The true mortality rate of covid-19 remains a matter of intense dispute, but it is undoubtedly true that a false public impression was given by the very high percentage of deaths among those who were tested positive, at the time when it was impossible to get tested unless you were seriously ill (or a member of society’s “elite”). When only those in danger of dying could get a test, it was of course not at all surprising that such a high percentage of those who tested positive died. It is astonishing how many articles are published with the entirely fake claim that the mortality rate of Covid-19 is 3.4%, based on that simple methodology. That same methodology will today, now testing is much more widely available to those who feel ill, give you results of under 1%. That is still an overestimate as very few indeed of the symptomless, or of those with mild symptoms, are even now being tested.
The Guardian’s daily graphs of statistics since January 1 illustrate this very nicely. It is of course not in fact the case, as the graphs appear to show, that there are now vastly more cases than there were at the time of peak deaths in the spring. It is simply that testing is much more available. What the graphs do indicate is that, unless mortality rates have very radically declined, cases tested on the same basis they are tested today would have given results last spring of well over 100,000 cases per day. It is also important to note that, even now, a very significant proportion of those with covid-19, especially with mild symptoms, are still not being tested. Quite possibly the majority. So you could very possibly double or treble that figure if you were looking for actual cases rather than tested cases.
I do not believe anybody seriously disputes that there are many millions of people in the general population who had covid and survived it, but were never tested or diagnosed. That can include people who were quite badly ill at home but not tested, but also a great many who had mild or no symptoms. It is worth recalling that in a cruise ship outbreak, when all the passengers had to be compulsorily tested, 84% of those who tested positive had no symptoms.
What is hotly disputed is precisely how many millions there are who have had the disease but never been tested, which given the absence of widespread antibody testing, and inaccuracies in the available antibody tests, is not likely to be plain for some time, as sample sizes and geographical reach of studies published to date have been limited. There is no shortage of sources and you can take your pick. For what it is worth, my own reading leads me to think that this Lancet and BMJ published study, estimating an overall death rate of 0.66%, is not going to be far off correct when, in a few years time, scientific consensus settles on the true figure. I say that with a certain caution. “Respectable” academic estimates of global deaths from Hong Kong flu in 1968 to 70 range from 1 million to 4 million, and I am not sure there is a consensus.
It is impossible to discuss covid-19 in the current state of knowledge without making sweeping assumptions. I am going here to assume that 0.66% mortality rate as broadly correct, which I believe it to be (and if anything pessimistic). I am going to assume that 70% of the population would, without special measures, catch the virus, which is substantially higher than a flu pandemic outbreak, but covid-19 does seem particularly contagious. That would give you about 300,000 total deaths in the United Kingdom, and about a tenth of that in Scotland. That is an awful lot of dead people. It is perfectly plain that, if that is anything near correct, governments cannot be accused of unnecessary panic in their responses to date.
Whether they are the best responses is quite another question.
Because the other thing of which there is no doubt is that covid-19 is an extremely selective killer. The risk of death to children is very small indeed. The risk of death to healthy adults in their prime is also very marginal indeed. In the entire United Kingdom, less than 400 people have died who were under the age of 60 and with no underlying medical conditions. And it is highly probable that many of this very small number did in fact have underlying conditions undiagnosed. Those dying of coronavirus, worldwide, have overwhelmingly been geriatric.
As a Stanford led statistical study of both Europe and the USA concluded
People <65 years old have very small risks of COVID-19 death even in the hotbeds of the pandemic and deaths for people <65 years without underlying predisposing conditions are remarkably uncommon. Strategies focusing specifically on protecting high-risk elderly individuals should be considered in managing the pandemic.
The study concludes that for adults of working age the risk of dying of coronavirus is equivalent to the risk of a car accident on a daily commute.
I should, on a personal note, make quite plain that I am the wrong side of this. I am over 60, and I have underlying heart and lung conditions, and I am clinically obese, so I am a prime example of the kind of person least likely to survive.
The hard truth is this. If the economy were allowed to function entirely normally, if people could go about their daily business, there would be no significant increase in risk of death or of life changing illness to the large majority of the population. If you allowed restaurants, offices and factories to be be open completely as normal, the risk of death really would be almost entirely confined to the elderly and the sick. Which must beg the question, can you not protect those groups without closing all those places?
If you were to open up everything as normal, but exclude those aged over 60 who would remain isolated, there would undoubtedly be a widespread outbreak of coronavirus among the adult population, but with few serious health outcomes. The danger lies almost entirely in spread to the elderly and vulnerable. The danger lies in 35 year old Lisa catching the virus. She might pass it on to her children and their friends, with very few serious ill effects. But she may also pass it on to her 70 year old mum, which could be deadly.
We are reaching the stage where the cumulative effect of lockdown and partial lockdown measures is going to inflict catastrophic damage on the economy. Companies could survive a certain period of inactivity, but are coming to the end of their resilience, of their financial reserves, and of effective government support. Unemployment and bankruptcies are set to soar, with all the human misery and indeed of deleterious health outcomes that will entail.
There is no social institution better designed than schools for passing on a virus. The fact that schools are open is an acknowledgement of the fact that there is no significant danger to children from this virus. Nor is there a significant danger to young adults. University students, the vast, vast majority of them, are not going to be more than mildly ill if they catch coronavirus. There is no more health need for universities to be locked down and teaching virtually, than there would be for schools to do the same. It is a nonsense.
The time has come for a change in policy approach that abandons whole population measures, that abandons closing down sectors of the economy, and concentrates on shielding that plainly defined section of the population which is at risk. With this proviso – shielding must be on a voluntary basis. Elderly or vulnerable people who would prefer to live their lives, and accept that there is currently a heightened risk of dying a bit sooner than might otherwise be expected, must be permitted to do so. The elderly in particular should not be forcefully incarcerated if they do not so wish. To isolate an 88 year old and not allow them to see their family, on the grounds their remaining life would be shortened, is not necessarily the best choice for them. It should be their choice.
To some extent this selective shielding already happens. I know of a number of adults who have put themselves into voluntary lockdown because they live with a vulnerable person, and such people should be assisted as far as possible to work from home and function in their isolation. But in general, proper protection of the vulnerable without general population lockdowns and restrictions would require some government resource and some upheaval.
There could be, for example, a category of care homes created under strict isolation where no visitation is allowed and there are extremely strict firewall measures. Others may have less stringent precautions and allow greater visitation and movement; people should have the choice, and be assisted in moving to the right kind of institution for them. This would involve upheaval and resources, but nothing at all compared to the upheaval being caused and resources lost by unnecessary pan-societal restrictions currently in force. Temporary shielded residential institutions should be created for those younger people whose underlying health conditions put them at particular risk, should they wish to enter them. Special individual arrangements can be put in place. Public resource should not be spared to help.
But beyond those precautions to protect those most in danger, our world should return to full on normal. Ordinary healthy working age people should be allowed to make a living again, to interact socially, to visit their families, to gather together, to enjoy the pub or restaurant. They would be doing so in a time of pandemic, and a small proportion of them would get quite ill for a short while, and a larger proportion would get mildly ill . But that is a part of the human condition. The myth that we can escape disease completely and live forever is a nonsense.
Against this are the arguments that “every death is a tragedy” and “one death is too many”. It is of course true that every death is a tragedy. But in fact we accept a risk of death any time we get in a car or cross a road, or indeed buy meat from the butcher. In the USA, there has been an average of 4.5 amusement park ride fatalities a year for the last 20 years; that is an entirely unnecessary social activity with a slightly increased risk of death. Few seriously want amusement parks closed down.
I genuinely am convinced that for non-geriatric people, the risk of death from Covid-19 is, as the Stanford study suggested, about the same as the risk of death from traffic accident on a daily commute. The idea that people should not commute to work because “any death is a tragedy” is plainly a nonsense.
The problem is that it is a truism of politics that fear works in rendering a population docile, obedient or even grateful to its political leaders. The major restrictions on liberty under the excuse of the “war on terror” proved that, when the statistical risk of death by terrorism has always been extraordinarily small to any individual, far less than the risk of traffic accident. All the passenger security checks that make flying a misery, across the entire world, have never caught a single bomb, anywhere.
Populations terrified of covid-19 applaud, in large majority, mass lockdowns of the economy which have little grounding in logic. The way for a politician to be popular is to impose more severe lockdown measures and tell the population they are being saved, even as the economy crumbles. Conversely, to argue against blanket measures is to invite real hostility. The political bonus is in upping the fear levels, not in calming them.
