Denmark has become a standout sceptical hero of late, having lifted all restrictions at the start of the month and reclassified Covid as no longer “an infection critical to society”. The Government has even put out a fact check to counter misinformation about its approach – the right kind of fact check, countering actual misinformation.
The Danish shift in strategy was all the more remarkable in that it came at a time when reported infections and deaths in the country were at or close to an all-time high. Infections have since plateaued, underlining that it was the right move. However, given that the near-record deaths have come two years in and despite high levels of vaccination, it is worth digging into the data to see if there’s anything more they can tell us.
The first thing that stands out is how high hospital admissions are, though as the Government says, many of these will be incidental admissions or mild cases. In addition, while hospital admissions are much higher in Denmark than the U.K., the number of patients in hospital is around the same (see below, plus the admissions (above) appear to be peaking), which presumably reflects mild cases with short stays.
The second thing of note is that ICU patient numbers are right down since Omicron came along – as you would expect for a milder variant – and following the same trajectory as the U.K (see top chart). However, the big oddity is that deaths are rising steeply and even headed towards a new record. This is very different to the U.K., where deaths are headed down, and it prompts us to ask why. It is especially odd given that ICU patients are down so low, as it means the ratio of deaths to ICU patients is higher than ever. The Government has felt obliged to clarify that the criteria for admission to ICU has not changed. This means that either more Covid ICU patients are dying or more Covid patients are dying outside ICU. How many of the deaths are with Covid rather than from Covid is unclear, and this may be a factor. The Government points out that overall mortality was down to normal levels by the end of January (see below), so this suggests many of the Covid deaths are incidental or otherwise part of normal mortality – though be aware that the data for excess mortality is not yet available for the period covering the recent sharp rise in Covid deaths. The deaths-to-ICU-patients ratio in the U.K. is also currently very high, as ICU patients have come right down while deaths have stayed higher, though unlike in Denmark deaths are now headed down.
The surge in Covid deaths in Denmark is also happening despite high vaccination rates. Israel has shown a similar pattern, with record deaths this winter, though in Israel’s case it had high ICU numbers as well. Israel’s excess mortality was also below average in mid-January, but again, we don’t yet have data for the Omicron surge.
The dominant Omicron variant in Denmark is BA.2. Is this part of the reason for the currently higher deaths? A recent study on hamsters found BA.2 causing more severe illness than BA.1 and being back to liking the lungs, which sounds concerning. However, humans are not hamsters, and you would expect a large clinical change like this to show up in ICU numbers, which it hasn’t so far.
The picture in Sweden is similar to Denmark, with low ICU numbers but higher hospital numbers. Like in Denmark, deaths have headed up recently and reached a similar level (in Sweden’s case, no record is being approached, but that’s because earlier waves were more severe). This means Sweden, too, has a surprisingly high deaths-to-ICU ratio, around the highest it’s been. This is particularly odd as in spring 2021 (its Alpha wave) it had lots of Covid ICU patients but very few deaths, whereas now it has few ICU patients but a disproportionately high number of high deaths. Excess deaths in Sweden, like in Denmark, were low in mid-January, but, again, data for the recent Omicron surge are not yet available.
Overall, the picture from the Omicron wave in these four highly vaccinated countries is mixed and perplexing. There is no consistency in the ratio of reported infections to hospital patients, hospital patients to ICU patients, or ICU patients to deaths. (We don’t yet know about ratios of Covid deaths to excess deaths in the recent Omicron surge, except in the U.K., where overall deaths have been below average since Christmas.)
The oddity in particular of the deaths-to-ICU ratio being up in Denmark, Sweden and the U.K. needs explaining. It may be some kind of artefact, such as because deaths with-but-not-of Covid are higher, but it needs looking into. In Israel that ratio isn’t up, but that’s because ICU admissions also went high as deaths did. In Israel and Denmark new Covid death records have been hit or approached – though the level of Covid deaths in those countries is not much higher than in the U.K. or Sweden, it’s just that Israel and Denmark had milder previous waves. This means at least part of the explanation may be that Sweden and the U.K. have more acquired immunity, which is more robust than vaccine immunity. Whatever the explanation turns out to be, the fact that record or near-record deaths have occurred in Denmark and Israel despite vaccination and the mildness of Omicron is striking and should prompt further investigation.
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First class report.
“Better to have questions without answers, than answers without questions,” as Professor Feynman used to say.
In more sceptical moments, I sometimes think old-school empirical science took a mortal hit around the time of the Feynman Lectures…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw
…Just as mainframe computers started to proliferate. Sixty years later it’s been a digital hop, skip and jump to the “well-correlated neighbouring stations” cited in Chris Morrison’s latest excellent article showing up Met Office settled science for the feebleminded yarn it actually is.
Thanks also for the educational diligence of Paul Homewood and other citizen scientists probing away behind the scenes.
“well-correlated neighbouring stations”
It is a fundamental principle in scientific investigation that if multiple measuring instruments are to be used and their data combined, they must all be calibrated against the same, standard reference instrument whose accuracy is known. Then the error of each is the same and known and allowance made, and not compounded.
There is no common reference instrument against which the temperature instruments around the World used for “the global temperature record” are calibrated. Combining – correlating (!) – their data has an unknown, incalculable compounded margin of error.
Averaging data introduces a margin of error. Average global temperature (there isn’t one) or temperatures is meaningless particularly when claims of warming in small fractions of tenths or hundredths of a degree are made.
