The Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR) estimates the percentage deaths in all those with an infection: the detected (cases) and those with undetected disease (asymptomatic and the not-tested group).
The IFR is used to model the estimated number of deaths in the population at large. If it’s a large number approaching 1%, then the modelled outputs can report an alarming number of fatalities – providing the impetus for lockdowns.
Early in the pandemic, Imperial College London’s Report 9 modelled the impact of Covid based on a publication by Verity et al. on March 13th 2020, which estimated the IFR as 0.9%.
This IFR gave rise to the modelled estimates that “in an unmitigated epidemic, we would predict approximately 510,000 deaths in Great Britain and 2.2 million in the U.S.”.
The authors wrote this: “However, the resulting mitigated epidemic would still likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over. For countries able to achieve it, this leaves suppression as the preferred policy option.”
A recent publication by Stanford researchers based on seroprevalence studies in the Covid pre-vaccination era provides a more robust estimate of the IFR.
Across 32 studies, the median IFR of COVID-19 was estimated to be 0.035% for people aged 0-59 years and 0.095% for those aged 0-69.
We compared the two IFR estimates, which shows the Imperial College estimates are much higher than Stanford’s across the age groups.
Estimating IFR in the early stage of outbreaks is so error-prone that it should come with a warning. Antibody studies provide a more accurate understanding of how many people have been infected and permit a more precise estimate of the IFR. However, early in the pandemic, such studies are not available – Verity et al. based their IFR on Chinese data and just 1,334 cases outside mainland China. The case fatality ratio was estimated on just one severe case in those under 19.
Instead of early models and predictions, an alternative strategy is to analyse the data as they emerge: work out what is going on. We did this, and by April 2020 we wrote that it was increasingly clear that the “age affected structure doesn’t fit with pandemic theory”.
The early IFR estimates from Imperial College were substantially overestimated across the ages compared to Stanford’s seroprevalence studies – more than ten-fold in those under 19. But how do they compare with the actual data?
Imperial College predicted that 81% of the Great British population would be infected throughout the epidemic. By December 31st 2021, the ONS infection survey estimated that 81% of England’s population had COVID-19. ONS reports 87 registered deaths in 0 to 19-year-olds in England and Wales by this date.
We used these data to back-calculate the IFR in the 0-19-year-olds based on 11.36 million (81% of the population) in this age group infected by the end of 2021. This gave an IFR estimate of 0.0008% (see figure).
The consequences of overestimating the IFR are profound. It overpredicts the number of deaths and influences political decision-making without considering the long-term harm and well-being effects.
Overestimating the IFR is not that unusual. For example, in the Swine Flu pandemic, the post-pandemic IFR was reported as 0.02%, fivefold less than the lowest estimate during the outbreak.
There are further problems with the IFR to consider. First, it assumes all deaths with a PCR positive test or Covid on the death certificate were caused by SARS-CoV-2. This Is not the case, as we have shown. The IFR also doesn’t account for hospital deaths or the complex interaction of multimorbidity (underlying conditions) and the assignment of causation.
An analysis distinguishing causation in under 18s, as opposed to those who died of another cause but were coincidentally infected, reported a mortality rate in under-18-year-olds of two per million – an IFR of 0.0002%, 20-fold lower than Imperial’s estimate for under-19s. This suggests Covid is the underlying cause of death in only about a quarter of young people when it is registered on the death certificate.
Invoking the precautionary principle for the widespread use of restrictions based on catastrophic predictions also underlines the misunderstanding of that principle, which is to act only when you are sure that the benefits of your actions outweigh the negative consequences. No evidence of this existed in March 2020, as lockdowns were not even contemplated in the existing pandemic plans.
Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine. Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. Dr. Jason Oke is a senior medical statistician, university lecturer and researcher with an interest in diagnostics and monitoring. This article was first published on their Substack page, which you can subscribe to here.
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Finally a picture on DS that doesn’t make me feel nauseous.
Don’t those elephants just look so happy and free? Contrast it with the picture below in the article about Austria with those disgusting, menacing, repressive stormtroopers harassing citizens for nothing more than going about their daily lives.
