15,841 Cases Added to Sunday’s Daily Total Due to Technical Glitch
Even hard core sceptics might have experienced a tremor of doubt yesterday on seeing the daily total of new cases: 22,961. Is Witless and Unbalanced’s graph of doom going to turn out to be accurate? Er, no. The reason Sunday’s figure were so high is because 15,841 additional cases were added to the “daily” total, which, without them, would have been 7,120, which is almost exactly what they were seven days ago on September 29th (7,143).
So where did these extra 15,841 cases come from? Apparently, they are positives spread out over a seven-day period between September 25th and October 2nd but which were omitted from the daily totals due to a technical glitch. The Guardian has more.
Boris Johnson said earlier on Sunday that there was “a failure in the counting system which has now been rectified”. He told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show it was a “computing issue” and all those who had a positive test had been notified.
While PHE said the technical issue did not affect people getting their test results, Test and Trace and PHE joint medical advisor Susan Hopkins, has said it resulted in a delay in cases being passed into the contact tracing system.
“All outstanding cases were immediately transferred to the contact tracing system by 1am on 3 October and a thorough public health risk assessment was undertaken to ensure outstanding cases were prioritised for contact tracing effectively.”
Michael Brodie, the interim chief executive at Public Health England, said the “technical issue” was identified overnight on Friday 2 October in the data load process that transfers COVID-19 positive lab results into reporting dashboards.
“After rapid investigation, we have identified that 15,841 cases between September 25th and October 2nd were not included in the reported daily COVID-19 cases. The majority of these cases occurred in most recent days. Every one of these cases received their Covid-19 test result as normal and all those who tested positive were advised to self-isolate. NHS Test and Trace and PHE have worked to quickly resolve the issue and transferred all outstanding cases immediately into the NHS Test and Trace contact tracing system.”
Just when you think you this Government’s handling of the crisis could not get any worse, Matt Hancock says, “Hold my beer.”
Stop Press: Robert Peston in the Spectator this morning has more on the cock-up:
The reason for the confidence-destroying lag was a glitch in two of Public Health England’s ‘legacy’ computer systems, which meant that data was not being transmitted properly. Or at least that is what a senior official tells me. The glitch has apparently now been fixed. But confusion has been sown and damage done.
Stop Reality: Lord Bethell, a Health Minister, has told the Conservative Party Conference that Britain will look back on the Government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis “with pride” and compared it to the 2012 London Olympics.
“Inhumane, degrading, inexplicable” – Amnesty International’s Verdict on Government’s Care Homes Policy
The Mail on Sunday ran a story yesterday about an Amnesty International report on the disastrous impact of the UK Government’s management of the coronavirus crisis on care homes. It could not be more damning.
It is an excoriating verdict that will, undoubtedly, give voice to the rage and anguish of thousands of families: the Government’s pandemic policies violated the fundamental human rights of vulnerable older people in care, a major report has concluded.
“Inexplicable” decisions were made that were “heedless at best”.
The measures exposed elderly residents to the virus and then, crucially, blocked them from receiving life-saving medical care. And ultimately this led to tens of thousands of deaths, according to the Amnesty International analysis, shared exclusively with the Mail on Sunday, ahead of publication.
The report will show, starkly, that Ministers “knew from the outset” that COVID-19 posed an exceptional danger to the 400,000 residents of UK care homes, many of whom are frail and live with multiple health conditions. But while claiming time and again that the need to protect them was at the very heart of policy, what actually happened was quite the opposite.
Homes were “overwhelmed” by infections and older people were subjected to “inhuman and degrading” treatment. The review paints the Government as “directly responsible” and lays bare a litany of failures and sinister edicts that resulted in tragedy.
The piece is worth reading in full.
One of the most interesting details in the report is that of the roughly 28,186 excess deaths recorded in care homes from March 2nd to June 12th, 18,562 were attributed to COVID-19, while the remaining 9,624 made no mention of “novel coronavirus” on the death certificate. Amnesty International says some of these deaths will have been due to undiagnosed Covid, but others will have been an indirect result of the Government’s attempts to “protect the NHS”.
The exact causes have not been revealed – yet figures show vastly fewer patients being treated for heart attacks, cancer, strokes and diabetes since the pandemic began. Dementia deaths – unrelated to Covid – have also surged by more than 50%.
Could this be ‘collateral damage’ of the decision to divert all resources and attention to tackling the virus?
As this newspaper has reported over the past five weeks, while pandemic restrictions eased across the UK, care homes remained in lockdown – barring families from being with their loved ones. It means many residents have been effectively isolated for almost eight months now. Hundreds of families have written to us, almost all telling harrowing tales of watching a husband, wife or parent slowly waste away and “give up” – starved of any human contact.
Amnesty International has had similar reports – and recognises the devastating impact on health of prolonged isolation, which has been well documented in medical literature. They attempted to collaborate with the Government, NHS England and Public Health England on their report, requesting information that has, thus far, remained hidden.
This includes details about how and why decisions were made to restrict care home residents’ access to NHS services during the pandemic and implement blanket “do not resuscitate” orders.
Importantly, they also asked for data in order to compare the death rates of older people in hospital with those in care homes.
This would give clearer pictures as to how many – had they been allowed treatment – might have survived. But at time of going to press, the official bodies had failed to provide any of this.
