Today’s shocking evidence by Prof. Neil Ferguson that, had lockdown been implemented a week earlier, the death toll would have been halved, has the ring of truth, although it must remain a surmise (and I am aware of his past record).
But I want to give you an anecdotal example from my own family of the extraordinary government laxness at the start of this pandemic.
Whilst I was in London during February covering the Assange hearing, Nadira attended the Berlin Film Festival. She has produced a feature film in Iran, currently in post production, which she was there to promote. She therefore spent almost the whole time in the company of people from Iran involved in the film.
In very early March, a week or more after her return, Nadira developed a bad fever and pneumonia like symptoms. I advised her to call 111. It is important to remember that at this time Iran was well known to be a major epicentre of Covid-19. Nadira was phoned back by a Covid-handler from 111, and she explained the situation to him. He said that she just had seasonal flu and that Germany was not a risk for Covid-19. She explained that she had been the whole time with people newly flown in from Tehran. He stated that unless they were showing symptoms, there was no risk of infection. He said Nadira did not need a test or to self-isolate.
When I got back from London, Nadira took to her bed and remained there for a week, which is simply unheard of – she never gets sick. Cameron developed a nasty cough and we kept him off school for over a week.
Two things are in retrospect striking. The first is that Nadira complained bitterly, and continued to do so for some weeks, that she had completely lost all sense of taste and of smell. We had been gifted a particularly good bottle of wine and I thoughtlessly opened it, rather than wait until she could enjoy the taste too. At that time loss of taste and smell was not a reported marker of covid-19.
The second striking fact is that we now know that the real reason that the 111 service was so adamant to Nadira that no testing was required, is that there was in fact no available testing capacity for anybody who was not Prince Charles. That does not explain why Nadira was told she did not have to isolate. Nor does it explain why in early March NHS Scotland could not grasp the difference between being in Berlin, and being in Berlin with a group flown in from Tehran.
It is worth noting that Nadira flew back in to Edinburgh, very likely carrying Covid 19, precisely two days before the controversial Nike conference. Nadira is just one person, and I am prompted to tell the story (with her permission) by Ferguson’s admission that the failure to do anything about the thousands of people returning from Italy had seeded the virus substantially. That is only a part of it. The refusal to take seriously and test members of the public who believed, with sensible reason, they may have contracted the virus abroad, plainly contributed to the UK’s higher death rate (let alone the failure to bring in airport screening).
Of course, until an antibody test is made available, we have no evidence it was not indeed just the flu which Nadira and Cameron had. To complete the family story, I did not develop pneumonia but did come down with a number of acute symptoms of which the most startling was sleep. About ten days after I returned to Nadira from London, I went through a period where I just could not wake up: for about five days I was sleeping 20 hours a day in a proper, deep sleep. I also found I could not type to blog. I could not control my fingers, while after ten minutes of typing my hands became extremely painful and I literally could not move my thumbs at all. I had all kinds of worries, from arthritis to Alzheimers. It was only later I discovered this arthritis like condition can be a coronavirus symptom too. It now seems to have thankfully cleared up.
At precisely the same time my daughter, who lives with us, came down with eye infections so bad she was off work for a fortnight while they were treated by the Edinburgh Eye Clinic. There is some evidence now this too can be a symptom of Covid-19, though the same can be said for a huge variety of symptoms.
The only member of my family to have been tested was my sister-in-law, who works in the NHS. She was extremely ill and hospitalised for a considerable period. She self-isolated and avoided admission perhaps overlong, not wanting to be a burden on her own hospital. In this self-isolation period my brother continued to look after her and to share a bed, and yet he has at no stage exhibited any symptoms.
This is all only anecdotal. Only one of the family ever was tested, even though Nadira very much ought to have been and wanted to be. It interests me that only Cameron ever developed a cough – even my sister-in-law who was hospitalised for weeks never coughed, even though both she and Nadira had breathing difficulties. My daughter and I had completely different symptoms again. The only common symptom to us all was fever. My brother, who cannot have avoided catching the disease, had no symptoms at all.
Anecdotal evidence is not without value. What the story of my family does show is that government negligence caused the most serious failure in diagnostic capacity compared to better organised countries, and thus the abdication of any possibility of effective track and trace right from the start. That seems to me a sufficient illustration of why the UK death rate has been so high.
I wish to thank all of those who tuned in for the first procedural hearing in my Contempt of Court trial. I realise it was not too gripping but please do not give up and do stay with me through the procedures as they get more dangerous. Julian Assange’s case has been marked by terrible abuse of procedure. I am severely constrained in what I can say, but I may perhaps say that today was a most happy contrast to the handling of Julian. I have no doubt your presence with me helps; and it is a massive emotional support.
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I flew back to England from China on government advice on 18th February. Big mistake.
China was in total lockdown. I was temperature tested three times before getting on the plane.
As the plane approached Heathrow the next morning we were told to remain in our seats as a public health detachment was going to board. I fully expected to be sent into 14 days quarantine. We all sat there with our masks on for 15 minutes after landing, then we were abruptly told to leave.
I passed through automatic passport check and customs still wearing the mask, without hindrance. I spoke to no-one. No one spoke to me . No questioning, no advice, no test of any sort. Then I took a bus and a train home and followed 14 days self imposed isolation. I just couldn’t believe it, the contrast in approach with China was total. At that time there was very little incidence inside the UK and it was obvious that if it came, it would be through ports and airports. Unbelievable, but worse of course was to come.
After living and working in China where everyone was wearing mask and gloves outdoors – a legal requirement – and temperature testing was being carried out on entry to all buildings, I feel very uncomfortable with the laxity here. In the shops no-one – customers nor staff – wears a mask and few wear gloves. In Morrisons the staff hang about chatting in close groups of up to four with no protection provided.
Every day I check the flight timetables to try to get back, but still no indication of relaxation. China including Hong Kong are not like the UK arguing for months whether to impose 14 days quarantine, they are simply closed to foreigners with few exceptions and that’s that.
No wonder China has had 3 deaths per million compared to the UK’s 606. Hong Kong, 0.5, no deaths for weeks. And a high percentage of the UK population think the government has done well? It seems to me that a democracy cannot work without an educated and informed public, and we have neither. I just despair.
What a dreadful example.
I have no idea why we did not close our borders, we are a flipping island. I know people who flew back from America last week, where they had locked down in sunny luxury, stayed the night at friends in London, flew to Edinburgh and then a taxi to Aberdeen. Came back in time to avoid a possible quarantine. Makes a mockery of the whole thing, what a disaster BoJo has made of all of this, and I am afraid, despite sounding like she is doing better NS hasn’t done anything that hugely different. This was an opportunity of a lifetime for her to LEAD Scotland. Forget the rules imposed by treaties or devolution and just take charge! I am disappointed and despair too!
Good and illuminating comment!
