I purchased a copy of Norman Fenton and Martin Neil’s book Fighting Goliath having enjoyed, and been educated by their blog Where are the numbers? As a mundane clinician I found the statistical analysis hard going; we long-in-the-tooth doctors never had a great deal of statistical training in our youth, or if we did I found it incomprehensible then, so much of the knowledge has been relegated to the trash bin in my brain from where only fragments can be recovered.
Yet their statistical arguments are very convincing; it takes me back 40 years to when one of my friends from medical school, who like me became a rheumatologist, destroyed a number of clinical trial results on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs by demonstrating how a large number of procedural errors invalidated them. These ranged from inadequate trial size through selection bias to the use of the wrong analytical process. Later on I walked out of a conference when the pharmacodynamics of a new drug were tested on 12 people; one subject had a prolonged excretion half-life but was excluded from the analysis as an outlier. I questioned how one could ignore nearly 9% of the sample, and did not get a satisfactory response.
Thus both the use of Bayesian analysis to debunk some of the vaccine trial results was both interesting and convincing. But a more fundamental issue raised by Fenton and Neil was how you should define someone who is vaccinated. To decide arbitrarily that someone was not vaccinated until 14 days after he had been always seemed to me to be bizarre, and the effect of this is, of course, to bias the numbers of subjects getting side-effects, or Covid-type symptoms, in the vaccines’ favour. From a clinical viewpoint the 14 day rule is quite simply wrong. The serious consequences of SARS-CoV-2, or its vaccine, both of which seem to relate to the effect of the spike protein on the immune system, will begin within hours. So what is now needed to set records straight is a complete re-analysis of all the trial and observational data using the baseline for ‘date of vaccination’ as the date it was actually given. Will such a re-evaluation happen? I doubt it. Even with all the growing evidence of side-effects and failures of principle (vaccines do not prevent transmission and have little to no effect on serious disease), repeat vaccination programmes have been set up. I was a good boy; believing what I was told I was ‘done’ three times. It didn’t stop me getting the virus and on the third jab I got symptoms of myocardial dysfunction, though I have no concrete evidence to prove that I had myocarditis as our local health service is not geared up to check. But I am not having any more boosters.
So the vaccine experience has not proved successful. The evidence that they work well, or that they do not produce significant side-effects is either non-existent or flawed due to selection bias. In the context of NHS spending one has to question whether the vaccination programme is value for money.
Fenton and Neil have questioned also the entire basis of the pandemic and raised the question of whether SARS-CoV-2 is really the organism of concern. There I disagree. The evidence points overwhelmingly to a coronavirus variant; not least because of the extraordinary convulsions of those seeking to deny that they were involved in viral gain-of function research. Fenton and Neil have suggested that many of the seriously ill were actually suffering from bacterial pneumonia. Here I think they are wrong. Why invoke two organisms when one will do? Yes, Haemophilus influenzae may be cultured but it’s a normal commensal organism so it would be surprising if it wasn’t. Going back to 1892 reveals that a similar suggestion was made then, after one researcher, Richard Pfeiffer, found evidence of a bacillus, but during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic it was not present more often than it was – and of course the identification of viruses then did not exist. CT scans cannot easily distinguish between pneumonia, alveolar haemorrhage or a combination of the two, so using scans as a marker for infective pneumonia is clinically inappropriate. One needs to have lung biopsies to prove the cause of the shadows, but for all sorts of good reasons these were never done. Neither, as I have said previously, were there any reasonable post-mortem studies because pathologists were ordered not to conduct autopsies.
