10th February 2022
Some observations on the infection fatality rate of COVID19
[Mainly that it does not really exist]
When COVID struck the world two years ago, or thereabouts, the first thing that happened was rather unfortunate. Namely, the instant and widespread distortion, nay destruction, of data. This happened so fast that it became almost impossible to know what on earth was going on. Who to believe … what to believe?
I have never been so naïve as to think that we are not constantly subjected to certain ‘truths’, which may or may not be true. After all, I have been battling against the dreaded ‘cholesterol hypothesis’ for decades. In doing so I have become something of an expert in recognising seriously distorted data when I see it.
I have learned to search for things not said, which are usually far more important than the things that are. I have also learned to treat the words used with great distrust. Words such as ‘fact’ for example. Facts have a disturbing tendency to crumble under pressure … note to the dreaded dementors, sorry fact checkers.
However, I felt I had become pretty expert in navigating the games played. I had learned to sail the stormy waters of scientific truths, or facts, reasonably well. Then came COVID, and the world of fact distortion achieved warp drive. Alleged facts flashed past so fast, and in such great numbers, that it all became a blur.
In this blog I will attempt to remove some of the blur surrounding the issue which became key to ‘The Great COVID Wars’. This is the Infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID19.
You may not feel this was central to everything that occurred, or remains so, but I hope to convince you that it is the single most important ‘fact’ of them all. The keystone. Also, the one most jealously guarded by the fact checkers. ‘Put your weapon down, place both hands in the air, and step away from your IFR.’
To begin. There was a time when epidemiologists, with regard to infectious diseases, used two different terms. Infection fatality rate (IFR) and case fatality rate (CFR). Although it has to be said that the distinction between the two was never exactly black and white.
After all, how do you decide when someone who is ‘infected ‘with a disease, reaches the point when they become a ‘case?’ Historically this happened when someone became so unwell that they were admitted to hospital. Whereupon the disease itself would be diagnosed with a test of some sort – sometimes. Sometimes clinical signs and symptoms were all that were used.
Which means that ‘cases’ have always been somewhat easier to count and compare. However, no-one has ever really known how many people were infected in the first place. By which I mean those people who were not seen anywhere, by anyone, and so never managed to the reach the status of a ‘case.’
In general, those with a mild infection just lay in bed, for a while feeling a bit sorry for themselves. Indeed, the advice for those with ‘flu’ always used to be to stay at home, drink plenty, and take some medication to control the temp and the aches and pains. This represents the traditional three Ps management technique. ‘Take two paracetamol and piss off.’ [Paracetamol is called acetomenophin in the US – take two As and piss off … nah, doesn’t really work]
Ergo, those with few symptoms, or no symptoms, were never seen or counted. So, the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR), which represent the total number of people who become infected, who then die, has always been subject to a great deal of guesswork.
A whole series of the underlying problems with defining IFR [and also CFR] were highlighted in the paper ‘case fatality risk of influenza A (HIN1pdm09): a systemic review.’ The authors looked at the Swine Flu epidemic of 2009, and also reviewed data on infection and case fatality rates from the past.
I shall paraphrasetheir main findings. ‘We haven’t a clue what the infection fatality rate was for this, or any other flu. In truth, neither does anyone else, because the data are complete rubbish.’
Their actual conclusion, couched in more scientific language:
‘A consensus is needed on how to define and measure the seriousness of infection before the next pandemic.’1
Did this consensus ever happen? You must be joking.
As you may have noticed, we have begun the move into very blurry waters indeed. You may ask how it is possible to compare the Infection Fatality Rate of COVID19 with previous influenza epidemics, when we have no idea what the IFR rate of previous influenza epidemics may have been.
Despite such great uncertainty, this IFR rapidly become a red line issue for the COVID wars.
On one side were the CDC, Fauci, Neil Ferguson and Imperial College London – and suchlike. The ‘establishment’ – the ‘experts’. They confidently stated, from the very beginning, that the Infection Fatality Rate of COVID19 was around one per cent. Meaning that for every one hundred people infected, one person would die (on average).
Quite how they knew this is beyond any real understanding? They say modelling. I say guesswork. Which, in truth, is pretty much the same thing. A brand new, never seen before disease, and they just knew what the IFR was.
This was also at a time before any accurate testing existed, and we had no idea how many people had actually been infected? Indeed, at this point, they were primarily relying on information from China … Oh well, at least we know that Chinese data are always fully reliable … thank God. Just don’t mention that pesky laboratory in Wuhan, or gain of function research. Or pretty much anything else that emanates from China, in truth.
On the other side were…. Well, there wasn’t really another side so to speak of. A rag tag bunch of researchers and epidemiologists who were fascinated by the data coming in, and what it was saying. It included those such as Professor John Ioannidis and Professor Carl Heneghan at the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford, and suchlike.
I just watched with interest, at first. My own bias has always been to be very wary of any expert consensus that springs into life. This is because it will almost always be a slave to the inherent problems with human thinking that ride roughshod over a disinterested pursuit of the truth. Particularly in a crisis.
Problems such as: groupthink, confirmation bias, fast thinking rather than slow thinking, deference to ‘experts’, the desperate need to come up with ‘the answer’ and stick to it, and suchlike. We all know what they are. They all came into play, as expected.
Anyway, a key question here was, how did their one per cent figure compare with more common or garden influenza? This is very hard to say. I have seen figures of 0.67% for the flu epidemic of 1967. I have seen far less. ‘Spanish flu’, the big daddy of them all, was estimated to have had an IFR of around two to three per cent.
But how accurate can these figures be? In the paper I quoted above, the IFR estimates for swine flu (HIN1pdm09) ranged from less than one death, per hundred thousand infections, to more than ten thousand. Yes, from one in a hundred thousand, all the way up to ten per cent. This is what scientists call…. A pretty wide range. You could call it other things.
Cutting to the chase, the reality is that, at the start of the COVID19 epidemic we had no idea what the IFR of a severe influenza epidemic was, nor did we know the IFR of COVID19. You would think that this would make any comparison somewhat tricky.
However, the mainstream consensus rapidly coalesced around two ‘facts’.
Fact one: a severe seasonal influenza has an IFR of around point one per cent. Or, to put it another way, one death per one thousand infections.
Fact two: COVID19 has an IFR of around one per cent. Which meant that COVID19 was going to be ten times as deadly. This, then, became our starting point.
What would this mean in the real world?
The UK has a population of sixty-seven million people. Which meant that if everyone were infected, we would end up with almost exactly two thirds of a million deaths. Which is one per cent of the entire population. The population of the US is three hundred and thirty million, so there would be three point three million deaths
Hold on a minute. The models also predicted that not everyone would get COVID19. Full herd immunity would kick in once about eighty per cent of the population – or thereabouts – had been infected. This, by the way, was another thing that the experts just knew, right from the very beginning. [But what about mutations, and variants, and re-infections I hear you cry…. ‘Oh, do shut up’].
In effect, the COVID19 epidemic would come to an end when eighty per cent of people had become ill, maybe slightly less. Ergo, the overall death figure would be about five hundred thousand in the UK, and just over two million in the US. Or thereabouts.
This is a lot of deaths. Around the entire world pop: ~7.9 billion. We could see nearly seventy million deaths.
This one per cent figure, then, became the trigger for everything that followed. I think of it as the ‘justification’ figure. It was used to justify lockdowns, and everything else that went along with them. Here, after all, was a disease ten times as deadly as a bad influenza epidemic. Something must be done, or millions will die.
A further complication
Of course, things are rarely this simple. Even if the one per cent figure were true, it is essential to ask a follow up question. Who exactly is dying?
The average age of death caused by the Spanish flu was estimated at twenty-eight. Yes, twenty-eight.2 The average age of death caused by COVID19 is around eighty-one – in the UK.3
I feel that the fact [and unusually this fact is almost certainly true] that COVID19 almost exclusively kills the elderly, and almost always the elderly who have many other comorbidities, had to be taken into consideration. But it wasn’t.
Instead of a disease that can wipe out young healthy people, aged twenty-eight, we had a disease on our hands that primarily kills those close to the end of their lives. Children and young adults, even middle-aged adults, even nearly old adults, have been almost remarkably unaffected by COVID19. This was known very early on.
What are the actual figures here? Turning attention specifically to the UK, we have had, at the time of writing, around one hundred and fifty thousand COVID19 deaths. Defined as… those deaths with COVID19 mentioned on the death certificate [whatever this actually means – another whole can of worms].
On the other hand, the number of people under the age of sixty, who have died from COVID19, with no other disease mentioned on the death certificate, is five hundred and forty-two. That was, by the 1st of February 2022.4
This is slightly under one per day during the epidemic. Or, to frame it another way, the risk of dying, for a healthy (or at least believed to be healthy – who knows for sure if they are or not) person under the age of sixty has been one in 79,131. [UK pop < 60 = 42,869,306].5
This risk, however, has been over very nearly two years. So, the yearly risk of death from COVID19 per years is 1:158,263. Or ~ 0.0075% … for this population. Just to give a comparator. The risk of dying from a road traffic accident in the UK, per year, is around eight times higher 6.
1in 20,000 per year vs 1 in 160,000
Thus, for more than two thirds of the population, the risk of dying from COVID19 has been 0.0075%. Instead of one per cent… it has been seven thousandths of one per cent.
Some people will say that this doesn’t matter. All deaths are of equal importance, we cannot discriminate on grounds of age, illness etc. In which case, taking the UK population as a whole, we have had 158,000 deaths with COVID19 mentioned on the death certificate. This represents a total risk of death of 1 in 424. Or ~ 0.25%.
Again, this has been over two years, so the total risk of death, per year [which is how risk is normally presented] has been 1 in 848, or ~ 0.125% per year. Which, as you may have noted, is around seven times less than one per cent.
Strangely, with COVID19, we have not stopped counting at the end of one year, and then started again. We have just kept on adding the figures year upon year – and will continue to do so? We have also continued to add in people who have been infected more than once…Double, treble, nay quadruple counting.
If we keep doing this, the IFR of COVID19 will eventually reach one. Not one per cent, but one. As in the entire population of the world will end up dying of COVID19. Although, at 0.125% per year this, as you may have worked out yourself, will take about seven hundred years. You may want to go and lie down and think about this.
Of course, the rough figures I have calculated above do not represent the Infection Fatality Rate. Instead, they represent the population fatality rate (PFR) i.e., forgetting about IFR and CFR, how many people, in total, have actually died. The population fatality has to be significantly lower than the infection fatality rate because not everyone has been infected… or have they?
The terrain is all?
We must now venture into yet another layer of complication. Yes, this onion has many layers. Most of which, you may be glad to know, I am not going to consider, or else this blog becomes a book. But the next layer is critical.
What does being ‘infected’ actually mean, and can we even know that it has happened?
At the risk of terrible oversimplification, historically there are two camps in the infectious disease world.
- Camp one: the microbe is all (The germ theory).
- Camp two: the terrain is all (The terrain theory).
Camp one believes that if you become exposed to an infectious agent you will inevitably become ‘infected’. You will then inevitably suffer (at least some) symptoms from the infection. You will then become unwell – maybe very unwell – and may even die. The germ theory. The severity of the disease is almost entirely dependent on the ‘viral load’ that you encounter.
Camp two states that the ‘terrain’ of the human body is far more important. We are surrounded by, and harbour microorganisms in our bodies. When exposed to pathogens ‘germs’ we become ill if our defences are weakened by deficiencies or toxicities. The germ itself is pretty much unimportant.
This is the ‘terrain’ theory. It means that many/most people, may not become ‘infected’ at all. Or that they may not even notice it – they simply shrug the infection off.
Historically, the two camps were led by Louis ‘the germ’ Pasteur and Claude ‘the terrain’ Bernard. It is said that, on his death bed Pasteur admitted. ‘Bernard was right, the pathogen is nothing, the terrain is everything.’
Well, yes and no. It is difficult to suffer any symptoms from a disease if you are never exposed to the germ. Which means that the pathogen clearly is something, not nothing. But … but we are making a greater mistake if we think that everyone is going to respond the same way to a germ. An assumption upon which our response has been predicated.
You may not think it, but the thinking behind all the actions taken is that COVID19 will inevitably ‘infect’ anyone who comes into contact with it. It will spread from person to person in a predicable manner, it will cause illness in everyone, and suchlike. In effect therefore, we have acted as if the terrain truly is nothing. Therefore, we must do everything possible to reduce contact, in order to reduce morbidity and mortality. In essence, the microbe is all.
The next assumption, following on from this, is that those who have not demonstrated any signs of symptoms have simply not been exposed to it, or not exposed to a sufficient ‘viral load’.
Personally, I find this impossible to believe. My daughter, a junior doctor who caught COVID19 working on a COVID ward in Wales, stayed at our house, suffered anosmia, and was diagnosed with COVID19 – with a PCR test, no less. No-one else got a snuffle.
At one point during the first couple of months of the epidemic, in May 2020 to be precise, I was standing next to two unmasked nurses in a small treatment room (we were not allowed to wear masks at this time) who were both coughing repeatedly in my face. Both were diagnosed with COVID19 the very next day and went off ill.
Every working day for six months, I went into nursing homes and an intermediate care centre. During which time, thirty-six patients died of – probably – COVID19. All of whom I saw and examined at least once. However, I did not become infected, and I never have. I also showed no antibodies – in a test in Autumn 2020.
If anyone tries to tell me that I was not exposed to the virus, or a sufficient viral load to cause infection, I can only laugh. I would reckon myself to be amongst an elite ‘most exposed to SARS-Cov2 virus in the world’ workforce. For at least two months I was working with no PPE – at all. Surrounding by staff and patients – many of whom died of COVID19 [no staff members, only patients].
If I was not infected, and officially I have not been, it raises the question. What, exactly, does infected mean? I speak as someone who also had to have seven Hepatitis B injections before I was able to raise a feeble, and pretty transient, antibody response. A friend and colleague had, if memory serves, over thirty Hep B vaccinations, and never raised a single antibody.
What does this, in turn, mean? That neither of us has any immunity to Hep B? That antibody tests are hopelessly flawed. That ‘immunity’ exists in ways that we have no idea how to measure – my current view.
Looking more specifically at COVID19, what happens if someone is found to be infected, as part of routine testing, yet has no symptoms, and produces no antibodies. Can you state that they were ‘infected’?
You may want to have a look at ‘The Flawed Science of Antibody Testing for SARS-CoV-2 Immunity.’ 7
It quotes this FDA statement
‘…results from currently authorized SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests should not be used to evaluate a person’s level of immunity or protection from COVID-19 at any time, and especially after the person received a COVID-19 vaccination.’
So, antibody tests cannot tell us if someone has been infected, or effectively, vaccinated, nor if they are immune to SARS-Cov2. Just run that idea round your head for a while. Then see what answer pops out.
One small study further suggested that if you were diagnosed with [had a positive test for], COVID19, but suffered no symptoms, there was a 92% chance that you would show no measurable immune response post infection. 8
These people, with a positive test, yet no symptoms, and no antibodies, were clearly ‘infected’ – they had a positive test after all [another can of worms]. However, these people must represent the most immune population of all. COVID19 hit them but was simply shrugged off. Leaving behind no sign that it was ever there.
Before I spin off down another hundred complications and side-issues – all of which are fascinating in themselves – I will attempt to highlight one immutable fact.
We have no idea how many people have been infected with SARS-Cov2, primarily because we have no idea how many people have been ‘infected’ yet demonstrate no sign of contact with the virus (unless they were coincidentally tested at the time). People such as, to pluck an example from the air … me.
It follows, therefore, that we cannot know what IFR rate might be. All we really have to go on (for all its further myriad flaws) is the Population Fatality Rate. Namely, how many people have actually died of COVID19.
In this end, this is the key figure. The one that counts [even if I have serious doubts about how this figure is created].
Thus far, across the world, over a period of very nearly two years, we have officially had five point seven million deaths from COVID19.
The total population of the world is seven point nine billion. Therefore:
- The total population fatality rate is 0.072%
- The total population fatality rate per year is 0.036%
This is a long, long way from the IFR of one per cent. Indeed, per year, it is around thirteen times less.
Is this because only one thirteenth of the world’s population have been infected? This is extraordinarily unlikely. The recent REACT study in the UK, found that 65% of those infected with the Omicron variant in January 2022 had previously been diagnosed with COVID-19.9
Seven per cent more had symptoms strongly suggestive of previous infection but had not had a confirmatory test at the time. Ergo, very nearly three quarters of those getting COVID19 in January 2022 had been infected before.
The authors are now attempting to backtrack from this finding. Why? Because, if it is correct that the vast majority of people infected represent re-infections, it means that the infection rate must be extremely high, much higher than anyone admits.