Amnesty concludes by calling for an independent public inquiry to begin ASAP, with legal powers to compel officials to produce documents and records that, to date, they’ve kept secret. Ministers, including Matt Hancock, would also be summoned to give evidence under oath and forced to justify their actions.
Excellent suggestion. You can read a summary of Amnesty’s report here and the full version here.
Dishy Rishi May Be Our Best Hope
Rishi Sunak has given an interview to Harry Cole and Matt Dathan in the Sun, confirming his reputation as the most sceptical member of the Cabinet when it comes to the lockdown.
[T]he Chancellor warned his boss, friend and neighbour he was not a robot and he would not be silenced in the fight against future economy-crippling lockdowns.
He said that the response to the virus must be viewed in the round and not merely on case numbers.
And he warned that a further lockdown would cripple not just the economy but society, too.
Cementing his position as the leading hawk in the Cabinet against tougher clampdowns, Mr Sunak pleaded for ministers to strive for a return to normality in the face of the virus.
And with Mr Johnson warning of a “bumpy road ahead” through to the New Year, Mr Sunak sounded caution at extreme measures for the sake of the long-term future of the country.
He continued: “Lockdowns obviously have a very strong economic impact, but they have an impact on many other things.
“We have to look at this all in the round and beating coronavirus is important and minimising the harm that it causes is important.
“But there are other things that are important. Kids not being in school for months… if university students’ learning is impacted that’s not a good thing.
“People not showing up for medical appointments because they’re worried is not a good thing.
“And obviously the economic impact on people’s jobs and incomes and security is not a good thing.
“Having a difficult economy has an impact on both our ability to fund public services like the NHS but also on individual people’s long-term health outcomes.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Let’s hope Rishi’s backbone doesn’t weaken as Government documents leaked to the Guardian reveal that a new three-tier lockdown system is being planned for England, paving the way for harsher restrictions including the closure of pubs and a ban on all social contact outside of household groups.
Called the “COVID-19 Proposed Social Distancing Framework” and dated September 30th, it has not yet been signed off by No 10 and measures could still be watered down.
Alert level 3 – the most serious – contains tougher measures than any seen so far in local lockdowns since the start of the pandemic. They include:
– Closure of hospitality and leisure businesses.
– No social contact outside your household in any setting.
– Restrictions on overnight stays away from home.
– No organised non-professional sports permitted or other communal hobby groups and activities, such as social clubs in community centres.
– Places of worship can remain open.
– Schools are not mentioned in the draft. A government source said this was because Boris Johnson had made clear that classroom closures would be a last resort and the reopening of schools was considered within Whitehall to have been a relative success.Any attempts to impose more stringent measures are expected to provoke renewed anger among Conservative backbenchers, who are likely to demand a vote in parliament should they come into force.
Worth reading in full.
Prof Ferguson Even More Alarmist Than I Thought
A reader has written to clarify some things about Professor Neil Ferguson’s previous barmy predictions. It seems I understated his alarmism.
You wrote:
“Worth reminding people again that Professor Ferguson’s estimates of the impact of previous viral outbreaks have been almost comically inaccurate. In 2001, he predicted that foot and mouth disease could kill up to 50,000 people. It ended up killing less than 200. In 2005, he told the Guardian that up to 200 million people could die from bird flu. The final death toll from avian flu strain A/H5N1 was 440. And in 2009, a Government estimate based on one of Ferguson’s models estimated the likely death toll from swine flu at 65,000. In fact, it was 457.”
Correction:
In 2001, Ferguson was involved in “modelling” for Foot and Mouth disease. Because of that some extra seven million sheep and cattle were slaughtered that needn’t have been.
In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would die from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, better known as “mad cow disease”, increasing to 150,000 if the epidemic expanded to include sheep. The reality is: “Since 1990, 178 people in the United Kingdom have died from vCJD, according to the National CJD Research & Surveillance Unit at the University of Edinburgh.” (2017)
In 2005, Ferguson claimed that up to 200 million people would be killed by bird-flu or H5N1. By early 2006, the WHO had only linked 78 deaths to the virus, out of 147 reported cases.
In 2009, Ferguson and his team at Imperial College advised the Government that swine flu or H1N1 would probably kill 65,000 people in the UK. In the end, swine flu claimed the lives of 457 people in the UK.
In 2020… well, the rest is hysteria.
If Lockdowns, Masks and Social Distancing Work, Why Haven’t Deaths From Flu and Pneumonia Declined?
A reader took a screen grab of the above ONS chart in the most recent episode of Andrew Neil’s show on Spectator TV comparing deaths from flu and pneumonia in 2020 with the five-year average. They were fractionally below at the beginning of the year and they’re fractionally below now, but have tracked the five-year average pretty consistently since January 1st. This begs the question: if the Government’s non-pharmaceutical interventions did little to stop transmission of flu and pneumonia, why should we think they’ve done anything to prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2?
The same point is illustrated by this graph, taken from a September 29th post on the Centre For Evidence-Based Medicine’s blog. It shows respiratory disease deaths continuing to trend under the previous 10 years.
Stop Press: A reader has calculated the daily hospital discharges of Covid patients and compiled a chart to illustrate this. There’s a caveat:
It’s not perfect, I had to take the deaths data from NHS England as the coronavirus.data.gov.uk deaths include deaths outside hospitals, and even then the results jumped around a bit – hence I’ve only plotted the 7-day averages on the graph, to smooth this out a bit.
