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Thread: COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

  1. #17981
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    Quote Originally Posted by wal View Post
    Have you ever gone bush walking where there were venomous snakes? If you have you would have taken a snake bite kit right? Why because you know snakes can kill. Will not stop you getting bitten, but at least you have a way of surviving the event, vaccines do not stop you getting covid but mitigate the effects. Everything has a risk attached to it and all vaccines are no different. If you access the risk is to high to get a covid jab then you live the consequences.
    wal, have you actually been reading the posts on this thread that you don't personally type? I think you're being lazy. Can you not see that these are NOT vaccines, and that they DO NOT WORK? I don't know what to tell you that we haven't told you about a thousand times. It's clear that you don't follow the links and that you don't know about these injections, the masks, the "social distancing", and all the rest of this bullshit.

    And here are the consequences:

    Australia, deaths by state:
    Victoria 1,280 -
    NSW 621 -
    Queensland 7 -
    ACT 14 -
    WA 9 -
    SA 4 -
    NT 0 -
    Tasmania 13 -
    Australia 1,948

    The population of Australia is 25,902,500. Read it this time.

  2. #17982
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    Bumping this very important post: COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

    There’s a persistent rumor going around that COVID-19 is both highly infectious and also extremely deadly.

    As the rumor goes, computer models originally predicted 2.2 millions deaths from COVID-19 in the United States alone. This prediction was based on the idea that 268 million Americans would become infected, and approximately 0.9% of those people would die as a result of infection. To achieve those mind-boggling numbers, computer models assumed each infected person spreads the illness to 2.4 other people. And those people spread the illness to 2.4 others, and so on. At this rate, the number of people infected doubles every 4 days.

    If true, this sort of infection fatality rate would be more successful that any multi-level marketing scheme in history.

    Also, with so many infected with COVID-19, certain industries would take notice—one of those industries being the sleepy life insurance industry.

    The life insurance business lives and dies based on its ability to accurately predict death rates. If a life insurance company can accurately predict population-level death rates, it can make a lot of money selling life insurance to the general public. And, this is exactly what life insurers do—predict population-level deaths and use that information to make lots of money.

    One thing to know about life insurance companies is they don’t like being wrong because being wrong means going out of business and going out of business means they can’t make money. And, having been in this business since 2004, one thing I have learned about life insurers is… they are very fond of making money and likewise… they despise losing money.

    And, in the life insurance business, the best way to lose money is to be wrong a whole bunch of times about insured policyholder death rates. Dying costs money, and the more policyholder deaths there are, the more money a life insurance company loses. Now, to a certain extent, life insurance companies are prepared to lose money when people die. And, they’re even prepared to be a little bit wrong about the number of people who die—this is why they hold massive amounts of reserve capital and surplus funds. And, obviously, everyone dies at some point so making those insurance payouts is inevitable. But a life insurance company would prefer you live as long as possible so they can keep collecting premiums from you, keep making money, and avoid losing money for as long as possible.

    On net, a life insurance company has to make a profit, just like any other business. They cannot lose money, on net, and remain in business.

    If any of this sounds like common sense, it’s because it is.

    What you might not know is just how good life insurers are at predicting death rates and minimizing losses from unexpected deaths. Their business model and longevity is proof that their statistical models work and have worked for a very long time. A statistical model that did not work would mean there would not be any life insurance companies and no life insurance policies. And, since there are life insurance companies that sell life insurance policies (and have sold them for a very long time), we can reasonably assume that the statistical model does indeed work.

    This fact cannot be understated. Life insurers aren’t “just guessing” about population-level death rates. Nor are they gambling. They are predicting death rates in the U.S. (and all over the world where such data exists) with uncanny accuracy—enough accuracy to run a profitable business for centuries at a time, with no “help” from taxpayers.

    The proof that life insurers know exactly what they’re doing, and are exceptional at it, is in the longevity of life insurance businesses. Many of the life insurers in existence today have survived the Civil War, the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, both world wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, and 9/11.

    In spite of the tremendous death counts experienced during multiple wars and a deadly pandemic, these companies continued to pay death claims and remained profitable. Most people do not appreciate the level of skill that this sort of thing takes. And, while many life insurers have decided to exit the business in recent years, it wasn't because their models failed. Life insurance is a capital-intensive business that requires a long-term perspective to succeed. In today's low interest rate environment, a growing number of the publicly-traded insurance companies are chasing higher-profit lines of business. The companies that remain, however, are still operating as they've always done.

    Which brings us to the current state of affairs.

    What everyone has been debating since the beginning of the pandemic is… just how deadly is COVID-19?

    If COVID-19 is a uniquely deadly virus, then surely the life insurance companies would know it, wouldn’t they? Or, if they didn’t know it, they would certainly be studying it and repricing their products appropriately to account for the uncertainty in those death rates, right?