Thank you very much for the posting, DoctorK, you are right more than 100%, it unbelievable we didn’t check all arrivals, we should have, it may well be it was because we didn’t have enough no contact infrared thermometers, the NHS was allegedly testing them last Autumn to decide whether they should buy them. It’s only now, when our level of new infestations is running above many other countries, the Government insists on all arrivals to quarantine for 14 days. It’s a scandal, a country with the population of less that 1% of the world accounts for close to 10% of the world’s c-19 deaths.
you do realise that many (we will never know how many) of the “victims” of covid-19 were not even tested for the virus, never mind having an autopsy performed to determine the process of HOW the virus caused their deaths?
the NHS’s own figures confirm that over 95% of UK covid-19 deaths were already seriously ill with at least one other disease, sometimes several:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/06/COVID-19-total-announced-deaths-3-June-2020-weekly-tables.xlsx
I have yet to see any compelling evidence that this “global pandemic” is anything other than a normal bad flu season re-branded.
They also removed the requirements that were added in 2016 to prevent more Harold Shipman – style murders.
DoctorK
A good friend of mine had similar story
Flew into Heathrow from Tokyo…3 stages of testing before leaving. Got to uk…nothing even though there was an outbreak. He ended up getting himself tested on returning up north. Was negative but still quarantined himself
It’s all very well having a go at the public but what chance do they have in a government never gave us a chance by leaving borders open that should have been easily shut? Look at everywhere that dealt well with the virus…they shut borders quickly to infected hotspots. Negligence of highest order.
Well we didn’t do much to check arrivals because the basic assumption of our pandemic planning was that a new highly infectious disease would spread exponentially wherever it arrived, so that travel restrictions would have a negligible effect of only a short delay. This is written plain to see in our pandemic preparedness plans from 2005 onwards.
It is the UK’s scientific consensus on pandemic planning that seems to have been defeatist and bereft of 21st century ideas.
Interesting comment and news to me.
China etc thought otherwise of course.
Hi Craig, so glad that you are all over it now. mind, this virus might bite back and as yet, is still on a rising trajectory globally.
I have got in touch with Titus who might be able to help you with antibody tests. They are simple to use. I had a similar episode to Nadira being in bed for near enough a week with a high fever and my lungs splitting, but I have now tested negative, don’t know whether the test was of good quality.
The last thing that must happen now, and moves are on the way already, is that we all agree to go on holiday, flying in petri dishes that force you to breathe the same, filtered but stale air of others, hence the mask.
The procedural hearing was dull but the knowledge that there were 200 others with you listening to the admittance that they had computer and printer problems, and that Lady Dorrian had given two directions to AS’s jury, the latter revised, otherwise there would have been no need to give two, has warmed the cockles of my heart.
Wishing you all the best up there, take care and thanks for your/all our interests you stand up for.
I thought Lady Dorian sounded very nervous about sharing her speaking notes.
A widnae haud ma breath on the antibody test.
Papers from China relate that antibodies spike early and then tail off to a minimum. Antibody tests can essentially be tuned to react to a predetermined minimum concentration. From a public health perspective a false negative is not an issue, although it would be a disappointment for the individual hoping to obtain a Covid passport (physical or notional). From a public health perspective a false positive is a serious issue, sending a potentially future spreader out into the community with a false, immunity record.
Reports from Spain and New York stating that antibody testing on a large scale, community basis, after the virus has burned through give community immunity rates from 5 to 10% are latched on to by the anti-herd immunity ultras. These reports only prove that the antibody tests DON’T work (in any appreciable way).
I heard an epidemiologist from Oxford on the radio around 3 weeks ago. She estimated population infection rates in the UK at 20 to 30% and stated that she wouldn’t be surprised if it was 40%. This sounds about right.
On the positive side, the lack of verifiable cases of reinfection suggests that the presence of antibodies at very low concentrations is sufficient to fight off future exposure.
Maintaining lockdown at stringent levels will of course not add (quickly) to community immunity. The American curve for new infections dropped from peak by about a quarter and has remained steady for around four weeks. By dumb luck this may be optimum.
The UK, new infection curve is headed towards extinction of the pandemic (perhaps the lifting of the lockdown in England will “rectify” this). The numbers of new infections in Scotland has consistently reduced for 7 days straight. The rate of decline, if continued, whether by live data or rolling five day average basis would lead to zero new infections in five days time. Good luck to Nicola trying to maintain lockdown when (if) we reach zero new infections.
I believe you have reversed polarity. From a public health perspective it is the false negative is a major worry as it leaves the person free to spread the disease.
A false positive, well bad luck mate, those 14 days in quarantine weren’t that bad were they?
If you have antibodies you have had the virus and have a certain level of immunity. So Vivian is right.
Antibody testing is different from testing for the presence of the virus itself.
The whole point of the antibody system is that it can be turned on and off at will, so you are only making large amounts of antibodies when you need to. You are primed to be able to make antibodies to millions of foreign molecules, but if you were making all of them all the time, you would have no energy left to do anything else.
Anyone with any knowledge of immunology knows that a secondary antibody response is much, much stronger than the initial one. That is why the BCG vaccination that children my age got was a double dosage affair.
So the biggest danger around is that SARS-CoV2 mutates sufficiently fast that by the time you are exposed a second time, the antibodies you made first time around no longer work and you have to start from scratch again.
Antibody tests are only useful soon after infection has occurred. If you had it months ago and have been healthy since, your antibody titre now will be very low. There will just enough swimming around to prime a secondary response.
The thought process that you can have an ‘on demand’ antibody test at any time is laughable. It will only be suitable for those who think they have been recently infected. If you were infected in early 2020 and had no future exposure, most tests in 2022 will be meaningless.
Why COVID-19/Sars-Cov-2 are over, along with flu season.
Notice there were 3 influenza peaks this year, the last being COVID19/Sars-Cov-2.
Exponential growth lasted 3 weeks, when COVID19/Sars-Cov-2 peaked, now 11 weeks ago.
Flu season itself ended 7 weeks ago, when new influenza like illnesses were fewer than the national baseline, the way it has ended every year for the last 10 years.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/images/ILI22_small.gif
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
So why is there still a lockdown? Is it to protect against a flu that no longer exists, or is it to do maximum damage to the SME sector of the economy, so the monopolists only have to pay cents on the dollar to buy the property they worked for their entire lives?
“Notice there were 3 influenza peaks this year, the last being COVID19/Sars-Cov-2. “
Correction. The Covid 19 peak is not like influenza it is a completely different disease. There is a lot written about it but I will leave it to you to educate yourself more.
Idiotic – normal double or more spike flus are a) within the actual ‘flu season’ and b) usually smaller ‘spikes’ than the main one.
What exactly is the point of the continual denial by the coordinated trolls across the boards & btl?
A) In the U.K. protection of Bozo’s government, the ‘let them die’ and ‘getting it done’ obsession to push through the hard BrexShit that was ALWAYS plan A.
B) minimise the number of CV deaths by inadequate testing of all deaths. Hence creating the understated ‘Covid deaths’ far below the Excess Deaths – which the MSM has been happily trotting along with, colluding with Cabinet, and will belatedly admit to ( too little too late as usual) to shrug and say we didn’t know! Yes they fucking did – the Excess Deaths were screaming it daily.
Almost all the comments apportioning blame allocate it to the ‘Government’ but is this correct?
