School children under the age of 15 are more likely to be hit by lightning than die from coronavirus, new figures suggest, amid mounting pressure for the government to get more to get pupils back into classrooms as quickly as possible.
Scientists from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford have called for “rational debate” based on the “tiny” risk to children and have suggested that if no vaccine is found in the future then it may be better for younger people to continue with their lives, while shielding the more vulnerable.
It comes as the government was accused of “losing the plot” after Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, scrapped the Government’s target of getting all primary school pupils back in the classroom before the summer holidays
Statistics
Official statistics for COVID-19 are publicly available and anyone can download the data for analysis. All the numbers so far show that the virus is far from being a ‘once in a century’ plague.
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By simply separating out weekly reporting variability, the long-term death rate profile becomes clear, and its peak can be located with confidence. Using the distribution of times from disease onset to death, it is possible to extend the model to infer the time course of fatal infections required to produce the later deaths. Because of the wide variability in onset to death times, a quite sharply peaked infection curve produces a death curve that declines only slowly. The inferred infection curve peaks a few days before lockdown, with fatal infections now likely to be occurring at a much-reduced rate.
If social distancing made things better, we would expect a positive correlation on both of these graphs – in other words, earlier social distancing would lead to both earlier flattening of the curve and lower total deaths, meaning these points would all sit close to a diagonal line sloping up from left to right. Instead what we see is very little correlation at all, and what there is is negative. So early social distancing is either doing nothing or making things worse. This is likely because the virus spreads mainly in hospitals, care homes and private homes rather than in the community, so social distancing of the wider population beyond a basic minimum (washing hands, self-isolating when ill, not getting too close, and so on) has little impact.
Professor Carl Heneghan, an Oxford University epidemiologist, expects no ‘excess deaths’ by the second week of June, for which the data will not become available until mid-June.
The weekly death toll in England and Wales dropped to its lowest levels since the lockdown began, an Office for National Statistics (ONS) report said today. A total of 1,983 people in England and Wales died with Covid-19 in the week ending May 22, down almost 30 per cent in a week and the lowest figure for two months.
The way the data are analysed and presented currently gives them limited value for the first purpose [of understanding the epidemic]. The aim seems to be to show the largest possible number of tests, even at the expense of understanding. It is also hard to believe the statistics work to support the testing programme itself. The statistics and analysis serve neither purpose well.
There was no exponential growth in Covid-19 infections the UK. From the first days of the outbreak growth rates were in decline.
The following chart produced by financial strategist Alistair Haimes should put the above question to rest (compare it with the above chart).
The left hand side starts in March 2020 when the UK had had its first 300 infections and then stops at 10 April when Europe as a whole had reached a growth rate of zero or less. The chart is analogous to the above chart of interest rates. If you cannot distinguish the different colours and European countries don’t worry too much (UK is dark blue) as they all show the same overall pattern. The trends are all downwards, from start to finish.
[I]f you believe herd immunity is only reached at 60 per cent, you should be terrified at any loosening of lockdown. If you don’t, then you must reconcile antibody testing that says 80 per cent are still susceptible with the difficulty the virus seems to encounter in marching very far past 20 percent of the population.
That is the reconciliation my hypothesis achieves. I propose that there may exist forms of human resistance to this virus that don’t show up in Covid-19 antibody tests.
[I]n focusing on that Covid antibody test alone as indicating a pass-or-fail immunity, we could be overlooking important ways in which humans may be endowed with, or acquire, other kinds of resistance.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-has-coronavirus-fled-london-
So as you read, in coming weeks, furious news stories about technical incompetence, citizen non-compliance, threats of stricter enforcement and blame in all directions, as if everything was hanging on the latest government policy, remember the humility of scientists instead of the solipsism of the political class. Yes, the Government action plan will most likely be ineffective, but politicians were never in charge of this anyway. It’s bigger than they are — the best they could ever hope to do is tinker around the edges. Coronavirus is nobody’s ‘fault’.
As an NHS doctor, I’ve seen people die and be listed as a victim of coronavirus without ever being tested for it. But unless we have accurate data, we won’t know which has killed more: the disease or the lockdown?
