If there was ever a time that ‘Zero Covid’ – the goal of eliminating Covid altogether – made sense, it was when the virus first appeared in Wuhan. Had the Chinese authorities raised the alarm sooner, and scrambled to contain the virus, perhaps there never would have been a pandemic.
But there was one. Covid has now been with us for two full years (perhaps longer). Hundreds of millions have been infected, and even greater numbers have received the vaccine. At this point, you might say, ‘Zero Covid’ is a non-starter.
Yet people are still pushing the idea. A recent article in the Daily Kos – a left-wing news site in the U.S. – argues that “COVID-19 must be eliminated, not become endemic, if America is to survive”.
Is this just a case where the headline is much more radical than the article itself? No – the one thing of which the author can’t be accused is attempting to downplay his position. “We cannot live with endemic COVID-19,” he writes, “Hang on, let me say that again: We. Cannot. Live. With. Endemic. COVID-19.”
Let’s consider his arguments, one by one. The author begins by comparing Covid to the flu, noting that the former is much more contagious. Whereas seasonal influenza has a basic reproduction number of 1.4, he notes, “COVID-19 has a R0 that is over five. Maybe as high as 10.”
I don’t know where he got the figure of ‘10’ from, but even if you take the higher estimates of Covid’s R0 at face value, they correspond to circumstances in which the population was immunologically naïve.
Once enough people have caught the virus at least once, the number still susceptible to infection will be substantially reduced. Not to zero, of course, as even natural immunity wanes – but enough to forestall the kind of transmission levels we saw in the spring of 2020.
Note: this is evident not just from the protective effect of natural immunity, but also from the declining transmission advantage of new variants. As immunity to each new variant rises (particularly among the subset of individuals who’re most likely to infect others), the effective reproductive number correspondingly declines.
The author then claims that a world with endemic Covid will be one where health care is much more expensive, due to demands placed on the system by constant surges of new Covid patients. Here again, however, he ignores the impact of natural and vaccine-induced immunity.
“Endemic COVID-19,” he writes, “would behave exactly the same as epidemic COVID-19: in surges, waves, or spikes.” Would it? What seems far more likely is that endemic Covid would not behave in this way. At the very least, any “surges, waves, or spikes” will be smaller and less deadly than those observed during the epidemic phase of the disease.
The author’s next argument is that, even once Covid becomes endemic, we’ll still see a lot of deaths. But as before, he fails to take account of immunity. “If the level of COVID-19 fatalities could be dropped to just 0.5%,” he writes, “then the rate of deaths would be “just” 160,000 people a year.”
Yet ‘0.5%’ is an implausibly high estimate of the IFR for a world where Covid is endemic. In a recent Twitter thread, Professor Francois Balloux used the figure of 0.1%, adding that even this was “probably far too pessimistic”.
The author then invokes the spectre of long Covid, noting that persistent symptoms “are not rare”. However, if he’d referred to the latest estimates from the ONS, he’d know that only 2–3% of patients still report symptoms after 12 weeks, and this is before you factor in widespread immunity.
Even if ‘Zero Covid’ were achievable, which it almost certainly is not, the costs of getting there would be enormous. We’d not only need a massive annual re-vaccination program, but also constant vigilance at the border, as well as large-scale testing in perpetuity.
“Whatever the price of defeating COVID-19 may be,” the Daily Kos article concludes, “it must be paid.” And that more or less sums up the case for, and against, ‘Zero Covid’. For you can’t take a proposal seriously if there’s no estimate of costs.
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Hmm. Looks like my comment yesterday might be right.
Drag out the Leadership contest through 2022 and elections 2023.
Boris has charisma, not many people have it, but those who have, want people to like/love/admire them and that’s their modus operandi. The man for the job now is Dominic Raab, quietly loyal, takes the job on the chin, its what we need now, a clear thinker who is focused on the job not on pleasing people.
I don’t recall so much as a peep out of Raab that opposed covid restrictions. Of course the same applies to most of the other realistic candidates. At least Mordaunt abstained from the last covid votes. Pretty sure Raab voted with the government. What we don’t know is who were the (relative) covid sceptics in the cabinet who pushed the PM to ditch Plan B.
Possibly a good thing not to respond to everything a chaotic PM does.
The only person I remember gaining some credibility with regard to freedom and Covid was Steve Baker.
