The latest ONS figures show the number of deaths in England and Wales for the week ending July 29th to be 18.4% above the five-year average. As a consequence, we’re beginning to see hand-wringing leaders in national newspapers belatedly blaming the lockdowns for the current health disaster. Someone may correct me, but I don’t recall the mainstream media doing much back in spring 2020 to highlight the all-too predictable consequences of lockdown. We are also seeing doctors who spoke out at the time predicting what this calamitous policy would lead to at last getting a hearing. But it’s too little too late.
The defence of supporters of the March, October and December 2020 lockdowns is that criticism now is made with the benefit of hindsight and at the time there was no alternative. I would counter that it isn’t hindsight now but a lack of foresight then that needs examining.
The Independent Inquiry under Baroness Heather Hallett, if it’s to do anything useful at all, must rule out any future imposition of lockdowns, short of a return of bubonic plague! “Ahha!” say the zealots. “But, we didn’t know it wasn’t the equivalent of bubonic plague.”
Actually, despite the official narrative both then and now, we did know quite a bit about Covid’s likely virulence. The Diamond Princess, sailing serenely around the Western Pacific from January 20th to February 20th 2020 until it was struck by an outbreak of coronavirus, was a perfect petri-dish to study the impact on the 3,711 people on board. Of the 1,045 relatively young, relatively fit crew, 145 (14%) were infected and none died – a case fatality rate of 0%. Of the 2,666 relatively old, relatively unfit passengers, 567 (21%) became infected and somewhere between 9 and 14 subsequently died, a case fatality rate of about 2%. Bubonic plague it most certainly wasn’t.
“OK,” the zealots reply, “but, we’ve got 10 million old people in the U.K. If they all caught this thing, hospitalising many and killing 2%, that’s still 200,000 deaths and countless others in hospital.” Then up popped Neil Ferguson with his prediction of 500,000 deaths and the Chicken Lickens went into overdrive. It was at this point that someone in the bowels of the Department of Health might have gone to the shelf in the archive store marked “Inquiries best forgotten” and dragged out the 2010 Hine review of the U.K. Government’s response to the 2009 influenza pandemic. There are a few points to bear in mind about that pandemic:
• It mainly affected young people and children. Globally, 80% of (H1N1) pdm09 virus-related deaths were estimated to have occurred in people younger than 65.
• Neil Ferguson had predicted 65,000 deaths from this pandemic (actual number 457).
• 90 million doses of Pandemrix were ordered from GlaxoSmithKline, though the Department of Health managed to cancel some. However, it was subsequently discovered that Pandemrix caused narcolepsy, particularly in children, and the vaccine was withdrawn and compensation paid out by the U.K. Government.
In perusing the Hine report, if they’d got as far as p.68, they’d have come across this:
That’s interesting. Dame Deidre Hine, unlike those responsible for locking us down in 2020, had the nous to look back through the archives at reports on the Government’s response to previous pandemics and found that as early as 2003 warning flags were being waved about putting too much emphasis on models and recommending a broader approach to decision making.
On the previous page there’s another warning: Modellers are not “court astrologers“ it says:
Finally, just read the following extract from p.69 of the Hine report. Wouldn’t Professors Sikora, Heneghan, Gupta, Bhattacharya, Kulldorff and many, many others, recognise this trait?
Clearly, there was experience in the Health Department that should have come to the fore and recommended a more measured approach.
The lockdowns stand or fall on the credibility of Ferguson’s models and on the belief that, even if they were hopelessly wrong, as they were, the prudent thing was to assume they were right and proceed accordingly. The Hine report warns against this approach and the fact that the pre-existing pandemic response plan, eminent epidemiologists and doctors from around the world also warned against this will surely persuade the Hallett Inquiry to reject the notion that that there was no alternative.
Of course, apart from saving lives the other justification for imposing the lockdowns was to ‘save our NHS’. Well, we built the Nightingale hospitals between lockdowns one and two and never used them, so forgive me if I’m a little sceptical about this justification beyond the first lockdown.
Let’s just look at how effective lockdowns and other NPIs have been in changing the profile of hospital admissions with Covid. Did our enforced actions flatten the sombrero? Figure 1 shows Covid hospital admissions from March 2020 to the present for the U.K., Israel, Germany and France – I could have chosen any countries, they all tell the same tale. Regardless of whatever NPIs have been in place, regardless of any vaccination programme, the shape of each wave looks pretty much the same, no flat sombreros in sight, just KKK hoods!
It wasn’t hindsight that allowed Anders Tegnell in Sweden to avoid lockdowns. Professor Sikora didn’t have the benefit of hindsight when he warned of the all-too-predictable consequences of lockdown in terms of foregone cancer treatments. Neither was it hindsight that Professor Heneghan relied upon when he saw, during his weekend shifts in geriatric wards, that old people weren’t getting the care and advocacy that previously ensured they were kept hydrated. (Can I recommend the episode of the Brendan O’Neill podcast with Carl Heneghan? It’s exceptional.)
The acid test of the Hallett Inquiry will be if she accepts that either Ferguson’s numbers were credible or that it was reasonable to assume that they were. Defending either proposition will mean it’s a whitewash.
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Referring to para 2, a while back it seemed to me that the obsession with antibodies, especially re the product on offer, looked like an advertising tactic, not proper science. More like deliberate avoidance of comprehensive education on the topic.
