From the Narrow Desert

Tigers are part of this, too . . . . My hippie uncle, also called William Tychonievich, used to rock and roll under the stage name Billy Tyger, a handle intended to reference both his (our) own name and William Blake. One of Blake’s Proverbs of Hell is "The crow wished everything was black; the owl that everything was white."

As I was walking, for some reason one of William Blake's Proverbs of Hell popped into my mind: "The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction." Seconds after thinking of that out of the blue, I rounded a bend in the trail and passed a couple walking with their young son. The boy was wearing a T-shirt with a cute cartoon picture of a tiger, helpfully captioned, in English, "TIGER CUTE."

Now that they've released the 2022 numbers, here's how things stand:

As discussed in my July 2022 post "Reports of the 'depopulation of Taiwan' may have been somewhat exaggerated," the claim (started by Igor Chudov and spread by Karl Denninger and Vox Day) that there had been a 26-sigma drop in Taiwan's birthrate was grossly exaggerated and was the result of a very basic error in statistical analysis. As the chart shows, birthrates have been falling steadily since well before the birdemic and peck, and there have been no sudden and inexplicable plunges.

Deaths, on the other hand, did jump significantly in 2021 and even more so in 2022. Of course there is no reliable information about causes of death. In my own circle (people known to me personally and their first-degree relatives), five have died of Suddenly and zero of the birdemic.

Taiwan's mask mandate, which is still in force, allows masks to be removed in special situations -- including (last I checked) eating, drinking, walking, riding a motorcycle, taking a photo, and lecturing -- so I'm pretty much good. My students, who have to sit at their desks without doing any of those things, not so much.

A few days ago, one of my private students said, "It's not fair that I have to wear a mask but you don't!"

"It certainly isn't," I said. "Feel free to take it off if you like."

"I can't!" she said. "Big Ben says I have to wear it."

Big Ben! I wish I had thought of that.

The Minister of Health and Welfare -- "Taiwan's Dr. Fauci" and the world's most powerful dentist -- was called Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), and his given name is a perfect homophone of 時鐘, the Chinese word for "clock." The Chinese for "stupid" is 笨, pronounced ben, and so Big Ben in London is called 大笨鐘 -- literally, "Big Stupid Clock."

It's just a perfect nickname -- a very clever Chinese-English pun, and (much like "Let's go Brandon") indirect enough to make it playfully irreverent rather than just rude. Forget the old "Tooth Fairy" nickname; I'm never calling him anything but Big Ben from now on.

So imagine my mixed feelings when I discovered, just days later, that Big Ben had resigned! Not in disgrace, mind you, but to focus on his run for Mayor of Taipei -- a position which is generally recognized as a stepping-stone to the presidency. The good news is that Big Ben will likely be in the public eye for many years to come, giving me ample opportunity to talk about him. The bad news is that he hasn't really stepped down but stepped up, and the new guy will probably be just as bad but without the awesome nickname.

Igor Chudov recently posted an article called "Depopulation of Taiwan: Birth Rate Dropped by 23% in ONE YEAR -- And it is NOT the Birdemic," a claim which was later picked up by Karl Denninger and then Vox Day, and so was presumably read by a fair number of people in this corner of the blogosphere.

Taiwan is of special interest, not just to me personally because I happen to live here, but because of its unusual timeline. Pecking started in March 2021, when there had only been a negligible number of birdemic "cases," and by September 2021 half the population had been pecked. The birdemic itself didn't take off until April 2022, when around 83% of the population had already been pecked. Therefore, any widespread public health changes between mid-2021 and mid-2022 must be due to the pecks, not the birdemic itself.

Chudov's sensational claim is based on the fact, reported by the Taiwan government, that 23.24% fewer babies were born in May 2022 than in May 2021. To get an idea of how unlikely such a difference is to occur by chance, Chudov employs this rather extraordinary method.

I inputted historical birth rate data from Macrotrends for the years 2009-2021, and added the year 2022 as year 2021 adjusted down by 23.24%. Obviously, 2022 is not over and the number of Taiwanese babies to be born this year (or during the next 12 months) is unknown. So the chart below is an illustration of what would happen in the next 12 months if the 23.24% drop stays constant.

To be clear, the 23.24% drop is not about 2022 so far or anything like that; it's just comparing one month to another one 12 months previous. In May 2021, there were 12,300 babies born in Taiwan, but in May 2022, there were only 9,442. From this, Chudov concludes that it is reasonable to assume that the entire year of 2022 will have 23.24% fewer births than 2021! Here is his chart.

That looks like an impossibly sharp drop, and it is. As Chudov writes, "When expressed in 'sigmas', units of standard deviation, the 23.24% drop in the birth rate in Taiwan is a 26-sigma event!" (As a point of reference, a man 26 sigmas taller than average would be about 12 foot 4.)

