30th December 2020
I have not written much about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, written many hundreds of years ago.
In it, Dante describes the outcasts, who took no side in the rebellion of angels. They live in the vestibule. Not in heaven, not in hell, forever unclassified. They reside on the shores of the Acheron. Naked and futile, they race around through a hellish mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner, symbolic of their pursuit of ever-shifting self-interest.
I find this description of the desperate pursuit of an elusive wavering banner rings rather true. This, it seems, is pretty much the place we have arrived at. Which banner have you decided to follow?
The ‘COVID19 s the most terrible infection ever, and we must do everything in our power to stop it, whatever the cost’ banner.
Or the ‘What on earth are we doing? This is no worse than a bad flu, and we are destroying the world economy, stripping away basic human rights and killing more people than we are saving’ banner.
There may be others.
Between these two, main, completely incompatible positions, lies the truth. It is in pretty poor shape. It has been crushed, and bent out of shape, smashed, and left as a broken heap in the corner. I search where I can, to find the fragments, in an attempt to bring together a picture that makes some kind of sense.
But what to believe? Who to believe?
I feel somewhat like Rene Descartes. In order to find the ineluctable truth he scraped everything away until he was left with ‘Cogito, ergo sum’. ‘I think, therefore I am.’
I have stripped away at the accuracy of PCR COVID19 testing. I found myself left with nothing I could make any sense of. I hacked down to establish the way that COVID19 deaths are recorded. All I found were assumptions and difficulties.
Did someone die with COVID19, of COVID19 – or did it have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with COVID19? Who knows? I certainly don’t, and I wrote some of the death certificates myself.
Have we overestimated deaths, or underestimated deaths? I do not know … and so it goes on.
So, what do I know? I know that COVID19 exists – or I am as certain of this as I can be. Was it a natural mutation from a bat, or was it created in a laboratory? Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. It’s here, and there is no chance that any Government, anywhere, would ever admit responsibility for creating the damned thing. So, we will never know. If you asked me to bet, I would say it was created in a lab, then escaped by accident.
Is it deadlier than influenza? Well, it is certainly deadlier than some strains of influenza. Indeed, most strains. However, Spanish flu was estimated to have killed fifty million, when the world’s population was about a fifth of what it is now. So, COVID19 is definitely less deadly than that one. About as deadly as the influenzas of 1957 and 1967. Probably.
Will it mutate into something worse? Who knows.
Will the current vaccines work on mutated strains? Who knows.
Can it be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers? Who knows.
How effective are the current vaccines going to be? Who knows.
What are we left with?
At the beginning, I kept relatively quiet on how deadly COVID19 would prove to be. Because I didn’t know. The figures raged up and down. The infection fatality rate become a battle scene, with warriors lined up on either side to defend their positions.
I even got attacked by factcheckers, the self-appointed know-it-alls who are, it seems, capable of judging on all matters of scientific dispute. Truly, the Gods have descended to live amongst us. Those who can determine what is true, and what is not. No need for any further clinical trials, or any more scientific studies of any sort, ever. We just need to ask the Fact Checkers for the answer, to any given question.
Anyway, it appeared that tens of thousands died in some countries, almost none in others. What I was waiting to see, was the impact on the one outcome that you cannot alter, or fudge. The outcome that is overall mortality i.e. the chances of dying, of anything.
I did this because, when it comes to recording deaths from a specific illness, things can go in and out of fashion. A couple of years ago I looked at deaths from sepsis. At one time this was a condition of far lower priority. Doctors didn’t routinely search for it, or routinely record it, on death certificates.
Sepsis is an infection that gets into the blood, toxins are released, and people die. Everyone knew it happened. Or at least I hope they did.
Then, all of a sudden, there was a gigantic push to look for it more diligently, diagnose it more, treat it better. I think this was generally a good thing. Sepsis is eminently treatable, if you think to look for it, and lives can be saved. We now have initiatives like ‘Sepsis six’ and warnings that pop up on computers. ‘Have you considered sepsis,’ and suchlike. I love it … not. Because I do not love being told how to think, and do my job, by a computer algorithm programmed with ‘zero risk’ as their touchstone. But, hey ho.
In 2013, in the UK, a report was published by the health ombudsman ‘Time to Act – severe sepsis, rapid diagnosis and treatment saves lives.’ As the report stated.
‘Sepsis is a more common reason for hospital admission than heart attack – and has a higher mortality.’ The UK Sepsis Trust 1
That last statement is somewhat disingenuous, as many people with sepsis are very elderly, often with multiple morbidities, and suchlike. They were probably going to die, shortly, from something else.
Anyway. With all this activity, with all this increased sepsis recognition and treatment, you would expect the rate of deaths from sepsis to fall. It did not. The rate has gone up, by around 30% since 2013. Does this mean there is far more sepsis going about? Or, that it is just more often written on death certificates? I suggest the latter. I use this example, simply to make it clear that even the cause of death written on a death certificate is far from rock solid evidence.
With COVID19, this is a massive problem. In the UK, and several other countries if you have had a COVID19 positive test (which may, or may not, be accurate) and you die within twenty-eight days of that positive test, you will be recorded as a COVID19 death. I do not know much for sure about COVID19, but I do know that is just complete nonsense.
There are so many cases where – even if the COVID19 test was accurate – COVID19 would have had nothing whatsoever to do with the death. Another thing known, or at least we probably know, is that the vast majority of people who die had many other things wrong with them.
In the US, the Centre of Disease Control (CDC) found that ninety-four per cent of people who died of COVID19 ‘related deaths’ had other significant diseases (co-morbidities) 2. This ninety-four per-cent figures would only be the co-morbidities that were known about – who knows what lurked beneath? Especially as people stopped doing post-mortems (i.e., autopsies in the US).
So yes, they had COVID19 (or at least they had a positive test – which may not be the same thing), but they were often very old, and already severely ill. Using an extreme example, someone with terminal cancer who is a week from death, catches COVID19 in hospital, and dies. What killed them? The statistics say COVID19. I say, bollocks.
When I started in medicine, ‘bronchopneumonia’ (a bad chest infection) used to be known as the ‘old man’s friend.’ For those who were very old, and frail, often demented, lying in care homes, often incontinent, a chest infection represented a reasonably painless way to die.
Very often we would not actively treat it, instead we allowed for a peaceful death. Indeed, this still happens. Less so now, as someone, somewhere, often a relative from a country far, far, away – who has not visited for years – is far more likely to sue you.
Did they really die of bronchopneumonia? You could argue yes, you could argue no. Yes, it was the thing that finally pushed them over the edge. No, they were already slowly dying as their body gave out. In the end, what does anyone actually die of? My Scottish grannie, who lived to one hundred and two, used to say ‘they die frae want of breath.’ Entirely accurate, but, alas, also completely useless.
So, what you need to do, is look beyond what is written on death certificates. You need to look at what is happening to the overall mortality. Whilst you can argue endlessly, pointlessly, about specific causes of death. What you cannot argue about is whether or not someone is alive, or dead. Even I usually get this one right. No pulse, no breathing, no reaction of the pupils to light, no response to pain… and suchlike. Yup, dead. Now… what they die of? Um… let me think.
Thus, I have tended to look to EuroMOMO. The European Mortality Monitoring project. As they say, of themselves:
‘The overall objective of the original European Mortality Monitoring Project was to design a routine public health mortality monitoring system aimed at detecting and measuring, on a real-time basis, excess number of deaths related to influenza and other possible public health threats across participating European Countries.
Mortality is a basic indicator of health. Therefore, understanding its epidemiology is fundamental for effective public health planning and action.
Mortality monitoring becomes pivotal during influenza or other pandemics for several reasons. In a severe pandemic, mortality monitoring can be a robust way to monitor the pandemics progression and its public health impact when other systems are failing, due to an overburdened health care sector. Decision makers will require data on the pandemics impact and on deaths by age and geographical area in various stages of the pandemic. Mortality monitoring can provide such estimates, which will be important to guide and prioritize health service response and decision-making, i.e. use of antivirals and vaccines.’ 3
Here are the data that you can therefore, pretty much, fully rely on. It is where I go to see what is really happening across Europe. Not all of Europe, as some countries do not participate. However, there are more than enough, to get a good picture. It encompasses key countries such as Spain, Italy, the UK (split into four separate countries), Sweden and suchlike.
Here is the graph of overall mortality for all ages, in all countries. The graph starts at the beginning of 2017 and carries on to almost the end of 2020.
As you can see, in each winter there is an increase in deaths. In 2020, nothing much happened at the start of the year, then we had – what must have been – the COVID19 spike. The tall pointy bit around week 15.
It started in late March and was pretty much finished by mid-May. Now, we are in winter, and the usual winter spike appears. It seems to be around the same size as winter 2017/18. It also seems to have passed the peak and is now falling. But it could jump up again. [The figures in the most recent weeks can always be a bit inaccurate, as it can take some time for all the data to arrive]
Two things stand out. First, there was an obvious ‘COVID19 spike’. Second, what we are seeing at present does not differ greatly from previous years. The normal winter spike in deaths.
If we split this down into individual countries, this reasonably clear pattern falls apart.
Here are the figures from England
Unlike the first graph, the scale on the left is not absolute numbers. It is a thing called the Z-score. Which means standard deviation from the mean. Sorry, maths. If the Z-score goes above five, this means something significant is happening. The red, upper, dotted line is Z > 5. As you can see, despite the howls of anguish from England about COVID19 overwhelming the country, we are really not seeing much at all.
What of Sweden, that pariah country? They did not fully lock-down, the irresponsible fools (all they did was follow WHO guidance – by the way), and we are now told they are suffering terribly, they should have enforced far more rigid lockdown, their ‘experiment’ failed etc. etc. COVID19 shall have its vengeance. Or to quote Arnie – I’ll be back.
As you can see, nothing much happening in Sweden either.
Then, if you look further, there are anomalies all over the place. Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, and did exactly the same things as the rest of the UK with regard to lockdown, masks etc. At least it did in the earlier part of the year. However, it shows a completely different pattern to England. Or, to be fully accurate, it shows no pattern at all. No waves, and nobody drowning.
What of Slovenia?
As you can see absolutely nothing happened earlier in the year in Slovenia. Now, it has the biggest spike of all – apart from, maybe, Switzerland. Earlier in the year it was held up as a great example of how brilliantly effective masks were. Now… you don’t hear so much about masks. Maybe masks only work in months beginning with M. [Maybe, whisper it, they don’t work at all].
So, what have I learned from euroMOMO? First that it appears to have made absolutely no difference if a country locked down hard, and early, or did not. Everyone points at Norway and Finland as examples of great and early government action, and how wonderful everything would have been if we had done the same.
Well, look up at Northern Ireland. Then look at Finland
Spot the difference. There is none.
Of course, much of the most heated debate surrounded what happened during the so-called first wave. Who dealt with it well, or badly. Now, everyone in Europe is doing much the same things. Lockdown, restrictions on travel, restrictions on meeting other people, everyone wearing masks, etc. etc. Yet some countries are having a new wave, and others are not.
There is a special prize for anyone who can match up the severity of restrictions in various countries, to the Z-score. I say this, because no correlation exists.
So, again, what have I learned about COVID19? I learned that all Governments are floundering about, all claiming to have exerted some sort of control over this disease and ignoring all evidence to the contrary. In truth, they have achieved nothing. As restrictions and lockdowns have become more severe, in many cases the number of infections has simply risen and risen, completely unaffected by anything that has been done.
The official solution is, of course, more restrictions. ‘We just haven’t restricted people enough!’ Sigh. When something doesn’t work, the answer is not to keep doing it with even greater fervour. The real answer is to stop doing it and try something else instead.
I have also learned that, in most countries, COVID19 appears to be seasonal. It went away – everywhere – in the summer. It came back in the autumn/winter, as various viruses do.
On its return is has been, generally, far less deadly. Much you would expect. The most vulnerable died on first exposure, and far fewer people had any resistance to it, at all. Now, a number of people do have some immunity, and may of the vulnerable are already dead.
Which means that, in this so-called second wave COVID19 is of no greater an issue than a moderately bad flu season.
If I were to recommend actions. I would recommend that we stop testing – unless someone is admitted to hospital and is seriously ill. Mass testing is simply causing mass panic and achieves absolutely nothing. At great cost. We should also just get on with our lives as before. We should just vaccinate those at greatest risk of dying, the elderly and vulnerable, and put this rather embarrassing episode of mad banner waving behind us.
Hopefully, in time, we will learn something. Which is that we should not, ever, run about panicking, following the madly waved banners… ever again. However, I suspect that we will. This pandemic is going to be a model for all mass panicking stupidity in the future. Because to do otherwise, would be to admit that we made a pig’s ear of it this time. Far too many powerful reputations at stake to allow that.
1: https://www.ombudsman.org.uk/sites/default/files/Time_to_act_report.pdf
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 
10 Points to Ponder as 2020 draws to a close ...
1. The dumbest thing I ever bought was a 2020 planner.
2. 2019: Stay away from negative people.
. 2020: Stay away from positive people.
3. The world has turned upside down.
Old folks are sneaking out of the house & their kids are yelling at them to stay indoors!
4. This morning I saw a neighbour talking to her cat. It was obvious she thought her cat understood her. I came to my house & told my dog…. We had a good laugh.
5. Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit.
Pyjamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.
6. Does anyone know if we can take showers yet or should we just keep washing our hands?
7. I never thought the comment, “I wouldn’t touch him/her with a 6-foot pole” would become a national policy, but here we are!
8. I need to practice social-distancing ….from the refrigerator.
9. I hope the weather is good tomorrow for my trip out to the bins!
10. Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go into a bank with a mask on and ask for money.🤣🤣
Brilliant AHNotepad lol
Thank you for being a voice of reason in this current season of insanity and hysteria. Very much enjoyed this blog post, and it’s great to hear that level-headed medics do exist! (And I’m allowed to say that as a fellow medic).
No, probably not. You will be isolated and sent for mental reassignment.
An excellent article and written so that most folk can understand it; thank you for taking the time to write it. I think the elephant in the room will be the long-time costs and fallout from those who have been kept in isolation for months. Un-diagnosed and untreated conditions aside, I fear we will start to see an explosion of mental health issues across all age ranges (I write ‘explosion’ not for effect but more so out of anticipation). Will the Govt assume these premature deaths and conditions to be covid related? The Govt and official sources are unlikely to attribute any post covid rise to its policies but there must be a factor somewhere.
Interesting article. Noticed some of the same myself, but can you poost where your graphs come from? Can’t find that data.
Not so worried by the medicos as I am by those nihilistic kids in the garage with their CRISPR kits.
As for this blog post, bang on point. The folk dyeing are the ones most likely to die even in a year of no COVID-19. Extra deaths tell us something but the oldies dying doesn’t really tell us much at all.
Thanks for putting this up.
sorry im tech thick spelling no very great either…. this is pantomime season infact its been a pantomime since 2020 started WAKE UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
Some might argue that the big spike in week 15 of 2020 is in part due to the milder rise in the winter 2019 morbidities. Those folks ‘dodged the bullet’ in 2019 only to have their luck run out in 2020…but hey, what do I know, I’m not an epidemiologist – I only play one from the keyboard.
Agree – this is outstanding!
Love your analysis that speaks sanity – love the ponders and they lifted my spirits – my ponder for the year gone by is why o why did the government not shield the vulnerable
I don’t think that it is the job of the government to shield anyone, is it? Isn’t that the job of each one of us, in our unique position. The job of governments, if they have any, re illness, is to get their facts straight (as much as there are straight facts known) and let people act accordingly. Governments probably should close borders (inc airports) under some circumstances, or arrivals from specific places, where appropriate, but other than that I think they should keep out of the lives of HM’s subjects.
> I don’t think that it is the job of the government to shield anyone, is it?
Hold on, that’s the magical argument for disbanding the army, navy, air force, and police.
AhNotepad. Thankyou so much. We are splitting our sides open in our house. Fabulous!!!!.
Ah Notepad………you made my day. Funniest, wittiest thing I’ve read in god knows how long! Thank you! Hope you don’t mind me copying and sending to friends who could also do with a good laugh?!
Gery, not at all, that’s what I did 😂
Well done Notepad. You made me smile.
Oh, thank you! Sharp wit and so on target.
Just brilliant. So nice to realise I’m not truly mad. Agreed. 💯
AhNotepad – thank you. That’s a dose of perfection medicine for our locked down, buggered up woes. 🤣
Absolute, Pure GOLD !
“This is NOT a holdup!” 🙂
such a good laugh
AHN Thanks.
I took liberties & plagiarized.
Thanks for a great article to finish 2020 on. As Einstein said ‘Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.’ I suspect if he was alive then he would use 2020 would a shining example of the latter….
great write up. I agree that we pos can influence R by a small portion of its natural variance (fluctuation from 0.6 to 6). What I disagree with in looking at excess deaths is assuming no difference between saving 2 weeks of life and 20 years. Yes a person aged 60 with comorbidities will eventually die aged 80 when medicare provided. This person dies at age 60 only on the fact of contracting C19. I think the only way to look at this and be accurate is to look at lost “years of life” and not per each life lost. If we have arrived at data showing no significant years of life were lost above logic fully applies.
I agree. But my life contains only twenty four hours in each day.
Bartlomiej, Dr Sebastian Rushworth did some calculations on that here: https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/29/how-many-years-of-life-are-lost-to-covid/
If masks don’t work, what is the explanation for this? That we wear them incorrectly? Wear the wrong kinds? Or that no mask can stop a virus? Or this virus?
If masks made a difference then why have they not made a difference? In France mask warning become mandatory, both inside and out, from August 21st. After this rate rate of infections rose from 5000/day to 100,000/day. Yes, I know the immediate counter-argument. It would have been worse if they hadn’t. I don’t know this, nor does anyone else, all I know is what actually happened. Not, what might have happened.
What is the science of why they fail to prevent spread? Why don’t they work?
What is the science that they do?
Malcolm, that’s such a good answer compared to my wordy diatribe.
Rob Friedman,
Here is some science for you. Is it “settled science”? Hell, no, but it’s thought-provoking.
http://stan-heretic.blogspot.com/2020/11/not-wearing-surgical-masks-reduced.html
Here’s a testimonial from a veterinary surgeon.
https://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2020/12/igg-iga-and-sniffing-virus.html?showComment=1607843944844#c8279773654711416745
My own (layman) guess? Masks vs no masks is not really a binary condition. Too many factors to consider. Some of the ones I can think of (never mind the ones I can’t):
The nature, quality, and condition of the mask.
The transmissibility of the thing “masked” (will the virus penetrate the mask? Under what circumstances?)
The “skill” of the wearer (are they treating the mask correctly?)
The contagiousness / susceptibility of the wearer.
The environment the people are in (outdoors, indoors with good or poor ventilation)
Length of time exposed to infected air.
Lack of eye protection (yes, the eyes may be an entry point for Sars-CoV-2)
For all the studies which have been done, I think the “acid test” would be to mask up some demonstrably sick people and have them breathe at close range on demonstrably healthy people. See who gets sick. They did this in 1918 to more than a dozen people during the huge pandemic (except they weren’t wearing masks). No one got sick. Of course, this study would never be done today. We really don’t know much more than we did in 1918, however “modern and smart” we think we are now.
And, by the way, I don’t understand who would down-vote Dr Kendrick’s comments on masking. Masking is grossly unsettled science, virtually more religion than science.
Thanks for sending. It’s hard for a layman to know how to respond to the split between opinions. Logically, wear a mask: if it’s ineffective, there’s no harm in it.
It’s a branch of science called, politics.
Two possibilities come to mind. The first is that the virus is so very small, although it is transmitted in droplets of water so perhaps the size of the virus isn’t the be all and end all of the matter. The second factor seems to me to be the fact that people touch their masks. If they have already got the virus they will have possibly deposited it on the mask surface and touching that surface is now a means of spreading what they have. If they don’t have the virus then touching infected shop products (or another source of the virus) before touching their mask means that they have possibly now deposited viral particles a few millimetres from their nose… um… not a good idea.
Caroline, that applies if the virus conforms to germ theory. If Bechamp is correct ant it’s about the terrain, I think evidenced by Edgar Hope-Simpson, then masks are pointless, as are most other interventions.
Yes, indeed.
Here’s an explanation — there is a video presentation that goes with this but of course that has been removed from Youtube because it ‘violates our terms of service’
Epidemiologist: Coronavirus could be ‘exterminated’ if lockdowns were lifted
‘Going outdoors is what stops every respiratory disease’
A veteran scholar of epidemiology has warned that the ongoing lockdowns throughout the United States and the rest of the world are almost certainly just prolonging the coronavirus outbreak rather than doing anything to truly mitigate it.
Knut Wittkowski, previously the longtime head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University in New York City, said in an interview with the Press and the Public Project that the coronavirus could be “exterminated” if we permitted most people to lead normal lives and sheltered the most vulnerable parts of society until the danger had passed.
“What people are trying to do is flatten the curve. I don’t really know why. But, what happens is if you flatten the curve, you also prolong, to widen it, and it takes more time. And I don’t see a good reason for a respiratory disease to stay in the population longer than necessary,” he said.
“With all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity. About 80% of the people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they were infected, or they had very, very mild symptoms, especially if they are children.
So, it’s very important to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible, and then the elderly people, who should be separated, and the nursing homes should be closed during that time, can come back and meet their children and grandchildren after about 4 weeks when the virus has been exterminated,” he added.
Wittkowski argued that the standard cycle of respiratory diseases is a two-week outbreak, including a peak, after which “it’s gone.” He pointed out that even in a regime of “social distancing,” the virus will still find ways to spread, just more slowly:
You cannot stop the spread of a respiratory disease within a family, and you cannot stop it from spreading with neighbors, with people who are delivering, who are physicians—anybody. People are social, and even in times of social distancing, they have contacts, and any of those contacts could spread the disease. It will go slowly, and so it will not build up herd immunity, but it will happen. And it will go on forever unless we let it go.
Asked about Anthony Fauci, the White House medical expert who for weeks has been predicting significant numbers of COVID-19 deaths in America as well as major ongoing disruptions to daily life possibly for years, Wittkowski replied: “Well, I’m not paid by the government, so I’m entitled to actually do science.”
https://ratical.org/PandemicParallaxView/PerspectivesOnPandemic-II.html
About the Author
Dr. Wittkowski received his PhD in computer science from the University of Stuttgart and his ScD (Habilitation) in Medical Biometry from the Eberhard-Karls-University Tuüingen, both Germany.
He worked for 15 years with Klaus Dietz, a leading epidemiologist who coined the term “reproduction number”, on the Epidemiology of HIV before heading for 20 years the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University, New York. Dr. Wittkowski is currently the CEO of ASDERA LLC, a company discovering novel treatments for complex diseases from data of genome-wide association studies.
Eddy, this may not be the video you referred to, https://brandnewtube.com/watch/dr-knut-wittkowski-amp-dr-dan-erickson-on-lockdowns-and-herd-immunity_ZLING2FWBp4w3gV.html as I haven’t watched all of it, but it is one with Knut.
Thanks – that’s not the banned video but still very good thanks – note that it features one of the docs who runs the California testing facility and was banned by YT.
Seems to me that if masks do work, then I by wearing one I am retaining the aerosol (or whatever form the virus takes) right there in front of my nose and mouth, held in by the mask, and am then inhaling it all back thus increasing my viral load. Is this suicidal???!! I am supposedly vulnerable due to my age although I am pretty healthy.
“In France mask warning become mandatory, both inside and out, from August 21st.”… That was only in certain hotspots, Paris, Toulouse and so on… not nationwide… in the department of Gers for example, it became mandatory in communes with populations of more than 1400 from December 8th… The highest daily increase of infections in France was 88790 on November 7th… however, that is presumably based on mass random testing, which makes it suspect due to false positive rates… none of that proves the efficacy or otherwise of masks… If we look at China as an example of a nation that wore masks and practiced extreme lockdown and has the pandemic under control… did the masks help or was it just that they wash their hands more often and are not very keen on kissing and hand shaking in general? If masks are useless or at least not proven to make a difference, why do medical professionals wear them in hospitals?
They don’t. Surgeons wear them, although they have never been demonstrated to do any good. They wear them, so tis claimed, to stop them dribbling into patient wounds and stop blood splattering into their mouth and nose. Some people believe they like wearing them to look more imposing and distant.
China claiming to have control over the virus is hilarious. Basically they just said look it’s not that bad but hey let’s say strict lockdowns and masks worked to wreck the West both economically and philosophically.
I often hear people say that medical professionals wear masks in hospitals, or that surgeons wear them when operating. This is not actually true, see: https://vimeo.com/483535178
What people should be asking is, “if they work, why don’t surgeons have to wear them?”
Dr Malcolm , I survived septic shock , which doctors never diagnosed . So I agree with you fully , they ever considered I went through septic shook . Over 15 years amd I’m still dealing with the after affects .
I worked in ICU for many years as a nurse, I was part of a team called critical care outreach and we rolled out the sepsis care bundle. We saw so many patients on the ward who deteriorated with sepsis or admitted with and not dealt with promptly. On the general wards and A&E was very poorly managed. I can tell you at that time, many doctors and many more nurses didn’t understand sepsis or how to manage it. I imagine it is still very mismanaged, and it shouldn’t have to be. But pressures in hospitals are high, staffing inadequate an training poor in many areas (such as nutrition, importance of gut microbiome etc). Sorry you are still suffering, Have you heard of redox signalling? If you are still struggling might be something to look at. I had mitochondrial damage 2ndy to ciprofloxacin. My healing only began when taking redox molecules. It might not just be the sepsis you have effects from, but the medication you took during that time.
Good advice, thank you.
Wilma and Jenny:- I went into septic shock during a boringly ordinary surgery…. over 90 hours in ICU, and I remember too many of them. The most horrific of experiences. But the worst was yet to come, when the chief of ICU informed me months later that he had no intention of following my “suggested” instructions re. Sepsis. – He felt they (Marik Protocol) was ‘too controversial’ for his taste ! So beg your indulgence when I react cynically to “experts” advising us on covid & masks and vaccination.
My own hypothesis is that even with the doubtful evidence behind the efficacy of mask wearing, the social psychologists advising the government have determined that they are an outward display of compliance with government restrictions. And therefore very useful.
It’s a way of creating peer pressure to comply with their various edicts.
As Sir Patrick V himself admitted, these are often not based on scientific evidence but “policy”
Rob, here is a free one for you https://www.greenmedinfo.com/anti-therapeutic-action/face-masks-lack-safety-and-ineffectiveness-research. Lots of information to see. For further information refer to a study done in 1981 at Severalls Hospital in Colchester, by Neil Orr, surgeon, about the use of masks in operating theatres. Then look up an article by Arthur Firstenberg on this and other studies. I think you will be surprised.
Thanks for sending this info. I look forward to digging in.
Happy New Year’s,
Rob
AhNotepad and Rob: Here is more information about masks:
https://www.rcreader.com/commentary/masks-dont-work-covid-a-review-of-science-relevant-to-covide-19-social-policy
Gary, thanks for that reference, there’s a lot to read there.
I have seen these studies previously too. There seems to be a whole host of evidence based studies over the past 50 years that fail to show material benefit from masks in all sorts of scenarios.
Odd that all of this got overturned in 2020. Clear that it is part of the general politicization and religion associated with Covid. A very large top professional services firm this year even made a video as its Christmas greeting for clients that mentions as part of the text how we are all showing we care by wearing masks. You see people on Linked In now even posting virtue signaling comments that laud them. Evidence, facts and trade offs around dehumanization are just not considered relevant.
If masks were beneficial then I strongly believe that evolution would have created at least one animal with a natural mask over its mouth and nose. I cannot think of a single mammal that has that. Guess that the need to exhale CO and expel it away from the face, as well as being able to breath oxygen in without encumbrance matters in evolutionary terms. I prefer not to tangle with our natural design that God plus evolution created for us. Masks are clearly counter to it.
The big issue right now is that we are not dealing with rationality when it comes to anything connected with Covid. Masks are just one manifestation of that. Cialdini’s “The Psychology of Persuasion” and Rosling’s “Factfulness” are very helpful analytical frameworks to understand the biases that are at work right now. Almost any history of the First World War then provides the empirical evidence of the ability of humans en masse to keep doing the same stupid things over and over. Doing those things was also popular at the time in pretty much every combatant country. So were the technocratic military leaders who took the decisions. It was only later that the stupidity was recognized.
One can extend the list to include Salem, the McCarthy era and the rise of Totalitarian philosophies in the last century. They were all started by populations that got afraid, with the fear then whipped up by politicians who used it to control the people. Normal rationality was then suspended and the cycle of fear followed by crazy policies that no one could question became self-perpetuating. We are living through a similar situation now. I am not sure how it will end. Am doubtful that the vaccines will be the end game, independently of whether they “work” or not,
Stephen, good comment. I don’t get this “wearing a mask shows you care”. I am not very people oriented, (you might have noticed), but I see the mask wearing as following policies put out by The Hancock, or fear of “catching” something if you don’t wear one, and justifying it by convincing yourself you “care”. Being a bigot, I think I care more by trying to get people to see that they do not have to wear these things, and if they will listen, what the studies over the years show. Maybe I care about me because if this mask thing doesn’t stop it will cause further social breakdown, not only between wearers and non-wearers, but between young and old. We have already seen this, mostly from oldies who say the virus is spreading because of irresponsible young people who won’t stick to The Hancock’s rules. As far as I know the young ones are just getting on with things in general without the veiled hatred/disapproval. Apparently there are some university students who are so scared they won’t let their house mates go out incase they bring something back, so living the one life you get is not universal. Next we have the criminal suggestion the government will get The Hancock or The Johnson, or perhaps The Gove, to announce secondary school children will have to wear masks all day. WTF? I have a friend whose son is somewhat deaf. He relies far more on lip reading than most of us. He has other problems too, but he is intelligent, is able to play the acoustic guitar, and sight reads the music. What is this ?hitty policy going to do to him?
I won’t wear a muzzle, and as yet have not come across anyone who wants to make an issue of it. If they do I must try and stay rational and ask for their name. If they ask why do I want their name, I will need that to put on the Notice of Claim that they will be able to discuss in court. I will have to point out they they are committing an offence for which they are personally liable, and not the organisation who employs them.
I have written to the CEO of Tesco, attaching a video of an incident of assault and battery against a customer, by “security” staff, in one of their Hereford stores. I got a reply.
Stephen,
Good post on a great article by our sensible Doctor, and of course the brilliant satire by Ah Notepad.
A couple of points. I presume you meant Co2 and not CO. You know that 40,000 ppm “planet destroying pollution” (according to the greenies) every human exhales, of which a large proportion would get trapped by a muzzle and rebreathed thus causing irreparable brain damage.
Your point about McCarthy is rather poignant right now as the Communists he ranted about are on the point of assuming power in the fraudulent American election – without firing a shot as they promised.
Patrick Healy: How right you are. They certainly know an invasion would be completely foolhardy as >40% of the civilian population are armed, but the theft of government/media has proven surprisingly effortless. We shall see what happens on Wednesday.
That viruses are incredibly small.
3 minute demo by an anesthesiologist using vaping to show what happens when we exhale using various kinds of masks.
Wow great utube clip to watch (anesthesiologist using vaping) truly masks don’t work
Thank you for making me laugh in these miserable days!
AhNotepad,
you are one of the few who can make me laugh.
God save you.
Love it, well done
very punny
May I forward?
yep, this one’s been doing the rounds a while but well worth sharing around again, he he
AhNotepad – re Point 7, I always thought the expression referred to a barge pole 🤔
AhNotepad, Nail on the head. If you had post that in Jan20 you would be sectioned. Now its classed as normal, Unbelievable.
michael, there are still some round here who would like to see me sectioned.
Hopefully this message will reach those of us with the ability to realise what’s really going on Mick C . (Hooe, Sussex)
This is very interesting stuff, but I think it surely all depends upon the extent to which there’s a second wave. The four year graph showing the winter death pattern with the April/May Covid spike as an exception hints that we may be over the worst of it, but we need the crucial Jan/Feb data to be sure of this. In previous years you can see that the sharp uptick in deaths starts in the weeks immediately before Christmas and carries on into spring. In 2020 however that uptick started before November, and then seems to have been suppressed by the November lockdown. This does, unfortunately, leave open the possibility that we will see a larger winter spike in deaths over the Jan/Feb period than in previous years.
However, even if it’s, say, twice the usual winter deaths number, the shuttering of the economy as a response to the danger presented is still a huge overreaction. Yes, I’m persuaded by the Great Barrington Declaration and that focused protection of the vulnerable was always the right approach. It is worth recalling that we do know, at this stage, that reinfection with Covid19 is so rare as to be a freak occurrence; that means that herd immunity is and always was possible and viable. (And no, Sweden hasn’t shown that this doesn’t work, because Sweden did not adopt the GBD recommendations, which wasn’t even written until autumn 2020).
Objections to the focused protection strategy hinge upon the idea being impractical, at which point surely we must ask: are you seriously saying that closing the economy and placing 65million people into family isolation is what a practical alternative looks like? It costs close to £60billion per month to run a locked-down economy. We’re really saying we couldn’t have left hygeine/distanced shops, pubs and restaurants open while expanding healthcare to protect the vulnerable and done it for, say, half that number? Of course we could have done.
John,
Great post, but I no longer believe the data on 2nd wave. The PCR test is at least somewhat fraudulent and they run it with far too many cycles.
Re ‘herd immunity’…
I’m wondering about this… Is it really feasible to expect ‘herd immunity’?
I’m speaking as a layperson here, just off the top of my head. Presumably there are many viruses? Flu viruses for example? But is there ‘herd immunity’ for these viruses?
Perhaps these viruses don’t even impact on most people? People don’t necessarily have antibodies or whatever to all and sundry viruses?
Why are some viruses named…and others aren’t even identified? How many viruses are there?
Just rambling thoughts…but wondering about this…?
elizabethhart: Good to wonder! Why is it that some are susceptible to colds and flu and others not? I have not been sick, except for two brief, trifling occasions which affected the nasal passages, in fifteen years. What did I do fifteen years ago? I stopped eating all ready-made food and began eating only home-made food made from scratch. Except for when traveling I have continued this. I’ve never been prone to getting sick much anyway, and can’t recall ever having the flu, but in my fifties I had several bouts of serious bronchitis during stressful periods in winter. Doesn’t happen any more. With the carnivore diet cold no longer bothers me nor my bronchii. I’m hiking weekly in snow with temperatures in the mid-30’s with no problem at all. I think good metabolic health is key. And the foods (and unnecessary medical treatments) we avoid are crucial to that. Proper breathing, too.
Read the Compatibility Gene, it postulates the reason why some people are immune to some diseases and others aren’t.
Also there’s a series of presentations on YouTube by Vincent Racianello entitled Virology 2020 which explains the prevalence of viruses.
One example, if all of the viruses in the ocean were laid end to end it is estimated that they would stretch over 100,000,000 LIGHT YEARS, with a total mass equivalent to approximately 1000 times the weight of all the elephants in the world.
Thanks John C.
Speaking of Vincent Racaniello, interesting to revisit this post on his Virology Blog, published in 2012, re the controversial US sponsored research into trying to make H5N1 more transmissable… (Subsequently described as ‘gain of function’ research):
Origin of the H5N1 storm: https://www.virology.ws/2012/07/10/origin-of-the-h5n1-storm/
Just think, if you went into a bank a year ago wearing a mask, you would be arrested. Now if you go into a bank without a mask, you would be arrested.
Yes, I have a good laugh at AH Notepad’s 10 things.
When I first read this my heart literally dropped – someone else misreading data and pronouncing on it, misleading the desperate into ignoring restrictions which can only lead to more deaths. I didn’t respond though because I assumed, rightly or wrongly, it had been written in good faith. A week later though I see no reflection or retraction, no reconsideration, despite all the evidence in front of us. Sweden was a failure, our lockdowns have been too little too late and test and trace pathetic, but all you can say is “stop testing”. If I can, I’ll follow this through to the bitter end, even if it means trying to have you removed form your profession.
Baz in Kent, so good to hear you can accept and allow people to have views that differ from yours. You obviously cannot be 77th brigade, are you a fact checker?
I don’t even know what you’re talking about, I’m just someone who’s worked with data analysis and research all his life and knows bullshit when he sees it. The question is “what’s the motive”, I assume in this case it’s notoriety to build a follower base, having seen this stuff repeated by Yeadon. Everything leads down the path of consequential curves – tests > cases > hospitalisations > deaths. It makes me both sad and angry that desperate people can’t see this and are being told what they want to hear, leading to more infections and down the path we go. This is preying on people’s hope and fear, it’s dangerous and despicable.
I can show evidence at every level of the web of deceit, be it PCR, NHS, ONS, whatever but I know from other challenges I’ve made that I won’t get an honest debate.
Baz in Kent, you have made veiled accusations.
Who is building a follower base by using notoriety? and why?
Who are the desperate people causing more infections?
Who is CAUSING the hope and fear?
Please show the deceit you refer to, and the players involved.
Coming here with statements like doing your best to ruin someone’s professional career because you don’t agree with what they say, yet it’s not worth you saying anything as you won’t get an honest debate. It seems as you are saying that it’s not honest if you don’t get agreement. If you want a debate, make some points without threats or disparaging remarks and be prepared for the reaction. If you get disagreement, there’s a chance of the discussion moving forward. If you get only agreement, what have you achieved?
Here are some stats for you:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/uec-sitrep/urgent-and-emergency-care-daily-situation-reports-2020-21/
Pull the latest one down UEC Daily SitRep – Acute Web File 28 December – 03 January 2021 (XLS, 147KB)
What’s to debate?
Tell me what you deduce and I’ll be happy to tell you what’s to debate, there’s a lot of data here.
1. MSM and you claim ICUs in the UK are overwhelmed and out of space.
The NHS website data indicates that is not so.
2. The MSM claim’s Sweden’s failure to lockdown and mandate masks has been a disaster.
In terms of death per capita Sweden has gone from 5th to 28th since adopting Focused Protection (recommended by the Great Barrington Declaration) in July. Surely this would be interpreted as a huge success.
And because there are so many countries in the top 20 that are in very restrictive lockdowns (martial law lite), the conclusion must be that lockdowns are totally ineffective.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
Over to you bud.
” … but I know from other challenges I’ve made that I won’t… ”
– Sums it succinctly, It’s all about you.
Feel free to re-direct your (un-appreciated…) efforts on a perhaps instantly satisfying media such as Twitter, a favourite of a certain narcissist who deemed it a way to run his country. – limitless audience.
Whatever I am I can’t get my posts past the moderator. I wonder why?
Because there is one moderator. Me. And I have a life outside of reading all comments. So it sometimes takes a little time. You may cease to wonder
You seem to be getting quite a few posts past the moderator. I know this as I have replied to some, but not all. My posts may not get past the moderator, but I am not so vain as to go looking to see everything I post gets put up. Some of what I say may not be acceptable, that’s ok, I have no wish to control the world.
In July Sweden was 5th on the covid deaths per capita hit list.
It’s not even in the Top 20 now (I believe they are 28th)
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
I think you have the words failure and success mixed up.
In reply to Fast Eddy, any cursory study of commentary on Sweden shows their backtracking.
My first post referred to misreading data to mislead and anyone intelligent and open-minded will know full well that comparing Sweden to the UK and not, say, Norway is misleading at best and more like deceitful. Sweden has ten times Norway’s deaths and if we’d followed their path we would have had a similar experience – ten times the death rate. This is why Whitty, who studied with Tegnell, decided against so-called “herd immunity”.
Interestingly although months late, the mainstream media and commentators finally have their lens turned on antilock and self-titled “sceptics” (makes it sound thoughtful) so I won’t be a lone voice for too much longer, having been a challenger of Yeadon et al for months.
Baz in Kent, Norway and Finland had a higher death rate than Sweden, so there were fewer people who would be likely to die this year.
It indicates a weak position when name calling is used, “antilock” and “self styled “sceptics”. Try getting rid of these tell tale signs and put forward your case
Baz in Kent, I meant to say Norway and Finland had a higher death rate in previous years, than Sweden.
AhNotepad: Yes, Dr. Rushworth has addressed this issue in regard to comparing Norway and Sweden.
If I sound aggressive it’s only to counter the obsequiousness of most other posts here.
As to prior year death rates in Scandinavian countries affecting 2020 mortality, unless you have access to evidence I don’t this is just not true, Noway’s death rate (around 8) in particular has been lower than Sweden’s (around 9) for many years. If I followed your argument (which I don’t) maybe you’d expect Norway to suddenly catch up with a lot of deaths in 2020? In any event there’s no evidence that death rate in one or more years has any impact on subsequent death rate other than through policy response.
I have written nothing about Norway. How can a death rate in a country be below another country. The death rate is always 1. Everyone who is born, then dies. Or perhaps you mean something else?
Re: Norway I’m replying to AH Notepad above. The death rate is widely as deaths per 1k population.
The death rate used, in almost all population studies is per one hundred thousand.
Indeed, my fat thumb. The point remains.
Baz – if I wanted to read the disinformation that you are posting here, I’d just go to the BBC.
I think that most of us are here because we can see that the MSM is lying on Covid (and just about every other topic under the sun)
Do you think you are capable of presenting the Big Lie better than the trained liars at the BBC and other MSM outlets?
If those liars cannot convince us then to be quite blunt, you have not got a chance in hell.
I know this is futile because I have shown this to various people who are also infected with CDS but let’s do it anyway:
Sweden adopted Focused Protection in July — they were 5th and now they are 28th on the per capita death list
I know they were fifth because I look at this site multiple times per week as I have been monitoring the impact of the policies of various countries https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
Have a look at the countries that are near the top of that list — UK Spain Peru Belgium Italy etc… all locking down. I believe that all countries on that list have some level of restrictions in place.
Given they have never locked down then surely Sweden’s death totals should be by #1?
Feel free to explain why they are not #1 on that list.
Better still, feel free to explain why there not on the list at all.
If you can’t provide a valid answer then I suggest you stop wasting our time and find a site with like minded people and drop your posts there.
Because on this site we are after facts logic and evidence. This is the antidote to CDS.
I’ve already talked about Sweden at some length but in view of your aggressive position I’ll go over it again and add some more layers for you.
1. Sweden has legislation against lockdown.
2. They have a high rate of trust in government and scientists
3. As one of your mates has demonstrated, the Oxford stringency index places them higher than Norway, Denmark and Fikand and about the same as USA and UK.
4. Despite this they have a much higher death rate per capita than the other Scandinavian countries
5. As recommended by WHO, making comparisons with bigger countries is misleading.
6. They’ve now legislated to allow them to impose restrictions, against a backdrop of an alarming increase in deaths which is above the EU average.
These are all facts which we can interpret as we like but for me, the main point is that the most (possible only) valid comparison is with other Scandinavian countries where Sweden has ten times Norway’s death rate, if you really still want to compare us to Sweden then I’ll compare us to New Zealand.
You cannot pick and choose any countries to compare with. If you are a believer in science you review all the data from all countries. For example, I choose to compare Northern Ireland with England. Then what, you choose Peru with South Africa, or Belarus. I choose Japan – which did not lock down, with Belgium, which did. What then. What arguments can be made? None.
Risk impact assessment of Malcolm Kendrick’s 30 Dec 20 Covid-19 blog post
Firstly let me explain why I take Dr Kendrick’s blog posts so seriously.
Lockdowns necessarily restrict people’s freedoms and cause damage to the economy and the nation’s health, for some people they’re too great a burden for a number of reasons, some more compelling than others. For instance:
• Low paid key workers who rely on SSP if they have to self-isolate
• People with illnesses that make them extremely vulnerable
• Elderly people who are therefore at risk
• Relatives of elderly people in nursing homes
• Owners of small businesses receiving no Government support (the “excluded”)
• Many people from ethnic minorities
This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Some people are less affected but nonetheless have to accept restrictions on their freedoms:
• Wealthy individuals, especially those receiving a pension aged 60-65
• People on furlough
• Younger people who feel “invulnerable”
Again by no means exhaustive but I would ask you to consider in which bracket you fit.
Lockdowns are therefore by definition unpopular and can be considered a “bad thing”.
Why then have they been so widely enforced? The obvious reason is that they are designed to save lives. There are few estimates of lives lost if we hadn’t had lockdowns but one put before the select committee in April 2020 was Prof Thomas of Bristol University’s j-value model which estimates 990,000 lives lost. This is before we knew about the new variant’s increased transmissibility. I should add that Prof Thomas was against lockdowns because he uses j-value to calculate a GDP value of life and demonstrated that average life expectancy could be reduced by an average of 3 months, leading to a calculation that this loss would be “worth” more than the value of the mainly elderly lives saved. You can form your own conclusion about this but UK Gov discarded this method and no doubt decided that almost 1 million deaths was too many to contemplate. Personally I find the concept unethical, distasteful and inhumane. You can read his paper in my online depository, along with other pieces of evidence and useful information:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1–_wcsVr6CNT7lyMIIkawTqpVG9Wc6Bj
The point then is that although lockdowns are damaging for some, potentially life threatening for a minority, inconvenient for many and widely unpopular, compared to the c.80k lives lost in 2020 they may well have saved over 900k.
What this got to do with Dr Kendrick’s blog? The fundamental issue is that he’s using his influence to encourage his supporters and others to ignore lockdowns and, from reading posts in response, you could argue avoid getting vaccinated against Covid. Why is this a problem? Well, his blog has been quoted on the Twitter feed of Michael Yeadon, a well-known lockdown sceptic with 90k followers, and of course he has his own followers reading the blog. Simple mathematics demonstrates that if only 90 of these followers were to ignore lockdown and ended up spreading Covid, with an R of 2 (not unreasonable based on current rates) a generation time of 3.5 days (median from studies) and a fatality rate of 1% (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/207273/covid-19-deaths-infection-fatality-ratio-about/) we would see 15k deaths within a matter of weeks. This is serious.
So how does Dr Kendrick actually influence people? The answer is by misleading them by deliberately misrepresenting data and scientific information, using a well-trodden path among so-called lockdown “sceptics” (a word designed to convey thoughtfulness) of:
• Testing – question PCR test accuracy and therefore…
• Cases – “why mass testing” etc leading to
• Hospitalisations – (“they’re not full” “ICU beds are empty”)
• Deaths – (“it’s just like a normal winter” “they’re not Covid” “non-Covid deaths are higher”)
In my depository I include information on each of these topics showing their falsehood. I’m open to challenge on any or all of these from anyone.
One particular area mentioned by Dr K is mass testing, this is 2 different topics.
Firstly PCR tests in the UK are only for symptomatic people so basically people need to get tested if they have symptoms, this is why tests go up when infections increase – not the other way round as you’re being led to believe. We haven’t ever used PCR for mass testing and although a small minority will have been tested without symptoms this will be statistically insignificant.
Secondly there is now mass testing using Lateral Flow Tests which are for people without symptoms and will provide useful information about infection spread, but anyone testing positive will have a confirmatory PCR test at some point. There has never been any questioning of LFT in terms of driving UK Gov policy, as far as I’m aware.
I’ve included a recent UK paper on asymptomatic transmission as this is often used as a red herring. I would say that Matt Hancock’s terminology of “1 in 3” isn’t helpful as this isn’t the case but it is true that people with Covid don’t show symptoms straight away so may well be asymptomatic (more accurately presymptomatic) for around a third of the time they’re infectious. This is important.
So if you refer back to Dr Kendrick’s blog post (and previous posts) you’ll see each of these and, with an open mind, will be able to understand my concerns. You can also examine other antilock people and resources, particularly but not limited to Michael Yeadon, Carl Henighan, Ivor Cummins and Toby Young who all use the same and similar tactics. If you spend enough time on Twitter you’ll also see a few people like me who are debunking them.
You should be asking “why would they do this?”. If you have any intelligence and are capable of analytical reasoning at even a basic level you’ll identify money as an obvious reason. Building up a follower base isn’t easy but once you have one, selling books for example becomes easier. It isn’t easy building a supporter base at the best of times but it’s definitely harder if you’re not differentiated, by which I mean if you don’t say anything different. Antilock is saying something different and has an attraction to a growing base as not having lockdowns has a seductive appeal.
Another reason may be some kind of fear of socialism, on the basis that any restriction is “bad for business”. I think this applies to some but not Dr K.
There are other potential reasons, one more sinister one I’ll throw in is to do with racism. It’s a fact that ethnic minorities suffer more from Covid. I’m not accusing Dr Kendrick of racism but it’s also a fact that some well-known antilock people are also anti-immigrant ie Farage, Tice, Claire Fox, Hartley-Brewer, Pearson, Young, Brady etc.
It could be argued that presenting an alternative view, as Dr K does, is “healthy debate” but I believe I’ve shown this to be false. It’s dangerous debate and could even be likened to 1930’s Germany if you consider the groups most exposed to Covid – ethnic minorities, vulnerable, sick and elderly.
I’m strongly against this 6th form Tory government and Boris Johnson in particular, one theme I commonly hear is “lockdown is hurting me financially”. This is a fair point to which I would answer it’s not lockdown it’s the virus, your battle ground should be the lack of proper financial support from UK Gov.
I also hear “look at all the missed cancer appointments” and “what about mental health?”. A couple of points:
• Tory austerity stripped the NHS of resources.
• UK Gov has been woefully inadequate in providing proper support and communication.
• Just look at the situation in hospitals now even with restrictions, mainly because lockdown has been too little, too late – but it would have been much worse without them.
Now ask yourself “what’s in it for Baz in Kent?”. If you can think of anything beyond saving lives let me know.
This pernicious misinformation has to stop.
B
11.1.20
So, you have accused me to trying to make money from my writing. Implied that I am a racist and that I am killing people. You have strongly claimed that no-one should question anything. Good job. You really did see 1984 as an instruction manual, rather than a warning.
Malcolm — you really should give the Koch Brothers a call — I understand (read it on CNN?) that they are funding Great Barrington so surely they’d send some cash your way. It is in their interests to fund covid sceptical authors because … uh… because… uh…
Amusingly, I passed the GBD link to a few people when it came out — they immediately responded with ‘Koch Brothers funded it’… and refused to read it. Amazing how just mentioning those two fellows – without any evidence — can immediately discredit something.
Hats off to PR people – they are so powerful that they can make a circle a square – or an intelligent person act very stupidly.
They can also convince people to beg for lockdowns, sign of with Stay Safe, and ignore facts and logic – all because of a bad flu.
Baz,
The concept of “misinformation” depends on your perspective.
In 1914-8 everyone supported offensives across No Mans Land in France. The “science” and the Generals said that it was the only way to win the war. Wearing down the enemy. The enemy were seen as an existential threat. Nobody thought of General Haig as General Melchett. He was a hero and the fund for veterans was named after him.
Most of the population agreed and herd conformity clicked in. Anyone who thought this was stupid was vilified and even imprisoned.
We now know how stupid this all was. But sentiment only changed from the late 20s onwards. Historians now recognise that this was a disaster. Most other disastrous episodes in human history have been the same. Think Salem, think Nazi Germany, and whatever. Popular sentiment and the voice of the establishment all agreed. A handful of brave people resisted but were metaphorically crucified. Sophie Scholl was guillotined by popular consent. No one lifted a finger.
A fallacy does not become the truth because it is a fashion.
I hope you see the parallels. Censorship is never smart.
Best,
Stephen
No idea what is in it for you Baz in Kent. Your mind is obviously one of the closed ones, and as I said in my post some people on here are incredibly spiteful. I hope you feel better after your massively long post with your accusations and unpleasant way of putting things. No, actually I don’t.
”Now ask yourself “what’s in it for Baz in Kent?”. If you can think of anything beyond saving lives let me know.”
Notoriety
”This pernicious misinformation has to stop.”
Then please stop it. and Watch ukcolumn on youtube at 13:00 Monday, Wednesday and Friday. There you will find an analysis of the current government misinformation.
You fail to apply logic or acknowledge facts in your shorter posts so forgive me if I don’t bother to read that rather long essay.
When credibility is lost, it’s lost. It’s similar to crying wolf over and over – then trying to tell a 30 minute story about how a wolf is about to attack.
@Baz in Kent
Your argument boils down to “Lockdowns work, therefore it is wrong not to apply them.”
Unfortunately, there is no undisputed evidence that lockdowns do, in fact, work. If you look at any one country, you should see kinks in the Cases and Deaths curves as lockowns are instigated or removed. You won’t find any. Also, if you compare countries with differing levels of lockdown, for every country doing well, there’s another country doing badly at the same level.
Common sense tells you that lockdowns should make a difference. But the data says lockdowns make no difference. To the spread of Covid, that is. Maybe small isolated areas get spared for a while if travellers are kept away, but ultimately Covid will get us all.
Our best defense is personal behavior, as in boosting general health, avoiding crowded areas etc. Maybe get vaccinated if you get the opportunity. Leaving it to the government to save you is fruitless. Look what they’ve done to the NHS. Do you think they care any more about you?
You also argue that lockdown deniers are only interested in business. Well, business creates jobs and pays the wages and taxes, and many people have sunk their life savings into small businesses. Business failures are devastating both financially and psychologically to many people. The downside to lockdowns is massive, and I believe very under-estimated.
Hi Baz in Kent,
So, if you really want to accuse people of having “blood on their hands”, why don’t we take a closer look, and include absolutely everybody who might fall into that category, shall we? Here we go:
1) Around the time that the pandemic was first beginning to spread globally, the WHO stated that there was no evidence of human-to-human contact. (Even though they had been warned by Taiwan, they chose to ignore that). So they must have massive blood on their hands.
2) When countries around the world wanted to ban flights to and from China, they were accused (by Tedros) of being “racist”, and were strongly encouraged not to do so.
3) At the height of the pandemic in New York City, at least one doctor and several nurses came out on YouTube and said that the treatments they were being told to use- (which came form “the top”, somewhere; I’m not sure which authority ordered this)- was actually killing people instead of saving them. This doctor gave a very technical analysis (meant for his fellow doctors). His video was, unfortunately, banned from YouTube. Eventually it resurfaced again, after that wave had passed. So I guess YouTube has massive blood on their hands as well.
4) Countless lawmakers, politicians, and other elites (including Neil Ferguson) have disregarded their own Lockdown orders. In some cases, there were parties of 200 people, with no social distancing, no masks. So we must accuse them of massive blood on their hands as well. Not only from the all those “deaths” they must have caused, but the fact that they weren’t very concerned about following their own restrictions might give some of the rest of us pause…..
5) Here in Germany, where I live, approximately 5000 doctors signed a petition to the government, urging them not to enforce more Lockdowns, because their claim was that Lockdowns cause far more damage than benefit. If the government had listened to them (which of course they didn’t), I guess these 5000 doctors would also have “blood on their hands”? I guess we should all be suspicious of doctors now, since it appears they want to kill us?
6) Also here in Germany, they have removed about 20 hospitals- (I’m not sure of the exact number), and around 2000 beds. They did this between the summer and the Fall of 2020. At the height of a “so-called pandemic”, one might ask….why???……
7) Many doctors are frustrated by the fact that they are not allowed to talk to their patients about vitamin D, and optimizing metabolic health. Although there is much scientific proof of these, “optimizing your immune system” and trying to prevent bad effects from COVID have been deemed “misinformation” by the WHO, Facebook, et al. (And according to WHO now, natural immunity “no longer exists”).
I could go on and on. But right from the beginning, I had the feeling that the people who were creating the policies were either totally incompetent….or something more sinister than that. By the way, I am not easily “influenced” by people. I ask my own questions, do the research and come to my own conclusions. Dr. Kendrick (and people like him) have only confirmed my suspicions.
Baz in Kent,
The single most problematic (I would say, “egregious”, but that would be wrong, of course) line in your comment is, “deliberately misrepresenting data and scientific information”. “[D]eliberately misleading”, you say? So, Dr Malcolm Kendrick is just a sniveling, demagogic, venal, self-aggrandizing, insensitive (or murderous) fabricator in search of a “following”? In your own words, “this is serious”.
I’ve read Dr Kendrick for a few years now. Maybe I’m just too daft and dense to see the unvarnished evil of this man. I suppose I’m too simple-minded to consider other sources of information, some confirmatory, some contradictory, of Dr Kendrick’s views. I suppose I don’t “have any intelligence and [am not] capable of analytical reasoning at even a basic level”.
Of course, we might have skipped the ad hominem and suggested Dr Kendrick is simply wrong. That might still be serious, but it would be an entirely different matter. We didn’t do that, did we, Baz in Kent?
I have taken a look at your Google drive. There’s a lot to go through. But I do note that “False positives.jpeg” (a screen shot?) is not sourced. Undoubtedly an oversight.
Still, Baz in Kent, thank you from the bottom of my heart for this treasure chest of wisdom you offer!
The fact I can’t get my posts past the moderator won’t stop me pursuing you people who’ve caused more deaths.
What do you intend to due once you have puseud them?
I recommend reading the attached before you do whatever it is you plan to do.
John Ioannidis of Stanford is a co-author. It’s not my field but I believe he is the most pre-eminent epidemiologist in the world. It’s also peer reviewed and looks at real cross country case data systematically rather than the counter factual of comparing model predictions with outcomes and then saying how great the policies were. Most Imperial College type papers do the latter and are therefore by definition non falsifiable empirically. Whatever the clever analytics, regressions and statistics that they deploy. The answer is still embedded in the framing of the paper.
Their conclusion: “we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020. We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures. The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmissions may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures.”
It’s about as strong as academics who focus on an evidence based approach and a rigorous approach to hypotheses and logic are likely to get in my experience.
Probably right to focus on “case” numbers (despite the data being noisy) but my guess is that death statistics would send a similar message more clearly – the countries that focused on lock downs of entire populations failed to protect the vulnerable populations who are likely to become severe and fatal “cases”.
Link here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484
Just released I believe.
Thank you for this
Thanks for finally allowing my posts and I hope they prompt some honest debate.
As to what I intend to do about people who use misinformation to mislead the desperate, there’s growing unrest in our country as the issue at last becomes mainstream and I have a long list to contribute. I can understand why there are some who are pulled in by the seductive appeal of ignoring lockdowns and other restrictions, especially those that have been let down by our 6th form government’s pathetic financial and other support, but I don’t understand and will always condemn anyone who takes advantage of this, whatever their motive. What’s your motive? What are the key planks of your pandemic strategy? You must know that a good deal of what you wrote is at best questionable so why write it? You know full well that just one person ignoring restrictions exponentially risks the lives of others, no matter whether they’re themselves less vulnerable.
I saw your post quoted by Yeadon, that’s at the root of my issue with you. I believe he – and by inference you – has blood on his hands.
B
You are a most aggressive fellow who has yet to provide a single fact about anything. Stating that people have blood on their hands is to suggest that somehow, or another, I have killed many people through my actions. If so, you perhaps have some facts upon which to base this statement. You state that my facts are questionable. In my last post I used data from EuroMOMO. To the best of my knowledge, no-one has questioned their data. However, you must believe that their data are wrong. If so, could you provide some facts to support your position on this.
And please refrain from making deliberately aggressive remarks. I did not ‘finally’ allow you posts. I approved them when I read them. I work full time, I am writing a book, I have a whole other life that has nothing to do with this blog. My entire philosophy is to allow debate, to encourage opinions that do not agree with mine. I may have to change this policy as a number of people have told me that they find the comments to have become too aggressive and they have been frightened off. Yes, that means you.
Baz, after your so open minded post, full of honesty and constructive debate, I won’t bother trying to compete with your eminent views, as they are, in summary, rubbish. Happy New Year.
Firstly regarding your moderating my posts, they hadn’t appeared in your blog and were no longer showing as pending so I assumed you’d deleted them. My apologies.
Am I a “most aggressive fellow”? That’s a matter of opinion but I’d say I’m frustrated, worried and a little annoyed. You’ll have seen that I delayed making any comment until more time had elapsed and the ramifications of relaxing restrictions, coupled with an increase in ignoring them, became evident in the hospitalisations and deaths statistics, to the point where the NHS is in crisis. Who do I blame? The government for sure, for failing to protect the people with adequate and early lockdowns but also anyone encouraging people to ignore them or avoid getting vaccinated.
Turning to the Euromomo data you’ll see that I don’t question the facts but your presentation of them, including your timing. Standard deviation is a good way to make comparisons but compressing charts is also a good way of hiding comparative significant trends. It’s clear (to me) that the current “all ages” charts for almost all European countries are showing well above trend deaths this winter, despite lockdowns and increased vaccine take up suppressing flu.
I have little doubt you’re also aware of other datasets like excess mortality which mitigate against your theories and I’ve posted elsewhere a reply about UK Covid and non-Covid deaths.
You’ll also know that medical advances have improved survival rates and that the key issue today isn’t necessarily deaths but hospitals at crisis point. Put these facts together and you should have second thoughts two weeks after your original piece of polemic.
I will reply separately to your supporters who seem so keen to point at my “aggression” rather than intellectually challenge me. My accusations aren’t “veiled”. The evidence shows that breaching restrictions will cause more deaths than not, therefore anyone in a position of influence using it to encourage or induce people to risk other people’s lives does, indeed, have blood on their hands.
B
You have still failed to provide a single fact.
Baz, please provide your evidence that inadequate lockdowns are causing increased deaths. I present https://bradshawadvisory.com/data-insights/lockdown-severity-vs-covid-19-deaths which shows no correlation. How is this wrong? A detailed analysis will be adequate.
CNN BBC and the NYT say lockdowns work. That’s good enough for 99.99999% of people.
Facts, research, data, evidence…. bah…. https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-coronavirus-the-evidence/
It’s hardly surprising this ultra-right organisation is anti-lockdown as, along with the climate change denying Koch, they were behind the Great Barrington bullshit. First rule of research analysis, check your source’s motive. In my opinion you’re making yourself look a bit desperate and aggressive.
Baz wrote ”In my opinion you’re making yourself look a bit desperate and aggressive.”
Hmmm, pot? 🤔 kettle? 🤔
Baz – FYI: Sunita is a co-author of GBD.
Rather odd that she is being attacked relentlessly… she’s only trying to convince nearly 8 billion idiots not to commit suicide by economic collapse over a bad flu.
Here’s the thing. I have stated a number of times that I believe the PTB have a master plan that involves ending us in a humane way because we are running out of oil.
I actually have no issue with the Covid Scam. Like Trudeau said in the leak ‘We were told it was in the individuals best interest to participate.’
So when you are locked in your house under martial law, and you are down to your last can of beans, and begging for the lockdowns to be extended, and ratting out your neighbour who dares to venture out and try to kill some rats to eat…. think of me. Because I will be laughing my ass off as I think about you and all those billions of others who gleefully marched over the cliff like so many human lemmings.
Now that is seriously funny. But I won’t laugh for very long, because knowing what is behind that curtain does not provide immunity from the end game (nor does any vaccine).
Feel free to print this post out, frame it and reread it come doomsday. Because I am sure when you are at death’s door you will not recall that I told you so.
Anyway it does not matter what any of us is thinking – also from the leak ‘In the end it was implied by the PMO that the whole agenda will move forward no matter who agrees with it or not.’
We have seen what happens if The Rules are violated and someone has a coffee … or is it a picnic… in the park… If anyone decides enough is enough and pulls out a gun – they’d be dead in an hour. Cuz the neighbours will help the cops find and kill them because they want to Stay Safe!
A contagion of hatred and hysteria: Oxford epidemiologist PROFESSOR SUNETRA GUPTA tells how she has been intimidated and shamed for backing shielding instead of lockdown
According to Wikipedia, for instance, the Great Barrington Declaration was funded by a Right-wing think-tank with links to climate-change deniers.
It should be obvious to anyone that writing a short proposal and posting it on a website requires no great financing. But let me spell it out, since, apparently, I have to: I did not accept payment to co-author the Great Barrington Declaration.
Money has never been the motivation in my career. It hurts me profoundly that anyone who knows me, or has even a passing professional acquaintance, could believe for a minute that I would accept a clandestine payment for anything.
I am very fortunate to have a house and garden I love, and I couldn’t ask for more material wealth than that. Far more important to me are my family and my work. Yet the abuse continues to flood in, increasingly of a personal nature.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8899277/Professor-Sunetra-Gupta-reveals-crisis-ruthlessly-weaponised.html
I am going to apply my (too many posts rule here). Can we restrict the posts please.
I’d already read it and you’ll know as well as me that it’s an analysis comparing countries against Sweden and South Korea, not an absolute impact assessment. It’s been widely questioned on the not unreasonable basis that you can’t realistically compare Sweden with Germany or South Korea with the UK.
Thanks anyway.
What exactly is the reason one cannot compare them? I would really love to know.
The other comparison is North Dakota versus South Dakota. That’s a hard one to dispute.
We can all agree that Covid is a bad disease. I do not see anyone claiming otherwise.
But the discussion is about whether the government mandated restrictions make much difference and whether they create more misery than they alleviate. Then, a relative comparison of efficacy clearly makes analytical and ethical sense.
Feel free to dispute the methodology of the man (Dr Ioannidis) who is possibly the most eminent person in the field but to just state that countries cannot be compared a priori is not analytical.
By the way, this is not aggressive. It’s discussing the facts.
I intervened only because you seem to be making threats and accusing people of murder who disagree with you. I do not like that. If I have misunderstood your meaning then it would be really good if you could clarify.
Can you explain what’s the absolute impact assessment and how it’s done?
thanks
Perhaps you’ll read again the various replies I’ve posted and you’ll see that I have provided a number of facts and pointed to sources of evidence. I don’t know how to include images or links but that shouldn’t matter, the evidence is all there on ONS, Euromomo, Our World in Data etc. If you’d like to ask me any specific question I’ll answer it, which is more than I can say for you at the moment.
Making me out to be unreasonable is classic gaslighting.
Baz, thank you for your posts, they lend an almost hilarious interlude to the otherwise hum-drum proceedings.
Replying to multiple posts on mobile platform isn’t easy, nonetheless:
1. Sweden in particular is a good example of how you can’t easily compare one country with another, it has legislation against lockdowns and a strong culture of trusting scientists and government. There’s an excellent thread by @jboylan on Twitter, he lives in Sweden. I was there for 6 weeks in 2019 and have friends there, I can tell you they’d rather be like Norway but i expect yips won’t be over me. They’ve now passed emergency legislation to allow,them to implement restrictions.
2. Economic, geographic and social demographics have too big an influence on virus spread to just compare cases and deaths. Eg population density, proportion of service industries, population age.
3. The Dakotas are indeed interesting and there are many contrary opinions about them.
4. An absolute impact assessment would be without making comparisons ie an assessment of the absolute impact of various measures. There are a number of these readily available.
5. As to AH notepad, your response proves my point. Thanks.
I still haven’t heard anything from any of you with any evidence challenging my points.
Sorry if I’ve missed anything.
Baz in Kent: What points have you made? List them, please, and be specific. All I can recall are dire accusations (blood on the hands), and threats to pursue those who disagree with you and drum them out of the profession. I also suggest giving factual, verifiable evidence, as Dr. Kendrick has done in all of his published written work, but which you seem hesitant to do. What happens on this blog, and almost uniquely so, is an example of a lively discourse leading to deeper knowledge and insight. Certainly has for me, anyway.
If you take the time to search “Baz” on this page you’ll see I’ve provided a number of pieces of evidence and valid challenges. Given time I intend to address a number of points made by your good Doctor but I’m confident that so far I’ve shown him to have been misleading about the deaths data as a minimum. I’ve made an online depository for some relevant information which I’m sharing here and I’ll add more responses later.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1–_wcsVr6CNT7lyMIIkawTqpVG9Wc6Bj
Please provide one example of my being misleading. Absolute facts, and figures please. Not the complete generalisations that you seem to equate with data.
Surely the Swedes must be happy about their falling from 5th on this list?
They don’t even make the list now https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
But then like the rest of the world, Swedes would not be aware of this because the MSM pounds the drum telling them they have failed and should lock down like all those countries that are near the top of that list 🙂
Well, that doesn’t explain much in regards to absolute impact assessment. How is it done? Can you explain the methodology? How do you compare Sweden that didn’t enter a lockdown to hypothetical Sweden that would have entered a lockdown?
So now AH Notepad finds humour in this deadly serious situation.
Read Prof Thomas (Bristol) evidence to the select committee – he’s another sceptic but for a different and completely open reason – 990k deaths if we hadn’t locked down.
I’m familiar with the stringency index which of course shows Sweden high on stringency. As I’ve previously said, many comparisons are meaningless, where’s your modelling for deaths without lockdowns?
Look at the consequential curves (as I’ve mentioned) and the curves showing UK lockdowns.
I’ve asked for your pandemic response plan but all I’ve seen is “stop testing”.
If you people were really serious and well-informed you be doing better than this.
Sorry, but what can you possibly mean here? If you cannot get your posts past the moderator, how is that I have just read them? Are you just making some kind of point, hoping people won’t have noticed that your posts do get past the moderator? Are you mad? To be honest, if I were the moderator I wouldn’t give your posts the time of day, but then I am not Dr Kendrick. In my opinion, not that you will care, you seem to be a very nasty little man.
When I read comments from Baz and others with CDS, I am reminded of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
There are also parallels in what is happening in the USA right now.
The conversations on Covid and politics are almost completely one-sided, populist and deranged. All dissent is eliminated.
Where is John Galt?
At least they aren’t eliminated on Dr K’s blog. I think he has amazing patience with the people who attack him. I sincerely hope we never need a John Galt. Who knows? The world is not looking good.
Malcolm,
I think sometimes a moderator has to simply pull the plug on people who will not be reasonable. I can think of one person in particular who has already done enough to justify that treatment a long time back!
100% agree. I am here because it is an oasis of logic and fact.
In fact I avoid the MSM because it is filled with lie and all that Baz is doing is regurgitating the lies he reads on the BBC.
Baz adds ZERO value to these discussions.
And trying to argue with him is like trying to argue with a 4 year old or a …..
If your heart literally dropped, you’d be dead.
Baz, you are not a critical thinker. I am sorry for you. The numbers show this Plandemic is mostly a Hoax because it is comparable to the common flu, and the response has been incommensurate. You are just being told by someone that early lockdowns would have made a difference, but where is your evidence? Again, you are just guessing.