A large part of NHS administration, in itself a huge number of people dwarfing their front line staff with many paid considerably more than others on the Government payroll, has a role in strategic and tactical planning and the implementation of the resulting plans.
Whilst the many senior Whitehall civil servants and politicians had a significant controlling function they knew close to SFA about the issue at hand and were reliant on the NHS and experts who did, or everyone thought they did.
THe terrible decision making was not only at a strategic level. The supply of PPE was an NHS function. Also it is unlikely that a politician took the decision to discharge patients that might be carrying Covid back to care homes.
So, should it be the NHS being held to account? Should there be a Commission to examine the deep planning and supply failures?
Or will the NHS bureaucracy be able to hide behind the success of their front line staff thus escaping their roles in excess deaths?
You are far too kind about the government’s role. It was back in 2016 that it was either Gove or Hunt who said that we don’t need the reserve stocks of PPE because we can always buy the stuff in from suppliers abroad in case of need. It was pure austerity cost-cutting. We have just seen what happens when everyone has the same epidemic. Evidently the desire to cut and economise overcame everything.
This is a link to a Scottish Doctor who gives an insight as to how things were managed by the NHS. I think you have a point!
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/05/11/how-to-make-a-crisis-far-far-worse/
John The NAO report today further nails your lie.
Further independent studies will add further nails.
It isn’t evidence, it’s an claim which can neither be proven nor disproven. Ferguson could not predict the likely outcome of giving advice but not following it, but we are supposed to accept he can predict the course of a virus.
The economy has been trashed by a policy which failed, so now the perpetrators and the compliant have no choice but to double down.
I don’t think the Scottish government handled the virus well in the early stages, they tended to take their lead from Westminster, god only knows how many folk contracted the virus at that time, though as you say symptoms as we are beginning to realise, are far more wider ranging than anyone could’ve known.
As for Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, they both got tested for the virus very shortly after entering Scotland, at the same time almost 700 NHS staff had to self isolate, no test for them.
In my opinion royalty is an affront to society, I can only hope an independent Scotland dispenses with this ruritaninan nonsense.
Re Ferguson claim, interestingly Johnson doesn’t condemn it as false, he called it premature.
My anecdote. I am pretty certain I had it in London in early February. I have never had a flu such as that. My body didn’t feel right until about 6 weeks later.
There is clearly a sinister reason why the antibody tests haven’t been deployed …
However looking at the FACTS published by the independent ONS recently, here is my analysis of when this virus was already starting in its killing spree.
All Deaths were BELOW average into the new year. Near the end of Jan that trend took a initial change of trajectory. Followed by the inflection in February. By March the trend was back towards crossing the 5 year average and the exponential trend of Excess Deaths was in full flow by the time of the criminally delayed containment measures of this unidimensional hard BrexShit obsessed government and media and troll army.
The ONS analysis also shows that all the other expected causes of death have followed the trends expected (including from stopping elective surgery deaths and work and traffic related deaths due to shut down) accept for degenerative conditions afflicting the aged who would normally have received care in hospitals.
Hospital deaths reduced as these poor old people were decanted into the community – some obviously would have taken CV to these care homes because they were NOT tested before discharged from hospitals. Care Homes without PPE and sufficient personnel. These non -hospital deaths therefore increased and is the best explanation.
The Occupational analysis adds further clarity – mostly disproportionate are low paid, low skilled, service people (e.g security guards) AND more definitively the transport workers who carry these people to work and back. Clearly indicating spread via transport of the low skilled workers.
Who are also disproportionately black and asian. So nothing to do with genetic disposition, or that much, in my reading.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/analysisofdeathregistrationsnotinvolvingcoronaviruscovid19englandandwales28december2019to1may2020/technicalannex
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales/deathsregistereduptoandincluding20april2020
As far as we can assume from the few autopsies that are carried out, the WHO urged not to carry them out due to possible transmission, showed that the oxygen interchange within small blood vessels in the lungs, was increasingly interupted as the mucus stuck to the walls like plastic, which led to multiple blood clots in some patients.
How many autopsies have been carried out in this country and what conclusions can be taken from them? anybody has any ideas?
Oh Craig, please wake up! The virus is real, but the response to it as a scam from beginning to end. It’s about taking control of us and our liberties. You lived through the ’68-69 epidemic that killed 80,000 in the UK. Do you even remember it happening? I don’t. Life went on. Check unlockthelockdown.com for some facts. You, above all others, should know the MSM lies.
The lockdown has been extremely successful in those countries which implemented it rigorously and early.
If you’re telling us that the handling of the Covid crisis has been an absolute balls-up from start to finish, you’re preaching to the choir, Craig. Johnson’s behavior has been a perfect example of the Peter Principle, a man promoted above his level of ability floundering around desperately trying to make it look like he has a clue what the hell he’s supposed to be doing. I would almost feel sorry for him, but I remind myself, he IS Boris Johnson, and he’s where he’s spent his entire adult live plotting and scheming to be – Downing Street. Let him reap what he’s sowed. As for Ferguson, you’ve said it yourself – you’re aware of his record. And so am I.
the same explains why nyc became the global epicenter of the pandemic. early march the mayor was being advised by virologists and epidemiologists to shut down bars, clubs, restaurants, hotels, etc. but instead of heeding their advice he kept saying ‘ hey, i’m not there yet…’
the same ignorant bluster brits were fed by the albino sea elephant.
I wouldn’t take much notice of anything Neil Ferguson says. Here is a summary of the situation by Toby Young of Lockdown Sceptics.
” Had Boris imposed the lockdown a week earlier it wouldn’t have made any difference to the subsequent Covid death toll since the R number was already falling by the time the lockdown was imposed. Neil Ferguson’s claim that infections were doubling every three or four days in the week leading up to the lockdown is evidence-free political point-scoring.
Nearly every robust comparative analysis of the rise and fall of the disease in different countries across the world has come to the same conclusion: the pattern is unaffected by whether or not a country imposed a full lockdown, when it imposed it, or how severe it was.
There is no evidence that the Government’s scientific advisors, acting in their official capacity as members of SAGE and its subgroups, advised the Government to impose a full lockdown before March 23rd.
The one intervention the Government could have made that really might have saved lives would have been to introduce port-of-entry screening in January. That’s something Neil Ferguson explicitly warned against, preferring to rely on a Communist dictatorship to ensure the safety of the British people.”
You have inculcated the values of Toby Young. They are sordid values.
@jane
The Toby Young? [sad tale on twitter as the Epstein bud Toby Young of London is defrocked]
Can you point, please, to your comprehensive database of “robust comparative analyses of the rise and fall of the disease in different countries across the world (which) have come to the same conclusion: the pattern is unaffected by whether or not a country imposed a full lockdown, when it imposed it, or how severe it was? “
The utter and complete t…Toby Young? The Private school profiteer and Eugnetist, t…Tweet deleting t…Toby Young?
Desperate , so so desperate ..?
I find it astonishing that this isn’t a notifiable disease. The NHS took out full page adverts in newspapers, describing the symptoms of C-19 and telling the reader to isolate should they suspect they have a case. But tell anyone about it? Nah.