It also follows that exposure and transmission is extremely high. This, in turn, means that the IFR is significantly lower than anyone admits – or indeed can admit.
It is no surprise then to find that those running the REACT study are based in Imperial College London. Which is where all the original IFR estimates came from. The lair of Neil Ferguson et all. The originator of the ‘justification’ figure. Those who are now doing all they can to suggest that the number of people who have been infected with COVID19 remains low.
Even more telling, although this is less easy to confirm, we have cases of people with three, or even four, infections. How can anyone get infected four times, when people around them have not been infected once? Are they dancing naked around a flagpole, breathing in deeply from an inverted loudhailer in a COVID19 ward?
No, they are not. The explanation is that those getting re-infected are those who are unable to simply shrug of COVID19, for whatever reasons. Their terrain was different. Which means that they will likely keep on getting infected as new variants appear. Hopefully in milder and milder versions.
On the other hand, if we look at those individuals who show no evidence of infection – those who have never suffered symptoms and developed no antibodies – it is not that they have never been exposed, or ‘infected’. It is that they have more robust defences. As Claude Bernard argued, the most important thing here is not the germ, it is the terrain. It always was, and always will be.
As you may have gathered, I am convinced that we have all been exposed to and ‘infected’ with COVID19, probably all within the first year [even if I don’t know how you determine being infected]. Which means, in turn, that the PFR and the IFR – after two years of the virus spreading around – will have will be very much the same.
Can I prove this. No. If a large number of people develop no symptoms, and there is no test used that can accurately determine infection/exposure, I cannot possibly prove this. Equally, no-one can prove anything in the opposite direction.
A bit of a standout clue, however, is that three quarters of those found to be infected had been infected before. This could only have happened if people have been repeatedly exposed to a sufficient ‘viral load’ to get COVID19. And if they have, so has everyone else.
Of course, if we cannot accurately define what we mean by ‘infected’ no prediction can have been right. In turn, this means that we bet the house on an outcome measure so deeply flawed as to be virtually meaningless.
A strong clue that has been more widely recognised to be meaningless, is that it no longer exists. How so, I hear you cry? Well, it was decreed fairly early on that any positive COVID19 test represents a ‘case’ of COVID19. Something that kind of slipped through, without anyone noticing.
It was a worldwide thing, but the text below is taken from an NHS press briefing conference, using data from coronavirus.data.gov.uk. The bit in bold is most important.
Number of people who have had at least one positive COVID-19 test result, either lab-reported or lateral flow device (England only), by date reported – the date the case was first included in the published totals. COVID-19 cases are identified by taking specimens from people and testing them for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. If the test is positive, this is referred to as a case.10
Once this happened, any historical comparison of IFRs, or CFRs, became impossible. If everyone who is infected is also a ‘case’ then everyone is an I/C, (infected/case). There is no longer an IFR. Nor can there be a CFR. There is a combination I/CFR.
This, in turn, means that the IFR rate has been artificially boosted. Case fatality rates will always higher than IFRs [people who become very ill from a disease are always more likely to die from the disease, than those who suffer no symptoms].
Add them together and the IFR jumps up. Or at least it does if no-one notices that you are flipping between, and combining IFR and CFR, at speed, and continue talking about the IFR as if it remains the same thing. Oh, the tricks that are played to inflate the IFR and ‘prove’ that the experts were right all along.
Despite the fact that it is now devoid of any meaning, the one per cent IFR for COVID19 remains the most fiercely guarded figure of all. Dare to state the IFR is significantly lower than the one per cent ‘justification’ figure and the dreaded dementors, sorry fact-checkers, descend from on high.
They will attack you, your personal habits, your professionalism, your motivations, your clear ‘anti-vaxx’ stance, your lack of being an expert – and anything else they can think of to personally denigrate and humiliate.
They will countenance no arguments, no discussion. It will be determined that you are simply wrong, certainly stupid, and unable to understand The Science and probably in the pay of someone evil cabal, or other. It is somewhat irritating. I want to discuss science, if not ‘THE SCIENCE’. They want me crushed and silenced.
End thoughts
We understand far less about infections than we like to think. We are simply scratching at the surface at present. It is all extremely complex. If you are up for it, you may wish to read this paper. ‘Pathogenesis of COVID-19 described through the lens of an undersulfated and degraded epithelial and endothelial glycocalyx.’11
This paper represents a monstrously complex discussion of ‘the terrain.’ Namely, why do some people shrug off COVID19, whereas others may become so seriously ill that they may die?
According to this paper, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the things that we think of as part of the classic ‘immune response.’ T-cells, B-cells, cytokines, antibodies and suchlike. It is almost entirely to do with the ability of cells in our body to prevent viral entry.
Keeping things as simple as possible. If COVID19 (or other viruses) cannot get into an endothelial cell – or find it very difficult to do so – because the glycocalyx is healthy and robust, then SARS-Cov2 simply bounces off, and you will not become seriously ‘infected’. Yes, you will ‘shrug’ the virus off. It may enter your bloodstream, but that is about as far as it is going to get.
I mean, I have always been aware of the importance of cell entry in viral diseases. Both HIV and the Ebola virus enter a cell by hijacking a protein called CCR5 attached to cell membranes. There are a few people who have a thing called the CCR5delta32 mutation. If you have this mutation, it means that HIV and Ebola cannot attach themselves to the protein. Neither virus can then get into the cell and ‘infection’ cannot occur. The terrain is all.
Have any of those on SAGE, or Fauci, or Ferguson, or the CDC paid any heed to such things? I would be very surprised if any of them had even heard of the glycocalyx. A perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger* effect, I feel.
Yet, despite their stunning ignorance about such things, certain individuals and organisations grabbed the reins of influence in order to convince those in power that they had the answer.
The most important ‘answer’ being that COVID19 has an IFR of one per cent, which is at least ten times that of a serious influenza epidemic. Then, as the ‘germ’ is obviously everything, the only way to prevent hundreds of thousands, nay millions, of deaths was through lockdown, mask wearing, societal control, and suchlike.
We must stop spread, the ‘the germ is everything brigade’ cried. Although, with a 75% re-infection rate it is hard to argue that we have managed anything of the sort.
If this IFR figure was grossly inflated, which certainly seems to be the case, then all that we did was to create untold damage – for no good reason. I shall leave you with a post that I put up in a WhatsApp group recently. It followed a study from John Hopkins which estimated that COVID19 lockdowns only reduced deaths by 0.2%. [A study that will be attacked remorselessly, no doubt].12
‘Did lockdown work? No, the difference it made was marginal, at best. Were the models that we relied on accurate? No, they were bloody useless. Are the vaccines safe and effective? – Jury is out. Is there anything that was done justifiable by the evidence, in so much as it can be relied upon. I do not believe so. What we certainly did was to explode the economy, pile vast debt on UK Plc. create a massive backlog of work for the NHS. Fail to diagnose and treat hundreds of thousands of cases of cancer, and suchlike and create a tsunami of mental health problems. We also ran roughshod over incredibly important human rights, that have taken centuries to take hold and grow. In my opinion, almost everything that was done has caused more harm than good. What is the counter-argument? If we hadn’t done all these things, it would have been far worse. The evidence to support this position is sadly lacking.’
*Dunning-Kruger effect is, in psychology, a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.
1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809029/
2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3734171/
5: https://www.statista.com/statistics/281208/population-of-the-england-by-age-group/
7: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2785530
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 
Thanks for these worthwhile observastions.
– – – or even obsevations
As usual the great Doctor manages to get to the kernal, by stripping the layers of deceit.
When you refer to “facts” and truth, I find it regrettable that you are not involved in the greatest scientific fraud of all time – the great global warming scam – which is about to send millions of old, poor, cold to an earlier grave than any Chinese Winter
Thank you again for your work on enlightening those of us who have been WONDERING FOR two years why we have lost 24months of our lives. I will share and share to help others feeling as desperately sad as I do ar the way the populace have been CONNED ‘For our own benefit’
“Two weeks to flatten the curve”.
Like a mug, I believed this might true, but the two weeks passed, and they always dreamt up some other control device. I stopped believing anything from the “authorities” when I noticed in the world data charts there were never any cases in the “recovered” column for the UK. So if you got “it”, you presumably had “it” for ever.
Thank you for another wise, courageous and thoughtful text!
I am still working as a GP, aged 63. Over the last 2-3 weeks our work force has been severely dented by covid infections. The younger doctors, nurses, and receptionists are picking it up from their kids. Those of us left to struggle on are mostly 55 plus. I half jokingly say that try as I might I can’t catch the bloody thing, despite working for 2 years, like you, among many infected patients. I have had multiple tests, usually after symptoms, and never even a borderline result. About 9 months in, before I was vaccinated, I had a negative antibody test. My younger colleagues’ return to work has been significantly delayed by waiting for negative lateral flow tests, that is they feel well enough to come back, but can’t because of the rules. Meanwhile, every morning I, and anybody else working in our rather echoey surgery, go through our dozens of community PCR results, which are almost all positive and have been for the last month, suggesting that the virus is now endemic, yet there are barely any patients in ITU. I am told that my colleagues can’t come back until they are safe to treat vulnerable patients – the same vulnerable patients that move through a community with endemic levels of infection, and yet don’t end up on ITU.
If you believe PCR test results.
“The younger doctors, nurses, and receptionists are picking it up from their kids”: what’s the evidence for that?
They said that their kids tested positive and one to two days later the parents went from negative to positive. Test here refers to lft followed by pcr
Never in the history of virology has a ‘positive test’ been ‘a serious case of infection’.
Once that happened, and a Pandemic ( a great excess number of deaths) was redefined as a great excess of positive tests, then all recording and statistical analysis became meaningless for me.
I have taken many more words to say exactly that!
I usually stick to, STOP TESTING. The more you look for something, the more you will find it.
But only if it’s there, obviously.
I call your statement the ‘Ostrich school of research’: don’t look, and you will not find.
Rather like pharma, MHRA etc. They don’t look for harms, so everything is safe and effective.
Ah
The ‘what about’ defense? Or do you agree that not testing is that same as hiding your head in the sand?
I was making a point about the idea that more testing creates more disease. It’s a very appealing idea, but seems to me to be little more than wishful thinking.
I think that we should be searching for the many effects of the virus and the treatments/vaccines.
I know this post will put me squarely in the ‘geek’ category, but I’ll post anyway… Some time ago Sebastian Rushworth had a post talking about tests in general with false positives, false negatives etc. In an effort to make sense of it and to try to remember how it all worked, I wrote some code so I could see the effects of various assumptions. Here is one example – where the number of people infected is 10 percent…
Number of tests performed= 1000000
Sensitivity= 0.88
Specificity= 0.94 ( aka ‘Power of Test’ )
Percent of population infected: 10 %
Alpha = 1.0 – Sensitivity == 0.12 aka Pr{ Type II Error }
Beta = 1.0 – Specificity == 0.0600000000000001 aka Pr{ Type I Error }
Number Infected = 100000
Number NOT Infected = 900000
Total Testing Positive (True + False) = 142000
Total Testing Negative (True + False) = 858000
Fraction of Positives to Total = 0.142
Positive Predictive Value (PPV) = (True +)/(Test +) = 0.619718309859155
Thus of the Positive Tests, 38.0281690140845 % will be FALSE positives
###############
One interesting result is the last line – under the assumptions above, 38 percent of the tests showing Positive, will be False. If that weren’t bad enough, if we assume that only 0.1 percent of the population is infected (whatever that means), the percent of false positives rises to over 98 percent – yes ninety-eight is not a misprint.
So when will testing ever let us know when the pan/en-demic is over?
End of Geekiness…
But what do you say if the % of positive tests (true and false positives) is <0.5%? That would tell me that false positives are not a significant number. What about the rise is the positive rate during waves (increased testing, hospitalizations, deaths etc.), from 15%?
Seems to me that the ‘most are false positives’ assumption doesn’t actually mean anything and should be retired. I hope you keep the Geekiness up and continue to learn.
Cases, cases, cases,………..casedemic. What relevance is a positive result without symptoms?
None.
So you don’t agree with the ‘false positive’ narrative? Good to know
Which narrative in particular? Your post was at best unclear on that point.
I’m sorry, your ‘casedemic’ remark was so clear. Do you believe that false positives are a significant part of the positive results?
David,
Consider what happens (with the same assumptions as my previous post) if no one is infected. Then out of 1,000,000 tests 60,000 will be positive – all false. That’s a 6% positivity rate. This is due solely to the fact that the test is IMperfect – that is the specificity and sensitivity are not 100% . There is no such test in existence. So the question remains: When will the testing tell us Covid is gone? It looks like never, to me.
Thanx for you encouragement – I keep trying to figure some of the stuff out…
Tom
I understand, and no test is 100% anything, but we haven’t seen a 6% minimum positive rate (at least not in countries who have conducted lots of testing). Israel, Island etc. have shown minimum positive rates of <0.5%. As some of those are true positives, this indicats to me that false positives are <<0.5%. I agree that we will probably not see 'no cases' with any analytical method, but when we see a positive rate of <<0.5% (with a high rate of testing) we will know that we have few cases. If the tests said 'no Covid', we would know that it's worthless…
But we all know that we missed the time when 'no Covid' was an option. I think that we will have to decide when the number of deaths (or hospitalizations) is acceptable
David,
As I said I’m trying to figure some of this Covid business out… I am puzzled by reports of positivity rates 99.5%. I have not seen numbers that high for any test, but I am certainly no expert. If multiple tests are being used, then that changes all the statistics and what I’ve said above does not apply.
David,
One more comment on testing, then I think I’m tapped out… So here in Mass. USA the state website for Covid talks about ‘molecular tests’ and they give the Sensitivity as 95.2 (95% CI [86.7, 98.3] ) and Specificity as 98.9
(95% CI = [97.3, 99.3] ). So the numbers here seem higher than the ones I used in my example, and are approaching values that might be able to give positivity rates of <2%. Certainly better that the 6% I found. But for a single test, I'm wary of positivity rate below 1-2%.
Also at the site https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/covid-19TestingToolkit/molecular-based-tests/current-molecular-and-antigen-tests.html there is a chart of many commercially available tests. Several of them claim 100% for both sensitivity and specificity – yikes. These turn out to be from the manufacturers, and in the one case I looked at the sensitivity was based on testing 39 known positive samples, while the specificity was based on 204 known negative samples. Seems like way too small numbers to be able to claim 100% accuracy.
So I'm still puzzled by very low positivity rates, but what else is new?
Tom
Community testing should be retired. Only symptomatic cases should be tracked and only if viral culturing is done.
I have been saying the same since the WHO fury of “Test! Test! Test!” (may 2020 or close). All that huge mass of BIASED test results is USELESS for any quantitative epidemiology research. And it is meaningless as input for any scientifically based modeling of the epidemic. And useless to verify the predictions of the evolution of the number of “cases”, because the BIASING of the sampling was constantly being modified by political order (now symptomatic and contacts and family are tested; later, all children in school ar tested, so introducing a shift in the sample towards younger age; later on, the same children will be tested twice per week, i.e., aggravating that shift; etc.; and similar arbitrary changes were enforced in diferent countries: no “meta-analysis” can deal with such a mess…).
Is there any way we can share your article?
Press on the 3 vertical doors at the top RHS of the page. Choose “copy link “. Paste on whatever platform you fancy eg email, WhatsApp (watch you don’t get “fact checked” on sites like fb) and SEND. Hope that works for you.
*dots ! Sorry
Fascinating stuff, thanks again.
One thing that strikes me is that, although IFRs and CFRs have been mentioned throughout, in the early days they were referred to by a few specialists with a ‘small’ voice. However right they may have been, based on their expertise and historical, they were up against a propaganda machine, perhaps the biggest one ever cranked up. They also couldn’t refer to data from the current pandemic (obviously). In other words, it was these ‘scientific cranks’ speaking from the back of the hall, against the pearly white smiles of the manipulated media. Only one winner there.
What’s different now is that there is an increasing number of people who realize that our cumulative response to the pandemic has been misguided, at best. Also, we have recent (irrefutable?) data from this pandemic on which to draw to ‘prove’ that we have apparently based our response on a foundation of straw. Surely there must be a reckoning.
One other thing is that I worry that Ferguson’s 500k may come true, albeit out of context. Not through covid deaths but through collateral damage.
That’s a really interesting stat of 75% reinfection rate. I believe I had sars2 infection in January 2020 and have had no signs of anything since. Could reinfection be in the vaccinated mainly as the UKHSA suggests that they do not produce neutralising immunity on infection so could be open to constant reinfection?
My other thought is on dormancy of infection. Do we know yet whether sars2 lays dormant and can reactivate? I have done much work on my terrain since jan 2020 infection so maybe I’m holding reactivation at bay?
