This video I’ve just finished making, entitled ‘COVID-19 and the Immune System: An Evidence-Based Investigation’, is the first of several in a series examining the government’s response to Covid. The series is called ‘COVID-19: Following The Real Science’ and looks at how our immune systems coped with Covid and investigates a great deal more besides. Dr. Jenny Goodman, who introduces the video, calls it “the Real Covid Enquiry”, and certainly it covers aspects that are completely untouched by the official enquiry.
The government’s pandemic response was, of course, directed not so much by Ministers but by their scientific advisers and SAGE (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) in the guise of ‘following the science’. As Danny Kruger MP said in the Afterword to The Accountability Deficit by Molly Kingsley, “‘Following the science’ became like a religion… normal scientific processes were laid aside, and instead the clique of credentialled advisers at the top of government acquired a total supremacy… government may be utterly bewildered but at least it can ‘follow the science’, as in old days it heeded the flight of birds or the entrails of a chicken.”
The important point about science is that it continually changes and evolves. Nevertheless, once our government had decided that we needed to lock down in late March 2020, ‘the Science’ then miraculously became ‘settled’ and policy was never updated for new data or contrary scientific opinions. Those scientists and doctors who disagreed were ignored, cancelled and sacked and doctors were struck off by the General Medical Council.
The World Health Organisation (WHO)
The WHO came out with some important pronouncements, which subsequently proved to be completely wrong. Two of these were:
The scientific advisers never bothered to check any of these WHO pronouncements, even though the science and observational data was readily available to them early on in the pandemic.
In December 2021, the WHO finally admitted that the virus was airborne, although with Covid all but over, it had come far too late and with minimal fanfare so that only a few were aware of it. This may have been because of its seismic implications for the pandemic response during the previous 19 months.
On two occasions the WHO altered its website to fit the prevailing Covid narrative, only to be forced to change it back again after an outcry from those few scientists who were actually following the real science. On no occasion did the WHO admit to any of its mistakes. Yet this is the organisation that wantsto control global health policy in the event of another pandemic.
To compound the problem, our government’s scientific advisers behaved as though they had no knowledge or understanding of virus behaviour or our immune systems – as if the vast body of medical science on these subjects didn’t exist. It might have helped if there had been a virologist or an immunologist on SAGE but no, that had not occurred to anyone. In common with the WHO, the advisors never admitted to any mistakes and never advocated a change of policy when the basis for the current policy was shown to be wrong. One wonders, really, whether they performed any useful function at all.
“Where could we catch Covid?”
An airborne (aerosolised) virus stays in the air indefinitely and can travel long distances on the air, crossing continents. This makes lockdown, social distancing, school closures and Test & Trace completely redundant because the virus will reach all of us, regardless. So all these pandemic measures were a waste of life, damaged children’s development and wrecked our economy. An aerosolised virus also makes most masks pointless as the virus is so small that a non-surgical mask is no barrier.
Zero Covid (sealing borders to prevent the virus arriving), advocated by several prominent U.K. politicians, could therefore never work, as was seen in both China and New Zealand. An aerosolised virus does not recognise a closed door or a sealed border. Again, all this science was readily available early in the pandemic.
So where could we catch Covid? We were most at risk in hospitals and care homes, followed by our own homes. Where, then, was the logic in locking down the healthy with the sick? We were least at risk outdoors. So where was the logic in allowing us only one hour a day of exercise?
Natural Immunity
So how did our immune systems cope with Covid? Provided we were in reasonable health and did not have a pre-existing inflammatory condition, our immune systems could cope well with Covid. We made the appropriate immune memory cells, which largely protected against reinfection with variants and certainly against severe reinfection. In fact, despite the WHO’s early pronouncement that no-one had immunity, around 50% of us proved to have pre-existing immunity to Covid from prior common cold coronavirus infections, a point which became evident very early on in the pandemic.
The success of our immune systems against the virus was despite inadvertent sabotage by the government pandemic measures. Lockdown, social distancing, masks and school closures all prevented the normal immune system challenge and development through regular interactions with other people. This left our immune systems weakened, as we saw by the explosion of colds and flu once Covid receded. We were denied fresh air and sunlight (and hence vitamin D and virus-killing ultra-violet light) except for one hour a day. We were encouraged, and sometimes coerced, to use hand sanitisers, which were toxic to our immune systems and the environment. We were deliberately made to feel fear, anxiety, stress, loneliness and isolation, all of which suppressed our immune systems.
The Mathematical Modelling
Why were we subjected to these pandemic measures? Because the government asked Professor Neil Ferguson at Imperial College to do the mathematical modelling for COVID-19. Yet his track record for other pandemics was abysmal (example: he predicted 50,000 deaths in the U.K. from mad cow disease but in reality only 170 people died). His Covid death predictions were similarly exaggerated but were never questioned or checked by other members of SAGE before being presented to Ministers. They were never amended for the much lower real world deaths.
