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An interesting overview of problems with COVID-handling
Post-anniversary, my COVID-readings have dropped to almost nothing, but I did stumble upon a very interesting text yesterday: 40 Facts You NEED to Know: The REAL Story of “Covid”.
On the upside, it gives a thorough overview of many of the problems involved, including use of faulty or flawed statistics (notably, based on poor tests and a poor division between “died from” and “died with”), the problematic approach to vaccines (notably, wholly inadequate testing and the highly unusual mRNA angle), and the ineffective or outright harmful countermeasures (e.g. ventilators, lockdowns, and, again, vaccines).
On the downside, it is a bit polemical and might to some degree use straw-men* or exaggerations. I advise particular caution with “Part I: Symptoms”, especially in light of the repeated use, including in the article title, of quotation marks** around “Covid” and its variations (e.g. “Covid19”). (And, of course, I do not vouch for the correctness of any individual claim.)
*For instance, the first item is a claim that COVID and the flu have identical symptoms, which I suspect to be not entirely true in detail, which definitely applies similarly to some other disease comparisons (and is unremarkable), and which can miss aspects like relative likelihood and typical severity of any given symptom.
**With scare-quotes being the most likely explanation among the multiple uses of quotation marks.
A discussion of potential malignant abuse and/or creation* of the pandemic to push a political agenda, after the main list, is particularly interesting. I tend to favor Eriksson’s Razor(s) over conspiracy theories, and am also a frequent user of Hanlon’s Razor, but I do find it almost impossible to believe that what happened was just a matter of coincidence, conscious (prime) movers acting without coordination, incompetence, whatnot. Certainly, these, especially incompetence, played in; certainly, much of what happened can be explained by after-the-fact opportunism. However, after more than three years of ever-mounting absurdities and utterly inadequate explanations of prior actions, I cannot see them as enough.
*In the sense of creating a storm in a teacup by taking a non-crisis and pushing propaganda and mis-/disinformation until it looked like a major crisis.
(In a bigger picture, for which I have a text in planning, it is quite clear that we live in a type of reverse democracy, where elected governments do too much to influence the will of the people, with the people’s own money, and are themselves influenced too little by that will—to the point that some governments try to dictate to the people what opinions they may and may not have.)
A few other items of particular interest:*
*With the usual reservations for formatting, etc.
18. There was a massive increase in the use of “unlawful” DNRs. Watchdogs and government agencies reported huge increases in the use of Do Not Resuscitate Orders (DNRs) in the years 2020-2021.
[etc.]
The increase is attributed to a deliberate pushing of DNRs, regardless of the will of the patient and relatives, and interests me on two counts: Firstly, that I have no recollection of hearing about this in the past.* Secondly, my recent writings on life-and-death choices (cf. [1], [2], [3]), which overlap in the idea of less-than-voluntary death. Indeed, pushing DNRs to e.g. free up hospital beds or allowing more transplants would be quite in the same line.
*But I have heard a few complaints of a general and non-COVID push for more DNRs.
[In item 19.]
[Use of ventilators] was not a medical policy designed to best treat the patients, but rather to reduce the hypothetical spread of Covid by preventing patients from exhaling aerosol droplets, this was made clear in officially published guidelines.
This is another first claim to me, but it does have the advantage of explaining why there was so strong a drive to use ventilators early on, contrary to typical practice, and, maybe, why ventilators became a non-topic after the early phase. (However, it is also notable that hospitals were often given flawed incentives, in that patients on ventilators led to more revenue than patients not on ventilators, and that it might make more sense to investigate the motives of the incentive creators.)
34. The EU was preparing “vaccine passports” at least a YEAR before the pandemic began. Proposed COVID countermeasures, presented to the public as improvised emergency measures, have existed since before the emergence of the disease.
[…]
In fact, vaccination and immunisation programs have been recognised as “an entry point for digital identity” since at least 2018.
[…]
Here there is a possibility that the EU and/or other entities are maliciously using COVID to force the people into various control measures, in order to enforce long-term compliance. This is consistent with other observations, in that “government of the people, by the people, for the people” does not at all match the ideal of many Leftists, many politicians, and many civil servants/government bureaucrats, who put the government first and the people second—a recurring theme in my writings. (And/or put something else first in a similarly perfidious manner, e.g. their own careers or their favored causes.)
