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News

Anti-vax Olympic champion dies from Covid aged 51 after finally agreeing to take jab – The Mirror

An Olympic champion who initially refused the Covid vaccine has now died from the disease. Gymnast Szilveszter Csollany passed at the age of 51 after eventually agreeing to be jabbed to keep his job.

Olympic gold medalist Szilveszter Csollany has died from Covid aged 51 after initially refusing to take the vaccine.

http://archive.today/2022.01.27-015931/https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other-sports/anti-vax-olympic-champion-dead-26051796

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Publications

Covid-19 vaccines and treatments: we must have raw data, now – BMJ

In the pages of The BMJ a decade ago, in the middle of a different pandemic, it came to light that governments around the world had spent billions stockpiling antivirals for influenza that had not been shown to reduce the risk of complications, hospital admissions, or death. The majority of trials that underpinned regulatory approval and government stockpiling of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) were sponsored by the manufacturer; most were unpublished, those that were published were ghostwritten by writers paid by the manufacturer, the people listed as principal authors lacked access to the raw data, and academics who requested access to the data for independent analysis were denied.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220120011239/https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o102

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Alternative Media Videos

Live and Unplugged – True Covid History given to Irish Nurses Group – Ivor Cummins

Ivor Cummins gives an excellent talk on the history of COVID-19 to Irish Nurses and Mother’s Group.

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Publications

Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-Based COVID-19 Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021 – JAMA

Question  What is the risk of myocarditis after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination in the US?

Findings  In this descriptive study of 1626 cases of myocarditis in a national passive reporting system, the crude reporting rates within 7 days after vaccination exceeded the expected rates across multiple age and sex strata. The rates of myocarditis cases were highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males aged 12 to 15 years (70.7 per million doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine), in adolescent males aged 16 to 17 years (105.9 per million doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine), and in young men aged 18 to 24 years (52.4 and 56.3 per million doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine and the mRNA-1273 vaccine, respectively).

Meaning  Based on passive surveillance reporting in the US, the risk of myocarditis after receiving mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines was increased across multiple age and sex strata and was highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males and young men.

http://archive.today/2022.08.24-225032/https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346

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Publications

Citation impact and social media visibility of Great Barrington and John Snow signatories for COVID-19 strategy – BMJ

Results Among the 47 key GBD signatories, 20, 19 and 21, respectively, were top-cited authors for career impact, recent single-year (2019) impact or either. For comparison, among the 34 key JSM signatories, 11, 14 and 15, respectively, were top cited. Key signatories represented 30 different scientific fields (9 represented in both documents, 17 only in GBD and 4 only in JSM). In a random sample of n=30 scientists among the longer lists of signatories, five in GBD and three in JSM were top cited. By April 2021, only 19/47 key GBD signatories had personal Twitter accounts versus 34/34 of key JSM signatories; 3 key GBD signatories versus 10 key JSM signatories had >50 000 Twitter followers and extraordinary Kardashian K-indices (363–2569). By November 2021, four key GBD signatories versus 13 key JSM signatories had >50 000 Twitter followers.

Conclusions Both GBD and JSM include many stellar scientists, but JSM has far more powerful social media presence and this may have shaped the impression that it is the dominant narrative.

http://archive.today/2022.02.16-000944/https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/2/e052891

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News

John Lewis moves to distance itself from high street rivals and reassure staff it will offer sick pay regardless of their Covid vaccination status – This is Money

In a blog post, John Lewis group operations director Andrew Murphy told staff – whom it calls partners – across its department stores and Waitrose grocers: ‘We just don’t believe it’s right to create a link between a partner’s vaccination status and the pay they receive. 

‘When life increasingly seems to present opportunities to create division – and with hopes rising that the pandemic phase of Covid may be coming to an end – we’re confident that this is the right approach.’ 

He said John Lewis ‘cast no judgment’ on other businesses and that the pandemic had often left firms with ‘just a choice between a range of unappealing options.’

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-10430427/John-Lewis-makes-pledge-unjabbed-staff.html

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News

Warring scientists fight on as Omicron retreats – The Sunday Times

“There are some scientists who have absolutely loved being media stars for the first time and they don’t want to stop. We don’t hear as much from the paediatricians, disease physicians, academic virologists and the immunologists who really know about these things.” (says Professor Allyson Pollock.)

Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said many prominent Covid voices have never written papers on infectious diseases. “It’s like me deciding, ‘I did a course on health and economics a year ago: maybe I should set up a group advising the chancellor on how to manage the tax system.’”

http://archive.today/2022.01.23-170611/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/warring-scientists-fight-on-as-omicron-retreats-hq2dz6kjd

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News

Doctors join waiters in turning down Covid jabs – The Times

Doctors are among the health workers least likely to be vaccinated against Covid-19, while fitness instructors, artists and waiters have some of the highest unjabbed rates overall.

