21st April 2020
Unfortunately, it seems that COVID-19 has infected everyone involved in healthcare management and turned their brains into useless mush.
Lockdown has two main purposes. One, to limit the spread of the virus. Two, and most important, to protect the elderly and infirm from infection – as these are the people most likely to become very ill, end up in hospital, and often die. [In my view, if we had any sense, we would lockdown/protect the elderly, and let everyone else get on with their lives].
However, the hospitals themselves have another policy. Which is to discharge the elderly unwell patients with COVID directly back into the community, and care homes. Where they can spread the virus widely amongst the most vulnerable.
This, believe it or not, is NHS policy. Still.
Yes, you did just read that. COVID-19 patients, even those with symptoms, are still to be discharged back home, or into care homes – unless unwell enough to require hospital care e.g. oxygen, fluids and suchlike. If this is not national policy, then the managers are telling me lies.
In fact, it does seem to be policy, although the guidance from the UK Government is virtually incomprehensible1. I have read it a few times and I fail to fully understand it – or partially understand it. I tried reading it upside down, and it made just about as much sense.
I wrote about this situation in my last blog, as the impact of COVID of care homes was becoming apparent – even to politicians. I thought that someone, somewhere, might have realised the policy of flinging COVID positive patients – or patients who may have COVID – out of hospital, and into care homes, might prove a complete and utter disaster.
I now call care homes COVID incubators. Places where the disease can grow and multiply, happily finding new host after new host. Not so happily for the residents.
Equally, sending people home is further complete madness. Sending them home to somewhere that, very often, contains another elderly and frail person. Normally a husband or a wife. Did anyone think through the consequences of this? Clearly not. Do you think the other person in the house may be at risk? Really, you think. Surely not, knock me down with a feather…
If there is not another elderly partner in the house, there will usually be carers who come in to look after the freshly discharged COVID positive patients. These carers will have almost no protective equipment. Even if they do, they will be lifting and moving the patient around, washing them, taking them to the toilet… in very close proximity. The chances of getting infected are very, very, high.
These carers will then go and visit other elderly, vulnerable patients scattered around the community. They become the perfect vectors to spread the virus far and wide, amongst the exact group of people that we are trying to protect.
I have been doing a lot of jumping up and down about this over the last few days. The hospital trusts appear incapable of understanding the argument. ‘Clear the hospital, clear the hospital’… are the only words they seem capable of uttering.
The hospitals, I point out repeatedly, have been cleared. Wards are standing empty, corridors echoing. The first peak has also been passed – even if no-one dares admit it. So why are we continuing to fling COVID positive patients out into the community? Why? Why? Why?
‘Because it is national policy’. Squawk. ‘Because it is national policy’. Squawk. ‘Pieces of eight, pieces of eight.’
The entire nation has been locked down. Do not travel, stay two meters apart, do not go outside blah, blah. Meanwhile we have the perfect anti-lockdown policy in place for the very people we are mostly supposed to be protecting. There are two parallel universes here.
If you wanted to create a system most perfectly designed to spread COVID amongst the vulnerable elderly population, you may well have come up with the current one. Infect people with COVID in hospital, and then scatter them into care homes and the rest of the community. Making sure that you infect all the carers on the way.
As Albert Einstein said. ‘Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity… and I’m not so sure about the universe.’
Thud… the noise of my head hitting the desk in utter frustration.
Thank you again Dr K
Can you get this question put to the politicians at the daily briefing? Need a friendly journalist – but I expect questions are carefully vetted. We only seem to hear from a few trusted souls.
Absolutely right. Ask one of our journalists to ask the politicians at the daily briefing to explain why this is happening. We’d all like to know!
Variolation seems to mean something other than what it’s used to mean in that article.
Finally the government concedes to allowing the public to ask questions. But what was the first question? When can I see my grandchildren again. Vetted or what? Where was the vital questioning of their policy? Where was the question asking them to justify the horrendous outcomes from the lockdown?
https://www.change.org/p/health-minister-matt-hancock-nhs-ceo-sir-simon-stevens-chief-medical-officers-for-the-uk-c4uk-protect-our-nhs-with-vitamin-c?utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=custom_url&recruited_by_id=f68e5273-9d8c-446f-8ba1-215eec0c5d87
Facebook and Wikipedia are choosing to delete anything they decide doesn’t fit their world paradigm so debate and information along with the freedom to make up our own minds is removed. Is democracy still alive or…..??
We go to see our grand children. If there’s anybody in this situation, just do it. Is it essential? Yes, if is one of the things people need for their mental well being, and that of their families. Not all people will feel the same, so they need not do it, but don’t give in to the propaganda pedlars.
The rest of that sentence is rather important.
It is at least a fact, and there aren’t many of those to cling to of late.
Thank you
You say it yourself… “If you wanted to create a system most perfectly designed to spread COVID amongst the vulnerable elderly population, you may well have come up with the current one.”
If you operated a public health service and wanted to get rid of yourself of a demographic that costs you the most money by far, would you do anything different?
I really do not want to believe your theory and want to call you a conspiracy theorist, but I have a horrible, horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that you may be right, even although they wouldn’t admit it, possibly not even to themselves. A sort of ‘we’ll just drag our feet a teeeeenyyyy… bit longer with the old folks’. No-one will notice.’
C’mon. They’re tryin’ t’ do their best . . . as they conceive of it.
Nobody –
None of us –
None know what’s happening or how it will evolve or what to do.
The thing is to do Something. It’s all happening faster than can be addressed in real time with any controlled research.
Anything’s better than nothing, right??
(Maybe not.)
Firing off the entire thermonuclear arsenal would be “something”.
I leave it to you to judge if that would be better than doing “nothing”.
But it seems to me that no conceivable situation is so bad that well-intentioned fools can’t make it a lot worse.
I don’t want to believe it either but sometimes you just have to wonder if the supposed “unintentional consequences” were in fact intended.
Of course these ‘unintentional consequences’ are intended. The thinking of most young people is – there’s too many old people, they own the property we want, their pensions cost us money. They need drastically thinning out. Makes sense? That’s why I, a ‘Baby Boomer’, am keeping my head well below the parapet. Staying home, living on spuds. Sorry for surviving so long but that’s thanks to the NHS which came onto being on my first birthday. It’s saved my life at least once since then but maybe I’ve had my share. Look, shall we just jump off the cliff? Then you can all get back to normal. And maybe, when the next epidemic comes along, some of you will be old. You might feel differently then. Sorry to rant, it’s cabin fever!
This would make sense except that the amount being spent on lockdown dwarfs even the NHS budget.
I’m not saying this is so (I still haven’t decided myself if my original comment was somewhat tongue in cheek) but those two thoughts don’t necessarily need to be mutually exclusive. It’s called “making lemonade from lemons” – government installs a terrible, panicked policy and individuals take advantage of the new situation.
That’s where a wider agenda comes in; we are being trained for a ‘new world’ of surveillance and control.
In The U.S. nursing homes apparently refuse to take covid patients from hospitals. What to do about that? https://khn.org/news/coronavirus-patients-caught-in-conflict-between-hospital-and-nursing-homes/amp/
My understanding was that the lock down was in place for only one reason – to ensure ITU departments are not overwhelmed and patients don’t die in corridors or ambulances (politically this is really bad!). Hence the need to delay and spread the peak of patients who are ill enough for hospital. This can explain the, pretty much global, madness that is happening. Sweden seems to have it about right.
However, in many hospitals they’re twiddling their thumbs…
“London hospital.
Half empty. Some wards have less than a handful of patients, some wards are closed. Most staff have been moved to wards so are falling over selves. While their regular work goes undone.
A&E very quiet. I’ve sent patients there who are seen immediately. The heart attacks, strokes and appendicitis cases are presenting too late. People with covid are waiting too long to present. If you get breathless then for goodness sake come in. I’m so cross at the initial advice to stay home until struggling.
Had a look through covid ward lists and vast majority patients are aged over 70. Hardly any patients under 60, those who are have underlying health problems for the most part. Lots more men than women affected.
It’s just a snapshot but echoed by colleagues in other hospitals.
I think we can / should start to move back to normal life soon for the well young people among us. I fear for the short and longer term economic hit. It’s crazy to have all these young well people furloughed or made redundant.”
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3886452-The-hospital-I-work-in-is-so-quiet?pg=1&fbclid=IwAR0XWKdyXRodWuf7QrXWVf7-XH8tb9BZG9oZmakv4caL_GjD76-R03oAFcs
This appears to be the case nationwide, and certainly where I work.. I don’t want to think we’ve been had, but I fear for whatever reason, we have. It’s genuinely disturbing to see such a disparity but the story the public are being given and the reality. I really do not know what to think.
It seems that the Australian authorities are planning to lift restrictions as slowly as possible. Our nationwide toll is about two in a million.
My Aus. town of 120,000 has 36 confirmed cases, 31 from overseas travelers and 5 spread from those 31. Yet, the whole town is shut down; cops stopping people in cars asking where they are going. Groceries ok, KFC, not ok.
To:-Trust Me I ‘m not a Doctor.
From: Trust Me I am No Longer a Nurse. ( I am Jennifer)
I am pleased that a journalist was able to ask the question of the Government Spokes-people earlier this week, that some NHS staff were being threatened because they had dared to contradict what we, the public, were being told about ‘adequate’ supplies. ( the fact that the testing stuff was an hour away by car, and that equipment was stored miles away, was not mentioned)
This morning I was alarmed that a Nurse was on telly, justifying why the PM was admitted to ITU. Now I do not deny that it was the PMs right to mention, by name, his great carers…..but what has the RCN got to say about any Nurse breaching confidentially, by PUBLICALLY discussing ANY living patient’s care. ( please note, I capitalise the N to refer to a qualified Nurse)
Or has our Professional body changed it’s Code of Practice since my Registration lapsed?
Ho hum!!!!
Jennifer I understand that nurses in at least one large hospital in the North, Yorkshire I think, was asked to sign a confidentiality clause relating to their PPE, that they would make no negative comments as to its quality or suitability.
Have that 2nd hand.
Effort do you think, to prevent a legal claim against the NHS if substandard PPE contributes to infection ?
Jerome, I would say your second-hand info will be accurate. I have worked in establishments from north to south, from the sixties to the turn of 21st century, and been subjected to gagging clauses in one way or another. One month in the mid eighties, we received an envelope with our pay slip. There were 2 notes inside the envelope, one refering to illegible drug orders, saying we were not to 2nd guess what was intended…..( you get the message.. Those numpties doing drug rounds needed to be told), but more significantly, the other note stated that we must not discuss management of the hospital with the press. Move on a few years, and 300 miles south, I was approached by a think tank, asking my opinion on the dire state of affairs in the NHS. ( I would not enter into any discussion). I was known to frequently advise management of the lack of staff and equipment, but was fobbed off with “it’s the same all over”, and told “to consider my position.”
So….nothing new, and I applaud those risking their lives by working in less that safe conditions during this contagion. But, I have the utmost respect for those speaking out, and at risk of losing their livelihoods by educating the public as to those unsafe conditions. Had they remained silent, there would surely be more deaths on the front line. They are brave, too.
“My understanding was that the lock down was in place for only one reason – to ensure ITU departments are not overwhelmed and patients don’t die in corridors or ambulances (politically this is really bad!)”.
But if they die in their own homes, or in homes for the aged, that’s quite all right.
“Sweden seems to have it about right.”
According to this whistleblower, Sweden seems to be adopting the Shipman Protocol for virus patients in their nursing homes.
https://rairfoundation.com/swedish-health-professionals-expose-coronavirus-directives-for-the-elderly-basically-kill-the-patients-watch/
I hope this isn’t a duplicate reply, but something went wrong the first time. Monty, the article you linked about the directive in Sweden is very short on facts and evidence, including all pertinent particulars about the patients apparently being denied. oxygen and instead basically being euthanized unwillingly.I’m not saying it’s untrue (and I hope it’s not true!) but the source of the article is highly questionable. Amy Mekelburg of the RAIR Foundation, is a long-time hate monger and troll. I used to encounter her and her ilk when I was on Twitter. They lie a great deal about meat production, are virulently anti-Muslim/anti-immigrant and just not a very reliable source at all. Just a sample article from 2015 when they started as a group: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/anti-muslim-twitter-troll-amy-mek-mekelburg_n_5b0d9e40e4b0802d69cf0264?ri18n=true
My OH used to say of numpties in general: “If he had another brain cell, he’d be dangerous” So true.Time to put them back into the toy box.
Sorry, no. They sold-on that brain cell long ago.
The Government has a massive future problem in funding pensions for the retired and providing care for the ever longer living elderly infirm. Call me cynical if you will, but the approach you have outlined above cuts through these two problems like a knife. God forbid, but it could almost be a deliberate policy.
Spot on!
I have thought this from the very beginning. I remember at the start of all this so called PM saying if all visits to care home were banned the residents would be safe in isolation. It might have worked if he had remembered to ask the Vestal Virgins to come and look after them.
I think the PM has been doing his best to ensure there are no vestal virgins left.
That’s because they’ve run out of vests as well as gowns..
Add in that with equity release schemes with the term and conditions that if either of the parties who took on the “loan” dies or goes into long-term care the “loan” MUST be paid off in full including accrued compound interest.
Good scam – loan people money they don’t have to pay back and can defer almost indefinitely secured on property valued at 5-20 times the original loan value, kill them off, get the property cheap or the loan paid off by a life insurance policy.
Win Win for the banking cartels.
So true! Thank you for being humane about the elderly and for being logical about infection!
Dear Clive As usual Kendrick talking sense. I personally think Hancock should be sacked along with those supreme Idiots at PHE. A quango that needs abolishing post this crisis. The sorry story unraveling is becoming a joke a magnificent Calamity. Poor testing, false mortality figures , no Ppe with manufacturing companies saying they cannot penetrate Whitehall bureaucracy, etc. Ppe exports to China. No wonder they do not Like the public wearing masks. It puts their shambolic precurement to shame
That the economy is also floundering fast shows ineptitude on a massive scale. God alone knows how this is going to end. Not well I suspect. Mark thinks armed insurrection is a distinct possibility in the US. When I saw armed militia responding To Trump’s call to arms to protect the second amendment you wonder if he is right. One guy was driving a reinforced Hummer at the governors residence in NewHampshire. Their death total has now reached 46,000. Ours is 17,000 of which it is estimated 40percent (nursing homes) are not even recorded. All the while the BBC pumps out the usual claptrap. Apparently light radio BBC2/1 now sees itself Not as an vehicle of entertainment but as an educator. God help us.
When all this is over my prayer is we see the back of the EU, Richard Branson, The BBC, all woke Intellectuals of left wing persuasion, over paid and egotistical celebrities, overpaid football players, Gary Neville and that prat Lineker, and finally and utmost Harry Megan most of the a Royal family, half the Mps and to conclude the House of Lords. I am sure you can add to my list.As the Lord high executioner said in Mikado: none of them will be missed!! Love Simon
Sent from my iPad
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And in your mass genocide of “the EU, Richard Branson, The BBC, all woke Intellectuals of left wing persuasion, over paid and egotistical celebrities, overpaid football players, Gary Neville and that prat Lineker, and finally and utmost Harry Megan most of the a Royal family, half the Mps and to conclude the House of Lords” where do you intend to put them? Or is actual genocide what you have in mind? If we had remained in the EU perhaps we wouldn’t have had the same problems getting the PPE we so desperately need. And after it is all over we will be entirely on our own trying to rebuild the economy, with no EU, or allies in Europe, to bail us out, but I suppose as you intend to empty more than half the country with your Final Solution that won’t matter..
As far as I’m aware, France and Italy are in the EU. They both have a massive problem due to a shortage of PPE. In fact, in Paris, some members of institutions were threatening to strike because they are lacking PPE.
The EU commission has decided to “print” money to help countries whose economies are/will suffer. Their bureaucracy has given Hungary (with few problems) much more money & help than it has to Italy, which has massive problems.
” I personally think Hancock should be sacked along with those supreme Idiots at PHE”.
There is not the slightest point in sacking them. They would just be replaced by carbon copies. When you have certain incentives and rewards, you get the people who respond to those incentives and rewards.
Personally I feel those responsible should be imprisoned for at least 5 years. In China, they might be shot – and I would not argue with that.
That’s the key right there. An overriding ability to lie so effortlessly. They actually get a kick out of it. It pays the bills, and it gives them their thrills. What more could matter?
We’ve been saying the same thing. They surely can’t all be this stupid, can they? We have to suspect motives and people’s characters and that is depressing. But the alternative – that they are all extremely foolish – is really depressing too. We are absolutely fed up with it all, as you are bound to be, Malcolm. It’s awful to find yourself at odds with most of the world. And worst of all, the censorship of uncommon sense is appalling. Thank goodness for you and your blog.
Thank goodness, indeed. I often feel that Malcolm and this forum are an island of sanity that I’ve been more inclined to escape to as these days of madness rage on.
There are two important dimensions of a person’s mind, and they are more or less independent: intelligence and personality.
It’s “highly unlikely” that anyone stupid gets into government. There is so much wheeling and dealing, conniving, backstabbing and false promising to do.
But personality… it also seems “highly likely” that many (if not most) of those who attain high government posts are psychopaths. That personality fits the job like a glove. The ability to lie effortlessly and continuously; complete absence of any guilt or empathy; absolute selfishness; and a talent for completely ignoring the moral dimension and treating life as a game of Monopoly.
Dear Dr. Kendrick thank you once again for taking the time to highlight this appalling government strategy. As a former community care manager I am not remotely surprised at any of this. The elderly population and social care have always been grossly neglected and even despised. Pity the community care staff ill equipped and poorly remunerated for the risks they are taking. Thanks again for all of your hardwork.
Malcolm – an excellent piece . . . I share your frustration . . . especially since I have strong circumstantial evidence that all my family had COVID19 just before Christmas.. . . brought to us by someone visiting London and came back a few days later with ‘flu’ . . . a special ‘flu’ with fever, dry cough, internal pain across her back (Trying to track it down, she asked her husband where her lungs were), she had muscle aches and this went on for weeks after Christmas. She got it worse than any of the rest of us – she is Afro-Caribbean – My wife was next worse: same pain in the upper thorax across her back- problems expectorating – temperature – seemed to linger for ages. My 33y son and his other half were poorly – one daughter 7 had a slight fever and just wanted to be cuddled, but managed Christmas dinner – her sister 10y was asymptomatic. I felt a twinge of sore throat coming the night before Christmas eve and the before impending family gathering . . so I took 4 tablespoons of liposomal vit C (12g) as I went to bed. Next morning: I was fine . . if not a little smug – it had worked before. Then 8 days later that tickle in the throat again. More vitamin C. But next morning the infection has set in – but nothing like the flu we had last year. I would now call this the ‘double-bounce’ that seems to be the hallmark of COVID19.
I blame all this lockdown-hysteria on the media. I keep thinking to send a tweet to Piers Morgan to ask him if we can please be allowed to go back to work, school and have shops open.
I blame the lockdown-hysteria on the the incompetence of the Imperial College modelling group – who seem to be inspired by a fantasy football approach to tackling a serious problem. Or perhaps they were using the dart board method.
Sorry about the rant . . . hadn’t realized how much it had got under my skin.
Hi, If you had this early you were in a minority, see here https://twitter.com/WWICK_HG/status/1251525018128994305?s=20
There’s so much trivia in that page, what was the point you were trying to make?
Your theory that you and your family having had the virus around Christmas is supported by the apposing academic body to ICL in Oxford. For those interested it’s worth a look at the backgrounds of the leaders of both establishments. For the life of me I can’t remember their name😫
Yes I think that was about when I had something weird, but brief. I’ve read a lot of similar reports and I just heard the same from someone I was talking with – well shouting from a social distance. Could have been COVID, or could of course have been some other winter virus doing the rounds.
Where & when were the world military games ? Ans: Wuhan and mid October.
That bit of info came from this page.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Military_World_Games
The same post notes a spike in flu like cases in Seattle shortly after a big US military contingency returned there.
I rest my case !
Sorry this page meaning this blog. The wiki link refers to the games.
The lack of a strategy to encourage everyone to boost their immune systems is imo staggering. I’m over 70 and didn’t take any medication/ pills until now. It’s a daily multi vie and 500g of vit c, plus lots of sun for me. But of course that not going to swell the coffers of the pharma brigade very much. Roll on the the soon to be created cash cow, sorry vaccine. Strange times indeed.
I’d like to say a word on behalf of Vitamin D and Vitamin K2, as well as magnesium. Vitamin A you can get from liver, chocolate, or (in lesser amounts) other foods.
Sunshine is great, but ideally for half an hour a side with maximum exposure. And, in the UK, near noon when the sun is high. (Swimming shorts for me!) As you get older skin gets thicker and tougher, and it takes longer to make Vitamin D.
Re when to get vitamin D from the sun – in British Summer Time, the sun’s at its highest in the UK at 1pm, not noon 🙂
anglosvizzera: You must be enjoying that wonder of wonders, Daylight Savings Time. High noon is 1:00 p.m. sharp!
Ah yes indeed. We go out for our afternoon cuppa at 1pm sharp! However, I understand that the sun has to be 45 degrees or higher, using the rule of thumb “when your shadow is shorter than your height” and in the UK, this is now between about 12pm and 2pm. As we’re 62 we stay out for a good half hour at least 🙂
Gary.
In astronomy, nothing is that precise; all is in flux, albeit sometimes very slowly.
Actually in the UK, the sun is at its highest, at around noon GMT (1pm BST) (allowing for any difference in longitude vis a vis the Greenwich meridian), plus or minus 18 minutes. That’s why it’s called Greenwich Mean Time.
If one plots the position of noon in the sky in the UK from the same location over the course of a year, one will find makes a tall, narrow figure of eight. I believe that is true at all temperate latitudes. Obviously, at polar latitudes, not all this figure can be plotted, and at other latitudes, the tilt varies. This all means that noon is only exactly “on time” four times a year. The change in noon position is due to the tilt of the earth’s axis and the earth’s location on its elliptical orbit round the sun, closest to the sun in January, furthest away in July at present, though these positions will be reversed in around 13,000 years time.
If you look up solar analemma on Google, you will find some nice photos, and graphs of the time difference in relation to the date.
I am being particularly pedantic today!
Shirley, you are allowed to be pedantic when you know what you are talking about. Pity certain “experts” don’t stick to the facts.
Oddly enough, I live almost exactly on the Greenwich meridian – matter of a couple of miles. A couple of hundred miles due north of my previous home.There was a brass plaque on the front wall of the bookshop I worked in.
There are solar noon calendars online for those interested.
Sasha: I’ve always used the Naval Observatory’s chart, but they’ve moved it to a new website, and it is currently unavailable. If anyone is capable of screwing something up, it is the federal government, especially the Navy, whose ships keep colliding with other ships, and half of whose sailors are down with either mumps or SARS CoV-2.
Gary: do you think we might be too harsh on the government? They do have a big ship to run and, considering its size, they are doing an ok job, no? One of the biggest factors in their favor, IMO, they don’t have a profit motive, which takes a lot of nonsense out of dealing with their customers. I think…
All the relevant, up to the moment info can be found at the app dminder.
Thank you for the recommendation.
A naturopath told me to go in the sun between 10 a.m and 2 p.m. for at least 20 min. The opposite of what we have been told. Wear a hat, have bare arms and legs. Don’t shower immediately after.
Yes, good advice although taking BST in the UK into account the times would be adjusted to 11am-3pm. In the height of the summer (around 21 June) it’s probably best not to be out at the middle of the day for many people though to prevent burning (unless your skin has tanned enough already), as the sun is still strong enough after 10am and before 4pm – rule of thumb being when the sun is higher than 45 degrees, (ie “your shadow is shorter than your height”)
I am one of at least thousands of people who used to burn, and now tan much more effectively. There’s some evidence that avoiding industrially produced omega 6 seed oils is key.
Nicotinamide (Vitamin B3), Astaxanthin, vitamin E, and, surprisingly, adequate Vitamin D levels, all have been said to protect the skin from sun burn to a certain extent.
I found that once I started supplementing over the winter months with vitamin D I tanned more easily and without burning at all in the summer. Must be a link there…
Sasha
Agreed. In principle,there is no profit motive. But as influencers their value is recognised by the bribers, sorry lobbyists and a profit motive can develop. Indeed many argue that it does develop and the abundance of very wealthy public representatives with no other means of support suggests so.
Jerome: don’t they get wealthy before or after public service but usually not during?
Over here in France, an informal network of GPs have been exchanging their experiences and what works. They have come up with the following as effective, with a significant improvement in outcomes, but needs to be implemented as early as possible, not started when severe respiratory problems have begun. Since this use by members of the group (at the time of putting the news online), zero deaths:
1. Azithromycine which is an antibiotic that also acts on viruses and is anti inflammatory for lung tissue
2. Effizinc zinc supplement
3. Singulair used by asthmatics for its anti inflammatory role in pulmonary insterstitial tissue.
4. In severe cases add heparin at low dose to prevent thrombosis, phlebitis and pulmonary embolism.
I’ve read of dipyridamole (Persantine) being used in COVID 19 medications regime,
– https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.27.20027557v1 though it’s prime use is for ‘anti-coagulation’. Mopping up d-dimers also a useful function.
Yet another drug like Plaquenil being re-purposed.
Oh, sorry, we can’t use either, (or the zinc that should go with HCQ), they’re Off-Patent so there’s no $quillions to be made…
Antony Sanderson: I would put my money on the dart board method.
The circumstantial evidence is mounting that the virus was present in the U.K. since at least November, if not earlier. As I’ve said before I saw a lot of patients with a lingering dry cough lasting 2 to 6 weeks with a low grade fever. A GP colleague noticed the same phenomenon. If this is true then we are in the second wave.
On 14th October 2019 we were visited by an American friend who had flown from Prague. She arrived with a very nasty set of symptoms: a deep persistent cough, congestion, and some discomfort. Somehow she couldn’t shake it off, and thought she might have picked it up on the flight from Chicago to Europe a few days earlier.
Well, there’s this:
The “smart people” are starting to see reality.
I might have posted that wrong for this blog software, I’m not sure. Anyway, the link is:
https://news.yahoo.com/2-died-coronavirus-weeks-1st-050101858.html
The lock-down is just a matter of closing the barn long after the horses have run wild. Oh, who am I kidding. It’s not “just a matter”. It’s more like it’s burning the barn and the farmhouse down in the process!
