The latest Public Health England (PHE) Technical Briefing on the variants of concern is out, and it shows that the infectiousness of the Delta (Indian) variant has dropped again, so that it is now at the same level as the Alpha (British) variant was at the end of March.
The Delta variant secondary attack rate (SAR – the proportion of contacts an infected person infects) is down to 10.7% this week, from 11.4% a week ago (see graph above). That means that around 90% of the close contacts of people infected with the Delta variant are not infected by them. Once again, this shows how claims that the Delta variant is “60% more transmissible” or similar fail to make clear that transmissibility changes and often declines over time, and that even if the Delta variant is currently more infectious than the Alpha variant it is still less infectious than the Alpha variant was when it first appeared on the scene.
You might be wondering, though, how a disease that only infects 10-15% of close contacts, even at the height of an epidemic wave, can be called highly infectious. And indeed, how such a disease can cause an explosive epidemic wave at all, and why those waves crash down as quickly as they arise despite not exhausting the pool of susceptible people.
If you do wonder that, you would not be alone. A famed epidemiologist called Robert Edgar Hope-Simpson spent his life observing the idiosyncrasies of seasonal influenza and summarised some of his thinking in a 1981 article entitled “The role of season in the epidemiology of influenza“. More recently, in 2008, a group of scientists took up Hope-Simpson’s investigations (which were inconclusive) and summarised seven conundrums of influenza that he identified, all of which apply equally to COVID-19:
1. Why is influenza both seasonal and ubiquitous and where is the virus between epidemics?
2. Why are the epidemics so explosive?
3. Why do epidemics end so abruptly?
4. What explains the frequent coincidental timing of epidemics in countries of similar latitudes?
5. Why is the serial interval [the time it takes for secondary cases to appear] obscure?
6. Why is the secondary attack rate so low?
7. Why did epidemics in previous ages spread so rapidly, despite the lack of modern transport?
The scientists add two more:
8. Why does experimental inoculation [infection] of seronegative [without antibodies] humans fail to cause illness in all the volunteers?
9. Why has influenza mortality of the aged not declined as their vaccination rates increased?
To explain these strange features, Hope-Simpson proposed the radical notion that, unlike other infectious diseases like measles and non-seasonal cold-causing viruses like rhinovirus, influenza is not primarily spread by transmission from the sick to the well (hence the low SAR). Rather it is spread by temporarily highly infectious and usually symptomless carriers in whom the virus has been latent but has now been triggered by a seasonal stimulus. Hope-Simpson was never able to identify the seasonal stimulus, though argued it must be ultimately dependent on variation in solar radiation, which is the driver of the seasons.
The scientists behind the 2008 article are not persuaded by the idea of latency of influenza, which they suggest has no evidence. Instead, they think the behaviour can be explained by seasonal variations in innate immunity, especially caused by the drop in vitamin D during winter months:
Significant seasonal and population variations in innate immunity make it unnecessary to postulate latency to explain the bizarre epidemiology of influenza… To make sense of influenza’s epidemiology, we revise Hope-Simpson theory, hypothesising marked variation in the infectivity of the infected (the good infectors demonstrated in rats by Schulman and Kilbourne in 1963) and that vitamin D deficiency is Hope-Simpson’s seasonal stimulus.
This theory leaves questions of its own, however, such as why a gently undulating vitamin D level would suddenly trigger a brief explosion in viral infectivity, and why the flu season typically starts in August and September, when vitamin D is at its peak (see figure below).
Recently there has been a lot of interest in the idea of “super spreaders“. This is the counterintuitive idea that with diseases like flu and COVID-19 the majority of infected people don’t pass on the virus at all and a small number (say 10-20%) are responsible for almost all transmission. In fact, this is now a widely accepted concept of epidemiology – which suggests Hope-Simpson was onto something.
The question remains though: what triggers the brief but deadly explosive outbreaks of seasonal viruses like flu and COVID-19, and what brings them just as abruptly to an end? Hope-Simpson’s observation, that it must have something to do with changes in solar radiation, since it is a seasonal phenomenon which occurs simultaneously in geographically remote places of the same latitude, remains pertinent.