New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show vaccination rates by profession at the end of last year. The data provides an early indication of which parts of the NHS and social care workforce could be hardest hit by the compulsory vaccination rule that comes into force in April.

http://archive.today/2022.01.21-103524/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/doctors-join-waiters-in-turning-down-covid-jabs-rf79t7ktf

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News

The catastrophe of the Covid models – Spiked

Everything the government has got right on Covid-19 in the past 12 months has happened when it ignored ‘the science’. If the modellers hadn’t made such fools of themselves in the summer and autumn of 2021 they might have been taken more seriously by the government in the winter. As it was, their incompetence had seeded enough doubt in Johnson’s mind for him to resist going beyond ‘Plan B’ despite almost every ‘scenario’ modelled telling him that hospitalisations and deaths from the virus would exceed anything England had ever seen before.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220121140042/https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/21/the-catastrophe-of-the-covid-models/

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Videos

Where COVID is the only attributable cause of death, we see the rate of death is remarkably low – Dr. John Campbell

Dr. John Campbell seems surprised at the Office for National Statistics Freedom of Information request about deaths from COVID-19 with no other underlying causes.

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Opinion

I’m a doctor and this is why we MUST start treating Covid like flu – Dr. Charles Levinson, Mail Plus

We need to start living with this virus before it wrecks even more young people’s lives, further devastates the economy and continues to pour fuel on the fire of the non-Covid health crisis.

Don’t get me wrong – flu is no joke. Familiarity has meant people assume it’s a runny nose or feeling under the weather, but it’s not.

A bad flu year produces a significant death toll. In the 2017/18 winter, 22,087 flu-associated deaths were recorded in England. The year before it was 15,047. These are over a few months only, so the daily death rate is very high. Those numbers could also be an underestimate as testing for flu is minuscule compared with our Covid effort. 

http://archive.today/2022.01.20-145519/https://www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/health/medical-matters/146470/why-we-must-start-treating-covid-like-flu

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Publications

John Lewis Partnership sick pay policy for unvaccinated staff – Andrew Murphy, Executive Director, Operations at John Lewis Partnership

We’re conscious that some businesses have changed their sick pay policy with regard to unvaccinated employees in some Covid related absence scenarios.

At the John Lewis Partnership we’re not going to make any change of this type.

We’re hugely supportive of the UK vaccination programme (we give ‘free’ time off to all Partners to get their vaccination and we’ve provided our Bracknell sports hall to the NHS as a vaccination centre since the very start of the jab roll-out, providing 160,000 jabs). We just don’t believe it’s right to create a link between a Partner’s vaccination status and the pay they receive.

Leadership teams from every business have had to work incredibly hard to navigate the Covid years. There has been no map, guidebook or training programme to help anyone find the best way through. Very often, there’s just a choice between a range of unappealing options.

We cast no judgement on the decisions of any other organisation, in fact we’ve enjoyed how united businesses – retailers especially – have been in the face of these huge corporate and societal challenges. However, when life increasingly seems to present opportunities to create division – and with hopes rising that the pandemic phase of Covid may be coming to an end – we’re confident that this is the right approach for us.

http://archive.today/2022.01.24-133419/https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6889929866620243968/

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News

High Covid death rates skewed by people who died from other causes, admits Sajid Javid – The Telegraph

Daily reported Covid death figures are too high because people are dying from conditions unrelated to the virus after testing positive, Sajid Javid has admitted.

On Wednesday, there were 359 deaths reported in Britain, but the Health Secretary said that “many” people were being included in the count who “would not have necessarily died of Covid”.

His comments came after death data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a large discrepancy in weekly death registrations compared to the figures released on the Government dashboard.

For the week ending Jan 7, the UK Health Security Agency reported 1,282 deaths of people who had died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus.

However, ONS data show there were just 992 death registrations with Covid mentioned on the death certificate in that week.

http://archive.today/2022.01.20-173140/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/19/high-covid-death-rates-include-people-did-not-die-virus-admits/

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News

All plan B Covid restrictions, including mask wearing, to end in England – The Guardian

Boris Johnson has announced the end of all Covid measures introduced to combat the Omicron variant from next week, including compulsory mask-wearing on public transport and in shops, guidance to work from home and vaccine certificates.

http://archive.today/2022.01.19-132831/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/19/boris-johnson-announces-end-to-all-omicron-covid-restrictions-in-england

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Publications

COVID-19 total deaths – weekly summaries All data up to 4pm 19 January 2022 – NHS

Commentary from Paul Embery of UnHerd:

Fresh NHS data shows that the total number of covid-related deaths in hospitals in England involving patients under the age of 80 and with no pre-existing condition is 3,037. This covers the entire period of the pandemic.

