Our in-house doctor reflects on the year gone by, noting the Daily Sceptic’s excellent track record of identifying important issues about the NHS’s management of Covid months before the mainstream media.
As 2021 draws to a close, it is customary to reflect on the year gone by and to anticipate what the new one might bring. Looking back, it isn’t excessively hubristic to feel pride in the achievements of the Daily Sceptic community. We have established a good track record of identifying major issues around the NHS’s management of the pandemic before they became widely known.
We identified high rates of nosocomial infection. Denied by the NHS, then accepted. We spotted errors in attribution of deaths to Covid which were due to other causes. Denied, then accepted. We have exposed numerous public misrepresentations of data by NHS leaders. Often denied then reluctantly accepted, sometimes under pressure from the Office for National Statistics. False positives yielded by PCR Tests? Officially denied. Yesterday accepted by the U.S. Government.
Most recently we noticed a substantial proportion of hospital inpatients classified as Covid were in fact incidental infections. Denied, and ignored until this week when the rest of the commentariat suddenly discovered the Primary Diagnosis Supplement, published weekly since July. We have been analysing that data regularly since the summer. For much of the last 18 months I have been repeatedly struck by the observation by the American writer and politician Upton Sinclair – “It is impossible to get a man to understand something if his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.”
This helps explain why, for the last 12 months, the Daily Sceptic has failed to make much of an impact, but something has changed in the last couple of weeks. Even the Guardian now accept that the figures on ‘Covid admissions’ grossly overstate the number of patients acutely unwell, and if opinion polls can be believed, our points seem finally to be landing with the public at large.
Here on the Daily Sceptic, we have been stating the obvious for months, so why the abrupt volte face by lockdown enthusiasts? Before I consider this point further, let’s first examine the data update provided yesterday and what we have discovered about the Omicron variant.
Graph one shows patients admitted from the community in London in December 2020 (brown line) versus December 2021 (blue bars). Cases are slowly increasing but are still about half of the numbers from last year.

Hospital cases continue to rise. Despite the alarming looking uptick on the right of Graph Two, it’s hard to interpret this data sensibly in the light of reporting lags around Christmas and the difficulty of discharging patients from hospital over extended bank holiday weekends. What we can say is that the number of inpatients designated as Covid in England today (11,542) is about half what it was on the same day last year (22,713).

The disparity between cases admitted from the community and cases diagnosed in hospital still suggests 25-30% of Covid patients are contracting the illness incidentally in hospital. The Primary Diagnosis Supplement is delayed this week for some unexplained reason, so I can’t comment at this time, except to reiterate that the latest info revealed that 29% of hospital cases recorded as Covid were in fact incidental findings. Given the transmissibility of Omicron, this figure is likely to rise further.
ICU bed occupancy both in London and England has not changed significantly. This is not just important from the point of reduced disease severity, but reflects tighter infection control in ICU. General ward figures have now been widely acknowledged to reflect substantial nosocomial spread. This is less likely to occur in ICU’s as most patients are cared for in individual rooms or bays.
I am grateful to the Spectator for crunching the stats on length of stay for Covid patients and discovering this has shortened substantially. For some reason SAGE and the NHS are reluctant to publish this important information, even though we know they assess it on a daily basis. Why might that be?
On the scientific front, there have been several papers published in the last few days assessing comparative data from Omicron and Delta waves. The Steve Biko Hospital in Tshwane has published a paper in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases showing a more rapid rise and decline of Omicron hospitalisations, with a peak occupancy 51% of the delta wave and markedly lower mortality, length of stay and oxygen requirement for Omicron patients.
Further South African data suggests that T cell responses, whether from vaccination or prior infection, hold up well against Omicron. Several studies in mouse models support the thesis that the spectrum of disease is milder and Omicron does not infect cells in the lower respiratory tract.
On the epidemiological front, the latest ZOE app update suggests that positive cases in the community are increasing, but the rate of increase is slowing in the 0-55 age group. On the other hand, cases in the 55-75 age group are rising more sharply. I am bemused by the recommendation that as 75% of people with ‘cold type’ symptoms are likely to have Covid, Government advice should be updated to include symptoms of sore throat, headache and runny nose as being symptoms requiring self-isolation. Being something of an old-fashioned doctor, I would be very grateful if one of the experts could explain to me why we aren’t simply reclassifying the variant as a common cold rather than treating it as a deadly pandemic, if the major symptoms of Omicron are as described?