Thank you for helping me retain my sanity. The world IS bonkers… sadly this includes most of my family and friends. I depend on your wise words to reassure me. It is gratifying to know that someone out there speaks with a voce of reason and clarity..
Same for me LOL
Would comparing the ratio of deaths following a positive Covid-19 test result with the ratio of deaths following a negative Covid-19 test result give us an indication of how many people actually die of Covid-19? I’m sure such a compartson has been made but can’t find one.
If you want to know how many people died of Covid look at the ONS weekly deaths which shows the number with Covid “as underlying cause of death”. These are registered deaths certified by doctors.
I have a very good mate who has been working for Big Pharma for 25+ years. He has entertained me over pints on numerous occasions with stories of how he bribes doctors.
It works like this — the sales people push their drugs on doctors by enticing them with all expenses paid junkets to thrilling destinations. Of course they are technically ‘conferences’ but in reality they are fun in the sun holidays.
And he told me, the more of the drug you prescribe the better your package. If you push a lot of the dope you get first class and a suite….
Apparently the doctors at these junkets are prone to comparing how much dope they pushed with what they received in exchange. That seems to be a hot topic of conversation at the ‘conference’ table.
Anyway — in the US — there are USD38,000 enticements given to medical facilities who list Covid as cause of death. Medical facilities are operated by the same doctors who push drugs in exchange for paid junkets…. Think about that.
I do have another mate who’s father was a surgeon and chief of staff at a massive Australian hospital and he refused to accept the junkets. He would probably refused to list cause of death as Covid when someone died of a heart attack but had tested positive for Covid.
But he’d be the exception.
If you paid me 38K to sign off on Covid as cause of death for just about anything you better have some ink refills ready!!!!
A friend told me that one of his customers went to a major hospital when his father died of something unrelated to COVID, and the doctor actually asked him if he would mind if his father was recorded as dying of COVID because the hospital got more money from the government for such patients.
Not in the UK
To clarify, my comment was in response to Fast Eddy. Last time I checked, there were fairly strict rules on how far Big Pharma could go to get doctors to prescribe their products in the UK.
I bet there are all sorts of dodgy goings on with vaccinations though.
Database shines light on pharma payments to UK doctors
https://www.ft.com/content/b3e42806-3ec7-11e6-8716-a4a71e8140b0
Big pharma cash and hospitality to doctors rises
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/30/big-pharma-cash-hospitality-doctors-rises-one-three-refuses/
Loved it it has lift my spirit up!!
Good to know there are people who can think
There is also the fact that we almost certainly have an increase in deaths due to inability to get treatment for the likes of CVD and cancer. This means the excess death figures for this time of year are pushed up a little by these as not all of them will be recorded as Covid. This means the deaths at the moment are further within the band of statistical variance
That is exactly what I thought when I saw that spike. In Hospice land all the cancer and dementia patients (which make up the vast majority of our patients) suddenly disappeared – we were getting COVID referrals almost exclusively. But the COVID tsunami lasted only through the months of March and early April. Come June we started getting patients whose treatable illnesses progressed rapidly because they were not able to see their doctor for months, despite the fact that they were starting to have problems. By the time they got to see their doctor (by video) it was too late and they ended up being referred to Hospice. It wasn’t just cancer treatment that stopped – nobody was seeing their doctor. How many treatable illnesses that are far less serious and deadly than cancer went undiagnosed and untreated because people were terrified to leave their homes, or they couldn’t get an appointment with their doctor because their doctor wasn’t seeing patients? The total mortality numbers could be telling a different story from the official narrative even in that respect.
By the way, Dr. M – I love your writing style.
If you take the time to analyse ONS deaths data you’ll see that 2020 deaths were around 73k above the 5-year average with Covid deaths 78k, non-Covid deaths in 2020 were therefore c 5k down. Some of these would have moved to the Covid column and lockdown will have reduced deaths from flu etc.
Without minimising any death and finding it hard to make comparisons and, indeed, accepting that some people will have died because of lockdowns, the evidence is that without lockdowns we would have a far higher death toll from Covid and though this would have reduced deaths from other diseases this number would have been far lower.
Then there’s there impact on mental health of those hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths and the impact on other treatments of overrun hospitals – as we’re now seeing even with restrictions.
Well,…you made me smile (z<10)…sounded like something from Hancock’s half hour !! Most of all makes sense. I’m off to another galaxy with some COVID to make a million or three.😂😂
My god you are the voice of sanity Dr K and summed up exactly what we as an older couple have said from the start.Dont be flippant and treat it just like any other other flu or virus,you wouldn’t go in to a room shaking the hands of people full of snotty flu of course it’d spread if you did, use common sense.We have had such a hard time from our grown up children about us breaking the rules because we chose to not shut ourselves away we chose life,we don’t have a great load left but what we do have we will safeguard,treasure and enjoy to the full and sod their rules.Your spot on with the stop the testing too,every time I get a sore muscle or a cough or headache im told go get a covid test,not a chance I see it for exactly what it is at this time of year.We do have underlying health issues but none that are”on the list” but still capable of shortening our lives if we let them.we eat well.we exercise,we keep a check via blood tests on our vitamin and mineral levels esp in our cases.We cant eat out,we can’t go to the pictures,we can’t shop till we drop,we can’t cuddle our grandchildren who are terrified of us.Some would say well whats the point your old and have nothing much going on,wrong! Life is precious and we fully intend to enjoy it as best we can and they can shove their vaccine.well done Dr K.
Well said, those sinister bastards are desperate to push their rushed experimental vaccines on as many people as possible, their intentions are clearly malicious.
No. Pfizer’s motivation is benign and is as it has always been: to make money. They may be distributing their vaccine ‘at cost’ but their name will be on everyone’s lips for many years to come – which is priceless marketing. It would be a disaster for them if their vaccine was found on balance to do harm. I don’t believe the vaccine is necessary apart from the need to justify the climb down from where the panic has driven us. From what I have read, their vaccine is likely to need further development as the bug evolves which is a perfect outcome for the business. Disclosure: Some of my pension is tied to their commercial success.
I don’t doubt the same is true for other pharmaceutical companies too.
Will I take the vaccine? Yeah, probably. Why not? When I worked for one of the other pharma companies they absorbed (back when God was a lad) I used to take part in phase II clinical trials – bought myself a (very cheap) motorcycle on the proceeds. Not that I’m expecting to get paid this time!
Buggrit! Phase I, not phase II. Dose/response/tolerability trials. Most such trials required frequent blood samples and a week or more off alcohol and sometimes only eating provided food. The ‘compensation’ and money saved from participating in a few such trials soon added up.
Never did me any harm! Baaah! (Col Melchet voice).
Note – we still dont have a SARS coronavirus vaccine – not for want of trying:
https://www.wired.com/2003/05/feds-race-to-make-sars-vaccine/
There was the AIDS/HIV global hysteria 40 odd years ago – and today, still no HIV vaccine.
(Probably because the ‘target audience’ was too small to justify the cost return, althought scientists say HIV is a tricky little bugger.)
Yet, for Covid1984, they have a vaccine in 10 months. The briefest Net search will tell you the typical trial time for a vaccine is between 10 -15 years:
https://www.reference.com/science/how-long-to-develop-vaccine
‘It’s not unusual for a vaccine to take 10 to 15 years to complete all the phases under normal circumstances.’
‘The most important, meaningful phase of CV-19 vaccine trials has barely begun, let alone been completed.’
Jeannie,
It is sad to teach kids to be afraid. They may never get over it. They could be afraid FOR you, but not OF you.
Anna when I have a 4 year old say to me don’t want to cuddle you youll give me covid theres no doubt in my mind that its not something I would ever teach or pass onto any of my grandchildren.
People don’t realize how much pain this causes us its not funny its not something we relish and yes its very sad but not of our doing.
Oh, Jeannie, I could tell from your writing that it had not come from you!
The world has gone mad,the overreaction to this virus is frankly unbelievable.I put this down to fear generated by amongst other the British Government.The behavioural insight team based in the Cabinet Office see the document MINDSPACE,the 77th Brigade who push out psyco information to scare and “nudge” the public to do as they are told,backed up by the press.A couple of comments in the Telegraph from ambulance paramedics, that most people they pick up haven’t got covid,all they have got is a flu virus a, Lemsip would sort out.We the Great British public are being played,for what end I don’t know, only time will tell.If people used common sense and just treated this virus like flu,it would go away,like all the rest do every previous year. The unreliable PCR test is inflated the “cases” and thus maintaining the fear factor.The ONS figures don’t lie,but most people don’t look at those,relying on the main stream media.
The World Health Organisation have defined a case of CoViD19 as a positive test for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
They have redefined herd/community immunity as being as a result of vaccination only, they’ve removed the infection path.
They have said that the RT-PCR should have no more than 30 steps.
As Kary Mullis said seek and you shall find.
I despair at the complete lack of scientific evidence for the decisions made.
My clinician colleagues do not question anything, wearing masks and visors when there’s no evidence for their efficacy or that asymptomatic people are infectious.
Yes, I noticed the same! Worrying. What is behind this mad push?? One must wonder..
Jon Rappoport might be a conspiracy theorist, but he predicted that once the vaccine was released they would cut down on the permitted number of PCR cycles, which would cut the number of positive tests and “prove” the vaccine was working.
“Jon Rappoport might be a conspiracy theorist…”
… and he might also be correct.
Well, are you a conspiracy denier then?
Harry, I am challenging the idea put about by the authorities that anyone who believes in a conspiracy is necessarily gaga.
Obviously the world is full of conspiracies. As a student of history I am aware of this.
One can easily discern:
1. A conspiracy to make vast amounts of money.
2. A conspiracy to gain and keep power over ordinary citizens.
3. A conspiracy to blame certain nations, and thus gain certain political ends.
4. A conspiracy by some scientists and others to enhance their reputations as experts and gurus.
5. A conspiracy not to tell the truth, and not to have honest open debates.
There are, of course, many more.
And, incidentally, I have found Jon Rappoport’s articles to be very credible, in the main.
Joe Dopelle: I agree. John Rappaport is a truth-teller.
Curiously I said the same thing myself recently, after reading “dissolving illusions” where the authors suggested that polio got “disappeared” by relabelling it as something else just as the vaccine came out.
I muttered to myself “I bet they alter the number of cycles on the pcr test just as the vaccine comes out, alter the required symptoms, and start renaming it flu.”
LOVED dissolving illusions!!! SO MANY parallels between previous outbreaks and vaccines “that saved the day” AFTER the disease had mostly run its course…sigh.
I think that’s probably the plan.
yes, it’s interesting now that they have a vaccine that the news is finally getting out that about 27-30 cycles is plenty. it does seem to fit. but i’m quite cynical about this.
One Kary Mullis is worth several million Fergusons, Vallances and Whittys. (Or, as LockdownSceptics calls them, Unbalanced and Witless).
Someone asked him if he didn’t think it was irresponsible to air his opinions about AIDS and HIV. To which he replied that he was a scientist, not a lifeguard.
https://youtu.be/xTYDzcC-n1k This might be the one, but in one of Gundry’s videos he talks about vitamin D, and if he starts noticing symptoms he takes up to 150,000 IU a day in three 50,000 doses for a few days. He says he has never seen a toxicity problem. Please don’t bother shooting the messenger.
We also have Vitamin D as a treatment for Covid-19 in phase lll clinical trials … how many people in the UK are aware of this fact?!
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04579640
This is welcome but the amounts given are probably not enough. For many people with a vit D deficiency 800 iu a day will be totally inadequate to correct this over a 6 month period. A better way of doing this would be to correct to a given level – say 100nmol/l and then give as much as was necessary. Given the wide variation in vit D absorption any trial that uses fixed amounts is unlikely to provide a proper result. Bolus dosing as is used regularly here in France should also also be evaluated . As should use of Calcifediol on those who have covid .
My husband and me started taking VitD back in the summer. We’ve both never been so well – not a sniffle, cough or sneeze. Also we didn’t have the ‘flu jab this year (always ill after it; I finally added up the evidence and thought – nah). Hubby says it could also be down to everything in sight at work being sanitised, but even so as someone who got through 2 bottles of Domestos a week before I still think the VitD has made a massive difference.
Jayne, those sanitizing products are toxic, it is the VitD3 and be sure to take it with K2
We take Vits C, D3 and zinc. These have all, both anecdotally and in trials, been successful at lessening the risk of a bad case of covid.
Cheap and effective and what is there to lose in being cautious?
Sounds like a made-to-fail trial, or they’re just ignorant? A single bolus of cholecalciferol can take up to 2 weeks to be converted to calcidiol (the so-called inactive form – gotta laugh), before that will be slowly converted into calcitriol (the so-called active form), not much use waiting for this to happen if you’re ill. A trial recently in Cordoba gave calcidiol directly, by-passing the long slooww conversion. But of course we’re British and really stupid of course or something to that effect.
This trial is set up to fail? A large dose of cholecalcifiol can take up to 2 weeks to be converted to calcidiol ( the so-called inactive form) and then it has to be converted to calcitriol (the so-called active form). A recent trial in Cordoba competently administered calcidiol directly, but we’re British and stupid of course.
Hi .. I am not a doctor just an ordinary Mum/Granny and it has been a breath of fresh and honest air to read all your articles this year, thank you… I was hoping this madness may stop in 2021 but like you say they cannot admit to being wrong so guess it will be another trying year for us all! Happy New Year to you!
This morning I was pondering mortality numbers and how they are used to frighten people. How many people are aware of how other health impairments cause death? How many people are aware of how many people die in any given year for any cause? It seems as if logic and reason have divorced from our collective response, and much of the fear generated is rooted in a collective ignorance about death and numbers. For instance, in any given year in the US 450,000 deaths are attributed to tobacco. If one were to extrapolate responses to COVID to cigarettes, we would surely be burning down tobacco fields and arresting merchants for selling a drug that kills so many, right? 250,000 people die every year from obesity. Surely we should be destroying factories that produce junk food and again arresting those evil merchants of delicious junk? In fact, in the US we subsidize corn growers for producing high fructose corn syrup, which makes producing junk food attractive economically.
Yet here we are, obliterating society for similar death counts due to COVID. I feel frustrated as someone whose economic health only took a minor hit in the months following the first lockdown. Since that time, I literally could not be any busier, due to the wreckage caused by closed schools and a lack of social interactions between children. (I wish I weren’t so busy, in case that’s not clear.) I can’t imagine how it must feel to be someone whose livelihood has been obliterated by lockdowns and restrictions. I don’t know that there is any easy answer to COVID, but I am grateful for the work of Dr. Kendrick and his orientation toward logic and reason in a time of such rampant fear-mongering.
Thanks for another moment of sanity
Many many thanks. You deserve a nice whisky for all your efforts on this blog. I appreciate your explanations, and the great responses from all contributors. I wish you a peaceful and healthy 2021.
To those who do believe, no explanation is necessary.
To those who do not believe, no explanation is possible
Just had a thought….for those of us in UK, maybe we ought to rename us The Silly Isles.
Thank you, Ah I needed a laugh 😆
Great post and clear minded thinking.
Is there anything like the EuroMOMO data for the USA? That would be very interesting to see.
Sorry, don’t know
Somewhat similar information can be found here for the USA. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
A researcher at Johns Hopkins looked at this and published her findings — the university removed the findings because ???? You can find a link to the research on this article (someone fortunately got it onto PDF before it was killed) https://wbckfm.com/johns-hopkins-university-researcher-finds-death-rate-before-and-after-covid-the-same/
Your sense is invaluable.
Possibly check the (US) CDC data? I haven’t checked it myself recently, but I do remember that I read somewhere that the CDC data for COVID deaths was far lower than “expected”. I think they might have all cause mortality as well.
I posted some info on a Github site that includes some CDC data on excess deaths:
Click to access Experimental%20page.pdf
Have to scroll down thru the various graphs.
One of the reasons why the USA appears to have suffered more from Covid-19 than any other country might be that the only national authorities collecting data are those like the CDC – which seem to be corrupt and hence unreliable.
Don’t discount metabolic health. As has been reported, only 12% of adult Americans qualify as metabolically healthy. We’re a staggeringly unfit country and will therefore be prone to excess death even in times of fewer invasive viruses. Even in a standard year, 250,000 Americans die from obesity related causes. We need to become fitter as a long term health strategy. Forgive me for being cynical, but I will not hold my breath on national policies driving us in that direction.
“…Great post and clear minded thinking….”
NOoooo, – we can’t have that ! It’s agin th’ narrative…
The CDC does publish data, which can be downloaded (to a program using ‘wget’) form these websites:
https://data.cdc.gov/api/views/muzy-jte6/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD
https://data.cdc.gov/api/views/3yf8-kanr/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD
The first will get weekly deaths data for 2019 and 2020 thru the current week. The second will get the weekly deaths from 2014 thru 2018. The data is in csv (comma separated data columns) suitable for importing into Excel, I think. I read the files with my own code. There is a lot of data on each line in these files, but I just look at the deaths by ‘natural causes’ column.
Try the Human Mortality Database (https://mortality.org/). Their visualisations are not as good but you can get the data and roll your own.
Thank you, your second last paragraph captures it.
I saw a stat yesterday, in the UK only about 388 under 60 have died of covid during the whole pandemic (epidemic). Whether that is ‘of’ or ‘with’ or whatever I’m not sure, but it is a TINY number.
I have a friend who runs the local branch of a men’s mental health group called Andy’s Man’s Club. There are so many men of working age, in their prime for goodness sake, who are having the life crushed out of them. Frankly it’s criminal.
No. That was 388 under 60 in England only with no previously diagnosed ‘condition’. It’s still a very small number when compared to the damage to the economy. You can find the NHS spreadsheet here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/12/COVID-19-total-announced-deaths-24-December-2020-weekly-file.xlsx (it’s a shame they don’t use Open Document Format like the government recommends- they must have money to burn).
Mike C: “(it’s a shame they don’t use Open Document Format like the government recommends- they must have money to burn)”
Wow ! Where can one go with that line eh ? !!
You may remember that in October there was a data crash and loss because NHS/ONS (Whoever it is who runs the thing this week) relied on Excel for what’s surely becoming quite a large data pool. As opposed to something more akin to an actual data table. Sorry, but I’ve had this for much of my (working) life, especially when working in larger organisations (one can forgive small businesses), few seem to plan for ‘big data’, start out using an Excel sheet and then wonder why, sometime later, with several thousand ‘records’, the thing’s turned into a slow, unstable mess. I once asked an Engineer if he’d considered using Powerpoint to do finite element analysis. Baffled face. (Use right tool for the job ?)
(Actually I have personally found .ods files to be somewhat unstable too. Though. .csv seems to be okay if well structured. Mind you I’m the kinda person who still uses DOS for some things……)
I think the point is that at the start of a data collection exercise someone grabs for the first tool available – just to ‘get the thing going’ – and in this world of (blind ?) cosy conventionalism that’s Excel. I can’t see a UK Government department standardising on Open Office somehow……
It’s an interesting aside to consider the data sources and ‘quality’ of the data input, in this context. And Malcolm’s explanation of what’s ‘recorded’ as Covid could make drawing any substantive conclusions from it tentative at best.
Worked for a Russian oil company for a few years a while back, and their IT people were pulling their hair out over the proliferation of Excel spreadsheets by engineers and others. It was an unorganized mess, plus a security threat. I’ve seen it in other companies, but in that one the IT folks had actually identified it as an issue and were trying to do something about it. Open Office would have the same problem.
Veracity of data is a huge problem, anywhere!
Venezuela, under Chavez, mandated Open Office for their gov. agencies. I’m not saying it’s a correlation but look at where they are now.
Mike, when I talk to my friends about the chances of dying from COVID, they are worried about getting long Covid more than dying.
As someone with Long Covid for10 months I would agree !
Well worth reading, especially for Colin and Dan !
Love Di. x
Sent from my iPad
>
I cant help but think that the main driver of policy is hospital admissions rather that deaths. The former is harder to deal with than the latter, politically speaking. Also hospital management is now much better compared to the first wave, so less deaths. There remain millions of vulnerable people yet to come across the virus, most of them eager for vaccination which will stamp on the tail of the pandemic and provide a template for managing the next one.
Comment on the ‘world having gone mad’ surely miss the madness of the pre covid world. Species loss, climate change and ecosystem destruction, behind the emergence of Sars-Cov2 cannot be ignored for much longer, if it not too late already.
I saw today or yesterday that many so-called hospital “admissions” for Covid-19 are in fact people admitted for other reasons who caught the virus in hospital – and were then registered as “Covid-19 admissions”.
Or maybe they didn’t catch it at all but just tested positive on a Qt>35 PCR test?
Exactly, Harry. I regret not having added that stipulation – but there are so many such that it would be tedious to keep adding them.
There was a young doctor on Five Live this morning who said exactly that. People are getting the virus IN HOSPITAL and that is put as the cause of death on the stats.
Thanks Dr K, great summary of the current situation that I read just as I found out we’re going into tier 4!
Hi Malcolm – thank you for the sanity in this madness. One thing raised an eyebrow though. Can you expand upon why you would bet on Laboratory cock up against the Sweet & Sour Bat with Bat Rice and a liberal drizzle of Bat Jus?
All the lab virus stuff is covered in a 2010 document on the Rockefeller Foundation website, and it is known that Fauci was driving it and illegally getting funding for gain of function viruses. When he was stopped, the whole lot was sent to China.
No bat persecution required.
Look up what you can find on lab research into viruses. For many years scientists, paid by government grants in the USA and other countries, have been trying to get animal viruses to attack human cells. Not satisfied with that, they have been trying to “add function” to viruses – in simple language, to make them much more virulent and deadly.
Combine that with the fact that no lab is (or can be) wholly virus-proof, and you can see that for decades now governments have been paying to put our lives at risk.
[The 1916 New York polio epidemic was thought to have caused 23,000 cases and 5,000 deaths through new England the Middle Atlantic states. The case fatality rate of 25% was far above the rate for “wild” polio of less than 1%.].
“Three miles from the epicentre of the outbreak, Simon Flexner and his associates at the Rockefeller Institute at 63rd Street and York Avenue… had been passaging spinal cord tissue containing poliovirus, from one Rhesus monkey spinal cord to another… It is a remarkable coincidence that a unique neurotropic strain of poliovirus was developed a few miles away from an epidemic caused by a uniquely pathogenic strain of the virus… almost anywhere in new York was within a few streets of a rail link to the Rockefeller Institute”.
[And it’s less than two miles walk to Grand Central Station!]
– “Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History”
Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk
ISBN13: 978-1480216891
Joe Dopelle: The Age of Autism has an excellent analysis by the late, great Dan Olmsted about the 1916 New York polio outbreak. Clickable button on the righthand side of the page. A fascinating read.
1whatsgoingon,
The labs were working with bats.
I pretty much wake up most mornings now with the notion that we are fucked!
I read countless articles showing that lockdowns do more harm than good, viruses such as Covid are seasonal due to low vitamin D status in the winter, why on earth do the Gates foundation refuse to fund anything related to vitamin D, why is this little hormone so toxic – Why for that matter are the gates foundations behind all of the organisations at the heart of covid? One research paper showed that ICU admissions could be reduced by 90% if only D levels were optimal (>50) and yet no one wants to even talk about it, if you post anything on social media it gets taken down. Covid has now gathered so much momentum that ANY death could be tagged as a Covid death, ergo no vaccines will work, they cant. A car fatality could flag as a Covid statistic which means there is no end to lockdowns or face masks. This is the new normal.
There’s already talk about Spring 2021 being an optimistic end to the madness but I fear that it wouldn’t take much to get to the end of summer and then here comes the Winter ’21 4th Wave – oh dear god. I fear the only solution to Covid is to take your vitamin D3 supplements, get rid of the face masks (as this does very little than show the government you are still scared and complying) and turn on our politicians.
The economy is tanking. Hospitality will take a long time to recover. Why didn’t the big rich breweries take legal action to question the science (or lack of it) behind the lock down, tiering etc? They all just sucked it up.
Off licenses remain open.
Note that Tim Martin of Wetherspoons tried to do his bit creating a 23 page pamphlet to be made available in all pubs. But shutting the pubs put the mockers on that. See:
https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/~/media/files/pdf-documents/events-2020/wetherspoon-news–do-lockdowns-work.pdf?la=en
Mike,
I so agree. The people simply must stand up. It has been obvious that it does not matter the science, the thousands of expert signatures, petitions, videos, lawsuits – the officials are uninterested. There is a sinister agenda that will not be swayed. And it only succeeds because so many citizens allow it.
Right on
Vit D is cheap as chips – no money in it for Pharma. Nuff said. I read a statistic somewhere ( don’t know if it is true) that an African living in sub Saharan Africa was 1000 times less likely to die of Covid than his brother who had migrated to UK. Now sub Saharan Africa is not exactly a rich place for the majority of the population . The brother in London would probably have a better standard of living and access to better medical care. What he does not have is access to enough sunshine to produce sufficient quantities of vit D in his melanin rich skin even in summer. In both Italy and Spain the vit D levels of the elderly population are abysmal despite sunny springs , summers and autumns because sun avoiding behaviours are practised. Grannies do not go go the beach and strip off – unlike the Germans and Scandinavians who on the whole seem to have had lower death rates. If there is any conspiracy it is the covering up of the importance of vit D sufficiency in modulating the immune system and thus protecting against the ravages of respiratory diseases in general ( well established science) and covid 19 in particular ( plenty of evidence but “fake news”). Df David Grimes’ blog has a lot of good stuff on vit D .
Same applies to countries like Mexico. One word: sombrero.
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION – PROPOSALS ONLY
======================================
Tier 5 – Everyone under house arrest, only one member of the household can leave once a week for shopping purposes.
Tier 6 – Weekly Covid tests at your house, infected people will be dragged into the street and despatched promptly, afterall we must protect the NHS!!
Tier 7 – Napalm all cities whose levels go above 2% Infection
Tier 5 shopping once a week will definitely harm me. I eat lots of blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. They may last a couple of days in the fridge, but after that they decompose. They then go on the compost heap, where we could add a few well known names in the UK
Well, as long as you’re picking them yourself and not relying on crops grown elsewhere and flown in that’s alright then.
I might suggest the Carnivore Diet – nothing but meat (you have to eat fatty cuts though, and perhaps some oily fish).
Meat and fish can be frozen and kept almost indefinitely.
Frango, you could indeed suggest a carnivore diet. However, I once would have suggested diets, but I am now more circumspect about doing so. https://youtu.be/mioR_WrkRaU Is one example of the complexity of the gut and it’s requirements. Stephen Gundry has quite a bit to say on the matter and explains some of the details of the benefits of particular foods. A diet may suit a person at one time, but it can’t be a one-size-fits-all. I’m not trying to have an argument against your suggestion, but just to point out it is not a simple matter.
One of the biggest problems seems to be leaky gut. Another rabbit hole to go down.
Ah, my suggestion was a little mischievous. If and when we get to a point where people actually have difficulty feeing themselves adequately, it would seem the obstacles in the lavatory pipe would just have to be removed by force.
More seriously, of course I wouldn’t recommend anyone to embark on a diet that might harm them – or even make them unhappy. But it’s useful to know that the Carnivore Diet might be a practical option, if only for a limited period.
I myself could get by, if necessary, on nothing but water for maybe 9-10 months. Yes, I am carrying that much adipose tissue.
Indeed ‘Yes’ AhNotepad – “… One of the biggest problems seems to be leaky gut. Another rabbit hole to go down.”
Back to Prof Ebringer, the ‘leaky gut’ was one of his research platforms. No one has yet taken his place on the arthritidis field.
Been re-reading Orwell’s ‘1984’ ?
Always!
Thank for the post (see also Ivor Cummings et al).
In assessing the severity (of the second wave) perhaps we should be looking at hospital admissions. This takes resources from other serious illnesses and we hear daily from the media how the NHS is at breaking point – not quite sure how a hospital breaks but….
Presumably the patients being treated for covid 19 are confirmed to have it, so numbers really are high. How do hospital admissions compare with other years?
Has anyone else noticed that the graph of the ‘second wave’ is so very different the the first one? Almost like it’s a different disease. Oh, wait… [headlines about new variant… evolution… easier to catch… mumble… mumble].
Love it. it all seems so logical to normal folks but the lockdown maniacs will always have the “imagine how many millions would have died if we did nothing” argument to fall back on. Trouble with all this is there is no penalty for causing carnage with lockdowns, only penalty for “not doing enough” – Prof Ferguson is a master of this. It also doesn’t help that the media want the doomsday scenario so they keep pushing this nonsense.
Be a good boy now, take the jabs, and toddle along.
In the fine article, Dr Kendrick showed several graphs of countries that did not lock down and had far fewer deaths than the UK.
I’m having to self isolate from stupidity. Got into a major row with friends yesterday. Them shouting people have died! Me saying we are having a normal respiratory death season. Them saying I am only listening to one side of the argument, me saying I am looking at the raw data and they are looking at media hysteria. No win, bad feelings all round. I went home and I’m staying home.
By the way an old lady friend said she heard the new strain was more infective but less dangerous. Is that how the polititians are going to slide out of this?
I sympathise. I know exactly how you feel. I think I will have no friends left soon!! Already feels like relationships with friends has changed.
I have found the same, but I don’t much care. People are who they are, and no amount of hand-wringing or worrying will change that.
Appreciate your friends and family for their better points, and if they are unable to reason just accept that. A cat can’t reason much either, but it can still be excellent company.
We will celebrate the new year tonight with a couple and a family, the only ones we know who are not insane. We will have hugs. And I am quite weak…but i don’t live in fear of this and there are so many ways to treat it. I had my two girls and 3 grandkids in October and it was the best time ever. Shortly after that I took a turn for the worse. One family had a cold. Maybe they were no longer contagious but no one else got it. They asked me if they should come. I said Yes. I want to see my grandchildren. Should I die without seeing them? When I think of the two littles fighting for my lap, it makes my heart happy.
Well done anna. Happy New Year. What’s the point of a long miserable lonely existence? Better t have a shorter happy one. You never know, you may get a long and happy one.
I bet someone will disagree, and length of life is their priority.
“By the way an old lady friend said she heard the new strain was more infective but less dangerous”.
That describes the common cold. Or am I missing something?
I (against my better judgment and under pressure from a family member) got tested recently whilst suffering from what at any other time would be labelled a common/head cold. Only reasoning for testing was several other people I have had v limited contact also going for tests who had exactly same symptoms. We all came back positive. So my take was ‘so what does being told I (might) have coronavirus change about the fact I ostensibly have a cold?’ – but of course in this new dystopian world of Covid it’s not about me any more and all about the harm I pose to others. And yet nobody else in my immediate family is ill so if it’s so contagious how does that work, esp if you buy the other gotcha bit about none of us having any immunity due to this being a ‘new’ virus. I wonder if eventually they will tie themselves up in knots with the ever changing conditions of this virus to the point where it make no sense to anyone. But sadly I think hysteria and fear may still win the day 😔
Liz,
In my opinion it is time for us to turn their arguments around on them and start calling them out for their selfishness. Why are they willing to hurt children and many young people to attempt to save their withered old a**es? Does anyone who has lost their job or business over lockdowns really argue in their favor? I bet that is rare. Ask those who favor lockdown if they would be willing to give up their paycheck or pension?
Is this class war?
Thought for the day
– if ending lockdowns saved just 1 life, then it would be worth it.
anna m, I think you will find that the elderly are not “attempt[ing] to save their withered old a**es?” On the contrary, they are if anything more powerless than the average citizen. The politicians and civil servants who bray about “protecting Nan” are just using the elderly as pretexts for their own purposes.
How many “withered old a**es” do you imagine were responsible for drawing up the coronavirus legislation and rules?
Hi Joe,
For the most part I agree with you. I happen to have a bunch of friends and acquaintances who seem to be totally onboard with all the propaganda. All financially secure. (For now.) They brook no discussion. Average age about 70.
I have noticed the same, anna m. (By the way, I am a healthy 72). One factor that may be relevant is that older people remember a time when authority was more generally respected, and ordinary people believed what they were told by doctors, scientists and government. (Rightly or wrongly – I suspect wrongly).
Speaking for myself, I think – and have done so since the first lockdown was announced – that the official policies are completely wrong. Had I been in charge, I would have inclined to let the epidemic run its course, taking advice if things looked like getting out of hand.
I am well aware that my pension depends on people who are still working, and I am astonished that anyone – let alone cabinet ministers – could imagine that stopping people from working wouldn’t ruin the economy and impoverish the great majority of us.
But of course those who dictate those policies are not in the same boat. They have their private steam yachts to take them away to their tropical islands.
Might I also point you to a previous comment?
Dr Kendrick,
This is perhaps the best posts on the response to CoVID-19 I have read.
I am, we are, in your debt.
Thank you
Etienne Taylor
On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 7:39 AM Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: ” 30th December 2020 I have not written much > about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has > simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, > written many hundreds of years ago. In it, Dante describe” >
Dear Dr Kendrick
Do you have any information as to how many of those making up the original spike in deaths died because Doctors killed them by ventilating them when this was an entirely inappropriate treatment?
After the initial relentless political/media campaign insisting that ventilators were the be all and end all they suddenly went totally quiet over the issue of ventilators (after New York’s Dr Kyle Sidell released a social media statement saying he believied ventilation was killing covid patients).
Do you have any reliable data regarding this?
Nope, I would just be guessing. However, when things go strangely silent, you know something is being quietly covered up. ‘Ventilators, no, never used them here. Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
I read on Twitter that there is a bit of an oxygen shortage and that less oxygen is needed if a patient is ventilated that if not. So there is a tendency still to put them on a ventilator. Is that true?
I just looked up the map of ICU capacity per county in Germany.
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/coronavirus-infizierte-genesene-tote-alle-live-daten-a-242d71d5-554b-47b6-969a-cd920e8821f1
(scroll down to “Die Situation in den Krankenhäusern” and go to the “regional” tab)
There are 5639 Covid patients in ICU, and about half of them are being ventilated. With all the reports on staff shortages in ICUs and how ventilated Covid patients make for a much higher workload, I don’t think they would be putting them on ventilators if they didn’t believe there was a significant benefit. Interestingly, the percentage of ventilated Covid patients was only on the order of 10% in September. The difference might be that with the increased prevalence, it is now again getting to many elderly patients.
Still, it would be interesting to compare outcomes to other European countries, even if it might amount to comparing apples and oranges (different ICU capacity, different levels of immunity in the population).
Last April in New York.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/80-of-coronavirus-patients-on-ventilators-in-new-york-die-0btv3vbw8
Every time I read one of Dr Kendrick’s articles, I feel my sanity return.
Without wanting to indulge in flattery, I think I feel rather as Scorates’ friends did when they heard him talk. The world didn’t get any better, but they felt a lot better about it.
Alas and dammit, I meant “Socrates”. But I am sure everyone got my drift.
The Lawyer that successfully prosecuted VW over the emissions fraud and Deutsche bank over mortgage fraud says his team are now ready to start legal action against those responsible for orchestrating the covid19 fraud.
He is interviewed on bitchute –
Reiner Fuellmich | Full Length Interview in Berlin | Planet Lockdown
Bringing those that organised this massive fraud down is the only chance of preventing it from happening again.
Tim Fallon- I am pinning my hopes on this guy! I pray that he succeeds. Also, were you (or anyone) aware of the fact that there was a huge scandal in Europe back in 2009-2010, involving the same “players”- (WHO, Dr. Drosten, members of the German government, and even Dr. Fauci?) That was the H1N1 Swine Flu. There was a push to sell vaccines to all of Europe (mainly by people who benefit from vaccine sales); the media and the public got wind of it, and people refused to take the vaccines. “How soon we forget!” I didn’t even know about it at the time, but I’ve been reading up on it now.
The PCR testing companies should get their fees reduced by the percentage of false positives they report. But how to test the percentage of false positives?
Martin Back,
As far as I know Florida is the only state in the US that now requires the PCR cycle count to be returned with a positive diagnosis. My own opinion is that a high cycle count is not so much a “false positive” as a “meaningless” one.
But that one change, adopted nationally (and internationally) would go a long way to putting the number of “positives” in perspective.
Give 55 negative samples to a PCR test and see 4 positive outcomes.
Test false positive rate = 3.6%.
This is what I got out of an Abbott Laboratory PCR-test Manual.
Now randomly test one million people with that test and see 36,000 positives.
The prevalence might be about 0.3% though, which is 3,000 real positives, so 3,000 of those 36,000 were real positive (simply put).
So you see 33,000 false positives in 36,000 positives which means a population level false positive rate of
100%*(33,000/36,000) = 92% (as our basic numbers have only 2 significant digits).
92% false positives from random large scale population testing.
That’s not very informative, is it?
Then there are people who were infected and recovered, but still have viral fragments inside them. They would return a positive test, and strictly speaking it would not be a false positive because the test detected real viral material. But the positive result would be worse than useless — it would be misleading.
Martin Back,
That would be my “meaningless positive”, but “misleading positive” might be a better description.
So how about this? You get COVID and recover, and you have naso-pharyngeal antibodies (IgA’s) that block reinfection (note the vaccine probably won’t do this). You get tested and you come out positive. The test is detecting whole virus, bound up by the antibodies, not fragments. Another “misleading positive”, because it implies, wrongly, catching COVID doesn’t confer immunity.
No end to the ways we can keep the pandemic going!
And a lot of the kids who got the SF vaccine now have narcolepsy. But you don’t hear the mainstream media worrying too much about that now do you????
Good news. All power to Fuellmich’s elbow.
Well, as the world can see, the US courts are largely corrupt. Hope they do better over there.
This is single best synopsis of the current response to the COVID-19 pandemic I have read. Dr. Kendrick has done us all a great service with this post.
Wonderful article just what I needed some common sense . Feel so sad what has become of this world will there be an end to this madness ???
Keep up your splendid work Dr Malcolm Kendrick shame more people are not listening to common sense instead of following the sheep
In South Africa we are in the midst of a second surge in summer which is double that of the first surge so bang go any theories on seasonality. Discovery a large medical aid group has said that 36% of its clients over 60 land up in hospital with serious complications. The hospitals and ICU’s throughout SA are full.
This cannot be just another influenza.
Is that across the whole country? Is it in parts of the country that had lower numbers back in March/April? Are these numbers based on tests or medical diagnoses? Also the profile in South Africa of the infection is different to that in higher latitudes, if you look at Hope-Simpson’s book on influenza he describes the different trajectories of infection at different latitudes. This phenomenon has been noted in the southern states of the USA.
Positive single-stranded ss(+)RNA viruses are (mostly) resistant to everyday UV (no summer burn-off in the wider environment). DNA, however, is not UVa resistant. Crucially moreover, DNA also has an in-built proofreading cell ‘editor’ to kill (…autophagy) genetic mistakes/errors, but some DNA viruses can sneakily hijack autophagy for their own direct benefit. Critically, such cell ‘editors’ do not kill RNA viruses; however, that is in part why RNA viruses are so highly dangerous, as they can wreak havoc by releasing millions of mutant copies of themselves. As such, that is what RNA viruses (…positive, or negative types) just happen to do. It is normal. It’s a thing. Changes evidenced (not Mutations, as has been incorrectly written-up by NERVTAG, UK), are not a pathogenic concern… Viral strains are, but coping out with hindsight ‘variants’ is cheap! You cocked up.
Examples of negative ss(-)RNA viruses are Influenza, Ebola, and Rabies. DNA viruses (for example Herpes simplex [Shingles]) can, however, but rarely, also mutate by random chance, but nowhere nearly as dramatically as RNA viruses can do so.
RNA viruses, moreover, are highly susceptible / unstable to exposure to alkaline environments (e.g. such as would be found with people who are in good physical health, and hence are not acidic). DNA viruses, on the other hand, are NOT (so susceptible) to an alkaline milieu but, as otherwise, that is why a decent diet / lifestyle / fitness regime is so critically important in giving some protection / immunity against RNA Coronaviruses (Winters Common Cold).
Folk who are unwell, with Metabolic Syndrome (Insulin resistance] / Diabetes, and pre-Diabetes), suffer terribly from acute acidosis as well as with high HbA1c (glycated [sugar] haemoglobin). These factors, and senescence, are ambrosia for the RNA virus that causes Covid-19 disease. It presents as something of a ‘targeted’ perfect storm.
One of my new year’s resolutions is to improve my metabolic health. The official start to the new year is when Waitrose runs out of cut-price mince pies.
When I was a child every school (I went to 11 schools due to being an Army ‘patch brat’), every school had a fat kid. Today, every school has a thin kid.
Charles,
Do you have good reason to believe that stuff? Are respiratory illnsses not seasonal in SA?
Very many thanks. I’ve followed you all the way through this scenario, always looking for affirmation of my take on it and your sensible, informed insights.. Thankfully I have found them, I’ve also appreciated the input of the respondents in the comments.
Please continue having something to say!
Kind regards
First, full points to AhNotepad 🙂 🙂
But I’d like to see an article about what seems to me to be the most important covid issue currently – are the hospitals being overwhelmed?
It doesn’t matter whether more people are dying of covid or not – hopefully fewer now than in March/April because we know more about how to treat it as well as the other points. What matters is how many people are admitted to hospital and how long they stay there whilst dying or recovering, and how those numbers compare with the available bed-weeks in our hospitals. And staff-weeks as well!
It seems to me that governments are trying to manage events against these criteria, so judging them solely against deaths is pointless.
“But I’d like to see an article about what seems to me to be the most important covid issue currently – are the hospitals being overwhelmed?”
Lockdown Sceptics deals with such matters almost every day. UK Column often does, too; and Dr No… and many others.
Spoiler: the answer is a big fat “NO!”
https://lockdownsceptics.org
https://ukcolumn.org
https://dr-no.co.uk
“The NHS, to its credit, has started releasing weekly reports of total and occupied general and critical bed numbers, with daily figures for each trust. This means we can compare occupancy over the most recent reported week, 14th to 20th December, and compare the figures to the nearest in dates week in recent years (week 3 in this file). It turns out that current occupancies, both for general acute and critical care beds are actually marginally lower than in recent years. Current general and acute bed occupancy is 89%, compared to 94% in 2019 and 91% in 2018, and this despite the facts that this year compared to last, we have several thousand less beds available. The pattern is repeated for critical care beds: 77% occupancy, compared to 84% in 2019 and 81% in 2018”.
– https://dr-no.co.uk/2020/12/26/situation-normal/
Indeed. People simply cannot believe that this is true. The main problems is that, with so much testing, many hospital staff are having to self isolate, so there is a significant staffing issue – rather than a bed capacity issue. We were not allowed to be tested in March April. Goodness knows what would have happened if there had been testing back then.
But,if there is a significant staffing issue, how can the Nightingales be readied? As stated in yesterday’s briefing. The Nightingales twitter accounts are silent as are thosewho worked on them and I’ve seen reports of them being dismantled.
Agree, of course, that beds are no good without staff (and that’s always been a problem too – think back to our time as junior hospital doctors…). But the thing is, the sit-reps show most trusts are at or below normal capacity (compared to recent years), yet the MSM reports the hospitals are overwhelmed, patients being treated in ambulances etc, ie the narrative is there are too many patients for the number of beds, rather than not enough staff, though of course there is an interaction. Perhaps there is yet another interpretation: the sit-reps are correct, occupancy is at or below normal, but the reason for that is not because of lack of demand, but because there are not enough staff. But that seems unlikely: if it were the case, then there would be, to put it bluntly, bodies on the streets… and that would definitely, and rightly, be on the front pages. Dr No suspects the most likely scenario (to use that now much tarnished word) is that trusts are managing capacity, perhaps in ways that will turn out to be far from ideal (as in dumping patients back into the community, as happened in the first wave).
The other things is the sit-reps, and so the occupancy rates calculated by Dr no, do not show steady state numbers for available beds, instead they fluctuate from day to day. This may (or may not) reflect staff shortages when there is a reduction in available beds, meaning the staff shortages are in effect taken into account, if that makes sense (if you have less overall beds because of staff shortages, but are still at or below normal occupancy rates, then nil desperandum).
According to Ivor Cummins and covidrecovery.ie, two rapid antigen tests taken 12 – 24 hours apart would pick up as many pre-symptomatic cases as PCR tests, without all the false positives, and as such could be used to ease staff shortages in hospitals and care homes.
I received a reply from my Hospital Trust a few days ago confirming that there were 20 Covid patients admitted at the time and that 130 had died with Covid mentioned on their certificate since last March to the end of Nov. This is in the SE comprising of 2 large Hospitals and one small one and it is a very elderly area. I was quite speechless especially because the very next day we were placed in tier 4. Even if this figure has now doubled over the last couple of days it does not demonstrate a crisis. So either non of these Hospitals have any staff because they are all self isolating or there really is something amiss. Perhaps a combination of both.
Today “ICU Occupancy Still Below Average” https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/01/01/latest-news-241/#icu-occupancy-still-below-average
Sorry to come late to this. There’s a lot of nonsense being discussed about occupancy rates. The reasons occupancy rates are same/lower than previous years is (a) ~90% is the maximum average occupancy that can be achieved. An average means sometimes higher, sometimes lower, not constant at that level. Any hospital that ran closer to 100% average occupancy in acute & general, never mind critical care, would be under constant pressure, with patients not just on trolleys in the corridors, but littering the waiting rooms and lining up in the car park. That means (b) many patients who would normally be treated, are not being treated; (c) as Dr Kendrick observes, staffing levels are down, as a result of a combination of genuinely ill staff and staff isolating. None of this is inconsistent with hospitals being under enormous pressure – quite the opposite.
It’s a schoolboy error, made repeatedly in these comments, to assume that you can discern the truth from a simple, one-dimensional dataset. Data is vital (and arguably under-reported throughout this period) but it is open to multiple interpretations, and unless you look at all the relevant inputs, including the direct experience of people working in hospitals, like Dr Kendrick and me, you cannot reach accurate conclusions.
Excellent, Doc.
Weariness with the whole thing comes through. And your ending is spot on. Anyone who thinks those responsible will get their comeuppance are sadly wrong.
That Professor Ferguson is still listened to points to that.
One thing I have noted, is how many scientists are unscientific.
I have watched many of Jim Al-Khalili’s brilliant documentary and been enchanted. I have read his book ‘Life on the Edge’ twice – still trying to grapple with biology on the quantum scale. And yet two days ago he wrote in the Guardian – a paper I once was proud to say started life in my city but has now become ‘gutter press’ for would be intellectuals.
And his point was that this debate was between science and disinformation. There was no recognition that those in the medical profession and science were actually divided on the subject.
I find that his non-acceptance of difference of opinion unscientific and downright dishonest. Also, considering I’ve read his book twice, it’s offensive that he should point the accusation at me and many others like me.
On a wider note, I’m actually shocked at the number of scientists that do allow themselves to be ruled by emotion once they’re outside their comfort zone.
In recent years Professor Brian Cox, Sir Paul Nurse and the Science Historian Naomi Oreskes come to mind.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/28/scientists-fought-coronavirus-now-they-face-the-battle-against-disinformation
After I read Al-Khalili’s article, my feelings were much the same as yours. Used to admire him; now I just feel sad.
Exactly, Thunkit. My first reaction was disappointment – real disappointment. It makes watching or reading his stuff quite difficult. Though I would recommend ‘Life on the Edge’.
Oh, I should mention also Johnjoe McFadden. As it was a co-authorship.
I am, alas, a life member of Humanism UK. I have taken many non-religious funeral ceremonies. Jim Al-Khalili has been president of it and is Vice-President and a patron. I am now ashamed to be part of an organisation that prides itself on the matter of human rights but fails to consider alternative explanations for what is going on in the world. We have the association mentioned in our wills but I think that may well change. I feel so let down by them.
Likewise, the French have made a mockery of their Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
Thank you again, for yet another excellent summary. What would we do without these voices of sanity, popping up in the inbox periodically? l would like to share one faint hope for 2021.
For all his many faults, well covered elsewhere, Boris Johnson has an excellent brain, when he cares to employ it. Now that he’s achieved Brexit, perhaps he could put it to good use by paying real attention, personally, to the whole business of Covid. If he could only be persuaded to set aside the advice from official government advisers, and spend a few days properly engaging (ie not just a token, cosmetic meeting) with the likes of Heneghan, Gupta, Lee, Cummins, yourself and the numerous other experts out there currently being ignored, because their views contradict the prevailing orthodoxy, it is difficult to believe he wouldn’t see sense. Surely?
And surely Boris owes into the British public to not just rely on the lazy concept of ‘the science’, but to research it himself? He needs to realise that there is a completely different interpretation that can be put on all the various facts and figures, one that accords far better with his own libertarian instincts. And that Rishi Sunak would probably support! Allowing for the fact that his attention has been elsewhere during 2020, and that too much has had to be delegated to the likes of Matt Hancock, perhaps Boris should now get his own head around the situation. Probably alone among our rather pathetic politicians, he has the intellectual grasp, if he cares to use it, the position and the personality to reframe and refocus our whole approach to Covid in 2021.
Can but hope…
Unfortunately, FW, the time when a political leader like the PM could simply make up his own mind and impose the policy that seemed best to him is long gone.
Nowadays, probably in almost every country, it’s all done by groupthink. Which is VERY BAD NEWS INDEED for citizens, as the collective intelligence of a committee seems to be something like the square root of the sum of its members’ individual IQs.
About the last British PM to take full responsibility for executive decisions was the Duke of Wellington. There is a story that, asked after his first cabinet meeting how it had gone, he replied that it was damned odd: he had given the ministers their orders, but instead of going off to carry them out, they seemed disposed to stay and argue about them.
Perhaps you might share some evidence for your assertion that Boris has an excellent brain. So far I cannot see much . Plenty evidence of him being a bone idle lying chancer though. Even if he did have an excellent brain his laziness would get in the way of any real turn around in his approach to covid.
I have read one or two of his books about the ancient world that were competent and showed a good knowledge of the subject. Mind you, one of the things public schools are best at is teaching pupils to be fluent and persuasive, both in speech and on paper.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute®ion=World
Thank you Malcolm. As ever, brilliant. Am also delighted to see both you and Rajendra Sharma are part of UKMFA
No doubt in my mind that what you day is right. What about the “filling of hospitals” and that the NHS can’t cope?
Interesting that many people will be vaccinated just when the virus will naturally be decreasing in the Spring. No doubt the vaccine will get the credit.
Just as with smallpox, polio and most of the other infectious diseases, for which vaccines were produced after they had peaked and were on the way out. “Dissolving Illusions” (referred to frequently in this thread) has many details.
A thought on how people don’t understand risk (or refuse to). As well as just how bad the press are on this:
[The August Sturgis rally] attracted about 460,000 people from across the United States over 10 days
In its own study, the Associated Press found that at least 290 people in 12 states tested positive for the virus after attending the rally.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/80-covid-19-cases-minnesota-traced-sturgis-rally/story?id=74336914 [Nov 21]
At an infection rate of 0.06%, the Sturgis rally was probably the safest place to be in the USA.
If only the average citizen could distinguish clearly between 0.06% and 60%…
Joe, that’s easy, 0.06% is absolute risk, 60% is relative risk.
If only the average citizen could distinguish clearly between absolute risk and relative risk…
Easily fixed, make “Doctoring Data” mandatory reading, with exam, while waiting for Rona jab.
Sorry, thumbed down in error.
Easily fixed. Just thumb up and wait a few seconds. It should change.
Interesting re lack of excess deaths since the earlier peak etc. BUT, I note your article has made no mention of a couple of other interesting issues…..
Q1. What about the documented cases of younger people with no other obvious conditions or co-morbidities who have died quickly (apparently) due to Covid 19. I added “apparently” as you may of course say the cause of death may have been incorrectly registered on the death certificates. But my point is, has flu been known to similarly kill otherwise young/healthy people to the same extent?
Q2: What about “long Covid” as it is known? I have seen features in the news about young previously healthy people who have suffered terribly for many weeks with extreme fatigue or lack of energy since testing positive for Covid, and indeed I personally know two people suffering this (one an ambulance driver and the other a nurse) who have been off work for several weeks with these symptoms and still are showing no signs of improvement. Even if it wont kill most of us then surely we need to know more about the other symptoms or long-term effects, and such effects should be considered in any strategies for dealing with this.
Otherwise thanks heaps for your insight.
Flu kills more younger people. The average age of death in the Spanish flu was 28. (Not the current 82). There are many, many people who have suffered ‘long flu’ and ‘long all sorts of other viral illnesses.’ It is simply that no-one paid much heed to them, and the medical profession tended to write them off as neurotic malingerers. Perhaps long Covid will be worse, but there is no evidence for this, yet. It is just another thing that has been thrown into the mix to ‘prove’ that all the stupid actions taken are worthwhile.
Yes, I have been one of the statistics suffering ‘long flu’ – had a really bad dose many years ago leading to 6 weeks bed-ridden, developed ‘walking pneumonia’, and fatigue lasted months. Even now, 20 + years later, if I get run down I start to get wheezy – which never happened pre-flu.
“Spanish Flu” was something of an outlier among influenza types in being more harmful to young people – people of the age carried off by Covid, 80-year-olds and so on, tended to survive “Spanish Flu”.
Waldorf, was it the flu? Or was it the inappropriate treatments that caused the deaths? I wonder if in 100 years from now the questions will be similar over the millions killed by Sars CoV2, when really it was the lack of HCQ, Ivermection, and the excessive use of some vaccine or other.
Flu vs. COVID-19: the numbers, graphed, easy to read.
Interesting graph. Without going in depth, is it fair to say the difference is constant but fairly minuscule- except at around 10 years of age where the risk is less with covid ?
That’ll wind him/her up! Note that the vertical scale is logarithmic. As I see it, they’re saying that Covid is many more times fatal than ‘flu, but this old graph has been doing the rounds. It pays no attention to current practice of writing in Covid as cause of death by default. The poster hasn’t answered any of the points in the article.
I believe lots of people get “long glandular fever”. I certainly did, as did many of my friends and so did my daughter some 30 years later. I can still remember how unwell I felt for months after glandular fever and would very suddenly become absolutely bone-crushingly tired, where I would feel really nauseous if I didn’t go to bed very quickly. It was a good 6 months before I was fully back to normal.
My daughter was diagnosed with it at the end of 2019. After three months she went back to the GP, as she was still absolutely wiped out and was just told to get lots of rest!!!! One wonders what amazing therapies the long-covid clinics will come up with.
Hopefully not GET and CBT. However, its the only tool they currently have.
In regards to Q1, I can account for one of the 380 under 60 deaths as a friend of mine got involved in an Car accident which killed him, he had previously tested positive although this clearly wasnt the cause of death it was noted on the death certificate. Perhaps the other 379 were similar circumstances ? ?
There’s no way to win with Covid. What it comes down to is a balance of tragedies, in making government policy.
It is tragic to see young people die or be debilitated for life with long Covid, and somewhat less tragic to see older people die. But it’s also tragic to see businesses destroyed which were built up with hope and financial sacrifice, jobs lost, education disrupted, a few getting ultra-rich while many get poorer, etc etc.
Personally, I think most governments have elected to save granny and stuff the economy because they don’t have the courage to make the right decision. They know they will get slaughtered by the media who will play up the excess deaths angle, and they will do anything to avoid the experience.
Martin, what are they saving granny from? If we took any notice of the arbitrary, fact-free based, dictates, granny would not get to see and play with grandchildren. That would be good for what? Certainly not mental well being, or having some enjoyment in life. This is what they want, no more family, no more social contact, nothing that people could enjoy. All blamed on a virus so dangerous and lethal that only a tiny percentage of the population gets infected and go on to have anything more than a mild reaction. And what about the mental well being of the grandchildren who cannot understand why they cannot get near their grandparents?
They have no interest in granny, they just have interest in throwing their power about driven by people who do know better, but tell lies in order to change behaviour.
Martin,
I find such ideas, plausible as they may seem, hopelessly naive. Until enough people are willing to admit to themselves that we are caught up in a sinister agenda, call it fascism, we are doomed. The agenda is destruction and those participating in this coordinated effort are our enemies.
So true
Thank you. This is a dose of sanity.
I recall my own father when he was in his mid to late 80s. He had many things wrong with him. Age related. If I thought that I had even so much as a suggestion of a cold then I stayed away from him. So did everyone else and he policed that himself. It was kind of obvious that a cold could potentially kill him. Let alone flu. Society was not shut down though in some sort of attempt to prevent my father getting a cold.
He passed away five years ago at 89. At Christmas. One of the final causes was a respiratory illness. Despite all the precautions. Sepsis was also present. But he had also had a heart attack, had kidney problems and all sorts of other issues including diabetes. When I discussed the cause of death with the Doctor he explained some of the complexity. I agreed that we call it Old Age. Which was the reality. He told me that many people dislike that on the Death Certificate though. My guess is that in December 2019 my father would have been included as a Covid related death.
Can fully see the complexities of diagnosis that you write about, Dr Kendrick. These things really are not as simple as we want them to be.
I agree very much with your suggested way out of this too. My fear is the same as yours though: having done this once, nobody in power will want to admit it was not the right thing to do. Given that so many people generally have also strongly supported what we have done too, then they do not want to consider the possibility that it may not have helped. Anyone who has diligently worn a tight fitting mask everywhere really does not want to hear that it did not help. They want to feel that it does.
Both government and governed are just in too deep and this cycle may well perpetuate itself. This is why the only answer that seems acceptable right now is to keep doubling down on the same misguided policies. The vaccine is then the only exit route that provides a way out without having to admit this was all stupid. But, I share your questions on the vaccine. I have not seen any true evidence either that tells me whether it will achieve anything. We are living in very difficult times, where politics, health and general science have all morphed into one. This is not beneficial for any of these professions. The concept of weighing up evidence and making decisions based on it seems to be a lost skill.
So many things are a syndrome these days. In a case such as your father’s where there are many factors contributing to his death, I think they should call it GAFS — General Organ Failure Syndrome.
Maybe the spike in April was partly caused by the lockdown? I say this because Covid was already around before Christmas 2019 (I reckon I caught it on Dec 20 2019 from a coughing removal man from London) but we carried on as normal. When the lockdown came, many elderly were discharged from hospital and sent to care homes and GP visits were withdrawn. The other thought is that accepting it has been badly handled is one thing but as well as ‘cock up’ it might be useful to keep it going as it serves a purpose. The motivation might be for eg it is useful cover for introducing changes, policies and protecting embarrassing NHS waiting lists/failings. It is also making a lot of money from some such as those who sell drugs, IT etc. In the long run, putting everyone on a database would be welcomed by the security services. Our freedom is slipping out the back door as we look out the front.
As I think I’ve probably said before, in the urgent care centre where I work there was a not insignificant number of patients reporting persistent cough lasting 1 or 2 weeks, occasionally longer with mild fever (37.6-37.8) in October 2019 this increased slightly over November 2019; both my wife and I had a persistent cough that lasted 4-6 weeks. I know that I remarked to patients that there were some nasty viruses going round.
If this was SARS-CoV-2 then there must be a significant number of people who have some immunity, which makes the current decisions even more inappropriate. I did obtain the number of admissions of people with respiratory disorders into my local acute trust for the period September 2019 to January 2020, and as far as I am aware this year has been no different, I’ll put in another FOI request in the new year.
Amazing and thoughtful analysis, thanks. Why doesn’t the SAGE experts know this or are they more interested in what’s really in it for themselves and not for the greater good?
I read today that Spain is keeping a database of people who refuse Covid-19 vaccines and that this will be shared across the EU and that it may prevent travelling – if this is true, then anyone travelling should also be tested for other contagious diseases like TB, hepatitis and HIV to name but a few before being allowed entry to any country, but somehow I doubt that this will come to pass as it will be an infringement of ones human rights!
Andrew, some of the SAGE experts do know this, but they are into behavioural change, not looking after peoples’ health.
And then in the distant future they realised that the PCR testing was so unreliable that it was that alone that was the reason behind the whole thing.
Spot on. A pseudo-epidemic from testing with an over-sensiitive test alone.
In China they simply stopped testing, and there the ‘epidemic’ is completely over.
Dr. Kendrick thank you so much for your balanced insightful blogs throughout 2020. They have helped keep me calm while global Governments have lost all sense of proportion and abandoned rational thought. You deserve the very best for 2021. Lang may yer lum reek!
Thank you for another great post, honest and clear for the non-experts among us. I’m of the whole world’s gone mad banner. I bought into it initially and thought that at least our beautiful planet was getting a much deserved break from our excesses, but as Summer approached and I watched as things played out among our political and scientific classes, something just began to feel wrong. I noticed the absence of debate on/in media, I noticed the absence of evidence and how ugly the narrative creators, policy makers were becoming in their ‘you’re either with us or against us’ communications, at least they were here in Ireland. Professionals who spoke up were being told their positions were untenable. The only evidence of any human decency was among the minority informed dissenters. Those pushing the narrative, professionals and lay people alike were like rabid dogs baying for more blood. It was, is ugly to watch and listen to it all. Truth has always been scarce among our politicians, but Scientists, we now realise are their bed fellows, or at least a dogmatic strand of Science which has destroyed the integrity of the profession. And as for journalism, where are the truth seekers gone? My, former, trusted sources for balanced reporting, BBC, RTE One, Guardian, Times, all dead to me now and I will never support them again. RTE even had the audacity to create a questionnaire about people, of a certain age (mature) (me) seeking their information from suspect sources, and they wondered about us. I’ve also heard comedians, of a certain age 20/30s, sneering at mature family members who are choosing to search for other points of view around covid on social media. When did questioning and critical thinking become something to rubbish. If we can no longer depend on mainstream media, we have to reach out, despite the labeling, diminishing tags. Vaccinations are currently being rolled out among our old in the nursing homes, and I think it’s tantamount to our vulnerable being used as Guinea pigs for a monstrous strand of Science and the medical profession seems to be willing to stand by and even carry out orders. To find ourselves in a world where Science, medicine, politics and media are all singing from the same hymn sheet on a questionable narrative beggars belief, and is absolutely overwhelming at times, and the answers to how we got ourselves here require an analysis too detailed for here. I’m glad I found your blog Dr. Kendrick. I share your posts where I can, though I know very few people who are actually interested, sadly.
We are the keepers of the flame of truth. It is getting a bit of a battering at present. Luckily it never goes out completely, but people are having a bloody good go, at present.
Thank you Dr. Kendrick you are so right in saying that we are keepers of the flame of truth – long may it burn! In the midst of this insanity we have to tend our flame for future generations. xxxx
That’s a wonderful post Doreen. Your final sentence is telling. I too share this blog on our local internet ‘discussion’ group. People, including friends, think I’m a crank. Most of them are more bothered about where to get their hair done or dog groomed. Then they’re up in arms when the doggy parlour is deemed non-essential.
‘Don’t yell at me,’ I tell them. One woman told me that it was people like me, pedalling conspriacy theories, that are the reason we’re in such a mess.
This is not a loony, this is an otherwise rational person who holds down a decent job and has successfully raised a family. One of the majority who just read the headlines and take it all in.
I am now going to don my coat and woolly hat and walk the (ungroomed) dog. Just me and him with the fox and the deer and nobody to spoil it.
I’ll come back after my magic hour to tier 4. Utter insanity.
My husband thinks I am nuts also.
My wife knows I’m nuts.
I share your feelings. I’m also in Ireland. I cannot get my head around the whole thing. I never imagined that so many people – particularly my 3rd-level educated colleagues and friends – could be so lamentably and hopelessly lacking in the desire to at the very least question the narrative and seek to inform themselves at probably the most momentous time in their lives.
Like you, after initially being convinced, I very soon began to notice (how could one not?) the complete lack of balance and the incessant fear-mongering in the media. It was simply incredible.
And yet, just today a poll on Journal.ie (yes, yes I know) shows 75% of respondents in favour of going back into the severest lockdown. It is truly bewildering stuff. The comment section alone would drive you to the madhouse.
We are now in the middle of one of the greatest, most expensive cases of ass-covering in history. The double down will continue until the vaccine saves us all.
Or kills us all.
This is the only pandemic where the fearmongering and prevention measures are more deadly than the virus.
Why are there no lock downs and masks worn in China?
Because they already have a totalitarian Marxist state that has complete control of all people.
And because the CCP is not interested in destroying their economy.
I’m glad you’re back. I was getting worried. I agree with you except when it comes to vaccinating the elderly. Technically I fall into that category and do not give informed consent to be guinea pig for a hugely profitable vaccine that was rushed to market. Who knows at this point what the effect will be of this mass human experiment?
Well, I just think it is the only way out of this current mess. I fully support anyone who doesn’t want a vaccine. This is an individual choice.
Is the covid vaccine as effective as we are told?
https://thehighwire.com/videos/how-effective-is-the-covid-19-vaccine/
Are vaccines a way out of this mess or a bigger mess?
https://thehighwire.com/videos/the-biggest-experiment-ever-done/
It’s only a choice if you are given informed consent. PLEASE watch the Highwire video on the efficacy of the vaccine vs placebo. You might want to add a chapter to “Doctoring Data.”
And of course the so-called “placebo” isn’t a placebo at all. It contains some of the most dangerous ingredients of the vaccine.
“Well, I just think it is the only way out of this current mess”.
But surely that is a political mess, not a medical one? That is to say, if everyone takes the vaccine the government will be able to declare victory and restore normality.
However I doubt if the vaccine will improve matters medically. As far as I can see young people do not suffer from Covid-19, so would not benefit from a vaccine (where “young” means more or less “under 65”). Old sick people are too weak to take the vaccine, as it might kill them. That doesn’t leave many people at all.
It sounds like a cure for which there is no (or hardly any) disease.
I’d be very wary of any vaccine after reading this https://www.wired.com/2003/05/feds-race-to-make-sars-vaccine/
Without at all trying to create fright, I’m utterly convinced that a large number of people are now quietly giving up and dying. Of loneliness, isolation, lack of contact and lack of care..oh, and not forgetting depression and economic ruination. Yes, The people are dying now.
I’ve not commented before on any of your posts but I have followed you avidly and read them all and want to thank you so very much for sharing your great wisdom. You have kept me sane and reinforced many of my own views when the majority of my friends have disagreed with me which has made me feel very isolated, not because of the Covid situation but because of our such differing views. I would never have thought I would be seen as a conspiracy theorist but I do now also firmly believe that there is something more sinister going on behind the scenes that makes it favourable to keep everyone scared.. I believe world vaccination is on the agenda which will of course make £ millions for Pharmaceutical companies, and the Govts will have the power over us that they want. I have done a lot of reading on the ‘Great Reset’ and for me it explains the reasons for a lot of the ridiculous measures being taken by the world Govts etc. Once again, many thanks for sharing your views and wisdom. You have many followers.
Thank you for your posts and comments, Dr Kendrick. May I wish you and yours a healthy and happy 2021. I look forward to further reason and sanity from you; both in short supply at the moment IMHO.
If you were low on petrol, would you not only make essential trips?
Might the plan be to power down the global economy and conserve what is left? Of course that only delays the inevitable – so might the plan also involving conditioning humans to accept very strict lockdowns? Better than an uncontrolled collapse involving epic violence…..
The Biggest Oil & Gas Discoveries Of 2019
But what’s most striking is that new discoveries aren’t even close to keeping pace with the loss of conventional resources.
According to Rystad, the current resource replacement ratio for conventional resources is only 16 percent. In other words, only one barrel out of every six consumed is being replaced with new resources.
So not only has our pace of discovery declined, but discoveries are also in much more challenging geological venues and typically offshore, which means it could take many years just to bring new resources online.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Biggest-Oil-Gas-Discoveries-Of-2019.html
This visual drives home the message – and note – even when oil was priced over $100 per barrel — very little new oil was being found:
And applying logic, if there was so much conventional oil left to discover/burn…. then why have we been steaming oil out of sand in Alberta, drilling miles beneath the sea for oil, and blasting rock and sucking up the dregs in shale?
And losing massive amounts of money in the process https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Shale-Has-Lost-300-Billion-In-15-Years.html
This smacks of total desperation — and with shale peaking in 2019 — as the saying goes ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’
https://www.ft.com/content/320d09cb-8f51-4103-87d7-0dd164e1fd25
Awesome info as ever, Sir Malcolm Kendrick. “ far too many powerful reputations at stake to allow that “. ….. and far too much money to be made for the 0.1%. Probably about the same % that will die from Covid. Run chicken licken, let Henny Penny know that the sky is falling in.
Spot on as usual. The government’s projections are just that and the number of cases is not that, but is the number of positive tests which is not the same. If you bother to look at the number of positives as a percentage of the total tests done(and bother to adjust so the date tested is used, not the date reported) you find that until yesterday it barely changed. That’s without worrying about the statistical effect of false positives, repeat tests being double counted, Lighthouse lab standards being rubbish. It’s a busy winter as usual. Heaven help us if we had gone through this in every winter crisis. That said, I don’t want this virus so will be heading off to get my vaccination as soon as it’s on offer
But Andrew, any of the vaccines being worked on did not have an endpoint of stopping infection. Just to lower “medium” symptoms.
Surely Vitamin D is a far cheaper and more effective method ?
Why would you take a vaccine that has never been tried before? This is a new type of vaccine, never widely used before now. Are you a guinea pig?
Earendil: None of the trials for the three vaccines being given (Pfizer, Moderna, and Astra-Zenca) have been completed. All are ongoing, with the general public being the phase III group. None have been trialled in the elderly or frail, who typically have a weak immune response to vaccines. Yet these are among the first targeted group according to the media. Guinea pigs we are. Madness.
The more you test the more false positives you will get. Then the MSM can take those numbers and create even scarier headlines. Governments can then use those scary headlines to get people to embrace strict lockdowns.
https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-coronavirus-the-evidence/
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality (locked down countries are in the top 20 – Sweden is NOT in the top 20)
So why lock down?
Keep in mind many countries locking are dictatorships – their leaders have no problem admitting they got it wrong – the first time.
There is nearly complete consensus on lock downs. There is overwhelming rejection of Great Barrington. Anyone who challenges the narrative is mocked or deleted.
How do you get nearly all leaders on board for economy destroying lockdowns?
What do they fear more than a destroyed economy? Could it be the lockdowns delay the destruction of the economy?
