The reopening of indoor hospitality earlier this week came too late for many businesses as data reveals that six pubs have closed every week during Government-imposed lockdowns. Most have either been demolished or converted into homes and offices. The MailOnlinehas the story.
Figures released today showed 384 pubs have closed permanently during the national and tiered local restrictions over the past 14 months.
The number of locals is down by one per cent from 40,886 to 40,502, according to research by consultants Altus Group…
West Northamptonshire Council granted permission to turn The Romany in Kingsley, Northampton, into 11 flats after its closure during the first lockdown last year.
And The Majors Arms in Widnes, Cheshire, was sold last October, with its new owners requesting permission from Halton Council to turn it into a shop.
The Crobar in Soho, central London, previously said it would be unable to reopen after struggling to pay rent during the pandemic, but is now planning to resume business at a new venue after fundraising over £100,000.
The study found more pubs were lost in the South East than other parts of the U.K., with 62 demolished or converted for alternative use during the pandemic.
The West Midlands, Wales, North West and East of England each saw more than 40 pubs closed during the same 14-month spell.
Pubs that disappeared have either been demolished or converted into other uses such as homes or offices, said Altus.
Almost half of the children in hospital recorded as having needed inpatient treatment for Covid may have actually needed treatment for something else and happened to test positive, a new U.S. study suggests. The MailOnlinehas the story.
Out of 117 children who tested positive were treated as inpatients in Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, 53 were likely not sick enough from the virus itself to need inpatient treatment.
Children younger than 18 make up only 12.4% of U.S. Covid cases, and less than a fraction of a per cent of the total number of deaths from the virus, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show.
An estimated one to three per cent of Covid hospitalisations for Covid are among children – but the new Stanford study suggests the real figure may be even lower…
The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Hospital Pediatrics, took a closer look at data on 117 children who were either hospitalized for a Covid-linked syndrome – MIS-C, which occurs after kids are infected with coronavirus – or who tested positive after arriving at the hospital.
The children were hospitalized between May 10th, 2020 and February 10th, 2021.
About 40% of those children were completely asymptomatic for Covid.
Another 28% displayed only symptoms of mild-to-moderate coronavirus infections.
Nine kids became severely ill from Covid, including three who probably were not hospitalized because of the infection, but became seriously sick with Covid during their stay, their medical charts suggest.
Only 15 out of the 117 children were determined to be critically ill (about 13%). Fourteen of them were likely brought to hospitals specifically because of their Covid symptoms.
One child was admitted to the hospital to undergo surgery for a congenital heart problem. They had no symptoms when they arrived at the hospital, but later tested positive and fell critically ill, likely due to the combination of Covid and their heart condition.
Fourteen children were diagnosed with MIS-C – multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children – which has been linked to Covid. These children may not have gotten severely ill during the acute phase of infection with coronavirus, but it set off a chain of immune responses that brought on the potentially life-threatening inflammation.
All-in-all, only a little over half of the kids who were logged as hospitalised for Covid were actually sick enough from the virus itself to need inpatient treatment for it.
The other 45% were likely hospitalised for something else and just happened to test positive for Covid.
