Day: 14 February 2021

The above banner on the GOV.UK site makes two alarming claims about the state of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom: First, that it’s spreading fast, and, secondly, that one in three people who have the virus have no symptoms. Lets take those in order.

Reports come in daily at the moment about the declining rate of infection. According to the latest, from MailOnline:

The UK has recorded another 13,308 coronavirus infections – down 27% on last week.

Daily deaths have also dropped by a quarter to 621 taking the total to 116,908 – although separate figures suggest the number could be much higher…

It marks the third Saturday in a row where deaths have dropped week-on-week. 

To put this into context, here are a couple of good graphs from the COVID-19 data-tracker at the Spectator, taken from the GOV.UK coronavirus dashboard.

What about the R number? These estimates all come from Professor Philip Thomas, University of Bristol, the ONS, the Imperial College REACT study and the UK.GOV coronavirus dashboard and all put the number below 1:

The GOV.UK page on the R number confirms this.

Latest R range for the UK: 0.7 to 0.9

Latest growth rate range for the UK: -5% to -2% per day

An R value between 0.7 and 0.9 means that, on average, every 10 people infected will infect between 7 and 9 other people.

A growth rate of between -5% and -2% means that the number of new infections is shrinking by between 2% and 5% every day.

So still spreading, but perhaps the banner should read “Coronavirus (COVID-19) is slowing down”. It could speed up again, I suppose, but at this particular moment in time it is slowing down.

Leaked NHS data shows that hospitalisations are shrinking at a faster rate than predicted, with hospital admissions and deaths projected to halve over the next month.

The second claim in the banner, that “one in three people who have the virus have no symptoms, so you could be spreading it without knowing it” is debunked on the Probability and Risk blog maintained by Norman Fenton, a maths professor at Queen Mary, and Martin Neil, a computer science professor at Queen Mary, both contributors to Lockdown Sceptics.

Based on data provided by the UK Government, the Worldometers website estimates the number of active cases on any given day. In the week of 1st – 7th Feb the average daily number of active cases in the UK was 944,650. But not everybody who has the virus gets tested, so assuming testing is accurate, the true number of active cases must be higher than this. If we use the Government “1 in 3” claim – together with reasonable assumptions about the proportion of people with and without symptoms who actually get tested – then the ‘true’ number of active cases would have to be about 1.4 million, which represents just over 2% of the population (see the detailed analysis).

Combining the Government’s claim and an assumption of a 2% active daily infection rate, means that 0.711% of the population who had no symptoms must have had the virus, for the period 1st – 7th Feb (the detailed analysis provides the full Bayesian calculation). So, if we randomly tested 10,000 people without symptoms, during that week, we would expect to have found that about 71 tested of these people would test positive.

We can empirically test the implication of the Government’s claim that 0.711% of the population who had no symptoms must have had the virus, using an ongoing study at Cambridge University to do so. This study is testing students without symptoms and, for the week of 1st – 7th Feb, reported that a total of 4058 students with no symptoms were tested. Given this number, and the government’s claim, we should have expected to see that 29 of these 4,038 should have tested positive. But how many did test positive? If it is a lot less, then the Government’s claim must be wrong. In fact, none tested positive!

They have come up with a different estimate of the percentage of people with the virus who are asymptomatic – and it’s a lot less than one in three.

Taking proper account of uncertainty, as explained in the detailed report, we estimate there is a 95% probability that the true proportion of people with COVID-19 but no symptoms is between 0.65% and 7.19% with mean 3.077%. So, between as few as 1 in 153 and as many as 1 in 14, with a mean of 1 in 32.

Worth reading in full.

The second claim in the GOV.UK coronavirus banner, therefore, is in need of some revision.

Stop Press: Faulty estimates of the number of asymptomatic cases may have led Swedish authorities to overestimate the level of immunity last year, according to Anders Tegnell. The Telegraph has more.

Dr Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist who devised the no-lockdown approach, said the level of immunity populations had against the virus was “an enigma and mystery” in the early stages of the pandemic.

COVID-19 was perhaps falsely compared with flu, when a large proportion of people catch it and show no symptoms, recover, then develop antibodies, said. Dr Tegnell.