He got behind the Together declaration, which brought down the HC GT mandate.
Therefore, he could be the right properly conservative Brexiter candidate Toby wishes for, although I am not sure about his charisma and he won’t have enough backing anyway.
As someone here stated before, if it’s Gove, get ready for mandatory tattoos on your forehead, if you are not fully vaccinated, let alone unvaccinated.
There is only one true politican around Westminster who could come close to being up to the job and that is Lord Frost.
The paucity of intellect, honesty, integrity, gravitas amongst our political class is absolutely staggering.
I agree, he’s way above any of the cabinet, but would he be able to step in?
A man asleep on a beach to replace a man asleep on sentry duty, when duty called?
Probably the only individual with the charisma required is Ms Mordaunt.
She will require a strong team but Lord Frost, Mr Wallace, Mr Zahawi, Mr Sunak can provide that team.
Wallace: utterly bland. W of S
Zahawi: Davos Deviant. Crook. Non British.
Sunak: Davos Deviant. Crook. Non British
So only Lord Frost.
What a very un-British comment and factually incorrect.
Mr Wallace has achieved a great deal more in his life than you ever will and shown excellent judgement over Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The ethnic origin of any of these individuals is completely irrelevant. They are all British.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
You don’t appear to understand the difference between state and nation.
Zahawi and Sunak might be UK citizens but to describe them as British is absurd: it would be like claiming all NZ citizens are Maoris.
Complete bigoted nonsense.
A British citizen is British.
That’s it.
A laughable failure to deal with my point that state and nation aren’t synonyms.
I’m ethnically British.Those two aren’t.
You’re effectively denying the existence of the indigenous population of these islands and making the utterly absurd claim that those who arrived yesterday are no different than those most of whose ancestors were here 4,000 years ago.
Define British ethnicity.
Oh! I see…..a bit tricky, isn’t it…..?
I am partly Scottish, from before written records began so probably Nordic via Ireland.
Also part English but from Norman antecedents.
But English comes from the Angles from Central Europe, much of the early language still spoken on the Frisian Islands
And part Anglo Irish but with a French Great Great Grandmother and a Great Great Grandfather who almost certainly descended from peripatetic Assyrians.
My surname? Those who know about these things suggest potentially French Huguenot, exiled to these islands in the seventeenth century.
My wife? Saxon (Oh! From Saxony, then.) and Scottish but quite possibly some Spanish blood from the survivors of the Spanish Armada.
Try and tell me that we are not ethnically British and you and I will take it outside…..
I prefer not to descend to rudeness but your lack of intelligence is an embarrassment to the members of this site.
Never wise to comment after your customary Babycham.
Isn’t Wallace the infantile tosser who laughably claimed that, because of the performance of the British army in ther Crimean War, our current tiny, badly-equipped , led-by-PC-buffoons army would have have no trouble defeating the Russian army?
There seem to be a lot of infantile tossers about.
Maybe a little early for the special brew.
Feeble.
It looks like I have found the downticker and the site has gained a troll with spare cash. Or a sugar daddy.
So much narcissism, so little clue; perfect for a thread on Bunter.
So you’ve moved on to the Bucky.
Interesting….
Time will tell, but I do fear this could be game over for us. What looked to me like an orchestrated campaign of sustained pressure has finally got its man. I cannot stand the guy, but maybe the cabal running the show couldn’t either.
Looking on the bright side, it could be that many more people now understand that they bought a puppy, listening too much and believing too much of the propaganda dished out by certain organisations.
You clear out a stinking house. If the new occupants cause a stink then they get turned out as well.
But we haven’t cleared out the stinking house, they did. The occupants of that stinking house moved to better arrange the furniture. We hold zero influence atm, and the sooner people understand that the better; only then can the masses show their power.
Yes! The group occupying and stinking up the house have simply kicked one of their lot out.
And worse still, if you clear out this lot, all you have to replace them is an even more putrid, fetid bunch.
For the avoidance of doubt I have no hope whatsoever in the system working for the benefit of anyone but themselves.
To me, it points to an imperfect coup. Whether orchestrated by Davos globalists or China (the latter becoming more and more plausible in my mind, or is there even a difference given UN as the common denominator) they operate through ‘cutouts’ – examples would be Obama, Biden, Trudeau, Ardern etc. But they don’t have control of the entire system (yet) so their operations are kind of bitty and imperfect. Johnson clearly failed to deliver on certain targets and so you’re right, there was a sustained campaign against him via the channels and levers ‘they’ had at their disposal; esp. the media. This lasted several months – we should be examining this period closely as it will tell us lots about the limitations of the occupiers’ power in this country.