Further Galeria closures / Follow-up: German department stores (and COVID-19)
Back in 2020, at an early stage of the COVID-lockdowns, I wrote a text on German department stores ([1]). In an excursion to a text from last month, I noted:
[…] I have likely not set foot in a department store in the almost three years since [1]—in part, due to the relatively low benefit; in part, due to the COVID-countermeasures, which saw a long stretch of forced downtime and made me lose any habit of department store visits. Further, that German Wikipedia points to severe and continued problems for the sole major player left (Galeria / Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof), including repeated Schutzschirmverfahren, which, in my understanding, are comparable to the U.S. “Chapter 11”.
Today, I learn that a new round of closures is part of the latest Schutzschirmverfahren, including the Galeria in my local Wuppertal, which might make the issue semi-academic. This could bring the total number of stores down from 129 to 77. (Cf., in German, [2] and [3].)
Contrast this 77 with the “170-or-so” mentioned in [1]—and even this number was likely very considerably smaller than when I moved to Germany in 1997. (But note that the current Galeria resulted from the merger of two previous chains, which makes numbers hard to compare.) On the upside, as early as in [1] there was a potential threat of 80 closures, and the actual number of closures in the almost three years since has been lower, which points to some possibility that stores are saved over time.
Third COVID Anniversary / Follow-up: Various
In a few days, we will have the third anniversary of my first text on COVID.* In the year since the last anniversary, COVID-mania has petered out and I am going through a period of low motivation to write. Correspondingly, I will just mention a few brief points:
*See [1] for the original text and [2] resp. [3]/[4] for the previous anniversaries.
- These new twelve months have, again, confirmed my fear that the countermeasures would do more harm than good. They did—and by a very considerable distance.
- There are some (based on my state of knowledge) inconclusive signs that the after effects of the countermeasures, especially lockdowns and market sabotage, will continue to hit the business world, that many who managed to get through the prime crisis were left sufficiently injured and with sufficiently reduced reserves that they might yet falter. (Not to mention the losses in e.g. missed growth opportunities for those who do survive.)
- The likely long-term effects on humans, especially on children, might be far worse. Adult health, youth education, socialization of infants, whatnot, have all suffered massively through the countermeasures. Here, too, much of the damage might only become noticeable in the future.
- Developments in knowledge during these three years have almost without exception come down on the side of the “sceptics” and against the likes of Fauci, Birx, and Ferguson. COVID, lockdowns, masks, vaccines, …—on each item, the “sceptics” were right and the self-proclaimed “experts” wrong.
- Nevertheless, there are large groups, especially of politicians, who stubbornly insist that this-or-that was a success, that millions of lives were saved, that inflation is just “greedy capitalists” (“price gougers”, Putin, or similar), whatnot. Whether this is stupidity/ignorance or intellectual dishonesty, I do not know, but it is absurd, intolerable, and horrifying.
- There are no true signs that the reckoning that is so urgently needed will take place. At the end of the day, the perpetrators of this travesty, be they incompetents or evil manipulators, will get away unpunished, unless some drastic change takes place. Bad as that is, the worst part is that the main reason for a reckoning is to prevent repetitions. Without a reckoning, repetitions are more likely, especially if large parts of the population have already been indoctrinated into seeing various idiocies as normal and acceptable.
Excursion on “amnesties” and the like:
A common attitude among the early COVID-fanatics in light of later developments (apart from the aforementioned denial) is some variation of “We did what we thought right, no-one could have foreseen what would happen, and we cannot be blamed!”. Well, there were a great many others who did foresee what would or could happen, be it with an eye at the economy (like yours truly), at medical issues (note, in particular, the Great Barrington Declaration), at consequences for children, whatnot. Moreover, many of us openly warned about negative consequences. Our warnings were ignored—worse, we were condemned and defamed en masse as e.g. COVIDiots, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers,* anti-science extremists,** peddlers of mis- and disinformation, … But now, they suddenly claim that no-one could have foreseen this-and-that!
*Notably, with no regard for the degree of opposition (including very sensible positions like a “test more before we inject half the world”) and with no regard for opposition to specifically the COVID vaccines vs. opposition to vaccines in general, which is a very, very different thing.
**The idea that someone like yours truly would be anti-science, even without the “extremist”, is absurd—and quite insulting.
