27th January 2021
This blog was published on RT-com, after much discussion and a few changes. It can be seen here It took a few days. The editors were concerned about the fact-checkers having a go at it and demanding retraction.
We went back and forward. I assured them that all my quoted facts were correct, so the fact-checkers could only attack the ‘opinion’ stated. Which they may well do. If so, fact checkers are no longer checking facts, they are decreeing which scientific opinions are correct, and which are wrong.
Which puts them in a very dangerous place indeed. We do not know who the fact checkers are, we do not know how much they are paid, we do not know what editorial control is exerted over them. We know nothing about them, yet their pronouncements are decreed final on all matters.
This is the recreation of Soviet show trials of another era. “We know you are guilty, you will be found guilty, all that is required of you is that you admit your guilt. We, the judges in this case, however, are subject to no control, no-one can find us in the wrong, or punish us in any way.”
Anyway, the main concerns of Russia Today were that I did not look at enough variable factors. What about population density? What about secondary lockdowns etc. I replied it was impossible to assess all variables fully. I sat and thought about the confounding variables inherent in lockdown, that you would probably need to include in any study on them:
Number of tests carried out
False positives
False negatives
How deaths are recorded/validated
Population density
Percentage of population living in cities [not the same as population density]
Population density within cities
Number of single person households
Average age of population
Age distribution
Percentage of ethnic minorities
Primary ethnicity of population
Number of people with multimorbidity’s
ICU beds per head of population
Time of first lockdown
Time of relaxation of first lockdown
How well lockdown measures were followed.
Time of second lockdown
Restrictions within lockdowns curfews etc.
Test and trace set-up
Vitamin D levels
Northern or Southern hemisphere
Strain 1 COVID
Strain 2 COVID
Strain 3 COVID
Air pollution
Main method of commuting, underground, buses etc.
That’s just for starters.
The total number of interactions between these twenty-seven factors is twenty-seven factorial 27 x 26 x 25….x 3 x 2 x 1
Which is …
10,888,869,450,418,352,160,768,000,000 possible interactions.
So, if anyone says you have not taken the interactions of all variables into account, you can say that this is – effectively – impossible. Perhaps they would like to demonstrate they have done so.
I also pointed out I was not the only person to believe that lockdowns had little, or no effect on transmission rates and death from COVID. Here is part of an article from South Africa, based on the paper ‘COVID-19 in South Africa’
The article was published on Prevention Web:
Lockdown didn’t work in South Africa: why it shouldn’t happen again
By Benjamin T H Smart, Alex Broadbent and Herkulaas MvE Combrink
At the start of October, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Chinese government lauded South Africa’s response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Yet data concerning both the spread of the virus and the indirect consequences of the lockdown suggest that the severe restrictions imposed in South Africa – some of the strictest in the world – were far from effective.
We recently reviewed the evidence for the effectiveness of the lockdown at slowing the spread of the pandemic. The mitigation strategies initially implemented may well have gone some way to “flattening-the-curve” – that is, reducing the rate at which the virus spreads through the population. But we found no decline in either daily new cases or deaths between around 27 March, which was the first day of level 5; and the latter part of July, when cases began to tail off during level 3.
Lockdown level 5 in South Africa was one of the world’s strictest. Citizens weren’t allowed to leave their residence except for essential purposes such as grocery shopping and medical care. All non-essential businesses were shut down, and cigarette and alcohol sales were banned.
If this “hard lockdown” had been effective, the rate of infection would have dropped significantly 7-14 days after lockdown was implemented. Note that one must look for a delay due to the disease’s 5-6 day average incubation period, and time for test results to be released. This simply did not happen.
Of course, the number of cases did increase over time, but what counts is whether the rate of increase changed when lockdowns changed. We found no such changes. As lockdown restrictions were relaxed and South Africa entered levels 4 and 3, when much of the economy re-opened and restrictions on movement were substantially reduced, there was no increase in the rate of infection.
In fact, during level 3, the pandemic peaked. And as the country entered level 2, the pandemic started to recede. If lockdown regulations were having the intended effect, one would expect the rate of infection to spike as restrictions were relaxed. This did not happen…..
Here is the article that first appeared in RT-com:
The scientific evidence so far on COVID lockdowns suggests that they don’t work – and may actually increase the death rate
We are being told that lockdowns halt the spread of the infection, but where’s the proof? The places with the worst death rates all followed that path – and the ones who didn’t have generally fared better.
‘Paradoxically, human beings, when compelled to act, learn to justify a chosen course with an assurance unwarranted by the evidence for the course chosen.’ Bernard Lown.
I have studied the history of medicine, and medical interventions, for many years. The most extreme disasters have always followed a fairly distinct pattern. A series of steps, if you like.
Step one = we have a serious disease that is killing lots of people.
Step two = it creates great fear, and the medical profession has nothing much in place to deal with it.
Step three = a charismatic leader emerges to decree that he (almost always a ‘he’ up to now) knows how to treat it/control it, etc. This is ‘the idea’.
Step four = The ‘idea’ is enthusiastically taken up around the world and becomes mainstream thinking.
Step five = the ‘idea’ becomes standard practice.
Step six – the ‘idea’ is taught to medics and becomes accepted truth, a fact.
Step six = anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked.
There is always, of course, the possibility that the ‘idea’ is the best thing to do. This happens from time to time. However, there seems to be little or no correlation between the enthusiasm, and speed, with which ideas are taken up, and the likelihood they are correct.
The problem, as I came to recognise, lies between step two and step four. By which I mean that a charismatic figure convinces everyone that they have the answer, before there is any evidence to support it. The person may not be charismatic, simply someone who has the ability to grab attention and push the ‘idea’ forward. Such as the Chinese Premier.
Another thing that leads to disaster, which is perhaps of even greater importance, is that the ‘idea’ must sound like the most obvious common sense. It should trigger a response along the lines of ‘Yes, of course, that sounds perfectly reasonable’. Once that’s been achieved, the ‘idea’ drops neatly into people’s minds, settles down, and grows roots, creating not a ripple of cognitive dissonance.
At which point it cements itself in, and becomes difficult, even painful, to remove.
To quote the film Inception: ‘What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere.’
We love ideas, they make us who we are. We defend them, sometimes with our very lives.
“Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions with such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?” J.G. Farrell.
So, yes, I have no illusions about the strength of ideas. They are so powerful, and so dangerous that you must be very careful where you aim them. Because ideas also have a God-like power, which is that they are immortal.
The damage inflicted by medical ideas
You can kill a person who holds an idea. You can kill thousands of people who hold the same idea – but you cannot kill that idea. Unless you kill every single person who believes in it, then wipe it from the historical record, so that no-one can ever think it again. See 1984.
I will give you a couple of examples of horribly damaging medical ideas. The first is the radical mastectomy. An idea first driven by William Halsted, a US surgeon from the end of the nineteenth century. He believed, as did almost everyone else at the time, that breast cancer spread locally – as did all cancers. Therefore, anything located anywhere near the cancer had to be cut away in case it had already been polluted.
With a radical mastectomy the entire breast, the other breast, muscles on the chest wall, lymph nodes, more muscles were cut out. Almost anything that could be removed without actually killing the women in the process.
The mutilated women were immensely grateful, and the surgeons proud of their expertise. They were doing a good thing, because the idea was considered to be inarguably correct. Questioning it was to be met with the response like, ‘Do you want these women to die – you heartless swine?’
Except that it wasn’t correct. Breast cancer does not spread locally. At least, when it does, it does so very slowly. The spread that causes problems, and kills women, is not local. Cancer cells get into the lymphatic system, and the bloodstream, and spread widely around the body, very early on. Often, long before the primary cancer can be detected.
Those who questioned the radical mastectomy, were attacked. Geoffrey Keynes, brother of John Maynard, tried less radical surgery in the 1920s. It did not go down well:
‘Halsted’s followers in America ridiculed this approach, and came up with the name “lumpectomy” to call the local surgery. In their minds, the surgeon was simply removing “just” a lump, and this did not make much sense. They were aligning themselves with the paradigm of Radical Mastectomy. In fact, some of the surgeons even went further to come up with “superradical” and “ultraradical” procedures that were morbidly disfiguring procedures where the breast, underlying muscles, axillary nodes, the chest wall, and occasionally the ribs, part of the sternum, the clavicle and the lymph nodes inside the chest were removed. The idea of “more was better” became prevalent.’
More is better… this is another of the deadly repeating themes of ‘the idea.’ The idea can never be wrong, it is just that people are not doing with sufficient vigour. If women are still dying from metastatic breast cancer, even after radical mastectomies (and they were), the answer could not possibly be that the procedure doesn’t work. The answer is that we are not being radical enough: ‘Hack away more, and then more.’
‘I was greeted with hands stretched out in a Nazi salute’
Another big medical idea is that of bed rest following a heart attack. It was thought, at one time, that all heart attacks were fatal. James Herrick, another US doctor, described the first non-fatal heart attack in 1912, then suggested that following such an attack, strict bed rest was important. This would take pressure off the heart and allow it a chance to heal. Again, this sounds perfectly reasonable. As described by Dr Bernard Lown, a professor of cardiology and the developer of the defibrillator:
“To a medical novice like me, the justification for enforced bed rest was persuasive. It was based on a sacrosanct therapeutic principle, the need to rest a diseased body part, be it a fractured limb or a tuberculosis-affected lung. Unlike a broken bone, which could be immobilized in a cast, or a lung lobe, which could be collapsed by inflating the chest cavity with air, the heart could not be cradled into quietude. The only approximation for a diseased heart was to diminish its workload. It was long known that during recumbency the heart rate slows and blood pressure drops, both indices of less oxygen usage and therefore of decreased cardiac work. Heart rest was therefore equated with bed rest.”
And so it became standard practice. It was simply what you did:
“Patients were confined to strict bed rest for four to six weeks. Sitting in a chair was prohibited. They were not allowed to turn from side to side without assistance. During the first week, they were fed. Moving their bowels and urinating required a bedpan. For the constipated, which included nearly every patient, precariously balancing on a bedpan was agonizing as well as embarrassing.
“Because world events might provoke unease, some physicians prohibited their patients from listening to the radio or reading a newspaper. Visits by family members were limited. Since recumbency provoked much restiveness and anxiety, patients required heavy sedation, which contributed to a pervasive sense of hopelessness and depression. Around one in three patients died.”
Bed rest started as a relatively mild thing. However, as it is with almost all things, it became increasingly ‘radical’. Lown, along with his mentor Dr Samuel Levine, tried to change this. He became involved in trying to get patients up out of bed to sit in a chair:
“Little did I realize that violating firmly held traditions can raise a tsunami of opposition. The idea of moving critically ill patients into a chair was regarded as off‑the‑wall. Initially the house staff refused to cooperate and strenuously resisted getting patients out of bed. They accused me of planning to commit crimes not unlike those of the heinous Nazi experimentations in concentration camps. Arriving on the medical ward one morning I was greeted by interns and residents lined up with hands stretched out in a Nazi salute and a “Heil Hitler!” shouted in unison.”
Step six = anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked
No evidence, no problem
Then, among all the other problems with ‘the idea’, between steps two and three, is one that I have not yet mentioned. It is that no study is ever done to find out if the idea works, or not. It is just conceived to be so obviously beneficial, such common sense, that there would be no point in wasting time and resources trying to prove it works.
No-one ever did a study to find out if the radical mastectomy improved survival. No-one ever did a study to prove that bed rest saved lives. They were both introduced on the back of absolutely nothing. In time, eventually, the folly of both was finally recognised. It took seventy years for radical mastectomy, fifty for bed rest.
Which takes us to lockdowns. The most expensive, invasive, and potentially destructive medical intervention ever attempted by humanity. Was there any evidence from anywhere, in history, that lockdowns would work? No, there was none. But we have the six steps on full display here.
Step one = we have a serious disease that is killing lots of people – check.
Step two = it creates great fear, and the medical profession has nothing in place to deal with it – check.
Step three = a charismatic leader emerges to decree that he (almost always a ‘he’ up to now) knows how to treat it/control it etc. This is the ‘idea’ – check.
Step four = The ‘idea’ is enthusiastically taken up around the world and becomes ‘mainstream thinking’ – check.
Step five = the ‘idea’ becomes standard practice – check.
Step six – the ‘idea’ is taught to medics and becomes accepted truth, a fact – check.
Step six = anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked – check.
Does it work – have lockdowns worked? You can pick and choose countries to support the case that it does and dismiss any evidence you don’t much like. Unfortunately, once you introduce a medical intervention that affects everyone, everywhere, you have lost the possibility of carrying out a controlled experiment of any sort.
Despite the lack of any randomised evidence, most people are absolutely convinced that lockdowns work to control the spread of COVID-19. They point to various countries, e.g. New Zealand, Norway, Australia and Taiwan, to prove their case. They always have a ready explanation as to why countries that underwent lockdown still have high death rates and vice-versa.
The ‘idea’ has become the truth. Its proponents now demand that those who doubt the efficacy of lockdowns prove that they don’t work. However, I don’t believe it’s up to those who don’t believe that lockdowns work, to prove that case.
The starting point, for any scientific hypothesis, is for the proponents to disprove the null hypothesis. Demanding that those who believe something may not work, to prove that it doesn’t, is to turn the scientific method upside down. You can never prove a negative.
The null hypothesis, by the way, is that there is no difference between two things. Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) in medicine are designed to prove, statistically, that there is an actual difference between doing A or B. This is how science is done, how research is done.
We must look carefully at the death rates
Unfortunately, it is not possible to do a controlled trial with COVID-19. The possibility of doing any randomised study was lost very early on. Which means that we are forced to rely, instead, on observational studies. We can look at country X, that did Y, and see how it compares with country Z that did not do Y.
Or we can look at two countries that did Y, to see how they compare. Or two countries that did not do Y. With COVID, of course, no two countries did exactly the same thing. Not even the four ‘countries’ within the UK. So any observations become more difficult to rely on due to this ‘confounding variable’.
In some UK countries, six people could meet up, in others it was eight, or two households, or only one household etc. In some, restaurants were open, in others they were shut – at varying times. From a scientific perspective, it’s a mess.
Anyway, to simplify things, let’s look at the 10 countries around the world with the highest death rate from COVID. That is, deaths per million population (I have left out countries with population of less than one million, such as Monaco, or Liechtenstein, or Andorra because a few deaths here or there can distort the death rate considerably)
What did they do differently, what did they do the same? Looking only at first lockdown dates:
Belgium first locked down on March 18th, 2020.
Slovenia first locked down on March 20th, 2020.
Czechia first locked down on March 16th, 2020.
The UK first locked down March 23rd, 2020.
Bosnia-Herzegovina first locked down March 16th, 2020.
Italy first locked down March 9th, 2020.
North Macedonia first locked down March 18th, 2020.
The USA is highly federal and different states took different approaches – seven states did not issue lockdown orders: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. In those seven states the death rate from COVID averaged at 1,280 per million vs. 1,254 as the US average.
In comparison, New Jersey first locked down March 21st, 2020, and its current death rate is 2,310 per million. New York locked down on March 12th – its current death rate is 2,130 per million. These states have the highest COVID related deaths in the US.
Bulgaria first locked down on March 13th, 2020.
Hungary first locked down on March 28th, 2020.
All countries locked down, Italy first, Hungary last. As you can see, the date of first lockdown is unrelated to the death rate. The other stand out facts are that these are all ‘European’ countries. All with majority Caucasian populations. They are all in the Northern hemisphere.
If I were thinking of running a clinical trial where the hypothesis was that a lockdown was the best way to prevent deaths from COVID, then I would start by looking at observational data such as this.
I would find that the ten countries in the world with the highest death rates all locked down at similar times, with similar restrictions.
I would look at the US where the death rate in states that locked down, and those that did not, were almost the same rate (or vastly higher in the cases of New Jersey and New York), and I would conclude that the observational studies had – thus far – failed to disprove the null hypothesis. In fact, the evidence up to this point could suggest that lockdowns may actually increase the death rate.
In short, I would look for another idea.
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 
just brilliant – thank you
200,000 farmers in Punjab have been camping out together for a month. Odd how they are sitll well, covid seems to have gone!!
In 1961 at the age of 11, my grammar school class were taught by our history teacher about the abandoned practice of bloodletting, and the 4 humours theory.
He summed up the lecture with an explanation of how the practice had survived for so many centuries without being challenged, observing wryly that if the patient had improved, it was deemed to be due to the treatment, whereas if they died, it was deemed due to their advanced condition, delayed diagnosis or treatment and “they would have died anyway”.
I wonder if any of my former schoolfriends have forgotten that. It seemed a very logical and true explanation to me and I never forgot it.
Bloodletting cures Covid 19!
Bloodletting still exists in Chinese Medicine but the points are bled for a few drops of blood. Often produces some amazing results from what I had seen
California absurdity on Covid-19 lock downs – Placer County California
A must see – ‘Do you know the Scientific History of Lockdowns?’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=978zLJJLo-I It accompanies the open letter (January 10th 2020) addressed to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation with courtesy copies sent to the U.K. Security Service, Australian Security Intelligence Organization, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the German Foreign Intelligence Service and the U.S. Department of Justice. In it the writers call for an investigation into major policy decisions.
Yes. What’s different with the Wuhan virus is that the CCP actively promoted lockdowns via the WHO, Imperial College, friendly (read bought and paid for) politicians and media, not to mention >100k social media bots and fake accounts. The intent was to destroy western economies, accomplish regime change in the US, and introduce populations to totalitarianism. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams!
Western statements about China (and Russia and Iran and Syria and Venezuela and…) are examples of psychological projection that would have delighted Freud or Maslow.
The motives they attribute to those nations are their own motives.
China has not the slightest reason to waste effort trying to undermine Western nations, which are doing such a superb job underminining themselves unaided.
Calling it “the Wuhan virus” is unwarranted, as there is no clear evidence as to where it originated or whether its origin was natural or artificial. What is quite certain is that no other nation has invested so much money or effort into “gain of function” research to make dangerous viruses even more deadly than the USA.
It is also unwarranted to talk about the “CCP”. The Chinese government has been doing a better job than any other major nation’s government. Do we speak of the “Conservative Party” or “the Democratic Party” when referring to the governments of the UK or USA? No, we do not. And if China as we see it today is the handiwork of communism, then let’s have communism here too.
One just needs to read “Unrestricted Warfare” by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui to understand China’s intentions.
One would need to get a description of the book to want to read it, and consider if it applies. As is the current most used phrase by fact checkers to such accusations to explain events – “No evidence.” How can there be evidence before investigation in all cases?
For a summary visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare
Dan, I have read that book. It describes some of China’s less obvious options should the US government continue to threaten it or advance to military escalation. Launching a war against a country that produced Sun Tzu 2,500 years ago might be riskier than the Pentagon and the White House realise.
By publishing their book in good time, the Chinese colonels made sure that their potential enemies would be well aware of China’s defensive resources.
Be careful what you ask for.
To copy China here, where would we put the re-education camps to house a million people? China has done remarkable things in a generation, but it has two faces.
Dan anderson: Great big one already built in Utah. Nevada has lots of open space, and is mostly owned by the government. Maybe North Dakota?
Prudence Kitten
OMG
Hopefully one day you will grow up
Did you by any chance read the good Doctor’s introduction and learn nothing?
With respect, that’s absolute rubbish – although I agree Ferguson and Sage are part of the problem but that’s nothing to do with China, that’s the Tories.
If we were to assume your false claims were true, then you have to ask why did the west copy China ? Do they not have independent intelligence, their own strategies ? Do they just blindly copy the ideas of the country they have been effectively at war with for the last five years ?
Let’s also remember Operation Cygnus run in October 2016 to test the UK’s response to a serious influenza pandemic. The results were ignored by Hunt and his chums as too expensive.
Steve: It’s called asymmetric warfare, and all powerful countries engage in it. The Chinese model of full control of its citizens, though, came from the U.S. (during the Carter administration). It didn’t need to be exported here because it has long been the dream of the technocrat elites. That is what this has been all about: Control. Not health. We in the U.S. and UK simply have been afflicted with incompetent leaders and thoroughly compromised “experts” such as Anthony Fauci and Neil Ferguson, compromised by the medical oligarchy headed by Bill Gates.
https://www.ocregister.com/?returnUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ocregister.com%2F2021%2F01%2F26%2Fhealth-care-worker-dies-after-second-dose-of-covid-vaccine-investigations-underway%2F%3FclearUserState%3Dtrue
Health care worker dies after second dose of covid vaccine investigations underway
Tim Zook and wife Rochelle.
By Teri Sforza | tsforza@scng.com | Orange County Register
PUBLISHED: January 26, 2021
Tim Zook’s last post on Facebook brimmed with optimism. “Never been so excited to get a shot before,” he wrote on Jan. 5, above a photo of the Band-Aid on his arm and his COVID-19 vaccination card. “I am now fully vaccinated after receiving my 2nd Pfizer dose.”
Zook, 60, was an X-ray technologist at South Coast Global Medical Center in Santa Ana. A couple of hours later, he had an upset stomach and trouble breathing. By 3:30 p.m. it was so bad his colleagues at work walked him to the emergency ro …
Anyone who agrees to be injected with an experimental vaccine — then dies — deserves ZERO sympathy.
Perhaps these vaccines are tests — aimed at removed idiots from the gene pool and averting Idiocracy?
85-90% of vaccinations result in very mild symptoms. 15% have serious side effects. But isn’t that the same for Covid-19? Why take the vaccine then?
Mate living in Bali pinged me a few days ago – wife and infant son have covid — they had sore throats and slight fever… isolating … my wife spoke to his wife today — pretty much recovered…
Covid is BS — unless you are riddled with disease and nearly dead already — in fact if you are in such a state — Covid would be a welcome friend — ending your miserable life.
Perhaps someone might find a correlation in the ten countries with the greatest number of malaria cases, where, presumably, hydroxychloroquine would be routinely available and their deaths per million from Covid.
1 Uganda 7
2 Ghana 12
3 DR Congo 7
4 Burkina Faso 6
5 Kenya 32
6 Zambia 35
7 Pakistan 7
8 Ethiopia 18
9 Malawi 27
10 Niger 6
The UK has neither malaria nor HCQ treatment and has 1,447 Covid deaths per million.
Might people in these countries also have considerably higher concentrations of Vit D in their systems as well as more effective medicines. The difference in numbers is staggering.
No, this is not a factor in this case. Dark people’s skin absorbs less UV radiation, ergo at more risk for vit D deficiency. It does come down to the effect of drugs like HCQ and ivermectine on reduction of viral load, and hence # of deaths. India with its nearly 1.4 billion people has 111 dead per million.
Antonetta,
I think you are not quite right. Dark people have more D deficiency in northern climes, but in hot, sunny countries that balances out. This is also shown by the lack of seasonal respiratory illnesses in southern countries.
I’m not disagreeing with you but there’s also the sunshine, vitamin D connection that is non existent in the UK.
All of those countries have very high absolute ( not relative humidity) making the virus much more difficult to transmit as it is airborne.
Approx. UK population over 65 is 18%, in Uganda it is 2%. Lockdown in Uganda will not affect Covid 19 death rates very much. Leading cause of death in Uganda is Malaria and Aids. I don’t live in Uganda.
Do we believe that DR Congo (or the others listed) have the capability or resources to identify Deaths from SARSCov2? Stats I’ve found are 0.1 qualified medical doctors per 1,000 population. Niger and a few of the others listed have less! The probability of valid data must be minimal.
How prevelant is the use of HCQ ? Dr K has indicated that its the most prescribed drug in india – if that is so in these other countries then there may be an argument.
Vit D cannot be ignored – more time is spent outdoors, we would imagine and long sleeved shirts would be less common – plus the tropical sun.
Nine of those countries are in sub Suharan Africa. If you’ve survived childhood in those countries you’ve survived Malaria, everybody gets it. ALL who grew up there actually have partial immunity to Malaria. Might it be that an immune system adapted to endemic Malaria gives strong immunity to Covid-19 too? Must be some similarity if we use HCQ for both.
Colin McDonald: Good question. Why would an anti-parasitic have anti-viral properties? I wonder if the effect is the same, that Zinc interferes with parasitic action or replication as it does for viruses, HCQ being an ionophore, assisting Zinc’s entry into the cells where it acts to suppress the enzyme viruses use to replicate.
Comparing death rates across countries is unlikely to be comparing like with like. Each country has its own criteria for inclusion of Covid on d certs. Each country no doubt tests for Covid using different tests and different PCR multiples.
If we said, yes but I would like to see for comparison death rates by age, comorbidities and numbers of drugs ingested per day for those who died within 28 days of first vaccine/second vaccine surely Boris et al would say: Pouf, just coincidence.
Good points, Jennifer; but you have just arrived at the point where Dr Kendrick began his article. There are so many factors to be taken into account that the combinations and permutations reach astronomical numbers.
To my mind the null hypotheses is that Covid-19 – if there even is such an illness – is just a normal viral respiratory disease. Everything else has been added by human fantasy.
Surely governments would require that the evidence that lockdowns save the day be overwhelming ….
Because the evidence that locking down destroys lives, businesses, and will collapse the economy … is overwhelming.
I would argue that it does not matter if the evidence supporting lockdowns is overwhelming — that would only mean the virus lingers for much longer — and every month this virus persists is like loading another bullet into the chamber when it comes to the people who are at-risk of dying from it.
And of course the destruction caused by lockdowns would far outweigh any benefit.
Wait till you are in a position where you are checking your rat traps each morning to see if your children will eat that day — if you are in favour of lockdowns (martial law actually)
Yes. Western nations where Gates seems to run healthcare policy must put as many deaths down to covid as possible. Perhaps other countries are more honest in their counting?
Fake numbers, false conclusions. Why zero flu cases? They are not testing for flu. No money in flu, big bucks in covid.
It’s almost as if someone had deliberately set out to ensure that no one can do any meaninfgul comparisons or arrive at any reliable conclusions.
A virus whose very existence is uncertain – it has never been isolated – and which may or may not have arisen naturally, in China or perhaps somewhere quite different.
A virus that has few, if any, unique signs and symptoms. A virus for which there is no reliable diagnostic test.
A virus whose alleged presence and mortality so very often bring forth immense sums of money from governments, corporations, and NGOs.
Exactly. 5-stars. I can’t star in this part of the app.
The disease is real. After that anything the government says are guesses or lies.
Anything individual doctors say about their personal, first-hand experience is most likely true and helpful.
Why do you use the phrase THE disease is real.
Clinical disease symptoms are experienced and observed.
The causes of various conditions currently assigned ‘covid-19’ or more loosely coronavirus, are tied up in trillion dollar industrial sickness management and the basis for a 4th biotech revolution.
Colds are real – but while associated with pathogens have these been irrefutably proven to be causal rather than symptomatic.
Deeply invested ideas are deeply defended against empirical challenge or open questioning BECAUSE they wont stand otherwise.
Yet within the dissociated masking ‘reality’ of their legal fiction, are positioned as the basis of a new order – along with demonising ‘carbon’.
The carbon units are the virus to be controlled are we not 😉
I say “the disease is real” because something is making people sick that is different from other diseases that have been identified.
It is also a weasel way to keep people from outright labeling and lumping me in with people that claim everything including the “disease” is fake.
Whatever covid-19 (or any of the other names they are using to identify it) is, it exists.
It causes symptoms. Most are common with a variety of other know diseases (as I define that word), and some of the respiratory symptoms are severe.
The PCR testing as most have been doing it (35+ cycles) returns 90% false positives.
Actual deaths FROM it are less than 10% of the deaths reported WITH it.
Flu has disappeared because they are NOT testing for flu despite the flu symptoms being reported because there are BIG bucks in finding covid cases.
There is little follow-up of any kind of those that were diagnosed with covid. Are they routinely testing for antibodies? Testing for immunity? etc. The only follow-ups I’ve seen are those that report MORE deaths and severe symptoms in those that “had” the disease and recovered.
No “incremental” statistics are reported. How many MORE deaths than “average” have occurred?
And the demographics of those that supposedly have/had the disease do not make the headlines or lead paragraphs of stories.
So, is the “disease” not real?
It hijacks human selves and replicates by their reactions.
The underlying pattern is one of setting the problem so that it CANNOT be solved while masking in the crusade to eradicate it. I take it a lot deeper than this particular symptom-expression but like Jesus state that you can read the signature characteristic in the fruits.
Pathogenic theory is the fruit of psycho-pathic or dissociative thinking.
We look into a reflection of Garbage back as if it has nothing to do with the ideas and beliefs – or predicates and definitions – of our own modelling (garbage in).
I can state with a high confidence that a disease condition is also a condition in which the body unites to heal or restore impaired function. The blocks or challenges to function suggest to me a lack of life support, or the exposure to toxic challenge or both. But as human consciousness, we have the capacity to imagine and frame our condition in patterns that repeat self-destructive reactions in the reenacting of trauma – species trauma – not just individual, family or cultural trauma.
It is easy to see that the mind in recoil from overwhelm, desperately seeks to mask over and project fear OUT and AWAY and lock in the distancing by normalising the masking personae. I use plural, because mutually reinforcing support has to ‘unite’ against fear to protect the mask against the fear. But we can only truly join in love. Fear makes an illusion of joining, an illusion of life and a masking in what it usurps. Love is the willingness to be with what is, to the point of recognising truth. The meanings of everything have been turned on their head.
Thorough and to the point, as always, Dr. K. The big problem for us all looking forward is that our “glorious leaders” have now set out their ( ineffective) stalls and are doubling down, unable to admit that the tactics employed this past year have been mainly useless. An endemic virus cannot be stamped out ( just look at influenza- although where the heck has that ”disappeared ” to this year?) Just hope and pray that the new miracle vaccines actually work and are safe in the long term. If not, we are socially and economically screwed if the current clowns and their, ahem, expert advisors stay in charge….
They are not vaccines as we traditionally know them. They are experimental gene therapies, with no proof that they stop transmission. Why anyone would have one unless very elderly and most at risk is beyond me. Oh wait, most of the population are almost vomiting with fear over an illness with a 99.7% recovery rate…………
“Just hope and pray that the new miracle vaccines actually work and are safe in the long term”.
A natural wish… but completely hopeless unless you have a time machine. We can’t know if they are safe (or even effective) in the long term until the long term happens. Meanwhile…
“Merck Scraps COVID Vaccines; Says It’s More Effective To Get The Virus And Recover”.
https://summit.news/2021/01/26/merck-scraps-covid-vaccines-says-its-more-effective-to-get-the-virus-and-recover/
With the obvious implication that the correct policy from the start was to let the virus run its course, thus exposing everyone to the virus as soon as possible. Like vaccination, but more effective – according to Merck.
Lockdowns, of course, deliberately slow down or even prevent the process of exposing everyone to the virus. As one might expect, governments adopted policies that were exactly the opposite of the correct one.
I totally agree. I feel like everything our governments are doing is the opposite to what they should. Lockdowns are resulting in the gross neglect of the elderly. And that is only one of the many harms.
You, are a smart kitten.
So if you claim that lockdowns do not work you must prepare a thorough study of many parameters in many combinations that prove your argument.
If however you claim that lockdowns do work then there is no need of any such study, it is a God-sent truth that only heretics dare questioning.
That’s pretty much it. Those spouting the standard narrative on msm are taken at their word. Those questioning it are “fact checked” to the nth degree.
Ergo – Step Six
Caitlin Johnstone wrote a very insightful blog article about this:
“Dissidents Must Understand The Difference Between Fact And Narrative”.
Her point is that only intelligent people of integrity with trained minds are even somewhat immune to the hypnotic effect of a good story. Please read it: you’re unlikely to forget her message.
Randomized controlled trials for thee, my own omniscience for me.
-The issue with “the science” is that real science proceeds by trying hypotheses rather than trying heretics.-
I plagiarized that because it is both so good and so true.
Even more it seeks to employ imagination to find any conceivable way to disprove its hypothesis.
But that was when Science was seeking to uncover the truth of our reality rather than defining or determining reality so as to leverage a personal gain or private agenda under the mask of virtue.
I read Pollack’s 4th phase of Water not long ago. As well a ground breaking discovery, the whole book is an exemplary lesson in empirical science whilst remaining understandable and accessible for human significance – hence it open wonder and curiosity rather than ‘explaining a dead world’ in dead terms.
The stats (and I’ve only looked at charts readily available in the media) suggest that cases and deaths increase in the week or so following the beginning of a lockdown and continue to rise for a while and then fall. Is this because fewer people are being tested during lockdowns (eg required by employers who have closed) and we are seeing the results of tests carried out just before the beginning of the lockdown? Is it because lockdowns make people panic initially and get tested? Do people stay at home during lockdowns and so, if they get ill, they go to hospital later and so are more likely to die? I don’t see how we can ever find out. I do find interesting though, that the areas where new variants have allegedly been found are the same countries where AZ conducted its trials. Perhaps some of the recent cases are actually vaccination side effects, not the virus at all.
” Perhaps some of the recent cases are actually vaccination side effects, not the virus at all.”
That’s interesting. It reminds me of reports of outbreaks of “vaccine-derived polio” occurring in Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan) after wild polio was officially wiped out in 1999. Apparently the polio vaccine was made using a live polio virus and it was this that mutated and infected others after excretion from the body of vaccinated people. The longer the vaccine survived after excretion, the more chance of it mutating. It’s effects were the same as the wild virus; paralysis.
Are any of the current Covid vaccines made using a live virus?
https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/poliomyelitis-vaccine-derived-polio
Without doubt, the uptick in deaths in the past couple of week is because they vaccinated nearly 4 million old people in 2-3 weeks with a drug virtually untested on Their demographic – the elderly 70, 80, 90 100 yrs old with Other illnesses.
8000 extra deaths in 4 million people is a small % and can hardy be a surprise that there is a correlation.
Arthur, correlation? Possibly. https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1200901313511268352
Sanity, thy name is Dr Malcolm Kendrick!
Brilliant. I wish you were my doctor.
There’s just one thing you said, Malcolm, that I have to dispute, your claim “You can never prove a negative.” You can in fact prove a negative. I could say to you that there are no US dollars in my shirt pocket and that would be easy to prove.
That’s not really a negative, it’s a number. It’s the same as saying “There are zero dollars in my shirt pocket right now.” A quick look could prove or disprove it.
However, assume you say something like, “I never carry money in my shirt pocket,” If true, it would be necessary to observe you for your entire life to prove it conclusively. And if you occasionally sneak the odd dollar into your shirt pocket it would require long observation or a stroke of luck to disprove it.
A
I have a shirt pocket if you want to conduct an experiment.
My understanding is that Taiwan did not lock down or certainly not as we did. What they relied on was a very sophisticated and heavy investment in track and trace technology and when outbreaks were located local quarantine was implemented. They also have a higher pop density than UK or Sweden which discounts the density argument
A mystery factor that may also be in play is that the entire region of SE Asia and Oceania have been relatively unscathed regardless of demographics, health systems, GDP, NPIs etc. One hypothesis is that they have prior immunity from earlier corona virus exposures. It seems as likely an explanation as any other.
Michael Trumper: Also sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of South Africa. Very low fatality rate.
Also they are hotter countries and have higher levels of Vit D3, just like Africa. New Zealand had just come out of summer when covid struck too
Interesting article pointing out the blindingly obvious that lockdowns don’t appear to be as beneficial as most people seem to think they are. I saw a Twitter post by a molecular biologist pointing out that suppressing the virus through lockdowns would naturally cause it to mutate in such a way as to increase its transmissibility, so we’re probably making things a lot worse for ourselves by hiding away.
(Btw, you might want to correct the error in this sentence “Number of people with multimorbidity’s” – ie “multimorbidities”)
Regarding “fact checkers”, the BMJ recently commissioned an article from a group called First Draft News trying to combat “misinformation” on the web.
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n26
This is from their website, although oddly they claim not to have competing interests:
I tried to remonstrate with them in Rapid Responses, so far to no avail:
Censorship and repression pose a threat too
Dear Editor
I have commented often in these columns about the concept of “misinformation”. Claire Wardle and Eric Singerman [1] do not seem to be in any doubt that we are talking about not so much information which is false (which would be a different category) as information which is inconvenient to policy. But what right do they have to deprive the public of it, and where might it end? Surely, if there are negative aspects to a policy the public have a right to know about it, otherwise we are …into the bad cycle described, for instance, in the Cumberlege report.
[1] Claire Wardle and Eric Singerman , ‘ Too little, too late: social media companies’ failure to tackle vaccine misinformation poses a real threat’, BMJ 2021; 372 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n26 (Published 21 January 2021)
[2] Helen Haskell, ‘Cumberlege review exposes stubborn and dangerous flaws in healthcare’, BMJ 2020; 370 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m3099 (Published 06 August 2020)
MK, How can we compare death rates between countries if countries don’t measure the same thing? The ONS report, “The WHO recommendation is to report on death certification, which England will continue to do through the ONS. For daily reported death figures, there is no international consensus on methods.”
We’re not comparing like with like and we count ‘deaths from any cause.’