This resulted in Sweden believing more people had developed immunity than was accurate, he explained.

“We thought that it would be similar with COVID-19 – that we would have quite a large part of people that actually develop antibodies with very low levels of symptoms and didn’t show up in health care,” Dr Tegnell told the Oxford Union this week.

“That has proven to be not right because immunity in the population has developed much much lower than I think anybody expected in the beginning. A lot of the initial modelling stuff was also having that assumption and it didn’t turn out to be the case.”

Worth reading in full.

The One That Got Away

Borders around the world are getting tighter, but one particularly enterprising reader of Lockdown Sceptics has still managed to book a trip.

What follows here is an explanation of how I’ve created a legal excuse to get out of the country and find myself sitting on South Beach in Miami in two weeks’ time. However, in doing so I’m pretty sure there are a bunch of rules that I may have broken, and so, just in case, I’m going to keep this anonymous.

These breaches are, in my opinion though, harmless, necessary, and easy to get away with. Harmless because we know that travel contributes to such a small proportion of transmissions, but also because I have already had COVID-19 and recovered, so I believe my travel is even more harmless than harmless. Necessary because I don’t think I’ll make it through to the next Great Goalpost Shift, whenever that is, without getting away for a bit. And easy to get away with because I’ve had some excellent help from complete strangers.

My first problem that needed overcoming was creating a legitimate and legal excuse for leaving the country. There seems to be a bit of hubbub around traveling for property viewing, but I decided the safest option was traveling for work. Of course, I want a break from everything, so I don’t want to actually do any work when I could be sitting on a beach in 30-degree sun; and, regardless, my employer certainly wouldn’t be sending me abroad any time soon when we are not even meant to be going into our own offices.

So I came up with a different idea. Here is the email I sent to a number of bars and pubs in Florida:

Hi [insert bar name],

I’m emailing from London, UK with a plea. As you may well know, we here in the UK are living under the cruel dictatorship of an unelected pseudo-Government called SAGE, the priests of the new religion that is stampeding across our now-God-forsaken country of worshipping the NHS. They have systematically removed every single part of life that makes life worth living, and, put simply, I’m not sure I will make it through the next few weeks – let alone the months that we are now being told we will have to endure.

What makes it all so much worse is that we are not only trapped in our houses, but we are now trapped on this island too, with only one means of escape: we can travel for work.

So, this is my plea to you: can I have a job interview?

It can be for anything – I’d happily take one shift a week cleaning floors on my hands and knees as a volunteer if it meant I could travel to one of the only places that has any right to call itself a “land of the free”.

To be perfectly honest, it can even be a job interview where we both know I won’t actually get a job; so long as you “insist” that the “interview” is face-to-face, I can show that to anyone who questions my travelling as proof that I am travelling for work.

I have a few things to wrap up here first, but I will be “free” to travel on the 25th Feb, so anything between the 26th – 28th would work.

I hope this email falls on compassionate ears.

Kind regards,

******

One response was all I needed, and boy did I get one:

Hi ******

Thank you for your application for the role of bar staff.

We have had a large number of applications for this position, so it’s with great joy that I am able to invite you for an interview for the position.

Here at [redacted bar name] we have a strong family ethos and so it is vitally important that we meet everyone who we might offer a job to in order to ensure that they will be a good fit for us.

With that in mind, would you be able to come down at 2pm Sunday 28th February?

Your interview would be largely informal, but we would like you to prepare a couple of cocktails, which we would then enjoy while having a chat to get to know you better!

Please let me know as soon as possible as there are many others who are keen for this role.

Best wishes,

******

I have now saved that email, but I am tempted to print it and frame it, or at the very least, laminate it before flying

I then set my attentions on the ESTA. If my Government believed I was traveling for work, could I legitimately apply for a travel and tourism visa from the Department of Homeland Security? Answer: yes. I would book return flights, travel out there for the interview during which I would, of course, earn no money, but the trip could still be considered a legitimate work reason.