The truth is nobody knows with any accuracy how much global warming there has been “since records began” (1860 as the Little Ice Age ended) or in fact how much the climate system is currently warming in the context of the last 10 000 years, other than in general terms, slowly and small, irregular increments.
The only true “climate scientists” are geologists, because climate is part of the Earth’s history which can only sensibly be analysed retrospectively over long periods, and geologists are the Earth’s historians who carry out this analysis.
Understood (and far better explicitly stated than my hand-waving).
I wonder if “well correlated” means the same time? If so the wind speed across the distance must be accurately know, because this causes a correlation time delay. See my other comment, the whole process has huge error bands (uncertainty). More useless alleged data!
Thanks for the Feynman link. I winced when he mentioned ‘computers that can churn out new guesses’ – exactly the ‘science’ of models used as ‘proof’ which we’re being subjected to.
There’s a huge difference between someone who thinks scientifically and someone who can learn a bunch of scientific detail. The first has humility and conducts an ongoing quest for truth. The second arrogantly believes they’ve learned all there is to know.
Cue another quote from 60 years ago (same goes for Profs):
“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.”
Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974)
An excellent quote, demolishing that whole bogus concept of “settled science”. Real science can never be “settled”. New discoveries challenge old assumptions, and at some point everything we now believe to be true has to be re-evaluated. Do we still believe the Earth is flat? Do we still believe that all matter is a combination of fire, air, water, earth and aether? But it takes a great deal of determination to push against the inertia of accepted ideas.
The MET office is as usual mathematically inept, probably deliberately. The only scenario where intermediate data can be derived between two points is where the exact function (this may be a curve or straight line but must be both a continuous function and have a continuous second derivative) is known. As temperature with wind movements is not a function like this, the intermediate temperature profile cannot be estimated and any data is worthless. Not even class 5, worthless! I can suppose that a straight line is used, so as to not tax the brains in the MET office too much! Worthless!
More excellent work by Chris. Thank you.
The whole argument of generating ‘assumed data’ for between datapoints does strike me as a bit mad
If my house was worth £500k, but ten miles away there is a house worth £1m, does that make houses five miles away worth £750k.? Data is only as reliable as the assumptions that you make about it.
A datum is a fact assumed from direct observation. Triangulation and extrapolating/averaging from data points is not direct observation and does not produce data, it produces numbers, as does computer modelling.
When the numbers produced from this jiggery-pokery are presented with a degree of accuracy greater than the actual input data, which is the case in climate “science”, we are in the realm of the absurd and make-believe.
Consider that in some countries ‘gridding’ can be done over the distance from London to Edinburgh.
Yes JXB, but it is much worse than that, see my other comments. The gridding process is mathematically so flawed that it can only produce nonsense. I suppose if you are willing to average everything over a long time period the errors might be smaller, but as maximum temperature probably only lasts for a very short period, this is useless too!
So the MO own the science do they? Presumably this proprietory climate science is different from the science that is accessible to the rest of the world.
Well yes, we know it is different because it is not based on old-fashioned measurements but on the new, improved, presumably AI enhanced, climate modeling.
It’s based on smugness, delusion, self importance and make believe
Brilliant reporting Chris and from your sources too.
Can we please get the torpedoes in the water and sink these rusting hulks of climate measuring organisations?
Perhaps we could hack into their weather stations and recalibrate them.
I think ‘smoke’ and ‘mirrors’ is being kind the criminal ecoactivists and the Met Office – ‘bull’ and ‘shit’ might be more accurate.
Those with long memories may recall that prior to the Typhoon Record the MetO were overjoyed when a non-MetO weather station as Cambridge Botanic Gardens claimed a new record. They tried to restrain the eagerness and said they needed to check the equipment first. Note equipment and not site. And of course the equipment was fine so pop the champagne corks. Then the ordinary honest folk got to work and came up with a site rating of WMO 3 to 5.
It is interesting that they transitioned from an idea of an impending ice age to one of the planet being burned up. I remember at school it was all about the impending ice age. It is interesting how you can flip the narrative 180 degrees as if no one notices.
Another thing that seems to go unmentioned and which is yet self-evidently extremely important is the decline in insect numbers over the last few years. Virtually no one notices. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening. It is very dramatic and doesn’t presage well for larger creatures. Open your eyes this stuff isn’t brain surgery. Painful to look at but you have to look.
I’ve noticed it too.
True but there are enormous uncertainty as to why. With Bees it is probably disease, with butterflies it might be very wet weather. However, saying that this is due to anthropogenic climate change is ridiculous! With more greening of the Earth there ought to be more flowers and thus more flying insects, a degree of temperature change has not done this before, so why now? It might well be our mild winters have failed to kill of preditors, or allowed disease to flourish in less hardy stock. Farmers love hard winters, they kill lots of pests.
You have to tune into nature properly and listen to its woes and you can do that anywhere. You can choose not to listen but then you will bring about a constipation of the world spirit. Forget all the worldly human nonsense and have some respect for attentiveness. This makes a big difference.
All these estimates and fakery also extends to the Energy Performance Certificates or EPCs demanded when a house is sold. According to this research the consumption is overestimated and most properties are about C rating. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778823002542
The EPC software is far from fit for purpose, It is designed not to work properly, for example a heat pump gives extra good points!
Well done Mr Morrison.
The Met Office: Making Estimated Twaddle.