13th September 2020
[Winter is coming]
In the flu pandemic at the end of World War One, the average age of death was twenty-eight 1. In the UK, the average age of death from COVID19 is eighty-one for men, and eighty-four for women. Which is older than the average life expectancy in parts of the UK. These data are from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), as analysed and reported in the Daily Mail 2.
[I do not usually reference newspapers for scientific data, but this article is very clear and understandable for the lay reader].
The risk of dying if you get infected and have serious symptoms, requiring some medical actions – the case fatality rate (CFR*) – also rises exponentially as you get older. In Italy, in the early stages of the pandemic, the CFR for those under twenty-nine was zero per cent. Rising to twenty per cent in those over eighty 3.
[*this figure changes over time. It always falls as more and more people are tested. See previous blogs also about mixing up CFR with Infection Fatality Rate (IFR)]
I am not getting into an unwinnable argument as to the value of human life at different ages. I am simply making the point that COVID19 is, for reasons not well established, vastly more serious in the elderly population. This is very different from previous epidemics.
COVID19 also targets those with significant underlying medical conditions. A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US, found that ninety-four per cent of patients who died from COVID19 had other ‘health conditions and contributing causes.’ 4
In essence, we know that COVID19 is a disease that is both significant and deadly in the elderly population. Particularly the elderly population with underlying medical conditions. For those of working age – who are otherwise healthy – COVID19 is far less serious. The risk appears to be lower than for influenza. In children, and those under forty, the risk is almost non-existent.
Therefore, it is relatively straightforward to identify pretty accurately those who we need to help protect from COVID19, and those who we do not.
On this basis I am going to recommend that the best way to protect the vulnerable elderly is to build up immunity in the younger population, in order to stop the spread throughout the whole community. If eighty per cent of the population under seventy were to get infected, this would stop transmission in its tracks, and COVID19 would be gone.
However, what we are doing currently is to lockdown ever more tightly to stop the spread. Whether or not this is working is unclear. However, let us assume that it is doing so. Then, I would argue that we are doing precisely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time.
It is true that in recent weeks, positive infection tests have risen rapidly. However, deaths have not nor have hospital admissions. In the month of August (which is as far as the Office for National Statistics figures go), in the under thirty age group, there was one death 5.
Of course, if more and more people get infected, and more elderly vulnerable people get infected, there will eventually be an increase in deaths. Therefore, what we need to do right now – before winter comes – is to encourage everyone who is fit and well and under the age of seventy (slightly arbitrary figure) to take the masks off, get together and spread this virus far and wide.
At the same time, all of those who are older and/or vulnerable should self-isolate, and this should be rigorously encouraged, and supported. How long would it take to infect the rest of the population?
Using widely accepted figures. If the R number is three (average number of people an infected person will go on to infect), and the serial interval is four days (time from becoming infected to infecting others) 6, then we can do a little thought experiment.
We start with the number of people currently infected. Today, Sept 11th there were 3,539 positive tests in the UK. Assuming people are infectious for a week, then the minimum number of people who have COVID19, currently, who could spread it is 3,539 x 7 = 24,773.
This assumes we have detected every single infected person in the UK, which is not possible, so my 24,773 figure is a major underestimate of the true starting point.
If the R number is three, and the serial interval is four, we would treble the number of cases every four days. We start on day one with 24,773 infective people.
Day one = 24,773
Day five = 74,319
Day nine = 222,957
Day thirteen = 668,871
Day seventeen = 2,006,613
Day twenty = 6,019,839
Day twenty-four = 18,059,517
Day twenty-eight = 54,178,551
That’s it. Done in a month. Of course, it doesn’t quite work like that. As more and more people get infected, there are less people left to infect so the R number drops. We also know that a number of people have already been infected. How many? Who knows.
However, the general principle stands. We could protect the vulnerable elderly by creating sufficient immunity in the rest of the population, ensuring that the elderly are shielded at the same time, and it could be done rapidly.
Matt Hancock (UK health secretary, for those reading this blog in other countries), made the utterly insensitive comment urging people not to kill their granny:
‘Young people have been urged by the health secretary not to “kill your gran” by spreading coronavirus after an increase in cases led to calls for mass testing of students.’7
Has this man been on a course on how to really and truly insult and upset your electorate? If not, then he is clearly just a natural.
Leaving that to one side, Matt Hancock should be urging young people to get infected and ‘protect your granny’ – and also your grandpa. Because grandpas are people too.
Yes, I know, some people, many people… most people? Will be upset by what I have written. How can you possibly encourage people to go out and get infected? Do you want people to die?
No, I want the least possible number of people to die of this awful disease, and its terrible consequences. I also want to stop lockdown as soon as possible because I know that lockdown kills people. Currently it is killing far more than COVID19. Forgetting the economy, forgetting the social destruction and loss of jobs and livelihoods, there are terrible things happening to lives.
Here is what the UK Parliament was told, early on in the lockdown:
‘A global surge in domestic abuse has been reported during the coronavirus pandemic, as those living with domestic violence face greater risks at home during lockdowns, and support services are harder to reach and to provide.
The UK has followed the global pattern of rising domestic abuse risks during the crisis: calls and contacts to helplines have increased markedly and evidence suggests incidents are becoming more complex and serious, with higher levels of physical violence and coercive control.
Counting Dead Women has calculated that there were at least sixteen domestic abuse killings of women and children between 23 March and 12 April.’ 8
Young children are far more likely to die at the hands of their parents than they are to die of COVID19, and young women are far more likely to die at the hands of their abusive partners. Vulnerable children are far safer at school than at home. Yet, we are locking them in their houses.
So, I would turn the whole argument around. Why are we killing children with Lockdown? Get rid of the virus, now, get rid of lockdown now, and allow them to live. Allow the rest of us to have a job, and a future.
As for our elderly people, trapped in houses and Care Homes, unable to see their families. Get rid of this virus now, get rid of lockdown now, and allow them to live. To those who believe they occupy the moral high ground by demanding more lockdowns, more protection etc. I believe that you are failing to protect anyone.
The fact is that we know who to protect, and the best way to do it is to create population-wide immunity as fast as possible. In doing so, we will not overwhelm the hospitals. We will not destroy the NHS – or any other health service around the world. So long as this disease does not rampage through the elderly population again.
For those who say, we must wait for a vaccine. I would say that you could be right to do so, one may appear. However, if you are not right, if problems emerge in development or rollout, what do we do. Lockdown forever? Keep the elderly apart from the rest of society, forever?
I would also say that we cannot plan on the basis that this ‘vaccine’ saviour of humanity may appear. We can only plan on the basis of what we know, what we have got right now. What we have got is a virus that is, for the vast majority of the population is, relatively benign. The majority of people who test positive are not even aware they have been infected.
Yes, of course, if we let COVID19 fly free in those under seventy, there will be deaths. How many? That is very difficult to say. John Ioannidis, a professor and researcher that I rate very highly, attempted to calculate the Infection Fatality Rate in the under seventy population. In July he put it at 0.04%. So, I will go with his figure 9.
0.04% is four in ten thousand. Which may not sound a lot to some. However, in the UK, we have sixty-seven million people, of whom fifty-six million are under age seventy. So, four in ten thousand fatalities would result in twenty-two thousand four hundred deaths. I agree that is a lot, but this figure comes in far too high, for a number of reasons.
First, it is estimated that we would need 80% of population to be infected, to create population wide immunity. So, we can immediately reduce twenty-two thousand four hundred to eighteen thousand. Still too many? Well we would, of course, shield people with underlying diseases such as type II diabetes and cancer and heart disease.
If the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) figures are correct, ninety-four per cent of those who die of COVID19 have other serious underlying conditions. So, if we also protect those under seventy, who have serious underlying condition, the eighteen thousand figure reduces to one thousand and eighty.
Which means that it may be possible to achieve population wide immunity at a (maximum) cost of just over one thousand deaths, from COVID19, Probably not even that, as we do now know far better how to treat it than we did at the start. We could also do this by the end of the year – by the latest. You still think one thousand deaths is too many. Well, consider the alternative.
Let us look at just one condition, cancer. Due to the actions taken to reduce deaths from COVID19, there has been a serious delay in cancer diagnosis. Here from the Lancet:
‘Substantial increases in the number of avoidable cancer deaths in England are to be expected as a result of diagnostic delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Urgent policy interventions are necessary, particularly the need to manage the backlog within routine diagnostic services to mitigate the expected impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients with cancer.’10
The authors estimated the years of life lost from delayed cancer diagnosis and treatment will be in the region of 59,204 – 63,229. A year of life lost is not the same outcome as a life lost dying from COVID. However, sixty thousand years of life lost is significantly greater than one thousand COVID19 deaths, and the longer we go on, the greater this number becomes.
This, remember, is just one condition. The ONS estimated that lockdown has, so far, caused sixteen thousand excess deaths due to such things as people not attending hospital with heart attacks and strokes, and suchlike. I want to emphasize this is not my figure, it comes from SAGE 11.
I don’t think I can make the point forcefully enough that we are not playing a zero-sum game here, whereby every COVID life saved is a life saved, that would otherwise be lost. Lockdown itself, kills people, in their thousands and thousands. Their tens of thousands. More than COVID19 itself, in total? Some people think so, including me.
I say this because ONS further estimated that, in England alone, the economic recession itself will lead to around 17,000 excess deaths per year, for several years. Add that to the sixteen thousand this year, add that to the cancer lives lost…
‘This (estimated recession) produces an increase in deaths of between 1.2% and 6.8% in England as a result of the negative economic impact from COVID-19 and associated NPIs (actions that are taken to prevent the disease i.e. lockdown), with a central estimate of 3.1%. This is between 6,800 and 38,300 additional deaths per year, with a central estimate of 17,400 per year 11.’
The other point to bear in mind is that, if we shield the elderly and vulnerable, and create population immunity, we are also protecting millions of people who would have a far greater risk of dying if they became infected.
Using an infection fatality rate of one per cent in the over seventies [it is probably higher than that] we have twelve million people over seventy in the UK. If eighty per cent got infected, this could result in nine hundred and sixty thousand deaths. That would certainly overwhelm the health service.
So, I would ask people to turn their thinking around on COVID19. We have it within our power, right now, to get rid of COVID19 by the end of the year. Will this get rid of it forever – who knows – it may return in the winter. If not this winter, next winter?
If we open up society there will be a cost, there will be deaths, that is inarguable. However, I believe that we will save far more lives by letting this disease spread in the younger, healthy population. We will save both children and adults, and we can return to normal life.
Therefore, the proposal is simple. Work out who is most at risk, work out how to keep them shielded, then encourage everyone else to get out there and live their lives as before. [General Practitioners have already been asked to create lists of their patients who are most vulnerable, so most of this work has been done]. Once we have the infection rates sufficiently high to block viral spread, the entire population, including the elderly and vulnerable, can be released to live their lives as before.
The alternative is to wait, in hope, for a vaccine. One that is almost certainly not going to get here before winter arrives in the Northern Hemisphere. By which time further irreparable harm will have been done, and thousands more lives will have been lost, unnecessarily.
1; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3734171/
3: https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-COVID#the-case-fatality-rate
4: https://www.jems.com/2020/08/31/cdc-report-underlying-conditions-94-percent-COVID-19-deaths/
6: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200316143313.htm
8: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmhaff/321/321.pdf
9: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v3
10: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(20)30388-0/fulltext
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 
The voice of reason, as always. Thank you
Once again Dr Kendrick is the lone voice speaking the truth. No one in authority will listen, not the politicians or the ‘experts’ that don’t understand basic arithmetic, all frozen stiff with fear, lurching from one crisis to another.
Not quite Haj, not all of them are lurching. Too many of them know exactly where they want the sheep to run to. Reluctantly I’m coming to the conclusion that many $hadowy figures with individualised obscure agenders, businesses run by psychopaths plus bought politicians are the drivers of this plandemic disaster.. A lazy compliant / complicit mainstream media just makes it easier for them.
And, dumbing down State Education systems world-wide has produced a population bereft of perceptive and logical Thinking. Rhetoric USED to be part of the British school curriculum, now it’s limited to (some) elite, private establishments.
Oh, the politicians and experts certainly do understand it. Their agenda, however, is to prevent the penny from dropping with the (so far) indifferent and apathetic masses – and realising what a calamitous debacle that has been created.
To paraphrase Dr K: the Emperor truly is standing bollock naked (it’s just that he’s so far managed to divert the attention of onlookers with his “charming oafishness”………..
THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING TOO, PROTECT THE ELDERLY, AND VULNERABLE AND LET IT RIP!!!!
Dr Kendrick, thank you for your fabulous and sensible contribution. For the last month or so I have been working on this plan for New Zealand. In my opinion that of an increasing number of citizens, including health professionals, New Zealanders have created a prison for ourselves. We do not really have an escape plan which it is hoped will be adopted fully or in part by various groups.
I am delighted that your proposals are perfectly compatible with this plan. Would you mind having a read of this and offer your tend cents worth?
Keep up the good work! Science and common-sense will eventually prevail.
https://www.garymoller.com/post/how-to-escape-from-our-covid10-prison-the-plan
Hmmm… part of my comment above did not print.
I meant to say as well that I have developed an escape plan for New Zealand and I’m asking for your ten cents worth – and that of your learned readership.
Regards and kia kaha from New Zealand!
Calm, logical, reassuring, measured, sound. Thank you a million times. Throughout this horrible, horrible year you have been an absolute rock and I am so grateful. I just wish this ridiculous government of ours would buck up their ideas. I’m terrified, not of the virus, but of the blind and one sided response to it. I’m 78, fit as a butcher’s dog (woof) and want my life back.
Thank you.
Dr Kendrick’s “prescription”, it seems to me, is not very different from “do nothing at all out of the ordinary; and as far as possible keep vulnerable people as isolated as practical”.
Pretty well the exact opposite of what our government, NHS and “authorities” have done.
So right Janet. I’m already there and yes, my wife and I never wear masks except in shops where its obligatory. We don’t social distance or avoid crowds. Nor do we have any fear of the Wuhan flu. I have read extensively and fully understand the agenda that mandates a climate of fear. To save you the days I spent, you can check out my findings if you wish, on http://www.truthundecover.com
If you are in the UK muzzles in shops are not obligatory. There is a badly written government document on guidance foor wearing face coverings. There is a list of exemptions.
Site can not be found. Grateful if you could reply with an unexpired link please
Try
http://truthundercover.com/
Probably it’s truthundeRcover.com , didn’t check but makes more sense to me.
cheers.
The link doesn’t work. It’s http://truthundercover.com Great presentation on You Tube. No one in command of this Country will take this on board, because it will involve contrition and apologies and this Government don’t do either.
If only the government would read this and act!
I think if the government did read this, and I suggest they may have a minion, and there’s 77th brigade to boot, they would see the advice, and agree with it from a health perspective, then they would do the opposite, as they are doing. there is a forecast population in the UK for 2025 of 15,000,000. They have to get rid of a lot of people before then.
If anyone doesn’t know, Halfcock has stated that young people not social distancing is “killing their gran’ “. What an evil minded little twerp.
Oops, who forgot to tick the boxes again 🤭
Malcolm, many thanks for all your hard work on this.
Yes, the comment about “killing granny” is also hugely patronising and undermines grannies right to make her own choices about what degree of risk she might be willing to take, or not. Manipulating people into compliance by inviting them to feel guilty is not good for their mental health.
Listening to the radio yesterday I also found out that part of the government’s possible strategies for getting more compliance with their ill thought through responses is to “use media to increase sense of personal threat”. So much for the independence and integrity of the press, and, as the PM said not long ago when he was defending them, their role in holding government to account. It’s clear he really knows most of the press chase drama and often don’t do enough research. So the press can be relied on to spread whatever propaganda the government wants to dream up next.
Should that be 150 million Ahnotepad? The island might sink?
No, the figure is fifteen million. See this https://deagel.com/country/United%20Kingdom
They are to busy (like concentration camp guards) following orders (the narrative) from the UN [agenda 21, agenda 2030], WHO, WEF, the “Good Club” et al.
One problem is the long term effects of the virus. Dying is not the only problem. I didn’t read anything about it in your analysis. Is it because you believe (or have the data) there aren’t really any serious long term consequences?
I would like to see more data on this. It is well-known that ventilation can create long-term irreversible lung damage. See the paper ‘Ventilator-induced Lung Injury’ Key point ‘Mechanical ventilation is life saving, but numerous experimental and clinical studies have shown that it can induce lung injury, leading to potentially irreversible structural and functional damage, a concept known as ventilator-induced lung injury.‘ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4896812/#:~:text=Mechanical%20ventilation%20is%20life%20saving,)%20(6%2C%209).
How many of those with long-term lung damage were those put on ventilators. A management option now known to have caused more harm than good in many patients. So, it is not really happening anymore.
Disappointed that you focus on physical damage from ventilators.
There are reports on the virus causing tissue damage, including to the liver, heart, lungs, brain.
The Government has allegedly accepted the existence of “Long Covid” where people are suffering major long term physical impairment.
This could qualify as “a fate worse than death” and should surely be included in any impact assessment of the outcomes of infection.
Death may not be the worst result of Covid-19 infection.
Death may not be the worst result. Interesting concept
https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/long-haul-covid-19-post-viral-fatigue-syndrome-explained-573775
for an alternative view.
There are a lot of intermediate points between dead and absolutely fine, and any long term health issues should be considered before recommending that everyone should just go out and catch it.
For me, as for many, it is easy to imagine a fate worse than death. A living death in Victoria must come close. But you don’t need to even make the effort to imagine that, if you have seen or heard about the frail, elderly people in ‘care’ homes who are incarcerated 24/7 with no human contact. This while the UN and other global organisations identify solitary confinement – of convicted criminals – for more than 15 days as torture.
Sarcasm doesn’t cut it as an intelligent answer.
“There are reports”. Can you reference your sources and their provenance please. PS we have had a 1+ case here in the last 14 weeks.
Brilliant username. Indeed, you have made my day. Thank you!
It’s not the virus that causes the damage, but the immune over-response it causes. Suppressing this stops a large part of the non lung damage which is undoubtedly worsened by ventilation.
This is simply not seeing the forest for the trees. I’ve already said this on this blog and other places: a vast majority of doctors/scientists seem to have forgotten all they have ever learnt prior to COVID-19. Long term complications from any disease are not as rare as you’re lead to believe, for example: “… A comprehensive MEDLINE literature review of articles pertaining to extra‐pulmonary complications of influenza infection, using organ‐specific search terms, yielded 218 articles including case reports, epidemiologic investigations, and autopsy studies that were reviewed to determine the clinical involvement of other organs. The most frequently described clinical entities were viral myocarditis and viral encephalitis. Recognition of these extra‐pulmonary complications is critical to determining the true burden of influenza infection and initiating organ‐specific supportive care…” [1] Bare in mind, it’s only “far out there” cases that make case reports in the literature. Some “injury” is so common especially in young adults that nobody even bothers to report even though their urine tests positive for myoglobin, just look up “influenza induced myositis.”
If only people quit obsessing over things “we don’t know,” and started looking at things in context—COVID-19 is nowhere near as virulent nor dangerous as was initially made out, but to avoid looking like cretins, some just choose to keep doubling-down! In fact, week ending 28th Aug, the number of death certificates mentioning COVID-19 was more than 10 *TIMES* fewer than those mentioning regular run-of-the-mill ‘flu/pneumonia [2].
Quite frankly, with all the hysteria, two psychological diagnoses come to mind: “Fabricated or Induced Illness syndrome” (formerly known as “Munchausen syndrome by proxy”) and “nosophobia”!
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5596521/
2. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending28august2020
Applies to flu and other diseases. It’s not only Covid.
Viral encephalitis from measles. Viral encephalitis from herpes simplex. Guillain-Barre from gastroenteritis. Stevens-Johnson from viral infection in children. Kawasaki in children from any number of viral infections. Long term problems from pulmonary TB. Paralysis for an extended length of time from polio, for example Mary Berry on television does not have arthritis in her hands but is a residue from poliomyelitis as a child.
The thing is, we don’t know a lot about thus virus. We don’t know much about long tern consequences. Hell, we don’t even know much about which kind of immunity will you get.
There are plenty of success histories around the world about countries who managed the Pandemic well with pretty few deaths and without infecting everybody. Are you proposing this approach just for the UK or countries like the US who were pretty incompetent managing the Pandemic.
BTW, I’m the David who asked the first question and this is just my first response.
David who asked the first question, I note with interest the picture in the avatar that comes up with this email is exactly the same as that of sirio11. I wonder why that would be.
Don’t understand what you’re talking about (or implying). I’m David “sirio11” Cossio
“countries like the US who were pretty incompetent managing the Pandemic.” but still less mortality than UK per head of population. Several states did what we did and sent elderly hospital patients out into care homes to die.
David,
The long-term damage from COVID in some people appears to be real, but recovery from this damage, though often very slow, appears to be real as well.
https://www.kmbc.com/article/serious-long-term-impact-from-covid-19-can-improve-with-time-early-evidence-suggests/33936366
Even with long-term impacts from COVID for some, you have to show how lockdowns and similar strategies are better than Dr Kendrick’s recommendation. You risk condemning people who will never or only lightly get sick to long-term uselessness and bleak futures. “The greatest good for the greatest number” is far better than “stay in your room until the bug goes away.”
Oh David; everyone keeps trotting this out; all untoward events can leave folks feeling debilitated
please see here: https://twitter.com/gerdosi/status/1304877651241435137
after trauma; heart attacks; pneumonia; glandular fever; whatever; whatever; whatever; this whole thing only started 5 months ago; how could anyone evaluate “long-term consequences” for something so recent? If you go looking, you can find things; after a bad flu, no-one would do a cardiac echo; no-one would go on a random fishing trip like that; just a “wouldn’t it be great if we could find something; find anything?” but now with rona; it is all different: I imagine there is a gazillion of funding to investigate and try and invent some special consequences: and the media would lap it up; to help groom the narrative.
eg do you want to investigate cockroaches? Have a big lab? Sort of quiet? Yes? Want some funding? .. well, best say you want to investigate the effect of climate change on cockroaches: this should help your grant application; so long-term effect of flu on cardiac function: yawn …… long-term effect of rona on cardiac function: .. how exciting …. how many noughts can we write into the funding application?
There has been talk of Long Covid since around May this year, but the first UK cases of Covid illness were only reported around February this year. Of course we know that many pathogens leave long-term damage and ongoing health issues. Covid might turn out to be particularly damaging in this respect. However, it seems to me too early to declare that it will have a high rate of long-term after-effects when we are only around seven months from the first known incidences of the illness. Pneumonia alone can leave an otherwise fit person with fatigue for six months.
I couldn’t agree more Janet and thank you so much Malcolm.
May everything gets well.. Any updates regarding vaccines??
Respectfully, Please have a look at my site as well. thank you
Excellent essay. Actually the disease spreads according to the Gompertz curve, as laid out for instance by Dr. Michael Levitt. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200629/Stanfords-Nobel-Laureate-develops-a-prediction-model-for-SARS-CoV-2.aspx
Further, from the boat the Diamond Princess (or was is Princess Diamond?) we see that, even in an aged population, only a mere 25% gets infected. Which would mean there is already a 75% immunity?
Anyway, look at the ‘cases’ and ‘tests’ in the UK in the coronavirus-data-explorer at ourworldindata.org. 2,500 tests per million people and 45 ‘cases’ per million. Assume that’s all with the PCR test which has a false positive rate of at least 2%.