Brains definitely turned to mush! How will we ever get out – except in a coffin in my case as I’m over 70!!
Dr K, Spot-on. It looks to me kinda like Sweden Lite, and of course its now, as otherwise, all to down to Trump’s feckless ‘Darwinian’ rules. Who needs old people anyway? These are obviously diktats written up by folk with no grandchildren. This has been a cock-up, with no original thinking, from the get-go. The hammer and the nail comes to mind. Yes, Taiwan had a good grasp of it all from prior SARS alarms, but surely those that think they know should have been a wee bit up to speed?
In the USA it seems that the nonsense is exactly like it is in the UK. I believe that only our President sees it. The Docs in charge seem to be changing their minds on the best remedies by the day if not by the hour. I guess that we can only be thankful that they didn’t go into private practice. But it is time that they get out of medicine completely!
Dr. Tom Baldwin
Ocean View Delaware
“Only our president sees it?” Seems to me, he’s the only one who’s been muddying the waters all along so he can figure out how to cash in for himself, as usual: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/07/timeline-trumps-coronavirus-response-is-increasingly-damning/
He just outdid himself:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/trump-coronavirus-treatment-disinfectant
Hi Eric: re medical experts denounce Trump
The experts are the vaccinators. Trump is asking if there is another way to treat this pandemic. “Coronavirus Disinfectant” is now a new medical term for every other treatment not involving a vaccine. Traditional Chinese Medicine anyone?
Andy, too bad Trump didn’t specify what he meant because calls to poison centres went up right after he suggested people could start ingesting disinfectants. They’ve had calls from people who drank bleach, lysol and rubbing alcohol…No world leader should be making such broad, ignorant comments, sarcastically (as he later tried to claim and no one who knows him believes) or seriously. He’s doing more harm than good, as usual by opening his pie-hole.
[For some reason I can’t reply to teedee126, April 26, 2020 at 4:31 pm, i.e. the post below Andy’s, so I’ve put this here]
As usual for MSM attacks on Trump, the claims about a spike of calls to poison treatment centres is fake news. The Canadian Lawyer who blogs as “Viva Frei” made a whole video debunking it:
He also had one debunking the original MSM lies that Trump advised people to inject disinfectant:
Another MSM line a few weeks ago was that Trump’s idiot supporters were so ignorant of science and so trusting of him that they would willingly drink “fish pond cleaner” on his advice, and kill themselves. The claim was that a couple just happened to notice at the back of their food pantry (!) an old container whose ingredient list included something sounding a bit like hydroxychloroquine – which Trump (and lots of medics in many countries) think is a promising treatment for Stage 1 COVID-19. The wife was interviewed on television, apparently furious with Trump, but surprisingly unemotional about the loss of her husband. Well, the MSM don’t seem nearly as interested now it turns out that the wife is a Democrat activist, the husband was a scientifically savvy engineer, and she was angling for a divorce. According to Viva Frei, a murder charge is on the cards:
Ironically but unsurprisingly, when Trump actually does do something really stupid (e.g. the sort of warmongering that Hillary actually advocated during the election campaign), the MSM utters no criticism, and calls him ‘presidential’.
If you find yourself liable to be taken in by this sort of fake news, which “everybody knows” because it is repeated in all the “respectable” media such as WaPo, the NYT or the Guardian, I can recommend a website run by Guardian readers who got sick of all the lies that the paper runs for the intelligence services, and for others among the powers-that-be. It’s called OffGuardian.org, and genuinely tries to live up to the Guardian’s long-abrogated motto, “Comment is free, but facts are sacred”. Its COVID-19 coverage has been superb.
Omg. I hadn’t yet seen that one, Eric. I couldn’t even finish reading without laughing in disbelief. I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised, tho, even the Governor of Georgia didn’t know a person could catch the virus from someone who wasn’t showing symptoms, but had tested positive. I actually had a Trump supporter tell me they were going to start drinking more alcohol because “alcohol kills the virus.”
I truly wish I were joking. Ignorance in that number of supporters is not a comforting thought. I live fairly close to the U.S. border and used to feel quite comfortable travelling there for various reasons, but now I feel more wary than anything else.(not that Canada doesn’t have its share of willfully ignorant people, as well.)
Thanks for the link and stay well.
teedee126: It doesn’t??? Rats! On the other hand, how can one kill something which isn’t alive? It is clearly the case that germ theory is thoroughly misconstrued by much of the public. I recommend everyone watch the news conference by the two Bakersfield (CA) doctors which anglosvizzera posted. “Notice we aren’t wearing masks?” They are clear that self-isolation and mask-wearing by the healthy is weakening their immune systems.
“It doesn’t??? Rats! On the other hand, how can one kill something which isn’t alive? It is clearly the case that germ theory is thoroughly misconstrued by much of the public. I recommend everyone watch the news conference by the two Bakersfield (CA) doctors which anglosvizzera posted. “Notice we aren’t wearing masks?” They are clear that self-isolation and mask-wearing by the healthy is weakening their immune systems.”
TeeDee: lol…but just to be clear, are you saying you don’t believe that viruses are alive, that they can’t live in us and replicate?
Or am I missing something in your comment, like sarcasm, perhaps?
That said, I loved seeing the news conference where they weren’t wearing masks. I’m starting to let up on some of that myself, though I’m being gingerly about it because I was in poor health for a solid decade or more and it’s only been in the last 5 years or so that I’ve really gotten my health on track. I have to wonder how quickly my immune system can grow strong (though my most recent lab results from late last summer showed incredible numbers according to my doctor) I guess I just want to be a little more careful than some on here, despite age. I have started hugging family members again, though. So it’s a start 😉
teedee126: As I understand it viruses are produced by cells in large quantities as a means of cellular communication. Thus they, of necessity have gizmos on their outer surfaces which can lock onto receptors on the surfaces of other cells to be drawn in, at which point the cell utilizes them. It is virologists who say they are not alive, that is they have no metabolism and cannot reproduce themselves. Endogenous viruses are essential to the functioning of organisms. The problem arises when exogenous viruses (from other species) which are capable of mayhem (not intentionally, but because they are in the wrong biological system; viruses have no intentions) enter cells. The cells reproduce them, and if the organism cannot fight them off with its immune-system armory, they can sicken and kill the host. But viruses themselves are a benign and essential part of the functioning of biological systems.
Good for you to be cautious. Keep up the hugs. I’m not much of a hugger, but I love chatting with people. I have family and neighbors, but I miss chatting with the farmers at market and shopkeepers I’ve come to know. One of my favorite things about hiking in the parks is meeting people from faraway lands. Sadly, I probably won’t see too many of them this year.
Your explanation about the virus not being ‘alive’ or able to reproduce on its own makes perfect sense. Thanks for taking the time to clarify what you meant.
Yes, I’m trying to strike a balance between being reasonably cautious and not getting ridiculous about the distancing. I can totally relate to missing those chats with fellow hikers/walkers, farmer’s market folks, though; this is the hardest part of the lockdown for me as well and I’m not naturally outgoing /extroverted. But those spontaneous little chats with people in the very places you mentioned, are the ones that I miss the most.
It is alive . . . once it’s in you and past your ACE2 and has hijacked your Strands of Life, it becomes a creature – part you, part the non-living invading protein. It needs you. You are, in part, each other. Perhaps that’s why the conflict for dominance can be so difficult.
This is where a little well-placed entropy would be handy.
I’ve watched the videos. He certainly never suggested people drink disinfectants. I bet the increased calls to poison control are a lie. And yes, of course alcohol would kill microbes. It is used for toothache. I gargle with salt when I have a sore throat. Maybe I’ll try vodka.
I’m curious though. Are other world leaders, such as Boris and Angela working as hard as Trump is every day on this problem?
Anna M: “I’ve watched the videos. He certainly never suggested people drink disinfectants. I bet the increased calls to poison control are a lie. And yes, of course alcohol would kill microbes. It is used for toothache. I gargle with salt when I have a sore throat. Maybe I’ll try vodka.
TeeDee126 replied: Perhaps you should have read his daily briefings rather than just watching videos. Trump said Thursday at a White House briefing that an “injection inside the human body” with a disinfectant like bleach or isopropyl alcohol could help combat the virus.
“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute,” Mr. Trump said after a presentation from William N. Bryan, an acting under secretary for science at the Department of Homeland Security, detailed the virus’s possible susceptibility to bleach and alcohol.
As for the calls to the Poison Control Centres around the country, if you want to call those good people who work there, liars, and say they’re making up those stories (many call centres of that sort must record and/or log every single call) that’s your prerogative. Also, people were asking the centres about drinking bleach and rubbing alcohol in these instances, not vodka. As for those who had already ingested it and were afraid, those calls can likely be followed up to see if they’re going to suffer lasting organ damage.
Bottoms up and have a good day..
Inject disinfectant !!! Time for Trump to get out of medicine completely
Inject disinfectant !! Time for Trump to get out of medicine completely
This is already being done. I’ve just read the article, it’s Ok, it’s things like Dettol that are dangerous. I see people are jumping up and down about it being dangerous to inject such poisons. They seem to be ok about injecting mercury, phenol, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80, neo-plastic monkey kidney cells, dog kidney cells, aborted human foetal cells, but that’s ok if you call it a vaccine. Hmmm………but there’s no public liability for the manufacturers. Poor old makers of kitchen disinfectants don’t have this protection.
I’ll keep his open minded inquiry into cures, thank you very much. My alternative is Bill Gates, who by the way also doesn’t belong in medicine. What’s a shame is the way the media treats him and attacks him to his face, day after day, and then twists what he says. That is a national embarrassment.
Anna, when you DIRECTLY QUOTE someone’s own words, it’s not “twisting his words”, nor is it “fake news”. They print what he says or they show him saying it in his videos. Try as you might, you can’t call something ‘fake’ by the media when you hear the words coming out of his own mouth. But, he’d be thrilled knowing how ‘devoted’ you still are to him after he has ruined the reputation of the U.S. on the world stage and highly damaged the United States’s relationship with its allies. He would be happy indeed.
It also gives me something to agree with him about. He always knew that his base supporters were just as immoral as he is and demonstrated it perfectly when he said “I could just shoot somebody on 5th Ave (in NYC) and I wouldn’t lose a single vote.”
Trump certainly knew his supporters well, didn’t he?
Anna M: Anyone who would take medical advice from a college dropout has a fool for an advisor. Only his money allows him into the conversation.
That’s hilarious. I didn’t realize Trump was IN medicine 😊
Sasha
I was responding to a comment by Dr Tom Baldwin – “I believe only our president sees it”- (the truth i assume he means)
About certain doctors -” but it is time that they get out of medicine completely”
I don’t think Trump knows much about medical matters so maybe he should keep his gob shut about these things. That’what i meant about him getting out of medicine’
Not so hilarious really, eh?
Yes, I realized that is what you were talking about. I just thought your comment was really funny.
Brilliant – as always. I just returned from the grocery store…and the plant nursery, which is apparently an essential business here in Oklahoma. The place was packed. I wear my DIY mask and gloves to placate those around me. I’m 72 and pretty sure I’ve had the virus, but if it’s my time to be part of the “herd thinning”, so be it. I have a DNR and DNI and my family knows my wishes.
But I sure do need a haircut.
Great going! Just take your Vitamin C (3,000-10,000 mg/day), don’t be overweight and you’ll be fine.
Add some zinc, pills or oysters – washed down with Green Tea (ionophore to assist Zn INto the cells). Perhaps a nice red / polyphenols after some midday sun exposure for free Vit D.
Indeed, I think I am leaning towards zinc as a supplement everyone should currently take in these Covid times. But I think you also need to take magnesium as well, especially if you take a PPIs e.g. omeprazole, lansoprazole – anything ended in prazole.
And maybe add 3 mg melatonin in the evening. The elderly produces that less and less, and someone saw that correlation with the increased change to get infected and develop symptoms.
Doris Loh published a research article on the melatonin link:
https://www.evolutamente.it/covid-19-pneumonia-inflammasomes-the-melatonin-connection/
I put together a slide to illustrate the relationship:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/christian-dandre-beng-hons-phd-545906b_melatonin-and-covid-19-activity-6658595099301208065-T_DR
CDAndre: thanks for posting those articles, very good reads!
You may enjoy this and the links
https://www.nexusnewsfeed.com/article/jon-rappoport/a-vital-paper-david-crowe-challenges-the-discovery-of-the-covid-19-virus/
The virus has been seen under an electron microscope. It exists.
Koch’s postulates are irrelevant to viruses. For viruses you need Rivers’ Postulates.
Kathy, just a few days ago my daughter (44) said, “Mom, I may need to ask you for a trim, soon. I had an appointment for May 2nd, but I’m not sure that’ll be happening now. But, please, no trying to do layers! Just the ends!” 😉
I’m glad you have said this. I have been concerned that these care homes act like a petri dish; like the cruise ships – incubators – with tentacles. I know we/they are fighting a war on so many fronts – adn doing so partially sighted – but this has been a disaster waiting to happen for a few weeks. There is space, in most of the country, to test and isolate all of those at high risk, and protect their carers.
I have just received a letter from the sheltered accommodation that an elderly relative lives in. My wife and I, who see him every other day, are his carers. We don’t care for anyone else. Just “Cousin Bri”. Cousin Bri has had 2 strokes and has very limited mobility. He is a fall risk, has limited personal hygiene, is unable to put his shopping away and sees no other friends or family. We enter his flat from the outside and neither we, nor he, ever access any communal areas of the accommodation.
This letter informs us we have been banned from seeing him.
We pay for professional carers to see him for one hour on Tue and an hour on Fri. They are allowed to continue to see him.
*Sighs and also bangs head on desk*
Thank you Dr Kendrick. The CDC labs were contaminated. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/health/cdc-coronavirus-lab-contamination-testing.html?fbclid=IwAR2FyL135Fb05OvOYlY7YpBrcovIyX-2Mz4cmwAX5fJTBJsTOZ5oAXUEehs
JillM: Thanks for the link. Sometimes the NYT tells the truth! “Nobody was in charge of the overall test program.” Morons in charge in the UK; morons in charge in the U.S.
This is all a FUBAR of biblical proportions. The Mantra I have heard, from the start is “Public Health England Says”,
PS, I am again, somewhat obtusely reminded of William Burroughs’ quote: “After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.”
Well we are a drain on society, so I’m told , so this solves the problem in two ways: firstly, it reduces the pension bill and it releases a lot of inheritance for the younger generation to spend on bolstering the economy.
I’ll bet someone has considered this or am I being paranoid.
Who knows? I can see it both ways, including the fact that it’s a tidy business taking care of the elderly with what they pay caregivers and what they spend on sub-par food in many care facilities. I would think they’d want the aged to stick around and keep paying to be cared for, but your point is just as valid and perhaps more so..
Irene, you are not paranoid, such thinking is “normal” – but rarely acted on by younger Mr & Miss Beneficiary… But Governments in general and POLITICIANS in particular, with their imperitive to “save” money (so they can squander it on their own Nationally-funded Pensions…) are a different animal.
Thank you
I have a question.
Why does the way you frame it give me the impression that the management or policy makers of the NHS sound stupid?
This is about institutions failing. Is it anything to do with career people cocooned in their personal development plans within a budget maximising bubble ? And with no liability for anything ? Of course, care homes are largely out of sight and dont make for great MSM fodder. Plenty of manufactured stories about the young being affected. That sells.
That’s not failure, that’s sabotage.
Harry Institutions do fail and fail miserably. When a market based institution fails it loses customers & capital and is allowed to go under – generally. Not so with state funded. When such fails more funding is often becomes the solution. In most western countries there are enough good individuals within the system, persins not unlike Dr Malcolm, to whistle blow where and if such a conspiracy was to be hatched and rolled out. I believe its sheer incompetence.
A US study by Goldman Sachs suggests unemployment will soar to 15% from about 3% this quarter. That means from 27 million minimum to 67 million maximum will lose their jobs in the next three months.
This is a catastrophe! The pain, suffering and death will be immense from this man-made disaster!
According to this one study, at “1% increase in the annual unemployment rate, approximately 21 additional suicides per 100,000 of the population can be expected.” If that’s correct, each 1% increase in the unemployment rate in the U.S., with a 330 million population, will lead to 69,300 additional suicides.
Based on the current predictions, those 12 percentage points could lead to an estimated 831,600 US suicides.
Recently the so-called “experts” cut down the total number of expected COVID-19 deaths in the US to around 61,000.
That means we can expect more suicides than coronavirus deaths in the US in the months ahead and possibly as many as 13 times the number of coronavirus deaths.
I wonder what the rate will be in the UK and that’s without the deaths from lack of timely medical treatments.
And the deaths from heart attacks and other stress-related loss of health.
BrainUnwashed, then those figures would point to LESS damage done by not locking down, permitting a measure of Naturally-generated Herd Immunity to grow.
Losing a family member to misfortune IS painful, but will eventually be overcome. Losing to suicide…is more painful and the guilt / damage never goes away, and society as a whole suffers more…and for longer.
It takes a shrt-sighted Politician to lock down, but a far-sighted leader NOT to.
A complete FUBAR – what is happening in the other Petri dish of infection, prisons?
Federica – not as vulnerable as OAPs
As vulnerable as the wretched sailors on the TR aircraft carrier? I don’t think they are any less vulnerable – all institutions from boarding schools to aircraft carriers carry substantial risks.
Of the 2,700 passengers, ovet 600 tested positive. Sadly 1 died. Nothing near the effect C19 has on care homes & the aged. A local small home (at latest count) attributes 11 fatalities to C19 . I suspect it has less than 80 beds.
Frederica, – take a wild guess…… well, society didn’t really need them anyway ! Think of the money saved, not to mention lives and crime statistics / embarrassment saved from paroling the worst offenders, as too-often happens.
Win- Win, just like the pensioners.
Have to test everyone every week before a decision can be made is the currant thinking. Besides hand washing one should attempt to prop up their immune system since there is no cure for covi19 according to WHO.
Andy, NOooooo, think of all those unemployed Big Pharma managers and board members !
‘We’re trying to quietly destroy the Immune System, – Get with the Program!’
But there are good treatments out there, but they invariably include “naturals” such as Vitamin C, and Zinc. – Only un-patentable.
Hi Janet: re testing
Big F will provide the test kits, but more importantly need a tracking system to see who has been tested. When the vaccine is rolled out the same tracking system can be used. The virus is a red herring to distract us from the ultimate purpose. Need a conspiracy theory to understand what this is all about.
To survive one has to take responsibility for their own health. Whatever we learned about CVD on this blog also applies to a virus with some additional tweaking.
There is a brilliant logic her – and it is really scaring!
“If you wanted to create a system most perfectly designed to spread COVID amongst the vulnerable elderly population, you may well have come up with the current one”.
That might account for why the UK, with a population less than 1% of the global population, is a close runner-up to the USA in new daily deaths from Covid-19. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
It’s the triumph of free-market capitalism! Margaret Thatcher, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
Free market’s got nothing to do with it. Thank your beloved NHS for this fiasco
The NHS doesn’t run most of the “care” homes where the old are dying in swathes. And the attempts to privatize the NHS have crippled it.
All the administrators should be fired; go back to doctors and nurses running their own hospitals. If necessary, let them hire managers to work *for them* – not vice versa.
Lollypops, it’s not the fault of the NHS, it’s the fault (deliberate policy) of successive governments (all of them) since Margaret theres-no-such-thing-as-community Thatcher.
AhNotepad: Ditto here. We’ve been going steadily downhill since the contemporary Reagan administration.
Tom, – anyone checked her tomb recently ?
I certainly haven’t, Janet. And I’m not about to! 😎
Genuine questions – I agree with you and am going to lose friends – what about elderly people who are not low care homes and who are seemingly relatively healthy? What about the 70+ year old who’s smoked for several decades but doesn’t have anything diagnosed as yet, but has a wife he lives with? What of her? Not in the best of health but also with nothing diagnosed? Do we say to them “it’s up to you – stay put or take your chances”?
I’m 70+ in good health, not taking any medication, not overweight, I’ll take my chances.
Me too. Very active – as a very busy specialist translator – and physically, walking (when not locked down!) up to 10 km a day. Do they really expect me to sit mouldering indoors for the next two or more years? Another think coming!
Helena. Ever heard of fomites? The “I’m all Right Jack brigade” lives on. Glad you are in good health, but you could so easily be an unwitting super-spreader, thus jeopardising those unfortunate to be less healthy than yourself.
Jennifer, accusing someone of possibly being a super-spreader, interesting, but how does that help peoples’ state of mind, and on what evidence do you base it?
AHNotepad. I have no evidence whatsoever regarding the contagious spread of the virus, nor its impact on mental health. Does anyone?
But we need to take some steps to try to manage this situation. Or should we? We could just continue living as we did, and rely upon herd immunity to sort us out. Thinking about it, maybe that’s the answer. In the UK that was obviously the implicit intention at first, until the penny dropped with the public, and demanded something different….and here we are where we are.
Jennifer, I don’t think “the penny dropped with the public”. I think it was stirred into near hysteria by those with agendas using the complicit MSM. The MSM usually broadcasts gloom and doom, rarely is it good news. People are frightened of things they don’t understand. (Including Fergoid who appears to have little understanding of disease transmission as he always gets it wrong). In my job I come across households with dogs. A couple of labradors running towards you may frighten some people. It doesn’t bother me as I understand them, I cannot run away, but if I just stay where I am, don’t look at them, and carry on with what I am doing, they get to me, see there’s nothing to see here, and move along. Rather like controlled sheeple.
AHN
Isn’t this the double whammy. If you are infected, stay away from people. If you think you are not infected, stay away from people you might be a super spreader.
Mr Chris,yes, this instruction No 1. You MUST NOT leave the house for any reason, but if you have a reason, you can leave the house. Infection risk.
However, it is counter intuitive, sounds right, but in the long term will do the opposite to what’s needed, and weaken the immune system. I was talking to someone dealing with getting old people back into their own homes once they’ve been assessed that they can cope on their own safely, she agrees the lockdown is unscientific and daft.
@Jennifer – if we worried about everything that may carry pathogens, including those of us who are apparently healthy and not displaying any symptoms, we’d never leave the house! Oh, wait, that’s what we’re being told to do…
We can’t isolate everyone who appears to be healthy just in case they happen to be asymptomatic spreaders! In fact, it’s become apparent that those people vaccinated with the acellular pertussis vaccine (the one in current use) are asymptomatic spreaders of pertussis.
If you haven’t already watched these videos, it may help you understand that we actually need to challenge our immune systems to ensure they protect us and hiding away indoors is likely to make things a lot worse:
Part 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfLVxx_lBLU
Part 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb6j7o1pLBw
Anglosvizzera. I realise the powers that be are being a bit wishy washy as to when we can return to some degree of normal life. However, be it 6 weeks, or a few months, as being suggested, to get the rate of transmission to a manageable level, then surely most of us can cope? The restrictions are not scientifically based, merely a theory, of which we are participating guinea pigs in a world wide campaign. We are surrounded by nasties from the moment we are born, and generally get by. The difference with C19 is its unknown mode of transmission and life cycle. If the social distancing, shielding the vulnerable, and intensity in improving personal hygiene ( sadly rather poor) fail to have an impact, then let’s agree to return to previous norms. I don’t see it is much to ask the fit and well, regardless of their age, to comply.
Jennifer: We are not surrounded by “nasties” from the moment we are born. We are surrounded by gazillions of microbes whom are essential for our survival and good health. We evolved surrounded by such, and will be surrounded by them to eternity. The first part of the trouble comes with a novel microbe in a naive host. This is why children often get sick, and this is how their immune system develops properly, by these sorts of challenges. By the same token, we, as adults need constant boosting from these same microbes which cause sickness in children that our bodies have long ago learned to recognize in order to retain our strong immunity. This is why, for the healthy, wearing masks and staying away from each other is counter-productive; it potentially reduces the strength of out immunity. In a hospital setting, nursing home, dentist’s office and such, wearing a mask is a very good idea, an essential. The second part of the trouble comes with the elderly, especially the elderly and diseased, who are the ones at primary risk of serious illness and premature death from this new SARS virus. Age and infirmity vastly reduce the ability of the body to fight off infection. The good news here is that doctors are working hard to figure out how best to treat this novel affliction. The bad news is that too many people have been taught to be terrified of microbes, which are essential for good health and a strong immune system. And the places we should be going to maintain health, outside and to parks, are closed to us. Colossal stupidity, I say. The public health establishment are morons, in my estimation.
No, I don’t think they are morons. They have an agenda which involves believing there is no such thing as immunity unless provided by vaccines.
On the one hand the government talking heads tell all healthy (assumed) people they must stay at home, otherwise they will be killing people because they may be asymptomatic and passing on the deadly virus which gives most people only mild symptoms, or none at all.. On the other hand, where the government know people have the deadly virus (according to unreliable tests), they are sent to be with others who may not have it, but because of their age, would be severely affected if they caught the virus.
I think the lockdown is not intended to do anything to reduce the transmission of the disease, but to condition people to do what certain anointed ones want, as part of a program to reduce resistance to further future impositions. Some will call “conspiracy theory”, but let’s be reminded once again, if you were told last summer, that before the spring, most of the world’s aircraft would be grounded, businesses would be forced to close, and we would be queuing outside shops to buy food, what would your response have been?
Do you think Game Theory could have ‘worked’ something so utterly preposterous? ‘They’ have had a lot of time to make practice, and we are, seemingly, the only blue dot we know of, but to me it’s just too outrageous. I’m sure we are being looked into, but I go with cock-ups, ‘cos if we are being listened too they would be on our side.
You’re right, we would have thought that person was a conspiracy nut, but here we are..
You have to be quite careful with language. As we humans are a social species, we instinctively pay a lot of attention to what others think and say. That is true even if the others don’t strike as particularly intelligent or well informed; it’s their numbers that count. Psychologists have shown that even sensible, intelligent people who can easily find the right answer to a simple test will incline to choosing a wrong answer if they see that everyone else chooses it. What’s more, the subject of such tests is quite unaware of having bowed to superior numbers – he still thinks he chose the right answer objectively.
Therefore those who want to take control of us are very assiduous in bending language to their will. (If you haven’t read it, run – don’t walk – to George Orwell’s superb “Politics and the English Language” https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit).
A “conspiracy theorist”, on the face of it, is a person who holds a theory about a conspiracy. That conspiracy may, or may not, be a real one. Now we know – especially those of us who have studied history – that conspiracies abound always and everywhere. From Aeschylus and Caesar to Shakespeare and “Yes, Minister!” we see politicians and soldiers doing little but conspire.