At the time of writing, the NHS has just announced the initiation of ‘mini-Nightingales’ in hospital car parks and the like to care for patients recovering from Covid. This is certainly a much more sensible idea than trying to set up ICUs in warehouses, but is likely to run into the same obstacle – namely, lack of staff. Dr. Stephen Powis, the Medical Director of the NHS, says that the service is on a “war footing”. To the best of my knowledge, Dr. Powis has never been in a war.
The papers and airwaves are filled with commentary about NHS staff absence rates as a consequence of positive Covid tests or mandatory self- isolation from close proximity to a known patient. Again, perhaps I am being obtuse, but could one of the experts please explain to me why this problem would not immediately vanish if we simply stopped testing asymptomatic people?
Aside from data analysis, I have also been reflecting on the professional performance of the public health community over the last 12 months. I am reluctant to castigate colleagues, being all too aware how easy it is to make mistakes in clinical practice, but medicine is, by necessity, tightly regulated. Systems are in place to spot poor practice and prevent unnecessary harm to patients. These systems are imperfect, but they function reasonably well. Even when criminally minded doctors such as Harold Shipman and Ian Paterson evade detection, they only manage to harm relatively small numbers of people.
Where are the equivalent systems to regulate the decisions and actions of public health doctors? The quantifiable harms of constant lockdown advocacy have been demonstrably greater than the benefits, as has been regularly pointed out on these pages in the last 12 months. Decisions taken as a result of advice provided by SAGE have damaged far more people than a rogue clinician can do. Simply put, the cure has been worse than the disease.
I note that Professor Chris Whitty, giving evidence to the House of Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee was dismissive of criticisms around the adverse effects of lockdowns on cancer diagnosis and treatment. He described such views as being “an inversion” of the truth. I beg to differ – and I do not think I’m alone in my dissent.
Lest readers misunderstand, I am not equating SAGE with Shipman or Paterson. Nevertheless, the system of checks and balances in clinical medicine does not appear to be replicated in public health. When repeated mistakes are made by clinical doctors, prompt regulatory action follows and sanctions are imposed. When can we expect the same standards applied to the healthcare modelling community, who have been demonstrably in error so often in the last 21 months?
Finally, I ask for readers’ patience as I outline my final point of 2021. Over the Christmas period, I have been re-reading Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. Aware that not everyone shares my fascination with analytical history, some background may help. De Tocqueville travelled to America in the early 1830’s. His mission was to discover what the French could learn from the infant United States and its novel political system. The United States had recently extended the voting franchise to all white males – a radical experiment for the time.
De Toqueville writes: “On my arrival in the United States, I was surprised to find so much distinguished talent among the subjects and so little among the heads of the Government. It is a well-authenticated fact, that at the present day the most able men in the United States are very rarely placed at the head of affairs.”
A prescient analysis, which could have been written this week rather than in 1836. This fits with my belief that the skills required to get elected in a democracy are quite different from the skills needed to govern well. It is essential that our senior politicians are able to critically evaluate advice and hold ‘experts’ to account but sadly these skills are not currently manifest.
Accordingly, here is my wish for 2022. That the Daily Sceptic community resolve to get Toby Young into the House of Lords. Not just for his work on this website, but for his consistently inspirational leadership of the Free Schools movement and the Free Speech Union.
I don’t propose this audacious ambition so Toby can swank around wearing ermine, but specifically so we can put him to work (in typically forthright fashion) representing an important strand of public opinion in the seat of our legislature – providing the skillset that our elected representatives either lack or are too afraid to express. Of course, that will never happen. Or could it?
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All these covid patients “surging’ into hospital — how do they actually get into hospital (I mean the ones who are in hospital because they have covid, not the ones who pick it up while they’re there)? Who decides they need to be hospitalised, and how do they decide without actually seeing the sufferer?
That’s something I’ve been wondering too
They are driven there in an ambulance following their car accident, and test positive for COVID on arrival.
Or their dad drives them there following their football injury, and they test positive for COVID on arrival.
Or they collapse on the A&E doorstep from undiagnosed diabetes, and test positive for COVID in hospital.
Or they arrive in the middle of a heart attack due to an undiagnosed heart condition, and test positive for COVID in hospital.
Or they survive an attempted suicide with broken bones and a head injury, and test positive for COVID in hospital.
Or they have a fall at home due to their Alzheimer’s, and test positive for COVID in hospital.
Or they arrive having suffered a stroke caused by the ‘booster’.