Agree. I do believe that those crowing on some kind of morally pure high ground are likely to soon find that very same ground a desperately barren one that’s covered in sh*t.
It’s a Vichy government – we’re speculating about who will become the camp commander, IMO.
Well, who’s been appointed to an organisation by the boss, and the first thing you do is to tell him to resign? Weird.
Bob’s take
Boris the puppet has gone. Bring on the next puppet (and let’s Trusst in her).
The job of all honest journalists (indeed all people) is to discover who are the puppeteers.
Go to it, Toby and worthy crew.
He’s resigning but he is outwardly resigning for the wrong reasons. He’s not resigning because of the devastation he’s caused the country over the last two and a half years and will continue for years to come. It seems he’s resigning over parties and text messages and other trivia. This is just the continuation of the political denial and mendaciousness which infests Westminster.
Alleged front-runner wrote a book last year with an intro by Bill Gates
The bad thing is that this has immediately brought Dominic “Don’t call me a rat, no rat deserves that!” Cummings back into the limelight, making all kinds of hysterical demands. And that’s the guy who is a committed Zero Covidian out of his immeasurable cowardice. No more Boris is certainly called for. But we don’t exactly need an Arden or a Trudeau as replacement.
Was this local or international? The Tories or the Davos Deviants?
If we know the answer to the above it may shed light on what to expect. Sadly I fear this coup was a DD Bunker command. As John K rightly points out, on accepting his promotion Zahawi promptly turns his back on his boss and tells him to resign – not very British…oh. Whoops….
It looks like matters may take a turn for the worse because if the DD’s are behind this they will damn well make sure that the next PM is a proper puppet.
Davos is behind nothing and we’d all be better of without continuously fighting these US domestic politics proxy battles. It absolutely doesn’t matter which guy presently sits in the White House and which other guy would like to sit there, especially as these guys are indistinguishable, anyway. They’re all good and all fighting evil fascists with the term fascist long devoid of any meaning beyond the other guy.
The currently most peddled definition of fascism is exactly identical to Hitler’s jewish world conspiracy minus the term.
I do not wish to appear rude but I haven’t got a clue what you are on about.
That makes two.
Three. I thought I followed it at first but re-read it and its turns out I don’t.
The whole great reset narrative comes from the internet wing of Joe Biden’s political opponents. That’s a fantasy story designed to make the Democrats look bad, nothing more. And since that’s an American party, how they look matters preciously little outside of the USA.
Doesn’t it come from here?
The WEF publishes one of these content-free, buzzword-laden tomes about every year, always using the then-current buzzwords.
Check the publications of the Tony Blair Institute, which is very cosy with the WEF. “Our teams are now embedded in governments around the world” (May 2020) https://nitter.it/jengleruk/status/1544952568870313985#m – there’s much more where that came from, for example he claims in the Tony Blair Institute UK annual accounts that he persuaded the UK to go from targeting the vaccines to vulnerable groups, to a policy of universal vaccination. They’re open about it, but somehow when anybody else mentions it, it’s just a conspiracy theory.
“…teams working in more than 20 countries and providing advice and resources to a greater number”
https://web.archive.org/web/20220202041326/https://institute.global/institute/our-response-covid-19
Here they are lobbying for mass COVID testing and digital ID, in a piece co-signed by Jeremy Hunt, now one of the leading candidates to replace Boris Johnson:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220202041629/https://institute.global/policy/taking-uk-testing-strategy-next-level
I think you’ve confused yourself regarding the purpose of this site. Your research is also somewhat adrift.
I think you should stop publishing speculations about me. This just communicates that my statements hit on something you’d like to bury.
Runners: Drax, Baker, Hunt, Truss, Frost, Jabbit, Sunak and Raab.
Outsider possible: Jenkyns
And most importantly, what colour will No 10’s new wallpaper be?
(just trying to get ahead of the supine MSM, y’understand)
More pertinently I wonder if the book has opened on the colour of the new PM?
And now over to the weather.
Could any of these free us from WEF tyranny
According to RW there is no WEF (Schwab, Charlie Windsor, Soros, Carnage Carney, et al), no Reset, no Agenda 2030, these are all fantasies of Joe Biden and his Democrats.
