We’re publishing an original piece today by Dr Will Jones, one of Lockdown Sceptics’ editors and regular contributors, which tries to answer 12 key questions about COVID-19 as factually as possible, referencing the best, most up-to-date evidence. We’ve decided to stick it just below ‘About’ in the main menu on the right-hand side.
The questions he considers are:
- How deadly is COVID-19?
- How is COVID-19 Spread?
- What about asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission?
- Do lockdowns work?
- Does social distancing work?
- Are lockdowns harmful?
- Are the vaccines effective?
- Are the vaccines safe?
- Do masks work?
- Are masks safe?
- Are effective treatments available?
- What should governments have done?
To give you a taster, here’s Will’s answer to question number three: What about asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission?
Asymptomatic infection is typically characterised by a much lower viral load and consequently much lower infectiousness. The study in JAMA on household secondary attack rate (SAR) cited above found that asymptomatic infections had a SAR of just 0.7% versus a SAR of 18% for symptomatic infection. The proportion of infections that are asymptomatic increases among those with immunity from previous infection or vaccination, showing that it is a characteristic of immunity.
People become infectious around two days prior to onset of symptoms as viral load peaks. This pre-symptomatic transmission is estimated to account for around 6.4% of spread, according to a study of actual transmission events from Singapore. Modelled estimates of the contribution of pre-symptomatic spread appear to go too high.
This means that people without symptoms, whether asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic, are not major drivers of the epidemic.
The whole thing is very much worth reading in full.
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Oooo we’ve jumped up to “very much worth reading in full”. Don’t ever say that about the Graun please.
“Very much worth reading in full.”
Indeed it is. Thank you, Will.
It’s very much worth reading in full twice.
Then you’re fairly confident that Will doesn’t mention that nobody has any idea of the long-term effects of the “vaccines”.
Yes, he manages to skirt round the ‘vaccine safety’ section and all current concerns.
A simple sentence at the end that nobody has any idea of the long term consequences will be of these pharmaceutical products which may manifest years after the event – but we all hope nothing untoward occurs. Probably too risky for Toby to publish thou.
Otherwise, I nice concise summary document.
Yep, that was my only issue.
Yes agreed.
I suspect Toby has been put under a LOT of pressure. I wouldn;t be surprised if his family was threatened. They will not stop at very much
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, yet, adding some much-needed balance on the experimental, genetically-engineered, bio agent injection, issue: https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/05/covid-vaccines-necessity-efficacy-and-safety/
So the government cheerfully envisaged 63,000 deaths from the lockdown and thought it was a price worth paying? Collateral damage, evidently.
They really were determined to keep us all safe. Every death is a tragedy, eh? Yeah.
75,000 deaths is the figure I have from SAGE last July.So has that changed then? I thought it might increase with long periods of restrictions (still ongoing) since then. And a rough extrapolation had it at several million world wide. More than have died of (or with or showing symptoms of or dying rather inconveniently from a care home’s point of view) covid-19.
What a pity none of our politicos died as a result!
Thank you Will, it’s very good and can be forwarded on readily to others for information.
An excellent piece. Thanks.
Actually was worth reading in full !
Funny how Govt was happy to throw 63K people under the bus and lockdown so many times and for so long, especially given on every occasion they did it we’d already passed the peak !!!
Hopefully a new political party (Reform, Reclaim) will run with this kind of data and burn all the incompetent MP’s at the stake in the process. The media also need to meet with a reckoning too.
Sorry, burning at the stake is banned, too much risk involved, you know.
Articles summarising what the data show are always useful. However, it’s rather important that they make clear, in their introductions, that many of the data are bogus.
Sorry, but the vaccine section is pretty dire.
‘The vaccines, particularly the mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer’s, appear to be effective at preventing COVID-19 infection. They succeed in producing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.’
As SARS-Cov-2 directly enters the lungs via the air passages and attached to the cell lining how can ‘anti-bodies’ affect the virus? The virus is miniscule compared to big clunky anti-bodies. Its the T-cells that protect against the virus , the killer cells that the immune system employs directly. Now if you talk about covid19 , the ‘disease’ that is the result of the immune system attacking itself because of impairement due to old age or severe ailments , then anti-bodies can have a role there, but it may not be the positive one you describe.
The mRNA vaccines deliver a protein spike that mimics the original Wuhan sequenced spike. They enter the blood stream and then the membranes of the blood delivery conduits. They replicate. The body sends armies of T-cells and anti-bodies to fight them. This can and does cause bleeding and/or clots.