    Life insurance companies are nothing if not conservative. They do not like uncertainty in mortality rates. And anything new, that poses a novel risk to their business, is something they will scrutinize if for no other reason than self-preservation.

    So… what have life insurers done in response to COVID-19?

    Would you believe… nothing?

    Whatever lip service you may have heard from life insurance company executives, or industry commentators, the reality is, life insurance companies have taken little to no action to reprice their policies in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Life insurance has not gotten more expensive in the last few years in the U.S.. In fact, it’s gotten cheaper. This follows the decade-long trend of falling premium rates.

    We can see this show up in the simplest of life insurance products—the one-year annual renewable term life insurance product.

    Life insurers have a multitude ways to design a life insurance product, most of which involve using a policyholder’s invested premium dollars to offset, subsidize, or otherwise “hold down” the pure cost of insurance, but all policies are essentially based on the one-year term insurance chassis. The annual (one year) term life product is—as the name suggests—a life insurance product with a contract term of just one year.

    It’s the simplest form of life insurance and the one that most accurately reflects the pure cost of providing life insurance coverage without the benefit of using investment gains to create affordable premium rates.

    Most life insurance products are priced such that more premium is collected than is actually needed to pay for the pure cost of insurance. The excess premium is then invested for future years where it will be used to offset the rising cost of insurance. For policies that are in force for decades, this makes a lot of sense. Anyone who has ever been around humans before knows that all humans eventually get old. And, furthermore, these old humans die at a much higher rate than young humans. And, because of this, it’s much more expensive to offer life insurance coverage to an old human than to a young human. Most old humans can’t afford life insurance, and most life insurance companies don’t want to take the risk of selling life insurance to an old human.

    So, life insurers collect excess premiums from a young human buying life insurance. And then, when that young human turns into an old human, the excess premiums, plus any investment gains on those excess premiums, are used to pay for the increased cost of providing life insurance coverage in his old age. There’s also some profit generated from having invested this money for so long, which the insurance company keeps (or, in the case of mutual life insurers, pays to its policyholders), and which makes it worthwhile to continue collecting premiums from an old human who has been paying premiums for decades.

    But, if you strip out all the fancy investments, what you have left is the pure cost of providing insurance coverage. And, this pure cost of insurance will most accurately reflect the real cost of providing insurance coverage. Looking at this from a different perspective, it reflects the real cost (to the insurance company) of taking on the risk that a policyholder dies. It is a true reflection of the amount of money needed to justify selling a life insurance policy to an individual.

    This is important because… if more policyholders die than expected, or if expected death rates increase, insurance companies must reprice their life insurance products to reflect the higher mortality rates. They cannot infinitely justify low premiums just because the market wants a lower premium. This is not like selling a television set or a car. Mass production does not lower the cost of insurance. Demand, or lack thereof, does not change premium rates.

    If a manufacturer of television sets experiences sluggish sales, it can discount the price of its T.V.s in an attempt to sell more of them. Life insurers cannot discount the cost of insurance.

    Instead, life insurance companies create the demand for their product, set its price, and the marketplace pays what the insurer demands. The pure cost of life insurance reflects nothing more and nothing less the objective risk of a policyholder dying. And, until or unless someone figures out a way to negotiate with The Grim Reaper, it will always be this way.

    To design the one-year pure term insurance product, life insurers calculate the cost of providing life insurance coverage to an individual for just one year.

    So, what does it cost to provide pure term life insurance for one year?

    In 2017, MetLife—one of the largest insurance companies in the U.S.—published its term insurance rates for its one-year term life product, which you can access here: Page not found – Monegenix(R)

    According to MetLife's table, in 2017, a 45-year-old male, with a standard non-smoker’s rating, would have paid $0.85 per $1,000 of life insurance coverage. This is much lower than the 2001 table rate of $1.53 per $1,000.

    That means a 45-year-old man who doesn’t smoke would have paid $425 for $500,000 of life insurance coverage, for one year (2017). In 2018, the policy would have terminated and insurance coverage would have ended.

    Fast forward to 2021. MetLife no longer sells term life insurance because it spun off its life insurance division and formed Brighthouse Life Insurance Company. Brighthouse is, thus, a proxy for MetLife’s old term life product going forward.

    A recent quote from Brighthouse Life Insurance Company, dated November 4th 2021, shows a 45-year-old male, standard non-smoker, can buy $500,000 of life insurance coverage, for one year, for $270. That is $155 cheaper than in 2017, before the pandemic started:

    COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events-oyt-45-jpg

    Something is amiss, or… excess deaths, to the extent they did occur, has not affected the cost of life insurance.