“Inflation is the biggest threat to Boris” – “Rising prices have been destroying governments for a hundred years,” writes Mathew Lynn in the Spectator, following the news that inflation increased in April from 0.7% to 1.5%. “It would be complacent to imagine this one will be the exception”
“Fearful forties turn their backs on AstraZeneca vaccine” – According to the Times, up to half of people in their forties are failing to turn up for their vaccine appointments in some cities in Scotland amid concerns about the AstraZeneca jab
“Beware the twin fanatics of Net Zero and Zero Covid” – The Telegraph‘s Madeline Grant points out the similarities between ‘Net Zero’ and ‘Zero Covid’ advocates. Both “impractical projects whose costs will fall disproportionately on the poorest”
“Knee-jerk lockdowns are not the answer” – A leader in the Telegraph calling for an end to distancing measures and lockdowns as the default answer to any increase in infections
“Jabs for the boys” – Molly Kingsley reminds readers of the Critic that “it has – or perhaps had – been a well established principle of bioethics and law that questions of child welfare should not be defined by reference to adult preferences, but instead require clear consideration of the benefits to and harms for the child”
“The myth of vaccine hesitancy” – “The panic over vaccine hesitancy is just the latest expression of our establishment’s tendency towards authoritarianism,” according to Fraser Myers at Spiked
“A death knell for degrees” – “A monochrome, twilight form of university life has dragged on for five terms and cannot be allowed to go on any longer,” writes Professor Robert Tombs in the Daily Mail, responding to the plans of some universities to keep online teaching for another year
“Not worried about the jab? You should be” – “The problem with the COVID-19 vaccines is that we simply do not have enough information about their side-effects,” says Harry Dougherty for the Conservative Woman
“Never have so many become so blinded to the truth” – “If you are observing the official narrative, you have seen the pattern,” writes Nicholas Orlando at the Conservative Woman. “You were well prepared for the approaching about-turn on restriction easing”
“Asymptomatic Transmission: A dangerous idea” – Asymptomatic transmission has driven much of lockdown policy says the Rev Phill Sacre in his latest video, but it has “caused something far worse – a change in our mindset”
“In Asia, a COVID-19 resurgence leads to new restrictions” – Euronews reports that a number of countries in Asia are finding that “the virus remains resilient, despite strict mask mandates, case tracing, mass testing and wider deployment of the newest weapon against it – vaccinations”
“The Moralisation of COVID-19” – The AIER’s Ethan Yang lauds the research undertaken by Dr. Maja Graso demonstrating that the COVID-19 response has been ‘moralised’, and is therefore uninfluenced by any cost-benefit analysis
“Singapore says ‘no truth’ to Kejriwal’s new variant claims” – The BBC reports that Singapore’s authorities have rejected claims made in Delhi that a new “Singapore strain” that is “extremely dangerous for children” has been found in the city state
We’re publishing a round-up of Covid vaccine safety reports and news compiled by a group of medical doctors who are monitoring developments but prefer to remain anonymous in the current climate. By no means is this part of an effort to generate alarm about the vaccines or dissuade anyone from having them. At Lockdown Sceptics we report all news about the vaccines whether positive or negative and give no one advice about whether they should or should not be received. Unlike with lockdowns, we are neither pro-vaccine nor anti-vaccine; we see our job as to report the facts, not advocate for or against vaccines.The vaccine technology is novel and the vaccines have not yet fully completed their trials, which is why they’re in use under temporary and not full market authorisation. This has been done on account of the emergency situation and the trial data was largely encouraging on both efficacy and safety. For a summary of that data, see this preamble to the Government’s page on the Yellow Card reporting system. We publish information and opinion to inform public debate and help readers come to their own conclusions about what is best for them, based on the available data.
AstraZeneca faces further bans in Slovakia, Quebec and Brazil (for pregnant women).
57 Scientists and Doctors have created a report that summarises key concerns on COVID-19 vaccines regarding long and short term health implications.
The Israeli People’s Committee have released a report on the adverse events related to the COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer).
Concerns continue to arise around COVID-19 vaccination and pregnancy. The MHRA have announced that the vaccines are safe for pregnant women, following the results of a “preliminary study” in the New England Journal of Medicinewhich only included a small group of 827 women, 13.9% of whom suffered pregnancy loss. Cases of spontaneous abortion have been reported to Yellow Card, VAERS and Eudravigilance and countries like Brazil have currently banned certain vaccines. Hundreds of thousands of reports have been made of hormonal disruption, bleeding and miscarriage with Facebook groups being censored and removed, as also reported by the BBC. Fears could centre around the effect of the virus (as replicated by vaccination) as flagged up in this study in the Journal of Cells on the effects on the placenta of COVID-19.
The MHRA has given approval for the mixing of vaccines following the publication of the Com Cov Study by Oxford University in the Lancet. This is despite findings that there is some increase in adverse events with the mixing of vaccines.
A useful article in the Pharmaceutical Journal summarised all the current approved vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 and others currently in development.
