12th April 2020
Several politicians, including Keir Starmer, the opposition Labour Party leader, have been demanding to know the exit strategy for the lockdown. “We should know what that exit strategy is, when the restrictions might be lifted and what the plan is for economic recovery to protect those who have been hardest hit,” he said last week.
This is an entirely valid question, but the Government cannot have an exit strategy, unless they have an overall strategy. One follows directly from the other.
And there are only four possible strategies:
To eradicate the virus from the entire population by enforcing lockdown. Or to enforce lockdown until there is an effective treatment. Or to enforce lockdown until there is a vaccine. Or to enforce lockdown to slow the spread of the virus, so as to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed.
Eradication is virtually impossible with such a highly infectious disease. Even if the UK was successful, if other countries were not, keeping Covid-19 out would require border closures for years, maybe decades. Endless checks on planes, boats, lorries, cars. Constant testing and restrictions. It is almost certain that the virus would still slip through. This does not seem a viable option.
What about finding an effective treatment? The chances are vanishingly small. Influenza, a very similar virus, has been around for decades, and no game changing medications have yet been found.
As for a vaccine? This solution is so distant that it does not really exist. It will be a minimum of eighteen months before an effective vaccine can be developed, then tested, then produced in sufficient quantities to be of any use. Waiting for eighteen months before releasing lockdown would be socially and economically impossible. We would be committing national suicide.
Ergo, there is only one overall strategy that can be followed. Control the spread to avoid overwhelming the NHS. This has never been made explicit, but the Government has, albeit indirectly, told us that this is exactly what they are doing.
In the last few days, a letter was sent to all households, signed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, before he too succumbed to the disease. It was entitled “Coronavirus – stay at home; protect the NHS, save lives.” It contained this key passage:
“If too many people become seriously unwell at one time, the NHS will be unable to cope. This will cost lives. We must slow the spread of the disease, and reduce the number of people needing hospital treatment in order to save as many lives as possible.”
The key sentence is the first. If too many people become seriously unwell at one time.
This fits with the initial UK strategy. Contain, delay, research, mitigate. The UK has passed through “contain” and is now in “delay and mitigate”. Research sits in the background and may, or may not, provide a solution.
However, delay and mitigate doesn’t mean that people will not become infected and die. It just means that the NHS will not be overwhelmed by a massive wave of people getting ill at the same time. We are simply, it should be made clear, trying to control the “peak”, which now may likely be a series of “peaks”.
At present, ministers are not admitting this. They are presenting lock-down as a way of “beating this virus.” In order to enforce lockdown, they are haranguing and scaring the population into compliance.
Covid-19 is being presented as a deadly killer that does not discriminate. Young, old, we are all at risk of contracting this dreadful disease. Every night, the television news has story after story of young people who have been infected, and who have died. In fact, very, very few people under 20 have died so far. I believe it was five, at the end of last week.
There is hardly anything said about the fact that the average age of death is around eighty, that the vast, vast, majority of those dying are old (92% are aged over sixty) The great majority of them have several other serious medical conditions.
The reality is that for anyone younger than about sixty, Covid-19 is only slightly more dangerous than suffering from influenza. The infection fatality rate (IFR) currently stands at around 0.2% in those countries doing the most testing. This figure will inevitably fall, once we can identify those who were infected but had no symptoms.
By avoiding this more reassuring message, by frightening everyone into compliance, the Government has painted itself into a corner. How can they say to people that, last week you couldn’t drive two miles to walk in the countryside, or go to the beach, or go to a restaurant, or lie in a park sunbathing, in order to prevent the spread of this deadly killer disease …but this week you can?
Worse than that, when cases begin to rise again, about a month after lockdown is relaxed, we will all have to lock down again, to prevent the next surge? How will the public respond to this? I don’t know, but I expect that it is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to force everyone back into lockdown again.
By this point, millions will have been financially crippled and will be desperate to work, if their jobs still exist. Thousands of businesses will have fallen over, bankrupt. Hundreds of thousands of operations, and cancer treatments, will have been postponed and cancelled. I have already warned that it’s possible, perhaps even likely, that many more people could as a result of the lockdown than will die from coronavirus.
That great harm is being done by it was made clear in an article last week in the Health Service Journal:
“NHS England analysts have been tasked with the challenging task of identifying patients who may not have the virus but may be at risk of significant harm or death because they are missing vital appointments or not attending emergency departments, with both the service and public so focused on covid-19.
“A senior NHS source familiar with the programme told HSJ: “There could be some very serious unintended consequences [to all the resources going into fighting coronavirus]. While there will be a lot of covid-19 fatalities, we could end up losing more ‘years of life’ because of fatalities relating to non-covid-19 health complications.”
It may well seem that all this suffering was…well, for what, exactly? To simply prevent a surge of cases. This government, all governments, must be honest about this and admit that in the longer term we cannot prevent almost everybody getting infected and acknowledge that a proportion of those infected will die.
When lockdown restrictions are lifted this does not mean that the virus has gone. It does not mean that people cannot infect each other. It does not mean we can simply carry on as before. It means that we have kept the first surge under control.
So, what is the exit strategy? The answer is that we don’t have one. We have a strategy of delay and mitigation which will continue until… when? Until everyone has been infected? Until we have an effective treatment? Until we have an effective vaccine? Until enough people have been infected that we have achieved herd immunity?
The Government must tell us the truth and be clear about what end point they are seeking to achieve. Only then can we have an exit strategy. One thing for sure is that this lockdown is not a way to defeat the virus.
Thank you
the end result is working towards a cashless society of total control.
Many good points. It is frustrating there is no exit strategy, but when the government is led by the nose by Ferguson’s predictions, the chance of the government telling the truth is as near zero as it’s possible to get.
Ferguson? Please tell me you don’t mean the the same ‘Ferguson’ who prophesied preposterous numbers during the Foot & Mouth outbreak ? – You know, the agricultural epidemic which saw a huge % of the national herd(s) destroyed… just in case.
From fading memory, Baseline farmer suicides were around one per week nation – wide, and went ballistic afterwards… to the extent the police in one county were temporarily taking shotguns from them.
Once again, FEAR did as much damage as the disease.
To Janet Love: Yes, precisely that Ferguson – he has found himself another wrecking ball and is happily playing with it. When the likes of HE are “experts” you get a feeling that it will not end well. Not that there is a good end to such events as this, but spare us the efforts of the lnow-all’s who only know how to make things worse.
Thank you Dr Kendrick. A reasonable voice amongst this madness.
Can I ask why announced covid deaths today were 657 in 24 hrs in England but according to NHS website Covid-19 deaths are 121 yet total deaths is as announced 9,594??
I worry this is another scare tactic and the figures are being manipulated. Also over half of total deaths are over 80.
Hi Sonya,
I can perhaps answer that – though I am no expert.
It is the difference between date of death and date of announcement. Understandably not all deaths can be reported as timely as they might. So yes another 657 deaths were announced but the date of death was spread over a number of days. That is why the number for a particular day will increase for a day or more afterwards. – see the effect and some info on this website –
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-12th-april/
There is no attempt to deceive in this – but most “journalists” never check what it is they are reporting – the radio station I listen always reports these as the highest daily total .. !!!
Dr K: Yay! I’m now going to go up on to my roof and scream: “Dr. Kendrick says no to the lockdown”!
Thank you!
Cogently argued Malcolm. I am under the distinct impression that the public are never going to be informed vis-a-vis COVID-19 in order that we can protect ourselves.
The reality is that sooner or later everyone could be exposed to the virus. Isolation and face masks will only delay the inevitable.
Which is a good reason to slow the process down, so as not to have everyone get it at once and overwhelm the NHS. The difficulty is telling the populace – explaining that it isn’t about preventing infection (or deaths) but to protect the NHS and the economy, with the knock-on effect of preventing more deaths. People have a much lower IQ en masse than individually so communicating this kind of thing is risky – and without the people largely behind the government’s instructions, they lose control completely and that won’t achieve any end (no matter which they’re aiming for).
Such a large vehicle to be steered, and such a disparate mass of people steering it *and* deciding which direction to steer it in! I’m glad I’m not the one in charge.
mand SeasonMand, if this is “protecting the economy” WTF happens when there is no protection?
I don’t say they’re doing it well, I’m just saying it’s a very delicate thing to do.
I’ve been hearing from NHS staff that many ICUs are actually devoid of any patients at all! Usually they’d have people post-surgery for routine stuff, there are no cancer patients and so on – so we’ve shut down the entire country in order to protect the NHS, but if it’s true that they have no patients, we are only delaying the inevitable at the expense of the economy.
I can’t say anything about the rest of the country’s hospitals, but my son works in one and tells me they’re rushed off their feet. At first they cleared the decks – no outpatients, an eerie emptiness with staff twiddling their thumbs in anticipation of the onslaught. That’s a while ago; now, they definitely have enough work to do. All patients that are in hospital are either covid positive, or so seriously ill it’s worth the risk of catching it. He’s used to chatting with patients on all wards (he’s a phlebotomist) presumably including the ICU, but now hardly any are well enough to be chatty, his department have been allocated to a ward each rather than being “peripatetic” all over the hospital, and of course the mood is very different. The spirit of team work sounds wonderful, and the tension sounds horrendous.
As I say, anecdotal but I’d imagine everywhere’s similar.
Not everywhere
OK, not everywhere. I said I didn’t know. 🙂
If studies listed in Doctoring Data, are to be believed, this lockdown is also saving lives.
mand SeasonMand: I think we should put Dr. Kendrick in charge. We’d have a lot more fun!
I don’t think I would be very good at being in charge. I like to break things apart so that others may then put them back together again in better and stronger ways. I am Hermes, the disruptor.
Dr. Kendrick: As a child I took apart every toy I got, to see what was inside, then attempted to put them back together. Not always successful, especially when a hammer was required for disassembly. That’s why I’m not an engineer, although I hold them in high esteem.
@ Gary – Great idea! We would indeed.
@ Malcolm – You’d have more fun too, a much bigger toy to take apart…! 😉
Hermes the disruptor, great persona for you. 🙂
PS. How about the Dominic Cummings role, then? Examining the known data and proposing strategy?
After reading Doctoring data I have to wholeheartedly agree with that!
You scared the pants of me and did not tell me how to put them back on!!
Really?
Isn’t Hermes the divine messenger with his winged sandals and the mediator between the worlds of gods, the dead and the living?
He was up to occasional mischief and an accomplished thief, but a disruptor?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes
I just learned that he was also a god of fertility in archaic times.
Hermes is a multitasker
Dear Dr Malcolm Kendrick
As a child, I’d take things apart and still do it as an adult. I’ve moved on from mechanical things to ripping apart thinking, underlying structures and systems.
Perhaps being a disrupter is mostly a good thing, it does have its dangers in as much as all humans have differing values. Some people crave security and hate all disruptions, others take a more nuanced view and yet others revel in it.
There is of course a danger in getting all disrupters together. Groupthink is real so would all disrupters just disrupt everything and get nothing done?
I happen to believe a Think Tank or something like that which is designed to ask hard questions and challenge the status quo is needed.
Health, Education, the Money System, Governance could all feature.
What do you think?
Everyone says that they need disruptive thinkers or creative thinkers. Trying to get any organisation to welcome and use disruptive thinkers is exceptionally difficult. The reality is that, whatever they may say, people really want to be surrounded by people who think the same things and support each other. This ‘group think’ creates rigidity and means that systems are liable to complete destruction when confronted by unexpected, rapid, change. Changing this, the need for conformity… not sure how
Yes, tis true that many organisations including government say they want disruptive thinkers but most times they don’t.
I have experienced this myself. As a self-confessed innovator I wondered why I got fired from some companies and promoted by others.
On reflection, the main difference was the degree to which the culture permitted or embraced openness. Some businesses are based on command and control and others see that people are part of a system.
I’d suggest no one would ever be able to convince everyone but there are always pockets or niches which are more accepting.
The reality is that some ideas take a long time to permeate down and some take generations or even never.
I think it was Buckminster Fuller who said he created new ideas and waited till people were ready before they started gaining traction.
I had in mind a citizens think tank in which people could explore ideas, and challenge conventional thinking. It might not get anywhere but it might also be fun in creating something…
Perhaps, I’ll have a bash at it!
Best wishes
Organization of disruptors = highest order oxymoron.
Look at the four or five factions regularly contributing here. Lots of rigidity going on. Trouble is, lots of folks like to have affirmation of their self-concept as a counter-establishment intellectual savior and to Hell with those other saps at whatever cost.
Missing concept – “box”.
You must understand it full-depth in order to think (I mean truly THINK!) outside it.
That’s much more difficult than standing on an Ikea soap-box.
(What faction am I in? 🙂 )
The trick, I believe, is to be able to change your mind at any moment. The problem is, often, emotional attachment to ideas. Something that I fight against every day, with variable degrees of success.
The trouble is that most people I have encountered do not have either the confidence, nor the intellectual honesty to enable them to question their beliefs, let alone admit them incorrect or out of date. You are a maverick, and this is why I have great respect for you.
I read somewhere that that’s what made the German war machine so effective in WWII. They actively worked to promote that culture in their military. I don’t if it’s true or not..
Re Hermes…
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
– George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
And fertility god? Weren’t they all, at some point? 😉
I also used to take things apart as a child. The lovely bed clip-on lamp to encourage reading….. Note to young self: turn off electricity first.
I’ve been saying essentially this for weeks. If there is only one case out there it will spread. Also, if the virus develops, then a second wave could be worse than the first if no natural immunity has developed. I just get shouted down by everybody else for “not caring” or being asked, ” what if it was your relative?”.
People can’t bear the fact that sometimes there is very little to be done. We sometimes don’t have cures.
I am male 58 with high blood pressure so could be considered a risk. I worry, but only about things I have control over.
Dont forget Prof Whitty would have liked us to only have one wave otherwise we will push this into flu season……lightbulb moment!
Thats why they are are still building extra capacity…….the way it is going thats were we are headed.
Well I live in Australia and we will be going into the flu season here shortly. There are at present only about 50 or so deaths here. The flu kills more than that in any one season. I may sound cold hearted to some but I think we should protect the elderly and vulnerable and just let the virus do it’s thing and in short order it would be gone and done with in a matter of weeks. I also believe that by having everything locked down we are only delaying the inevitable. I am 66 going on 67 and could be considered at risk. I do have other health conditions despite living healthfully thanks to our poisoned environment and heavy metals like mercury and gadolinium (contrast agent) and chemicals like glyphosate . But to tell you the truth, I would rather take my chances with a virus than have my freedoms taken away, which is what is going to and is happening right under our noses. I do not want to live in a dystopian world. I can see down the track there will be mandatory vaccines. This new vaccine sounds very dubious. Look up mRNA vaccines. Very scary.
Jan, I live in Queensland. The death rate here is one in a million. That is not my definition of a pandemic. I see mandatory vaccines in the future.
The most sensible thing I’ve read in a long time. It’s apparent the rule makers don’t have a clue and were the ones who suffer.
Thank you.
There has been some debate (squashed by many) over the possible influence of 5G. Let me say I am a sceptic on this but at the same time I believe that the way to halt this is through data and not banning people talking about it. I set about this morning to find out the deaths by million pop’ (as deaths are the most reliable data at the moment) coupled with 5G rollout. Although correlation cannot prove causation with this kind of data it can point to no causation but alas the data did not provide this. In fact it is mounting in the opposite direction. Can anyone come up with plausible explanations. Data below
City Million Pop Deaths Deaths Per Mill 5G 0=No
Tokyo 38 85 2.237 0
Delhi 25.7 19 0.739 0
Sao Paulo 21.06 275 13.058 0
Cairo 18.77 24 1.279 0
New York City 8.5 5150 605.882 1
Buenos Aires 15.1 89 5.894 0
Istanbul 14.1 387 27.447 0
London 10.3 2577 250.194 1
Madrid 6.19 6084 982.876 1
San Fransisco 3.3 13 3.939 0
Los Angeles 12.3 265 21.545 1
Mexico City 8.85 49 5.537 0
I can only hope that you, unlike Ancel Keyes, did not cherry pick these data.
🙂 no they were selected on the basis of population size mainly and fair split of 5g rollout and non rollout. I had no idea when selecting them what sort of picture they would paint. For what its worth the Pearson Correlation Coefficient is 0.62 with a p value of 0.018. I dont put them forward as evidence of 5G involvement but what they sure as hell tell us is that we need to look at this especially as plenty of Scientists are warning of the dangers of 5G long term. The meida will tell you that 5G complainers are nutters by painting them as proposing that 5G carries the virus. This is not the hypothesis, the theory is that 5G weakens the immune system making us more vulnerable to a virus
I think it’s a very interesting and provocative thought but it makes you very vulnerable to people calling you a nutter and what more. As you can see happening here.
To be honest I have to admit that at a first glance I’d also be tempted to throw the whole 5G-theory out of the window but do realise that I actually have no data to justify such thing.
I know I don’t have the right to ask you anything or direct you anywhere, but objectivity would be served if you could come up with a list of all, say, capitols, and 5G coverage as a percentage and then the population size and covid-19 death toll. Then you can never be accused of cherry picking, and then you can freely run your thoughts, including exclusions, over those data and come to sensible, maybe even indisputable, conclusions.
How about Seoul, with significant 5G coverage, pop 10 million, 2 deaths, or Berlin, pop 3.5 million, 50 deaths? Looks like Ancel Keyes data.
Seoul is a good example but I left Berlin out as its one of those cities with a slither of 5G which makes it hard to cat as either yes or no
OMG. All the 5G masts are in cities beginning with L, M and N. All consecutive letters! That can’t be a coincidence!
Seriously, drop the pathetic 5G nonsense, you’re spreading utter garbage.
Angus, Gateshead or Bristol or Cardiff don’t begin with L,M or N.
Are you spreading utter garbage?
I think he is being ironic
Oops, sorry, I don”t do irony. My wife does that, usually after the washy.
thanks; very useful to have Milan data: can you quote it?
smartersig – You might like to read what Martin Pall has to say about EMFs in general and then Dr. Arthur Firstenberg’s book “The Invisible Rainbow” and follow with reading anything by Brian Hoyer. And Dr. Thomas Cowan. They bring plenty of evidence as to the damage at a cellular level, and to our DNA, that EMFs of all sorts cause, and moreso 5G. From my own experience I have had to turn off the wi-fi and return to using a cable (no problem) and reduce my use of the mobile phone to a minimum (you get used to it and you are not bothered constantly by beeps from WhatsApp). When I am out and about I have to avoid places with wi-fi and wear protective clothing. This is due to being electromagnetically sensitive. Once you’ve read more about it you may become convinced. I can also recommend going to Lloyd Burrell’s website, or Nick Pineault’s website, and there are others worth looking at too. The telecoms companies and those spreading 5G antennas around the world have not done any tests for safety. But wherever they go up, bee populations are decimated, plants wither and people develop horrendous symptoms.
Please read Martin Pall, Dr. David Cowan, websites such as Paul Burrell’s, Josh del Sol, Nick Pineault, Dr. Mercola’s, Dr. Arthur Firstenberg’s book “The `invisible Rainbow” to find how electromagnetic frequencies affect out cells and DNA, and now 5G more than ever. It is very scary what governments are allowing telecom and other companies, such as those owned by Elon Musk, to do to us and our planet right under our nose with no safety testing.
Would I be right in assuming that 5G is rolled out in areas of high population density; and in areas of high population density more people with die of covid-19 just because – more people? Would that not explain any link nicely?
While I’m certainly not a fan of 5G, could it simply be that those people living in more crowded places are exposed to a higher viral load?
When I trained as a radiographer back in the 1970s, part of our training took place at a TB hospital every few weeks. We were not required to have any kind of vaccine or immunity test as it was pointed out that in order to ‘catch’ TB you had to be in close proximity for a length of time, in a poorly-ventilated place, to someone with the active disease.
For example, my husband’s father developed TB as a young man of 22 in the early 50s when he worked as a cinema projectionist – an ideal location, in a small, dark, windowless, stuffy room connected to a large unventilated room full of the general public, many of whom likely had active TB, possibly without knowing. His favourite diet seemed to consist solely of jam sandwiches, not known for their immune-enhancing properties. He was one of the few survivors in the TB ward where he ended up, possibly due to his age, and lived to be 82 in the end.
I’m sure 5G has some kind of adverse effect on the body, if not the immune system, but I too have looked at the towns where all 4 operators have 5G compared with the highest numbers of Covid 19 deaths and there is no convincing parallel, as far as I can see, unless you ‘cherry pick’.
Oh I’m not saying that 5G is linked to covid! I just meant that if people are seeing a link between the two, then urban density just seems to be a reasonable explanation for both – a correlation, not a causation.
There is plenty of scientific evidence for the damage that radio frequencies do to the DNA in our cells. 5G just ramps up the frequencies to a deadly level. Please read Dr. Martin Pall, or Dr. Firstenberg, or just go to Nick Pineault’s website for many links.
nnmlly: As I understand it the risk of harm from radiation rises with both the strength of it and the proximity to the source. 5G requires far more towers far more closely spaced than 4G, thus in a crowded city the risk would be heightened for many. There has recently been patented in the U.S. a technique for delivering the signals through electrical wires, thus nobody will have any choice about exposure.
Could you interpret the figures for me as I don’t really understand what you are saying. Is there a corelation or not between the numbers of deaths and roll out of 5G.?
I saw an article on RFK, Jr’s website Children Defense Fund. It’s an analysis of an article published in ICEE (I think?) which is apparently a reputable engineers’ magazine. (I have no idea, maybe engineers on here could comment). The article was about research on mobile and wifi, including 5G. Look it up, if you are interested.
Sasha, you are probably referring to this article from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
https://spectrum.ieee.org/news-from-around-ieee/the-institute/ieee-member-news/will-5g-be-bad-for-our-health
As you might expect from a bunch of engineers, they don’t think that 5G will be bad for your health.
“The first medical studies on possible health effects from EMR [electro-magnetic radiation] started almost 60 years ago, and literally thousands of studies since then reported either no health risk or inconclusive findings. A relatively small number of studies have claimed to find some evidence of risk, but those studies have never been reproduced—and reproducibility is a key factor in good science.
We should continue to look at the question of EMR health effects, but the vast majority of evidence says there’s no reason to pause deployments.”
But read the comments, which come from from some quite high-powered individuals. There is some doubt as to the safety of 5G. The problem is, there’s not enough evidence either way, i.e. you can’t conclusively prove or disprove that 5G is safe.
Martin, thanks. I will try to find the link to the article that his website mentions. I am fairly certain they have the link listed. I didn’t read the article itself, just a synopsis by RFK Jr’s website. If I find it and if it’s different from what you posted, I will link it here.
Martin, here is link
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/child-health-topics/known-culprit/electromagnetic/electromagnetic-radiation-due-to-cellular-wi-fi-and-bluetooth-technologies-how-safe-are-we/
It’s a post from April 7th and refers to an article published in IEEE. It’s a different article from the one you mentioned. And it apparently reaches different conclusions. But I didn’t read the article itself
Thanks for the link. We’re doomed, unless we find a nice comfy cave to live in ;o) Meanwhile, follow these sensible precautions:
TABLE 7: Recommendations for using Cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices:
Cell Phones/ Smartphones on cellular networks
1. Network: For internet connectivity, prefer Wi-Fi. If not available, prefer to use 4G networks for both calling and browsing/data streaming.
2. Calling: Use wired headphones and keep the phone at least 1m away while calling.
3. Browsing/ Video Streaming: Keep device on a table/platform at least 50 cm away
Wi-Fi Devices
1. Prefer smartphones over laptops for casual work such as e-mails/ browsing.
2. Keep smartphone/laptop on a table and operate from an arm’s distance (50cm).
3. Avoid keeping smartphone in the pocket while it is connected to a Wi-Fi router.
4. Avoid keeping laptop on the lap while it is connected to a Wi-Fi router.
5. Wireless (Adhoc transfer) : Stay at least 1m away from both sender and receiver.
6. 4G Wireless Hotspot: Stay at least 2m away from the device while it is active.
Bluetooth Devices
1. Speakers: Keep speakers at least 25 cm away and connected smartphones at least 50 cm away.
2. Smartwatch: Avoid unless absolutely necessary.
3. Earphones: Avoid unless absolutely necessary
Martin, thanks. I assume, you are an engineer? Have you read the article they refer to? And if you did, what do you think of their conclusions? I haven’t read it or thought about the issue much. I only know that I can’t carry the phone in my pocket or hold it next to my head for longer than a minute. My head or leg goes numb..
Sasha, yes, I am an engineer, but civil, not electrical or electronic. I skimmed the article. They measured the radiation emitted by devices and compared it with the government-recommended limits, and concluded the devices were unsafe.
Personally I am not too worried. People who are heavily exposed to this type of radiation, like kids who have grown up surrounded by electronics, don’t seem to be affected. Whether 5G is uniquely dangerous I don’t know. It’s early days yet but so far the areas with 5G don’t seem to have any unusual morbidities.
Remember the objections people put up to cell phone towers in their neighbourhoods? If they had caused any trouble there would be court cases galore, but so far nothing that I am aware of. Maybe it will be the same with 5G.
Not that I treat radiation lightly. I left my last dentist partly because I felt he was giving me too many X-rays. If I fall asleep with the bedside radio on I wake with a headache the next day, presumably from the radiation. I would prefer a world with no unnatural radiation, but that is impossible given current lifestyles.
Martin, thank you for your feedback. It’s all very interesting.
Can’t comment on 5G but:….
When they got my new pacemaker up and running, I was warned :
Do not put your mobile phone in your breast pocket.
Do not stand closer than 8inches to the microwave (but they don’t leak according to the blurb)
When I got a new car, which has keyless starting, the car mechanics said they had never heard of any such thing.
So what is it?
I’ve heard Doris Loh talking about foton-sensitive amplification molecules in the body, and she referred to chlorophyll as being one, which are able, once having captured a photon from electromagnetic radiation, to knock electrons out of all kinds of molecules, creating reactive oxygen species in the process which then can wreak havoc in parts of the body. She posited that there is a dose dependent relationship between the amount of radiation you receive, the wavelength (i.e. energy of the photons involved) and the damage they cause.