To any policy maker or advisor who calls for a self-serving amnesty: Not only should you have foreseen the potential negative issues on your own, had you had a brain and actually used it, but you were told about the potential negative issues—you were outright and explicitly told! You have no excuse whatsoever and you have no right to an amnesty. That you have the inexcusable audacity to ask for one merely serves to condemn you further.
Excursion on the “precautionary principle”:
A common excuse by COVID-fanatics is the “precautionary principle”, that we must act strongly because we do not know how bad COVID could be. This is disingenuous and turns the world on its head. In truth, the “precautionary principle” would dictate that we proceed with caution with the countermeasures, as we know that humanity easily survived e.g. the Spanish Flu,* but we do not know how bad e.g. the effects of lockdowns would be—those of us who used our heads and understood even elementary economics knew that they would be bad, but to predict the exact consequences was near impossible. If we look at the vaccines, there might never, through the entire course of human history, have been a better example of when the “precautionary principle” should have been applied—to not inject (or try to inject) billions of humans with multiple doses of poorly tested vaccines. What if things had gone very, very wrong? (As opposed to the “somewhat wrong” that we have reason to suspect today.) What if the vaccines had turned out to be troublemakers on par with Thalidomide? Certainly, no precautionary argument concerning something so trivial as COVID could have outweighed that risk.
*Note that even the very early estimates around COVID, outside the panic-mongering of idiots like Ferguson, pointed to a lesser danger than once from the Spanish Flu—and incomparably lesser than from some of the epi- and pandemics of even earlier times. As is, COVID turned out to be closer to the regular flu than to the Spanish… For that matter, cancer kills more humans per year, year in and year out, than COVID.
Then there is the damage to Rechtsstaatlichkeit and democracy… To this, note that principles of this type are especially important when things go wrong, to prevent governmental and other abuse, to reduce the risk of totalitarianism and dictatorships, etc. To swear by such principles in times of smooth running and then to abolish them when a crisis appears, well, that is incompatible with the very ideas behind them—like building and bragging about a storm cellar and then, when a tornado actually comes, to remain above ground “because reasons”. Again, the “precautionary principle” speaks against the policies of the COVID-fanatics—the true COVIDiots.
DeSantis speaks out in favor of Djokovic and against insane COVID-restrictions
The issue of Novak Djokovic and his unfair treatment by various entities with regard to his vaccination status has been addressed repeatedly in earlier texts ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]). While he was allowed to compete in this year’s Australian Open, and while this allowed him to regain the first place on the ATP ranking, he is still a victim of undue restrictions, as with e.g. this year’s Miami Open.
The restrictions on travel to the U.S. (that prevent Djokovic from participating in the Miami Open) has caused Florida* Governor Ron DeSantis to write a letter to Joe Biden, available at Brownstone. Due to the high quality and high relevance to COVID-nonsense in general, not just on the topic of Djokovic, I republish large parts below:**
*Miami is, of course, located in Florida, which makes the tournament of particular relevance to DeSantis—and the main risk of COVID-damage, should such exist (have existed), would be (have been) directed at Floridians, not the U.S. population in general or Delawareans, as Biden’s potential special-interest group.
**Restricted to the body. Footnote removed. The usual reservations for formatting, etc., apply.
It has been reported that Novak Djokovic has formally applied and been denied permission from your administration to enter the United States so that he may compete at the upcoming Miami Open tennis tournament. This denial is unfair, unscientific and unacceptable. I urge you to reconsider. It’s time to put pandemic politics aside and give the American people what they want—let him play.
While Mr. Djokovic is surely a supreme competitive threat to his fellow tennis professionals, his presence in our country poses no meaningful health or public safety risk. I note that since the onset of COVID-19, Mr. Djokovic has visited the United States at least twice — including once during your presidency — without any apparent health incident. It is also not clear to me why, even by the terms of your own proclamation, Mr. Djokovic could not legally enter this country via boat. Please confirm no later than Friday, March 10, 2023, that this method of travel into Florida would be permissible.
Furthermore, even as you enacted the Proclamation on air travel that remains in force to this day, your administration pointedly allowed thousands of unvaccinated migrants to enter our country through the southern border. In sum, the current “travel ban” as applied to Mr. Djokovic and presumably millions of other potential unvaccinated foreign visitors — seems completely ungrounded in logic, common sense, or any genuine concern for the health and welfare of the American people.
