Thursday Throughput: Peter McCullough, Omicron, and Space Telescopes
Graphic by Chinmayamahapatra, CC BY-SA 4.0
[ThTh1] Last week, one of the most popular podcasts in America — the Joe Rogan Experience — hosted physician Peter McCullough to talk about COVID-19. He made a variety of claims that we’ve heard before — that vaccines are dangerous and unnecessary, for example — combined with bizarre conspiracy-mongering, claiming that the medical establishment is refusing to use therapies like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in order to push vaccines and that it is they, not the virus, that bear responsibility for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Yes, that’s right. He’s claiming tens of thousands of healthcare professionals — those same professional who are to the breaking point with COVID — are deliberately not curing people because reasons.
The interview lit up the twitters, instantly becoming a sacred text to COVID skeptics who chattered about how reasonable and knowledgeable he sounded. I watched as much of the interview as I could stomach.
One of the tactics used by anti-vaxxers, and one McCullough uses, is to throw out a rapid series of talking points and references to make them sound knowledgeable and authoritative. But addressing even one of those talking points or debunking even one of those references can take an entire article. You could spend ten hours going over why the claims made in one hour are false or misleading. This is a tactic I have encountered many many times with conspiracy theorists. They will throw a dozen claims. Someone will spend a great deal of time and effort debunking three of four of them. And the deceiver will then say, ‘Oh, so the other claims are fine, then?’
But I still think there is value in showing what is being done here on a fine scale. As Andrew noted in his response, you have to consider the source. If they have a history of dishonesty, maybe you shouldn’t trust the things they’re saying. Andrew focused on McCullough being sued by Baylor for continuing to claim association with them. I’ll focus on just one scientific issue to illustrate why you should take everything else he says with enough salt to fill the Dead Sea. You can check also out Dr. Z’s long video or ORAC for more.
At one point, McCullough makes the claim that you can’t catch COVID-19 twice; that “natural” immunity is 100%. Rogan, to his credit, calls him out on this, pointing out that he personally knows people who’ve caught it twice. McCullough then claims that these people didn’t have COVID-19; they had a bad flu that a false positive on a PCR test said was COVID-19.
The mention of PCR is a warning sign. As I’ve noted, anti-vaxxers love to make false claims about PCR tests. However, the PCR false positive rate isn’t nearly high enough to account for all the double infections. We know this because, when COVID-19 has been in retreat, the test posivity rate has been below 1%. Moreover, we can detect COVID-19 antibodies in people who’ve been infected. We can see that they’ve been infected and we can see those antibody levels fading. In fact, it would appear that the best immunity is afforded to those who’ve had an infection followed by vaccination. Are the serology tests false positives too?
Note also the anti-vaxxers know about serological studies. A year ago, they were citing serological studies as supposed proof that there were millions of undiagnosed asymptomatic infections out there and we actually had herd immunity and therefore didn’t need vaccines. They put forward Manaus — which have been devastated by COVID-19 — as an example of what the rest of us should do — only to go conspicuously quiet when a second devastating wave hit the city. So they are or should be well aware that we have a trove of evidence from multiple directions showing that, yes, Virginia, you can get COVID twice. Or even three times.
And the thing is, that this is such a stupid and unnecessary deception. If McCullough had said that natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity, many people would argue with him, but at least it’d be a debatable point.1 If he had made the point that a prior COVID-19 infection should count as the equivalent of a prior vaccination — e.g, if you’ve had COVID-19, getting the first vaccine is effectively a booster — I’d actually agree with him. But to make the demonstrably overwhelming false claim that infection immunity is lifelong is bizarre. It’s like a small fib isn’t enough.2
Dr. McCullough is not some random palooka. He’s a cardiologist, was vice chief of internal medicine at Baylor and is a professor. It’s bizarre to watch someone of his considerable stature go off the deep end like this. I have no idea why he has thrown in with the cranks. It’s not just infuriating; it’s sad. And a demonstration of how even a smart man can fall prey to conspiratorial thinking.