Concerns about the connection between COVID-19 vaccines and blood clots are ongoing – this week in relation to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
In a study by Radboud University Medical Center and Erasmus MC in the Netherlands, and the Helmholtz-Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Hannover Medical School (MHH), and the University of Bonn, in Germany, researchers have found possible links between mRNA vaccines and the reprogramming of the innate immune system.
VAERS update: The U.S. vaccine adverse event reporting system has recorded 4,057 deaths relating to COVID-19 vaccines as of May 7th 2021. This is over twenty times the average annual number of all vaccine-related deaths usually reported to VAERS (under 200 per year) in a period of less than four months. Forty six per cent of these deaths occurred in people who fell ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated.
Cumulatively 20 weeks for Pfizer (approx 19.5 million doses) and 16 weeks for AstraZeneca (approx 28.5 million doses) and two weeks for Moderna (approx 0.1 million doses); 34 million unique people received one or two doses; 215,939 unique reports filed with Yellow Card.
Total Events 757,564; Total Reports 215,939; Total Fatalities 1,102.
Over 40 health experts have expressed their “grave concerns regarding all proposals to administer Covid vaccines to children” in an open letter sent to the Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The letter was organised by Dr Ros Jones, a member of the Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART), and warns against a “repeat of any past tragedies which have occurred especially when vaccines are rushed to market”. The Telegraphhas more.
In a joint letter, [the health experts] warned it is “irresponsible, unethical and unnecessary” to jab children and urged the medicines watchdog not to “repeat mistakes from history”.
Their intervention came as Matt Hancock announced that Britain had bought enough Pfizer vaccines to inoculate all children over the age of 12.
The Health Secretary said the Government would be “very, very careful and sensitive” about whether to roll out the vaccination programme to children, but stressed that research showed the jabs were safe.
He told MPs on Monday that a decision was likely to be taken within the next two months while the rollout continued through younger age groups.
…
[The letter reads:] “Extreme caution has been exercised over many aspects of the pandemic, but surely now is the most important time to exercise true caution.
“We must not be the generation of adults that, through unnecessary haste and fear, risks the health of children.”
The letter has been signed by over 40 medics, scientists and doctors including Professor Karol Sikora, Dean of Medicine at Buckingham University, and Lord Moonie, a former consultant in Public Health Medicine.
It argues that while there are clear benefits of a vaccine for the elderly and vulnerable, the balance of benefit and risk for youngsters is “quite different” since healthy children are at “almost no risk” from Covid.
The letter goes on to say that children do not need the vaccination to support herd immunity, adding that recent modelling suggests the U.K. has now achieved the herd immunity threshold.
“All medical interventions carry a risk of harm, so we have a duty to act with caution and proportionality,” it says.
“This is particularly the case when considering mass intervention in a healthy population, in which situation there must be firm evidence of benefits far greater than harms”.
Ministers met on Tuesday to discuss emergency plans that could see local lockdown restrictions being imposed in Indian Covid variant “hotspots”, with Boris Johnson saying that things will be clearer in “days“. But the Leader of Bolton Council has warned that there is a “danger of unrest” if local restrictions are used in the area. Sky News has the story.
David Greenhalgh, a Conservative and head of the local authority, said that previous implementations of the coronavirus measures were ineffective in the region.
Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, Mr Greenhalgh was asked if it was true he had warned Health Secretary Matt Hancock about civil unrest in the event of local Covid restrictions.
The councillor said: “I do think there is a danger of unrest.
“There was a great deal of resentment. Bolton was… disproportionately affected, really since July last year, and even when our rates were coming down, we still remained in lockdown when other areas rates were higher than ours.”
Bolton is currently one of the hotspots of the Indian variant of the coronavirus.
Cases have doubled in the last week, and 19 people are in hospital, according to Mr Hancock.
Mr Greenhalgh added: “We are putting all the measures in that we can at the moment. We have community spread, there’s no doubt about that, and we’re holding back a variant that would appear – although the evidence is still being gathered – to be a little bit more transmissible, easily transmissible.
“The majority of our cases are in very much our younger age groups – primary school, secondary school and in their 20s.