    But, maybe this is a fluke. Let’s look at other ages and the associated costs for $500,000 of term life coverage in 2017:

    Age 55: $835
    Age 65: $2,395
    Age 75: $5,685

    Compare that to the one-year term rates for the same $500,000 of term life coverage in 2021 (2021 table available here:Page not found – Monegenix(R)

    Age 55: $500

    COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events-oyt-55-jpg


    Age 65: $1,105

    COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events-oyt-65-jpg


    Age 75: $4,515

    COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events-oyt-75-jpg



    Across all observed ages, premiums for pure term insurance have fallen since 2017.

    Of special interest is the age-75 costs for term life insurance. Few people would buy one-year term insurance at that age, but even if they did… the cost for coverage has declined significantly from $5,685 to $4,515—in spite of the high mortality rates of 75-year-olds during the pandemic.

    At this point, it should be obvious to the casual reader that death rates from COVID did not cause a dramatic increase—or any increase—in life insurance costs during this time.

    The logic behind the numbers hasn’t changed since the pandemic began, either.

    Early on in the pandemic, a friendly acquaintance of mine, Pete Neuwirth, organized the available data from the CDC (before the government stopped reporting “deaths from Covid” and started reporting “deaths with Covid”) and published it to his blog, here: “Life Contingencies” - An Actuarial Look at COVID-19 Mortality - Peter Neuwirth FSA

    Pete is a retired insurance actuary with 40 years of experience in risk management. I’ve found him to be unusually insightful during this time, especially when fear-mongering and hysteria has become the norm.

    Anyway, of special interest is his summary of the probability of dying from a COVID infection:

    Age — < 50 Probability of dying = .0003 (approximately 1/3000)

    50-64 Probability of dying = .0013 (approximately 1/750)

    65 + Probability of dying = .0085 (approximately 1/120)

    Overall probability of dying if infected = .0024 (approximately 1/400)

    His estimates back then are consistent with the current data published by the non-profit organization, Physicians For Informed Consent:

    https://physiciansforinformedconsent...ugust-2021.pdf

    So, you see, the data do not support the idea of COVID-19 being a highly deadly illness. Life insurance companies have yet to adjust their mortality pricing to reflect The Narrative™. And, regardless of what any particular insurance company’s vaccination policy is for its employees, or whatever public statements they make about COVID or public health policy, the boys in the back room who are responsible for pricing these life insurance policies are running the calculations based on what the data actually says… not what The Narrative™ says, and not what politicians, the medical establishment, and the news media is telling you. In short, the life insurance industry is functioning just as it always has—as the (mostly) quiet industry that hums along, largely ignoring what everyone else is doing and making money in the process... narratives be damned.

  3. #17983
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    Quote Originally Posted by Frank_B View Post
    I know I had it in January of 2021 and am almost certain I had it again in July, albeit a much milder form. January kicked my ass for 3 days. I completely lost my taste and smell during this time and it took months to get it back. When I finally had it all back, I celebrated by trying to eat everything in sight and reveling in what I’d missed so much. I’d lost significant amounts of weight (and strength) from this so I was cooking and eating everything in sight without issues.

    In July, I had a weekend where I was really tired. Training seemed to be all wrong that following week. No cough, fever, etc., just lethargy and tiredness. I assumed I wasn’t recovering well enough, but I also noticed a weird smell too. Took me weeks to figure it out but it was onions. They smell like burning plastic and/or rotting garbage now and I can only smell the alcohol in any type of perfume or cologne.

    Maybe I didn’t have it twice and something else ended up giving me parosmia, but I’m reasonably certain it was COVID, Round Two.
    This is the beauty of the Covid scam, the listed symptoms are so vague that you can "have it" countless times. You can even have and not know it if the test shows a positive. Then you are "asymptomatic". Fuck, everybody thought they had it last year when the first round of symptoms was described, then the symptoms were expanded to include everything.

  4. #17984
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    wal, have you actually been reading the posts on this thread that you don't personally type? I think you're being lazy. Can you not see that these are NOT vaccines, and that they DO NOT WORK? I don't know what to tell you that we haven't told you about a thousand times. It's clear that you don't follow the links and that you don't know about these injections, the masks, the "social distancing", and all the rest of this bullshit.

    And here are the consequences:

    Australia, deaths by state:
    Victoria 1,280 -
    NSW 621 -
    Queensland 7 -
    ACT 14 -
    WA 9 -
    SA 4 -
    NT 0 -
    Tasmania 13 -
    Australia 1,948

    The population of Australia is 25,902,500. Read it this time.
    Yes Mark. (You sound like my Mrs, "don't you ever learn anything thing"), but seriously, yes Mark I do read those links and don't think I don't appreciate this thread and your hard work, I do, but I don't always follow the trend and as much as I agree with on most stuff especially the training info I don't agree with you with most of the stuff you promote on Covid, and I believe your addiction to online medications is a serous mistake that will eventually cost your your health if it has not already.