This is very plain in Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon has achieved huge popularity by appearing more competent and caring in managing the covid-19 crisis than Boris Johnson – which may be the lowest bar ever set as a measure of political performance, but it would be churlish not to say she has cleared it with style and by a substantial margin.
But when all the political gains are on the side of more blanket lockdowns and ramping up the levels of fear, then the chances of measures tailored and targeted specifically on the vulnerable being adopted are receding. There is also the danger that politicians will wish to keep this political atmosphere going as long as possible. Fear is easy to spread. If you make people wear face masks and tell them never to go closer than 2 metres to another person or they may die, you can throw half the population immediately into irrational hostility towards their neighbours. Strangers are not seen as people but as parcels of disease.
In these circumstances, asking ordinary people to worry about political liberty is not fruitful. But the new five tier measures announced by the Scottish government yesterday were worrying in terms of what they seem to indicate about the permanence of restrictions on the, not really under threat, general population. In introducing the new system, Nicola Sturgeon went all BBC on us and invoked the second world war and the wartime spirit, saying we would eventually get through this. That of course was a six year haul.
But what really worried me was the Scottish government’s new five tier system with restrictions nominated not 1 to 5, but 0 to 4. Zero level restrictions includes gatherings being limited to 8 people indoors or 15 people outdoors – which of course would preclude much political activity. When Julian Assange’s father John was visiting us this week I wished to organise a small vigil for Julian in Glasgow, but was unable to do so because of Covid restrictions. Even at zero level under the Scottish government’s new plans, freedom of assembly – an absolutely fundamental right – will still be abolished and much political activity banned. I cannot see any route to normality here; the truth is, of course, that it is very easy to convince most of the population inspired by fear to turn against those interested in political freedom.
What is in a number? When I tweeted about this, a few government loyalists argued against me that numbering 0 to 4 means nothing and the levels of restriction might equally have been numbered 1 to 5. To which I say, that numbering the tiers of restriction 1 to 5 would have been the natural choice, whereas numbering them 0 to 4 is a highly unusual choice. It can only have been chosen to indicate that 0 is the “normal” level and that normality is henceforth not “No restrictions” but normal is “no public gathering”. When the threat of Covid 19 is deemed to be sufficiently receding we will drop to level zero. If it was intended that after level 1, restrictions would be simply set aside, there would be no level zero. The signal being sent is that level zero is the “new normal” and normal is not no restrictions. It is both sinister and unnecessary.
UPDATE I just posted this reply to a comment that this argument amounts to a “conspiracy theory”. It is an important point so I insert my reply here:
But I am not positing any conspiracy at all. I suspect that it is very easy for politicians to convince themselves that by increasing fear and enforcing fierce restriction, they really are protecting people. It is very easy indeed to genuinely convince yourself of the righteousness of a course which both ostensibly protects the public and gives you a massive personal popularity boost.
It is argued that only Tories are worried about the effect on the economy in the face of a public health pandemic. That is the opposite of the truth. Remarkably, the global lockdowns have coincided with an astonishing rate of increase in the wealth of the richest persons on the planet. That is an effect we are shortly going to see greatly amplified. As tens of thousands of small and medium businesses will be forced into bankruptcy by lockdown measures and economic downturn, their assets and their markets will be snapped up by the vehicles of the super-wealthy.
I am not a covid sceptic. But neither do I approve of fear-mongering. The risk to the large majority of the population is very low indeed, and it is wrong that anybody who states that fact is immediately vilified. The effect of fear on the general population, and the ability of politicians to manipulate that fear to advantage, should not be underestimated as a danger to society.
There has been a substantial increase in human life expectancy over my lifetime and a subsequent distancing from death. That this trend should be permanent, in the face of human over-population, resource exhaustion and climate change, is something we have too readily taken for granted. In the longer term, returning to the familiarity with and acceptance of death that characterised our ancestors, is something to which mankind may need to become re-accustomed.
In the short term, if permanent damage to society is not to be done, then the response needs to be less of an attack on the entire socio-economic structure, and more targeted to the protection of the clearly defined groups at real risk. I greatly dislike those occasions when I feel compelled to write truths which I know will be unpopular, particularly where I expect them to arouse unpleasant vilification rather than just disagreement. This is one of those times. But I write this blog in general to say things I believe need to be said. I am very open to disagreement and to discussion, even if robust, if polite. But this is not the blog to which to come for comfort-reading.
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Initial viral dose – the amount of virus exposure at the start of infection – the infectious dose – may increase the severity of the illness and is also linked to a higher viral load throughout the course.
Basically why masks are so important : the coronavirus is about 0.12 microns in diameter and N95 (masks) protect down to 0.1 microns, with 95% efficiency, which is where it gets its name.
If you look at the research on masks, you will see vastly more studies showing they are ineffective (or close to), and very few with positive results. Then there are the negatives of prolonged mask-wearing, one of which is an increase in oral thrush, bacterial infections and (dentists report) bad breath now known as ‘mask breath’, and spectacles fogging up which makes work difficult or impossible for glasses wearers and which leads to the no-no of constant mask adjustment.
Really? The virus spreads through droplets, from small (aerosols) to large with millions of viruses in each. The masks are effective. Don’t look at some experiments by physicians. Search for physicists with high speed photography. And compare with countries like Japan where people wear masks when THEY are sick. Other experiments show that there is no decrease in oxygen and only slight increase in CO2. I don’t give a damn about an anecdotal evidence from dentists. Besides I wear a mask at most an hour a day when shopping, like most people. The experiments were done on nurses with full shift duty showing no detrimental effects.
This as with Goose’s post are fraudulent.
Masks that the public wear including N95 have no protection against viruses and do indeed reduce oxygen, just ask why operating theatres have extra oxygen pumped into them.
Masks protect no-one, but do act as an incubator and mobile distribution centre for viruses.
On N95 masks Goose says
“Basically why masks are so important : the coronavirus is about 0.12 microns in diameter and N95 (masks) protect down to 0.1 microns, with 95% efficiency, which is where it gets its name”
This is incorrect.
For example, the N95 mask is designed and rated to filter particles greater than 300 nm at 95% efficiency
oth CV and IF behave almost the same outside of the body and this is due to their size, structure, and relative chemical similarities. On average, both are about the same size, ranging around 100 ±30 nanometers or nm (CV can range smaller in size than IF). For consistency purposes, I will refer to both of them at the 100 nm size, which is reasonably accurate (nm is 10-9 meter (0.000000001 meter), a micron (μm) is 10-6 meter (0.000001 meter). The meter is about 10% longer than a yard, or 39.37 inches so 1 micron is 0.00003937 inch.
https://www.aier.org/article/the-year-of-disguises/
Please state the sizes of the following
1. Oxygen molecule.
2. Carbon dioxide molecule
3. Virus particle
4 . Aerosol particle
5. The various sizes of mask filtration.
A cull of older people, whether voluntary or not, would have the happy result of decreasing the population who voted for Brexit and hasten the happy day when the UK would return to the EU fold :). Joking apart, though, it might be difficult to isolate some older people, including myself, who have children who go to school. I would probably choose to take the risk of catching a virus, as I would not wish to be either separated from my children or for my children to be isolated from school.
Then I would stay away from you and your children! Teachers are dying here in the United States. Children bring home the infection and give it to their grandparents, who are most likely to die. I think it is irresponsible to behave as though this pandemic is not dangerous.
‘Then I would stay away from you and your children!’
I’m not sure you were invited
we don’t get a choice at the grocery store.
Crypto Nazi are you.Joking apart.The EU was a Third Reich policy in 1942 and that was the plan and continued by Allen Dulles.And it is still fascist now.
What of “long Covid”?
I have a friend, a Londoner, who claims that she personally knows THIRTEEN people who are suffering with it. This person is not generally an unstable or unreliable person. Pick any random friend of yours, and imagine that 13 people known personally to them are struck down with a debilitating, disabling chronic condition. Extrapolate to the population. How many people does that ultimately come to? Anecdotal, I know – but long covid has not gone unnoticed by the medical profession, and somebody may well have harder figures.
And this in a country – I mean England, of course, to whose rule we are all unfortunately subject for the foreseeable future – where a decade and a half of inexorable political momentum towards “chequebook euthanasia” has been pursued. Where hatred and othering of disabled people, encouragement to see them as workshy frauds and a worthless drain on public funds, has been widely encouraged, to great success.