[…]
The only thing keeping Mr. Djokovic from participating in this tournament is your administration’s continued enforcement of a misguided, unscientific, and out-of-date COVID-19 vaccination requirement for foreign guests seeking to visit our great country. American tennis legend John McEnroe recently termed this restriction “absurd.” He was quite right to say so.
We are now three years since the onset of COVID-19, and we have learned many valuable — and often painful — lessons during that time. For one thing, it is now clear that the COVID-19 vaccines are not as effective as initially advertised. A new study in the Lancet has found that natural immunity is at least as effective as the COVID vaccines (“Our analysis of the available data suggests that the level of protection afforded by previous infection is at least as high, if not higher than that provided by two-dose vaccination using high-quality mRNA vaccines.”). Furthermore, data also suggests that exposure to COVID-19 is now significantly less likely to result in hospitalization or fatality. Finally, not only is the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine now in question, but recent scientific studies have identified serious potential health risks from the vaccine. Florida’s Surgeon General has issued guidance recommending against the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for males ages 18-39 years old — precisely the cohort of Mr. Djokovic.
[…] Although it has taken some time, most of the rest of the world has now come to recognize COVID-19 vaccination requirements as obsolete. At present, it appears that the United States is one of only a handful of countries that requires foreign visitors to have received a COVID-19 vaccination. […]
[…]
COVID and natural immunity / Follow-up: The paradoxical betrayal by those who should fight for truth
In my previous text, I went hard on fact-checkers, proponents of Official Truths, and the like. Among other things, I noted:
With more facts in hand, it is horrifying how much the likes of Fauci [contextually juxtaposed with Trump] got wrong.
At around the same time, Brownstone published a text on distortions, including by Fauci, around natural immunity and COVID, which well illustrates some of the problems.* I strongly recommend reading the article as a whole, especially for examples and details. Still, a few quotes:**
*In addition to pointing to the benefits of natural immunity. This is off-topic relative my previous text, but is important in its own right, considering how many have not yet seen the point.
**With reservations for formatting, etc.
A new study in The Lancet has confirmed that natural immunity from COVID infection is at least as protective and durable against severe complications as vaccination.
Yet again, another COVID “conspiracy theory” has become today’s “The Science™.”
Natural immunity has long been a well known and accepted part of immunology, despite rabid, frenzied attempts to discredit it.
This fits a bigger picture of trying to discredit unwanted opinions with various slurs (e.g. “conspiracy theory”, “racism”, “White Supremacy”) instead of with arguments. Such attempts could, on a meta-level, be seen as a strong argument for the attacker being wrong and the attacked being right, as those who actually have arguments should* use those arguments instead of shouting “conspiracy theory”. I have reached the point where, unthinkable just a few years ago, “conspiracy theory” seems more like an endorsement than a condemnation. The issue with natural immunity is particularly puzzling, if we take a “we want to help” attitude at face value,** as the idea behind vaccines has historically been to get as much of the benefits from (post-infection) natural immunity without actually taking the risks associated with a (regular, non-manipulated) infection—immunity with less risk; not stronger immunity. The COVID vaccines use a somewhat different approach, but there is nothing that a priori (in my layman’s perspective) pointed to their being more effective than natural immunity and, for the young and healthy, even the “less risk” part seems*** highly dubious by now.
*Unfortunately, this is not foolproof, as some go for the easy manipulation of the broad masses over attempts to convince the thinkers; however, it does seem to hold up very well with the Left. (Cf. e.g. [1].)
**Whether we should is another matter. Much of what has happened can be parsimoniously explained by assuming a priority of e.g. selling vaccines or enforcing compliance over a wish to keep the people healthy.
***Unfortunately, the methods of the COVID fanatics, and the polarization of the debate that they have caused, have made it hard to gain a clear impression, at least without putting in much more leg-work than I have. There are definite risks, but how large they are and how they compare with the COVID risks is hard to tell.
Repeatedly, “fact-checkers” labeled posts as “misleading” for claiming that natural immunity was highly effective and could provide similar protection as vaccination.
Except they’ve all been proven wrong.
The Lancet study examined 65 studies from 19 different countries to determine the level of protection from infection against severe illness from COVID.
And they found that natural immunity was extremely protective against further complications, even for newer variants.
