By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Early in the Chinese-virus pandemic, Boris Johnson, the colorful British Prime Minister with the haystack-in-a-hurricane hairdon’t, talked of “squashing the sombrero”: for the curve of a pandemic that is allowed to progress until population-wide immunity is reached is approximately symmetrical about its peak, just as a sombrero is about its crown.
The UK’s chief medical officer showing the Press the difference between a sombrero graph and a Gibraltar graph, March 12, 2020
If, however, the progress of the pandemic is interfered with by a lockdown, the very large number of fatalities at the peak of the sombrero will never be reached.
Instead, the initial exponential growth will be interfered with, the pandemic will reach a far lower peak, and the curve will no longer be symmetrical. Instead, it will resemble the shapely profile of the rock of Gibraltar (British) as seen from across Algeciras Bay. The objective of a lockdown is to head for Gibraltar town by the fastest route, for once one is there one can lift the lockdown.
Late though the British lockdown was (if it had been just two weeks earlier, at least 50,000 of the 70,000 excess British deaths attributable to the virus would have been prevented), it was effective when at last it was introduced. In Britain, both daily new cases and daily deaths are heading not for the crown of the sombrero but for Gibraltar town:
In the United States, deaths are heading for Gibraltar town, though a little more slowly than in Britain. But there may be trouble ahead, because following the lifting of lockdown measures and the mass breaches of lockdown by far-Left demonstrators the number of daily new cases is heading not for Gibraltar town but for the sky. Two or three weeks from now, daily deaths are likely to rise too.
It is worth contrasting countries such as Britain, with a fierce lockdown, the United States, with a less fierce lockdown, and Sweden, with no lockdown at all. Increasingly, there is soul-searching in Sweden about the no-lockdown policy, for Sweden now has just about the highest daily number of new cases and of new deaths per head of population in the world.
Finally, the notion – advocated by many vexatious trolls here – that the coronavirus pandemic is “no worse than the annual flu” must now be dismissed out of hand. If one compares the daily incremental counts of flu and of the Chinese virus in the United States, by June 10 the latter was about six times the former.
Even if one compares apples with oranges – the daily incremental count of the Chinese virus against the estimated total for the entire flu season – the Chinese virus is twice as bad as the worst annual flu in the U.S., and the deaths are still increasing at about 1000 a day, and the daily incremental count is known to be a considerable underestimate.
Incremental daily coronavirus death count in the U.S.A. (cyan) compared with incremental daily counts for various recent flu seasons (solid curves) and with estimated final death counts for flu seasons (dashed curves).
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14% of Sweden’s population have developed antibodies, which suggests previous exposure to the virus. This is an absolute minimum as we don’t know how long the antibodies last in humans. If it is similar to other corona viruses then the antibodies might be shorter lived.
This means a MINIMUM of 1,432,200 Swedes have had COVID-19. 4,939 have died. This is a MAXIMUM case fatality rate of 0.0035%
So people can bash Sweden all they like but they and Belarus were the smart ones who did not trash their economies on a GIGO model.
Well said, sir
“14% of Sweden’s population have developed antibodies,”
In fact, the infected fraction seems more like 6%.
And the economy has fared no better than neighboring countries.
Nick Stokes – claims that Sweden will be as badly off economically as countries with strict lock-downs don’t make sense. Small business owners in particular are much better off – as are the many thousands cruelly banned from visiting their dying relatives. There is also an ethical aspect to lock-downs which not many seem to worry about.
Lock-down legislation is inequitable and uncharitable – it harms some population groups far more than others. For legislators with their secure income, secure jobs and roomy homes they can be positively enjoyable! I wonder if such legislation would ever be passed if each and every legislator knew with certainty that as a result, they personally would become insolvent and be queuing up for charity food parcels
You both are still disputing about lockdowns. But lockdown is not the most powerful measure against coronavirus. Mandatory face masks are first line of defense against coronavirus. It is possible to defeat virus without economy breaking measures. Check Slovakia, coronavirus defeated without lockdown and with 100 times less deaths per 1M population 500 vs. 5.
Sweden currently suffers from isolation from other European countries, where virus is already under control.
TRM
Am I the only person that believes that the “lockdown” is indirectly responsible for the waves of rioting, arson and looting taking place in multiple countries world wide? Idle hands and all that!
I am closely watching for signs of civil unrest in Sweden in order to disprove my theory!
Power failure in NY city circa 1977 triggered citywide mayhem & destruction.
https://time.com/3949986/1977-blackout-new-york-history/
KAT,
Do you also concede that the wearing of masks against Covid allowed protesters some immunity from detection and made them more athletic in their rape/burn /loot lawlwss acts? That lawlesness costs a lot of money.