[ThTh2] The situation with the omicron variant is changing almost on an hourly basis. What we think we know now is that omicron has been in the United States for weeks. It is incredibly infectious, at least twice as infectious as delta, maybe ten times as infectious as the wild COVID-19. Vaccines still have efficacy in reducing both the likelihood of infection and the severity of it, although boosters help a great deal. It appears to infect the upper respiratory system, which the original COVID did not do, which makes it more infectious. But it also may be why early data is showing it is less dangerous, with hospitalization rates half or lower than delta. If it’s less likely to cause pneumonia, it’s less likely to kill.
Putting all this together, the next few weeks could be very bad. We will likely see a huge surge of infections. And even if omicron is only half as deadly as delta, that will still mean a huge number of people going to the hospital and a lot of death because exponents are very powerful things. But the good news, I guess, is omicron will go through the population very fast. By the end of February, everyone will either be vaccinated or have had omicron.
The advice has not changed: get vaxxed, get boosted, wear a mask. Because “mild” covid is a relative term. It is still deadly, especially if you are unvaccinated. It will still make people sick for weeks, possibly give them long COVID and may cause permanent damage. And, as I’ve noted, viruses are not Pokémon. They don’t reach a final form and stop evolving. Every infection is another chance for a new variant to emerge. A vaccine may not completely protect you but it will dramatically cut your chances of ending up in the hospital or the morgue. And, at this point, anything we can do to slow the spread will help our hospital workers get through yet another awful wave.
[ThTh3] And in still more COVID news, the FDA has approved Pfizer’s protease inhibitor for home use. While we will not make enough to deal with the omicron wave, this could be a useful treatment down the road. And finally, Walter Reed has completed phase 1 trials of a universal COVID vaccine. There’s a long long road to drive on this one though.
[ThTh4] It is possible we will finally end the Zeno’s Paradox that is the JWST launch. Currently on the schedule for Saturday.
After a two-decade wait, the JWST may finally launch this weekend.
[ThTh5] To be honest, I feel like I’ve been quantum entangled for almost two years (H/T: Will).
[ThTh6] This is just a stunning video of Comet Leonard:
Wow.
This is Comet Leonard, moving against the backdrop of the Milky.
And those bright stars at upper right? They're actually planets—Venus and Mercury.
All seen, last week, by a spacecraft that's orbiting the Sun. pic.twitter.com/CrAlFsx882
— Paul Byrne (@ThePlanetaryGuy) December 21, 2021
Note that the comet has two tails. The bright ion tail points away from the Sun, no matter which way the comet is moving. The dust tail points along the orbit. The motions of the planets and the comet are mostly from the motion of the spacecraft itself.
[ThTh7] And here is a stunning picture of the comet, which has brightened considerably in the last week. If you have a pair of binoculars, you might be able to catch it just after sunset, left of Venus and below Jupiter.
C/2021 A1 Leonard
Dec.21 – 11:15 UTC📷 Michael Mattiazzo pic.twitter.com/QpQYbAW0sc
— Aleix Roig (@astrocatinfo) December 21, 2021
[ThTh8] If this is true, why do they get fooled when you pretend to throw the ball?
- Although, unlike vaccines, acquiring natural immunity incurs the risk of organ damage, long COVID and death.
- He makes a similar claim that no one who’s gotten early drug therapy has died. This is laughable given that we’ve had right-wing talk show hosts who’ve refused vaccines, gotten COVID, immediately started taking the so-called therapeutics and died.
AKA the Gish Gallop.
The bullsh!t asymmetry principle. Ten seconds to throw out a superficially plausible talking point, two semesters to fill in the background knowledge needed to understand why it’s wrong.Report
I think part of the way to approach conspiratorial thinking on the vaccines that hasn’t been tried much is doing less ‘debunking’ and more common sense-ing. I know we’re all super into mRNA (and it is really cool), but to the extent we’re dealing with fear of new technology, it’s worth emphasizing that J&J uses an adenovirus which is decades old. And hey you only need one shot for that version!
