Category: Uncategorized

Advertising doesn’t work

Contra the popular business assumptions, all that “online ad revenue” is more akin to money laundering among the cognoscenti and voluntary donations from the ignorati than anything resembling the stimulation of demand in the prospective market:

I’ve often recounted the curious tale of how in the 1980s I worked for a marketing research start-up that created perhaps the all time best real world lab for carrying out Randomized Controlled Trials.

In eight towns, we bought the new laser beam checkout scanners for all the supermarkets and drug stores in town in return for their cooperation. We recruited 3000 households in each town who agreed to identify themselves to the checkout clerk, so we could record all their consumer packaged goods shopping. And we controlled what TV commercials they saw on cable TV. So we could divide our sample into test and control groups that had exactly identical amounts of purchasing of the client’s product over the previous year and then show them more or different ads for a year and measure how much their purchasing increased.

Even today. this sounds like science fiction, but it was all up and running 40 years ago.

Brand managers at CPG firms were initially wildly enthusiastic: finally, they could scientifically prove to the beancounters at headquarters that their advertising is so effective that they should double their ad budgets!

But after a half decade of spectacular growth in our service, it turned out more or new advertising only rarely increased sales. And I don’t mean that doubling the ad budget only increased sales in the test group of thousands of families by, say, 7{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6} over sales in the control group of families, and that didn’t quite payout in terms of profitability. No, I mean, the typical result was that the sales in the test cell that saw twice as many ads as the control cell bought 0.1{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6} less.

They turned off all their keyword-search ads, then measured actual sales:

TADELIS: And the impact on average was pretty much zero.

What was eBay’s existing belief about paid-search advertising?

TADELIS: The company believed that roughly 5 percent of sales were driven by paid-search advertising, meaning that they believed that if we would pull the plug on advertising, sales would drop by 5 percent. What we found was that sales dropped by about half a percent. So, that’s an order of magnitude less. And it was not statistically different from zero.

But maybe it’s still worth it to gain even that half a percent? Now we have to know what the advertising costs, and measure the return on investment.

TADELIS: When you did the return on investment for every dollar that eBay spends — eBay believed that for every dollar they’re spending, they’re getting roughly a dollar-and-a-half back, meaning 50 cents of net profits. And what we showed is that on average, they’re losing more than 60 cents on every dollar.

So, how did these results go over?

TADELIS: Well, the president of eBay, who later became the C.E.O., he cut the paid-search marketing budget immediately by $100 million a year.

So, what happened next? You might think — what with capitalism being the hyper-competitive, market-optimizing, perfect-information ecosystem it’s supposed to be — you might think that other companies, once they learned about this eBay research, would cut their online ad spending. Or at least commission their own research to test the theories. So, did they?

TADELIS: Excellent question. There was a lot of chatter online after our experiments became public, suggesting that folks at eBay don’t know what they’re doing. And paid-search advertising works wonderfully if you know how to do it. But of course, that was backed with no data and no analysis.

In other words, the digital-ad community did not rush to replicate the results.

In the early 1990s, my father’s company was a leader in high-resolution graphics. They had always sold through a three-level distribution-dealer-end user structure, but saw their market position being eroded by inexpensive Taiwanese manufacturers going direct to the end user. So, they took out some very expensive, very prominent ads in PC Week, hired a number of people to take all the anticipated calls, and eagerly awaited the phone to start ringing.

I was one of the people assigned to the late 5-8 PM shift that covered the West Coast. I took one call on the third day. By the end of the first week, it became clear that the ads wouldn’t even begin to pay for themselves, much less the additional staff.

Not all paid advertising is useless, but I would estimate that 99 percent of it is. Which, of course, is why every owner of a popular Internet site soon learns that no one is willing to pay anything for access to even large and dedicated communities.

Don’t fear to walk away

 Sometimes, the corporations and government offices will even back down:

9 young female employees of a NY court office all oppose C19V (They want kids)They organized & told their supervisor they will ALL walk out on the job if the C19V is mandated. The office cannot run without them. Result: the office is not mandating the shot. 