I have long maintained that the serious consequences seen and attributed to SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19, are due to a cytokine storm. If this is provoked by the spike protein then vaccines that cause the body to generate spike protein would similarly provoke trouble, which is exactly what we have seen. Why should the serious consequences of infection such as thrombosis, myocarditis etc. be reproduced by the introduction of spike protein alone (for most of the Covid vaccines are causing indigenous production of it) if it wasn’t in the first place caused by the spike protein content of the virus? This observation alone undermines any anti-spikeopathy hypothesis. Bear in mind that the spike protein has been shown to have mutated and with new SARS-CoV-2 variants the risk of severe illness has diminished – but the vaccines are still using mRNA that causes production of the original spike. But, as I have repeatedly posted, cytokine storms can be provoked by all sorts of things – other infections, introduction of immunogenic proteins, genetic predisposition etc. (I still have to hear of anyone pontificating on Covid who has read the definitive cytokine storm textbook by Cron and Behrens. Furthermore I have yet to see a scientifically valid rebuttal of the cytokine storm theory of causation.) SARS-CoV-2, in my opinion, was simply better and quicker than some of the other known precipitants, but as the Northwick Park drug trial showed, a cytokine storm can arise within hours or even minutes.
The cytokine storm is a fairly acute phenomenon. The timescale of its development is rapid. The systemic effects parallel the lung damage. The more you look, the better it fits. But the more you look and read about it the more you begin to realise that the severe sepsis caused by bacterial infections is also a cytokine storm effect. There is now a huge literature on the subject. The damage one sees developing, with thromboses, myocardial dysfunction, renal impairment etc., leaves one starting to wonder whether every severe sepsis case, irrespective of the underlying causative organism, kills people not because of aggressive damage by rapidly proliferating bugs but by the overreaction of the body to their presence. If a myriad of infections produce the same common path end result, the actual organism itself may be irrelevant in management terms.
That is not to say that one should not treat an infection if you can. I would be the last person to withhold appropriate antibiotics from someone with a widespread bacterial infection and, having seen the devastating effects of joint infections in arthritis patients, antibiotics would be the first thing I would use. But the systemic sequelae will not respond to antibiotics and require specific immunosuppression. We knew this before Covid; Cron and Behrens specified the use of corticosteroids and specific interleukin antagonists (tocilizumab for Il-6, anakinra for Il-1). I have treated sepsis in multiple sclerosis with large steroid doses (and appropriate antibiotics, of course). I started doing so in the early 2000s and the effects were dramatic. The rationale is unquestionable and the evidence substantial. And yet, despite my repeated attempts to put the evidence before government and its SAGE committee, it was ignored. Then someone within the system came independently to the idea that steroids might work – and so a trial was set up to prove what was, in fact, already known. As a result the definitive treatments for the cytokine storm syndrome caused by SARS-CoV-2 were delayed by several months (November 2020 for steroids, early 2021 for tocilizumab) while I had urged their use in May 2020. I have speculated that the deaths in the intervening period that could have been avoided runs into thousands. In the U.K. alone. Panic drowned the voice of expert clinicians; the response (or lack of it, treatment-wise) was driven by the wrong experts.
Someone will no doubt argue that I should not be proposing the use of untested therapies while at the same time criticising the deployment of improperly tested vaccines. Yes, my recommendations were untested in COVID-19, but there was ample evidence for efficacy (and safety) in exactly equivalent settings, so that argument fails.
So while I would dispute Fenton and Neil’s superinfection theory, and stick to the concept of the spike protein being the major precipitant of the hyperimmune response called COVID-19, it is not a unique response and occurs in lots of infections. Does it matter what exact bit of a bug sets it all off? Or even which bug? Should we therefore drop the designation of COVID-19 altogether, and start to discuss the real syndrome of which COVID-19 is but one manifestation? And rename that syndrome – think of a name that produces a neat acronym. I have come up with Triggered HyperImmune Sepsis Syndrome, or THISS. THISS might be the enduring legacy of Fighting Goliath but I invented it and claim my prize.
Dr. Andrew Bamji is a retired Consultant Rheumatologist and was President of the British Society for Rheumatology from 2006-8. He is the author of Mad Medicine: Myths, Maxims and Mayhem in the National Health Service. His Covid blog can be found here.
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God bless you Chris. Now the green lobby claim desert good, rain forest bad! Deserts are a sign of co2 stress, IE concentrations are too low to allow plants to grow in non optimum conditions.