Rene Descartes was the a……e who claimed that animals don’t feel pain thus creating hell on earth for them so who gives a sh..t what he said about anything
I am glad you picked up on the important points of the post.
Don’t be so sarcastic Doctor
Some things i care deeply about you obviously don’t
Now i’m waiting for lots of nasty reactions from your groupies
I have no groupies, but if you wish to drag the discussion completely off line to support your own deeply held views, do not expect people to be entirely sympathetic.
I want to join this particular thread but give me a second whilst I make myself a bacon buttie.
Dr Kendrick, being sarcastic is not like you? Many other commentators have wandered off-point but you don’t slap their wrists. The infliction of suffering on animals is objectionable, I’m sure you think so too. (Please don’t slap me, I’m old, and lonely and scared!)
Jordan Peterson is a brilliant man. But he is deeply religious. Should I trash Jordan Peterson?
There are many similar examples.
FE I like your posts. However, as the number of replies is reaching a crescendo I am afraid I am restricting to two or three long ones a day, of five or six shorter ones. Just so that things do not get out of hand. So, could I ask you to reduce the output slightly. Thanks.
Mike, everyone is wrong about some things. Most of us are probably wrong about very important things. If you condemn everyone whom you believe to be wrong about something, there won’t be anyone left except those who never say anything at all.
And Descartes was not “the” man who thought that animals don’t feel pain. Until the 20th century, almost everyone thought that – except for farmers and people who actually lived with animals.
Two other very clever men had something to say on the subject.
“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool” – George Orwell.
“This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them”. – Bertrand Russell.
I recall he claimed animals did not possess a Soul.
This is akin to seeing animals as ‘Skinner’s rats’
Which has become the basis for the systemic manipulation of human animals by f*cking with our minds as a way to f*ck with our biome. (Look up Carrie Madej for more on biological access to behavioural controls).
Descartes thought is part of the world we perceive – in fact the Cartesian split is in his name.
Regardless your feelings, history is active. You can cancel your version of your world to make a nicer corrected version, but you only put your demons out of view – not really out of mind, and this is why our whack-a-mole approach feeds the problem by driving it to ever more insidious forms of expression and limitation. Indeed as hell on Earth.
Your freedom to disregard Descartes is within your freedom to think as you are truly moved. That you were moved to react as you did indicates a sense of pain without a voice that is represented by much human blindness and indifference to animals.
My sense of Soul is that of extending recognition and meaning to a world of relation. You don’t have a Soul; you are Soul. The ‘materialist’ view is an object model. Within this framework Life is a cannibalistic murder or machine of death. I recommend not using that way of thinking as it opens a way to deeply hurt ourselves, while suffering it as the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.
I agree about Descartes. He personally tortured dogs. If someone can be so wrong on a matter that a person of normal intuitive abilities can understand, it shows a serious flaw in his ability to philosophize about reality. Which, of course, does not mean he got everything wrong. But I do not respect him.
Oh but it’s ok to test a covid vaccine on animals before you get the jab right?
Well actually it seems we have skipped that phase so you should be more than happy to take on the role of the monkey. Walk the walk as they say.
So good of you to let Frankenstein experiment on you instead of a poor moneky 🙂
I know it’s not exactly the same … but do we need to split hairs?
FE,
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Did you think that because I think torturing animals is wrong that I am an animal rights activist?
What I am saying is that vaccines are tested on animals.
The reason we do that is because we don’t care if animals suffer and die after we inject them with experiments.
Better them that us right?
We torture animals all the time. Check out industrial farming….
Remember who make-up was once tested on animals. They pry open their eyelids and rub products on eyes to see how they reacted.
If you been vaccinated or you have ever eaten meat then you are complicit in the torture.
Does that nullify all of you other life accomplishments? Should you be pariah-fied?
Let’s bury the hypocrisy shall we.
Yes, and Thomas Jefferson, who memorably wrote, “…all men are created equal”, was also a slaveholder.
And Barack Obama, the first black US president, famously described his grandmother as “a typical white person.”
So, nobody’s perfect. Get over it.
Even better – guess who said these this:
“Any potential relief efforts sent to India would accomplish little to nothing, as Indians “bred like rabbits”.
I guessed Churchill and Google agreed.
I have a black friend who grew up in the civil rights era and served in Vietnam in the late 60’s. Wonderful guy, but it turns out he doesn’t care for Asians.
Lots of prejudice in the world, sometimes in the strangest places.
Descartes lived in the seventeenth century.
At that time, people killed each other for heresy, generally supported the death penalty applied in all sorts of nasty ways and believed all sorts of things that we now hold to be false. Nobody in Christendom was vegan either.
I like animals too but your logic would imply that we should not care about anything that anyone in the past wrote about anything. No one from the past would survive our moral test.
I am not a groupie, by the way. I just like history and prefer that we judge history by its standards, not ours.
It is true that the Euromomo statistics are the only credible resource in our daily bombardment by scaremongering vague numbers of uncertain meaning and validity.
This EU dataset is quite interesting as, apart from the data per country, it offers data per age group too. If you compare the graphs per age, you will see the impressive predominance of mortality among old-age population rather than among the younger ones.
An interesting observation in those visuals is that the vertical scale in the age graphs is not fixed but differs in each age group. As a result, they give the false impression that all ages over 40-50 have about the same spike of excess mortality during 2020. If however you use the same scale for all, then it becomes clear that Covid mortality is a direct function of age and it is not the same for all.
By presenting the danger as equal for all ages, perhaps you have an excuse to confine everybody in the pen, young and old, and not only those in real danger. I wonder if that distortion of the graph scale is accidental, or in order to emphasize the danger. This observation is related to the fact that you cannot find statistics on the age distribution as easily and extensively as on other data types.
I am not sure. If you look at the scale, it is very obvious that deaths are almost entirely in the elderly.
The 3 age groups 45-64, 65-74, 75-84 seem to have about the same spike in 2020 in Euromomo graphs.
However, the 3 spikes refer to totally different numbers of victims, as the graph vertical scales differ substantially, with 9,000, 14,000, 25,000 maximum values respectively.
Dr. Kendrick, would you comment on what the numbers mean that are published by PHE at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notifiable-diseases-weekly-reports-for-2020 in England and Wales???
Covid-19 was only added in week 11. Total for Covid-19 to end of December 2020 was 13901. Are these deaths of Covid-19 or registered cases?
How should these government figures be interpreted in view of what MSM is reporting?
Yes. It seemed to me early on that although this sars-2 was deadly for some, for most, it was not, and it was following the path of other respiratory viruses. I told people – who did not believe me. I said to make sure D3/K2/Mg was OK as doing that myself has correlated with zero bad colds for several years. I was dismayed when I saw on the news that police were telling people sun bathing over the summer to move on. I gave up after a while. Some of my medic friends would have disowned me, and they are dear to me. I just keep quiet lest the thought police come to my door. The vaccines seem OK and hopefully will allow the panic to subside and give governments and some experts a chance to drop the position they have felt unable to retract. There will be a history written at some point but most will think the vaccine saved us.
Many thanks for the voice of sanity, but my email ended at the Euromomo quote “ at detecting a “
Wouldn’t like to have anything stand in the way of attracting more converts to the cause, for instance: ‘ F.F.S Look at the numbers before you believe anything they tell you’.
Best Wishes,
Malcolm Hunt ‘
>
Dr McKendrick,
I simply want to say ‘thank you’. Thank you so much for interrupting the Downing Street briefing which is broadcasting at the moment which I gladly chose to put on silent whilst I read your latest post. Your statement ‘…..the world has simply gone bonkers’ was enough to make me smile and continue reading to the end!
So grateful for your continuing efforts to try and get the true perspective out there. It’s a tragedy it’s falling on deaf ears (with regard to those in control) but I am sure you must have an army of fans/followers who think you are just brilliant and we just wish you could be given a vocal platform to at least be able to offer your thoughts to the public too.
Thank you Claire
PS. I had the pleasure of hearing you speak at a seminar in Birmingham once. Around 2013. Zoe Harcombe hosted it. I bought your book The Great Cholesterol Con as a result and think it’s time you rushed into print The Great Covid Mishandling Con too 😊
> > >
From European data it looks like COVID19 follows the usual seasonal influenza pattern –worse in winter, better in summer. But here in South Africa, where influenza is virtually unknown from November to April, we are currently experiencing a second wave of COVID19 that has a death rate as bad as the first wave, and is still climbing.
Clearly some of it is the virus breaking out in new, previously-untouched areas, and some due to deaths with, not of, the virus. Is there really a second wave? There is a huge increase in positive test results, but as we know they are not to be trusted. And now they say we have a super-infective virus mutation. Frankly, I don’t know the real story of what’s going on.
In addition to my earlier observation on the variable scale in Euromomo age-related graphs, I have one more, related to geography. It was posted in my blog under the title “The Line of Death in the Balkans” three weeks ago [https://tatatnsosos.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-line-of-death-in-balkans.html], from where I copy:
“Recently there is a rapid surge of Covid-19 cases in Greece, especially in the north part of the country. At the same time there is a dramatic rise in the pandemic victims in Northern Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Both countries have reached Italy and Spain in the number of deaths per 1m of population, with Montenegro following suit. The impressive increases in those countries are not seen in the neighbouring Albania or Bulgaria.
An interesting observation is shown on the map: If you connect Sarajevo and Thessaloniki, the line passes through the heavily afflicted countries and only them. It looks like a plane had been flying along that line spreading death.”
At that time, Slovenia’s ranking was rather low, but very rapidly bypassed all the other ex-Yugoslavia countries and now stands at the 3rd place in the world in terms of deaths per capita.
Interestingly, the “Line of Death” connecting Sarajevo and Thessaloniki passes also from Ljubljana if extended to the north.
The definition of Health comes to mind. It is the physical psychological and social well being not just the absence of illness.
Thankyou Malcolm and a happy New year
Neil
Thanks Malcolm for your insightful and uplifting covid coverage this year.
btw, WHO is just now discovering that ivermectin is increasing covid survival rate by 83%:
Finally, I was wading through the reponses looking for one in which ivermectin would be mentioned!
And there is https://www.c19ivermectin.com and if you want to hear Dr. Pierre Kory’s take on it, here he is in the US senate:
And here on a zoom meeting with Dutch ‘virus truthers’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0mvhGaHuCs&t=70s
Or Dr. Andrew Hill with a 11 study meta-analysis of trials in over 1400 covid patients.
Ivermectin really is the wonder drug that can completely blow covid-19 out of the water.
It’s both a pre- and post exposure profylactic, as well as a early, medium and late cure, or ‘primary component’ in a combination therapy.
Kory: “If you take a monthly dose of Ivermectin, you won’t get covid.”
Oops, Dr. Andrew Hill, that was your link. 🙂
I wonder if Twitter and faceBook are going through their immense backlog of censored posts in order to publish (belatedly) those they deleted for disagreeing with WHO’s position that week.
That should keep them busy.
Very good post, again.
I have one question. Obviously, feel free not to answer it. Or simply to say you do not know.
But, flu seems to have disappeared this year. Do we know why?
I have read in various places that every year we see different dominant strains of respiratory illness in the winter. So, I guess it could be that Covid somehow replaced flu this year. Or, I guess, that our awesome lock downs have eradicated flu. Am sure that the Lockdown banner supporters will argue the latter.
It does seem to be a conundrum though.
I wonder whether anyone has the figures on dying of sepsis this year.
If the sepsis was targeted for 7 or 8 years and the figures went up. What happened this year?
As I understand it:
The figures for flu and CoViD19 are being combined, from a diagnostic point of view what are the differences in terms of signs and symptoms?
Secondly, if a person tests positive, irrespective of whether their illness is caused by the influenza virus or the SARS-CoV-2 virus it will be a CoViD19 case.
Thirdly, if a person tests positive for SARS-CoV-2 it is reported to PHE directly circumventing the NOID reporting pathway.
Could it be (at least in the USA) that hospitals get paid to list Covid as a cause of death – but dont get paid to list flu?
Thanks for the sanity, doctor. Feeling much better now.
Why has the US not shown a seasonality? There actually was a spike in all cause mortality in July?
Anyone know of a sane GP in Powys, N Hfds or S Shrops, i.e. interested in prevention via healthy diet, exercise, vit D autumn to spring? I’m in fairly good health (age >65) and just want to keep it that way. I read that catchment areas are being expanded, which might allow more choice in a rural area with many practices 10-20 km apart.
Consulting a medical herbalist would be a good option. You can find one by searching the National Institute of Medical Herbalists ‘Find a Herbalist’ page.
Dr Deborah Myhill (private GP nowadays) near Knighton offers more holistic treatment which might be what you are looking for
Thank you. A great post as usual. I have been looking at the Office of National Statistics figures of total deaths for the last 6 years and comparing the figures for this year with the average of the previous 5 years and have come to the same conclusion as you have. Total deaths really is the only real figure we can rely on.
They started a stampede and now….they don’t know how to stop it! Good to listen to a your logic, think you need to talk to the “ones in charge” maybe we would get back to normal life then
While I do believe excess deaths is a very useful measure, does anyone know if these days were adjusted for the effects of lockdown, such as greatly reduced traffic deaths and homicides and increased suicides and ODs. Seems these would confound comparisons to years where no sick lockdown occurred…
Thank you Dr K. Take care. Let’s rise up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDfAdHBtK_Q&fbclid=IwAR3dcyC8XX0Nw1jDcr6Ywm_DkE7N6pQhYKu3C8OJavyWqB6McB0llRDSc-A
ke 30.12.2020 klo 16.36 Dr. Malcolm Kendrick kirjoitti:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: ” 30th December 2020 I have not written much > about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has > simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, > written many hundreds of years ago. In it, Dante describe” >
Finland are very heavy on vitamin-D fortification. They have very little deficiency, kind of like Japan. Fish eating Norway are probably also up there.
this is so sad to read. I have read you for years and I’ve respected you but you have now officially become part of the problem. Compare what happened in the Scandinavian countries. Now give a thorough look at New Zealand. Yes, there is a lot that we do know About what to do, what not do, what works, what does not. This post is a feeble attempt to justify how wrong you were about so many COVID things. I guess it would take too much guts and honor to admit your errors . You’ve been right about so many things in the past, but on this issue you’ve been mostly wrong.
Scott Sedam via mobile 248.390.0773 scott@truen.com ________________________________
scotttruencom, if you look at the data from any country, and try to say at what point they implemented any of the silly lockdown, mask, distance mandates, you can’t tell where it was done.
Sweden – no lockdowns no masks – if that country was a band they’d be broke cuz they can’t crack the top twenty in deaths per capita https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
Thank you for once again providing the antidote to massive scaremongering enough to daunt all but the strongest minds.
Re the apparent South African anomaly of a summer surge: can this not be explained like much else as an artefact of statistics collection? During the first surge South Africa was not doing anywhere near as much testing. Now it is doing exponentially more testing with in consequence exponentially increased false positives and misdiagnosis. Anyone want to prove otherwise let them produce the mortality statistics as you have done for other countries.
The really scary thing is that as long as we make everything hinge on the flawed PCR test even the vaccines will not get the numbers down much. Even as the vaccines appear to work (with luck) at the level of individuals the number of false positives will hardly flicker on the gauge. Summer may come to the rescue until we start the whole pantomime over again next Autumn. Could this be why the government appear to be shuffling sideways towards reliance on the lateral flow test, which delivers only a fraction of the false positives generated by the PCR and consequently far lower incidence? The government’s dogged support for both types of test, producing as they do radically different pictures, would be comical if the matter were not so serious.
Peter, I strongly suspect ‘governments’ are trying to move to lateral flow for the best two reasons ever…. Numbers produced will suit THEIR political purposes, and, way say cheaper to buy AND operate.. But wait! – There’s more ! – by doing so they’ll score a march on the Great Unwashed, who are becoming educated to PCR’s flaws, and again, by moving over… will appear to gain credibility and ‘Leadership.’
As many readers have already said – Thank you Dr Kendrick for pointing me to EuroMOMO in the first instance and the invaluable insights you have provided over the last few months.
The only thing that is important (as Malcolm has pointed out many times, is mortality). In South Africa deaths appear to be spiking now but can we really be confident of the classification of deaths in South Africa or the timing of reporting?
pandata.org have this to say:
“South Africa experienced two waves. A COVID-19 wave which passed through South Africa with delays between provinces possibly exceeding six weeks. This wave, and the pace of the wave is clear by looking at the hospital surveillance data across provinces, looking at case positivity rates across provinces (and positive numbers themselves) and most importantly looking at reported deaths across provinces.
The second wave of deaths had nothing directly to do with COVID-19, and was rather a wave set in motion by the hardest lockdown months in April and May 2020. This wave hit the country and its people in a more uniform manner, given the uniform timing of the lockdown, thereby resulting in excess deaths happening across the country in a consistent pattern measured by time.
Lockdown disrupted the actual reporting of deaths. While there is a requirement to report deaths to Home Affairs or to Law Enforcement, these avenues were closed to most by the requirements of Lockdown. Although it is claimed that deaths are recorded by date of occurrence rather than date of reporting, it is reasonable to speculate that accuracy has been found wanting.
A better explanation for the two waves that are reflected in the excess death numbers is that the first wave represents COVID-19 deaths and the second wave represents lockdown deaths. One wave was unavoidable. The second is completely self-inflicted.”
It is even more tragic in South Africa that lockdown related mortality will bear so much more heavily on the impoverished and those without jobs – things were bad enough before CoV-2
“If you asked me to bet, I would say it was created in a lab, then escaped by accident.”
Well Doc – I’m not too sure about the escaping by accident – It’s a very ‘Strange Coincidence’ indeed that the 7th Military World Games took place in who nows where in mid/end of October 2019 just before the virus outbreak.
Well slap-a my thigh it was in a region in China, in a city not previously too well known for much, called-now where was it ~ ah that’s it ~ Wuhan!!!
Three separate places in the city where it is said to have spontaneously erupted is more than likely to have been a deliberate act.
Which Military Power probably unleashed it upon an unsuspecting world is one for the conspiracy theorists.
Heck it could even have been a double act by Vlad & Don!!
“Which Military Power probably unleashed it upon an unsuspecting world is one for the conspiracy theorists”.
No. If (and it’s a big “if”) any government released the virus, the matter is a question for political and military analysts.
There’s no doubt at all that such a thing is perfectly feasible. (Anyone read Tom Clancy’s “Rainbow Six”?)
Then the questions that arise are: who would would release the virus? How would they hope to gain? And so on.
One valid objection usually raised is that a virus is too unselective. It spreads everywhere and hits everyone. Another objection is that Covid-19 has not been deadly enough for a biological weapon.
Well, governments are devious and they lie a lot. Remember “Novichok”, the world’s deadliest nerve poison which, however, somehow fails to kill most of its victims? Maybe anyone planning to use a viral weapon would want to fire a few trial shots first, to see how it spreads and what the reaction is.
Hmmmm….
FT.com “The global economy was facing the worst collapse since the second world war as coronavirus began to strike in March, well before the height of the crisis, according to the latest Brookings-FT tracking index. “The index comes as the IMF prepares to hold virtual spring meetings this week, when it will release forecasts showing the deepest contraction for the global economy since the 1930s great depression.
Google Luc Montagnier a virologist who won the Nobel prize for discovering the HIV – Aids link.
Ignore the ‘conspiracy theory stuff’ and find where he insists Covid could not possibly occur without the hand of man.
Even Maradona could not have pulled this off
Lies, damn lies and statistics and then more lies. The government and their scientific advisors have made a decision to scare the living daylights out of everyone, however it didn’t work on everybody. I guess most people reading this report are at least sceptical to the Whitty Vallance horror show. Keep pushing the sense, the message, the truth that this pandemic came, it tried to come again, but bumped into a bit of herd immunity, it will come one more time and will be even less effective. The truth is we have caused untold damage to mental health, the economy, education and general health care. Our generation will be held accountable and the soft compliant population won’t like it when the pidgeons come home with their wealth tax, their child’s future ruined and angry homeless people at their doors. Happy new year.
At last the vaccines are being rolled out around the world. Ive had the Pfizer vaccine.. 2nd shot on 16th Jan. Soo pleased. Side effects were a slight sore arm that night if I rolled onto it. Since then feeling fine. We might get back to normality later this year with luck.
They stopped the animal experiments with a similar technology vaccine because, when the vaccinated animals were challenged with the virus, they were much more likely to die from organ failure. Whoops.
Are you just trying to scare him or can you back that up?
As you may well imagine, this is not a topic that has been given wide or emphatic publication. Because it is so embarrassing to the vaccine advocates, social media can be expected to do their level best to conceal it. This is about the best starting point I have been able to find so far:
“Pfizer COVID vaccine trial shows alarming evidence of pathogenic priming in older adults.
Some of the world’s top vaccine-promoters are warning about unique and frightening dangers inherent in developing a coronavirus vaccine”.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/pfizer-covid-vaccine-trial-shows-alarming-evidence-of-pathogenic-priming-in-older-adults
Robert Kennedy, Jr. gives an accessible explanation here:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/the-truth-about-vaccines-2020-vaccine-roundtable-part-2-video-and-transcript/
And before anyone brings it up, the presence of Dr Andrew Wakefield as a panel member has no bearing on what Mr Kennedy says.
I could, but you can look it up. It would be a good mental exercise for these restricted times.
AhNotepad: Yes, indeed. Two of our top vaccine promoters and developers, Dr. Paul Offit and Dr. Peter Hotez gave public warnings in interviews last spring about the possibility of immune-enhancement from mRNA vaccines. They remembered previous efforts which ended in failure based upon the initial animal safety studies. With these vaccines they skipped the animal safety studies altogether! Now both of these gentlemen are completely on board with both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Somebody got to them. But they were right. Covid is a disease of poor metabolic health. And there are at least three effective treatments: 1. HCQ+zinc+antibiotic (the Zelenko protocol); 2. ivermectin (an old repurposed drug); and 3. budenoside (an asthma drug) delivered through a nebulizer. There is no need whatsoever for a vaccine, and as far as I know, none of the trials have been published. This is a very dangerous development, the promotion by governments of these vaccines.
Here we are Eric, and all the other doubters, in case you didn’t bother to look I found this in less than 20 seconds. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0035421
Get your vaccine and you recieve a free histopathlogy if challenged.
“These SARS-CoV vaccines all induced antibody and protection against infection with SARS-CoV. However, challenge of mice given any of the vaccines led to occurrence of Th2-type immunopathology suggesting hypersensitivity to SARS-CoV components was induced. Caution in proceeding to application of a SARS-CoV vaccine in humans is indicated.”
Just as well you’re not a mouse.
I remember that paper, too, Ah. Unfortunately I can’t find a reference to it right now – a search for likely terms just produces an immense pile of references to the current vaccine trials.
Not being able to trust Google causes considerable mental heartburn. Come back Altavista!
I suspect Dr Kendrick is familiar with the report. The experimenters were extremely pleased with the preliminary results, as all the animals showed strong antibody responses.
Unfortunately, when exposed to the actual pathogen, they all died quite suddenly.
That’s what can happen when you mess around with unbelievably complex biochemical systems that you hardly understand.
Try using the date filter on google – in particular your end date should be pre Covid. That will filter out the propaganda.
Fergus, I’m happy for you that you are happy and at present, seemingly safe. Please don’t be disappointed if / when you are diagnosed with covid, that vaccine is only successful in ameliorating symptoms, not in preventing you from becoming infected & unwell.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂🤣😂😂😂
The purpose of the restriction of “normality” is to prevent asymptomatic transmission.
Covid vaccines are not known to prevent asymptomatic transmission.
Please explain how use of vaccines can justify the removal of such restrictions.
Mr Fisher, asymptomatic transmission is covered in a Chinese study of 9,899,828 people. They apparently did not find one instance.
You are right Mr. Fisher. Lockdown forever is the only answer.
I hate to rain on you parade…but…. Fauci is quoted in here as are many other scientists who insist the fastest they could ever come up with a vaccine is 3 years. And even that is a huge long shot.
It’s not for want of money.
Don’t worry too much – you’ve probably just been injected with the standard flu vaccine. I am sure it’s relatively harmless.
https://www.wired.com/2003/05/feds-race-to-make-sars-vaccine/
The ‘virus’ is the government the carrier’s the media.
Thank you so much Dr K for a balanced level headed article. Ive sent it to my MP with my latest letter. I’m giving him my attention on a weekly basis at the moment and he does seem to be taking a bit more of a proactive approach at last. Draconian tier systems are killing businesses, causing serious mental health issues, even suicides sadly. Families are parted for months. Older people live in fear like my 89 year old Mum who had zero Xmas and how many does she have left?
Ive forwarded your article many times. To believers and sleepers. Personally I think there IS a deeper agenda but I like that you can put forward a well reasoned response without it! Thank you!
Seems one needs to be an economist with 70+ years of experience to know what to say. Listen to the end then decide?
Coherent but concerning view from economisthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1-0XKYAZII
Almost everything Catherine Austin Fitts says makes sense of a kind. But… the part that overlaps my area of expertise fails the test utterly.
Namely: injecting nanoparticles into our bodies that will communicate with the Cloud.
That is utter nonsense. A nanoparticle is defined as something well under 1 micron in any dimension – one thousandth of a millimetre.
“The Smallest Computer in the World Fits On a Grain of Rice”
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a22007431/smallest-computer-world-smaller-than-grain-rice/
Maybe someone can go a bit further. As the article goes on to report, IBM has made a computer that’s about 1 millimetre cubed in size. (One billion times larger in volume than a nanoparticle). But… it loses all its programs and data when powered down. And it certainly couldn’t begin to perform any of the operations necessary to affect physiology or body chemistry, far less modify thinking or emotions. Not to mention the equipment necessary to communicate by radio with the Internet (from inside a human body). And how would it be powered? Mitochondria consume glucose, proteins and fats to power the body’s cells. How would you make a tiny computer emulate that feat?
Yet another example of what Michael Crichton dubbed the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:
“You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know”.
– Michael Crichton, “Why Speculate?”
Smartdust might provide the answer you’re looking for: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/09/16/smart-dust-is-coming-are-you-ready/
Thanks for the pointer, Roan. I read it with some scepticism, having some experience myself of the field of high-tech “evangelism”. The author is credited as (inter alia) a “popular keynote speaker [and] futurist”; no mention of his having any actual experience of building such devices.
The size which he gives for a “smart dust” device is about that of a grain of salt – coincidentally, exactly the size of the IBM device in the “Popular Mechanics” article I cited. A billion times bigger than the biggest nanoparticle.
I cannot believe that anything that size could either contain a self-contained power supply or transmit and receive through human tissue, walls, etc. to the Internet. (Unless it were using cold fusion or something yielding similar power density).
Nor would I want anything artificial the size of a grain of salt implanted in my body – either coursing through my blood stream or embedded in a bone or muscle. It certainly wouldn’t fit through a hypodermic needle, anyway.
Unless what’s injected as a “vaccine” is an intelligent, self-organizing swarm of true nanoparticles, which assembles itself into a networked computer only after being injected.
In which case I give up. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
It would fit through a needle. I remember the size of the needles to implant caponising pellets.
Hmmmm, Ah…. “Caponising pellets”, eh? What a marvellous analogy for the current vaccination frenzy.
Although one might feel that the population has already been mentally and emotionally caponised.
If anything can change this, I feel it will be politics. There is one only one political party that can change this – The BREXIT party, soon to be called Reform UK.
They sent the following magnificent letter to Matt Hancock:
https://www.thebrexitparty.org/letter-to-secretary-of-state-for-health/
This must have been written by someone deeply in the know, because it points a whole series of sharp sticks at the PCR tests, and the ‘contribution’ these may be having to the panic in the country.
Whatever you think about Brexit, hardly matters, since this outlandish destructive nonsense dwarfs any other action short of war itself. Nigel Farage scared the Tories into voting to permit the referendum, and perhaps he can work his magic again.
Meanwhile, I will try to attend the next anti-lockdown protest in Manchester at 1.00 in Piccadilly. It is about the most constructive thing I can think of.
Superb – as are many of the comments. Thank you Dr Kendrick – voice of sanity in this wilderness, this lack of moral rectitude – may its feral inhabitants fall silent. To you : Stay well, stay safe – slàinte mhath (slangevar) to 2021
A fair bit of conspiracy crap in the comments. Being one who is extremely vulnerable and old I understand the issue of health or economics and that the hospitals have been starved of good management ,beds and nurses . That nurses are falling sick with stress now as overworked and many leaving or thinking about leaving the job. Even so do we want bodies in the streets because there are not enough beds or staff? Lockdown is necessary to enable the NHS to cope if for nothing else.
Steve cook, the alternative could be “a fair bit of lockdown crap in the comments”. Why do you think it is helpful to a discussion to say those who think differently from you are posting “crap”? Is your case weak? As for hospitals being overwhelmed, have you been inside one lately, because Gloucester isn’t https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=%23ycampaign&prefetchtimestamp=1609404910407
This Twitter thread is over a month out of date. The situation at Gloucester is now very serious. So yes, there is a fair bit of lockdown crap here.
The question to ask though is whether lock downs and so forth are helping.
The data does not suggest that they do. As the original post says.
Hospitals may be overwhelmed. But that does not mean that the interventions make sense.
I am getting tired of the selfishness of pro-lockdown people who expect that it is perfectly alright to demand that the young of a society sacrifice themselves for a bunch of 70 and 80 year olds.
Can’t the pro-lockdown people comprehend that poverty and despair kill and that many, or most, of the fatalities will be elderly?? The looming depression could make the Great Depression seem like a picnic.
Join David Icke and be happy
Feel free to lock yourself down indefinitely then.
But do NOT impose your lockdowns on me.
And BTW – lockdowns do nothing but smash us out of jobs https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-coronavirus-the-evidence/
As a fully qualified armchair warrior with no relative qualification I would hesitate to point out that excess deaths is 71000 up to 15 December and with numbers climbing rapidly in the past 2 weeks I expect this to climb as well to nearer 80000. Does this qualify as over-running the NHS when you consider there is not much normal bed occupancy occurring ?
Thank you Dr Kendrick, and thanks to ahnotepad too, for a very welcome chuckle.
I’m very tired.of the human stupidity and of the human dependency on money.
But I can only praise your texts,on any matter and, in the case, about the «pest».
Your «What is left to say?» is full of wisdom. Full of real notions, since your grandma. God bless you, believer or not.
oliveira
Thank you for being a voice of sanity in these mad times. As a child every common cold made me seriously ill. My parents did their best to protect me. We did not expect or desire the country to be shut down. What has happened to common sense and civil liberties? Almost everything that makes life worth living has been taken away in the name of “protecting us”.
I always enjoy it when a well informed, intelligent, reflective professional – i.e. you, doc – finds himself in perfect agreement with me. It implies you’re on to something.
The most striking thing is indeed how little we know securely. Our best guide is indeed the figure for total deaths.
By the by, who can resist “Mortality is a basic indicator of health.” Snort.
This is the most sensible and honest piece of writing I’ve seen in a while. Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Kendrick. The graphs tell the story. One great tragedy is that so many of the deaths, at least in New York and the UK, and likely other places in Europe, resulted from neglect and abuse in for-profit nursing homes, combined with the end of any semblance of oversight and the political decision to shove hospital patients into them. I crunched the numbers for the period up to August for Sweden, the UK, and the U.S. The mortality rate per hundred thousand divided by the number of nursing home beds per hundred thousand, then multiplied by one hundred to move the decimal point two places to the left, to arrive at a ratio. Sweden: 4.15. The UK: 7.79. The U.S.: 7.57. Mass murder it was.
Normally, as GPs we worry about how ill a virus makes the patient, not what it is called, and we ride the storm. We tell people with suspected flu to stay at home to avoid infecting others, and deal with the ones that get ill, as best we can. The last 10 months has reduced our face to face consultations by about 2/3, and, while I don’t miss the pointless cholesterol and mild hypertension consultations, I worry about all the missed cancers.
Absolutely refreshing. Thank you for your article.
Enjoyed your writing. Happy New Year.
Linda
Thank you, Malcolm. A voice of reason in a gale of foolishness. On Wed, 30 Dec 2020 at 15:38, Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: ” 30th December 2020 I have not written much > about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has > simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, > written many hundreds of years ago. In it, Dante describe” >
Once again the voice of sanity in an insane world. It seems that whatever people have been told by their government, most people believe it rigidly because they have been frightened by the information they are being fed. It is blindingly obvious that the Lockdowns and mask wearing haven’t worked. If they had, we would all be getting on with our lives as normal. Simple fact, yet everyone seems to have missed it. I live on the Isle of Man, where there is no covid at all in the community. We are in a giant bubble, 33 miles long, 13 miles wide. No restrictions, except we are imprisoned by our borders. Yet the other day I saw a young man in running gear apparently in training, and wearing a mask. What possible reason could he have for wearing one? Where could he possibly pick up covid in a covid free island? People are being literally frightened to death by Those in Charge who are, are you so rightly say Dr K making an absolute pig’s ear of it all. How can they sleep at night?
“How can they sleep at night?” You ask…. so I’ll let you into a little secret …. it is simply a thing called “The Noble Lie”; “They”, the controllers of this place believe what they are doing is for “the greater good”.
Now, what ‘ends’ they might define as “good” and to whom they see as those who should benefit from those ‘ends’, or whom they mean by “greater”, may not be who or what you or I would want to see benefit. In fact it may be to our cost or detriment.
I can empathise if you can not believe this to be true; the majority of the public cannot believe it either, simply because this is not something they would ever do themselves and thus cannot believe it of others, especially those in positions of authority or government who they have been conditioned to trust and who’s motives they dare not deign to question.
Perhaps a worthwhile place to begin to understand the Noble Lie is here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YbCKLr_vHhY&feature=youtu.be
Well said again. Thank you for your thoughts on COVID-19. Such commonsense, just wish our governments thought the same. So many now talk about the new “normal” scary thought. They also believe what the main stream media says as gospel and health professionals i.e. wearing masks will protect you, etc, etc.
Aye Aye Sir, well said, and thank you for the good laugh!
Riveting that tests over-estimate cases, there are no excess deaths, countermeasures are ineffective and most deaths are not actually due to COVID.
However, here Los Angeles County deaths are exploding and some have waited 18 hours to even get out of the ambulance at the ER ‘cos there are no ICU beds left.
My question is: do you actually have any advice for folk who want to survive this thing? Seriously, what should we be doing?
Jonathan, to survive, try to do all the things most normal people do, have loads of vitamin C and D and zinc and K2. In practice you will have to work a lot harder to die from it than you would to survive it.
Get out and enjoy fresh air and plenty of exercise. Go home, have a good solid nourishing meal, take your supplements, have a drink if you like, and then get a good night’s sleep. Avoid stress that upsets you, but try to get the amount of stress that keeps you happy and healthy.
Another supplement reportedly to be very beneficial, both as a preventative and treatment, is quercetin. Take 1000 mg a day as a preventative, and if you get the virus, then double that to 2000 mg twice a day. Or even greater, if necessary.
What is left to say? Maybe just to remind people that some of the main sponsors of the (relatively few) large global media (ie ‘bad news sells’) companies are the (relatively few) large pharmaceutical (ie ‘vaccine’ fast-tracker) companies. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy or anything, but maybe these companies saw the media reporting on ‘drug cartels’ and thought “… now there’s an idea!”
Truly one of the precious few voices of reason. I have just one question if someone can answer. Just musing why set the ‘Z’ threshold at 5 ? My rusty statistics would set it well below that for statistical significance (closer to 2 st. Dev from the mean). If threshold is at 2 , might it show a different picture in comparing countries ?
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/coronavirus-weltweit-infizierte-tote-tests-alle-live-daten-a-7365ef99-2aa6-4ee1-b429-14c4edf3b0b2
Second last graph Übersterblichkeit = excess mortality for some European and international countries. I don’t like their new data rendering in various shades of pinkish brown instead of a proper graph, but it paints a similar picture to what Malcolm is saying. The UK is not experiencing much of a second peak in deaths when you look at the color scale. You can hover over each field and get the numbers, +20% for the first week of November. Is that a lot? Sounds to me but maybe not.
Worst hit is Belgium with +79% for the last week of October (Slovenia is not part of this graph). It is also an outlier in that it breaks the pattern of countries that have had a bad first peak not experiencing so many deaths in fall / winter.
If you look at the colors for Germany, you really wonder what all that clamoring we are subjected to is about. The worst peak was mid-August at +21%, and that was attributed to a heat wave. So how does this squre with the 300 daily deaths we had in late November that prompted the hard lockdown? Well, +14% for the last week of November the last week of data availale. We are currently at 650, so that might translate into +35% overall mortality. At the same time, nearly 6000 people are in intensive care for Covid, and many hospitals have reached capacity. So the clamoring seem justified, at least until you start looking elsewhere or into previous years. Not sure what to think yet, but thank you Malcolm for pointing this out.
https://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/2020-12/statistisches-bundesamt-sterbefallzahlen-november-2020-anstieg
There are two proper graphs, mortality for all of Germany and for Saxony only. Saxony is currently seen as the problem child. They had not much of a first wave, they were touted as careless throughout the summer and into fall (I travelled there in July, and found compliance with mask rules to be markedly poorer than elsewhere), they have a particularly strong AfD party (our equivalent of UKIP or whatever they are called now) and had plenty of protests against restrictions, made up from a strong local contingent but also from activists who travelled there to protest.
The jury is still out whether they are having a very strong second wave because they missed out, because of behavior or both.
Translation by Deepl:
Significantly more deaths in November than in previous years
In November 2020, 8,186 more people died than on average in the years 2016 to 2019. Excess mortality was particularly high in Saxony.
30 December 2020, 17:09Source: ZEIT ONLINE, dpa, khe47 comments.
Listen to article
Federal Statistical Office: an empty hospital bed stands in a treatment room at a hospital.
An empty hospital bed stands in a treatment room in a hospital. © Jens Büttner/dpa
According to preliminary findings of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the number of deaths in Germany increased significantly in November 2020. According to the report, 8,186 people died, 11 per cent more than the November average from 2016 to 2019. The total number of deaths was at least 84,480 people. The last time there were more than 80,000 deaths in a November was in 1974 – when 81,006 deaths were recorded.
The number of deaths related to the coronavirus was thus 7,335. For the last week of November, the 48th calendar week, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported a total of 2,579 deaths related to Covid-19 – 639 more than in the previous week.
The statisticians registered a significant increase in deaths, especially among those over 80 years of age. There were 8,192 more cases, or 19 per cent, than the average from 2016 to 2019. “In contrast, deaths among those under 80 years of age are at the same level as in previous years,” they said.
“In addition to the direct and indirect consequences of the Covid 19 pandemic, shifts in the age structure of the population may also contribute to above-average case fatality rates,” the experts informed. For example, they said, the number of people aged 80 and over had risen from 4.7 million to 5.7 million between 2015 and 2019.
According to the statisticians, excess mortality was particularly high in Saxony. In the state, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, 39 per cent more people died compared to November in previous years.
Both nationwide and in Saxony, the difference increased week by week. In the last week of November, it was 55 percent higher in Saxony than the previous year’s average. Nationwide, it was 14 per cent. At the same time, the number of people who died from or with Corona also increased from week to week in November.
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Note that Saxony was 39% higher for all of November when deaths really only took off in the last week of November and into December, so December data will look even worse. Even if Saxony is a bit of an outlier because of its very mild first wave, I suppose it is a reminder to politicians what will happen if they let things run their course. This does not necessarily apply to other countries that had more infections earlier. Belgium and to some degree Spain seem to show though that previous hard times do not count that much.
Hi thanks as usual for clarity and outside- of-the box thinking. I think you are right about so many things, sadly enough. The most salient points that stick out for me is that, while Covid-19 is worse than the typical flu, it is probably no worse than the extremely bad flus of ’57 and ’67. They were very bad, but at the time (at least in France) they went practically unnoticed by the medias and the politicians. And have been almost completely forgotten. There were other, more concerning things going on at the time, for one, and second, bad flus were considered normal and expected. Today, this would have been politically unacceptable, but times have changed. Different from the COVID-19, they did burn out quickly. The second, depressing point, is that nothing has really worked in terms of mitigation. This virus has done what this viruses do very well, and that is spreading until stopped by a vaccine or the formidable human immune system. All the face-saving mitigation efforts by the governments of the world have been (almost) for naught, and we have destroyed the economy for nothing. Or so it seems.
I do note that in the US the excess mortality does show a very big, long bump (+10%-20% more deaths than expected) over all of 2020, available here: https://www.cdc.gov/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm That does seem like a lot, and the hospitals are overwhelmed. Maybe Americans are in particularly bad health, or maybe this is just a repeat of 1957 and 1967 and will be soon forgotten.
“Truly, the Gods have descended to live amongst us. Those who can determine what is true, and what is not. ”
That jumped out for me.
The wonderful interpretation of creation that those in power,(and they were always in conflict), were just as capricious and ignorant as those below the cloud.
Thanks, Dr K. insightful as usual. We need an election to get rid of the idiot politicians that keep dragging us down, but I fear that their followers vastly outnumber those of us who’d rather think for ourselves. With elections in May, the PR machines will whir into action and claim that the natural reduction in cases is due to their wonderful management and thus prove they were right instead of simply coincidental timing. It makes me want to weep.
Been following your blog for quite awhile Dr Kendrick and you are so the voice of sanity.
I am just rereading your book “Doctoring Data” and have a question – nothing to do with covid.
Have you ever done any work on Bisphosphonates to treat osteoporosis? The side effects are horrific and may make fractures more likely. Do you think that data was doctored here?
Yup
Noted for future reference – thank you
Results of a random search on bisphosphonates threw up this – (issue is of interest). http://www.versusarthritis.org/about-arthritis/treatments/drugs/bisphosphonates/https://www.versusarthritis.org/about-arthritis/treatments/drugs/bisphosphonates/
Bisphosphonates are generally well tolerated. The risk of digestive problems with oral preparations is very much reduced if you carefully follow the instructions that come with your medicine. Less common side-effects include: itchy rashes or photosensitivity (rash on exposure to sunlight)
Malcolm,
I think we all depend on you in this incredibly bleak time. You are a rock of common sense, and I was starting to worry that your absence for a few days (not even moderating our posts) meant that you had finally been nobbled one way or another – I am really glad to know that you are still with us into 2021.
Thank you. Reached a state of ennui for a bit.
You deserved a rest! Do you know anything about this supposed new strain of COVID – such as how they test for it – a different PCR test, I presume.
David Bailey: I had hoped he was having a skiing holiday, which he surely deserves! Or s skiing now prohibited?
@DrK,
what’s the current lab panel for RTI, is SARS-CoV-2 the first test and if that returns positive, do the tests stop, or do ‘flu & pneumonia get run anyway (as in “first hit” or “exhaustive search”)?
Yet another great post Dr Kendrick. Please keep up the good work. Its reassuring to know that common sense + proper data analysis can still be presented through the madness.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55479018 This sort of rhetoric from a hospital consultant does significantly more harm than any virus. In fact I would go so far as to say that the comments and their context needs to be looked at, after all if a consultant or senior nurse in an NHS hospital said anything that went against the official line the GMC and definitely the NMC would become involved.
Just read that that Prof. Hugh Montgomery, head of an ICU dept., said that anybody who does not wear a mask has blood on their hands. Wow! The lunatic has taken over the lunatic asylum. He needs certifying. But quick!
I didn’t listen to the Hugh Montgomery video clip (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-55496640) but I read the subtitles – if they were not accurate then someone owes Prof Montgomery an apology.
Quote: “We’re seeing whole families coming in now
and I’m watching one parent then another parent
or a parent and a child die, you know I’m watching
whole families getting wiped out here, and it’s got to stop.”
Hmm… NHS England have also just published their latest weekly spreadsheet on Covid deaths (https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/12/COVID-19-total-announced-deaths-31-December-2020-weekly-file.xlsx). No change among 0-19 year olds in the past week – 27 total since the beginning. Maybe this ‘parent and a child’ death occurred since records closed at 4pm yesterday, but I would have thought it would make headlines. I think Prof Montgomery is exaggerating for effect.
Or getting bribed or blackmailed to lie?
Wow. No.
I have no reason to think Prof Montgomery is not sincere. ‘Exaggerating for effect’ is as far as I’m willing to go. *I think* he’s wrong based on my own investigation of the published data.
I have a great deal of respect for him and what he does. I could never do his job but I’m fairly sure he could never have done mine.
Doctor Kendrick, I would count Boulderite’s remark as a personal insult to Professor Montgomery. Wouldn’t you? And you only allow personal insults if they’re directed at yourself I think. So why have you allowed this to pass scrutiny? Please do the honourable thing Doctor and remove it.
I thought about it. But when someone accuses others of, effectively, murder, then I feel that the perspective alters. If you cannot take it, you should not give it out. You may disagree with this, and I would respect that opinion. I mainly mean, personal insults against other commenting on this blog. It prevents any further discussion of any value.
Did you actually read the article or just the headline? Is it only you allowed to have an opinion?
If he didn’t keep his face covered, life may become unpleasant after such an example of misinformation. Then again it is being aired by the Brainwashing B’stards Company
Misinformation?? Professor Montgomery is actually there, on the wards, at the coalface!
“It is making me actually very angry now that people are laying the blame on the virus, and it is not the virus, it is people, people are not washing their hands, they are not wearing their masks,” he said.”
If there were any justice Montgomery would be removed from his position for making such an unfounded remark.
It’s not the virus, it’s not the people, it’s the politicians led by their SAGE behaviour manipulators. Most of what we see is not real, it is deliberately induced fear.
How do you explain someone like the 41-year-old American congressman dying this week who had no chronic diseases? Was it just a “little flu,” as the Brazil nut-president likes to call covid. The Spanish Flu was obviously much more deadly, but it was also a completely different era with no vaccines and a lot less medical tools. And perhaps the covid statistics are not as bad because countries did do lockdowns? What’s clear to me is that certainly this novel virus affects some people much more than others. The most frequent common denominator is said to be old-age and underlying issues likes diabetes and heart disease but I suspect it is also that some people just have weaker immune systems than others (for a variety of reasons: age in some cases, diet and others, more..) or have bad luck with the level of infection.
Yes, the gravity of the pandemic lies somewhere between, but closer to very serious than not.
Not absolutely sure but I read he had a heart attack. People like him might have partly occluded arteries and the Covid-19 is the last straw.
According to The Washington Post he died of a heart attack after an operation.
Yes, his heart did stop, and it was due to complications from covid, not because he had heart disease.
Read the Washington Post article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/29/luke-letlow-covid-louisiana-congress/
Excerpts:
– “Letlow announced that he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Dec. 18, the Monroe News-Star reported, and isolated at his home in Richland Parish in northeastern Louisiana. By the next day, he was admitted to the hospital.”
– “..on Tuesday (Dec. 29), he suffered a “cardiac event” and died, Ghali (his doctor) said. Asked whether any underlying conditions might have contributed to his death, Ghali said, “None. All covid related”..
– “..he had an inconsistent record of wearing masks while campaigning, sometimes covering his face at meet-and-greets but also speaking indoors without a mask on to rooms of mask-free residents.”
I think one incident can not be representative of anything.
If you follow the statistics and daily obits, you will find there have been literally tens of thousands of incidents around the world just like this one. In America, covid is taking more than 3000 people per day right now and it is on the rise. This particular case though is especially illustrative given Letlow’s age and lack of underlying disease; it undeniably shows that covid is indeed a real, deadly disease and, most important, not only for the elderly. Stop buying conspiracy garbage.
Dear brian, I have now cancelled my ongoing order for conspiracy garbage, can you please provide a quote for the official statistics/deadly disease (for which most people need a test to tell them they are in danger of dying at some point) garbage?
Isn’t the point that flu is not always a mild disease, and it can kill, but we have learned to live with it, not destroy our economies in a frenzy of panic to try to eliminate every last flu virus.
That is what we should be doing – protect the vulnerable, and let the rest continue as normal?
Besides, after these lockdowns finish, there will be no money for anything – including health care – we are burning our house down to get rid of a wasp’s nest!
Brain, in this new age of enlightenment we all need to question the information we are fed by the media. An American congressman … my immediate thought would be overweight person who doesn’t exercise or eat responsibly, I may be wrong, but there again are perfectly healthy people really dying from Covid ?
Do the covidians really think that the vast majority of people who died ‘from’ Covid weren’t going to die this year anyway ? Unfortunately, or not, death is inevitable for all of us and more so for those who are older or sick.
The NHS/PHE seem to be a bit cagey wrt the PCR threshold Ct cycle rate used in PCR testing. Some suggest that values as high as 45 are being used. Many sources suggest that a value of >40 cycles is useless for virus detection, or even >35 cycles. It will be useful to see what happens over the next few months.
FYI – “A typical RT-PCR assay will have a maximum of 40 thermal cycles”, taken from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cycle-threshold-ct-in-sars-cov-2-rt-pcr
I guess you are only quoting, but it simply does not make sense to combine the words ‘typical’ and ‘maximum’ in one sentence!
There is also the oxymoronic question, properly asked, “…..but there again are perfectly healthy people really dying from Covid ?” Perfectly healthy people do not die of diseases. Something in their system is not working properly.
Brian, a starting point would be
“Distrust the government,
Avoid the mass media,
Fight the lies”.
Governments have been shown to be almost universal deceivers over this virus, and their paid stooges in the media just do as they are told. What you get told is unlikely to be the facts.
I’m not aware of the details so I can only speculate:
England’s NHS reports that up to 30 Dec 2020 342 people aged 40-59 with no previously diagnosed underlying medical condition died with Covid in NHS hospitals in England. Leaving aside freak accidents like being killed as a result of a car crash shortly after a positive test I think we can reasonably say that Covid killed at least some of them.
Our ONS publishes data using different agegroups to the NHS so it’s difficult to directly compare numbers but this should be close enough: On average in the years 2010-2019 62,400 people aged 45-64 in England and Wales die each year. 342 people is 0.5% of this number.
I am not aware of a source of historical data with which we could compare how many people with no underlying health conditions died of ‘flu (for example) each year. (Yes, I know Inflenza is not a Coronavirus – comparing their effects does not make me a bad person).
I know some such people exist – but nobody I know would claim that nobody has died of *just* this damned bug. It may well be that Luke Letlow was just unlucky.
Brian
Oh dear oh dear – I suppose it had to happen sometime and Brian went for it , like a dog after a bone.
Maybe the US is different but for the life of me, around here the crisis is and has been in the media. Folk dying of all sorts of things, the relatively young usually suicide otherwise, all the usual suspects continue to take their toll. I should be worried at 60 with coronary issues and × but am not.
Is there something wrong with me ?
How do you explain the death of 188 children from the flu?
2019-20 Season’s Pediatric Flu Deaths Tie High Mark Set During 2017-18 Season. August 21, 2020 – CDC today reported one new seasonal flu-related death in a child that occurred during the 2019-2020 season, bringing the total number of flu deaths in children reported to CDC for last season to 188.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlights/2019-2020/2019-20-pediatric-flu-deaths
And btw :
About 900 persons die annually from diseases associated with or related to constipation. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02554713
I am reminded of Mr Creosote!!!
Why can’t the government see this common sense. I’m a lay woman and it’s perfectly logical. Although I am a litter worried other factors or people are manipulating the virus for other agendas.
Always good to hear read your Blog, some sanity in a Mad world, unfortunately I had to have a test today for work otherwise I won’t get paid!! After reading your views at least I know there is at least one Doctor out there who agrees they probably are causing more panic than needed!! Thank you and Happy New year let’s hope 2021is a bit sane!! 😊😊
Wonderful wonderful wonderful.
But we have to try to prevent such panics spreading in the future if we can.
To me Ian there were two main catalysts:
1. The horrific images portrayed in the media of Wuhan and Italy – both localized outbreaks.
2. The number 500,000
After that it became a self-perpetuating shambles.
Just applauding here
Is anyone experiencing this and can anyone explain it?
After I’ve clicked onto this blog on my tablet, the web address very often stays in my ‘history’ section and I have to shut everything down to get rid of it. It doesn’t happen with any other site. It’s making me suspicious. Should it?
I get the odd post from this Blog. Mostly it is spasmodic, but sometimes posts do come in splurges – like now. Historically, I recall that many folk have had odd issues with posts and the like, and that Dr K himself has puzzled over this from time to time. Odd things do happen. Maybe it’s just a WordPress software issue/quirk, but then… maybe not.
Shaun, I have found that some of the subscriptions on the WordPress Follow-me page have dropped into “Pending”. All was well when I corrected it.
I notice websites built on WordPress have very persistent cookies. I view this blog in a browser on my PC, so no idea what happens on a phone (my aging eyes can’t read long-form pieces on such a small screen). No option but to clear your cache, which may well cancel any active logins on other sites.
Good point Thunkit, but I do both (Mob & Laptop) as my Bank are forever getting me to clear the bloody cache, and so something else is going on. I can go for weeks with no news from Dr K’s Blog, and then bam! Flooded. I don’t give other WordPress a/c’s the same attention I that do with this blog (…from time-to-time when my interest is pricked), and have no bother with some other like-minded souls as Dr K, but then maybe its ‘cos they are not… blogs? Dunno.
Thank you re. caches.
This is excellent and well balanced. Do you not think the question of asymptomatic transmission (or lack thereof) is important enough for a review of what’s out there? I would certainly welcome any analysis you had on this.
WOW, sense at last, but to be expected seeing your many balanced and well researched previous posts. As a well couple in their late 70’s – is this really an oxymoron? – My Wife and I feel especially vulnerable to all the panic measures being constantly rolled out by our ‘Gilbert & Sullivan’ government and their fake so called scientific puppet masters. According to the BBC et al. I have ‘Blood on my Hands’ and am a Criminal for having the audacity of attempting to live a normal life with family & friends. Since March this year we have tried our utmost to carry on regardless, often in ignorance of the latest panic measures and ‘Scares’ as depicted by the MSM and other gutter media. Sorry BBC, but after a long relationship we have finally parted company! This Xmas we have been especially busy in our Crime Spree. Grandchildren from 4 to 13 Years old, sleepovers (adults) Xmas lunch with Sister in Law, the usual cursed supermarket shop, opening the mail without sanitising it first …………………where to stop? Happily some of our previously nervous family members have ‘thrown in the towel’ and agreed to comply with our Criminality, and a great PLUS is that our grandkids have not been indoctrinated not to touch Granny and mask up etc. Additionally in opposition to the ‘elf & safety lobby for the elderly. We / I still enjoy Smoked Salmon ( our immune systems are not considered to be up to its possible bugs! ) climb ladders, heavy gardening in the cold, I service the car – MOT due when silencer blew out so onto ebay and next warmer day under said car with spanners jacks + stands – NB did risk assessment first !!!!!
It seems that good health is the answer, and that age alone is not a good enough indicator of frailty or morbidity. Obviously, and even more so in the case of the Wuhan Flu which appears to be relatively benign in the absence of underlying medical conditions, age will show an increased probability of a bad outcome by virtue of most serious diseases progressing to their final outcome as years accumulate. Add to that the isolation which often descends on retirees who’s lives have revolved around their work place. Advice to the young – develop as many pastimes and interests as possible both physical and even more so mental, then when you retire you will feel instead a release from routine into a sane and productive phase of your life. In my case I retired very late and the freedom to make decisions free from imposed restrictions from ‘elf & Safety, accounts, spread sheets, micro management regimes, etc, felt as an escape from prison island!
On the question of Lockdowns and the ‘Stay at Home’ mantra surely this strategy is counter productive if not dangerous to our health? I was of the opinion that our body’s defence or immune response would be dependant on the particular enemy in the vicinity. Historically, a good example of this is the tragic fate of the Inca civilisation when confronted with pathogens imported by the Conquistadores. Whatever the latest claims of organisations such as the WHO say on this I still believe this is a fact. So when we are told to ‘Stay Home’ aren’t we really harming our defences not only to the currently circulating virus but all the other ‘Bad Boys’ out there as well? Perhaps going to the Super Market is a free vaccination thats been developed over millennia and way in advance of anything developed in a lab – especially in the current rush.
Thanks, well done again!
I do not think there will be any change in “official” response until a majority of health care professionals reject them. Why are most medical doctors and nurses unable to recognize and accept the exceptional clarity of evidence that shotgun PCR testing and lockdown mania are the oppose good healthcare? Are they not exposed to this information? Or, even with reasonable intelligence are they just sheep with hive mind thinking?
Oh my goodness! So well articulated. True to the state of affairs. Thank goodness for sound reasoning. 🙂 thank you sir
An excellent read, thank you so much for talking sense.
You mention the 1967 (I assume you mean the 1968 ‘Hong Kong’ ‘flu) pandemic as being comparably deadly. I was 16 and studying for A-levels at the time – I can remember several of my A-level questions, but nothing about the ‘flu, probably because there was nothing to remember. The UK experienced around 80,000 excess deaths (equivalent to 100,000, scaling for today’s population), but we didn’t get daily news bulletins of the number of deaths or stories about the NHS being overwhelmed, and we certainly didn’t close down our economy. Of course, most adults at the time would have fought in a World War or been subject to the Blitz – they knew what real risk was; we seem to have forgotten.
In the USA, the Woodstock Music Festival took place in the midst of the Hong Kong flu pandemic, yet life went on as normal.
I was 21 at the time and was a student at a university in the U,S. I didn’t know there was a pandemic.
Excellent article
Thank you
Dr. Malcolm – Thanks again for an in-depth analysis of what the data says. For a lot of this, I’d come to about the same conclusions, but you added a bit more to that. Maybe more importantly, you’re coming at this from a professional direction and really know what you’re talking about, where I’m looking as an amateur.
A problem with the Government response has been “follow the science!” since there is a tradition of scientists always telling the truth that no longer actually applies, if it ever actually did. People get stuck in beliefs whether they are scientists in their day-job or not. Where the authorities say “there are no medicines that work for a virus” and “vaccines are the only way out”, and that vitamin supplements are unnecessary with a modern diet, that will tend to be accepted as a basis for the government response. With social media, and the burgeoning of fact-checking sites and the flagging-up of “false data” when someone tries to post something against the official consensus, it’s pretty difficult to even tell other people that the official position is faulty.
This doesn’t seem to be a conspiracy to make this pandemic worse, just a lot of people believing the official position is correct and thus treating any objections as dangerous misinformation. True Free Speech will obviously contain a lot of carp, but it’s up to the listener to distinguish the carp from the truth in it, but it is nowadays considered that most people can’t discriminate between good and bad information, and so only the officially-sanctioned information can be allowed. Heaven help you if what you say falls into the fuzzy definition of “hate speech” or “denier”, when you could lose your job. (Note for Dr. K – you probably run this risk every time you post.) Bit of a bummer when modern technology makes it so much easier to publish information around the world.
I suspect that the “flattening of the curve” involved in lockdowns has just given the virus more time to mutate. There’s talk of 2nd and 3rd waves, but in truth this is still the first wave since the virus never went away, it’s just that the transmission was depressed for a while but not stopped.
Fairly early on, it was known that HCQ reduced the severity of the disease (and hospitalisations) if given early enough with Zinc and an antibiotic. A bit later on, Ivermectin was found to be even better. The authorities however didn’t accept that, and over here in France pr. Raoult has had some problems in defending his treatment régime and HCQ is actually illegal to prescribe except for lupus, RA, malaria, and the other accepted uses. This official objection doesn’t make sense, given the long safety record, even if it didn’t help in the way pr. Raoult showed. It is after all safer than Aspirin, officially.
Predicting the future course of this pandemic looks uncertain. We know it will mutate further, and maybe the next mutation will not be stopped by the vaccines (though it looks like HCQ and IVM will still do the job if you get symptoms, and that vitamin D will still improve the response of the immune system). NZ and Oz may currently have stopped infections, but it only takes one failure in the border or quarantine to start it off again. It does seem somewhat odd that the people saying that the natural immunity conferred by having recovered from the disease will be short-lived also say that the vaccine will convey a longer-term immunity, though. It does seem to me that the two versions of immunity will be pretty comparable.
I hope 2021 turns out somewhat better than 2020 has been. Happy New Year!
Thank you for this excellent post. I appreciate how your graphs help disentangle the daily fear we get on the news.
Some news articles indicate that many people have gained weight during COVID, possibly from less physical activity from staying home. Excess weight apparently contributes to chronic diseases and makes COVID more lethal. Could this be another way in which lockdowns might contribute to excess mortality?
I feel like we live in a world where people seek orthodoxy instead of reasoned debate. It was already there with topics like climate change, transgender activism, poverty and exploitation and more. There seems to be one politically acceptable view and everyone else is a climate skeptic, a corona denier or a trans- (or whatever else) phobe. And with COVID so many people can not countenance ambiguity, not knowing something, experts being wrong, changing solutions….they want one truth and no one else dare question it. It’s insanity. But I hope people will see through this in the coming year when they get sick of restrictions and the virus recedes with the end of winter.
Great article again. We need some sanity amidst the current madness.
It seems that the overall level of death, respiratory illness and pressure on hospitals in the last month of this year is in line with a normal UK / northern hemisphere winter. Despite what media, government and certain “scientists” want us to believe.
But illnesses labeled as flu seem to be close to zero. Most of the respiratory infection seems to be Covid.
Is there any view on why flu is seemingly so low? Lockdown supporters would say it proves the efficacy of doing that. I would guess there are other explanations though?
I see they’ve now extended the 2nd booster vaccine gap to 12 weeks.They really do just bumble on and on don’t they.
Dr Kendrick I feel you are being much to nice about this. The response to Covid is being determined by just about anyone based on Wikipedia, what I read on Twitter or some similar knowledge substitute.
On Quora I read an answer written by a lawyer in reply to some public comment of a politician on whether the first vaccine should be prioritised as 1 dose for everyone or 2 doses for at risk groups. When I pointed out to the idiot that there is no reason for thinking that the politician or the lawyer actually knows the correct answer to a very complex question of pharmacy and immunology he responded with BNBR. As a professional he knows what ethics is and yet he still injects his ignorance and stupidity in to public realm.
And this just keeps happening.
So far we have had
It is ventilators
A 3 week period of imprisonment were no one sees anyone else. (So everyone who needs help can just die).
It is (or isn’t) HCQ
PPE we must have PPE
Social distancing, (incels as leaders of society).
Demands to be obeyed (accompanied by threats and shroud waving)
This reminds me of the Iraq war were everyone who thought he was someone decided that Iraq need to be invaded. Then 6 years later everyone discovered they had known better all along, (apart from a few people who’s colours were to firmly nailed to the mast).
What will we be saying by 2027?
PS perhaps we should quote Magnus Pyke from She blinded me with Science, he least that was fun.
Thank you so much for this beacon of sense. You have saved my sanity, Doctor.
> WordPress.com
Sir. The best reading to date on this matter. I’m at a complete loss to understand how Sage enall ignore basic facts and head for worst possible imaginable scenarios. Something has to give soon. Crazy times.
An excellent post, and Dr No agrees wholeheartedly with the points made. One very minor point is how useful Z scores are – there was some debate a while back (Dr No can’t seem to find it…) about the EuroMOMO methodology (from https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/what-is-a-z-score):
“Z-score are computed on the de-trended and de-seasonalized series, after a 2/3 powers transformation according to the method described in Farrington et al.1996”
as in by the time you have de-trended and de-seasonalized and done a 2/3 transformation, what exactly are you left with? A sausage that has been flattened and refashioned into Heaven knows what! Farrington et al’s 1996 paper is not for the fainthearted….
Another way of comparing overall mortality between countries is to look not at the amplitude, but at the shape of the overall mortality curves. For instance, the shape of Sweden’s spring spike is remarkably similar to that of the UK’s, despite very different lockdown policies. Yet another way is to look at weekly all cause deaths per million, as in this Dr No post https://dr-no.co.uk/2020/12/16/the-covid-delusion/ which not only shows no correlation between lockdown measures and mortality, but also shows that most European countries didn’t have a spring spike (or if they did, it is lost in the background noise).
That post also considered the covid ‘have hammer everything is a nail’ problem (“When all you ever hear about is covid, everything starts to look like covid.”) which is related to the if everyone seriously ill in hospital gets a covid test, then if you are not very careful, just about every death starts looking like a covid death. But the real point of the post is the covid delusion – the madness of the crowd, including the mainstream media, just buying into the Establishment narrative, without a moment’s critical thought. This is perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the pandemic, and the hardest one to explain. Maybe it’s just part of being human. As the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche once said (Dr No opens the post with this quote) “There is no delusional idea held by the mentally ill which cannot be exceeded in its absurdity by the conviction of fanatics, either individually or en masse”.
What an excellent article. No hysteria, just unarguable facts. Thank you
An excellent article and easy to follow too. Thanks!
Awesome simple summary of data that makes a lot of sense, unlike the fact free mass hysteria on TV and social media. I saw an update today from the WHO, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, who says even after taking one of the vaccines (and who wants one of those rushed jabs, especially when other options seem to have very high efficacy with years to data to show safety) public health measures like social distancing will still need to be maintained. Makes you wonder what the real agenda is, and when will this madness stop.
Martin Back, https://youtu.be/2mf60U7wHHw do you have any more information on this apparent corrupt move?
“There is no confirmatory data on Ivermectin available as yet for its use in the management of Covd-19 infections. In terms of safety and efficacy,there is no evidence to support the use of ivermectin and we do not have any clinical trial evidence to justify its use.
The use of such a drug could potentially lead to harmful effects or even death and SAHPRA [South African Health Products Regulatory Authority] is firm on the stance that this medicine is unproven in the management of COVID-19 infections. Any attempt to import this drug will be dealt with by SAHPRA’s Regulatory Compliance unit in conjunction with law enforcement agencies such as SAPS [South African Police Service] and the SIU [Special Investigating Unit].”
https://www.sahpra.org.za/news-and-updates/ivermectin-is-not-indicated-nor-approved-by-sahpra-for-use-in-humans/
I have no idea why they got their knickers in a twist over Ivermectin.
“Originally introduced as a veterinary drug, it kills a wide range of internal and external parasites in commercial livestock and companion animals. It was quickly discovered to be ideal in combating two of the world’s most devastating and disfiguring diseases which have plagued the world’s poor throughout the tropics for centuries… It has also been used to successfully overcome several other human diseases and new uses for it are continually being found.
Ivermectin has continually proved to be astonishingly safe for human use. Indeed, it is such a safe drug, with minimal side effects, that it can be administered by non-medical staff and even illiterate individuals in remote rural communities, provided that they have had some very basic, appropriate training.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043740/
https://ivmmeta.com/
I have no idea if Ivermectin is effective. As the authors of this meta-study caution, there is a positive publishing bias. In other words, if someone tried it and found it to be ineffective, they would not bother to report that. So you can understand authorities not rushing to prescribe it for fear of being accused of fruitless expenditure.
That said, there are no indications that it is toxic if used correctly. I believe it is fairly cheap, so I don’t understand why authorities don’t run their own trials. It would cost very little, and the potential benefit is great.
If I were the health czar, I would run parallel tests of IVM, HCQ, and any other promising ameliorating drug that is safe and cheap. Ask around at the various hospitals and clinics. I’m sure some doctors favour one treatment, some another, and some don’t want to get involved. Let each hospital and clinic run their own preferred treatment, and compare results. With all the thousands of cases, you’ll very soon have a good idea of what works and what not, with your own population. Once the results are in, you can make the most effective treatment the standard.
Martin, they are not bothering about the ineffectiveness of the vaccines. They are rushing to inflict that on people, and nothing is known about the long term effects. I smell rats
AhNotepad: I think we should all be alarmed about the rapid and widespread rollout of the experimental “vaccines.” Prophylaxis using mRNA technology has never before been used on human subjects. It may take a few months or a year or two to show how dangerous this is. The trials using ferrets or monkeys for earlier versions of SARS vaccines showed neither safety nor efficacy. Those currently given EUA’s in the U.S., and licensing in the UK have only about four months of trial data, which has yet to be published (we’ve seen only press releases). Foolhardy, I say, to even consider becoming a guinea pig for a disease of little consequence to 99.5% of the population.
Carvallo’s study in Argentina is the most striking.
I’m already using Ivermectin as a preventative.
Scotland, Northern Ireland and Eire have disappeared from Euromomo.I fear the worse, that this is some form of censorship by withholding data, I hope not and its a glitch. Does anyone have any info? Nothing surprises me these days, but……
fun with statistics!
us population, 12/30/2018 : 327,533,037
us population, 12/30/2020 : 330,765,573
2018 us deaths, all causes : 2,839,205
2020 us deaths, all causes : 2,913,144 (as of 12/30/2020)
percentage of population died in 2018 : 0.87%
percentage of population died in 2020 : 0.88%
sources:
cdc 2018 mortality info link:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
2020 mortality info:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm
census.gov population clock:
https://www.census.gov/popclock/
CT,
It’s a bit confusing, but the CDC data starts on the “week ending 2/1/2020” which means it begins on 1/26/20. Last time I ran the figures, I got about 300k excess deaths over 2019.
You’ve missed the point. This is not about COVID, it’s about money. We are in the middle of a silent global economic war.
It’s all a bit medieval, apply 12 leeches for the pustules infecting the body, mmmmm that didn’t work, OK let’s go for 24 leeches, and keep repeating until it does, end result patient dead..
Reblogged this on Citizens.
Dear Malcolm. I have been following your good self with admiration for many years -hence my utter amazement that you have completely missed the point re mortality rates and covid lockdowns etc. The key is not deaths but the overwhelming of Hospitals and ICUs with sick patients who need treatment. Without such treatment many will suffer seriously and die. The various restrictions in limiting suffering and mortality are therefore fulfilling their purpose. The mortality rates are not a measure of failure but of success. I am hoping you will restore my faith in your credibility by thinking again on such matters. Yours in anticipation. Regards Dick Spicer
Virus-free. http://www.avg.com
On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 3:36 PM Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: ” 30th December 2020 I have not written much > about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has > simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, > written many hundreds of years ago. In it, Dante describe” >
So says the BBC CNN etc… but let’s fact check this —- here you go bud — you can pull down spread sheets by the day — to save you some time — ICU’s are not overwhelmed
I have also seen a comparative visual using the same periods over the past 3 years and ICUs are actually slightly less full this year than in those years. Unfortunately I cannot post the image here as it was emailed to me and there is no way to drop it in
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/winter-daily-sitreps/winter-daily-sitrep-2019-20-data/
Dear Dr Kendrick,
I have read your article with great interest. I would like to make two remarks:
1) Regarding your first graph (all countries, all ages) I would say that the “winter spike” in former years seemed only to start at the very end of the year while the probably COVID19-induced winter spike in late 2020 seems to have started a lot earlier. So when one would run that time series through an ordinary seasonal adjustment software or website (I wonder why nobody else seems to do that) one would probably get an autumn-winter-spike in late 2020 that is not as big as the one in spring but still quite big and unusual for the season.
