Categories
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.

Categories
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.

  • 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
Publications

Healthcare personnel exposure in an emergency department during influenza season – PubMed (2018)

Abstract

Introduction: Healthcare personnel are at high risk for exposure to influenza by direct and indirect contact, droplets and aerosols, and by aerosol generating procedures. Information on air and surface influenza contamination is needed to assist in developing guidance for proper prevention and control strategies. To understand the vulnerabilities of healthcare personnel, we measured influenza in the breathing zone of healthcare personnel, in air and on surfaces within a healthcare setting, and on filtering facepiece respirators worn by healthcare personnel when conducting patient care.

Methods: Thirty participants were recruited from an adult emergency department during the 2015 influenza season. Participants wore personal bioaerosol samplers for six hours of their work shift, submitted used filtering facepiece respirators and medical masks and completed questionnaires to assess frequency and types of interactions with potentially infected patients. Room air samples were collected using bioaerosol samplers, and surface swabs were collected from high-contact surfaces within the adult emergency department. Personal and room bioaerosol samples, surface swabs, and filtering facepiece respirators were analyzed for influenza A by polymerase chain reaction.

Methods: Thirty participants were recruited from an adult emergency department during the 2015 influenza season. Participants wore personal bioaerosol samplers for six hours of their work shift, submitted used filtering facepiece respirators and medical masks and completed questionnaires to assess frequency and types of interactions with potentially infected patients. Room air samples were collected using bioaerosol samplers, and surface swabs were collected from high-contact surfaces within the adult emergency department. Personal and room bioaerosol samples, surface swabs, and filtering facepiece respirators were analyzed for influenza A by polymerase chain reaction.

Conclusions: Healthcare personnel may encounter increased concentrations of influenza virus when in close proximity to patients. Occupations that require contact with patients are at an increased risk for influenza exposure, which may occur throughout the influenza season. Filtering facepiece respirators may become contaminated with influenza when used during patient care.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30169507/

Categories
News

World Health Organization Scientists Linked to Swine Flu Vaccine Makers – ABC News (2010)

Scientists who advised the World Health Organization on its influenza policies and recommendations—including the decision to proclaim the so-called swine flu a “pandemic” had close ties to companies that manufacture vaccines and antiviral medicines like Tamiflu, a fact that WHO did not publicly disclose.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200325100604/https://abcnews.go.com/Health/SwineFlu/swine-flu-pandemic-world-health-organization-scientists-linked/story?id=10829940

Categories
News

Drug companies face European inquiry over swine flu vaccine stockpiles – The Guardian (2010)

Council of Europe to discuss whether pharmaceutical firms spread alarm over pandemic to boost orders of medicines

European health chiefs are to hold emergency talks about whether pharmaceutical giants have unduly influenced governments into squandering public money on vast stockpiles of unnecessary swine flu drugs.

https://web.archive.org/web/20130909085314/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/11/swine-flu-h1n1-vaccine-europe

Categories
News Videos

Accelerated Urgent Care doctors recommend lifting shelter-in-place order – 23ABC News

https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/accelerated-urgent-care-doctors-recommend-lifting-shelter-in-place-order

Update 05 May 2020: Original video was removed from YouTube. Below is the mirror on Bitchute.

Categories
Publications

Time variations in the transmissibility of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19 – BMC (2017)

The COVID-19 epidemic curves are consistent and follow the Gompertz curve. Similar distributions have been reported for Influenza, such as the 1918/19 epidemic in Prussia.

Epidemic curve of pandemic influenza in Prussia, Germany, from 1918–19. Reported daily number of influenza deaths (solid line) and the back-calculated temporal distribution of onset cases (dashed line). Daily counts of onset cases were obtained using the time delay distribution from onset to death (see Table 1). Data source: ref [18] (see [Additional file 1]).

https://tbiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4682-4-20

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 Videos

No scientific proof social distancing prevents spread of COVID-19 – Professor Joel Hay, USC

  • COVID-19 is very infectious but causes no symptoms in most people.
  • New York disaster is due to use of ventilators.
  • 80% of pregnant women were COVID-19 positive but not a single baby died due to COVID-19.
  • Do what we always do: isolate the frail and sick but don’t isolate the young and healthy.
  • Getting herd immunity is how we’ve solved the problem in the past.
  • Social distancing is destroying millions of lives and killing 100 people for every one it saves.