…
One lives more in one day than the other its entire life.
Lions are the very icon of freedom & living life to the fullest, even if they are lazy bastards.
Don’t worry I’m sure DS can come up with a picture of Bojo mounting a lion..
A pig surely? Spit roast with Cameron perhaps?
Oh god sorry, that’s just too much
“Of course, any new variant should be treated with extreme caution, “
I’m so tired of all this NIMBYism. Too many people are happy to swallow all of this crap – until it’s their problem. Yes of course it’s tragic that this stigma will hit Botswana hard but that’s because it’s all nonsense not because it’s an unfortunate truth.
“Of course, any new variant should be treated with extreme caution,“
They feel obliged to parrot this nonsense or they won’t be taken seriously. This is compliance bordering on complicity.
In France everyone is so absolutely petrified of the Omacron variant they’re breaking out the best Bordeaux for petit-déjeuner..
If an opponent can successfully stick “Omicron” to “O Macron” then Macron will lose the election, because being perceived as a great big pile of Dangerous Lergy is a terrible look for a campaigning politician, but there’s a long way to go. He hasn’t even started campaigning yet.
To right..
Never mind about Botswana – the tourist industry in Brentwood and Nottingham will be devastated!!
“Of course, any new variant should be treated with extreme caution”
Why? And why should the gunk be any less useless than it is?
How much more of this con game can the public absorb without twigging it’s a myth about a virus of no high consequence.
“Wearing masks here is compulsory and all shops/offices/banks have sanitising spray at the door and a guard to remind forgetful patrons.”
Sorry that you bought into the narrative. Now that they’ve spun your country into the fear campaign, you are stuck dealing with consequences. Maybe you should just pitch your tourism industry to the skeptics. I can promise that nobody on this site buys the story about this variant being created in Botswana anyway.
Certainly nobody here is going to be buying the hype and the panic responses.
Apart from “raye” and the few other trolls, who get paid to stalk this site.
Appears we have the Dr Jekyll “rayc” today:
“rayc
30 minutes ago
Well, the last part of the postcard sounds like the author is fully subscribed to the official agenda and more than happy to be fucked some more. Until this sort of Stockholm syndrome virus is eradicated from the brain of everyone on the planet, the pandemic will never end.”
I’d love to go to Botswana, but I’m not going until they allow me to go with a plain uncluttered face for all to see.
amanuensis, made a comment in another thread about what if there was a real threat from a novel highly infectious killer disease, (put to one side covid, we all know now it’s not as billed) but have a grown up debate.
21st century air travel is the best way to spread infectious disease around the planet within a few hours! That’s a fact, (if you accept the principles of germ theory).
Quarantine has been a tried & tested method for preventing transmission of disease for decades, I don’t find it unreasonable as a public health measure to limit travel & impose restrictions such as quarantine.
International air travel isn’t a human right, flying people around the world to protect the tourist sector of a country isn’t reason enough to spread disease, discuss as a grown up?
OK back to conspiracy theory, it’s too bloody late to stop covid now, even if you’re a believer, so let it rip.
I doubt it matters. 10%+ IFR rate, society completely collapses and the preppers take over, ‘elites’ go into their bunker and the army try and lock everything down, until they realise it’s hopeless and their families are dying also, at which point it’s everyman for himself.
I’m almost swayed by this response. Given the hysteria from covid I’d say an actual pandemic would result in anarchy, no matter how wonderful the plans were, and how many preparatory exercises were undertaken.
We probably shouldn’t worry so much about it and should just try to be happy.
But it was the media & psychologists that created that hysteria!
It doesn’t take much to close boarders, though the Tories make it look difficult, I admit.
Yours & Paul B’s, prognosis makes it look decidedly dystopian, which wasn’t the direction or context my post was meant to take FFS.
But don’t worry i’m in a better position than most to cope with the worst case scenario,
The problem with that argument (which is certainly internally coherent) is that if you allow governments powers to act in an “emergency”, you will inevitably soon face an “emergency”.
