Post hoc rides again...
 

There is a classic fallacy in argumentation known as "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" (After this, therefore because of this). It is being used by anti-vaxxers to claim that the COVID vaccines have killed thousands of people.

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) takes reports of "adverse events" following vaccines without checking whether they are actually caused by the vaccine. The website has a disclaimer that says so.

Of course, with reports of deaths the causes of death are checked to see whether they might be vaccine-related. None of the more than 2500 cases they'd checked as of late March had been. Of course, as with any ideologues, facts are of no concern to anti-vaxxers. Ideologues replace facts with ideology.

I note that 15 reports to VAERS of unusual and serious blood clots (cerebral venous sinus thrombosis), three of them fatal, in people who had received the J&J vaccine, were enough to cause the CDC and FDA to recommend a pause in administering the J&J vaccine, and also to alert physicians to the unusual nature of these clots, being accompanied by low platelet counts, which contraindicates the usual treatment with the anticoagulant heparin.

[QUOTE=VBCurtis;575807]Suicide rate is down from a normal year. The "we're in this together" group-fight proved stronger than despondency during 2020.

[COLOR=darkred]Moved from "Getting others to do the work on exponents I like (was: Trial Factoring Progress)"[/COLOR][/QUOTE]Source?
In May 2020, it was reported for Milwaukee county WI EMS calls that certain call types were drastically higher than usual; 70% higher mental health related calls, 54% higher drug ODs, 80% higher suicide attempts.
[URL]https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2020/05/07/ems-calls-show-54-spike-in-drug-overdoses-80-increase-in-suicide-attempts/[/URL]
If the pattern did not hold for the full year, but was a transient spike, that's probably a very good thing for the families involved.
Alberta EMS also reported a spike in opiod overdose calls [URL]https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-albertas-ems-teams-responded-to-spike-in-calls-related-to-opioid-use/[/URL]

EMS dispatch versus complaint type showed significant percentage changes for many types in Teheran (capital of Iran), see table 2 of [URL]https://escholarship.org/uc/item/90w3d0p2[/URL]
As did Roanoke VA: [URL]https://roanoke.com/news/local/roanoke-fire-ems-statistics-reflect-a-2020-changed-by-the-pandemic/article_160362f6-a163-11eb-a6d9-7398cf183168.html[/URL]

Stroke mortality was reported increased. [URL]https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STROKEAHA.120.031975[/URL] The hypothesis there is reluctance to risk covid infection caused fewer patients to call EMS regarding stroke symptoms, followed by increased mortality of untreated stroke victims a week or two later, ~7.8% elevated occurrence.

"Monday, government statistics in Japan reported that more people died from suicide in October than from COVID-19 in all of 2020. A majority were women." [URL]https://www.wkyt.com/2020/12/04/study-reveals-increased-suicide-rates-across-us/[/URL]

[QUOTE=kriesel;576844]Source?[/QUOTE]
[url]https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-ivory-tower/202104/why-did-us-suicides-decrease-in-2020[/url]

On the other hand:
[url]https://parentology.com/breaking-news-teen-suicide-rates-rising-in-2020/[/url]
[url]https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-pandemic-effect-suicide-heightens.html[/url]
[url]https://fee.org/articles/youth-depression-suicide-increasing-during-pandemic-response/[/url]
[url]https://magazine.jhsph.edu/2020/covid-19-and-suicide-crisis-within-crisis[/url]
[url]https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/suicides-surge-in-2020-local-health-officials-say/2342504/[/url]

[QUOTE=kriesel;576844][QUOTE=VBCurtis;575807]Suicide rate is down from a normal year. The "we're in this together" group-fight proved stronger than despondency during 2020.

[COLOR=darkred]Moved from "Getting others to do the work on exponents I like (was: Trial Factoring Progress)"[/COLOR][/QUOTE]Source?[/QUOTE]The very next post in this thread after the one you quote, or at the post it links to, [url=https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=575527&postcount=1338]this post[/url] to this thread from April 9[sup]th[/sup], has a link to the AP news story about suicides in the US being down nearly 6% last year.

