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The Independent leads with the news that the NHS is about to pilot its new coronavirus detector app – known as the “NHSX app” – in the Isle of Wight. Matt Hancock is expected to announce at today’s Downing Street press briefing that the 141,000 residents of the island will become the first people in the country to test the new homegrown app.
But why has the NHS developed its own contact-tracing app rather than rely on the tried-and-tested approach developed by Apple and Google? According to this report in The Register, the British Government has rejected the Apple-Google approach because the US tech giants protect their users’ privacy too well. The Apple-Google approach is a tracing programme that relies on users consenting to their phones being used for data collection without creating a hackable data pool. The NHS app, by contrast, automatically sends that information to a central database on state-owned servers that creates a honey-pot for identity thieves.
Two concerns immediately spring to mind. First, if the app is being developed by the NHS, will it actually work? The NHS’s efforts to develop its own computerised patient record system had to be abandoned in 2013 at a cost of nearly £10 billion to the taxpayer. Second, will the NHS be able to protect all the data it gathers? Pooling data in one place is very bad practice from a security point of view and a group of 173 security academics have written a ‘we, the undersigned’ letter flagging up their concerns about privacy and medical confidentiality if the NHS app is rolled out nationally. (More on that letter here.) Two years ago the NHS became one of the most high-profile victims of the global WannaCry cyber attack that ended up costing the UK taxpayer £92 million. One of the reasons the NHS was particularly vulnerable is that it was using out-of-date IT systems, including Windows XP, then 17 years old. Incidentally, the Norwegian government developed it’s own Covid-tracker app and refused to publish the source code on the grounds that it would pose a security risk. Within a week, open source advocates had decompiled it, published their findings and identified numerous glitches. If, by some miracle, nothing goes wrong on the Isle of Wight, we’ll all be expected to download the new NHS app to our phones in the next two or three weeks.
Meanwhile, at yesterday’s press briefing Michael Gove said the British public must learn to live with restrictions on our movement for many months and would have to adapt to a “new normal” going forward. (As if to underline the point, several of today’s papers have said Boris won’t unveil an exit plan on Thursday as expected, but will now wait until next Sunday – and BuzzFeed‘s Alex Wickham has some detail on what’s likely to be in that plan here.) “Ultimately, unless and until we have a vaccine then I suspect that we are going to have to live with some degree of constraint because of the nature of the virus,” Gove said.
Does this mean we should start calling the restrictions the Government has put in place the “Forever Lockdown” after Joe Haldeman’s science fiction classic The Forever War? A reader has flagged up a quote from another science fiction author, Robert Heinlein, that is appropriate for the current time, given how little dissent from Covid orthodoxy is tolerated:
I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy . . . censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything – you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
If you’re concerned about the silencing of critical voices, someone has started a petition on Change.org calling for the resignation of Diane Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube whom the petitioner describes as the video publishing platform’s “chief censor”. You can sign that petition here.
At least the lockdown will be subjected to some proper Parliamentary scrutiny today, with a debate about the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) Regulations due to take place in the House of Commons this afternoon. Several Tory rebels are expected to take the Government to task – the Mail has more. Leading the charge will be Steve Baker MP, a former Conservative minister and leading Brexiteer, who’s written an op ed in today’s Telegraph in which he urges Boris to end the lockdown, which he describes as “absurd, dystopian and tyrannical”. (I always liked the cut of his jib.) Among other things, Baker says he thinks the lockdown laws may be unlawful:
A judicial review is being brought against the lockdown laws, claiming they are ultra vires – that is, that ministers have no legal authority to impose them in the way they did – and that they incur a disproportionate interference with fundamental rights and freedoms. There is serious legal scholarship supporting that view. I fear the present rules may be unlawful.
One of the most egregious examples of state over-reach Baker flags up in his jeremiad is South Yorkshire Police telling a father-of-two that he couldn’t use his own front garden in Rotherham to play with his children. “Families have been driven off their own outdoor property, against the law,” writes Baker. Yesterday, in a rare act of humility, the same police force apologised after it criticised a man for exercising while wearing jeans. Who knew that was against the rules? Yahoo News has the story.