It matters greatly for two main reasons. First, if we vastly overestimate deaths from Covid-19, we will greatly underestimate the harm caused by the lockdown. This issue was looked at in a recent article published in the BMJ, The British Medical Journal. It stated: “Only a third of the excess deaths seen in the community in England and Wales can be explained by Covid-19.
If Covid-19 killed 30,000, and lockdown killed the other 30,000, then the lockdown was a complete and utter waste of time. and should never happen again. The great fear is that this would be a message this government does not want to hear – so they will do everything possible not to hear it.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/490006-death-certificates-covid-19-do-not-trust/
A total of 12,335 more people than usual have died at home during the coronavirus pandemic, raising fears about the knock-on effects of telling people not to go to hospital.
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
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
Introduction: An important unknown during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the infection-fatality rate (IFR). This differs from the case-fatality rate (CFR) as an estimate of the number of deaths as a proportion of the total number of cases, including those who are mild and asymptomatic. While the CFR is extremely valuable for experts, IFR is increasingly being called for by policy-makers and the lay public as an estimate of the overall mortality from COVID-19.
Results: After exclusions, there were 13 estimates of IFR included in the final meta-analysis, from a wide range of countries, published between February and April 2020. The meta-analysis demonstrated a point-estimate of IFR of 0.75% (0.49-1.01%) with significant heterogeneity (p<0.001).
Conclusion: Based on a systematic review and meta-analysis of published evidence on COVID-19 until the end of April, 2020, the IFR of the disease across populations is 0.75% (0.49-1.01%). However, due to very high heterogeneity in the meta-analysis, it is difficult to know if this represents the “true” point estimate.
- JP Morgan research said infection rates had fallen since lockdowns were eased
- It suggested the virus ‘has its own dynamics’ which are ‘unrelated’ to lockdowns
- Report said they were imposed with little thought of ‘economic devastation’
LOCKDOWNS have not altered the course of the coronavirus pandemic but have devastated the global economy, a study by JP Morgan has claimed.
A paper by Marko Kolanovic, a strategist at the investment bank, argued that governments were “spooked” into imposing lockdowns that were “late” or “inefficient”.
Part 1: Exponential Growth is Terrifying
Part 2: Curve Fitting for Understanding
Part 3: COVID19 Never Grows Exponentially
Experts said the major study, which included all patients hospitalised with Covid-19 over 10 weeks, showed that diabetes – which is often fuelled by obesity – is driving Britain’s death toll.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/19/one-third-covid-19-deaths-england-have-among-diabetics/
The number of people claiming unemployment benefit in the UK soared to 2.1 million in April, the first full month of the coronavirus lockdown.
But the labour market is set to worsen, according to politicians and analysts, with Therese Coffey, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, telling the BBC on Tuesday that the unemployment rate was likely “to increase significantly”.
One reason why the models failed is that they – just like most countries’ politicians – underestimated how millions of people spontaneously adapt to new circumstances. They only thought in terms of lockdowns vs business as usual, but failed to consider a third option: that people engage in social distancing voluntarily when they realise lives are at stake and when authorities recommend them to do so.
As countries plan how to leave lockdown, they can look at Sweden and ask: what happens if you don’t involve the police, if you don’t issue edicts about how many of your relatives or neighbours you can visit, and just ask people to be careful? Might that work? The Swedish experiment casts huge doubts on the models, and makes the case for trusting the public.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/can-we-trust-covid-modelling-more-evidence-from-sweden
- COVID-19 is about as deadly as flu, averaging between 0.1 and 0.8 per cent death rate.
- The general population under 65 with no pre-existing conditions are more likely to die in a road accident.
- Infections peaked and began to decline in many places including the UK before lockdown began
- Social distancing shows no consistent relationship to the slowdown of infections in cities around the world?
- Studies show that people confined to their homes may be as at much risk as those out and about.
- ‘R number’ rise happened in the middle of lockdown and probably linked to ongoing spreading in hospitals and care homes.
- Shutting down the world economy may result in of the order of 1,157,000 additional child deaths and 56,700 additional maternal deaths in low- and middle-income countries.
- Former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption: “The lockdown is now all about protecting politicians’ backs. They are not wicked men, just timid ones, terrified of being blamed for deaths on their watch. But it is a wicked thing that they are doing.”