She also argues that it’s this kind of radiation, generating ROSs that have to be ‘neutralized’ by Vitamin C among other substances (vit E, glutathione, &etc.) which leads to a shortage (or deficiency) in them which makes it necessary to supplement (more).
So maybe you don’t notice anything clinically from electromagnetic radiation, but sub-clinically your system could allegedly be put under (more) pressure and for instance your life shortened, or developing (more) cancer as age advances.
I’m not saying I have the level of knowledge that I can reject, debate or accept this opinion, but I think it’s quite an interesting concept.
I recently talked to a friend who’s a nuclear physicist. He is one of the smartest people I know. I was asking for another friend who was concerned about buying an apartment on the last floor of the apartment building. On the roof of that building there are a bunch of antennas for mobile. My physicist friend said: “anything that receives and retransmits, will amplify”. Whether it’s bad he can’t say for sure but he can’t imagine it being good.
Down here in Rye we have been delighted this weekend that almost no-one has come down from London to their holiday home (shades of Eyam) and infected any of us countryfolk and that tourists have largely stayed away; I confess that at nearly 70 I am a little uneasy about getting it (though I may have had it in December) but you are quite right that the measures are designed to flatten the peak and not more. Actually until last week the weekly death toll was not much greater than usual, and less, it would appear, than in the swine flu epidemic in 2009. But to be fair, whatever any government did would have been wrong. I am interested to see whether there is going to be a substantial overprovision of ventilators and if so whether commentators will be critical of the frantic calls for more which they themselves made. I have been blogging a bit on this; see The Wry Observer on WordPress… I think it will all be much clearer when we have an antibody test that tells us who has had it, and is therefore relatively safe. Estimates differ wildly. But it does appear that the Cheltenham Festival may have distributed the thing substantially.
How reliable are the tests?
Reading this article brought home that I am at higher risk, being a healthy 65 – I don’t feel old, but I am, I guess. I too think I may have had it earlier this year after being told by my GP, following a chest Xray for something else, that I had a shadow (inflammation) on my right lung. A subsequent Xray showed the shadow had gone. I did have the most awful cough. With an effective anti-body test being the only way I can tell, for a while at least, that I have had the virus and have a level of immunity, the thought of going back out into the world after lockdown is frightening. Is my mask merely a security blanket? Some difficult decisions ahead for me. Thanks for a thought provoking article, Malcolm.
scazzer, I am 67. I do not feel old, because I am not. Paul McCartney is still going, as is Mick Jagger and others.
Forget them. How about Keith Richards? That’s one tough guy, isn’t he?
In order to return to normal life, we will all have to find ways to boost our natural immunity against infection.
COVID-19 is a more virulent, and a very much more infectious, version of the influenza that occurs world-wide every year towards the end of the winter
– examples of which are SARS and MERS.
A vaccine is never going to prevent the next strain of Influenza, since vaccines take many months to develop
– and we are always chasing ways to stop the last pandemic – not the next one
We are not going to learn much from the medical profession or government about these natural ways to boost our immunity, since most modern doctors do not understand anything which is not a licensed drug.
I have spent 10 years interacting with many NHS scientific advisory committees including NICE, and none of them can cope with “Diet and Lifestyle” – because they don’t understand it.
– An example of this is a GP who proudly told me that “I know nothing about Nutrition” – how sad and dangerous !
– Another is an eye surgeon who told me that she does not give advice about Omega-3 – because “Vitamins are dangerous”
Dr Cicero Coimbra, Dr William Grant and Henry Lahore show strong evidence that high levels of Vitamin D boost our natural immunity against the annual Influenza, and COVID-19
– and help to fight the cytokine storm
( https://vitamindwiki.com/Vitamin+D+WOW+facts )
Dr Andrew Saul and Patrick Holford maintain that we should take much larger amounts of Vitamin C – when we are stressed or ill
They both report how the Chinese and many USA hospitals are now using IV Vitamin C as first-line treatment for COVID-19.
( http://doctoryourself.com/ )
( https://patrickholford.com )
Dr Sarah Myhill suggests that we should inhale iodine vapour, since that coats our nasal passages and upper airways with an antiseptic that kills the virus when we breathe it in
( https://www.drmyhill.co.uk/ )
Dr Paul Marik has a protocol involving Vitamin C, Vitamin B1 and steroids that have a synergistic effect in treating Sepsis, that also helps to treat Influenza and Pneumonia.
https://www.evms.edu/about_evms/administrative_offices/marketing_communications/publications/issue_9_4/sepsis.php
Dr Joseph Mercola has published “10-Tips to Beat Coronavirus” that add several foods, traditional herbal remedies and supplements, such as Elderberry, Spirulina, Beta Glucans, Glucosamine, Selenium, Zinc, Alpha Lipoic Acid and Sulphoraphane, plus Zinc and the traditional herbal remedies Echinacia and Turmeric
( https://www.mercola.com/ )
We are not going to hear much about these ways to build immunity from the medical profession, because the doctors in NICE in the UK do not understand them and the FDA in USA has banned anyone making claims for treatment or prevention using anything but licensed drugs.
Also Google and Facebook altered their search algorithms in June 2019 to block any claims that do not use licensed drugs, mostly as part of their war against Fake News but possibly to keep the advertising revenue from the drug companies.
Many of the general public do understand some of these natural methods of boosting our immunity, including how sunlight is the best disinfectant
– except that the dermatologists have taken over the lunatic asylum and told us to stay out of the sun !
So if we aren’t going to hear these messages from our doctors or our search engines or social media or the mainstream media, where and how are we going to learn about ways to prevent infection from COVID-19 and the next version ?
Have you been following the fascinating research coming from grassrootshealth.net?
I also ponder on that question. My conclusion is that perhaps only those lucky people who have happened upon that sort of information as to how to protect oneself will be the ultimate survivors. Personally I am trying to share all that information with anyone that will listen! I also try and share the information regarding the perils of statins, most (if not all) vaccines, drug-cocktails, eating junk food and sugary stuff…some are interested, some aren’t. In the end, I suppose we’ll find out one way or another…
So, Malcolm, what would you do, if you were, say, a 70 year old man in generally good condition? Meaning average arterial and lung health for that age, and no diabetes or obesity? Wait for at least two years in semi-isolation, hoping to get vaccinated, or take your chances out in the world, hoping you’ll survive COVID-19 reasonably intact and get at least some immunity for a substantial period?
The latter
How about if you were pressing 80 and had a couple of “underlying conditions” constituting some kind of risk yet to be quantified and qualified with years of RCTs . . . now?
(How many of us here does that describe?)
Perhaps you have a different perspective from most, having devoted your life to being out there helping patients?
Oh, and for full disclosure, what might your age be? I’m 76.
Me, I’m locked down here in the U. S. A.
But . . . I have my own key!
What is the point of all these hypothetical “What ifs”? We are who/what we are, not what if we were someone/something else. 🙄
What if you’d been a 50+ year smoker (pipe mostly).
At 63, (and admittedly with very good labs now that I’ve taken diet very seriously as a carnivore)I would take my chances as well, but I’ll admit it’s not death that scares me as much as the manner of it. I’ve already had pneumonia and don’t relish drowning in my own fluids again. Too bad we can’t get really radical and promise to euthanize those who get to the intubation stage if they are of sound mind and have discussed it with family. Then I’d be willing to chance getting it. But until then, I just don’t know. That said, I couldn’t agree more that we must have a clear exit strategy and if it means going back to pre-COVID-19 work, school and leisure activities, so be it. We can individually decide how to proceed. Some may continue to mask up when they shop or just say to heck with it and hope for the best.
Thanks for the impassioned article, Dr, Kendrick
I don’t think there is any intention to let us go back to living how we were. In due course they will probably relax some of the restrictions but I suspect Social Distancing is here to stay in one form or another. After all it prevents all but marital sex.
Probably we will be encouraged to put government mandated tracking software on our phones before we are allowed out. And of course censorship of “social media” is another bonus
I don’t think it is preventing all but marital sex, esp since you are now allowed to stay in a mate’s house if you have an argument with your family. I know a lad and his girlfriend have been doing some interesting late night “gardening” in a tent on his mum’s allotment – good on them I say.
Is that like parachute jumping for the young? Under 60 or so you are more likely to die of parachute jumping than anything else so it is a big risk but over 60 you are exceedingly more likely to die of something else so it is safer!
Counterintuitive!
At 63, I would take my chances as well, but I’ll admit it’s not death that scares me as much as the manner. I’ve already had pneumonia and don’t relish drowning in my own fluids again. Too bad we can’t get really radical and promise to euthanize those who get to the intubation stage if they are of sound mind and have discussed it with family. Then I’d be willing to chance getting it. But until then, I just don’t know. That said, I couldn’t agree more that we must have a clear exit strategy and if it means going back to pre-COVID-19 work, school and leisure activities, so be it. We can individually decide how to proceed. Some may continue to mask up when they shop or just say to heck with it and hope for the best.
Thanks for the impassioned article, Dr, Kendrick
I am almost exactly the man described, except that because I can cycle pretty well on the hills round here, I’d rate my lungs as rather better than average.
I too shop for our food, and obviously continue to cycle. It is irritating that I am not supposed to drive to a decent cycle track, but on the other hand, a lot of roads are safe to cycle on at the moment.
I reckon that probability of a collision with a car goes up more than linearly with the number of cars on the road because on a nearly empty road, the cars give cyclists a wonderful margin – more even than social distancing would require! Normally I try to avoid rods completely.
I totally agree that the government, aided and abetted by the BBC, has totally painted itself into a corner. I reckon that when President Trump starts to slacken the restrictions, we will too.
Could you please, please, please leave Trump out of this? He has the idea that this is all up to the states…until it’s not. You can’t on the one hand tell the states to fend for themselves for PPEs, ventilators, tests, lock downs, etc., as he has done for the majority of the time; and then suddenly say that the President is God and gets to choose what happens to the states, as Trump just said yesterday.
You can’t have it both ways.
And whence this idea that everything is up to the states comes from, I have no idea. Imagine WW2: “Sorry, Hawaii, about that Japanese attack. We recommend you start building more ships and planes.”
Why do we even have a CDC and a NIH if we don’t use them?
If you want to discuss reopening the country or parts of it, then let’s discuss it. But let’s leave Trump out of it, as he seems to change his mind with the wind.
BobM: States actually had quite a bit of sovereignty until the Lincoln presidency. The original Articles of Confederation was a compact among sovereign states. The Constitution replaced this by agreement among the states, but the issue was unsettled until the secession of Virginia and the other southern states. Today, the federal government grabs power wherever it sees fit, and the states do what they are told. Basically bootlickers. It’s lucrative for them, though. Lots of greenback dollars flow their way, regardless of the fact that they are just pieces of paper, devoid of any intrinsic value. But you’re right, Trump should be left out of our discussion. A lot of people like him, and a lot hate him, but this has no bearing on how we recover from this madness.
I agree, along with the 16 others already giving you the thumbs up. Having nursed my way through MRSA in its early days, AIDS, from when it was an unknown quantity, bovine spongiform encephalitis ….and on and on… coming in contact with lots of manky wounds, and various adult contagious diseases, I managed to get through unscathed….but at 72 , and my hubby at 77, both now coping with underlying conditions….we are up against this scourge. The scourge? Yes offspring in their middle years GROUNDING us. We dare not disobey them, so to all around us, we appear to be complying with the Government….but believe me, we are complying for the love and concern of our wonderful adult children. Staying at home is no problem for us, and if it keeps their minds at ease, despite having no research to back it up long term, we will comply..All is never as simple as it seems.
Chances, chances!
What’s my potential risk? What’s yours? Not too bad, right?
Tell you what: It doesn’t mean a thing when you get it.
Years ago I got a different rare dangerous disease pretty much thought to be extinct.
A decade later, I came down with it again. Literally unheard of. Zero “chance”.
Mine is the only known case.
I got it, chances notwithstanding.
Rethink your numbers. There’s only one of you.
When you get it, it’s 100%, no more, no less.
So, presume you got it.
Now, what’s your chance of death within a week?
Numbers, anyone?
Quite high if you don’t stop and relax, I would think
JDPatten: You’ve had a birthday since the last blog post; you’re nearly five years ahead of me. But numbers, yes. We haven’t the numbers yet to make sense of the actual threat of this, and the numbers we are given are suspect anyway, as to the causal role Covid-19 plays in these deaths.. I read no mainstream media, and very little alternative media. It seems their entire purpose today is to whip up hysteria. The information I do get about this nasty bug comes mainly from here, and the sources posted by commenters. Tis a mystery. By the way, happy belated birthday.
Gary,
Do you see yourself as being optimistic or pessimistic concerning this world situation we’re in as you repeat that the reported numbers are incorrect and actual numbers cannot be known?
This blog is a wonderful source of a certain bent of information. It does seem to attract a great deal of conjecture as well.
I look at a wide range of information sources – as skeptically as I can manage. (But I certainly don’t spend the whole day at it as some seem to!) 🙂
Actually, since 2 doesn’t seem much in the face of 3,952, I decided to cheat. (Actual numbers!) My birthday isn’t for another 2 weeks. But thanks, advancedly. (My, you do keep close track!)
JDPatten: I’m an optimistic realist. I find great joy in being alive, but don’t trust media or government, or the fairy tales we’ve been taught all our lives. Understanding human nature, and my own imperfections, I’m neither surprised or overly perturbed when people do stupid things. As far as Covid-19, I really don’t know what to think or expect. The Iceland data are encouraging. I don’t have any great worries about myself or my family; we almost never get sick. I’ve never as an adult had the flu, and haven’t had a cold of any consequence in decades. I think the lockdown is a bad idea, especially closing the schools, but that’s my opinion; impossible to know what difference it will make, at least at this point. I suspect the economic consequences of the lockdown will be far-reaching and long lasting, and thus more lethal than the virus itself. I also worry greatly about the power our government is grabbing; they’ll never give it back. I worry about the UK. Sounds like they’re taking it in the shorts. By the way, I don’t actually pay much attention to people’s ages, but you’re one of my favorite commenters, so I always read carefully what you write. A few weeks ago you said you were 75, then a few days ago 76, so I figured you must have had a birthday in between. Also, have you read Colonel David Hackworth’s “Hazardous Duty?” I met him at a book signing in 1996, and shook his great bear of a hand. Remarkable life he had.
Gary,
“Optimistic realist” sounds only a bit oxymoronic. 🙂
I think you’re basically correct in outlook, possibly excepting:
The experiment in Sweden isn’t looking happy. Arizona nor Florida look happy. The colder North Central states with few cases so far will be interesting.
It remains to be seen (As with so much else) whether propensity-or-not for flu/colds has anything at all to do with this thing.
Schools? Dunno. Only History will tell.
Best case: After the cull of just a “few” of our most susceptible, it’ll wain to background annoyance. (Note, however: the susceptible ain’t only the frail and elderly.)
Worst?: It’s a bad movie script. Ultimately, the only survivors will be the few that gain immunity without having had symptoms or damage of any sort – selection for a new species, in effect. Of course the society with its Economy will have been destroyed . . .
But, of course, there’s no way to know how this will turn out.
The mindless little specks have no intent. We are the source of life for the things. We and how we behave are the vector that determines how it turns out.
Darwin would have been very interested. But you know that I’ve said that.
I shall go see about this Colonel of yours.
JDPatten: Cannot disagree with your sentiments. Colonel Hackworth is well worth reading. At the time, our most decorated living soldier. A fine leader of men, who left us too early, although in his seventies, of cancer. Joined up at fifteen, in the days before they knew every single thing about every citizen.
David, agreed about the roads. It seems to me that people are for the most part driving unusually sedately on even the fast, straight ones. I live in a rural area and don’t always regard empty roads as safe ones. The only time I have ever been hit by a car was when cycling on Dartmoor, miles from anywhere.
66 years . CABG x 5, T2D and chronically well- padded and not overly (aerobically) fit, but yes, I’m happy to mix and mingle, though at a greater distance than before and I’ll be more selective as to ‘where’ I go.
But being locked up, forcibly un-employed and fiscally fraught a is doing more harm to my QALYs – via mental health consequences – than what I fear from the Beer Virus.
Can’t change my age or a lifetime of imperfect health, but its my choice of what supplements to take / amounts, – Vitamin C, Vit D, Zinc and quercetain. and where I go.
AhNotepad,
“Quite high if you don’t stop and relax, I would think”
True, to a degree, if you look at “because of COVID”, since stress will effect cardiovascular status.
Once sneak-thief COVID is in you, relaxing is gonna help?
C’mon.
Actually, I find it quite relaxing to make conceptual points through storytelling. The true ones are always best. 🙂
Biggest news of the day is surely the jaw dropping report of the Oxford professor saying 80% chance of a vaccine in September. Dr Kendrick doesn’t mention it nor do any of the comments. Thats a little bit weird. If I’m a healthy 70 year old man I would think this is worth avoiding as best you can with the expectation that at that age your likely to be near the front of the queue when/if the vaccine becomes available. Thinking in terms of immunity sounds bit gung-ho! If the vaccine is 18-24 months away my comment might be different.
They don’t even have an antibody test yet. Despite this – fundamental requirement to test a vaccine for efficacy – they claim that they are going to develop, run clinical trials to check for safety and efficacy, then manufacture several billion doses in four to five months. Well, I think I would be willing to wager a rather large amount of money on that – not happening.
Thank you for that injection of sanity.
And did they already purify the virus?
I wonder how they are going to get round the safety issue of a vaccine.
It takes many years to build an adequate vaccine safety profile.
I believe that the fastest ever vaccine made in response to an outbreak was for Ebola. It took five years. Ebola kills at least 50% of infected. When a disease is so deadly, it will be worth taking the risk of using a relatively untested vaccine. I would have had that vaccine in a heartbeat if I was at risk.
When a disease has a CFR of less than 0.5% – will the risks of a rushed vaccine truly be outweighed by the risk of the disease? I certainly wouldn’t be game to have that jab.
If anyone has any references to more about safety and efficacy of the proposed vaccine I would love to learn more. Cheers.
nnmlly, it’s easy to get round the safety issue of vaccines, they have been doing it for years. Just give legal indemnity to the manufacturers and the medical industry. Simples.
What if they tell you you MUST have it? Otherwise you don’t get “immunity passport”. Can’t travel, can’t go out. Mandatory vaccinations. Is it a possibility?
The thought of mandatory vaccinations worries me more than any virus.
See: Why it’s too early to start giving out “immunity passports”
Coronavirus antibody testing needs to get a lot better, and so does our understanding of immunity, before people can start circulating freely
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/998974/immunity-passports-cornavirus-antibody-test-outside/
Re the possibility of mandatory vaccination, consider this:
Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures Funds Microchip Implant Vaccine Technology:
https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/bill-gates-and-intellectual-ventures-funds-microchip-implant-vaccine-technology1
I hope it doesn’t come to mandatory vaccinations. Even though, you could argue, in some sense they are already mandatory. And more and more of them are being added to the schedule.
I think it’s a goal, or even one of the many.
I’ve earlier posted an angry rant (you can even say: attempted to hijack this forum, for which I probably would have to apologise to the good doctor) about how all this is a setup in order to get to the point of mandatory vaccination but was moderated away and probably rightly so. Anyway, I said it: all on purpose, and many purposes at the same time, for that matter.
Might this be the vaccine in question?
Looks like an entirely new and different approach.
Maybe old rules no longer apply?
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/09/coronavirus-scientists-play-legos-with-proteins-to-build-next-gen-vaccine/
JD,
Maybe. You first.
Thanks Anna, don’t mind if I do – once it’s FDA approved and with enough clinical history behind it that my own fairly conservative GP OKs it.
See, I have some standards too.
@JDPatten I’m afraid you won’t have much of a choice. Either you ‘just take the damn jab’, or confined to home quarantine forever.
Always get the jitters as soon as I read “Oxford Professor” . . . Vaccine? . . . Wait until Father Christmas brings one along at the end of the year.
Dr Kendrick,
“They don’t even have an antibody test yet.”
I’m a bit confused. A Google search of antibody test for covid 19 produces a number of links about both existing and pending antibody tests. For example,
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/los-angeles-county-launches-large-scale-covid-19-antibody-study-n1182031
If there were an accurate test, it would be being used. No test is being used, so none of the tests, currently, are of any use.
We now have some clarity as to what here in lunatic California is called the “Covid-19 test.” Del Bigtree was tested for IgG, or Immunoglobulin G, and something called ICM, the former purporting to indicate he had an active infection, the latter to indicate a previous infection. Sounds pretty dicey to me, as IgG apparently can indicate that any number of infectious agents have aroused the immune system. As for ICM, I haven’t found any reference for it.
To me, the only way out is to ensure everyone can be tested. Make everyone aware and gently bring us all back in. The country can’t afford to go on for much longer.
James Bee, do you have any idea what the test was designed for, or what it does? Do you know the proportion of false results, for what reasons?
But there isn’t a reliable test, so testing is pretty pointless if the test can’t distinguish between different corona viruses, influenza B, and various other things
The current antigen test being used only tells you that someone has active disease and is said to be only 60% accurate. Until we have a very accurate antibody test to show who has been infected and recovered, we will remain in the dark as far as testing is concerned.
Thank you Malcolm. I agree with every word.
Amongst other things, I’m tired of politicians saying ‘we will be led by the science’. Leadership is about taking ALL factors into consideration, developing a strategy, communicating it and then executing it. Just simply saying ‘we will be led [only] by the science’ comes across as simplistic, binary and irrational.
It seems that the medical industry is in control. This scares me more than the virus.
Thank you Dr. Kendrick – that makes it pretty clear.
Does this mean that this virus is much more dangerous than any Flu that killed say 888 per million in Europe 5 years ago, when 28,000 died in the UK? Death per million in the UK currently is around 55.
I understand that Covid-19 has come late in the “season” and risen rapidly to cause the NHS problems with numbers needing ICU at the same time. Has the NHS not had any problem dealing with the average 17,000 deaths per winter season over the last 5 years? And will this virus recede during the summer as similar viruses do normally? Is it that much worse?
Mathematically (I know nothing of medicine) it looks like it reaching a peak – perhaps first of many you think?
Thanks again for your insight into these things.
The thing is when we try to compare flu cases to COVID-19, there’s a different level of care that goes into treating many cases. Often if one is hospitalized for flu, it’s because they’ve become severely dehydrated. Once they’re given some fluids intravenously, they’re sent home within hours in most cases. They may still feel terribly weak, but they’re out of the bed and on their way home, whereas once someone is hospitalized with C19, it may involve a longer stay as well as oxygen, medications and finally intubation/ventilators..
So how did 17,000 pa die of Flu/pneumonia on average in the last 5 years. Do we not try to save them in anyway?
It is the fact that a massive number of people die of Flu all over Europe like 217,000 in 2014/15 but it takes a scary name and hysteria to get any one to notice.
Agreed. This seems to be an overreaction, but as I said, it’s one thing to visit the hospital for a couple of hours to be rehydrated (as in most flu cases) or given antibiotics for pneumonia and then sent right back home. But, this really is more serious and even Dr. Kendrick said that this is something he’s never witnessed before and the speed with which it kills is something awful to behold. Though I agree that the breadth of this lockdown seems completely unnecessary and will likely do more harm than good, I have a problem with those who say that C19 is “essentially the flu, so what’s the big deal?” I believe the decision to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed was a good one, but they’ve failed to protect those in long term care. No surprise, there, though…
But, as Dr Kendrick has pointed out elsewhere (RT.com) it was done arse about face.
We knew from Italy, Germany, and Spain that the most vulnerable were the oldest, but instead of making a huge targeted effort to protect them from contracting the virus, we made an only partially successful effort to lock down the entire country and in the process protect millions of people who would suffer only flu-like symptoms, while severely damaging the economy and storing up long term health and mental health problems that will likely cripple the NHS without massive injections of cash over the next twenty or thirty years.
If we had, instead, kept the elderly from contracting the virus, then resources could have been targeted on those with known co-morbidities to keep them isolated, while the rest of the population got on with ‘herd’ immunity with hospitals only having to cope with those who contracted severe symptoms, like the idiot Boris who invited the virus by shaking hands with sick patients.
It’s a fuck-up. ‘They’ are now locked-in with denial. It’s kinda sad. Yes, they may be following Dr. K. (I’m sure they bloody well are! Been there, done…). We have an interesting 3-weeks ahead of us. Sic transit gloria mundi. Lads, mine’s a hand-pulled Sam Smiths when it all falls out of bed.
Yes, so true, and let’s hope they’ve learned something from this and will be better prepared to respond appropriately next time around. Things should never have played out this way. I hope they back us out of this ditch before the economic/societal damage is irreversible (if it isn’t already.)
Reading widely one gets the impression that going onto full intubated ventilation does not often end well… the treatment protocols still being nutted out on the fly. How significant are the similarities with hypoxic damage as compared with pure pneumonia ?
Knowing how hidebound medicine works, they’ll be ‘doing an Einstein’, ie, the same things over and over and hoping for a better result. Just last week I came across reports that suggested ventilator PEEP (between breath) pressure needs to be keps LOWer rather than (then?) current standards. – How may months has that been to filter through the Nurses observing their patients and finally being broadcast?
Would, a hyperbaric chamber be of therapeutic benefit ? I’d guess that from a manufacturing aspect, churning out dozens of pressure-vessels with windows will happen a lot sooner than setting up production lines for hi-tech machines like (invasive) ventilators.
Or put the ICU beds at the bottom of a coal mine.
Now here’s an interesting question:
In the 2014-15 flu season, 28,330 people died from flu in the UK.
Analysis of the deaths shows that, like Covid19, the vast majority were over 65.
My experience from talking to seniors (I run a private physio practice) is that almost every one of them has an annual flu vaccination.
So – most of these fatalities (and presumably, most of the fatalities during any other flu season) involve people who get their flu shot every year.
Why, therefore, do we see so many deaths? What does this tell us about the effectiveness of flu vaccinations?
