By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The United Kingdom now has a higher death toll than any other European country, and the second-highest in the world after the United States. Yesterday’s officially declared count was 29,427 (433 per million population), just above Italy’s 29,315 (485 per million).
However, Fig. 1, from the Cabinet Office daily briefing, shows that the seven-day rolling mean recorded daily deaths has been falling since April 14, about three weeks after the Prime Minister announced the British lockdown:
Fig. 1. UK recorded daily Chinese-virus deaths, March 14 to May 5, 2020 (COBR)
By contrast, the United States had reported 72,271 total deaths to yesterday, or 218 per million population.
However, such international league-table comparisons are problematic, for several reasons. The start-dates for the infection vary from country to country. Worse, the World Health Organization has failed to implement an agreed reporting standard for deaths. Therefore, different countries count the deaths in widely differing ways.
China, for instance, has been under-reporting both cases and deaths from the outset, and has recently ceased to report deaths altogether, even though outbreaks are known to be occurring in various provinces, notably Heiliongjiang.
For some weeks, the United Kingdom did not report deaths that occurred outside hospitals. This turned out to be a grave mistake, for it transpired that large numbers were dying in care homes, a problem that several countries have faced. Fig. 2 shows reported deaths by sector. It is about ten days behind the times, since the recording of deaths by the Office for National Statistics is a slower but more complete process than HM Government’s daily totals.
Now that the United Kingdom does report deaths in care homes and in all other settings as well as in hospitals, it is closer to the true numbers than Italy, for instance, where a recent audit suggested that fewer than half of all Chinese-virus deaths were being reported.
Fig. 2. UK recorded weekly Chinese-virus deaths by sector
However, even the more complete figures provided by the Office for National Statistics appear to be a significant undercount. For instance, the ONS weekly statistical report for the week ending April 24 shows that 8237 Chinese-virus deaths occurred. However, the excess mortality compared with the same week averaged over the previous five years was 11,539, suggesting that even HM Government’s revised death counts are underestimating the true position by 40%. If so, the true cumulative death toll may well exceed 41,000.
In the long run, and in the absence of a competent, internationally-standardized reporting protocol, it is the excess deaths that will be the best guide to the true fatality rate.
That the statistics should have been so inadequately kept as to allow a grave discrepancy between Chinese-virus deaths and excess mortality even in Western countries is bad enough. However, elsewhere in the world the under-reporting is still more severe.
In Brazil, for instance, where the President decided that no lockdown was needed despite the high population densities in the major cities, the hospital system has been overwhelmed, mass graves are being dug and the number of deaths reported is a severe understatement of the true position. The President also fired his health minister, who had criticized him for not following social distancing guidelines.
The Cabinet Office briefing on daily new cases (Fig. 3) shows that a peak was reached about two weeks after the Prime Minister’s announcement of the lockdown. The fact that the peaks in new cases and in deaths occurred two weeks and three weeks respectively after the lockdown was announced is an indication that the measures have had some effect.
Fig. 3. UK daily new Chinese-virus cases, March 21 to May 5, 2020.
Of the countries we have been monitoring, only Canada has a daily growth-rate in active cases (Fig. 4): all the others now show declines.
Fig. 4. Mean compound daily growth rates in estimated active cases of COVID-19 for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from April 8 to May 5, 2020.
As for cumulative deaths, Canada is again the high-end outlier, with a daily compound growth rate exceeding 5%. All others, including the U.S.A., are at or below 3%. However, there are signs that the slowing of the growth rates is itself slowing. Lockdowns can now be brought to an end, but with caution.
Fig. 5. Mean compound daily growth rates in cumulative COVID-19 deaths for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from April 15 to May 5, 2020.
Ø High-resolution images of Figs. 1-5 are here.
Today’s column will be the last in this series. I hope that readers will have found it useful to see, day by day, the decline in growth rates that provides governments with the opportunity to phase out their lockdowns.
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Several hours ago Western Australia’s Health Minister Roger Cook repeated several points he’s made in recent days about influenza in the lockdown.
• In April WA recorded just 20 cases of influenza, the lowest monthly total in history.
• In the last two weeks there have been two reported cases of influenza, the lowest weekly rate in history.
• WA had 548 influenza cases detected in April 2019 and 151 in April 2018.
• In 2019, 80 West Australians died from influenza including five children aged less than 10.
WA has so far had 551 confirmed COVID-19 cases (531 recoveries) and none reported in the last eight days, with a total of nine deaths and 11 cases still active.
Australia-wide, an update from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (http://www9.health.gov.au/cda/source/rpt_1_sel.cfm) on total cases of 67 diseases apart from COVID-19 …
April 2019 – 139,788
April 2020 – 101,611
May 2019 – 194,747
To 7 May 2020 – 627 (e.g. chlamydial infection 9,695 in May 2019 and so far 202 this May, but I’m nevertheless dubious that the overall reduction can be this huge)
And specifically influenza numbers from Australia’s Immunisation Coalition (https://www.immunisationcoalition.org.au/news-media/2020-influenza-statistics/) …
April 2018 – 1,977
April 2019 – 18,667
April 2020 – 262
May 2018 – 1,717
May 2019 – 30,571
To 7 May 2020 – n/a (but the NNDSS suggests 280 in April and so far just nine in May)
Nationally, Australia has so far had 6,895 cases of COVID-19 with 97 deaths.
