As an addendum to my piece yesterday on the evidence for variants driving Covid surges, a comparison between India and neighbouring Bangladesh is illuminating. Once again, the curves below are the positive test rate and they are superimposed on the graphs of variant proportions over time from the CoVariants website.
India has had one large surge in 2021 so far, occurring in spring and associated with the Delta variant (which was first identified there; in dark green). It has had no summer surge, and no new variant since.
Bangladesh, on the other hand, has had two peaks in 2021, a spring peak associated with the Beta variant (light red) and a summer one associated with the Delta variant.
Beta appears to have been pushed out by Delta in India during the spring, whereas Bangladesh was hit by the two variants in succession.
The presence of two peaks associated with two variants in Bangladesh, in spring and summer, contrasted with the single peak in India in spring associated with one variant, is further evidence that variants are key drivers of surges.
Identifying variants as key drivers of Covid surges does not in my view support the lockdown narrative that sees ‘scariants’ as reasons to maintain Covid restrictions and keep pushing endless vaccine boosters. From a sceptical point of view a big advantage of recognising that variants are key drivers of surges is that it implies that the rises and falls in infection curves are not primarily related to imposing or lifting restrictions but to the arrival of new variants and the subsequent re-establishing of herd immunity to the virus.
To illustrate, here are three U.S. states which famously lifted restrictions despite dire warnings of what would happen if they did. (Note: the curves here, from the CDC, are for raw numbers of reported infections rather than the positive rate.)
Florida lifted restrictions in autumn 2020 and went through the winter with no state-level restrictions. Yet its winter wave peaked and declined just like those in lockdown states. There was a small peak in the spring, but this was associated with the Alpha variant (dark red), not with the lifting of restrictions. This too declined, before the appearance in summer of a large surge associated with the Delta variant, which is now in decline. The imposing or lifting of restrictions played no part in this pattern, which is very similar to elsewhere.
Texas had a large winter wave, after which the state lifted restrictions in March, which led to no new surge. A slower decline in spring might be associated with Alpha but there is no clear peak. Come summer, however, and there is a big new surge associated with the arrival of Delta.
Mississippi also lifted restrictions in March and saw no new surge, with only the slightest bump in the spring being discernible, associated with Alpha. Come summer, however, and there is a big surge associated with Delta, now in decline.
With no restrictions in place, the lifting of restrictions in these states cannot be blamed for causing the summer surges just as the imposing of restrictions cannot be credited with causing the falls. Instead, what we have are further examples of a surge occurring upon the arrival of a new variant and shortly peaking and dropping, presumably as herd immunity to that variant is established. This is very helpful for explaining the behaviour of the virus and why it has little or nothing to do with the imposing or lifting of restrictions.
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This is very good work and shows that we have serially achieved saturation/herd immunity, only for the balance to be distrurbed by the entry of new variants, hence time needed to re-establish endemic balance. That’s how it works…
As any fule knows correlation does not imply causation.
India’s surge happened around the time of their vaccine rollout, the government advice at the time was to discourage the widespread use of Ivermectin as a prophylactic, believing that the ‘magic jab’ would do the job. The surge was only brought under control once the widespread use of Ivermectin was restored. A bit of research into the experience of Uttar Pradesh would be enlightening for many.
Again my theory is just that, another theory and the same rule of correlation does not imply causation applies but it is as plausible as the other.
The good news for sceptics is that we were right about everything, from the start.
The bad news is that no-one much cares, or is listening. Nothing has really changed since March 2020.
That’s an essential point, Julian. I have this argument with people who are sceptic about some of the handling, but fundamentally believe that the threat was real and intentions pure
I often make the point that, 18 months on, our analysis and predictions have been proved much more accurate than the Narrative, both in terms of the data and the response – often citing the accuracy of my forecast numbers of deaths in comparison with wildly wrong predictions from modelers. I have also, like others here, been accurate in predicting political moves – most recently re. the pseudo ‘freedoms’ developing since June.