How do you quantify that mask/violence variable? Geoff S
There is problem with the IFR I stated above. It should read 0.35% or 0.0035
As pointed out by yirgach above, new research indicates that tests do not detect antibodies after the majority of cases (mild) are over. This raises several questions but it basically says that the 14% number is inaccurate and low. This would make the actual fatality rate lower.
Recently Yoram Lass (formerly director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Health) gave an interview and said the following:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/22/nothing-can-justify-this-destruction-of-peoples-lives/
“Mortality due to coronavirus is a fake number”
and
“The only real number is the total number of deaths – all causes of death, not just coronavirus”
And with that in mind here are the latest in the “excess deaths” count.
For 2020 the USA has an “excess death” rate about 6.6% (60,607) higher than the previous 4 year average for weeks 1 to 16.
As a comparison I checked the first 16 weeks of 2018 compared to the previous 4 year average and it was 7.2% (63,260).
There is also a preliminary week 1 to 21 (end of May) in the dropbox showing 6.8%. It is missing a combined 8 weeks (Connecticut=3; North Carolina=4; West Virginia=1). I’ll update as the data becomes more complete.
Using the same data I downloaded on 2020-06-05 I ran it for each month. The CDC tracks by week not month so it is a bit of a kludge but this is the weeks that approximately correlate to the months:
Weeks 1 to 5 ~= January (Entire USA was -0.8%)
Weeks 6 to 9 ~= February (Entire USA was +0.3%)
Weeks 10 to 13 ~= March (Entire USA was +3.9%)
Weeks 14 to 18 ~= April (Entire USA was +28.7%)
After that the data is still too incomplete to be of use and even week 18 is missing too much for my liking.
Interestingly weeks 10 to 13 (March) show very little except for New York City at +49.7% and only a few others breaking double digits (Montana=10.1 ; South Carolina=11.7 ; Louisiana=11.7 ; New Jersy=12). Also noteable were the states well below the 4 year average (Connecticut= -12.6 ; Pennsylvania= -19.2%). Pennsylvania was -14, -29 and -19 for the first 3 months.
Weeks 14 to 18 (April) is where the biggest hit took place.
New York City = +415.9%
New Jersey = +169%
New York State = +87.7%
Massachusetts = +85.5
How much of that is due to political mismanagement (sending sick back to the nursing homes and restricting the use of HCQ+Zinc) is anyone’s guess. We won’t see “Cause of death” numbers from the CDC for 2-3 years. They have 2012-17 available but 2018 is still in “preliiminary” status.
The script and all related files are here if you want to kick the tires:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fh9x5fngmfbeiiu/AAAH-OtOMqiY_R9qqG6YccCRa?dl=0
PS. I’ll be adding “Weekly” to the “Year To Date” and “Monthly” ones already online when I get some time. Weekly is the finest resolution I can get with the CDC data.
Death rate is what matters. Infection rate not so much. The US death rate is declining.
Infection rate in > 65 yr demographic is the key metric because that is the most likely group to be hospitalized and possibly die.
Every other demo < 65 yrs old the infection rate should be allowed to go wherever society takes it. The higher the infection rate in the healthy working age population, the quicker we get this behind us. As it's the better for quickly obtaining herd immunity and protecting the vulnerable.
Joel
Couldn’t agree more. There seems to be this paranoia about second waves, new cases etc.The only number that matters is deaths. In Australia it’s almost a month since anyone died from Covid yet we still have plenty of restrictions and our internal borders remain closed in certain states. In Singapore the number of cases rose from 900 to over 40000 in the Last 2 months with people saying that this is an example of what happens with a second wave. However on the first 900 cases 11 people died on the next 40000 odd only 15 have died. Similar impacts in Japan and Korea where any upticks in active cases have not been met with proportional increases in deaths. It’s clear to me that as societies open up if you have well prepared hospital systems , increased testing, advanced tracking, protection of elderly and vulnerable everyone can get back to normal. Yes active cases may increase but deaths won’t increase to any great extent. In the US they say how terrible it is that the number of cases have spiked but they don’t emphasise that the number of deaths have fallen. In the end that deaths is the bottom line and the only stat that matters. If no one dies , we don’t have a problem . The biggest problem I see that a desperate media in cahoots with left wing political parties are desperate for the sense of crisis to remain As long as possible to achieve certain dramatic political and social changes.
Zigmaster’s analysis is good. One might add that many of the most vulnerable have already died, so that one would expect a slowing of the death rate.
In the UK, excess deaths are about 70,000 above the five-year average, and the Office for National Statistics attributes nearly all of these directly to the Chinese virus.
