We’re publishing another guest post by our in-house doctor, formerly a senior NHS panjandrum, this one looking at the latest hospital data. Turns out, staff absences are the reason London hospitals are under pressure, not a surge in Covid admissions due to the Omicron variant.
How quickly things change. The Daily Sceptic has asked me to provide a brief update on the unfolding situation after the Christmas weekend. Less than two weeks ago at the Downing Street press conference, Professor Chris Whitty said “by the time we get to Christmas I expect the majority of people going to hospital to be Omicron cases”. In response to a journalist’s question about Omicron, he said: “This is a really serious threat. How big we don’t know but everything we do know is bad.”
So, how bad is it?
Hospital admissions are rising, but not necessarily due to Omicron, according to Chris Hopson, the CEO of NHS providers.
Talking to chief executives this morning, the sense is that admissions are rising but not precipitately so. What’s particularly interesting is how many chief executives are talking about the number of asymptomatic patients being admitted to hospital for other reasons and then testing positive for Covid.
Trusts are not, at the moment, reporting large numbers of patients with Covid type respiratory problems needing critical care or massively increased use of oxygen, both of which we saw in January’s Delta variant peak.
Hopson is in error on one point – the peak in January was the Alpha variant. But then attention to detail is optional for NHS executives. On the other points around the reduced number of admissions and the rising proportion of incidental Covid cases, the published data support his remarks.
In this brief update on the unfolding ‘nailed on’ Omicron catastrophe, I will present a few graphics illustrating what the public are permitted to know so far.
First, the figures for the Christmas weekend. Graph One shows the admissions from the community with Covid in London hospitals in December of this year and last. It compares figures from December 2020 (the brown line) with admissions for December 2021 (the blue bars). If the confident predictions about imminent catastrophe from SAGE are to come to pass, the Omicron variant really needs to up its game. So far, it is failing to deliver. The current admission rate is less than half that associated with the Alpha variant at this time last year.
Graph Two shows the real problem in London. The blue line represents staff absences from London hospitals up to December 19th. This is the most up-to-date data we have. The NHS collects information about absenteeism on a daily basis, but will not be providing the next public update until January 13th. The brown line represents patients testing positive for Covid in London Hospitals (bear in mind, as Hopson points out, the brown line is a gross overestimate due to incidentally positive cases).
It can clearly be seen that there are far more staff off work ‘due to Covid’ than there are patients in hospital ‘with Covid’. How many have tested positive but are asymptomatic? How many have the sort of mild symptoms we’d usually associate with a cold, which in normal years would not require absence from work, nor any tests to confirm the presence of a seasonal upper respiratory tract infection? My central point is that the current pressure in London may be because we’re sending staff home for extended periods when they’re not unwell, rather than an influx of severely ill patients. Simply put, is it possible that an over reaction to a perceived threat is causing the problem rather than the Omicron variant per se.
Graph Three provides further context in relation to the overall inpatient burden in English Hospitals across the whole pandemic episode. Even taking the figures at face value and discounting the known over estimations in relation to primary diagnosis, it is clear that the 8,474 patients currently in hospital with positive Covid tests is substantially lower than the 19,783 in hospital on the same day last year – this equates to a Pritchard ratio of 0.42.
All other observable metrics such as ICU occupancy, data from the ZOE app and, of course, the now negligible death rate from Covid points to a much better situation than at this time last year. Hospital admission rates expressed as a percentage of positive tests in the community continue to fall from a peak of 9.6% in February to 2.1% now. Patients testing positive for Covid occupy 6% of NHS beds, compared to 22% this time last year. The widely predicted re-emergence of winter flu has also failed to materialise – cases of flu are still 95% below the numbers seen in 2019-20.
Despite this stable looking picture across the piece, multiple expert commentators have yet again been quoted in the mainstream media forecasting imminent catastrophe and demanding complete societal lockdown. There have been some reasonable points made around the possibility that the data over the Christmas weekend may be subject to a reporting lag, and justifiable concerns about the possibility that intergenerational mixing over Christmas could lead to more cases occurring in vulnerable older people. The SAGE meeting notes from December 23rd make reference to these possibilities. However, the general tone and content of public remarks is at variance with the available public information.
