The Telegraph leads with Boris’s announcement at yesterday’s Downing Street press briefing that we are now “past the peak” and he will set out a “road map” next week on restarting the economy and reopening schools. (Robert Peston has more details.) In his first briefing since his return to work, the Prime Minister said the UK was “on the downward slope”, but emphasised the country must not “risk a second spike”. Further on in the same story the paper reveals that some ministers want to wait until the daily number of new infections falls into the hundreds before easing restrictions “after seeing Germany’s infection rate rise when it eased its own lockdown”. In fact, the infection rate hasn’t gone up in Germany since it eased its lockdown last week. On Monday it ticked up to just under 1, but it has since declined and using a one-day rise to claim easing has triggered a second wave of infections is misleading, to put it mildly. The latest R0 number in Germany is 0.76 according to the Robert Koch Institute.
The Cambridge statistician David Spiegelhalter has a good piece in the Guardian, outlining some of the difficulties involved in counting the total number of COVID-19 deaths and comparing the death rates of different countries. In Europe, the UK currently has the third-highest number of deaths per million (388), behind Belgium (632) and Italy (452), but such comparisons are bedevilled by different methods of recording deaths from COVID-19 in different countries. And even if we could reliably compare countries using that metric it still wouldn’t be a fair way of judging the performance of those who’ve been tasked with managing the outbreak because the death rate is affected by several things beyond their control, such as population density, median age and climate. Professor Spiegelhalter says he’s not going to reach a conclusion about any of this until the ONS publishes its data about all-cause mortality at the end of the year, giving us an indication of how many excess deaths there have been. He points out that this is how the impact of seasonal flu is calculated: “The effects of seasonal flu are not based on tests or death certificates, but at looking at the total number of deaths over the winter, seeing how many extra there are than a baseline, allowing for climate, and assuming these excess deaths were linked to flu. On average, over the last 10 years this has come to about 8,000 flu-related deaths, rising to 26,400 in 2017-2018 and 28,300 in 2014-15.” But the lockdown muddies the waters of this method because, as we know, some of the excess deaths in the year to date have been related to the lockdown – non-COVID-19 patients not being hospitalised, for instance – and the total number of deaths from some other causes, such as road traffic accidents, has fallen. It’s not even clear what the relevant counter-factual is. All we know for sure is that people are going to be arguing about this for years.
One fear the Government has, says the Times, is that people won’t actually leave their homes and return to work if the lockdown is eased. It has whipped up the public into such a frenzy of blanket-clutching fear, aided and abetted by the hysteria of the mainstream media, that a significant percentage may not dare venture outside for non-essentials. According to polling by Ipsos Mori, more than 60% of people would feel uncomfortable going to bars and restaurants or using public transport after the lockdown is over, more than 40% would be reluctant to go shopping or send their children to school and more than 30% are worried about going to work or meeting friends.
If you have children under 10, not sending them to school would be deeply silly. To date, only one child under 10 has died of the virus in the UK and children under 10 do not transmit it, according to Dr Ebere Okereke, a consultant in global public health for Public Health England. So no risk of children passing it on to their teachers – or their parents or their grandparents. Dr Obereke is basing this on a recent review of the evidence done by the Royal College of Paediatrics (RCP), but there’s corroborating evidence from the China/WHO joint commission which hasn’t uncovered a single instance of transmission from a child to an adult. Among the cases studied by the RCP is that of a nine-year-old English boy who contracted coronavirus in the French Alps but did not pass it on, despite having contact with more than 170 people at three schools.
Does this mean Boris will announce that primary schools can reopen next week without a pointless and unenforceable insistence that pupils should remain two metres apart? We can but hope.
Another bit of good news is that South Korean experts have concluded that patients who were feared to have been ‘reinfected’ with the virus, casting doubt on the possibility of an effective vaccine as well as making herd immunity look all-but impossible, were just false positives. Live Science has the story.
On the subject of testing, did Matt Hancock meet his target of carrying out 100,000 in a single day by April 30th? We’re due to find out at shortly.
The Office of Budget Responsibility has estimated the cost of the measures Rishi Sunack has introduced so far to protect the economy from the impact of the crisis: £100 billion. The big ticket items are as follows:
- £39 billion on the furlough scheme to pay 80% of staff wages.
- £16 billion of extra spending on public services.
- £15 billon on grants for small businesses.
- £13 billion for increased business rate relief.
- £10 billion on the support system for the self-employed.
- £1.2 billion on changes to the “off-payroll” system for freelancers and contractors, known as IR35.
- £1 billion in sick pay.
- £800 million for charities.
- £500 million to local authorities for vulnerable people.
An application to challenge some of Ireland’s coronavirus laws will heard shortly, according to the Irish Times. An application by John Waters and Gemma O’Doherty for permission to bring a challenge against laws introduced due to the Covid-19 pandemic is due to be heard before a High Court judge next week.
And a similar challenge is being launched in the UK, it was announced today. Businessman Simon Dolan is seeking a Judicial Review over the Government’s emergency measures. His lawyers have delivered a ‘Letter Before Action’ on his behalf to the Government, giving it until May 7th to respond. Mr Dolan is seeking to challenge the Government on three main points:
- Whether lockdown is unlawful because the Government implemented regulations under the Public Health Act 1984 instead of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 or the Coronavirus Act 2020.
- The legality of the continuation of lockdown regulation, and whether the tests are too narrow, failing to take account of the economic and social impacts of lockdown.
- If the restrictions brought in by the Government contravene the European Convention of Human Rights, which cover the right to liberty, family life, education and property.
He’s also seeking to persuade the Government to make three key policy changes that will restore some of our freedoms and get the economy moving again:
- Allow gatherings of up to 100 people.
- Reopen schools.
- Review the lockdown restrictions every two weeks.
In addition, Dolan wants the Government to disclose the scientific evidence that ministers and civil servants have been relying on to make policy decisions. (Does this mean his barrister will have a chance to cross-examine Neil Ferguson about his March 16th modelling?) He’s also seeking clarity over who sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and wants the Government to publish the minutes from SAGE meetings. (You can read the minutes of NERVTAG meetings here.)
Needless to say, Dolan is a lockdown sceptic – and from the points he makes in the press release, its sounds like he’s a regular reader of this site. Here are some of his quotes:
Small businesses continue to be badly affected. Businesses have been forced to shut, furlough staff and make cuts just in an attempt to survive.
Lockdown is also taking a huge toll on mental health and family life. Calls to the National Domestic Abuse helpline are up 49%. Referrals for cancer tests have fallen by 76%. It is estimated that 18,000 more people with cancer could die because of the disruption.
We are depriving children of a proper education and instead teaching them to hide away from uncertainty rather than to confront it.
It is now universally accepted that the lockdown will cause enormous long-term damage to both the economy and the general health of the population. No-one will be untouched by its effects, but the poorest in society will be by far the most affected
Simon Dolan is hoping to pay for this challenge via a crowdfunder. (He’s like a sound version of Jolyon Maugham!) Readers who wish to contribute can do so by clicking here.
ITV reports that the police have been handing out fines to people flouting social distancing rules – or wrongly suspected of doing so – like traffic wardens on Dexedrine. The National Police Chiefs’ Council says 8,877 fixed penalty notices (FPNs) were recorded by forces in England between March 27th and April 27th, while 299 were issued in Wales over the same period – a total of 9,176. 397 were for repeat offenders, with one person fined six times. (Give that man a Blue Peter badge!) The FPNs are for £60, but like parking tickets are reduced to half that if paid within two weeks. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that police have received 200,000 calls notifying them of people who are flouting the rules. What became of freeborn Englishman? We’ve become a nation of informants.
The sceptical case is beginning to gain traction. Bloomberg ran a comment piece yesterday entitled ‘Lockdown Critics May Have Some Valid Points‘ – gee thanks, guys – and Elon Musk, the Tesla creator, has come out as a hard sceptic. “If somebody wants to stay in their house, that’s great. They should be allowed to stay in their house and they should not be compelled to leave,” he told stock-market analysts in a call on Wednesday. “But to say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom.”
Tesla posted a surprise first-quarter profit on Monday – go Elon!
For those who still aren’t convinced, Iain Davis in Off-Guardian has compiled a summary of the data demolishing the case for lockdowns.
According to a long piece for the BBC’s website, the disproportionately high death toll among BAME people may be due to “the accumulated physiological burden from the stresses caused by racism and race-related disadvantage, such as the frequent secretion of stress hormones”. We’re going to be hearing a lot of this unscientific gobbledegook as the post-mortem into BAME deaths gets underway, but my money is on the fact that people with darker skin produce less Vitamin D, with more and more papers being published on this every day.
Guy de la Bédoyère, the author of a book on the polio vaccine who’s made several excellent contributions to this site, has sent me his thoughts about Vitamin D and why the lockdown could be killing people:
If a lack of Vitamin D is a contributory factor affecting BAME people and their susceptibility to severe symptoms, then there is also a rather glaringly obvious link to care homes. Most residents, regardless of ethnicity, spend all day indoors, adding to their general suite of ailments and sheer age, get little sunlight and probably a lot less now. My 99-year-old mother-in-law (who soldiers on – she was in the year below ‘Colonel’ Tom Moore at Keighley Grammar) is extremely unusual at her care home in having a two-room garden apartment where she can sit outside on warm days. In the three years we’ve been visiting her we have scarcely ever seen anyone else sitting outside. We chose the home because all the others we inspected involved living in rooms indoors. I imagine the same consideration applies to people with existing medical conditions who can’t go out much – and unless I’m very much mistaken the UK is the most northerly of the most seriously affected countries and is only now emerging out of winter. the lockdown is going to have a potentially serious impact on vitamin D levels in everyone from babies to centenarians. The lockdown is particularly condemning the over-70s to their homes (although many are visibly ignoring it now), terrorising them out of enjoying the outdoors. Is this another factor that’s going to result in the lockdown increasing their susceptibility?
Could Vitamin D be the reason why Florida’s death rate is only six per 100,000? The Governor of Florida declined to impose a lockdown, leaving the residents of his state free to go out and enjoy the sunshine.