But Chudov's underlying reasoning -- that a 23% difference between two months makes it reasonable to assume a difference of the same magnitude between two years -- is insane. Obviously, month-to-month variation will be much greater than year-to-year variation. As an example, I've just checked my financial records, and it just so happens that my business made 6.8 times the income in December 2021 that it made in December 2020. Given that information, how confident would you be in assuming that my total revenue for the year of 2021 was also 6.8 times that of 2020? In fact, the total for the two years was almost exactly the same, differing by less than 1%. That's just how it is, especially when the absolute numbers are relatively small (as in a small business, or a small country like Taiwan). Some months are high and some are low, for no particular reason, but over the course of a year, things have a way of averaging out.

If we plot actual month-by-month data, as reported by the Taiwan government here, it looks like this. (I only went back to 2018, not 2009, because I'm lazy like that.)

Just eyeballing this, there's a lot of random noise, probably a slight overall downward trend in births, and certainly nothing at all like a "26-sigma event." (Check out that 45.28% drop from December 2020 to January 2021, though! What is that, 51 Chudov-sigmas or something?)

Or let's strictly follow Chudov's method of comparing months of 2021 to months of 2022.

If, as Chudov reckons, the May-to-May difference "can be described as 'unimaginable' in terms of the likelihood of happening due to random chance," take a look at January-to-January -- an even bigger change, and in the opposite direction!

If pecks are in fact causing a decline in fertility, this is not yet clearly evident in Taiwan's birth rates.

⁂

Note added: Here's one more chart, showing the number of births per 12-month period. (Only calendar years are labeled. The first bar is 2018, the second is Feb 2018 through Jan 2019, and so on.) The pattern is one of steady decline, starting well before the peck and unchanged thereafter. If the peck is going to cause a sudden drop, it hasn't happened yet.

During a press conference that afternoon, a reporter asked CECC head Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) to comment on reports that mask regulations would be relaxed in July and that the border will be reopened in August. Chen said that given the fluctuations in the outbreak, the CECC is not able to plan as far in advance as August, but will make adjustments in response to the epidemic situation.

Regarding the loosening of mask rules in July, Chen said "for the time being, we will probably not be implementing an overall relaxation of mask (rules) because, in addition to the birdemic, masks have a considerable preventative effect on other respiratory diseases." Chen did not elaborate on what other respiratory diseases the CECC is concerned about.

Chen said that even if the ban on masks is lifted, the relaxed measures will only apply to "special situations." Chen emphasized that generally, masks should continue to be worn at all times.

On October 6, 2021, exactly as I had predicted in August, the number of peck-attributed deaths in Taiwan overtook the number of birdemic-attributed deaths. A month later, I predicted that by Chinese New Year 2022, the pecks would have killed twice as many Taiwanese people as the birdemic.

That second prediction didn't pan out. Instead, we're seeing a "second wave" of birdemic-attributed deaths, while peck-attributed deaths have slowed to a trickle, so now the two a pretty much neck-and-neck. As of yesterday, the birdemic-attributed death toll was 1,436. Peck-attributed deaths are no longer reported anywhere near as regularly as they used to be, but on May 17 the total peck-attributed death toll was 1,477.

Curious as to what had changed, I looked up the relevant statistics and plotted the number of reported deaths per million doses for each of the pecks for two different periods: up to January 17, and from January 18 to May 17. It turns out peck lethality has changed a lot. Overall, peck lethality is about half what it used to be -- 14 deaths per million doses, down from 30.

The first thing to notice is that AZ pecks -- the deadliest of the lot, 28% of all doses but responsible for 57% of peck-attributed deaths to date -- have been quietly discontinued. (There were 28 new AZ deaths from January 18 to May 17, but no way to calculate deaths per million doses without dividing by zero.) I didn't know this until I looked up the data to make this chart. It was never announced. I guess they didn't want to admit, after administering 16 million doses to the trusting citizenry and killing more than 800 of them, that they'd made a mistake. They did discontinue it, though, suggesting they've developed some capacity, however limited, for learning from experience.

Eliminating AZ from the mix is only part of the story, though. Every one of the other peck brands has seen a dramatic change in lethality. Mod is killing half as many people as it used to, and Med just a third. What's going on? I can think of a few possibilities.

1. The first dose is the riskiest. If you survived the first dose, you're likely to survive additional doses of the same thing. By January 17, 81% of the population had already received a first dose, so most of the doses since that time have been second or additional doses.

