The BBC and other media outlets have publicised a disturbing claim in a Parliamentary report, that racism has played “a key role” in the deaths of pregnant women:
End racial disparities in maternal deaths – MPs
An MPs’ report is calling for faster progress to tackle “appalling” higher death rates for black women and those from poorer areas in childbirth.
The Women and Equalities Committee report says racism has played a key role in creating health disparities.
But the many complex causes are “still not fully understood” and more funding and maternity staff are also needed.
This is mostly based on a previous official report titled ‘Saving Lives, Improving Mothers’ Care‘. (They have added some interviews with mothers who felt that their concerns were ignored for racist reasons.)
The first thing to note is that pregnant mothers are very safe, with a death rate of six per 100,000. Even taking a year-long period, and including indirect causes, deaths are extremely rare. Suicide and drugs/alcohol are prominent causes of the few deaths recorded, with cardiac disease and Covid of equal impact. (Hatched bars show direct causes, solid bars indirect causes.)
So, for example, Covid was an indirect cause of death because it happened more widely and not because of pregnancy.
Half the causes of death are not obstetric. This should be a warning bell about the interpretations later placed on the data.
Later data show that the greatest predictor of later death was pre-existing medical problems including obesity. Obesity is also given as a primary cause. Not receiving advice is also noted as a cause, though it’s not clear if this can be due to not taking advice despite antenatal classes being offered. Some of the case histories mention this, and it would be relevant to understanding causes, and could be compared to the take-up of vaccinations.
Table 2.9 gives us the figures regarding race differences, the subject of media attention on the Parliamentary statement, but also prominent in the summary of the research report.
The numbers, mercifully, are small. Childbirth is safe in the U.K. The ‘White European’ results are the only ones sizeable enough to merit detailed examination, and they show that direct and indirect causes are of almost equal power, slightly favouring indirect. The racial group deaths are few, and some noise is to be expected.
To put this report into context, as regards U.K. ‘Black Caribbean’ mothers, we are talking about three direct deaths and six indirect, so nine in all. ‘Black Africans’ (who probably have spent more of their lives in Africa), are five direct, eight indirect, 13 in all. Combine the two, eight direct, 14 indirect. Tiny numbers, but favouring indirect causes.
Here are the calculations of rates per 100,000.
The rates per 100,000 differ considerably, but the base populations also differ considerably, and there are 18 times more whites than blacks. When events are very rare it is probably better to give absolute results, rather than relative risk odds ratios, which could be misleading.
In my view the main finding is that some mothers are unwell prior to childbirth, and often die for reasons not directly caused by childbirth. Some of those causes of ill health are self-imposed.
The Parliamentary group seems to have gone overboard on a racism explanation for which there is no evidence in this study. Indeed, there is virtually no data analysis in this report at all. They give the basic demographics, but few if any two-by-two tables. They do not show correlations, nor do they construct and test any explanatory models. Can they predict from their findings what puts women at risk? Drugs, drink, being overweight? Little from the authors on these necessary questions. A simple multiple regression on the total sample would have been instructive. The list of participants is impressive, the data analysis rudimentary, and the use of relative risk over-dramatic given the very big differences in sample sizes.
As is usual, they give stern lectures to service providers about the need to further educate themselves. They say less, if anything at all, about mothers keeping themselves healthy, for their own sake and their babies’.
This article was first published on James Thompson’s Substack page, Psychological Comments. Subscribe here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Business as usual in New York
Business as usual in Germany
Germany’s New Government: Business as Usual with China
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18081/germany-china-business
https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/25fe.svgOlaf Scholz, who succeeded Angela Merkel as chancellor on December 8, pledged [in a telephone call with China’s President Xi Jinping] to strengthen economic ties with China, but he failed to mention human rights or the destruction of democracy in Hong Kong
by Soeren Kern
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends & keep sane
Wokingham – Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Can a leopard change its spots? Not if it’s a German one.
H. Essame, then serving as adjutant in an infantry regiment in 1918, wrote in his book “The Battle for Europe 1918”, on the day the armistice was arranged “It would all have to be done again. The Boche were like rhubarb; cover up a plant with concrete and it would in the end break through”.
