Shutting down primary schools may have been unnecessary as a Swedish study suggests that keeping them open had no impact on contagion.
There was no measurable difference in the number of coronavirus cases among children in Sweden, where schools were left open, compared with neighboring Finland, where schools were shut, the research showed.
A working paper, published by the Public Health Agency of Sweden and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, compares the two countries’ approach to education during the pandemic.
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AstraZeneca has been granted protection from future product liability claims related to its COVID-19 vaccine hopeful by most of the countries with which it has struck supply agreements, a senior executive told Reuters.
The World Health Organization hired a high-powered public relations firm to seek out so-called influencers to help build trust in the organization’s coronavirus response.
WHO paid $135,000 to the firm Hill and Knowlton Strategies, according to documents filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
WHO has come under intense scrutiny for amplifying the Chinese government’s false claims about the coronavirus.
Hill and Knowlton proposed identifying celebrities and other social media users with clout to ‘amplify’ WHO’s messaging about the pandemic.
https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/17/world-health-organization-coronavirus-celebrity-influencers/
The government skipped essential data privacy impact assessments in its rush to get the system up and running
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4017986/uk-test-trace-illegal-gdpr
A critical factor that makes the elderly more susceptible to infectious diseases is what immunologists call “immunosenescence”: the decline in the immune system’s functionality as people age. This is also associated with an increase in the incidence of inflammatory diseases, because an elderly body tends to be in a state of chronic low-grade inflammation. This “inflamm-aging” is one reason why older people have tendencies to develop more severe forms of respiratory diseases.
The key problem with SARS-CoV-2 infection is inflammation in the respiratory tract, which can be exacerbated in individuals predisposed towards potent inflammatory responses.
Immunosenescence also results in diminished responses to vaccination. Indeed, annual flu vaccines are notoriously less effective in the elderly. This phenomenon is very important in the context of the massive efforts and funds being invested worldwide into the ultra-rapid development of vaccines for COVID-19.
The fact that elderly people do not respond well to immunizations has largely been ignored in most discussions of COVID-19 vaccines, despite this being the group in greatest need. Most of the scientific community’s experience with vaccine development for any disease has been focused on vaccinating the relatively young.
The Department of Health has conceded the initiative to trace contacts of people infected with Covid-19 was launched without carrying out an assessment of its impact on privacy.
The Open Rights Group (ORG) says the admission means the initiative has been unlawful since it began on 28 May.
As national restrictions were imposed, experts from the Department of Health, the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the government’s Actuary Department and the Home Office forecast the collateral damage from delays to healthcare and the effects of recession arising from the pandemic response.
It estimated that in a reasonable worst case scenario, around 50,000 people would die from coronavirus in the first six months of the pandemic, with mitigation measures in place.
[T]he report published in April they calculated that up to 25,000 could die from delays to treatment in the same period and a further 185,000 in the medium to long term – amounting to nearly one million years of life lost.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/19/lockdown-may-cost-200k-lives-government-report-shows/
Britain’s leading choirmasters and conductors have criticised the ban on singing in churches as based on “assumptions, not science” as they urge ministers to reverse the veto.
- Some experts argued that masks would help slow the infection rate.
- Others pointed out that improper use of face masks can amplify risks, for instance by acting as a reservoir for virus particles.
- It seems that today’s mantra of ‘listen to the science’ is not as straightforward as it seems.
- Claims to wear masks are untested and unchallenged, then elevated to the status of ‘the science’.
- The hasty assembling of research articles in support of a policy position is not science. This is as likely to be to be dangerously misleading as it is to yield even negligible benefits.
- Scientific controversy in the 21st century is settled by institutional weight and muscle, not by experiment.
- The president of the Royal Society wants to have his cake and eat it: he wants the government to defer to institutional science, but not for science to be accountable for this influence.
- The government, weakened by its capitulations to breakfast TV anchors, politically motivated scientists and scientific institutions, may find itself unable to roll back policies which turn out to do more harm than good.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/16/the-government-has-lost-control/
- Sweden’s total deaths per million in population as of July 14 is 549. That’s considerably lower than the deaths per million rate in the UK, which is 662, and in Spain, which is 608. In Belgium, the death rate is 884.
- Sweden deaths per million is many times better than the rates found in New Jersey and New York: 1,763 and 1,669.
- Articles condemning Sweden’s “failure” rarely if ever mention these comparisons.
