Recent headlines would have us believe that catching Covid makes you less intelligent, with even mild infections knocking several points off your IQ. All these headlines refer to a study by Adam Hampshire and colleagues published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study was based on the Real-Time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT) cohort in England – a sample of 2.4 million people who were randomly selected to take a Covid test during the pandemic. Of the original participants, about 110,000 subsequently completed an online questionnaire and cognitive test. And of these, about 10,000 people were excluded because their symptoms began less than 12 weeks before taking the cognitive test.
The authors therefore had data on cognitive ability and Covid infection for about 100,000 people. As for Covid infection, they knew both the date of infection and its severity, measured by the number and duration of various symptoms. They also had data on people’s demographic characteristics and pre-existing health conditions.
Their main findings are shown below. The top three charts plot the distribution of cognitive test scores by variant, illness duration and hospitalisation. All three comparisons are adjusted for demographic characteristics and pre-existing health conditions. The bottom three plot average differences based on a model that estimates the effect of each variable controlling for the other two, along with demographic characteristics and pre-existing health conditions.
The two blue charts on the left show that people who caught the original virus or the Alpha variant scored lower than those who caught the Delta or Omicron variants or who didn’t catch Covid during the study period. The red charts in the centre show that people whose symptoms persisted scored lower than those whose symptoms were short-lived. And the green charts on the right show that people who were hospitalised scored lower than those who weren’t.
The first thing to say is that Hampshire and colleagues didn’t actually look at change in test scores, which means that headlines referring to “drops in IQ” or “falls in IQ” are highly misleading. Rather, they looked at the association between test scores and illness duration/severity across individuals. As the authors clearly state, “we could not assess cognitive change” and “we could not infer causality”.
However, it’s true that one possible explanation for their findings is that Covid infection has a causal effect on cognitive ability – reducing it by 42% of a standard deviation (6 IQ points) among those with symptoms lasting more than 12 weeks. How likely is this? Before getting to an alternative explanation, I will highlight several things in the paper that caught my eye.
First, if you go to Table S6 in the Supplementary Appendix, you find the exact distributions of cognitive scores corresponding to the top three charts in the image above. These confirm that individuals who caught the Omicron variant, individuals who had asymptomatic infections, and individuals who required no medical treatment, had a marginally better (i.e., more right-shifted) distribution of scores than those who did not catch Covid during the study period.
Second, the authors estimated the effects of variant, illness duration and hospitalisation on a cognitive score variable that was standardised after adjustment for demographic characteristics and pre-existing health conditions. Depending on the interrelationships among the variables, this may have resulted in larger effects of variant, illness duration and hospitalisation than would have been observed if standardisation had been done before adjustment.
Third, if you go to Table S7 in the Supplementary Appendix, you find the output from a multivariate model of cognitive test scores that includes a predictor for number of vaccine doses. The output seems to imply that vaccination had a statistically significant negative effect on cognitive ability. This is contrary to a Swedish study which found a strong positive association between vaccination and cognitive ability. I say “seems to imply” because the output is rather unclear. It’s possible that I am misinterpreting how the vaccine doses variable was coded. (The authors did not respond to my request for clarification.)
But let’s take the main findings at face value. Could they be explained by something other than Covid infection having a causal effect on cognitive ability? Yes: self-selection.
We know that people with higher cognitive ability tend to work in professions that had lower risk of exposure to Covid. Hence they may have been less likely to get infected during the early months of the pandemic and more likely to catch the milder Omicron variant. We also know that people with higher cognitive ability tend to be healthier. So they may have been less likely to become seriously ill when they did catch Covid.
In other words, rather than early and more-serious infections causing lower cognitive ability, it may be that higher cognitive ability caused people to get later and less-serious infections. This explanation is consistent with the first of the three observations I made above.
Overall, the Hampshire and colleagues’ findings are interesting and they clearly warrant further scrutiny. But I’m not yet convinced that Covid infection has a large negative impact on cognitive ability. Having said that, I could certainly believe that an infection bad enough to send someone to the ICU might knock a few points off their IQ – at least temporarily.
