April 5, 2023 - 7:00am
For suggesting that the average IFR of Covid-19 might be between 0.01% and 0.05% during an early 2020 interview with UnHerd, I was mocked by large sections of the media and accused of minimising the harms of Covid-19 in service of a Right-wing libertarian agenda. My analysis was called “spurious” by the Sunday Times, and was quickly dismissed by senior MPs and the establishment press.
Data released this week by Denmark’s health registry however confirms, once again, that the age gradient in mortality from SARS-CoV-2 infection essentially resembles a cliff-face, accelerating sharply only in the ninth decade of life. The numbers come from an exercise undertaken to sift deaths from Covid-19 out of the deaths with Covid-19, which reveals an overcount of around 100% in the Danish data. This puts the average mortality risk over the last three years for those above 20 at 0.089%. Adding the under-20s reduces it further to 0.065%.
What can we usefully infer from this data about the lethality of SARS-CoV-2?
The first point to make is that it is unhelpful to talk about an ‘average IFR’ — and this is something I should certainly have avoided doing three years ago — as this is entirely sensitive to the age structure. Commonly, the risk to the older age groups is downplayed while the risk to the majority of the population is exaggerated. Policy decisions made on the basis of an average IFR are likely to be sub-optimal, and model projections based on an average IFR are bound to carry flaws.
It is worth noting in this context that the all-important supposed IFR of 0.9% in the Imperial College model of March 2020 was anchored to data — such as from the Diamond Princess cruise ship — that was skewed towards the high-risk groups. This was the main problem with their projection, rather than any errors in the methodology.
Some of us pointed out at the time that the UK data on deaths was equally compatible with a very low IFR, had the first wave of the epidemic occurred earlier than supposed by the Imperial model. The 0.065% mortality risk from Covid-19 across the past three years in Denmark is certainly closer to 0.05% than 0.9%. In fact, summing over several years can result in an overestimate of IFR, since the numerator (the number that die from the infection) will keep growing, while the denominator (the population size) remains static.
If you count for long enough, the IFR can exceed 100% — which is clearly nonsensical. That said, three years is probably a reasonable period over which to measure the overall IFR, as a significant proportion of people are likely to have been infected over that period, and so the total population can be safely used as a denominator.
However, we also need to bear in mind that vaccines have almost certainly reduced the total number of deaths. If, for example, vaccines reduced the expected number of deaths by a half, then the IFR is actually double what has been measured here. But to obtain an average IFR of 0.9% from this data, we would require over 75% of those aged over 90 to have died from Covid-19 in the absence of vaccination and, even so, the IFR for those under 60 would remain at 0.05%.
The main lesson to be learnt here is not to quibble about the true value of the IFR but, instead, to construct a strategy that is robust to these uncertainties. Focused protection of the vulnerable population, followed by targeted vaccination, remains the only reasonable solution given the very low IFR in the majority of the population. That’s not to mention the enormous costs of lockdown.
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SubscribeInsightful article. It does make me wonder though why neither Ted Cruz (son of a Cuban migrant), nor Jeb Bush (Spanish speaker with a latina wife) came close to winning the Republican primaries in the 2016 election. It would’ve been interesting to know the presidential candidate choices of all these identified groups.
This also doesn’t explain how woke progressives nearly ended up selecting Bernie Sanders in the same 2016 primaries if they only make up 6-8% of the Democrats. This of all things may have pushed the establishment liberals towards woke progressive ideological positions.
I think there was a big appetite for change back in 2016 in US politics where the youthful extreme wings of both parties dominated. Change was Barack Obama’s headline promise to deliver, and his biggest failure in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.
That financial crisis was the genesis of the populist movements left and right, where the “technocratic elite” lost immense credibility. In my view, this gets less attention in these analyses than it deserves as this is where it started to go wrong (along with the Iraq War) for US.
On other news, Max Boot made an appeal on WaPo to repudiate Di Angelo’s “White Fragility” and in general woke progressive politics, fearful that Democrats are on track to lose the election if they continue their current path.