No job, no career, no travel, is worth submitting to the Vaccine Nazi regime. And this is not the first example of an office backing down from an announced vaccine mandate of which I have heard.

Remember, many corporations are struggling because they can’t find decent employees, so they’re not eager to see their existing ones walk over nonsense like this.

Bindery Campaign Update 6

Days Left: 22

Status: 55.6 percent of goal.

The Iliad: 180/500

The Odyssey: 176/500

The previous update inspired a Homer-related question. But to me, the real hero of The Iliad has always been entirely obvious.

Which Iliad character would you want to be?

Hector.

Man. You are a weird one. As a Greek I ask this question of northwestern brothers. Almost all answer Achilles. Only The Golden One answered a very Greek answer “Achilles who then turns into Odysseas”. So Hector huh? You sympathise with the Trojans?

Achilles was a whiny little Special Boy bitch who got his best friend killed for nothing, required divine treachery to win his famous duel, and failed to respect even the most valorous. Hector was a man and a true hero, who gave his life for his family and his nation.

“Assuredly to me also are all these things a subject of anxiety, dear wife, but I am exceedingly ashamed of the Trojans and the long-robed Trojan dames, if I, like a dastard, aloof, should avoid the battle: nor does my mind incline me thus, for I have learned to be always brave, and to fight in the foremost among the Trojans, seeking to gain both my father’s great glory and mine own…. Jove, and ye other gods, grant that this my son also may become, even as I am, distinguished amongst the Trojans, so powerful in might, and bravely to rule over Ilium. And may some one hereafter say, returning from the fight, ‘He indeed is much braver than his sire.’ And let him bear away the bloody spoils, having slain the foe, and let his mother rejoice in her soul.”

Homer provides us with an object socio-sexual lesson in The Iliad, as he beautifully demonstrates the difference between the situational Alpha, (who in this case is at heart a supercharged Gamma) and the genuine Alpha. He also shows us the sort of problems that inevitably arise when Gammas achieve power.

Fauci spins ADE infections

The Vaccine Hitler has revealed how he plans to try to spin the CASE NIGHTMARE scenario of Antibody Dependent Enhanced (ADE) breakthrough infections of the vaccinated population permitting virus mutations that will hit the vaccinated much harder than the unvaccinated:

Fauci warns of ‘worse variant’ that ‘could impact the vaccinated’ if Covid-19 is allowed to keep mutating in unvaxxed population

In his latest bid to promote Covid-19 jabs, White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci upped his pandemic warnings and cautioned vaccinated individuals about an even “worse variant” that could come after Delta.

Those who remain unvaccinated, Fauci claimed in a Sunday interview with MSNBC, are responsible for the coronavirus mutating. This has led to the Delta variant, which health officials have continuously warned is partly behind the mass rise in cases and could lead to another surge in the fall.

“There’s a tenet that everybody knows in virology: a virus will not mutate unless you allow it to replicate,” Fauci said. “Fortunately for us, the vaccines do quite well against Delta, particularly in protecting you from severe disease.”

But if you give the virus the chance to continue to change, you’re leading to a vulnerability that we might get a worse variant, and then that will impact not only the unvaccinated, that will impact the vaccinated because that variant could evade the protection of the vaccine.

You would have to be literally retarded and completely ignorant of how mutations work to not see the obvious lies in Fauci’s spin draft. Let’s count the lies, deceptions, and misrepresentations.