I don’t consider all the above figures totally accurate because I’m unsure how immediately the various state health departments make disease notifications, but the data on face value suggests over the past five weeks of lockdown Australia has had tens of thousands fewer cases of communicable disease, various of which can be deadly.
There seems to be a media reluctance to draw attention to non-COVID-19 disease trends and I sense the numbers somehow offend both the “stop the lockdown today” and the “stop the lockdown months from now” cohorts. The latter group should use the data to support their argument.
Whatever, there’s growing evidence to support the politically incorrect argument that COVID-19, or its associated lockdown, has saved lives – in Australia, at least.
Surveys are suggesting that even without the lockdown laws most Australians would at the moment avoid crowded social venues such as concerts and sporting arenas, with uni boffins claiming that various of the social distancing traits will continue post-lockdown, at least for a fair while as the COVID memory lingers (assuming Australia reaches zero cases and keeps its international borders closed).
Australia and a few other lucky countries might yet find that, despite the boredom of home isolation and the economic damage, COVID-19 (or the reaction to it) has been a huge benefit to overall public health.
Mr Gillham’s information from Australia about the decline in mortality from non-Chinese-virus infections is fascinating. I shall persuade the Office for National Statistics to conduct a similar analysis.
Thank you for your focus on and attention to this disaster, Lord M of B, and I apologize for saying yesterday that “it appears all of the smart people got on the Mayflower”. Stay sane and safe.
Many thanks to Mr Long for his kind comment. I have a series of videos on the climate to make, so I must get on with that. But I posted this series here, with the kind indulgence of our host, because I was concerned that shills for the Chinese regime in one direction and extreme Right-wingers in another were making common cause to pretend that lockdowns don’t work. Fortunately, both sides of this debate have now been fairly aired. Though the extremists on both sides will not resile from their extremism, most people now realize that in countries with high population densities the lockdowns were unfortunately essential. But now they can be cautiously dismantled.
COVID-19 SUMMARY TO DATE
Total Mortality in Europe: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
In Europe, Total Deaths from All Causes peaked in week 14, the week of 30Mar2020-5Apr2020, suggesting that the lockdown was too late to be effective.
The exception was England, which has the worst Covid-19 death rate in Europe. Here is why:
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, a Scottish physician, wrote:
[excerpt[
“Unfortunately, it seems that COVID-19 has infected everyone involved in healthcare management and turned their brains into useless mush.
…
[In my view, if we had any sense, we would lockdown/protect the elderly, and let everyone else get on with their lives].
However, the hospitals themselves have another policy. Which is to discharge the elderly unwell patients with COVID directly back into the community, and care homes. Where they can spread the virus widely amongst the most vulnerable.
This, believe it or not, is NHS policy. Still.”
___________________________
Here in Alberta, the Covid-19 lock-down has resulted a debacle.
Most of our deaths are in nursing homes – our policy seems to be “Lockdown the low-risk majority but fail to adequately protect the most vulnerable.” This was also true elsewhere in Canada and the USA – notably in Quebec.
The global data for Covid-19 suggests that deaths/infections will total 0.5% or less of the total population – not that scary – but much higher and clearly dangerous for the high-risk group – those over-65 or with serious existing health problems.
“Elective” surgeries in Alberta were cancelled about mid-March, in order to make space available for the “tsunami” of Covid-19 cases that never happened. Operating rooms were empty and medical facilities and medical teams are severely underutilized. The backlog of surgeries will only be cleared with extraordinary effort by medical teams, and the cooperation of patients who die awaiting surgery – patients who were impatient…
Alberta started to re-open on 1May2020, exactly to the day as I predicted one week before. Elective surgeries re-started on 4May2020.
In conclusion, the full-lockdown was an error – we should have followed the Swedish model and taken precautions but not shut down the economy, which harmed so many young people. We have over-protected the huge low-risk majority from a virus that typically does not harm them, and severely under-protected the high-risk elderly and infirm. What a mis-managed debacle!
This is not 2020 hindsight. I reached my conclusion in mid-March 2020, based on data from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, South Korea, and total mortality in Europe. Iceland data was examined later.
I wrote on 21Mar2020:
“LET’S CONSIDER AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH, SUBJECT TO VERIFICATION OF THE ABOVE CONCLUSIONS:
Isolate people over sixty-five and those with poor immune systems and return to business-as-usual for people under sixty-five.
This will allow “herd immunity” to develop much sooner and older people will thus be more protected AND THE ECONOMY WON’T CRASH.”
“This full-lockdown scenario is especially hurting service sector businesses and their minimum-wage employees – young people are telling me they are “financially under the bus”. The young are being destroyed to protect us over-65’s. A far better solution is to get them back to work and let us oldies keep our distance, and get “herd immunity” established ASAP – in months not years. Then we will all be safe again.”
__________________________
Next time good people, listen to your Uncle Allan, who tries his best to take good care of all of you. Could’ve saved you a few trillion dollars… and all that trashing the economy, lockdown misery and the predicted economic recession/depression.