Professor Sir Ian Diamond, the head of the Office of National Statistics (ONS), was interviewed on Marr yesterday. (You can watch it on the BBC iPlayer here.) They got into a number of interesting issues, including how best to calculate the UK death toll, which Diamond predicted is really around 30,000, not the 28,131 as of yesterday morning. This is if you add those deaths where medical practitioners have recorded COVID-19 as the cause of death on the death certificate but don’t have any test evidence to corroborate that. At present, as readers of this site will know, only those COVID-19 deaths where the patient tested positive are currently included in the Government’s official death toll.
Diamond went on to explain to Andrew Marr that of the excess deaths he and his colleagues at the ONS have counted, up to a third are an indirect consequence of the lockdown and other measures, adding that even more indirect deaths will occur in the future. He said:
…but I think we also need to remember that at the moment we are seeing the highest number of deaths each week that we at the Office of National Statistics have recorded since weekly records started in 1993… when we see these very high levels of death not all of them, not all of them are the result of Covid-19. The last week we had records for the excess was approaching 12,000 deaths of which, I would suggest, between eight and 9,000 were Covid and the rest were what we call indirect deaths. Those could be for example people who would normally have gone into hospital for some reason but the beds were not available. Just give you an example: in my late mother’s last couple of years of her life she went into hospital and back out again a few times. Had she not been able to go in one of those times she may well have died a little earlier than she did. So I think it’s important to recognise there are indirect deaths as well as the Covid-related deaths. We have a piece from the Office of National Statistics that we’ve done jointly with the government actuaries department, the Home Office and Department of Health coming out in the next few days which will show also a third group which will come out over the next few years where changes in the prioritisation of the Health Service, for example, reductions in cancer screening, will lead to deaths over the next few years. And the final thing I’d just like to say, Andrew: if we have a lengthy and deep recession then we know that can lead to increased deaths as people are pushed into lengthy periods of unemployment… the headline numbers that I started with need to be adjusted and added to by those indirect deaths.
Marr followed up by saying it sounded as if Diamond was confirming that the UK is heading for the worst death toll in Europe. But Diamond wasn’t having that:
I wouldn’t say that at all. And I would say that making international comparisons Andrew is an unbelievably difficult thing to do. We in this country have, in my opinion… I think we have the best reporting, the most transparent reporting, and the most timely reporting because we include death registrations and we’ve been pushing our deaths registration reporting as fast as we possibly can. And then even after you look at the actual deaths it is incredibly important to recognise that context. So deaths are going to be more concentrated, as I’ve already indicated, in inner cities. If you have a rural country then it’s likely that your death rates will be lower. I’m not saying that we’re at the bottom of any potential league table – it’s almost impossible to calculate a league table – but I’m not prepared to say that we’re heading for the top.
The fact that the ONS is about to publish data on the likely number of deaths caused by the Government’s strategy for mitigating the impact of the virus was news to me. From the point of view of lockdown sceptics, that data will be invaluable evidence in the case for the prosecution. (Thanks to Guy de la Bédoyère for transcribing Bob Diamond’s comments.)
An eagle-eyed reader spotted an interesting detail in a doctor’s diary published by BBC News yesterday. According to Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary, the ‘clap for carers’ that takes place every Thursday at 8pm causes a small spike in Accident and Emergency admissions. (That’s ER admissions for our American readers.) Some people are jumping up on concrete bollards and letterboxes in order to clap, only to then fall off and hurt themselves. Ella Simkin, a health 23 year-old, went out with her parents to clap last Thursday at their house in south London and decided to jump on to a raised concrete flower bed. She missed her footing and ended up in hospital. And it’s not just young people. While some have been exercising more than usual during the lockdown, others have stopped exercising altogether, particularly the elderly, and problems can occur when they suddenly get up and clap. They may fall and break a bone, for instance. How long before clapping every Thursday night is replaced by the British Sign Language equivalent – basically, waving your hands in the air – as it has been at Manchester University Students’ Union? The reason for that daft bit of snowflakery was not to avoid injury, but because traditional clapping can supposedly cause “issues” for sensitive students.
