Lockdown Sceptics’ contributors Norman Fenton, Martin Neil and Scott Mclachlan, all at the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary, have produced a thorough analysis of how many people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic. Their conclusion: not one in three, as the Government would have us believe, but one in 19. Here is the abstract:
Over the period Dec 2020 – Feb 2021, the UK Government, and its scientific advisers, made the persistent and widely publicised claim that “1 in 3 people with the SARS-Cov-2 virus have no symptoms”. In this paper we use a contemporaneous study of asymptomatics at Cambridge University to show that the claim is contradicted by the government’s own case numbers over that same period. A Bayesian analysis shows that, firstly, if the “1 in 3” claim is correct then, over this period, the actual infection rate must be at least 11 times higher than the infection rate reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 0.71% ; and, secondly, if the reported infection rate of 0.71% is correct then the actual number of people with the virus, who have no symptoms, is at most 2.9% (1 in 34) and not 1 in 3. We argue that this contradiction can only be explained by the false positives being generated by RT-PCR testing. Hence, the published infection rate is estimating the number of people who test positive rather than the number of people with SARS-Cov-2 virus. When the false positive rate is correctly accounted for, the most likely explanation for the observed data, over the period in question, is an infection rate of approximately 0.375% rather than the ONS publicised claim of 0.71%. Likewise, we conclude that the actual number of people with the SARS-Cov-2 virus who have no symptoms is approximately 1 in 19 and not 1 in 3. We show that these results are robust under a sensitivity analysis that allows for a wide range of assumptions about testing accuracy and proportion of people with symptoms. Hence, the UK government and ONS claims cannot both be simultaneously true and the actual infection rates are significantly less than publicised.
The paper is worth reading in full.
To read a summary, click here and to see a six-minute YouTube video summarising the paper, click here.
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I have the greatest respect for Norman Fenton – but I’m afraid we’re once again tangled in the false definition of ‘infections’ and illness.
‘Asymptomatic spread’ is wildly exaggerated, as other research shows, and even basic observation confirms.
I suspect Fenton knows this but his video demonstrates the incompatibility of the ‘official’ figures which in itself shows how this government are lying to us ie even giving them the benefit of the doubt they still don’t add up. I believe therefore his intention was probably to show those that still trust the government, that they shouldn’t.
That’s irrelevant though.
The exact number of asymptomatic infectious people is ZERO.
As a proper ct number would demonstrate and prove.
The myth arose from the Chinese superspreader at Webasto in Germany, who just suppressed her symptoms with heavy paracetemol intakes.
Only the heavily drugged and the vaxxed can be asymptomatic AND infectious.
This was just a ruse to introduce masks, tests, lockdowns and vaxx passports, nothing else.
What is the issue here, one of definition? I fail to see how a virus can spread from someone who isn’t affected by it. When we say ‘asymptomatic’ are we talking symptoms so slight the person doesn’t notice, externally there are no signs etc? The only way I can see someone with no symptoms of an illness spreading it is if someone with covid sneezes on them and they rub it on me?!
If you have virus cells in/on you but you aren’t ill/infected then the load isn’t high enough to have taken hold and start replicating (how they spread) surely?
Oh it’s not based on clinical diagnosis anyways, it’s PCR test based, so not infected, just present at ludicrous thresholds, in a leaky lab, with the work experience guy mixing samples. This whole thing is a crock of shit, I’m not sure why I was expecting it to be somehow different to all the rest of the claims tbh.
Good post but even fomate transmission has now been thoroughly debunked. They’d have to rub it on your tongue!
Oh completely, I get that! People have lost their collective minds!
1 in 19, my arse.
I think I must be stupid, how can an asymptomatic person pass on an illness they don’t have to another person, so they can they be asymptomatic, with no symptoms. My limited science education tells me that this should be called Münchausen syndrome. I suppose it’s one way of ramping up the numbers, along with unreliable testing.
This analysis is badly tagged/titled. It should say ‘Another reason why the RT-PCR test is load of crap’!
Remember before the word Hypochondriac was renamed as Asymptomatic?
WHO have a vaccine
for that but the word has become toxic
so they’ll call it a serum
.
This is an interesting study as it dismantles Project Fear with hard numbers but it misses something critical. Something that numbers to 3 decimal places, however accurate, detract from.
