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May I recommend reading this? Kim in another discussion forum is doing great work exposing the inadequacy of the government, whilst here we are squabbling about basic science and attacking scientists instead of politicians. Please for your homework read and comment on Kim’s posts.
Clark
Sarcasm alert The death rate has increased because people have started to die of ennui, stabbing each and suicides amongst other causes of shutdown. But of course you wouldn’t know because most of these people are recorded as having died of covid-19 on government say so, after all you can no longer trust all these made up figures. Also we may now need to revise all our statistics and have categories of causes of death so perhaps we can have this: Died with pneumonia, or died of pneumonia, died with heart failure or died of heart failure. Ah but I forgot we already have all this, it is just written in a different way! Back to the drawing board.SA, I think the political system might be fucked, leaving it up to the people.
Lots of people walk past the front of my house because it is a public footpath, so I have a chance to speak with them. I also ‘phone around people I know. It seems that the brave guardians of free speech at this blog are not typical. Most people are stupid enough to put community health ahead of the economy. They are too dull-witted and conformist to realise that Ferguson is the real enemy, who forced China to shut itself down at the beginning of this year. We are lost; the minds of the majority are too enslaved by the MSM for them to break the social restrictions.
Interesting to look at this table from ONS. You have to download the XLSX document then click on table one.
What is interesting is that it gives the causes of death in March. There is no mention of ennui as cause of death. No murders, apparently and no suicides. But lots of deaths due to other conditions including Covid-19.
Another interesting table is Table 5a which gives covid=19 deaths according to ages and underlying comorbidities. Overall there are 6-10% of deaths in people without underlying disease in the age groups above 70. Also in the 40-45 age group this proportion is 34% (although the numbers are small).– “You are claiming the excess death rate hasn’t been substantially inflated by those factors?”
I thought you didn’t accept that the death rate had increase at all! You said that looking back from next year, the death rate would be “nothing special”, didn’t you?
Clark
You have not been following this carefully. The death rate was lower than the average for the last 5 years until about last bit of March and started to rise because the lockdown was introduced. Even before the effect of this lockdown were felt, people lost the will to live and started to die with covid-19 and not because of covid-19. In this way you can also have no increase excess mortality but increase in excess mortality specifically due to ennui.Ha ha, I’ve just seen the irony. For you it’s not science, it’s faith. Covid containment measures have ceased to make any sense at all so you just believe in The Word coming down from on High. It doesn’t matter what the excess death figures include – co-morbidities, suicides, seasonal influenza, lockdown casualties – you just chant the mantra “excess mortality.” Who cares whether the data is accurate, don’t think, don’t question, don’t worry, just have faith. Seek refuge in the Church of Covid and shun the disbelievers. Ha ha. it’s delicious. Now I understand your reaction when I attacked the High Priest Ferguson.
So we can question government produced data, but where do we then get our data from? If we can’t depend on ONS then who can we depend on? Maybe we can each generate our own data and just use it to suit our purposes. Suicide has gone up. But how do you know? Well it is bound to go up with the lockdown. But is there any data? No you have to be a fool and a covid believer to think that suicide has not gone up because of the covid-19 lockdown, but the government is hiding it.
I personally do not believe in high priests or godlike figures. I have never used this terminology and never believe in any one individual for all my information. I am sure Ferguson, like all humans, makes a lot of mistakes, but he has a large group working with him in a very reputable university. I am sure also that Ioannidis is very reputable and works in a very respectable institution. Neither is the first a high priest of anything, nor is the second one a godlike figure, they are both very fallible humans. They both produce data which adds to knowledge, and science always needs a challenge. But one thing I never do is get my data from OG, UK column or other political sources.Again we have not kept eyes on the ball. Boris is playing fast with facts and science whilst we have this discussion. And off course there will be a second peak and off course those who want to take whatever lesson there is to take will decide that the lockdown was wrong. But let us get something straight, the terminology.
Lockdown: what does it mean? In China it meant as Clark likes to point out, welded doors and people literally incarcerated. In France it meant that you had to download a form and fill it in before you went out of your house, stating the reason for leaving your house, and if stopped by the police, you could get fined if you have not filled a form or if your reason was not valid, these are just two examples. In UK it meant a mixed message, people can go out to supermarkets, only to buy essential things but this was purely voluntary. If you wanted to travel many miles for a walk, you could do so. If you were a PM, you shook hands with many people provided you then washed your hands whilst specifically singing ‘happy birthday to you’. If you are a government minister you could self isolate after having a positive test for the virus but then go to TV centre to mingle with others after one week. The lockdown was not really a lockdown.
