Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Fresh restrictions are being introduced in some parts of Britain to contain an uptick in the growth of Covid-19 cases.
Coronavirus: UK epidemic growing as R number goes above 1
11 September 2020
Public health officials have warned of “worrying signs” of infection among the elderly, as an official measure indicated the UK’s epidemic is growing again.
The R number was raised to between 1 and 1.2 for the first time since March.
Any number above one indicates the number of infections is increasing.
The number of new daily confirmed UK cases of the virus rose to 3,539 on Friday – an increase of more than 600 on the previous day.
The virus is still at much lower levels across the UK than at the peak in April, but a study of thousands of people in England found cases doubling every seven to eight days.
It found a marked rise in infections in the north and among young people.
…
Police warned there was a “real risk” some people would treat this weekend as a “party weekend” before the new restrictions come in.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54116939
There is a substantial backlash in Britain over Covid lockdowns, with pubic anger at what many see as an overreaction to a not very deadly disease.
There is a real chance any attempt to re-impose a tighter lockdown would be met with widespread civil disobedience.
GOTTA BE KIDDING
Boris Johnson faces backlash over Covid rules after Nicola Sturgeon declares kids in Scotland WON’T fall under rule of 6
Sascha O’Sullivan
Natasha Clark10 Sep 2020, 15:23
Updated: 10 Sep 2020, 22:29BORIS JOHNSON is facing a backlash over the new Covid rules after Nicola Sturgeon declared kids in Scotland WON’T fall under the rule of 6 – but they will in England.
Tory MPs have demanded the PM “save Christmas” or be labelled the grinch by excluding children from the draconian six person limit on social gatherings.
Tory MP Steve Baker told The Sun: “Keeping these restrictions going into Christmas would be one of the most damaging things the Conservative party has ever done.
“It’s extremely difficult to see how this policy will last after the Scots’ announcement today.
“Boris must save Christmas – he’s not the grinch.”
…
Read more: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12634595/kids-under-12-boris-backlash/
Let us hope efforts to create a vaccine and improve therapeutics to treat this nasty virus yield prompt results.
Show me the bodies.
Come to that, show me the skyrocketing hospital admissions (which would include many people who would not have been admitted back in March/April because the wards are now so much emptier and unstressed).
Oh, neither of these statistics is rising with any significance but the usual suspects just look at the “cases” – the great majority of which show no symptoms.
Colour me skeptical but I (along with countless others) have a deep suspicion that most of this is down to over-sensitive testing.
As for the ludicrous R number that the same suspects are getting excited about, I’m afraid it has as much statistical integrity as the mythical Global Average Surface Temperature. Both are just fine examples of computer modellers’ fantasies.
The ONs stats based on death certificates showed 57,000 people dead of – not with – covid last time I looked… that’s excess deaths, over the 5 year average calculated weekly. There are a few thousand more excess deaths on top of that we can put down to side effects of the lockdown.
this set of stats clearly shows that ‘other’ deaths are not being labelled as covid. Is that enough deaths for you?
Testing in the UK has stalled in the last few weeks – it has slightly gone down even as these cases rise. analysis for the R4 stats programme indicated that this is a real rise, not due to extra testing/testing in most afflicted areas.
and we see from the USA, with its disastrous approach to controlling the outbreak, that cases can rise in older populations and deaths and hospitalisations rapidly increase given this sort of doubling.
The current measures are timely and necessary to forestall an otherwise inevitable increase in hsopitalisations in a few weeks, then deaths following on behind.
The stats in the UK showed, until very recently, that someone who had tested positive or had and recovered from Covid at any time since March was a ‘Covid Death’ even when they had been killed in a car accident or from a heart attack .
When you force draconian removal of fundamental freedoms – for the sole reason given back in March “To Protect the NHS” from being overloaded – then it is imperative that you produce as many deaths from Covid as possible to ‘justify’ government actions.
Coroners were recording all deaths as Covid either because they were told to or they were just avoiding having hold post mortems. There is a court case pending to have a death certificate corrected to show that the cause of death was not Covid as their relative tested negative at all times.
In the US flu is not one of the CDC”s 110 causes of death. Flu deaths are wild guessed with computer models. People die of major organ failures, not directly from the flu. I wonder how England records deaths …
or just estimates flu deaths as a percentage of all pneumonia
deaths?
Even with Covid, perfectly healthy people are not dying from that virus ALONE. Lots of adults have medical problems they don’t know about such as diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease. Sometimes the first symptom of heart disease is a fatal heart attack. I lost a 50something friend like that. Another friend had pancreatic cancer — didn’t know until 4 weeks before he died.
This https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/?_ga=2.47429543.1253529782.1599742716-1651949938.1599652613 shows deaths WITH COVID-19 as 41,623 total and currently 9 and day.
No indication of daily deaths increasing, also hospital admissions stable, currently 141 a day.
Testing is increasing, currently 227,465 a day with 3,497 a day positive (1.5%). At that level I suspect a significant proportion are false positives.
Thanks Bill , this is total hype ( not surprisingly ) for the press.
The Guardian have been pumping this daily as usual for the last six months. A recent article reported under 900 total being treated in UK hospitals. ( There are 1,257 hospitals in the UK ).
Current covid deaths in UK is averaging about 10 per day. Compare to over 5000 UK suicides in 2019. That’s 15 per day. The death rate have been flat for the last two month at which time it was the end of the initial epidemic peak.
The is NO “second wave” , it is largely due to increased testing.
The headline graph from BBC is totally misleading ( colour me shocked ). Firstly “mass testing” was no a binary which suddenly happened around the end of April, it took months for the govt. to put this in place.
This is a Mannian graph of apples on oranges which is incorrectly labelled “cases”. What they are now measuring with tests is INFECTIONS not cases. What they were measuring in April was SERIOUS cases showing up at hospital A&E.
A Guardian graph of NSO covid data showed bell curved of positive tests now peaks in 20-29 demographic. This is the younger population who socialise more yet often show mild or no symptoms. For the most part they simply were not being tested in April.
There is a similar game in France which is currently detecting far more infections per day than even at the peak of the epidemic in March, but again the comparison implicit in the “record breaking” headlines is a lie because they are not measuring the same thing. They testing contacts of contacts now, not just emergency room admissions.
France similarly is only counting about 10 fatalities per day.
Eric is welcome to vaccine shot, if he wants one. Maybe an autumn break in Sochi ?
Look at the stats, the positive test rate has bee around 1% for 3 months, slightly up atm but has been before in this 3 month period. Guess what, estimates of specificity in a recent paper is 98.8%.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078949v1
“ The sensitivity of the RT-PCR diagnostic test was estimated to be 0.777 (95% CI: 0.715, 0.849), while the specificity was 0.988 (95% CI: 0.933, 1.000). ”
Note that a positive test result is not a ‘case’ in medical terms. To rise to the level of a ‘case’ the subject of the test has to have symptoms of the disease. Most of those tested are asymptomatic and probably have an innate immune system that is preventing the infection taking hold.
Remember that the PCR test will report positive on fragments of dead virus it is not a false positive it found RNA that matched the comparator. It is just that the PCR test is unsuited to this type of testing.
If someone with no symptoms at all has pollen found in their nose have they got hay fever?
BillP
You said, “… I suspect a significant proportion are false positives.”
Other possible interpretations are that the people getting infected now have inherent resistance to the infection, as evidenced by their late infection rather than early, and they are getting less sick. Another possibility is that the virus is mutating into a less virulent form, which is not uncommon, and thus the people getting infected are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms that don’t require hospitalization. Or, both of the above.
Or current tests are over-sensitive, picking up inactive bits of the virus.
Are people with no symptoms actually “sick”? Do they get antibodies? Can they make others seriously sick, or will others only get their no symptoms “flu”?
It”s easier to ask covid questions than to answer them !
Due to differences in how coronavirus is statistics are counted and reported, they aren’t a reliable way to compare how different countries are doing. Excess death is a more reliable statistic.
In terms of excess deaths, America has been doing well. On August 30, America’s excess death was at -20%. link That means that 20 percent fewer people died than would be predicted based on the five year average.
BTW, what are your thoughts on vitamin D? As the sun begins its retreat from the Northern Hemisphere, we expect folks’ vitamin D levels to decrease and we expect to see coronavirus cases increase. link Of course, the uptick we’re seeing could also be due to relaxed restrictions.
On the other hand, there is this Lancet article which doesn’t find a big effect due to vitamin D.
On the other other hand, there is a very exciting study with a very big effect size that shows treatment with a vitamin D metabolite reduces the severity of coronavirus enough to make it a non-problem. We really do not need a vaccine if we can reduce the severity of the disease to less than that of the common cold.
The Lancet cannot be trusted as a source any more than the National Enquirer, having published the anti HCQ paper that had obviously not had any serious review.
The reports from hospitals treating COVID-19 patients say that sufficiency in vitamin D is a good marker for not requiring ICU and/or surviving.