For example, Professor Danny Altmann, an immunologist based at Imperial College London, told MailOnline that Boris’s decision not to impose any further restrictions seems to show the “greatest divergence between expert clinical/scientific advice and legislation”. I fail to understand this view. His remarks are congruent with the letter published in the Lancet earlier this year by 122 self-identified experts accusing the Government of conducting a “dangerous and unethical experiment” by lifting restrictions on July 19th, which of course turned out to be nothing of the sort.
Professor Altman knows far more about immunology than I do. It would be enlightening if he could explain to the Daily Sceptic why experts like himself are so constantly antagonistic towards the Government, given that over 85% of the U.K. population have now been vaccinated against Covid – rising to 95% among the over-60s – on top of substantial natural immunity generated by infections over the last 12 months.
Other self-identified experts from Independent SAGE are promoting a subtle rebrand of societal restrictions by referring to legalised social limitations as ‘health protections’. To my mind this is an overt politicisation of science – readers should be very concerned by such Orwellian language.
When I hear expert advice that does not correlate with observational experience I lean on the motto of the Royal Society – Nullius in verba, roughly translated as ‘take no man’s word for it’. To that end and to enable non-experts like myself to assess the data for ourselves, it would be helpful if the NHS could release daily updates on Covid discharges from hospital and details about the length of stay of Covid patients. This information is available and provided to all NHS chief executives in daily email briefings, so why are taxpayers not permitted to see it? If scientists and public health doctors are pressurising the Government to restrict citizens’ right to make their own choices around freedom of movement and association, isn’t there an onus on the NHS to provide all relevant information relating to that advice?
Further data packets should be released on Thursday. I will update readers later in the week.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
We’ve known for decades that this is a scam.
We don’t need any further evidence.
‘We’ dont need further evidence but many others looking at this site do.
Yep: as the meme runs: is that the truth – or did you hear it on the BBC?
Isn’t it kinda strange that the ‘answer’ to the pandemic that never was, and the climate crisis that doesnt exist, is a world wide communist dictatorship run by, and for, the elite?
I dunno a pbout the last ten years, but I’ e experienced 65 years’ worth of West Wales summers and, with a few freak exceptions (e.g. 1959, 1975) they’ve always been exactly the same: cold, wet and windy, with the occasional good week if you’re lucky.
Of course, climate change was always a con
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am – ignore the Covid Con make friends & keep sane
Wokingham – Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
First it was Climate Cooling, then it was Climate Warming, and now it’s been rebranded as Climate Change. Soon they’ll be using the scary term Climate Inertia.
Next one will be ‘climate disease pandemic’. Well, they have to blame the bioweapon mortality on something.
Maybe we could call that disease “climate mange”?
Climate non change total bollox giz your fucking money
Or the Covid Winter.
The Covid Winter.
That has book title written all over it.
Laura Dodsworth?
anyone who tries to claim “the science is settled” has never done science.
Precisely. Also, those that think that scientific findings can magically put matters beyond debate also don’t understand that such debate is right at the heart of true science.
My abiding hope is that once the public realise how utterly deceived they were over Covid it will be the lightbulb moment when they realise the same people have also been lying about Climate Change.
I knew Covid was a scam from day one (in fact, based on my experience as a journalist covering Bird Flu and Swine Flu I knew it was a scam that was coming even before it happened), but must admit I had been taken in by the climate scam like many others. In fact, one of my early concerns about the lies around Covid was that it might make people distrustful of science and therefore not accept what I thought, at the time, was the real risk of climate change.
However on a personal level what it did was make me start to question even my most firmly held beliefs if those beliefs had come about as a result of information from particular sources. And I looked again at the data around climate change, with a more critical eye, and came to realise that it was exactly the same sleight-of-hand con trick as Covid: amplifying a threat and using fear to enact change that benefits a small and powerful group at the expense of everyone else.