But as I often see people saying why don’t the govt publish the recoveries figures, this might be the next best thing. Especially as on every single day I have data for, the average discharges figure has always been above the average deaths figure – in the current “second wave” you’re 6x as likely to be discharged as you are to die in hospital!
Lockdowns Had Little Effect on COVID-19 Spread in US States
There’s an interesting, if unsurprising, piece of statistical analysis in the National Review that concludes the “shut downs” in US states had no effect on transmission of the virus. Here’s the kernel of the argument.
If lockdowns really altered the course of this pandemic, then coronavirus case counts should have clearly dropped whenever and wherever lockdowns took place. The effect should have been obvious, though with a time lag. It takes time for new coronavirus infections to be officially counted, so we would expect the numbers to plummet as soon as the waiting time was over.
How long? New infections should drop on day one and be noticed about ten or eleven days from the beginning of the lockdown. By day six, the number of people with first symptoms of infection should plummet (six days is the average time for symptoms to appear). By day nine or ten, far fewer people would be heading to doctors with worsening symptoms. If COVID-19 tests were performed right away, we would expect the positives to drop clearly on day ten or eleven (assuming quick turnarounds on tests).
To judge from the evidence, the answer is clear: Mandated lockdowns had little effect on the spread of the coronavirus. The charts below show the daily case curves for the United States as a whole and for thirteen U.S. states. As in almost every country, we consistently see a steep climb as the virus spreads, followed by a transition (marked by the gray circles) to a flatter curve. At some point, the curves always slope downward, though this wasn’t obvious for all states until the summer.
The lockdowns can’t be the cause of these transitions. In the first place, the transition happened even in places without lockdown orders (see Iowa and Arkansas). And where there were lockdowns, the transitions tended to occur well before the lockdowns could have had any serious effect. The only possible exceptions are California, which on March 19 became the first state to officially lock down, and Connecticut, which followed four days later.
Even in these places, though, the downward transitions probably started before the lockdowns could have altered the curves. The reason is that a one-day turnaround for COVID-19 test results probably wasn’t met in either state. On March 30, the Los Angeles Times reported the turnaround time to be eight days. That would make the delay from infection to confirmation not the 10 we assumed, but more like 17 days (6 for symptoms to appear, 3 for them to develop, and 8 for test processing). In early April, the Hartford Courant reported similar problems with delayed test results in Connecticut.
What’s more, there’s no decisive drop on the dates when lockdowns should have changed the course of the curves. Instead, the curves gradually bend downward for reasons that predate the lockdowns, with no clear changes ten days later.
Lockdown partisans might say that the curves would have been higher after the ten-day mark without the lockdown. While we can’t redo history to prove them wrong, the point is that the sudden and dramatic changes we should see if they were right aren’t there. If we showed people these curves without any markings, they would not be able to discern when or even if lockdowns went into effect.
The conclusion:
The evidence suggests, then, that the sweeping, mandated lockdowns that followed voluntary responses exacted a great cost, with little effect on transmission.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The WHO has just released data showing the last three pandemics were worse than the present one. Jim Hoft has the full story in the Gateway Pundit. Bottom line: The WHO estimates that 750,000,000 people have had the coronavirus. With one million global deaths, that puts the mortality rate at 0.13%, the same as seasonal flu.
Downing Street Cancels Halloween
Downing Street has threatened to fine parents of trick-or-treating children if they gather in groups of more than six. The Evening Standard has more.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister told a briefing of Westminster journalists that the rule of six was “clear” and that it applied to children as well as adults.
He also said they were asking children not to meet in groups of six or more when trick or treating. It means parents face fines of up to £200 if their children are caught in large groups going door-to-door on Halloween.
However, millions of people across the UK are already under – or coming under – tighter lockdown rules including bans on different households mixing.
Asked who would be fined if groups of more than six children met in the street, he said: “We’ve set out the enforcement around the restrictions. We set that out clearly.
“We are asking the public to abide by the rule of six and it’s a matter for the police to enforce the rules.
“It’s correct, parents will be fined if children meet in more than groups of six children.”
Once again, Boris sounds like he’s reading from a script written by his enemies. What happened to the fun-loving libertarian Tory I used to know? As Julie Burchill writes in the Telegraph: “It’s like Falstaff tried to become Henry V and ended up as Hamlet, bumbling about on the battlements, trying to keep everybody happy and thus getting on the wick of one and all.”