I hear a lot of anecdotes about cancer patients being sent to the back of the queue, with COVID-19 patients taking priority – or, rather, priority being given to notional COVID-19 patients because, of course, half of all hospital beds are empty. Here’s one reader’s personal experience of this neglect:
I recently underwent bowel cancer surgery which was a success; I’m now fully recovered and back at work – I was discharged the very day the first coronavirus media reports appeared. The ‘fly in the ointment’ for me was that I had a coincidental finding of a suspicious lesion on a kidney – so they needed to bring me back to have it biopsied, then removed. I attended for the biopsy only to be told that all cases were being deferred for three months because of coronavirus – so I was sent home with no biopsy and no prospect of having the lesion removed in the near future. It is somewhat ironic that I make a great recovery from the first cancer, owing to the excellent NHS care I received, only to now find myself under house arrest, possibly along with tens of thousands of other cancer patients, waiting for a low stage cancer to become a high stage cancer. What do you think the take-up would be if those in my position organised a Friday evening clap-in at 8pm each week for all those heroes who will probably die due to their treatment being withdrawn to keep empty beds free ‘just in case’? At least they would know their sacrifice was appreciated while they were still alive.
More suggestions for theme tunes for this site have come in: ‘Aint it Grand to be Blooming Well Dead‘ by Leslie Sarony, ‘I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive‘ by Hank Williams and ‘Ghost Town‘ by the Specials.
Some readers have submitted their suggestions for Tarantino-esque movie titles for a film about the rivalries of epidemiologists, the best of which is Public Health Fiction. And thanks to RDawg for designing this poster featuring Neil Ferguson and Johan Giesecke squaring up in the ring:
As always, a big thanks to those who donated to pay for the upkeep of this site yesterday. Maintaining it – and doing these daily updates – now takes up about three-quarters of my day, so if you feel like donating you can do so by clicking here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in the site, or have points you think I should make, you can email me here. We’ve now passed 250,00 page views so I like to think the message is gradually getting through.
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I hate the focus on “100,000 tests”. There’s nothing special about 100,000 tests compared to 95,342, but the BBC et al. are obsessed with tripping him up over it. As a result, no doubt, extensive government resources are currently tied up trying to ensure a purely arbitrary number of tests are carried out. It’s pathetic. If the government did but have some balls and just tell the press to f*ck off.
100k tests target is simply noise. Neither side will really challenge the other as there’s far too cozy a relationship between the political class and the media. One scratches the other’s back etc.
It would be great if a journalist such as Toby Young, Fraser Nelson, Peter Hitchens or James Dellingpole could take part in the daily punch and judy show. But I won’t hold my breath …
I think even if the government targeted 1 billion tests they would tell us they met their target, its utterly meaningless. I’m not sure who advising government thinks that the public will be feeling happy and secure just because there are more tests. More like to appease the press that the government as you state are beholden to.
As for tests to see if I’m ill, I’d feel more happy and positive if I’m told I’ve had coronavirus rather than have it but that test seems to have dropped off the face of the earth, no doubt because it will reveal much higher proportions of the population have had it than Neil Ferguson or Chris Whitty claim. Another fact for the government to bury…
For the test that tells you whether you currently have it, I imagine by the time you receive your test results back you would have recovered anyway (or died) based on our governments performance in pandemic management.
Riddle me this: if you have symptoms you must self-isolate. But you can drive a couple of hundred miles for a test. What happens if the test is positive – do you then get arrested?
Agree the antibody test would be the game changer
At least England is close to 100,000 tests. In Scotland, we’re doing 3,500 a day. At that rate, it’ll take about 4 years to test the population. But at least wee Nicola can be the talk of the town with her advice to wear a scarf over your face if you go into a public place. I’m not long home from Lidl. Thankfully only one shopper, that I saw, has heeded her ridiculous edict.
What a piece of nonsense her scarf advice is! Absolutely pointless, yet here they are, wearing totally useless face coverings: purdah by suggestion.
Add to that the 2 Nicola letters received this week: how much did this cost?.
They do serve a purpose though. In conjunction with sunglasses, they can defeat facial recognition software and make it safer to go out in public.
Congratulations Comrades! We have reached the target of 100,000 for masks. Next, let’s double tractor output. Then onto record wheat harvests. And when Our Leaders allow us out of our cells, rejoice as the central plan picks winners by region, sector and demographic group. Another 5 years of glorious achievement, comrades, at least!
And then universal famine- if we follow Old Jo’s collectivisation programme.
What joys await: no doubt there shall be special awards for curtain twitchers .
I wonder when the daily Two Minutes Hate will be imposed?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvGmOZ5T6_Y
‘Stakhanovite Movement 2020’ !
old fred. Thanks. Never heard of it, so looked it up. I’ve learnt something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakhanovite_movement
You could learn an enormous amount from only around 10,000 antibody tests done properly at random all around the country. 100k tests of any kind at this point in the pandemic is pretty much pointless. Porton Down have been doing these tests but the government are keeping the results secret.
If that’s right it’s because a huge number of people have had it already and never even noticed. Releasing any such figures would surely turn all but the most brainless ifitonlysavesonelifers/lockdownfreaks against the current house arrest. Now it’s all a game of political spin by the government to ‘prove’ they did the right thing. It’s scandalous and the media are completely complicit in this mess
It is odd. Hancock was saying at the beginning of April that antibody tests had been conducted. Nothing heard about them since. When asked about such tests at the 5pm briefing the usual response of late has been that it was necessary to wait 28 days for antibodies to develop, which leaves one wondering what Hncock was on about early April.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-we-ll-get-to-100-000-tests-a-day?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=LNCH%20%2020200403%20%20SM&utm_content=LNCH%20%2020200403%20%20SM+CID_5ae208617fbfda09ca6352c67438f21e&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_term=says
Hancock Yes, but I’m not assuming any come on stream – that’s pillar three, as we call it – in order to hit the 100,000 target. We have already 3,500 a week of antibody tests at Porton Down, and they are the top quality, the best test in the world. We’re using those for research purposes to understand how much of the population has had coronavirus. This is one of the great unknown questions. But that’s obviously a very small number, 500 or so a day.
One suspects the only way the Government are going to lever people back to work will be to make continued receipt of furlough benefits dependent upon it – with a tapered reduction of furlough matched by employers’ reassumption of salary payments. Perhaps this might be tapered to match part time return to work, and, I’d suggest, with some mandated requirement on employers to retain employees for a period too – otherwise impecunious (or unscrupulous) employers will simply lay people off at the first opportunity as soon as furlough ends).
I’ve heard of firms readying their HR departments for when the lockdown ends. Once the government gives us permission to live like humans again, anyone not returning to work gets the sack.
I wouldn’t worry too much about those surveys. People adjust to all sorts and want to be out and about. I expect if you asked the same group something like “Do you think you’ll be out shopping this time next year?” They would answer “Yes”. Familiarity and time will reduce fear. “My friends are all at work and nobody died.”
I’d suggest simply stop paying them to stay at home. They’ll soon move when that happens.
Another very big thank you Toby for this brilliant site and your work.
Thank you also to Simon Dolan for leading a legal challenge. It’s cheered me up no end and I’ve happily chipped in.
Off for a compliant drive plus a longer walk shortly, followed by a recovery beer.
Happy Friday fellow Lockdown Sceptics.
Whole-heartedly seconded!
+1
there’s some excellent stuff on here. Thanks to all
Members of the Government who fear “that people won’t actually leave their homes and return to work if the lockdown is eased” should perhaps review the Prime Minister’s public pronouncements before allowing him anywhere near a microphone. During yesterday’s update, I was astonished to hear him say the lockdown prevented 500,000 deaths. Absolutely no scientific or other evidence on which to base this absurd claim, but he still made it. I can’t help but wonder what the two actual scientists who flanked him thought.
At the beginning of this crisis we saw a rational, level-headed response from the Prime Minister. Then the media clearly bullied him into a lockdown for which there was no substantive evidence. But after having listened to him on the two occasions since his lockdown was lifted, it has become apparent that Boris Johnson has not only imbibed the Kool-Aid, but he’s now licking up the last droplets in the bottom of his glass. It seems he genuinely believes this is his Churchill moment, and he intends to spin his way into history by convincing the British population that his actions saved half a million (if not more) lives.
A neighbour-(whom I met on my sneaky second walk today- the first since the house arrests commenced)- told me that she was reported to the cops by a nosy watcher.
She held a small gathering for her young son’s birthday and ensured that the 3 guests were suitably spaced.
Apparently the cops stood too close while delivering their lecture and she gave them an earful accordingly.
No further action taken.
Secondly, up here, we have just been favoured by a second Nicola letter, an exact replication of the original, which came to us a couple of days ago.
The letters contain virtually the same advice as the original Boris letter.
I’m finding all this to be increasingly tiresome now: we aren’t children and more folk are venturing out.
Local shops are busier and, thankfully, the hard working, ever polite and friendly staff are all well, despite having to endure uncalled for ear ache from recalcitrant idiots.
As for tunes:
https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/77741/The+Best+of+Johnny+Kidd/I%27ll+Never+Get+over+You Johnny Kidd and the Pirates- first verse only
https://genius.com/The-tiger-lillies-prison-house-blues-lyrics
https://genius.com/Peggy-lee-is-that-all-there-is-lyrics
And one more song, from the very great Tom Lehrer’ the doyen of black humour:
https://genius.com/Tom-lehrer-we-will-all-go-together-when-we-go-lyrics
Except for the current crisis it should be more like:
Less than 1 % will go, the rest are fine
Don’t steal my family’s feeedoms, don’t steal mine
Universal unemployment
Cops preventng all enjoyment
Yes, Less than 1% will go, the rest are fine
…
In a similar vein, a couple of days ago I asked a guy collecting the shopping trolleys at my local (and very busy) Asda store if there had been any cases of Covid amongst the staff working there. He thought a while and then said “No, Nothing”. A shift system is in operation there, with 120 staff on site at any one time.
I must say that, although queuing to get in was a bit of a pain, once you were in the shopping experience was much better than in normal crowded times. Every cloud has a …..!
On your point about the shops, my OH was out shopping earlier today at Aldi, where there was a short queue, and the younger man in front started to chat, saying how much busier the roads were, a that he owned a coffee shop in Norwich, which he’d re-opened three weeks ago and had never done such good business. I’m guessing it’s the lack of competition from other coffee shops, but it sounded like there were plenty of grateful customers around in the town to keep him busy.
There is, to my knowledge, only 1 fried chicken/fish and chip takeaway open in my town of 100,000 people. I’ve been getting a meal there on the days I pass it on the way back from shops. Out duty isn’t to stay inside, its to keep our being patrons of those local businesses who’ve shown the bravery of staying open.
So, what’s the panic about a “second wave” all about?
Firstly, the second wave panic, pushed by Prof Neil Ferguson is based on speculation. It’s not based on science. And this is very important, because, remember, the politicians who are making all the decisions about what our lives look like are claiming to be “led by the science”.
Pandemic models are not scientific. And what I mean by that is the established scientific procedures of ***test the hypothesis, demonstrate the hypothesis, falsify the hypothesis*** cannot be applied to a model.