Secret NHS Plot To Kill Disabled Children
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWJdiFpZ7Dc&list=WL&index=92
Teenagers with autism and Down’s syndrome were offered ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ orders during routine appointments with their GP during the pandemic, it has emerged.
Many parents believe their child has been ‘discriminated against’ and say they were only asked about the order because of their learning disability.
The DNR orders were reportedly offered following ‘concerns about the pressure on the NHS’ – but it has left families confused and ‘upset’. Andre Walker
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends & keep sane
Wokingham – Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
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http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
The new world order does not want the old, the disabled, and the disobedient as all eugenic programmes seek only the perfect specimens to survive.
Glad Daily Sceptic is finally being recognised for uncovering these falsehoods.
When will the culprits be identified and prosecuted? Or will blame be spread around or covered up?
If everyone was ‘just following orders’ to ignore and censor the truth, the order givers in gov must pay the price.
I believe this will occur, and relish their gradual persecution.
Who is a actually recognising the DS?
I only heard about this from guido and initially assumed it was yet another tin hat site.
if it had a better name it would be easier to share the articles and analysis. You share an article & everyone is like “Daily Sceptic!! So you ARE into conspiracies!! I thought you knew better than that!”
The guardian or telegraph won’t prominently link to or credit a site called “Daily Sceptic” either. Maybe it should be called “News Analysed” or maybe “Sodium”.
if it had a more credible name it’s mission would be easier and maybe attract less of the far out and more reasoned and rationale.
You have a point. Personally I think the name is fine. No name can guarantee uptake. I guess this site is niche, yet its work has been prophetic as well as a vital public record of the horseshit we’re suffering. Gov has chosen to ignore it. You cant force people to open their eyes.
To answer precisely: DS is recognised by sceptics and ‘turning covidians’. One day it will go down in history. So I guess we’re all ‘too cool for school’ early adopters
No, please don’t change the name and self-censor to appease the weak minded, afraid of associating with truth seeking people because they can’t handle reality.
Daily Sceptic means that we should be sceptical of everything until data and evidence is produced that gives the information some validity, including information on our own side of the argument (and I have to stress, although there is a general consensus on Covid-related issues on here, posts will get challenged if they make claims without supporting evidence).
Similarly you have new media outlets like UK Column that openly tell it’s viewers not to take what they’re saying on trust, but to research it for themselves.
I’m not that interested in controlled legacy outlets like the Telegraph and the Guardian – they’re deservedly in decline and the level of misinformation they’ve spread over the last 21 months shows why.
The culprits are already receiving their just desserts, gongs for Whitty, Van Tam, Harries and the MHRA head. And if that’s not sickening enough the war criminal Bliar gets 2. All the awards must have been for services to fucking up the economy, our children’s education and the health of every person with a chronic illness that wasn’t Wuflu
So after nearly two years of national emergency, I still haven’t come across anyone who can tell me that they have had this thing. My wife and I caught bad colds over in Holland end of January 2019, but who knows? So I still believe that this has all been concocted. I’ve never worn a mask or used holy hand wash, never kept my distance, and will never partake of the lethal injection. And just watched as the our country and the rest of the World dissolves into complete financial disaster. Welcome to the End of the World.
I had what I presume was the Delta variant at the end of August – all the classic symptoms except I didn’t have any real breathing issues, possibly because I do a lot of running and have good lung capacity. Confirmed via PCR and antibody tests, so it does exist.
It was probably the most unpleasant illness I’ve ever had (not the most serious – I’ve had meningitis!) but it definitely felt like an unnatural illness as the symptoms are really weird, unpleasant, and varied.
I was pretty bad for two weeks and ended up having a month in total off work, so it can be serious for some people.
I fully agree though that the response to the disease has been far, far, worse than the illness itself. If we didn’t have a way to test for this bug we’d just treat it like one of those weird seasonal bugs that pop up from time to time and just carry on as normal.
In which way are “the symptoms ….. really weird, unpleasant, and varied”. Could you describe them? Just curious.
I can describe mine. General aching especially hips and legs, one night of mild fever and profound loss of taste and smell for around 2 weeks. At no point would I even have taken a day off work it was so mild. But yes, I would describe the symptoms as ‘weird’; unlike anything I’ve had before. And this is to be expected given that this is a man-made bioweapon with documented patents stretching back to the late 90s.