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“Farage must step aside and let Rupert Lowe lead Reform”
Says man who failed to hold sway at Reform and flounced out. I have concerns about Reform although they hold my support as the only valid opposition to the Uniparty. However, the truth is to accept that there will be always be ideological differences on points of policy, and that you can’t have 100% agreement, 100% of the time
As an interested observer:
I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, but there are people floating around now who could be brought together – Lowe, Suella, Cummings, Habib, Bridgen, and poach Jenrick as leader. That grouping instantly looks stronger than anything Farage can put together before the next election.
The reality is that Lowe is not motivated by money. Sargon calls him ‘Boomer Jesus’, because he gives his salary away to his constituents. He is not going to become just another body piled up on the right (some of the corpses have reanimated and are popping up on Youtube with their tales). As a result Farage has been found out.
Whilst it may seem like it doesn’t matter to the voting public, it matters to Reform’s party structure and volunteers (as has been proven late yesterday), and the chances of Farage attracting the high profile defections he needs before the next election are dented if people think they will also be discarded if their popularity rises.
Farage is a wrong ‘un. He has had a good career and Brexit was a magnificent achievement but it has gone downhill since and it is time he left the stage. He has gathered his forty pieces of silver and should now do the decent thing and P. off.
And remember how Farage destroyed his own Brexit party, after Gerard Batten dared to openly support Tommy Robinson and welcome him as an advisor.
Farage did not need to destroy UKIP. He left as many of us did because Gerard took advice from Robinson and made the party into an anti-Islamic one contrary to its purposes and contrary to any sensible political strategy. It was also wrong.
Thereafter UKIP went into decline. It would have disappeard but for the legacies it received from older UKIP people who made their wills while it was a decent party.
Farage build another party and we know how well that has developed.
What utter tripe to claim that Gerard Batten “made UKIP into an anti-Islamic party”, just for DEFENDING BRITISH CHILDREN FROM PAKISTANI MUSLIM RAPE GANGS!!!
Shame on you! Whose side are you on? You’re like an ostrich with your head in the sand, while your ancestral homeland collapses all around you. We have seen what happens when Muslim Terrorists are allowed to take over a country, such as Syria, where horrific genocidal massacres of Alawites and Druze people have been taking place, with Syrian Christians threatened to be next, while the Terrorist Leader struts around in a suit and tie pretending to be a “moderate statesman” to the world, so they’ll all give him money.
As HP on here wrote,
“Muslims in British politics can only result in the elimination of Britain as a viable state.”
As an outsider (not a member of a Party), Reform appears to operate as a “protest group” and is just teetering at the brink of the definition of a Political Party. Opinion polls for the odd by-election tends to indicate that judgement.
How do you define “protest group” as opposed to “political party”? Anyway, the main point of democratic politics is to allow the voters to “protest” against the people who have been working on their behalf by voting them out of office.
I don’t know what to make of it all.
No matter what the truth is, this has been handled very badly and I think quite a few Reform supporters are disappointed.
And looking at some of Reform’s new recruits, it does not fill me with confidence.
But who knows? Maybe that is what a party needs to do to get into power? More uniparty?
Maybe we should set up a new political party with the sole aim of creating electoral reform. Once achieved, this party would cease to exist and new elections called under a new system.
Would be really interesting to work out a system that would have the highest chance of having consensus.
Muslims in British politics can only result in the elimination of Britain as a viable state.
As Bruce Bawer’s former colleague called “Fjordman” warned years ago,
“Islam Must Be Expelled From The West”.
You are one of the very few who see the truth about Pakistani “Sour Grapes” Habib, who “flounced out” after he failed to get elected as an MP, because the voters didn’t want him, so he was quite rightly replaced as Deputy Reform Leader by an elected MP. After incessantly whingeing to the press and anyone who would listen, now he’s trying to ride into power on the coattails of Rupert Lowe.