What has happened in the past 20 years or so is that politicians and the mass media have have gone all out to brainwash us that a conspiracy theorist is a wild-eyed fanatic who believes wholly incredible things about our noble and slefless leaders.
Don’t let them win!
That’s precisely why I chose the term, “conspiracy nut” to describe what most would have thought if we’d heard all this a year ago. Many ‘reasonable’ people would have gone beyond the more rational sounding, “conspiracy theorist” if we were foretold of a total lockdown coming in 2020. I think most of us imagine things like the dismantling of Democracy and taking away our rights as a more gradual process and would have been stunned by how quickly this could happen.
But yes, that said, we must all be careful when describing those who think far outside the box going forward and not let politicians or media mock anyone for it.
p.s. all of Orwell’s books are favorites of mine, and always a great read for anyone interested in exposing “the man behind the curtain” and the evil he’s up to.
I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole conspiracy-theory- wise, but sometimes, on dark days, I can’t help but feel like this is a test run.
Yes Natalie, I have similar thoughts.
Is the Western world setting up for a default on our debts??
“Is the Western world setting up for a default on our debts??”
Au contraire. If that’s what you think I can’t help feeling that you have the wrong end of the stick.
Debts are generally owed by the poor to the rich. It sounds (and is) despicable, but the best way for a rich person to become even richer is to grind the faces of the poor.
If the rich and powerful are in control (as they inevitably are) they will enforce the rights of creditors and make sure debts are paid.
As Michale Hudson has pointed out, in ancient Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago there were people who fought for the debtors against the creditors: the kings and priests. They did so, not out of kindness or altruism, but because they didn’t want their kingdoms to collapse when too many poor people were enslaved for debt, and all the land was grubbed up by the rich. (Which is the way the Roman Empire did actually fall).
Unfortunately, our clever modern political systems do not include anyone whose job it is to serve the interests of the country and the people as a whole. Just think: which of our modern leaders is dedicated to saving the people and the nation? Not Trump, not Johnson, nobody in Europe… although I have some hopes of Messrs Xi and Putin. And Maduro and Assad. (That’s why the West hates them all so much).
Countries can default easily like Iceland did 10 years ago. Difficult if you want to borrow in the future, like having a heart attack and then seeking life insurance. 10% of government income Is spent on interest effectively like piling on debt on your credit card.
Don’t worry Tom they won’t cancel your debts. Why do You think we push 50% To university? Got to get your debt slaves early on.
You can live in Syria if you want. Good luck with that.
Tom Welsh
I’ve always read your comments with interest , but ask millions of Syrian refugees how Assad is saving the people and the nation. It’s no good asking the hundreds of thousands his forces have killed
Putin ? Maduro? Am i missing some kind of irony here
You have interesting political leanings 😊
The test run was Event 201. This one is real. The lockdown will continue for the rest of the year, there will be mandatory phone tracing apps and OH LOOK! THE VACCINE IS HERE!!! That will also be mandatory. After that statins will become mandatory. Then vegan diets. Or anything else The Anointed choose to impose. We control the vertical, we control the horizontal, da dee da da, da dee da da (OK that dates me)
chris c, have you just got a job with the mainstream media? Just asking 😊
I’m just free associating from what I see on TV, filtered through the paranoia of reading John Brunner and his numerous dystopias (Stand On Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up being most relevant).
There was a character in Stand On Zanzibar who spent his time stoned on whatever he could get, watching TV and thinking “Christ! What an imagination I’ve got!”
I do that, only without the drugs
I agree AhNotepad, there does seem to be something very sinister and co-ordinated going on… In this regard I recommend you watch Aaron and Melissa Dykes’ recent documentary ‘We’re Living in 12 Monkeys’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JLBXfKDbbI&feature=share
There’s a bit of setting the scene at the beginning, but it gets into things around seven minutes in, including reference to Neil Ferguson and the Imperial College London modelling, and an MIT article ‘We’re not going back to normal’, which resonates with the narrative that’s developing globally…
Yes Elizabeth, thanks for the video link.
When you see the game plan and Prof. Ferguson’s part of it – the question that comes to mind is – “are our politicians useful idiots or part of the plan?”
I would say mostly “useful hirelings”.
I’m sure that this specific manufactured crisis is the outcome of a multi-variate analysis of various crises that could ever be imagined and lent themselves for human initiation.
The US has uncoverable liabilities in terms of future social and health care. China has an upside-down demographic that is unsustainable for the decreasing productive population. Various West-European countries have pension funds on which Goldman Sachs, ECB and South-European countries have trained their eyes on, especially the Dutch have amassed pension savings in the order of 600 billion Euro if not more.
Vaccine critics will be shut up, it’s even possible to implement compulsory vaccination now (and I’m sure it will come) referring to ‘protection of the vulnerable’ and the companies that produce them won’t be liable for collateral damages. Gates will finally cash his shares in the pharmaceutical industry, something he has been working for years for now and spent a lot of money on in the form of ‘filantropic donations’ to WHO, Imperial College, Ferguson, the Dutch Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM) etc., which make these institutions biased as ‘he who pays decides the outcome of the reports’.
They tried it a few times before (MERS, SARS, Swine flu, Bird flu) and those went out with a sizzle but this time they succeeded. Somehow Ferguson was enabled and allowed to come up with a scary but unrealistic number of hundreds of thousands of casualties ‘if we would not act’ without even knowing the real mechanics and statistics of the epidemic, his flawed, climate scare-like modelling was allowed to dominate also the American decision making (Fauci, was that you?) and that of many other western countries. Expensive anti-virals are pushed upon us while the $10 cure of Raoult Didier and Dr Zelenko are suppressed, verboten, but work quite well (Zelenko: hcq+azi+zinc: 1 dead in more than 500 treated, Didier: 12 dead in 3000 treated — see mediterranee-infection.com/covid-19 — against 100 deaths in 4579 traditionally treated).
Governments can train their populations into accepting arbitrary restrictions and unreasonable excessive punishments (fines exceeding 2.000 euros, arrests).
Travel restrictions, censored communications, truth suppression, prohibitions of meetings and all kinds of other measures that can be used to suppress protests in the making.
All based on the ridiculous narrative that it ‘just happened’. Yeah right, Bill Gates funds a WHO organised exercise in pandemic mitigation from a … corona virus, more than 200 countries’ military meet in Wuhan for the International Military Games, near a *cough* biolaboratory where the coronavirus is being ‘studied’, and BANG!, outbreak, profit for Gates, suppression of the democratic (yeah, did you really think that, you’ve been warned many times it’s not) peoples’ rights, destruction of the economy, austerity as a result, and here comes the banger: a slew of bankruptcies in a heavily financialised world in which the assets go to: THE BANKS! And all of it being explicitly not their fault!
Do I believe this is manufactured? Hell Yes.
DownUnder here in Australia, we’ve about to lose 50% of our airlines. – The “Virtuous” one, owned 40% by the CCP and 40% by two other, wealthy, airlines. Dick still has a 10% (?) stake
Fiscal murder and mayhem everywhere, all because of Lockdown.
One can only wonder about suicide rates for the rest of the year and beyond.
– In 2018, in Oz, about EIGHT per day / 12 per 100,000,
Or 6 males per day. Reasons are complex and… multi-factorial… (sorry!) but $$$ figures high on the list.
This first-Quarter, we’ve lost around (ca 75) 5 per WEEK. Less than ONE per DAY.
As always Malcolm, your logic is impeccable. The inevitable conclusion is shocking. An additional factor is that the way that death stats have been presented has the effect of hiding deaths due to Covid outside hospitals.
A further question is whether the consequence for care homes is deliberate or just a cockup. An initial mistake could be forgiven, even expected. But if it was a cockup, Surely, someone in the “system” should have seen this by now. It would then be decided to do something about it……
So Dr. Kendrick is Scottish. But what country does he reside and work in? I was told by a Scottish woman that Chelsea is not in Scotland.
Chelsea?
Tempted to bang your head again? Please don’t 😉
but are not Scottish death stats cognisant of care homes, unlike in England?
Oh, Cheshire. Is it in Scotland?
No. Just south of Manchester
“Oh, Cheshire. Is it in Scotland?”
Google Maps is your friend. (Or an atlas if such things still exist).
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cheshire/@53.2137031,-2.8317087,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x487af98b138a979d:0x35855d8a114a8ecb!8m2!3d53.2326344!4d-2.6103158
Or perhaps Chelyabinsk? Chappaquidick? I know, Chesapeake!
Cheshire ?
Cheshire = England
Two of my G/Gparents lived there, but they were Irish.
I am Cornish.
Dr Kendick is British, but not English.
I am Cornish but not English.
He and I are both internal exiles. British but not English even though we live in that part of Britain that calls itself England.
Yes, this the reason as to why gang warfare also runs riot in the UK. All are protective of their own postcodes… ‘cos postcodes are import bruv. It makes ’em (anyone) special unto themselves. They can become person’s apart. With a postcode ‘handle’ anyone can be anyone they want. It’s the truth, innit? This is a very marked outlook of many folk on our small Island. It’s the basis for many a TV sketch. Funny, but sad.
For a very clear explanation, read Richard Wrangham’s book “Demonic Males”. It’s mainly about chimps, but it turns out there is much less difference than you might think.
Thanks Jean – I just believe someone got Cheshire mixed up with Chelsea. And yes I am aware of surprising national preferences. Syd here from Cornwall insists he is not English. There you go ! PS Am Irish living in Ireland – simples.
Like Wales, Scotland and Ireland, Cornwall is part of the “Celtic fringe” where they speak variants of Gaelic. Cornwall fought long and hard to avoid being conquered by the “English” (mostly Norman, but that’s another story).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_the_Western_Men
Mr. Savage, I have emailed the following comment to Dr. Kendrick and I am also posting it here to you as I have great respect for your exemplary journalism on the subject of statins. Yes, so, here is my comment:
There has been considerable discussion of ACEs and ARBs in the context of COVID-19, however, by comparison, there has been a dearth of discussion of statins. Have you seen this RCT report: “Are certain drugs associated with enhanced mortality in COVID-19?”, by M R Goldstein, G A Poland, C W Graeber, published 27 March 2020, QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, hcaa103, https://doi.org/10.1093/qjmed/hcaa103
EXCERPT: “A retrospective analysis of a multicenter randomized, placebo-controlled trial testing the statin, rosuvastatin, for the treatment of infection-related ARDS, yielded concerning results…subjects randomized to rosuvastatin 20 mg daily for the 28-day trial were more likely to exhibit a rise in levels of proinflammatory cytokine, interleukin-18 (IL-18) and that rise was significantly associated with increased mortality”…
…”In conclusion, both ARBs and statins are the standard of care and commonly used in the chronic treatment of the comorbidities associated with severe COVID-19 pneumonia, ARDS, and death. Through their mechanism of action, by ARBs increasing viral entry and statins increasing IL-18 levels, these drugs might synergistically promote severe pneumonia, ARDS, and death in the setting of COVID-19, particularly in older individuals who are more likely to be taking these drugs”…
It’s astounding that this study has gone under the radar. I trust there is something herein that you will wish to further elucidate.
JP Sand – Embarrassed much – putting me in similar territory as Dr K ! But very grateful indeed. I think the battle never ends. This is encouraging – my first reaction is to send this report to my GP. Thanks again.
JPSsand
There is a lot to wade through on this blog at the moment but I always do since you never know what you will find.
Your post citing the effect of Rosuvastin on cytokines was one such nugget. Thank you
JP Sand. Many thanks. I am far from being an academic, but I certainly get the message from your excerpts. Unfortunately, I am not surprised that the study has gone under the radar, probably lounging on the dusty shelves of statin and cholesterol research .
Shurely shome mishtake?
This video was recently made by a U.K. citizen. The clips by outraged doctors are a must -listen-to as well as an announcement from the executive director of the WHO (@ 7.54 minutes) that wasn’t broadcast widely by the mainstream news. Seems house arrest may not be enough for these controllers.
If the narrator of this video is in fact calling for ‘peaceful’ disobedience (an honorable idea that we must all protect and demand our right to engage in) then why show a close-up of a protester in Michigan with an open carry weapon and then launch into the well known “hundredth monkey” effect? Trying to equate one with the other is disingenuous.Those protesters may be absolutely right in questioning this lockdown, but I’ve dealt with these same people on social platforms who were calling COVID-19 a hoax from day 1 and I assure you, they don’t read nor do they care about science or facts of any kind.
1. The right to bare arms shall not be infringed upon. So it’s totally legal to bring this gun. To work, to the groceries store, to protests. And as this is a mass gathering, who knows he is there to guard against mass shooters that seem to pop up out of nothing and start shooting ‘without reason’, although the dominant effect is that democrats start calling for a weapons ban. So maybe it does indeed have a reason…
2. Turns out those people who dismissed the whole thing from the start were right after all.
Harry de Boer: Bare arms only in warm weather. As to “bearing arms,” meaning “open carry”, some states allow it, but others require a special permit. It is unusual in most places in the U.S. to see ordinary citizens in public openly armed. This is why it was news. But it really doesn’t mean much of anything at all.
Yes – bare arms in the summer. Is that where they will put the tattoo when we have had our shots?
Jean Humphreys: Indeed so. “Line up here folks, on the dots six feet apart, please.”
Harry, why would you make assumptions about my political leanings based on what I discussed in my comment? I never said the protesters with guns didn’t have the right to have them, my comment was about the narrator contradicting his own words about peaceful protests while showing images to the contrary and then discussing the hundredth monkey effect as a ploy to tie the two together.
As for your contention that ‘they’ were right that COVID-19 is just a hoax, then you’re also saying that Dr. Kendrick and thousands of other doctors and nurses are mistaken when they say that they’ve witnessed this virus taking lives and it’s like nothing they’ve ever seen before. Please provide YOUR proof that this whole thing is a hoax.
I happen to think this heavy-handed lockdown is ridiculous and needs to end asap, but there were certainly good arguments on the other side for trying to control the influx of patients. But now that we know many hospitals have plenty of room and are not being overwhelmed, we can definitely say it was a huge overreaction to close down almost everything.
Too much attention on one age group here. The all cause mortality rate in younger aged (45-64) people has increased way more than in elderly age group/s (75+) in relative terms. This sounds heartless, but over 65’s represent 84% of mortality in an average year. COVID 19 has focused attention on these. When we look back in a years time will a 6 month rolling average mortality chart even register COVID 19 (?)
“The all cause mortality rate in younger aged (45-64) people has increased way more than in elderly age group/s (75+) in relative terms”.
Bear in mind that it is much easier for a small number to increase rapidly than a large number.
As the marketing director of a computer firm told the media long ago, “We’ve been doubling sales every 18 months. However when you start from zero, it takes a long time”.
Any mathematician would tell you that it takes forever.
Could it be that it is intentional? Isn’t there a major problem with national pension systems everywhere?
If it is, it isn’t very cleverly done. The costs of the response will outweigh any reduction in pension payouts by orders of magnitude!
I remember eating a dodgy curry the once, gave me the squids, fever and generally wishing I would die for about 24 – 48 hours. Luckily I recovered, now am I really to believe that all of this pandemic is coming from a chinese guy who happened to eat a dodgy bat ? I’m starting to call BS on this now. especially when in his very town there happens to be a lab that just happens to carry tests on SARs like viruses just like this one. What are the chances!
Ok so if we take the giant leap to suggest that this virus was hatched in a lab and let loose deliberately, lets asks the question why. Whats the agenda ? Elderly people have outlived their usefulness. They cost us a fortune in care costs. Occupy much needed housing and for what – they dont work anymore, they dont contribute they just cost us money. Heres a thought – lets wipe them out. We know there are too many people on the planet and this needs to be addressed, might as well get rid of the sick people at the same time as well. Too much pollution going on as well, lets sort that out at the same time. Too much power to the arab states ? Sure – lets kill oil and sort that out as well. While we’re on lets scare the bejesus out of people so they are too scared to leave their home and it will make it easier to control them in the future, ooh and for good measure lets grant ourselves access to their data on their mobile phones so we can see exactly what they are up to. Nobody wants 5g but hey it makes it easier to monitor the people, you’re having that as well. Whats the betting that any vaccine will be mandatory in the future as well – god only knows what will be in that.
I must admit, my mind has run away with me but its purely because like Dr K – it makes absolutely no sense as to why the hell our “experts” are running it this way. I’m off to make another tin foil hat 🙂
Speaking of overpopulation, why not also cut it off at the source and find a way to keep people from bringing babies into this world when the parents are already starving and dying of thirst? Tell the churches to stop teaching them to keep popping out babies and telling them it’s a mortal sin to use contraception. (Yes, I’m just letting my mind run away with me, too, so no one needs to flip out on me.)
Sounds like you could be Bill Gates’ alter ego
lol..could I wear a cape? 😉
And the evidence mounts that the epidemics had already peaked before the coercive lockdowns were even introduced, and the voluntary measures already in place were sufficient.
In Britain:
“It comes as a leading expert at the University of Oxford has argued the peak was actually about a month ago, a week before lockdown started on March 23, and that the draconian measures people are now living with were unnecessary.
Professor Carl Heneghan claims data shows infection rates halved after the Government launched a public information campaign on March 16 urging people to wash their hands and keep two metres (6’6″) away from others.
He said ministers ‘lost sight’ of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who he claims have been ‘consistently wrong’ during the crisis. ”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8235979/UKs-coronavirus-crisis-peaked-lockdown-Expert-argues-draconian-measures-unnecessary.html
And in Germany and Switzerland (German translated by Google):
“In Germany there were two important times: on March 9th the ban on large events (> 1000 people) and then on March 23rd the lockdown with extensive ban on contacts. And this analysis by the RKI also shows that in Germany, as in Switzerland, it was not the lockdown measures that effectively inhibited the spread of Covid-19.
Simple measures are sufficient
These results contain explosives: Apparently these two works now show more or less identical: The simple measures, avoiding major events and the introduction of hygiene measures are highly effective. The population is able to implement these recommendations well and the measures can almost stop the epidemic. In any case, the measures are sufficient to protect our health system in such a way that the hospitals are not overloaded.”
https://infekt.ch/2020/04/sind-wir-tatsaechlich-im-blindflug/
Is there any reason to keep these coercive lockdowns in place a day longer?
“He said ministers ‘lost sight’ of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who he claims have been ‘consistently wrong’ during the crisis. ”
In his excellent video interview the other day, the usually very urbane and courteous Dr John Ioannidis said more than once that the data used by Imperial College in its model was “astronomically wrong”.
Dr Ioannidis does not use such an adjective lightly. And he repeated the same phrase at least twice.
All together now: “Garbage In, Garbage Out!”
Yes, the problem is that part of pushing “evidence based medicine” needs to be some education in the hazards of looking at only part of the evidence, especially when it is filtered and selected by the media for shock value. It requires some education on the inherent limitations of modelling.
That imperial College report must be one of the most costly pieces of misleading science in history.
It’s far from the first time Neil Ferguson has been 100% wrong. In fact he is wrong every time yet they still believe in him.
When he writes his memoirs, I trust he includes his Secrets of How to Stay in a Top Job… because “competence” is not how he’s done it so far.
If I was that incompetent I would have been sacked. However once you reach a certain position you can only be promoted. I like Nicholas Naseem Taleb’s description of “The Intellectual Yet Idiot”.
See also other members of The Anointed like Ancel Keys and Walt Willett.
Hey! The “elderly” have a life, too!Why should I @87 be held back because of the unhealthy cavalier chrono young?Robert
Is there anyone under 30 on this blog? 40?, 50?
Young fella here – 59.
42
Bob You are the answer! To life, the universe and everything. Please be useful until your next birthday, when it all fades away.
I’m 50 later this year.
Agg: that means you’re 49. Enjoy it. Celebrate it! As my 93-year-old aunt says, in every birthday card, “age is just a number.”
Age IS just a number and the age of those on this forum should mean absolutely nothing if we’re talking about who can contribute to the myriad conversations we’ve all had and enjoyed. Everyone can have something of value to contribute at any age.Full stop.
And I saw once on a birthday card – “Cheer up! In ten years time you’ll never believe you were this young.” 😀
Gary, I do enjoy it, I love being middle aged, find it very liberating, and I celebrate life rather than any birthday
Agg: Retirement is even better. You get to do anything you damn well please. Until the spouse retires.
Gary lol
I’m very aware that by the time I get to the ever moving retirement age, there will be no pension option available any more. Please enjoy your retirement for me too 🙂
Agg: I’m very fortunate that California has a good teacher’s retirement system. Of course it is underfunded (but not as much as the state employee system), and gaping holes will be appearing in both of these as a result of the colossal stupidity of the lockdown. I wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few states reached bankruptcy. In California’s case, it will be because of the immensely wasteful way in which tax revenues are spent. I have great sympathy for those with private pension plans or no pension at all. I spent half my career (21 years) working in private industry, and paying into Social Security. The Reagan administration decided that teachers (and only teachers) didn’t deserve Social Security, so any teacher with a public pension automatically gets their award cut in half. On the other hand, immigrants, at 65, who never paid in a penny, get a check every month. I’m not complaining; I’m frugal, and a saver, so I want for nothing I need, with a bit extra for things I don’t need but want. But many without any sort of guaranteed pension will be forced to work until they drop.
Gary: California you say? I could do with more of your sun! I live in a nice corner of the U.K. though so will not complain too much.
I feel I’m in the work-till-you-drop group (unless I win big at the lottery, or marry for big money, both highly unlikely). I’m also good at tightening the belt, and enjoying simple things in life, so as long as I stay healthy with all the marbles in the right place, I should be all right. Hence me following this blog, no health issues at the moment touch wood but getting ready for the rest of my life.
Shaun – good question!
With serious CVD at 70+ I am probably in the “middle age” of our vulnerable flock which is frequenting this excellent blog 🙂
Malcolm is our young leader.
BTW digging in our garden and chopping the trunks to firewood my angina now and then tells me to relax in the evening with a glass of wine and watch the bats circling above our pond. A voice which we must obey.
Don’t eat the bats!
On my still permitted walks I am watching the spring migrant birds coming in and passing through, and water voles in the river. It’s good to see a few “old folks” getting out in the sunshine too.
I’m not really surprised the Police have not made a nuisance of themselves here, as they have elsewhere. There are still not many cases here, or in fact in much of the rest of the country outside of highly populated and polluted areas but we have the same rules imposed as central London
chris c, as I understand it these are not “rules” they are largely “government guidance” or “whims of ministers” which are legally unenforcible
Tell that to the Police shouting at people through megaphones, filming them from drones, giving themselves the right to go through people’s shopping baskets etc. (well that last one proved to be a step too far)
Someone I met today on my walk along the river had been out to a deserted heath for a walk. When she got back to her car the Police had plastered it with a notice telling her to go home and stay indoors, and that they had taken her number. Bless, she must have been eighty if she was a day and still walking about in the sun.
There’s getting to be quite a backlash against the lockdown judging by people I’ve talked to recently. This sort of overreaction isn’t helping.
Those who plastered the car with stickers, maybe police, were acting directly against the information recently given by the home secretary. A letter should go to her MP with a copy directly to the home secretary. This type of thuggery must not be allowed to go unchallenged.
chris c: Little did we know that there were so many morons in charge in this world. We went for our first hike today since October. I’ve recovered enough from medical interventions to be ready for bear. I knew the national parks were still closed. I know back ways into all of them (we have three close ones), but then came to find out these out-of-the-way dirt roads were also closed!!! So we went to a Sequoia grove that is not in a park, and the road was closed! In fact all but 1 of the forest roads were closed. So we took the one which was open, and had a short hike to my daughter’s Girl Scout camp from long ago. Not much hiking, but a gorgeous day in the woods, nevertheless. Hot here. Supposed to be in the 90’s next week. Global warming, bring it on! We like warm weather.
Actually they ARE laws, see here
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/made
I got that from here
https://www.ukcolumn.org/coronavirus
yet another excellent source of information.
I believe they have closed all footpaths in Wales. I’ve only seen one closed here in the limited areas I go, plus another one the farmer closed after dogs attacked his sheep and lambs. Of course all the nature reserves are also closed, and I think National Trust land.
I had a friend in the Police and even she had run-ins with the traffic lads whose heads are bigger than their hats.
Perhaps some of us don’t want to admit their age… just in case.
Just sayin’.
I find it fascinating that so many forum members hereabouts are of such an advanced age. Anyway, its kinda comforting that there are a few who are not so old. Thank you peeps
Of what interest is it? Why is it comforting that some are not so old?
Well, I do find it fascinating! I had thought that the age breakdown was a bit askew, but maybe its that older folk do have a broader sense of life’s game-plan. Anyway, I have 4 kids and 6 grandchildren, and my kids, and their partners/husbands/wives, do like to discuss today’s issues, and if there were a younger demographic here, I think we could have a ’rounder’ interaction as to broader thoughts on these maddening national events, and so its disappointing that there appears to little contribution. Maybe, as they are not dying so much it is that is they really couldn’t give a damn? Much like your son gobbling his snacks. Further, it does appear that much of it all is part-and-parcel of the route we have gone in recent years (with the nations’ food intake etc.), and its familial lifestyle, that has then brought so much grief onto folk.
If you look at the history of this blog, it began as specialised in CVD, which tends to be a disease of the old. Secondly on the subject of Corona 19, since the disease is said to kill off the old, you can understand why the old are interested
It’s not the old, it’s the old AND compromised.
“Why is it comforting that some are not so old?”
It’s of concern that people don’t take notice until they’ve developed health problems like heart disease or diabetes, when these could have been avoided if they’d taken action decades earlier. I certainly would have liked to have known what I know now 20 years ago.
I think the reason the blog readership is skewed to an older age group is that when you’re young you tend to take good health for granted and it’s only when you develop a health condition yourself or see it in your contemporaries that you start paying attention. Certainly was in my case. It wasn’t until I developed a chronic condition in my mid-40s and finding that the doctors were clueless that I started doing my own research. That led to researching other chronic conditions like heart disease which led me here.
OTOH it may simply be that retired people have more time to comment on the blog compared to readers in their 40s and 50s. I still wouldn’t expect many under 35 for the reason above. Besides most of them are spending too much time on Facebook and Twitter to read anything longer than 140 characters.
I guess anyone who has stumbled across Dr Kendrick’s blog may have done so when researching statins either for themselves or relatives?
