Financial Times Elides Excess Deaths In UK with Deaths From Coronavirus, Triggers Call For Coup From Ex-SAGE Member
Professor Anthony Costello, the former WHO Director and now a member of the “alternative” SAGE, got very over-excited on Twitter earlier today in response to an FT article showing the UK had the highest rate of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic among a group of 19 countries that produce comparable data. According to the article, the UK has registered 59,537 more deaths than usual this year since the week ending March 20th. In Costello’s brain, this became: “The FT report the UK has the highest rate of excess COVID19 deaths in the world. 59,537 more deaths than usual with a rate of 891 deaths per million.”
Costello’s tweet set off a chain of responses, each more hysterical than the last, with Robert West, a Professor of Health Psychology at UCL and a former member of the SP1-B subgroup of SAGE, seemingly calling for a coup on the back of it. “We cannot wait until this is ‘all over’ to find out what is going wrong,” he said, referring to Costello’s tweet. “But to learn from its mistakes the Government has to admit it is making them. This is something they appear completely unwilling to do. Time for NHS and public health to take over?”
Let’s gloss over the fact that in Costello’s fevered imagination the highest excess death toll in 19 countries became the highest in the world and focus on the other bit of hyperbole in his tweet. How did 59,537 excess deaths, which the FT says may have been “directly or indirectly” caused by the virus, become “COVID19 deaths”? After all, according to the latest ONS data, 47,343 deaths in the UK have mentioned “novel coronavirus” on the death certificate, more than 10,000 fewer than the excess death total. The six million dollar question is whether all excess deaths since the week ending March 20th have been from COVID-19 or whether some have been due to the lockdown itself? As I pointed out yesterday, the number of deaths from COVID-19 in care homes in England and Wales in Week 20, according to the ONS, is less than half the total number of excess deaths in care homes in Week 20. In the graph below, the green shaded area represents the excess deaths not linked to COVID-19.
Could it be that it’s not undiagnosed COVID-19 that is responsible for those excess deaths, but the hysterical over-reaction to the pandemic by the authorities, preventing people with other diseases seeking medical help?
To be fair to Costello, the FT makes the same elision as him in the headline: “UK suffers highest death rate from coronavirus.” From that, it sounds like the FT is assuming all the excess deaths are due to COVID-19 as well. It doesn’t try to justify this directly, or point out the discrepancy between the number of excess deaths and the number of deaths in which “novel coronavirus” is mentioned on the death certificate. But it does say: “Excess deaths is internationally recognised as the best way to compare countries’ performance in handling infectious diseases. Chris Whitty, the UK’s chief medical officer, called excess deaths ‘the key metric’.”
Well, yes, they might be a good way of measuring how countries have handled infectious diseases – maybe even the “key” way. But it doesn’t follow that, as the headline suggests, excess deaths are a reliable way of measuring how many people have died from coronavirus.
Costello is a long-standing member of the Labour Party and Robert West is a leftie who retweets all the usual suspects – George Monbiot, Carole Cadwalladr, Paul Mason, James O’Brien, Owen Jones, etc. They have a vested interest in eliding “excess deaths” with deaths from COVID-19 since it supports their contention that the Government’s delay in locking down led to a higher number of Covid fatalities. But I expected better from the FT.
Are We Counting Covid Deaths Correctly?
Dr John Lee’s latest piece in the Spectator points out that the way Covid deaths are being counted is incredibly unreliable. He writes:
Normally, two doctors are needed to certify a death, one of whom has been treating the patient or who knows them and has seen them recently. That has changed. For COVID-19 only, the certification can be made by a single doctor, and there is no requirement for them to have examined, or even met, the patient. A video-link consultation in the four weeks prior to death is now felt to be sufficient for death to be attributed to COVID-19. For deaths in care homes the situation is even more extraordinary. Care home providers, most of whom are not medically trained, may make a statement to the effect that a patient has died of COVID-19. In the words of the Office for National Statistics, this “may or may not correspond to a medical diagnosis or test result, or be reflected in the death certification”. From March 29th the numbers of ‘Covid deaths’ have included all cases where COVID-19 was simply mentioned on the death certificate – irrespective of positive testing and whether or not it may have been incidental to, or directly responsible for, death. From April 29th the numbers include the care home cases simply considered likely to be COVID-19.
So at a time when accurate death statistics are more important than ever, the rules have been changed in ways that make them less reliable than ever. In what proportion of COVID-19 ‘mentions’ was the disease actually present? And in how many cases, if actually present, was COVID-19 responsible for death? Despite what you may have understood from the daily briefings, the shocking truth is that we just don’t know. How many of the excess deaths during the epidemic are due to COVID-19, and how many are due to our societal responses of healthcare reorganisation, lockdown and social distancing? Again, we don’t know. Despite claims that they’re all due to COVID-19, there’s strong evidence that many, perhaps even a majority, are the result of our responses rather than the disease itself.
Dr Lee’s conclusion is withering:
One of the unappreciated tragedies of this epidemic so far is the huge lost opportunity to understand COVID-19 better. We like to beat ourselves up for having the worst Covid death toll in Europe — but we will never know, because we decided not to count properly. In a country that has always prided itself on the quality of its facts and figures, the missing COVID-19 data is a national scandal.
ONS Seroprevalence Survey
The ONS released some data today about a seroprevalence survey it has carried out involving a sample size of 885. Of this group, who were given an antibody test between April 26th and May 24th, 6.78% tested positive, which works out at 4,542,600 people nationwide if we scale it up to encompass the whole population.
Can we calculate an IFR based on this? It’s not as simple as dividing 4,542,600 by the total number of Covid-related deaths in the UK – 47,343 at last count – since the people the ONS gave the antibody tests to were “in the community”. None of them were in hospitals or care homes. So how many of those 47,343 deaths were of people “in the community”? If we assume that people “in the community” would simply transfer to hospital when they fell ill with COVID-19, but people in care homes are a separate, self-contained population, the way to calculate the IFR is to strip out all those Covid-related deaths that have occurred in care homes, which we can estimate at about 21% of the total (the ONS estimated that 21% of all Covid-related deaths in England in the week ending May 8th were in care homes). So scaling that up to the entire population gives us ~9,942 Covid-related care home deaths, leaving ~37,401 deaths in the community.
If we divide that 4,542,600 by 37,410 that gives us an IFR of 0.82%. That’s roughly three times higher than the CDC’s IFR of 0.26% – pretty robust, in my view – which suggests that either the numerator or the denominator is wrong. It’s likely to be both, obviously, but which one is more wrong? If we assume the seroprevalence data is broadly accurate – and a sample size of 885 is quite high by antibody survey standards – that suggests the number of deaths in which doctors are ascribing the cause of death to COVID-19 is being exaggerated three-fold.
“Didn’t you see the arrows?”
Good lockdown joke sent to me by a reader:
I was in Tesco today, and midway through my shop I realised I’d forgotten something. I walked back to get it, much to the horror of the shoppers behind me.
“There is a one way system!” screamed one terrified lady. “Didn’t you see the arrows?”
“Arrows?” I said. “I didn’t even see the Indians!”
Simon Dolan Legal Challenge Goes Forward
The High Court judge has ordered the Government to respond to businessman Simon Dolan’s legal challenge to lockdown by June 12th. The date, set by Mr Justice Swift, came after Government lawyers again asked for more time to prepare and respond following the formal launch of proceedings.
“Such is the magnitude of our fight, we pushed hard for an earlier date,” says Simon Dolan. “But true to form, the Government wants delay after delay.”
The crowdfunder is now up to £147,135, well on its way to hitting its target of £175,000. Thanks to all those readers who’ve donated.
You can read the evidence in support of the legal challenge here. I was pleased to see Lockdown Sceptics get a mention in the evidence. See pp.43-44.
Michael Moorcock’s Prophecy
Good quote a reader has sent me, this one by the science fiction writer Michael Moorcock:
If we continue to make any sort of social progress, I suspect that the political battle lines of the twenty first century will not be between socialism and capitalism but democracy and paternalism.
People Are Drowning Because of Irrational Fear of Covid
There’s a depressing story in the Mail today about three people drowning over the Bank Holiday weekend, in part because the RNLI suspended coastline patrols when the lockdown was imposed and haven’t fully reinstated them. “More casualties are now feared on unsupervised beaches after two deaths near Padstow in Cornwall on Monday, and a third at Teignmouth in Devon on Tuesday,” the Mail reports.
The RNLI had a total net income of £186.6million in 2018, so it’s not lack of resources that’s preventing the RNLI getting back out there.