The simple dietary/supplement approach is to:
** take zinc supplements or eat sufficient red meat to ensure sufficiency
** Eat fruit and vegetables high in quercetin or take daily supplements(they are often sold as Quercetin and zinc supplements) Quercetin is a natural zinc ionophore similar to HCQ, there are others,
** Eat a Brazil nut a day to be sufficient in selenium
** Ensure sufficiency in vitamin D either by sunbathing without sunscreen for some minutes (admittedly not practical in sleet) or by taking vitamin D3 supplements
Don’t trust me look at various research papers e,g, Journal.ppat.1001176 – note this was written 10 years ago; title:
This is the equivalent of the regimen zinc, HCQ zinc-ionophore that many front line doctors recommend for OUTPATIENT use as soon as symptoms are detected or for prophylaxis. So many patients – thousands – have been saved this way that the observational evidence shows that the in vitrio evidence in the paper is supported in vivo.
Similarly search for:
Selenium COVID-19;
Vitamin D COVID-19
Why the government(s) have not made these very simple safe dietary recommendations clear to everyone is unclear.
Except that the paper I referenced above in the first sentence of the Abstract states:
So changing diet could obviate the requirement for many vaccines – and this would not be welcome in some quarters. It also shows why there are some people whose innate immune system stops viral infections – which is why so few people are actually really ill from COVID-19. Probably less than 2% of the population. Had their sufficiency in the trace elements and vitamins above been ensured then they would probably not have been (so) sick.
The pandemic could probably be stopped in a week if people were to be told to eat the correct diet and take the right supplements. One must assume therefore that someone wishes the pandemic to continue
This Lancet ‘study’ is a great example of Mumbo-jumbo and no evidence. Science is not an argument. An argument is something else.
Evidence is more than what is written in fake propaganda ‘studies’. We need to stop this lying. People need to go to jail.
What does the Vit. D ‘evidence’ say? What is the explanation for the dark skin covid paradox?
Q: Why are twice as many Blacks in the US and the UK dying of covid, as compared to whites?
A: Because in the US 82% of the black population is severely Vit. D deficient as compared to only 30% of the US white population.
White people are less Vit D deficient than black people because of their skin color. Make sense?
The Lancet study appears to have no data and a recommendation to study Vit D deficiency by giving patients less than 1000 UI/day.
Supplements of 4000 UI/day to 6000 Ui/day are required to correct the population’s Vit. D deficiency, raise the US population Vit. D blood serum level from 26 ng/ml average to above 60 ng/ml.
It is very simple to determine Vit. D effect on patient outcome.
Measure Vit. D active in the blood stream of covid sick patients. Almost all of the severely sick covid patients are severely Vit D deficient. Average Vit. D blood serum level in nursing homes? 17 ng/ml.
The Lancet ‘study’ has zero prove the concept data, which is Vit. D blood serum level, covid patients Vs covid disease outcome.
The Lancet study suggests giving Vit. D supplements to people when they get sick and come to the hospital. Sorry to late. But an idiot would know that. The Lancet ‘study’ was not written by idiots.
It was written by a group of people who are committing mass murder. Is there another viewpoint?
Supplements of 4000 UI/day to 6000 Ui/day are required to correct the US population’s Vit. D deficiency. The Vit. D researcher have recommended Vit D supplements of 5000 UI/day for all US citizens.
Coronavirus: Black African deaths three times higher than white Britons – study
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52574931
82% of the US black population, 69% of the US Hispanic, and 42% of the US general population is Vitamin D deficient.
Prevalence and correlates of vitamin D deficiency in US adults.
https://tahomaclinic.com/Private/Articles4/WellMan/Forrest%202011%20-%20Prevalence%20and%20correlates%20of%20vitamin%20D%20deficiency%20in%20US%20adults.pdf
https://emerginnova.com/patterns-of-covid19-mortality-and-vitamin-d-an-indonesian-study/
Patterns of COVID-19 Mortality and Vitamin D: An Indonesian Study
Vitamin D Insufficient Patients 12.55 times more likely to die, blood serum 25(OH)D level from 21 to 29 ng/ml
Vitamin D Deficient Patients 19.12 times more likely to die, Vitamin D blood serum level less than 20 ng/ml
Vitamin D ‘normal’ for this study is 25(0H)D above 30 ng/ml.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fixing-americas-racial-economic-divide-could-add-400-billion-to-us-gdp-goldman-sachs-chief-economist-195442619.html
Vitamin D deficient has been linked to long term brain damage and difficulty in concentrating and making good decisions…
Vit. D deficient people do not sleep well. They have chronic back pain in addition to chronic ‘diseases’ such as type 2 diabetes. There is a 50% reduction in the incidence of type 2 diabetes from raising blood serum level Vit. D active from below 20 ng/ml to above 40 ng/ml. There are 29 million people in the US with type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90–95% of adult diabetes cases.
The CDC expects the number of cases to double or triple in the next 40 years.
Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, non-traumatic lower limb amputations, and new cases of blindness among adults and is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. The estimated total yearly cost of diabetes in the United States is $245 billion [1].
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076015300091?via%3Dihub#bib0105
Incidence rate of type 2 diabetes is >50% lower in Grassroots Health cohort with median serum 25–hydroxyvitamin D of 41 ng/ml than in NHANES cohort with median of 22 ng/ml.
“Only around 3% of Black men born into the bottom quintile make it into the top income quintile, compared to around 10% of white men,” wrote Hatzius. “ If left unchecked, this perpetuates the income disadvantage of Black men across generations.”
Adding to the confusion of vitamin D levels, there are other deficiencies to consider in the metabolic process. Just add another 50 years for the AMA and FDA to inform us–right after they complete the new food pyramid revamp.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180226122548.htm
The C19 virus is doing what all influenza viruses do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac
Unfortunately we do not yet know what effect (if any) the lockdowns may have had.
The Casedemic
Excellent video thanks MW.
Update. Skip to 25:00 fwd for more on the Casedemics from PCR testing.
Thanks Ian, the idea of plotting the deaths on same graph upside down is an excellent idea. I will have to adopt that. Very explicit visualisation of the whole problem.
Regarding the 37-minute YouTube video by Ivor Cummins above: It makes some powerful points. It looks at graphs of key statistics. Here’s a rough summary:
The Gompowitz (sp?) curve of fatalities seen in other epidemics is being followed, meaning there was little reason to panic at its height, and that it would fade without lockdowns.
This is because most of the population has existing resistance / immunity to infections.
Sweden’s death toll from flu in 2019 was much lower than that of its Nordic neighbors, providing more “dry tinder” (frail, vulnerable people who’d otherwise have died in the prior year) for Covid-19. Supporting this, countries that had had MORE severe 2019 flu seasons had lower impacts from Covid-19. (A very strong argument IMO.)
The second wave in the U.S. is in the South, which reflects the geographic difference between temperate and tropical zones, which peak at different times. (A weak argument IMO.)
Also contributing to the illusion of a second wave is a “casedemic” due to over-sensitive testing that detects fragments, not true cases (hospitalizations).
This fake second wave was seen before in the Swine Flu epidemic—when what drove alarm about it was alarmism and media frenzy.
Also, a likely seasonal effect.
And the second wave might be due to Autumn flu, in part, being mis-counted as Covid-19.
And the second wave is minor in size.
Lockdowns are causing deaths from deferred elective testing and surgeries. Plus causing other social negatives.
Lockdowns slow herd immunity, making infections in the fall more deadly.
You know a video is good – when you post a link and then go read the comments and it’s about the first link!
Sorry griff but your figures are not correct. 4500 deaths were taken out of one column because they were inaccurately counted. Many thousands more need to be reclassified as clearly many died WITH CV and not of it
We can see an indication of the threat that the virus poses to healthy people here, as excluding those with other serious underlying conditions, the virus has been responsible for the deaths of a relatively small number of otherwise healthy people, some 1,300 deaths in England since March
Follow this link
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/…
then go to the file under Tab3 “Deaths by condition”
This shows Underlying conditions:
YES 28,245
NO: 1,394
Clearly figures can prove anything, but also clearly the threat is mostly to the very elderly who are already very ill with the median age of death being 85 and dying of 2.6 co-morbitities. A third of the latest upsurge in cases come from workers in care homes so the vulnerable urgently need better protection otherwise deaths in care homes will soar.
Regrettable as any deaths are it is no reason to trash the economy and our freedoms as this virus is not some modern bubonic plague that in 1665 London killed proportionately 150 times more people than today
The government also has a duty to ensure those with the far more common problems of cancer, heart disease obesity etc receive treatment, as the numbers dying from these are far in excess of CV deaths as the other categories of illness are being neglected
From June 10th and still today there have been more deaths from flu than from cv
tonyb.
Deaths in care homes are boost to the state. Eliminate costly, elderly non productive individuals and then cash in the inheritance tax. The deliberate policy of forcing homes to take known or untested individuals, which happened in both UK and NY, is NOT an oversight. It was premeditated murder.
It is not non mask wearers who “kill granny” , that is the governments job.