2) The problem with all the graphs comparing the excess death rates of the current COVID19 outbreak (spring and autumn) with the effects of influenza in previous years and using it to get an idea of how deadly COVID19 is compared to those influenza outbreaks is that all those influenza outbreaks (at least post WW2) were allowed to run almost unmitigated through the population without any restrictions while that can certainly not be said for most of the countries in that database and all the countries further analyzed by you, at least with regard to the autumn wave. Even Sweden did apply at least some measures. I do think the only country in Europe actively ignoring COVID19 (at least in the spring wave) was probably Belarus, and so I wondered how they had fared compared to previous years. I do not know whether they report to the database you are using. But I did find some monthly data they reported to the UN database. So I downloaded the available data starting in early 1980 and running through to June 2020 (albeit with 4 years missing in between: 2000, 2001, 2006 and 2010). After applying standard seasonal adjustment I got the following results (Belarus has currently a population of about 9.5 million inhabitants):
a) In 2020 they had a “spring spike” starting comparatively late in April with about 500 excess deaths, rising in May to about 1,700 excess deaths and reaching about 3,700 excess deaths in June. The average monthly death rate for previous years was about 10,000. As no further data was available (the next half yearly update to the database is due in February 2021) it is unclear whether that was already the peak of that spike. For the 2nd Quarter that amounts to about 5,900 excess deaths probably related to COVID19 compared to about 600 COVID19 related deaths officially reported for that time.
b) The highest figures for probably influenza related excess deaths in previous years had been reported in January 1980 (3,800 excess deaths unadjusted compared to annual average / 2,500 excess deaths after applying seasonal adjustment), in the 1st quarter of 1985 (January: 1,700 / 600 + February: 2,700 / 2,300 + March: 2,500 / 1,600 = 6,900 / 4,500) and in the winter of 1995/1996 (December 1995: 2,000 / 1,500 + January 1996: 4,300 / 2,700 = 6,300 / 4,200).
So it seems to me that the (almost) unmitigated outbreak of COVID19 in Belarus was according to the currently available data for the first 6 months of 2020 within that time roughly as deadly as the most severe influenza outbreaks in the past 40 years. Yet as we will have to wait some time until we will get a full picture I would say that the jury is still out on this question.
I do wish you and your readers a very happy new year 2021.
Yours sincerely
Henry Fischer, Chemnitz, East Germany.
Great article Dr. Kendrick, as always…
2020 cause of death… mostly COVID as we’re told ‘ad nauseam’… – it’s the height of flu season in the USA, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at CDC statistics. CDC – USA week 51 – 27 cases (0.1%) out of 720 tests (0.2%). With COVID raging on, seasonal flu almost nonexistent. Huh… Another interesting fact from CDC – there are now more people dying from drug overdose and suicide (https://tinyurl.com/y5or9v2e), but no one is talking about that and not listed in any “cause of death” charts I can find. I lost 3 family members this year. COVID? no – 2 died from dementia – 1 from CHF. Here’s a chart that lists “ALL causes of death to date in the USA – Feb 1st thru Nov 28th” to put things into perspective (https://tinyurl.com/y3kxrx2s) – Heart Disease #1- 555,840, #2 Cancer-492,362, #3 Covid-260,141, #4 Stroke-128,644, #5 Chronic Respiratory-122,385, #6 Alzheimer’s-108,261, #7 Diabetes-80,832, #8 Pneumonia 42,710, #9 Sepsis 32,085. Current Covid deaths in the USA now 352,088 so that may have pushed Covid to #1. Notice “Flu” not even mentioned… And coding can be a issue as mentioned on CDC’s website; “Deaths with an underlying cause of death of COVID-19 are not included in these estimates of deaths due to other causes, but deaths where COVID-19 appeared on the death certificate as a multiple cause of death may be included in the cause-specific estimates. For example, in some cases, COVID-19 may have contributed to the death, but the underlying cause of death was another cause, such as terminal cancer. For the majority of deaths where COVID-19 is reported on the death certificate (approximately 95%), COVID-19 is selected as the underlying cause of death.” (Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm). Yes, these are all statistics, but draws a different picture beyond Covid. I feel there is a much bigger picture which is based on POWER and WEALTH. Powerful and wealthy people, but that’s another story all together.
Covid – ONS stats
All cause mortality
wk 51 2017 12,517
C19 deaths 0
Deaths from all (other) causes 12,517
All cause mortality
wk 51 2020 13,011
C19 deaths 2,986
Deaths from all other cause 10,025
Difference 2,492
This table shows us that in wk 51 of 2020 (w/e 18th Dec.) there were 2,492 fewer deaths from cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory disease than during the same wk in 2017, which is plain bull dust.
I admit to ‘cherry picking’ the year 2017 because not only did winter of 17/18 have a higher than average number of deaths from ‘flu but those deaths passed un noticed by politicians and press alike other than the perennial line or two in the press re ‘hospital corridors full of patients on trolleys’.
The above scenario is evident (but to a lesser extent) of almost every week from early September until now. This leads me to believe that at the least, this second wave is way over-hyped because at the most, the excess mortality from C19 for this week, is 492, (13,011-12,517) or 70 odd per day.
Food for thought – hopefully not tripe
Thanks for the blogs and Happy Hogmany Dr Kendrick
https://youtu.be/lKCTkLJbtT4 Happy New Year to the sheep. Well done for submitting to the face nappies. Thinkers, beware.
Reading this, I can see where Trump’s instinct was right that this CDC cure was worse than the disease and Trump has been wrongly blamed for 200,000 deaths.
Brazil’s Bolsonaro is another case of not only not wanting to shut down, but not shutting down.
Great article Malcolm!
I am surprised though that you would recommend experimental COVID vaccines to anyone, especially to those that are most vulnerable and more at risk of adverse reactions. Reports of severe adverse reactions (and at least 1 death that I have heard of) are coming in from all over the world.
The CDC is reporting “Health Impact Events” that require medical care running at about 3% of those vaccinated. These are only the immediate reactions, the long term damage will be far higher.
Click to access 05-COVID-CLARK.pdf
All of this for a vaccine that has a near 0% effectiveness (when the numbers are calculated correctly).
Here are the statistics for the Pfizer vaccine:
43,931 participants [21,965 in each group]
170 confirmed cases
162 in placebo group
8 in vaccine group
10 severe COVID cases in the placebo group, and 1 in the vaccine group.
Pfizer advertises 95% effectiveness for their COVID vaccine. They use relative risk to calculate that number from the number of cases. Using relative risk is a common ploy (that you taught me about -thank you!) that drug companies use to mislead people into believing their product is far more effective than it actually is. The more accurate way to report effectiveness is to use absolute risk, which in this case means looking at the fact that the vaccine saved 9 severe COVID cases for 22k people vaccinated, which comes out to 0.04% effectiveness for severe cases, which is essentially zero. Another way to look at it is what value is it to vaccinate 22k people to avoid 154 cases, of which only 10 were severe? The other vaccine studies also use the same statistical sleight of hand.
Also, prior coronavirus vaccine studies in ferrets showed that after the ferrets were vaccinated and then later exposed to coronavirus in the wild, they experienced a hyper immune response and died. Researchers now speculate that their could be a 20 – 30% death rate from this vaccine that occurs months or years later when vaccinated individuals are exposed to COVID in the wild.
I suggest to everyone to sign this:
Petition to Stop Mandatory Vaccinations: https://stopmedicaldiscrimination.org/
I think one incident can not be representative of anything.
Au contraire, Jerome; it is a fundamental principle of science that a single well-attested observation can destroy any theory, no matter how long-standing or popular.
Joe – so long as it’s WELL attested and very well attested at that ! No rum of the mill attesting can or will suffice.
Malcolm, I printed out the graph for all cause mortality over the last few years intending to show my friends. Then realised it would make no difference. They don’t want to see. They think I am deluded anyway.
One of them actually said: it is too dificult to look outside the mainstream thinking, please be kind to us. And she was the one with insight. The rest have none
It is so sad and so lonely being someone who thinks for oneself.
The herd has immunity, but they don’t know it, and the herd do what they are told.
Happy New Year.
“One of them actually said: it is too [difficult] to look outside the mainstream thinking, please be kind to us”.
I am reminded of a few quotations from Robert A. Heinlein.
“If ‘everybody knows’ such-and-such, then it ain’t so, by at least ten thousand to one”.
– Robert Heinlein, ‘Excerpts from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long’, “Time Enough for Love”
“Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, the small fraction who do think mostly don’t do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, actively, creatively, and without self-delusion – in the long run these are the only people who count…”
– Lazarus Long (in “Time Enough for Love” p. 396, by R.A. Heinlein)
“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics”.
– Robert A. Heinlein, “Revolt in 2100”
“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity isn’t a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity”.
– Lazarus Long, in “Time Enough for Love” (Robert A Heinlein)
“Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor”.
– Robert A. Heinlein, “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long”, in “Time Enough for Love”
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded – here and there, now and then – are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
“This is known as ‘bad luck'”.
– Robert A. Heinlein, “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long”, in “Time Enough for Love”
Liz, the graph shows about 1,400 people per week dying over and above the average of about 10,000 deaths per week, give or take, in England, in December. Do you think that’s too trivial to be worth bothering with?
Thank you for your considered commentary throughout this hideous episode Dr K. I wish it were over but as you say there are far too many reputations on the line for people in power to back away from their useless policies.
I’m genuinely horrified by reports of medical professionals saying that people who interact with others have ‘blood on their hands’. I get that they are tired and over-worked and the NHS is underfunded but those kind of accusations are stoking the hysterical, puritanical fires we seem to have lit and are now unable to control.
I wish you and fellow contributors a return to freedom and sanity in 2021.
Dr Kendrick, I’ve been waiting for this post for the last couple of weeks. Even the moderately sensible that I know are now scared beyond rational. It’s so hard to be able to send them anything factual to review when the mass media is so prominent. Thank you for your considered discussion and bringing some kind of calm to the current ridiculousness.
Near-faultless analysis.
Nothing at all can be said without incensing one or both banners, so many thanks for posting your views and running the attendant personal and professional risk. It matters.
Hello, interesting article, a couple of questions / comments:
“If the Z-score goes above five, this means something significant is happening. The red, upper, dotted line is Z > 5. As you can see, despite the howls of anguish from England about COVID19 overwhelming the country, we are really not seeing much at all.”
Yet your graph shows the line is currently above 5, somewhere between 5 and 10. Being more than 5 standard deviations away from the mean is incredibly unusual. It is like a British man being more than 7 feet tall. It is baffling that you could describe that as “not much at all”
You then comment that there is no correlation between severity of lockdown and Z score of death rate – implying, I think, that if lockdown worked there would be a negative correlation between them. However the variables are not independent – generally a severe government response came after a spike in deaths, and so all things being equal there will be positive correlation between them.
Therefore seeing no correlation in the final values of the two variables would, prima facie, indicate that lockdowns had reduced the death rate from Covid, as we don’t see the underlying positive correlation we expect to be there.
However, given the weakness of this analysis in testing the efficacy of lockdown, would it not be better to investigate how the death rate changed after lockdown restrictions were introduced (and loosened)?
Best wishes,
Simon
These are important points and it’s a shame, and perhaps revealing, nobody else responded to them. I think the z-score is a little misleading, and certainly difficult to interpret. Easier to say that in December, excess mortality was running at about 15% in England – that is, 15% more people were dying than usual. About 1,400-1,500 people per week. Is that good or bad? Discuss. I observe there have only been c 4000 deaths from terrorist acts in the UK *since 1970* which has justified extensive restrictions on civil liberties over the years, although of course whether that’s proportionate could also be challenged.
Then the question is the counterfactual – what would the excess mortality be with fewer or different restrictions? Very difficult to answer.
Finally there is the key question – what is it now? Let’s wait a week or two till current excess deaths data are available. Then let’s reconsider how serious this is.
@Oberstleutnant https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#excess-mortality
Any “virus” that needs 24/7 media pushing is propaganda. The flu never needed reminders that it exists. A kid comes home from school with the flu. You can bet everyone in the house will get it. Not Covid-19. You need to be tested to know if you do. And if you have symptoms, they resemble symptoms you had in 2019, 2018, 2017, etc.
The virus is a hoax. There is NOT ONE single shred of proof that it exists. And with all the documented fraud surrounding it. Only a fool would think otherwise.
The virus hoax is typical of what China has been using on its people for many years. Using it as a tool to control the masses. I have watched them do it for years. 2020 is no different.
NOBODY HAS DIED FROM IT. PROVE ME WRONG. I BET YOU CANT.
The virus hoax has been pushed to destroy nations. Rig elections. All in the name of “safety”. Breaking every law in the book to do it too. And there isn’t a single Constitutional law that allows for it. And there will indeed by HeII to pay for those who are involved in such tyranny. Left wingers and China most of all.
Indeed!
“JJ789678567” Absolutely! massive smoke screen deployed on the World… why people can’t see this, I don’t know…
Dear Malcolm
While I agree that governments around the world have not always made the most informed decisions regarding covid I have to point out two flaws in your excess death argument. The first is that excess death peaks in Europe did seem to rise in the second wave to no more than the normal winter peak. However, your conclusion cant be roght. The reason is that in Soith Africa where it is now summer there is now also a second wave and the excess deaths are definitely higher than normal for this time of uear so it cant be just the normal winter peak. Secondly you state that all the vulnerable people were killed off in the first wave. You must then be presuming that there has been a 100% infection among the population which is clearly not the case. My conclusion is that it is still too early to see whether excess deaths will drop, remain high, or increase after the festive season. I do believe based on the south african data that unless the vaccine is rolled out extremely fast you should expect a prolonged increased excess death peak in the UK.
Iman, what is the study for any of the vaccines using to qualify them as effective?
Could you write a proper sentence please. If youre asking are the vaccines currently approved effective then yes at least the pfizer vaccine seems effective. Its published and data is available.
Yes, it was a poor sentence. So you say the data “is published and available” for effectiveness. By whom was this published? Would it have been the manufacturers? What about an independent publication? Do you have one of those?
Sometimes you hear a particular car is rubbish, if you look at the manufacturer’s brochure, it is the best piece of engineering ever to grace the planet.
I. van den Bout: Actually none of the covid vaccine trials have been published, and won’t be until late 2021 or 2022 because they won’t be completed until then. What we have been given are press releases from the manufacturers. The Pfizer document submitted to the FDA is available, but lacks the raw data. The clinical trials for all three vaccines being currently given are ongoing. The public are the phase three group. In other words, the public are participants in the clinical trials, no consent forms needed, nor IRB approval.
They guy who is selling the Brooklyn bridge when asked if he had the title deed to the structure said ‘yes it seems I do’
I can make the intro if you are interested — I get a 20% commission if the deal goes through 🙂
Had a good chuckle at some of this – very clever. But I’m not clear on this one: As you can see, despite the howls of anguish from England about COVID19 overwhelming the country, we are really not seeing much at all. – with a z-score of around 35 on your graph?
Its still early. See where the z score is in a couple of weeks
Nice thought provoking article – and manages to be entertaining also. Re: As you can see, despite the howls of anguish from England about COVID19 overwhelming the country, we are really not seeing much at all. – doesn’t seem supported by z-score of around 35 (!) – think there might be something wrong here. Also not sure about the z-score of 5 cutoffs…3 maybe.
I would suggest you all just look at the first graph with the massive big spike. Ignore the rest til they are complete for this year.
Think of others
“Think of others”
Good bumper sticker slogan, but what are you trying to say?
Thinking of collateral damage to others?
How do you know COVID-19 exists? Can you link to a scientific article or do you prefer the text on the TV?
Dear Dr Kendrick
Enjoyed your examination of the facts. It does appear from what you presented was that the z number was significant in week 17 which indicates that something unusual was happening that should have been prevented/was unavoidable (depending on your viewpoint). Are you saying that what is occurring now (Dec 20/Jan21) by way of mortality and going onto infection rate and deaths is usual? Are you also inferring than if there was a flu test then our hospitals would be in the same capacity level? What of the fatalities of people with no underlying health problems or are outside of the vulnerable age bracket? Thanks Paul
Paul,
They do have flu tests. They just aren’t used very often.
It’s not usual. Deaths are about 1,400 per week above average (which would be 11-12,000 for this time of year). These are ONS figures based on certified deaths.
You can argue about whether things would be any worse if we weren’t in lockdown. And whether those people had comorbidities that meant their life expectancy was short anyway. But the claim that no more people are dying than usual is simply wrong.
Jim, does not the “excess” death figure being described as more than usual depend on how many years you look back over? Some years have had a higher figure than 2020. So being “more than usual” is something that happens. Is the mortality figure something to worry about more than, say, the chronic diseases of many people caused by a poor lifestyle? That lifestyle is poor may apply to any of us here, as generally we get less exercise, we don’t have to take day to day responsibility for our survival in the way, for example, crofters do.
Dr Kendrick
Current EuroMOMO web page doesn’t present data for Northern Ireland and Scotland, but I think it used to do so. Do you know anything about this?
Brilliant! Absolutely great work. Thanks for questioning. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Great article. Thanks. I don’t suppose you could do or point to a similar article that includes accurate USA data?
This fairly talks about deaths, i.e. mortality, but does not discuss morbidity that is the numbers in hospitals requiring treatment often for extended periods and I feel that should be taken into account too
Yes, but you also have to take into account the cancer diagnoses not being made, the people dying from other conditions who did not attend hospital when they should have done so. The increase in household violence, women and children being battered. The people losing their jobs, the impact of poverty on health. The loneliness and depression. The destruction of the quality of life of many elderly people. The UK Office of National Statistics estimate 17,500 excess deaths per year for several years, simply due to the economic impact of lockdown. You cannot just count things on on-side of this equation. Lockdown is killing many people. Has killed many people. may well kill more people that Covid19 will ever manage. This cannot all simply be brushed under the carpet.
Dying from Covid19, or suffering long term effects from Covid19 is not he only health issues that matters. Since Covid19 arrived, far more people have died of cardiovascular disease, or cancer, or diabetes, than Covid. This laser like focus on one condition, and only one condition, is absolutely ridiculous. You can die, and be damaged, by many other things.
And again its seems that an Australian perspective is not welcome.
I wrote and posted a longish comment 13 hours ago. And still it has not appeared here.
As I have said a few thousand times, this is not of my doing. It seems some people refuse to believe that some comments never get through to me. I have approved all comments, that I have seen, for well over a month.
One work-round is to use a different name or pseudonym. As far as I know there is nothing to stop you doing that. (And a different email address as well).
It’s a thing. Someone messes with this. You know it, we know it. If they are scared of old buggers like us, that is sad.,
Because this hads happened before, this time I also took the precaution of sending it to you by email.
Could you please post it Malcolm Malcolm ?
bilinoz: Good to hear from you!
I am hardlu ever here Gary because my comments mostly are not published.
But I have plenty to say elsewhere where I am published.
For example on this doctor’s Facebook page
Here in Oz
billinoz: This is clearly some sort of technological snafu. What happened to you beginning last March or so happened to me from August to October. My comments simply didn’t post, but I kept trying, and since October they have all appeared. Keep trying. Looking forward to your perspective.
Gary, I’ve now sent a copy of my comment to Malcolm twice by email because it has not appeared here. But it still has not be posted. Nor have I had a reply.
Meanwhile here in South Australia life is almost normal as in pre Covid !
Few of us wear masks.
And on New Year’s Eve we danced tango.
And across Australia except in NSW, there is a commitment by government to eliminate the Covid virus.
The exception is NSW where . they don’t bother that much and from where Covid has recently reseeded itself into Victoria.
So with near universal approval all persons arriving from NSW have to quarantine for 14 days.
billinoz: Sounds like good news! Glad to hear it.
billinoz, I’m in South Australia too, and yes life is almost normal, and few people wear masks…but this could change in a heartbeat, as we know when the SA government called the ‘extreme lockdown’ a few weeks ago. I also question the ‘expertise’ of the people in charge here, check out a CV of Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier for example, do you see any expertise in viruses there? https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2020-08/RCD.9999.0430.0001.pdf
With the clusters in New South Wales, the fear is building again. Certainly among people I know, they are terrified of the virus, and seem to think it’s a death sentence, so successful is the fear-mongering in the media.
The propaganda is working a treat, with the people themselves becoming the Stasi, expressing outrage at people ‘doing the wrong thing’, e.g. young people enjoying themselves, weddings etc in New South Wales.
So far many people have been compliant, particularly with JobKeeper paying people off, but as this reduces, it will be interesting to see what lies ahead. Given this coronavirus situation has dominated our lives for nearly a year now, I wonder how this will pan out for relations between the younger and older generations? Older people in their comfortable homes with their comfortable pensions seem to be ‘alright Jack’, but younger people might start feeling disaffected with their futures being under a shadow…
Many are putting their faith in the ‘magic bullet’ vaccines, but I think there could be problems ahead…
How do we treat non-emergency, non-Covid patients if Covid is making people so ill that Covid patients who are struggling to breathe are filling hospital beds? Surely, the first thing to do is reduce community Covid infection, get Covid hospital admissions lowered and then we can start a road back to some manageability?
nipperdoodles, this was never done in the past for flu. This is the first disease, which most people will not even notice they have picked it up, that, if they get tested and found positive, are labelled a “case” and told to self-inflict mental harm by going into solitary confinement.
Professor Pantsdown said in a recent Times “interview” (euphemism for “propaganda piece”) that when they proposed the first denial of liberty, “we didn’t know if we’d get away with it”.
There are a few treatments which would reduce the probability of people even needing hospital treatment. But they are not permitted, as they are “unproven”. Never mind that the vaccines are not only unproven, but nobody is going to get taken to task if they kill lots of people.
If it is generally so ‘harmless’ why are hospitals full?
They are no fuller than usual. A major issue is that so many staff are having to self-isolate that there is now a major staffing crisis. A problem caused by our reaction to Covid19. Nothing to do with the virus itself.
I understand how important it is to have staffing before ward capacity can be utilised but nowhere have I read or heard NHS staff say that the number of Covid patients they are managing is anything less than challenging at the very least.
When I read verbatim accounts (yesterday’s UK press, ‘The Guardian’/‘Independent’)! of a nurse coming off duty to be faced with anti-mask protesters outside the hospital, I am despairing of the increasing paranoia I hear around us.
Please remember that I also work in the NHS. You can get almost any account you want, and choose to listen to one account over another. The reality is that hospitals, currently, have lower bed occupancy than in either of the past two years – at the same time period.
My local hospital has halved bed occupancy in many wards, because they have bays for four patients, and they only allowing two patients into each four bed bay to stop the spread of Covid. My daughter works as a doctor at another, local hospital. She reported it was very busy two months ago, with Covid patients. Now, it is quiet.
Which accounts do you wish to listen to?
I do not need to read accounts, or listen to accounts. I am an account.
Dear Dr Kendrick, I have followed your WordPress blog for years. I gained increased understanding from reading your views on cholesterol, statins and thyroid treatment.
However, I hadn’t, until recently, expected that challenging established science would end with such polarising conversations at such a desperate time. I believe we both want things to be better organised. I am not a doctor, though my daughter is. Our experiences appear to be very different and I sought, through reading the blog and comments, to get to some equilibrium in the debate about Covid.
It’s with real sadness that I will not be comfortable reading your blog again. I wish you and your daughter well in your daily efforts to treat patients.
For me, the name-calling and assertion of right does not prove any argument or provide credibility
Around 30,000 NHS staff either off sick with Covid-19 or in isolation, chief warns
The Telegraph, 5 November 2020: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-covid-second-national-lockdown-start-cases/
It would be interesting to know how many of the 30,000 NHS staff were in isolation due to a positive PCR test and no symptoms…
Good idea. Hard to disagree.
The problem is that the evidence does not show that what we are doing is having much impact on reducing infections. Despite the apparent allure of distancing, masks and lock downs. This is the big problem. The virus seems to do what it will. Regardless of all this stuff.
Context is also missing from the whole public dialogue.
Nearly every year, hospitals need to cancel routine operations at some point in the winter to free up capacity. This is not just a UK phenomenon either. A winter flu / respiratory illness surge is normal and the precise timing seems to vary for reasons that are not well understood. Possibly weather related but it is not clear. The BBC and media do not share that context though.
From an operational perspective, the hospitals are being smart. You want to run a hospital at full capacity. The facilities are expensive and you want to treat patients. Free capacity is not that helpful in a world of waiting lists for treatment. Think of US airlines who routinely overbook. Same idea. You can never predict exactly when you will get a winter surge though so you plan routine operations anyway up to full capacity with some surge allowance that may not be enough for the peak. Having to then reschedule is part of the normal routine. Just as with a US airline, it is routine to ask for passengers to travel on a later flight. The airline cannot always predict surges, just as a hospital cannot.
Again: in the current hysteria of getting everyone frightened so that we suspend normal rationality and just obey a failed government class that is desperately afraid it will be found out, this context and logic does not get shared either.
Dr Kendrick, I have posted previously on this but forgot to ask – do you know how the figures given by Public Health England for Statutory Notification of Infectious Diseases ( NOIDs) are arrived at? My understanding is that Doctors are legally required to report numbers of any suspected (but not necessarily confirmed) infectious disease cases they encounter. If this is the case, how are the numbers so wildly different from those being reported in the media? Or maybe I am not understanding?. Page 14 of the Public Health NOIDs table gives the weekly figures for COVID cases which average out at approx 100 per week over the last few weeks, whereas the media reported another 56,000 cases yesterday. Am I going mad? I realise that the 56,000 come from tests at test centres etc, but isn’t there still a legal obligation for any positive tests (although we know that they may be false positives) to be reported via NOIDs? If so, why are the NOID figures so significantly different? As I said, maybe I am just completely misunderstanding – but I would like to understand, as we are being locked down on the strength of the media reported figures,
A very interesting study shows that for every 1% rise in US unemployment, 40,000 people die.
https://tinyurl.com/ya5239x7
Unfortunately it’s probably the unemployed or their families who are dying. I have several deserving names who should take their place. Though if they went, who would take their claimed place of keeping us safe?
I completely agree, the government have scarred the country and now look at the state we are in! A bloody mess. I believe in early February I had covid… the flue. The government have done this and like you say are to embarrassed to admit they F….. up.
Dr. Kendrick,
Thank you for your blog. You’re one of the few voices of sanity left.
In order to understand why we’re in this mess, I recommend reading “Virus Mania” or “Inventing the AIDS virus”- the latter can be freely downloaded from researchgate per the author.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261948355_Inventing_the_AIDS_Virus
A much shorter book is “Science Sold Out- does HIV really cause AIDS”. After reading these books, a light bulb came on in my head because everything makes sense now. HIV=AIDS is a hoax and yet it’s endured for nearly 40 years because of scientific corruption. Nothing about the “science” of COVID-19 makes sense until you understand that 2 generations of virologists have fully embraced junk testing and junk science.
On a separate note, I recommend reading “The Invisible Rainbow” by Arthur Firstenberg. He blames diabetes and heart disease and cancer on rising EMF (staring in the 19th century). He also attributes pandemics, including COVID-19, in part due to EMF (5G on the ground and 5G signals from satellites in the ionosphere). He also blames previous pandemics on the introduction of radio, radar and satellites (1918, 1957 and 1968). I have no idea if he’s right or not but the implications are stunning, of course.
Whatever about radio – radar and satellites were non existent in 1918 and how extensive might radio waves have been ?
He links widespread radio usage due to WWI with the 1918 pandemic; the massive increase of radar with the 1957 pandemic and satellite launches with the 1968 pandemic. You’ll have to read the book for details.
But in the years in question, average life expectancy has increased year on year with just a few blips, 2nd WW maybe 1957 & Hong Kong flus. Just in past few years has life expectancy reduced.
Along with other things not addressed by Parliament/MSM in relation to HCQ, Ivermectin, Vitamin D…..
Can we add this?
Apprarently available in India.
Reply to TFS
Anyone with Desmond Swayne, Graham Brady or Charles Walker as their MP should maybe ask for this to be raised in the Commons. Writing to the Dept. of Health as most MPs do if you contact them is a waste of time.
I don’t know of any other MPs who have come out as strongly against lockdown and for the idea that the govt needs independent scientific advice PDQ to get itself out of a hole. There may be more.
1) A hospital trust will start postponing some planned operations due to a sharp rise in patients with coronavirus, a chief executive said. The trust’s hospitals include Andover War Memorial Hospital, Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital and Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-55501101
2) A woman in the UK was arrested by police after she filmed a video inside an almost completely empty hospital and posted it online. According to reports, a 46-year-old woman was subsequently arrested by police for filming the video and has been charged on suspicion of a public order offence.
Ref. pic.twitter.com/dBnf9WqHKq
Make of this what you will but my take is: if you get sick in the UK currently you stand a good chance of dying – unless you only have the government approved flu, AKA Covid.
Steve, if you get sick, you may die, then again you may survive. If you are the wrong age, you might get taken into hospital, tested, pronounced as a covid case, have treatment withdrawn, and allowed to die. In my book that is “killed”. I know someone this happened to. Kept in because of a stupid test result, got pneumonia and sepsis, treatment withdrawn, dead!
Followed your Twitter link but no mention in the Gloucestershire newspaper of what she was filming. Can you point us to that precise information about what she was filming?
Are you implying that the situation in this ‘empty’ hospital was/is being hidden from the public by hundreds, if not thousands, of medical and support personnel, every one of which are sworn to silence and secrecy or intimidated into complicity with this deception?
Nipper,
I did watch that woman’s film. What I can say is that there have been many such films on youtube last spring and now again. One I saw today the person questioned some personnel outside, and they were quite unaware that their hospital had been in the news or was overwhelmed. This is in the US. They were also allegedly caught on a major news outlet using film from Italy and pretending it was New York.
Film Your Hospital https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FilmYourHospital&lang=en
1. If you search that without adding twitter to it you get a deluge of conspiracy theories – when you see that assume the theory is real and this is a massive attempt to cover it up
2. Why do medical personal not reveal this? If you check google on this you will come up with loads of articles that indicate medical staff will be fired if they take to social media re covid. Of course there is no concern that they will speak to the MSM because the MSM will not listen to them. In fact if they dare speak up and get any traction on social media they will get deleted.
Remember the two doctors in California who exposed the testing lie? The MSM piled on to them with scorn and ridicule. Doctors are generally above intelligence individuals and they quickly get the message that there is ZERO upside to exposing this LIE. So they remain silent – keep their jobs and watch this charade play out deeply frustrated.
I have spoken to one of the epidemiologists who co-authored Great Barrington at length and the level of frustration in that community is epic.
This quickly ended up in a black hole:
We, the signatories, are doctors from all areas of healthcare, who have been serving people in practices and clinics for decades. During this time, we have witnessed more than one seasonal infection in Germany, most of them with far more severe conditions and significantly more deaths than since January 2020 from COVID infectious diseases. Together we serve approx. 70.000 people.
The circumstances of the coronavirus wave in the FRG have been perceived differently than the media and the ongoing warnings of politics, which were unjustified in fact, presented to the public for months.
Predictions of individual advisory virologists with millions of seriously ill and hundreds of thousands of deaths in Germany have not been true in any way.
In the practices, hardly any infected patients were infected and if, then with normal, mostly mild progressions of virus flu. The hospitals have been more empty than ever before.
There was no overload of ICU. Doctors, doctors and nurses were skillful in short-term work. Initially, we found the wave of the virus running towards us to be threatening and were able to understand the infection protection measures.
However, there are months of secured evidence and facts that this wave of the virus is only slightly more intense than an ordinary seasonal flu and must be considered much more harmless than, for example, influenza infection in 2017/2018 with 27.000 deaths in Germany. According to the data situation, there hasn’t been a threat to the German population from Covid-19 for months.
Dr. Robert Kluger
Dr. Bruno Weil
Dr. Antonia
Dr. Felix Mazur
Dr. Katharina Hotfiel
Dr. Christine Knshnabhakdi
Dr. Hanna LübeckHeiko Strehmel
Dr. Norbert Bell
Dr. Heinz-Georg Beneke
Dr. Hans-Jürgen Beckmann
Dr. Thomas Hampe
Dr. Luke Mine’sRadim Farhumand
Dr. Tillmann Otlerbach
Dr. Ulrich RebersDr. Dr. Hubert hair
Dr. Verena Meyer-RaheDr. Dr. Manfred Conradt
Dr. Matthias KeillchPhv.- Doz. Diploma Psych. Dr. Dr. Christian Wolff
Dr. Holger Schr
Dr. Michael KühneDorothe G öllner
Dr. Wolf Schr
Dr. Ernst Schahn
Dr. Michael SeewaldStefan KurzKonrad Schneider-Trench Schroer
Dr. Anna Pujdak
Dr. Stefan S ällzer
Dlpl.- Med. Holger Dreier
Dr. Norbert Katte
Dr. Thomas Gerenkamp
Dr. Flllp SalemDominik jokes
Dr. Karsten Karad
Dr. Georg RüwekampSchmidt Krause,
Dr. Elizabeth Kiesel
Prof. Dr. Henbert Jürgens
Dr. See Christine Jürgens Less
Look let’s cut to the chase here. Thousands of elderly people were murdered by State policies that were implemented as part of the government’s response to the Covid hysteria that those government bodies created.
There needs to be full scale investigations launched and wholesale prosecutions.
Check country after country and what you see is that the average age of those who died from this virus is around 80 years old. That tells you right away there never has been a pandemic. The vast majority of those elderly were nursing home/care center patients. The figures there are around 55-60% of the total death count- likely higher as the figures have been fudged by counting certain deaths as hospital deaths if they came from nursing homes but died in the hospital.
And why so many died from nursing homes in such a short period of time? Because of those policy changes not due to some unique, other-worldly “killer virus.” We would have the same concentrated death ratio from nursing homes nearly every season if the policies put in place this year were implemented permanently.
All of this is resulting in what we are now seeing as rather low death counts in country after country over the last several months. This is because the “low hanging” fruit has been plucked. If this truly were a “global pandemic” we would still be seeing residual death totals- we are not. In a global pandemic death does not simply put the brakes on (we have in fact gone in reverse) it continues forward for some time even as it abates.
Thomas Luongo is always good:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/01/thomas-luongo/the-lesson-of-2020-whats-the-point-of-pointing-out-the-hypocrisy/
I do agree with all of this, I too have been trying to get people to understand but it really is like bashing one’s head against a brick wall.
Thank you for confirming my thoughts.
Patricia
FINALLY!! I cannot express how clear your analysis is! I am fed up with the negativity this situation is causing between my loved ones. I just WISH that those who claim to have ‘awoken’ would approach this with the same sense and rationale as you. I don’t want to be branded a sheep, or dumb, by someone who acts as though they are superior to me. I’ve sat on the fence with regards to the numbers, as well as the failing strategies and seemingly pressured and panicked decision making. You really have bought some logical answers which I have been seeking for some months now.
I believe the missing piece of the puzzle is the way flattery in affecting leadership in all levels of government. Those being pulled into the group think, save the world paradigm, as if they are not being used as pawn in the bigger purpose of WEF elites. Manipulation of the public is not new but has been enhanced by tech and media. Coersion of masses of gullible is the agenda, not protecting lives. The loss of livelihood and lives in the general public are just the cost of doing business in a war without bullets.
I can’t find the Euromomo data for N. Ireland. Can you help me?
You’re right, its gone. How strange. Perhaps someone could ask them where it went? I write about it one week, gone the next. And Scotland has gone too.
I have written to them. I do not expect any reply.
Could this be connected with Brexit – have these been reclassified?
You simply can’t compare the winter spike of 2017/18 or 2018/19 with this year, because the data is not yet in. What data we have shows this year’s winter spike beginning much earlier than in either of those previous years, which seem to have peaked at around New Year’s day, i.e. where we are now. And we won’t have the full data for where we are now for a few weeks yet. You already know that, and I’m surprised that you attempt the comparison, frankly.
How long would you like me to wait?
10 weeks in the USA to show 80% … https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
I would like to know if the subject of this article has in fact been killed by manslaughter:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9104293/Dont-sleep-wont-wake-words-Covid-stricken-father-died.html
Surely it is illegal to give a treatment to am adult patient against their will?
I agree. This is an example of grossly inappropriate handling of this disease. We know that significant quantities of vitamin D3, and C are helpful. Ivermectin seems VERY helpful if given early enough. Whereas a ventilator has a history of being a death sentence for this disease.
Whether he likes it or not, The Handcock has questions to answer, in court.
Accordining to Euromomo cumulated data, the excess deaths in 2020 are over 330 000 when all together last three years are 240 000 (deaths added). It’s true that sometimes it’s difficult to see the correlation between the actions and the deaths, but anyway most of the countries have had serious restrictions (also Sweden this autumn) and still we have such a number.
How many of these excess deaths might be as a result of actions taken by the authorities, directly & indirectly including the inappropriate use of ventilators?
How many dead are there under the bumps in the graphs, I wondered? A lot!
“..the US suffered some 275,000 more deaths than the five-year average between 1 March and 16 August,” — https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
A quarter million+ people death beyond what would have been expected is a lot.
A new disease is going to add more deaths, logically, painfully.
The flu does what it does, and now Covid will pair up to add to the flu deaths.
Dan, you cannot know the figures are correct. A major confounder was the payments to hospitals for treating covid patients compared to non-covid patients. $13,000 for a covid case, $39,000 if they died on a ventilator. There was a wholesale rush to get people on ventilators, to maximise the hospital income, which otherwise had dried up because nothing else was being treated.
In some ways, our comments are Trumpist, without the MAGA hats.
“Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov’s ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, purposely, very inaccurately and low. “When in doubt, call it Covid.” Fake News!
8:14 AM · Jan 3, 2021”
Dan, perhaps you can explain what trump has to do with the payments made to hospitals.
Thx for a great read!
I believe sars-cov-2 is not a new virus as it was found all over the world in 2019: Spain, Italy, Brazil, France, US…
I believe most people in the first spike literally died of fear. Long lasting intense fear causes blood clots. Blood clots cause all sorts of problems…
Yes and long lasting intense fear also impairs the immune system.
COVID is easily preventable and curable nearly 100% of the time.
1. Only people that died had low vitamin D levels,
those with high vitamin D levels don’t even get sick.
2. Nebulized hydrogen peroxide – 100% cured.
3. Hydroxychloroquine + zinc – near 100% cured.
4. Dr. George Fareed and Dr. Brian Tyson Early Treatment Protocol.
5. MATH+ Protocol – near 100% .
6. Niacin – 100% effectiveness.
7. Fantastic Spreadsheet* following 13 clinics.
Currently: 11,029 COVID patients treated, only 22 deaths.
(*thanks to theasdgamer!)
1. https://tinyurl.com/y699j6nw
2. https://tinyurl.com/y3bjqtsk
3. https://tinyurl.com/y4hmt5bg
4. https://tinyurl.com/yb96qd7g
5. https://tinyurl.com/y7bt4pf5
6. https://niacincurescovid.com/
7. https://tinyurl.com/y9ryjd2t
interesting, only thing is, why has Hydroxychloroquine been so thoroughly found to be rubbish for covid that even Trump (the biggest promoter of it) chose not to use it when he came down with the virus?
brian: HCQ is most certainly not rubbish:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33122096/
brian,
Trump didn’t know hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) needs to be combined with zinc, in which case it works nearly 100% of the time. HCQ has been used safely for around 70 years and is over the counter in many countries. There were 2 HCQ studies that were designed to fail that were used to rubbish HCQ. One was simply made up, and was later retracted. In the other extremely high toxic doses of HCQ (without zinc) were given to the study participants with the intention of killing them – of which they succeeded at.
Take a look at the spreadsheet (7) above – you will be amazed!
Dr. John H: It was Dr. Vladimir “Zev” Zelenko, a GP in upstate New York, who established the Zelenko protocol (HCQ+zinc+antibiotic) based upon the work of Didier Raoult and his own research, and he used it with great success among his patients:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33122096/
He received a call from the White House about this protocol before Trump got his diagnosis. Likely it wasn’t used in Trump’s treatment because he was treated at Walter Reed, a military, and thus mainstream, hospital. But Dr. Zelenko was a consultant to the doctors who treated Rudy Guiliani (Trump’s attorney), so Guiliani may very well have been treated with it. Dr. Zelenko talks about this in a recent Highwire interview. A fine healer indeed he is, like Dr. Kendrick.
Interesting Gary, thank you!
Zelenko is a true hero. A favorite quote from him:
“People are not dying from COVID-19. They are dying from politics. It’s called death by politics.”
Dr Alexander Johnson is going to dazzle us all with yet another mind blowing operation later tonight. Operation Moonshot still seems to have difficulties, but with the alignment of the major planets, the atmosphere on Pluto is collapsing, the atmosphere on Neptune is going into total reversal, but at 8:00pm Jan 4th 2021, Dr Johnson is about to explode the contents of Uranus.
Those lacking critical thinking skills get hoodwinked by late treatment studies of HCQ into thinking that early treatment doesn’t work. There is no shortage of physicians who merely follow the herd.
Thank you Dr., as long as your type of sanity is alive humanity will flounder through.
I think on the whole this is pretty reasonable. Of course, there are a couple of obvious flaws:
1) the winter spike being comparable to a ‘bad flu’ is actually VERY significant given a lot of the most vulnerable perished in the May spike. Thus much younger and fitter people were dying at the same rate to still meet that of the bad flu seasons.
2) the comparison between Finland and Ireland is redundant – Finland borders countries and is not an island surrounded by sea (probably a massive factor in N. Ireland having avoided the incidence that England had).
Food for thought though. Thanks for posting.
Henry – quick observation. The UK irish travel links are pretty busy. The Heathrow – Dublin link is or was said to be the worlds busiest. Likewise Dublin Holyhead sea link not alone serves the UK but also the continent.
I think “protect the vulnerable” should be examined. Who decides who is vulnerable? Do those people want to be “protected”? If I was classed as vulnerable I would want everybody trying to protect me to £µc∆˙ ©ƒƒ and let me get on with what I have left. I can make a much better job of it than they can.
This lack of significant increase in the death rate by Covid has been noticed and commented on by many. What is to learn is how the political establishment will conspire, distort and lie, as they have historically always done to extend their power and control over the population. This is why they are supposed to be checked by our political system, apparently something the masses don’t seem to any longer grasp.
This article is one of the few that are based on rock solid common sense. It is truly excellent. Everyone should be made to read it , especially our politicians. Unfortunately they won’t because gormless stupidity prevails !
The planned covid-19 scam, a lab manipulated virus (gain of function research) was desighned to crash the debt ridden global economy in order to allow inflation, maybe hyper inflation, to decrease the value of the debt, to bring in a new digital currency and citizen wage etc as fully described in next link. Time to protest and/or make plans…both good idea! Explains why ivermectin not used by doctors everywhere when symptoms first appear….they do not want a safe and effective remedy and there are a few out there now…..they want lucrative unsafe (because rushed) vaccines, buckets of fear, lies, lots of old folk to die (as is normal) to bolster the fear etc etc….and they want Boris to be the stooge he has become referring only to SAGE/Bill Gates funded Neil Ferguson for ‘advice’. Thank goodness the German lawyer has now lodged court papers for the crime of genocide . In the USA, Australia, Canada and no doubt other places, legal action is starting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih5a5x44rg0
The spike in April was due to hysteria and fear driving people with benign symptoms to rush into hospitals and medical staff putting them on ventilators. Tragic.
Yup, venting was a death knell, high doses of immuno suppressants in the already vulnerable and then wonder why there was a high death toll, but then the underlying cause of death was still their underlying health condition.
An ICU nurse recently put up a series of posts on Twitter outlining what hard work it is looking after Covid patients on ventilators and what struck me was how anyone over the age of 60 and not in good health survives being put on a ventilator. It sounded so brutal, intrusive and traumatising that I immediately thought that if it were me, I would rather die than go through that, particularly if I were towards the end of my life. I appreciate I can’t speak for everyone and I’m sure if you had young children, then you wouldn’t chose death but I would have thought the recovery from that kind of ‘treatment’ must take ages.
I can tell you from personal experience that being on a ventilator is horrible. After open heart surgery I was fully conscious for at least three hours being ventilated. I could only see part of the clock face, so cannot be more accurate than that. It was painful and frustrating and very very hard not to fight the machine. At one point I could feel a gob of mucus close to my larynx, and had the immense urge to cough. I tried to mime a cough, but they didn’t understand, so I wrote with my finger on the sheet – for ease I did “cof” and got “oh you can’t have a drink dear you have got a tube in your throat”. Then (over my head) they said shall we give her some paper and pencil – nah, she does’t need it. Just as well they didn’t – they would have learned some new words, and facts about themselves. Then it was time for the day shift to come on, and they set me free. Ten minutes later my husband rang, and they gave me the phone. Speaking was hard. I am pretty sure that will have been part of the reason I lost the ability to sing. Statins later just finished it off.
So ventilators are not very nice. Especially when one doesn’t actually need one. As I didn’t then.
It’s a bloody hoax wake up guys no ones in charge in parliament they were all and probably still under house arrest.there isn’t even a royal family.
Dr Charlie ward knows more about it than anyone else.
Tests are rigged seen a cake come out the test tent and it was positive and the goat too that wanted to eat the cake.
Agenda 21 omg looking forward too GESARA/NESARA
AND SO WE SHOULD
I THINK IF WE THROW THE TELLY OUT COVID WILL DISSAPEAR
LIKE ALL THE STARS IN HOLLYWOOD . THE POPE AND ALL THE CARDINALS
ALL THE DEMOCRAT PARTY RUN BY A CLONE. COME ON DJT SORT IT OUT SEEN AS WE ARE ALL WORLD WIDE AMERICANS AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME.
THE MASKS ARE KILLING PEOPLE NOW BACTERIA AND THE TERRIFIED SHEEPLE.
WHO NEED TO WAKE UP TO STOP THIS SHIT.
Hospitals are empty
2021 will be the year that the COVID19 virus will cease to exist. Once everyone is vaccinated there will be no more deaths reported as caused by the virus and everything will be normal again, unless a new virus pops up.
Social distancing is, in itself, adding censorship. Ordinarily, groups of students and other habitual groups would be getting together. A major issue such as Covid would be aired and dissenters would be able to voice their views and receive some support. It is much harder to do this over the telephone, etc.
And you had better believe that’s the way Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Witless and Unbalanced, and the various Sir Humphries like it.
To take the most glaringly obvious case: when Parliament does not meet properly, regularly, in person, it is toothless and doesn’t do its job.
Dear Dr. Kendrick
Your article about Covid and mortality made for a good read and I like the twist of enlightening humor. The article was sent to me by a friend in southern Oregon.
I work as an Advanced Illness Nurse in a large Level One Trauma Center at UMC in Lubbock, Texas. For a brief while there was closure of certain busineses, but otherwise we have been open to business essentially all along. In the early days the most vulnerable were dying off then the Covid eased up a lot til mid Sept and it spiked (room occupancy wise at Thanksgiving) and since then room occupancy is 2/3rds what it was. It all became routine.
Actually the truth be known the occupancy and mortality were not too bad at the onset in the Spring and barbers and non food bars and churches closed for a while. Then they opened up and oddly enough here in the Fall the bed occupancy and mortality was much higher yet unlike earlier months business continued pretty fully open or had some limits on occupancy.
Locking down economies is false economy.
What I would point out that may have added extra embellishment to your story (which I shared with other EC staff), is that at no time in history have we had a populace of very old feeble folks who are kept in some semblance of fragile existence thanks to modern medical advances and then bingo Covid came along.
I notice we are getting less hospice eligible patients showing up in the EC this year and it may well be due to the fact some 550 souls have perished in our county from Covid.
At times I do have to remind peers that Covid is not all Covid and folks wash up here with well yes, good old garden variety pneumonia or all the other ailments.
Do keep the blog site going. You are a good writer and you could be a bit too visionary for the folks people vote for.
P.S I gave a copy to a doctor who is on the Mortality Board here at the hospital.
Professionally,
Morgan M O’Brien RN CHPH. Advanced Illness Nurse in the EC. Lubbock. West Texas.
“…at no time in history have we had a populace of very old feeble folks who are kept in some semblance of fragile existence thanks to modern medical advances and then bingo Covid came along”.
This is very significant isn’t it?
Whatever became of this coronavirus? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/
Outbreak in British Columbia
And this coronavirus outbreak 2002 in Melbourne, Australia ? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870246/pdf/15816152.pdf
( BTW does anyone know what “serological cross-reactivity is?)
Antibodies produced against the nucleoprotein of HCoV-OC43 by infected subjects cross-react (recognize) the nucleoprotein of SARS-CoV.
bigpardner: Hope this helps:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.22.20137695v1
Thank you for this, a very interesting read. I clearly remember thinking back in January last year ‘oh lord what are ‘they’ going to make of this?!’ I was imagining major overreaction and hysteria of course but never in my wildest nightmares could I have envisaged what was to come.
Excellent article based on fact and figures as stated why won’t the government admit their mistakes and take a more measured and realistic take on the COVID “threat” thanks
Dave, there is only a tiny covid threat. In previous years we have just got on with life. This year a load of evil minded (or stupid) toadies want to exert mind bending control over everybody. Look up videos of Klaus Schawb
Shared delusions between 2 people are called ‘Folie a deux’. What is the term for mass delusion? The public actually want the measures that are taken, yet at the same time, they are quietly going on with life as usual. Shops are selling at the back door, builders are building, people are still seeing their family and friends by telling themselves they are in ‘bubbles’. There are marshalls at the local Sainsbury’s, yet free for all at Aldi next door (which is doing very good business by the way).
The only place I can express this stuff is here. No one in my life will listen, except my son who agrees but says I should stop talking about it because I am alienating everyone.
Thank you Malcolm for a place of sanity.
Liz, I suspect your son is doing you the useful service of explaining, in the simplest of terms, the difficulties you are having.
The fact is that the vast majority of people value being popular and highly esteemed far above knowing the truth – letting alone telling it.
Until that situation changes, we won’t really understand science. Because it requires the exact opposite point of view: that the honest, exact, unvarnished truth is the ONLY thing that matters. We may – and usually do – differ about what that truth is; in which case our only safe course is to discuss it openly and as objectively as we can.
This was one of the most important messages that Richard Feynman had for us all. And Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR, once replied to an interviewer who asked if he didn’t feel the need to “adjust” his statements to conform to the scientific orthodoxy with the marvellous remark, “I’m a scientist, not a lifeguard”.
Science is the impartial search for objective truth. Technology and engineering entail applying what scientists have discovered to accomplish useful tasks.
If scientists distort their findings to court popularity, or even to fit in with received opinion, they betray their calling and destroy their usefulness to society.
Hear hear.
“The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement.”
Karl Popper
Liz, mass delusion is called “BBC”.
I am a member of the public, I do not want these measures as they are completely ineffective. Lockdowns don’t work, unless wrecking the economy and consequently many peoples lives is the goal. Face nappies don’t work, and there is much published in this over decades. No information is available as to how they do work, since they don’t.
AhNotepad, you are not a member of the public, by which I mean the herd, you are someone that thinks for himself. I agree the media are driving this craziness. I got rid of my TV licence a few months ago in disgust. I won’t read newspapers, I get my information from thoughtful people who look at the raw data.
So I am isolated from my friends who follow the panic. It’s a lonely place.
Liz, I hope you do have someone you can talk over your thoughts. If not, I might be able to work out a way, by using a temporary email alias which I can close immediately after it serves its purpose. So it won’t leave anyone open to spam. Let me know.
Thanks notepad, that would be good. I’m very isolated at the moment.
Liz, let me know when you’re ready, and I will set up the address and post here. Put in a code word of anything you like of any mixed characters, and don’t forget what it is (like I do with passwords). If I receive more than one email I can then ignore the others. I won’t leave it up for more than a day.
Thanks notepad, I’m ready.
Password Bramble2. I can let you know what that means.
You’re not supposed supposed to say what any password is. Send to liz2021@nym.hush.com and pick another password, include it in the email and tell me later what it is.
Wondered how that could work.
Stilts
Liz, I have an email what was the word you used? That email address no longer exists, so don’t send anything to it, it will bounce.
Stilts
Liz. I agree. There are so many points of view expressed on this current blog that I have given up reading them now…..yours stood out, and as your son says, we are at risk of alienating ourselves. Let’s just accept the fact that more and more of us know less and less about this situation. Unfortunately, some seem to push their points of view with baffling scientific jargon, ( which the majority are unlikely to have any understanding of ), as if they have the answer,. Then, when questioned, they back up their views with name calling and rudeness.
Enough’s enough.
yeah, that sciencey thingey is so hard to understand…maybe we should take up knitting
“What is the term for mass delusion?”
“The Madness of Crowds”?
Yes Liz. It’s hard. When out of sheer weariness you back off arguing, people can assume you’ve ‘seen the light’ and agree with them and they can start gloating. Not something I want. It’s exasperating. You are certainly not alone.
Brilliant assessment, and easily understood, finally someone with sense 😊
What do healthcare staff think about this? Are they all keen to be vaccinated?
Covid-19: Doctors must be vaccinated without delay, says BMA:
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4964
You will never know, because in public they all say one thing. However, I do know that many of the staff I have spoken to have significant concerns. Nurses more than doctors – has been my experience.
Britain Opts for Mix-and-Match Vaccinations, Confounding Experts
If a second dose of one vaccine isn’t available, another may be substituted, according to new U.K. guidelines: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/health/coronavirus-vaccines-britain.html
Amid a sputtering vaccine rollout and fears of a new and potentially more transmissible variant of the coronavirus, Britain has quietly updated its vaccination playbook to allow for a mix-and-match vaccine regimen. If a second dose of the vaccine a patient originally received isn’t available, or if the manufacturer of the first shot isn’t known, another vaccine may be substituted, health officials said.
The new guidance contradicts guidelines in the United States, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted that the authorized Covid-19 vaccines “are not interchangeable,” and that “the safety and efficacy of a mixed-product series have not been evaluated. Both doses of the series should be completed with the same product.”
Some scientists say Britain is gambling with its new guidance. “There are no data on this idea whatsoever,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. Officials in Britain “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.”
My emphasis.
Here’s the Daily Mail’s take on it, contradicting the New York Times article:
Britain is NOT opting for a mix and match vaccination approach and giving patients two different doses is ‘not recommended’, insist health officials
Head of Immunisations at Public Health England Dr Mary Ramsay has spoken out
She said if people had Pfizer jab first they shouldn’t then receive the Oxford shot
Professor Anthony Harnden confirmed advice remains to have the same vaccine
It comes after Britain’s guidance for the rollout was updated to a ‘mix and match’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9106003/Vaccines-expert-says-doctors-NOT-mix-match-different-types-Covid-jabs.html#comments
Oh dear, quite confusing…
Good luck, reckon you’ll need it…
Here’s the Daily Mail’s take on it, contradicting the New York Times article:
Britain is NOT opting for a mix and match vaccination approach and giving patients two different doses is ‘not recommended’, insist health officials
Head of Immunisations at Public Health England Dr Mary Ramsay has spoken out
She said if people had Pfizer jab first they shouldn’t then receive the Oxford shot
Professor Anthony Harnden confirmed advice remains to have the same vaccine
It comes after Britain’s guidance for the rollout was updated to a ‘mix and match’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9106003/Vaccines-expert-says-doctors-NOT-mix-match-different-types-Covid-jabs.html#comments
Oh dear, quite confusing…
Good luck, reckon you’ll need it…
Sense at last!
Not the only science orientated mass panic group think around.
Concentration should be on using the data to calculate herd immunity; they won’t do that because, as pointed out, too many reputations and livelihoods depend on perpetrating this panic.
Ever noticed how the sensationalist agenda changed from deaths to cases?
Dodgy science is prevalent here; a totally unproven assumption that increased cases equal deaths by putting COVID 19 on certificates if the case was recorded. It’s equivalent to saying that because the patient died in bed that bed was the cause!
But; not only are there vested interests of the huge number of non producers making laws and restrictions this is also driven by the bossy brigade who love telling us not to work socialise or travel and wear the disgusting barriers that are masks. It is the next political correctness which will reduce freedoms further; debate is gradually being stifled in favour of the precautionary principle.
And what the devil is the exit strategy???
Well said Malcolm. In entire agreement with all you state. Funny you mention bronchopneumonia as I was jusy saying the other day to my wife that when I was a houseman way back in 1978 this was universally the CoD I wrote when signing death certificates.
Absolutely true. Problem is how do we get the political class to act in the interests of the proleteriat rather than their own selfish party interests.
If we could do that, Jj, we would have finally cracked the problem of democracy.
Unfortunately, I see no prospect of that.
The one non-negotiable condition on which we are permitted to have a “democracy” is that there is not the slightest risk of the people gaining political power – or even influence.
Hold a referendum and get an unexpected result
Thanks for this excellent article. It heartens me to read thoughts from people that jump the hysteria bandwagon to think and question. Which in itself is a feat as they meet with ridicule and censorship from not only government institutions but also tv and main media including social media. Recently, i came across this article on testing of optimum size of nano particles for delivery to the brain through the blood brain barrier. From your earlier articles I had held the BBB to be nearly sacred, but apparently that wall is being torn down. Any thoughts on this?
I think it will be interesting – in the fullness of time – to look back at the three year mortality rate and see if it is significantly higher than previous mortality rates for preceding three year periods. If there is no substantial difference, then I think that could be interpreted as ‘evidence’ that this virus has hastened the passing of people destined to die soon anyway, rather than causing a lot of deaths all on its little lonesome. Obviously every death is a tragedy for the families of those dying, but there’s a big difference between hastening vs causing deaths. Until we can look back at those sorts of data, there will be no reasoning with the panickers.
Oops, forgot the link
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75253-9#data-availability
I couldn’t agree more. I thought I was the only doctor left with any sense ( I am a GP). The rest of the profession seem to have stopped understanding statistics!
I fear they never started
Today you can declare that it’s no longer a fear, but a verifiable Fact.
Thank you Malcolm, this couldn’t be a better celebration of Dante’s 700th death anniversary, this year…
Not that we have learned much from him ever since 🙂
Dr Kendrick.
I’ve often heard about isolation of a virus as being a Gold Standard, and that too this date, Covid 19 has not being isolated.
Would it be expected that such a virus that has turned the World upside down would/should have been isolated by now?
Is it that difficult to isolate such a virus or does such isolation and mapping identify potentially details of skullduggery in the virus’s creation i.e Man Made vs Natural?
As I understand it, properly isolating a virus is hard work. If people can indeed publish claims to have have isolated a virus on the basis of inadequate evidence, there is little incentive for anyone to attempt that work.
I think the problem is this. Viruses (unlike bacteria) have to grow on something else – e.g. human cells. This means that if viruses are extracted but not adequately purified, they will be contaminated with human/fungal/bacterial RNA. The next step is to smash open the viruses to study the RNA contained in them. Without total purity, you simply do not know where the RNA originated.
I still think that TFS’ point stands. How are several pharma companies all racing for a vaccine without isolating the virus? Wasn’t measles, chicken pox isolated?
anna m, I seem to remember a case was taken to court in Germany, and though disputed, the outcome was no one had proved the existence of the measles virus.
AH,
Odd. I am upset that I do not have immunity as measured in a titer, but have had 3 shots. Nonetheless, While all my older sibs had measles, I have never known anyone to have measles. What am I to make of that? I am very skeptical of vaccines, but they do do something.
Even little old South Africa managed to isolate the virus as long ago as 1 April 2020. It has been isolated and genetically sequenced thousands of times by now.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200511/South-Africa-obtains-first-laboratory-isolate-of-SARS-CoV-2.aspx#
Martin, from what I have read (sorry I don’t have a reference to hand) viruses used to be isolated by a process that meant that they could show an electron microscope image containing virus particles and nothing else.
The article to which you linked is a press release, and it doesn’t contain a forward link to the paper itself (in fact one of the comments is asking for such a link). Thus it is impossible to know if it was pure or not. The difference between pure and ‘nearly pure’ is enormous for the reason I gave above.
Viruses multiply in cells, so a culture would be a mix of viruses and cells in a nutrient solution. Since viruses are many times smaller than cells, surely all that is necessary to create a pure viral solution is to filter the cells out. I really don’t see a problem.
My understanding is that viruses can only exist in a host, so in the cells. If you filter out the cells, the viruses are hidden in the filtrate.
I think they have to open the cells, which releases the viruses plus the host RNA – so purifying the RNA is a non-trivial job. The gold standard is to reach the point when you can take electron microscope images that just show virus particles.
David Bailey: For what viruses has this actually been done? Apparently the isolation and purification of viruses involves high-velocity centrifuging.
Thanks for the great article! I’m curious – How do you address people who say all-cause excess mortality is NOT up from prior years because COVID deaths have been offset by behavior change (ie less car accidents)?
Behaviour change could operate in many way though. For example, people may be taking less exercise, and many are getting seriously depressed and stressed, which can lead to heart attacks. I don’t think it makes sense argue that way.
Veronica – despite the following – spanner in that logic.
Reported 4 months ago – expect increases since then.
https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2020/october/increase-in-heart-disease-deaths-at-home-during-pandemic
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/paramedic-callouts-suicides-attempted-london-double-year-a4573283.html
Repercussions do you think ?
300 000 delayed cancer treatments in south of Ireland alone, reported 6th Nov.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40077518.html
and repercussions more ?
https://www.thehealthsite.com/diseases-conditions/binge-drinking-increases-as-people-spend-more-time-at-home-due-to-covid-19-lockdown-784476/
Lots of other areas not covered.
If masks, according to WHO didn’t originally show efficacy in controlling the flow of respiratory virus’s…….
1. What RCT trial changed their position?
2. If Masks stop the transmission of respiratory diseases, and the WHO has been regularly playing war games against the ‘big one’, then why the delay in finding out that they are indeed the ‘saviour’ people claim them to be?
Surely if the masks are the be all, then hundreds of thousands of people have died Worldwide needlessly of all respiratory diseases. Surely a case for negligent murder against the WHO and our own Government should be levelled, especially from those with loved ones in care homes who have died because of the slow adoption off such measures.
3. If the WHO was doing its job, masks were a thing, that they had been playing these war games for more than a fews year, with the help of particpating Governents, then why within a Risk Log, which doesn’t exist, is there not an entry for insufficient supply for n95 masks noted or an entry for full material and background data packaged for when masks questions arise ready for the big one?
Interesting graphic at the start of this article:
https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/01/02/latest-news-242/#is-the-london-nightingale-really-reopening
Enjoy your articles and videos doctor Kendrick, and share them with family who might be open minded. Your manner and logic go a long way to giving your message credibility – as well as the statistics you site of course. Thanks much from Oregon!
Thank you
Hi. I totally agree with you doc. TYVM Forr sharing. All the best
Abdul B.Pharm. Bolton UK
I was in Manchester today and noticed that the management at Weatherspoons have collected a set of anti-lockdown articles on a website, and permitted any of their staff to post these in their windows!
I haven’t explored it yet, because I have more or less given up on all current affairs – they are bad for health I think!
https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/
Your argument doesn’t match up with your data.
1. “If the Z-score goes above five, this means something significant is happening.”
2. (graph showing England’s Z-score is almost 40)
3. “As you can see, despite the howls of anguish from England about COVID19 overwhelming the country, we are really not seeing much at all.”
Daryl,
The high z score you are looking at is from last spring. The current z score is on the far right, barely a blip.
In the US, the CDC tracks total number of deaths from all causes, and has a nice web page which you can tinker with “cause of death” codes and so forth.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
But forget all the reason codes. They’re suspect. I actually agree with your argument that the most reliable approach is to just focus on ALIVE or DEAD. And it’s clear that the US death rate has been far, far above historical average from March until today. It makes the bad 2017-2018 influenza season look like a blip in comparison.
I will add one thing: If you separate all the deaths out by “With and without COVID” listed on the death certificate, it’s clear that the “No COVID” deaths are also well above normal values. The most likely reason for this is that COVID19 was being undercounted, especially early in the pandemic.
Are there not multiple examples of covid death certs that were anything but ?
Was there not a significant financial incentive for hospitals, certainly in the US, to apply the covid stamp to any manner of fatality, for the sole reason that a positive test result had been returned for the unfortunate individual?
Jerome Savage: Yes, in the U.S. Medicare (the health insurance system for all who are 65 and above) incentivized hospitals by tripling the payment for covid cases from $13,000 to $39,000. Why they did this is beyond reason. Simultaneously, cancelling elective surgery was economically costly for hospitals. We do not have the lack of excess capacity that the NHS seems to have, except in some rural areas, so many support staff in hospitals had their hours cut. Emergency rooms were eerily quiet as many feared coming near a hospital. A complete debacle.
Gary
That all sounds very familiar.
I cant explain the attraction of the mountains, maybe at present, its the absence of breathing restrictors. And that is being denied to us at present.
You are missing the entire point of Dr. Kendrick’s post. Dr. Kendrick’s whole point is that if death certificates are suspect, you should look at the overall death rate. You can argue endlessly about whether hospitals are classifying deaths as COVID-related for profit, but there really isn’t any argument about whether a person is dead.
Look at the “Weekly number of deaths (FROM ALL CAUSES)” graph. The death rate in USA has been Z > 5 since March. If your hypothesis is that these are something other than COVID deaths, what are they?
Suicides up > 70%, drug Od’s up >13%, delayed health care up 1000% (I’m just guessing, but the low hospital census everywhere says that the numbers delaying health care are huge).
Coronavirus Derangement Syndrome deaths are a confounder for covid deaths. Incompetent public health care policy killed many thousands of people. And iatrogenesis-produced VILI in New York/New Jersey killed many thousands back in Mar-Apr.
Daryl,
A better explanation is that lockdown kills – in myriad ways. For example, 40% fewer heart attacks came to hospitals. That means they occurred at home
Anna, some of the heart attacks occurred at home because the ambulance men made the judgement it was not an emergency and refused to take the victim to hospital. This happened to a (now late) neighbour of mine. A similar situation with my own daughter-in-law with severe pain from gallstones. Para-medics judged no emergency. She suffered 4 more days. When she turned yellow her daughters had to beg the ambulance to take her. The gall bladder was removed the same day and she’s now recovered. In the UK it’s not because we’re scared that we’re not going to A&E. They’re refusing to treat us.
Covid derangement syndrome at play
Absolutely brilliant. The conclusion sounds right too and seems to concur with a large number of independent practitioners ams medical experts.
While the curve is typical of seasons past, please also keep in mind that the measures taken to limit the spread of coronavirus have also meant a significant reduction in cases of seasonal flu. This suggests that the curve is comprised of deaths from coronavirus in lieu of seasonal flu deaths.
Maybe.
Hope-Simpson in his seminal 1981 work on Flu talks about the latency effect each year in which he hypothesises that the virus effectively wakes up in asymptomatic carriers and that these carriers shed virus particles. He then suggests that a dominant strand with most chance of survival infects other people. I think I have represented his argument correctly.
I know that coronavirus is not flu too but this mechanism is one potential explanation for why flu has gone away. It has been superseded by this year’s dominant Covid strand that has “woken up” seasonally (eg triggered by weather, vitamin D deficiency or whatever, causes not fully known) and outperformed the other seasonal strains in the fight for its own survival.
Clearly, these arguments based on Hope-Simpson are all hypotheses but they explain much of the annually observed data such as simultaneous outbreaks of the same strain of different viruses in the past in different countries on the same latitude such as Cirencester and Prague, where direct transmission seems implausible. They also explain the failure of various attempts in 1918 directly to infect people with flu by transmission from sick people and the effects that various other studies found over the years where intra household infection from one ill person to others was far more limited than might be expected.
The absence of flu does therefore not “prove” the benefits of lock downs, I am afraid. Much of what counted for true science pre March 2020 seems to have been thrown away in the panic that society has got itself into. Science is also choosing to state too much with certainty that ought not to be. When one reads Hope-Simpson it is very refreshing. He looks at data, creates hypotheses and is clear about what he thinks he can demonstrate with evidence and what he thinks is uncertain. Our current politicised scientific community are really behaving like witch doctors.
It’s not possible to make such a claim unless you have a control population, and a test that can differentiate, and is reliable. We don’t any of those.
Please keep in mind that measures taken to reduce the spread of coronavirus have dramatically reduced the burden of seasonal flu. So while we are looking at a curve that is typical of any flu season, it must be comprised of COVID19 to the extent seasonal strain has been suppressed.
I think there are doubts that these lockdowns are effective in inhibiting the spread of either COVID or flu!
Perhaps a more interesting reason is that more and more people are taking Vitamin D each day.
That probably accounts for the increasing price. If those who promote testing got a grip and prescribed vitamin D instead, it would probably cost far less, and we would have no panic over the phantom cases.
Lockdowns effective ?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/18/peru-has-toughest-lockdown-world-still-ended-worst-fatality/
Jerome, what you are forgetting is the “lockdown paradox”. Lockdowns do work in fighting and vanquishing the virus. It seems to do this by ensuring that large numbers of people die, so there are no hosts.This is demonstrated scientifically by mathematical modellers reaching a consensus, to say what they are told to say, and to pick the figures that support the policy of keeping the population safe.
AHN – I hav no doubt. Lockdowns are soul destroying, cut right in to the human spirit. Masks signal world is dangerous. We are forced to re-evaluate our position. Some of us wont be able to and will succumb, that is those who are already fragile. Its colossaly inhuman and destructive of the spirit. But if we dig deep, stay strong and fight for new friendships and genuine connections we can come out stronger.