“We still haven’t got an increase in hospitalisation and severe illness, which is hugely welcome, those figures still remain low.”
As Will Jones highlighted in an earlier post, the number of Covid cases in Bolton – as well as in Blackburn with Darwen, another Indian variant hotspot – already seems to be flattening.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College’s modelling team appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning where he took a surprisingly sanguine attitude to emerging data on the Indian variant in the UK. The Spectator has the transcript.
Presenter Nick Robinson asked him: “Transmissibility is this key thing that you’re looking to get the answer to. When do you think you will have that answer and is it really a case as we were hearing earlier on the programme which is if it is 50% more transmissible this variant, that’s little short of a disaster, but 20% we could kind of live with?”
Ferguson said:
So first of all it’s never all or nothing with science, you gain evidence as the data is collected. Certainly it is much easier to deal with 20 and 30 per cent than it would be 50% or more. The challenge we have – and just to explain to people why this is difficult, I mean we’re tracking this virus you could say “Well, why can’t we immediately see how it outcompetes the existing Kent variant?” – is because of how it was introduced into the country.
It was introduced from overseas, principally into people with Indian ethnicity, a higher chance in living in multigenerational households and often in quite deprived areas with high density housing so we’re trying to work out whether the rapid growth we’ve seen in areas such as Bolton is going to be typical of what we could expect elsewhere or is really what is called a “founder effect” which is often seen in these circumstances.
There’s a little bit of – I would say – a glimmer of hope from the recent data that while this variant does still appear to have a significant growth advantage, the magnitude of that advantage seems to have dropped a little bit with the most recent data so the curves are flattening a little but it will take more time for us to be definitive about it.
It certainly does seem to be flattening. Here’s the latest data from the hotspots.
Large events with no face masks and no social distancing are just as safe as dining at a restaurant or going shopping, new data shows – so long as measures such as pre-entry Covid tests are in place. The bad news is that these findings could, according to some reports, persuade the Government to introduce vaccine passports for such events. The Timeshas the story.
Preliminary data from the events research programme is understood to have found that with screening, improved ventilation and other mitigating factors the risk of virus transmission can be significantly reduced, reducing fears that sports matches and concerts could cause big outbreaks.
The results will boost hopes that the end of restrictions can go ahead as planned on June 21st despite the spread of the Indian variant.
They are likely to strengthen the case for requiring “Covid-status certification” for such events to prove that those attending are at lower risk of being infectious.
The results will be forwarded to ministers in the coming days before a decision on further easing of lockdown measures due next month.
While the research programme took place before concerns over the spread of the Indian variant, it is likely to form a key plank of the Government’s plans for the reopening of society.
A Government source said the results from the trials had been encouraging and further test events were planned for the coming weeks. “We are still waiting for the final bits of data but the results so far have been very encouraging,” the source said.
“It will help make the case that these large events are not inherently more risky than other parts of the hospitality sector. It shows that there are things that you can do to make these settings as safe as other daily activities.
“It is true that they are not going to be 100% safe but you can lower the risk to a reasonable level.”
It doesn’t appear, however, that this study had any control – at least, there have been no reports of events going ahead with no mitigating measures including pre-entry testing against which to compare the results. So how can they know that the measures have “reduced transmission”? A study without a control group can’t tell us anything about how effective and necessary the intervention is. There were no outbreaks with the testing. But maybe there wouldn’t be any without as well. And even if there are, why is that a problem if hospitals can cope? These questions don’t seem to be being answered.
The Government is said to have already told football’s UEFA that crowd sizes at upcoming events will be limited to 45,000. A review is expected to report on the settings in which domestic vaccine passports will be required later this month.
One of Independent SAGE’s “experts”, who on Tuesday criticised the Government for not delaying the latest easing of lockdown restrictions, is a social scientist-cum-race adviser with no medical qualifications. Dr Zubaida Haque, a founding member of the group, told Good Morning Britain that the third step of the Government’s roadmap out of lockdown should have been stalled because of the Indian Covid variant – not only to protect the unvaccinated but also to protect the vaccinated, who she claimed could still be vulnerable to this strain of the virus.