Screenshot with comment of Table 3 – Deaths by Condition

https://england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/COVID-19-total-announced-deaths-20-January-2022-weekly-file.xlsx

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20220122113121/https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/COVID-19-total-announced-deaths-20-January-2022-weekly-file.xlsx

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Opinion

I was pilloried for being a lockdown sceptic – now it’s clear I was right about quite a few things – The Telegraph

How did we listen to that bonkers, ahem, advice with a straight face? I thought it was worth compiling a list of the 50 craziest measures

http://archive.today/2022.01.19-080846/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/01/18/pilloried-lockdown-sceptic-now-clear-right-quite-things/

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News

A QUARTER of all Covid ‘deaths’ are now patients who died WITH the virus not from it, official data shows – Daily Mail

Covid was not the underlying cause of death in nearly a quarter of virus-related fatalities last week, official figures suggest.

The most up-to-date Office for National Statistics figures showed there were 922 deaths registered in England and Wales mentioned coronavirus on the death certificate in the week to January 7. Of them, Covid was not ruled to be the primary reason for the death in 210 cases, or 23 per cent — although it may have been a contributing factor. 

For comparison, the share of deaths not primarily due to the virus stood at around 16 per cent when Omicron first arrived in the UK. With the Alpha wave last January, before the country embarked on its historic vaccination drive, the proportion was about 10 per cent.

The rise of the milder strain has led to a similar pattern emerging in hospitals, where nearly half of virus inpatients are not primarily needing treatment for the infection — compared to about 25 per cent with Delta. 

http://archive.today/2022.01.18-162511/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10413701/A-QUARTER-Covid-deaths-patients-died-virus.html

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Publications

COVID-19 deaths and autopsies Feb 2020 to Dec 2021 – Office for National Statistics

An Office for National Statistics FOI request revealed 6,183 deaths recorded where COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate, between 1 February 2020 to 31 December 2021.

You asked

Please supply deaths caused solely by covid 19, where covid is the only cause of death listed on the death certificate, broken down by age group and gender between feb 2020 up to and including dec 2021.

Please supply the number of autopsies carried out on those where covid was the only cause stated.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

We have provided analysis on COVID-19 as the only cause of death by age and sex in England and Wales for your requested time period.

Table 1: Number of deaths where COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate, 1 February 2020 to 31 December 2021, by sex and age group, England and Wales
Age groupMalesFemales
<110
1-400
5-900
10-1401
15-1910
20-2441
25-29123
30-34247
35-394215
40-445224
45-498743
50-5413852
55-5923492
60-64254102
65-69279119
70-74357204
75-79395252
80-84492402
85-89470533
90+520971

http://archive.today/2022.01.18-223112/https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/covid19deathsandautopsiesfeb2020todec2021

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News

Covid outbreaks now shrinking in 96% of England’s neighbourhoods: Maps show how Omicron is fizzling out naturally and graphs lay bare how SIX TIMES fewer deaths happened in third wave despite cases being triple level of last winter – Daily Mail

EXCLUSIVE: UKHSA data shows infections are dropping in 96% of the country’s nearly 7,000 neighbourhoods

Parts of Castle Point, Shropshire and Bexley have seen infections fall by more than 70% week-on-week

And MailOnline analysis shows Omicron wave deaths were seven times lower than the peak last winter 

Official figures show half as many Covid patients were in hospital at one time compared to the Alpha peak

And 4.5 times fewer patients were moved to critical care beds during the latest wave compared to last winter 

Coronavirus cases are now falling in virtually every area of England, official figures show as the Omicron wave continues to collapse with deaths six times lower than in the second wave.

Some 6,519 out of 6,790 neighbourhoods (96 per cent) around the country recorded a fall in infections in the week to January 11, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). 

http://archive.today/2022.01.17-152417/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10410053/Covid-outbreaks-shrinking-96-Englands-neighbourhoods.html

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News

The C.D.C. concedes that cloth masks do not protect against the virus as effectively as other masks – The New York Times

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday clarified its stance on various kinds of masks, acknowledging that the cloth masks frequently worn by Americans do not offer as much protection as surgical masks or respirators.

While this disparity is widely known to the general public, the update marks the first time the C.D.C. has explicitly addressed the differences. The agency’s website also no longer refers to a shortage of respirators.

The change comes as infections with the highly contagious Omicron variant continue to soar. Some experts have said that cloth masks are inadequate to protect from the variant, and have urged the C.D.C. to recommend respirators for ordinary citizens.

http://archive.today/2022.01.17-035141/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/health/cloth-masks-covid-cdc.html