UK Govt Coronavirus Response: Sceptics Thread

[sancho panza]

7 hours ago, Dogtania said:

It's a bit of a concern and seems iffy that they are just vaccinating any old bugger.  From anecdotals here and elsewhere it sounds like you can just turn up and if there is one spare they'll happily jab you in the arm.

I think I had last march so really not convinced it's the best for me.  Especially since other countries seem to be going down the only first dose for those with antibodies or prior positive test. Maybe if they tested for antibodies (which don't stick around too long anyway?) it would hold things up or there would be less jabs handed round.  Seems like it's a race to get as high a vaccination number as possible, anything that stands in this way -including negative news about side effects/ complications- be damned and buried.

Similar to the very frail elderly ie care home residents, who by all accounts stand a good chance of snuffing it come the second dose.  Very bizarre.  I have seen videos leaked, obliviously cant be taken as gospel, but nevertheless looks like in some countries these bedridden care home residents are being vaccinated against their will.  Like I say context and veracity is lacking but looks pretty bad on the face of it, even if isolated.

I think one of the issues is that they've been jabbing people regardless of their medical history which is a worry for me.

Sweden-dare I mention it-has used antibody testing a lot to provide insights and I think that's something we could learn from.I'm intrigued to understand the logic of vaccinating people with natural immunity.

From the colleagues at work and the patients I've attended the vaccination can really knock you six.

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.”

[sancho panza]

Sept 2020.

Interssting to reflect on having had a second wave.

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563

It seemed a truth universally acknowledged that the human population had no pre-existing immunity to SARS-CoV-2, but is that actually the case? Peter Doshi explores the emerging research on immunological responses

Even in local areas that have experienced some of the greatest rises in excess deaths during the covid-19 pandemic, serological surveys since the peak indicate that at most only around a fifth of people have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2: 23% in New York, 18% in London, 11% in Madrid.123 Among the general population the numbers are substantially lower, with many national surveys reporting in single digits.

With public health responses around the world predicated on the assumption that the virus entered the human population with no pre-existing immunity before the pandemic,4 serosurvey data are leading many to conclude that the virus has, as Mike Ryan, WHO’s head of emergencies, put it, “a long way to burn.”

Yet a stream of studies that have documented SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells in people without exposure to the virus are raising questions about just how new the pandemic virus really is, with many implications.

Not so novel coronavirus?

At least six studies have reported T cell reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 in 20% to 50% of people with no known exposure to the virus.5678910

In a study of donor blood specimens obtained in the US between 2015 and 2018, 50% displayed various forms of T cell reactivity to SARS-CoV-2.511 A similar study that used specimens from the Netherlands reported T cell reactivity in two of 10 people who had not been exposed to the virus.7

In Germany reactive T cells were detected in a third of SARS-CoV-2 seronegative healthy donors (23 of 68). In Singapore a team analysed specimens taken from people with no contact or personal history of SARS or covid-19; 12 of 26 specimens taken before July 2019 showed reactivity to SARS-CoV-2, as did seven of 11 from people who were seronegative against the virus.8 Reactivity was also discovered in the UK and Sweden.6910

Though these studies are small and do not yet provide precise estimates of pre-existing immunological responses to SARS-CoV-2, they are hard to dismiss, with several being published in Cell and Nature. Alessandro Sette, an immunologist from La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California and an author of several of the studies (box 1), told The BMJ, “At this point there are a number of studies that are seeing this reactivity in different continents, different labs. As a scientist you know that is a hallmark of something that has a very strong footing.”

Box 1

Swine flu déjà vu

In late 2009, months after the World Health Organization declared the H1N1 “swine flu” virus to be a global pandemic, Alessandro Sette was part of a team working to explain why the so called “novel” virus did not seem to be causing more severe infections than seasonal flu.12

Their answer was pre-existing immunological responses in the adult population: B cells and, in particular, T cells, which “are known to blunt disease severity.”12 Other studies came to the same conclusion: people with pre-existing reactive T cells had less severe H1N1 disease.1314 In addition, a study carried out during the 2009 outbreak by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 33% of people over 60 years old had cross reactive antibodies to the 2009 H1N1 virus, leading the CDC to conclude that “some degree of pre-existing immunity” to the new H1N1 strains existed, especially among adults over age 60.15

The data forced a change in views at WHO and CDC, from an assumption before 2009 that most people “will have no immunity to the pandemic virus”16 to one that acknowledged that “the vulnerability of a population to a pandemic virus is related in part to the level of pre-existing immunity to the virus.”17 But by 2020 it seems that lesson had been forgotten.

RETURN TO TEXT

Researchers are also confident that they have made solid inroads into ascertaining the origins of the immune responses. “Our hypothesis, of course, was that it’s so called ‘common cold’ coronaviruses, because they’re closely related,” said Daniela Weiskopf, senior author of a paper in Science that confirmed this hypothesis.18 “We have really shown that this is a true immune memory and it is derived in part from common cold viruses.” Separately, researchers in Singapore came to similar conclusions about the role of common cold coronaviruses but noted that some of the T cell reactivity may also come from other unknown coronaviruses, even of animal origin.8

Taken together, this growing body of research documenting pre-existing immunological responses to SARS-CoV-2 may force pandemic planners to revisit some of their foundational assumptions about how to measure population susceptibility and monitor the extent of epidemic spread.

Population immunity: underestimated?

Seroprevalence surveys measuring antibodies have been the preferred method for gauging the proportion of people in a given population who have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 (and have some degree of immunity to it), with estimates of herd immunity thresholds providing a sense of where we are in this pandemic. Whether we overcome it through naturally derived immunity or vaccination, the sense is that it won’t be over until we reach a level of herd immunity.

The fact that only a minority of people, even in the hardest hit areas, display antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 has led most planners to assume the pandemic is far from over. In New York City, where just over a fifth of people surveyed had antibodies, the health department concluded that “as this remains below herd immunity thresholds, monitoring, testing, and contact tracing remain essential public health strategies.”19 “Whatever that number is, we’re nowhere near close to it,” said WHO’s Ryan in late July, referring to the herd immunity threshold (box 2).

Box 2

Calculating the herd immunity threshold

In theory, outbreaks of contagious disease follow a certain trajectory. In a population that lacks immunity new infections grow rapidly. At some point an inflection in this growth should occur, and the incidence will begin to fall.