The Times has some interesting detail on the YouGov poll that was reported in the Sunday Times yesterday, with fieldwork done on Thursday and Friday of last week. The headline figure is that that 55% of the British public remain scared about getting coronavirus. And, interestingly, this doesn’t vary much with political affiliation or how you voted in the EU Referendum (although ConservativeHome found that a third of its readers support the Swedish Government’s approach). However, it does vary between men and women: just 47% of men are scared, compared to 62% of women. Among different age groups, the most scared are not the over-55s, but 34-44 year-olds. Our older readers will not be surprised by that finding.
Indeed, one of these, describing herself as “Frustrated in Kent”, has sent me a marvellous rant about the supine cowardice of her fellow countrymen:
Today, walking my dog, I saw a young man zoom by on a bicycle, wearing what looked like a WWI gas mask with full goggles and, of course, gloves. This in the middle of the Kent countryside. Later this morning, in a queue outside Waitrose, I got into conversation with a woman behind me who was dead scared that her mask was not going to protect her inside the store. This afternoon, I ran into a neighbour while I was walking on a footpath across an orchard. He nearly fell into the apple trees in his scramble to social distance.
What is wrong with these people? We’re in the country, for God’s sake, and we’ve been distancing for weeks. Is everybody so unable to think for themselves that this sort of behaviour becomes the norm? I blame the news, the politicians and especially the media coverage – particularly the BBC’s sensationalism. Every story is designed to scare everyone into quiescent behaviour, with the implicit threat of fines and/or worse for nonconformism. Is this how fascism begins – when a quiescent population abjures the right of the individual to speak and think for him or herself and accepts the status quo without question?
I have always wondered how the German nation adapted to the hideous excesses of Hitler and his regime since Germans by and large are sympathetic and stoic and caring people. I happen to be married to a German and have been for 35 years. Now I have a more perfect understanding. If you accept something without questioning authority, then that authority takes ever more advantage of the situation and soon you have a population that is denied the opportunity to question. This is what is happening here and I am concerned that the nation is on the wrong track.
I’m waiting for the day I’m told that I have to wear a special marking on my clothing to show I’m over 70 so that I can be stopped on the street by the authorities for breaking lockdown and then I’ll be hustled on home (with a fine or worse).
Another reader has sent me a good quote from CG Jung about “psychic epidemics”, something we appear to be in the midst of. It was quoted by the late great Christopher Booker in his last book Groupthink: A Study in Self Delusion:
It is becoming more and more obvious that it is not starvation, it is not microbes, it is not cancer, but man himself who is his greatest danger: because he has no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are are infinitely more devastating in their effect than the greatest natural catastrophes.
A quick round-up of interesting article I’ve spotted, or which readers have flagged up, in the last 24 hours:
- ‘Freedom isn’t just another word‘ – Must read piece in First Things in which John Waters, one of the two litigants trying to fight the lockdown in the Irish courts, explains why he’s brought the case
- Interview with Anders Tegnell – CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviews Sweden’s chief epidemiologist and the architect of its mitigation strategy
- ‘Warren Buffett sells all shares in major airlines amid $50bn loss‘ – The Telegraph reports that Buffet has liquidated his airline stock
- ‘Politicians Have Destroyed Markets and Ignored Human Rights with Alarming Enthusiasm‘ – Strident critique of lockdown policies published on the Mises Institute blog
- ‘Public opinion, not scientific advice, is what is keeping us in lockdown‘ – Another great column from Dan Hannan in the Telegraph
- ‘Dossier lays out case against China bat virus program‘ – More details on the ‘five eyes’ intelligence leak in the Australian Telegraph
- ‘It is time to take seriously the link between Vitamin D deficiency and more serious Covid-19 symptoms‘ – Matt Ridley urges the Government to take a look at the mounting evidence that there’s an inverse correlation between the body’s production of Vitamin D and susceptibility to COVID-19. Should we really be kept out of the sunshine?