Deaths in care homes are boost to the state. Eliminate costly, elderly non productive individuals and then cash in the inheritance tax. The deliberate policy of forcing homes to take known or untested individuals, which happened in both UK and NY, is NOT an oversight. It was premeditated murder.
It is not non mask wearers who “ki11 granny” , that is the governments job.
Where are the dead Griff
Griff, UK (England and wales anyway) deaths became decoupled from diagnosed cases a long time ago. Covid deaths are currently irrelevant as a cause of death, non-covid pneumonia and flu is currently far more deadly (but still only near normal).
And it is deaths WITH covid, and in the vast majority of cases, not directly and only from covid.
See Fig.1.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending28august2020
If lock downs and other measures like masks have obviously had no or negligible effect on the number of flu deaths, obviously it will not significantly affect covid either.
The covid curve is typical of all epidemics, all the (political) interference has been futile and damaging.
Your grasp of Covid is about on a par with your grasp of climate. The latest cumulated ONS figure is 51,000 which has already been revised downwards to eliminate as far as possible those who died with Covid rather than of Covid and to eliminate an anomaly which was leading to anyone who had tested positive being counted as a Covid death.
ONS figures only cover England & Wales. The current total UK figure is about 50,000 or about 0.075% of the population. For comparison the 1968-69 H2N3 influenza pandemic killed 80,000 or about 0.15%!
Excess deaths were positive from week 12 to week 24 and went positive again three weeks with non-Covid respiratory deaths, ie influenza and pneumonia stuck at the ~800 level as Covid deaths continue to decline. Those deaths have outnumbered Covid deaths since the last week of June.
There is no evidence of increased deaths and every evidence that mass testing is producing dubious positives given the test that is being used: see here- https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/07/covid-19-testing-1000-times-too-sensitive/
As Ian Magness says above, “show me the bodies”. As he also says, or at least implies (you been reading my stuff, Ian??), the use of the word “case” to describe every positive test is dishonest — a fact of which I am sure both politicians and the NHS is well aware! A “case” is someone who has sought medical attention; a positive test is simply a positive test. Testing in the UK has now been going on long enough for any real increase in infections to show up in the figures. An increase from 101 in Tuesday’s ONS release MIGHT be enough to save a bit of face. Further decline into double figures, not so much!
For anyone whose nose may be out of joint, this post was directed at griff and seems to have been stuck in moderation for about 12 hours?!
Over at https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy there is a chart showing economic decline of 38 countries.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/economic-decline-in-the-second-quarter-of-2020?year=latest&time=earliest..latest
At bottom left is a button to ‘Add country’ where you can add China for a more dramatic table.
The text implies that the number of deaths of people of retirement age is directly related to poorly performing economies?
Over at https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus there is this assertion:
“Only if we end the pandemic everywhere can we end the pandemic anywhere. The entire world has the same goal: cases of COVID-19 need to go to zero.”
And then demands:
“To be safe anywhere, every region in the world needs to make progress against the pandemic – and this means dark blue lines hitting zero.
Progress is possible – some countries bent the curve of new cases and are monitoring the outbreak well. But globally we are very far from the goal and the global number of confirmed cases is rising extremely fast.”
“If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.” – Pyrrhus of Epirus – 319 to 272BC
cases of COVID-19 need to go to zero
The only way I can see that happening is if they completely stop testing for it. Makes you wonder what the REAL goal is?
Exactly. It is insane, impossible and why?
Disastrous approach to handling the outbreak in the USA? ROFLMAO. You poor EU suckers are going to have a bad fall/winter unfortunately. The time to get SARS-CoV-2 was this summer when the sun was high in the sky and all you had to do was get some sunshine and shrug it off then come out of it with immunity. No such luck this fall/winter, take your supplements, but many won’t because the “health authorities” won’t tell them to.
With regard to lack of recommendations to take supplements, it’s almost as if governments want illness, want death. The same goes for diet and its impact on chronic diseases like diabetes.
I am not sure it is the governments, but the medical people that advise them. Telling people that they should be
* sufficient in zinc and vegetables/fruit/green tea that provides natural zinc ionophores
* plus selenium – a brazil nut a day and
* lots of Vitamin D 5000-10,000 iu a day.. so less sunscreen and more time in the sun or take D3 supplements
Would be as good as giving people many vaccinations against viral diseases and therein is the problem.
There is no profit in telling people zinc and Vitamin D will give you a strong innate immune system. There is profit in insisting that people are vaccinated and even more profit if you can make that system mandatory with ID cards
Research shows though that intracellular zinc stops viruses using the cell’s RNA transcription – it blocks viral replication. Corona virus, Influenza, Polio – all profitable vaccine targets.
This was known and published 10 years ago. Search on journal.ppat.1001176
The in vitrio experiment has now been validated in vivo observationally by thousands of patients cured using zinc and a zinc ionophore HCQ.
This pandemic could be stopped in a week.
Someone doesn’t want it stopped.
“we see from the USA, with its disastrous approach to controlling the outbreak”
In what sense was it disastrous, apart from nursing home scandals, hindering alternative outpatient treatments (e.g., HCQ) to ensure patients end up severely ill in ICUs, excessive intubations that led to disastrous mortality?
Griff you are a pure propagandist. You misrepresent the facts on the ground with such a simple grace you should consider a career as a Shakespearean actor. Well – over-actor.
Here in the USA the media is reporting with great hysteria contractions of COVID as if contraction were a death sentence. Their statistics on contractions and deaths are enormously exaggerated. Worse yet, even with over exaggerated death counts reported on CNN the survival rate of COVID is 99.9%.
The multi-phase disaster to our approach from the ‘rona, here in the USA, started with the way the media has browbeat and blackmailed the politicians on editorial pages, into a forced shutdown by threatening to report every death (from any cause) as COVID and placing it at the various doorsteps of the 50 Governors mansions.
Phase two of our disaster was the media and politicians morphing the objective from “flattening the ventilator curve” to saving every citizen from contraction.
Phase three of our disaster was the economic collapse, loss of busines, increases in domestic abuse, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide.
Phase 4 of our disaster was the media praising Leftist Governors such as Cuomo despite horrible bureaucratic mismanagement and demonizing Trump who was first labeled a xenophobe for his travel bans by MS/CNN and their hand puppets, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff and the endless cast of Progressive Politicians who encouraged people from New York to San Francisco to get out and mingle. Politicians who change positions faster than a speeding teleprompter.
The left went from go out and party, to we need to flatten the curve, to we have to prevent infection, to its a disaster and its all Trumps fault. All the while Cuomo was sending infected elderly into old folks homes for the purpose of population control. The biggest miscalculation of the college indoctrinated left is their delusional belief that everybody else is blind to their duplicity. The shifting sand of their positions and the projection of their mistakes onto Trump.
Griff you are quite simply either badly misinformed or a paid troll promoting the dogma of the left however it is manifested on CNN and the global media Propaganda Ministry.
You come across as both.
Bill you’re my hero….could not have said it better….all of it
Griff, I know you read and comment on the UK Daily Mail because you post the same guff there as here. Their headline on an article today
Another five people die from coronavirus in England bringing deaths total to 29,661 while another 244 cases are reported in Scotland
There has never – EVER – been an effective vaccine against a carona virus. BTW, the common cold is caused by a carona virus. Those who hope for and anticipate the imminent release of a vaccine for carona virus are living in a fantasy world.
The pandemic will continue until an effective treatment is found or until the herd immunity level has been reached. HydroxyChloroquine is a likely cure (or at least effective treatment) for carona virus. Tell me again why Fauci (who receives grant money from Gilead (a vaccine developer) refuses to to a definitive study on the drug, using the dosage protocol that thousands of local doctors have used successfully (at the first signs rather than at death’s door in the ICU).
yup cases rising from the 20s to the 60s kids partying bring it home Id bet
BUT
the death rates are amazingly low(sa far)
probably cos the newly infected one dont have the multiple co morbidities AND have more functioning immune systems.
there will be a few that do get rather ill and may have the “longhaul” effects whatevr age
while they keep OS aitravel going without quarantine it will keep coming.
Aus is still getting returning aussies bringing it back with them
but
they spend 14 days quarantined, no arguments
oh
unless youre rich n famous like Kylie M and tom hanks et etc
“the death rates are amazingly low(sa far)”
Covid mortality closely follows natural mortality. That’s not going to change.
https://swprs.org/why-covid-19-is-a-strange-pandemic/
Since this fall semester began in the U.S., over 25,000 college students have tested positive by PCR but not a single one has required hospitalization.
Several countries have been showing uptick in cases since August
UK
Sweden
Spain
Belgium
The NE corridor of the US
Yet the death count has not had the same uptick, adjusting for a 3-4 week delay from onset until death.
bottom line – developing immunity in the general population works long term
Right, the tests are wantonly inaccurate and true illness and death are remaining low. Notice how they changed the goal posts, going from flattening the curve to stopping new “cases” when, in fact, the test is designed to find new cases everywhere. For that matter, any test can come out positive if the PCR cycle number goes above 30+. Drop the cycle number and you start getting lots of negatives. Turn up the volume on any system and you eventually get noise, which is exactly how upping the cycle number works, and then the noise is considered a positive results. This is a stacked deck of cards, with the deck not only stacked but also marked for the benefit of the government and politicians.
