The Re-Adjustment Bureau
Hats off to Carl Heneghan and Yoon Loke. Three weeks ago, they wrote a post on the Centre For Evidence-Based Medicine blog drawing attention to a peculiarity in the way Public Health England (PHE) recorded Covid deaths. They discovered that if you’d ever tested positive for COVID-19 and you subsequently died, even if several months had elapsed since the test, your death was recorded as being from coronavirus.
PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the Covid test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested Covid positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE Covid death figures.
By this PHE definition, no one with Covid in England is allowed to ever recover from their illness. A patient who has tested positive, but successfully treated and discharged from hospital, will still be counted as a Covid death even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later.
After their post was published, Matt Hancock announced a review into the way in which PHE collects Covid data and temporarily suspended its publication. Yesterday, that review was concluded and PHE has said that henceforth it will only record a death as being from coronavirus if it occurs within 28 days of a positive test. (Heneghan and Loke suggested 21 days.) As a result, PHE’s Covid death toll has been revised downward by over 5,000. This is more than even I expected. The BBC has the details.
The new methodology for counting deaths means the total number of people in the UK who have died from COVID-19 comes down from 46,706 to 41,329 – a reduction of 12%.
And figures for deaths in England for the most recent week of data – July 18th to 24th – will drop by 75%, from 442 to 111.
That 75% drop for the third week of July is astonishing. As Heneghan and Jason Oke point out in a new blog post, this doesn’t just apply to July 18th to 24th, but to the whole of July.
under the old PHE system, 2,086 deaths were reported in England in July by date of death, with the 28 days cut off this number is 574 – nearly a quarter of what was previously reported.
The same applies to August. For instance, if you look at the last two days, under the old reporting method 100 people were recorded as having died from coronavirus yesterday and 77 today. Under the new method, those numbers are revised downwards to 11 and 15. Heneghan and Oke have illustrated the difference with a graph showing the seven-day moving average for July.
Incidentally, the Government still hasn’t updated its own dashboard. If you look at this page, you’ll see that the number of Covid deaths recorded yesterday was 100 and the number today is 77.
Raise your game, Handy Cock.
British Public More Terrified Than Everyone Else
Does PHE’s over-counting matter? Yes, obviously, not least because it brings the official method of counting deaths in England into line with Scotland’s, making it harder for Nic Sturge-Un to claim she’s handled the crisis better than Boris. (Although she couldn’t have done much worse). More importantly, the over-counting may have contributed to the coronaphobia that has gripped the British public and which may in part account for why the UK has suffered a 22% fall in GDP since the beginning of the year.
The above graphs from the Economist show that the British are more frightened to leave their homes than the citizens of France, Germany, Italy or Spain, particularly when it comes to returning to the workplace. Not the sick man of Europe, exactly, since the UK’s Covid deaths per million are in line with those of France, Italy and Spain. Rather, the hypochondriac of Europe.
Excoriating Op Ed by Editor of Sunday Telegraph
Alastair Heath, the Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, has written a damning piece about the Government’s handling of the crisis in today’s Telegraph. Here are the opening two paragraphs:
So now we know: Sweden got it largely right, and the British establishment catastrophically wrong. Anders Tegnell, Stockholm’s epidemiologist-king, has pulled off a remarkable triple whammy: far fewer deaths per capita than Britain, a maintenance of basic freedoms and opportunities, including schooling, and, most strikingly, a recession less than half as severe as our own.
Our arrogant quangocrats and state “experts” should hang their heads in shame: their reaction to coronavirus was one of the greatest public policy blunders in modern history, more severe even than Iraq, Afghanistan, the financial crisis, Suez or the ERM fiasco. Millions will lose their jobs when furlough ends; tens of thousands of small businesses are failing; schooling is in chaos, with A-level grades all over the place; vast numbers are likely to die from untreated or undetected illnesses; and we have seen the first exodus of foreigners in years, with the labour market survey suggesting a decline in non-UK born adults.
Alastair has always leant towards scepticism, but this is his most sceptical piece to date. Great stuff. Worth reading in full (if you can get past the paywall).