We have now reached Gibraltar town: the death count – which is the one that matters most – is at last under control. I suspect it would now be possible to unlock completely for the under-65s with no comorbidities, while advising everyone else to be careful.
Once we reach the Spanish Border, then it’ll be time to cheer !
Too many people, including politicians are too focused on positive tests as simply “Bad.”
On the contrary, We need positive tests in healthy persons under 65 yr old.
Get it. Isolate. Get over it. Go on with your life and then be a barrier to the virus.
Every person who has had SARS-CoV-2 and is virus-free (thus immune) is another person who will NOT transmit the virus to a vulnerable person. That person becomes a dead end for the virus. We need dead ends for this virus to stop it. Waiting another 12 months for only a partially effective vaccine is a fool’s game.
<
Very simplistic view at a disease that can cripple people for months maybe a lifetime. Not to mention the possible longterm effects on life expectancy.
At the moment that is a gamble with unknown outcome.
The Death rate of UK is nearly double that of USA.
UK: 623 deaths/ 1 million
USA: 365 deaths/1 million
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
In response to Sunsettomy, the UK has paid a very high price for locking down far, far too late. Some 50,000 of the 70,000 excess deaths this year could have been prevented by locking down just two weeks earlier.
Whoa…easy tiger.
I’m not trying to be facetious here Viscount, but from whence did you procure that little pearl of certainty?
UK and Germany shutdown dates were the same, and I’m presuming time is your only causal factor in saving 50,000 lives. I’m having a hard job making that tally up.
(worldometers) As of 19/06/2020 total Covid19 deaths:
UK- 42,288
Germany- 8946
No, the number of deaths and additional infections vary greatly depending on how many people have been infected at the time of the lockdown. The curves look very different then even if the initial number of infected people was the same:
What is not very easily to see in the upper graph is the ~14 days lack from implementing the lockdown to peak of the cases.
So here are easier graphs to comprehend:
https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/0*PpLQ0mQR8D1StQAC
https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/0*3UZ2gfo4w0HdAojq
Interesting, thanks.
Yes, but with the virus now being endemic, we would eventually have the exact same number of fatalities.
We’ve just kicked the can further down the street.
Mr Esperson is not perhaps familiar with epidemiology. The most important thing to know about any new and sufficiently infectious and sufficiently fatal pathogen is that the earliest and most determined action to prevent transmission has the greatest chance of success at the least cost.
Allowing the pandemic to rage unchecked would have been very much more expensive than containing it. And it is not true that containing it merely spreads out the same number of deaths over a longer period. For viruses tend to mutate over time so as to become less fatal. Therefore, playing for time is of great advantage.
“Allowing the pandemic to rage unchecked would have been very much more expensive than containing it.”
You sound like a climate “scientist”.
I still wonder whether lockdowns and other measures might have increased the number of deaths in the given time interval of a few months, where the number of people dying per day was actually higher for a longer period in those months than if nothing had been done, thereby giving a large peak number of deaths in a short time, BUT a smaller, ever decreasing number of deaths through successive days after the big peak, resulting in fewer deaths overall during those few months.
Maybe the lockdown INCREASED average number of deaths per day over a longer interval, whereas no lockdown would have allowed for the progressive reduction of deaths at a faster rate over that interval.
Gibralter Town might be less pointy, but Sombrero Town might have seen fewer deaths overall, because, after that big peak, deaths fizzled out relatively quickly, instead of continuing at a steady pace, caused by the very actions intended to stop death.
In response to Mr Kernodle, epidemiology has the advantage of having studied previous pandemics. it is by now well established that it is the direct fatality caused by the infection that far outstrips consequential fatalities.
By way of confirmation, the Office for National Statistics in the UK studied the excess deaths since the turn of the year and found that very nearly all of them were directly attributable to infection with the Chinese virus.
Epidemiology has the advantage if having studied the previous HOAX pandemics like the swine flu (which was less lethal than the regular flu).
“14% of Sweden’s population have developed antibodies”
Around 6% in Sweden have developed COVID-19 antibodies – Swedish Health Agency
JUNE 18, 2020 / 7:40 AM / UPDATED 15 HOURS AGO
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-sweden-immunity-idUSL8N2DV3N2
And get this. It ain’t over yet.
Since a Covid-19 death can be monetized and there are a horde of folks with a political interest in the death count, there is no possibility of an accurate count. I watch instead the ILInet which counts all influenza-like illness cases including Covid-19:
“The U.S. Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet) provides data on visits for influenza-like illness (ILI) (fever [≥100○F] and cough and/or sore throat) to approximately 2,600 primary care providers, emergency departments and urgent care centers in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Mild COVID-19 illness presents with symptoms similar to ILI, so ILINet is being used to track trends of mild to moderate COVID-19 illness and allows for comparison with prior influenza seasons.