We need a NEW party, a PATRIOT PEOPLES PARTY, with a dream team of Rupert Lowe, Nick Candy, Andrew Bridgen, Paul Weston, Dave Atherton, Nick Griffin, Dan Wooton, Douglas Murray, Tommy Robinson, Lawrence Fox, Lord Pearson, Gerard Batten, Robin Tilbrook, Brian Gerrish, and all the other courageous patriots too numerous to list here, including all those unjustly arrested and imprisoned for protesting against the murder of children, and military veterans who have been hounded and betrayed by treasonous litigation just for doing their job.
Maybe Peter Lynch’s son will run as a candidate, and friends of Kevin Creehan and Fred Hill, and maybe James McMurdock will come over, too. And all the Lady Patriots like Katie Hopkins, Alex Phillips, Bonnie Spofforth, Lucy Connolly and many others.
Now THAT would make a real change!
Come on, Rupert, gather them all in!
There is another Patriot, whose name has been forgotten, and who I’ve been unable to find any trace of in the media. The only details I remember about him from the news at the time was that he was a British pensioner in his 60s, who decided to make a silent protest against the horrific, cowardly beheading of Fusilier Lee Rigby, by placing a few bacon rashers on a low wall outside a mosque.
The Muslims called the police, who arrested him and he was sentenced by a judge to one year in prison, just like Kevin Creehan. But I could never find out any more information about him after that, or whether he survived his time in prison, unlike Kevin Creehan.
If anyone can find out any information about the pensioner’s fate, I would greatly appreciate it.
Indeed. It’s a tricky one. There will never be a party where everyone agrees, and there will never be a party where everyone who votes for them agrees with everything they say they will do. But sometimes you cannot compromise beyond a certain point. I don’t really know what’s gone on with Lowe and Farage – it might be ego on one or both their parts, it might be more substantial. From what I have seen of them, I am much closer politically to Lowe and he seems to have the right temperament and character to help get some things changed. Maybe he felt that he could not compromise, in which case fair play to him. Between Labour and the Tories, the Tories are “better” but I will never vote for them because they cross too many red lines for me. We are in such desperate times though that Reform might get my vote.
Friday Morning London Road
& Oak Avenue Wokingham
“Waitrose wine expert claims he was suspended for sharing Telegraph cartoon” Reform supporter Ben Woods says Waitrose targeted him after a social media post of his was promoted by Elon Musk…
…Whereas if he’d posted in support of Stonewall, BLM or Greenpeace, he’d get extra John Lewis vouchers.
Donald Trump issues chilling new ‘World War 3’ nuclear warning
‘This could lead to World War III, very easily, could very easily lead to World War III.’
Good to know that our government is taking WW3 seriously:
‘…with its armoured infantry converted to mechanised infantry, and its key enablers primarily aligned to smaller persistent missions, many allies will have serious reservations as to whether 3 (UK) Division remains a going concern.’
‘…with the vast majority of the new warfighting capabilities not being delivered until the latter half of the 2020s, the British Army has essentially admitted that it cannot field a force for high-intensity combat for the best part of a decade.’
‘for the Army to deploy a single armoured brigade would require the commitment of around 70 to 80% of its total combat engineering capabilities in order to cross gaps and rivers or to breach minefields……manoeuvring this force successfully will require…..modern communications….extend its obsolete Bowman system because of delays to MORPHEUS……the UK is wholly dependent on others for space-based imagery;’
‘….the UK……can’t provide a sizeable fully coherent force commensurate with its status as the (now) third-largest spender in NATO without the support of others.’
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/hollow-force-choices-uk-armed-forces
Brilliant! Well done everyone! Give yourselves a nice big pat on the back while sitting on your enormous backsides…….
Donald Trump has suggested halving nuclear armaments around the world.
To reduce the likelihood of a WWIII, UK and France should give up all their nuclear missiles and their forces should stay at home. Just why do these two ex-empires require nuclear armament in today’s world, and why should their forces fight in a foreign country?