As I understand it the development of the yearly flu vaccine is like shooting on a moving target. As the flu virus develops a new vaccine needs to be designed but if you wait until the new wave of flu arrives you’ll be too late with the vaccine. It’s my understanding (please correct me) that the choice as of what the next virus variety will be basically is a gamble and that therefore the vaccine fails so often. By the way, it’s a cocktail of virii so some virii will be hit by the vaccine, others–the newest ones–not.
As Britain is passing the 10,000 death mark and almost everyone is still on lockdown. Where are all these deaths coming from? Are they all hospital admissions? Were there anyone in hospital before the virus hit Britain and if so were all the patients suffering from the virus before or did they acquire the virus from their visitors or the medical staff? As for lockdown it’s been a waste of money and time for the majority of people. Instead the only people who should have been in isolation were the old and people with low immunity. Because when lockdown ends the virus will still be around.
Tim, you cannot have a “one size fits all” approach. There are plenty of old people who are healthy, capable of looking after themselves, and do not want to be “done good to”. They are not dangerous disease carriers, anymore than “foreigners”, who seem to be universally accused by what ever country they are in. Why do you think it right to deprive one group of their liberty just to fit some arbitrary prejudice?
I don’t think Tim meant that. His point seems to be, at least to me, if this virus has an incubation period of up to 14 days and we are now 3 weeks into lockdown, where did they get it from? I have a feeling that many cases were ‘caught’ in hospital as many people who had been in hospital for surgery etc then seemed to come down with Covid 19 and died. I also think that perhaps it may have been better to protect those who were more at risk and let the virus spread in the community to achieve some kind of herd immunity which would ultimately be more protective than what we’re doing.
Probably the old and vulnerable would be on a voluntary isolation, not lockdown.
AHN
the old are not an homogeneous population, some are fitter and have more immunity than the other non homogeneous population , the young.
As you say the current policy is a non policy, known as whistling in the dark and hoping for the best.
Here’s the problem
We literally don’t know how many people have died FROM coronavirus, just WITH coronavirus, nor are we likely to any time soon.
There doesn’t yet appear to be much or any of a spike in the overall death rate, just what the deaths are blamed on.
Yes! Unfortunately if you scour around the internet, it looks like we are headed that way. Good old Bill Gates has stated in many different interviews that he want to vaccinate the entire planet, that mass gatherings will not be possible until this happens. It seems that the UK government is really in bed with BG as the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has awarded grants to Imperial College who produced the extremely dodgy numbers (how on earth can the government have any credibility if they are advised by this bunch?). Statements about lockdown until vaccine available, ‘immunity passports’ (very creepy sounding statement from Matt Hancock who has 75% shares in another private pharma company called Porton Biopharma). Then you find that Chris Whitty received a $40 million grant from Gates years ago…… BBC also has received a stack of money from guess who ….. the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I for one will be declining any vaccine and it is also my worry that I will be cut off from the world and lose all sorts of rights. I suspect there will be a stack of people just like me, so I think there will be a fight to inject some common sense into the debate and I would not be surprised if lawyers get involved.
I also will be declining the vaccine, although it could mean I become a prisoner in my own country or even under house-arrest.
Because even good ol’ Bill is very worried that those vaccinated might die from a ‘cytokine-storm’ like that which resulted when SARS1 vaccines were being tested and subjects were challenged by the SARS virus.
Will the Death Certificate say “Death by Vaccine induced runaway cytokine reaction” – not on your nelly.
But don’t worry, all the important people (vaccine manufacturers, health boards) will get immunity – from prosecution for reckless endangerment of the public.
I should have researched, but I didn’t, and I didn’t know Hancock had his snout deep in the trough, nor that the Fergoid was paid by someone who wants to vaccinate the world and reduce the population by 15% for starters. If this information was on the TV news, I wonder how many people would stop thinking a lockdown was anything to do with saving lives.
I have been wondering the same thing! I think they may be using the ONS data to announce deaths, as these also include deaths in the community (and of course the media will use the highest number possible). Someone science advisor on the daily TV briefing said
‘the ONS figures are of people who had covid on their death certificates, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they were infected with it – many haven’t been tested’
Are you kidding me! And no journalist has picked up on this? I would expect most deaths in the community would be older people with existing conditions and many in care homes. With the very relaxed attitude about coding anything and everything as covid19, it is possible that this lockdown is being justified by counting a whole stack of deaths which are not even relevant to lockdown. Deaths in care homes should be separated out and not included in any totals used t justify lockdowns. I have also heard that care homes are cancelling patients’ medications and getting them to sign DNRs as well as many people who are disabled or with learning disabilities.
And patients seem to be getting treated as ‘suspected covid’ and therefore if you die and covid is anywhere on your death certificate, it gets counted as a covid death. And looking at the spike in deaths in the last week, the breakdown shows that a lot of these are non covid, which seems to indicate that many people are dying who should not be, and who are not covid.
The whole thing is a mess.
I just saw a comment on Facebook on a friend’s page – one of her friends works for a funeral director and said that since 12 March this year ALL deaths have been certified as Covid-19. No deaths from heart attacks, cancer or anything. They knew one person who’d died of a stroke and even their death was down as due to Covid-19. No post-mortems are being carried out. This person said that it is like Covid-19 is now appearing to be a cure for all other diseases!!
All well and good, yet there isn’t a single country not attempting to mitigate infection somehow – except maybe Belarus. The alternative seems to be that many elders will die horribly before their time and that the younger generations – give or take a few random unlucky people – and the oldsters simply accept that. It isn’t acceptable and we will lose many practised and wise people if we do this. The fact of the matter is that there ís no solution and our government, like most others, is doing the best it can in an impossible situation. They seem to me to be on a hiding to nothing, whatever they do. I’d like to see the alternative plan of Sir Keir’s predecessor, if only to point and laugh…
I think a statistical analysis will bring this to light once this is all over.
I hate nitpicking but i feel it really IS worse as two young nurses died the other day now a third, iv never ever known this occurrence before im sure it would have been highlighted
Well I sympathise with what you say Paula, but if anything C-19 appears to leave children relatively untouched. Flu definitely does not. In 2014/15 28,000 deaths in UK and 2 or 300 were children. Flu can kill 40 year olds as well – and of course not all Influenza Like Illnesses (ILI) are created equal. HIN1 a decade ago had a death rate of 10%. Thank heavens it didn’t really get a grip here. There is still no vaccine for it, I believe, even now.
For me the tragedy has been the lack of proper protection for front-line medical staff, who by definition are going to be exposed to larger doses of the virus than any of us would normally. I have seen it said that the dose is a factor in the outcome – I don’t know. The health minister has rightly taken flac over the issue of PPE, but it is NHS managers who are to blame for lack of PPE, and lack of shape in racking it up when needed. The level of reliance on China for stuff is a wake up call. The lack of protection is unforgivable.
It is undoubtedly worse for some people…I think that, without being racist, many of those who have died who were seemingly ‘healthy’ may have had an underlying vitamin D deficiency due to their ethnicity and the fact that for them it’s far more difficult to obtain adequate vitamin D levels in our latitude. Other factors may also come into play, as suggested by Dr Aseem Malhotra, namely ‘metabolic syndrome’, obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Anglosvizzera, I’ve been thinking the same about vitamin D and ethnicity. Older people are also more likely to be deficient, and those who are obese. All risk factors for caring badly with covid. Of course correlation isn’t causation, but if it were a factor then keeping everyone indoors would seem to be something of an own goal.
Anglosvizerra,
But were those young nurses black or Indian? Staying indoors will decrease everyone’s vitamin D, won’t it? I think more people ought to know about how much longer time dark skinned people need to remain in the sun. I saw a cancer map of the US for black people and the farther north they live the more cancer. I have told a couple of black people about this and they are very grateful for the information.
Yes, of course anyone who doesn’t get adequate sunlight will risk having a vitamin D deficiency and, as you say, the darker-skinned members of our society are most at risk. Dr Rangan Chatterjee found this out for himself when his own son nearly died due to this, which made him realise how little he’d been taught about nutrition at medical school and propelled him into finding out more (and spreading the news!!)
A magnesium deficiency can also be responsible for vitamin/hormone D not working properly in the body, which may explain why some people continue to have an apparent D deficiency despite taking very high doses. As I understand it, magnesium is a mineral that is in short supply these days in our diet and isn’t particularly bio-available even when it’s there. A deficiency often manifests as ‘anxiety’ and a lower ability to cope with stressful situations (like now!) But stressful situations also cause the body to ‘use’ more magnesium and therefore may contribute to a deficiency in the body. Testing for magnesium deficiency is also fraught with problems being as the usual NHS test is the blood serum test which only, as its name suggests, measures the amount in the blood serum. But the body cleverly steals magnesium from body stores to ensure the blood levels are optimal and therefore a true deficiency is not apparent until all the body stores are depleted.
I’m not an expert but have gleaned this information over the years – and clearly those advising us about how to minimise our risks (ie the NHS and government) are either not interested in sharing this information or remain ignorant.
I remember years ago when rickets started reappearing in Scotland it turned out to be mostly among Asians. I also wonder what is the effect of wearing a hijab or niqab. Would be interesting to see if more women suffer in the Middle Eastern countries.
I am continuing to get out in the sun as much as possible. Mark Hanwilly (a willy is like a cock only smaller) is dead against sunbathing so there must be something in it. They don’t seem interested in how NOT to catch it, or how to make it not dangerous, it goes against The Narrative.
That’s a very good point, imo. In the past, after listening to Dr Ames’ Triage Theory, I was thinking the same thing about African Americans in Chicago and how Vit D seems to be connected to serotonin production, if I remember correctly.
Typo:-
“I have already warned that it’s possible, perhaps even likely, that many more people could (DIE) as a result of the lockdown than will die from coronavirus.”
Spot on Dr K.
However the fear porn spouting MSM have a lot to answer for.
This has been my view, and I support the government in its lockdown efforts to not overwhelm the NHS. But, as you say, it is extremely unlikely to eradicate the virus.
There is a serious issue that you have not discussed, however; mutation. For me, one compelling argument for lockdown is that, by preventing the spread, we’re preventing the chance of mutation so that, when a virus is found (if it is), it will be effective.
Please note that I am not a doctor, just a very invested observer.
I think you mean vaccine? Yes, of course, this is a possibility. However, in most cases, viruses attenuate through mutation – though not always.
But also, if the virus mutates, then the ‘miracle vaccine’ when it appears will already be useless…
Dr. Kendrick,
I have another question about the possibility of a vaccine. People are wondering if getting covid really gives immunity for a long time, a life time, or 3 months. Am I right that if the virus doesn’t give a long term immunity, then a vaccine cannot be developed?
Well, that is certainly the case with many vaccines. The promise was “life long immunity” but the reality was quickly “you need a booster”, and now “every couple of years”.
This virus mutates, but not at the rate of flu. Most of the early cases in Seattle were of an odd mutation, not that it had an effect on letality or contagiousness, but that is how they knew that it had spread from a single unrecognized carrier. Similarly, most ter in NYC were imported via Europe and not directly from China.
That is something that makes travel restrictions appear potentially dangerous. You get isolated virus populations, meaning some might respond differently to an eventual vaccine. Or you get some immunity to one strain, and it starts all back up once a different strain comes in.
Yes – thank you. I did mean vaccine. For a non-doctor, do you then think that mutations would generally be weaker and easier to control?
The arguments I’ve read appear to postulate that a vaccine would not be effective against the mutation so, unless, as you (I think) postulate, they will be weaker and less dangerous, this would a major issue.
The case made is that the lockdown limits mutation. You do not think this to be the case?
According to a small stem cell company, they have experienced healing of lungs impacted by the Covid-19 virus.
https://vitrobiopharma.com/category/technical-content/covid-19-updates/
There’s a lot of instances of “potential” in their PR
Thankyou. I am already getting annoyed by the paternalistic guff being spouted, and I am sure that the great British Public will be too. This could be a trigger for . . . what?
Worrying.
If this carries on into the summer (in the UK) and it gets HOT, and people are still being told to stay in, I expect there to be riots in cities.
Agreed Malcolm , but Speaking from Tipperary Ireland, surely the best we can do is slow things down so ICU and the hospitals can cope ? The GPs here right now are underworked, and are moving into the hubs to help , for sure , but also to supplement incomes lost due to reduction in private practice . Listening to Anaestetists here , they are applying the usual humane criteria for who gets an ICU bed , and its not the residents of nursing homes ,where we have our clusters. So there is definitely an increased demand on the critical services due to whatever percentage fall really ill .  Lockdown doesnât beat this but it does perhaps slow things down while we figure out proper public health stuff and ramp up our hospitals to cope  (yes agreed should have happened yesterday but here we are )Regards  Shook your hand in London , at the Garry Taubes fest , not sure who was most stressed at the time Sent from Mail for Windows 10 From: Dr. Malcolm KendrickSent: Sunday 12 April 2020 17:49To: roisin.costello@gmail.comSubject: [New post] The lockdown is NOT a way of beating this virus Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: "12th April 2020 Several politicians, including Keir Starmer, the opposition Labour Party leader, have been demanding to know the exit strategy for the lockdown. âWe should know what that exit strategy is, when the restrictions might be lifted and what "
Roisin,
I think the crude but realistic answer to that is that if we insist of trying to ventilate people who are already close to death for other reasons, we need to continue the lockdown – but what on earth is the sense in that? When Prince Charles fell ill with the virus, we were assured that he would recover quickly – and indeed he did – at age 71 (I think).
David Bailey: Age correct. He is two months older than I.
Prince Charles will have a homeopathic Doctor. We’re quite confident in these situations. The homeopaths had a very low mortality rate in the 1918 flu, from memory under 1% vs c.30% in the allopathic hospitals. i’m only a lay user of homeopathy, albeit over 25 years. I’ve only known one distant friend with symptoms of C-19. She was approaching the breathless phase when my remedy reached her. Taken as directed, quite aggressive dosing, she turned the corner in around 2 hours.
Hope Melanie will post her homeopathic remedy
@Mr Chris. Although I feel I can detect a little sarcasm in your comment regarding the remedy Melanie used, anyone who is familiar with the selection of homeopathic remedies will be aware that there are usually several remedies that may be appropriate and that it’s the patient’s individual symptoms, character, medical, family history and more that lead to that remedy. In the case of an epidemic, there may well be what’s called a ‘genus epidemicus’ that fits most people’s symptoms which is useful to save time. There are homoeopaths around the world as I write who are comparing notes to find this genus epidemicus for our current pandemic and I’m sure any positive outcome will be broadcast, although probably not in the MSM!!
@Melanie, do we know whether there is a new official Royal Homeopath that replaced Dr Fisher?
Come on, anglosvizzera. Homeopathy is nonsense and doesn’t work. Haven’t you seen “Contagion” 10 years ago? With Jude Law as an evil homeopath? In the movie people are dropping left and right from 24 hour Ebola. There’s panic on the streets, the good scientists in CDC are developing a vaccine that should be ready in 3 months and Jude Law is pushing homeopathy on people. They even managed to make good looking Mr Law look ugly. Maybe the script has been laid out for us years in advance and now we just need to follow it. Or maybe I lost my mind somewhere along the way. Both things are possible…
Lol, you are entitled to your opinion of homeopathy of course!! Yes, I have seen the film although it was a while ago and I can’t remember the details. However, homeopathy has been ‘working’ for me and my family since they were tiny babies (and the cats)…obviously a very strong placebo effect going on there!
They call that ‘predictive programming’, the people are trained to act in a favourable way by theater, movies and songs. In Old Greece they already did it in the theaters.
Fascinating. I didn’t know that they already did it in ancient Greece. Nothing new under the sun, I suppose
Yes, here in the UK it’s called BBC One/Two and Now Sky, ITV, and Channel4. In the ‘olden days’ it was called John Craven’s News Round, but that was deemed too grown up, and so they had to dumb it down. Seems to work.
Melanie,
That is an interesting point, though I am sure many of the doctors predicting that the Prince would recover were Western medicine. In other words, you really have to be approaching 80, or have a lot wrong with you to be at serious risk.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2020/04/09/adjusting-covid-19-expectations-to-the-age-profile-of-deaths/
That said, I don’t want to dismiss homoeopathy, even though it seems impossible, because I think too many ideas that seem to work are dismissed because theoretically they can’t work!
Do you have any source for the data you quote from 1918?
@Mr Chris – in this instance it was Byronia 30C every 20 minutes timed to match the energy of the disease. Would normally expect to see a result within 4-6 doses if it’s the right remedy. My friend said it was on the 6th dose her cough suddenly stopped and the direction of travel changed. As anglosvizzera points out, it was very much dependent on the presenting symptoms….and in my friends case, any movement was making the cough much worse (which is a key note symptom for Byronia). Byronia seems to fit quite well but if, as some doctors are reporting anecdotally, the symptom picture was that of sudden breathing difficulties similar to altitude sickness, I’d have gone with Coca. And if the disease had progressed further, then probably Carbo Veg. At just £2.95 for each remedy I’d be minded to have all three on hand should anyone find themselves in a self-treating position and running out of conventional options.
@anglosvissera I’m not sure if the Royals have replaced Dr Fisher, but I imagine they would have done so.
@David Bailey. The figures I refer to were published in the 1921 Journal of American Homeopathy. I’ll try find the original shortly. I agree it’s difficult to explain how homeopathy may work… I feel the answer lies within the energetic realm (Einstein) rather than the material (Newton) and as science pursues its research in this area, we may one day know the answer. That said recent work with nanopharmacology is looking promising for providing, at least, some answers.
I would like to speak up for homeopathy. Yes, my “sciency” brain looks at the How (the mechanism, at least as it’s usually explained) and exclaims, Nonsense, a load of tosh, it can’t possibly work!” Whereas my empirically observing brain looks at the What (the actual effects in front of my eyes) and sees that it does work. My pride wants to believe it doesn’t, because it *cannot*. But that isn’t scientific thinking.
I saw a toddler with the thickest, stickiest, most disgusting persistent blob of snot I’ve ever seen – given one pillule of Pulsatilla 30c by her mother, who was scornful and believed it would do nothing at all. The snot cleared up within minutes and the child was breathing freely, after two days like that. I’ve also seen it work on people who didn’t know they’d been given it and on animals who weren’t warned what effect was expected – in measurable ways, no one making a judgment that the problem “seems to have improved…”
Most studies have been very badly structured, testing claims that qualified homeopaths would never make in the first place.
There’s bound to be the placebo effect going on too, in some cases – just as there is when people take aspirin or paracetamol for pain. We should harness the placebo effect and use it more; just think how much budget it would save, for one thing. There are bound to be beneficial effects from personal attention, longer consultations, perhaps physical touch, effects also repeatedly shown to affect patient outcomes in all situations regardless of what kind of medication they take (one of my biggest worries about isolating those with covid). But there is *also* the homeopathy working independent of these factors.
As I saw Stephen Fry remark on QI once, it is faith that says “We know.” It is science that says “We cannot be sure.”
Hear hear! I’ve seen, and heard of, so many amazing success stories from people using homeopathy (also for their pets) that there has to be more going on than ‘just placebo’ a lot of the time. Who cares if we don’t yet know how it works? There are plenty of off-label prescriptions for conventional drugs being used for various ailments where it isn’t known why they work for those, and lots of conventional drugs have started to be used after accidental findings before they found out the exact mechanism.
It’ll be interesting to see the outcome in Cuba of the rolling out of a homeopathic cocktail to the general public to help prevent and minimise the effects of Covid 19, being as they’ve had lots of success for things like leptospirosis.
Well said. And I concur about Qi…
The homeopathic remedy I was given – NHS prescribed – is the only thing I can take to prevent further strokes. Everything else they’d normally suggest is contraindicated in my case. I sometimes get warning signs, usually over a few weeks before I cotton on, and a dose stops them – again, it’s often a while before I remember to ask myself whether I’ve been getting the warnings. (They can be subtle, they never follow a pattern, and I can be forgetful.)
Malcolm, thank you very much for posting this, it raises very important questions.
Managing the number of infections at any one time does seem like the only realistic way we will get out of this situation, but in practice it’s likely that the lock-down will be released in a phased manner, targeting perhaps key areas of the economy, particularly those where the risk of passing on the virus is lower. I’d also imagine that the lock-down will be flexed in response to ongoing data/metrics.
Antibody testing also has to be a key part of the solution – identifying those who have had the illness and are (hopefully) immune, and for whom lock-down is no longer necessary. As more and more people get exposed to the virus and develop immunity, the degree of lock-down can be progressively relaxed.
An industrial scale vaccine may be a long way off, but there’s a reasonable chance we will have something in smaller quantities much sooner than this, in which case it could be given to those most at risk from the virus – the old and those with existing conditions – which would give us further freedom in managing the situation.
Yes exactly. Prof Whitty is praying for an accurate do it yourself antibody test . He has been hopeful since the start but it has failed to be accurate enough. Fingers crossed we get it rolled out soon, as it will be a game changer.
You could volunteer – https://covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/files/cov001pisv3202apr2020pdf?fbclid=IwAR0C2u2kpDflLtRnB57BNrHMqAo6oucOTUBvj7VWvuG-VzcRSuQvyXcK-6I
Hi anglovizzera: re vaccine study
If the study is a success then all young and healthy people can be vaccinated, and when they get old and unhealthy they will be protected from dying FROM the virus. Looks like a blockbuster solution that can eradicate the virus if applied on a wide sale.
Hmmm – you seem to be under the illusion that any protection conferred by a vaccine for this will last for many years. If it were to mutate, as is speculated, then a vaccine will be needed at regular intervals. Even the flu vaccine isn’t very effective and it’s been pointed out that having it year on year makes one more susceptible to ILIs (Influenza-like Illnesses).
As with the H1N1 vaccine, some of the adverse reactions may not be picked up immediately (ie narcolepsy in that case) and this is more likely if it’s rushed out without long-term safety trials.
All those younger people being given a Covid 19 vaccine may well find that their long-awaited old age is marred by some autoimmune or other condition as a result.
Instead, why not follow the advice of Dr Kendrick and many other doctors and health advocates to optimise one’s immune system rather than leave it to chance? It would be helpful to find out why some ‘seemingly’ healthy people succumbed to the virus – possible a nutritional deficiency like vitamin D, for example? Or vitamin C? Or magnesium (given the stressful situation many are finding themselves in)? Or all of those and others?
My husband and I are 62 and very rarely get colds despite spending time with those who are snivelling and coughing all over the place. I have only ever knowingly had ‘flu’ once in my life and that was over 20 years ago when I was a stressed-out mother of 4. I don’t think it’s because we’re ‘lucky’, I think it’s because we make an effort to eat a nutritious, organic (where possible) diet and take any good-quality bio-available supplements we feel we may need.
I read a news article recently that children in the Philippines were to be given vitamin C supplements at the present time. Why does our government not think in the same way?
Anglosvizzera
That is exactly our strategy, I think getting infected is inevitable, so we exercise in the fresh air a lot, and we supplement with amongst other things, vitamine C vitamine D etc etc to boost our immune system. In my opinion this epidemic shows that having the so called co morbidities, many of which are avoidable through life style changes is lethal for over 80s
Hi anglovizzera: re vaccines as solution to pandemic
Agree with your assessment. My comment was hypothetical from point of view of vaccine study scientists. Our governments created the obesity epidemic with their dietary recommendations. Adding vitC would actually be beneficial to a diet that promotes insulin resistance. What is needed is an insulin resistance test that together with the antibody test could pinpoint why grannies succumb to the virus.
anglosvizerra,
“you seem to be under the illusion that any protection conferred by a vaccine for this will last for many years. If it were to mutate, as is speculated, then a vaccine will be needed at regular intervals.”
How perfect! What could be better? A real bonanza.
A data scientist perspective from Iceland data, worth a read
View at Medium.com
Spot on yet again Dr K.
smartersig, I think this article really says it all.
I’m a person who needs to see the numbers and the data being sold to the public simply doesn’t add up. I feel it has been cunningly presented to deceive and blow this all out of all proportion. For example in today’s Sydney Morning Herald they report “COVID-19 cases in Australia 6325 COVID-19 deaths in Australia 59”. Leave aside for a moment the fact that a lot of those deaths are likely overstated because many of the counted deaths are “with” rather than “from” C19, A layman would jump to the conclusion that the death rate is about 1% (59/6325) because there is no attempt to explain that the true (population) number of infections (combined infections from confirmed and untested) is very likely substantially higher than confirmed cases alone.
Razavian’s paper points out:
“After adjusting the age-group statistics, we can see that more than 96% of cases remain undetected and therefore, not part of any statistics. applying the 4% detection rate to 1.5% mortality rate among detected cases leaves the total mortality rate close to 0.06%.”
This is still a lot of deaths but even the Australian government concedes they’re only trying to slow rather than eliminate the total number of deaths over a longer period of time. But at what cost?
It worries me that there is no exit strategy, just a policy of delaying deaths.
No-one will answer this simple question: How many collateral deaths will have occurred because of the lockdowns and other interventions. The answer will certainly not be zero.
Unless we change course, we will feel the collateral damage of these disastrous interventions for many years to come.
Dr John Ioannides tested lots of people in the US, Santa Clara County, forgot the state, and arrived at a realistical ‘infection mortality rate’ of 0.1%.
Surprised this article didn’t inspire more comments. I read that article, and yes, it seems plausible at first sight. Do we know how complete testing in Iceland was?
How does he estimate real cases in Sweden for the 80-90 and 90+ groups, because that is crucial for calibrating his model. Neither do I get how he arrives at total mortality.
And most importantly, how does this square with the Austrian study of 1000+ randomly selected individuals which showed way below 1% active infections? The Austrian study did not detect immunity, but from his model, one would expect way more active infections than the Austrians found.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/less-than-1-of-austria-infected-with-coronavirus-new-study-shows
Since the tests haven’t been validated, the results must be near worthless.
Which tests are near worthless? Iceland’s or Austria’s, virus or antibodies?
There is a pretty good wikipedia article on the pandemic in Iceland. To date, they have tested about 10% of the population (30k out of 300+k) and found 1.7k infection, which is a little of half a percent of the population. If you assume about half have recovered, you get a number that is highly compatible with Austrias.