“Nationwide during week 23, 0.7% of patient visits reported through ILINet were due to ILI. This percentage is well below the national baseline of 2.4% and represents the eleventh week of decline after three weeks of increase beginning in early March. The percentage of visits for ILI in week 23 remains low among all age groups. Nationally, laboratory-confirmed influenza activity as reported by clinical laboratories is at levels usually seen during summer months which, along with changes in healthcare seeking behavior and the impact of social distancing, is likely contributing to the low level of ILI activity.”
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcovid-data%2Fcovidview.html
In response to Pochas94, there is no incentive in the UK to report a non-Chinese-virus death as a Chinese-virus death. And the Office for National Statistics has determined that nearly all of the 70,000 excess deaths this year compared with the five-year average are attributable to the virus. And that is after quite a strict lockdown. The numbers would have been far worse without it.
When you share a home with 5 other people, what good is a lockdown going to do? One gets sick, they all get sick. Not an effective stratagem. However, social distancing seems to be important. You should avoid crowds when an infective disease is present.
We get panicky and frazzled hearing of big numbers of fatalities. But human beings have always, every day, run the risk of dying prematurely from illnesses, wars, famines or accidents. What has changed?
We are a cowardly, immature generation, molly-coddled from birth. We can’t cope with facing the possibility of catching an infectious illness – and prefer to ruin the world’s economy just to prevent that. Re big numbers of fatalities: bear in mind we die only one death each – which none of us can avoid sooner or later. What really counts is that we during our brief lives are charitable, rational, helpful and industrious in all our activities. By effecting lock-downs we are not.
Mr Esperson is entitled to his prejudices, but responsible governments must bear in mind the risk of very large death tolls, particularly in centers of high population density such as New York and London.
“very large death tolls” caused by lockdowns?
The blame game: “because following the lifting of lockdown measures and the mass breaches of lockdown by far-Left demonstrators …”
This is some kind of foolish IMO. It can’t be, that the “liberate xx” ( for xx set a state) calls of the POTUS, see https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/17/donald-trump-calls-three-us-states-liberate-coronavirus-lockdown-12573002/ is the real reason for the present problems? Indeed these much too fast relaxes of the lockdowns is the real reason for the 2nd lift up of the cases from my sight. The POTUS tried to accelerate the business for his election battle again in the hope that the summer conditions will stop the virus. It didn’t work and a second lockdown is not to avoid. Some kind of backfire… And: the common blame game won’t work either.
In response to frankclimate, I stated correctly in the head posting that lockdown measures are being lifted, that there have been mass breaches of lockdowns by far-Left demonstrators, and that following these two circumstances the daily numbers of new reported cases are no longer heading for Gibraltar town.
I take the rational approach, which is that to state the truth – however inconvenient that truth – is not blameworthy.
It is arguable that no second lockdown would be necessary, provided that the violent marxist/fascist agitators can be kept off the streets and the people take sensible precautions to protect the elderly and vulnerable.
“It is arguable that no second lockdown would be necessary,..” I don’t think so , at least in some states. Look at the new positive cases in Florida and Texas, we have an exponential increasing there again. The pandemic is out of control! And this is NOT the result of breaches of lockdowns but a much too hasty and uncontrolled lift off. Sometimes one can’t twitter a virus away.
Frank we will get the virus and get over it.
Derg, of course we will, no doubt. But what’s the price?
For most…Maybe flu like symptoms.
Cases are not growing exponentially. In Texas, it appears that they’ve even been falling for 4 days in a row. If hospitalizations and deaths increase substantially within the next two weeks, then their declining trend will have been broken, and this would be concerning. It hasn’t happened.
Apparently, day 4 was up and not down in TX. It’s still not an exponential trend though.
Why do we talk about the UK lockdown as if it was a real thing? Sure the people of the UK where locked down but for months the borders were still open and the country was continuosly seeded with 100,000’s of thousands of arrivals.
Only in recent weeks have they even looked at quarantining arrivals and even then its only a lip service self quarantine that will be widely ignored. The whole UK Covid story looks like complete madness yet the population seems to have swallowed it , and is happily out clapping and singing we are all in this together.
In response to Yarpos, the UK lockdown was late, and was indeed far from complete. Nevertheless, it has at last proven effective, as the Gibraltar graphs for the UK in the head posting demonstrate. Both daily cases and daily deaths have reached Gibraltar town.
Now it is possible to begin dismantling the lockdown, and I suspect it could be done a lot faster than it is being done. We shall be late out of lockdown as we were fatally late into it, and the economic as well as the human cost of governmental dithering and delay will be enormous.
