EvidenceNotFear

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Publications

No evidence for increased transmissibility from recurrent mutations in SARS-CoV-2 – Nature

COVID-19 is caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which jumped into the human population in late 2019 from a currently uncharacterised animal reservoir. Due to this recent association with humans, SARS-CoV-2 may not yet be fully adapted to its human host. This has led to speculations that SARS-CoV-2 may be evolving towards higher transmissibility. The most plausible mutations under putative natural selection are those which have emerged repeatedly and independently (homoplasies). Here, we formally test whether any homoplasies observed in SARS-CoV-2 to date are significantly associated with increased viral transmission. To do so, we develop a phylogenetic index to quantify the relative number of descendants in sister clades with and without a specific allele. We apply this index to a curated set of recurrent mutations identified within a dataset of 46,723 SARS-CoV-2 genomes isolated from patients worldwide. We do not identify a single recurrent mutation in this set convincingly associated with increased viral transmission. Instead, recurrent mutations currently in circulation appear to be evolutionary neutral and primarily induced by the human immune system via RNA editing, rather than being signatures of adaptation. At this stage we find no evidence for significantly more transmissible lineages of SARS-CoV-2 due to recurrent mutations.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201125121534/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19818-2

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News

The AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine Data Isn’t Up to Snuff – Wired

  • Vaccine produced by a partnership between a University of Oxford research institute, Vaccitech, and AstraZeneca, does not need to be stored at freezing temperatures.
  • Cheaper and easier to produce than the high-efficacy vaccines produced by BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna.
  • The price of AstraZeneca’s shares dropped on the news, and an analysis from an investment bank concluded, “We believe that this product will never be licensed in the US.”
  • A closer look at the the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials reveals some very shaky science.
    • Cherry-picked the data
    • Dosing issues
    • Opaque planning and data analysis procedures
    • Age group selection

https://www.wired.com/story/the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-data-isnt-up-to-snuff/

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Publications

No evidence for increased transmissibility from recurrent mutations in SARS-CoV-2 – Nature

We do not identify a single recurrent mutation in this set convincingly associated with increased viral transmission. Instead, recurrent mutations currently in circulation appear to be evolutionary neutral and primarily induced by the human immune system via RNA editing, rather than being signatures of adaptation. At this stage we find no evidence for significantly more transmissible lineages of SARS-CoV-2 due to recurrent mutations.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201125121534/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19818-2

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News

Number 10 cherry-picked ‘spurious’ Covid data to justify England’s second lockdown and may have intended to frighten the public, top Cambridge statistician claims – Daily Mail

  • Sir David Spiegelhalter suggested the Government tried to ‘manipulate’ Britons
  • Cherry-picked ‘worst-case scenarios’ to ‘instill a certain emotional reaction’
  • No10 lambasted for its apocalyptic graphs and spurious data shown to public

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8979123/Number-10-used-apocalyptic-Covid-19-graphs-frighten-public-lockdown-statistician.html

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News

Moderna CMO Tal Zaks: Data does not show that vaccine prevents you from potentially carrying this virus and infecting others – AXIOS HBO

Moderna Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks warns on #AxiosOnHBO to not “over-interpret” vaccine results: “They do not show that they prevent you from potentially carrying this virus…and infecting others.” Adding, we shouldn’t “change behaviors solely on the basis of vaccination.”

Mirrors:

Categories
Opinion

Landmark Danish study finds no significant effect for facemask wearers – Prof Carl Heneghan & Dr Tom Jefferson, The Spectator

In the end, there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19. 1.8 per cent of those wearing masks caught Covid, compared to 2.1 per cent of the control group. As a result, it seems that any effect masks have on preventing the spread of the disease in the community is small.

…there is a troubling lack of robust evidence on face masks and Covid-19…The only studies which have shown masks to be effective at stopping airborne diseases have been ‘observational’…But observational studies are prone to recall bias: in the heat of a pandemic, not very many people will recall if and when they used masks and at what distance they kept from others.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201119080242/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/do-masks-stop-the-spread-of-covid-19-

Categories
Publications

Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis – NCBI

Many countries across the globe utilized medical and non-medical facemasks as non-pharmaceutical intervention for reducing the transmission and infectivity of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). Although, scientific evidence supporting facemasks’ efficacy is lacking, adverse physiological, psychological and health effects are established. Is has been hypothesized that facemasks have compromised safety and efficacy profile and should be avoided from use. The current article comprehensively summarizes scientific evidences with respect to wearing facemasks in the COVID-19 era, providing prosper information for public health and decisions making.