“That financial crisis was the genesis of the populist movements left and right, where the “technocratic elite” lost immense credibility. In my view, this gets less attention in these analyses than it deserves as this is where it started to go wrong (along with the Iraq War) for US.”
Agreed. Another Unherd article reported that woke culture is most popular among Millennials (age 25-40). Not surprising since that generation are the ones struggling to establish a career, buy a house and start a family.
Progressivism is an opportunistic infection among those who’ve lost all faith in the current social and economic systems.
I think that is a bit of an oversimplification. Between an unstable economy, shameless offshoring, rampant monopolization, shady trade deals, destroyed industry, stagnant wages, ruined careers, corporate scandals, blatant cronyism, banking collapses, housing market breakdowns, massive wage gaps, and now rampant inflation, I think it is safe to say that the American economy has been a disaster for the last three decades. At some point people are going to ask why they should even listen anymore to the technocrats who ran things. The skepticism of our “nothing to see here, everything is fine” elites is not just limited to the Left.
Agree with all of that. But is it also a fact that social media and 24×7 news has amplified a lot of things to feel as if they are more prevalent now? Look at the wall to wall Trump Derangement Syndrome, and Brexit Derangement Syndrome. So much noise. Or is it that globalisation has allowed those abuses to be perpetrated on a global scale, concentrating more and more power into fewer and fewer hands in a way never seen before? I just don’t think the human brain is designed to handle such information overload.
Or they just want to feel ‘special’ and they don’t feel special enough.
Only a very young person would posit that this all started with the financial crisis of 2008. The real genesis of the change started in the 1960’s.
Many of us make the logical error in thinking the world began when we were born. That is why an understanding of history is so vital, and why the Left is so insistent on changing it.
I don’t think it would really be possible to put a date on where it all started to go wrong in general – luckily that wasn’t my intention. The lineage I’m trying to trace is when did populism take a hold of America. I can’t think of another time in living memory Americans were ready to elect a self-declared socialist or an obvious nepotist populist such as Trump (some quote the Jacksonian era as the last example).
Try this: populist movements begin when a large cohort of a nation becomes convinced its future is in danger and that the people who rule the country either don’t care about the large cohort’s peril or are actually responsible for the danger.
In 1960 the US was 90% white.
In 2020 the US is 57% white.
White minority status is now predicted for 2042.
Ted Cruz was a great candidate and was my first choice. He just didn’t have enough personality to create the buzz needed to go up against someone like Hillary who had almost all of the news and entertainment industries, along with Wall Street, backing her. That’s no fault of his own, just the personality he was born with. His positions, and his willingness to defend them, were excellent. I’m still hopeful he’ll have another go at it someday.
Jeb Bush could go nowhere because no one trusted him. He was a classic RINO. His brother’s memory was too recent: run on the Republican ticket, but spend your term in office trying to keep the Democrats happy. Not a good deal if you want a conservative president. Plus, at least on those occasions when George W. talked conservative ideas, he came across like he believed them, even if his actions in office indicated otherwise. Whenever Jeb talked conservative principles, you were left wondering if there was someone just off camera pointing a gun at him and forcing him to say these things. It had the feel of a hostage video. Definitely not someone to trust. And he had the personality of a decaying fish on a riverbank.
So no principles (that we can believe) and no personality. What’s his pitch for president then? It almost seemed like it was “If you liked my brother, I’m more of the same.” But Dems didn’t like his brother because he didn’t officially identify as a Dem, and Republicans didn’t like him because he pretended he was a Dem. In other words, Jeb took the approach of “Appeal to no one, hope to somehow win anyway.” It didn’t work.
This was very interesting to read. Cruz may indeed end up being the face of a new multi ethnic working class Republican party.