The only trials performed to gain emergency use showed absolute risk reduction of major symptoms of approx 1%. There is no data from trials on immunity or reduction of transmission.
I realise this site does not want to fall foul of censorship because of editorial comments about vaccines. Would it not be better then to remain silent on these rather than state inconsistent and possibly misleading comments?
Who is going to censor it and how? And of course, no censorship is more effective than self-censorship.
“among those groups who are most vulnerable to the virus [the experimental, genetically-engineered, bio agents] appear to be significantly less effective”
I believe that’s the money shot, a subtle advocation of mass injection of the young and healthy, since, as we were told in LS, a couple of days ago, “[vulnerable people’s] freedom to have a normal life, to travel, to go to public spaces, to socialise – in other words, their fundamental freedoms (the very same ones that lockdown denies) – presuppose that they are able do all these things as safely as possible.“[1]
[1] https://dailysceptic.org/2021/05/07/immunity-passports-a-debate-between-jay-bhattacharya-and-alberto-giubilini/
And, of course, the ‘effectiveness’ is based on relative figures from questionable trial data, which need to be more deeply analysed in terms of placing those figures against absolute risk reduction figures – as has been often mentioned.
In addition, I can see no observational evidence in terms of the mortality curve of any vaccine ‘effectiveness’ on that outcome. If anything, that indicator suggests the reverse.
Just rounding out the picture on the “vaccines”: https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/05/covid-vaccines-necessity-efficacy-and-safety/
“However, the same figure in England and Wales was 8%, suggesting significant differences in how Covid deaths are registered between jurisdictions.”
The citation for that appears to be missing, and using ONS figures [1], I’ve found only 6.05% of “Covid” deaths were involving, but not due to, up to week 25 (with the highest being 7.41%, up to week 12, which was only the second week to record a Covid death). To hit 8% (in one significant figure; 7.63%, more precisely), we need to extend to week 46, which would be rather late for “spring”!
[1] “We use the term ‘due to COVID-19’ … when referring only to deaths where that illness was recorded as the underlying cause of death. We use the term ‘involving COVID-19’ … when referring to deaths that had that illness mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not.” https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending23april2021
Another thing that cannot be stated too strongly or too often; no-one has any idea what the national or global death figures are for covid 19, most particularly the global figures:
‘According to World Health Organization data, each year, two-thirds of global deaths are not registered with local authorities. That’s a total of 38 million annual deaths that aren’t part of any permanent record. Not only are the numbers not part of any global death tally, but the cause of death is also not recorded — leaving policymakers without critical information about population trends and health.
Now, that vast undercount of deaths might be changing — thanks to the virus. It’s pushed the science of death-counting into the international spotlight, highlighting the importance of strong and developed death registries.’
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/09/25/914073217/why-the-pandemic-could-change-the-way-we-record-deaths?t=1620061584653
‘At the other extreme, 81 countries collect data of very low quality or do not register deaths at all. All low-income countries and two-thirds of lower-middle-income countries fall in this category.’
https://www.who.int/gho/mortality_burden_disease/registered_deaths/text/en/
So, globally, loads of deaths last year and this are being compared with?…..Errr…..nothing….because, in so many developng countries, such data simply doesn’t exist.
Seek etc etc
The data really is junk
Daily reminder that “Covid-19” is an ever expanding list of symptoms that overlap with every respiratory illness known to science and probably now includes athletes foot (aka Covid toe)
Excellent.Including Will’s balanced reporting of vaccines.No need to go into long term effects as we don’t know yet but he highlighted the main concerns with Vaers etc. Can’t understand the criticism about this BTL. The vaccine produce antibodies but we don’t know for how long especially among the elderly. They have reduced mortality in LCH as evidenced in UK and Sweden but at what price in side effect in elderly is still debatable.
But the following two charts shows that deaths have been prevented in the elderly.First chart ICU use in Sweden se high use 2020 and also in the two waves 2021(reflecting total cases).Then compare with deaths during the same time periods.The low deaths since Feb 2021 must be vaccination of LCT residents.
Deaths
No need to go into long term effects as we don’t know yet but he highlighted the main concerns with Vaers etc. Can’t understand the criticism about this BTL.
‘Can’t understand the criticism about this BTL.’
I’m not really sure what you’re getting at here?
Genuine question.