2% of 2,500 = 50 false positives while the ‘confirmed cases’ are somewhere around 45.
I think we are talking about noise here and that the severely over-hyped ‘epidemic’, at least in the UK, is over.
I believe you may be right. my post is mainly to try and convince people that, even is the disease is as serious as was first claimed, it is perfectly safe to end lockdown. Personally, yes, I think Covid19 has gone this year – across Europe at least. If we weren’t testing and testing, we would not even know it existed any more. It sure as hell would not show up on the overall mortality stats.
Yes, I got your point. You seem to aim at even convincing the people who still ‘believe in covid’.
It is well known that in large scale testing for a disease with a low probability the false positive rates easily lead to ‘pseudo-epidemics’. Which with the PCR can virtually go on forever.
I think covid is gone but the people in the governments all over the world have been ordered to carry out another agenda.
Harry, perfectly put. Again, just ask, “Who Profits?” – Que bono ?
The elite called, they want their serfs back and steal their property.
The UK has left the EU and it looks like a trade deal will not be struck. The pandemic this year has been a very convenient smoke screen as we sleep walk into isolation.
Here is an recent video by Ivor Cummins which is well worth watching regarding Covid-19
“Viral Issue Crucial Update Sept 8th: the Science, Logic and Data Explained”
Yes, this is an excellent summary of the development of covid until now.
I suspected CDC’s case2death rate would crater in July, and it did. I agree that the best thing to do is infect every healthy person under 60 in the US, but after having followed the issue for some time, noticing conflation [a logic failure], which is closer to a real plague in the US, and anchoring [a cognitive bias], the press across the pond seems to have completely lost it’s pudding. I don’t watch TV for news, as it’s a reductionist medium, so I don’t know what that’s like. The majority of news outlets, both established and alternative continue to use COVID19 [disease] to identify infections [SARS-CoV2 or new/novel coronavirus] while omitting the line about ‘80% of people will have few if any symptoms’ as well as deaths, which leads me to believe those people who get paid to write the news are getting their understanding from television.
I set up GoogleAlerts for “quarantine”, “isolation” & “university” three weeks ago, thinking the understanding of this event is going sideways when 20 million college and 60 million k12 students begin classes, and already this seems to have started. MichiganStateUniversity recently locked down the whole campus UNLESS students have to go out for necessities or want to go home, which defeats the purpose altogether. The frats & sororities are being quarantined around the country constantly for a viral infection that has been presented by the press as a disease (thanks to a WHO director in April), ie ’73 more COVID19 infections’, when another story from the same outlet will use “COVID19” as an adjective to count deaths.
The city of Toronto spent 13.9 million dollars to set up 140 bed self-isolation location [~100k per person?] where the reported population in nearly 3 million, which by fast math breaks down to ~0.005%. Also the space is strictly for positive viral tests, as those living with someone who tests positive can move to the SIL to avoid infection at home. I don’t know what this location looks like, but this seems absurd to me.
WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, Oscar? I’ve actually begun asking myself twice a week if “environmental factors” have begun to cause me some sort of psychological break, so I’m glad to find your articles and know I’m not the only one with questions about efficacy, lockdowns, projections, masking (with almost no specificity regarding construction, cleaning, quality, et cetera) and little concern for “health” other than physical, which is damn narrow as well.
So, after what I will term the above as “digital diarrhea”, I want to thank you for your posts. It’s good to know someone has a working brain and strong spine.
Referring to the Toronto location: the SIL is NOT strictly for positive cases, as those who live with a positive case may also move there. And I would like a 2nd opinion on my ‘fast math’ because this effort seems ridiculously over-priced and useless considering the size of Toronto.
“It’s good to know someone has a working brain and strong spine”.
As good an appreciation of Dr Kendrick and his work as I have seen,
Problem with the follow-me
I wonder if we are not already near herd immunity, however what is surely happening with the tests is that they are substantially just false positives (175k a day generating 2.5k positive results), something also suggested today with great technical proficiency on Lockdown Sceptics by James Ferguson. Still only tiny fluctuation in the rate of hospitalisations and deaths (bumping along the bottom).
Very sensible stuff. Scary too in a way, doing something proactive.
In effect what you’re suggesting is taking covid on face to face rather than running and hiding.
We simply have to get away from the present mess which is confusing and frightening in equal measure, particularly to the vulnerable who at this rate will never get back to any kind of normal.
“In effect what you’re suggesting is taking covid on face to face rather than running and hiding”.
I think it’s more a matter of ignoring the virus – apart from those who are most vulnerable to it, who should perhaps stay out of circulation as much as possible.
In other words, exactly what has traditionally happened during all previous viral epidemics, and exactly what would have happened if the governments and “experts” of the world (and Big Pharma) did not exist.
Another excellent piece, Sir.
Alas there is just one flaw with your plan to rid the country of Covid-19 in a month. It might work.
Billion dollar vaccine contracts would have to be cancelled.
All the Covid ‘health’ passports for our smartphones would be junked. (Already being rolled out in Ireland https://www.healthpassportireland.ie/ ).
And as for all those pavements that have been permanently widened to enable ‘social distancing’…
Covid-19 is the totalitarian gift that keeps on giving and the plutocrats in Davos, for whom it represents a core facilitator of ‘The Great Reset’, are not going to let anyone cure it lightly.
I think I found the other conspiracy theorist. 😉
Ah yes, I’ve been a conspiracy theorist since 9/11. My friends used to laugh at me, now they just ask me what’s going to happen next.
Finding out that NATO already stationed nukes in Turkey before the USSR started shipping the same to Cuba was my ‘glitch of the matrix’. When subsequently it came to my attention that Tariq Aziz (former Iraq foreign minister) got the green light from Madeleine Albright (then US’ UN embassador) for the invasion in Kuwait, only to have Iraq being invaded as a consequence, I got suspicious that foreign politics is a very dirty game, supported by MSM propaganda. And I got fully aware when after 9/11 Prof. Dr. Steven Jones found and documented (and got sacked for it) thermate found in the dust of the buildings. ‘Total awareness’ of the extreme level of corruption and complicity was the result when I found out that a third WTC building (# 7) got demolished on the same day and that Larry Silverstein had bought, and insured against terrorist attacks, WTC a few months before the ‘attack’.
After all that, there was no way back for me and looking through ‘Putin did MH17’, the ‘nerve gas attacks by Assad on his own population’, and ‘covid’, as being purely or partly faked propaganda psy-ops was a breeze. Of course the CIA (strategically placed employees) and Gates (grants) own the MSM…
“Alas there is just one flaw with your plan to rid the country of Covid-19 in a month. It might work.”
Absolutely love it!!!
Count me in.
I do wonder if the UK government plan is to create chaos & fear.
“…I do wonder if the UK government plan is to create chaos & fear….
Were’nt they doing that before covid, – with incompetence ?
James. They certainly were! It just gets worse.
You are absolutely correct. However as a 69 year old, I would choose not to self isolate. A single person, living on my own, it was dreadful
I completely agree with you – both as a personal choice, and in principle. Elderly people may be more vulnerable; but they have lived long lives, and have a fund of experience. The choice of whether to isolate themselves (“hide”) or to continue with life as usual is surely up to them alone.
Nobody lives for ever; and when you reach 70 or so you come to terms with a lifespan closer to 10 or 20 than 50 or 60 years ahead. How can a stranger decide whether an extra few years is more important that all the good things of life – company, friends and family, laughter, sharing, new experiences?
A critical care consultant in the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport in early April gave this interview on Channel 4, reporting that those filling his ICU were much younger patients than they were expecting – in their 50s or younger,and many with no pre-existing conditions eg a fitness professional.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejlbCmRJMW4 posted April 3rd
Presumably it wouldn’t be as bad this time, as ventilators are being used much less frequently now, but many, like Boris Johnson, would need ICU even without needing to be on a ventilator. Allowing the virus to rip through the population as fast as is suggested here could still overwhelm the health service.
Also, with so many people infected at the same time, would there be enough people well enough to man the essential services we all rely on?
The difference now is that many of us are now self-medicating to boost our immune systems and stock up on prophylactics or early stage otc treatments.
Unfortunately plenty aren’t self medicating though. Unless the government is going to make immune boosting supplements advised and available to all there could stil be a lot of damage eg ethnic minorities seem to be at higher risk. And many people on very low incomes won’t afford supplements.
Steve R, so true. DownUnder here in West Oz, back in Feb. – March pharmacies had run out of HCQ due to panic buying … by Medical people !
I also noticed zinc and Vit. C bottles were lonely on the shelves….
Good point… Yes, so far no mention of the backbone of this pandemic -‘ key workers’. Without them nothing would be running (transport, deliveries,shop staff, prison guards, police, NHS etc etc. 29 transport staff died ( that we know of) in the first couple of months from Covid. We sort of take them for granted – they are making sacrifices every day. Yes,our cavalier & ignorant first responses led to that. Many NHS staff died then too – they are not over 70 !! They are all though, exposed to ‘high viral loads’ – which increase the risk of a high dose of infection dramatically. At the beginning of it all they did not have the right PPE, so that played a massive part in those deaths. These, are all people who are being exploited and massively undervalued. So, as we ride out the winter spare a thought for those at the sharp end. Maybe there is a better way… could be risky though………
Actually I’m more concerned about the nose-dive in which governments all over the world are trying to keep their respective economies.
The World Bank’s covid-19 program is announced to have a duration until 2015, while some people report having seen export reports of covid-19 test kits over 2018 and 2019 on the Worldbank’s website.
The World Economic Forum is planning a ‘Big Reset’ which will undoubtedly result in a cashless society, total control over our expenses, covid-passports which, referring to ‘bio-security’ may or may not allow one to travel, based on our then implemented social score.
The Deutsche Bank has issued a report in which ‘a period of chaos’ is envisaged. No doubt after that ‘a New World Order’ will emerge according to UN Agenda2030 with its ‘Sustainable Development Goal’ imposed upon us in an authoritarian way.
You’ll not be allowed to own land anymore (of course Big Agri Corporations will), no car (‘Smart Cities’ will ‘allow’ you to go to work without ‘needing’ a car), forced vaccinations (the right to good healty for everybody) and so on and so forth. Look it up: UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The Big Reset, or NWO, after the chaos, will involve control and governing of the people through digital technology, that’s where the broadband 5G comes in, which will replace governments. That’s one reason for the high influx of ‘immigrants’, to kill nationalism and the nation state, and the digital technology will make it possible to erase and replace governments. We’ll be under the direct control, of course through a layer of ‘technocrats’, of the elite who finally will get their serfs back.
The China model will be adopted. You want to go somewhere? Apply online and wait for the A.I. to evaluate your social score and giving you permission, or not.
That’s ‘digital citizenry control’ through granting and revoking privileges.
In China, people nowadays are more concerned about their social score than their income.
Wait for it.
I agree. I have read the Sustainable Development goals and it makes for scarey reading. We are already seeing the beginnings of undermining of democracy, civil liberties and personal autonomy. Unfortunately, as you say, there’s far too much money to be made in agenda’s unrelated to the well being of human beings. This government is not willing to own up to mistakes – and they wonder why people now might not be so willing to comply with their wishes/legislation. I think a lot of people are beginning to question why their experiences in their own lives are not consistent with the (largely fictional but has a grain of truth) narrative about this virus that has been created.
A JP Morgan investment report about Big Farma asked the question whether it was even ‘a good business model’ to cure people, referring to the Hep C vaccine that seems to have made itself superfluous.
Oopsies that should read:
– The World Bank’s covid-19 program is announced to have a duration until 2025
– Agenda21
– good health to everybody
I totally agree with you. Italy is doing the same, going out of its way to prevent people from catching the virus, making children wear masks at school while standing and walking, and allowing them to remove them when they’re sitting, as if the virus spread only at certain heights. As if children hadn’t spent the previous months (from May when lockdown stopped until now) playing together and swimming together at the beach, and didn’t socialise when outside school.
Here we’re now demonising young people who meet at bars, they are now evil super spreaders, although the number of deaths (as of yesterday) was 6. We are terrorising people (many still drive alone in their cars wearing masks) to prevent 6 (out of more than 60 million Italians) from dying.
The known secret nobody can talk about here is that if someone dies and has a number of other underlying pathologies, none of which is the certain cause of death, then the person is counted as having died of coronavirus, even though they tested negative.
And since this crazy approach to the virus – preventing it from spreading – is the same worldwide, I can only infer that either the world has gone mad, or there’s something going on here. Economic interests, social experiments, I can’t quite put my finger on it. This wicked, diabolical worldwide plot to destroy our economies, our lives, of depriving us of happiness and hope for the future can’t be just to prevent the few deaths we are now recording.
That’s all well and good but instead of all this BS why not roll out HCQ (hydroxychloroquine) to everyone at risk and be done with this mental masturbation. It looks like you completely missed the real solution. Sure the FDA warns us of a made up risk but we all know the FDA is thoroughly corrupt. Your article could have been one paragraph long instead of trying to play epidemiologist.
One 200 mg tablet every other week. It’s already proven to prevent infection (Dr Risch Yale). Why is this not being used? As far as I can tell it’s being black balled to eventually sell a probably dangerous vaccine with probably limited effectiveness. Especially when the manufacturers liability has been removed, a vaccine could end up causing more problems than solutions. You fail to mention vaccine adverse events which are huge (I wrote an entire book on this horrible effect). I guess this is TOO easy. Why are we not examining countries that have distributed HCQ to its population at risk? You will see that their countries don’t really have a problem anymore. Write an article on these countries next for a glimpse of a real solution.
You Sir are totally right. Another good thing about HCQ is that also the long-term effects from covid in young people will be prevented.
You could always write your own blog.
Covid is nog without risk even in the younger generation. Recent german studies (https://www.tctmd.com/news/signs-cardiac-damage-even-younger-nonhospitalized-covid-19-patients ) tested 100 people (avg age 49) nearly 80% had some heart damage after Covid. It is still too early to tell how many of these will not recover completely.
Are you sure the heart damage wasn’t there beforehand? Grab 100 people who seem otherwise healthy off the street. Start scanning and testing them and you’d be amazed what you would find.
Living is not without risk. Do you stay home in case you get injured if you go out?
Thanks for another lucid and well researched blog – it seems probable that our future has already been wrecked by the blundering and incoherent response of so many governments. But I also fear the complexity of this virus, for example here is something I would appreciate your comments on: https://www.statnews.com/2020/09/04/carnage-in-lab-dish-shows-how-coronavirus-may-damage-heart/
I’d put link to this on Facebook if it wasn’t for the censorship by algorithms. For some time I’ve coming round to the same conclusion through watching how news outlets are being used to manipulate the population. Here in Spain the media keeps on changing the way the figures are presented to keep the official narrative alive. For a short time we went from “nuevos casos” (new cases) each day to “casos positivos” (positive test results) then on to “asymptomaticos”, which speaks for itself. But that was quickly changed as it gave the impression that more and more people were becoming immune, which I strongly belive they are. Now we have “contagiados”, which is the equivalent of infected, with the added implication that the infected person is spreading the disease. I’d just like to add that I’m 71 and in what many would see as a high risk group because of a heart operation I had some years ago.
I have put several of Dr. Kendrick’s Covid-19 blogs on Facebook. They were not removed. However, it offended several of my Facebook friends – who insisted the blog could not be right – and quoted the usual statistics, etc.
I’ve put links to this blog and other websites expecting them to be removed, but they haven’t up to now.
There’s an inherent flaw here: you seem to assume that everyone with an underlying health condition which puts them at greater risk has already been diagnosed and recognised as such by GPs and/or consultants. This isn’t the case and I speak from my own experience, that of family and friends, and members of patient support groups. It can get years to get a diagnosis of a medical condition. Which means all kinds of people are at risk if they go out and mingle, work, study, use public transport etc. There must be young people or children who are more vulnerable than a fit elderly person for that reason. Additionally, I doubt very much if all the conditions which would predispose an individual to have an extreme response to the virus have been identified, such as the individual’s social conditions, diet, general health apart from an underlying condition, and all the other factors which make a difference to health.
In my opinion what would help the most right now is cheap, fast, simple, reliable at-home testing – like a pregnancy test. If you could test and know the result quickly, you’d then be able to make a judgement on how to act, and any symptoms you got would be quickly identifiable as COVID rather than, say, a cold, migraine, flu or bronchitis.
Testing is irrelevant if there is no gold standard. David Crowe takes apart the PCR test and the antibody test at http://theinfectiousmyth.com. If the so called “virus” has not been purified, what are they testing for? The PCR test is just an amplification tool. It does not yield a definite YES/NO result!!
Hi LJ: “cheap, fast, simple, reliable at-home testing”
people often you can have 2 out of 4: choose which 2 of the 4 you can have
….. cheap and fast? ….. only 2, mind ……
Would you like these done twice daily? on the hour?
Should you not also test for adenovirus; rhinovirus; para-influenza; influenza; RS virus; parovirus? ……. all the other rona viruses that flit about?
Fast cheap testing would be rife with both false positives and false negatives. It would be disastrous.
At last a clear, measured and well put summary of the obvious. Thank you for being a beacon in this Pandemic darkness. The UK and regional governments have all got this completely wrong. Most governments around the world have also got this wrong, primarily due to self interest and political ineptitude. The sooner we follow Sweden’s lead the better.
There are several questions still to be answered regarding the effects of the pandemic. One glaring point relates to medication. It would appear that the main cause of mortality from Covid is Cytokine storm ie: imbalance in the bodies immune response. The majority (94%) of fatalities come from people are on Several medications which interfere with the bodies immune system. The question is “Are medications making the elderly population More susceptible to Covid / Cytokine storm”?
No one seems willing to investigate this. Why?
The governments got nothing “wrong”. This was all planned. Who knows that Event 201 just happen to predict a corona virus outbreak back on October 18, 2019?
Think it’s just coincidence? WAKE UP!
The Swedish have way way more deaths than their neighbors Finland and Norway, why should anybody would want to follow them? All their economies are doing about the same, so if you look at the 3 countries and measure the success to the Covid response, exactly why should you choose Sweden? (Outside of just confirming your own ideology)
Sirio11 way way more deaths
Would you like to be a bit ore specific? Otherwise it looks like a trolls message, and I’m sure you’re not a troll,……….are you?
AhN. Looks like a troll to me. Blog has become infected. No longer so easy to sift through to find informative and helpful stuff as was the case previously. Shame. I try to read the trusted names, but they are diminishing, whilst the followers increase.
The huge number of deaths in Swedish care homes were an outrage, arguably ‘Gerocide’ … I hope it will be investigated properly. I agree with you and wonder why anyone would want to condone Sweden’s strategy instead of Finland’s and Norway’s far more reasoned, rational and humane approach.
Because Sweden still has something resembling an economy and didn’t actually kill any more grannies and grandads than the UK. Only certain parts of Sweden had a high death rate. The UK has a terrible death rate. If we’d done a “Sweden” we’d probably be no worse off death-wise and still have an economy instead of having the worst recession in 300 years, which will end up killing far more than any virus. Have fun when you end up paying for it next year all with increased income tax, corporation tax, inheritance tax (so a good idea to kill a few more middle class people with something to leave) and and CGT
Sirio 11, you look a lot like Daivd Cossio? Do you have a twin, and were separated at birth? if so, maybe we could have a happy, family reunion.
I am David Cossio, don’t get the comment.
The comment is that you are posting under two different names. Why does anyone do that. I simply don’t understand.
The point is that your first comment was under another name, but with the same picture, under the name David Cossio. See
Don’t get what are you trying to imply with the sarcastic tone. I’m curious about what possible conspiracy theory will you guys think of, I guess there no shortage of possible hidden motives behind posting about Covid in a blog. I have been David “sirio11” Cossio (you can google me) for decades now. Seriously, don’t get the tone.
Sino – playing silly games. Enuff.
I think at this stage I have acute conspiracy theoritis – u dont help !
Sirop and David have the sam e motto vivier ahora
Look I have enough to do trying to sort out which posts I have time to read, without eliminating bots and trolls and nutters
I didn’t post using 2 accounts, I don’t have 2 accounts, I have no idea why this blog or WordPress or whichever decided to randomly use my name or my nickname. Don’t know if it’s because used different devices (computer and ipad). Anyway, it’s kind of funny some of you think somebody would want to post using 2 accounts (for some nefarious purpose I guess) using the exact same picture. Lol.
sirio11, or is it David? What we saw was what we got. Whaterver anybody wants to believe, it looked like one person was posting using two accounts.
Sirio,
It’s called paranoia.
Dr Kendrick has always encouraged discussion of differing ideas, often entailing disagreement, even argument, as long as it’s cordial. Sometimes, not often, an idea can arise from any one of us that could adjust the conceptual landscape.
At least that’s the general idea. Not so much lately. There are cliques that little tolerate the voicing of differing notions. Fear of being seen as possibly not fully informed and correct?? It’s not a comfortable atmosphere in which to persist.
Persist, though.
Sirop
The swedes also have more deaths than Singapore, but there are so many con founders that I have found comparisons very difficult to get my head round. The best I have seen is Jimmy Kudo and the effect of stripping out care home deaths. That certainly changes the picture in Belgium.
My point is, why you would want to follow Sweden if there are too many countries with much better outcomes. I see Sweden mentioned a lot, but people usually don’t define exactly what sre the parameters for success, and looks like they just pick Sweden for ideological purposes.
I pick Sweden, from time to time, because they have probably/hopefully achieved population wide immunity. Their death rate is now, effectively, zero. Currently countries like Australia who locked down more tightly are struggling to contain the virus and introducing curfews, arresting the citizens etc. New Zealand must, eventually, unlock, or their economy will, simply, be obliterated. If we don’t get a vaccine in the next twelve months – or even later than this – the only possible approach is to achieve population wide immunity.
Sweden took the approach of slowing infections (somewhat). They did manage to wipe-out their elderly in care homes, same as the UK. Had they not done this, their death rate would have been far lower. Their economy was damaged, because if the world around them collapses it impacts on Sweden. However, they did not do as much damage as the UK, or Spain etc.
If you see this pandemic as a marathon, not a sprint, then the Swedish tortoise will probably end up beating the New Zealand hare.
sirio11, they, and I, may be using Sweden for idealogical purposes, but that is exactly the reason all the tinpot dicktaters round the world are doing with the deliberately warped figures generated. California and Australia come to mind as to obvious examples.
Hm. But what is Sweden’s tally of elderly COVID fatalities and how would you go about counting? I doubt there’s a way to distinguish among died with COVID, because of COVID, and of COVID itself. The grand total of elders should not elicit pride or inspire others to follow.
The Swedish also had much less people die in the previous flu season.
A lot of the elderly people that died now would have died last season had the flu been worse then.
Also Sweden has more elderly people living in elderly homes, which were not really well protected, as they have admitted themselves later. So we can’t simply compare countries with their neighbours and conclude that they ‘did’ much worse if the death rates are higher.
Sweden did, per capita, much better than the USA and especially Peru, which had instituted a martial law like lockdown regime.
So the numbers go all over the place irrespective of measures taken, which actually indicates that their is no indication at all that those panicky measures have any effect at all.
The reason to choose Sweden is that they did falsify the hypothesis that without lock-down we would be heading towards a catastrophy with regards to deaths due to covid-19. We do know that lock-down do have a disastrous effect on the economy and on deaths not from covid-19.