As in this case, once you concede the point you make, the powers you allow will be abused in response to fatuous non-threats like a new “variant” of a globally endemic cold virus (or indeed covid generally).
Best imo to make it as hard as possible for them to exercise such powers, except in specific, localised and defined cases.
I doubt many people would want to live in my ideal world, because we wouldn’t have government, or international air travel.
In reality, it’s too late, government assumed parental responsibility over its citizens long ago.
My post was made purely in practical terms, excluding Hollywood scenarios, e.g. Paul B.
“I doubt many people would want to live in my ideal world, because we wouldn’t have government, or international air travel.”
I can’t imagine how a world would manage without a government of sorts – even ants have organisation. And international air travel is great – I certainly intend to make up for lost flying with all this money I’ve save up since March 2020! Ryanair Stansted to Helsinki £4 cheapest.
The problem with that argument is that it implies that the spread of disease is a bad thing.
Actually the spread of viruses and bacteria is a really good thing. I am sure that thanks to all the mixing and travelling the human immune system as a whole has never been more exercised or in better shape.
I agree.
Indeed, in an ecological sense pathogens have an important function, remove emotive societal moralistic arguments, you’re left with a natural process.
Buy a new car and have it stand in your drive for 20 years. Don’t drive it. After 20 years it is not fit to drive any more – all rubber pipes gone hard, the chemicals in electric components decomposed, brake fluid has absorbed water and the pistons have rusted solid. A car needs to be run and maintained, as does the human body – bacteria and viruses to keep us trained and topped up and in condition to tackle the tough ones.
“Actually the spread of viruses and bacteria is a really good thing. I am sure that thanks to all the mixing and travelling the human immune system as a whole has never been more exercised or in better shape.”
That’s true up to a point, mostly because we’ve long ago assimilated, and paid the blood price for doing so, all the really bad ones. A modern day equivalent of the Black Death or the diseases that the primitive societies of the New World were hit by when they were recontacted by the human mainstream after centuries of isolation would not be acceptable as just a route to immunity.
Hypothetically, such a new disease could arise, though covid obviously wasn’t it.
“21st century air travel is the best way to spread infectious disease around the planet within a few hours!”
Air travel is the only way to spread any physical stuff around the planet in a few hours.
It has the drawback that it can be stopped.
Regarding infectious disease, from a military point of view you might want to
The idea that the rulers are doing nothing more than watching their screens and finding out that X has happened, Y has happened, and so on, is in the running for the biggest lie of all during the current period.
I said as much earlier in another thread.
“deposit your stuff in various places around the planet first”
Like the Chinese ‘students’ in all of the UK universities and colleges? Like the Boys From Brazil!
Nothing is a right.
The only rights you or I or anyone have are those which we are capable of defending. If you are incapable of defending your bodily autonomy and the state forces you to take a medical treatment, then you have no right to bodily autonomy. At best you have a claim you are impotent to defend.
So I claim a right to travel internationally. And I denounce nation states that by means of violence and intimidation have given themselves the right to the land and to withhold it from anyone who the self appointed rulers of the land consider not of that land.
Fat lot of good my claim does, but I claim it nonetheless.
How do you enforce your right to get on someone else’s plane? It’s a great philosophical debating point which I would enjoy having & actually mostly agree with, but it’s not a practical relevant debating point in industrial civilization, where we’re all slaves.
I don’t claim a right to get on someone else’s plane.
I claim a right to freely reach an agreement with someone who has a plane to take me where I want to go.
And I claim the right to go wherever I like, however I might get there.
Unfortunately I have no means to defend my claims. So I don’t have those rights. But I believe I should have them.
Thanks for the mention.
I’d say that the important bit is to tell the truth to the public.
In the case of covid, the right thing to have done is to have said around May 2020 ‘thanks for the response — it was very important that you locked down because we didn’t know, but thankfully we escaped lightly this time‘.
Instead they have perpetuated the over-reaction, with continued threats and warnings. Given then everyone now knows that covid isn’t a massive danger (not benign, sure, but also not killing everyone) they’re adapting themselves to the constant message of doom coming from authorities around the world.