A model is just a fancy way of saying “a guess”. So, at a guess, 100,000 people could die if the lockdown is lifted. But that’s all it is. A guess. It can’t be tested, proven or falsified. And the actual scientific data directly contradicts that guess.
What the scientific data shows is that the virus has a *low mortality rate*. This fact directly contradicts Prof Neil Ferguson’s guess, that it would have a high mortality rate.
The scientific data shows that 97% of people with the virus will only have mild symptoms and won’t need to go to hospital.
The scientific data shows that 3% of people who have tested positive will need to go to hospital.
The scientific data shows that of the 3% who go to hospital, 87% will make a recovery.
The scientific data shows that only 1.35% of the UK’s population has been tested for the virus. In Scotland, only 1.01% of the population has been tested!
The scientific data shows that the first reported case of the virus was 28th February. If the typical time from infection to symptoms is 14 days, that means the virus was in the UK from at least 14th February. Lockdown didn’t happen until 24th March. So the virus was spreading at a very fast pace throughout the country for 6 weeks.
Prof Neil Ferguson’s model estimates that only 5% of us have been exposed to the virus. This is a guess. And it’s just clearly wrong.
The reality is, no one knows if there will be a second wave. There might be a slight increase in new cases – based on testing – and some new deaths.
However, those deaths will remain within the demographic of the elderly and those with weakened immune systems who have underlying health conditions. And these are the people who should remain quarantined for a bit longer.
I have asked many people this question before but no one has an answer… Why did the UK Gov downgrade the Coronavirus to no longer a HCID 4 days before going into lockdown on 19 March while it WAS classified as a HCID from January onwards all the weeks whilst we were NOT in lockdown?
See for yourself here:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid
Note this excerpt: “…in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.” It goes on to say that the need for a national response remains, which has been met by the government’s Covid-19 response.
Isn’t that the exact polar opposite (low overall mortality rate) of what Neil Ferguson predicted and didn’t we go into lockdown precisely because Mr Ferguson advised the government and predicted an apocalyptic death wave on 16 March, just 3 days prior to this announcement on the government website…? It makes absolutely no sense. And if you look at the bullet points what classifies as a HCID, then as far as I can tell, Coronavirus hits all the points…
Can anyone shed light on this?
Agree totally bizarre and baffling, like so many aspects of this craziness.
Thank you for this unique, concise and comprehensive round-up of the facts. It is a hugely welcome relief from the utter garbage spouted by the government and their advisers.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-30th-april/
CEBM The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine develops, promotes and disseminates better evidence for healthcare.
30th April
“NHS England releases data at 2 pm each day and reports daily count up to the previous day as well as a total figure…
Today’s (30/4/2020) reported figure is 391 deaths in hospitals in England. These deaths are distributed back to the 12th of March.
Consistent with previous analyses, the peak day of deaths was the 8th of April.”
They’ve analysed the mortality data and produced graphs showing the number of deaths per day according to the date of actual death, not the date of announcement, which can differ by quite a bit.
So my guess of a month’s lag on reported deaths coming in wasn’t far off.
The fact that the vast majority of people will literally think that 700+ people are dying PER DAY is quote frankly scandalous. If the figures were reported literally instead of retrospectively, I feel like a lot of people would calm down and start to get some perspective.
Especially when you consider that about 1500 people die every day on average. EXCESS deaths are what is important but they are clearly being manipulated. Did someone at ONS suddenly find a bunch of death certificates which had fallen behind the water cooler, just as Boris was getting back to work? And were they holding back all the care home deaths so they could release them all at once too?
There’s some weird stuff with the increase in “non-covid” deaths too, and added to the scam of counting almost all deaths as covid even when they weren’t, the whole thing becomes opaque.
As British institutions go the CEBM seems to be the one with the best understanding of the covid situation in our country. Time we all started living by their “lockdowns are bad” type guidance rather than Ferguson’s un-reviewed models.
The second wave idea isn’t very scientific. Here is a paper from CEBM
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-epidemic-waves/
This site, and in particular the below-the-line comments, are a lifeline. I never thought I’d be a ‘below the line’ contributor, but am driven to this to protect my sanity.
Some observations:
1 How will the Government get us back to work?
The official Gov’t advice on work – see:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-to-employers-and-businesses-about-covid-19/guidance-for-employers-and-businesses-on-coronavirus-covid-19
includes:
“During this time of unprecedented disruption, the UK Government is not asking all businesses to shut – indeed it is important for business to carry on. Only some non-essential shops and public venues have been asked to close.”
This is not a message that has come across – at all. Many working-age employees, currently enjoying furlough on 80% pay, will be hard-pressed to accept a new edict that “Stay at Home to save lives” will, overnight, turn into “Go to work to save the economy”. They will rightly ask ‘What has changed in the risk that I face if I go out there’? The answer is ‘nothing’ – the risk for you is as negligible as it has always been’ – but who’s going to tell them that with authority?
Today’s Ipsos Mori survey, reinforcing the public’s acceptance of lockdown, emphasises the difficulty the Gov’t faces. The furlough (the ‘ventilator’ for the thousands of small businesses in intensive care) may be keeping those businesses on life support, but (as with the ventilator) many will die in the end. [The ‘great ventilator panic of March 2020’ will be another chapter in the lengthy enquiry].
2 Does lock-down ensure that there will be a 2nd wave?
The Prof Wittkowski interview makes clear his view that there would be no 2nd wave if the virus had been allowed to run its course. Lock-down has ensured that it hasn’t run its normal course, so unlocking will allow it to continue to spread – always inevitable. How can the Gov’t spin its way out of that one?
3 The death data
There has been shocking ineptitude in the collection of the mortality stats. Collection:
• by date of reporting, not by date of death,
• then ‘all deaths are with Covid’ rather than looking at an excess mortality figure
• then revision, without comment, of the daily stats (viz the JASA comments y’day on 10 April deaths:
o “On 10th April the media went nuts with the daily rise figure of 980 new deaths, but if you look at the total deaths graph on the NHS website for 10th April, it is 700 as of yesterday, three weeks later.”
However, the UK does seem to have a particular problem. This link (below – from Tom Bidie BTL 29 April near the end) does need explaining – otherwise we’ll never persuade people back to work:
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/images/momo_ages_200429.png
I’ve seen no good explanation yet – conspiracy theories don’t wash with me.
4 Who pays the bill?
To update Dirksen for inflation “100 billion here, 100 billion there; pretty soon, you’re talking real money”. There’s been no mainstream debate about who pays for this yet. Will our children of working age, and grandchildren about to come into the workforce, really accept having to pay, over many years, to have extended the lives of the elderly and infirm, in some cases for a few months only, back in 2020?
5 Cock-up or conspiracy?
It’s always the former, in my experience.
The Gov’t was going down the right track ‘let it run its course while advising elderly to stay safe’, got diverted by the horror scenes from Lombardy and Prof Ferguson, and has now run up a blind alley.
It will take real guts to back-track and get the country back to work on an effective basis (which means cancelling ‘social distancing’ advice if travel and work are to be feasible). They are going to have to ‘follow the economists’ rather than ‘follow the science’ if the damage to us all is to be minimised.
Depressingly, I see little evidence that they have the guts or the leadership. As a result, the long-term economic damage from a prolonged lock-down and half-hearted and slow return to normality could well be worse here in UK than the rest of the world. I hope I’m wrong.
Glad to have got that off my chest – .… and as I used to say at the end of the lecture “if you have been, thank you for listening.”
Economics is a science too, albeit “the dismal” one. Economics seems however to have some level of understanding of how connected the modern world is and how reliant we all are upon everything getting done properly, epidemiology ignores everything which isn’t today’s exciting new disease.
This was encouraging news from a Pennsylvania hospital head: https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/04/umpc-argues-covid-19-not-as-deadly-as-feared-says-its-hospitals-will-shift-back-to-normal.html
I made the mistake of looking at Georgia news before bed last night, and encountered The Atlantic’s whack job on Governor Kemp after he (very very mildly) let people a little bit out of their houses last week. (No one was dining in restaurants or drinking at bars. What, you want people to die?) Evidently 4 people died after. That bringing Georgia’s fatalities up to 1131. In a state of 10.6 million people. First, there’s no way the easing of restrictions could’ve had anything to do with those deaths. Second, it is unrealistic to expect people in nursing homes not to die at a higher rate than in the rest of the community. We could stay home for the rest of the century, and old sick people would continue to die.
Anyway, the Atlantic had a headline about Kemp making a “human sacrifice.” Which, frankly, is libelous and worthy of a lawsuit. I lay awake fretting for a while, thinking we’ll be imprisoned forever. Then I finally realized, with that clarity that comes to a relaxed mind – the Atlantic wants Georgia to fail. It doesn’t care about COVID, not really, it just is delighted to have ammunition, and opening the state is perfect because some deaths are inevitable. And Kemp can be blamed!
Kemp is a Republican and Georgia is a red state, but it has a sizable Democratic population in Atlanta. Atlanta’s Democratic mayor has been an outspoken critic of ending statewide house arrest. Georgia is in play this year – many Dems hope to flip it. So the media outlets that are heavily invested in ousting Republicans will do whatever they can to facilitate that.
All things became clear.
I have wondered for some time how much of this whole soap opera owes its momentum to the fact that this is a U.S. Presidential election year?
I think a massive amount of this is to do with Donald Trump being in the White House. I am the first to admit that I hold no love for Trump. The sleep I lost after his election, oh my god! He is a terrible leader, incompetent and inconsistent in the extreme. If we had actual competent grownups in charge of the country, I would hope things would be different now.
But! The degree of hatred many people hold for him is waaaaayyyy beyond rational. And the NY Times and Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN, and a number of other outlets are very interested in getting rid of him. My father used to rant about the liberal media, back when Fox News was new and enticing to him.
For 20 years, I’ve found Fox horrifying. I still kind of do, but at the moment, right-wing media is the only place playing anything resembling a counter-story to the deadly-plague-of-doom-zombie-apocalypse narrative we’re getting from the MSM. This narrative continues in the face of mounting evidence that COVID isn’t that deadly, that people are protesting because they have lost their jobs and their freedom to leave their houses and not because they love Trump (they don’t – most Repubs on Facebook are very disappointed in Trump’s handling of the matter), that the very real costs imposed on the entire population might bear at least SOME scrutiny. I’m seeing none of this from the MSM, and it disappoints me profoundly. I’m frightened at the degree of control these outlets have over the entire country. And the story they’re selling, my god! 18 months lockdown??? I ask you!
