I’m slightly surprised to be writing this post as to my mind the answer is obvious – of course the U.K. will face a winter Covid surge. It’s winter. That’s what happens in winter; the dominant respiratory virus surges and, most years, taxes the capacity of the health service. The only question is how big it will be – unusually large like 2020-21, or unusually small like 2019-2020 before Covid hit? It’s worth remembering that more people died in England and Wales per head of population in 2008 (once adjusted for age etc.) and every year prior to it than died in 2020 or 2021, many of them succumbing during the winter flu season, as the chart below from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries shows. In other words, there’s a winter surge in deaths-by-virus every year, and I see no reason why 2021-22 will be any different.
As I see it, the only realistic way there would not be a Covid surge on some scale is if another influenza-like virus takes over, which seems unlikely right now as flu is almost nowhere to be seen.
Nonetheless, I am writing this post, and that’s because some people seem to think that this year it’s not going to happen. Dr Sebastian Rushworth argues that places hit hard already, such as Sweden, New York and Lombardy, have developed enough immunity to avoid “another big wave” altogether. Andrew Lilico in the Telegraph maintains that owing to “infection saturation” and vaccine third doses, “for us, the Covid crisis is over”. Even the usual doom-mongers at SAGE are predicting a decline in hospitalisations and deaths in December, according to new modelling released on Friday. A decline in flu-like hospitalisations and deaths in December? Whoever heard of such a thing?
I freely admit that the winter surge may, because of acquired immunity, be relatively small in places like the U.K. which have already faced widespread exposure. Perhaps that’s all that Sebastian Rushworth and Andrew Lilico mean, and in which case our positions are not so far apart. But will it really be a non-event, as SAGE at least appears to be implying, so that Covid deaths decline during the winter and don’t put any further pressure on the health service?
Looking across to America, we can see that the summer and autumn Delta surge has seamlessly moved into a new winter surge in the more northerly states, including highly vaccinated New England in the north east. Southern states hard-hit by Delta already, such as Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, are not yet seeing a new rise, though there is an uptick in Arkansas, Kansas, New Mexico and Arizona that may be ominous. In the north east at least, then, the indication is that, as in Europe, vaccination does not protect from the winter spike, though whether prior high exposure, as in some of the southern states, keeps it muted remains to be seen.
My expectation remains that the U.K. will experience a winter Covid surge in December that causes a peak in hospitalisations and deaths in January, as happens most winter flu seasons, including last year. My prediction is that our acquired immunity will keep this down below last year’s level, perhaps to around 60%, but this is really just a guesstimate.
With restrictions returning and vaccine mandates being reinforced across Europe as the autumn tilts into winter, it’s important to be clear that the U.K. remaining restriction-free must not depend on there being no winter surge or heightened seasonal pressure on the health service. My fear is that these rosy predictions of no-winter-surge make us hostage to fortune, or rather to near-certainty, as when the almost inevitable surge does appear the pressure to respond as per the rest of Europe – because ‘look, our cases and hospitalisations are now going up as well’ – will be irresistible.
The health service was not overwhelmed last winter – at peak Covid-occupancy in England on January 18th, 10% of the NHS’s 85,802 beds remained unoccupied, while Covid patients occupied just 31% of beds. Hospitals coped by triggering their winter capacity-expansion plans and, if necessary, they will do the same this year.
There continues to be no evidence that general lockdown restrictions make any significant impact on Covid infections or deaths, or that they are worth the immense costs and harms they impose on society.
Naturally, I hope the optimists are right, and I will certainly be glad to raise a glass to their foresightedness if they are. But in the likely event they are not, we are in desperate need of a new tune to sing. As a society we must learn to turn our back on the baleful lockdownism that has characterised the pandemic so far, and find another way of responding to the acute hospital pressures, which are, after all, a normal winter occurrence.
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“The sun has got his hat on
Hip, hip, hip hooray
The sun has got his hat on
And he’s coming out today!”
Blimey, even the sun is “woke” now, along with Father Christmas and the rest…
There is no doubt in my view that proper studies of insect populations need to be undertaken. I too remember the days gone by when any journey outside the town would result in a windscreen and front bonnet covered in splattered insects, but no more. The question is why?
Unfortunately, if this subject can be tacked on to another “crisis” some dishonest member(s) of ‘The Science’ will surely do so.
The subject is however more than worthy of in-depth study.
Have you ever considered that the angle of a car windscreen has changed and is now far more streamlined and thus insects are likely to pass over rather than splatter
The number plate’s not, and indeed there are several insects splatted on mine, I just checked.
Yes I have. Bird populations do seem to fluctuate wildly though. Done properly a study in to insect populations would be of far more value to humanity than the millions currently wasted on nonsensical and pointless climate change studies.
Found it remarkable yesterday how many insects invaded our house – never seen so many varied types; our little garden was thick with them and I was chasing butterflies around the house to try to remove them! This doesn’t tell us anything about wider patterns of course but the way the heat had seemingly brought millions of extra critters to life was quite something!
‘… proper studies of insect populations need to be undertaken.’
Why?
