Sanjeev Sabhlok's Blog, page 62
July 30, 2020
Minutes of my first attempt to form a liberal party in India – January 2000
Found this finally in my old emails – the preliminary minutes that I had drafted of a meeting held on 27 January 2000 at Centre for Civil Society in which the idea of a liberal political party for India was discussed. I had convened this meeeting which Parth Shah had kindly helped organise. I now […]
July 27, 2020
My next TOI blog post: Explaining India’s extraordinarily low death rate from Covid-19
This. There were a few typos in the original version I sent to TOI. I’ve requested them to fix the typos. The corrected version is available here.
July 18, 2020
Why epidemiology is not a science but a priesthood
I’ve made a number of comments about epidemiology on Twitter. Bringing a few of these together: The "mad scientist" is not a creation of the movies but a grim ongoing reality. Eugenics and psychiatry have always supported totalitarian dictatorships. "Climate science" followed suit. And today epidemiology. Science without ethics is pure evil. — Sanjeev Sabhlok, […]
July 17, 2020
The crucial role of Vitamin D in explaining the behaviour of coronaviruses and flu viruses
An extract from my comment on FB [see also this] ADDENDUM Many "experts" are blind to the role of Vitamin D in human physiology. But Vitamin D is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL. Most Africans who migrated to northern altitudes 100k years ago DIED but babies with a mutation against melanin survived. The White Africans forget this basic […]
July 16, 2020
The gross failure of public policy and political parties in India in dealing with c19
This email received today says it all: Dear Shri Sabhlok, I have only just read your column (Apr 29) on the Imperial College pandemic model and found your email from the Swarna Bharat Party website. Two and a half months later and there is still, as you mentioned, no party that has commissioned the examining […]
July 9, 2020
My Twitter comments and (changing) predictions re: the US pandemic
A placeholder post, intended to help me quickly find my main Twitter comments on this subject. Note how my estimate of potential US deaths has reduced drastically from 28 May to 24 June. I prefer being driven by data, and as the facts change, I change my mind. 10 July 2020 USA is probably seeing […]
July 1, 2020
My email to a person still panicking from the pandemic
Extract: Herd immunity is a theoretical construct. In practice herd immunity varies with viral load and a number of characteristics. There is no unique “number” for herd immunity. Also various definitions in the literature about what it means. The one I use is when the reproduction rate drops below 1 and the virus spread starts […]
June 27, 2020
While Vedics might have heard about the ocean, they DID NOT practice ocean-faring trade like the Indus people
QUESTION: If the Rig Veda was largely composed inland then why do we have a reference to ocean trade in the Rig Veda? ANSWER: This “reference” is simply incorrect – it is highly questionable from many angles. And the flimsy poetic “evidence” derived from it does NOT prove even remotely that the Vedics directly plied […]
May 30, 2020
Next TOI blog post and comments: Why less than 25% of the world’s population is likely to get Covid-19
This is the post. And this is an email I sent out a moment ago to a number of people. ==EMAIL=== Dear all Things went pear shaped for all previous analyses and “models” when Stockholm’s data showed that it had crossed the herd immunity threshold in mid-April but serological studies showed far less than 20% […]
May 27, 2020
COVID-19 will almost certainly never infect more than 25% of the world’s population
Email that I’ve sent out to a few people: This chart below is the final nail on the covid panic (and yet, this is a serious disease – I don’t mean to downplay its seriousness – see my text below). This chart was created by someone who used Neil Ferguson’s model, applied it to Sweden, […]
