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28 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
1\ Good news: I found evidence that lockdowns work!

Bad news: they "work" at stopping tuberculosis testing in Africa

The red lines below show when South Africa imposed lockdown measures

TB testing fell in half:
2\ TB is no joke. In terms of life years lost, it's far worse than COVID-19

TB kills north of 400,000 annually in Africa and 1.5 million globally, with a heavy toll among the young and middle aged

EVERY YEAR
3\ Bizarrely, there is 100 years of medical guidance on TB, all of which says:

--Don't stay in side. Get people outside (so why are we closing parks and beaches?)

--Treat care homes like powder kegs (so why did we jam them full of hospital discharges?)

4\ Here's a link to the tuberculosis testing data used in the chart above:

nicd.ac.za/wp-content/upl…

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More from @ElonBachman

Bachman Profile picture
28 Dec
1\ Like many countries, South Africa is using the specter of "pediatric deaths" to justify a second lockdown

It's complete nonsense

In a country of 59 million, something like 30 healthy people under the age of 19 have died of COVID-19:
2\ By comparison, flu/pneumonia kill around 2,500 people in South Africa under the age of 14 every year

That's right, flu/pneumonia is about 100x more of a risk to youngsters than COVID-19
3\ Data sources:

nicd.ac.za/wp-content/upl…

statssa.gov.za/publications/P…
Read 4 tweets
Bachman Profile picture
27 Dec
South Africa is locking down again because "hospitals are overwhelmed"

This is a lie. There are 1,300 COVID-19 patients in ICU across the country's 600 hospitals.

That's about two ICU patients per hospital
A contact writes that an ambulance was turned away from 6 hospitals in KZN yesterday, & that hospitals are pulling docs out of retirement

Not sure what's going on. COVID numbers remain small.

Is this just bureaucrats mistaking each other's contingency plans for reality?
Total COVID-19 hospital occupancy in South Africa is lower today than at the prior peak in summer

Hospitals were never swamped in summer

So either South Africa is just lying about current COVID-19 caseload, or hospitals are full of other patients...
Read 6 tweets
Bachman Profile picture
22 Dec
1\ This thread commemorates those brave politicians who didn't let lockdowns slow them down

Send me other examples by DM, and I'll add them

First, Deborah Birx: retiring in disgrace after gathering 2 households and 4 generations for a Thanksgiving party

nypost.com/2020/12/22/dr-…
2\ Then there was Nancy Pelosi, who helped shutter a nation of small businesses before arranging to see her stylist

Hey, at least she liberally disinfected herself with vodka

edition.cnn.com/2020/09/02/pol…
3\ And who can forget Gavin Nuisance, gleefully presiding over the nation's longest and most severe lockdown, while breaking the law to dine at French Laundy

nypost.com/2020/11/18/gov…
Read 66 tweets
Bachman Profile picture
22 Dec
1\ Here are the best books I read in 2020 (thread)

Putting it out there a bit early, because nothing in my hopper promises to make the list

2019's list is linked in the first tweet
2\ The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms (Hoffer)

and

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Hoffer)
3\ The Myth of National Defense (Hoppe)

and

The Vision Revolution: How the Latest Research Overturns Everything We Thought We Knew About Human Vision (Changizi)
Read 25 tweets
Bachman Profile picture
22 Dec
1\ Over the past 24 hours, our household has been a perfect microcosm of the statistical illiteracy that allowed COVID-19 hysteria to take root

It's been eye opening for me

And mind you, this house has been staunch realists the whole time

Thread...
2\

A: "We should sleep in separate rooms"

B: "Why, we all have it"

A: "To avoid reinfection"

B: "That's not a thing. You know it's not a thing"

A: "I saw it on the news. People are getting it twice"

B: "A few people out of a billion is the same as "never"

A: "But still..."
3\

C: "It's probably just the flu"

D: "Flu prevalence is down like 95% this year. It's almost certainly not flu"

C: "But the symptoms fit the flu"

D: "Right, but they also fit COVID. COVID is prevalent. Flu is not."

C: "But the symptoms fit the flu, so it's probably flu"
Read 6 tweets
Bachman Profile picture
18 Dec
1\ Far from an original observation, but I keep thinking about what the advent of the "Gig economy" means for the value proposition of "citizenship"
2\ Under the old model, citizens (and particularly knowledge workers) were bound by financial and commercial ties to one city or country

Politicians used these monopolies to extract taxes, in exchange for which they provided sub-par services

It was a thinly disguised shakedown
3\ Now, hipster/bourgeois culture is global

You can land most places, take an Uber (or a local clone) to an AirBNB, use a food delivery app to order a poke bowl, find a date on Tinder, and then use the cloud to collaborate with co-workers in other countries
Read 9 tweets

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