And I wonder – if Trump were to announce his resignation in exchange for everyone opening the economy immediately – how fast would all the plague horror stories stop?
My worry – If Trump can restart the US economy and unemployment falls very rapidly then he could be re-elected in Nov (oh dear!).
As said elsewhere ‘Voters care about the economy, first, second, and third. Everything else is just noise’. 30 to 40 million unemployment are waiting for action.
I’ve been making the same point about fatalities amongst the old,sick and frail: nature does this ,yet we seem to be unable to accept the fact that death will end the life span,and that this will come most frequently to the very old and sick, regardless of the cause(s).
The way the media is whipping up a storm about nursing home deaths is irresponsible and silly.
Seems to me that lockdown is the human sacrifice, governments, the media and a large proportion of the population have come to believe that some sort of Deus Ex Machina will swoop down to save us from this virus if we simply make our lives unbearable enough. This is NOT a novel or a film, there is NO author waiting to reward you for your devotion to a lost cause, you do NOT get redemption through suffering, you get it by getting back to work and making life happen again.
There is one film it does slightly resemble, though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDldRklFv9k
I posted this comment on yesterday’s article by mistake. The Bloomberg piece https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-29/coronavirus-lockdown-critics-may-have-some-valid-points indicated by a commentator tells us that it is in New York, Detroit and New Orleans that the hospital system has been stretched to capacity. Density of population is given as the reason. Might not obesity and underlying ill health of population also have a lot to do with it? More than half of adult New Yorkers have overweight (34%) or obesity (22%). Detroit residents are more obese than the average American. New Orleans residents suffer from obesity, diabetes and hypertension at rates higher than the national average. Just look up city name and obesity and the information appears. These cities are also home to a large proportion of African Americans who are likely to be deficient in vitamin D. Lack of vitamin D plus overweight equals critical outcome. Meanwhile people stay at home eating junk food, getting even less exercise and less sunshine than usual and becoming an easy prey for any virus that is going about.
The legal case will be interesting. I can’t see it working. It seems that in a pandemic those in authority must be allowed to act – may be they used the wrong Act but that seems a technicality. I am sure HMG will claim that it is looking at the greatest good which includes the economy’s impact on other health parameters.
I personally feel that it would be better for the government to be more open and share more of their workings. Our ministers feel the same since they always bang on about transparency but never actually do it. If they were more transparent I think they’d be able to keep a consensus going – not on a lock down but the next more nuanced requirements. We risk real fragmentation which isn’t good at all. I doubt that the judges can force a government to publish everything.
It could be that the legal action is an attempt to apply political pressure and gain publicity. That seems like a reasonable use. Even if Dolan doesn’t have the law on his side it could be that he pushes the government to be more transparent.
“It seems that in a pandemic those in authority must be allowed to act”
Within reason though; and especially if they’re going to continue the lockdown, I’d like to see parliamentary and legal review frequently! They’ve taken some very serious liberties away from us somewhat speculatively (even the WHO wasn’t recommending lockdown in the literature review they did last year)- the last thing we want is future governments using this as precedent. At what point is this an unnecessary measure, and who gets to decide that?
I’d agree. The lock down was precautionary. I believe it was necessary. It might turn out that is has done more harm than good (if we can measure all the knock-on events). However, stopping an epidemic that you don’t understand seems sensible. However….
We have stopped it. We do now have a much better understanding of the virus (not perfect) and of the problems of lock down. For me, it is all about what happens next. So I think governments must be allowed to shout “Fire!” in an emergency and people just respond but not forever.
TBH I don’t think the initial lockdown was that ridiculous (especially if they’d done it a few weeks earlier…..). I can understand a degree of the political willies, unknown virus, look how China got rid of it, media pressure etc. No government is perfect.
What I CAN’T understand is the extension of the lockdown for another three weeks, when there was plenty of evidence coming in that they’d overreacted. The smoking gun for me was actually the fact that the peak was clearly on the 8th April. The fact that they’ve said so only a few times, and fleetingly – plus the fact that they waited for Boris to come back and admit that “we’re past the peak” WEEKS after the peak was actually passed – well that’s the nail in the coffin. They’re a shower of shit.
I wonder if Boris himself hadn’t been a “victim” whether he’d be able to see more clearly. Probably not. Then again, I think they all CAN actually see what they’ve done, and now they’re just desperately trying to save their arses rather than the country.
It makes Gordon Brown’s selling of the gold (£5 billion wasted) look like rather small potatoes.
It does. But at least with this (hopefully) the good intentions were there whereas that was just….. dumb.
Totally agree this is mainly about arse covering for them now. I was so infuriated by the buffoon trotting out the we’ve avoided 500,000 deaths through our sacrifice line last night. It is appallingly disingenuous to still be spouting that ‘reasonable worse case view’ given all the data that has emerged about the virus since Ferguson’s bombshell.
Me too and in the same breath as ‘the peak is passed’, they must really think we are stupid!
The lockdown was not justified. Don’t forget the government was pursuing herd immunity ie the same policy as Sweden until Neil Ferguson’s dodgy dossier was published. That, combined with media pressure, was the reason for the UK lockdown – not evidence that it would work or that we were in fact in the grip of a true pandemic (as in 1918). If we accept the argument that the govt had to act where does it end? Every winter when the NHS is short of beds and there is a spike in flu deaths? Don’t forget flu is not a notifiable disease ie the true number of flu deaths is likely to be higher than recorded. There is plenty of evidence that any and all deaths with C19 are being recorded inaccurately as from C19 not to mention “suspected” C19 deaths are being recorded as from C19. The govt should have calmed the panic from the outset instead they encourage it and it’s perfectly obvious they are engaged in a face saving exercise at this point.
I’m pleased that Dolan is challenging the government it’s about time there was some public opposition although I am sure the media will depict him as a raving lunatic (wants old people to die etc).
I despair.
We now seem to be in thrall to a magical symbol R which, as a sacrifice to appease the Gods, we must keep below 1.
At great human and financial cost we have bought the time to enable the NHS to care for the victims of this virus. We are doing all we can to find a means of protecting us from it, and to lessening its effects.
We know that restricting the activity, interactions and mobility of the healthy will not in the long run reduce the number of people dying with the virus.
We also know that, in doing this, the Government is sacrificing the lives of tens of thousands of people, creating untold suffering, and depriving millions of the things that make their lives life worth living.
Prime Minister, how in all conscience can you continue to do this?
To avoid listening to the latest rubbish spouted on R4 on my journeys to and from work, I have been indulging in the radio station Magical Musicals- a great way to pass half an hour. This particular lyric from the song Cabaret ( and the musical of the same name) has struck a chord with me – ‘ start by admitting from cradle to tomb isn’t that long a stay’. To those millions who are terrified to come out of their homes- just live your life, it doesn’t last that long; don’t waste even the smallest bit of it by being scared of something that may never happen.
Agree, and people don’t understand risk either. I googled ‘what are my chances of dying, ranked’, the list makes interesting reading, I think I’m more likely to die in an ‘extreme weather event’ than this virus!
I have a comment on the cost of economy protection so far.
The total spending on health was around 134 billion in 2019/20. Based on the website below.
https://fullfact.org/health/spending-english-nhs/
For me, it means that we have already spent roughly the same money on protecting the economy just until now that would be enough to run the total health service for a year. Before the virus, there was not enough money to upgrade the health service and now we have spent one year budget already only on the economy. I assume this money will be missing from the further running of the health system that will cause deaths. However, this will be a slow gradual increase, not a peak. And probably won’t be under the magnifying glass and media interest.
Do remember the way things were back in 2018 ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42572116
Nasty, but really not taken as being that much out of the ordinary.
Isn’t it strange how selective people can be – or whipped up into a frenzy by the media.
Hope the sun stays out over the weekend.
Having called for the lockdown in the first place, the media will then bash the government when the NHS funding runs dry. North Korea may find it amusing to donate us some equipment.
It’s disgusting that of all the protests in recent history the only one Boris ever paid attention to was less than 10 nutters in white coveralls (they weren’t true HazMat suits) saying “shut down the country”.
https://youtu.be/Ex2AmdwxPsc
Am finding myself increasingly sinking into depression as this nonsensical situation plays on..and on..
What has happened to the population in the UK ? So many people were energised to protest about the Brexit debate which was modelled by many as likely having catastrophic social and economic consequences – really ? Well wtf about the impact of this madness then ? But the masses now seem content to just clap like seals for fish once a week, and then hide away to worship “our” new deity.
I don’t get why there is no rebellion here, or any form of hard action. And why is there no public debate taking place on all this – with some hard talk about obesity, care homes, jobs etc. All we are fed is endless drivel of moving targets, manipulated statistics to sort the latest narrative, and corporate-style “meet the numbers at all costs” actions.
I just don’t get how this once proud nation can have become so fearful, blind to facts, and lose the ability to rationalise, make judgements and live a life. How dare any of us go back to complaining about dictatorships or communist regimes around the globe, and seeking to cleanse our moral souls by sending in the Armed Forces to take action against them when we just sit back and drink the Kool-Aid on this one.
Shocking.
I couldn’t agree with you more.
I , stupidly I realise, answered ‘yes’ to a Facebook page that asked if the lockdown should be lifted- I feel as though I may be lynched. Why are all these people so terrified? Many of them work for the public sector so their jobs aren’t in jeopardy so maybe that explains some of it. I am baffled. How do these people cope with every day life?
I’m starting to get a bit worried this might fracture our society even further, we could end up with another Brexit-esque split dividing up the fabric of the country; you can see how the Mail and Telegraph are kind of hedging their bets on both sides of the fence – witness the Mail stirring up trouble about ‘Covidiots’ but then publishing economic impact stories. The tone of the (notorious) reader comments in both is starting to change though, I detect a possible shift towards a more sceptical view. I also think certain Unions might use this opportunity to settle old grievances’ (rightly or wrongly) – I see the teaching unions and the RMT are on the war path, both of which will affect how the lockdown is perceived on the left wing.
Certainly for me a fracture, nay a full break, is there already – I have become polarised. As Fin posted yesterday – My freedom doesn’t end where your fear begins.
I am not in the “sandwich” generation, I only have teenage children. I had to deal with parental loss whilst a young adult which was both shocking but character building, we all have a choice to either succomb or recover and thrive.
But my children are being denied their basic rights to learn, to represent their schools and clubs in sports, to develop friendships and (eek, sexual !) relationships and it breaks my heart to see them denied the privileges those cowering away have enjoyed. And their reward for being “in it together” will be to be saddled with national debt and being tarred as the “corona generation” with regard to estimated, teacher assigned examination marks.