Quite apart from many other ruinous things that it can do to your body, including (commonly) inducing debilitating chronic fatigue, COVID-19 is NEUROTOXIC. You can get brain damage from this thing. Even if you are healthy. Even if you escape that, you can get equally unpleasant effects like parosmia. Some people who acquired this condition from SARS-CoV2 infection report that they can’t stomach anything but the simplest and blandest foods, and can’t be near anyone who has eaten anything stronger. They’ve been like this for months. Nobody knows if they will ever recover.
Let’s measure costs in QoLY, where the deaths of “geriatric” elders count for little.
Put those two numbers together. Instead of conveniently counting only the deaths of seniors, now we are counting the ruined lives and death-by-official-neglect of people in their 20s and up, each losing an average of (very conservative estimate here) about 20 years of life and health. The total number of “deaths” has just gone up by a factor of thousands (low end of range), hundreds of thousands (high end).
Now argue to me that we should open everything back up again.
The argument in this blog post is one that I would have a hard time tolerating civilly if coming from anyone who was a less skilled communicator and rational arguer than Murray. Murray is at least able to present the facts and arguments with some credibility and relatively little taint of a nefarious agenda.
But something doesn’t add up. There are big gaps in the picture that Murray has presented here.
How keen are you on playing brain damage Russian Roulette, simply because the powers that be won’t tolerate granting you UBI? That’s what you should be asking yourself.
great fact-based summary of long covid: http://swprs.org/post-acute-covid-long-covid/
Thanks for the link Bianca. I watched the film – ‘Message in a Bottle’ embedded in the article. Posted on July 8, it’s an appeal from people with long Covid to take some notice of them. They hold up cards stating their name, age, number of days since contracting the disease and their persistent symptoms. About 100 are pictured in one composite image. Two are under 10 years of age, 5 look like they might be over 60 and the rest are young. About 47.5K people have watch the film, but the agency that made it does not list it on their YouTube channel; nor was mentioned on their Twitter page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIeOoS_A4c8
‘Pick any random friend of yours, and imagine that 13 people known personally to them are struck down with a debilitating, disabling chronic condition.’
And there you have it – the word ‘imagine’. I do not discount that ‘long covid’ might be a thing but I my hackles do rise a tad when I am asked to ‘imagine’. I can do that and have done with many a thing. Imagination is a wonderful and precious thing if used correctly. The facts of what is going on now will not be known for some time to come and we, of course, will have to wait for those facts.
I know of no-one, as yet, who has had Covid-19 other than a relative who was certified as dying from it. I live in a region that has one of the highest infection rates (North West of England). Lots of my friends and family live in the same region. Are we all excellent at obeying the rules (when we’ve figured out what they are)? Or is there something dodgy about the published statistics based on the somewhat dodgy testing regime?
‘I have a friend, a Londoner, who claims that she personally knows THIRTEEN people who are suffering with it. This person is not generally an unstable or unreliable person.’
Not the friend perhaps (despite being a Londoner) but what of the THIRTEEN?
As you said yourself, you are quoting anecdotal evidence.
That’s quite different from what Craig is doing.
I’m personally very grateful that he should be so reasonable. Everything is says is very sensible and based on reading reputable sources such as the Lancet and the BMJ.
OK. Here are some stats on long covid (see also below my contribution on Craig’s stats on asymptomatic cases):
https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/long-covid
craig seems to be picking and choosing stats to come up with a mortality rate, and then discounting the stat he uses (“even that is pessimistic”).
Every MSM article I have read on long COVID has pointed out that ‘many’ (they never say how many) sufferers of this condition have not been tested for COVID19. But this important fact is always buried deep in the article.
Media reporting on COVID19 has been atrocious. Rumours and fear porn make great clickbait and every media outlet chases clicks so it’s all COVID all the time. When Trump was diagnosed with it the Guardian had ‘live updates’ complete with flashing red light. On the BBC news international site it is not unusual for 3/4 or more of the front page articles to be COVID and/or Trump related.
‘All the passenger security checks that make flying a misery, across the entire world, have never caught a single bomb, anywhere.’
And if those security checks were to be removed, what then? The checks might act as a deterrent? However the answer to that question, is that we will probably never know.
Further, the claim that nothing is every found is incorrect eg Nezar Hindawi; a bomb found this year at Mangalore.
The Nezar Hindawi bomb attempt happened in 1986. The Mangalore bomb was an attempt to bomb an airport by leaving a bag in an airport.
Alright. Pipe bomb, Manchester Airport, 2017.
I’m sorry to have to disagree with you on this, Craig, but according to the numbers I’ve seen children are not immune and are in fact major spreaders of the virus. I am 72 and have several conditions that make me vulnerable. However, that said, people in the prime of life who are being forced back to workplaces without adequate protections, just to keep making money for the parasitic financial barons are getting sick and dying. That includes teachers, hospital workers, meat packing workers and workers in Amazon fulfillment centers. Many corporations are hiding the number of infections and deaths and threatening their employees with the sack if they tell anyone what is going on. Perhaps you support profit over people, but I do not. I think things should be shut down until the vaccine either recedes or a vaccine is developed. The ruling class insists on putting people in danger and threatens to cut them off of unemployment benefit if they refuse. That is NOT acceptable!!
Indeed, everyone making the “open back up” argument seems to be carefully avoiding acknowledging that children SPREAD the virus, which they undoubtedly do (at least one study has found them shedding very high viral loads). Instead, those people always talk about the RISK to children being low… which it is, because they spread it without getting sick themselves.
Not only is it quite a dishonest debating tactic, it’s not even subtle. It’s really rather obvious.
I was deeply disappointed to see Mr Murray using it… Based on some of the content of this blog post, I’m starting to wonder if he has been “got to”. In his defence, he was making the exact same arguments at the beginning of the pandemic; but they look rather more sinister now than they did back then.
Indeed. It is necessary to shut down household contact not because households acquire the virus out of thin air but because their children go to school (where there is virtually no social distancing, mandatory mask wearing or regular testing) mix with the children of many other households and bring it back with them. I am very suspicious of the reluctance to point out this very obvious fact (matched by the equally obvious fact that those forced to go to work also import the disease). It was only yesterday that Professor Ferguson (now persona non grata, so with nothing to lose) approached the issue at last.
Thank you for you comments Fleischgeist. Very informative.
Did you even read what Craig wrote?
He doesn’t fail to mention that children are spreaders. On the contrary. He uses that fact to discuss the importance of shielding the old and vulnerable those children come in contact with.
Before you criticise him, do him the curtesy of reading his blog properly.
I know this will sound harsh but here goes…
Because you are in the category of vulnerable to respiratory infection…no kids should go to school or be allowed to interact with their grandparents?
Please understand i don’t mean to be uncaring. But i get the impression you are vulnerable every winter? How is that different to any other winter?
Well argued and balanced article.
For another persptective, I’d like to draw your attention to an article by Mike Yeadon entitled
‘What SAGE has got wrong’.
In it he he argues that there will be no need for a vaccine, that ‘immunity’ to the virus has reached almost 70% and the epidemic is in its closing stages
https://lockdownsceptics.org/what-sage-got-wrong/
or the delingpole podcast
https://delingpole.podbean.com/e/dr-mike-yeadon/
However this is almost 2 hours long, nonetheless a good listen.
Yeadon’s article is utterly appalling and full of scientific errors. He even claims that the PCR (swab) test is mistakenly picking up the coronaviruses that cause the common cold. How insane is that idea?
Yeadon’s ramblings in the podcast are so error-strewn it’s hard to listen to. He talks nonsense about PCR testing and the epidemiological interpretation of the Gompertz curve, amongst other things, and keeps trying to bolster his generalisations with sweeping statements like “any biologist would tell you this”, “it’s absolutely undeniable” … tosh. I couldn’t listen to the end so I’m not sure what overall conclusion he’s trying to reach, but the rhetoric on the way there suggests it’s best avoided.
But given they are cycling the pcr beyond what they should,with rna viral specks that are present in other coronavirus sequences…it is not implausible. Your arguments against yeadon need to be fleshed out better if you want to convince.
Well argued indeed. It’s refreshing to hear truth spoken so robustly. He bases his opinions on sound training and experience and when he says Vallance is lying (with a challenge to him to sue!) I’m prepared to believe him: its the only theory that fits the facts!