This little risk analysis indicates that lock-downs are NOT a good idea.
I forgot to include the link to Sweden vs USA, Peru and as this blog doesn’t allow editing of postings I’ll post it here:
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&country=SWE~USA~PER®ion=World&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=total_deaths&pickerSort=desc
Harry,
“… that lock-downs are NOT a good idea”
Agreed absolutely (economic destruction and consequent non-virus based deaths)
Thanks
I’ve had many discussions about this very strategy and been called a granny killer yet the most obvious truth here that’s rarely spoken is this. This Government could not give a flying fig about elderly, ill people who cost the NHS a pretty penny in continued care and pension payouts so why are they stopping the economy to save their lives? They stuck Do Not Resucitate orders on them and flung them back into care homes without tests and family visits. This is not, in the UK at least, about the virus. This is way more sinister than that.
I always laugh when some politico claims to care about the people. In the US, a growing number of my darker brothers & sisters are having doubts about whether the Democrats actually give a ________ about them or are simply using them for votes by offering platitudes.
Ask them from political party the KKK emerged from. (Answer: democratic)
Lorraine, sadly I think you’re right. Politicians are happier to ‘not’ pay Age Pensions…. More for their generous Parliamentary Pensions.
Really enjoying your blogs, Malcolm. Sharing this excellent film on the origins of covid19 with you. https://freedomplatform.tv/plandemic-indoctornation-world-premiere/
On Sun, 13 Sep 2020, 10:45 Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “13th September 2020 [Winter is coming] In > the flu pandemic at the end of World War One, the average age of death was > twenty-eight 1. In the UK, the average age of death from COVID19 is > eighty-one for men, and eighty-four for women. Which is older th” >
This is madness – no one, including you Malcolm, understands yet what immunity is conferred from catching CV-19, and for how long it lasts.
Also whilst it is true that very few healthy people under the age of 70 die from this virus, many who have caught this disease are now suffering with severe chronic side-effects. One of my best friends, 50, slim and previously in excellent health, has hardly been able to work for the past 6 months since catching COVID, and is suffering with severe lung and heart problems, which may be life-changing for her.
Without an understanding of how immunity works, and the longer-term effects of CV-19, your proposal risks killing and maiming many, with possibly little benefit.
An effective vaccine is the only long-term way out of this situation; in the meantime we need to do what we’ve always done to protect ourselves against these sorts of pandemics – adopt excellent hygiene, practise effective social distancing, and set up a test, trace and isolate system that actually works.
Many are currently being killed and maimed due to Lockdown. All of those not being diagnosed and treated for cancer so far, for example. The people living in agony not having hip or knee replacements. I watched two elderly patients die, after their cancer treatments were suddenly stopped. I think I can most certainly out ‘case history’ you with tales of damage done by Lockdown.
We do not know how many people are being damaged long-term by COVID. So we have known damage vs. unknown damage. I repeat this is not a zero-sum game. Lockdown is causing known, massive, damage to health. Both long-term, and short-term.
I think you missed the point, or perhaps avoided it. Markheller13 was not arguing for a lockdown, but rather caution to prevent spread of Covid19. He was arguing that your “back of the envelope” calculations of deaths is probably wrong for the reasons he mentioned.
He also points out that we know very little about protective immunity acquired from Covid19 infections and nothing about its durability. Your suggestion of encouraging infection is reckless and ill-informed.
In your model, how do we protect the vulnerable? Aiming for 80% infection over a short time period would mean that caregivers for the vulnerable, doctors, nurses, hospital staff would all have high rates of infection. Who would care for the frequent medical needs of the vulnerable.
Doctors nurses hospital staff already have had high rates of infection. In one of the care homes I cover 60% tested positive at time or another. The authorities dealt with this by telling everyone that if you were exposed at work, you had to stay at work. Sorted.
If Covid19 infection does not provide infection, then neither will vaccination, then what do we do?
In my area, front line doctors and nurses do have high infection rates, but not in disciplines that are not directly involved in acute care or management of Covid19 patients. Imagine if 40-50% of workers were infected? Even with low levels of infection as they currently stand, there are still outbreaks in homes with deaths. So, I am sorry, not sorted.
What qualifications do you have to speak on vaccines? This is not your area of knowledge and based on some of your previous posts, you have a poor factual understanding of even the basics of vaccines (july 9th, 2019). We don’t know for natural infections or vaccines whether protective immunity will be achieved and whether it is durable. Both natural infections and vaccines carry risks. If we do get an effective vaccine, do you think we should vaccinate everyone? I guess, like me, probably not, so why do you think that widespread infection of the public is a good idea? At least for a vaccine you have a choice. With your suggestion of mass spread of the virus, the risk of infection will surge but short of isolating yourself, avoiding infection will not be a choice. Currently, the risk of infection is pretty low, and odds are that you won’t get infected in the short term.
What we do? We don’t encourage mass infections of the public with a pathogen. We don’t need to go back to lockdown, but we can use other measures to slow or mitigate spread. Sorted.
KennieG, caution is not without its own risks. Caution by keeping away from people or using other measures preferred by controlling politicians reduces peoples exposure to all the things needed to keep their immune system in trim.
KennieG
Very often generalists see a wider more encompassing picture than specialists who can be limited in scope. History is full of examples of breakthroughs made by the so-called unqualified and amateurs. To only pay attention to specialists is saddening.
A lot of unfounded suggestive statements.
What is this insane ‘what immunity is conferred’ and ‘how long it lasts’ about? It is a SARS Coronavirus. Where is the previous one? Where are the flu viruses that we became immune to?
Exposure to a flu virus infers long lasting immunity and there is absolutely no reason to assume it will be different in this case. This fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD–an old Microsoft technique) inciting nonsense has no scientific base whatsoever.
Slim does not equate to healthy. So called ‘TOFI’ people (Thin on the Outside, Fat on the Inside) can still have insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome and low vitamin D3 status, especially in the UK. So being ‘thin’ is no warranty for good health at all.
There won’t be many ‘maimed and killed’ as the (fake) epidemic is already as good as over.
Just look at the number of hospitalizations and deaths. The corona-virus flu season is over.
An effective vaccine hasn’t been found yet for the SARS-CoV-1 and I see no reason why it would be so much easier to find one for version 2.
And talking about ‘understanding’. SARS-CoV-2’s transmission is dominantly through aerosols.
Anti-social distancing nor face masks will stop it. Outside air will dilute it enough to not infect further rather healthy people. The main route of infection is being in a confined space with no proper ventilation (as in fresh air) with a symptomatic patient for a prolonged period of time.
The stupid talking points you keep repeating here without any reference to science (there isn’t any) such as ‘excellent hygiene’ (do I hear a hot potatoe there?), ‘effective social distancing’ barely have any effect, if any at all.
Test-and-trace only works if about less than 1% of the population is infected. At the time your government (pretendingly) woke up we were already far past that point.
What actually would have worked is keeping symptomatic people out of confined public spaces, for instance by temperature measurements, so they can’t spread infective aerosols in spaces where other people are.
And then there are the ionophore/zinc + macrolide combination treatments that have already proven very effective in the EARLY SYMPTOMATIC settings.
Ionophores can be: quinine, ivermectin, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, quercetin.
Macrolides: azithromycin, doxycyclin.
Zinc: cat-ionic Zn++
Your 50-year old friend with probably hidden co-morbidity would have tested negative within 5 days of treatment.
It’s much better to put your efforts in getting this combination treatment accepted then to spread this FUD around.
“A lot of unfounded suggestive statements.” That is a good title for your comments. Thank you!
The so called “facts” that are being publicly presented about this virus are not put into any sort of context that might help people figure out just how dangerous this really is – a glaring lack of relevant information. I heard someone from a pharmaceutical company on a radio show cut short the presenter talking enthusiastically about a vaccine by saying that, unfortunately, most vaccines don’t work.
No vaccines ever “work”. They only poison and kill. Just read the ingredients!! If The Powers That Be roll out a mandatory, or even voluntary vaccine, the deaths will come.
https://www.drrobertyoung.com/post/to-test-or-not-to-test-to-vaccinate-or-not-to-vaccinate
https://www.drrobertyoung.com/post/everything-you-need-to-know-about-viruses-vaccines-and-the-science-of-virology
https://www.drrobertyoung.com/post/to-vax-or-not-to-vax-that-is-the-question
Gillpurple, do you have more details about the prog? That’s a valuable reference
I wish I had made a note at the time – it was on LBC a few weeks ago. A rare bit of truth telling – not all of the the truth mind – that would totally tank the share price, can’t have that can we. I will see if I can find out.
Given the history of the vaccine industry, which bit of it is telling the truth you appear to hold dear and trust a vaccine of a type never before used to do anything to protect against getting the disease? You should look at Vernon Coleman on the pharmaceutical industry, and the accusations he makes. The industry can’t take him to court , as they have no defence.
If you want a vaccine, please do, for those of us who don’t, have ours as well.
Influenza can also leave one weakened for weeks/months and with regards to a safe vaccine – does one exist ? You may wish to check out Moderna’s planned vaccine that will alter your DNA. Transhumanism ?
I still live with various health issues having suffered Ileo-caecal TB after the BCG vaccine – resulting in several surgeries during a 22 week stay in hospital when only 27. Crohns followed. Now 74 – non mask wearing – non social distancing – recently retired ! I have had a lifetime of so called ‘experts’ making suggestions on my behalf regarding my health.
What is the “flu” anyway? Does one catch it? Get infected? NOPE!!
“… it is important to understand that the flu is nothing more then the body’s forced expulsion of acidic waste from the interstitial fluids of the Interstitum via the lymphatic system. The flu is the body’s way of saving your life from ingesting highly acidic or poisonous foods and liquids which were never meant for human consumption.”
From Dr. Robert Young’s article:
https://www.drrobertyoung.com/post/have-you-had-your-covid-19-meal-today
Well I hope Dr Robert Young has written more reasoned papers as that one was the biggest load of tosh I have seen since I was unfortunate enough to hear Matt Handycock. If you believe that paper most people should have flu symptoms most of the time. Come to think of it, it looks like the output of a vegan zealot.
He’s helped many many people heal, so where’s the problem? It’s a FACT that viruses do not cause disease. Have Koch’s Postulates ever been verified for COVID? No. Has it been isolated? NO. Same with Zika, Ebola, SARS, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
https://bolenreport.com/habeas-corpus-show-us-the-bodies/
Dr. Young has been arrested 3 times by the Feds. Guess why they always drop their fraud charge? Cuz he’s the REAL DEAL.
Get a clue, read David Crowe’s paper and get back to me?
Click to access CoronavirusPanic.pdf
All very believable. But the casual bystander will want to know why this bodily process, known as the flu comes in waves and why something, affects multiples of care home patients around the same time – following loose contact with incoming, affected persons.
OK, the suggestion that the Moderna’s vaccine will alter DNA is absolute nonsense. Their vaccine is based on RNA not DNA. Now maybe you are concerned about a foreign RNA molecule entering your cells. Guess what, this happens everytime that you are infected with a virus. DNA viruses make RNA in your cells…yes transhumanism!!!! RNA viruses carry RNA into your cells and make more RNA….More transhumanism!!! Get the facts before you spout out nonsense.
Safety is still required for this and all vaccines, but conspiracy theories have no place in the debate.
Yes, viruses are probably “OS updates/patches”, which may or may not cause problems for some people. Although some were very upset when I suggested that those who could not eventually adapt to the virus (or patch) would die. So why not just “catch” the virus? A lot cheaper and more predictable than a vaccine. After all, the vaccine might not contain all the ingredients of the actual virus so you might get a faulty update. Or it might contain others that we don’t need and can’t cope with right now. Seems a pointless expense.
Mark,
Would I be right in guessing that your income has not stopped due to lockdown?
oh mark; there are so many didactic opinions you state; that are fact-free; God bless you;
“An effective vaccine is the only long-term way out of this situation”; what a laughable piece of nonsense; all said in a kindly way; viruses enter through the nasal and respiratory and gut mucosa; agreed? vaccines totally bypass that and enter via a steel needle into the dermis; how could anyone imagine that is a great way?
Well, let me think. Smallpox and measles vaccines were highly effective when delivered intradermally. Contrary to many conspiracy theories, these respiratory viruses were not going away prior to vaccination but were eradicated or nearly eradicated through vaccination. If you are not convinced, read about the history of the eradication of smallpox. The unique vaccination strategy employed to eradicate this virus from developing nations demonstrated over and over again the efficacy of this vaccine.
The Salk vaccine for polio has also eradicated polio the disease. While the Salk vaccine fails to protect from mucosal infection and shedding of polio in the gut, it is protective against disease.
So you stated: “vaccines totally bypass that and enter via a steel needle into the dermis; how could anyone imagine that is a great way?” No need to imagine, if this approach didn’t work, we would still be dealing with smallpox outbreaks.
Incidentally, while I don’t agree fully with your post, I would agree that mucosal immunity might be a good thing to elicit in a respiratory virus vaccine. You will be pleased to know that some of the Covid19 vaccine candidates may exploit nasal inhalation as a vaccine route.
Polio was originally given orally, on a sugar cube, which sort of made sense as that is how the virus enters the body. It is now given intramuscular. If you’ve ever had Revaxis as a tetanus booster then you’ve also had a polio booster.
Parents were always warned to be careful when changing their child’s nappies after they’d had the polio inoculation as it could be present in the faeces.
Strange then, that most of the children involved in recent measles outbreaks had been vaccinated. Since when were smallpox and measles respiratory viruses? AFAIK only smallpox has been allegedly eradicated – nothing else that we vaccinate for has gone away and, allegedly, mot strains of measles and polio we see now are the vaccine strains (Ok, we can pretend that polio isn’t polio and calling it infantile flaccid paralysis in many cases, but it’s polio and linked to the vaccine), not the “wild” ones, so perhaps we are actually making things worse. It is possible that the vaccines used when I was a child (eg Salk) were more effective that modern ones, of course.
I think you have your facts wrong. In the US, in a 2016 study, 56% of measle cases were in unvaccinated children, despite the fact that they represent less than 10% of the population. Measles was nearly eradicated by vaccination. Just look at the incidence curves as they correlate to the introduction of vaccination. It is true there are vaccine failures, these are well studied and relatively rare.
Smallpox and measles infect through inhalation and are respiratory viruses. They do spread systemically like many viruses, but they are still respiratory.
Eradication of viruses is a very difficult undertaking. The WHO was only successful against smallpox for many reasons. First, all cases are symptomatic, there were no asymptomatic carriers, there are no animal reservoirs for the virus and there was a cheap, stable effective vaccine. Contrary to what I have seen posted, eradication was the result of over 150 years of vaccination. The true end of smallpox was not through 100% vaccination, but rather perimeter vaccination around epicentres of outbreaks. This was only successful for the reasons mentioned above. Similar to measles, despite mandatory smallpox vaccines starting in 1853, vaccine hesitancy, often due to religious objections, led to frequent outbreaks of smallpox up until the early 20th century. To be honest, when the WHO announced a plan to eradicate polio, a water borne virus, I was pretty skeptical. Eradication of measles might be achievable, but I think this will also be quite a challenge. Remember, widespread vaccination largely eliminated endemic virus from the Western nations only after 100 years and the concerted effort by the WHO to eradicate smallpox globally took 18 years.
Are far as vaccine strains causing disease, this has been documented for measles, but it is incredibly rare (less than one case/year) with no transmission and very often related to a compromised immune status (HIV). So the measles that we see today is rarely the vaccine strain but is the wild-type strain which persists, largely due to vaccine hesitancy.
Polio is another story and the live polio vaccine, although generally better at providing protective immunity and immunity from infection and shedding of virus, can undergo reversion to a pathogenic strain. This is a huge problem as we speak. The live vaccine worked well, with some risk, in Western Nations where both high vaccination rates and hygiene (this is an enteric virus) limited the consequences of a vaccine strain reverted to a pathogenic strain. I don’t know, but was the use of this vaccine in developing nations a perfect storm? Reversion of the vaccine to a pathogenic strain is rare, but the consequences of a pathogenic revertant in developing nations where vaccination rates are still low, and water hygiene is often poor, are severe. The goal of eradicating polio is a noble cause, but the risks of the current live vaccine have shown the current strategy to be unacceptable. There are strategies for drastically reducing the chance of reversions of virus strains and I don’t know if these approaches have been applied to the polio vaccine strains, if not, in my opinion, it should have been done before initiating a global eradication program.
I agree with something markheller13 wrote!
“…we need to do what we’ve always done to protect ourselves against these sorts of pandemics – adopt excellent hygiene, practise effective social distancing…”
– Implicit in this is that this is just one of those ‘these sorts of pandemics’.
– We should wash our hands before and after going to the shops (or wherever)
– We should not go to work (or the pub or shops, races, cinema, concert etc) if we’re feeling crook.
Done and dusted.
markheller13 said, “An effective vaccine is the only long-term way out of this situation; in the meantime we need to … set up a test, trace and isolate system that actually works.”
Elon Musk has a better chance of flapping his arms and flying to Mars than “we” have of setting up “a test, trace and isolate system that actually works.”
You certainly have great faith in government’s ability to manage big, complex systems. Or anyone’s ability for that matter.
And, by the way, my understanding is that “an effective vaccine” fails to save us from the annual flu season, and no one really knows (at least in the USA) how many people suffer and die from it.
100% agree with everything you say,
Thank you Dr M Kendrick!
Was saying from the beginning, everything what is happening this year is absolute madness (got into trouble by voicing my options on couple of occasions)..
Why not to spend couple of billions on improving care homes to provide 5* care, give the best possible support to over 70th??? Let the rest of us work, pay tax, study, save our businesses and livelihoods!
We love our elderly relatives and neighbours, we would be glad to see the government spending money on improving their care conditions! Let us (under 70-th) to acquire immunity to this terrible disease and protect our elderly!
So happy to see a few people thinking clear and not afraid to say it out loud.
If only there was someone in charge of government policy with as much common sense and you Dr Kendrick. Matt Hancock has been promoted above his ability and is a man whose mouth engages before his brain. What you suggest is logical, evidenced, and makes sense, so you can be 100% sure that it is not a route that will be taken by the current health secretary or the equally inadequate UK government. This virus, like others will never be suppressed and I predict the vaccine if and when it comes will be not provide a problem free solution. Humankind has evolved through millennia, to fight infection and build immunity, and that’s what should be happening now, whilst simultaneously protecting those have been identified as vulnerable. It can be done.
“Matt Hancock has been promoted above his ability and is a man whose mouth engages before his brain”.
A hypothesis that appeals to me (although I cannot prove it) is that each of divides up his or her brain power in different ways. Once I met a salesman who worked for my company, and as we passed without stopping he said, “Hello Frango!” and then asked for my wife and kids by name. I managed a faint “Hi!”, but it was 20 minutes before I could even recall his name.
I consoled myself by reflecting that, in front of customers, he would have to ask me to explain the complexities of our product range – computers, software, etc. I had all that stuff right at the surface of my mind, where I could reach it immediately, whereas he would have had to look it up.
We were using our brain power for different things.
Dr Kendrick obviously applies a good deal of his brain to thinking about disease and its prevention. People like Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson probably devote at least 90% of what thinking ability they have to the basic essentials of their profession: cheating, lying, stealing, backstabbing, social climbing, currying favour, conniving, spreading rumours, making the worse appear the better case, etc.
If they didn’t they wouldn’t have the jobs they do have.
I’ve had a running discussion with an anesthesiologist on intelligence. In psychology, there is a theory that intelligence crystallizes over time and moving away from fluidity, but I’m pushing 50 and my brain is more flexible than ever. The idea of ‘never stop learning’ has value, but doesn’t answer the question as well as I’d like.
It seems to me that knowledge creates a framework to recognize an issue and devise a solution-this seems to be what formal education does. But the best solution is increasingly found outside the framework, which implies that knowledge is both and asset and a liability. That idea in the context of however one wants to define our somewhat collective understanding of a subjective experience [kung flu, beer virus, SARS-CoV2->COVID19, TheCOVID19ExistentialCrisis, whatever], seems like there are a lot of physicians that have a specific (emotional) reaction rather than a (multi-factor) response, ie they only see the issue through one lens. Considering the “MD pipeline” in the US that I heard about [I’m not a doc] and what they have to internalize in what amount of time after having demonstrated the ability to recite information, it might explain how we got to this space. Why we stay with the same perception would be another altogether, of which ego and social credibility are almost certainly factors.
Hancock was way beyond competence when he was promoted from ink monitor.
Hancock’s utterance at Easter weekend (…..if you leave home, people will die…..) was hardly the work of a clairvoyant. On average, almost 2,000 people die in UK each day. He could therefore have said “if you DON’T leave home people will die” and been right on the money. Hancock is our very own Dan Quail (for those of you who remember him)……
https://upvir.al/ref/aG46945852?track=messenger
This seems like a sensible plan. It’ll be like the Blitz when they shipped the children out of London. You could pack the elderly off to someplace isolated that is warm and sunny — Scilly Isles? Hired cruise ships?
Meanwhile the rest of the population could mingle. I can see it now. “Covid party at Joe’s Pub. No cover charge if coughing or running a temperature.”
But to an administrator, this means leaving the population to their own devices. The horror! What will they do without wise guidance and firm regulation? It will be a hard sell.
Your trust in the general public may be rather over optimistic – have you seen the pictures of the beaches and countryside this summer?
And what is wrong with what people did on beaches or in the countryside? Or are you under the impression that you can “control the virus”? What people did had no effect, nor does separation of 6’6”, nor does wearing masks, nor does excessive hand washing.
Never mind, Boris Buffoon told people to get out and go to the beach, now the same Buffoon is talking a 10pm curfew for the whole of England. It’s about time people stopped acquiescing, and demand their freedoms back, or it will be too late, and they will be gone forever.
What is wrong with what people did on beaches and in the countryside? I was referring to the sheer volume of litter, human excrement, scorched earth from fires and wanton destruction of beauty spots. All of which had to be cleaned up and dealt with by ‘The Grown-ups’. Not to mention the vast amounts fly tipping. Too many people just do whatever they want and assume others will sort out their mess – that’s why I question the judgement of the general public, who seem unable to clean up and leave anywhere as they found it, or to imagine how it would be if nobody did clean up, and that’s how it was when they arrived themselves. Oh – the outrage! We seem to be living in an age of entitlement, high expectations and lack of responsibility for our own actions and I fear that common decency and respect for others is on the decline.
alexadobree, a very fair point. With my blinkered view I was thinking only of the ignoring of Hancock’s half baked rules, not the unsanitary attitude of a significant portion of the population.
Beaches, hmm. Quite a few people doing the sensible thing and raising their vit D levels while getting some fresh air and reducing stress. Why do you have a problem with that?
Going outside dilutes the virus to far below the viral load needed to infect someone.
Of course, Vitamin D and fresh air are essential – but I was appalled by the trashing of the beaches and the countryside and the inconsiderate, selfish, thoughtless, disrespectful behaviour shown by so many people.
Indeed, but that’s usual in al public spaces (sadly) and has nothing to do with CV19 – except that most council tips are shut or won’t take certain types of waste, public loos are shut so you have to go behind a bush and so on. Simple solution would be to open loos and collect rubbish, but council workers are too scared to go to work (and being paid anyway, so no incentive)
Alexa,
According to what I have read, your best defense against getting very sick is to be outside in the summer and get lots of vitamin D.
of course – please see my additional comments above, I see that I could have been clearer in my original post
Perhaps the elderly don’t want to be packed off.