Not much difference, except the gaps in between are longer.
https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
Well, good luck, Eric. I’m off to hit the toon, going to lick and touch and breathe on all kinds of public surfaces tonight, to spread the bloody-mindedness.
Come on, what did you expect… It’s truly a sad day when the “land of the free” no longer applies. Hopefully England will show you how it’s done in 2022.
I admire your optimism. The government must be devastated now that the omicron is looking like a damp squid. Well, there’s still climate change and Russia in the works to help get the job done.
The US is “the land of the fee and home to the slave”.
I like that. Gonna nick it.
When they talk about Public-Private Partnerships, they are talking about full-on Communism. What they mean is that publicly elected government officials and the boards of private corporations merge into one in regards to the running of the country.
The boards of large corporations are astute, whilst elected officials tend to be egotistical and not always very bright. And easily walked into financial difficulties or photographed in compromising positions or situations.
Thus, the Public-Private Partnership results in unelected corporation CEOs and board members running the country, whilst the elected government officials do nothing more than pose for campers and issue scripted soundbites.
Just like back in the day in the Soviet Union.
Sounds more like Mussolin’s definition of Fascism to me, but I won’t quibble. A boot stomping on the face is still a boot stomping on the face.
There’s enough vaccine in that syringe in the photo to vax the whole world.
We’re not supposed to look at New York’s
motherboardcityscape like that…They’re only making things worse.
See this:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-numbers-killed-by-these-vaccines-is-much-worse-than-what-we-thought-dr-sucharit-bhakdi-mike-yeadon/5765883
Gut wrenching.
I am currently trying, from a distance, to convince my 25yo daughter not to get ‘her’ booster; the result is mostly silence, as it was when I forwarded articles to persuade her not to have the first two. Which she did and didn’t tell me, just let me carry on.
We can tell people, as Mike says, but many simply do not wish to listen, and it takes its toll on us.
Shame it’s too late to be sending Christmas cards.
Yup. They’re grown, they have to make their own mistakes. Let us hope they learn the lesson that Government and medical authority are not worthy of blind trust. And not too painfully.
Ditto with my son
I deal with my mother in the same way, only she’s trying to convince me to take it. There’s no room for argument, reason or actual evidence, they even insisted the side effects from the first two were all in my mind. No point saying anything.
I expect a similar sort of message when Bozo has sobered up from his New Year partying. It’s the defiant ones – us – next.
A snippet:-
“The ZOE Covid Study also found that there were 78,748 new daily symptomatic
cases in the vaccinated population – those with at least two doses – across the UK,
up 40pc from 56,346 last week.”
We need to move beyond defiance, and establish that he has no authority over us: https://ourdecisiontoo.com/Issue/there-s-nothing-left-to-do-but-go-our-separate-ways/320/
Lived in NYC in the late aughts and again in late teens, and can only report seeing it over that period become an outrageously expensive, third-world, strangely self-regarding authoritarian dystopia. Even before Covid, sensible people were exiting for better pastures. With the recent pull of Florida etc, I cant imagine the utter stupidity of those that remain. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/09/05/new-yorkers-are-leaving-the-city-in-droves-heres-why-theyre-moving-and-where-theyre-going/
New Yorkers are fortunate that they have the right to move to other states. Most of us, in the UK, have no similar option. So, we need, collectively, to claim our share of this once great (OK, sort of passable) land.
https://ourdecisiontoo.com/Issue/there-s-nothing-left-to-do-but-go-our-separate-ways/320/
Yes, I have a close relative who got out a few years ago, now lovin’South
Carolina. The politics in NY state are unbearably depressing, and there is a big social spend, which means rates on houses are really high, and this hits the blue collars especially hard. When they retire, they have to get out because it is unaffordable on a fixed income – and house prices are kept down by this too.
I received an email this week from Virgin Atlantic to say their winter sale was now on. Normally, I’d splash the cash for a trip to New York, but New York doesn’t seem particularly habitable these days.