Ie, people now regard governments telling them of terrible risks and getting them to live under restrictions as ‘normal’ — what will they say/do to get people to change behaviours if an actual deadly pandemic comes?
I think it is too late. If we did get a problem pandemic it would kill huge numbers before people changed behaviours. If we’re lucky this we won’t get another pandemic in the next 10 years or so.
That’s the problem with modern society, i.e. socialism, people won’t take responsibility for their own lives & politicians are governed by polls, so yes no authority would likely act quicken enough in a real scenario!
In fact, I think the neoliberal obsession with eradicating disease is an erroneous one doomed to failure.
But that wasn’t my point I was merely addressing practical mitigation measures, which you seem to appear to be rowing back on, ya pain in the ****! (sarc).
Well Mr Gates has been muttering about Smallpox – Marburg for quite a while.. so nothing would surprise now. These creeps will have to keep doubling down to achieve their goals, and at the end of the day we are regarded as ‘useless eaters’..
“In the case of covid, the right thing to have done is to have said around May 2020 ‘thanks for the response — it was very important that you locked down because we didn’t know, but thankfully we escaped lightly this time‘.”
Absolutely not!
The lockdowns were criminal overreactions that they only got away with by gross exaggeration and massive fear propaganda. We certainly knew enough by March 2020 to know that lockdowns weren’t needed. As a few sane countries proved.
We should have stuck to the flu pandemic preparedness plan we had worked on for years, and which the UK regime set out to follow. It was perfectly sufficient. Unsurprisingly, letting fear and panic rule over our reason didn’t end well.
“If we did get a problem pandemic it would kill huge numbers before people changed behaviours. If we’re lucky this we won’t get another pandemic in the next 10 years or so.”
The “crying wolf” point is fair enough, but since we have not had a “problem pandemic” in many decades (and arguably one is hugely unlikely to arise in the modern world at all), and seem to have pandemics similar to this one (ie best responded to by keeping calm and carrying on) every few decades, maybe it’s a good thing if people learn to ignore the panic-mongers.
“I’d say that the important bit is to tell the truth to the public.“
Absolutely, but our culture long ago accepted that it was far too dangerous to tell people the truth. Instead we accept a managerial “controlling panic” rationalisation for paternalist lying.
“International air travel isn’t a human right”
Then it could be argued that walking from your home to the shops isn’t a human right. There are no ‘rights’ – we are all lucky in what we are allowed to do by those who have the big sticks, guns, and nuclear weapons and money.
OK stop with the stupid shit, if you’ve got your own plane then fine, but if you’re using EasyJet you’re fucked. OK?
I knew expecting a grown-up debate on current practicalities was a mistake.
‘The game lodges in northern Botswana employ hundreds of local people and most have managed to scrabble through the last two years.’
Other board games were available
Not a lot of use complaining now. The time to tell these people to fuck off was in March 2020
And now they have the Monopoly with their very own mutant virus.
Which has put them all at Risk.
You can’t really complain if you then go on to demonstrate how far you have bought into the bullshit. You are complicit in maintaining the very nonsense that you say is affecting your economy so much.
BBC News website rugby sides Cardiff and Scarlets return from South Africa.
A new Covid variant circulating in South Africa has seen the country put on the UK red travel list.
The Welsh regions had travelled out there earlier this week for the resumption of the United Rugby Championship.
Answering a query from Newport West MP Ruth Jones in the House of Commons, Javid replied: “As for what can be done to try and get them back before this deadline… nothing.”
Helpful little cunt isn’t he
Botswana, the covid-infested, variant-ridden hellhole that had a total of just six, PCR scam enabled, supposed ‘covid’ deaths last week.
Yeah, but that’s 0.0000001% of their population…….
And…and… something something . EXPONENTIAL…something something! [excited hyperventilation]
But, they aren’t journalists, are they? Hacks at best, I’d say. And not even honest hacks.
Well, I blame TY’s propensity to lick clean the anus of the execrable Johnson and Tory gummint for not seeing this would happen.
the journalistic spheres inability to hold them to account for the last 2 years worth of cockups, and pushing the fear porn on their behalf will be remembered
I am filled with sympathy right up to the point at which I read how the country is slavishly following mask rules, hand sanitising rules and are essentially begging for the authorities to declare the jab is good against its “variant” so that the jabbed can be allowed to go there without hassle.