An excellent example for my own discussion of fact-checkers and how large the disconnect between claims about science (facts, whatnot) and the actual science (facts, whatnot) can be. (But note that I do not vouch for the correctness of details, here and elsewhere, e.g. whether “extremely protective” holds true or just “protective”. The point is, to me, that natural immunity was dismissed in a near blanket manner, while actually working well.)
Even more importantly, the study found that natural immunity was “at least” as protective as vaccination against all variants. And frequently more so.
[…]
Beyond being as least as protective, natural immunity was potentially longer lasting than protection from vaccination.
As really should have been expected. Moreover, something that the sceptics have been saying for a very long time based on earlier research. (A disadvantage with a meta-study is, of course, that it has to wait for individual studies to materialize—the truth has been out there for most of the COVID era.)
It’s almost impossible to be more wrong than Fauci, Birx, Mother Jones, dismissive “experts” and “fact-checkers” have been over the past few years.
With regards to masks, vaccine passports, school closures, lockdowns and natural immunity, for every single pandemic question the ‘experts’ formulated the wrong answer.
Hear, hear! The interesting question now is to what degree this is explained by e.g. incompetence and to what degree by some hidden agenda.
One of the most consistent features of the COVID era has been “experts” lying to the public, while steadfastly refusing to ever admit they were wrong.
Ditto. (Note that the word “lying” is justified, even should the issue ultimately be rooted in incompetence, as many stuck with the same line even after it must have been clear that the line was faulty.)
Beeching axe vs. Swedish station closures / Follow-up: German department stores (and COVID-19)
In an older text ([1]),* I discuss a side-topic of optimizations that might seem plausible, especially in the short term, but which might have unforeseen or ignored negative effects, especially in the long term—as with the closing of railway stations in rural Sweden during the 1980s.
*I apologize for the quality of language in that text. While I make no claim of perfection in other texts, I found myself sorely tempted to let a rewrite follow the revisit.
Today, I encountered the British Beeching cuts ([2])* of some twenty years earlier—and I find that the Swedish cutters of the 1980s had failed to learn from history.
*The exact version read and quoted is 129913.
For instance, I wrote that:
[…] Possibly, in any given case, [a station closure] was a rational decision, but it had the effect that overall passenger load was reduced and that fewer passengers used the other stations, making the next cut that more tempting.*** […]
***I note that this was deep in the country-side, where almost everyone had a car, and that it was rarely worth the trouble to take the car to the next station: unless the intended train travel was very long, one might just as well go the entire distance by car as go to a further-away station by car and then taking the train from there.
(Footnote present in the original.)
This while [2] says e.g.:*
*Internal remark removed. Some change to formatting might have occurred.
The assumption at the time was that car owners would drive to the nearest railhead (which was usually the junction where the closed branch line would otherwise have taken them) and continue their journey onwards by train. In practice, having left home in their cars, people used them for the whole journey. Similarly for freight: without branch lines, the railways’ ability to transport goods “door to door” was dramatically reduced. As in the passenger model, it was assumed that lorries would pick up goods and transport them to the nearest railhead, where they would be taken across the country by train, unloaded onto another lorry and taken to their destination. The development of the motorway network, the advent of containerisation, improvements in lorries and the economic costs of having two break-bulk points combined to make long-distance road transport a more viable alternative.
This assumption seems naive to me even for the 1960s, as the objection that I raise in the footnote is obvious as a possibility (but not necessarily as a certainty); however, that the same assumption was (implicitly or explicitly) made twenty years later is remarkable: How could railway experts be unaware of the British experiences? If originally unaware, how could they have failed to research prior experiences before engaging in similar cuts?
(Off topic, it is also a possible example of a recurring issue of various service providers, producers, whatnot being, for want of a better word, self-centered, in that they see their specific service, product, whatnot as the natural default, as unusually important, as having an exceptional position in the eyes of the customers, or similar.)
Among other interesting statements in [2], I was gratified to find claims of failed “bustitution”. While likely not something that I have ever discussed, I have always found bus travel to be cumbersome relative train travel, including in terms of (dis-)comfort and travel times. Similarly, cost and environmental* effects aside, a comparison between travel by bus and by car leaves the car well ahead. Whether my own experiences are relevant to a train–bus comparison in the British 1960s is uncertain; however, looking at the world that I know and have known, a relative failure of bus lines is not surprising. To be blunt, buses suck—even by the standards of public transport.
*And note that the environmental effects were prioritized far lower in the 1960s than today.