Like emel, I still don’t know a single person in real life who’s had this thing. But I did have a cold/cough back in about 2015, which was the only cold/cough I’ve had in the last 17 years (I’m 60 now). And that illness was odd. I mean, I wasn’t particularly unwell, apart from a persistent cough. Indeed, I remember cycling two or three miles to the shops one day to get some cough mixture, which didn’t work. But I distinctly remember a couple of times feeling genuinely worried that this felt weird, and I wasn’t sure what was happening. A cough but no sneezing. Tiredness that you couldn’t put your finger on..
Anyway, it all went away in, oh I don’t know, two or three weeks. But that memory of something unusually wrong going on has stayed with me. Sorry I can’t be more specific, but there you go.
I do wonder though – what did happen to SARS-One? Did it really just disappear off the face of the Earth, or did it do what SARS-2 would have done if the Chinese Communist Party hadn’t sent out those videos of pedestrians spontaneously dropping dead? Just mutated into something more easily tolerated, and ignored?
I had COVID at Easter, so an LFT I did reluctantly afterwards told me.
Started on a Friday night with a headache and fever. Sore throat but no cough over the weekend. And then general fatigue for the rest of that week (i’d have had a couple of days off work if I hadn’t been working from home). Completely better by the following Monday. So a 10 day illness.
It was worse than a normal cold but not as bad as a few of the asthma attacks I used to have when I was younger.
I had it first week of December. My 12 year was sent home from school (like his entire year group) until he had tested negative. He had a cold – usual stuff – but tested positive.
The wife and I both had Xmas lunches on the Friday and spent the Saturday with screaming hangovers which never went away and put us both in bed. The hangover ‘symptoms’ simply morphed into Covid ‘symptoms’ and lasted about 4 days. Out of bed on day 2 and fully functioning on day 5.
The brain fog (once the hangover had passed!) was weird but for me the weirdest symptom was screaming shoulder pain. I had a serious shoulder operation about 3 months ago and although I had no post-op pain, with Covid both shoulders (the operated on one and the other one) were agony.
My shoulder surgeon said this is a known (in the medical world) side effect of Covid, and even more so post vaccine, but it hasnt been covered by the MSM. Incidences of frozen shoulder are up 1000% but the only times Ive seen it mentioned was in the Metro!
No breathing issues or any of that stuff though. Had a pint after a week and it tasted exactly the same.
What they want to do is update their methodology and then claim that the remarkable reduction in hospitalisations/deaths is due to the vaccines.
Three cheers for the excellent Daily Sceptic and its brilliant and courageous contributors. The tide is definitely turning.
Agreed. But it isn’t turning, in my view.
My mother and two aunties have changed sides in recent weeks. I also know of others. Anecdotal I know, but one can hope there are more. Most online comments I see these days are also against any more restrictions etc.
That’s a good sign. Until gov announces it’s over and never brings back restrictions, we’re just ‘awakened slaves’. Better than just slaves but not much better.
My daughters inlaws were avid maskers and eagerly accepted the first two shots. My daughter has been patient but persistent in pointing out the inconsistencies in the government narrative – the inlaws are now sans mask everywhere and have declined the booster.
My parents are both double jabbed, but not boostered. My father still wears a mask in shops, but now despises Bojo, and has come round to the point of view of supporting me and my sister in our trials at work. My mother, bless her, will do whatever my dad says.
It will still be a bloody slow and hard road to ‘normal normalcy’.
Anecdotally, I have spoken to several people who are double-jabbed and boosted and are adamant that they’re not having any more jabs.
We’ll see.
But I agree that until governments are limited to simple advice and guidance, this will never be truly over. The problem is that we need politicians and “experts” to repudiate every crackpot policy they’ve recommended, including mass vaccination. Not going to happen without political change.
It would be nice to see Toby rip the tits off (metaphor in case of any misunderstanding – not literally) Karen Brady in the HoL wouldnt it……
I would rather see the House of Lords abolished completely
‘why this problem would not immediately vanish if we simply stopped testing asymptomatic people?’
Because then the whole ‘pandemic’ would disappear together with the political, intellectual and moral integrity of all the state’s vested interests.
The level of Covid deaths in November/December 2020 was entirely normal for midwinter respiratory illnesses, see https://dailysceptic.org/what-does-endemic-covid-look-like/, scroll down to the first graph. So the level of December 2021 has actually been well below the average.
The January 2021spike in deaths was due to the vaccine rollout. We know this spike was due to the vaccines because this video animation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSrc_s2Gqfw, shows that the same thing happened in many countries around the world as they started their own vaccine rollouts.