The 1970s gave rise to a theory that defined this inflection point as the herd immunity threshold (HIT) and offered a straightforward formula for estimating its size: HIT=1−1/R₀ (where R₀ is the disease’s basic reproduction number, or the average number of secondary cases generated by an infectious individual among susceptible people). This simple calculation has guided—and continues to guide—many vaccination campaigns, often used to define target levels of vaccination.20

The formula rests on two assumptions: that, in a given population, immunity is distributed evenly and members mix at random. While vaccines may be deliverable in a near random fashion, from the earliest days questions were raised about the random mixing assumption. Apart from certain small closed populations such as “orphanages, boarding schools, or companies of military recruits,” Fox and colleagues wrote in 1971,21 truly random mixing is the exception, not the rule. “We could hardly assume even a small town to be a single homogeneously mixing unit. Each individual is normally in close contact with only a small number of individuals, perhaps of the order of 10-50.”

Nearly 50 years later, Gabriela Gomes, an infectious disease modeller at the University of Strathclyde, is reviving concerns that the theory’s basic assumptions do not hold. Not only do people not mix randomly, infections (and subsequent immunity) do not happen randomly either, her team says. “More susceptible and more connected individuals have a higher propensity to be infected and thus are likely to become immune earlier. Due to this selective immunization by natural infection, heterogeneous populations require less infections to cross their herd immunity threshold,” they wrote.22 While most experts have taken the R₀ for SARS-CoV-2 (generally estimated to be between 2 and 3) and concluded that at least 50% of people need to be immune before herd immunity is reached, Gomes and colleagues calculate the threshold at 10% to 20%.2223

Ulrich Keil, professor emeritus of epidemiology from the University of Münster in Germany, says the notion of randomly distributed immunity is a “very naive assumption” that ignores the large disparities in health in populations and “also ignores completely that social conditions might be more important than the virus itself.” He added, “Tuberculosis here is the best example. We all know that the immune system is very much dependent on the living conditions of a person, and this depends very much on education and social conditions.”

Another group led by Sunetra Gupta at the University of Oxford has arrived at similar conclusions of lower herd immunity thresholds by considering the issue of pre-existing immunity in the population. When a population has people with pre-existing immunity, as the T cell studies may be indicating is the case, the herd immunity threshold based on an R₀ of 2.5 can be reduced from 60% of a population getting infected right down to 10%, depending on the quantity and distribution of pre-existing immunity among people, Gupta’s group calculated.24

RETURN TO TEXT

But memory T cells are known for their ability to affect the clinical severity and susceptibility to future infection,25 and the T cell studies documenting pre-existing reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 in 20-50% of people suggest that antibodies are not the full story.

“Maybe we were a little naive to take measurements such as serology testing to look at how many people were infected with the virus,” the Karolinska Institute immunologist Marcus Buggert told The BMJ. “Maybe there is more immunity out there.”

The research offers a powerful reminder that very little in immunology is cut and dried. Physiological responses may have fewer sharp distinctions than in the popular imagination: exposure does not necessarily lead to infection, infection does not necessarily lead to disease, and disease does not necessarily produce detectable antibodies. And within the body, the roles of various immune system components are complex and interconnected. B cells produce antibodies, but B cells are regulated by T cells, and while T cells and antibodies both respond to viruses in the body, T cells do so on infected cells, whereas antibodies help prevent cells from being infected.

An unexpected twist of the curve

Buggert’s home country has been at the forefront of the herd immunity debate, with Sweden’s light touch strategy against the virus resulting in much scrutiny and scepticism.26 The epidemic in Sweden does seem to be declining, Buggert said in August. “We have much fewer cases right now. We have around 50 people hospitalised with covid-19 in a city of two million people.” At the peak of the epidemic there were thousands of cases. Something must have happened, said Buggert, particularly considering that social distancing was “always poorly followed, and it’s only become worse.”

Understanding this “something” is a core question for Sunetra Gupta, an Oxford University epidemiologist who developed a way to calculate herd immunity thresholds that incorporates a variable for pre-existing innate resistance and cross protection.24 Her group argues that herd immunity thresholds “may be greatly reduced if a fraction of the population is unable to transmit the virus.”

“The conventional wisdom is that lockdown occurred as the epidemic curve was rising,” Gupta explained. “So once you remove lockdown that curve should continue to rise.” But that is not happening in places like New York, London, and Stockholm. The question is why.

“If it were the case that in London the disease hadn’t disseminated too widely, and only 15% have experienced the virus [as serology tests indicate] . . . under those circumstances, if you lift lockdown, you should see an immediate and commensurate increase in cases, as we have observed in many other settings,” Gupta told The BMJ, “But that hasn’t happened. That is just a fact. The question is why.”

Possible answers are many, she says. One is that social distancing is in place, and people are keeping the spread down. Another possibility is that a lot of people are immune because of T cell responses or something else. “Whatever it is,” Gupta added, “if there is a significant fraction of the population that is not permissive to the infection, then that all makes sense, given how infectious SARS-CoV-2 is.”

Buggert’s study in Sweden seems to support this position. Investigating close family members of patients with confirmed covid-19, he found T cell responses in those who were seronegative or asymptomatic.10 While around 60% of family members produced antibodies, 90% had T cell responses. (Other studies have reported similar results.27) “So many people got infected and didn’t create antibodies,” concludes Buggert.

Deeper discussion

T cell studies have received scant media attention, in contrast to research on antibodies, which seem to dominate the news (probably, says Buggert, because antibodies are easier, faster, and cheaper to study than T cells). Two recent studies reported that naturally acquired antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 begin to wane after just 2-3 months, fuelling speculation in the lay press about repeat infections.282930

But T cell studies allow for a substantially different, more optimistic, interpretation. In the Singapore study, for example, SARS-CoV-1 reactive T cells were found in SARS patients 17 years after infection. “Our findings also raise the possibility that long lasting T cells generated after infection with related viruses may be able to protect against, or modify the pathology caused by, infection with SARS-CoV-2,”8 the investigators wrote.

T cell studies may also help shed light on other mysteries of covid-19, such as why children have been surprisingly spared the brunt of the pandemic, why it affects people differently, and the high rate of asymptomatic infections in children and young adults.

The immunologists I spoke to agreed that T cells could be a key factor that explains why places like New York, London, and Stockholm seem to have experienced a wave of infections and no subsequent resurgence. This would be because protective levels of immunity, not measurable through serology alone but instead the result of a combination of pre-existing and newly formed immune responses, could now exist in the population, preventing an epidemic rise in new infections.

But they were all quick to note that this is speculation. Formally, the clinical implications of the pre-existing T cell reactivity remain an open question. “People say you don’t have proof, and they’re right,” says Buggert, adding that the historical blood donor specimens in his study were all anonymised, precluding longitudinal follow-up.