I am elderly and would love to be packed off to sunnier climes like Madeira who have low rates
I am dismayed that the suffering of the many people who have had the illness for many weeks or months is not factored into your analysis.
I have seen figures that suggest that from 10 to 30% of folks who ‘recover’ from Covid have debilitating and often frightening symptoms.
How can you advocate for mass infection knowing the terrible morbidity of this illness?
Two small trials have recently been published that demonstrate the effectiveness of vitamin D in preventing ICU Admissions And the use of iodine gargle to completely illuminate the virus if taken early after infection. Seems the best thing is to do large trials of these two and perhaps other Natural Remedies immediately and perhaps we will find that we can protect most everybody and get back to living again for all ages.
I do believe in vitamin D, and I am now taking eight thousand units of vitamin D a day – as summer turns to autumn. However, I do not know how many people suffer debilitating and frightening symptoms and neither do you, or anyone else. Figures can suggest anything. I do know that having your chemotherapy suddenly stopped can be both debilitating and frightening, and I watched two patients die because of this. I have dealt with people in terrible pain from arthritis in knees and hips, who cannot have replacements. I have seen three people die who were refused admission to hospital – because of Covid19. I know that children and battered wives are trapped at home with their abusers. I have seen the damage here with my own eyes.
If all you see if Covid19, and all you are worried about are long-term effects of Covid19, you are missing approximately 90% of what is actually happening, and the damage that is being caused, has been caused, by turning the entire focus of the NHS (and other healthcare systems around the world) to one disease.
Do you not care about the debilitating and frightening problems associated with lockdown?
Do you need to do a vit d serum test before upping the amount of vit d supplement ?
Is there a safe and unsafe level to take depending on age etc?
Vit D (in the UK) is freely available without prescription, so no, you do not HAVE to have a serum test. I am 81 and currently supplement with 25micrograms daily. I asked for – and got – a test (on the NHS!) last week and my level was 80nmol/litre which I understand is “reasonably good”. There does not appear to be any consensus for a recommended maximum level. Good luck!
There is this excellent presentation on vitamin D by Bruce W Hollis.
Apparently according to a YouTube posted on one of Dr.K’s earlier blogs 60,000iu is considered as a treatment for first symptom onset, the daily dose after that was about 20,000iu I think. I am currently taking 2 x 5000iu a day.
A lot of information on vitamin D is found at this site : https://www.grassrootshealth.net/ They do promote a commercial product.
‘free floating’ vit D (not the 25 and 1,25 (OH)D) is picked up by the prostate and reduces inflammation and hyperplasia. That’s why it’s good to take 5,000 IU twice a day.
Cheers
Please, Could you give us a glimpse of the mechanistic justification of Vitamin D being an immune system enhancer?
Also, Which of these three have relation to the immune system: cholecalciferol, calcidiol, calcitriol?
The supplements I take are cholecalciferol. An elderly relative of mine had an intramuscular injection of calcidiol a few years ago, which is prescription only in my country. Wouldn’t it be less invasive and cheaper to take the oral supplement?
D3 cholecalciferol is converted in the liver to 25OHD (AKA calcifediol = calcidiol) which goes into circulation and has a half life of weeks or months (less at higher levels, as part of the self-regulatory system). For bone and calcium metabolism, some of this is converted in the kidney, as part of a regulated system with parathyroid hormone, into circulating 1,25OHD (calcitriol) which is a hormone (circulating long-distance signaling).
The immune system generally is not concerned with circulating 1,25OHD. It uses 25OHD as an input to autocrine (within the cells, numerous types of immune cells and many other cell types too) signaling system. This is not acting as a hormone. Levels of 40ng/ml (100nmol/L) or more are required to make this autocrine signalling work properly. Most people have less than this, sometimes only a quarter or less. A comments thread is not the place to explain this with references! Please see my explanation at https://aminotheory.com/cv19/#vitd-autocrine and more generally the research articles cited in that whole long page, or at least the first 2/3 of it, and the other pages there.
Thank you!
Good luck trying to get pharma to pay for a study concerning anything positive with an unpatentable drug or vitamin.
This proposal ignores the harm caused by the hypercoagulative blood – microembolisms in the lungs, brain, heart, kidneys, liver etc. and sometimes larger clots leading to stoke and heart attack. https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=microembolism+COVID-19
Also, Kawasaki disease by that or other names is triggered by COVID-19. Most doctors don’t know that children suffering from Kawasaki disease have very low vitamin D and that symptom severity is worse for those with the lowest 25OHD levels, as measured in vitamin D blood tests and as needed for immune cell autocrine signaling. https://rebelem.com/multisystem-inflammatory-syndrome-in-children-mis-c-vs-kawasaki-disease/#comment-289832 .
The proposal ignores all the evidence that COVID-19 severe symptoms happen only to people with weakened and dysregulated immune systems – and that low vitamin D is the most important, easily correctable, cause of this. It would be take a lot of text to list all the research articles here, so please see my pages https://aminotheory.com/cv19/ and Karl Pfleger’s article Low Vitamin D Worsens COVID-19 http://agingbiotech.info/vitamindcovid19/ .
No, it doesn’t. Please read Malcolms previous blogs.
Just take the combination treatment of ionophore, cat-ionic zinc and macrolide and be done with it. The ionophore transports the Zinc++ into the infected cell where it (the zinc) inhibits the viral RNA’s replication.
Robin,
There is nothing in Dr. Kendrick’s posts that conflicts with what you have written about the importance of vitamin D and a healthy immune system. Kawasaki syndrome has several causes and was lower than usual this year. Hypercoagulation ought not to occur if people are properly treated early on. Nor probably other severe side effects requiring long convalescence.
gillpurple and anna m. I was referring to the proposal on this page. There is a huge amount of damage being done to people, in some cases without them going to hospital, by the hypercoagulative state and/or high levels of bradykinin – including many people younger far younger than 70. The proposal on this page doesn’t mention this harm, which would ensue if the proposal was followed.
Everyone, including children, should supplement vitamin D3 to bring their 25OHD levels to the 40 to 60ng/ml range recommended by https://www.grassrootshealth.net/project/our-scientists/ (2008), https://www.europeanreview.org/article/20876 (2020) and https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12072097 (2020) The average vitamin D level of traditionally living East African Maasai herders and Hadzabe hunter gatherers is 46ng/ml (115nmol/L): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22264449 .
If this was achieved, far fewer people would have weakened and dysregulated immune systems than they do today. Vitamin C, omega 3 fatty acids, zinc, vitamin A, B vitamins and probably boron are all important to the immune system but vitamin D is the greatest general deficiency and is the one most easily repleted, since such small, inexpensive, quantities are required: For average weight people, 0.125mg (5000IU) a day is, on average, sufficient. See the Ekwaru et al. graph of 25OHD levels by D3 intake and body weight at my page https://aminotheory.com/cv19/d3/ or in the original article: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111265 . This is one gram every 22 years, and the ex-factory cost is USD$2.50 a gram. It only needs to be taken once every week or two. Obese people need at least twice this.
People only get severe COVID-19 symptoms if their immune systems are weak and/or dysregulated. The same is true of Kawasaki disease (and other similar pediatric hyper-inflammatory immune responses, by various names, now being triggered by COVID-19), sepsis, ARDS and life-threatening influenza.
So very few people would become seriously ill with COVID-19. Far fewer people would develop noticeable symptoms. Although the risk of being infected by SARS-CoV-2 is only marginally affected by 25OHD levels, these high levels in the whole population would vastly reduce viral shedding for those who are infected, and I think the R0 value would fall below 0, even with our normal lifestyles. So there would be no need for social distancing, masks or lockdown. Hardly anyone would be harmed or killed. It wouldn’t matter how the SARs-CoV-2 virus mutated – nor the influenza viruses. There would be far less sepsis and ARDS. This would be true all year round.
This program of vitamin D supplementation would be far easier than all the other alternatives and would protect against other diseases well beyond COVID-19. This is a brief account. There’s no point in trying to explain it all in a comments thread like this, so please see all the research articles I link to and discuss at https://aminotheory.com/cv19/ . This is not a commercial site. I should have registered it as aminotheory.info .
Robin Whittle,
Thank you very much for your explanation. All such good points and would require even more of the utterly lacking common sense and good will that our leaders lack. But it is sort of aside to the thrust of Dr. Kendrick’s post, which is why the lockdown caused more problems than they pretend to solve and why even without your ideal healthy populace, it doesn’t add up. I took it you were arguing against that, but instead you were augmenting the general attitude here.
Thanks anna m. I am arguing for everyone’s bodies to get their proper operating requirements. The most important of these regarding the immune system, COVID-19, sepsis, ARDS and influenza is that vitamin D supplements be used to ensure everyone’s 25OHD (calcifediol) levels are at least 40ng/ml (100nml/L) all year round, irrespective of the darkness of their skin or how much skin they expose to UV-B light.
This no more radical then electronic technicians arguing for fully charged batteries, or motor mechanics arguing for full tanks of uncontaminated fuel, working fuel pumps and fuel filters which are not blocked. However, to many doctors, this is a radical and unwelcome suggestion. Many MDs know and/or care too little about nutrition and are overly enamoured with drugs, vaccines, surgery etc. The autocrine function of vitamin D in the immune system has only been elucidated in the last 10 years or so – and I suspect most doctors do not understand this at all: https://aminotheory.com/cv19/#vitd-autocrine .
I am arguing against the conventional “wisdom” of lockdowns etc. until the boffins perfect their vaccine and ride over the hill like the cavalry, to save the day.
I am arguing against the many people who avoidantly portray COVID-19 as not being serious. It certainly is, but only for those with weakened and dysregulated immune systems – and the main easily correctable reason for this is inadequate vitamin D.
I am also arguing against the proposal on this page, summarised by Dr Kendrick in a recent comment as “If we don’t get a vaccine in the next twelve months – or even later than this – the only possible approach is to achieve population wide immunity.” by, what other commenters have referred to enthusiastically as “Let it rip!”.
There are now several of my comments on this page, but the one above is a good summary. I suspect that in the UK, France and other northern countries above 35 degrees or whatever from the equator, over the next few months, real, hospitalised, cases (not just whatever is picked up but the current mix of PCR, antibody and antigen tests) will rise inexorably despite increased lockdowns. The UK government fully expects this with winter, but they don’t say why. It it the cold? The wet? Different behaviours because of these? Or is it the much lower average vitamin D levels? See my page for UK 25OHD graphs by by white/BAME, M/F and by the month of the year: https://aminotheory.com/cv19/#2020-UK-vit-D-BAME .
This will be bad for all those harmed and killed, but IF enough people, including doctors, learn from this that the problem is low vitamin D, and that this can easily be fixed (much more easily than vaccines, deadly and disastrous lockdowns, or accepting this harm and death) THEN the good news will be that soon everyone will know what a few know now (I have known since March): that almost none of the current harm and death from SARS-CoV-2, for all ages, needs to happen. Children are harmed and killed too – search for Alexander Parsons COVID-19 and for “multisystem inflammatory syndrome”.
We need new vitamin D factories, since the current ones are mainly in India and China and their output is insufficient for their populations. The biggest barrier is doctors not understanding that the measured, blood circulating, 25OHD califediol is not a hormone. It is a pro-hormone for the circulating hormone 1,25OHD calcitriol for calcium and bone metabolism, but it is a feedstock for the autocrine signaling (internal to cells, not endocrine/hormonal) systems in many types of immune cell. We need at least 40ng/ml for this to work. Most people without supplements have about half this or less on average, and even less in winter and spring.
So its no wonder that influenza, many colds and COVID-19 are more harmful and infectious at these low vitamin D times. The greater rate of spread is probably mainly due to increased viral shedding and only marginally due to reduced risk of infection for any given viral insult
The situation in some US states over summer has not been a lull – there are many more people there who have very low 25ODH levels all year round due to brown and black skin and/or who are obese and/or who drink a lot of high fructose corn syrup which reduces 25OHD levels due to upregulating an CYO24A1 enzyme which breaks it down into 24,25OHD: https://vitamindwiki.com/Fructose+reduces+blood+levels+of+active+vitamin+D .
Thanks to Dr Kendrick for allowing genuinely free-wheeling discussion here – including criticisms of his proposal and discussion of vitamin D which on many other sites will get comments removed, or never approved.
Robin Whittle
Agree with much that you say. My problem comes with the protective function of Vitamin D. There are countries where vitamin D levels should be high, e.g Israel where the situation seems to be worsening.
As for latitudes for getting vitamin D naturally, I have an App D minder which tells me by géo localisation the height of the sun and whether is high enough to make Vit D
Mr Chris, the situation in israel seems to be worsening. By what measures? Is it using the unreliable PCR test? If so the figures are just another political ruse.
This is my 6th comment in this thread. They are not necessarily in order since I am replying to people – here Mr Chris, whose comment is below, and which for some reason has no Reply option. He asked about Israel, where COVID-19 is prevalent, and which should have higher vitamin D levels than, for instance, the UK. Indeed it does, but almost everyone in Israel has less than 40ng/ml 25OHD.
At the end of https://aminotheory.com/cv19/#vitd-autocrine you can see bar graphs for the distribution of average (year-round) 25OHD levels in Israel. I just updated the text there for the benefit of this discussion. Perhaps 2% of the population have above 40ng/ml. 59% of Arab women have average levels below 12ng/ml, and the average would be lower coming out of winter. The situation in the UK is even worse: https://aminotheory.com/cv19/#2020-UK-vit-D-BAME .
It is a waste of time trying to get enough vitamin D from sunlight all year round unless you live within about 20 degrees of the equator and you expose yourself to really quite a lot of sun, all year round, and are prepared to handle the skin damage, DNA damage and cancer risk this entails. Its harder still for brown or black skinned people. As I wrote earlier The average vitamin D level of traditionally living East African Maasai herders and Hadzabe hunter gatherers is 46ng/ml (115nmol/L): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22264449 . This is in the recommended range of 40 to 60ng/ml and is the best indication we have of the 25OHD levels of our ancestors, which our immune systems evolved to work with.
Vitamin D levels are low (below 40ng/ml) in many African countries due to people not being outside all the time. There seem to be some other protective factors at work in many African countries, lowering the incidence and severity of COVID-19. This may include more boron (my guess) in the diet, BCG vaccination, exposure to other diseases, use of hydroxychloroquine for malaria and the prevalence of helminths (intestinal worms) which downmodulate many immune responses and which our immune system evolved to counteract by making those responses stronger than is healthy (hyper-inflammatory, at least with low vitamin D levels), if we don’t have helminths: https://aminotheory.com/cv19/#helminthsgone .
Going back to the Israeli 25OHD distribution graphs, we know (see other articles linked to from my page) that COVID-19 severity is strongly proportional to vitamin D deficiency, which is more common in the aged, for various reasons including lack of sunlight, poorer generation of D3 in response to UV-B and usually, inadequate supplementation.
Obesity drives severe COVID-19 symptoms for various reasons, including ectopic adipocytes in the alveolar tissue of the lungs, expressing ACE2 and so being able to be infected by SARS-CoV-2. All the excess adipocytes emit pro-inflammatory cytokines – or at least they do in typical obese people, who, in general, have very low vitamin D unless they are taking 2 or 3 times the 0.125mg (5000IU) D3 a day required by average weight people. https://aminotheory.com/cv19/obesity/ . I know of no COVID-19 observations of obese people who supplement substantially and so raise their 25OHD levels well into the 40ng/ml or higher zone. This is what they all should be doing, as a matter of urgency. I think this would significantly reduce their otherwise very high risk of harm and death.
If I was running the government (In the UK, USA, Australia – all much the same) I would round up all the D3 in the country and get it to people in aged care homes ASAP, and more generally to all those over 60, all those who are obese, and all those with brown or black skin. Pregnant and breast-feeding women too. Anyone with COVID-19 symptoms turning up to a doctor or a hospital would get oral 25OHD (immediately effective, rather than waiting for D3 to be converted in the liver – see the Cordoba trial https://aminotheory.com/cv19/#2020-Castillo) and vitamin C and probably various other things along the lines of the MATH+ protocol https://aminotheory.com/cv19/icu/#Marik-protocol for those who need it.
D3 factories would be planned and built with 24 hour a day supreme effort reminiscent of wartime. Multiple sources of independently tested D3 capsules (and drops for babies) would be made available at low or zero cost and everyone would be encouraged to take them. It only needs to be taken every week or two, so a common capsule size for average weight adults would be a weekly 0.875mg (35,000IU) capsule. Obese and elderly people need medical care anyway, but there’s no time for 25OHD tests for most people. The aim would be to get most people safely into the 40 to 60ng/ml range, with no concern if some go over the 100ng/ml (250nmol/L) “high end of normal” range. Toxicity only begins to be a concern above 150ng/ml.
Sarcoidosis is sometimes regarded as a reason not to supplement D3, but this is another form of immune dysregulation, and according to https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1002/jbmr.2262 sarcoidosis patients to better with D3 supplementation.
Then, it wouldn’t matter whether most people get COVID-19 or not, because only in a very few cases, with these 25ODH levels (the elderly, and those with serious medical problems already) would there be significant harm or risk of death. This would not overload the hospital system (which would have very few influenza or sepsis patients with these 25ODH levels). Most likely the low viral shedding would reduce transmission even without lockdowns etc. so I am not convinced more than half the population would be infected. It wouldn’t matter how SARS-CoV-2 mutated. Likewise the influenza viruses.
I am trying to be brief! I don’t want to try to write everything relevant in this thread, which is why I have an extensive set of web pages, one of which is https://aminotheory.com/cv19/d3/ .
Robin, have you ticked the two boxes so you are sent notifictions of new posts and new comments? You will be sent details of comments, and they allow to reply specifically to a particular post.
I am replying to AhNotepad: “Mr Chris, the situation in israel seems to be worsening. By what measures? Is it using the unreliable PCR test?”.
At ourworldindata dot org there are two graphs in which it is possible to select countries and see “Daily new confirmed cases of COVID-19 per million people” and “Daily confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people”. Daily “new” cases are rising now after a summer lull in many countries including Canada, Ireland, UK, Netherlands. Germany and France. They are rising in Israel too but there was no real summer lull.
One explanation may be falling vitamin D levels leading to greater severity, greater shedding and to some extent greater susceptibility. However, I think it is too early to be sure about this. Vitamin D 25OHD levels may lag 2 or 3 months after the summer solstice (21 December) due to 25OHD being stored in the blood and fat cells for 2 or so months (at low levels, the half life is shorter at higher levels) and due to warm weather and so sun exposure lagging by about 2 months due to the ocean’s thermal inertia.
In 3 to 6 months (December to March) any significant effect of winter-spring low 25OHD levels on COVID-19 incidence and serverity will be very clear – but the decisive evidence would be in the rates of harm, hospitalisation and death, and I think only death is recorded reliably and graphed.
Other explanations for recent rises in “new cases” include: Increased use of PCR tests which are overly sensitive, and so do not represent actual infections. I have no idea how to quantify this in various countries or to what extent this and the following mechanisms are true. Use of antibody tests which detect infections in previous months – so not actually new cases. Similarly the use of antigen tests which sense fragments of the virus, such as spike protein and so may not be detecting viruses. Since the exact nature, with yes/no thresholds, of the various PCR tests is varied, and may have changed over the months, and with the growing addition of results from the totally different antibody and antigen tests, the current figures, though plotted on the same graphs as the March-April PCR tests (where the coverage of those infected was relatively low, the many people were genuinely infected) it is a mistake to think the recent figures measure the same thing as was measured in April.
Also, people may be subject to less stringent lockdowns and/or be taking less notice of them.
The deaths chart is more reliable, but still there are problems of people “dying with COVID-19” rather than because of it.
The deaths graph is best viewed with a log vertical scale to magnify small changes to small death rates. I haven’t tried all northern hemisphere countries, but I found little or no sign of rises in the last month or two, with the exception of Israel and Spain. Hospital care my be improving, which would lower the rates in the last few months. (My 7th message.)
Thanks Ah, I tick the two boxes and get messages via email. Clicking the Reply button there loads the page, but the browser doesn’t land on any particular message, and it seems that messages such as this one of yours I am replying to, which are indented by 4, have no Reply link. This is true whether the email Reply button’s URL is opened by Firefox or Chrome. So I reply to the closest higher message from anna m (“Thank you very much . . l.) and my reply goes to the bottom of the line of indented by 4 messages below hers.
Robin, I scroll to the yoga the page, which takes ages to load sometimes.
I wrote bottom not yoga
Robin – despite the dangers you associate with CV19, the fact remains young people are almost unaffected.
Don’t worry about the up and coming excess cancer deaths. Chances are before they croak they will have had a PCR test of which they will be able to tag it as a covid death. China must be salivating at the thought of all of these western countries they will be able to buy up on the cheap. Here comes the second wave anyway. Well that’s what we’ll be calling the people who pcr test positive for covid but actually die of flu.
Hi Dr Kendrick. Amazing info and ideas but how do we get this on MSM where it needs to be? I’m just amazed how blinkered most people are. Keep up the great work, hopefully you’ll be rewarded if the majority start thinking for themselves and using some common sense.
So the answer is, all those under seventy get infected, and those over seventy self isolate for a month?
You might like to hear the views of Dr John Campbell, who has been a beacon throughout this crisis via his YouTube daily updates. He has advocated Vitamin D from the beginning along with a great deal of research on various other treatments and preventions: http://www.youtube.com/user/Campbellteaching
Also, because I’ve always been prone to upper respiratory infections, I wondered recently if having my tonsils and adenoids removed as a child might be a factor. Good old Google revealed this, which you may find interesting and could be affecting people in your own circle: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/tonsils-removed-throat-infection-colds-adenoids-surgery-childhood-allergies-asthma-a8387801.html
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/what-are-the-long-term-health-risks-of-having-your-tonsils-out
Stay safe and well
Your tonsils are part of your lymphatic system. Lifelong immunity to viral infections is considered by some virologists to be due to ‘persistent’ infection in particular tissues that maintain a readiness to counteract another similar/related infection.
So yes, removal of such tissue could impair your resistance.
On another speculative tack, the immune system is imperfect and some individuals, on infection, have insufficiently discriminatory killer cells that don’t only kill ‘unimportant’ infected cells, but kill most infected cells including e.g. neurons in critical areas. How this discrimination is controlled is, as far as I read, not understood, but may well be the cause of a number persistent/long term diseases.
Thanks for the reference to killer cells, and their inefficiency in some individuals. I’m someone whose very healthy D3 levels and intact tonsils have not prevented even the common cold from prostrating for anything up to four months each time. Colds have led to some permanent neurological deficits too – never mind actual flu, which I have had, and dread getting again. I have autoimmune diseases, which no doubt exacerbate my rotten infection-fighting ability.
Good, but you forgot one crucial point, maybe the most important! Everyone should be supplementing with Vitamin D! This reduces to basically zero the risk of death from the virus.
The government have actually included a recommendation for vitamin D supplemention in their Winter strategy which they published a month or so ago. The strategy talks mostly about the horror we going to face come winter, namely second wave, flu, Brexit shortages, civil disobedience, riots, the army, Marshall law etc but amongst the 80 odd pages there is a three line paragraph as to how the health of the nation can be improved with vitamin D. Heartening.