  1. Covid-19 is not mutating in the unvaxxed population any more than any other virus. It spreads freely there, subject to the natural immunities conveyed on a) those who have full immunity because they already had the disease and b) those who have partial immunity due to related coronaviruses and rhinoviruses.
  2. Those who remain unvaccinated are not responsible for the coronavirus mutating. 
  3. The giveaway is here: “particularly in protecting you from severe disease”. What’s happening with the vaccines is similar to the consequence of not taking all your prescribed antibiotics and killing off all the bacteria infecting you. Fauci is admitting the vaccines are non-sterilizing, which means it is mutating in the vaccinated population.
  4. The vulnerability Fauci references is the ADE scenario that Karl Denninger first laid out back in February 2020, the most serious of which is CASE NIGHTMARE KITTY, which would result in the death of every single vaccinated individual. Fortunately, it appears a lesser CASE NIGHTMARE scenario is in store, which is why the Vaccine Nazis are already pushing boosters on those who are vaccinated, as it is the vaccinated who will likely be most at risk from the mutated variants.
  5. That variant WILL evade the negligible protection of the vaccine, because it is the vaccine itself that has created the vulnerability. That’s what “Antibody Dependent Enhancement” essentially means.

Less than nothing

That’s what the Pfizer vaccine does, according to a large Pfizer-funded study:

The highly-anticipated Pfizer’s safety and efficacy study of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine is finally out. After six months of monitoring over 45,000 patients, the study found that there were 15 deaths in the vaccine group and 14 deaths in the unvaccinated placebo group.

In other words, more vaccinated people died from the virus than the unvaccinated. According to the study, there were no deaths among 12‒15-year-old participants. The study not only demonstrates the lack of efficacy in the most important group but also highlights the extremely low fatality rate of Covid-19 in most of the 45,000 participants.

And before the Vaccine Nazis jump on the claim that there were more vaccinated participants than unvaccinated, there were 21,926 vaccinated and 21,921 unvaccinated participants. That means the chance of dying is  1 in 1,462 for the vaccinated and 1 in 1,565 for the unvaccinated.

The Pfizer vaccine doesn’t even reduce the risk of death, which is the last thing the Vaccine Nazis are still trying to claim it does.

Of course, this was before ADE and the Delta variant were combining to endanger the vaccinated, so “less than nothing” is the current best case scenario for the vaccines.

One doctor’s perspective

This is from a comment posted at Naked Capitalism by a doctor who is a regular commenter there:

We continue to have quite a bit of infection in the community. In my own practice, I am usually seeing 5-15 cases a day of COVID. The majority of these cases are vaccinated breakthroughs. There have been 2 whole days this week where the entire day were all vaccinated breakthroughs. Please note this is the outpatient side. Despite Dr. Walensky’s reassurance to Americans that these are very rare, this has not been my experience at all. These breakthroughs continue to happen in clusters. While the unvaccinated positives tend to be more isolated and far less likely to spread and sicken contacts. The clusters are almost always vaccinated as well. I have no explanation for this. It is my feeling the virus is trying to tell us something. This seems to be consistent with constant news reports of cluster events among the vaccinated all over the country.

The unvaccinated positives are likely underrepresented in my office sample. They are likely younger. They are likely to have no insurance or high copays so very hesitant to get tested. They are likely to get fired if they miss a day of work so they just do not want to know if they are positive. Furthermore, it seems that every effort has been made to make it very difficult for anyone to get tested. Why bother?

As far as the hospital it remains about 50/50 vaccinated/unvaccinated. The percentage of vaccinated patients seems to be slowly creeping up daily. I am hearing from my friends all over the country that the same is true. You no longer hear about 1{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6} vaccinated anymore in the hospital. A slow but surely increasing prevalence of the vaccinated in the hospitals. The vaccinated inpatients tend to be older and vaccinated at the beginning in DEC or JAN. The unvaccinated are younger usually 40-60 almost always with obesity or diabetes. Unlike the last wave, the majority of these patients are in and out in a day or two. I am not saying there are not sick people there are. Just not nearly as many as before. This too is confirmed by my friends. The critically ill are few but are almost entirely made up of the unvaccinated. We have had but 2 vaccinated in the ICU this whole time. The stories you are hearing of crashed hospitals in the big cities are happening because large numbers of non-critical patients are being admitted and discharged with continued large numbers coming into the ER. The other factor is staffing. Nurses have become depressed and are leaving in droves. And the ancillary staff in many places has been decimated by employees leaving because of the vaccine mandates. There is more at work than patient numbers by the panic porn that is all over the MSM.

