In summary, all the 455 contacts were excluded from SARS-CoV-2 infection and we conclude that the infectivity of some asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers might be weak.
Patients kept waiting for hours secretly record NHS hospital staff doing #TikTok rehearsal.
“That’s why we’ve been waiting so long”
“They are mugging the system”
“Is this really happening? Am I really witnessing this??”
“I’ve seen it all now”
Source: https://t.co/sgI8efmG3I
“Most important is stopping the transmission from hospital to nursing home,” Lum said. “We do a very good job on isolation. Once we have any person infected we isolate them in hospital for three months and at the same time we isolate all the close contact people in a separate quarantine centre for 14 days for observation.”
I can’t clap for the NHS because of a truth that all NHS staff come to learn – that the NHS runs only by exploiting its workers.
This unaccountability is not limited to hospital management. The failures of procurement departments and of Public Health England during this crisis are by now well-documented. As for how much time and money is wasted by countless other NHS bodies – including (but not limited to) NHS Digital, NHS Resolution and NHS Business Services Authority – I can only guess. No one seems interested in holding these bodies to account, either.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/26/as-an-itu-doctor-i-cannot-clap-for-the-nhs/
Covid-19 patients are no longer infectious after 11 days of getting sick even though some may still test positive, according to a new study by infectious disease experts in Singapore.
A positive test “does not equate to infectiousness or viable virus,” a joint research paper by Singapore’s National Centre for Infectious Diseases and the Academy of Medicine, Singapore said. The virus “could not be isolated or cultured after day 11 of illness.”
What’s truly surprising is just how recent the theory behind lockdown and forced distancing actually is. So far as anyone can tell, the intellectual machinery that made this mess was invented 14 years ago, and not by epidemiologists but by computer-simulation modelers. It was adopted not by experienced doctors – they warned ferociously against it – but by politicians.
As Boris Johnson’s government plunges the UK further into political chaos, a ‘No 10 source’ has been very busy. Some of the UK’s most influential political journalists seem to be repeating whatever this unnamed and unverified source says. But this isn’t journalism, it’s propaganda. And both the BBC and ITV‘s political editors have turned up the megaphone as full-on government mouthpieces.
Covid conformism must be confronted. In their echo chambers, where they’re all trying to outdo each other in their levels of commitment to smashing Covid, the political and media elites have become increasingly blinkered, dogmatic and intolerant on everything related to Covid-19. The lack of relaxed, freely stated opposition to their lockdown mania means they become madder and madder in their commitment to it. The corrosion of freedom of thought in relation to Covid-19 has deadly consequences, because it means the lockdown endures – nine weeks now – when many people know in their heart of hearts that it is wrong and deeply damaging to the future of this country.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/25/the-public-must-lead-us-out-of-the-lockdown/
Boris Johnson has ‘trashed’ public trust and adherence to lockdown, Government advisers warned last night.
* Stephen Reicher, psychology professor at The University of St Andrew
* Susan Michie, professor of health psychology at University College London
* Professor West, health psychology professor at UCL
I think I now understand why this period has come to be known by the repulsive word ‘lockdown’, an American term which describes the punishment of rioting convicts in a penitentiary, by confining them in their cells for long periods.
We are learning, during this induction period, to do what we are told and to become obedient, servile citizens of a new authoritarian State. We are unlearning the old rules of freedom.
..all the proper institutions of a civil society have grown so weak that the Strong State can now get its way.
The married family, the independent middle-class, able to make a decent living on the basis of hard-won qualifications, the political parties, Parliament itself, the Opposition, the Monarchy, the Armed Forces, the Church (pathetically anxious to close itself), the Civil Service, most of the media, the BBC, are just husks of what they were 50 years ago.
Podcast highlights
- There were many signs that were really available by the end of February indicating this is a virus that has ‘weak legs.’
- The data was all available by the end of February [2020] and anyone who can use Excel could analyse it.
- “The best statistical test is the eyeball test.” And if you chart things in Excel, you can very quickly make an instinctive judgement.
- No country succeeded in protecting the elderly and nursing homes–it’s hard thing to do.
- We had a soft flu season. The people who would have been susceptible to a generic flu were hit by a virus that came late and swept through rapidly. This could explain the high COVID-19 death numbers among the vulnerable.
- Many analysts agree that the lockdown did nothing to affect the peak of infections and deaths.
- None of the pro-lockdown people seemed to analyse the data and used the data to support lockdown.
- Many pro-lockdown scientific colleagues are academics receiving salaries; their lives would not be negatively affected by the lockdown. Scientists love nothing more than staying at home to work.
- What really matters is the years lost rather than the number of dead. Life is risky and when you’re old, life is more risky. You’re expecting younger people to give their future to get two more months of life.