And why – because as a nation we were too afraid to call it as it is, and became obsessed with eliminating deaths that may in some cases be both an emotional and financial relief.
This is what I am finding most upsetting too, and it’s not just the lockdown itself it’s the prospect of the pointless, arbitrary and fun stifling social distancing measures that will no doubt be imposed indefinitely once they do go back to school that are going to make things utterly miserable for all involved.
Yep, it’s heart breaking.
The political alignments are interesting and the government are trying to play them with Ferguson as a Trojan horse. John Crace in the Guardian today was having a typically hilarious dig at Johnson but stopped short of spluttering about the “it would have been 500k deaths” lie because the left still think Fergie (who now writes for the Telegraph) is on their side.
Passing up a Johnson porkie like that is conspicuous. At this rate he will be remembered as the prime minister who gave the NHS 250 million pounds a week and saved half a million lives
Right-on middle class lefties all love the lockdown of course but the right is more split with no doubt some unease on the part of Johnson about how many elderly retired Telegraph-reading Tory voters with nothing to lose but their lives will punish him for appearing to go soft on the lockdown.
I’m a primary teacher, at my small rural school we are keen to return. We would appreciate time to plan whatever adaptions the government forces on us but we’re eager to get going. I recognise I’m lucky to have my wages secured but we’re not all a rabid bunch of Corbynites.
I’m a primary teacher, at my small rural school we are keen to return. We would appreciate time to plan whatever adaptions the government forces on us but we’re eager to get going. I recognise I’m lucky to have my wages secured but we’re not all a rabid bunch of Corbynites.
Because they are led by social media that is generated by the crowd itself. I see it as herd behaviour similar that people do when they are panicking during an evacuation procedure in dangerous situations. The world is in panic mode. It is like a catch of 22. We would need a very strong wave of sane thinking that can stop it.
Bang on Brian…but there is dissent, just not enough to be heard over the sheeple – YET.
The likelihood is the facts will be retrofitted to suit the situation after the event. Don’t forget Whitty and Ferguson go back a long way and have received more funding from Bill Gates than Imelda Marcos could spend in an afternoon on Fifth Avenue – and that’s going some.
These are old allies with a vested interest in gerrymandering facts and figures, although it escapes me why Boris is so blind to this other than the fact he is now not simply a journalist or a back bencher and has succumbed to the usual political paraplegia in order to save his ass. He’s no lolloping cartoon character anymore and I fear he’s sold out…. he started this thing by being rather matter of fact about it, “some of us will lose loved ones”, implying that we have to sacrifice the few to save the many, but seems to have completely changed tack.
Aye…summat more to this, me thinks…..
There is dissent, but if it’s on YouTube it’s likely to get removed for “breaking community guidelines.”
It’s definitely in the comments sections of the websites I haunt (not the Spectator any more since they made it subscriber-only). But unlike Brexit, there’s not a political party or movement for people to latch onto. It may come if the lockdown lasts long enough.
But the establishment and media have done such a good job with the non-stop propaganda. It has me shouting at the tv, at the adverts and public announcements, ditto the radio.
Thank you…brainwashing and propaganda in every advert on tv. I turn the f’g thing off
Yeah… Note the speed in which the number of food, ailment, home and patronisingly ‘caring’ supermarket and banking adverts have spread like a virus on the airwaves. God, I never thought I would miss Ray Winstone and his ‘ave a bang on that’ football gambling ads…but will celebrate the day on which they return
I’m encouraged that the two centre-page articles in today’s Telegraph could have come straight from this website – is there about to be a sea-change in opinion?
Thanks for bringing Simon Dolan’s legal challenge to my attention and good luck to him. Legal action will commence on May 7th if Matt Hancock does not rectify the complaint.
Simon Dolan’s Letter Before Action to the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock :
https://static.crowdjustice.com/group_claim_document/Letter_to_The_Rt_Hon_Matt_Hancock_MP_Secretary_of_State_for_Health__DgnuEzh.PDF
MG
I think it’s interesting that ONS stats include all deaths where Covid suspected. I wonder if hay fever symptoms could be mistaken for Covid considering the similarity (coughs, difficulty breathing) and the fact we’re at a 70 year high pollen count:
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/health/hay-fever-sufferers-warned-over-18056004
It also looks like GPs are warning about possible confusion between the two:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-52349794
I already got hauled off and temperature checked because I went to give blood and was snuffly.
It’s the ‘2nd wave’….! ‘Stay inside!’ ‘Stay Safe!’…. Oh lordy… Now we could have weeks of paranoia from the sheep due to flippin hay fever. How convenient
Yup I got a bit paranoid when I started coughing, but I also sneezed so all is good
While some were out whooping and banging on pots,
Mugging off our future were our familiar despots.
All cheerled by the auntie who numbers 2,2,3.
Since we’re all
“Stayin’ safe”,
Let’s discuss the motive behind this rapid loss of freedom,
Movement
And bodily integrity,
For i’ve read inbetween the lines of the of legislation that the marionette’s apparently prepared hastily,
It seems, at least as I understand it, we may no longer be fundamentally free!
And frankly,
‘Social distancing’
Started one September some
222 months back
for folk the like of me,
Yes it goes without saying…
‘We love you NHS’
and all who service thee,
But as spoke from the edge of this vast petri dish by those with hearts which see…
“Just like you we hate this
wicked flu
As we despised those
‘evil WMD’.
But we love at least as much our children growing in a land
Bereft of tyranny !
Amin Phillips March 2020
A LONG POST BUT BEAR WITH ME…
Someone asked me how I was coping with lockdown. “Fine”, I replied. I guess according to the latest report I’m one of the 9%…
I stopped short of saying “What lockdown?” in case they were of the insidious, curtain-twicthing, snitching, back-stabbing, mealy-mouthed, spiteful, cowardly, lily-livered New Brit Brigade that now seems to be de rigueur for this once great nation, and frankly I didn’t fancy a visit from the Bizzies, as I was too tempted to give the last one a slap for castigating me for travelling to work to close a barn door that had blown open. Apparently it wasn’t ‘essential’ that I went and closed it and should have allowed an entire flock of 138 sheep to trample my newly planted vegetable garden with impunity. Well, it is Wales….
So I thought I would construct: A REMINDER OF THE LEGALITIES OF LOCKDOWN AT UK PLC
Driving to a different walking spot every day – legal.
Stopping to sit down on the ground or on an available bench during your walk, to read Playboy or The Telegraph (or this website) whilst having a champagne picnic – legal.
Going out to your shop (however far away, the Act doesn’t say) solely to buy said copy of Playboy, a bottle of Laurent Perrier Rose and a packet of Gauloises – legal.
Travelling to your office because your missus and kids are driving you absolutely bat sh*t crazy with their incessant noise and bickering, meaning you cannot complete your very important work in the home environment – legal.
Staying at your friend’s house for the weekend because you’ve had an row with ‘er indoors and you need to cool off by drinking copious amounts of Stella then watching Pornhub in the spare room with impunity – legal.
One for the girls – visiting your isolating or ill friend’s place with a food delivery and having a good chin wag about the fella who is driving you mad ‘by just being there / breathing/ existing’ etc, whilst remaining socially distanced – legal.
Doing site work, along with other trades/folk – legal.
Whilst at work over lunch (observing distancing) you may wish to have a jolly good lambast at the sheer scale of the ridiculousness of wrecking the entire UK economy when all that was required was quarantining the vulnerable. Again, legal.
Interesting subjects for discussion at said lunch:
Why highly regarded consultants in hospitals all over the country are under pressure to record ALL deaths as Covid-19, whether positive or or not and even when the patient had no symptoms?
Why, if the virus is so terrible, we’re allowing people into Britain who aren’t then immediately quarantined?
Why Professor Neil Ferguson, who’s been incorrect about every single thing he ever predicted, like a scientific version of Mystic Meg, is still being heeded? (If he’s not Cambridge Five I don’t know what is…surely MI6 are all over him, given he’s got his mucky mitts on every single health scare that’s been close to systematically destroying the UK for the past 20 years?. Just saying…)
Why these countries, all near China and far more densely populated than the UK, have NO LOCKDOWN, but an infinitesimal number of deaths? Whitty can pull this apart all he likes, the stats are too diverse to not warrant serious investigation, and something would be very wrong any way you look at it – whether it’s the fact we’re misrecording deaths (a resounding ‘FAIL’) or whether we do in fact have the worst cases in Europe (‘FAIL’ – and why?). We can’t have it all ways.
So here goes:
(psqkm=people per sq. km. London is 4542).
Hong Kong 7140 psqkm – ONLY 4 DEATHS
Taiwan capital 5519 psqkm – ONLY 6 DEATHS IN ENTIRE country
Tokyo 6158 psqkm ONLY 117 DEATHS
Answers on a postcard…
Instead of watching the Daily Doom forecast, I read this. 100% happy with my decision.
I’d love to…but I then find I am unable to form th proper arguments with the dummies about it…so alas, I have to indulge.
However, this morning I sodded it all off and watched four episodes of The Professionals back to back whilst drinking tea…which was a welcome relief I can tell you.
I’m lucky, I think, I don’t seem to have any dummies to have to deal with.
And I’m feeling sufficiently bolshy to not take any “you’re killing people by going outside” BS, possibly by countering that meeting someone else while outside has an infinitesimally small possibility that someone else down the line might die (unlikely, as I’ve been in quarantine long enough to know I don’t have it), I do know that continued lockdown absolutely will kill people, whether by suicide or by untreated disease that they’ve been too scared to have treated.
I used to love watching The Professionals when I was growing up!
It’s on every day on ITV4… highlight of my day!
VERY wise words and well put. Thank you for the post.
A pleasure, A N Other….
What’s the betting the ONS get knobbled when it’s time to release the overall death stats that show we didn’t actually suffer than many more croakers during this entire French farce…. ?
I actually never thought I’d live in George Orwell’s 1984 or in a satellite Russian state but he we all are. Time to learn to sail as the only place worth being in a decade’s time is on a yacht…..
The answers are all here. They’ve been available since 06 Feb. This Professor (John Nicholls) in Hong Kong is a coronavirus expert. Did anyone give him a call, I wonder (actually, I don’t, I can guess….)
‘Quick summary: look at the fatality rate outside of Wuhan – it’s below 1%. The correct comparison is not SARS or MERS but a bad cold which kills people who already have other health issues. This virus will burn itself out in May when temperatures rise. Wash your hands.’