Razavian gets a 4% detection rate by overlaying the Swedish and Icelandic distributions. He estimates that the real cases in Sweden in the 80-90 group are about a factor of 1.7 higher than detected cases. For 90+, the factor seems to be closer to 2, but it is hard to read the bar graph. How does he get the factor???
He then extrapolates from this high-age tail to the integral of the distributions to estimate that 96% of the total cases are undetected.
For April 6, his estimated total number of cases for Sweden is 100000. This is less than 1% of the population. Again, some have recovered, so not really out of line with Iceland’s or Austria’s testing. How can he predict that be end of April, the pandemic in Sweden will be over? I don’t have the number of days for doubling in Sweden, but if it is anything like the 8-12 days we are seeing elsewhere now, it will take longer than that.
Also, why is it I have not been able to find any numbers based criticism of his article?
For tests validity, refer to several posts by Dr K
There do not appear to be any functioning antibody tests at this point, that much is clear.
However, the testing discussed here is for the virus. Issues with the virus tests are much smaller than with antibody posts.
My Liddle and Scott Greek dictionary gives Hubris as wanton violence or insolence
Mr Chris: My Webster’s is slightly different: “Wanton insolence or arrogance resulting from excess pride or from passion.” This certainly applies to Gates and the other prominent vaccine proponents, such as Dr. PrOffit and Peter Hotez, both of whom are imperiously dismissive of the all too truthful and devastating accounts parents tell of their children descending into hell post-vaccination. The only industry, with the exception of the nuclear power industry, whose products enjoy the complete absence of liability for causing injury or death. A few days ago, when Congress passed the Give-everybody-especially powerful-industries-a-great-big-pot-of-money Act, they included liability protection for any and all Covid-19 vaccines developed. This is a new and ominous development; heretofore only vaccines on the childhood schedule enjoy such a get-out-of-jail-free card. All other adult vaccines, such as shingles, do not enjoy such protection, and there are multiple lawsuits underway claiming injury from Shingrix.
Eric,
These are good questions. Have you tried to contact the author? Since you seem pretty good at this type of analysis, you should do so!
@ Mr Chris – I think the modern English meaning of hubris comes from outrage or insolence towards the gods – which the gods always punished, being pretty touchy about that kind of thing. Not sure about the rape meaning but I’ve certainly heard it before, and I have a feeling it was a specific crime within a broader definition(?).
Good ol’ Liddell n Scott. 🙂
Hubris:
In ancient Athens, hubris was defined as the use of violence to shame the victim (this sense of hubris could also characterize rape).[6] Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because of anything that happened to the committer or might happen to the committer, but merely for that committer’s own gratification:
to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: naive men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater.[7][failed verification][8][9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris
More graphic interpretations can be found if one cares to look. As I mentioned, this was ancient-Greece. Words migrate in their meaning over time. A good example today is Epicurean, or the politician’s ‘favourite’… Quantum leap.
@Anna: Thanks. Anyone with a few minutes on hand can google the missing numbers and then do a bit of primary school math. I might have to register with that site which I don’t usually do when I have no idea who posts there. But then, I hang out with you guys, so what…
Mr Chris: ???
On the other hand, eyeballing the stats covid peaked in Sweden perhaps a week ago, and it could well be over by May. They have no lockdown and the daily death rate is substantially lower than the UK. I would agree that the guys a bit out there with his use of statistics.
Eric: Pertinent questions. I read the Iceland article with great interest, but must concede I failed to fully understand it, or its implications for other countries.
As China and S. Korea are ahead of the curve, won’t what happens there next be a good indication?
There are countries whose statistics I trust
I think that it was probably spreading in China as early as late September-early October.
China was underreporting at least into March, maybe even now. But I don’t think they are lying outrageously now. If they had a rampant epidemic now, we’d know about it.
South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, I’d trust to an even larger degree.
You wrote “The infection fatality rate (IFR) currently stands at around 0.2% in those countries doing the most testing. ”
Just had a look, that would be the numbers reported by South Korea and Singapore. My first question is: how do they define CV deaths? My guess is as “from” rather than “with”, but where do they draw the line?
Secondly, they were probably able to contain their clustes, which most Western European countries and the US can no longer do.
Thirdly, can they keep this up, going forward or are they going to be up against much more trouble than us medium term?
Jeff, only if you believe China’s figures, which are no less manipulated than the Italian or UK figures.
I was actually not talking about the reported figures, but by seeing what happens on the ground. They are at least 2-3 months ahead of everyone else in terms of dealing with this.
With simulations run in 2016 (project 201) would it be fair to say that a GCSE student would have looked at the data and said ‘stockpile enough masks etc for your health and social care workers’. This would have cost little and kept us ahead of the game in one small area
I can’t disagree with the main points of this blog, however the elephant in the room is that we cannot cope with the peak because of lack of preparation. While it’s true that a percentage of people will die with Covid-19, with or without the lockdown, if the NHS is overwhelmed then it is probable that there will be increasing amounts of collateral deaths as well. So the process of ‘flattening the curve’ is to try and keep the saveable enough resources to enable that.
It’s probably optimistic that any country could provide ICU facilities, PPE, and standard ICU drugs in store in case there is a pandemic or other surge in ICU needs, however such preparations would have cost a fraction of what this lockdown process is costing now. With careful investment and management such facilities could have been rotated to prevent expensive equipment decaying on warehouse shelves for years, and in the rare occurrence we need to flex the ICU capability of the NHS could be brought to the frontline. Hardly a new concept, we’ve been using this process for decades with nuclear and other weapons, ready for the nuclear Armageddon that probably won’t come.
But even in the short term the current logistic problems have been seen coming for months. Like many other nations – the US being a prime example – denial that something, anything would need to be done, regardless on whether it is the right thing to be done. We’ve lost the opportunity to track the spread of the disease due to the paltry testing regime, so many of our key workers have almost certainly been propagating the virus until symptoms showed, which takes away the opportunity to manage the spread as the government seems to want to do.
The reality is that the NHS almost certainly couldn’t cope with the do nothing strategy – it has a moral and ethical duty to try and care for the ill and would have been completely overwhelmed judging by the numbers we’re seeing now – as most of the deaths are from infections pre-lockdown but with some social distancing providing minimal alleviation – it would only be another week or two before people who should have access to a ventilator including those without Covid-19 would be turned away due to lack of ventilators (or a myriad of other items). Whether the lockdown was the right choice will be for the historians to determine, but I suspect the failure to do anything initially apart from mouthing the soundbite – following the science – took most flexibility from the government. That and historical under investment in the NHS, I guess.
throngsman, if the NHS has a moral and ethical duty to look after the ill, then the government has a moral and ethical duty to look after the NHS, which it has failed deliberately to do since Maggie Thatcher’s intention to destroy the NHS by stealth.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/25/margaret-thatcher-pushed-for-breakup-of-welfare-state-despite-nhs-pledge
AhNotepad – good link. But more recently the NHS budget has been cut in real terms since the coalition onwards. Regardless of political orientation one good thing that came from the Labour administration from 1997 until the coalition is the above average investment (in GDP terms) of the NHS.
Does the fact that 22,000 have died this season of Flu/Pneumonia have a bearing?
Surely it must.
Sorry I meant to say that – “historical under investment in the NHS, I guess.”
Well its funding is similar as a percentage of GDP as the average of the 15 best funded in Europe. For that funding we get less of most things though.
David R – I was trying to find a link to discover the annual flu rate values for this season this evening. The numbers are out there, I guess, but I’m struggling to find a believable source that just give me the numbers without having to delve into reams of stats. If your figure is correct – not disputing, just unable to verify, a link would help please – then that would suggest 22K vulnerable people that should reduce the ‘at risk’ population. Judging by the daily figures, potentially not.
It is astonishing that the NHS has managed to free up enough beds which are the equivalent of 50 new hospitals!
But as Malcolm acknowledges, at what price?
At the expense of my (urgent) spine operation for one – my potential 2 nights in hospital, put off indefinitely, will probably turn into 20 years of disablement and not-being-able-to-work by the time we come through this. I already have a severe loss of function in my affected leg and foot. And also the possibility that I fall down the stairs because of this, and lie on the floor until the cat eats my face…
I find it fascinating (morbidly so) that there is a collective will to shut down the world, yet there is apparently no possible way to suggest that attaining healthier lifestyles via diet and exercise is somehow impossible. It is crystal clear that this virus targets those with underlying conditions with a fury (99% of Italian deaths involved underlying conditions, young New Yorkers prone to mortality linked to diabesity, etc.). Is it really beyond our capacity as a people to shift diet to improve insulin sensitivity, which clearly is protective from infections in general, and more specifically to covid mortality?
Not very profitable hough, compared to feeding people crap food and following up with crap drugs.
The problem here is threefold (at least):
– There is no data that putting everyone on LCHF, and saturated fats at that, lowers susceptibilty to either catch the virus or have a nasty illness.
– The medical profession in general has been invested in the opposite (eat plenty of seed oils and carbs).
– Even if it worked, it would take too long to turn around food production, to convince everyone and to flush out the depots of linoleic acid.
I’m going to disagree a little. While we don’t have data showing those on keto are NOT showing up in mortality statistics, we have a lot of data showing those who have died are diabetic and obese. This is not arguable. Two, we have data from prior viruses that show reduced susceptibility to flu, SARS and herpes when insulin is low.
As to changing susceptibility, I’m too lazy to provide links, but insulin levels drop almost immediately when shifting into low carb, and leptin levels follow about a week later. As to changing food supply, I think it’s more a matter of shifting processing than any other factor. In the US at least, dairy has been destroyed during the crisis due to a lack of institutional buyers (schools, etc.).
I think you’re right broadly. The system will support the addiction to carbohydrates, and this is very challenging to turn around. However, these are rather alarming times, and it is time to reconsider how we subsidize garbage food and promote health as a society.
It is so good to read your sense when we all have so much nonsense to put up with. Many thanks.
I have been saying this from the get-go and found myself roundly hated for it. I got banned twice for “soapboxing” and “dominating the conversation” (commenting no more than anyone else) and have been variously called an idiot, a spreader of disease, a killer of old ladies, a witch, nasty, a troll and worse. It’s NOT what people want to hear. Most people, in my experience, staunchly have magical thinking firmly in place and genuinely believe that if they just obey all the rules a) Covid-19 will pass them by and b) the virus will somehow disappear.
But far worse is the amount of curtain-twitching and snitching that’s been going on, with people fabricating ‘rules’ in their own heads, extrapolated from the govt’s ‘life-saving’ guidelines. I’ve seen people reporting a family for parking in front of their house to go for a walk (they shouldn’t drive anywhere, not even locally, to exercise), blaming cyclists for spreading it because they are out exercising for “2-3 hours”, someone criticising his 80 year-old neighbour for going to his allotment, and countless diatribes against “gangs of teenagers” flouting the rules. On my local neighbourhood forum, someone published a picture of someone’s car with the details of their registration (because 4 teenagers had got out it) and when I took them to task for this (in a jokey manner) I ended up getting banned from the site – again.
I can’t say that Covid-19 has encouraged me to believe in the thought processes and discrimination of the average human. It’s been roundly depressing, and I feel very frustrated (and angry) at getting dragged into the mass delusion with them.
Chancery Stone, I agree with your post entirely. I was told off by a heart specialist yesterday who told me as I came out of a shop, (that he was a heart specialist) and that I had better take this virus seriously. That put me at risk as my rage, sorry, blood pressure, shot up
Humans have always seemed so clever, I suspect the reality is somehow different.
We are a concoction of carbon, hormones and various chemicals, we are also creatures of habit. Our brain structures driven by these chemicals and hormones give the impression of thinking but in fact they create concepts and beliefs.
These concepts and beliefs are possibly helpful when faced with immediate danger, but they get hijacked.
Anything we perceive is filtered by our beliefs and values, and we automatically ignore anything which contradicts them.
I am though pondering exactly what my beliefs are in the light of this current situation?
Cheers
I think it is quite hard to see your own biases. It’s like sitting in your own car and being able to see the blind spots. They are called “blind spots” for a reason. From what I understand, there are methods developed to overcome your biases but sticking to them is a big discipline, I think.
Any “Red Dwarf” fans here?
Do you remember the episode “Back to Reality” where the crew hallucinate an alternative reality in a fascist dystopia?
As they’re getting their bearings they notice a wall covered in posters, amongst which are:
“Vote Fascist for the 30th glorious year!”
– and then the absolute kicker:
“BETRAY YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS! FABULOUS PRIZES TO BE WON!”
This got one of the biggest laughs of the episode.
Nobody’s bloody laughing now, are they?
Its a postponement at best. Maybe the summer sunlight will also bring the numbers down. But as soon as we go back to where we were, well the numbers will again climb. Those over 60 and those with health conditions are most in harm’s way.
ellifeld, I am over 60, and I am not in harms way.
Me too. I’m 73 and healthy. Don’t have fly jabs and won’t have the Covid-19 one whenever it appears.
Fly jabs?
Mike S,
”Fly jabs?” Present tense of “flu jab”
Flyboy jabs?
Mike S: Must be mutant flies with a proboscis capable of penetrating skin. Learn something new every day!
And we didn’t think this was transmitted by flies! Someone tell the governments!
That’s what is missing from the MSM panic – how to be one of the people who are not badly affected. Good food – without a barcode – and getting out in the sun is probably a good plan
chris c, well I have been getting plenty of exercise over the past few weeks. Not pedalling round in lycra as plenty seem to do, but getting sorted so I can produce veggies, as I should have done years ago, but the work in for food out seemed excessive. Then I stumbled across https://youtu.be/cHF-bIsbvpg and many of his other videos. Workload and tedium disappears, now gardening is a pleasure.
Postponement is good. I’m with postponement.
I have plenty of work to do, projects to finish – holed up right here.
Eighteen months or so should be good.
Goran,
Are you still with us, from freewheeling Sweden?
He is, but is unable to post. I have no idea why. He has e-mailed me.
Thanks for this…we have missed Goran
I think here in the US antibody testing is how some believe the government will be able to lower the fear levels seen. I’ve seen the CDC bring this up. This morning I read an article by the governor of the state I live in Florida, bring up antibody testing. I hope it works out for the best.
Florida’s DeSantis says confirmed coronavirus cases likely a ‘small fraction of those who have actually had it’
https://www.foxnews.com/media/florida-ron-desantis-confirmed-coronavirus-cases
A big problem with fear I believe comes from the press. They are scaring the heck out of people. I’m not sure what the answer is with that. In part many people now view news as entertainment. They watch news all day long. Social Media is another issue. I have disagreements with the WHO but liked their announcement a few weeks ago, stop watching news all the time.
Ah, ha! It sells newspapers.
Sad, but likely true. I know others have other ideas on why all the media promotion of the virus.
On Friday I went to the grocery store called Publix. No one was there. There was maybe one or two other shoppers with me. Kind of nice I thought, I had the isles all to myself for a change. I get home and find out a local news station had run a segment saying that some employees at Publix stores had tested positive for the Wuhan virus! No specifics said. No names mentioned.
There are 5 Publix stores in my area. No mention on how the employees are doing. We were joking among ourself that Publix must have forgotten to pay for TV commercials with the local news station.
I figure the shoppers will be back soon to Publix. They frequently have stocks of toilet paper.
Ron DeSantis, completely trustable!!!! hahahah
In Northern Italy, 60 volunteers who thought they’d never suffered COVID-19 gave blood. 40 of them tested positive for antibodies to the virus. ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/futefm/in_northern_italy_60_volunteers_who_thought_theyd/ )
If we project this on the rest of Europe and we relax the restrictions considerately after the peak has, say, halved, I don’t understand how the next peak could be worse than what we’ve gone through now.
Also, if we massively start testing for antibodies we immediately can lift all restrictions from the people who test positive, while requiring them to observe good hygiene to prevent particles from others landing on their belongings from being transferred to others, especially elderly.
Except that we don’t know which test was used. The most widespread will detect antibodies to the other, more harmless Corona “runny nose” virusses, too.
Isn’t it about capacity, handling the surge, the tsunami without the reserve in place to soak it up, (never mind the paraphernalia) unremarkable and all as its effects on the overall mortality rate appear to be ?
Government probably had no choice but to run with the national fervour/fever favoured by Ferguson.
Once again Malcolm, the voice of reason. I do hope it is listened to by people in “high’ places?
At some point early on in all this, on the BBC six o’clock news I recall there was mention of the intention being to create a number of ‘waves’ of cases and herd immunity to spread the problem over about a year, and a graph showing a whole series of so called manageable peaks, but it was quickly withdrawn from the public eye and presumably buried as just too scary a truth.
I wonder how history will judge our response compared with countries like Sweden who decided to ‘keep calm and carry on’.
Depending on ‘WHO’ writes the History… (yes, pun intended) you can only bet 50-50 that it’l be honest. Once again, people are going to have to dig deeper than official narratives…
Fully agree with this post. Here in South Africa our initial three-week lockdown has been extended for a further two weeks. I don’t see the point. It’s just delaying the inevitable. You have to face the fact that eventually everyone is going to be exposed to the coronavirus. It’s too infectious and widespread to avoid. The best you can hope for is controlled exposure so as not to overwhelm the medical system, while at the same time building up your medical supplies and establishing the most effective way of dealing with Covid patients.
One point not mentioned is that we are not the same people we were before COVID-19. Thanks to saturation reporting, everyone knows about social distancing and face masks and hand washing. If the lockdown is lifted with warnings that the virus is still out there, we’re not going to rush into each others’ arms, mafficking and jubilating, at least I hope not. Each person should maintain sensible precautions until they get the all clear that they’re immune or they’ve had the virus, or a vaccine if one ever gets developed.
Maybe mass gatherings could still be banned, although I’d love to see the football season start up again. One big worry is public transport. People going to work packed into crowded buses or trains or aircraft could be a recipe for disaster. I was thinking maybe compulsory flexitime could reduce peak crowding.
What a joy to read your post. I’ve been trying to tell people that when the restrictions are lifted it doesn’t mean that we won’t still have this in the population. Those who feel terror will continue to do so for quite a while and those who have found their metier in huffing and puffing in supermarket queues will also be able to do so. Unfortunately, those who are susceptible will also continue to be so. It’s about a lack of preparation on the part of the Government and NHS as well as warped and unreliable statistics. It’s very difficult to know what is really going on but a relief to know that there are intelligent, rational human beings out there who san see a bigger picture.
Without knowing who has had it (or not) surely the data is skewed? My husband and I believe we had it 1-14 February and there’s lots of anecdotal evidence that Covid was in the UK possibly since the back end of December. It also seems pretty clear that the Chinese data was far from accurate as was their timescale – meaning the virus was possibly worldwide long before the clusters of cases in Italy, for example. I am watching Iceland’s data with interest as they have managed to test a good percentage of their population and results so far seem to show a large proportion of asymptotic cases. The post apocalyptic wash up will be most interesting I think!
The problem we have with the RT -PCR test is… it is far from perfect, and was never deisgned to be ‘Diagnostic’. The inventor was quite specific about that.
Rather than waste $$$ on a future vaccine, – which hope fully will be MORE effective than the current ‘flu guesses – better to develop faster and more accurate antibody tests.
Even how a Test is used makes a difference. For a suspected naive or low-infection population, what about ‘contaminating’ a number, a dozen for instance, into ONE test. A Neg. result clears that group. A Pos reading means splitting the group into two..and doing each group, and repeat. This would work best with a quick test, one that produced the least number of false Negatives. I understand the South Koreans get results in 5 to 6 hours of gathering samples.
Living through a Pandemic sucks. (So emotional seeing so many people you know and see on the news die younger than they would have done, aslo knowing it could be one of your family next, who knows how your immune system will cope, the sword of Damascus hangs over us all the time but it appears bigger and more real than at anytime in the past few decades ) I think in your summary you missed out the early briefing where Prof Whitty said we are going to have up to 80% of the population eventually infected. He has never rowed back on that and he also said it is now a Pandemic so we have to deal with this in a different way than when we were testing and Isolating all contacts. He is an expert in this field…right man right place. The problem started when our CSO Vallance mentioned Herd Immunity and that was the signal for mass media outrage. Whitty also said the fatality rate would not be over 1% and probably much less. The main problem as you said is overwhelming the NHS as the hospital rate is 5% of all cases. But today we have spare capacity and growing. I feel they are going to use the spare capacity to get the NHS back up to full speed the trouble is we have not got enough trained staff. Unless they can convince the retired staff to stay on for longer. The problem the Gov also has is the way other countries have kept the death rate so low, how can you defend a stance which calls for nature taking a high toll in such a short time? If only we knew the future. Damned if we do damned if we do not.
Adam, It’s the sword of Damocles,. not Damascus, that was for a conversion on the road to, but we’re not allowed on the roads, unless to go necessity shopping, or exercise.
Regards
Pedant society
(I nearly corrected Adam as well, but your reply was far more entertaining – and I was too scared to!)
Thanks for the correction Ah, I had a feeling it was not quite right! so much for trying to sound intelligent! failed again.
We have never tested and traced. He’bya government appointed mouth piece.
The “full Monty” treatment protocol from EVMS suggests a STATIN.
Click to access Marik-Covid-Protocol-Summary.pdf
Could it be time to take the plunge in advance of infection ?
Cholesterol-lowering treatment may worsen the outcome of a Covid-19 infection.
According to Hu et al. serum cholesterol is significantly lower among Chinese patients with Covid-19 (1). The reason may be that low cholesterol predisposes to infectious diseases, because LDL partake in the immune system.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m1182/rr-10&ved=2ahUKEwj27K-a6d_oAhVASxUIHXTjBIYQFjAAegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw2oC9xpFOz_fW1KAEZPuhsP&cshid=1586589261131
It has Vit C, Vit D and Zinc as part of the treatment
I live in Quebec, Canada. From the beginning, the government’s message here has been to “flatten the curve.” At least we’ve had that transparency.
Still, looking at the enormous economic and human cost of this lockdown, I can’t help but wonder is the cure is not worse than the disease.
Elderly people ironically seem to be the ones suffering the most from the lockdown. Since their family is not allowed to visit them anymore, it seems the quality of their care has taken a nosedive. Apparently, nagging relatives are necessary to get reasonably good care.
Thank you for your clarity. The public would prefer the truth even if they say they may have made a mistake. Our initial strategy was right until the WHO shamed countries into lockdowns
Erm, I’m left pondering when my exit from this particular life will be? With 64 years and 4 months on planet earth, is my end to be decided by a tiny little virus with a few tricks up its sleeve?
By the time I get this virus, my hope is for a treatment which will reduce the chance of an ugly ignominious end. I’ve always fancied myself as a warrior as opposed to a worrier.
The logic of your premise seems quite sound to me and I can’t wait for the other 60% to gain herd immunity, so I can go on living until the next one comes along!
Further logic suggest that the various Nightingale hospitals will be kept on and people shunted over there to survive or perish. This will leave existing hospitals to get back to be being, understaffed with not enough capacity but at least we are almost used to that.
You are correct, people are suffering financially and perhaps this is where the next innovation will come from. There really was and is no need for neo-liberalism which has led to austerity, and I am by the way of no political persuasion. I don’t trust any of them to do my bidding.
My observations and experience tells me that innovation or challenging the status quo is not welcomed especially in Governments of any persuasion.
Why should Government tell us the truth, they never have, unless or until they are forced to. The so-called opposition doesn’t tell us the truth either. What all politicians do is tell us what is convenient to them.
My somewhat sceptical view is that people in power tend to be problem solvers and solving problems never moves us forward. We need vision creators and makers and I’ve never seen a vision maker reach political influence.
The system doesn’t allow it.
Cheers
Thank you once again
Excellent post.
A loosely relevant quote:
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.”
William Burroughs
If you see what I mean.
Meanwhile I struggle to make sense of what we are told on the basis of what I experience. (I work in a busy regional UK hospital). Personal strategy: A media blackout in my own life and crack on with the job, though there are so few patients………………………
Funny, my experience when presenting at a local hospital (unrelated to virus) – Devoid of clients in ED, gaggles of doctors and nurses almost fighting over me… and I believe a German news crew found a similar situation when sent to an ‘inundated’ minor hospital. – Bored staff.
COVID it seems, is either a non-event, or deadly ICU fodder.
Western Australia.
Thank you Dr. Kendrick for a reasonable discussion
based on common sense as always.
Elmer Carlson D.C.
Seattle,Wa. USA
I have said this since day one and that yes the people with underlying health issues may well die but all I have heard every news cast has been save the nhs
We will save some luves as there are sufficient ventilators but this is a bullshit knee jerk reaction and many more people will die because of rather than with it
Narrow minded puppets the lot of them
Respirators are so last month.
Thank you for saying this. I am so worried – not for myself but for the people who will suffer the unintended consequences of this mistake.
Cumbria!
Can you turn your mighty intellect into what is going on in Cumbria?
It has the 2nd highest cases in the UK per population and one of the highest death tolls in the world per population.
It is sparsely populated with not many large towns and has very little pollution
The age of the population is slightly higher than normal but not as high as some.
A black swan….or maybe grey? If you follow some estimates 200,000 of the 500,000 (pop of Cumbria) may already have been infected , 1 death per thousand infected. So half way to herd immunity?
Do you know anything about the diet and health practices of the people who live there?
The diet is pretty much like the rest of the population and same with health practices, it seems to be the same in all the areas, the more affluent ones and the poorest but it is really difficult to find specific information. maybe because it is more Northerly and lack of Vit D.but then other more Northern places would be worse…..it might just be random chance.
Have you had outbreaks in nursing homes?
What about the Cumbrian popular Health ?
Mental health – financial position on the UK totem pole?- Poorer folk tend to be more depressed which = lowered immune system.
Mexico – a more obese nation than the USA – is on track for ‘proving’ the link with COVID mortality and … Diabesity / Heart Disease.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-mexico-diabetes-idUSKBN21D3I5
Is it a good time to introduce a…. processed carbohydrate tax ?
