copenlu/druid huggingface dataset:
Claim: “COVID-19 [is] less deadly than [seasonal] flu” (Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2020-01-10)
Evidence (2024-01-05): A common misperception that exists is that COVID-19 is no longer a serious virus, and some may even believe that it's less serious than influenza. While the rates of serious illness, hospitalizations, and death from COVID-19 are significantly lower than during the height of the pandemic in early 2020 and 2021, recent data indicates that COVID-19 remains more serious than influenza. [...] - Among individuals over 65 they are 3-4x more likely to die from COVID-19 compared to influenza (see figure 2). [...] Source: CDC Pneumonia and Influenza Mortality Surveillance from the National Center for Health Statistics Mortality Surveillance System (FluView interactive) accessed 1-4-24 Because the vaccine reduces the risk of serious illness, hospitalization and death, this information can be helpful during discussions with residents and their representatives who have reluctance about getting vaccinated, particularly for those who are hesitant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine but got the influenza vaccine.
Claim: “COVID-19 [is] less deadly than [seasonal] flu” (Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2020-01-10)
Evidence (2024-01-01): Vaccines and Omicron mean Covid now less deadly than flu in England was Dkr4188 now Dkr1999 for your first year, equivalent to Dkr166.58 per month. Make up your own mind. Build robust opinions with the FT’s trusted journalism. Take this offer before 24 October.
Claim: “COVID-19 [is] less deadly than [seasonal] flu” (Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2020-01-10)
Evidence (2024-05-15): Al-Aly told MedPage Today that his group was actually surprised by the results. "We pretty much bought into the public narrative and drank the Kool-Aid like everybody, thinking that COVID is no longer [more deadly than the flu], although ... there was no data," he said. "But the verdict is out now, because we've analyzed the data from the 2023-2024 COVID season and clearly COVID mortality is still higher than the flu." [...] However, the results did reveal that the risk of mortality in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had fallen when compared to the previous 2022-2023 season. In their 2023 study, using the same database and methods, Al-Aly's group found that in the fall and winter of 2022-2023, COVID was about 60% more deadly than the flu in patients hospitalized for the illnesses. "We should continue to take COVID seriously," Al-Aly emphasized. "I know we're all sick and tired of this pandemic and all of us have pandemic fatigue, but COVID is still more of a threat to health than the flu."
Claim: “COVID-19 [is] less deadly than [seasonal] flu” (Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2020-01-10)
Evidence (2024-01-03): Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Similarities and differences between COVID-19 and Influenza 3 January 2024 | Q&AEnglish version last updated 3 January 2024. COVID-19 and seasonal influenza (flu) are both infectious respiratory viral infections. While some of their signs and symptoms are similar there are some important differences between them such as their ability to cause disease in different population groups COVID-19 and flu are caused by two different kinds of viruses, their signs and symptoms and groups at risk of severe complications are similar but not entirely the same. There are also differences in how they are treated. This questions and answers page will help you know the facts about both COVID-19 and influenza, so you can make more informed decisions about your health. [...] Both infections are caused by viruses, but their effect on individuals can vary. Some have no symptoms, or mild symptoms, and others may suffer from severe disease. Both influenza and COVID-19 can be fatal. In many cases they may share similar symptoms, including cough, runny nose, sore throat, fever, headache and fatigue. [...] Most people infected with COVID-19 and influenza do not develop severe disease and do not need any specific treatment as they recover at home. For more information about caring for someone with COVID-19 safely at home, see:
Claim: “COVID-19 [is] less deadly than [seasonal] flu” (Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2020-01-10)
Evidence (2023-04-07): Two new studies suggest that COVID-19 Omicron variant infection is deadlier than influenza, with one finding that US veterans hospitalized with Omicron in fall and winter 2022-23 died at a 61% higher rate than hospitalized flu patients, and the other revealing that Israeli adults hospitalized with flu were 55% less likely to die within 30 days than those admitted for Omicron in the 2021-22 flu season. [...] The authors noted that two or three times more people in the United States were hospitalized for COVID-19 than flu during the study period. "However, the difference in mortality rates between COVID-19 and influenza appears to have decreased since early in the pandemic; death rates among people hospitalized for COVID-19 were 17% to 21% in 2020 vs 6% in this study, while death rates for those hospitalized for influenza were 3.8% in 2020 vs 3.7% in this study." [...] COVID-19 patients needed supplemental oxygen, invasive mechanical ventilation, and vasopressors to raise blood pressure more often than flu patients. A multivariate analysis showed that the 30-day death rate was 9% among flu patients, compared with 26% among COVID-19 patients, a relative difference of 55% (HR, 0.45).
