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UK Govt Coronavirus Response: Sceptics Thread


sancho panza

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9 hours ago, Harley said:

Whatever, I'm not going anywhere near places where people are humiliated and degraded like that.

I can see exactly what you mean, its outright degrading to give a customer, a mere 5 chips!

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leonardratso
5 minutes ago, Hancock said:

I can see exactly what you mean, its outright degrading to give a customer, a mere 5 chips!

especially when they already weigh 30 stone and should be getting 1 chip.

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sancho panza
10 hours ago, Harley said:

Whatever, I'm not going anywhere near places where people are humiliated and degraded like that.

Couldn't agree more.

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8 minutes ago, leonardratso said:

especially when they already weigh 30 stone and should be getting 1 chip.

Having 1 chip is like having 1 pint of beer, an impossibility.

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Agent ZigZag

Just had a lovely liquid lunch. Staff all playing along with the pantomine of wiping tables and masks. Dead easy to get a table and served. All I needed to do was give first name and mobile number. Spoke with manager who said they are only playing along with the minimum rules. No mask required at anytime enjoyed my drink and the company and the weather. 

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Globally

Tobacco deaths per year 8 million

Obesity Deaths per year 4.5 million

Alcohol Deaths per year 3 million

Poverty deaths per year 18 million

COVID Deaths so far 2.9 million

Prepare for you vaccine passports, smoke a cigar, eat a chocolate bar, Drink a pint.. All from the comfort of your shop doorway.. 

COVID... Bojo will protect you by giving his mates all our tax payers money..

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sancho panza
9 hours ago, macca said:

Globally

Tobacco deaths per year 8 million

Obesity Deaths per year 4.5 million

Alcohol Deaths per year 3 million

Poverty deaths per year 18 million

COVID Deaths so far 2.9 million

Prepare for you vaccine passports, smoke a cigar, eat a chocolate bar, Drink a pint.. All from the comfort of your shop doorway.. 

COVID... Bojo will protect you by giving his mates all our tax payers money..

It took an age to decide which emoticon to go for.Informative,yes,agree, yes,funny yes.

Wish there was a funny but sad but true button

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sancho panza

Church finally turns up at the frontline.About time.They're getting it.

https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/04/14/christian-leaders-warn-against-the-introduction-of-medical-apartheid-under-a-vaccine-passport-scheme/

Dear Prime Minister,

As Christian leaders across a range of denominations, we continue to pray at this time for your Government “and all in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity” (1 Timothy 2:2).

However, we write to you concerning an area of the most serious concern, namely the potential introduction into our society of so-called “vaccine passports” which have also been referred to as “Covid-status certificates” and “freedom passes”. We are wholly opposed to this suggestion and wish to make three points about the potential consideration of any scheme of this type.

Firstly, to make vaccination the basis of whether someone is allowed entry to a venue, or participation in an activity, makes no logical sense in terms of protecting others. If the vaccines are highly effective in preventing significant disease, as seems to be the evidence from trial results to date, then those who have been vaccinated have already received protection; there is no benefit to them of other people being vaccinated. Further, since vaccines do not prevent infection per se even a vaccinated person could in theory carry and potentially pass on the virus, so to decide someone’s “safe non-spreader” status on the basis of proof of their immunity to disease is spurious.

Secondly, the introduction of vaccine passports would constitute an unethical form of coercion and violation of the principle of informed consent. People may have various reasons for being unable or unwilling to receive vaccines currently available including, for some Christians, serious issues of conscience related to the ethics of vaccine manufacture or testing. We risk creating a two-tier society, a medical apartheid in which an underclass of people who decline vaccination are excluded from significant areas of public life. There is also a legitimate fear that this scheme would be the thin end of the wedge leading to a permanent state of affairs in which Covid vaccine status could be expanded to encompass other forms of medical treatment and perhaps even other criteria beyond that. This scheme has the potential to bring about the end of liberal democracy as we know it and to create a surveillance state in which the government uses technology to control certain aspects of citizens’ lives. As such, this constitutes one of the most dangerous policy proposals ever to be made in the history of British politics.

Finally, as Christian leaders we wish to state that we envisage no circumstances in which we could close our doors to those who do not have a vaccine passport, negative test certificate, or any other “proof of health”. For the Church of Jesus Christ to shut out those deemed by the state to be social undesirables would be anathema to us and a denial of the truth of the Gospel. The message we preach is given by God for all people and consists in nothing other than the free gift of grace offered in Christ Jesus, with the universal call to repentance and faith in him. To deny people entry to hear this life-giving message and to receive this life-giving ministry would be a fundamental betrayal of Christ and the Gospel. Sincere Christian churches and organisations could not do this, and as Christian leaders we would be compelled to resist any such Act of Parliament vigorously.

