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.
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Slight distraction. What about the amazing announcement that we will no longer be free in the UK but will need to ask constant permission for access to society against the ever expanding and constantly changing requirements of our police state masters…?
That development, if it transpires, must be met with French Resistance level pushback. For our children’s sake, if not for our own. If they can establish that, atrocities will follow as sure as night follows day.
im ready to visit my local supermarket, load up a couple of trolleys and then walk out. How about you>?
National Socialist Salute needed when walking past covid blokleiters.
But the nearest British equivalent of Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie would be Little Britain’s Fat Pat. More seriously, Lambie had a strange Damascene conversion not long ago on the subject of gene therapy injections. One minute she was grilling Brendan Murphy on how crap the vax damage payout scheme was, and then the next she was screaming in the Senate about how every last person must be hunted down and vaxxed. Perhaps she had a visit from the trench coats.
Yes, somebody or something has got to the Independent federal Senator from Tasmania. The woman who had told a Senate Inquiry into Australia’s Covid vaxx roll-out that her Taswegian constituents (including herself and her friends) were hesitant to take the jab because of the side effects and the lack of compensation should anything go wrong, has gone full Vaxx Brownshirt.
She has spoken with unhinged fury against a motion moved by One Nation senator, Pauline Hanson, to outlaw No-Jab-No-Job vaccine mandates. She has supported the fruit canning and processing giant, SPC, and their introduction of a vaxx mandate for their employees, getting quite gung-ho with the veiled threats: “those anti-vaxxers out there, that 20 or 30 per cent, ah, the ones out there ah protesting on the streets and doing that sort of thing, I think you’re going to find the rest of us coming at you lock, stock and barrel, ah, and we’re going to be putting the pressure on you fairly hard because the rest of us that are trying to do the right thing by the country, and our kids, and get vaccinated and do the right thing, um, I think for you we’re going to start getting even more agitated and we’re going to start getting more hardcore and I think that’s what you’re going to see massive division out there, ah, and it’ll be us on the front foot, that’s what I think’s gonna happen, I think the tide is going to turn, on those anti-vaxxers out there and you are really gunna feel the heat.”
Now it’s Novack’s turn to earn the demented ire of the absolute charmer from the arse-end of Australia.
I don’t particularly like Djokovic’s on court persona but he is a fantastic tennis player and, we now learn, a very brave and principled man.
I suppose it’s a lot easier to be brave and principled when you are a multi-millionaire but I’m sure the pressure on him to give is immense.
Forget the money, he has the chance to move clear as the winner of the most men’s slams in history. To potentially give up the chance to win another (a slam he always wins), shows admirable courage in sticking to his principles.
Maybe he can see a future where he alone remains the ‘fittest’ tennis player…
And perhaps the only tennis player.
If only more of them followed his example.
No one has disclosed what is actually in the various Jabs, and as drug taking is a problem in the sports world he is looking pretty principled..
Djokovic is showing a lot more sense than people like Sergio Agūero, now invalided out of his chosen sport. Djoko’s on court persona is totally irrelevant here.
On the BBC today:
‘Universal mandatory Covid vaccinations are unethical and will not be introduced in England, the health secretary says.
Asked on BBC Breakfast if he envisages compulsory vaccinations, Sajid Javid says no, adding that they have only been introduced in high-risk settings such as for NHS and social care workers.
“I think it’s unethical and also I think that at a practical level having some kind of universal mandate for vaccination doesn’t work,” he says.
On Wednesday, the prime minister suggested there should be national debate on mandatory vaccination but Javid says there is no need for a debate and suggests Boris Johnson was referring to a conversation about “high-risk settings”.
Well, let’s hope so.
Quite, let’s hope so. If they try and force universal mandates, people will get nasty and things will go out of control. Anyway, Bojo, I thought you said 70% vaxxed would be enough for herd immunity. Or was that another lie?
Last year it was let’s just just get the elderly and the vulnerable vaxxed them we can go back to normal!
looking bac k the whole thing was a propaganda master class. I saw a repeat of the woman who was first to get a vaccine in the uk with all the nhs staff standing in a line down the hospital corridor clapping like morons. I actually felt a little bit of stomach acid come up . it was that bad!
It’s ALL lies!
“Believe nothing, trust nobody”
The jabs (not vaccines) ensure that herd immunity can never be reached and the looting can continue as long as the globalists require it to.
Last year we were told 15 million to end the cycle of lockdowns.
I’m sure they’ll be looking at the idea Greece has come up with.. To mandate the clotshots for all over 60s, it’ll solve the pension crisis, the drain on the NHS, the social care issue and free up property all in one move.
Since I’m over 60 I am resigned to the fact I will be shipped off to some camp for dissenting…… But they’ll have to fucking catch me first and I won’t go peacefully.
We’ve an attic you can hide in – at least until they come for us.
Thank you, may need to take youup on that sooner than any of us think.
Welcome. Might be quite crowded, but at least there won’t be any panickers….
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
Don’t burn in the camps.
If (when) there was a ‘national debate’ on compulsory vaccinations, would it be an informed debate I wonder? Would everyone be allowed to participate, or would the filthy unjabbed be banned from entering any debating chamber? Rhetorical. I think we know the answer.
See the ITV poll.
High risk settings like going to the pub? Or working in the private sector?
Lambie is an unhinged nutcase. I would say mad as a box of frogs, but that would be unfair on the mental capacity of cartoned amphibia.
I hear the slow boiling of frogs can be quite fun.
Well, yes – for psychopathic sadists. For MPs? Yes, of course!
