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FEWER than one per cent of Covid-19 deaths in England’s hospitals has been among people under the age of 40, NHS data reveals.
Just 11 people below the age of 20 have been killed by the bug out of 22,049 confirmed fatalities. And there have been only 155 deaths in the 20 to 39 age bracket — with many of those tragedies coming among people with underlying health conditions.
That equates to just 0.75 per cent of hospital fatalities within the under-40s. Conversely, 52 per cent of those whose deaths are tied to coronavirus have been in the over-80s.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11566129/under-40s-less-1-percent-coonavir
[Humans Rights Watch] considered how the technology has been used by China, Israel, South Korea, the United States, and other governments, and gives guidelines to governments on ‘human rights risks’ posed by using mobile location data.
The is the worst interference with personal liberty in our history. For what is by historical standards not a very serious pandemic except for particular categories of vulnerable people who can isolate themselves voluntarily.
The problem about law is that it excludes common sense.
In the years following the [Swine Flu] pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) faced fierce criticism over its handling of the situation.
Some medical experts doubted whether the H1N1 outbreak was really a pandemic at all.
Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, a German doctor and former member of parliament, had been watching the spread of swine flu in Mexico City – where the virus was first recorded – and was puzzled at the reaction of the WHO.
Dr Wodarg eventually launched an inquiry into the Swine Flu pandemic and the WHO’s dealings with the pharmaceutical industry in the lead up to the N1H1 pandemic.
Government scientific advisers are furious at what they see as an attempt to censor their advice on government proposals during the Covid-19 lockdown by heavily redacting an official report before it was released to the public, the Guardian can reveal.
About 8,000 more people have died in their own homes since the start of the coronavirus pandemic than in normal times, a Guardian analysis has found, as concerns grow over the number avoiding going to hospital.
Of that total, 80% died of conditions unrelated to Covid-19, according to their death certificates. Doctors’ leaders have warned that fears and deprioritisation of non-coronavirus patients are taking a deadly toll.
“The two Chinese companies were offering a risky proposition: two million home test kits said to detect antibodies for the coronavirus for at least $20 million, take it or leave it.
The asking price was high, the technology was unproven and the money had to be paid upfront. And the buyer would be required to pick up the crate loads of test kits from a facility in China.
Yet British officials took the deal, according to a senior civil servant involved, then confidently promised tests would be available at pharmacies in as little as two weeks.”
Rapid antibody tests “have limited utility” for patients, the World Health Organization warned in an April 8 statement, telling doctors that such tests remained unfit for clinical purposes until they were proved to be accurate and effective.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/world/europe/coronavirus-antibody-test-uk.html
University of College London scientists sampled and sequenced the genomes of virus samples from more than 7,500 people who caught COVID-19
Their findings suggest the pandemic began sometime between October 6 and December 11, 2019
The virus appears to be mutating about as frequently as expected
A March study suggested that two separate strains of coronavirus spread from China, with the more aggressive one becoming dominant in Europe and the US
Now, the University of College London researchers say that their study suggests just a single strain swiftly spread around the globe
It has mutated, but it’s unclear if those changes have made it more or less deadly
Johan Giesecke, a state epidemiologist who advises the World Health Organisation, said the UK’s death toll suggested instating harsh social restrictions was not the best method of tackling the pandemic.
The risk of coronavirus for the young is “staggeringly low”, the UK’s top statistician has said – as he condemned the government’s “embarrassing” handling of Covid-19.
He made withering criticisms of the Government’s handling of the crisis, saying its treatment of statistics was “not trustworthy” and amounted to “number theatre” rather than an attempt to properly inform the public.
The vast majority of New Yorkers still walking into hospitals with COVID-19 have been sheltering at home and avoiding mass transit. Very few were even traveling on foot or in their own cars on a daily basis, according to a survey of new patients from over 100 hospitals across the state over a three-day span. Of those surveyed, 66% were at home before entering the hospital.
- Two in three people coming into hospitals with the virus were simply at home, Cuomo said.