__________________________
In response to the unduly self-congratulatory Mr MacRae, this column advocated drawing a distinction between the young and the old some weeks ago. And, whether he likes it or not, lockdowns were essential in the early stages, to prevent the hospitals from being overwhelmed in urban centers with high population densities, such as London and New York. Just look at Brazil. In Sweden, the urban density and the mean person-to-person contact rate were low enough to permit only a partial lockdown, but even then the death toll per head of population is considerably above that of any other Scandinavian country, and is continuing to rise. For good reason, responsible governments paid no head to armchair epidemiologists like Mr MacRae and instead looked to the safety and well-being of their peoples.
With good reason, those who opposed lockdowns did not prevail in the public debate. However, it is now time to dismantle the lockdowns. Those under 60 are so little at risk that the lockdowns can be dismantled quite rapidly.
Sir, no need for you to be impolite. You disagree with me on this issue. Let the evidence speak for itself.
The full-time epidemiologists did a much worse job than I (and Willis) did – their estimates were hugely inaccurate and excessive – especially those from England.
The fact that Sweden did not do the full lock-down and is currently doing better than England should not be waived off due to population density or other such factors.
I wrote on 21Mar2020 based on the data available at that time:
“Isolate people over sixty-five and those with poor immune systems and return to business-as-usual for people under sixty-five.
This will allow “herd immunity” to develop much sooner and older people will thus be more protected AND THE ECONOMY WON’T CRASH.”
I still say that was the correct call.
What actually happened DURING THE FULL LOCKDOWN in places like London and New York City was THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I STATED:
– A full lockdown of the total population and the economy, costing trillions of dollars, killing the economy, harming billions of low-income people and over-protecting the low-risk population.
– Incredibly incompetent, almost criminal lack-of-protection of the high-risk population, such that ~half of the deaths occurred among the elderly in old-age homes.
– Delay in building herd immunity, such that Covid-19 may return in the Fall of 2020.
Let’s revisit this question in Winter 2020 and analyze how the “full-lockdown” countries have performed vs Sweden.
The global data for Covid-19 suggests that deaths/infections will total ~0.5% of the total population – not that different from other seasonal flu’s – but dangerous for the high-risk group – those over-65 or with serious existing health problems.
Here in Alberta, the Covid-19 lock-down has resulted in a mis-managed debacle. Most of our deaths are in nursing homes – our policy seems to be “Lockdown the low-risk majority but fail to adequately protect the most vulnerable.” This was also true elsewhere in Canada (Montreal) and the USA (New York City) and in England (London).
“Elective” surgeries in Alberta were cancelled about mid-March, in order to make space available for the “tsunami” of Covid-19 cases that never happened. Operating rooms were empty and medical facilities and medical teams are severely underutilized. The huge backlog of surgeries will only be cleared with extraordinary effort by medical teams, and the cooperation of patients who die awaiting surgery – patients who were impatient… Alberta started to re-open on 1May2020, exactly to the day as I predicted one week before. Elective surgeries re-started on 4May2020.
Two doctors from Bakersfield California, Dr Dan Erickson and Dr Massihi doctors reached similar conclusions, and were censored by YouTube for expressing their honest views. Here is the Bakersfield doctors’ ~1.1 hour video that was repeatedly banned by YouTube, preserved elsewhere:
https://savedmag.com/dr-erickson-covid-19.mp4?id=0
The Bakersfield doctors were telling the truth – they were saying that Covid-19 was not more severe than other major seasonal flu’s and less severe than some.
In Europe, Total Deaths from All Causes peaked in week 14, the week of 30Mar2020-5Apr2020, suggesting that the lockdown was too late to be effective. The exception was England, which has the worst Covid-19 death rate in Europe. Here is why:
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, a Scottish physician, wrote:
“Unfortunately, it seems that COVID-19 has infected everyone involved in healthcare management and turned their brains into useless mush.
[In my view, if we had any sense, we would lockdown/protect the elderly, and let everyone else get on with their lives].
However, the hospitals themselves have another policy. Which is to discharge the elderly unwell patients with COVID directly back into the community, and care homes. Where they can spread the virus widely amongst the most vulnerable.
This, believe it or not, is NHS policy. Still.”
___________________________
In conclusion, the full-lockdown was a huge error – we should have followed the Swedish model and taken precautions but not shut down the economy, which harmed so many young people. We have over-protected the huge low-risk majority from a virus that typically does not harm them, and severely under-protected the high-risk elderly and infirm.
This is not 2020 hindsight. I reached my conclusion in mid-March 2020 and published it on 21Mar2020, based on data from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, South Korea, and total mortality in Europe. Iceland data was examined later.
Like the phony issue of catastrophic human-made global warming (CAGW), the Covid-19 flu has become a subject of political manipulation and deceit.
The left is opposing the re-opening of the economy, allegedly to “save lives”, but really to further harm the economy and the re-election prospects of their opponents, most notably one Donald Trump.
Leftist states like New York have killed off huge numbers of their costly elderly and infirm, using deliberate policies that quarantine their high-risk populations in cramped quarters and expose them to the disease. Florida, with its huge elderly population, has fared much better under a Republican governor.
The left has tried to draw parallels between Covid-19 and the bogus CAGW “crisis”, and has tried to use Covid-19 as a lever to double-down funding for costly, ineffective green energy schemes – utter nonsense!