So hats off to Covid for showing me the light in this one; and I suspect when we’ve overturned the narrative in Covid we’ll have another hard job going after that. But at least we will have a, hopefully, much more cynical public to deal with then.
The covid-fear-narrative/propaganda is also what opened my eyes to the climate change brainwashing. I had had a sceptical period back in the early 2000s on reading a Crichton book ( “state of fear” ) and then that Swedish( ?) economist’ sceptical analysis, but was convinced back into the fold by a family member working in the environment section of the EU bureaucracy. Now I have *really* taken whichever pill it is, and I don’t think that I believe the official story about the twin towers any more either.
How can you believe anything anymore? If a small group of powerful people can get thousands of politicians and millions of other influential people to lie for them, then anything is possible.
Have a look at Michael Schellenberg’s book, Apocalypse Never.
He destroys all this crap including that the planet is overpopulated and cannot feed everyone. It’s all absolute BS.
His latest, San Fran Sicko is also great – cuts right through to the absolute moral bankruptcy of the “elites”….
Thank you.
I agree that this is an important book that anyone with an open mind should read, even though Schellenberg says that he believes that humans are causing a slight warming of the planet but it isn’t going to lead to the catastrophy that many environmentalists say is coming.
I think this proves the point that most people are right about some things and wrong about others, but some people are right more often than not and some people are wrong more often than not. Every claim made by an individual should be considered on it’s own merit regardless of anything else that person has said.
I dont know how you could see though the covid hoax, yet remain blissfully unaware of the climate scam.
Or 911, 7,7, JFK, Moon etal.
See how the politicians and media blatantly lie on a vast scale day in day out? Well the picture they paint is what will be recorded in the history books and future generations will be trained to believe all the lies are a true record of events. Now apply that scenario to other pivitol events in history. Still believe what they tell you is true?
Because I was on the frontline of reporting Bird and Swine Flu and was horrified by the disconnect between what was clear and obvious from the data and the narrative that we in the media were trying to spin out of it. I was even more alarmed by the way I was shut down when I tried to make the case for balanced reporting.
With climate change I guess I didn’t have as much personal involvement and so hadn’t really studied the data in the same way.
We wouldn’t be in the mess we are in if everyone’s default thinking was cynical.I will never understand those who just follow the MSM propaganda blindly.
That could/should read “if everyone’s default thinking was cyclical”.
Climate changes in cycles i.e. sometimes it gets warmer or wetter etc. sometimes it gets cooler, drier etc. regardless of what humans do. Similarly sometimes covid cases increase, sometimes they decrease regardless of lockdowns, mask mandates etc.
The mistake, hubris or deliberate deception promoted by modellers of climate change and covid is to assume that short term trends will continue into the future, and that mere humans can control these natural phenomina.
And all sceptics should be cynical, by default. Maybe most of us are.
More stuff you won’t see on the BBC.
The covid debacle has made me think more about climate change. Pre covid I would say I ‘accepted’ climate change in that I broadly bought into the mainstream view that man made climate change was a thing and the debate was all but over. The last 24 months has made me reconsider. Essentially I’ve lost faith in the scientific process – If Ferguson can be treated as a respectable and serious scientist despite his continuous and glaring errors then I shudder to think what nonsense is passing as science in the climate debate.
Climate ‘science’ is the model deployed by covidians. Government and corporations recruit and fund only those who support the pre-ordained narrative. Scientists who challenge the narrative are censored, deplatformed, defunded, sacked and in some cases subjected to death threats. This is how they manufacture their infamous “97% of scientists agree……”yarn.
Think back to David Bellamy for an example of how long al-Beeb has been pushing the anti-scientific, anti-logic warble gloaming agenda.
There will be no more David Bellamys. They are all screened out at school. If any slip through the net, university gets rid of them. That way, everyone entering into positions of influence are guaranteed to be a safe pair of hands.