About a year ago, via this site (or maybe it’s predecessor), I came across organisations that can (at a fee) perform T-cell assessments related to SARS-Cov-2, which I became interested in on the basis that it was well over a year since I had some kind of respiratory attack (traditionally called common colds) around the time that C-19 emerged. Not advertising, but the firm used was based in Abingdon. The result of that was inconclusive, so it was probably caused by one of the hundreds of other viruses. I had a go at this, because it was obvious that it would be pretty unlikely for any relevant antibodies to be on board after 12 months or more.
Looking on the bright side, it has turned out to be educational about the mechanics of our immune system. On the other side, I’d better not say too much!
Incidentally, I endorse John Campbell’s channel; useful and reassuring to a large extent.
Very interesting (as always).
I’m afraid there has been so much lying that my default assumption now is that any covid related output from “official” bodies is not based on incorrect assumptions or innocent mistakes but on expediency, greed, lust for power, arse-covering. So rather than that concluding that “vaccines” were “effective” because antibodies, the conversation was more like “what plausible story can we cook up that sounds like these vaccines are effective”.
Yes indeed. Why choose the spike protein for the covid vaccine :-
https://hillmd.substack.com/p/spike-proteins-choice-by-competing
Yeadon may be being a little over dramatic by describing the vax as bio weapon, but for a more nuanced view :-
https://dpbh.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/dpbhnvgov/content/Boards/BOH/Meetings/2021/SENEFF~1.PDF
I’ve yet to see any scientific rebuttal of the dangers raised in the paper (and the earlier one with Antony M. Kyriakopoulos).
The immune system is incredibly complex and poorly understood, and even worse often misunderstood, especially by the genetic engineers behind mRNA whose only brief nod to the immune system, seems to have been how to avoid their product being destroyed by it.
What could possibly go wrong.
I don’t think Yeadon is being over dramatic at all. These products are referred to as ”countermeasures”, and Katherine Watt elaborates further;
“NUTSHELL: US Government since 1969 has incrementally transferred/hidden the joint DOD+HHS Chemical and Biological Warfare Program (50 USC 32) in the Public Health Service Act (42 USC 201) and Food Drug and Cosmetics Act (21 USC 9), such that federally-funded, federally-directed public health programs and products are actually bioterrorism programs and biological and chemical weapon attacks.
21 USC 360bbb-3, Authorization for medical products for use in emergencies, is one of the key pseudo-laws enabling the bioweapon attacks under the Covid-19 national emergency pretext.
We now know that there is no stopping condition, because use of the products “shall not be considered to constitute a clinical investigation.” If there is no regulated investigation, then there is no stopping role for a regulatory agency to perform, and the products are not medicinal drugs or devices: they are weapons.”
https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/p/stopping-conditions
“I recently watched a documentary, Idiocracy” – thanks for that, this really did make me laugh out loud. I guess this is the film Hancock should have watched rather than the fictional disaster movie Contagion
Yes, a very good question as to why they chose the spike protein for the vaxxes, particularly as there were doctors warning in December 2020/January 2021 that the spike protein was already being seen as the pathogenic part of the virus. I remember reading quite a few items on Children’s Health Defense about that. I also remember reading about a study that had shown the spike protein had caused damage in different organs, without any trace of the virus being found. They can’t claim there was no knowledge, when even I had heard that the spike protein was in itself harmful prior to the vaxx rollout. It could be as simple as Fauci et al. long knowing what the problem was, what part of the virus they felt needed to be eliminated and had started brewing their poison some time around October/November 2019.
Another very good question is why “scientists” across the world decided to fixate on antibodies. It’s one thing saying that the health authorities in the US or the UK decided on a certain course of action and that was that, but why did every other country on earth decide to follow suit? The real pandemic was the “stupid” bug that invaded most people’s brains.
Looking forward to your article on pregnancy and the vaxxes.
I’ve learnt a lot these past couple of years not only about our fake democracy or rNHS not being the envy of the world, or the government who’s job it is to protect this country and its inhabitants but does not, but how wonderful our own bodies are, our immune systems are nothing short of miraculous, provided we take care of it and not bombard it with toxic chemicals. I question everything now! We only have one life and I am not entrusting it to anyone particularly the government or its health agencies.
Idiocracy is the name of a film about the human race regressing to stupidity! Very apt!
‘Regressing’ – I think we are beyond present continuous and have arrived at past perfect.
We have had a pandemic of stupid which started in 1945 when the Nation went nuts and overdosed on the Cradle-to-the-Grave, lots of free stuff elixir doled out by Labour.
Stupid is now endemic, taught in schools, and there is no cure. Only a minority have immunity.
Instructional, well balanced and argued. Thanks.
At the very least, the OAS theory is much too simplistic: Influenza (and common colds) are recurring infections most people survive without even getting seriously sick. This implies that people becoming reinfected with it will have an immune system supposedly imprinted by the previous version of it. Nevertheless, the immune system must be capable of updating itself quickly in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Forgive me, Amanuensis, until I reached “…..and this will lead the cell being targeted by the immune system, resulting in to the usual immune response to cells …….” I was following your explanation beautifully, but then lost the thread. Sorry to be a pain, but there appears to be a typo in the extract above. Could you please amend. Many thanks, and for your excellent articles generally.
“The rapid rise in N-protein antibodies across the population at the start of 2021 might simply reflect the relatively high infection rates seen with the Omicron variants compared with prior variants, although it might also be important that Omicron is rather dissimilar to prior variants and this might reduce the impact of any OAS that is present.”
I think you mean 2022, not 2021.