Anywsy, that’s my parable for the day. But even the lockdown medievalists cannot show a benefit, that I can find.
The problem with the continual changing of the inflictions is it inevitably makes people anxious. This has been going on for nearly a year. The police are being more oppressive, Alexander has just loaded more inflictions, TO MID-FEBRUARY????? WTF??? and this adds to the stress. Feeling anxious is a chemical response, so this continuous anxiety is a constant disruption of our chemistry, which makes peoples immune systems weaker.
I’m getting on a bit, and I don’t want to be protected at the expense of wrecking the lives of younger people. I’ll take my chances with this false pathogen epidemic.
Lets hope Piers Corbyn is voted in as mayor of London to replace the current ineffectual being.
Piers Corbyn as mayor – now I never thought of that.
Up the hills mountains, a man shares space with silence & nature and not a maskerader in sight. I met a lady one Sunday morning with her dog on the mountains. As our conversation progressed, she informed me that this was her church. The world can be enlightening and generous to the heart and the soul.
Jerome Savage: Yes! The mountains are my church and my doctor.
Excellent article from a man with impressive credentials.
Honest and articulate with sound evidential proof to back up the statements……
Why can’t more people see the irony of what is happening……. Blind Panic does not help and neither will lockdowns without reason…..
Life must go on and we have to accept that people die of old age and other cruel illnesses.
Laughed till I cried.
Brilliant and absurdly reassuring.
Thank you Malcom for both entertaining and informing.
This was a great article. Very well reasoned. I cringe when I think of the wild attacks it will prompt. You don’t deserve that.
Not sure what you were saying about the PCR test though. Simply that you couldn’t conclude anything in the end? Anyway, well done.
A rare triple treat – facts, logic and common sense
Oxygen therapy, ventilation, dexamethasone and antivirals drugs were not available as medical therapies in the 1918 pandemic. The excess death rate with COVID is higher despite all of the advances of medical science
Katrin,
Part of that excess death rate is directly attributable to some strange decisions that were taken. For example, there was a general call for the ‘need’ for vast numbers of expensive ventilators. When these were used on COVID patients, they produced a lot of deaths. I remember a doctor commenting on how he was supposed to intubate patients who were still talking coherently – he seemed quite bewildered that he was supposed to do this.
Then there were the excess deaths caused by the decision to move less severe COVID patients back out of hospital in to unequipped care homes!
Katrin,
Take a look at this 2 min. video from Ivor Cummins comparing 1918 flu to COVID:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1344973418052128768
There truly is no comparison.
For me there is one thing left to say.
A lot of people are experts in medicine, and in public health, and in epidemiology, and in statistics, and in genomics, and in pharmacology. I hate 99.9% of these people, and I disregard their views and their advice in everything. I shun anything coming from these mendacious, callous reprobates, all traitors to the human race. They have robbed and insulted and negligently killed or gravelly endangered the lives of many people better than myself, whom I love and look after. I will not forgive or forget this episode in infamy.
There are very few people in medicine I do not hate, and one of them is Malcolm Kendrick. He is a real doctor who knows his art, as he has been treating ill individuals for many years. He is not a vain intellectual, or a futurist, or a social engineer, or a political philosopher, or a self appointed saviour of Humanity. Rather, he is a real human being with his thought standing firmly on reality. That I can respect. His reasoning deserves consideration. He is a man among men. Everyone who deviates from his example, I will not respect. Experts are dead to me, I prefer real people now.
We need more professionals like Dr. Kendrick, and fewer politicians and numerologists.
To be fair, I think a lot of doctors are probably deeply bewildered and disturbed by what is going on, so probably ‘hate’ is the wrong word for them.
Most of us here, are already used to the fact that Big Pharma has deliberately killed or injured a lot of people in many ways, and has placed ‘experts’ in the system to corrupt the idea of evidence based medicine. I think it takes others more time (which we may not have) to realise how bad these people can be. History is full of periods where really bad people ruled – humans aren’t any better now.
Excellent summary. Thanks!
I agree totally with you and many people who are thinking not only following what the government and Midia tell you
The worse is of this so called pandemic that it cost lives of those who suffer from cancer and other serous diseases as they can not have proper treatment and therefore will probably die
Also the poorest countries will suffer the most as we are not supporting them
It is unforgivable what the governments are doing and they should be taken to court!!
I hope it will happen otherwise what is the future for us and our future generations!!
Thank you Malcolm for pulling together the threads of 2020 and Covid and making an amusing and factual piece. My husband chuckled his way through it, he has had his fingers in his ears singing la la la up until now, so a real break through in our household. He still maintains that the decision makers must have these facts and they are not stupid so why are they making the decisions they are……!
The current decision ‘based on science’ is to flout the drug companies trials and spread the 2 dose vaccine up to 12 weeks apart. I am flabbergasted at their ability to make unilateral decisions with no evidence. (Even Pfizer are reported to say they have no data to support a gap of more than 21 days…and they have no liability, so nothing to prove, gain or lose by this decision. Possibly£?)
Are the behavioural scientists working out how far they can push people’s belief and acceptance of what they are being told before the people revolt?
The future looks bleak to me. There is now so much more behavioural information being gathered to fuel everything from product and service marketing to political opinion to health that we, the person in the street, no longer have control over what we think we know and do and what we are being told to think and do.
Maybe I’m already delusional and we havent had freedom of thought and speech for a long time?!
“He still maintains that the decision makers must have these facts and they are not stupid so why are they making the decisions they are……!”
Has he considered money, power, and reputation? It seems that nowadays those are far more important – to many – than honesty or compassion.
The following insightful remark by John Maynard Keynes, one of the cleverest men ever, was made in the context of economics; but it applies perfectly to our present leaders and their advisers. Why would an unpleasant, selfish person suddenly become a saintly altruist just through winning an election or being promoted?
‘Capitalism is “the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds”’.
– Attributed to John Maynard Keynes by Sir George Schuster, “Christianity and human relations in industry” (1951), p. 109. Recent variant: “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone”.
As quoted in Moving Forward: Programme for a Participatory Economy (2000) by Michael Albert, p. 128. (Wikiquote)
“Maybe I’m already delusional and we havent had freedom of thought and speech for a long time?!”
Oh, we have had them. We still have them. But most people have no desire to use them.
Josh Billings warned, “As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand”.
(Incidentally, among many other memorable bons mots, Billings said, “The old miser who has accumulated his millions, and sits down on them afterwards, reminds me of a fly that has fallen into a barrel of molasses”).
Mark Twain also explained that, “It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them”.
I’m trying to get a grip on this whole covid situation, but this entire article seems so unprofessional and poorly written that it’s hard to believe or take any of it seriously. What are your sources on all the graphs? Why did you only have three sources and it doesn’t seem like any of them are any proof that you are right? Please explain this further if you insist on finding the truth
Have you tried following any of the links at the bottom of the article?
Yes i have actually, and atleast 66% of them are just liks to articles that he quotes, aka not sources. I would also like to restate that the importance of the sources for the graphs is critical. And to end off, I don’t mean to sound rude, but replies to this has been quite passive aggressive and not constructive.
Justin, you are free to feel offended, but to say the replies were “passively aggressive”, to quote the modern mumbo-jumbo term, is not constructive.
Justin, rather than calling Dr Kendrick’s article ‘unprofessional and poorly written’ might it not have bene better to supply a link to something that demonstrates that his graphs are wrong/misleading? I am pretty sure if you do Dr Kendrick will respond – as he has to other criticisms here.
Justin, thank you for a well thought through, helpful and objective critique. Not!
“Insist on following the truth” is the one positive in your shoddy response.
Dr Sebastian Rushworth has another good article out today discussing the origin of the panic and overreaction and why we are being prepared to forget who caused all the damage to ourselves and our children’s futures https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/01/03/why-did-the-world-react-so-hysterically-to-covid/
And to understand some of the chicanery being employed to enhance the fear, Dr Clare Craig (pathologist) explains how the application of testing has failed to guide our response in an interview with Jeffrey Peel https://pcrclaims.co.uk/videos
This interview with Dr Clare Craig is longer and, dare I say, better. https://www.facebook.com/makelockdownshistory/videos/416053446188908/
Hi Malcolm – for some reason I have only just “found you”. My 41 year old son sent me your 30th December post. Both he and I (I am 70) and retired are beside ourselves with what is happening. As you stated, you get to the point when you do not know what to believe! However, both my son and I have searching for the truth and it is very hard to find. What we do know is that the scientists, medics and the Govt who follow are telling us half truths and sometimes complete fabrications. Over the last 6 months, there are so many examples. I have written letters to the DT, called TalkRADIO, sent emails constantly to my MP, resorted now to postibg on Youtube, but no one is listening. I do not understand the motives of SAGE and the medics. What is their agenda for god sake. What are they covering up. Right now the biggest scandal that has not emerged is false positives with mass testing using the PCR test and the lighthouse labs. Is this why the infection rate has soared and NOT the new strain which is the storyline that those in control would want us to believe to keep the country in a state of complete fright? How can we change all this?!
Cui bono?
Martin, for SAGE MO, look at ukcolumn.org. Their next screwyoutube broadcast is Mon 4th at 1:00pm.
This article is like a breath of fresh air. I found it accidentally while browsing random posts on twitter. None of this can be found on google because they are removing such articles from the search results. We’re back to the dark ages it seems where science, facts, data, and common sense are are all labeled heresy. I’m afraid to speak about this topic with colleagues or friends because I will forever be labelled a conspiracy theorist and a tin foil hatter.
Please hang around! You’ll find this an excellent and instructive blog, with some good comments too.
Somebody: Welcome to the Sanity Club! It has grown in membership by leaps and bounds in recent months, a most heartening development amidst the continuing stupidity committed by western governments.
Because a positive PCR test is universally used to diagnose Covid, rather than symptoms as with all previous diseases, can anyone tell me what unique set of symptoms will identify a case of Covid in the absence of a test?
Dr Kendrick, have you come across Ivermectin as a treatment to reduce Covid mortality? The WHO have confirmed that a preliminary review confirms Ivermectin’s effectiveness. Following on from this, Dr Andrew Hill from Liverpool University is currently performing a WHO commissioned review. Dr Hill in a 12 minute video confirms a highly significant 83% reduction in Covid mortality. There are 3 more trials due to be published this month before the WHO issue an official recommendation. If this pans out as hoped, it offers an alternative treatment to a risky vaccine especially for the frail elderly. Not likely to be welcomed with open arms in the Big Pharma community!
I am aware, I am planning to write about it shortly. Thanks for nudging my elbow.
Lots of good info. on Ivermectin for Covid here:
Thanks Dr Kendrick. I will keep a lookout.
Interpretation of analitic data is very complex. I have more than 20 years experience analysing structured and no related data for bussiness and health intelligence and all I can say in relation to mortality data showed here, even knowing nothing about covid, that in fact exists an exceptional cause on 2020th march and after septembre untill now. This cause were responsible with no doubt exclusivelly in more than 30% of deaths reported. Not even in wars periods there was a comparable excess.
Have a look at Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Very sound critical analysis.
Protect the vulnerable. Clean up the infection hot spots, HOSPITALS then get on with life.
Since the PCR test is almost universally used to give a diagnosis of Covid, could someone list the symptoms necessary to confirm a case of Covid in the absence of the test?
I’m not sure there are any symptoms that would absolutely confirm a diagnosis of Covid-19. That’s part of the weird bind we are in. It’s a disease caused by an alleged virus which may or may not have been isolated, which causes symptoms that overlap almost completely with other respiratory infections, and for which there is no reliable test!
Perhaps some of the doctors commenting could give their opinions?
At long last ! The mass testing is a farce , with a high % of false positives .. costing millions …
Thank you for taking the time to write common sense .. you have renewed my faith in the medical profession.. Lets hope that Governments come to their senses before they destroy what’s left of us all .
A little disingenuous to claim this pandemic is less deadly than the 1918 one when this one seems to be only getting started and comparing total deaths from a century ago for a pandemic that lasted about 3 yrs. with the current one in its first year seems, at best, incomplete reasoning.
The Spanish flu is estimated to have killed 50 million, when the worlds population was fifth of what it is now. When we pass the 250 million mark you can make the case that Covid19 is worse. I think we still have a bit of a way to go.
I think the most frightening part of your comment is “the worlds population was fifth of what it is now”. In just over 100 years…
Cymorg, https://youtu.be/SdKkZLqhmDM. We are in for a fun time with three years of lockdowns..
I so hope there’s a limit to how long people can stay so ridiculous. Another Gulliver’s Travels in the making.
Thank you.
I am just a run of the mill, not such a bright spark who has been trying to make sense if the data and studies.
I wanted to find some conclusions, but at least now I know that the reason I didnt wasnt because I am a little bit thick.
So yes, thank you for this xx
Great article. I have felt the same that the world was going mad and massively overreacting.
Oh for goodness sake, I’ll tell you what it’s all about. It’s only ever discussed by aficionados of a certain ‘conspiracy’ topic (plus all the various governments in great secrecy). We are about to enter a multi-year period of cataclysms. You are looking in the wrong places for your answer. One consequence of staying ‘safely’ at home is that one never looks up at the sky. Watch the sky. Soon, you will see something that hasn’t been there for thousands of years – a new star. And this will get bigger and bigger.
Other things you should be watching are the earth changes such as earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis plus fireballs. Dutchsinse is the go-to guy for the earthquakes and volcanos. All the fault lines are coming alive. Ask your old relatives or friends etc if they have noticed anything unusual with the sun these days. Some very observant people have noticed it’s no longer in its usual position in the sky. Here’s a video on this and be sure to read the comments too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRN9Wvq0C9U . Here’s another video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NT5n8Lcesw .
The sun doesn’t go walkabouts. It’s us. The Earth is being perturbed. Look up how they discovered Neptune and Pluto
They discussed this openly back in the early 1980s. There’s plenty of articles in national newspapers and magazines in 1983 on this. But Reagan put a stop to this once the US government realised how terrifying it will be a few decades down the line. And now, time has run out and the extinction level events are about to start. Once people realised their governments have been keeping this a secret (whilst looting the planet to dig very deep underground bases for themselves and their families), they’ll either (a) go into denial; or (b) kill themselves; or (c) hunt down these elite bastards and hang them, from the nearest tree or lamp post. When people finally understand what is really going on, the mass panic will be biblical. Billions of people will die before it’s over. That’s a given. It’s baked in the cake. I can give you a cast iron guarantee on this.
So it’s very important for these governments to vaccinate their populations because the crap in those ‘vaccines’ will render the people totally harmless (as well as kill them)
If you haven’t dismissed the above as the rantings of a loony conspiracy theorist, try listening to this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpUkz_s6Eo . Or just read the transcript by clicking on the row of 3 dot below the bottom RHS of the screen.
Um, great apocalypse rant. Sorry, but it sounds a little on the tin foil hat side of reality. Still, I do not like to censor posts.
What’s in the cake?
I don’t know. Theories are created as a vital part of our need to find answers. Concluding with identifying a body or organisation to blame is perhaps an understandable way of putting mystery into some sort of place. I remember many claiming that HIV was engineered by the CIA in the 1980’s. There seems to be consensus eventually that HIV’s source was in chimps, but I don’t know if that’s ever been conclusively proven. There’s notions of Sars-COV-2 coming from bats, maybe via a research lab, maybe via ‘wet’ markets. Once again we may never know conclusively. There’s elements of ‘Gaia’ in the idea that the planet itself is fighting back – and in a way I’ve often found the Gaia idea of critical balance being maintained quite plausible, in a bit of a ‘broad brush’ way perhaps.
But, I’m convinced there’s only ever ‘best guesses’. There’s so much we don’t understand – about almost everything – it’s impressive we’ve understood as much as we have about Sars-COV-2 in what’s been a very short time period. For sure there’ll be further findings – some that perhaps turn current best guesses on their head.
All credit to Dr Kendrick for not censoring. At one time I’d experienced a few (of my) comments to posts on his blog not making broadcast – even though I’d not thought my rambling very controversial ! After all, there can (sometimes) be an element of future insight in even the craziest of ideas.
You mention the sun in the sky, anon. Just for the moment however it would be very pleasant to see the sun beyond the ever-present grey low cloud – that I can’t even get on a ‘plane these days to see beyond ! So, next time it’s visible down here I’ll be sure to have a very good look at it !
Kudos for not censoring my post.
I have the highest regard for you because of your graciouness
Alas, almost everyone thinks the same as you.
Have you seen any videos of hospital staff practising their Tik Tok dance routines?
They are like the dances in the 2012 London Olympics show.
Here is a video comparing them:
https://archive.org/details/2012-london-games-predictive-programming-1
That Olympics show is really creepy, especially in the light of what has now happened.
There’s even a Boris Johnson Spitting Image muppet on a hospital bed at 6:59 mins
That is predictive programming.
So in 2012, they notified us very publicly that this pandemic is coming.
Now look at this show to commemorate the re-opening of the Spanish Steps in Rome during the 2016 equinox:
Do you think that might also be predictive programming?
IMO, both shows are very sinister and they are giving the audience of our future.
As usual, the messages are given symbolically
Thank you “anon”, you’ve brightened up my Monday.
Hi all
Thank you Malcolm for this brilliantly-written, modest, readable and informative article
And thank you to all the commenters – you are all a breath of fresh air
I have done some work on my own with Excel, comparing the ONS overall deaths figures with the government’s claimed Covid deaths
(I know it calls them “deaths within 28 days of a positive test” but they know full well that this is used by the country as a whole to mean “approximate but reliable official count of daily Covid deaths”)
I have compared the figures for “overall deaths” in England and Wales,
from 13-Jun (when the early Pandemic died down)
to 18-Dec (the latest current available data point),
comparing 2020 to the last few years.
To account for population growth, which most other comparers (including the ONS itself) do not usually do, I focused on a fixed measure, “daily deaths per million people” (ddpm)
Equalising over that whole span of 189 days, in 2020 the rate of ddpm was 24.3
(out of each cohort of 1 million people, 24.3 people died each day)
In 2017, the next highest year, the ddpm rate for those same 189 days was almost identical at 23.8, while the average 2016 to 2019 was only a little bit lower at 23.5
Yes, you read that right.
Out of each million people here, we have had 0.5 extra daily deaths compared to three years ago. Over the whole of the last 6 months. Fluctuations between previous years were just as big.
“But maybe December is worse?!”
Looking just at the last week, “Week 51”, 12-18 Dec, the ratio is roughly the same. 31.1 ddpm in 2020 vs 30.4 ddpm in 2017.
But according to the official figures, in that week 2810 people died of Covid in UK & Wales!
Divide that by 58.37m population = 6.9 ddpm of Covid!
Now, that’s puzzling… how can almost 7 people die daily per million, when overall daily deaths per million are only up by 0.6 people?
I therefore estimate that over recent months, the actual number dying of Covid is at most 10% of the official number claimed.
Overall, I concur entirely with Dr Kendrick’s analysis.
In the spring, the overall death numbers show a massive spike.
That’s how we can know with close to 100% certainty – independently of what the gov’t claims to be Corona deaths – that Covid was a likely factor in the death of thousands of people, who would not have died anyway at that point.
Because overall deaths were massively up.
And now they are not particularly up at all.
So equally this is how we can know – again, with close to 100% certainty – that the large numbers of people allegedly now dying of Covid are exaggerated by up to a factor of 10.
Thanks for reading all this – if anyone is interested in my Excel data – very clear, and all drawn from ONS / gov.uk data – with a nice snazzy graph as well – please let me know.
All the best
MC
Thank you for this. If you have the analysis in more detail perhaps you could send it directly to me. Thanks
Sorry, I’m reading comments in the wrong order and didn’t see your more detailed post. Happy to look at your more detailed analysis, but your numbers for week 51 don’t look consistent with the ONS excess deaths data to me, even allowing for population growth. Can you share the data please?
Hi Jim
This is getting confusing as we’re speaking across 3+ different mini-conversations now, but let me finally for now post a specific answer to your week 51 query
I don’t know how easy this will be to view in plain text format, here goes:
Year Dea(wk) Dea(day) E&W pop(m) ddpm
2016 11,493 1641.9 58.376——– 28.1
2017 12,517 1788.1 58.739——– 30.4
2018 11,116 1588.0 59.107——– 26.9
2019 11,926 1703.7 59.478——– 28.6
avr’g 11,763 1680.4 n/a————- 28.5
2020 13,011 1858.7 59.852——– 31.1
2020 vs average last 4 years + 2.5
2020 vs next highest year + 0.6
Thank you, MC. I too have been looking at the figures from the ONS but you have put a new interpretation on it. I would be very interested to see it all, including the snazzy graph!
Jean
Very interesting MC.
One place you may consider sending the info / graph(s) is to Ivor Cummins https://twitter.com/FatEmperor?
Not sure if that link works but it may give you a direction anyway.
If you haven’t come across him he’s worth following.
Also https://lockdownsceptics.org/ perhaps.
I’m directing away from Dr K but hopefully we all feel getting good / honest information out there is in all our interests.
MC,
I wish I could follow your logic here, but I can’t:
“But according to the official figures, in that week 2810 people died of Covid in UK & Wales!
Divide that by 58.37m population = 6.9 ddpm of Covid!
Now, that’s puzzling… how can almost 7 people die daily per million, when overall daily deaths per million are only up by 0.6 people?”
Why shouldn’t 7 of the deaths have been from covid?
Because Covid is here in 2020 and wasn’t there in 2017
So if Covid killed 7 people this week in 2017, we should see some similar-sized bump in the deaths, comparing this week (or entire 6 last months, which yield the same numbers) with the same period in 2017
But in fact the dial has barely moved – a very tiny increase, but that’s all. That tiny increase is probably close to the true numbers of covid deaths and lockdown-caused secondary deaths put together. But that increase is about 0.6 ddpm, not 7ddpm, less than a tenth!
MC, not here in 2017? PHE had a document in 2015 saying covid was a notifiable disease in prisons. There is also a document written in 2007 and published in 2008 mentioning SARS cov2 AND!!!! SARS cov 3.
Thanks, but I just don’t know what I’m missing. I understand about 1600 people die daily in the UK, or is it just England. Why wouldn’t 7 of them be lost in the noise.
Hi Anna
I am talking about ddpm (daily deaths per million) because that it is a year-neutral, country-size-neutral, scalable and objective unit, more suitable for calm and rational analysis.
Your figure of daily deaths of 1600 (which is about right for some days of the year) is the whole country.
I start with the England and Wales weekly total, (because that’s what ONS outputs for this year and going back many years for comparison)
I divide by the population size (in millions) for that year to yield a weekly deaths per million, then divide by 7 for an average ddpm rate for the duration of that week. Then I compare the 2020 number to the very slightly smaller ddpm number in 2017 in the same week, which gives the actual excess daily deaths per million (0.6 excess ddpm for Week 51)
I also calculate the same thing for the Covid figures. Here the gov’t publishes daily figures. I add the England and Wales figures for each day of that week to obtain a weekly total deaths figure, then divide by the population size (in millions) of that year to yield a weekly deaths per million, then divide by 7 for an average ddpm rate for the duration of that week. (6.9 excess ddpm for Week 51)
(This is like adding two dissimilar fractions, eg 4 / 9 and 7 / 8, we need to convert the numbers on the bottom (denominator) to a “common denominator” (in this case 72) and then restate each fraction as “over 72”, meaning 32 / 72 + 63 / 72 which is easily added up to 95 / 72 )
Each of those excess ddpm numbers multiplies out to a much higher number when you convert it back up to weekly deaths for the whole of England and Wales
The real excess ddpm of 0.6 (I say “real” because based on objective actual rates of death) multiplies up to a relatively moderate 252 excess weekly deaths countrywide.
The claimed 6.9 excess ddpm – based on the government’s Covid claims – multiplies out to a much-higher 2,898 excess weekly deaths nationwide.
It’s not a matter of a faint signal of 0.6 being lost in a “noise” of 7, or 7 being lost in 1600 and so on – my units and conclusions translate to 3,000 claimed national Covid deaths when only 250 more died versus this week 3 years ago. Where are the 2,750 bodies buried?
And ditto re the whole 6 months:
0.5 vs 2.3 translates out to under 6,000 vs over 26,000 claimed. Where have the alleged 21,000 Covid shown on the objective year on year comparisons? They’ve just vanished.
PS: In this comment, I have used the words nation and country to refer to England and Wales, for convenience. Of course no slight to Scotland or NI is intended.
Hi MC,
I appreciate your effort. What was the number 72 about?
Perhaps I can rephrase the question. Stats on anything – temperature or heart attacks, they go up and down. We can calculate deaths from various causes and there will be variations. So if we do a total death count for a year or a month, there will be so many heart, so many cancer, so many accidents and that number will always differ a bit even if the total deaths are pretty close year over year. So this is what I mean by being lost in the noise. 0.6 or 6.9 are just not that different.
So it looks like what you are saying is this is not plausible, that it adds up to too many to be realistic, especially week after week?
Hi Anna
I am replying to your comment starting “Hi MC, I appreciate your effort” which I can’t reply to directly.
You write: “so this is what I mean by being lost in the noise. 0.6 or 6.9 are just not that different.
So it looks like what you are saying is this is not plausible, that it adds up to too many to be realistic, especially week after week?!
1. Yes, that last bit of your comment is a big part of it – looking at 6 months, that is quite a large difference, of many tens of thousands of people “difference”. It is more than small fluctuations.
2. But there is an even larger point here. The 6.9 figure is the eddpm translation of *the government-claimed covid deaths* from mid-Jun to mid-Dec.
Yes, those daily numbers on the Covid official “dashboard”, if you add them up over the whole 6 months, they equate to 6.9 daily deaths per million from Covid.
That is the Government’s claim of the catastrophic Covid deaths from Jun – Dec. They claim over 26,000 died of Covid. This equates to the 6.9 figure. If 6.9 could be “noise” then the 26,000 are noise. The 2 numbers are just 2 different “languages” for expressing the same thing.
Clearly, the governments opinion is that the 26,000+ are not “noise” at all – they claim that this is a reasonable scientific, significant “signal” – and the “signal” means that we continue to be experiencing the deadliest disaster in living memory.
But there are not even a quarter as many as that extra deaths! That is the objective fact. All the rest is therefore over-attribution, as Doctor Kendrick sets out plausibly, and backs up from the different angles of his own detailed research.
My own (separate) research leads to the same conclusions.
The point is that we are seeing many hard number indicators that lead to the same calm, reasoned conclusion.
We could restate 2.3 as 26,000+ and 0.5 as under 6,000 – those numbers are very significantly different. If the 26,000+ were true, it would be significant, impactful, clearly noticeable and relevant for public policy. It is clearly *not* true as the vast majority of it does not show up.
MC
(Lastly – I should point out that back in March – May, (the actual Covid crisis) when you do the same comparison of claimed Covid deaths vs excess overall actual deaths – hey presto!
It *does* yield a clear correlation, a clear “signal” on *both* counts. The official Covid count is up by a huge amount, and so is the overall excess overall deaths. The 2 measures demonstrably correlate in reality.
Like the Grand old Duke of York, “when they were up – they were up, and when they were down – they were down”. And they are significantly and indisputably down now.
Just to reiterate
During the week of 12-18 Dec, there have been 0.6 extra daily deaths per million people in 2020 as compared to the same week in 2017
We are participating in wave after wave of mass lockdown, the impression from the media and government is that we are facing a tragedy of apocalyptic proportions.
Not just back in the spring, but now.
The plain truth is, that for each million people on the country, 999,999.4 people are locked down, still with no clear end in sight, because of a national disaster manifested by 0.6 of a person extra dying each day this year vs the same period 3 years ago!
This has been the case for the last 6 months, and continues to be the case this month.
0.6 per million.
This is not a statistic you will see in the newspapers.
Where did you get these numbers? They’re not right. There are about 3 extra people per million dying every day in Dec, about 1400 excess deaths per week.
Jim, that’s about 20 people extra dying each day in the UK. Since the normal rate is at least 1200 a day and about 1600 day in the winter, that represents roughly 1.5% extra. If it were 20 people fewer dying a day, no one would even notice.
No, I don’t think that’s right. 3 deaths per million is about 200 total excess deaths per day, or about 15% more than usual. Jim
Hi Ah notepad
although i think we’re on the same page analytically, on this one your figure is mistaken – if Jim is right about 1400 edpw, then it is 200 edpd, not 20.
Put like that, it does sound serious – not apocalyptic, but serious.
But it is context-free.
A harsh winter flu year kills more than 200 pd – day in, day out, for the whole 3 months of winter. Some years even more than 300 pd.
It also takes no account of the millions and millions people in this country. Some countries’ whole population is under 1 million. In a country that size, 200 extra deaths per day IS a big deal.
Out of each million people, that 200 edpd becomes about 3 (compared to 2017 it is under 2)
Each death and pain is a tragedy. My heart goes out to anyone who is suffering, from Covid or anything else.
But daily excess deaths per million of 2 or 3 – or, looked at another way, 0.5! is not a remotely reasonable level to justify what is going on.
I have not even mentioned that most of the excess deaths are of people in their last stages of life, usually in care homes. Many of those people, including my wife’s grandmother, do not want any of this. They are gaining months of bitter frightened loneliness, and at the cost of economic and educational catastrophe which has the potential to be so much worse.
Anyway the main point was to stick up for Jim’s specific numerical point this time, although to agree with your general take, Ah Notebook.
all the best
MC
Thanks for doing your best to explain this to people. I find that it is very tricky to explain matters like this, because people arrive at things from very different directions, and very different understandings. I am looking at your figures at the moment, and hoping to be able to first, fully understand them myself. Second, see if I can put them into a blog/article to help other people understand. One thing I am good at, I think, is making some quite complicated things clear.
MC,, you’re right, my bad maths.
The annual figures don’t indicate a significant problem though.
Hi Jim and other readers
I have sent my Excel research to Dr Kendrick
I am using my chosen measure, ddpm, because of the issue of population growth.
Other options would include either skewing previous years to match 2020’s population, or vice versa, (gets messy as each year has its own numbers) or by ignoring this important factor altogether.
I thought a more helpful method would be to use an “clean” metric like ddpm (thus not using any particular year as the unit definition) to yield easily-understood intra-year comparison rates.
I initially looked at 2 specific periods
1. the whole of the “post-pandemic stage”, 27 weeks = 189 days from 13-Jun to 18-Dec (also known as Week 25 to Week 51 inclusive)
2. The last week of available data (12-Dec to 18-Dec) – Week 51
Jim, you are right that if we specifically look at December data (as accurate comparison data is limited to complete weeks I assume you mean the 3 weeks from 28-Nov to 18-Dec) that yields a 2020 figure of 29.9 ddpm, which is 2.9 ddpm over the average (27.0), and 1.9 ddpm over the next highest year, 2017 (28.0 ddpm)
However, for context, please note that 2017 was also 1 ddpm over the average, and was 2.2 ddpm above 2018 (25.7)
2019 was 1.4 ddpm above the previous year as well. These fluctuations are fairly normal, and post-June 2020 is perhaps very slightly “worse” than the “worst” previous year.
Also, these increased deaths include the surely non-zero amount of deaths caused by both justified and unjustified knock-on effects of the Covid reactions. I do not have hard numbers, but there is a lot of anecdotal data supporting this.
Zooming out of these specific numbers and time periods:
For the post-pandemic period as a whole, Jun to Dec, my conclusions are certainly valid. There have almost certainly not been 24,910 deaths as per gov.uk from Covid – (2.3 ddpm) because the total excess ddpm is only 0.5 – you can come to your own estimate of how much the official post-pandemic Covid deaths figure is magnified by – I estimate by a factor of between 4 and 10
If I can, I will update my Excel so it is more flexible, and you can plug in any date range you want in 2 simple boxes and it will carry out and display the whole calculation on the spot – i like Excel formulae!
I do take Covid seriously…
I do see a spike, and it may have been greater had we not been isolating…
I do not believe the tests are valid results much of the time…
I will not have the vaccine…
But I am taking higher doses of Niacin & Vit D together with the other Covid advised supplements…
I am almost 70 and do have auto-immune issues…
I’m not at all sure that lockdowns have done any good but on the whole I agree with you, JC. I am just over 70 and I take Vit C, D, K2 and Zinc, eat a whole food diet and am careful about who I get close to. I do this every flu season. I also gave all my nearest and dearest 3 month supply of vit D3 for Christmas.
Someone mentioned above having a cold and testing positive. I don’t think the test is specific enough to differentiate covid from other colds.
Yes please do write about ivermectin soon! So many doctors are strongly recommending its use. Apparently when used prophylactically it can even prevent contracting the virus. There’s a big hullabaloo about it in the US (some for it, some against it) but then what else is new?? It sounds amazing but how does one get their doctor to prescribe this especially for prophylactic use and then if hospitalized do you just very nicely insist that the doctor use it?? I’m in Canada and would love to get hold of it. Haven’t talked with my doc yet but can’t imagine she’d go for it. Big sigh!
Ivermectin. I thought that rang a bell. When OH was working with livestock, he used to go to the agricultural supplies merchant and buy it off the shelf. The vet told him the the dosages to use. I think that if we had kept some, it would likely be a bit out of date by now – I am talking 1990’s.
Jean,
During November I spent ten days in hospital. During that time I was given Bactroban nasal spray to use 3 times a day. I had two cancerous tumors removed and spent time on three different Wards, plus A & E. Each Ward contained Coronavirus patients
but I managed to return home still virus free. Three tests were done during that time and each one came back negative. Perhaps the Bactroban had helped?
The main reason why I mention this hospital stay is that at no time before being admitted to Hospital was I aware that I even had cancer. Obviously I had been having a bad time health wise but had no idea why. You can only get to speak to your G.P. by telephone and this proved to be of no help whatsoever. The doctor who I did speak to wasn’t even my usual G.P. However, upon speaking to me, he wasn’t happy about my breathing and rang for an Ambulance for me, and I will be eternally grateful to him for
that.
I had had an MRI scan some weeks before the above happened and this had evidently shown the tumors which I knew nothing about.
The reason I have posted this information is that Dr. Kendrick expressed concern regarding people dying from various illnesses that had not yet been diagnosed but I never imagined that I could possibly be one of them.
I am no longer a spring chicken, so to speak, but have no wish to end up as a statistic on one of Malcolm’s blogs. I want to be here to continue reading, and learning so much from them for some time yet. Thank you for your wonderful blog Malcolm.
I would like to wish a belated Happy New Year to everyone. Sorry for being so long-winded, but I feel so much better for getting that off my mind.
Special good wishes to you Jean. And AH Notepad you are priceless, and thanks for the laugh.
P.S. I have been told that I need chemotherapy as there are still tumors lurking in the background, but nobody could even guess as to when that would be!
Sylvia: When I had my tumor removed about a year ago I was told that chemotherapy would only be appropriate as the third step after radiation. Radiation involved a feeding tube, so I declined. As it turned out, the tumor margin was clear and there was no lymph node involvement. Wish you the best.
Thank you for sharing this fascinating tale Sylvia. Very brave of you.
Interesting story re Bactroban Sylvia,thank you.
Corroborates our experience of the product which, is available OTC in South Africa.
Always used it as prescribed when flying to and from SA and never once experienced a respiratory problem as is often the case after longhaul flights.
Have heard it also mitigates against the ‘cruise cough’ a sometime consequence of long shipborne cruises.
All the Best and keep your chin up.
financialfundi,
Thank you for your reply which is very much appreciated. I will certainly check to see if Bactroban is available in the UK and keep on using it whilst Covid 19 remains a threat. I must admit to being just a wee bit envious of your lifestyle though, we have snow forecast over the next few days!
Best wishes, Sylvia.
EDJ: Try a veterinarian. Tell them it’s for your dog or something. I just spoke on the phone with the farmer from whom I get my yearly supply of beef. He’s got the ‘Rona, but doing great. I mentioned Vitamin D, zinc, HCQ, and ivermectin. He said he’s used gallons of ivermectin on the cattle as a wormer. Works in humans, too!
Gary, I have seen Ivermectin described as an antibiotic. Does it have a damaging effect on gut bacteria?
AhNotepad: I don’t know. It is an anti-parasitic with a good safety profile and has been used for decades. We will know more when Dr. Kendrick makes his post about it.
FYI, an article recently published on The BMJ…which just happens to coincide with vaccine products being rushed out…
Covid-19: Expedite vaccination or deaths will surge, researchers warn:
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4958
Quoting some of the article, which is free access, what do you think about this, including reference to ‘modelling’?
Deaths from covid-19 in England in the first half of 2021 could exceed those seen in the whole of 2020 unless the vaccination programme is vastly increased and a national lockdown implemented—with educational settings closed for at least a month—researchers have warned.
In a preprint released on 24 December,1 researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used modelling to compare the effects of varying covid-19 restrictions on the virus spread, hospital and intensive care admissions, and deaths from 15 December 2020 to 30 June 2021. The model took account of the new variant spreading rapidly in southern England, which it estimated to be 56% more transmissible than non-variant covid-19.2
As of 11 December 2020 some 67 591 people in England had covid-19 on their death certificate, the government’s dashboard advised.3 Currently, the government plans to stagger the reopening of schools from 4 January. However, its Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has reportedly warned that infections will become uncontrollable unless secondary schools are closed in January.4
The study, which has yet to be peer reviewed, said that control measures similar to the November national lockdown would be “unlikely to reduce the effective reproduction number to less than 1, unless primary schools, secondary schools, and universities are also closed.” It added that it would be necessary to “greatly accelerate vaccine rollout to have an appreciable impact in suppressing the resulting disease burden.”
Openly naked propaganda.
Brilliantly put and with evidence
How can you get the gov advisors to read this and agree????
Is there any correlation about increases in death rate and the ethnic make up of the european countries?
It’s one of the obvious differences between Northern Ireland and England.
Which brings us to the Vitamin D question.
It goes away in summer and BAME people get it worse.
You don’t say !
Why nothing about Ivermectin which is showing great efficacy around the world with people on the ground making the decision to use it because our governments are so absolutely bloody useless.
I will never forgive the UK for telling people to do nothing.
I follow the FLCCC protocol. Ivermectin, Vit C and D, zinc and Quercetin and have no fears about this pandemic.
For a post titled “What is Left to Say”…
I don’t think I’ve seen the comments explode on this blog as they have the last few days. Pretty clear people have a lot left to say.
It’s a great post, and I appreciate it, but I doubt it will be Dr Kendrick’s last post on the subject. Unless COVID miraculously burns out in the next few months (with credit going to the vaccine, of course /sarc), I expect we’ll have no end of government intervention and poor management for awhile.
Much of what you say makes a lot of sense to me. But there’s a problem. Cumulative All-cause mortality is 19% higher for 2020 than the five-year average, and in late December weekly mortality is running about 15% above average, after a long period of ~zero excess deaths. That’s 110,000 excess deaths last year and about 1,500 per week in Dec (I haven’t got precise numbers in front of me). That’s not the Black Death, but it’s not nothing. Your presentation of the data is I think a little dishonest about the scale of ongoing excess deaths.
Thankyou Jim Robertson for your comment.
Hi Jim
Unless I have misunderstood Dr Kendrick, I thought he was accepting the initial spike as indicative of a large number of actual Covid deaths. I certainly do – not based on the Government’s claims, but on the actual excess death data.
I thought most of the issue lies with the post mid-Jun end of that spike. I am seeing no meaningful excess deaths that would come within a million miles of justifying the current restrictions.
(putting emergency funds into treatment, turbocharged increased Winter capacity, separate Covid-only hospitals, extreme isolation of care homes with workers paid triple pay to sequester there for 3-month shifts, other common-sense solutions, sure. Of course. For a fraction of the cost of lockdown. Hey, there have only been 7 months to plan for this winter. But I digress)
So for you to cite the annual al-cause mortality is not germane, and (unintentionally) misleading. All that matters is what has happened since June. The first part of Dec was very slightly higher – almost entirely due to culpable hospital unpreparedness. This has already stabilised by the mid-December.
I think that conflating of the pandemic period with what appears to clearly be a post-pandemic period is not helpful.
I do acknowledge that there may be different ways of looking at the same patterns. Sorry if any of this has crossed the line of amicable truth seeking.
Those are fair points and I certainly agree that excess deaths back in April/May are not a good justification for restrictions now. The question is where we are in the cycle – are we returning to a relatively stable situation, if still problematic – running at c 15% excess deaths – or are we where we were in early March, before exponential growth in deaths really kicked in? I think it’s the wrong time to be complacent about the current situation given increases in case numbers, even given the problems with those data.
Hi Jim
I appreciate your replies
The excess deaths in the last 6 months as a whole have been barely 2% (2020 23.8 ddpm vs vs 2017 24.3 ddpm, a rise of 0.5 ddpm)
The rise is the same when looking at the last week of available data in December “Week 51”.
Look, 2% is not nothing. It justifies public health *advice*. It justifies public health *support*. It justifies pouring money into shielding, care homes, hospitals, paying retiree Doctors, rushing through medical students.
It does *not* justify the incredible harm of what is being imposed by force. It doesn’t come close to justifying it. nor would a “rise” of 10% – or even 15%. Or 20%
Even a 20% “increase” of eddpm vs the next highest recent year would mean 5 extra daily deaths per million. If we cherrypick certain periods, the rate did touch as high as that over some short stretches in the last 6 months.
Although it was also completely flat – zero – for other, longer periods.
Rates fluctuate. This is normal. some years are higher. They don’t all have to conform to an “average” on a week in week out basis. You look at longer periods, and even *then* we expect fluctuations which are fine.
Going back to that example of 20% – which is not remotely happening – 5 extra daily deaths – usually of very elderly – don’t justify locking up a million people to prevent.
About 5 people per million are killed or seriously injured in Road Traffic Accidents (KSI in RTA) every day – and these include many children and young people, in full health, with their whole life ahead of them.
Would you propose banning all private cars?
Maybe limiting all cars to 15 mph in town, and 40 mph on motorways? (a far less draconian imposition than we’re facing now)
Rationing road use to cut traffic by 50%?
Semi-bankrupt our futures by pouring 10’s of billions of pounds which we don’t have into wider safer roads? (Still far less than lockdown cost!)
All of those should be higher in the priority queue than the Covid lockdowns – and they are based on solid objective data gathered over years, not the unreliable months-long Covid numbers
You seem a reasonable, numerate, strong-minded individual who has done their own data research (most have not)
Somewhere we have been slid into mass semi-insanity, possibly amplified by 24-hour media and social media.
There are many instances in human history, even recent twentieth century history where similar things have happened
The internet is also now giving a chance for all the sane dissenters to connect, which might be something quite new.
But as always, sooner or later, the worm will turn. The same amygdala-driven media and mass psyche which is now hyping up the covid danger, will turn a full 180 degrees and start hyping up the massive harm we have done to ourselves.
(Of course that, too, will be done with equally breathless exaggeration in the other direction)
The new headlines will be full of “What have we done?”, “A Lost Generation”, “Misguided Experts” “Broken Britain” (ok that one isn’t new) and so on. Every politician will be falling over themselves to position themselves as the one who tried to moderate the lockdowns.
As the powers that be are poised lemming-like to inflict new levels of harm, (I write 20 minutes before PM announcement due at 8pm) we’re all just wishing that the inevitable awakening will come sooner rather than later.
“Of course that, too, will be done with equally breathless exaggeration in the other direction”.
While I quite agree with your sentiment, I rather doubt whether the harm done by lockdowns can be exaggerated.
Jim Robertson: Watch the Claire Craig interview. In my opinion we should ignore “case” numbers, since the PCR test is so unreliable. Data on hospital admissions, ICU admissions, and mortality, particularly compared to other years, will give a sense of how much concern we should have over covid.
“Hey, there have only been 7 months to plan for this winter”.
Any reasonable person will see your point and probably nod agreement.
But the people in power are not reasonable. To plan ahead would involve considering that new things should be done, or old things no longer done, or something at least being done differently.
But that would imply – would it not – that things had not been done perfectly in the past? And since the people in power know that they themselves are perfect, they obviously could not have done anything imperfect.
So planning is impossible – or, at any rate, obviously unnecessary. Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, past, present and future.
While the December All Cause mortality is slightly higher than normal, the excess is confined almost exclusively to those aged 85 + yrs old.
Further, a chart of ONS stats up to wk 51 show no sign of a ‘spike’ but rather a gentle surge that is closely representative of December for every one of the past 6 yrs.
Data for WK 52, which may or may not confirm the trend is due out 6th Jan?
Thank you for your brilliant article. One thing I still wonder about is how many if the excess deaths were from people not going to hospital or being denied medical treatment. My mother was denied medical treatment and lost a kidney as a result.
Please take a look at https://pandata.org
They are doing very good work in trying to find the middle ground between the waving banners.
Goodness,a good interesting read.
Why would all the scientists, medical Doctors, Epidemiologists world wide be wrong and you be right!
Irene,
There are a whole mass of experts who disagree with the lockdowns. For example try this lot:
David
David thanks for the link, should already be in my MP’s inbox.
I would like to have the following also taken into account:
“The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data” John P.A. Ioannidis
Click to access 2020.05.13.20101253v1.full.pdf
“We have no idea how many ‘Covid deaths’ were actually Covid” Dr John Lee
https://app.spectator.co.uk/2020/05/27/count-for-nothing/content.html
“Brazilian scientists and academics write an Open Letter on the “science” of the coronavirus pandemic”
https://conexaopolitica.com.br/ultimas/brazilian-scientists-and-academics-write-an-open-letter-on-the-science-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic/
“600 Physicians Say Lockdowns Are A ‘Mass Casualty Incident’”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gracemarieturner/2020/05/22/600-physicians-say-lockdowns-are-a-mass-casualty-incident/
“Scientists Have Utterly Failed to Prove that the Coronavirus Fulfills Koch’s Postulates”
“COVID-19: William Farr’s way out of the Pandemic”
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-william-farrs-way-out-of-the-pandemic/
“A Conversation with John Ioannidis”
https://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2020/07/09/a-conversation-with-john-ioannidis/
“The fatal mistakes which led to lockdown”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-strong-was-the-scientific-advice-behind-lockdown
“Why no-one can ever recover from COVID-19 in England – a statistical anomaly”
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/why-no-one-can-ever-recover-from-covid-19-in-england-a-statistical-anomaly/
“Prof. Sunetra Gupta: ‘We May Already Have Herd Immunity’”
https://21stcenturywire.com/2020/07/24/prof-sunetra-gupta-we-may-already-have-herd-immunity/
“How bad is covid really? (A Swedish doctor’s perspective)”
I think I’ll stop there; I have several hundred more (literally) but my hands are getting tired.
But do listen to Dr Kary Mullis, who invented PCR, explain why it cannot ever be used as a diagnostic tool.
Irene. I enjoy Dr Kendrick’s blog very much. But this last contribution has attracted over 700 responses, most of which I have found irritating. I am watching the PM’s address to the nation, and although I dislike the man and his Government very much, I really do wonder why so many responders on this blog seem to pour scorn on anything and everything we are being told by contributors in our media, be they politicians, scientists, teachers etc. . I refuse to accept that we are being fed only garbage regarding the severity of this pandemic, and the dreadful state of affairs in the NHS. The figures are out there….I believe them. We all have points of view regarding how things might have been done better, but come on….stop knocking everyone, and anyone who sees things from another point of view.
Jennfer, have you watched the interviews with Mike Yeadon? Have you looked at ukcolumn.org who post a news broadcast on youtube three times a week. These are two sources of information that are not funded by those with a stake in pharmaceutical companies. Most of the mainstream media are owned by six corporations which have financial links to pharma., or they get grants from Bill Gates, though you might see him as a kind hearted philanthropist. The figures the government gives for “cases” are disingenuous. They will not declare the accuracy, or put another way, the error rate of the tests. The tests are carried out in circumstances which would make the results inadmissible if they were present as evidence in a criminal investigation. That is Mike Yeadon’s opinion. The tests are used to make the numbers of infections look they are a threat to the nation. I heard one doctor this morning say everybody he sees now has the mutant virus infection, and even worse they are asymptomatic. In sane times that means the people have been exposed, and are immune. Otherwise how else did humans get this far? It has always been the way with diseases.
Here’s a point of view, discount the introduction, it’s a bit naff, but the rest of it is interesting. https://drcharlieward.com/time-to-wake-up-watch-this-and-share/. It’s about 8 minutes.
“I really do wonder why so many responders on this blog seem to pour scorn on anything and everything we are being told by contributors in our media, be they politicians, scientists, teachers etc.”
Some of us – perhaps unlike you – have been noticing for many years that governments and their tame media systematically lie about a number of subjects. This morning one might think of Julian Assange, a true hero whose only offence has been to tell the public how their taxes have been used to murder innocent civilians abroad. Yet governments and the media, all in chorus, tell us what a dreadful man he is and why he should be imprisoned or even executed.
We have noticed – eventually – that the official message that fats are bad for us and we must eat “healthy whole grains” is the exact opposite of the truth. We are aware that Iraq had no “weapons of mass destruction” – nor does Iran today. We strongly suspect that the official story of 9/11 is a pack of lies. And so on. As we came to doubt the reliability of official sources, we began to find unofficial sources that seemed far more reliable – such as Dr Kendrick.
“I refuse to accept that we are being fed only garbage regarding the severity of this pandemic, and the dreadful state of affairs in the NHS. The figures are out there….I believe them”.
That is entirely your choice. You are free to do so. But too many of the sources which I trust agree that it is mostly garbage for me to think otherwise.
Lastly, I think the root of the whole “Covid-19” problem (and many others) is that so many people, like you, trustingly believe government and media lies. That trust speaks very well of your character – but it is a wicked world out there, and vile dishonest people are all to ready to take advantage of your innocent credulity.
Franco. As expected! You have brought in lots of other topics ( Assange, fats, 9/11 etc) , as the well known diversionary tactic used by poor debators against those who see things from a different point of view. You call into question my character, as though I am inferior to your abundant knowledge of this world.
I have been around a bit. I have many years experience in 2 professions in health care provision. I have many years experience in front line politics. I have 70 odd years being a decent member of society, bringing up honest and polite offspring.
Do not assume I am not a deep thinking individual and incapable of recognising bullshitters.
So, you think I am innocent?I am as capable as the next of being rude, intolerant and dismissive as the next, but until this week I thought Dr Kendrick’s blog was the place to subdue such tactics.
Seems I am wrong in this instance.
Yes, can be both keep things civil please. I know it is tricky when emotions are running high.
Jennifer,
I did not find Frango’s reply to you rude. Giving the benefit of the doubt, he says that most people, like you, are perhaps more trusting than they should be and this is because decent people tend to expect others to be decent also. Personally, I am coming to the idea that this may be THE issue facing modern civilization! Those who are not decent and sincere often gravitate toward positions of status, money and power and this character is not obvious to the public.
I also didn’t think it was a diversionary tactic to explain why, over many years, he has come to the conclusion that mainstream sources often are not trustworthy. It’s a process many of us have gone through.
Dr Kendrick, I apologise for giving offence in the pages of your blog.
Thank you very much for your apology. It takes a good person to do that.
Jennifer
Too many questions. From the initial fotos coming from China of persons collapsed in street, the absence of the lab spokesperson, the sirenic prediction of mass fatalities the highly dubious testing procedure, the inflated figures, (with becomes of), a hastened new vax developed well inside a normal trial period, lack of science behind masks, failure to weigh up costs / harm against any perceived lockdown benefits, failure to consider the negative related outputs – we can add other disturbing developments such as increasing interference in civil liberties, censorship, the endless media bombardment on this one condition and one condition only and no end in sight with the rumour mill at full pitch and people becoming more & more wary of what might be ahead.
‘The figures are out there….I believe them.’
Well then, you are put in a very difficult position. The MSM tells you UK hospitals are overwhelmed. But the figures FROM THE NHS — indicate otherwise.
Give me a second or two to step back before you pull down the spreadsheets — I prefer not to get gray matter on my shirt when your brain explodes…
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/uec-sitrep/urgent-and-emergency-care-daily-situation-reports-2020-21/
Irene, how can you be sure that “all the scientists, medical Doctors, Epidemiologists world wide” disagree with Dr Kendrick?
It is true that most governments and their tame mass media stick to the official story. But in fact most of the real doctors and scientists whose opinions I have seen agree strongly with Dr Kendrick.
The question is whether you have the strength of mind to research and form your own opinion.
Over 40,000 medical professionals and scientists agree:
https://gbdeclaration.org/view-signatures/
IMPORTANT!!!
Reply to a FOI enquiry:
National Audit Office
157-197 Buckingham Palace Road
Victoria
London
SW1W 9SP
United Kingdom
27th November 2020
Dear Mr ………….
In answer to your request under the freedom of information act the attached files contain the recorded deaths by year for England and Wales.
Some years may be missing as they are under audit to ensure accuracy.
YEAR Designated Area Total
1998 Deaths registered in England and Wales 541,589
1999 Deaths registered in England and Wales 553,532
2000 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2001 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2002 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2003 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2004 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2005 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2006 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2007 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2008 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2009 Deaths registered in England and Wales 491,348
2010 Deaths registered in England and Wales 493,342
2011 Deaths registered in England and Wales 484,367
2012 Deaths registered in England and Wales 499,331
2013 Deaths registered in England and Wales 506,790
2014 Deaths registered in England and Wales 501,424
2015 Deaths registered in England and Wales 529,655
2016 Deaths registered in England and Wales 525,048
2017 Deaths registered in England and Wales 533,253
2018 Deaths registered in England and Wales 541,589
2019 Deaths registered in England and Wales 530,841
2020 Deaths registered in England and Wales 485,564
upto and inclusive of week 45
The only pandemic in human history to make the death rate fall.
So unless there was a sudden increase in the last 7 weeks of 2020………………
Say 485,564 x 52/45. = 561,096 so an increase of about 5%. But this is ALL CAUSE, so how many have lockdowns killed?
And the population has increased in that time so as percentages it may be less!
Latest from good old Simon:
https://www.keepbritainfree.com/so/70NRD0JKU?languageTag=en&cid=6d91f31f-9379-4478-b1e4-1f5f645d29f6#/main
National Audit Office
157-197 Buckingham Palace Road
Victoria
London
SW1W 9SP
United Kingdom
27th November 2020
Dear Mr …………
In answer to your request under the freedom of information act the attached files contain the recorded deaths by year for England and Wales.
Some years may be missing as they are under audit to ensure accuracy.
YEAR Designated Area Total
1998 Deaths registered in England and Wales 541,589
1999 Deaths registered in England and Wales 553,532
2000 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2001 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2002 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2003 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2004 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2005 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2006 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2007 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2008 Deaths registered in England and Wales N/A
2009 Deaths registered in England and Wales 491,348
2010 Deaths registered in England and Wales 493,342
2011 Deaths registered in England and Wales 484,367
2012 Deaths registered in England and Wales 499,331
2013 Deaths registered in England and Wales 506,790
2014 Deaths registered in England and Wales 501,424
2015 Deaths registered in England and Wales 529,655
2016 Deaths registered in England and Wales 525,048
2017 Deaths registered in England and Wales 533,253
2018 Deaths registered in England and Wales 541,589
2019 Deaths registered in England and Wales 530,841
2020 Deaths registered in England and Wales 485,564
upto and inclusive of week 45
The only pandemic in human history to make the death rate fall.
Interesting, so unless there was a sudden increase in the last 7 weeks of 2020………………
Say 485,564 x 52/45. = 561,096 so an increase of about 5%. But this is ALL CAUSE, so how many have lockdowns killed?
Dr. Kendrick,
You touch on epistemology, to a small degree. What do we know? What are the limits of our certainty and uncertainty?
We know the limits, to some degree, of PCR test false positives and negatives.
We know that the state of North Dakota for a while published data distinguishing between hospitalization WITH covid as 40% of covid hospitalizations (as distinct from hospitalization DUE TO covid).
We have a video by Dr Ted Noel, an anesthesiologist, using vaping to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of various masks, including the N95 mask.
We have statistics in the States of a 70% increase in suicides due to lockdown and statistics on various other harms, including drug overdoses, unemployment, home foreclosures, divorce, etc. We strongly suspect a massive increase in premature deaths due to people failing to seek health care due to lockdowns and fear.
We have over a dozen doctors–who have tried early treatment with antivirals–saying that early treatment with antivirals works and not a single doctor who has tried early treatment with antivirals saying that antivirals don’t work. Not a single black swan sighting.
We have cohort studies–some of which are very imperfect–saying that early treatment of high risk patients with hydroxychloroquine reduces hospitalization approximately 80%.
We have NO cohort studies or RCTs of early treatment with hydroxychloroquine providing evidence against hydroxychloroquine. Of course, some studies recruited an insufficient number of low risk people to adequately test the hypothesis for that cohort. So there are both conclusive studies for hydroxychloroquine used to treat high risk patients and inconclusive studies of hydroxychloroquine being used to treat low risk patients.
I don’t know if others would like to see this, but I would like to see your analysis of the Derwand study of hydroxychloroquine for treating high risk patients.
I might question whether SARS-2 is more deadly than most seasonal flu’s, if measured by actuarial case/man-years (of life lost) rather than simply mortality cases or deaths. The latter statistic is both unusually unreliable (compared to traditional flu-season stat’s, such as “excess” deaths, for flu-like conditions) and nonsensical or of little meaning, I would argue.
Young children with immature adaptive immunity are at relatively high risk of death from flu, while being closer to zero risk than any other age group for SARS-2 (aka CoVID-19 … a commie term that I reject, especially since the evidence that this is a lab-derived (gain-of-function) virus is now pretty compelling to me — I would recommend those who are more skeptical read publications by Li-Meng Yan et al on the subject).
If we compare the first season of flu (i.e. Spanish flu of 1918) to the first season of SARS-2, I would estimate that the Spanish flu (the only comparably “novel” modern flu in comparison to SARS-2 as a CoV), I would simply say that by my analysis the ratio of almost any meaningful stat for virulence is two orders of magnitude (i.e. Spanish flu being ~100:1 more virulent). That is an apples-to-apples comparison. A few historians have only recently made an effort to analyze the Spanish flu pandemic, whereas at the time the world got on with the job of fighting and finishing WWI and paid little heed.
Not only are seasonal flu’s now not novel for over a century, but we also have a substantial portion of the population innoculated in advance every season. So there is a large pool of both natural and artficial immunity in-population.
SARS-2 does indeed seem to have some unusual — maybe unique — properties. It is my strong hunch that these would/could not have evolved in the wild, but that is water under the bridge now. It is endemic and will remain so. I still predict that its importance will dissipate rather quickly, in part because the CoV family of viruses are the only known family that includes error correction built into its RNA/genome(s). And the messenger-RNA based vaccines in particular may work especially well in the most susceptible for this reason, since they largely bypass the endogenous immune response in this same group. A weak or absent immune response limits efficacy of more traditionally-generated vaccines for well-understood, longstanding seasonal viruses such as flu. And autopsies have shown those who die of SARS-2 infection largely show a complete absence of germinal-center generation and development in lymph nodes. IMO this reflects the unusually minor role of humoral response/immunity for CoVs in general coupled with the unique properties of SARS-2 in taking advantage of inadequate metabolic health in endothelial tissues as well as leukocytes, as compared to other flu-like viruses.
Despite the general overreaction to various recognized mutations (RNA error correction is far from perfect, but CoVs mutate very slowly and also generally with little to no functional effect) due to the public overreliance upon medical solutions (i.e. vaccines and manufactured-antibody interventions), this portends very well for likelihood of population immunity passing by any ability of this CoV to keep pace (by natural evolution in humans) IMO, while for flu new vaccines are required every season without question.
And the spike protein itself, the dominant target of all vaccines, really characterizes all CoVs (both alpha and beta) and generated/generates immune-response cross-reactivity amongst them, and does not seem likely to change via mutation in a way meaningful enough to nullify efficacy of the vaccines developed for SARS-2 specifically.
So even if the first season of SARS-2 might measure more potent than some seasonal flu’s even if measured in total man-years (of life lost), I highly doubt that the second (much less further) seasons will.
The public discourse about this minor pandemic has been as unintelligent and uninformed as almost anything I have yet seen for any modern topic, and that is really saying something. Certainly Dr. Kendrick’s blog is a refreshing exception. The virus has not frightened nor affected me at all from the beginning, but the fragility and stupidity and paucity of skepticism of modern societies truly is scary.
Thank you for that Ken. It deserves a wider audience. If I were to change it into a ‘guest’ blog (with a few edits e.g IMO to in my opinion, and a bit more explanation of concepts such as germinal-centre generation and suchlike, would you be happy with this.)
Absolutely, Dr. Kendrick. Please feel free to edit, rewrite and publish (or “post”, I guess) in any form you would like with or without attribution.
Best regards,
Ken
Ken, Life finds away, that much seems obvious as in how sapiens got to where we are at today in such a short time, but what point a virus? Is it, that it is just a key part of our building-block, and just simply wants… life? A vital looking for a spark? Anyway, could you elaborate on what you have mentioned as you seem to know a great deal more than most of us. Well, most certainly me?
1. “in part because the CoV family of viruses are the only known family that includes error correction built into its RNA/genome(s)” ~ I had understood that RNA can run wild with no cell autophagy? But, that DNA viruses could not.
2. “(RNA error correction is far from perfect, but CoVs mutate very slowly and also generally with little to no functional effect)” ~ I’m with you on SARS-2 being a cock-up (I think that once someone saw a possibility they just could not stop themselves!), but on a score of 1 – 10 what do you think would be the natural chances of the gain-of-function re ACE2?
3. “And the spike protein itself, the dominant target of all vaccines, really characterizes all CoVs (both alpha and beta) and generated/generates immune-response cross-reactivity amongst them, and does not seem likely to change via mutation in a way meaningful enough to nullify efficacy of the vaccines developed for SARS-2 specifically.” ~ Is there any more possible SARS-2 surprises looking to happen (mutate)?
4. “The virus has not frightened nor affected me at all from the beginning, but the fragility and stupidity and paucity of skepticism of modern societies truly is scary.” ~ White Coat Fever? It’s now more like White Coat Hysteria. Could we be victims/suffering from asymmetric propaganda?
Anyway, a big, big thank you for your input!
Thanks for the kind words, Shaun. I will try to answer your questions as best I can, but in some cases I may also misinterpret.
0 (introductory questions): In terms of “why” we act as a host species for some viruses I can offer only opinion. I think of viruses as the purest form of Darwinian evolution, selected within “accidental” host cells initially by purely random statistical chance from “cellular debris”. I do NOT consider a virion to be an “organism”, in the sense that it cannot generate biochemical energy and cannot reproduce on its own (without endocytosis and harness of the intracellular machinery of a host cell).
By contrast, I tend to think that living organisms (based upon cells with membranes) possess methods to evolve adaptively in response to changing environment, and not merely through chance (somatic) mutation that might occasionally confer a survival/reproductive advantage. “Genetic imprint” is one such that is now widely recognized, but I suspect that there are far more not yet discovered.
1: I don’t know much about DNA viruses at all, nor about so-called “retroviruses” such as HIV. But I might guess that error correction is more commonly intrinsic to these simply because they either harness or contain DNA itself.
It is my understanding that CoVs are the only family of RNA viruses (> 90% of all, I think) to incorporate a crude (compared to that of DNA) form of error correction. Because this error correction NA makes up most of the total RNA the CoVs are huge in size. But the error correction also explains the exceptionally slow mutation rate of CoVs.
The cells themselves possess “host defensive” mechanisms to destroy virions and prevent their replication. As well, there are the whole-body (or extracellular) defenses (e.g. leukocytes), but these tend to cause destruction of host cells. The overall immune response is very broad and highly developed/evolved, and combines epithelial (i.e. host) and white-blood cells. However, through chance natural selection each family of virus also tends to evolve countermeasures to some of the host defenses. And also an equilibrium can be established in some combinations of host species and virus that allows for indefinite cellular virus replication — apparently this is the case with CoVs and horseshoe bats, for instance.
But most viruses cannot be allowed to replicate without constraint, or else we die. Unconstrained replication will eventually make our cells and overall bodies unviable metabolically.
2. I tend to think chances are 0 on a scale from 0 to 10. Richard Dearlove, who has access to far more qualified expertise than I, weighed in as such. In US the national intelligence scientific community appears to have drawn the same conclusions judging from public statements by (former) officials such as Mike Pompeo. The SARS-2 vaccine development researchers have largely opined similarly or chosen to remain silent. I have seen no scientific argument whatsoever, from any source in the world, that explains the molecular properties of SARS-2 as possibly evolved in the wild.
3. Anything is possible, of course, and it appears that some researchers in UK are now claiming that the recent variant/mutation involving the spike glycoprotein there may significantly degrade selectivity/specificity (or bonding affinity) of some of the SARS-2 vaccines. I have not been really studying the early speculations and observations — I tend to prefer to wait for these things to shake out more definitively. But my guess would be that the new UK variant will be found to retain similar efficacy of early vaccines to that with “original” strains. It is the built-in error correction that makes me guess so.
4. I always tend to look at social phenomena such as this latest virus hysteria as mainly instructive about deeply rooted basic human nature. Something in my ancestral background seems to result in my not sharing some of this, but my brother seems to be more typical. So yes, the herd mentality sometimes exhibited in highly “networked” modern socieites results in a drowning out of anything but the “party line” sometimes. The same phenomenon sometimes generates “bubbles” in financial markets, for example.
And speaking of “party line”, this entire craze was arguably largely spawned by an ignorant and childish mainstream press in the West being mesmerized and seduced by CCP methods and propaganda.
Ken, A big thank you for your detailed reply. I shall take some time in digesting it! I mainly come at these issues from an aquaculture perspective where I have had a great deal of experience in assorted disease issues, but which is a sector that is not too prone to playing ‘games’, but has suffered with viruses terribly (Salmon IPN, and Shrimp White Spot Virus more particularly). However, I also follow matters like statins, flu, margarine & HFCS, and now covid in some detail, and of course Barry Marshall is a bit of a hero of mine. As I am fond of saying… first they play you, then they recruit you, and then they game you. Much like you, with a bit of leather on my back, at 69 1/2 years young, I tend to look at most issues through ‘Bubble’ goggles. In my case it’s with my clear-cut Cult-goggles. Cult-goggles (and Enron-goggles) are very, very good.
There is a book, the original edition of which came out in 2007 I believe, called “Virus Mania” by a German investigative science journalist named Torsten Engelbrecht. The latest edition has reportedly been updated with a chapter on SARS-2. I just ordered it from a UK online book store.
A German clinician named Claus Köhnlein was heavily involved in the book from the beginning I think. Interviews of him can be found online, and Köhnlein, Engelbrecht, et al (e.g. Peter Duesberg) have been criticizing modern medical treatments of infection by viruses for many decades now. This goes back to HIV and other viruses discovered in the modern age of PCR and NA equipment/technology. I have an older book by a US investigative journalist who also seems to be exceptionally sharp and hardworking and medically astute — this is a skeptical history of the medical response to AIDS.
Viruses exist in all forms of cellular life, including single-cell organisms. They are universal in that sense. IMO they originate exclusively from cellular life and they have always co-evolved with cellular life. Cellular life (including us homo sapiens) clearly has always maintained and evolved the tools to deal with viruses — otherwise we and other forms of life would not still be here after some 4 billions years or so.
But we all die too, and we eukaryotes are not even biologically immortal as some forms of cellular life are. Our cellular machinery predictably only lasts so long before our repair mechanisms break down and cellular metabolism becomes too inefficient to sustain us.
Antivirals (including the “accidental” anti-parasite types such as HCQ and ivormectin) are an especial delusion of medicine and society I think. These are basically cellular toxins. Lacking cellular membranes and morphology to target, drugs can merely inhibit basic cytoplasmic metabolism fairly broadly to attempt to slow intracellular viral replication. If perfectly timed and dosed and in special cases of weakened immunity it appears that this may slightly enhance survival. But in the vast majority of cases I think that antivirals act simply as cellular poisons and either do not help or hinder recovery. And I believe administration of antivirals is simply a clinical crapshoot in most cases.
WIth true living cellular pathogens medicine can target highly selectively and do a lot. With viruses we and our immune systems are on our own, for the most part. I was only recently reminded of Köhnlein, but I think that I largely agree with his point of view on viruses in general. Medicine has little to offer and should concentrate on other things.
Hi again Ken, Brilliant! Thank you. I have ordered the book. It would seem to be something of a ‘bible’ for me. My only regret is that I wish I had written it!
Hi again Ken, Your reply got me digging once again, and as such, you are quite correct, in that although RNA viruses do replicate somewhat promiscuously they are a bit dyslexic, which inevitably leads to some mutagenesis. However, as you mentioned, CoV’s uniquely do have an element of proofreading capability https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/pdf/S1097-2765(20)30518-9.pdf and they also seem to be capable of kicking out ribavirin (RBV) – the broad spectrum antiviral NA.
This is about your COVID-19 illness.
This is also about the endothelium of your cardiac vessels.
Take it to heart.
Or… trash it out of “Principle”.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L20-0882?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub++0pubmed&
JDPatten: Tragic story. She had all the risk factors for a poor outcome from infectious disease, or perhaps this particular infectious disease: obesity, hypertension, and especially relevant, poorly controlled diabetes. We do not know the extent of her existing endothelial health, but it may have been poor. Likely was poor.
What we’re seeing currently differs from “Normal” winter deaths greatly. Why? Because in no previous years have we seen all the control measures now in place, What you should state is; “Against a backdrop of very high social contact restriction up to and including the closing of workplaces and schools/universities, leisure activities, shops, working from home, massive online home deliveries…we still see the “normal winter spike”
So either we would all be dead now without those restrictions.
Or, maybe the restrictions are simply not achieving much.
My money is on the latter. The virus / illness seems to do what it does. Regardless.
Hmmm…
I would assume the opposite – there have been a large number of deaths as a result of the lockdowns, so we would expect the death figures to be much higher even apart from the alleged number of covid deaths.
(for example, ONS over 3 months ago estimated that the side-effects of lockdown had already caused 16,000 excess deaths – see Dr Kendrick’s fully-sourced blogpost dated13-Sep for more)
Since deaths are in fact not up at all by any significant amount, the initial conclusion should be very clear, that the actual covid deaths since Jun are a small proportion of what the Gov’t claims.