(However, note that I make no statement on whether the overall effect of the Beeching cuts was positive or negative—or, for that matter, the effect of the Swedish cuts.)
Excursion on other aspects of [1]:
The main/surface topics of [1] are department stores (including long-term trends and the potential effects of the, then new, COVID-countermeasures) and the ability of customers to buy this-and-that in a reasonable manner. To this, I note that I have likely not set foot in a department store in the almost three years since [1]—in part, due to the relatively low benefit; in part, due to the COVID-countermeasures, which saw a long stretch of forced downtime and made me lose any habit of department store visits. Further, that German Wikipedia points to severe and continued problems for the sole major player left (Galeria / Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof), including repeated Schutzschirmverfahren, which, in my understanding, are comparable to the U.S. “Chapter 11”.
More locally, I noted that “Sadly, I had [a Walmart-style market] just a few kilometers away, when I first came to Barmen, but it has since closed—incidentally, leaving the (otherwise very small) mall that it anchored almost dead.”. Since then, a new anchor has been found, but one with a smaller scope both in size (one floor instead of two) and product range (very little not found in a regular, food-centric, supermarket).
Follow-up V: Djokovic as GOAT? (III) and COVID distortions
As I have argued repeatedly in the past (cf. [1], [2], [3], [4]), Djokovic is the true number-one player in the world, only failing to be so officially due to artificial restrictions placed upon him. Moreover, these restriction have skewed various measures of GOAT-ness, including weeks-at-number-one (his lead artificially shortened) and majors-won (temporarily trailing Nadal, when he might well have been one or a few ahead).
Looking at the official ATP rankings, Djokovic began the day with at least three artificial strikes against him: he had not been allowed to compete in the 2022 Australian Open and U.S. Open, and his victory at Wimbledon had not brought him any ranking points—a penalty of potentially 6,000 points.* With today’s final of the 2023 Australian Open, a mere one of these artificial strikes were removed, as Djokovic won—and this is still enough to allow him to return to the official number-one position on Monday (when the next official rankings are released).
*An enormous amount. Compare this with e.g. the overall numbers given in [4].
Looking at his last 12 months, he has won three out of the five largest tournaments (2023 Australian Open, 2022 Wimbledon, 2022 ATP Finals), reached the quarter-finals in one (2022 French Open),* and been artificially barred from one (2022 U.S. Open). As a comparison, this would have been a banner year even for someone like Pete Sampras and it exceeds the career best of any active player except for Djokovic, himself, and Nadal.
*Losing against eventual champion Nadal. A negative side-effect of the knock-out format is that someone unlucky enough to meet the eventual champion early might go out in a, in some sense, “too early” round, and a quarter-final is best seen as the lower limit of the accomplishment. I note that Djokovic was the defending champion and likely is the second best clay player (after Nadal) among the currently active players. (But this is the same for everyone and moves on a very different level from the other issues.)
Looking at the Australian Open, this was Djokovic’s 10th (!) victory, and it comes in a series of three straight victories (2019–2021), one missed tournament (2022), one victory (2023). Now, had Djokovic not been artificially barred in 2022, what are the chances that Nadal would still have won? That Djokovic would have won instead? This is impossible to say in detail, but giving Djokovic a better than 50% chance borders on the cautious, in light of both his success at the Australian Open and at such tournaments that he was allowed to play during the surrounding year. Nadal, then, correspondingly well below 50%, as he does not just have to fend of Djokovic but also has to consider the risk of losing against someone else as the events are reshuffled.*
*Note e.g. [5] and how strongly chance plays in for any player who is not highly dominant.
Looking at the overall majors won, Djokovic has now caught up with Nadal at 22, but should likely be a few ahead. Just turning last year’s Australian Open would make it 23 to 21; with a 22 to 21 resulting from a partial change (Nadal does not win, but neither does Djokovic). Ditto replacing a 2020 scrapped Wimbledon and a Nadal-victory in the French Open with a scrapped French Open and a Djokovic-victory in the Wimbledon. A 2022 U.S. Open victory for Djokovic would have made it 23 to 22. All taken together, 25 to 20.* (And I might well have forgotten some artificial disadvantage for Djokovic.)
*But note that the probability of all is much smaller than the probability of at least one, and that the latter is all that it takes to put Djokovic in an outright lead.
