Thanks for the reminder about the 2023 study. I know we’ve talked about it offline, but I wanted to share a few observations here rather than make a separate post — hope you’ll forgive the use of the comment section. :)
I appreciate what the reconstructed curves and spatiotemporal analysis of Milan 1630 suggest about “spread” — or the lack thereof.
My main interest lies in the shape and behavior of daily all-cause mortality (ACM) curves during major death events. The Milan study is less useful for that purpose, unfortunately., for two reasons:
1. As the authors note, the data exclude some locations of death, and there’s no estimate of how many deaths occurred in hospitals (possibly because it’s unknowable). Even basic information like the number and size of hospitals would help.
2. Most of August is missing. On one hand, that kind of gap isn’t surprising given the age of the records. On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder who benefits from the absence and how. ("The Case of the Missing Milan Death Ledger" is a great title for a mystery, isn't it?) :)
These limitations prevent me from treating the Milan curve as a complete or fully accurate depiction of the event. That said, completeness isn’t required for visual comparisons with NYC and Bergamo, both of which I/we consider manipulated.
What stands out in the Milan 1630 curve is its organic shape. It's full of noise, fluctuation, and variation across days of the week. It looks natural. I would expect even an entirely iatrogenic death event to have similar properties.
The NYC and Bergamo daily death curves are so shocking in part due to the steep, uninterrupted rise — specifically, the number of consecutive days with increases. Bergamo shows 12 in a row; NYC shows 16. That simply doesn’t happen in seasonal respiratory waves or in events like heat waves, earthquakes, or power outages, where day-to-day death counts fluctuate. (Mentioned here too, under Problem 3: https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/eleven-serious-problems-with-the)
The absence of stochasticity is a major red flag.
Chicago looks believable for an iatrogenic event; NYC and Bergamo don’t.
From a biopsychosocial perspective, the human psyche plays a central role in the risk of infection and disease. One psychological aspect that plays a role in determining the risk of infection/illness and thus the development of a pandemic is the so-called behavioural immune system. The concept of the behavioural immune system is based on the assumption that people are immunologically active in the defence against pathogens not only when there is direct physical contact with the microbe, i.e. in a material-biological way, but also in a non-material psychosocial way, in that a person recognises an infected person as infected (e.g. because he sneezes, looks sick), is disgusted by him or feels fear and distances himself, i.e. protects himself with psychosocial means against the danger of becoming infected. Biological and psychological/psychosocial defence mechanisms are inextricably intertwined. For example, if you look at a photo of a visibly ill person, the interleukin (IL)-6 concentration increases in the viewer (Schubert 2017).
The fact that a person makes the appearance of an infection or illness, i.e. signals to others to keep their distance, can be justified immunoneuropsychologically. In the case of an infection, pro-inflammatory cytokines (e.g. IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α) cross the blood-brain barrier and trigger a series of neurovegetative (including exhaustion, loss of appetite) and psychiatric (including irritability, social withdrawal) symptoms (“sickness behaviour”) in the brain. This serves to regulate the experience and behaviour of the infected person in such a way that, on the one hand, energy can be saved for the defence process and, on the other hand, it can be signalled to the other person verbally (“I feel sick”) and non-verbally (someone looks sick) that one is infected (Schubert 2017).
Conclusion
What do smallpox, plague, Spanish flu, HIV and – currently – COVID-19 have in common? The centuries-long ideological adherence to the machine-paradigmatic orientation in medicine and the associated one-dimensional and time-limited view of the problem of pandemics. Looking purely at the material-biological aspect of the pathogen in dealing with pandemics and prioritising measures aimed at eradicating the pathogen and isolating the host are bound to fail because they cannot match the complexity of the problem. A paradigm shift in medicine, on the other hand, would place the complex interaction between pathogen, human and environment in the foreground of diagnosis, treatment and prevention of pandemics. It would make people more responsible and focus on their innate and acquired immunological protection and defence capabilities, which extend beyond the biological into the psychological and social, even cultural sphere. Perhaps this would then mean the end of pandemics as we know them today.
Have you ever heard of the so-stories how the indigenous tribes when exposed to pathogens from the West got wiped out or 25% of them died because they had no immunity to whatever s..t? I’m in the process of writing a book on how the diseases of civilization-which are only known in the West- keep gradually creeping in into the isolated communities not because they have no immunity against them, but because they are being poisoned…by soft drinks for example…
I'll be interested in your book. (Also alcohol as well as rubbish food/drink being introduced. Potentially weapons upsetting local balance)
The most puzzling example I'm aware of concerns the Amazon basin. Here's the story - I've not investigated myself and can't tell you how accurate this is. It's lodged in my mind as a puzzle in need of an explanation. As follows:
Engravings and accounts from the time of first being found show the river system very densely populated. Second contact found it empty of people.
A few decades ago evidence was found of the initial high population density by way of a pattern of banks of rich soil. Clearly gardens. The very dark colour of the rich soil due to large quantities of charcoal included which enables the root fungi to flourish and nourish the crops. So now we can routinely buy mycorrhizal fungi in garden centres and also charcoal available for plants (termed biochar).
So what's the explanation? Personally I have no idea.
Thanks for the reminder about the 2023 study. I know we’ve talked about it offline, but I wanted to share a few observations here rather than make a separate post — hope you’ll forgive the use of the comment section. :)
I appreciate what the reconstructed curves and spatiotemporal analysis of Milan 1630 suggest about “spread” — or the lack thereof.