- ‘Germany’s New Cases, Number Of Deaths at Lowest in Five Weeks‘ – Yet more evidence that Germany’s easing of the lockdown hasn’t caused a rise in infections
- ‘Why Sweden Has Already Won the Debate on COVID “Lockdown” Policy‘ – A point of view I think we all share, this time put forward by Patrick Henningsen on 21st Century Wire
- ‘The effect of human mobility and control measures on the COVID-19 epidemic in China‘ – Paper published in Science mag claiming the lockdown in China actually worked. Thought I’d link to it in the interests of balance.
I was recently interviewed by Meghan Murphy, a Canadian feminist who’s been banned from Twitter for misgendering trans activists, about the lockdown and freedom of speech. You can listen to the podcast here or watch it on YouTube here. That interview took just over 40 minutes. If you want the short version, click here to listen to an interview I did with Kevin O’Sullivan on TalkRadio on Saturday.
Readers continue to suggest songs that would make suitable theme tunes for this site. The latest batch include ‘Every Breath You Take‘ by the Police, ‘Merrie Melodies & Looney Tunes – Opening themes‘, ‘Behind the Mask‘ by Eric Clapton and ‘Fight the Power‘ by Public Enemy.
Thanks to those who donated for the upkeep of Lockdown Sceptics yesterday. I had been hoping to dial down my advocacy on Thursday when Boris was originally supposed to reveal his exit plan, but that’s now been postponed until Sunday and that deadline may slip again. So if you feel like donating, please do so by clicking here. (Every little helps!) And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, you can email me here. See you tomorrow.
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Who made these people the government? I will never carry their app, nor take their vaccine and nor will i wear a mask. The Government has lost the plot. We are a free live humans not some piece of meat to be monitored and shuffled from queue to queue to satisfy some people who’ve decided that they can boss me around like don’t matter. This whole thing shows we need to dismantle half the government. I’m not part of their community and their collective lunacy.
The government was made by 17.4 million people who voted to close borders and restrict freedom of movement, and were upset that this wasn’t getting done quickly enough for their liking.
Grow up. Brexit has nothing to do with this. Take your partisan comments elsewhere.
But no one who voted to leave the EU wanted to prevent free movement outside their houses. If this is some kind of payback by Remoaners, it is has gone on long enough.
This isn’t that. Plenty of remainers consider the lockdown mroe dangerous than the pandemic itself, I’m one of them.
As am I.
Me too, and Toby’s round up just said support for lockdown doesn’t fall into familiar political or partisan categories. It’s really important we keep scepticism a broad church, we are people ‘who wouldn’t usually agree’ who agree about this, as if we don’t, we’ll scare people off from speaking up. Doesn’t matter what your politics or views on the EU are, if you think lockdown is madness, come on in, the water’s lovely.
Hope you are now aware this is what you were supporting?
And others simply feel they’ve been robbed of what should have been the last chance to emigrate to Europe. Which has been confirmed by the government refusing to consider any extension to the transition to make up for the time when no work can be done to prepare for Brexit. Perhaps the government thinks we should all be grateful for being let out of our houses when – if – that happens, and will have forgotten how much freedom we used to have.
Once again you CAN still emigrate to Europe. You’ll just have to fill in few forms. (It will still be WAY easier than going to say the US or Australia – and plenty of people have been doing that for years.)
Maybe you could try somewhere that got decimated by EU austerity policy. Like Greece.
This site is about the lockdown – nothing else.