We draw your attention to the recent Judicial Review overturning the Scottish Government’s ban on public worship, which demonstrates that such disproportionate prevention of the right to worship is a clear infringement under Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights. We cannot see how any attempt to prevent people from gathering for worship on the basis of either testing or non-vaccination would not similarly be ruled to be a breach. We agree with those members of Parliament who have already voiced opposition to this proposal: that it would be divisive, discriminatory and destructive to introduce any such mandatory health certification into British society. We call on the Government to assert strongly and clearly that it will not contemplate this illiberal and dangerous plan, not now and not ever.

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sancho panza

Paper published for peer review.

Looking at all cause mortality in New Zealandbeing higher than anytime since 2003 despite having few covid deaths,I'd be interested in seeing an analysis of that too.

 

Highlights mine

 

 

 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00779954.2020.1844786

Government mandated lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths: implications for evaluating the stringent New Zealand response

Abstract

The New Zealand policy response to Coronavirus was the most stringent in the world during the Level 4 lockdown. Up to 10 billion dollars of output (≈3.3% of GDP) was lost in moving to Level 4 rather than staying at Level 2, according to Treasury calculations. For lockdown to be optimal requires large health benefits to offset this output loss. Forecast deaths from epidemiological models are not valid counterfactuals, due to poor identification. Instead, I use empirical data, based on variation amongst United States counties, over one-fifth of which just had social distancing rather than lockdown. Political drivers of lockdown provide identification. Lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths. This pattern is visible on each date that key lockdown decisions were made in New Zealand. The apparent ineffectiveness of lockdowns suggests that New Zealand suffered large economic costs for little benefit in terms of lives saved.

1. Introduction

On 23 March 2020 New Zealand’s Prime Minister announced a nationwide lockdown for four weeks, to start on 25 March. On 20 April the lockdown was extended until 27 April. The lockdown was Level 4 of the Coronavirus alert system – the ‘eliminate’ level. The levels had been introduced just two days earlier, first starting at Level 2 – the ‘reduce’ level – and jumping to Level 3 – the ‘restrict’ level – during the Prime Ministerial statement. With these decisions, between 25 March and 27 April New Zealand had the most stringent settings in the world for containing Coronavirus.

In the top panel of Figure 1 the timing of these announcements, and key changes in the alert levels, are overlaid on the time-series of the OxCGRT stringency index for New Zealand, which is based on eight indicators of containment and closure (Hale, Webster, Petherick, Phillips, & Kira, 2020). In the bottom panel of Figure 1 the stringency index for New Zealand is compared with that for several other countries. This comparison shows that from 25 March the New Zealand stringency index exceeded that for countries like Italy, Spain and France who by then had thousands of Covid-19 deaths.

Figure 1. New Zealand had the most stringent government response to coronavirus. Source: Author's calculation from Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker data

rnzp_a_1844786_f0001_oc.jpg

 

The New Zealand Treasury assume that output at Level 4 was reduced by 40%, at Level 3 by 25%, and at Level 2 by 10–15% (Treasury, 2020). So even with a V-shaped shock and recovery rather than a U or L shape, 33 days of Level 4 and 19 of Level 3 (that ended 13 May) would reduce output by 10 billion dollars (ca. 3.3% of GDP) compared to staying in Level 2 throughout. The purpose of the current study is to see what health benefits – in terms of lives saved – were likely achieved to balance against this cost in terms of lost output.

One would assume that rigorous cost–benefit analyses accompanied the decision to set the most stringent policy response in the world. Yet Cabinet papers released six weeks later suggest not: the government ignored advice from the Ministry of Health to stay at Level 2 for 30 days, instead jumping to Level 3 after just two days, then Level 4 two days later (Daalder, 2020). 1 Two epidemiological simulations seem to have played a key role; the Imperial College forecast of 0.5 million Covid-19 deaths in the U.K. and 2.2 million in the U.S. if no changes in individual behaviour or in control measures occurred (Ferguson et al, 2020), and forecasts by University of Otago academics with an on-line simulator (http://covidsim.eu) that ranged from seven Covid-19 deaths (assuming low infectiousness, R0 = 1.5 and 50% general contact reduction for nine months) to 14,400 (highly infectious, R0 = 3.5, just 25% contact reduction for six months), with a mean across the six forecasts of 8300 deaths (Wilson, Barnard, Kvalsvig, & Baker, 2020).

