Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

FDA’s War on Commonsense Nicotine Regulation

Nicotine pouches—small, smokeless packets tucked under the lip—deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. They eliminate the tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens that make cigarettes so deadly. The logic of harm reduction couldn’t be clearer: if smokers can get nicotine without smoke, millions of lives could be saved.

Sweden has already proven the point. Through widespread use of snus and nicotine pouches, the country has cut daily smoking to about 5 percent, the lowest rate in Europe. Lung-cancer deaths are less than half the continental average. This “Swedish Experience” shows that when adults are given safer options, they switch voluntarily—no prohibition required.

In the United States, however, the FDA’s tobacco division has turned this logic on its head. Since Congress gave it sweeping authority in 2009, the agency has demanded that every new product undergo a Premarket Tobacco Product Application, or PMTA, proving it is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” That sounds reasonable until you see how the process works.

Manufacturers must spend millions on speculative modeling about how their products might affect every segment of society—smokers, nonsmokers, youth, and future generations—before they can even reach the market. Unsurprisingly, almost all PMTAs have been denied or shelved. Reduced-risk products sit in limbo while Marlboros and Newports remain untouched.

Only this January did the agency relent slightly, authorizing 20 ZYN nicotine-pouch products made by Swedish Match, now owned by Philip Morris. The FDA admitted the obvious: “The data show that these specific products are appropriate for the protection of public health.” The toxic-chemical levels were far lower than in cigarettes, and adult smokers were more likely to switch than teens were to start.

The decision should have been a turning point. Instead, it exposed the double standard. Other pouch makers—especially smaller firms from Sweden and the US, such as NOAT—remain locked out of the legal market even when their products meet the same technical standards. 

The FDA’s inaction has created a black market dominated by unregulated imports, many from China. According to my own research, roughly 85 percent of pouches now sold in convenience stores are technically illegal.

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The World Confronts the Genocide Washington Is Trying To Bury

On October 4th, 2025, in an interview with Axios, President Trump stressed that one of the main goals behind his Gaza plan was to restore Israel’s international standing. “Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world,” Trump said. “Now I am gonna get all that support back.”

Under Trump’s plan, a supposed ceasefire took effect on October 10th. But Israel only withdrew from less than half of the Gaza strip, and killed at least 93 people in the next two weeks, after killing at least that many per day for the previous two years. Israel has only allowed 15% of the humanitarian aid called for in the plan to enter Gaza, and has kept the critical Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza closed. The daily life-and-death struggle to find food, water and shelter carries on unabated for two million people in Gaza.

While the reduction in the daily scale of Israel’s mass murder is obviously welcome, this is not a real ceasefire. Like previous Israeli ceasefires in Gaza, as in Lebanon, this is a one-sided ceasefire that Israel violates at will, on a daily basis, with no accountability.

This is only the first part of Trump’s plan for Gaza, and there is still no agreement on the other parts, such as the disarmament of Hamas, who provide the only government and police force in Gaza. They now have the added job of protecting their people from Israel-backed criminal gangs and death squads, some with links to ISIS, who prey on them from the Israeli-occupied areas, stealing aid supplies, assassinating local leaders and terrorizing the population.

Hamas is obviously not going to disarm under these conditions, and previously said it would only surrender its weapons once Palestine has an internationally recognized government with its own armed forces. On the other side, Israel has not agreed to other parts of Trump’s plan, such as its withdrawal from the rest of Gaza, nor to any plan for the future of Palestine.

In the United States, where corrupt politicians and corporate media take U.S. and Israeli lies at face value or even repeat them as statements of fact, some may believe that Trump’s plan has resolved the crisis in Palestine. The rest of the world is not so naive or easy to manipulate, but many other governments are also beholden to oligarchies that profit from trade, investment and arms deals with Israel, even as the public in those same countries reels in shock at Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians and U.S.-backed impunity for its crimes.

Trump’s Gaza plan, like much of his foreign policy, cynically exploits the greed and fear of political leaders and their oligarch patrons. Admitting that Israel has “lost a lot of support in the world,” he offers a shortcut back to “business as usual” for governments eager to protect – and even expand – profitable ties despite Israel’s ongoing atrocities and open contempt for international law.

In his first term, Trump brokered the “Abraham Accords,” normalization deals between Israel and Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan that included mutual recognition and expanded trade. He now has his eye on the big prize: Saudi Arabia.