Geez. Seems to me it’s just insurance for themselves to be able to state that this important info was not withheld. But in fact, drowning it like that ensures nobody will see it. And besides, my point was that it should be the main/only thing being said over and over, because it’s really the most critical, if we are concerned about minimizing deaths and severe cases. Not sure this is clear, though…
Is the medication ( high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular) prescribed ( mostly for the elderly) indirectly leaving them open to increased risk of Covid ( and other viral infections such as flue) and increasing their mortality risk. Death as a result of Cytokine storm Is the main cause of Covid and flue deaths. Why is this not being invested as a matter of urgency? Big Pharma suppression?
Interesting that you have doubled your vit D dose. Apart from summer / autumn do you have other data for fixing your dose. Since I have been on 4000IU a day for sometime , is the reason for my query
Its pretty cheap, can’t do any harm at this dose, so why not. Not entirely scientific, but the data on Vitamin D is so ‘all over the place’ that I think I can let myself off.
Same here Doc, £10 for a years supply of 10,000 IU per pill/day seems like a non brainer to me. besides if anyone has ever seen ivor cummins D for debacle video they’ll realise theres much more to D3 then covid.
Please look at the latest research articles linked to from: https://aminotheory.com/cv19/#lr including the 25OHD calcifediol trail in Cordoba, Spain, where modest oral 25OHD is pretty much a magic bullet for hospitalised COVID-19 patients. Instead of 13 of 26 in the control group needing intensive care and two dying, in the supplementation group of 50, one needed intensive care and none died. Vitamin C would have helped too.
Average weight people need, on average 0.125mg (5000IU) D3 a day to reach the 40 to 60ng/ml (100 to 150nmol/L 25OHD level required for proper supply of 25OHD to the autocrine signaling systems of numerous types of immune system cell. I wrote a detailed web page so I wouldn’t have to rewrite the same detailed stuff in comments sections like this – so please take a look. I am not selling anything. I should have made the site in the .info domain.
Kudos for getting your units straight. 🙂
Malcolm
Since it is still sunny I will up my dose later in the Autumn. I still don’t understand official reluctance to advise Vitamin D3, I used to think that there should be a consensus on these things, now I just shrug my shoulders and reach for the D3 bottle
I am still puzzled by the prevalence of cases at the end of the summer, I thought it had been shown to a latitude thing?
You are assuming the mainstream want you healed. That would defeat the whole object of the release of the virus. Bill Gates has made no secret about telling us he wants 7.8 billion vaccinated. Fauci, Gates & the WHO have tied up the vaccine patents that will be approved.
Don’t count too much on sunshine. While you certainly can get a brimming daily dose of Vitamin D from the sun, that’s possibly at the latitude of the UK only from April to early September – and then only when the sun is shining and between about noon and 2-3 pm. Also, of course, to expose enough skin, you need to wear shorts and, if possible, nothing else. And turn so you get tanned front and back, for 20-50 minutes each depending on the sun, your age and how tanned you are already.
Every day I see people swanning around fully dressed, with nothing exposed by their faces (if not wearing a broad-brimmed hat or mask) and maybe hands.
They won’t get any benefit at all.
Dr Coimbra is convinced of the efficacy of treating autoimmune conditions with high doses of vitamin D and has been doing so successfully for nigh on 20 years. He is a Brazilian professor of neuroscience. Dr Coimbra thinks that we should all be taking 10,000iu of vitamin D3 per day. I have read that vitamin K2-MK7 and magnesium play a role as well.
Only strategy that’s making sense, Dr Kendrick.
Since the March lockdown I’ve been casually watching the official reported infection rates and death rates for several countries. I guess my rationale was to look at the trends of nations who were considered ‘ahead’ of the UK (Spain and Italy were, at one time +2 weeks, France +1 week), also Sweden, for where we might have been had we not done so much ‘locking down’ (but on a larger scale as we’ve nearly 7x the population). Not scientific (as I’m not especially so) perhaps, but it suggested indicators as to where the UK was going and where we might have gone, if things had been different.
Sweden seems to have had a bumpier ride, infection-wise, compared to the more ‘Gomperzt-like’ daily rates of others (who’d locked-up). But their death rate graph was pure Gompertz, like that of the others. Sweden had a mini infection peak (within in a wider first peak) around the end of April, by which time their death number curve was declining. They then suffered a more severe second infection peak, (second half of June) followed by another, smaller bump-up in infections mid August. But, as was the continuing situation over on their death rate curve, it kept on steadily declining throughout those two subsequent peaks.
Now, let’s skip Southwards and look at Spain – second infection peak similar to their first (peaking end August) which I’m hoping is now on its downward slope, but only a slight mortality rate uptick throughout their ‘second wave’. France perhaps lagging a bit on the peaks this time, larger second showing, but again only a small rise in death.
For the UK, this might suggest that, as many of us of a like mind are thinking, the future holds a few further ‘bumps’ in infection rates, but not resulting in corresponding fatalities. That Sweden’s second and maybe third (could they possibly be creeping up towards a fourth right now ?) ‘waves’ show UK’s infection rate patterns compressed: The difference being simply that UK, France and Spain are stretching out by using lock/not lock controls ?
To be fair my own observations and suppositions were reinforced by Ivor Cummins’ video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac), suggested by a commenter on another of Dr Kendrick’s posts – thank you whomever that was – which I watched the other day – and I’d thoroughly recommend. But there does seem to be growing evidence that the subsequent waves are not, as had originally been suggested I think (from Spanish ‘flu) ‘worse’ than the first, at all. Or at least not here in this geographical part of Europe.
So why would we keep on prolonging the agony, stretching this out, if only to conflate more serious Covid symptoms with those of seasonal ‘flu and the many other reasons people end up in hospital during the winter period ? Outside of healthcare, families are already stressing over the six person limit and their imagined Christmas meal plans ! I can’t subscribe to the conspiratorial ideas that it’s a Brexit negotiation diversion, or a big pharma manipulation to ensure they get their vaccine glory. But those kinds of things do start to sound more plausible when (and if) the next couple of weeks go by without the otherwise anticipated (Covid-related) hospital influx. Under normal situations I’d always believed that at some point, no matter what the political situation, sense prevailed, perhaps at the eleventh hour. I can only hope that this is also the case in terms of this second coronavirus ‘wave’.
The Ivor Cummins’ video you reference is brilliant! I encourage everyone to watch it (37 min.). Here is the link again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac
Indeed it tells the whole story & is another nail in the coffin of the Fauci/WHO lies, but it wont stop them. There is just too much money to be made.
Thanks for calling to reason – such as you can from where you are.
Exactly what is this disease – and what is in fact the ordinary? is part of my unwillingness to presume ONE disease to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
Likewise calling it a disease and infection when it is no such clinical thing is an affront to my sense of coherent reality. But such ‘currency’ of thinking is so well established by the hysterical ant’s nest of framed reactions as to suggest a realpolitic has to deal in the dead on behalf of the living.
This last point raises an underlying intent to reframe disease to medicalise health under martial law – period! The ‘biosecurity state’ is not a theory so much as a reframing of society – people – Us! – as vectors of contagion to be permitted token freedoms only upon compliance with medical (sic) parameters that are arbitrary – ie made up!
The ‘gates of hell’ are open to receive all who look INTO them and despair.
But look AT them and recognise WHO and what we are NOT.
Benign or ‘sleeping’ viruses suggest extremely convincingly that of themselves they CANNOT be ‘The Cause’ of disease – and are part of a whole that is hidden by giving priority and therefore power (away) to them as THE pathogenic agency.
This has generated a pathological medical industry – that could have ‘psycho’ prefixed to it, because the invested belief is so deeply entrenched.
Doctoring that kills to cure has entirely lost the plot (or become subverted to support and follow another).
Letting Live! Is a core message in what I read Malcolm calling for.
But WHO listens or cares among those who are set in contriving to wage war by deceit?
However, I listen and join in letting live, but I cannot free the minds of anyone who is not already moved to seek freedom, and need only join in freedom with all who are.
What freedom? You may ask!
And this is where we are brought to our thought, to our intention, and to our choices, moment by moment. For we are framed in our thinking to seek freedom in forms of debt and slavery that do not seem so in their masking presentation.
I am older, but not within the ‘risk’ brackets of statistic reversed as if to define my own life.
Yet even so I urge that you do not call to ‘SHOULD” those who are declared to fall within your markers – to lockdown, isolated and forsake their freedom – but extend such honest and open information as to enable and TRUST them to make an informed choice for themselves.
Perhaps you could conceivably start arguing that taking risks against OFFICIAL advice is an attack on our Covid Health Service, so as to undermine its capacity to protect those who accept and comply in proscribed weakness, susceptibility, defencelessness and nakedness set against fear and unmasking.
Free association and exchange has within itself the capacity to align in pathways and patterns of support for life and living. There is an interloper in the Temple of Healing unto life and the living.
The transmutation of anger operates a purging within.
If there is truth in ‘terrain’ theory, then take responsibility for what you are open to hosting or allowing to frame your thinking and responses. Not by giving negative charge by reaction, but in the manner of ‘thanks, but no thanks’. If ‘no’ is not recognised to mean ‘No!’ then hold to the core integrity – for if you don’t stand up for yourself, no one else can. But it is not enough to mask in the forms of what passes off as integrity as if to tick the boxes to achieve the target.
The ‘elites’ would deny you a place at the table by inducing you to eat such crumbs as they let fall, by controlling the supply of support for life. (Which they are currently choking back – even while raining helicopter money that in turn signifies the closing down of ‘money as we knew it’.
But then elitism as self-specialness never was going to share in life and so it has developed the mind of death in life. But as fear of loss given power over life.
I cannot make another’s choice – nor want to get that tangled up!
So I can live my own in such light as I am willing to let in, by living from – and letting live.
“Follow the Science!” speaks the denial of Science.
Humanity climbs – and is herded into a computer model.
Is this where we came in?
Once again, a logical analysis. Thank you Dr K for the time you must have spent putting all this together. I wish to God (and as a Christian I don’t say that flippantly) that the Powers that Be would listen to the real experts – like yourself and like minded others. I simply cannot understand what Boris & Co are doing. What on Earth is the matter with them!
A fascinating and credible analysis. I shall reference it in my own blog if I may.
It reminds me of when we had athe last major foot and mouth epidemic in UK cattle, when there was a total lockdown as well as a mass slaughter program (not something we normally do for humans). I had a South African patient who had run a farm out there, and said they dealt with foot and mouth by ramming a handkerchief up the mose of a cow showing symptoms and then stick it up the noses of all the others. Before vaccination for measles and German measles in the UK there would be children’s parties so they could all get it. Same principle. Time once again to apply yesterday’s lessons to today’s problem.
Thank you. I just wish I could hope that somebody was listening who might have some influence – except the likes of us self-selected group.
Quick Quiz Time: Name ANY corona virus that has produced a second wave ?
Erm, the common cold? Many, many waves.
And all different mutations.
I read somewhere that there were supposed to be between 6 and 11 types of sars-cov-2 with slightly different symptoms and virulence, so either those articles were all bshit or the virus has already mutated. Could be either, could be both.
Once we buy into the branding, we are captured in endless permutations, shifting parameters, meaningless testing, manipulated media reporting and dangerous treatments.
But when a brand is seared into the mass consciousness in such a way, to NOT buy it, is to be seen as ineffectual at best. For (most) everyone else is going the other way!
How willing are we to keep our head when (most) everyone else throws it off like a hot potato?
(Or swaps it for a potato head 😉
Living cells replicate what we call viruses and which are indistinguishable from what biologists call exosomes. Living cells according to their specific environmental conditions determine what is replicated. As well as the conditions that turn off the signalling. Homeostasis operates to maintain support for life under all kinds of stresses and distress. We are generating new toxic exposures all the time by all kinds of industrial materials and processes. The body serves to keep us alive despite or regardless our treatment or neglect.
The packet of code doesn’t DO the mutating or the hijacking. But is a form of cellular derived information that other cells CAN receive and CAN execute the code – again according to needs and conditions. The result of running the code CAN be varied in its symptoms or lack of them.
If we are going to give up on human being, for a system of contagion control – starting with a ‘novel’ mutation of a cold or flu virus, why not first throughly question it from the ground up?
Because we are normalised to (identified in) running the coded meaning of viral causes with regard to a whole range of disease conditions without questioning its predicates or qualifications.
Ideas set as too big to fail, (or call to true account), bring down everything else with them.
Fear frames the misdirection of attention, funding and control.
Fear also recognises its own intent or device in others and can easily believe in pathogenic attackers, but much less readily accept a symbiotic whole – worthy of alignment in willing service and support.
The ‘gain of function’ research is example of the developing of pathological capabilities under pretext that other pathological entities will do so if they can, and so as a ‘good guy’ we get there first so as to be able to develop defences against others of the same programming.
That the end is imagined to justify the means, allows the means to determine pre-emptive strikes – which are the best defence in terms of denying the would be attacker the chance to begin to even think of attacking you. Yet this IS the likes of the CIA and all the contagion of ‘Intelligence’ operating with potato heads that can always have more stuff stuck into them so as to mutate into spiky balls and even crown themselves sovereign while pretending to be a parliament or indeed a governance of anything but an antibiotic state.
The desire to protect life cannot be set over and against it.
If National Security becomes a catchall for protecting lies given priority over truth, it represents fear of disclosure repackaged to ‘make you safe!’.
Follow the Psyops!
Save face!
Support the C.H.S!
(Get a potato head. Stick a mask on it. Get a Biosecurity state thrown in as a free gift!).
Almost most medical papers are bs.
So if Dr Kendrick is right we need to ask who is advising our Government and are they influenced by by people or organisations that will benefit financially from present policies?
The preferred Government policies are predicated on the production of a vaccine.
I’ll leave readers to work out who will gain most.
It is naive to think that big pharma and Bill Gates can influence some 150 governments of the world to shut down their economies so that they can make money. Money is just one of the goals. This is bigger than that.
This was a particularly good article I thought, but many, many qualified people have been saying similar things since March. And look at Australia / New Zealand. They got to sit back and watch and learn and what have they learned? Absolutely nothing. They just could hardly wait for their turn to impose a police state.
A means to capture the assets of others is to install a puppet regime. This can usually be done by buying politicians and others of influence along with threats of pain or loss for non compliance in a ‘sweet deal’. This has been operational for a long time as an export. Now it’s coming home.
Regulatory capture has been operating for around a century, such as to entangle into a net of constraints that effectively only allows movement along predetermined permissions.
It’s also naive to think the group playing this game is just these two.
Bilderberg conferences, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, NGOs. We’ve let the elites prepare and carry out their operations without any resistance or investigation. People who did ask attention to this were scoffed at as ‘conspiracy theorists’, and now that it’s clear it IS a conspiracy after all, it’s (almost) too late.
Great article
From American Medical Association – Covid-19 and the Path to immunity.
“…
More than 8 months into the outbreak and after millions of infections globally, anecdotal case reports of reinfection mostly after initial mild COVID-19 illness are appearing. Although the complete immune profile of these individuals is not clear, reinfection with SARS-COV-2 suggests that the natural immune response many not provide sterilising immunity but that it may shorten viral shedding, reduce spread, and prevent disease…”
Unless specific people have tested positive for covid, recovered, and are now ill again and testing positive again, I consider this misinformation.
Let me just retort what ‘they’ alwasy say: “That’s just anecdotal, it has no value. No proof has ever been found that such is the case.”
After one ‘dengue’ you can also get ‘re-infected’ with another strain.
We are motorhoming in the UK and meetIng quite a lot of people. If I tell anyone that my husband and I believe we had Covid19 at Christmas time I so often get the response “Well it’s funny you should say that because…..” and they relate some tale of their own when at the end of last year they too, or some family member, had the Covid symptoms. Often only one person got them despite being in contact with lots of family members, it being around Christmas.
I’m hoping such conversations might help people to feel a bit safer.
No matter where we go we seem to be the only people in shops not wearing masks, even where some of the shop workers out on the floor are going without them. When I am confronted and tell them I’m exempt, it is fine, but I would much rather be able to just say “because I don’t want to wear one.” A fishmonger didn’t like me saying I was exempt. He said I didn’t look unhealthy. He was obese himself which may have contributed to his annoyance.
I’m 72 going on 73 years old and please don’t insult me by demanding that I should isolate. I will never hide away like a coward from illness. The virus will never frighten me. As for lockdown! what a stupid foolish crackpot idea that was/is. It kills, it depresses, it causes bankruptcy, lose of homes, jobs and family life. People are running scared by government who have introduced a total load of hogwash. Get real, get out, get a brain and lets enjoy what is left of our lives.
Spot on, Tim!
I am pretty sure that if you polled those of us over 70, you would find that very few would be willing to be protected by locking down all the younger people – with all the horrible consequences that can cause.
My 92 year old Dad would. He can’t believe I think we should all get back to normal. He’s terrified.
Perfectly put Tim. Thank you!
Thank you Dr Kendrick. Well done, sir.
Brilliant common sense. A very rare commodity!
On Sun, 13 Sep. 2020, 19:46 Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “13th September 2020 [Winter is coming] In > the flu pandemic at the end of World War One, the average age of death was > twenty-eight 1. In the UK, the average age of death from COVID19 is > eighty-one for men, and eighty-four for women. Which is older th” >
At least the common ‘flu is an Equal Opportunity Disease, dangerous to young AND old, whereas “covid” is Age- Discriminatory. Maybe that’s what is so terrifying, – all the obscenly rich people are…..’Old’.
What’s with you James?
‘Covid’ as mapped out in its trajectory is no more age discriminatory than any other average year of death by all causes. Covid reaction – that’s another story still unfolding.
Your obscenely rich people are in your terms obscenely rich.
Old hasn’t anything directly to do with it.
Yes there are old rich people who also die. Maybe some can attenuate their lives with what money can buy – stem cells and young people’s blood transfusion are two I have heard of.
But I responded in part because I am alert to what I see as an intention to demonise the ‘old’ in the minds of the young. And can start out under guise of protecting them.
Divide and rule generates an emotional charge that is used by those who also use the obscenely rich.
I thought that flu mostly shows a U-shaped age-related severity profile whereas covid-19 has a J-shape.
I believe the most important consideration in all of this is that very few people need to die from COVID because there are highly effective preventions and treatments (as Chris Rasmussen pointed out above). Many doctors around the world are reporting near 100% success using the Zelenko Protocol (HCQ + zinc) (1) and the MATH+ Protocol (2). Dr. Thomas Levy, MD writes in this fantastic treatment resource guide (3) “…nobody needs to die from COVID-19, or even to suffer needlessly (as many virus victims have remained quite ill for months before finally recovering).” Dr. Mercola writes “The COVID-19 pandemic could be resolved in 30 days for about $2 per person, simply by taking affirmative action to raise vitamin D levels among the general public” (4)
1. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VnBudq0f0dPtsJRZrRt3XiBDZAYvjlTR/view
2. https://covid19criticalcare.com/
3. http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v16n37.shtml
4. https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/07/09/optimal-vitamin-d-levels-for-coronavirus-crisis.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20200709Z1&mid=healthrtlucm20200709z1&rid=912432641
The weasels and stoats have taken over Toad Hall. I am counting on Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad
to save the day. Meanwhile I am preparing a lovely picnic for us all, to eat by the riverbank.
Us ? – With your Knight in Shining Armour ? – I trust you will be propery protected with 3 or 4 layer Surgical Mask, you know, the ones preferred by your politicians, – the ones that DON’T work.
In France, positive test results went up after masks became compulsory, but deaths didn’t go up. This tells me that masks are effectively immunizing us, maybe by trapping virus particles, letting them die, then us inhaling the dead virus, just like a nasal spray vaccine.
Or does it just show that the more you test, the more positives you find, while the weather in Summer in the Northern hemisphere make the virus less virulent. If masks immunised us, wouldn’t they do the same for flu, but flu deaths are rising
Astounding comment!
What other possibilities did you consider for the explanation of the results?
Binra, I didn’t consider any other possibilities. I like my theory and I’m sticking to it.
Although… maybe the Chinese are selling pre-infected masks to France.
Or… Gauloises kill the virus, but you can’t smoke them if you wear a mask.
Or… wearing a mask reminds you you should go and get tested.
Or… they only test people wearing masks because the testers don’t want to get infected.
Or… first they spent all their money on masks. Now they spend it all on test kits.
Or… okay, I give up. What’s the real explanation?
Also, possibly a False Positive Paradox
“It is especially counter-intuitive when interpreting a positive result in a test on a low-prevalence population after having dealt with positive results drawn from a high-prevalence population. If the false positive rate of the test is higher than the proportion of the new population with the condition, then a test administrator whose experience has been drawn from testing in a high-prevalence population may conclude from experience that a positive test result usually indicates a positive subject, when in fact a false positive is far more likely to have occurred.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy
If pre-masking they were only testing people with symptoms of coronavirus, when the test would be highly accurate because you are testing a population with a high prevalence of coronavirus, and then post-masking started testing the general population, which would have a much lower prevalence of coronavirus, the false positive rate would shoot up.
Martin,
I think you are right about the false positives. But another explanation is that the masks increase the amount of virus particles because they do not allow the body its normal exhalation of same. The test is not very specific. And again, that will be especially true when you are doing unnecessary testing of low risk people.
In the Netherlands the number of tests carried out per so called ‘confirmed case’ is 50.
The reciprocal of that is 2%, coincidentally the same as the false positive rate of the PCR test.
I call a pseudo epidemic.
The weasels and stoats have taken over Toad Hall. I have my hopes pinned on Moley, Ratty, Mr. Badger and even Toady to save the day.
Not all of the above, Toady will be absent, playing with his latest toy…. (Vaccine)
Ratty will come up with sensible ideas. He’s a good bloke is Ratty, loves his little home patch – as do I. It’s time to get that book out again I think, it’s like a comfort blanket to me. Thanks for reminding me, Sue, that there are rational creatures still out there. On the River bank I mean.
This may sound simplistic, but I think the elderly are more severely affected due to dehydration. They are notoriously poor “drinkers”. If you have a fever, you need to PUSH FLUIDS.
The real cause of death from COVID patients is blood coagulation in the alveoli of the lungs. The red blood cells are compromised (cellular breakdown from poisoning) and cannot get into the capillaries to exchange CO2 for O2.
see: https://www.drrobertyoung.com/post/doctor-exposes-the-corona-effect-covid-is-blood-coagulation
MUST READ!!
Malcolm you don’t seem to be aware of the mass of evidence around about the ultra-high risk of any covid vaccine. You would normally be on the non-establishment side, which in this case would be the counter Gates-Fauci-WHO gangsters.
I think you will find that Dr Kendrick is usually on the “side” of truth and reality. Much is not known about vaccines in general, and some of them seem to do some good. (I say that although my family and I were vaccinated many times and hardly ever avoided seriously unpleasant consequences ranging from swelling and pain to sepsis that made surgeons recommend high amputation).
For flu, I doubt if vaccination is wise as the risk from flu is so low, and the minority whom it may seriously harm are also at risk from the vaccine.
The same logic applies to Covid-19, the more so as no safe and reliable vaccine has yet been produced.
Good analysis but it does rely upon the assumption that catching the virus, and recovering, conveys immunity from future infection and from being infectious. What evidence do we have that this is the case? If people could be re-infected a couple of months after their initial infection and recovery would that not prevent the achievement of herd immunity?
I’d be really interested in your thoughts……
We don’t know if it does or it doesn’t confer immunity, but if it doesn’t, it’s very unlikely that a vaccine would either. So we might just as well get on with life now and not mess around killing people through lack of other health care, stress and abuse while waiting for Godot.