Visit Professor Joel Hay’s site at: https://joelhay.com/

Categories
News Opinion

Coronavirus Lockdown and What You Are Not Being Told Part 2 – Off-Guardian

Categories
Videos

Communication and public engagement – Marc Van Ranst, Belgian Flu Commissioner

Lecture by Marc Van Ranst, Belgian Flu Commissioner, at the ESWI/Chatham House Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Stakeholders Conference on 22 January 2019.

Judging from the content of the lecture, this could be alternatively titled, One voice, one message: How to work with the media to mislead the public.

In the audience is Jonathan Van-Tam, Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England.

To guard against censorship, this video has been mirrored on Odysee and Bitchute. Please scroll down for embedded videos.

Categories
News

Ineffective flu vaccine added to 50,000 extra deaths last winter, ONS says – The Independent (2018)

It was the worst winter on record for more than 40 years, with the 1975-76 season being the last time deaths climbed so high above the expected levels.

The NHS was rocked by a record winter crisis in early 2018, with a massive rise in flu cases and sub-zero temperatures triggered by the Beast from the East storm, which added further to death rates.

“The number of excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2017 to 2018 was the highest recorded since the winter of 1975 to 1976,” said Nick Stripe, from the ONS Health Analysis and Life Events team.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-vaccine-deaths-nhs-ineffective-crisis-bad-weather-illness-2017-a8660496.html

Categories
News

Why lockdowns are the wrong policy – Swedish expert Prof. Johan Giesecke, UnHerd

  • UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
  • The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
  • This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product”
  • The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better
  • The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
  • The paper was very much too pessimistic
  • Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
  • The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
  • The results will eventually be similar for all countries
  • Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
  • The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
  • At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available

Summary from 21st Century Wire.

21st Century Wire
Categories
Publications Videos

COVID-19 lethality in 0.12% to 0.2% which is in the range of severe influenza – medRxiv

Stanford University study founds antibodies in 50 to 85 times more people than previously thought in Santa Clara County, California. Covid-19 lethality of 0.12% to 0.2% which is in the range of severe influenza. 

Categories
News

Winter deaths ‘highest since 1999’ – BBC (2015)

There were an estimated 43,900 excess deaths in England and Wales last winter, the highest number since 1999, figures show.

The report suggests most of the deaths involved people over 75.

The flu virus was a major cause of the rise, along with an influenza vaccine that was less effective than those of previous years, experts said.

The figures are published by the Office for National Statistics and show there were more deaths in women than men.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34919149

Categories
News

Killer flu outbreak is to blame for 64,000 deaths – The Daily Mail (2018)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5440785/Killer-flu-outbreak-blame-42-spike-deaths.html

Categories
Opinion Publications

Excess deaths: government commissions review – BMJ

[Nicola Oliver ] tells us that 15,969 people died of flu (in England) last year, although only 320 died in hospital, and 15,649 were apparently left to die without due medical attention at home. What she fails to note is that the 15,969 deaths were not recorded deaths but a projection derived from the Flumomo algorithm [2] for ‘flu attributable deaths’ based on all cause mortality [3], so it does not really get us anywhere (except that it is just kind of thing I am complaining about!)

https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rapid-responses

Categories
News

Ineffective flu vaccine added to 50,000 extra deaths last winter, ONS says – Independent (2018)

The flu vaccine’s failure to protect against some of the key strains of the infection contributed to more than 50,000 “extra” deaths in England and Wales last winter, according to data from the Office of National Statistics.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-vaccine-deaths-nhs-ineffective-crisis-bad-weather-illness-2017-a8660496.html?__twitter_impression=true

Categories
Publications

N95 Respirators vs Medical Masks for Preventing Influenza Among Health Care Personnel: A Randomized Clinical Trial – PubMed

Among outpatient health care personnel, N95 respirators vs medical masks as worn by participants in this trial resulted in no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza.

http://archive.today/2020.04.16-074055/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31479137/

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