I came to it because I came across a nasty, nasty statin injury. I hope no one on this blog had that much injury from statins. That woman was dying, IMO. No one would admit it was from statins, so they diagnosed her with “autoimmune hepatitis”. So, I first came across Dr Graveline’s book and then to Dr Kendrick’s books and to here.
It’s the same with vaccines. I started researching it because I was seeing vaccine injuries.
I’m 63 now, but became interested in heart disease and strokes in my 30’s at the latest, because those are the two diseases that robbed me of my dearest relatives, starting with my nana when she was only 52 and both my parents when they were 69, just to name 3 members of my family. I have a cousin who had to have a quadruple bypass at 37. I doubt he’ll wait till he’s “old” to start looking into CVD.
Sasha
Re Autoimmune hepatitis. I have suspicions that there is a connection with statins. Will Dr. Graveline’s book elaborate ? If so it’ll be on my order list.
I have a particular interest.
This paper suggests that liver injury thro statin use is very rare.
“The incidence of true liver injury caused by statin is noticed to be around 1%.[34] Clinically significant hepatic effects, including fulminant hepatic failure and autoimmune hepatitis, can occur with statins.[14] Even though rare, idiosyncratic liver injury associated with statins could be severe.[23,27] Based on the reports from Swedish ADRs Advisory Committee, rare but severe idiosyncratic liver injury was reported with statins which usually developed within 3–4 months after the start of therapy. A similar pattern of liver injury may be reproduced on re-exposure. It was reported that atorvastatin is mostly associated with cholestatic liver injury whereas hepatocellular injury is more common with simvastatin.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4766774/
Hi Jerome, the paper appears to be written from a pharmacists point of view whose motivation is to promote use of drugs. For help with covid-19 infection and statin use:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322222038_Statins_and_mitochondria
“Numerous studies mentioned above prove that statins cause mitochondrial pathway-induced apoptosis and mitochondrial dysfunction manifested by morphological changes, inhibition of the mitochondrial respiratory rate, a decrease in the efficiency of oxidative phosphorylation, and a decrease in the mitochondrial membrane potential. “
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2018.01605/full
“ mitochondria, the chief organelle for metabolism, have emerged to play crucial roles in the maintenance and establishment of immune responses. “
Thanks Andy, yes – that’s something I had forgotten about . However I am interested in Sasha’s remarks above re someone who was dying “No one would admit it was from statins, so they diagnosed her with “autoimmune hepatitis””
This is something that is familiar to me but gets little attention from statin critics nor from our own Dr K. That paper is certainly pro pharma but its findings are similar to many others. I just wonder is there more to this particular so called “rare” side effect, are we getting the whole story ?
53!
Thank you. Spot on, as usual.
Malcolm, in paragraph 2 of your ‘Anti-lockdown strategy’ article, you state that [In my view, if we had any sense, we would lockdown/protect the elderly, and let everyone else get on with their lives].
I would ask who gives you, the Government or anyone for that matter, the right to decide my future and how I should live it.
How are you, or the Government going to describe or classify someone who is elderly and/or infirm (why do you group these two together) and write them off ‘for their own good by effectively sending them to prison until they either die of boredom or of truly old age.
I do not want to be ‘locked down/protected’ ; I want to live the remainder of my life on my terms, with the same rights as everyone else in the UK, if younger people can go out, then so should I, respecting the same rules for such an activity.
At some point in the future It is likely that I will succumb to an illness that may well lead to my death, after all we are all born to die, but until then I’m living life to the full and no one has the right to control me….’for my own good’.
I am 75, live on my own and take my chances with whatever life throws at me, I do not want help, I do not want ‘molly coddling’…..I just want to enjoy what I have left of my life, with respect to others…….I am NOT elderly…..rant over!
well said gazzer; let the patronising stop
Hear hear!
But the Dr. seems to be referring to those who are unwell and in care homes, hence my question about older people with no known morbidities.
Yes. One of the greatest defects of the NHS is that it allows government to regiment and control us on the grounds that “we’re all in this together”.
If medicine were completely private, every individual and family could choose what doctors and treatment they wanted.
And many could simply die and decrease the surplus population.
Sure they could – if they could afford it. If not, tough t..
Good for you gazza, the government has the right to advise – same as doctors but ultimately we should have the absolute right to either take the advice or not.
I am so glad that we made the decision to take my mother of 90 home from hospital after she had been admitted for a chest infection and a UTI in March. We were told on the 13th March that the hospital was going to be requisitioned for Corona virus patients and the hospital had to be cleared as soon as possible. We were offered a place in a local care home or four visits a day from a reablement team, which we cynically knew wouldn’t happen. We went for neither, thinking both scenarios would finish her off. The decisions we had to make on one day were monumental. The message was simply all out, all out no matter what the circumstances were. Most patients were not as fortunate as my mother and I dread to think what happened to many of them as many of them didn’t have full capacity, or a family ready to shoulder the burden of care.We took a very frail mother home on the 16th March, she was not ready to be discharged. She will be 91 next week, thanks only to my sister who gave up work to look after my parents for what we thought would be a relatively short period of time. How wrong we were. We will now probably share the care of my parents for the rest of their lives. Care homes and Nursing homes sound like no place to spend the rest of your life.
Those willing to sacrifice their own lives and leisure time to care for another whether it’s an aging parent, distant relative or friend, are becoming a rare breed in our society. You mum is lucky to have you. All the best to you and your family, Deborah.
I’m sorry to read of your understandable frustration. Hope you are able to resolve the issue with infected elderly patients being sent out of empty hospitals back to buildings housing many vulnerable elderly. Truly a dreadful situation by the sounds of things. One would think after his bought with the Wuhan virus Boris Johnson would be more sympathetic to make the change.
On the positive news for me, in a time of disease and fear, I think there is a good chance that I have finally sound an answer for my stomach woes. About time! Only took 30 years. Well, time will tell of course, lots of healing to do, but it is time for me to set sail on to new pastures.
Back in a strange time, I used to have several British higher ups communicate with me. It wasn’t anything I was looking for or wanting but apparently appearance on the outside were different. I recall a UK politician explaining to me how things are done differently in the UK compared to America. His main complaint concerned how government policy makers were not elected directly by the people, which in turned made for strange disconnected policy. There was little fear of a backlash basically. It went something like that. I’m not entirely sure of all that was said. Memory isn’t great. And I’m not sure if things are much better in the US. Sounds like a FUBAR situation though. And your former royal Harry does not have AIDS. He wanted that to be well known and clear. He wasn’t trying to make me laugh, but I had a good chuckle over that.
When I went to work in the USA l thought that a presidential system must be superior to a parliamentary system in that a president could pick the most qualified people for a Cabinet post eg get the best economist as Treasurer, a health expert for Health Minister etc. In a parliamentary system you can only appoint Cabinet Ministers from among the elected MPs, who tend to be lawyers, union officials and party apparatchiks. Unfortunately that’s not what happens in the US; eg the only economist in Ronald Reagan’s first Administration was George Schultz and he was Secretary of State (foreign minister). Instead people are appointed based on repaying political favours, not any particular expertise. Add to this the constant churn of personnel – there’s generally an exodus midway in a President’s term as senior personnel below the Minister leave to get well-paid lobbying jobs using their contacts in the current administration. Add in that most of those people were also unqualified political appointees and that in business it’s recognised that it takes 18 months to become really effective in a new position, they are leaving just as they are becoming (somewhat) effective at their jobs. None of this makes for good policy making.
I think what your UK politician was referring to is that in the British system the Civil Service tends to have a monopoly on advice to Ministers and they frequently present the Minister with a narrow range of options, any dissenting opinions having been suppressed at a lower level. The politician may feel he’s being manipulated by his own subordinates – as satirized in the BBC series Yes Minister. Yet it is the politician who has to take responsibility for the failings of his department and resign while the career civil servants remain unscathed, so the politician understandably feels aggrieved. This commentary expresses the tension very well:
http://www.locushabitat.com/yes-prime-minister-singapore.html
However, the idea that the voters should be able to elect particular Cabinet positions directly, let alone their subordinates, is farcical. How do you communicate complex policy in a 30 second ad? That’s why most political campaigning takes the form of sloganeering.
https://covid19criticalcare.com/
Thanks for the link, Beth. I’d heard they were using IV-vitamin C in China, but hadn’t yet heard it was being used in the U.S. by some doctors. Hopefully, Canada is following suit..
You’re welcome. Follow Andrew Saul on MeWe or FB, doctoryourself is his webpage. Orthomolecular medicine. Also read the American Herbalist’s Guild Covid guides, lots of understanding of what happens at the cellular level and practical guidance on what to do from highly experienced herbalists treating clients.
I appreciate the info, but to be honest, when I clicked on your second link, I was a little put off, but that’s just my personal bias against anyone who praises the U.S. potus, it’s nothing personal toward you. I started reading, but had to stop when I got to this part: “But let’s talk about the latest terror bomb detonated by Global Atheist PC Creeps upon your perfectly good, free life as a US citizen in 2020, governed by a President who does not think backwards.”
Personally, I can’t recall a more ‘backwards’ or corrupt politician than DJT. But again, that’s me, and I still appreciate your first link about vitamin C very much. Take care.
Hello teedee, I think it’s Andrew Saul’s page you refer to? Please don’t be put off, he’s no fan of the current president, sometimes we are separated by a common language and in jokes that don’t translate well across borders? He’s part of orthomolecular medicine, something that I have witnessed cure friends of so called incurables. And FB as the current experts on all things medical, along with Wikipedia and YouTube, don’t like what he says…😊
I appreciate the clarification, Beth, and might I add that if FB, Wikipedia and YouTube don’t like something, one can be sure there’s an agenda at work that doesn’t necessarily serve the public good.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/vitciv.html
This is the IV protocol for hospital use should anyone wish to ask for and receive it to facilitate a cure
I posted this on the other Covid discussion, worth reading if you want to understand where the vaccine and pharmaceutical manipulation oops sorry health industry started. This is part 5. And consider how to personally approach the current situation, it is the luck of which medic you meet. Make sure you have a Lasting Power of Attorney for Health and Social Care in place, with clear instructions on how you wish to be treated otherwise the medics have total control, no visitors, DOL (Deprivation of Liberty) implemented while safeguarding ignored. You don’t think that would happen in the NHS? Personal experience last week….
https://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/a-new-set-of-questions-about-1918/
Yes, I’ve had a nagging feeling I need to get a medical power of attorney, etc. and think about this more than I have been, just in case. Take care, Beth..
Me too. I’ve reached the stage where being dead would be better than a lot of the alternatives. I will probably be one of those people whose rotting corpses are found weeks after they died in their own bed. Better that than forcible ventilation.
I hear that, Chris.
Where I live there were a lot of old folks who gradually shuffled off the mortal coil, mostly from their eighties to a neighbour at 106. There were times when there were more ambulances than buses going by. Most of them including my mother (95) did NOT have a good death on the NHS. Dying peacefully at home is just not on the menu any more.
My older sister has been part of the housekeeping staff at a large long term care home for about 35 years. Over the years she’d had residents beg her to kill them. One woman in her 90’s wasn’t one to complain, but she’d scream into her pillow, trying to muffle her cries. She just wanted to die. Those stories used to haunt me. I’ve told both my kids I’d rather go on my own terms somehow than to ever be put in that position. I try not to think about it too much though, and they’ve both guaranteed me I will never be put in a home.. But hopefully, I’ll go when I’m still in my right mind. That’s part of my motivation to stay as healthy as possible, and if I’m lucky, I’ll get hit by a speeding bus one sunny day. 😉
https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/was-covid-19-test-meant-detect-virus?utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter%3A%20Was%20the%20COVID-19%20Test%20Meant%20to%20Detect%20a%20Virus%3F%20%28Xb2GrQ%29&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter&_ke=eyJrbF9lbWFpbCI6ICJiZXRoa3lkZEBnbWFpbC5jb20iLCAia2xfY29tcGFueV9pZCI6ICJLMnZYQXkifQ%3D%3D
God help us Dr. Kendrick. I would ask, “What are these people thinking?” Except they clearly have forgotten how, or never learned. The Leicester Method has worked for the last 135 years: Isolate the case, quarantine the contacts, and thoroughly clean and disinfect the residence. These morons have probably never heard of it. What about reading it sideways? No? I didn’t think so.
Could it possibly be because the NHS is now run by medically untrained administrators? They seem to make the decisions, and the doctors and nurses just have to follow orders.
When those administrators put their heads together with the politicians and civil servants who appointed them, who set their goals, assess their performance and determine their future…
Here’s an idea. In the USSR, military and naval commanders were always shadowed by political officers whose job it was to keep an eye on everything they said and did, in order to report them if they became politically incorrect or started thinking about a coup d’etat.
We might apply the same principle to the NHS. How about assigning to every administrator a qualified and experienced doctor to act as a “patient advocate”. He would have powers to force the boss to do the right thing in the interests of the patients.
After all, at present it seems that no one with any power in the NHS gives a killed virus for the patients.
Of course, one might think it would be better for every administrator to BE a qualified and experienced doctor who acts as a patient advocate.
But Rome wasn’t built in a day.
But while they’re ‘administrating’ they can’t be ‘doctoring’, can they. And we need doctors.
I worked in industry/manufacturing/engineering and the best managers and directors I knew had worked up from the shop floor and knew the job inside out.
Then they were replaced by “professional management” who came from college with no knowledge and no need to obtain any. A colleague described one as “giving good meeting”. Read the tales of the death of British Leyland among many others.
My father and one of his brothers worked for the NHS from its inception until they retired. In those days “admin” worked FOR the doctors, unlike today. A nurse I knew told me the dates when the number of managers exceeded the number of nurses and the non-medical staff outnumbered the medical, both I recall in the eighties.
Hmm – don’t pretend any of it makes enough sense to me, and many aspects of concern, but if all the ‘non-elderly’ were allowed to intermingle and ‘get on with their lives’ (with the elderly locked away) wouldn’t the non-elderly getting on with their lives become another giant petri dish that would inevitably then get to the elderly anyway? As for the conspiracy theories (except regarding China obviously 🙂 I have trouble seeing how any of the governing nations caught up in this were likely to see covid and the lockdowns as good for them, unless they really are capable of playing much longer games with far more variables than I’d normally credit humans with. Though I’ve always had trouble with economics.
From many articles and graphs I have seen recently, it seems that the age profile of Covid-19 mortality is almost identical to that of overall mortality in normal times.
In other words, Covid-19 is depriving the sick aged of only a few days or weeks of life – a few months at most.
Sad though that is, one one gets to 80 or so and is in poor health, the end of the road is clearly in sight.
So why worry unduly about the consequences of everyone mixing freely?
I would agree with you except for the strange way that this sometimes kills and the way that it has perplexed medical personnel as to how to treat it, although they are now figuring it out.
I have heard slightly different. There are people dying in their 60s as well. Probably less than old, percentage wise, but there are. Very likely with comorbidities but, as a friend pointed out, in their prime in terms of what they can contribute to society…
´If you wanted to create a system most perfectly designed to spread COVID amongst the vulnerable elderly population, you may well have come up with the current one.´
It is interesting to compare the approach of the health system in previous epidemics with the approach of the current day.
England suffered a severe influenza epidemic in 1950-51. The ONS records excess winter deaths for that period as 106,000, which is significantly more than for any subsequent year.
It seems that Liverpool suffered the worst and Dr. Andrew B. Semple (Deputy Medical Officer of Health for the City and Port of Liverpool) reported at the time that:
“The epidemic of influenza which occurred in Liverpool in the last week of 1950 and the early weeks of’ 1951, although of short duration, was for three consecutive weeks the cause of the highest weekly death roll, apart from aerial bombardment, in the city’s vital statistics records since the great cholera epidemic of 1849.” (Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine Vol.44 789).
According to Dr Semple general practitioners were overwhelmed. He notes:
“For example, one doctor and his assistant in an industrial practice who kept records during the epidemic saw between them 1,821 new cases diagnosed as influenza…..”.
The NHS were caught off guard at the outset because of the speed of the epidemic, but, as Dr Semple notes:
“…it did not take long for the Medical Superintendents of the former municipal hospitals to realize the true state of affairs and on their own initiative they arranged for the provision of additional hospital accommodation for complicated cases of influenza and for cases where social need required the admission to hospital. There is no doubt that the action of these medical superintendents was an important factor in reducing the mortality from this epidemic.”
It seems that the 1950-51 version of the NHS was a much more nimble organisation that was able to respond quickly and appropriately to the local situation.
“It seems that the 1950-51 version of the NHS was a much more nimble organisation that was able to respond quickly and appropriately to the local situation”.
Of course! It was quite new, much smaller, had far less funding and – above all – wasn’t run by clueless ignorant nincompoops.
erratum: “governing organisations within nations” that was supposed to be…
Incredibly frustrating – The Australian Government doesn’t care that lives will be lost because of their lockdowns.
In Australia we had a very interesting discussion on ABC’s Q&A last Monday night.
The episode, titled “Where to Next” featured an economist, Professor Gigi Forster, who was criticised for simply stating the fact that harms, including excess deaths will arise directly as a result of these unprecedented lockdowns. As she put it, the economy is people’s lives and when you damage the economy you harm people. Deaths and despair are the result. It’s worth watching the first 15 minutes of the show, it’s available on iview.com.au. (Those outside Australia may need a VPN to bypass geoblocking) The discussion also reached all major news outlets including the abc news website
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-20/economists-warn-against-early-lifting-of-coronavirus-lockdown/12165934
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/current-affairs/coronavirus-australia-economist-gigi-foster-shares-blunt-lockdown-view-on-qa/news-story/e8fafd0e4c268c45cbb5133b767f0863
Professor Foster argues logically and rationally and I believe she is totally spot on. The trade-off in lives from corona vs lives from lockdown is a discussion we need to have.
Professor McVernon was also on the show and she is the architect of modelling used by the Australian government to make lockdown decisions. She admitted that the collateral damage, deaths, harm to people’s lives, the 3 million unemployed, the loss of $20,000 from around 1 million individual’s superannution funds, $300 billion in debt that will have to be repaid, the countless suicides, and suffering from delayed operations, cancer treatments, all ignored, not relevant or important enough to build into her modelling.
And I’m totally fed up with the bs propaganda promoted by our Australian government and the mainstream media. It’s interesting to note however that word is trickling out and opinion is changing in Australia. Support for the lockdowns is falling and I believe this will accelerate as the impacts of the lockdowns start to be felt in people’s lives.
Dr K. thank god we have you and this forum to give us the true picture. I once again thank you for your courage and inspiration in bringing these issues to light.
Hi Deb I saw that Program on Monday and formed the same view….Professor Forster was right on the money. She talked about (from memory) Quality Adjusted Life Years and that’s what is (should) be used by Governments as to where to spend their limited resources. Australia currently has only 74 deaths ‘due’ to COVID-19 but would have many more suicides/death due to delayed procedures/deaths due to scared people not presenting to hospital with ailments.
I admit that in other countries (eg Italy, US), many of the deaths seem to be a result of overwhelmed health systems (if you believe the reports)…which implies that people died who may have been saved if there were enough ICU beds. Perhaps we need to compare with countries like Sweden who apparently haven’t locked down much at all….but we’d need to look at TOTAL medically related deaths and deaths by suicide over the period that COVID measures have been in place. I suspect that there would be more overall deaths in the countries with the greatest lockdowns.
I think in the end, hindsight would suggest that we should have kept all the young(er) people contributing to the economy and found ways to protect the most vulnerable…particularly as we’re going to be living with COVID for quite some time and Governments can’t keep going with stimulus forever.
Hear, hear!
I could not agree more. I am still convinced this is a globally-planned strategy to see how easy it is to control people. It has been very easy up to now. However the tectonic plates are starting to move with protests against lockdown in many countries, sadly not here.
South Korea is interesting. It has not had a lockdown. On Saturday from 10,653 confirmed cases there had been 232 deaths and the curve seems to have plateaued. Sweden, another country with no lockdown but social distancing, was still rising with 13,822 confirmed cases and 1,511 deaths. Japan is another no lockdown country . It had 9,787 confirmed cases with 190 deaths and rising.
This article is from Switzerland, is regularly being updated, and has been labelled propaganda which since it is a view being propagated almost certainly is. Yet it makes sense to me. What about you?
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Re: my last post at 11:11pm, my apologies to all, the correct iview link is https://iview.abc.net.au/
Most countries have medical protocols for Covid patients, what is the UK protocol? All I keep hearing is that there’s no specific treatment, so we don’t administer anything. No supportive therapy, no antivirals – nothing. Sick people are getting kicked out of hospitals without any treatment. No wonder the UK has such a high death rate! The recovery rate in hospitals (before they stopped reporting the abysmal numbers) was 8% compared to Germany’s 97%. What is this callous, medieval policy aimed at?
The data I have is that last year the USA had 38 million cases of Influenza and 80,000 deaths. No one batted an eyelid. Business as usual. Conspiracy theories abound, but I firmly believe that ordinary human stupidity trumps (pun intended) conspiracy. Politicians usually have zero scientific training and are in a perpetual popularity contest so their decisions are driven by two things: expert advice and media approval. The media are the advertising agency for politicians selling their electoral success to us.
The ultimate responsibility for this mess therefore lies with the medical “experts” who daily catastrophize about overwhelming a hospital system that is well able to cope (with a bit of internal re-arranging).
Coronavirus found in air samples up to 13 feet from patients https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/coronavirus-found-in-air-samples-up-to-13-feet-from-patients-1665757-2020-04-11
Yeah. Er, is there any proof that those virus samples came from those patients?
Hi Randall: virus travels 13 ft and then settles on floor, and then gets on your shoes. Washing hands might not be enough, we might have to wash our feet as well to avoid spreading the virus.
andy: Wash our feet but not our shoes?
Malcolm, I think I have an idea that can help us understand the particular lever of this problem. In this last post, you cite the guidance document which includes a link to “associated legislation”, i.e. Heath and Safety at Work etc, Act 1974. The idea is this.
It can be assumed that this Act has formed the basis for decades of function of the health system whereever health and disease is involved. It can be assumed that this system was honed to best-effort and best-effect (as opposed to worst-effort and worst-effect), through on-site hands-on experience and policy.
By virtue of being a new policy, it can be assumed that this guidance document interferes with this honed system in some manner. By virtue of this system having been honed through decades of on-site and hands-on experience and policy, it can be assumed that this guidance document interferes to at least make it worst to some degree, i.e. it hasn’t been honed to the same best-effort and best-effect state through decades of on-site and hands-on experience and policy yet.
At a glance, I can already see one potential lever of this problem in the form of conditions for discharge, i.e. still symptomatic, as opposed to asymptomatic (I’m assuming here, correct me if I’m wrong), in the case of infectious diseases. Compare the previous policy regarding discharge to this new one. I imagine we’ll find that conditions for discharge did not allow discharge for symptomatic patients in the case of infectious diseases, but now they do. In this suspected lever, it’s easy to see how it cannot possibly be done without interfering to make things worse, it hasn’t yet been honed. For this intervention to be honed, the consequent actions must take place, such as equipping those places we discharge symptomatic patients to, etc. This is the second suspected lever, those places have not been equipped.
So, compare the two policies, find the lever. Once you find it, well, do what you do best and inform us.
Cassius:”The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars…”
Well, actually it might be. Look at this prediction made by an astronomer and an epidemiologist in January 2019, a year before the coronavirus pandemic broke out.
Are We Approaching a New Influenza Pandemic?
“The four most recent human influenza pandemics (1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009) were preceded by La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific and almost all influenza pandemics in history fall within ± 1 year of sunspot extreme. Sunspot activity will reach its minimum in 2019. Therefore, a new influenza pandemic may well be imminent now, one hundred years after the 1918-1919 pandemic. It will therefore be prudent and timely to strengthen worldwide surveillance strategies and to prepare ourselves for a future emergency”
https://www.hilarispublisher.com/abstract/are-we-approaching-a-new-influenza-pandemic-24922.html
Dear Dr Kendrick – can you alert MPs or the press about this scandal of discharging care home Covid-19 patients back to their care homes ?
Anne,
Good thought but no one is listening, which is (one reason) why Dr. Kendrick is banging his head on the desk.
It is in the press in today’s Telegraph: ‘Care homes’ soaring death rate blamed on ‘reckless’ order to take back Covid-19 patients’: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/24/care-homes-ordered-take-patients-suspected-coronavirus-nhs-hospitals/
My wife, an ex-nurse, is a (Council) carer visiting the elderly at home. She now has face masks and a visor to go with her plastic aprons and gloves, but it seems to me that the people in charge have no idea if these are adequate or indeed how to dispose of them. They certainly don’t provide bags. My understanding is that the type of mask she wears is only useful in protecting others from her and, as the people she visits don’t wear them, she remains unprotected. Apart from the risk of her then infecting me I suspect that the mask doesn’t offer full protection to others anyway. If it did surely everyone should wear them and we could end self-isolation and what passes for a semi-lockdown.
I have to say that the government response has, and continues to be, inadequate to say the least. Also the preparedness for such a long predicted pandemic was zero. And now we’re being told human testing of a possible vaccine will go ahead Thursday. what could possibly go wrong?
I would very much like to know who are the subjects on whom this vaccine is to be tested.
Is anyone really reckless enough to volunteer? Or will it be tested, in time-honoured fashion, on the desperately poor by offering payment?
Maybe the vaccine should be tested on members of the cabinet and NHS administrators.
Tom Welsh: Such is the state of panic and fear among the sheep that yes, regular people are actually volunteering for these “trials.” I don’t think it rash to postulate that Bill Gates is not one of them.
I wonder why I misread your word as “pustulate”. Mr Gates has a very bad effect on my cognitive abilities; I think it’s the result of extreme rage.
Hi Tom: re vaccine volunteers, they should ideally be recruited from the currently uninfected ones in a nursery home. Long term unintended adverse reactions will be minimal. A nursing home is the ideal vaccine testing lab, better than a mouse study.
Testing on young ones with intact immune systems will take years with too many variables.
andy: Is a nursery home the modern equivalent of a foundling home? Shouldn’t be hard to recruit from there, though. That how Dr. Stanley Plotkin ran his vaccine trials. And children are more gullible than the even sheepish adult population.