That’s the cliff road with a blindfold, in view of what Prof Michael Osterholm reports. He’s a US epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. The first thing you’ll hear him say is that it’s not just geriatrics. His figures on deaths show “very many young vital people dying”, in fact 21% aged 20-40 and 44% under 70. He later speaks about immunity and re-infection. The CDIRP has now seen many cases of re-infection and to their surprise, only 2-4 months later. He reports that people are dying on the second infection. What that suggests is that with repeated infection, even the ‘fittest’ could spiral down in relatively little time. The question of how deeply the virus will cull, with or without a vaccine, needs time to estimate, since neither we not the virus are static entities – but human behaviour will play a major role. Osterholm says the US, which already lost 1/4 million people, has lost control, and what epidemiologists are witnessing with the brevity of immunity and reinfection outcomes is looking grim. He says some European countries are likely to lose control too, because their governments and his aren’t helping people enough to survive without jobs – and there are very few jobs out there now to go to, should restrictions end. Poverty, he firmly asserts, is the main factor affecting mental health. “The virus has been cruel to the black population”, he says, as many were living three families to an apartment. How could you protect vulnerable people living in such a household if one went to work and brought it home? He points to another class of victim than the elderly and not so elderly – the poor, whether locked down or back at risk. But in response to the proposal of the Great Barrington Declaration, Osterholm says the whole idea of protecting the vulnerable is “impossible”. His advice on policy is “we can borrow a bit of money from ourselves”, to give small businesses & workers the money they need to survive. It’s not forever but that will buy the medical community more time to work out a long-term strategy. He cites 4 countries that have been “models” in dealing with the virus, where many of their industries are open again and their economies are doing well. If the US abandons all restrictions, he warns, no other illness will be treated. The hospitals in the mid-west are almost full and at the current rate of infection, there are already “some very tough times up ahead”. Interestingly, Osterholm is not in favour of locking people in their homes. He encourages outside activities – apart from ice-skating – as long as people are distanced. What he says must not happen is that people are forced in large numbers back into indoor spaces – like factories. That he would suggest, the UK must resist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9ihyYQL8O0&feature=youtu.be&t=8m28s
The consensus of scientific opinion as reported in respected outlets like Nature, and independently by a number of epidemiologists, does indeed appear to be that pursuing an “open back up” strategy is to invite almost certain disaster.
Yet if you have a look through this comments thread, you’ll also find people presenting the opinions of supposed epidemiologists arguing the opposite. Usually alongside accusation of these “scientific” views being covered up by the mainstream for nefarious purposes.
It all looks depressingly Surkov doctrine to me. If you’re a ruling elite and the public start to realise that they can’t trust you any more, as the Western public have done in the last 10 years, what do you do to maintain control? Weaponise plurality; use their newfound distrust of the mainstream against them. Amplifying the fringe voices who oppose the parts of the mainstream consensus that are inconvenient to the rulers (scientists telling truths that are inconvenient to money), using these fringe voices to create the appearance of a cover up. As a corrupt member of the ruling elite, the people may not trust you any more… but if they don’t trust each other either, then you can still rule them.
I find myself wondering how many times this essential show has played itself out in history.
You’re completely insane.
You’ve been told the actual numbers of deaths for each age group. The average age of death in the UK is over 82. An impossible figure if the death rates of young people were anything other than tiny.
I hate people who make up their own facts.
No, it’s about consistent:
– We estimated an overall infection-fatality risk of 1·39% (95% credible interval 1·04–1·77) in New York City. Our estimated infection-fatality risk for the two oldest age groups (65–74 and ≥75 years) was much higher than the younger age groups, with a cumulative estimated infection-fatality risk of 0·116% (0·0729–0·148) for those aged 25–44 years and 0·939% (0·729–1·19) for those aged 45–64 years versus 4·87% (3·37–6·89) for those aged 65–74 years and 14·2% (10·2–18·1) for those aged 75 years and older. In particular, weekly infection-fatality risk was estimated to be as high as 6·72% (5·52–8·01) for those aged 65–74 years and 19·1% (14·7–21·9) for those aged 75 years and older.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30769-6/fulltext
So considering each age-group IFR as a proportion of total IFR:
For ages 25 to 44, 0.116 / 1.39 = ~8.3% of overall covid deaths.
For ages 45 to 65, 0.939 / 1.39 = ~67.3% of overall covid deaths.
Covid kills a higher proportion of those over 70, but kills a higher absolute number of those under 70 because there are far more of them.
His figures on deaths show “very many young vital people dying”, in fact 21% aged 20-40 and 44% under 70.
For anyone taking this tosh on board, I have a lovely Bridge for Sale in London.
Details from CM
See my comment above; 21% and 44% of the covid deaths, not 21% and 44% of the population in those age-groups dying.
As with any event initial decisions are made on the basis of what is known at the time. Back in early March the bulk of the available data was based on the statistics emerging from China.
This article published on March 10 2020 on Medium, by Tomas Pueyo,: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca relied heavily on the data coming from China.
Data which included the statistics that just under 81% of those found to have contracted symptoms experienced only mild flu like symptoms in which recovery occurred at home without any need for hospital admission; just under 14% would be serious, requiring hospital admission; whilst a further 4.7% required critical intensive care.
In terms of these specific statistics of the actual outcomes and experience in China the initial question for any Government would be that of capacity and capability of existing health care systems to deal with those kind of percentages when turned into real numbers.
A question complicated, at least in the UK (and probably to a degree in the US) by the fact that the capacity in the NHS system, in terms of available beds; critical care facilities; trained staff; PPE etc; as well as intangibles such as morale, levels of experience and so on, has been seriously compromised in a number of ways over time.
A run down of resources, cherry picked privatisation, contracting out (see here for a general analysis of the issues – http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2018/01/31/in-the-eternal-inferno-fiends-torment-ronald-coase-with-the-fate-of-his-ideas/ – insufficient trained staff, poor pay levels and so on.
At this point, in addition to the obvious question mark over the efficacy and ability of the NHS to deal with any shock to the system, now matter how mild (or otherwise), other, political considerations come into play as far as the bunch of charlatans commonly known as the UK Government are concerned. Its certainly no accident or coincidence that the Government’s attitude to the NHS has, since the initial stages back in February/March time, been formalised by a Parliamentary vote against tying the Governments hands in putting up the NHS as part of any post Brexit trade deal with the USA.
A collapse of the NHS “assets” – both tangible and intangible – as a result of even mild strain on a system so run down as to be unable to cope with the mildest of shocks would, from the philistine perspective of this UK Government, not be in keeping with their political objectives.
As a result we had so called Nightingale hospitals, with no equipment or staff, standing empty whilst the demographic most at risk were shunted off to inadequately resourced care homes to die in droves as part of a cynical policy of ‘herd immunity’ designed to cull the “economically inactive”.
Even the initial ” lock down” was carried out in a half hearted manner with the Government dithering for several days after the initial decision until it was made clear by the French that any further delay would likely see vital trade supply routes via the Channel ports closed off to the UK with the implication that the Dutch would likely adopt the same policy in regard to the deep water port of Rotterdam – through which most of the UK goods transit.
With such an inept, corrupt (in terms of values if nothing else) and malign Government with the current track record it would be optimistic indeed to anticipate that the kind of sensible and targeted suggestions made in this blog thread would ever be contemplated, never mind effectively carried out.
Which raises a further issue around this debate which is dominated on all sides – including from those involved in the so called Great Barrington Declaration (partly funded by the Koch Brothers) – see here: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/14/revi-014-o14.html – by vested interests intent on promoting and controlling particular narratives and the questions surrounding them rather than narratives which generate more pertinent questions about the increasingly obvious systemic weaknesses and lack of efficacy of a collapsing capitalism.
Far better to direct attention towards promoting and manipulating a narrative which has everyone shouting at one another over whether this is real or otherwise than risk the proles questioning the system.
“It is astonishing how many articles are published with the entirely fake claim that the mortality rate of Covid-19 is 3.4%, based on that simple methodology>”
The current death rate for those confirmed to have had the disease is 4% (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/).
And by age, sex, etc.: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/.
There is no testing for Covid-19 available in NW Surrey unless you present to the Serco run testing centre (located in a temporary building in the grounds of the local DGH) with a cough and/or a raised temperature AND an appointment made with their call centre based in Glasgow on a 119 number.
That is how OUR NHS is being decimated.
Little by little…….
Craig, my Mother died of Covid in her Care Home in early March. She first got it in early December 2019 and at the time they didn’t know what it was and thankfully she recovered from it with hospital care. We only know that it was Covid in December because she got the same symptoms in March and was refused hospital treatment, she died within 24 hrs along with several of her friends who had been tested and were positive.