I suspect the current CFR is about .35% one out of every 300 people depending how well you isolate the most at risk. But there is another problem. After recovering it can leave your lungs damaged. I don’t know if your lungs recover in one or two years or if its permanent. In my case I now max out at about two miles per hour walking. I was what they consider a mild case. I’ve heard scuba divers who get this disease are unable to dive any more because of the lung damage.
In view of this I think it will cause too much suffering to go for the Swedish model of protecting those the most vulnerable and going for herd immunity in the rest of the population. Until last week I advocated the Swedish model. Now because of the lung problems I believe we should slow the pandemic by going full mask and using contact tracing with selective quarantines to root out the virus.
In response to Lowell, globally the case fatality rate is between 2 and 5 percent. The infection fatality rate that I calculated by casting back deaths a couple of months ago is about 0.34%, which agrees with Lowell’s estimate.
I am very sorry to hear that Lowell is suffering lasting effects from the virus. I suspect that the damage caused to those who survive the infection has been under-reported and too little studied.
I agree with Lowell that track-trace-isolate with protection for the most vulnerable is indeed the best approach.
The number is probably too low:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v2.full.pdf
Everything from 0.5-1.5% IFR is still plausible. My bet would be from 0.7-1%. More to the upper bound probably.
Is it an indicator of a poor health system that certain causes of death increase a hospitals income?
In response to Mr Richards, if certain causes of death increase a hospital’s income incorrectly, then there is a market-distorting incentive in place that ought perhaps to be removed. No such incentive is available in the UK: yet our death rate per million is considerably above that in the US.
“No such incentive is available in the UK”
How would you know? Do you have any real knowledge of UK’s health system? I guess not.
A large part of the reason reported new cases in the USA is not dropping is the expansion of testing. We should have seen big spikes by now from the anti-police demonstrations – why aren’t there any?
Deaths in the USA are tracked on reported date, not date of death. New York City is still reporting hundreds of deaths each week that occurred in March and April. The peak back then would look much higher, and the drop-off to today much sharper, if deaths were counted based on date of death, rather than date of report.
Does Britain have the same artifacts in their reporting? Is testing still expanding rapidly there, and are deaths from months ago showing up in this week’s statistics?
In response to DuncanM, in the UK we test about 25% more per million than the US does, and yet our daily case count has reached Gibraltar town. Testing enables identification of carriers, so that they can be isolated, thereby helping to prevent the spread of infection.
I agree that the late reporting of deaths is a scandal. Real-time, high-resolution information is essential for the control of a pandemic such as this, and most countries – Britain included, no less than the US – simply haven’t bothered to put the necessary reporting systems in place.
Young man I met today recounted knowing a man tested 4 times for WuhanFlu in the USA since the initial results varied. Fellow’s recent 3rd test was positive for virus & just 2 days later the same fellow retested as negative for the virus. Although am uncertain of test type(s) it makes me wonder if any, or all, of those “positive” test results are included in formalized statistical bases of people who’ve contracted this pandemic.
Why should I be worried about the coronavirus when we have had so few cases in Lincoln where I live. The doctors surgeries had all closed before we had a single case.
https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/local-news/figures-breakdown-each-region-lincolnshire-4235559
What have you got to say about this it does not tell us that coronavirus is rampant in the UK but that statistics are being used to scare people.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/893178/Weekly_all_cause_mortality_surveillance_week_25_2020_report.pdf
In response to Mr Penman, if he analyzes the excess mortality statistics for this year he will find that there have been about 70,000 more UK excess deaths than are normal for the time of year – and counting. The Office for National Statistics has studied these deaths, and has concluded that nearly all of them are directly attributable to the Chinese virus. And that is after a strictish lockdown had been introduced, with the effect of greatly inhibiting transmission of the infection.
Did you look at the graph I showed it says that last week the all causes mortality rate fell below the seasonal norm( not sure about your 70000) but it is clearly not still counting.
A month in UK new cases were flat just the same as the US, so there is no ‘trouble’.
As for “if it had been just two weeks earlier, at least 50,000 of the 70,000 excess British deaths attributable to the virus would have been prevented”, this is pure bullshit. Sweden with very light lockdown has followed a similar curve, and we know anyway fro previous viruses that the lower the first wave, the bigger the second. People will die, you cant avoid it, that is a fact, and all lockdown was supposed to achieve was protecting the health service from a flood of cases.
The discourteous Matt_S is perhaps not familiar with the mathematics of exponential curves. Deaths in the UK in the two weeks before HM Government got around to imposing a lockdown were increasing at a mean daily compound rate of 37% – i.e., doubling every two days. Elementary probabilistic combinatorics – of which epidemiology is a subdivision – dictates that the death rate following a lockdown is chiefly determined by the number already infected at the time when the lockdown is introduced. Just do the math. One understands that people have strong prejudices, but they should not allow those prejudices to stand in the way of rational analysis.