Yes, just Harrabins Rowlatts and McGraths allowed
Spot on. One of my first posts on here (it seems like an age ago now, back when it was Lockdown Sceptics), was to point this out.
Some will recall when Neil Ferguson briefly engaged with this site and sang the praises of Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook, two global warming acolytes behind the totally bogus “97% of scientists agree” nonsense.
The moment debate is over is the point at which it ceases to be science.
For the layman here does that graph show a 1.5c increase in 100 years?
It does, and push the timescale back a few hundred years and you would see a decrease.
Why would anyone give you a thumbs down for an honest observation? Have a thumbs up on me….
The global temperature has been rising, along with sea levels, since the last Ice Age when much of the UK was covered in ice a kilometre thick and people could walk from here to what is now France. That is a fact. Another fact is that there is no correlation whatsoever between atmoshperic Co2 levels and global temperature. A lesser known fact is that communism wont stop the climate doing what it has always done – change.
Plus plants live on CO2 and shit oxygen that we live on.
Can you say “Doggerland”
Is that where you go at night?
I thought that was some weird place Dahn Sarf near the Isle of Dogs.
All “models” are nonsense when produced to further agendas, and those who produce them are fools, charlatans or bought and paid for.
The only good models are Airfix, without glue fingerprints, nice paintwork and the decals right way up. All else is balls, crystal or otherwise.
. . . and the only good system is a sound system.
Lol and a fair few Japanese ones.
British statistician George Box once said that all models are wrong, but some are useful. I don’t think he envisaged the exact kind of usefulness some models have these days.
The only good models are Airfix! Brilliant!!
In the northern hemisphere, 21,000 years ago (circa 19000 B.C.) an Ice Cap stretched down as far as the south of England.
In 18000 B.C. this Ice Cap began to retreat northwards. Which is a clear indicator that at this time the planet started to get warmer. It’s fair to say that human activity played no part in the planet warming up at this time.
Projections based on clear historical evidence show that the planet will continue to get warmer, and that by A.D. 3000 the Ice Cap will have retreated ever further north.
The climate nuts churn out tales about polar bears and how they are being devastated. Which is a provable lie.
What’s actually happening with polar bears as the Ice Cap naturally retreats northwards is that they are meeting and breeding with black and brown bears. The offspring of these couplings gain genes from both parents, which gives them the ability to live and prosper both in iced over environments, and in green temperate zones.
The black and brown bears, as they currently are genetically, cannot survive in completely iced over environments, whereas polar bears can. Likewise, polar bears, as they currently are genetically, cannot survive in a totally green temperate zone.
But when these different breeds cross with each other, the offspring are experts at hunting and feeding in both environments.
Bear ( see what I did there) in mind there has been a lot of fluctuation in the ice cap extent as well, during Holocene, roman, medieval etc climate optimums.( Wonder why they’re referred to as optimums
)
Either that or those pesky neolithic hunters used to go round burying treestumps under the ice so we’d be fooled into thinking there were forests there during previous climate optimums.
How many people know that camels used to roam the Artic!!!!
Equally, how many people have worked out that polar bears managed to survive the previous climate optimums just fine i.e
they didn’t go extinct, even if they did have to roam the forests of Greenland for a while.
The Net Zero project will survive until sufficient CONservative MPs fear for their Constituencies and remove Johnson and Nut Nuts from Downing St …… or give him a massive kick up the arris which he will feel for the next decade.
J and his princess only adopted it out of tactical reasons, to make inroads into the young urban metro electorate who would otherwise have voted green or left green.
It was a smart political move at the time but completely shortsighted.
Therefore soon, those chicken will come home to roost.
No, you are reading this wrong. This climate crap is tied in to Agenda 2030.
Or some kind soul uses a big axe to good effect.
I thought one theory was that if global warming does occur, the UK would get colder due to impact on gulf stream?