Hi Gary: should read “nursing” home, can I blame this on computer error? Read somewhere that volunteers were recruited from hospital patients grasping at straws.
andy: Couldn’t resist having a bit of fun. Actually. I don’t think there will be a great deal of difficulty recruiting volunteers, such is the level of fear whipped up by the media in this nation of sheep. I still predict that this won’t end well, as they are forgoing the crucial first step: safety testing in animals, and there has not yet been a successful coronavirus vaccine. Whether this is because of a peculiarity of the coronavirus, or for some other reason, I don’t know, but I suspect the former. Apparently Canada is planning to lock down until a vaccine is licensed. Cry for Canada.
From what I have read about attempts to create a SARS vaccine, the problems only appeared when vaccinees (is that a word?) were challenged with the virus.
The challenge caused a cytokine storm reported as ‘an unexpected immune response’. The vaccinees had not previously had the virus.
Is it expected this time do you think?
And,
In the case of the HPV vaccine things went wrong when vaccinees had had HPV infections previously.
SteveR: I really don’t know what to expect this time, but if the vaccine is of a similar type to the first SARS vaccine, I wouldn’t be surprised if turned out to be too dangerous to license; on the other hand, they are skipping animal safety testing, which is where the problems of interference appeared. Additionally, there are several other novel types of vaccines being developed, with real money being poured into them. Oligarchs are salivating at the prospect of 7 billion doses at $30+ a pop (or more). A horrid mistake, in my view, far more costly a mistake than statins. I think they’re pissin’ up a rope thinking they can steamroll grownups into such folly, despite the relatively high percentage of sheep in the population. As for Gardasil, the trials were a complete fraud, which fraud is being challenged in federal court in California by a team led by RFK, Jr. No placebo group in any of the four trials listed on cdc.gov, with the exception of a tiny third arm in one of the trials. Like with statins, the data from this group were not reported; they were combined with the data from the adjuvant “placebo” group. There is only one reason for not reporting this data: it showed how truly dangerous Gardasil is.
SteveR: Children’s Health Defense has a detailed article today about what is called “disease enhancement” as a result of either vaccination or infection, and this has been the primary stumbling block to the development of vaccines for certain diseases (Dengue fever and coronavirus infections, among others). We know what happened in the Philippines with Dengevax. The NIH (our National Institutes of Health) owns quite a number of patents for components of Dengue and other vaccines. This, of course, makes them completely neutral on the subject of vaccine development.
😀
Gary Re: Canada. Where did you hear that Canada was going to stay in lockdown until a vaccine is available? We must be watching different accounts because I’m hearing about each province’s plans to at least ease up on the lockdown in various stages starting in May…god help them if they try to keep it going till there’s a vaccine!
teedee 126: I read it in a news article yesterday, but then this may be dated news. Obviously since you’re in Canada you have much better information than I do.
On the other hand, if you just read it yesterday, I may well have missed something. I tend to follow news from Canada and the U.S. mainly, but also like reading about all places (and this is truly my favorite site, so I do a lot of reading here, as well), so it’s a good bet I’ll miss something important in my own backyard now and then. 🙂 Thanks for the reply..
“Hi Tom: re vaccine volunteers, they should ideally be recruited from the currently uninfected ones in a nursery home”.
If it gets them out of that anteroom to the next world, they should jump at the chance – and hope the vaccine doesn’t kill them instead.
The authorities have been quite cunning. They arranged for the old and infirm to be penned up together in “old age homes”, to make sure they would be willing to volunteer for anything at all.
Unbelievable. And discharging patients who still have a fever?
With the large numbers of people influencing things and the great variety of factors involved in the whole Covid19 affair, I am assuming that we have BOTH of these working together; (1) enormous human stupidity, and (2) a zest for power and control demonstrated by the scramble for mandatory money-making vaccines, etc.
I hope the truth will out one day, properly, but for this to happen, people have to admit they were mistaken. This is something we seem to find incredibly difficult.
I live on the Isle of Man and in one of our nursing homes, 37 of the residents have the virus. We currently have 15 in hospital and 9 deaths. Four have been in hospital and five in the community. I don’t know if the nursing homes are considered to be ‘in the community’. It seems pretty logical to me that a care home or nursing home is a very vulnerable place to be at the moment. Whoever is advising the government is either very dim (surely not), or else has no one they care about in a care home.
Cuba: Interferon Alpha2b
Any thoughts on this treatment?
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/more-than-40-nations-ask-cuba-for-interferon-alpha-b-20200327-0004.html
Care (whether institutional or at home)- hospital ping-pong has the added infection dimension that carers are, for the most part, neither robots nor monks & therefore are going from an area of high C19 concentration to a lower one at the end of their shifts (or collapsing into ICU). In keeping with the WW2-style propaganda campaign, more of them seem to be around shared areas (eg supermarkets) in uniform, with dangling ID lanyards that have probably touched many ‘care’ surfaces, than in pre C19 days. It’s probably too much to expect someone who’s been flitting around the care-at-home routes to change before doing her/his shopping, but it would be nice to see the lanyards slipped away in a pocket in public space. If they’re coming off a nursing home shift, surely they should change out of uniform before going into public space?
They can’t change and yet not change.
People working to care for people at home sometimes do the clients’ shopping. During the epidemic, so they don’t have to spend time in the queue to enter the supermarket, they produce their ID lanyards and are let in straight away. Otherwise, they could not fit several clients into the paid time available. Even then, they often work unpaid time, because unless one does, a zero hours contract has a tendency to become exactly that.
At least when nursing in the NHS, if on a properly organised ward where a record was kept, one normally would get time off in lieu of unpaid overtime, or one used to.
One 5 minute read tells you a lot.
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/
It is hard to resist the impression that we are being played.
Ahhh, Thatcher’s children. How safe are we in their hands? What we are now seeing is the devastating consequences of Maggie’s ideology: Everyone for themselves! We are a far cry from being human. No wonder you are banging your head on the desk… Perhaps we could all head-bang in unison, on youtube? In case anyone out there hasn’t reached the head-banging stage, might I suggest they not only read Dr. Kendrick’s blogs but also the book “Virus Mania”. That should do it. Meanwhile, I have just purchased some melatonin, to go along with my artemininisin, zinc, bee propolis, and hydrogen peroxide (nebulise 3%). Thank you for this wonderful space of sanctuary.
Sue – I don’t think we should try to politicise this blog much. Bias confirmation is something we all indulge in and I try not to allow dogma to get in the way. Just like in the context of C-19 and our current problems, facts are important rather then hyperbole.
I tend to give both sides of the aisle a kicking when needed – including Thatcher at the time. To confirm your view of her – “No such thing as society” is often quoted – BUT what she actually said was –
“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”
I know a lot of people who agree with that, whatever their political views – including Nye Bevan and Herbert Morrison (if you read their speeches) from 70 years ago.
David,
I gave Sue an approving click, even though I am far from a Left Wing person – indeed the only political party I have ever been in was UKIP.
I suppose the ideology back in Thatcher’s day, was that private industry was somehow magically efficient. Well it is, but only efficient at making money for itself, so if you let it loose on something like the NHS, it doesn’t make it run more efficiently – far from it – but it does manage to cream off a lot of money into the private sector – because that is what it is efficient at doing!
Something seems to have gone crazily wrong with the NHS, and I would blame the endless reorganisations – one after another – that were done by both political parties.
David,
I have never been a member of any political party, not even UKIP. I look at them all and I think – you must be joking. One of my great uncles was on the Labour Party National Exec or whatever it was called in the 1920/30’s. Perhaps I would have been a labour man then?
I will not give you a fight over what you say David. I worked all my working life in the Public Sector and understand many of its shortcomings, but I know how it can be a centre of excellence as well and we all know that applies to the NHS – but it is a curate’s egg if we are honest.
I lived in the Midlands during the 1970’s and anyone who thinks Thatcher turned up in 1980’s and ruined things either wasn’t there in the 70’s or was asleep. I recommend Andrew Marr’s “Modern History of Britain” as a summary. Both the left and right to blame, but mainly the left from what I could see. A perfect storm of aggressive unions and weak, poor management. I was a union member myself and went on strike.
I have a friend who is of the left (me – I’m in the centre) who pretty well admits that they would rather get worse treatment, than see profit in the NHS. I have recommended a read of Tim Harford’s book “The Undercover Economist”. There is a chapter on health systems that challenges one’s preconceptions, including mine. The rest of the book is also worth a read.
It is always Thatcher shut coalmines, when it is a matter of record that Harold Wilson shut many more. It’s the Tories ruined manufacturing mantra, when New Labour lost 40% of it after the millennium (2 dollars to the pound on a false boom of borrowed money – nobody could sell anything). Remember the “we don’t need manufacturing” said Blair – “we do design, making things is so last century”. There is plenty to criticize the right for, I remember being apoplectic in the mid-90’s when a teenager flown over from the Caribbean with a serious heart problem, died while they were arguing about who was going to pay. I wrote an angry letter to the PM and got the usual guff as a reply. It is just that I think a pre-set position should be avoided if possible.
I know how poor private suppliers can be in the public sector, especially if you do not manage them, or do not insist on getting what you pay for. Around 2000 the Blair government insisted that we contract out some area of our support work to the private sector (I am not making this up). So we had our own electronics guys , who were damned good and part of our culture, sat out while a few private companies (some with big names) had a go at completely cocking it up.
As for the numpties who have been running the country since 2010 – don’t get me started.
When this over – if it ever is in the brave new Bill Gates run world. The NHS will need a good hard look from an independent position. Like all of us here I am incredibly grateful and have full respect for our coalface NHS doctors and nurses treating those most badly affected by C-19. We have let them down over PPE. BUT we should remember that not all is well even amongst the medical side of the NHS. There must be an honest review of its failings. It should be saving us, not the other way round. Ministers are always accountable in the end, but the management of the NHS are well paid and a disaster (IMHO).
Yes, but society? A very, very bad choice of word.
I take your point Shaun – but the whole piece makes the idea clear.
One 5 minute read tells a story
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/
A set of interesting graphs
We have spent years making the NHS so complex it is beyond the point where it can be controlled in any meaningful way at all, and sprinkled all through it are managers and contracts that lock in into muddle because it pays them well.
Is so happened that I dislocated a finger near the end of January, so I saw a little bit of the hospital system. The COVID-19 problem was already brewing, so I was aware of possible infection dangers. As we entered A&E, we had to queue up waiting to be checked into the system. The queue had no social distancing. That was before we could sit down in a cramped waiting room and await our turn. Thus as far as I could see, anyone arriving with an infection would have some minutes in which to spread it to those nearby.
When the doctor wanted to look at my X-ray, it looked as if it would be easy – there was a screen in the cubical where I was situated – but he first had to log into the machine – fairly slowly – then he had to perform some sort of search to find the images. It must have been quicker 50 years ago – someone would just send the images with the patient. They could obviously replicate that approach now by putting the image on a memory stick. Digitisation seemed to have slowed the process down.
A week or two later, I was visiting the same hospital for outpatients follow-up care on my finger. The place was full of people trying to make out where it was they were meant to go to – probably spreading the disease. A week later, I cancelled my next appointment because I didn’t feel safe from infection in there. Possibly I will have one permanently bent finger as a result.
When you make a system incredibly bureaucratic, one thing is sure – in a crisis it can’t possibly cope.
David, you took me back 50 years generating a random memory The Civil Service in my area changed from a manual written form inputting overtime and weekends (it was a shift job) over to a pencilled in scanned bar-code to be inputted by machine. I don’t think it saved staff, they just fed the costly machine instead of typing in numbers on a console. So we moved from one sheet of paper to pay 15 people to 4 sheets of paper for each person for different inputs.
An organisation in the public sector becomes pretty unmanageable above about 2000 staff. In my experience (admittedly a decade out of date now) it didn’t matter what people were told to do, you would always find groups that were totally deaf. Friends tell me that many large companies in the private sector are almost as bad.
There are now phone apps, like ADP in the US, which allow you to punch in and out through the app. And one HR person can supervise it for lots of people. But some companies may not use it for security reasons. Maybe..
“They could obviously replicate that approach now by putting the image on a memory stick”.
Quite right. But, oh! Security!! Memory sticks are anathema to security professionals.
David.
You have obviously not wasted many minutes of valuable time in the X-ray department, waiting for specific films to be located, knowing that should the clerk fail to find them, the consultant would go ballistic on the ward round, and blame the nearest target i.e. me.
Not to mention, that it was against hospital policy to release films before the radiologist’s report had been written, and there was usually a backlog here due to staff shortages. So if the films were found, it took a considerable amount of wheedling for me to be allowed to take them to the ward, bound by a solemn promise to return them immediately after the ward round.
This was over thirty years ago.
Interpreting X-ray films, celluloid or digital, is a specialist skill. Some features may be invisible to the relatively inexperienced A & E senior house officer. So speed comes with added risks.
Cambridge University researcher reports mutations of covid-19
The neglect of residential homes for the elderly, despite the trumpeted aims, is certainly astounding. Since the measures meted out by the Government are strange and unprecedented, it is quite understandable that we should suggest what in normal times would be considered as ‘over the top’ reasons for them. To be cowered by people disparaging our ideas as conspiracy theories is permitting them more censorship. Not to show suspicion could be dangerous for it could engender more confidence in a government to be able to control people.
Just supposing there were to be hidden agendas, other than control and monetary opportunism, what could they be? Restructuring of finance, country or world? Grooming for more Artificial Intelligence? Keeping roads and airways less busy and reducing pollution? Population control through vaccination (fewer childhood deaths= fewer children born)? …?
If any such agendas do exist we are not being told about them.This rather suggests that we might resist or not easily comply with the measures if we knew what they were for – far better to scare us into speedy compliance.
It is clear that fear is being pushed and exploited to a huge extent and that we are being treated like easily manipulated idiots. We are getting fear-inducing messages repeated ad nauseam. First there is fear of the “killer” virus. Secondly, people might not be able to contemplate the thought of a government that is either really foolish or devious – far better to believe you have trustworthy people at the helm. Thirdly, there is the fear of not belonging to the crowd or being ostracised if you were known to harbour different views.
Also, people are being encouraged to enjoy the “We’re all in this together” atmosphere, and “We will beat this!” We have Vera Lynn singing “We’ll meet again” and the Queen endorsing the idea, and people reminiscing about World War II togetherness. There is entertainment and excitement with new ways of doing things all exhibited on screens. Such rewards! This would all be fine if the crisis was not made by the Government itself.
Maybe our education system or learning is too biased towards the team rather than the individual. Perhaps members of the Government are merely puppets having their strings pulled. Who knows?
Hopefully, all this is an overreaction, matching of course the Government’s overreaction.
folks do ascribe to them “planning”:
in contrast one wonders if being at the heart of the UK Govt these days is akin to be at the HQ of Field-Marshall Sir Douglas Haig; on the 2nd July 2016.
“You say the last offensive incurred 20,000 casualties and gained no ground?”
“Yes, General Haig”.
“Then send in the 4th, 7th and 49th Elderly and Sick Divisions. Surely they’ll break through”.
My Grandad was there – killed. But I think it was 1916, not 2016?
P.S. I meant any agendas to be extra ones that might encourage the measures, rather than stand alone ones.
This is from an Establishment physician-instructor working in Emergency.
His central goal here is addressing the harm that medical treatments can cause – iatrigenesis.
This entry deals in part with the elderly with COVID.
So I’m gonna toss it in here and hope it gets read seriously by some before it flames out in this volatile atmosphere.
https://www.statusiatrogenicus.com/2020/04/applying-applied-physiology-to-covid.html
JDPatten: Thank you very much for that, even though I only understood a little bit of it. Perhaps someone here can better explain it to us.
A good read and crucial for people to know. He summed it up well in the very last paragraph, pointing out that each patient may need a different approach depending on their particular comorbidities: ” Of course, some patients will not be able to sustain spontaneous ventilation with severe COVID. Patients with obesity (inertial mass loads), pre-existing weakness (inability to sustain the high loads), worsening parenchymal disease and compliance (increased elastic loads), advanced age (lower MVV), or marked increases in CO2 production or Vd/Vt may experience workload imbalance and frank respiratory failure. It is our job to discern them from the patients who can sustain the loads and who will be spared all of the iatrogenesis that results from prolonged sedation and mechanical ventilation. I posit that applied respiratory physiology is the Rosetta Stone for that differentiation.”
I only understood the first bit of what he said – but I understood that well.
I used to do some sub-aqua diving, and you learn about free diving too. In free diving (no tank of air) you are warned not to take more than a couple of deep breaths before you dive, otherwise you may flush out the CO2 from your body, and it is the CO2 which makes you gasp for breath. This means you can go into hypoxia and not even notice. This can be deadly because you think you can continue diving, when you should be returning to the surface for a breath of air. Hypoxia also muddles your thinking.
So COVID-19 can somehow stop the process by which oxygen is picked up by the haemoglobin in the blood, but not block the process of breathing out CO2.
I know there’s been a million and one covid links on this blog already but this one could be worth reading, I think. It was sent to me by a physician who is dumbfounded by the measures being taken around the world. He highly recommended this article. I hope you enjoy it…
https://coronavirustruths.godaddysites.com/?fbclid=IwAR0wHCAbQhf7JC_Z8UVrg5M4oqCsdMz9kNs-2IUCDjjB2NFzc7QNVhHE5yA
Sasha, interesting link. There are many snippets worthy of note, but one could explain the high numbers both in the US and elsewhere, like Italy:
“ if your city attributes enough deaths to COVID-19, it can request billions of dollars of federal aid.”
Corruption rules………..
Yes, probably plays a part… US health care is a for profit system. You eat what you kill, so to speak. And healthcare is the worst area to have a profit motive, IMO. Leads to a lot of dumb decisions that cost real human lives.
Sasha: Thank you very much for that. Essential reading. The response to SARS-CoV-2 is a wildly successful, in-your-face marketing ploy by the pharmaceutical industry. It is up to us to put a stop to it.
Gary: yes. Interesting times we live in
Thanks for this link, Sasha. I wish I’d read it a couple of months ago before I fell for the notion that this virus is MANY times more transmissible than influenza. If everything they’re saying is shown to be true, then something unimaginable is going on.I wish they’d left out the political finger-pointing at the end, though, because I wanted to send the link to our Chief Medical Officer and the Premier of Ontario, but the political parts make it sound too conspiratorial in very questionable and partisan ways.
Other than that, it was a great read and this part especially nailed the bottom line for me: “TRUTH: COVID-19 has been treated like a world-ender; it’s not even remotely close. As mentioned earlier, it has infected just over 2 million people in the world. Not killed 2 million people. Actually, not even made 2 million sick. Just infected. So it is 76 million short of infecting 1% of the world’s population. It is 998 million short of infecting as many as influenza has this year, the vast majority of which are sicker than the average coronavirus patient. The world has never shut down for any disease before. And it chose this one to do so?
TRUTH: Quarantine is a period or place of isolation in which people who have been exposed or infected with a contagious disease are placed. The government has used it to impose shelter in place on healthy individuals and close businesses. There are words for that, but quarantine is not one of those words.”
I agree that politics should have no place there. I think it would be better if they left it out. It opens them to all sorts of attacks.
I have no affiliation either Democrat or Republican but it is a possibility that some on the left are seeing the lockdown as a way to weaken Trump. Just like when Obama was in power some on the right did the same thing…
Sasha: Right on target!
It wouldn’t surprise me if some Dems and Progressives want to play the same kinds of games as Trump, as many have been telling the party to ‘fight fire with fire’ and all that.
I had been very active on Twitter politically, but by the time this lockdown got under way, I was utterly fed up with the whole political scene on both sides. I don’t miss being on there at all, and I think it’s actually improved my general health and outlook. At least I can focus on other things without the silly distractions and circus atmosphere on there. Now I can learn other things with a clear mind and join in the fight against any attempt to inflict mandatory vaccines on us, among other things..
That’s what I also came to regarding politics. I think all that energy is put to better use educating yourself about things that are important: health and wellbeing of yourself and those close to you.
I pick up the local paper from time to time for the comics and puzzles. Lo and behold today a sort-of non-Covid story: “Survey: Remote workers are drinking on the job” “Millions of Americans are drinking as they work from home during the COVID outbreak. . . . Beer is their drink of choice. . . . 42% of nearly 13,000 workers were drinking on the clock at home. . . . Half of those surveyed in Virginia and New Hampshire were drinking on the job, while 60% admitted to it in Rhode Island.” (Rhode Island is our smallest state, and not an actual island at all).
Same issue in the good ole USA.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/21/cuomo-coronavirus-nursing-home-policy-proves-tragic-goodwin/
And the story gets better. The NY governor apparently blames the nursing homes for an issue of his making!
https://spectator.org/cuomo-on-covid-19-in-nursing-homes-its-not-our-job/
H/T Instapundit
Cuomo has gotten a well-deserved black eye for his handling of NY’s bumper crop of COVID cases and deaths. I really am sympathetic to the plight of political leaders during this time. They’re between rocks and hard places: deaths from disease on the one hand and economic ruin on the other. They are trying to follow uncertain and incomplete medical advice and uncertain and incomplete economic advice. It would be tough for even the wisest and (frankly) luckiest leader.
Still, the arrogance with which Cuomo defends his decisions is disgusting.
Data from my local paper today: In my county of about a million, 5,149 have been tested. 351 cases, for a case rate of 0.068%. 7 deaths, for a case fatality rate of 0.000007%.
My error: Case fatality rate in my county (7/351) is 0.02.
So, we have SARS-CoV-2…which causes ‘COVID-19’. Why has this happened? There’s apparently umpteen coronaviruses, most of which are supposed to be mild, common colds, but this SARS-CoV-2 has become a big issue – why? I suspect I’m not on my own in not ‘getting this’… Is this one potentially more dangerous because there might have been lab-manipulation? And why is it so targeted in its ill-effects – e.g. apparently against the elderly, or immuno-compromised, unlike other viruses which attack the young?
So now we have this SARS-CoV-2 which apparently doesn’t cause many problems for children (do they get infected or not?), or for younger people but, for some reason, goes on super attack against the immuno-compromised, particularly the elderly with co-morbidities.
Do we as yet have a nice neat chart which clearly outlines the risks for the different age groups / health types? E.g. that clearly indicates the real risk for say a healthy, exercising, well-nourished 75 year old? As compared to a sickly 75 year old who is poly pharmacied and vaxxed to the hilt?
It’s really doing my head in trying to understand what is going on… It’s confusing for everyone. For example, at the moment in Australia, the Federal government is keen for parents to get their children back in school (which seems like a good idea to me), but the teachers, particularly older teachers, are perhaps understandably worried they might be at risk? So there’s an obvious inconsistency which shows up the perceived harmlessness for children, as opposed to potential risks for older cohorts.
And then there’s testing…. So now testing is being pushed for this particular coronavirus, which seems like the Trojan horse for us to have ‘immunity’ and vaccination records for all and sundry viruses, bacteria. So what next, are they going to check for pertussis immunity status? How would that work, is it even possible to have a pertussis immunity status? Similarly measles immunity – is immunity via natural measles going to look different to measles vaccination immunity? Same re chickenpox, mumps, rubella. And all the other diseases/vaxes on the schedule…
Where are we headed with this testing bizzo? In the space of a few months, we have a new virus/disease racing around the world, and a whole infrastructure going on around it, what does it all mean?
It seems to me this should be an opportunity to demand a look at international vaccination policy across the board, particularly with the ever-increasing number of vaccine products, and revaccinations with failing products, e.g. pertussis.
The coronavirus vaccine is the last straw. And we also need to be mindful of Heidi Larson’s statement at the WHO conference last year, i.e. “We’ve shifted the human population…to dependency on vaccine-induced immunity…We’re in a very fragile state now. We have developed a world that is dependent on vaccinations.” That has to be a talking point, i.e. the population being made dependent on the vaccine industry…can we walk this back? We need public discussion on these never-ending medical interventions with supposedly ‘preventative’ products. And to be able to rise to the occasion and cope with the sick when an epidemic strikes.
Elizabeth, you raise the interesting question of the risk profile of sick vs healthy 75 year olds.
One may assume that all the elderly inhabitants of care homes get exposed to the same level of infection. Yet not all develop C19 and die. What is it about the ones who survive with minimal or no symptoms? We need an in-depth investigation to determine the anti-risk factors (for want of a better term) and then apply them widely.
They always talk about risk and reward, so I think a term for anti-risk factors could be “reward factors”. Do these things and you will be rewarded with better health and a longer life.
Thanks Martin; Dr Nadir Ali has talked of the “Leiden Study”: of very elderly folks in Leide, Holland followed for 10 years. Those with the lowest LDL died earliest; and had higher rates of infections; those with higher LDL levels on average lived the longest.
In the PROSPER trial, west of scotland statin trial, in the 1990s; overall mortality was the same between statins and placebo; the statin group had higher death rates from infection and cancer; a consistent theme it seems.
“Do we as yet have a nice neat chart which clearly outlines the risks for the different age groups / health types?”
See, for example, https://hectordrummond.com/2020/04/23/guest-post-what-we-think-we-know-and-what-it-might-mean-for-predictions-and-possible-mitigation-strategies/
Thanks Tom, that’s interesting. Still hoping for the nice neat chart eventually…
The situation is bewildering in Australia because the death rate is so low here. But we’re coming out of summer, and just entering flu / flu vaccination season…will be interesting to see how things develop here…
elizabethart: Thank you very much. Well spoken.
May I post a link to the second in a series Perspectives on the Pandemic by Professor Knut Wittkowski?
I had wanted to comment on what is going to be a hopeless wasted effort to ‘test and trace’ but he explains ‘why’ so much better than I could.
Elizabeth, influenza typically kills older adults.
The natural course is for the old and weak to succumb to disease. Assuming SARS-CoV-2 is a more virulent strain of corona virus, which does occur occasionally, then what is happening is not outside the bounds of normal. Not trying to be a grim reaper.
Very well laid out, Elizabeth, and summing it up beautifully with Heidi Larson’s chilling statement at the end..
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/22/top-economist-us-coronavirus-response-like-third-world-country-joseph-stiglitz-donald-trump
Apart from Sweden and smattering of others, which world leaders have had a great response Eric – few.
People like Stiglitz are a joke. When Trump (I am not his biggest fan) stopped flights from China he was derided for it by Stiglitz’s Democratic mates. Now he didn’t do enough – well who did? It seems like Trump’s first thought (like Boris’s here) was not to turn his country into a third world one economically – but Stiglitz’s Dem mates and their MSM all screamed at him to do it. Now they have what they wanted and all the worst areas are Dem. – Stiglitz blames Orange Man Bad.