Vaccines will certainly help to reduce severe disease [from the variant]… but at the moment there are some things that we still don’t know about this variant and one of the main things we don’t know is, to what extent it can still escape the vaccines. We need to find that out.
What the Government should have done was to stall this stage of the roadmap, particularly because we didn’t pass test four… [which says] if we think that there’s any further risk from new variants of concern, we should stall. They have completely ignored that and gone ahead.
The Telegraphhas more on Dr Haque’s medical expertise – or lack thereof!
Dr Zubaida Haque… specialises in racial equality and has been involved with various Government-commissioned reports on welfare issues.
In an interview with Good Morning Britain, she said the Government should have stalled the latest stage of the roadmap out of lockdown…
She went on to criticise Matt Hancock for his recent comments indicating vaccine hesitancy may be behind the rise in Covid hospitalisations in Bolton, one of the Indian variant hotspots.
“This whole notion that, that at the moment, everyone’s freedom is threatened because of vaccine hesitancy groups is absolute nonsense,” Dr Haque said.
It was one of Dr Haque’s many TV interviews and newspaper columns since the pandemic began, ranging in scope from vaccine passports and the reopening of schools to financial support for low-paid workers needing to self-isolate.
However, she has no medical, clinical, virological or epidemiological qualifications.
Instead, her PhD thesis was titled: Exploring the validity and possible causes of the apparently poor performances of Bangladeshi students in British secondary schools.
She now works for the Hamilton Commission, an organisation set up by Formula 1 star Lewis Hamilton to improve the representation of Black people in U.K. motorsport.
Dr Haque was not the only member of the historically overly cautious Independent SAGE group to take to the airwaves criticising the latest step towards freedom.
Dr Kit Yates and Prof Gabriel Scally both appeared on Sky News, on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, talking about the new variant.
Dr Yates is an expert in using mathematical techniques to predict biological models at the University of Bath, while Prof Scally is president of the Epidemiology and Public Health section of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Sir David King, chairman of Independent Sage said: “When we set up Independent SAGE we wanted to ensure that it was truly multi-disciplinary and fit for purpose when it comes to giving the best possible evidence-based advice in relation to the pandemic.
“We are proud to have such a wealth of experience to call upon as [we] require.”
“Why is UK taking a risk with the variant?” – The BBC’s Nick Triggle puts some of the claims made for the Indian variant into context, pointing out that the picture is more complex than the headline-grabbing figure that it is 50% more transmissible
“Direct your anger at the lockdown obsessives, not the unvaccinated few” – “The understandable anger of people like Lord Lloyd-Webber needs to be directed at ministers and the SAGE modellers,” says Peter Johnston in the Telegraph, for they are “urging them to take disproportionate and unjustified decisions to extend the lockdown even in the face of a waning pandemic”
“Isolated” – In a post for the John’s Campaign, Melanie tells the story of her mother Jean who was diagnosed with dementia back in March and placed in a care home at short notice where she was then isolated
“Can the Covid vaccine change our DNA?” – Neville Hodgkinson explores the evidence related to DNA, RNA, the virus and the vaccine for the Conservative Woman
“SAGE cannot be serious” – “It seems odd that no one from SAGE stopped for a moment to check the numbers against the real world,” writes Professor David Paton for Spiked
“A distressing interview on the BBC Today Programme” – BBC Today’s Mishal Husain talks to the father of the child who was refused an exemption from hotel quarantine despite suffering from severe disabilities. He is being represented by lawyer Adam Wagner
“Nina” – James Delingpole talks to the receptionist of a large NHS medical practice for the Delingpod. She tells him about the adverse reactions to the jabs that her patients have had
“Ontario will open outdoor recreation on or before June 2nd” – Citizens of Ontario will be allowed outside for recreation, the Post Millennial reports, after a report from Sick Kids called Let the children play laid bare the impact of the lockdown on children
“This Article Is Partly False” – Writing for City Journal, John Tierney demonstrates that FaceBook and its fact-checkers are “stifling scientific debate” and “enforcing progressive orthodoxy”