The real parallel between Covid-19 and the bogus CAGW “crisis” is this:
States that adopt worthless green energy schemes, which are not green and produce little useful (dispatchable) energy, will experience many of the same symptoms as the full Covid-19 lockdown – huge unemployment, a failed economy, and a demoralized citizenry dependent on government handouts – who will typically vote for the left. That is why the Democrats do what they do – that’s how they roll.
Did New York Governor Andrew Cuomo copy British practice? He reportedly ordered Covid-19-infected patients into old folks homes and killed them all off. No wonder New York and London have very high death rates attributed to Covid-19 – it looks like the same deliberate government policy. Qui bono?
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, a Scottish physician, wrote:
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/21/the-anti-lockdown-strategy/
[excerpt[
“Unfortunately, it seems that COVID-19 has infected everyone involved in healthcare management and turned their brains into useless mush.
…
[In my view, if we had any sense, we would lockdown/protect the elderly, and let everyone else get on with their lives].
However, the hospitals themselves have another policy. Which is to discharge the elderly unwell patients with COVID directly back into the community, and care homes. Where they can spread the virus widely amongst the most vulnerable.
This, believe it or not, is NHS policy. Still.”
____________________
In 2020 by country how many died from the Flu vs COVID?
Derg:
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
Flu season was very mild this winter, 2019-2020. Many more people died from Covid-19 than other flu’s.
Assume Covid started in Europe in week 9 – 24Feb to 1Mar2020
That is, if you believe the numbers. David Icke video:
https://londonreal.tv/the-coronavirus-conspiracy-how-covid-19-will-seize-your-rights-destroy-our-economy-david-icke/
M’Lud, isn’t it safe to say that, due to the number of cancelled operations and a general reluctance to go to hospital if it can be avoided, that there will be an increase in the number of excess deaths, even of people who have not tested positive for covid 19?
Bloke down the Pub is right that if the lockdown were to be persisted in there would be some excess deaths from cancellation of normal elective surgeries. However, these deaths will almost certainly be outweighed by a considerable reduction in mortality from infectious diseases other than the Chinese virus, at least in the medium term. In the longer term, the lockdowns will have been brought to an end.
195 countries with Corona. 37 countries with no deaths.
The UK now has more deaths than 184 countries put together. Data from Worldometer.
This is utter bull**** figures coming out of the UK-
Great Britain
“Cumulative all-cause mortality in the UK remains in the range of the five strongest flu waves in the last 25 years. The peak in daily hospital deaths was already reached on April 8 (s. chart below).
New statistical data show that in mid-April, out of about 12,000 additional deaths, about 9,000 were „related to Covid“ (including „suspected cases“), but about 3,000 were „not related to Covid“. Moreover, of the total of about 7300 deaths in nursing homes, only about 2000 were „related to Covid“. In both the „Covid19 deaths“ and the non-covid19 deaths, it is often unclear what these people actually died of. The Association of British Pathologists has therefore called for a „systematic review of the true causes of death“.
The temporary „Nightingale“ hospitals in the UK have so far remained largely empty. A similar situation was already seen in China, the US and many other countries.
At the end of April it became known that the lockdown was apparently not, as officially stated, recommended by a scientific commission alone, but that a high government advisor had „pushed“ the scientists to support the lockdown.
Peter Hitchens: We’re destroying the nation’s wealth – and the health of millions. „If you don’t defend your most basic freedom, the one to go lawfully where you wish when you wish, then you will lose it for ever. And that is not all you will lose. Look at the censorship of the internet, spreading like a great dark blot, the death of Parliament, the conversion of the police into a state militia.“
The prejudice demonstrated by “richard” is here repeated yet again. However, he and his ilk have lost the public debate about whether there should have been lockdowns. He may care to study the situation in Brazil, a country with a high urban population density and no lockdown. Or New York, where the lockdown was late and where, as in Brazil, mass graves had to be dug.
No doubt he wishes that the excess deaths reported in Britain, which are very high and will of course go still higher in the coming weeks and months, were not attributable to the Chinese virus. But in that event what on Earth were they attributable to? The Office for National Statistics says that most of these excess deaths, even though they were not reported as Chinese-virus deaths, are very likely to have been attributable to it.
That is why setting prejudices aside and looking at questions of life and death dispassionately is so important. “richard” has failed that test throughout. And that is precisely why he and his ilk have so comprehensively lost the debate. Their unwillingness to make the slightest attempt to be objective condemned them and their argument to deserved comtempt and oblivion.
Put up or shut up, Mr Monckton- Show us the proof that the deaths were “of’ corona and not “with” corona.
All illustrations are revealing the numbers, like climate change, have been manipulated.
Stop being a baggage handler for the Government.
Richard – and the vast majority of those 37 countries free of death, and soon CV19 virus free, are island states, de facto practicing “lockdowns” by closing their borders to air planes and boaters alike. We see this throughout the South Pacific, here, from New Zealand.