Has Trump made mistakes? Does the Pope have a balcony? But it is the Dems who have driven the agenda of Lockdown (and Dem areas are the most lockeddown), and as some have pointed out, are now seeking to not let a good crisis go to waste – vaccine passports here we come – tracking you by your phone, who have you met today? You will not be allowed on the aircraft, theatre, restaurant etc.. unless your phone has the correct certificates on it.
When you look who is driving the vaccine agenda, it is the likes of Bill Gates and his foundation in lock step with the WHO. And who (pun unintended) does Bill Gates fund? Prof, Neil Ferguson. Funny he is telling us we need to be strapped in until a vaccine is available.
Anyone who thinks C-19 justifies that agenda is not paying attention.
Well, here in Germany, several virologists, including Chritsian Drosten, have been very vocal that the careful reopening is a step too far too early, that we are in a fragile state with R hovering between 0.7 and 0.9, and we should really bring it down to 0.3. Some of the criticsm is justified. For example, shops up to 800 m² in area are allowed to open. This apparently led to crowded malls where individual shops were meeting the criteria but too many people mingled in the common areas. But it misses the elephant in the room: public transport. Ridership has fallen about 50%, but so have trains and busses, partly due to driver shortages, partly for economic reasons. And it is impossible to distance in one of the few buses that are left during rush hour. Stupidtity at its best. At least, (simple home made) masks are mandatory in public transport and shops already or will be by Monday, depending on city and state.
A thoughtful case for crunching the curve is made by U Edinburgh epdimologist:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/22/flattening-curve-new-zealand-coronavirus
One has to wonder how sustainable this can be in the medium and long term for mostly landlocked countries in Europe as compared to islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Here’s to the guardian in being almost as speedy as myself:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/german-states-lifting-lockdowns-too-quickly-warns-merkel-coronavirus
now there’s a balanced newspaper Eric; impartial; reasoned; balanced; from the land of the woke, who curiously have now gone to sleep on us; but have they morphed into corona alarmists we wonder; “we need to shut everything down”: just like our climate alarmist chums who also seem to have gone quiet; but are they now too corona alarmists, we wonder; …. ah, we, the deluded; just accept the soothing reassurances of “the authorities” everywhere, they know what is best for us. Be grateful, yield to their wisdoms.
I linked the guardian article on Germany because it paints a very accurate picture of the discussion in Germany right now. And I linked the other article by the Scottish researcher because it raises points worth discussing.
An no, don’t think protecting the vulnerable and letting the rest of the population gain immunity is a good solution, not with the high percentage of serious illness, lasting damage or deaths we are seeing in presumably not at risk.
But are they really “not at risk”?
I’ve noticed most of the “healthy” young people who died are overweight if not obese. IMO obesity like Type 2 diabetes hypertension and a bunch of other things are downstream of insulin resistance, as per Ron Rosedale’s talk on The Fat Emperor which also implicates leptin. I also wonder how many of them were on statins.
“One has to wonder how sustainable this can be in the medium and long term”
……. what do you mean Eric:
do you mean how sustainable is “vaccine passports here we come – tracking you by your phone, who have you met today? You will not be allowed on the aircraft, theatre, restaurant etc.. unless your phone has the correct certificates on it.”
“it is the likes of Bill Gates and his foundation in lock step with the WHO. And who (pun unintended) does Bill Gates fund? Prof, Neil Ferguson. ”
Is that what you mean is unsustainable Eric? That some unreasonable souls might object to all these shenanigan going on behind the scenes to manipulate us? Where on earth did you pop up from?
Terry, did you actually read and comprehend what I wrote before you went ballistic? And thank you, I have been posting here regularly for many years, so I didn’t just pop up unlike yourself.
The author made a case for crunching the curve that warrants serious discussion. Neither she nor I mentioned vaccine passports or tracking phones.
My point was that what works for NZ or Oz may not work for any random continental Western Euroean country. Even if that country succeded in crunching the curve, it cannot suppress travel from other countries that may not be as successful for an extended period.
T
Actually, neither can we in Oz & NZ suppress travel for an extended period. Even if we ban all passengers arriving by air, there’s still going to have to be airfreight and especially sea freight, in fact that’s happening right now. It just takes 1 or 2 infectious crew members to pass it on to port staff and it will all start over again. Since most ship’s crew are from 3rd world countries and live in close proximity when aboard ship, this is just a matter of time. Similarly aircrew could be infectious but not yet showing symptoms when the plane arrives. This is the flaw in NZ’s elimination strategy – that since they’ll emerge with a population that’s still highly susceptible they have only bought a lull in the battle not won the war.
We will not bring this pandemic under control until we have achieved herd immunity, and given the infectiousness of CV-19 a very high degree of that. Since a vaccine is 12-18 months away (if ever) we cannot shut down the economy for that long without causing massive damage to people’s lives, including more avoidable deaths as Malcolm has pointed out. The only solution is to use this lockdown to prepare by getting more ICU equipment and PPE, then gradually ease the restrictions while isolating the most vulnerable. That means restricting access to care homes and requiring infection control and ongoing testing of staff. That also means that any elderly person displaying symptoms should be removed to hospital and physically isolated from the healthy population. This would seem to be the best use of those temporary “Nightingale” hospitals: use those to house the mild cases where they are cared for by a separate staff, and only transferring the serious cases to the regular hospitals. Sending infectious patients back to the care home where they can infect the rest of the residents is insane and ignores the most basic principles of quarantine.
In Canada (especially in Toronto) they’ve resorted to marking off seats with a sign saying, ‘restricted’ so that people don’t have to try to figure out how far to distance when getting on buses/trains, etc. It saves time and a lot of people are at home anyway, and not taking public transit as much, so that seems to be working fairly well, so far.
Politics- and policy-free article but interesting:
The Military Games (World Event) were held in Wuhan, China last October. The US participants left in military planes,. all from Seattle airport; Washington State had those curious cluster of coronas later!
“An analysis of CDC data shows a dramatic uptick in “Influenza like Illness” or ILI beginning the week of November 9, and rapidly intensifying across key southern states, and one outlier- Washington.”
“China began forward facing measures to “control” the spread of the Wuhan Coronavirus in December, with the first case now being traced back as early as November 17. However, given the nature of the CCP, we know that the virus was likely in circulation earlier. Using November 17th as a baseline, and moving backwards to track when likely infection occurred, we get a range between October 22, to November 2.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Military_World_Games
“with nearly 10,000 athletes from over 100 countries competing in 27 sports”;
The article blows a big hole in the plan to trace contacts in the UK.
It is likely that you would remember who you had sex with in the last two weeks, making contact tracing in HIV very possible, but could you remember who you co-breathed with or co-touched surfaces with over the same period. Airborne respiratory viruses are not amenable to tracing.
My replies were all cancelled, obviously I am following Goran into the void.
Testing a different email
OK this is weird. I posted a followup to this from my usual address and they BOTH disappeared. Now this one has come back. Is anyone else missing/being edited out? How will we know?
In my experience you won’t know. It’s not worth worrying about, WordPress has foibles and does strange things from time to time.
It really bugs me because it happens once or twice a year and while I am usually good at spotting patterns there doesn’t appear to be one. My suspicion is that someone I riled long ago notices me posting somewhere and presses the tit to have me blocked on WordPress. Then after a while I can get back on. I have suspected a dietician I had several run-ins with but frankly she lacks the brainpower to do such a thing.
Hi Chris, I’ve had similar problems recently, replies dissapearing into the ozone…., however, my reply did work with an alternative email address. I think it may be Adblocker, or in my case using Brave browser, which effectively cut’s out most of the crap……if you are using this browser you need to ensure you clear it for WordPress and that you log in again…best of luck!
Maybe it’s these guys
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/british-military-information-war-waged-their-own-population
Here’s another stunning lack of competence: I used my card in the local shops where I previously used cash, exactly as they ask. The card was blocked. I got it unblocked again but less than a fortnight later they blocked it AGAIN. So they are making me an Unperson whenever they choose.
With all this talk of phone tracking apps and vaccine passports etc,.what if they cock that up? Or even Hancock it up?
Less cash being used, therefore more card use. Multiple small card purchases by tapping, triggers an anti theft hold / suspension on the card.
I think that flattening the curve is a misnomer. Won’t the result of lifting the lockdown be a new peak leading to a new lockdown then to a third peak ad infinitum? Or at least until the threshold of herd immunity required to stop the spread of the virus is reached. Could this not lead to a greater total number of casualties than letting the disease rip through the population in the first place would have done?
The only source of real human wealth, other than the natural growth of plants and animals, is human labour. Everything else is just moving it around, legally or otherwise. Stopping people who need to work from working will ruin us all, and the weakest will lose out the worst, as always.
The country has no sensible choice but to end the lockdown now. There will be a large new wave of cases and more deaths, but one can only hope the epidemic will be over sooner. Protecting those who wish to be protected from exposure to the virus will be difficult, if not impossible, but quarantining the healthy must now be down to the wishes of the individual concerned.
But if large numbers of people do fail to acquire sufficient immunity to prevent serious illness, there is probably nothing much that can be done to help them, (and this includes any proposed vaccine), and they will be at risk for the rest of their lives. But any continued financial support for them will depend on the survival and prosperity of the healthy, who should be encouraged to return to work if asymptomatic, and to go on with their lives as normally as possible.
In the US it’s been divided among Republican and Democrats. Again. With some Dems saying pressure to open up is a right wing conspiracy. And Reps saying the opposite of Dems.
https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/11/06/event-201-health-security/
a pandemic simulation exercise: back in October last; just when all the US military planes had just flown off from Seattle for the Military Games, that were Oct 18-27; it was lucky these good people were acting to help us, and run this exercise back in the US.
“That center’s latest pandemic simulation, Event 201, dropped participants right in the midst of an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak that was spreading like wildfire out of South America to wreak worldwide havoc.
As fictional newscasters from “GNN” narrated, the immune-resistant virus (nicknamed CAPS) was crippling trade and travel, sending the global economy into freefall.
Social media was rampant with rumors and misinformation, governments were collapsing, and citizens were revolting.”
“For Event 201, hosted in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,”
…….. all these good people ….. with the very best of intentions ……. with our very best interests at their heart ……..
……. what good luck they were doing this back last October
The mythical disease they modelled …. gosh that word keeps coming up ..
was called CAPS ……. Coronavirus Associated Pulmonary Syndrome
… they fantasised …… many will need ventilating …… many will die …… thank goodness they were looking ahead to protect us;
the video is embedded in the above link … it won’t separate out as a YouTube video
“The CAPS virus—which Toner describes as a cousin of SARS, “but slightly more transmissible, like the flu, and slightly more lethal”—was presented as resistant to any existing vaccine, as scientists scrambled to come up with one.”
Phew; great they were thinking ahead;
“That scenario, Toner says, is utterly realistic. “We don’t have a vaccine for SARS, or MERS, or various avian flu viruses that have come up in the past decade,” he notes. “That’s because vaccine development is slow and difficult if there isn’t an immediate market for it.””
and by chance, that is where Mr Gattes can help
why, back in 2010, with his extraordinary vision and insight and compassion for us all https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/A-Better-Response-to-the-Next-Pandemic
he was saying
“The ability to make a vaccine quickly and manufacture it in huge quantities is a critical part of a response to an epidemic. You need to get production going in less than a month instead of more than five months, ”
“There are new manufacturing approaches that reduce the lead time and increase the production rate, but government rules don’t allow the vaccine companies to use them yet because of safety concerns. ”
…. safety concerns …. how petty folks would obstruct manufacturing for these .. really …
Well, we all know what needs to happen, don’t we? We just need to sweep aside these namby-pamby safety concerns, and just get making these vaccines: testing? Bah, rubbish; those that have our best interests at heart, they know what is right for us: yield to your betters; do what they say.
CAPS ……. could this also have been chronic respiratory associated pulmonary syndrome?
just to be clear, some of the elderly who are being released could hve come from ICUs and/or ventilation, so could still be in a bad way?
Meaning they could die in a matter of months so their carers will need to deliver palliative care, which will require sophisticated nursing and use of powerful drugs. Sounds a distressing and terrifying situation for both parties.
Or have i missed something.
USA has its own Sars and vaccine is at great risk? “Due to a dominant proportion of the samples in this study were collected from China and USA, we observed a significantly higher level of genetic diversity from these two countries. Most SARS-CoV-2 accessions from the other countries can find their closely related sisters from either China or USA. Australia, Brazil, South Korea, Italy and Sweden were clustered together with two USA samples but without a Chinese version, suggesting that these infection cases may be somehow related. However, direct evidence of the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from either bat or pangolin to human is still missing. Thus, the observation in this study raised the alarm that SARS CoV-2 mutation with varied epitope profile could arise at any time, which means current vaccine development against SARS-CoV-2 is at great risk of becoming futile.” https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.09.034942v1.full.pdf
thanks Jerome;
from here is a description of the population of what are called care homes. It is worth reading what many of these poor folks in these homes bear, as serious co-morbidities.
From here https://academic.oup.com/ageing/article/33/6/561/16174 they talk of a national UK census in 2004 for care home residents.
Some things from the summary
“25% were ‘residential’ and 75% in ‘nursing’ care” .. we will describe nursing care later.
” Medical morbidity and associated disability … had driven admission in over 90% of residents”
“More than 50% of residents had dementia, stroke or other neurodegenerative disease.”
“Overall, 76% of residents required assistance with their mobility or were immobile.”
“78% had at least one form of mental impairment and 71% were incontinent.”
“27% of the population were immobile, confused and incontinent”
__________________________________________________________
“could have come from ICUs and/or ventilation,”
I think it is pretty clear that this population would not receive the therapies that so many seem to fondly imagine will be effortlessly dispensed; so no tubes and no ICU and no ventilation. Kindness, care, consideration, compassion might be higher priorities.
So a care home can deliver those.
“palliative care, which will require sophisticated nursing and use of powerful drugs.”
I think you are talking hospices there; a different thing again.
“Or have i missed something.” ……. could be ……..
Pro- lockdown strategy
Please do not judge the present situation using the predictive retrospectoscope on a situation that has been alterered by … some lockdown.
Containment has already prevented 60,000 deaths in France, according to this study
Not counting indirect deaths induced by hospitals and ICUS being flooded
Not counting home and care homes deaths
Not countin (my 2 pence) the impossibility to provide enough oxygen, curare, sedation drugs and more hospital material and drugs and PPEs.
Look up the number of ICU beds needed : 20 times the “usual” number.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.fr%2Fentry%2Fle-confinement-a-deja-evite-60000-morts-en-france-selon-cette-etude_fr_5ea1238ec5b6194c7be83049
Original language :
https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/entry/le-confinement-a-deja-evite-60000-morts-en-france-selon-cette-etude_fr_5ea1238ec5b6194c7be83049
Another error on my part about our local data: Case fatality rate is actually 2% (7/351), not 0.02% as I alleged earlier, and the test-positive rate is 6.8% (351/5149). The morons in charge must be having an effect on me. Or maybe I was just born that way.
Here is a roundup of the vaccines and drugs being developed and/or already in clinical trials for SARS CoV-2:
https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/yxmvjqywprz/index.html
Much food for thought here…
The Secretive Group Guiding the U.K. on Coronavirus:
A variety of quotes from the article below…
The government’s influential Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies — known by its soothing acronym, SAGE — operates as a virtual black box. Its list of members is secret, its meetings are closed, its recommendations are private and the minutes of its deliberations are published much later, if at all.
That lack of transparency has become a point of contention, as officials struggle to explain why they waited until late March to shift from a laissez-faire approach to the virus to the stricter measures adopted by other European countries. Critics say the delay may have worsened a death toll now surging past 20,000, and they fault the government for leaving people in the dark about why it first chose this riskier path.
Another member who has become a household name, and a source of scrutiny for his eye-watering statements, is Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London. His team of modelers produced the March 16 report that prompted Downing Street to impose a lockdown (it was also influential at the White House, which embraced social distancing).
Professor Ferguson, who collaborates with the World Health Organization and has advised other countries on how to deal with epidemics, later came down with symptoms of the virus himself. In late March, testifying before Parliament from self-isolation in his house, he generated more headlines when he said that Britain could keep its death toll under 20,000 if it stuck with strict social distancing.
Professor Ferguson did not reply to requests to discuss his advice to the government or the deliberations of SAGE.
But in an interview with The New York Times the day the March 16 report was published, he laid out the choice Britain faced: Manage the spread of the virus in a way that minimized deaths but allowed a significant percentage of the population to become infected — a situation known as “herd immunity.” Or tamp down transmission of the virus by imposing a lockdown of the kind the Chinese government did in Wuhan. In the end, he said, there was no choice but to take the latter course.
“The U.K. has struggled in the past few weeks in thinking about how to handle this outbreak long term,” Professor Ferguson said. “We don’t have a clear exit strategy, but we’re going to have to suppress this virus, frankly indefinitely, until we have a vaccine. It’s a difficult position for the world to be in.”
Until mid-March, Professor Ferguson, Professor Vallance and other scientists had appeared receptive to the case for “herd immunity.” Then, confronted with new numbers that projected hospitals would be overwhelmed with patients and that the death toll would skyrocket, they pivoted to a suppression strategy.
Among the other mysteries of SAGE is the makeup of the group. Professor Vallance said it includes representatives from more than 20 institutions, with expertise ranging from molecular evolution to microbiology. There are four expert groups, with anywhere from five to 45 members, whose advice is funneled into SAGE. Some scientists, like Professor Ferguson, serve on multiple panels.
But outside experts questioned whether it has enough representation from fields like public health and logistics. Britain’s lack of masks, gloves and other protective gear has become another weak link in its response.
The entire article is worth a close read…
ACE2. Batwomen:
In 2005, Shi Zhengli and colleagues found that bats are the natural reservoir of SARS-like coronaviruses.[5][6][7] She led a research team that studied how SARS-coronaviruses from bats could infect the human ACE2 receptor, where she gained this function via combining novel SARS-CoV viruses from bats with human immunodeficiency virus-based (HIV) pseudovirus systems to facilitate hACE2 as a receptor for cell entry and subsequent infection.[8][9]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Zhengli
* https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/04/24/how-did-the-wuhan-virus-start.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20200424Z2&et_cid=DM514890&et_rid=857270511
It is all quite simple when you see it written down. As we enter the next 3 weeks of lockdown here is a summary of the advice from those who are most informed:
1. You MUST NOT leave the house for any reason, but if you have a reason, you can leave the house
2. Masks are useless at protecting you against the virus, but you may have to wear one because it can save lives, but they may not work, but they may be mandatory, but maybe not
3. Shops are closed, except those shops that are open
4. You must not go to work but you can get another job and go to work
5. You should not go to the Drs or to the hospital unless you have to go there, unless you are too poorly to go there
6. This virus can kill people, but don’t be scared of it. It can only kill those people who are vulnerable or those people who are not vulnerable people. It’s possible to contain and control it, sometimes, except that sometimes it actually leads to a global disaster
7. Gloves won’t help, but they can still help so wear them sometimes or not
8. STAY HOME, but it’s important to go out
9. There is no shortage of groceries in the supermarkets, but there are many things missing. Sometimes you won’t need loo rolls but you should buy some just in case you need some
10. The virus has no effect on children except those children it affects
11. Animals are not affected, but there is still a cat that tested positive in Belgium in February when no one had been tested, plus a few tigers here and there…
12. Stay 2 metres away from tigers (see point 11)
13. You will have many symptoms if you get the virus, but you can also get symptoms without getting the virus, get the virus without having any symptoms or be contagious without having symptoms, or be non contagious with symptoms…
14. To help protect yourself you should eat well and exercise, but eat whatever you have on hand as it’s better not to go out shopping
15. It’s important to get fresh air but don’t go to parks but go for a walk. But don’t sit down, except if you are old, but not for too long or if you are pregnant or if you’re not old or pregnant but need to sit down. If you do sit down don’t eat your picnic
16. Don’t visit old people but you have to take care of the old people and bring them food and medication
17. If you are sick, you can go out when you are better but anyone else in your household can’t go out when you are better unless they need to go out
18. You can get restaurant food delivered to the house. These deliveries are safe. But groceries you bring back to your house have to be decontaminated outside for 3 hours including Pizza…
19. You can’t see your older mother or grandmother, but they can take a taxi and meet an older taxi driver
20. You are safe if you maintain the safe social distance when out but you can’t go out with friends or strangers at the safe social distance
21. The virus remains active on different surfaces for two hours … or four hours… six hours… I mean days, not hours… But it needs a damp environment. Or a cold environment that is warm and dry… in the air, as long as the air is not plastic
22. Schools are closed so you need to home educate your children, unless you can send them to school because you’re not at home. If you are at home you can home educate your children using various portals and virtual class rooms, unless you have poor internet, or more than one child and only one computer, or you are working from home. Baking cakes can be considered maths, science or art. If you are home educating you can include household chores to be education. If you are home educating you can start drinking at 10am
23. If you are not home educating children you can also start drinking at 10am
24. The number of corona related deaths will be announced daily but we don’t know how many people are infected as they are only testing those who are almost dead to find out if that’s what they will die of… the people who die of corona who aren’t counted won’t be counted
25. You should stay in lockdown until the virus stops infecting people but it will only stop infecting people if we all get infected so it’s important we get infected and some don’t get infected
26. You can join your neighbours for a street party and turn your music up for an outside disco and your neighbours won’t call the police. People in another street are allowed to call the police about your music.
27. No business will go under due to Coronavirus except those businesses that will have already gone under.
(There is of course another meaning to the word ‘simple’.)
Very good. I can add another one. If someone in your household has symptoms, you must fully self-isolate for 14 days. But if you are exposed to covid at work (in the NHS) you must remain at work.
Mmmm. I had to drop some medicine off to my youngest daughter in another part of London (they have no car to get about, and so it was easier for me to do it). Well, social distancing? Not a thing of it. I had not seen them since this virus broke-out, but all the parks were full of folk as if it was just a normal sunny Saturday afternoon with folk playing football, basketball, and all sorts of other games. Skateboarders and stuff by the million, and small shops crowded, also I’ve never seen so many folk sunbathing in a public park! Some, whilst walking, kept about a metre of two from each other, but unless you were looking out for it, you would not pick it up. My daughter is on furlough with a very active 3-year old (…and how crazy is that proving!), All the local food shops are open etc., and she says its just crazy to her, as its as if nothing has changed – bar Dad getting the medicine!
Dr K, This is a total Gov. turn-about. Here in London this is full-on ‘herd immunity’ on the quiet. No question. All over London this is the case. Yes, you may get the police being a bit heavy-handed in the provinces, but the policy here in London has gone 180-degrees. Denial, denial, denial is the political clap-trap we here. As otherwise, its political bullshit run riot. 2-weeks ago we had police helicopters chasing down folk for sun-bathing (they even hovered above me in for 10-mins in our 3 1/2 acre communal garden! I thought they were actually going to land!!), gathering, walking, biking, etc., etc. Now, the Met helicopters (whose base is just behind me, hardly venture out). So it goes.
Yes, there is so little fairness.
I know you are talking about the NHS workers spreading the virus though Malcolm – don’t mean to imply you are moaning about the situation. It is all so amazingly daft.
Tish – The codology of it all! Ridicule may render government measures inoperable. Was it Napoleon feared the peoples ridicule ?
Its third version hav stumbled on, its mutatating not unlike ………… no I’ll not go there !
Beautifully expounded, Tish. I have printed your wise word nd m now off to warm up the laminator.
Tish, very good, that clarifies the confusing message from the government. Send the post to Private Eye, it may get you 15mins of fame, I’m sure they would print it.
I have spoken to one person in the past week, and heard about another, both of whom had queries about something bought at supermarkets. They both had their receipts given to them by a gloved till operator. When they offered the receipt as a discussion point, they were told the customer service person could not touch the receipt as the customer had touched it. Infection risk? What a dangerous world we live in.
Priceless!
I believe we are living in a couple (or more) parallel universes at the same time. You read that some minister are beginning to understand that due diligence has not been done with the government only taking Bill Gates advice (via Imperial College), probably not realising that it is the case. Strangely keen on not letting up until there is a vaccine, which may never happen. I can’t find it now, but there has been a video posted recently with Bill Gates saying he wants to stop any chance of herd immunity – he is the main evangelist for vaccines of course through his organisation. The best way to achieve his aim is to keep us all locked down waiting for his vaccine. There is a bit of an impression in reporting here and there that some ministers maybe getting uncomfortable with this position. Apparently Ferguson from Imperial says we should ease up the lockdown and then reapply it, maybe several times if there is a surge of cases. A psychologist has said after 6 cycles of this you will agree to anything to avoid it again – mandated vaccine and tracking by a mobile app – see who you have contact with. Don’t have the vaccine, don’t get let out! 1984 comes to mind.
Those briefing, telling us now we have reached the peak, when we appear to have done that 2 weeks ago – according to CEBM –
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-23rd-april/
Matt Hancock telling us he is still working off the Imperial report of the 16th March. As said above some other ministers beginning to have doubts about that advice.
Will Boris come back next week and say what a fine mess you made while I have been away? and sort it all out? Don’t hold your breath.
David: “It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action; it begets a calamitous necessity of going on”. Thomas Paine
David,
If vaccines are mandatory, then there is no reason why they would have to work.
here you go David;
“but there has been a video posted recently with Bill Gates saying he wants to stop any chance of herd immunity”
“Gates talking ……………… at 33:45, :
“We don’t want to have a lot of recovered people […]
To be clear, we’re trying – through the shut-down in the United States
– to not get to 1% of the population infected.
We’re well below that today, but with exponentiation,
you could get past that three million [people or approximately one percent of the U.S. population being infected with COVID-19 and the vast majority recovering].
I believe we will be able to avoid that with having this economic pain.”””
“……… with having this economic pain”=”by having this economic pain”
Poor deluded creature; as good as his operating system; he wants to get the rate down to 1%;
the corona is way ahead; (good news!)
From here, they estimate 19% of California population tests positive
https://uncoverdc.com/2020/04/24/tracy-beanz-live-california-doctors-erickson-and-massihi-press-conference/
it you can last for 15 mins or so; you get the message; like oxygen, and the flu, and innumerable other respiratory viruses, that are around every year, our current obsession is everywhere; let’s lock the old up; that way they will be protected: what a fantasy: get real people; we are practising nonsense; we are just hurting people; grandmothers forcibly separate from their dearly beloved grandchildren; how can inflict such nonsense; a caring society; bah.