The idea (and that’s all it is) is that increasing CO2 will cause the Artic ice to melt reducing the salinity of the Atlantic ocean, in turn causing the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation [AMOC] to switch off. As a result our winters will be like the winters of Newfoundland. That’s the idea. I see no evidence, only computer modelling. The AMOC has only been measured since 2004 so it’s all conjecture.
Cheers! Yep that tallies with my understanding
Thanks for explaining that – really helpful.
Ordinarily my tolerance for listening to/reading any of the “reports” doesn’t get past “modelling”
Perhaps that’s why I took no notice of the PANDEMIC on day one
It is theoretical. It’s certainly true that we benefit from the existence of the gulf stream at our latitude in the UK. However, in the real world, the significant performer is the jet stream, and thus which air mass we end up in for a while – such as a couple of days ago, with > 12 °C overnight on 1/1/2022, and the short term effect it has on levels of rainfall, and ground temperature. Apart from actual rain, the amount of cloud cover during daylight hours matters a lot too – both for the plants and the modern kit for power generation (solar photovoltaic (PV) ).
I’m used to this, with some kit on my house since 2014. Here’s the last 5 years output graph.
Gotta cover all bases!
It’s all a question of scale….
Just in case there is someone here who has not yet signed this petition which has taken flight re Blair: (climate change scaremonger, war monger coronavirus fear porn promoter and so on):
Petition · Tony Blair to have his “Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter” rescinded · Change.org
Yes, it might not achieve all it hopes but it will achieve at least a warning shot over the bows. And with coming up for 300K signing you merge with a very large crowd.
Yep, just a gesture, but nice to mark one’s disgust – with Bliar, Bozo and even Queenie!
It might be as many as protested the Iraq war –
they didn’t take any notice of that either , but it will be good to prove to the arrogant twat that it has not been forgiven or forgotten
301 k now
I’ve been living by the sea for years. I can see it from my house. It doesn’t look any different now to what it did when I first moved here, and the beaches are no more engulfed by the sea now than they were in old photos and paintings from many decades ago.
Perhaps there are some differences that are not obvious to the casual observer, but before words like “crisis”, “catastrophe” and “emergency” could be remotely appropriate – all common parlance amongst the doomsayers, and government policy – there surely ought to be something far more devastating happening than what I am seeing during this typical British winter.
This is empirical observation, of a basic sort admittedly, but apparently more reliable than the modelled garbage leading to completely bogus public policy, backed by hysterical propaganda, which wastes trillions of pounds we don’t have. The peddlers of this pseudo scientific tripe are despicable religious nutters.
Agreed, though your last sentence needs to add the nuance that Jesus is displeased with their anti-humanism, and utter distrust of the creation, both of which are outstandingly alien to him.
Yes, I find it rather amusing that the land area of Tuvalu (you know, the island whose prime minister stood in a bucket of water at COP26 asking for money) has actually been INCREASING!
Likewise the Maldives, supposed to have sunk years ago. Instead, beach-side hotels with those attractive boardwalks, buiklt before the predictions were made 40 years ago, are still open for business. And they’re building new oners, and several airports.
I hope he caught a chill
But, but, but maybe it is getting much deeper under the surface!! (Lol)
I noticed recently one of the tricks the BBC regularly uses to imply things are warmer than ‘normal’. Their forecast maps only show city temperatures (which are of course typically a couple of degrees warmer than the countryside) and then compare these maps with average temperatures for the time of year – average temperatures which will of course be much closer to those in the much larger area of the countryside!
Al-beeb keeps pushing all the wah Covid, warble gloaming, NHS, wacism mantras though.
At least they are so consistent in validating the conspiracy theorists that there is a shortage.
Having done extensive reading about covid and then about climate change (well, I’ve had plenty of time on my hands lately) I decided quite some time ago that the wool was being well and truly pulled over my eyes about both. I stopped worrying about our house disappearing underwater and just decided to enjoy what is left of my life -totalinarianism permitting. What I can’t forgive is the fear that children are being indoctrinated with on a daily basis – that their world is going to vanish. When I was a kid it was bay of pigs/nuclear armaggedon, now they are all going to expire in uncontrollable heating. Why do we have to constantly frighten generation after generation this way? Well, I think I know why, it’s that ubiquitous Orwellian boot yet again, isn’t it?