The danger posed by this virus was already sufficiently understood by early March: yet HM Government dithered for two fatal weeks. Had it acted when it should have acted, the great majority of the deaths that have resulted could have been prevented, and the lockdown could have been ended much sooner.
The Swedish experiment has regrettably failed. I had very much hoped it would work, but the jury is in and the verdict is that, notwithstanding the high death toll (now rising faster in Sweden each day, per million of population, than just about anywhere else in the world), population-wide immunity has not been achieved, and is nowhere close to being achieved.
The Swedish experiment has regrettably failed.
By what standard has the experiment failed?
The following are a couple snippets from an article in the National Review:
Neil Ferguson is the British academic who created the infamous Imperial College model that warned Boris Johnson that, without an immediate lockdown, the coronavirus would cause 500,000 deaths and swamp the National Health Service.
Johnson’s government promptly abandoned its Sweden-like “social distancing” approach, and Ferguson’s model also influenced the U.S. to make lockdown moves with its shocking prediction of over two million Americans dead.
Indeed, Ferguson’s Imperial College model has been proven wildly inaccurate. To cite just one example, it saw Sweden paying a huge price for no lockdown, with 40,000 COVID deaths by May 1, and 100,000 by June. Sweden now has 2,854 deaths and peaked two weeks ago. As Fraser Nelson, editor of Britain’s Spectator, notes: “Imperial College’s model is wrong by an order of magnitude.”
In response to Fonzie, I am no defender of the Imperial College model – or of any model that is based on inadequate data.
To cite Sweden’s low death toll compared with what that model predicted, as though that were some sort of defense of Sweden’s approach, is not rational.
The truth is that the daily case count in Sweden has surged in recent days, and one can expect the death toll to follow the same trend in two or three weeks’ time. Sweden has not succeeded in achieving population-wide immunity – indeed, it may be that as few as 5% have been exposed to the infection to date.
Sweden is best compared with the other Scandinavian countries. It is doing a lot less well than any of them – indeed, in some respects, its figures are worse than for all of them added together.
Two weeks earlier there had been 319 deaths covid deaths in the UK in total. I do not think a full lockdown would have been accepted i.e House imprisonment as that it what it was, although house confinement might be a better term.
I note from my diary that in effect people were practising social distancing, hand washing, not attending large or even small gatherings as far back as February 14th The crowds at Cheltenham for the racing and at Liverpool for the football were isolated incidents that should have been banned.
As has been mentioned before, the informal lockdown from mid/late February was working even before the need for house confinement. Testing was abysmal and mask wearing should have been introduced in shops.
the vast majority of cases occurred in care homes and hospitals where people with ordinary injuries caught the virus in the latter whilst hospitals were cleared of elderly into care homes without testing.
Many tens of thousands of people will die for non treatment or non diagnosis of such things as cancer and heart disease because of the single minded fixation on covid. The worst thing that could have been done was confine people indoors in small tightly sealed homes. Outside was always far better but that was prohibited.
As for peoples mental, physical and financial health-that will be plain for all to see as the excessive Lockdown will cause an almighty recession and spending on such as health care, policing and social care will have to drop.
tonyb
How does this compare with the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-1969 when up to 4 million died worldwide?
I suggest that you read Dr Malcolm Kendrick, a GP here in the U.K. particularly
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/05/31/covid-deaths-how-accurate-are-the-statistics/
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/06/11/covid-will-lockdown-lead-to-a-major-health-disaster/
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/06/02/how-does-covid-kill-people/
Patients in hospital being treated for ARDS/pneumonia/Kawasaki/cytokine storm who test positive can be said to have died OF CoViD19.
People who die and test positive can be said to have died WITH CoViD19.
As CoViD19 is a notifiable disease, like measles or scarlet fever, it has to appear on the death certificate either as a primary cause or a related cause.
The patient doesn’t have to be known to the certifying physician, and cause of death is based on the certifying physician’s opinion of the likely cause, there can be no definitive cause as there are no autopsies or, uniquely, coroner inquests (which normally follow all deaths from notifiable disease).
If someone dies in a Care home from a stroke or heart attack and they test positive then was the CVA/MI a result of a coagulation problem precipitated by CoViD19? Or was the presence of CoViD19 a coincidence ? Without a full examination looking for evidence of abnormal clotting then there can be no definitive answer.
The decision to shutdown was made on a seriously awful computer model, a leviathan of tangled bug ridden software which has been heavily criticised by other modellers and software engineers, the somewhat amended software is available on GitHub.
Discharging carrier patients back into care homes was a disaster waiting to happen.