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2019-05-08): Although periods of regional warming or cooling can be caused by natural variability (or events like volcanic eruptions), human-caused warming of the entire planet has led to the highest global temperatures of the last 2,000 years.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2024-10-02): Boreholes [edit]Borehole temperatures are used as temperature proxies. Since heat transfer through the ground is slow, temperature measurements at a series of different depths down the borehole, adjusted for the effect of rising heat from inside the Earth, can be "inverted" (a mathematical formula to solve matrix equations) to produce a non-unique series of surface temperature values. The solution is "non-unique" because there are multiple possible surface temperature reconstructions that can produce the same borehole temperature profile. In addition, due to physical limitations, the reconstructions are inevitably "smeared", and become more smeared further back in time. When reconstructing temperatures around 1500 AD, boreholes have a temporal resolution of a few centuries. At the start of the 20th century, their resolution is a few decades; hence they do not provide a useful check on the instrumental temperature record.[13][14] However, they are broadly comparable.[3] These confirmations have given paleoclimatologists the confidence that they can measure the temperature of 500 years ago. This is concluded by a depth scale of about 492 feet (150 meters) to measure the temperatures from 100 years ago and 1,640 feet (500 meters) to measure the temperatures from 1,000 years ago.[15]
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2024-10-08): The temperature record of the past 1000 years describes the reconstruction of temperature for the last 1000 years on the Northern Hemisphere.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2024-10-08): In this new study, scientists used the largest available database of past temperature reconstructions extending back 12,000 years to carefully investigate the geographic pattern of temperature change during the Holocene. Olivier Cartapanis and colleagues find that, contrary to previously thought, there is no globally synchronous warm period during the Holocene. Instead, the warmest temperatures are found at different times not only in different regions but also between the ocean and on land. This questions how meaningful comparisons of the global mean temperature between reconstructions and models actually are. According to the lead author Olivier Cartapanis, "the results challenge the paradigm of a Holocene Thermal Maximum occurring at the same time worldwide." And, while the warmest temperature was reached between 4,000 and 8,000 years ago in western Europe and northern America, the surface ocean temperature cooled since about 10,000 years ago at mid-high latitudes and remained stable in the tropics. The regional variability in the timing of maximum temperature suggests that high latitude insolation and ice extent played major roles in driving climate changes throughout the Holocene.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2024-09-19): The team compiled more than 150,000 published data points from five different geochemical archives (or "proxies") for ancient ocean temperature that are preserved in fossilized shells and other types of ancient organic matter. Their colleagues at the University of Bristol generated more than 850 model simulations of what Earth’s climate could have looked like at different periods of the distant past based on continental position and atmospheric composition. The researchers then used data assimilation to combine these two lines of evidence and create the a more accurate curve of how Earth’s temperature has varied over the past 485 million years.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2024-08-23): The temperature record of the last 2,000 years is reconstructed using data from climate proxy records in conjunction with the modern instrumental temperature record which only covers the last 170 years at a global scale. Large-scale reconstructions covering part or all of the 1st millennium and 2nd millennium have shown that recent temperatures are exceptional: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report of 2007 concluded that "Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years." The curve shown in graphs of these reconstructions is widely known as the hockey stick graph because of the sharp increase in temperatures during the last century. As of 2010[update] this broad pattern was supported by more than two dozen reconstructions, using various statistical methods and combinations of proxy records, with variations in how flat the pre-20th-century "shaft" appears. Sparseness of proxy records results in considerable uncertainty for earlier periods.[2] [...] The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report cited 14 reconstructions, 10 of which covered 1,000 years or longer, to support its conclusion that "Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years".[7]
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2024-10-07): [edit]Proxy measurements can be used to reconstruct the temperature record before the historical period. Quantities such as tree ring widths, coral growth, isotope variations in ice cores, ocean and lake sediments, cave deposits, fossils, ice cores, borehole temperatures, and glacier length records are correlated with climatic fluctuations. From these, proxy temperature reconstructions of the last 2000 years have been performed for the northern hemisphere, and over shorter time scales for the southern hemisphere and tropics.[81][82][83] [...] Proxy reconstructions extending back 2,000 years have been performed, but reconstructions for the last 1,000 years are supported by more and higher quality independent data sets. These reconstructions indicate:[83]