There is the notion that perhaps T cell responses are detrimental and predispose to more severe disease. “I don’t see that as a likely possibility,” Sette said, while emphasising that we still need to acknowledge the possibility. “It’s also possible that this absolutely makes no difference. The cross reactivity is too small or weak to affect the virus. The other outcome is that this does make a difference, that it makes you respond better.”

Weiskopf added, “Right now, I think everything is a possibility; we just don’t know. The reason we’re optimistic is we have seen with other viruses where [the T cell response] actually helps you.” One example is swine flu, where research has shown that people with pre-existing reactive T cells had clinically milder disease (box 1).121314

Weiskopf and Sette maintain that compelling evidence could come through a properly designed prospective study that follows a cohort of people who were enrolled before exposure to SARS-CoV-2, comparing the clinical course of those with and without pre-existing T cell responses.

Understanding the protective value of pre-existing SARS-CoV-2 T cell reactivity “is identical to the situation on vaccines,” said Antonio Bertoletti, professor of infectious disease at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. “Through vaccination we aim to stimulate antibodies and T cell production, and we hope that such induction of immunity will protect … but we need a phase III clinical study to really demonstrate the effect.”

German investigators came to the same conclusion, arguing that their T cell findings represented a “decisive rationale to initiate worldwide prospective studies” mapping pre-existing reactivity to clinical outcomes.31 Other groups have called for the same thing.6

“At the start of the pandemic, a key mantra was that we needed the game changer of antibody data to understand who had been infected and how many were protected,” two immunologists from Imperial College London wrote in a mid-July commentary in Science Immunology. “As we have learned more about this challenging infection, it is time to admit that we really need the T cell data too.”32

Theoretically, the placebo arm of a covid-19 vaccine trial could provide a straightforward way to carry out such a study, by comparing the clinical outcomes of people with versus those without pre-existing T cell reactivity to SARS-CoV-2. A review by The BMJ of all primary and secondary outcome measures being studied in the two large ongoing, placebo controlled phase III trials, however, suggests that no such analysis is being done.3334

Could pre-existing immunity be more protective than future vaccines? Without studying the question, we won’t know.

2 hours ago, Noallegiance said:

Hospitalisations and deaths within 28 days of vaccination stats needed....

Couldn't agree more.I doubt we'll get it.

The itorny is that the patients end up in the covid sections of hospitals.

Edited February 18, 2021 by sancho panza

[Dogtania]

4 hours ago, sancho panza said:

I think one of the issues is that they've been jabbing people regardless of their medical history which is a worry for me.

Sweden-dare I mention it-has used antibody testing a lot to provide insights and I think that's something we could learn from.I'm intrigued to understand the logic of vaccinating people with natural immunity.

From the colleagues at work and the patients I've attended the vaccination can really knock you six.

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.”

Re the Norway concern.  I haven't gone through the paper but it's obviously a lot better than the Reuters article.... Which iirc I read being that they had only vaccinated a few more than 30,000, predominately the biotech one.  For 23 to die does seem a lot but sample small etc.  Just hope we get more follow up and it's properly investigated and findings not hidden.

 

[sancho panza]

 

Clare Craig providing evidecne of the possibility of people having pre existing immunity from covid from previous coronaviruses........

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by sancho panza

[sancho panza]

more great commentary from Clare Craig.Can anyone spot the pandemic year in the all casue mortality chart?

 

 

 

 

 

[Hancock]

17 hours ago, sancho panza said:

more great commentary from Clare Craig.Can anyone spot the pandemic year in the all casue mortality chart?

 

 

 

 

 

In other words its all a load of bollocks.

[sancho panza]

6 hours ago, Hancock said:

In other words its all a load of bollocks.

Yep.But some things aren't bollocks.

Incredible what Matt's been up to.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/19/matt-hancock-acted-unlawfully-failing-publish-covid-contracts-high-court

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, acted unlawfully by failing to publish multibillion-pound Covid-19 government contracts within the 30-day period required by law, a high court judge has ruled.

The judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, ruled the failure to do so breached the “vital public function” of transparency over how “vast quantities” of taxpayers’ money was spent.

The judgment is a victory for the Good Law Project (GLP), a crowdfunded not-for-profit organisation that is making a series of legal challenges related to the government’s procurement of protective personal equipment (PPE) and other services during the pandemic.

Research by the procurement consultancy Tussell had found Hancock’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) had spent about £15bn buying PPE from different companies by the beginning of October, but that only £2.68bn worth of contracts had been published.

Government regulations require all contracts with a value of more than £10,000 to be published, and to be sent for publication within 30 days of being awarded.

The GLP highlighted three PPE contracts to illustrate their case: a £252m contract for the supply of face masks with a finance company, Ayanda Capital; a £108m contract with Clandeboye Agencies, which had previously supplied only confectionery products, and PPE contracts worth £345m with a company trading as Pestfix.

None of the contracts was published within the required 30-day period. Tussell found that the average time for publication of Covid-19 related contracts was 47 days, which meant the government’s own 30-day deadline was likely to have been breached “in a substantial number of cases”, Chamberlain said.

Hancock and the DHSC had fully opposed and defended the challenge, including by arguing that the GLP had no legal standing to bring a case. The DHSC’s head of procurement had explained the challenges of procuring PPE rapidly during the pandemic and ensuring that contracts were published, and the department denied it had any intention not to publish them.

Chamberlain ruled: “The secretary of state’s evidence provides a cogent explanation of his historic failure to comply … but this explanation amounts to an excuse, not a justification. It follows that, in my judgment, the secretary of state acted unlawfully by failing to comply with the transparency policy.”

The obligation to publish contracts within 30 days “serve a vital public function and that function was no less important during a pandemic”, he said. “The secretary of state spent vast quantities of public money on pandemic-related procurements during 2020. The public were entitled to see who this money was going to, what it was being spent on and how the relevant contracts were awarded.”

Jolyon Maugham QC, the GLP’s director, welcomed the judgment and said it was significant for the organisation’s other legal challenges, which include one related to the Cabinet Office’s contract with the research company Public First, which was heard on Monday. The government argues in those cases too that the GLP has no legal standing.

The GLP has written to Hancock asking him to publish all outstanding contracts, and the names of companies whose offers to supply PPE were processed through the “VIP lane”, a high-priority route given to referrals by MPs, peers and others with political connections. The government has refused repeated requests to publish the list of companies.