Somewhat akin to the Royal Society for Protection of Birds being fervently behind windmills which are murdering tens of thousands of birds every year in our own waters and land alone.
Amazing isn’t it, socialists hate that the main bi product of capitalism is plant food, so they had to invent pseudo science to dismantle it.
The Climate zealots are anti human, they want less of us around, and so anything that causes depopulation in their crazed minds is good, anything that encourages human population growth is bad. When its viewed from that very simple angle it makes everything else we have been witness to in the past 4 plus years fall into place.
Succinct.
The real agenda is Depopulation.
What do the WWF have to say about that considering they’re are a clone of the WEF!
They say that polar bears are having to learn to live in trees!
WWF are right behind it even though it is killing all sorts of wildlife, whales, dolphins, birds
Nature in net zero transition plans | WWF
It seems obvious to me that milder winters at the end of the Mini Ice Age, allied with perfectly normal climate change, is causing CO2 to increase. After all, what is the primary purpose of plants other than to survive? Absorb CO2 and produce Oxygen.
Now, given that CO2 levels are, apparently, rising, despite the fact that temperatures have not risen for nearly 30 years, proves that CO2 does not have a definitive relationship with temperature. Indeed, the evidence that CO2 follows temperature is copiously detailed and reviewed. There is not one document in the entire world that proves the opposite without modelling. Modelling is about as accurate as Labour’s “1.5 million homes by 2029”.
In my layman view the Science is pretty obvious: the end of the Mini Ice Age and the Moon being on a ten year tilt cycle is causing ideal conditions for plants. Increased numbers of plants are, indirectly, producing more CO2, feeding more vegetation. It is exactly the same effect that was seen in humans since the invention of modern energy and better nourishment. There is also, of course, the increase in Oxygen levels, which plants absorb via synthesis causing healthier plants.
Quite agree. Do not forget the Vostok ice cores which lag temperature as pretty by Henry’s law.
Law?
It’s only his opinion!
Who is he, anyway?
Another candidate for decolonisation.
Although all organic life uses oxygen, green plants through photosynthesis give out oxygen whilst metabolising CO2. Quite a useful byproduct for the rest of us who use up oxygen and emit CO2.
Actually, in the UK, a lot of rarer species of plants like poorer less green habitats (not necessarily arid, as plenty of rain the UK, and when we had very dry springs in 2020 and 2021, then seeds did not geminate). But it is no good if there is dense vegetation such as Hogweed, cocksfoot and nettles- the rare plants get outcompeted and are lost. How much an increase of Co2 effects this I don’t know.
“…it is no good if there is dense vegetation such as Hogweed, cocksfoot and nettles- the rare plants get outcompeted and are lost.”
This I believe is now referred to as “re-wilding.” Or leaving the land to return to scrub when it becomes useless to man and beast. Land, all land requires management.
Not always. many nature reserves or wild places need some sort of management, hence conservation volunteers. Even in the mountains, they have to cull the deer as often there or too many, and some times fence areas off.
People often forget that nature reserves are semi-natural in many many cases. The scrub clearance and grazing has been done for thousands of years, so it is hardly surprising.
Scrub that is probably not indigenous to that “re-wilded area”.
They’ve tried shutting off large area in Mid-Wales and the Molinia grass, which is natural, has completely out competed everything else to form a sort of desert that not even the voles like and birds cannot nest in. Birds of prey cannot prey etc, etc. Idiocy.
As you said, rewilding results in scrubland, not pristine forests as they imply.
Plants are often rare and in marginal habitats because they are poor at competing. I was a botanist and remember studying rare plants, like Trinia glauca, a small umbellifer growing in the Avon Gorge. It was interesting to see a relic population, perhaps having migrated in after the last glaciation, but I wouldn’t obsess about its retention at all costs.
Thank you Chris for your continued contributions. They are a ray of light in these dark times.
How is the 4% human CO2 contribution figure calculated?
Professors Will Happer and his collaborator William van Wijngaarden(Tom Nelson Podcasts 56 and 158) attribute the recent modern CO2 rise to fossil fuel burning.I know that Professor Ian Pilmer and others quote 4%. Can anyone help?