But Arab-Israeli relations have long been contested. In the 1949 UN General Assembly vote on Israel’s admission, all Arab and Muslim countries except Turkiye (which abstained) voted against recognizing the state of Israel. Thirty-two mostly Arab and Muslim countries, including some of its closest neighbors, still either don’t recognize Israel or have no diplomatic relations with it.

Despite decades of hostility, Trump persuaded Israel and some of these countries to support his Gaza plan with the promise of future benefits from normalization and trade. But there is still a gaping chasm between Israel and these Arab and Muslim countries over Palestine. They say they will not recognize Israel unless Israel recognizes Palestine, with full sovereignty over East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

But the foundational basis of Netanyahu’s Likud Party is its plan for a Greater Israel, to be formed by annexing all of occupied Palestine “between the sea and the Jordan.” And on October 22, during Vice President Vance’s visit to Israel, the Knesset voted in favor of annexing the West Bank.

Trump unveiled his Gaza plan at the very end of the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level meeting in New York, where many world leaders spoke out for much stronger international action against Israel. The New York Declaration, which 142 countries voted for, was the result of a conference in July led by France and Saudi Arabia that promised “concrete, timebound, coordinated action” to enforce a ruling by the international Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024 that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal and must be ended “as quickly as possible.”

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GASLIGHTING: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Claims No Democrats Have Compared Trump to Hitler

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace looked into a camera today, and with a straight face, claimed that no Democrats have compared President Trump to Hitler.

Not only have they compared Trump to Hitler repeatedly, they’ve done it on Wallace’s own show.

This is the type of obvious gaslighting and outright lying that has caused millions of Americans to lose trust in the media. Everyone knows this is a lie, yet she just tells viewers not to believe their own eyes and ears.

The Wrap reports:

JB Pritzker insisted that he has never compared Donald Trump to Hitler – one week after he compared the United States’ use of ICE and border patrol agents to Nazi Germany.

“I haven’t suggested that Donald Trump is Hitler,” the Illinois Governor said while talking with Nicolle Wallace on “The Best People” podcast.

Wallace chimed in: “I don’t think any Democrat has. I think it’s a smear that they project back onto critics. JD Vance called Donald Trump cultural heroin, he called him America’s Hitler. The attacks on Donald Trump as a fascist came from three-star generals who worked for him.”

Just last week, while speaking at The Economic Club of Chicago, Pritzker drew parallels between Trump’s leveraging of ICE and the border patrol against illegal immigrants to the Nazi’s attacks on Jews.

“This is how authoritarian regimes do it,” Pritzker said. “They create these kind of fake ideas that there’s an enemy out there and it could be sitting next to you at one of these tables. So just somebody sitting at your table that you don’t like might be one of those enemies. So let’s round them up, let’s make sure they are the subjects of the laws that we’re passing, because we don’t like who they are. That is what authoritarian regimes do.”

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Zohran Mamdani branded a ‘liar’ over false claim his Muslim aunt was too scared to take the subway after 9/11

A hardline socialist who’s the favorite to be the next mayor of New York City has debunked his own story that claimed his Muslim aunt was too scared to ride the subway after 9/11.

Zohran Mamdani said Monday that he was actually referring to one of his father’s distant dead cousins, a woman he named only as Zehra. 

Mamdani, 33, made the revelation at a press conference as he sought to get ahead of the debacle ahead of the November 4 mayoral election. 

‘I was speaking about Zehra fuhi, my father’s cousin, who passed away a few years ago,’ he said. Fuhi stands for paternal aunt in Urdu and Hindi. 

Last week, Mamdani fought back tears as he told of how the September 2001 terror atrocity had left an aunt who wears a hijab too scared to use public transport in New York City. 

‘I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11 because she did not feel safe in her hijab,’ he said. 

But internet sleuths quickly discovered that Mamdani’s only living aunt, a woman called Masuma Mamdani, lived in Tanzania at the time of the September 2001 terror attacks.

An online photo further revealed that Masuma does not wear a headscarf. 

Relatives of 9/11 victims also criticized him over the comments, suggesting they were ‘insulting and insensitive’ and amounted to ‘lunacy.’ 

Terry Strada’s husband Tom, 41, a Cantor Fitzgerald bond broker, died after going to work on the 104th floor of the North Tower. The youngest of their three children was just four days old. 

She branded a Mamdani a ‘despicable liar’ after he changed his story on Monday.

She told the Daily Mail: ‘I find what he (Mamdani) had to say completely insulting to all of the people that suffered a horrible loss that day.