So in essence they are complaining that they have been good boys, followed all the rules and are being punished unfairly.
At which point I think they are turning themselves into slaves of the bio-security super state just like everyone else and they can go and rot.
Sympathy from me: zero.
Let’s have a prediction then for 17:00, closest wins?
Lots to choose from in freedom bingo:
Masks
Lockdown
Pureblood lockdown
Circuit Breaker
Passports
Curfew
Levels 1-5
R0
Xmas lockdown
Flatten the sombrero
Heavy heart
No worse than Delta
No restrictions
Following the science
Monitoring closely
Get triple boosted jabbed to save granny at xmas?!
HOUSE!
Pepa Pig?
An admission that Jabid is his love child?
We are at war with Germany?
Susan Michie wants to finger your entrails.
The chocolate ration is increased?
Matt Hancock is Harrys dad?
Not sure I can face it. Have a stiff drink at hand, but suspect that won’t suffice.
Am I reading the Guardian?
Sob story from presumably quite wealthy expat , one of the worried well. How dreadful its happened when all the NPIs were being followed. Have you had your booster of those vaccines that are working so well?
I wouldn’t mind betting that the locals dispense of all the crap as soon as they head home, and that the majority of any illness/deaths in Botswana is within the ex-pat communities, just like the rest of sub-saharan africa.
Well, the last part of the postcard sounds like the author is fully subscribed to the official agenda and more than happy to be fucked some more. Until this sort of Stockholm syndrome virus is eradicated from the brain of everyone on the planet, the pandemic will never end.
Is this some sort of payback by our lords and masters against pesky non-covidian Africa, for simply refusing to be genuinely affected by it?
Criminal, literally creating poverty, because they can
” Bullingdon Club initiation ceremony claim: New members of David Cameron’s old club ‘burn £50 note in front of beggar’ “
Boris Johnson sounds ill – he is labouring when he inhales.
Stress, he knows what he is doing, he knows we know what he is doing
Agreed.. and to be honest I thought the Peppa Pig waffling incident was not what it at first seemed. It struck me as signalling. That was my initial gut reaction anyway, it seemed contrived on his part, and I’m as sceptical and against what’s going on as anyone on here..
He’s good at getting something for the media to focus on and they did
Codename Peppa = release the Botswana Variant!
So… ‘more transmissible and can evade jab based spread reduction….’
Well, more transmissible is good and they repeatedly tell us the jabs don’t stop spread – seriously wtf kind of clown world am I living in….?
First journalist out the gate “WHY AREN’T YOU LOCKING DOWN HARD NOW, IS ANYONE ON SAGE SAYING LOCK DOWN NOW AND IF NOT WHY NOT?!?!?”
“Botswana variant”? Isn’t that racist?
Bots are not a race. They are generated by computers
Just saw the latest announcements.
I increasingly think this will never end. Ever.
Two years of being goaded to live in fear.
That is already over 2 per cent of a normal human life span.
Yet another “variant” to frighten everyone with.
This can be perpetuated for ever.
And it is all based on unproven Germ Theory.
Nobody has ever shown experimentally that viruses make people ill.
If anyone on this site knows of a study that showed that then please say so.
Germ Theory is just medical dogma.
The journalists are mental, they all need to get out in the real world, we do not care.
OMICRON = MORONIC = yes apt and a laugh, but..
OMICRON = ONCOMIR = a much more sinister anagram. It’s microRNA associated with cancer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncomir
And just by chance, Israel on Thursday held a “war game drill” OMEGA in case of an outbreak of a new lethal variant of Covid-19. Just a coincidence of course..
OMEGA goes live and then OMICRON appears worldwide a day later..
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/middle-east/article/3155763/israel-holds-war-game-case-lethal-new-coronavirus-strain
Yes thanks to many scientists willing to speak the truth we know this new variant is mild and marking the end of the road for COVID-19.