Who gives a fuck about tennis when they plan to kill us
In her resignation statement Shithead praises the Pig Dictator
She is so thick that it is oblivious to her that from start to end the Pig Dictator set her up
I suspect they recruit and retain a few thickos for these very purposes
Some people have commented that Plan B was a distraction from the party story
Au contraire, the manufactured party story allowed the introduction of the next stage of Stan’s genocide laws
I agree with most of your sentiments. I am maybe a bit biased because I follow tennis (or used to) but I think this story is important as long as Djokovic sticks to his guns, refuses to reveal his vaxx status and refuses to go to Aus. I don’t want him to have an exemption. A Number 1 sports person in a big money sport who stands up for freedom would be a useful ally.
I think an exemption would be good if he then refused and said all must be treated equally.
Yes
Indeed, but perhaps too much to hope for.
Yes, the fight against the genocidal Covid scam needs to be waged on a broad basis. Djokovic’s firm stand may help some waverers start the wake up process and for that alone it has merit.
Distraction from the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, more likely. I reckon if those facts became known, everyone would forget about the lurgy altogether, as those who seek to control us are very likely to be heavily implicated.
I don’t want this to happen but if a player has a heart attack during the later stages of the Aussie Open how do they spin out of that? Well played Novak, his coaches and management team for being principled.
“The Tasmanian Senator on Thursday morning said the rules were simple and Djokovic shouldn’t receive any special treatment. “
No, you want him to have a not-fully trialled, experimental gene therapy treatment, for an illness that in his case, would have 99.9+% survival rate of he got it!!!!
Refusing him is SPECIAL TREATMENT you clot shot jabbing clots.
I’m sure that he will “cry all the way to the bank”
(Djokovic)
Double vaccinated is so three-months ago. Leading politicians worldwide agree that Immunity these days is only worthwhile after three jabs and the two jabbed are no better than the stinking unjabbed. Are these Australian politicians literally trying to kill people?
YES
Soz, but 3 jabs is already last week’s news. Reports from Israel say a 4th shot will be needed for all, within the near future. Even BG does not force updates of his carp software on us that often.
Any player worth their salt will boycott the australian open in protest against australias crimes against humanity.
Sadly I don’t suppose any will.
Tasmanian devil.
Or Honey Badger?
The Present Mrs Johnson has given birth, hope it wasn’t a forced medical intervention as a distraction
Has it got 666 on its forhead?
No, but it’ll have to be weaned off cake.
As Australia and New Zealand are no longer functioning democracies, they should be excluded from all sporting events.
Ditto the UK, USA, China, ………….
So if you can get a ‘medical exemption’ to jabbing then you don’t need to isolate?
In that case, isolation isn’t necessary for anyone.
I guess all those grandees and their lackeys who attended COP26 must have qualified for ‘medical exemptions’ in order not to need to quarantine?
You have, in fact, caused me to re-think my comment above, Mr Dee. If one can get a medical exemption to a jab, then the jab itself isn’t necessary, never mind being excused other ‘mitigations’. If people who are, say, ‘allergic’ to some component or other of the jabs can be ok without it, then so can anyone else.
And all those grandees and their lackeys you mention? Saline, my dear Mr Dee; they were jabbed with saline only. That dollop Merkel might have risked the actual jab, but she seems frit of her own shadow. Perhaps on account of being an elderly overweight old woman, with who knows what other comorbidities.
“Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie, who believes that Djokovic is trying to exploit a “loophole” to dodge the Grand Slam’s Covid restrictions“
Is there actually any evidence Djokovic is applying for this loophole exemption, beyond the fact that the organisers have apparently included him on the list of players – possibly just wishful thinking on their part?
Seems pointless if so. Why stand on principle over the “vaccine” coercion and then weasel your way in via an exemption?
If he does that then Djokovic is revealed as merely another sporting conformist and hypocrite. But until then, and so long as he sticks to his guns, he remains a fine, and rare, example of real integrity in pro sports. Genuinely courageous, in a genuinely important cause, unlike all those knee-taking conformist virtue signallers.
There should be no discrimination over the “vaccine”, and nobody, whether “vaccinated” or not, should participate in or attend any event that discriminates. By doing so, you condone the discrimination.
Well said, not that I’m sucking up because I need your attic
Oh I don’t know, I have claimed exemption from face coverings.
People should have the legal right to not share medical history, but…nations have the right to exclude any non-citizens from their nation. I despise this who mandate garbage but, it’s not my nation and the Aussies have allows tyrants to rule them, so bigger issues than tennis. But let him play!
Yes it is the Aussie’s choice and I hope he doesn’t play.
In the UK Coercion and Bullying is iIlegal Gov.UK, can they coerce the jab with the threat of restrictions in your life?
Oh the irony of it being called the Australian Open
Utter nonsense – he’s already had the virus and so has natural immunity!
Maybe the sports bods will boycott this event like the UK and USA will boycott the winter olympics.
Nope that is just too plain simple.
Ah, Tasmania, the home of the most effective genocide I’ve heard of against its native people.
There is an ivermectin panic on the big tech and MSM right now. Massive articles from MSM on Ivermectin trying to push a danger narrative and also negative press on Americans Frontline Dr’s, again, to keep the Covid narrative alive. Just go to the Goog and type ivermectin then look at all the panic news articles. We are over the target. Big-Pharma is panicking. This medicine has been widely used by humans without any problems for 40 years. It’s inventor won a Nobel Prize after 20 years of successful use and after 100 million people were cured of a broad spectrum of problems without any side effects. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
His medical history is no business of this Antipodean harridan.