[url=https://apnews.com/article/asia-pacific-bali-health-coronavirus-arts-and-entertainment-4ec6747d25b03487956e02651aefd7e4]Two influencers ordered off Bali after fake mask video prank[/url][quote]DENPASAR, Indonesia (AP) - A U.S.-based YouTuber and a Russian influencer were ordered off Indonesia's resort island of Bali on Friday after recording themselves defying mandatory mask-wearing with some imaginative makeup.

Clips of the video created by Josh Paler Lin and Leia Se and posted two weeks ago show the two duping supermarket guards with a painted surgical mask after they were refused entry because Se was unmasked.
<snip>
Although first-time violators of Bali's mask-wearing rule face fines of 1 million rupiah ($70) for foreigners and deportation after a second offense, the police wanted them removed off the island immediately.

"It's only proper to sanction them more severely, not just with a fine but also deportation," said Bali's civil service police unit head Dewa Nyoman Rai Dharmadi. "They are not only violating, but deliberately provoking in public to defy health guidelines."
<snip>[/quote]

Want to travel around Europe?
Still confused about "onboarding" or "backend to backend communication"?
The full gory details are [URL="https://ec.europa.eu/health/ehealth/covid-19_en"]here[/URL] and [URL="https://github.com/ehn-digital-green-development"]here![/URL].

How Isaac Newton spent his lockdown: [URL]https://www.biography.com/news/isaac-newton-quarantine-plague-discoveries[/URL]
I wonder what the effect of the past year's relative physical isolation on our contemporary scientific community's productivity will turn out to be. (Other than multiple COVID19 vaccines in wide use and related advances.)

[QUOTE=kriesel;556025]All that social distancing and handwashing etc. is reducing development and maintenance of immunity by reducing propagation of mild pathogens.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=a1call;556088]It is in a way parallel in operation to use of antibiotics to destroy bad-bacteria and in the process destroy the Healthy/Beneficial-Bacteria-Cultures of the digestive tract.
[url]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180926082539.htm[/url]
But we still have to use antibiotics (the full course of) when needed since the alternative can be worse.
Social-distancing is to viruses/bacteria, what is antibiotics to bacteria.[/QUOTE]

[B]Study finds serious bacterial infections on the rise in newborns[/B]

[QUOTE]
MONTREAL (CityNews) – The Montreal Children’s Hospital of the McGill University Health Centre (MCH-MUCH) [B]has found a spike of serious bacterial infections (SIB) in newborns and young infants, in a study conducted through the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.[/B]

The study also shows the number of emergency hospital visits for infants up to three-months-old decreased by two-thirds, despite SIBs doubling for the age group.

“The spike in serious bacterial infections that we observed during the pandemic is concerning. With fewer viruses circulating because of public health measures, fever is now more often a sign of a serious bacterial infection,” says the study’s principal investigator, Dr. Brett Burstein, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at the MCH and a Junior Investigator in the Child Health and Human Development Program at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), in a statement.
....

The study also noted life-threatening invasive bacterial infections (IBIs) [B]tripled [/B]in proportion during the same period.




[/QUOTE]


[url]https://montreal.citynews.ca/2021/07/15/study-finds-serious-bacterial-infections-on-the-rise-in-newborns/[/url]

[url=https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-f9c58c50f565e707be9bedfa9a82319e]States scale back virus reporting just as cases surge[/url][quote]OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Several states scaled back their reporting of COVID-19 statistics this month just as cases across the country started to skyrocket, depriving the public of real-time information on outbreaks, cases, hospitalizations and deaths in their communities.

The shift to weekly instead of daily reporting in Florida, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota marked a notable shift during a pandemic in which coronavirus dashboards have become a staple for Americans closely tracking case counts and trends to navigate a crisis that has killed more than 600,000 people in the U.S.

In Nebraska, the state actually stopped reporting on the virus altogether for two weeks after Gov. Pete Ricketts declared an end to the official virus emergency, forcing news reporters to file public records requests or turn to national websites that track state data to learn about COVID statistics. The state backtracked two weeks later and came up with a weekly site that provides some basic numbers.[/quote]IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

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