Using a minimalist approach to symptoms such as a temperature >37.7 (very poor specificity) and persistent cough only later adding taste changes. Gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhoea are still being overlooked.
Increased testing has clearly identified more cases, especially those who are asymptomatic.
You can argue over numbers and whether this is worse/no worse than flu ‘til the cows come home, whether an earlier imposition of self isolating would have saved more lives is somewhat academic, the reality is that we are where we are.
It should be noted is that originally the World Health Organisation recommended AGAINST the use of corticosteroids in the treatment of hospitalised CoViD19 patients, the very thing that has been touted as a life saver last week. Maybe had this advice not been given then maybe less people would have lost their lives.
One thing is certain we will be picking up the pieces in primary care for years to come, not only those who developed long term conditions due to the serious complications associated with CoViD19 but also the mental health problems associated with self isolation. Even now I am starting to see patients with anxiety associated with living in a closed environment. I am also seeing patients who could be infected, but don’t have a fever, persistent cough or changes to sense of taste/smell but do have GI symptoms particularly children.
I think that infection rate in the UK is tied to the level of illegal immigration . We need a 14 day quarantine period as much to stem this tide of illegal immigration entering the UK rather than just stop the virus entering. Our border force is useless and does nothing about illegal immigration this could also be why ethnic communities are more affected by this virus.
Yes Matt, you’ve turned up a real howler there, because as a prominent advocate for the logic of Aristotle, and even having lectured and made videos about his “Sophistical Refutations”, latterly in these “Covid” presentations there have been quite a few faux pas.
Surely this is the well known fallacy of logic, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc”. Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X. There’s absolutely zero proof, nor could there be any proof that such numbers of deaths could have been avoided by those actions. This is naught but pure speculation.
Thank you Lord MoB for a very detailed and sound overview of the Covid 19 outbreak.
My concern is not whether this latest Corona virus is more deadly than previous iterations.
I suspect, the natural variation withing virus evolution, will, from time to time bring us one that is very infectious and also ones that are barely detectable, thus, it will pass over us as an unrecorded event.
The concern I have, is the outlandish forced lock down response, to this particular outbreak. The analogy used earlier in this comment thread by Fonzie, of using a sledge hammer to kill a fly is very appropriate.
We have definitely wrecked the furniture and the fly is still out there. The economic disaster that now surrounds us, thanks to our sledge hammer policy leaves us less able to respond to the ongoing risks within society. Whether the risk is ongoing Covid infection, or another social disasters we don’t yet know about.
If society is so frit of the unknown, that is huddles into a dark corner every time a threat arrives with everyone distanced from others on instruction from on high, then what sort of society have we become?
The actual number of infections if the virus persists, will be exactly the same as if we had not trashed the wealth creation of the world. The only certain difference is the rate of infection, not the overall impact re deaths. I am however, mindful of the ongoing evolution of treatment regimes now being tried to reduce the mortality rate of this virus. This is a very positive and natural endeavour obviously. It is one of the few positives of slowing the rate of infection, created by the mass isolation policy. We are given more time to try new treatments, this may result in a few people surviving who would otherwise have died, that is clearly to be welcomed.
Testing is also an issue.
The idea that all tests are of equal value is completely false. The “Antigen” tests used to establish who is currently infected is fine as far as it goes, but it does not help us understand the total spread of the virus, withing the population. We need a concerted, statistically based, “antibody” test/study. We need to know who is already a survivor, we need to know what level of infection has actually taken place within the population. From that we can be more accurate as to the overall mortality rate, of this Covid 19.
I am anxious about the government’s strategy re Covid 19, because it begs the question. What will they do when Covid 20 arrives, or Covid 26? Are we to look forward to a world of perpetual anxiety, with constant lock down isolation, all done to keep us safe from viruses?
When personal freedoms are withdrawn on instruction from the state, for whatever reason, we should be very concerned for our ongoing and future right to freedom….
I agree with Mr Evans that it would have been better for governments to have acted earlier and more decisively, whereupon many lives would have been spared and the complete lockdowns that then became necessary would not have become necessary.
However, we are where we are. Lockdowns can now be cautiously dismantled, particularly if governments have the wit to engage probabilistic combinatoricists to assist them in working out which subsets of the population can go safely back to work, and how much the low-risk subsets can intermingle without passing the infection on to the at-risk subsets.
back-of-the-envelope calculation – not a bad place to start – shows that everyone under 65 and not suffering from severe comorbidities can go straight back to work and play, indoors or out, with little risk, particularly if masks are worn in confined spaces.
The big question is, will this virus come back say this winter and where will it do most damage?
Sweden or New Zealand? If there is no effective Vaccine New Zealand will have to be isolated for ever, or allow the virus to run it’s course.