It really would be something if instead of priming the immune system to fight the relevant proteins, the vaccination instead primed the immune system to ignore them.
The framing of our world in models, taken as real currency, sets us in complexity as a result of competing contradictions.
Selling the idea of an ‘immune system’ is already the idea of defending against attack, & therefore sells the fear of threat to be defacto true – rather than ‘modelled’ or imagined.
Once the mind is invested in its modelling, it runs a defence system,
A failed model adds fudge to maintain appearances of authority.
The immune system is a derivative of Mithridatism – invoked to save germ theory from zero tolerance. The internalisation of conditioned or inherited belief looks out and sees accordingly.
Toxic influence includes associations with shock.
The individual nature of every case is not genomic, but historic – relative to the whole context of that life – indeed the total terrain.
Pathological fixations beget pathological models, applied by psycho-pathic dissociation from reality.
We are already displaced to maps and models while herding ourselves to a transhuman Metaverse. In other words we are generating all the signs by which to monitor our currently active choices.
I appreciate a willingness to question from a genuine curiosity, rather than as a means to a paycheck or identity booster for social creditation.
Living questions are journeys of discovery. No one else can recognise answers, but they share the terrain.
What is it to be truly human?
Perhaps we learn by first opening the experience of what we are NOT – but thought we should be?
It seems that everyone mounts a weak antibody response to Omicron, whether vaccinated, recovered or presumably immunologically naive. For those that have been vaccinated, Omicron breakthrough works like another booster. Some have interpreted that at OAS, but if it is, it is beneficial, as it does not diminish response to Omicron.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.01.22270263v1.full
Here, we analyzed samples from BA.1 (Omicron) convalescent patients with different constellations of prior SARS-CoV-2 immunity regarding vaccination and previous infection with a non-Omicron variant and determined titers of neutralizing antibodies against different SARS-CoV-2 variants (D614G, Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, Omicron).
We found high neutralizing antibody titers against all variants for vaccinated individuals after BA.1 breakthrough infection or for individuals after infection with a pre-omicron variant followed by BA.1 infection. In contrast, samples from naive unvaccinated individuals after BA.1 infection mainly contained neutralizing antibodies against BA.1 but only occasionally against the other variants.
We and others have previously shown that sera from unvaccinated individuals after Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351) or Delta (B.1.617.2) variant infection only occasionally neutralize the Omicron variant.(1) Similarly, Omicron neutralizing antibodies are low and only short lived after one or two doses of CODID-19 vaccination, but enhanced in hybrid immune individuals (combination of vaccination and infection) or after a third booster dose of vaccination.(2, 3)
Thank you. We learn so much from your blogs.
Sent from my iPad
>
Thank you Malcolm for a wonderful article.
I have 2 questions:
Wasn’t it Bechamp and not Bernard who was Pasteur’s opposition? Who maintained that it was internal and not external elements that caused disease?
And do you still believe in the germ theory?
Correct. It was Antoine Béchamp.
See Wikipedia under Germ theory denialism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_denialism
Oh dear, it looks like Dr. Kendrick is on the wrong side of the fence again. Cholesterol denier. Germ theory denier. Next he will deny the sun moves around the earth, then where will we be?
Oh dear, I was sure it was Bernard. Must give myself lines.
Here are a few to be going on with:
____________________
___________________
______________________
______________________
Yes, but what about your thoughts on Germ Theory
Seriously, after all this, you actually trust Wikipedia?
I was being sarcastic. I should have put the /s tag at the end.
Actually, Dr Kendrick was correct. Bernard said a healthy terrain could deal with germs; Bechamp said an unhealthy terrain produced the observed germs.
Germ theory denialism isn’t new. It can be traced back to the origin of germ theory itself, often to two contemporaries of Louis Pasteur: Claude Bernard and Antoine Béchamp. Both came up with opposing hypotheses to Pasteur’s enduring germ theory. Bernard proposed the concept of “milieu intérieur”, which suggests that the body’s internal environment—or “terrain”—maintains its equilibrium. The state of the terrain, rather than the presence of pathogens, ultimately dictates whether disease will develop (which is not an entirely crazy idea, given what we now know about the microbiome and the immunocompromised). Meanwhile, Béchamp—considered a bitter crank and rival of Pasteur—suggested that pathogenic bacteria are produced by human tissue as a response to a harmful change in the terrain. Thus, bacteria do not cause disease; they are merely a self-created symptom of it—which is clearly just incorrect. — https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/deep-dive-into-stupid-meet-the-growing-group-that-rejects-germ-theory/
I was disappointed.to discover Malcolm had made.a mistake Thank you for correcting the correction and clearing Malcolm’s reputation. I’ve read acres of Malcolm’s writing and always found him to be scrupulously accurate. Superb blog.
.
michaelm: It was both Bernard and Bechamp.
The reference list doesn’t include articles 11 and 12 cited towards the end, at least on my screen. Have you got these references please
11: https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.202101100RR
12: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-a-preprint-looking-at-the-impact-of-lockdowns-as-posted-on-the-john-hopkins-krieger-school-of-arts-and-sciences-website/
They got chopped off. I am claiming no responsibility.
Dear Dr Kendrick. Fascinating post, as always. In your boxout, the statement
“COVID-19 cases are identified by taking specimens from people and testing them for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.” Much has been written about the reliability of LFT and PCR tests. My understanding (no doubt wrong) is that the tests do not look for the virus and therefore can not be relied upon. What is your view on this?
The PCR method amplifies fragments of DNA.
Thanks for another erudite article. I wanted to follow up reference 11 (glycocalyx), but there are only 9 references at the end of the article?
I am just trying to work out what happened
Can’t square your calculations with the ONS table, giving indeed 542 fatalities with no underlying comorbidities, but only between March and June 2020. Extrapolating would still give a surprisingly low figure for the year, and still make your point, but am I missing something here?
Public Health England reported case fatality rates for Alpha at 0.9% and Delta at 0.2% in Table 3 of Technical briefing 18 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1001358/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_18.pdf. Given Omicron is reported to be >50% less severe than Omicron, this prevailing coronavirus is so mild that the WHO’s PHEIC designation is now, certainly, not commensurate with the risk it poses.
What’s going on?
Did you know that PwC are running the Cabinet Office Task Force? https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/1270f58b-4824-4f5f-a4f6-2231e0167929?origin=SearchResults&p=1. PwC and their corporate clients have a vested interested in digital identities see PwC’s strategy ” Driving the future of health”. PwC has been IBM’s “independent” auditor for 98 years and IBM Watson AI is the engine behind, at least, New York, EU, UK (via Entrust), Australia (via Accenture) digital identities. A monopoly on citizens’ digital identities has been formed benefitting a cartel of complicit Biopharma and big tech companies.
I heard about the plans for this when I was a director of IBM Botswana 1998-2002 and working with IBM’s health informatics consultant providing “thought leadership” on health strategy to the Government of Botswana, with Microsoft and Harvard Aids.
A minor point, but the references go up to 12, but there are only 9 appearing. Can you show them, please?
As usual, you make many excellent points about the folks who were crying “the sky is falling” with faulty statistics who managed to prevail over more reasonable voices, CFR vs IFR, overestimation of death rates, and the lack of understanding of how the immune system works. I have always been a fan of Bernard’s (to paraphrase) “it’s the terrain not the germ”, even though the germ in question does have some importance. These are all definitely questions worth asking and pursuing.
However, a few things still bother me: the germ in question did seem to fill up hospital and emergency wards in a pretty overwhelming way during several waves, even if it did not kill that many (young) people. And what about the massive excess deaths (all causes) over what is usually seen in many countries, particularly the US? It’s difficult to ignore that even if you argue that at least some were due to lack of medical care for other conditions…the hospitals being full of covid patients. It does seem as if something pretty exceptional has happened, even if the sky did not fall and this coronavirus is headed to become just one of the many common cold-causing viruses.
And according to many people I know that caught Covid, it made them really sick, much sicker than they have ever been with a typical flu. Things seem to be changing with omicron. I have it as I write this, and honestly, it’s just a bad cold. But then again, it might just be the terrain. I’m 60, but in great health, of normal weight, never get sick (good immune system in general), triple vaccinated, etc.
I won’t comment on your other points, but as an NHS clinician, I can say with some certainty that hospitals in the UK have never been overwhelmed with Covid patients at any point. This is purely a distortion that has been propagated by the media.
Very excellent point. Early on the situation as portrayed in NYC and elsewhere seemed catastrophic.
Shortly after Christmas I had a bad cold which lasted about a week. I have never before had a cold last so long and the symptoms felt slightly different from any previous cold. Lateral flow tests for SARS-CoV-2 remained stubbornly negative. Many others, possibly millions, must have had a similar experience. Was this the dreaded Corvid19? It seems we may never know.
The concept of a “fact” is one that most of us have always taken for granted, but now that the “fact checkers” have weighed in and started making people’s lives miserable (and misinformed) perhaps it merits a closer look.
fact
n noun a thing that is indisputably the case. Ø(facts) information used as evidence or as part of a report. Øchiefly Law the truth about events as opposed to interpretation.
PHRASES
before (or after) the fact Law before (or after) the committing of a crime.
a fact of life something that must be accepted, even if unpalatable.
the facts of life information about sexual matters, especially as given to children.
in (point of) fact in reality.
ORIGIN
C15 (originally meaning ‘an act’, later ‘a crime’, surviving in the phrase before (or after) the fact): from Latin factum, neuter past participle of facere ‘do’.
– Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th Edition.
So a fact was originally something that a person had done (which might be criminal). As witness the vast number of detective stories, from Inspector Vidocq and Sherlock Holmes to “Murder She Wrote”, that kind of fact is often very hard indeed to pin down.
The definition offered by the COED – “a thing that is indisputably the case” – is not terribly helpful either. As well as the academic fashion for writing “the case” instead of “so” or “true”, we have that word “indisputably”. How many important facts do we know that are indisputably true? There are people who dispute pretty well everything.
So perhaps we should understand “indisputably the case” to mean “agreed by consensus”, which doesn’t look helpful but does get us a little bit further. What is this consensus? The same dictionary gives the admirably simple definition “general agreement”. But “general” among whom? When a given fact is in dispute – which the dictionary asserts to be literally impossible, as a fact is defined as being “indisputable” – power politics tends to take over.
Galileo thought, on extremely good evidence, that the Earth and all the other planets went round the Sun. The Church had decided that, on the contrary, the Sun went round the Earth, and was prepared to fight for that “fact”. Galileo’s public renunciation of his ideas may have been all that saved him from being burnt alive.
In 1992 Pope John Paul II publicly admitted that Galileo had been right, and the Church wrong. So what are we to make of the “fact” that the Sun goes round the Earth? In 1615 it was apparently true, as “the consensus” upheld it. Today it is considered by almost everyone to be untrue. What made the difference? Partly the general availability of telescopes, which allowed anyone to see for themselves how the heavenly bodies behaved. But mainly the removal of the threat of incineration.
The “fact checkers” of today have assumed, to some extent, the role formerly played by the Inquisition. They home in, like dive-bombers, on any public statement that threatens an official narrative, and do their level best to dissuade the general public from accepting it.
Such behaviour is antithetical to science and any other attempt to discover truth. The best way to conduct such work is to open the floodgates to all opinions and ideas – to all manner of “facts” – and let their supporters debate freely. That way we may eventually approximate more and more closely to the truth.
Thanks for this. I’ve always felt that mass testing was part of the problem. I bet if you did a PCR test for measles or chicken pox at the same rates, most of the population would eventually test positive. Whoever thought up testing healthy people?
“Whoever thought up testing healthy people?”
Someone who hoped to profit immensely from “treating” them.
Maybe the people who persuaded the NHS to test everyone over 40 for blood pressure and cholesterol?
Your refs stop at 9, may we have the others?
I will have a look. Not sure what happened
Thank you!
Did you do the T-cell test, which is supposed to catch more previous infections that the antibody tests?
https://www.t-detect.com/
No, I did not. Along with 99% of the population
That might involve a simple skin test . Perhaps more susceptible individuals might prove to be relatively anergic?
Many thanks, as ever. Footnotes 10, 11 and 12 are missing?
As Warren Buffett is said to have remarked, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked”.
Pausing for you to get over your very natural feelings of revulsion, I feel that one very useful “silver lining” of 2020-2022 has been that it is already beginning to become clear who has been bathing in the altogether. That should make it much easier to identify and prosecute them.
We have learned, some of us to our surprise and regret, that:
1. Our scientific and medical establishments are not by any means committed to the truth or to the principles of doing good and not doing harm. On the contrary, they have largely been taken over by financial and political interests, to the extent that ordinary GPs and hospital doctors are routinely committing acts that contravene the Nuremberg Code – and not marginally or unobviously. GPs in the UK have “earned” bonuses of £100,00/year or more by administering injections that certainly kill or injure some, and probably do no good to most people. In the USA and to some extent the UK, hospitals have been heavily bribed by the government to diagnose Covid-19 as often as possible, to withhold safe and simple treatments, to apply very dangerous and sometimes lethal “treatments”, and to overstate “Covid-19 deaths” as much as possible.
2. Our governments are not committed to our interests as citizens, but appear to have been taken over by big corporations through what amounts to massive bribery.
3. All the pious talk of “human rights” and “values” that we have been hearing for years is at best meaningless and at worst a pack of deliberate, cynical lies. The moment it suited governments in the UK and elsewhere to exaggerate the seriousness of the alleged “pandemic”, all constitutional, legal, and moral principles went out the window and might became right. No matter what they say from now on – in speech or writing, no matter how much gold leaf and how many elegant curlicues are added – we will know that it cannot be trusted.
4. The political theories of democracy and republicanism have no bearing on reality, as constitutional and legal limitations to the power of governments have been carefully trimmed back for over a century. Your MP does not represent you or your interests, but the political party of which (s)he is a member. The government does not act in the interests of the nation, but in the personal interests of its members and especially their corporate clients (and, some might add, owners).
5. Edward Bernays and his successors since 1917 or so have perfected a system of propaganda and persuasion that seems capable of making whole populations believe that black is white within a few days or weeks. Whether because those methods are so powerful – which seems unlikely, as some of us seem immune to them – or because the average citizen is very gullible, we have reached a situation where over half of most citizen bodies believe things that are demonstrably untrue. In such a situation, the whole theory of democracy crumbles to the ground. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe”. (Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey (6 January 1816))
It would be nice to think that once the log has been lifted and the activities of the crawling things underneath revealed, some retribution – or at least some constructive reform – might follow. But I fear it won’t.
I didn’t realise that I’ve got a £100,000 bonus coming.
I’m very sorry if I have maligned you, Dr Heneghan. No doubt you are responding to my statement that “GPs in the UK have “earned” bonuses of [£100,000/year] or more by administering injections that certainly kill or injure some, and probably do no good to most people”.
Although I was careful not to quantify “GPs”, and I certainly didn’t mean “all GPs”, I thought I had recently read that from a reliable source. In fact I thought Dr Kendrick himself had said it. But I cannot find any such statement by him, or by Dr No, or by Dr Vernon Coleman.
A Web search shows that GPs are paid flat sums for every injection; the figures mentioned range from £10 up to about £30. Taking an average of £20, it would require 5,000 injections to make up that £100,000. But after all, that is only 100 per week.
I thought those payments were established fact, and I repeat that I apologise if I have been unfair.
Could anyone please clarify what the true situation is? Do UK GPs get paid for administering “Covid-19 vaccines”, and if so how much can they reasonably earn that way?
Apology very much accepted 😊👍🏼
GPs do get paid for vaccine administration. Most of them have employed additional staff, or asked existing staff to work longer hours to do this. There is no doubt that more money has been earned, but I would very much doubt if any GP has earned anything like £100K from this. I think most people would accept that if the Govt is asking GPs to take on a significant additional workload that they should be paid to do so. The average GP in the UK has ~ 2000 patients on their ‘list’. Approx 60% will be vaccinated x 2. GPs in the UK get paid £12.58 per vaccination.
So the approx figures is £12.58 x 2 x 1,200 = £30,192.
I have no idea what the average additional costs may be across all practices. However, a friend is a practice nurse who has been working two extra days a week for several months now, to give vaccines. This will have cost the GP practice several thousand pounds. There will also be additional reception time, and suchlike.
A guesstimate would be £20K per GP.
Thanks, doctors! I have made the mistake that is so easy to make nowadays – believing everything I hear from a source that appeals to me. I’ll try to be a bit more sceptical in future.
My first Moderna shot (jab!) was done by a registered nurse from a major Boston hospital volunteering to do it after hours. My second Moderna was administered by a recent nursing school graduate who was also volunteering.
So far no $.
My third Moderna (The Booster) was done at a CVS pharmacy. No bonus $ for the pharmacist.