Despite the Alarmist Club of Liberal Progressive Governments and Media telling us droughts are getting worse because of climate change, the opposite is true. Even the infamous CRU at East Anglia’s data reveals decline in drought since 1950.
——Incredibly reports that are the opposite of what is really happening are the norm on mainstream media. This means that the public are being thoroughly brainwashed, but why would that be? My friend recently said to me “Why would people say there is global warning if it isn’t true”? To an ordinary person like my friend that is busy with work and family life, who does not have the time to investigate every issue, and who may think mainstream news are doing that on his behalf, it is something he finds difficult to comprehend. So he just assumes what he is hearing will be mostly true. This is the power of propaganda.
—- We will all on this website have been in the company of friends and family and perhaps made statements that are contrary to current orthodoxy, and that the friends and family will not have heard before. The result is often a stare at you as if you are from Mars, and this suspicion that you are one of those conspiracy theorist people like those who think America did not land on the Moon or who think UFO’s are being hidden by the Military etc etc.
——-I have had a friend say to me “What makes you think you know more about this than the scientists”? They cannot see how silly that question is even when I ask them what scientists they are referring to. It is enough for people to just accept that this is all about science and that all the scientists agree and know what they are talking about. I have even had a person say to me with a look of exasperation on his face “David Attenborough says there is a climate crisis and that is good enough for me”. ———-Oh dear.
There are some people, far too many who are not worth talking to they have been so seriously brainwashed. Walk away or ridicule is the only answer.
I could walk away but I would probably be left with no friends. I give the example of my friend as typical of the general population. Apparently politicians today are less trusted than ever before, but somehow when it comes to climate change people seem to believe it all. They think it is all about science. —–No, it is bought and paid for science. Almost all science regarding climate change is funded by government. The same government that no one trusts anymore. —-Getting that message across however is not easy.
I’m experimenting with meeting such people half way by saying “yes you are half right but have you considered ….” I am hoping that they will be more open to further new facts. A work in progress and it is very tricky with close family and friends.
It is interesting isn’t it that the best of such conversations happen with total strangers at the bank or market or garden centre and a throw away remark gets the nod.
And bringing up the Hunga Tonga underwater volcanic eruption and 13% more water vapour in the atmosphere is normally a good move.
Spot on. It takes patience. Don’t try overloading their propaganda-soaked brains too quickly!
Always, first, follow the money.
‘……he just assumes what he is hearing will be mostly true…’
And that’s a big mistake; one should assume that the reverse is the case until proven otherwise. The MSM is a prime propagator of propaganda.
Start with Miliband, and once you realise he is a total charlatan, then you can move on to the rest of the eco socialist parasites.
The Great Climate Hoax – Ideology, Not Science!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3ZcPuVpg5s
My recent climate related chat with exceptional researcher and talent Ben Pile
Godfrey Bloom Official
Godfrey Bloom for PM.
% of CO2 in the atmosphere 0.04
% man made 4
% generated in the UK 1
I’ve asked many people who expressed concern over ‘climate change’ if they knew any of these numbers.
% who did? Zero.
Try it.
Indeed. I’ve had people answer 50% (in a hesitant voice) when asked what proportion of the atmosphere is CO2. The figures you show are never reproduced in any msm promoting AGW, I wonder why?!
And that tells us the state of our edukashun system. As a young child I knew atmosphere was 79% Nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 1% trace gases.
I blame the schools.
That’s 1% of the 4% in the UK, not 25% of total as some might construe from your list.
And 96% of CO2 resides in the oceans and there is a constant exchange between ocean and atmosphere determined by water temperatures, which are dependent on incident solar radiation, but also upwelling, downwelling of warmer/colder waters. This and the CO2 cycle with plants changes air carbon dioxide concentration.
None of this is controlled by Man.