I know several 35-55 yr old people who have caught it and survived but remain permanently incapacitated with severe lasting effects. We simply do not know what the lasting effects are or will be, so to suggest that it would have been better to not lockdown apart from a certain age group is as ridiculous as it is reckless, and criminally negligent.
Vietnam and New Zealand got it right, the bastards in the Govt here are guilty of Genocidal behaviour in my opinion.
Yes Baz,
It certainly seems like genocidal behaviour.
Thanks for your personal story, and I’m sorry for your loss – there is not much information about how there was either Covid-19 or another lethal coronavirus going about Europe in 2019 – there is a confirmed case in France from November I think, and the high death toll in Italy from a ‘mysterious’ pneumonia in December is being put down to Covid-19 now.
I had an unusual cold in late December myself, a dry persistent cough,,, which couldn’t be Covid the doctor said – I didn’t ever feel fully recovered, and had another bout of strange cold, sinuses bad too, that couldn’t have been Covid because I hadn’t visited Wuhan or other such nonsense. Really knocked me out that one, and I am still recovering – but, strangely, have been using antihistamines to relieve the symptoms, and starting to feel much better now.
A friend, who has asthma, had a similar strange cold in December, and by then miles away from me, had a very bad bout of Covid-19 in ,,, March – she was also refused admittance to hospital and could hardly breathe for weeks ‘like someone was sitting on her chest’. Scary times. She recovered, but her partner is a virus-denier, so I do worry.
I’m in that 35-55 year old age group – you could try suggesting antihistamines to see if it helps those people you know? It won’t do any harm anyway. My reasoning for trying it was from reading about the more severe symptoms, an auto immune reaction causes a breakdown in tissues, and they use steroids to calm down that reaction (and keep them breathing & hope for recovery). The immune system is very complex – but part of if has gone into overdrive. The doctor had prescribed me a steroidal nasal spray as well. So, thought I’d try antihistamines, and they definitely help (especially after eating,,, yeah, who knows?), and I no longer get a swollen tongue at least, and the cough goes away.
I’ve had CFS in the past, and this isn’t the same, but definitely look at their diet is my advice to anyone suffering.
Vietnam have done well – apparently they have regular pandemics so the government reacted quickly and the populace knew the drill – and they know they don’t have the hospital beds so immediately go into lock down. Wouldn’t it be nice if our governments took advice from those with experience?
It goes back further than late 2019. Traces of the virus have been identified in sewage from samples in Barcelona in 2019.
In MARCH 2019.
Oho, that’s good to know Robyn. The most I know is that excess deaths were up last year for Europe – and that there are a few confirmed Covid-19 infections. It’s a strange thing for there to be hardly any reporting on – at least most people don’t appear to know about it so I assume it’s being kept quiet.
I can’t think of any reasons for not mentioning it,,, except, if it turned out all our governments knew about it, and dismissed it as someone else’s problem. Hmm.
Sorry for your loss.
Unless you have deinite blood sample or compelling proif of contact with Wuhan, from the earlier illness showing Covid antibodies- it is more likely that was pneumonia from the flus/coldw of that time of year.
The fatal second seems to certainly be Covid – not linked with the earlier flu (for which the body would have antibodies for) it was spreading widely from hospitals to care himes and by careworkers being bounced all over for little pay/ no ppe – which would have put tgem as much at risk as the patients and staff and families of all assiciated.
There is a clear culprit – The Government.
Bozo the Clown and his BrexShit heads.
They are going for it again – as it provides cover for their HARD BS.
With the greatest of respect, the relatively low death rate at the moment in this country is precisely because of the precautions being taken, the fact that the vulnerable are able to be protected, because health care is available because the disease has not been allowed to run its course, and because the viral load that people contract is relatively low – again, because of the precautions.
It sounds as if Craig wants us to go with the ‘herd immunity’ theory in all but name, let the virus rip through the population and get business back to normal. With a significant number of people dying in fairly short order – the weakest and/or oldest in the country, of course – the rest of us would be left to deal with whatever long term symptoms Covid-19 brings. We have no idea what they might be. We do know it affects every organ in the body to various degrees, produces serious cognitive limitations for an indefinite period in many, and scarring of the lungs that will never heal.
The prospects of long term health damage mean a rather poor outcome for individuals afflicted. So far from robbing very elderly people who were at death’s door anyway of a final few months (all spent in confinement too!), we may be taking decades away from the otherwise healthy, and reducing their life prospects in the meantime. We don’t know. But is that a risk that is worth taking, just to see what happens?
Hospitals hit maximum capacity just before the lockdown in March. Opening everything up for “business as usual” would utterly swamp them in short order. Lives are being saved, giving us a low death rate, only because people are being treated with increasing efficacy. That would revert to no treatment at all.
So the death rate would go up significantly, and the number of cases sky-rocket. Total deaths, and long term injury, would then be vastly greater than the 0.6% being attributed here, and apply to the entire population.
That is one heck of a gamble to take, when we do not even know for sure it can only be caught once, when there is not yet any vaccine, and we do not even have a cure.
‘With the greatest of respect, the relatively low death rate at the moment in this country is precisely because of the precautions being taken, the fact that the vulnerable are able to be protected, because health care is available because the disease has not been allowed to run its course, and because the viral load that people contract is relatively low – again, because of the precautions.
It sounds as if Craig wants us to go with the ‘herd immunity’ theory in all but name, let the virus rip through the population and get business back to normal.’
It was my impression his suggestion was generally continuation of the status that was established prior to the latest strict lockdowns (ie what you presumably refer to as the ‘precautions being taken’) and with additional measures to facilitate protection of the vulnerable.
IMcK: My impression is somewhat different, that we should learn to “live with” the virus instead of interrupting life. Open pubs, restaurants, allow people to work with their own perceived impression of the danger and act accordingly. That works fine if everyone is well informed with good data from honest sources, and were only taking risks with their own lives and not with those of others, but we live in a far less than ideal environment where that is concerned.
Vulnerable people can only be protected so far. They have to come into contact with the not-so vulnerable in order to live. If these contacts are very likely to be exposed because of a Laissez-faire attitude, then these vulnerable people are going to be very near to the firing line and die as a direct result of such a policy.
Not a single hospital in Scotland hit maximum capacity. We even had a massive facility sitting empty at the former SECC. Cost £ Millions and never saw a single solitary patient. Why do you people tell such obvious lies?
Most people never use anything over 80% of their lung capacity. Some minor scarring which you won’t even notice or being put under house arrest for 3 years? Which will do most damage to your health?
Nobody is “being put under house arrest for 3 years”, Penguin – why do you tell such obvious lies? That one is a really, really, obvious lie too. This isn’t a Scottish blog, btw. Hospitals had been hitting maximum capacity, and not only in this country (the UK). Do you need to have this proven to you – are you really that willfully ignorant, or do you think that level of BS will somehow work?
“Most people never use anything over 80% of their lung capacity. “
Really. JHC – most people hardly use their lungs that much. That has to be about the most craven apologia for doing nothing about this virus I have seen to date – you are absolutely shameless. Do you use your legs much? So would it matter if they didn’t work so well anymore?
Unbelievable.
What bs glenn uk
You were the first to say death rate was high because the government weren’t going far enough
And that was during lockdown
But now that is why the ifr is so low
Clown
You’ve peppered the board with your knee-jerk dismissals, Nick.
It’s kind of tough to see what your actual point is here, could you try using English a little more carefully? You might actually make a case that way, instead of spluttering some sort of vague, semi-literate denialism.
There is a very important fact which is apparently unknown to Craig as it is to the vast majority of people thanks to the dishonest, government-compliant news media. Only one commentor, Scott, seems to have mentioned it but I would like to reiterate it with a source that is not to be ignored.
On October 5, the WHO admitted that, based on all the available serological studies, they would estimate that around 10% of the world’s population had been exposed to the virus. This is 20 times the 35 million official “cases” at the time, and, assuming the virus as the cause of the official 1mil+ deaths, which is a highly dubious assumption (see, for example, this article by renowned retired pathologist John Lee: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-way-covid-deaths-are-being-counted-is-a-national-scandal), this would yield an estimated IFR of about 0.14% overall, which is right in the middle of the range of a normal flu, or maybe even a harsh cold. The implication of this fact on its own would go to invalidate the very basis of the whole hysterical fear campaign around the virus which has been thrust upon us by our governments and their scribes in the media, since it reveals that there is no extraordinary public health threat posed by this particular virus.