Surely the NHS would want to know where C-19 is, and how widespread it is? Might it not be worth giving the medics in the area a heads-up that there are cases in their area, so they can prepare for an onslaught of cases? Didn’t anyone want to know where that person had been?
Not a bit of it. Stop at home and that was the limit of the instructions.
It IS notifiable.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/notifiable-diseases-and-causative-organisms-how-to-report
This is from the Governments web site, 4 days before lockdown, covid was downgraded. Notification does not even come into it. Have they notified us of the consequences of this virus, they all knew by 15th. January?
Status of COVID-19
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK.
The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.
The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.
The need to have a national, coordinated response remains, but this is being met by the government’s COVID-19 response.
Here are the weekly reports on the number of covid19 cases, suspected OR confirmed in England and Wales, ongoing. The first cases appear in Week 10, ending 8th March, where 3 cases are reported.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notifiable-diseases-weekly-reports-for-2020
Please note that only a small percentage will actually die.
Covid19 has always been a notifiable(statutory, in fact) infectious disease. See here for statutory duty of all RMPs(Registered Medical Practitioner).
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/notifiable-diseases-and-causative-organisms-how-to-report
In other words, all covid19 cases which have passed before any RMP will have been notified and reported in the weekly tallies above. However, given the large number of deaths occurring, the numbers don’t seem to add up quite. Looks almost like more deaths than cases.
What is your point here?
They were correct to “downgrade” Covid-19 because it doesn’t fit the criteria for a HCID. That doesn’t mean that covid-19 doesn’t have consequences.
Also, HCID cases need mandatory transfer to those hospitals designated to deal with HCID. Downgrading allowed hospitals to treat covid-19 patients without needing to transfer them to the 3 designated HCID hospitals.
I see this statement quoted often as some kind of “truth” that the health authorities didn’t consider covid-19 to be dangerous. That interpretation is nonsense. Read through all of that government publication and you will understand.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid
Aye, and the Sars Virus from 2003 is still on the HCID register, and that killed 700 in the UK. How many deaths from CV19 have there been in the UK, and why is it not on the HCID register? I rest my case.
No cases reported since 2004, but SARS remains a notifiable disease under the International Health Regulations (2005), hence its inclusion.
You’re right – so why do you suppose the advice was simply to stop at home, in the full page ads taken out by the NHS? The most definitely did not say to notify anyone, call 111 or anything else. Perhaps they expected _everyone_ to be fully versed with the notification process, and that was too obvious to even bother mentioning. This was during March-April.
“The most definitely did not say to notify anyone, call 111 or anything else.”
That has nothing to do with what is a notifiable disease. Notifiable diseases, and there are a few, confer legal duties on laboratories and medical practitioners, statutory duties for reporting notifiable diseases in the Public Health. The point being to make public health aware of outbreaks etc.
It is not for the public to notify.
Again, what is your point? What is your understanding of a notifiable disease and the puropse of such a requirement?
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/notifiable-diseases-and-causative-organisms-how-to-report
ET.
I’m under the impression the virus was down graded to save on PPE, and according to the explosive Panorama programme (That the media completely ignored the next day, it never happened) on the matter, that a fair bit of the PPE ordered was infact cleaning equipment, and not the vital PPE the NHS staff so badly needed.
I don’t think that was the reason. PPE requirements remained the same. HCID are in a class of their own. It made no difference to the recommendations for handling patients except that they didn’t have to be transferred to the specialist HCID hospitals. And if you read the criteria for HCID, they were correct to do so.
The mishandling of the PPE supplies is another story.
The 4 nations part is a lie. The committee of experts that added it to the list was not consulted before it was taken off the list, in their name. That decision was made by the second committee, with a last minute agenda item which was forced through as a fait accompli.
The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.”
‘The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (source) is made up of scientists, doctors, professors, members of NHS foundations and one Group Captain Christopher Melville OBE representing the Ministry of Defence. The role of the ACDP is – “an expert committee of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). Its work cuts across a number of organisations, including the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Public Health England (PHE) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).” Their terms of reference are – “To provide as requested independent scientific advice to HSE, and to ministers through DHSC, Defra, and their counterparts under devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, on all aspects of hazards and risks to workers and others from exposure to pathogens.”
https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/uk-government-officially-and-quietly-downgrades-covid-19/
This reeks of a rather desperate attempt to bolster the ‘approved’ alternative narrative – ie ‘government-didn’t-do-enough-early-enough’. It’s the same nonsense the Labour Party seem to have adopted.
Sorry, but I’m not buying it at all. Putting the public under house arrest because of a flu-like virus is a gross over-reaction by any standards. There are clearly agendas involved that have nothing to do with public health.
facepalm
Quite so. These are unprecedented draconian interventions in freedoms of many forms. Plus..how does suspending jury trials and fiddling with death certificates bolster our health? By manufacturing fear, thus at zero cost, a population was brought to a halt, imprisoned and in numerous cases impoverished. Agendas you say? Not half.
It’s not a flu.
25,000 patients were sent from hospitals into care homes and back to home WITHOUT testing or any reasonable PPE provision for the carers.
That seeded it
The rush of trolls here and other boards (curiously attacking CM and MoonofAlabama on a day that saw the release of the damming NAO report is hardly surprising)
A lot of good comments on this blog, as always.
Early March, my ex and our two teenage daughters came down with something that resembles Covid-19 very much. 3 weeks and there were mobile again, my ex told me they were sick, very sick, all the symptoms fit in except the coughing. Now they live in Denmark and I live in Sweden. A week later or so, I began feeling very bad, very very bad, tired , labored breathing, very sore throat and pains in all joints, I slept on the sofa downstairs, I did not have the energy to go upstairs.This lasted for about 14 days, where I hardly did not eat, and then it abated slowly and a week later I was up, but not running! Around that time ( mid April) I called) the Swedish health system to ask if I could have a test, nope it was reserved for cases in hospitals, and I was breathing wasn’t I ?
I my opinion we all got it (I was most lucky, 63 and not that good health) but we got through. Denmark introduced a strict lock down and Sweden did not do much result: Denmark ca 600 casualties, Sweden almost 5000 casualties.
In my opinion strict control and limit to peoples movements can combat stuff like this. Imagine if the Covid -19 had same lethality as the bubonic plaque with contagious as Covid – 19. The dead in Sweden are mainly the very elderly people in nursing homes, as they did not take the measure stipulated seriously. Nursing homes in Sweden are privately run. When my time comes it is back to Denmark, in a jiffy!
Anyway I hope that my family and I have got a load of antibodies accumulated.
Good luck out there to those people, whose governments are even more incompetent than mine.
@ Den lille abe June 11, 2020 at 14:34
‘…When my time comes it is back to Denmark, in a jiffy!…’
Don’t you mean ‘in a zimmer’?
