staying healthy

Out of the Box: A Cautionary Warning

What follows is a brief collection of what many would call out of the box thinking today; some (you might call them the screamers) would in fact label what follows absolute heresy.

If you’re not in the mood to have your thinking about current events challenged a bit, then move along, there’s nothing to see here. Likewise, if you’re unwilling or unable to put on big boy (or girl) pants and question the endless parade of dire and oft conflicting information we’re all assaulted with daily, then click on over to your favorite foodies’ website for the plat du jour (something I enjoy doing every day myself).

Of note, what follows is in NO WAY an effort to delegitimize or downplay the severity of the SARS-CoV-2 invasion and the impacts of the resultant COVID-19 syndrome. Quite frankly it can wreak devastation for the most susceptible, and it has invoked one of the most unusual mass responses ever seen in global history.

Finally, an apology for the length of this post; it’s a big meaty topic.

The What If Syndrome

Over a year ago I had a client approach me, a very successful and uber-intelligent physician, seeking some help after witnessing first hand my personal transformation over the past few years. He claimed to have “done everything right” as prescribed by traditional medicine for four plus decades, from eating stone ground oatmeal every morning to (over) exercising diligently to cutting saturated fats from his diet and much more. Yet with all of his at times painful compliance, his lipid profile was a mess and he was, predictably, having some issues with statins after having taken them for years with little efficacy.

I provided him a raft of information and reading resources, including some of the most scientifically grounded and respected scientists, researchers, and thought leaders in the medical, sports, and ancestral health worlds.

Specifically (given his traditional medical background) I encouraged him to read some of the works of Drs. Gundry and Shanahan, medical professionals who’ve seen the light and have integrated rational nutritional principles into thriving medical practices. His almost immediate response was to note how critically these clinicians deviated from “accepted and classical thought”, and given such, their recommendations couldn’t be trusted and shouldn’t be followed.

His final comment to me on the matter, before simply giving up before even really getting started, was something akin to this: “What they’re saying is basically heresy, but what if they’re right?”

What if they’re right indeed is a principle that applies more than ever to those raising a cautionary note about end-of-the-world predictions and current events.

Trying to Make Sense of Today with a Bit of Context

There are hoards of commentators opining these days about COVID-19; those who speak (and write) the company line are those you see plastered across various media outlets, distilled down into sound bites for the masses.

Perhaps not so ironically those who dig deeper into the details and the available data, analyzing information in real time at a granular level, not using models to hypothesize, aren’t so embraced by traditional media outlets, therefore it takes a bit more work to find this information.

From my personal perspective, as a retired physician able to understand and digest the medical side of the data fairly comfortably, I’ve found it most illuminating to read with interest the works of several folks who are otherwise experts at analyzing big blocks of data – ironically several of the most insightful have been economists.

Take for example this piece – Coronavirus – It’s Not Heart Disease, It’s a Plane Crash – written by Chris MacIntosh and published this morning. From the piece –

Cardiovascular disease kills over 17 million people annually. It’s the main cause of death globally apparently. I thought it was stupidity but now Google tells me no, it’s “CVD”. Cardiovascular disease. So much for that then.

Looking deeper we find what causes it. Too much macaroni cheese, and donuts, which actually means I was right all along. Stupidity IS the main cause of death. Furthermore, we know what we can do to stop it. Buy a pair of running shoes and actually use them for – you know – running, instead of mooching about the mall from one junk food outlet to another.

Anyway it causes millions of deaths every year and in a minute I’ll tell you why we don’t collectively say…ok that’s it. Enough is enough, you’re all quarantined and everyone must, for the next 4 weeks, self isolate in the gym on a diet of lettuce and bottled water. Which if you think about it would save millions of lives, not to mention millions of dollars in healthcare.

I tell you what makes folks freak the pha-kout though. Air travel. Google explains to me that nearly a third of folks are afraid of flying.

Here’s deaths by transport for 2017.
Highway: 37,133
Rail (Trains): 761
Marine (boats & other watercraft): 694
Commercial Airlines: 0

And did you know that there was a 1 in 3.37 billion chance of dying in a plane crash between 2012-2016. There was a 1 in 20 million chance of being on a commercial airline flight experiencing a fatal accident from 2012-2016 and when there was a crash 98.6% of those crashes resulted in exactly zilch fatalities — Of the 140 plane accidents during 2012-2016, only two involved fatalities (1.4%). Ironically folks will gleefully gorge themselves on burgers and fries before boarding a plane, terrified it’ll fall out of the sky. It’s like popping a slow release cyanide pill and then getting onboard one of the safest forms of transport in the world and thinking to yourself…this thing may kill me. Irrational? Yup.