I don’t share the view that all excess deaths should be attributed to the virus. If we look at the ONS data on provisional deaths to week 17 (24th April end date) we see a clear drop in deaths in hospitals for non Covid deaths which is exceeded by the rise in non Covid deaths in other settings. This clearly indicates that lack of hospital treatment has given rise to extra deaths not due to the virus.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/0ZXy6/1/
It must be borne in mind that the statistics reflect any mention of Covid on a death certificate, and thus are deaths “with” rather than “from” the virus. Moreover, when we look at the changes in the data compared with the previous week, we find that a number of previously recorded deaths are being reassigned as Covid deaths.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/8BAcE/1/
It also seems clear that the spread of the virus in care homes post dates that in the wider population. Of course care homes are essentially high population density environments where the effective R is much higher than in the general population, so once an infection takes hold it will spread rapidly and almost completely through a home. With those facts, the finger points clearly to failings in the health system as to why care homes have suffered so badly all round, with a doubling of non Covid deaths and then a surge in Covid deaths, likely on the back of the discharge of still infected patients from hospitals.
Somewhat tangential, but I continue to believe we are making multi-trillion dollar decisions based on incomplete, inconsistent and sometimes inaccurate data. Toss in questionable models and political motivations and it’s hard to imagine anyone making good decisions.
We have three petri-dish experiments that I’m aware of that should be mined for all the data we can get (should have been done already). The Diamond Princess, the Charles de Gaulle, and the Theodore Roosevelt. The last two are navy ships, which means (1) forget social distancing, and (2) you will get 100% compliance with orders to report for testing at regular intervals. It also means the sample set is biased toward young, male and fit relative to the general population, and a bit less so relative to the working-age population.
The Charles de Gaulle lists a full compliment of 1,950 including both crew and air wing. Over 1,000 have tested positive. As of April 17, 500 showed symptoms, 24 were hospitalized, and 1 critical. The Theodore Roosevelt’s compliment is 5,680; of the 94% tested, 678 were positive [the testing numbers reported imply a complement of 4,500 rather than the claimed 5,680] So far 1 fatality, 7 remaining in hospital, 1 critical.
What explains the much higher positive test rate on the Charles de Gaulle?
What percent of the infected on both ships were rendered unfit for duty, required hospital care, etc.?
It’s clear COVID-19 can be devastating in vulnerable populations; we really need to know how dangerous it is for people in the work force who can’t work from home. Detailed data from these three ships should tell us a lot more than we appear to know now.
Lockdowns, at least in the U.S., will soon end themselves, rules or no rules.
The decrees are unenforceable en masse, as more and more of the public (and the police) are coming to realize. Certain governors can throw their hubristic little tantrums all they want, but they’re irrelevant. The tide is turning.
Mr Cranch is right. Now that lockdowns have achieved their primary purpose of preventing the disaster that is unfolding in no-lockdown Brazil, people will not indefinitely tolerate the loss of their freedoms. Governments know this perfectly well, and, since they did not introduce the lockdowns for fun, they will end them just as soon as they judge it to be safe to do so.
Perhaps I missed it but what is the average lag between “confirmation” of Covid-19 and death, and also the lag between death and reporting. The “Recorded daily deaths” chart peaks on roughly a weekly basis.
Recorded deaths show a weekly pattern because there aren’t so many people putting together statistics (or running tests) on a weekend, so there is a catch-up in the first half of the week. If you look at data aged to the actual date of death the pattern largely disappears, or even inverts to show the effects of reduced levels of care at weekends.
No Lock down- “In February 1957, a new influenza A (H2N2) virus emerged in East Asia, triggering a pandemic (“Asian Flu”). This H2N2 virus was comprised of three different genes from an H2N2 virus that originated from an avian influenza A virus, including the H2 hemagglutinin and the N2 neuraminidase genes. It was first reported in Singapore in February 1957, Hong Kong in April 1957, and in coastal cities in the United States in summer 1957. The estimated number of deaths was 1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the United States’
If only “richard” were capable of making even the smallest attempt at objectivity, he would realize that the United States is heading for at least 110,000 deaths from the present infection, and that is even after bringing lockdowns into effect. From that consideration, even he should be able to discern that the death toll would have been considerably quicker and greater unless those states with high population densities had locked down.
Christopher
But, it is interesting that Cuomo has said that something like 60% of the cases in NY were people who were “sheltering in place,” and were expected to be protected from the virus. Anyone who promotes lockdowns needs to explain why they don’t appear to be working as expected. Further, if they are not working as expected, can the loss of civil liberties and damage to the economy be justified?
Might it be that the supposed efficacy of hard lockdowns is not what is hoped? If that is the case, might it be over-kill, even for high population density regions? Could hard lockdowns be contributing to the problem by keeping people close together for long periods of time when one of the household members is infectious? Might there be a moderate response of social distancing and hygiene that would be as effective as the hard lockdowns? Without evidence-based answers to these questions, then recommendations of particular protocol would be little more than informed opinion.
Clyde asks “Anyone who promotes lockdowns needs to explain why they don’t appear to be working as expected.” I’ll bite.
Food parcel home deliveries made without scrupulously practicing viral hygiene to typically older and much older people, plus a strain of CV19 with high viral loading and therefore much more easily spread and contracted (not to mention more lethal), in the vast, greater NYC is areas.
This strain turned out to be the same as the highly lethal strain seen killing in Italy, and different than the strain seen in the rest of the US and Canada, as well as Australia and New Zealand. (See “Corona virus mutations affect deadliness” https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3080771/coronavirus-mutations-affect-deadliness-strains-chinese-study)
“n my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide.