Let’s look at deaths:
https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/gb
Oh, ‘cases’ are soaring but deaths are not. Who cares?
Ian, spot on. Exactly what I’ve been saying for months, including the mythical temperatures. If you’re not a liberal none of this is very complicated. Griff is next in line after your posting. That’s what it’s like in the alternative non-reality universe.
Show me the bodies.
Come to that, show me the skyrocketing hospital admissions (which would include many people who would not have been admitted back in March/April because the wards are now so much emptier and unstressed).
There will be a lag between infections and hospital admissions of around 2 weeks at least. The current case numbers are not likely to result in a large number of hospital admissions but the concern will be that recent uptick is the start of a sharp exponential rise in cases.
Other independent sources such as the Covid Symptom study show that symptomatic cases have almost trebled since Aug 25th.
As for the ludicrous R number that the same suspects are getting excited about, I’m afraid it has as much statistical integrity as the mythical Global Average Surface Temperature. Both are just fine examples of computer modellers’ fantasies.
Why do you think this? Do you actually know how it’s determined? Do you understand the mathematics behind it? The Swedish epidemiologist, Tom Britton, has produced a decent YouTube video which explains R. Tom has had significant involvement in the Swedish response to the pandemic.
Cases should NOT be the ‘metric’ to follow, especially if testing has increased, and it is as ‘sensitive’ as some articles i have read says it is.
Not trying to be morbid, but hospitalizations and mortality rates are what should be looked at.
I am in Arizona, and per the AZDHS website
(https://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-control/infectious-disease-epidemiology/covid-19/dashboards/index.php), BOTH of those rates are as low as they were in mid march.
As Wills E. said, STOP THIS MADNESS ! Let people get back to work, and normal lives – and not the ‘New Normal’ crap with ‘face diapers’ ( . . NO, i will not use the ‘M – – k’ word . .) and ‘distancing’.
YES, protect those that may be have an issue if they contract the virus ( . .elderly, those with underlying conditions, etc. – ALL the things we have read about for MONTHS now); but not 99.5 % OR MORE of the population.
“Not trying to be morbid, but hospitalizations and mortality rates are what should be looked at.”
The underlying phenomena is exponential.
Hospitalizations and mortality lag. Up to 30 days.
with a doubling every 7 days, for example, that implies 8x infections before you act if
you wait to look at mortality.
Nature favors those who act quickly,decisively and brutally. China hs recovered.
Most of the world missed their opportunity to contain the virus and are now left with mitigation.
Consequently you have a mess, an ugly mess.
No politician will want to wait 30 days because every death from the day cases spike going forward
will be laid at their feet whether they were preventable or not. No politician want a single death
traceable to their actions.
Think of it this way. If cases spike on day 1 and your leaders wait 30 days to act and your
wife dies on day 25, your natural reaction to a lockdown on day 30 will be “they should have
acted earlier” whether that would have saved your wife or not. Even IF the overall death rate goes
down you will blame them. someone somewhere will blame them.
“YES, protect those that may be have an issue if they contract the virus ( . .elderly, those with underlying conditions, etc. ”
This is a fine sentiment but not practical as a public policy.
what are you going to do?
1. For the next 2 weeks, those over 50 should isolate? over 50s stay home from work?
2. All you fat people stay home, diabetics stay home, the 50% of you with low vitamin D stay home
how do you enforce it.
basically the control of the spread is NOT up to the government. It is up to you.
wash your hands, wear a mask, avoid closed indoor spaces. When people don’t do this
you get spread. We see that daily in korea where every single example of fresh outbreaks
is tied to groups of people meeting in closed spaces for extended periods with no masks.
oh wait, we had one example of open air spread: protests against the law.
“Related to August 15 Seoul rallies, 1 additional case was confirmed during investigation. In total, 565 cases have been confirmed.
– Rally related (212), further transmissions (301), police (8), under investigation (44)”
Bottom line? don’t blame politicians for taking the easy way out when the public refuses to follow
simple instructions.
Also, I will repeat my advice from feb.
Get your vitamin D levels up
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.04.20188268v1.full.pdf
Wearing a mask basically only works well if you break the 2 main rules:
1. Stay home if you feel the slightest sick
2. Keep distance to others.
If you follow those 2 basic rules, masks will have very little effect. Basically only when people that are assymptomatic but have virus levels high enough to be able to spread the virus to others and that do break or cant follow rule 2 due to local circumstances.
I think most of the young will tell you it’s only a problem if you are old or have health issues. There is a view that politicians are happy to conscript them and send them off to wars as cannon fodder and give them a medal and service for serving their country. They are happy to hold services and give out medals to people who die to covid for the country.
For those people who present at hospital with symptoms, you can use a Vitamin D based treatment too.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7456194/
It was only a pilot study, but the resuts were pretty definitive.
I note in the report that “hydroxychloroquine (400 mg every 12 h on the first day, and 200 mg every 12 h for the following 5 days), azithromycin (500 mg orally for 5 days. ” is the standard protocol for this Spanish hospital.
I wonder how many people are receiving hydroxychloroquine as standard covid treatment now, without the fuss and publicity?
People travel throughout the world in a single day now; just because you eliminate the virus in one spot doesn’t mean it won’t simply come back, and worldwide numbers are currently as high as they have been. The time to end all lockdowns and masks was during summer when vitamin D was very easy to obtain, but that time has passed in the NH.
Now it is up to tanning beds with UVB bulbs or supplements. Take a vitamin K2 supplement or eat foods rich in it daily with the vitamin D to properly regulate calcium deposition.
Well said Martin C,
No, the real important numbers that people should be concerned about (IMHO) is what percentage have died (mortality rates) from the virus exclusively and with comorbidities. If those rises either the virus has mutated or the medical system is faulty, if it falls then the virus may be weakening through mutation, or medics are getting better at early identification and treatments.
Friendly reminder that new cases don’t predict new fatality. There is zero statistical relationship (you can easily to the R^2 on various lags in many countries). Its only predictive if testing is somewhat constant. Its why CFR is a terrible metric and one more example of why health professionals should have the assistance of true statisticians that can test for meaningful outcomes
Positive percentage or age weighted variants of positive percentage are the best and UK positive percentage is extremely low. You are simply testing more, which results in more false positives. Overall spread remains extremely low and we think the UK is mostly herd immune. And has been for a while.
In other words no need to worry.
1) The number of cases are going up because people are testing more.
2) The only way they know about these “cases” is by testing more – people aren’t actually sick
3) It’s well known that the tests are not fit for purpose.
4)Covid deaths, alleged or real, have fizzled out, and there has been NO second wave.
Indeed. CCP-19 is a disease so dangerous that most people have to be tested to determine whether they have it.
The only symptom, it seems, is dying of old age.
It is not even clear that they are reporting cases. A positive test result may indicate infection but in the absence of symptoms, a positive test does not indicate a case. The reporting is a tangled mess.
Not in the UK. Testing figures are very slightly DOWN since the end of august
5) WHY isn’t the mortality rate given here?
There will be a second wave of deaths that correlate with the normal respiratory disease season.
Cases, yes! Deaths, no! It’s the same in Victoria, Australia. More testing, results in more cases. It’s totally meaningless! The PCR test is flawed and can test positive for ANY COVID virus which there are many.
I’m in england, no deaths on the streets, hospitals are not full with dying patients. The roads are busy, supermarkets are busy, people are out and about enjoying life…
Due to testing, if one person is positive, even though they have shown no symptoms, they lock down the area the person is from 😐
All local pubs are open and two of them are very busy daily. The local Mediterranean restaurant is very busy daily…
A friends father has gone on a lads holiday to turkey for a week, another flew to india..
Seems the cancerous WHO/fauci/U.N have other plans?
What is required is a vaccine against stupidity especially for the ruling classes.
Notice the scales on the graph? It makes it look scarier than it actually is.
What is wrong with the scales? The vertical scale as well as the horizontal scale are perfectly linear.
Pandemics, race riots, and the possibility of anarchy offers a much faster path for the frightened
sheeppeople surrendering to a totalitarian governance and socialism than the slow moving climate scam.Reject all of it. Get on with life. Live. Life is short.
And most importantly, “Fuc& the Left and their Climate religions.”
Once again, infections are being confused with cases. Infections are rising, are cases, i.e. those requiring treatment? People with no or mild symptoms are infections but not cases.
^^^THIS!^^^
I’m so tired of hearing “infections” being called “cases”.
The “cases” count also includes false positives.
Deaths in the UK have flatlined near zero for a month now.
What kind of deadly epidemic kills almost nobody?
A phoney one.
The only reasonable usable metric is the excess mortality.
The next best thing in the mortality concerning COVID-19:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
which illustrates clearly that the COVID-19 season in the UK was over several months ago.
Exactly the same thing goes for Sweden.