Maugham said: “I’d rather that there was no need for organisations like ours to have to sue government to get it to come clean. The public is plainly entitled to know how and with whom and at what prices government spends public money.

“Anything else is a recipe for corruption. But until government understands and respects that there is a genuine public interest in how they are awarding Covid contracts, including through the VIP lane, we have little choice.”

A DHSC spokesperson said contracts were awarded “at speed” to secure PPE during the pandemic, and that 8bn items were delivered to frontline workers for their protection. “We fully recognise the importance of transparency in the award of public contracts and continue to publish information about contracts awarded as soon as possible.”

The GLP’s judicial review challenge was supported by the Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, Caroline Lucas of the Green party and the Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who all welcomed the judgment.

Edited February 19, 2021 by sancho panza

[sancho panza]

via lockdown sceptics.

Love the law of the instrument analogy.very apt.These professors appear to be lacking in common sense,a not untypical occurence in highly intelligent people in my experience.

 

https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/02/19/latest-news-290/#imperial-credits-lockdown-for-drop-in-cases-florida-begs-to-differ

Another day, another misleading headline. LBC titled a piece on yesterday’s update from the Imperial REACT study: “Lockdowns driving down coronavirus rates but they remain high, study finds.”

The (pre-print) study in question is not like the models from the other Imperial team. It is a sensible analysis of the prevalence of coronavirus in the population by randomised testing of large numbers of the community. It is not intended as a study that attributes causation to correlation. Nonetheless, it can’t resist slipping it in there and LBC, like other outlets, found what they needed to fit their confirmation bias. There is one reference directly linking the fall in cases to lockdowns in the paper. It noted that the fall in prevalence in the over-65s was similar to that in other age groups, concluding that any effect of the vaccine reducing cases is not yet a “major driver”. Instead, the paper comments: “The observed falls described here are most likely due to reduced social interactions during lockdown.”

To be fair to this Imperial group, the above comment lies in the discussion part of the paper. Unfortunately, I think it shows how many academics and professors who support the lockdowns have their heads buried in the sand with regard to the realities found in the rest of the world. As Lockdown Sceptics readers will know, the Governor of Florida nullified all public health orders and banned the shutting of businesses or fining of those ignoring mask mandates in September. Their case rates increased over the last five months and peaked in early January, just like in the UK. In the six weeks since January, their case numbers have fallen by about two thirds. The same decrease that the Imperial REACT study found in the UK over the last six weeks.

 

Why are so many professors now advocating lockdowns and restrictions? The psychological explanation lies partly in “the law of the instrument” first expressed by philosopher Abraham Kaplan in his book The Conduct of Inquiry: “I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.”

Scientist should never have been given the almighty hammer of lockdowns, but now they have been given the hammer, MPs need to stop them pounding.

Stop Press: Professor Paul Elliott, the director of the study, seems to think it’s his job to tell ministers what they “have” to do. Speaking to Sky News, he said:

At the moment, the prevalence levels are still very, very high. We just have to get them down further. It is really encouraging news, what we’ve seen reported today – that the virus is on the way down, the ‘R’ value is robustly below one, which means that the epidemic is shrinking rather than growing. But we just have to be cautious because at the moment the pressure on the NHS is still severe and there are still very large numbers of patients in hospital with coronavirus, sadly.

Another example of scientists and advisers not respecting the boundary between science and politics, between providing data and weighing up the costs and benefits across the whole of society, which is properly a job for our political leaders.

Stop Press 2: The Mail reports on the moment Joe Biden’s Covid adviser “is unable to explain why lockdown-loving California isn’t doing better than open-all-hours Florida”.

Stop Press 3: Summit News points out that no-lockdown Sweden is seeing Covid deaths plummet quicker than lockdown UK. See this tweet by Dr Eli David for a nice graph illustrating this point.

Edited February 19, 2021 by sancho panza

[Hancock]

14 hours ago, sancho panza said:

via lockdown sceptics.

Love the law of the instrument analogy.very apt.These professors appear to be lacking in common sense,a not untypical occurence in highly intelligent people in my experience.

 

Its the cheering them on by almost all in the MSM that is the bigger worry.

These people are highly academic, not highly intelligent.

[macca]

A non corrupt MP exists.. 

https://twitter.com/zarahsultana/status/1364305407934611459?s=20

[Hancock]

On 24/02/2021 at 00:39, macca said:

A non corrupt MP exists.. 

https://twitter.com/zarahsultana/status/1364305407934611459?s=20

Like to hear her views on Labour promoting child rape of white working class kids by Islamists.

[sancho panza]

11 hours ago, macca said:

A non corrupt MP exists.. 

https://twitter.com/zarahsultana/status/1364305407934611459?s=20

It's a start isn't it?

 

1 hour ago, Hancock said:

Like to hear her views on Labour promoting child rape of white working class kids by Islamists.

One battle at a time Hankers

[Hancock]

42 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

It's a start isn't it?

 

One battle at a time Hankers

Sadly they've won all the battles and taken all the money.

I do find it strange though that if what Hancock has done is against the law, then why isn't he being arrested.

I wish i took the full 50k from the Bounce Back Loan, it was stupid to fill the form out honestly.

[sancho panza]

3 hours ago, Hancock said:

Sadly they've won all the battles and taken all the money.

I do find it strange though that if what Hancock has done is against the law, then why isn't he being arrested.

I wish i took the full 50k from the Bounce Back Loan, it was stupid to fill the form out honestly.

Remember that Home Secretary who claimed her sister's bedroom as her main residence and her family home in Brum as a second home....

[Hancock]

34 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

Remember that Home Secretary who claimed her sister's bedroom as her main residence and her family home in Brum as a second home....

Rings a bell, there is no punishment for their scamming so they might as well continue.

Most landlords are happy for you just to turn up during the week, to gift his £30million is very good of him.

[Harley]

Long but a good summary.  Wish the end (macro discussion) was longer though!

https://www.realvision.com/podcast/realvision/episode/6248e0b6-63ea-11eb-b0c9-a30ba1b1dbff

The Interview, Recorded on January 4, 2021In the fight against COVID-19, lockdowns have become a major policy tool used by governments around the world with a stated goal of limiting the spread of the virus and keeping hospitals from running out of capacity. Nick Hudson, CEO of Sana Partners, and Russell Lamberti, Founder of ETM Macro Advisors, are part of Pandemics Data and Analytics, or PANDA, a collective of leading scientists, actuaries, economists, data scientists, statisticians, medical professionals, lawyers, engineers and businesspeople working to challenge the mainstream narrative around lockdowns using scientific evidence that they argue shows that 1) lockdowns are not effective at their stated goals and 2) the secondary costs of lockdowns far outweigh the potential benefits. In this interview with Mike Green of Logica Capital Advisors, Hudson and Lamberti introduce viewers to their organization and make the case that the COVID-19 response does not square with any of the pre-COVID pandemic response protocols that were updated in late 2019, that the effects of lockdowns on children and other marginalized groups have not been properly considered, and that lockdowns could set a dangerous political precedent.......