Exactly, these figures are all a nonsense, death rates per million, ‘cases’…
If the PCR test is unreliable, it means all the ‘cases’ and deaths statistics based on it are useless, is that not so? Garbage in, garbage out.
So looking at some garbage, Statista says there have been 2.1 million COVID-19 deaths worldwide as of January 27 2021.[1] That’s over a year, in a world of 7.8 billion people, with 59 million deaths expected globally in 2020.[2]
It’s absolutely insane that the world has been turned upside down for a ‘pandemic’ with these numbers, which are likely grossly bloated due to the unreliable PCR test.
What is needed now is careful examination of the global mortality data for 2020, including consideration of an ageing population increasing the number of deaths, particularly in western countries.
There may be excess deaths in 2020. Maybe even 2 million excess deaths. And you know what, even if there were, this would not justify the shocking medical tyranny that has overtaken the world.
There may be a virus, albeit of very murky origins. And this virus seems to be a Trojan horse for introducing incredible restrictions on people around the world. Who is behind this?
On the back of this virus, very dodgy testing has been used to quarantine people with no symptoms; entire countries have been locked down, with people unable to leave their homes freely; people have been subjected to an invasive nasal swab; masks have been mandated, with talk of multiple masks now (!!!); people are under surveillance via QR codes; and now people are being pressed to submit to fast-tracked experimental vaccine products, for a virus that apparently isn’t too serious for most people under 70, and not necessarily a death sentence for everyone over 70.
And the original reason touted for all these restrictions is that the ‘health services’ wouldn’t be able to cope. The health services that haven’t been fit for purpose for years.
There’s an ageing population, with people living longer, but not necessarily with quality of life, and with many people with the diseases of ageing placing increasing burdens on health services. Is this being acknowledged and addressed, that an ageing population will demand more health services?
If people demand to be kept alive, the health services will have to expand!!!
It’s totally ridiculous to stop society and the economy because the health services aren’t up to scratch – address that fundamental problem!!!
1. Number of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths worldwide as of January 27, 2021, by country.
2. How many people die and how many are born each year? Our World in Data. by Hannah Ritchie, September 11 2019.
elizabethhart: Thank you. Good summary of the stupidity. Who is behind this? The oligarchs and their technocratic enablers. But the banksters are getting a bit of a comeuppance with Game Stop!
I’m curious, why do you feel everything is a conspiracy? If the virus was naturally occurring, which seems just as likely, if not more so, than it being fabricated, then your whole fabric of conspiracy falls apart. Talking about people falling in love with an idea, has it never occurred to you that you are simply obsessed with the idea of conspiracies and therefore not only see them where none exist but automatically believe in them? Are you not in love with the idea of ‘conspiracy’ and thus blind to the simpler facts: viruses happen, no biggie.
I’m not sure that it’s a desire to see a conspiracy rather than a desire to believe that our politicians are not complete imbeciles playing a game of other peoples choosing.
There were less deaths in Canada and the US then in previous years, when compared to 2020. It looks like the took other deaths and turned them into Covid deaths to create the pandemic look. I call that cooking the books.
Adding to that China has not isolated the virus. Nor have many other countries. So how can they test for a virus that has never been isolated? The use a bogus PCR test of course.
Thank you once again Dr Kendrick. It is more than obvious that the disastrous and deadly policies we’re all under are not rational but emotively based. As a mental health professional I’d like to know how long this deadly insanity will go on for. I’m especially stunned that after bringing Scotland to its knees, our FM in her infinite wisdom thinks anyone will vote for independence, or that we can even be independent with a decimated economy and a fractured and depressed society. Thank you for being a voice of reason.
I am pro independence, but you make a vey valid point. Despite much preferring Sturgeon to Johnson, Sturgeon frequently comes accross like a particualrly pernickety school prefect who is determined to do lockdown better than any of the other prefects, as if she will win some Brownie points for it. I frequently wish that she would do more revolutionary thinking than ‘I’ve won my adherence badge and teacher loves me’.
Thank you Dr. Kendrick. If only we could put you in charge. You’re brilliant and a heck of a lot more charismatic than that bureaucratic weasel, Anthony Fauci.
Mask wearing is another seemingly sensible but foolish idea that has become entrenched in the collective consciousness. There is little evidence that masks prevent spread and evidence that they can cause harm.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/27/fog-of-covid-war.aspx?ui=5380b88d2e94629f5af7e7bbc96530200ac2a763474357f58a6b03d91ef25abe&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20210127&mid=DM786989&rid=1069475018
But what came first? Lock down or increasing deaths? If the virus jumped around from China what route did it take? Who was travelling most from there to where? So yet more variables! Impossible to compare really!
Surely lockdowns are caused by high death rates though? So it isn’t a suitable metric for measuring their efficacy, unless you look at death rates after the effect of the lockdown has kicked in. Otherwise, it’s like saying that people in hospitals have a higher death rate than those at home, so hospitals don’t save lives.
We know that covid spreads through contact between people and that lockdowns reduce contact. So it is logical to assume lockdowns reduce the incidence of covid. It is possible that isn’t the case, but it is acceptable to require more stringent evidence to support a hypothesis that flies in the face of common sense – extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Dr Kendrick – any follow up on your last post which stated nothing unusual was happening in England, as per Euromomo data? The excess death rate is now 15 standard deviations above normal.
Simon,
You fall into the trap of asking for proof they do not work. The very trap Dr K outlines above. You have to show they work otherwise it is a massive and dangerous experiment into the health and wellbeing of almost every person on earth. You at the very least would need to show they work better than doing very little in comparison. Remember voluntary action can be more than enough to both slow the spread of infection and easy the burden on health care services.
It is the criminalisation of basic human interaction, mass propaganda to scare the population into submission (this alone will cause poor health outcomes for years) and the manipulation of data that creates a mess that is difficult to entangle. If lockdown was a drug I suspect the long list of side effects and lack of efficacy evidence would prevent its distribution and licensing.
In the Netherlands lockdown was inspired by the rate of infection exceeding R1. not the number of deaths. Taking into account the efficacy of the pcr test (silently along the way increased from 30 to 35 cycles), that figure is non-telling. The number of hospital admissions and icu admissions are insufficient to warrant such action. They are predicting that the english and south african variants might flood the hospitals, but no evidence so far that i have read about. It really seems to be a deliberate action of fear mongering and following an underlying agenda
Dr. Kendrick, you are preaching to the converted. I love your stories of years gone by when incredibly harmful practices became common place without any proof of efficacy. I trained as a nurse at St. Thomas’s Hospital in 1973 and I remember those poor disfigured women who’d had radical mastectomy.
In terms of lockdowns, I believe that the main cause of death related to the elderly is NEGLECT. I think that adequate hydration is essential and likely underestimated. And anyone who is suffering from Covid 19 especially if febrile MUST receive a high fluid intake……as the doctors used to say : “PUSH FLUIDS”. Do you imagine that happening in a busy nursing home?
Louise McElhill: Very important point! Neglect is surely the cause of many of the nursing home deaths. Two years ago, a relative had a stroke. While in rehab he complained about tremendous thirst, and that the food was completely tasteless, since they weren’t allowing him salt. So no water and no salt. A second stroke took him, much too young.
My mum is in a home. Since this latest lockdown 8 residents have tested positive (non are sick in any meaningful sense from C19) yet residents kept isolated 24/7. This is a cruel and distressing policy. The home are actually doing their best and following orders. It is quite apparent that full PPE and very limited contact has made any difference to the case numbers.
Now one has isolated the virus not even China. Freedom of Information requests have been sent out to numerous governments etc and to date they cannot say they have isolated the virus. So they test with the bogus PCR test which is meaningless to get the numbers. You also cannot test for something, that has not been isolated. That would be like testing a 10 thousand grapes to find a cherry. There of course there are no cherries in with those 10 thousand grapes, but the test comes back positive anyway. Now with the 10 thousand grapes you could actually see there were no cherries in there. Just eat them all to find out. The virus they are looking for is invisible/ non extant. Odd how they find something they cannot prove exists. So the test is the problem. Finding the one cherry would entail a lot of eating but at least you could prove there were not any in the with the 10 thousand. If you used a PCR test on that bunch of grapes you could find that non existent cherry of course. So the test is flawed big time. They have based everything on that bogus test. Kary Mullis even told them years ago the test was not to be used to test for a virus.
https://shadowsbearsoutlook.blogspot.com/2021/02/who-fails-to-mantion-vaaccine-deaths.html
Not exactly related to care homes, but shows you how in a supposed caring environment the bleeding obvious can easily be missed – I was hospitalised for gallstones some years ago and was nil by mouth. Getting no food was fine, you get used to it, but I was left for four days without water. Every time a nurse checked on me I would tell them the thirst was the worst thing, it was becoming unimageable. Despite charts everywhere, me telling staff, and a big Nil By Mouth above my bed, I had to ask a nurse on my fourth day if they could do something about my thirst because I hadn’t peed in two days and I was going mad with it, and only THEN did they put me on a drip, which could have been done days earlier, or even right at the start. Instead they left me to, literally, suffer unnecessarily. Had I been senile, sedated, sick in some other way that prohibited me from communicating, they could have, literally, let me die of thirst.
Now that really is awful.
That is utter malpractice.
Happens all the time in UK hospitals. I’ve personal experience of it. Also witnessed the same treatment doled out to two elderly relatives, post stroke. Water was all they could think about and the only word they said. The ward staff ignored their (and my) entreaties.
Wasn’t that called “The Liverpool Care Pathway”?
Yes, The Liverpool Care Pathway. My late father-in-law, in his early 80s, had an inoperable brain tumour and was given less than 6 weeks to live when admitted. He wasn’t given anything, just a moistened sponge to wet his mouth…but he continued for about 10 weeks in the end, despite already being very thin. We couldn’t understand how that could be ethical.
This happened too with my father. NBM above his bed but he kept asking for water because he was thirsty, nursing staff ignored him. Seemed they were following the Liverpool care pathway……..
They tried that with my father at Leighton Hospital. Nil by mouth at every opportunity.
Yes. My mother had a nice big pitcher of fresh water placed by her bed everyday in the nursing home. Problem was she was not Physically able nor mentally capable of sitting up and pouring herself a glass.
I agree that there may be (probably is) a problem with the elderly not being sufficiently hydrated. However, the merits of pushing fluids in those with infections including when febrile and in Covid 19 may not be as clear cut as we’ve all been led to believe over many years. Very interesting interview with a research scientist whose specialism is this very subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP65st24crc&t=761s .
Jackie Bushell: Thank you very much for that link! It makes such good sense.
Question, is it possible that after these draconian lockdowns are lifted there will be a rebound of “everyday illnesses,” especially in children who’ve been sequestered away from their peers? In other words, will the next “pandemic” be in children and young adults, whose immune system have been tricked into down regulating due to the decrease in pathogen exposure?
holly they will never be lifted, they are temporary measures, so are permanent. Freedoms will have to be taken back.
I have had a wager that the restrictions in various forms will be on and off until the next Gen election to cover any possible enquiry narrative. Once given power is hard to get back.
Reply to R:
Did you manage to find a bookmaker? I too fancy some fairly long odds bets. But it may be that ‘the other side’ expect long-lasting restrictions in our freedom and regard it as high-probability, i.e. short odds.
I read elsewhere that one bookmaker had decided not to take bets on COVID.
New peer reviewed study proves lockdowns do not work
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484?fbclid=IwAR3o-5bLOSxq6lhqTvTBcj2zThi04hqrpQoDi4W69QgHfsw8jaIkOPWVAxw
Thank you for your good work
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“ Cough, fatigue, sore throat and muscle pain may be more common in people who test positive for the new UK variant of coronavirus”. This is getting ridiculous, the specificity of these symptoms is around 10%, and I maybe being generous.
That sounds like a general description of symptoms associated with flu.
A couple of days ago I saw a 6 year old who had fallen asleep for a couple of hours at school. School were not concerned as mum didn’t find out until she collected him. He had a slight temperature and mum gave him calpol. When I saw him his obs were normal but his tonsils were swollen without any exudate. I told mum it was likely a viral infection and to keep an eye on him. Enlarged tonsils means the body is fighting an infection.
Very thought provoking. But what would be the reason why lockdowns don’t work? I’d truly be interested in knowing. Is there some other mechanism for better handling a pandemic and keeping the hospitals from overflowing? It doesn’t look like it. Viruses seem to do what they’re going to do.
Th main reason for thinking that lockdowns don’t work is that nations and states that have had them have had just about the same incidence of cases and deaths as those that didn’t.
Logically, lockdowns aren’t promising becaus all prior experience tells us that viruses spread uncontrollably,and no such crude measure hinder them. Our best defence against virus infections is our immune system, which does an excellent job.
Alaicia, the obvious government policy to prevent hospitals overflowing at times like this would be NOT to slash the number of beds by half or more.
They do that when there is no epidemic in sight, then whine when one comes along. Why not keep enough beds, doctors, nurses and other resources to meet foreseeable worst-case demand?
They want the money for other good causes: killing people in Africa and Asia, aircraft carriers, thermonuclear weapons, and of course jobs for the boys and girls.
Alicia,
Very thought provoking. But what would be the reason why lockdowns work?
CaF, this is not a pandemic. Where are the bodies being brought of households daily? The WHO had to change the definition to make it a pandemic, and it was then whipped up by a bought MSM who like nothing better than bad news to broadcast. Look up Tom Woods “Your facebook Friends are Wrong About Lockdowns” They’ve been going on for nearly a year and they haven’t worked.
“Two weeks to flatten the curve”. “Oooh, but they did it too late”, a little known item is the contract placed by the UK with an advertising company the month before the first UK lockdown. The same company that has just come up with the crisis actors playing the part of patients in the adverts with three people in oxygen masks and the slogans heaping hate on everybody.
Ian, we are royally screwed.
Thank you Doctor Kendrick. This is a very good article.
Two notes. First, about radical mastectomy, I remember reading something about that in the book “Calculated Risks” by Gigerenzer, from 2001, written for the general public. Oldie but goldie. Top level clear thinkers produce real diamonds from time to time. In my opinion, we the lay people should seek such books first, as a good foundation for further research.
Second note. One of the things that have caused more distress for me is the irrationality that a lot of people, of many professions and walks of life, seem to be compulsively addicted to. It goes as follows: even if this treatment/remedy/strategy does not work, even if we have caused harm to one thousand patients, still we must repeat the harm to ten thousand more, because not doing so would be an insult to the former people. Everyone must go through the same ordeal, because egalitarianism or some other crazy prejudice.
A second example of this egregious mistake: we cannot allow people to wander alone in the beach without a mask because it would be unfair: all or none. Common sense, fundamental rights, data and facts are relics of the Ancient World: we now know better. Uniformitarianism is the new LSD!
A third example: now we cannot allow dying old people to see their loved ones without a mask or touch them before they die, as it would be unfair to those who died earlier. Cruelty is compassion!
In my opinion, this is all a criminal form of lunacy!
I pray to all the gods and even to nothingness that Dolores Cahill, whom I dislike more than like, is wrong about her terrible prophesy about masks and bacterial epidemics. This must not be allowed to happen, antibiotic production and distribution is of vital importance due to that now high risk.
In this new world, bacteria will be, just like centuries ago, understood to be demons, brought to this world by those who still hold tight to the principles of critical thinking. Anything is possible but accepting the truth of our own mistakes.
Thanks to all the regular commenters of Dr. Kendrick’s posts. I learn so much here!
What is Dolores Cahill’s prophecy regarding masks and bacteria? I googled her and she seems to be on the side of good, but I couldn’t find anything about what you mentioned.
Sorry, I conflated Professor Cahill with another woman. She predicts people will die after the vaccine. I do not remember the name of the one who predicts great mortality because of wearing dirty masks. I’ll search, and if I find it I’ll give attribution here.
Obviously, I do not want either prophesy to come to pass. I do not think anyone wants that.
Thanks for noticing.
https://principia-scientific.com/professor-dolores-cahill-people-will-start-dying-after-covid-vaccine/
Dr K, I love your insightful, logical articles and I hope that your voice is heard in places where it will do some good. Whether it is (yet) or not, please keep it up !!
I am not a medic or a scientist and am not wedded to any theories here, but wanted to ask a simple question…which to me seems important….and that is, how is the virus transmitted ?
This may sound absurdly naive but if it is by droplet from someone in close proximity then I can see why a case would be made for keeping people away from each other. If it is borne on the wind (for example) and makes no difference how isolated you are then enforced isolation is clearly irrelevant…so which is it ?
I am no fan of lockdown either, but we are so often told, its about saving the NHS – flattening the curve etc etc. So do you agree that the death rates would be higher if all the emergency beds were taken because people would be left on the street to choke to death? Have the lockdowns prevented that happening at least or has it just been ‘luck’ that the numbers of patients needing intensive treatment have not (quite) exceeded capacity?
I dont know, but I hope some of you will have a view on that ??
Rio, go to Ivor Cummins website and find a copy of Edgar Hope-Simpson’s book of influenza virus transmission.
Did you see the news article about the Argentinian ship where all but 4 of the crew, who had all tested negative before leaving shore, started to develop symptoms after 35 days at sea? I was wondering how they could’ve become infected – carried on the breeze? Food that was kept in chilled storage? All very odd.
Here’s one article (for those that can read the Telegraph without the paywall, if it’s operating) – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-argentina-fishermen-trawler-ushuaia-covid-19-echizen-maru-a9621716.html
And another here – https://www.france24.com/en/20200714-mystery-as-argentine-sailors-infected-with-virus-after-35-days-at-sea
“how is the virus transmitted ?”
Rio, that’s a good question and the simple answer is that no one knows yet.
However, we do know that no precautions prevent the virus from being transmitted; nations and states with lockdown have about as many cases and deaths as those without.
Rio,
How can you save the nhs after the economy is destroyed?
Print yet more money!
If only your common sense could be made into a serum & injected into the masses.
Well done to get it past the RT censors. RT’s coverage has been pretty poor. You could of course have also mentioned dogma about nutrition (cholesterol, fat) , although since ignorance still prevails on that subject perhaps it was wise not to. So depressing to see how all the wrong lessons are being learned and so right not to give in.
I saw a Minister almost in tears today on Talk Radio saying 100,000 have now died in UK in a year.Many in care homes. Drilled in with vigour, time and time again. Yet the UK daily mortality is 1600 so around 600,000 will have died in UK this year. The average stay in a care home is 2 years. There are 18,000 care homes in UK. Perhaps 300,000 die in care homes each year.
Should no-one now die in new-normal UK?
Lockdown in the US?? Pff. Don’t be silly. People here do what they want to do.
Lets look at New Jersey. It’s the most densely populated state. You think that might have something to do with spread, beyond simply ignoring “lockdown”?
It’s very often instructive to look at extreme examples of a problem.
The Virus cannot live very long outside a warm body – seemingly preferring humans.
If we humans were to stay away from each other – ABSOLUTELY – for the period of time it would take for free-wheeling viruses to die AND for those already infected to clear their systems of the virus (Or die!) ––– then it would be over.
No communicability, no hosting: no virus.
Of course we cannot do that, having the human natures and physical and emotional needs that we do.
I suspect that it would not take much of a lapse at all in the ABSOLUTE scenario above for The Virus to keep going. It it seems to get around quite efficiently. Review New Zealand’s case.
So, do the best you can as an individual.
Get the vaccine.
If you don’t want that, keep ABSOLUTELY isolated.
Well, no. Of course you don’t want to do that.
Good luck!
There have been a couple of studies done that correlate increased covid cases in places with high uptake of flu vaccines. I was reading abouf it a couple of days ago but can’t remember where. It might have been on Mercola. Try putting in a search for “flu vaccine and covid cases”.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589909020300186?via%3Dihub
Why do you delve into fantasy scenarios where factories don’t exist and grandparents don’t ache to be with their grandchildren? It has always been abundantly clear that the bulk of us were always going to get covid. So many countries that thought they had it under control are now having case spikes.
I choose to deny your dilemma–isolation or vaccine–and take a third route.
It makes so much more sense to take your chances with an experimental vaccine than to rely on antivirals with known safety profiles which are well-tolerated. /sarcasm
“The ‘idea’ has become the truth. Its proponents now demand that those who doubt the efficacy of lockdowns prove that they don’t work. However, I don’t believe it’s up to those who don’t believe that lockdowns work, to prove that case.”
I disagree. As Drs. Lown and Levine and others have shown someone will have to take the radical step of proving that the treatment does not work (and that the adverse effects are deadly). The trouble is that almost the entire current political cohort (including the eminent ‘scientists’ of SAGE etc) from around the world will have their reputations trashed if/when they’re proved wrong.
Lockdown didn’t work. Let’s prescribe more lockdown. Bah!
“The ‘idea’ has become the truth. Its proponents now demand that those who doubt the efficacy of lockdowns prove that they don’t work. However, I don’t believe it’s up to those who don’t believe that lockdowns work, to prove that case.”
That’s accepted logic. Those who make a claim are responsible for proving the truth of the claim, those who doubt the claim aren’t responsible for proving so.
I was interested in a comment below the last post regarding Antibody-Dependent Enhancement. I am repeating my reply here, in case anyone has any thoughts.
I hadn’t heard of such a thing as ADE 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 get it every year.
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 is known to exist.
My reply to you somehow ended up below Patten’s comment.
That’s normal, Madge. It’s the indentation (from the left hand side of the page) that counts. If you write a comment that’s “top level” (i.e. not a reply to another comment) it will be at the left. Any replies to that are a little further right, and so on.
Matt H
Please look at RunDMCs videos on U tube. He is a brilliant data analyst who is particularly interested in Long Covid from which he suffers. He has analysed the data on flu vaccines and seems to believe there is credible evidence that they worsen outcomes in Covid patients. The data isn’t extensive but even anecdotally it is clear that the flu jab was a common factor among the elderly who comprise the biggest fatality cohort.
I’ve seen a couple of things that appear to suggest that the flu vaccine might increase susceptibility to coronaviruses. I wondered about it, being as the cases started shooting up shortly after the “record” flu vaccine programme started this winter. For example:
From this study – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7126676/
they found that, “Vaccine derived virus interference was significantly associated with coronavirus and human metapneumovirus”
And also here – https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/12/can-flu-vaccine-increase-covid-risk.aspx
Also the Cowling (2012) RCT which showed that children who received a flu vaccination were more than four times more likely to develop an influenza-like illness.
Thanks, I found that study.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/54/12/1778/455098
Thanks Matt. That makes for some confusing reading!
They start by saying “Influenza vaccination is effective in preventing influenza virus infection and associated morbidity among school-aged children”, which is, of course, the established canard to suck you in to getting your kids vaccinated. And in the results section, they say
“There was no statistically significant difference in the risk of ARI or FARI between participants who received TIV and those who received placebo, either during winter or summer 2009”
which doesn’t make any sense, as there definitely IS a statistically significant difference, as they explain later.
Where there is no SS difference is “There was no statistically significant difference in the risk of confirmed seasonal influenza infection between recipients of TIV or placebo,”, i.e. in real life, the vaccine didn’t work, but in fantasy land “TIV recipients had significantly lower risk of seasonal influenza infection based on serologic evidence” – but let’s continue to ignore the possibility that serological evidence bears little relevance to actual protection.
Then the main result, which was the objective of the study, shows “However, participants who received TIV had higher risk of ARI associated with confirmed noninfluenza respiratory virus infection (RR, 4.40; 95% CI, 1.31–14.8). Including 2 additional confirmed infections when participants did not report ARI, TIV recipients had higher risk of confirmed noninfluenza respiratory virus infection (RR, 3.46; 95% CI, 1.19–10.1).”
Which contradicts the second quote ……. “There was no statistically significant difference in the risk of ARI or FARI between participants who received TIV and those who received placebo, either during winter or summer 2009”.
“Associated” doesn’t mean caused. Could have a commonly held factor, for example. Read Dr Kendrick’s book “Doctoring Data,” explains all this in comprehensible language. I’ve been getting copies and sending them to family and friends, along with Ioannidis’ paper from 2005.
I have Dr K’s book “Doctoring Data” and have read it too! And, yes, “associated” doesn’t mean “caused” but then again it doesn’t exclude that possibility either!
DaveL: An association usually cannot be termed causal, but it can, if it satisfies the Bradford Hill criteria (tobacco and lung cancer being the poster boy for an association powerful enough to be unquestionably causal). That said, we’ve seen so much junk science, particularly in the nutrition field, which implies causality with the weakest of associations. The Harvard School of Public Health is famous, or infamous, if you prefer, for this sort of nonsense. Medical science is in crisis, as well, since most of the funding comes either from industry or government. Governments now work for industry, as does the media, who shamelessly trumpet the very profitable garbage produced as world-changing.
Some reading which may be helpful. https://tomwoods.com/death-by-lockdown/
This is a very good article of course, looking at the origins of the use of various medical procedures without any supporting data.
Let’s consider the definition of lockdown from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: “Lockdown definition is – the confinement of prisoners to their cells for all or most of the day as a temporary security measure.” So are all the nations and states that employed lockdowns to control the virus spread treating all their citizens as criminals, including nations with strong Constitutional protections?
This is one of the complaints in two lawsuits, one filed against the state of Ohio, filed 13 October, and one against the state of New Mexico, filed 31 December. In the Ohio lawsuit, the complaint states that the shelter in place orders by the governor is indistinguishable from the state law description of the house arrest orders for offenders and constitutes a violation of Constitutional Due Process.
Those interested in learning more on the lawsuits and following their progress can do so at ohiostandsup.org.
Does anyone know why lockdowns don’t work?
Alicia Vincent,
My guess is because they are not complete and total (which means essentially no human contact whatsoever for a few weeks). Which is completely impossible in this society. Maybe if “essential workers” (part of having “this society”) got virus proof suits with their own personal oxygen supplies….Just imagine the infrastructure to supply those.
And maybe not even then.
LA_Bob, the trouble with plans is they usually fail when challenged by reality. How arrogant do pseudo scientists, modellers and governments have to be so they think they can control the world including everything as small as a virus?
It would also have to include the people to do the enforcement. Sounds like one of those old Greek paradoxes, like am I lying when I tell you I’m lying? The question was asked why don’t lockdowns work? I think Alicia explained it pretty well.
What we have seen in the USA is poor people are particularly hit hard, since they generally have real jobs that require their physical presence, and also tend to live many people to a household, so a lockdown is only going to concentrate the transmissibility within the household that is locked down. In the meantime, the people working to keep this household afloat mingle outside and bring the virus home. The people who make these rules have no skin in the game, since they generally work jobs or have positions that can be done remotely, and live in big houses with few people. I suspect they secretly despise poor people and would like to see them gone anyway.
Alicia, lockdowns don’t work longterm. A 14 day lockdown is quite effective, after that the chance of contacting the virus increases. My guess is that viruses are part of the environment including any new arrivals. Viral load might determine immune reaction.
How about getting Sir Michael Caine ( of The Italian Job ). At the end of the film he said ” Hang on! I’ve got a good idea”
Thank you.
You are 100% correct in every detail I just finished my route cause analysis with fishbone I’m crying 😢 what can I do to help you ?
You are indeed a very wise and educated Doctor I just finished my route cause analysis on covid 19 unbelievable results how can I help? we need the people and educated people to free minds here only then will we all get stronger together.At the moment we are all divided we NEED and must be UNITED 👍👌😁🏴
Are the lockdowns causing the virus to mutate?
I read a tweet by a molecular biologist today who said just that.
As I understand it, viruses just mutate by the time they get out of cells, just as every other organism mutates. (I know, viruses aren’t organisms, but they do use cells to function)
Thank you Malcolm for a new post. The difficulty we find ourselves in is the big if….if we hadn’t locked down would we have seen less deaths, more deaths or no change. The answer of course is impossible to quantify because we don’t actually know, we can only surmise from graphs and statistics (which potentially got us in the lockdown mess in the first place- mathematical modelling indeed) and on our individual ability to deal with risk, think logically, think outside of the daily indoctrination on all media channels etc.
I have wondered over the last months whether an eminent scientist might be allowed to study the effect of no lockdown in small select places in the country. It would require volunteers- people who are prepared to put their money (or lives) where their mouth is. They would need big badges that say I am participating in science and I’m not wearing a mask and I am socialising for everyone’s future benefit. They would have to be allowed to attend lots of places and gather (under strict control of course), not at all like those who gather to protest, in sporting events like football or rugby matches (- 6 nations coming up!) and in restaurants – only select ones of course, and travel on public transport and sit in classrooms with children and listen to them read so they are nice and close. They would need to do it soon so the warm Spring weather could have no influence. Of course because of the fear that has been generated that those not taking precautions are responsible for others developing the illness they would need to warn others of the imminent danger they presented (despite daily lateral flow screening…..), perhaps a hat with a flashing light or a loud and irritating klaxon – a bell perhaps, to ring and to constantly shout unclean, unclean….? Watch the fearful scatter like leaves in the wind, it would speed up shopping trips, that’s for sure. No queueing needed!
Do you think anyone else would join me in a study like this and where would I find a scientist willing to design it?
Oh I forgot -this wouldn’t be allowed because the NHS wouldn’t be able to cope should the participants develop symptoms. (Please don’t slam me I know how hard those involved are working) and if we didn’t catch it en masse and develop serious symptoms, trying as hard as possible but exhibited immunity -who would have egg on their face?
After months of trying it the lockdown way I’d love the opportunity to try it the way nature intended, but I’ll keep dreaming! The vaccination fuelled release plan has been promised….!
Ok I will play the IF game.
IF your country didn’t lock down you would be Sweden. Sweden is not even in the Top 20 in terms of covid deaths per capita
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
‘In short, I would look for another idea’. Doctor Kendrick, are you looking for another idea? Is anyone? Please hurry, and let us know when you find one.
Doubtless Dr K will be having into the target range of Neil O’Brien as a result of this post. Please may it be possible for Dr K to view the incidence of respiratory illnesses in the winter of 2019/20 cf to winter 2020 to date – either by diagnosis or recorded death and correlate that to “Covid related” deaths over the same period and lockdown restrictions? I read from other sources that the ‘flu has gone AWOL this winter but is it “really” so – or is it like “elective” treatments and just “temporarily suspended”?
The WHO flu reporting website shows a remarkable reduction in sample submission numbers. Flu sample submission all but ceased from week 17 2020 – ie from April 20 2020.
https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=10
Entrer start year/week and end year/week in the selection boxes, then ‘display report’.
Ken Garoo: Amazing! Influenza has been completely eradicated worldwide! Why are they not shouting this from the rooftops?
Thank you. I’m at a loss, as I’m sure many of your readers are as to which numbers to believe. If one looks at the PHE Notifiable Diseases Weekly Reports for England and Wales, for week ending 24/01/2021 they were just 63 cases of Covid-19. For the week ending 17/01/2021, just 145 cases of Covid-19 and for week ending 10/01/2021, 197 cases. And from the same PHE, Covid-19 reported cases for all of 2020 were 13,901. So are the numbers quoted by Government in the MSM true or not? Are they positive PCR tests or actual symptomatic patients that are positive for Covid-19? And what does it really mean when the MSM say there were “x” number of deaths within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19. Did the person die because of Covid-19 or they just happened be to positive 28 days before dying of a heart attack or cancer? Someone please please enlighten me!
surely the strength/extent of lockdowns (how intrusive are the restrictions); length of lockdown (was it fully maintained until new-case count actually zeroed for a period); and compliance with the rules all factor into whether lockdowns are comparable. I am in New Zealand, and our highest level of lockdown (early on) was maintained until new case count was zero. Zero, not just slowing. And then slightly reduced lockdown rules still applied until we got more comfort. Tell me where else in the world this approach was effectively applied. Go fast, go hard was the motto – and we lived it. We’ve had 1 (one) case recently via returning NZ’ers from overseas (who MUST endure 14 days quarantine, not stay at home). 1 case and the whole country was getting ready for new lockdowns.
Now there are three more Kiwis infected by that returning traveller.
A lady who did 14 days in quarantine
But then became ill with Covid after being released from quarantine.
So can Covid take more than 14 days to manifest ?
Or did she catch the virus from another infected traveler while in quarantine ?
Or perhaps she didn’t “catch” it from anyone else. Does she have symptoms? If so are they caused by rona? If she only has a positive test result, could it be a misleading result?
Or perhaps… it’s all part of a grand plan … note the plan applies globally… Canada is making noises about the ‘Mutant End of World Covid’
What amuses me is that if it truly was the end of the world version of Covid —- and Ardern believed lockdowns would stop it — then why has Auckland not gone into lockdown?
The headline this morning indicated that there won’t be a lockdown until at least next week because they don’t want to interrupt the Auckland Anniversary.
Oh ok … hate to be a party pooper — after all it’s just the end of the world at risk here (so they say).. but the party is the priority.
Duh — sounds like the plan was to purposely create community infections… give them a chance to spread over the weekend — then lockdown in Feb…. (as per the leak).
Canada Leak:
– 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.
– 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.
Thank you!
Why has Australia done well? It depends when you ask the question. If you ask Melbournians’ 6 months ago they wouldn’t agree that they were doing well.
We have only been through one winter since the start, UV light may have an effect on your country plus other healthy conditions such as access to good food and water etc.
But as far as I can see morbidity for 2020 was within a standard deviation, so no problem.
Melbourne is doing quite nicely now.
21 Days since the last local transmission.
For accurate information by a local medical doctor about Covid in Melbourne, check out this link :
I’m in Melbourne. If we’re doing so well, why are masks still mandatory in shopping centres and supermarkets. Why are only half the chairs allowed to be used in my GP’s waiting room and those who can’t find a chair have to wait outside in the weather (and magazines to read while waiting have been banned). Why do I still have to sign in with my phone number when I go for a haircut and in some other places. Why is social distancing demanded in almost all retail outlets. There are a multitude of ways life hasn’t returned to normal here. And winter will be upon us in a few more months and will that mean another season of lockdowns if virus cases increase like flu always does in winter? And incidentally, my GP says the ridiculous method of taking temperature by pointing a ‘gun’ at someone’s forehead is hugely inaccurate and laughable.
Bev, I think that’s called the new freedom.
Are those ongoing restrictions really so onerous? Presumably they are designed so that it’s easier to nip any future cases of community transmission in the bud if they should arise – and to avoid another lockdown like the previous one.
We haven’t reached a single milestone in the fight against the China virus. If you’re fighting someone, there’s an element of engagement, of actively trying to overcome. We’ve just locked it out, refusing to have anything to do with it. We haven’t started ….., and neither has it.
I was wondering about that: the locales that have kept it near zero are doomed to pursue their restrictive measures forever, save a workable vaccine. That would be depressing. Hopefully the vaccines, or at least some of them, work, since that would be the only route to herd immunity.
I heard a doctor on a zoom call trying to reassure the audience that all the measures taken were correct etc. And then he stated the masks will reduce Ro. That is completely wrong, the Ro is the basic reproduction number that characterizes the virus. The only way to change Ro would be some genetic manipulation of the virus, the sort of thing they try to do with mosquitoes. He probably meant to say effective reproduction number, but you would think a doctor would be more careful about what he says, unless of course he doesn’t really know what he is talking about.
“That would be depressing. Hopefully the vaccines, or at least some of them, work, since that would be the only route to herd immunity” …shurely shome mishtake? Nature, in a manner that is sometimes not seen as helpful, is quite capable of sorting itself out. Its what errors have got us here that is the question that needs asking.
Excellent thanks.
The idea that saturated fats clogged arteries sounded pretty good
Thank you, Dr. Kendrick. Difficult not to think of this whole sordid affair as a great crime, a psyop. CDC monkey business with the numbers (something utterly unsurprising given their history):
Gary, don’t 400,000 Americans die every year from the adverse of “correctly” prescribed drugs anyway?
AhNotepad: I truly don’t remember, but it seems to me it is somewhere around 100,000.
Malcolm this focus on ‘Lock downs’ is beside the point.
Experience here in Australia & New Zealand shows that they DO work
If you also shut down the entry of new infected persons from elsewhere
Or quarantine all new entries for 14 days.
But NO they don’t work if your government permits lost & lots of infected people to enter the country
And start the pandemic all over again.
That’s our collective truth from the past year of experience in Australia & New Zealand.
And finally it seems that blond buffoon you have for a PM is starting to listen to what we Aussies & Kiwis say.
Pity it took 100,000 dead to get him to listen.
South Korea was supposed to be the model of how to do covid. Look at their stats today. Looks like they keep having “problems”. Covid is inevitable. We can make sure we supplement with vitamins C & D & zinc and have a plan to get antivirals should we need them.
Don’t live in fear. Live free!
The secret police in the US are coming after all highly visible Trump supporters. The aim is to create a climate of fear.
This could all be stopped if people would protest every day and demand that the China Tyrants resign.
It depends what you mean by “lockdowns work”. If you mean that they destroy businesses, increase suicide rates and lead to all sorts of shortages without any exit strategy in place after a full year of on-off lockdowns, then yes, they work.