No ‘Second Wave’ in Europe
We often hear alarmist reports of a ‘second wave’ in Europe, with rumours swirling about which countries are about to be removed from the travel corridor. According to the Telegraph, as many as 14 countries could soon be removed from the list, including the Netherlands, Gibraltar, Monaco, Malta and San Marino. But in the case of every ‘second wave’ country, all we’ve seen is an uptick in the number of people testing positive each day, no corresponding uptick in the number of daily deaths. I’m grateful to the FT for helping to make this point with a couple of graphs.
First the graph showing the increase in daily infections.
And now the graph showing the daily deaths.
In other words, the uptick in infections is almost entirely due to increased testing and nothing to worry about.
My Holiday in the Sun
As readers will know, I spent an enjoyable week with my family in Italy last month – three days in Venice, followed by four in the Dolomites. I’ve now written this up for the Telegraph and, as you’ll see, I wasn’t with my whole family.
After four months of living under virtual house arrest in Acton, I desperately needed a break. I know the lockdown is tough on everyone, but it’s particularly difficult to endure if you think it’s a catastrophic mistake. Since the beginning of April I’ve been running a blog called LockdownSceptics.org, pumping out daily reminders of the harm the lockdown is doing, whether to schoolchildren, cancer patients or elderly care home residents. Not that it makes any impact on public opinion. It’s as if the entire world is suffering from ‘psychotic delirium’, to use the phrase of Bernard Henry-Levi, the French philosopher.
My wife and I booked a family getaway, but we hit a lockdown-related snag two weeks before departure. No, our chosen destination wasn’t removed from the travel corridor – we’d arranged to go to Italy not Spain or the Bahamas, thank God. Rather, we discovered our 15-year-old son’s passport was about to expire. Normally, you can pay extra to fast-track the application or, failing that, stand in a queue for a few hours at the Passport Office. But not at the moment.
I sat down with Ludo and told him he had a choice: we could either scrap the holiday, or he could stay with a friend and I’d buy him a new gaming desktop. It took him all of two seconds to make up his mind.
There’s plenty more in this vein.
Alarmist ITV News Report About “Lingering” Effects of the Virus
A reader has written to object to a report on ITV News yesterday evening.
This is (honestly) the first time I have felt moved complain about a news report, but Emily Morgan’s piece on tonight’s ITV News at 6.30pm was a textbook example of the exaggeration, scaremongering and frankly, crap reporting that seems to have swept through the media in recent times.
The report was supposedly highlighting how several people who had recovered from COVID-19 were still experiencing negative health issues and implied that these were somehow unique to the virus and constitute a ‘hidden cost’ of the disease that is now now becoming apparent.
EVERYBODY PANIC!
These symptoms included chronic fatigue, an inability to concentrate and constant muscular pain. Exactly the symptoms of Post Viral Fatigue in fact – a condition known about for over 40 years (known in the 80s as ‘yuppie flu’).
The clue is in the title – a syndrome that you tend to get after fighting off a debilitating virus (usually the flu). There is plenty of information on the web should anyone at ITN bother to fact check (Hint: it’s usually better to do this before you broadcast the report).
I’d love to know what qualifications Ms. Morgan has relating to Heath/Science? I suspect the answer will be none, just like her equivalent at the BBC, Hugh Pym, who has a degree in PPE. How are these people supposed to critically report on their briefs when they don’t appear to have even a basic understanding of subject they are reporting on? Deborah Cohen (Newsnight) has a background in medicine and boy does it show – her reports are always excellent, balanced, never alarmist and because of this interesting and informative. Sadly, she’s one of the few.
Keep Two Sheep Apart
A reader gets in touch after spotting an unlikely sign in Folkestone.
I’m on holiday in Kent this week and whilst walking along coast path at Folkestone yesterday I couldn’t believe this sign was for real. Now they’re just trolling us.
Socially Distanced Cars
Another reader reports more madness: socially distanced cars.
I was chatting this morning to a neighbour whose wife is currently working from home.
I have no idea what she does, but he told me that her firm has said no one will be going back to the office until at least January and even then they will only allow 40% of the staff back. This is, according to the firm, because “the rules” say that not only must staff socially distance in the office, but cars must be socially distanced in the car park with only alternate spaces used!