Round-Up
- “It’s Grim Up North” – Mine and James Delingpole’s latest London Calling podcast
- “Following the evidence for hospital admissions” – Piece for the Spectator by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson putting rising hospital admissions into context
- “NPHET recommends Level 5 restrictions for entire country” – Ireland’s National Health Public Emergency Team has recommended that “Level 5” restrictions are imposed for four weeks, the most severe level there is, following 364 more cases yesterday (and no new deaths)
- “Dr Martin Feeley and Professor Samuel McConkey in studio” – Watch two Irish public health experts debate the effectiveness of the lockdown and further restrictions
- “More than 1,000 UK pubs plead for government help after dire Friday trading following 10pm curfew” – More than 1,000 UK pubs have signed an open letter to Rishi Sunak pleading for a rethink of the 10pm curfew
- “Planet Normal” – In the latest Telegraph podcast, Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan talk to a whistleblowing doctor about the revolving door between NHS executives and influential consulting and outsourcing firms who are doing very well out of the ‘crisis’
- “Military will help distribute Covid-19 vaccine, says Hancock” – Let’s hope the word “distribute” in that headline isn’t a euphemism
- “URGENT UPDATE: Societal Damage from Bad Science, not the Virus? Why are they doing this?” – Latest YouTube video by Ivor Cummins
- “Beat Covid Without a Vaccine” – The Wall St Journal says home testing and Covid passports could contain any further outbreaks
- “Corona False Alarm?” – Review of the new book by Dr Karina Reiss and Dr Sucharit Bakdi. You can order it on Kindle here
- “G-A-Y nightclub owner launches legal challenge against 10pm COVID-19 curfew” – Best of luck to him
- “Spectator Out Loud: Douglas Murray, Sam Leith, Melissa Kite and Toby Young” – Listen to me and others reading out our latest Spectator pieces
- “We can’t work from home forever” – Good piece by Kevin McCullagh in Spiked. Without face-to-face interactions, productivity, innovation and workplace culture will wither away
- “How To “Talk Covid” and the End of the Pandemic?” – Omar S. Khan’s latest blog post
- “Next year should spell new leader for the Tories” – Clare Foges in the Times says that every PM runs out of steam and for Boris that moment has almost arrived
- “Lockdown sceptic Richard Madeley: Covid-19 press conferences are ‘naked media manipulation’” – Another good rant from Richard Madeley on Kevin O’Sullivan’s show on TalkRADIO yesterday
- “COVID-19 emergency measures and the impending authoritarian pandemic” – Academic paper warning that the authoritarian measures introduced to control the spread of the virus could last for a long time
- “This BBC interview showed just how much Boris Johnson has changed” – Michael Deacon, the Telegraph‘s sketch writer, is unconvinced by Boris’s claim to be firing on all cylinders on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday
- “The greatest power we have is to refuse to vote for people who insult us – so save democracy and vote for my None Of The Below Party” – Peter Hitchens’s column in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday
- “Life as a Uni fresher in lockdown – it’s like living in ‘UK’s most expensive prison’” – Anonymous student writes in the Telegraph
- “A Saturday night out in Newcastle” – Encouraging signs of a rebellion brewing in the North East
- “Undetected breast cancer warning for thousands of women” – According to BBC News, 30,000 women missed out on mammograms between March and July
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. 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.
Update: Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics. The answer used to be to first click on “Latest News”, then click on the links that came up beside the headline of each story. But we’ve changed that so the link now comes up beside the headline whether you’ve clicked on “Latest News” or you’re just on the Lockdown Sceptics home page. Please do share the stories with your friends and on social media.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook – and pay tribute to those who are doing their best to expose the woke cult as a barmy, authoritarian, hard Left movement with its roots in Marxism.
Yesterday brought news of an unlikely ally in this fight – actor Rupert Everett. He launched into a tirade against the wokesters at the Cheltenham Literary Festival yesterday, comparing them to the Stasi. The Mail has more.
Everett, 61, who found fame playing a gay public school pupil in the 1984 drama Another Country, said: “We’re in such a weird new world, a kind of Stasi it feels like to me, and if you don’t reflect exactly the right attitude, you risk everything just being destroyed for you by this judgmental, sanctimonious, intransigent, intractable, invisible cauldron of hags around in the virtual world.”
A useful reminder that not all luvvies have been captured by the cult. Could Everett be a potential recruit for Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party?
Stop Press: Douglas Murray urges us to fight back against Critical Race Theory in his latest Telegraph column.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop 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 (takes a while to arrive). 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 with lanyard for just £1.99 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it 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.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s a round-up of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of mask (threadbare at best).
Stop Press: A reader has written to us praising her “amazing” grandson.
My amazing almost-12 year-old grandson is the only child who will not wear a mask at his new primary school, pleading exemption for his mild asthma! Hats off to him for his courage and conviction and I’m at least grateful that the school are allowing him to be exempt – although in the first two weeks of term they had four assemblies on the importance of mask-wearing!
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email [email protected] or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
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. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here.
And Finally…
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the geniuses behind South Park, have produced a “Pandemic Special” that was broadcast last week. Sixty minutes of eviscerating cynicism about the massive over-reaction to the virus, from the government on down. You can watch the trailer here and Eric Cartman’s social distancing song here. No news at present about how to watch it in the UK.
Discussion
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MORON NATION PART DEUX
So we need another lockdown to stop hospitals running out of beds (save the nhs yet again). And again create a covid only service. And again cancel other critical care services. And again have excess deaths at home. And again have excess deaths in care homes. And again increase mental health
problems. And again increase the unemployment and national debt. And again create a “solution” that is worse than the problem.
Errrrrrrr..did we not save the nhs first time round?…but the extra beds (nightingale hospitals) where never used. Then we got rid of
some of the extra beds, but some do remain. So why not use them and shield the most vulnerable if they so desire!?
THIS NATION IS RUN BY FUCKWITS EXTRAORDINAIRE!
Keep clapping.
2338 Public Health officials and 2561 medical practitioners have now signed the Great Barrington declaration. It is gaining some momentum. If the number of signatories becomes large enough maybe someone will print it out and bash Boris and chums over the head with it.