RNLI chief Mark Dowie blames the Government for not banning people from going to beaches and for not giving the RNLI more notice of the easing of lockdown restrictions. Apparently, this has meant it hasn’t had adequate time to work out how to operate during the pandemic.
We have to work out how to do in-water rescues and give first aid – normally conducted at close quarters and often with people coughing up water. We have to find PPE that will work on a beach and in the water – visors and aprons are no good on a rescue board. And we have to train our lifeguards in procedures to reduce the risk of infection. All this takes time and we learnt of the lifting of restrictions at the same time as everyone else.
Bad news, Mr Dowie. No PPE is going to protect people pulling drowning people out of the sea and giving them first aid. But the good news is the chances of one of your people dying from COVID-19 are quite small. Let’s work them out.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) estimates that around 2,000 new people are being infected every day. People remain infectious for no more than 10 days and each infected person is currently infecting less than one other person. So that means that no more than 20,000 UK citizens are infectious at any one time – and that number is falling. So the chances of the person you’re pulling from the sea being infectious with COVID-19 are 20,000/67,000,000, or 1/3,350.
According to the Center for Disease Control, the infection fatality rate for Covid is 0.26% so the chances of an RNLI employee dying if they catch the virus from the person they save from drowning is 1/385.
Combine those two figures, and the chances of an RNLI lifeboat person dying from rescuing someone at sea are roughly 1/1,250,000. By contrast, the chances of a drowning person pulled from the sea dying if they’re not given first aid are 1/1.
You do the maths, Mr Dowie.
Stop Press: In a bulletin earlier today, the ONS estimated that ~54,000 new people were being infected each week between May 11th and May 24th, which works out at 7,714/day, or 77,140 infectious people in the UK at any one time. According to my calculations, that would increase the above risk to 1/334,392. Still quite low.
Donald Trump Responds to YouTube Censorship
President Trump is due to sign an executive order later today that will supposedly regulate or “close down” social media companies he perceives as censoring conservative voices. I’d love to say this was in response to YouTube censoring me yesterday, but in fact the final straw was Twitter flagging up two of Trumps tweets on Tuesday as requiring a fact check. The tweets weren’t about coronavirus, but potential voter fraud in California. The Mail has the story.
Test-And-Trace Fiasco
The ongoing saga that is Matt Hancock’s attempt to roll a test-and-trace programme across the UK hit a new peak of comic hilarity today when the Mail disclosed that the website crashed when it went “live” this morning.
Staff employed to warn Britons they may have been infected have also struggled to log-on to the system, with one calling it a “complete shambles” after revealing they had not even received their password to access the website and start their shift while another questioned why the COVID-19 system wasn’t perfect before it went live…
Shocking pictures today also showed deserted drive-through testing centres in Twickenham, Heathrow, Edinburgh and Chessington in Surrey, while flat-pack furniture giant Ikea reclaimed a key swabbing location in west London because it plans to reopen to the public in the coming weeks.
Needless to say, the much-touted NHS track-and-trace app was nowhere to be seen, having encountered a number of “teething problems” during its trial run in the Isle of Wight. I asked the IT expert who’s been following this saga for Lockdown Sceptics to comment on today’s launch.
Today the Government launched its track-and-trace programme. Personally, I am not celebrating 25,000 new Government employees paid to trawl over my private life on the assumption that I am a bio-hazard. So forgive me if it seems churlish to ask, but what happened to your app, Mr Hancock?
Now relegated to a “supporting” role, readers of this site will recall the May 4th Independent front page headline heralding the app as part of the government’s “roadmap to end lockdown”. What went wrong? As this site pointed out on May 4th, the choice of a home grown, Government-developed, centralised database was a bad idea from the start. The famously IT-savvy Matt Hancock begged to differ and commissioned the National Centre for Cyber Security to agree with him.
The resulting 13-page report used a lot of impressive-sounding crypto jargon, but the issue of a centralised verses distributed database wasn’t addressed until the very last page. “This paper does not make a case for either a centralised or decentralised […] model,” it said, but then followed up with three justifications Mr Hancock could use for not opting for the decentralised Apple/Google approach. That didn’t convince 173 security academics who signed a letter saying so, nor did it persuade Harriett Harmon’s Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, which pointed out that it wasn’t just bad software, it was very likely illegal. The much-lauded NHS app was dead in the water.
But Mr Hancock wouldn’t let go of his conviction that high-tech wizardry was the solution and he found £3.8m to commission Swiss software company Zulke to build another app, this one utilising Apple and Google’s technology. That answered the academics and human rights committee, but had the disadvantage of not providing a single byte of intelligence data for track-and-trace purposes.
The upshot is that today’s big track-and-trace programme launched with no surveillance app and a fledgling testing service. This article in the Conversation gives some idea of the problems ahead, revealing that “the average number of tests required per case was 52 in South Korea, and 64 in Australia”. What that means is that for each person the South Korean team discovered was infectious, they then had to track down 52 additional people as having been exposed to the infectious individual – and in Australia that number was 64. The article adds: “In South Korea the testing was conducted on a base of well-funded and efficient public services and an effective infrastructure, including widespread digital surveillance.”
In other words, the South Korean track-and-tracers had access to extensive surveillance data – far more extensive than that currently available in the UK.
How will Hancock’s army of 25,000 amateur detectives cope, particularly as as they’re being paid minimum wage and have received, at most, a few weeks “training”? And what’s the likelihood of them making mistakes when trying to identify the 50+ people each infected person has made contact with using an ordinance survey map and a telephone directory?
Rather ominously, Hancock announced yesterday that it was every citizen’s “civic duty” to place themselves in quarantine for 14 days if identified as at risk by his 25,000 crack sleuths – and if they neglect to do this voluntarily, swingeing fines will be just round the corner. I think we can pretty much guarantee that every person ordered to self-isolate by some muppet on the end of the phone claiming to work for “the Government” will be one less vote for the Conservative Party at the next General Election.
But will the Government really be able to fine people if they refuse to self-isolate in these circumstances? No, according to the employment lawyers Jackson Bourne. See this blog post.
And just to add to the comedy of errors, the Executive Chair of NHS Test and Trace is one Dido Harding, whose record when it comes to data protection is less than golden. This was a good spot by Simon Dutton in the comments beneath yesterday’s update. He quoted the following passage from Harding’s Wikipedia entry:
In October 2015, TalkTalk experienced a “significant and sustained cyber-attack”, during which personal and banking details of up to four million customers is thought to have been accessed. City AM described her responses as “naive”, noting that early on when asked if the affected customer data was encrypted or not, she replied: “The awful truth is that I don’t know”. Her “inflexible line” on termination fees was also criticised. Marketing ran a headline, “TalkTalk boss Dido Harding’s utter ignorance is a lesson to us all”. The Evening Standard noted that “It has been a tough week for TalkTalk boss Dido Harding, facing complaints from customers and calls for her head.” The company admitted the hack had cost it £60 million and lost it 95,000 customers.
Round-Up
And on to the round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- ‘More bad academic thinking about lockdown‘ – Hector Drummond eviscerates this paper by Professor Richard Layard, an economist at the LSE. Among its many faults, it accepts Neil Ferguson’s apocalyptic projections without a murmur of criticism
- ‘Norway health chief: lockdown was not needed to tame Covid‘ – Fraser Nelson reports on an interview given by Camilla Stoltenberg, director of Norway’s public health agency, in which she acknowledges locking down the country was pointless
- ‘43% Of COVID-19 Deaths Are In Nursing Homes & Assisted Living Facilities Housing 0.6% Of US‘ – Good piece in Forbes, pointing out how few people are at risk from the virus
- ‘End the lockdown now and cut taxes to avoid a depression‘ – Dan Hannan talks straight on the City AM podcast
- ‘It’s time to end police-enforced lockdown – and trust the British public‘ – Editorial in the Spectator urging the Government to end the police-enforced lockdown and trust the British public to use their common sense
- ‘Webinar COVID-19 – Epidemiological monitoring and measurement of infectivity rates in key countries‘ – High-level seminar on whether Brazil should lockdown, featuring Nobel Prize-winner Michael Levitt and a couple of boffins from Imperial College. Levitt doesn’t think Brazil should lock down
- ‘The ecstasy of sanctimony‘ – A neighbour of Dominic Cummings writes in the Critic about the ghastly spectacle of the mob hounding him outside his house
- ‘Isolation “can increase chances of early death by 50 per cent”, new study suggests‘ – Article in the Standard warning of the dangers of self-isolation
- ‘The lack of evidence lockdowns actually worked is a world scandal‘ – No shit, Sherelle. Telegraph columnist Sherelle Jacobs on top form
- ‘Medical Professionals and Scientists for Health, Freedom and Democracy‘ – More on the new German group in Off-Guardian
- ‘Has Sweden made a fatal mistake with Covid 19 coronavirus?‘ – An epidemiologist in New Zealand predicts a final Swedish death toll of 60,000. What planet are these people on?
