Categories
Opinion

The lockdowns still aren’t working – Spiked

It is also worth noting another unsayable fact at this point: approximately the same number of people have always been projected to contract Covid-19 in most ‘curve flattening’ scenarios. Lockdowns simply spread the deaths out across a longer period of time.

The original argument for locking down to ‘flatten the curve’ was very specifically about stopping patients from entering hospital in a single stream that would overwhelm healthcare resources and cause millions of incidental deaths. Now, however, we know that hospitals have not been swamped on a large scale in any of the non-lockdown US states, nor in nations such as Sweden which never locked down. In fact, more than 200 hospitals in lightly hit areas of both lockdown and social-distancing states have begun to furlough their employees, after cancelling elective procedures in preparation for a Covid wave that simply never arrived.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/08/the-lockdowns-still-arent-working/

Categories
Videos

Perspectives on the Pandemic | Professor Knut Wittkowski Update Interview | Episode 5

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  • Professor Neil Ferguson was not doing science.
  • Lockdowns are worse than useless.
  • It was known to everyone that the lockdown would cause a catastrophe.
  • Isolating nursing homes would have prevented the load of hospitals.
  • The lockdown approach taken by most governments was a human catastrophe that should never have happened.
  • All we have done is slowed the spread of herd immunity and increased the risk to the elderly.
  • We have wasted a lot of time, money and lives.
  • The spread of respiratory diseases are predictable and relatively short.
  • Bill Gate’s comments about the need to lockdown until a vaccine is ready is absurd and has nothing to do with reality.
  • We don’t need a vaccine for COVID-19.
  • “I don’t know where the government finds these so-called experts who very obviously don’t understand the very basics of epidemiology.”
  • Tragic stories from some doctors are not representative of the general experience. We don’t stop living our lives because something goes wrong in a particular place.
  • The Swedish approach shows that the draconian measures taken in other countries were unnecessary.
  • We may see a ‘Second Wave’ rebound but it may be low.
  • There is no reason to believe that COVID-19 will be fundamentally different from other coronaviruses.
  • Having a novel virus is not novel.
  • We have no science about the effect of social distancing.
  • The COVID-19 disaster is a failure of the people to take control of the government.
  • There is no reason to wait before opening up schools and businesses.

Categories
News

Two new waves of deaths are about to break over the NHS, new analysis warns – The Telegraph

A new analysis by Edge Health, a leading provider of data to NHS trusts, warns that a second and then a third wave of “non-corona” deaths are about to hit Britain. Unless radical solutions can be found to resume normal service and slash waiting lists, the NHS may be forced to institute a formal regime of rationing.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/two-new-waves-deaths-break-nhs-new-analysis-warns/

Categories
Publications

It’s not exponential: An economist’s view of the epidemiological curve

The spread of COVID-19 is not going to follow an exponential curve – and grave errors will follow if analysts believe it will. The number of new cases rises rapidly, peaks, and then declines. It’s called the epidemiological curve. It’s not a theory or hypothesis; it plays out that way every flu season. It is how it has played out in China and Korea for COVID-19. Flattening the peak to avoid overloading the healthcare system is the main medical goal of the seemingly extreme containment policies we have seen to date.

https://voxeu.org/article/it-s-not-exponential-economist-s-view-epidemiological-curve

Categories
Videos

There never was a surge but we’re in danger of losing our capacity to deal with the second wave because we panicked – Tony Heller

Tony Heller compares COVID-19 with other pandemics and explains why the lockdown may create an even more devastating second wave.

Medical professionals say there never was a surge, hospital activity is at a low and we’re in danger of losing our capacity to deal with the second wave because we panicked.

Categories
News

The hospital I work in is so quiet – MumsNet

Forum posts apparently show NHS workers and patients discussing the empty UK hospitals. Screenshot below.

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3886452-The-hospital-I-work-in-is-so-quiet

Go to forum

Categories
News

NHS crisis: 20 hospitals declare black alert as patient safety no longer assured – The Guardian (2017)

More than 20 hospitals in England have had to declare a black alert this week after becoming so overcrowded that they could no longer guarantee patient safety and provide their full range of normal services.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/11/nhs-crisis-20-hospitals-declare-black-alert-as-patient-safety-no-longer-assured

Categories
News

Exclusive: Nightingale largely empty as ICUs handle surge – HSJ

London’s Nightingale hospital has remained largely empty, with just 19 patients being treated at the facility over the Easter weekend, HSJ understands.

https://www.hsj.co.uk/service-design/exclusive-nightingale-largely-empty-as-icus-handle-surge/7027398.article

Categories
News

The coronavirus lockdown is also harming the nation’s health – Dr. Max Pemberton, The Daily Mail

Colleagues around the country report their clinics have never felt emptier or their workloads lighter as hospitals have gone on a war footing.

Yes, of course it is a war we have to fight with every weapon at our disposal. But I read, with a growing sense of outrage, a leaked report this week claiming that over the Easter weekend just 19 patients were treated at the newly-created 4,000-bed Nightingale Hospital in East London.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8223733/Have-gone-far-fear-lockdown-harming-nations-health-writes-Dr-MAX-PEMBERTON.html

Categories
Publications

Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through the postpandemic period – Sicence Magazine

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/14/science.abb5793

Categories
News

Flu piles pressure on over-stretched NHS hospitals – Daily Mail

This article in January, before COVID-19 scare, was already warning about a hospital crisis for this year’s flu wave.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6603277/Flu-piles-pressure-stretched-NHS-hospitals-outbreak-KILLS-26-people-week.html

Categories
News

Hospital A&E wards ‘in crisis over shortage of emergency doctors’ – The Guardian (2016)

Article from 2016:

Royal College of Emergency Medicine says workforce is not growing fast enough to keep pace with rising numbers of patients.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/10/hospital-a-and-e-crisis-shortage-emergency-doctors

Categories
News

Offline: Is the NHS in crisis? – The Lancet (2017)

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)31187-X/fulltext

Categories
News

Overstretched hospitals face winter flu crisis, doctors warn – The Guardian (2017)

Article from 2017 warning about the risk of A&E departments ‘grinding to a halt’.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/24/winter-flu-crisis-hospitals-overstretched