Latest hospital admissions by region & total England, data release 6th Oct.
Really the interesting one here is London.
Is it ethnic minorities in the North West driving it there? Well, London has a higher proportion.
Is it over-crowded housing in North West driving it? Well, London is more over-crowded.
Is it obesity in the North West driving it? Well, London is just as obese.
……… or could it be that London essentially reached herd immunity in the spring & the North West didn’t? Keep the care homes secure, stop nosocomial infections in both & it all stays under control. Nothing to see here, move on.
Time for some light entertainment
#HANCOCKS POSTULATES #NO1 THE ONANIST APPROACH #CONTRICK19
https://www.bitchute.com/video/rpLhowNuwT0f/
Is there any element of double counting in the ‘cases’? I can imagine some people wanting repeat tests to see if they still have an infection. Thus it is the same person being positive twice and not a ‘new’ case?
Seems like Laurence Fox had a twitter meltdown calling some people things you shouldn’t…had to delete a load of tweets. Probably the end of the Reclaim Party, I expect. Shame. Operating outside the PC circle of acceptability is extremely difficult.
Twitter meltdown not important probably but I gather some hypocritical scumbag thought it was just fine to call Fox a “racist” but is going to sue him for slinging insults back. Lawsuits can be a real problem for dissenters in modern Britain, because the judges tend to be woke types who back the hypocrites almost every time.
Quite. One law for them, another for the rest of us. But it showed a sad lack of judgment on Fox’s part that he should risk his nascent party on a few tweets.
From US Minister Azar
“In the conversation with Martin Kulldorff, PhD (Harvard), Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD (Stanford), and Sunetra Gupta, PhD (Oxford), we heard strong reinforcement of the Trump Administration’s strategy of aggressively protecting the vulnerable while opening schools and the workplace.”
Funny.Gupta hardly had an opportunity to speak to Boris J by phone but can fly to Washington and get in touch with the top echelon of US C-19 response!
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.28.20203463v1
Efficacy of Famotidine for COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
“Results: Five studies were eligible for inclusion: all were retrospective cohort or case series. Low quality evidence suggests a likely clinical benefit for the use of famotidine in decreasing mortality in hospitalized patients with moderate to severe COVID-19. A meta-analysis of two cohort studies showed a statistically significant decrease in the composite outcome for death and intubation with famotidine (HR 0.44, 95% CI 0.27 to 0.73). Conclusion: Further evidence from RCTs is required for famotidine to treat COVID 19.”
Famotidin (Pepcid) is a dirt cheap drug sold over the counter in some countries.Maybe Trump’s doctors saw this newly published article.
Also many surprised that Trump doctors prescribed Melatonin(an antinflammatory) not much talked about but perhpas guided by this articlefrom Texas and Beijng
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024320520303313#!
So 19 alleged Covid deaths in the last 24 hours…at that rate it will take over six years to double the current death total. I’ve watched a lot of mainstream TV news tonight. ..haven’t heard anyone mention how staggeringly low that figure is.
No to mention the fact that even the CDC estimate just 6% of deaths are of Covid, as opposed to with Covid. So that’s effectively 1 death in the whole country directly attributable to Covid in the last 24 hours.
Important new article in abstract
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/143380
Recent endemic coronavirus infection is associated with less severe COVID-19
”Importantly, the patients with a previously detected eCoV had less severe coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) illness. Our observations suggest that pre-existing immune responses against endemic human coronaviruses can mitigate disease manifestations from SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
Or to put it another way, the virus is running out of victims.
By the way, this supports the idea that the virus is indeed highly infectious. If it wasn’t it wouldn’t have been able to find all those highly vulnerable victims first time round (and we would consequently be seeing a much higher death rate now, as opposed to the extremely low death rate we have in reality). I suspect as well millions of us are having repeat infections but it’s likely each time the body is better able to defend itself.
Umm, do we know if the body is better able to defend itself in a repeat infection? Or might it be more like dengue fever, which can be worse second time round?
I hope all the nurses who participated in Tik Tok dancing videos are given the highest vaccination priority of all. No further retribution required.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/10/05/boris-johnsons-crumbling-regime-is-caught-in-a-death-spiral/
Delingpole sums it up: ‘O brave new world…..’
Harsh but fair assessment by Delingpole,imo.
In the latest London Calling (linked above), Delingpole encouragingly says:
“I heard the other day that 80% of the Parliamentary party, of the Conservatives, are agin what the government is doing, the coronavirus insanity. OK, well, in that case, where is the rebellion?”
This is just after pointing out the idiocy of the “Conservative” Party (principally Sayyid Javid) devising draconian internet speech control laws. This seems likely to be the usual stupidity of “Conservatives” drawing up authoritarian rules that they think will please the authoritarian wing of their party, seemingly too stupid to understand that, just like all the other times, these will be captured by the pc leftists who infest government and the bureaucracy and will be used to punish, not kiddy porn, drug promotion and terrorist causes, but to protect the usual pc nonsense from criticism, and crack down on any remaining vestiges of traditionalist, conservative and patriotic speech and thought.
80% of Tory MPs against the government yet 330 of them vote for an extension to the Coronavirus Act just doesn’t stack up.
Depends what you mean by “against the government”. I suspect it means they are grumbling about the nonsense, but not prepared to come out in open rebellion yet. That’s not unusual for “Conservative” Party MPs, tbh.
