On December 1st, the U.K. Government published a technical report on the Covid pandemic.
We commented on it in our post and its late pick-up by the mainstream media and their lack of critical approach to its ‘independent’ content.
One of the paragraphs that interested us is the one in which the Chief Medical Officer explained the non-Covid related excess mortality most European nations are experiencing:
There is little doubt that delays in presentation, reductions in secondary prevention (such as statins and antihypertensives) and postponement of elective and semi-elective care and screening will have led to later and more severe presentation of non-Covid illness both during and after the first three waves. The combined effect of this will likely lead to a prolonged period of non-Covid excess mortality and morbidity after the worst period of the pandemic is over.
There can be little doubt that blocking access to, say, cancer screening and treatment will have disastrous consequences – one of the many legacies of lockdowns. But how did Professor Whitty and his team conclude that excess cardiovascular mortality was due to a lack of statins and antihypertensives?
Primary care is where the bulk of statins and antihypertensives are prescribed, but did the prescriptions of such drugs change during the pandemic?
Not according to Open Prescribing, which is based on monthly NHS prescribing data.
Another aspect that needs to be considered when looking at whether a lack of statins could have caused a sudden increase in cardiovascular deaths is the length of time of exposure to the drugs.
A large meta-analysis of the effects of statin use in primary prevention compared to placebo reported a number-needed-to-treat (NNT) of 138 people with statins for five years to prevent one death, 49 to prevent one cardiovascular disease (CVD) event, and 155 to prevent one stroke.
The figures for secondary prevention (in those who have known heart disease or a history of stroke) are better, as you would expect: NNT of 83 for one death after five years of exposure to a statin.
The five years do not fit the introduction of restrictions in March 2020, nor is there any evidence that lipid regulating and antihypertensive drugs were prescribed less in the last three years based on the NHS’s data.
There is evidence of a fundamental change in working practice and primary care delivery during the three periods of restrictions. Six measures recovered to pre-pandemic levels within a year, asthma and COPD (pulmonary disease) reviews recovered by August 2021, and blood pressure monitoring and cardiovascular disease risk assessment had a sustained drop in activity up to December 2021.
However, a sustained drop in monitoring is unlikely to be the reason for the increase in excess deaths. In 2017 we did a systematic review of the effect of global cardiovascular risk assessment in adults. We found its use did not translate into reductions in CVD morbidity or mortality.
So what might be the cause? The British Heart Foundation considers “severe ambulance delays, inaccessible care and ever-growing waiting lists are contributing to heart patients dying needlessly”.
While the data from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities report an excess of cardiovascular disease mortality, the ‘independent’ report produced by the U.K. Government does not attempt to understand what is causing the excess mortality from CVD.
In the last year, there has been an excess of 21,841 deaths with CVD mentioned on the death certificate. Our analysis suggests it isn’t a fall in drug treatment, and the drop in CVD risk monitoring can’t account for it, given the lack of evidence of an effect.
Given all its resources, the Government could and should do better to get to the bottom of what is driving the excess in cardiovascular deaths. We’ll keep digging.
Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack blog, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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First rule of Fight Club…
Reason.? Pragmatism and Patience.
Agreed. Musk is between a rock and a hard place, walking a tightrope, whatever image you prefer. With the risk of being fined up to 6% of Twitter’s global revenues IIRC, it’s difficult to see what alternative he has right now. I think he’s biding his time.
Yes, Twitter has to abide by the EU rules, they have no choice…and whether it’s better to be on the inside or not, I don’t know….
As far as using Twitter..it’s miles better under Musk…much more free..and despite what Mr Kogan says, huge numbers of censored and banned people I used to follow have returned….as for all of Elon’s other ‘pies’, I would have to look at each one separately and decide…why can’t he be right on some things, and wrong also…like a normal person? It seems to me that he’s being held to a higher bar than is usual…
Whether he’s for free speech or not, I will wait for the evidence..which currently looks good….it’s a fact that he released the Twitter files…and frankly I don’t remember people being so wound up when Jack Dorsey was ‘hiding’ the Hunter Biden files, or censoring anything Republican or Conservative..or banning any one who didn’t stick to the scamdemic agenda??…….as I say I’ll await further evidence…
Elon Musk EUSSR’s double agent
************************************
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
European Union of soviet socialist Republics????