Instead of getting into a battle of studies no one has actually read I think the better question is ‘what would your doctor say?’ Or, ‘Are you really that worried about a shot? So worried you’d rather miss Christmas with Grandma again?’
I’m not saying this kind of thing works with everyone. But I do think we’re going to convert a lot more people by turning down the tension and talking more about normal things that sound less like political talking points. I also think part of the appeal of the conspiracy theory is the idea of being in on something others aren’t. The best way to deal with that isn’t to treat it as super high stakes but to ground it in the mundane, and hopefully reassuring.Report
I’ve referenced Fred Clark over at Slactivist before, but he has a good series of posts on “I Want To Believe”, where he talks about conspiratorial thinking like Satanic panics.
He notes that people don’t make their way to that point innocently, but start with the premise that Something Is Wrong with the world and that dark evil people are doing it and engineer their way back into whatever conspiracy fits.
Notice how they are never relieved when its pointed out that millions of children are not in fact abducted each year, but instead they become angry and defiant and just widen the conspiracy to include whatever source of information is presented.Report
I remember after 9/11, that a number of respected professors of engineering (civil and mechanical!) pushed the conspiracy that the towers were preset with cutting charges, or the planes were packed with high explosives, because there was no way jet fuel would burn hot enough to melt steel.
Any first year engineering student understood why that was a load of BS, so it was especially sad to watch such people make fools of themselves to spin a conspiracy.Report
I remember that too, and was struck by how it wasn’t just mouth breathing morons, but actually well educated people who bought into it. Except they were educated in wholly unaffiliated fields, like medicine or law or something.
But it was a case where just a little “self research” was disastrous. They would read or skim a few articles and pick up a few key words and concepts, then go around talking confidently about “bending moments” and “modulus of elasticty” while sneering at actual engineers.
Which was the tell- They insisted that expert knowledge isn’t trustworthy, but then load their arguments with sciencey-sounding jargon to make themselves sound like an expert.Report
Reverse scientific method. Start with your conclusion and then throw out all data that doesn’t match.
https://medium.com/politically-speaking/the-reverse-scientific-method-why-conspiracy-theories-are-so-convincing-9cc43c2dd592Report
Yep, they only needed one or two experts to buy into the conspiracy, and that was it. After that, all the other experts were part of the conspiracy, or had bought into the lies. It’s as if Occam slit his own wrists with his razor.Report
Building 7, man.Report
IIRC (and I might not), the argument went like this:
“I’ve done the math, and burping all the jet fuel wouldn’t create enough heat to topple the building.”
“All the stuff inside the building burned too.”
“Oh! Never mind.”Report
The jet fuel would burn hotter than the paper or wood, although those would burn longer.
No, the failure of the argument is that it was never about melting, it was about softening the steel enough to cause it to suffer plastic deformation and be unable to support the weight of the floors above. Once the first floor dropped, it was a chain reaction all the way to the bottom.Report
How do we know the fatality rate of Omicron at this stage? Or is it still somewhat speculative?Report
ThTh8 reminds me of a study they did of infants that claimed to show they understood addition. If I recall correctly, they’d show them a single doll and then clear their slate and then show two dolls and based on how the infants reacted, they concluded they were doing arithmetic.
Turns out the babies were simply responding to change and novelty and could not, in fact, do math. Baby Geniuses they were not.Report
I remember when that came out, because I was both studying linguistics at the time and also a fairly new parent, and the conclusions were obviously wrong. It was the same “stare longer at something unexpected” concept, and they would e.g. show the infant one doll, then put a screen or curtain in front of it, then visibly put a second identical doll behind the curtain, then remove the screen — but in some cases they would secretly add a third identical doll behind the screen before revealing it. Infants that were old enough (around 6 months) would stare longer when the extra doll was added.