2. The number of "cases" (positive test results) is much higher than it used to be. Before January 17, about 18,000 people had tested positive. From January 18 to May 17, there were 896,000 positive tests. This is partly because more people are being tested and partly because the definition of "case" has changed. Before, a positive antigen test had to be confirmed by a positive PCR test before it could be considered a "case"; starting this month, though, all positive DIY antigen tests are counted as "cases." People who die of peck side effects after testing positive for the birdemic are presumably counted as birdemic deaths, not peck deaths.

3. The pecks themselves could have changed. I mean, why wouldn't they? Quietly replacing most of the doses with normal saline would seem to be the best way of minimizing deaths without admitting anything.

Then there's the question of the Pfi pecks, which show the opposite trend. While the other brands have dramatically decreased in lethality, Pfi is now more than twice as deadly as it used to be. No idea what to make of that.

Please, God, save us from this terrible storm -- oh, never mind, it's just stopped!

-- traditional prayer

Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.

-- the Dread Pirate Roberts

Just yesterday, I posted on how Tooth Fairy Chen (Taiwan's dentist-turned-health-dictator) had broken his promise of a month ago and decided to mandate birdemic pecks for people like me. This obviously prompted some pretty serious praying on my part, and promises of the same from some of my readers.

Well, lo and behold, the very next day, the Tooth Fairy, exhibiting the flightiness so characteristic of his species, changed his mind. I can now get pecked or continue with the weekly charade of an easy-to-fake* DIY test -- which is how things already stood anyway. Of course he could just as easily change his mind back again tomorrow, but for now things are  back as they were a few days ago.

And I am left feeling that I ought to feel absolutely certain that this was an intervention of God's in answer to my prayers and those of others, but in fact able to offer only the uncertain prayer, "Thanks -- if that was you, I mean." I have still not resolved to my satisfaction the issues raised in my post "Shining Buddha problems."

Anyway, my sincere thanks for the prayers of those who prayed, regardless of whether or not those petitions affected the outcome.

* Just sayin'. I would obviously never encourage my readers to do anything of which Google would disapprove.

November 3:

Taiwan will not mandate birdemic pecks: CECC

CECC says Taiwanese have right to reject peck

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — In response to a recent incident in which an elementary student athlete was rejected from joining a school team for not having been fully pecked, Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) head Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) reaffirmed on Wednesday (Nov. 3) that Taiwan will not mandate birdemic pecks.

[. . .]

The CECC encourages people to get pecked but will not mandate pecks, Chen said, adding that the center does not want to see people lose rights inherent to them because they chose not to get the pecks, according to the report.

December 5:

Essential workers urged to get second peck before Dec. 17

Taipei, Dec. 5 (CNA) Essential workers in certain government-regulated industries will need proof of a second birdemic peck administered before Dec. 17 beginning Jan. 1, the CECC (Central Epidemic Command Center) announced Sunday.

At a press briefing, CECC spokesperson Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said that the tightened rules would include requiring workers attached to certain ministries to be fully pecked by Jan. 1, with at least 14 days between receiving their second peck and their first day of work.

Those employed by or working in institutions under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW), and the Ministry of Labor (MOL) will be covered by the CECC's new regulations.

What happened between Nov. 3 and Dec. 5 to make the Tooth Fairy change his mind? Well, there have been 130 birdemic-related deaths in Taiwan in that period: 1 from the birdemic itself and 129 from peck side effects. Obviously, the solution is to force more people to get pecked! Look how well that's working for every other country in the world.

As a teacher and school owner, I am subject to the Ministry of Education. I am weighing my options, of which I need scarcely say that getting pecked myself is not one. Your prayers are much appreciated.

Taiwan's very own downmarket Dr. Fauci, Health Minister Chen "Trust Me I'm a Dentist" Shih-chung, models the latest in mouthwear fashion -- a sexy new black satin face mask with a daring heart-shaped cutout!

Ah, I stand corrected. This is actually a special persons-with-disabilities mask, worn out of consideration for those who are both hard-of-hearing and illiterate and also don't understand sign language. There's some intersectionality for you!

Of course, according to Tooth Fairy Chen's own rules, it's okay to just not wear a mask when giving a speech or appearing on television (germs being notoriously camera-shy), but where's the fun in that?

As for the question I asked in the title, the answer is:

You know, if I were a down-on-my-luck dentist reduced from filling cavities to doing daily panic-update propaganda pieces for the government to keep everyone scared, I don't  think I'd be able to resist beginning every speech with, "This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill."

I shouldn't always be making fun of the old son-of-a-canine, though. After all, look how well he's being doing with the birdemic these past few months.

That's right, only one birdemic death in the whole month of November! Isn't that fantastic news? I give all the credit to the Minister of Flossing and his life-saving pecks. Just think how many lives might have been needlessly lost without them!