Sure enough, my ESTA was approved in under an hour, which meant I could book my flights. I’m sure it will come as no surprise that the outbound flight cost more than twice as much as the return flight – after all, what demand is there for flying into London right now?

However, even with a legitimate reason to travel, an approved ESTA, and booked flights, one issue remains. Ensuring I receive a negative COVID-19 test within the three days before flying, especially as I had the damned thing only a month ago and we all know how long after recovering it is possible to show up as positive. That said, as I have three days, I can get in a fair few tests, if I need to, in order to ensure a genuine negative result.

So, that’s that. I will be flying out in a couple of weeks and will then spend two weeks on the beach, in the sea, in the gym, in bars, pubs, and clubs, going on dates, reading in the sun, and generally just being with people.

I will be sure to send you a postcard from the Sunshine State!

The Seasonality of COVID-19

The article by Glen Bishop, the maths student at Nottingham, pointing out a rather obvious flaw in the latest modelling from Neil Ferguson and his team has generated quite a response. Today, we are publishing an original essay by Dr Noah Carl, who has provided rather a lot of evidence that COVID-19 is indeed a seasonal disease.

I read the article by Glen Bishop in Friday’s Lockdown Sceptics newsletter with great interest. The author, a maths student at Nottingham University, had heard that a new paper by Imperial College researchers was predicting a deadly third wave of COVID-19 in the summer of this year. He decided to read the paper for himself, and noticed that the researchers were making one very questionable assumption: there is no seasonality to COVID-19.

Because he couldn’t quite believe this, Bishop emailed the researchers to check whether he had made a mistake. No, they told him: their model does assume zero seasonality. As a justification, Bishop received a paper titled “Misconceptions about weather and seasonality must not misguide COVID-19 response”, which was published in August of last year. However, he wasn’t convinced, describing the paper as “a political commentary on the consequences of what the virus being seasonal would mean for American politics, rather than a purely scientific paper”.

In the next part of his article, Bishop compared the daily COVID-19 death numbers in four countries: Brazil, Peru, Sweden and the UK. These countries differ in important ways. Peru and the UK implemented extensive lockdowns, whereas Brazil and Sweden took a more relaxed approach. On the other hand, Brazil and Peru are located in the southern hemisphere, whereas Sweden and the UK are located in the northern hemisphere. Bishop reasoned that, if seasonality is an important driver of the pandemic, countries in the same hemisphere should resemble one another. But if only lockdowns matter, countries with similar policies should resemble one another.

As many readers will already be aware, both Brazil and Peru saw deaths peak in June or July and then fall in September, whereas both Sweden and the UK saw deaths rise in March and then fall in May. This suggests that hemisphere matters more than policies in explaining the distribution of COVID-19 deaths over the year. In fact, not a single European country saw deaths rise during the summer, even among those that were spared a deadly spring wave.

Bishop’s criticisms of the Imperial College model are well-taken. In the remainder of this essay, I want to present additional evidence for the seasonality of COVID-19. Before looking at studies that deal specifically with COVID-19, it is worth mentioning that other human coronaviruses are known to be seasonal, with the peak of infections occurring in February (in the northern hemisphere). As one recent study – which analysed eight years of data on a cohort in Michigan – concluded, “Coronaviruses are sharply seasonal.” Hence it would be somewhat surprising if COVID-19 didn’t behave in the same way.

There are several mechanisms that may account for the seasonality of coronaviruses. The first is simply that people spend more time indoors in the winter, leading to more opportunities for transmission. A second is that respiratory droplets remain airborne for longer in cold weather, so they are more likely to enter someone’s nose or mouth. A third is that blood vessels constrict in cold temperatures, which may reduce our immune system’s ability to kill viruses in the nasal passage. A fourth is that viral particles may degrade more quickly when exposed to sunlight. And a fifth is that UV light may boost our immune systems by facilitating the production of vitamin D.

Since the pandemic began, a number of studies have been published (either as preprints or journal articles), which together provide strong evidence for the seasonality of COVID-19.

Dr Carl goes on to summarise eight of these studies.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Lockdown Sceptics regular Guy de la Bédoyère has also written a brief response to the Nottingham student’s article.