Your comments re UK hospitals are similarly wrong as those about GPs. As an ICU consultant of over 30 years, I can tell you from my own experience that:
I have never taken a bribe to alter a diagnosis.
I have never administered treatments that were known to be dangerous without the potential benefit outweighing the risk
I have never administered a treatment known to be lethal.
I have never been approached by a hospital administrator trying to manipulate the death figures.
I have never withheld simple and safe treatments.
What is written on the death certificate after a death in ICU is usually reasonably accurate because of the intensive investigations done. In the early days, patients flooded in and were dying in unusual ways. The vast majority came in with respiratory distress, not another cause and were subsequently found to be covid test positive.
Thanks for your reply. Please notice that I was careful not to suggest that all doctors and hospitals, and especially not any specific ones, had done those things.
Yet surely we know that “treatments” have been given that, in some cases at least, caused death or serious injury. I refer to the “vaccines”.
It looks hard to avoid the conclusion that figures have been grossly manipulated, or at least obfuscated.
Hospital administrators would not necessarily have had to approach doctors to arrange for death figures to be manipulated. Didn’t the WHO decree, two years ago, that any death in connection with which Covid-19 had even been mentioned was to be ascribed to Covid-19 on the death certificate? And, of course, the whole pyramid rests on the soft, moist sand of the “PCR test” – whose inventor warned that it could never be used for diagnosis.
If all diagnoses and death certificates blaming Covid-19 were correct, why has it been officially admitted that the total figures for Covid-19 detahs were grossly inflated?
As in Dr Kendrick’s post, the whole process of counting cases vs infections is, at best, a grey area.
What is an asymptomatic person who tests positive? They cannot be counted as a case, but probably were counted as an infection. Maybe they should just have been classified as a healthy person!
In the early days, of alpha and delta infections, tests were largely irrelevant to the diagnosis. They were clearly dying of a novel disease.
What you say about the WHO is wrong. They give quite clear instructions on how to record deaths, with covid as the underlying cause (everybody dies of cardiorespiratory failure, but you do not put this on the death certificate) or as an incidental cause.
Click to access Guidelines_Cause_of_Death_COVID-19.pdf
I bow to your superior knowledge and experience. So far we have cleared doctors and the WHO from any responsibility for the harms of the past two years, and the (possibly far greater) harms to come. From one of your earlier comments I believe that you are also clearing hospital administrators.
Who’s left?
Perhaps no avoidable harm at all was done, everyone did their duty, and everything is for the best in this best of all possible health systems.
“Former WHO employee Astrid Stuckelberger: ‘A pandemic of lies’”
https://freewestmedia.com/2021/12/05/former-who-employee-astrid-stuckelberger-a-pandemic-of-lies/
‘The WHO underwent an audit in 2014 and after that, it became more like a company with countries as its subsidiaries.
‘“When I worked with international relations in the WHO in 2013, I saw that GAVI came in more and more. GAVI presented a global action plan for vaccination 2012-2020. That is, eight years where GAVI had everything in their hands. Bill Gates handled the vaccination, he took over.”
‘The WHO wields enormous power over countries, she said. “Before, all countries were free. But now, when I do interviews around the world, I see that each country is part of a ‘WHO company’. WHO is no longer a democratic member organization, like the UN. The various governments form the basis of the ‘enterprise’. It logically agrees with what is happening now, since the ‘companies’ want money, business, and to control people. It’s like slavery. The taxes we pay, they go to governments that are subject to ‘the company’. Under the multinational organizations, such as GAVI.”’
I think what Prudence Kitten was referring to is the fact that all treatment was withheld from patients who were contacting their GPs because they thought they had c19. I believe it was government advice to GPs to tell such patients to stay at home, that there was no treatment and so some elderly and vulnerable patients ended up in A&E, very unwell, through lack of treatments with such safe remedies as ivermectin and all the other drugs that are known as cures for c19 if given early enough. Dr Peter McCulloch, a very eminent US doctor has shown this to be true – it is very much worth listening to his many talks on this on YouTube if you haven’t already, ditto Dr Scott Atlas – there are many doctors that agree with this).
Perhaps by ‘bribes’ she meant that hospitals were given money for each c19 diagnosis. As we know, the tests used for these diagnoses are extremely prone to false positives….perhaps some doctors would call it as c19 knowing there was a financial incentive; it seems this was the case from anecdotal evidence (the deceased not being seen by a doctor to determine cause of death, for example, as happened in nursing homes).
You must excuse many in the general population, who like myself have followed the terrible events of the last 2 years very closely, reading widely such blogs as this, because we have lost a very great deal of trust in doctors (Dr Kendrick is a very honourable exception). I’m afraid my own parents were treated very badly by the nhs (both died long before 2020). In fact my whole family’s experience of the nhs has been poor, so personally I didn’t have much faith in the health service before this. In 2020 the door to the GP practice in the large village where I live was barred with that plastic tape police use for crime scenes – this at a time when GPs were most needed. Now, when I am sure that the crisis (if indeed there ever was a crisis) is long, long over my sister, because of ‘covid’, is not allowed to visit her very ill husband who has been in hospital for over two weeks. He is frightened and depressed and very lonely and my sister is beside herself with worry. So, I am sure you are a great doctor and that you have behaved perfectly throughout this. Funny, though, that there was never a noticeable rise in deaths throughout 2020, that is until doctors started administering the experimental ‘vaccines’.
I’m afraid the medical profession in general and corrupt vaccinalist KOLs in particular are to blame for thousands of covid deaths. And the WHO above all else. From very early on in the pandemic and throughout to this day studies came out showing that those who were deficient in vitamin D were far more likely to get severely ill and die of covid. Superior studies done in Israel debunked the ” it’s being ill that reduces the vit D ” naysayers , by using only those patients for whom a vit D level was available in the 12 months prior to infection. Studies from Cordoba and Barcelona showed the interest of treating hospitalised patients with Calcifediol -a form of vit D that acts much faster than Cholecalciferol. Was any notice taken of this ? Was any attempt made to improve the immunity of populations with mass treatment with a cheap as chips and harmless remedy? No . Why not? People were allowed to die who could have been saved . Same for treatment with the Raoult protocol or Ivermectin. Why? Because had there been safe and effective treatments recognised for covid none of the vaccines would have got their emergency use authorisations after presenting a mere 2/3 months worth of data and Pfizer and Moderna would not be laughing all the way to the bank. Indeed Moderna would probably no longer exist as before covid they were going down the tubes never having brought a product to market. The disgrace is that most doctors have gone along with this scandal and only a few brave ones have spoken out. Those that have spoken out or even queried the doxa have been vilified and/ or ridiculed by the media. In some countries their licence to practice medicine has been threatened despite the fact that they have been treating covid patients and keeping them out of hospital rather than acquiescing to the “stay home and take Paracetamol till you can’t breathe” mantra.
Now that it is as plain as the nose on your face that these vaccines do not prevent transmission and that double and triple jabbed patients are still ending up in hospital and dying, where is the outcry from doctors to bring in immune boosting measures such as vit D or ambulatory treatment with repurposed drugs ? The new drug from Pfizer works by inhibiting enzymes that are crucial to virus replication. It costs an arm and a leg and safety data is short term. The same inhibition of enzymes is a property of Ivermectin and is actually stronger in the latter yet despite that and the fact that Ivermectin has a better safety profile than Paracetamol it is vilified as a “horse paste” .
This has all the certainty, righteousness and lack of evidence worthy of a religious cult. Reality is rarely this black and white. Head on over to Sebastian Rushworths’s site or the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford, neither of which could be described as establishment stooges, for some data backed analysis.
Your protestations of innocence indicate why the medical profession is no longer taken seriously by many. It reveals a reluctance to learn from experience and to admit fault. For example, did you administer remdesivir to covid patients or ventilate them? Did you administer the so-called covid vaccines? Did you prevent these patients from receiving hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin? The anger and feeling of betrayal of many is growing and could become a tsunami.
“Did you ventilate people”
Of course! That is what happens in ICU. By the time these patients arrive in our orbit, they usually have a respiratory rate in the 50s, too breathless to speak, with deteriorating blood gases and level of consciousness. They have at most an hour or two of life left. Would you suggest we wait until cardiac arrest occurs and then use CPR, or maybe you do not believe in that either? HCQ and ivermectin are not going to help here, even they were any use anyway.
Wow! You have no idea what to do, so you try nothing, even though you know that doesn’t work. You have no idea whether HCQ or ivermectin work (they do, I’ve used it on patients, IVERMECTIN WORKS”) but you refuse to try them based on ignorance. You are clearly not a scientist.
It’s well documented that ventilation for covid cases is a death sentence for many. It seems statistically that not ventilating leads to better outcomes. Surely as an expert you know this?
E&B, how misinforming. We all know vaccines are the only way out of, well, any situation, and a nice day on the ventilator perks you up no end. Here is a scurrilous article from a well known quack https://media.mercola.com/ImageServer/Public/2022/February/PDF/ivermectin-outperforms-other-medications-pdf.pdf
Eggs
I suggest you stick to the branch of medicine that you know about, because you clearly know nothing about intensive care. Patients die of covid despite ventilation, not because of it. It is blindingly obvious that mortality is less in the no-ventilated than in the ventilated patients – they are less sick and can be managed with CPAP etc. Use some common sense.
I think, however, that early on in the pandemic, people were put on ventilators due to very low O2 levels, who would have done far better on CPAP. Therefore, in at least some of these cases, the ventilation was unnecessary and potentially harmful? Which, I think, is the point that is trying to be made here. Or, do you believe that this is not so? This may have been more of a problem in the US, where there was a strong financial incentive for hospitals to ‘ventilate.’ Some $36,000 dollars of income per ventilated patient – if memory serves.
I’m old enough to remember when there weren’t enough ventilators, and General Motors and other companies stopped producing what they were producing to start making ventilators.
I believe that ventilators saved millions of lives, together with Remdesivir, at least I know that in Northern Italy they did.
No you are right. As time went on and with experience, the better use of CPAP and other supportive therapy reduced the use of ventilation considerably. What I am objecting to in this mini-thread is firstly the allegation that we deliberately falsified the death certificates for financial reasons, and secondly, essentially being characterised as reckless headbangers, at best, if a patient was ventilated.
As to your comment about US hospitals, I worked for a year in a specialist private non-profit hospital, and the principal differences between UK and US were that money talks very loudly, and the fear of litigation leading to over treatment and investigation.
No you are right. As time went on and experience, the better use of CPAP and other supportive therapy reduced the use of ventilation considerably. What I am objecting to in this mini-thread is firstly the allegation that we deliberately falsified the death certificates for financial reasons, and secondly, essentially being characterised as reckless headbangers, at best, if a patient was ventilated.
As to your comment about US hospitals, I worked for a year in a specialist private non-profit hospital, and the principal differences between UK and US were that money talks very loudly, and the fear of litigation leading to over treatment and investigation.
Perhaps you are overlooking the question of public perception of the behaviour of the medics and their superiors? One of my relatives was denied early treatment and was subsequently ventilated to death. A perfectly healthy friend in his forties received a first dose of the “vaccine” and was found dead in his bed. What conclusion do you expect me to reach? Incompetence? Medical malpractice? Murder? Shit happens? These deaths should not have happened, and your description of the ICU unit as some kind of charnel house cuts little ice.
It helps to keep in mind that “official” (for lack of better word) Medicine is very hierarchical. Most medics can’t deviate from guidelines even when they disagree with some of them.
Kant
‘Public perception of medics’
Very high in UK and has risen during the pandemic. You are in a tiny minority. Maybe you need to get out more and meet a wider range of people. Views on the NHS as an organisation are a different matter.
Click to access nhs-and-public-health-perceptions-vs-reality.pdf
Personal stories make anecdotes, not data, and prove nothing.
Sasha
The training structure of doctors in training is hierarchical, but the deference that used to be present is largely gone. Nurses especially have no hesitation in submitting untoward incident forms if they think something has gone wrong.
Guidelines have advantages and disadvantages. They should serve mainly as an aide-memoire and not a rigid policy.
johnsymes, from the cited report:
”There is also an overly negative perception of the service the NHS provides and how it is run.”
It is likely the number of people needing to interact with the NHS is also a “tiny minority”, so quotes about perceptions can easily mislead.
Public perception appears to indicate masks are some benefit in avoiding disease. Read the story about Whitty and the Mandates here https://dailysceptic.org/todays-update/ Perception /= science.
John
I was talking about questioning guidelines rather than reporting incidents. If, for example, American Heart Association says statins must be prescribed once cholesterol reaches a certain reading, most docs will prescribe it whether they agree with that guideline or not
Doctors in Italy must be a different kind from the ones in the rest of the world, then.
Just last night, the Italian broadcaster Rete4 has aired an investigative report from hospitals in the North of the country, the ones that registered an unusual number of deaths during the first months of 2020.
Doctors and nurse, behind the screen of anonymity, confessed that they are forced to use high pressure oxygen well knowing that it will most likely kill the patient. Stories of patients who refused intubation, went home and got immediately better are also reported by those doctors.
As a curious note, the ER medical director of one of those hospitals is currently in detention awaiting trial, accused of murdering two patients “to free more beds”. The nurses who went to the police said that they couldn’t live with that remorse anymore, and that the killed patients were in the dozens but all the bodies but two were already incinerated without autopsies.
So, you see, I fail to understand why I should be careful when a used car salesman is trying to sell me a car, because all he care about is its profit, but a doctor is obviously a different kind of man, pure and enlightened, who would never do something wrong because of profit.
And before you start with the “but doctors working in public hospitals can’t profit”, there are direct and indirect methods of profiting, even in public hospitals, where privileges and prestige (and a bigger budget for the department) are as rewarding as a new Porsche.
An Italian Australian at the tropics – patients who refused intubation, went home and got immediately better
A more extreme case of this in the US:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/6LxuZLzPjor1/
Thanks for an excellent and helpful article.
One simple question: What can I do to maximise the the health and robustness of my glycocalyx? (And yes, I am taking my vitamin D, vitamin C, and zinc!)
Dr Kendrick speaks well of nitric oxide. Apparently generated by sunbathing, and even when breathing in through the nose.
I suspect that a low-carb diet should help, in principle. Since all carbs are glucose, and excess glucose in the bloodstream damages everything.
Nitric oxide is generated by the UVA rays so in theory should be available during the months when vit D cannot be made because of the low angle of the sun. Does anybody know if this is the case?
John Mann: Take glucosamine/chondroitin. Doesn’t cost much ($0.46 USD/day). Pages 259-261 in “The Clot Thickens.”
From where is inexpensive glucosamine chondroitin sourced? Do you know?
Also, one can take collagen, it’s inexpensive and it works.
Sasha: I don’t know, but most likely the PRC. I have for years made and taken bone broth. Does this obviate the need for taking glucosamine/chondroitin?
My assumption is that it does… Another good thing for connective tissue health is aspic.
Sasha: I’m glad you asked that question. I looked at the bottle, and it clearly says “Product of China.” Into the trash it goes.
Gary: I meant – what is it made from? I think shellfish based are more expensive than other kinds. And I don’t know whether more effective or not… Consumer Lab might know more
Sasha: I don’t know what it (the commercial one I bought) was made from. I’ll stick with eating the connective tissue from the beef I buy. The chewable parts I eat with relish (good for the jaw muscles); the tough parts I simmer (along with the bones) with a bit of vinegar for 48 hours. Actually anything with gelatin is good (my bone broth jells like a bowl of Jello if I cool it too much). This is probably why aspic is good; it must contain gelatin. Glycine-rich.
It sure does. Very gelatinous
Add perhaps glucosamine/chondroitin.
Thanks all for your suggestions.
On confusing IFR and CFR this is a good read:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public-health-preparedness/article/public-health-lessons-learned-from-biases-in-coronavirus-mortality-overestimation/7ACD87D8FD2237285EB667BB28DCC6E9
Dr. Kendrick, I think your footnote to the glycocalyx paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34862979/) is broken.
One question I have as a total layperson (but who understands something about the glycocalyx thanks to your good self, such as “what it is”) is, smokers are said to be resistant to SARS-CoV-2 infection, but they also tend to have damaged glycocalyx, Seems like a contradiction. Hmm?
There was something on these lines in a video that included Tess Lawrie, it appeared that current smokers had some protection, that’s a hard trade off Vs other issues with smoking though. It might be that the chemistry of smoking stops the infection in the respiratory system
This is a good read on IFR/CFR confusion in COVID work:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public-health-preparedness/article/public-health-lessons-learned-from-biases-in-coronavirus-mortality-overestimation/7ACD87D8FD2237285EB667BB28DCC6E9
Every time I visit the supermarket shelves looking for a supplement, I can’t help but notice the huge stocks of vitamin D – which obviously translates into equally huge sales of vitamin D.