It’s not Global Warming or Global Cooling … it’s Global Staying the Same.
So, yes, by all means, we better ban the internal combustion engine.
Bozo:
“Can somebody turn the fuckin heating up? I’m starting to look a right nob head with stories like this coming out.”
Am I alone in not caring what type of world future generations ‘inherit’? If it’s not to their liking then let them sort it out. There is no real parallel with WW1 & WW2 analogies, people were conscripted and didn’t have the opportunity to critically decide if the fight & sacrifices were worth it – harsh I know but probably true?
I’m with you. I will drive my V12, eat as much meat as i like, burp, fart, pick my nose and recycle nothing. It’s my life.
For those of a technical disposition it is worth noting that the data used for the above graph is based on modelling extrapolated across the whole country from the comparatively few measuring stations, if my reading of their site is correct.
So just like global temperatures that are based on even sparser data, there is an awful lot of speculation involvedm and yet just like with Covid, an awful lot of government decisions are being based on very questionable science.
“Across the planet, warming ran out of steam some time ago”
The graph at the head of the article shows this to be nonsense. Currently there is a plateau. That is all that can be said.
Sorry, but I’m a real sceptic.
Hi folks – what I’m about to suggest may be painful and beyond comprehension. But watch the BBC long range weather forecast on iplayer today (one of my odd sins – getting weather updates from this ugh ….). The emphasis on how temperatures dropping from their current highs to where they would be NORMALLY be ….! God forbid that the current highs are not a portent of global warming! Sure you’ll pick up on what this conveys.
The Great Global warming scam – exposed the hour!
It was reported last year that an Australian MP and climate alarmist, claimed that when growing up he had never experienced so many heatwaves and bushfires. Little wonder … he grew up in Scotland.
Great article. I thought it was a bit suspicious that the Today programme was talking about one warm day rather than last year being the hottest ever!
When they say the ‘hottest day ever’ they usually omit the information that they are referring to a specific data set (often the one coming from satelites) that were only operational from the late 1980s onwards.
I sent this article to someone who is an occasional reader of DS.
He has very detailed knowledge of climate science but has no vested interests.
He has been a long-term critic of extreme arguments on both sides of the debate.
A summary of his views in a conversation we just had:
Global warming is happening and does need addressing.
Carbon dioxide is a factor but there is a complex inter-relationship with many other factors e.g. methane and water vapour.
There are significant natural cycles in play but these are generally subsidiary to the man-made factors.
He believes that Chris Morrison’s paper contains many misleading opinions and incorrect assumptions e.g. he suggests that the timescales of the data used has been cherry-picked (not dissimilar to the way COVID data has been cherry-picked by the authorities and is criticised by DS) and that the questioning of some of the Met Office data is invalid.
I will not go into more of the detail but provide some views of my own.
I fear that this article has not helped further the concerns being aired by the Daily Sceptic.
The historical differences of opinion and interpretation between the various parties engaged in the climate change debate will not be resolved here.
What I think DS should continue to do is to take an objective view of the messages being put in the public domain and particularly the appropriateness and viability of measures that are being taken – especially when the politics overrides the science. One particular concern of mine has been the introduction of E10 fuel and it would be great to see an objective article on the pros and cons of that measure.
How does the someone “with a detailed knowledge of climate science” square the Mediaeval Warming period with the paucity of man made factors? How detailed is the someone’s knowledge?
The only reason we haven’t all died from the warming is the vaccine (and the NHS).
Tony Heller is very good at showing how the likes of NASA and others alter the data to produce the climate records they want – I think he is still on youtube – he’ll be kicked off soon.
When they can’t even cheat and get the results they want you know they are fucked.