“grandmothers forcibly separate from their dearly beloved grandchildren”
So you would prefer they be permanently separated by death rather than temporarily by quarantine? Strange definition of “caring” IMO. Surely quarantine is the best choice from a menu of unpleasant options.
Stuart, death will get us all (except me) at some time, and until it happens you won’t know when. Quarantining healthy people, which is what is happening now, will probably weaken their immune systems, since the systems are built on continual challenges. Look at someone who knows quite a bit, at around 20 mins onwards the immune system is explained. https://youtu.be/JW9zT5kESr8.
I am quite happy to handle “dirty” supermarket trolleys, pick up and take home “contaminated” food, Touch my face with unsanitised hand. My immune system will benfit and develop resistance.
Those who wear gloves, masks, refuse to touch trolleys, wash their food with bleach, refuse to get near anyone else will have two problems. One is a chronic state of fear, two is a weakened immune system. I’ll dice with death and this deadly virus, which causes minimal symptoms for reasonably healthy people.
A agree – eat well, sleep well, exercise moderately (in the sun at the proper times for vitamin D), add supplements, don’t panic about this virus – I have only ever had flu once in my life, despite working in schools and hospitals (no flu jab either) and rarely get colds. A combination of organic foods, some supplements (usually in the winter), homeopathy and echinacea tea (at first signs of anything) have served me well in my 62 years. I’m not going to worry either!
Hi anglo: good recommendations, but why?
Googled mitochondria/virus and appears that perhaps a healthy mito is required to combat a virus. All your recommendations will benefit mitochondrial health. Reductionists might be interested how viruses can hijack the immune system.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4417658/
“Low serum cholesterol levels, low antioxidant capacity, and abnormal early morning cortisol levels are biomarkers consistently associated with both depression and suicidal behaviors. In this review, we summarize the manner in which nutrients can protect against oxidative damage to mitochondria and lipids in the neuronal circuits associated with cognitive and affective behaviors. These nutrients include ω3 fatty acids, antioxidants (vitamin C and zinc), members of the vitamin B family (Vitamin B12 and folic acid) and magnesium.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/cr201398
“Mitochondria are essential for triggering the cellular innate immune responses against invading pathogens, such as viruses. In the predominant pathway, virally generated RNA acts as a pathogen-associated molecular pattern (PAMP) and activates cytosolic RIG-I-like RNA helicases (RLRs), which then dock to the mitochondria via mitochondrial antiviral signaling adaptor (MAVS; also known as IPS-1, Cardif or VISA)1,2,3,4. This subsequently activates a signaling cascade that results in the phosphorylation and nuclear translocation of the interferon (IFN) regulatory factors, IRF3 and IRF7, leading to the induction of type I IFN (IFN-α and -β) expression, the major antiviral defense weapon of the cell5,6. The released IFN activates the IFN response pathway via Jak/STAT signaling, leading to the induction of the expression of a large family of cellular antiviral genes7,8,9.
Viruses, especially RNA viruses, whose RNA products can potentially function as PAMPs, have also evolved strategies to antagonize the type I IFN signaling pathways; this allows them to grow robustly and generate the immunopathology that is a characteristic of the viral infection10,11,12.”
AHN
There it had to happen, I totally agree with you. I remember a group of us were in the back streets of Cairo, and we had a chance to eat some street food half refused to do so out of fear. The other half tucked in.
You can’t live in fear all the time.
Someone I knew who worked Africa, part of their training was to kill a baboon (without using guns or other missile projectors) Hang it in a tree for a fortnight, and then eat it. It was said to taste like cak, but it would mean you could survive. Our education in “hygiene” would mean that worrying about it might prevent survival.
“Quarantining healthy people, which is what is happening now, will probably weaken their immune systems”
There is absolutely no proof of that – vaccination against smallpox lasts a lifetime which shows that your immune system doesn’t weaken because it somehow forgets. The lower mortality of the Spanish Flu among older people is thought to have been due to them being exposed to a similar strain decades earlier in an earlier flu outbreak. The immune system can weaken due to age or nutrient deficiencies but in that case you have even more reason to avoid infection. If a virus or bacteria mutates sufficiently that the antibodies don’t work it’s not because the immune system has weakened but because it’s essentially dealing with a new pathogen.
I haven’t watched all of that Erickson video as I don’t have a whole hour to waste listening to conspiracy theories. I did watch the first few minutes and from 15:00 to about 22:00. His argument is nonsense. He says that babies’ immune systems learn as a result of exposure to pathogens and without that their immune system is weakened. In fact children whose immune systems are not challenged due to being in an overclean environment, rather than having a weak immune response instead have an exaggerated response – allergies – to common environmental substances. If you take his argument to its logical conclusion you should bathe in raw sewage to “strengthen” your immune system. You first.
Who is this guy anyway and why should I listen to him? Just because he’s an MD and wearing scrubs doesn’t make him an expert in infectious diseases or immunology, and I personally have encountered enough medicos spouting absolute bollocks to not accept any random medico’s opinion as holy writ. (1) He seems to be more concerned about the loss of income because the wards are currently empty – presumably because elective surgery is cancelled – than whether patients will die. His argument that CV-19 is no more dangerous than the flu is specious – although the fatality rate of those infected may be similar the fact is that CV-19 is far more infectious. If hospitals are deluged with seriously ill patients while there are limited supplies of ventilators, oxygen supply, medications etc (2) and/or suffering staff shortages due to illness, then expect the death rate to skyrocket.
(1) Doctors whose opinions I do respect include Malcolm, Michael Eades, John Briffa, Bill Davis and Paul Mason among others, precisely because they base their opinions on scientific evidence.
(2) Supplies are always limited, unless you somehow believe they can be infinite.
Stuart, oh I see, the open minded approach. “”I haven’t watched all of that Erickson video as I don’t have a whole hour to waste listening to conspiracy theories.” etc etc
Disagree entirely, but nevermind all that. Where is Briffa now? I’ve not seen anything of him for years. Nine you, he’s just some Dr. Why would anyone listen to him?
Dr Briffa’s still around. He stopped writing in his blog when he became a dad and doesn’t seem to have gone back to that. But there are videos and talks he is still doing:
September 2019 – https://www.imi.ie/insights/podcasts/lunchtime-listen-peak-leadership-performance_john_briffa/
He seems to be focusing on helping business employees now:
https://www.personallyspeakingbureau.com/speaker/dr-john-briffa/
https://video.londonbusinessforum.com/detail/videos/boost-your-wellbeing/video/4050732720001/dr-john-briffa—feeling-good?autoStart=true
Thanks.
anglosvizzera – I shall always be grateful to John Briffa because it was the advice I read in his Observer column about the importance of supplementing with co-enzyme q10 if one was taking a statin that transformed my life all those years ago. Before I supplemented my muscles were so weak that my tennis racket would turn in my hand on contact with the ball, so feeble was my grip and at night, my ear against the pillow, my heartbeat sounded horribly soft and ‘shlurpy.” Things improved massively after supplementation.
After Briffa bowed out I discovered our wonderful host here and dumped the statins. A good move – never looked back. Thank you, Dr. K. Eternally grateful.
Thank you but I can take no credit. It was something sent to us and is probably doing the rounds.
AhNotepad – I am trying to trace it.
These two doctors from the US in this press briefing broadcast a couple of days ago are talking the most sense I’ve heard for a long time! Explaining exactly why we have an immune system, why stringent lockdown strategies make this worse, why being outside in the fresh air and sunshine are to be recommended for the majority of us etc.
Part 1 here (51 minutes) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfLVxx_lBLU&fbclid=IwAR0I7nZwyminxjZ5a0paWv6DCIFrhyz3tqsAp37R5lp4-EPa46AB42b89Vo
Part 2 (12 minutes) here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb6j7o1pLBw
anglosvizzera: Thank you for posting that. Doctors talking sense. They are from three counties to the south of where I live, in the same agricultural valley. Similar data to that from my county.
anglosvizzera, they are both excellent videos. Thank you for posting.
I sit here and wonder why a country of 25 million citizens, with 79 C19 deaths (many C19 questionable – mostly aged with co-mordities), we are putting 3 million people out of work and spending well over $300 billion for something the evidence now shows has an impact that is similar in many respects to seasonal flu. At the same time we are totally ignoring the far greater crisis from additional deaths and social, mental and physical harms directly caused as a result of these interventions.
thanks Deb; we seem to dividing into 2 clear groups: those; (examples above) who still preach …. … we all going to die… (cue put hands over ears and run around screaming)…
…and those who think the whole thing is mad; the mortality is no different to flu; except we are going to so grieve; in 6 months or more; at the economic wasteland all around us. Regret at length.
Those who think we are all going to die, are 100% correct. The only question is, when?
Because too many of the sheep in Canberra rely on “advisors” – the first target of any lobbyist – and too LAZY – or fearful of ‘Offending’ to do their own research.
Besides, the over-riding ambition of any politician is to be re-elected… until they’re eligible for a Parliamentary Pension.
As proven experts in promulgating lies, deceit and mis-direction they are perfectly qualified to sort out the (internet) Truth from Bovine Waste, and make correct decision…
anglosvizzera: Interesting that one of the doctors says, in effect, that a strong immune system requires continual boosting from the sea of microbes in which we swim throughout the course of the day. Makes perfect sense. Healthy people should not be confined for prolonged periods if we wish them to retain their health.
“a strong immune system requires continual boosting” Indeed;
well; I guess it like our muscles Gary: we could lie down all day and protect them; or float on the space station, and protect our muscles and bones up there;
or we could protect our eyes from sunlight; and hide deep underground in the darkness forever.
or we could rest our brains, and do no thinking; as many would seem to be doing now!!
best wishes to you; you are right; we all need to be out in the fresh air, mixing with people we happily bumped into .. a lifetime back?? … no it was six weeks. An eternity.
Thanks Anglosvizzera,
Please everyone listen to these two videos, and pass them on if possible.
David
Oh look!
It’s gone mainstream now.
So I guess we’ll just have to drop the idea.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/24/21231085/coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory-covid-facebook-youtube
thanks JDPatten;
yes, it is appalling isn’t it? The stuff people talk about; here for example is an ex-weapons scientist, involved in UK secret work on microwaves etc during his lifetime; spouting this ridiculous stuff
as if his background would give him any scientific credibility to talk on such issues; it really is appalling how totally unqualified folks get listened to. We must condemn this completely.
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“It’s nuts.”
(Hmm. Now where is it that I read that??)
I always tend to think that those opposed to such technology are just silly – but there are no safety trials that I have heard of, just profit driven people saying 5G is OK.
If we are to adopt it, as we are doing – it is for those who make the profits to show us it is safe.
I will probably buy one.
Do you mean like the vaccine manufacturers have to show their products are safe, and to take the liability?
Interesting.
“It’s nuts” was a quote from our host Dr Kendrick. Interesting and amusing that he got thumbs down from people who apparently either don’t read at all or don’t inquire more deeply in the face of something that displeases their gut bias.
A couple of carefully (rationally?) worked out schemes to get out of lock-down.
‘Course, it’s all crystal ball work.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/03/variolation-may-cut-covid19-deaths-3-30x.html
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.12.20062687v1
Hi JDP: to variolate or not to variolate?
The variolee’s reaction to variolation will depend on the status of the immune system. What tests can a GP perform to determine how robust or depressed ones immune system is?
Feeling a bit squiffy?
Maybe you’ll get yourself to the hospital . . . where they have plenty of “ventilators”?
Read this. Print it out. Bring it along.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ventilators-specia-idUSKCN2251PE
thanks JD: the marvellous thing about the forum is all the many inputs; thanks again;
“They now focus more on breathing and a patient’s overall condition”: phew; just looking at a person; whatever next;
“If the patient can get better without it, then there’s no need”; phew, everyone was meant to run around screaming ………..
“the additional machines will need highly trained and experienced operators.” gosh, amazing.
“It’s not just about running out of ventilators, it’s running out of expertise,” phew; brilliant
Isn’t it extraordinary how this elementary principle has been completely left out; till now; by the headless chook MSM as they deluge all in the “we are all going to die” propaganda.
I’ve heard of CPAP / BiPAP machines enjoying a measure of success when used early. – That’s the commercially available ‘anti-snoring’ gadgets with the air delivered via a mask.
Yes, with the running around in circles, the Fundementals are so easily overlooked and distracted by complicated (read: Sexy…) machines and expensive drugs.
And this from Australia, cheaper, simpler, uses a bag-valve-mask to make a better mousetrap.
I see no reason why the delivery device needs to be an invading hose… a face mask or pressurised ‘helmet’ would be safer in the light of that story !
https://ozvader.com/solutions/
As it appears to be oxygen deprivation that is the problem, would increasing the CO2 trigger the breathing response?
If anyone is still rushing to use a ventilator in UK hospitals, they should’ve already seen this press release from UCLH on 29 March by now (my nephew is an emergency medic there and tells me that they shared this document internationally…and, I presume, nationally!):
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/mar/ucl-uclh-and-formula-one-develop-life-saving-breathing-aids-nhs?fbclid=IwAR1Mfb5WK5Uj0ZN6Q8qzRDPyQNFEBO5_XAQavF2r9qwJxw7o2JpxxMCvAj0
They absolutely don’t want you on a ventilator. They do their jesy best to avoid it as, once on one, you’re very likely to die or survive but as a shadow of your former self. In order to avoid what the public now know as ventilation (there are different kinds), they in fact use less invasive forms of it such as those you linked to. There’s no secret stash of great alternatives, nor are Drs suggesting that invasive respiration is a panacea.
Bill Gates got this wrong:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/the-worst-things-bill-gates-ever-said-a6990046.html
Dr Kendrick and our friends across the pond….please forgive me as I think I may have succumbed to C19, as my mind must surely have turned to useless mush. Did I really hear the newscaster correctly? I was catching up on today’s news, and am now recovering from an attack of a severe coughing fit and shortness of breath….tell me someone, please, that Trumpy Bumpy is off his trolley? So sorry to laugh in these tragic times….must be the Nurse in me….laughing and crying are closely related in times of great stress. I couldn’t speak for 10 minutes, and hubby was getting quite worried for me.
The world is going mad.
Like many Famous Folk in ‘Merica, a self-made man… and graphic warning of unskilled labour .
Janet, that’s no way to describe his parents population program 😁
Janet, that is if you think of a ‘self-made man’ as someone who was given 400 million by his father (not the measly 1 million he likes to lie about getting) and even got more from dear old dad when he bankrupted his first casino.Someone who has filed for bankruptcy four times and failed at every single business he started isn’t my idea of a self-made man or even a good business man. He’s a con artist and I hope he’ll one day face state charges for money laundering, tax evasion, RICO and sexual assault (that is if there’s any justice in the world and there really IS one law for all people). We’ll have to wait and see, though..
A Google search for ‘Bill Gates Psychopath’ brings up a lot of very scary stuff. Much of it was voiced years ago but has obviously not been properly headed. We are still seeing people in the media questioning all the wrong things and showing the man great deference – something he will be really enjoying if he is as bad as is suggested. This Covid19 time is a real education for some of us, but is it producing far more Bill Gates cheerers than doubters? These seem to be dangerous times without the danger coming directly from the virus.
Oops! ‘properly heeded!‘
Jennifer – “Trumpy Bumpy is off his trolley?”
I’m not sure if this is a reference to injecting disinfectant.
If so, here are some alternative points of view/thoughts on the matter from Dr Suzanne Humphries’ Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/drsuzanne/posts/?ref=page_internal
I thought the post with the 2 captions somewhat thought provoking:
Caption 1 – Americans when Donald Trump suggests injecting disinfectant and
Caption 2 – Americans when the CDC suggests injecting aluminum, formaldehyde, glyphosate, aborted fetal cells and other toxins.
Charles, thanks for that link. Unusually I did look at it and discovered this little gem https://truepundit.com/exclusive-robert-f-kennedy-jr-drops-new-bombshell-bill-gates-coronavirus-vaccine-will-pay-out-billions-in-profits-to-dr-faucis-agency/
Follow the money……………..
Yes the Trumpy Monster didn’t just make it up did he?
BUT reaction is mostly Orange Man Bad – he was aware of the stuff that had already been put in the public demain as in caption 2. and knew the MSM (85% left in the USA) would drive in straight-away.
He is not my favourite guy (or do I mean favorite guy) but Trump Derangement Syndrome drives them mad and he hooks them every time. They will be saying he is a Russian agent next – or is it a Chinese one this week?
Come on, just look at the dose. If one wanted to follow that mad suggestion and use bleach for “internal cleansing”, at concentration comparable to what is normally used, that would require injecting considerable amounts of bleach. Compare this to the µg of nasties in a dose of vaccine.
This is not to say that I am happy with the compositon of some common vaccines.
Further to Tish’s excellent 27 bullet pointed summary, I’ve found a bit more on the following 2 bullet points:
No. 11 “animals are not affected…” and
No. 12 “stay 2 metres away from tigers”
As always, Dr Matthias Rath covers the nutritional side of things and also the immune system. Here’s a link to a Q&A dated 7 April and the tiger appears under “Why don’t animals contract the pandemic virus?”:
https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/2020/04/questions-and-answers-on-the-current-pandemic/
Also, there is an article dated 24 April about the use of the anti malarial drug chloroquine. Testing was stopped due to 11 deaths. Here’s the link:
https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/2020/04/study-using-high-doses-of-malaria-drug-against-coronavirus-stopped-early-due-to-patient-deaths/
It’s important that the tiger should be wearing a mask and preferably gloves. The tiger should also maintain a 2m distance from the victim they are having for lunch.
AhN ‘- you do realise you may b exposing the authorities to ridicule !
The author of the second link seems to have a praiseworthy attitude to health – encouraging the building up of a strong immune system, and being suspicious of pharmaceutical companies’ motives in producing expensive drugs. But I think he has derived precisely the wrong conclusions about hydroxychloroquine.
It is an extremely cheap generic drug, and its proponents advocate it, accompanied with zinc and in small quantities, for Stage 1 of the illness, i.e. when the infection is trying to spread in the upper respiratory tract. (Or even for use prophylactically, as I believe it is traditionally used against malaria.) There is a well-understood mechanism to explain its action against COVID at this time, but no plausible reason to expect it to work in later stages, certainly not by the time patients are in ICUs with pneumonia.
Several ‘trials’ of the drug seem to be designed to fail and to prove the drug dangerous, by giving it too late and in inappropriate quantities. In the UK, patients are told not to even contact the NHS until they are well past the time when the drug is useful. I wouldn’t like to guess who is influencing these policies and the design of those trials, but my guess is that they are not very interested in finding a cheap treatment for this illness.
The latest video from Dr Erickson – “No Science behind the Lockdown”:
Just watched – it is excellent!
Dr Erickson says when we isolate ourselves in a nice clean environment, our immune system is not challenged and starts getting weaker, so after lockdown we will be more vulnerable to whatever is going around.
Is this true? I always thought immunity lasted for a lifetime. If our immune system does get weaker, how much weaker after, say, a month in sterile conditions — 1%, 10%, 50%?
Then again, perhaps he means our immune systems are not being exposed to all the slight new variations and mutations of common viruses and bacteria, i.e. our immune system is not weaker, but it is not being updated and is therefore vulnerable to the current microbial mix.
Martin Back: The introduction of the varicella vaccine in the U.S. had the unintended consequence of increasing the rate of shingles in adults, and shingles in children who had been vaccinated. It is thought that this was caused by the lack of circulating Herpes zoster, the cause of both chicken pox and shingles. This would corroborate what doctor Erickson explained about the lack of boosting weakening the immune system. Here is some information about this:
Martin makes valid points. Also,
IF this virus, SARS – Cov2 is a bio-engineered creation, then the presence of (foreign) HIV bits in it makes sense, targeting the immune system as a pre-emptive strike.
Proof ? – Getting re-infected after recovery suggests a ‘weapon’.
What I’d like to know is that if, as some are saying, we don’t have any immunity after having been infected with Covid 19 despite the presence of antibodies, how on earth is a vaccine going to help? All that does is produce antibodies…
If catching the disease does not confer immunity, then a vaccine cannot work.
As I thought. The other question that is bothering me is that some other countries appear to be using some kind of antibody test to show whether people have had the virus, and yet the ones the UK were meant to use are, apparently, not reliable enough.
So can we believe those other countries when they say that vast numbers of the population have been ‘infected’ and didn’t have symptoms or only had mild ones, or are their antibody tests faulty too?
I’m presuming it’s the antibody tests they’ve been using on the general public rather than antigen tests that only show active infection?
Dr. Kendrick: There are some strange things going on in the SARS CoV-2 vaccine world.
1. An mRNA vaccine, by Fauci.
2. A Lentiviral Minigene vaccine (China).
3. A DNA plasmid vaccine (CEPI, a U.S. foundation).
4. Australia and the Netherlands are trialling the TB vaccine, BCG.
Here is the link, if anyone is interested:
https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/yxmvjqywprz/index.html
Dr Malcolm,
How would the people who would do such research go about determining immunity or no immunity?
Surely there are protocols.
One gets a tetanus booster every ten years, but with measles you’re good for life. (Must have taken a long time to figure that one!) So, it’s variable.
Is COVID any more complicated or difficult than other diseases in determining immunity?
It does seem that without uniformly reliable testing nothing can be determined.
The WHO is already trying to scare people by saying that those who can show they’ve already had the virus and recovered may not necessarily have enough immunity to keep from getting it again. Even if that turns out to be true, I would think it’d be like those who’ve gotten shingles: the first time they get it they say it was kind of rough going, but if they got it a second time, it was quite manageable/mild. Also, the WHO never seem to mention the same thing about getting the vaccine. Why aren’t they telling people that getting the vax doesn’t mean they won’t get the virus again? (Right; they’ll probably say it at some point as a way to encourage people to get a bloody booster every year like the flu shot)
It suggests no such thing and we don’t know people are getting re infected.
I’m also going to start taking ZINC, because of COVID-19. How much to take can depend on what else we eat with it, though. Dr. Georgia Ede has a very good article on plants effects on the absorption of various vitamins and minerals. Scroll down to see just zinc if you like, but be sure to read the part about ‘anti-nutrients’/ phytonutrients and the effect it has on zinc. For example, if you only ate a plate of clams, high in zinc, you’d absorb most all of it, but as soon as you add a carb/plant, the absorption of the zinc is pretty much gone: https://www.diagnosisdiet.com/full-article/micronutrients-and-mental-health
Should read Anti-nutrients/Phytic Acid to be more specific.
Gary, we don’t have compulsory masks, yet, but we do have queues outside almost every open shop. I was told off (again) today for not standing behind the line. I pointed out I was in fact standing behind it, and that it was just like being at school, only worse. I was told it was for my protection, so I suggested the prefect looked at Dan Erickson’s video. I was told that because of the rules imposed the prefect felt protected. Stroll on.
Before going into the shop, I collected a trolley from the bay where someone else had left it. I walked to the door with trolley, and was asked if I wanted it cleaned. I pointed out it was now too late as I had already touched the trolley, and so got all the available bugs. So it would have been cleaned, then I would have touched it with my already contaminated hands, and after shopping left it in the bay, for someone else to use, in it’s uncleaned state.
These people probably watch the TV news, then believe it. I don’t watch the news because it is full of lies and deceit at the moment.
AhN, our little Sainsbury’s began by cleaning the basket handles for you but they quickly gave up on that. The other day there was no queue (hurray!) so I hopped over the bit of barrier that was hop-over-able, then became aware I was being glared at by the lady monitoring the door – I assumed probably because I had landed a bit closer than six feet away from her. Next day the breach in the barrier had been thoroughly blocked off. Oh dear.
Aileen, I suppose it is their little bit of pointless power. I think it’s also an indicator they are scared of getting infected. To me that is a more likely way of getting an infection. My approach is to eat food, take plenty of vit C and others, then take every opportunity to get bugs from every source that presents the opportunity. I would like to get a wooly hat on the form of a corona virus, then scare people with it. 😁
AhNotepad: Reminds me of the coronavirus piñatas for sale in Mexico. Symbolically beating the crap out it when in use.
AhN, I like the idea of a coronavirus hat!
AhNotepad: In the U.S. it is county health directors who make the rules. I suspect ours is about as smart as Neil Ferguson. State health departments are even worse, as they have become reliant on sackfuls of money supplied by the CDC, who works for industry, and makes its own sackfuls of money from the vaccine patents it holds. Where does all this money come from? The taxpayers, of course, though indirectly. These “health” people are playing a deadly game, while bathed in ignorance. They are incapable of ever admitting they are wrong.
Yes, one way to remain (tolerably) sane is not to listen to the news – on TV or radio. I gave up my TV license last year in disgust with the BBC, so I don’t watch TV anyway, but I usually limit my news-gathering to a quick flick over the BBC website, and leave it at that.
David, the guy at the supermarket, the one you call ‘the prefect’. He’s doing his job, why would you make it more difficult for him? Be kind.
ShirleyKate: Right. I’m always nice to them. They have no choice, and I find I like most of the people who work in retail, anyway. But they do look ridiculous, and I sometimes laugh.
At every moment.
Silliness of Vegans & Vegetarians Scientifically explained !
Lockdown isn’t for protection but a very crude management control tool.
It allows politicians to demonstrate their worth- action & rhetoric
It protects the prime minister from infamy- who wants to know as the pol pot of GB
And allows the NHS to cope
To me all what is going on just now is “madness in the drivers seat”!
Sweden seems to be reasonable in this respect.
Gorman
My son tells me that although the shops are open there is nobody in them, some shops have two customers in four or five days. His theory is that Swedes are obedient folk, and that advised to avoid crowding, that’s what they do.
Well done
Chris
People here in Sweden are certainly “aware” of “consensus” around Corona! Tomorrow I intend to go to my favorite restaurant again and expect to see “moderate” crowds at lunchtime.´
Still official stupidity rules by us as the rest of the world even if Sweden is certainly better off.
Yes! We were just a few guests in the restaurant with “good social distance” indeed.
There is “stress” also in Sweden and people are perhaps more ‘obedient’ here than in other countries.
I also met with a former colleague (much younger and still working) in a shop today and who told me that they now were part time laid off (one day per week. She felt uncomfortable with the present development. “Spare parts for aircraft engines are today low in demand.” Very understandable with all aircrafts on the ground!
This thread started with “care of old people in care homes”. I borrowed a copy of “The way we die now” by a doctor, Seamus O’Mahony; he has spent most of his working life in the UK. I am not sure what image most people following this blog have; of the sick and old that present regularly to hospitals in the UK; yes, regularly, .. not just now. Yes, regularly, all the time.