One time I arrived and found a packet of 3000 iu vitamin D boxed in one of those plastic containers which are designed to make them hard to steal. I asked an assistant why this was, and he explained that this was applied to particularly popular products.
I reckon that this country has somehow learned about vitamin D despite the NHS – I am sure this blog has helped. That (and Boris’ parties) have set us free!
Let’s hope the Canadians break free next with the help of those truckers!
It would be sensible to take Vitamin K2 and magnesium with Vitamin D, and ensure adequate Vitamin A intake by eating liver, dark chocolate, etc. See, for example, “Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little-Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life” by Kate Rheaume-Bleue.
There are many other books about Vitamin K2. The most in-your-face is probably “Vitamin K Or A Wheelchair: Your Choice” by Doug Fenwick.
One thing that has puzzled me is why the ‘gern’ proponents were also very pro-masking. If you have a predisposition to believe that it is viral load, more than anything else that determines whether or not you get sick, and how sick you get, then forcing people to rebreathe thier own infected air would seem to be a questionable thing to do, because, again logically only, we have no experiments …. you would be making them sicker. You’d have to be cutting the spread by one heck of a lot before making grandmother sicker sounds like a good idea.
But as far as I know, none of the pro-mask crowd ever worried about this. Why? Is there some study out there that I am completely unaware of that makes this a proven non-concern?
Because your argument doesn’t make sense. If you are infected, you have zillions of germs in your upper airways. A tiny fraction of these is in your exhaled air, mostly in the form or aerosols and droplets, most of which will get trapped in the mask which will wick the moisture away almost instantly. The fraction that makes it back when you inhale is absolutely tiny compred to what you already have, and of course, it is the very same bug genetically. It just does not matter.
Can anyone explain to me how “the IFR rate has been artificially boosted”?
Is it because only positive tests are counted as an infection? In other words it ignores asymptomatic infections?
Although I have no relevant qualifications, I think you are exactly right.
If only positive tests count as infections then the population of infected untested is ignored and this boosts the IFR.
Thanks Dr Kendrick. As ever, a very thoughtful piece. I strongly respect the fact that you are fully prepared to recognise that there are many things about illness that modern medicine does not understand.
I also like the fact that you explicitly refer to Terrain Theory. Most mainstream medical and public health related orthodoxy seems to be 100% Germ Theory oriented. This is despite the confounding evidence such as failed attempts going right back to the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and earlier to induce human to human transmission.
My own thinking has evolved a lot in two years. I am certain that the tenets of Germ Theory are unproven via any form of true science. It has instead become an orthodox religion. It seems just as likely that viruses are really exosomes that are a consequence of illness as much as a cause of anything at all. I do not believe anyone has proven causation from an isolated virus, as opposed to bizarre experiments without control samples that involve injecting gunk into the brains of monkeys, of example.
I feel that the true origin of the unusual deaths and mortality spike that occurred from March 2020 is not known. Something definitely happened and physicians such as yourself were on the front line of dealing with it. Our fixation on Germ Theory means though that nobody with funding is looking for any non viral related origin. That is the true tragedy.
History will look back on this era in the same way that we look back on the past and ask why we were so backward and so closed minded.
The amazing thing is that the perfect laboratory for the effect of Covid was the Diamond Princess cruise ship, yet the lessons seem to have been totally ignored by most of the policy movers and shakers. Serious Nobel-winning scientists like Michael Levitt who used the Diamond Princess data in their models were likewise ignored.
“Of the 3,711 people aboard Diamond Princess on the 20 January cruise, 1,045 were crew and 2,666 were passengers. The median age of the crew was 36 while the median age of the passengers was 69. The passengers were 55% female and the crew was 81% male. Of the 712 infections, 145 occurred in crew and 567 occurred in passengers” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_Diamond_Princess
The 14 deaths were all among the passengers, four in their 80s and six in their 70s. Ten were male. (Some ages and genders are unknown.)
This pretty much matches the observed pattern in the general population. Older males were the most at risk. IFR among crew was zero. IFR among the elderly was 2.5%. Note this was before vaccines were available.
Good fuller analysis from Levitt: https://heatherrenkel.github.io/index.html
Also, he was to be the key-note speaker at a symposium on synthetic biology, a subject he created, and was dis-invited because of this ‘disinformation’. Luc Montagnier died recently, another wrong kind of expert, in spite of Nobel Prize for work on HIV, whose opinion was ‘misinformation’.
Forgot to add from the link: “48% of the patients had underlying disease. Cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension are the most common, followed by endocrine disorder such as thyroid diseases, diabetes, respiratory diseases, and cancer in that order.”
I think it’s safe to assume most of the dead came from the diseased group, i.e. those whose terrain was not up to scratch.
I love love LOVE every word of your blogs and read and reread them to make sure I’m not making assumptions or misunderstanding anything.
As an interesting n=4 story, twice our family has been exposed to covid. First in March 2020, our son came home from boarding school for the first lockdown. He was coughing and spluttering and we joked it was covid. Thereafter for a few days we all felt a bit below par, not really coughing, but my husband had a sore tummy, I was exhausted and spent 3 days sitting in a chair reading (nice excuse for laziness), and our daughter projectile vomited, and the adults lost their smell/taste before it was known as a symptom. There was no testing available at the time, but the minute I was able to get antibody tests through work, I did and only my husband showed to have any antibodies.
Then, Christmas 2021, I felt lousy one day with a sore throat and cough and again wanting nothing more than to sit and read. I tested negative. Next day husband had the same, we were due to go to a party so tested to be safe and he was positive. Children felt a bit ropey but also tested negative. Husband and I did PCR tests, he was positive, I was negative. We live in a happy marital situation, so kissing and sharing space is normal and didn’t change on account of covid infection. Despite that I resolutely continued to test negative.
As a background I have always had a robust immune system. I was brought up on a farm, my family had 6 dogs, I lived outside (not literally) and was always active. More recently I have trained as a nutritional therapist and studied functional medicine, so the whole family has a healthy diet. My husband has what used to be called palindromic rheumatism but is now accepted to be a precursor to rheumatoid arthritis, which shows as an episodic but excruciating sudden onset of arthritis, so is medicated prophylactically with sulfasalazine. He used to have a poor level of immunity but since changing our diet this has improved immeasurably.
So, like you, I am quite sure I have been exposed to covid countless times but seem resolutely incapable of testing positive. Ditto our children.
Interestingly, the children are the same with chicken pox. I have tried SO hard to get them infected to get natural immunity but they determinedly seem not to catch it. They’re now 13 and 12 and still haven’t caught the damn thing.
Anyway, thank you Malcolm, I love your work and I love your dry humour, I can hear your voice when I read your words, which I always take to be a sign of authenticity.
Kate
Kate Berkeley registered Nutritional Therapist and Functional Medicine Practitioner DipION, AFMCP, mBANT, CNHC Kate Berkeley Nutrition Spetchley Park Spetchley Worcestershire WR5 1RS
07971664106 http://www.kateberkeley.co.uk
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Malcolm,
This is very interesting, thank you.
On your own experiences of not catching Covid, I note you do not mention vitamin D and other supplements.
You do not go into country differences either.
Much food for thought here
Vitamin D requires a blood all on its own. And, yes, I take 9,000 units Vitamin D3 per day.
I found a capsule with 10,000 IU + 200 mcg K2, so that’s what I take.
I recently made contact with http://www.drdavidgrimes.com/
We have had a few mutually supportive email exchanges.
That mRNA/DNA products have been rushed out as vaccines with minimal testing, and vitamin D and off label (successful) use of safe medications has been marginalized or blocked ‘for lack of evidence’ worries.
Do you supplement K2 along with D?
Malcolm
Thank you, I appear to have forgotten to check the boxes
Dear Dr Kendrick,
What a brilliant read and as always, we continue to learn something new from your blogs!
My husband gets the local rag and for the last two years we have always turned to the obituaries, waiting to see the massive rise in deaths, but no! Those people listed are generally in their 90s, 80s, 70s and one week there were three who were over a hundred!!!!
A friend of ours, whose 99 year old Mother was taken ill in a Nursing Home in Buxton, was rushed to Stepping Hill by ambulance where she died some hours later. Her son was told she had died of Covid, whereupon he said that there was no Covid in the Nursing Home! He was told that she must have caught it in the ambulance????????
A week doesn’t go by that we don’t comment on the ineptitude of the so called professionals and in future, thanks to you, we will now refer to them as yet another Dunning-Kruger effect!
Many thanks for keeping us sane,
Corinna
Isn’t cholesterol needed to keep the cells “fortified” against infection? I’m wondering if “old people with comorbidities” is actually “old people on an assortment of drugs to lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol and force blood sugar into their tissues?” That is, I’m wondering if the fertile “terrain” for covid is terrain of people (old or young) who are on chronic medications. I mean, the assumption is that it’s the underlying obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure that creates the risk, but what if it’s not the existence of those conditions, but the *treatment* of them that is the risk factor?
Cholesterol is also needed to keep cells from falling apart! “Cholesterol composes about 30% of all animal cell membranes. It is required to build and maintain membranes and modulates membrane fluidity over the range of physiological temperatures.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol#Function_in_cells
“Although the brain represents only 2% of total body weight, it contains 20% of the body’s cholesterol. The Cholesterol Levels in the brain are high on purpose—because it needs large amounts of cholesterol to function properly”.
https://www.lowcarbusa.org/low-brain-cholesterol-levels/
A great explanation and I have agreed with your suggestions all along.
Why cant all this be investigated fully? All I hear of now are the effects of all this on people now suffering with terminal illness that were ghosted during the last two years in favour of preventing the lives of a very very small minority.
I believe we are only just touching the surface of the result of the governments decisions, which we can see clearly from their own actions during the lockdowns, did not really carry much weight.
Keep up the good work.
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Who would pay for this investigation?
How many did the medics kill with overuse of ventilators?
How many in the US were killed with the highly toxic drug Remdesivir, the only drug they were allowed to use in hospital?
How many British frail elderly were killed when they threw them out of the NHS into care homes that couldn’t meet their needs, imposed DNR orders on them and then killed them with midazolam the moment they got a sniffle?
Strip out all these causes of death and the covid19 mortality drops away.
Great analysis of what happened. Why didn’t the BBC invite someone with your insight onto Question Time on the 3rd Feb, and have a proper debate, rather than the one sided bias view we get time and again. 🤔
I think the answer to your question lies in the name “BBC”.
So, Dr. Kendrick, you approach the question of covid knowledge cautiously and a bit gingerly. (You go a bit beyond what the title says.) And you also discuss the ways of thinking presented by the public health authorities. And you mean to “do no harm.” Perfectly appropriate for a physician.
So you come to the conclusion that we can be certain that there is a high level of uncertainty in what the PHAs are saying. (Careful there. Don’t step in the uncertainty.) Uh, oh, I think Eggs just spilt his hot coffee on himself. Anyway, soldiering on…I think that we can speak in degrees of uncertainty, can’t we? (Some uncertainty might be good for the terrain and make it more fertile.) But uncertainty will always be a major problem when the philosophy is, “First, do no wrong,” won’t it?
So, terrain is the primary consideration and germ secondary–at least with respect to covid. Maybe not for ebola or smallpox or polio or bubonic plague. But we are discussing covid. Or at least I thought we were. But somehow covid keeps getting confused with these other diseases that can be deadly in the young. And covid vaccines keep getting compared to polio vaccines. Much confusion, which breeds fear and uncertainty. Oh, well, as long as it ends up in the compost pile….
So, if we thought that covid was the Big Green Monster coming to eat us, then our panic was understandable. But at some point the Big Green Monster theory lost strength and had to be discarded. Maybe June 2020. But, because of sunk cost and reputation preservation, the Big Green Monster narrative couldn’t be abandoned. And the population had to be kept terrorized to keep them compliant. (“Else they might come for us with pitchforks and torches.”) Riding the tiger….
And we know from Event 201 that the plan was always vaccines. Even in October, 2019. (“Oh, here he goes with his conspiracy theory.”)
“The pandemic will continue at some rate until there is an effective vaccine or until 80-90 % of the global population has been exposed. From that point on, it is likely to be an endemic childhood disease.” (tic toc, vaccine development is on the clock)
https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/scenario.html
Is it just a theory when the people who conducted the pandemic exercise posted about it on the internet? Maybe to some people….
Should we ask the question, “Qui bono?”
Why shouldn’t Bill Gates have a business plan around vaccines and profit $50 billion from vaccines? And fool President Trump into rushing development of vaccines and avoiding long term safety trials in animal models? (After all, the covid ifr is ten times flu, isn’t it?) But those pesky repurposed antivirals had to be blocked, didn’t they, in order to preserve the EUA for vaccines?
(“And we couldn’t recommend supplementing with nutrients like vitamin D, zinc, magnesium, etc. to reduce immune incompetence or covid deaths might fall and the panic consequently subside.”)
And now we know that the US had _huge_ excess mortality in the working age population in 2021 and we ought to find the cause of death statistics for those people. Maybe this is an ongoing problem that can somehow be avoided. The best evidence is that covid was not a direct cause. Maybe covid caused chronic conditions that led to these deaths? At this point, we can’t be certain whether it was covid or vaccines that led to these deaths. Maybe both, to varying degrees. And we should bear in mind that this is likely not a strictly US problem.
But there is data from VAERS and DMED as well as 2021 mortality statistics that point at vaccines. VAERS is noisy, but there is still signal there. We ought not ignore it. And some anonymous Department of Defense source claims that the DMED data is inaccurate. Obviously, a well-substantiated claim.
So the calculated uncertainty continues, which is good for gardens.
The Spanish flu is an interesting one.
It turns out that US government researchers couldn’t cross contaminate the infected with uninfected people no matter how hard they tried, including wiping samples of sputum into the eyes of the unifected.
Secrets of Influenza
https://odysee.com/@drsambailey:c/secrets-of-influenza-%F0%9F%98%B7:1
With covid19 we heard about the concept of asymptomtic spread but where was the proof of any sort of person to person spread?
What do you mean by “person to person spread?”
“To establish a novel SARS-CoV-2 human challenge model, 36 volunteers aged 18-29 years without evidence of previous infection or vaccination were inoculated with 10 TCID50 of a wild-type virus (SARS-CoV-2/human/GBR/484861/2020) intranasally. Two participants were excluded from per protocol analysis due to seroconversion between screening and inoculation. Eighteen (~53%) became infected, with viral load (VL) rising steeply and peaking at ~5 days post-inoculation. Virus was first detected in the throat but rose to significantly higher levels in the nose…Mild-to-moderate symptoms were reported by 16 (89%) infected individuals, beginning 2-4 days post-inoculation. Anosmia/dysosmia developed more gradually in 12 (67%) participants.”
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1121993/v1
‘What do you mean by “person to person spread?”’
I meant an infected person spreading the disease to an uninfected person, which did not happen in the Spanish flu example..
’36 volunteers aged 18-29 years without evidence of previous infection or vaccination were inoculated with 10 TCID50 of a wild-type virus (SARS-CoV-2/human/GBR/484861/2020) intranasally.’
I’ll have a read when I get chance but in every other example similar to this they have never actually isolated a virus in the proper sense of the term isolation (meaning separated from all other things). Normally when virologists say isolation they mean they have a rough sample that has been grown in a culture of cells and that various toxins and antibiotics were mixed in.
So the innoculant will most likely be a toxic brew of all sorts as oppossed to an actually isolated particle identified as a virus.
Just from your quote isn’t it odd that only half of the subjects experienced symptoms?
50/50 is like a toss of a coin, maybe exposure to this innoculant gives you symptoms maybe it doesn’t, I thought the covids were super deadly and going to the shops without a mask would leave you dead never mind being intntonally innoculated with the stuff.
I remember a previous discussion here about this phenomenon, originally described by Dr Hope-Simpson.
He concluded that someone only became sick if some other factor (I think he called it X) was present. The tentative conclusion of this discussion was that factor X was insufficient vitamin D. If the ones that showed no symptoms had good levels of vitamin D, that would explain everything, I imagine.
“Normally when virologists say isolation they mean they have a rough sample that has been grown in a culture of cells and that various toxins and antibiotics were mixed in. So the innoculant will most likely be a toxic brew of all sorts as oppossed to an actually isolated particle identified as a virus.”
When HCQ is given at 2 grams in 24 hours, is it a medicine or a toxin? When one gram of calcifediol is consumed at one dose, is it a nutrient or a toxin? Dosage matters. We are exposed to various toxins at low levels daily which we never even notice.
“Just from your quote isn’t it odd that only half of the subjects experienced symptoms?”