Charles even has a page about it on his own website. https://web.archive.org/web/20220411203452/https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/thegreatreset
He’s a man without a country now. Moral of the story: when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
At the moment Neil Oliver’s aphorism seems entirely appropriate:
“It’s not always about what they say it’s about.”
Something big is on its way.
‘Something big is on its way.’
I have about five different big budget dystopian science fiction disaster movies in the running at this point.
I reckon they’re going to try to reverse Brexit – in deed, if not formally. They were talking about BJ resigning on the Dutch news about 10 minutes before his speech, and the tone was that they expect to see a change in the Brexit process.
I also think the rape of constitutions and the rule of law to “protect people” is something the scum political leaders of the West are only to happy to continue with, now they realise how jaw-droppingly easy it is to make people give up basic rights and do absurd things for no reason whatsoever. And to continue making them do absurd things even when it is beyond clear that said absurd things have been abject failures.
My prediction: a year from now we will see in the UK what is happening in the US. After all the whining of how terrible Trump was, a lot of foolish voters now realise how much worse Biden is. The same will apply here. I can imagine Sunak becoming PM, fits in with the current diversity trend (I have zero problems with a PM of Asian descent, it’s just when it appears to be based on tokenism, undermines everything). I love El Gato, but neither Sunak nor Jabbid resigned out of any sense of disgust with Boris, they’ve had months to do that, as have all the other rats. This is typical, nasty, back-stabbing UK politics. The sad thing is that whoever takes over will probably be much worse for the country as a whole. If a GE sees Labour or a Labour/LD win, the UK will be where the US is today, on the road to hell.
Great summary (as usual).
My (current, this week!) take on the upheaval of the last few years is that it was very much targeted at the US, which I think is currently being systematically dismantled from within by outside forces and their proxies. At this point every aspect of the American way of life is under attack – its history, culture, myths, politics, traditions, individualism, liberty etc. have been deconstructed and demolished to make way for communitarianism – like a giant re-education camp.
If I was a foreign power and I wanted to comprehensively take down America, I could scarcely imagine a better way of doing it than C-19, which was all about abrogating one’s individualism for the greater good.
Viewed through that lens, things start to make sense for me – (but I do have an overactive imagination).
“At this point every aspect of the American way of life is under attack – its history, culture, myths, politics, traditions, individualism, liberty etc. have been deconstructed and demolished to make way for communitarianism – like a giant re-education camp.”
Inadvertently or not if you swap ‘British’ for ‘American’ this sentence would equally apply to this country.
If one goes with the theory of some type of movement (whether Davos, whether China, Russia, 5th columns within), it makes sense that the greatest effort would be put into undermining the Anglo countries, particularly the US and the UK. They still have the greatest sense of freedom and independence and some semblance of a participatory democracy. It also explains the extraordinay demolition of what I would have considered the free-sprited countries Canada and Australia. I know there’s fight-back there, but the governments there seem to have got away with far too much.
Re Brexit – it was always going to cost, it was always going to be difficult and people are being told it’s not worth it, even though it is about the country’s ability to determine its future.
At the same time, we are told that going hungry, going cold, sitting in the dark, possibly even engaging in WWIII is a price worth paying for Ukraine, a country which has nothing to do with Europe other than that it is now funneling organised crime and black-market weapons into the EU in unprecedented levels. Not to mention all the outrage about Trump’s wall at the southern border, yet not a peep about a very similar looking wall being put up in Poland… hypocrites.
Absolutely, but we’re not the superpower. If C19 was a sinister plot (and to some degree we all think it was) then to me, ending the US’s superpower status would seem to be a prize great enough to justify it.
Wokeism arose in US universities I think to begin with, then we had BLM, defund the police, with the Pied Piper of Trumplin to lead the nationalists down the garden path (while he set Warp Speed in motion). Now we have mass shootings being used as a pretext to take the guns and very soon the US military will find itself in the nexus of a war on two fronts, in which it will surely be defeated. It’s all pointing to the same thing: a Soviet-style collapse and being made an example of. China will own the next century and doesn’t want any competitors! As much as I think the WEF goons are criminal lunatics who need arresting and locking up, I don’t think they run the world. I think they run the West.