My view a year ago was that whatever the government did would be much worse than the virus. The government has done its worst and we have yet to allow the population to obtain any immunity, whilst compromising their existing immune system with hand sanitisers, face masks and isolation. There is no indication that the AZ vaccine works and the Pfizer one is killing off the elderly who’ve been isolated for a year and younger people who aren’t at risk from the China Virus, so these vaccines (which aren’t designed to prevent you from getting the disease, just to minimise it) aren’t an exit route.
Stick around, Billinoz. What’s your exit strategy?
I hope you are wearing your two masks
jiver222, only two masks? That’s totally reckless and shows little concern for others. You should have at least four, and one of the layers should be impervious. I suppose two layers would be ok if you made the masks from 12mm carpet felt, or perhaps a good quality veg tanned leather (with glued seams, stitching alone is not adequate).
jiver222: I thought it was now three or four?
“ In short, I would look for another idea.” I need to hear what that other idea is. I am retired in relative isolation on two acres of crap land on the island of Hawaii. Whether or not my state and/or island lockdown or not does not affect me. I have not even experienced any interruption of necessary medical services. For all I can say the pandemic is a hoax. And, between bites of crow, I can admit that both the Lt. Governor of Texas and President Trump were correct to encourage us to enthusiastically expose ourselves to this new virus. Perhaps they intuited what the data on deaths, presented in this article, implies. That there was nothing to be done to stop the spread and that any effort was a waste of time and resources. So what is the other idea? Perhaps Dr. Kendrick gave it in Doctoring Data: “Lives cannot be saved; we all are going to die.” It seems strange to me, but I have always felt some comfort in the dance of death represented at the end of Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal.”
Interesting but I live in Queensland Australia and my son in New Zealand and I assure you that a hard lockdown known in nz, and a more relaxed one here in Queensland has been very effective indeed. We had a difficult few weeks but for nearly a year now we have led normal lives, going to restaurants, bars seeing friends within the state. ‘we look at the rest of the world and see the mistakes that are being made. All our visitors from abroad are quarantined in hotels, under guard. the only cases getting into the population is when this hasn’t been observed. Self quarantine at home didn’t work, when checked on 70% were not at home!! hopefully we will have a ‘bubble’ of countries we can visit who have taken strict precautions,but who knows when?? holding on to the hope for a vxxxxne to take the problem away, and everything will magically go back to normal is very unlikely as the virus is constantly evolving. we can’t believe the lives ruined and millions of dollars lost because the correct steps haven’t been taken. ‘if the whole worlds agreed to go into a hard lockdown for say a month, maybe,just 7maybe, this strain of virus could be eliminated. But of course, that’s not going to happen is it?
>
If you remove the 90% bogus covid reporting, the US has a death rate of 125 per million. Imagine, per the CDC your only symptom is a cough and you die, that is a covid death. No PCR test required, not that they can be trusted.
Thank you
Thanks for another excellent and timely article
Hello Malcolm, I think Bill has covered the AUS/NZ experience, so will focus my comments on the real problem, politics. The problem as I see it is that Lock Down means what ever the incumbent party deems it to mean. Surely if you Lock Down you should immediately restrict overseas travel and institute quarantine procedures, so whilst the UK ‘locked Down’ in March, they only introduced mandatory quarantine for overseas travellers in June. Even then, the arriving travellers had to self quarantine and get themselves from the airport, so if they were positive had plenty of time to share the load.
It is largely academic now as impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, but when the medical historians review this episode, there will be stark contrasts between low transmission countries like AUZ/NZ and the basket cases included in your piece.
All the best to family.
The Lancet just published a paper on 2020 all-cause mortality in New Zealand in which the authors crowed about our low mortality rate for the year. However – if you discount the expected number of flu deaths (we didn’t have flu this year) there are actually 2-300 excess deaths (which is quite a few in our tiny population). Don’t know what they are from yet, however we have had an at least 12 fold increase in maternal mortality this year.
This article makes many mistakes and goes beyond reasonable scepticism to cynicism. For instance, comparing rural to urban US states is misleading as is comparing nations with different age/sex profiles. I could do on. At a simple level, for me where I live, reducing the number of people I have close contact with reduces my chance of and infection which is causing more and more problems. Like so much else, lockdowns done early and well are effective, ours, less so.
colinbannon, that might be plausible if viruses were transmitted according germ theory. You need to read Edgar Hope-Simpson’s book on influenza epidemics, and Bechamp’s works on terrain theory.
Your first mistake was assuming that covid statistics are meaningful. 90% of covid deaths are incidentally covid in the US.
Suppose you test positive for covid. You actually only know for certain that you have covid if you get really sick and certain symptoms occur. Otherwise, you might have some other viral ailment.
Since there is so much uncertainty in covid statistics, it seems quite pointless to discuss the efficacy of lockdowns.
For another take on the ‘idea’ I recommend this video by Tom Naughton, comedian and maker of the ‘Fat Head’ movie. The video concerns diet, but the principles behind the ‘Grand Plan’ as Tom Naughton terms it are very similar to Dr Kendrick’s 6-step process regarding Covid19. Plus, it’s very funny.
That was an excellent talk, and as you say, funny too. Points made about diet and ‘the anointed ones’ are spot on for the way people are being pushed to accept the ideas of a small group of people who in actual fact, are getting it all completely wrong. Thanks for posting it Martin.
Tom Naughton is a great guy.
That was a wonderful video – I wish he would do another one about lockdowns!
Yes. It is very good and relevant to the Covid lockdown debate.
Thank you Martin Back!
Wonderful – great strip-down of the ‘anointed ones’. One to share onwards. Thanks for posting this.
Nassim Taleb and Thomas Sowell are two of very few “intellectuals” who can actually think, glad Tom Naughton mentioned them, along with Taubes of course. If you have ever read F. A. Hayek’s “The road to serfdom” you will also recognize the totalitarians that can’t make a mistake that Naughton mentioned, except he didn’t call them totalitarians. But that’s what they are. Like our current lockdown artists.
From my non-medical, dim-witted point of view, I think Andrew Larwood above has hit one of the nails on the head.
Manipulation of numbers. Ever since I saw the ‘benefits’ of Lipitor exagerated by fogging the numbers I have trusted ‘official’ figures less and less.
This post was going to be longer, but the more I wrote the more ratty I got. In fact, I got so ratty I had to take the dog for a walk. When I proof-read what I’d written (when I’d dried off and had a full change of clothes) I had set off on various tangents and sounded unhinged.
There’s a web site, Lockdown Sceptics ( https://lockdownsceptics.org/ ) that I visit from time to time. There’s more than a little truth spoken. The associated forum can get a bit radical but more points of interest are raised. At one time there was a link to a site where people could regale others with their lockdown experiences. I visited a couple of times but I, even as a pretty optimistic character, had to come away. It was just too depressing. People suffering anxiety and worse, grandparents and grandchildren estranged, economic woes etc. etc. It’s a pretty dark place for sure.
To wear an optimitic cap for a moment, a few positives have come out of the Covid war. Round my way (north of England) two wonderful initiatives are prospering. Both concern male well-being. One is called ‘Blokes’ which was started pre-lockdown as a means for elderly, often single guys to share each others company. They’d get together at a local venue for a brew and a chat or game of cards. I’ve seen photos of 20 or 30 smiling faces which is wonderful. Since lockdown they’ve continued via Zoom (or other). I’ve heard plenty of tales of elderly males cursing, muttering and chuckling as they try and get to grips with virtual technology.
The second is called Andy Mans Club (if I’ve mentioned it before, my apologies). https://andysmanclub.co.uk/about/. The brief video there is very poignant.
It’s a place where men can talk. Though I’m lucky not to need any help myself, I have particular interest through friends and acquaintances who have struggled. The club started near here (Halifax) and is now national.
Through both these groups friendships are made and lives saved, particularly important during these current times. Rays of light in a muddled world.
Another group that gets men together is here:
I do not consider zoom meetups to be a ray of light and I boycott all such.
Supplement to my earlier ramble reference the manipulation of numbers……..
The Times article featured in today’s Lockdown Sceptics website is a classic example of obfuscation. Under the strap. ‘100,000 deaths’ is an unrepresentative photograph of 20 people who have died.
A chart down the page explains it.
Numbers – don’t trust them!
… ‘Despite the lack of any randomised evidence, most people are absolutely convinced that lockdowns work to control the spread of COVID-19. They point to various countries, e.g. New Zealand, Norway, Australia and Taiwan, to prove their case. They always have a ready explanation as to why countries that underwent lockdown still have high death rates and vice-versa.’ This puzzles me because, as far as I know, none of the countries mentioned above has a high death rate. Although I understand the gist of the rest of the argument, these countries seem to me to actually be examples of where lockdowns and restrictions are indeed working.
Nothing puzzling here: We know that New Zealand and Taiwan have implemented very strict lockdowns which have worked very well: 5 deaths and 0.3 deaths per million respectively. And life has pretty much returned to normal for the vast majority of people in these countries. But, these facts contradict Dr. Kendrick’s conspiracy theory, so these inconvenient facts are ignored.
It’s obvious the good doctor is playing games because he refuses to define the crucial term, lockdown. How can he compare the “lockdowns” in various countries if he has not even bothered to define the term itself? He is comparing apples with oranges (deliberately I suspect), and it is sad to see how many people are falling for this type of reasoning.
good points, well made
Yes. Dr Kendrick
cites South Africa as a case study of strict lockdown not working. He gives up on factoring in different conditions in different countries to do comparative studies, because there are too many variables so why bother. I submit you do need to take into account locking 47 people into one small house, something not applicable to most Western countries, when considering the South African situation:
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-01-28-come-and-try-to-save-lives-in-this-home-of-47-pleads-mitchells-plain-family/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Coronavirus%20special%20edition%20Thursday%2028%20January%202020&utm_content=Coronavirus%20special%20edition%20Thursday%2028%20January%202020+CID_5994442f3cbc14dcc3e87c8885fcc5e7&utm_source=TouchBasePro&utm_term=Come%20and%20try%20to%20save%20lives%20in%20this%20home%20of%2047%20pleads%20Mitchells%20Plain%20family
Is this because – in the case of Aus & NZ at least – they stopped all non-essential, non-resident arrivals? Not sure about Taiwan and Norway.
Taiwan and New Zealand adopted dramatically different approaches, something anyone with a connection to the internet (including Dr. Kendrick) can discover.
Taiwan developed strategies to fight future epidemics and pandemics in response to their experiences with SARS (2003) and H1N1 flu (2009). These included changes to their privacy laws, the ability to quickly ramp up production of PPEs and controlling their distribution, implementing protocols to identify people with the virus, and strategies such as high tech contact tracing and universal mask wearing to reduce or prevent community spread. Consequently there was no need for harsh “lockdowns” as seen in so many other countries.
New Zealand adopted a very different approach because it was caught as flatfooted as most other countries. Lacking the strategies Taiwan had developed and implemented, it seems to have taken a page from the Chinese play-book by attempting to eliminate the disease rather than mitigate its spread. It imposed a countrywide lockdown in late March which was so successful they were able to begin to reduce the restrictions about 5 weeks later. By early June, NZ declared the pandemic to be over in their country.
What both countries had in common was the severe restrictions they imposed on people wanting to enter the country. This was relatively easy to do because both are relatively small island states, and they required the few who were permitted to enter to be totally isolated until they were deemed to be free of the disease.
Lockdowns in Australian states are just delaying the inevitable.
Dana – it’s actually worse than that… it’s killing MORE people.
Lockdowns ensure that a virus will stick around longer than it normally would because it delays herd immunity….
So delaying herd immunity means that the at-risk people are exposed to what for them might be a death sentence…. for a longer period of time… It’s like playing Russian Roulette with Granny and every few months you stick another bullet in a chamber, put the gun to her head and click it…
Additionally, the longer this situation persists (I see Toronto is now about to start their FOURTH consecutive month of lockdown), you destroy more lives and businesses.
The people who run the show obviously understand this …. they KNOW that it’s old and already dying people who die from Covid as well…
They have tens of thousands of scientists and medical professionals who have explained this on the Great Barrington Declaration. If you could find a 7 year old of average intelligence who has not been exposed to the MSM drumbeat of fear and tried to explain to them why lockdowns are a very bad idea… they’d get it.
So clearly lockdowns have ZERO to do with eliminating a virus, or reducing deaths and hospitalizations. The vaccines likewise.
We saw the formula with WMD and 911…. instill fear in the masses — which results in them begging for authoritarian solutions … in those instances freedoms were revoked and governments generated mass support for the war on terror (when amusingly they create the terror by bombing wedding parties etc…) …
This time Covid is the tool…. the fear is epic… the ‘terror’ is real .. it’s on every railing… toilet flush handle… it’s in the air you breathe… this has driven people to hysterics….
And they are now begging for the solution … they are so desperate their cognitive dissonance is firing up and forcing them to ignore the warning signs about the proffered solution… they are so mad with fear that they will even push their children to the front of the queue to receive The Vaccination…
And if anyone dares not to play along … the masses will applaud as these recalcitrants are locked down permanently in Covid Denial Detention Centres… I imagine that if one were to escape they’d be stoned to death … because they are spreading the Black Death (to people who are immune to it because they have been vaxxed !!!!)
Bravo whomever is behind this brilliant campaign… every angle is covered… there is no escaping the vaxx… you either take it at some point or you go mad living in an eternal lockdown… or as I intend to do … run the very fast car that I recently purchased for this purpose (see if it really can break 300km/hr)… and slam into a rock cut… (I was thinking of getting a personal plate ‘Covid21’ but I don’t that would be approved…)
The only question here is what is in this vaccine that we are not being told about.
I am almost certain that the reading I have done on this provides an answer — it will alter human DNA and when they are infected with a future virus (even a common cold) their body will react with such a strong response… that it will actually kill itself trying to fight that infection.
Of course as I have suggested previously… this is related to reaching The Limits to Growth.
The reason why there is no pushback from any world leaders is because there is consensus… when you are no longer finding much oil…. collapse is the only option.
Now do you want to experience uncontrolled collapse with mass starvation and violence…. think The Road + Mad Max x 1,998,965,278,873,190.0876655899554433 … then double that…
(Anyone who thinks they are remote and can avoid death — remember — we have 4000 spent fuel ponds that need high tech gear to remain safe… when civilization goes the water boils off and they spew for centuries… I’ve got an entire library of online references that addresses that issue – let me know if anyone would like me to publish them here)
Or do you want to die from pneumonia… I believe the latter is a far more tranquil way to go…
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.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Biggest-Oil-Gas-Discoveries-Of-2019.html
Exactly.
And it’s not as if the virus has been eradicated anyway. According to tests from sewage plants it is still in the community, just that no-one is testing positive to it. So there is always the possibility that there will be an odd case pop up outside of overseas quarantines, which will result in an immediate lockdown.
But if there is a roadmap to freedom, the states aren’t revealing it. I suspect the hope is that the vaccines are sufficiently effective in minimising hospitalisations that the curve is flattened sufficiently to allow normal life. Ah, except, the EDs in South East Queensland (i.e. where 90% of the population lives) are already over capacity due to RSV. In summer. So there is no scope for a single case of Chinese virus requiring hospitalisation ….
Anyway they can always blame the failure on the people who choose not to take the vaccine. And there will be plenty of those, many previously proud, rigid vaxxers are expressing doubts about the hurriedness of bringing them to market. Seemingly particularly those with pre-existing conditions who one might have thought would be eager to get it in light of the supposed death rate amongst that category of the population.
Thoughtful piece, thank you Dr K. I really wish that instead of the hysterical ranting MSM seems to generate and politicians enjoy, we could have more debate like this. Calm and considered. I was pleased to see the aims of HART and wish you and your colleagues there every success with it. I desperately hope that we can look at this issue in a more grown up and educated way and stop the fear-mongering. Lockdowns are quite literally ruining people’s lives and potentially futures too.
Imagine two years ago saying to someone that an illness that does have a small risk of fatality MAY be caught by a grandparent in their family and the only way to prevent this possibility from happening is for everyone in the family to isolate themselves at home for an indefinite period of time. The grandchildren must stay at home, not go to school, not see their playmates, not get proper exercise and develop their social skills. The parents must educate their children themselves at home, whilst also trying to work and / or face losing their job or business if they had one. The parents must not go out, must not see their friends, must not socialise or have any real-life contact with other people at all. There will be no social support at all for their isolation or struggles and none of it is optional. No one would have ever considered that this was a sensible solution – NO ONE!!!!!!!
Covid is hereditary. You get it from your grandchildren. /s
Failing to consider a few key factors in your list of 27: demographic, death reporting, healthcare outcomes, and density. Makes this in my view a particularly naive piece.
Where these factors line up against a population, they will lead to more deaths, which will cause more govt response, which will place them at the top of the d/1m leader board, with LDs.
You’re piece shows selection bias in its purest form, and provides no insight into comparison.
View at Medium.com
Thank you so much for your incredibly insightful blogs. I always read every last word of each of them.
I am really interested in your latest as I have held the same belief as you conclude. But there is one thing that I can’t reason in my mind. And that is how can lockdown not work, surely the reduced social contact should mean that infection rate and death rate are reduced? I see that the data shows that they appear not to, but how can that be so?
I hope you see I’m not questioning your conclusion, I have the same conclusion, but I like to battle out both sides of the debate in my mind, so I can be assured as to my reasoning.
I would really love to hear your thoughts,
Kate
Download my free eBook on Immune Support here… https://kateberkeley.co.uk/support-your-immune-system-e-book-signup/
Kate Berkeley registered Nutritional Therapist and Functional Medicine Practitioner DipION, AFMCP, mBANT, CNHC Kate Berkeley Nutrition Green Farm Edwards Lane White Ladies Aston Worcestershire WR7 4QF
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>
Perhaps viruses just spread far more widely and effectively than most of us think (just floating in the air all over the place) making social distancing. masks and lockdown a waste of time?
Basically we all get exposed and whether or not you fall ill depends on how healthy you are.
Consider the supermarket workers in the USA, UK and Ireland.
They continued working in their shops, enclosed spaces with aircon as the masses came in day in day out to buy food. Masks were not mandated early on and none of those silly screens were in place and yet at the height of the pandemic in March/April supermarket workers showed no increased likelihood of being ill with covid or dying from it compared to those locked up at home.
Yes, Tim, I think you are probably quite right. It seems that whether a person falls ill depends much more on their underlying state of health (nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, etc.) than on whether a few virus particles float up their nose. We all have trillions of virus particles in and on our bodies, but most of the time they do us no harm. Indeed their presence may be essential to make sure our immune systems are calibrated and in good working order.
Dr Malcolm Kendrick
Any chance of an specific article on Vitamin D.
An f.b. posting lately from a non medic connection suggested that “synthetic” Vit D was suspect and had a negative effect on the thyroid, another corporate attempt to muscle in on whatever. It was a random post and we know that any theory we want can be found on our web. Seems to be an infinite number of angles and contradictory opinions on almost any subject we choose. But yes, it would be a worthwhile exercise from a non partisan promoter of common sense, logic and solid research.
FYI, this article on The BMJ, an interview with Andrew Pollard, the leader of the Oxford vaccine clinical trials in the UK, Brazil, and South Africa: How the Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine was made: https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n86
Consider this statement for example:
We don’t have any new trials planned to look at different regimens here in the UK, but we’re moving on to new trials to evaluate different age groups—for example, children.
What do you think about that, about children in the frame for coronavirus vaccines?
Why? Why should children have coronavirus vaccination, when they are not apparently at risk with SARS-CoV-2?
Because they are a large market that needs to be expolited, profit is profit.
Not being at risk themselves is irrelevant.
elizabethhart: Exactly. This is criminal. Pfizer has now finished enrollment in a trial of 12-15-year-olds in Oklahoma City, OK. And Washington, D.C. has passed a bill allowing children as young as 11 to consent to any approved vaccine without the parents’ knowledge or consent, crafted very carefully so that everyone knows except the parents. The Nazis actually won; it just took an extra 75 years for their plans to come to fruition.
Vitamin D.
In relation to my previous post, I forgot to add this.
The Big Vitamin D mistake.
Click to access jpmph-50-4-278.pdf
Could you comment on the statistical error, which it suggests has led to lower RDA of Vitman D, then should be the case?
I suspect this started as a big pharma shake down designed to screw $billions out of the global population aided and abetted by bought and paid for WHO officials and local national medical advisors.
Something very similar to the 2009 swine flu fraud they carried out before.
Then it morphed into a WEF type globalist power grab when they saw how easy it was to get a terrified population to do all sorts of ridiculous nonsense in the name of the ‘stay safe’ mantra.
Now I fear the global population is being subject to ‘the great reset’ a major part of which involves mass culling of the population via their rushed experimental vaccine that far too many people have been terorised into blindly accepting.
For those that would call me a ‘tin foil hatter’, I would respond ‘better that than being a gullible chump’
PS
Dr Kendricks latest book about the corruption of big pharma is an excellent read and ties in nicely with the current big pharma shake down that we are suffering.
Tim Fallon: Good! By latest book do you mean “A Statin Nation?”
Consider these statements from this article on The Independent, published on 13 March 2020: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity-uk-nhs-outbreak-pandemic-government-a9399101.html
What happened to change this plan?
…Sir Patrick told the BBC that the advice the government is following for tackling coronavirus is not looking to “suppress” the disease entirely but to help create a “herd immunity in the UK” while protecting the most vulnerable from it.
Asked if there is a fear that clamping down too hard on its spread could see it return, Sir Patrick said: “That is exactly the risk you would expect from previous epidemics.
“If you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures it bounces back and it bounces back at the wrong time.
“Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it.
“Those are the key things we need to do.
“Sir Patrick said some of the social distancing measures put in place by the government, including self-isolating for seven days if symptoms develop, are “actually quite extreme”.
Sir Patrick said it was “eye-catching” to order the cancellation of mass gatherings and sporting events but that the chances of contracting the disease by attending such occasions are slim.
He told the BBC: “Mass gatherings do have some impact, it is not that they don’t do anything if you stop them.
“But they are very much more minor than the other ones.
“The most likely place you are going to get an infection from is a family member, a friend, someone very close in a small space, not in the big space.
“It is sort of eye-catching to say ‘Stop those’ (but) it is not actually a big effect on the transmission.
“That is not to say we wouldn’t do it at some point but it is not the most important thing to get into place first.
“He said those watching the Wales v Scotland Six Nations rugby tie in pubs are more likely to contract the illness than those in the Principality Stadium on Saturday.
“I think it is more likely that there will be transmission in pubs and other areas where people are aggregating watching it than in the actual stadium itself.
”He did not, however, urge people to stay out of pubs or social situations as a result, only repeating advice that those with symptoms should remain at home…
I believe the UK government may have changed the definition of a ‘covid’ death recently. It was ‘any death within 28 days of a positive covid test result’. I believe they have changed it to ‘any death within 60 days of a positive covid test result’. This would account for the recent step increase in deaths, possibly doubling the number of ‘covid’ deaths on a specific date, along with a corresponding (but unmentioned) drop in ‘non-covid’ deaths. This would help the ‘covid’ deaths cross the magic 100,000 figure which seems to being used to maintain the fear. If that is the case, this would constitute what a civil servant would call being ‘economical with the actualite’ and a real person might call fraud.
It would be very interesting to go over the deaths using the long-established pre-covid method of recording death. The ‘covid’ deaths would probably come down to 10,000 – 15,000 equivalent 6 to 10 days excess death, at long-term average rate, over 10 months.
I wonder how a strict lockdown can be implemented in a population that cannot afford not to work and lives in crammed housing. Could that explain the absence of effect. We have seen the phenomenon in the Latino population in the USA.
And in Brazil & Argentina, USA, Italy, India, the Philippines, Indonesia..etc..
Covid is easily spread in densely populated areas & the shanty towns of the big cities.- even during a lockdown
And here in Oz that realisation is having a big impact : housing prices & rents for flats & appartments in high rises have crashed. Prices and rents for houses with gardens in outer suburbs and regional towns have increased markedly.
People want out of the densely populated inner cities. It’s safer that way.
Not sure that’s generally true based on some articles that I’ve read. In any case, the desire to move out of the city is partly motivated by the requirement to go into the office every day being replaced by the ability to work from home.
OZ pussies ?
I am confused on the issue of fact checkers and RT. I thought these fact checkers were used by only a couple of social media platforms?
Indeed – checkers branching out and spreading virus like ?
More truths from Simon Dolan. ‘Our nation’s children are fast becoming the pandemic’s forgotten victims’, and advice for small businesses:
https://www.keepbritainfree.com/so/19NT9lvO3?languageTag=en&cid=6d91f31f-9379-4478-b1e4-1f5f645d29f6#/main
Very disappointing. Scientists being unscientific.
https://mailchi.mp/humanism/our-weekly-update-1019056?e=5b9a6620a5
https://humanism.org.uk/events/vaccines-hesitancy-fake-news-and-science/
Crying or laughing?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2020/dec/08/matt-hancock-brought-to-tears-on-tv-as-first-covid-vaccinations-begin-video
Matt Hancock was laughing.
All the way to the bank
JDPatten: This is for you (yes, I worry about you getting the vaccine, although it is certainly your own damn business):
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/surgeon-warns-fda-pfizer-immunological-danger-covid-vaccines-convalescent-asymptomatic-carriers/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=9a687b92-5f4c-4559-91e9-8afbfabbfd7a
Gary,
Thanks for your concern. I read your link. I am not worried enough to put off my next-week’s appointment for the vaccine.
It’ll be either Pfizer’s or Moderna’s. Don’t know yet.
I’ll keep you informed as to how it goes.
JD – Its the long term outcome that has not been tested – is it not ?
Malcolm, are you suppressing my comments ? Three comments of mine are missing ! Surely you wouldn’t suppress the excellent news of how we are dealing with this disease here in Oz ?
Meanwhile in Australia we have a new ‘official ‘ slang : “Double doughnuts”. It means zero new infections and zero deaths.
It is now 23 days since there was a new locally transmitted Covid case in Victoria. And months since anyone died from Covid there as well. In other states the situation is even better.
Lots of people happily eating double doughnuts here in Oz !
And that is due to the double strategy of 1 : Enforcing 14 days quarantine for ALL incoming travellers at a police supervised hotel; Being willing to lockdown areas, regions cities when there are In Breaks.
But I see on the BBC news online that over a thousand Britains are dying each day from Covid.
😦
“And that is due to the double strategy of 1 : Enforcing 14 days quarantine for ALL incoming travellers at a police supervised hotel; Being willing to lockdown areas, regions cities when there are In Breaks.”
I lost you on the last step of your proof – can you explain why it is due to that, and not to the simple fact that Australia is enjoying its summer?
David, please listen to the BBC. You know they have fact checkers to ensure only the government propaganda is broadcast, sorry, I think I meant to say “only the truth is broadcast”..
Wanna bet $100,000 that Covid will be back?
Locking down an island no doubt can be effective — I am in NZ and we have had success with lockdowns.
But now the price is being paid. Kiwis returning with cash have kept the property market afloat… the influx of monied expats has its limits.
Domestic tourism has helped that industry from collapsing. However I am in Queenstown and I know many people in tourism — the post-lockdown spending euphoria is wearing off — it is still school holidays but the hotels are already gasping for air.
As one GM told me yesterday ‘bookings have plunged even with rock bottom rates — forward bookings are horrific — and this is meant to be high season —- we don’t see a pick up until ski season — which is not until July — how can we survive 5 months of this!!!’
I wouldn’t be popping any Champagne if I were you. The worst is yet to come matey.
Ivor Cummins, one of the leading critics in the world on the efficacy of lockdowns and masks in preventing the spread of COVID-19.
The Australian Tennis Open is happening next month in Melbourne. And even the tennis greats have had to do their quarantine for 14 days in a police supervised hotel. And a whole group of the greats left quarantine this morning here in Adelaide. I wonder if some of them will stay on after the Open now that they have got into a safe Covid free refuge ?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-29/tennis-players-emerge-from-quarantine-in-adelaide/13102072
‘Even the tennis greats’ ? ‘A whole group of the greats’ ? Are not these ‘greats’ people, like the rest of us? In my view nobody is ‘greater’ than anyone else, and should enjoy no more privilege than anyone else.
ShirleyKate, !00% agree.
Ah c’mon Bill !
Why the ‘100,000 deaths’ figure is misleading the public | Noah Carl | The Critic Magazine
https://thecritic.co.uk/why-the-100000-deaths-figure-is-misleading-the-public/
Who mentioned proof? Can’t be sure that seasonality isn’t a factor of course, but I’m not aware of any indication that the small amount of community transmission that we have had here in Australia has been worse in winter than in summer
Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons (That well known Conspiracy Website)
The Treatment of Viral Diseases: Has the Truth Been Suppressed for Decades? Lee D. Merritt , M.D.
Click to access merritt.pdf
Thanks TFS,
I think that is a really interesting link for two reasons:
It confirms my feeling that those pulling the strings in the health service do not want this pandemic to end anytime soon (which makes them mass murderers in my mind).
It also raises the fascinating question as to why drugs designed to treat parasites or bacteria are actually effective against viral diseases.
BTW If you press the button in the top left hand corner, and select Download, you can obtain the PDF file.
Fantastic article. Thank you!
I have downloaded the article and will read it.
Here’s what wikipedia has to say on the society that publishes the journal and the journal itself. I know wikipedia articles can be subject to manipulation but this one tells me to be at least very careful with anything from that society:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons#Journal_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons
AAPS is generally recognized as politically conservative or ultra-conservative,[2][7] and its positions are unorthodox and at wide variance with federal health policy.[8]
The Washington Post summarized their beliefs in February 2017 as “doctors should be autonomous in treating their patients — with far fewer government rules, medical quality standards, insurance coverage limits and legal penalties when they make mistakes”.[8] It opposed the Social Security Act of 1965 which established Medicare and Medicaid and encouraged member physicians to boycott Medicare and Medicaid.[9] The organization requires its members to sign a “declaration of independence” pledging that they will not work with Medicare, Medicaid, or even private insurance companies.[10]
AAPS opposes mandated evidence-based medicine and practice guidelines, opposes abortion and over-the-counter access to emergency contraception and opposes electronic medical records.[10]
Current affairs have little interest. Turn the radio on, turn it off at once. Can’t trust anything. Even if some news is factual (and how can you be sure?) it’s only a snapshot. Can’t be much else.
We can have no trust. We are given no logical reasons. What we can know is what is currently affecting us all. The fake news is coming from scientists and governments, not from us. We are being distracted by it. Distracted from looking for reasons. Humiliated by the public’s responses and the contempt with which we are being treated. If the intended outcomes are thought to be good, why can’t we know about them? Do they fear anarchy? Do they know we won’t like them?
We suffer more than the believers in it all. They have a sense of purpose, stupid though it is.
Malcolm,
That was an excellent article – thank goodness for RT for publishing it!
If there is one thing than absolutely kicked me in the nuts, and made me more open to medical things not being fully set in stone, it was in relation to a man in New Zeland brought back from the death, with Introvenous vitamin C.
I realise the fact the person involved was given Vitamin C, had a remarkable recovery, but this didn’t proved causation.
My issue is with the doctor at 9.30. At no point did he suggest that the hospital had investigated such a ‘possible’ causation with Vitamin C or anything else that would explain the remarkable recovery…….NOTHING.
At them time, I was asking my partner on why the NHS hadn’t asked questions of this remarkable recovery but then given the blinkered approach to Vitamin D, HCQ & Zinc, Ivermectin….nothing surprises me anymore.
I’m afraid the NHS is totally controlled by big pharma and they don’t want cheap cures. Don’t expect to be cured of any chronic illness by an NHS doctor
Sam
Is Dr Kendrick not one such ? Careful there now !
Doctor K, Thank you, yet again. Lockdowns? Whatever. The universal issue is syncretic thinking in hindsight. It’s highly dangerous. Today, asymmetric propaganda has come of age with the ‘help’ of social media. Ed Bernays (see ‘The Century of Self’, Adam Curtis, BBC/Youtube) would just be loving it. Yep, there is a lot of money to be had by paid-up players in the game. The play-book of a double-edged opportunity is very alluring. It’s become a something of a ‘standard’ in the ultra-capitalist world. Going back in time with bad ‘Ideas’, the experiences of Barry Marshall (Helicobacter pylori) should be a dire warning to all as to how this is all getting played out.
Shaun Clark
Re – Barry Marshall & Helicobacter pylori. My stomach ulcer developed after long term use of aspirin. Stopped using it and ulcer free since. Coincidence ? Possibly !
People keep talking about H. pylori but, based on what I have read, majority of H. pylori carriers are asymptomatic and in them carrying that bacteria has a protective effect against, if I remember correctly, allergies and some respiratory diseases.
You are missing the point. BigPharma went after Barry Marshall like rabid dogs in trying to debunk and discredit him and his work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall up against them peddling their useless peptic ulcer drugs. The vitriol was much like Dr K gets today over his statins stance. The BBC actually made a documentary about it https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/5584399b5e4a4222aafb7524cc41e37a Barry Marshall’s discovery was seminal in its day, and led him and his co-discoverer (Robin Warren) to being awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine. BigPharma and mainstream medicine denial led to shocking and quite unnecessary gastric surgeries. It was, as otherwise, a double-edged gravy train for BigPharma and surgeons/hospitals, and truly serves as the miners canary in understanding how BigPharma goes about its (often) nefarious business. Barry M. and Robin W. were the Edward Jenner/Jon Snow of their day. If that sounds a bit gushing its meant to be.
That looks libellous. You’re lowering Marshall and Warren to the level of a third rate country surgeon with no qualifications who plucked a localised myth of cowpox being a preventative for smallpox (a myth clearly demolished by the people who died of smallpox after being inoculated by him with cowpox) and converted it into a gravy train of £’0,000s of government funds?
The method by which he gained admission to the RS is indicative of his modus operandi for inoculation. Cuckoo.
Hilarious.
So, a couple of weeks ago the WHO comes out and says PCR cycles of 40 are not accurate and that cycles shouldn’t exceed 30.
Fast forward to today and we are seeing a substantial drop in cases and hospitalizations in the USA. WOW!!!!! how did that happen?
COVID hospitalizations are based on COVID tests. The total number of hospitalizations hasn’t changed, just the number of COVID hospitalizations.
Colour me shocked at the miraculous turn of events. I guess the vaccines and lockdowns must be working. We must have MOOOOR.
How can you compare apples to apples when they change an apple mid count? Add another variable Doc……
Orange man gone.
Vaccines arriving.
So the “crisis” can be packed up and put in the loft.
Prudence Kitten: Except The Anointed won’t let that happen. They’re already moving the goal posts, inventing strings of ad hoc hypotheses. Refusal to comply is our only option.
How is it that people are willing to swallow so many extremely premature deaths, business failures, home foreclosures, divorces, high unemployment, etc. from lockdowns in order to reduce the deaths of mostly mentally incompetent people half of whom will likely pass away before the end of the year?
theasdgamer, I think they are not doing that at all. They are like frightened rabbits, scared for their own skins and pretending to be protecting others, and are doing whatever they are told. They have virtue slogans to support their non thinking actions. “Oooh, you’re infecting me, you aren’t wearing a mask, you are killing people. You’ve left your home you murderer, you have blood on your digital recording studio, oops I mean hands.”
Would you like a vaccine? They’re safe you know…………. http://www.vernoncoleman.com/vaccineskilling7.htm
I feel like we are not seeing our fellow human beings as even human beings anymore. We become Just an anonymous mask wearing skin bag of virus moving around ready to murder someone. This can’t be good for the future of humanity let alone how we treat others.
Janet, I think this is all by design perpetrated by the mentally ill psychopaths like Ferguson and those who sit on SAGE, SPI-B and MINDSPACE. Indeed it is in their documents that they are increasing the level of fear in the population to bring about behavioural change.
As Tom Naughton pointed out:
1) The Anointed identify a problem in society
2) To fix the problem the Anointed propose a grand plan.
3) The Anointed dismiss all evidence the theory behind the Grand Plan is wrong.
4) The Anointed assume that no good, intelligent person could possibly oppose the Grand Plan.
5) If possible, the Anointed will impose their Grand Plan on others (for their own good).
6) The anointed will never, ever, ever admit that the Grand Plan was a bad idea.
If the plan fails:
1) The plan was good, but people didn’t follow it correctly – because they’re stupid.
2) The plan was good but was undermined by people – because they are evil.
3) The plan didn’t go far enough. We need to do the same thin again ONLY BIGGER!!
It has worked to a large extent, as witnessed by almost everybody doing totally pointless things such as wearing face nappies, swerving away from people who might get too close, coming out with meaningless statements such as “well we’ve got to be / I’m being careful”, queuing up at supermarket entrances to “sanitise” their trolley handles, gingerly handling £notes by one finger and thumb in case they catch the lurgy.
I have been affected since the last supermarket visit as I had a row because I wasn’t standing on a blue circle in Tesco. I avoid going there now. I have heard similar stories from thinking friends. The zombies just do what they are told.