Unfortunately he can’t. He is the wrong party for that. We saw that clearly in the 2018 Texas senator election. Paddy O’Malley….excuse me…Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, a dorky Irishman who looks exactly like what he is, was declared by the media to the be the true Hispanic candidate to represent the state’s vast Hispanic population. On the other hand, the media declared Rafael “Ted” Cruz, as you noted the son of a Cuban refugee, the very face of northern European white supremacy in the race. And that is what he will always be unless the current media titans vanish, which seems unlikely. The good news is that Texas voters disagree with the media. And in fact the media has an astonishingly low trust rate with the population at large. It should be noted that Cruz easily won in 2018, even though the money pouring into Fauxspanic O’Rourke’s coffers made it the most expensive senate race in history up to that point.
I’m so tired of “journalists” asking the wrong questions or reporting on the wrong questions. They repeatedly ask if we are in favor of immigration or not. But the real question is if we are in favor of ILLEGAL immigration or not. I am all for legal immigration and totally against breaking the law. That doesn’t make me a racist.
The same goes for climate change. I wholeheartedly agree that the climate is changing, as it has done for eons, yet I don’t believe that there is anything we mere humans can do about it. That doesn’t make me a dreaded “climate denier”.
Nah. A lot of Disillusioned Democrats just voted for Trump in 2020. It still staggers me that Biden managed to get 80 million votes. MSM Trump Derangement Syndrome really worked.
Sure he did.
A bunch of corporate, Bush era neocons are leaving the Republican party to join the Democrat party. The woke Twitter crowd is too out of it to notice, but I guarantee you much of their traditional base sees exactly what is going on. The party leadership (neoliberals) are basically inviting in their base’s most despised group of politicians with friendly smiles and warm pats on the back. Not to mention tensions between the Democrat base and the neoliberal leadership are already high. They are banking on traditional liberals (American) and anti-corporate progressives being too stupid, weak, or apathetic to do or say anything about it. I would personally not take that bet if I were them. If you thought the civil war within the Republican party got a bit heated, you have not seen anything yet.
The corporates might be decamping but the people are going the other way. Their instincts are spot on. Same thing has happened in the UK with the Red Wall voting for the Tories while corporates and middle class liberals are falling over themselves to be ‘woke’ socialists (fake ones)
Bang on.
Just follow the money. Spineless, selfish, greedy elitists clamoring to stay in the club. They sell their souls to keep their membership.
This research looks to me like the authors were determined to find like-for-like problems and weaknesses in both parties. Since academics are almost 100% leftist, that implies they’re worried about a populist Republican surge.
You don’t like balanced reporting then? You’d rather a one sided hit job that simply attacks your political opponents, rather than an insightful piece showing the different divisions (and overlaps) between the two major parties?
OK, we’ll take it slowly.
1-“Balanced” doesn’t mean you find equal good and bad in each side, whether the good and bad IS actually equal or not.
2- when you deliberately go out of your way to create false equivalence where the two side are not equivalent, that’s not balance, that’s disingenuousness (at best).
So you’re suggesting there’s no difference of opinion between the Trumpists, the Evangelicals and the more traditional elements (Reagan) of the Republican Party, as there is between the AOC led factions and more centrist Biden groupings within the Democrats?
The big parties are in it for power. They have that in common. The battle is between the elites and the workers, the somewheres versus the anywheres, not left and right.
Yup!
Blacks have been in the US for longer than any group besides the English and the Dutch. Most can trace their lineages so far back they run out of written records. They possess little generational wealth. They are predominantly workers and are archetypal “Somewheres”
They vote 9 to 1 for the party run by capital and the Anywheres.
I really don’t like this guy or his writing. Cue the commentators to rubbish me! He’s an academic writes like an academic, and his use of statistics is meaningless. Second cue for the commentators. For example, X% of Americans support BLM. Really? I don’t believe it. Many people support the concept that black lives matter (Unherd wants to capitalize this, what’s up with that?), but would not support the organization if they bothered to look at the website and see what BLM stands for. Are you a Marxist? Do you hate America? Do you want to abolish whiteness? Do you want to destroy the nuclear family? Do you think saying white lives matter too is racist? Do you believe white America today owes black America reparations? Would you like to wash the feet of black Americans in a public, religious ceremony to atone for your sins?