A very important point. Vaccines provoke the body to produce antibodies by exposing the body to the virus. If the body can’t make antibodies from the virus, it surely will not be able to produce them from the vaccine. I suspect that if this was widely understood, we would suddenly stop hearing from people who say we may not get natural immunity.
I suspect that we might not get permanent immunity but that it would be highly unusual for a person to get it twice in less than a couple of years.
The silly concept of non-inferred immunity after a viral infection has been introduced and pushed by the same people who want you to mask up, anti-socially distance yourself from other people and preferable isolate yourself in order to tank the economy, cause chaos and ‘wait for the vaccine’ which would bottom-line Gates with a billion USD or more. It’s an old (how ironic) Microsoft FUD-technique (Fear, Uncentrainty, Doubt) used to gain competitive advantage.
This scientifically unfounded concept is best ignored altogether.
It’s not an assumption, it’s an observation with all viruses that have passed through our lives.
They infer long lasting immunity. There is absolutely not one reason to assume it will be different with this SARS-CoV-2.
Have you seen SARS-CoV-1 returning?
Vaccinations give you a short time immunity, exposure and getting the disease doesn’t.
Maybe if your innate immune system has previously eradicated the virus so your acquired immune system hasn’t had the time and opportunity to develop immunity, then it might ‘come back’, although you wouldn’t know it if you’d had it previously, because if the innate immune system is successful in clearing the virus out you won’t even notice it.
How come no mention of T cell immunity? It may be that 50% of the population is already immune via T cell immunity which would dramatically decrease the number of people who need to actually get the disease to get to herd immunity. This would explain the massive number of asymptomatic cases. Also explains why Sweden is already at herd immunity.
Please read my post dated 12.09.20 around 10.58 pm, attached to Dr Kendrick’s previous blog. It gives a brief outline of some experimental work done very recently (July 2020) in Germany on T-cell immunity in respect of Covid -19.
Dr K,
This is quite simply an outstanding post, even by your own consistently high standards. I am in total agreement, the madness has gone on for far too long. Instead of returning to normality, we are again moving backwards. HandyCock (sorry that was the autocorrect) has pushed through the ridiculous “rule of 6” and hasn’t ruled out a 10pm curfew if we don’t behave (I suspect the virus becomes more virulent at 10:01pm). We can look forward to Covid Marshalls zealously enforcing this essential evidence based scientific measure (assuming of course that any of them can actually count up to 6 – I am assured that on a good day, they can).
Of course the muzzled sheeple continue to obey the ever more preposterous “guidelines” because they are full converts. Baaaaa! Baaaaaa!
The dystopian “new normal” is being relentlessly normalised. Whilst shopping in a supermarket today, the tannoy blared every 2 minutes “we are keeping you SAFE today, please help us to help you by wearing a face covering, sanitizing your hands and properly socially distancing AND following all other government Covid guidelines” . After about 15 minutes of this I could contain myself no longer and tannoyed back “just STFU !!”
Enough is enough, if this doesn’t stop now, there will be no going back.
I recently came across some interesting screenshots of the KGB national destabilization techniques as revealed by defectors. The quality is rather poor but I think our very own deep state actors have learned a great deal from Soviet methods. There is even mention of “happy clapping”!
An excellent read below by Iain Davis below.
https://in-this-together.com/covid-19-scamdemic-part-1/
Iain Davis is sane and well worth the read in my view.
That mind manipulation is in operation by our ‘Cabinet government’ is not at all secret.
I’ve no doubt it is first used upon them.
This is simply the concept of triage, a long accepted medical practice where the treatment options are limited, and the disease is unlimited.
And if the vaccine arrives, how do we know that it won’t have the same side effects as the disease (or worse)? I can’t take much more of this – no one talks to me any more, my job is basically gone, I can’t go to a concert to relax, I’m probably going to be forced to take drugs made from animals and aborted babies – so if it doesn’t end soon, I’ll be a suicide statistic
Why give attention to what disturbs you, when you can give it to things that inspire and encourage you? Then you will be in a better place to meet what will be when and if it comes.
Fear closes down the mind so as to seem to force you to do what you hate. So address the fear – by generating the conditions in which your imagination doesn’t run away with your reactions.
We can only start from where we are – with what we have. But if we don’t begin, we only generate the conditions of evasion, that give ground to experiencing what is not actually here.
Someone once wrote a book saying evidence based research that offered a solution or advice needed to be fully referenced with citations, open to challenge and be peer reviewed.
Thus I have great difficulty – given the lack of citations in your blog – that “sufficient Immunity” is a given solution if the vast majority of the population is exposed to Covid-19.
If the damage done by such exposure to under 70s is minimal and there is risk assessed evidence that it will not cause widespread and/or significant consequential debilities then that would be a step in the right direction.
However, for me. the clincher would be if you can also show clear research evidence and data that there has been, or very likely be little or no mutation effect within Covid-19 over time – otherwise we are in an annual flue risk scenario. All over 70s would have to be locked-in and isolated for weeks or months at a time for fear of death by Covid-19. (Notwithstanding that some future magic immunity injection would cater for mutations and avoid all that.)
Sorry, but a few otherwise well argued points backed up by citation evidence does not mask the core assumption postulated, without evidence, to justify your approach that: “We could protect the vulnerable elderly by creating sufficient immunity in the rest of the population, ensuring that the elderly are shielded at the same time, and it could be done rapidly.”
Please don’t get me wrong, I will willingly change my mind if you can show me evidence that puts my mind at ease…
Lots of evidence that this is a weaponised Wuhan virus. If it doeesnt have the desired effect of worlwide vaccination they will no doubt release another strain. The whole mask, social distancing, lockdown story is to create enougj fear to meet their world changing agenda. If we don’t stand against it now we won’t be able to next time.
There you go:
Why would you need to lock the over 70s up for months just because the virus mutated? We don’t do it for flu. Perhaps the over 70s should have some say in the matter. Locking them up this time didn’t save them; it killed them. Viruses are always with us. We need to learn to improve immunity and treat the sick, not destroy quality of life for no good result. If you want o stay in prison, go for it, but leave the rest of us to make up our own minds
Agreed. I’m 72. I am heartsick that the economy stopped to save my old arse. My son in law lost his whole career in the sports industry. Leading to lots of stress for my daughter and a transgender grandchild and him of course. I’m a granny and I’ll take care of myself thank you. As older people who are retired and of decent means this lockdown has not the same effect. My life has not changed much from what it was. Most of my friends are scared to death and hiding still. But they can with no significant difference in their daily lives. We don’t meet for coffee. Big whoop. Not thinking of the terrible toll going on around them. Not caring I guess until that toll drops down on them in some way. And it will. The rest of the younger should go back to work and children to school. NOW.
Well said, Janet. Thank you.
And yet, even the USA is pushing for vaccines (for children, as well, who are truly not even susceptible to this). Most of what we see and hear is just trumped up nonsense meant to scare people into staying in their basements, into wearing useless masks and MAKING themselves sick and all the rest of the hoopla.
I’m so truly sick of hearing about this I could scream.
Professor Henghan has some interesting things to say about the current situation:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-needs-to-bin-the-rule-of-six
I have said this from the get go, let it rip. Big problem would be that no other country would accept British travellers, or allow their populace to visit us, thus putting our travel industry at great disadvantage. This would have to be a worldwide policy. And good luck with that.
There Are NO ‘Slow Viruses’ Just ‘Slow Virologists’
https://www.drrobertyoung.com/post/there-is-no-slow-virus-just-slow-virologists
Does the PCR test actually detect virus? Is it even a YES/NO test?https://uncoverdc.com/2020/04/07/was-the-covid-19-test-meant-to-detect-a-virus/
Does the COVID-19 virus even cause disease at all? Can one die FROM COVID or just die WITH COVID?
https://www.drrobertyoung.com/post/doctor-exposes-the-corona-effect-covid-is-blood-coagulation
https://www.drrobertyoung.com/post/autopsies-prove-death-by-disseminated-intravascular-coagulation-or-pulmonary-thrombosis
https://www.drrobertyoung.com/post/what-is-a-virus
Excellent Blog. There has been far too much concentration on “the virus” and far too little on humankind. Your Blog turns it around. The best vaccine is the virus, shielding those most risk. And this is without mentioning the now-demonstrated benefits of vitamin D.
I would support this approach to getting rid of Covid ,however do not trust that the government would be able to “protect ” the over 70’s or the vulnerable at all..they can’t seem to organise anything at this point…
As usual, Dr,. Kendrick is a voice of reason in the wilderness.
I find it interesting that as we add more statistics and facts to this puzzle, the more it looks like those of us who questioned, right from the beginning of this exercise in stupidity, may have been right after all. We were right that we should have been protecting those who are vulnerable, letting those who are healthy carry on with life, and treating those little more than mild cases with the treatments that were found to work instead of doing the utmost to censor that information and threaten those doctors and scientists that dared to suggest that there is, in fact, an alternative to dying on a ventilator or waiting in fear for a vaccine. I wonder if the history books will record this fiasco as it truly is, or create an alternate history about the Great Pandemic of 2020, when The Great Vaccine Saviour saved the earth’s population from sure decimation.
If I were to post this on my Facebook page I would get no ‘likes’ and probably abuse from those who think that Malcolm is a debunked conspiracy theorist and and even worse an anti-vaccer. It seems that people believe only what they want to believe and are brainwashed by the government without realising it.
My mother at 91 had to be admitted to a Care Home just over a fortnight ago. We, the family, could no longer look after her as she lost the ability to walk. She had to endure 14 days quarantine and is now allowed one designated visitor once a week outside for half an hour at a distance of two metres. Masks have to be worn – no hand holding or touching allowed.
This is what will kill her. We are allowed Skype calls if we book them but she is quite deaf and they often take place on a carer’s mobile phone. This is a woman who has survived Meningitus with Sepsis, Bowel Cancer followed by hospital acquired C Diff for four months and can no longer walk for many reasons. I know she would rather be dead than be treated like a criminal just because she has become disabled. She has a veiled and faraway look about her eyes now, abandoned to strangers, some kind, some not so kind. This is what it’s like waiting to die in a care home at the moment.
Debbie, I can’t remember where I saw it, but it was within the last week. Someone with a story similar to yours just told the care home to get stuffed and sat next to her mother and gave her hugs. There’s no problem, better to be happy for a short time than miserable for a long time. Oh, and no masks and any of this other inhuman crap.
“Care homes” have always had this kind of effect on their inmates. My own mother was ill for a couple of years before the NHS, in its wisdom, ejected her from hospital and moved her to a home.
She was dead within a month.
Obviously all the Covid-19 nonsense makes that effect far, far worse.
My friends 97 yo mother is in a nursing home. Early in April On her birthday her daughters went outside her window and waved and held up cards. Blew her kisses. The management told the sisters they were not allowed from then on to do that. WTF? Heartbreaking. Makes me angry. Even now only one family member is allowed a scheduled visit with her. She is 97 years old and basically alone in her last times. Utter insanity.
Well, the government needs to kill off the elderly and the expensive so they don’t have to pay pensions and to reduce drain on the NHS, so they can sell it to the USA. What better way than to make them lose their will to live. If no one is visiting care home residents , no one knows what the standard of care is like. Take the money, don’t provide the quality, blame the deaths on CV19
“Early in April On her birthday her daughters went outside her window and waved and held up cards. Blew her kisses. The management told the sisters they were not allowed from then on to do that”.
To have any hope of understanding such behaviour, it helps to recall H.L. Mencken’s famous definition, first published about a century ago:
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy”.
A friend of mine has moved into a care home and was shut up in her room for 4 weeks when she first went in. She has become very depressed and cries sometimes when we talk. We have Skype meetings with the help of a care worker. She can’t leave the home when she wants. No visitors. It’s a disgrace.
Thank you once more on this excellent blog. When discussing this topic with people a common argument that is made is: covid has nasty permanent health problems with lungs etc. Do you have information on this?
I see quite a few unfamiliar names requesting large amounts of information. Dr Kendrick has been blogging for many years, about a wide variety of topics but with an emphasis on heart and circulatory diseases. This years, of course, his main focus has shifted to Covid-19.
May I politely suggest reading through all Dr Kendrick’s previous posts this year? You may find all your questions answered.
Other excellent sources include
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
https://evidencenotfear.com/
http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmFDE8P6_M-C4HTOuWwm4Dg
Frango…couldn’t agree more. All these folks asking for more of Dr Kendrick’s time. I reckon they are trolls, trying to put a spanner in the works.
Actually this whole cycle happened 40-50 years ago on the early computer bulletin boards. Newcomers kept asking basic questions, and that was how the FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) document had its inception. Every board had a prominent notice telling readers to read the FAQ at least once before posting any questions – and, if possible, the whole current thread. As time went by more and more common questions were appended to the FAQ until it became a useful introductory book on the subject.
Nowadays many people are in too much of a hurry to do much reading.
Actually our guru, Dr Kendrick has published some books that are very good at answering FAQ’s – but not so far ion the topic of The Virus – too soon!
Malcolm once again clarity from chaos.The politicians are in a game of who ,among the leaders of the devolved nations, wins, not what course of action leads to least suffering. They have lost sight of what should be done and the prize is not popularity
Neil
Brilliant, Malcolm, brave also. We can only hope that as the weeks pass and hospitalisations and deaths stay low (though they are perhaps bound to rise a little as people go back to work) the government will declare (spurious) victory and we can get back to normal. You will never convince the rain dancers that it wasn’t the dance that brought the eventual rain. Will they ever let us hear the reassuring news, though? Councils are not allowed by central government to release data on hospitalisations when numbers are below 3, allegedly ‘ to protect privacy’…..
The doctors that make sense on this issue are the ones that say COVID19 is not a virus:
https://www.andrewkaufmanmd.com/hippo/
Dr Thomas Cowan:
This is extremely interesting stuff as it touches the basic methodology of virology research and its flaws.
But I can’t help myself from asking: “But what about ebola?”
The last thing we need is a vaccine for an imagined virus that has never been isolated so scientific tests can be applied. The “virus” is likely to be only exosomes–cell communication or clean-up.
First ISOLATE the ‘virus’, do proper tests to determine if it really is an infectious agent, then continue SCIENTIFICALLY.
The purpose of healthcare is NOT to scare the populace, but to help and comfort.
Robert of richland
The virus has been ‘isolated’ in various instances, but what the Koch postulates require is that it be purified and tested on people to show causality with the disease and that’s what has not been done yet.
Ive been saying exactly this for a month now but would be political suicide
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What happened to the theory about vitamin D deficiency I seem to recall being blogged about early on?
Just scroll up a bit. 🙂
An alternative view of how this Covid virus affects us.
Source: https://www.biospace.com/article/-oak-ridge-researchers-use-supercomputer-on-covid-19/
Some quotes to whet your appetite:
“A group of researchers at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee used the Summit supercomputer, the second-fastest in the world, to analyze data on more than 40,000 genes from 17,000 genetic samples related to COVID-19. The analysis took more than a week and analyzed 2.5 billion genetic combinations. And it came up with a new theory, dubbed the bradykinin hypothesis, on how COVID-19 affects the body.
Daniel Jacobson, a computational systems biologist at Oak Ridge, noted that the expression of genes for significant enzymes in the renin-angiotensin system (RAS), which is involved in blood pressure regulation and fluid balance, was abnormal.
… …
The final result of all this is what is being called a bradykinin storm. When the virus affects the RAS, the way the body regulates bradykinin runs amuck, bradykinin receptors are resensitized, and the body stops breaking down bradykinin, which is typically degraded by ACE. They believe it is this bradykinin storm that is responsible for many of COVID-19’s deadliest symptoms.
The researchers wrote that “the pathology of COVID-19 is likely the result of Bradykinin Storms rather than cytokine storms,” which have been observed in COVID-19 patients, but that “the two may be intricately linked.”
… …
This provides a possible explanation for why ventilators have been less effective in severe COVID-19 than physicians originally expected. “It reaches a point,” Jacobson says, “where regardless of how much oxygen you pump in, it doesn’t matter, because the alveoli in the lungs are filled with this hydrogel. The lungs become like a water balloon.”
… …
The bradykinin hypothesis also explains why about 20% of COVID-19 patients have heart damage, because RAS controls aspects of cardiac contractions and blood pressure. It also supports COVID-19’s neurological effects, such as dizziness, seizures, delirium and stroke, which is seen in as much as 50% of hospitalized patients. French-based research identified leaky blood vessels in the brains of COVID-19 patients. And at high doses, bradykinin can break down the blood-brain barrier
… …
On the positive side, their research suggests that drugs that target components of RAS are already FDA approved for other diseases and might be effective in treating COVID-19. Some, such as danazol (to treat endometriosis, fibrocystic breast disease, and hereditary angioedema), stanazolol … … … decrease bradykinin production. Icatibant, also used to treat HAE, decreases bradykinin signaling and could minimize its effects once it’s in the body. Vitamin D may potentially be useful, because it is involved in the RAS system and may reduce levels of REN, another compound involved in the system.
Other articles:
A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19 — and an Interesting New Theory Has Emerged
A closer look at the Bradykinin hypothesis
Source: https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63
Bradykinin and the Coronavirus
Source: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/09/08/bradykinin-and-the-coronavirus
A hypothesized role for dysregulated bradykinin signaling in COVID‐19 respiratory complications
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7267506/
Oh my 😟
That was a very interesting reading.
I want to commend you for avoiding the mask issue. Many of us have made the mistake of trying to talk rationally about it. But it is impossible to talk rationally to people who live on a blind faith based on terror.
Reason, good numbers correctly presented, clear reasoning are all life savers for us who hate being terrified. But many others see those things as insurmountable obstacles. They prefer to live in terror and obscurity. It was a waste of time that only stimulated them to become ever more irrational and emotional.
Your strategy seems much better. I learn so much from you. Thanks!
Enjoying your challenging take on a difficult problem. My great aunt was nursing during the 1919 flu pandemic, and said it was grim for taking young lives. Mass burials were the order of the day in some places.
We seem to be reluctant to talk of death nowadays: and my research found that GPS were unlikely to bring up the topic in consultation. We, as a population, seem to have become very scared and have no-one to share these feeling with. . Interesting.
My grandmother lost twin babies to Spanish flu. I’m sure it was a horror then. Yes. For some reason death seems hush and becomes somewhat a surprise when it happens to others. People used to picnic at cemeteries visiting their dead. Governments have always caused death. The medical profession too. But now both are on steroids. Policies and metabolic death basically forced on us by bogus dogma.
I agree with most of what you have written and especially the unwritten implication that the disease has now run its course – as indeed do all epidemics.
From the medical literature I’ve read over the last 9 months however, some seem to be of the opinion that the long-term damage of this illness is not particularly different from other infections – for a certain segment of patients. Can you clarify?
The other piece of information that keeps surfacing is that so-called ‘herd immunity’ is now thought to be as low as 20% infected, due to other forms of ‘background’ immunity. That seemed to have been known early on from the Diamond Princess cruise ship data.
Also, the implication that domestic violence is primarily a male problem has, I believe, been successfully challenged by a number of (non-feminist) researchers. One small statistic for example: more young children in the US are killed annually by mothers than fathers.
Domestic violence primarily affects women and this is not an implication. This is from the Women’s Aid website:
‘Every case of domestic abuse should be taken seriously and each individual given access to the support they need. All victims should be able to access appropriate support. Whilst both men and women may experience incidents of inter-personal violence and abuse, women are considerably more likely to experience repeated and severe forms of abuse, including sexual violence. They are also more likely to have experienced sustained physical, psychological or emotional abuse, or violence which results in injury or death.
There are important differences between male violence against women and female violence against men, namely the amount, severity and impact. Women experience higher rates of repeated victimisation and are much more likely to be seriously hurt (Walby & Towers, 2017; Walby & Allen, 2004) or killed than male victims of domestic abuse (ONS, 2019). Further to that, women are more likely to experience higher levels of fear and are more likely to be subjected to coercive and controlling behaviours (Dobash & Dobash, 2004; Hester, 2013; Myhill, 2015; Myhill, 2017).
The United Nations defines gender based violence in the following way:
“The definition of discrimination includes gender based violence, that is, violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately. It includes acts that inflict physical, mental or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of liberty.” (CEDAW 1992: para. 6).
Infanticide is one tragic aspect of domestic abuse.
This article needs to be sent to Premier D Andrews and his chief health officer to enable Melburnians and Victorians to be free from the draconian measures instituted. The reason most people are not speaking out against such measures is due to the $1700 fine a person would get even if commenting negatively on social media.
You think they don’t already know it? They’re not protecting you, they’re carrying out orders…
All over the world.
Thank you once again for a common sense thought provoking blog
Hang on though. In New York, 26% of the deaths were in under 65 age groups.
In England, according to the ONS, 12.2% of CV deaths are in under 70’s.
So I am not sure about the Daily Mail analysis.
Another thing, this “underlying health issues” business. According to the NHS almost everyone has one. High blood pressure (over 130/80) anyone? Obesity ? These are very common in the UK, more people will have one than not !
I think it might help if you supplied a link to the relevant statistics.
David Bailey here are the links:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19englandandwales/deathsoccurringinjune2020
I trust everyone has noticed the Daily Mail “analysis” uses the covid deaths divided by the whole population in a given age band. Not by case numbers or number infected. It is NOT the CFR, or even the IFR.
The good doctor has picked an IFR of 0.04% for under 70’s. This was the median value derived in the paper linked. The thing is, these estimates were all over the place, from zero to 0.57%. Given our poor record so far, I think it is reasonable to expect an under-70’s IFR an order of magnitude greater than 0.04% in the UK, and therefore ten times the deaths.
I only hope that decision makers are reading this and that it has the desired effect. Thank you for your voice of reason in a world awash in folly.
JAMA has an interesting article on how the immune system responds to SARS-Cov-2. Unfortunately it is way above my level of comprehension.
Perhaps Dr Kendrick could give us an understandable tutorial on how the immune system works, and also what the various tests look at.
COVID-19 and the Path to Immunity
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2770758
Perhaps someone could give me the tutorial. The more I read about this, the more I find uncertainty. This is fine, I like uncertainty, but there is much that is not known.
Reblogged this on Citizens.
Dear Guys. Please check out my blogs regarding health and parameters as well.. stay blessed everyone.
Some balanced reporting in the media would be nice. Instead of headlining 3 people died of Covid today, tell us the ages, and what other health conditions they had. Perhaps even add they were in a care home and deliberately refused medical treatment. Along with this to keep perspective, a note of how many people that day also died of cancer, heart attack, stroke, child birth, other infectious illnesses such as HIV or TB, road and household accidents and crime, especially domestic murders against women and children provoked and enabled by Lockdown.
Lord Sumption, former Supreme Court Judge, spoke out on BBC Today Programme this morning. Wonderful. Encouraging older people to do whatever they wish. Another hero to be sure.
is it working
Hi everybody I’m a newbie, I was beginning to doubt my own sanity until I stumbled across the sainted Dr Malcolm Kendrick a couple of weeks ago.