This whole scamdemic relies on three lies. A test which is scientifically meaningless, a revision of the definition of ‘sick’ so that the test in question is deemed a stand alone diagnosis, and an assertion that because you have a positive test despite the fact you feel well you can pass on a virus you don’t have to someone who won’t know they’ve got it. It’s a modern take on the Emperor’s New Clothes fairytale.
I’ll focus on one of these. Asymptomatic transmission. As Mike Yeadon et al are at pains to highlight it’s all about viral load. If the load you are ‘infected with’ or carry, is not enough to make you feel ill, it’s not enough for you to pass on in significant levels. That’s Virology 101 and has been for many many years. Nothing so far discovered about this virus suggests anything to the contrary. You can’t change this by an Order in Council. (Actually, apparently you can!)
Well there you have it. Finally more professional statisticians, , scientists, engineers are not only questioning the narrative, but challenging it. At last. Those who have been doing so for the past year, we can thank dearly. Drs. John Ioannidis, Michael Levitt, Carl Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta Jay Battacharya, Martin Kuldorff, Clare Craig, Scott Atlas, Tess Laurie, Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Mercola, Harvey Risch, Pierre Kory, Simone Gold, Peter McCullough. Ivor Cummins, Joel Smalley the stats guy. Robert Kennedy’s Children’s Defense Fund, Del Bigtree the Highwire, The Conservative Woman,
And I’ll add to that list of heroes Dr Scott Jensen, Dr Scharit Bhakdi, Dr Samantha Bailey, Dr Knut Wittkowski
I am a simple soul; if a RT- PCR test does not test for infectiousness – because it was not designed to do that – “why” are Whitty, Vallance, JVT and all the other experts using the resulting “case numbers” as the underpin “justifying” the strategy? But then I remember we live in the era of the career politician, the vast majority of whom are as TAS and totally unfit to lead the way out of a paper bag. I now regard myself as an “anarchist” in the true sense of the word and my long held belief that political parties are anachronistic is being validated on a daily basis.
We can argue that this circus is nothing to do with a virus, but for many of the people we encounter daily, with whom we do battle, it very much IS about a virus, and are persuaded by the doom ads. (My favourite is the one about 6 people meeting in the park on separate blankets, snubbing the passing acquaintance who would take their gathering over the allowable total. All delivered in the ‘confiding’ tones of a woman who sounds like she smokes 40 a day…)
Having dealings with the sheeple (especially the supposedly highly-educated sort) is greatly assisted with proper ‘hard’ science like this, and I for one, am grateful.
I like the video too – it’s a keeper.
I’m a freelance journalists who has been doing COVID research for almost a year now. I’ve come to believe that the percentage of “asymptomatic” cases is, in fact, far HIGHER than the CDC says (an estimated 40 percent) of cases. I’m actually trying to get statistics (“data”) from colleges and athletic programs, which have done more testing than just about any other organizations. In America, college football players were tested at least three times a week. Every college student at most colleges has received at least one COVID test, many have been tested multiple times. Well, what do the results of all of this testing reveal? I don’t know as the sports leagues and colleges won’t report what percentage of “positive” students were “asymptomatic” or had only “mild” symptoms. I strongly suspect that up to 80 percent of college students who tested positive were either asymptomatic or experienced only mild symptoms. I found ONE newspaper story in my state that supports my view. The dean of health at the University of Alabama reported months ago that of all the students who had been tested only between “1 and 4” and “1 and 5” had symptoms. Restated, this means 75 to 80 percent of UA students were “asymptomatic.” He also said that among those who did test positive, “very few” experienced significant symptoms. It’s bizarre this story didn’t get any national attention because, as far as I know, it’s the only admission I’ve seen from a college “authority” that the vast majority of “cases” were asymptomatic. I’m attempting to get update figures, but the University will not provide this information. These colleges will also not tell me how many of their students ended up being hospitalized from COVID. From reading sports articles it’s very clear that almost all of the athletes who tested positive (and were thus held out of practice and games) were, in fact, asymptomatic or had only very mild symptoms. We know this because 99.9 percent of these athletes were back practicing and playing 10 days later. Anyway, at least with young people, I’m still convinced that the vast majority of positive “cases” were never “sick” in the sense most of us define this word. I still think, at least among the young, 65 to 80 percent of “cases” could qualify as “asymptomatic.”
False positives…..