Not in my mind. Literature reports that about 40% of people exposed to covid are asymptomatic. In a small sample, 50% asymptomatic is unsurprising, especially if the subjects knew that they would be exposed. Some likely prepared by supplementing with D3 or calcifediol beforehand. (h/t David Bailey)
shirleyjonesbrand8@yahoo.com
This was a highly enlightening, fascinating read! I forwarded it to a close friend of mine for whom I produced a monthly e-newsletter for five years, a double board certified surgeon who was the Director of Trauma surgery at Yale University Hospital. I am sure he is going to gobble this up.
I would love to read your take on the possibility that COVID-19 is not just a typical coronavirus, but was genetically engineered before it was released on humanity as a bio weapon. Do you see any aspects of COVID-19 as being atypical for other known viruses?
Carol B.
Florida
I have been reading about nitrite poisoning.
IMO the vaccines are the bioweapon. Covid was engineered and then released to justify the jabbing.
Thank you for this work of genius. But do you really believe that the jury is still out on the vaccine?
Hi Dr Kendrick, many thanks for a great post/update. I get the sense, the powers that be are fixated on vaccination for just about everything!
I respect your sceptical approach to “received wisdom”. It is disappointing therefore that in your quote from your own WhatsApp post you include the neoliberal notion that debt has been piled onto UK plc. It would be worth exploring Stephanie Skelton on debt or Richard Murphy specifically on how the pandemic has already been paid for. I find those writers to have a similarly refreshing approach to their subject as you do to yours and I think you might be interested in their views. Keep up the good work.
Having researched the money system since around 2007, I would agree.
The debt based money system is opaque to most people.
In a way, I’m disappointed in humans because videos about the money system get very few views, whereas videos about cats doing silly things get hundred’s of thousands.
Think I shall see if there’s a way to reincarnate as a boisterous ginger tomb cat, at least then I might make people laugh… If I can find a half decent owner who doesn’t use me as a football, I could at least amuse a few asset rich people!
Could you share the names of the people you watch? Thank you
The two I named are worth looking up!
Thank you
Sasha: I read Martin Armstrong (armstrongeconomics) and Tom Luongo. Much of the financial stuff is over my head, but what I do grasp is very useful in understanding how we’re all being screwed by the gazillionaires.
Thank you for the suggestions
Sasha: ZeroHedge (Tyler Durden) is also good, although Safari is completely blocking all access to the site on my computer.
Our older macs did that too. Upgraded to El Capitan and can now access zerohedge after accepting the warning that it’s an unsafe site. They recommend you back up everything before doing that, but I got away without doing so.
Am I right in thinking that Vitamin C and nitric oxide are needed, along with treating insulin resistance, to protect the glycocalyx?
A Doctor with common sense who thinks outside the box. A rare and beautiful thing. Massive thanks for your hard work and honesty…. Absolute legend 👍
Thank you
Dear Malcolm Thank you so much for this article! I do wish the mainstream media would publish this! Maybe people would just start to relax a bit…. From a follower in ‘freedom war-torn’ Canada Rosemary
>
Dear Malcolm,
thank you for helping to keep me sane in this mad world. You don’t know how much your work means to many of us. I took the red pill and am surrounded by blues….
I thought you might be amused by a quotation I saw in the introduction to a book on Lutyens. Apparently, Lutyens ‘distrusted words and those who wielded them’…preferring the clear evidence of actions. I wish I could insulate myself from much which has been written and said over the past two years as easily as he could. Your words are trustworthy and help to redress the balance, if not in the wider world as yet, but for those who are paying attention.
with best wishes,
Ian Comaish
>
Thank you, Dr. Kendrick. Masterful! I’ve been taking glucosamine/chondroitin, and my glycocalyx is quite pleased. Looking forward to reading reference 11.
Hi Malcolm – cheer from an elderly fan in Alberta – the land of the “truckers convoy”. Good stuff – albeit “singing to the choir”. Carry on.
Another terrific column, which is good. Been missing you, but in the meantime have been thoroughly enjoying (and learning from) The Cloth Thickens. Another gem!
The Cloth Thickens?
Isn’t that Dr Kendrick’s forthcoming book about the farcical attempts to make masks seem viable?
Sticky –
Oh drat! Really – I missed that one (and would like to blame autocorrect). Love that you caught it and your response! I’ll read it as soon as he writes it.
Sorry, Marcia T, I couldn’t resist it!
You’re not Irish, are you . . . ?
A bit Irish – and as my Dad used to say, that along with Scotch, French, Dutch, English, and Swamp Yankee. Never sure about that last one. Curious about why you thought that, though.
Indeed. Autocorrect is my worst enema too.
Brilliant!!
Marcia T, I am referring to the Irish not pronouncing the ‘h’ after a ‘t’. I know I am generalising, but am also speaking anecdotally – maybe it depends on which part of Ireland one is from, also.
Anyway, this brings me to the story about the two Irishmen who emigrated to Canada. When they got off the boat, one of the first things they saw was a large sign reading: ‘Tree Fellers Wanted’.
“Jaysus, we should have brought Murphy with us!”
Superb analysis! And a beautiful illustration of what critical thinking looks like.
If you click “see all comments” all twelve references will appear, and link #11 works.
Mike
Super blog. The best yet. Will spread it as far as I can. I also have a young Doctor daughter. She must read it to help her critical thinking faculties.
*Malcolm sorry. I am a cricket fan!
Great read – as always a nice easy read with hard demonstrable facts. One thing though, the ONS data set you’ve used to get the 542 deaths under sixty was published on 1st Feb 2021, not 1 Feb 2022 – it also only includes deaths up to 4 July 2020.
Thought I’d mention this before you get accused of something heinous.
Thanks very much, especially for the link to du Preez et al (“… undersulfated … epithelial & endothelial glycocalyx” – I was not aware that I knew so little about the glycocalyx!). I’m halfway through it, so after a little rest, to let my brain stop hurting, I will return to it and read the rest.
For a simple intro to sulfate, I would recommend this article (with links to Seneff’s papers) which also is relevant to Vitamin D: https://holisticprimarycare.net/topics/nutrition-a-lifestyle/sulfate-the-most-common-nutritional-deficiency-you-ve-never-heard-of/
How about Epsom Salts as a supplement? (Magnesuim Sulphate) Addresses two shortcomings at once. Both components highly regarded. My great-aunt used to sprinkle Epsom Salts into a saucer and pour tea into it and drink the resulting liquid. Lived to a very ripe old age!
This is a long way of saying nothing.
I am usually a fan, especially in the work around cholesterol and thyroid. But it makes no difference if we know what the rates are.
People are still suffering from Long Covid two years after having Covid. Had we allowed the virus to rampage through the population of the world, we would have even more people with this.
My husband picked up Delta and gave it to me. I was ill for a few days but recovered well. He felt ill for some weeks, and has taken over a year to recover.
Many people have killed themselves because they could not stand their low quality of life.
mistymole wrote ”Had we allowed the virus to rampage through the population of the world, we would have even more people with this.”
There are articles that support that opinion, and there are many articles that point out “the virus” has had no more effect in terms of numbers than a normal flu season. That people are still suffering from long covid, this is a frequent feature of diseases for some people. Their recovery times are long, even if it wasn’t covid. Rather than heaping so much attention on a disease, it would be better to find out why some people have long recovery times.
It makes a difference to know if you’ve been lied to and manipulated by the public health authorities.
If your husband was ill for weeks, perhaps he was vitamin D deficient when he contracted covid, which would hinder the immune system tamping down inflammation. Has your husband checked his 25OHD/calcifediol levels?
Perhaps all your husband needs is to get his 25OHD levels up. You can order Fortaro online. (Fortaro is the brand name for 25OHD you can order.)
For those who suffer from long covid, I recommend finding a good acupuncturist. I have treated a number of “long-haulers” with acupuncture and all of them so far have been pleased with the results.
In July 2021, the UK DHSC said that the IFR was 0.096%
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2021-07-12/31381
That was probably for either Delta or a mix of Delta and earlier versions.
One can also quibble that the ‘COVID deaths’ are a mix of deaths only from COVID, deaths partly from COVID and false positives, aka deaths from something else entirely. The DHSC number might be lower if we eliminated car crash, cancer and other victims whose deaths had nothing to do with COVID.
I recently saw an IFR of 0.04% quoted for Omicron. I’ve no idea what the IFR is for a severe common cold, but is Omicron now broadly on that level? Apparently, severe colds can also kill the very elderly.
Oh no, did they start another fake pandemic? After reading “Virus Mania”, that’s exactly what it has been. Germ theory? Makes for tons of profit and very little health. Terrain theory? Treat your body right and it will usually take care of you. And that means NO big pharma drugs. They are the poisons that make you sick and diseased so you can become fodder for the medical system’s bank accounts.
The health experts? Seldom believe any of them, even my doc and his cardiologist. The boobs and agency pantywaists on the TV and in the news…useless thugs at best.
Be on the lookout for CoV-3 coming to a nation near you. There was mention of this, along with CoV-2 and CoV-1 (already a fake pandemic in 2003) back in 2007 in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. The reference came from Chinese virologists…hmm.
Age 71, no flu shots in over 45 years and never any mRNA injections ever. No covid and not sick at all except a slight cold in 2019. I am an anti-vaxxer all the way.
Dr. Malcolm, I enjoyed your book “The Clot Thickens” very much. Thanks for that and this revealing article.
I’m a big fan of yours, especially re cholesterol issues, but it’s hard for me to be swayed in one direction or the other when it comes to Covid — I tend to agree and disagree with arguments on both sides. Having said that, I would like to play devil’s advocate here:
1. Re the idea that there is no evidence that lockdowns and masking have any effect. How would anyone be able to produce evidence for or against this? Even if you compare lockdown/masking countries to non-lockdown/non-masking ones, there are too many confounding factors to make a determination. I guess we could stop the lockdowns/masking and see if there is any difference, and then see if a major disaster occurs.
2. The U.S. in 2020 had about 540,000 more deaths than it had in 2019 before Covid struck. The largest change in any year in the teens was in 2015, which had about 86,000 more deaths than 2014. I can’t think of anything that would cause this increase in 2020 besides Covid. I can’t buy into 540,000 people dying because they were stressed from having to stay home or wear masks.
3. We’ve had several times in the last two years where hospitals are overwhelmed with patients, ICUs running out of beds, patients waiting in the halls to get medical attention, whether or not they had Covid. This is a big problem caused by Covid as far as I’m concerned. Is there a sensible way to deal with this?
Regarding point 1, I would say it is impossible to really lock people down unless you can deliver food to them all! This was not possible, and we all went off to the supermarkets to buy food. In that first lockdown we were told that masks would not help.
Also, at a more technical level, it has been pointed out (sorry I forget the guy’s name, but he has debated with Dr Kendrick) that viral infections typically follow a Gompertz curve – exponential at first, and then flattening out and descending . He reckoned that the lockdowns were timed (deliberately or not – take your pick) to coincide with the Gompertz peak so that the lockdowns appear to do something useful. Remember that when Boris refused to close down Xmas a few months back – sure enough the COVID rates began falling back anyway.
Regarding point 4 – why did they close down all the Nightingale hospitals that we had paid for to solve just this problem?
I agree with Points 1 and 2, although I would quibble about the actual number of deaths. There was definitely excess mortality in 2020 in the US, mostly among those 80+. There was excess mortality in 2021, among the working age, but not those 85+, where mortality declined back to normal levels. And we are fairly certain that the working age deaths were mostly _not_ covid.
Covid deaths actually increased in 2021 by 12% over 2020. Covid likely continued to kill mostly the elderly. The contribution of the 85+ cohort to the causes of death normally associated with old age–heart disease, cancer, and stroke–must have declined in 2021. We can look at chronic lower respiratory disease deaths to get an answer as to how much decline we should expect–CLRD deaths declined 12%. Yet heart disease and cancer were within historical ranges, while stroke was up a bit.
Deaths in the 85+ group were down about 150,000 in 2021 from 2020, while deaths in working age were up about 138,000. In the same ballpark. It seems to me that in order for heart disease, cancer, and stroke deaths to keep up with historical levels, about 12% of them must have come from working age deaths.
I know that this is roundabout statistical reasoning using process of elimination rather than direct reasoning from statistics, but I simply haven’t found any mortality statistics broken down by both age and cause of death. Perhaps you know of a source.
For my statistics, I used https://deadorkicking.com/death-statistics/us/2021/ .
Yey things were looking pretty grim down out wayd during the first half of 2020.
My numbers are from the CDC website. But I notice your site’s death total for 2021 is almost the same as CDC’s count for 2020. Wondering if there is a slip up there and maybe one of them confused which year they were talking about. Assuming that isn’t so, 2021 deaths are still about 540,000 more than 2019, so still a lot of excess deaths which I believe come from Covid.
One of the CDC’s pages you might look at is https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#SexAndAge, specifically Tables 2 and 3 and some data that you can download. It’s a bit confusing unless you’re a statistics/data freak, but you can find information on age groups and causes of death.
“My numbers are from the CDC website.”
And there’s the problem. The CDC used a wide net. Covid deaths were about 50% of the CDC count, based on what hospitals have said about covid patients–that for half, covid was a secondary diagnosis. There was an article about it in the Atlantic.
” But I notice your site’s death total for 2021 is almost the same as CDC’s count for 2020. ”
My site’s death total for 2021 is only about 5k larger than for 2020. But if 85+ y.o. deaths are down 14% and 75-84 y.o. deaths are down 3%, while total count has to remain about the same, then the difference must be made up with the working age population and with the 65-74 y.o. group. There were about 47k increased deaths in the 65-74 y.o. group.
Covid deaths were up 12% in 2021. I expect that a high percentage of those numbers came from the 85+ y.o. group. Yet total deaths in the 85+ y.o. group were down 14%–some 150,000 fewer deaths. And 23,000 fewer deaths in the 75-84 y.o. group. I believe the totals more than I believe the cause of death numbers. Perhaps there was dodginess in cause of death assigning cause as covid when it was really something else. That would show heart disease, cancer, and stroke numbers skyrocketing due to younger people dying.
I would love to find an alternate database to compare numbers.
Looks like 85+ y.o. contributed about 30% of the covid mortality count in 2020 and about 30% of total mortality.
https://datavisualizations.heritage.org/public-health/covid-19-deaths-by-age/
Have you looked at John Dees almanac on Facebook. He is crunching numbers and finding very interesting results based on ONS stats and actual stats from a UK health trust.
I totally agree with you. I wish your words could be written in the sky for everyone to see.
Here in Italy, our wretched government has granted us freedom from the outdoor muzzle starting from tomorrow. Imagine that. This is a concession handed from above, like a drop of water on the scorching lips of a crawling desert survivor. The favour has to be savoured slowly because if any of our MPs wakes up on the wrong side of the bed tomorrow, it can all be revoked. We must wear N95 masks indoors and sit at least 1.5 metres apart. Incredibly, we can go to a restaurant (walk from the door of the restaurant to our table face-masked, of course, because covid infects at heights exceeding 1.50m, I guess). Then we can sit and remove our masks. “Because you are there to eat”, someone told me. Of course, covid knows you’re there to eat, and won’t infect you. We must show the monstrous abomination of a SUPER REINFORCED GREEN PASS (proof of vaccination, 3 jabs or covid + 2 jabs), to go everywhere. Private clinics won’t see patients unless they have it (they’re left to die, I suppose). You can’t go into any shop without a super reinforced green pass. The Italian health dictatorship also wanted tobacconists to enforce super reinforced green pass admission, then someone must have told them that much of the government’s revenue comes from tobacco and various lotteries, and so now you can buy your cigarettes and your scratch and win cards without proof of vaccination.
The deputy health minister declared that starting from April indoor muzzle removal could be taken into careful consideration. This has caused a government upheaval, and the deputy has been silenced, because indoor muzzle removal is not on the horizon, in April or any time in the foreseeable future.
This is to say: I WISH I LIVED IN THE UK. You had it bad, but ours is ongoing hell, with no end in sight.
Italians are affected by covid hypochondria from which they’ll never recover. I’m sure that tomorrow there’ll be more face-masked people outdoors than ever before.Here catching covid is a death sentence. People hate you. You deserve to be quarantined and treated like a dead person walking. You receive texts from friends asking you if you are still breathing, reassuring you that you are in their prayers, may God be with you and help you wade through these horrific times of illness. You asymptomatic covid positive, why on earth are you still alive?
Our country has made covid big fat business, the numbers of cases, deaths, patients, and tests are inflated to get funds. Pharmacies make €1.5 million/year out of covid tests. Why should the pandemic end? It’s greater money than human trafficking, immigration, drugs and prostitution. Long live covid.
The rage I feel inside, the sense of injustice, of being fooled and humiliated every single day. This has no cure. Whenever you feel wronged, think of our situation here in Covid Dictatorship and you’ll find comfort.