My main interest lies in the shape and behavior of daily all-cause mortality (ACM) curves during major death events. The Milan study is less useful for that purpose, unfortunately., for two reasons:
1. As the authors note, the data exclude some locations of death, and there’s no estimate of how many deaths occurred in hospitals (possibly because it’s unknowable). Even basic information like the number and size of hospitals would help.
2. Most of August is missing. On one hand, that kind of gap isn’t surprising given the age of the records. On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder who benefits from the absence and how. ("The Case of the Missing Milan Death Ledger" is a great title for a mystery, isn't it?) :)
These limitations prevent me from treating the Milan curve as a complete or fully accurate depiction of the event. That said, completeness isn’t required for visual comparisons with NYC and Bergamo, both of which I/we consider manipulated.
What stands out in the Milan 1630 curve is its organic shape. It's full of noise, fluctuation, and variation across days of the week. It looks natural. I would expect even an entirely iatrogenic death event to have similar properties.
https://substack.com/profile/32813354-jessica-hockett/note/c-134046314?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=jjay2
The NYC and Bergamo daily death curves are so shocking in part due to the steep, uninterrupted rise — specifically, the number of consecutive days with increases. Bergamo shows 12 in a row; NYC shows 16. That simply doesn’t happen in seasonal respiratory waves or in events like heat waves, earthquakes, or power outages, where day-to-day death counts fluctuate. (Mentioned here too, under Problem 3: https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/eleven-serious-problems-with-the)
The absence of stochasticity is a major red flag.
Chicago looks believable for an iatrogenic event; NYC and Bergamo don’t.
https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/three-cities-same-virus
EDIT: Changed my mind about a dedicated article. Some differences between what I said there about and what I said here. https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/comparing-milan-1630-and-bergamonyc Article version represents most recent thoughts.
OUTDATED DEADLY MEDICAL SCIENCE
From a biopsychosocial perspective, the human psyche plays a central role in the risk of infection and disease. One psychological aspect that plays a role in determining the risk of infection/illness and thus the development of a pandemic is the so-called behavioural immune system. The concept of the behavioural immune system is based on the assumption that people are immunologically active in the defence against pathogens not only when there is direct physical contact with the microbe, i.e. in a material-biological way, but also in a non-material psychosocial way, in that a person recognises an infected person as infected (e.g. because he sneezes, looks sick), is disgusted by him or feels fear and distances himself, i.e. protects himself with psychosocial means against the danger of becoming infected. Biological and psychological/psychosocial defence mechanisms are inextricably intertwined. For example, if you look at a photo of a visibly ill person, the interleukin (IL)-6 concentration increases in the viewer (Schubert 2017).
The fact that a person makes the appearance of an infection or illness, i.e. signals to others to keep their distance, can be justified immunoneuropsychologically. In the case of an infection, pro-inflammatory cytokines (e.g. IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α) cross the blood-brain barrier and trigger a series of neurovegetative (including exhaustion, loss of appetite) and psychiatric (including irritability, social withdrawal) symptoms (“sickness behaviour”) in the brain. This serves to regulate the experience and behaviour of the infected person in such a way that, on the one hand, energy can be saved for the defence process and, on the other hand, it can be signalled to the other person verbally (“I feel sick”) and non-verbally (someone looks sick) that one is infected (Schubert 2017).
Conclusion
What do smallpox, plague, Spanish flu, HIV and – currently – COVID-19 have in common? The centuries-long ideological adherence to the machine-paradigmatic orientation in medicine and the associated one-dimensional and time-limited view of the problem of pandemics. Looking purely at the material-biological aspect of the pathogen in dealing with pandemics and prioritising measures aimed at eradicating the pathogen and isolating the host are bound to fail because they cannot match the complexity of the problem. A paradigm shift in medicine, on the other hand, would place the complex interaction between pathogen, human and environment in the foreground of diagnosis, treatment and prevention of pandemics. It would make people more responsible and focus on their innate and acquired immunological protection and defence capabilities, which extend beyond the biological into the psychological and social, even cultural sphere. Perhaps this would then mean the end of pandemics as we know them today.
https://vegetativetraining.wordpress.com/analysis-of-pandemics-by-prof-christian-schubert/
Jon,
Have you ever heard of the so-stories how the indigenous tribes when exposed to pathogens from the West got wiped out or 25% of them died because they had no immunity to whatever s..t? I’m in the process of writing a book on how the diseases of civilization-which are only known in the West- keep gradually creeping in into the isolated communities not because they have no immunity against them, but because they are being poisoned…by soft drinks for example…
I'll be interested in your book. (Also alcohol as well as rubbish food/drink being introduced. Potentially weapons upsetting local balance)
The most puzzling example I'm aware of concerns the Amazon basin. Here's the story - I've not investigated myself and can't tell you how accurate this is. It's lodged in my mind as a puzzle in need of an explanation. As follows:
Engravings and accounts from the time of first being found show the river system very densely populated. Second contact found it empty of people.
A few decades ago evidence was found of the initial high population density by way of a pattern of banks of rich soil. Clearly gardens. The very dark colour of the rich soil due to large quantities of charcoal included which enables the root fungi to flourish and nourish the crops. So now we can routinely buy mycorrhizal fungi in garden centres and also charcoal available for plants (termed biochar).
So what's the explanation? Personally I have no idea.