Edited February 25, 2021 by Harley

[sancho panza]

https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/03/06/believing-in-impossible-things-and-covid19/

Believing in impossible things – and COVID19

332 Replies

6th March 2021

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

1: ‘The Concept of Coronavirus Herd Immunity Is Deadly and Dangerous’ https://www.self.com/story/coronavirus-herd-immunity

Since COVID19 first hurtled over the horizon, before landing upon us all with great force, I find that I have been asked to believe in many impossible things. First, I was told that attempting to create herd immunity was not achievable. It would also be extremely dangerous and would inevitably result in many hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.

Then the vaccines arrived at fantastical speed and I was told that mass vaccination, by creating herd immunity, would be the factor that would allow us to conquer COVID19 and return to normal life. I am not entirely sure which of these things is impossible, but one of them must be.

2: ‘Vaccines, on the other hand, are believed to induce stronger and longer lasting immunity.’ https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/does-the-vaccine-give-better-protection-than-having-fought-off-the-virus_uk_601c0663c5b62bf30754c563

I was then told the vaccine would provide greater immunity than being infected with COVID19. Which was interesting. I am not sure if this is actually impossible, but it seemed unlikely that anyone could make such statements after about three hundred people had actually been studied, and just two months had passed.

At the time I was aware of two people proven to have been re-infected with COVID19, out of about ten million cases. So, getting infected certainly seemed to provide a pretty good degree of immunity. A re-infection rate of 0.00005%

I also know that vaccinations can only ever really create an attenuated response. Whereas a full-blown infection triggers a full-blown immune response. So, I think it is pretty close to impossible that vaccination can provide greater protection than that from getting the actual disease. Which is why I think it is utterly bonkers we are actually vaccinating people who have circulating antibodies in their blood.

3: ‘Universal mask use could save 130,000 U.S. lives by the end of February, new study estimates.’ https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/23/universal-mask-use-could-save-130000-lives-by-the-end-of-february-new-modeling-study-says/

I am also being asked to believe that face masks are essential to stop the spread of COVID19 and prevent millions of deaths worldwide. The use of masks to prevent viral spread is something I actually researched in depth before COVID19 arrived (for various reasons), as did the WHO. They looked at non-pharmaceutical interventions for prevention of influenza, and produced a hefty report, which covered the use of masks.

Yes, I agree, influenza is not exactly the same as COVID19. But it is pretty much the same size of virus, and it is thought to spread in much the same way. Anyway, the WHO reported their views on masks in 2019, using data from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) – the gold standard.

‘Ten RCTs were included in the meta-analysis, and there was no evidence that facemasks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.’ https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf?ua=1

Since then, there has only been one RCT done on COVID19 transmission, in Denmark. It did not find any significant benefit from masks in reducing spread. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/

Never has a trial been subjected to such immediate and hostile reporting. Fact-checkers (whoever exactly they might be, or what understanding they have of medical research) immediately attacked it. One such, called PolitiFact, made the following judgement, which amused me.

“Social media posts claim, “The first randomized controlled trial of more than 6,000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.”

The study concluded that wearing masks did not offer a very high level of personal protection to mask wearers in communities where wearing masks was not common practice. The study noted, however, that the data suggested masks provided some degree of self-protection.

We rate this claim Mostly False. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/”

So, according to PolitiFact, masks provided self-protection, but not personal protection. An interesting concept. Note to self, try to find out the difference between these two things.

In fact, this was just one of hundreds of critical articles, with self-anointed fact checkers clearly desperate to pull it to pieces. Yes, we have now entered a world when political fact checkers feel free to attack and contradict the findings of scientific papers, using such scientific terms as ‘Mostly false.’ Maybe they should have called it ‘very unique’ at the same time. Or, like the curate’s egg, that was good in parts.

Ignoring the modern-day Spanish Inquisition, and their ill-informed criticisms, I will simply call this study. More evidence that face masks don’t work. Perhaps someone will come along with a study proving that face masks work. So far … nada. Another impossible thing.

4: As of the 2^nd March 2021 there have been 122,953 deaths from COVID19 in the UK.

Unlike many people I have actually written COVID19 on death certificates. Mostly they have been educated guesses. On at least five of them, early last year, there had been no positive swab to go on. So, I was just going on probable symptoms. As were many other doctors at the time.

Which means that you can take five off that number for starters. Although, of course, once written, that is very much, that … when it comes to death certificates. In fact, early on in the pandemic, we were probably underdiagnosing as often as over diagnosing deaths from COVID19. Although no-one will ever know. With no positive swab – and few swabs were being done – and almost no post-mortems – you were simply guessing.

As for now … NOW we have the very strange concept that any death within twenty-eight days of a positive COVID19 swab is recorded as a COVID19 death. Simultaneously, I am told that if I have a positive test at work, and then take some time off work (I can never remember the latest guidance). I am not to have another swab for ninety days.

How so? Because it now seems (I actually knew this a long time ago), that swabs can remain positive for months after the infection has been and gone [or was maybe never there to begin with]. Or to put this another way, you can have a positive swab long after you have been infected – and recovered. There are just some bits of virus up your nose that can be magnified, through the wonders of the PCR test, into a positive result.

Which means that an elderly person, infected months ago, can be admitted to hospital for any reason whatsoever. The they can have a positive swab – everyone is swabbed. Then they can die, from whatever it was they were admitted for in the first place. Then, they will be recorded as a COVID19 death.

In truth, this is just the start of impossible things when it comes to the number of COVID19 deaths. Do not get me started on PCR cycle numbers, and false positives. We would be here all day.

Equally, how many people have truly died of COVID19, instead of simply with COVID19? If I painted a blue circle on your forehead, then you died, I would not say that you died of a blue circle painted on your forehead. I would say that you died with a blue circle painted on your forehead.

5: The Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster. It Shouldn’t Be a Model for the Rest of the World

This was actually the headline title from an article in TIME magazine. The article went on to state that ‘The Swedish way has yielded little but death and misery. And this situation has not been honestly portrayed to the Swedish people or to the rest of the world.’  https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/

Death and misery. Hmmmm, I might make this the title of my next book. Bound to be a best seller.