Now what should have happened is what one would call a curfew. That is no body leaves the house for any reason whatsoever. They should have food and provisions delivered through specifically organised networks preferably through the councils, who appear to have had a minimal role in this crisis. In that way in 2 weeks you would have had a real sharp drop in R, but provided you also practised quarantining. Again we advocated self isolation if you had any symptoms. This means that you stay at home. If you live with others, you have to isolate in a room alone and use separate facilities, in order not to infect others. That’s OK if you live in a house with several ensuite toilets and shower rooms and perhaps even a kitchenette, but for most people, living in small flats, self isolation means sure infection for as many people as possible living in the same address. What we should have done is quarantining. That means anyone with symptoms should be tested and if positive, then transferred into an isolation unit, commandeered hotels would do, where they can be cared for their basic needs whilst those providing this care have adequate PPE.
If these were adopted, plus a vigorous contact tracing as happened in South Korea, the R would have been slashed to near zero in a very short time. And this is not just theory, it was demonstrated in China, after the epidemic was in full swing, in Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea, before cases started to climb sharply, and in Taiwan in a semi preventative early stage. Bringing down R to the lowest level was the highest priority and had to be down quickly.
But we have now suffered the worst of both worlds, we will suffer a continued but rather wishy washy ‘lockdown’ which is open ended and with no clear exit strategy and will suffer both the worst health and economic consequences. And for what? Because the Johnson Regime does not want to spend money on PPE, testing, contact tracing and proper quarantine. Whether this is economic or ideologically driven or just sheer incompetence does not matter. Why introduce silly apps within even having adequate testing? Why trying to obtain ventialtors when you can’t provide PPE? In France, Spain and many other countries the government has provided face masks for the general population, delivered free. In UK we are still debating their virtues and being precious about them, and in any case they are not available.
So please let us stop this nonsensical theological discussion and get on.Node, accusing me of faith is the most offensive thing you could have done due to religious indoctrination throughout my childhood that took me decades to escape. Apparently you barely read my comments so it is not worth writing more.
SA, I read the headlines while I was shopping and saw the new rules. I am very concerned that R will rise above 1 and infections will start increasing again.
I agree that local authorities have been sidelined. I agree that curfew and food distribution would be highly effective, and they are desperately needed, but only in the areas of high infection density. It is a huge mistake to apply restrictions equally across the entire country; see this map. In high infection areas, and among some key workers, and especially among key workers in high infection areas, R probably never fell below 1. In those places and groups it will rise way above 1 now, under the new rules. The country could soon find itself with its entire key worker population incapacitated by covid-19, and new clusters spreading from around key worker populations.
Proper quarantine and segregation are also desperately needed. The stay-at-home rule made the problem manageable and prevented absolute catastrophe, but is in no way a solution.
My guess is that contact tracing is only practical in areas of low infection density.
We need widespread testing, and we need masks.
This is not complicated FFS. The government response is close to useless; they are clueless.
Yes of course some of these measures need targeting, especially in big cities with many living in flats with limited capacity for staying at home with the kids in cramped accommodation. I am not sure how those in high rise flats manage to observe social distancing if they have to use lifts.
What was really bizarre is that after 2 months of having open borders we have now discovered that we must check visitors coming to UK. In fact the rest of the world will probably want to ban visitors coming from UK as posing extremely high risk of spreading the infection.I’ve reviewed the new rules on-line and I’d gained a wrong impression from scanning the headlines. I think these new rules will make little difference. Rt will increase a little bit but not get much closer to 1, and it won’t help the economy much either.
The international travel quarantine is rubbish too, just pandering to xenophobia. Why two weeks? I suppose it’s because of shortage of PCR tests. Four days and a PCR test would be better wouldn’t it? Now I suppose we’ll see the quarantine done all wrong, inadequate isolation leading to a whole outgoing crowd of travellers with carriers among them, infected by someone new to quarantine or more likely UK resident key workers.
The new rules are full of ambiguities and personal interpretations. They are not meant to help industry but to offload any responsibility to employers and employees away from government, do that furlough could be cut.
But the greatest thing is that aboris has now been effectively reduced to a local governor of England where Scotland, Wales and N Ireland have their own rules.The ICL model for Sweden has updated; Rt now about 0.8, 95% certainty that it’s less than 1.
We must keep in mind, that whatever we think of Boris or the conservative government, this is probably the most difficult set of circumstances any of them or any of us would ever have had to think through and try in any of our lifetimes.
The most surely will not get it all right, let’s hope they get most of it right.This article seems to have made an impression on Dave, who was adamant that covid-19 is a hoax.
