Search Result for 'covid'

Government policy is not based on science This research was compiled by a financial researcher and fund manager who wishes to remain anonymous. There are a few main reasons to be optimistic we should end lockdowns and get back to normal.  We know who this coronavirus affects. The median age of death in almost all countries is over 80 with multiple existing conditions. We are failing to protect old people and are locking up the young and imposing social distancing when they have no risk of death. We can protect the vulnerable more intelligently.Most people have immunity due to cross reactivity and cross immunization. The human immune system is not completely helpless against this virus. Herd immunity levels are much lower than people think and the virus appears to follow a Gompertz curve, which correctly anticipates the virus fizzling out.In most countries, Covid deaths were 40-100% higher than a bad flu year. The virus is bad but it is not the Spanish Flu and is most like the Hong Kong flu of 1968 and the Asian flu of 1957.  They were bad, but we never shut the entire world down for those. Flus are deadly, the world is dangerous, and we will all eventually die. But we won’t all die form Covid.    Here is the complete collection of research and links categorized ...

Dr Clare Craig FRCPath Who you gonna call? Virus busters The system for counting deaths from Covid is not working properly and we are over-counting Covid deaths. This can be fixed, easily, by improving cross-checking and retesting all alleged positive PCR test results. Accurate data is a basic prerequisite for good policy choices. The remedial steps needed are simple and relatively inexpensive. Central government should mandate them to be done immediately. When trying to understand the impact of increased testing on case numbers we look to the percentage of tests reported as positive. In a similar way, it is important to double check other data points against each other, as percentages, to truly understand how the epidemic is progressing. Using this approach, it appears that we are over-counting deaths because there are not enough severely sick people from Covid to account for them. In other words, there are proportionately more Covid deaths per case and per hospital admission since the Summer. This paper explains this phenomenon and calls for proper scientific cross-checking to be instituted before a Covid outbreak is declared. Contradictions in the data The ONS carry out random testing of the population to estimate how many people have Covid in the UK each week. A sample of people are randomly tested and then modelling is used to predict ...

In his analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the U.K., financial analyst James Ferguson questions the likely overstatement of Covid and investigates the factors behind unexplained excess deaths.

The Covid Physician Valentine’s Friday, 2020. A quarter century practising medicine. Half in hospitals, half in general practice. I’d been treating unseasonal, politely-coughing, relatively-well patients for the previous two and a half weeks. Extraordinarily, on Saturday at 4am I was abruptly awoken by uncontrollable, whole body, flailing movements. They continued without relent for 5 hours. I’d hypothesised I was having a grand mal seizure, but as I lay violently shaking and goose-pimpled I coldly concluded I was conscious, so these were rigors. I’d witnessed two in my career one as a naïve house officer on a medical ward, and now the second in the comfort of my own bed. It wasn’t my last hurrah. Two Paracetamol, two duvets, two days of bad diarrhoea and I returned to work Monday, a few pounds lighter and clinically puzzled. This was no ordinary fever. As it happens, two other GPs in my vicinity later described similar contemporaneous symptoms, and we all tested negative for Roche’s COVID-19 antibody assay 4 months later. That, however, is not so meaningful since most people are thought to clear the virus without the need for specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. On top of this, in PHE’s own studies, Roche’s test demonstrated only 83.9% - 86.7% sensitivity, so it was missing 13-17% of true positives. There are two arms of the ...

by Howard Greene Governments have imposed extreme policies to contain COVID-19 infections because of public perceptions that the mortality risk is high. As the collateral damage to education, careers, routine health care, and economies grows, and as infection rates decline, it is reasonable to assess to what degree the COVID-19 mortality risk justifies continued Government intervention in normal life. It goes without saying that any unnatural death is a tragedy to be avoided. Nevertheless, in a free society, individuals make decisions every day that come with mortality risk: driving at high speeds on crowded interstate highways, or rock climbing, or ignoring the onset of serious obesity. In America, Government policy should reflect population mortality costs without trying to protect every citizen from the inevitability of death. Individuals should make decisions about risky behavior based on knowledge about their personal exposure to mortality risks. Unfortunately, bad news sells better than good news, and politicians are driven to ‘do something’. As a result, the actual population cost and individual risk of dying from COVID-19 have been lost in a fog of tragic stories and fear mongering. This paper aims to cut through that fog by answering some basic questions: What is the individual risk of being infected with SARS-CoV-2?If an individual contracts COVID-19, what is his risk of dying?How does this mortality ...

Debbie Lerman and Sasha Latypova present the Covid Dossier: a record of the global military and intelligence coordination of the response to COVID-19, country by country. This was no mere public health response.

COVID-19 saw the emergence of an industry of fact-checking websites and censorship of 'misinformation', portrayed as a danger to public health. Drs Roger Watson and Niall McCrae revisit one to see how well it has aged.

The true effectiveness of the first Covid booster was short-lived, if meaningful at all, once inherent biases are corrected for, says Prof Eyal Shahar. Peak protection was somewhere between mediocre and zero.

Covid vaccine injuries are going mainstream in Australia. A major news network this week gave over a quarter of a Covid special to vaccine safety and some important facts were aired, says Rebekah Barnett.

This is a review of the evidence concerning the medical complications and lingering effects of COVID-19 by an epidemiologist and a retired Professor of Forensic and Biological Anthropology. COVID-19 death rates have fallen across much of Europe since a peak in early April, irrespective of governments’ responses to the virus. Even in those countries at lower latitudes – Brazil, India and the southern United States – death rates also appear to be falling, following a flatter trajectory. These patterns are akin to those of another seasonal respiratory virus – influenza, where declining fatality rates reflect a natural seasonal waning of the disease. In the absence of a high seroprevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, the evidence of natural immunity – including innate and T-cell mediated immunity and cross-immunity conferred by exposure to other coronaviruses – offers an explanation at the community, cellular and molecular level for how immunity to COVID-19 may be leading to a decline in infection rates across the world. Nonetheless, acute complications of COVID-19 in children, and the persistence of symptoms following serious and, as noted in the media, mild illness may be seen as posing sufficient risk to justify attempts to maximally suppress SARS-CoV-2 through ongoing or intensified Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions. But how substantial are the complications of COVID-19 in children? What are the connotations of symptom persistence? And are ...