HMG/NHS England/Simon Stevens were all busy handing out large contracts to their pals and Johnson was preoccupied with Ms Symmonds.
eg ‘Palantir, is one of four large technology firms to start working with the NHS on supporting the COVID-19 efforts through the provision of software from Palantir Foundry.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies
That is extracted from: https://healthtech.blog.gov.uk/2020/03/28/the-power-of-data-in-a-pandemic/ which was co-authored by Matthew Gould, latterly the UK Ambassador to Israel and then at NHSX since 2019.
‘In May 2019, Gould was appointed as the first chief executive of NHSX, which oversees digitisation of NHS England and commissions projects from NHS Digital and other bodies. NHSX came to public notice in April 2020 after it commissioned NHS COVID-19, a contact tracking app to monitor the spread of COVID-19.
Michael Gove, Cabinet Office minister, described Gould as an “inspirational public servant” when replying to questions on the app in the Commons in April 2020.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Gould
Just as I said –
Boris Johnson ‘hosted a babyshower at Chequers for Carrie Symonds’ just days before the lockdown was introduced and AFTER a Cabinet minister had already come down with coronavirus
He and Ms Symonds hosted event on Saturday March 14, Private Eye reported
This was the same week health minister Nadine Dorries revealed diagnosis
Two days later PM told UK to ‘stop non-essential contact and travel’ due to virus
Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8388005/Boris-Johnson-hosted-babyshower-Chequers-Carrie-Symonds-just-days-lockdown-started.html
Here is a graphical analysis of the NHS fatality data, broken down by age group and presence/absence of co-morbidities. 95% of fatalities had 1 or more co-morbidities. The average was 1.8 co-morbidities, so most had 2 or more (typically diabetes, dementia, chronic heart issues). Only 5% died ‘from’ Covid. The rest died ‘with’ it. The test used to determine Coronavirus presence has a 60-70% success rate, so it is little more than guesswork.
https://off-guardian.org/wp-content/medialibrary/2020-06-04-NHS-England-deaths-with-C19-by-age-range-and-any-pre-existing-conditions_1_740.jpg?x13761
The lockdown has resulted in suicides, deferred treatment for cancer patients, etc, etc. There are about 13,000 excess deaths at home to be explained. At the peak of the fatalities, the spare capacity in ICU beds was 40%! No wonder people were dying at home. They were either kicked out of hospital to make way for the predicted number of cases or were scared silly by the media, too scared to seek medical help.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/06/covid-with-of-or-because-of/
The SAGE committee advice was no lockdown, until there were pushed into it by Cummings.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/top-aide-to-u-k-s-johnson-pushed-scientists-to-back-lockdown
Witty, the CMO has stated that the coronovirus is not particularly dangerous, and is harmless to the great majority of people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adj8MCsZKlg
The lockdown were driven politically, not medically. The same applies to Germany, Norway and Denmark.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/29/german-official-leaks-report-denouncing-corona-as-global-false-alarm/
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/norway-health-chief-lockdown-was-not-needed-to-tame-covid
https://www.thelocal.dk/20200529/leaked-emails-show-how-denmarks-pm-steam-rollered-her-own-health-agency/amp
Ferguson has been consistently wrong in all of his epidemic predictions from Foot&Mouth onwards. His work is regarded as alarmist by other epidemiologists. If anyone is interested in rational approach to all of this, have a look at Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s site (for example).
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/05/31/covid-deaths-how-accurate-are-the-statistics/
@ Ken Garoo June 11, 2020 at 16:44
Another very interesting article on Dr. Kendrick’s site is:
‘COVID Update – Focus on Vitamin D’:
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/28/covid-update-focus-on-vitamin-d/
I all ready take 4,000 iu of vitamin D3 a day (though I often skip it ) as well as Zinc (another well-recommended Covid and flu supplement), but Black and ME people particularly should take note, as they are particularly vulnerable. If any of you have Iranian or ME or Black friends or relatives, I suggest you pass this vitamin D3 and Zinc info on.
His latest article questions the lockdown.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/06/11/covid-will-lockdown-lead-to-a-major-health-disaster/
I am pleased to see that his views are entertained now. The last time I linked to his blog the comment was removed.
—
[ Mod: Yes, John. The crucial difference is that this time it’s actually on-topic.
Regards. ]
‘The average was 1.8 co-morbidities, so most had 2 or more (typically diabetes, dementia, chronic heart issues). Only 5% died ‘from’ Covid. The rest died ‘with’ it’
ha ha ha ha- people did not die of bubonic plague they died ‘with it’.!!
You just have to look at excess deaths to see the direct and indirect lethality of Covid-19.
A huge amount of disinformation there skippy!
And your bed mates as usual cheering you along – meanwhile posting massive ad hominem and abuse and curses at Craig Murray at your barrack rooms at O-Gee!
Think yourselves as clever and cheeky???
Eff you all – the long and the short and the tall.
I keep telling you Following Orders is NOT a valid defence when mass murdering civilians – as you will find out down the line.
“Today’s shocking evidence by Prof. Neil Ferguson that, had lockdown been implemented a week earlier, the death toll would have been halved, has the ring of truth, although it must remain a surmise (and I am aware of his past record). ”
This seems odd. Why does it have the ring of truth when the guys been wrong every single other time he’s opened his mouth? There’s absolutely no evidence whatsoever that lockdown has saved a single life, anywhere. There is, however, evidence that lockdowns, and the policies that ave been rolled out with them in many countries, kill. Not even on a small scale either. AND it’s not hard to find the evidence that backs this up. Come on, Craig. You can do better than this.
There’s no evidence – you are correct – as long as you’re willing to completely ignore it. Countries that implemented lockdowns late, or not at all, suffered far more than those than implemented them early and forcefully.
Deaths are proportional to rates of infection, all other things being equal, right? Do you accept that? (If not, we’ve really got an uphill job on here)
Rates of infection dropped precipitously as soon as lockdown took place, in every country where it was implemented. Look at the data for reproduction R:
https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/#/details/Germany
Try it for any country you like. Look how the number of daily new cases dropped on 23/3:
https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19estimates/#/details/United_Kingdom
Do you actually think all this stuff is simply made up?
“Do you actually think all this stuff is simply made up?”
Not exactly made up but manipulated to prove a point. Imperial College London is funded by Bill Gates among others. What it does not say is flu-like viruses have that parabolic graph anyway as they run their course. What ICL is trying to say is that measures taken to prevent the spread had created this effect, which is nonsense.
“Rates of infection dropped precipitously as soon as lockdown took place, in every country where it was implemented.”
You made this up. What about countries where it was never implemented, for example, Belarus. Yesterday its figures were 51,316 infections and only 293 deaths. They’ve been out in the open, getting fresh air, watching their football matches, that is, all three major leagues and now the cup. Intelligent people like you glenn_uk should be able to see what is going on. It troubles me that you can’t.
You cannot use 1 case vs the general conclusion that lockdown is a supreme method.
I.e. ‘Belarus work so that mean lock-down doesnt work!’ meme, thats not how science work.
Belarus is by the way quite a special case to begin with of various reasons when judging their Corona stats.
You need to explain why it’s a special case. And then go on to Japan.