No. People must eat what they want. He we informed them properly, many would make better choices.
Cumbria interests me too, as I was born there. There are a lot of second homes and tourism is the dominant economy, did this lead to a lot of influx of the virus carried from London etc.
There are poor / depressed ex-industrial areas like Barrow in Furness or West Cumberland around Workington, but perhaps the most significant factor will turn out to be the age of the population – it’s a place people retire to.
There was a big influx about 4 weeks ago but the rates are still climbing and actually increasing
I wondered the same about Norfolk which has more cases than Suffolk – was it the Londoners travelling to “Chelsea-On-Sea” as some call the North Norfolk coast? Still not many cases though.
Would anyone else have laughed if the police turned round Boris and his chauffeur on his way to Chequers, and told them to go home?
”Would anyone else have laughed if the police turned round Boris and his chauffeur on his way to Chequers, and told them to go home?
They should have done, otherwise it’s one rule for us and another rule for them. Perhaps he should take the only option as did the Scottish health minister, and resign.
The Scottish health minister having to resign is just a case of sour grapes. If you are lucky enough to have two homes how does travelling between them in a sealed box and not interacting with anyone new at the other end put anyone or you at any additional risk? Children are allowed to travel between households if the parents are separated, so why can’t entire households travel between houses? No logic to it.
I can’t comment on the case of the Scottish minister travalling to her second home. I can say that the Cornish are rather upset at the second home owners coming to shelter there – Cornwall has the smallest number of ICU beds per capita BEFORE any influx, so they are feeling protective towards their own. Agree about the driving thing though – I would love to get in my car and just go out to see what spring looks like. As you say, in a sealed container.
KJE, I don’t whether it’s a case of sour grapes, or just another media feeding frenzy. As you say there’s no logic.
Dr Kendrick, Your hypothesis is terribly accurate. As a nurse of 35 years experience in critical care; I tend to be seeing the same future as you with the same crystal ball. The unintended consequences of pandemics are documented throughout history. Covid-19 is likely to prove no different. Thank you for sharing your brave and bold knowledge based comments.
New posting test!
Hello, hello . . .
You passed the test!
Still cutting firewood, or you have enough by now for The Cold?
Here in New England we have four seasons:
Early Winter, Mid Winter, Late Winter, and . . .
Next Winter.
We have missed you !
Thank you all for you concern – “missing me”. This is social media at its best as I see it! I don’t know what I did “right” but something has changed in the “system”. So this is a second effort to see if “it works”.
Firewood? I just had a load of trunks 🙂
Hello again Goran! Each time I serve my red sauerkraut your name springs to mind. In January we prepared 7 X 1kg KILNER jars for the coming year…..thank goodness it was before the panic buying started…..can you imagine what folks would have said seeing me pile my trolley with enormous red cabbages, only to be rejected at the checkout.
Trying to find out how the “filters” work.
Readers of the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchen, got treated to a pretty accurate summary of the current situation:
The death numbers that just don’t add up
What do the daily death figures, supposedly from Covid-19, really mean?
People who don’t know that 1,600 people die normally every day, and who don’t study the sombre official figures, or listen carefully to what officials say, may get the wrong impression.
Here are some facts for you.
A week ago, at the daily official briefing, Dr Jenny Harries, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, confirmed my point that many deaths with Covid are not necessarily from Covid. She said: ‘These are Covid-associated deaths, they are all sad events, they would not all be a death as a result of Covid.’
What nobody says is how many are as a result of the virus.
Then, if you look at the Office for National Statistics weekly death charts, for week 13 of each year (the week which this year ended on March 27), you find some interesting things.
The total of deaths for that week in 2020 is higher than the five-year average for that time of year, which is 10,130. In fact, it is up to 11,141.
This is 1,011 more deaths than normal per week, 144 more deaths than normal per day, regrettable but not gigantic. Do these figures justify the scale of our reaction?
If you add up the total deaths for the first quarter of the year from respiratory diseases, the figure so far for 2020 (22,877) is less than those for 2013 (25,495), 2015 (28,969), 2017 (25,800), 2018 (29,898) and 2019 (23,336).
Again, is this event as exceptional as we are being told? If not, why the shutdown?
Let’s not confuse the Important Message with…facts.
Why are we not getting our daily dose of Fear & indignation from SEPSIS deaths ?
– One very FOUR hours in the UK, around 1,000 per week.
https://www.sepsisresearch.org.uk/statistics/
Yes, I picked that one deliberately, as COVID and SEPSIS both respond to including vitamin C in the treatment protocol.
Janet, if you keep using expletives like “vitamin C” you may have your internet connection removed. 🙂
Just stumbled across this https://youtu.be/adYqbucF8M4
Thanks for this David, you are spot on. If only I could get my ever more worried wife to listen to this rather than the BBC…
That sounds ominous.
Thank you, Dr. Kendrick.
I believe your government has done some modelling predicting 20,000 ‘covid-19’ deaths, and 150,000 deaths as a result of the lockdown. (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-19-update-lives-vs-lives-the-dilemma-of-ending-the-lockdown)
The NZ government has aped this hysterical reaction. It is awful. Cancer services no longer exist. The country is in pieces and will be for a very long time.
Meanwhile four people with co-morbidities in their 70s-90s have died, who happened to be covid-19 positive.
The majority of NZers have been convinced that Covid-19 has a huge death rate, and that once we eliminate this deadly disease (permanently closed borders – yeah right), we will somehow emerge into this blissful utopia of reduced pollution and kumbaya. As opposed to entering a new era of debt and economic depression, the likes of which will make our utterly abysmal record of child safety and wellbeing (nobody beats, starves and kills their kids like we do) progressively worsen.
Our curve is so flat, that we can assume bugger all immunity has been achieved. Winter is about to hit.
The whole thing is a terrifying, dystopian joke.
Thanks for your columns though – a voice of reason amongst the panicdemic.
According to CDC, the 1968 flu pandemic killed 1 million people worldwide and caused 100,000 deaths in the US. So far Covid-19 has killed far less, 100,000 people worldwide and 20,000 in the US. We hear that the death rate is much higher from Covid-19 than from any previous flu and that it spreads more rapidly. However, the 1968 flu hit young and old alike. Perhaps the death rate was lower because so many young people got well. Covid attacks older people and in general older people are more apt to die from influenza or any upper respiratory disease.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.html
“According to CDC, the 1968 flu pandemic killed 1 million people worldwide and caused 100,000 deaths in the US”.
I think the figure was 38,000 deaths in the UK. I was at university in 1968 and do not remember any particular impact or concern. None of my correspondence of diaries from then even mention the epidemic.
I thought from the start that the aim was to “flatten the curve” and prevent the NHS from becoming overwhelmed, but somewhere along the way this seems to have been forgotten about, despite the “protect the NHS slogan”. I don’t understand how anyone can think that bringing everything to a standstill is protecting the NHS when, far from being overrun, many hospitals are now practically empty. What *is* likely to overwhelm the NHS is the problems involved in getting back on its feet. The waiting lists will be tremendous, and those people who are unwell for non-covid-like reasons are likely to have become more unwell in the meantime. And then if the whole thing starts up again in the autumn – well, it doesn’t bear thinking about!
All they are trying to do is to slow down the rate of infections so they can free up the ICU beds and equipment for those who get very sick. However, they are reporting that those with preexisting conditions are the one who are likely to die. So the key is to help more people get healthy so they don’t get sick. Reducing sugar intake can go a long way toward eliminating metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes, etc., but viruses have actually been shown to be dependent on glucose to survive and replicate. “In lab cultures of mammalian cells, researchers showed that influenza A infection could be controlled by targeting viruses’ dependence on cellular glucose. Boosting glucose concentrations concomitantly increased influenza infection rate, and treating viral cells with glucose metabolism inhibitor significantly decreased viral replication…” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131215160856.htm?fbclid=IwAR2w4PmkXVxO8a1GniW4yk8ZDEU
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that might be you AhNotepad, but in general it is. For every disease that is actually. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, flu, and this virus. But I’m glad you’re ok, me too actually as far as I know.
Your comment made me think if those who are seriously ill are getting IV fluids with glucose in them.
And how about Intralipid = based on soy oil, a double whammy
I don’t know why the percentages wouldn’t be more accurate. Good if true, I’m guessing.
REPORT: 30%-50% Of Patients In Chicago Tested For COVID-19 Already Have Antibodies In System
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/report-30-50-patients-chicago-tested-covid-19-already-antibodies-system/
Cont: My husband went to a swap meet with a friend (a long drive in a closed car) just when the pandemic was getting started. His friend got very sick with the corona-virus a few days later. He survived but is still in quarantine weeks later. My husband never had even a sniffle. I’m pretty sure he brought it home to me. I had a sore throat several times for a few days but it would go away after I took liposomal vitamin C. I hope we will have a chance to get an antibody test to see if we had the virus and are now immune. I also hope someone will track the number of people who died based on their diet. Do any of you have stories to share about those who did or didn’t provide glucose to feed the virus and what effect it had?
Hi, Glucose doesn’t feed the virus as such. Viruses have no metabolism of their own. They use host cells, which are affected by glucose, to replicate.
Ivor Cummins and Dr Ron Rosedale discuss this on this podcast. As Dr Ron notes towards the end, its likely any hospitalised patients are feed the standard glucose/water concoction. https://thefatemperor.com/ep67-ron-rosedale-md-crucial-explanation-on-how-to-avoid-serious-viral-impacts/
Features another panic merrchant saying we need more restrictions. https://youtu.be/pfIfQH_X4Wk
Thanks Malcolm a sober and sensible analysis as usual
Would be very interested in your take on this article. Ivor linked to it on Twitter:
http://web.archive.org/web/20200405061401/https://medium.com/@agaiziunas/covid-19-had-us-all-fooled-but-now-we-might-have-finally-found-its-secret-91182386efcb
On Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 12:51 PM Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “12th April 2020 Several politicians, > including Keir Starmer, the opposition Labour Party leader, have been > demanding to know the exit strategy for the lockdown. “We should know what > that exit strategy is, when the restrictions might be lifted and what ” >
The tragic death of 21 year Chloe Middleton was widely reported in the meda as caused by Covid-19 and quickly held up as proof as to why young people – thought to be too blasé about Covid-19 – should take the outbreak more seriously.
I was interested in the case and found her facebook page.
Her photos and recent posts (since deleted) strongly indicated to me sadness and depression.
So I had doubts.
Now I read that the reports started because the coroner said the death was related to Covid-19 after being told Middleton had a cough,
But it turns out she didn’t test positive and so cannot be listed as a Covid death.
The pity is funding for mental heath may be reduced the economic toll taken by the Covid crisis.
It just seems like there is a strong desire to attribute as many deaths as possible to Covid, even if there are other causes of death with or without Covid.
We are in sunny Spain, where the lock down is fierce, strictly policed and being adhered to. The atmosphere in the local forums is absolutely toxic! Little Hitlers appearing everywhere. We are in our late 60s, with pre-existing health conditions. However, on the positive side, we have plenty of sunshine and take a good dose of it daily, we have a good, healthy, natural low carb diet, we use supplements including vitamin C, Iodine, Selenium, Magnesium. I am reading that we should add Vitamin A as soon as we can get hold of it (the Herbalists that sell such things here are closed.). We have good, healthy, higher than average Cholesterol, so I’m presuming we’re very efficient at producing Vit D.
If we become ill we are planning to up Vitamin C to the point of tolerance and hope for the best. I have already made mountains of soup.
Like others have said, it’s the manner of death that is so disturbing! To die alone, with no comfort from your loved ones is just unthinkable. I think if the worst comes, we will just avoid hospitalisation.
When are we going to have a sensible discussion about Euthanasia?
Note to self – must get my affairs in order!
“I am reading that we should add Vitamin A…”
As I have studied this, here is what I have gathered. Note that I am NOT A DOCTOR and have no medical or scientific qualifications; I am merely passing on what I have read. Recommendations vary and change over the years, but this is what I believe to be good practice today.
There is some scepticism about Vitamin A supplements, as it is one of the easiest vitamins to overdo. “The Perfect Health Diet” by Shou-ching and Paul Jaminet, which is well regarded, suggests 1/4 lb of beef or lamb liver once a week. That gives you the right amount of Vitamin A, as well as other important nutrients such as copper (another one not to overdo). Copper works with zinc in various beneficial ways.
Pig or chicken liver is not as good, as they don’t have so much Vitamin A. If you don’t like or can’t get liver, an acceptable substitute is dark chocolate – about 200 grams a week (two standard bars). Chocolate can be supplemented with pig or poultry liver to taste.
Vitamin A should be balanced with Vitamin D3; about 1,000 to 5,000 IU/day, plus all the sunshine you can get (on bare skin of course). Toxicity is unusual and 5,000 IU should be safe, but of course I am not qualified to give medical advice so you should seek it from a doctor or a doctor’s book.
Be wary about fish oil capsules, as some experts think fish oil can go rancid in capsule form.
Lastly, adequate magnesium and Vitamin K2 round off the package. K2 is quite cheap and is said to play a vital role. For lots of information, see (e.g.) https://blog.daveasprey.com/106-the-powers-of-vitamin-k2-with-dr-kate-rheaume-bleue-podcast/ and/or the book “Vitamin K2 And The Calcium Paradox”.
This is another thing which greatly concerns me. If you go into the hospital, you are alone, which is awful. And if your loved one is in the hospital,you cannot negotiate with the doctors about their treatment. It almost makes me agree that if the worst happens, stay home.
Anna M: It was shocking to me when I discovered that all hospital rooms are now private, when I had an overnight stay at the end of January. My only other hospital stay was nineteen years ago, and the rooms were all double, a good thing, too, because my roommate was a non-English speaker, elderly and blind. He ripped all the tubes and so forth out overnight. I became his interpreter, as his daughter could not stay overnight, having children of her own. This was in a Catholic hospital in a county with a 40% Latino population, yet they had not a single Spanish-speaker on staff. What would happen today? He was scared, and I was his lifeline to understand what was going on. There seem to be many more bi-lingual health professionals now than there used to be, at least I hope there are.
Heartening news from Australia collaborating with the Netherlands
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-09/professor-paul-young-discusses-the-search-for-a/12139690
Hi Dr Kendrick, you always make a lot of sense!!! Wondering if you might have any thoughts on why so many health professionals who aren’t aged over 60 are dying? Is it a repeated exposure to the virus thing?
Found this today:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/wellbeing/2020/04/13/coronavirus-young-doctors-nurses-deaths/
Test
Never make promises you cannot keep.
Never start fights you cannot win.
Politics has nothing to do with saving lives.
Let’s wake up, ignore the idiocy and move on.
I’m worried about what is going to be in the vaccines. Remember swine flu fiasco. Sounds as if it will be mandatory. ‘ID2020’ will indicate who has or hasn’t received the vaccine. http://stateofthenation.co/?p=10705
This all seems to be more about control than our health. New world order anyone?
Anyone else see Bill Gates on TV and want to whack him in his smug face with something made of aluminium, and say “See how you like it!”
I want to hit Bill G with something harder than aluminium and get him to take all his vaccines at once right now, and force him not to work, remove his savings and put him on UC (including having to spend several hours on the phone registering). Vindictive, moi?
KJE: Not at all vindictive. He should be the first on the docket in a new Nuremburg trial for what he has done to children in Africa (the manufacture of all the mercury-laden vaccines once on the U.S. schedule, but discontinued after an Oops! moment at the CDC Simpsonwood Conference, has not been stopped-they’re still churning them out and sending them to Africa; this includes the DTP, discontinued in the U.S. in the mid-90’s). If the Left could actually think, they would call him the biggest, baddest racist in the country.
Yes, he is particularly animated in interviews these days. Can’t seem to contain his glee. People please look up Event 201 where they play acted this whole thing out in November 2019.
Re “Covid-19 is being presented as a deadly killer that does not discriminate.” Certainly there is much fear-mongering about this disease in the mainstream media – and who is feeding the MSM with this message?
In Australia we’re up to 61 deaths now, in a population of around 25.4 million. Apparently 18 of these deaths are of people who were on the Ruby Princess cruise ship. That certainly needs looking into… The rest are generally other elderly people, mostly 70 and upwards with comorbidities, and many in aged care homes.
But the entire population is being menaced about this virus, with each ‘case’ being breathlessly reported. But if most ‘cases’ are generally benign and not life-threatening why are these numbers being beaten up?
I guess we’re waiting to see the wash-up in Sweden, but others also promote the herd immunity strategy, with Graham Medley, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, arguing the UK may still have to reconsider allowing “people to catch the virus in the least deadly way possible”. According to the report in the Independent “This would involve accepting the heightened risk to the elderly rather than harming younger generations with rising unemployment, domestic violence and mental illness”.
Medley suggests the government has “painted itself into a corner” by imposing widespread restrictions on movement that he claims may cause more damage than the epidemic itself.
Check the internet for the article: Coronavirus: Boris Johnson urged to reconsider lockdown strategy by virus adviser. Independent, 4 April 2020.
We’ve heard that many of the stricken medical personel or younger people probably were exposed to a high viral load.
What about the opposite? Will repeated exposure to low doses result in immunity without the disease ever manifesting? If that could be proven, it might lay out the road out of the lockdown: ease social distancing gradually.
In addition, one might put everyone on a good dose of vitamin d and low carb. World dominion is waiting…
Eric, as I see it it could only ever be anecdotal as it would be impossible to carry out a random controlled trial. Which virus would any one person be exposed to, and how do you ensure they are not exposed to others? We live with vira (viruses if you speak US), they are not nasty predatory hunters.
I beg to differ. The -a plural in Latin is only used for neuter nouns ending in -um. Also, virus (poison) is a mass noun like information, water, juice in modern English, hence there is no plural form in Latin.
(five years of Latin in high school coming back to haunt me)
Eric, thank you, I stand corrected.
Absolutely. Virus can only be either second declension mass noun like oceanus with no plural or possibly 4th declension when the plural looks exactly the same as the singular (like domus). And anyway, we don’t speak Latin, we speak English and the English plural is viruses.
OMG! I thought I’d left my Latin O-level studies in the distant past…I didn’t pay much attention though, which is why I failed it dismally. However, when I started to learn Italian at the age of 48 I realised that it did come in handy, at least those bits that did resurface! Italian came far more easily than the other languages I studied at school.
anglosvizzera: The same for me with Spanish, particularly the verb forms, which are close to identical. The British gentleman in my classes in Mexico, who was accompanying his wife (nearly all of us teachers in this group) nearly pulled his hair out with frustration, though. He clearly failed to take Latin at all in school!
Eric: Thank you for that. Only three years for me, but it has served me well in life, making learning Spanish in my 40’s pretty effortless. My Latin teacher lived to 102! As far as I know, “virion” is singular for virus, but I may be wrong.
You’ve forgotten the 3rd Declension neuter nouns like corpus, nominative plural corpora.
(I scraped through O-level after four-years worth.)
I would be interested to know if there is an research out there that shows mortality rates between the employed and unemployed?
On Malcolm’s ‘COVID. ‘With’ ‘Of’ or ‘Because of’’ post, Christian, jillm, Jan, Tony and I discussed the possibility that annual flu vaccination could be impacting on vulnerability to COVID-19. This is serious to think about because the Southern hemisphere, including Australia where I live, is now entering ‘flu season’, or more particularly ‘flu vaccination season’, and flu vax is being pressed upon all and sundry, particularly people over 65 years, pregnant women, and everyone really. Flu vaccination is also now on the taxpayer-funded schedule for children from 0-5 years – it seems children are now being set up for flu vaccination for life.
The possibility that flu vaccination could be impacting on COVID-19 does need to be properly considered. I forwarded an email on this matter to Sweden’s top epidemiologist Anders Tegnell recently, but haven’t received a response…no doubt he’s busy… But this is an international issue that does need serious consideration. FYI, see my email to Anders Tegnell below: (My email to Dr Tegnell includes some hyperlinks to sources, but these don’t show up below.)
8 April 2020
Dear Dr Tegnell
Re the current global COVID-19 crisis.
As deaths associated with COVID-19 appear to be focussed in the elderly, is consideration being given to the possibility that annual flu vaccination may be implicated, i.e. might make people vulnerable to COVID-19?
In this regard I’m thinking of the previous Canadian studies that “provided the first signal of an association between seasonal flu shots and pandemic flu illness” (H1N1). http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2010/04/new-canadian-studies-suggest-seasonal-flu-shot-increased-h1n1-risk
It’s curious to see your comment in this report: “State epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, reiterated the the spread of infection to elderly residents in Sweden is a major problem, adding that “when I talk to my Nordic colleagues, they do not have the same problem there”. (Sweden stands firm over its controversial COVID-19 approach)
In Australia we’re up to around 50 deaths ‘associated’ with COVID-19. Most of these people are elderly and with co-morbidities. (I’m not sure how they conclude COVID-19 as the cause of death…this seems to be an issue around the world that needs investigating/clarifying.)
Putting that aside for the moment, most of the people who have died have been in aged care facilities or have recently come off cruise ships.
These are people who are likely to have had annual flu vaccination… Isn’t it reasonable to ask if flu vaccination might be implicated in their respiratory illnesses?
As we know…flu vaccination doesn’t really work in the elderly does it…? See for example Osterholm et al.
In recent times we have special flu vaccines for the over-65’s that have been “specifically designed to boost the immune response…for this age group”. (This is from an email with advice for seniors mentioning Fluad®Quad quadrivalent adjuvanted vaccine.) Could this ‘boosted immune response’ be causing problems?
I understand flu vaccination is now commonplace around the world, including Italy and China. And there’s this promotion for flu vaccination in Sweden: Nurse Gladis leads the way on influenza vaccination in Jonkoping, Sweden.
Again, to consider this in regards to repeated annual flu vaccination? Is repeated annual flu vaccination causing problems for elderly people with respiratory illnesses?
It’s also notable that medical staff are under pressure to get flu vaccines, and it’s been reported in the the UK that some young nurses have died, associated with COVID-19.
What do you think about this Dr Tegnell?
Kind regards
Elizabeth Hart
Adelaide, Australia
Elizabeth, quite so. I believe there is also evidence suggesting that the flu vaccination is associated with more influenza-like illness (ILI)? Presumably some, at least, of ILI can be attributed to coronaviruses.
As Dr Kendrick’s post suggests (if I’m understanding it correctly) and i think the majority of posts are in support of the suggestion that we should just have got on with it (no lockdown but possibly with voluntary sheilding for those vulnerable and choosing to) am I correct in thinking therefore that 250k potential UK deaths and that an NHS and morgues etc totally overwhelmed and in meltdown etc, would be considered an acceptable outcome by you all? If not, what am i missing please from this narrative as I am genuinely baffled?
Jane, a complete or even partially complete answer to your question would be too long, and would involve quite a lot of details that one absorbs over time but that might seem puzzling at first.
I think the gist of it is that we feel there is no solid evidence that a virus called Covid-19 even exists; or, if it does exist, that its effects are any worse than those of other coronaviruses (like those that cause the common cold). Also the “test” does not really test anything; and that the overall death statistics do not support the idea that a lot more people are dying than usual at this time of year.
In other words, it is beginning to look rather as if much of the panic is really unjustified, and whipped up to serve specific interests. (The mass media of course love nothing better than a really good health panic or disaster story).
Jane,
I think another crucial point to appreciate is that the average age of death from COVID-19 is nearly 80. As people age, their health tends to go down, and many people of that age are extremely vulnerable, and can die from things like broken hips, flu, norovirus, etc. Normally this is almost ignored, but now if they die of COVID-19, they are added to the numbers you read every day.
The average rate of death in the UK is about 1600 per day. If some of these meet COVID-19 in their final days, and can’t shake it off before they die, they will get added to the list of deaths from COVID-19
Wind borne?
The wind is currently strong and so is my hay fever from tree pollen. We live on the coast where none of the culprit trees and catkins exist. The pollen is coming on the wind across the country,
in copious supply. I have googled to see whether this corona virus could be likewise carried long distances by the wind. The jury seems to be out – it is another thing we don’t really know. Nature will triumph whatever.
I read an article by some Italian researchers suggesting that the virus could be attaching itself to the particulates in air pollution, which would carry it over distances and also allow the virus to travel deep into the lungs. The article pointed out that the cities of Lombardy, with their very high pollution levels, have been hit much harder than cities such as Rome. It’s an interesting idea but I wasn’t sure if I was just being incredibly gullible in thinking so!
I know a retired biochemist, and we discussed this virus at some length. He pointed out that viruses have a protein coat, and when a protein dries out, it de-natures and this is more or less irreversible. Without that coat, the virus can’t invade a cell. On this basis, I’d say that a virus can’t spread in the wind – particularly in the dry conditions we are currently enjoying.
How do we get this information to a disinterested government that is being led by the neils?
Actually, the virus seems to prefer cool, dry conditions. It’s the absolute humidity that counts. Cool air cannot hold so much moisture so the virus survives longer. Also I think the mucus layer in your airways dries out in cold, dry conditions, making it easier for the virus to reach the ACE2 receptors.
This article describes the coat as “oily”.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200323-coronavirus-will-hot-weather-kill-covid-19
Air pollution, of course, is extremely prevalent in the UK. As far as I know (which is not very far thanks to the concerted efforts of government and the media) we consistently failed to come anywhere near European standards for decades. And now…
Hi Tish: re virus in the wind, very likely
https://www.livescience.com/covid19-coronavirus-transmission-through-speech.html
“However, mounting evidence suggests that aerosols may spur transmission more than once thought, and these smaller particles “can remain aloft for a considerable amount of time,” on the order of hours, said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist and head of the Climate and Health Program at Columbia University in New York City. “
“Shaman noted that the study authors sampled the air for just three hours, meaning the virus could potentially remain viable for longer. Until scientists learn more about the true viability of the virus in a variety of settings and conditions, they have to consider all potential routes of transmission in their attempts to slow transmission, he added. “
Hi Tish: re virus spread by wind, more info
https://www.wired.com/story/they-say-coronavirus-isnt-airborne-but-its-definitely-borne-by-air/
There are indications that a high viral dose infection results in more severe symptoms. Conversely a small hormetic dose would produce fewer symptoms. A small viral load would still activate the immune system and produce antibodies without producing symptoms. My hypothesis is that a small airborne virus load is the preferred way to get infected.