You are right in the sense that we cannot absolutely rule out what you imply. Nor can we absolutely rule out what I imply.
So let’s use the actual hard numbers instead of speculation.
Public policy should beset by the facts and numbers which are the susceptible to subjective and mistaken understandings
Yes, excess deaths were significant from Mar – May (including the weeks of that time when we had total lockdown, by the way, which does not support your line of thinking) – and no, they are not significant from June onwards.
0.5 extra ddpm (daily death per million people) in 2020 vs 2017 – over the entirety of the last 6 months.
Please remember that.
Excellent essay. Here in Australia I simply sit on the sidelines bewildered and profoundly disappointed by the panic whilst attempting educate people but I am stamped upon by advocates of lock-downs and big Government. But at least I go to print in publications to state my case, as best as I can. As for masks, fully agreed. I only wear one in order to be allowed to enter the supermarket and to avoid the mandatory $200 fine for not wearing one. I can only hope that our leaders will at some point in the future be held to account, especially when the final statistics are in and we most likely find – for Australian at least – that far more people died as a result of the Government interventions than who ever died from COVID. And you can even count the ones who died with COVID in that result!
There are plenty of intelligent enlightened people following this blog. Some of you must be creative too. Creative and imaginative enough to write a satirical/comical novel about a government’s approach to a virus? Or something similar that might enlighten and help future generations to understand? If they keep coming up with these lockdowns there will be no shortage of time for many people so why not think on it. I suppose Malcolm will be too busy. Pity. (I don’t consider myself creative enough!)
This guy did it already. Is very entertaining.
https://market-thinking.com/2020/12/a-christmas-murder-mystery/
Lockdown Sceptics by Toby Young (if you do not know it already) is the best hub site for finding all the best sceptical stuff that is out there.
Tish I so agree, and I say to everyone, don’t give up, don’t feel you are repeating yourself. The message needs to get out there in as many different forms as possible – there are just so many people out there talking about this as long as you ignore MSM. I agree with Stephen, Lockdown sceptics has been a great hub, and I have discovered so many new writers and podcasters through it. The more you explore, the more likely you are to find something that is relatable to people you know. But I digress, I really wanted to let people know about the cartoonist Bob Moran if you aren’t already aware of him. He is that rare thing, a huge talent, a decent human being, and somebody who really gets this issue and is able to make us laugh (and cry) about it. His website is well worth a look http://www.bobmoran.co.uk.
Try the great C.J. Hopkins. There’s very little space on the satirical side of him.
However, there are issues that even satire cannot handle. Tom Lehrer once hinted that he stopped writing his glorious songs because satire died when they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger.
Nine months ago I rolled up my sleeves and prepared to write a series of hard-hitting, thoroughly researched articles showing up the absurdity of government policies.
After about a month of research, I had collected dozens of pages of bullet points, facts, figures, quotations and links. Then I stopped.
Everything had already been said, clearly and forcefully, online by people with far more experience, qualifications and authority than I will ever have. Some of them were even better writers!
But it was doing no good. It’s like the animals in a zoo reasoning with their keepers, explaining how immoral it is to keep them locked up.
But the keepers don’t give a rodent’s backside. They are doing it because they can, and fine words can never overcome brute force.
The old maxim of “it’s easier to fool people than it is to persuade them that they have been fooled” applies perfectly to the Covid saga.
Bravo. Spot on. Thank you for “fact-checking” common sense and true medical data.
Dr. Kendrick, I wonder what you think about the idea that people with SARS-2 or flu or any other flu-like illness should even be admitted and treated in hospitals in most cases. The idea of even calling a MD for a viral infection has never occurred to me over more than six decades — I just stay away from others until I believe I am recovered to the point of not being contagious. IMO there is really no appropriate or necessary treatment for viral infections — either we deal with them via endogenous immune response or we die.
Maybe that seems heartless and unacceptable in our modern world of medicine, but to me it seems the right tradeoff. There are highly specific antibiotics to intervene with living-organism pathogens while insignificantly cytotoxic to our own cells, but not for the accidental (though evolved for survival in host cells via natural selection) biological debris that comprises virions IMO. Antivirals merely interfere with our own cellular metabolism — they are largely low-dose (as prescribed/titrated) cytotoxins as far as I can describe or define.
How about the idea of developing more efficient delivery of oxygen-assist home devices and supplies, maybe supplemented by occasional drugs such as anti-inflammatories (a doubled-edged sword at best, these being fundamentally immunosuppressants). Tell people to lay prone and so forth.
How much extra, and at what cost, does hospitalization do for a patient with a flu-like infection regardless of how advanced complications may get?
At home, at least patients would be able to see friends and family (one would think) and would not endanger others in-hospital who are not friends and family.
Even corticosteroids, which are very tricky and dangerous to use for many common conditions such as cancer, are of limited utility IMO. So-called cytokine storm ALWAYS (in my reading) develops only upon the total exhaustion of major portions of the immune system and some of the leukocytes (including vital Treg lymphocytes), only thereafter leaving a lopsided/imbalanced/unregulated vestigial response by still surviving macrophages and the like. The cytokine signaling becomes huge simply because the magnitude and scope of cell injury becomes huge — the immune system has pretty much lost the battle already, at least within evolutionary context. As I see it, steroids are only appropriate after nearly complete failure of a patient’s immune response, and are probably only successful (in saving the patient) in a minority of cases that develop to this stage. Is that really what a hospital system should be mainly devoted to?
I am purely speculating and guessing, based upon conjecture, but I might surmise that keeping most (e.g. non-members of CCP) out of hospitals is likely the de facto, if not explicit, policy in mainland/Red China. As technocrats/bureaucrats the CCP seem to be more competent than the like in the West, at least. And I think this would be smart or prudent policy — a reasonable tradeoff. We are going to die at some point — what makes this virus such a special grim reaper that deserves so much more attention?
Maybe as an MD you would be best served not to comment.
Confirmation, vaccines are safe and effective, er, I might have made another mistake.
https://thevaccinereaction.org/2021/01/two-elderly-men-die-hours-after-getting-covid-19-vaccines-in-israel/
“… I might have made another mistake”.
Is it just me?
Yes, Frango, but I just read an article on the Lockdown Skeptic site that I think is of crucial importance and we all need to really think about it!
It goes like this. We thought that if we argued facts and logic that it would have an impact. We thought if we talked of things like human rights and freedom, that people would care,
Well, they don’t care. What they care about is being on the right side of perceived morality, and safety. They are driven by emotion. Thus all the successful memes like protecting grandma and We’re in this together.”
So, what I think we need to do is change tactics somewhat. Let’s point out the human tragedies of despair, loneliness, children’s lost life opportunities. I do realize that Dr. K and others have done that but we need more. Let’s have more stories of a grandma who has been isolated for months and no hugs. The woman above who is told she needs chemo (time is of the essence) and they won’t schedule it. (!!) My neighbor’s boy who has not seen another child for 10 months. And even more, Let’s turn their memes around. If ending lockdown saves one life, one child, it is worth it. And how about the selfishness of favoring lockdowns by those who get paid to stay home? What about the selfishness of a society who sacrifices its young for the elderly?
I think Ivor sums it up https://youtu.be/p_vAQyVlXzU. You may of course disagree.
I follow your argument, anna m, but where and how are you proposing to make these emotional appeals? The mainstream media, including TV and radio, won’t touch them with a bargepole.
And if you post enough on social media for them to notice, you’ll be censored and perhaps wholly excluded there too.
Don’t get me wrong: I would love for the idea to succeed, but I can’t quite see how at the moment.
Frango,
I can only hope the idea spreads. Some of us do talk to our frightened friends and relatives and have not presented our side in that way.
excellent comment Anna – do you think Lockdown sceptics could host such a page or would it need to be a separate entity altogether? I also think that Lockdown sceptics, which I think has done a brilliant job on this pandemic every day and has brought a much needed dose of sanity to millions of us, should also start a “truth about the vaccination” page, instead of its endorsement of vaccination as the “only way” out of the lockdowns. If people have to have a dangerous vaccination, with all sorts of future health implications which are not yet known, then is that not risking them being put into another sort of “personal” lockdown if they end up disabled by it?
Steph,
I was not aware that Lockdown Skeptics said vaccines are the way out. That really bothers me as it does not seem congruent with the other things they say.
We lost our country to a coup today and I am so weary. We are headed toward a police state and forced vaccines will be part of it.
Anna m from what I read on an almost daily basis we are seemingly already in a police state. In my region the police now have power to approach anyone who is outside of their home and ask them why they are on the street and not at home. In England it was reported that 2 women who had journeyed in their car for 5 miles to go for walk were surrounded by police, read their rights and fined £200 each despite the fact that the law says that you can travel for exercise provided it is within your locality. I’d say that a journey of 5 miles would count as being in their locality. The hot drinks the women had brought with them to keep warm were categorised as a “picnic”. What kind of country have we already become? Why is our country taking a much more draconian and infinitely less transparent approach, when it comes to the case figures and data on deaths, than almost any other european country?
Hi Steph, I follow Lockdown sceptics pretty closely and I’ve never seen that view expressed – they include reporting on vaccines but they also include many voices who disagree that vaccines are the way out. Do you have an example of the editorial voice saying vaccines are the only way out because I would certainly want to challenge that. Please let me have some examples. Having said that the ‘anti vax’ label is so toxic I can understand people taking a cautious approach. I’ll tell you the people who are really annoying me at the moment and that is 38 degrees who are currently running quite a disturbing campaign cheer-leading mass vaccination as our only way out and inviting people to declare that they will take the jab. I find this quite unethical given a lot of their supporters I am guessing will be fit young people. Where will they be if, god forbid, some of those people are damaged by a vaccine for which there was no clinical need?
This is good, from the OffGuardian:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/01/no_author/what-vaccine-trials/
UK government deals with corona virus https://us-east-1.tchyn.io/snopes-production/uploads/2018/01/headless.jpg
AstraZeneca is an Anglo Swedish company…
Does this explain why Sweden has folded in its ‘light-touch’ approach to the virus, and has capitulated to the panicked response in other lockdown countries, particularly the UK of course, because it’s all about the lucrative vaccine roll-out now, particularly the scope for annual coronavirus vaccination after the ‘pandemic’?
Possibly, but bear in mind Swedish hospitals do frequently run close to 100% capacity in winter. So, although it’s not looking like an exceptionally bad winter for respiritory viruses overall, it doesn’t take much to push them beyond. The fact that the world has been looking at them and arguing over their old-fashioned (ie pre-2020) approach, adds to the nervousness and political pressure. Once the the concept of herd immunity went, pretty much overnight, from being an uncontroversial explanation in immunology text books of a natural process, to a politically toxic phrase, it became impossible to explain that it wasn’t an objective being ruthlessly pursued, but something that would naturally ease the situation at some point, whatever the policy.
Also bear in mind that even recent emergency legislation is relatively light touch, compared to elsewhere, so it will be interesting to look beyond media hysteria, to whether there really is universal wailing, gnashing of teeth, and “oh-forgive-us-world-for-our-recklessness” angst, or a more mixed response.
There is no correlation between lockdown severity and deaths http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/2020/11/03/here-we-go-again-in-lockstep/
Consider this article in STAT: Britain takes a gamble with Covid-19 vaccines, upping the stakes for the rest of us: https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/04/britain-takes-a-gamble-with-covid-19-vaccines-upping-the-stakes-for-the-rest-of-us/
This is interesting to think about…
Paul Bieniasz of Rockefeller University is one of those who is watching the evolving situation in Britain with dread. A retrovirologist who turned from HIV research to work on SARS-2, Bieniasz is studying how the virus acquires mutations that allow it to evade the protective antibodies people develop when they have contracted Covid-19, or when they have been vaccinated against it.
Bieniasz believes Britain is replicating in people the experiments he’s been doing in his lab — and could be fostering vaccine-resistant forms of the virus.
On New Year’s Day he posted a short, sarcastic treatise — “Musings of an anonymous, pissed off virologist”— on Twitter outlining how one could go about rendering Covid vaccines “impotent,” if that was one’s goal. Giving millions of people who are at daily risk of contracting the disease incomplete protection by delaying the second dose of vaccine was key, he suggested.
“My concern, as a virologist, is that if you wanted to make a vaccine-resistant strain, what you would do is to build a cohort of partially immunized individuals in the teeth of a highly prevalent viral infection,” Bieniasz told STAT. Even rolling out the vaccine at all when there is so much transmission occurring is far from ideal, he said, suggesting it would have been safer to beat down the amount of virus in circulation before beginning the vaccine deployment.
“You are essentially maximizing the opportunity for the virus to learn about the human immune system. Learn about antibodies. Learn how to evade them,” he said.
Re masks…
I’ve repeatedly requested evidence to support the wearing of masks from politicians in South Australia. There has been a push to wear masks, particularly during the ‘extreme lockdown’, which was subsequently called off as a false alarm, and also subsequently, with the Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier encouraging people to wear masks.
But no references backing the use of masks are provided on the SA Health website.
Recently there’s been alarm about coronavirus outbreaks in Sydney, particularly the Northern Beaches, and now masks are mandatory in certain premises in Greater Sydney, see the NSW government website: General advice on wearing face masks: https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/face-masks
This website includes a link to more information on an Australian government website i.e. Question: Are cloth face masks likely to provide protection against COVID-19? Response by Infection Control Expert Group (ICEG): https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2020/07/coronavirus-covid-19-are-cloth-face-masks-likely-to-provide-protection-against-covid-19_0.pdf
So does the evidence stack up to support wearing of masks? Very questionable in my view, seems more like virtue signalling and control…
Consider for example this statement from the WHO, emphasis is mine:
“Many countries have recommended the use of fabric masks/face coverings for the
general public. At the present time, the widespread use of masks by healthy people in
the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence
and there are potential benefits and harms to consider.
However, taking into account the available studies evaluating pre- and asymptomatic
transmission, a growing compendium of observational evidence on the use of masks
by the general public in several countries, individual values and preferences, as well
as the difficulty of physical distancing in many contexts, WHO has updated its
guidance to advise that to prevent COVID-19 transmission effectively in areas of
community transmission, governments should encourage the general public to wear
masks in specific situations and settings as part of a comprehensive approach to
suppress SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”
Fantastic video all about masks, and why they are a terrible idea:
https://themodelhealthshow.com/maskfacts/
There is a great companion video at the bottom of the page worth watching too!
Dr John H, thank you for that link, brilliant. It is also available here https://youtu.be/zQVBlQnfjkA on the censors favourite platform.
Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data. the bmj opinion, January 4, 2021:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-we-need-more-details-and-the-raw-data/
I am a retired from dentistry in 2018 after 31 years. We were always told that masks don’t work. They prevent about 20% of the bugs getting through . I always found my glasses would mist up so much that I couldn’t see clearly so I decided to ditch the masks on the grounds that if 80% of microbes are getting through, then there is not much point . I considered that I was far more dangerous to my patients as a partially sighted dentist than I ever was by not wearing a mask. When I explained this to my patients, they all agreed .
I went to my long-term (very experienced and trusted) dentist the other day for a root canal on a back tooth. I was shaken when I entered the surgery (unmasked as directed) to see the dentist and his assistant wearing huge perspex face masks with heavy solid masks over their noses. They looked very much like fighter pilots inside their canopies, wearing oxygen masks.
Communication was severely hampered by their inability to hear what I was saying (and I have never been accused of speaking too quietly). Eventually the dentist told me he had decided not to do the root canal because it was too fiddly and inaccessible.
Of course it might have been more feasible if he had not been wearing a cockpit on his face.
Joe, the description of the poor dentist trying to work under such opressive conditions is troubling. However, he may have done you a favour. If you Look up Tom Levy’s information on root canal fillings, they are something to be avoided, and if it’s up the back having the tooth out may be better.
“…it’s up the back having the tooth out may be better”.
Thanks for the advice, AH. Extraction was a thought that occurred to me as a last resort, but when I mentioned it the dentist was unhappy. It seems they are nw very reluctant to extract if it can be avoided.
Well of course they are reluctant to extract teeth. When they do that it is problem solved and once the gum has healed there is no more work to be done. Bye bye source of revenue. I have had plenty of root canal treatment in my time. All came to extractions in the end.
Antony,
If your glasses were fogging, well, of course your mask was mostly ineffective. I’d venture to guess that most mask research has never accounted the air leak at the nose/cheekbone valley. If the edges of the mask don’t conform to your face and seal, well . . . then it’s useless.
JDPatten: You’re right. I use an industrial N95 (OSHA and NIOSH) respirator in the wood shop when things get sawdusty. It will properly seal, to avoid glasses fogging, but only once or twice. Too expensive for me for single use, so I re-use them and hope for the best. I refuse any other type of face cover, and haven’t used one since a July Doctor’s appointment.
Jean,
Teeth are living organs. If an infection threatens the blood circulation and nerve supply of a tooth, a root canal is often suggested as a way to avoid that infection going systemic – and – at the same time, put off the tooth loss, maintaining normal occlusion.
But, the tooth is dead following a root canal.
It can only deteriorate and become quite brittle following that.
So, a root canal can only ever be considered a temporary stop-gap. (literally!)
Next: an implant. Still, not living – not having the springy cushioning of gingiva and ligaments of a living tooth, but better than a gap.
Thanks very much, Jean. Such advice is very welcome and useful. I like and trust my dentist, but after all he is in work to make a living.
Some time ago I lent him my annotated copy of Dr Weston A. Price’s book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration”, thinking it might help him advise patients better. He kept it for over a year, then returned it without a single word.
Antony, Thanks for the post. Similar information to the article by Arthur Firstenberg on masks which started with the study in 1981 by Neill Orr at Colchester. Patients did better when theatre staff didn’t wear masks.
Gary Ogden,
Thanks for your reply to my post Gary. Funnily enough, this morning’s mail brought a copy of a letter, from the hospital to my G.P., saying that they intend to treat me with BCA immunotherapy as early as January 2021 – I now wait with baited breath for an appointment, but, sorry to say, without any real hope. They even gave the mesurements of the areas which were causing them concern regarding future tumors, let us hope that whatever they do will work some magic for me. I am so pleased that you had a good outcome after the removal of your tumor, and what a relief that must have been.
Best wishes, Sylvia.
Sylvia: Have you read “Tripping over the Truth,” by Travis Kristofferson? Reading this is what gave me the inspiration to do everything possible to beat this and some knowledge how to do so. My brand new GP (old one retired) referred me both to the (ENT) surgeon and two radiation oncologists. Surgeon was wonderful, as was one of the oncologists, but I turned them down. When I attempted to get help from my GP for hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), she refused. There is a clinic not much more than walking distance from my house. It is used only for diabetic amputees whose limb wounds won’t heal, but it has many applications. Perhaps you should look into it.
Tripping over the Truth is the first book I bought after my bowel cancer diagnosis. It is a great read and I heartily endorse Gary’s recommendation!
Gary, thank you so much for that information. It is an awful lot to digest just now, but I will certainly give it my best shot. I must say that, like you, I had a wonderful Surgeon and everyone was so caring. Would you believe it, I was initially admitted to hospital as an emergency with breathing problems. I think my GP suspected Covid-19, and who could blame him because I did too, Cancer was initially the last thing on anyone’s mind, hospital staff included.
I will certainly order a copy of ‘Tripping over the truth’ and hope that the knowledge it provides will be helpful to me too.
I e-mailed a link to the Denis Rancourt article to a retired scientist friend in the US; his response was: “Regarding the Denis Racort thing. Rubbish and bull fertilizer. We may not have all the answers but there is absolutely no doubt that masks reduce transmission and vaccines work, even if all the dangers are unknown. This isn’t opinion, it is fact. ‘’.
And:
In the larger cohort who got the two regular doses, vaccine efficacy was 62% (with a 95% confidence interval of 41% to 75%). There were 27 cases in the 4440 treatment patients, compared to 71 cases out of 4455 patients in the controls. Meanwhile, in the half-dose-first group, efficacy comes out at 90% (with a 95% confidence interval of 67% to 97%). Both of those 95% CIs are a bit of a spread. In this group, 3 out of 1367 patients in the treatment group came down with coronavirus, compared to 30 out of 1374 in the controls. That control-group infection rate is definitely higher than what was seen in the two-full-dose group, which makes you wonder if it’s running randomly high (which would make the half-dose group look better than it really is) or if the larger full-dose group was running randomly low (which would make it look worse than it really is, but remember, with its larger sample size there’s correspondingly somewhat less room to believe that it was that far out of whack). We need to add in to these calculations the news that the half-dose group included no patients older than 55, and to wonder what effect that had on the numbers, too. The paper reports a combined overall efficacy of 70.45 (95% CI between 54.8% and 80.6%), but how much you trust that one comes down to how different you think these two groups are.
Basically, the more you believe the 90% number is a statistical fluke, the more you then believe that the real efficacy of the vaccine is probably in the 60-per-cent range. On the other hand, if you buy into the idea that there’s something really different and useful about giving everyone a half dose at first, you can be somewhat more optimistic. That belief is optimistic in itself, but it’s not completely nuts, either. Remember, one of the things about a viral vector is that you raise antibodies not only to the protein that whose genetic message you’re delivering, but to the viral vector itself. It’s not impossible that a lower dose the first time made subsequent antibody neutralization of the second dose less of a problem. But you’d need to prove that. And to prove, with intention, that a half-first-dose really does work better to start with.
A bright spot in the data is that (counting from 21 days after the first shot) there were overall ten hospitalizations for coronavirus (two severe, one leading to death), but none at all in any of the treatment groups. This would be a good point to note that the coronavirus cases totaled in all these trials were based on symptoms, which were then confirmed by RT-PCR swab assays. The UK trial also had regular swab assays taken to try to get data on asymptomatic infections, which is something that wasn’t done in either the Pfizer/BionTech or Moderna trials. The numbers aren’t huge, and they aren’t tight, but they’re all we have. There were 24 asymptomatic patients in the low-dose-first group, for a vaccine efficacy of 58.9% (95% confidence interval from 1 to 82.9%, and that’s what I mean by “not tight”), and 45 patients in the two-standard-dose group (efficacy of 3.8%, unfortunately). So at least for this vaccine, the efficacy at preventing asymptomatic cases is notably lower than that seem for symptomatic ones, and that may well be true for all of them. The differences in those asymptomatic numbers, though, also argue that the low-dose vaccination regimen was indeed different from the two-standard-dose one, don’t they?
I do rather play Devil’s advocate and send bits and pieces from this site and other ‘alternative’ ones (I can no longer mention them to my husband as he tells me that I’ve taken leave of my senses).
He sent me a link to this:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/09/the-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-efficacy-data
Please forgive the long post. I am not scientifically minded but the articles I read contradict the ‘official’ narrative; is this selection bias? My instinct is not to trust the government story line, it doesn’t ring true to me. There seem to be many who disagree and may who agree; how are we supposed to know what to believe? Instinct is not very scientific. Obviously I have great respect for Dr Kendrick and follow his opinions.
“We may not have all the answers but there is absolutely no doubt that masks reduce transmission and vaccines work, even if all the dangers are unknown. This isn’t opinion, it is fact‘’.
Anyone who claims that “there is absolutely no doubt” about an issue on which scientists are divided is not a scientist but a politician. At any rate, when he makes such claims he is not engaging in science.
As for his claim that “vaccines work”, it is even worse – if that’s possible. What on earth are we meant to understand by “work” in this context? Especially when the manufacturers themselves are publicly announcing that their own vaccines do not prevent one from being infected or passing the virus on to others?
It may also be relevant that Dr Rancourt is a very controversial figure in academic circles, largely because of his refusal to accept the theory of anthropogenic global warming. His Wikipedia entry gives some relevant details.
Once a person has been declared a heretic by the politically correct, there is a strong tendency to denounce everything he subsequently says.
“If you asked me to bet, I would say it was created in a lab, then escaped by accident.”
Upon what evidence/papers are you relying for that view Dr. Kendrick?
Because there is good published evidence that suggests the polar opposite, and strongly implies a natural derivation.
(I am aware of Li-Meng Yan’s work mentioned elsewhere above. Peer review was not especially glowing).
Thanks.
I have spent quite a large part of my life looking closely at ‘good published evidence.’ In many cases I simply remove the word good. In the case of almost anything to do with Sars-Cov2 I find it helpful remove the word evidence. Serves me well. Perhaps you would be kind enough provide the good published evidence in support of your views.
Dr. Malcolm,
“If you asked me to bet, I would say it was created in a lab, then escaped by accident.”
This is a public statement, the disclaimer of the bet-ask notwithstanding.
I would say that there’s little reason to think that there’s a critical threshold amount of information on which to base any public statement concerning the COVID-19 virus’ origin, much less such a suggestive one.
Why?
I’m very well aware of your work, and I’ve read (or watched) almost all of it over recent years – and that is precisely why my presumption was you would have seen (evidence/support/backing, whichever word you prefer) you felt sufficient to inform your statement.
It was not a loaded or a sarcastic question, it was a genuine one.
I wasn’t purporting to have ‘views’, but from what I have seen thus far (and as we both know ‘proof’ either way here is almost impossible) on the balance of probability the evidence suggest strongly the virus is of natural derivation:
The research I was referring to in this case was from Anderson (et al.), and I attach below. He also gave several interviews at the time, I attach one of those too.
I have not seen any decent refutation of this, nor any supported contradiction – though it is entirely possible I’ve missed one (or several) that undermine it, and as Keynes famously (may have) said: “When the facts change, I change my mind.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-not-human-made-lab-genetic-analysis-nature
Perhaps you would also be kind enough to provide (or point your readers in the direction of) the support of the placement of your ‘bet’?
Maybe this paper undermines your Nature article? There were over 2000 papers citing your article, but this had the highest number of citations on point.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmv.26478
I haven’t trawled through all 818 comments prior to this one to see whether anyone else has posted it already, but this article looks into the origin of the virus in great depth.
https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748
The conclusion of the author is that it has not been established beyond reasonable doubt that the virus was lab-made, but the balance of probabilities suggests that it was.
There has been so much utterly irresponsible – indeed, criminal – experimentation on “gain of function” and transferring animal viruses to human cells that it would be hard to say to what extent any new virus was natural and to what extent man-made (or at least assisted).
Most people, I dare say, have no idea how difficult it is to keep a virus confined during prolonged experiments involving many people. I know of several cases of viral leaks within and from top-security labs, some of which were not even detected until days or weeks later.
There is no possible excuse for doing work that strengthens a virus or that transfers it from its original host species to human beings.
“There is no possible excuse for doing work that strengthens a virus or that transfers it from its original host species to human beings.“
Fauci thought there was, though he would probably deny it.
Fauci and his associates were no doubt interested in the money and prestige available through such projects.
Yuri is a businessman, by education and by effort. ($)
He has no science education or training.
Ask what motivating force is behind his articles before you cite them as being beyond reasonable doubt.
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/yurideigin?challengeId=AQEzUkapc1ZSZQAAAXbUnPTxeTRUbDTY74LFNO3OfkyUvga2xQly6hZYeuwmfyKqWSLCp23wkzZ1SBTVyEGV3vpl0w59qg9QJA&submissionId=42124ce2-b775-5716-5b93-0085e356c81d
JDP, thank you for the caution, what in Yuri’s paper is false that we should be aware of?
AhN,
You’re welcome.
My mission stops at the caution. It’s now up to the person who wants to sign on with Yuri to decide on the likelihood of falsity or truth.
Well, just for giggles and grins…
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/01/04/u-s-official-leak-or-accident-at-wuhan-lab-most-likely-source-of-covid-19-pandemic-n1303499
May I step in?
The reasons why I believe this was 1. made in a lab and 2. and purposely released are as follows:
1. I am aware that in 2019 the economy was on the verge of collapse – I have posted an FT Brookings research paper that has data indicating this. Also if you look at the overnight repos the Fed was stepping in day after day to lend money to financial institutions because the banks did not trust each other even for a few hours. The last this happened? Lehman
How convenient was it that covid hit giving cover for the central banks to drop a nuclear bomb of stimulus on the global economy. When your back is to the wall and you have run out of ammo — and you are going to die no matter what – why not drop the bomb … IF it kicks the can one last time.
2. The legions of lies we are being fed by global leaders and the MSM clearly indicate a coordinated plan of action. How do you get everyone one board for covid? You explain to them ‘we are f789ed – we can either collapse now — or we dump a bad flu on the people – and use that to justify the mother of the mother of all stimulus — and everyone gets to live a little longer — oh and getting people into lock down mode means they don’t rip each other’s faces off when global Holodomor hits. There is a leak out of Canada that suggests in Q2 martial law will arrive. You think these lockdowns suck….
I suspect what will play out is that people will be locked completely down and initially food will be delivered… but then one day the food will not come – the govts will announce that the food is coming ‘tomorrow’ … and the good little sheeple will cower in their basements waiting for the food… eventually they will begin to starve. Look up death by starvation. It’s quite peaceful once you get beyond the pizza cravings. But hey, better than ripping each other’s faces off and hunting for the neighbours children.
So ya, that’s why I think that Covid is man-made. Oh and Luc Montagnier Nobel prize winning virologist says it is.
And I also think it is a fantastic idea.
8 billion hungry predators is not something I am keen to be part of.
This is what Dr Montagnier said in April 2020:
Dr Luc Montagnier the man who discovered the HIV virus back in 1983, says Covid19 was man made.
“Professor Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize winner for Medicine, claims that SARS-CoV-2 is a manipulated virus that was accidentally released from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Chinese researchers are said to have used coronaviruses in their work to develop an AIDS vaccine. HIV RNA fragments are believed to have been found in the SARS-CoV-2 genome.”
“With my colleague, bio-mathematician Jean-Claude Perez, we carefully analyzed the description of the genome of this RNA virus,” explains Luc Montagnier, interviewed by Dr Jean-François Lemoine for the daily podcast at Pourquoi Docteur, adding that others have already explored this avenue: Indian researchers have already tried to publish the results of the analyses that showed that this coronavirus genome contained sequences of another virus, … the HIV virus (AIDS virus), but they were forced to withdraw their findings as the pressure from the mainstream was too great.”
In a challenging question Dr Jean-François Lemoine inferred that the coronavirus under investigation may have come from a patient who is otherwise infected with HIV. No, “says Luc Montagnier,” in order to insert an HIV sequence into this genome, molecular tools are needed, and that can only be done in a laboratory.
According to the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine, a plausible explanation would be an accident in the Wuhan laboratory. He also added that the purpose of this work was the search for an AIDS vaccine.
The truth will eventually come out.
In any case, this thesis, defended by Professor Luc Montagnier, has a positive turn. According to him, the altered elements of this virus are eliminated as it spreads: “Nature does not accept any molecular tinkering, it will eliminate these unnatural changes and even if nothing is done, things will get better, but unfortunately after many deaths.”
Let me contribute to your conspiracy theory.
1) There is a lot of ‘underground’ noise/reporting about the USA funded “Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center in (Tbilisi) Georgia”. It has Military connections and has been accused by Russia of developing and disseminating Bio Weapons. Might be rubbish, who knows ?
2) The USA and the Wuhan Labs HAVE cooperated in the recent past on research into transference of Covid viruses from Bats to humans. Published in Nature magazine.
3) The USA have a recent history of blaming China and Russia for everything. Associating Covid with China is politically very convenient for Trump and USA politics. However, there is some evidence that this virus was in Europe and the USA prior to 2020.
4) One of my own. DSTL Porton Down is collocated with the Flu/Colds research Centre they have extensive links to the UK and USA Security Services and carry out research (and development) of Bio weapons (Novichok !). They have first class facilities for detecting, identifying and handling BIO threats. They have been strangely quiet during this ‘pandemic’.
FE,
I have another reason to suspect the leak was not accidental. It came out in our election year, the deep state is in a state of war with our president and it served the purpose of assisting in creating conditions to steal the election.
anna m: Right you are! Not a coincidence.
Lockdown and mental health:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/lockdown-measures-catastrophic-for-recovering-addicts-mental-health_3643402.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-01-05-5
This a copy and paste from: https://lockdownsceptics.org/page/2/
The UK is basing it’s Herculean response on ‘Cases’!!
“Stop Press: Several readers have got in touch to point out that the reason for the alarming case data Boris cited in his announcement – 80,000 on December 29th alone – is because the UK is testing more people than any other European country. One reader has calculated that we’re currently testing between six and 14 times more people every day than France, Italy and Germany. Another drew our attention to the number of “cases” in the UK for January 4th as recorded on Worldometers, which dwarfed that of France, Italy and Germany, even though the number of deaths is quite similar:
UK – 58,784 Cases/407 deaths
France – 4,022 Case/378 deaths
Italy – 10,800 Cases/348 deaths
Germany – 8,039 Cases/527 deaths
“Strange,” says the reader. “Over 10 times more cases than France with a similar number of deaths. Germany had over 100 more deaths, but 50,000 fewer cases.”
The explanation? Matt Hancock and his obsession with administering as many PCR tests each day as possible.”
Two weeks ago I jogged past the local community hall which had just been requisitioned as a test and trace centre. There were long queues of, seemingly okay, people lined up to get tested and hand their personal data over to the data collectors. I remarked at the time that we would see a spike in ‘cases’ soon, we are now in Tier Four.
If they must use PCR testing at least fix the detection cycle rate at <30 cycles. By now you would have thought enough data had been gathered to justify how PCR testing can be used 'accurately', but I bet they aren't even collecting such data !
Yesterday I went to the surgery for a routine blood test. It felt like old times, except that the waiting room contained just 3 plastic chairs, and I seemed to be the only patient there.
However, the interesting thing is that I took the opportunity to talk to the nurse.
She reported the same concerns as the rest of us – i.e. how can there be a pandemic with nobody getting ill? She knew of nobody who had had it. She did know some hospital nurses who reported that while there were a lot of COVID patients in hospital, they were not particularly sick!
I also talked about the rushed vaccines, and she agreed, and she wasn’t sure whether to have the vaccine.
She also said how as soon as she gets out in the evening, she takes her mask off.
Well David, since 30 December, this usually great blog has given out facts, figures and graphs, implying that we ought to dismiss facts, figures and graphs as reported on BBC/Channel 4 broadcasts, as questionable. I believe the BBC, but by admitting this, it seems to suggest to some fellow bloggers that I must be a bit thick and gullible.
I am far from convinced with what I am reading here, I am sorry to say. I find it sad that people may question the validity of ITU staff filmed in a major London Hospital today, which I watched with my own eyes, and I trust the journalists and film makers, as being honourable.
This morning I received care at a small Community Hospital……as quiet as a morgue, and to passers by it may have seemed closed. I was assured it was ultra busy. This afternoon I attended a large Regional hospital for treatment. It was exceptionally quiet and calm. Staff were working none stop to keep a lid on their work load. Personally, I do not have knowledge of anyone I know as being Covid positive, let alone dying from it. ( I am not a Billy No Mates). So do I deduce there is nothing going on? Of course I don’t, ‘cos the BBC has told me about the dreadful situation.
The BBC provides the Parliamentary Channel, and then I can make my own mind up.
Am I really that stupid?
“Well David, since 30 December, this usually great blog has given out facts, figures and graphs, implying that we ought to dismiss facts, figures and graphs as reported on BBC/Channel 4 broadcasts, as questionable.”
Actually, I think if you look back over Dr Kendrick’s blogs here, you will find that they have been consistently against lockdowns and consistently extremely sceptical of the official figures, for reasons that he has clearly laid out.
Indeed, since you claim his is a “usually great blog” you are surely contradicting yourself!
David. My most recent response has not appeared on the blog for some reason. I attended the Regional Hospital twice this week for essential treatments. The ambulances were queuing round the access road, and the local BBC reported and filmed it as such. I spoke to the Nurses attending to me, and they confirmed how seriously stretched they are.
I will not be responding on Dr Kendrick’s blogs any more. I have contributed to and learned from it for 7 years. I do not accept your interpretation that I am contradicting myself because I hold some opposing points of view to his excellent blog of 30 December. I realise that I am in the minority regarding which statistics I believe, and which sources I trust. My views are as valid as the next, but I get the message to just keep them to myself.
It is important to read history because it can provide context. I also searched for lockdowns but the drew a blank….
Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tents
The 2017-2018 influenza epidemic is sending people to hospitals and urgent-care centers in every state, and medical centers are responding with extraordinary measures: asking staff to work overtime, setting up triage tents, restricting friends and family visits and canceling elective surgeries, to name a few.
“We are pretty much at capacity, and the volume is certainly different from previous flu seasons,” says Dr. Alfred Tallia, professor and chair of family medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “I’ve been in practice for 30 years, and it’s been a good 15 or 20 years since I’ve seen a flu-related illness scenario like we’ve had this year.”
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/
The overall burden of influenza for the 2017-2018 season was an estimated 45 million influenza illnesses, 21 million influenza-associated medical visits, 810,000 influenza-related hospitalizations, and 61,000 influenza-associated deaths
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm
Jennifer: Please don’t leave. Your insights are as valuable and useful as everyone else’s. The minority is often right and the majority wrong.
Thanks Gary, but having continued to read recent responses, I find I still have nothing to contribute. As one pompous and conceited contributor suggested to me, I have gone back to my knitting, which is more productive. I have enjoyed our banter and your responses, but the blog has become most unpleasant, and no longer a source of education. I will continue to read Dr Kendrick’s pieces, but not responses; this alas, includes yours, and other decent, sensible contributors, who have been drowned out lately. Good names, conspicuous by their absence, spring to mind.
I agree Jenifer, this post has produced some very unpleasant comments, one of which lives in Kent (or does he?). I just ignore them. Poor souls must have sad lives.
Jennifer: Sensible decision. Dr. Kendrick is always worth reading, and more than once, but it does seem like the ‘Rona comments have come close to a dead end. I will continue to read them, though, because of the occasional link to something interesting.
David, it’s hard to see why anyone would give you a thumbs down for reporting a personal experience. Thumbs down should not be used childishly or petulantly – perhaps we are all guilty of this from time to time when our emotions are high.
Better not to have thumbs. I rarely see them on my iPad. I don’t know if I get thumbs up, down, or none at all. This avoids promoting arrogance, depression or hopelessness.
I don’t let it worry me – just think of the shed loads of abuse Malcolm must have had over the years – it puts things into perspective!
It’s easy to hit the thumbs down by mistake. Its not so easy to correct.
Jerome – Yes. Just too easy to do – I did it here the other day. Laptop v. slow in bringing up the thumb markers, eyes tired, and pressed the wrong bloody ‘thumb’ – Ggggrrrr. Won’t say to whom I did this…but am really upset with myself for being so hasty. **Slow down woman !! 😦
If you furiously keep tapping the like tab it will eventually turn
Thanks for that Jerome – just ‘wish’ I could remember in which section and whereabouts – would dearly like to undo impatient mistake !
Sir Desmond Swayne, MP, has been talking against the lockdown on Radio 4 today! Yes, BBC! Alleluia! One small step for mankind?
For his stance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Swayne
Well written but has it’s flaws:
1, People who die of something like heart failure and also happen to have tested positive for COVID are having COVID as the main cause of death on the certificate and I hear the argument that it wasn’t the COVID it was the heart failure but we also know that in many patients the COVID is making the other comorbidities worse and indeed is the reason the patient died of heart failure, ergo COVID did in fact kill them.
2, Your assumption that the UK’s winter peak is no different to a bad flu season is premature as the main deaths haven’t happened yet. I’d like to see this article updated in the spring.
3, My final point is we all know the excess deaths above the 5 year average rate isn’t that high but what is real is that the NHS are being crippled by the sheer volume of patients (that won’t likely die) ending up in hospital with COVID and these numbers aren’t made up and won’t ease for a long time. Yes the deaths will dramatically decrease with the roll out of the vaccine but our precious NHS will continue to be overwhelmed until, one way or another, we beat this…together by all playing our part.
I am going to ask. Are you medically qualified. Have you ever written a death certificate? I ask because this is my day job. Diagnosing patients and, from time to time, writing death certificates. So I do feel pretty well qualified to comment on such matters. You presumably have expertise on such matters?
I work in AMU departments across the UK 5 days a week and have done for many years. No I don’t write death certificates but I have many friends that do. The example I used of the heart failure patient is a real example explained to me by a Cardiology Professor about one of his patients so I think that counts for something don’t you? Maybe it’s just a one off(?). We all know coding within the NHS isn’t accurate and coding everybody who has COVID when they die as COVID being the cause of death isn’t accurate but in many cases it is very accurate.
As for your comment “Which means that, in this so-called second wave COVID19 is of no greater an issue than a moderately bad flu season” I’m guessing the reports coming from our hospitals are just made up?…over egging the pudding? Attention seaking? That’s it, man up, stop moaning and get on with it.
Like I said let’s see what the area under the curve looks like in a month or so.
I hope you’re right but I fear you’re not.
Yes of course they are ‘made up’.
I have a friend who runs a Covid testing lab in Canada and she concurs that the PCR tests are a joke. They generate massive numbers of false positives. So these infection numbers we are fed by the MSM are made up.
Epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski (ya I know, he was a janitor at the prestigious Rockefeller University but still….) has stated that flu deaths are being labelled as Covid deaths. I wonder if the $39,000 payment they receive has anything to do with that? More ‘made up’ numbers.
I’d like to direct you to a credible news site like CNN, the BBC or the NYT but Knut is only a janitor who messes about in the school lab after hours, so only the College Fix will speak to him https://www.thecollegefix.com/epidemiologist-coronavirus-could-be-exterminated-if-lockdowns-were-lifted/ Of course he is an idiot so ignore what he has to say.
And then we are told the NHS ICU is overwhelmed with patients dying of Covid. Unfortunately NHS website does not confirm this https://www.thecollegefix.com/epidemiologist-coronavirus-could-be-exterminated-if-lockdowns-were-lifted/ So again, we have more ‘made up’ stuff.
Then we have not one but multiple Covid vaccines some of which are nearly 100% effective!!! Wow – in 6 months or so we have multiple miracle cures. This is worthy of the late night shopping channel. If you buy within the next 60 seconds you get a second vaccine free!!
When it comes to Covid I struggle mightily to find some element that is not made up.
This is mass delusion right up there with religion. I know in advance no matter who many facts or how much logic I throw at this I am unlikely to convince you that you have been captured by the matrix.
In parting, I leave you with a comment from the late great George Carlin : Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man, living in the sky who watches everything you do every minute of every day.
Hats off to Ed Bernays – possibly the most important man in the history of the world https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04
Dr. Kendrick,
Although you didn’t direct the “medically qualified” question to me, I think that it’s appropriate for me to answer it.
I have no medical degree. I have a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, a master’s degree in physics with thesis, which thesis was written based upon my own research proposal, which is rare in physics. I have taken 5 or six biology courses, including micro and biochem. But most importantly, I have read over 100 journal articles related to covid, including pathology reports, microbiology articles, internal medicine articles, hematology articles, infectious disease articles, immunology articles, medicinal chemistry articles, pulmonology articles, and vascular surgery articles. I didn’t merely read abstracts; I dove into the weeds. And I had no trouble comprehending any of the articles, although I had to search for definitions a few times.
So I don’t qualify medically in any formal sense, but my opinion is based on thorough research.
We are not in this together. Those making these rules have not lost their salaries.
“we all know the excess deaths above the 5 year average rate isn’t that high”
1. With respect, most people *don’t* know that at all, including the people running the media and propagandizing the the rest of the country, using this panicked, mistaken impression of current mass deaths to silence dissent. Most random people you ask don’t know it either.
2. The numbers put out as a proxy for covid-related deaths, have been since June and till now, utterly and demonstrably bogus. They are a “dodgy dossier” par excellence. It is critical that we all know this. If one key plank of the narrative is factually nonsense, that is enough to make all the rest extremely suspect.
3. The only part you are partly right about is the hospital situation. Every year they run at approximately full capacity (and sometimes over-capacity and that causes unavoidable deaths, which actually *does* make the press, but without the hype and panic it becomes one soon-forgotten story)
They *set* the annual capacity by the needs of the peak in winter.
Th health authorities, far from deserving clapping, are almost entirely and solely responsible for the current hospital fiasco. They have had about 7 months to prepare better. At this point, it is too late and too bad. They are working very hard, and sometimes even risking their lives, but running about like panicked Chicken Littles. They are like both the leaders and the soldiers of the colossally mistaken “charge of the light brigade” – they deserve both “honour” for the “C’est magnifique” bravery but also head-shaking for the stupidity at all levels.
We are like a country where the police levels have fallen below the bare minimum, or where the traffic lights are not working. You cannot *force* the rest of country into lockdown to cover and bear the brunt of your irresponsibility, panic and lack of initiative. You can *advise* – although even that causes domino harm. That i your right. But to *force* us all to comply with imprisonment and ruin in this situation crosses even beyond culpable stupidity into (unintended) wickedness.
The main problem, IMO, for the NHS Hospitals is that they regularly test their staff using the dubious PCR tests. They then get guaranteed, at least, one positive test result and this means a whole team of Nurses and Doctors are sent home for two weeks to isolate.
The problem is faulty testing leading to staff shortages.
Sort out the testing and the ‘pandemic’ will disappear – overnight !!
What part is it that we are supposed to play ?
I spent a lot of my money and time on my education, I do intend to surrender my ‘educated’ reasoning, analysis skills and common sense to stupid politicians and duplicitous ‘experts’ who are wantonly ignoring and cherry picking the facts to meet their own political agendas.
As RATM sing in the track ‘Killing in the Name’: “F**k you, I won’t do what you tell me”
Recent figures how Flu hospitalisation and intensive care admission rates both decreased from 4.33 per 100,000 to 2.43 per 100,000 and 0.36 per 100,000 to 0.21 per 100,000 respectively.
GP consultations with flu-like illness also decreased, from 16.6 per 100,000 to 14.7 per 100,000, but remain above baseline levels.
Covid 19 is somewhere in the region of 600 to 850 per 100,000 population; far worse than the flu! And with this new mutation just hope you don’t get it. Many people have regretted saying that it is just a flu when their partner or family member has died of it. Carry on and find out the true facts before blogging stuff that may not be factual!
What have I blogged that is not factual. Example please
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! You panic mongers have denied the efficacy of early treatment with antivirals and now whine about how dangerous covid is. I think that there’s an opening for you in the circus in town.
There is a cohort study out on HCQ that shows 80% reduction in hospitalizations among high risk patients in an outpatient setting. RCTs of pill treatments in outpatient settings aren’t as valuable as they are in hospital settings, for obvious reasons. So, cohort studies (which rank just below RCTs for confidence) are the best we can get.
No, RECOVERY’s trial of late treatment in hospital settings with HCQ using moderately toxic dosing wasn’t a valid test. For excellent results for covid, you give antivirals within two days of symptom onset.
Just a quick comment to the lurkers who ridicule ‘conspiracy theorists’
20+ years ago I played on an ice hockey team and one of the owners (they are big Telecoms guys) mentioned to me that people should never say anything incriminating on a telephone. He informed me that all operators MUST install monitoring software on their networks and that the governments are using that software to pick up key words. e.g. cocaine… bomb… If you utter one of these key words you are more closely monitored to see what you are up to…
Fast Forward to about 6 months before anyone ever heard of Snowden. Having beers with some mates and I mentioned this and one of them – a partner in a substantial engineering firm and a big techie guy– scoffed and said that was a conspiracy theory that he’d heard many times. In my defense, it did come from a guy who owned multiple Telecoms in a few countries but hey he was probably making it up.
Anyway… 6 months later Eddie dropped his bomb. And to my mates credit he recanted.
There are literally thousands of conspiracies taking place at any given time — every document from every government labelled ‘classified’ is a conspiracy. Sometimes (not often) someone leaks a document or someone stumbles across the conspiracy and puts it out there.
Now if you were a government how would you convince people to ignore the leak? What better way than if you referred to it as a conspiracy theory and ridicule it. You might even have the MSM run regular stories on totally nutter theories and create the conspiracy theory label — so that going forward if you slap that label on a real leak — it gets lumped in with stuff like 5G causes Covid. Hmmm… might the Deep State be behind that theory?
I have a way of testing the intelligence of people. I drop some data on them such as the NHS ICU numbers — which demonstrate the ICUs are not overwhelmed — I make sure they are aware that the numbers are from the source — the NHS website — then I ask what they think. If they dismiss the numbers I know they are thinking ‘conspiracy theory’…. they fail the test… and best to avoid any controversial topics.
It is amazing how many highly educated, ‘intelligent’ people … fail that test. If that was used as the entrance exam for uni, there lecture halls would be nearly empty.
It is not that people dismiss things as conspiracy theories. They dismiss anything that does not fit in with the narrative that they have accepted as true. “Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
And then will not, ever, change their minds
First story ‘they’ heard:
Horrific media-driven reports and photos from Wuhan and Northern Italy tied to Ferguson’s 500,000.
Probably we all do that to some degree. If not taken to excess, it lets a person follow through a line of thinking without being constantly blown off course. For example, if you spotted a newspaper article entitled, “The hidden dangers of cholesterol”, my bet is you would not read it, I know I wouldn’t.
I feel the problem is that some people take that instinct way too far and become locked into an incorrect idea.
David, I might read it, there are dangers in cholesterol. It permits beings to live, and the alternative to living is dying, hence the danger.
I would certainly read it plus, would pass it on to family, friends (who are often tired of my ‘soapbox’) and, I would print it out and hand to my lovely GP. All for lids and carpets being lifted…
Embedded links missing from the previous post :
Dr Kendrick – would you modify any of your blog in the light of what appears to be the recent surge in deaths in the UK? The contention is that they are the result of a new UK variant of the virus. If deaths have risen notably and there is indeed a more virulent version of the virus at large, would these factors alter any of your conclusions?
It is already conceded that the new strain does not produce a more severe disease, just that it is more infective.
Since infectivity is obviously very hard to measure – particularly when the COVID tests throw up a lot of false positives, maybe Malcolm may feel as I do, that this is yet another false alarm.
Still, it would be interesting if Malcolm were to write a blog about this subject – discussing how the different strains are detected, and exploring the data this has produced.
It may be that a random selection of samples are sent for RNA sequencing and other virological testing. The new variants are the latest of over 2000 variants picked up over the past 12 months. IIRC the UK variant has a change to the protein that interacts with the ACE2 receptor. Although more contagious it is less virulent. Therefore its spread through the population is not necessarily a bad thing as it means people become immune without becoming unwell, achieving what the vaccine is meant to do and possibly with less side effects. A presentation on the UK variant by a virologist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC8ObD2W4Rk&t=740s
Ivor Cummins on COVID Seasonal Mortality: https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/status/1346865286146908171?s=20
Has anyone noticed that if you add up all EU deaths they are very similar to the US total (very similar population). 🙄
Dear sir or madam:
I recently had my Moderna injection at the Oviedo Mall on December 30th.
I was reading an article about how/where the injection should be made: Into the deltoid muscle , upper arm. Not into pinched skin on the arm so that the dose is injected into fat not the muscle making it an ineffective method of inoculation. The man who administered my injection pinched my arm and injected into the fat on my arm, not the muscle.
Please review instructions given to those individuals administrating the injections.
(I sent this to Seminole County it have nothing heard back)
How will I know whether my dose is effective?
Lois Kaufman
DOB 8/17/1945
Lois, let’s hope it doesn’t have this effect https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9119431/Miami-doctor-58-dies-three-weeks-receiving-Pfizer-Covid-19-vaccine.html
AhNotepad: Latest weasel words from The Lancet:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32623-4/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email
Gary, is the “Zimmer” in reference one related to the maker of the walking frame? There might be an increased demand for them if cases of myelitis increase following vaccination.
Having read the article I now feel like Baz in Kent.
AhNotepad: Good article by Ken Stoller, M.D. It’s not a vaccine after all, but a medical device:
https://www.ageofautism.com/2021/01/pfizer-moderna-et-al-covid-products-are-medical-devices-not-vaccines-.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ageofautism+%28AGE+OF+AUTISM%29
Lois. Correct, most photos of the vaccine being administered show pinching. Wrong way to do it. Even if pinching muscle it tightens the fibres and causes needless pain.
As a former nurse, I was taught to give intramuscular injections, (I never gave vaccines), as follows:
After cleaning the site, one pulled the skin to one side and held it there with a single finger. Then one pieced the site in one, quick stroke, described to us like throwing a dart, before injecting the syringe contents fairly slowly. When one had finished this, one pulled the needle out quickly, which released the skin so it moved back to its original place, covering the track of the needle to prevent leakage of the injected fluid as much as possible.
The main skill is judging the force of the injecting stroke, so it is appropriate for the thickness of the muscle one is injecting into. One does not want to go right through it. With practice, an injection can be so painless, that the patient is not aware of it and is surprised when one says it is done.
Has anyone noticed that the total EU deaths are very similar to the total US deaths? Both with very similar populations?
Thanks Dr Kendrick in a sea of such chaotic madness going on now of bad data being used to justify so much upset and loss of freedoms it’s good to see your viewpoint in the blog, and adds some sanity to this whole situation, to see how far we are from the viewpoint portrayed by the MSM and government and that it’s not a health apocalypse as the information and stats don’t paint that. Please keep up the good work.
An important message from Simon Dolan
https://www.keepbritainfree.com/so/5bNRTVJ3S?languageTag=en&cid=6d91f31f-9379-4478-b1e4-1f5f645d29f6#/main
Demanding a less than 0.00006% chance it is the result of random processes before considering it significant, five standard deviations from the mean, is a ridiculously high threshold to set. Two standard deviations would be more in keeping with the typical 95% confidence interval common in biological sciences.
Why only vaccinate the vulnerable? Why not everyone who wants it? This would protect the individual from a potentially nasty illness and also help the community by bringing down the overall virus load.
Fergus Glencross: Nobody knows whether or not any of the vaccines “would protect the individual from a potentially nasty illness.” All three vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, and Oxford/Astra-Zeneca) are in the midst of phase III clinical trials. In the U.S. no covid vaccine has been approved or licensed, and all are considered experimental. The first two have been given Emergency Use Authorization, which can only be given for a disease or condition for which no known existing drug or vaccine exists. So this EUA is based upon fraud, because there are at least three very successful treatments in use in the U.S. and worldwide. Our government has suppressed the availability of these, and downplayed their value because our regulatory agencies and the NIH work, not for public health, but to enrich industry (and in the case of NIH, its own scientists, who hold numerous vaccine patents and are allowed to receive $150,000 per year in royalties from the pharmaceutical companies NIH has sold licensing rights to, while still working at taxpayers expense). So be wary of them. There is no need for them. Moderna’s vaccine has just claimed another victim, a healthy 56-year-old Florida obstetrician.
That single death may prove highly significant as he was pro-vaccine, knew the signs of his ‘bad’ reaction to the vaccine, got the best available treatment, but died anyway despite those treating him reaching out to experts nationally.
It is unlikely that his fatal experience can be buried though I’m sure they will try.
Gary, thanks for that post. I had not joined the dots and understood that these experimental substances should not be used because as you state, there are alternatives available, which governments and corporates attempt to downplay as ineffective.
The vaccine wasn’t Moderna’s but Pfizer’s.
Worth reading Sebastian Rushworth’s latest analysing the results of the 3 vaccine trials too.
Fergus, remember those who have a vaccine now, are not receiving a safe and effective vaccine, they are taking part in a Phase III trial prior to approval. There are approved for experimental use, with no liability for those manufacturing or administering them.
I thought phase 3 trials have been concluded.
The AZ phase three trial is not due to complete until February 2023
Dr Kendrick
I had a look at clinicaltrials.gov and found that the AZ study ended in March 2021. Did they alter the date or did I look at the wrong information?
Perhaps they have changed it in the last week. When I last looked, phase III clinical trial was scheduled to end March 2023/
Fergus Glencross: They have not. The public is part of the phase III of the trials. None of these trials have been published, and none will until phase III is complete, between mid-2021 and late 2022. So we have little data on which to base any decision whether or not to participate by taking one of these products. It is clear that the rates of adverse events from the mRNA (not really a vaccine, but a medical product) are far higher than those from the flu jab. In the U.S. they are considered experimental, and none of them have been approved or licensed by the FDA, although it appears the UK authorities have licensed them. Astonishing state of affairs. This will not end well.
Thanks Gary. I didnt know that.
Fergus Glencross: Addendum: Dr. Sebastien Rushworth has made a blog post today. Apparently the trials for all three vaccines have been published between January 8th and 10th in the The Lancet and the NEJM. Read his post for more information.
In light of the fact that this is an experimental vaccine, are those who agree to be experimented on at least getting paid???
Fast Eddy: No. And, they are liability free. What they represent has nothing to do with improvements in human health, and everything to do with a massive payday for the pharmaceutical industry. In the U.S. the billionaires have increased their wealth by double digits since March.
I fully support any initiative from Big Pharma to skip using animals for all new drugs and vaccines and go directly to CovIDIOTS. Doing so would dramatically accelerate the time to market.
I also endorse using CovIDIOTS for crash testing new vehicles.
And if the NASA Orion Capsule ever gets the green light, I would recommend a CovIDIOT be the first human to attempt to go beyond earth orbit and into outer space https://youtu.be/4O5dPsu66Kw
The world is over populated so surely the more people that die from this, the better. That would leave moire resources for the survivors, better wages, cheaper housing, less pollution – as there was after the Black Death – so why are we bothering at all? Of course, that might explain why some countries are not using treatment protocols that have been shown to be successful
Ha ha! Good one, Fast Eddy!
I heartily agree!
Why not allow healthy young people who have an almost 0% chance of dying from a virus get injected with an experimental vaccine.
Darwinism in action!
Jennifer, don’t leave, please. Your contributions are ones that I gravitate to as you always write sensible, relevant and interesting comments.
If you do leave then come back again after this hideous debacle is sorted out and we can return to what this wonderful blog has always been about. In spite of Covid we still have hearts, arteries and wonky lifestyles, etc., that need attention.
All the best from a virtual friend,
JanB 🌹
This came in today – BMJ 4 Jan 2021 –
Very good article written up by Peter Doshi, associate editor, The BMJ
Competing interests: I have been pursuing the public release of vaccine trial protocols, and have co-signed open letters calling for independence and transparency in covid-19 vaccine related decision making.
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-we-need-more-details-and-the-raw-data/
Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data
January 4, 2021
(snip…) Five weeks ago, when I raised questions about the results of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s covid-19 vaccine trials, all that was in the public domain were the study protocols and a few press releases. Today, two journal publications and around 400 pages of summary data are available in the form of multiple reports presented by and to the FDA prior to the agency’s emergency authorization of each company’s mRNA vaccine. While some of the additional details are reassuring, some are not. Here I outline new concerns about the trustworthiness and meaningfulness of the reported efficacy results.
“Suspected covid-19”
All attention has focused on the dramatic efficacy results: Pfizer reported 170 PCR confirmed covid-19 cases, split 8 to 162 between vaccine and placebo groups. But these numbers were dwarfed by a category of disease called “suspected covid-19”—those with symptomatic covid-19 that were not PCR confirmed. According to FDA’s report on Pfizer’s vaccine, there were “3410 total cases of suspected, but unconfirmed covid-19 in the overall study population, 1594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group.”
With 20 times more suspected than confirmed cases, this category of disease cannot be ignored simply because there was no positive PCR test result. Indeed this makes it all the more urgent to understand. A rough estimate of vaccine efficacy against developing covid-19 symptoms, with or without a positive PCR test result, would be a relative risk reduction of 19% (see footnote)—far below the 50% effectiveness threshold for authorization set by regulators. Even after removing cases occurring within 7 days of vaccination (409 on Pfizer’s vaccine vs. 287 on placebo), which should include the majority of symptoms due to short-term vaccine reactogenicity, vaccine efficacy remains low: 29% (see footnote). (more… article cont’d)
Don’t miss the comments – only a few, but a good question from one commentator that is answered by Peter Doshi. Neat, ties up threads.
mmec7, I looked at the comments but there was no reply from Peter. There is a comment from someone (misguided IMO) who says he/she is worried about the lack of efficacy compared to that claimed will lead people into irresponsible behaviour if restrictions are lifted. My view id the restrictions are irresponsible in the first place, and are rather like giving pills for blood pressure instead of sorting out the cause.
I will need to go back to it then as a question was put by a lass named Ann, and a response from Derek Lowe. Here is the link to the article – from Science Magazine .org https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/09/the-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-efficacy-data
CLINICAL TRIALS
The Oxford/AstraZeneca Vaccine Efficacy Data
By Derek Lowe – 9 December, 2020
Quite a big article, and do catch the comments – as much meat in the comments as in the article.
Overall, a bit of a big read.
(Apologies Ah – as looks like I may have inverted two links ! Thanks for picking up what looks to be a rather large error on my part.)
I will also add this – that came in this evening – a wretched case –
59 yrs old doctor in excellent health – No platelets, his were down to 1 …!! They could not bring the platelets up; he died.
Read the whole article –
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/healthy-florida-doctor-dies-after-pfizer-covid-vaccine/?
Pharma wriggling, but are being skewered by science and beyond all reasonable doubt, the PEG in the vaccine has caused the problem : thrombocytopenia purpura : ITP is a well-known adverse event associated with vaccinations. The vaccine most often implicated is the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, where the disease occurs in approximately 1 in every 25,000 to 40,000 doses of the vaccine
Anyone with a coagulation problem needs to be aware of this unwanted side effect: Note Factor V Leiden. Beware if are on anticoagulants. Beware if have problems with blood clots : DVTs ; VTEs.
This story is being suppressed on f/b and on twitter –
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/healthy-florida-doctor-dies-after-pfizer-covid-vaccine/?
On the BBC today and being quoted on patient support groups (support by pharma !) Pfizer vaccine is being promoted over the Oxford vaccine –
THE BBC NEWS TODAY REPORTED THAT PEOPLE WHO ARE IMMUNOSUPPRESSED SHOULD ONLY HAVE THE PFIZER VACCINE, AND NOT THE OXFORD VACCINE, AND WHY. BECAUSE IT IS A LIVE VIRUS, ALTHOUGH NOT A HUMAN VIRUS (CHIMPANZEE), IT IS A LIVE VIRUS; I THINK THAT FOR INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE IMMUNO COMPROMISED, CLEARLY WE WANT TO PROTECT THEM, AND THE PFIZER VACCINE WOULD BE MORE APPROPRIATE FOR THEM
Then take on board the wretchedly sad lead-in story –
I would not touch any of the vaccines with a barge-pole – way more than 6′ … (Comes to a fight, think I have enough medical reasons to have em run in the opposite direction 🙂 )
Also worth asking, “how many innocent animals have been killed to provide these vaccines ?”
Indeed yes, Steve. The total horrors of the whole shebang.
What is Left to Say ? – Here’s one – just in from the USA – still blinking my eyes – HCQ refers – given the go-ahead in the USA, hope the rest of the world follows – ensure the FULL protocol from Prof Raoult is *correctly followed :-
American Medical Association reverses earlier statement against hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus infections
The American Medical Association (AMA) has reversed its initial stance against hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat COVID-19. The association’s reversal now permits physicians to prescribe the medicine at their discretion to address coronavirus infections. Previously, the association dissuaded its member physicians from recommending the drug to their patients with COVID-19.
A recent AMA memorandum released Oct. 30 made the reversal official: “[AMA rescinds] its statement calling for physicians to stop prescribing hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine until sufficient evidence becomes available to illustrate that the harm associated with use outweighs benefits early in the disease course.”
The same memorandum also updated a March joint statement discouraging the use of HCQ. Patients will now be notified that “further studies are ongoing” to determine any potential benefit from the medication and other combination therapies against COVID-19. Lastly, the document reassured patients that AMA supports physicians that prescribe HCQ and other combination therapies “if it is in [their] best clinical judgment.”
Some drug companies are blocking the use of HCQ in favor of the less-effective remdesivir
Visit(opens in a new tab)stuartbramhall, 8h ago
Oops – Did not put up the link to the above item (synapses at fault…!) –
https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/14359095/posts/3115072343
just in from the USA – still blinking my eyes – HCQ refers (has the go-ahead to use… Great news this. USA now says Yes – hope others follow.)
Is it possible that this whole plandemic thing was done for one reason – to oust President Trump? Now that they think that is done, they want to wind things up as fast as possible before people begin to realise what a crock of s**t they have been sold.
If so, it had to be imposed on the rest of the world simply to make the story seem credible in the US.
shirley3349, – you mean ‘Z-Track’ ? – pulling skin/tissue to one side…inserting…then releasing it over the bore-hole effectively sealed it, keeping leakage /bleeding to absolute minimum.
I don’t know whether this has been answered but on 1st January someone queried the NOIDS data. Yes clinicians have a legal responsibility to report any cases of notifiable diseases, including CoViD19. However, I have seen on patient notes where they have had a SARS-CoV-2 test, irrespective of the result, “PHE notified, no notification required” or words to that effect. This means that a NOID is not submitted by the clinician.
This article in The Australian today…
‘Seventy per cent more contagious’: Reason for Greater Brisbane lockdown
“We know this particular variant can spread very rapidly if it gets hold so my hope is that it hasn’t got hold,” she said.
Queensland Chief Health Officer Dr Jeanette Young said the strain of COVID-19 was “incredibly contagious”.
Dr Young said the situation had effectively taken the state back to where it was in March, when authorities knew very little about the virus.
She said the mutant strain, while more contagious, does not appear to make people sicker.
“At this stage, the evidence coming out of the UK is that it doesn’t cause more severe disease, it doesn’t increase mortality, and most importantly of all for us it doesn’t affect the efficacy of the vaccines that have been developed to date,” she said.
“The issue is that more people will get it and we have seen that in the UK.”
About one in 50 people of the population in the UK have contacted COVID-19, causing serious problems for their overloaded healthcare systems, Dr Young said.
“If you can’t manage the numbers … if you can’t provide oxygen and the basic care that those people then need, then the consequences will be worse.”
What to make of this?
More from the article…
Dr Young said the three-day lockdown would give authorities a chance to determine how far the strain has spread in the community.
“If we can get on top of this today, we will be able to manage it and not need to go back through that lockdown period that we had to go through in March and April,” she said.
Under the lockdown rules, only those who need to attend work and cannot work from home, provide health care or support for a vulnerable person, undertake essential shopping and to exercise within the area are allowed to leave their homes.
Masks are also mandatory when those in the local areas need to leave their homes.
Elizabeth, that’s wonderful news. https://youtu.be/zQVBlQnfjkA Masks are, of course, the answer to the problem.
Check this out…
What are the rules around Greater Brisbane’s coronavirus mask mandate? Your questions answered: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-09/coronavirus-queensland-masks-mandate-greater-brisbane-lockdown/13043068
For the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, mask wearing has been made compulsory for millions of residents in the Greater Brisbane region.
The mandate has been imposed to stop a potentially “catastrophic” outbreak arising from a hotel quarantine cleaner being in the community for five days while infectious with the highly contagious mutant UK variant.
What are the rules?
If you live in any of the five local government areas that encompass Greater Brisbane, it’s mandatory for you to wear a mask when you leave your home during lockdown.
If you’re driving into Greater Brisbane from elsewhere during the lockdown, you must have a mask ready to wear.
You can take your mask off while eating and drinking and while at your home.
You also don’t need to wear a mask if you are outside but within the boundaries of your home, for example to garden or mow the lawn.
You must wear a mask while:
Driving your car
Doing exercise
In workplaces
At weddings or funerals
Shopping at supermarkets and shopping centres
On public transport or shared transport
Do I really need to wear a mask in the car?
Yes — even if you are alone while driving.
Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said the mask rule also applied to people in cars because health officials wanted to make mask use “as simple as possible for everybody”.
“When you leave your household, put it on and keep it on until you get back home … including in the car,” she said.
Dr Short agreed.
“I think because of the short timeframe that this has all happened in, we want clear, concise instructions for everyone to follow,” she said.
“So if you put on your mask as soon as you leave the front door — no questions, no exceptions, then that’s much easier to follow.”
It’s nothing to do with disease, it’s CONTROL, CONTROL, CONTROL.
Masking for exercise is dangerous, China has outlawed it. Keeping it on to drive may be as well if it reduces alertness.
All the restrictions reduce health and immunity. But I am giving up. Not enough people care even though in my opinion it is glaringly obvious that this is utter tyranny.
I had to fly to Christchurch recently and had to wear a mask (60 minutes). I could barely breathe.
I cannot imagine taking a long haul flight with a useless face diaper. In fact I can’t imagine taking a short flight if that’s a requirement.
Let’s assume that masks provide some benefit, would one of those who believe they do, please provide, perhaps from papers they have read, a quantified assessment of the benefit? It may be necessary to provide a range of figures for the different environments involved.
If I get any virus, just leave me alone. It serves me right for not looking after myself to the required standard. I’ve got to go sometime, and I do know from personal experience that when you are ill enough, you just don’t care what happens. That was when I was sixteen.
Given the MSM and governments spew endless disinformation and outright lies about Covid, I’d assume this is more of the same.
That said, if one thinks the Leak out of Canada is real, then the scientists who engineered then released covid may have built in something that evolves to make it more contagious – or they released Covid 2.0.
1:47 PM (7 hours ago) Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Saturday, October 10, 2020 1:38 PM, (REMOVED) wrote:
Dear (REMOVED),
I want to provide you some very important information. I’m a committee member within the Liberal Party of Canada. I sit within several committee groups but the information I am providing is originating from the Strategic Planning committee (which is steered by the PMO).
I need to start off by saying that I’m not happy doing this but I have to. As a Canadian and more importantly as a parent who wants a better future not only for my children but for other children as well.
The other reason I am doing this is because roughly 30% of the committee members are not pleased with the direction this will take Canada, but our opinions have been ignored and they plan on moving forward toward their goals. They have also made it very clear that nothing will stop the planned outcomes.
The road map and aim was set out by the PMO and is as follows:
– Phase in secondary lock down restrictions on a rolling basis, starting with major metropolitan areas first and expanding outward. Expected by November 2020. Expected by December 2020.
– Daily new cases of COVID-19 will surge beyond capacity of testing, including increases in COVID related deaths following the same growth curves. Expected by end of November 2020.