Even though the Imperial College forecast was not for New Zealand, it seemed to shift local strategy away from ‘flatten the curve’ mitigation to one where:

 … you want to have a series of small peaks over a longer period of time and you amplify up quite stringent controls … then as it goes down again, you can ease those and be prepared to ramp them up again. (Director-General of Health, March 19)

This description matches a chart in the Imperial College forecast, for a suppression strategy in place for two years (Daalder, 2020). The highest death forecasts from the Otago academics may have influenced comments made by the Prime Minister in announcing the lockdown: 2

If community transmission takes off … our health system will be inundated, and tens of thousands New Zealanders will die … it is the reality we have seen overseas … We can stop the spread by staying at home and reducing contact … That’s why … effective immediately we will move to Alert Level 3 … after 48 hours we will move to Level 4.

 

It is unfortunate that epidemiological simulations had such impact. The Susceptible, Infected, Recovered (SIR) epidemiological model, and variants with Exposed and Dead (SEIRD), have infectious people mixing (homogeneously) with others; each person has equal chances to meet any other, regardless of their health status. Yet in reality, people engage in preventative behaviour to reduce the risk of exposure; allow for this, and some public actions designed to reduce disease spread may do more harm (Toxvaerd, 2019). These models also have too many degrees of freedom, so are poorly identified from short-run data on cases. For example, Korolev (2020) shows long-run forecasts of U.S. COVID-19 deaths from observationally equivalent SEIRD models ranged from about 30,000 to over a million. Forecast deaths depend on arbitrary choices by researchers, and data at the time cannot show which forecast is right as so many models are observationally equivalent in the short-run. Elsewhere, Swedish researchers using the Imperial College approach forecast (in mid-April) 80,000 Covid-19 deaths by mid-May (Gardner et al., 2020). In fact, just 3500 died by 15 May, with the forecast more than 20-times too high. A final example is the Otago forecasts, which had assumed no case tracing and isolation; using the same simulation model, Harrison (2020) set tracing and isolation success at 50% and forecast deaths fell by 96%.

Rather than using poorly identified simulation models, I use data on Covid-19 deaths, as of each date key lockdown decisions were made in New Zealand. Deaths data are more reliable than cases data (Homburg, 2020). 3 My research design exploits variation among U.S. counties, over one-fifth of which just had social distancing rather than lockdown. Political drivers of lockdown provide identification. If the Prime Ministerial claim, that sans lockdown tens of thousands of New Zealanders would die, is correct then one would expect to see more deaths in places without a lockdown. This may explain global fascination with Sweden, as a country without lockdown. However a within-country research design has two benefits; less variation in measuring Covid-19 deaths than for between-country comparisons, and it better suits the highly clustered nature of Covid-19. For example, Lombardy’s Covid-19 death rate was 1500 per million versus 300 per million elsewhere in Italy. The New York death rate (by 15 May) was 1410 per million but just 190 per million in the other 49 states. Taking China’s data at face value, Hubei’s death rate was 76 per million versus 0.12 per million elsewhere. With such clustering, analyses using national averages may mislead. 4

Whether a county had a lockdown has no effect on Covid-19 deaths; a non-effect that persists over time. Cross-country studies also find lockdowns superfluous and ineffective (Homburg, 2020). This ineffectiveness has several causes: real-time activity indicators suggest the threat of Covid-19, rather than lockdown per se, drives behaviour (Chetty, Friedman, Hendren, & Stepner, 2020). Just one-tenth of the 60% fall in consumer mobility in the U.S. was from legal restrictions, with the rest from people voluntarily staying home to avoid infection (Goolsbee & Syverson, 2020). Likewise, Cronin and Evans (2020) find that more than three-quarters of the decline in foot traffic was due to private behaviour, with mobility falling before state or local regulations were in place. Economic theory also shows that public health interventions can paradoxically increase infection rates due to risk compensation effects (Dasaratha, 2020; Toxvaerd, 2019). Notably, lockdown is not historically used to deal with epidemics, which is why some epidemiologists (e.g. Giesecke, 2020) remain opposed. A review, prompted by the 2006 U.S. Pandemic Influenza Plan, argued against confining large groups like entire cities:

There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods in order to slow the spread of influenza … . The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme … that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration. (Inglesby, Nuzzo, O’Toole, & Henderson, 2006, p. 371)

Instead, isolation of infected individuals was historically relied upon – and eventual use of this in Wuhan, rather than lockdown, was key to breaking the disease spread (Stone, 2020).