The US appears to have some issues have some rise in mortality, but I am not sure certain. It would therefore be good to know the overall excess mortality in the US.
I am very suspicious of the idea that a person can be able to transmit a virus when the virus load which they carry is too small to give ant symptoms. There is little doubt that the testing is giving many false positives, perhaps from tiny virus loads or other corona viruses. The idea that a person can be made ill from a single virus particle is very unlikely, and is not shown in any other virus that we regularly become exposed to, for example colds or flu. There is an immune response to any virus, it may just not be strong enough to defeat a large virus contact, hence infection. Social distancing and masks both recognise this, the test sensitivity does not. The indicator is hospitalisation and deaths, not some “magic number” from the testing programme.
“Cases” are rising but “daily deaths” are not. Over 1166/day at the peak, now way down (9 yesterday).
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
The most vulnerable are either dead or staying home, and the people who are catching it now aren’t dying.
I found this analysis very enlightening. It’s quite long but worth watching.
Should have been a link attached. Try again.
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F8UvFhIFzaac%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR1K8Clw3dD-0JAv8xe_8MNum7KBanpVgpZCzFB637NypfAaVKqCPVxKxx8&h=AT1ocPeDU56djph3EZgw_sDZhcot1_lbAQefnqExPj_udwRe4CVo2uwL_oPvINUXvR7F83JKQUqDv3ql2gK-9fYWeyxGQpRDsx7BL6He9Fe_GtuaHYCd1ezDlsXkR2ssTnBw3aiTfwoC_hG-AdUe8fv-pCDAvd6aq4vRWkQC54IN-GLzYl33tFU7EySeX8yQfM9Ks1trgwUVfGagOkFzrOGKtQ4bNod3jfcn06w9bFEh6faVKIelWlXb7FUvlWbmk_HmlNNwoGJnIq1SJwKnFZ_opguvaSfPXgkZku1r5D77YMVgYFCoow2i2n0XjaMVFjqVgTGmoZ91qnq__7aM07YwfN9LShJkfk8g43f6eT5JBI03Pw
The reason the virus is growing amongst the young in the UK is that the pubs and police are not doing their job properly, our daughter, 23, said this would happen, her social media friends are not following social distancing at all.
Once the virus has attached itself to the young it is easily passed onto Nana and Grandad who, having organs that need a higher oxygen supply to function properly, find their heart isn’t up to the job and their organs start to fail. But then who gives a damn about the elderly, no-one obviously!
I’m sick and tired of hearing people bleating about the regulations, basically moaning that not more people died! Just how many should have died for you to agree that the lockdown was necessary? We’ll never know because we DID have a lockdown!
I have as much freedom now as I did before, and wearing a mask is nothing, our son in law is a doctor and he and his colleagues have always worn them for great swathes of the day, if masks don’t work why would they have ever bothered to wear them?
I personally know several people, many of them young, who caught the virus and months later still have very nasty symptoms, I also have friends who have lost loved ones, ok they had underlying problems but they still died far too early and their families have lost a loved one years earlier than they should have.
If adhering to the scientific advice, no Boris doesn’t make it up as he goes along, will help contain the virus then I fail to see why it’s so unpopular, unless you’re happy for Grandad to pop his clogs early so you can get your hands on his money?
Please don’t conflate this extremely crafty virus with the man made global warming nonsense, one really is deadly.
Well said!
Well said. At the dentist recently I asked about COVID risks. The masked staff, who are exposed constantly, said a shop queue was more risky, as they are used to cleaning. Could not get in though if any known COVID symptom was evident.
At a shop in France, LeClerc, the other day , the long fish queue was almost all unmasked, despite Castex on the shop audio repeatedly suggesting measures.
The so-called freedom-lovin’ mask refuseniks have an irrationality about them, easily stirred up, that for sure secretes in all other sectors, such as politics, choice of entertainment, etc.
As for the Gilets Jaunes back on the street, they have new masks. The problems are not caused by COVID, which made them worse. Hiding behind a virus in this case is sure to backfire.
“The so-called freedom-lovin’ mask refuseniks have an irrationality about them…”
That “irrationality” is not placing faith in symbolic gestures, which is really all wearing a mask is. It’s like wearing garlic around your neck to ward off vampires. The CDC just published a caution that masks worn to ward off the covid vampire don’t work for the wildfires in the western US because they cannot filter out the smaller particles. The corona virus is even smaller, yet people that “have a rationality about them” think the masks will keep them safe. It’s an inverted world we live in.
Maybe it’s the young ones trying to kill off us oldies so that they can have a rerun of the Brexit vote and get the ‘right’ answer this time!
Carrie
First of all let me agree the young are being reckless, not sure the police or pubs should be blamed. The blame should be firmly put on those unconcerned by social distancing and hand washing
We also see this lack of concern with our tourists here in the South West. We wish they had been allowed to go to Spain to party as they obviously believe nothing can happen to them on holiday. If the young people are ALSO tourists it is not surprising they are catching the virus as their social behaviour needs vast improvement..
I know of no one at all who caught the virus other than one elderly lady who broke a hip, was sent to hospital and caught CV there.
Of course Boris is making it up as he goes along.
We can see an indication of the threat that the virus poses to healthy people here, as excluding those with other serious underlying conditions, the virus has been responsible for the deaths of a relatively small number of otherwise healthy people, some 1,300 deaths in England since March
Follow this link
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/…
then go to the file under Tab3 “Deaths by condition”
This shows Underlying conditions:
YES 28,245
NO: 1,394
Clearly figures can prove anything, but also clearly the threat is mostly to the very elderly who are already very ill with the median age of death being 85 and dying of 2.6 co-morbitities. Some 20000 died in Care homes. A third of the latest upsurge in cases come from workers in care homes so the vulnerable urgently need better protection otherwise deaths in care homes will soar again.
Regrettable as any deaths are it is no reason to trash the economy and our freedoms as this virus is not some modern bubonic plague that in 1665 London killed proportionately 150 times more people than today
The government also has a duty to ensure those with the far more common problems of cancer, heart disease, obesity etc receive treatment, as the numbers dying from these are far in excess of CV deaths as these other categories of illness are being neglected
From June 10th and still today there have been more deaths from flu than from cv.
tonyb
I see my comment is in moderation. My similar one some hours ago was also moderated and has still not appeared. Why?
tonyb
I recently learned that the word following “1665 London” automatically puts a post into moderation.
“if masks don’t work why would they have ever bothered to wear them?”
Good question. It’s not science telling them to do that. Studies have shown that they don’t work, even in surgical settings. They can keep a surgeon from sneezing snot on a patients opened body and blood from splattering on a surgeon’s face, but they can’t stop pathogen transmission.
“this extremely crafty virus”
It’s really not. Lots of doctors are treating it quite successfully. What gives it the appearance of being crafty is medical system ignorance, incompetence, and malfeasance.
“Studies have shown that they don’t work”
Here’s a thread arguing that masks reduce the severity of infections:
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/09/good-news-more-masks-means-more-asymptomatic-infections-and-less-severe-ones/
There were multiple studies done before this Covid mess indicating masks don’t really make a difference to health care workers when a virus is involved. This even included a study on whether masks during surgery made a difference (the study found they did not). Now it’s political and if you don’t follow the right path, you get ostracized/banned.
It’s a false sense of security. You think the mask stops the bad things and they just don’t. The aerosols are so small they move right through the fabric or go around the edges. Keep in mind you have to move as much air in and out of your lungs whether you have a mask on or not to keep yourself oxygenated so you breathe harder with a mask and increase the air pressure in and out.
Here’s a great video. Keep in mind the aerosols containing Covid are smaller than smoke particles. https://videopress.com/v/4egEyh2b
That would be a great tactic to deal with covid Karens who publicly confront people not wearing masks. Tell them to get a vape and test the effectiveness of their masks themselves. Maybe that’ll shut their yappers.
Certainly, it can’t contain the aerosols, but the vapor cloud created stays closer to the source, in effect increasing distance. Now if one is sharing a close space for a period of hours, there is likely no benefit. One is not likely to get a face full of spittle and aerosols from someone a few feet away, however. As an experiment, try blowing out a candle with a mask on.
Several studies were summarized in EID Journal in May, where they found that universal masking does not reduce viral spread. But nobody ever seems to refer to that. Those studies were real-world, not lab studies.
Well back in reality, there is no correlation between lockdowns, masks, and infection rates.
You can’t contain this virus with lockdowns. It will run its course. It is of the same family as the common cold. The symptoms are the same. The common cold mutates which is why there is no cure for the common cold. My Brother and Sister-in-law, 73 and 71 respectively contracted COVID19. My Brother recovered in a week his wife had a harder time with it. She recovered in 3.
I don’t know that I believe what appears to be your exaggerated claim of people suffering nasty symptoms MONTHS later. They should be consulting health care professionals because “OK they had underlying problems…”
People with underlying conditions, Carrie, die after contracting the flu and the common cold. The only way for us to live is to protect those with underlying conditions, best we can and for the rest of us to move about and have the ‘rona burn itself out through herd immunity.