Glen Bishop’s fascinating paper about how SAGE appears to have overlooked and ignored, or at the very least underestimated, the role of seasonal factors in Covid’s fluctuating impact over the last year, both in the northern and southern hemispheres, is most instructive. His point leads to other assumptions made by modelling scientists which ought by now to have become obsolete. It reminded me of Jean Baptista van Helmont (1577-1644, though given dates vary slightly). If you haven’t heard of him, he was an early chemist. He famously experimented with a willow tree which he observed grow over five years.

Since van Helmont had only added water to the tree he concluded, in a classic example of false science, that the growth was exclusively attributable to the water. He took no account of the nutrients in the soil or sunlight because he was not aware of their effects, did not postulate their potential role, and did not apply the basics of experimentation and replication. As one scholar has observed: “Helmont’s experiment is also notable because although carefully conducted, the conclusions derived from the experiment were wrong because the theory on which it was based was incorrect.” (David Hershey, 1991). So, it has been with those scientists and politicians who assume that the reduction in Covid cases last summer and now is almost entirely attributable to their recommended NPIs and rises in cases to a lack of their NPIs during non-lockdown periods. In scientific terms they have applied one theory leading to one solution, ignored other countries where the solution was different (like Sweden), failed to operate any control experiments, and assumed that the observed results must be down to their solution rather than any other factors. Even if they were right, in Toyland that still wouldn’t past muster as ‘science’ because there is no scientific-standard of proof.

It’s fascinating to see that even today some modern scientists remain susceptible to the belief that the framework of their theories and assumptions represent the beginning and end of the phenomenon they are studying, compounded by a traditional reluctance to admit they might have been wrong. Following the science is one thing, but it does rather boil down to the quality of the science, doesn’t it?

The Public Should Use Yellow Card Reporting System to Report Vaccine Side Effects

The following post, by a senior hospital doctor, urges members of the public to report side effects of the Covid vaccines using the established Yellow Card system. The Yellow Card website he refers to is here and the contact details are here. Weekly summaries of yellow card reporting are available here.

The Yellow Card reporting system was introduced in 1964. It was part of the response to the thalidomide disaster. A lack of ability to co-ordinate reports of uncommon malformations (in this case) or rare medical conditions led to prolonged unrecognised harm with disability and life-restricting deformity.

The scheme is administered by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) and the Commission on Human Medicines.

While previously most reporting was by medical professionals (doctors and pharmacists), it is possible for patients or carers and family members to report suspected adverse drug reactions. This can be done online, or via a telephone call, or on cards available from pharmacists.

Vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus causing COVID-19) are being rolled out at an unprecedented scale and speed. Despite reassurances, this rollout is based on extremely limited trial evidence involving short periods of follow-up in largely young and healthy individuals. These trials may miss rare or serious events due to both small numbers and short follow-up. They may also underestimate the importance of ‘minor’ side effects in higher risk patient groups. Vomiting and diarrhoea, in a fit and healthy young person, may cause no harm, for example, but it may be the final event leading to death in a frail elderly care home resident.

It is essential that public awareness, or the ability to use the Yellow Card system to self-report, or to report on behalf of others, is raised. This includes sudden or unexpected deaths from any apparent cause following a recent vaccination. it is particularly important to report the development of COVID-19 shortly after vaccination.

A relevant summary taken from Wikipedia:

Reports can be entered through the MHRA’s website, or a smartphone app which is available for iOS and Android devices. The app can also provide news and alerts to users.

Yellow Cards are available from pharmacies and a few are presented near the back of the British National Formulary as tear-off pages; copies may also be obtained by telephoning +44 (0) 808 100 3352. The scheme provides forms that allow members of the public to report suspected side effects, as well as health professionals.

Freedom of Speech Under Threat Say Half of Britons in New Poll

Half of Britons think free speech is “under threat”, according to a new poll by the Reclaim Party. The precarious state of free speech won’t come as a surprise to readers of Lockdown Sceptics, of course, given how often we report on the attempts to silence, smear or delegitimise anyone who dissents from Covid orthodoxy. But it’s good to know we’re not alone in being concerned about this. The Sunday Telegraph has more.