If it’s any consolation (and it probably isn’t) things here in France are almost as bad and look very likely to worsen, particularly after ‘Micron’, our pound-shop dictator, gets reelected.
As Stalin is reputed to have said “What matters is who counts the votes”…
You might try paying little boys to throw rotten fruit and eggs at public bureaucrats in their offices. Little resistances add up. This is an old way of protesting and should be brought back.
Any viruses potential to wipe out humanity can be judged quickly by “rule of thumb” is it killing the young quickly? If not don’t panic.
What Wuhan virus is…is a demonstration of what really is ailing West societies…metabolic disease.
On a different subject, thankyou for pricking my interest in cadiio infraction and what causes it.
After viewing all the evidence it seems to me to be a basic law of physics problem, Newtons first law. What the blood in the arteries are trying to do is go straight, unfortunately the bends and branches stop that putting strain at certain points, if you smoke, take drugs or just live, these all take a toll on the flexibility of the system to cope and cause cracks at the pressure points, unfortunately the repair of the cracks are in the wrong direction narrowing the arteries.
You will see the same problem in any high pressure system, that is why pipelines have as few bends as possible.
Its time to look at methods for cleaning out the build up of plaque without operating?
Your reasoning on plumbing is sound but inapplicable to the heart.
Look up the helical heart on youtube
If you are curious look up Manel Ballister (bear with his accent)
the electromagnetic underpinning of what we call biology (and physics) is disregarded by ‘explanations’ based on impacts and thermodynamics.
Active ignorance runs by what we think to know and so do not question.
We’re good at that 😉
Are there any proven methods that you know of?
My brother and I both had flu in 1956 – the year of the Hungarian Revolution – which failed, of course. We were living in Scotland and were feeling so crummy we didn’t fight over the single library copy of “War and Peace”.
The doctor came every day and we got better.
Eventually we reverted to being a uniquely dysfunctional family, as described by Tolstoy’
I believe Malcolm and others will appreciate the linked article – it relates to genomics in particular but to the state of science in general.
Dont let a virus refutation site deny access to a work that stands in its own right.
The Epistemological Crisis in Genomics
Regardless of the data the original lockdown was to prevent meltdown in the NHS which has been badly organised for years. Are you indicating Boris’s proposed removal of all restrictions is the right move? The vulnerable do not think so. The Times this week noted US research that indicated masks give protection of over 80%. As uncomfortable as masks are I will not be removing mine in enclosed spaces.
The wearing of masks is inversely correlated with a population’s understanding of physics.
Observation suggests that the wearing masks is almost universal. Which implies…
…that the CDC doesn’t include physicists in its discussions about mask effectiveness?
I think that all the physicists employed by the CDC are put to work on radiation projects. Which might explain their hair loss and extra toes.
What comes first, the aging process or the damage to the cardio vascular system?
I believe solving the vascular system problems would move human health in the correct direction allowing people to live an active life for far longer than currently.
Number one is nutrition and to stop following liars with the biggest megaphones who don’t care if you live or die just how much they can make off your long sick lives.
So the biggest hurdle is to return to fundamentals, which is how we run our societies and for whose benefit?
The dissipation of power over a greater number of people and a level of reason to be reached before participation in decision making are fundermental. Its up to the few to educate the current voters to change allegiances to this new system. But beware, the current power structure will fight to the end to protect their privilege.
It was never a pandemic. It was clear by March 2020 that in spite of fearmongering over the high death rate in the elderly population of northern Italy that deaths would never reach pandemic levels.
End of that story.
In sunny Queensland, with strict border lockdowns and other mandates, it was impossible for anyone to contract any version until late 2021. I’ve certainly been exposed to it, on one occasion at least for several hours in a car plus other, less contained instances, and have failed to exhibit any symptoms. My glycocalyx is probably in excellent condition though, with a BP of 113/76 and good D levels. My wife and younger son seem immune too. My daughter had it mildly for a day and a bit, my other son for three days with a temp of 39. But his was a very high viral load, cooped up in a car with four other infected people for 20 hours straight. He recovered very quickly.
So probably the end of that story too.
Thank you Dr Kendrick for another excellent blog post.
Although the available death diagnosis data for the past 2 years is suspect I believe we do have reliable all-cause mortality data from ONS and the archives.
The annual age-standardised mortality rate for England and Wales (separately) from Table 10 of the ONS Monthly Mortality Analysis for December 2021 shows that 2020 had the highest mortality rate since 2008. The data from this source only goes back to 2001 but shows 2019 as the lowest mortality rate since then.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/monthlymortalityanalysisenglandandwales
https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fbirthsdeathsandmarriages%2fdeaths%2fdatasets%2fmonthlymortalityanalysisenglandandwales%2fdecember2021/monthlymortalityanalysisdec.xlsx
The data on number of deaths and population for the whole UK from the Human Mortality Database (HMD, https://mortality.org) currently covers 1922-2018. If we calculate the age-standardised mortality rate using the same standard as ONS (European Standard Population 2013) we find that the England (only) figures for 2001-2018 from ONS’ monthly report above closely match the whole UK figures from the HMD.
From the above we can show that 2020 was the highest mortality in 12 years and prior to 2008 had never been as *low* as that. 2019 was the lowest mortality since 1922 (probably lowest ever).
Many would argues that 2020 would have been worse without our government interventions. I am not at all convinced.
Hi Malcolm
Just a short comment that it’s intriguing to think of possible paradigms here — the pathogen vs the terrain and how that might influence the ways we seek to understand immunity. It was similar with the process model, which is also a paradigm shift.
Certainly we get trapped in certain ways of thinking. If the answer does not lie there, we tend to force it to do so. That seems to be considered more satisfactory than changing the way we think about things – for most people anyway. It’s almost like ‘well, that’s cheating.’
Lactones. Such as Ivermectin ….
Esters.
Organic salts.
Buffer solutions. Ascorbic acid readily forms such.
Nothing stops the virus, except the body’s own defences.
If the host surives those very same defences!
“If the host [survives] those very same defences!”
Which it is better able to do when not poked and prodded with amateurish mRNA concoctions.
Another day, another pharma whistleblower …
https://paine.tv/exclusive-pfizer-vax-trial-manager-tells-all-blows-whistle-on-data-brook-jacksons-shocking-revelations-during-her-first-sit-down/
Deeply sinister goings-on, quite apart from the pharma fraud. The interviewer seems incredulous, from his experience, that they didn’t cover their tracks more thoroughly. Also a discussion with an ex-Black Rock exec on life insurance payouts, i.e. dividends.
It’s claimed that ~60-65% of humans have been injected with one or more COVID jabs. I don’t know if this total is entirely reliable because some countries might have been a bit economical with the truth.
Another question would be how many were GM products and how many were conventional weakened virus ones. I believe that at least Pfizer, Moderna, AZ, J&J and Sputnik are based on synthetic genomes which covers Europe, N America and Russia. But Indians for instance are more likely to have had a product from one of their indigenous manufacturers, who seem to be making conventional products.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper and safer to pay the mafia its protection money? (Including the money they now hope to make from HIV and cancer treatments.)
Malcolm I know u don’t give medical advice online but if possible to ask – theoretically at least – what might be the difference between eating foods high in albumin to try and boost it in the blood, to eating supplements with the other three proteins that are found in albumin (sorry names too long to remember!!)
Cheers!
Zak
There are no foods high in albumin – per se. Albumin is a protein complex made in the liver which is then sent out to sustain cells/tissues/organs around the body. Within albumin are various different type of protein – some of which appear more beneficial to glycocalyx health than others. The body, being lazy, will use what it gets. Chondroitin sulphate, for example, is not really a protein. Is is an amino/sugar type thing. A long string of different molecules bound together. This is a key part of the glycocalyx layer, as is hyaluronic acid both of which tend to bind to albumin – and suchlike (all get very complicated). My assumption has been that if you eat them as supplements they act as readily available substrates for the formation of new, healthy glycolalyx. You can see a nice diagram here https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bri/2012/859231/fig2/
Dr Lecter recommends: “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
Thank you very much for explaining 🙂
Have a good weekend
Zak
On vitamin D, I find Dr. Grimes excellent, but Dr. Sunil Wimalawansa adds important knowledge, as Wimalawansa is a vitamin D researcher.
Here are a couple of examples:
” Vitamin D Deficiency: Effects on Oxidative Stress, Epigenetics, Gene Regulation, and Aging ”
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/8/2/30
“Vitamin D supplementation guidelines”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960076017300316
There are more interesting articles by Wimalanwansa at google scholar.
“we have begun the move into very blurry waters indeed”
Yes and let’s not forget that Dominic Cummings had apparently advertised for oddballs and misfits to join him. I would like to know more about those at the helm. Autism in some cases can involve fixations, for example, and this behaviour might feature among some of them.
There is still a dispute as to whether covid is primarily a pulmonary or a coagulopathic disease, and there ought not be.
There is no question that covid infects primarily via the upper respiratory tract. There is also no question that pervasive vascular microthrombi are characteristic of covid. And there is no question that covid affects the lungs. And there is no question that covid causes severe systemic organ damage after it has progressed via coagulopathy.
So how do we resolve these various facts? It seems to me that coagulopathic damage is primary, while pulmonary damage is secondary to the pulmonary vascular coagulopathy. And the immune system plays a role in the formation of microthrombi and in the vascular endotheliitis pathology.
“COVID-19 Coagulopathy: Current knowledge and guidelines on anticoagulation”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7816593/
In terms of _initial infection_, covid is a URT disease.
But in terms of _pathology_, it seems to me, covid is a coagulopathic/immunopathological disease.
Call it a (vulnerable) endothelium destroyer. The basic mechanism of actions is the same in the lungs as in the circulatory system. Entry is facilitated via the ACE2 receptor, which are highly prevalent in lung endothelial cells, and vascular endothelial cells. Because Angiotensin conversion 1 to II occurs in the lungs (for whatever reason), therefore, this is where the modulating ACE2 system also operates.
What causes the drop in oxygen levels of badly infected patients?
Is it the alveoli which no longer perform gas exchange efficiently, or is it the blood which loses the ability to transport oxygen?
I think it is alveolar oedema. The CO2 can still escape, but the O2 struggles to get in. So the normal high CO2 drive does not kick in, which is why people seemed so ‘normal’ with drastically low O2 readings. At least this is what I understand is gong on. Happy to be corrected. I always found blood gasses confusing.
The CO2 has to be able to escape the blood, doesn’t it, or dyspnea kicks in? So, because CO2 diffuses more readily than O2, CO2 is able to escape the blood, while O2 remains trapped in the alveoli. So, silent hypoxia kicks in, followed by hypoxemia.
Also, CO2 is much more water soluble than O2, because it is more polar. And there is a reaction with water that ends up with bicarbonate ion, which helps with diffusion.
It has been a long time since chemistry and I had to look it up.
This hypothesis does not make a lot of sense to me. When you look at membrane diffusion, CO2 is a much larger molecule than O2, so it could cross the membrane less easily. Then you have to look at equilibrium reactions. The fact that CO2 is readily dissolved and can be buffered as bicarbonate sounds like there would be even less of a force driving it out of the blood.
Yes, but I think you have to remember that the in vivo transportation of molecules probably has little correlation to molecular size, and suchlike. Oxygen is a highly reactive substance and probably has to be ‘protected’ by various other molecules surrounding it/protecting it. Each glucose molecule, for example, is surrounded by 16 (if memory serves) H2O molecules.
True, I was thinking about molecules. In vivo transportation is via red blood cells. If the oedema means that red blood cells can’t get near the membrane, that’s the answer. CO2 travels via bicarbonate, right? So even if there is a bit of ligand water, that’ll get to the membrane sufficiently easily.
Perhaps vascular endotheliitis results in blood leakage underneath alveoli with alveolar inflammation/edema following.
And thank you, Eric and Dr. Kendrick, for finishing up my thought about CO2 and bicarb. There are a couple of reactions involved that depend on relative concentrations.
CO2 will convert to bicarb and vice versa.
CO2 + H2O H+ + HCO3- (lowering pH)
Carbonate ion (double negative) will convert to bicarb and vice versa.
pH will affect whether the forward or reverse reaction dominates.
CO2 will tend to fizz out into air from bicarb in solution if it has half a chance. Good thing for us. And that will raise the pH a hair.
The question, it seems to me, is one of degree. Free virus in the blood is more mobile than virus in the alveoli, isn’t it? So there is more opportunity for viral spread in the blood. Hence, lots of opportunity to attack the vascular endothelium and affect all the organs.
I don’t doubt that alveolar damage also occurs. Making covid patients wear masks doesn’t help their O2 levels much nor does it help reduce the amount of their own virus that they re-breathe.
McCullough suggested opening windows in covid rooms. Works for outpatients, maybe.
Maybe the country doctor ought to be brought back. “See, Mr. Davis, I’ll have to go out to my truck to see if I have any O2 cylinders left. If not, I’ll have to make a trip to the shop to pick some up and come back this afternoon. And be sure to keep your windows open and drink plenty of fluids.”
Dr. Kendrick, I love you. Such interesting reading, clarity, studied, reasonable.
Thank you !!!! Thank you !!!
The third paragraph reminded me of this:
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don’t do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don’t stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
– Crosseyed and Painless, Talking Heads 1980
A couple of questions for you. What about the statistics that stated there were many more unvaccinated people admitted to hospital than non-vaccinated? Also, what explains why there were/are so many people in the hospital? Is it because the virus is more virulent than the SARS etc or that compared to the Spanish Flu, people stayed at home and dealt with it that way? Just pondering. Thanks in advance, Brenda
Brenda Gill: One the fatal defects in the vaccinated/unvaccinated data is that, at least in the U.S., one is considered “unvaccinated” until fourteen days after the second dose. Since the majority of adverse events occur within fourteen days of the jab, this constitutes major scientific fraud; makes the data of no value except for use as propaganda. It completely ignore adverse events after the first jab.
Brenda,
You ask an interesting question. I will assume that by “admitted to hospital” that you mean “admitted to hospital with a covid diagnosis.” I will further assume that the diagnosis is based on a lab test which ought not be used for clinical purposes. I will _not_ assume that covid is the primary diagnosis.
Back in March 2020, 100% of those admitted to hospital were unvaccinated. Now, the majority of those admitted are vaccinated, but the percent vaccinated has also been increasing with time.
In order to avoid statistical errors, one must not include the unvaccinated before the vaccination rollout began, or the conclusion is biased. Numbers must be taken from the current week if you are to judge the _current_ effectiveness of vaccines accurately.
Once vaccination has reduced to miniscule numbers, if you see the percent vaccinated admitted to hospital increasing, then you have evidence of waning immunity.
If the population of a region is 75% vaccinated and 60 percent are admitted to hospital, that is _not_ evidence that vaccines have failed to protect. We would expect more vaccinated than unvaccinated to be admitted because the vaccinated are a much larger percent of the population than the vaccinated. If the percent admitted increases with time, with vaccination percent holding steady, then that would be evidence of waning immunity.
If the population of a region is 75% vaccinated and 80% are admitted to hospital, that _may_ be evidence of antibody dependent enhancement OR it may be that there is some sort of distribution anomaly, likely based on age. It may be a case of Simpson’s Paradox.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-simpson/
When one breaks down the data by age and still gets overrepresentation of the vaccinated being admitted to hospital, then that is evidence of antibody dependent enhancement.
The current covid data shows waning immunity and that excess mortality has increased since 2020 in the working age population, while mortality has decreased by an approximately equal amount in the 85+ y.o. group. I assume that the 85+ y.o. group are still overrepresented in covid deaths, but I could be wrong. (Those hoofbeats could possibly be caused by zebras.) It looks like the excess mortality is not due solely to covid.
There is a further statistical error caused by mis-definition of “unvaccinated” which others have covered, so there’s no need for me to discuss it.
There is something else to consider. Vaccinated deaths are generally counted only with respect to covid. However, it is also useful–and potentially more important, actually–to count vaccinated deaths with respect to total mortality and compare them with the unvaccinated in order to be able to do a proper risk/benefit analysis. If vaccines were to somehow cause an increase in deaths due to heart attack, cancer, and stroke, while giving some temporary protection from covid, we would want to know that, wouldn’t we? So that is why we look at total mortality. And perhaps the vaccine will provide a total mortality benefit, but in order to know, we have to look.
So how would we look? We would look at mortality statistics by cause of death category and age where they are first collected–usually a county, in the US. And we would conduct autopsies on some sampling of corpses where there has been an out-of-historical-range increase in a cause of death category. And we would have a plan on how to conduct the autopsies, because at first we wouldn’t know exactly what we were looking for. So there would be an exploratory phase to investigate how one ought to conduct autopsies. Then public health authorities should put that information together and issue autopsy guidelines for pathologists and coroners, informing them as to how a suspected vaccine death ought to be investigated and ruled out. But have we seen any of that? If not, why not?