– Complete and total secondary lock down (much stricter than the first and second rolling phase restrictions). Expected by end of December 2020 – early January 2021
– Reform and expansion of the unemployment program to be transitioned into the universal basic income program. Expected by Q1 2021.
– Projected COVID-19 mutation and/or co-infection with secondary virus (referred to as COVID-21) leading to a third wave with much higher mortality rate and higher rate of infection. Expected by February 2021.
– Daily new cases of COVID-21 hospitalizations and COVID-19 and COVID-21 related deaths will exceed medical care facilities capacity. Expected Q1 – Q2 2021.
– Enhanced lock down restrictions (referred to as Third Lock Down) will be implemented. Full travel restrictions will be imposed (including inter-province and inter-city). Expected Q2 2021.
– Transitioning of individuals into the universal basic income program. Expected mid Q2 2021.
– Projected supply chain break downs, inventory shortages, large economic instability. Expected late Q2 2021.
– Deployment of military personnel into major metropolitan areas as well as all major roadways to establish travel checkpoints. Restrict travel and movement. Provide logistical support to the area. Expected by Q3 2021. Along with that provided road map the Strategic Planning committee was asked to design an effective way of transitioning Canadians to meet a unprecedented economic endeavor.
One that would change the face of Canada and forever alter the lives of Canadians. What we were told was that in order to offset what was essentially an economic collapse on a international scale, that the federal government was going to offer Canadians a total debt relief.
This is how it works: the federal government will offer to eliminate all personal debts (mortgages, loans, credit cards, etc) which all funding will be provided to Canada by the IMF under what will become known as the World Debt Reset program. In exchange for acceptance of this total debt forgiveness the individual would forfeit ownership of any and all property and assets forever.
The individual would also have to agree to partake in the COVID-19 and COVID-21 vaccination schedule, which would provide the individual with unrestricted travel and unrestricted living even under a full lock down (through the use of photo identification referred to as Canada’s HealthPass).
Committee members asked who would become the owner of the forfeited property and assets in that scenario and what would happen to lenders or financial institutions, we were simply told “the World Debt Reset program will handle all of the details”. Several committee members also questioned what would happen to individuals if they refused to participate in the World Debt Reset program, or the HealthPass, or the vaccination schedule, and the answer we got was very troubling.
Essentially we were told it was our duty to make sure we came up with a plan to ensure that would never happen. We were told it was in the individuals best interest to participate. When several committee members pushed relentlessly to get an answer we were told that those who refused would first live under the lock down restrictions indefinitely.
And that over a short period of time as more Canadians transitioned into the debt forgiveness program, the ones who refused to participate would be deemed a public safety risk and would be relocated into isolation facilities. Once in those facilities they would be given two options, participate in the debt forgiveness program and be released, or stay indefinitely in the isolation facility under the classification of a serious public health risk and have all their assets seized.
So as you can imagine after hearing all of this it turned into quite the heated discussion and escalated beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed before. In the end it was implied by the PMO that the whole agenda will move forward no matter who agrees with it or not. That it wont just be Canada but in fact all nations will have similar roadmaps and agendas.
That we need to take advantage of the situations before us to promote change on a grander scale for the betterment of everyone. The members who were opposed and ones who brought up key issues that would arise from such a thing were completely ignored. Our opinions and concerns were ignored. We were simply told to just do it.
All I know is that I don’t like it and I think its going to place Canadians into a dark future.
Vancouver, Canada· Posted October 14
BTW – this dropped yesterday:
Quebec imposes curfew as part of 4-week lockdown
A province-wide curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., the first of its kind in Canada during the pandemic. There will be exceptions for essential workers and dog walkers near their home. The fine for breaking curfew will be $1,000 to $6,000.
I’ve run this through my super computer and come up with the following:
The Covid Story is 100% fake (it’s basically a bad flu) … if I add 70% more fake to that I get… 170%
Dear Dr Kendrick,
Don’t know if you’ve already addressed this topic but…
I am coming across internet articles that raise very worrying questions regarding the longer term safety of mRNA vaccines. The term ‘genetic engineering’ is used and the three-letter acronym ‘GMO’ (Genetically Modified Organism) is also used. I find these articles difficult to follow, but in essence they seem to be suggesting that once this mRNA vaccine has been administered, should the recipient contract a coronavirus variant, their immune system could go into overdrive with the result that organ failure or death could follow.
Do you have a view on this?
I ask because as a 74-year old I will shortly be invited to roll up my sleeve for the Pfizer ‘vaccine’.
I am 3 years your junior, so I will face the same decision soon. I don’t have the ability to assess the vast quantity of arguments and counter arguments so I base my refusal to accept any of the vaccines on a number of simple observations.
1) Vaccines are not always safe, and that is even after proper testing. These vaccines have been hugely rushed and may cause a lot of illness or a disaster.
2) Most people know nobody who has been affected by COVID (I have asked quite a few) and several have told me about people they knew who went into hospital with some other problem and were officially recorded as dying of COVID. Thus I don’t feel particularly at risk.
3) We all have to come to terms with mortality, and a disease that strikes the very old and sick doesn’t seem too much of a disaster.
I agree with David’s comments, but I have also learned from the ‘statin’ debate that it can be helpful to think about what other measures you can take that might be equally efficacious? There is ample evidence on good metabolic health being a protective factor and of course vitamin D. I have finally ordered a vitamin D test in the post after thinking all winter ‘I take supplements, I’m probably OK’. I don’t want to leave it to chance any more. Also Dr Kendrick, is there any value in the pneumococcal vaccine as an alternative?
Here’s a fun link to help counteract people making silly comments about Covid deaths.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/deathsinvolvingcovid19interactivemap/2020-06-12
Steve: I find drug and cosmetic company testing using animals distasteful, too, but for all of the medical products (they are not vaccines) being used currently, there was no animal testing, which is a real problem for finding problematic safety issues; challenge testing on animals (usually ferrets) in the past has doomed all attempts to develop mRNA medical products. I think we’re going to see injuries and deaths which will doom these as well. May be difficult to sweep them under the carpet because a huge slice of the public (at least in the U.S.) are wary of them. Governments seem to have tied their star to them, though, and they are liability-free, so the public is essentially being screwed in the name of massive profits for industry. As our president speculated, the cure may be worse than the disease.
The reason that I asked Dr Kendrick yesterday about the apparent rise in the death rate, is to find out his views on the so-called UK variant of the virus and whether its alleged enhanced ability to transmit is likely to modify any of his thoughts on the appropriateness of the UK or worldwide response. Perhaps I should not have used the words ‘more virulent’ to describe its characteristics. As David Bailey pointed out, ‘more infective’ is a better expression.
I am irritated, as most commenters here seem to be, by the MSM obsession with the number of positive test results, being aware of the unreliable nature of the tests and perhaps wrongly, thinking anyway that more positives mean a better build-up of immunity, so ‘a good thing’ as opposed to the hysterical impending doom portrayed by the media as a whole – as long as the number of excess deaths is not genuinely ‘intolerable’. What is tolerable?. Does it look yet as though the ‘UK variant’ is going to take us beyond what sensible people would think tolerable? Surely ten percent above the five-year average death rate is tolerable. Is twenty percent?
In my view, what is not tolerable is the enormous damage being done to almost every aspect of our lives and our future by what seems to be a totally disproportionate response to the epidemic.
It’s not about an epidemic. It’s about totalitarianism.
Something to think about…
‘In the context of highly infectious disease, every person is at risk of infection and a potential threat to the life and health of others — a person’s default state is of a nature and degree to warrant immunisation.’
As raised in this article: Our default state: Compulsory vaccination for COVID-19 and human rights law: https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2021/01/08/our-default-state-compulsory-vaccination-for-covid-19-and-human-rights-law/
That document is a total crock. It is a bunch of scheming psychos who are trying to twist the meaning of words for their own benefit. IMO they are such dangerous people they should be sectioned under the mental health legislation and locked up indefinitely. For most people, ie more than 99%, these viruses are not a threat to safety. In just the same way all those involved in the production and administering of the vaccine have no liability, I should have no liability for not wanting a substance which may cause me harm.
Are the recipients in the UK or anywhere else given this information about ADE?
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijcp.13795
Three minute Youtube video by a doctor on the potential benefits of Ivermectin, censored
Google’s employees of course know more about medicine than do qualified doctors.
Worth posting the fact of the censorship on Twitter, if you use it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55598918 we are now encouraged to act as if we have the virus. As flu can be asymptomatic and we have never adopted these stringent measures, what is so different with SARS-CoV-2 to every other virus that we have to act as if we have it? Should I act as if I have Ebola? Smallpox? Polio? Norovirus? Dengue fever? Malaria? although I have no symptoms of any of these.
What are people so scared of with SARS-CoV-2?
When people start dying from ADE in the next couple of years they will just use that to pretend that there are new and deadlier viruses and we shall live under house arrest forever and have no social life ever again.
What is going on in the UK…?
These are the headlines in the UK Telegraph:
Crackdown planned as Covid deaths hit record high. Ministers considering tough new measures to pressure more people to stay at home
Sage advisers call for tougher lockdown than March after record single-day deaths
Sage advisers are calling for a lockdown tougher than the one seen in March as they argue the current restrictions do not go far enough.
Professor Susan Michie, a health psychology professor at University College London who sits on a Sage subcommittee, said more stringent action was needed.
While around 90 per cent of Britons are sticking to the rules there are also “more people out and about”, Prof Michie told the Today programme.
“It should definitely be tightened,” she said. “This is quite a lax lockdown because we’ve still got a lot of household contact, people go in and out of other’s houses. We should have stricter rather than a less strict lockdown than we had in March.
“You have this wide definition of critical workers and therefore you’ve got really busy public transport. There’s also this new variant, and we have the winter season and the virus survives for longer in the cold.”
Dr Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the newer, more transmissible variant should be treated as a “pandemic within a pandemic”.
The Sage member told BBC Radio 4: “Even if we went back to that last spring level of reduction in contacts, we couldn’t be confident we would see the same effects as we saw last year because of the increased transmission.
“So both for the UK, and many other countries as well, we need to get away from this idea that we’re going to see a repeat of what happened last spring with our behaviours and really face the possibility that this is much riskier and we’re going to have to work much harder to reduce the impact.”
It comes after the UK yesterday recorded its highest single-day death toll since the start of the pandemic, with 1,325 deaths confirmed, while a further 68,053 positive tests were confirmed.
The US also has a ‘worst day’ too…
US sees most single-day deaths in pandemic: 4,000+
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/01/us-sees-most-single-day-deaths-pandemic-4000
Please suh… can we have su mo lockdown? Please keep us safe suh….
😂😂😂😂😂
Since there aren’t wagon loads of bodies being carted off daily from houses, it’s pure and simple tyrannical oppression, based on claimed, but unsubstantiated so called science. Some people in Kent agree with the approach apparently.
the cruelty of all this almost brings tears to my eyes.
Will they ever cross the line to the extent that people wake up? Or is that impossible?
I endured two months of Level 4 lockdown here in New Zealand. We live on a large section with biking and running tracks nearby so we could get out on a daily basis. And in spite of that by the end of the lockdown I was bored and irritated to high hell.
I cannot imagine what it must be like for people in places like London, or Berlin and other places that are cold and dark and have experienced multiple lockdowns. Quebec, which has a curfew in place as well, must be a nightmare.
I have a good friend living in Montreal who has taken to drinking heavily most days because there is not much else to do and no reason to wake up in the morning – and that was before the curfew.
I suppose when the End Game arrives most people will be so mentally, physically and financially busted to pieces that they’ll welcome it. I suspect the psychologists who are advising the PTB on how to best get rid of us now that we’ve reached The Limits to Growth, have been working on this strategy for many years. They must be watching their plan in action with some degree of satisfaction.
What is going on is a progression towards martial law (if one subscribes to the theory that the leak out of Canada below is real).
Fake Covid tests along with deaths caused by co-morbidities being attributed to Covid to ratchet up fear. Fear makes it very easy to control people because they look to the authorities for answers. Lockdowns and maks will help everyone ‘stay safe’
What the leak does not indicate is the why. Trudeau has said Covid is an opportunity to fix all that ails the planet — Time Magazine has an entire website on this.
Obviously this is all bullshit. However people holding passports from DelusiSTAN (many people) accept that a Great Reset is coming – we just need to get past Covid.
Clearly that leak does not provide the full story. The people who were at that meeting were told only what they need to know to execute the plan.
Because I know that 1. the financial system was about to collapse towards the end of 2019 and 2. conventional oil peaked in 2005 and shale peaked in 2019…
I know there can be no Great (or not so Great) Reset. Which means I must look for other answers.
We clearly have reached the Limits to Growth. We are as a species like a mouse trapped in a jar of water.
We are an extremely violent species that if sated can also show great acts of kindness to each other. But make no mistake, if you throw 10 starving humans in a cage with a single pizza, they will behave like starving dogs on a single bone….
If I had to guess, this is all about getting us into our individual cages and putting us down by starvation. The volume on fear will be turned up to total hysteria before this is over and nearly everyone will be begging more total military enforced lockdowns.
The promised food will not arrive and we’ll all weaken and drift off into a painless death.
Better than 8B people beating each other to death when the pizza delivery number goes dead. And definitely better than making pizza out of each other as toppings.
I’m roughly 80% certain of that as the end game.
Let’s revisit the leak — and see what comes next shall we!!!
1:47 PM (7 hours ago) Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Saturday, October 10, 2020 1:38 PM, (REMOVED) wrote:
Dear (REMOVED),
I want to provide you some very important information. I’m a committee member within the Liberal Party of Canada. I sit within several committee groups but the information I am providing is originating from the Strategic Planning committee (which is steered by the PMO).
I need to start off by saying that I’m not happy doing this but I have to. As a Canadian and more importantly as a parent who wants a better future not only for my children but for other children as well.
The other reason I am doing this is because roughly 30% of the committee members are not pleased with the direction this will take Canada, but our opinions have been ignored and they plan on moving forward toward their goals. They have also made it very clear that nothing will stop the planned outcomes.
The road map and aim was set out by the PMO and is as follows:
– Phase in secondary lock down restrictions on a rolling basis, starting with major metropolitan areas first and expanding outward. Expected by November 2020. Expected by December 2020.
– Daily new cases of COVID-19 will surge beyond capacity of testing, including increases in COVID related deaths following the same growth curves. Expected by end of November 2020.
– Complete and total secondary lock down (much stricter than the first and second rolling phase restrictions). Expected by end of December 2020 – early January 2021
– Reform and expansion of the unemployment program to be transitioned into the universal basic income program. Expected by Q1 2021.
– Projected COVID-19 mutation and/or co-infection with secondary virus (referred to as COVID-21) leading to a third wave with much higher mortality rate and higher rate of infection. Expected by February 2021.
– Daily new cases of COVID-21 hospitalizations and COVID-19 and COVID-21 related deaths will exceed medical care facilities capacity. Expected Q1 – Q2 2021.
– Enhanced lock down restrictions (referred to as Third Lock Down) will be implemented. Full travel restrictions will be imposed (including inter-province and inter-city). Expected Q2 2021.
– Transitioning of individuals into the universal basic income program. Expected mid Q2 2021.
– Projected supply chain break downs, inventory shortages, large economic instability. Expected late Q2 2021.
– Deployment of military personnel into major metropolitan areas as well as all major roadways to establish travel checkpoints. Restrict travel and movement. Provide logistical support to the area. Expected by Q3 2021. Along with that provided road map the Strategic Planning committee was asked to design an effective way of transitioning Canadians to meet a unprecedented economic endeavor.
One that would change the face of Canada and forever alter the lives of Canadians. What we were told was that in order to offset what was essentially an economic collapse on a international scale, that the federal government was going to offer Canadians a total debt relief.
This is how it works: the federal government will offer to eliminate all personal debts (mortgages, loans, credit cards, etc) which all funding will be provided to Canada by the IMF under what will become known as the World Debt Reset program. In exchange for acceptance of this total debt forgiveness the individual would forfeit ownership of any and all property and assets forever.
The individual would also have to agree to partake in the COVID-19 and COVID-21 vaccination schedule, which would provide the individual with unrestricted travel and unrestricted living even under a full lock down (through the use of photo identification referred to as Canada’s HealthPass).
Committee members asked who would become the owner of the forfeited property and assets in that scenario and what would happen to lenders or financial institutions, we were simply told “the World Debt Reset program will handle all of the details”. Several committee members also questioned what would happen to individuals if they refused to participate in the World Debt Reset program, or the HealthPass, or the vaccination schedule, and the answer we got was very troubling.
Essentially we were told it was our duty to make sure we came up with a plan to ensure that would never happen. We were told it was in the individuals best interest to participate. When several committee members pushed relentlessly to get an answer we were told that those who refused would first live under the lock down restrictions indefinitely.
And that over a short period of time as more Canadians transitioned into the debt forgiveness program, the ones who refused to participate would be deemed a public safety risk and would be relocated into isolation facilities. Once in those facilities they would be given two options, participate in the debt forgiveness program and be released, or stay indefinitely in the isolation facility under the classification of a serious public health risk and have all their assets seized.
So as you can imagine after hearing all of this it turned into quite the heated discussion and escalated beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed before. In the end it was implied by the PMO that the whole agenda will move forward no matter who agrees with it or not. That it wont just be Canada but in fact all nations will have similar roadmaps and agendas.
That we need to take advantage of the situations before us to promote change on a grander scale for the betterment of everyone. The members who were opposed and ones who brought up key issues that would arise from such a thing were completely ignored. Our opinions and concerns were ignored. We were simply told to just do it.
All I know is that I don’t like it and I think its going to place Canadians into a dark future.
Vancouver, Canada· Posted October 14
I’m revisiting Neil Ferguson et al’s infamous modelling report: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
Consider these statements:
For an uncontrolled epidemic, we predict critical care bed capacity would be exceeded as early as the second week in April, with an eventual peak in ICU or critical care bed demand that is over 30 times greater than the maximum supply in both countries (Figure 2).
The aim of mitigation is to reduce the impact of an epidemic by flattening the curve, reducing peak incidence and overall deaths (Figure 2). Since the aim of mitigation is to minimise mortality, the interventions need to remain in place for as much of the epidemic period as possible. Introducing such interventions too early risks allowing transmission to return once they are lifted (if insufficient herd immunity has developed); it is therefore necessary to balance the timing of introduction with the scale of disruption imposed and the likely period over which the interventions can be maintained. In this scenario, interventions can limit transmission to the extent that little herd immunity is acquired – leading to the possibility that a second wave of infection is seen once interventions are lifted. (My emphasis.)
Once interventions are relaxed (in the example in Figure 3, from September onwards), infections begin to rise, resulting in a predicted peak epidemic later in the year. The more successful a strategy is at temporary suppression, the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination, due to lesser build-up of herd immunity. (My emphasis.)
Are the unnatural interventions in human life/society causing devastating long-term damage?
Is London already headed for herd immunity? ‘Professor Lockdown’ Neil Ferguson predicts high infection rate in places like the capital and vaccine rollout will slow Covid spread and help life get ‘back to normal’ by autumn
Ferguson’s grim predictions of 500,000 deaths in the UK convinced government to implement first lockdown
Now he says London may have herd immunity because 25-30 per cent of the population has been infected
He adds that areas in the Northwest of England could be on its way to herd immunity too
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9131383/Professor-Lockdown-Neil-Ferguson-believes-London-herd-immunity.html
This is where we are https://twitter.com/i/status/1347246304401960961 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55560814
Think about the message this sends to anyone who is tiring of these senseless lockdowns.
In America there are a lot of guns. So who is going to stop talking the talk and actually walking the walk and pulling the trigger first? No one – that’s who.
‘They have also made it very clear that nothing will stop the planned outcomes’
Let’s revisit the leak out of Canada where holiday season lockdowns are being extended and more extreme. In Quebec there is now an 8pm till 5am curfew.
If this is a faked leak then why put such specific time frames on it?
If this is a faked leak then how was the person who faked it able to predict EXACTLY what is happening in Canada?
If this is a fake leak why would Reuters even bother to acknowledge it (rather lamely) https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-canada/fact-check-a-leaked-message-outlining-alleged-canadian-govt-plan-to-create-a-totalitarian-state-through-lockdowns-and-credit-strategy-is-fake-idUSKBN27C344
LEAK OUT OF CANADA IN MID-OCTOBER:
1:47 PM (7 hours ago) Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Saturday, October 10, 2020 1:38 PM, (REMOVED) wrote:
Dear (REMOVED),
I want to provide you some very important information. I’m a committee member within the Liberal Party of Canada. I sit within several committee groups but the information I am providing is originating from the Strategic Planning committee (which is steered by the PMO).
I need to start off by saying that I’m not happy doing this but I have to. As a Canadian and more importantly as a parent who wants a better future not only for my children but for other children as well.
The other reason I am doing this is because roughly 30% of the committee members are not pleased with the direction this will take Canada, but our opinions have been ignored and they plan on moving forward toward their goals. They have also made it very clear that nothing will stop the planned outcomes.
The road map and aim was set out by the PMO and is as follows:
– Phase in secondary lock down restrictions on a rolling basis, starting with major metropolitan areas first and expanding outward. Expected by November 2020. Expected by December 2020.
– Daily new cases of COVID-19 will surge beyond capacity of testing, including increases in COVID related deaths following the same growth curves. Expected by end of November 2020.
– Complete and total secondary lock down (much stricter than the first and second rolling phase restrictions). Expected by end of December 2020 – early January 2021
– Reform and expansion of the unemployment program to be transitioned into the universal basic income program. Expected by Q1 2021.
– Projected COVID-19 mutation and/or co-infection with secondary virus (referred to as COVID-21) leading to a third wave with much higher mortality rate and higher rate of infection. Expected by February 2021.
– Daily new cases of COVID-21 hospitalizations and COVID-19 and COVID-21 related deaths will exceed medical care facilities capacity. Expected Q1 – Q2 2021.
– Enhanced lock down restrictions (referred to as Third Lock Down) will be implemented. Full travel restrictions will be imposed (including inter-province and inter-city). Expected Q2 2021.
– Transitioning of individuals into the universal basic income program. Expected mid Q2 2021.
– Projected supply chain break downs, inventory shortages, large economic instability. Expected late Q2 2021.
– Deployment of military personnel into major metropolitan areas as well as all major roadways to establish travel checkpoints. Restrict travel and movement. Provide logistical support to the area. Expected by Q3 2021. Along with that provided road map the Strategic Planning committee was asked to design an effective way of transitioning Canadians to meet a unprecedented economic endeavor.
One that would change the face of Canada and forever alter the lives of Canadians. What we were told was that in order to offset what was essentially an economic collapse on a international scale, that the federal government was going to offer Canadians a total debt relief.
This is how it works: the federal government will offer to eliminate all personal debts (mortgages, loans, credit cards, etc) which all funding will be provided to Canada by the IMF under what will become known as the World Debt Reset program. In exchange for acceptance of this total debt forgiveness the individual would forfeit ownership of any and all property and assets forever.
The individual would also have to agree to partake in the COVID-19 and COVID-21 vaccination schedule, which would provide the individual with unrestricted travel and unrestricted living even under a full lock down (through the use of photo identification referred to as Canada’s HealthPass).
Committee members asked who would become the owner of the forfeited property and assets in that scenario and what would happen to lenders or financial institutions, we were simply told “the World Debt Reset program will handle all of the details”. Several committee members also questioned what would happen to individuals if they refused to participate in the World Debt Reset program, or the HealthPass, or the vaccination schedule, and the answer we got was very troubling.
Essentially we were told it was our duty to make sure we came up with a plan to ensure that would never happen. We were told it was in the individuals best interest to participate. When several committee members pushed relentlessly to get an answer we were told that those who refused would first live under the lock down restrictions indefinitely.
And that over a short period of time as more Canadians transitioned into the debt forgiveness program, the ones who refused to participate would be deemed a public safety risk and would be relocated into isolation facilities. Once in those facilities they would be given two options, participate in the debt forgiveness program and be released, or stay indefinitely in the isolation facility under the classification of a serious public health risk and have all their assets seized.
So as you can imagine after hearing all of this it turned into quite the heated discussion and escalated beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed before. In the end it was implied by the PMO that the whole agenda will move forward no matter who agrees with it or not. That it wont just be Canada but in fact all nations will have similar roadmaps and agendas.
That we need to take advantage of the situations before us to promote change on a grander scale for the betterment of everyone. The members who were opposed and ones who brought up key issues that would arise from such a thing were completely ignored. Our opinions and concerns were ignored. We were simply told to just do it.
All I know is that I don’t like it and I think its going to place Canadians into a dark future.
Vancouver, Canada· Posted October 14
Just to say Derbyshire Police were forced to row back after the media exposure regarding the two women driving 5 miles from their home – the BBC has it here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55594244 although strangely chose not to link the update to the original story. The government seems to be aware they are close to the limit of what they can impose – look out for another onslaught of psychological warfare!
Take a look at this stunning graph analysis of the lifesaving efficacy of Ivermectin in the Mexican state of Chiapas, where there is widespread use of ivermectin:
https://twitter.com/Covid19Critical/status/1347721731272830976
Dr. John H, I think someone may cass “BS” on this. I don’t, many thanks for posting
I don’t know how you expect the poor pharmaceutical companies to earn a crust if people just go around willy nilly using cheap, off the shelf, tested medicines ?
Big news in the States. No, not the massive banning of conservative voices from social media. That was a stupid tactic and will just alert the sheep that something is up.
Pelosi is scared and is calling for Trump’s immediate impeachment. The scuttlebutt is that some special forces were mixed in with protestors and that they entered Pelosi’s office and took her laptop and that there is incriminating evidence that Pelosi has been working for the Chinese and committed treason against the US. We all thought it odd that some of the Capitol Police actually aided protestors entering the Capitol.
National Guard troops from Virginia, Maryland, and DC have surrounded the White House. The DC mayor is a democrat and so is the governor of Virginia. The governor of Maryland is a RINO. There’s a rumor that special forces troops are being bussed in to DC to counter the National Guard troops. Recall that the Acting Secretary of Defense is a former special forces commander. In any case, President Trump is away from the White House.
I would not be surprised if some democrats and “republicans” in DC were arrested soon. There have been some Chinese defectors who are giving info about collaborators in Congress.
theasdgamer, come on, I know we get a tad political from time to time, but that’s a bit overtly so on a supposedly medical blog.
AH,
Maybe so, but I believe the election fraud and the goings on in DC are directly related to the covid oppression scenario.
theasdgamer: Things have clearly gone horribly wrong in the swamp of Washington, D.C. As to what to believe of all of this, I don’t know. The Acting Secretary of Defense is a good guy, and the Special Forces are under his direct command now, but the military is not one united force, and the Pentagon is full of career spenders of vast numbers of taxpayer dollars, bureaucrats. We shall see.
I think this whole plandemic may be part of the plan to get rid of Trump. That makes a lot more sense than all the vague talk of Reset21.
How do you convince every country in the world to play along with this plan? Even those that are sworn enemies of the United States?
Isn’t it easier to just have the FBI invent Russia-gate and get the MSM to perpetuate the lie for 4 years then when you realize you are still about to lose, stuff boxes of ballots under tables, send the observers home then run the ballots through the counting machines?
Surely there is no need to destroy the global economy to achieve the goal of ending Trump
Casualties of war.
Such Crap but i suspect a lot of the usual commenters on this blog will believe it’s true.
No need to reply- i’ve just taken delivery of 6 Dorothy Dunnett novels, which i last read about 30 years ago so i’m about to read some great, rivetting historical fiction, not right -wjng conspiracy theorist fiction/ fantasy
Goodbye and thanks for all the BS
I wish you were our health minister here in Australia. We are in lock down because one single person tested “positive” to the mutant strain. We are now having to wear masks everywhere including in our cars driving alone!!
Frankly I’m glad he isn’t.
A total of 809 deaths in Australia from Covid in the past year and total population of 25 million.
Now how many is it in the UK or the USA ?
What are the statistics for Australia on suicides, drug Od’s, and deaths from delayed health care?
@theasdgamer, this from Australia, Population now 25.6M :-
” In 2019, preliminary data showed a total of 3,318 deaths by suicide (age-standardised suicide rate 12.9 per 100,000),
Average of . 9 per day. – 6 males and 3 females.
Do these numbers stay fairly constant for 2020?
Hi, Virginia,
I have a theory about your “health minister” idea. I think they’re really all politicians, not practicing scientists. Yep yours, Fauci, Birx, Whitty, Valance, and etc. All of them. Their job is to provide cover for the government’s preferred policy, which is to avoid deaths at all cost (bad for a politician’s continued employment). Dr Kendrick wouldn’t last long in a position like that. Wouldn’t be selected in the first place.
On masks inside your car: Would the police really stop you if they observed you unmasked while driving alone? I’m in LA Count, California, current COVID capitol of the USA. The cops don’t even do that here!
In Germany the driver of a car must remain maskless because it is more important to identify someone committing a traffic misdemeanour, than risking infecting their passengers …
Sebastian Rushworth provides his summary of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine products in his blog post:
Are the covid vaccines safe and effective?
I like that article.
The one elephant in the room however, argueably as relevant as whether vaccines prevent serious infection / death in the elderly and vulberable, is do they prevent people passing it on, whether or not they are symptomatic. This surely is vital in light of a mass vaccination programme in those at very little risk.
It doesn’t sound at all ethical to give a meningococcus vaccine instead of a placebo without a person’s knowledge and permission. Very disturbing.
They did know – it was laid out in the Patient Information Sheet that they read prior to giving consent.
That is good. Thanks.
You are simply saying that you do not like the study. But it’s peer reviewed and is looking at the evidence systematically.
The point is the same. No one has shown systematically with actual data (as opposed to models) that lock downs have helped.
Ireland on the rise…
Oops. Cut the pic instead of copying it:
Dr Kendrick,
I’m a big fan of you and you and your blog, I completely support your view on saturated fats and heart disease but I’m very unpersuaded by your anti-lockdown arguments. I’m very grateful for people locking down to have helped keep me alive. With the latest results from Sweden, do still hold to your view?
Thank you for reading anyway. I suppose most people must feel that lockdwons are a good idea, because the level of support is very high. Perhaps I am wrong. I don’t yet believe so.
The gimp enjoyed being locked in a wooden box with a ball in his mouth.
Anthony,
I think it is obvious that a true lockdown in which each household had absolutely no contact with any other for a sufficient period of time, would be successful (but with enormous cost and loss of life from other things).
The point is, the only way that people can get food, is to go shopping – typically to the supermarkets. If this bug really is passed on from person to person, that would be the obvious place for this to happen. I say ‘if’ because of the Hope-Simpson book that others have referred to.
Also, if the PCR test is showing any appreciable false positives, we will never seem to be rid of the disease.
RT-PCR tests https://youtu.be/EWNkJUDctdk This should not be viewed by people between the Thames estuary and the Dover Strait/English Channel. It appears a totally different biological system exists there.
AhNotepad: Thank you for posting that.
Covid-19 – The Illogicality of claims of PCR false positives and low fatality rates
UK statistics as at 18 Jan 2020 (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths?areaType=overview&areaName=United%20Kingdomj
Tests completed 61,774,304 a
Positive cases 3,433,494 b
Hospitalisations 343,613 c
Deaths 89,243 d
Total infections. 6,000,000 e (ONS estimate https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19infectionsinthecommunityinengland/antibodydatafortheukjanuary2021)
Estimated deaths. 96,000 f (ONS estimate)
Case fatality rate (d/b) 2.59%
Infection fatality rate (f/e) 1.60%
A key plank of lockdown scepticism is that PCR tests have a high rate of false positives
The evidence does not support this but it’s crucial for anti-lockdown rhetoric
Also crucial is the Infection Fatality Rate as the lower this is, the lower the risk to life
There are claims that PCR false positives are as high as 93%
It’s also claimed that the IFR is a low as 0.1%
Looking at the data above if, say, only 50% of the cases were false CFR would be above 5%, if false positives were 93% as claimed CFR would be 37% and more people would have been hospitalised than have had the virus.
If UK IFR was 0.1% as claimed, total infections would have to be 96 million, way above UK population
If UK IFR was 0.23% (possible worldwide average) infections would have to be 42 million, way above the current ONS estimate from antibody testing
It is clear from the above that claims of a high proportion of PCR tests being false positives and a low IFR are at best unrealistic and at worst ridiculous. The dangers of acting on these claims are twofold: firstly that underestimating PCR positives (overestimating false positives) leads to policy decisions based on lower case rates. Analysis of infection rates before, during and after lockdowns (and other restrictions) proves the effectiveness of such measures so there is a clear danger from failing to implement them – either at all or in good time.
Secondly underestimating IFR also leads to dangerous policy strategy, based on a much lower total number of expected deaths. For example if “herd immunity” is assumed to be achieved at 60% of the population being infected (40 million), IFR of 0.1% would mean 40k deaths whereas IFR of 1.5% would mean 600k.
The point also has to be made that if a large proportion of cases are false positives, the IFR will be staggeringly high.
In his April 2020 evidence to the select committee Prof Thomas of Bristol University (who has been against lockdowns) concluded that there would be 990k deaths because he added an estimate of consequential deaths due to health services becoming overrun, an additional risk not accounted for here. He based this on the early experience of Wuhan.
There is debate about the possibility of pre-existing immunity which may provide some additional community protection, but there is also debate about the population percentage needed for herd immunity being substantially higher. Until one or both of these contentions is proved, the safe option is to decide policy based on current estimates and general consensus.
The large number of deaths just suggests to me that we must have the worst treatment in Europe, or possibly the world. I did see that many hpstial sare still using ventialrors for many patoents althugh that’s been shown to cause more deaths. The NHS also ignores treatment sthat have been successful in other countries. WHY? I also find it interesting that increase in cases seems to follow increase in vaccinations. Are people who are vaccinated testing positive? Are they turning into asymptomatic spreaders? Impossible to say unless it is investigated. I’m beginning to envy those who die as they don’t have to put up with teh destruciton of society by lockdowns any more.
Yes Sweden — but first let’s pull some real data on Sweden.
In July they were FIFTH on this list. Then they adopted Focused Protection..
Now they are TWENTY EIGHT.
Never locked down. Never mandates masks. (unlike most of the countries higher in the table)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
I do enjoy watching CovIDIOTS flop about like beached whales when confronted by that data!!!
Baz in Kent: I’m reading an essay/review of “Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession,” in which the author quotes John Foster, a Baptist preacher in 1804 whose “ideas of boldness and resolution are explicitly related to the likes of Richard III, who, says Foster, ‘did not waver while he pursued his object, nor relent when he seized it.’ ” Which makes me wonder, will you be relentless when you seize the ones you pursue, or not seize them and just lurk (or is lurking now forbidden in the UK, or expressly encouraged)?
In reply to Gary Ogden, it’s a good question. Consider this:
I’m a retired widower living alone, luckily I don’t get bored as I have a digital recording studio where I’m recording an album (themed on Love, Loss and Time in case you’d like to know) but I welcome diversions from time to time. Hopefully you’ve seen how passionate I am about people like Kendrick influencing others to challenge lockdown restrictions and in that act, risk other people’s lives – I believe for no better reason than financial gain.
I’ve never been a “lurker” and never will be.
As to Richard III, it depends on your assessment of the man, Shakespearean or no? I certainly don’t see myself as the bard’s version.
I hope that answers you.
Nice to see someone change their mind…..
Canadian expert’s research finds lockdown harms are 10 times greater than benefits
Dr. Ari Joffe is a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Alberta. He has written a paper titled COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink that finds the harms of lockdowns are 10 times greater than their benefits.
You were a strong proponent of lockdowns initially but have since changed your mind. Why is that?
There are a few reasons why I supported lockdowns at first.
First, initial data falsely suggested that the infection fatality rate was up to 2-3%, that over 80% of the population would be infected, and modelling suggested repeated lockdowns would be necessary.
But emerging data showed that the median infection fatality rate is 0.23%, that the median infection fatality rate in people under 70 years old is 0.05%, and that the high-risk group is older people especially those with severe co-morbidities.
In addition, it is likely that in most situations only 20-40% of the population would be infected before ongoing transmission is limited (i.e., herd-immunity).
Second, I am an infectious diseases and critical care physician, and am not trained to make public policy decisions. I was only considering the direct effects of COVID-19 and my knowledge of how to prevent these direct effects. I was not considering the immense effects of the response to COVID-19 (that is, lockdowns) on public health and wellbeing.
Emerging data has shown a staggering amount of so-called ‘collateral damage’ due to the lockdowns.
This can be predicted to adversely affect many millions of people globally with food insecurity [82-132 million more people], severe poverty [70 million more people], maternal and under age-5 mortality from interrupted healthcare [1.7 million more people], infectious diseases deaths from interrupted services [millions of people with Tuberculosis, Malaria, and HIV], school closures for children [affecting children’s future earning potential and lifespan], interrupted vaccination campaigns for millions of children, and intimate partner violence for millions of women.
In high-income countries adverse effects also occur from delayed and interrupted healthcare, unemployment, loneliness, deteriorating mental health, increased opioid crisis deaths, and more.
Third, a formal cost-benefit analysis of different responses to the pandemic was not done by government or public health experts. Initially, I simply assumed that lockdowns to suppress the pandemic were the best approach. But policy decisions on public health should require a cost-benefit analysis.
Since lockdowns are a public health intervention, aiming to improve the population wellbeing, we must consider both benefits of lockdowns, and costs of lockdowns on the population wellbeing. Once I became more informed, I realized that lockdowns cause far more harm than they prevent.
There has never been a full cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns done in Canada. What did you find when you did yours?
First, some background into the cost-benefit analysis. I discovered information I was not aware of before. First, framing decisions as between saving lives versus saving the economy is a false dichotomy.
There is a strong long-run relationship between economic recession and public health. This makes sense, as government spending on things like healthcare, education, roads, sanitation, housing, nutrition, vaccines, safety, social security nets, clean energy, and other services determines the population well-being and life-expectancy.
If the government is forced to spend less on these social determinants of health, there will be ‘statistical lives’ lost, that is, people will die in the years to come.
Second, I had underestimated the effects of loneliness and unemployment on public health. It turns out that loneliness and unemployment are known to be among the strongest risk factors for early mortality, reduced lifespan, and chronic diseases.
Third, in making policy decisions there are trade-offs to consider, costs and benefits, and we have to choose between options that each have tragic outcomes in order to advocate for the least people to die as possible.
In the cost-benefit analysis I consider the benefits of lockdowns in preventing deaths from COV
Canadian expert’s research finds lockdown harms are 10 times greater than benefits
Dr. Ari Joffe is a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Alberta. He has written a paper titled COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink that finds the harms of lockdowns are 10 times greater than their benefits.
You were a strong proponent of lockdowns initially but have since changed your mind. Why is that?
There are a few reasons why I supported lockdowns at first.
First, initial data falsely suggested that the infection fatality rate was up to 2-3%, that over 80% of the population would be infected, and modelling suggested repeated lockdowns would be necessary.
But emerging data showed that the median infection fatality rate is 0.23%, that the median infection fatality rate in people under 70 years old is 0.05%, and that the high-risk group is older people especially those with severe co-morbidities.
In addition, it is likely that in most situations only 20-40% of the population would be infected before ongoing transmission is limited (i.e., herd-immunity).
Second, I am an infectious diseases and critical care physician, and am not trained to make public policy decisions. I was only considering the direct effects of COVID-19 and my knowledge of how to prevent these direct effects. I was not considering the immense effects of the response to COVID-19 (that is, lockdowns) on public health and wellbeing.
Emerging data has shown a staggering amount of so-called ‘collateral damage’ due to the lockdowns. This can be predicted to adversely affect many millions of people globally with food insecurity [82-132 million more people], severe poverty [70 million more people], maternal and under age-5 mortality from interrupted healthcare [1.7 million more people], infectious diseases deaths from interrupted services [millions of people with Tuberculosis, Malaria, and HIV], school closures for children [affecting children’s future earning potential and lifespan], interrupted vaccination campaigns for millions of children, and intimate partner violence for millions of women. In high-income countries adverse effects also occur from delayed and interrupted healthcare, unemployment, loneliness, deteriorating mental health, increased opioid crisis deaths, and more.
Third, a formal cost-benefit analysis of different responses to the pandemic was not done by government or public health experts. Initially, I simply assumed that lockdowns to suppress the pandemic were the best approach. But policy decisions on public health should require a cost-benefit analysis.
Since lockdowns are a public health intervention, aiming to improve the population wellbeing, we must consider both benefits of lockdowns, and costs of lockdowns on the population wellbeing. Once I became more informed, I realized that lockdowns cause far more harm than they prevent.
There has never been a full cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns done in Canada. What did you find when you did yours?
First, some background into the cost-benefit analysis. I discovered information I was not aware of before. First, framing decisions as between saving lives versus saving the economy is a false dichotomy.
There is a strong long-run relationship between economic recession and public health. This makes sense, as government spending on things like healthcare, education, roads, sanitation, housing, nutrition, vaccines, safety, social security nets, clean energy, and other services determines the population well-being and life-expectancy. If the government is forced to spend less on these social determinants of health, there will be ‘statistical lives’ lost, that is, people will die in the years to come.
Second, I had underestimated the effects of loneliness and unemployment on public health. It turns out that loneliness and unemployment are known to be among the strongest risk factors for early mortality, reduced lifespan, and chronic diseases. Third, in making policy decisions there are trade-offs to consider, costs and benefits, and we have to choose between options that each have tragic outcomes in order to advocate for the least people to die as possible.
In the cost-benefit analysis I consider the benefits of lockdowns in preventing deaths from COVID-19, and the costs of lockdowns in terms of the effects of the recession, loneliness, and unemployment on population wellbeing and mortality. I did not consider all of the other so-called ‘collateral damage’ of lockdowns mentioned above.
It turned out that the costs of lockdowns are at least 10 times higher than the benefits. That is, lockdowns cause far more harm to population wellbeing than COVID-19 can. It is important to note that I support a focused protection approach, where we aim to protect those truly at high-risk of COVID-19 mortality, including older people, especially those with severe co-morbidities and those in nursing homes and hospitals.
ID-19, and the costs of lockdowns in terms of the effects of the recession, loneliness, and unemployment on population wellbeing and mortality. I did not consider all of the other so-called ‘collateral damage’ of lockdowns mentioned above.
It turned out that the costs of lockdowns are at least 10 times higher than the benefits. That is, lockdowns cause far more harm to population wellbeing than COVID-19 can. It is important to note that I support a focused protection approach, where we aim to protect those truly at high-risk of COVID-19 mortality, including older people, especially those with severe co-morbidities and those in nursing homes and hospitals.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/canadian-experts-research-finds-lockdown-harms-are-10-times-greater-than-benefits
The pernicious, second order effects of lockdowns are clear. So why do the politicians insist on lockdowns? Perhaps they don’t have our best interests at heart. Lockdowns certainly demoralize the public. Maybe that’s the intent. But don’t listen to me, I’m a “conspiracy theorist.” I ask questions when things don’t seem right. Makes me an oddity, I suppose. But I was never a fan of rooms with echoes.
You know, it’s funny, I could foresee the pernicious effects of lockdowns straight off and I’m not trained in public policy any more than Joffe. I suspect that Joffe was blinded by tunnel vision due to his specialization.
So why might the PTB want to destroy morale?
How do you get both elected leaders and dictators to dance to this tune?
How do you get the MSM to act as the percussion section?
What do the PTB fear more than the collapse that lockdowns will eventually cause?
What purpose(s) do lockdowns serve?
I am partial to the energy story:
But what’s most striking is that new discoveries aren’t even close to keeping pace with the loss of conventional resources.
According to Rystad, the current resource replacement ratio for conventional resources is only 16 percent. In other words, only one barrel out of every six consumed is being replaced with new resources.
So not only has our pace of discovery declined, but discoveries are also in much more challenging geological venues and typically offshore, which means it could take many years just to bring new resources online.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Biggest-Oil-Gas-Discoveries-Of-2019.html
It would appear that the joyride is over – we need to conserve what remains. Lockdowns are a fantastic way to do that – air travel alone burns 8% of all oil we use.
Of course this is only a temporary ‘solution’ So what’s the end game?
I reckon we’re going to go into full global martial law (we are moving in that direction by the day).. and starved to death. As I have posted previously, it’s better than 8B top of the heap predators getting hungry and having a go at each other.
I can see why the likes of Trudeau and Ardern (snowflakish Koombaya thumping types) would be on board for the Covid Plan. It’s really is the painless option.
No 10 considers a tougher lockdown ‘with curfews, exercise limits, compulsory masks outside, no support bubbles and nurseries shut’ if Covid cases keep rising’ – amid suggestion ‘people may only be allowed to leave home ONCE a week’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9131613/Is-lockdown-TOUGHER-Matt-Hancock-refuses-rule-curfews-closing-nurseries.html
Ontario’s new lockdown measures will be like nothing we’ve seen before https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-ontarios-new-lockdown-measures-will-be-like-nothing-weve-seen-before
Anyone want to revisit that leak out of Canada that predicted all of this?
Martial Law is imminent (if I recall the PMO’s office says Q2). If the above rolls out we can consider it Martial Law Lite.
I thought I’d take a look at a BBC Bitesize lesson for 5-7 year olds. It included a cartoon of a central to the lesson little girl (presumably aged 5-7) wearing a mask in a museum. Please let them not be trying to encourage 5-7 year olds to wear masks even though they are not obliged to!
I hate to see sole car occupants wearing masks. People are making it so easy for us all to be dictated to.
Yes, and look at how masks are now becoming ‘fashionable’ and essential accessories – never let a good crisis go to waste.
The normalisation of mask wearing is insidious and distasteful and, IMO, should be counteracted.
If only one colour mask was made available and if you could only get them from Chemists or Doctors then it would at least give the message this is a temporary and necessary measure. As it is, it is quite clear mask wearing is going to be really difficult to shrug off.
One of Dr Kendrick’s most confidence inducing characteristics is that he is prepared to admit he may be wrong. That makes me trust his opinion. There are others who comment here who have totally and utterly closed minds. I wouldn’t trust a word they say. Mentioning no names, because the same people are incredibly spiteful.
Comparative evaluation of clinical manifestations and risk of death in patients admitted to hospital with covid-19 and seasonal influenza: cohort study | The BMJ
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4677
Could the hysteria triggered by the media have increased the tendency to early intubation? We know that in Italy and some other European countries early intubation was recommended during the first weeks of this pandemic in order to protect health care professionals from infected aerosols. Financial considerations based in diagnosis-related group (DRG) reimbursement incentives might have also contributed. Hence, most likely, the rationales for early intubation might have been unrelated to individual health data.
We know that mechanical ventilation dramatically increases the risks of sepsis and other sequels such as renal insufficiency, hospital stay, or long-term outcome. The crucial question is: Was mechanical ventilation or the type of virus (influenza vs. corona, as the authors suggested) the decisive factor for the differences the authors found?
Hi Malcom,
Thank you for this, it is an interesting read. For those healthy folk under 60 who wish to wait before being vaccinated, how long would you suggest is a decent amount of time to wait?
Thank you
Until April – at which point most of the panic will have subsided
But if panic is politically useful, will TPTB allow the panic to subside? I hear talk of four years of this nonsense.
One the most confidence-inspiring aspects of Dr Kendrick’s posts and his blog, is that he is prepared to accept that he might be wrong. Because of that, I trust what he says. There are those who comment on here, mentioning no names, whose minds are completely shut to any view but their own, and I see no reason to trust their opinions, even if they are quoting ‘facts’. I don’t claim to be all that clever, and frankly don’t understand a lot of what is said, I just have a bit of common sense and some gut feeling. What Dr K has said has helped me a great deal. I don’t know how on earth he finds the time to do his ‘day job’ as well as read all the stuff he must have to read, and write this blog, but I want to say thank you to him. Please don’t give up, whatever anyone says to you Dr K.
Apologies if this appears twice.
I have been a great fan of your blog for many years, Doctor Kendrick, but this is the first tme I have commented. Very recently I heard that apparently the UK records did not include a large number of people who had actually had the virus. It was suggested that this was a bad thing. I would have thought that if more people had had the virus this meant that more people were likely to be immune. I would be interested to have your comments on this.
I find it amusing that a blog entitles, “What is left to say” has collected 1085 comments so far – I think that may be a record here.
David Bailey: Yes, it is a new World Record! Now up to 1,138.
Interesting summary of the vaccine situation by Dr David Healy:
Shifting Vaccine Confidence | Dr. David Healy
https://davidhealy.org/shifting-vaccine-confidence/
Quoting from a recent BMJ rapid response by John Stone, see this link for references: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4845/rr-3
”Misinformation” is an inadequate term which fails to distinguish between information which is false and information deemed unsuitable. Dr Noel Thomas in a letter about informed consent and the high speed delivery of vaccines last week wondered indeed whether the public could ever be adequately informed [2]:
“Even if they explain that the vaccine makers are contractually free of any compensation liability, further queries may be put to them, about that peculiarity ? The lack of medium and long term safety and efficacy information makes them, in some respects, experimental vaccines, another area of uncertainty for clerical staff.”
Would Patten et al direct the public’s attention away from the excellent recent article by Peter Doshi [3] or would they happily acknowledge the gaps in the presently available data?
Should there really be a health bureaucracy deciding for the public what they may read? Last year a former editor of this journal, Richard Smith warned in his article ‘The Faults and Dangers of an Iatocracy’ [4]:
“Doctors have important roles to play in a pandemic—primarily in treating the sick and advising on prevention—but they cannot become rulers, and politicians cannot hide behind them. And we, the people, must never succumb to the idea that a world run by doctors would be a better world.”
I really believe we have gone quite far enough in this direction.
Very good explanation by Mike Yeadon former Pfizer scientist re tests:
For consideration:
Sweden: death rate 2010-2020 | Statista
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/
An interesting seasonal pattern can be seen in the Florence Nightingale (radar plot) at the Centre for Evidence based medicine https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-florence-nightingales-daigrams-for-deaths/
I have downloaded the data from the ONS for England and Wales and have fitted a sine wave pattern to the data (similar to the EUROMO analysis) and the resulting excess deaths look different to the ONS excess deaths based on five year averages but the radar plot is similar to that at CEBM
There are perhaps two observations I would make:
The first is that there is severe underreporting across bank holiday periods followed by overreporting in subsequent weeks. (The ONS has commented on this for week 52 of 2020 when there was one less bank holiday than prior years and consequently a relatively inflated number of deaths reported).
The second is that seasonal flu appears to be triggered seasonally (reactivated) slightly later than the coronavirus has been in 2020.
The question that needs to be answered now is whether we will see a reduction in deaths from covid-19 in the coming weeks or whether the 10% excess mortality will persist. However as Dr Kendrick has pointed out the current winter excess is not a pandemic spike which is clearly visible in the radar plot.
Possible hypotheses on current levels of excess mortality could be that while lockdowns have not succeeded, they have somehow delayed the exposure of smaller sub-communities to the virus; alternatively that the establishment of community equilibrium (herd immunity) has been retarded by lockdowns and tiering measures (see @elizabethhart above – ironic that the comment came from Ferguson). The latter would be a perverse outcome and counter to the current media narrative.
Nonetheless the figures I have derived for excess mortality in the last 12 weeks and first 12 weeks of the succeeding calendar year for prior periods are as follows:
2014/2015 3,574
2015/2016 -11,455
2016/2017 2,799
2017/2018 15,406
2018/2019 -9,540
2019/2020 -177
2020 13,902
The 2020 figure is missing excess deaths for the 12 weeks at the start of 2021.
It is clear that the current winter season is not significantly different from the 2017/2018 winter season at this point in time – in order of magnitude terms (except for timing of viral activation) but the situation is still developing.
What of our finances?
This is good, from Lockdown Sceptics:
https://lockdownsceptics.org/covid-hyper-medicalisation-and-virus-interference/
New ONS excess deaths figures today, covering week 52: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending1january2021
Deaths 26% above the five-year average in the final week of Dec, about 2,100 more deaths than usual. Interesting how the chart on the page does not look very dramatic, certainly not compared to the first wave. But 2,100 more deaths than average is no joke, capping a year with a total of 75,000 more deaths than usual (mostly in the first wave).
I take no view on whether current restrictions have been effective in reducing death and serious illness, nor whether some of those deaths could have been avoided if the restrictions were not in place. There are strong views on this forum; the evidence I’ve seen points different ways.
But let’s not pretend this is trivial illness and no worse than seasonal flu.
Jim
In reply to Jim Robertson, you quote the same figures I’ve already detailed but you’re reluctant to draw a conclusion, despite by your own admission having seen the conflicting opinions. Why is this? Or have you actually already drawn a conclusion and are a little frightened to attract the ire of Dr Kendrick, Fast Eddy or AH Notepad? What you say directly contradicts Dr Kendrick’s post as I’ve already shown, why not just decide what your opinion is and tell us?
Baz. I have a few rules on this site. One is to stop people becoming domionant the comments. So, it is one long post (maybe two, if very important), or three short ones, maybe four.
Of course it makes sense to limit posts but as I’m being challenged by 5 or more people I don’t have much choice. That said many of their posts are repetitive and I’ve refuted them all, so I’m happy to ignore them as the writers seem incapable of forming a balanced, evidence-based view. Having a mind is no use if you never change it.
I’d like you to personally respond please on the main issues I have with your position:
1. You claim that the data shows “despite the howls of anguish from England about COVID19 overwhelming the country, we are really not seeing much at all.” In fact the evidence shows UK all-cause mortality in the last 13 weeks to be > 21,000 above the 5-year average, a quite astonishing and frightening figure https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cBNoLJPN_4J3ZYyxCTUDsUk9N0TWNWQH/view?usp=drivesdk
2. You claim that “ if you have had a COVID19 positive test (which may, or may not, be accurate) and you die within twenty-eight days of that positive test, you will be recorded as a COVID19 death”. This is untrue. Although Covid may indeed be recorded in the death certificate it will only be registered as “underlying cause of death” if it’s recorded as such by the certifying doctor. You may claim that you refer to the government daily statistics but that’s not how you put this point across in the paragraphs following this statement.
3. You claim that “ Mass testing is simply causing mass panic and achieves absolutely nothing.” This is untrue. Until the very recent introduction of mass lateral flow testing (which as far as I know you have never queried, unlike PCR), testing policy has been that only people with symptoms can have a NHS PCR test. This is why testing has increased with the number of people having symptoms and cases have increased because there are more infected people. This is borne out by the number of hospitalisations and people in ICU. PCR’s high sensitivity and specificity mean it’s extremely accurate with very low false results if used on symptomatic people, this is why it isn’t used for mass testing.
I do have other issues with your blog but most of these have been picked up in my earlier replies to you and your followers.
I also believe that you know your claims to be untrue although the only evidence I have for this is your “eminence”.
As I’ve made clear, I am passionate about people in positions of influence, like you, using that influence to induce and encourage others to take actions that endanger the lives of others. I don’t agree with you about statins or cervical smears but everyone has the right to decide about their own life (even though this may later increase demand on the NHS), however breaching lockdown restrictions risk the lives of others.
I look forward to reading your reply.
Comments/mentions on this page:
Me 42
You 73
AH Notepad 127
Fast Eddy 40
Censorship?
You obviously have much to say. Perhaps you should go the effort of setting up a blog, writing articles, dealing with the costs and admin (my blog costs a few hundred a year to run – with no income), reviewing the comments and suchlike. You seem to have become an expert in all matters medical immunological and epidemiological within a very short space of time. Putting my books and articles, medical degrees, lectures and suchlike over the years, to shame. Maybe I will be allowed to comment on your articles in future.
Sarcasm aside that doesn’t really interest me, I’d rather make music. I’ve never before got this involved in a subject but the reason is I’m passionate about it and have time on my hands.
I’m looking forward to your response to my listed points, I’d like to be able to withdraw my accusations and will if convinced.
In answer to the post about aggregating the numbers, my “find” function doesn’t differentiate but most counts are posts and of course the observation would also apply to my own number.
Well, if you can afford your own studio, you are obviously a rich person who can’t possibly understand the problems of lockdowns to “normal” working people who risk losing their livelihoods and having to exist on universal credit (if they are lucky enough to get it) or statutory sick pay if they have a positive test. I notice that th emajorty of those in favour of lockdowns, in spite of all evidence that they cause more harm than good, are those who are not financially affected by them (eg public sector workers and large company white collar workers paid to do nothing, rich people, retired people, unemployed people). just have a thought for all the small businesses and tradespeople who carry on regardless and haven’t caught this disease because they can’t afford to (and it doesn’t affect more than a small percentage of us).
John – I’ve noticed that as well — people who still have jobs are 100% behind the lockdowns.
I had someone just a week ago (works in the pharma industry) tell me ‘ya — the lockdowns are really tough if you are a waiter’
I kid you not. He dismissed it as an economic nothing burger.
‘Oh the people who have lost jobs due to the lockdowns that keep us safe are suffering? They should eat cake!’
Unbelievable.
As I was saying to another mate recently, I look forward to the end game on this (i.e. collapse).
Yes I know that ‘knowing’ gives me no immunity to the consequences, but then what’s coming is coming and I am in the ‘acceptance stage’ so am beyond caring.
However I must confess to feeling a bit (well a lot) of Schadenfreude as I anticipate these pompous lockdown jockeys joining the ranks of the unemployed.
It is titillating to imagine how they will feel when the ultimate impact of their cherished lockdowns hit and they begin to feel the first pangs of hunger.
Having spent a fair bit of time in 3rd world countries, I’ve long felt it ‘wouldn’t it be great if people who feel good because they toss spare change into the Oxfam box while checking out with $300 of groceries got a chance to experience real poverty – real desperation – fear of being unable to feed their families just once in their lifetimes’
How often does one make a wish – and it comes true!!!!! And even better — they brought it upon themselves!!!!
I said I wouldn’t comment any more until I hear again from Dr K but as this is a personal attack I need to defend myself.
Best not to make assumptions, my digital studio is a computer I got for nothing and monitor speakers I bought on eBay for £127, I already had the instruments. The software (Reaper) is $60. That’s it.
As to working people and those running businesses, don’t conflate UK Gov pathetic financial and other support with lockdowns. This country has the wealth for any need and the capacity to borrow – at next to zero interest – to ensure every citizen is provided for, as well as a strong recovery.
I’m lucky compared to many but lockdown alone is no fun.
I suggest you and anyone else checks the latest information in my online depository, especially relating to Manaus and herd immunity. then calculate how many would die in the next few months without lockdown. There’s also new information on excess deaths.
There are many other responses to my posts to which I could reply but, as I said, I’m now waiting to hear from Dr K in response to my 3 points.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1–_wcsVr6CNT7lyMIIkawTqpVG9Wc6Bj
So your “studio” is a free computer, some speakers, and some low cost software. Why did you need to proclaim you had a “digital studio” when it is not quite what most reasonable people would equate to a “studio”? it’s the sort of misinformation people expect from politicians.
Because that’s precisely what it is – a digital recording studio. If if said it was a recording studio (no mention of digital) you may have a point. But of course I didn’t, so you don’t.
Come on Baz… we all know your real name is Justin Bieber.
Why are you aggregating comments and mentions? Someone may comment five times and be mentioned forty, especially if it’s their blog or if they posted something lots of people refer to.
Can I also add that I note 2 of my replies to F Eddy (1. doctors getting paid to falsely certify deaths and 2. ICU occupancy) haven’t made it to the blog. I’m not too concerned but I wouldn’t want him to get the idea that I couldn’t answer.
Thanks.
That is not what he said. Hospitals in the US were paid far more money for looking after Covid patients. So the pressure was put on to diagnose Covid in more patients.
Also, hospitals faced a big loss of income from all the cancelled elective surgeries, many of which were essential for the patients health. The extra medicare reimbursement may or may not have made up the difference, but I don’t know. Surely there were economic considerations made by administrators in diagnosis.
With apologies as I said I’d shut up, one further point to add to my reply to John. I’ve written to my MP suggesting a volunteer database for older people like me willing to give up their vaccine date for someone younger who has to go out to work, particularly on low pay. So far she’s resisted but I’m persevering.
What have you done apart from attempt to grasp the moral high ground?
Is that “attempting to grab the moral highground” by offering your unproven vaccine to some hapless innocent, instead of standing by your claimed convictions and accepting your medicine? Would the 30 or so deaths and the Chinese removal of the vaccines have anything to do with that move?
This is the quote from Fast Eddy “Anyway — in the US — there are USD38,000 enticements given to medical facilities who list Covid as cause of death.”
Sorry to post again but accuracy (and truth) are crucial indicators of integrity.
Baz in Kent: It s actually $39,000. Medicare made the decision last Spring to triple the hospital compensation for covid cases from $13,000 for non-covid cases. This is indeed an incentive to inflate numbers. With the cancellation of elective surgeries, many hospitals are bleeding money, another incentive. Except for the over-65’s, we have a private system in the U.S. It doesn’t work very well, mainly because of the vast sums of money wasted and the capture of the regulators and practice of medicine by the pharmaceutical and financial industries.
Fact check: Hospitals get paid more if patients listed as COVID-19, on ventilators
USA TODAY reached out to Marty Makary, a surgeon and professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, about the claim. Makary said in an email April 21 that “what Scott Jensen said sounds right to me.”
PolitiFact reporter Tom Kertscher wrote, “The dollar amounts Jensen cited are roughly what we found in an analysis published April 7 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading source of health information.”
Ask FactCheck weighed in April 21: “The figures cited by Jensen generally square with estimated Medicare payments for COVID-19 hospitalizations, based on average Medicare payments for patients with similar diagnoses.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/
I’ve run a few businesses in my day…. but never a hospital. Now loads of hospitals are part of publicly listed companies… and when you run a listed company the pressure is enormous to make as much money as possible. Also the honchos are usually richly rewarded owning shares or more importantly share options that get triggered when the share prices hits various benchmarks.
Have CEO’s of listed companies been known to push the boundaries to get the share price higher so their options vest? …….
I can picture the memo (probably verbal) going out to the ICU heads —- (who no doubt get bonuses if the hospital makes lots and lots of money)….. ok fellas — we get nearly 40k if we put a ventilator on a covid patient so wink wink nudge nudge….. you know what to do right?…. and we get 13k if we label anyone with a respiratory disease as suffering from covid … flu… covid… respiratory diseases right? So you do what you think is the right thing to do here…. understood? YES SIR.
Now is everyone corrupt? Probably not — but we get a good idea of the scale of this dirty business from Johns Hopkins.
Have a look at the causes of death — from heart to disease to cancer to diabetes — the numbers are plunging…. almost nobody dies of the flu any longer. WOW — magic huh?
But look at the covid death numbers…. off the charts!!! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iO0K75EZAF8dkNDkDmM3L4zNNY0X-Xw5/view
13k… 13k … 38k…. 13k… 38k… 38k… 13k…. 13k… 13k…. 38k…38k…13k… 13k… 1313k… 13k … 38k…. 13k… 38k… 38k… 13k…. 13k… 13k…. 38k…38k…13k…13k… 13k … 38k…. 13k… 38k… 38k… 13k…. 13k… 13k…. 38k…38k…13k…13k… 13k … 38k…. 13k… 38k… 38k… 13k…. 13k… 13k…. 38k…38k…13k…k … 38k…. 13k… 38k… 38k… 13k…. 13k… 13k…. 38k…38k…13k…13k… 13k … 38k…. 13k… 38k… 38k… 13k…. 13k… 13k…. 38k…38k…13k… etc….
Soon the thousands become millions… and hundreds of millions … and billions…. the ICU boys get fat bonuses…. the honchos cash in their share options and pocket many millions…
It’s a fiesta… no it’s a covid orgy …. and it’s almost legal… but that does not matter because ain’t nobody going to prosecute anyone because the people behind this covid scam obviously are getting the outcome they desired…. they have effectively offered massive BRIBES to get the medical community on board.
And you gotta wonder — those doctors who leap onto CNN to discuss overwhelmed covid wards… do ya think they may be ‘talking up their own book’ as the saying goes?
Dr. K,
I’m not sure that there was any pressure. Hospital labs merely set their ct’s high to avoid producing false negatives per medically necessary instructions to promote infection control. Of course, the lab directors weren’t stupid. They knew the financial impact on the hospitals.
Based on North Dakota’s data, I expect that 40% of hospital numbers are _with_ covid, not _due to_ covid.
And when hospital numbers get mixed with community numbers where employers are telling employees to get tested if they want to work, you get codswallop.
Jim
We can never make a comment on the death rates or make an assumption that any death rate increase is directly attributable to the virus while ignoring deaths caused by the affects of lockdown and the health service’s overwhelming obsession with one ailment to the detriment of other ailments.
Jim, how do you square these numbers with the analysis MC posted? One of you must be more wrong than right, correct?
Here’s a fun exercise that even a CoviIDIOT can do while enjoying the lockdown in the UK and Staying Safe!
1. Open Google
2. Select Custom Search and input 2000 – 2018
3. Search Hospitals in UK full flu
Oh wow — check out this result!!!!
Overstretched hospitals face winter flu crisis, doctors warn
Emergency departments risk “grinding to a halt” this winter, say medical leaders. They warn that the number of patients facing long waits for treatment is likely to hit record levels.
Dr Taj Hassan, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said staff were dangerously overstretched, as NHS figures showed the number of people waiting more than 12 hours for treatment during the coldest months of the year has soared.
From January to March 2012, 15 patients waited for more than 12 hours – in 2017 this figure was 100 times greater, at 1,597.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/24/winter-flu-crisis-hospitals-overstretched
Now let’s try this for America.
Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tents
The 2017-2018 influenza epidemic is sending people to hospitals and urgent-care centers in every state, and medical centers are responding with extraordinary measures: asking staff to work overtime, setting up triage tents, restricting friends and family visits and canceling elective surgeries, to name a few.
“We are pretty much at capacity, and the volume is certainly different from previous flu seasons,” says Dr. Alfred Tallia, professor and chair of family medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “I’ve been in practice for 30 years, and it’s been a good 15 or 20 years since I’ve seen a flu-related illness scenario like we’ve had this year.”
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/
Finally, try searching for lockdown flu in America and lockdown flu in the UK using that same time filter….
Let’s try it….
OMG. This MUST be a mistake! There are not articles indicating there were lockdowns in either country. Let me try this again………… hmmm same result – nothing. Zero. But they had flu patients in tents in America — gosh — what were they thinking? They should have locked down hard to make sure everyone Stayed Safe.
Surely if I type in America economic collapse flu … I will find stories of America collapsing because they failed to lock down… the hospitals were overwhelmed… millions of people died … companies could not function due to lack of workers….
Odd – can’t find that either.
Toronto has declared a STATE OF EMERGENCY citing ‘imminent overwhelming of ICU capacity’
Hmmmmmmmmmmm….. don’t recall any emergency when they were overwhelmed in recent years.
2018 – Surgeries postponed due to severe flu cases overwhelming Toronto ICU https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/02/13/toronto-hospital-flu/
2017 – Surge in patients forces Ontario hospitals to put beds in ‘unconventional spaces’ https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/04/16/surge-in-patients-forces-ontario-hospitals-to-put-beds-in-unconventional-spaces.html
2016 – More than 4,300 patients treated in hallway of Brampton Civic Hospital last year https://www.cp24.com/news/more-than-4-300-patients-treated-in-hallway-of-brampton-civic-hospital-last-year-1.3657561
2013 – Hospitals overwhelmed by flu and norovirus patients https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/health-headlines/hospitals-overwhelmed-by-flu-and-norovirus-patients-1.1108376
2012 – Hospitals overwhelmed by surge of flu cases https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/hospitals-overwhelmed-by-surge-of-flu-cases/article562037/
2011 – Hospitals overwhelmed by surge of flu cases https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/hospitals-overwhelmed-by-surge-of-flu-cases/article562037/
Replying to Fast Eddy about Dr Joffe, this is another example of misrepresentation of not just data but the whole rationale of his position.
Looking at CFR or IFR on a worldwide basis (0.23%) isn’t helpful as it’s an average, in the UK it’s about 1% (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/207273/covid-19-deaths-infection-fatality-ratio-about/) and this has a massive impact on policy response.
He also states that herd immunity would be achieved at 20% – 40% which again is a world average and disputed by the WHO (https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19), most put it at 60% – 70% for the UK. Even if you accept the principle of achieving immunity through the virus instead of vaccinations (which the WHO and I don’t) the number of deaths would make this unacceptable (at least 990k http://www.colbas.org/ntp/opnAxs/N02TH20A.pdf).
I have a lot of sympathy with Dr Joffe’s argument for less developed countries and I fully support the WEF’s Great Reset (https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/) but using him as an example of what UK policy should be is disingenuous. As usual.
Baz in Kent, if you can accept the WHO line that immunity can only be attained through vaccines, please explain how it is humans have managed to get through many diseases to reach the numbers we had by the 1950s which was before most of the vaccines.
Tell me why you accept the WHO line on herd immunity but you don’t accept their line on lockdowns (which Sweden was following) or their line on masks, which said masks might be useful for specific situations, but was not recommended for use by the general population.
Tell me why the rather small amount of money that might be made from book sales, is so heinous when compared with the amount of money the WHO gets from the Gates foundation, not to mention Imperial College’s receipts or the £92 million to the BBC, again from Gates. Would it be ok if a certain local book writer got a fat wad from gates?
You obviously don’t see the flaws in most of the points you make, or you might stop making them.
AhNotepad, re Gates’ “£92 million to the BBC”, can you give me a reference/source for that?
Elizabethhart, I can’t find the same page I saw what I thought was the £92 million. I have found https://unitynewsnetwork.co.uk/revealed-bbc-charity-receives-millions-in-funding-from-gates-foundation/ which shows several tens of $millions.
Baz in Kent: Please read the BMJ article https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563 on pre-existing immunity and the commentary on the potentially flawed random mixing assumption that leads to levels of 60% for herd immunity.
The very idea that we would have to have 990k deaths in the UK to allow herd immunity to develop is absolutely laughable. The Spanish Flu pandemic (if you accept its assessed impact at 3 per mille in the population) would only kill 204k today with the increased population and if you did not allow for improved medical treatment over 1918. This SARS-COV2 virus is nowhere near as virulent.