- Of the 1,270 new patients surveyed, 18% were from nursing homes across New York state
- 4% were from assisted living facilities
- 2% were homeless
- Less than 1% were from prisons or jails
- Only 4% of those newly infected said they took public transportation on a daily basis.
66% of new admissions were from people who had largely been sheltering at home. The next highest source of admissions was from nursing homes, 18%.
The government’s daily briefings on #Covid_19 are “not trustworthy communication of statistics” says Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge
Covid-19 test kits in Tanzania have raised suspicion after samples taken from a goat and a pawpaw fruit came back with positive results, as the president said there were “technical errors”.
New study analysing dozens of actual Covid-19 clusters from around the world shows enclosed spaces are hotbeds of the virus
- The overall infection rate was six per cent, but it was much higher among friends (22 per cent) and family members (18 per cent).
- In terms of location, the main risk factors were homes (13 per cent) transport (12 per cent) and dinner and entertainment (seven per cent).
- Risk of infection is much higher within households or other enclosed environments in which contact is close and sustained.
- In the outdoors, it falls to something in the 0-5 per cent range.
- Children, it seems, are not only better able to resist the infection within the home but also less likely to bring it back with them.
- Close and prolonged contact is required for transmission of the virus.
- Risk is highest in enclosed environments such as houses, care facilities, public transport, bars and other indoor spaces where people congregate.
- Casual, short interactions are not the main driver of the epidemic.
- Susceptibility to infection increases with age.
- Just 11 people under the age of 20 have succumbed to Covid-19.
- Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College has a dismal record as a forecaster.
- There’s the possibility that the lockdown has actually made the virus more deadly.
- Bank of England warned that if the lockdown is extended until June the economy could shrink by 14 per cent this year.
- More than one-in-five adults now furloughed on 80per cent of their wages.
- A fifth of the working-age population could be jobless and the quality of people’s mental and physical health would plummet.
- Every day, about 1,700 people die in Britain. Only five years ago, in the winter of 2014/15, more than 28,000 people died from seasonal flu, not far off the current coronavirus death toll of just over 30,000.
- Direct evidence to support the two-metre rule is weak, and based almost entirely on modelling rather than real life.
None of them were healthy at the time they became infected with the virus. “All of the cases had pre-existing conditions and most of them had several,” says Alexandar Tzankov, a pathologist from the University of Basel.
[D]octors found “multiple pre-existing conditions” and they were present “in every single case.” The cause of death tended to be a respiratory tract infection, a lung infection, a pulmonary embolism or a combination of all three. The most common pre-existing conditions found by the pathologists pertained to the cardiovascular system or the lungs.
“Essentially, COVID-19 isn’t a problem to children or the normal, healthy population,” says Püschel. Furthermore, each individual’s physical condition is a more important factor than age, he says. “Age by itself isn’t an illness. Older people are more likely to suffer from illnesses, but the extent of pre-existing conditions is relevant,” Püschel says
Throughout the UK’s coronavirus crisis, the government has stressed its response has been guided not by ideology; not by politics – but by the science. So what are the scientific justifications for lockdown?
The horrible truth is that it now looks like in many of the early cases, the disease was probably caught in hospitals and doctors’ surgeries. That is where the virus kept returning, in the lungs of sick people, and that is where the next person often caught it, including plenty of healthcare workers. Many of these may not have realised they had it, or thought they had a mild cold. They then gave it to yet more elderly patients who were in hospital for other reasons, some of whom were sent back to care homes when the National Health Service made space on the wards for the expected wave of coronavirus patients.
Once the epidemic is under control in hospitals and care homes, the disease might die out anyway, even without lockdown. In sharp contrast to the pattern among the elderly, children do not transmit the virus much if at all. A recent review by paediatricians could not find a single case of a child passing the disease on and said the evidence ‘consistently demonstrates reduced infection and infectivity of children in the transmission chain’. One boy who caught it while skiing failed to give it to 170 contacts, but he also had both flu and a cold, which he donated to two siblings. Children appear to have ACE2 receptors, the cellular lock that the coronavirus picks, in their noses but not their lungs.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-know-everything-and-nothing-about-covid