 

2. County-level evidence from the United States

The U.S. provides useful variation for estimating impacts of lockdowns because the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution gives police powers to states, which limits the federal response to epidemics (Inglesby et al., 2006). The first-shelter-in-place or stay-at-home orders were issued on 14 March for San Francisco-area counties, followed by a California-wide lockdown from 19 March. Many other governors quickly issued state-wide lockdowns, but in others (e.g. Texas), weaker ‘state of disaster’ notices let cities and counties adopt local lockdown rules, albeit with federal social distancing guidelines in the background. 5

The varied situation that resulted is seen in Figure 2, which shows counties subject to lockdown orders (technically, government-ordered community quarantine) and those with just social distancing. Data are from American Red Cross reporting on emergency regulations for each county, from 14 March onward. The map was first posted by ESRI (of ArcGIS fame) on 3 April, updating through early April if rules changed.

Figure 2. County-level variation in lockdown orders as of early April, 2020.

rnzp_a_1844786_f0002_oc.jpg

 

With such a dynamic situation, care must be taken in defining the treatment variable. One could use the timing and duration of lockdown orders but with many orders still in place by mid-May durations were incomplete at the time of key decisions in New Zealand and so provide weaker evidence. Instead, I use the binary treatment of being subject to lockdown as of early April; the situation seen in Figure 2. All data sources were available to inform New Zealand policymakers from mid-March (the map data were available from the Red Cross, ESRI later made them more conveniently available). See Appendix 1 for details.

The number of Covid-19 deaths per county is highly skewed, with standard deviations over eight times the mean (as of mid-May). Therefore, the log of the number of deaths is the outcome variable for the regressions, reducing the coefficient of variation (CoV) to 1.3. 6 Death rates could be used (CoV = 2.5), but are less flexible than log deaths with log population as a covariate (rates force the coefficient on log population to 1.0). To get percentage impacts of lockdown from the log outcome, I use 100×(eβ^0.5V^(β^)1)

with confidence intervals from the approximate unbiased variance estimator of Van Garderen and Shah (2002).

The regressions use 22 control variables, including county population and density, the elder share, the share in nursing homes, nine other demographic and economic characteristics and a set of regional fixed effects. 7 These controls explain about two-thirds of variation in log deaths (as of mid-May). Even with these controls, the errors for the log death equations may correlate with treatment status, if selection into the treatment group (77% of counties) is due to unobservables. 8 Political drivers of lockdown are plausible instruments; counties without lockdown are all in states with Republican governors (overall, 26 states have Republican governors) and lockdown was more likely if a gubernatorial election is set for November 2020 (these elections are due in 11 states). Conditional on the state-level factors, the extent that a county became more partisan between the 2012 and 2016 Presidential elections, relative to the state-level change, affects odds of lockdown. This county-level relative change in partisanship has a mean of zero, by construction, but the standard deviation swing in partisanship was 7.7 percentage points. 9 It is hard to think of other paths for these variables to affect Covid-19 deaths than via political calculations about lockdown. I use a control function version of IV, with first stage residuals added to OLS outcome equations, because the percentage impact estimator (and its variance) is based on OLS.

A final issue on estimators is possible spatial autocorrelation. Counties neighbouring a county with unexplainably more deaths may have more deaths, given epidemic spread of Covid-19. I cluster at state level, to allow correlations in errors for counties in the same state. Clustered errors can be conservative, in not letting intra-cluster correlations vary and in not allowing between-cluster correlations (Gibson, Kim, & Olivia, 2014). As a variant I also use a spatially autoregressive model with autoregressive errors (SARAR), estimated by generalized spatial two-stage least squares (Drukker, Prucha, & Raciborski, 2013). This lets errors correlate across neighbouring counties (and neighbours of neighbours), and allows for spatial spill-overs in deaths (see Appendix 3 for details).

The main regression results are in Table 1. The first column has the first-stage results, for which counties have lockdown. The F-test for excluding the instruments is 4.1 (p < 0.02) using clustered standard errors or 46 (p < 0.01) using the spatial error model. The remaining columns have OLS and IV results for cumulative deaths at three dates matching key decisions made in New Zealand: 23 March when Level 3 was announced with the two-day warning for Level 4; 20 April when Level 4 was extended; and, 11 May when a staged move to Level 2 over 10 days was announced. The aim of showing results for these dates is to see how any evidence evolved for whether lockdowns reduce Covid-19 deaths; the data were available to New Zealand decision-makers at the time so it is not a question of being wise in hindsight.