Immunity debt, COVID, and a reduced germophobia
Reading [1], I am reminded of an interesting personal paradox around COVID: that I began the journey as quarter-germophobe and grew less germophobic as time went by.
Now, I was never anywhere near, say, the eponymous protagonist from “Monk”, but I have over decades washed my hands after coming from the outside, strongly disliked handshakes with strangers, outright hated it when a waitress has put cutlery directly on the table, tried* to avoid using a hand that had contact with door-knobs and railings for direct contact with food, and similar—all because I have had a feeling that germs could spread. (I also have a dislike of kissing, but this is likely mostly a side-effect of that disgusting artificial smacking sound that is usually added to TV/movie kisses.)
*Unlike Mr. Monk, I tend to forget what hand has done what and when after a few minutes have passed, so my success rate might not be the best.
On paper, I would seem an easy victim for e.g. mask-up-and-keep-your-distance propaganda, but, unlike so many others, I kept a cool head and looked at the actual facts and arguments—not the fear-mongering and panic.
On the contrary, as I learned more about how how human immunity worked, I began to consider my old quarter-germophobia outright detrimental,* something likely to have worsened my health outcomes in the past. The hitch is that immunity is built and refreshed through exposure, and that continual exposure to small doses of an “attacker” can give us an advantage when a larger dose follows. Yes, of course, a hand touching a railing can lead to a severe illness, but it is a rare scenario, and what is gained through the much more likely exposure to something small will usually outweigh the risk. In particular, immunity to “yearly” or otherwise recurring diseases often hinges on a refresher exposure: If I am hit by a virus today, chances are that my immunity will still be able to handle a renewed exposure a year from now, and that this renewed exposure will make me better able to handle the recurrence yet another year into the future (and so on). However, if I go year in and year out without a refresher, then the immunity will dwindle, if in doubt because the accumulated mutations of the virus make it a worse match for the original defense.
*As opposed to merely overkill. (I had long realized that it was more a matter of psychology than a real protection, which is demonstrated by my washing my hands comparatively often but rarely very thoroughly—a quick rinse and the psychology is satisfied, even though I know that such quick rinses are of dubious effectiveness. I admit to slightly having increased my thoroughness in the early COVID-countermeasure era, however.)
Another issue to remember is that far from all exposures lead to an actual “case”: We are constantly exposed to various viruses, bacteria, and whatnot—but how often do we actually grow ill? Indeed, I have repeatedly heard tales of someone, or some group of workers, who has (a) been exposed to unusual amounts of germs, (b) remained unusually healthy, which raises the question of “Despite—or because?”.* Is the claimed (pre-COVID) increased spread of e.g. colds truly a result of an increased exposure to germs,** or might it be a result of a decrease, through too many of us being too set on avoiding infections? That more of us are singles and/or childless and have a lesser private exposure? Certainly, while I rarely have been very ill, I have long seemed to be more susceptible to common colds than most of my colleagues.
*Including repeated claims around garbage men and a scene with a slaughterhouse worker in one of James Herriot’s books.
**As a physician once claimed to me. (All that commuting and whatnot would make us more exposed today than a decade or two back.)
As to [1], a key point is “immunity debt”,* which is a similar idea to some of the above, including the risk that the COVID-countermeasures have weakened our defenses against other diseases, which makes us much more vulnerable to them now than we would have been in an alternate reality without COVID-countermeasures resp. than we were pre-COVID.
*“a gap in the level of protection that you might be expected to have from previous exposure to the disease in question”.
End result: I am less likely to wash my hands, avoid contacts with this-and-that, whatnot today (late 2022) than I was at the beginning of 2020.
Also see [2] for a prior discussion of similar issues, including my over-protective mother. (While I am the over-protective one, towards myself, above.)
Follow-up IV: Djokovic as GOAT? (III) and COVID distortions
To further make my point from yesterday, the new ATP rankings are in.
First, to revisit an older rankings discussion, we then had a ranking that made Djokovic a strong candidate for the true number one (see there for argumentation):
The official ATP ranking currently* has a top-7 of:
*Note that this page is regularly updated. Data used represent the current state.