You cannot prevent people from dying. You and I and every single one of us is going to die. People who think like you don’t want any of us to live before that happens. Just go ahead and lock down in your house until death comes for you. But don’t send the government gestapo after those of us who are not afraid of Corona. I choose to go out an live my life even if it makes me sick.
We have no problem sending the young to dangerous jobs of all kinds. It is irrational to do this and then insist that they have to suffer the very significant costs of these lockdowns. All three of my children, now in early-mid career are taking the hit in the economic effects. To do this when the AVERAGE age of death from the WuFlu is over 80 !!! is irrational. If gran is still active enough to control her life and wants to, she is welcome to isolate. Me, I want to see my children and grandchildren succeed.
PS, my mum was gone more than 5 years before she actually died, and those last 5 years were hell for her family carers (although they would deny it). Those who bleat about care home deaths need to take gran home and look after her there. Why has there not been a massive move to take gran home from the ‘care’ facility where flues have always spread? Because society wants low paid skivvies to change her diaper, get her washed and brushed for a short visit on Sunday afternoon.
The official UK stats site has a page on PCR, in which its best prior estimate of the false positive rate, based on other PCR data, is 2.5%, but that has not been validated.
When the page was written, the percentage of positive tests was only 1.6% – less than the anticipated error. They go on to say it “must” be much lower, and pick 0.25% out of the air. But today’s figures give the positive test rate as between 1.5 and 1.6%, suggesting either that the actual infection rate is constant over the last month or two and the rise is an artifact of testing, or that most or all of the tests are false positives.
It is hard to see how more genuine infections would result in a constant rate of positives.
However, as absolute numbers of PCRs escalate, even if no COVID was present, one would expect to see a gradual rise in COVID-attributed deaths, the definition being a positive COVID test in the previous 28 days. All you need for each false death is 125 tests on fatal admissions, and you will have increased the daily death toll by 2, or something like 30%.
As so many have commented here and elsewhere , in the US and in Europe where a distinct second wave of cases is apparent the associated mortality is much , much less than that associated with the first wave . The exception is Australia . The reasons for the lower mortality of the second wave may be due in part to the realisation after the first wave that the elderly , in particular , need to be more carefully quarantined , and judging from personal family experience this is now happening in care homes, whereas it initially did not happen.
If testing is producing more positive results , but without serious symptoms , are we not on the road to herd immunity , without the need yet for a vaccine. My worry would be a rushed out vaccine , applied probably by force , as a face saving motive by embarrassed political leaders.
Last week, mask in place I stoppped off for petrol at a service staion in Middleton (North of Manchester on the way to Rochdale). It was busy , people in and out constantly . I was the only one with a mask on and felt really silly. If there is anything British people hate it is being conspicuous , so I believe that the mask obsession will live on only in the minds of our befuddled leaders .
Paul Homewood’s site had a comment from a “mwhite” a few days ago with a video (which I don’t know how to link to) of a doctor pointing out that the wearing of masks has had no effect on current non -covid flu, so why do we expect it to be beneficial with covid?
The collapse of the UK economy (-21.7% so far ) and the expected 5 million unemployed when furlough ends should sharpen the minds of our leaders , but the evidence is that it will not .
Remember the Somme? 60000 casualties in one day . The response of the British Govt: more conscription , send even more young men into certain death in the hope that something will work . The same mentality exists with our current leaders in UK .
https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F8UvFhIFzaac&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cd65f94c7d1ac46b1116f08d857b83baa%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637355796065736778&sdata=2q%2FRm76QOtvkP3yEaebkR74xdw%2B7rmauBgTeE10EwEI%3D&reserved=0
Really good explanation, 40 mins but well worth the watch.
In other news, the lethality of the virus in the UK is very strongly decreasing.
I’m now assembling the material for another of my big long COVID articles. This time, I’m focusing on the ratio of deaths to cases, and how it has fluctuated over the epidemic. Here are the preliminary figures for the UK on a month by month basis:
Ratio of COVID deaths to new cases
March – 6.9%
April – 17.5%
May -13%
June – 10.1%
July – 4.4%
August – 1%
September 1st-12th – 0.4%
There are other countries, notably Italy, showing a similar pattern.
Every statistic about Covid-19 in the British media is a lie
Up to 90% of people who test positive for Covid barely carry any virus and are not contagious.
It has been revealed that the standard tests being used in the US to diagnose Covid-19 cases are far too sensitive, with the vast majority of people marked down as being positive are turning out to be negative. Top US virologists have been stunned by revelations about the laxity of the US Covid testing regimen. Tests that deliver a simple binary “positive or negative” result are not fit for purpose, as they tell us nothing about the contagiousness of each person.
Data from New York, Nevada and Massachusetts shows that when the amount of the virus found in a person is taken into account, up to 90% of people who have tested positive should have been negative, as they are carrying only tiny amounts of the virus, are not contagious, pose no risk to others, and have no need to isolate. This means that only a fraction of the daily “cases” being reported so hysterically in the mainstream media are actual, bona fide Covid-19 sufferers, and need treatment and to separate themselves from others.
So how could this have happened? The answer has to do with the sensitivity of PCR (Polymerase chain reaction) tests for Covid, which it turns out can be ramped up according to the taste of the testing companies. Most testing companies have chosen the outrageously high sensitivity limit of 40 PCR cycles – meaning that the DNA in a sample is exponentially increased 40 times in order to amplify its signal. By using such a ridiculously sensitive test means that the faintest traces of a dead virus, or even leftovers from previous infections (such as the common cold), can result in a positive. Professor Juliet Morrison, a University of California virologist, said that even a limit of 35 PCR cycles is too high, let alone 40. She said she was “shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive.” But apparently, pretty much everyone in the US Covid brain trust took exactly that on faith.
So the scale of the pandemic ‘problem’ is actually much smaller than we’ve been led to believe – about a tenth of what all the politicians and media have been using to justify the lockdowns, the quarantines, the mass testing. Some may be shocked that the scale of the problem is so much smaller than assumed. But for a seasoned ignorer of any and all statistics that contain Covid so-called “cases,” there are no surprises here. The truth is, there was never any reason to be confident in such figures. The FDA has only now been forced to concede that they have no idea how different testing companies determine which the positive and negative tests are: they just accept whatever data they are given.
What these findings bring is absolute assurance that the testing to this point has been an utter waste of time, and that not one statistic concerning this pandemic – from cases to deaths to infection rates – can be believed. But it should not have taken some journalist to ask the right question to discover this: a bit of common sense would have been enough. What is it going to take for these professional virologists to drop their assumptions and models, and just start acting based on the facts at hand?
Scrap test and trace
It’s a virus so deadly, you need a test to tell whether you have it or not. So goes the refrain of many lockdown skeptics, “Covidiots” (so beloved by the Daily Mail) and anti-maskers. Something has gone not just wrong, but totally haywire when the might of the world’s scientific establishment is trained with the zeal of a Witchfinder General on one particular microscopic particle. Not even a particularly dangerous particle; the latest data show it is the eighth most common cause of death in England, and it doesn’t even make the top ten in Wales.
Meanwhile, in Wuhan, the original source of this disease, the pool parties are in full swing. They don’t seem to be too worried about PCR tests or contact tracing, or even the virus itself. The Chinese government says that their supreme lockdown was so awesome that they now have zero Covid: a biological impossibility. Maybe they just stopped testing, and decided to get on with their lives. Everyone else should take a leaf out of their book.
You’re too late! Can you imagine the reaction from the “usual suspects” if the testers replaced the current test with 30 cycles? Our hard-of-thinking, “stands to reason, innit” brigade would have a collective conniption fit and accuse government of trying to kill us all off.
Note how misguided computer modellers who forecast 500,000 deaths because they don’t know the difference between IRF and CRF are lauded and listened to while those who are “shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive” are shushed up and shown the door!
The “usual suspects” are desperate to prop up the current rule-by-decree regime and will use any excuse to hang onto their dictatorial powers, hence the vast increase in testing which is finding the harmless remnants of former infections being used to justify the continuing British lockdown.
Unfortunately for the “usual suspects,” the number of people getting wise to this fraud is growing every day. More and more people have noticed that the number of so-called “cases” are increasing, yet the number of hospitalizations and deaths are not. Many people are asking questions, the most prominent one being “where are all the dead bodies?” – to which the government has no answer.
There are few deaths to speak of
Cases may be rising but the death rate isn’t
0.07%
Positive tests are not cases.
Further to my last comment, here are the official UK criteria for a “COVID admission,” the figure that is now said to be starting to increase:
“England data include people admitted to hospital who tested positive for COVID-19 in the 14 days prior to admission, and those who tested positive in hospital after admission. Inpatients diagnosed with COVID-19 after admission are reported as being admitted on the day prior to their diagnosis. Admissions to all NHS acute hospitals and mental health and learning disability trusts, as well as independent service providers commissioned by the NHS are included.”