 

Table 1. County-level impacts of lockdowns on Covid-19 deaths.

 

There is no evidence that counties with a lockdown have fewer deaths. For all three dates, the coefficient on lockdown is statistically insignificant. 10 Given the strength of the instruments (e.g. an F-test of 46 for excluding them, with the spatial model), the insignificant effects of lockdown are unlikely due to weak instruments. A test of over-identifying restrictions also reveals no concerns (p < 0.18).

It typically takes three weeks or more for a SARS-CoV-2 infection to cause Covid-19 death (Homburg, 2020) so early April lockdowns should show effects by May. To monitor this, Figure 3 shows percentage impacts (and 95% confidence intervals) of lockdown on Covid-19 deaths (cumulative), from models estimated every Monday from 23 March until 1 June. 11 On just two of 44 test occasions (11 Mondays over four models) do 95% confidence intervals exclude zero (25 May and 1 June, for the spatial control function approach). Adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing, using a bonferroni correction, requires significance at the α/n

level, which is .0011. This is 12-times smaller than the actual p-value. So the firmest conclusion is that over more than two months after New Zealand’s 23 March lockdown decision, there was no evidence of more Covid-19 deaths in counties without lockdowns. In terms of the confidence intervals, for the OLS results these range from −2% to 8% on 23 March, −24% to 26% on 20 April and −32% to 27% on 11 May, and with the SARAR estimator they tend to have larger positive values (more deaths with lockdowns) and negative values closer to zero (−13% and −15% on 20 April and 11 May).

Figure 3. Evolving estimates of the impact of county lockdowns on Covid-19 deaths. Note: Shaded regions show 95% confidence intervals.

rnzp_a_1844786_f0003_ob.jpg

 

This statistical insignificance of the lockdown treatment variable is not from the failure of the models to explain cross-county death patterns; about two-thirds of variation is explained by early May. The models show deaths are higher if the elderly or those in nursing homes are more of the population; patterns noted in popular discussion of Covid-19. Deaths are higher if whites are a lower share and blacks a higher share of the population, as noted by Millett et al. (2020). Counties with higher inequality and more people without health insurance experience more deaths. Fewer deaths occur if the smoking rate is higher, similar to what is found in the U.K. for 17 million NHS patients, where Williamson et al (2020) find current smokers less likely than others to die (as hospital in-patients) with confirmed COVID-19.

Five sensitivity analyses confirm the result that lockdowns are ineffective at reducing Covid-19 deaths. The first weights by county population; the 5th percentile county has under 3000 people while the 95th percentile has 450,000 so a case can be made for more weight on populous counties. The second uses death rates (by 11 May). The third uses IV-Poisson count data models, and the fourth uses LIML which may be preferred if there are weak instruments. In all four of these alternative approaches, lockdowns have no impact on Covid-19 deaths. The last sensitivity analysis is just for Texas, which had a more even split of 89 counties with lockdown and 165 with social distancing. The IV results show no effect of lockdown but with OLS it seems that counties with a lockdown have more deaths – a pattern strengthening over time (e.g. lockdown counties have 37.1% (SE = 18.6%) more deaths by 11 May). 12

3. Summary and implications for New Zealand

Lockdowns are ineffective at reducing Covid-19 deaths. Variation amongst counties in the United States, where over one-fifth had no lockdown, shows no impact of lockdowns. Specifically, one cannot reject the hypothesis of zero difference in deaths between lockdown and non-lockdown counties. Using these results to inform a counterfactual of what would have happened if New Zealand had not gone into a Level 4 lockdown faces the criticism that the setting is different. Yet it is a universal force of human nature – privately taking steps to reduce exposure to a new risk – that likely makes lockdown superfluous. Moreover, evidence from elsewhere suggests that lockdowns were either superfluous (Homburg, 2020; Stone, 2020) or cause total deaths to rise because of non-Covid mortality (Williams, Crookes, Glass, & Glass, 2020).