Thank you Andy and others. Interesting.
I can live with the objective of limiting deaths to (say) 1200 per day, or new cases to below (say) 6,000 per day. If we tweak the measures and go above these limits then we reverse the tweaks, repeat and retry different tweaks.
If we have 20,000 ventilators and people are on them 10 days on average and half come off and live then you get 1,000 deaths per day on average. As you say, it just requires honesty. I do have some sympathy with the need for simple and coherent messaging, at least everyone knows “stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives”.
Limiting new cases to 6000 or deaths to 1200 per day or similar metrics seems an entirely plausible strategy, in line with saving the NHS by keeping within its (expanded) capacity. If we tweak the lockdown and stay below these numbers we can add further relaxation steps as things progress, being wise about it and relaxing in groups or communities with inherently lower risk as a priority.
There is an aspect of this that I have only seen mentioned a couple times in the last couple of weeks. What do old people think of all this? Well I know some who are rightly frightened. After all the media and our government have stoked up fear deliberately to get compliance with their lockdown instructions. People dive into a bush if you get nearer than 5 metres while on a short walk.
But, I know many other thinking old people (many of us can still do it) can see that it is a bad virus epidemic and they know that it is mostly oldies (as Dr, Kendrick says) that end up dying from it. In all Flu-like epidemics it is the case. Younger people do die in all such outbreaks, and in fact it has been said that while Flu often takes children, C-19 does less so. I don’t know.
I have 2 points to make –
My wife and I are in our 70’s, but fairly fit and physically more capable than many in their 50’s. We don’t want to see our children and grandchildren’s future ruined (both medically and economically) to save old people who have had most of their life – and in some cases will die in the near future. I would like another 20 years, but not at my family’s expense. Comfortingly they see it different. The concept of QALYS used by the Clinical Excellence people NICE comes into it. If we have a new cancer drug developed, NICE will only spend £30,000 to obtain 1 good year of life for a cancer suffer. Now we are willing to spend £bn’s just to stop old people from dying with little QALYS expected. A number have pointed out this strange idea that suddenly you can’t put a price on a life – good luck with that.
Secondly leading on from the first. The current strategy (?) is to flatten the curve, so the NHS is not overwhelmed by too many folks needing ICU at once. It will likely save few lives and may end up costing more lives, just spread them out a bit. Given that an average of 17,000 pa have died from Flu/Pneumonia over the last 5 winter seasons , and I believe that more than 20,000 have died in the season just ending; I can summarise the strategy as –
Your old granny can die of the Flu etc. and we will do little, and the media will not stoke hysteria, just as long as us old folk have the good manners to die quietly and slowly enough not to cause inconvenience. Cynical? – perhaps, but it fits the facts.
I thought this item over at InProportion2 was interesting and made the point.
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/inform_scare.html
David R,
I totally agree – this is the absurd misconception that the media (with rare exceptions) have consistently peddled – we absolutely have to ‘save’ everyone regardless of what else they are dying from – my feeling is that much of the media have changed in recent years from organisations that inform people and expose information that needs exposing, to organisations obsessed by partially hidden agendas that often have little to do with reality.
I too want to live another 20 years, but certainly not, as you say, by ruining the economy for all the younger people.
“The reality is that for anyone younger than about sixty, Covid-19 is only slightly more dangerous than suffering from influenza.”
What is the evidence for this claim? I think it is controversial.
An illustration: In 2016, 161 under 60s died from influenza in England & Wales (data from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/adhocs/007849numberofdeathswhereinfluenzawastheunderlyingcauseofdeathorwasmentionedonthedeathcertificatebyfiveyearagegroupenglandandwales2001to2016).
Based on your “92% are aged over 60” figure, there have already been 850 deaths amongst under 60s during the coronavirus outbreak.
How many of these under 60s were overweight or obese? There seems to be some silence surrounding this matter. Perhaps a bit of a taboo? This blog has solutions to most cases of obesity but they have to be heeded.
You are not alone on this. Reputedly (still trying to find the original) Mexico’s President blamed ‘junk food’ as being foundational to his population’s metabolic ill-health… setting them up for COVID-19 mortality.
And from the Home of the Brave / Land of the Free, comes this link. – https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85553 Got to love the description of obesity being a….’novel…. risk-factor.
– It’s not just Walmart that attracts …. strange shoppers !
Dr Aseem Malhotra has made the point in the daily papers and on his Facebook page about obesity being a risk factor. One paper he quoted was this:
Click to access an010207.pdf
I saw a study that said you were 4 times more likely to need intervention if you were technically “obese”.
“What is the evidence for this claim? I think it is controversial”.
“A meta-analysis of the three datasets, showed that by random effects, deaths that occurred in patients with no underlying conditions and who were <65 years old account for 0.9% (95% confidence interval, 0.1-1.7%) of all deaths where presence of underlying conditions has been assessed.
"The risk of death is 13-to 73-fold lower in non-elderly people <65 years old than in older individuals. The age-dependent risk gradient is modestly sharper in European countries versus the US locations. Regardless, the absolute risk of death in the non-elderly population is consistently very low even in these pandemic hotbeds. As of April 4, only 1.7 to 79 per million people in this age group have died with [sic – TW] a COVID-19 diagnosis".
Click to access 2020.04.05.20054361v1.full.pdf
John P.A. Ioannidis, MD, DSc, Cathrine Axfors, MD, PhD, Despina G. Contopoulos-Ioannidis, MDStanford Prevention Research Center, Department of Medicine, and Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford University School of Medicine (Dr. Ioannidis), Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), Stanford, California, USA (Dr. Ioannidisand Dr. Axfors), Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden (Dr. Axfors),and Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA (Dr. Contopoulos-Ioannidis) Correspondence to: John P.A. Ioannidis, MD, DSc, Stanford Prevention Research Center, 1265 Welch Road, Medical School Office Building, Room X306, USA. E-mail: jioannid@stanford.edu.
“The risk of death is 13-to 73-fold lower in non-elderly people <65 years old than in older individuals."
This I assume, unlike the 0.9% healthy U65's refers to ALL U65's including those with underlying conditions which is less than 8%.
Thanks! Now we need comparable data for influenza to evaluate the claim…
No drugs involved here… just let REAL FOODs be your medicine… it’s no brainer.
The media wants you to think Covid-19 virus will kill healthy people. But my bet is that 100% OF PEOPLE with severe Covid-19 have an underlying metabolic issue like obesity and diabetes. The problem is that almost EVERYBODY in the world is metabolically unhealthy, so it looks like anyone can get it.
Who are the most susceptible to Covid-19? What is the root cause of “cytokine storms” or massive inflammation?
Cytokine Storm is an immune system gone awry and an inflammatory response flaring out of control – causing significant damage to body tissues and organs.
The most susceptible to Covid-19 are people with diabetes, hypertension (symptom of diabetes), obsesity – these “metabolically unhealthy” people also have high leptin levels. Most people with obesity or diabetes often develop leptin-resistance, which is highly inflammatory.
You cannot have a strong, robust immune response when you have high levels of leptin as a result of leptin resistance. You cannot fight Covid-19 well if you are “metabolically unhealthy”.
Obese people had 6x the risk of having a severe Covid-19 case in China. The evidence is crystal clear that coronavirus attacks the metabolically unhealthy much harder.
Crucial Explanation on how to Avoid Serious Viral Impacts
~ Ron Rosedale MD
Rosedale has an important part of the answer, I believe. But I am never keen on people who say everyone, or always, or 100%. Absolutist statements are never, ever, correct.
What about other health conditions?
This is a very good discussion around lockdown strategies by Tucker Goodrich and Ivor Cummins, both data engineers par excellence. My key takeaways were:-
– Lockdowns don’t work when the virus is in the population
– The economic cost project to be > total annual healthcare budget in the US.
– Vaccine development for SARS is c.18 years into development so don’t expect anything soon
https://thefatemperor.com/ep66-risk-management-expert-and-engineering-manager-discuss-coronavirus-strategies/
Very true
Making up policy at press conferences?
May I offer a thought on the unequal ratio of men to women in the high risk category? I am not a geneticist but even GCSE biology suggests a genetic explanation. Men have one X chromosome, women have two. If there is a gene variant on the X chromosome that worsens susceptibility to this virus, and suppose it is recessive, then a man with the variant will be in trouble while a woman will have a fair chance of the “bad” gene being overridden.
Like I said, just a thought.
Hi Ian: re gene hypothesis
Perhaps women have a smart gene that prevents indulging in harmful behaviour, the virus then becomes secondary.
Hi. The vast majority of genes on the 2nd X chromosome in women are silenced.
Am I right in thinking that more women have a TH1 focused immune response and more men TH2? Theoretically TH2 means more susceptibility to virus infection.
The Swiss doctor has given up diary-style reporting, but he last updated his website yesterday. The material below is probably new here, but please realise that you must go to the original source to use his links.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Swiss chief physician Pietro Vernazza
The Swiss chief physician of Infectiology, Professor Pietro Vernazza, has published four new articles on studies concerning Covid19.
The first article is about the fact that there has never been medical evidence for the efficacy of school closures, as children in general do not develop the Covid disease nor are they among the vectors of the virus (unlike with influenza).
The second article is about the fact that respiratory masks generally have no detectable effect, with one exception: sick people with symptoms (notably coughing) can reduce the spread of the virus. Otherwise the masks are rather symbolic or a „media hype“.
The third article deals with the question of mass testing. The conclusion of Professor Vernazza: „Anyone who has symptoms of a respiratory disease stays at home. The same applies to the flu. There is no added value in testing.“
The fourth article deals with the Covid19 risk groups. According to current knowledge, these include people with high blood pressure – it is suspected that the Covid19 virus uses cell receptors that are also responsible for regulating blood pressure. However, surprisingly, people with immunodeficiency and pregnant women (who naturally have a reduced immune system) are not at risk. On the contrary, the risk of Covid19 is often an overreaction of the immune system.
Intensive vs. palliative care
A German palliative physician explains in an interview that Covid19 is „not an intensive care disease“, as the severely affected people are typically people of old age who have multiple pre-existing conditions. When these people get pneumonia, they „have always been given palliative care (i.e. accompanying death)“. With a Covid19 diagnosis, however, this would now become an intensive care case, but „of course the patients still cannot be saved“.
The expert describes the current actions of many decision-makers as „panic mode“. At present, intensive care beds in Germany are still relatively empty. Respirators are free. For financial reasons, hospital managers may soon come up with the idea of admitting elderly people. „In 14 days, the wards will be full of unsalvageable, multimorbid old people. And once they are on the machines, the question arises as to who will switch them off again, as that would be a homicide.“ An „ethical catastrophe“ from greed may ensue, warns the physician.
Ventilation with Covid19
There has been and still is a worldwide rush for ventilators for Covid19 patients. This site was one of the first in the world to draw attention to the fact that invasive ventilation (intubation) may be counterproductive in many cases and may cause additional harm to patients.
Invasive ventilation was originally recommended because low oxygen levels led to the false conclusion of acute respiratory (lung) failure, and there was a fear that with more gentle, non-invasive techniques the virus could spread through aerosols.
In the meantime, several leading pulmonologists and intensive care physicians from the US and Europe have spoken out against invasive ventilation and recommend more gentle methods or indeed oxygen therapy, as already successfully used by South Korea.
Why Some Doctors Are Now Moving Away From Ventilator Treatments (TIME)
Ventilators aren’t a panacea for a pandemic like coronavirus (Dr. Matt Strauss)
With ventilators running out, doctors say the machines are overused for Covid-19
Covid-19 Does Not Lead to a “Typical” Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ATSJ)
Do COVID-19 Ventilator Protocols Need a Second Look? (Medscape)
German: „Too often intubation and invasive ventilation is used“ (Dr. Thomas Voshaar)
German: COVID-19: Ventilation – and then what? (DocCheck)
Children can pass it to adults.
Yes, thank you children for helping us adults to get immunity.
Tish I agree. It has been known for decades that families with school age children (who actually go to school) have more diseases than those without. Children pass it around, then bring it home. Consequently looking after your immune system is the best approach. It is also known in a specific instance, that GPs who treat a lot of children with chicken pox are less likely to suffer themselves, they keep getting their immunity boosted.
The UK has been considering chickenpox vaccination for children. The reason they haven’t gone ahead with it (yet – at least to the best of my knowledge) is that it seems that older people who don’t spend time around children, thus potentially boosting their immunity to the chickenpox virus every now and again, are more likely to develop shingles.
The reason for putting the chickenpox vaccine on hold was to look at whether there was anything in this.
Aileen: Read Gary Goldman’s published work on the result of the rollout of the varicella vaccine in the U.S. He was in charge of surveillance in southern California. The CDC tried to intimidate him into burying his findings, but he hired an attorney and beat them back.
David thank you again.
David Bailey,
I think that this:
“…children in general do not develop the Covid disease nor are they among the vectors of the virus…”
is a crucial question that needs strong clarification. Because the meme is huge now that asymptomatic people/kids can spread it. If that is false, we need to know so that we can end this lockdown sooner.
What is going on with the concept of “herd immunity”? It seems to be a dirty phrase in the intellectual media, and also with many disease experts, yet it is logically the only long term solution, unless you believe that a disease with the infectiousness and prevalence of this one can be successfully suppressed to the point where it can be dealt with as a notifiable disease and tracked and traced locally wherever it arises. That seems a long shot, though it appears this is what anyone who denigrates “herd immunity” must be seeking.
The government’s advice to Passport Office workers recently seems to suggest they actually recognise that most of the population getting the disease is in reality inevitable, which also means herd immunity (assuming this disease is not very unusual in creating no immunity whatsoever). But the government apparently denies that. See this typically dismissive Guardian piece yesterday, seemingly trying to smear the government with “pursuing herd immunity”, under the assumption presumably that such a charge will be politically damaging to it:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/documents-contradict-uk-government-stance-on-covid-19-herd-immunity
Might recent history have been different if the concept had been termed “population immunity” instead of “herd immunity”?
If most people were already considered to be immune, it would be more difficult to justify the rolling out of a hastily put-together vaccine.
It is well known that some coronaviruses – such as those that cause the common cold – mutate so quickly and often that no effective vaccine has ever been developed.
Creating a vaccine for “Covid-19” would be easier if anyone had yet sequenced the virus and if it were possible to detect it, and distinguish it from other coronaviruses.
I read a study that looked at data from China (yeah, I know; who knows how good this is?), and calculated an R0 of 5.7, which means that each person with covid-19 typically infects 5.7 others. The flu is about 2 or so.
Anyway, the higher this number is, the larger the number of people who have to be infected for there to be herd immunity. I think it’s (1-(1/R0)) (in percent, times 100), so if R0=1, it’s zero percent; if R0 = 2, it’s 50%; if R0=5.7, it’s about 82%.
If this is true, 80+% of people having to get the disease before there’s herd immunity means that we’ll likely never get there. And this ignores any change in the virus.
It does mean that you get there faster though
A key trick in bargaining is to agree with your opponent, then say “but…
Let us, for the moment, agree with the spirit of the lockdown, which is to reduce the rate of spread through social distancing etc.
Therefore:
1/ Any activity is permitted that maintains social distancing, and does not harm others
2/ Any activity that boosts natural immunity, such as daily exercise, should be encouraged, not merely tolerated.
This means that many more people could go back to work, or at least to safe parts of it. Large parts of the construction industry for instance, and garden centres, if they can maintain social distancing.
This means many more sectors could restart, such as the housing sector. Many more shops could re-open. Sunbathing and family picnics could be acceptable, subject to local conditions so that the social distancing is maintained. Friends could see each other, outside, keeping social distance.
Why not??
Ivan said,
“Therefore:
1/ Any activity is permitted that maintains social distancing, and does not harm others
2/ Any activity that boosts natural immunity, such as daily exercise, should be encouraged, not merely tolerated.”
Unfortunately I can see why someone who really believed in lockdown might not agree with that.
They might say that social distancing isn’t an all or nothing thing – lots of 2-metre encounters would probably each have a small probability of passing on the virus, which would then add up.
They might also argue that with more places open, it would become progressively harder to enforce the lockdown generally.
They might argue that people operating with fewer restrictions might become more careless.
I agree with Malcolm that the lockdown is crazy, but all the facts are unpleasantly mushy – you can’t apply logic!
Yes David – but there would only be a risk of that if we assume that these people, in general, are actually thinking about the issues. There is not a lot of evidence that they do anything other than follow the crowd though. People generally seem to believe anything they are told by someone who appears to be in authority. And the same messages are repeated ad nauseam, with no permitted rebuttal.
Freedom of speech? No.
My prediction is, they will continue to build hospitals to accommodate for increasing numbers of patients. They will be hoping this prevents the nhs being overwhelmed. Then phase out lockdown bit by bit, with the focus on saving the economy. They might release a list of lower risk tier work/leisure activities/jobs.
Plasma therapy would seem like a possible interim treatment using the blood of people who have recovered. Government seem to be dragging their feet on this.
I have been following the (probably spurious) Covid-19 numbers at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Now I see that the UK number for “recovered”, which was stuck at 135 (from memory) for literally weeks, has now progressed to “N/A”. It is the only country in the listing – of about 190 nations – that does not display either a number or a blank (for zero) in this column.
I think that is because recovered people are mostly lost to follow-up.
Thank you again Dr Kendrick for voicing your usual thoughtful and honest content. The way things are going, there will likely be many more personae non gratae, assuming they don’t succumb to some mystery illness, ( which may, or may not be proven…). I’ve read every post on this over the last 2 days, and, there’s a lot of good sense combined with an understandable amount of confusion and trepidation, I fall into all these mindset catagories, depending on what I read, see, or hear. And that’s where a lot of the trouble is – the cumulative effects of this would-be pandemic may yet prove more damaging than the virus itself.
Anyway, I could go on ranting all day about politics, WHO, vaccines, Bill Gates, 5G, exosomes, DNA, RNA, zinc, nanobots, conspiracy, bat soup, ….endless buzz words and soundbite extracts.THAT in itself is harming me. The constant overwhelming sense of helplessness and despair that the media et al seem to perversely delight in. But most of all I’m very angry about how all this is evolving. I don’t know the truth of the origin, by what or whom, or even why. What I do know is that it has been inherently ‘wrong’ on many levels since day 1….and that’s only assuming anyone could explain when day 1 actually was. Given then that I don’t really understand what the hell is going on for real, I’d appreciate if someone could shed some light on a couple of puzzling, but more likely, naive issues I have .I’m no academic or analyst but facts reassure me. If I hear correctly, the RT-PCR test is not conclusive in detecting COVID19,specifically, but does pick up on viral condition(s) in general? If this is the case, and apologies for my sweeping logic, how can the test be deemed accurate.Surely the test will only detect viral activity, of any kind within the parameters of the test capabilities? Next question with apologies to anybody who has lost family recently…how do the medical profession test for cause of death if there isn’t a specific test for COVID19? Sorry to be morbid but then again I just don’t know how they determine cause for sure so perhaps someone could enlighten?
Moving on it seems that there’s no obvious way forward that will satisfy everbody but given the varying degrees of lockdown globally, economies will not survive or even recover. Peoples’ livelihoods have already been shattered and I don’t envy the decision makers on their future strategy trying to justify something that isn’t sustainable. My biggest concern, and again, notwithstanding the inevitable, tragic fatalities, is that it would be very easy to lift all restrictions if some miracolous vaccine was suddenly magicked out of the ether. That’s not going to happen. So, last point – does anyone think that IF a vaccine is developed, it will be compulsory? I’ve turned down my flu jab for the last 20 odd years on the basis of why should I knowingly put something in my body that could potentially harm me? Last hint of cynicism, I also hear that patents expire on drugs/medicines….but not on vaccines. Is this true?
The very idea of a vaccine being compulsory is truly frightening. On the one hand, euthanasia is forbidden… Our wills must retain some authority.
Tish: The magic bullet! Which cures all and sundry ailments! Step right up folks!
Hector Drummond has published some intriguing graphs by Laurence Hodge. The first graph shows excess UK winter deaths by year. Note that there were over 100,000 in 1950-1, and nearly 90,000 in (I think it was) 1960. Even the 38,000 claimed for the 1968 flu seems relatively small.
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/04/13/a-historical-perspective-on-winter-deaths/
I really wish the figures could be released as Covid19(A) – With serious underlying medical problems and Covid19(B) – Without any serious underlying medical problems when they are announcing the daily death rate.
The numbers and general level of hysteria will be kept high to reassure the public that the government is right in how its handling it all. I think the actual exit strategy is lets just see how its working out in Italy and Spain as they appear to be a couple of weeks ahead of us and should its naturally calm over there we’ll follow suit and should it go belly up then we’ll wait a little longer.
What is keeping me up at night is not the fear of the virus but the way our government has simply threw money at it in a blind panic. Interest rates cut to near nothing, Companies told not to pay dividends to its shareholders, landlords told not to (or be able to) evict non paying tenants. -Companies forcing their staff to be furloughed – okay the companies can claim back the payment but the company will still have overheads eating away at them in the mean time not to mention business interruption rendering contracts to die on the vine in all of the uncertainty. Mass unemployment is going to follow this if we’re not careful, which will then send crime, depression, domestic violence and divorce rates through the roof. Retirement age will no doubt need to have an extra 5-10 years tagged onto it to help pay for all of this which will only worsen the unemployment not to mention the increase in taxes that everyone will pay. Only the golden pensions of the MPs and likes will be protected whilst the rest of us suffer.
I could go on but I guess you get my point in all of this. At the end of the day we should have let the under 60’s with no underlying medical conditions stay at work and let us other folk decide to either carry on or stay at home.
Finally, viruses mutate, are we going to do all this again next year ?
I sincerely hope the fact that 116 people in South Korea have tested positive for Corona for the second indicates a flaw in the testing and not the fact that immunity – herd or otherwise – does not develop.
Has anyone tested the tests?
Jillm: Dr. Kendrick has clearly explained why there is no Covid-19 test. The antibody test in use is not specific to Covid-19; it simply indicates active infection with something. Kary Mullis himself would have excoriated them for using rt/PCR as a diagnostic tool, which it isn’t. Thus, we don’t really know how many “cases” there actually are. I would put my money on the novel clinical manifestations as being the only reliable “test.” The findings appear to be different in different people, as if there were two different diseases, as Jo Nova suggested.
A St. Louis doctor that is upset with how causes of death are being reported, and with journalists.
Follow the money…
Magnificent! The best possible use of 10 minutes of that doctor’s time. Listening to him makes me remember how truly admirable Americans can be at their best. He denounces the lies and exaggerations from politicians and the media, explains what is really happening, and gives excellent advice.
It seems that in most areas you get tested for the virus if you are admitted to hospital, and increasingly those admitted to hospital are those with symptoms that suggest that you have it and are ill enough to need hospital, usually because you need oxygen. The other main group that get tested are health care workers with suggestive symptoms – these are tested with the hope that they are negative and can go back to work, as happened to me 2 weeks ago. Also in some areas you get tested if you are frail elderly in a home. That leaves a huge amount of the population with none of these criteria that haven’t been tested, for justifiable reasons, but who may have had the virus. Is the antibody test on the near horizon?
Mark Heneghan: Dr. Kendrick says there is no antibody test, and he is usually reliable, yet Stanford researchers are currently using an antibody test to prove the hypothesis that Covid-19 reached California last fall, rather than in January, and Del Bigtree went to a drive-thru clinic to gat an antibody test. I have no idea what to make of all this. Perhaps the UK has its very own antibody test on the way, but it hasn’t been finished yet?
Tests are being developed and, as yet, have very poor sensitivity and specificity. Thus, not good enough to be used to validate any possible vaccine. In my world, that means that there is not yet an antibody test.
Dr. Kendrick: Yes. The IgG which is being used here is, as far as I know, not specific to any particular microbe, but merely indicates an active infection of some sort. Thank you for clarifying what antibody tests show.
To test the hypothesis that the virus was around last fall, wouldn’t it be easier to test blood samples taken at that time for virus DNA/RNA rather than antibodies?
Eric: Sounds reasonable to me, but then, again, would the DNA test be specific enough? And have they saved any, or enough of this blood to test?
To my understanding, the current PCR test is very sensitive. It can amplify a single RNA fraction. It is also important to understand that different labs / countries look for different genes of the virus, but all of these were chosen to look for things that are specific to our current gremlin and cannot be found in other Corona viruses.
So I don’t see why it wouldn’t pick up differences between blood samples (if the virus is present in blood at all).
I have read that the UK has purchased 3.5 million antibody tests which are currently going through a validation process. Which begs the question: shouldn’t this have been done before purchasing millions of them? or does the validation process itself require millions of tests to be carried out? – but wouldn’t all this be done at the expense of the company which developed the test in the first place?
I ve been in medicine a long time and the first time I had heard of a ” lockdown ” was in March of 2020. Up until then I had been puzzled by PHE and their desire to contact trace a respiratory virus as I had believed that this was clearly a waste of time especially with new cases being flown in daily to Heathrow.
Anyway the concept of a lockdown and social distancing strikes me as strange. What evidence base is there to support a lockdown of a healthy population to prevent the spread of a respiratory virus? Are there peer reviewed papers which evidence this strategy ? I have heard of some evidence from the east coast of the USA in 1919 but I believe that has been discredited.
I am wondering what exactly is the definition of ‘pandemic’?
Definition of “pandemic” – it is one of those manufactured words taking epidemic and panic and squishing them together.
Jean Humphries: Good one! Although “pan-” in the combining form means something on the order of “universal.’
For definition of “pandemic”, please refer to Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, Chapter six. “Words mean what I choose them to mean, nothing more, nothing less.
Jillm: From my Webster’s, “of all the people; prevalent over a whole area, country, etc. . . . .”