Excellent piece and I enjoy the Dutch Euro perspective. It would appear tongues were wagging prior to Bozo’s surrender.
I think we are for it.
So Nadhim will we now see withdrawal from the futile proxy war with Russia so we can start buying oil, gas, petrol, wheat, fertiliser, repeal of the Climate Change Act, carbon tax abolished, new licences for gas and coal fired power stations, an end to subsidies to ‘renewables’, abandonment of the Net Zero lunacy, fracking licences. the necessary monetary and fiscal policies to lower inflation?
Listening to the Fat One’s speech I didn’t realise ‘we’d never had it so good’… and what a fabulous job he’s been doing.
‘So Nadhim will we now see withdrawal from the futile proxy war with Russia so we can start buying oil, gas, petrol, wheat, fertiliser, repeal of the Climate Change Act, carbon tax abolished, new licences for gas and coal fired power stations, an end to subsidies to ‘renewables’, abandonment of the Net Zero lunacy, fracking licences. the necessary monetary and fiscal policies to lower inflation?’
These moves would of course instantly put the UK ahead of Western Europe, capital would flow into the country, defence spending could cut, jobs would be created etc etc etc.
The fact that the opposite will happen I think tells us what we need to know: We are being run into the ground by outside forces and their proxies, the Manchurian candidates who are in the running to be the next ‘Prime Minister.’
I am not yet persuaded by the China angle CG but in all other respects I concur.
Well it’s a new idea to me too. But they pushed the pandemic button, introduced the world to lockdowns and are largest funders of the WHO…
Bojo and his gang pushed the UK’s pandemic button, albeit with more than a little immoral support from WHO controller Bill Gates.
See my reply to crisisgarden.
It seems Manchuria is not where it used to be.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful. Yes, it could be pulled back from the brink, but I despair at the sheer stupidity/blindness/disinterest of the British people. I am amazed that people talk about ‘when interest rates come down’, ‘where we will fly to this winter for skiing, or which Costa for a summer holiday next year’. Also ‘when petrol prices come down’ and ‘when the NHS gets back to normal’. Are these people really that daft? I sit here wondering if I have made sufficient plans and purchases to keep us warm and fed this winter, and others seem totally unaware that (to my mind) armaggedon has already started. What really worries me is the amount of compliance. It is frightening that we now know that if the government tells the population to do something to their own detriment, most of them will happily do it. What if we get a government whose agenda is to do just that? What will it take to wake people up? We used to be such a stroppy lot. What happened?
Anybody else imagining the runners and riders polishing their CV’s and answering these questions in the mirror ready for the Davos interview:
1. What is your biggest achievement to date?
2. What is your strongest attribute?
3. What is your weakest?
And so on.
Sunak: 1. I bankrupted the country. 2. I’m black and non British. 3. I don’t tell lies as well as Bozo.
Jabbit: I injected 40 million with the toxic juice. 2. I am from a Pakistani immigtant working class family and black. 3. I am a slaphead.
Truss: 1. encouraging young British men to go to Ukraine to be killed. 2. Geography and I’m also a very good liar. 3. Geography- which supports 2. above.
We could have some fun with this.
Sir Desmond Swayne is supporting the candidacy of Suella Braverman, lockdown sceptics both.
The might of the Daily Sceptic lobby should fall in behind them.
A” lockdown sceptic” who didn’t feel so strongly about it that she actually resigned.
I noticed that. Odd for him to declare so early on – he is usually more measured.
I don’t know much about her but she voted with the government on Plan B so hardly a lockdown sceptic. What has she said or done to make you think she is?
If memory serves me right, she wrote one or two rather good and rather sceptical pieces in the papers. I doubt the gallant Sir Desmond (Lockdown legend) would be on her team otherwise.
I can find no evidence of this, nor do I have any recollection of it. She seems to have followed the government line at every step. Perhaps Swayne thinks covid is over and that Braverman has other good qualities.
The state of this nation is encapsulated in the fact that the deaths of thousands of the elderly and infirm as a consequence of the hospital clearances in 2020 is mentioned nowhere as a reason for this dreadful man’s political demise.
He should have gone then. Many previous Prime Ministers (pre 1990) would have.
My general feeling is that the Cons have done to Bojo what the Republicans did to Trump which is probably the end of them for a while.
Unfortunately for the Cons they won’t have Joe Biden f*cking things up and giving them a fighting chance like he is for the Republicans.