‘Sunlight will cut the virus ability to grow in half so the half-life will be 2.5 minutes and in the dark it’s about 13m to 20m. Sunlight is really good at killing viruses. That’s why I believe that Australia and the southern hemisphere will not see any great infections rates because they have lots of sunlight and they are in the middle of summer. And Wuhan and Beijing is still cold which is why there’s high infection rates.’
https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/conference-call-coronavirus-expert
Does this mean that all those people who were standing for ages in the sunshine while waiting to get into a supermarket, were actively annihilating the virus? That’s the only good reason for the lockup that I can come up with.
Great post! Thanks so much for this! I’m now smiling and even giggling a little!
Mimi you naughty girl for giggling! (Assuming you are a girl) .
Don’t you know that in the Church of Lockdown giggling is verboten? Ten “Hail Hancocks” facing the wall!
Maud, I might be a girl… who knows! It’s the Internet!
Ah, and what is life without a good giggle now and then!
Maybe Asian genes are more resistant to covid. Obviously the fact that China itself might get off rather more lightly than the West would only be a coincidence!
Quick question – ‘driving to a different walking spot every day’ – how far can you drive? Stock police response seems to be ‘where the time for walking is considerably more than that for driving’. Can I drive 1 or 2 hours from home, walk for 3 or 6 hours perhaps, and then go home? Is that legal?
Don’t confuse random Government Ministerial ‘guidance’ with the law.
The Regulations require you to ‘not leave the place where you are living without ‘reaonable excuse’. No. 2 excuse being:
(2) To take exercise either alone or with other members of the household.
Apart from Wales, which Regulates this as ‘once-daily’, that limit is guidance only.
If questioned by the Stasi, sorry I mean County Constabulary, you should proffer a copy of the Coronavirus Regulations for the Officer’s perusal, politely and with pleasant smile.
He/she can’t do you for either your exercise trip, or your
unspoken ‘bug*er off’.
Thanks for that.
That’s right. You can drive to a walk provided the total walking time exceeds the driving time.
But what a load of tosh considering if anyone had any brains they’d just say “Yes officer I plan to walk for four hours!” if he knows you’ve driven an hour!
This is a complete waste of police time and a titan infringement on civil liberties so if people lie to them it’s tough titty. This is a flu like virus not foot and mouth.
Agreed – and thanks for the above long post.
However what the law says and what the police do may differ significantly. Mostly I walk not far away because there are plenty of places I can go and meet few or no people.
One I met the other day decided to drive to a nearby deserted heath for a walk in the sun. When she got back to her car the police had plastered it with a notice telling her to go home and stay indoors, and that they had taken her number.
Lucky they didn’t see her, she must have been eighty if she was a day. Almost certainly walking in the sun did her far more good than staying indoors.
Don’t tell anyone but I have a couple of places where I can sit in the sun unseen from the road.
It really does annoy me when Boris says it could have been 500,000 loss of life. Please, where is the eveidence?
Please look up the Milgram experiment 1961. The obedience shown to people in white coats. You will in part see what is happening now.
Well noted – this prompted a post on OpenCorona (https://www.facebook.com/groups/224650028639377/) Cheers!
For what it’s worth: Not yet peer reviewed, but then who cares. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1.full.pdf
Excellent. Some nice maths in there for us sane scientists.
£100bn for a lockdown? We could have had a high speed train for that!
So glad about the legal challenge. I’ve been writing to lots of Human Rights firms about suspended medical treatments, but without success. Hopefully the action will at least force the government to start thinking and acting more sensibly.
I’ve just read the pre action letter, it’s a thing of beauty (if you like that kind of thing) https://static.crowdjustice.com/group_claim_document/Letter_to_The_Rt_Hon_Matt_Hancock_MP_Secretary_of_State_for_Health__DgnuEzh.PDF
I agree. Although that silly fella Hancock will have lots of help responding, I smiled at the fact that he will have to spend some time responding. He’s the real Covidiot.
Toby, thank you for today’s post and at last something we can do. I have given to Simon Dolan’s crowdfunder and it’s already over half way to its initial £30k target.
#Meetoo
Me too. Thank heaven for the sane people on thus site and for Toby!s excellent analysis.
Family biz took an inquiry today from a very well know chocolate manufacturer, they are after disposable gloves and paper boilersuits (like you see at crime scenes, with a hood that tucks your hair in) for their production line staff. Anyway, our suppliers- having told us June – are now telling us PPE is out of stock until the winter, you can’t get stuff for love nor money, and we have preferential arrangements with several.
This means famous chocolate maker now having to switch production line staff to white doctor’s coats and washing up gloves, which are massively more expensive (plus coats have to be laundered) which – in long mutual moaning session with them about how nuts this all is, which is the same conversation we’re having with literally everyone we speak to – they said will significantly add to the costs of producing their product, which they said will inevitably lead to a price increase.
Our customers are all having similar issues, so local biodigester power station kits all their guys out in disposable gear (they need eye wear, masks, gloves, disposable coveralls) as it’s a messy, stinky business, now having to buy cloth kit and get it laundered. Nobody is really thinking through all the knock on economic costs of all this, not just lost jobs, and closed businesses, but increasing costs (and prices) if and when we finally get to work.
A few weeks ago we also had a desperate scrap metal merchant ring us on the hunt for eye protection and masks, as his guys couldn’t work without PPE (dust and metal fragments) and he’d had to close his business, not because it was a covid risk, but he couldn’t kit out his workers. This must surely be happening in myriad industries where people need to be protected at work?
I had a Chinese company (Shanghai) contact me with those kinds of products but I haven’t yet responded.
It would be interesting to know what everyone feels about future trade relations with China?
Should I get back to the Chinese company, or not?
Institute of Fiscal Studies have done a report: Recessions and health: the long-term health consequences of responses to the coronavirus https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14799
Which in my obsessive reading, I clearly missed as it’s dated 9th April (although have been scouring the news, not seen this mentioned anywhere?)
Very interesting, and very worrying, particularly this bit…
‘Economic shocks and downturns have been shown to be important during pregnancy and early childhood. At this point of the lifecycle, physical health and cognitive trajectories are being set and this has long-reaching consequences for later life health. Poverty rates increase in a recession. This may feed through to negative in utero and early childhood risk factors…. being born in a recession reduces lifespan by about 5%. ….stark and lifelong effects that early childhood conditions have on health, not just because of the biological pathways, but also as the result of the effects of in utero and early child health conditions on other economic outcomes and family behaviours. ‘
I read somewhere that babies conceived and born during the Spanish flu in 1918-20 achieved, on average, lower occupational status and had shorter life spans than average.
Yep that’s my professional niche (I’m a charity consultant, have been for twenty years), the social and health outcomes due to economic deprivation are stark and well documented (although harder to quantify than numbers of dead as there are so many variables – housing, stress, mental health, drinking, smoking, diet, social aspirations, education, healthcare and on and on and on). So if you are a poor kid, you are significantly more likely to suffer with emotional and behavioural problems (the latter is ‘acting it out’, rather than ‘acting it in’ in self harm, bulimia or whatever), if you have behaviour problems, you are far more likely to be permanently excluded from school, 50% of all young offenders were excluded from school, it’s like a horrible game of snakes and ladders.
Does anyone know much about the blog “Off Guardian”? They have published a very well researched article here:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/29/lokin-20-the-lockdown-regime-causes-increasing-health-concerns/
The official downgrading of COVID-19 from “HCID” status on March 19th that they mention there is interesting and something I don’t remember reading about in the Guardian.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
People are saying they did to be able to alter the PPE requirements – so that they wouldn’t need to procure as many items. Why is noone considering it they did it because er…… because Covid doesn’t actually merit that status?
Actually I suspect it’s because anything above low status you can only treat in particular places; they had to lower it to get COVID treated in normal hospitals.
The HCID list thing is what started this whole thing off for me. When I discovered that it had been removed from this list I couldn’t understand why and I still haven’t been able to find an answer to the question: if Covid19 is so bad why has it been removed from a list that states that it has to be an acute infectious disease in order to be included?
yep – Iain Davis is a real human, not a Russian bot. The original post is here on his own blog, republished on OffG: https://in-this-together.com/lokin-20/
To my knowledge, OffG was started by people who used to be commenters on the Guardian site. The problem is hypersensitive libs tend to scoff at accepting even editorial content on there since they assume anything they don’t agree with is Russian propaganda.
offguardian has been publishing excellent articles since day one of the covid crisis. They have collated statements by a number of top epidemiologists and virologists who question the official narrative. You should also watch UK Column news . check it out on Youtube. It’s on every Monday Wednesday and Friday.
OffGuardian is a pain, it won’t open in Opera, I have to fire up Firefox which tells me there is a broken certificate and I have to give it and Kaspersky permission to let me view it.
Now there’s a thing, wouldn’t Eugene Kaspersky know more about viruses than Bill Gates?
The last time a pandemic caused widespread concern was during the AIDS crisis. I remember feeling empathy for those affected by the awful disease which brooked no hope of a cure. Scientists took many years to understand AIDS, while we were left to speculate – I’m sure most of us of a certain age remember the urban myths peddled at the time. We were, thankfully, scared silly by the TV campaign voiced by John Hurt. Condoms became de rigueur for the right minded among us.
In spite of all this, we believed a solution would be found. We fought through it, scared though we were. And, now, we have Covid-19. During the AIDS crisis, we weren’t banned from meeting people; drug users continued to take risks; people still gave blood. So, are the recent steps taken by the government in everybody’s best interests? Where, previously, we were left to roll the dice, we are now told to confine ourselves.
Before this interminable lockdown, people were already behaving differently – a walking group I had joined was scheduled to meet on 22 March, but only two of us, myself included, attended. It transpired the other walkers stayed at home out of concern. The age range of the – healthy – group is between 21 and 45. The pact between the people and its government is, clearly, complicated.
Now, we raise millions for the NHS. The blame for the PPE debacle shifts daily. People retreat from each other to signify their compliance. The plans which should have been drawn up to protect the vulnerable remain a notional entity, while an inexperienced cabinet heeds imperfect data models. Fear by proxy has taken hold, while AIDS continue to take lives – the annual death toll hovers around one million. How many antiretroviral drugs can, instead, be bought with the NHS money to directly save many lives elsewhere? Lastly, when being human has become a revolutionary act, what price do we put on life, and is the calculation involved different according to the life in question?
‘Fear by proxy’ indeed!
The people have been authorised to be scared stupid on behalf of the government!! Long may we prostrate ourselves before the great Johnson!!
Great bit of writing from Andrew Lilico here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/01/cant-let-social-distancing-go-years-even-cost-many-lives/#comments
This atually made me a little emotional. Honestly I think if anyone can read that and still be an unquestioning lockdown zealot, they might not have a soul.
Nice to see some positive comments on it as well, save for the inevitable ‘if your own son got infected’ moron.