The end result of all this compliance is that those who complied are helping to build the prison in which their children and grandchildren will live, but they are so stupid they cannot see it.
I have an at risk transitioning male grandchild and this isolation is a real worry. He told his family right at the beginning of lockdowns in NY. No chance to make new friends of peers. No meet up or support groups in person. How do you make friends wearing a mask? 14 yo. First year of high school. On meds. Scary. Curious? Don’t you feel if you avoid tesco now “they have won”? Of course the stress of all this is frankly more dangerous. I avoided the fear by turning everything off in April and finding my own info. But my friends are still hiding. And still plan to after vaccination for a long while. They look at me like I have sprouted another head if I try to share some conflicting truth. I think I had it two weeks ago. Slight fever one evening. Cold symptoms. Could not smell or taste for about a week. I’m 72. But pumped up my immune system even more right away last spring. I take no meds. Spent much of summer and fall outside hiking and painting. Frankly was one of my best summers. By not watching scare tactics of MSM I had no anxiety. My worries are the consequences of these loss of freedoms and lockdowns. Not only to my family but society.
AhNotepad, “The end result of all this compliance is that those who complied are helping to build the prison in which their children and grandchildren will live…”: I think you have hit the nail on the head.
“… but they are so stupid they cannot see it”. I’m not so sure about that part. Is being brainwashed (which seems to me to be what is happening, on a monumental scale) the same thing as stupidity?
(I also think there are those who, while believing that the corona response is appalling and ridiculous, believe that it will pave the way to creating a better society in the future.)
Aileen, it is possible to be intelligent and to be brainwashed. The effect is not dependant on intelligence, but the inability to think independently. They believe the narrative, they can possibly see the way things are going yet continue on the path. That comes down to stupidity IMO.
My wife thinks no government is likely to have done better given the situation, it is more he case that in the UK no government could have done neither worse nor better. They are all so stupid they would all have done the same.
So far they have got 10 million primed for a quick exit.
Buy shares in undertakers………..
So all the physicians who should know better are also frightened rabbits (not afraid of covid, but of the repercussion that come from speaking out against bad public health policy)?
Simon Dolan is encouraging small business owners to join a campaign to get the government to write off their emergency lockdown business loans. If the government doesn’t do this will it be because they want some small businesses to fail or they want to take them over or have more state control over them?
This is interesting:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business-xi-jinping-communist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei
14 Residents died in care home after vaccine
Malcolm I once respected you & this blog. I don’t any longer. You are suppressing the debate to favor the Covidiots. At leat 5 of my comments on the Covid situation in Australia have disappeared. That makes you at least partially responsible for the deaths & the infections happening from Covid in the UK.
And to be frank you are abetting the spread of a major infectious disease.
Bill, I continue to inform you that I have never suppressed, or removed any comments that you have made, and you continue to disbelieve me. Maybe I have missed your comments. There is only one person who I am currently censoring, and that is Baz in Kent (although he tries to comment using other names – and may have succeeded). The reason for this is that he states he is currently reporting me to the GMC in order to try and get me struck of the medical register. He also states that he is making accusations against me which he demands I respond to. Once you admit you are not debating, simply accusing, then goodbye.
As for the GMC threat- this worries my not. Many people have reported me to the GMC over my blog. The GMC write to me from time to time to inform that it has happened. At present, and this may change, they still allow freedom of expression for doctors. So long as I do not insult other doctors, by name, give direct medical advice to people, on line, or bring the profession into disrepute they do not, currently, take any action. However, I am not keen on people threatening me.
Anyway, you can freely attack my views, in fact I welcome this. You can attack me and call me an idiot – I am less keen on this as a form of debate, but it has absolutely no effect on me, whatsoever. However, do not tell me that I censoring debate, or censoring your posts, without having absolutely clear cut evidence that this is actually happening – and that I am doing it.
Bill, have you checked your comments recently? When you post a comment, it shows up provisionally (pending moderation). The next comment you post shows up likewise – but the second last one disappears until approved. Leave a day after posting before you are sure a comment hasn’t appeared.
Perhaps Billinoz is just ‘lost in oz’! Oops, too much sour-casm. 😉
You have seven posts here, proclaiming how well we’ve done, but refuse to debate with people who reply to you refuting your assertions. Rather than attacking Malcolm and accusing him of being responsible for deaths in the UK (!!), why not consider and discuss alternative positions? That’s what the comments section is for. My take on the ANZ “success” is that it will prove doubly disastrous when we eventually get the virus here, as we have not allowed any immunity to develop against the initial strains, so when we do get hit it will be by all the mutations at the same time. We have no exit strategy. Bolsonaro is right – we have to learn to live with this thing, and the sooner we start, the sooner it will be over.
Bill,
Since you are commenting on a blog about the question as to whether lockdowns have worked, wouldn’t it make more sense to actually address yourself to what Malcolm wrote?
Malcolm used to be accused for being responsible for the deaths of people (like me) who gave up their statins because of the side effects – though curiously I am still alive 8 years later. Every doctor who questions current medical practice can be accused of being ‘partially responsible for deaths’, but doctors are probably the people with most experience to bring to such questions – far more that those who tinker with computer models in ivory towers. We shut them out of the debate at our peril.
Statins… a good mate of mine works for Big Pharma… they sell Statins… he is very obese, does no exercise so not at all healthy — and he was on these things…
He was telling me years ago that I should also take them … I said but I am in excellent health — I don’t have any problems — he said ya but that doesn’t matter – these will make you EVEN HEALTHIER!!!!
Of course a few years later the list of side-effects emerged… I never mentioned that to him because you know how it is when you pull an ‘I told you so’ — they always say they never said that.
7 years here. And much better,
Bill. There are a few healthcare professionals and commentators who, from the start of this mess, have sought debate and offered alternative ideas to the extraordinary, panicked response we are currently saddled with. Dr K is one such and to suggest he is repressing anything is wrong. You seem to have made some accustations based not on your disagreement with the body of the original post but because your posts have gone astray.
This is not the first time he’s put his neck on the block and there are many that thank him for the opportunuty to properly debate the whole saga.
One thing that you touch on I sort of agree with. That is the volume of noise coming from so-called covidiots. I look at different sites (Lockdown Sceptics, Ivor Cummins for example) to see what people are saying. I get the feeling that people are getting more angry, and the longer we fail to find a solution the more people’s frustration will build. Perhaps you saw the anti-lockdown demonstrations in Holland? I fear they will not be the last.
Bill, on the day that Perth W.A. has gone into lockdown your views are important on one of the few platforms that actually allows free debate. I hope you repost your thoughts so the rest of us can use them as part of making our own minds up.
Oh we will miss you so!
Before you leave us, click Deaths per 100,000…. do you see Sweden (no lockdowns, no masks) in the top 20? https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
I hear the weather is pleasant in DelusiSTAN this time of year….
whinging Pom turned on its head
If Australia had a land border with some hypothetical country called Aboriginia and aborigines were attempting to cross it and bring diseases with them, you might understand the problem that other nations have with your quarantine solution. Impractical most places.
England has a land border–the Channel Tunnel. Most nations are in a similar situation with land borders.
If you believe the dodgy CDC statistics, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
Thank you Malcolm – this is a hard but necessary read. I remember early on people talking about the ‘reckless experiment’ that was going on in Sweden. Sweden was not the country indulging in experimentation, they were following the WHO pandemic guidelines. Countries adopting lockdown were the reckless experimenters, and the sheer irrationality of the ‘idea’ persists as people continue to come to this blog and complain that you haven’t ‘proved’ that lockdowns don’t work. What is starting to trouble me deeply now is the brainwashing of the population into adopting behaviour that is inimical to health, behaviour which may well persist long after the crisis is over, and perhaps completely subconsciously. For me it is summed up in this poster ‘Don’t help the virus spread. Covid-19 thrives on human contact.’ My first thought? What else thrives on human contact? Your immune system! I remember very vividly this video from early on in the covid crisis in which Dr Erickson explains how contact trains your immune system – it is at 18 mins on this video: http://off-guardian.org/2020/04/29/watch-dr-erickson-covid19-briefing-censored-by-youtube. If someone had said a year ago that they stay indoors as much as possible, wear a mask at all times outside the house, use hand sanitiser throughout the day, wear gloves, avoid hugging friends and members of their extended family, they might rightly have been thought of as being mildly mentally ill. Now people who behave like this are praised for their virtue and ‘common sense’.
The Great Reset? It’s just a too-big-to-fail scam writ large. When asked about man’s effect on his environment Kurt Vonnegut Jr said that humankind had trashed the joint, and I have got to say that I, for one, strongly agree with the sentiment. As Karl Mark’s proclaimed capitalism is an imperfect system as its governing mechanism is failure (or something like that), and so the trick in life has been to stay clear of failure. However, with the lockdown-virus there is now the perfect opportunity to trash the old system right across the board. All this will do is offer a reset for the (financial) system (whatever it will be), and those corporations who can play the new game or, have serendipitously found themselves fitting in with the new model. Your ticket into this brave new world is a vaccine every year.
re ‘covid deaths’ a Vicar complaining about cause of death being wrongly ascribed to Covid 19 https://twitter.com/karma44921039/status/1355492747331960834?s=04&fbclid=IwAR2v-rwvMpCU2ecQQvNpyMNFGGvmetBrqvIceNn_QuJLFbPj-TmG95g2PZk
Thank you. Another great article.
I cannot disagree with any of this.
The world has truly gone mad.
This era will rank with other hysterias of history.
Future historians will puzzle for ever over just what were we thinking and why were we doing it.
Stopping humans being human is just inhuman.
Recent psychopathy in Ireland from the Zero Covid Island bizarro fringe
– so took some time to address the New Zealand Question (they bang on about copying NZ – I despair at the madness…
Dr. Kendrick:
One of the comment writers (far above..) asked “why don’t lockdowns work?” Could you please give that some thought and suggest an answer?
Here’s my, non-medical, guess:
For the quarantine idea to work the disease has to meet at least the following conditions:
1 – a small number of infected people;
2 – a short incubation period;
3 – obvious symptomology (unambigious, highly credible, test);
4 – high mortality rate; and,
5 – known method of transmission (appropriate sanitation procedures known).
The covid19 flu meets none of those conditions, so lockdowns don’t work..
—
As explanations go, this one doesn’t seem adequate or logical does it?
It’s really not that complex !
If lockdowns work, why is the UK, apparently, so much worse than any of the countries that haven’t locked down ?
Don’t make the mistake of confusing science and politics.
This year for me has been about trying to articulate my deep sense of how wrong lockdowns are – for me it is a mounting progression of ‘wrongness’ and missed opportunities to stop the madness – let me explain:
1. The cost of lockdowns cannot be justified even if they worked. Dr Kendrick was one of the very first to articulate this here on this site – it is a must-read for all. Even on the most generous projection of lives saved https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/03/29/a-health-economic-perspective-on-covid-19, and using government figures of the costs, he shows the disparity between normal NHS practice of cost-benefit analysis and spots the beginnings of ‘covid’-world, where no amount is too much to prevent one covid death.
2. Lockdowns don’t work anyway. And actually, the comments on here from Vallance confirm my suspicion that lockdown really was just for show, and timed perfectly to coincide with the downturn in cases. Which makes sense if we were just copying China – we did the same with the Nightingale hospitals, a big fanfare for a building that was barely ever used. The big-ticket restrictions and closures – schools, mass public events, even pubs and restaurants, had marginal effects, whilst essential work, shopping, and isolation in households continued as it would have to. Add the final blow, convincing people going outdoors was ‘dangerous’ and you have a good recipe to allow the spread to continue virtually unhindered.
3. Lockdowns did not save any lives – and digging into SAGE minutes pre-March shows they were never intended to.
4. Lockdowns kill people through other means – well documented already.
5. Lockdowns may well have worsened covid deaths. The theory here being that the aim should be to reach herd immunity as quickly as possible with the smallest amount of deaths. Knowing that younger people suffer almost no harm, allowing them to mix and develop herd immunity protects the more vulnerable. Lockdowns did the opposite, focussing the spread on care homes and hospitals and lengthening the agony for those who had to shield.
6. Lockdowns have likely impaired the population’s immunity through a variety of factors – lockdown sceptics have an interesting article on it http://www.lockdownsceptics.org/how-lockdowns-damage-our-immunity. Stress, lack of exercise, conflict, isolation, anxiety, uncertainty, all of these things direct impair your immune system. To its shame, the government has consistency downplayed the notion that you can improve your immune system without drugs or vaccines.
So that was my lockdown journey of growing horror at what this government has done, but on the way I have discovered myriad dissenting voices. Every single point above has been made by qualified people with way more knowledge than me and can easily be found via the huge variety of ‘lockdown sceptic’ sources.
Here’s a series of blogs on The Virus that covers quite a wide range.
Does the approach seem even handed to you?
Does it line up with your own approach to Public “Information” about this mess?
https://goingviralthepod.libsyn.com/
A tangential connection to death certificates.
During my time in NHS finance I had occasion to observe the issue of death certificates in a large hospital.
Details were sent to the general office for the clerks to fill in the certificates.
They would then wait for a junior doctor from the appropriate department to come along at lunchtime to sign them. He would be paid on the number he signed in his following month’s salary. It was one of the perqs.
One thing that I noted was the swift nature of the verification: They would rush into the office, be given the certificates and documentation, sign hurriedly and be off.
This rather surprised me. If I am given a form to sign, I check the backing documentation.
The opportunities to distort information if there is a perceived advantage are rife.
JDPatten: EcoHealth Alliance is essentially a front group for the Pentagon and other U.S. Government agencies, not at all disinterested or objective, but a promoter of government policy.
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/peter-daszaks-ecohealth-alliance-has-hidden-almost-40-million-in-pentagon-funding/
The future being decided for us:
https://www.weforum.org/events/annual-meeting-of-the-global-future-councils-2017
There is masses on this World Economic Forum website if you follow the various links, although it has some new world language! Perhaps it’s time to get ourselves properly informed as to what is going on. I feel quite ignorant but I want to know for the sake of the children.
Tish: This is what they want, but they won’t get away with it.
Highly technical, but absolutely worth a read:
Dr Malcolm Kendrick, I just want to add my voice of support and respect
for the work you do with this blog! I am sure as a practising physician it
is difficult to ‘air’ your views, but I for one am extremely grateful that you
do!
It is obvious from the amount of varied comments that are posted to this
blog, that the whole CV19 situation is a massive minefield of confusion,
angst and opinions, and trying to get to the truth is probably impossible!
Is this deliberate, WHO Knows?
Again, Thanks for your insights!
BV: Not impossible, and not deliberate. Humans are simply imperfect, and complex issues require time, thought, and study. Great gobs of money to be made by fear and confusion add to the mix. But we will eventually figure it out. In my view, the damage done by government response will be incalculable, especially in regard to an entire generation of children traumatized into fearing other humans. None of the perpetrators will go to jail, though. The very wealthy are immune form consequences, although in the U.S., some of the little people have figured out how to separate the Wall Street plutocrats from some of their ill-gotten gains, by beating them at their own game. A bit of good news for a change!
Hey Gary, thanks for your reply! I cannot disagree with your comments,
and yes, the perps will not face justice! Shame on the justice system!
It is good to hear about little pockets of good news, where these will all
lead to at the moment is unknown, we can only hope for the appliance
of common sense to prevail?
From another branch of science, a successful – for now – professional asking the ‘wrong’ questions is feeling the chill of disapproval from his colleagues, and his students feel they are being tainted by association. I’ve no knowledge of physics beyond what I can glean from Jim Al-Khalili and his ilk, so I’ve no idea whether Professor Avi Loeb, Chair of Harvard’s Astronomy Dept. is a fruitcake, or not.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jan/31/professor-avi-loeb-it-would-be-arrogant-to-think-were-alone-in-the-universe-
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, “Jim Al-Khalili and his ilk,” have been shown by this crisis to be little more than government stooges.
Have to agree, sadly.
In relation to the global coronavirus vaccine juggernaut, today Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced all Australians have “the opportunity to be vaccinated by October of this year, commencing in a few weeks’ time”.
It’s alarming the still experimental coronavirus vaccine products are being rushed out so quickly…
Will Australians be able to give their ‘informed consent’ to this vaccine intervention, or will they be coerced into having coronavirus vaccination, as Scott Morrison and Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth have intimated previously? For example with the ‘no jab, no play’ framework used to compel the vaccination of children in Australia?
Much remains unknown about the coronavirus vaccine products, including whether they might facilitate the evolution of more virulent variants.
Australians must be properly informed and consulted on this matter, but instead we’re facing paternalistic governments that are failing to be accountable under cover of Federal and State emergency laws.
There is much to investigate in regards to the panic to vaccinate the entire global population against a virus that currently isn’t a serious threat to most people, despite the fear-mongering media headlines.
What happens now, with a growing number of fast-tracked experimental coronavirus vaccine products being pressed among the global community?
How much thought has gone into this unprecedented global coronavirus vaccination campaign, and the possible consequences?
I am now taking this matter directly to the TGA, the Australian regulator of vaccine products.
FYI, see my email to Adjunct Professor John Skerritt asking the TGA to consider if Covid-19 vaccines could facilitate the evolution of more virulent variants: https://vaccinationispolitical.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/tga-submission-could-covid-19-vaccines-facilitate-the-evolution-of-more-virulent-variants.pdf
Perhaps no need for everyone to get the vax…. just enough to ensure the new more dangerous variants spread across the world rapidly and kill everyone.
I am reminded of what happens when antibiotics are misused.
Eddy, indeed. If vaccines were given to Gates, Newsom, Cuomo, Fauci, Ferguson, Whitty, Murcock, Johnson, Hancock, all at the WHO, WEF, SAGE, and a few others, there would be no need for the whole population to have it.
Thank you, as a lay person, your “still small voice” of reason has kept me believing that there Are people within your profession who actually want people to know the Truth of matters, and not just the hysteria of a few loud voiced Henny Pennys. As a victim of vaguely tested plastic hernia mesh, I for one will not be offering myself up as a vaccine guinea pig.
Is someone taking my name in vain? 🙂
Excellent article. This paper similarly concludes: “The current literature directly evaluating the impact of COVID-19 policies largely fails to meet key design criteria for useful inference.” https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.21.21250243v2
Hi Dr. Kendrick,
I read your recent article on lockdowns.
A couple of months ago I realized that the primary reason that the world’s (mostly leftist) media and the commentators are all seemingly blindly following the lockdown policy and ignoring the science, ignoring the comparisons like you make in the article – and that were actually available in mid 2020 – and they continue with the fiction that the PCR tests are indications of a pandemic – and on and on it goes – is simply this:
LOCKDOWNS WERE NEVER ABOUT PUBLIC HEALTH IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Lockdowns were all about politics and profits.
The ugly and inconvenient truth is that the left has seized control of the WHO, and Bill Gates, the media that he and the CCP has corrupted have all been and still are singing the Bill Gates agenda of ‘scary virus, must lockdown and wait for a vaccine’ – and all the corrupt public health officials – that Gates foundation has singlehandedly corrupted, along with their Democrat buddies, and the supporters of the Democrats – Big Tech that has been censoring every voice that has disagreed with the WHO and the Gates Agenda – along with the rest of the China classes who have all been afraid of being done out of business by Trumps agenda to Make America Great Again (MAGA) and push back against China – which hurts all the billionaires who are doing business with China – in particular read the World Economic Forum group – who are busy trying to plan their Great Reset under the cover of what is essentially a fake crisis – along with their corrupt political buddies…….they moved heaven, earth, and hell including financing the Antifa and BLM groups to get rid of Donald Trump, and now they are busy trying to continue to impose authoritarianism on the worlds liberal democracies.
Are you aware of all the anti-lockdown/Covid19 protests going on in Europe this last week?
According to the BBC – nothing happening there!!!! (Ruptly gives some good coverage on YouTube – a Russian funded site!!!!!!)
The only mass media organization in the world that has not been corrupted by China is Rupert Murdochs Fox News and Sky News Australia – (not sure about UK rarely watch it) – these 2 organizations, like you, have questioned every piece of stupidity along the way.
Why is that?
Because Murdoch doesn’t have a China business.
But almost all the rest do – e.g. Bloomberg – 30% of his profits are in China. Most of the big news networks in the USA either have businesses inside China or their owners -e.g. Blackrock does.
So the CCP has them by the balls – or they are simply playing the CCP’s game.
I could go on and on.
But I think you are getting the picture.
The biggest questions that remain are not – ‘Do lockdowns work’ – we know they don’t.
The real questions is WHY ARE THE MASS MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS IGNORNING THE TRUTH AND CONTINUING TO TRY AND CREATE FEAR AND ALARMISM AND CONTINUING TO QUOTE AND USE ‘EXPERTS’ THAT HAVE BEEN DISCREDITED – IN FACT THE MSM WILL NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE PEOPLE THEY QUOTE ARE CHARLATANS. WHY?’
Hope this gives you some ideas for more articles.
Best regards
Ivan M. Paton
________________________________
Ivan Paton: Also, Forbes Magazine, one of the most prominent business mags in the U.S. is now (since 2013) owned (95%) by a PRC media company. They have long attacked anyone questioning vaccine safety, and now they’re going after Dr. Mercola. The Republican Party is terrible, too, but the Democrats are now fully controlled by the oligarchs.
This quote by Herbert Marcuse might shed some light on your question, since his Hegelianism has run rampant through the IYI class (see Tom Naughton video above for reference) for years now. He is still a shining light for BLM, Antifa, and for lots of people in government, academia and the news media.
“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or that oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.”
-“Repressive Tolerance, by Herbert Marcuse (1965)”. Marcuse.org. Retrieved 2013-09-06.
Sorry for the convoluted syntax, but that’s the way Hegel and his followers, like this guy, liked to talk. How do you like the idea of “repressive tolerance?” Needless to say, this strategy is pursued far beyond such primitive concepts such as “Left” or “Right”.
Thank you for your independent thinking. I’ve found this whole covid stuff very weird. My family are from India a country with 20x the population of the UK, full of what would be classed high risk bames in the UK (1.2 BN indians), no NHS , flakey mask wearing and social distancing , multigen households, a population density that is insane in cities , mass poverty, poor sanitation, lots of testing, cold winters especially in the north…and yesterday for 1.2bn folks there were about 127 deaths . If you want proof of the laxity of the Indians just go on YouTube and watch ‘golden temple live today’…observe the mask less ‘dangerous’ hoards in a state that itself has half the population of the UK (Panjab)…and 8 deaths yesterday. The big difference I can see is that the ‘derided’ populist leader is actually popular with the elites (they want to keep him), his political opponents have little power and therefore the whole system is incentivsed to lower numbers (in the UK the incentives for many are to increase numbers by any means). For instance the media when reporting covid includes ‘cases’, deaths and importantly the numbers of people who have ‘recovered’ (positive test). All in very weird
You could also question how accurate Indian reporting is. I spent about a year working and traveling in rural India. In India people drop like flies from all kinds of things with barely anyone keeping track. Especially when it’s poor Indians.
Greedy UK! Why is the UK going over the top all the time? Shameful! Look at the graph here and bear in mind the World Economic Forum’s statement ‘As the WHO has warned, vaccine nationalism – or a hoarding and “me-first” approach to vaccine deployment – risks leaving “the world’s poorest and most vulnerable at risk.”’
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/what-is-a-vaccine-passport-and-will-you-need-one-the-next-time-you-travel
Well my 5 doses will be going spare anyway.
Thanks to TFS (January 29, 2021 at 1:02 pm) for the link to Dr Merritt’s document. Useful to know about more of the history of anti-virals.
For lockdowns, though, it should be pretty obvious that if you stop every human contact of people outside their “bubble”, then after the incubation period of around 5 days or so anyone who has nobody in their bubble who has become sick cannot become ill because no-one in their bubble is infectious. Similarly, if someone in your bubble has become ill and you cease contact with them, and 5 days later you haven’t got any symptoms, then you’ve dodged that bullet. Any illness can only spread within a bubble, and stops at the boundaries of that bubble. The extension to 10 or 14 days of being clear of infection may be needed given that the quoted 5 days is only an average incubation period. You come out of lockdown when there has been no infection in your bubble for the required time (so some people are locked down for 14 days, but it could be longer for people where there has been an infection in their bubble).
Lockdowns, like quarantines, have to work if they are correctly implemented.
With such a lockdown, you wouldn’t see just a reduction in reproduction number, but instead it would drop down to zero within around a week.
However, that absolute lockdown is not what is being done. Instead, a few things are no longer allowed, but people still go to work, people go to the shops, delivery drivers deliver stuff for the people who don’t want to go to the shops, and all the “essential” people are still going to work. What people are calling lockdowns are instead just reduced mobility, not a total prohibition of movement.
It wouldn’t be easy to implement a true lockdown. On the other hand, if you gave people enough time to buy in enough stuff to last a couple of weeks, and then stopped all except emergency traffic, you could probably get close enough. You’d need to contact-trace everyone who actually had symptoms during that lockdown, and of course after it was over (since even this draconian lockdown isn’t perfect). Care-home staff would need to stay in the care home (away from family) for the lockdown period, as would all other carers.
As far as I can tell, there’s little infection when shopping in a supermarket. Otherwise, the checkout-workers would be dropping like flies, and they aren’t. On the other hand, offices and other places with closed-cycle air systems (or with minimal fresh air added) are likely to be great for passing on infections (see sick-building syndrome). Hospitals are great places for catching what’s going around, too, because the air gets circulated without much fresh air being added, and sick people go there. It’s actually not difficult to add UV-C disinfection of the air in the filtration chambers to kill any virus before sending the air out again.
Though a full lockdown really must work, it is obvious that the partial lockdowns as implemented (and called lockdowns) do not – they reduce the reproduction number to just below 1 but not down to zero. For a lot of people living pay-cheque to pay-cheque, for a full lockdown they would need some help up-front to prepare for a couple of weeks of non-contact. Old people may need extra arrangements. Other places where a lot of people live together (prisons, monasteries, etc.) may need extra thought, too. Still, the full lockdown that would work, with red crosses on doors and all, would not be politically acceptable.
Still, given the long-term cost of any sort of lockdown, and the obvious failure to actually stop the disease propagating at the severity of lockdown that is politically acceptable, I’d suggest it would be far better to give antivirals (HCQ, IVM, or similar) to people when they get symptoms or when they have contacted someone with symptoms, vitamin D to everyone, and otherwise to get on with life as normal. The lockdowns as-implemented are causing a longer-lasting damage than the illness would do if we treated those symptomatic people early with antivirals.
Simon, all you have written about the effect of lockdowns is based on a belief in the germ theory of transmission. Look at Bechamp’s work, which Pasteur reputedly accepted shottly before dying.
Stolen from Lockdown Sceptics newsletter:
Rather than sitting out the lockdown and school closures in England we decided to spend our time in Cape Town. Currently, the only South African restrictions are a ban on the sale of alcohol (the illicit trade is very profitable for ANC cronies), closed beaches (the Government was told the virus comes in waves), closed state schools (the teachers’ union is the single most important voting bloc and like many in the UK, the SA teachers are partial to being paid for no work) and a 9pm curfew.
The great thing about Africa is everyone knows the Government is incompetent and corrupt. For this reason, together with the fact that hunger trumps corona fear, the South African lockdown quickly broke down and the first wave subsided regardless. Virus cycles run their course. The same thing is happening now. Despite a supposedly more infectious variant and no meaningful restrictions, South African cases are down from 321 per million on January 9th to 98. today The South African Government’s attempts to blame lockdown-related hardships on the virus ring hollow; people do not believe the statements of “the virus caused this”. They know it’s the Government preventing them from earning a living and feeding their children. Viruses don’t write laws.
The actions of politicians aim to increase and consolidate their power and in Africa the citizens know this. The usual tool is fear, delivered through the public broadcaster. I was surprised how the UK Government used public funds to constantly broadcast a message of fear. At least in Africa, the opposition parties say no and push back against power grabs. Amazingly in the UK, rather than push back, the opposition has egged the incumbent on.
Given South Africa’s limited social security net and inability to print money, the lockdown trade-offs become apparent very quickly. When faced with economic collapse, starvation and riots, the Government was forced to end the lockdown. Developed markets can hide the lockdown costs for longer, but that does not mean they don’t exist, obviously. Nations will be burdened with the fallout for decades.
Once governments have tasted absolute power and begun spending without limit, it is difficult to reverse course. In developing nations unfettered spending quickly becomes hyperinflation; it will be interesting to see how it ends in the UK.
The biggest difference between South Africa and the UK seems to be in the UK there is no opposition to the government, it is a one party police state, as a growing number will testify.
This is also a big difference: Given South Africa’s limited social security net and inability to print money, the lockdown trade-offs become apparent very quickly. When faced with economic collapse, starvation and riots, the Government was forced to end the lockdown.
Compliance was bought by governments in the UK, Australia etc. And many were happy to be paid to sit at home, enjoying their ‘war against the virus’. It seems there are plenty of people happy to be ‘looked after’ by the government. Selling their freedom for a few pieces of silver.
And so much for the ‘benevolence’ of ‘our elected representatives’, who have no compunction in setting the police on people who challenge the status quo.
Good bye liberal democracy…
Here in South Africa we’re still pretty locked down. Day 316, Level 3B modified, or some such. It was only a couple of weeks ago they called out the army to keep the beaches clear. We can go to the beach and buy alcohol now, but it’s a criminal offense not to wear a mask, and the hospitality industry is on its knees.
This is a great documentary with a very novel approach, hot off the presses in January 2021.
It follows Sweden and Covid…’the Lagom way’… https://youtu.be/Ri_yU_gHLc
What a contrast with the UK.
And then…Tegnell reneged under pressure from the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and King Carl XVI Gustaf.
Why did Tegnell and Sweden fold? Was it all about facilitating the vaccine? Supporting the emerging global coronavirus vaccine market…worth billions?
AstraZeneca is a British-Swedishmultinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company after all…
Why did Tegnell and Sweden fold…?
Hello everyone!
An off-topic here.
I bring you a few questions. I want to know how does the COVID disease in its grave phase (the phase that most people never get to develop, as far as I know) differ from the common cold grave phase and the flu grave phase.
Over the interminably long months of this public health debacle, I have read doctors saying things like “We’ve never seen a disease like this ever before!” and also the opposite “There is nothing about this disease that we have not seen before.” Who is correct? Is there a third way?
Is there really something specific and characteristic about this disease?
Thanks
I think the sudden drop in oxygen saturation, whilst the patient feels ‘well’ is unusual. Otherwise, there is nothing Covid19 does, than you do not see with severe cases of influenzas – including long-influenza. The pathophysiology is very much the same.
Try this idea as being unique to this virus:
A cascade of platelets due to endothelial injury by the virus results in a huge release of serotonin. Clearance of serotonin occurs largely in the lungs, but COVID lungs have injured alveolus vasculature requiring shunts to open, spilling all that serotonin into the system at large – serotonin toxicity, or serotonin “syndrome” results, along with associated cytokine response. No “cold” or “flu” does this.
The hoax media are touting the dropping case numbers of covid in the US. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the CDC advising to not test asymptomatic people. /sarcasm
Orange man gone.
You understand the game, but I wonder if perhaps a lot of other readers consider our position a “conspiracy theory.”
My response, of course, is to laugh in their faces.
The idiocy is in taking the lefty narrative seriously, which a lot of right wing pundits do. smh
Typo alert… you have “Step six” written twice. But excellent article! (Feel free not to publish or delete this comment when you’ve done the correction…)
I probably won’t be taking a COVID-19 vaccine, having decided that high serum vitamin D appears to greatly help the immune system. But those who want one might well like to watch this talk by a doctor on the J&J vaccine.
It is single dose, unlike most of them, and seems to do what people want a vaccine to do … perhaps more than the other products offer
Dr No has scanned the comments and doesn’t think this has been mentioned before; apologies if it has.
One other way of comparing countries with and without hard lockdowns, which is a worthwhile exercise, given it is pretty much the only data we have, that gets round some of the inter-country comparison problems is to look at the shape of the epidemic curve. Not the amplitude (how high it goes) but when it goes up (and the rate of increase), and when it goes down (and the rate of decrease. If we stick with the null hypothesis that lockdowns make no difference, then the curves should be similar in countries that lockdown hard, and countries that don’t.
Dr No never did a full post on this (the chart isn’t very pretty), but he did do a tweet comparing Sweden and the UK:
The rise, peak and first part of the fall in deaths is almost identical in both countries, the only difference being Sweden’s rate of decline was more linear, but both countries reached baseline at around the same time. Although that chart only covers the spring/summer peak and fall, a current one (even messier!) shows much the same thing.
Today the UK government announced there had been a 41% drop in cases in the last 2 weeks and that we are now past the peak. Anything happen 2 weeks ago other than the WHO guidance on PCR cycle threshold changing? Is it coincidental with this guidance change that case numbers have been plummeting, and not just in the UK?
And yet we are also seeing reports that deaths in care homes have gone right up again – and all with cv positive tests. How can both things be true? Also govt seems obsessed with getting case numbers up again by doing door to door testing in some areas. No evidence that they want this to end.
And following vaccination!!!!
Seems the number of cycle threshold of PCR tests is down from 40 to 30 which results in far fewer cases being detected. I’m pretty sure that with a CT of 40 there is a much higher risk of false positives being reported. This has to be the reason for the decline.
In Ontario, (Canada) the government published a guideline on the PCR test which states that with 1% prevalence the test shows only 44% real positivity, meaning 66% of the positive test results are in fact negative.
Reduce the cycles and you remove many of these false positives
Ready for an Atomic Bomb?
The Leak Said:
– 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.
Feb 02, 2021
The dawning of COVID-21: As pandemic gets under control, new mutations pose host of new concerns
Scientists warn aggressive efforts are needed to slow the spread of COVID variants coming in from other places — or new mutations emerging from here
https://nationalpost.com/health/the-dawning-of-covid-21-as-pandemic-gets-under-control-new-mutations-pose-host-of-new-concerns
Imho, high death rates in some countries are due to the flawed treatment protocols and suspension of medical help. Having experienced a complete block to the access of medical services in the UK when I had a suspected covid, I can tell you, you feel totally helpless and abandoned. In the UK the mantra is – self-isolate and do nothing until you can’t breathe. Then call for an ambulance, but better go to hospital yourself, because the ambulance might not come on time. That’s what they told me on the 111 line. I was coughing for 2 months from last March, sometimes with blood, but could not get an x-ray or even being seeing by a doctor for love nor money. I had Bupa insurance, who had also washed their hands off me (pandemics are excluded, you see). I searched high and low for a private firm, willing to pay whatever, but alas, all private medical services had been suspended too. I couldn’t believe it was happening in Britain in the 21st century.
In contrast, I have relatives in Russia – their advice is that the earlier you start the treatment, the better the outcome. They are warning people not to self-medicate, because every patient is different and requires a different therapy. A doctor comes to your home and in most cases, brings free prescription medicine to you. Then they closely monitor the situation with the regular check ups. They had a lockdown last march, but none for the “second wave”. It’s pretty much business as usual in Russia now.
No-one is discussing the difference in the treatment protocols, but I strongly believe this is the explanation (at least partial) we are looking for such a vast difference in the death rates between countries.
That’s interesting information Anna, about Russia. A doctor comes to the house? Sounds better to keep the sick in their own homes if they can be managed there, rather than spreading the virus in hospitals among vulnerable patients in with other ailments.
How are the doctors and nurses going in Russia though? Are they coping? Are they likely to be immune? Wonder how they go on re quarantine too? With quite often healthy people, including medical staff, being quarantined in countries such as the UK, and the ripple effects that would have in the medical system? So would be interesting to know how hospitals are coping in Russia?
It’s diabolical that promising treatments, plus vitamin D, have been suppressed in countries such as the UK and US…was this done to facilitate the emergency authorisations for the vaccines? Because everything is about the vaccines… And to deliberately hinder treatments and preventatives such as vitamin D…what would you call that?
elizabethhart: Quackery in service to greed. There is simply no other reason to suppress highly effective treatments. The result is mass murder. Those who caused it will never be held to account, as the oligarchs now hold all the reins of power, certainly in the U.S.
I quite agree re suppression of effective treatments. I think it’s criminal.
In Russia initially there were fewer cases, and they were taking all patients to specialist infectious hospitals (legacy of the USSR) straight away. It soon became unrealistic, so they introduced regular home visits by a doctor, also the medicine delivery, and if the blood oxygen levels dropped and/or other concerning symptoms developed, people were hospitalised. All patients, irrespective of the severity of the symptoms, were taken to have a CT scan done by ambulances. Plus, no-one cancelled the private care either, if you wished to go the private route.
Hospitals were certainly overwhelmed during the first wave especially, but they have reorganised, reprofiled entire hospitals to Covid only and employed the army to build new multiprofiled, fully equipped hospitals, not just stadiums with lots of beds and ventilators.
They got ready for the new wave, and despite the difficulties, managed the situation to avoid another lockdown. All restaurants, museums, theatres are open (50% capacity), and judging by my Instagram feed, people are partying and going about their usual business. Masks are worn in public places. Now 50% of the hospital beds are empty, and a vaccination program is in full swing.