In fact, the only major thing I got wrong was early on, when I thought that musical and theatrical events would regain normality by autumn 2020. I told the orchestra I play with that I wouldn’t be participating until the mask and social distancing shit was abandoned – probably in that autumn. Doh! I posted current ‘Safety Policy’ yesterday – to illustrate how badly stuck we are in that groove – a year on.
But, as you say – despite the sceptical view being largely correct in its predictions, no-one is listening. That is behavioural programming aka ‘brainwashing’, and why I have been cynical about some of the Polyanna remarks made here.
No – little has really changed once you dig beneath the top-soil.
Would be interesting to see how vaccine rollouts correspond with these variant surges/declines.
Is blanket vaccination driving escape mutations and hence further variants. Lamda in South America seems to be more lethal than previous variants?
Do stop this loose talk about ‘surges’ that are natural ripples in the prevalence of any virus.
IMHO, that’s a very important point: Copying the vocabulary of the COVID drivers spreads their propaganda, even if it does so involuntarily and ineffectively.
Last year, when I was still hoping the pandemic theatre would stop playing after a single season, I used to try to tell people that we cannot have a second wave unless we had had a first wave before that (which wasn’t the case) …
Uhh..didn’t I just read a rather similar thing (with a few more graphs…) but with a slightly different title, under “Today’s Update” of Tuesday 21st Sept. 2021, namely –
“The Compelling Evidence that Variants Drive Covid Surges”?
Or have I finally gone completely mad? – which wouldn’t surprise me it’s true…
It’s good news for “vaccine skeptics”, since it’s the vaccines that drive the selection of more infectious variants.
Richard Fleming has done some good work on this with similar charts to above, but tracked against the vaccine rollouts:
https://www.flemingmethod.com/vaccine-chasing (scroll halfway down to the section “(2) Mass Vaccination Pressure Selection of the Variants.”
Also revisit Geert Vanden Bossche who warned of this over a year ago: https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/
The problem with Geert Crankden Bossche’s argument is that it woud apply to natural immunity to anything in exactly the same way: Mankind ought to have been eliminated by supervirues outcompeting our immune system a long time before he could ever come around to writing this text.
Such a seriously long time, actually, that today, this planet should be devoid of any life as the superviruses ought to have exterminated it before it could ever evolve beyond single cell organisms.
I totally agree with the proposition that this is good news for sceptics. Of course, it can be expected that new variants will cause surges/ripples of illness, but these will burn out with or without vaccines. The latest UK data suggest that the ripple caused by the delta variant is now in decline. The fact that this has been a ripple and not a surge (in terms of fatalities and serious illness), is I suspect because of growing natural immunity in the population – which is another way of saying the vaccines are no where near as effective as originally proclaimed.
Deja vu?
I think you need to be careful drawing this conclusion:
‘The presence of two peaks associated with two variants in Bangladesh, in spring and summer, contrasted with the single peak in India in spring associated with one variant, is further evidence that variants are key drivers of surges.’
The two peaks show correlation, but not causation. With intense competition between variants, and that they are all Pring produced all the time, only a minor (if any) difference in transmissibility will result in one dominating. The upshot is that competition and the behaviour of variants within a multi-strain competitive landscape provide the conditions for one to dominate, but don’t ‘drive’ – that comes from loss of infection-blocking immunity and seasonality. We need to get away from assigning agency to the variants.
The data suggest to me that some people have different levels of immunity to different variants, for reasons that are probably not fully understood by medical science. Of course, no one can be 100% certain about this; but applying the principle of Occam’s razor, I would think the explanation but forward by Prof Anthony Brookes in the article posted on Monday is the most likely one.
Is it realistic to believe that sufficient herd immunity to each variant is generated in a manner rapid enough to account for such a steep decline in cases?
Still promoting the anti-science idea of variants?
Variants are never dangerous according to Dr Mike Yeadon, the most outspoken doctor against the C19 fraud.
But if C19 doesn’t even exist and the pcr tests cannot diagnose diseases according to Kary Mullis, then explain to me how is it possible to produce ‘variants’?