There is now lots of evidence that the coronavirus had begun spreading undetected all over the world by autumn 2019 at the latest. This has led to a mystery as to why winter 2019-20 was relatively mild in terms of ‘flu’ deaths and why excess deaths only started appearing from January onwards, first in Wuhan, then Lombardy and Iran, then other places such as New York and London.
This has led some scientists to dismiss all evidence of early spread as false positives, and conversely some sceptics who accept early spread to argue that the excess deaths of the pandemic have all been caused by interventions, not by the virus.
For myself, I don’t see how interventions can explain all the excess deaths. If that were the case we should see a positive correlation between interventions and deaths, but we don’t. Rather, as we know, evidence-based studies show there to be little or no relationship between lockdown strictness and deaths, either positive or negative.
The reality is, there are a number of mysteries about the behaviour of the virus at different times and places, the lack of excess deaths prior to 2020 being just one. Consider: there was a relatively deadly outbreak in Wuhan in December 2019, but no deadly outbreak elsewhere in China or the rest of South East Asia. Then in February and March there was a more deadly outbreak in Lombardy, but not so much elsewhere in Italy, and in New York and the north east of the U.S. but not so much in the rest of the country. Western Europe had some hotspots in spring 2020 but central and Eastern Europe saw very little. Then some other places had a strong summer wave in 2020, but not so much India, which was only strongly affected by Delta in 2021. South East Asia, on the other hand, went largely unscathed until Omicron. These patterns have not yet been adequately explained, and nor have the reasons that each (pre-Omicron) Covid wave (like flu) typically only infected 5-15% of the population before dying away, irrespective of what measures were in place.
My current best hypothesis to explain the oddly variable behaviour of the virus is that it is to do with virus variants and human immune systems and some under-appreciated aspect of how they interact. Why more deadly variants started appearing from December 2019, however, I do not know. Nor am I sure why the first deadly outbreak was in the same place that the virus may have originally escaped from, in milder form, some months before.
What I have put together, though, is a graph of Covid deaths up to May 31st 2020 for each U.S. state, plotted against the state’s distance (in miles) from New York City. This provides a powerful illustration of how strong the relationship between proximity to New York and Covid deaths in that first wave was (note the logarithmic scale).
Looking at this, it’s little exaggeration to say that proximity to New York City was the key determinant in spring 2020 of a poor outcome, rather than anything else such as lockdown stringency or timing. This seems to me strong evidence that what was driving this pattern was the variant at large in New York, and how much of it was in your state.
An extra piece of evidence, then, that the answer to some of the coronavirus mysteries lies in the virus’s changing genetic make-up.
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solves a problem to access those large fees – and another benefit, our lecturers will be able to promote democracy to China’s up and comi…. – LOL – maybe not
It is amazing how our oh-so-careful universties can adjust their principles when money is involved.
Keeping Blairs education industry going. When my son was looking at going to uni I said no Mickey Mouse courses and no Micky Mouse Universities. (He studied Chemical Engineering at a Russell group uni).
Universities have become (more so) holding bays for the young, who self fund 3 years before going into the job market, to do a job they could of started at 16. (I was talking to somebody in the village and the grass was being cut. The person said it was his grandson cutting the grass and he had a Phd in Psychology).
there’s a growing industry in behaviour science
Indeed – we can be assured that those taking STEM courses will be free from undue influence, and deal only in a truth based on scientific method. That has been so obvius over the last 18 months. We need more versed in the critical thinking of a science and technology dominated culture.
The issue is less simple, and – as always ‘Follow the Money’ is the guide. Chinese students are BIG money, and offending the Chinese is not the road to wealth.
Why are we using our limited training capacity as an export product?
If we wish to train Chinese students, open branches in China.
But as our democratic rights are being swiftly eroded by our once Conservative government to bring about an enforced communist type regime, how useful those students will be over here to advertise the benefits of communism! What a clever ploy. The Imperial College will be delighted. I bet only the most zealous are permitted to come.
“communist type regime”
It’s just the natural (if unforseen by addicts) trajectory of the Tory addiction to capital accumulation at the expense of anything else, not the con of ‘communism’ used as a front for the same.