As I’ve said many times in the past five months, the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
Round-Up
- ‘“State becomes more powerful and individuals weaker” with forced isolation: Alan Jones‘ – More common sense from our favourite broadcaster on Sky Australia
- Plan B Conference in New Zealand – One of the organisers of the Plan B conference in New Zealand (featuring Prof Gupta, among others) has got in touch to say anyone can attend. You’ll be able to watch it here when it’s broadcast live on Monday. Meanwhile, Saint Jacinda has announced that anyone who tests positive in NZ will be forced to quarantine in a government managed facility
- ‘The statistical quirk that means the coronavirus pandemic may never officially end‘ – The Telegraph‘s Science Editor Sarah Knapton flags up something I’ve often drawn attention to on this site: false positives will mean the virus will never be eliminated
- ‘Australia, How Have You Let it Come to This?‘ – Good piece by Professor Augusto Zimmermann in Quadrant
- ‘Mass testing results: Endless panic and false positives‘ – Another corking post from Daniel Horowitz in the Conservative Review
- ‘Flu and pneumonia killed five times more than Covid last month‘ – According to the latest ONS figures, there were 193 deaths reported in the week ending July 31st that had coronavirus mentioned on the death certificate and 928 people who died of flu or pneumonia in the same period
- ‘Partygoers put Oldham at risk of further curbs‘ – More needless misery is in store for the residents of Greater Manchester
- ‘A Tale of Two Tyrannies: Psychiatry and the public health response to coronavirus‘ – Interesting blog post by Gary Sidley, a retired NHS psychologist
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Two today: “Failed Exams” by Laxcity and “Ventilator Blues” by the Rolling Stones
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A couple of months ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have re-opened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have opened near you.
Now that non-essential shops have re-opened – or most of them, anyway – we’re now focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. As of July 4th, many of them have re-opened too, but not all (and some of them are at risk of having to close again). Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet – particularly if they’re not insisting on face masks! Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums that are now open, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of publicity. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
I’ve created a permanent slot down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (now showing it will arrive between Sept 26th to Oct 6th). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card that looks like as if it’s been issued by the NHS for just £2.79 from Etsy here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face nappies in shops here (now over 28,000).
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
Meanwhile, probably not a good idea to wear unusual face coverings as an expression of your resistance to mask fascism. The Standard reports that the tech millionaire John McAffee was arrested in Norway for wearing a thong on his face.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. If you feel like donating, however small the sum, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here.
And Finally…
In my Spectator column this week, I’ve written about why I started “Love in a Covid Climate”.
It all began in April when I started a blog called Lockdown Sceptics. I wanted to create a clubhouse for that small band of dissenters who think that locking down the entire population, the healthy as well as the sick, is a violation of our civil liberties, particularly when our scientific understanding of how the virus is transmitted is so incomplete. It quickly started getting a lot of traffic, suggesting we aren’t such a tiny minority after all. On an average day, the site gets 25,000 visitors and to date it’s had more than 2.5 million page views.
The idea is that if you’re a Covid realist you don’t want to go out with a hysteric who frets about a ‘second wave’
Last week I got an email from one of my regular correspondents saying he was newly divorced and thinking of signing up with a dating agency. ‘It made me realise that a key criterion for meeting someone is that they absolutely must be a lockdown sceptic,’ he wrote. ‘I genuinely think that if I can find a girl as sceptical as me, she must therefore be marriage material. That’s how important (and sadly divisive) this issue has now become. I could never date (let alone build a relationship with) a lockdown zealot.’That’s when the lightbulb appeared above my head. Why not start a dating site myself? My tech-savvy collaborator, Ian Rons, had already created some discussion forums on the website, so all he needed to do was add a new page where users could post their lonely hearts messages. We decided to call it ‘Love in a Covid climate’.
Worth reading in full.
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Packham is a dangerous BBC mouthpiece who is extremely ill-educated in matters of climate and certainly wholly incapable of discussing the subject in a rational and scientific manner. His ability to link “climate change” to birds in the garden is nothing but 21st century voodoo with him as the lead shaman. The miserable specimen that he is he referred to this site as The Daily Septic which neatly sums up the heights of childishness that he aspires to and indeed has attained.
Packham is a virus on the planet although I am not sure he is even as infectious as that laughable con that was the C1984. Hopefully he is up to date with his jabs and is fully boosted.