…The data suggest that both medical and non-medical facemasks are ineffective to block human-to-human transmission of viral and infectious disease such SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, supporting against the usage of facemasks. Wearing facemasks has been demonstrated to have substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/

Categories
Opinion

The Great Reset Is Not a Conspiracy Theory – James Delingpole, Breitbart

But the Great Reset is not OK. It really doesn’t matter whether you want to cast its masterplan — which remember, ultimately includes the abolition of private property — as communist or fascist or technocratic. The much more important point is that it represents a totalitarian takeover by a small, powerful, oppressive, unelected elite which will leave the rest of us impoverished, immiserated, and deprived of our liberty.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/11/20/the-great-reset-is-not-a-conspiracy-theory/

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20210104212153/https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/11/20/the-great-reset-is-not-a-conspiracy-theory/

Categories
Opinion

Should you rush to get a COVID-19 vaccination? One specialist in Japan says he won’t – Prof. Masayuki Miyasaka The Mainichi

Two major U.S. pharmaceutical companies racing to develop novel coronavirus vaccines have announced that their vaccines have been confirmed to be over 90% effective. But Masayuki Miyasaka, a leading immunologist at Osaka University, told the Mainichi Shimbun in a recent interview that even after these vaccines become available, he does not plan to receive them for the time being.

At a meeting of the Committee on Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan’s House of Representatives on Nov. 17, Miyasaka stated, “There’s no doubt that their effectiveness is quite high, but their safety is not guaranteed at all,” sounding a word of caution about expectations for the vaccines.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20201120/p2a/00m/0na/008000c

Categories
Publications

COVID-19 in children: analysis of the first pandemic peak in England – BMJ

Children represented 1.1% (1,408/129,704) of SARS-CoV-2 positive cases between 16 January 2020 and 3 May 2020. In total, 540 305 people were tested for SARS-COV-2 and 129,704 (24.0%) were positive. In children aged <16 years, 35,200 tests were performed and 1408 (4.0%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2, compared to 19.1%–34.9% adults. Childhood cases increased from mid-March and peaked on 11 April before declining. Among 2,961 individuals presenting with ARI in primary care, 351 were children and 10 (2.8%) were positive compared with 9.3%–45.5% in adults. Eight children died and four (case-fatality rate, 0.3%; 95% CI 0.07% to 0.7%) were due to COVID-19. We found no evidence of excess mortality in children.

Children accounted for a very small proportion of confirmed cases despite the large numbers of children tested. SARS-CoV-2 positivity was low even in children with ARI. Our findings provide further evidence against the role of children in infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201124224223if_/https://adc.bmj.com/content/105/12/1180

Categories
Videos

Dr Mike Yeadon on the UK government’s mismanagement of COVID-19 on – Unlocked

YouTube has removed interview so we have archived the video in the above location. It is currently available on Unlocked Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/unlockedunitedkingdom/videos/vb.112364983833705/409747283542470/

Categories
Publications

A billion people have no legal identity – but a new app plans to change that – World Economic Forum

Ensuring everyone has a legal identity, including birth registration, by 2030 is one of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It prompted the World Bank to launch its Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative in 2014.

The latest data from the Bank shows there are just over 987 million people in the world who have no legal identity, down from 1.5 billion in 2016. The majority live in low-income countries where almost 45% of women and 28% of men lack a legal ID.

…Thompson’s app uses blockchain to preserve the user’s digital identity from interference, making it accessible only to the person whose ID it holds. As a digital solution, it goes with the grain of how many people in emerging economies manage their finances using smartphones.

http://archive.today/2021.01.02-174558/https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/legal-identity-id-app-aid-tech/