Interesting:
Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic
“Lifespan in the US in those days was 70 whereas it is 78 today. Population was 200 million as compared with 328 million today. It was also a healthier population with low obesity. If it would be possible to extrapolate the death data based on population and demographics, we might be looking at a quarter million deaths today from this virus. So in terms of lethality, it was as deadly and scary as COVID-19 if not more so, though we shall have to wait to see. ”
https://www.aier.org/article/woodstock-occurred-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic/
Mr Monckton continues with his nonsense without any proof of who died “with” the virus or “of” the virus.
The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford shows that COVID-19 deaths in England peaked on 8th April, too soon to have been influenced by ‘lockdown’ measures. As in USA death certificates are ‘generous’ with C-19 attributions. April 8th is based on the actual dates of death not the reported dates.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-2nd-may/
This is the best guide I have found to reality, it is updated regularly.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Professor Johan Giesecke of Sweden’s article in ‘The Lancet’ seems to give a plausible prediction of where we shall all be in 12 months or so.
‘In summary, COVID-19 is a disease that is highly infectious and spreads rapidly through society. It is often quite symptomless and might pass unnoticed, but it also causes severe disease, and even death, in a proportion of the population, and our most important task is not to stop spread, which is all but futile, but to concentrate on giving the unfortunate victims optimal care.’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31035-7/fulltext
Mr Sherratt is incorrect. The interval between 23 March, when the UK lockdown was announced, and the peak in daily cases was about two weeks, which is very much what one would expect. Likewise, the interval until the peak in daily deaths was about three weeks, again much as expected. HM Government actually predicted that the peak would occur approximately when it did. For lockdowns reduce the mean daily person-to-person contact rate – in the UK by 85%. And that, like it or not, interferes with transmission, and is certainly capable of doing so in such a fashion as to show results after two weeks.
Unfortunately, it looks as though HM Government is likely to be as dilatory in ending the lockdown as it was in introducing it in the first place. That is the problem with having people who are scientifically illiterate in charge. It does not help that the soi-disant “experts” in whom the Government has placed such touching but misguided faith have been quite unable to agree among themselves on anything much.
I believe that the information from CEBM at Oxford is accurate and the best we have. 15 days from March 24th to April 8th is not long enough to produce an effect from the house arrest of the entire nation. The house arrest and the destruction of the economy will have very measurable effects.
This paper is pretty convincing on the lack of utility of quarantining the well.
‘Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic’ by Thomas Meunier; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Falmouth, Massachusetts, Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education, Ensenada, BC, April 24, 2020.
‘Abstract
This phenomenological study assesses the impacts of full lockdown strategies applied in Italy, France,
Spain and United Kingdom, on the slowdown of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. Comparing the trajectory
of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth
rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends. Extrapolating pre-lockdown growth rate trends, we
provide estimates of the death toll in the absence of any lockdown policies, and show that these strategies
might not have saved any life in western Europe. We also show that neighboring countries applying less
restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very
similar time evolution of the epidemic.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1.full.pdf
Unfortunately we are all at home to Professor Cockup. Word of the week ‘stochastic’.
Mr Sherratt does his best, but is unconvincing. Like it or not, the mean person-to-person contact rate in the United Kingdom fell by some 85% as a result of the lockdown. Given the approximate period from incubation via frank symptoms to case report, and given the data shown in the Cabinet Office graph, it is as plain as the nose on your face that the lockdown prevented a far greater case growth rate and death growth rate. For there were simply not enough people infected at the time the lockdown was introduced to interfere significantly with the growth rates, which were 20% daily for cases and 26% daily for deaths, and had been so for several weeks.
There had been some diminution in the growth rates before the lockdown was formally introduced, both because some measures were introduced before the full lockdown and because people were beginning to take precautions on their own account. Responsible governments, however, could not afford to take the risk of allowing transmission to continue at the then prevailing daily rates of growth.
As this column has pointed out, now that the lockdowns have served their purpose, and now that detailed studies of those hospitalized, such as that which this column presented in some detail a few days ago, have shown clearly that those under 60 are not much at risk, it is possible for governments to end the lockdowns, while advising those over 60, and particularly the very elderly and infirm, to take particularly careful precautions.
“The fact that the peaks in new cases and in deaths occurred two weeks and three weeks respectively after the lockdown was announced is an indication that the measures have had some effect.”
At quite an expense. An expense that will bring years to decades of financial misery to millions of middle class families. And in the end analysis, flattening the curve will not have changed the final area under the curve for several confounding reasons. One, this virus is everywhere now. Two, it is highly transmissible in a casual community setting, a passerby feet away, or a contaminated item on a store shelf waiting to be handled again and brought home. And thirdly, many infections have a 3-5 day asymptomatic phase, and for many young and healthy nothing more than an annoying cold sniffles. So unlike TB and Ebola, which both have high case fatality if left untreated and transmission requires more direct contact, thus demand contact tracing. All 3 facts make COVID-19 testing-contact tracing now useless, and in fact more likely counter-productive at this stage.
And serology testing for CoV-2 for individual travel passports or work permits is an extremely bad public policy, for multiple reasons.
The only thing that will stop this virus now is herd immunity. That will come either through naturally acquired infection, or by a widely-available vaccine.