In describing what he does, Dr M says how his speciality is gastroenterology; stomach and bowel problems. How he acts as a “general physician” looking after whatever comes into the hospital, that cannot go home, and that are uninteresting to the super-specialists. Yes, he says that and it happens.
He very honestly writes
“Most of these patients are frail and old, with multiple diseases. Many have dementia. I am ashamed to admit that I once viewed the care of such patients as unworthy of my attention as a highly specialised gastroenterologist. Many of these people were at the end of their lives and caring for them forced me to think about death and dying”.
“Peaceful and dignified death is hard to achieve in acute-care hospitals. Some relatives do not thank me for a non-interventionist approach; one family, .., accused me of attempted euthanasia.”
I fear that a group such as the above can be weaponised; that we do not see them as individuals, each with their own frailty; and instead we can accuse a govt of “failing” to do all sorts of stuff we can imagine. I recommend folks to read this book. Ahnotepad says above we will all die; indeed; and maybe we need to think a little about it; and decide if we were to be as frail as described above, do we think it right that folks strive to do all sorts of invasive things to us.
Part of the nonsense of the IC modelling seemed to be to package up all the very old; who had several diseases; (called multiple diseases above); and take their mortality;
and assume that if all were instead they were put on a ventilator; that they could be washed clean; and cleansed; and returned; restored; invigorated; renewed; to the community; to continue to live a long and vigorous life. One can but admire the profound ignorance and supreme confidence of the dreadful IC model.
So take the number of “frail and old, with multiple diseases”; assume each should somehow be put on a ventilator; and like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we have the madness that the Fergoid unleashed on the whole world. Magic: ventilate; it is curative; they will be restored.
Aggressive care in the frail elderly can mean compassion; kindness; consideration; patience; understanding. Many things cannot be fixed; can we somehow understand and accept that;
“I am ashamed to admit that I once viewed the care of such patients as unworthy of my attention as a highly specialised ..”
This is your weaponised group; cluster them; take aim; who can we fire them against?
Yes Terry. I shall refuse all food and drink and everything but hey, look at this pair. He is 94 and she is 91:
New video from expert nutritionist Patrick Holford, discussing vitamin C, D and other micronutrients and so on regarding safe treatment (and prevention) for Covid 19:
He misses his own point. He mentions that vitamin C and glucose are linked but just misses the fact that they compete for the same receptor. So later on, he misses the fact that he you just drop all carbs, you don’t need C from plants because meat has enough.
I’m with you Bob. He’s a bit of a chancer. So many mistakes in the interview. A typical smooth talking guy on the make that one needs to be very wary of. Bennett was all over him.
Benett was nowhere near him, he didn’t correct him at all.
Bob: Sorry, that was my point! Bennett was too enthralled (“all over him”) by the guy!!
Ah, then I beg your pardon.
I’ll pass on the constructive criticism to Patrick Holford and see what he says. I wouldn’t say he’s a bit of a ‘chancer’ though, Shaun. He’s been around a very long time and has made excellent contributions to public health (not via the usual sources, of course.) He started out in psychology many years ago and soon learned about the link between nutrition and mental health. I remember seeing a Horizon programme on TV in the early 80s where he undertook an ‘experiment’ given children nutritional supplements which resulted in their IQ measure being vastly increased compared to the control group.
If you find any other ‘mistakes’ in the video, please let me know and I’ll run those by him too.
As for getting ‘enough’ vitamin C from meat, Bob, in the current situation our need for vitamin C is hugely increased – as is shown by how animals that produce their own vitamin C ramp it up when they’re sick. The animation with the lemons and the goat illustrate this. I don’t think we could get those sorts of levels from meat without seriously compromising other aspects of our health.
Without compromising what?
@Bob and @Shaun Clark – Patrick Holford replied to my query about vitamin C and sugar competing:
“You’re correct to an extent. I actually only just saw your comment but a) did a post on this on Instagram and b) covered it more in the next programme – https://youtu.be/Ht7x6Nqk-OE. We now have to stop vitamin C posts on FB -loads of warnings. So, I’m going to mainly communicate via my free e-news which you can sign up to on http://www.patrickholford.com (the aqua bar below the image). This is uncensored so I can tell the truth, and the full story on these issues there. I donlt know, quantitatively, exactly what is the scale of difference of eg absorption of vitamin on different types of sugar/sugar-free/low GL/zero carb environments, nor how immune cells function with available glucose or ketones. I suspect this will be ‘fine tuning’ while messed up glucose metabolism, as in diabetes, might have a big effect on the total functionality of vitamin C. Another rabbit hole to go down.”
Hi Anglo, Thanks for the follow-up. I don’t want to get into an argument with the guy but from memory he was also peddling the ‘fact’ that the Wuhan virus has the ability to knock-out the heme iron ion from the RBC. That has been thoroughly debunked as bogus quack-science mischief. Further, he was talking about the MER’s virus which he referred to as the Mediterranean virus. Mmmm. Interestingly one of the Prophet Mohammed’s pet cures for everyday ills (back in the day, and still in vogue today) was to drink the urine of camels. Needless to say the Saudi authorities desperately advised everyone to stop doing that, and of course eating camels as well as MER’s of course is Middle East Respiratory syndrome, which seemingly jumped from a bat to camels, and then to man! Anyway, that edict helped put an end to MER’s.
”thoroughly debunked as bogus”
Has it? I am always suspicious when this phrase is used. Often it is an “appeal to authority”, and has little to do with the subject in hand.
AhN: Well, if you feel so strongly about it show me as otherwise. It would wake-up this whole Wuhan imbroglio if you or others could do so. I can’t recall which Dr K. blog-topic it was on, but I seem to recall it was a very good/sound refutation posted by ‘Martin'(?) As a lay person I follow these things with interest, but since that posting I have seen absolutely nothing else of the ‘idea’ until the PH ‘explanation’. Maybe, it’s just the possibility of some mischief, along with the so-called appeal to authority that tickles your goat? I would not comment on such matters if there was no evidence of such a comment(s). I do not pull crap out of the air.
I guess this is the article by Patrick Holford to which you’re referring:
Click to access ph-flu-fighters-chapter-9.pdf
And this is the article by Doris Loh that I presume he was quoting:
https://www.townsendletter.com/article/online-covid-19-ards-cell-free-hemoglobin-ascorbic-acid-connection/
I don’t know enough about it all to refute or support any of it, but there are lots of references at the bottom!! If you can point me to the ‘debunking’ (“..as bogus quack-science mischief…”), I’d be grateful. There are a lot of (supposed) experts out there debunking stuff that actually is factual or valid, so would be good to know who it/they are so I can look into it more – sometimes they have a vested interest and therefore habitually debunk stuff (not saying that in this case they’re wrong, of course…until I know who they are.)
I did also notice he was incorrect about the MERS acronym, but was duly corrected.
Last revised: 23 Apr 2020 copied as per: “I conducted a retrospective multicentre study of 212 cases with laboratory-confirmed infection of SARS-CoV-2. Data pertaining to clinical features and serum 25(OH)D levels were extracted from the medical records. Vitamin D status is significantly associated with clinical outcomes. An increase in serum 25(OH)D level in the body could either improve clinical outcomes or mitigate worst (severe to critical) outcomes. On the other hand, a decrease in serum 25(OH)D level in the body could worsen clinical outcomes of Covid-2019 patients.” (see table 1) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571484
Randall, yes! From memory, 25(OH)D levels over 75 nmols/L were associated with *19 times* less likelihood of critical illness with covid-19. Of course it could be argued that vitamin D might be depleted as a result of illness rather than the other way round, but nevertheless this does seem to be a huge effect.
Grassroots Health have produced some interesting graphs based on the data:-
https://www.grassrootshealth.net/blog/first-data-published-covid-19-severity-vitamin-d-levels/
I don’t think the paper has been peer-reviewed yet. It will be interesting to see how it survives that process.
Our ‘ICU’ and mortality rates appear lower DownUnder than on your side… perhaps lots more sunlight / Vit D is making the difference.
Our lockdown also easing, groups of 10 “socially distant” now ok, up from 2
Surprisingly even the BBC mentioned vitamin D. Otherwise they get just about everything wrong
Dr. Kendrick and anyone else,
I see the meme out there that we may not develop any immunity from getting the infection. Someone said this came from WHO. I would like to counter that and say if that is the case, then we also cannot get a vaccine. No immunity should equal no vaccine. Vaccines provoke the immune system to make antibodies. Am I right or am I right?
Don’t let them tell us the vaccine will need repeating!!!*#*#*#!
Yeah, I’m worried about that too, a yearly covid vaccine. They want to vaccinate us to death.
Yes Anna, and No, you’re not supposed to connect the two… $ee if you can $pot a rea$on.!
Yes there are antibodies and Proper Antibodies only available from vaccines. I too think they are lining us up for an annual covid vaccination. Think of the profits. It doesn’t even have to work to be profitable, and as for side effects . . .
Anna, exactly my thoughts! They can’t tell us that a vaccine will help (because its only measure of efficacy during trials is antibody production) and then say that those who developed antibodies naturally are not actually immune.
anglosvizzera said, “They can’t tell us that a vaccine will help (because its only measure of efficacy during trials is antibody production) and then say that those who developed antibodies naturally are not actually immune.”
Actually they can. They can tell us whatever “keeps us on the reservation”. I’m not a believer in conspiracy theories, but I do think some people in power might be enjoying themselves too much these days. So, you see, don’t get too smug. Just because you have “antibodies” doesn’t mean you can get high and mighty and go about unsupervised. You must wait until the Powers That Be grant you “proper antibodies”, and even then you’ll need to watch your step. It’s for your own good!
LA Bob,
You’re almost there. Just realize that conspiracy is the only logical explanation for many things.
Anna,
I am never sure about conspiracy theories as such. I think a lot of the problem can be attributed to various changes in society:
1) The press has become far less analytic – even the ‘quality’ press. Nowadays it seems to focus on ‘sending out a message’ and ‘human stories’. Even their science correspondents often seem to know very little science.
2) Science – including medical science – has gone badly off the rails and super arrogant. I mean logically a science in which the top people don’t agree, is not ready to offer advice to anyone, or at least it should be all very tentative. In reality there is a greasy pole and one individual can claw his way to the top and spouts out his ideas.
3) More and more politicians arrive in post having studied ‘political science’ – they have very little knowledge of the real world, but have learned how to put out a message, and how to lead from the front.
4) Everything seems infected with politics!
I can only hope that in the aftermath of this debacle, everyone learns that modern science is far less reliable than people think.
The system itself is rigged by those who use entrusted power or stolen power to make its so – and there willingness to be normalised – there’s the energy source for all this.
Hi, Anna,
I really can’t agree. Conspiracy implies cooperation, competency, and “honor among thieves”. What I see is chaos, ambitious egos, and “the madness of crowds”. And skullduggery as well. I don’t think humans are evolved to handle massive organization at the population levels we have in most countries, never mind the entire world. Heck, even small families can be pretty messy.
There is growing popular sentiment to end the lock-downs. Eventually, the leaders who want to keep their power — in the democratic nations anyway — will respond constructively. The sooner the better!
LA_Bob: Don’t forget herd mentality among those who would like to keep their jobs and know this doesn’t involve questioning the received truth. That’s the largest and scariest group of the morons in charge.
UK Home Secretary says it’s imperative we continue with the (stupidity of) lockdown. Perhaps a reminder is appropriate. https://youtu.be/ItOPg2l7-t0
I don’t know how well this is generally known but after having had strokes that affect your speech (usually with right limb paralysis) people often retain ‘automatic speech’ – they might still be able to sing old favourite songs, count, say yes and no, etc. I have seen several genteel elderly ladies whose automatic speech consisted of little but swear words. My fear is that after this coronavirus nonsense, were I to suffer a stroke, my speech would be an utter embarrassment to anyone within earshot!
I lived for several decades, rarely if ever, swearing/cursing, but then came a perfect storm of menopause, facebook, twitter and “Mango Mussolini”…Et voila, I could make a sailor blush some days. No stroke necessary 😉
It’s 1:00 a.m., and I’m having a bit of insomnia. This morning, like all Saturday mornings for about 35 years I’ve gone to the farmer’s market. This both supports farmers and is an essential part of my my social network. They now require masks for all customers, so I left. I refuse to be a sheep. Later, I went to the hardware store, which has been in business for 141 years of our city’s 162-year existence, and at which I’ve been shopping since the late fifties, to get new air conditioning filters, as it has gotten hot. There was a line to get in the store, everyone six feet apart. This store and its employees are also part of my social network. I refuse to stand in such a line, so I left, filterless. Both of these draconian measures are brand new this week. What in God’s name are we doing? Thanks, in no small part, to this wonderful community here, I will retain my sanity, but are we to have family and nobody else in actual physical contact? Do those in authority have any idea the damage they are creating? Neighbors I saw on my evening walk, fourteen of them, and not a single mask. There is hope.
Gary – And you will find, if you do enter the store, the 6ft distancing rule is not applied or observed. Window dressing !
Jerome Savage: Yes! Observed only at the door and the checkout line; nowhere else inside the store. Lunacy.
Gary,
Our farmer’s market just opened. You order on line, drive up and stay in your car. A masked person delivers your order to your car. I also won’t go. And our farmer’s market was particularly nice, has a building to use with a kitchen, and thus a woman who cooks breakfasts. Big long table, lots of fun.
Our local country store, much like yours, now allows 2 people in at a time and you have to wait to get in, while the store owner actually locks the door between customers.
And yes, the authorities know exactly what they’re doing. I mean, the really bad ones at the top. The rest are just fools trying not to rock the boat.
So far as I understand, there isn’t a reason to wear a mask while walking outdoors. Unless its a crowded street or something.
Anna M: I wouldn’t credit the authorities with the level of knowledge needed to address a public health crisis. In our (U.S) government public health policy is carried out by county health departments, who take their marching orders from state health departments who take them from the CDC, who are entirely captured by industry, as is WHO. Trump, to his credit, is defunding WHO, but largely for the wrong reasons. We’ll take it, though.
… But just as interesting !
Gary Ogden
Hi Gary – with reference to your insomnia comment – further to Shaun’s comments about life and lockdown in London, ordinarily I’d suggest emigrating to the UK but under the circumstances I suppose you can’t.
I agree with both of Shaun’s comments on London. I’m nearby in Hampshire and for some/many lockdown = holiday/party time.
The traffic on the nearby M3 motorway is increasing (not as busy as normal though), and on roads there are more queues at junctions and traffic lights, and streams of traffic going by.
And to think I was issued with a permit to travel document 5 weeks ago in case I was stopped by the police to justify my journey. That’s a laugh.
Groups of cyclists out and about, those working from home getting nice sun tans in the garden (we were meant to feel sorry for them only getting 80% of full pay and grappling with boredom). I suppose they could be product testers for garden furniture manufacturers and BBQ makers.
I could go on but Shaun’s covered it already.
I think some may be dreading the end of “lockdown” and a return to normality.
OK. I posted a quicky on my Mobile earlier, but it seems it never got listed. Mmmm? Anyway, I visited my youngest daughter again today to drop of some much needed shopping. On the way I went by Hackney Marshes. I can tell you there were 1000’s upon 1000’s of folk on Hackney Marshes playing fields. HMPF (and the surrounding parks), cover a huge area. I lost count of the football games I saw – besides everything else!!!!! There were a lot of police vehicles parked-up in various ‘cosy’ spots, but all-in-all it was London doing what London does on a very hot summers day. Good folk enjoying themselves, and seemingly very happy! It was all that London can do best. When going home I thought about stopping to take some pics, but by then the numbers had died down a bit, and to be truthful, I thought, why? I kinda agree with what folk are doing! They are the antithesis of what this bollocks is all about. Good on ’em! We, will, prevail. Thank you.
Oh, to be in London Shaun! We are in the beautiful south-west but surrounded by spying people it seems. My husband had a phone call this morning from a neighbour who says he has been seen talking to a chap – who he has not seen for months actually – within 2 metres of him. There is apparently one ‘case’ here but I still wonder if a lot of us got it around Christmas time anyway.
Incidentally, we do respect people’s wishes/demands and keep our distance when talking to them but if they want to avoid walking past us on a pavement then they are the ones who have to get off it. And I usually tell them I’m not scared of them😏
How to make friends and influence people!
We’re in the south west too. And yes, there are lots of people moaning on our local FB page about anyone who dares set foot outside, especially if they’re ‘old’ (I presume they mean over 70, although when I was young, anyone over 40 looked ‘old’ to me! Maybe they think I’m old at 62?) One person mentioned that an ‘old’ person was seen walking with a newspaper in his hand that he’d bought – but that as, in their opinion, a newspaper wasn’t ‘essential’ he should have been reprimanded!
Reading through some of the comments, it seems that some people aren’t able to get out for any exercise for various reasons (health issues and so on), but constantly complain about anyone that does even though it’s been ‘recommended’ by BJ to get some exercise each day. (Don’t tell anyone but the other day my husband and I went for a long countryside walk and popped into a shop on the way back – but went out again in the car to the local supermarket. Were we ‘allowed’ out twice in one day? Who knows. There were some days where we didn’t go out at all as we were repairing our patio decking which presumably gave us enough fresh air and exercise, all that rubbing and sanding by hand.)
I was chatting to our next-door neighbour over the fence yesterday who said he went to a funeral of a friend last week, with some other mates, where they stood outside the church, all at least 2 metres apart – but discovered that someone in the village had called the police. Obviously the police arrived and were actually very apologetic about it all, just ‘reminding’ them not to stay too long. They were all outside, the sun was shining, the air was clean and breezy – the least likely opportunity for anyone to ‘catch’ Covid 19 (especially as there have been hardly any cases in our area.)
I can’t bear to imagine the situaiton when Covid 19 actually makes its way down to these parts!
Tish, I do the same on pavements. If others want to walk amongst the traffic, they are entitled to their freedom, If they want to walk within a couple of feet of me, that’s fine.
I was within a few feet talking to someone who works in care for the elderly, we were both very comfortable about the distance, and from my point of view it was normal talking distance. Even in the olden days, 2019 and before, I found people who wanted to stand a foot away from me were far too close for comfort. Even when I moved away they moved too. Makes me shudder.
Shaun Clark: Good for them! Sadly, in our little neighborhood park they’ve ripped out the goalposts, so no more games here, ever (they certainly won’t be putting them back). Makes me weep. Morons in charge nearly everywhere.
I’d like to know if there are any protests against the lockdown. I know there were some in Paris, but I mean here in Britain. GOOGLE doesn’t seem to report any, but I suspect it would censor them anyway. Does anyone know of any?
David, five minutes ago I was wandering down my deserted street wondering exactly the same thing.
Apologies if someone has already posted this from Dr Judy Mikovits, but it is worth trying to follow what she is saying (you might need her two books on the cover-ups ‘Plague’ and ‘Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science’)
SteveR, thanks for posting this, it hasn’t been on this blog previously.
Too bad the Dr comes across as a little paranoid, as she has some interesting things to say. On the possibility of vaccines causing epidemics, a couple of years ago I decided to look into why there was so much fuss about vaccines which, I had assumed, were safe and effective. But it doesn’t take long to discover that the industry actually has a horrible safety track record, regardless of how effective vaccines actually are, and that is still on-going. It really needs to be cleaned up.
Just one example, taking the following citations a) to d) together:
a) Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2000, 78 (2) Simian virus 40, poliovirus vaccines, and human cancer: “From 1955 through early 1963, millions of people were inadvertantly exposed to simian virus 40 (SV40) as a contaminant of poliovirus vaccines; the virus had been present in the monkey kidney cultures to prepare the vaccines and had escaped detection.”
b) “At Eli Lilly, a researcher named Robert Hull begun cataloguing the new monkey viruses that were confounding vaccine manufacturers and private researchers alike…
By the spring of 1955, Hull had identified eight new simian viruses from monkey kidney tissue cultures. (Eventually, by 1958, the number would increase to twenty-eight. All of them, Hull reported, had come from monkey kidney tissue cultures used for polio vaccine production.)”
https://archive.org/stream/TheVirusAndTheVaccine/The%20Virus%20And%20the%20Vaccine_djvu.txt
P42
c) “The number of patients given the contaminated vaccine is also unknown, but estimates exist of more than 98 million people exposed to the contaminated vaccine in the United States alone.10 Batches of intravenous polio vaccine (IPV – intravenous inactivated (Salk’s) polio vaccine) produced after 1963 were SV40-free, while the virus remained present in the oral vaccine (OPV − oral live attenuated (Sabin’s) polio vaccine) until the 1970s.
Click to access Radiology_43_1_HiRes_3.pdf
P11
d) NATURE | VOL 408 | 2 NOVEMBER 2000 | http://www.nature.com correspondence
Sir— Your News and Opinion articles1,2 about alleged contamination of vaccines should serve as a warning against over-optimism. These articles highlight the failure to show any evidence for contamination of Wistar Institute polio vaccine stocks by human and simian immunodeficiency viruses (HIV/SIV), and you appeal for a truce. But — although Edward Hooper is quoted as saying that “vaccine samples released did not include any from batches prepared for use in Africa” — lymphocytes have been detected in other polio vaccines3. Half of the vervet monkeys in Southern Africa are SIV positive; these animals were used for preparing early polio vaccines. Considering the many millions of vaccine doses prepared in primary vervet monkey kidney cultures over a 30-year period, it is inconceivable that some SIV did not contaminate many cultures. By the same yardstick, simian virus 40 (SV40) contaminated millions of doses of poliovirus vaccine until the animals were screened for this tumour virus. Edward Hooper and others surely do not intend to undermine the polio vaccine efforts. What is needed is a new awareness of the need for caution — remembering the example of BSE — in view of the current impetus towards xenotransplantation and the accompanying danger of contamination. Our aim should be to improve our vaccines, not to undermine public confidence in them.
G. Lecatsas
Department of Virology, Medical University of
Southern Africa, Medunsa 0204, South Africa
I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
I agree David.
I would also like to see true and simple-to-follow statistics on the number of UK covid 19 deaths versus the UK flu deaths per month/annum. These seem to be confused (deliberately?) or withheld yet are obviously very important. How can we argue a case properly when the general public is being encouraged to think the covid figures so high? Some say past flu figures have been exaggerated (to get more people using vaccines? – my husband and I had several invitations and reminders). Now it’s the turn of covid to be exaggerated? What the hell is going on? I would like to make a case with simple to relay knowledge I feel confident of. At the moment we still seem to be trying to compare one set of criteria with another completely different set. Nothing to match up properly – or am I just unaware of some?
Does anyone have a good set of figures for the comparison? Some relevant things have been posted. What do we think are the best figures we have? What should we be saying?
And how confused are comparable statistics in other countries?
Unfortunately, not everyone else gets to go on with their lives:
Active, fit 49 year old with no known illness, just barely made it. But what is the reasoning to try a statin?
Doctors had already started him on medications that many hospitals are trying: hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug President Trump has promoted; and a statin, which was eventually stopped because it affected his liver. He was also enrolled in a clinical trial of an antiviral drug being tested for Covid-19, Remdesivir, although nobody knew whether he was receiving it or a placebo.
That afternoon, increasingly concerned about his lung inflammation, doctors tried an immunosuppressive medication, tocilizumab.
Nothing was working. So doctors turned to an 11th-hour method. An eight-person team repositioned Mr. Bello onto his back, inserted large tubes into his neck and leg, and connected him to a specialized heart-lung bypass machine.
Yes but Eric, everything is about statistics – in medicine as in almost everything else. The fact that extreme cases are portrayed in the press instead of any reasonable statistical analysis is telling in itself.
For example, would you like to be treated with chemotherapy (assuming you have not had cancer) on a preventative basis – just in case you were about to develop some particular cancer? I suppose if you did that nationwide, you might stop a few cancer tragedies by zapping a cancer before it got going, but would that make sense? Locking down fit, healthy people for a long period of time seems to be based on the same mad thinking.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/26/virologist-christian-drosten-germany-coronavirus-expert-interview
Interview with Christian Drosten of Charité in English. He says he’s of half a mind to support those who want to keep the lockdown until R is near zero. However, he says that there will be pockets from which reinfection will happen.
The guy in the Guardian interview said we’d be immune to Coronaviruses in future, then said you can’t rule out another Coronavirus pandemic. What am I missing?
Seems the regulations in France were not very clear either and were understood by a few care homes and doctors to do triage right there and sedate the elderly.
https://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/2020-04/coronavirus-frankreich-triage-altenheime-todesfaelle
We live in Alsace and my wife works in a retirement home (EHPAD). The guidance is actually simple and well understood. There’s no formal triage, and the French administration has denied that it has ever come to that. But the reality is different. From your link “Man hat dafür gesorgt, dass die Menschen aus den Altersheimen nicht mehr in die Krankenhäuser kommen”. Translation of Michel Parigot: “It was arranged that people from retirement homes no longer were taken to hospital”. This is exactly what my wife experienced — and is still the case today. Whenever a resident is suspected of Covid, they are tested. It can take several days for the test results to arrive. If they are positive they go to a floor set apart for positive patients. When patients have respiratory difficulties, they call for an ambulance to get them to hospital. The request is politely refused, leaving the resident to die at the retirement home. That’s the “triage”. During March the death rate was about one per day for 2 weeks in her retirement home alone (reduced since), My wife believes that all the staff have been contaminated in spite of masks, aprons and bonnets, (she caught it and passed it on to me in early March) because a number have been off sick and others lost their sense of smell. Staff are not tested…
Interesting insights from two physicians in NYC.
https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/er-log-one-month-coronavirus.html
Hospitals were willing to pay premiums in some situations: They offered large hourly rates to out-of-state physicians who were being asked to come live in hotels and be deployed wherever they were needed each day, to work 13-hour days, 14 days in a row without a day off, in physically and emotionally strenuous environments. Premiums one anonymous administrator told me they prefer to pay because offering hazard pay to local per-diem physicians sets a bad precedent, and wages are sticky. It’s harder to reverse a temporary increase in rate or decrease the number of shifts for local new per-diems than it is to just spend more on doctors who will get on a plane and quietly leave at the end of their tenure. I rarely see the ER staffing agencies hospitals use to execute these callous strategies mentioned in news stories. They’re an invisible part of the system.
There’s nothing like a pandemic to bring out the opportunists.
Most of us have been OK with living our lives as if taking care of others is more important than taking care of ourselves. Hospitals exploit this feeling.