The latest cautionary tale being held up to locked down Britons as the reason we can’t be released, including by Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty, is Chile, where an ambitious vaccination programme (albeit with China’s questionable Sinovac vaccine) has not prevented the country experiencing a new surge of coronavirus infections.
But as with other supposed cautionary tales like France and Brazil, are things really as bad as they’re being portrayed by our doom-addicted scientists, politicians and media?
Here’s the actual state of play. The positive rate did indeed start drifting upwards again in mid-Feb and since the end of March has accelerated – though since southern-hemisphere Chile is now in the middle of autumn, this is not wholly surprising.
This is despite the vaccination programme, which rivals the UK’s in speed of rollout, getting going at the start of February. Chris Whitty has backed the vaccinated-people-letting-their-guard-down theory, but in fact Google mobility data shows no sign of that, with a steep decline in mobility beginning in early March. Dr Clare Craig has written an excellent piece in the BMJ on other possible explanations beyond blaming people for letting their hair down (an explanation that hardly works for care homes).
But whatever the explanation, positive cases and deaths in the UK are now very low, suggesting Chile can hope for a similar outcome before long (though it will be interesting to see how its winter affects this).
Importantly, though, Chile is still significantly behind the UK in terms of total Covid deaths, so as a cautionary tale it is a strange one to pick.
Chile’s overall excess mortality is also similar to the UK’s.
In sum, given that the UK’s winter surge, which also coincided with its vaccine rollout, settled down within a few weeks, and Chile’s Covid deaths are currently behind the UK’s, Chile provides no reason not to follow states like Florida and Texas in reopening fully.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Simple – just more evidence that vaccines are a waste of space.
Sorry – you writers who thought you could jump on the bus.
Dear LDS.org, your lockdownscepticism appears not to stretch so far as to question PCR testing.
Oh we have, before they changed the website.
Heh?
Plenty of questions over the past year. Not sure what you mean.
It’s mid autumn in the southern hemisphere, best wait until winter before any conclusions can be drawn (The winter resurgence?).
This city is one of many in the world that has had bad outcomes, but share the same pollution problems. I’ve found another picture just to demonstrate.
Didn’t Chile have one of or the most restrictive lockdowns in the world? 5 months of house arrest with the police and troops patrolling the streets looking for anybody who dared leave their abode? So why are they having a surge?
I believe that was Peru.
Then eventually they saw the benefits of Invermectin and as if by magic, the crisis was over.
https://joannenova.com.au/2021/02/in-peru-ivermectin-cut-covid-deaths-by-75-in-6-weeks-cheap-safe-and-quite-ignored/
Chile is southern hemisphere and is going into its flu season. Case solved.
Apologies to mwhite, who got to the point before me.
It’s autumn there, for Chrissake.
Our case declines are mainly due to the effing weather, as are their increases.
WTF is wrong with humanity?!
The average IQ must have dropped from 100 to well below 50 in 2020.
Even more for journos, politicians and public ‘health’ officials.
Sorry but Common Sense has flown out of the window!
That’s because people have been told to open the windows to ‘let the Covid out.’
Why are infections increasing in Europe?
More testing = more cases ? No evidence of greater mortality I understand.
But, Dr Whitty, if vaccines don’t stop the epidemic what are we supposed to do? lockdown forever? What does waiting actually achieve other than cause other deaths?
Also, come on now, Chile is southern hemisphere, deaths will be picking up naturally as they go into Autumn.
Lockdown will only be lifted when the people rise up, perhaps a good old fashioned riot and violence will do.
You may well be correct. Whitty, like many others, has a strong career connection to Bill Gates and Gates wants us dead. Now roll up your sleeve.
BOMBSHELL: Disposable blue face masks found to contain toxic, asbestos-like substance that destroys lungs. Health Canada has issued a warning about blue and gray disposable face masks, which contain an asbestos-like substance associated with “early pulmonary toxicity.” The SNN200642 masks, which are made in China and sold and distributed by a Quebec-based company called Métallifer, had been part of Canada’s public school reopening plan. Students were told that they needed to wear them in the classroom to prevent the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19). Health Canada, however, discovered during a preliminary risk assessment that the masks contain microscopic graphene particles that, when inhaled, could cause severe lung damage. “Graphene is a strong, very thin material that is used in fabrication, but it can be harmful to lungs when inhaled and can cause long-term health problems,” reported CBC News. For a while now, some daycare educators had expressed suspicion about the masks, which were causing children to feel as though they were swallowing cat hair while wearing them. We now know that instead of cat hair, children were inhaling the equivalent of asbestos all day long. As it turns out, the SNN200642 masks that were being used all across Canada in school classrooms had never… Read more »
This is horrible. Poor kids.
That particular cat has been out of the bag for a while now but generally suppressed.
Like WWII gas masks in the UK, which fortunately few people actually wore
https://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL124.htm
What treatment are they using to stop people dying?
Lockdown probably. Does anything else work? !!
The red bars show (below) that deaths in Israel started declining, end of summer out to Nov 2020.
Then with ‘operation warp-speed’ their Govt. started injecting the Covid gene therapy treatments on mass – artificially manufacturing the virus in the bodies of the millions of unwitting guinea-pigs….
Then the fatalities came back with a vengeance…. So what should be expected in the UK, come the winter?
Comparing Chile to the UK is really bad science. Each country occupies different latitudes and as shown by Hope-Simpson Chile will be seeing a rise in cases towards April while the UK will see cases drop from Beginning of March. The peak for Corona/Flu viruses is June for countries just below the equator, like Chile. Why not look at Texas or Florida where completely opening has made no difference and has in fact been slightly better. Only Tyrants try to suppress inconvenient information whereas science seeks it out.