‘To compare an aunt being uncomfortable on the subway to all of these families that were murdered was just very insensitive and shows his true colors.

‘How dare he lie about 9/11 to invoke sympathy from Muslims. New York suffered horrible losses from a terrorist attack carried out by radical Islamists. He is a despicable liar and this should open everyone’s eyes to who he truly is.’

She said Mamdani should apologize, but didn’t think he would.

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Obamacare’s Underused Free Preventive Services Expose A System Rife With Fraud

Obamacare failed to make health care more affordable. Every day the government shutdown lumbers on, more Americans are looking more closely at health care costs and learning just how damaging the impact of Obamacare has been.

The latest evidence comes from the Obamacare exchanges which have seen a spike in “zero-claim enrollees.” Because of irresponsible Biden-era policies, federal subsidies were increased during Covid. Health insurers received payments on behalf of 35 percent of enrollees—and 40 percent of fully subsidized enrollees—who did not use a single service for the time period they were covered. Zero-claim enrollment, which is more than double the rate in a typical health insurance market, is consistent with evidence of widespread fraud.

Some people have claimed that the improper enrollment claim is exaggerated. Even if that were the case (and I find the evidence of mass improper and fraudulent enrollment overwhelming), it would show that Obamacare is failing on another one of its key promises—having people access regular and preventive health services. The new data also shows that Obamacare coverage increasingly does not equal care. 

The premise behind Obamacare’s preventive services mandate was straightforward and optimistic: By eliminating cost‐sharing for evidence-rated preventive services (those graded “A” or “B” by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force), patients would seek timely screenings, counselling, and “wellness” visits. This in turn would reduce emergency care, lower hospitalizations, and improve health. Under Obamacare’s mandate, the services covered without copays include annual check-ups (well visits), mammography, pap smears, colorectal cancer screening (including colonoscopy), and immunizations.

Research generally concludes that Obamacare’s mandate slightly increased preventive care. However, research generally does not distinguish Obamacare exchange enrollees from the commercially insured population (which also incurred the mandate).

But despite mandates for preventive services with zero cost-sharing, a large and growing share of ACA exchange enrollees never submit a claim, meaning they apparently use none of the services their policies cover—preventive or otherwise.

Since Obamacare eliminated potential financial cost barriers to preventive services, why would so many covered individuals never obtain any services at all—not even a well-visit or screening?

When someone has coverage with “first-dollar” preventive services but makes no use of the system, some possible explanations arise. They may be healthy and have no need for care in that year. Or they may lack access (such as provider network issues) or awareness that preventive services are free. Finally, we have to consider whether they are improperly enrolled, or a phantom enrollee.

In either of the latter two cases, Obamacare’s assumption—that coverage leads to preventive care uptake, better health, and lower costs—is significantly undermined.

Personally, I have been enrolled in an Obamacare plan, bought using an individual coverage health reimbursement arrangement for four years now. My insurer aggressively advertises the free preventive services and wellness visits. I receive letters, emails, and text messages for an annual physical and the flu shot. Obamacare insurers have probably ramped up these efforts in recent years out of concern around a low medical loss ratio (that would force higher payments to providers or rebates) as well as their internal concern about a growing number of zero-claim enrollees and the public perception problem of useless coverage that creates.  

The main explanation for the rise in zero-claim enrollees is the tremendous amount of fraud and abuse endemic to Obamacare. The data does not lie. In 2025, there are more than 6.4 million ineligible people enrolled in a fully subsidized Obamacare plan—and in 15 states there are more than twice as many people enrolled in fully subsidized plans than are eligible. And the examples of the fraud are overwhelming, as a huge money-making apparatus from lead generators to unscrupulous agents and brokers to insurers made massive profits from the fraud. Millions have been enrolled without their consent or knowledge, falling victim to fraud schemes. 

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The Rubio Doctrine: Neocons Are Back!

According to several recent news reports, the two major Trump foreign policy shifts last week are the handiwork of Marco Rubio, the President’s Secretary of State and (acting) National Security Advisor. As with all neocon plans, they will be big on promises and small on delivery.

First up, according to Bloomberg it was Rubio who finally convinced President Trump to take “ownership” of the US proxy war on Russia, and for the first time place sanctions on Russia. Up to this point President Trump chose to portray himself as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia. But with this move against Russia’s oil sector he can no longer credibly claim that this is “Joe Biden’s war.”