Reading todays post immediately took me back to March of this year, when I first heard of the lockdown and the associated rules, the first words out of my mouth were “well that’s not going to slow down the virus at all, all that’s going to do is bankrupt the country”. Over the next few hours I came up with what I came to call ‘OPTION 3’, If you remember we were offered option 1, do nothing, option 2, slow down the virus with a lockdown. Well we certainly paid for option 2, but I’m quite certain we got option 1. So what was my option 3, well I’d but many safeguards in place but in a nutshell, we shielded the most vulnerable 10% to 15% of the population, then the rest of us on one day went to the polling stations (seemed the most obvious choice) however we didn’t vote, we got sprayed in the face with the virus. 4 weeks later we’re done. I know it sounds crazy, I said as much at the time, but I did feel that it was possible that it could save more lives than the lockdown, when you consider that each week shielding went on more and more would eventually fail, so the shorter period that it went on for the more lives would be saved. As I said I admitted it was crazy at the time but after seeing the last 6 months unfold doesn’t seem so crazy anymore.
So the lockdown was a complete failure, didn’t slow down the virus at all? Yes! I know there is no evidence of this, it’s just common sense, we know the data has been completely corrupted, so it’s all we’ve got to work with. The school system is a perfect tool for spreading an infectious disease, 30 kids packed into a relatively small room, most of them won’t have washed their hands from arriving to going home, and whose going to have notice a few extra coughs in January and February, the result, nearly every school child in the country had already caught it before they closed the schools. There was never any chance of slowing it down, it burned through the country in 9 weeks and by the beginning of June we attained herd immunity. The antibody tests simply don’t work, after a month anybody who didn’t have symptoms doesn’t have a detectable level of antibodies, I know of several people who have in there procession a positive virus test and a negative antibody test. I know there’s no proof but when you can’t trust the data common sense is all we’ve got!
One things for sure this does explain the governments behaviour, if what’s going on is more to do with the utter failure of the lockdown and the cover up of that fact, what politician is going to want to own that.
Now let me see if I can put a smile on the Docs face.
NEIL FERGUSON!!! Lapse in judgement? You see it’s the timing that makes me suspicious the 5th of May just after the infection rate peaked, and we can assume he had unfettered access to the raw data, so did he have a ‘oh know I’ve done it again moment’, broke his own rules, resigned, and tried to put as much distance between himself and the steaming turd he’d just laid.
Whilst I support this and previous articles you have written, particularly misinterpreting infections for cases, I do not understand why the government medical advisors take an opposing view. We seem to live in an age when the establishment view is deliberately misguided as if oppressive control measures were always the ultimate aim. How does the public, or even MPs know who to believe? We’re unlikely to get a full scale medical debate on TV, just like we never will over the need for net zero carbon emissions. Lobbying our MP seems the only option short of donning the yellow vest!
Richard,
Those calling the shots here have zero interest in your health. They want money, power, and control. Understand this, and their actions make sense.
When you don’t understand what your government does you have to assume there’s another agenda at work.
I’d pick up the yellow vests–at least!
Watch ukcolumn on youtube or brandnewtube. They do programs Monday, Wednesday and Friday if you want to watch live. They explain what is going on, you will not be amused.
I have now had Covid twice (once symptomatic once asymptomatic) and I still do not have the antibodies. I have O Rhesus Negative blood and there is research to show that my blood type does not develop antibodies.
In addition I know someone who tested positive for Covid and the antibodies in March and then tested again for the antibodies in June and he no longer had them…..
Whilst I do not disagree with what you have written we need to be careful about not creating a false sense of security with ‘herd immunity’ that may not actually last longer than 3 months
All the more reason to let the virus ‘blow through’ quickly and get rid of the massive pool of healthy-but-as-yet-uninflected timid mask wearers and anti-socialisers who otherwise will keep the virus pot burning through the winter as you become increasingly vulnerable to infection.
In the meantime the best advice is load up with D3 and take a daily zinc supplement and a zinc ‘ionophore’ – e.g. quercetin – to push it into your cells.
Don’t say you weren’t warned!
How much do I hate spellcheckers, let me count the ways.
Some may also be uninflected whatever that means, but I meant the far more frequently used and understood word ‘uninfected‘.
On the other hand, those tests have barely been validated so I wouldn’t suddenly assume that this virus does what no other virus has done yet without strong proof.
CH, how do you know you have had covid?
I find it very hard to believe that O neg blood does not develop antibodies. My husband has O neg and he is rarely sick. How does he do it?
At last a logical way to get our lives back….we cant lockdown or live the way we are forever.
I do not agree with lockdown or masks. Yes we need to protect the vulnerable. I work in a care home and am well aware of the impact covid19 has had on our must vulnerable in society, as well essential workers. This virus and the measures to “control” it have left its mark on every single person. And sadly as you say it will continue to impact people’s lives for years to come.
The world should watch and learn from Sweden, they appear to have chose the correct route.
Bizarrely reasonable discussion about masking. Basic thesis is that, while masks might not prevent exposure to disease completely, they might allow for lower levels of exposure, which in turn would reduce symptom severity via reduced viral load. Message here is very much about getting people back to school, playgrounds, work, etc., with increased (but not draconian) masking. I think there are clearly lingering questions, but I do appreciate the rather flexible approach taken here:
https://zdoggmd.com/monica-gandhi/
That guy is a mainstream shill. If you want to see some real science on masks, take a look at Denis Rancourt’s paper:
https://www.rcreader.com/commentary/masks-dont-work-covid-a-review-of-science-relevant-to-covide-19-social-policy
Kids barely get covid and no transmission from a kid has ever been documented. Schools can open and if teachers are afraid of covid let them not gather with more than one teacher at the same time in a classroom and keep windows and doors open.
The only problem is that even the WHO says there are more disadvantages to wearing masks than advantages
! Take a look at the section on use of masks for the general public on page 6 and the somewhat weird list of benefits, including: “reminding people to be compliant with other measures …” my experience is that people wearing masks no longer think they have to comply with social distancing rules; “potential social and economic benefits…; the production of non-medical masks may offer a source of income….” seriously!
Mind the work ‘might’ in “…they might allow for lower levels of exposure…”.
If you can’t present hard facts supporting your opinion, then please don’t try to make me compulsory submit to it.
So is the government still double dipping on the virus tests? If so does that mean the current levels of 3000 positive test a day are in fact 1500? So what is the point of double dipping? Could it be so the government can spoof the data, just how many people are coming back with two positive tests, it could be argued the only ones truly infected, could that number be approaching zero? Let’s face it we just don’t know! It’s a shame the governments idea of 10 million tests a day by December appears to be, pie in the sky. I think I would have enjoyed watching the government try to explain a 100 thousand positive test a day, whilst no one was getting sick!
The government are ramping up the figures for a lockdown in October. Place your bets.
My wife was out walking with a friend today, whose daughter in law is an ER nurse at a California hospital. The nurse reports that virtually everyone that comes in is diagnosed with COVID, even when their symptoms are obviously unrelated.
I wonder if jimmy kudo would like to explain that one away.🤔
Follow the money. The US government is giving money to support hospitals dealing with Covid patients. As they are all private enterprises, of course all their patients have Covid. I believe they get more if the patient is on a ventilator.
Possible financial incentive for the hospital ?
I can’t imagine it’s only me that’s noticed the strange anomaly, no local lockdown in the south, particularly in London the most densely populated area in the country. It must be that southerners are better behaved than us up north, oh sorry that’s ridiculous. Then maybe the governments prepared to damage the north economy in favour of the south, more likely, but I still don’t think that’s right. Then how about this, the south has full herd immunity, up north we’re just shy of having herd immunity. Why the discrepancy? I have a theory shielding! Back in March when the vulnerable were advised to self-isolate, in the south, because they were a couple of weeks ahead of the north, as far as the infection rate goes, many that self-isolate in the south had already been infected, in the north not so many. So when shielding end, in the north there was a higher percentage of people that had successfully avoided the virus through April and May. It’s not a huge difference, it could quite small, just enough to mean the difference between just over herd immunity and just below. I believe what you would expect to see with a population that hasn’t quite reached herd immunity is small sporadic out breaks’ fancy that! When will the north achieve herd immunity? The best way for us to achieve full herd immunity in the north is crowds this is what is needed for the very small number of people with the virus to come into contact with the small amount of people that have avoided the virus, but of course we have no crowds, without crowds it could take many many months before we finally achieve full herd immunity in the north.
Far more likely that they are “punishing the North for having more Labour voters. London will not be locked down because that’s where policitians and bankers and celebs hang out – can’t annoy them.
A library is selling off some books so I thought I’d pop in and take a look. The place was empty but a masked woman asked me to put on a mask and I told her I was exempt which seemed to surprise her. But before I could get through the door she asked me to fill in a track and trace slip. I told her I would never do that and began to walk off. She called me back saying it was ok because it was only voluntary! So know your rights!
Again, please don’t underestimate ‘ Long Covid ‘. I had the virus in March, likely caught working for NHS as an OT, and still not recovered, basically my life is on hold. Can’t walk outside, now need a wheelchair on rare occasions well enough to go out and affected me in multiple ways.
No easy answer to how to manage this virus yet would like more people to consider Dr Kendricks views.
“Matt Hancock (UK health secretary, for those reading this blog in other countries), made the utterly insensitive comment urging people not to kill their granny:”
This is something that I’ve heard a few times now. There is a child psychiatrist practicing out of West Los Angeles who talks strongly about ‘fear’. In particular the fear we are inculcating in children. He gives a wonderful (and bizarre) example concerning a park in his neighbourhood, He is first asked about masks:
“Aside from the fact that they are absolutely useless and kids won’t abide by putting them on – which renders the whole point moot, they are actually psychologically damaging. They instill and reinforce fear.
I keep getting back to this point about fear because I think it’s the crux of the entire issue now. Without managing the fear we cannot move forward.”
The homeowners association of the doctor’s neighbourhood closed the park 2 weeks ago “Because there were too many children not wearing masks in the park and that the grass may become contaminated and that because children like to touch the grass and roll in it they could become infected and then kill their grandparents that they were living with. So, they sprayed toxic chemicals on the grass in order to disinfect the grass. And it’s now going to be closed for 30 days with the option of renewing on a daily basis.”
“What happens to kids when they live in that kind of environment. What they learn is everything is scary, everything is dangerous.
They are dangerous, their friends are dangerous, the grass is dangerous. They could kill grandfather
“It was an error to close schools, this is negligence, this is abuse.”
About 53 minutes in on the link:
What a great post Dr K. I came to oral blows with a sibling who is a GP this weekend about the failure to protect the vulnerable and at the same time the decimation of the economy and the unbelievable infringements of freedoms of the young, fit and healthy.
I find it so frustrating that fear seems to remove all logic. I do not understand why we are not hearing daily reports about hospitalisations. Surely that would help indicate if ‘cases’ were needing significant medical treatment and therefore if the NHS still needed ‘protecting’ (with these ongoing curtailments of our liberty).
I also don’t understand why we aren’t seeing a health campaign to encourage everyone to look after their immune health. Why aren’t people being encouraged out into the last remnants of summer sunshine to top up their vitamin D levels? Why have the messages about being overweight stopped? Why aren’t we encouraging people to see friends and family, have a glass of wine, laugh and relax – so that they feel loved, supported and connected with others, all of which is so important for good mental health, which in turn supports physical health & therefore our immune systems. Instead, we are peddled endless tales of fear, death & isolation where snitching is seen as a good thing & we may have tinpot dictators (marshalls) telling us what to do in public.
How can we get Dr K’s message spread further?
Thank you yet again. I love knowing I’m not the only GP out there saying this stuff
Thank you Dr Kendrick. This idea was one that I thrashed out with my 13 year old son right at the very beginning of the lockdown. I was looking towards a way of returning to normal as quickly and effectively as possible. It took the 2 of us about 15 minutes. He’s 13 years old and seems to have a better grasp of the epidemiology of COVID than those at the WHO and in governments across the globe.
The Covid story is becoming pure Hollywood.
“Nobody knows anything.” — William Goldman, Oscar-winning scriptwriter’s comment on Hollywood.
“There are none so blind as those who will not see”.
Thank you, Dr Kendrick. The worst thing is how blindingly obvious this all is and how there has never been an open, honest cost benefit analysis of the policies of our appalling government.
The big question is how can we move from a monolithic position of fear and rule of the precautionary principle to a proper, rational debate amongst the politicians and in the media?
Well, you cannot protest in the UK, that’s banned. In the UK the BBC has been cowed by threats of losing its charter, so they are not criticising anything. I suppose we can now see more clearly how various events unfolded throughout history. Many things we may have hoped we might have moved on from.
In reality, if one side keeps peddling fear, fear, feat. Deaths, second waves, long-term damage, the debate has no chance to get going. ‘We are trying to protect the public, and you want everyone to die.’
I thought there was a large protest in London a couple of weeks ago?
I have been thinking for months that rational debate is stalled because of the personalities of the Prime Ministers and Presidents of different countries. If they really wanted to help, then Johnson, Macron, Sanchez, Merkel, Conte and many others must just resign, along with all the individuals in their cabinets, plus many hundreds of political designated Office holders directly below the ministers.
It is not like there is a shortage of people desiring those positions. So not a problem there. If they would just preach by example, and sacrifice their own political careers for the common good, for their countries, then the necessary rational debate would be a possibility.
In theory, the People should be able to recall a rogue elected official any time. In practice, this is almost impossible. Because of the hitmen of the politicians, which are the journalists. Of those, the ones who bear most guilt of following unconditionally the mad ideas of our suicidal politicians are the most veteran journos and the owners and directors of the newspapers, radio stations and tv channels. They must go too.
Tabula rasa.
Let us all just act as if the Plague took all their lives. Let us all just simulate a couple of tears dropping from our eyes. And then, we all move on.
We do not need any of those lunatics. All the problems we have now have been created by them. We need to prevail over the politicians of all countries. That is normalcy.
Ernest Benn wrote: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
Every child of enough age should learn that quote by heart. It explains everything.
Median Age of “Death by Covid” for the following 10 countries- this was as of July- likely little to no change in data:
Austria 80+ years Source EMS;
Canada 86 years Source HCSC;
England 80+ years Source NHS;
France 84 years Source SPF;
Germany 82 years Source RKI;
Italy 81 years Source ISS;
Spain 82 years Source MDS;
Switzerland 84 years Source BAG;
United States 80 years Source CDC;
Sweden 86 years Source FOHM
In each of those countries the average age of “Covid deaths” (without even disputing the questionable died “from or “with) exceeds normal lifespans of the citizens of said country.
A “global pandemic” is certainly not defined by age of deaths EXCEEDING the normal lifespan where no young healthy people are affected.
I will offer up just a few broad comments and put details to any who wish:
1) There is no excess death toll due to virus- that death toll is due to policy shifts and attribution to “Covid” is patently false when not outright administrative corruption by health officials;
2) Above “excess” death toll is an artifact of nursing home mismanagement- 55-60% of “covid deaths” are from nursing homes + or – 3%- once that is taken away we have normal or often lower than normal mortality rates in country after country;
3) The average age of “Covid deaths” worldwide EXCEEDS the normal lifespan of citizens of those countries- that being 81 years old with on average 2.5 comorbidities- think about that;
4) Average number of weeks of life lost due to “Covid” is a mere 1-3 weeks and that’s without consideration of having died “from” or “with”;
5) PCR tests used to determine “cases” are a diagnostic fraud- inventor of PCR test, Kary Mullis, asserted PCR tests were not designed for diagnostic purposes;
6) “Cases” which are determined by flawed PCR tests are purposefully juiced up in numerous ways- want details?- this is not simply more tests=more cases we are talking medical and institutional fraud- why did the CDC change years old policies on March 24th, April 14th and June 13th with each change designed to increase number of “positive” test cases;
7) The WHO made a significant change in it’s definition of pandemic in 2009. Why? What preceded this in 2005-2007? What are the signatories to the WHO “health agreements” obligations once a Phase 6 pandemic is declared? Very important to understand this.
8) In the annals of pandemic since the year 350 “Covid” ranks 23rd out of 24 in overall deaths as a percentage of population worldwide- even without debating the manufactured figures of “Covid deaths”. The swine flu pandemic of 2009 (“coincidentally” the same year the WHO changed that definition) ranks 24th. These two pandemics are several hundred (thousand in some cases) % points lower in mortality rates than past pandemics- how did they even make the cut;
9) The “deaths from Covid” are from a specific demographic- pandemics are noted to impact mortality rates of a broad demographic. That demographic that this “pandemic” has impacted is not merely the elderly but the most fragile of the fragile of the elderly who could die from any infection in their condition;
10) “Deaths from Covid” are from specific locations. Pandemics are defined (supposed to be) by cutting across a wide swath of geographic regions. This pandemic has the habit of only impacting densely populated areas and more specifically the elderly in those areas and more specifically nursing homes- in the US for example if we eliminated just the deaths from NJ and NYC nursing homes we would not be having this conversation. In Italy same would be said if we eliminated deaths from elderly in Northern Italy- same elsewhere Belgium, Spain, Canada, Sweden etc.;
The above 10 points are the short list.
If people would stop wearing masks and stay off the internet and cable news for a week no one would know there was such a virus in existence- “Covid 19” would not even rate a thought.
“1) There is no excess death toll due to virus- that death toll is due to policy shifts and attribution to “Covid” is patently false when not outright administrative corruption by health officials”
Sweden published its Q2 2020 (April-June) demographic data analysis and a spike of about 4500 deaths when compared to Q2 2019 is clearly visible. I couldn’t find data on the years before that, but my guess (and from what I’ve read on the web) is that the ratio od 2020:20xx is about the same.
So there has clearly been some uptick, most likely because the elder population was exposed to a new virus.
Now, I agree about most of your other points, and I wouldn’t be reading Dr. Kendrick’s blog if I thought his analyses were incorrect. However, the virus obviously exists, even though it’s nowhere near as pandemic (in the sense of its IRF) as it’s made out to be by governments and media.
Excellent, Allen.
Another statistic to add to your very full lost. David Speigelhalter claimed that the ‘over-90s face the highest risk, with a one in 81 chance of catching and dying from the disease,’
For some reaching such an age would be nice. And for many others to know that fact when you were young might be ‘odds you’d gladly take’.
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-what-are-the-coronavirus-risks-to-children
Allen,
Is there a historical USA chart for the winter season excess deaths including 2020 that you can link too?
Hi Dr. John,
Sorry to get to you so late- I don’t know how to get specific responses and am loathe to sift through 400 comments- which I did. There must be a feature for direct responses.
In any case I do not know of such a site except the NVSS site which I often utilize.
The CDC has to be run by mid-level statisticians as compared to other countries as assessing the data you seek is arduous in the US- I do it as a project so can work through the numbers though it is painstaking. I don’t speak German but it is easier to find mortality data in the untranslated German health dept’s site than it is with the CDC e.g.
BTW I did the entire CDC weekly flu reportage from it’s inception in 2000 to date and at present the CDC has almost completely stopped reporting flu deaths- that is not a coincidence.
Here is an example for 2017:
Click to access nvsr68_09-508.pdf
Considering the damage being done to the social and economic fabric of Australia, it’s remarkable to think about the coronavirus statistics here which are causing all this upheaval…
For instance, there have been 816 deaths attributed to COVID-19 across Australia in the last eight months (in a population of 25.5 million).
729 of those deaths are in the state of Victoria. These are very small numbers in light of the thousands of people who die in Australia every year, e.g. 158,493 in 2018 (AIHW).
Are the deaths in Victoria being beaten up to maintain lockdown…why…?
According to the Federal statistics, most of the COVID-19 related deaths are in people over the age of 80, i.e. over the age of life expectancy…are these deaths that would have happened anyway?
Can one say this self-evident likelihood without being hammered for being insensitive and politically incorrect?
And are these deaths ‘with’ COVID-19 or ‘of’ COVID-19?
Also consider there are question marks over the definition of ‘cases’ and testing, see for example this article in The BMJ: Covid-19: the problems with case counting.
And look at the lack of information on the Victorian DHHS website: Victorian coronavirus (COVID-19) data
So much blathering about ‘cases’ and testing…but where’s the detail on the severity of ‘cases’, and information on ages of people dying, and comorbidities, status of people in hospital etc?
Why are ‘cases’ and testing being beaten up, while we get no data on important matters.
All smoke and mirrors?
!!!RED ALERT!!!
Government Vaccine roll-out consultation. Anyone can comment. Closes 18th Sept, but they say they are still open to comment after this. The main area of concern seems to be granting themselves the liberty to use unlicensed vaccines and medications (should the need arise!) while excusing vaccine companies and health professionals of any liability since this ‘would not be fair’:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/distributing-vaccines-and-treatments-for-covid-19-and-flu/consultation-document-changes-to-human-medicine-regulations-to-support-the-rollout-of-covid-19-vaccines
Thank you Tish. I have responded.
What a piece of work it is. I’ve just responded and now I’m so angry. It’s as if the whole lockdown policy has been precisely to make manifest a self-fulfilling-novel-vaccine-only-solution-prophecy. And no liability entailed with unlicensed usage because that would be ‘unfair’. Leaves one foaming at the mouth.
a very nice article on false positives: they are estimating a prevalence of 0.02% for rona; that Dr K was mentioning weeks ago; they point to the seemning contradiction that all tests report 2% positive rate; https://lockdownsceptics.org/radical-uncertainty-and-government-innumeracy/
“In other words, for each 100,000 people tested, we are picking up at least 24 of the 25 (98%) true positives
……….. but also falsely identifying 2,000 (2%) of the 99,975 healthy people as positives too. ”
Isn’t that wonderful; love the science: picking up 25 positives, and mixing in 2,000 false positives: what a way forward.
“Not only do < 1.2% (24/2024) of pillar 2 ‘positives’ really have COVID-19,
……..of which only 0.1% would be medically defined as symptomatic ‘cases’,
………. but this 2% FPR rate also explains the ~2% (2.02% in this case) positive rate so consistently observed in the official UK data."
To see terror and abject fear in people’s demeanour as you walk past (especially the elderly). To continually face blindingly obvious and stupid illogical rules and regulations while out shopping or going out to a cafe, restaurant or pub. Now we’re encouraged to spy on our neighbours and report to the Police, including covid marshals. Where to next Boris? Whitty? Hancock?. Black uniforms with SS insignia? Unfortunately a complete rethink, with an adoption of Swedish rules, is never going to happen. SAGE (what a misnomer!) will never admit they were wrong, nor will any politician; it’s not in their nature. Daily it is becoming more apparent that the laws of Entropy and Natural Selection are reducing the severity of this virus. But you can bet your life savings that
Boris et al will claim the credit when it’s eradicated, especially “The Man Who Never Blinks” Whitty (how about that for a misnomer!).
It may vary from district to district, but my impression – bolstered by assorted conversations I have had offline – is that people are utterly cynical and weary of this nonsense, and ignore the rules as far as they can.
Some including me, don’t wear masks in shops, use cafes without using track and trace, and mix with people more or less freely! I consider track and trace to be a gross intrusion on privacy, and if these were widely used we would end up with pieces of paper containing personal information littering the streets, just as we now see discarded masks.
Where you really see panic is in the faces of politicians, who realise they have been lead into an absurd dead-end.
This article is behind a paywall, but it is possible to register for three free articles, so anyone can access it:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-does-a-case-of-covid-19-really-mean-
Professor Carl Heneghan’s views are clearly close to Malcolm’s.
Thank you for such a great article. You have restored my faith and hope that medical professionals will start speaking out.
I can see the logic but I am not ready to send my kids (23, 29) out to get infected because a number of their friends who got sick in March are STILL SICK – and they are not outliers – a non-trivial percentage of people who get sick have lingering problems.