- ‘Locum GPs forced to claim benefits as work dries up‘ – Good spot by a doctor reader: locus GPs are having to claim unemployment benefit because so few people are now coming to GPs’ surgeries
- ‘New York State quietly deletes controversial Cuomo order that forced nursing homes to admit coronavirus patients‘ – Busted!
- ‘Police prepare for post-lockdown gang violence fuelled by social media‘ – Another lovely by-product of the lockdown fiasco
- ‘Banks’ emergency lending to companies hits £27bn’ – The lockdown bill is still climbing, according to the Times
- ‘Pubs could reopen before July‘ – Finally, some good news!
Theme Tune Suggestions From Readers;
Some more suggestions for theme songs from readers: “Panic” by the Smiths, “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher (from Groundhog Day, obviously) and “Self-Inflicted Wounds” by Joe Bonamassa.
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
A couple of weeks ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have reopened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have opened near you. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It still takes me about nine hours a day, what with doing these updates, moderating your comments and commissioning original material. If you feel like donating, however paltry the amount, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, email me here.
And Finally…
In my Spectator column today I write about the puppy-mania that has accompanied lockdown, the risk of newly-acquired pets being abandoned when the crisis is over and the fact that, in the case of my household’s latest addition, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. We have a five month-old cavapoochon called Malinky, or Mali for short, and her cute appearance can be deceptive. Very deceptive. Here’s an extract:
Mali has a disgusting habit of actually eating other dogs’ faeces. Whenever I take her for a walk on Wormwood Scrubs, she will sniff it out like a forager looking for edible mushrooms and, as soon as she finds any, happily start munching away. Sealed in a little plastic bag? No matter. She’ll gobble that up too. And when she’s finished this little treat, she’ll flip over on to her back and roll around in the residue so as not to leave the tiniest bit behind. What a delight it is to stick her back in the car after that! And to cap it all, the little horror suffers from travel sickness, so all the poo she’s consumed on her walk will often come back up on the way home. Suffice to say, my one-year-old VW Touran no longer has that nice new car smell. When I fling open the door on arrival back home, gasping for breath, sparrows fall out of the sky and roses wilt on their stems.
You can read the entire piece here.
Update: An earlier version of today’s update included a letter purporting to be written by F Scott Fitzgerald about quarantining in the South of France in 2020. It was in fact a parody so I’ve removed it.
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If the ONS put their information on YouTube they would be deplatformed, It’s the source of great perspective and information. Including the latest revelation a commenter published yesterday; Flu deaths significantly outweigh the rona. Over 40k since the start of the year. One of the worst flu seasons for a long time. Perhaps these flu victims weren’t able to get the treatment they needed. Zero media attention of course.
The mystery of the missing 2020 seasonal flu victims is an issue that requires urgent investigation.
Turns out they were there all along. I had to go through all 20 weeks data and add them up one at a time. Took all of 15 minutes. I’m sure a journo can spare some Cummings bashing minutes to do the same.
Thanks for this. Are you saying this is in addition to the CV deaths, and what is the shape of the data – is there a decline in the weekly totals after the lockdown (if lockdown was having any impact, the Flu deaths should also have declined)?
This is separate from covid deaths. They have a very clear delineation on their weekly reports
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending15may2020
ICD10 J00-J99 respiratory deaths are slightly lower than the 10-year previous average: 33419 to Week 20 compared with a 10-year mean of 33789 (95% CI 31086,36726). I’m not sure where you’ve got your data from. The excess mortality is on top of this figure. This ICD code includes influenza deaths.
UK weekly mortality rate by age group. There is excess mortality even in the 15-45 group. From 45-85, mortality was doubled. Above 85 it was trebled. Data is to week 20 with a 10 year median/min/max.
So what does this mean?
Lockdown made lots of young people kill themselves.
What I mean to say is, the excess death data for 15 to say…. 50 is surely the most telling here. If that is ridiculously higher than normal, there is no other explanation than adverse effects of lockdown rather than disease. Simply because the chances of dying of covid, or flu, are so tiny in that age range.
It increased death rate by 50% in 15-45. Now the two most common reasons for males to die in this age band are suicide and traffic accidents. Suicide is a notifiable death, and there has not been an epidemic. RTAs are definitely down. That night explain the slight difference between males and females.
Suicide may be recorded on the death certificate but the ONS doesn’t properly compile the figures for causes such as suicide until the end of the year, right now the UK doesn’t have the data necessary in the right place and format to be collectively analysed to detect a rise in lockdown induced suicides. Typical bureaucratic incompetence.
Yes, suicide is indeed notifiable, but there is a long history of putting other things on the death certificate – normally to ‘spare the relatives’, now more likely (if it happens) to ‘spare the authorities’!
How would such an increase explain the fact that both curves for 15-45 follow the same shape as those for all other age groups? Why would it decline from a peak at the same time – would it not increase with duration of lockdown? Note I plotted a log scale so comparison is direct. The absolute risk in this age group is actually very low, I think it’s a real but modest effect on mortality, probably down to existing comorbidities in a small subset of the population.
Does that hold in Sweden though? They show barely any excess at all for 15-45, completely normal range. Up to 65 shows a tiny tick.
Agree. To back that up, Britain is by far the worst country in Europe and one of the very few (also France, Spain but their spike still much lower than England) to have experienced higher than normal mortality in age group 45-64 for the period around the time that hospitals were cleared of many non C 19 patients to make way for C 19 patients who never turned up.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#map-of-z-scores
Yet we are still clapping the NHS?
In several US states more youths have been driven to suicide by lockdown than elderly have died of the virus. And in several african countries security forces enforcing lockdowns have killed more than the virus has.
My data is from the ONS weekly reports
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending15may2020
20 week total is over 40k
Sorry I can’t do charts (I used to have a team for that :), but looking at the latest ONS data for flu deaths (strictly speaking, all “respiratory disease” deaths:
1st 20 weeks of 2019 were 32,987, and for the same period in 2020 (excluding Covid) they were 33,419 – so these are virtually identical.
The split between the pre and post-lockdown weeks was:
2019 weeks 1-12 22,022, 2020 equivalent (ie the pre-lockdown period) 21,423
2019 weeks 13-20 10,965, 2020 equivalent (ie the lockdown period) 11,996.
Make of that what you will, but it’s clear that lockdown this year had no dramatic impact on reducing flu deaths – in fact they went up.
The ONS have weekly breakdowns, they specifically mention deaths due to influenza and pneumonia specifically not related to covid 19.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending15may2020
I had to go through all 20 and add them up as they don’t have a cumulative total as far as I can see.
Our old dog Tilly used to eat poo too! Dog poo, fox poo, horse poo, cat poo, any old poo. Loved her to bits! RIP Tilly ❤️
Mine just rolled in fox poo whenever it could. We often wrapped her in a plastic bag till we could get her in the bath!
Our 5-pound Persian cat is a poo machine too. She must produce her weight in poo every day, most of it placed carefully under the grand piano. The vet has pronounced her physically healthy, but couldn’t rule out mental derangement.
What do you feed her on? Can’t be much protein in it if most of it isn’t being digested.
She sounds a bit like me! 😂 Thank god we haven’t got a piano…
One of the reasons early humans encouraged dogs around their settlements was because they recycled the human faeces into less toxic dog ones.
The Fitzgerald diary is not real. It is parody written by American author Nick Farriella for the humor site McSweeney’s. That should have been an easy one to check before including it in today’s blog.
https://mobile-reuters-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN21733X?amp_js_v=a3&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQIKAGwASDIAQE%3D#aoh=15906931567180&_ct=1590693163727&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2Farticle%2Fuk-factcheck-quarantine-fitzgerald-lette-idUSKBN21733X
I wondered if the date was a typo, assumed it was satirical and enjoyed it anyway.
The ONS are coming out with an IFR consistently higher than PHE which is odd. I find the idea that we might be overcounting COVID deaths 3x to be a bit suspect!
That said I find IFRs up near the IFR of Diamond Princess suspect; that was an infection rampant in a load of octogenarians! This IFR is in the community, should be much lower. Fishy smell.