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2019-10-30): Over the past eight hundred thousand years, glacial–interglacial cycles oscillated with a period of one hundred thousand years (‘100k world’1). Ice core and ocean sediment data have shown that atmospheric carbon dioxide, Antarctic temperature, deep ocean temperature, and global ice volume correlated strongly with each other in the 100k world2,3,4,5,6. Between about 2.8 and 1.2 million years ago, glacial cycles were smaller in magnitude and shorter in duration (‘40k world’7). Proxy data from deep-sea sediments suggest that the variability of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the 40k world was also lower than in the 100k world8,9,10, but we do not have direct observations of atmospheric greenhouse gases from this period. Here we report the recovery of stratigraphically discontinuous ice more than two million years old from the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area, East Antarctica. Concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane in ice core samples older than two million years have been altered by respiration, but some younger samples are pristine. The recovered ice cores extend direct observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, and Antarctic temperature (based on the deuterium/hydrogen isotope ratio δDice, a proxy for regional temperature) into the 40k world.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2024-09-19): But some of the most common climate proxies at this timescale are even more miniscule. Foraminifera (known as "forams") and diatoms are unicellular beings that tend to live on the ocean seafloor, and are often no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence. Because they are scattered all across the Earth and have been around since the Jurassic, they’ve left a robust fossil record for scientists to probe past temperatures. Using oxygen isotopes in their shells, we can reconstruct ocean temperatures going back more than 100 million years ago. [...] But when we’ve gone back so far that there are no longer even any conodont teeth, we’ve lost our main indicator. Past that we have to rely on the distribution of sediments, and markers of past glaciers, which we can extrapolate out to roughly indicate climate patterns. So the further back we go, the fewer proxies we have, and the less granular our understanding becomes. "It just gets foggier and foggier," says Brian Huber, a Smithsonian paleobiologist who helped organize the symposium along with fellow paleobiologist research scientist and curator Scott Wing.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2017-01-27): Since we can’t go back in time to learn about past climates, paleoclimatologists rely upon natural sources of climate data, such as tree rings, cores drilled from Antarctic ice and sediment collected from the bottom of lakes and oceans. These sources, called proxies, can extend our knowledge of weather and climate from hundreds to millions of years.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2022-01-31): Paleoclimate proxies are physical, chemical and biological materials preserved within the geologic record (in paleoclimate archives) that can be analyzed and correlated with climate or environmental parameters in the modern world. Scientists combine proxy-based paleoclimate reconstructions with instrumental records (such as thermometer and rain gauge readings) to expand our understanding of climate variability to times before humans began measuring these things. These reconstructions of past climate and environment span all timescales, from year-to-year variations to those that occurred over millions of years. These data help us understand how the Earth's climate system varied both before and after human alteration of the landscape. The use of a proxy to reconstruct past climate requires an understanding of how that proxy is related to some aspect of climate. For example, some proxies, such as atmospheric gases trapped in glacial ice (e.g., carbon dioxide and methane), provide a relatively direct measurement of atmospheric chemistry at the time the ice formed and was sealed off from the atmosphere. Other proxies are less direct, such as stable isotope measurements (e.g., oxygen and carbon) from shells of marine organisms. These indirect proxies require calibration studies in the modern system to establish the relationship between climate processes and the proxy.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2021-11-10): - It suggests a general warming trend over the last 10,000 years, settling a decade-long debate about whether this period trended warmer or cooler in the paleoclimatology community. [...] The researchers looked at the chemical signatures of marine sediments to get information about past temperatures. Because temperature changes over time can affect the chemistry of a long-dead animal's shell, paleoclimatologists can use those measurements to estimate temperature in an area. It's not a perfect thermometer, but it's a starting point.