And the reason for this fear is the same reason folks are terrified of nuclear power (the safest form of power known to man).  When a plane crashes or a tsunami hits, or a Fukushima happens they all do so with an unexpected speed. This is why our reaction to these events is disproportionate to the events themselves.

Contrast this to “CVD” which doesn’t do its dirty work in one fell swoop. It’s not like the heart attack man swoops down in one month and takes them all. It kills one in your street, another few across town. Then it ventures into the next neighborhood before taking up residence in the old age home and poof poor Betty’s gone…and then Bernie across the hall. We don’t like it, but we just accept it and learn to live with it…like politicians…or herpes.

So now to the dreaded bat flu which has brought the entire world to a screeching halt – literally.

What makes this virus special is its speed, or in medical speak R value.  Let’s put this into context, so far it’s killed about 100,000 people or less than a fifth of what the seasonal flu kills annually. Ultimately it’s going to kill a whole lot more, but we should be asking ourselves will it even come close to donut disease (CVD)? Probably not. 17 million remember. And what if it did meet or even exceed donut disease? It’d then be a really bad year but not out of the realm of something we’ve all learned to live with – at least with respect to CVD…

He goes on to quote from Dr. John Lee’s (retired professor of pathology and former NHS consultant pathologist) recent article in The Spectator –

In announcing the most far-reaching restrictions on personal freedom in the history of our nation, Boris Johnson resolutely followed the scientific advice that he had been given. The advisers to the government seem calm and collected, with a solid consensus among them. In the face of a new viral threat, with numbers of cases surging daily, I’m not sure that any prime minister would have acted very differently.

But I’d like to raise some perspectives that have hardly been aired in the past weeks, and which point to an interpretation of the figures rather different from that which the government is acting on. I’m a recently-retired Professor of Pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, and have spent most of my adult life in healthcare and science – fields which, all too often, are characterised by doubt rather than certainty. There is room for different interpretations of the current data. If some of these other interpretations are correct, or at least nearer to the truth, then conclusions about the actions required will change correspondingly.

The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month? Statistically, we would expect about 51,000 to die in Britain this month. At the time of writing, 422 deaths are linked to Covid-19 — so 0.8 per cent of that expected total. On a global basis, we’d expect 14 million to die over the first three months of the year. The world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of that total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu). Not figures that would, in and of themselves, cause drastic global reactions.

Initial reported figures from China and Italy suggested a death rate of 5 per cent to 15 per cent, similar to Spanish flu. Given that cases were increasing exponentially, this raised the prospect of death rates that no healthcare system in the world would be able to cope with. The need to avoid this scenario is the justification for measures being implemented: the Spanish flu is believed to have infected about one in four of the world’s population between 1918 and 1920, or roughly 500 million people with 50 million deaths. We developed pandemic emergency plans, ready to snap into action in case this happened again.

At the time of writing, the UK’s 422 deaths and 8,077 known cases give an apparent death rate of 5 per cent. This is often cited as a cause for concern, contrasted with the mortality rate of seasonal flu, which is estimated at about 0.1 per cent. But we ought to look very carefully at the data. Are these figures really comparable?..

He goes on to document an astounding and very concerning practice being conducted currently – mainly a dramatic and significant change in the methodology of reporting deaths related to COVID-19. The point – context matters – and at least some of the powers that be have been changing the game (and the context) on the fly, most often to worsen the impact of the data. (One of course would ask why? I have no idea, and will leave that to others to pontificate on.)

Math Still Matters

One of my mentors in business (for context, we were analyzing multifamily real estate projects) was fond of saying over and over again that “math matters, and it’s almost aways a bitch to dig into the details”. He was, of course, right, and every time I’ve ignored his advice and gone with emotion/desires over the hard reality of the math, the project has bitten me in the *ss. (We humans just do dumb things sometimes.)

It’s rare to find a genuine mathematical genius today, particularly one who can translate what are often obscure and complicated mathematical constructs into language we mere mortals understand. That said, I’ve been following one for years – Karl Denninger writing over at the Market Ticker. He most often writes on economics, though is a dedicated low-carb guy, a tech genius and former tech CEO, and very well versed on current events. He’s brutally forthright and willing and able to sling stones at any giant standing today.

Over the past several weeks he’s been spot on with several math-based predictions related to COVID-19, and his frequently updated rolling calculations of R0 (R naught) values – using data from state health agencies and the CDC – is probably some of the most important and enlightening data in the world right now (and predictably, as it opposes the narrative being propagated by most of the media, is for the most part ignored).

KD writes with animated clarity, if you’re not up to being challenged, or offended by frankness, don’t click over there.

On the other hand, if you really want to get to the bottom of things, and incorporate useful real data you can use to make decision for your family, click over there and spend an hour reading back through several weeks worth of posts.

Stay healthy my friends, and spend a bit of time outside the box today.