I’d agree. If you assume 6% prevalence, 66M population and 60k deaths (90% in over 65, who make up about 18% of the population), that’s a naive IFR of 1.5%. But since there are 9x as many deaths in a population that is only 1/6 of the total, the IFR split is 0.18% (under 65) and 7.5% (over 65). Splitting further by 85+ makes it even higher in that population.
I agree but that doesn’t explain the diamond princess! That was an infection in an age group that should therefore have had about 3 times the number of deaths.
Also the ONS was supposedly excluding care homes and hospital deaths. Should be getting a lot lower IFR if you exclude those.
The effect is really most dramatic in the over 85. Those 45-85 will be more like 1-2% and those over 85 about 20%. That is consistent with the age effect in the Diamond Princess. The over 85 are so disproportionately affected. And so poorly protected.
Fair enough, targeted protection surely the way to go then? To be fair, most carehomes have managed well.
‘The numbers are terrifying’ with apologies to Jerome K. Jerome Some people are under the impression that all that is required to compile coronavirus death statistics is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing. It is not quite as simple as that. I know an NHS hospital statistician, a most conscientious fellow, and when he was ordered to make his coronavirus death statistics as terrifying as possible, he determined never to exaggerate his hospital’s corpse count by more than twenty-five per cent. ‘When we have had forty deaths,’ said he, ‘then I will tell people that we have had fifty, and so on. But I will not lie any more than that, because it is sinful to lie.’ But the twenty-five per cent plan did not work well at all. He never was able to use it. The greatest number of deaths they ever had in one day was three, and you can’t add twenty-five per cent to three – at least, not in corpses. So he increased his percentage to thirty-three-and-a-third, but that, again, was awkward, when they had only had one or two deaths; so to simplify matters, he made up his mind to just double… Read more »
Good take! I think I have read 3-men-in-a-boat at least twenty times (and that is without the suggested counting regime!).
Brilliant!
Has anyone calculated and compared different countries’ death rates as percentages by age group?
Here in Sweden, 24% of deaths have been of people aged 90+…
About 48% of the above excess mortality is in 85+ age group.
You can play here https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps . But to save the effort, here is the standardized mortality for England, Sweden and it’s neighbors in the 95+ age range. Now tell me who’s been protecting the elderly?
Sorry typo – it’s 85+. You can look at any age group.
For everyone who loves a good conspiracy theory.
I decided to see what there was online to explain modern Britain’s love of soap opera (particularly the C 19 soap opera), which seems to have coincided with an increase in national soppiness. And I came across this:
‘New home, new life’ (bbc world service) is but one, albeit very significant, example of the use that DFID and other agencies have made of soap operas as a tool for conveying narratives intended to bring about change. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, UK development money funded the creation of soap operas to develop awareness and acceptance of reforms….’
‘Indeed, a combination of academic insights from psychology, anthropology and communications, with practical lessons such as those highlighted in this report, might enable an investigation of the role and appeal of narratives that could inform military influence activity and wider government strategic communications.’
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/358906/Report_How_Soap_Operas_Bring_About_Change_3March2009.pdf
Has the increasingly surreal (but immensely popular) C 19 soap opera been deliberately created via the state broadcaster to manipulate the general public into obeying the lockdown and whatever reforms may follow?
You should look into the Lear Centre. Responsible in no small part for the massive left bias of American media.
The No Agenda Podcast has a good summary
https://youtu.be/85w5UttbPZ4
It’s not a conspiracy as you say, they are quite open about it.
I can also highly recommend the No Agenda podcast to anyone who reads this website. It’s an incredibly well produced podcast that dissects the media and events around the world. It has helped me stay sane through this ‘pandemic’ as well as providing some fantastic insight to other global events during the past few years.
It may be worth going back through their podcast archive if you’re interested, but honestly just listen to the newer episodes over the last few weeks relating to the pandemic. That should give you an idea of what to expect.
Isn’t it hand-sanitiser opera rather than soap opera?
“Full spectrum domination”
We are being mentally attacked and programmed on many levela
Well that was an eagerly awaited non-event for the People’s Republic of Scotia, no?
In Scotland we still have the Tartanized Lockdown but the furloughed can now socialize outside in small groups at distance. Any thought of anyone meeting up back at work remains completely off-limits of course.
Even the Telegraph has some unhinged reporting today. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s piece contained the phrases ‘we knew even then [Feb] it was as contagious as flu but 10 times more deadly’, and ‘the case fatality rate is as awful as virologists first thought’. Maybe best to read around the subject a bit more Ambrose.
And please, enough of the spurious ‘but we’re at war’ conflations by witless callers and broadcasters I still keep hearing on these utterly depressing radio talk shows. No, we are not, for God’s sake. Unless of course you wish to draw more cogent parallels with, e.g. Nazi occupied France, in which activities such as taking photographs outdoors and assembling without permission were verboten, and ‘denunciations’ quite a popular pass-time.
Which is just as well. Can you imagine if that nice Mr Putin decided to send a few battalions of troops to invade us? They wouldn’t meet much resistance, that’s for sure… All Bojo’s bluster about the “British Spirit” seeing us through this “pandemic” is a joke, and a bad one at that. I really feel sorry for the few remaining WW2 veterans – what on earth must they think of all those wimps sitting at home, enjoying almost full pay, terrified to venture outside…
What really gets my goat is that all of this pernicious nonsense is ostensibly being done for the sake of said veterans. These are people who flew Spitfires, survived PoW camps, took part in Dunkirk, the Normandy landings, espionage missions … now being locked away, isolated and in many cases denied medical care “because we need to protect the vulnerable.” The complete lack of respect for that generation is just breathtaking.
Me too, I’m so angry about what we are doing to our old.
Putin would have a pushover. I understand that our soldiers are not allowed to get in their tanks because of s.d.
I have to interject. Whilst I agree that all those happy to sit at home are absolute wimps of the highest order, not everyone who has been furloughed is on almost full pay.
I have been furloughed, but don’t forget, the payment is capped at £2500 per month. That is less than half of my normal pay. ‘Fatcat’ I hear the masses scream, but actually I cn barely afford to pay my family’s bills on half pay (single earner family) as these things tend to be structural and take a while to re-formulate. So, I have taken up temporary zero hour contract work to make up the difference. This has badly impacted my family life, but I’m grateful to have some work.
Believe me, I want nothing more than to get off of ‘furlough’ and back to my usual line of work. Many people want the same. This government and it’s crazy policies are making that impossible.
Interesting choice of phrase. I’ve considered myself at war since March … but with the C U Next Tuesdays who suspended democracy, imposed a police state, terrified 95% of their own population, trashed the economy big-time, and enforced separation of families.
Whether due to malice or gross incompetence doesn’t really matter in the short term. Analysis can follow once their deeds have been wiped from the face of the earth. The consequences may be more problematic, as IanE states above.
(Yes, I know, puerile humour is an unusual weapon of warfare. But to quote Bill Hicks, “You do what you can …” .).
https://project.nek.lu.se/publications/workpap/papers/wp20_9.pdf The Individual Welfare Costs of Stay-At-Home Policies Perhaps not the easiest paper to read from Univ. of Lund, Sweden but some interesting conclusions. “The results suggest that the welfare cost of a one-month stay-at-home policy, restricting non-working hours away from home, amounts to 9.1percent of q Sweden’s monthly GDP. The cost can be interpreted as 29,600quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), which roughly corresponds to between 3,700and 8,000 COVID-19fatalities. Moreover, we find that stricter and longer lockdowns are disproportionately more costly than more lenient ones. In this paper, we use a choice experiment to estimate the welfare costs of stay-at-home policies that limit people’s opportunities to leave their homes during non-working hours. Importantly, we only consider costs associated with restricting people’s non-working hours. Hence, to obtain the societal cost of more restrictive stay-at-home orders, our cost estimate should be added to the costs of shutting down workplaces, schools, and childcare facilities and of the corresponding reduction in economic activity.” As I read the paper these are the minimum cost and the cost for the above is not included. Also not included in the cost are the adverse effects of staying home abuse, suicide, mental health problems etc. One month cost… Read more »
Just wanted to say – whoever you are, you are an absolute star!