- Nonlockdown Sweden has a death rate similar to harsh-lockdown France can only be explained by claiming France didn’t lock down harshly enough or long enough.
- Two weeks after the WHO’s prediction that Sweden will have a resurgence in COVID-19, both cases and deaths in Sweden continue to trend downward.
- Thanks to Sweden we know what both lockdown and nonlockdown countries look like: they look remarkably similar in some cases.
- After all, after failing to implement a lockdown for months, Sweden is still nowhere near matching the death rates reported in New York.
https://mises.org/power-market/medias-jihad-against-swedens-no-lockdown-policy-ignores-key-facts
Coronavirus tests used by the NHS may be unsafe and have been halted, the Government has announced.
The Department of Health said the NHS Test and Trace service had been notified that some test kits produced by Randox Laboratories may not meet required safety standards.
- From late-February 2020, Birmingham City Council gave care homes a £1,000 extra cash to take in hospital patients in a hurry, including some with coronavirus.
- Reason: more NHS beds could be freed up for coronavirus patients.
- Care home had to bid for the resident in a four hour window and, if their bid was ‘winning’, organise admission within 24 hours – regardless of the citizen’s Covid-19 testing or diagnosis status at the point of discharge.
- Care home manager, Jane Farr, of Digby Manor care home in Erdington, believes her rejection of the offer is one of the reasons none of her residents have been infected.
- From late February, any in-patients deemed ‘fit to discharge’ were rapidly moved out of hospital so hospital staff could focus on coronavirus patients.
- Dr David Rosser, chief executive of University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) said the city created too much capacity – indicating some of the frantic measures to empty beds turned out to be not needed.
- From April 15 the Government’s rules changed and all discharged residents were supposed to undergo a test first.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/revealed-16-care-homes-given-18550503
- There is no scientific evidence that masks are effective in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
- Sweeping mask recommendations will not reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission, as evidenced by the widespread practice of wearing such masks in Hubei province, China.
- Cloth masks will be ineffective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission, whether worn as source control or as PPE.
- Surgical masks likely have some utility as source control from a symptomatic patient in a healthcare setting to stop the spread of large cough particles and limit the lateral dispersion of cough particles.
- Surgical masks may also have very limited utility as source control or PPE in households.
- Authors do not know whether respirators are an effective intervention as source control for the public.
- A non-fit-tested respirator may not offer any better protection than a surgical mask.
- Respirators work as PPE only when they are the right size and have been fit-tested to demonstrate they achieve an adequate protection factor.
- There is no evidence to support use of cloth masks by the public or healthcare workers to control the emission of particles from the wearer.
- Wearing surgical masks in households appears to have very little impact on transmission of respiratory disease.
- There is no evidence that surgical masks worn by healthcare workers are effective at limiting the emission of small particles or in preventing contamination of wounds during surgery.
- There is moderate evidence that surgical masks worn by patients in healthcare settings can lower the emission of large particles generated during coughing and limited evidence that small particle emission may also be reduced.
- Data from laboratory studies indicate masks offer very low filter collection efficiency for the smaller particles.
- The authors were unable to locate any well-performed studies of cloth mask leakage when worn on the face—either inward or outward leakage.
- Many references to coverings employ very crude, non-standardized methods or are not relevant to cloth face coverings because they evaluate respirators or surgical masks.
- The National Academies of Sciences Rapid Expert Consultation on the Effectiveness of Fabric Masks for the COVID-19 Pandemic: “The evidence from…laboratory filtration studies suggests that such fabric masks may reduce the transmission of larger respiratory droplets. There is little evidence regarding the transmission of small aerosolized particulates of the size potentially exhaled by asymptomatic or presymptomatic individuals with COVID-19.”
- Authors concerned that many people do not understand the very limited degree of protection a cloth mask or face covering likely offers as source control for people located nearby.
- Cloth masks and face coverings likely do not offer the same degree of protection as physical distancing, isolation, or limiting personal contact time.
- Transmission is not simply a function of short random interactions between individuals, but rather a function of particle concentration in the air and the time exposed to that concentration.
- A cloth mask or face covering does very little to prevent the emission or inhalation of small particles.