Don’t say “if” a teenage son gets infected, say “when”, and he’ll be fine with barely any symptoms at all, because the only way this ends is when we have herd immunity. The virus has killed mere tens of people in this country below the age of 30, and most of them had srious underlying conditions. There are much bigegr risks everyone faces every day.
It won’t even come to 100k if we stop sending covid patients into carehomes and finally treat our old with dignity and respect, we could in that respect have our cake and eat it too. In fact, you can buy a lot of elderly care with £100bn, and the sooner we get herd immunity, the sooner the very frail would be free to enjoy hugs and kisses, and family parties, and time with their friends, and a potter round a garden centre, and all the things that make a life.
It’s behind a paywall. Grrr!
Some valiant Frenchmen have set up a site called covidinfos.net that provides alternative covid information in French translation. I don’t know how many people visit the site, but it doesn’t get many comments. Here in France, it seems, a lot of people just aren’t very interested in whether we are being told the truth or not. A friend from Grenoble, for example, who lives in a flat, keeps a stack of attestations which she fills in with a pencil, changing the date, time and purpose several times a day so that she can go out as often as she likes. She is happy to see fewer cars on the roads, fewer aeroplanes in the sky and less rushing about. Grenoble is a city of young people, skiers and engineers who don’t seem to think a virus is much to worry about. They bend the rules as best they can without getting angry in the spirit of an old saying of my mother’s: “what can’t be cured must be endured.” I wish I could be as philosophical about it.
I’ve just had a quick look at the site. You can convert to English using the language translate icon in the browser. on Chrome it normally pops up anyway,
Thank you for highlighting.
When I say “French translation,” I mean mainly automatic translations into French of articles that originally appeared in English or German. There are a few original French articles. The only dissenting French doctor seems to be Dr Didier Raoult, of hydroxychloroquine fame. Yesterday covidinfos published extracts from a letter written to the Health Minister by somebody who works in a hospital putting the case for the end of lockdown. The person wanted to remain anonymous and did not say what he actually did in hospital, but his letter included detailed references for all the information he provided. The covidinfos site was launched by a commentator on Off Guardian who was being driven “insane” by the lack of alternative information in French. I don’t know how numerous we are. I have the impression that some people believe this virus is a killer and some people don’t, but in either case they accept that so long as the law imposes lockdown there is nothing they can do about it and they are not interested in delving further and upsetting themselves, like me, to no avail.
The Government’s mantra (Cummings no doubt) along with the sensationalist media fools have terrified most of the nation. Fear = Control.
For heaven’s sake, why are we not just shielding the vulnerable and letting the rest of us, if we want to, get the @&^% on with it?
The last time, in living memory, that a virus pandemic caused such widespread concern was the AIDS crisis. I remember the newly sharpened focus through which we viewed our own mortality, feelings which were mixed with empathy for those affected by the awful, Mephistophelean disease which brooked no hope of a cure; photographs of skeletal, barely alive, people were published regularly by the press; celebrities and public figures we had grown to love, and had grown up with, were taken before their time. Scientists took many years to understand the nature of this new existential enemy, and, during this time, we were left to speculate as to how it came about and who could be affected, and how we could, or would, be affected – I’m sure most of us of a certain age remember the urban myths, half-truths and rumours which were perpetuated by all and sundry at the time. The delivery method by which the virus entered the body was left to the populous at large to discover – tainted blood transfusions, shared syringes and childbirth were added to the litany. Meanwhile, we were, thankfully, scared silly by the effective government funded TV public information advertisements voiced by John Hurt. Condoms became de rigueur for the right minded and considerate among us, while some abstained from casual sexual encounters. Many people were directly or indirectly affected by the situation, some more than others, and, sadly, the stigma attached by the ignorant to those with HIV/AIDS means the scars of this particular conflict are still with us today.
Yet, in spite of all this, we believed that the efforts being made at the time by the pharmaceutical industry and the Establishment would eventually deliver a solution, which they indeed did. We fought through it, scared though we were. And, now, a new combatant has entered our arena, one which has taken lives and will continue to take the lives of those too weak, for whatever reason, to fight it. During the AIDS crisis, we weren’t banned from meeting people in case we took part in unprotected sex; drug users were educated, but continued to take risks to get their high; people still bravely gave blood and transfusions still happened. All of this leads me to the following question: are the steps taken by the government during this time in everybody’s best interests? Where, previously, we were left to roll the dice and assess risk, we are now told to confine ourselves within our own homes in the hope that either a) a cure is found, or b) the virus somehow blows itself out.
Before this interminable lockdown, people were already starting to behave differently, and in a way which I have never previously experienced – a walking group I had joined, numbering 20 members, was scheduled to meet on 22 March, but only two of us, myself included, attended. It transpired later that the other walkers stayed at home as they were concerned about the risk of both spreading infection and being infected. The age range of the group is between 21 and 52. Fear had already taken root in people who should not have considered themselves to be at risk. Another question, then: was the lockdown an act of political expediency? Quite possibly; the pact between the people and its government is, clearly, a complicated mechanism.
Now we raise millions for the NHS – droplets in a chaotic, infinite ocean. The blame for the PPE debacle shifts daily in line with the political allegiances of the journalists, broadcasters and social media users desperate to spin the argument to back their agenda. Objectivism seems to be passé and quaint, something we used to do. People cower and retreat from each other to signify their compliance and virtue in actively avoiding a threat with a low fatality rate in the healthy. The plans which should have been drawn up immediately to protect the elderly and vulnerable remain a notional entity, while an inexperienced cabinet bases its decision making on imperfect data models. Fear by proxy has taken hold, while real horrors which lapsed from our memories still continue to take lives – the annual AIDS death toll hovers around the one million mark, killing those not fortunate enough to have access to the latest anti-retroviral treatments – sub-Saharan Africans being the main victims. How much are the patents attached to these HIV/AIDS drugs worth, and would the money raised for the NHS recently have purchased the patents, or at least purchased enough drugs to directly save many lives? Lastly, in a world in which being human has become a revolutionary act, what price do we put on life, and is that calculation different according to the life in question?
215 people under 60 with no pre-existing condition have died at @NHSEngland hospitals with #Covid_19.
This is out of all children and virtually our entire workforce.
Also needs to be set against #lockdownDeaths: missed cancer diagnoses, strokes, heart-attacks etc.
215. https://t.co/WUA6iWk5sm
https://twitter.com/AlistairHaimes/status/1256323368715841538?s=19
No KNOWN pre-existing condition? The recovered student nurse who went home this week, protested that she is only 35 and healthy. However, she is still noticeably obese even after three weeks on a ventilator.
Good news from a serological study in Iran:
Its estimate for the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection was 22-33%. This translates into an infection fatality rate of 0.08-0.12%. We all know what ballpark that is.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079244v1.full.pdf
I think we now have to assume that the government knows all this and understands that in terms of numbers this is not much worse than a bad season for the flu. But it is impossible for it to come out and admit this openly. Governments hate to admit they’re wrong at the best of times, but this error is on a scale far beyond even Iraq invasion territory – there will be no public admission of what ‘the science’ increasingly shows is the case.
The government’s behaviour can now only be understood if you look at it as arse covering. We are going to see an almighty climb down over the next months or so, but it will all be dressed up in this mumbo-jumbo and woo-woo about the R rate, and will consist of slow baby steps back to normality. The narrative will then be that we saved 500,000 lives and now our efforts have to turn to restoring economic activity, blah blah. What they are hoping is that what has happened in other countries such as Sweden and Japan never becomes widely known by the population, which is quite likely – because journalists will likewise never want to admit that their (almost) universal hysterical clamour for a lockdown was unjustified.
If I was into conspiracy thinking I would suggest that this is presumably why serological testing for antibodies is not widespread here and is clearly on the ‘go slow’. I’m not into conspiracy thinking normally but I think it’s difficult to explain otherwise. Why do the Iranian authorities have the wherewithal to do this sort of thing, but not those in the UK?
On the 9th of April Sir Patrick told us at the press briefing that we was days away from the Public Health England serological antibody results, not heard anything since.
Yeah it’s really strange.
Italian serological surveys are looking good too, I think, except in hotspot towns – but we know they get overwhelmed and there’s a serious multiplier on casualties.
I thought they’d clarified they are unreliable?
Unreliable clinically, useful statistically; They have a high false negative rate, and a small false positive rate. So not useful to find if you or I have had it, but quite possible to get a population reading.
With a big enough signal you can adjust for those, if you know them.
The problem with the early californian surveys is that the signal was within the potential ‘noise’ area. (around 2.5% positive found). Now the people behind it claim they found a false positive rate of 0.5%, but the confidence range is from 2-0%, if the tests are in the 2% area the actual prevalence could be much lower. This is why they were criticized. They’ve published an addendum defending their work.
Iran has a much higher % positive – much less problematic for noise.
Hanlon’s Razor: Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. Although, Occam’s Razor: the most obvious explanation is the correct one, could land on your interpretation, I suspect cock up is the most likely. However, from the email I had from my MP, who compared deaths to the civilian casualty rate of the second world war (!) I’d say you are right about arse covering, in fact Boris will just keep on with ‘victory is ours, brave Britannia’ for as long as he can.
Some thoughts:
– wouldn’t put it past them to throw the scientists under the bus, this might be why they keep saying ‘followed the science’ (which is what Labour and the press told them to do)
– science is meant to be objective, individual scientists rarely are, they are as vainglorious, arrogant, ambitious, and blind to their own bias as the rest of us (ditto medics). Indeed Neil Ferguson is famed for his arrogance and vanity, and he’s not liked
– some scientists are mightily fed up with their specialism being impuned, I think those voices will get louder, Knut Wittowski said no scientist in the world of respiratory viruses would ever say ‘I got the numbers down from 500k to 25k’ – all that tells us is something else is going on, or the hypothesis is incorrect, I think more will break ranks. CEBM for instance is very well respected, there must be others also ready to wrestle this back the right way?