The Trump move followed a confusing few weeks since the Trump/Putin Alaska summit in August. After that meeting Trump dropped the neocon position that a ceasefire in the Russia/Ukraine war must occur before any peace negotiations. It was a sign that Trump was looking more realistically at the war. He also said he did not think Ukraine would win, which is pretty obvious.

A surprise call to Putin the day before Ukrainian president Zelensky was to arrive in town just over a week ago reinforced that position and Zelensky left Washington empty-handed. He was seeking Tomahawk missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory.

Then out of the blue President Trump last week announced through his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that the US would be sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies until Russia declares a ceasefire in the war before negotiations. That won’t happen, but what it does mean is that Rubio and the neocons have successfully gotten Trump to step on the escalation escalator. That is what they always do. It will be much harder to back down now.

At the same time the US Administration was jumping deeper into the Russia/Ukraine war, a long-time neocon dream was suddenly back in play. Although in Trump’s first term a “regime change” operation was attempted against Venezuela, it failed spectacularly. But the neocons have long dreamed of overthrowing the Venezuelan government – they almost got their way back in 2002 – and suddenly after several weeks of extrajudicial murder on the high seas in the name of fighting the drug war, President Trump announced that land strikes on Venezuela would begin soon.

He did mention that he might brief Congress on his plans for war on Venezuela, not that Congress can be bothered to care much one way or the other.

The neocon old guard that still dominates Washington foreign policy is taking a victory lap. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was on the Sunday shows beaming over the conversion of “no regime-change wars” President Trump to “regime change wars” President Trump.

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Election Interference Litigation: Trump’s Case Against the Des Moines Register and Pollster Moves Forward

Back in 2018, I launched a podcast very loosely tied to what I’ve done for a living for many years, and so I called it “Shaping Opinion.” The very first topic I sought to cover was how political polls are used to shape public opinion and influence the vote. 

Needless to say, I didn’t get any takers who were willing to put themselves out there on this issue, and not just in that first year. This has always been one of those topics I’ve been ready to seize on if any new studies or indisputable proof would come up that would give me a chance to dig in. But no matter who I approached, people got awful shy on this one, especially after the presidential race of 2020. 

Of course, this is one of those topics where you can trust your own eyes and ears, and your powers of observation over time. In every presidential election cycle, Democrats are over-sampled and Republicans are not. Pollsters say there are reasons for this, but they never tell the full truth. 

You can count on public polls telling you early and often that the Democrat candidate is dominating. At some point around the conventions, polls will say each candidate saw a “post-convention bounce,” but the Republican candidate’s bump is always temporary and fleeting. The Democrat candidate’s bounce is always framed as the start of the home-stretch run where he or she is a likely winner. 

This is to condition the voters into assuming the Democrat will win. Social psychologists often say that most people like a winner, so for many, once they have a sense from the polls who the likely winner will be, that’s who they decide to vote for. 

Anyone with common sense who has seen this pattern over at least three election cycles can detect for themselves that polls are commonly used to shape opinion, not reflect it. 

So last year, when a well-respected pollster from Iowa named J. Ann Selzer published her final numbers for “The Iowa Poll” three days before election day, many of us were extremely curious. She released what was the final Des Moines Register presidential election poll, which had Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by three points. 

Fox News called this a “shock poll” that “showed a seven-point shift from Trump to Harris from September, when he had a four-point lead over the vice president in the same poll.” 

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Shock New Report Lays Out The Full Scale Of Environmental Damage Caused by Onshore Wind Turbines

Fresh insights into the ecological devastation caused by onshore wind turbines around the world are contained in a shocking new paper published last month by a group of ecologists in Nature. The paper is paywalled and has attracted little mainstream media interest, but it highlights research that illustrates that the effect of utility-scale wind energy production “can be far reaching and sometimes have large and unexpected consequences for biodiversity”.

An annual figure of around one million bats are killed in the countries with the highest number of turbines, but harmful effects are seen in many other parts of the ecosystem. The number of top predators such as jaguars, jungle cats and golden jackals can be changed by turbines in tropical forest gaps leading to the “possibility for cascading effects” along similar latitudinal levels. 

In short, the science team notes that turbines can kill birds, bats and insects, change animal behaviour, physiology and demography and alter ecosystems. The installation of wind turbines invariably results in habitat degradation, but it is regions rich in biodiversity with minimal existing infrastructure that suffer the most.

The authors state that wind facilities “are recognised as an important driver for losses and degradation of irreplaceable habitats that are important for conservation.” Such areas, of course, can be found in the windy highlands of Scotland. For City-dwelling eco zealots, it is a case of out of sight, out of mind. Net Zero is all about money and power – bats and eagles have neither.