Yes, Sweden has been attacked from all sides with terrific venom, for holding out against imposing severe lockdown. How dare they… follow the WHO’s initial advice. That everyone else ignored.

So, have they done well with regard to COVID19 deaths? Not particularly. Have they done badly?Not particularly. On Worldometer they rank twenty fourth highest for deaths per million of the population. Which is pretty much bang on average for Western Europe.

One reason why they might not have appeared to do better is that, in the year 2019, they had their lowest rate of death for at least ten years. Three and a half thousand less in total than in 2018 https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ . In Norway, a country  used to beat Sweden with, due to their very low COVID19 deaths there was no difference in death rate between 2018 and 2019. To be blunt, the elderly population in Sweden had some catching up to do.

Once you factor this in, the much-lauded difference in deaths, between Norway and Sweden, kind of disappears.

‘Our study shows that all-cause mortality was largely unchanged during the epidemic as compared to the previous four years in Norway and Sweden, two countries which employed very different strategies against the epidemic. Excess mortality from COVID-19 may be less pronounced than previously perceived in Sweden, and mortality displacement might explain part of the observed findings.’ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v1.full

In absolute figures. Sweden had

• 92,185 deaths in 2018
• 88,766 deaths in 2019
• 97,941 deaths in 2020

A drop, then a rebound. Perhaps another way to look at the figures is to compare 2020 with a bad Swedish year in the past. In 2012, 91,938 people died. However, the population was lower at 9.5 million vs 10.2 million. So:

• The absolute death rate in 2012 was 0.957%.
• The absolute death rate in 2020 was 0.969%.

The difference between 2012 and 2020 is 0.012%. That is 120 extra deaths per million of the population, which is 1,224 people in population of 10.2 million. The statistics tell us that twelve thousand people died from COVID19 in Sweden. Maybe you can make all that add up. Frankly, I find it impossible.

6: Lockdowns have worked.

Before COVID19 came along, no country had ever attempted a lockdown – ever. So, no-one had any idea if such a thing could possibly work. There was no evidence, from anywhere, to support its use.

It was the Chinese who started it, and who claimed great success for their jackboot lockdown tactics. Well, they convinced me… not. Frankly, if I had to choose a country from which to obtain high quality, unbiased information, about anything, China would not feature in my top one hundred and ninety-four countries

But there you go, lockdown worked under the control of the kind and caring CCP. Hoorah, cheering all round, and the first person to stop cheering gets shot. Well, we don’t want any damned nay-sayers, do we? After that, according to almost everything I have read, everywhere, it worked for everyone else too. Remarkable.

Yes, it is certainly true you can find countries that locked down, closed their borders, and kept the rates low. That, however, is not proof of anything at all. The scientific method requires a little more rigour than this.

In fact, the main thing that scientific rigour requires is that you specifically do not go around looking for facts that support your hypothesis. Because that, I am afraid, is the exact opposite of science. What you need to do, instead, is to go around looking for facts that disprove your hypothesis. This is what Karl Popper called falsification.

For example, my hypothesis is that “all swans are white”. I seek, and find, only white swans. So, this makes my hypothesis is correct? No. What science requires you do is to hunt tirelessly for black swans. If you never find one, fine. However, you need to be aware that the moment you do, your hypothesis has just been disproven. In real life things are very rarely as simple as this, but that is the basic principle.

However, with lockdown (and I recognise that no two countries locked down in the same way) the hypothesis is that countries which did not lockdown will have higher rate of death for COVID19 than those that did.

So, let us look, first, at the countries with the highest rate of COVID19. Excluding very small countries e.g., San Marino, or Gibraltar, we have, in descending order of deaths per million of the population https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ .

• Czechia
• Belgium
• Slovenia
• UK
• Italy
• Montenegro
• Portugal
• USA
• Hungary
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• North Macedonia
• Bulgaria
• Spain
• Mexico
• Peru
• Croatia
• Slovakia
• Panama
• France

Every single country in this list carried out fairly strict lockdowns. The UK, apparently, has the strictest lockdown in the world, this winter.

Four countries that have been roundly criticized for having far less restrictive lockdowns are: Sweden, Japan, Belarus and Nicaragua (Realistically there are others, in poorer countries, where lockdowns have not happened – because they can’t afford it)

In these four ‘non-lockdowns’ countries, the death rate is, on average 391 per million.

In the top twenty ‘lockdown’ countries, the death rate is, on average 1,520 per million.

The only non-lockdown country in the top ninety for death rates is Sweden. It comes just below France, at number twenty-four.

Now, if the difference between lockdown and non-lockdown countries were ten per cent, or even fifty per cent, I would fully accept that there are many other variables that could explain such finding away. Although, of course, we should really look at a higher rate in the non-lockdown countries, not a lower rate.

Yet although this evidence is out there, I am being asked to believe that lockdowns work. At least the WHO agrees with me on this impossible thing. As Dr David Nabarro, the WHO special envoy on COVID19 said:

“We really do appeal to all world leaders, stop using lockdown as your primary method of control,” he said.

“Lockdowns have just one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-12/world-health-organization-coronavirus-lockdown-advice/12753688

Lockdowns, according to the WHO, in unguarded moments, have just one consequence. They make poor people an awful lot poorer.

‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If this is granted all else follows.’

[Talking Monkey]

2 hours ago, sancho panza said:

https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/03/06/believing-in-impossible-things-and-covid19/

Believing in impossible things – and COVID19

332 Replies

6th March 2021

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

1: ‘The Concept of Coronavirus Herd Immunity Is Deadly and Dangerous’ https://www.self.com/story/coronavirus-herd-immunity

Since COVID19 first hurtled over the horizon, before landing upon us all with great force, I find that I have been asked to believe in many impossible things. First, I was told that attempting to create herd immunity was not achievable. It would also be extremely dangerous and would inevitably result in many hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.

Then the vaccines arrived at fantastical speed and I was told that mass vaccination, by creating herd immunity, would be the factor that would allow us to conquer COVID19 and return to normal life. I am not entirely sure which of these things is impossible, but one of them must be.

2: ‘Vaccines, on the other hand, are believed to induce stronger and longer lasting immunity.’ https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/does-the-vaccine-give-better-protection-than-having-fought-off-the-virus_uk_601c0663c5b62bf30754c563

I was then told the vaccine would provide greater immunity than being infected with COVID19. Which was interesting. I am not sure if this is actually impossible, but it seemed unlikely that anyone could make such statements after about three hundred people had actually been studied, and just two months had passed.