    I am wrong about many things and I will admit my mistakes to you if the Covid thing turns out the be as you say "bullshit", I will be the first to say "Mark I was wrong", but at the moment No. Anyhow while I have this opportunity I want to say to you as much as it is worth a Happy Christmas to and your folk in WF and thanks for all your hard work you do for dumb shits like me.

  5. #17985
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan Arnold View Post
    McCullough seems to say some valuable things, but I'm confused about one aspect. On with Rogan he said you cannot get Covid twice. Rogan immediately responded that he knows people who have got it twice. I've also heard of others getting it twice. So which is it? I'm assuming if you can get it twice then its basically like the flu and its seasonal and people will continue to get it as the years go on and the vaccines will be useless. If you can't get it twice then you have immunity and we will eventually reach herd immunity and all the mandates will have to eventually crumble when its gone right? Someone enlighten me.
    The PCR test are not accurate. That is the key to the scam. My father fell ill last winter and acquired pneumonia. They tested him for Covid and it said positive. I insisted they test him for the flu. They did. He was positive with the flu. So which is it? The flu or covid? The inventor of PCR test said famously that Fauci is a idiot and fraud and his test are not intended to prove viral infections. He mysteriously died several month before the plandemic kicked off.

    Dr. Kary Mullis, inventor of the PCR test, explains Dr. Fauci has an agenda - YouTube

  6. #17986
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    Quote Originally Posted by wal View Post
    Yes Mark. (You sound like my Mrs, "don't you ever learn anything thing"), but seriously, yes Mark I do read those links and don't think I don't appreciate this thread and your hard work, I do, but I don't always follow the trend and as much as I agree with on most stuff especially the training info I don't agree with you with most of the stuff you promote on Covid, and I believe your addiction to online medications is a serous mistake that will eventually cost your your health if it has not already.

    I am wrong about many things and I will admit my mistakes to you if the Covid thing turns out the be as you say "bullshit", I will be the first to say "Mark I was wrong", but at the moment No. Anyhow while I have this opportunity I want to say to you as much as it is worth a Happy Christmas to and your folk in WF and thanks for all your hard work you do for dumb shits like me.
    What did you think about the life insurance situation?

    __________________________________________________ _______________

    And this is very important: UK Government report admits there are 23.5 Million people in England who have NOT had a single dose of a Covid-19 Vaccine – The Expose

    If you think about it for a second, they've lied to us about everything else they can find to lie about. Why would they NOT lie about the number of vaccinated people and the number of vaccines? This whole thing has been engineered to encourage compliance, herd behavior, and fear. Of course they've overstated the vax numbers. Obviously. All governments are doing this, because why wouldn't they? It gets them exactly what they want.

  7. #17987
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post

    And this is very important: UK Government report admits there are 23.5 Million people in England who have NOT had a single dose of a Covid-19 Vaccine – The Expose

    If you think about it for a second, they've lied to us about everything else they can find to lie about. Why would they NOT lie about the number of vaccinated people and the number of vaccines? This whole thing has been engineered to encourage compliance, herd behavior, and fear. Of course they've overstated the vax numbers. Obviously. All governments are doing this, because why wouldn't they? It gets them exactly what they want.
    You got probably a combined total of 35 percent of vaccinated people in the West, lower elsewhere.

  8. #17988
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    I’m just laughing over the idea of a snakebite kit. Wal, can you order those from the back pages of Boy’s Life magazine?

  9. #17989
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    An interesting thing got said by the newsreader on NBC national news tonight. Senator Karen Warren of Massachusetts tested positive for the kung flu despite vaccinations and a booster. It seems one of two things may be in play as a result of this report.

    1. The media narrative is getting garbled about getting the shots or else.

    2. A huge error was made by the writers or the puppet who read that report.

    In any event, Warren having tested positive sends a clear message of the futility of the current courses of action being pushed by Our Enlightened overlords. Add to this the comparative hospitalization rate of 19% for the delta variant and 1.7% for omicron. It's getting increasingly difficult to sell the latest wave of panic.

  10. #17990
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    starting strength coach development program
    Could the decrease in price be a result of the economic effects of the covid response outweighing the increased mortality from covid? i.e. reduced demand -- I can't imagine life insurance sold well during the great depression.

    And even of covid doesn't significantly increase mortality, doesn't the response, at least eventually?

    If the life insurers are so good at predicting -- shouldn't they be factoring in all the missed doctors visits, delayed surgeries, suicides, cases of domestic violence, being poorer and everything else fucked up from the covid response?

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