The point is that BLM has huge perceived support from white people who don’t want to appear racist.
Americans are being defined less and less by the 2 party system, so “reaching across the aisle” does not mean what it once did. If 40% of Americans were Ds and 40% were Rs, then 20% were some form of third party/independent. But what if now 20% are Ds, 20% are Rs, doesn’t that mean 60% are something else? Isn’t 60% a majority?
The worst number of political parties for a country to have is one. But the close second worst number is 2. I’m a Trump voter (my 2020 vote from abroad didn’t count, but that’s another story), not because he’s a R but because of his mostly excellent policies. I still don’t believe that Trump is a real R–and I hate real Rs only a bit less than Ds, mostly because Rs don’t hate straight white people.
I think your comment is spot on. Academics are almost 100% hard left and even those who are not are not on side.
Let’s go Brandon!
Seeing as Black Lives Matter is the name of the group it should be capitalised, the same as Labour, Conservative, Democrat and Republican. However if you’re using as a statement that you believe black lives matter, then it wouldn’t be.
I agree but the computer didn’t get it at first.
Well they should be. We’ve got plans for them.
Both parties always were and always have been coalitions. That’s how parties in FPTP operate to win power. It’s not so different in PR only there the ideologies coalesce into coalitions at governmental level. At least FPTP gets it out the way early. To a certain extent, either way, representative democracy is and always has been a game of finding a coalition of views broad enough to win elections.
interesting article but a.bit weird to use an infographic that places the right on the left hand side and the left on the right hand side.
LOL, you’re right, I hadn’t caught that!
The only meaningful battle at this point is people who still desire freedom and liberty and those that want to embrace a totalitarian medical/climate change state. Everything else doesn’t matter. Either there will still be some degree of freedom in the world if enough people resist or we will all live under a totalitarian state. All else is the same divide and conquer nonsense they always pull. We are ruled by propaganda. It is the single most effective tool in the elite’s arsenal against the greater humanity. The sane left and the right need to understand this and join forces or we are screwed.
“‘Faith and Flag Conservatives’” hahaa, not stereotypical at all…..
And their opposite, as named by this impartial poll:
“‘Progressive Left’”
Or as the guys doing the Poll, and making meaning of it would call them, if no one was listening: ‘The Good guys and the Bad Guys’….and the top one would be the bad guys…..
What description would you use for the groups then, with names that clearly state their political leanings?
Are you assuming that the term “Faith and Flag” is somehow insulting? I don’t see why you should, it seems to broadly describe a particular sector on the Right. I also believe those to whom it applies would be proud to be classified thus. However, I do agree that the term “progressive” is problematical, but I don’t know how it can be reclaimed from this particular grouping as they consider what they are doing as progressive, of course, they are in a minority in this belief. It’s an example of redefining language and terminology, and it’s not just the Left that does this.
But the Left has perfected it.
Well, a disease can progress too, so IMO to say that you are progressive can be something other than a compliment. But too much commentary assumes that progress is invariably beneficial, that is true. The challenge seems to me to be to take back the word from those who see it as always for the good.
On the highway to hell being a progressive is not a smart move.
‘Of these, the ‘Progressive Left’ make up just 12% of Democratic voters and are the whitest Democratic cluster, at 68%.’ A bunch of White people telling Blacks and Latin@s what they should want.
Please notice that no mention is made of any of the 3 Republican groups’ racial makeups — because they are all 90% white or better.
Although whites still make up about 74% of the voting electorate, not only are they the only swing voters, they also have the largest bloc of non-voters. As Peter Franklin pointed out in an article on a Jacobin Magazine/YouGov poll, those missing voters are not progressives.
Non-college educated and not interested in politics, that cohort is waiting to be motivated by a smart right-winger with the right “cultural” message.
And the zealous young white leftists who now control the Democratic Party and who worship at the shrine of George Floyd are likely to hand it to that smart right-winger.