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Opinion

Alistair Haimes: The virus that turned up late

“There are really only two particularly unusual things about the Covid-19 epidemic: the timing of its arrival and the lockdown some countries declared.”

Deaths per day, as is well-reported, peaked around Easter; and because deaths lag infections by something around three weeks, this implies that infections peaked sometime in mid-March. If you add up all the bars in the chart and fill in the blank area of deaths still to come, we are looking at a killer that, in scale, is bad-but-nothing-special compared to killers of previous years. Panning out: as a killer worldwide, it looks as though Covid is going to take a toll perhaps 1% of 1918’s Spanish Flu.

…the dark blue line is 2019-20, with Covid-19; the turquoise and red lines are the bad flu years of 1998-99 and 1999-2000.

…Covid-19 is narrowly in third place as a killer to remember, behind the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 influenzas (2017-18’s ‘Beast from the East’, the green line, doesn’t place), a point also made by American statistician William Briggs.

Alistair Haimes: The virus that turned up late
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News

Coronavirus risk for young is ‘staggeringly low’, says UK’s top statistician – The Telegraph

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.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/10/coronavirus-risk-young-staggeringly-low-says-uks-top-statistician/

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Opinion

We DON’T have the worst Covid-19 death rate in Europe and it’s wicked of the Left to pretend we do – Daily Mail

The grim threshold was supposedly crossed when the UK’s mortality rate reached 29,427 deaths, seemingly surpassing Italy’s figure of 29,029. But those bald figures are like any other statistic, utterly devoid of meaning when stripped of context.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8303639/DAN-HODGES-dont-worst-Covid-19-death-rate-Europe-wicked-pretend-do.html#comments

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News Videos

The government’s daily briefings are “not trustworthy communication of statistics” – Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, BBC

The government’s daily briefings on #Covid_19 are “not trustworthy communication of statistics” says Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge

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Opinion

Ten reasons to end the lockdown now – Dr. John Lee, The Spectator

Even if one could understand why lockdown was imposed, it very rapidly became apparent that it had not been thought through. Not in terms of the wider effects on society (which have yet to be counted) and not even in terms of the ways that the virus itself might behave. But at the start, there was hardly any evidence. Everyone was guessing. Now we have a world of evidence, from around the globe, and the case for starting to reverse lockdown is compelling.

  1. You cannot understand the significance of this virus simply by looking at the raw death figures
  2. The policy response to the virus has been driven by modelling of Covid – not other factors
  3. We don’t know if lockdown is working
  4. We should ease the lockdown to save lives
  5. Lockdown is not sustainable
  6. Lockdown directly harms those most likely to be affected by coronavirus
  7. Lockdown directly harms those who will be largely unaffected by coronavirus
  8. The health service has not been overwhelmed nor likely to be 
  9. The virus is almost certainly not a constant threat
  10. People can be trusted to behave sensibly

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/ten-reasons-to-end-the-lockdown-now

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News

How coronavirus spreads, and why some are spared – and others not – The Telegraph

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.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-spreads-affects-countries-differently/

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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/

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Publications

Global Covid-19 Case Fatality Rates – CEBM

This page is updated regularly as new information emerges. It sets out the current Case Fatality Rate (CFR) estimates, the country-specific issues affecting the CFR, and provides a current best estimate of the CFR, and more importantly, the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR).

Global Covid-19 Case Fatality Rates
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News Videos

Coronavirus: Is the government really ‘following the science’? – BBC Newsnight

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?

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News Opinion

Matt Ridley We know everything – and nothing – about Covid – The Spectator

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

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Publications

Children are not COVID-19 super spreaders: time to go back to school – BMJ

At the current time, children do not appear to be super spreaders. Sero-surveillance data will not be available to confirm or refute these findings prior to the urgent policy decisions that need to be taken in the next few weeks such as how and when to re-open schools. Policies for non-pharmacological interventions involving children are going to have to be made on a risk–benefit basis with current evidence available.

https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2020/05/05/archdischild-2020-319474

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News Videos

Perspectives on the Pandemic | The Bakersfield Doctors | Episode 6

Perspectives on the Pandemic – Episode 6: When Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Antin Massihi held a press conference on April 22nd about the results of testing they conducted at their urgent care facilities around Bakersfield, California, the video, uploaded by a local ABC news affiliate, went viral. After reaching five million views, YouTube took it down on the grounds that it “violated community standards.” We followed up with the doctors to determine what was so dangerous about their message. What we discovered were reasonable and well-meaning professionals whose voices should be heard.

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News

Coronavirus: 2million have now claimed benefits in UK since outbreak took hold – The Mirror

An astonishing 1.8million have claimed Universal Credit, 250,000 claimed jobseekers’ allowance and 20,000 claimed Employment and Support Allowance between March 16 and the end of April.

Even now UC claims are still running at around 25,000 a day – double the usual rate, MPs heard.

The new figures suggest around 5million people may now be on Universal Credit in the UK – many of them in work on low incomes.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-coronavirus-2million-now-claimed-21972159

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News

Herd immunity may only need 10-20 per cent of people to be infected – The Spectator

 A team led by Gabriela Gomes of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine argues that it is wrong to assume that herd immunity will only be achieved when 60 per cent of people have been infected. It is more likely, they argue, that the true figure lies between 10 and 20 per cent. The 60 per cent figure, they say, is based on the idea that we are all equally likely to contract the virus. In reality, there is a wide variation in an individual’s susceptibility to becoming infected. People who are frail or who have greater exposure to the virus – perhaps because they are working in an intensive care unit – are in practice far more likely to contract the disease. As the epidemic progresses the pool of easily-infected individuals dries up and the virus has to search out new victims who are less-easily infected.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/herd-immunity-may-only-need-a-10-per-cent-infection-rate

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Opinion Videos

Nobel prize winning scientist Prof Michael Levitt: lockdown a “huge mistake” – UnHerd

With a purely statistical perspective, [Prof Michael Levitt] has been playing close attention to the Covid-19 pandemic since January, when most of us were not even aware of it. He first spoke out in early February, when through analysing the numbers of cases and deaths in Hubei province he predicted with remarkable accuracy that the epidemic in that province would top out at around 3,250 deaths.

Nobel prize-winning scientist: the Covid-19 epidemic was never exponential”

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Publications

Three-quarters of people with flu have no symptoms – NHS (2014)

Approximately 20% of people had an increase in antibodies against influenza in their blood after an influenza “season”. However, about three-quarters of infections were symptom-free, or so mild they weren’t identified through weekly questioning about whether participants had a cough, cold, sore throat, or a “flu-like illness”.

https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/three-quarters-of-people-with-flu-have-no-symptoms/

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Opinion

Comparing England & USA Covid & Historical Kill Rates (Sorry, England) – William M. Briggs, PhD

You can see there isn’t any hope at all for coronavirus. It won’t even make the top 10. It’ll be lucky to make it even a noticeable blip once 2020 is over.

Why? See, what happens is that these bugs come, kill off a bunch of people. But many of these, since they’re old, would have died this year anyway. Sad, but true. That means if you’re looking for 2020 to be a banner year, don’t bother.

Comparing England & USA Covid & Historical Kill Rates (Sorry, England)
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Videos

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

This video has been removed by YouTube so a Bitchute mirror is provided below. Please wait after pressing the play button. It may take longer than usual to load the video.

More experts
  • 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.

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Opinion

Is England’s Lockdown Racking Up The Bodies? – William M. Briggs, PhD

…this isn’t proof, but it’s pretty good evidence the lockdowns caused a lot of harm. Physical harm, at the least.

Is England’s Lockdown Racking Up The Bodies?
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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