PS I see we are still on track for bugger-all cases in UK by the end of June. Shame that UK is so far behind places like Poland, where I am now, with most shops, restaurants and bars already open, and with cinemas, theatres soon to be…
In the last couple of days, my mental health hit rock bottom. Was really really struggling…until I had an epiphany today. Change your attitude to this whole thing, and your whole world changes. Here are my 10 commandments to help any of you struggling at home: 1. Anything printed in the mainstream media is “junk news”. Repeat that phrase. It is nonsense, sensationalist crap. The press love doom and gloom because it sells papers. But it’s all bulls**t. Don’t take any notice. Or better still, ignore all of it. 2. The same goes for anything on the BBC (fear porn), Sky News and Channel 4. Do not watch any of it. 3. Any statements from the mouths of the cabinet members are also nonsense. Hancock, Gove and Patel have been particular offenders. These people are power-crazed egotistical maniacs who believe their own hype and self importance. Ignore them. 4. Social distancing is NOT here to stay. 5. The NHS track and tracing app is a joke. If you don’t want untrained monkeys contacting you to tell you to self isolate for 14 days, don’t download it. The lower the number of people who use it, the quicker it will be… Read more »
Needed this today, thank you!
Screenshotted for future reference, thank you!
I forgot this one…
11. Stay off all social media. Full of crazy stuff and a lot of fear mongering. Life will be ok 😀
Well said! Especially no.11 – happily deleted my Twitter a/c a few weeks ago and haven’t regretted it one bit 🙂
Excellent post. This is exactly the kind of upbeat messaging that should be currently broadcasting from the mouths of every cabinet minister and printed on the front of every national newspaper. Instead, they continue to peddle their grotesque brand of fear, hysteria and wilful obfuscation of the facts. The reality is, there is now a surge of healthy rebellion afoot and dare I say, a refreshing scepticism of the lockdown policy. The observant among us may have seen a more relaxed approach to social distancing as neighbours chat in their front gardens, or see grandparents trying to keep up with their grandchildren as they cycle around the local park. Of course, there will always be the minority of rabid Covidiots, dressed as if they are about to enter a bio weapons facility and relentlessly barking “2 metres!!” at anybody who dares stray too close to them in the local Sainsburys. Maybe it’s to do with the fine weather (I do believe sunlight is a wonderful antidepressant) but I can’t help but feel a corner is being turned. More and more scientists and experts seem to be very conscious of what the history books written about this crisis will say, and… Read more »
Brilliant reply Scotty. 100% agree with you. 👍🏼
Agree!! Advanced happy birthday to your dad and here’s hoping you have a wonderful celebration with him!
Enjoy your day Scotty.
Keep on keepin’ on!
Don’t sweat the petty stuff, and vice versa.
Uncanny. Exactly what happened to me. A few days ago I was so enraged and desperate, my heart racing so much I thought I was having a heart attack, but the next day, a weight just lifted from me. The last couple of days, in beautiful weather, fewer and fewer muzzles, people laughing on the street, just filled me with the most exhilarating joy. On the other hand,I’ve just watched on the Spanish news a mini riot outside of a Nissan plant in Barcelona where 3,000 people have lost their jobs. When you’re throwing missiles at the pólice, social distancing is the last thing on your mind. Two very contrasting scenes but both show humans being humans, not lab rats trapped in a maze. These bastards will not break our spirit.
Well, I basically agree with 90% of that. BUT, whilst covid will be over fairly soon, the consequences will be with us for years. You can’t trash an economy (and a whole generation of school pupils’ education and life chances) as thoroughly as has been done (and is still being done) and quickly return to square one – especially when all countries have been french-connectioned simultaneously. Humpty-Dumpty will not be easily reassembled. (And, no, despite similarities in appearance, I was not referring to Boris there).
Agree Ian. We still have a long road to travel and it’ll take a long time to recover from the damage these idiots have caused, damage, that they have to be punished for. .
Thank you very much!! This is needed.
I imagine a year from now you will hear on probably more than one occasion “of course I was totally against the lock down”
All joined the Resistance eh?
Either that, or ” yes, mistakes were made but we’ve got to move on”. To the Hague with them!
If they end up anywhere im hoping It’ll be the old Bailey
Sorry to hear you’ve been a bit down, RDawg, but glad that you’re on the up again !
Worth remembering that your posts on here (however you were feeling at the time) helped a lot of people and generated much positivity/optimism/reality. 🙂
I had a reality check with my older bro yesterday, who reminded me never to listen to Michael Gove who is “an absolute moron!” He made me realise how ridiculous all these outlandish statements are.
Basically told me to listen to my better judgement, and question if I really believed the nonsense that the media and cabinet were coming out with.
i’ve enjoyed your posts Dawg but let me throw some down sides of lifting the lockdown on your optimism. I’ve not long returned from an evening bike ride (obviously to go get essential supplies…. eek) and the roads are busy again. My three month empty roads have been a joy in all this madness but now people are out and about again it’ll be back to avoiding women in huge Mercs pulling out in front of me, geezers with lowered BMW’s overtaking in crazy places and what happened tonight a bus pulled right out in front of me as i was overtaking it, he never indicated just made his move, i was lucky when i swerved into the other side of the road there was nothing coming. On the plus side i know of a outdoor party on the banks of Loch ….. this weekend, i’m not going….. eek but it will be good. The weather is looking good, we’ve had a few rehearsals during the last few weeks (on line off course….. eek) so all in all it will be a great weekend, pity i’m not going.
Welcome to my world 😊
Cheers!
Excellent post. I had some tentative positive news from my employer today. They are a foreign airline and plan to ramp up flights to the UK in the coming months, quarantine or no quarantine. This post has boosted my mood even more.
There are no guarantees in this life, but sometimes we just have to hope for the best. I’m not always good at this and tend to be a pessimist.
You have done some great work towards our cause with your communications with your MP, keep it up!
For the past 2 to 3 days I swing from rage to wanting to bawl my eyes out, as for hate I could really throttle Boris & Co. for putting 70m people through this torture. 😠😠😭😭😠😠😭😭
No 9. Reminded me of this picture in the paper the other day of Tom Hanks sat in his car with a face mask. He’s already had Co-vid weeks ago, why the hell would he need to wear a face mask?!
Bollocks to anyone that says recovering from co-vid doesn’t confer immunity, anyone with common sense knows it does.
What an elitist prick
He’s pushing their fear agenda
Serious alegations of child abuse against hanks – suspected major playor in pedo hollywood
Hollywood is used to push propagnda
PATERNALISM VERSUS HOW THE WORLD REALLY WORKS
Yes, sturgeon appears to want to adopt a mother like figure here for the scottish nation. “Save the children” stv deleted communication, etc. Of course this is all political posturing in her attempt to be the future “mother” of a new independent scotland. Her daily communications are now pitched at the IQ of a five year old – clear and concise limited vocabulary short instructions which you must obey or be put on the naughty step.
I look forward to how this paternalistic role is related to over the winter once the bbqs and extended holidays come to an end – find me a job “mother”; how are we going to pay for all those scottish public sector workers / services, etc. In other words, her metamorphosis into the wicked scottish stepmother from hell…
All political careers end in failure, the last 10 weeks and counting being a critical footnote to hers. Slainte!
https://zenodo.org/record/3862789#.XtASNcB7lPb
This a letter to Lancet to immediately act and correct the article in Lancet which said HCQ was dangerous (immediately after the publication WHO stopped endorsing the drug in the ongoing worldwide study and also the same for France and the UK).
Lots of signatories in the letter but surprise, surprise Prof Neil Ferguson Imperial College!
Showing some independence from Big Pharma and “Don” Gates?
Re your piece on the lifeguard charity. This is appaling. An elderly lady fell as we were out walking yesterday. She was mortified- said how she had recently had a hip replacement and her son ” would kill her for being out”. Was I meant to observe social distancing and not help her? Obviously, it never occurred to me and I ran to her aid and helped her up and escorted her arm in arm home. Get a grip everyone…
Nicely done!
Normal people have a natural instinct to help the elderly, infirm and very young. You did the right thing. The same applies when the little ones go back to school next week – the natural response to a child in distress, pain etc is to comfort them, not tell them to sort themselves out or call their parents to attend to them in an hour’s time. Any teacher who does that is not fit to be part of a civilised society, let alone be responsible for little ones.
I am glad that Toby has mentioned this alternative Sage group. I fell down a Twitter rabbit hole today and found a group by the handle independentSage which appears to be made up of a group of behaviour scientists, the names mentioned in the article and a few others are frequently mentioned. Looking at the tweets and the tweets of individuals which appear to make up this group I am quite alarmed. How much sway are these people having over the government? I know they are not the main Sage group by the way but the way they are speaking you would think that they are.
Guardianistas, to paraphrase ‘Yes, Minister’, always think they should be running the country.
Take a look at thier tweets particularly the individuals that make up this group. Hysterical propositions and then some spin to make it look like they care about the problems they have actually pushed for.
Yes – I’ve tried a few times, but I have a weak stomach.