Source: https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/08/who-accidentally-confirms-covid-is-no-more-dangerous-than-flu/
And the figure of 10% sero-positive across the world, which would give the IFR of 0.14% is based exactly on what? A guesstimate. It is funny how some people who are normally so critical of the WHO do not criticize it when a spokesman makes an unsubstantiated allegation.
It’s not quite a guesstimate, apparently, but it isn’t much better: “Ryan did not elaborate on the estimate. Dr. Margaret Harris, a WHO spokeswoman, said it was based on an average of antibody studies conducted around the world.” How this “average” (mean or median?) was arrived at and who was given the antibody tests in these studies is not clear.
It is a mistake not to see that the pandemic is not a medical, but a socio-economic question. Pandemics are inevitable in a world in which travel and trade are growing rapidly and the natural environment is increasingly squeezed.
The challenge is to organise society so that we can deal with new problems, including those related to environmental degradation. At the moment the basic characteristic of our society is that it is, in matters related to the economic foundation of our lives, neither planned nor regulated. We live in a storm of our own making in which the tattered remnants of government, born of basic social necessity and evolved over millennia, have become merely another scam, a con game equipped with its own security system, violence and propaganda.
What Covid has demonstrated is that, at one and the same time, we need the sort of international organisations that WHO was advertised as being, to co-ordinate the sharing and refinement of information and a devolution of power from the anonymous oligarchy to the community.
In some senses what we have learned is extraordinarily simple: old people are very vulnerable (is this news?) and Health Systems need to be built with reserve capacity. Both lessons are direct affronts to neo-liberal ideology.
In Canada most of those who have died have not just been old but have been residents of Nursing Homes competing for investment with a market model that demands the cutting of costs. Staff levels are cut well below any medically viable minimum- ( I recently read of a home on Dundalk, Ireland, in which one apprentice nurse had care of more than eighty patients!)- and staff members are invariably part timers, often holding down jobs in two or three homes. RNs are suffering from high levels of unemployment and underemployment as their pay rates, pensions and working conditions are constantly chipped away at in the interests of profit.
And then there are the obscenities related to pharmaceutical responses to the crisis: in place of the desperate need to mobilise the best research workers and the most talented scientists to develop treatments and vaccines, not to mention best containment practises, the job has been handed over to PR firms promoting the claims of corporations and other interested parties. As much energy is devoted to preventing others from making progress as there is to seeking solutions.
Finally there is the “economy”, the undermining of which is one of the few positive aspects of the pandemic. The economy is the cause of this pandemic, to attempt to preserve it is to invest in the development of its murderous capacity, its ability to come up with more, wider ranging, more deadly and less controllable pandemics to come.
Clearly the pandemic has shown how important it is to be able to close down factories and public transport without condemning workers and consumers to starvation. In other words we are reminded that we need to reconstruct a decent system of social security, to recommit ourselves to the principles that nobody should be left without a maintenance, a home and access to basic services, including health care. These are principles long established as the bases of society which have always been sabotaged by capitalist ideologists, for whom a population on the brink of starvation and utterly dependent upon employment for their existence has always been a central aim. In other words the choice is between capitalism and society. The pandemic reminds us of this and we are missing the point if our response to the failings of capitalism is to attempt to rescue it from its fate in order that it may produce new disasters, more wars, deadlier epidemics and, in the end, widespread extinctions.
Thankyou for this post bevin. I think you have shone a light on what is wrong with our world. The evil that the rich, in their ignorance and their pursuit of profit, do.
Bevin
The most poignant and sensible post i have seen on this issue.
More power to you
I now for the third time had my contributions etased whilst still writing it. VERY FRUSTRATING. WILL DO IT FROM THE COMPUTER NEXT TIME.
Where are all the paid pension contribution of those that died before applying for them? How much is this continuing windfall for this moneytree spenders?
great summary of covid facts: https://swprs.org/covid19-facts/ and different death rates in different places: https://swprs.org/studies-on-covid-19-lethality/ . Looks like care homes played a very important role in this pandemic.
Yes bianca
I have heard figures in Scotland of near 70% deaths in care homes April and may
After the elderly,with all sorts of hospital acquired infections, were sent back into the care homes,with swathes of staff self isolating. I’d go as far to call that manslaughter, or shall we pretend those in power didn’t know what would happen?
Nick,
It was stupid. I doubt it was intentional.
One statistic that’s hard to argue with is the number of people who have died. According to the Scottish Gov’s own data, currently the number of people who have died from all causes is well within the 5 year average for this time of year. This is a weekly average number by the way. Source: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/covid19stats
Since early June, it has been below the 5 year average on at least three occasions and higher than the 5 year average on one. Since the number of dead reported before the pandemic was within the upper & lower limits and it is now also within the upper & lower limits, I find it difficult to digest that we are continuing to suffer from an excessively dangerous pandemic.
Indeed the number of dead reported to be significantly above the expected range lasted just 10 weeks from 29th March to 14th June 2020.
It remains the case that over 90% of the fatalities are in the 65 year old and over group, half of them from care homes. And almost certainly, most of those had severe underlying health problems.
The top 10 causes of premature death in Scotland are mostly associated with heart & lung diseases, the majority caused by smoking/alcohol and none due to Covid-19. One might ask the Government if they are so determined to save people from themselves, why is it that tobacco is still readily available to those who like to smoke just before putting on a mask as they enter a licensed premises?
You know that those who believe the narrative spun in order to justify the sweeping authoritarian measures brought into place apparently in response to a pandemic, will employ their ever faulty post hoc ergo propter hoc logic to explain away the inconvenient fact that there are no excess deaths and haven’t been since the end of May by claiming that the lockdown measures themselves are the cauzse of this situation. Rather than the far more obvious conclusion that where we are is in fact the normal state of affairs when there isn’t a pandemic. We are being consistently lied to. Many people know it, but it’s time we all stopped dancing to the tune we are told we need to dance to.
But that is rubbish. The government is trying to save people from others, not themselves. Alcohol: you don’t have to drink if others drink. Smoking: albeit imperfectly, the government is trying to protect non-smokers from passive smoking. And smoke is easily detectable so everyone has the option to avoid other people’s smoke.
Covid is different: you don’t know who’s infectious, and they may not know themselves. But it would indeed be better to have enough testing in place to know who’s infectious and to isolate these people from the rest.
Except that sars-cov-2 really isn’t particularly dangerous for the vast majority of people, and that’s according to Chris Whitty himself in May, amongst many other experts. Tobacco and alcohol on the other hand are two of the biggest killers, worldwide. Tobacco alone kills over 8 million per year, alcohol kills around 3 million. And of course, it isn’t just the people who die from smoking and drinking that suffer the consequences of those activities, the whole of society does, to some degree. They won’t be banned because they make very rich people richer. Which, incidentally, the economic catastrophe caused by the lockdown measures also appears to be doing. Vulture capitalists always gain when we lose.
If I want the government to protect me, I’ll ask but otherwise they can piss off out of my life with their overbearing interference.
That ANYONE has any trust or faith in ANY of these self serving careerists remains to me a mystery.
Sturgeon is using this platform for little more than self aggrandizement and as a timely distraction for her corrupt behaviour in parliament as well as her role in the attempt to have an innocent man jailed.
I was waiting for you to climb down the pole from when you chipped in with your alarmist anecdote back in July about how ‘extraordinary government laxness’ contributed to why ‘the UK death rate has been so high.’
And saying, “I am not a covid sceptic. But neither do I approve of fear-mongering,” hardly requies you to excuse yourself for telling an unpopular truth. In fact, the popular truth is that the majority of people who can be fooled some of the time, are slowly, inevitably seeing this for what it is: a lie, to cover up a planned economic transformation on an almost incredible scale that has revealed a stunning coherence of message across previously-thought sovereign areas. It’s a hell of a revelation.
I would advise you to become just a wee bit more sceptical to save you hitting your bum on the ground in your next post on the matter, when you try to quietly align yourself with the zeitgeist.
Something it would be interesting to see you take as a text for a future post, is what Prince Charles may have meant when he said –referring presumably to the Covid19 pandemic — that we now have:
“a unique but rapidly shrinking window of opportunity to … set ourselves on a more sustainable course.”
In particular, it would be interesting to know what you think that sentiment implies about Charles’ suitability to fill the role of a constitutional monarch.