There is no criterion requiring that the admission be for suspected COVID. So, as in the case of deaths, the more testing is done, the more false positives there will inevitably be before or during admission for any cause, and an admissions “spike” is guaranteed even in the absence of any admissions for suspected complications of COVID-19. Such a spike would appear long before one for deaths, because (assuming a 1.6% false positive rate) you’ll get 2 “cases” entering the admissions stats for every 120 people routinely admitted for any cause, and most won’t die of course.
Increase the testing more, and COVID deaths too will begin to rise, even in the absence of any virus whatsoever. In this way, increasing the level of PCR testing will produce, first, an increase in cases, followed by an increase in admissions, followed by an increase in deaths. And this will happen whether or not there is even any virus around, simply from false positives.
I don’t care how many people test positive for Covid. The more the merrier as far as I am concerned in the warm weather when people have mild symptoms and just develop antibodies for later.
Can everyone stop with the masks, ignore the diktats from the podiums and write to your MP to make clear that no one at all elected them to hand over Parliamentary power to one Minister to make up crimes and hand cosply community police officers the power to fine people £10,000.
We also never elected them to take on the duty of stopping everyone from catching a chest infection.
Domestic politicians should understand when they are being encouraged to undermine their own legitimacy by nefarious international bodies that see national parliaments and governments as a nuisance in their plans to control human life.
The main reason why many countries have a second wave now is not because it is the second wave in historical terms, if we look back on previus pandemics, but it is due to changed restrictions.
If you keep the restrictions at same level during the pandemic you wont create those artificial 2:nd waves as we are seening now. The real second wave is till around the corner on the northern hemisphere. I expect it to start in oct-dec and continue to April-may.
Countries that do not have long term restrictions in place by then and keep going in and out of restrictions will have trouble, again.
Sweden seems to be almost the only country in europe that currently do not have raising numbers. We are also the only country that basically have had the same restrictions through the whole pandemic so far. We will and can continue with same restrictions for another year or longer without damaging the economy too much.
The virus wont go away with lockdowns, it only gets pushed back for a short time. When you open up the virus is till there and it only looks for one thing, is there anyone near it can infect. It does not care about politics or lockdowns. A short term lockdown can work if you use it when you are going for the peak fast to reduce the spread and reduce the peak so the hospitals can handle the situation. It should be short, max 3-4 weeks to force the numbers down fast but then you must switch to to long term(year or years) restrictions that you do keep and just accept the virus is there and has it own slow spread while protetcting the old people.
There are 3 things that will reduce the infection rate:
1. Reduce number of people that gets into contact with each other,.
2. Immunity due to infections.
3. Vaccine.
The virus wont be under control until point 2 or 3 have reached optimal level.
If you constantly change number 1 the virus spread will go up and down and it is not a fast process, at first it comes creeping slow for weeks, unnoticed, as weeks becomes a month the numbers start becomming visible and politicians reacts to the numbers.
Maybe someone good at PID-controllers(see wikipedia for explanation) shold explain this to politicans?
Something that *this* enquiring mind would like to know is:
Why is the UK Case Fatality Rate so sky-high?
See here: https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#the-case-fatality-rate
(You might need to tweak the graph to get the UK onto it)
Why is the UK’s CFR nearly 12% while everyone else’s is a fraction of that?
What *is* going on there – is the UK definition of a ‘case’ much more different from everyone else’s?
My anecdote:
A gentle old boy (smoker) that I know (was the father of the owner of the ponies in the field at end of my garden – he used to help feed/bed/clean-up)
He contracted ‘something’ and was carted off to hospital, about 6 weeks ago. Nearly died but is now a hallucinating cabbage.
Thank you NHS
BUT, one thing they did do was test him for Vitamin B
He did not have ANY measurable Vitamin B12 in his entire body (stuff you can store inside you for years)
Thus, I hang the blame on the drive to vegetable based diets.
Also the crazy assumption that small amounts of alcohol may even be good for you. No. It washes Zinc out of you.
Here’s an interesting one:
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine/
Basically, Quinine trashes your heart.
Tony’s on the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOvOHiuKS40
We havent had a case for about 120 days now.
We had 24 deaths 23 in one nursing home, and the owner has been charged with 23 counts of manslaughter because she new the staff member who wanted to self isolate most probably had it, caught in Italy on holiday, but she said she would sack the staff member if she missed her shift.
Apart from that tragedy one other person has died with the virus out of a general population of 100.000.
I’m in great Britian, [Isle of Man].
Hey there I’m on the rock too… that case was someone returning from the UK if I recall correctly.
Righto, i mixed up the ballasalla primary school teacher who was the first case on the island, she recovered, and none of the kids she was teaching or their parents got infected.
I live 100yards from the school gates.
Nice to meet another Manxman here.
The cases back in April are clearly constrained by test availability. Note the flat top to the peak. The current rise in “cases” clearly goes back to the start of July, yet even while “cases” are rising for over 2 months, deaths have not. This suggests the latter rise is for different reasons to original April rise and they should not be compared.
The average daily number of deaths has remained virtually unchanged for around 20 days, declining slowly for around 40 days down to about a noisy 6-14 per day. I looked at the incremental change on 7 day running means – no uptick in deaths for 40 days or so.
If the trend of increasing cases, going back to start of July, was a real problem deaths would have been rising by now. Current evidence suggests to me artefact from testing, perhaps combined with asymptomatic “cases” in the under 45s age group who are at low risk. We will never know the true level of asymptomatic cases back in April for comparison.
Looks to me like government and scientists have over-reacted. Again.
Interesting is that NZ is seeing increase in cases and mortality since August.
So even though NZ has isolated itself from the rest of the world and for several months has had no mortality, they also have a second wave. A fate that the misbehaving Swedish have been spared. – It is up to the individual to guess why.
NZ has done a better job than most containing the epidemic, but to what price?
The price for New Zealand has been a destroyed commercial business structure, and enormous payments to almost every affected employer with no end in sight. Our Labour government has proved that elimination is impossible, as is shown by additional cases almost daily. And all of this while locked down for many weeks and no relief expected when an announcement is made tomorrow. Decisions have been made by government ministers with NO business experience, on advice from risk-averse public servant “experts”. Well, with our general election only weeks away, wasn’t it fortunate that a grant of $72 million was made to assist the media through a difficult time! At the same time our Prime Minister (trained in Blair’s UK office) is receiving international plaudits for her amazing achievements!
Increased testing shows more cases so what…
non covid excess deaths are now the problem, likely the consequence of lockdown and denying treatment…
Just like global warming, the Chinese Flu is a liberal conspiracy designed to trash the American economy to make President Trump look bad.
Corona cases rising in the UK – in the May interview on BBC Hard Talk with Anders Tegnell, the warning was already aired:
Coronavirus: Anders Tegnell, State Epidemiologist of Sweden, on herd immunity – BBC HARDtalk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Biqq34aUJcQ
Although a very biased interview, but Anders Tegnell is brilliantly explaining himself.
It is an old interview, not seen by many, but worth the 24 minutes.
The lowest seven day total of new cases (which smooths out the fluctuations in reporting) in the UK was on July 8 at 545. Since then it has steadily risen to 3001 on September 12 – a massive outbreak! But, since July 21 the 7 day average of UK deaths has been less than 20 per day, and since August 17 it has been 12 or less. [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/]
It is reported that death, if it occurs, is within 2 to 8 weeks after first symptoms. It is now 9 1/2 weeks after that minimum, so the death total should have massively risen by now. But it hasn’t. It follows that the UK may have reached a state of “Herd Immunity”.
Sunetra Gupta, a professor of theoretical epidemiology, at Oxford University has stated: “To lockdown to keep something under control is, in the long term, quite misguided.”
“There is also the possibility, as we suggested in March, that a large swathe of the population has been exposed. Some have become immune, and therefore exhibit antibodies, or don’t because those antibodies have decayed. And some were resistant to start with. Under those circumstances, no, we shouldn’t see a huge surge in infections in those regions like London and New York where we’ve had a major incidence of infection and death.”
[Source: https://reaction.life/we-may-already-have-herd-immunity-an-interview-with-professor-sunetra-gupta/%5D
Hence there is no need for “lockdowns, travel restrictions and social and economic carnage”.
This is confirmed by an article in the Lancet which states: “In our study, an increasing number of days to border closures was associated with a higher caseload, and more restrictive public health measures (such as a full lockdown compared to partial or curfew only measures) were associated with an increase in the number of recovered cases per million population. These findings suggest that more restrictive public health practices may indeed be associated with less transmission and better outcomes. However, in our analysis, full lockdowns and wide-spread COVID-19 testing were not associated with reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality.”
[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext]
Agree. See also my comment upthread. “Cases” rising for nearly 60 days, deaths falling and then staying at background noise level for 40 days.
Threat level minimal.
Since June there have been more deaths from flu than from Covid. The data illustrates that lockdown and face mask have made no difference-
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/latest
Computer model-driven policies have failed yet again. In the UK professor Neil Ferguson ‘modelled’ Covid-19 outcomes and arrived at a reasonable worst case scenario of 500k deaths.