Categories
Publications

Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China – Nature

Stringent COVID-19 control measures were imposed in Wuhan between January 23 and April 8, 2020. Estimates of the prevalence of infection following the release of restrictions could inform post-lockdown pandemic management. Here, we describe a city-wide SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening programme between May 14 and June 1, 2020 in Wuhan. All city residents aged six years or older were eligible and 9,899,828 (92.9%) participated. No new symptomatic cases and 300 asymptomatic cases (detection rate 0.303/10,000, 95% CI 0.270–0.339/10,000) were identified. There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases. 107 of 34,424 previously recovered COVID-19 patients tested positive again (re-positive rate 0.31%, 95% CI 0.423–0.574%). The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Wuhan was therefore very low five to eight weeks after the end of lockdown.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w

Categories
News

What they DON’T tell you about Covid: Fewer beds taken up than last year, deaths a fraction of the grim forecasts, 95% of fatalities had underlying causes… and how the facts can be twisted to strike fear in our hearts – Daily Mail

  • Despite the fearmongering, the number of Covid-19 deaths is significantly lower than the peak back in April 
  • Latest ONS estimate shows that in the week ending November 14, new infections were already levelling off 
  • GCHQ has embedded a team in Downing Street to provide Boris Johnson with real-time updates of Covid-19
  • Analysts will sift through vast amounts of data to ensure Boris Johnson has the most up-to-date information

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8971669/What-DONT-tell-Covid-facts-twisted-strike-fear-hearts.html

Categories
News

Quarter of people may already be immune to coronavirus – even though many have never been infected – The Telegraph

PHE researchers believe people with high levels of T-cells likely to have picked up immunity from coronaviruses like common cold

A quarter of people may already be immune to coronavirus even though many of them have never been infected, a new study by Public Health England (PHE) suggests.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/19/many-could-immune-covid-despite-never-having-infected-study/

Categories
Publications

Predictive performance of international COVID-19 mortality forecasting models – medRxiv

The Imperial model had larger errors, about 5-fold higher than other models by six weeks. This appears to be largely driven by the aforementioned tendency to overestimate mortality. At twelve weeks, MAPE values were lowest for the IHME-MS-SEIR (23.7%) model, while the Imperial model had the most elevated MAPE (98.8%). Predictive performance between models was generally similar for median absolute errors (MAEs) 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.20151233v5.full

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Publications

Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation – Frontiers in Public Health

Results: Higher Covid death rates are observed in the [25/65°] latitude and in the [−35/−125°] longitude ranges. The national criteria most associated with death rate are life expectancy and its slowdown, public health context (metabolic and non-communicable diseases (NCD) burden vs. infectious diseases prevalence), economy (growth national product, financial support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate.

Conclusion: Countries that already experienced a stagnation or regression of life expectancy, with high income and NCD rates, had the highest price to pay. This burden was not alleviated by more stringent public decisions. Inherent factors have predetermined the Covid-19 mortality: understanding them may improve prevention strategies by increasing population resilience through better physical fitness and immunity.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full

Categories
News

SAGE was put on a pedestal… but their models clearly didn’t reflect reality – Daily Mail

  • SAGE admitted early virus modelling based on figures from online encyclopedia
  • Committee of scientists advising PM also had no expert on human coronavirus 
  • Dubious data formed the basis for the group’s calls for first national lockdown
  • Experts predicted that the peak would be in June – but it actually came in April  
  • Impact of care home staff spreading Covid by working in multiple sites not considered
  • Scientists failed to consider the impact agency workers would have on spreading Covid in care homes by moving between several different sites to work
  • There were more than 30,000 excess deaths in care homes because of Covid in 2020

Professor Mark Jit, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and member of SPI-M, said the group used data from Wikipedia in the UK along with hospitalisations in China and Northern Italy to inform their modelling. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8961245/SAGE-used-dodgy-data-WIKIPEDIA-model-Covid-crisis-spring-BBC-documentary-reveals.html

Categories
News

Exclusive: GCHQ giving Boris Johnson ‘real-time’ intelligence to tackle Covid – The Telegraph

Experts working inside Cabinet Office to sift through data that can inform policy-making

GCHQ has embedded a team in a Downing Street cell to provide Boris Johnson with real-time intelligence to combat the “emerging and changing threat” posed by Covid-19, The Telegraph can disclose.

GCHQ analysts have been given access to mobile phone data to track the public’s movements during the national lockdown. The up-to-the-minute reports on compliance are passed to the Prime Minister.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/11/18/exclusive-gchq-cell-giving-boris-johnson-real-time-intelligence/

Categories
Publications

Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers – Annals of Internal Medicine

The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection.

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817