In practice it means the government needs to up its game and chalk up some “wins” pdq, or they are going to get open rebellion, and once that starts it’s downhill all the way.
Yes the most effective opposition to a Tory government, especially one with a large majority, invariably ends up being its own backbenchers.
They can’t all be myopic fools. It must be widely known that Johnson is dead in the water, and cannot survive much longer. Plus they are making a pig’s ear of Brexit which will only pour further fuel on the economic holocaust.
I think a big part of the problem is that they genuinely believe the panic has popular support. Perhaps it does, though I suspect a lot of it is biased Yougov etc polls and activist-stuffed postbags.
Anyway, even though they know the current policy is heading for ever deeper disaster for the country, it makes them reluctant to stick their heads above the parapet.
I would like to think that the letters from members of this fine group might have pricked a few consciences here and there. Enough to start a drunken conversation in their late night bars anyway.
I hope and believe you are correct in that, but I also suspect we are heavily outnumbered by coronapanic zealots and generally fearful types writing to urge their MP to protect them.
We have an ally the zealots do not. The truth. It makes a difference.
I know, its so unsporting when those clever woke leftists will insist on using the law in the way the traditionalist, conservative ‘patriots’, didn’t intend or have the wit to foresee.
Agreed, and Sturgeon to lockdown Scotland again in an act of complete political desperation.
Furious comments in The Sun under the circuit breaker article. If she does do this, I think the timing could be crucial: yet another suspension of normal activities, to last until just 7 days before the furlough ends.
This could finally do for her, as businesses will have lost even more custom during the 2 week ‘circuit breaker’, only to confront the ending of the bail outs from Westminster.
Cue, mass redundancies, which she won’t be able to spin as another SNP triumph.
She must go, for the sake of this increasingly miserable rancorous country.
It is bizarre, but I am hoping Sturgeon does this, and then Johnson follows suit days after. I am certain that this will be their death knell.
You can bet that more positive cases will then be dredged up from nowhere to justify a further two week extension to ensure full lockdown is in place when furlough ends. This I suspect has been the main goal all along as a means to minimise civil unrest, but this time it will backfire.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
·
2h
Thank you Chris Whitty,
@CMO_England, and @JulianWTO_UN, Flag of United Kingdom Ambassador, for your continuous, strong support to global health and @WHO. Together! #EBSpecial
Today England’s Chief Medical Officer welcomed the steps taken so far by the World Health Organization to initiate a review into the international health response to COVID-19.
The UK will do everything it can to support an independent, impartial and comprehensive review.
https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1313219683739471872?s=20
I’m not giving this piece of shit the satisfaction of a click. Writing his own political obituary.
My God, some “top” Scottish lawyers (eg advocate Niall McLuskey) are coming out in defence of civil liberties against the 2 week circuit breaker. Where you been boys?
The Sun is reporting that the NHS in Scotland have been informed that a Scottish “circuit breaker” is to come into force on Friday at 7pm and to last for 2 weeks. Scottish mid-term holiday starts on Friday at 3pm. Pubs, restaurants and hotels to close (except for residential stays at hotels), a travel restriction to apply (5 miles from home or up to 30 miles, to be confirmed). Hairdressers and beauticians to close. Not clear about non essential retail. People to stay at home, presumably we’ll get out for food shopping and exercise. Dentist Leitch says that 14 day circuit breaker will “buy” us 28 days escape from the advance of the dreaded virus. Devi Shrider saying it’s a pointless exercise without a closed (!) border and “mass testing”.
Bring it on. Over to the Scottish people to tell Sturgeon where to get off.
Guess they’d better close the border then. Oh dear.
If only we had a big beautiful wall.
Sturgeon’s Wall. Has a nice ring to it. Will require a slight invasion of England to cut costs by leveraging the work of the Roman Empire.
Draw a line from The Wash to the Bristol channel and build it there.
OY!
We can only hope that’s when the wheels come off. And Johnson always follows sturgeon, so that’s more wheels coming off.
Maybe Sturgeon can go all the way and expel all English super-spreaders. English refugees camps in Carlisle, imagine that.
It’s very silly. But I can’t help but thing that sturgeon is lying in bed and fantasising about it as we speak.
She sleeps in a coffin.
I’m sure she likes being punished behind closed doors/lids.
I heard the wuhan bat was a distant cousin
She’s descended from a pangolin.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
·
14h
It’s well-deserved,
@devisridhar
! You’ve been an incredible voice of science, solutions and solidarity in the #COVID19 response. Thank you for all your incredible work to improve people’s health and lives. Together!
Quote Tweet
Prof. Devi Sridhar
@devisridhar
· 2 Oct
What an honour to be profiled by @TheLancet – Happy Friday everyone Raising handsSun with rays(& Scotland response has little to do with me & more to do with strong local public health teams & clear leadership). twitter.com/EricTopol/stat…
Fucking demon. File under ignore until the trials.
Vomit, vomit, vomit!
Very depressing stuff from UK column today. We need to hear it but boy-oh-boy it’s scary. How do we stop the Johnson juggernaut? Can’t write to my MP any more for he’s such a wet. All he does is regurgitate the government narrative, useless. Birmingham has plans to do mass vaccinations as early as next month. All councils will likely have similar plans says UK Column. I fear before too long people like me i.e. no test, no app. no vaccine will only leave the house to meet their maker! Rather that than live their planned servile style of life. Meantime keep talking, keep thinking, find stuff to enjoy, smile and laugh.