So it seems that the public health authorities are not looking at total mortality and comparing the vaccinated with the unvaccinated as a time series. One can’t do it merely once and assume that the result holds invariable over time. Or perhaps the PHAs _are_ looking at the data, but not releasing it for some reason, which would be concerning. The lack of data release is concerning all by itself.
Reblogged this on All's right with the world.
I’m assuming that you mean more unvaccinated than vaccinated. Unfortunately, you can’t generalise. You will have to quote specific cases where you can provide date ranges, definitions of vaccinated and unvaccinated, admission criteria, testing regimes etc. One classic diversion used figures since the vaccines were introduced. Of course there were more unvaccinated in hospital for the first few months, but if you select a cut off date early enough, Bingo!, there were more unvaccinated hospitalised than vaccinated.
For Queensland, the big question should be why the hospital system was under so much stress, code Orange, cancelling non-elective surgeries, no beds etc. after six months of frantically vaccinating people, before they sacked ten percent of the hospital staff for not getting jabbed and before we had the virus.
Love your blog thank you ok once again Dr Malcolm Kendrick.
“So, antibody tests cannot tell us if someone has been infected, or effectively, vaccinated, nor if they are immune to SARS-Cov2. Just run that idea round your head for a while. Then see what answer pops out.”
Still letting this rin around in my head. I may become dizzy though 😃.
Your post translated into Italian!
https://www.theunconditionalblog.com/alcune-osservazioni-sul-tasso-di-mortalita-dellinfezione-di-covid19/
“Every working day for six months, I went into nursing homes and an intermediate care centre. During which time, thirty-six patients died of – probably – COVID19. All of whom I saw and examined at least once. However, I did not become infected, and I never have.” … does this mean we should henceforth refer to you as ‘Typhoid Malcolm’? Or perhaps ‘Kovid Kendrick’?
The thought has crossed my mind
How often do you test? Do you consider the tests to be accurate . . . enough? Do you do a throat swab also, which seems to some observers to result in more positives?
Might you, indeed, be quietly shedding? I fear that of myself, actually – when visiting my little grandchildren.
“If the test is positive, this is referred to as a case.” (NHS)
A lot of people did notice this early on. Mike Eades pointed out that in all his prior experience as a doctor, a “case” meant someone with symptoms who also (possibly) tested positive. The proliferation of dashboards, daily reported cases, etc. really pushed this.
After seeing Dr. Mike’s comment I began completely ignoring case numbers. Rather, I only paid attention to hospitalizations for Covid (as you say, a whole nother can of worms). But slightly better than case numbers.
Apolipoprotein, or lipoprotein(a) – a new way to reduce it: will this make an inroad into sclerotic heart disease . . .
or not?
So many attempts at fixes have proved harmful, but do we not have a clear culprit in LP(a)?
https://www.silence-therapeutics.com/investors/press-releases/press-releases-details/2022/Silence-Therapeutics-Announces-Positive-Topline-Data-in-SLN360-Phase-1-Single-Ascending-Dose-Study-in-Healthy-Adults-with-High-Lipoproteina/default.aspx
Please excuse the off (back on!?) topic.
JDPatten: Good to hear from you. The good news for me from this paper is that my Lp(a) is no longer considered high. It says high Lp(a) is 125 nmol/L, and mine, when it was tested, was 76 (Quest then considered > 75 to be high; maybe they still do). I have a hunch that this will be like raising HDL; another surrogate marker, which may or may not have a positive effect on CVD risk.
Hi Gary,
Surrogate, maybe. But it’s pretty well established that LP(a) does a good job at stabilizing clots such that they’re difficult to clear even if no longer needed.
Hm. Clot. I think I know of a book title including that. How firm is the link really, compared to how firm we’d like it to be?
(It’s interesting that this news item doesn’t strike anyone else here as being worth a discussion even though heart disease is still deadlier than any form of COVID. So far.)
JDPatten: I second your opinion that Lp(a) is very much worthy of discussion. My point, which I really didn’t make clear, is that, while Lp(a) level is a finding which correlates with CVD risk, lowering it with a pharmaceutical may very well lead to no improvement in that risk, just as raising HDL with a pharmaceutical failed to do so. I vote for putting our money into addressing the nine factors (on p. 256) which reduce our lifespan the most. Of these, type 2 diabetes is likely the most widespread, and is clearly a result of the idiotic dietary advice we’ve been given the McGovern committee circus.
Died WITH or FROM?
Russian evil is pale in comparison with the darkness of the West!
Update from John O’Looney Following His Hospitalization [VIDEO]
ER Editor: The last we heard about Milton Keynes funeral director John O’Looney, he had been taken to hospital ill. A drama ensued whereby he was literally rescued from the hospital by connected sources from within North America and the UK. He talks about these precise circumstances at the outset of the video. We’ve made a few notes below. See John O’Looney VIDEO for more.
https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/update-from-john-olooney-following-his-hospitalization-video/
Dear dr. Malcolm, first you seriously damage the statin business with your extravagant theories about CVDs, then you doubt The Science® on covid, now you dare talking about terrain theory, please expect to be accompanied by a couple of nice government employees to the closest reeducation camp.
The same ‘shrugging off’ was also true of poliomyelitis. For the majority, the virus just slipped through the gastrointestinal tract. In some it migrated through the gut into the blood – but still wasn’t too major. Yet for a few, it migrated to the anterior horn of the spine and brainstem, causing the flaccid paralysis. I don’t think anyone really knows why – but presumably – terrain.
Height of the Spanish Flu — Utterly fascinating article from 1919 by Dr Roseneau “EXPERIMENTS TO DETERMINE MODE OF SPREAD OF INFLUENZA”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/221687
Essentially he tried EVERYTHING to infect these members of the armed services with influenza with no real success – these ‘experiments’ most definitely would not get by the IRB even in N.Korea
Fantastic. I just need my husband to read it and absorb the facts…fat chance.
Thank you, Dr. K. Such a beacon you are. Thank you.
Thank you for this enlightening blog entry. When I started reading, I thought yet another long and winding story, what does he want to get at. However, the finding that most of the currently infected are in fact reinfected, and that there may be some that never catch it at all was an epiphany for me. Nobody in our immediate family has ever tested positive or has exhibited anything resembling anosmia or bronchitis.
Changes my thinking on some studies and measures and maybe some choices.
I wonder with the UK health data being a uniquely comprehensive, can one determine what kind of percentage of the population has never been tested positive or presented with telltale symptoms? Then maybe round up 1,000 of these and ask them if they ever had any symptoms but didn’t bother to see a doctor. Should be a nice study.
Similarly, could one find out the percentage of triple and higher infections? Lots of ideas for publications.
I should have been doing something else but watched this abbreviated video ‘Covid 19 Round table in DC’ on Dr Mercola’s site. https://www.mercola.com/
The full length version is nearly 5 hours, this edited version is about 40 minutes.
Basically it’s front line medics and researchers talking about how they have been prevented from treating their patients. (It’s one sure way to raise the IFR.)
It’s pretty moving really. One doctor had to stand and watch his patients die because he wasn’t allowed to treat them. How do you live with that?
Since the WWII, across Europe, life expectancy gradually increased until 2008, when life expectancy began to decrease. At the time people thought this was due to austerity measures but subsequent investigations found this was not the case. Every year some unknown agent (ie as yet not characterised) came around every winter and killed off lots of people, and made lots of health workers ill.
This was generally ignored by the media.
Along came covid which behaved in a strange way – see the blog post above. Is it possible that there is a combination effect? Covid and unknown agent leads to severe results; covid without unknown agent leads to benign results?
Wasn’t the counterpart op Louis Pasteur Antoine Béchamp?
Marijke: Béchamp was Pasteur’s professor.
To send to the reluctant.
This latest UK Column video includes info on smart meters. Since many people seem to care more about their finances than looking for truth they might watch this video if told it includes information about smart meters. This info comes towards the end, and is preceded by lots of useful exposure.
Guile needs to be fought with guile?
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-11th-february-2022
Covid-19 IFR was 0.096% last July according to Public Health England in response to a question asked in parliament by conservative MP Steve Baker.
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2021-07-12/31381?s=03
That said, I have seen no mention of it or its relevance in broadcast or mainstream media since then. Like the good doctor I have singularly failed to contract covid despite being an unvaxxed septuagenarian who’s been in and out of pubs and restaurants when Fuhrer Sturgeon’s diktats permit. All I’ve done is take 4,000 IUs of Vit D daily. Whether or not that’s made a difference I’m not qualified to answer but I’ll continue to do so – just in case.
Fauci has admitted taking varying doses, 4,000. to. 6,000 IU. IU. D3
He. KNOWS !
‘Terrain’. is All.
Dear Malcolm, Most of my GP colleagues did the antibody tests for SarsCov2 during the summer of 2020. Only 2 had antibodies even though several others were sure they had Covid in March 2020. I had a nasty viral illness in late Feb 2020 with rigors and a fever of 40.7 This is the only time in my medical career that I have been really unwell and the first time I was unable to get out of bed. I was antibody negative.
Since then I have done numerous ” hot clinics ” seeing kids and adults with possbile Covid in the surgery and out of hours and not even had a sniffle in 2 years.
“On the other hand, the number of people under the age of sixty, who have died from COVID19, with no other disease mentioned on the death certificate, is five hundred and forty-two. That was, by the 1st of February 2022.”
Those figures are only for 2020. Deaths of those under 60 from COVID-19 with no co-morbidities and mortality rates in 2020
I am having a look at this, I was certain that I looked for 2022, but may have got it wrong. Which has been known.
I’ve just listened to Sebastian Rushworth’s interview with Danish Professor Christine Stabell Benn. Her speciality is the effect of vaccines on our immune systems and overall health. It’s very interesting, for example discussing Live V Non-Live vaccines.
One thing that struck me is the way we could potentially be manipulated or compromised in the future. We’ve all seen: ‘you can’t come in here if you’re not vaccinated’, a shop or a concert for example. But what the professor is suggesting is that some non-live vaccines (some covid jabs for example) MAY cause higher overall mortality down the line. We all suspect they haven’t been tested properly, in fact she does discuss that.
Because of our lack of knowledge, is it not possible that we may be turned down for a mortgage, or a loan, or medical treatment, because we HAVE been vaccinated and are potentially at greater risk of dying early, so deemed a bad risk?
Or perhaps I’m spending too much time watching pod casts.
Thank you Dr Kendrick
Simply the most credible summation.
Malcolm, I love this cogent description of the value of the terrain, along with your clear description of why all Covid statistics are fuzzy or downright misleading. Thank you!
I wonder whether you’d consider writing more about why “the jury is out” regarding vaccines. I had a single J&J jab (in the U.S.) last April, and have chosen not to have a booster despite intense pressure from near and far. I haven’t felt that sufficient data was available to weigh risks vs benefits. People I care about very much now think I’m a right-wing nut job.
But as you said in your good interview with Joseph Marcola, “once you question something, you begin to question everything.” Is there any way to make this decision in a rational, rather than a hysterical, way?
Update from John O’Looney Following His Hospitalization [VIDEO]
“………..Those who have taken a shot with an ‘active ingredient’ (not what’s called a ‘clot shot’) that damages the immune system have between 2 and 5 years to live, he was told. 70% of vaccinated children will be sterilized as a side effect. This was widely acknowledged at this meeting. Sexton walked Brady out of the meeting, warning him that there would be extreme civil unrest when the public discovers what has gone on. Sexton was told that the govt were aware of this and had prepared for it, and were surprised that civil unrest hadn’t already started(!)……………”
https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/update-from-john-olooney-following-his-hospitalization-video/
https://greatgameindia.com/funeral-director-deaths-covid-vaccine/
I apologize for deviating from the IFR debate (again), but the attached video is a good one and may help, among others, Stephanie above regarding vaccines.
I’ve listened to quite a number of videos from Dr John Campbell, but this one concludes with some questions that we should be asking of those in charge.
The thrust of this talk is that infection generates natural immunity and do people who have had previous infection need to be vaccinated?
One interesting thing he states is: “People who had the 2002 – 2004 Sars virus have immunity against Sars coV-2, 17 years later.” He questions whether current vaccines will last that long!
He also shows the results of plenty of studies (some not peer reviewed yet) and other public domain data, that back his conclusions. For example, hospitalisation figures for people who are unvaccinated and have not had previous infection (high) against those who are unvaccinated but have had previous infection (low). Frankly it looks pretty conclusive.
Because he knows (presumably) that the fact-checkers et.al. are waiting for an opportunity to blow his studio up, he treads carefully even in the face of apparently convincing evidence. But even he at the end is saying to the powers that be, ‘come on for goodness sake, get on with it.’
Jeremy May, Campbell was encouraging anyone and everyone to get arm speared with an experimental use substance, with little regard to potential harms. It was after all known to be a toxic protein. Now the harms are becoming more well known, and which were known long ago, he is changing sides. He is not to be trusted. He has been presenting himself as an authority figure (Dr John Campbell) but not making it as clear that he is not a medical doctor. Given the subject, something he should have made clear.
AH
Rather than merely ranting, could you comment on the important issue that he raises, that we should personalize vaccination. This includes testing to see if people have natural immunity. If they do, the evidence he showed us in the latest video seems to prove that natural immunity is at least as good as vaccination in relation to serious disease and hospitalisations.
It seems to me that, should we get this message across, it’s an additional way to cast doubt on the whole vaccination programme. It will go alongside your message, not replace it.
JM, I was stating a view. Your choice of an emotional word, “rant”, it is close to descriptions such as “denier”. To introduce a toxic protein, which has harmed many, many people, doesn’t seem to comply with medical ethics. “First do no harm” does not include a trade-off of the form ”benefits outweigh the harms” will give little comfort, if any, to those who have had life changing injuries.
As for tests, are we to continue to use the Drosten derived PCR test, conjured up from a Chinese published gene fragment? “Vaccines” are touted as a medical miracle, yet they have only bene around since any particular disease incidence had plummeted from its peak to a level so low, that nature could have removed the remaining risks. But then Rockefeller and the Flexner brothers pushed allopathic as the only way.
Campbell had been pushing injections for months, now he suggests seeing if people need them. He should have started with that first, and perhaps pushed the other treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and zinc, and Ivermectin, but they had to be dismissed otherwise the untested, experimental jabs would not have been permitted.
But how can they test for natural immunity? Testing for T cell reactivity is expensive and time consuming. It’s not available in Australia, and the only commercial one I could find is in the US and they won’t test foreigners.
The first hurdle to overcome is getting the authorities to accept that natural immunity from a confirmed infection based upon symptoms as well as the PCR test is as good as the vaccines. Then to persuade them that it’s better than the vaccines! Only then would it be worthwhile getting them to test asymptomatic people to see if they had immunity, either through asymptomatic infection or cross-reactivity.
I don’t care anymore. The restrictions are being relaxed throughout most of Australia on a weekly basis. I don’t think it can last much longer now, the only things I can’t do as an unvaxxed are leave the country without a permit, or return without a week’s quarantine. And with the price of airfares now there’s no great incentive to do either, let alone spend a few hundred bucks on a test.
Thank you, Jeremy. This is another very good presentation by John Campbell. The case for natural immunity, which has always made intuitive sense, is now being backed by evidence.
The next studies I’d love to see would ask whether, for those who have not “recovered from infection,” which is to say, have not had any symptoms of SARS COV-2, have never had a positive PCR test, and are otherwise healthy (good terrain), what is the role of vaccinations? Are they beneficial? Irrelevant? Or counter-productive? Do they protect other people at all? Obviously they don’t prevent transmission, but do they help in any way?
Added all cause mortality in year 2020 in three countries per 100 000 people. Sweden 75, Switzerland 100, Spain 155. All time high since Spanish flu 1918. Then mortality was 6 – 7 times higher. Study made by Zürich, Bern and Oslo University receachers and published in Annals of Internal Medicine. (I read this from local Suomen Kuvalehti magazine 5/2022.)
Sweden did not had any lockdowns in 2020. Don’t know how other two had. Of course there are other influential things too.
Researches looked at pollen deposits (agricultural vs. young forest) to gauge population decline during the plague. Seems it was highly regional. This is surprising and implies that in some regioons, pretty much everyone succumbed and others stayed nearly unaffected. This is different from the emerging picture of Corona in that a seizable percentage of the population everywhere appears immune:
I have said to my MP, it would be quite strange that, after over two years of virus circulation, that there was anyone left who had not at some point come into contact with the virus. There has to be a high level of natural immunity. He didn’t comment, having voted for all the restrictions, emergency regulations, vaccine passports etc.
Reblogged this on by Michael Morse.