I believe that ultimately, it is about very low travel/tourism to/from Belarus and also that they decided quite early on for a mandatory 2 week self isolation/quarantine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Belarus#Government_response
What is your take on the low death toll for Belarus? Is there low transmission issue or is there a good government response?
Good government cover-up more likely.
https://www.rferl.org/a/son-of-belarus-paramedic-says-father-killed-by-coronavirus/30571639.html
JG: “You made this up.”
No John, I did not make it up. Heavens’ sake, man – the data on which my statement was based is presented in the links next to my statement!
Belarus appears to be run by a total denialist. You might like what he says, and maybe you think pneumonia has suddenly shot up in that country, but anyone with sense would take reliable statistics from reputable countries as examples of how they are performing with their approach to C-19.
Maybe you think – as Belarus’ president stated – that vodka and saunas cure C-19? Or is it all a hoax, like you claimed before (despite allowing for the fact that at least _some_ people have actually died of C-19 there)?
I’ve put this to you several times, John, and you’ve never addressed it : Why are you so fond of far-right wing Trump-inspired propaganda and denialism these days? Why do you promote clips from Fox News and white supremacists, pro-corporate and race-baiting sympathisers instead of NHS staff and independent scientists?
You said Glenn “in every country”.
As to the “Maybe you think” business I try to base my thinking on facts. You would have to find the Fox News clip because most of my links are from social media. I cannot help it if white supremacists also believe that we are being had. I hope you don’t think I’m one.
You often accuse people of “making it up”.
Even when I give links such as in my post just above, you say I’m making it up. In this post of yours:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/05/civil-liberty-vanishes/comment-page-4/#comment-940858
You accuse me of NEVER giving any actual data. You also say here that I don’t do research and only rely on “MSM” – unlike yourself of course:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/05/civil-liberty-vanishes/comment-page-4/#comment-940867
Your link was to FOX News – a Republican propaganda outfit, which was running a story by a Republican Senator who was pretending there was an over-count – remember?
You also linked to Ron Paul’s rather racist, ultra-business friendly libertarian website, which doesn’t like the lock-down. And you agree with that.
JG: ” I cannot help it if white supremacists also believe that we are being had. I hope you don’t think I’m one.”
Well, I’m over here with the medics and the scientists. You’re way over on the right, with Trump, Bolsonaro and a very nasty group of neo-cons and racists.
Sure you’re on the right side there John?
If we are assigning blame around here, we should start with lambasting Ferguson et al for claiming that their modelling systems were anything but mystic meg bullshitting. The parameterisation could not be done with any accuracy, so you could make whatever predictions you wanted to achieve your political goals. The goals were clearly to trash the economy of the masses, letting the moneyed classes short stock markets and make billions. So the tuning was made to be as armageddon-like as possible.
The second thing to say is that all ‘Covid19’ death numbers are meaningless. All cause of death certificates now are meaningless, as the whole system of proper allocation of cause of death was done away with. Again, this was deliberate to maximise the ‘numbers of Covid19 deaths’. That was clearly a political decision and whosoever it was that came up with the scam needs to go to prison for a very long time. It is the apotheosis of anti-science. We will never now know how many people truly died of SARS_CoV2 infection and how many were merely infected with it when dying of other things. That again is just what the Government wants: no ability to be prosecuted because no data to satisfy any judge.
We can also say that the advice to healthy people to be self-isolating indoors not taking exercise was an exercise in destroying human health, not conserving it. The weather was perfect during lockdown and all healthy people under 50 should have been in the sunshine, exercising. Sunshine stimulates Vitamin D production, both Vitamin C and D are excellent stimulants of the immune system. Depleting Vitamin D by being indoors for 3 months is medical advice that should see the advisors struck off.
It is absolutely simple to take exercise whilst maintaining social distancing. i did it for three months and never did i come within 2 metres of someone. Because of the lack of traffic, it was easy to step onto the road to give a wide berth to a walker going the other way. I regularly walked 5-8 miles a day, going to buy newspapers, food and going to my allotment site. I endangered no-one at any time. This is because I have a brain, a sense of responsibility (even if i am extremely skeptical about the whole thing, I always obey edicts because I am one in 60 million, with no right to over-rule a legitimately taken decision) and sufficient understanding of the role of diet and exercise in maintaining human health.
My mother may also have had Covid19. Like you, Mr Murray, she went completely off her food, slept for 20 hrs a day for around 5 days and took several falls for no obvious reason, whilst remaining lucid. All are known to be consistent with Covid19, but no diagnosis was made as she was not a hospital emergency.
What she got was me providing her with a very healthy diet, building it up over two months so that now she eats a healthy 3 course meal every day at lunchtime and a good breakfast including fruit smoothie and egg omelette as well.
Testing is not the primary blame factor for the disease: unhealthy diets will be.
If the nation distanced socially and ensured it all ate seriously high vitamin, high mineral, healthy diets with age appropriate exercise taken every day, I feel very, very confident that recovery rates would be higher, quicker and resilience to future attacks would be higher too.
I know from personal life experience that you get ill when your immune system is temporarily weakened. This can occur for many reasons: seriously over-exercising (anyone who runs mountain marathons knows that for two days after a race, you must be very careful so as not to expose your weakened immune system to germs); high stress (which is also associated with problems getting to sleep); unhealthy diets (anyone who goes and eats a week of greasy pre-prepared meals will be far more likely to get ill); smoking and drinking to excess (both are known to depress immune function).
If there is one thing to learn from Covid19 it is to prioritise our immune health to a far, far greater degree. This is a personal responsibility and for those over 50, daily walking of 2-6 miles, healthy eating and limiting alcohol consumption to 2 glasses of wine equivalent a day (preferably 1) is 95% of it complete.
For those aged 16-40, more vigorous exercise including running, cycling, swimming etc is entirely appropriate.
Prevention is always better than cure.
Bill Gates may try to make billions claiming he can protect you all, but he is a snake oil salesman.
The people who can protect you the most effectively are yourselves.
Your diatribe may be justified if it was directed at our government for acting slowly and not forcefully enough. Otherwise this rant implies that countries as disparate as China, Russia, UK, France, Italy US, Hong Kong, all decided at the same time to destroy their economies to spite the masses.
Who was trying to “maximise the numbers of Covid-19 deaths”?
Do you actually think our UK government was excited to announce, day after day, that they’d screwed things up so royally that we now have the worse rate in Europe, and almost the worst rates in the world?
You must have been following the news a lot closer than me, because I never saw Trump once try to big-up the number of deaths and infections, maximising the effect. His good friend Bolsonaro is doing a fine job, don’t you think? His approach is to ignore C-19 altogether. Tell me how that’s working out for them in Brazil.
And all those doctors and nurses are just lying their arses off, just to make good on some Secret Government Programme, right Rhys? No doubt because the NHS workers love the Tories so much, they’re willing to be struck off for malpractice, just to do Johnson a favour. That’s your case, Rhys. Makes sense!
Oh yeah, and they love paying people not to work while *deliberately* having the economy destroyed – Tories are famous for it.
What a mish-mash.