Bee populations are under pressure. So, possibly insect populations are too. What are the causes? What would be wrong with on-going studies into insect populations? As somebody has rightly pointed out insects form the basis of the food chain.
Until Billy starts screwing around of course.
I think swallows are low in number this year but around me loads of swifts, probably more than I ever remember. Martins probably a little lower on house martins but loads of sand martins around on the local river.
I cannot be convinced that the numbers of these birds have any relationship to insect armageddon – more likely varying environmental factors in their massive migrations.
There was a story a few years back about cuckoo numbers being down in England, but less so in Wales for some reason. I seem to remember a link with Malta was suggested and what they do to birds there.
(Speaking of Malta, I also seem to remember a story about Malta having “only” two different rubbish bins, and daily bin collections. Why are we so bad on this in the UK?).
Here in Thailand we have nightly rubbish collections. I have a recycler who comes and picks up all bottles(plastic and glass) cardboard paper and cans. These are provided by the local council and i do NOT pay for these services.
This is another interesting subject. Welsh and Scottish cuckoos are thought to take a different migratory path in the autumn compared with the English cuckoos. The English travel more SW through Spain and the Welsh and Scottish travel more SE through Italy. Feeding conditions here are much better as 95% of the tracked cuckoos safely reach their winter quarters. This is reflected in the better fate of their breeding populations; Welsh cuckoos have declined much less than in England and Scottish populations have remained stable.
The life cycle of the cuckoo is amazing!
Or events along their migration routes.
Insect Armageddon may have many causes, but discount Climate Change. Almost continuous geoengineering and its close relation the ever increasing level of radio frequency pollution should be near the top of any list.
radio frequency pollution
Can you elaborate?
If we’re facing insect Armageddon, it’s going to bugger-up their plan to make us all give up meat and instead eat insects.
I wonder what they’ll come up with next? Eat dirt?
Worms.
Cue singing…
‘Nobody likes me,
Everybody hates me.
I think I’ll eat some worms.
long thin slimy ones,
Short fat hairy ones.
See how they wiggle & squirm.
Bite their heads off,
Slurp the juice out, throw the skins away.
I don’t know how I could live without my worms three times a day!’
LOL! My first laugh of the day thank you!
My pleasure! Don’t think they teach it in the Brownies any more!!!
It might be on the verge of a comeback though if Billy hears about it.
There has definitely been a huge drop in the number of birds and insects in our garden here in Suffolk. The bee population has dropped dramatically as has the number of butterflies and so has the small birds – it has been quite a dramatic change. However the number of wood pigeons seem to have increased unfortunately.
Since a pair of peregrines took residence of the church spire, our pigeon population has been a tad smaller.
We have a few beekeepers in the village so we don’t want for honeybees but I’ve noticed fewer moths this year & reduced bat activity of an evening.
Lose the food at the bottom of the pyramid & the predator species suffer. Not until the predator species or the prey with PR are affected that we stupidly take note.
I bought a bug home, a luxury pad for insects which is on the house wall facing south, but as yet no one has taken up tenancy!
One of the many terrible harms of climate fraud is that genuine environmental and conservation causes have been sidelined or rubbished by association, as this article correctly highlights. I spent my childhood and younger years as an ardent conservationist, now I look at organisations like WWF and Greenpeace as the enemy. Even recycling, something I once felt quite strongly about, is tainted by association.
Insects undoubtedly need our concern and protection given their sensitivity to the toxins we routinely pump into the ecosystem. How ironic then that we take environmental lessons from one Bill Gates with his links to Monsanto. We’re living in a ghoulish inversion of reality.
No surprise but this matches my position in its entirety.
WRT recycling, from being very keen my position now is anything in any bin. I can of course kid myself that if I deliberately mix my rubbish I am virtuously providing somebody with work in a sorting plant.
Naiively I fantasise that our rubbish is sorted and recycled.
I don’t really believe any of it gets recycled, that if it is, it’s probably more energy intensive and that really, it’s all just an exercise in promoting communitarianism to break pleb individualism!
Yep.
I really liked this article – very well thought out and balanced. I think one thing to bear in mind is that bird populations vary as some are displaced by others. My personal impression was that Magpies were a rarity when I was a child in the 60s and (having just checked) this is confirmed by the RSPB. Starling populations, on the other hand, have declined significantly. I do think it is important to understand the reasons for these changes, but they may not, per se, be a sign of ecological catastrophe.
Tens – or is it hundreds – of thousands of wind turbines and acres of solar panels, both renowned for daily mass slaughter of avians and insects – could that have anything to do with it – particularly since climate change lunacy and these blots on the landscape are a pandemic of the Northern Hemisphere?
Plus: large areas of land now used for growing crops for biofuels, and large areas no longer farmed. Birds and insects adapted to previous conditions may have been affected.
And where is it writ except among creationalists, that all species must remain the same exactly as their creator intended?
So natural variability and evolution? Too difficult for biologists, naturalists? And of course anathema to ‘conservationists’ for whom NOTHING can be allowed to change.
“proper studies of insect populations need to be undertaken.’
Why?”
Have you not answered your own question?
Very odd.