I’m not going to downtick, but what are you trying to say?
Should be obvious.
And Musk is no fan of free speech; I can’t say this enough.
He can only fight so many enemies at once given the parlous finances of twitter. Have community notes started to appear on misinformation tweeted by EU officials yet?
…and run a rocket company and EV company.
Doesn’t the article more or less answer its own question?
Not a musk fan then Robert?
I’m not bothered one way or the other.
Musk’s way is better than it was, that’s about it!
My view is that Musk is relishing the opportunity of being taken to court so that these ill defined terms like dis and misinformation can be more closely examined by legal professionals.
Hopefully a judge will find the wording of the Digital Services Act to be nebulous, open to individual interpretation and political bias and therefore unenforceable.
Lets hope you’re right.
We see a lot reporting about Twitter’s collusion with the US government during the covid debacle, but nothing about the UK government and its dealings with social media.
Perhaps ‘our’ Matt did not have that much sway with the American tech company?
I can understand Musk’s predicament with Twitter, but kowtowing to these authoritarians won’t make them leave you alone.
Shadowbanning is far more insidious than overt censorship because it leaves the victim with no recourse to complain, act on it, or even to be aware they’re being censored. Its effect is a gradual demoralisation into silence, despair and compliance.
Then as some topics of ‘misinformation’ become very much information, when the walls of misdirection and propaganda can no longer hold back the truth; the point where more people than just the attentive and paranoid would finally speak out and protest, you end up instead with tumbleweeds and an apathetic population holding up their hands, saying “I know, but what can we do?”.
As a couple of people on here have said, it’s not confusing if you realise Musk is not on our side.
Does anyone who is awake actually think a person like Musk could even exist if his side wasn’t backing him?
His role is that of the Fool or Jester. He tells truths but in the end he is still part of the tyrant’s court. He will attract and mollify the peasants by telling them what they want to hear but in the end he still serves the powers.
He says watch out for AI then starts his own AI.
He calls for free speech, yet censors more than ever before.
He experiments on and kills monkeys in his transhumanist religious desires to have humans patch to computers.
He is in charge of the primary company that is trying to ram driverless vehicles on to humanity.
He runs starlink which is creating a grid of satellites around the planet which will aid total surveillance control over humanity.
He throws it in our faces when he wears a Demon costume.
He is not our friend. He is a false hero, like Trump.
The information/disinformation wars aren’t just about Musk……
I also note that Seymour Hersh has been ‘fact-checked’ by Facebook, in regards to his Nordstream theory article…
This article is worth a read..and I think goes to the heart of the censorship we are dealing with….
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/04/21/why-is-facebook-censoring-sy-hershs-nordstream-report/
As of Thursday, if you try to share on Facebook the February 8 Substack post in which Hersh first laid out the anonymously sourced charge, you’ll first be met with a prompt informing you about “additional reporting” on the subject in the form of Norwegian fact-checking website Faktisk, and warning you that “pages and websites that repeatedly publish or share false news will see their overall distribution reduced and be restricted in other ways.”
If you decide to “share anyway,” Hersh’s piece is posted but blurred out, and labeled “false information” by the social media platform. (It’s since been un blurred and labeled “partly false information”). “
…..But Seymour Hersh can and does post on Twitter…..!
Using Ocham’s razor the issue is not Musk but the EU.
…Occams…
….absolutely…undoubtedly they are a huge problem. I think Musk has been less than ‘kind’ about them…tin pot Hitlers…
Better inside the tent pissing out, possibly
Twitter has just given Britain First a gold checkmark. I’m not sure what that means as I don’t use Twitter, but it doesn’t sound like a telling off! Would that have happened previously? I doubt it – in fact I think they were banned.