They are the ‘also rans’ in large part, that is, those not sufficiently credible and gifted to make it to the real SAGE. Given what we know about the real SAGE and their propensity to favours models known to have error rates of multiple digits, I think we can safely ignore Alternative SAGE.
Oh I am ignoring this group but is what they are saying feeding into the main Sage group?
According to wiki ‘Costello is most notable for his work on improving survival among mothers and their newborn infants in poor populations of developing countries’ – so nothing to add to real SAGE, given that children are largely unaffected by the virus. Prof Susan Michie, according to wiki is a ‘British psychologist and political activist’ – sits on both committees, and not sure how that can be allowed. Guido did a very good round-up of their influence a couple of weeks ago. Their main audience seems to be the BBC!
Thanks for the pointer, I am shocked over how many people are lurking in the shadows over this trying to get thier 5 mins of fame. Disgusting.
Nothing to do with the main group
“ The self-styled, self-appointed ‘alternative SAGE’ shadow committee will hold their first press conference shortly. In not-so-surprising news this publicity savvy committee is made up of hyper-political scientists, many of whom have a grudge to bear against the government. Among its membership are actual communists, Labour Party donors, activists, Corbynistas, “anti-Zionists”, Brexit conspiracy theorists and even a former Greek MP.Guido brings you an extraordinary rundown of eight members of the twelve strong committee here…”
https://order-order.com/2020/05/04/not-independent-activist-stuffed-shadow-sage/
SAGE or alternative SAGE…. why would a country EVER model their state solely around the views of a group of scientists? Half of them are basically savants with little if any insight into the human condition.
Of all the mistakes made – and there have been many – I think the lack of representatives from other specialisms has ranked up there. The fundamentals of effective safeguarding are to involve every agency, be transparent and communicate. This was not done.
That said, right now, I’d take a group of philosophers over the current SAGE attendees. They are that lost in R numbers, 2m distances and T cells to the detriment of the nation’s overall wellbeing.
Krankie and Boris both announced partial relaxation of martial law and house arrest today . . The weird thing is most people have been ignoring these arbitrary rules since the begining of the month. Krankie won the competition for the most insane rule saying you can meet for a barbecue but must bring own food and you will need to dig a hole behind the rose bush if you want a number 2 . We also have news that dentists on the NHS can reopen from 8 th June.Since mid March those with a toothache could after a long wait see a dentist in a hub who would extract your tooth/teeth. The problem you see is “aerosols” . The same problem with ” aerosols ” has stopped all endoscopies in the NHS hospitals since mid march. In laymens terms if you have suspicions of a stomach or bowel cancer or bladder cancer you would pop along to your local hospital who would either scope down or scope up the relevant organ. In Germany dentists never closed and also in Germany physicians continued to do endoscopes naturally in PPE.Maybe a fee for service has its advantages as German doctors get paid… Read more »
We’ve all got a problem with “aerosols”…..they’re running the Government.
Obviously the virus was circulating before the l.d., when dentists were still operating. Was there a sudden increase (‘spike’, ugh) in c.v. morbidity and mortality among dentists. a week or so into the l.d.? If so, giving dental treatment js presumably dangerous when the bug is around. If not, not.
Gosh, looking at the care home situation, what a marvellous time to be a latter-day Harold Shipman.
incredible, isn’t it!
Except that I don’t think they are letting doctors go into care homes (or has that been relaxed?).
the old deer hunter?
I live in t’narth. In Asda yesterday, I got a little too close to one woman for her comfort.
“Six foot duck” she said.
I looked but couldn’t see it.
It was the one being attacked by 100 duck sized horses
Dr Vernon Coleman is on top form today, suspect this one will be detubed.
https://youtu.be/tdyjcNRVmdU
He always is, I love his sense of humour.
Vernon must have read my comment last week . He supports a Nuremburg style trial for the top docs and top dentists who went along with this madness…they were just following orders !
This is the one he posted yesterday, with some excellent psychological insights. The references to Hitler and Goebbels are, I believe, highly relevant; they were masters of mind manipulation techniques.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa6LszZa7pg&feature=share
Thanks for the link. He’s great. I especially like his suggestion that the politicians are certifiable, here:
https://youtu.be/tdyjcNRVmdU?t=658
How much do we know about the ONS “unweighted” seroprevalence survey? Were the donors essentially self-selected regular blood donors? Presumably all healthy? Presumably no children? How accurate is the test? Last week the figure was 5% so a 35% increase? Does that mean the London figure increased from 17 to 23%? The 95% confidence interval reaches nearly 9%. Did the French conduct more general surveys that implied up to 10x as many people had antibodies than shown with blood donor surveys? Children may experience none, or very mild symptoms and they represent over 20% of the population. How many adults have natural T Cell immunity or useful antibodies from exposure to other viruses? Surely the IFR is much lower than 0.8%
The information is all on the ONS website. I don’t think they were blood donors, but just households previously known to the ONS selected at random-ish. They don’t say where in the country they were, but they found 6.78% of 885 people had antibodies between 26 April and 24 May. The midpoint of those dates is 10 May on which there were 31855 deaths. If 21% of those were in care homes, we have 24055 outside them, and an IFR estimate of 0.62%, if we assume it takes the same amount of time to die on average as it does to produce antibodies. But it matters quite a bit when exactly the samples were taken– go a week further back and the IFR estimate drops to 0.47%. I doubt the IFR is really this high which makes me think more of those deaths were in hospitals or care homes. More important is what indication this gives us as to the state of the epidemic. May 10th looks to have been after the peak so I don’t think we will expect antibody levels to get much higher than this. They are similar values to what they found in France in Spain.… Read more »
Ok I’m defo down on the side of this being way less infectious than we were told now. And yes, heavily noco…. whatever that word is.
Quite interesting to compare the UK with Geneva: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20088898v1 If you look at the graph “Figure 1” it shows how seroprevalence grew from 3% to 6% to 9% in the space of three weeks, overlaid on the confirmed cases. There is a lag of about 2 weeks between confirmed cases and antibody positive, because of the time it takes for antibodies to appear. But the 6% bar matches up very well to 10th May on the UK graph of confirmed cases on worldometers in terms of where it is on the infection curve. In other words, it probably got to about 9% in the UK a week later, and then I would think stayed at around that level, with London a bit above Geneva probably and other areas lower. I’ve attached an image of how the susceptible ratio (which is 1 minus the fraction who are immune) changes through an epidemic. This is using a population of 60m, initial growth of 1.33x per day, and R0 of 2.4, basic SIR model. Under these parameters, you reach herd immunity at around 60%, which is why the line levels off at 0.4. The x-axis is days. Don’t worry about the absolute numbers–… Read more »
I don’t think a comparison of a city with a country is valid. Different regions in the UK have lags behind London and this causes a blunted peak. What it shows is that in a closed population of half a million people in one place, prevalence can grow from 3 to 9% in three weeks. You can’t extrapolate that to multiple clusters starting at different time across a country.
Agree, and I would like to see numbers for London.
Well, I would expect it to grow at a similar rate in all places in terms of the time taken to reach the peak because this is given more by the incubation and infectious periods, which are characteristics of the virus itself. In more crowded places with higher R0 the peak will be higher (so the actual rate will be higher in terms of cases per day, but time to the peak about the same). I think Phil Nuttridge’s video on YT was a good analysis showing how time to the peak is very constant everywhere.
I’m not sure how accurate these antibody tests are. I believe I caught COVID-19 three weeks into the lockdown, 4 days after visiting a supermarket. I took an antibody test last week but it came back negative. The virus I had was completely different to any normal seasonal cold that I have experienced before as I normally get loads of rubbish on my chest. I was never confined to bed and worked all the way through it from home, it was very mild apart from the breathlessness. A breakdown of my symptoms are below which fit with COVID-19: Saturday and Sunday: Felt a bit off, and with a bit of a headache which I just though was down to muscle tension from using a computer all day Sunday: In the evening started being sick and my throat was sore Monday: was the same but my stomach was turning over all the time and I had developed a cough and a burning sensation across my collar bone Tuesday: the stomach was more settled, but the sore throat was the same but the cough was severe now, and I was coughing all the time feeling like I was trying to clear my… Read more »
You may have beaten the infection with slightly different antibodies than the exact ones the test is looking for because of something you caught off your cat 15 years ago. At least I think that’s what the recent paper from Singapore that swedenborg just posted is saying might happen!
So was yesterday the peak?. Track and trace finally waking the apathetic up?, because social media was pretty brutal from what I saw. Hammered everywhere… Apart from probably Facebook that I can’t bear to log into anymore.