“Birmingham has plans to do mass vaccinations as early as next month.”
I very much doubt that. Which vaccine? As far as I know, other than the dodgy Russian one, none are anywhere near the point where they can be rolled out.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-54375643
The harder and faster the government pushes, the weaker their position becomes.
The UK Column deserve a lot of credit for being on top of this from day one. Many times I have dropped legislation changes into conversations with colleagues to which they have responded: “Don’t be silly, they would never do that”, followed very quickly by excerpts from the government’s own documents provided by Brian Gerrish, Mike Robinson et al.
Doctors at the press conference are taking their masks off to speak, putting masks in pockets and then taking the mask out to put on again.
Poseurs!
Our leaders talk some absolute bollocks about ‘lockdown’, the Wuhan lab flu and most associated issues, but for sheer insanity, these pronouncements from Johnson about wind-generated electricity are in a class of their own.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/05/boris-johnson-to-unveil-plan-to-power-all-uk-homes-with-wind-by-2030
Mr Johnson, what happens when the wind stops blowing for a while?
Ah, but Johnson has it on good authority from Neil Ferguson that wind never stops blowing, his model says so.
He said “It was offshore wind that puffed the sails of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, and propelled this country to commercial greatness.”!
Clever old Boris, Fwaaaah Fwaaaaaah!
Fuck me, that XR wench of his has really warped his mind. There are no feasible replacements for oil and gas without a catastrophic reduction in living standards to pre-Industrial Revolution levels….ah, but that is the plan, so maybe it makes sense after all.
then he will start talking … all that hot air should turn many windmills .
seriously, they have to switch on all the gas and diesel generators that they have to provide and keep on standby for when the sun dont shine and the wind dont blow
My MP voted against extending the ridiculous Coronavirus bill. I was so shocked I had to sit down and have another glass of wine.
What we really need is lots of pictures of those people who have tested positive, putting themselves through really good workouts – in self-isolation of course.
You know – maybe setting a personal best for their deadlift, squat or benchpress.
That’d be hilarious.
Trump should produce a covid workout video for the elderly and post it to the bbc who clearly hate him as per their usual bullshit impartial news on him this evening.
I would pay top dollar for such a video.
I was cycling 15 miles a day when had “it”, I got a bit sweaty.
No we just need them to say: “Trump went to a photoshoot while testing pisitive AND being symptomatic, so I can do whatever I like, especially if I’m asymptomatic”
Is it weird to say this, but as someone who had always been taught to hate Trump I’ve started to almost like him. His american patriotism is hilariously over-the-top, the structure of his phrasing is abysmal, his vocabulary is almost non-existent, and yet he is talking so much more sense than British politicians (Desmond Swayne excepted ofcourse) or any leaders in Europe except those excellent Swedes.
Just as an aside, is anyone else battling against bedwetters on any other forums? I’ve seen some names on here on comments in the DT and maybe a few other places, but there are definitely forums on the web which are veritable rivers of urine flowing out and through pyjamas and winceyette nighties.
Where are the worst offenders? Perhaps we need to organise a campaign of information away from the echo chamber on here? We can do so reasonably but in volume.
I used to, once. But it took so much time and my comments kept getting deletd before many bedwetters were forced to see them. If we’re going to take back the hotbeds of bedwetting we’ll need to work on timing and coordination, so that if our posts in bedwetter locations get dissappeared they’ll have already been widely read beforehand.
I assume everyone is doing a bit. Taking from here and placing there.
I hope so too, but it’s difficult at times. For a start, the odds are stacked given the ofcom guidelines and the sheer volume of panicky bedwetters means most forums are full of people likely to be sympathetic and even supportive of some lockdown scepticism but they don’t seem to want to stick their heads out of the trench.
I was looking at the covid discussion thread on digitalspy.com today and it’s so full of bedwetters it’s quite frankly ridiculous. Many of them post multiple times a day. There was a discussion about mask wearing where one of them opined that there wasn’t a single study that proved mask wearing to be ineffective and then posted 4 links to studies which apparently do show that mask wearing is effective.
2 of the studies were based on computer simulations but the conclusions were hardly compelling, 1 wasn’t based on any study but the fact that other countries were doing it and made the resounding scientific point that no one asked for a randomised control trial to prove sneezing into your elbow was effective whilst the other study was just about people catching covid allegedly from a choir practice in the US… Read more »
Are they bedwetters or trolls?
I spend most of my time calling people on the DM sheep and bedwetters. I know I shouldn’t resort to name calling but it’s hard not to.
I appreciate your service!
Yep – been battling all day with a bedwetter who is getting loads of likes the more she scaremongers. I was beginning to think I had her on the canvas when the newly-found positives caused the graph to move in the Whitty/Vallance direction. Oh, hell.
Forget bedwetters over Covid – look at this! https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1313191562319454210
Sainsbury’s marketing the ‘slave look’ as part of the launch of the DVD for ’12 years a slave’
Cue a meltdown…
Are we entering the Twilight zone?
They don’t like being called eugenicist, child-killer, Nazi cunts.
But that’s what they are.