The video is backed up by this independent study of 14 countries showing the same pattern, see https://williambowles.info/2021/05/28/covid-19-vaccines-lead-to-new-infections-and-mortality-the-evidence-is-overwhelming/amp/.
Care homes throughout the UK reported outbreaks within days of vaccination taking place. These reports were quickly hushed up and have never been mentioned again. Criminality by cover-up, criminality by continuing to promote these dangerous vaccines. For details see https://principia-scientific.com/the-covid-establishment-has-been-getting-away-with-murder/
If mass testing of healthy people had never been started, we wouldn’t still have to listen to witless Chris, stupid Susan, nagging Neal, pathetic Patrick and all the other hapless anti-heroes of the great Corona virus cult. Reportedly, there are about 900,000 LFTs available per day. This translates to a litte less that 900,000 hardcore Covidiots literally holding the nation hostage, twice and thrice vaccinated, dozens and dozens of times testing and retesting themselves and God only knows how often repeat-positive. None of these new cases are really new. They’ve all been positively involved with this before.
I would be very grateful if one of the experts could explain to me why we aren’t simply reclassifying the variant as a common cold rather than treating it as a deadly pandemic, if the major symptoms of Omicron are as described?
Well I am no expert but surely the answer is that although the initial symptoms and the symptoms for most people are very similar to a cold, unlike a cold, Covid occasionally progresses into something much more serious. Furthermore, there are now treatments which can substantially reduce the risk if Covid is diagnosed early.
That’s exactly like a common cold: Pneumonia is a possibly life-threatening complication, especially for frail or otherwise exhausted people, most of them being fairly old. Another vulnerable group would be young people with anorexia. I still remember titlepage photos of the first German victim of swine flu — a grossly underweight teenage girl.
Fair enough. I guess it is a matter of how likely it is to progress. The current hospitalisation rate for Covid appears to be about 1 in 165, call it 1 in 250 to allow for those admitted for something else. I don’t think the hospitalisation rate for the common cold is anywhere close to this.
Eh? A cold is how a good chunk of the population traditionally dies. They’re in their 80s, weak, they catch a cold, they go into hospital, they contract pneumonia, and that’s it.
Edit: Or as RW says.
It has more to do with the EUA for the clot shots ending once there is no longer a ‘pandemic’. The fact they are now talking about 4 boosters a year means they’ve no intention of reclassifying it as ‘endemic’ any time soon.
How do people like you even manage to walk to the shops for milk without panicking yourself to death?
“the skills required to get elected in a democracy are quite different from the skills needed to govern well”. Love this, it’s spot on
It’s been uplifting to read the DS throughout the year. along with all your comments
However, I must go now and celebrate.
nil illegitimi carborundum
A happy new year to everyone and love to all!
“Being something of an old-fashioned doctor, I would be very grateful if one of the experts could explain to me why we aren’t simply reclassifying the variant as a common cold rather than treating it as a deadly pandemic, if the major symptoms of Omicron are as described?”
As I understand it, what we know as the Common Cold is actually caused by types of coronavirus. So it really is a cold. Except that the powers that be are desperate to maintain a state of crisis, so testing positive for a cold consigns the patient to ten days’ confinement. Or maybe seven days plus two lateral flow tests. Except, remarkably, we’ve run out of lateral flow tests. I think the writer is encouraging us to gently disengage from the whole ghastly testing and tracing business. If so, I heartily agree.
What about general admissions, any correlation with the 8% rise in mortality?
Nice report. But we still have miles to go to breakthrough full. Especially now that Whitty and co will be emboldened to push harder with their NY honours.
Arise Sir Lockdown.
I wonder if we had the figures for those hospitalised with Flu, pneumonia and other respiritory illness in the years prior to Covid, and then just used those in Hospital because of Covid not with it because they broke their leg and caught it in Hospital, what those figures would look like.
2022 Time to wake up, we have had 2 years of this now, it is very obvious this is not about a virus, this is about control and the removal of liberties such that a new world order, under the banner of build back better can be born, But to build back you first have to destroy, which is what they are in the process of doing, destroying our relationships, our families, our work, our economy, our health and education system and democracy. This cannot go on unless we want our children and their children to be slaves to those running the new world order. If we want this to end we must unite and disobey, take back control we are millions, they are thousands, time to send them back to the cess pit they emerged from,
2022 I say no to a new world order, you need to too.