As far as I know, no medical staff were forced to quarantine unless they had a proven infection.
In Finland and other Scandinavian countries vitamin D is added to dairy products so this may be a factor in the lower incidence of Covid-19. Here in the UK, the Government is providing free vitamin D to vulnerable groups https://www.gov.uk/government/news/at-risk-groups-to-receive-free-winter-supply-of-vitamin-d as from 28/11/2020 —- better late than never!
Ziverdo Kits (Zinc Acetate 50 mg, Doxycycline 100 mg & Ivermectin 12 mg) available online from India along with hydroxychloroquine.
Yes – offered to “at-risk groups” and in the measly amount of 400iu a day! Firstly it’s likely that everyone in the UK actually needs supplementation, not just because, as Hancock says, we didn’t go outside as much in the summer – and secondly, as Dr John Briffa proved to himself a few years ago, 400iu a day will do diddly squat to correct a deficiency.
There was a study done (can’t remember when) where they gave some women 400iu a day and the control group none, and it didn’t make any difference. Well, surprise, surprise…I suppose that’s the sort of study Hancock was referring to when he boldly announced last year that vitamin D isn’t useful.
I have friends who I consider to be healthy and eat properly, yet (a few years ago) when they commented about various minor health issues (flaky nails, for example) I suggested they get their D levels checked. Sure enough, they were almost zero! Same for one of my daughters who never listens to me and never goes out in the sun. And another friend with vitiligo, whose GP told her to stay out of the sun (but didn’t go into the benefits she’d be missing such as vitamin D production, nitric oxide etc.) So if I know several people with a deficiency, I imagine that it must be rife.
Isn’t the 400iu a day recommendation just to prevent rickets?
Dr Coimbra treats vitiligo, among other things, with vitamin D.
anglosvizzera – I can’t seem to reply to your post mentioning salt pipes and iodine but I wonder if you could share a link or instructions as to how to make a DIY salt pipe, please?
I replied yesterday, Elizabeth, but my comment has not appeared for some reason.
Anna,
I hope you are fully recovered by now, but I suspect you had the best treatment available in the UK right now – stay away from the hospitals!
BTW, were you taking anything to prevent COVID – like vitamin D?
Hello David, thank you for your kind wishes. I am fully recovered, but it is still unclear whether I had the “thing” or not, since no testing was available back in march last year. After weeks of coughing and getting worse I finally begged a Bupa GP (on the phone) to refer me to a hospital, so I was finally checked up on the 23.03. There were signs on all windows at the E&R not to enter the hospital with the symptoms. A maskless receptionist at a completely empty waiting room (I’d never seen it this empty – there was only one more person there except me) did not want to let me in initially, even with the GP referral. Once inside, it was business as usual, everyone quite calm, and not a mask in sight. Despite already being at the hospital with the symptoms, they wouldn’t do the test. It all seemed quite surreal. What is a sick person supposed to do, if all GPs, hospitals and private medical services are out of limits?!
When I was abroad in July I paid for a private antibody test, but alas, after 4 months there were no antibodies.
I was not taking vit.D at the time, since little was known back then, as it was all just kicking off. I do take it now however!
Anna, I’m delighted to know that you recovered from whatever it was. Do you know anyone who HAS tested positive? Because I was in a zoom meeting with five couples from the UK who all have extensive groups of friends and colleagues, and nobody knows anyone who has tested positive. One couple thought they might have had it in March, but then, they mightn’t have. Some had heard of friends of a friend getting it, but no direct knowledge. Sort of ties in with the SA AZ trial, where only 5 front line health workers could catch it rather than the 46 required, making the trial meaningless.
So who and where are all these positive cases? It’s one thing to manufacture false positives with high cT PCR tests, it’s another to not know anyone who’s got one.
Regarding knowing people who’ve “tested positive” – I live in the south west of England, where cases have been very low in comparison to the rest of the country. Surprisingly, we do know a few people who’ve “had” Covid or have tested positive.
One was early on last year, an ex work colleague of my husband who had it quite badly and was on a ventilator for weeks. He seems to be ok now, we think. Then another couple we know, both in their early 60s, had it – they said it was like mild flu (they do take vitamin D though, as I’d suggested it about a year ago, but probably not as much as we take.) I’ve just heard that my stepson’s partner “has” Covid, mild but had a bit of dyspnoea, now improving (she’s practically a vegan, but let’s not go there…)
One of my daughters who lives in Devon was sent an antibody test last year as part of the national survey, and tested positive! She can only think that she had it on returning from New York in late Feb when she developed a cold, but had anosmia for a couple of weeks afterwards, before it was mentioned as a symptom. Having attended a webinar with Dr Sarah Myhill and learning of her “two-pronged” approach to respiratory viruses (ie an iodised salt-pipe and higher-than usual vitamin C throughout the day) I told my daughter how to make a home-made salt pipe and where to get the Lugol’s iodine to go in it. She did so and within a day her sense of smell had returned, and she said her energy levels went up too. However, those of us who mixed with her must probably have been exposed to her “virus” but none of us have had any symptoms to speak of.
My nephew, an ED doctor in a major London hospital, had a cold but tested positive for Covid so did he…or didn’t he…have it? Who knows! I have friends near Bradford, and in Surrey near the new “mutant” outbreak but they don’t actually know of anyone personally who’s tested positive either. It’s all very odd.
Unfortunately I personally know at least 6 people who tested positive. Three of them described it as a heavy flu, 2 had only had loss of smell and taste and no other symptoms. Another (my cousin) has had “classical” covid symptoms with complications and ended up in hospital. However, his 3 (!) tests came back negative. The strange thing is, when he tested for antibodies after he recovered, he had plenty. Nothing with this virus makes any sense.
I know at least 15 people who got Covid. With various outcomes.
At least five or six of my relatives either tested positive or had Covid-19 like symptoms. A couple of them were very sick, although none required hospitalization.
And, a neighbor of mine died from the disease in December.
My mother lives in a nursing home with about 145 residents, and 7 of them died from the disease according to official data and confirmed by a social worker who was asked about the deaths.
What is going in Sweden?
”There is a big risk of a third wave,” said state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, “and a clear need to continue following the measures that we have in place”.
Is this what usually happens, these ‘waves’ of a virus?
And what’s the story with ‘COVID-19’?
Are we on ‘COVID-21’ now?
What are the precedents for what’s going on now? Or is it unprecedented?
Something that is unprecedented is a plan to vaccinate the entire global population with a variety of fast-tracked vaccine products. This is a huge experiment underway, without informed consent.
*’Sweden is at risk of a third wave of Covid-19′: Public Health Agency – The Local
https://www.thelocal.se/20210204/sweden-is-at-risk-of-a-third-wave-of-covid-19-public-health-agency
I understood that viruses evolve to do less damage – which lets them spread more easily. Of course if most of these deaths are of people close to death with something else, but get PCR tested, that may not help us.
It’s called old age, primarily.
I know, and why the Tories don’t explore all this I don’t know – are they still mesmerised by the word ‘Science’?
I am close to the point where the very word, ‘science’ makes me cringe.
I suspect that the Tories are as corrupt as Labor or at least don’t want the press to call them nasty names.
Waves “of a virus” do not occur. It’s the human response to the human misapprehension of what a virus is.
The virus innocent. It requires a warm body to “come alive” and proliferate to produce nasty effects.
Keep your own warm body away from Thanksgiving crowds of covert COVID sources (Cousin Jimmy, Aunt Betty, etc) and you’re fine.
Christmas. New Year. January six. Super bowl. Notice how “spikes” occur at an incubation interval following these COVID exchange get-togethers? Just wait and watch for the super bowl party spike.
Without the constant supply of proximal warm bodies, the virus has nowhere to go.
Waves of human behavior.
JD
Aside from that Cruise ship that we have now all but forgotten the following comes from
“Fact checkers” who on the same page, state that cloth masks slow the spread of covid,
“State confirms 124 COVID-19 cases tied to Sturgis Rally, more out of state
As of Sept. 8, the South Dakota Department of Health reported 124 cases among South Dakota residents who got sick after attending the rally, the Argus Leader reported. State health officials have tracked those cases through contact tracing.
The Associated Press reported that at least 290 people in 12 states have also tested positive since attending the rally.
One person has died so far from COVID-19 who attended the rally, a Minnesota man in his 60s with underlying health conditions, Minnesota Department of Health Infectious Disease Director Kris Ehresmann said at a briefing on Sept. 9.
If there had been just 88 cases connected, that would be an infection rate of 0.02%, as the claim purports. The correct figure from the South Dakota Department of Health and other states’ reports together make up an infection rate of 0.09%.”
My understanding is that the age of the attendees at these rallies might not be insignificant and they are not health obsessed.
Jerome, we need the figures for those not attending the rally as well.
AHN
Excellent point. Will confirm but it appears that those who attended the rally had a lower rate of infection than that recorded nationally. Saw that referred to in an earlier blog but the infection rates as calculated in the fact check article were certainly low 0..09%
This is completely incorrect. Viruses (and humans) don’t exist in a vacuum. Environmental influences have affected human health since the beginning of time. That includes viral infections. There’s a reason flu infections spike in the winter.
Sasha,
Can’t say if you wer addressing me but I agree with you, viruses (virii ?) were, are and will be, for good, better or worse. The point being made here is that, be it 0.02% or 0.09% that infection rate is nothing to get excited about and both of those %’s are close to zero.
But media frenzy after sturgis purported an infection of 250,000 against an attendance of 450,000 = 55% causing health care costs of $12bill – yes $12 bill.
The article in my previous comment knocks that hyperbole and the following article lists the media”s sensation extravaganza outpouring, losing the plot effectively, but concluded in their wrap up that the news sensation pieces could not be verified.
https://www.truthorfiction.com/was-the-sturgis-motorcycle-rally-a-super-spreader-event/
Previous article –
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/09/11/wsj-sturgis-covid-study-n2576017
I continue to enjoy reading your informative blogs thank you and keep up the good work
Well, well, well…BUILD BACK BETTER….and where have we heard that before?
From the World Economic Forum website:
‘The scale of the change needed to address the climate crisis requires a departure from “business as usual”. Government and business leaders have a unique opportunity – and a responsibility – to build back better as they create a more climate-resilient future.’
The website (weforum.org) is full of pros for everything. You have to go elsewhere for all the cons, and respectable websites have plenty of them.
Latest from Simon Dolan:
https://www.keepbritainfree.com/so/46NTnYhJh?languageTag=en&cid=6d91f31f-9379-4478-b1e4-1f5f645d29f6#/main
From the World Economic Forum website:
Their definition of their Stakeholder Capitalism – “a business model that sees business leaders as trustees for society.”
Businesses to be our guardians?
Kind of like “Business people” who think they can be president and run a country like their own failed businesses, surrounded by flunkies and yes men? And then burn the place down? That what you mean? We’ve had a couple of them here lately. Didn’t end well. Yes. Politicians are the same. But business idiots are a different breed of wannabe dictators. They are damn used to getting their own way and not subject to a ballot box. Until they become subject to one. If those of you are all for the fake one we just got rid of. You weren’t paying much attention. Even a clock is right twice a day. The rest. Not so much. I’m just looking for truth. It’s somewhere between here and what MSM says.
Janet,
The new one inspires less – even after 50 something years of practise.
(PS I’m outta here now before the flak starts)
I really despise people who lie about Trump. Really, you are lying about me and others of his supporters. Trump at least fought for the middle class until the covid debacle.
I think this is an accurate portrayal of Trump (and Biden… and Obama.. and Clinton… and Bush… and and and…. JFK messed up though) https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/epilogue-a-night-to-remember/
You have a right to your inaccurate opinion.
Janet – I know I said I was outta here but this was yesterday.
“at CNN’s town hall on Tuesday.
Joe Biden was asked about racial disparities in COVID-19 vaccine treatment and he directly suggested that many minorities “don’t know how to use, don’t know how to get online.”
Tactful ?
Jerome Savage: Joe Biden is legendary for his propensity to put the number 12 shoe directly in the pie hole.
There are some hilarious send ups – one in particular by a Benny Johnson who puts Bidens words in to a non descript office scenario with a 20 something generation.
His latest is – “everybody knows I like kids better than people” !
Statinised in my book !!
Sorry – that comment from Biden is what we might expect from someone on statins. The brain is just missing some of the usual signaling that would normally trap such a comment and kick it to touch.
Might this be a result of too many statins?
Or could it be that politicians are under the control of a master race from the Planet Orc….
A bit frightening to watch actually…
https://rumble.com/vdwa0n-not-for-public-view-biden-interview.html
Then there is this amazing footage
Or maybe they are just robots?
Well the first is Biden mediating. But he should have informed his wife prior. Again – statins makes one forgetful.
Second is overcooked groupies at loose causing a rehearsed fungirl slapstick reaction designed to allow the thought process to filter the quickfire babble – process a response. Again – we cannot rule out statins but not as obvious as Biden.
Dr K is showing remarkable patience with me so I will quit while the going is good.
My husband worked for someone like above. He ran it into the ground for his own pleasure and profit. A business important to the viability of the small town had to close its doors. We had to move Created quite the upheaval in many lives. The jerk went on to do the same somewhere else. Yes. I don’t want business people directly running millions of lives but how do we stop it? I can’t get Bill on the phone. I can’t vote yea or nay. So troubling.
“Businesses to be our guardians?”
More like “BIG Business to be our guardians” a la fascism. Big business tightly connected with government. Connections = fasces
Sounds like governments around the world have taken a leaf out of the “Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment”…………
Is it conceivable that the cycle number on the PCR tests are being gradually lowered to make the vaccines look good – then just as the summer starts, they will ramp them back up again and announce a new COVID variant – that requires a lockdown until a new vaccine is ready?
But in the summer, respiratory viruses decline naturally – as we saw last year – so it they did try to con us into thinking it’s yet another mutation or wave or whatever, it wouldn’t make any sense.
The South African variant seems to love the summer. If we could combine the South African variant and the winter-loving English variant, we’d have a world-beating all-weather variant. (Oops, let’s not give people ideas.)
Graph modified from South African Medical Research Council website.
https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-africa
Dr. Kendrick:
Why did you not define the critical term “lockdown”?
Did China, Belgium, Taiwan, Slovenia, New Zealand, USA, UK, Sweden, etc. all “lockdown” the same way? If they didn’t, you were comparing apples to oranges to tangerines to pears, so any objective comparison was doomed from the start.
You defined the other critical term, “work”, as deaths per million population, but why did you choose to only compare the ten countries with the highest death rates with each other, and ignore those with dramatically lower rates?
For example, why did you not compare Belgium – 1,771 deaths per million; Slovenia – 1,580; Czechia – 1,397; UK – 1,389; Bosnia-Herzegovina – 1,387; with, let’s say, Taiwan – 0.4 deaths per million; China – 3; Singapore – 5; New Zealand – 5; Hong Kong – 25?
Is it possible that the “lockdowns” in those countries with dramatically lower per capita death rates were different than those with dramatically higher death rates? And is it possible the differences between the lockdowns may have affected the per capita death rates?
In closing you wrote: “In fact, the evidence up to this point could suggest that lockdowns may actually increase the death rate.”
A skeptic like me has looked at the broader picture and reached a very different conclusion. Because the lockdowns in China, New Zealand, and Taiwan (to mention a few) were very different from those in Belgium, USA, and UK (to mention a few), I have reached the conclusion that the differences between various lockdowns were, to a great degree, responsible for the differences in the per capita death rates.
Of course, whether the lockdowns in one country could have been replicated in another is an entirely different question. But, I am sorry to say, I fear you have cherry picked data in an effort to reach the foregone conclusion that “I would look for another idea.”
You call it cherry picking. I call it searching for black swans. If you decide that your research is looking for cases where lockdowns occurred and the rate of deaths is low, then you are seeking confirmation from your hypothesis. This, I am afraid, is the exact opposite of scientific research.
The function of which is to attempt to disprove hypotheses. Or to put it another way. Two things must be assumed to be the same, and the function of, say, a clinical trial is disprove this the ‘null hypothesis.’ If you set out to prove that you are right, and look for examples where you are right – you can almost always do so. however, you have proved nothing. What you need to to is look for examples which appear to disprove the hypothesis.
This is not cherry picking, this is the basis of all scientific research.
Yeah but. Still… what’s a “lockdown”?
In my part of the woods it’s a suggestion couched as guidance. People are out and about in numbers not all that different from… uh… “normal”.
No locks. No confrontations by persons of authority monitoring societal behavior. No consequences – – except for maybe getting COVID.
There are LockDowns!, somewhere I suppose.
And then there is “Please. Do it for others”. (Good luck getting that one done!)
You can’t formulate a proper hypothesis or be understood if you use just the one term for all the disparate presentations.
Dr. Kendrick:
If the null hypothesis is that “lockdowns work”, the failure to define the operative term “lockdown” casts a shadow on the credibility of any conclusion that might be reached, pro or con. From my perspective, your unwillingness to even acknowledge that error undermines the legitimacy of your article.
Secondly, you are the one who appears to have been “seeking confirmation from your hypothesis” by limiting your dataset to only those countries with the highest per capita death rate while ignoring those with the lowest death rates, hence my allegation of cherry picking.
I, on the other hand, looked at some countries from each end of the spectrum, including those in your dataset, and found that most of those with low death rates had implemented some type of lockdowns, as had those with the highest death rates. So, I wondered, is it possible that, for example, “lockdowns China or New Zealand style” contributed to their low death rates in contrast to your conclusion that there was no real difference between countries at the high end of the spectrum (with which I agree).
So, my hypothesis is that there is a positive correlation between death rates and the type of lockdowns at the low end of the spectrum even if there is none at the high end. For example, China’s draconian lockdowns seem to have stopped the spread of the disease which resulted in an extremely low per capita death rate, but what does the USA have to show for its patchwork of lockdowns?
However, there is far more to this than meets the eye, something the lockdowns-don’t-work crowd seems determined to ignore. China apparently decided to do whatever it took to *eliminate* the virus, and it’s lockdown strategy reflected that goal. NZ’s approach was similar: stop the spread, thereby robbing the virus of suitable hosts, and stop its importation at the same time.
Once the viruses ‘died off’ because they ran out of hosts, which in China seems to have taken about two and a half months and in NZ about a month and a half, the lockdowns were eased and eventually removed, although both countries maintain restrictions on visitors. (I found an excellent explanation of NZ’s strategy in this article: “Covid-19 and the Swiss cheese system” tinyurl.com/my2l22s6 )
It appears these types of lockdowns worked because they were implemented early enough, so I submit that design AND timing were the critical elements. Most countries seem to have waited too long because once the genie was out of the bottle, trying to eliminate it apparently became impossible, and mitigating its spread through lockdowns seem to have resulted in failure.
So, I’m inclined to agree with your alternative hypothesis that “lockdowns may actually increase the death rate” when they are implemented too late. Unfortunately, your article was not nuanced enough to tease out the differences between “lockdowns China and NZ style” and “lockdowns US and UK style”.
HarryB,
It’s quite easy to say an action was taken “too late”. It’s not so easy to know when “too late” is.
Kind of leads you to circular logic as well. “We know lockdowns work when they are implemented timely. How do we know? Because they worked in places where they were implemented timely. And how do we know they were timely? Because they worked.”
LA_Bob, if you look at the “cases” and deaths graphs for US states, there were different actions taken, yet the graphs all follow similar lines (not identical) For more information an easy place to find the graphs is on tomwoods.com.
How do you know lockdowns worked? What is a “lockdown”? Even if you are right about lockdowns reducing deaths from rona, do you consider the adverse effects for many other causes of deaths caused by the lockdowns?
Ah,
You’re preaching to the choir here. I responded to HarryB’s comment about the effectiveness of lockdowns. I tried to politely punch a hole in the idea that, “It appears these types of lockdowns worked because they were implemented early enough”.
I try to keep an open mind, but I’m largely convinced a virus will burn through available victims at a pace of its “choosing” with little regard for what the victims “do” about it. Maybe a complete and total lockdown (no human contact, no one goes anywhere, people in virus-proof suits deliver food, etc) would have an effect, but I suspect a “reservoir” of virus — somewhere, anywhere — would restart the epidemic after the lockdown was lifted. The words of the Swiss doctor who writes for Swiss Policy Research resonate with me: “The Illusion of Control”. Compelling phrase that.
Ivor Cummins puts it – (based on national statistics in various countries involved), countries in Oceania, Southern Pacific etc and right up to Japan had the same covid death rate as OZ & NZ but without lockdowns or masking (voluntary & sporadic in some of the more northern)
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DQU0b-En3pCI&ved=2ahUKEwioue-kqO_uAhXVThUIHZGSBMYQFjAJegQIChAB&usg=AOvVaw0RuiuBBlRNzL_2EMtgjEDW
Jerome, please stop giving information, especially when it doesn’t agree with the misinformation narrative, brought to you courtesy of your caring government.
LA_Bob:
On February 15, 2021 you wrote in part: “I responded to HarryB’s comment about the effectiveness of lockdowns. I tried to politely punch a hole in the idea that, ‘It appears these types of lockdowns worked because they were implemented early enough’.”
Apologies for the late response.
New Zealand implemented a deliberate ‘lockdown’ strategy to “burn through available victims at a pace of its ‘choosing'” (to use your words), and some 5 weeks later the virus had run out of victims.
Although correlation does not always imply causation, if NZ’s early ‘eliminate the virus lockdown’ strategy did not directly cause the amazingly low death rate of 5 people per million, I request you provide an alternative explanation.
You wrote: “Maybe a complete and total lockdown (no human contact, no one goes anywhere, people in virus-proof suits deliver food, etc) would have an effect . . .”
Maybe so, but NZ implemented a lockdown strategy somewhat less stringent than what you described, and some 5 weeks later they declared that community transmission had ceased. Are you claiming this was merely a coincidence?
You wrote: “I suspect a ‘reservoir’ of virus — somewhere, anywhere — would restart the epidemic after the lockdown was lifted.”
That was, and still is, NZ’s fear, a worldwide reservoir of millions of infected people that would restart the epidemic. They decided to implement a mandatory ‘managed or quarantine isolation’ for anyone entering the country (with a few exceptions), and it seems to have worked as advertised. After the first deaths in March and April, they did not report another one during the next three months, and then only 3 more between May 27 and yesterday.
Interestingly enough, the latest death was a person who had returned from Zambia and had been confined in their managed isolation facility.
Your theories are essentially what New Zealand has actually done, so why not give them credit for a job well done?
With the figures given for many countries being suspect, there can’t be any confidence that New Zealand’s figures were because of any action or in-action. Governments around the world have demonstrated that they don’t give a stuff about whether people die, or whether they have a life ruined through social disruption. If you go back in Malcolm’s blogs one thing that was apparent is social disruption caused death spikes, years or possibly decades later. The governments like power, and wield it claiming they are doing it for the benefit of the people. Those with power have never done things for the benefit of others, unless they themselves benefitted.
Economically NZ has been in the post lockdown honeymoon period — cashed up Kiwi expats returned giving a boost to the property market and overall economy (a house near Glenorchy had been on the market for years asking 23M…. it sold within a few months of the lockdown ending…)
Wage subsidies coupled with lockdowns meant many people actually saved cash because they could blow their cash in bars and restaurants — or on ‘stuff’ …. so they let rip once they got out of their cages…
Alas that is coming to an end… there are only so many cashed up Kiwi expats … and most of them that plan to return have done so…. and the wage subsidies are gone… and the saved cash burned… and now the hangover begins.
Queenstown is dead — and this should be high season. And Queenstown has been faring better than the rest of the country in terms of attracting domestic tourism dollars….
I live in NZ.
Yes there is no Covid but the economy as expected is starting to take major hits. When tourism is your top earner and you lock out the tourists…. that’s what eventually happens.
The UK has 122,000 covid deaths — 400 or so — yes 400 or so — involved people without co-morbidities … so most of the deaths involved people who were already dying.
Let’s extrapolate …. the UK has 66M people – we have 5M.
Worst case scenario for NZ would be 400/13 = 30. So 30 people who were not already going to die… would have died if we had not shut down the country and let the tourists continue to come and spend money.
I can live with 30 healthy people dying.
I know 3 people who have committed suicide in the Queenstown area – it is my understanding these were related to Covid despair (job losses… mental issues exacerbated by the total lockdown)
We are a town of 30k…. extrapolate over 5M….
Lockdown has been a complete disaster for the country. We should have, if anything, followed Great Barrington – LOCK DOWN THE AT-RISK only.
We had an election recently… I voted for https://www.outdoorsparty.co.nz/ I like outdoors… I like parties… it seemed like the right thing to do …
NZ back to lockdown. How strict is likely to be ?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/27/new-zealand-auckland-to-go-into-seven-day-cov
Hi, HarryB,
Thanks for your comment.
“…I request you provide an alternative explanation.”
Ivor Cummins is far better qualified to do this than I. Look right above your post to Jerome Savage’s February 16 9:10 PM post. He links an Ivor Cummins video which specifically addresses your question (which I copy here).
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DQU0b-En3pCI&ved=2ahUKEwioue-kqO_uAhXVThUIHZGSBMYQFjAJegQIChAB&usg=AOvVaw0RuiuBBlRNzL_2EMtgjEDW
Please note no one should claim this is the answer. But I think it’s a pretty compelling set of alternative explanations.
“Are you claiming this was merely a coincidence?”
I think there are far too many variables to assign attribution to high or low COVID incidence with any confidence. There are whole families that get it (with different outcomes) and whole families in which it is isolated to one member. Seasonality? Vitamin D? Age? Lockdown status? People look for patterns in something which has a chaotic feel to it with some “strange attractors” (just showing off my shallow understanding of chaos theory here). I was surely exposed to someone who had both symptoms and a positive test. I never had any symptoms. Why not? Who knows?
“Your theories are essentially what New Zealand has actually done, so why not give them credit for a job well done?”
Hey, maybe they deserve credit. Maybe they were just lucky. I don’t know. But can you translate the experience of an island country of 5 million to Los Angeles County, CA, population 10 million? Color me skeptical, very skeptical. Very skeptical.
LA_Bob:
Ivor Cummins does not provide any explanation whatsoever to “The New Zealand Question” in the video to which you provided the link–did you really watch it? Instead, he begins with the foregone conclusion that “lockdowns don’t work”, and twists readily available information to reach his conclusion. The closest he can come to answering the question is to ask for more information because he asks for T-cell immunity data from the blood of people in NZ and Australia around Feb and March, 2020. (This can be found near the end of the video beginning at 14:45.) I am sorry to say, but it appears he has absolutely no clue, and yet seems to have fooled many people.
Just like every other article I’ve read or video I’ve watched by someone criticizing ‘lockdowns’, Cummins (like Dr. Kendrick) REFUSES to define the term. How is it possible to make any type of coherent argument if we can not even agree on what we’re discussing? But, when one has already reached a foregone conclusion, critical details like this are apparently irrelevant.
Okay, on to the video itself:
Cummins shows a list of “TWENTY+LOCKDOWN LACK OF EFFICACY PAPERS & ANALYSES:”, but I was unable to find the first three, although I did find a scholarly criticism of the third paper entitled “Homburg’s Lockdown Analysis: Conclusions without Data and an Appropriate Estimation Model” which reached this conclusion: “Homburg failed to conduct an effectiveness analysis of the lockdown – this was not even feasible with his approach.” [1]
So, Cummins begins with claims I can’t verify, and ignores at least one paper undermining one of his pieces of evidence, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I had been willing to take more time I would have found additional contradictory information. We’re not off to a very promising start, and it only gets worse.
He then flashes a red herring by claiming “we should copy New Zealand”. But, that is unlikely for a number of reasons, not the least being its lockdown strategy appears to have been implemented early enough in the pandemic for them to be able to ELIMINATE community spread. Could this be replicated anywhere else, now? I doubt it.
Cummins then continues with a world map displaying a huge green oval covering one area of the world, claiming it has a death rate of 30 deaths per million (“ultra low”), and draws another oval with a death rate of about 900 deaths per million. A dramatic difference indeed!
He then states: “anyone who suggests, given that this region (900 deaths per million) is locking down and masking mandatory more than these guys (30 deaths per million), anyone who suggests that the difference between these two huge regions is related to lockdowns and masks given from what we know from the science..I’d have to say, they’re stupid or some other reason.”
So “the science” tells him that “lockdowns don’t work”, but he ignores the inconvenient fact that China (3 deaths per million), India (112 deaths per million), and Pakistan (56 deaths per million) comprise almost half of the world’s population, and all three of them imposed ‘lockdowns’, some of them more severe than those in any of the countries in the 900 deaths per million group. In other words, he makes a false comparison between the area with extremely high fatality rates, claiming they’re “locking down like crazy” while ignoring the fact that the area with even more stringent lockdowns (at least at some point during the pandemic) also has a dramatically lower death rate.
Of course, correlation does not necessarily imply causation, but to deliberately falsify known facts is dishonest, so it proves nothing other than the author’s dishonesty.
Toward the end of the video Cummins asks: “so, what’s really going on here in Australia and New Zealand during (Nov, 2019 – Feb 2020)?” And, incredibly enough, he can not even answer his own question–the best he can do is beg for help.
Once again I wasted precious time watching someone blabber on and on about something he either doesn’t understand, or is deliberately distorting the facts to reach his forgone conclusion that “lockdowns don’t work”.
Regarding your last very skeptical paragraph: As long as we deliberately close our eyes to what happened in New Zealand, China, Taiwan and few other countries with very low per capita death rates, we are sowing the seeds for catastrophic failure when the next pandemic begins to unfold. We’re still in the fog of the Covid-19 war, but there is enough data for us to be taking very good notes. Unfortunately, the conspiracy theories are multiplying so fast they are making the naturally occurring fog of war even denser. And this video is a good example of that problem.
Finally, I agree that copying the approach of NZ or any of the other countries I mentioned and pasting it into, let’s say, Los Angeles County, is probably a recipe for failure. But, if we are willing to understand the principals upon which their decisions and actions were based, maybe we can learn something that can be applied to the US as a whole, or our own communities individually.
[1] https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ev-2020-0015/html
Ok HarryB, give us a definition of “lockdown” and a few examples of countries which fit the definition, and some examples of countries which have done something, but which do not fit the definition.
AhNotepad:
I’m afraid you are not going to get away with turning the tables on me. In one of my first posts (January 28) I wrote: “It’s obvious the good doctor is playing games because he refuses to define the crucial term, lockdown.” To date, neither Dr. Kendrick nor anyone else has defined it.
No, the burden of proof for defining the term ‘lockdown’ is upon those who claim “lockdowns don’t work”, just like the burden of proof is on them for defining the other term, ‘work’. Does 5 deaths per million, 50 per million, 1,000 deaths per million meet their definition of ‘work’? Again, Dr. Kendrick, et al. won’t say.
Having said that, I will note that I have written about ‘lockdowns’ in the context of “lockdowns China or New Zealand style” on Feb. 8. So, *I* have already identified a category of ‘lockdowns’ even if I did not specify the details (which anyone can discover using their favorite search engine).
By early last summer I had begun to wonder if there was a positive relationship between ‘lockdowns China or New Zealand style’ and their low per capita death rates, and had come to the conclusion it seemed like the most plausible explanation.
On the other hand, Taiwan, with its astonishingly low death rate of 0.4 per million, did not ‘lockdown China or New Zealand style’. Which led me to spend some time trying to understand why their strategy also seemed to have ‘worked’. What all three countries seem to have had in common was the adoption of the goal to ELIMINATE the virus from their respective countries rather than attempt to mitigate its spread, like most other countries.
So, I offer these three countries as examples of countries that implemented strategies specifically targeted at ELIMINATING the disease, and I submit their strategies ‘worked’.
All other countries that I am aware of, including Australia, seem to have adopted various strategies (‘lockdowns’ if you will) aimed at mitigating the spread of the virus. Did any of them ‘work’? Once again, as long as no one is willing to define that term, how can we say if they worked or didn’t?
So, AhNotepad, what is your definition of the term ‘worked’ and ‘lockdown’?
No, the responsibility is upon those proposing the action to justify that it works. Not upon opponents to prove a negative.
No, Australia has worked to eliminate the virus, with success. Your research is poor.
Yes, it has worked in Australia too. We have no Chinese virus, except in imported, quarantined individuals. But to what effect? We have no vaccine that prevents the Chinese virus, we have ruined swathes of our economy and increased the suicide rate by 25%. There is no exit plan. Every lone, +ve test results in a three to fourteen day lockdown depending upon the state.
Congratulations!
Now you are I suppose waiting on the vaccine so you can stop your economy from imploding right?
Sadly there is no vaccine. There is NO VACCINE.
Here’s your first hint – vaccines take many years to be developed and approved, because time is required to test them for long term side effects. All the money in the world cannot buy time.
So what you have is not a vaccine. But it is being referred to as a vaccine. One might suggest that doing so is criminal.
So why are you being coerced into taking a vaccine that is not a vaccine?
What exactly is in that syringe that is being injected directly into your DNA?
Australia once a prison camp is again a prison camp. I suppose it’s better to not have the flu circulating, than to have it, as you all eagerly queue for your lethal injections 🙂
Eggs ‘n beer:
I’m afraid you did not really read what I wrote. I was not asking anyone to prove anything…positive or negative, I was asking Dr. Kendrick, AhNotepad, et al. to define the operative terms ‘lockdown’ and ‘work’. But, no one is willing to do so, including the two people I just mentioned despite them having taken the time to respond to other things I’d written. My question remains unanswered.
You wrote: “No, Australia has worked to eliminate the virus, with success. Your research is poor. . . . We have no Chinese virus, except in imported, quarantined individuals.”
According to the worldometers website, Australia has 1,871 people who are *currently* infected, and the Australian Government Department of Health’s website [1] reports that “over the past week, there has been an average of 4 new cases reported each day.” It continues, “Of cases with a reported place of acquisition, 77% were locally acquired”. While these numbers are extremely low, they are not zero.
Also, according to the same official government website [2], Australia’s aim is mitigation, not elimination: “The Australian Government’s health response to the COVID-19 outbreak aims to:
* “minimise the number of people becoming infected or sick with COVID-19
* “minimise how sick people become and the mortality rate”
I just spent some time reading more about the situation in Australia and do see numerous references to eliminating the virus, but I had based my opinion about mitigation on this official website. I will also note it was last updated on January 25, 2021, so mitigation remains Australia’s official goal.
If I understand correctly what you have written, you are saying the ‘lockdowns’ in Australia HAVE worked because “we have no Chinese virus”. Isn’t that essentially the same as what I have previously written, namely that “lockdowns China or New Zealand style” have resulted in the low per capita death rates in their respective countries?
Which is the point I’ve been trying to make all along: talking about ‘lockdowns’ in some generic manner is useless. Instead, we need to understand specific lockdowns and try to figure out if they ‘worked’ (whatever that means). Only then can we begin to have a reasonable discussion about the cost/benefit ratio.
[1] https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-at-a-glance-18-february-2021
[2] https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert/government-response-to-the-covid-19-outbreak
HarryB, again, your research is poor. There isn’t an Australian Government response to the Chinese virus. You really must stop believing what appears on government web sites. The Australian government has no authority wrt to the management of the virus (apart from vaccines). That lies at state and territory level. So in Australia you have eight different lockdown methods producing the same result of elimination of the virus in the community. You’re tilting at windmills. There is no one definition of effective lockdown, there are many.
Eggs ‘n beer:
I was aware of Australia’s federalism, but had forgotten about how it would play out in the context of the pandemic. So, yes, I understand your point about the difference between Australia’s policy of mitigation and the goal at the state and territorial levels to eliminate it. I stand corrected.
You wrote: “So in Australia you have eight different lockdown methods producing the same result of elimination of the virus in the community.”
Okay, so we can now add eight more types of ‘lockdowns’ to New Zealand’s ‘lockdown’ method, all of which have helped reduce community spread to zero, or nearly so.
You are so right about there not being “one definition of effective lockdown, there are many.” And that is what bugs me about Dr. Kendrick’s article and the numerous accolades he’s received in response. If we can’t even agree on the operative term of the subject, how can we have an informative discussion about it?
Good points. But there are places with lockdowns, and ones without. Some US states didn’t, like Florida. Sweden didn’t. And they fared equally well as those countries that did – excluding the outliers like Oz and NZ who had the luxury of easily defended borders.
So regardless of the problem of defining lockdown, or China virus death, or science, there is considerable evidence (not proof) that, if you have the China virus in the community to the extent that it can’t be eliminated, lockdowns give no benefit. And if you take into account a 25% increase in suicides (in Oz), skyrocketing house prices and business failures there are clear disbenefits.
If there was a clear, concise definition of lockdown, I don’t suppose there would be room for much discussion. If we left it to bureaucrats, we’d end up with 17 definitions (with 53 sub-classes) of lockdown, but it would take 5 committees an 22 years to finalise them ….. but there would then be plenty of discussion on the variances between the categories.