– Judicial Review, not sure if you’ve read the pre action letter in Simon Dolan’s case? It’s worth slogging through the legal speak for the real gems in there https://static.crowdjustice.com/group_claim_document/Letter_to_The_Rt_Hon_Matt_Hancock_MP_Secretary_of_State_for_Health__DgnuEzh.PDF
– front line doctors, some are milking this for every ounce of ‘historical underfunding put us in this position’ (which perhaps it did initially, I understand their frustration) but others take seriously ‘first do no harm’ – I’ve read a lot of ancedotal dissent, surely it can’t be long before there’re open letters, and interviews and the like
– part of this isn’t just mass hysteria, I actually think us Brits are kind, considerate and caring, and I think people were longing to be part of something good and decent (whatever you think of the lockdown, you can’t knock how people rallied to help others), they’ve been ‘had’, we need public opinion to change, I think it will
– what we’ve done to our elderly, and in care homes is an absolute travesty, and from what I’m reading is part of a relationship of disdain between the NHS and the care sector, it could have been wholly avoided, and we could have treated those people with kindness, care and dignity, I think people are essentially good, and enough decent people will start to make a stink about it
– from what I’ve been reading of YouGov, the main supporters of lockdown are women (I’d posit, stuck in compassion against their own interests), I think when things shift to hurting their family, and the abused children, battered women, and abandoned animal stories really crank up, added to the awful stories of care homes, this will change. For instance my local dog’s home is starting to put to sleep due to lack of funds and inability to rehome, our local hedgehog hospital is front page news this week in our little weekly paper, in a financial and welfare crisis, as it’s going bust, our donkey sanctuary ditto is running an appeal to keep the donkeys alive, our air ambulance is going bust, and in our rural area the dumped horses (owners can no longer afford the livery fees) are starting up, I think as more and more of the heart string tugging consequences become apparent, women will switch teams
– men like sport, we’re going into the summer, I think that will start to grate
– if people are supremely self interested about their own health, they are even worse about their own wallet
– Labour, no idea what they will do, but suspect they will bitterly regret campaigning for poverty, we already know that deaths are currently concentrated in poorer areas (no sh*t sherlock) and they have stuck to a ‘lockdown better’ line, but the economic consequences will be heaped upon the disadvantaged, not sure how long they can cling to their current line that the heartless Tories don’t care about ‘saving lives’ when lives start being irreparably damaged, how they will achieve this reverse ferret, no idea.
All excellent points. While I agree with Hanlon’s razor in principle the suggestion here is only of semi-malice. The 500k number was arrived at in good faith at the time, nobody was deliberately cooking anything. It’s just convenient to somehow not find the time to get around to updating it when new data arrives.
Labour will stop short of questioning the “dodgy” simulation because it will make them sound callous. And they don’t need to. They just have to say to the Tories, 40k people are dead wtf? If the best the Tories can answer with is “it would have been 500k” then the point has been made. Ferguson will continue happily in his job for many years to come although maybe he will stop getting Christmas cards from a few people in the scientific community.
Exactly right this is what’s happening with the narrative about how the government are saving us from 500k fictional deaths.
The narrative on Sweden seems to be developing into “they’re exceptionally Swedish and they’re on a voluntary lockdown”. With the implication that that wouldn’t work on our unruly British plebs who have to be locked up for their own good. Gosh, thanks.
As for conspiracy theories, yes I did wonder why somehow all those test kits everybody ordered turned out to be “faulty”. Spain had a load of them, so did we. There was a lot of talk about them at the end of March.
The UK government however does have top secret antibody tests that Porton Down are doing.
No doubt there will be an interesting twitter shitstorm about this Iran study saying why it’s completely wrong and should be disregarded. It’s better that they found a higher prevalence because that makes the results less sensitive to the specificity of the test kits.
Those Swedes. In France the morning roundup on the radio of what the papers were saying mentioned how the Mayor of Lund in Sweden had poured tons of chicken droppings in a park, apparently to fertilise the grass, but really to discourage people from assembling for the Walpurgis festival because the smell would be too awful. Subtext: people who hold pagan festivals are sneaky and irrational, unlike the French. Better to stay at home because it’s the law rather than be kept in by the smell of chicken droppings.
yep the same nonsense is being suggested of we Americans – even those of us in Minnesota. You know, where a lot of Swedes settled…
“What they are hoping is that what has happened in other countries such as Sweden and Japan never becomes widely known by the population, which is quite likely – because journalists will likewise never want to admit that their (almost) universal hysterical clamour for a lockdown was unjustified.”
The Sun doing precisely that – https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11531650/swedens-top-virologist-not-convinced-anti-lockdown-coronavirus-strategy-right/
With some trepidation I clicked on that sun article – the first and last time I will ever visit the sun website. Worthless corrupt rag for thick pigshits at the best of times. Always better to read the comments section and although of course there are plenty of lockdownforlife sheep on there, there’s a significant amount of dissent. If even the lowest IQ are now questioning the lockdown then the tide is turning. But it will be too slow, and there will be semi permanent restrictions that go on for months if not years. It’s the potential permanent long term changes ‘justified’ by this media epidemic that scares me the most
You know they would hate that here! Real data showing a small risk?! They are more than happy to include people they know didn’t die of COVID (just needs to be anywhere on the death certificate, ONS said before that’s 14% of numbers), or ‘suspected’ in care homes.
At 19:50 Sir Patrick Vallance mentions the Public Health England study
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/united-kingdom-covid-19-briefing-transcript-april-9
I’m hearing reports of doctors being instructed to put every death down to covid, something very weird is going on with death reporting.
Yep, I know from first hand experience of a relative working as a GP that this is exactly what they are being told to do. A disgrace. Who is going to be the first brave whistleblower on this?
The government should now take extreme care with transparency to avoid this entire debacle turning into another ‘dodgy dossier’ event.
The subsequent enquiry must look, in detail, at how readily available medical knowledge was not converted into correctly resourced contingency plans.
For example, a five minute trawl of the internet would have produced the following:
‘Human rhinovirus (HRV) and coronavirus (HCoV) infections are associated with both upper respiratory tract illness (“the common cold”) and lower respiratory tract illness (pneumonia). New species of HRVs and HCoVs have been diagnosed in the past decade. More sensitive diagnostic tests such as reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction have expanded our understanding of the role these viruses play in both immunocompetent and immunosuppressed hosts.’
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305825415_Update_on_Human_Rhinovirus_and_Coronavirus_Infections
‘Rhinovirus infection in the adults was associated with significantly higher mortality and longer hospitalization when compared with influenza virus infection. Institutionalized older adults were particularly at risk. More stringent infection control among health care workers in elderly homes could lower the infection rate before an effective vaccine and antiviral become available.’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5343795/
So:
A. An enhanced ability to identify new viruses has been evident for some time.
B. The deadly effects of coronaviruses/rhinoviruses, even already identified ones, on the elderly and infirm was well understood.
Even more than the incompetence of a deliberately alarmist PR campaign now gone horribly wrong, that this country was not better prepared for an entirely predictable, even likely, medical emergency is a serious and major indictment of both government and the state operated health service administration.
Hiding from that indictment will simply compound the forthcoming penalty at the ballot box for both national and local government.
The link below from CEBM has some graphs for each of the English regions. In London hospitals there have been 43 reported C-19 deaths during the past week. ‘If’ the trends continue London will have very low single figures for those dying in hospitals each day by the middle of next week, and the same will be true for the whole of England by around May 17th. This will then be less than the number of daily road deaths (in a normal year of course). The “all C-19 deaths” numbers will take longer to decline while care homes continue to have problems protecting the most vulnerable group. The coronavirus detected case numbers will still climb for quite a while because testing is ramping up so fast. Kings College estimate that there are still 300,000 with symptoms out there waiting to be found, but the vast majority of those must be non-life threatening infections. (This is down 85% since 1 April).
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-1st-may/
Some more serological research reported yesterday from Italy calculates between 21 and 33% of the most affected Northern Regions already have antibodies to the virus, and the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is therefore about 0.2% – which corresponds with other research where large scale testing has been undertaken (eg Iceland and Finland). If you plug in 21% and 0.2% to the population of the UK you find the predicted minimum number of C-19 deaths to date is 28,000. Yesterday’s UK all cases number was 27,510.
It is so concerning that our government seems to refuse to look at the last 2 months of real data from around the world but still rely on their theoretical models from before the crisis. You really don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that the death rate is nowhere near those early models and certainly now not enough to justify a lockdown and economy crash
Why are the mainstream media not asking the simplest questions such as how many people of the 28k ish fatalities have serious underlying health conditions, how many are over the age of 65, etc. That will I believe indicate that the number of people under 65 and healthy who have died out of the 50 million under 65s is so small that it makes the lockdown look pointless. I suspect the chances of dying of Covid if you fall in to that latter group is no more than the chance of dying on your daily work commute. The BBC reported some ONS analysis a few weeks back that showed over 91% of deaths in that week were people with one or more serious health conditions, the story however was quickly buried on their website.
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Not sure I agree on the whole BAME and vitamin D theory.
Plenty of studies showing that social deprivation (and location as a result) is linked to covid death rate. With deprived areas having: high population density, poorer health, multi generations living in the same property, etc, but ALSO having higher % of BAME populations.
It might also be interesting if any parts of the BAME community are more susceptible than others, for example some Asian communities are far more likely to live in Multi generational housing than others
A must read about the origins of th Covid-19 from Daily Telegraph Australia.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/bombshell-dossier-lays-out-case-against-chinese-bat-virus-program/news-story/55add857058731c9c71c0e96ad17da60
Very concerning.Australia and NIH US indirectly helping scientists in China with extremely dangerous work.They are not saying biochemical attack or modified virus but pure incompetent handling of virus for insane research might be the source.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19bylocalareasanddeprivation/deathsoccurringbetween1marchand17april#middle-layer-super-output-areas
On this website you can put in your postcode and get the exact number of Covid deaths in your borough.
Useful. But please remember that pretty much every UK death is being recorded as covid at the moment no matter what.
[…] Lockdown Sceptics reports, this problem has been confirmed by […]
UK government want all uk ill vulnerable people to be in lockdown indefinately, basically accusing us of giving young healthy people the virus which we have stayed in lockdown not seeing any family being alone at home, we are not allowed to go to a pharmacist, GPS, or hospital while the virus pandemic is still killing people, I’m one of the extremely ill high risk people who has several illnesses including lung problems I’m only 56 & the government can hope we will all have died by 30th September 2020 but they are wrong as I will still be alive fighting for my life till the end, also do they even realise the Queens also over 70, so is Prince Phillip, Prince Charles, & many more totals VIPs so is that also in place too, looks like our UK royal family has to expect to stay at home indefinate, will the Queen allow this ludicrous plan to do this, does he know what he’s actually saying & what he’s asking the UK to do ? I know I’m not going to be in lockdown indefinate, Boris Johnson is the same age as me , would he live life in lockdown? It’s heading for disaster if he does this, this is why I am beginning to believe he wants all the ill & elderly gone, it will raise their cash flow on saving gov. Money too, will homeless & people who are drugs next? Followed by benefits claimers, it’s nothing to do with the poverty people live , or area where they live. Beginning to believe it could be man-made plan.