- While COVID-19 is not the same as the flu, the numbers look very similar.
- People rolled over for a lockdown based on no real solid science.
- There’s a whole fallacy about the R value because it is dependent on the time you’re infected and no one knows what the time infected is, no one knows about hidden cases.
Source website: https://thefatemperor.com
Injected influenza vaccines probably have a small protective effect against influenza and ILI (moderate-certainty evidence), as 71 people would need to be vaccinated to avoid one influenza case, and 29 would need to be vaccinated to avoid one case of ILI. Vaccination may have little or no appreciable effect on hospitalisations (low-certainty evidence) or number of working days lost.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD001269/ARI_vaccines-prevent-influenza-healthy-adults
Lockdown caused more deaths than it saved, a Nobel laureate scientist said on Saturday, as he predicted the UK would emerge from Covid-19 within weeks.
Michael Levitt, a Stanford University professor who correctly predicted the initial trajectory of the pandemic, sent messages to Professor Neil Ferguson in March telling the influential government advisor he had over-estimated the potential death toll by “10 or 12 times”.
The Imperial College professor’s modelling, a major factor in the Government’s apparent abandoning of a so-called herd-immunity policy, was part of an unnecessary “panic virus” which spread among global political leaders, Prof Levitt now tells the Telegraph.
[P]harmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced a $1.2 billion deal with the US government to produce 400 million doses of the unproven coronavirus vaccine first produced in Prof Hill’s Oxford lab.
Meanwhile, the British Government has agreed to pay for up to 100 million doses, adding that 30 million may be ready for UK citizens by September.
Project leader Prof Hill warns against ‘over-promising’, as vaccine success is far from guaranteed
Social distancing is a fantasy…like it or not, every individual citizen is going to have make their own risk assessments, use their common sense and make their own decisions about how to live their lives. “Stay away from everyone” is a clear message but not credible.
During the surreal early weeks of the lockdown, the notion of long-term social distancing seemed logical and sensible, but as the weeks rolled by, the utter ludicrousness of it became apparent. Matt Hancock helped to emphasise the absurdity of it all when he said that it will not be possible to hug anyone outside of our household until the virus was “totally sorted”.
Currently, over 8 per cent of people who were tested in ‘pillar two’ have been told that their test result is ‘unclear’. Pillar two is the strand of the government’s testing strategy that deals with at-home tests and those carried out at drive-through centres. This pillar is designed for certain key workers and those who have been randomly selected for testing.
Yet the NHS instructions given to Sarah make clear that while the test might be ‘uncomfortable’, patients should stop if they ‘feel strong resistance or pain’. In other words, she was told to stop swabbing if it hurt. The tests may be accurate in a clinical setting but the problem comes when people are expected to try to carry out the procedure themselves in the real world.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/revealed-90-000-void-uk-covid-tests
The observation that the greatest reduction in COVID-19 cases was achieved under the combined [social distancing] intervention is not surprising. However, the assessment of the additional benefit of each intervention, when implemented in combination, offers valuable insight. Since each approach individually will result in considerable societal disruption, it is important to understand the extent of intervention needed to reduce transmission and disease burden.
The effectiveness and societal impact of quarantine and social distancing will depend on the credibility of public health authorities, political leaders, and institutions. It is important that policy makers maintain the public’s trust through use of evidence-based interventions and fully transparent, fact-based communication.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30190-0/fulltext
A healthcare firm which employs the prominent Conservative politician Owen Paterson as a paid consultant has been awarded a £133m contract without any other firms being given the opportunity to bid for the work.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has given Randox the contract to produce testing kits to help respond to the coronavirus pandemic. It was awarded “without prior publication of a call for competition”, according to details of the contract seen by the Guardian.
Doctors have told The BMJ they are deeply concerned at the number of patients becoming infected with covid-19 in NHS hospitals in England and have called for more stringent infection control measures to combat its spread.
[M]any of these measures were not included in the government’s initial decree for phase two of the easing. Many of these changes are due to pressure applied by the public and civil society.
It was striking that one of the first changes was made after pressure from what is traditionally one of the most conservative sections of Italian society: the Catholic Church…Some brave priests were violating the lockdown.
Officially, the [lockdown] process has been led by experts. The government has created various committees of more than 450 experts to guide its coronavirus policies. These include a taskforce established on 10 April of economists, scientists, managers and psychologists to help the government navigate the path out of lockdown.
Economic hardship was undoubtedly a major factor compelling people to protest….Lots of Italians are angry because they can see there is no rationale or fairness in the way the government has chosen to ease the lockdown.
Only a truly democratic government, which draws its authority from the people, has a chance of dealing effectively with Covid-19 and the emerging social and economic crisis.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/21/the-people-are-leading-italy-out-of-lockdown/