A non-economist might say ‘what difference does it make?’ If people would reduce interactions anyway, due to perceived Covid-19 risks, having government force them to stay home would seem costless. Yet as economists know, a government diktat approach runs into the central planning problem; no central planner has all the information (collectively) held by parties involved in voluntary exchange (Hayek, 1945). For example, absent lockdown, if a butcher felt they could operate safely and if customers felt they could safely shop at this butchery, voluntary and beneficial exchange could occur. Instead, under the central planning approach applied in New Zealand, butchers were shut but supermarkets selling meat were not. Potentially, much economic surplus (for both consumers and producers) was lost.

In terms of implications for the future, these results add to the evidence that lockdowns are ineffective. This was also the prior view in public health; for example, Inglesby et al. (2006, p. 371) noted: ‘It is difficult to identify circumstances in the past half-century when large-scale quarantine has been effectively used in the control of any disease.’ So when the next pandemic occurs, the Covid-19 lockdowns should not be considered a success that should be replicated. In terms of the (recent) past, the ineffectiveness of lockdowns implies that New Zealand suffered large output losses, of 10 billion dollars or more according to Treasury figures, for no likely benefit in terms of lives saved as a result of the decision to move almost immediately from Level 2 to Level 4. Notably, this decision went against Ministry of Health advice to stay at Level 2 for 30 days. If decision-making from March and April is reviewed, any claim that lockdown was necessary to save lives can be treated with strong scepticism. It is especially concerning that there were data available, on the dates of those key decisions, to show that lockdowns are ineffective at reducing Covid-19 deaths.

Acknowledgements

Helpful comments from the editor and an anonymous referee and assistance with the mapping from Geua Boe-Gibson are acknowledged. These are the views of the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

Edited by sancho panza
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10 hours ago, macca said:

Globally

Tobacco deaths per year 8 million

On the other hand, BATS and IMB give really good divis!

[Wrong thread, I know ... and hopefully they get their vaping technologies rolled out. More seriously, it shows that people have always chosen to take risks in life: tobacco has been smoked in the West for 400 years, and "God L" was at it for probably thousands of years before that. Freedom has to include the freedom to do unsafe things, if it is to mean anything at all.]

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sancho panza
On 19/04/2020 at 08:07, sancho panza said:

Food for thought here from Sweden which is currently behind a lot of European countires in terms of deaths per million.Interesting to see him point out what he sees as the weaknesses in the Imperial College Paper that the UK's 180 degree U turn was based on.

 

Worth noting his view that 50% of people have most likely had it.Very much backing up this US research regarding an aircraft carrier where everyone was tested and many were asymptomatic.

Key take home for me is his view that when we look back in a year,the death rate will be similar to a flu season and there won't be much difference between those who locked down and those who didn't.

https://order-order.com/2020/04/18/must-watch-swedish-epidemiologist-lays-swedens-thinking-video/

This interview by Freddie Sayers of Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, who is an advisor to the Swedish Government (he hired Anders Tegnell who is currently directing Sweden’s strategy), is worth 35 minutes of your lockdown viewing time. He lays out Sweden’s thinking

  • The flattening of the curve we are seeing now is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
  • UK policy on lockdown and in other European countries is not evidence-based
  • The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
  • This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product”
  • The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better
  • The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished, non-peer-reviewed paper have so much policy impact
  • Is dismissive of the 510,000 figure that was predicted if mitigation measures were not implemented
  • The Imperial College paper was much too pessimistic and did not factor in the now much increased ICU capacity
  • Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway, taking no account of real world specifics
  • The results will eventually be similar for all countries
  • Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
  • The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 will in all likelihood turn out to be in the region of 0.1%
  • At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will likely be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available

His Swedish blunt logic is not an eccentricity, he was the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and an advisor to the director general of the WHO. Guido increasingly thinks we need to move towards “climbing down the rungs” of lockdown. This eminent epidemiologist makes a convincing case that this 3 week extension should be the last unless and until there is a second wave…

ProfJohan Giesecke,former Swedish state epedimiologist is interviewed by Freddie Sayers of Unherd.com a year to the day after he was last on there.

It's refreshing to see a clinician reflect openly on what they got right and what they got wrong on Covid.

It's a real shame our politicians aren't made of the same stuff.

https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/04/17/swedens-professor-johan-giesecke-i-think-i-got-most-things-right-actually/

 

 

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On 18/04/2021 at 01:07, sancho panza said:

ProfJohan Giesecke,former Swedish state epedimiologist is interviewed by Freddie Sayers of Unherd.com a year to the day after he was last on there.

It's refreshing to see a clinician reflect openly on what they got right and what they got wrong on Covid.