Here’s an interesting definition of a pandemic in an article on the WHO website, which focuses on influenza pandemics, particularly the 2009 pandemic, but is also relevant to the current coronavirus situation. It also includes reference to Peter Doshi. It’s worth a close read…I’m still
digesting it…
‘The classical definition of a pandemic is not elusive’, authored by Heath Kelly (2011)
http://www9.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/
thanks Peter; the “lockdown” seems to have come from the Fergoid, as some call him, from IC; as pointed out above; he was responsible for the appalling slaughter of millions of healthy animals in 2001; he shows no remorse or regret for any of this things; he seems extraordinary; no expression at all of sympathy, or regret. Just completely cold. Have a read at this article https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8951/e59ad3931dce8dbfd8cda6cb96f0663afefb.pdf?_ga=2.78330647.2035581988.1585464702-1751260321.1583268529
….. it just talks about the terrible mess that was FMD 2001; with the Fergoid in control, with an RM Anderson (sir to you!) who had left Oxford shortly before: google on why he left; and then with govt contacts, got the FMD contract; ….. a slick move …………..
Geoff, re RM Anderson (Professor/Sir), see this link for some background… https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/roy.anderson
Involvements with the UK Ministry of Defence, Wellcome, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the WHO. He’s also been a non-executive director of GlaxoSmithKline (not currently I think), and was also involved with an interesting company called Hakluyt (look them up), but not currently listed. And was on the Advisory Board of The Vaccine Confidence Project according to their 2015 report. The VCP is a sort of ‘big brother’ surveillance organisation monitoring ‘vaccine confidence’ which has been supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and which appears reluctant to disclose its conflicts of interest. Here’s my BMJ Rapid Response discussing the Vaccine Confidence Project and its platform provided by the BBC: ‘Pharma-led chorus dominates the public narrative on vaccination: https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l312/rr-6
Heard on BBC radio news this morning, a minister: “The first job of government is to protect the people and save lives and this is based on the best scientific and medical advice”. “The economic advice from the OBR is not based on science”.
Thick or what? The Fergoid is not a scientist as he cannot comprehend there may be another solution (to the non problem). The minister has no ability to comprehend the deaths directly resulting from isolating people, taking away their income, and destroying businesses.
Why aren’t we hearing more about this!
https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/ace-inhibitors-arbs-and-covid-19-what-gps-need-to
Here’s the only way out that I can see in the near future: if it turns out that this disease has already run through a large enough part of the population that there is a reasonable degree of population immunity already. In other words, it is not the lockdown that has caused the decline in spread, but the natural end of the epidemic, for the moment at least. We will experience further epidemic events from this virus, as we do with other colds and flu’s, but hopefully by then the really damaging epidemic – of hysteria, fear and panic – will have receded.
There are reasons in the data for holding out hope for this. We do not know the prevalence, but we do know it is much higher than was previously thought, and we think the disease is substantially more infectious than was thought. It’s arguable that the lockdowns would have come too late to prevent a large proportion of the population being infected. See the detailed discussion of the numbers here:
https://thefatemperor.com/ep66-risk-management-expert-and-engineering-manager-discuss-coronavirus-strategies/
Basically, it appears the declines did mostly start before the formal lockdowns, and it does appear countries without lockdowns are not experiencing noticeably worse epidemics. But we will only know for sure as more data come in over the next few weeks.
Mark, I don’t the normal system will last another few weeks, it’s at breaking point.
The problem is that the government can force the lockdown to remain for quite a long time, even as catastrophic and probably irreparable damage is done. It can do so as long as people think the lockdown is saving them from the awful plague that propaganda has built this disease up to be, in their minds. And that propaganda continues apace – see today’s WHO statement that this disease is “ten times more deadly than swine flu”. That’s pure speculation on their part because they don;t know the disease’s prevalence in the population, and without knowing that they just don’t know how deadly it is, but it’s reported nevertheless as authoritative fact.
‘The real pandemic may be a deficiency of vitamin D’ say’s Renu Mahtani in this video presentation….. not just how vitamin D3 is important in helping the body fight Covid 19, but also the mechanism of ARDS in lung problems explained in a way both professionals and most of us can easily understand.
Absolutely agree. It is a seco-steroid hormone, not actually a vitamin at all. There are vast amounts of up-to-date and historical studies that confirm its importance to immunity.
If vitamin D isn’t actually a vitamin, why are told that we don’t need extra of this vitamin, when there are at least some studies, which suggest a few humans are deficient?
If it does provide some protection against cancer and it’s derived from a mechanism which needs exposure to sun, why are we told to cover up and put on sun blocks etc?
How on earth are we supposed to make decisions when all the decisions are made for us by experts who may be incorrect?
Who defines what news is fake or dodgy?
Below is only one article, don’t know what they are selling or how the writer profits, or what agenda they have, but at least it’s almost understandable!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/secosteroid
Cheers from confused of Swindon!
Steve: I’m sure you know it really, as we are all being gamed 24/7 by Big Pharma, Bad Food, and the Monster Agri-Ind machine. They spend millions of dosh playing you, and then they game you over-and-over (check-out Barry Marshall’s fight against the ulcer-Barons). The pattern is plain to see once you ‘get it’. And no, I’m not a Vegan, but I do try hard to eat well and be LCHF (it works!), and stay away from Statins and Mr Windows products (and no, most certainly not Apple!). Some doctors sadly do have a God-complex (…its hard sometimes to be humble), but now we have an IT entrepreneurs and politicians love-in ‘suffering’ from much the same hubris. Interestingly, the original ancient-Greek meaning of hubris was the pleasure gained by humiliating someone by forcefully subjecting them to anal rape. Mmmmm.
Governments are in the thrall of big pharma. They have a blinkered viewpoint. The RDA of many vitamins and minerals is way too low. Vitamin D is the most obvious example of this. It’s my opinion that if everybody over the age of 50 was prescribed around 5000iu of it a day (with occasional testing of blood levels, and magnesium and vitamin K prescribed where necessary) that the burden on the health services would be massively reduced.
Hi
Governments have to be in thrall to big pharma because the underlying structure dictates it. The holy grail of global neo liberalism makes us all consumers. The more we consume the more we have to work, like some giant merry-go-round.
The running joke with my wife (who lovingly lets me play around with ideas) is that we consume until we drop dead. In early life we eat and get fat, buy plastic toys with a built-in obsolescence. In later life we consume drugs to treat our over consumption of 5 or so decades earlier.
Yes, our consumption will ensure continued craziness and full employment.
The underlying structures are the key, change the underlying structure, and we get a different outcome. Until that time, (possibly never), rubbish thinking, rubbish ideas and rubbish outcomes will tend to prevail.
Such fun!
This was excellent!!!
The only concern with vitamin d is that it seems to increase ACE2 expression, and ACE2 is the binding protein for covid19. ACE2 might be therapeutic once infected, but will it increases susceptibility?
Yes, I’ve been wondering the same thing.
I still think taking vitamin D is probably still a net positive. There was a small study on people with hypertension in China that showed that people on ACE inhibitors – which increase ACE2 – had better outcomes than those that weren’t on them. Not definitive proof of anything, I know. I’m still taking 2000iu a day.
Watch the video above as this will clarify a very complex system
Tony, thank you for posting.
Simon C, having now watched this video, it makes the case for vitamin D increasing the expression of ACE2 being a good thing, and also explains other associated helpful mechanisms. Very interesting.
Last night I finished reading a new book on vitamin D and sunlight exposure. It mentioned that the group most deficient are retired folks. It just said once retired one is less likely to go outside. Also the older one is the less capable one is able to make vitamin D from sun exposure.
It had me thinking, in my parents neighborhood, where most are older and retired, I’ve seen and heard many elderly decide to no longer go outdoors due to the lock down.
Soul, there are a couple of videos I’ve watched which suggest vitamin D or lack of vitamin D is possibly having an effect.
This video is 20 minutes long, if people have the time, I think it’s worth watching.
Dr John Campbell a retired British doctor, suggests we are likely to be deficient in this country during the months when the sun is at it’s lowest.
He reads from a large BMJ study. 15th February 2017 and suggest we all take vitamin D supplements.
A nice clear explanation.
Yes! Even if older people do go outside at the right time of the day, with adequate skin uncovered and stay in the sun for long enough, the chance their skin will convert UVB to vitamin D is low.
Who was the author of the book on vitamin D you have just read?
Lower still if they are on statins
Seconding Annette’s request here: what is that book on Vit D? My life changed – no exaggeration – after discovering a severe Vitamin D deficiency, which the NHS weren’t going to think of testing for, which I only found out by a series of complete flukes. Anything that’s easy to point friends to (or lend to them) will be nice 🙂
Excellent address – Easy for anyone to understand and with good graphics. Should be mandatory viewing by every doctor and every medical student – part and parcel of a medical qualification : MBBS, / MD. Crucial. Thanks for putting this up Tony, am sharing onwards, help support my own admonitions !
The answer is HERD IMMUNITY!! It is exactly how humans have always responded to such outbreaks.
MUST-WATCH noted epidemiologist on herd immunity – https://youtu.be/lGC5sGdz4kg
Read about Sweden’s herd immunization success story – https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120805778/coronavirus-to-swedes-its-the-rest-of-the-world-engaging-in-a-reckless-experiment
From a business perspective- we have an overpopulated world -isn’t this a convenient and politically blame -free solution ?
The trouble with that theory is that the numbers that will die from this disease under any response are trivial in population terms. But the economic costs of the response to it are already catastrophic and growing every day the lockdown, and the disproportionate terror that sustains it, remains in place.
The Black Death of around 1350 is estimated to have killed up to half the population of Europe. But within a century population had recovered to its pre-Black Death level. The World Wars had even less impact on population growth – indeed war and disaster stimulates reproduction.
Tom Welsh: You can bet we’ll see a Covid Boom, like the post-WWII Baby Boom, if there are any fertile couples left, and it will be just in time for the next flu season, oh boy!
Susan Robinson: As opposed to mowing them down with Uzii’s? Agreed! Less bloody anyway.
Thank you
Investigating the impact of influenza on excess mortality in all ages in Italy during recent seasons (2013/14–2016/17 seasons)https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971219303285
“A mortality rate of 10.7 per 1,000 inhabitants was observed in the winter season 2014/2015 (more than 375,000 deaths in absolute terms), corresponding to an estimated 54,000 excess deaths (+9.1%) as compared to 2014 (Signorelli and Odone, 2016), representing the highest reported mortality rate since the Second World War in Italy (UN, 2019).”Fifty four thousand excess deaths. Fifty four.
Not a single school closed. Not even a real attempt to understadn what happened in that year. Fifty four thousand excess deaths.
“As for a vaccine? The solution is so distant…”
I suppose that if a vaccine does/does not appear in the next few weeks/months it will prove/disprove the Big Pharma theory behind all this i.e.
vaccine = planned
no vaccine = not planned
Charles Gale: We will see one or more vaccines before the year is out, and likely something will go horribly wrong. Even though the main vaccine-promoters (other than Gates), namely Dr. Paul PrOffit and Dr. Peter Hotez, are sounding alarms about this, Bill “Titanic” Gates is ramming full speed ahead. As awful as PrOffit and Hotez usually are on this issue, they are right this time. But the gubment is on board, and that is all that matters. Fauci goes whichever way the wind blows.
See: WHO Public statement for collaboration on COVID-19 vaccine development:
https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/13-04-2020-public-statement-for-collaboration-on-covid-19-vaccine-development
13 April 2020
Here’s a reason to question the received opinion that the lockdown was effective. The peak in UK deaths seems to have come too soon. The generally accepted average incubation and time to death numbers (based on the Chinese figures) are 5.1 and 17.8 days respectively, giving an average time to death from infection of 23 days. If we had been at a peak of new infections when the lockdown was introduced on 23rd March, and the lockdown drastically cut the rate of new infections, then we should have seen a peak of deaths some time this week, but instead the current figures suggest the peak was last weekend. Granted, the numbers may change as reporting is clarified, but those are the numbers we have at the moment.
I’d be very interested to hear any thoughts on this.
NB: one issue open to question here is what is the time to death? The figure I’ve used is from the 13th March study referenced in the notorious Imperial College report of 16th March:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.09.20033357v1
Other figures around seem to suggest a rather shorter time, but that might be based upon a much earlier study of 24th January which said that “the median number of days from the occurence of the first symptom to death was 14.0 “:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jmv.25689
The peak at my local (English, rural) hospital is expected around 4th May, apparently! It keeps getting moved along.
Mark, The cynic in me says that maybe, just maybe Gov.UK could see that the infection rate had peaked before the 23rd March and thus in the future claim it was their foresight (in ordering a lockdown) that caused the death rate to be lower than 250K when the decline was just the norm for a viral epidemic.
Roger
Roger – This could be lines from Midsummer’s Dream – the ‘Mechanicals’ – just watching again – wonderful stuff – I think Shakespeare would have had a field day with this scenario as it unfolds in all its machinations and total nonsense before us – Shakespeare, where art thou ? The casting would be such fun … This is the Russel T Davies adaptation – good stuff.
Finally seen a reference to this in the mainstream media, but it’s for Germany, by a professor of economics at Hanover:
https://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichten/coronavirus/warum-deutschlands-lockdown-falsch-ist-%E2%80%93-und-schweden-vieles-besser-macht/ar-BB12E6km
Interesting corroboration that the same effect is seen in Germany.
A major problem is the chaotic nature of deaths recording in this country, with who knows how many deaths at eg nursing homes possibly not included in the figure, and who knows what criteria applied to decide what is a covid death. Nevertheless, it remains the case that according to the figures at Worldometer, the peak in UK deaths was between the 8th and 11th April, when 23 days after the lockdown would have been 15th April. What we are certainly not seeing is a sharp decline in deaths after 23 days after lockdown, which is what presumably would have happened if the lockdown had stopped a previously rapidly spreading disease in its tracks. Though the maths is not straightforward, and it would be interesting to see modeling for this (though not carried out by Imperial College, who must surely be regarded as utterly discredited by now).
Maybe there is an effect from the recording only of hospital deaths, if that’s what the numbers reflect? Though it could be that hospitalisation only of the most serious cases would suggest quicker deaths, or that it would suggest longer drawn out deaths due to hospital treatment. I don;t know, though I suspect the 23 days is based mostly on hospital cases anyway. If the effect is reproduced in Germany that reduces the prospects for an argument that there was something special in the circumstances here in the UK that reduced the times to death.
My first hypothesis, if there is no simple explanation in the maths, would be simply the obvious one that the virus spread peaked before the shutdown for other reasons – either because of steps taken voluntarily or because other factors in the virus’s lifecycle caused it to do so – climate (as with colds) or speed of spread, or something we don’t know about (this would also explain why similar peaks and declines have been seen in countries without lockdowns). It also ties in with other indications that the progress of the virus generally pays little regard to lockdowns:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-israeli-prof-claims-simple-stats-show-virus-plays-itself-out-after-70-days/
https://www.thecollegefix.com/university-researchers-find-no-additional-decline-in-coronavirus-infection-rate-from-lockdowns/
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/Infekt/EpidBull/Archiv/2020/Ausgaben/17_20_SARS-CoV2_vorab.pdf?__blob=publicationFile#page=5
typo: “that many more people could XXX as a result of the lockdown than will die from coronavirus.”
Thank you for your sober thought and a great piece.
Kelly
Originally the exit strategy was universal covid vaccination, but that does not look realistic. More profits can be made selling test kits. Politicians are now sold on the idea of massive testing to control spreading the virus. The next step is to initiate the China protocol to identify who can be released from isolation.
Option B: Wait for the curve to flatten, the original plan. In the meantime stockpile supplies of ventilators and other equipment to meet the anticipated surge in infections when isolation is removed. Preparedness will involve accurate modelling provided by the government.
Option C: Wait and see what Trump will do. In other words carry on and hope problem goes away.
Option D: Re-assess the data to determine actual severity of the virus and who is at risk.
Charles Gale, Your vaccine yes=planned, vaccine no=unplanned is more thought provoking than I first figured. If these ongoing ‘events’ have been engineered by big Pharma and /or whoever else, then your equation likely rings true. Likewise if a vaccine isn’t developed, then there’s a degree of absolution possibly. However, IF a vaccine miraculously appears, and IF this then satisfies the logic of your equation, ( in which I think you’re correct), then that vaccine doesn’t necessarily have to work does it? It’s already open knowledge that we still don’t have an effective vaccine for the ‘common cold’…which from what I gather, is just another corona virus. There’s an even more insidious angle. The announcement of a supposed vaccine could be flexibly timed to suit the status of an economy based on a sliding scale of failure-rate. You could,’t muddy the waters any better; it’s almost perfectly orchestrated if even a fraction of it is true.
Rant aside, great summary Chris regarding us played and gamed incessantly and we still have no answers sadly. In particular, I ilked your use of the word hubris. It’s wonderfully descriptive when apprpropriate. I must confess to quoting it often but I was unaware of the full anatomical explanation. So, in this case completely appropriate,and of course we’re being made to pay for it aswell. Business as usual then, or not, as the case may be.. .
I was about to give everybody the benefits of my opinion. However I read Charles Lamb’s splendid coinage, Ultracrepidarian: somebody who gives opinions on matters beyond his knowledge.
So instead I’ve provided a link.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-ult1.htm
Apologies Shaun vis-a-vis the hubris comment. I typo’d you as Chris for some befuddled reason. But thanks again for your graphic Greek translation!
Well, here’s a thought that occurs to me regarding risk. I am 62, generally in good health and have lots of supplements I believe would help me cope with covid. I am also high risk because I take a chemo pill and I do have high blood pressure. I have stopped my captopril, which is probably the main reason its a risk. But last year I went 10 months and 11 months respectively not seeing my grandchildren because after the usual winter of not visiting, I began to realize my cancer situation was out of control and I was not well enough to travel. So I was down for the next 6 months, 6 weeks at a clinic. I saw them all twice this fall/early winter. So here I am – feeling much better but who knows? What if this is my last good year? I know I should be optimistic and all that but…do I want to spend my possibly last good year unable to leave my house, or do I want to see my grandchildren? Seeing as how my main reluctance to die is to not see and help my grandchildren grow up, you can guess the answer.
Anna, this is terrible. I am so sorry that you have to go through a situation that was already very very difficult even without covid 19, but with? My dear, I feel for you, I really do.
Best wishes, Yolanda
It just seems ironic to me that end-stage cancer patients (which I currently am not) are told by their doctors to go home and enjoy their family and their remaining time.
Well – I now try this “serious” input from “freewheeling” Sweden.
It is rather relaxed here which confirms the view of Ivor Cummins et al in their podcast above – great talk to me.
We thus decided to have a nice lunch at our favorite restaurant today in our small town and was greeted by the staff as one of their favorite customer – nice feeling. The place was populated but not overcrowded so “social” distances were easily guarded which is also the official “voluntary” practice in Sweden now and this is fine with me.although I am one of the presumably vulnerable, at 70 + with CVD, and one of those who are prone to “suffer”. Though with 15 g o vitamin C daily I think I am in a better position than many of my peers.
thanks Goran: you are sort of a key guy to us: reporting how things are in Sweden; as we understand you are all doing ok; and despite the world’s MSM pressurising your govt to put you all under house arrest; like the rest of us are; your govt has resisted this; so to some extent, you are a sort of control experiment for the world; we hope your govt will hold their position; even the Danes seem to be slowly seeing the light: and maybe slowly release their serfs from house arrest. Keep telling us how things are!! best wishes
The Swedish input that I am testing is Mackmyra Ek single malt, aged in oak. It seems pretty good to me
Myself I though prefer the Scotch, Ardbeg 🙂
Cheers to Malcolm.
Thanks!
Yes, I am very impressed by our state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell who with pride is riding the present “storm” blowing from all sides, not least from the president of the US. He has though many admirers i Sweden, including me, and among the “man in the street”.
He knows what he is talking about!
To me the internal attacks on him reeks of Big Pharma advocates (“vitamin deniers”); there are surely some of these guys around.
Välkommen tillbaka Goran.
The Telegraph today not so impressed with Anders. Suggesting it’s a failed experiment or words to that effect. “Sweden has shown how not to tackle coronavirus, as it fights now to save face” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/16/sweden-has-shown-not-tackle-coronavirus-fights-now-save-face/
Would appreciate your opinion on the accuracy of the article.
I have a cunning plan for governments everywhere. First you create a panic byspreading horror stories via the media about this new killer virus. Then as governments do, you also panic and/or cave in due to emotional blackmail from all and sundry, then , under pressure, issue insane measures like lockdowns. And of course long after the horse has bolted.
In the mean time you keep padding the number of deaths from covid so the punters stay at home, cowering behind the sofa with a blanket over their heads. Then you realise covid19 is not the plague and people aren’t dying in the streets. Bad news is, you are not the only one noticing this.
Meanwhile the economy worldwide has crashed. How to justify your lockdown? Keep padding the nu mbers of deaths for awhile, then start reporting the real numbers. And hey presto, you have justified the insane lockdown cause lookee lookee here the numbers are dropping so it worked, pad erm pat yourself on the back.
And, also of the good, you can, as the numbers keep dropping, slowly remove the lockdown. Huzzah, what a wonderful government you are cause now the punters are allowed outside again. Never mind that everyone had that right all along. Brillant plan except for the ickle fact that worldwide the economy is in ruins and the fall out from the panpanic will claim more lifes and/or quality of life than covid19.
Was there an evil plan behind all this? Probably not, merely your basic human utter stupidity. Or something!
Cheerio from the Netherlands,
Yolanda, slightly bored with covid19 idiocy
Yolanda: Colossal, historically unprecedented human stupidity. Politicians doing what they do best.
spot on Yolanda
Yes I tend to agree. IMO the shutdown is the end and Covid 19 just the means to attain it.
Here as in many other places there was a strong local economy, which has been trashed and much of it will never recover. However the big corporations and multinationals are not so much affected. I see them moving in to buy the local businesses at pennies in the pound and employing the ex-business owners on minimum wage zero hours contracts. Thus a lot of the profit which currently circulates locally leaves the area.
The latest weekly dataset of mortality registered in England and Wales has been published by the ONS which provides data up to the end of week 14 of the year (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales).
In week 14 we see a massive increase in the count of deaths compared to the previous 5-year average for the same week.
2020:
All causes = 16,387
Respiratory diseases (ICD-10 J00-J99) = 2,106
Where Covid-19 was mentioned = 3,475
2013-2018 average:
All causes = 10,007
Respiratory diseases (ICD-10 J00-J99) = 1,537
Extra deaths (all causes) = 16,387 – 10,007 = 6,380
Extra deaths (J00-J99) = 2,106 – 1,537 = 569
If _all_ the deaths where Covid-19 is mentioned and all the _extra_ J00-J99 deaths are attributed solely to Covid-19 then there are still a very large death count unexplained.
6380 – 3475 – 569 = 2336
2,336 more than average and not attributable to Covid-19 deaths. Clearly something bad has happened in week 14 of 2020. The lockdown was implemented in week 13 and deaths are usually registered within 5 days of death. Correlation is not causation.
What does this mean? Very difficult to know. Almost any interpretation is possible. We are running into very difficult territory when we cannot be sure who is dying of what, or why. I am keeping my eye on this, to see where it is all heading.
Maybe the discrepancy is because those people dying outside hospital are not being tested for Covid 19 (eg those in care homes) so there is a large cohort of people possibly dying from Covid 19 that is not being recorded as such?
As I understand it, only 10% of deaths are outside hospital – in these figures.
In reply to anglosvizzera:
If the discrepancy is due to deaths outside hospital and therefore without a firm Covid-19 diagnosis I would expect them to appear in the ‘J00-J99 Respiratory diseases’ section and so reduce my ‘unexplained’ figure.
However, if your suggestion is correct and many of these deaths _are_ actually due to Covid-19 then we are about to enter even more difficult times.
Apologies for a minor (?) mistake:
– The numbers I quoted above are based on the average of weekly ONS stats from 2010-2018, not 2013-2018 as I stated. 9 years not 5 years.
– I had initially excluded 2019 from the average in case it was showing any indication of an increase towards the end of the year.
– If you extend the averaging to encompass 2010-2019 (a full ten years) then the unaccounted for deaths count reduces to 2,311.
– If you confine the averaging to encompass 2013-2018 (as I claimed it was) then the unaccounted for deaths count reduces to 2,069.
– If you average 2014-2019 (5 year average) the unaccounted for deaths count is 2,108.
Pretty much however you cut it there are about 2,000 deaths not apparently attributable to Covid-19 that are not adequately explained in the dataset.
do folks follow this site?
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com
Where I am in the U.S., they are running TV ads telling people to go to the hospital if they think they’ve had a stroke, heart attack or some other serious illness because so few people that should be having these events are showing up at the hospital.
Several years ago, I took my partner to A&E because she complained of a sharp pain in her chest. She was checked out and nothing was wrong – it was just one of those things, and had already stopped before we got to the hospital! I suppose in the current situation we would have waited a bit, because she wasn’t breathless, nauseous, or deteriorating. In the current circumstances, possibly people are feeling justified in using a bit more common sense before rushing to A&E.
Here is a list of possible heart attack symptoms culled from the web:
Pressure, tightness, pain, or a squeezing or aching sensation in your chest or arms that may spread to your neck, jaw or back
Nausea, indigestion, heartburn or abdominal pain
Shortness of breath
Cold sweat
Fatigue
Lightheadedness or sudden dizziness
I would argue that such advice is next to useless, because every one of those symptoms can arise in all sorts of other ways. I do wonder if part of the reason the NHS is overloaded (even pre-COVID-19) that it is flooded with false alarms.
(Malcolm please comment if you don’t agree – or even discard this post)
I think it is an interesting point for discussion
Here is an update to my earlier posts on the German lawyer Beate Bahner.
Frau Bahner, last week brought an emergency action to the German Federal Constitutional Court, asking them to set aside most of the restrictions in force concerning Covid 19. It was refused on procedural grounds. In disgust, she resigned her licence as a lawyer, for conscientious reasons. As lawyer specialising in medical law, she felt she could no longer ever get justice for her clients.