I love doing this. The blank looks are sheer joy
Yes I have tried it many many times. But climate alarmists will say this—–“How is that you think a small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere cannot cause global warming while at the same time you claim it is causing global greening”. ——–I try not to fall into that trap. My way of saying it is this —-“There is no evidence that CO2 is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate”. This stumps them every time because it puts the ball right back in their court and they are now required to provide evidence, which they cannot do because there is NONE
Tell them a further 2-3 % is made saving data around the world( cat videos!) or bit coin mining
And then the electrical energy requirement of AI…
Wales and Ireland look nice and blue. Speaking of Ireland, seen the protests on GBN with those Police fascists who are the useful idiots of the state spraying pepper spray even at Councillors now. Those pigs make my blood boil, if they piled on me I’d at least want to severely damage one of them. When were the Irish people asked to be dumped on like this.
“When were the Irish people asked to be dumped on like this”
And when the English?
..or the Welsh??
The assumption behind the warmists case is that the world was an ideal place around 1930. All change in the climat and all weather events since then have been the fault of mankind and before that we had millenia of calm, routine (yawn) boring sameness in the climate and weather.
Daft, of course, but that seems to be their starting point.
Perhaps they read “End of History” and believed it. Thought it also applied to science.
Thanks Chris – excellent article as usual.
Environmentalism became the new home for Socialists as their idol the USSR imploded. Socialism is all about planning and control using pseudo-scientism to predict and manage social and economic outcomes.
Spontaneous, emergent order terrifies the Socialist as they lose control particularly when outcomes are more successful than their plans. For them it’s all about process, best outcome is not the priority.
Commercial greenhouse maintain an air concentration of carbon dioxide between 1 000ppm to 1 200ppm which is optimum for plant growth, to speed up growth to produce strong, healthy plants requiring less water and fertiliser. (And, strange to report, none of these greenhouses ‘boil’ or catch fire.)
All that new plant growth around the World is also new habitat for myriad fauna. And food-crop yields have also increased.
Why do people obsessed with ‘rewilding’, ecosystems, biodiversity, etc want to kill off natural ‘rewilding’ and all those plants and animals on a massive scale by reducing CO2 (an absurdity anyway) to meet their ideological fantasies? Why do they want people to go hungry?
“Greening created by agricultural irrigation of fields can “obliterate arid-land ecosystems”.
But clearing vast tracts of natural vegetation – and keeping them clear of regrowth – to accommodate planting of non-native trees as ‘carbon-offset’ for royalty and celebs private-jetting around the World is OK?
You are right about greenhouse management. I think a fair bit of it is done by using the exhaust from gas fired heating; no need to waste it by exporting it into the outside air.
Correct, which is why Eart Day is on Lenin’s birthday
https://thenewconservative.co.uk/dr-green-will-see-you-now/
Roger Watson at thenewconservative with a cracking taking apart of ‘Dr Green’ aka The Royal College of Physicians and their “Green physician tool kit.’
“I leave you with this gem (not made up) which is given as an example of what a physician could say to a patient: ‘When cars burn petrol, they emit toxic air pollutants that can be bad for your health. Remember to carry an inhaler, avoid busy roads where possible and consider wearing a mask outside.’ As I may have mentioned already, who said Covid-19 lockdowns were not softening us up for something?”
I saw an old 1963 film where Sir John Betjeman travelled the long lost Dorset and Somerset railway from Shelton Mallet to Burnham on Sea.
Most notable the landscape was barren and lacked vegetation. I know that area well and today it is like a forest, rich in trees and hedges.
The Net Zero bandwagon is simply a gang of fanatics and business people with vested interests in scaring people to death, it’s Covid Mk2.
No——-The climate scare was there 30 years before covid.
It goes to prove that the planet can quite happily look after itself despite (not because of) our interference. .
‘This recovery of CO2 levels in the atmosphere holds out hope for higher food resources in many parts of the world that suffer from periodic famines.’
Excellent as always from Chris. But I’ve seen the point made that extra bulk greenery doesn’t mean proportional extra nutritional value. A parallel increase in nitrogen is needed for that.
Opinions, please.