What was starting to turn me off was the bright idea most hotels had bought into by 2019 whereby you’d book a room, and then find that bike-hire or yoga classes had been included as a mandatory charge. It was starting to become comical as to how creative hotels had become at thinking up mandatory charges. I’d a feeling it wasn’t going to end well for New York’s hotels.
NYC is dead.
For confirmation, look up any given video by (the invaluable) Louis Rossman spanning the last two years.
Damned shame, too – probably the only place on earth in which I actually felt “at home”.
I used to go there on business in the early Eighties. Brought up on a diet of Kojak and earlier cop films and TV, I was gratified on my first visit to see the steam billowing up through numerous gratings, along with a fellow waving a pistol and running amongst the traffic. As an Englishman, I wasn’t too happy to find that the hotel my secretary had booked, The Halloran House, was NORAID/ IRA-friendly. I didn’t linger in the bar when the “rebel” singing began.
Lived literally in Times Square, next to the Grey Lady herself, ’round about the same era – the immortal Ed Koch was still Hizzoner at the time.
Sleazy.
Loud.
Crime-ridden.
Vibrant.
…I loved it.
Totally concur, his videos about NY commercial Real Estate, etc have been incredibly enlightening.
“We know businesses share our goal of keeping their staff and their clients safe and their doors open”
What is it that this numbskull does not get? It’s a virus that will seriously affect less than 1% and a large share of those will be retired or already too poorly to work.
“To put it simply, Covid is bad for business and vaccination ensures not just health but also a healthy economy.”
Covid has never been bad for business, only the ridiculously ineffective and damaging policies to mitigate it.
As for vaccinations ensuring health – they don’t stop infection, don’t stop transmission, and supposedly wear off within a few months. The apparent solution to this is a perpetual cycle of booster shots despite no medium- or long-term data to validate safety. And that’s before we get on to the current VAERS figures. This guy is seriously deranged if this is his definition of ensuring health for the individual and the economy.
It is obvious these politicians are commies and the scamdemic is just a means to an end.
New guy Eric Adams has already hopped aboard the ‘plant-based diet’ bandwagon, too; as if New York’s restaurants haven’t suffered enough.
Keeping’safe’ from nothing, or even a cold, must be cost effective for them, somehow, because they don’t put any effort into real medical conditions.
Omicron outbreak at polar research station.
“The Omicron outbreak happened despite all staff passing multiple PCR tests, quarantining and living in one of the most remote places in the world.”
“All 25 researchers were fully vaccinated and one had a booster shot.”
Self-fulfilling pandemic of the vaccinated.
It supports the hypothesis that viruses may hang around in the body and only become a nuisance if the immune system is below par, e.g. if vitamin D is too low. One doctor worked on this all his life, yet he’s almost forgotten. His findings were ‘inconvenient’ to the establishment
http://www.americanfeverbook.com/journal/day-83-6-hope-simpson-sheds-light-on-flu.html
I don’t agree in this instance, although I do think his work is legitimate. Omicron is another part of the scam being perpetuated by the jabs and fake tests in my opinion.
Dr Bhakdi’s recent video should interest you. Strong evidence the covid jabs are destroying people’s immunological defences against sleeping/dormant pathogens like tuberculosis, which, similar to Hope-Simpson’s influenza theory, are then able to opportunistically take advantage of the person’s weakened state.
The common view is that virus/pathogens are invaders from the outside, and modern virology thrives on this idea, but the opposite is often true, the designers of the covid jabs know this too and are sinisterly exploiting it.
Yo0u should look at the bigger pcture. The very fact that the United States is being driven in factionalism and ghettoisation obviously doesn’t serve the interests of that country. But the mind rot has been going on for decades this is just the manifestation. Political remedies are ridiculous. You might as well ask a malfunctioning android to work on his chakras.
They really have destroyed these places. I suppose critics would argue that their destruction was written into their architecture. The coming force is far far worse than what went before. I think we as an island nation might be able to fight it. But justice deferred is justice denied. Every day lots of clever young men and women commit suicide because they see no future. We have a real sense of urgency.
New York, is on a serious downward spiral. So many leaving the state.
I wonder what all those GIs who fought against fascism would make of this woke buffoon!