I think Will did a balanced approach to the vaccine never hiding the serious problems and that they have been oversold. You don’t need to go into speculation at this stage of further side effects long term,there is enough in the data already to show that mass vaccination of young people is a dangerous idea.
Ok, thanks for getting back.
For my part, I regard the lack of medium- and long-term safety data as a showstopper, in all but urgent cases – i.e. people at high risk of serious covid outcome.
Even if there were no demonstrable short-term side effects, the medium/long-term risks alone should preclude the administration of this stuff to healthy individuals.
“No need to go into long term effects as we don’t know yet”
Well, as we don’t know them, we cannot go into them. The critical point, however, is the second part of your observation: we do not know the long-term effects. How well did the “Just the facts” piece cover this?
The closest I’ve noticed it getting to the reality that the genetically-engineered bio agents are subject to the usual, pre-approval, clinical studies until late next year (in one case, I think) or, mostly, early / mid 2023, is “the vaccines are new”, in the trivialising observation, “Because the vaccines are new there is currently no data available on long-term safety”.
On first look the charts appear to indicate that during the 2021 second-wave more ICU patients survived.
But I’m not sure the extent to which they even show that. How many died-with/of-covid didn’t actually go into an ICU?
From what I can see here, it’s a very big leap to infer that this data demonstrates vaccine effectiveness. Causation/correlation/etc.
Happy for swedenborg or anyone else to put me right.
“charts shows that deaths have been prevented in the elderly”
Please explain how they show prevention, and discuss the preventative mechanism and the evidence thereof. (You’ve made that statement in the apparent context of vaccine-produced antibodies, which might be taken as attributing causality, but I wish to be clear that this was your intention, and of what brings you to that view.)
The reason I put up the ICU admissions was to show that this reflected a true second seasonal wave winter 2021. This had a double peak. The second peak has no corresponding death peak as during the first wave and the first part of the second wave.
Very few deaths amongst the elderly. But elderly and especially 80 and over were never admitted much at ICUs.They died at home/hospital non ICU or in Long term Carehomes. We had the virus circulating with high ICU admittance and low deaths amongst the elderly from February and onwards. Only logical explanation was a focussed primary vaccination in LCT. This was the group best targeted and best effect on mortality. Elderly persons not in LCT or having no community care and living alone have surprisingly good outcome of C-19.This is a mainly nosocomial infection due to staff being infected. We don’t need the vaccine for the young and healthy with then current frequent side effects but we can’t deny that they had an effect on mortality for those primarily intended.
Ok, I see what you’re saying better now. I’m still going to have to think about it a bit more though (and am just too tired right now).
At the moment I’m thinking we need more data on who did and didn’t die in ICU, and why. But, overall, the one condition to have changed during the second 2021 ‘wave’ was presumably the vaccine, and correlation is indeed sometimes analogous with causation.
Thank you.
It’s an interesting observation, but I think we’d need to do a lot of digging to reach any conclusion.
High ICU occupancy coupled with lower mortality is most obviously suggestive of improvements in care within the ICU (unless you’re noting that fatalities are significantly greater than ICU patients, in both cases). Maybe, in the face of fewer serious cases in the population, qualification for an ICU bed had been relaxed (which is not to suggest that the ICUs have been being filled with patients who really didn’t need them, because of some funding incentive, but, rather, that, in times of more severe infection, ICU facilities were having to be rationed).
At some point, we have to start running out of the famous “dry tinder”.
So, yes, the “vaccination” programme is one variable, but we should not become enchanted by a comforting story, before objective analysis is completed.
An interesting Tweet on selective statistics (that’s already been shared in LS comments): https://mobile.twitter.com/MConceptions/status/1385255293211262976
All your points are relevant.But even earlier in the pandemic the use of ICU in the elderly from LCT was very low. So the ICU use did not reflect so much the actual deaths which ocurred ouside ICU.But you are correct about the dry tinder effect.Sweden has currently a negative excess death which could reflect that, so this could be the main objection against vaccines having effect.But I think they must have had some effects. Currently in Stockholm hardly any vaccinated in LCT die in the current wave compare to last year devastating figures. It can’t be just surviving fit 90 year old left?
Interesting thoughts chaps. My gut feel is that the vaccines are responsible for some of the drop in deaths but not all. And I wouldn’t want to guess the proportion.
Sorry for being so timid in my inferences!
If you haven’t got any symptoms then you aren’t sick!
https://thewhiterose.uk/careworkers-talking-about-their-severe-side-effects-after-covid-shot/