Look at https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-florence-nightingales-daigrams-for-deaths/ to easily see that we only had a single epidemic spike and that the winter reactivation of the virus is leading to higher mortality but not a runaway epidemic – this is proof enough at this point that some level of functional herd immunity is already present in the population.
I would not go anywhere near Imperial colleges IFR given their track record in predictions.
I would favour CEBM’s work which states “This article presents data from two models estimating daily infections in England, deriving recent IFRs estimates of 0.30% using the MRC unit’s data and 0.49% using ONS data” See https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/estimating-the-infection-fatality-ratio-in-england/
Unsurprisingly this is not far off Ioannidis median estimate of 0.27% https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf
Am I immune to rubella or measles ? The reason I ask is because I have never had the vaccination for either, but I did catch the diseases when I was a child.
My other question to you about the vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 (and the influenza vaccine as well) is that it doesn’t give immunity but reduces the symptoms only. Therefore, community immunity through vaccination for SARS-CoV-2 is nothing but a myth; whereas, being exposed to the virus, infected with the virus plus immunity memory from previous corona viruses does provide immunity. I think a system 3 billion years in development is superior to a system 12 months in development.
Baz in Kent, you say “…I fully support the WEF’s Great Reset…”
For another perspective on what is currently underway in the world see, this article by Peter Koenig: We Are At War: https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-are-at-war-2/5733672
The summary says:
We are at war. Yes. And I don’t mean the West against the East, against Russia and China, nor the entire world against an invisible corona virus.
No. We, the common people, are at war against an ever more authoritarian and tyrannical elitist Globalist system, reigned by a small group of multi-billionaires, that planned already decades ago to take power over the people, to control them, reduce them to what a minute elite believes is an “adequate number” to inhabit Mother Earth – and to digitize and robotize the rest of the survivors, as a sort of serfs. It’s a combination of George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”.
Welcome to the age of the transhumans. If we allow it.
For info, Peter Koenig “is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)”.
@Elizabeth Odd that you edited the bio to exclude the Russian and other subversive journals, also that you claim he was senior economist at the World Bank which I dispute although I believe he worked there. “He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media, TeleSUR, TruePublica, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog”
There’s another Peter Koenig (who I’ve met) that’s an international expert on money, he’d be shocked if you were trying to attribute this “war” rubbish to him.
Baz.
If I understand it correctly even the Vaccine developers don’t claim that their vaccines will protect you or will stop the spread of Covid. They state that their vaccines will only treat the symptoms of Covid – something that, I suggest, you could do – in most cases – better with ‘over the counter’ flu remedies.
Let’s protect the small percentage who are actually at risk and let the rest live normally.
Throwing this graph into the mix for information:
U.K. Death Rate 1950-2021 | MacroTrends
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/death-rate
Thanks Elizabeth, but as it says at the top of the page, “All 2020 and later data are UN projections and DO NOT include any impacts of the COVID-19 virus”. Not sure this is relevant?
Jim
Yes, I did see that note Jim.
However, putting that aside, I thought the graph was interesting as it shows the death rate going up.
I noticed this earlier in the year on a similar graph re Italy: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ITA/italy/death-rate
I haven’t looked into this, but presumably there’s an ageing population bubble, with a group of people coming to the end of their lives, and so death rates going up?
Is this affecting COVID-19 statistics? Perhaps it’s already factored in?
Statistics isn’t my bailiwick, but just putting it out there.
Also see this link: Ageing Europe – statistics on population developments: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Ageing_Europe_-_statistics_on_population_developments#Older_people_.E2.80.94_increasingly_old_and_with_growing_dependency
Re my comment including reference to an ageing population bubble and potential impact on COVID-19 statistics…
See this thoughtful blog article recently linked to in comments on Sebastian Rushworth’s blog:
Final Report on Swedish Mortality 2020, Anno Covidius:
Consider for example:
…we should notice that if we consider 2020 as an outlier, then so should we also consider 2019 as an outlier – mortality 2019 was exceptionally low, and has clearly contributed to the high mortality of 2020 – “Dry Tinder”.
And:
The older the population, the more deaths. Old people tend to die more frequently than young people, in general.
Also interesting to consider discussion in the article about the Covid impact on foreign born in Sweden, and reference to ‘pairwise’ years.
And:
Covid is dangerous for the old, not for the young. On average. Still, the young got hit very hard by Covid – not by the virus itself, for the vast majority of the young the Covid was no worse than a traditional flu – but by the responses the governments took to mitigate the spread of the virus : schools closed, sports activities terminated or restricted, restaurants forced to close or limit their opening hours etc etc. It remains to be seen over the coming years what impact these unprecedented limitations on the lives of all these young people worldwide will have.
In regards to pressure on hospitals in Sweden, the article also notes ICU-capacity in Sweden has gone down by a factor of 8(!) in 25 years. So whatever emergency or crisis that would have hit Sweden, the capacity to deal with that crisis was (and is) simply not there. No wonder the hospitals are at risk of being overwhelmed!.
A thoughtful article, worth checking out.
First, a quick apology. I was unable to get onto wordpress for a few days. I think it was my system. Now back up and running
Don’t apologise. I and mostly likely every one of your many followers are just relieved to see you back. I was worried that you’d been taken down by the powers that be or Covid. Phew!
👍
Just thought you were having a well earned rest X It all seems pretty full on at the moment!
Some examples of the difficulties faced by young people on American college campuses due to the lockdowns enforced by university administrators:
– School requires asymptomatic testing and there’s no end in sight . My guy and girl friends are all miserable . So many have been like this is prison we can’t do anything. All bars closed in Louisiana. We gather at local parks and the cops come to shut it down. No fun ever allowed and no end in sight.
– School has a google form so that people can snitch on non-compliers.
– my friends and I have not gotten to leave our dorm to make friends. One way we socialize is opening up our dorm window & talking to people who are walking to their cars or back to their dorms. Another thing we have to do is take a daily COVID report, if we do not pass this test, we are not allowed to leave our dorm and will not be allowed to go anywhere at school.
– threats of suspension/expulsion for first offense, security guards posted throughout campus to enforce rules, kids encouraged to report non-compliance, etc. After having been on campus for a week, my daughter has not met nor spoken to a single person.
– Masks required outside their room anywhere..inside or out. All classes are online. Only 1 person can visit room and masks must be worn. Immediate suspension if caught violating. This is inhumane. It’s prison.
– They have knocked on doors in their hall trying to meet people, and have been chastised and hassled by the RAs for being ‘radicals’ for simply reaching out to others.
– no gatherings of 10 or more people. They have enhanced their Hawk Watch security app to include one’s ability to rat out kids that are gathering together in excess.
– No one was allowed to help them move in either! Single girls were literally trying to lug refrigerators across campus & up flights of stairs. No help was provided or allowed!
— https://dossier.substack.com/p/tales-from-americas-covid-college
100% false positives in Wuhan, China:
“The critique against PCR testing is further strengthened by a November 20, 2020, study in Nature Communications, which found no viable virus in PCR-positive cases at all. The study evaluated data from 9,865,404 residents of Wuhan, China, who had undergone PCR testing between May 14 and June 1, 2020.
A total of 300 tested positive but had no symptoms. Of the 34,424 people with a history of COVID-19, 107 tested positive a second time. Yet, when they did virus cultures on these 407 individuals who had tested positive (either for the first or second time), no live virus was found in any of them! “ — https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/13/coronavirus-pcr-testing.aspx
The balanced view of the Wuhan study is what the people who completed it said, the overall infection rate was low and the virus was “tired”.
This is a from recent (UK) study: “Of 48 seropositive individuals with full symptom data, nine (19%) were fully asymptomatic, and 16 (27%) were asymptomatic for core COVID-19 symptoms” https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wGqlOLDsq6LjAJ6RD6tqYQvulOxRdJ6t/view?usp=drivesdk
Baz, you are missing the point. The problem isn’t the tired virus, it’s the accurate PCR test. It cannot tell the difference between dead viruses, virus particles, ‘tired’ viruses, and live dangerous viruses.
Martin, since some people in the UK have visited a test centre, found there was a four hour wait for testing, gone home without being tested and still received positive results, the test cannot tell the difference between those you mentioned, no virus, or even no test.
Either by design or ignorance you misrepresent the facts of symptomatic PCR testing and make assertions about false positives without evidence. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iisXon0mC1C0rekilHcMUSi7U3YgTnNE/view?usp=drivesdk
There are also comments about suffering from the virus as if it’s as benign as the vaccine. I don’t know of any vaccine that’s killed 2 million people but I imagine one of you will enlighten me – evidence-free of course.
Maybe Dr Kendrick can give us the benefit of his experience and knowledge on these 2 areas, bearing in mind the evidence in my online resource as previously mentioned, once he’s replied to my 3 challenges to the claims in his blog. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1–_wcsVr6CNT7lyMIIkawTqpVG9Wc6Bj
Meanwhile I’ll refrain from further comment and hope that others will too, to give him the space to respond fully.
Where did I mention symptomatic testing? Read what I wrote, it’s quite simple.
We welcome your upcoming withholding of comments
You do very well at begging the question. If PCR testing is dodgy, then covid case numbers are dodgy and covid death numbers are dodgy.
2 million covid deaths indeed! I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
@ AH nosebag – if you’re not referring to symptomatic testing it’s de facto not PCR, please evidence this claim so we can all see.
Baz in Kent, you wrote “@AH nosebag”. I assume you probably support any amount of science free beliefs, and this is an indication your case has run out of steam.
Dear Dr. Kendrick,
I’m currently discussing the EuroMoMo data with a journalist friend who has responded with the year on year data (England) for weekly ICU admissions of flu patients (Covid admissions being nearly 3x higher this winter than flu admissions 2 years ago), and year on year data for adult critical care beds occupied in London (currently 35% higher than 2 years ago).
Whilst this data does not speak to the excess deaths figures of EuroMoMo, I wonder whether you have any observations? In particular, is there a difference in how Covid cases are treated now compared with seasonal flu 2 years ago? Would a care home resident with flu have been more likely to be treated in the home rather than hospital? Are we comparing like with like?
Many thanks.
I have found that the statistics have become, almost entirely, incomprehensible – or so biased as to be worthless. Which is why I focus on EuroMOMO. They are robust, untainted by bias (as far as I can ascertain) and provide the best overall picture of (most of) Western Europe.
Phil,
I really think that a graph that is in continuous motion – even changing scales – is a terrible way to present any data if it is meant to be actually read and understood.
As I understand it, many patients who were close to death for other reasons, were not treated for chest infections at that point. I would really like to know if that is the case if someone arrives in hospital with a very poor prognosis, but is found to have COVID. If the policy is always to treat COVID, I can see why the ICU usage would be a lot higher than previous years.
Ireland’s numbers have gone through the roof
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/corona-in-irland-wenn-die-mutation-auf-lockerungen-trifft-a-4313aeb7-28ed-4bcb-87c2-ebea70a47b6a
No translation needed really, just look at the graph of infections / 100,000 / week. Ireland went into second lockdown about three weeks earlier than Germany entered its “lockdown light”. It was hailed by many epidomoligsts in Germany as an example of what a well-coordinated lockdown could achieve.
They reopened when they had brought their numbers down and then relaxed travel and meeting restictions prior to Christmasdown, unfortunately at a time when the mutation appeared, which has gone from 9% in the week ending Dec. 20th to 40% now.
This shows us very clearly what can happen even in a population that has seen considerable infections previously. Let’s hope their death toll will not be as bad as the current rate of detected infections might lead one to expect.
Eric: Many commentators have pointed out that the average age of death in Ireland during the epidemic spike was in excess of the expectation of life. It would seem their general population have a better metabolic health than for example the UK given that only a very small number of very elderly people with co-morbidities died
Given the unreliability of PCR testing at determining infectiousness and its inappropriate use for sentinel monitoring of a population the spike up in measured infections has nothing to do with lockdowns or opening up but rather a winter reactivation of the virus. The new variant will only do harm if it penetrates a sub-population which escaped exposure during the actual epidemic.
What should be being monitored is the seasonal excess mortality.
I think there are a substantial number of academic studies now that show no correlation between mortality and lockdown severity. They did not bring their numbers down in Ireland – their numbers came down as they always do seasonally once the virus has impacted the vulnerable
So if the population had seen considerable infections previously then the population will be protected against a new variant provided there has only been antigenic drift rather than a major antigenic shift – I don’t think that the data is available yet on the virulence of the new strain.
The New York Times recently published an article titled: Vaccines are safe, no matter what Robert Kennedy Jr. says.
This is an opinion piece by Robert Kennedy Jr.’s niece Dr Kerry Kennedy Meltzer.
Kerry Kennedy Melzer admits “Being a doctor does not make me a vaccine expert…”, but she was provided with a soapbox to promote her views, while Robert Kennedy Jr. was denied a right of reply.
I’ve written an email to the Editor of the New York Times on this matter, including reference to the current rushed rollout of coronavirus vaccine products, and to the influence of Bill Gates, including his sabotaging of the mooted US Vaccine Safety Commission, which is interesting to consider now in light of the increasing number of coronavirus vaccine products racing to market…
My email to the NYT Editor is accessible via this link: https://vaccinationispolitical.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/bill-gates-and-kerry-kennedy-meltzer-campaigning-against-consideration-of-vaccine-safety.pdf
As we’ve seen recently with Dr Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, see my previous comment above, there are doctors who are using their ‘medical authority’ to promote coronavirus vaccination, despite the fact they haven’t expertise in this area.
Another example is Dr Omar Khorshid, the President of the Australian Medical Association. I’ve called him out about his promotion of coronavirus vaccination for ‘everybody’, see my email to him via this link: https://vaccinationispolitical.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/coronavirus-we-need-everybody-to-be-vaccinated-president-of-the-ama.pdf
The Australian Medical Association also has conflicts of interest, which I will pursue with Dr Khorshid in another email.
By contrast this Canadian GP seems to have the opposite attitude
With independent views like that, I can’t believe that his interview will stay on YT for long; better watch it quickly.
Excellent, David
That is an outstanding find.
And supports the findings of a John’s Hopkins researcher who has taken CDC data and reached similar conclusions regarding total US deaths https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iO0K75EZAF8dkNDkDmM3L4zNNY0X-Xw5/view
Of course the CovIDIOTS will say ‘but.. BUT there are so many doctors who say we are overwhelmed!!! And this is only one doctor saying otherwise!’
My understanding is that there are massive numbers of doctors who dispute the narrative — but of course they never get any air time so how would we know (there are around 50,000 medical professionals who have sign Great Barrington… but of course that’s all fake and Koch funded…)
It is truly amazing what you can do if you control the MSM and you have a good PR team. You can make people believe that a circle is a square — you can convince billions of lemmings — ah humans — to run off a cliff.
Wow! Thank you Dr Stephen Malthouse and interviewer Jeannette Rocher.
For people concerned about the entire situation, that is a great summary.
But the video’s days could be numbered on the censoring platform YouTube…
Here’s another link in case, actually better quality, on Rumble: https://rumble.com/vcesav-brave-reporter-goes-off-script-on-air.html
Also, looks like Dr Malthouse is into homeopathy, so people are likely to pile on him for that… I’ve always avoided the homeopathy issue, an absolute minefield… However, I’m becoming more and more concerned about the dangers of conventional medicine, e.g. over-use of antibiotics, over-use of opioids, over-use of anti-depressants, over-use of proton pump inhibitors…and over-use of vaccine products…
Something to lighten the mood. We could all join in:
Never mind all the above – todays Times has the answer to it all. Getting the virus and surviving it confers immunity at least as good as a vaccine.
Who’d have thought it !?
And when you have chewed up that meat, on an inside page there is a little something for dessert. “A Low carb diet can reverse diabetes” Of course they don’t say it is no use for TypeI – the real disease.
Great pic at the bottom of Lockdown Skeptics today showing Maria and the Von Trapp children being carted off by the London police, saying, “the hills are closed.”
The doctors could prescribe a known safe treatment, https://youtu.be/BD_96ybTMNE equivalent to a vaccine, and as far as anyone can tell near 100%effective.
We now know (or at least have been told) that having the disease confers immunity for around at least 5 months, but that such an immune person can still be infectious. We are also being told that a vaccinated person can also be infectious, but that the immunity is “better” (that is, less likelihood of becoming ill enough to need hospital treatment). At the moment no-one will commit to saying how long that immunity (from vaccination) will last.
Meantime, new variants may or may not be covered by the vaccine, with a further new and more infectious variant emerging in Brazil to add to the UK and South African variants. The emergence of new variants is however normal for corona viruses and any RNA-based virus, and it’s only really a matter of time before one emerges that the vaccine (or natural immunity) can’t deal with. Like the ‘flu vaccine, the Covid vaccine will need to be updated each year or so to deal with the current variants. Seems to me a bit like the Red Queen – we’ll need to keep running to stay in the same spot.
After all the discussions on this blog, it’s maybe useful to go back to what Dr. Kendrick actually wrote and read it again. There really is a load of uncertainty in the figures, even now, but I think we can be pretty sure that the medical facilities are being overloaded and that more people are dying than we would normally expect. It is almost certain that this is several times more than a “normal” bad ‘flu season, and that people would be dying at a higher rate if the lockdowns hadn’t been implemented. Still, it needs to be said that the lockdowns are maybe not the optimum strategy, but it’s the only hammer acknowledged generally to be available.
Medicines such as HCQ and Ivermectin, if given with Zinc (and possibly an antibiotic to stop secondary infections) change the amount of Zinc in the cells and change the ACE2 receptor enough that the virus doesn’t replicate itself so quickly, thus giving the natural immune system more time to produce the antibodies required. Data from Turkey and the Dominican Republic showed a large drop in hospital admissions, likely as a result of implementing this early treatment. By contrast, in Europe and the USA, the medical advice is to tough it out with maybe some Paracetamol and hope your body can overcome it – basically wait until it gets bad enough to need hospital. Other data shows a link between vitamin D deficiency and severity of disease, which really ought to be expected given the role of vitamin D in the immune system. It should also thus be expected that people with darker skin living in countries closer to the poles, and who work mainly indoors, will likely be low on vitamin D and their immune systems won’t be as efficient, so we’d expect them to be over-represented in the death figures. I don’t see it as racist to point out that skin-colour is important when it comes to natural vitamin-D production in our more-Northern climes.
I can’t be sure as to whether the data is actually correct, since in reality every medical intervention is a sample size of one, because everyone’s DNA is different and the circumstances are also unique to that person. It does however seem that people can reduce their chances of getting ill by around 90% by simply supplementing their vitamin D until they have around 50nmol/cc (or just take the Cod-liver oil as we used to do when I was a kid, and skip the blood analyses). If they do nevertheless find they have symptoms, they can improve their chances of not getting more ill by taking a dose of something like Ivermectin (sold over the counter as headlice treatment in some places) with some Zinc tablets.
Dr. Kendrick can maybe comment on my impression that medical authorities have the opinion that there is no medicine for a viral infection, and that people need their immune system to deal with that. However, in a 2005 NIH paper on SARS, co-signed by Dr. Fauci, HCQ was indeed found to stop replication of the virus (and given the similarity, the SARS-Cov-2 virus should also be retarded). It seems to me that such a delay in replication will be helpful in giving the immune system more time to produce the antibodies and thus clear the virus from the body “naturally”. That is, the medicine doesn’t actually cure the infection, and doesn’t kill the virus, but instead helps the body to deal with it. There’s thus the vindication of the medical view (it doesn’t kill the virus itself) but also missing the point that it actually helps if it’s given early enough before the virus has multiplied too much.
I haven’t put any links to source data here, since it’s pretty easy to find. There’s still going to be the problem that, given the same data, people will often filter it through their beliefs to come to different conclusions. If you believe that there is no medicine for a virus, then you’ll discount the data that shows it works (not a double-blinded RCT, etc.). Similarly, if you believe that vitamin supplementation is useless because the modern diet has sufficient anyway, then you’ll miss the correlations, since it’s always true that correlation does not imply causation.
Simon Derricut
The following article is not passing information through a prior-belief filter – it is an example of real science in progress:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-we-need-more-details-and-the-raw-data/
In those trials we potentially have selection bias, very probably have confirmation bias and probably observation bias as well.
We also need to reread
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
as to why most published research findings are false by John Ioannidis
Garth – the Peter Doshi article brings up some important problems with the Pfizer vaccine trials but it looks like the full information won’t be released until the trials are officially over in a year or two. It seems likely that that article may end up censored pretty soon if it starts to get a lot of views.
Sadly, the problem with published research being non-replicable (even by the people who first performed it) also applies to a lot of physics (where I usually comment), and it often seems that the research was intended to confirm the desired theory rather than trying to prove the theory wrong in the way science is supposed to operate.
I can’t fault the logic used in producing the vaccines. The adjuvants are intended to produce inflammation and to signal to the body that it needs to attack what has been injected – maybe not surprising that some people over-react to them, which may be a cause for the recent deaths after vaccination in Norway (but why not elsewhere?).
I’m definitely not an “anti-vaxxer”. I even paid 300 euros to get my daughter the HPV vaccine, since it’s not free here, and I’ll get the required vaccinations for myself if travelling to somewhere they are needed. I don’t however regard vaccination as risk-free, but that the risk from the vaccine should be less than the risk from the disease before I’ll take it. For Covid, the majority of the risk (around 90% of it) can be mitigated by getting enough vitamin D, and it certainly looks as if from the remaining risk, about 90% of that can be removed by taking Ivermectin and Zinc if symptoms are noticed. The risk of catching the virus (for me) would be higher in cities rather than out in the sticks where I live, so if I lived in a city and commuted on public transport, I’d most likely see the vaccine as worth the risk, though as things are it’s probably a higher risk that the disease. The point really is that the risks are different for each individual, and we really haven’t much more than a guess as to the size of them.
As Dr. Kendrick stated in the article at the top here, there is a lot of uncertainty in all the data we have about Covid. Despite that uncertainty, it really does kill people and also leaves a proportion with “long Covid” (but then so does the ‘flu, and the one time I did catch a ‘flu during a time of high personal stress it took me around a couple of years to start feeling normal again). Thus despite the uncertainties, we still need to do something. Given the incubation period, a full lockdown (where no-one travels or meets anyone else) for 2 weeks should be enough to stop the spread totally. The partial lockdowns actually implemented have some effect, but not much in proportion to the cost. The full lockdown would be difficult to organise, of course, and political suicide for those that proposed it or tried to implement it. I’m pretty sure that the people at the top understand that, and are doing the best that they think is (politically) possible.
I can see the reasons why the vaccine is seen as the only route out of the impasse, and why it is being implemented before all the tests have been completed. I disagree that it’s the only route out, though, since there is evidence that vitamin D supplements will help a lot and that Ivermectin (or other old and tested medicines) reduce the severity of the disease if given early enough. I don’t see the reason to tell doctors to not use those medicines, except for the belief that there is no medicine that can kill a virus and that thus such medicine cannot help but may do harm. It is very hard to change people’s beliefs. That comes back to the articles you quoted above – people tend to see what they expect to see, and often not what is actually there. Scientists are not immune to that human problem.
Simon, so you paid a lot of money to have your daughter injected with an arguably pointless substance, which was fast tracked through the FDA after six months of trials. I suggest you look up a video by Suzanne Humphries “Merck’s Dirty Little Secret”.
AN – yep, I did. It took a while to decide to do that at the time, but may reduce the chances of her getting cervical cancer by a lot. It’s always tricky balancing the risk/reward for medical interventions, but as far as I can tell the incidence of cervical cancer is pretty high. AFAIK the safety record has been pretty good, but of course I don’t know how many adverse reactions have been silenced. My doctor here is however good in the same way Dr.Kendrick is, and would have been aware of any major problems. A side-effect of the current pandemic is that I have become even less trusting in official announcements.
That was over a dozen years ago. These days I’d probably do a lot more searching on the available data, but I’d also probably still choose the vaccination as being the lesser risk.
Vaccines are unlikely to be totally safe. However, I still have a degree of trust that they are safer than the disease itself would be, at least by the time they are officially approved. With the SARS-Cov-2 vaccinations, there is only provisional approval for emergency use. Not quite as certain, in other words. If after a year or two after vaccination they “wear off” a bit and we get Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) as happened with the SARS test vaccinations, and a vaccinated person could then be more likely to die from the disease than an unvaccinated one, then maybe the use of Ivermectin will suddenly become acceptable since all the medical profession (who have been fast-tracked for vaccination) would be at major risk.
It appears that things are getting seriously worse. Simon Dolan has had 2000 followers removed overnight from his personal Twitter account …..and …….
https://www.keepbritainfree.com/so/9cNS6DKnV?languageTag=en&cid=6d91f31f-9379-4478-b1e4-1f5f645d29f6#/main
Tish: Things are indeed getting worse, and now with a censorship-friendly puppet about to be installed in the White House, and a thoroughly compromised Department of Justice, it looks bleak. Yet there are alternatives springing up. I just subscribed to tulsi.locals.com. Locals is a relatively new platform (two years old) established by Dave Rubin, a talk-show host and author, and Tulsi Gabbard just retired from the U.S. House of Representatives. She was my presidential choice in the 2020 primaries. A veteran, and a rare Democrat who supports the Constitution and thinks government exists to represent the people rather than the oligarchs.
How bad can it get? I dunno but this is pretty bad… watch as Lord Sumpton attempts to explain his position and Piers Morgan refuses to ‘get it’…. (one can imagine the director of the show shouting into Piers earpiece — ‘hit him again with how he says that cancer lady is worthless… and again … ignore that…. hit him again….)
Alas the good lord tries to reiterate his mic is turned off …. and the majority of viewers will agree with him being censored because he is ‘dangerous’… how dare he say those things!!!
We are now several weeks into a vaccination programme for older people. As I work with a large percentage of this age group normally but am being held at arm’s length at the moment due to their fear of infection, despite a massive reduction in physical ability that has affected many of them and mental health problems that they will never overcome imo, I am very conscious of the hope which is hinging around the vaccine. I want to ask the collective knowledge base who read this blog how any vaccine has its efficacy proven in the general public. How do we know whatever vaccine we are given that it is doing the job it was designed to do? Are there blood tests that can be used? From the data I have read about this vaccine, it would appear its efficacy in the trials is based on the use of the relatively ineffective pcr test and the development of symptoms in those people they have been able to maintain contact with. In the case of, for example, my 86 year old mother, what proof is there available that she has a growing immunity to the virus due to the injection? I would rather she didn’t catch covid to prove her symptoms are reduced enough to have not killed her! It feels as if the continued lockdown into potentially March/April is because actually no one wants to take that risk and therefore no one actually believes in the efficacy of the vaccine. Back to my original question -what is the test of efficacy?
Catrole, watch this https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/12/30/what-is-left-to-say/?replytocom=205602#respond, then get your vitamin D.
Pfizer trial data shows vaccine doesn’t work. Out of 22k people that received vaccine, only saved 8 severe COVID cases over placebo group. That’s 0.04% effective, which is essentially zero. Adverse events from the vaccine are far greater, and will continue to grow.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577?query=featured_home
The only problem with this analysis is, there are more the 300k excess deaths in the US just through October of last year. Hard to just explain those away. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm
If one person keeps speaking out and is left to be a spokesman, he or she might be arrested. But if more people broke silence and took their turn briefly, there would be less to blame them for and more influence.
This story reported in Australian (Murdoch media) Courier Mail today:
Australian intensive care nurse reveals the horrors of working on London’s COVID frontline Some quotes below:
Desperate resuscitations, 15-hour shifts, horror nightmares and heartbreak. An Aussie nurse describes what it’s like working on the frontline in COVID-ravaged London.
An Australian intensive care nurse on the COVID frontline in London has nightmares about alarms going off with no-one being able to help.
As a new coronavirus strain tips Britain’s estimated death toll over 100,000, Kathryn Lennon has laid bare the reality of the city’s choked hospital network.
Shifts are now going up to 15 hours and the standard ratios of one nurse to one patient are being smashed.
Nurses have been looking after up to four patients on their own during some parts of their shifts.
And intensive care doctors have warned they were almost at the point where they had to prioritise which patients received care because of a shortage of beds and staff.
Ms Lennon, who is from Cairns but moved to the UK in December 2019, said the nurses were struggling to cope with the physical and emotional demands of the job.
“You just hear emergency buzzers go off all the time, you don’t stop, your brain doesn’t switch off,” she said.
“Last night I just kept having nightmares about people dying in the bays. Usually those nightmares involve pressing alarms and no one coming and yelling for help.
“You just always hear emergency alarms in your dreams.”
Some shifts are heartbreaking, as she has had to show family members how to put on protective equipment so they can say goodbye to their loved ones.
“A patient in my bay died and we cleaned the body. The patient’s body went to the morgue and we cleaned the bed space,” she said.
“You don’t have time to be sad because someone else needs that bed.”
There are some moments of hope, with some patients being able to be revived – but the intensity of the disease seems worse in the second wave, she said.
“I did CPR on someone who we got back but they’re still in a coma so I don’t know what is going to happen to them,” Ms Lennon said.
“It is really, really horrific, it’s horrific to be in intensive care at the moment.”
And this story in the UK Telegraph today:
UK hospitals have been relatively empty compared to Europe – so why is the NHS struggling? Some quotes below:
Our stiff upper lip could be to blame for our excess mortality – the second-worst in Europe
As politicians and clinicians alike proclaim we are in the hardest haul of the pandemic, and tearful tales from intensive care wards are the stuff of every news broadcast, is the NHS on the brink of collapse? Is the risk of running out of intensive care beds, as Boris Johnson warned this week, “very substantial”?
Clearly, the pressure caused by the new strain, B-117, is great. Across the country, Tier 4 restrictions, which kept the old version of the virus under control, saw a tenfold increase in variant cases every three weeks.
That explains the abrupt halt in the decline of UK cases after October and November’s second peak. In other comparable countries such as France and Italy, 2020 shows two clear, smooth arcs of hospital admissions – spring and autumn, up and down.
Not here. Here the autumn downturn was rudely interrupted then radically reversed. On December 2, three weeks after the November 11 peak of 1,711, daily admissions were down to 1,262. But the next day they started climbing again, up to 1,337. A month later there were 3,351 daily Covid-19 admissions.
Even so, on that day, January 3, NHS England reported that of its 90,872 general beds, only 79,301 were occupied, with patients suffering all manner of ailments, including Covid-19, leaving 11,571 – or 12.7 per cent – of beds available.
What is really going on?
One thing that has yet to be mentioned is that several democrat governors mandated lockdowns of varying severities, likely in order to damage Trump by harming the US economy, which actually backfired in the election. So arguing the science of lockdowns is unlikely to persuade since the motivation for lockdowns was political.
By the way, with massive election fraud and military checkpoints in the US capital, you may now refer to the US as a banana republic and I will not be offended.
theasdgamer: We have indeed become a banana republic. 25,000 armed troops, vetted for their loyalty by the FBI, to install “Dark Winter” Joe on the throne. The political class will brook no opposition from the people.
Hello, thank you for this post 🙂 These numbers are staggering and so immensely devastating. I’ve also posted an article blog after witnessing the death toll pass 2 million, but decided to speak on my emotions after reflecting on the last 12 months on the pandemic. Would be really interested to hear your thoughts on the article if you have time. Thank you and wish you all the most health and safety possible during this time.
Crikey, just watched this video which also features Robert Kennedy Jr., Michael Yeadon, Dolores Cahill and others…and on the other side…Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Prince Charles…
And what about ‘our elected politicians’ who have bought into this caper and sold us down the river…? Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau and co…
This documentary sums it all up – self-styled ‘elites’ are planning to displace humanity with AI. Welcome to the ‘useless class’ of ‘hackable animals’…
The people behind this are traitors to humanity…
The New Normal Documentary by happen.network:
Crikey, YouTube have taken it down… This is so horrible, our liberal democracies are being trashed by these Big Tech oligarchs. And ‘our elected representatives’ have turned on us too…
We desperately need new platforms that will let people speak freely on serious issues.
Try this link for the documentary: https://www.bitchute.com/video/PhAY96MueUTQ/
Should be watched to the end. Thank you Elizabeth.
That is a well done video (maybe too well done…)
Here’s the thing:
1. If the end game was a ‘Great Reset’ I very much doubt we would be told about that. Time Magazine has a website dedicated to it — Trudeau and various other officials are on YT discussing it. Why go to all this trouble to create a cover for the reset — and broadcast the end game?
2. If we examine the components of https://time.com/collection/great-reset/ we can see that the promises are made are shall we say ‘koombaya’ bs. Covid and the ensuing reset will solve everything from gende/racial inequality to our destruction of the environment to poverty. This is just plain ridiculous. And even if it were possible, why do we need Covid to trigger the reset — surely the vast majority of people would be on board for this wonderful Utopia.
3. The foundation of civilization is energy, particularly oil. Without it, or if it is too expensive, civilization collapses. We were burning nearly 100M barrels of oil PER DAY pre Covid.
– According to Rystad, the current resource replacement ratio for conventional resources is only 16 percent. In other words, only one barrel out of every six consumed is being replaced with new resources. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Biggest-Oil-Gas-Discoveries-Of-2019.html
– We are often told there is a glut of oil. A glut does not mean we have found lots of new oil reserves – it simply means producers are pumping too much of what remains (usually because the price is low and they need to pump out more volume to be able to pay their bills). It’s like withdrawing excess cash from your bank account – you have a glut of cash – but your account is not more full.
Which brings us back around to my thesis. If we are presently burning 6 barrels of oil for every 1 we find (actually that ratio is probably worse now because investment into shale is collapsing) and we have been burning more than we find for some years now…. then very obviously we are in a severe crisis.
The PTB will NEVER tell us that we are depleting our reserves rapidly. If NASA determined a massive asteroid had a definite date with earth on Jan 10 2023, do you think we would be told? Of course not — because civilization would collapse — people wall into deep despair — they’d not invest, go to school or work… etc… Similarly with oil — if we were told that on Jan 10, 2023 our oil reserves would be depleted to a point where civilization would collapse… the collapse would be brought forward.
So no way in hell would we be informed of the oil situation.
Of course if global leaders and the people who really run the show understood that 2023 is D-Day… they would likely want to try to push that date out and prepare us for the end of civilization in the meantime.
A mate of mind has one of those crummy Tesla cars — you know — the ones with the 500kg toxic batteries that end up in the landfill and are charged by burning coal (the vast majority of the world’s electricity is generated by burning huge piles of coal) — he was telling me that he read that Elon is on record as stating he is not concerned about global warming (no kidding! – one of his companies want to blast rich people into space for joy rides!!!) rather he is concerned about conserving oil. Aha… that makes sense — passenger vehicles are a huge consumer of our remaining oil — so every switch to an EV kicks the can a little.
But EVs are a drop in the bucket in terms of conserving oil – they are too expensive and most people prefer not to wait around recharging batteries…
To seriously kick the can we MUST dramatically reduce oil consumption – air travel burns 8% of all oil… notice how Covid has massive smashed air travel? Notice how it is becoming more inconvenient by the day to fly international? Booking quarantine hotels is troublesome — flights are often cancelled — and in many instances travel corridors are closed without notice or quarantines re-implemented with less than 24 hours notice…. who in their right mind would travel internationally now? Very obviously international air travel is being targeted – that saves a lot of oil.
Shutting down the economy with lockdowns and curfews obviously also saves a great deal of oil.
The PTB have to find a balance here — they cannot just put everything on ice and only allow essential functionality — there must be some semblance of normality otherwise we hit stall speed and crash to the ground.
But where is all this going? Yes we can reduce our burn rate — but obviously at some point the tank runs too low to be able to keep us in the air.
To reiterate, I believe the functions of the lockdowns and masks and authoritarian enforcement of the rules — combined with a continuous ratcheting up of fear — is to ‘break’ us… to make us 100% compliant… to do as we are told (in the words of Fauci).
Notice how the headlines are now morphing into ‘mutant strains that kill the young’… I do not have a Tee Vee (through that in the bin 13 years ago) but I understand that it’s non-stop Covid scare stories on the ‘news’….. steroids are being added to the hysteria … and if we can trust the polls, this is working as huge numbers of people are begging for lockdowns and even curfews….
One might argue that if the collapse of civilization was imminent … that creating a compliant global population is a good thing.
I suggest reading The Road — or watch the movie … imagine that but 1000X worse — with no happy ending.
When I find myself thinking ‘I will fight to survive’ I think of some of the more vile people I have encountered in my life… a nasty neighbour… a biker gang …. hardened criminals… ex- military men who enjoy killing… when the government collapses the police will no longer pick up the phone… and these are the types that will be on the loose…. desperate for food .. willing to kill.. rape… that’s when I realize it is better of to die than fight against this. And remember — there is no future — there is no returning to normal — the energy required for that is gone…. you cannot put toothpaste into the tube…
Oh and before I forget, I have done a lot of research into spend nuclear fuel ponds. These are high tech installations that require civilization to remain operational. When civilization collapses the water will boil off and they will pump massive amounts of radioactivity for literally centuries… poisoning the planet. As an aside, there is a bit of Schadenfreude with this — I picture the gnarly biker gang feasting on broiled children that they keep in pens — but then their hair starts to slough .. and they die horrible deaths (download ‘Chernobyl’ for more info on this).
The way I think it ends is we go from curfews to full blown martial law… food will be delivered (happening in Lebanon right now)… then the food won’t get delivered… but we’ll be cowering waiting.. and waiting … we’ll weaken… then starve to death enmasse…
Better than being eaten … or dying from radiation sickness… ????
Eddy, have a look at adapt2030.
UK ICUs are nearly full? Well they were nearly full in 2018…. with the flu season inbound…..
NHS winter pressure: Hospitals report 99 per cent capacity over festive period as flu season looms
Monday 01 January 2018
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nhs-winter-pressure-flu-season-capacity-patients-corridors-e-vaccine-a8136231.html
First hand accounts from friends and family, medical staff working in the NHS, with many years experience are telling me that this year is like nothing they have ever experienced before. It is completely wrong to suppose that it is just like a normal flu season. Its not.
STANFORD STUDY QUESTIONS BENEFITS OF LOCKDOWNS AND STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS
A group of researchers at Stanford published a peer-reviewed study earlier this month assessing the impact of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders — what they refer to as non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in early 2020. The study did not find evidence to support that NPIs were effective in preventing the spread.
“In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020,” the study concludes. “We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures.
The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmissions may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures.”
The study was co-authored by Dr. Eran Bendavid, Professor John P.A. Ioannidis, Christopher Oh, and Jay Bhattacharya. The lead author, Dr. Bendavid, is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Stanford.
The other authors collectively work in departments including the Department of Epidemiology and the Department of Biomedical Data Science. According to the Spectator, the study was published in the European Journal of Clinical Observation.
The group studied the effects of NPIs in 10 countries: England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United States, which had more restrictive measures, were compared to Sweden and South Korea, where measures were less restrictive.
After they accounted for the less restrictive NPIs in South Korea and Sweden, they found “no clear, significant beneficial effect of more restrictive NPIs on case growth in any country.”
https://www.outkick.com/stanford-study-questions-benefits-of-lockdowns-and-stay-at-home-orders/
Reported today in Australia…
New South Wales residents who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine may be blocked from entering select venues under a radical plan flagged by the premier.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian is purportedly considering the plan that would require patrons to prove their vaccination status before entering venues including cafes, restaurants and pubs which can be considered “high-risk settings”.
Government-run venues including police and fire stations or Service NSW shopfronts could also be included under the plan, while non-government venues would be encouraged to join.
“Clearly, opportunities to travel overseas or opportunities to enter certain workplaces or venues might be enhanced if you have the vaccine,” she told The Daily Telegraph.
“Some of those decisions could be inspired by the government, (and) some of those decisions might be inspired by the organisation themselves.”
Berejiklian said the government would have further discussions in the coming weeks.“The more people that are vaccinated, the greater likelihood we can have a return to normality as we know it,” she told 2GB on Monday morning.
I don’t ever like to force people to do anything but there should be an incentive system.”
See: Anti-vaxxers could be refused entry to NSW venues under radical plan:
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/anti-vaxxers-could-be-refused-entry-to-nsw-venues-under-radical-plan-c-1978220
“Government-run venues including police and fire stations or Service NSW shopfronts could also be included under the plan, …………”
Excellent, does that mean no arrests and detention for the unvaccinated?
There can never be a return to normality when people allow their freedoms to be compromised by the likes of these people. Return to normality equates to ‘we lied to you’.
I’ve just read an article in The Telegraph about a large number of patients who have had severe Covid-19 returning to hospital at a later date and then dying due to organ damage. Has anyone else seen this? If so, what it your opinion? There are, of course, no details about previous health, age or vitamin D status, nor the treatments given. There is mention of treating with aspirin and statins.
Penny,
Take a look at the 12 min. video at end of article with Molecular Biologist Dolores Cahill. She will answer your question – brilliantly:
https://outline.com/3BxEpG
Covid is primarily a (coagulopathic) disease of the small blood vessels (capillaries and small arteries) and secondarily an autoimmune disease. When massive quantities of capillaries and small arteries in a patient’s organs become blocked, then there will be corresponding damage to the organs. Since covid is systemic, all organ systems are affected. Death from covid takes three primary paths–stroke/myocardial infarction, systemic organ failure, and cytokine storm.
From this information you may infer that someone who has been hospitalized recently due to covid and returns to the hospital is at risk from death due to organ failure.
I hope this helps.
Have a look at this Statista graph of COVID-19 deaths in the US as of January 9, 2021, i.e. from beginning of February 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/
Total deaths – 329,593
85 years and older – 105,673
75-84 years – 90,744
65-74 years – 70,230
55-64 years – 38,830
45-54 years – 15,558
35-44 years – 5,742
25-34 years – 2,196
15-24 years – 510
5-14 years – 55
1-4 years – 21
Under 1 – 34
These deaths occurred over nearly 12 months, in a population of around 328 million…
Looking at these statistics, in my opinion it is wrong that vaccination has been implemented for this coronavirus…
Most of the deaths are in the elderly, probably with comorbidities, and I suggest very questionably attributed as wholly Covid deaths…
In my opinion no way should massive populations of younger people be vaccinated with these fast-tracked experimental vaccine products, e.g. nurses, doctors, police etc, certainly not without clear informed consent about the risks and benefits for their age group.
It’s diabolical that this vaccination frenzy is occurring. And that treatments have been repressed to facilitate emergency authorisation of the vaccine products.
I highly recommend this research out of Johns Hopkins — the totals deaths in the US are pretty much the same as other years — but as the CDC data shows — deaths from heart disease cancer diabetes etc have fallen off a cliff — why? — because they are classified as covid deaths instead…
Of course this was ‘dangerous’ information so had to be removed by the university (actually the very powerful people who are running this elaborate Covid disinformation campaign would have ordered them to pull it) – fortunately it was saved and published elsewhere:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iO0K75EZAF8dkNDkDmM3L4zNNY0X-Xw5/view
elizabethhart: It is indeed diabolical, the frenzied push to vaccinate everybody. The ‘Rona is dangerous in the elderly, and the vaccine is dangerous in the elderly. What I find interesting is that the mainstream media is actually reporting on the nursing home deaths from the vaccine, something they refuse to do with deaths and injuries from childhood vaccines. Now the vaccine pushers in the State of California have “paused” the use of one particular lot of the Moderna vaccine–330,000 doses–because of a too-high rate of allergic reactions. For California to do this is amazing, because here, in the case of children, all vaccines are safe and effective for everyone, no exceptions allowed.
Good point Elizabeth!
Almost every one of those 329k deaths were unnecessary, because the cure (actually many cures) have been withheld. With proper treatment, the true death toll would be close to zero. No reason for vaccines, lockdowns, masks, etc.
This spreadsheet* says it all:
Courageous doctors at 13 big medical clinics have properly treated 11,029 COVID patients so far with only 22 deaths. That’s a 99.8% recovery rate – with proper treatment.
Bookmark this page, it’s updated regularly.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ia94A6Ls4NISLqZmyt1osxsdQ0D-zAcwRiA0_n4cm04/edit?fbclid=IwAR3XcfASvQHA787iAQJON_1rCRBbMWpQspWKkVnKmoz9ux0YcCHhdDKuxbY#gid=0
*thanks to theasdgamer!
Why does “emergency authortisation” exist in the first place?
If something is necessary and is shown to be useful, then you do not need to force anyone to accept it. People would be killing each other in a rush to get a lifesaver, even if it is just candy and people are just confused about their needs and wants. But if something is not necessary, or it is not useful, then few people will ask for it.
No authorization is needed to do good. Are we all the most moronic generation of all?
One really needs to be forceful and coercive if one has such a bad product to sell. What kind of entrepreneur would be so stupid and conceited to overproduce something that cannot be sold? Unless it is not an entrepreneur, but a sociopathic bastard who only knows to win money by grifting the public sector, purchasing the soul of civil servants so that they rewrite the rules in order to force people to buy the bloody product (I am feeling sorry for the invertebrates right now).
This is stealing poor people in their own pockets. We have just seen redistribution of wealth from the bottom to top. All the idiots who run the so called culture are applauding this incredible Heist. Amazing.
The poor do not even know how much poor they are now. The rich do not even know yet that they are now poor compared to the fraudsters who have pulled this off. The victors of this war for the treasure do not know how hard and painful their fall will be. This affair is not going to look any better a year from now, value-wise. We live under the shadows projected by many ominous tides, far more dangerous than any disease. I wish you all good luck, even to the bad guys.
When in doubt, root for the poor and the downtrodden. They will have the last word, no matter what.
Just adding a comment to try and get the total to 1200.
Today I’ve forwarded an email to Professor Allen Cheng, one of the major influencers on taxpayer-funded vaccination policy in Australia.
In my email I challenge the implementation of mass coronavirus vaccination in Australia, a medical intervention which politicians are threatening to coerce people to accept.
This matter is relevant to people around the world, with everyone under threat of this poorly thought through vaccination response.
Please feel free to share with others, my email is accessible via this link: https://vaccinationispolitical.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/coercive-coronavirus-vaccination-in-australia.pdf
Former Ontario chief medical officer challenges Lockdown policies
A former provincial top doctor has sent a letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford siding with Roman Baber, the MPP who broke rank with his own government to call for an end to lockdowns.
“MPP Baber made five key points (in his open letter) and I believe he was correct on all five items,” writes Dr. Richard Schabas, who served as Ontario’s chief medical officer of health from 1987 to 1997. He notes that Baber “deserves great credit” for opening up the discussion on lockdowns.
“Lockdown was never part of our planned pandemic response nor is it supported by strong science,” adds Schabas, who notes he helped train current top doc David Williams.
“Two recent studies on the effectiveness of lockdown show that it has, at most, a small COVID mortality benefit compared to more moderate measures. Both studies warned about the excessive cost of lockdowns.”
Schabas also served as chief of staff at York Central Hospital during the 2003 SARS crisis.
https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/former-ontario-chief-medical-officer-sides-with-roman-baber-on-lockdowns
Here is a very angry doctor in the US, claiming 100% success with a combination of Hydroxychloroquine, zinc and something else:
https://player.d.tube/btfs/QmeyYEAL1UruuxD8c4JBg71FP5VQhtZrAbddwf4ZT5fqUz
She is angry because as she says, using these drugs could end the lockdowns and stop the deaths – all over the globe.
David, the doctor may be correct, but that’s not what Bill and Klaus want, nor does Doris or Mattilda.
Dr David Grimes has put http://www.drdavidgrimes.com/2021/01/covid-19-and-vitamin-d-miracle-in.html this up about the Spanish State of Andalusia. By intervening at the beginning of November they now have 3 deaths a day out of 8.2million souls compared to our 1000+ at the same time out of ?64million.
Just how long will our ‘experts’ on SAGE sit with their fingers in their ears. (Silly question really since there can be no public outcry if the press refuses to print such news)
This is a really lightweight article. There is extremely little data on display here, and the analysis of the data is flawed and the author is happy to ignore that he is unable to determine a consistent correlation and his conclusion is, therefore, that no correlation exists. Has it never occurred to him that this might be because he is only considering what is essentially a single parameter. The number of deaths depends upon so many factors.
Although the author begins his article by claiming to be no banner waver, and very moderate and considered, he is clearly a flag waver around which those of similarly shallow opinions can gather…..and they proclaim him as a voice of sanity.
I can only conclude that all the doctors reporting the tragic situation in our hospitals are part of this conspiracy, despite them diverting so many resources to the care of COVID patients.
BUT well done for persuading all these people that there is no need to attempt to reduce the spread of the virus. Your article will cost lives.
Andy, whose article are you referring to? Your last paragraph is what might be expected from Imperial College modellers, SAGE, MINDSPACE, SPI-B, or the BBC. Fact free, and based entirely on belief.
Your post’s comment about costing lives sounds like something out of 1984 by George Orwell.
You present zero evidence that lock downs have any impact (see the latest Stanford study) but you accuse the post of being dangerous. You then just accuse people like me who agree with it of being shallow.
We really are in a scary era of history when your post passes as rational argument.
Andy, I hope you realise that Dr Kendrick is not some ivory tower theorist. He is a working NHS doctor who treats Covid patients and has watched some of his patients die of Covid. He is therefore well aware of the problems an increase in Covid patient intake would cause the NHS.
He is also aware that those suffering from non-covid conditions are not receiving the care they should because lockdowns confine them at home, government scare tactics have made them terrified of going out and seeking help, and normal doctor consultations have been forbidden because of social distancing regulations. None of which actions have been subjected to ‘gold standard’ randomised controlled trials — they have been sucked out of a bureaucrat’s thumb, and any criticism of them gets stomped on.
What a snarky, passive/aggressive, banal comment you posted! You must have worked a couple of weeks on that, at the least.
And you lefty lot are responsible for millions of covid deaths because of your smearing of antivirals.
No the hospitals are busy …so the doctors are not conspiring ….
But NOT as busy as in 2018… or most other years – do you recall martial law in past years? And make not mistake – this is NOT a lockdown – it is MARTIAL LAW.
The 2017-2018 influenza epidemic is sending people to hospitals and urgent-care centers in every state, and medical centers are responding with extraordinary measures: asking staff to work overtime, setting up triage tents, restricting friends and family visits and canceling elective surgeries, to name a few.
“We are pretty much at capacity, and the volume is certainly different from previous flu seasons,” says Dr. Alfred Tallia, professor and chair of family medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “I’ve been in practice for 30 years, and it’s been a good 15 or 20 years since I’ve seen a flu-related illness scenario like we’ve had this year.”
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/
2018 – Surgeries postponed due to severe flu cases overwhelming Toronto ICU https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/02/13/toronto-hospital-flu/
2017 – Surge in patients forces Ontario hospitals to put beds in ‘unconventional spaces’ https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/04/16/surge-in-patients-forces-ontario-hospitals-to-put-beds-in-unconventional-spaces.html
2016 – More than 4,300 patients treated in hallway of Brampton Civic Hospital last year https://www.cp24.com/news/more-than-4-300-patients-treated-in-hallway-of-brampton-civic-hospital-last-year-1.3657561
2013 – Hospitals overwhelmed by flu and norovirus patients https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/health-headlines/hospitals-overwhelmed-by-flu-and-norovirus-patients-1.1108376
2012 – Hospitals overwhelmed by surge of flu cases https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/hospitals-overwhelmed-by-surge-of-flu-cases/article562037/
2011 – Hospitals overwhelmed by surge of flu cases https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/hospitals-overwhelmed-by-surge-of-flu-cases/article562037/
As for your eagerness to lockdown to save lives… I will say this 3x so it hopefully penetrates the bony part:
SWEDEN – NO LOCKDOWN NO MASKS – NOT IN THE TOP 20 DEATHS PER CAPITA COVID
SWEDEN – NO LOCKDOWN NO MASKS – NOT IN THE TOP 20 DEATHS PER CAPITA COVID
SWEDEN – NO LOCKDOWN NO MASKS – NOT IN THE TOP 20 DEATHS PER CAPITA COVID
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
Lockdowns are futile – all they do is destroy lives, mental health and the economy
https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-coronavirus-the-evidence/
I am trying hard to see things from a different point of view re. a ‘reset’.
What have we learned from the past year?
It has been proven that most people in the world are easily frightened and rely on governments to solve most of their problems.
It has been proven that most people abdicate responsibility.
When we consider how mindlessness impinges on the world it is clear that any current measures to combat it are failing:
A walk in most parts of the world shows that
Many people see no reason not to throw their litter into or onto hedges, fields, pavements, streams, rivers, seas….
Many people think it is OK to leave dog pooh bags along paths or even hanging from trees when the unpackaged excrements would be better thrown onto an area where nobody ever walks.
Supermarkets and indeed all shops have been permitted to sell food and other goods in as much packaging as is desired by, one assumes, the majority.
Nobody is stopped from owning as many cars as they want.
In many countries there is still slave labour. Illegal immigrants are doing unpaid work and living in hovels while their rich employers go unpunished.
And there are so many other travesties that governments seem either unwilling or unable to rectify. There is so much fraud and dishonesty and much must be driven by all the inequality.
It is hard for thinking, considerate people to be treated as idiots by current governments. They are naturally outraged by the attempts to frighten them into submission when they have not been taken into confidences. But how are the irresponsible or immoral to be stopped in their actions unless they fear they will be noticed committing them? And why have our police failed to properly address the litterbugs and antisocial behaviour before, when police numbers now seem set to greatly increase? Why couldn’t we have had a litterbug type force to set some standards?
I’m simply playing devil’s advocate a little and trying to be stoical too. I have no idea to what extent current actions are driven by greed and power or by idealism. Whatever the reason or reasons it is sure to be a bumpy ride for most.
One thing I do know is that I could never go along with mandatory vaccination or under skin microchipping. Our bodies remain our bodies and our bodies only. And our thoughts are our own property.
The was just posted on Zero Hedge Today:
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/its-killing-younger-people-new-covid-strain-reportedly-emerging-within-brazilian-amazon
Brazil was one of the first countries to allow mass experimentation on their people with a COVID vaccine – China’s vaccine and Astra Zeneca’s vaccine, right? I’m sure they have millions of people vaccinated by now.
The description given by the doctor sounds an awful lot like ADE and pathogenic priming. Here’s an article written by Dr. Tennpenny that explains the outcomes of a previously studies coronavirus vaccine years ago, which found that antibodies to the spike protein caused significantly more lung damage:
https://vaxxter.com/covid-vaccines-part-2/
Are we seeing the beginning indications that the warnings were correct that coronavirus vaccination followed by exposure to the virus will result in severe disease and possibly death? How many of the people developing severe sickness now were vaccinated, especially the younger people? I bet that’s the one question they won’t ask or answer.
Dr. Mercola said this today about nebulized peroxide: “I have never seen or heard of this intervention failing in the treatment of COVID-19”.
Wow!
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/20/what-are-the-benefits-of-niacin.aspx
Dr. John H, I bought a nebuliser, just in case I need it, but with enough vitamin D etc, and the low case rate (the real case, not the fictitious rubbish lockdown advocates claim, but the things with clinical signs), I’ll probably never need it.
Thanks Dr J.
Re suggestions of liver issues –
500mg daily seems a usual dose but came across following re same dose
“That dose is small. Most liver toxicity occurs with > 2, 000 mg. To be safe, get an alt (blood sample) next time you check your cholesterol.” Any thoughts ?
Well done
Great work
I very much agree with you on most of your research .
What’s the graphs look like now with an add death toll ?
Keep it up
Regards
Graham
Here’s another analysis showing the increase in the rate of deaths has not increased but the absolute value has increased simply due to population aging:
http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.com/2021/01/has-covid-led-to-increase-in-all-cause.html
Always check sources! That post and its chart fail to mention that on the source page (the chart is a cut and paste with added annotations) there is a WARNING: “NOTE: All 2020 and later data are UN projections and DO NOT include any impacts of the COVID-19 virus.” No wonder the charts shows covid didn’t have any effect…
Always, always, always check sources! And here it is for that chart (you need to enter the years, 2015 to 2020) and the boxed out warning near the top:
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/death-rate
Keep reading until you get to the bits on covid mortality.
Dr No has just done a post looking at among other things EuroMOMO’s Z-scores, which he has long suspected might be Grade 1 numerology, and it looks like they are. So not only do they not correlate with national level anti-covid controls, as Dr Kendrick points out, it appears they don’t even correlate well with reality, especially for smaller countries. The fundamental flaw if they use standard deviations as the ‘measure’, and what happens is that smaller countries tend to have wider scatter, or dispersion, of their observations, and that in turn leads to a larger standard deviation, and than in turn leads to smaller Z-scores. The effect isn’t trivial – it’s why Northern Ireland appears to have been by passed by covid-19. Full post is here:
https://dr-no.co.uk/2021/01/22/apples-cores-and-z-scores/
Off Topic: Stop Press: Ivermectin:
https://covid19criticalcare.com/
Jan 14, 2021 – One week after Dr. Paul Marik and Dr. Pierre Kory – founding members of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) – along with Dr. Andrew Hill, researcher and consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), presented their data before the NIH Treatment Guidelines Panel, the NIH has upgraded their recommendation and now considers Ivermectin an option for use in COVID-19.
TIME TO FORCE THIS ISSUE/CONSIDERATION WITH POLITICIANS,DOCTORS AND HOSPITALS
Some people seem to be of the opinion that this has been the greatest pandemic of all time. Ignorance of data aside, this very same people have impeded beyond belief all the efforts by people like Marik to curb it. Shame on them. I will not mention the ineffable common name of the chemical whose IUPAC designation is “l-threo-Hex-2-enono-1,4-lactone”, a small quantity of which Dr. Marik has been recommending (in association with other useful non-patentable chemicals) as a novel primary treatment for the very deadly sepsis, a grave disease from which anyone, even the most healthy, can succumb.
How many people who die from viral diseases actually end up dying from sepsis? Not to belittle viral infections in general, nor the often opportunistic, secondary infections by other microbes, but I want to remember all the well meaning people that it is 2021 already and we do not have a treatment for sepsis because of CENSORSHIP OF THE SCIENTISTS!
Does it reach you guys better when I yell like that?
We also do not have a treatment for post-sepsis syndrome. Damage takes time to recover. Support seems to be in order, unless the sufferer is a horrible person and the carers would prefer to let go.
Euthanasia is not an acceptable treatment for post-sepsis. And you guys can go to hell if you voted for that crap. You ultimate imbeciles!
No one should have no problem with the ivermectin or the quinine and the zinc to be used to prolong a few months, or even years, the lives of people who, sadly, are close to breaking through to the other side. Ivermectin may save them from dying from a virus that causes a disease with a 99.9% survival rate, both as an early treatment and as late treatment, unlike the HCQ. I like that. It seems like an actionable fig leaf!
But I think it is very shameful for hundreds of millions of useful and nagging idiots who still are torturing us, specially the children, to recognize the utility of these drugs, which. The politicians have once again fooooooooooled you! Wake the kcuf up already!
(one o for each month of this protracted bonfire of vanities)
They are stealing money from you, and stealing your future, and the future of the young, just like ten years ago. What are you going to do about it?
Long Life Doctor Paul Marik!
Thanks to TFS for bringing this up. Long and prosperous life to you too!
This bit needs to be proofread:
On its return is has been, generally, far less deadly. Much you would expect. The most vulnerable died on first exposure, and far fewer people had any resistance to it, at all. Now, a number of people do have some immunity, and may of the vulnerable are already dead.
What is going on in the UK?!?!
According to EUROMOMO, England is experiencing extraordinary high excess deaths.
Wales has low excess. Scotland has moderate excess. And Northern Ireland has no excess.
So what is going on in England?
See: Week 01, 2021: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
Nice data set.
I highly recommend that the Lockdown (Martial Law) Junkies follow the info on Sweden throughout that page.
And please remember Sweden has NOT locked down and does NOT require masks.
How is it possible that the total deaths in Sweden are so much lower than all those other countries that have locked down repeatedly?
Explain to me why their numbers are not off the charts?
Over to you…..
Hi Fast Eddy
Possible explanation why people in some countries have lower mortality rates from Covid19: Vitamin D levels in commonly consumed foods.
Apparently milk is not routinely fortified with D in England. In Sweden milk is fortified.
Looks like adequate vit D with no masks is better than masks with low vit D.
Andy- yes, and also Japan is another country with very low death rates- (apparently, at least last I looked)- and a very high vitamin D level. I also heard that Japan never had a lockdown, and they only wore masks intermittently; either it wasn’t mandatory, or was not really enforced; not sure what the story was. But they’re one of the countries who’ve done very well- (and they have a lot of elderly people in the population!) I wish the media would take notice of some of these things….of course they don’t. According to Ivor Cummins, strict lockdowns most likely cause more deaths in the long run- (this is independent of the “collateral damage”- a word I intensely dislike!- that they cause)- but actually, by drawing it out and not allowing a “safe spread”, more people (mostly the vulnerable and elderly) have to die in the long run.
I also wonder if these so-called new mutations might be a result of the lockdowns as well? By not allowing the virus to “run its course”, and by making it difficult for the virus to infect the healthy people who are quarantining at home, maybe it “needed” to mutate to make it easier to infect more people, and therefore survive? This is only a theory, but who knows…….
I note today, when I click on the email “REPLY” button, it takes me to the browser, and then redirects to the FLCCC page. Is this a rogue bot at work, or is it intentional? If it is intentional, it could be argurd to be a good thing, but i think it is inappropriate for this blog, and smacks of propaganda.
What do you think about this?
Steve Hilton (Fox News) blows Fauci out the Universe with GAIN OF FUNCTION EXPOSE
https://vaccineliberationarmy.com/2021/01/24/steve-hilton-fox-news-blows-fauci-out-the-universe-with-gain-of-function-expose/
elizabethhart: The video has already been scrubbed.
The rapid disappearance of any video or other information speaks for itself. Loudly.
The link works for me in Australia. Is it maybe a problem in the UK with access?
“Video unavailable
This video has been removed by the uploader”
Haven’t seen this video. However, IMO, this is not really news, it’s just been ignored and buried over the last year. It is/was well known that the US and China, and others, have been engaged in research into virus transmissions (CVs) between animals (Bats) and humans with papers issued into the public domain (2016 ?) – and yes Fauci, and the Military, were involved. This is also true for the ‘Lugar Labs’ in Tbilisi Georgia where potentially dubious research with Military links into Biological diseases (weapons ?) has been carried out.
Outsourcing risks to third parties and providing ‘plausible deniability’ has the hallmarks of the CIA, but then as a lockdown sceptic I’m prone to conspiracy theories, don’t you know …
There is a lot of excellent detailed information on DilyanaGaytandzhieva’s site: https://dilyana.bg/
E.g. “Project G-2101: Pentagon biolab discovered MERS and SARS-like coronaviruses in bats”
https://dilyana.bg/project-g-2101-pentagon-biolab-discovered-mers-and-sars-like-coronaviruses-in-bats/
“Salisbury attack reveals $70 million Pentagon program at Porton Down”
https://dilyana.bg/salisbury-attack-reveals-70-million-pentagon-program-at-porton-down/
A definition of conspiracy theorist that appeals to some is someone who is inclined to join the dots. But “dot joiner” doesnt sound right !
We know that the sicker you are, the more likely it is that Covid will kill you if you get infected. But degree of sickness is difficult to quantify.
As a proxy for ‘degree of sickness’ I suggest the number of medications you are taking at the time of your Covid diagnosis be recorded.
If you learn that someone 86 years old and on 12 medications (not untypical) has died, and you are 85 on only four medications, you can breathe a bit easier. Conversely, if you are on lots of medications it’s an incentive to apply lifestyle changes to cut the number.
Also, if the actual medications were recorded on a database somewhere, AI would be able to search the data and pick out any that seem to be harmful and those that seem to be helpful, if any such exist.
Malcolm,
I am so glad you are back, because you are one bright light of sanity in sea of madness. I can well imagine that running this blog can be very wearing – particularly since now there seem to be some trouble makers popping up, but please, please remember the help (psychological as well as medical) that you give to so many people just by running this blog.
Malcolm,
I have just had a phone conversation with my GP about my cholesterol level (6.5 LDL 3.8) – and it went really well!
Initially she wanted to put me on to something other than a statin to lower my cholesterol (PCSK9 inhibitors – I don’t know), and I explained that there was no way I was going to do anything to lower my cholesterol, but if she was interested, I would explain why!
To my amazement she actually was interested!. At the end she gave me an email address to use to send her all the details, and I asked her to share the email with others in the practice.
First I pointed out that you are an NHS doctor – so I hadn’t just found a crank on the internet, and that everything you write comes with copious references.
I stressed that you base most of your conclusions on the actual published studies – not on abstract theory – this is what particularly struck me when I first encountered your books.
I encouraged her to read Doctoring Data first, because I feel that really goes to town dismantling the fog of statistical misinformation from Big Pharma, NICE etc, and I also mentioned Statin Nation. She seemed to be vaguely aware that there are relative statistics and absolute statistics, but I don’t think she was aware much beyond that, and I definitely didn’t want to humiliate her be pushing to find out what she knew exactly. I was careful to make it clear that I was not criticising the GPs in any way – just those responsible for all the guidance they receive.
I also like your Doctoring data book because it touches on so many other subjects – cancer screening for example – and all these are very relevant to a GP of course.
I’d definitely encourage anyone else with cholesterol ‘problems’ to do something similar if you get the chance. The fact that the conversation was over the phone seemed to help – not least because I had placed some notes on my screen before she started.
NIce David!
David the diplomat – great example of how to communicate with persons who may a right to be sceptical with us civvies caught in the middle.
“Two things stand out. First, there was an obvious ‘COVID19 spike’. Second, what we are seeing at present does not differ greatly from previous years. The normal winter spike in deaths.”
To me, the winter spike in 2020 seems far higher than the previous years in the chart.
It is now higher in some countries, that is true. However, the pattern is very strange. No increase in Northern Ireland, for example, very slight increase in Wales. Very large in increase in England? I cannot explain that.
Isn’t it interesting that the EUROMO England group aged 15-44 have such a high incidence of excess deaths? Surely that isn’t due to covid. We must look in other directions for the answer, I think.
“REPORT: CDC Apparently Changed COVID Criteria That Inflated Fatalities 10-Fold (2/2)”
https://redstate.com/michael_thau/2021/01/25/report-cdc-change-in-covid-criteria-that-inflated-fatalities-10-fold-also-broke-federal-law-conclusion-n316252
We have not heard from you for a while. Is everything ok?
Chantal
Dr K has a new role. HART: Health Advisory and Recovery Team
A new group of experts has been set up with the intention of raising the level of debate about lockdowns. They aren’t all lockdown sceptics, but they aim to put the existing measures in proportion and challenge some of the more extreme justifications for the current lockdown. Among their number are a few familiar faces such as Dr John Lee, Prof David Livermore, Joel Smalley, Dr Jonathan Engler, Dr Malcolm Kendrick, Prof David Patton and Prof Gordon Hughes.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/01/26/latest-news-266/#hart-health-advisory-and-recovery-team
For those interested, here is an article covering accuracy of PCR results versus test cycles used.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/your-coronavirus-pcr-test-positive-you-still-might-not-have-covid-19/5735461
There is no reliable diagnostic test, and there are no unique symptoms.
This means the government can terrify us all by suggesting we may all be walking time bombs. And almost any death certificate can be filled in with “Covid-19”.
In the USA, the CDC rules say that anyone who dies after having a cough can be ruled a Covid-19 death. Or anyone who dies of pneumonia!
On a completely different topic, I read that the state of Oregon (at least) now receives $220,000 in federal funds for every documented Covid-19 death.
“In his January 7 postscript, DeMeo catches the CDC red-handed. Earlier in the paper, he points out, as I did above, that there are nearly 300,000 missing deaths in the all-cause category for the numbers to pan out. On that day, Jan 7, he discovered the CDC had suddenly added 269,249 all-cause deaths into their end of year all-cause death totals!
Evidently, 269,249 people suddenly died in the last week of 2020. How convenient for the Covid narrative!”
theasdgamer: Thank you very much for posting that! Celia Farber is a first-rate journalist. A truth -teller. Indeed, the most damaging psyop in world history.
I don’t know if Dr Kendrick is still checking the comments, but I was interested by a comment above regarding Antibody-Dependent Enhancement. I hadn’t heard of such a thing until now, but it had occurred to me that such a thing might exist. I remember back in April wondering if a lot of the deaths might be in people who have had the flu vaccine. Especially those who regularly have it.
It would be interesting to discover if there is a correlation between severity of symptoms and having had the flu jab.
I have seen no discussion of this anywhere, which is surprising considering that Antibody-Dependent Enhancement exists.
Ummm ? 100,000 dead of Covid in the UK !
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55814751
Ohhh well, I guess at some point folks in the UK will learn what works. Australia, New Zealand & Taiwan certainly have already done so with a far far lower death counts in each.
And just to provide some context & comparison, here in Australia deaths from Covid are less than 900 in the past year in a population of 25 million. Not bad ehh ? Frankly I’m glad that our governments had the courage to enforce quarantine for 14 days for all incoming overseas travellers. And had the balls to enforce the strict lockdowns needed when ‘inbreaks’ of the Covid virus happened.
And now life in Oz is basically almost normal..Just no overseas tourism or students from other countries coming anymore. But hey, we’re alive and living the good life.
Great Britain can live up to the name & do the same !
Good luck !
Dry tinder !!!
I suspect that when Oz and NZ finally open their borders their deaths and cases will catch up, to some extent, with the rest of us. They can’t hide away for ever …
OK Steve
Now that’s a smart arse response.
And wonderful crystal ball gazing !
But next month the roll out of the Covid vaccine starts here.
Free to all in a staged roll out
So your crystal ball is nonsense.
Meanwhile we are alive and healthy and not dying like in your country..
Hey, I’m even dancing Argentine tango and going to the gym.
What works is early treatment with antivirals. Period.
Maybe some excess deaths are due to school closures.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/las-vegas-schools-forced-reopen-amid-rash-student-suicides
It is now September 2021. The vaccines appear to be losing their efficacy. I would love to see this post updated in light of vaccine actions.