Your kids – 23 & 29 ?
Nowadays all people are “kids” of the government. Only in Germany has this been made explicit, as the Kanzlerin, Frau Merkel, is generally known as “Mutti” (“Mummy”).
Yes in my neck of the woods we refer to offspring as “kids.” So my 90 year old mom refers to me as her “kid” and I refer to my 20-something offspring as my “kids.”
To clarify, my kids are independent adults. One daughter recently spent a year walking across the US alone; the other has been teaching in Russia and Greenland for two years. So obviously when I say “I’m not ready to send my kids out” I am not being literal. What I am saying I don’t think it would be a good idea for them to stop taking precautions and get infected. Luckily, they have no plan to do that. Both now live in NYC and work/go to school “in person” but with masks, distancing, etc because they don’t want to get sick like their friends who got sick in March and are still having problems.
I sense an element of control – despite their age. Seems NYC is an exception. I know no one who has had anything more than a sore neck and headache for a few days, whose daughters lost their sense of taste for 4 days. From what I hav read the mask is useless, per the Norwegian gov study, 200,000 need to wear a mask for 1 week, a proper mask worn properly to prevent 1 infection. It doesnt say if that infection is a assymptomatic, whether there are mild symptoms, uncomfortable symptoms, bothersome or whatever. I have no fear of this thing, despite approaching an age but I do fear the level of orchestrated interference in my life by the state listening the WHO “experts” who are 80% funded by pharmaceutical vaccine promoting conglomerates primarily, beside Bill Vaccine Gates and his charming wife melinda (or is it Belinda?)
My money is on ‘continuation of Fear-generation’ so that when a vaccine is eventually presented to the sheeple they’ll fall over themselves to get it. Safe & Effective won’t be uppermost in their panicked , misled and manipulated minds…
Meanwhile, prevention by a functioning immune system is still being studiously ignored, as are new & successful treatments.
The situation in Australia is grim… We don’t appear to have effective and independent specialists in infectious disease management here.
We need to look to Sweden and examine what happened there, but is anyone doing this? Is anyone involved in public health policy in Australia liaising with specialists in Sweden, e.g. Anders Tegnell?
It’s fashionable of course to attack Sweden’s approach, and their death toll, which occurred mainly in the elderly. (See my BMJ rapid response for some background: Looking at Sweden, COVID-19 and vitamin D… 13 July 2020.)
Tegnell acknowledges “the mortality rate was due to deaths in elderly and long-term care facilities that had weaknesses making it possible for the disease to spread”.*
But otherwise Tegnell’s and Sweden’s handling of the coronavirus situation appears to be working, certainly in avoiding the problems of lockdowns, including serious infringements on people’s liberty, and a myriad other health, social and economic problems that are looming ahead of us in Australia.
It’s crucial to properly and objectively consider Sweden’s approach – where is Australia going with the apparent ‘elimination’ policy that has now replaced the original ‘flattening the curve’?
We’re getting boxed into a corner by so-called ‘experts’ in Australia, this needs critical analysis now.
* Herd immunity ‘definitely not’ Sweden’s goal for coronavirus, says chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell. Newsweek, 14 September 2020.
Also see:
– The surge in Covid cases is not as it seems. Spiked, 15 September 2020
– Will a surge in coronavirus infections lead to a similar surge in deaths? The intriguing evidence from Sweden and US that suggests not necessarily. Daily Mail, 14 September 2020
Are there any French out there? With your wonderful motto of liberty, equality and fraternity you should be leading the way, not being as stupid as the rest of us!
Have a look at this Bell & Potter report Malcolm, what do you think?
Coronavirus analysis & outlook – Areas of Europe & USA likely reaching herd immunity, 1 September 2020:
https://ca4.bellpotter.com.au/Research/GetFile.aspx?id=BFDADB85-EB5A-4489-8FA6-95117B0A3718
Elizabeth
The Bell and Potter article is very interesting. Anybody else got a take on this?
Thanks Elizabeth for posting this report’s URL. One of the authors wrote about it and put up a PDF of it at: https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/be-cautious-on-names-linked-to-a-victorian-re-opening .
The authors are in Melbourne, now with a Ring of Steel https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/16/ring-of-steel-melbourne-residents-face-5000-fines-for-trying-to-flee-to-regional-victoria around it, with a AUD$5000 fine for anyone leaving without one of a very narrow set of reasons. This is about 100km south west of here, Daylesford, in Regional Victoria where today we gained the ability to travel, and even have a holiday. We can drive through Melbourne to go to another part of Regional Victoria if we don’t stop there except for a very narrow set of reasons.
I wrote to the authors that their analysis ignores the effects of vitamin D, as does the main way of thinking about health in general and COVID-19 in particular for most doctors, government officials etc. I wrote that the northern hemisphere dip in infections and deaths after May was probably largely due to vitamin D levels rising in summer as well as due to lockdowns etc. and to some limited degree of herd immunity. What they wrote about T cell memory cross immunity from various cold viruses is based on fancy lab tests, not on actual tests to see whether such people are actually immune to infection with SARS-CoV-2. I guess this is existing T-cell immunity is of some importance, but I can’t tell how much. One of the articles they mention, but don’t link to, is: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/04/science.abd3871 .
If hospitalisations and deaths rise in the UK etc. despite all efforts over the northern winter – the next 3 to 6 months – (exactly the opposite of what the Bell Potter authors predict) then it will be hard to avoid the conclusion that low vitamin D levels play a critical role in severity and in viral shedding, even if they only marginally affect the probability of being infected for any given viral insult. If this happens, then hopefully the penny will drop and people (including more than a few doctors) will realise that for the price of 0.045 grams of D3 a year they don’t have to suffer like this due to the winter drop in vitamin D levels.
There is an article predicting seasonality for COVID-19: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.567184/full I am about to read and comment on it. Ref 80 is to a now-withdrawn fake Alipio article: https://researchveracity.info/alra/ .
The UK government expects COVID-19 to get worse in winter too – the opposite of what the Bell-Potter report predicts. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3520 and https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53954492 . But what is it about winter which drives viral diseases? Primarily or wholly low vitamin D – which is much easier to fix than to put up with the consequences of not fixing.
Thank you for the link to the Bell Potter analysis. Very interesting. Good to think that despite the monumental mismanagement by our own govt, we may have achieved heard immunity.
The Spectator has run a series of articles by Prof Carl Heneghan. They are behind a paywall, but it might be worth the doctors here taking out a short subscription to the Spectator:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/writer/prof-carl-heneghan
Why haven’t normally well infants between 6 months and 5 years not been affected?
Why are the symptoms in normally well older children only mild?
No-one seems to have answered this from a physiological point of view.
Surely the criteria for getting tested, temperature and cough, have a very low specificity?
The other day I saw a 7 year old patient with sore throat and temperature, she also had swollen cervical lymph nodes (glands), indicating that she was fighting the infection.
Mum said that she saw white spots on her throat (we’re not meant to examine throats).
I sent the child home with 10 days of Penicillin V. I avoided suggesting that the family get tested, however, I did suggest keeping the child home until the end of the week (not that she couldn’t go to school), to stop the school throwing a wobbly and sending other children home unnecessarily.
Because heart disease is still a major issue – maybe more so because of COVID – and research and reviews keep coming in:
Is taking hypertension meds at bedtime beneficial really, or possibly dangerous?
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08037051.2020.1747696
And, concerning the heart and COVID – does COVID set you up for early heart disease even after “recuperating”?
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/evidence-builds-covid-19-can-damage-heart-doctors-are-racing-understand-it
Of course, some of us… um… already understand the issue. So further research would be redundant. Right??
I hope you dont mind me putting in my 2 cents’ worth. Being an ordinary slightly over 70 year old, it strikes me that it’s we older people who are following Govt rules and doing what we’re told. Not us spreading the virus left right and centre, but the younger ones enjoying life together. Just saying.
Rosemary, I’m a tad younger than you, not that is really relevant. There is no evidence that masks, distancing and hand washing have any effect on virus transmission. Staying indoors in a room with a couple of dozen people might (oh dear, that word “might” again raising the possibility of uncertainty) increase transmission, but then only if we believe the germ theory, which in itself is questionable.
As for young people doing what young people do, what’s the problem? Didn’t you do what young people do at that age? The sort of things that make life worth living? Why should young people be denied that now?
Apparently some consider that those who don’t wear a muzzle are selfish, how selfish is it that old fogeys like us should expect young people to have no life, just so we get a false promise of longer life? We’ve had most of our life, now we have to let others have theirs and we have to take our chances. There is always the protection which will be given by a largely untested vaccine for which no one in the medical world will have any liability, that’s a great comfort.
Just saying.
An analysis of the covid response from doctors in Belgium. Good read! With some amendments,it would be great to see doctors from around the world co- signing.
“More than 200 doctors express concern in an open letter about the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak”
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kt3cgrp63w85irr/200%20Belgian%20Doctors%20against%20Corona%20Hysteria.pdf?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR0uM3UwENzMvTIrcuhuZ_euW5AV9mbUdJrcexFHUnKEiE_BGN3ODARrc5w
Dr,kendricks as a long term admirer of yours I am a little anxious that you might have lead me a little astray and possibly encouraged some who normally would not share many of your views? It appears to me that although the IFR may be similar to flu….IF the disease is MORE infectious then many more will be infected and althought the IFR is similar the amount of deaths as a result will most likely overwhelm a health system…and lockdown etc may be actually required to stop this total collapse and increased fatalities from many causes…..If such is the case it might be an idea to possible correct the record? Yours sincerely Dick Spicer
Dick – Comment suggests no more than a cursory glance at silly headlines, not sure if it’s meant to disrupt the arguments – I was going to say childlike
Considering the fatalities among young medical staff dealing with C19, would an increased viral loading in the population in general increase the risk of serious illness/fatality in younger cohorts?
Ross – not really
Thank you so much for your work Malcolm.
I am from Melbourne Australia and currently in the most severe lockdown.
One question I get from people when I speak of the wisdom of your suggestions is that the say the the healthcare workers looking after Covid patients will get sick and more likely to die if the numbers of Covid cases in hospitals rise. No one wants to put doctors, nurses etc on the front line at risk. Do you have an article you have written on this or point me in the direction of finding this info.
Thanks again for your time.
Best,
Isaac Xavier
Health Coach, Writer, Sleep and Breathing Evangelist
Phone: + 61 422 977 040 http://www.isaacxavier.com
“When not preoccupied with ourselves, we actually have a chance to expand the concept of who we are.”
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
>
Yer i totally agree i think otherwise it just be going on forever. This lockdown has also had a massive impact on mental health. We are seeing less hospital addmission , an increase in positives but that goes to show more need to be infected. I imagine covid will be around for years to come, just like the common cold.
What to expect over autumn and winter?
My opinion is further economic contraction will occur. This will be achieved by perhaps a further national lockdown or large numbers of localised lockdowns brought about by a rise in postive test cases.
If vitamin D plays a key role in keeping the effects of the virus at bay then I would think that locking people away in their homes for weeks during the lockdown in March and scaring older and vulnerable people from venturing outside during the period when the sun provides enough light to generate vitamin D will mean, unfortunately, there may be a rise in deaths. This may be what triggers the new national lockdown.
I suspect that the generous furlough schemes will not be available this time causing major damage to livelihoods.
This time people who haven’t been social distancing and wearing masks etc. will be held responsible. Expect more coronavirus wardens be with added powers to fine you, like littering. Of course they will be incentivised to issue as many tickets as possible.
The BBC were reporting on a study recently that suggested people are now more divided than they were with BREXIT but this time because of people not wearing masks etc.
I am bewildered by the current panic with regard to cases. Surely the fact that thousands of people are testing positive, with low hospitalisations and very low deaths is a good thing? Surely that means that the majority of the population are not at serious risk from Covid19? What am I missing?
If you want to end lockdowns to help victims of domestic abuse, etc. (and who doesn’t want that?) why not push for stricter compliance with the tools that keep the virus from spreading (testing/tracing/masks&shields/distancing) so that communities can AVOID lockdowns! Rather than asking young people to get infected with a novel virus that causes lingering problems in an unknown portion of healthy young people (and could lead to other health issues down the road)?
I assure you my 90 year old mother would much rather risk getting covid than see her grandkids get infected with something that might impair their whole lives. But the truth is, she doesn’t have to make that awful choice – we could all just comply with the pandemic rules for 6-12 months so that communities can slowly reopen and stay open till we can achieve herd immunity via vaccine.
My other question about your plan – wealthy young people have the means to keep physically apart from their parents, grandparents, and vulnerable family members, but how will poorer young people, many of whom live in close quarters with extended family, avoid infecting them?
Also, as I have mentioned before, I read that the PCR tests in the US are being processed in a way (using too many “cycles” to find virus) that yields positive results in people who have an insignificant amount of virus – not enough to make them sick or be contagious (or develop immunity). If the UK has been using similar tests/processing, what happens to your plan?
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html?referringSource=articleShare)
Lisa, we could all comply with the never-been-tested-before-pandemic-rules, but where is the evidence they work? As well, you could do something simple like searching for “northern exposure” on this blog, and watch the video. In the UK, the deaths are now minuscule. You may not believe this as it doesn’t agree with the narrative, which no longer talks about deaths, but “cases”, a word which has had its meaning corrupted in recent weeks.
In the US, too, deaths have declined. Deaths were higher early in the pandemic because hospitals were overwhelmed, doctors knew nothing about the virus and lacked PPE/tests/therapeutics, nursing homes were clueless about keeping the virus out, and many vulnerable people got infected before anyone realized covid was here. Now, hospitals are on top of things, doctors have tests/new protocols/meds – and the old/vulnerable are staying home if they can and taking precautions if they can’t. (In the US, docs have been saying for some time that the average age of hospitalized patients has gotten younger. Since older people have weaker immune systems, that can only mean that older people are working harder to avoid infection than young people are.)
As for evidence, I know there was not a lot of data on masks early on, but Asian countries that never locked down yet never had out-of-control community spread all used the precautions I am talking about (testing/tracing/masks/distancing). In the US, regions that used these measures to prevent spread did better than those that refused to take measures. There has been some data recently on the effectiveness of masks, but it probably won’t satisfy you because, as proponents of masks have said all along, masks alone won’t protect anyone 100% – the idea is that each measure helps some, and all together, they help a lot. Some people think the fact that masks don’t provide perfect protection might be a feature not a bug – exposing people to amounts of virus too small to make them sick/contagious but enough to get their immune systems prepped.
Where’s the evidence that masks etc work? Tests are unreliable and I can’t afford to go 2 weeks with no pay just because someone I probably didn’t even see happened to go into the same cafe at the approx same time and was then dumb enough to book a test and test positive. No track and trace for me, thanks. I’d rather take my chances.
When you don’t isolate after exposure you are not just taking a risk yourself, you are putting everyone who comes in contact with you at risk, esp people older/more vulnerable than you.
You should read about testing/tracing/isolating. Around here at least, you would not be forced to stay home because you happened to be in a cafe where someone tested positive. That’s not how it works.
Moreover, if a community is consistent in using testing/tracing/masks/distancing, its citizens will not have to do a lot of quarantining because outbreaks will be rare and quickly contained.
For ex, this month I am living on a small island with a pop of 50,000 in the summer months (less than half that in winter). All summer, the island has, as usual, been inundated with vacationers from all over the US and beyond – ferries run back and forth all day, rental homes turn over weekly or monthly. Despite all that, life here feels close to normal. Retail stores and restaurants are open, and people grocery shop inside stores (most don’t offer delivery/curbside).
Amazingly, despite the traffic, turnover, and commerce, only 60 people tested positive for covid 19 in the eight months between Feb and Sept (over 8000 have been tested). How is that possible? Clearly not “herd immunity” since barely anyone has been sick. Maybe it’s the fact that, with only one small hospital and no ICU, islanders take the prevention seriously. In accordance with state protocols, people arriving from states where levels of covid are higher or rising have to self-quarantine; free testing is available for one and all; people are required to wear masks in places where they can’t maintain 6 ft distance from other people (violators pay a hefty fine); large gatherings are banned (and neighbors do report big parties); there are special hours for seniors/vulnerable people to go to the grocery store, etc.etc. etc.
All these measures have allowed the island to stay open yet safe despite many thousands of visitors coming and going all summer.
Recently, the # of positive tests jumped from 60 to over 100 in a week. Did the island immediately lock down? No. Stores and restaurants stayed open because contact tracers quickly found that those places were not the source of the outbreak. A small number of people did have to quarantine, but the rest of the 50,000 residents & visitors were unaffected by the outbreak.
In other words, using rational measures to control the virus allows people to lead lives very close to normal without sacrificing anybody’s health/life.
None of that contains any scientific evidence whatsoever – it’s just your feelings. If I was ill, I would stay home until I got better, but I’m no till so why shouldn’t I go about my daily business as usual? Why should my business be ruined? Why shouldn’t I see my friends (who are also not ill) just because someone who can’t read a study thinks that an old bra over your face and standing 6′ 7″ away from others actually helps anyone. And why is is more dangerous to be with others in a social setting after 10pm? What changes at 9.59? What is the problem with the seventh person (it’s like the old seventh picket rule for strikes)? Why are shops more dangerous than workplaces? Why is it less dangerous to have a waiter come to your table multiple times than to pay and collect food from counter in one go? Why do cafe assistant have to wear masks, but shop assistants don’t? Why do shoppers have to wear masks but people in cafes don’t – unless they are going to take their drink away? Why is one group of seven more dangerous than three groups of three?Why is it safer to have a nurse/doctor lean in through your car window than have a proper medical appointment – where premises could be disinfected between people? Why is it better to concentrate on one minor disease than all the others. How do I get food (and afford it) if I have to be isolated – even if you can get an online delivery slot the minimum order is far too much for one person and it costs a lot to get it delivered? And how can I afford anything if I can’t work for two weeks – not eligible for nay help and benefits take five weeks to come. If there was anything logical or rational about it, I might feel like going along with it. The best way to get over this virus would be to stop testing for it (esp in people who are not ill) and treat symptoms with treatments that work.
Lisa, I suppose iit’s good for you that you have such a strong faith. Personally, don’t believe in your “HandsFaceSpace” god, and you have no control in your experiment to prove whether or not you are right.
AHN
I don’t think you take phrases of people’s replies such as Lisa, out of context and do a pÎle on. What she said describing the situation on her island struck me as interesting.
Agree. Very interesting report on Lisa’s island. Isn’t that what we want to hear? Real world experiences and observations? Isn’t that what the rest of you want your leaders to know? We don’t know everything. The most we can hope for is we are the ones with our heads up watching and searching. Reporting. Lots of my way or the highway and distain for others here IMHO.
Exactly – and the scenario I gave was one where I probably hadn’t been exposed as a) anyone who was actually ill wouldn’t have been allowed into the cafe (or even the shopping centre) in the first place b) as all tables are at least 2m apart and there are many tables, I would be unlikely to come within 6m of the person who was dumb enough to get a test c) test is quite likely to be false positive if person was not ill – so why should I have to isolate, possibly go without food and lose 2 weeks money (jut because i was stupid enough to put my phone number of a piece of paper? And the govt is surprised that people are giving fake name in pubs. Duh! If lockdowns and isolation worked, why are we still seeing this virus- we’ve had lockdowns for 6 months now?
Hi Robin, I’m onboard with your vitamin D ideas, and I take supplements regularly now as I’m usually covered up against the Australian sun. However, I do roll up my sleeves occasionally for 10 minutes or so to get some natural exposure.
I do wonder though… In Scandinavia for example there’s less sunlight in winter. And in years gone by I presume vitamin D supplements wouldn’t have been the norm? What would Scandinavians natural defence have been then, food sources such as fish?
I remember hearing about cod liver oil when I was a kid, people taking spoonfuls. Wondering what that was about now, how long have people been onto vitamin D supplementation and what motivated them? What do you think about cod liver oil as opposed to the vitamin D tablets/capsules?
Also, as an aside, came across this article about the ‘Polar Night’ in Tromso, Norway, which is interesting: The Norwegian town where the sun doesn’t rise: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/the-norwegian-town-where-the-sun-doesnt-rise/396746/
Posting this again…didn’t get through moderation?
Another interesting link…
Do many people have pre-existing immunity to covid-19? The BMJ
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563
I read your article with interest and could see your case to a certain extent. My main response is to point out that the ‘viral load’ that NHS staff, care workers, public transport staff etc., would be exposed to could impact even relatively healthy staff. PPE supplies/awareness have improved, but not truly tested yet. There would also be more cases in many deprived areas & among ethnic minorities, all vulnerable – through increased viral load in the community. Underlying conditions may be undiagnosed. We have learned a lot from the first wave, yes, new treatments too. I fear though, that predictions on fatalities, and long term health issue predictions, from Covid 19, could be way off the mark.
This article should be force fed to every member of Parliament and all civil servants.
Thank you, Doctor.
So looking forward to Dr K’s response to the new round of nuttiness and the refusal to share the ‘science’ being ‘followed’ in the nations of the UK. So much anger and disbelief here in Scotland, I see the writing on the wall for the SNP and their childish ideas….try to lock the Scots down and they will rebel…😊
Herd immunity is being discussed again, some interesting articles to look up:
Coronavirus: What is herd immunity and could it work in the UK? Independent, 23 September 2020
Coronavirus: Whitty and Vallance faced ‘herd immunity’ backlash, emails show. BBC, 23 September 2020.
Is anyone else as bewildered as me about this SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 situation?
So this is a virus so mild that many people won’t even know they have it…
Or if they have it, there will be minimal symptoms…
Or for others symptoms will put them out of action for a while, but they will recover.
And some others will get it, including younger people, who may be left with long-term side-effects…
Or it will actually be deadly to others, particularly elderly people with co-morbidities…
So that covers a lot of bases…
The question is though, is this virus a major problem for the majority of people, and does the virus merit the level of societal and economic disruption that is occurring?
It’s also very alarming that academics/scientists/medicos are dominating this conversation, with who knows what agendas and conflicts of interest. And politicians are using these people to make decisions which are impacting on millions, nay billions, of people…i.e. us.
Our rights are being trashed, and people are not being held accountable. How is it legitimate for politicians to be exerting this level of control over us? See for example Boris Johnson in the UK and Daniel Andrews in Victoria, Australia. It’s extraordinary really how people are being controlled. Is this justifiable for this virus?
Ok, if this is a fair dinkum emergency, and the virus is real, yes, we need to take steps to deal with it. But I don’t trust the system, so I look at everything suspiciously…the imposed social distancing, the masking that many are enduring, etc. So much control going on. Astonishing things are happening in our liberal democracies under the guise of this virus, to use that over-used word, it’s unprecedented.
What do others think about all this?
Also, see below a quote from a recent CNN article focussing on ‘cases’ again in the US. And daily deaths – how do these deaths fit into the approximately 2.8 million deaths expected in the US every year?
US coronavirus: 21 states are reporting increased Covid-19 cases as experts warn of fall surge – CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/27/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/index.html
The US could see an explosion of Covid-19 cases in the fall and winter as people exercise less caution and spend more time indoors, where there is a greater likelihood of transmission, according to Dr. Chris Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
Murray says the IHME model shows a “huge surge” expected to take off in October “and accelerate in November and December.” The IHME model indicates that the country is currently seeing about 765 daily deaths from Covid-19, but that number could jump to 3,000 daily deaths by late December.