The vaccines are clearly not working as promised. Large numbers of vaccinated patients are getting sick. I remember when I did the guest post back in December about the Pfizer trials. I was and am gravely concerned about the medical establishment in the guise of the Editors of NEJM referring to these miraculous vaccines, perfect in every way, as a triumph. There are lots of things in medicine the past decades that are indeed miracles. But calling something a triumph before a shot was in the first arm betrayed to me a certain level of hubris and I knew in my heart at that very moment that Nemesis, Hubriss best friend, would soon be making a visit….

These vaccinated patients that are sick are not very happy at all. Many of them are profoundly angry. The lies and misrepresentations are very soon going to start catching up with our leaders. And what I never dreamed would happen has begun to happen this week close to half of my positive COVID patients in an unsolicited manner are demanding to be placed on alternative therapy such as ivermectin. In a very angry manner.

I have no problem using this drug. I used it quite a bit in the first big crash in the fall and winter and started using it again about 6 weeks ago. Using the scientific method as I was so carefully trained to do decades ago, and with the limited tools I have, I have been able to make some observations.

Once a patient, vaccinated or not, becomes positive for COVID in my practice, my nurses or myself call them once in the AM and once in the PM. There is a form we fill out on each of these calls to describe their clinical condition with parameters fever, congestion, shortness of breath, coughing, pulse ox, etc. When the patients have cleared every single one, we quit calling them. We usually have between 15-20 active cases this past few weeks daily. A pattern became very obvious very quickly in this process and I have distilled it with 2 raw numbers. The Ivermectin patients are cleared of symptoms (N of 44) in average of 2.4 days. The Non-Ivermectin patients (N of 19) are cleared of symptoms after 5.7 days. Furthermore, on day 5 of the illness, we always have the patients go and get tested again. The Ivermectin patients have literally a 100{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6} negative rate by Day 5. The non-Ivermectin patients have a 58{cc08d85cfa54367952ab9c6bd910a003a6c2c0c101231e44cdffb103f39b73a6} clearance rate by Day 5.

I want to make one thing very clear. This is the scientific method. These numbers are consistent with the overall signal that all kinds of studies are showing with this drug. However, I am just one clinician in one office. Nothing dispositive can be said or done with these numbers.

However, it is an indication of yet another complete fail on the part of our medical leaders. These signals have now been out there for about a year. It is at this point, a national embarrassment that nothing has been done to fully evaluate this drug. I will say again, our leaders are not practicing medicine, they are practicing business.

Of course the vaccinated are angry. They thought they were going to be protected from this, they were assured that the vaccines were “safe and effective”. But we now know that Pfizer knew from the very beginning that there was zero evidence that the vaccines were either safe or effective.

Will the sheep grow fangs and exact retribution or will they die en masse? Only time will tell.

There is ZERO evidence of vaccine safety, part II

Pfizer’s own purchase contracts prove that there is no knowledge of the long-term safety or the long term effectiveness of its Covid vaccine:

The purchaser of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine must also acknowledge two facts that have largely been brushed under the rug: Both their efficacy and risks are unknown. According to section 5.5 of the contract:

“Purchaser acknowledges that the Vaccine and materials related to the Vaccine, and their components and constituent materials are being rapidly developed due to the emergency circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to be studied after provision of the Vaccine to Purchaser under this Agreement.

“Purchaser further acknowledges that the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not currently known and that there may be adverse effects of the Vaccine that are not currently known.”

This goes WAY beyond the simple legal immunity that ordinary vaccine manufacturers enjoy in the United States. You’d have to be literally insane or entirely ignorant to permit anyone to put this hellbrew in your body.