The impact of the rise of “cancel culture” is laid bare today by an exclusive poll that reveals half of Britons believe they are less free to say what they think than five years ago.

Freedom of speech in the UK is “under threat”, 50% of people say, compared with less than a quarter (24%) who disagree.

Just one in eight (12%) believes people have greater freedom to speak freely than five years ago, compared with 49% who feel the opposite.

In recent years there has been a rise in celebrities, including J.K. Rowling, being “cancelled” on social media for speaking out on topics such as transgender rights. The study finds that more than four in 10 Britons (43%) say they are afraid to speak their minds on immigration matters, compared with 28% who felt they could.

A similar percentage (42%) admit they are scared to speak openly on transgender rights. A quarter say they feel OK to speak out.

The survey also finds that 43% of people are “afraid to speak their minds” with the police, while 23% are unafraid.

Worth reading in full.

And if you’re worried about threats to your own freedom of speech, or want to help others under fire, please join the Free Speech Union.

Round-up

• “Is this finally proof the vaccine is working in Britain? Covid deaths among over-85s plummet by 41% – almost twice as fast as un-vaccinated people over-65s” – The Jab is having a positive effect, according to MailOnline
• “Universal vaccine’ that can conquer all variants could be available within a year thanks to British scientists” – New vaccines are on the way, according to the Telegraph, and unlike the old ones, COVID-19 will not be able to mutate its way round them
• “Fury at ‘do not resuscitate’ notices given to Covid patients with learning disabilities” – A Mencap investigation has found that people with learning disabilities have been given DNR orders during the second wave of the pandemic, according to the Observer
• “Video of militant teachers boasting of strike threats to keep schools closed fuels fears that unions are plotting to block March 8th return” – The Mail on Sunday reports on the hard left teachers who don’t want to teach
• “Tory nerves are growing over Boris Johnson’s Covid strategy” – Katy Balls in the Spectator reports mounting unease on the Tory back benches about the Government’s cautiousness over easing restrictions
• “Explosion of children with tics and Tourette’s from lockdown” – The Telegraph reports on another unintended consequence
•  “We did have a sensible Covid plan… but copied a police state instead” – In his Mail on Sunday column, Peter Hitchens reminds the country that was a 70-page plan for dealing with a pandemic that was careful and based on common sense. Trouble is, the Government ditched it in a panic
• “TONY BLAIR: The world needs to agree a form of Covid passport – and Britain should lead the way” – A very predictable piece by the Former Prime Minister in the Mail On Sunday
• “The longest three weeks in history – from ‘flattening the curve’ to a ‘permanent new abnormal’” – In the run-up to the first anniversary of the lockdown, Neil Clark looks at how a temporary emergency measure became semi-permanent
• “Prohibitionism and new 10-year prison sentence for lying about holidays” – The latest edition of the Irreverend podcast discuss Matt Hancock’s threat to put citizens away for 10 years unless they tell immigration officials where they’ve been on their hols
• “Locked up, cash-strapped and cancelled” – The Bournbrook Podcast looks at the stories of the week gone by, such as the looming economic crisis
• “New York Governor’s top aide admits administration delayed the release of COVID-19 deaths in long term care facilities over federal investigation concerns” – Melissa DeRosa, who worked for Andrew Cuomo, has privately apologised to Democratic lawmakers for withholding the state’s nursing home death toll from COVID-19 for fear that the numbers would “be used against us”, reports CNN
• “I’d like to tell the health experts where they can shove their second mask” – A scorching piece by Kylee Zempel in the Federalist. COVID-19 is real, she says, but so are the coronavirus hypocrites, and they feed on your fear and compliance
• “Citizenship in 2021: Obey the authorities and ask no questions” – James Delingpole joins the Tom Woods Show for a wide-ranging discussion on “the bizarre phenomena of the past year and the even more bizarre phenomenon of almost total public acquiescence”
• Support UK Unlocked’s Save Our Summer campaign
• An enterprising lockdown sceptic has compiled some charts that put last year’s Covid death toll into perspective