The same should apply to other small countries, e.g. Israel, Pakistan.
Then Donald Trump needs to sit down with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, start accepting the multi-polar world, and finally get rid of all nuclear weapons. At the same time, Trump could stop threatening countries, both militarily and economically, and begin to cooperate with the world outside USA. We are, after all, all humans and we all strive for peace and prosperity.
Then we can get back to “sitting on our enormous backsides” and just enjoy life.
The matter of dismissal of nuclear weapons was presented in the Yes, Prime Minister series. Enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVO85anasrA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgkUVIj3KWY
Why keep feeding the Zelensky Troll?
It only encourages him.
I have tried restraint more than once in the past but it has never hindered our friend from posting his propaganda on a daily basis. The problem if no one responds is that it implies general agreement with his daily call to arms, and I definitely do not agree to his warmongering. On the other hand, plenty of people do support a hatred of all things Russian, in which case I like to promote the idea that there are alternative viewpoints. Anyway, Russia will continue to make progress in Ukraine and Zelensky’s days will soon be over. Whether that will stop our friend from encouraging nuclear war against Russia is another matter.
‘Since the invention of nuclear weapons, there have been efforts to push nuclear states to disarm, both for moral and practical reasons.
But even if stakeholders were aligned and a great power was willing to disarm, it’s possible that disarmament could increase the risk of a global catastrophe.
Great powers are disincentivized to use nuclear weapons (or, more broadly, military coercion) against each other.
This is arguably the reason for the lack of major wars since WWII (the Long Peace and New Peace).’
That is why….’The UK maintains an “independent, minimum credible deterrent” through submarine-launched nuclear weapons, but also supports nuclear disarmament efforts and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). While committed to a world without nuclear weapons, the UK will maintain its deterrent as long as it deems necessary, given the current global security environment.’
After all, Ukraine was once the world’s third nuclear power….
That is why unilateral nuclear (or indeed any) disarmament has now been consigned to the dustbin of history.
But Ukraine wasn’t really, was it?
Ukraine was never more than a ‘county’ of Russia 30 years ago, the western part of which belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1920. Ukraine was never a nuclear power, thank goodness.
But “The US formally suspended the treaty on 1 February 2019, and Russia did so on the following day in response. The United States formally withdrew from the treaty on 2 August 2019.” And apparently USA controls the use of our Trident missiles, so UK is (thankfully) not an independent nuclear force. (Imagine Starmer having his finger on the button!)
‘At the time of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine held the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, including 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and 44 strategic bombers.’
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/ukraine-nuclear-weapons-and-security-assurances-glance#:~:text=At%20the%20time%20of%20Ukraine's
But they relinquished the weapons in return for security guarantees, for which we can all be grateful, otherwise Zelensky would have long since nuked the world. And do not bother quoting Budapest memoranda, which never required Russia to recognise coups d’état, or to force parts of Ukraine to remain part of it against the will of the local population. US interference (Maidan) was in violation of the CSCE Final Act, the first point of the Budapest Memorandum.
“the layman’s view often struggles to separate structural dependence from operational independence. Many misunderstand the difference between the long-term, structural reliance on American technology, infrastructure, and logistics, and the short-term, immediate ability of the UK to independently launch its nuclear weapons. In essence, people frequently mix up long-term support with immediate control’
‘Critically, the decision-making and authorisation chain for launching nuclear weapons is entirely British. Only the Prime Minister has the authority and capability to authorise their use. There is no mechanism requiring permission from another country—such as the United States—before launch. Indeed, the missiles aboard these submarines can be launched without any external control or input.’
‘While the UK and the US jointly use the Trident II D5 missile system, each country independently owns and controls the missiles it deploys. UK-owned missiles are loaded with UK-designed and manufactured nuclear warheads, and they’re launched by UK submarines, crewed exclusively by Royal Navy personnel.