The disappearance of flu in the last 18 months adds to the mystery (and ideas that flu has simply been re-badged as COVID-19 don’t stack up against the huge amount of genetic sequencing of variants that has been done).
Whatever the underlying cause of the strange behaviour, though, some facts are clear. SARS-CoV-2 is not, by any reasonable definition, a highly transmissible virus – infected people on average only infect 10-15% of their close contacts, even at the height of the winter surge (and that is an upper bound as it assumes that all subsequent infections were caused by the index case rather than being co-index cases). This compares to 57% for rhinovirus and 70% for measles – those are highly transmissible viruses. Rather, COVID-19 is subject to the same kind of mysterious and explosive seasonal triggering as influenza is. This probably helps to explain why lockdowns make no clear impact on transmission or mortality, and why the virus does not immediately rebound when restrictions are lifted, as all the models keep wrongly telling us is going to happen.
One lesson from this is we should stop imagining we can capture the behaviour of this strange disease in simple mathematical models and pay more attention to real-world data. Perhaps then we would see things much more in proportion, and cease redesigning our world around our exaggerated fear of it.
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He should be locked down, hermetically sealed in his own personal cocoon, then he would be quite safe and need not worry about the rest of us. We’ll manage.
This guy knows perfectly well that Sars-CoV2 was never a substantial danger for anyone. He’s just convinced that our way of life is too unhealthy on a planet notoriously ridden with pathogens and thus, needs to be abolished because he and he only is the guy who knows exactly how everything needs to be done to be done properly. A megalomaniac who’s really convinced that he’s a god. People like this should be locked away in padded cells to ensure that they’ll neither harm themselves nor anyone else.
A Padded Cell lined with sharp stuff !!..
I think he would welcome being put to sleep as he would no longer need to fear us or the numerous virus that share the earth with us, I am happy to chip in a couple of quid for him to have a seat on the plane to dignitas.
I will second that.
You could say that the more someone seems intent on “saving” others the more of a danger he is to others.
Someone who is fanatical about saving the entire global population is a egomanical lunatic and an absolute menace.
The worst tyranny always comes from those who terrorises you “for your own good”, because they never sleep.
C.S. Lewis said it best. It is better to be ruled by robber barons than by omnipotent moral busybodies.
He’s not scared. He is, in his own words, a Fascist and a power junkie.
I think he is mostly terrified of his impending demise.
The proper way to handle dangerous, stubborn idiots who are unwilling to learn from their mistakes is to go a bit all medieval on them.
It’s a shame he’s not British
Let these people expose themselves for what they are, and a few more people will wake up
If I met this man in the street I would be very tempted to biff him on the nose…and I’m not a violent man at all. To think of all the pain, loneliness and broken lives it caused for something with well over a 98% survival rate. If indeed there is a next time, let’s lock him up in a small trunk and he can enjoy his lockdown all by himself.
“It’s a map for what is very likely in store for us courtesy of the ‘pandemic planning’ industry. Read it and weep. Or read it and resist.”
I don’t care what their plan is.
I will NOT comply!
Well said, HP! I’m with you.
Thanks Aethelred
Seriously, NEVER AGAIN. Full stop, with NO asterisks!
An interesting ‘stack from Dr Malone, as he focuses on Davos, ‘Disease X’ and also highlights the important work of Brian Bantugan in exposing the corruption of the WEF and the WHO. ”We won’t get fooled again”. ( That’ll be the legit ‘Who’ )
”It is Davos (World Economic Forum) week and the MSM hysterical propaganda push from the globalists regarding “disease X” is in full swing.
Almost every major news outlet in the world has run black propaganda pieces about disease X. Why do I write black propaganda – because the “experts” aren’t actually named, the peer-reviewed papers supporting the thesis of “a deadly pathogen causing 20 times more deaths than COVID-19” or “killing 20 times more people than COVID-19” or “killing 50 million people” are non-existent. Yet these narratives are all headline news in main stream media.
