The sad decline of Club Troppo

 Club Troppo used to be a good blog. the articles were few and far between sometimes arcane but of pretty good quality.

Alas it is no longer so. Paul Fritjers has been on an anti-lockdown jihad for sometime. the quality of his articles has been quite poor.

However before we go into this a few figures to contend with. If Covid is allowed to fester then

1. ! in 100 will die
2. I in 3 to 8 will get long covid.
3. 1in 12 will die from complications exacerbated by covid.

Also important is HERD IMMUNITY.

Fritjers originally advocated herd immunity without a vaccine. See HERE for problems with that.

He simply refused to debate any problems about this. This got worse when as many expected it was found you could get covid more than once. Again no response from Fritjers. Quite clearly under this scenario the heath sector would simply blow up. Covid would crowd out everything else. 

Like many who rail against lockdowns he thought Sweden was great. What about google stats showing little difference in behaviour between people in Germany and those in Sweden. no reaction from Fritjers on this.

What about the better economic performance by Australia compared to Sweden then and now. Not much except his embarrassing admission that Australia's better performance was because of higher iron ore prices. This is mixing up current prices with constant prices. See Noah Smith on effectiveness of lockdowns.

He than ran with an article which purported to show mask wearing had no impact on countering covid. EXCEPT it was based on a dud survey which Thomas Lumley . Kaiser Fung and Andrew Gelman all helpfully showed us. I could also show how he does not understand what a  lagging variable is.

All that has occurred is that Fritjers has entered wingnut territory with all the passion of a cultist. The problem is the  ideas are dangerous. When wingnuts actually gain power it becomes a disaster. Surely nick Gruen of all people should understand that.

That Fritjers continues to peddle such wing nut ideas at Club Troppo is both a disgrace and an embarrassment.

Whoopsy I forgot to add this is not the first time I have caught out Fritjers talking about a subject he has no idea about.  I had previously caught him out talking about when superpowers change. I suggested most people had the symbolic change over from the UK to the USA as the foremost superpower occurred during the Washington Treaty.  the actual change happened before that. He had no idea of what the treaty was and indeed did not even know what century it occurred in.

What was more embarrassing. Being caught out not knowing what you are talking about OR that I did it!!

This is not Catallaxy we are talking about where quality is a swear word. This is Club Troppo. It was wholly apparent after the very first article Fritjers had no idea of what he was talking about nor was he interested in an exchange of ideas.  He is now the Steve Kates of club Troppo.  The longer he 'writes' on that website the bigger the joke the blog becomes!