1 Carlos Alcaraz 6,740 2 Casper Ruud 5,850 3 Rafael Nadal 5,810 4 Daniil Medvedev 5,065 5 Alexander Zverev 5,040 6 Stefanos Tsitsipas 4,810 7 Novak Djokovic 3,570
Today, the same official ranking has a top-5 of:
| 1 | Carlos Alcaraz | 6,820 |
| 2 | Rafael Nadal | 6,020 |
| 3 | Casper Ruud | 5,820 |
| 4 | Stefanos Tsitsipas | 5,550 |
| 5 | Novak Djokovic | 4,820 |
Djokovic is now exactly 2000 points from a tied number one—and this is exactly the points that were withheld from him for his Wimbledon victory.* Alcaraz, too, has some points missing from his Wimbledon exploits, but far fewer, and even with this lone adjustment, Djokovic would be a clear number two and nabbing at Alcaraz’s heals. However, Djokovic was unfairly denied a chance at both the Australian Open and the U.S. Open, and even a very sub-par effort at even one of them would have been enough to bring him to number one.**
*Intended as a punishment of Wimbledon, not Djokovic, but he is the one who might see the largest negative effect.
**Alcaraz, in turn, missed the ATP Finals due to injury. However, injury is something relating to the player, e.g. in that a player who trains harder and plays more often has a larger injury risk (and might, therefore, have avoided the injury by earning less points in the past). Moreover, the maximum payout at the ATP Finals is 1,500 points to 2,000 for each of Djokovic’s missed majors.
Conclusion: in a fairer world, Djokovic would right here and right now be the number one on the ranking, and, as this is the final ranking of the year,* Djokovic would have just earned his 8th (!) end-of-the-year top spot, thereby extending his lead in the ATP era. (Sampras 6, Federer/Nadal/Connors all 5. Cf. Wikipedia on ATP number ones.) It would also make him highly competitive with the likes of Pancho Gonzales from the pre-ATP era.** (I caution that I, personally, do not give the end-of-the-year ranking a greater weight than the weekly ranking; however, many others consider it important—especially, for comparisons with the pre-ATP era.)
*At least in terms of top players and movements between them. There might or might not be other changes through lesser tournaments.
**Rankings from these times are often disputed and comparisons tricky.
Combine this with the artificial damage done to counts of majors-won and weeks-at-number-one, and it is clear that the last few years have been a travesty (cf. earlier texts), which makes just going by numbers impossible—but where it is to be feared that most future judges will just go by numbers.
Follow-up III: Djokovic as GOAT? (III) and COVID distortions
In the previous follow-ups (cf. [1], [2]), I noted that “The arguably best tennis player in the world, right here, right now, is Djokovic.”, with further remarks on how he was artificially disadvantaged and how he, among other consequences, might miss the ATP Finals through these artificial disadvantages.
As it happens, Djokovic just won these ATP Finals, even be it in the absence of Carlos Alcaraz, the injured number one on the world ranking, giving further support to my assessment. To wit: out of the five most important tournaments of the year, Djokovic won two (Wimbledon and the ATP Finals), lost against the eventual winner in the French Open (Nadal), and was artificially barred from both the U.S. Open and the Australian Open. In contrast, Nadal won the Australian Open and French Open, the first in the absence of Djokovic. (And flopped badly in the ATP Finals.) The sole other winner, Alcaraz had “only” the U.S. Open—again, in the absence of Djokovic.
The existence of the ATP Finals is, of course, yet another reason to discount the “majors won determines the GOAT” idea: While the relative value of the ATP Finals and the majors can be discussed back and forth, neglecting the former is silly. Looking at this year, Djokovic went undefeated* in five matches against players all in the top-9 of the world-ranking. Winning a major, seven matches against players in the top-128, or so,** is standard, and beating even one top-9 player is not a requirement—beating more than two is rare. If we look at totals of majors and ATP Finals for the “Big Three”, we find Djokovic at 21 + 6 = 27, Federer at 20 + 6 = 26, and Nadal at 22 + 0 = 22. (Yes, Nadal has never won.)
*Unlike the majors, the ATP Finals are divided into two round-robin groups, followed by semi-finals and finals. Correspondingly, it is possible to win the overall despite an imperfect record in the group phase.
**There are 128 slots for each major, but some are filled with wild cards, qualification players, and the like, that are not necessarily in the top-128 ranking-wise.
In a correction to my earlier claims: My fears that Djokovic would miss the ATP Finals were a little misguided, as there is a wild-card rule for those who have won one of the four majors during the year. Due to this rule, it would have taken a very unfortunate constellation for him to be excluded (barring more COVID-nonsense, of course).
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