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.
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.