Approx 1,300 comments at the moment on the bbc website about the possibility of greater scottish restrictions. Approx 8+ to 1 against the current rambling nonsense from sturgeon. So where is the scottish majority supporting all this? Me thinks the closet lockdown sceptics are beginning to speak out. About time. As much as it pains me, let it blossom, let it grow nicola by continuing as is….A critical turning point led by the people is my only remaining hope for this grand madness.
Agreed. It increasingly looks like the only way enough people are going to be shocked into seeing this for what it really is. How twisted has our reality become when the best solution for ending this insanity is….more lockdown.
Now it would just me nice if anyone in parliament would show some dissent. But no we are fast becoming the most left wing virtue signalling Parliament on earth. State spending to save “just one life” is a win win for all involved!
BTW, does anyone think that the computer glitch and such might have been deliberate not accidental. Government trying to play funny with the counting so as to fiddle its way to meeting Witless and Unbalanced’s “not a prediction”.
Has anyone seen the:
Great Barrington Declaration
Sunetra Gupta is onboard with it, as are other top scientists.
Who among us is up for making that the only public health law.rule which we will obey.
It’s that, or an eterntiy of lockdowns.
Does anyone think this is a good slogan to make use of:
Trump is old and obese, yet he recovered fine from covid-19. You will too! Now stop worrying and take back your life.
That wall street journal article has a damn creepy idea. I’d rather have a mandatoy vaccine than be forcibly quarantined at home, have to carry “your papers” and get regularly tested. And trust me, I don’t support mandatory vaccines, pisses of too many people and damages public trust in (what little of) the medical profession (which still has any credibility). The way out of this panicdemic is to stop caring, then have a voluntary vaccine (double safety for the voluntariness being that anyone who gets vaccinated gets no proof of having it, so no-one else can make a demand on anyone to have it) if one ever can be developed. But pervasive tracking, quarantine, forced testing, that is intolerable.
Sky News Papers review(?) Clare Fox as pundit – puts it across that a vaccine is not going to save the day even if one is invented because viruses don’t work like that. Really quite impressed by such a comment. It will be repeated through the night – so long as Trump gets out of hospital quickly.
She also said Wales are talking seriously about making the vaccine mandatory – she went on then to say the idea of a vaccine saviour is not right.
It does seem the vaccine narrative was pushed way too hard last week and is now being steadily rolled back.
Not a clever idea to decide to use unlicensed vaccines, especially when other countries won’t be using the same vaccine until it is licensed. Makes it all too clear that the UK are being used as guinea pigs, which makes it harder for them to make the case for it being mandatory…
I don’t think the “Ambush” and “Triumph” truth drop did the government any favours. It will be interesting to see if the West Midlands does indeed get the vaccine en masse next month.
I was interested to know how a vaccine that has to be stored at -70 degrees can be injected??? (ie the Ambush vaccine)
Drakeford can vaccinate me when I’m dead. Not before.
To save Mr Dee from Covid, it was regrettably necessary to kill Mr Dee.
Hilarious watching all the news channels spitting feathers over Trump. They know he has completely stumped them and their doom laden rhetoric. He will come out swinging now and target all of them. The media, the Democratic state leaders who went for hard lockdown to no beneficial effect, and Biden of course. Interviewed Michael Cohen who was like a raging madman. Sooooo funny to watch them lose their shit as they lose control of the narrative.
Trump has called the bluff of the Covid Cult (and by extension the Democrats) with this. Might just turn out to be the single greatest action of his Presidency.
There is a mumur in The Force isn’t there.
If you mean the man himself then there are definitely some things that are odd.. like some of the reflections on the table where he was signing (blank) pieces of paper..
If, as is rumoured, this is the time when he intends to take down the deep state, then for his own personal safety it would make sense to go under cover for a while…
I mean the spidey sense is saying something more than man leaves hospital has happened. There’s a sense something larger, better, different has happened in this saga.
By contrast boris’s todo was as dull as dish water. Before, during and after.
Even the most hardcore Democrats in the US are beginning to realise now – even with Covid, Trump still did more on the campaign trail this last week than ‘who’s basement is that?’ Biden….
Not that it really matters, of course it’s just empty theatre, but I understand that Trump’s performance in the first debate against Biden was utterly insipid. Even sick Trump should have been able to crucify his demented opponent on every talking point. Perhaps it was all part of the “I’m about to be tested positive” charade. If so, it was an act of political genius which I wholeheartedly support. We forget that this man has played tough and dirty all his life.
Trump Derangement Syndrome in full swing now. Get the popcorn!
Tuesday morning papers… Trump in Long Covid Shocker! You read it here first.
Popcorn could become the next loo roll!
Ssoooop f**king loving it! For now
Lots of his staff ‘testing positive’ – looks like they could have been ‘infected’ deliberately? But this means they can all quarantine for 10 days, which right now is actually advantageous – genius!
He should present data showing the rates of asymptomatic positives in the White House staff. Which I bet is close to 100%.
Yet non of those large numbers of Washington Staff are in hospital.
I am no Trump fan but watching him stick two fingers up at anyone who thinks these measures are justified by this positivetestdemic is glorious.
It is a pleasure listening to the word soup of the filling journalist on sky. Covid hot zone, humilation, superspreading, on and on. So biased and as she continues the more she reveals skys bias.
Banjo Joe must know his campaign is over.
The man’s a very stable genius.