Yes look after your health, eat well, get outdoors, get sunshine, get exercise. Yes the “allowed out one hour a day” rule was unforgivable; there was never any reason to stay in so long as you avoided others. Yes it was great being able to walk down the middle of the road; the quiet and absence of traffic fumes was wonderful. Yes it’s a very horrible illness that knocks a large minority of sufferers out for weeks and takes ages to recover from.
No doctors don’t make up false causes of death just to help make the government look bad because the government wants to look bad; what planet does that happen on? No, doctors are experts at discriminating between different diseases and when they’ve been giving oxygen therapy and renal support and it doesn’t work they write covid-19 on the death record.
Yes Bill Gates was a nasty monopolist in his main job but no he doesn’t know a thing about making vaccines, he just pays others to develop, distribute and administer them, probably because his wife kept nagging him to do something productive for a change with all that vast ill-gotten wealth and that’s why her name is in the name of the foundation.
I am afraid Clark that you have been indoctrinated with the mainstream story. Only brave politicians have the guts to stand up and tell the truth. As you will see if you watch this Bill or Melinda Gates are not the philanthropists you might think they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lPZmGgPKzc&feature=share
Amazing, brave, and completely insane. But she sings the tune you like, one crackpot out of countless thousands of politicians – so obviously she must be saying the truth while everyone else is “in on it”. That’s how it works.
She would not be allowed to sing that tune on the BBC!
I’m rather glad that dangerous misinformation and nonsense isn’t allowed free broadcast, without limit. It’s delusional and encourages poor thinking and the results can be deadly.
Her name is Sara Cunial. Wish we had a single MP like her.
I don’t. She’s clearly a crackpot conspiracy theorist who raves on about 5G, vaccines, and of course grand plots by Bill Gates. Not surprised you like her, though!
Well you wouldn’t glenn_uk. It is because even now with all the new evidence emerging that you still cling on to the good old BBC and Sky News propaganda.
Let’s get back to work for those that still have jobs to go to.
Oh, I “cling” to it, do I? Incidentally, you won’t be able to tell me where I’ve referenced Sky ever, because that’s something you just made up.
Whereas you “cling” to nutty far-right propaganda put out by your mates dressed in white sheets with pointy tops that have little holes cut out to see through, and who like setting fire to crosses.
I think Rhys is spot on. I am appalled that the government and media have not advised improving one’s immune system and general health. If instead of lockdown we’d gone on to crash obesity busting diets we would be in a much healthier state. We should all know by now we cannot believe a word this government says. Sadly that now extends to scientists like Ferguson. Sorting the wheat from the chaff is not easy. The obvious corollary of this is that we need to take responsibility for our own health. Sensible at risk folk did not need to be told to lockdown, they were already self shielding. There is plenty of blame to spread around and no doubt it will be apportioned when it’s too late, maybe we’ll learn from our mistakes but I’m not counting on it. As far as I’m concerned taking responsibility for your own health is now a revolutionary act. Even more so when the inevitable happens and Boris bows to Trump on our food regulations. We’ll all be vegetarians at that point.
Phil, they do advise on improving one’s health up to a point. The trouble is that government is much more interested in keeping their business mates happy than in promoting our health, and while the NHS health promotion has a budget that allows a whisper of good advice, the junk-food/booze/confectionery industry has a speaker-stack 50 feet high to bellow out the promotion of its products.
I do hope you’re right, though, and that we all become vegetarians.
@ Phil E June 12, 2020 at 14:33
‘… We’ll all be vegetarians at that point.’
If we can find any non-GMO veggies.
We’ll have to grow our own or have them grown by repurposed local farmers growing good people want to buy.
The stark facts are very clear. And, properly understood, daunting.
As Craig’s anecdote suggests, the ruling class regards the coronavirus crisis as something of very little importance. Except that, inconveniently for the lords of the economy, the general public, having seen reports of the devastation the virus has caused elsewhere- in China, Iran, Italy- demands that something be done to control the pandemic and to save the lives of the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people that officialdom, heartily seconded by its alt right ‘libertarian’ claques, considers that it is too expensive to save.
It could hardly be more clear: quarantine measures and a campaign of public health aimed at testing tracking and treating carriers of the virus work. If properly pursued such policies save the lives of almost all those infected.
The problem is that such a programme costs a lot. And it costs much more because, for the past fifty years, we have been running down our public health systems. Economising on nursing training, for example, and closing down hospital beds. The ‘granary’ of the National Health Service has been opened up to the vermin of profit takers. Even now the NHS is actually run by veterans of the US system, bean counters for whom the preservation of profits for shareholders is a fiduciary duty while the preservation of lives is incidental and possibly undesirable.
This pandemic has long been anticipated.
For a variety of reasons related to the nature of this society it was inevitable. As are successor epidemics- functions of the way that we live now, our trade patterns, our diets, our petrochemical based agriculture, our living conditions. And as a society we will either adjust to mitigate the impact of these disease outbreaks or learn to look away -as we already do with regard to the welfare of the great majority of the world’s population in the South, malnourished, ill housed and remote from medical attention- as millions of vulnerable people die.
What we are seeing now, would have been difficult to credit in the era before neo-liberalism established its intellectual and political dominance in our societies. The deaths of most of those who have died were eminently preventable. A failure to stockpile PEP gear and to retain the capacity to manufacture it at short notice, has been responsible for many deaths, including those who have died, virtually abandoned, for want of properly equipped nursing care, whether at home, in hospital or in other institutions. The lessons are very clear and they are easily studied and learned from.
What makes the current situation so difficult to understand is that, while the failures of a system are being demonstrated. before an international audience, in a fashion that is quite unmistakable, many people-perhaps a majority of those posting here, for example, are determined to miss the point and to discern, on the most miserable of excuses for rationales, evidence that, in fact the system is doing just fine, that nothing of importance is happening- a few hundred thousand people are dying a few months sooner than they otherwise would- except that a conspiracy is afoot, a conspiracy against capitalism as well as the people in order to enrich a few speculators.
The only conspiracy that I can see is one involving-for no reason but blind obedience to the ruling ideology and a sordid desire to shock- those determined to normalise the deaths of the most vulnerable.
And let us recollect who they are. The old, certainly. But most notably employees forced to work in unsafe conditions, without proper equipment and at pain of losing their jobs and their entitlements to social security networks, should they refuse. Then there are the poor and the marginalised- for whom it is increasingly difficult to receive medical attention and advice. And for whom a visit to hospital threatens to be a death sentence-beyond the reach of family, friends and caregivers and at the mercy of a system which saves money on providing oxygen by shooting people up with morphine. To finish them off.
Those who trivialise this suffering and its causes align themselves with the most immoral of people. By economising in the saving of lives, by sacrificing others to save themselves money, they become cannibals, devouring the flesh of others.
Thank goodness someone’s got some political awareness. With all the unmitigated conspiracy theory we get round here I wonder how many have suffered neurological damage from covid-19.
Clark – on the whole I agree with just about everything you say about the importance of controlling Covid-19 and how to go about doing it. In particular – testing, testing testing and quarantine for people who test positive.