Interesting that when the head of Tennis Australia tried to politicise the sport by talking about vaccines at the presentation ceremony for the Australian Open, the Victorian crowd, who have suffered the most from lockdowns in Australia, booed enthusiastically.
As for the benefits of eliminating the virus with lockdowns, I think it’s giving a false sense of security. Unless we’re prepared to enforce fortress ANZ in perpetuum, we’ll never attain herd immunity and we’re quite possibly leaving ourselves open to greater problems as we have to suffer all variations (UK, Brazilian, South African, Bristolian, Scouse ….) of the China virus simultaneously.
Eggs ‘n beer:
You wrote: “But there are places with lockdowns, and ones without. Some US states didn’t, like Florida.”
Florida DID ‘lockdown’ (if one defines the term as imposing severe restrictions on the movements of people). Executive Order Number 20-19 was the most comprehensive because it was statewide. [1] Notice Section 1.A: “Senior citizens and individuals with a significant underlying medical condition . . . shall stay at home and take all measures to limit the risk of exposure to COVID-19.”
Sections 2 and 3 list exemptions to the Safer At Home ‘lockdown’, and many people, including my wife and I, interpreted them to also apply to seniors. Regardless, it was amazing to find the streets almost devoid of traffic on the few occasions we drove to the store to pick up our groceries curbside.
You wrote: “If you have the China virus in the community to the extent that it can’t be eliminated, lockdowns give no benefit.”
It is important to understand the context of the lockdowns in Florida (and probably many other states). In the above mentioned Executive Order, the governor cited President Trump’s “15 Days to Slow the Spread” and his “30 Days to Slow the Spread” policies. Our leaders admitted that it was no longer possible to eliminate the virus, so the goal was to “slow the spread” in an effort to keep the medical system from becoming overwhelmed.
Was this a real concern? It seems to have happened in Italy and New York City, so could it also happen in Florida’s large cities? I’m not going to second guess health officials who claimed it was possible.
Was that goal achieved? It appears hospitals were not overwhelmed early on, so the lockdowns may have achieved that goal, but during the summer many hospitals did run out of ICU beds. However, they were primarily in the large metropolitan areas, and I’m under the impression there was capacity at nearby hospitals. Considering that Florida has a large percentage of seniors and Latinos, preventing the hospitals from being overwhelmed may have been no mean feat.
[1] https://www.flgov.com/wp-content/uploads/orders/2020/EO_20-91-compressed.pdf
Thanks Harry. Yes, Florida did lockdown, and after I posted I realised that I meant to specify that the data from July, (after the lockdown had largely ceased) showed that, compared to California, there was no benefit. And I see that for the last three days Chinese virus deaths in Florida are in single figures, which is great.
The scenario you paint is the one we were promised by the Australian state govts. Flatten the curve. And it seems to have worked for Florida, kudos to your Govt. It looks like you’ve achieved a level of herd immunity with a minimum of psychological disturbance to the population as a whole by using a short(ish) sharp lockdown judiciously. You have moved with the times, adjusting policy as facts and situations change. It almost seems like a scientific approach! Whereas in Oz the governments have ignored their promises (no surprise there) and are now reliant on some Pfizer (elderly and front line workers) and the AZ vaccines for an exit strategy.
There can be no doubt at all that Covid and its lockdowns are being used to accelerate and promote what the cavalier business elite have been working on whilst calling themselves social entrepreneurs. What is more distressing is the WAY it’s being done. This is what worries and disturbs me more than anything else.
How can it be allowed in our so-called democracy that we have been enlisted in a world-wide conspiracy to fool us and rob us of freedom and dignity? How can they have been allowed to use fear against us?
Why couldn’t they have told us what they would like us all to do globally to help the planet and ourselves, and why, and let us debate it as civilised people are supposed to do?
The manner, their mode of action, is terrifying.
Returns on certain investments of 20 to 1 or so a certain hi profile (if unpopular )investor has made known. Difficult to underestimate the power of profit, capital never sleeps etc
‘Patient walks into the doctor and says, “Doc, I saw that new ad. The one were the people with nice teeth and loose clothing are cavorting. I want to cavort. Ad said, ‘Ask your doctor about profitol.’ So I’m asking. Is it right for me? Will it clear up my condition?”’
“Classical Statistics Has Outlived Its Usefulness: Here’s The Fix”
https://wmbriggs.com/post/34533/
Well worth a read.
Enjoyed that – thanks. Confirm what i know quick and lively
Sorry Pr Kitten, I should say “Last sentence is how i interpret that”
“How can it be allowed in our so-called democracy that we have been enlisted in a world-wide conspiracy to fool us and rob us of freedom and dignity?”
It has never been a democracy – just the appearance of one. Apparently the owners are now confident enough to dispense with even the appearance.
So what will you do? Will you resist the tyrants or bovinely submit?
https://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/pathologie-mehrheit-der-opfer-stirbt-an-corona-nicht-mit-corona-a-0e69d82e-a56b-439e-8aaa-45a1d3a5cf25
Head of Kiel University Pathology:
“Majority of victims die from Corona, not with Corona”
The conviction persists among Corona sceptics: the death figures are inflated, many weakened patients die of other ailments, but not from their Corona infection. The data, however, are clear.
06.02.2021, 10.03 a.m.
The majority of people autopsied by pathologists in Kiel who had been infected with Corona before they died actually died of Covid-19. “In 85 per cent of the cases, we were really able to confirm that they died of Covid-19,” said Christoph Röcken, director of the Institute of Pathology at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH). So far, more than 50 people between the ages of 53 and over 90 have been autopsied in Kiel who had contracted Sars-CoV-2 before they died. Only a small number died with instead of with Covid-19, Röcken said.
Röcken and his team are currently performing autopsies on two people a day who died from or with Covid-19, in addition to their other tasks. Their goal: to gather knowledge about a pathogen and a disease that are currently raging all over the world. The results are being systematically compiled by 34 university hospitals as part of a nationwide initiative. Data from all over Germany is collected and evaluated in an autopsy register, and tissue samples from people who died of Covid-19 are stored.
Covid-19 is the cause of death in three quarters of all cases
So far, nationwide data from the autopsy register is not yet available. But he is hearing from other pathologists nationwide that they are coming up with similar results, Röcken said.
Last year, random surveys had come to similar conclusions: In more than three quarters of the autopsies, covid 19 disease could be documented as the main or sole disease leading to death, according to the presentation of the results of a survey in which two dozen pathologies in Germany had participated.
The Robert Koch Institute has recorded more than 60,000 Corona deaths so far. The statistics include people who died directly from the disease, as well as those with previous illnesses, for whom it is not always possible to conclusively determine the cause of death.
beb/dpa
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Here, you are entering a massively complex area. When someone dies, what did they die of. Depending on where you set your agreed parameters you can come to completely different conclusions. We know that the vast majority of people who die of/with Covid19 are elderly, and the vast majority of them also have other – serious – medical conditions. If you do not, the odds of dying are extremely, extremely small – amongst those under forty, almost non-existent. Ergo, Covid19 cannot, does not, kill the vast majority of people who are infected with it. Younger, healthy people shrug it off. Ergo, you have to be ill in other ways, to die.
At what point, with what specific pathophysiology, do you decree that condition x was what killed them. This is not hard science, it is rife with different interpretations. For example, until 1968, no-one died of a myocardial inflation in France, because they did not agree with the widely used ICD (disease) classification system. Then they decided to adopt ICD classification system and suddenly thousands of people were dying of myocardial infarctions each year. What changed,? The way that doctor decided to define the cause of death.
We must always be careful in taking causes of death at face value.
“Myocardial inflation” – Did you mean Myocardial infarction?
Yes
Here’s an analysis that complements Dr K’s comments above.
https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2021/01/27/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics-manufacturing-the-crisis/
Project fear (which appears to include manipulated statistics) has been so successful in brainwashing the nation into believing the narrative, that any dissenting argument needs the lightest nudge to knock it off course.
Jeremy May: Thank you for posting that link. A damning indictment of the authorities in the UK. Something similar has happened in the banana republic of the U.S. A. as well.
I think there’s an easier way to address this question: statistically what are the odds that a person who was fated to die on a given day COINCIDENTALLY contracted covid-19 in the preceding two weeks? Because other than that statistically insignificant number of people, anyone who dies “with” covid-19 necessarily dies “from” covid-19. It may be the case that they would have died a week later anyway; that doesn’t mean their premature death (even if only by seven days) was not caused by covid-19.
I understand that the traditional medical practice is to ascribe death to various contributing causes in decreasing order of significance and/or immediate causation. But the virus called covid-19 does not, itself, “cause” death, any more than influenza does. Those diseases trigger physical events to occur in the body in response to the presence of the virus – pneumonia, cytokine storm, heart failure, etc. – events which may or may not result in the death of the host. A person who has a “co-morbidity” such as high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, etc., is more likely to succumb to those physical events simply because their ability to withstand the adverse things triggered by the virus is lower. Does that mean they didn’t die “from” covid-19? Well, unless they were in the group that was going to die that day anyway, no. Covid-19 caused things to happen inside their body which resulted in their death. If those things hadn’t happened, they would not have died that day.
I understand that this is more honest than folks who want to minimize the seriousness of covid-19 would like. It’s unpleasant to simply state: “Many of the people who die of covid-19 probably would have died in the next few years anyway, so who cares that they died a little sooner?” But it’s a distraction to say those people did not die “from” covid-19, as if being able to generate a lower IFR with some linguistic sleight of hand should be persuasive in some way that speaking truthfully is not.
Steve,
To see that that analysis is wrong, there is nothing magical about days, why not insist the coincidence be to the same second? The narrower the coincidence you require, the fewer cases will satisfy it!
That is absolutely true. However, the huge difference with the China virus compared to every other infection in history is that everyone who dies, everyone who gets sick, everyone who doesn’t get sick but happens to sneeze from a few dust particles within earshot of a Karen and millions of completely symptom free people are tested for it. ergo, everyone who dies with the China virus, dies of it. Previously old people with comorbidities, especially with respiratory or cardiac ones, who died of the ‘flu would probably just be recorded with bronchopneumonia or heart attack, with no testing at all.
That’s why the stats are distorted – not because the China virus is over recorded, but because it’s the most comprehensively recorded virus ever. What you definitely cannot say, based upon cause of death statistics, is that it is worse than any other virus. The data doesn’t exist.
Eggs’n beer, thank you for this. You’ve expressed something I was struggling to articulate which is very important in this debate, ie, what we choose to record and report. The focus on covid has perhaps given people the impression that all other diseases are tested for and recorded in the same way. What Steve says about covid can be true of any other respiratory virus. But those viruses are not designated notifiable diseases, and anyone who makes that point is accused of ‘lying’ about the severity of covid. It’s a circular argument. And it could be said the making something a notifiable disease always has the danger of creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. The question is, why was covid chosen for that level of scrutiny – it was made a notifiable disease on the 5th March 2020, and two weeks later on the 19th March 2020 is was downgraded from ‘high consequence infectious disease’ status https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid. Can anyone throw any light on that?
Eric, given the total deceit of governments, and their conflicts of interest, and the unreliability of tests and their results, why would anybody be inclined to believe any “official” source. It gives off a distinct odour of rats.
That is the key issue, AhNotepad. The great divide is between the huge majority who continue to believe that their government has their best interests at heart, and those who – like myself – have most reluctantly been forced to the conclusion that it doesn’t.
Most kind-hearted decent citizens unwittingly rely on the “argument from incredulity” – that if such-and-such were true it would be too horrible to contemplate; therefore it isn’t true.
Sadly, that isn’t the way the world works.
It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how many times the MSM is caught lying… people still trust these sources.
With the MSM one has to wade into it with the understanding that they are trying to control what you think… cuz that is their job.
There was a video of this on YT where an anchor on MSNBC actually screws up and admits this …. having trouble locating it… probably scrubbed in the interest of protecting the matrix.
Just like Planet of the Humans was scrubbed.
German statistics diverge widely from heterogeneous US covid statistics. In my county, covid deaths (7 day average) started falling on 12/16/20. Hospitalizations followed suit on 1/6/21, three weeks later. No, I did not mix up the order. Something is very wrong with the way that statistics are being kept.
The German doctor should try autopsying gunshot victims and drug OD’s with covid if he wants to be taken seriously.
Do you care to tell us which county that was? If you look at this at a county level (and there are counties of less than 100,000 inhabitants), singular events can have these kind of outcomes. For example, there could have been a cluster in a care home that elevated deaths for some time but then deaths related to this cluster became less and less before the infection rate in the general population started dropping.
On a state or country level, ICU admissions, ICU occupancy and deaths have followed what one would really expect.
@ AhNotepad: The head pathologist of a teaching hospital can pretty much do as she or he pleases, not a government or offical source, even if the local state pays a good chunk of the salary.
Eric “head pathologist of a teaching hospital can pretty much do as she or he pleases” that doesn’t read well. Monopolistic perhaps ?
My county is over half a million. And you never ever see 7-day average of deaths decline before 7-day average of hospitalizations. I haven’t looked at states’ or countries’ graphs for average deaths/hospitalizations, but my county’s numbers make me suspicious.
Eric,
Doesn’t that slightly miss the point. I mean I knew two people who went to hospital some years ago in a very poor condition, but in each case the thing that actually killed them was a chest infection. As far as I know, neither infection was even identified indeed I don’t think they were actually treated for those infections because it was considered kinder to let nature take its course.
Surely this was always a common occurrence? For example if someone has received a lot of chemo, their immune systems would be functioning very badly – so that a mild infection would not be checked – isn’t that what COVID is doing in many of these recorded deaths? Society never tried to chase these mild infections to try to eradicate them.
Dr. Kendrick, having read your recent RT op ed, I note that you mention 60 feet as a more likely effective ‘social distance’. I only came across this distance recently while reading about the Common Cold Unit experiments at Porton Down that ran until the ‘90s I understand. Did you have a different source for this distance. Note that it applied when the volunteers were exercising outside!
I have also recently read through the dentist, John Hardie’s, ‘Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review of Their Inadequacies – Yesterday’s Scientific Dogma is Today’s Discarded Fable (www.oral health group.com October 2016).
Between the ten fold reduction in what was considered ‘social distance’ by Porton Down scientists and this comprehensive destruction of the value of face masking ‘to save Granny’ is the Government guilty of ‘Social Murder’ as a piece in the BMJ 4th Feb suggests?
Hi Steve,
Interesting post – unfortunately the article referenced “John Hardie’s, ‘Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review of Their Inadequacies – Yesterday’s Scientific Dogma is Today’s Discarded Fable October 2016” has already been removed from http://www.oral health group.com but it anyone is interested I located it at:
https://highlander.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/John-Hardie-Why-Face-Masks-Dont-Work.pdf.
It’s interesting but worrying that we are apparently moving back towards the medieval attitude to science: it is acceptable or unacceptable according as its findings prove welcome to the ruling elite (or priests).
The Catholic Church did not argue (much) with Galileo’s mathematics, logic, or facts. It found his conclusions to contradict Scripture, and therefore the priests knew immediately that his work must be wrong.
Today any science that contradicts the popular wisdom – global warming, The Dread Virus, the Red Communist Plot, etc. – is automatically dismissed out of hand.
That is the recipe for a return to medieval living conditions. We must accept facts, before we argue about what they mean or what we should do about them.
‘Lockdowns have no effect: the compelling evidence’
https://rumble.com/vdmnld-lockdowns-have-no-effect-the-compelling-evidence.html
In addition to Covid as an option for death certificates, can we please add eggs?
(Perhaps the statin lobby has awakened from its slumbers and is behind this latest diatribe?)
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003508
It’s laughable really.
Jeremy May – I prefer the word ‘diaTRIPE’ because that’s what it is.
First the Chinese get the western world to ties themselves up in lockdowns, wreck their economies and damage democracy
Then these authors from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China try to get the US to demonize one of the most nutritious and simple foodstuffs
What is their vested interest with this latest rubbish?
In regards to the response to the coronavirus, it will be interesting when all those relatively healthy people under 70 catch on that they’re going to be pressed to have coronavirus vaccination every year, or even more frequently, and sacrifice their own natural defences to the virus.
Wonder what they will think about the government and SAGE etc planning on making them dependent on the vaccine industry for their lifetime?
I don’t think the penny has dropped yet…
Penny, Ha ! It’ll cost more than that … can’t stop, I have a gravy train to catch.
“COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease”
Click to access covid19-rna-based-vaccines-and-the-risk-of-prion-disease-1503.pdf
So the pfizer vx an cause mad cow disease & related conditions and can leave people vulnerable to bological warfare.
This guy is a well known crank who maintains that all kinds of vaccines cause diabetes. Now he comes up with a theory that sounds rather outlandish. So why doesn’t he publish the sequences in the vaccine that supposedly “make” prions? Where is is fancy computer analysis? All I can see is conjecture and other cheap talk.
Eric
Not sure that we should discount everything and use denigrating term “well known crank”. That smacks of a hit job – to cancel out anything that’s not officially processed thro channels, the same official channels that pushed me on to statins all those years ago (free now and much better and, no – don’t think it’s a coincidence. Crank is a lazy term.
You shouldn’t blithely accept what is written about Classen on wikipedia. Compared to Kendrick Classen is a scientific figure par excellence as far as wikipedia is concerned, because they actually allow a page for Classen, whereas that well known quack and pseudo-scientist Kendrick (may he wallow in wikiwasteland for ever) is banned ….
Perhaps you could do a bit of research on diabetes 1 and vaccines instead? From an italian study in 2000,
“Investigators compared 150,000 children who had been vaccinated at age 3 months to an equal number of unvaccinated children. To assess the risk of developing type 1 diabetes in children who got the vaccine later, after vaccination became mandatory in Italy, 400,000 children who were vaccinated at age 12 were compared with children who had not been vaccinated.
In the group as a whole, the rates of type 1 diabetes were 46 per 100,000 for children who had been vaccinated and 34 per 100,000 for children who had not. For those vaccinated at age 12, the rates were 17.8 per 100,000 for vaccinated children and 6.9 per 100,000 for unvaccinated children.”
Pozzilli P, Visalli N, Coppolino G, Classen DC, Classen JB, Grp IMDIAB ( 2000 ) . Hepatitis B vaccine associated with an increased risk of type 1 diabetes in Italy . DIABETES . vol. 49 , A67 – A67
And yes, it looks like JB Classen has published in a reputable source with a lead author who has an impeccable scientific reputation, particularly in relation to diabetes.
https://www.excemed.org/experts/paolo-pozzilli
First of all, the linked paper about prions just didn’t serve the beef. If certain proteins do this, where are the facts? I just saw a lot of handwaiving and references to a mysterious computer code that was used to compare sequences, not the sequences themselves.
His prior pet peeve is not the issue here. Well, maybe there is a correlation for Hep B vaccine, but he has been maintaining this for almost every vaccine there is. As for the Italien paper, which I haven’t read, I would start by asking questions such as how common is the Hep B vaccination in Italy, who gets vaccinated? If there is a social or regional stratification, maybe that somehow correlates with other factors like diet or stress?
Eric – yes the logistics of it all, the confounding and compounding factors – just as Dr. K referred to in the previous blog. Is it not possible that both samples were fairly well representative of the general population ? Can your comments not be made against each and every study apart from the most simplistic.
I’ve just tried to paste this article into YouTube. It won’t let me. Clearly you are being blocked. Do you know this?
Simon Dolan’s latest. Well worth reading as usual.
https://www.keepbritainfree.com/so/48NULh_0p?languageTag=en&cid=6d91f31f-9379-4478-b1e4-1f5f645d29f6#/main
Some detailed comments on coronavirus vaccines, as opposed to certain other virus types. Apparent cause for concern, one would have thought
https://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=241536
But no, it seems not.
Isn’t that great, mass CT screening for lung cancer proposed, fortunately only for smokers and ex-smokers. Doesn’t say how often they want to screen. Presumably every year since the article mentions it takes 18 months for a nodule to grow into something inoperable.
And how many extra cancer deaths due to radiation? I know that the linear no-threshold model tends to overestimate the effect of small radiation doses, which appear to even be beneficial if purely x-ray and gamma, but this is true for continuous background radiation. Pulsed CT xray may not be as harmless.
Why don’t they learn to put cost-benefit and harms analysis right in the article?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/14/ct-scan-catches-70-of-lung-cancers-at-early-stage-nhs-study-finds
I apologise for mentioning coronavirus vaccines but…did anyone else see a professor from Southampton University on South Today this evening who said that all the coronavirus vaccines are 100% effective at stopping serious illness and death? I’ve been trying to keep up with vaccine news but have not seen any study which says 100%, not even on pharmaceutical company press releases. (Yet another claim for becoming immortal.)
How many readers here have gotten at least their first COVID-19 vaccine injection?
Raise your hand.
I raise mine.
I got the mRNA-1273 yesterday. That’s Moderna’s.
I put it off ten days so that my wife could get hers as well. Age 75 was the cut-off in our state until, suddenly, “companions” were allowed to accompany and get a shot as well. It’s been a wild shuffle.
And no, Gary and whoever, I’m not particularly concerned about reactions.
I like the fact that my shoulder’s sore today.
Anyone else???
JDPatten: Your choice, and nobody else’s damn business. As for me, I don’t get sick.
Actually, you did not receive a vaccine, you received a ‘treatment’.
Have a read of this https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/22/synthetic-mrna-covid-vaccines-a-risk-benefit-analysis/
Yuval Noah Harari has been a speaker at the World Economic Forum.
Here is a passage from his book ‘Homo Deus’.
‘History provides ample evidence for the crucial importance of large scale cooperation. Victory almost invariably went to those who cooperated better…. Thus Rome conquered Greece not because the Romans had larger brains or better toolmaking techniques, but because they were able to cooperate more effectively. Throughout history, disciplined armies easily routed disorganised hordes, and unified elites dominated the disorderly masses. In 1914, for example, 3 million Russian noblemen, officials and business people lorded it over 180 million peasants and workers. The Russian elite knew how to cooperate in defence of its common interests, whereas the 180 million commoners were incapable of effective mobilisation. Indeed, much of the elite’s efforts focused on ensuring that the 180 million people at the bottom would never learn to cooperate.’
Sobering.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9262397/How-California-Florida-took-different-approaches-ended-result.html
Florida, with no lockdown, doing marginally better than California.
I live in Florida, in the county with the fourth highest percentage of seniors over 65 in the US. I find it difficult to identify with the horror stories I read about ‘lockdowns’ because I am not really aware of any restrictions in our area. Admittedly, my wife and I are retired and both in the senior citizen category by a couple of years, so our need to mingle with others is dramatically less than when we were younger.
However, when we do go out, the vast majority of people I see are wearing masks in settings where they are likely to mingle with others in close quarters, just like we do. We occasionally visit with other people, but only outside, and sit or stand at least 8 or 10 feet away. On the rare occasion I need to go to the hardware store, I go early in the morning when there are few other people out shopping. (I went this morning, and only recall seeing one person not wearing a mask.) And we pick up our groceries using the store’s curbside service–no need to go inside.
A relative recently left California and moved to Florida partially because he could no longer tolerate the oppressive lockdowns they have imposed there. And yet, as the article noted, there does not seem to be a significant difference in the death rates between the two states.
You can refer to Tom Woods for a reasoned analysis of restrictions imposed and the effects they have had. However, those who comply are not influencing the progress of a disease, but are helping to build the prison in which their children and grandchildren will live.
Until people think for themselves and stop believing that governments do things for their wellbeing, this stupidity will not stop.
AhNotepad: Well put. Compliance is the greatest danger. Compliance is not really the American way, but it is frightening to see so many still wearing the face diapers.
AhNotepad:
Forgive me for being skeptical, but I have read so many conspiracy theory comments on this website that I don’t have the stomach for a new one–I’m building a prison for my children and grandchildren?
You wrote: “However, those who comply are not influencing the progress of a disease . . .”
I assume you are referring to my practice of social distancing and mask wearing. First of all, I am unaware of any law where I live that requires me to maintain a given distance from other people, nor one that requires me to wear a mask, so, I am not complying with any type of legal requirements regarding these practices.
Secondly, as the result of a fair amount of research, I have concluded that social distancing and mask wearing are based on information I consider reasonably reliable, and they seem reasonably logical. And because they are not very onerous, I have voluntarily adopted these strategies, not because they are legally mandated.
Finally, I take umbrage at your implication that I do not think for myself. We are all influenced by the culture in which we were raised and live, plus hundreds of other influences, many of which we are not even cognizant. When we are plunged into a crisis like the current one, everyone’s initial reaction is a product of their personality. The majority of people get much of their information from mainstream news sources and lately, social media, and I suspect their opinions are heavily influenced by those sources.
I happen to have turned my back on the former decades ago and never got involved in the latter, so I did not have any source of information I instinctively considered trustworthy. When I realized the pandemic would affect me, my personality led me to begin to research the disease on my own, and my current opinions are based on my extensive research.
However, I would never be so arrogant as to think I know better than everyone else, or even than anyone else. And I certainly don’t go around telling other people they’re stupid, like so many conspiracy theorists have done.
I was directed to this article by a relative (not the one who left California) who probably believes every single harebrained theory about the evils of western meds and Big Pharma, and I’ve had extensive discussions with her about it. (Not surprisingly, I learned that when her homeopathy ‘doctor’ fails to alleviate the symptoms of her chronic ailment, she quickly turns to a real doctor and takes real drugs from Big Pharama–theories only go so far…) So, I was not all that surprised to see so many of the choir’s heads nod it agreement with Dr. Kendrick’s claims even though he did not produce a shred of evidence to back up any of those claims–after all, I’ve seen it before with my relative.
Harry B, I am sure that the vast majority of us commenting on this post including yourself are united a fervent desire never to see lockdowns used again.
You seem to suggest that Ah notepad’s comment that people who comply ‘are helping to build the prison in which their children and grandchildren will live’ is somehow hyperbolic. Prison does not seem that unreasonable an analogy given the term ‘lockdown’ itself comes from the prison system. In fact, when the term first began to be used I recall finding it highly offensive and tried to avoid using it myself until through sheer repetition I become inured to it. The more I think about it, the more apt the analogy seems. You turn the country into a prison and ‘lock’ the people ‘down’ at will by government decree. Don’t forget it is not just lockdown itself that does the damage, it is the threat and fear of lockdown.
I think it would be hard to argue that compliance does not play a part in government willingness to continue to impose lockdowns and include them in their future ‘toolbox’ of responses to a new virus. No conspiracy theories are required for this. Governments court popularity with popular policies.
This post addresses the issue of ‘whether lockdowns work’. But there is another question – even if they did work, can they be justified. Dr Kendrick addressed this back in March 2020 https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/03/29/a-health-economic-perspective-on-covid-19.
I think Lord Sumption sums it up pretty well: “Many people believe that it is OK to be like China for a time, because when the crisis ends we can go back to being like Britain again. These people are making a serious mistake. We cannot switch in and out of totalitarianism at will.”
Paula:
Your response is more evidence of what I see as the conspiracy theories I mentioned in my response to AhNotepad. Permit me to explain.
You wrote: “Prison does not seem that unreasonable an analogy given the term ‘lockdown’ itself comes from the prison system.”
No, not in the way you describe. People often refer to someone who has been incarcerated as being “locked up”, not “locked down”. It is true that the latter term is sometimes used in the context of prisons, but it refers to extreme measures that have been implemented upon a group of people who have already been ‘locked up’. In other words, people who have not already been locked up can not be ‘locked down’ in the way you used the term.
The term ‘lockdown’ entered the vernacular in the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre and refers to emergency measures which encourage or order people to lock themselves inside the facility in which they find themselves in an effort to protect them from an external threat. The current use of the term ‘lockdown’ is much closer to this than what happens inside a prison to people who have already been involuntarily locked away.
Secondly, jurisdictions in the United States have broad emergency powers which can be invoked almost at will with little or no recourse for those affected to protest in a timely manner.
For example, on April 1, 2020 the governor of Florida issued Executive Order Number 20-91 which states in part: “I, RON DESANTIS, as Governor of Florida, by virtue of the authority vested in me by Article IV, Section (1)(a) of the Florida Constitution Chapter 252, Florida Statutes, and all other applicable laws, promulgate the following Executive Order . . .”
Notice that the government claims to have the authority to impose these emergency restrictions upon the public because it has already been granted that broad authority under existing laws.
Another example: Some years ago, a relative of ours was contacted by a local health department official and issued a ‘stay at home’ order because he might have been exposed to someone with measles and could not prove on the spot that he had been vaccinated against the disease. He was not even permitted to set foot outside of his apartment under threat of arrest even though he was not sick. I don’t recall how long the quarantine lasted, but he obeyed.
These types of ‘lockdowns’ are already in governments’ current ‘toolbox’ because the legal basis for them was established way back in a 1902 decision by the US Supreme Court in “Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana Board of Health”. The justices concluded that Louisiana’s health laws which could force the involuntary quarantine of people to prevent a communicable disease from spreading were a reasonable exercise of the state’s police powers.
So, your claim that ‘lockdowns’ come from the prison system is disingenuous at best, and your claim that the “government(‘s) willingness to continue to impose lockdowns and include them in their future ‘toolbox’ of responses to a new virus” is totally false because it has had that power for more than a century. It’s false claims like yours that feed my negative reaction to these types of theories.
You wrote: “I am sure that the vast majority of us commenting on this post including yourself are united a fervent desire never to see lockdowns used again.”
Since you people are not willing to define the term ‘lockdown’, I have no idea if I’m willing to endure another round of ‘lockdowns’–maybe I am.
Consider the situation from my perspective: Twice a year my wife and I fly cross country to spend a week visiting with my aged mother who lives in a nursing home. Last year we canceled our plans for our spring visit, and did not make plans to visit her in the fall because she was not allowed to see any visitors. And this year we’ve made no plans to visit her at all, primarily for the same reason.
Since her nursing home was ‘locked down’ almost a year ago, not a single friend or relative has been permitted to visit with her in her room. A few supervised outside patio visits were permitted, but they were not even allowed to touch each other’s hands, let alone give each other a hug.
On the other hand, if we had lived in New Zealand or Taiwan last year, there may have been a brief interruption during the ‘lockdown’ period, but we would have visited with her twice last year and would already have made plans for visiting her twice this year. And her friends and loved ones would have been visiting with her just like during normal times with the exception of the relatively short ‘lockdown’ period.
Would I be willing to endure a New Zealand style ‘lockdown’ if it meant my mother could have continued to visit with her friends and relatives, including my wife and I, like in the past? Absolutely yes!
I have yet to read a single naysayer’s plan that could have improved on the results of New Zealand’s ‘lockdowns’ when it comes to my situation vis-à-vis my mother.
Once again, I am not saying “lockdowns work”, but I am saying that at least a few countries have such low fatality rates (an important consideration for seniors like my mother, my wife, and I) and such few current restrictions that, for me, they have demonstrated a positive relationship between their ‘lockdowns’ and the resumption of almost normal life for the majority of people.
HarryB, labelling people as conspiracy theorists is a lazy way of debating.
One of a series of, I think, 12 videos https://youtu.be/Dte4kTabLz8 first published in 2018 which explore the effectiveness of vaccines, particularly measles, for which quarantining is totally pointless, and was never done until the measles vaccine was brought out for no other reason than the manufacturers could do it. Based on a false claim that the disease would be quickly wiped out. It wasn’t, but there have been a hell of a lot of injuries as a result. Edward Bernays type techniques were used to push the narrative.
I am in NZ. The lockdown did stop Covid … but that is much easier done when you are an island… it is next to impossible to duplicate this in places like Europe, North America etc…
However we are effectively still in lockdown in that it is impossible for any non citizens (tourists) to enter NZ…. Tourism is one of the pillars of the NZ economy…. and it will absolutely not return until Covid is eliminated globally.
The NZ economy has held up on the back of stimulus, subsidies and thousands of cashed up Kiwi expats who have come home. They are buying properties and infusing cash into the economy. Domestic tourism was strong, and to some extent offsetting the losses up until January when it fell off a cliff…
The country looks to be running out of heroin and cocaine…..
Withdrawal is going to be a bitch… speaking to people in hospitality and they are scared… I know the GM of a 5 star hotel in Queenstown and he’s dropped his rates to around NZD100 per night (normally North of 350…) and still he has maybe 10% occupancy…. I know a waiter in an upscale eatery — they need 3k turnover to break even…. barely making 1k…. the town is very quiet – and this is the summer high season.
This is as good as it is gonna get — until ski season starts … in JULY.
Harry B, I did not claim that ‘lockdowns come from the prison system’ so please do not twist my words and then accuse me of being disingenuous. I was referring to language and what may or may not be appropriate to describe stay-at-home orders. In the UK terms such as ‘house arrest’ and ‘prison’ are freely used by people to describe the situation we find ourselves in. Those are metaphorical descriptions, not analyses of where the policies came from.
You also claim that these words from me: “government(‘s) willingness to continue to impose lockdowns and include them in their future ‘toolbox’ of responses to a new virus”
are a false statement – those words are not even a statement. If you want to talk about the powers that are available to different governments in the world feel free, but that is not what I was talking about. The UK enacted legislation in March 2020 to legitimise their measures, by the way.
Are you really saying that the assertion that democratic governments court popularity with popular policies is a conspiracy theory? If not, please point out where in my comment I put forward a conspiracy theory, and not just an opinion you disagree with.
HB
Sorry – but am never going back on statins. You cannot believe the annual incremental improvements I hav experienced since stopping 7 yrs ago. I had had my concerns, then my suspicions, then cause to concerned – through my research where the same messages kept popping up, the same concerns until I drifted on to Dr Kendrick’s pages where his analysis & hypothesis satisfied my accountancy mindset, trained for logic & evidence, the audit trail convinced me that the sums didnt add up. I stepped off the sinking statin ship with not a little uncertainty, maintained a healthy lifestyle. And in words of lyndsey Buckingham of F.Mac, “ain’t never goin back again”
Looking at the finance world, it is obvious to many, myself included, that the bottom line is profit, share price , market share & emoluments. When the marketing people are unleashed, no technique is too low.
AhNotepad:
To the best of my recollection, I have not labeled *anyone* a “conspiracy theorist” at any point during this discussion as you claim. What I actually wrote was that Paula’s response was “more evidence of what I see as the conspiracy theories” I had mentioned earlier.
And contrary to your claim about my response being a “lazy way of debating”, I took a fair amount of time presenting evidence to contradict her claim. Isn’t that the way debates are supposed to work?
You, on the other hand, chose to post something about the efficacy of the measles vaccine, something that was irrelevant to the discussion–that is not how debates are supposed to work unless one wants to sabotage it. While I try to not put labels on people, I admit to having a difficult time not stereotyping them when they push their vaccine theories on others, such as when their theory is irrelevant to the discussion.
The question my relative was asked by the health official was crystal clear: did he have proof of having received both vaccines? If the answer had been yes, he would not have been ordered to quarantine, if no, he would be ordered to quarantine.
The purpose of my examples was to show that the government already claims to have the authority to quarantine people in certain situations (which it also has the authority to define). So, contrary to your scary sounding theory that “those who comply are . . . helping to build the prison in which their children and grandchildren will live”, I provided clear evidence the ‘prison’ had been legally constructed more than a century ago, and we’ve been living in it all of our lives. In other words, your theory is more than a hundred years out of date.
Paula:
My response to your comments was in the context of AhNotepad’s claim that people (like me) who comply with restrictions “are helping to build the prison in which their children and grandchildren will live.” His recommendation to “refer to Tom Woods for a reasoned analysis” means he was talking about the legal situation in the US.
You had written: “I think it would be hard to argue that compliance does not play a part in government willingness to continue to impose lockdowns and include them in their future ‘toolbox’ of responses to a new virus.”
Are you saying that people like me should disobey current lockdown orders (“civil disobedience”) because, if we comply, we are encouraging the government to include lockdowns in its response to a new virus? If so, I disagree with that for a number of reasons which I would be happy to explain if you wish.
However, maybe I’m still missing the point you’re trying to make, so if that is the case, please try again.
Harry B, I wouldn’t dream of telling you what you should do, and you don’t need my permission to share your thoughts on civil disobedience. You should, there was never a better time to have that debate.
HarryB: I live in California. I have not put on a face diaper since July, for a doctor’s appointment. I have not changed anything about the way I live except switching my shopping to stores (Walmart) where nobody, neither staff nor customers, says a word about my free American face. As I understand it, Los angeles County has become an oppressive place, but not here in the central part of the state. So California has no lockdown of any consequence, except to business owners, at least compared to the UK, New Zealand, and some Australian states. But more people are leaving California than coming, for lots of reasons. Can’t blame them. Blessed we are with natural beauty and lots of wonderful people, but cursed with a dreadful government. Such is the power of population centers (Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area), which are heavily Democratic-voting, while the rest of the state mainly favors Republicans (I don’t like either of them, the political parties), but it is enough to have a Democrat super-majority.
Gary Ogden:
You wrote: “. . . my free American face”.