It's a real shame our politicians aren't made of the same stuff.

https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/04/17/swedens-professor-johan-giesecke-i-think-i-got-most-things-right-actually/

 

 

He looked like a man who has been subjected to repeated death threats

A very different man with a completely different demeanour to the one who existed 12 months before

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sancho panza
12 hours ago, Mr X said:

He looked like a man who has been subjected to repeated death threats

A very different man with a completely different demeanour to the one who existed 12 months before

I've thought about it some more and what you say resonates with me.I've rewatched it and he's nowhere near as combative,particularly when Freddie asks about how accurate Imperial's modelling was,Johan credits them with being near the mark,which they weren't.

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sancho panza

Interesting to see stories about adverse reactions to covid vaccines coming out.Personally,I don't think it makes you an 'anti vaxxxer' to want to know why,if the Norwegians were investigating the AZ vaccine in January 2021 with regard to blood clots,why the MHRA managed to run algorithms that missed yellow cards mentioning them.

Some of the numbers are astounding.

https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/04/18/britains-regulator-missed-early-blood-clot-cases-linked-to-astrazeneca-vaccine/

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By the time cases of blood clotting in patients who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine had begun to emerge on the Continent (in March), Britain had already administered 11 million doses (the first ones having been given in January). No such adverse events had been reported publicly in Britain, but not for a lack of cases, according to the findings of a new investigation. Clotting cases were recorded in the UK’s Yellow Card database (a website for reporting adverse drug reactions) in January but were missed at first by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) – possibly due to the algorithms it uses to interrogate UK data. The Telegraph has the story.

On March 11th, the MHRA put out a statement saying it could see no evidence of a problem…

But the MHRA was, it appears, wrong. An investigation by the Telegraph has established that signals had been firing unnoticed in the UK’s Yellow Card database for at least a month, perhaps longer.

In January, a patient suffered a brain clot following their first dose of the AstraZeneca jab… Then in early February, two similar cases followed, including a death and a life-changing CVST clot in a young adult. All had low platelets and all were reported into the Yellow Card system.

On Friday, the MHRA told the Telegraph: “We are aware of thromboembolic events that occurred in January, however, our first report was received in the week commencing February 8th…. we cannot disclose information about individual cases to protect patient and reporter confidentiality.”

… The MHRA faces serious questions as to why it did not detect the signals sooner. The issue is not that it has been left looking flatfooted or even that earlier detection would necessarily have altered its advice, but that the delay left it unable to shape international policy and confidence in what remains a vital vaccine in the fight against Covid for the world.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Bristol studying the rollout of Covid vaccines, told the Financial Times on Friday: “The MHRA was slow in responding to the emergence of a specific constellation of symptoms associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine and slow to communicate what they were finding – and I am not the only one who thinks so.

This slow repose was caused, it is said, by algorithms which were not as sensitive as the ones used by European health agencies to sift through data.

From January 4th to March 14th, a total of 532 “blood system events”, including 20 deaths, came through the UK’s Yellow Card system relating to the AstraZeneca jab, according to an analysis of published MHRA data by Dr Hamid Merchant, a pharmaceutical scientist at the University of Huddersfield. There were thousands of non-blood-related reports besides.

Of the thrombotic events recorded, four related to CVST (but no deaths were recorded), 55 were non-site specific and there were clusters of 64 and 66 cases in the lungs and deep veins respectively. There were then 267 general bleeding events and six deaths, three of which resulted from cerebral haemorrhage. Finally, there were 60 cases of thrombocytopenia, including two deaths.

To sift such data, regulators build algorithms that must balance “sensitivity” against leg-work. The more sensitive the algorithm, the more warning signals it will throw up to investigate – and many of those labour-intensive investigations will prove fruitless.

It is not known exactly what parameters the MHRA set but it is clear they were not as sensitive as those used by some regulators in Europe. 

The MHRA says it followed a principle of applying “statistical techniques which can tell us if we are seeing disproportionately more cases than we would expect to see based on what is known about background rates of illness in the absence of vaccination”. This is reflected in the regulator’s initial statement when it said clotting reports were not above normal.

But other countries turned the sensitivity gauge up to 11. “Our policy is if it is associated with a death, or very serious adverse drug reaction, we will look into it right away,” David Benee Olsen, senior advisor at the Norwegian Medicines Agency, told the Telegraph. 

Reports suggest that the MHRA was more rigorous in its examination of data relating to the Covid vaccine produced by Pfizer. The Telegraph clarifies that “there is no suggestion whatever that the MHRA covered up the reporting of CVST with thrombocytopenia – it just did not spot the still unproven issue as early as others”.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Canada has reported a second case of rare blood clots with low platelets after vaccination with AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine in a week.