Unfortunately, we’ve all had to take an interest in epidemiological modelling and – for what it is worth – I’m inclined to agree with Ferguson’s assessment that the UK death toll may well have been half of what it is if the lock-down had started a week earlier. After the lock-down started, I think that the UK did reasonably well. Looking at the figures, the daily deaths have come down steadily and the number of new infections has come down steadily (even though they are testing much more than they used to) so their strategy is actually working. The only problem was the very bad initial condition, because they locked down much later than they should.
So the government did get it wrong – and badly wrong. On the other hand, I’m reluctant to condemn them over this, because I suspect that I would have made exactly the same mistake myself. When the e-mail came round on the afternoon of Tuesday 10th March, stating that all face-to-face teaching was suspended forthwith, I was extremely annoyed by it and thought that our vice-Chancellor was barking mad. That was my initial reaction. I now take the view that he did exactly the right thing – so I have changed my view on this considerably.
There is a very serious dilemma here – the measures taken (especially closing schools) have extremely drastic side effects. You don’t do this unless you really have to.
Of course, this Covid-19 also has very serious side-effects and – as you point out – nobody yet knows what long-term effects the disease has for survivors. It looks like a nasty one and it is much better not to get it – even for those who are young and healthy.
Bevin ,
It is about the disengagement from the ever increasing level playing fields of the EU, as has been the main objective of the last decade, as you surely know?
The fact that in 3 months of following that obsession, fatalities are already half of the Austerity imposed in 2010.
60,000 at least
But who cares? As long as they ‘Geddidun!’
Do the ruling classes regard “the coronavirus crisis as something of very little importance”?
Facts would seem to suggest otherwise. Try the fact that as of about June 4th the billionaire class were estimated to have increased their aggregate net wealth since the onset of the crisis by $565 billion.
Isn’t it odd that even as governments around the world were imposing widely varying restrictions on domestic populations central banks were acting in lockstep to print money, crush yield curves and prop up asset prices. Elsewhere on this blog people are comparing and contrasting the public health response of places like the PRC with the UK – but you can’t compare and contrast the policies of the PBOC with the BoE or the BoJ or the Fed or the ECB because their responses were all identical, and all identically designed to further enrich the already obscenely rich.
The screeching and wailing populations demand ever more diversity in statues and monuments and ever more homogeneity in central banks. Should all work out perfectly.
Ah, so it’s the protests against racial policing that’s your main gripe here.
More or Less on Radio 4 was good this week on the issue of whether the lock-down came too late:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd
SAGE were incompetent, and the government just listened to them – not all the other people such as Italian doctors howling about how we needed to lock-down.
The posts here example how the NHS’s just-two-symptom diagnostic questionnaire was another part of the UK utter incompetence.
Will continue to attend virtual hearings and hope to attend full hearing in court if this takes place.
Will not comment as yet upon my reactions to the preliminary hearing.
Craig, is too late to get access to the proceedings online?
It is adjourned now until 7 July. It should be possible to get access again for that hearing. I will post details nearer the time.
I was going to ask what transpired ? I logged into the phone conferencing system around 11:00 am (bit late admittedly) and found I was on a c. call for a case of abuse against a young woman. I assume I was just too late and it was a very short hearing ?
Mike
Mike I had the same experience.
Is there any blog or report of the hearing to be found on the net? Are you allowed to post links to such websites?
What lockdown I had to go to work despite being my partners carer.I asked my manager about it and got the usual reply that they would get back to me that was weeks ago still no answer british managers are useless
Thank you for sharing your family’s story, Craig. The laxness on the part of the medical community (and especially in the U.S., where I live) is unforgivable. I’m glad everyone in your family is recovering. Cheers.
You and family members might be enjoying immunity against Covid19 now, quite a bonus!
Although I’m not a fan of CNN, individuals there still get some good reporting through, like David Culver, who returned to Wuhan month ago. He interviewed the real deal in Corona combat, Dr. Zhong Nanshan – contrary to Dr. Fauci. This Chinese top expert warns his own nation for a second wave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87-QdgjxwiY
He also warns for Chinese military adventurism during the global Covid confusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4fx-hLaYok
Similarities between the CV19 epidemic and the 1978 film Coma. You go into hospital in non-critical condition and end up dead – $29,000 per person, or unit, so bed turnover is critical in making “a killing” on the health market:
https://williambowles.info/2020/06/11/watch-perspectives-on-the-pandemic-9-the-undercover-nurse-gives-her-first-hand-account-of-neglect-mismanagement-and-possible-corruption-in-the-treatment-of-covid-patientsrdquo/
https://www.anti-empire.com/nurse-blows-whistle-on-new-york-epicenter-hospital-killing-huge-numbers-of-virus-free-blacks-with-sedatives-ventilation/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma_%281978_film%29
But that IS the US privatised medical insurance system- that they are slavering their chops over by replacing our free NHS.
These US doctors become millionaires, have yachts, private clinics – because the multi tier system , with tax breaks for medical insurance, allows ( actively encourages) that class division.
If there was no incentive on medics or administrators to maximise the payments for treatments than the US per capita medical costs would be much lower and with full coverage for all!
You know that. So why the smoke?
While I agree that COVID-19 and the way it has been used is a “monumental hoax” it is not Craig’s fault, He, like so many others, has fallen for the fear factor that initially got everybody worried about whether they had the virus and this latest post demonstrates that concern and the personal anxiety he and his family suffered. What needs to be done is win him, and others, over. This is hard when for 3 months there was continual bombardment from all major news channels about what a danger COVID-19 is without ever any dissent from the narrative. This post, more than any, has made me aware of the personal struggle Craig and his family went through, and made me more capable of understanding why the blog presented such a one-sided perspective of what was happening.
But it is a hoax being used to manipulate.
Sadly for you the whole world is seeing the criminal negligence of our government. More Covid deaths being recorded daily than the rest of Europe combined. They are hardly going to be swayed in their opinion by claims there never was any pandemic.
I agree. The figures are being manipulated.
Manipulated to make themselves look the most incompetent government in Europe… . A diabolically clever hoax.
Manipulated to make it look worse than it is.
John – how about answering Carl’s point. Why would the government want to make themselves look worse than is actually the case – the worst in Europe?
I’m not expecting a sensible answer from you, unfortunately.
The NHS released a report dated the 3rd of June. It said 95% of the fatalities of Covid -19 had 1 or more primary illnesses. Therefore, 5% of the fatalities died solely from it. The ages broke down as follows (fatalities solely caused by Covid-19)
Age. No.
0-19. 3
20-39. 32
40-59. 155
60-79. 487
80+. 565
It seems Professor Ferguson’s original estimate of 500,000 fatalities are a tad out!
“It seems Professor Ferguson’s original estimate of 500,000 fatalities are a tad out!”
Why?
because we haven’t had the 2nd spike yet.
With Covid-19 or from Covid-19. they still died.
There were a further 151 deaths in the UK yesterday
Total Deaths in the UK 41,279
There have been 7.27M cases and 431,000 deaths worldwide
Try telling John “hugs of death” Goss that. He’s a denialist, like Trump and Bolsonaro.