Ahh, I see where you’re coming from. Permit me to ask a few questions:
* Let’s say California adopts a law which requires you to wear a “face diaper” if you intentionally move within a specified distance of people who believe their health may be endangered unless you maintain that distance or wear the mask. What would be your defense if you were cited for violating that law, assuming the facts were correct?
Consider California’s law which requires you to wear a “genital diaper” in many situations. If the government can require you to wear clothes, why can it not require you to wear a mask if it deems it to be in the public interest?
* Let’s say a local government has adopted an ordinance which requires you to wear a mask before you enter any place of business open to the public. How would that be different from an order by the Fire Marshall that the maximum capacity of the business is x number of people?
* If Walmart posts a policy sign which reads, “No shirt, no shoes, no face mask, no service”, what would you do?
* Why did you wear a mask while visiting the doctor when you seem to be unwilling to wear one when patronizing other businesses?
I read so many stories about “rights” people claim they have, but they seem more like gut reactions than claims based on an understanding of the legal system under which we live. And that is the thought that come to mind when I read your response.
HarryB: It was an essential doctor’s visit to get skin cancers removed. As soon as I got in the room she told me to take it off, and afterward, not to put it back on as I was leaving. It was also fairly early in this stupidity. There are no face diaper laws, only the decrees of tyrants, ignorant tyrants. I refuse too comply with stupidity. Walmart does have a face diaper sign in front, but they treat people with basic dignity and respect. Nobody in Walmart, neither staff nor customers, says anything to me except, “Good morning.”
Harry B
By your assessment you seem to suggest that because a theoretical power exists then the use of that power, even one which is actually without precedent and has never been either assessed or planned for, is used then the onus of responsibility lies with the general population rather than those trusted to wield power with some consideration of the consequences.
You also make a cherry picked assessment of a small isolated country like New Zealand and extrapolate that onto a global response to a virus. You cannot eradicate a virus like CV19 by isolation. You need many many factors to align, one being no zoonotic hosts. You also need worldwide and total adherence and compliance. Along with a full and effective vaccine. This is why eradication of disease is very complex and difficult. If only 1 person fails to align to your utopian vision the plan fails and you start again. It is foolhardy and dangerous.
Gary Ogden:
You wrote: “There are no face diaper laws, only the decrees of tyrants, ignorant tyrants.”
Maybe you’re right. But, if the ‘tyrant’ decrees you shall wear a face mask, and has the authority to enforce that decree, and you “refuse to comply with stupidity”, and you are arrested, convicted, and sentenced, I suspect you will realize there is no practical difference between the ‘face diaper law’ and the ‘decree of the tyrant’.
From what I understand, Walmart requires everyone to wear a mask while inside their stores, although it makes exceptions for those with certain health conditions. While I respect the right of people to not wear a mask if there is no such law, I do not understand their decision to intentionally violate the policies of private businesses they wish to patronize. In my way of thinking, it is disrespectful of the owners’ right to run their businesses as they see fit.
If you disagree with Walmart’s mask requirement, why don’t you take your dollars and patronize businesses whose values are more closely aligned with yours? Isn’t that part of the freedom Americans hold dear?
Rick:
I don’t understand the point you are trying to make about the “theoretical power” to which you are referring. In the context of this discussion, the government (at least in the US) has the authority to impose lockdowns, and it’s had it for over a hundred years–as I had noted. There is nothing theoretical about that authority because it’s on the books in black and white.
No, I did not extrapolate New Zealand’s situation onto a global scale. My point was that Dr. Kendrick’s categorical claim that lockdowns do not work is contradicted by NZ’s experience.
Can it be replicated elsewhere? It appears Australia and China have had results similar to NZ’s, and I expect Taiwan’s experience will be studied for many years. But, each of them have features that might be found in only a few other countries, so what worked there is unlikely to have worked in most other countries.
I am in Queenstown NZ – the town is literally dying…
You can severely lockdown an island (we could not even order takeaway food) and have temporary success but because you cannot eliminate a virus globally with lockdowns… and because there is no vaccine that stops covid (like there is no vaccine for SARS coronavirus)…. NZ must keep the borders closed for years…. so essentially we are in a prison here… waiting for the economy to collapse.
So no – lockdowns do not work – here – or anywhere.
You state that the US has a black and white law to enforce lockdowns? I will be corrected on this but would be surprised if any law is black and white. It is why courts and lawyers exist to argue over interpretation and proportionality etc. if the phrase or exact set of circumstances is not specific to now then it may be arguable. It is clearly a fact that the federal Gov cannot force lockdowns on States?
The main problem I have with your stance is that you use the term work without any definition of what work means? Let’s say you go to see a Dr with a sore knee, he tells you that if he punches you enough times in the left arm you will not feel any pain in knee any more. It works but at what cost?
You may be familiar with how new drugs are released onto the market in many countries with strict protocols. In short, they develop test and report. Once the drug shows some efficacy the results along with all the data on adverse reactions and the performance against placebo are published. Setting aside that many large Pharma Co’s have a history in manipulation of data, the regulation agencies will assess effectiveness against cost, adverse events and how it compares to doing nothing. Once approved the issuing medic should (they often don’t) compare the new to the existing drugs not just placebo, and make a choice on the basis of what is best for their patient and likely to improve the condition with the least chance of harm.
The current use of what is known broadly as lockdown is a bastardisation of a Chinese response to a virus, no significant analysis or planning has been done or seriously considered by any major nation on earth. The principle is one by which the wealthy are able to shield themselves easier that those less fortunate. If you have stayed at home and ordered anything including food to be delivered to your house then you have used mainly low paid workers to ‘risk’ their lives for your continued convenience.
The situation in New Zealand is the same. If you can wealth your way through this indefinite period you may accept some inconvenience but if, like very many, you find not just your job but your industry gone then that is a massive harm caused by the medicine.
In the main nations used forms of the policy to deal with already widespread infections. Again no data no analysis of costs and benefits. It is a classic trolly problem, the rushed pulling of the lever to divert the train is trumpeted with a utilitarian chorus of triumph and a declaration of the tally and how they saved a net number of lives. Meanwhile the innocent victims of the now diverted train, almost all of whom where never seen or even considered, are smashed to smithereens. It is a disgusting and appalling response, the results of which will take decades to manifest and longer to correct. The moral and ethical landscape that plagues those in power is not to be understated. They have a difficult job and nothing is easy. But in the end I believe that sacrificing the few for the many or in this case the many for the few is not a world view I wish to encourage. It was a fundamental part of the USSR and the gulags.
By that standard alone lockdowns fail.
Rick:
You wrote: “You state that the US has a black and white law to enforce lockdowns?”
What I wrote was that “the government” (by which I meant states, although I wasn’t clear about this) has the authority to impose ‘lockdowns’. There is no question about this (“it’s black and white”) because this authority was tested in the US Supreme Court in Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana Board of Health (1902), but also clearly stated in an unrelated case in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824). The former case probably rises to the level of a landmark case and has not been overturned. In other words, it is settled law that states have the legal authority to impose quarantines upon people within their borders because they are an acceptable use of the states’ police powers because they promote public health.
You wrote: “It is clearly a fact that the federal Gov cannot force lockdowns on States?”
If by that question you mean, can the federal government force the states to adopt lockdown laws, I suspect the answer is no. However, if you mean, could it force a nationwide lockdown upon all people within the US, it seems likely it could under the Commerce Clause.
On a side note: Although there have been numerous recent court cases involving ‘lockdowns’, all of the ones I’m aware of have been very narrow in scope–I have yet to find a single one that directly challenges a state’s authority to impose lockdowns. I find that interesting because, for all of the claims about ‘lockdowns’ being unreasonable or unconstitutional, we’re now almost a year into some type of lockdowns, and yet the US Supreme Court has not taken up a single case directly challenging a broad lockdown that I’m aware of. No, I suspect there is a huge smokescreen being laid down by (conspiracy) theorists because they know there is no fire.
Regarding my use of the term ‘work’: In this discussion I have already criticized the use of that term without defining it [1], but no one seems to be willing to define it. In Dr. Kendrick’s article he seems to have defined it in the context of per capital death rates, but it’s clear it means different things to different people.
I have decided to use the term in the context of the stated goal of the ‘lockdown’ order. Based on that definition, I submit that ‘lockdowns’ in New Zealand, Australia, China, and Taiwan worked because, from the best I can figure out, all of them had the goal of eliminating community transmission, which has essentially been achieved.
However, other governments have had different goals. For example, the goal of Florida’s ‘lockdown’ was to “reduce the spread”, and by that definition, it appears to have worked. After the governor determined that goal had been achieved, he began a systematic series of steps to relax the lockdowns.
Discussing the costs or other consequences of the ‘lockdowns’ is something entirely different than the question of whether they achieved their stated goals, and I don’t understand why people insist on conflating the two. Or maybe I do..because by playing so loosely with the terms they can continue to stir up unrest.
Regarding the harm done by lockdowns: I submit your criticisms are Monday Morning Quarterbacking. With the exception of Taiwan (0.4 deaths per million), it seems all countries were caught flat footed. Of course, they should have been prepared, but how many of those who are now criticizing the various responses were warning their communities years earlier what they should be doing to prepare for a pandemic like Covid-19? But, all of a sudden they now seem to have become experts and know it all.
Oh yes, the lockdowns have caused tremendous damage to millions of people, but if governments had done nothing, what might have been the damage? I am very concerned about the implication that the lives of seniors should have been sacrificed so the younger generation can continue to live unhindered by the plight of their elders.
Let’s not forget that the Great Barrington Declaration wasn’t published until October 4, 2020. Why didn’t these esteemed scientists wait so long–why was it not released in, let’s say, February? I recall reading an article by Dr. Bhattacharya on March 24, 2020 in which he stated, “If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high. . . . But a 20,000- or 40,000-death epidemic is a far less severe problem than one that kills two million.” [2]
So, he claimed the death toll might be dramatically lower than “millions” by orders of magnitude, but at about 2.5 million dead worldwide, and climbing, his rosy prediction seems to have been very wrong.
My point being that even highly trained scientists were floundering around early on as the pandemic began to sweep across the globe. We’re still in the fog of war, and I suggest a little humility is in order.
[1] see, for example my post dated Feb. 19: https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/01/27/does-lockdown-work-or-not/#comment-210256
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as-they-say-11585088464
I don’t think what you describe is a lockdown.
My impression of a lockdown is a situation where you are not permitted to go out of your home except for exercise, to buy groceries or go to the doctor. Where you are not permitted to have visitors to your home.
As we have seen when you overlay Swedish deaths/covid (they are similar to your situation) and the UK (properly in lockdown) they are virtually the same.
Very obviously lockdowns are useless.
https://www.thelocal.se/20200902/coronavirus-the-latest-news-about-the-outbreak-in-sweden-timeline-part-two
Stockholm below national average now, but still at 316 infections 100,000 / fortnight. Some regions are at more than double that. Authorities are worried that numbers are not going down faster. Apparently still no herd immunity.
Lockdown in UK so good it caused Sweden’s rates to drop too. Maybe the recent Victorian “stop living” order also helped.
Even if lockdowns did work, they still be unprecedented response to coronavirus, because one thing lockdow is successful at is neglect of our essential needs to maintain a happy and healthy life. A correct response to corona should never tell cancer patients they could wait or depressed people their mental health didn’t matter, obese people that their future problems aren’t important. The list of lockdown side effects goes on and on but lockdown supporters don’t like talking about them because they like being the heroes since it only requires them to sit down and watch Netflix all day
This was published in Feb 2018https://youtu.be/UtQuEzr0sL0 . Note the history of economic collapse and the prediction of economic collapse in a couple of years by possibly a geological mechanism with prohibition of travel. Well, it wasn’t a geological trigger, but the rest is there, so research the food shortage possibility, and then get prepared.
Amusing…
The Vaccine (Dis)Information War
So, good news, folks! It appears that GloboCap’s Genetic Modification Division has come up with a miracle vaccine for Covid! It’s an absolutely safe, non-experimental, messenger-RNA vaccine that teaches your cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response, just like your body’s immune-system response, only better, because it’s made by corporations!
OK, technically, it hasn’t been approved for use — that process normally takes several years — so I guess it’s slightly “experimental,” but the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have issued “Emergency Use Authorizations,” and it has been “tested extensively for safety and effectiveness,” according to Facebook’s anonymous “fact checkers,” so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.
More https://consentfactory.org/2021/02/23/the-vaccine-disinformation-war/
Ghana has become the first country to receive coronavirus vaccines through the Covax vaccine-sharing initiative.
The World Health Organization (WHO) programme aims to ensure that vaccines are shared fairly among all nations.
Covax is aiming to deliver about two billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines globally by the end of the year.
A total of 600,000 doses of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University arrived in Ghana’s capital Accra on Wednesday.
In a joint statement, the WHO and the United Nations children’s fund (Unicef) said it was a “momentous occasion”.
“The arrival of the Covid-19 vaccines into Ghana is critical in bringing the pandemic to an end,” they said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56180161
Excellent!!! We need to make sure the 3rd world gets the Trojan Horse Vaccine as well.
BTW – as I fled Auckland to evade the lockdown last Sunday the driver from our car was from India … I asked him how things are back home… he said you know how it is – nobody is following the lockdown orders — it’s India…and they’d starve if they didn’t work…. oh i said — so surely India must be overwhelmed with millions dying and the hospitals jammed… no … it’s not so anything like that he said…
HarryB
You continue to make bold assertions with poor evidence. The case you claim makes lockdowns a certainty in terms of legal standing namely US Supreme Court in Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana Board of Health (1902), is so different in scope and situation that I have no doubt that the current situation could be arguable. That does not mean it would succeed, but suggesting the blockading of a migrant ship from entering a quarantine area gives wholesale and unchallengeable power to the executive to lock healthy people in their houses and closing businesses is bordering on fantasy.
Your statements about comments made by Dr. Bhattacharya on March 24, 2020, conflates two completely different numbers. He was referring to the US you have tallied the world. A tally that unlike any other illness is politically dubious and highly subjective.
In the end you and I will not agree. The premise that you can claim success on a narrow set of criteria is at best disingenuous even if you are right to point out that the term work is not defined. We at least agree on that. In any case my assertion is that any NPI is a public health response and the side effects of any intervention should not be ignored.
You are or appear to be a trolley problem lever puller, a utilitarian, one that stands on the shoulders of those less able to withstand the harms and to hell with the consequences. You are free (theoretically) to make that call and I would defend your right to do so. I just morally and ethically place that view into a box marked DANGEROUS.
Suggesting that people including myself somehow think that the elderly should be sacrificed is without any foundation at all. In the UK for example whilst the GOV was literally pissing about with poorly constructed laws to stem the freedoms of healthy people it oversaw a policy of discharging sick (CV19) geriatric patients back into ill equip acre homes. Countless people died. My own mother resides in one, so there.
My own assessment from early 2020 was that the focus (UK) was catastrophically wrong. IT spent too much time on the healthy and lost sight of the sick. The death toll from all the harms is amongst the worst in the world and the long term damage will be enormous. It was in my view the worst possible outcome. The proposition that if we had not done what we did it would have been worse is a classic day one, science undergraduate, counterfactual and of no use whatsoever.
Rick, at around 4:50 this tells the plan, https://youtu.be/0iCjY9ZR4LY this was made in 2015. Most of us were still asleep then.
Rick:
Your questioning of Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana Board of Health’s applicability to Covid-19 restrictions appears to be based on a misunderstanding of how our system of government works (or is part of the conspiracy theories being circulated about the government’s authority to impose ‘lockdowns’). There are at least two elements about that case that disprove your claim that its relevance to Covid-19 ‘lockdowns’ is “bordering on fantasy”.
First: Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana Board of Health rises to the level of a landmark case because its reach is so broad that it affects the rights and liberties of the vast majority of people despite the case itself involving a small group of immigrants on a ship more than a century ago. Secondly, I have yet to discover a single legal challenge to states’ authority to impose ‘lockdowns’ which is moving up through the courts. Although a few restrictions have been overturned, the suits were narrowly targeted. This clearly implies that lawyers are unwilling to challenge the authority of states to impose ‘lockdowns’ because they know the suits will be dismissed based on the doctrine of stare decisis (“let the decision stand”).
If you doubt my word, I suggest you review Martinko v. Whitmer (April 29, 2020) [1] in which Steve Martinko filed a preliminary injunction against Governor Whitmer of Michigan alleging her Executive Orders regarding “stay-at-home” orders and restrictions on traveling to third-party vacation properties, among others, violated some of his fundamental rights. It is important to understand that Mr. Marinko was not directly challenging the governor’s authority to impose ‘lockdowns’ in this suit–he was asking the court to determine whether he might have a case to challenge that authority.
The court determined he didn’t have a case because temporarily halting the State of Michigan’s ‘lockdowns’ in order to take time to examine Mr. Marinko’s claims “would not serve the public interest, despite the temporary harm to plaintiffs’ constitutional rights”, so it denied his request.
And the basis for the denial? Although the court cited a number of cases, one of them was the landmark case I mentioned: “. . . contrary to plaintiffs’ arguments, the Supreme Court has upheld, against a constitutional challenge, a state’s quarantine of individuals even when they are NOT infected with the disease being controlled. See Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana Board of Health . . . (1902)” (Emphasis in the original.)
So, there you have it: a lawsuit was filed alleging current ‘lockdowns’ were unconstitutional, and the court found, partially based on Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana Board of Health, that the government did have the constitutional authority to impose ‘lockdowns’, and the court would not even entertain a challenge to that authority.
I know this doesn’t sit well with much of the anti-lockdown crowd which throws out all kinds of diversionary theories, but the government’s authority to impose lockdowns on the public, even those who are healthy, is based on sound constitutional grounds, which constitutional lawyers understand even if much of the public doesn’t.
Regarding Dr. Bhattacharya’s numbers: when I first read the article back in March, I did so in the context of the pandemic worldwide, but you are correct, I should have compared his 20,000 – 40,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US with the current US death toll of over 520,000. However, my two points still stand: “his rosy prediction seems to have been very wrong”, and, why did esteemed scientists like him wait half a year to publish the Great Barrington Declaration?
[1] https://www.michigan.gov/documents/ag/20200429_Opinion_and_Order_688921_7.pdf
What does that 500K represent? Well it’s the inclusion of all flu and pneumonia since they don’t exist anymore. If you’re diagnosed as positive by a PCR test that has been established to be able to find anything, not necessarily covid, and you die within 28 days (60 in some other countries), you are counted as a covid death no matter what you die from. Average age of death from covid is 80, avg age of death normally roughly 79, well it would seem you have already over lived your life expectancy. And those dying at 80 also have 2 or more comorbidities. So the frail elderly with health issues are dying. That’s what that 500K represents. But is that 500K an extra 500K than we see in previous years? Apparently that’s not true either. NY Times explains that there were increases across the board from diabetes, alzheimers, blood pressure and more. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/13/us/deaths-covid-other-causes.html. When everything is counted as covid and other diseases aren’t treated as usual, well you’re going to get what looks like a covid pandemic.
Elliot:
You wrote: “What does that 500K represent? Well it’s the inclusion of all flu and pneumonia since they don’t exist anymore.”
Hmm.. when I subtract the flu and pneumonia numbers (which no longer exist) from the 500K number, I come up with 500K. Am I missing something?
While it is true the NY Times article to which you provided the link reports “that there were increases across the board from diabetes, alzheimers, blood pressure and more”, it also states: “Some of these additional deaths may actually have been due to Covid-19, but they could have been undiagnosed or misattributed to other causes.”
The article continues: “Many of them are most likely indirectly related to the virus and caused by disruptions from the pandemic, including strains on health care systems, inadequate access to supplies like ventilators or people avoiding hospitals for fear of exposure to the coronavirus.” In other words, these people would probably still be alive if the pandemic had not hit our shores.
So, putting it all together, while the headline claims “2020 Was Especially Deadly. Covid Wasn’t the Only Culprit”, the article says that many of those other deaths were most likely indirectly related to the disease. Which is not the way you summarized the article.
But, if the 500K Covid-19 death toll is wrong, what is the actual death toll?
I would say no one knows. First of all how is it that if you subtract flu and pneumonia you still have the same number. Aren’t there amounts for flu and pneumonia each year? Secondly no matter how you look at this pandemic, the average age of death is roughly 80. Life expectancy is roughly 79 in the US. Also roughly 95% of those who have died have had 2 or more comorbidities. Over 40% died in nursing homes. So essentially frail sickly people at the end of their life are dying., which is kinda the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? As far as I’m concerned, this is all about a media fear show. They tell you the number of cases per day, and overall total, the number of deaths per day, and total, but there’s never any explanation of who is dying, like the one I just provided. Why would they continually do this? First it was about getting rid of Trump, blaming him for all deaths. Secondly the media is funded by the drug industry. They want that vaccine and the billions that it’s worth. A never ending pot of gold, mutant viruses always worse than the original one. It’s been one long year of scaring the population and it’s worked very well. Oh and the PCR test used to find cases is fraudulent, the way it’s set at too many cycles. More fear. And if tested and it comes out positive, which can have nothing to do with covid, if you die within 28 days, 60 in some countries like the UK, you will be considered a covid death no matter how you die. Does that sound fair to you? Does someone who tests positive and is elderly and frail and then dies, is it a covid death or are they at the end of their life? I just think covid is so overplayed that there have to be other reasons. So no, I don’t think 500K is a fair number. It has to be nuanced.
Harry B
The required agent provocateur is an important role and a role you accomplish quite well. Though your reference to putting opinions (other) in to boxes marked DANGEROUS, smacks of labelling, “conspiracy theorists” – consigns awkward opinions & possibilities / reasons to touch to kill any further examination, “anti lockdown crowd” – a rush to judgement and dismissal of real concerns of a significant part of the population.
All in all while most of us, myself anyway are open to be persuaded that current policy is beneficial I suspect your died in the wool lockdown and possibly blinkered.
Jerome Savage:
Is it possible you confused me with “Rick”? He, not I, wrote about views that he would put into a box marked DANGEROUS.
However, it is true that I used the term, “anti-lockdown crowd”. Neither Dr. Kendrick nor anyone else in this discussion has been willing to define the term ‘lockdown’, which I am now convinced is not unintentional. Are people in the ‘anti-lockdown crowd’ categorically opposed to all ‘lockdowns’, or just certain ones, or maybe those at certain times? Why are they unwilling to step out from behind the smokescreen they’ve created and clarify what they mean? How can people carry on a productive discussion or debate if no one is willing to define the central concept under discussion?
Consider the article’s closing paragraph: “I would look at the US where the death rate in states that locked down, and those that did not, were almost the same rate (or vastly higher in the cases of New Jersey and New York), and I would conclude that the observational studies had – thus far – failed to disprove the null hypothesis. In fact, the evidence up to this point could suggest that lockdowns may actually increase the death rate.”
I fail to understand how the good doctor can reach such a conclusion because the facts tell a very complex story. Consider that seven states did not “lock down” [1], and their per capita death rates range from Utah’s 602 deaths per million at the low end to S. Dakota’s 2,132 deaths per million at the top. (For reference, the average in the US is 1,585.) On the other hand, of the states that ‘locked down’, Vermont reported the lowest rate at 327 deaths per million while New Jersey’s 2,616 deaths per million places it at the top. (I’ve ignored Hawaii and Alaska because they are not contiguous to the other states.)
So, some states that ‘locked down’ had much higher death rates than the US average, as did some that did not ‘lock down’, and vise versa. What is the basis for the author’s claim that “lockdowns may actually increase the death rate” when some of the states that ‘locked down’ had much lower rates than the average? Frankly, I don’t see how anyone can make a compelling case either way.
Until someone is willing to begin to peel back the multiple layers of this onion and actually look at which of the “10,888,869,450,418,352,160,768,000,000 possible interactions” may have contributed to the different outcomes, I submit any conclusion is based on the person’s biases or objective.
You wrote: “All in all while most of us, myself anyway are open to be persuaded that current policy is beneficial I suspect your died in the wool lockdown and possibly blinkered.”
If you define the term “lockdown”, I’ll give you my opinion about it.
—–
[1] I use the term ‘lockdown’ here to refer to “stay-at-home-orders”. However, it should be noted there are huge differences as to when they were implemented, how long they lasted, to whom they applied, what type of exemptions they included, if they were orders with penalties or directives with no mechanism for enforcement, etc.
Something-undefined supporters’ complaints about lack of definition as to what something-undefined is, is just a pedantic exercise in semantics.
You can’t base anything on supposed deaths from the Chinese virus, because there isn’t a consistent definition of a Chinese virus death. The numbers you quote are meaningless. But if you use the Swedish government’s annual death from all causes figures, there is no excess mortality without a lockdown. Therefore your insistence on the definition of lockdown is irrelevant; in the light of the Swedish data, even Dr Kendrick’s question becomes irrelevant. The question should now be, “Why Does Anyone Lockdown?”
If you’re really looking for intentional ignoring of data, it has to be that of the Swedish statistics.
Harry … such a long post … I prefer short and sweet:
Sweden – no lockdown – no masks — not in the Top 20 in deaths per capita https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
I will leave it to you to make the right conclusion
Possibly – Apologies if I did. The problem is if we might take your observations as a reason to do nothing. Are lockdowns not largely based on WHO pandemic fixed menu?
Everything instruction prescribed has wriggle room – with few exceptions.
While trying to define lockdown, we might consider trying to define testing, define how a covid death is identified, define treatments and define how serious underlying conditions might contribute to a fatality defined as covid and how little or how much statistical reporting is carried out how realistic that reporting might be. It’s a minefield but someone must start somewhere.
Jerome Savage:
With the exception of one reference to Florida’s “stay at home” orders, and one to NZ’s ‘lockdown’, I have not offered an opinion about ‘lockdowns’, pro or con. So, I do not understand what you mean about taking my “observations as a reason to do nothing.”
It was Dr. Kendrick who chose in this article to not discuss testing, how Covid-19 deaths were identified, or any of the other related issues you noted. So, I chose to focus on what he actually wrote, namely the relationship between ‘lockdowns’ and what appears to have been his definition of ‘work’, namely, the reported death rates.
I agree it is a minefield–we don’t even know if the light we’re seeing is the end of the tunnel, or we’re actually dreaming.
Fast Eddy:
Sweden’s current per capita death rate is 1,282 deaths per million while three US states which also did NOT ‘lockdown’, Arkansas (1,763 deaths per million), Iowa (1,762), and S. Dakota (1,700) had death rates much HIGHER than Sweden. And many states that did ‘lock down’ had lower death rates than Sweden, some of them dramatically lower such as Maine (525), Oregon (544), Washington (671 deaths per million).
Why does the “anti-lockdown crowd” continually tout Sweden’s ‘no lockdown’ approach as the best way of addressing the pandemic while ignoring data from the US where we have an incredibly broad range of measures that were taken, ranging from no ‘lockdowns’ like Sweden’s to rather stringent ones, as well as a huge range in death rates?
If we extrapolate the numbers from Sweden and US states that did not “lock down”, I assume you must be comfortable with some 6,400 to 8,800 fellow Kiwis having lost their lives to the disease if NZ hadn’t ‘locked down’.
yes and Pfizer trying to take control of military bases. What for???
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/03/08/pfizer-covid-vaccine.aspx#commentfocus
Mate, you need to chill out and learn to use a calculator. With a death rate of 1,282 per million in Sweden it’ll take 780 years for everyone to die. The Chinese virus, nearest thing to immortality yet ….
You do know that in America hospitals get nearly $40,000 if they write Covid as cause of death.
You do know that in America the flu has disappeared
Hmmm… do you think some hospitals are putting Covid on the certificate when it was the flu that killed them? The symptoms are virtually identical.
Then there is the death by covid vs death with covid issue.
Then there is the comparison with the UK — seems lockdowns don’t matter — they do not reduce the death rate…
The good doctor has posted the annual deaths for Sweden. Pity that a few more old dying people died in 2020 — boo hoo — cry me a river.
Good riddance to these sacks of disease – if covid didn’t get them then something as innocuous as an overly cold shower would have tipped them into the casket… or a bad cold… or maybe a serious bout with constipation.
Keeping half dead people alive at a huge expense needs to stop. It is this sort of thing that is driving health care into bankruptcy.
And guess what — these geriatrics who live in shame as they shat the bed and have to be cleaned by some poor nurse… who spend most of their days in agony waiting to die … are done a favour by covid — and most of them probably welcome it ….
And their poor families who have to trek out to visit grandpa who can’t remember this names and stinks of stale urine and shat … do you really think they enjoy these visits? Been there done that … no thanks.
It won’t happen because we are almost certainly all going to be dead within a year — but please put a pillow over my face before shipping me off to one of these Death Camps — no way someone is going to have to demean themselves and wipe my arse and shower me… NO WAY. Pass the Covid infected blanket please!!!
Before you attack me with a cleaver… what about these 6M people who are not being treated because of these senseless lockdowns https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/07/nhs-faces-hidden-backlog-six-million-patients-awaiting-treatment/
And what about the suicides and extreme mental anguish that comes with being locked in a prison cell over and over and over again.
Then there is the financial hardship that BILLIONS of people are enduring because of this stupidity.
My wife and I sponsor two kids from the Philippines who live with us and attend school here in NZ. That country has been in lockdown for nearly a year now. We are sending money to the family of these kids so they can help their neighbours who do not have enough to eat.
Let’s not forget the generation of children who living virtual reality worlds on Zoom… or those who test positive and get stuck in a room by themselves for two weeks. If you think this is not a big deal then try locking yourself in a room for two weeks. Be sure to report back.
Am I ok with 8000 kiwis dying from covid if we were to follow sweden — ABSOLUTELY!!!
Why don’t you provide some context.. in the UK less than 400 people under 60 without serious illnesses have died from Covid. That would mean around THIRTY (30) healthy NZers would die from Covid if let it roll… (remember Lockdowns do not impact the death rate… Sweden has fewer deaths per 100k than the UK)
So thousands of already dying people would die from Covid in NZ….
When the economy here collapses and their grandkids are hunting rats for dinner .. and the daughters are being pimped by the neighbourhood gangs — maybe we can do a poll of these disease infested geriatrics… if you had to do it all over again would you prefer to have taken a bullet in your wrinkled old carcass so that your families would not have to be thrown into a living hell.
I betcha they’d say locking down was a huge mistake. The whole world has made a colossal mistake.
Well actually it’s not a mistake — as I have explained — we are being put down — like they put down dogs.
Because we are burning 6 barrels of oil for every 1 we discover.. so civilization is no longer sustainable.
8B without food – without power – without petrol — well that’s a very nasty formula….
Take the vaccine. It is actually the wisest course of action. Unless you fancy your chances against biker gangs, ex cons, military men, and assorted other violent desperate hungry men… then take that lethal injection.
They don’t call it the Compassionate Extinction Plan for nothing!!
Harry B
Wow. So the fact I suggested, based on your initial statement citing one primary case, that it could be arguable (and may not succeed) somehow deserves all sorts of ‘conspiracy theory’ allegations. I was assuming we were having a robust but sensible debate.
What you state with further research clearly upheld my preliminary view that the case could be argued. The fact that a full and substantive case is yet to arise or may never arise does in itself not make a case unarguable. This however never formed a substantive part of my response to you.
This small distraction aside, you have yet to present any real case for how you deal with the other side of the lockdown ‘coin’. My premise was clear and I acknowledged the lack of definitions, that if you issue any ‘treatment’ be that a new drug or an untried and un-researched or planned for, intervention against the basic norms of life like leaving your home to see family or friends or running your business then those interventions will have side effects or create other harms. This is the relief line the trolley problem -lever puller- sends the train down. That ‘train’ can and in this case will cause untold damage. It is this damage that anyone pulling the lever should either understand, model or at the very least acknowledge (I am not saying you personally don’t). Without a comprehensive assessment of the moral, ethical and likely cost of these actions nobody has any notion of if the levers are worth pulling at all, even on a purely utilitarian level. In the UK and I suspect elsewhere, no prior assessment was done, this I maintain is unacceptable.
My points made earlier about the better off standing on the shoulders of the poor seemed to hit a nerve. You state in response that you always use delivery/online and have just continued to use them and that I somehow suggested you should put people out of a job. That is a gross misunderstanding, so I will make my point clearer. If you or anyone supports a situation where staying at home is the default position, because of an imminent danger to life by continued close contact and work/social mixing then the situation is drastically different from the norm. Whilst you may be continuing your usual pattern of consumption, literally millions have not. My own experience of talking to deliver drivers and postal workers is that since this began in the UK they have for no increase in pay or bonuses worked like it is Christmas season. So they are seeing more people and delivering more parcels by orders of magnitude. My contention is that this is using low paid workers to shoulder a risk many find unacceptable for themselves or their family members. These workers are not emergency, medical or military personnel who sign up knowing that they will be in a whole world of shit much of the time. So if you believe the risk to be substantial enough to warrant massive sanctions and restrictions any order for delivery you make is like sending a soldier over the top from the comfort of your chateau.
If we could just stop the conspiracy theory nonsense in order to have a debate, then we get to a point where people have to decide or at least defer to one argument or the other. My objection is that the flip side of following the plans most nations and the WHO had in place for a pandemic was the least worse case. Yes more folks may have died from or with CV19 ( but nothing close to the leading models of doom) but the damage to health, lives, extra deaths from other causes and the ‘trust’ relationship between Gov’s, healthcare providers the police and countless other institutions and society is likely to be better in the medium to long term. The Swedish response (much maligned with “what about Norway” statements) is a good example of a country trusting its citizens to make some adjustments for the longer term and focus attention to where it was most needed. I was in Sweden for 3 months until Dec 2020 and the contrast in response to the UK was stark. Less terror propaganda, less blame games, less stress, more freedom, more humility, more support and open dialogue from those running the show. They admit mistakes (care homes) and react to the data. The balance was, in my estimation, about as good as you could expect. This country decided that the lever was not worth pulling because the societal harms in lives and hopes where not worth it.
Freedoms come at a price, I am willing to fight for those freedoms even when many around me have thrown them away without a second glance. Those freedoms rightly allow you to disagree in whole or part. Once they are gone however, we all lose the right to voice our concerns if it goes against the ruling narrative.
Rick:
You are attempting to draw me into a discussion/argument about which I have not once offered an opinion. My initial comments were directed at Dr. Kendrick’s use of data which I alleged was cherry picked in order to arrive at a foregone conclusion, and the refusal to define the critical terms used in his article and subsequent comments. I then addressed the question of the legal authority of ‘lockdowns’ in the US by showing that they are based on the police powers the US Constitution has granted to the states and are therefor the law of the land. Whether this authority might be contravened in the next million years has no relevancy to the present situation.
You wrote: “My points made earlier about the better off standing on the shoulders of the poor seemed to hit a nerve.”
Yes indeed, specifically the one that reacts to fallacious and useless theoretical arguments. Okay, I’ll bite:
First of all, you are playing very loosely with the numbers–no, you are in fact providing false ones. The fact is that the annual salary of postal workers and delivery people for the large firms in the US is above the median income of Americans. So, contrary to the grim picture you are painting of the poor, downtrodden workers who are being exploited by the selfish rich, the facts are very different here in the US.
On a personal level, I am retired and my income, as is that of a large percentage of retired people, is below that of the workers who typically deliver the packages to our doorsteps. So, your contention that I am “. . . using low paid workers to shoulder a risk many find unacceptable for themselves or their family members” is absolutely false in my case as well as for a large percentage of Americans, especially those at a higher risk of severe complications from Covid-19.
However, let’s say I fall for your argument and decide to no longer “stand on the shoulders of the poor”, what should I do? For example, I’m presently doing some remodeling work and need a tool that is not in my toolbox. I find the best price to be at Amazon, so how do you propose I acquire said tool because you claim I’m endangering the health of the delivery driver (who happens to have an annual income higher than mine) by ordering it from Amazon?
The same tool costs a little more at the local home improvement store, so, should I drive there instead to purchase it? But, there’s a fly in that ointment because, after it was delivered to the store (by a person whose income is probably above the median) it was placed on the shelf by a store employee (whose income is most likely not below the median income either). I would then need to bring the tool to the cash register where another employee (behind a Plexiglas shield whose annual income is probably higher than mine) would take my money. Isn’t that putting more people at risk than if I order it from Amazon? Or is it putting me at a greater risk?
And because of the way money works, if I order the tool from Amazon, I’m increasing the possibility the local employee becomes unemployed, or if I drive to the local store, I’m contributing to the chance the delivery driver for Amazon becomes unemployed. What should I do?
Or, how about our groceries? My wife decides to fix a chicken dinner next week and would normally include that with our weekly Walmart curbside pickup grocery order. But, I happen to know that the people who work in the chicken processing plants are relatively poorly paid and at increased risk for contracting the disease under discussion, so should we not order the chicken? And if we don’t, would that not help put those workers out of their jobs?
I could provide many more practical, day-to-day examples, which I’m willing to do after you answer my practical questions.
You wrote: “If we could just stop the conspiracy theory nonsense in order to have a debate . . .”