Then on Easter Sunday Evening, just after posting on her blog (which keeps getting taken down), she noticed two men in a car blocking the exit from her garage. She was scared; she is about 50 and lives, I believe, alone. She left her house surreptitiously and phoned her secretary asking her to please pick her up from a nearby street.
She waited but her secretary did not turn up or phone back. She eventually flagged down a passing car and asked for a lift. They refused that and suggested she phone the police, which she did. Then she thought better of this, but she was too late. The police arrived and when she told them what had happened they arrested her, handcuffed her with her hands behind her back and forced her down into the mud. She was taken to a psychiatric hospital in Heidelburg, which turned out to be only a few doors away from her office.
When she objected to entering the building, a police woman grabbed her head and rammed it against the pavement from some height. A doctor came out and she was escorted to an isolation room with no bed or toilet but with a hand-basin which at least had water. She was left there overnight.
The following morning a lot changed. She was moved to a very nice room with a bath, bed, toilet and other facilities. Apparently, someone called Jackie had seen her arrest, traced her and arranged for clean clothes and some books to be brought in, and her mobile has been returned. The above account is taken from a phone call to her sister which she asked to be uploaded, where it has been copied many times. She has ask to see the papers authorising her compulsory detention, which have to be certified by a judge, and has been told they are being prepared.
Enquiries by supporters asking after her, have confirmed that a woman with her name is a patient there, but she cannot have visitors or see a lawyer at present.
It is difficult to follow her account at times, as she is clearly traumatised by what has happened to her and is very overwrought. But she appears quite rational, if very naive for a middle-aged woman.
Her remark to her sister, that things are far, far, far worse than she ever imagined before she brought the case, seems justified by her situation. However, she is now comfortable, has eaten, and is being well-treated. She does feel safe and hopes to relax and, when recovered, think how to proceed
Enabling breaches of the constitution are criminal offences under German law. Most carry a penalty of up to 5 years in prison, so one can see why the authorities are so worried.
Perhaps you could provide more information on this. If it true, it is very worrying. If it is not…
I cannot vouch for the truth of Frau Bahner’s phone call, but today, the earlier editions of the mainstream German online press, were full of it. Their accounts then were mainly based on Frau Bahner’s telephone call as I reported it last night, though in some reports the police do claim she struggled and kicked them first. Since then the accounts seem, from my memory, to have been re-edited.
Commentators are now presuming, that because she is still in the hospital, her detention has been approved by a judge, but I have not heard confirmation of that.
Frau Bahner’s legal case was based on the fact the the Infektions-Schutzgesetz, the Federal Law which deals with infectious diseases, which was revised in 2016, was carefully drafted to ensure that it remained in harmony with the constitution or basic law, the Grundgesetz. This law sets out the principles which must apply when any detailed regulations are drawn up by the different Länder, which have considerable autonomy in this, however much the Federal government strives for uniformity.
One of the main principles of section 5, which deals with the restrictions on individuals to prevent or mitigate epidemics is that of specificity. Measures such as quarantine etc. can only be targeted at named people by means of a written legally binding order. 4 defined categories of such people exist:
1. Kranker a person suffering from an infectious disease.
2. Krankheitsverdächtiger a person whose symptoms suggest he will develop the disease.
3. Ausscheider a person who is excreting the pathogen, who could be a source of infection to the general public, without being either 1 or 2.
4. Ansteckungsverdächtiger a person who one can assume is carrying the pathogen, without being 1,2,or 3.
In all cases, there has to be evidence which would be acceptable to a court of law.
There is no provision for blanket prohibitions covering unnamed people. Therefore, Frau Bahner argues, such regulations cannot lead to the loss of the general rights granted under the constitution, e g freedom of movement and association, to demonstrate peacefully without advance permission, the right to freedom of opinion, the right to work, to run a business etc. Therefore passing or enforcing such regulations is both illegal and unconstitutional and subject to both criminal penalties and civil damages.
Changes to the constitution in Germany require a two thirds majority in both houses of the parliament. Presumably the government knew there was not chance of passing these and hoped the public would not challenge the regulations in court.
No more news about Frau Bahner tonight, but there have been small demonstrations in several towns in Germany, where protesters are carrying copies of Grundgesetz and showing the relevant clauses to the police when challenged. A good mixture of old and young. Will this movement grow?
Shirley
Very selective data from your source by all accounts. The lady has a problem. Who resigns from their profession on the basis of one case ?
Russian Baloney news if you ask me.
This sounds very similar to the damage to the lungs from pulmonary hypertension which can occur secondary to some heart conditions, e g mitral valve stenosis, where there is back pressure from the partly blocked left side of the heart. This in turn puts back pressure on the right side of the heart which may eventually fail. Some patients cannot benefit from surgery to free or replace the valve because of this previous damage to their lungs.
For myself, I suffer from a moderate degree of mitral valve regurgitation. It’s symptom-less at rest, but even very light exercise makes some of the blood flow the wrong way. This leads to back pressure in the lungs and breathlessness. This forces me to sit down and rest after walking about 50 yards, but then, (over 6 years after diagnosis), I still recover almost immediately.
No idea if she is a member of the AFD, but I think that is unlikely.
She sounds like an old-fashioned, conservative/liberal to me, possibly quite religious.
She has been shocked out of her naive belief in the integrity of the German legal system. She feels she can only keep her personal integrity by resigning. She swore an oath to defend the constitution when she received her licence to practice and she feels she is obeying the spirit of that oath.
(My own German teacher at school was a Czech citizen, a German-speaking, Lutheran jurist in Prague, who resigned when the German army invaded and fled to Paris rather than serve the Nazi regime. Her original motivation was that she did not wish to break the oath she had made to uphold the Czech constitution. I do not know how many other people make a similar decision. Jews, of course were simply sacked.)
She says she called the police for help and they arrested her without warning or legal cause. If her arrest was unlawful she might claim the right of self-defence. She also claims one police woman assaulted her. In my experience, it the police have unlawfully assaulted anyone, they always claim self-defence too. I was not there so I don’t know the truth and neither does the press.
My contact is Austrian, in tourism business, astute, early 20’s. I simply c.&p.d his response following his checks with German friends and media. His English practise might have lapsed of late so translates not entirely clear but he suggests a link to FDR. BTE he has absolutely no axe to grind. I repeat the following extract “On the day she was brought to the psychiatric clinic, she was stopping cars on the street and told them to call the police, as she feared that the was observed and followed by someone. When police arrived, she attacked them and made an confused (sic) impression to the officers and spoke about threat to her and to others, so the officers brought her to the clinic as it is usual in a case like that”
I likewise think the lockdown is the wrong approach but we need all the facts not a selection in this and all cases.
Nuff said.
Jerome. Please read my post below.
Except that regular police are usually quite benign, perhaps even more so in the state of Baden-Württemberg that has had a green governor for quite some time and in the fiercely liberal and green city of Heidelberg, when with dealing with a distraught middle aged lady lawyer.
Sorry – that should be “link to AFD” not to FDR ! My reply at 10:17pm on15th April.
Re Robert the Bruce. She resigned at first attempt. He kept trying & trying until he succeeded. My experience of German police is that they are very friendly & professional. The further East you go you might find a different experience
shirley3349, thank you for that post. How near could any of us be to the same treatment?
Shirley
This is headline stuff. Surely a newspaper has picked up on this & a link can be made available.
What a disgusting world we are looking into!
I got the following from a non biased contact;
“research about the case of the above mentioned woman, which is by the way, part of the far right wing party AFD. (Alternative für Deutschland)
First of all, several reliable newspapers in Germany have published something about the case. All of them state, that Beate Bahner has called for a demonstration all over Germany to express rejection about the taken measures of the Government of Germany in regard to Covid-19. Moreover, she published a “regulation” which states, that all of the measures are no more on her own website. After that, police have blocked her website due to “Threat to public welfare”. On the day she was brought to the psychiatric clinic, she was stopping cars on the street and told them to call the police, as she feared that the was observed and followed by someone. When police arrived, she attacked them and made an confused impression to the officers and spoke about threat to her and to others, so the officers brought her to the clinic as it is usual in a case like that. In the clinic, the doctor also stated that she appeared confused so he decided to keep her in the clinic. The audio file which was supposedly taken in a call with her sister in the clinic.
For me, it seems like she has a personal problem, rather than being victim of a conspiracy”
I have notice so many on twitter and other media are keen on Sweden failing. It seems that a lot of people have invested so much of themselves into the approach we are seeing in most places that they can’t bear the thought of Sweden suggesting something different. And it also seems to me that some/ a lot of people’s puritanical tendencies have taken hold. Always dangerous.
I’m glad Goran is back to tell us what is really occurring
Dr Kendrick this is so far the only article I found in english about frau Beate Bahner. Hope this helps https://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/fake-covid-19-pandemic-german-lawyer-beate-bahner-sewerly-beaten-by-police-and-take-to-psych-ward.817558/
Btw I have read her complaints (in german ) about the whole covid 19 situation and her pov is similar to that of yours. She is not gaga, on the contrary. As a lawyer she is specialized in medical law so she knows what she is talking about.
Like you I find this very worrying. BTW in Saxony you can now be put in a madhouse if you refuse to self isolate.
Personally I am beginning to wonder if there is much difference between life in a madhouse or outside in corona madness.
Yolanda, I am wondering what Stefan Lanka thinks about this situation.
This is the article from her local paper:
https://www.rnz.de/nachrichten/heidelberg_artikel,-festnahme-von-beate-b-aus-einem-meter-hoehe-den-kopf-auf-den-steinboden-geknallt-update-_arid,509450.html
Sounds like she had a psychotic episode, was rambling in the middle of the road, a passerby called the police and she started kicking the officers. She also recorded an audio statement in the psychiatric ward and sent it to the paper. I can see no attempt by the paper to hide the statement or that conspiracy theorists have pricked up their ears.
I also wonder if the board you have linked to is run by Russian trolls. How else would you end up with that weird spelling of severly?
typo: severely
Eric
I suggest you listen to the recording of her phone call to her sister made on Easter Monday morning?
My judgment is that she is clearly distressed and overwrought, but psychotic? During my nursing career I met many psychotic people and most were far worse than she seemed to be. I doubt whether she would have been admitted to hospital under normal circumstances. If she spoke the truth, she has been through a highly distressing experience and was reacting within normal limits.
One of my theories is that the hospital may be keeping her in for her own protection and for observation for any head injury she may have suffered. About this, her head certainly did not hit the ground in free fall from one metre, (not an exaggerated height if she was then standing); she says it was held by a policewoman. This happened, not near her home but outside the hospital before the doctor intervened. The following day, (Monday), once she had calmed down, the medical staff may have largely believed her account and concluded that she was in some way set up by the Verfassungsschutz, (a notorious secret service, targeting, in theory, those who act unconstitutionally, but this tends to mean, in practice, those who are against government policy), together with the police. The medical staff then persuaded her to stay in voluntarily for a few days until the fuss has died down, so she can then leave when she has found somewhere to go where she feels safe. We shall see.
She does now believe that the legal system in Germany is corrupt and can no longer protect the people, and so has refused to be a part of it any more. Her website article is a statement of what she regards as the legal constitutional position, which she implies should hold until the court makes detailed rulings on the Covid 19 regulations for each Land. Her call for peaceful demonstrations is her exercising one of her her constitutional rights, which cannot be legally set aside without a parliamentary vote, a two thirds majority in both houses. Remember, her legal education and experience has convinced her that both the Land governments and the police are acting illegally.
Proving the constitutional court is corrupt is well nigh impossible, so she thinks only a popular movement can now restore constitutional order, either by embarrassing the constitutional court into hearing the case in full, or by the authorities backing down and rescinding the regulations well before the 9th June, when they would have to be renewed. She believes, that the Verfassungsgericht is now in effect verfassungswidrig, (that the constitutional court is acting against the constitution). Time will show whether this is mistaken or not.
Remember, Frau Bahner has no objection to measures to counter the epidemic that are legal, that is restrictions on the four categories of infected or possibly infected people I listed in my previous post.
In any case, Frau Bahner needs time to recover from her ordeal and decide what she is going to do next. I, and I hope those who read my posts, wish her well.
Shirley Can you say if she is or is not a member of AFD ?
Did she attack police?
PS She obviously has never heard of Robert the Bruce, “if at first you don’t succeed try, try and try again.”
I have just read on the website of one of Beate Bahner’s supporters that she is now free.
She was released from the hospital after 24 hours, as the doctors did not apply to detain her any longer against her will.
She appeared in court this afternoon charged with posting on her website the call to demonstrate in violation of the Covid 19 regulations. She explained to the court her motivation and was then released. She was not charged with assaulting the police. There is possibly another charge to come, something about identifying a police woman and her phone number on her website, an offence against data protection laws.
According to Sean Henschel, a lawyer whom the website owner asked to attend the hearing, (though she conducted her own defence), she was fine and delighted that she might get her day in court. As this would give her another platform from which to attack the constitutional validity of the Covid 19 regulations, it will be interesting to see whether or not they go ahead with the prosecution.
Her website is still down, and she might apply to have it reinstated, because the site hosts claim they acted on the instructions of the State Prosecutor.
Jerome: Bruce won!
“Last month Reuters news service reported – falsely — that a popular Facebook post about Bill Gates planning to use microchip implants to fight the coronavirus pandemic was a “false claim.” The news service linked to the censored Facebook post.”
https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/bill-gates-and-intellectual-ventures-funds-microchip-implant-vaccine-technology1
AhNotepad: Celeste McGovern is a reliable source, and I have read this elsewhere as well.
‘ “Testing in patients would typically require at least a year and probably longer” senior co-author of the study, dermatology professor Louise Falo said, “… [but] recently announced revisions to the normal processes suggest we may be able to advance this faster”. ‘
Doesn’t bode well.
Greenmedinfo is a great source for genuine information. I trust Sayer Ji who owns the website but it has been deleted from Google searches. Why, you may ask? It’s Google’s agenda, to delete any source that does not conform to its promotion of Big Pharma. And I am not a conspiracy theorist, Google is.
Are the cracks beginning to show? Care homes start revolt (I hope) and on a UK Tv news channel too.
Hi Dr Kendrick
Have followed your writings since the ” Red Flag ” days. Came across this study and wondered if you were aware of it. It indicates there might be a benefit to ACE/ARB drugs.
The Use of Adjuvant Therapy in Preventing Progression to Severe Pneumonia in Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019: A Multicenter Data Analysis | medRxiv [10]
Sincerely Ed Ecker
Re Sweden, here’s an article including recent comment from Anders Tegnell, think it’s worth providing translation here: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/forskare-kritiska-til-fhm-lat-politikerna-ta-over
Tegnell’s response to harsh criticism in the DN debate: Basic errors
UPDATED TODAY 3:48PUBLISHED YESTERDAY 22:37
State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell today responded to the massive criticism voiced by 22 researchers at DN Debate about how the authorities handled the corona pandemic.
“There is a fundamental inaccuracy in that article,” Tegnell says, referring to the death toll figures the researchers at DN assume.
22 researchers, professors and doctors on Dagens Nyheter’s debate page demand that politicians should intervene more rigorously against the corona pandemic. They write that the attitude of the Public Health Authority has failed and judges the authorities’ actions from several aspects.
“The elected people, those who have overall responsibility, must intervene, there is no other choice,” they write, referring to the latest statistics which indicate that Sweden has a mortality ten times that of Finland.
Furthermore, they write that the FHM advised all symptom-free homebuyers from the Italian Alps to live as usual and that they still refuse to accept that the spread of disease from symptom-free has significantly contributed to the mortality of the elderly. Now that Sweden’s curves differ from those of neighboring countries, they mean that the authority is still “reluctant to change its recommendations”.
“On at least four occasions, it has been claimed by the Public Health Authority that the spread of infection has leveled out or will decline. It has not done that, ”they write.
Tegnell: The death toll is not right
The Public Health Authority had to respond to the researchers’ criticism at today’s press conference and Anders Tegnell began by strongly denying the claim that the authority does not work according to any strategy.
– Firstly, I absolutely want to deny that we do not have a well thought out strategy. We know that, Tegnell said.
Tegnell is of the opinion that the figures in the debate article are not correct, that “there are a number of fundamental errors in that article.”
He also pointed out that some countries, such as Italy, only record the deaths that occur in hospitals – making it difficult to compare the number of deaths between different countries.
– The death figures they quote are incorrect, they do not match the Swedish death figures, said Anders Tegnell.
“Figures less important”
During the afternoon, the authors behind the debate article made a clarification.
“The quoted figures themselves are less important in our opinion than the principle development of the pandemic we are trying to point out.
The figures we use in our debate article are consistent with the three most commonly used international statistics pages, namely the WHO website, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine website and the Worldometer website. These pages, in turn, retrieve the material from the daily updated report on all known cases in the world available on the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) ‘s website . ”, They write.
Just from this little article, I get the impression that Dr. Tegnell is is posession of alternative facts.
Well there’s something odd going on Eric…I don’t trust any of the figures. 95 year olds dying of COVID-19 etc… And it’s interesting to look at the data, such as it is, and see the countries with the most reported deaths, i.e. USA, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, UK, China, Iran… Have to think about their population of course. But also we understand most severe disease and deaths is in old people. And something these countries have in common is annual flu vaccination, I think it’s relevant to question if flu vaccination could be implicated in making people vulnerable to COVID-19. Also interesting to consider that Boris Johnson had his flu vaccination last October… Here he is promoting flu vaccination on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=533761737190464
Elizabeth, I don’t know about the other countries on your list but the NHS in the UK provides an annual flu vaccination only for certain groups: the elderly and those considered medically vulnerable. NHS workers, on whom it is pushed quite forcefully although it is not yet mandatory (don’t know about other care workers?). Also, recently, primary school-aged children. Others have to pay.
Though looking at that list, it does cover those who seem most likely to experience ill effects from covid, children apart.
Other than the flu vaccine making people more susceptible, I was again wondering about vitamin D deficiency. I went out to the shops today and stood in a queue in the sunshine at about 1pm, the optimal time at the moment here in the south of the UK, for the sun to be able to produce vitamin D in the skin. As it was warm enough, I had on a short-sleeved top and ‘long’ shorts, making the most of it. However, the other people in the queue and those walking past almost all either had full-length clothes on or stood in the shade.
I discussed it with my OH as we walked home and thought that maybe the fact that children are sent outside at lunchtime at school helped them build up enough vitamin D stores to protect them in the winter, aside from the fact that we’re told that children make vitamin D more easily than adults, and especially the elderly.
Regarding the elderly might statins, that are designed to reduce cholesterol in the body, have any effect on the body’s ability to create vitamin D, being as cholesterol is part of the process? Being as the vast, unquestioning majority of people in the ‘elderly’ age bracket seem to demand the damned things, could this be adding to the Covid 19 mortality?
Listening to what Dr. Tegnell on a daily basis tells us he sounds to me very confident and sensible claiming epidemiological facts which he, with more than 20 years of experience, is well acquainted with.
All what he says makes sense to me and Í have strong confidence in how he,”moderately” handles the present crisis among all MSM fear mongering “experts”.
Hej Goran,
It seems to me that Dr Tegnell is oneof the very few people who is doing the right thing in this pandemic. He and his team monitor what is going on and they keep calm. Extra bonus points to him for not caving in to moral and emotional blackmail. Wish we had someone like him in my country, life would be so much more pleasant now.
Met a woman in the supermarkt today who was absolutely terrified by the corona virus, she was actually shaking like a leaf. What will all this unnecessary stress do to her health?. Too sad for words. But that is what you get when both the press and government in the Netherlands are terrorising us with their doomsday rubbish day in, day out.
Cheerio, Yolanda
Yolanda,
Yes, Dr. Tegnell is to me a real “hero” in the true sense of the word!
Hi Goran, Welcome back! How is Finland doing?
Hi Goran, I agree, seems to me Sweden has taken a measured/proportionate response. Will be interesting to see how this all ends up. Have to ensure that apples and apples are compared, I’m not confident that the various countries are recording deaths ‘of’ / ‘with’ COVID-19 in a uniform fashion, this needs to be investigated and clarified.
Re the possibility that influenza vaccination might be implicated in COVID-19 disease, any thoughts re this abstract?
Acute respiratory failure secondary to eosinophilic pneumonia following influenza vaccination in an elderly man with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24981428
Abstract
Acute respiratory failure with diffuse pulmonary opacities is an unusual manifestation following influenza vaccination. We report herein a patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who developed fever with worsening of respiratory symptoms and severe hypoxemia requiring ventilatory support shortly after influenza vaccination. Bronchoalveolar lavage was compatible with acute eosinophilic pneumonia. Rapid clinical improvement was observed 2 weeks after systemic corticosteroid treatment, followed by radiographic improvement at 4 weeks. No disease recurrence was observed at the 6-month follow-up.
As I understand it, Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, the retired German lung physician who is opposed to the lockdown measures, the 2019 flu vaccine may have influenced the current epidemic in the following way.
There are at least 100 different viruses which normally live in our lungs, all competing to replicate and survive. Most cause no disease; a minority do, if not kept in check by the competition. The vaccine last autumn was very successful in combating the targeted flu virus, but this success has left a niche which other viruses including SARS CoV 2 have since filled.
Dr Wodarg is in favour of safe and effective vaccines, as I am myself, having only once experienced a bad side effect, a very high but short-lived fever following a cholera jab in my 30s.
But I do worry now that the flu jabs, both I and my husband had last autumn, may have increased our risk of Covid 19.
So touch wood and try and live as normally as possible.
Hi Shirley, I didn’t give vaccines much thought until one of my dogs was put down in late 2008, after what I subsequently discovered was gross over-vaccination. Specialists in veterinary vaccination were warning to decrease vaccination of dogs and cats to minimise the risk of adverse reactions. I campaigned on this matter in Australia quite successfully, with coverage in the consumer magazine CHOICE, and in the mainstream media, see this article for example: Vets accused of over-vaccinating pets: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-08-18/vets-accused-of-over-vaccinating-pets/949038
This led to an interest in human vaccination, as vaccination of humans is going through the roof! In Australia children receive over 50 doses of vaccines now, in various combinations and revaccinations. And adults are increasingly in the frame with pressure for annual flu vaccination, repeat diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis shots; pneumococcal; and shingles vaccination. We have no idea of the long-term cumulative effects of all these medical interventions throughout life, this is ‘undone science’. And now coronavirus vaccines are looming… It’s time for a review of how we have arrived at the burgeoning number of lucrative vaccine products and revaccinations pushed now, and the over-powering influence of Bill Gates and the pharmaceutical industry on international vaccination policy, via Gavi and the WHO etc…
Here is a short Tucker Carlson interview with Stanford University professor of medicine. Jay Bhattacharya:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/stanford-professor-jay-bhattacharya-coronavirus-death-rate
This guy features in several of the links from the Swiss Dr’s notes. He paints a much brighter picture, in that it would seem from a number of small scale experiments, that this virus has been far more widespread than believed, and that most of these ‘cases’ are asymptomatic.
As some have asked, it does make one wonder what is going on.
“Doctors worry the coronavirus is keeping patients away from US hospitals as ER visits drop: ‘Heart attacks don’t stop’”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/doctors-worry-the-coronavirus-is-keeping-patients-away-from-us-hospitals-as-er-visits-drop-heart-attacks-dont-stop.html
excerpt:
…At Providence, the volume of heart attack patients fell by about 50% in March compared with the same month last year, Hochman said, adding that the notion that people have just stopped having heart attacks is “too good to be true….
Maybe it is true? I think Malcolm told us long ago that depression leads to heart attacks. We know that there is less depression in times of crisis in general. Surprisingly, poeple appear to be less depressed in lockdown, too.
Hi Eric: re less depression when locked up
I know one depressed hypochondriac that became more agitated about the government lockdown. For more normal people that were not depressed to start with there was a sense of doom and gloom and fear and frustration. If ones income is not affected such as government employees then there would be less depression unless they have school age children. Personally I am not depressed, just annoyed at curtailed freedoms. My wife is absolutely terrified about leaving house for any reason, but not depressed. So overall there might be less depression.
So since the lockdowns are not a solution that “works”, to which we agree one hundred percent ( https://loico.com/covid-19-herd-immunity-likely-much-sooner-than-expected/ ), then we need to connect the dots of (1.) the most recent available scientific evidence as to the specifics of COVID-19 (especially versus SARS 2003) and (2.) of what we otherwise know in all areas pertinent no combatting a viral disease. And if we do that, then we believe that this is a large part of a working solution: https://loico.com/the-logic-of-surviving-the-coronavirus-pandemic/
On the rest, the specifically immunological part which will aid also in mastering future pandemics of similar kind, we are currently working on.
Sorry, it has to be “to combatting” instead of “no combatting”, of course 😉
More from (real) economists:
http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/policy-for-the-covid-19-crisis/
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/309813-wrong-tpa3255-31.html
Eric, if you have an LM2575S and a PSU of less than 40V you should be ok.
Eric, I see the IGM does consensus, not science. As Tim Noakes said, “Consensus is not science. If you’ve got consensus, you’ve got trouble”. I wonder how many of those IGM nodding heads have had their income taken away, and have the prospect of unemployment in the next few months.
Sorry, this was the link that was supposed to get pasted:
The video is worth watching ahead of the article.
– doctors disagree on whether to use standard ARDS treatment protocol
– Italian specialist says there are 20-30% of patients with stiff lungs, like classic ARDS, and 50% who have pliant lungs and probably do not benefit from standard protocol
– other doctors says he has patients with 40 – 50% oxygen saturation who have no distress and talk to him, which he would have thought impossible four weeks ago
-
James DownUnder
↓
</Instinct and flexibility is more likely to save the day – and lives, than religiously defending a “Protocol” In these circumstances, it would be better to pay attention to ‘Anecdote’ – which is merely unpublished data, than waiting for the usual Gold Standard of a Randomised, placebo-controlled (biased and manipulated !!!) double-blinded trial.
It’s a novel virus, so should be attacked in a …similar … fashion.
That some patients are TALKING zombies with impossibly low O2/sat. levels is what I’d call a CLUE that conventional wisdom is being turned upside down.
Any of them including high dose Vit C in their meds therapy ? One can only hope.