Lord Monckton
Forget about “excess” deaths, whatever that is, let us deal with actual deaths. The best way to look at this is to plot the total number of deaths recorded from 1st January to date, for each of the last 25 to 30 years as adjusted by popultaion (or deaths per 100,000 for the past 25 to 30 years). Let us see one graph with 25 to 30 different curves.
We can then see whether the total deaths in 2020 are higher than the number recorded in previous years, and if so by how much.
I suspect that the total death toll (adjusted by population) will not be the highest these past 30 years, and I suspect that we have seen this type of death toll on a number of occassions in previous years, when there has been bad seasonal flu and/or and/or ineffective flu vacines and/or extremely cold weather.
Mr Verney wishes that we could forget about excess deaths. The statisticians, however, beg to disagree. Given that HM Government failed to introduce a common standard of prompt reporting both of new infections, new hospitalizations and deaths, and failed even to require a confirmatory test where a patient appeared to have died of the Chinese virus, the data are inadequate, and the excess deaths are a better guide. The very, very large surge in excess deaths coincident with the emergence of the pandemic is not very likely to be coincidental.
And in Western Europe, excess deaths by week have ranged from 20% in Scandinavia to 90% in Italy, with a mean of roughly 50%. And since vehicular deaths aren’t occurring, well over half of deaths in April, for instance, can sensibly be attributed to the Covid19 virus.
I have been looking at the daily death curves for about 14 countries. Nearly all of them show the daily deaths peaking about 30 days after the curve first starts to ramp up. This happens regardless of lockdown or not. Here it shows the same for the UK. It’s the same for Sweden, USA, Italy, California, etc. Japan doesn’t follow the pattern. Looks like Japan did flatten the curve without a lockdown. Clearly lockdowns did nothing.
I used data from Our World in Data (Oxford) for world data and Covidtracking.com for US and state data.
Yeahbut… When you don’t know what you’re dealing with extra precautions are necessary and prudent.
poshas94
How does a prudent person decide when “extra precautions” are excessive? Is it prudent that a deer hunter carry an elephant gun because he is not certain that a rogue elephant has escaped from a local zoo? It seems to me that uncertainties that encompass low-probability events don’t warrant the same reactions as unknown uncertainties of high-probability.
Mr Breeding has uselessly repeated a comment he had already made upthread. The answer to his comment is as follows: Mr Breeding has made the elementary mistake of failing to allow for confounders. One thing that happens once a dangerous pandemic hits the headlines is that people begin to take precautions for themselves. That will slow the growth-rate in cumulative cases and in deaths.
But lockdowns will slow that rate still more, for well-understood reasons. To see what life in a major city with a high population density would look like without lockdown, just look at Brazil.
All the stats suck. In Illinois they report anyone who died “with” Covid as dying “of” Covid. This is a common practice. Since over half of all deaths were elderly, many would have died without Covid.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the only meaningful statistic is the daily number of people hospitalized with Covid. Try to find that for each country.
Unfortunately. you’re correct, and we cannot trust ANY numbers coming out of the media. The numbers are being generated from base-line unreliable methods (ANYONE tested positive is listed as died-from) then reported by the even-less reliable and then by the bent-on-scaremongering marx-stream media.
I’m still on the fence when it comes to using “excess deaths”. It almost sounds like using “dark matter” to fill in the blanks in a popular theory. 😉
Regardless, I am grateful to Christopher Monckton of Brenchley for the series, and I’m looking forward to his next article.
By contrast, the United States had reported 72,271 total deaths to yesterday, or 218 per million population.
If one eliminated the count from the megalopolis area from DC northeast to Boston, the rate would be far lower. Of course, similar characteristics (urban areas/higher rates) would be true for any country. Point being, tho, the “shutdown” should have been limited to that urban area.
Big growth in Pennsylvania.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/pennsylvania/
The Medicare reimbursement scheme in the US has hospitals claiming patients who die of non-COVID aliments declared as COVID deaths because of an extra $3700 the hospital will receive for COVID deaths.
I heard that it was about $13,000 per CV19 patient, and about $39,000 per CV19 patient put on a ventilator. Where there is cash incentives, one has to be particularly wary of the figures; they are prone to distortion.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 2,813,503 registered deaths in the United States in 2017.
The age-adjusted death rate, which accounts for the aging population, is 7,319 deaths per million population in the U.S. This is an increase of 0.4% over 2016’s death rate. In comparison, 218 deaths per million population in the USA from Covid-19 aren’t necessarily extra deaths, but could be just earlier deaths, because of comorbidity.
Why the Dempanic? Probably because Joe Biden is their Prescan.
“Today’s column will be the last in this series.”
Thank you CMoB, for all of these, all well-worth the time to read.
Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, is worried people aren’t preparing for the possibility of a fall wave of infections — which some experts fear will be bigger than what we’ve seen so far — because they expect a vaccine will be at hand.
“I’ve actually heard higher education experts say, ‘Well, you know, we’re kind of counting on the vaccine maybe by September because we keep hearing about that.’ And of course, in their mind, they’re equating [that to mean] colleges and universities will have the vaccine,” he told STAT.