Right now, Disease X and One Health are being propagandized in the main stream media as being the solution to save the world from a massive die off – this propaganda is being driven by the WEF in collaboration with the WHO. The Ecohealth Alliance is also at the forefront of the One Health initiative and has collected millions of dollars for their research projects into One Health. The Davos meeting is being used to prop up support for the WHO Pandemic treaty that removes national sovereignty over public health by promoting.
The WEF and the WHO envision solutions to the imaginary “Disease X” that involve more loss of freedoms. They want control over food systems, more money, more censorship, more surveillance, control over the climate change agenda – all in the name of public health. But even worse, they want all this codified in a document that the turns over national sovereignty to the WHO.”
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/disease-x-and-the-corrupt-lancet
Massive die off?? Maybe the “Disease X” is actually going to be the consequences from the jibby jabbys, wrapped up as a new illness, an opportunistic leap following the failure of the vax pass licenses to live.
Indeed, the powers that be are literally saying the quiet part out loud now.
You can’t fix stupid
I assume Mc Neil speaks from inside a pressurised, clean oxygen safe room in which he lives for 24 hours a day and has no contact with any living life forms, if not then step up onto the plate another rank hypocrite with a hatred for humanity, the “virus” is still with us, but so are lots of other diseases, so Mc Neil must surely be terrified that he may contract or carry one of these little critters. But of course he doesn’t live that way, he just wants to play God with other people.
GFY
And the horse he rode in on.
Sometimes it does seem appropriate if a lone wolf just takes someone out – for the greater good, of course.
Imagine the benefit to humanity if a lone wolf had dealt with Hitler, before he achieved unfettered power.
There were a few attempts long before the bomb in the Wolf’s Lair. And early ‘conspiracy theorist’, saw Hitler as some kind of Antichrist and planted a bomb in a Clock, but Hitler often changed arrangements at the last minute and the plot was discovered.
He actually thinks Medieval medicine is the gold standard for fighting pandemics?
He must be all in with the Science Must Fall movement?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9SiRNibD14&t=101s
Science Must Fall?
Again, quiet part out loud.
‘……..the Western focus on personal liberty above all else can kill”
An exponent, then, of Socialist Fascism.
‘Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity. It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts.’
Benito Mussolini 1932
McNeil’s epitaph (and that of Pantsdown): ‘He thought he was an expert.’
Here is the other Socialist, Mr A. H. giving a speech where he talks about freedom of the individual (or not, in this case). ANd notice the use of socialist words.
“…For you must also understand this, my people’s comrades: No leader can use more strength than his followers give him! What am I without you? What you do not give me, I can never use for your own benefit! If you refuse me your unanimous unity, what should I do?! I am a single man, I can possess the best will. The will is not worth more to you than your will is worth to me! And that brings us to the problem of freedom! Freedom, yes! Insofar as the interest of the national community gives the individual freedom, it is given! Where the freedom affects or even impairs the interests of the national community, the freedom of the individual ceases! Then the freedom of the national community takes the place of the freedom of the individual!…”
(1937)
And that also goes for Jeremy Vine and regular guests like Yasmin Alibhai Brown. What is funny about her is that she is so fast to call other people fascist. Yet she is one of the most vocal advocates for this collective nightmare.
“Here is a man who very nearly tasted the power that comes with running the world”
Surely this should say “the power that comes with ruining the world”.
Is this a concern for the planet or is the ageing scribbler becoming aware of his mortality and impending demise and will ride roughshod over everyone’s rights, no matter the horrendous damage, to try and ensure a little longer on this world? Selfishness and the gibbering terror of a threatened organism garbed in the finery of philanthropy is my take.
He literally said the quiet part out loud, and his mask fell right off, pun intended. When someone shows you who they really are, believe them.
Tyrants & authoritarians using the fallacy that they are saving you from harm if you just obey them were some of the most evil people that emerged during this whole covid madness. I was shocked as I watched ordinary people turn into cold hearted vicious fascists willing to destroy and even kill to fulfill their need for power and control. McNeil is just another one of these but with an outlet through his writing. He tasted this power and wants more.
Indeed, next time someone says, “You can either give up some of your rights temporarily, or give up all of your rights permanently”, RUN, it’s a trap! Or better yet, FIGHT!
I don’t want to be hater, but this guy…