest difference is sunshine as @PatB pointed out, but that, again, feels like a second order effect as other equally sunny places have been hit tremendously. Govt policy seems the key driver, and socialist healthcare beats laissez faire healthcare all day long.

On the point of quarantining healthy people I see three options:
1 -zero quarantines, let the virus rip (maybe try and protect a particular group of “vulnerable”)
2 - targeted 2-week quarantine of a subgroup discovered through track and trace
3 - full blown lockdowns of the entire population whether tested or not, at risk or not

Option 2 feels like the best compromise to me. And the point of this thread is to point out that the countries which have done best thorough all this have all followed option 2. Option 3 is clearly bonkers but from the Swedish data, option 1 is almost indistinguishable from option 3, as many people predicted.

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#14

@CJ1 - I agree with your points actually, to a large degree. I tried to get a question to them about ivermectin, for example, and they refused to host it, and their vaccine proselytism is unfortunate. By and large they are establishment through and through, BUT the key difference is that they are more traditional public health than they are whizz kid modellers.

As such their main recommendations centre around tried and tested solutions, primarily focused on community efforts to try and track the virus as best as they can, targeted quarantine for those who test positive, support for them and their families during that time and a properly funded local NHS effort to oversee everything rather than billions spent on private corporation apps. They favour this even over the vaccine effort, and certainly over national lockdowns which that see as necessary only because the govt had totally failed in its covid response.

As far as I can see, every country which tried this approach (including Cuba - this example) did remarkably better than countries that tried something else. That includes countries like the UK which botched the whole thing horrendously (and Indy SAGE is no stranger to criticising this corrupt govt) - which is to be expected, after all - but even countries like Sweden that did try an alternative management approach - the Great Barrington approach - which was supposed to be better.

Of all the ways to manage this pandemic, the “IS countries” from Taiwan to Cuba seen to have done the best. Sweden is almost indistinguishable from the countries that did the worst.

Thanks for the article on Cuba and HCQ by the way. I did read that last year in my effort to try and see if Cuba was using it. From the article, though, it seems that HCQ played only a marginal role at best in the Cuban approach.

Cheers all
PP

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#15

@PontiusPrimate thanks for your response it’s certainly difficult to pin down but I looked up the reference in the very detailed study here :
https://hcqtrial.com/
and used googletranslate to get this-

“ from Pleno.news

Rafael Ramos - 12/07/2020 13h00 | atualizado em 16/07/2020 12h20

“

Cuba stands out in combating Covid with hydroxychloroquine

Country defends the use of the drug in the early stages of the disease

With 2,420 confirmed cases, 87 deaths and 2,254 recovered patients, Cuba has stood out in the fight against the pandemic of the new coronavirus. The Central American country has been using low doses of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 at an early stage. The country’s residents have also followed the control measures established by the state health system.

  • We are aware of the controversies surrounding this product. Doctors here in general have a good opinion of the results achieved, as long as they are used early in low doses and only in patients without comorbidities, which can be complicated by hydroxychloroquine - said consultant to the president of BioCubaFarma, Augustin Lage Davila.

Read too

1 21 Covid-19 vaccines are already being tested in humans

2 Acting President of Bolivia Tests Positive for Covid-19

3 Eliana heals from Covid and embraces her children again 4 Patient defends chloroquine: “In five days I was fine”

5 “There is practically no risk of arrhythmia with chloroquine”

In addition to hydroxychloroquine, five other drugs are being used to treat the new coronavirus. Davila lists recombinant human interferon alfa-2b, which combines alpha interferon and gamma; biomodulin T; the CIGB-258 peptide and the humanized monoclonal antibody Itolizumab. Some of them have been used in the treatment of dengue and cancer.

BioCubaFarma is a Cuban organization of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Three medical brigades composed of 11 collaborators were sent from the country to work in Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe and Sierra Leone.”

You’re right as to limited info on hcq use but not sure how hcq use compares to the 5 other drugs mentioned nor how all of them impacted results.

cheers

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#16

“Used in this way, the dreaded PCR would have been an excellent tool in the efforts to minimise the impact of covid. Unfortunately it wasn’t.” As you guys know my strength is profiling (or you may have been able to work that out by now), and the profile here is one of deliberate obfuscation…the efforts of the “more traditional public health modellers” were always going to be a threat… those countries most deeply implicated in the “drive to compliance” like the U.K broke the cardinal rule of pandemic response…speed of reaction…and then consistently failed to address the further requirements of the traditional response…how on earth can this be accidental?

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#17

Exactly. And this is exactly why they ignored the Indy SAGE.

Nicely put.

Edit actually @GKH, the more I think about your point, the more there is to be said. The traditional pandemic approach favoured by Indy SAGE, whilst being the best in minimising the impact of the virus, is clearly far from optimal in the only dimension that matters to Boris, Cummings and the rest of the goon squad:

  • will this optimise the amount of money we can steal?

Disaster capitalism dictates that an effective solution to the problem should be ditched immediately in favour of one that allows private corporations to loot the public purse.