At the time I was aware of two people proven to have been re-infected with COVID19, out of about ten million cases. So, getting infected certainly seemed to provide a pretty good degree of immunity. A re-infection rate of 0.00005%

I also know that vaccinations can only ever really create an attenuated response. Whereas a full-blown infection triggers a full-blown immune response. So, I think it is pretty close to impossible that vaccination can provide greater protection than that from getting the actual disease. Which is why I think it is utterly bonkers we are actually vaccinating people who have circulating antibodies in their blood.

3: ‘Universal mask use could save 130,000 U.S. lives by the end of February, new study estimates.’ https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/23/universal-mask-use-could-save-130000-lives-by-the-end-of-february-new-modeling-study-says/

I am also being asked to believe that face masks are essential to stop the spread of COVID19 and prevent millions of deaths worldwide. The use of masks to prevent viral spread is something I actually researched in depth before COVID19 arrived (for various reasons), as did the WHO. They looked at non-pharmaceutical interventions for prevention of influenza, and produced a hefty report, which covered the use of masks.

Yes, I agree, influenza is not exactly the same as COVID19. But it is pretty much the same size of virus, and it is thought to spread in much the same way. Anyway, the WHO reported their views on masks in 2019, using data from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) – the gold standard.

‘Ten RCTs were included in the meta-analysis, and there was no evidence that facemasks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.’ https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf?ua=1

Since then, there has only been one RCT done on COVID19 transmission, in Denmark. It did not find any significant benefit from masks in reducing spread. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/

Never has a trial been subjected to such immediate and hostile reporting. Fact-checkers (whoever exactly they might be, or what understanding they have of medical research) immediately attacked it. One such, called PolitiFact, made the following judgement, which amused me.

“Social media posts claim, “The first randomized controlled trial of more than 6,000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.”

The study concluded that wearing masks did not offer a very high level of personal protection to mask wearers in communities where wearing masks was not common practice. The study noted, however, that the data suggested masks provided some degree of self-protection.

We rate this claim Mostly False. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/”

So, according to PolitiFact, masks provided self-protection, but not personal protection. An interesting concept. Note to self, try to find out the difference between these two things.

In fact, this was just one of hundreds of critical articles, with self-anointed fact checkers clearly desperate to pull it to pieces. Yes, we have now entered a world when political fact checkers feel free to attack and contradict the findings of scientific papers, using such scientific terms as ‘Mostly false.’ Maybe they should have called it ‘very unique’ at the same time. Or, like the curate’s egg, that was good in parts.

Ignoring the modern-day Spanish Inquisition, and their ill-informed criticisms, I will simply call this study. More evidence that face masks don’t work. Perhaps someone will come along with a study proving that face masks work. So far … nada. Another impossible thing.

4: As of the 2^nd March 2021 there have been 122,953 deaths from COVID19 in the UK.

Unlike many people I have actually written COVID19 on death certificates. Mostly they have been educated guesses. On at least five of them, early last year, there had been no positive swab to go on. So, I was just going on probable symptoms. As were many other doctors at the time.

Which means that you can take five off that number for starters. Although, of course, once written, that is very much, that … when it comes to death certificates. In fact, early on in the pandemic, we were probably underdiagnosing as often as over diagnosing deaths from COVID19. Although no-one will ever know. With no positive swab – and few swabs were being done – and almost no post-mortems – you were simply guessing.

As for now … NOW we have the very strange concept that any death within twenty-eight days of a positive COVID19 swab is recorded as a COVID19 death. Simultaneously, I am told that if I have a positive test at work, and then take some time off work (I can never remember the latest guidance). I am not to have another swab for ninety days.

How so? Because it now seems (I actually knew this a long time ago), that swabs can remain positive for months after the infection has been and gone [or was maybe never there to begin with]. Or to put this another way, you can have a positive swab long after you have been infected – and recovered. There are just some bits of virus up your nose that can be magnified, through the wonders of the PCR test, into a positive result.

Which means that an elderly person, infected months ago, can be admitted to hospital for any reason whatsoever. The they can have a positive swab – everyone is swabbed. Then they can die, from whatever it was they were admitted for in the first place. Then, they will be recorded as a COVID19 death.

In truth, this is just the start of impossible things when it comes to the number of COVID19 deaths. Do not get me started on PCR cycle numbers, and false positives. We would be here all day.

Equally, how many people have truly died of COVID19, instead of simply with COVID19? If I painted a blue circle on your forehead, then you died, I would not say that you died of a blue circle painted on your forehead. I would say that you died with a blue circle painted on your forehead.

5: The Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster. It Shouldn’t Be a Model for the Rest of the World

This was actually the headline title from an article in TIME magazine. The article went on to state that ‘The Swedish way has yielded little but death and misery. And this situation has not been honestly portrayed to the Swedish people or to the rest of the world.’  https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/

Death and misery. Hmmmm, I might make this the title of my next book. Bound to be a best seller.

Yes, Sweden has been attacked from all sides with terrific venom, for holding out against imposing severe lockdown. How dare they… follow the WHO’s initial advice. That everyone else ignored.

So, have they done well with regard to COVID19 deaths? Not particularly. Have they done badly?Not particularly. On Worldometer they rank twenty fourth highest for deaths per million of the population. Which is pretty much bang on average for Western Europe.

One reason why they might not have appeared to do better is that, in the year 2019, they had their lowest rate of death for at least ten years. Three and a half thousand less in total than in 2018 https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ . In Norway, a country  used to beat Sweden with, due to their very low COVID19 deaths there was no difference in death rate between 2018 and 2019. To be blunt, the elderly population in Sweden had some catching up to do.

Once you factor this in, the much-lauded difference in deaths, between Norway and Sweden, kind of disappears.

‘Our study shows that all-cause mortality was largely unchanged during the epidemic as compared to the previous four years in Norway and Sweden, two countries which employed very different strategies against the epidemic. Excess mortality from COVID-19 may be less pronounced than previously perceived in Sweden, and mortality displacement might explain part of the observed findings.’ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.11.20229708v1.full

In absolute figures. Sweden had

• 92,185 deaths in 2018
• 88,766 deaths in 2019
• 97,941 deaths in 2020

A drop, then a rebound. Perhaps another way to look at the figures is to compare 2020 with a bad Swedish year in the past. In 2012, 91,938 people died. However, the population was lower at 9.5 million vs 10.2 million. So:

• The absolute death rate in 2012 was 0.957%.
• The absolute death rate in 2020 was 0.969%.