Osterholm and other experts make clear that there will not be enough vaccine for college-age students in that time frame, even in the best-case scenario. It’s likely any supplies that will be available — if any of the vaccines prove themselves to be protective by the fall — will be designated for health care workers and others on the front line of the response effort.
“I don’t think we’re communicating very well at all with the public, because I keep having to tell these people, you know, even if we had a vaccine that showed some evidence of protection by September, we are so far from having a vaccine in people’s arms,” Osterholm said.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/06/mounting-promises-on-covid-vaccines/
Preparing for the worst
They said government officials should stop telling people the pandemic could be ending and instead prepare citizens for a long haul.
Three scenarios are possible, they said:
Scenario 2: The first wave of Covid-19 is followed by a larger wave in the fall or winter and one or more smaller waves in 2021. “This pattern will require the reinstitution of mitigation measures in the fall in an attempt to drive down spread of infection and prevent healthcare systems from being overwhelmed,” they wrote. “This pattern is similar to what was seen with the 1918-19 pandemic.”
Scenario 3: A “slow burn” of ongoing transmission. “This third scenario likely would not require the reinstitution of mitigation measures, although cases and deaths will continue to occur.”
States and territories should plan for scenario 2, the worst-case scenario, they recommended.
“Government officials should develop concrete plans, including triggers for reinstituting mitigation measures, for dealing with disease peaks when they occur,” they advised.
Lipsitch and Osterholm both said they are surprised by the decisions many states are making to lift restrictions aimed at controlling the spread of the virus.
“I think it’s an experiment. It’s an experiment that likely will cost lives, especially in places that do it without careful controls to try to figure out when to try to slow things down again,” Lipsitch said.
Plus, he said, some states are choosing to lift restrictions when they have more new infections than they had when they decided to impose the restrictions.
A vaccine could help, the report said, but not quickly. “The course of the pandemic also could be influenced by a vaccine; however, a vaccine will likely not be available until at least sometime in 2021,” they wrote.
“And we don’t know what kinds of challenges could arise during vaccine development that could delay the timeline.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/30/health/report-covid-two-more-years/index.html
“Julius” is a paid shill for the Chinese regime. There will be investigations of the regime’s lies and deceits, and of the origin of the virus. The regime that pays Julius originally said the virus came from a wet market in Wuhan, Hubei Province. More recently, the regime has stated that there are no such wet markets in China. Therefore, the likely origin of the virus is in a badly-run lab in Wuhan, where researchers had made coronaviruses more infectious so as to study opportunities to create vaccines. China failed to honour its international obligation to report the emergence of the pathogen within 24 hours; lied, in conspiracy with the World Death Organization, to the effect that the virus could not pass from person to person long after it can be proven to have known that such transmission was occurring; and now lies to the effect that there are no wet markets in China.
I call the Chinese virus the Chinese virus for the same reason as I call a spade a spade.
Huh? I’m a shill for China? Go ahead and try to take the easy way out.
But once again, for the clear thinkers out there, here are the myriad reasons Monckton is wrong:
https://www.unz.com/article/objections-to-an-independent-investigation-of-china/
Clearly the virus has been around a lot longer than the US deep state “China virus” narrative claims, which means your argument doesn’t hold water.
Post reading this, if you stubbornly hold to your ignorant perspective, it will be willful, which means you can’t hide behind the excuse of being a mere useful idiot. You would be intentionally championing the agenda of the globalist agenda that is locking down the world’s population.
Good luck with that, Viscount Monckton.
The people, you know, the commoners, have a long memory.
Yes, Julius is a shill not for China but for the Communist regime. The half-baked propaganda that he tries futilely to peddle here is so pathetically crude that it bears all the hallmarks of Communist propaganda. And who would bother to circulate such half-witted material except one who was handsomely paid to do so?
And there is no point in “Julius” trying to complain, for he does not sufficiently identify himself. It is fascinating how many of those who have tried to minimize the damage the Chinese virus is causing, or who are openly shilling for the Communist regime as Julius is, are too craven, too poltroonish, too yellow to identify themselves properly.
oh give me a break, those are some of the most respected alternative news websites out there. Your communist bogeyman meme just isn’t that scary anymore. People are actually much more wise to the propaganda of the western capitalist powers, which happens to have been more successful to date.
Case-in point, the “China virus” narrative. Right out of the US deep state gamebook.
No point going back & forth, I’ve passed on the facts, my job is done here..
Hei Long Jiang
black dragon river
can’t believe you’re still publishing this US deep-state anti-China nonsense (“China virus” – term coined by the US deep state to further it’s agenda) from Monckton.
Ok, he’s done some good work on the climate, but re Covid19 he’s either just being stubborn and refusing to admit he’s wrong (very bad trait for science reporting), or he’s a useful idiot unwittingly helping the US geopolitical agenda by using their mass-distraction name “China virus” instead of the scientific name.
The origin has not been conclusively discovered, all signs (to anyone savvy enough to read beyond the headlines) have long since pointed to the US as the origin of the virus.
Incidentally, anyone with half a brain cell learned in grade school that the loud mouth pointing the finger at/blaming someone else is usually the guilty party. The US is as usual playing the part of the loud-mouth bully:
https://www.unz.com/article/objections-to-an-independent-investigation-of-china/
Either way Monckton’s stubborn dis-information campaign is a disservice to the integrity of your site!