The UK has complete control over the command-and-control system. The communications infrastructure used to issue launch orders is entirely sovereign. There are no “lock-out” or veto controls enabling the US—or any other ally—to deny the UK the ability to launch missiles if the Prime Minister authorises their use.
Once a Trident submarine leaves Faslane, it requires no immediate external technical or operational support to launch its missiles. Submarines can operate autonomously for months, staying submerged and undetectable, ready to act independently if needed.’
‘any unilateral withdrawal of US support would be extraordinarily unlikely. The UK and US have maintained an exceptionally close and deeply integrated defence relationship since the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement (renewed regularly), ensuring a long-term, shared strategic interest in continued cooperation.’
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/heres-how-britains-nukes-are-operationally-independent/
So Starmer does have his finger on the button. That is so reassuring.
But it was also Starmer, or at least his party, that sent a large number of volunteers to US to assist Kamala Harris in the US Presidential election. Hopefully Trump has forgotten that otherwise the “exceptionally close and deeply integrated defence relationship” may no longer be so close …
“I’m sorry, but ADHD has become a scam that is wildly overdiagnosed”
I haven’t the patience to read all that…
What a surprise. The Tory press is setting out to destabilise Reform, the Labour press is at it too.
More evidence that Reform is a real threat to them. Don’t fall for it Reformers; stay strong!
Surely the senior Civil Servant who was geting (pulling down ??) salaries for three different jobs should be congratulated. he / she has shown how little these people have to do. Clearly a substantial redundancy programme is long overdue.
‘They’ will be scrambling to show how poorly he performed but I’d bet he was probably just as productive as his peers in all three jobs. He’ll be pilloried for drawing attention to the fact that he could actually ‘do’ three times more work than the others.
I know a former local government pensions clerk who was told very unofficially by his boss to slow down and do less as he was showing up his colleagues. He’s now self employed and his business is doing well.
I have heard of that in the public sector as well.
I was at school with both Peter and Christopher. Whilst Peter berates the schooling we had at The Leys, it was that very schooling which gave him – and I, and many others – the knowledge of such wonderful poems as that, which moves me to this day, and the muscular hymns we sang in our Methodist Chapel, many of which I too still recall to this day, was thanks to the schooling we received.
I for one feel a great sense of gratitude for such an education.
Thanks for that. Great clip.
Did Peter H “berate” The Leys? I don’t remember that but I am sure you know better than I.
“‘Sneaky’ Green-led council installs LTNs at 3am under police protection”
So what are the good people of Bristol going to do about it?
If they can’t vote the Green loons out then they’re clearly in a minority. They have few choices:
1) Vote in a less loony council – get the decision reversed.
2) Suck it up and deal with it. Live the way the Green loons demand.
3) Move somewhere governed by a less loony council.
4) Rebel and risk incurring fines or other punishments perhaps with the hope the fines will be quashed in the future.
“Rangers fans unfurl ‘keep woke foreign ideologies out’ banner”
May God bless those Rangers fans! I didn’t realise that Rangers fans are Protestants, and Celtic fans are Catholics, and their bitter rivalry is entirely religious in origin.
In creepy contrast to the Rangers’ banner,
“Rangers’ bitter rivals Celtic avoided sanction for singing “Lizzie’s in a box” and “If you hate the Royal family, clap your hands” in front of the Prince of Wales last month at Villa Park in the Champions League.”
Pictured: Rangers fans unfurl ‘keep woke foreign ideologies out’ banner – Yahoo Sports
I trust those Rangers fans will vote against the SNP woke foreign ideologies at their next opportunity.
Why Celtic avoided sanctions is beyond me – but I don’t watch or follow football and its politics.
Many years ago I used to work for a chap from Ayrshire. He found out I was a Roman Catholic – or left-footer as he termed it – and told me that his father would be horrified at the idea of him working with a Catholic. On those rare (not!) occasions we got drunk together he’d refer to me as a Feinian bastard (No, I’m not Irish) – despite me being more in favour of the Union than him. He was a good bloke but was so thin and wiry he got drunk too easily.