Some British private schools (which are increasingly abandoning the British middle class in favour of the more lucrative global elite) are indeed opening branches in China.
Let me get this straight. 2 years ago a virus escaped from China and arrived in several countries at a time corresponding to the arrival of Chinese students to universities across the world. Since then we have had universities stopping face to face tuition, because of this virus. Now we have those same universities bussing in students from that same country.
Yep…but God forbid you want a week on the Costas!
PUB’s Three Notice Process To Stop Schools Vaxxing Children
By popular and urgent demand, here lies PUB’s three notice process to deal with the clear and present threat that UK schools will be offering the experimental COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ to 12-17 year olds next month, following the JCVI’s recent u-turn on its 15/07/2021 assessment that the risk outweighed the benefits of vaxxing anybody under 18.
https://www.thebernician.net/pubs-three-notice-process-to-stop-schools-vaxxing-children/
Chinese students are welcome. Chinese politics can fuck off. The UK is not a fucking COMMUNIST country. And the politicians who are committing treason by importing Chinese Communist Party policy like lockdown and vaxpass and credit scores etc, well please fuck off to China and live your fucking dream there you dirty traitorous pieces of filth. These scumbags better pay for these crimes.
CCP and Tory Party = different guises in differing contexts for grabbing the boodle and the power. Simple.
Academia hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party. Bought and laid for.
Meanwhile, the CCP exploits the Chinese peoplemas slave labour and kills Christians.
How many of these ‘students’ are CCP operatives? What about stealing our IPR?
None of this matters, only the need for Vice Chancellors to top up their obscene salaries and promote their woke agendas.
It’s known as unregulated ‘global capitalism’ – favoured by both the Tories and Labour since 1980 and that ludicrous figure with the handbag.
And the university most closely linked with China is… yes, Imperial.
Hello Mr.Ferguson
How does Ferguson manage ordering from a chinese menu?
…I’ll have 200,000 Number 54,000’s please.
Are you sure?
Of course I am! My computer model says so.
Okay. Do you want wafers with that?
Course I don’t want f’ing wafers…… (copyright Monty Python)
Daughter of a friend of mine, in New Zealand, was a student recruitment officer and flew in and out of China, recruiting, on behalf of the Catholic school she worked for. She’s been NZ bound for a while now so not sure what is going to happen there.
A friendly reminder to British students: You’re forced to wear face masks etc because it is conjectured that it will help with attracting and maintaining a sizable number of these guys who are much more important than you because more money is (reportedly) to be made of that.
Aren’t Chinese people in the uk quite successful compared to other groups eg white working class boys and BME? Yet another means of infiltration and turning the indigenous population into second class citizens?
There were a lot of Chinese students at my university 20 years ago. I have absolutely no idea how they passed anything though as none of them could speak a word of intelligible English. I don’t mean that to sound small-minded, I’m all for studying abroad but I can’t imagine doing it without a decent grasp of the language. I just kinda assumed that the Uni didn’t mind when they were paying so much. It was super annoying to have to attempt to work with any of them on anything that wasn’t in the universal language of maths though.
Well, lots of valuable products are made in China these days – including the students, with related cash flow for the universities. Not necessarily beneficial to our local people, though.
Get the CCP sleepers topped up
Fascinating. So universities are able to organise chartered flights for their Chinese students.. but large food organisations in the country cannot organise drivers to deliver food to Uk shops. Yes, this makes complete sense.
And the wealth of China comes from energy generated largely by coal with a sizable amount of nuclear and environmentally disruptive Hydro. It’s a funny old world and will be even funnier if the Taliban turn up at COP26. How will the XR supporting and woke universities square any of this?
When we are constantly under economic and security threats from the Chinese, we import this vast army of Chinese students with obvious non-west allegiance, just to earn a buck? Are we utterly barking mad?
Just another way the East is winning and we are losing. When it becomes all about money this happens.
World peace may be great, we’ll never know it. Why is it bad to recognise that we have enemies.
So they fly in Chinese students who then have to sit in the rooms remotely accessing courses? They could do that from China.
The treatment of students during the government’s pandemic shows that universities are not “centres of learning”. The insistence on mask wearing proves that.