In saying that, Charles was taking a leaf from the page of the World Economic Forum agenda for our future – the Great Reset.
Exactly. But what is the WEF’s idea on a “more sustainable course” and how, exactly, are we to be set on this new course? Is mass unemployment, destruction of small business, keeping the population in intermittent detention, the desired way forward, or what?
Interesting article but no reference to treatment. The failure to use Hydroxychloroqune (HCQ) with an anti-biotic and zinc as a cheap effective treatment in the early stages is a great scandal. The Oxford University trial, Recovery, usually used to claim that it is ineffective and dangerous, was a farce where four times the safe and usual dose was used on patients who may or may not have had the virus and were often very ill already. There has been an absurd campaign, supported by the media, to make the public believe it is a dangerous drug when it is the second most used drug in the history of medicine. Government advisers must know this so why are they not acting accordingly to protect the public? Pressure from big pharma? Methodological ideology? Fear of admitting being wrong?
There are already dozens of studies worldwide showing it works.
In France where anti HCQ bigotry is rampant in official circles and exacerbated by professional jealousy, doctors use it all the time… for themselves, their family and friends. I suspect this is happening in the UK as well. I came across this comment on another website the other day I got this reply from someone who clearly was doing nothing but truthfully reporting what he knew: —
“A doctor friend of ours, a specialist working in the NHS, had actually carried out research on this topic some years ago for the WHO and he recommended that we try and get hold of the drug if the pandemic turned out to be as bad as expected back in February.
He also told us not to spread the source of the information as he was no longer allowed to express a positive view of HCQ by the NHS and he would be in big trouble if they found out.”
The silence on this subject in the UK is a disgrace. It has recently been revealed by Der Speigel that it has been extensively used in Germany where mortality has been much lower than in the UK and France.
Thank you, Theophilus, for mentioning HCQ. Mortality has indeed been high in France, but not in the Marseilles region where Professor Didier Raoult, head of the infectious diseases clinic there, used the protocol you mention from the start. The scandal is that general practitioners in France were actually prohibited from prescribing HCQ some time in January. This decision has finally been reversed but a lot of doctors don’t know this and continue to believe they’ll be struck off if they prescribe it, while chemists are afraid to stock it. Tell people to stay at home till they can hardly breathe, then rush them to hospital in a panic, stick them on tubes, transport them in full view of the cameras to hospitals at the other end of the country even though private hospitals just up the road have made beds available – the idea from the start, for whatever reason, seems to have been about creating panic, not saving lives. Lock people in their houses, let them out, threaten them with a “second wave” and instead of increasing the number of beds during the summer, so that society could continue to function when the second wave (Raoult would say “second act” – it’s nothing like a wave) arrives, spend 200 billion euros on tests and only 50 million on hospitals. Then make everybody think that only a vaccine will save us, even though the pharmaceutical companies admit the vaccines might possibly reduce symptoms, but will not prevent death. That’s what’s been happening in France anyway.
Thanks, Theophilus. I was surprised that Craig didn’t mention the Zelenko protocol – HCQ + zinc + antibiotic. To avoid argument here and for people who prefer primary sources, I include the link to this excellent site for a summary of the research and links to the studies cited. https://swprs.org/on-the-treatment-of-covid-19/
Yes I have to agree that those most at risk from the virus should be the ones targeted on how to protect themselves possibly by shielding, and that government resources should be aimed at them, whilst the rest of society returns to work, and businesses should be allowed to reopen.
The blanket closures aren’t actually helping anybody, for you’ll always have people holding house parties and gathering in groups.
Now governments are in my opinion using fearmongering to avoid scrutiny god only knows how many contracts and what amount of public cash has been spent under the guise of combatting this virus, but has ended up enriching people and companies with no input whatsoever to the virus. I can only guess at the amount of bills and policies that have passed through parliaments around the globe without undergoing proper checks due to this virus, and with the media obsessed with reporting on the virus 24/7 at the expense of other just as important news, we the public are being treated badly by the media.
Finally supermarket chains above all have been in my opinion guilty of profiteering all through this pandemic, many companies have made huge profits out of the confusion and fear propagated around this virus, they should be held accountable at a later date, named and shamed I say and boycotted.
Thanks for the article Craig. I’ve been advocating something similar for a while now. The virus won’t go away and we can’t hide from it forever. The long term damage to the economy, as well as people’s health and emotional wellbeing will only get worse by going in and out of lockdowns / restrictions, potentially far outweighing the consequences of your suggestions.
I’m also worried that the longer this goes on, the more lasting damage will be done to society through people’s new perceptions toward strangers. Where they’ll be viewed with suspicion and to be avoided rather than viewed as fellow compatriots. Coming from Glasgow where you can strike up a conversation with nearly any stranger as if they’re your neighbour, I fear a bleak future where these new attitudes will stick around long after things return to ‘normal’.
There needs to be a discussion about other potential ways to deal with this rather than a never ending cycle of lockdowns and restrictions being the only way – unlikely though given the state of our media, who seem only capable of groupthink, fear mongering and drowning out alternative opinions.
I’m not too bothered about the new restrictions numbered 0 to 4, were they not created to give a lower and higher option added to the English 1 to 3 system without causing confusion?
But there is another way, as – for example – China, South Korea, and New Zealand showed.
And New Zealand shows that a politician seen to be effective in curbing the pandemic will be rewarded by voters in a functioning democracy.
Of the 11 people I know who have had symptomatic Covid-19, 2 have got long Covid – a 30 year-old and one aged in her late 40s – both for over 6 months. This is a small sample I know, but it illustrates the point that you can’t just talk about the “small number” of old people who are going to die, even when you take an economist’s view of the pandemic. The symptom survey says that up to 5% of the people who tested positive for Covid-19 have contracted long Covid: the proportion of symptomatic people who get it will be higher than that, as some people in high risk occupations are getting routine tests and will be using the symptom survey app. The truth is we don’t know the long-term effects of the disease, either on the health of those who get it or on the economy.
On the proportions who are asymptomatic, please note that the article linked to about cruises only did PCR tests on day 20. I presume they don’t know if all the people who were positive on day 20 didn’t actually later develop the disease and this was only 12 days after the first (symptomatic) case was noticed. Note that on the Diamond Princess, the asymptomatic proportion was estimated to be 17.9%. In both these cases their passengers’ ages are likely to be older than the general population, but at least in the Diamond Princess they did a statistical analysis of the development of the disease over the quarantine time to estimate the asymptomatic population, rather than just a single snapshot.
I am as dismayed by the repressive measures used in lockdown as you, Craig. I live in England and I think it is pretty clear here that the government’s failures have both massively increased the infection and death rates and fostered the antipathy to lockdowns. The antipathy has grown both because of their hypocrisy and inconsistency, because they have not thought of ways that would allow physical, emotional and educational sustenance during lockdowns. My feeling is that there could be much larger, community-based bubbles in which these the requirements could be met. Each large bubble could be tested as a whole – or in, say groups of 100 pooled samples – which would massively reduce the amount of tests needed. If a bubble tests positive, then the individuals in it would be tested. This, of course, requires and test and trace system that is locally based, which we don’t have in England.
The prescription you outline won’t stop the spread of the disease: total shielding is not possible. This has been shown in all the debunking of the Great Barrington Declaration, which takes a very similar approach to yours (I’m not sure why you didn’t mention it). And it is not right to say that individuals – even if they are old – have an unfettered “right” to take their lives into their own hands. If they catch Covid-19 they could well spread it to others and they could occupy a much-needed hospital bed. The could kill a cancer or heart patient. You make the analogy with car driving: if someone risks their life to drive in a car, so be it, but they will still be held responsible if have a collision or run someone over and kill or injure another person. Libertarianism is a flawed ideology.
Statistics from my American state show that only about 2/3 of hospitalized COVID patients return home. Some of the hospitalized are released to funeral homes. But the rest of that 1/3 go to long-term nursing care or long-term acute care. That stat is for all age groups combined.
You can see that I am not lying, as you have accepted the statistic that I quoted. It seems as if you hate humanity, especially those who are less fortunate than you, as you are so offensive about them.
Based on a 50% asymptomatic rate, then if everyone in the world were to be infected then 190 million would get long Covid. Of course we don’t know what the long-term effect will be. One of them – for some people – is psychosis, starting in older people, which is normally very rare: people are presenting with this at mental health clinics.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7311337/
Thank you for such a reasonable article.
I had been waiting for it. And as usual, I’m not disappointed.