Their conclusion was that it showed that babies could do simple arithmetic, but coincidentally the age at which babies would show this behavior was the same age as when they’re expected to acquire the concept of object permanence. While the researches naturally saw the dolls as two or three members of the same category, there was no evidence that the infants did anything other than recognize that there should have been a thing and another thing behind the screen but not this other thing. The infants’ results would’ve been the same if the researchers had used three entirely distinct objects, where there would be no sense that arithmetic came into play.
There’ve been a bunch of studies like this over the years (babies or animals supposedly counting or doing simple math) that mostly just showed the researchers’ lack of understanding of what cognitive processes are involved in the concept of numbers.Report
Yes, that was it! Thank you for offering the details.Report
Actually it seems remarkably banal an obvious conclusion, that animals have a good grasp of how things should move.
After all, just watch how any predator chases and anticipates the movement of the prey and times its leaps to be where the prey will be, instead of where it is.
After all, just like humans, animals have spent their entire existence experiencing and learning from the cause and effect of walking, running and balancing.Report
Yeah the whole “Newtonian physics” thing is silly – it’s basically “dogs are surprised when moving objects don’t behave normally”.Report
“This defied expectations” is different than “This defied the laws of motion.”
A 3-year-old would remark if he went outside and the sky was green. It doesn’t mean he understands light wavelengths.Report
My dogs wouldn’t watch a TV. They didn’t know what it was. They reacted to noises it made (particularly doorbells and animal sounds) but the images on there might as well have been static. I can only surmise that dogs like these would basically not react to whatever was on a screen at all.
Other dogs love TV and will react to things on them. I knew one dog that would become very animated if a TV showed video of another dog hunting, or at play: she ran up to the TV and licked the screen maniacally wherever the image of the other dog was. These are probably the kinds of dogs who react with confusion or curiosity when the TV depicts objects behaving in unexpected ways.
But I don’t know what it is about a dog that makes her reactive or indifferent to a video screen.Report
If I remember correctly, their eyes have a different refresh rate so it’s mismatched against some TV technologies. That plus “no smell” plus “no color” means it’s a lot harder for them to relate.Report
Oh, your dogs can watch TV all right but are judging your taste in entertainment and finding it lacking.Report
Dogs dislike HBO: nudity, violence and no dog food commercials.Report
That reminds me. Back in the day my brother had a cat channel. The dog would sit in a chair for hours and watch it.
3rd story (closed) window with a chair next to it. The dog would look out at the street, and once every few hours she’d see a cat! Very exciting!
This was more of a “kill cats on sight” thing than “play with me”.Report
I grew up in a house that had a deck, and thus a glass door, that looked out onto a hill that was open space. The county would arrange for a flock of sheep to keep the weeds down, and the sight of them drove our dog (a Lab) nuts. But nothing compared to when we got a Border CollieReport
I mean, if it isn’t going to make the virus bounce off of my nostrils like bullets off of Captain America’s shield, what’s even the point?Report
Trump strongly supporting “his” vaccines.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/23/politics/trump-vaccine-covid-effectiveness/index.htmlReport
Better late than never.Report
ThTh4: Related, I’ll just mention that SpaceX did their record-breaking 31st successful launch of the year this week, a third in a 72-hour interval IIRC, and the 100th successful booster recovery. The Russians and Arianespace are wasting taxpayer dollars.
Part of me always wants to mention that the end of the ULA is in sight, other than the painfully expensive SLS/Artemis recreation of Apollo.Report
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/24/health/cloth-mask-omicron-variant-wellness/index.html
Which is it, CNN? Should we trust the science and the experts and the leadership? Or should we all change course to a more expensive (thereby excluding many folks) and more challenging (thereby reducing compliance) set of rules because of what two experts — one of whom works for you — says?
They’d quickly shame anyone who questioned masking… except when it’s them doubting their efficacy.Report