Hence local, community run NHS based track and trace was ditched in favour of billions paid to Boston consulting group and Serco for useless apps. Ivermectin and HCQ are ditched in favour of massively expensive and under-tested perpetually updated vaccines.

The Great Barrington proposal got some traction as it was seen as a business first approach, and laissez faire healthcare is really the only kind that capitalists favour. That was the basis of the “eat out to help out” scheme.

The tried, tested, real world solutions of Indy SAGE never got a look in.

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#18

Hi PP,

Just a couple of comments as a reply.

Yes, what Cuba did/does sounds sensible. It does of course require a functioning health service with many community health workers – something distinctly lacking in the UK – and should be done right at the start. Once many tens of thousands of people are infected at a given time, it’s difficult to see tracking and tracing still working properly.

I agree with your point about data from Haiti. I do suspect the figures are quite meaningless. Of course, it begs an interesting question: what is the real death rate from covid there? I mean, a country without a functioning health system, no lockdown or other strong measures in place https://ht.usembassy.gov/covid-19-information/ (a bit of unenforced mask wearing seems to be all), it ought to have a massive death rate from covid (if one believes any of the usual fear-laden predictions). Yet, it doesn’t – at least if it was a catastrophe, the news would have come out. In fact, if there was even a hint of a disaster, pro-lockdown governments would be very keen to point out how dreadful the consequences are of not taking draconian measures.

First point: as you say, 1 and 3 are indistinguishable in terms of covid deaths, so clearly option 1 is preferable over 3 and we could have been in the same situation without all the lockdowns, attacks on our liberty and new police powers. That’s in itself a huge gain.

Option 2 sounds reasonable, but how quickly will the subgroup become huge and unmanageable – especially if this is based simply on positive tests? Will it morph into option 3 before long? Especially with a media with screaming headlines telling us “something must be done”. I do think there has been a deliberate fear mongering going on.

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#19

My contention is that the situation was designed that way…let’s face it Boris and crew are no instigators (mostly), but they are followers and (as you say), opportunists…easily led…the whole test-and-trace app thing really stinks…are they seriously telling us that a workable app wasn’t feasible? Holy cow we can kill people in foreign countries from our own armchairs with impunity but we can’t get the mobile-phones to work…personally I’d ditch the lot (#FalseEconomy), for the traditional approach even so by the PtB’s own standards this was an epic fail…

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#20

Thanks @Willem, for an interesting discussion. I appreciate it.

Yes, I agree. Anthony Costello has said several times that it would be a matter of a few weeks to set up the NHS infrastructure and local track and trace that Indy SAGE has recommended from the start. So he believes that we have the capability. @GKH has brought up the way that the UK threw out the traditional pandemic response rule book at the start. It seems pretty obvious to me that they were initially going for a Great Barrington style herd-immunity strategy, but changed their minds after a few weeks when it was already far too late. We’ve never recovered from that initial blunder. Or perhaps that was the disaster capitalist policy all along.

We could have acted immediately - as many countries did. We have the advantage of being an island too, so we were naturally protected. The Govt chose to put the interests of their friends above public health, and here we are.

Only if these are the only two options. Both are disastrous in terms of the effect, and both have killed untold people unnecessarily. Sweden is by far the worst hit country in it’s neighbourhood. It’s far worse than any country that followed the Indy SAGE advice. It’s policy is a total failure in comparison to the Indy SAGE model that has been used around the world. That the UK is even worse is not a reason to view Sweden as any kind of success.

Well, let’s take a look. There are a LOT of countries that have followed the basic pandemic advice that I call the Indy SAGE model:

  • Japan - no national lockdown in a year, 9K deaths
  • Taiwan - no national lockdown in a year, 10 deaths (Holy shit!)
  • Vietnam - no national lockdown in a year, 35 deaths
  • Singapore - 1 national lockdown right at the beginning, no others in a year, 30 deaths
  • Cuba - no national lockdown in a year, 400 deaths.

We could also include South Korea, China itself, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and a host of other countries. These are all real world examples of countries that have decent government and health systems and reporting that seems reasonably trustworthy. They cover a range of climates and are spread around the world.

In none of these countries did the virus get away from them to the extent it did in Europe. There is no apparent reason to believe that this virus cannot be managed in a way that leaves the majority of people un-bothered, but still keeps the hospitals working and the deaths low. I haven’t looked, but I would also wager that the economic costs in all these countries is far lower than in Europe. Any European country could have chosen this policy, and for some reason, none did.

Wherever Great Barrington was applied (Sweden, some parts of the US, the early days and the Summer in the UK) it was a disaster in comparison. As I said above, socialist style healthcare beats laissez faire hands down.

We could have avoided the deaths, the overwhelmed hospitals, the lockdowns and everything that went along with it by following the advice of Indy SAGE. A year on, every country that implemented the basics of the Indy SAGE policies have by and large avoided lockdowns, kept their hospitals open and have far, far fewer recorded deaths. I acknowledge, again, that there are a lot of factors at play, but I still think the primary one is whether the government decided to protect it’s citizens or not.

Cheers
PP

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