I agree, so, instead of your theories and false numbers, tell me specifically what YOU have done so you no longer “stand on the shoulders of the poor”. Unlike the many people around you who have thrown away their freedoms without a second glance, I’m sure you no longer rely on anyone in the service sector, but are instead now living totally self sufficiently. Please explain how you managed to pull that off so quickly.
Harry B
Well it seems we are now discussing the ‘chicken and the bones’ of the problem. Your divergence into your own circumstances rather deflects from the broad point. Namely the potential harms from the imposition of lockdowns defined has stay at home orders and closing of many businesses at the whim of those in power and the retention of others and the criminalisation of ordinary human contacts. This is precisely what I was saying – the problem of the flip side to any perceived benefit has the potential to be longer lasting and significantly worse in every conceivable measure if we stop looking only at our own needs. These harms have never been seriously considered, modelled or planned for.
I never suggested you should make any choice you don’t want to. I am saying that the lockdowns everywhere force some people to continue whilst others don’t, despite the perceived or real increased risk. Those forced include every strata of the human population but the ratio is heavily stacked in favour of the better off. Your suggestion that delivery drivers fall into the better off camp is something I would not share with those whom deliver your parcels.
In addition, market forces often make local business less viable and many of us have a difficult choice to make. Do we go to the local store and pay more or order off Amazon and be done with it regardless of the consequences. That choice is a personal one based on many factors including wealth. It is not wrong to make choices based on price alone.
However the lockdowns have impacted on small often independent business harder. For example I buy both kindle books and real books. I buy real books from a small bookshop that is a joy to browse. The books are more expensive than amazon but I value their offering. Many browse leave and buy from amazon. I do not judge anyone for making this choice. Yet the shop keeper and I are now deemed to be criminals if we engaged in this transaction even if I was allowed in on my own and pay with contactless. That pushes wealth to Amazon and the larger stores who have made massive profits at the expense of the smaller independent.
You asked for specific examples of my behaviour: I have stopped all orders from Amazon since this began. I have ordered for delivery or pick up the same goods form independent stores still in some kind of operation. I travel (illegally but arguable my background include criminal law) to shop at independent grocery stores, butchers and fishmongers. It costs more but may mean they are still there when the shit-show is over. I even purchase milk from a small family diary who produce milk and sold almost all to coffee shops in their area. It is special stuff and expensive, their income was slashed by almost 70% at the point of lockdown. Thankfully enough locals and some farm shops have taken up the slack and thrown them a lifeline. I do not frequent or order from some larger stores that bully those who for any reason refuse to wear a face mask. I still support the bookshop in reverse, I browse Amazon and order from them for pickup. They will be gone if this goes beyond April. I have written to my MP and the bosses of several supermarket and delivery companies to argue the case for a pay increase for their workers. I have supplied the trash collectors with crates of beer, the 5 regular delivery drivers with cash gifts at Christmas. This all done on a small fixed pension income. My wife’s small business has been decimated to the point of selling equipment to keep the show on the road. Do I consider myself a saint for the above- no. It is my response only, people are free to choose how they behave and what they support etc. We are all hypocritical in many aspects of our lives me included. I am not a dyed in the wool liberal but I do figure the consequences of our collective and individual actions on the wider community and the world.
So back to the issue at hand. Those who implement and support lockdowns need to demonstrate efficacy and costs. You cannot ignore the flip side. You certainly cannot ignore the flip side and then call Dr K a cherry picker.
The lockdown selfish world is one I do not support ethically or practically. It is OK to disagree. My revulsion to the current state of play is one I suspect shared by many who do or have lived in totalitarian regimes. The actions of people and especially those in power is to me appalling equivalent to any actions seen by despots of the 20th century. It is often asked how these regimes come to pass and then subject millions to appalling treatment. It is not at the point of a gun in the beginning. It is a crisis real or imagined that is often propagandised and used to turn society against itself. In this case I do not subscribe to a conspiracy just a failure on a grand scale – groupthink and social media madness. Those in power will stop at nothing to absolve themselves of blame and care not one bit for you or me.
Rick:
I discussed the “chicken and the bones” of the problem because *you* had previously made it about me by claiming on Feb. 24, “You are or appear to be a trolley problem lever puller, a utilitarian, one that stands on the shoulders of those less able to withstand the harms and to hell with the consequences.” Interestingly enough, my personal situation helps illustrate the absurdity of your claim.
I was ordered to comply with a relatively brief, one month “stay-at-home” order, and had no alternative way of obtaining the goods and services I needed and desired, and therefor continued to obtain them in the same manner as before the emergency order took effect. The trolley problem experiment is based on the premise the lever puller has options and the ability to choose between them–I had no such options.
Your allegation about me exploiting the people who you claim to be “less able to withstand the harms” by obeying the ‘lockdown’ order is false because they are typically younger than me, and therefor at a *lower* risk of serious complications from the disease, and their income is typically higher than mine. Come to think of it, aren’t these the very people the “anti-lockdown crowd” claims should be able to continue to live as they had, pre-pandemic? Besides, I had no face-to-face interactions with these delivery people, so how was I endangering their health by helping keep them employed?
Regarding your claim about “the problem of the flip side” whose “harms have never been seriously considered . . .” This statement is absolutely false when it comes to Florida. (Yes, once again I’m being specific because theories of a certain flavor typically fall flat when exposed to the light of known facts.) The Governor of Florida made numerous references to his concerns about the negative long term consequences of restricting people’s movements and imposing restrictions upon how businesses operate, and during the week of April 20, 2020 he convened the Task Force to Re-Open Florida. I encourage you to look over the list of leaders who were invited to help provide him with guidance so he had a better picture of the consequences of his emergency orders and how to lift them as quickly as was reasonably possible. [1]
This puts the lie to your claim that these harms have never been seriously considered because on May 4, 2020, Phase 1 of his “Plan For Florida’s Recovery” was implemented. Maybe such leadership is absent elsewhere, but it ticks me off when people make such unfounded claims in order to prop up their theory.
Your sky-is-falling claim, “The actions of people and especially those in power is to me appalling equivalent to any actions seen by despots of the 20th century” is more theory of a certain flavor, at least as it applies to me–and let’s not forget, you made this discussion about me. That’s because you either ignorantly or deliberately ignore the politics and legalities in Florida (and undoubtedly elsewhere too). In a nutshell, the broad emergency authority the Governor of Florida had to ‘lock down’ people, including me, for about a month, and the restrictions he imposed on businesses are ultimately subject to the will of the people.
While the US Constitution does not prohibit the governor from using his emergency powers to “lock down” the state, the Florida Statutes do place limits upon him which, for example, can be found in § 252.36(2), Fla. Stat. The point being that the people of the state of Florida have lawful mechanisms at their disposal to curb the abuse of these types of emergency powers. So, despots don’t have a real chance in Florida, which completely undermines your theory of a certain flavor. (This is not to say there are no threats to our liberties, but they are unrelated to the pandemic.)
I make no claims about the situation where you live, but a little research on your part would have revealed the absurdity of your trolley problem lever puller claim as well as the theory about despots here in Florida.
[1] https://www.flgov.com/2020/04/22/governor-ron-desantis-re-open-florida-task-force/
P.S. I don’t know what is happening with these posts because there has been a delay of as much as a couple of days before I’m notified of them having been posted, and I’ve had at least one post never show up.
Rick:
You wrote: “You are or appear to be a trolley problem lever puller, a utilitarian, one that stands on the shoulders of those less able to withstand the harms and to hell with the consequences. You are free (theoretically) to make that call and I would defend your right to do so. I just morally and ethically place that view into a box marked DANGEROUS.”
Not once in this discussion have I defended or criticized a single ‘lockdown’, not once!
I have repeatedly pointed out that no one is willing to define the term ‘lockdown’, nor the other operative term, ‘work’. I did offer a definition of the term ‘work’ as being the stated goal of the ‘lockdown’, and then provided a few examples of countries such as New Zealand, Australia (Eggs ‘n beer is the person who pointed that out), and possibly Taiwan, or states like Florida who appear to have achieved their stated goals.
I also provided an example of “lockdown Florida style”, and pointed out that in the US ‘lockdowns’ are among legal powers the government enjoys. But, not once did I opine about the consequences of them.
Maybe you’re alluding to something you wrote earlier: “The principle is one by which the wealthy are able to shield themselves easier that those less fortunate. If you have stayed at home and ordered anything including food to be delivered to your house then you have used mainly low paid workers to ‘risk’ their lives for your continued convenience.”
First of all, the principal you stated has been true throughout recorded history–does anyone really believe that any point in time, the wealthy did NOT have more resources at their disposal than those less fortunate? So, what does that have to do with the present crisis?
Secondly, since you have decided to make this personal: I have been ordering goods online from the earliest days when they became available through the internet, from Amazon for 20 years, and mail order long before that. These items have been delivered to my house by USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc. for decades. I was picking up our groceries through Walmart’s curbside pickup service more than half a year before the pandemic hit our shores. I have never had food delivered to our house with the exception of pizza, which I’ve been doing occasionally for decades.
So, when it comes to employing “low paid workers” for my convenience, nothing has changed because they were delivering goods to my house for decades before the pandemic hit, and while it’s been in full swing.
Should I be trying to put these people out of a job–what problem would that solve? I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make.
This is a re-post as my original did not appear:
Did anyone see a professor from Southampton University opine on ‘the vaccines’ on South Today? Professor Saul Faust, I think. He said that all (all three?) the coronavirus vaccines are 100% effective at preventing serious illness and death. This was on a television news programme. 100%. The pharmaceutical companies must be really pleased.
Based on the data in the link you provided SD deaths are at 213 per 100k and ND deaths are at 193 per 100k. Can you explain what happened here? Maybe not locking down hurt as well.
New York and New Jersey are exposed to world because of all the people coming to the US thru the airports. So you cannot compare the two with Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Utah! Nobody told you that?
That works only if you believe the germ theory applies to virus transmission. Viruses were able to get round the world hundreds of years ago, so maybe there’s another mechanism which doesn’t depend on disease carrying foreigners.
David – thank you for this profound demonstration of logic!
What I was unaware of was the Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Utah! have been wrapped in a giant plastic bubble … and that all these people flying into NY and NJ do not move out of the cities… nor do any of the people that they infect with Covid.
I guess we have learned from our mistake from a few years ago … see what happens when you don’t wrap up state!!! (now don’t get angry … we are all here to learn — I’m just trying to help…)
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.
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/
Harry B echoes a common sentiment: “I am very concerned about the implication that the lives of seniors should have been sacrificed to the younger generation can continue to live unhindered by the plight of their elders.”
I am from the UK so let me describe the plight of our elderly during lockdown:
If you are in a care home:
• You will not receive visitors.
• If you have dementia, you will not be able to cognitively process why this is happening, you will just know that all of your relatives and loved ones have disappeared from your life.
• All social activities inside the home will stop
• All trips and activities that got you out of the home will stop
If you are lucky enough to live independently
• Maybe you enjoyed your retirement and kept your brain active by doing an evening class, visiting the theatre, the cinema, watching sports, going to the pub, eating out, popping to your local café to meet friends, having friends and family round. All that stopped.
• If you have grandchildren and your adult children are willing to disobey the ‘rules’ you might be lucky enough to see them. Otherwise – no family visits. I am not joking when I say that a member of Parliament in this country ‘joked’ about leaving her car parked across her parents’ driveway to stop them going out.
If you need routine or ‘non-essential’ medical care – forget it. Unless you have covid, having your health looked after is ‘non-essential’.
If you are still active and know that if you do not ‘use it’ you will ‘lose it’.
• Maybe your exercise is to walk or drive a short distance to somewhere beautiful and sit in the fresh air. Not allowed – for large parts of our lockdown benches were taped up or you would be moved on by the police, or even fined for driving to a beauty spot.
• Maybe a visit to the hairdresser, spa or nail bar gives you the social interaction and confidence to keep ‘making the effort’. Not allowed.
• Maybe your joints are not what they were so you can only do substantial exercise by swimming. Not allowed – for almost the entire lockdown period, swimming pools were closed, even outdoors pools.
• Maybe you attended an exercise or dance class, or some kind of organised sport to keep you motivated – all these activities are designated non-essential.
The concept of lockdown was not safety, it was to stop any ‘non-essential activity’. No allowance was made for activities that were relatively safe and beneficial. The grim truth is that if you are retired, much of your daily life is deemed ‘non-essential’ by the government. The government has robbed the elderly, the group they claim to be ‘protecting’, of the most basic choices about their daily lives.
So, let’s try and rid ourselves of the notion that people who oppose lockdowns don’t care about the elderly.
Well said Paula. We are lucky because we have grandchildren, and their parents think the same as me about these draconian impositions, they are best ignored. Today’s ukcolumn has several examples of the stupid crap-speak from the likes of SAGE and the lying politicians. They manage to make contradicting statements IN THE SAME SENTENCE.
Paula:
Once again, there are ‘lockdowns’, ‘lockdowns’, and ‘lockdowns’…
My 92 year old mother lives in a nursing home here in the US, and the restrictions you describe are similar to the ones imposed on her. However, some restrictions are beginning to be eased because of the high rate of nursing home resident vaccinations. We live on the other side of the country, so twice a year my wife and I fly up to visit with her, but we have not seen her since the fall of 2019, and we’ve made no plans to visit with her this year.
The ‘lockdowns’ in Florida where we live were dropped a long time ago (although nursing homes and similar facilities are still under tight restrictions), and I think most of the ones in the state where my mother lives have also been dropped. Consequently, with the exception of my mother’s situation, ‘lockdowns’ are a thing of the past and don’t affect me personally. (Which is not to say life has returned to normal, because many people continue to wear masks if they can’t maintain a comfortable distance from others, or are indoors, and also continue to take other precautions.) So, I have to admit I am not able to identify with the other restrictions you described.
It is important to consider the comment you quoted in its context, which was: “Oh yes, the lockdowns have caused tremendous damage to millions of people, but if governments had done nothing, what might have been the damage?”
In other words, if no ‘lockdowns’ had been imposed so that the younger generation could continue to live like they always had, what would have been the consequences for the elderly and those in poor health?
A decision to inconvenience a young person for a short period of time so an elderly person can live another day, another month, maybe another year does not, in my estimation, seem unreasonable, but the converse seems morally wrong. And that is what I meant by sacrificing seniors so the younger generation can continue to live their lives.
I was not aware of the restrictions you describe that continue to be imposed on elderly people in the UK who are living on their own. Can you provide me with a link to a copy of the official documentation that imposes those restrictions because I would like to read it?
HarryB, you’ll find the official rules of the current UK lockdown here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-lockdown-stay-at-home and you’ll also see how slowly restrictions are going to be lifted. You won’t find the bit about the MP parking her car across her parent’s driveway, so you’ll have to trust me on that, and also bear in mind that the UK has had a staggering 64 changes to the rules since March 2020, including three national lockdowns, regional tiered restrictions (often little different from a full lockdown), and restrictions on international travel. We did have some brief re-opening in the Summer.
I wanted to talk particularly about the effect of lockdowns on the elderly because I often see this framed as a generational issue which I find too simplistic, but again in the UK you simply cannot describe what has been done to the young as an ‘inconvenience’ that was put in place for a short period of time. Schools were closed for about 3 months in the Summer, and again for 2 months after Christmas. In between, not all year groups were able to attend, and whole year groups were regularly sent home to ‘isolate’ when a child or adult tested positive, missing two weeks of school (sometimes repeatedly). External exams were cancelled for Summer 2020 and will again be cancelled for Summer 2021. And don’t get me started on what has happened in Universities.
So I would agree, if it had been a minor inconvenience for a short time, and lives were saved, that is not unreasonable. But unfortunately none of that happened here in reality.
We should also remember that just because the government deemed certain activities, largely falling within the retail, hospitality and travel industries, ‘non-essential’, that does not mean these industries are not essential to our economy. Other countries in Europe understood this last Summer when they opened up, while we did everything we could to deter foreign tourists from visiting. At the end of the day you cannot separate the welfare of the elderly (unless they are very rich) from the economic health of the country. If I were retired I would be begging the government to prioritise the economy even if only for my own self-interest, but sadly, the most vulnerable in this country do not have a voice. The cost of facilitating shielding for those who want to is miniscule compared to the money currently being spent paying healthy, working age people to stay at home and do nothing.
Paula:
Thank you for the link. Although I did not read the whole law, I did spend a fair amount of time trying to gain an overall picture of it and some of the details that would apply to me if I were subject to it.
I’m sorry to beat a dead horse, but this law clearly demonstrates why the refusal of the “anti-lockdown crowd” to define the term ‘lockdown’ leaves people like me with no option but to conclude they are deliberately trying to confuse the issue in order to avoid dealing with the facts.
Compare the UK’s “Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020” with the “State of Florida, Executive Order Number 20-91 (Essential Services and Activities During COVID-19 Emergency)” law. [1]
I assume both would be classified as “lockdowns”, but what a dramatic difference! I was “locked-down” for a month, while you have been “locked-down” for how long? I was ordered to stay at home with the promise the ‘lockdown’ would be lifted a month later if the goal (“flattening the curve”) had been achieved, and a month later the ‘lockdown’ law expired because the stated goal had been reached. Based on what I knew back then, I felt our stay-at-home law designed to “flatten the curve” seemed logical, and almost a year later I continue to be of the same opinion.
Florida’s governor understood the impact on the economy, so a month later he issued “Executive Order Number 20-112 (Phase 1: Safe. Smart. Step-by-Step. Plan for Florida’s Recovery)” which initiated a series of steps to reduce the restrictions on businesses. I submit that a careful reading of the order as well as what he said leads one to conclude that he wanted people to “do the right thing”, namely, try to reduce their risk of being exposed to the disease, but he didn’t think it was the government’s responsibility to micromanage people’s lives. Or to put it another way, people are going to get sick and die from this disease anyway, so let’s work together in an effort to muddle through this without making matters worse. (It is, of course, much more complicated, but I’m trying to sketch the big picture.)
If it is difficult for someone to walk in another person’s shoes, the inconvenience I experienced for a month makes it impossible for me to understand what you are going through. All ‘lockdowns’ are not the same, and I have no doubt I would be chafing under the restrictions that have been imposed on you.
You wrote: “If I were retired I would be begging the government to prioritise the economy even if only for my own self-interest, but sadly, the most vulnerable in this country do not have a voice.”
I find this to be a very curious statement because here in the US, AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) advocates for people over the age of 50 whether or not they are retired. It is considered to be one the most powerful special interest groups in the country, and politicians who oppose policies endorsed by AARP do so at their peril.
[1] https://www.flgov.com/2020-executive-orders/
FrankenCOVID!!!
New California Covid strain branded ‘the devil’ as terrifying variant MORE infectious
SCIENTISTS have told the world to brace for a new COVID-19 strain which they have nicknamed “the devil” – because it is more infectious than previous variants.
They also fear it could combine with the strain already identified in the UK to create an even deadlier virus. In a study which helps explain a dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US state of California, scientists at UC San Francisco said a cluster of mutations marks it out as a “variant of concern”.They also fear it could combine with the strain already identified in the UK to create an even deadlier virus. In a study which helps explain a dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US state of California, scientists at UC San Francisco said a cluster of mutations marks it out as a “variant of concern”.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1402278/California-Covid-strain-coronavirus-variant-kent-south-africa-brazil-joe-biden
Sweden did not have a lockdown.
Here are the deaths in Sweden for the last ten years:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/
And the population for the last ten years – currently 10.4m (31st October 2020)
https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/population
So annual deaths per 100,000 of population are:
2011=955.
2012=970.
2013=946.
2014=923.
2015=932.
2016=924.
2017=920.
2018=911.
2019=868.
2020=942.
Average 929.
Considering that the 2019 deaths were 7% below average, an uptick might have been expected in 2020 anyway – regardless, the death rate for 2020 was the fourth highest of the decade.
And if you want to muck around with deaths per age group, the Swedes let you have all the data:
https://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/en/ssd/START__BE__BE0101__BE0101I/Dodstal/
In English!
Amazingly, the death rates of all age groups are not statistically significant between 2012 and 2020.
Deaths per ‘000 of population
60-64 years 2012 6.85
60-64 years 2020 6.17
65-69 years 2012 11.34
65-69 years 2020 10.51
70-74 years 2012 18.59
70-74 years 2020 17.48
75-79 years 2012 33.08
75-79 years 2020 30.31
80-84 years 2012 61.77
80-84 years 2020 58.14
85-89 years 2012 117.86
85-89 years 2020 112.94
90+ years 2012 238.89
90+ years 2020 244.29
So if you were looking at this data, unaware that the Chinese virus existed, could you spot anything to indicate that there was a health crisis? That there should have been a lockdown?
Please continue to post this and let’s see if you repeat this truth enough times if it is possible to cure stupidity.
Sure, but I don’t think it’ll work.
Further analysis of the last three years shows that the bulk of the mortality deficit in 2019 was in the >55s.
55-59 years 2018 3.63.
55-59 years 2019 3.49.
55-59 years 2020 3.65.
60-64 years 2018 6.37.
60-64 years 2019 6.02.
60-64 years 2020 6.17.
65-69 years 2018 10.71.
65-69 years 2019 9.96.
65-69 years 2020 10.51.
70-74 years 2018 17.32.
70-74 years 2019 16.47.
70-74 years 2020 17.48.
75-79 years 2018 29.52.
75-79 years 2019 27.97.
75-79 years 2020 30.31.
80-84 years 2018 55.74.
80-84 years 2019 52.44.
80-84 years 2020 58.14.
85-89 years 2018 107.44.
85-89 years 2019 101.73.
85-89 years 2020 112.94.
90+ years 2018 231.67.
90+ years 2019 219.82.
90+ years 2020 244.29.
So it wouldn’t be surprising to see an increase in 2020 in these age groups as 2019 was very low, and actually 2018 was the second lowest mortality in the decade too.
The comparative figures for the UK aren’t available. For Germany, even 2019 death statistics are not complete.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1127989/deaths-number-germany/
If you want to do comparisons for other countries, to the extent that estimates and provisional figures may suffice, this page has interactive graphs where you can select countries and age groups.
https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
The disclaimers about the accuracy are about two thirds the way down. Really, it shouldn’t be that hard to collate the raw data. Are they dead? Check. What date did they die? Check. What age group are they in? Check. What’s the excess mortality/mortality deficit? Check.
So if you want to show that lockdowns work against the Chinese virus …. you can’t. Sweden’s official government data shows that not having a lockdown is irrelevant to the overall mortality.
But if you look the figures for NZ and Oz, their death rates have declined. Which as we’ve had a zero case ‘flu season is not surprising. Perpetual lockdown of nursing homes may have helped here, but they could have done that anyway without destroying their economies.
E n B
Is there a suggestion, perhaps more than a suggestion that countries adjacent Oz & Nz, in Oceania as far Nortj as Japan have the same covid death rates as hard lockdown Oz & Nz but with no lockdowns?
Jerome, I don’t know. The main problem with that suggestion is the definition of a Covid death. But with Australia having announced 909 deaths with a population of 26m, and Japan 7,500 and 126m, Japan has 3,000 excess Covid deaths (there’s a meaningless figure squared!) of 3,000. As Japan had 1,380,000 deaths in 2019, 3,000 is statistically insignificant. Even the 7,500 is only 0.54% of the total.
Certainly tapping Australia, Japan and NZ into the first chart in
https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
gives Japan a good rap for their Chinese flu management. Hardly worth cancelling the Olympics for!
The problem is that for every time you post the MSM post 10,000 more Covid lies across thousands of outlets… so it is a Sisyphean task you are facing….
I spoke to a mate over the weekend – he can’t wait to get the jab…. and he was mocking me as an anti-vaxxer…. as I informed him, I have no issue with vaccines… but I do have a problem with on that has not been tested for long term side effects… and that I do not need because I am in excellent health so will likely win the lottery before I die of Covid.
The MSM has done a fantastic job — he immediately retorted with ‘what about the long term side effects’… and ‘lots of young people die from Covid’…. I passed him a link from the CDC side ‘long term side effects and complications flu’….. and a Washington Post article ‘less than 100 people under 18 have died of Covid in the US’ and another article demonstrating that only about 400 people under 60 who did not already have very serious illnesses have died in the UK…
I suggested he read https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/22/synthetic-mrna-covid-vaccines-a-risk-benefit-analysis/ and https://www.wired.com/2003/05/feds-race-to-make-sars-vaccine/
I doubt that any of this will sway him….. this is the power of repetitive lies…. particularly when the purveyors attach a few named experts supporting them…. once the seed is planted it is almost impossible to kill it….
I suppose there are parallels with people who get trapped in cults?
Well, sort of true. But I do the research mainly for the benefit of friends and family which gives me a sound basis for my actions (or inactions) and to give back to sites like this one which give me a lot. If some of it filters through to msm, like a much earlier thing on the Chinese virus which I sent to a mate in NZ who forwarded it to his son whose girlfriend’s cousin’s boyfriend worked in a Sydney radio station and they ran with the story …. so you just never know. But if you do nothing, nothing will happen.
re your mate, I went on a 20km hike yesterday with a few mates. I’ve known them all for thirty years but was surprised that one of them, who considers himself to be an intellectual, relies on the ABC (the Aussie equivalent of the Beeb) as his main news source. Perhaps that’s all part of being an intellectual? He thinks China is OK, doesn’t see any possible threat from them owning a port in Darwin or having a massive airport facility in remote WA, thinks they’re entitled to do what they like in HK and isn’t aware of the border skirmishes with India or the genocidal activities. Looks like the Confucius Institutes and other University organisations funded by Soros, Gates etc. are succeeding in their brainwashing. He is currently studying for his PhD in philosophy from a prominent (naturally) university. Although it is the same uni I went to, so it’s not that special. Oh, that’s his other source of news, The Conversation, an online rag funded by universities and written by uni staff. It’s bias is even more blatant than the Grauniad’s; I guess a hundred years of experience helps in watering down the obvious.
After his comments on China, clearly there was no point in wasting time on vaccines, China virus or lockdowns. Gotta pick the battles. Your comparison with cults is valid, I think.
In the meantime Prince Philip remains in hospital.
E n B re your post of Feb. 28, 2021 at 9:22 pm (which has no option to respond to). If you have already seen this apologies – if not, its a useful oversight of regional infection and related morbidities with a focus on Oceania. Ivor Cummins opening up debate.
Also i See Auckland is going in to a 7 day lockdown.
Thanks Jerome, I hadn’t seen it and it’s interesting.
Last point first – there are no T cell immunity testing facilities in Australia. Ivor is confusing T cell immunity with antibodies. Five or six studies have shown T cell immunity (preparedness might be a better expression) from 20% to 50% to the Chinese virus from people who’ve not been exposed to it. This is not the same as antibody immunity. I’ve tried to be tested for T cell immunity, but been told it’s impossible. I think I could get it done in Singapore.
His main error in the comparison of NZ and Oz deaths to the rest of the world, and the WHO and others’ data on lockdowns is their inefficacy “where the virus is already in the community”. What we’ve done is to use lockdowns to eliminate the virus from the community. We aren’t using lockdowns to (try to) slow the spread, flatten the curve or whatever; it’s gone. At least, so everyone believes. And when we look at our freedoms as a result of that strategy, e. g. looking at reports of police heavy handedness strip searching Welshmen for walking on the beach, talking to rellies in the UK, and so on, it’s a difficult strategy to argue against. To most Australians (perhaps not the majority of Victorians!) Ivor appears to be the idiot here. In Qld, we have full sports stadiums, restaurants, hair, nail and tattoo salons, buses, churches, shops …. yes, social distancing is still encouraged “where possible” and you have to check in to all these places (for contact tracing), no mask mandates and even those we know terrified enough to wear masks when it wasn’t mandatory have stopped. Compared to the rest of the world we’ve used our isolation to great effect.
His comments on air travel are way off the mark too. Particular attention to arrivals from China were a very early feature, resulting in Queensland detecting the virus in a Chinese arrival on 28th January, quarantining the whole Chinese women’s soccer team on the 29th and another Chinese woman on the 30th. Subsequently the whole group travelling with the first case were also quarantined, along with Tom Hanks and his wife. The bulk of the Chinese migration, uni students due in Feb/Mar, were cancelled. When did the UK start restricting arrivals at Heathrow? January this year?
So, let’s be clear. Firm lockdowns, taken early enough, are very effective in eliminating the virus from the community. Subsequent outbreaks, usually linked to seepage from quarantine facilities through cleaners or security guards, are now dealt with through three or five day lockdowns based on prior experience. Very definite short term benefits.
Long term? His comments on dormancy are spot on. The Auckland case seems to have come from nowhere. We have detections in sewage here where there have never been any cases. There is no exit strategy to returning to interstate or international travel without the risk of finding yourself locked down on arrival at Melbourne, followed by a two week ban from Qld as a precaution. We won’t have any tourist or student trade returning if the mandatory two week hotel quarantine at your cost is maintained. Unless they have been testing for immunity prior to vaccinations, which only started a week ago, we’ll never know if there is any natural immunity in the population. Especially as the WHO has proclaimed that natural herd immunity doesn’t exist. The Swedes have shown that there was no need for lockdowns if it is in the community, and long term I’m sure that their strategy will be proven to be the best overall. They will almost certainly have some resistance to new strains, which we cannot have. None of the vaccines are of a type that have been used in humans until last year. They are ALL experimental. None give protection against the virus in the way that measles vaccines are supposed to, they only reduce the severity, so if they’re part of the solution we will have to get used to it in the community which will require a huge mental adjustment.
Thanks E n B
Interesting, tho your last comment, “the solution we will have to get used to it in the community ” – “it” being the so called vaccine or the virus ?
My apologies. I posted a link to Our World in Data (OWiD), and I’ve been messing around with the interactive charts which are very easy to use. They show clearly that Sweden does have excess mortality. So I followed their links to the ‘raw’ data, which differs from the data in my Statistica link. Hence, to the Swedish govt site, and their raw data – which is clearly where Statistica got their numbers from. OWiD’s data understates 2016 to 2019 deaths by 2.64% to 3.19%, but 2020 by only 1.20%. Hence their interactive chart showing excess deaths in disagreement with the official govt. figures.
From an audit POV, OWiD’s numbers are untrustworthy until proven otherwise. Sorry about that.
I guess it’s just an indication of how little you can trust peoples’ numbers. Are the Swedish govts numbers correct? Impossible to check, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Should I email OWiD asking where their numbers came from? Probably. But I’ve already done this to similar organisations many times, and never got a reply, so, no, I can’t be bothered. I’ll take the Swedes at their word.
Eggs ‘n beer Re your comment March 2, 2021 at 10:19 pm . Its good to see constructive criticism of Ivor’s work though your comment re “chinese arriving 28th January, quarantining the whole Chinese women’s soccer team on the 29th and another Chinese woman on the 30th. ” “The bulk of the Chinese migration, uni students due in Feb/Mar, were cancelled.”
The assertion is clearly made by Ivor and and many others that the virus was prevalent long before January before there was any awareness of the virus and before any restrictions on immigrants or tourists were applied. Think Italy and Brazil and virus traces in September and November (I think) respectively. OZ and NZ being much closer would naturally be more exposed.
Norway, which did lockdown early, but later regretted it, has no change in mortality:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/611743/number-of-deaths-in-norway/
2020 deaths 40,611
https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/statistikker/folkemengde/aar-per-1-januar
Probably the closest analogy in terms of climate and culture.
These authoritarians are definitely exhibiting signs of a serious affliction.
From https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/big-brother-news-watch/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=7ab61c63-bdc0-423a-89ec-c0dfb0a560a0
Babies Not Exempt From Mask Bylaw at Some Regional Businesses
Kitchener Today reported:
A Guelph mother says she was following public health advice when she was asked to leave the premises of a nearby ski hill for not putting a mask on her 13-month-old son.
Rebecca Adam said she was picking up a ski badge on Sunday at Chicopee in Kitchener for her three-and-a-half year old daughter’s upcoming lessons.
“At the entrance I got turned down because my baby didn’t have on a mask,” said Adam. “I told her under two, Ontario law is no masks. She said it didn’t matter.”
At no time were Adam and her son indoors. She said people were only allowed to line up outside and that everyone was physically distanced.
Adam said she asked to speak to a manager, who reiterated there were no exceptions to the rule, not even for babies. She ended up walking away without getting the pass.
From childrenshealthdefense.org
Babies Not Exempt From Mask Bylaw at Some Regional Businesses
Kitchener Today reported:
A Guelph mother says she was following public health advice when she was asked to leave the premises of a nearby ski hill for not putting a mask on her 13-month-old son.
Rebecca Adam said she was picking up a ski badge on Sunday at Chicopee in Kitchener for her three-and-a-half year old daughter’s upcoming lessons.
“At the entrance I got turned down because my baby didn’t have on a mask,” said Adam. “I told her under two, Ontario law is no masks. She said it didn’t matter.”
At no time were Adam and her son indoors. She said people were only allowed to line up outside and that everyone was physically distanced.
Adam said she asked to speak to a manager, who reiterated there were no exceptions to the rule, not even for babies. She ended up walking away without getting the pass.
Dear Dr Kendrick
This is Hearing No. 37 of the German Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee with cell biologist Dr. Vanessa Schmidt-Krueger. She presents evidence from the European Medical Association’s Open Assessment Report on the vaccine.
She discusses contaminants that were found in the vaccine, plus queries about how dosage was ascertained, and most worryingly about specific risks of lipid nanoparticles, the toxicity of which has been known about for 20 years.
I suggest everyone read and disseminate.
http://enformtk.u-aizu.ac.jp/howard/gcep_dr_vanessa_schmidt_krueger/
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2021/02/coronavirus-mutant-covid-19-virus-dubbed-the-devil-causing-concern-in-california.html
After reading that transcript.. I am thinking … the ‘vaccine’ is The Devil
Mrs S: Thank you very much for that link. Fascinating and horrifying.
Jerome, thanks for your replies. Firstly, it’s the virus we will have to get used to living with, as the vaccine won’t eliminate it. Which does also means we’ll have to get used to living with the vaccine Karens.
Regarding Ivor, I know what you mean – but regardless of when the virus arrived in the community the lockdowns have worked as intended. We have no community transmissions and, certainly in Queensland, very few restrictions on gatherings and movements. 200 at weddings and funerals now, 50 people at your house (unless it’s a wedding or a funeral …. I didn’t say the restrictions were logical), all businesses are open and we can travel interstate but not to hotspots.
Welcome to Lockdown Island
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
“This could be Heaven or this could be Hell”
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say…
Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Lockdown Island
Any time of year (Any time of year)
You can find it here
Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget
So I called up the Captain,
“Please bring me my wine”
He said, “We haven’t had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine”
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say…
Welcome to the Lockdown Island
Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
They livin’ it up at the Lockdown Island
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)
Bring your alibis
Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”
And in the master’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
“Relax, ” said the night man,
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! ”
Unfortunately Lockdown Island is going bankrupt because we are accepting no new guests… and the guests we have are no longer spending cuz.
I suppose if one has to be in prison … waiting for the Lethal Injection … it’s not such a bad option
E n B
Thanks. – If the dormancy theory is correct, ie that of the Hope Sympson stable then regardless of lock outs or lockdowns we should see the winter season respiratory virus cases popping up – Auckland’s very recent week lockdown arising from a case (or cases – not sure which) might be an indicator.
Jerome, we already have – in summer! Last month all the ED in South East Queensland (where nearly everyone lives) were overflowing with RSV patients. Patients in corridors, beds shoved into bathrooms etc. “Unprecedented”, according to the media.
A totally unrelated fact: RSV shares many symptoms with the Chinese virus.
Another totally unrelated fact: in Queensland, we haven’t had a positive Chinese virus test (outside of travellers returning from abroad,in quarantine) for, two months?
I don’t know what Ct thresholds are used in Australia.
Mmmmm. RSV & definitely not China Virus. Wouldn’t look good if it were the China V ? In Auckland last weeks outbreak was certainly recognised as the latter
I am greatly amused by this …. https://maskexemption.cards/product/vaccine-exemption-card/
Let’s play connect the dots…
A COVID-19 variant discovered in California has been dubbed “the devil” by one of the scientists studying it. And he fears if its spread isn’t stopped, it could one day meet the highly infectious UK variant and swap genes, creating a “nightmare scenario”.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2021/02/coronavirus-mutant-covid-19-virus-dubbed-the-devil-causing-concern-in-california.html
If you have not watched this I would highly recommend doing so — because there is a leading vaccine specialist who states that there is an immense risk of creating very dangerous variants of Covid by using these ‘vaccines’ … he does not think there is a conspiracy to create these variants… he just thinks they have got it wrong … and need to change course immediately before it is too late (he is naive)
Then as we know Dr Michael Yeadon has launched a legal action against the FDA to stop the roll out of the vaccines https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/22/synthetic-mrna-covid-vaccines-a-risk-benefit-analysis/
One final dot – here is Trudeau admitting ‘variants are under development’
Anyone not think there is a master plan… a grand conspiracy?
Anyone think they’ll still be alive at this time next year?