As a result of this modelling, the government binned our pre-existing pandemic plan, which would have seen us through Covid with minimal disruption to our lives or the economy. Without even carrying out a cost-benefit analysis, the government took us into our first lockdown in March 2020.
Bob Seely MP, summed it up in a 2022 parliamentary debate. Paraphrasing Churchill, he said: “Thanks to some questionable modelling… never before has so much harm been done to so many by so few, based on so little, questionable, potentially flawed data… Modelling and forecasts were the ammunition that drove lockdown and created a climate of manipulated fear and I believe that that creation of fear was pretty despicable and pretty unforgivable.”
Asymptomatic Transmission
Why were we misled for so long about asymptomatic transmission? Asymptomatic transmission is transmission of the virus when we don’t have any symptoms and don’t develop any later. It had never been an issue for any other virus and should never have become an issue with Covid. It started with a German case report (i.e., a report of just one individual) published late January 2020, which appeared to show asymptomatic transmission.
The case report proved to be completely inaccurate as the authors had failed to ask the patient when her symptoms had started. This was a really elementary error for supposedly experienced researchers. The case report’s inaccuracy came to light as early as February 2020, yet that did not prevent our government making policy, which affected every citizen of the U.K., based on this single unverified report of one individual, which turned out to be completely inaccurate. There was no subsequent evidence to back up the ‘fact’ of asymptomatic transmission, yet Matt Hancock, our Health Secretary announced in November 2020: “Asymptomatic people with Covid are a ‘silent danger’.”
PCR Testing
And then there was the PCR testing. This was supposed to tell us whether or not we were infected with Covid but, in fact, it was incapable of doing so. Only viral culture in a laboratory can tell us if we are infected. PCR tests viral genetic material, some of which may be live virus but some of which will be non-infectious genetic fragments.
The lower the number of times the viral genetic material had to be amplified (known as the cycle threshold, or Ct) for the sample to test positive, the more likely it is to be a live virus. Because the Ct was pre-set (apparently arbitrarily) at too high a value, a large proportion of people were wrongly deemed infectious – ‘false positives’ – and were forced to isolate needlessly. This had a serious impact on the economy as well as being a waste of life.
The Mortality Data
There were several reasons to disbelieve the numbers of individuals who allegedly died from Covid.
Firstly, on the instructions of the WHO, doctors were told to record any death in a PCR-positive patient as a Covid death. So if a patient already had terminal cancer, a positive PCR test meant that the death was recorded as a Covid death. Because of the outcry from a few doctors, the instructions were later amended to record any death as a Covid death if the positive PCR test had occurred in the previous 28 days. Some improvement but not much. Even our new Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, acknowledged that the Covid death figures were unreliable.
This means we cannot use the government’s Covid death figures, as they could be considerably overstated; instead, we have to rely on excess deaths or all-cause mortality in comparison to prior years. These show that 2020 deaths were broadly similar to that of prior years and to a normal flu season. And we have to remember that every winter is now a bad winter for the NHS, with scenes of patients on trolleys in A&E and ambulances backed up outside and unable to respond to new 999 calls. Influenza is responsible for large numbers of deaths every winter.
Secondly, Covid was not even the true cause of death in many apparently genuine Covid deaths. The average time to death in Covid patients is 18 days. This is long after the viral phase (around seven days) has passed and means that death must be due to another cause. This could be an over-active immune response (known to be fatal from other infections), the development of secondary bacterial pneumonia, or sepsis, or, more importantly, the instruction to doctors to deny antibiotics to patients with secondary bacterial pneumonia or sepsis. Antibiotics are the recognised treatment for secondary bacterial pneumonia and sepsis.
In addition, doctors were instructed to give midazolam to care home patients with breathing difficulties; midazolam is a sedative and a respiratory depressant (i.e., it inhibits breathing). Where is the logic in giving a respiratory depressant to a patient with breathing difficulties? There was a large spike in care home deaths very shortly after Midazolam was prescribed.
Conclusion
How could we have managed the pandemic better? We would have been far better off without the Imperial College Mathematical Modelling, PCR testing and the government’s scientific advisors. We could have adopted the Swedish approach or that of the Great Barrington Declaration, both of which attempted to protect the vulnerable, while largely allowing life to continue as normal for the healthy. We should also not have been afraid of catching the virus if we were reasonably healthy, as some immunity to Covid will be of benefit to all of us now that it is endemic.
With this video, I have attempted to bear witness to some of what occurred during the pandemic; future videos will look at other aspects. Everything in this video is backed up by scientific evidence, whereas the government pandemic measures (lockdown, masks school closures, etc.) were ‘evidence-free’.
But reading this summary is no substitute for watching the video.
Dr. Rachel Nicoll is a medical researcher, lecturer and writer. You can contact her here.
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