Cue panic in government and nationwide lockdown.
Prof Ferguson (who has since been sacked for an off-limits clandestine meeting with his bit of stuff and is now generally referred to as professor Pantsdown) was previously disastrously wrong about vCJD and Foot and Mouth, so he’s now bagged a perfect hat-trick of failure with his Covid nonsense.
Covid-19 is proving fatal to almost nobody and is no longer a serious threat, but we’re being fattened up for another winter lockdown. The UK stands on the brink of ruin for, literally, absolutely nothing.
It also goes without saying that the UK’s hysterical £1 trillion Net Zero ‘decarbonisation’ policy is also based on flawed computer models. What could possibly go wrong?
The more cases the better, the sooner it is over. With a 99.8% recovery rate there really is no problem. If anyone is afraid then they can stay home and let the rest of us get on with our lives.
A “case” is a hospital admission, right? Uh, what? No?
Well, it must have a significantly higher death rate following the “cases” curve, right? No, again?
Then what is going on? Better testing you say? So now we know a lot of people have or have had the virus but the “cases” don’t get sick. That is not a CASE! That is a test result.
Border experience. Realised on the car ferry coming back from France that something had to be done; spotted the notice with one of those square hieroglyphics, I had unlike many a smart phone, filled in the grotesque Locator form: tried to do my wife, her phone out of juice; my phone wouldn’t do two people: at the passport check the flow through was entirely normal; nice chap said “have you done the er er..” Waved my phone and stumblingly tried to explain about the wife. “Well done. – drive safe!!”. Formed the impression that this extra chore on the passport checkers was not being prosecuted very keenly and indeed what could they do? Stop entry? Anyway, backfilled the wife when we got home and quarantined because we live in a close community where our travels are well known. Noted a Spectator article which slaughtered the quarantine policy.
Cases in most European countries seem to be increasing and many are already above 1st wave levels.
The good folks at Lockdown Skeptics today posted a long-ish but readable analysis of the problems with the inaccurate PCR tests:
https://lockdownsceptics.org/radical-uncertainty-and-government-innumeracy/
Some highlights:
“The standard COVID-19 RT-PCR test results have a consistent positive rate of ≤ 2% which also appears to be the likely false positive rate (FPR), rendering the number of official ‘cases’ virtually meaningless. The likely low virus prevalence (~0.02%) is consistent with as few as 1% of the 6,100+ Brits now testing positive each week in the wider community (pillar 2) tests actually having the disease.”
“The implications of the overt discrepancy between the trajectories of UK positive tests (up) and diagnoses, hospital admissions and deaths (all down) need to be explained. Positives bottomed below 550 per day on July 8th and have since gone up by a factor of three to 1500+ per day. Yet over the same period (shifted forward 12 days to reflect the lag between hospitalisation and death), daily deaths have dropped, also by a factor of three, from 22 to 7, as indeed have admissions, from 62 to 20 (compare the right-hand side of the upper and lower panels in the Chart below).”
I asked our county health department what the expected false positive rate is for the PCR tests that they are using. They said they don’t know and have no what to determine it. I would think that the test manufacturer would publish such data.
Anyway, looking at the data the county publishes, positives have been consistently around 2% of tests for a couple of months now, but there have been no deaths and very few hospitalizations.
Over this entire period since March, one person below the age of 70 has died. No one under the age of 50 has died and there have been no hospitalizations for anyone under the age of 20. A normal flu season is worse, especially for young people.
No the UK cases are not rising.
A case is someone who is ill. Almost none of these people are ill, instead most of them have residual DNA which may be months old and many others are false negatives (which is about 1% – do the maths). Both of these increase with the number of tests done. The only reliable figure is people who actually go into hospital with COVID FLU symptoms (not ones who are in hospital who happen to test positive) and those who die OF COVID FLU (which is a very low figure).
Around ~10 are now dying each day. I guestimate that about 5-10 are coincidental … or people who happen to test positive, but with no active illness, who then totally unconnected die of something else (when you test enough people, some of them will die by pure chance).
In any case we have community immunity.
See:
What is “residual DNA”? I thought COVID 19 was an RNA virus and testing was based on RT-PCR? (i.e RNA)
Also I thought that the figure to reach herd immunity was 1/(1-R0) and with R0 = 2 that would need roughly 50% of the population infected?
At least one study has shown that around 50% of people seem to be immune already, probably due to exposure to similar viruses in the past.
What really seems to have happened is:
1. The Chinese government found a new SARS-like virus in the wild and freaked out.
2. Lots of people in Wuhan went to hospital to be tested.
3. Many of them caught it there, leading to rapid spread.
4. Hospitals put them on ventilators.
5. Ventilators killed most of them.
6. World politicians freaked out over such rapid spread and high death rate a virus that many are immune to and which has a tiny death rate if you don’t put people on ventilators.
7. After wrecking the economy, the politicians keep doubling-down because they can’t admit they were wrong or they’ll lose the next election.
*Exactly*. I still remember in the 1950s how liberal governments would put children with polio on ventilators knowing full well that the ventilators would kill them. And it was all just a plan to force vaccinations on us all.
Steve45
Have you seen this:
https://judithcurry.com/2020/07/27/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought-update/
Thanks Clyde- my feeling is that we should trust these computer models.
The weekly test numbers have roughly quadrupled from July to early September.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/nhs-test-and-trace-statistics-england-weekly-reports
cases way up, deaths way down-
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
Just once in a while I would like to see the graphs shown with a linear scale and the Y axis for the UK of 60Million and then show the X axis with cases. For the USA it should similarly be linear with the Y axis of 330 million. This would put all the shroud waving panic into a more honest scale rather then using the tricks used by climate ‘scientists’ to increase the impact of the weak data.
This is all rather confusing. So, the “cases” aren’t really cases, they are “positive” results from a PCR test that may be detecting the shattered remains of a CV-19 infection in an individual who might not have shown any symptoms. Assuming the test result is accurate, of course, but we know there are false positives.
Perhaps the jump in “cases” is good news as it may indicate the CV-19 virus is becoming less lethal and/or our immune systems are successfully crushing the virus.
https://youtu.be/P0y6M-N8wOE
How are “cases” defined here?
Medically, a case is one where medical intervention is indicated, usually with admission to a hospital which begins record keeping on the course of the infection, treatment, and progress of the patient.
Detection of an infection past or present with little or no symptoms does not constitute a case.
It does now. Leftists change the definition of words and phrases all the time.
tony don’t use this word….. k 1 77 ed
8th line up from the bottom
If there was ever any credibility in the truth seeking purpose of this website and its community, COVID blowed it up completely. So much unfounded unscientific blabbering, it’s sickening. And it just repeats itself again and again even it was debunked months ago. That is just stubborn and stupid and not at all critical thinking.
That is very disappointing as the need to expose the uncertainty and unreliability of the 100% man-made global warming narrative is very important. But politicising a global health crisis and denying the severity of the disease for the risk groups as well as the IFR of ~1% from three big serological studies in UK, Italy and Spain will not get anybody anywhere to gain more credibility and people to listen.
Therefore COVID has been doing a really good job for the warmist camp. Great job COVID!
I don’t see many understating the potential severity of the disease (death) for those who are in high risk categories. On the contrary, rational people weigh all of the negative impacts of action on other health and economic effects.
Response to the threats of global warming can be exaggerated, irrational and damaging. So too can be response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Do you remember when the lockdowns were not to stop the disease, but to ‘flatten the curve’ so hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed when they ran out of ventilators (with an 80% death rate)?
Pepe Farm remembers.
Yes, it has been quite the ‘pivot’ hasn’t it? And, so very many people fall for it, too. I can hardly talk to people around me about the failures of consistency on this whole issue without getting back the latest media alarm narrative, to the effect that all sorts of asymptomatic carriers must be actively spreading the virus!
After all, if it weren’t so, why would we be wearing these darn masks everywhere?
What are you talking about Ron? All I see are well-informed folk with extremely strong opinions, guided by years of experience in the climate and/or medical sciences, putting forth well-reasoned arguments to counter the drivel manufactured by the so-called “experts” with their liberal agendas.
The UK has increased it’s testing, and…SURPRISE! The R-rate is increasing!! Who’dathunk, eh.
If the UK tested 10 million people a day, within a week we would have approx 1 million cases..OMG…LOCKDOWN FOREVER!!
Or, would it all be over by the following Friday and we could all get back to work/school?
Here’s another question…
If there were no testing whatsoever, would the R-rate in the UK be…
1. More
2. Less
3. Same
4. Not applicable
Answers on a postcard…
They’re not just relying on case numbers.
The Covid Symptom study shows symptomatic cases have trebled since August 25th.
The uptick looks to be genuine.
From Monday 14th September 2020 assembling of more than six people can result in fines of over 3,000 in the United Kingdom (The Peoples Republic Of Britain).
Source: RT
Just report it the Russian way….
https://news.yahoo.com/russian-excess-deaths-over-summer-142518552.html