You could almost conclude that the UK government are deliberately fucking this up..? Incompetence on this level is impossible isn’t it??
It’s given me a right chuckle today anyway.
Clapping Seal watch during the bike ride : it’s a real minority. Same houses, same morons, mental note made as I cycled every so slowly around the neighbourhood, stopping to have a nice big cloudy vape in the by the road in between 2 lots of idiots competing to see who could bang their pans the hardest… should have filmed it
Clapping seals next door had a bell today making a much noise as possible and probably noting us not going out again (never)..they have also had son and daughter and thier families round every week of this lockdown and pontificated to me when I poured scorn on it how important the lockdown is as well as signalling how virtuous they are by not leaving the house for 10 weeks (not including yesterday when seal no.1 took a random out for a test drive in his car that he is selling)!
My clapping seals had pots, bells and fireworks again. Maybe they were getting extra enthusiastic because this is the last weekly virtue signal.
No clapping seals in my area, it has never really been big here. Wonder if its because my area has quite a fairly high east European population and they don’t care.
My parents emigrated to England from Eastern Europe after WWII. My dad fought for the allies in Italy.
I have been brought up to clearly recognise with evils of both fascism and communism having had tales of what both Hitler and Stalin were responsible for at that time.
If they were alive today they would have called it for the bollocks we all know this is.
I suspect many of your Eastern european neighbours also have that heritage and ‘genetic memory’
That’s very likely although many of them are the fairly recent arrivals and they always struck me as the “this isn’t my country so I don’t care” brigade.
Yeah maybe… that would be a shame. But they do live here don’t they, so should care about themselves. At least they are NOT clapping which is a start… Maybe knock on door to see how they are. You never know.
They won’t bite you!
Lockdown’s logical flaw
Lockdowners would have us believe we needed to lockdown on 23 Mar. Also, that, now, still only a small proportion of the population has been infected. Vast swathes remain susceptible. The death rate now is similar to what it was on 23 Mar. So why are we easing lockdown? If lockdowners are correct, infections and deaths will simply start to rise again. On the other hand, if they continue to fall under an ‘eased’ lockdown, surely that proves we could have had an eased lockdown all along?
Logic doesn’t work with the fearful lockdowners. It’s like talking to a raving lunatic. Far more insidious are those who are pushing the ‘new normal’ agenda, these evil bastards are the true vermin
Unless it’s seasonal or there’s a large chunk of innate immunity, yes. Lockdown measures are as effective now as march.
That’s why the more logical lockdowners believe that lockdown can’t be eased until you have TTT. Hence we are seeing an (admittedly farcical) pretence at doing this.
With (actual competent) TTT you can manage an epidemic somewhere with a large susceptible population. This has been demonstrated in Iceland, Taiwan, and a few other places.
The correct strategy at this point, since we now know that the fatality rate among the under 60s without pre-existing conditions is almost zero, is for the hospitals and care homes to get their shit wired, to release the lockdown, and make sure that if London does still have a susceptible population, that it doesn’t for much longer. TTT is an irrelevance.
How would a lockdowner cope with the successful unlocking of much of europe without second peaks then? Do they simply deny that?
How about an axiom that I made up: “if interventions don’t substantially raise R when you lift them, it’s likely to be the case that they didn’t substantially drop it when they were put in place, all other things being equal.”
Here in Portugal after “unlocking”, the number of hospitalizations and ICU admissions keeps dropping (they have been dropping for almost 2 months now). Instead of removing all of the remaining restrictions, they are increasing the number of tests to find loads of “asymptomatic” cases and claim that the situation is very dangerous because their computed R is above 1, and the peak is still to come.
They have to explain it away the same way they’ve been doing with Sweden…
Lifting a lockdown may increase R a bit but as long as it’s still below 1 you probably won’t notice.
Actually, March 1st. Earlier intervention would have given more options. Think slow controlled braking not emergency stop.
There was already something slowing it up, or at least lifting the foot off the accelerator, before lockdowns though, we agree on that if I remember.
Indeed. But I think my analogy is reasonable – calls for intervention were actually much earlier than people realise. Sweden went for the gentle braking. Germany the same with eventual lockdown combined with expanded testing. They’ve done a lot better.
It’s not been a great day today. I may decide to self isolate from corona news for a while.
I did, however manage to send an e-mail to that slug who pretends to represent me in parliament and his personal baldrick.
I reproduce my letter here, with apologies to Toby for the bad language. Please feel free to use it as a template. Slugs love a bit of salt!
“Mr XXXX, Mr XXXX,
“Track and Trace”
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? Are you people out of your minds?!
This bloody virus is clearly on it’s way out. There are more holes, more problems, with this brain dead idea than there are holes in a Swiss cheese!
And presumably you self serving creeps in the “Labour” Party (surely an oxymoron these days!) think it doesn’t go far enough.
You wretched wretched people live off the state on your fat cat salaries of £85,000. You don’t give a shit about the people of this country whose lives you are ruining do you?
I’ve really had enough of you people. ENOUGH.”
Wow John. You were really having a bad day. I hope your MPs arse feels hideously bruised and that you feel much lighter tomorrow.
I do hope you had your moment of catharsis because that is all it will achieve. You’ll get a standard template response from one of his taxpayer funded minions without your letter even reaching the MP’s desk. Attending a surgery is the only effective way to reach them but they’ve conveniently got rid of that under the guise of social engineering – I mean, distancing…
nice letter but you should have addressed him as Comrade, they like that sort of thing
All I’ve had from my MP is an e-mail that said “thank you for contacting me, feel free to do so again.”
That’s it, 1 reply to about 4 e-mails he’s been sent or copied on.
He’s conspicuously absent all test time, 25000 majority (not that I ever vote for him, tend to spoil my ballot paper with “none of these idiots” across if if there is not a genuine conservative minded independent on the form) and a safe seat, of course he’s not going to bother himself is he, nothing worth fighting for.
‘Time for NHS and public health to take over?’. Who else has been in charge since the Great Panic of the calamitous third week of March? Who else cleared the hospitals and sent infected people into nursing homes? Who else denied people cancer treatment? Who else scared people away from essential urgent care? The sort of people who demand a Climate Nuremberg with the death penalty. I’m opposed to the death penalty but there has to be something in store for them to make this the last time they cause so much pointless destruction.
As regards the ONS Seroprevalence Survey I see they just mention testing for antibodies. However, it has been known for some time that many people who have been infected do not produce antibodies because their innate immune system dealt with the infection, so their adaptive immune system (which produces the antibodies) was not needed. This is mentioned by Karol Sikora and he has a small clip explaining this currently pinned to the top of his Twitter feed. On May 22 he said “Why are we not seeing more positive antibody results? A paper in ‘Cell’ suggests that T lymphocytes are our main defence. There could be significant cross-immunity from ‘common cold’ coronaviruses which provide protection. Very important – we need a better test for immunity.” The paper in ‘Cell’ is here – https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30610-3 The paper says that SARS-CoV-2−specific CD4+ T cells were identified in 100% of COVID-19 convalescent patients. Also the paper states “Importantly, we detected SARS-CoV-2−reactive CD4+ T cells in ∼40-60% of unexposed individuals, suggesting cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.” To me this suggests that firstly many people already have some immunity from having been exposed to ‘common cold’ coronaviruses in the past,… Read more »
I read that the flu vaccine many people have every year could give a false positive for this virus. We hear so much recently about falsified Corona deaths particularly in the over 60s I wonder if this could affect the number of those dying with the virus rather than from the virus as it’s the over 60s group that are affected.
I wondered if the flu vaccine was implicated in any way. Don’t suppose they’ll look into that one!
I’m sure people will be studying all aspects of this pandemic for years to come.
Beware the false assumption that all those infected for the purposes of calculating IFR develop antibodies. It’s becoming increasingly clear that many are resistant due to innate or cross immunity and hence fight off the infection without developing antibodies. Thus the IFR is lower than antibody surveys will suggest.
“resistant” does not mean incapable of eliciting an adaptive immune response though. Cross-reactive T-cells would engage the adaptive immunity that still produces immunoglobulins, just later – hence IgG is slower to be detected. I can think of NO viral challenge that does not make antibodies. We have cross reactive influenza T-cells and antibodies from past infections, but you will still be able to detect antibodies specific to a new strain on challenge.
Hepatitis A is also an RNA virus like Covid-19. A vaccine was developed which protected excellently against hepatitis A. It was discovered that persons after vaccinations without antibodies still did not get hepatitis A. They obviously developed protective antibodies if challenged in natural circumstances being exposed to hepatitis A. That was enough to protect them from clinical disease. There could only be one explanation. T cell’s primed immunity. Why can’t the same be true for Covid-19?