Indeed Donald, as Mr. Farage has shown on several YouTube videos recently, French Navy Warships are actually escorting small lighters and dinghies across into British territorial waters, where they rendezvous with UK Coastguard cutters, seemingly by arrangement. “Refugees” fleeing from the supposedly oppressive French Regime are then escorted into British Ports, where teams of “social workers” escort them into accommodations paid for by the British Taxpayer. Britons are actually paying to have new new sources of potential infection imported from abroad, principally from France, with the connivance of UK Coastguard!
Again political correctness prevents medical personnel from stating the bleeding obvious. Since darker skinned people require much greater intensity of Sunlight to penetrate their skin, and greater time, to produce adequate amounts of Vitamin D, which us vital to efficient immune response to a whole plethora of diseases. They are far more susceptible to falling victim to current epidemic of coViD-19. This is a fact, and not racism in the bigoted sense. Again many so called “refugees” are malnourished leading to a whole host of problems and illnesses and may have already overloaded immune systems. CoViD-19 being the final straw in many cases, I strongly suspect.
Footnote: I’d strongly advise any dark skinned legal immigrants, and indeed British Citizens, especially those involved in healthcare or in NHS, to embark immediately upon a regime of vitamin D supplementation, and indulge in Sunbathing whenever possible, or clinical Photo-therapy on a regular basis, for the Rest of Their Lives whilst resident in Britain. The darker your skin, the greater your need. Recognise that you’ve evolved to live in a much warmer and sunnier climate than is generally the case in Britain, and take action to mitigate the risks of Vitamin D deficiency. Get tested regularly for Vitamin D deficiency using clinical haematology. The same holds true for such as those in other northern Countries or States in latitudes above about 50 degrees North. There is a genetic predisposition to susceptibility, and it isn’t racist or bigotry to say so.
I am not however arguing that ethnic people are predisposed to getting COVD-19 as you are just that most illegal immigrants are ethnic and of course they want to live in ethnic communities, there are ethnic people living in Lincoln UK who do not seem to have a higher chance of catching the virus because we are not a popular choice for most illegal immigrants.
Do correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t most “ethnic” communities in Lincolnshire light skinned Eastern Europeans. I’m not arguing about what you said but this tendency to not use proper descriptors for groups of “ethnics” of whatever race is forced upon us all by the politically correct brigades. I do think, and it seems born out by statistics, that people of African, and Afro Caribbean descent seem more susceptible for the reasons I’ve outlined. If there’s less incidence of coronavirus infection among Eastern Europeans in Lincolnshire, the reasons might be multifold.
They are lighter skinned, they are out in the sun all day in the fields, they eat a lot of fresh vegetables, and they live in isolated encampments. Was that a fair assumption Donald? Ultimately if the foregoing were all true, they’d have supercharged immune systems. We can’t all stay hidden away from every virus, and you know there are hundreds of potential pathogens going around. This us why Humans developed an immune system in the first place. Sadly though some people do become sick and die. Hubris makes us think we are all invincible, but we’re not, alas.
I remember when we had the “beast from the east” in Lincoln many people of north African descent were standing on street corners with their mouths open in amazement , clearly they had never seen anything like it before. I saw one car that lost control and ploughed into one group standing there. The racial divide I think has a different history in the USA than in the UK, we have never had segregation here but I don’t want the rest of the world to come and live in the UK because unlike the USA we are only a small island.
Christopher Monckton does not have to worry about any climate/covid-19 policy. He is rich!
Viral infections are no respecters of wealth. Viri don’t think, or have political views, or plan attacks. Nobody is safe from infection, from myriad potential pathogens every day. Millions of virus particles fall from the sky each day upon every square metre of the planet. We cannot hide away forever alone underground. We must gave some faith in ouyr evolved immune systems, and try to eat the right foods, that will keep it heathy and ready to fend off infection. Despite the very best efforts though, sadly some people will die every day. Humans are mortal creatures, and politicians must face up to that fact.
Yes but he does not have to work, like us plebs.
Lord Monckton’s classic essay on Aristotle’s Climate:
https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/aristotles-climate
Here is quite a good lecture by a USA Professor on some of Aristotle’s most common fallacies of logic, in a style quite different to Lord Monckton. You may like it?
Try to apply what he says, when reading and analysing reports, and indeed comments in here. Did they come up to muster, or was the author pontificating illogically?
The UK government have just reduced our alert level from COVCON 4 to COVCON 3, which means the virus is in general circulation and can lead to a relaxation of restrictions. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53106673).
We are unlikely to reach COVCON 1 as the virus is unlikely to disappear any time soon and is more likely to become endemic.