The Nature paper is a wake-up call about the increasing damage that is being inflicted on natural habitats by wind turbines that are steadily increasing in size and destructive potential. It is a summary of the latest findings about the effect of turbines and it is not sanguine about the future.

“Perhaps the greatest unknown in predicting future effects of wind power on biodiversity lies in the scope of the potential expansion of the technology and the cumulative consequences of this expansion for species and ecosystems”. A 2021 USA report on the potential pathways to Net Zero emissions is noted and this suggests using up to 13% of the land area for wind farms. The new Trump Administration is likely to put a stop to this madness which the scientists observe could have “dramatic consequences for biodiversity”.

The BP Deepwater Horizon accident is generally considered the worse US offshore oil spill. Estimates vary but it is thought to have led to the deaths of around 600,000 sea birds and the incident led to widespread condemnation by environmentalists that continues to this day. Slightly less publicity is given to the 500,000 bats killed onshore in the US by wind turbines every single year. In the UK, 30,000 is the estimated annual kill number, with Canada at 50,000 and 200,000 in Germany.

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UK Courts Block Grooming Gang Survivor from Enforcing Compensation Award: Could this be happening in America?

For Americans, the term “Grooming Gang” may seem like a distant UK issue. But the story of “Liz,” a Rotherham survivor in North England, should resonate. In March 2023, she won a £425,000 ($550,000 USD) compensation award against her rapist, Asghar Bostan, part of a Muslim Pakistani grooming gang (rape gangs). Yet, by October 2025, court delays have left her empty-handed.

These delays, coupled with fears of “Islamophobia” accusations that shielded UK gangs, mirror U.S. struggles with justice for sexual abuse victims. They raise alarms about whether similar crimes could hide in America under the same guise of political correctness. Short prison sentences, like the lenient terms often handed to UK offenders, further erode trust—a pattern Americans see in trafficking or abuse cases.

The UK’s endless inquiries, costing millions with no action, and courts that stall survivors’ justice, parallel American issues. From trafficking rings to campus assaults, both nations grapple with backlogged systems and institutional failures. Liz’s fight is a warning: justice delayed is justice denied.

A Stalled Victory with American Implications
Liz’s trauma began in the early 2000s, when she was raped as a teenager by Ashgar Bostan, a taxi driver convicted in 2018 under Operation Stovewood. This probe targeted Rotherham’s child sexual exploitation crisis from 1997 to 2013. She pursued the UK’s first private civil prosecution, funded by philanthropists including Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who raised £30,000 with Lord Vinson to cover legal costs. Her team secured a default judgment for £425,934—now about $585,000 with interest—for her lifelong trauma.

Bostan’s criminal sentence was shockingly light: just seven years for multiple rapes, with parole eligibility by 2022, reflecting a UK trend of lenient sentencing for grooming gang members.

But Liz’s win remains hollow. A charging order on Bostan’s property was granted in September 2023, finalized in November, with a sale order in October 2024. Yet, no final court date exists as of October 2025.

The 2.5-year delay mirrors U.S. court backlogs — 1.3 million pending civil cases in 2024. Elizabeth faces postponed hearings and months-long waits for fee waivers, despite judges’ “shock” at these delays. And at each stage the system demands £10,000 from her in “court fees.”

Even obtaining court transcripts is a lang drawn out expensive ordeal. Lord Pearson fought for Bostan’s 2018 trial transcripts, battling Sheffield Crown Court from December 2020 to March 2021 for the civil case. After the House of Lords Library admitted they were too expensive for them to obtain, Lord Pearson personally paid for them. Bostan’s 2024 parole breaches went unmonitored, echoing U.S. failures like Larry Nassar’s parole mishandling. With UK courts adding 500 more cases to the backlog each month, trials now stretch to 2027 — much like U.S. survivors enduring prolonged pain.

Could Grooming Gangs Hide in America?
And the pattern is not foreign to the U.S. either. In the UK, grooming gangs—largely Muslim Pakistani men targeting vulnerable white English girls—operated for decades while authorities hesitated, fearing “Islamophobia” accusations. That fear allowed abuses to fester unchecked. Short sentences, like Bostan’s seven years, enabled early releases, undermining justice and retraumatizing victims.