He is known to be autistic, which is a neurological problem, and yes, there is a degree of opportunism about that on both sides of the coin. Just doing what a sick man tells you what to do might not be wise.
Packham claims to be an autist because that’s a current fashion. But autist making a career as TV star is a contradictio in adiecto, more so for this kind of TV star. After watching the clip, it became pretty clear that he’s an aggressive pathological dickhead who’s extremely self-confident in his dealings with other people. That pretty much makes him an anti-autist. Could be a borderline guy. This would fit the behaviour.
Exactly
What evidence is there, other than his word, to prove that Packham is autistic. It’s very fashionable to self declare, is he trans too?
Not wearing a shirt like that!!!
I think he gets his t-shirts from the local clothes bank!
Send him to Siberia in winter without clothing, fuel, food or shelter. See if he still feels there’s a climate emergency.
Or as we remember in that old pop song about Star Trek “it’s worse than that he’s dead Jim”——–What is particularly dangerous about the BBC and the likes of this buffoon Packham is that apparently about 70 % of people are getting their news from the BBC. So it is even worse than the fact that Packham is a “dangerous BBC mouthpiece”
If the BBC keeps confirming ‘the truth’ about the Climate Problem, and banning any contradictory views, and the Government keep introducing laws to deal with it, how can anyone with or without a PhD (in anything
) have anything credible to say that contradicts the agenda, let alone appear on TV to present their case?
Yes, for example, I know the poor performance of windfarm generated Electricity can be explained with A’ level Physics (1971) course material, but it is apparent that few have attained that level of understanding, let alone any at the BBC. Or are they scared to tell the Truth.
And this deficiency must be widespread, across the West, otherwise we wouldn’t be in the predicament that we are in.
A cynic might observe that the recent flooding in Dubai had something to do with the underlying design of certain things, such as not investing in adequate drainage. Might have looked good financially, but they failed to consider the real world risk and, err, take out insurance, in effect.
Re. Packham, it is well known that he is abnormal health wise, being somewhat down the scale on the autism spectrum. Must have an effect on his output, and the efficacy of it all.
These days a declaration of autism is a bit like a declaration of ADHD and is grossly abused by many “sufferers.” I do not wish to insult genuinely autistic people but with people like Packham I believe it should be taken with a large pinch of salt. He is considered well enough to host BBC propoganda programmes and is doubtless paid stupid money for doing so, I therefore am entitled to call out his lies and nonsense.
That part of the World has wadis, which are deep, wide, usually dry, water courses in the sand, formed over time by sudden, torrential rain.
It is generally recommended not to camp or walk along wadis which can suddenly become flooded, raging torrents of water.
Whilst heavy rainfall is not common, it obviously does happen from time to time, enough to have made wadis permanent features of the desert landscape.
Dubai – needs to invest in storm drains.
It’s a weird city, seen from above. Some years ago, I went to and from Karachi via Dubai, just to change planes there, so had a look at it from the air.
And maybe do a lot less cloud seeding!
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/04/17/uae-denies-cloud-seeding-took-place-before-severe-dubai-floods.html
Having catogorily stated that it wasn’t caused by cloud seeding we now know what the cause was, cloud seeding!
Neil Ferguson is not a Mathematician.
Correct but he identifies as one.
That’s all right then, isn’t?
Packham is such a nasty ignorant Pratt. Proud to contribute to this publication.
Blimey Mr Sutton, you are me! My own graduate research paper was called “Some aspects of the Infrared Dissociation Spectrum of the H3+ Molecule Ion”, and I spent most of the time getting holes burnt in me with the laser, or writing a shonky Monte Carlo simulation about as reliable as Prof Fergusson’s model.
Now for something you already know:
Packham is a whey faced ninny and well known criminal. He encourages law breaking ‘eco-activists’.
‘Encouraging or assisting a crime is itself a crime in English law, by virtue of the Serious Crime Act 2007. It is one of the inchoate offences of English law.’
If he had his way, he would destroy the entire ground nesting bird population of Great Britain.
Packham and his ilk are already responsible for the almost complete destruction of upland ground nesting birds in Wales and on Exmoor, Dartmoor during my lifetime.
How are they responsible? They are responsible through their lobbying for the Hunting Act and the protection of various very common corvids, raptors and mustelids.