The difference between 2012 and 2020 is 0.012%. That is 120 extra deaths per million of the population, which is 1,224 people in population of 10.2 million. The statistics tell us that twelve thousand people died from COVID19 in Sweden. Maybe you can make all that add up. Frankly, I find it impossible.

6: Lockdowns have worked.

Before COVID19 came along, no country had ever attempted a lockdown – ever. So, no-one had any idea if such a thing could possibly work. There was no evidence, from anywhere, to support its use.

It was the Chinese who started it, and who claimed great success for their jackboot lockdown tactics. Well, they convinced me… not. Frankly, if I had to choose a country from which to obtain high quality, unbiased information, about anything, China would not feature in my top one hundred and ninety-four countries

But there you go, lockdown worked under the control of the kind and caring CCP. Hoorah, cheering all round, and the first person to stop cheering gets shot. Well, we don’t want any damned nay-sayers, do we? After that, according to almost everything I have read, everywhere, it worked for everyone else too. Remarkable.

Yes, it is certainly true you can find countries that locked down, closed their borders, and kept the rates low. That, however, is not proof of anything at all. The scientific method requires a little more rigour than this.

In fact, the main thing that scientific rigour requires is that you specifically do not go around looking for facts that support your hypothesis. Because that, I am afraid, is the exact opposite of science. What you need to do, instead, is to go around looking for facts that disprove your hypothesis. This is what Karl Popper called falsification.

For example, my hypothesis is that “all swans are white”. I seek, and find, only white swans. So, this makes my hypothesis is correct? No. What science requires you do is to hunt tirelessly for black swans. If you never find one, fine. However, you need to be aware that the moment you do, your hypothesis has just been disproven. In real life things are very rarely as simple as this, but that is the basic principle.

However, with lockdown (and I recognise that no two countries locked down in the same way) the hypothesis is that countries which did not lockdown will have higher rate of death for COVID19 than those that did.

So, let us look, first, at the countries with the highest rate of COVID19. Excluding very small countries e.g., San Marino, or Gibraltar, we have, in descending order of deaths per million of the population https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ .

• Czechia
• Belgium
• Slovenia
• UK
• Italy
• Montenegro
• Portugal
• USA
• Hungary
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• North Macedonia
• Bulgaria
• Spain
• Mexico
• Peru
• Croatia
• Slovakia
• Panama
• France

Every single country in this list carried out fairly strict lockdowns. The UK, apparently, has the strictest lockdown in the world, this winter.

Four countries that have been roundly criticized for having far less restrictive lockdowns are: Sweden, Japan, Belarus and Nicaragua (Realistically there are others, in poorer countries, where lockdowns have not happened – because they can’t afford it)

In these four ‘non-lockdowns’ countries, the death rate is, on average 391 per million.

In the top twenty ‘lockdown’ countries, the death rate is, on average 1,520 per million.

The only non-lockdown country in the top ninety for death rates is Sweden. It comes just below France, at number twenty-four.

Now, if the difference between lockdown and non-lockdown countries were ten per cent, or even fifty per cent, I would fully accept that there are many other variables that could explain such finding away. Although, of course, we should really look at a higher rate in the non-lockdown countries, not a lower rate.

Yet although this evidence is out there, I am being asked to believe that lockdowns work. At least the WHO agrees with me on this impossible thing. As Dr David Nabarro, the WHO special envoy on COVID19 said:

“We really do appeal to all world leaders, stop using lockdown as your primary method of control,” he said.

“Lockdowns have just one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-12/world-health-organization-coronavirus-lockdown-advice/12753688

Lockdowns, according to the WHO, in unguarded moments, have just one consequence. They make poor people an awful lot poorer.

‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If this is granted all else follows.’

When you read all that it makes you wonder what on earth is going on in the west with all the absurdity around Covid. There's some sinister agenda at play.

[XswampyX]

37 minutes ago, Talking Monkey said:

When you read all that it makes you wonder what on earth is going on in the west with all the absurdity around Covid. There's some sinister agenda at play.

Imagine if you had closed down the whole economy, spunked billions up the wall and invented a vaccine that was next to useless... what would you do?

 

[sancho panza]

10 hours ago, XswampyX said:

Imagine if you had closed down the whole economy, spunked billions up the wall and invented a vaccine that was next to useless... what would you do?

 

The only option most Western govts have is to double down on their thesis.But more and more people are starting to question the logic of theri response.

I know of a few lockdown enthusiasts who have had a change of perpsective after seeing close relations self harm/get their cancer treatments postponed.

[sancho panza]

10 hours ago, Talking Monkey said:

When you read all that it makes you wonder what on earth is going on in the west with all the absurdity around Covid. There's some sinister agenda at play.

Kendrick is viewed as somewhat of a heretic by the medical establishment but if my anecdotal research reflects the broader views of clinicians working on ground level,then he's not the outlier that they think he is.

[Talking Monkey]

15 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

The only option most Western govts have is to double down on their thesis.But more and more people are starting to question the logic of theri response.

I know of a few lockdown enthusiasts who have had a change of perpsective after seeing close relations self harm/get their cancer treatments postponed.

Doubling down is simply backing themselves further into the corner they've backed into along with making the inevitable backlash all the more explosive

[Hancock]

2 hours ago, Talking Monkey said:

Doubling down is simply backing themselves further into the corner they've backed into along with making the inevitable backlash all the more explosive

But fortunately for them, Labour and the entire establishment have backed them all the way in this lockdown so will anyone ever call it out as being a hoax?

[macca]

On 15/03/2021 at 11:45, sancho panza said:

The only option most Western govts have is to double down on their thesis.But more and more people are starting to question the logic of theri response.

I know of a few lockdown enthusiasts who have had a change of perpsective after seeing close relations self harm/get their cancer treatments postponed.

Problem is those that have closed boarders and done proper lockdowns tell a different story 

Taiwan 9 dead 2.98% economic growth, double UK population density.. 

New zealand 25 dead 

Vietnam is something like 45 dead

Australia 950 dead

Uk over 125'000 dead..

Boris still on his killing spree 

You can't compare our half arsed open boarders lockdown to a proper well run intelligent lockdown.. 

Allowing 21 million people to land at Heathrow without even a temperature check is not a proper lockdown.. 

Edited March 17, 2021 by macca

[reformed nice guy]

9 hours ago, macca said:

Uk over 125'000 dead..

Look on the bright side, we did manage to prevent almost all deaths from flu, Alzheimers, most other dementias etc and massively reduced deaths from heart disease, strokes, COPD etc