The article by Mercouris is a very good summary I think. No wonder Dave has gone of The Duran.
May 11, 19:29, #53242 – I spoke too soon. There are reports that the London Underground is packed.
Apologies I posted on another thread, late evening, a link I found, which I took on trust, without examining it, showing some Scottish mortality figures, which appeared pertinent to this blog, (as the UK figures show 50% mortality from London), but which I’m informed by Mods are clearly wrong. Sorry about that.
Dave, I saw that comment of yours and replied to it, but my reply vanished upon posting because yours had been deleted.
It looked to me as though the April figures you found were probably incomplete. As best I remember, on the spreadsheet charts available from the page you linked, there was no data for April 2020; the most recent was March 2020. From memory, March 2019 deaths from all causes were 4700 or so, and March 2020 was over 5000 – maybe 5300 or something? Anyway, it was a clear rise, whereas February 2020 was about the same as February 2019, so a sharp, anomalous rise clearly started in March 2020.
Here’s the latest graph for Scotland:
https://squonk.tk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/dscot19.png
That’s from this document:
https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/covid19/covid-deaths-report-week-19.pdf
I think the spreadsheets from the page you linked were hospital records. The graph above is “Deaths by week of registration”. There’s probably an administrative delay from hospital records to registration.
It’s good to see the death rate coming down at last. The governments of the UK acted far too late. I’ve been watching this coming since the third week in January; China doesn’t just shut down its entire economy for nothing. 760 million people were under some form of quarantine at one point; that’s 10% of the entire global population! The effect was so big that reduction in air pollution over China was recorded from satellites. China’s electricity production was 60% of normal.
The UK government had over two months to prepare but took precisely fuck all preventative action, though they did set up emergency hospitals and morgues! Fucking cynical tossers. I’m furious. Test manufacture could have been set up. We could have had millions of masks at the ready. The care homes could have been reorganised ready to quarantine infected residents. Local food distribution could have been implemented to keep people from infecting each other in supermarkets. A universal basic income could have been implemented ready so that ill people could miss work and so not infect their colleagues, and because so many businesses would need to be closed. A national infection map could have been set up so that people knew where to avoid. We could have made the UK a very hostile environment for SARS-CoV-2.
We’re now over seven weeks past the “lockdown” ie. the stay-at-home order, and still there has been no intelligent response. What the hell are they all doing; snorting coke with Boris? I have never seen such utter, wilful incompetence in my life.
These seem to be the relevant pages from last night, retrieved from my browser history:
I strongly suspect that what has actually happened is that thousands of old folk have been effectively euthanised by nurses in the care homes, because there was simply no way of getting them into hospital for breathing and oxygen support – palliative drugs increased until permanent unconsciousness resulted.
The problem about our government is that it never really departed from its original policy of ‘mitigation@ rather than ‘suppression’ as discussed here:
This way of building up resistance through widespread infection is often referred to as achieving “herd immunity”, though governments which practice the mitigation strategy tend to avoid public use of the term and sometimes deny that it is their objective.
Since the ultimate objective of mitigation strategies is to achieve herd immunity, whether this objective is admitted or not, social distancing tends to be encouraged rather than enforced, and is less rigorous, whilst mass testing for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus does not happen, since it is deemed unnecessary.
The country in the West most identified with the mitigation strategy is Sweden, though it was also the strategy followed for a time by Britain.And this really explains why this government is behaving the way it is doing. Is it incompetence, or is the pursuit of the policy to achieve herd immunity?
And there is too much distraction about discussing ‘the science’ and that the policy is led by the science. It is clear that with a new epidemic that there is little light that science can directly shed and therefore policies of containment of infectious diseases should reflexly be implemented as these are well known tried and tested principles. Some of these anomalies exist to this day:
If you have a respiratory virus it is axiomatic that you should take adequate precautions to contain the spread through aerosol and droplet transmission. This is the most important route of transmission. Of course droplets can also land on various surfaces and cause infection if someone touches an infected surface, but that is secondary. But it looks as if the emphasis has been on hand washing and less on avoiding droplet transmission by widespread use of face masks. This si absurd. And the reason to me appears to be that the government has neglected to plan for a supply of face masks to the general public. Other countries supply those free to citizens. In Spain they are distributed to the public and in France they are sent to home addresses. You can’t even buy masks here.
Testing, isolation, contact tracing, is also a longstanding public health principle for dealing with epidemic respiratory disease, but non of this is taking place. In fact I think that ‘science’ has been used to divert from basic public health principles. Science in the shape of modelling and calculating the death rate is irrelevant in the first stages but sadly has been used in the wrong way by some governments.
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