So they had pre-immunity before they had the Jab, so the jab never forced them to generate antibodies.
This stuff is all very cool.
Shame everyone on the planet seems to have forgotten how it works.
No.They had no immunity to Hep A beforehand and got the vaccine. Even the few who did not develop antibodies after the vaccination were still protected against the disease.
On that logic, my point stands – when challenged they developed antibodies. Hence detection of antibodies would be a valid measure of past exposure (but not necessarily immunity). Antibody prevalence to hep A would detect those challenged, and SAS-COV-2 antibodies would tell the same. It is logical that many of the population have some pre-existing T-cell immunity, but only 6% have seen the virus.
Ok so why then don’t I have cytomegalovirus antibodies in my blood like 85% of other people?
I mean…. Did they vanish? Or is everyone else but me continually being infected? Or have i lived in an iron lung my whole life?
Do you know that you’ve ever had CMV? About 1/10 have not. And yes, antibodies decline over six months to a year. Cellular immunity remains and gets a boost when the cells see the pathogen next time. This sets off the cell expansion and also gets antibody production going again. Repeat…
I assume Longer to be detected would take you further back in time for point of infection and hence mean a lower IFR.
Ddi they test all passengers on the Diamond Princess for antibodies? You’d think that would have been a logical place to start.
I would not worry so much as Toby about the IFR being 1% according to ONS antibody study. If I remember correctly, the Spanish figure was slightly higher 1.3%. But the only interesting figure is IFR for each age group. It was dramatically low for everybody below 65. 0.13 IFR in Spain. And if you look at the IFR for children and younger dramatically lower. We need age stratified IFR to stop terrifying the population. We all know that the true IFR is probably even lower due to the other factors mentioned.
It strikes me as odd that only 6-7% of people have antibodies yet 70% of those infected are thought to be asymptomatic.
It could be the case that antibody test kit manufacturers have overly prioritised test specificity by only including protein makers that are specific to Covid-19 and therefore only detecting antibodies that are directed towards these antigens (so as not to produce false positives due to pre-existing antibodies to other Coronaviruses).
Could it be that antibodies (either pre-existing or newly produced) that are directed towards surface markers common to many different coronaviruses, and therefore not detected by tests, are responsible for clearing the infection?
Just a guess.
Yeah that strikes me as odd too; it implies that we’re missing the vast majority of infections, but at the same time that the disease hasn’t spread very far.
IFRs are a pointless argument anyway at this point; the number of people who have died is set – either this disease is much harder to catch and spread (in which case lighter measures than lockdown would have surely worked) or it’s really prevalent and not too deadly (in which case lockdown was utterly pointless).
Given that it was clearly limiting rapidly from the earliest start, it would never have reached the sort of numbers to cause widespread devastation across the country.
nobody turning up for a test lol. No one trusts the government tests.
Aren’t you supposed to queue in the hot sun with your car windows closed?
given the announced relaxation of the lock down rules I’m not sure this will be enough for the Chesham Dogging Society (remember them?) but they do have a twitter account with plenty of lock down related humour https://twitter.com/mickyjo98017844?lang=en
This is a story I’ve trotted out a few times in my discussions elsewhere regarding the global response to this virus. By pure coincidence somebody did an article on it only a year ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-a-japanese-soldier-who-hid-in-a-jungle-cave-for-27-years-2019-1?r=US&IR=T It’s the story of a Japanese WWII soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, who spent 27 years in the jungle not knowing the war had ended. How does this relate to COVID-19 you may wonder. Well it’s simply that this man spent his life on a war footing for something that was no longer a threat. The war was over, he could have gone back to a normal life decades ago. And that’s pretty much where we are now. We’ve been put onto a war footing that could be indefinite. The problem is that we’re preparing ourselves for something that may never come. There may not be a 2nd peak the war could well be over. The 2 hunters who found Shoichi represent the vaccine we’re made to wait for to end all this. Of course we could all be wrong and the virus may come back with a vengeance. But if it doesn’t then until we’re found it seems as if we could well spend the figurative… Read more »
Just taken this to heart from the excellent Vernon Coleman:
DISTRUST THE GOVERNMENT
AVOID MASS MEDIA
FIGHT THE KIES
On T shirt please?
Coleman’s excellent analysis prompted one further question: What makes a lockdown sceptic? We are a pretty varied bunch on this site, so what’s the common factor, the element in all our minds that resists brainwashing and makes us say NO?
Sorry, lies! Edit button pls!
Oh good, it’s not just me being brain-dead!
Bloody KIES, exterminate the lot of them !
I think they are allies of the Borg.
For me it was just a gut feeling that things weren’t quite right, then I started looking into it, came across the HCID list that covid had been removed from, thought that a little odd seeing as how infectious it was supposed to be, then found out about Peter Hitchens, who I’d never even heard of, then realised that close friends were getting duped as I realised we were being brainwashed and misled and it went from there really. The swprs website was influential too. I’m a loose remainer, I guess socially conservative but I didn’t vote Tory at the last election since I didn’t trust Boris, seems I was right about that!
That is exactly the same path I took!
Also John Ioaniddis first article where he said we are making decisions without data.
My first inclination was that we may be aliens.
Now I think it’s ….. something following a strong, visceral contrarian reaction to what we perceive as ‘something being off’. Or in layman’s terms – a natural bullshitometer.
Yep, me too
Ferguson’s modelling was the thing that got me going. I’d had some involvement with modelling a few years back and knew them for what they mostly are – crap.
Lockdown did it for me. As soon as it was announced I knew it was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen. The most efficient way to solve most problems will be through a targetted approach. If there’s a problem with your car engine you don’t need to take the whole car apart for example. Even once the lockdown was imposed they could have started clearing sections of the country instead of just sitting and waiting until the infection level was sufficiently low. Now I must make it clear that I probably wouldn’t have been overly bothered if the virus was allowed to spread at a level that allowed hospitals to cope. That’s because I accept death as an inevitable part of life. Tell that to the relatives of the deceased people will say and I’ll be thinking, ok but if they don’t die now should I have to say something to the relatives when they eventually die of something else? They could have lived a bit longer they’ll say and I’ll be thinking you could say that for just about any death. And as time has gone on seeing all the collateral damage it’s caused it’s only made it seem… Read more »
It was the apocalyptic headlines in the papers that did it for me I thought something was already off.
I was with the government until the text message and “Stay at home” started. Everything seemed sensible up to that point – quantine for households with the virus, some anti-social distancing, handwashing and hygiene, protect the vulnerable.
I just couldn’t see the benefits of turning into an authoritarian state. Surely the virus would pass through the population anyway when we reopened? Why aren’t we using the spare NHS capacity we have? What about civil liberties, mental health, jobs etc…
Then I found this site!
Exactly. I knew something was already off but the text message and “stay at home” mantra just sounded creepy and manipulative.
I found this site via twitter and its been a lifeline.
For me, it was the numbers coming out of China. It was hard to believe that with a population of 1.4 billion, more hadn’t been affected in other parts of China, particularly in Beijing and Shanghai. When they were locking down Wuhan, it was estimated that 5 million people fled to other cities within China and beyond.
Then I came across a video by Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, which put forward what seemed to me to be very sound arguments that concluded it was a case of “The Emperor’s new clothes.” It’s also hard to believe that China has had less than 5000 deaths, but as Wodarg said, they didn’t test for it outside of Wuhan and treated patients as having the normal respiratory diseases like pneumonia.
I started researching into all sorts of things including the PCR test, invented by Nobel Prize winner Cary Mullins and found that it should not be the sole means of diagnosing a viral infection.
All this and more led me to this site which has helped keep me sane in all this madness! Thanks.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/spain
https://covid19.healthdata.org/italy
Models are models and they are usually crap as we have seen. However I saw this site is forecasting growing number of deaths for Italy and Spain again in july and forward. Didnt find any explanation for that. Even up to 1800 daily deaths in the worst case scenario. Only those 2 countries, I wonder what’s up,
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is the one behind the figures
https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04734
According to this article the above organisation has a very bad track record for modelling indeed almost useless. Difficult to understand the figure. According to
https://www.covibes.org/public/Spain
about 27000 deaths now and completed 98%. Perhaps they are speculating of a second wave but I think that Institute has a terrible reputation for forecasts.
Yeah, Im aware of the reputation and track record. Just speculating of a second wave only in 2 countries seems odd.