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2020-04-15): Much like archaeologists dig up artifacts to piece together stories of ancient civilizations, climate scientists dig up natural "artifacts" to piece together stories of past climates. From fossil pollen to air bubbles trapped in ice cores, these artifacts, or "proxies," allow scientists to compare current climate change to the past. This week, NOAA released the most comprehensive database ever assembled of proxies—many available publicly for the first time—that can tell scientists about temperatures since the last ice age ended roughly 12,000 years ago. [...] Paleoclimate proxies indirectly record climate and atmospheric conditions present when they formed or grew; air bubbles in ice cores sample past carbon dioxide levels, pollen and undecayed plant matter reveal growing conditions, and the ratio of oxygen isotopes in marine fossils indicate ocean temperatures. Proxies can come from all over the world — from glaciers in Antarctica to the tropical oceans — and compiling them into datasets can help place today’s warming climate into the context of a longer history. [...] By using records from multiple proxy sources, the scientists were able to cover every continent and ocean for a more complete reconstruction of Earth’s climate over the past 12,000 years. In addition, comparing multiple proxy sources against each other allows scientists to reconstruct a more reliable and consistent story.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2023-03-09): Scientists often seek clues to past climates by drilling into glaciers and ice sheets. The extracted ice cylinders, sometimes taken from several kilometers below the surface, show evidence of atmospheric composition, volcanic eruptions, dust storms, even wind patterns. Combined with other paleoclimate records such as tree rings and fossils, ice cores enable scientists to reconstruct past worlds. [...] Paleoclimatology relies on ice cores but also tree rings, cores drilled from lake and ocean sediments, and fossils. Piecing together all the evidence produces a picture of a planet that was often much hotter than today, but was cooler than the present climate for most of the last 11,000 years. Ice cores also show that current carbon dioxide concentrations are now higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years, and the higher concentrations are driven by human burning of fossil fuels. Multiple paleoclimate records indicate cooler temperatures over the past 11,000 years, as shown in this cartoon. Credit: C. Iverson and E. Greenhalgh, NOAA Climate.gov, based on data from doi:10.1126/science.1228026
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2021-03-29): These clues to past climate are scattered across the Earth, from the layers of vast ice sheets and sediments at the bottom of lakes to rings of tree growth and towering stalagmites in caves. (See later section for more on the different sources of proxy data.) [...] For example, explains Prof Dan Lunt, professor of climate science at the University of Bristol, "50m years ago, CO2 concentrations were greater than today and the planet was substantially warmer. Proxies for CO2 allow us to quantify the former and proxies for temperature allow us to estimate the latter". Scientists can use this information to estimate climate sensitivity. [...] Proxy data can also help determine changes to sea level, ice cover and vegetation during past warm periods. One example is the previous interglacial period around 125,000 years ago – called the Eemian that was likely as warm or warmer than today – which can provide evidence on how all of these factors may change as the world warms.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2020-06-22): Ice sheets have one particularly special property. They allow us to go back in time and to sample accumulation, air temperature and air chemistry from another time[1]. Ice core records allow us to generate continuous reconstructions of past climate, going back at least 800,000 years[2]. By looking at past concentrations of greenhouse gasses in layers in ice cores, scientists can calculate how modern amounts of carbon dioxide and methane compare to those of the past, and, essentially, compare past concentrations of greenhouse gasses to temperature.
Claim: 18 proxies tell us the world was the same or warmer 1,000 years ago (Joanne Nova, 2019-05-08)
Evidence (2018-03-23): Thermometers, ice cores, isotopes. Because each of these approaches measures slightly different things - atmosphere versus ocean, gases versus isotopes, temperatures hundreds of years ago versus temperatures millions of years ago, seasonal versus annual versus time-averaged temperatures - matching them up with one another and building one continuous record of temperature through Earth’s history is a difficult task. This problem becomes even harder as we move further back in time because our ability to assign an exact age to a measurement decreases. To ensure we make the most accurate measurements possible, each proxy requires a specific expertise in the field and in the lab in addition to an understanding of how these methods work in modern settings through empirical observations and/or experimentation. Because these proxies tell us slightly different stories, scientists applying different methods to the geologic record with the same goal of better understanding and quantifying ancient Earth’s temperatures must collaborate to tell the complete story of our planet’s past. Events like the Paleoclimate Symposium at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History provide forums in which scientists can share their knowledge, discuss these problems, and reach a working consensus as a community.