Britain has well over 250,000 birds of prey, well over 350,000 foxes and over 500,000 badgers.
Packham also makes a great deal of noise about a perceived shortage of hen harriers. Hen harriers are upland ground nesting birds!
An excellent study using cameras showed that the main predator of hen harriers are…..foxes!
https://robyorke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Skye-harrier-nest-predation-report.pdf
Well, stuff my old boots, the man is not just a criminal but a dim and narcissistic nincompoop…..
But you already knew that!
Great comment and a different aspect that we often forget. —–Apparently the Red Kite in Germany has been virtually wiped out because of the 40,000 wind turbines in a country where most of Europe’s Red Kites live and breed.
About 12 000 years ago Britain was covered with an ice sheet, freezing cold, and not an island but connected to Europe by a land bridge because sea levels were 40metre lower than today.
Now Britain is not covered in ice, is reasonably warm is an island due to 12 000 years slow, incremental non-linear natural process of warming caused by multiple factors, nothing to do with Mankind.
It is not logical to image that process stopped just because we started burning fossil fuels. It is not ‘science’ to imagine the colossal natural process that warmed up the climate system of the planet, can be relegated to a bit part by Mankind’s activity or stopped.
By natural process that warming will continue for thousands more years, moving the climate system to a tropical condition over most of the surface – as has happened repeatedly in the past, before reversing back to an ice age. Nothing Mankind does or doesn’t do can stop that.
Facts: the actual rate of any temperature change cannot be observed (this is admitted by the so-called scientists), and therefore cannot be measured or compared. Climate cannot be observed or measured so cannot be compared.
”Scientists” have contrived the ‘Global Mean Temperature Anomaly’ cobbled together from average temperatures from only a small area of the Earth’s surface, manipulated with mathematical formulæ to produce numbers – not temperatures – accurate to two decimal places but with a margin of error wide enough for the safe passage of a coach and horses, which are purported to demonstrate ‘global warming’.
It is all fiction.
Yes exactly, and it is impossible for all the government funded data adjusters to not know any of the points you just made. But when there is this symbiotic relationship between government and science and who pays the piper calls the tune then facts are conveniently put to one side.
I have stated many many times on this platform and others that computer models are not science. Putting assumptions, speculations and guesses where many of the parameters in your model are either poorly understood or totally unknown is just a computer game. It is NOT science. Even the most basic parameter in the climate model ECS (Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity) which determines what effect increasing CO2 levels will have on temperatures is UNKNOWN. It is just guessed at, and all of the models just assume the correct number for ECS is high. Is it any wonder then that all of the climate models have so far been WRONG. I recall the words of a lead author at the IPCC many years ago (von Storch) who was honest enough to admit. “In 5 years time we will have to realise that there must be something seriously wrong with our models as a 20 year pause in global warming does not exist in any of the models”. He was referring to the fact that there had just been 15 years of virtually no statistical warming since 1998. —–Now the main problem we have with this issue that is really politics masquerading as science is that our mainstream News programs are pushing a particular narrative that “science” knows exactly what is happening with climate change and they also know what the solution is. The worst offender is ofcourse the BBC, who refuse to even contemplate that anything other than the IPCC version of reality can possibly be true.. ——This is therefore not NEWS. It is activism and we are paying the license fee to fund our own brainwashing.
Close connections to the oil industry obviously means Own cars which aren’t electric.
But that’s really completely besides the point. The oil industry may well publish something that’s actually right. This would need to be determined for each individual case.
So this is the eminent scientist who got a degree in zoology and couldn’t hack it on a PhD course and became a cameraman’s assistant.
Chris Packham is such a self-righteous, narcissistic, pompous pillock I struggle to believe anyone takes him seriously.
We couldn’t be too much poorer, than Packham and these morons try to make us.
“It’s working backwards from an event and showing that it can happen under some scenario.”
Haha! This happens or used to (I can’t believe things have changed and if they have it’s probably got worse) all the time in business. “What answer do you want?” “Okay we”ll sort the figures to agree with the decision you want to make!”
Job done!!
“track record of presenting demented predictions”
Will keep me chortling for the day…
If the climate computer attribution models actually worked they would be able to predict weather/climate events before they occurred, not after.