In the U.S., similar dynamics could conceal organized abuse. The FBI’s 2024 trafficking report highlights vulnerabilities in marginalized and underserved communities. Cases like a 2023 Minnesota trafficking ring, involving Somali-American men exploiting teenage girls, show disturbing parallels. Local officials delayed action amid community sensitivities. In cities like Minneapolis or Dearborn, fear of “Islamophobia” labels could mirror UK failures, letting exploitation go unchecked. Political correctness risks becoming a shield for predators, as it did in Rotherham.

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The Covid Re-Review Project: All Models Are Wrong, and Some Are Dangerous

Iwelcome Eyal Shahar’s call for a re-review of Covid vaccine papers. In fact, I started long before Eyal blew the whistle — even before the vaccines appeared.

At the end of the terrible year 2020, a highly influential paper appeared in Science. It made headlines in major media outlets around the world. The paper, titled “Inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against COVID-19,” was soon used by governments across the globe to justify their increasingly authoritarian policies.

It attracted my attention because the last author was Czech mathematician Jan Kulveit. Together with my two colleagues, Ondřej Vencálek and Jakub Dostál, we wrote the following response:

“All models are wrong, but some are useful“ goes a famous saying usually attributed to George Box. Today, he would perhaps say that all models are wrong, and some are even dangerous. This, in our opinion, is the case for the study “Inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against COVID-19”1 that appeared in Science and received widespread attention around the world. 

The study aims at understanding the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in controlling the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors analyze data on the total case counts and death counts from 41 (mostly European) countries between January and the end of May 2020. They produce an estimate of the effects of 8 different NPIs (such as limiting gatherings of people, closing schools, etc.) which were implemented in many countries during the studied period. The effect of each NPI is quantified by the reduction in the infection reproduction number R at the time of the NPI imposition in the respective country. 

The results have been widely welcomed because they seem to show that all of the NPIs generally work, and the effect sizes seem to agree with the common sense (e.g. the more you restrict gatherings, the greater reduction of R you obtain). Governments across the world will be very happy to hear that the restrictions they imposed were justified. But were they?

In fact, we do not know, and this study does not help us to find out. We argue that there is a fatal flaw in the model which renders it useless. Looking at the only equation in the body of the paper (see the “Short model description” section), we see that the authors assume the underlying (unobservable) basic reproduction number R0,c to be constant in time for each country. This basic reproduction number is then multiplied by the effects of the NPIs and this is fitted to data. Thus, the model assumes that any change in the dynamic of the epidemic is due to the NPIs. This is deceptive because it is circular. If you want to quantify the effects of an intervention, you cannot assume that all the observed effects are due to the very intervention. 

Also, this assumption of constant R0,c suggests why the authors chose to stop modeling once any NPI is lifted. The NPIs are usually lifted as the epidemic dwindles. Thus, the NPIs are present when R is high, and they are absent when R is low. With data from a longer time interval (including the summer period of low prevalence and relaxed NPIs), the simple model the authors used would learn a negative effect – that NPIs speed up the epidemic. This was clearly undesirable, so the authors chose not to use the data from the summer to fit the model. Such modeling strategy is highly questionable.

To make our point completely clear, we performed the following experiment. We took the original dataset2 and invented a new NPI that never existed. Let us say that from the imposition of this new NPI on, each citizen was required to wear a T-shirt with a “Stop-Covid” inscription, until this NPI was lifted. 

We drew a random date uniformly from the period over which a particular country was modeled, and “imposed” this T-shirt NPI on the data (see reference [3] for the original dataset with the T-shirt NPI added). We did not change the numbers of cases and deaths anyhow. Such an NPI never existed and so it could not have had any effect. We then ran the original model (see reference [4] for the link to GitHub to the version we used) without touching any parameters. The result is shown in Figure 1. The T-shirts almost made the pandemic go away!

How is this possible? Every epidemic has its intrinsic dynamics. The simplest SIR model produces a single peak in the number of active cases. If we want to reproduce such a peak with a simple exponential function (which is what the authors do), the coefficient in the exponent (i.e. the empirical reproduction number) must decrease in time from the beginning of the first wave. Thus, assuming that any effect on the reproduction number is due to NPIs, the model cannot produce anything other than assign a positive effect (i.e. a reduction in R) to any NPI. Even to a nonexistent one, as we have shown.

Thus, in our view the model is deceptive and very dangerous, because it can be used by the governments to retrospectively justify any NPI they chose to impose on the people. We do not claim that some/all of the NPIs have not had a positive effect. We only say that this model is no way to find out.

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