By Michael Curzon  /  18 April 2021 • 09.45

 

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sancho panza

BMJ 15 th January 2021

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n149

Doctors in Norway have been told to conduct more thorough evaluations of very frail elderly patients in line to receive the Pfizer BioNTec vaccine against covid-19, following the deaths of 23 patients shortly after receiving the vaccine.

“It may be a coincidence, but we aren’t sure,” Steinar Madsen, medical director of the Norwegian Medicines Agency (NOMA), told The BMJ. “There is no certain connection between these deaths and the vaccine.”

The agency has investigated 13 of the deaths so far and concluded that common adverse reactions of mRNA vaccines, such as fever, nausea, and diarrhoea, may have contributed to fatal outcomes in some of the frail patients.

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Chewing Grass
6 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

The agency has investigated 13 of the deaths so far and concluded that common adverse reactions of mRNA vaccines, such as fever, nausea, and diarrhoea, may have contributed to fatal outcomes in some of the frail patients.

What a way to Euthanase old-folk, why can't they just leave very frail elderly patients alone, to me care of the elderly is criminally barbaric, I have seen many elderly relatives on their last legs dragged from care home - hospital - care home - hospital until they die in a drugged up stupor.

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14 hours ago, sancho panza said:

The agency has investigated 13 of the deaths so far and concluded that common adverse reactions of mRNA vaccines, such as fever, nausea, and diarrhoea, may have contributed to fatal outcomes in some of the frail patients.

Prince Phillip??

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On 18/03/2021 at 22:28, sancho panza said:

Many international studies bear out that lockdowns have proven to be a complete failure as a public health measure to contain a respiratory virus. They did not succeed in their primary objective of containing spread yet have caused great harm.

Lockdown a failure? :Jumping:did'nt billionaires and millionaires treble their wealth during lockdown?

Sounds like a success to me..

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sancho panza

well worth 10 minutes to put the India scaremongering into context as well as Covid overall .Poses the very valid question of whtehr whats happening in India is being sued to jsutify lockdowns in a country where Coivd is now endemic.

Shocking how compliant the media are with not questioning the covid narrative

 

 

 

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sancho panza

Russel Brand.1.7mn views.On why Big Pharma/Tech is ebgging for Covid passports and why they're not in the interests of the ordinary man/woman.

Super stuff.

 

 

 

 

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sancho panza

Brilliant interview here with former Professor of Pathology and Dr of 30 years,John Lee.He covers most of the major issues with covid the disease and explains how the Lockdown hasn't/won't work,why many NPI's such as masks don't work.

All in all,if you watch one video from the last year,it should be this one.

 

 

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sancho panza

Interesting to see how this squares with equality laws as numerous people won't be able to have the vaccine.

I still haven't had mine,so it looks like EU is off the travel list.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-03/eu-proposes-end-to-travel-restrictions-for-vaccinated-tourists

The European Commission proposed easing restrictions on business and leisure travel for those who have been fully inoculated against Covid-19, adding to signs of a gradual return to normalcy as vaccinations gather pace.

 
 

The European Union’s executive arm recommended welcoming tourists from countries with relatively low infection rates as well as those who are fully vaccinated, according to a statement Monday. The proposals require approval from member states and a Commission official said he was hopeful they would be adopted by the end of this month.

 
 
 
 

The new parameters would replace a current blanket ban for non-essential travel to the EU for residents of all but a handful of countries that has been in place for more than a year.

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sancho panza

I read in the FT now that the govt is admitting to 41 deaths linked to blood clots caused by AZ vaccine.

As I've said previously,I'd be interested to know how many have died within 28 days of vaccination.

Amazing that these deaths were intially missed by the MHRA depsite issues in Norway etc.

 

Quite how they expect to view these admissions as a sign to reinforce faith in govt covid policy,I don't know.

I suspect the 150,000+ NHS hold outs and 30% of care home workers who've not had the jab thus far,won't have been tempted from their foxholes by these figures.

Personally,I'm not an anti vaxxer,far from it,but I have kids to raise and noone to raise them in my place if I die.I reserve my right to take my chances of surviving covid over my chances of surviving the vaccine.The MHRA galring incompetence fills me with dread ref the vaccine.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/astrazeneca-jab-linked-clots-deaths-slow-scientists-race-understand/

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