You miss a key point about mortality from this disease. There are separate death rates.
For instance, there is the death rate among the wealthy who get the best of medical care. The odds of a Donald Trump dying from this are slim to none.
Then there is the death rate for ordinary people, in a system where they can receive health care. They get the oxygen they need. They have doctors and nurses attending to them. There is a ventilator available if they need one.
But, then there are the death rates that occur as the medical systems get overloaded and break down. There are the death rates that occur when there are no hospital beds available, and patients are lying in hallways with a nursing student checking on them every once in a while, maybe. There are the death rates where people are turned away from overcrowded hospitals, or told not to go to the ER even when they are sick. This was a part of the higher death rates early in the disease.
These death rates also hit the older populations highest, because at this point Age Discrimination kicks in and what should be written on the Death Certificate is “Triaged To Death”. We killed this useless old person so we can cure this younger person. Older people are more likely to die when the health care system overloads and younger doctors decide that younger people must live and the state agrees thinking of future tax payments and possible military service that this younger person can supply the state.
One of the main reasons given for the lockdowns has been to “protect the health care system” and keep it from going into an overcrowded. overload mode where many, many more people die from this disease than have to die. The low death rates cited are a product of a functioning health care system.
How did S.Korea manage to control the outbreak so successfully? Their population is slightly smaller than ours (>51 million), their population density is around double ours, they reported their first case at around the same time as us, and yet their outcome is completely different.
No lockdown was imposed, because they managed to test and trace it almost to extinction. As a result, they have suffered only just under 26,000 cases and 457 deaths, compared with our 873,800 cases and just under 45,000 deaths.
My question is……. why isn’t there a UK delegation of politicians and scientists sitting (right now) at the feet of the equivalent experts in Seoul, to learn from them?
Why isn’t the Daily Mail screaming and shouting about this?
Also Taiwan
Taiwan led the world in closing down for Covid-19, now it wants to do the same with opening back up
September 22, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/21/asia/taiwan-model-coronavirus-hnk-intl/index.html
Also Vietnam, Cuba, New Zealand.
Part of the answer to this is that South Korea was well prepared because of their experience with MERS-CoV. But because SARS (1) disappeared almost as suddenly as it came and MERS was more localised the world ignored the warning signs about the possible emergence of related new coronaviruses and the inabilities to handle SARS-Cov-2 is the result.
‘HOW BRITAIN COULD HAVE DEFEATED COVID. YOU CAN NOW WATCH “THE DIRTY WAR ON THE NHS” HERE, FREE
12 August 2020
The Dirty War on the NHS was first broadcast in Britain on the ITV Network on 17 December, 2019. It was shown following the general election that saw Boris Johnson become prime minister – even though the future of the NHS was a major issue in the campaign.
The remarkable prescience of the film became clear when the COVID pandemic struck, and the NHS, crippled by bed shortages, the starvation of resources and accelerating privatisation, could not cope. This was the film’s warning – a warning also delivered in 2016 when a full ‘drill’ for a pandemic showed the NHS would barely survive such an emergency. The politicians and managers did nothing; the report of the results of the drill was suppressed.
The ideological assault on the world’s first public health service continued at the height of the COVID crisis with inept private firms given lucrative contracts for PPE and mass testing. The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, an arch privatiser, announced in August 2020 that in future most GP consultations would be be online. Hancock’s association with the tech company, Babylon Health, is dealt with in The Dirty War
The film’s website is http://www.thedirtywaronnhs.com
The following review by Jean Shaoul appeared on the World Socialist Website- http://www.wsws.org
Over 60s cannot afford to get sick . Those of us who went through Thatcher’s feminism our marriages broke down taking with it our self- respect and our financial security. During those years of government enforced poverty our exes are all our pay and all our capital while depriving us of the bonds of respect from our children.
I can’t think of a better way to cure a man from seeking to make money than to force him to pay for his wifes mortgage while rents a bed sit or nowadays takes to the street. Feminism made every man fully responsible for everything that had ever gone wrong in a marriage. We learnt survival and have remained in survival mode for the rest of our lives.
I really love my life and I have no fear at all about losing it. Life is a beautiful gift whatever the ups and downs. But that doesn’t actually mean that I can afford to die, just because it might be rational for policy thinkers in Whitehall. Please Mr Sunak can you let the virus rage but bung us Thatcher survivors ten grand for a funeral?
Herd immunity is pensioner poverty. I find myself unable to blame myself for not looking after no 1 just because a mad woman in no 10 told me to do so.
There are two different questions there. One is that of how dangerous covid is. You are making the false assumption that covid is like the flu, in that if you don’t die you’re fine. That is grossly incorrect. Many people way below 60 who have been through a “mild” case of covid are reported to suffer from more or less serious long-term health problems. (I am one of them.) So the long-term effects are unclear and possibly grave.
And my mild case meant 4 weeks off sick as well, followed by several months of sub-par performance due to health reasons. Which also comes with an economic cost to the employers and the economy.
The second question is whether Western governments’ responses are the best responses. Obviously, they are not. For better responses look to China, South-East Asia, and New Zealand.
Charts of total mortality for all reasons for
England and Wales http://null4.net/enw-mortality.png
Scotland http://null4.net/sco-mortality.png
It appears plain that the epidemic had a large impact around April-May, and since then mortality has returned to approximately normal.
Government restrictions during an epidemic would seem reasonable and are typically generally supported.
Continuing restrictions after the epidemic has passed, however, needs to be rigorously justified.
I observe attempts at justification largely on the basis of high “case” numbers due to positive results in testing and ad hominem “covidiot” name calling, usually associated with an increased emotional tone.
If one wants to argue that the drop in deaths to normal levels is due to the success of restrictive policies, that’s fine but some kind of testable hypothesis would be most welcome. For example, one helpful commenter suggested that the drop in US deaths to 17% below normal was due to fewer car accidents. That hypothesis turned out to be false – car accidents account for only 2% of deaths in US, and the reduction in car accidents in the first half of 2020 was about 2%, despite miles travelled dropping by 16%. I’d be delighted to have my mind changed if anyone can provide a good explanation that correlates with objective facts.
BTW I wonder if the term covidiot might not boomerang in the future, and acquire the opposite meaning to that originally intended.
” All the passenger security checks that make flying a misery, across the entire world, have never caught a single bomb, anywhere. “
I’ve read some tosh on this blog but that takes the biscuit. Aside from being wrong do you not think the deterrent has an effect?
The article works the same trick as a lot of anti-vaccination propaganda in focusing on deaths and ignoring the number of cases or long term effects such as permanent lung and heart damage. I only know 5 people who have had Covid, this was back in the spring and they still haven’t fully recovered, shortness of breath and general fatigue, and might never. One reason why death rates may have fallen is very probably that we know so much more about the disease than we did in the early part of the year when it was an new and unknown disease. Doctors now know what works and what doesn’t but it still means 7,800 people in hospital needing lengthy treatment and a responsibility on the rest of us to avoid any more admissions.
Good points.
Long Covid I think it’s called.
No expert on this at all but despite the government’s handling of it the scientists are learning all the time.
I have read that the earlier the medics can treat people with the virus that the outcomes would be bettr.
For example the initial treatment of pumping pressurised oxygen into already damaged lungs initially made things worse.
But to be fair the medics had to do something at the time.
They know more now as you say so hopefully deaths will be lower despite more discoveries of cases.
One US doctor talked about using blood thinners such as Wharfarin? as a first treatment because the virus tends to causes the blood to become sticky and syrupy ( try pumping jam into someones’ s lungs as a cure ). so just one of many possible treatments.
Not convinced of hiding the over 60’s away though.
Could be done but I suspect that most are keeping out of the way anyway as much as possible now.
The interesting and hypocritical thing is that the MSM ( the BBC in particular) and the politicians are not doing what the kids and the people who have to work are doing.
Namely: crowding at schools/Universities and work.
Parliament is never full and the BBC’s interviews and QT program is always carried out on Zoom.
Bit of a practice of Coming a Cummings there from both parties.
To be fair there is a lot of co – morbidities in both as lying causes a lot of stress.
Drinking Smoking and illegal drug abuse.
Give MPs meal vouchers and they’ll spend it in drinking – brothels and crack cocaine dens.
I do wonder whether Ben Bradshaw should get out more?
Or preferably – stay in more.
He hasn’t ( and he’s not alone ) got a clue how ordinary people live.
That’s whay his and others arguments are pure crap.