Key quotes:
• There was “massive confusion” about different Covid data between England’s health bodies. “Public Health England figures are about double the ONS figures because PHE are reporting anybody who has had a positive Covid death in the past… This will get increasingly confusing as we go into the next Winter because there could be a new outbreak and new deaths while also still reporting on historical deaths… This is a problem for epidemiologists and media… ”
• Even a “28 period cut-off is still not ideal for accurate death numbers because there is “immediate cause and underlying cause… Immediate cause means you’ve had Covid within 21 days but outside of that, it becomes the underlying cause — something that contributed to your death but wasn’t a direct cause. A 21 day cut-off would be helpful because it gives a clearer understanding of that distinction”
• “We follow excess deaths which is the most accurate information about what’s going on at that moment, but it can’t tell you what those deaths are caused by” (i.e. people not coming forward with heart attacks etc)
• “There’s an important distinction between lives lost and life years lost. One of the things we’ll be watching very closely over the next six months is how many people would have actually died in the next six months… That’s where the excess deaths really matter. If we start to see it trend significantly under for the next few months, we’ll start to come forward with information that suggests there was a group of vulnerable people that any respiratory infection would have shortened their life.”
• “In the media you’ll always hear about catastrophe and the consequences of that. One of the things we notice is that when you don’t hear anything that usually means there’s good news happening. So when Sweden looks worse you hear about it but when it’s not so bad, like now, you never see it in the media.”
References for the video can be found at the content creator’s website at https://the-iceberg.net
Here, it seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not. PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the COVID test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested COVID positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE COVID death figures.
By this PHE definition, no one with COVID in England is allowed to ever recover from their illness. A patient who has tested positive, but successfully treated and discharged from hospital, will still be counted as a COVID death even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later.
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Preventing a covid-19 pandemic – BMJ
A randomized placebo-controlled trial in children showed that flu shots increased fivefold the risk of acute respiratory infections caused by a group of noninfluenza viruses, including coronaviruses. (Cowling et al, Clin Infect Dis 2012;54:1778) From Table 3, vaccine recipients had 20 noninfluenza virus-positive ARIs and 19 virus-negative ARIs; non-recipients had 3 noninfluenza virus-positive ARIs and 14 virus-negative ARIs. These figures yield an odds ratio of 4.91 (CI 1.04 to8.14).
Such an observation may seem counterintuitive, but it is possible that influenza vaccines alter our immune systems non-specifically to increase susceptibility to other infections; this has been observed with DTP and other vaccines. (Benn et al, Trends in Immunology, May 2013) There are other immune mechanisms that might also explain the observation.
In reality many of the people who died from Covid-19 were likely to die this year anyway, so in one respect this estimate is likely to be too high. In another respect it’s likely to be too low, as it will not include ‘lockdown deaths’, that is, the deaths from delayed cancer and heart treatments, and so on, but as I was interested in the effect of Covid-19 I didn’t want those in my graph anyway. (Another complication is that not everyone who is classed as a Covid-19 death actually died from it, but I decided to ignore this.)
The five year average for 2015-19 is 531,355 deaths per year. As of writing this there were 42,462 Covid-19 deaths in the UK. There are likely to be a few more deaths in the next few weeks, but not many more, as the disease is (barring an unlikely second wave in winter), on its way out. Besides, the number we are adding on here is for the whole of the UK, not just England and Wales, so if anything this number is inflated. That gives us 573,817 deaths for 2020. Then I got hold of the historical population figures for England and Wales, and calculated the death rates per 1000 from it, so that population increases are taken account of. Here is the result:
https://thecritic.co.uk/this-is-what-we-amputated-a-limb-for/
Ben Humberstone, Head of Health Analysis and Life Events, Office for National Statistics:
‘Today’s analysis shows that jobs involving close proximity with others, and those where there is regular exposure to disease, have some of the highest rates of death from COVID-19. However, our findings do not prove conclusively that the observed rates of death involving COVID-19 are necessarily caused by differences in occupational exposure.’
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge of information being presented to clinicians regarding this novel and deadly disease. There is a clear urgency to collate, review, appraise and act on this information if we are to do the best for clinicians and patients. However, the speed of the pandemic is a threat to traditional models of knowledge translation and practice change. In this concepts paper, we argue that clinicians need to be agile in their thinking and practice in order to find the right time to change. Adoption of new methods should be based on clinical judgement, the weight of evidence and the balance of probabilities that any new technique, test or treatment might work. The pandemic requires all of us to reach a new level of evidence-based medicine characterised by scepticism, thoughtfulness, responsiveness and clinically agility in practice.
https://emj.bmj.com/content/early/2020/07/09/emermed-2020-210098