Look I really didn’t want to leave the EU, I lived in the EU for five years, it truly has bugger all to do with this problem we are trying to solve RIGHT NOW. If you want to be on team sanity for solving this nightmare, we are your tribe, if not, this is not the site for you. It’s just NOISE, it doesn’t matter, what does matter is getting people’s brains out of hock and getting them to think. Whatever your political stripe I think we can all agree that lockdown is just madness. Let’s just solve that big problem and we can all go back to bickering later. PS I have friends in Greece and Spain, if you think the UK is bad, thank your lucky stars you are not there! We are smart people, we are motivated, let’s lay aside our differences and get cracking.
<3 As soon as the sneering begins, I have to lockdown my brain lest I wade in like you saw there lol
Couldn’t agree more, I’m not wearing a gagging mask.
As is often the case in these maddening situations, reality has been flipped.
The ‘clean’ will be wearing masks, when apparently they’re only useful for stopping already infected people infecting others.
The healthy won’t be wearing masks – and in refusing to will attract abject cries of ‘DIRTY!!’ from those also-healthies who need a psychological safety blanket every time they step outside.
We were discussing in one of our lab meetings, now conducted on the cretinous Zoom, how poorly worn PPE is actually a hazard in itself. I have to use the stuff professionally and have to laugh when I see people using it incorrectly in the supermarket.
Another piece of health theatre I’ve learned about today is that our cleaners, who bless them are still working, have apparently been cleaning our office door handles with the same cloth they use on the communal toilet pans…
I won’t either: surreal scenes in a local shop today: we formed a patient queue while a large delivery was cleared and then: the hapless assistant, whom I know quite well, was wearing a plastic helmet with full visor while stationed at the till. Think of the gear bomb disposal operatives and biohazard teams wear. She wears glasses- so do I- they steam up, so she has trouble seeing the till, her face becomes overheated and sore. No plastic barriers which all other outlets have installed for their staff. She told me that the head gear is obligatory while on the tills, but not on the shop floor. 2 customers disported rather shoddy masks. This is bonkers! ― Sophie Scholl, see below, was executed by the Nazis for her resistance activities. One of the bravest and best, an exemplar of moral courage “It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always… Read more »
Absolutely sums it up for me.
I will not take the app either, I’ll have the vacine but wait at least 12 months to give the vulnerable people who really need it places nearer the front of the queue (at my age covid-19 doesn’t class as a risk worth worrying about), I’ll wear a mask where-ever I think it will prevent facial recognition and if it helps reduce fear in those around me (fear hurts a lot more than covid-19, masks don’t do much to stop covid-19 but maybe people will get back their confidence when they see them in use). We really could use setting up a separate “country” of all of us who want to live free rather than exist in fear, a large enough group of us working to a libertarian set of laws and swearing our loyalty to an alternative government.
If someone were to offer me a vaccine I would give it to my mother so that I could then visit her and she could be allowed to see her friends in the same building.
FYI China has developed face recognition software that’s 95% accurate with the mouth and nose covered. To be sure of defeating it you will need sunglasses as well as a mask.
Wow. That’s amazing
Wearing a mask is a visual depiction of capitulation, of accepting the ‘party’ line that the virus is more dangerous than it is. Not to mention that masks generally don’t work. In the region I live in (thanks to BBC stats which are not prone to understatement) 1 in 1000 people have tested positive. Multiply it by 10 it’s still only 1 in 100, by 50 then 1 in 20. Given that 97% won’t need medical intervention what’s the point of a mask/ I have to ask, since I’m single: have people stopped having sex now? They didn’t during the AIDS debacle and that was far more deadly. No masks then, even when it was suggested (by the BBC Radio 4 no less, but this was the 1980s) that HIV would most likely turn into an airborne virus. Ever been had?
This a thousand times.
To those who think that wearing a mask will give others “confidence”: isn’t it more likely that a masked population will entrench and intensify neuroticism and ignorance? And why should the unhealthy needs of some pathologically risk-averse individuals trump those of the rest of us? If you’re doing this out of compassion, I believe it is very misplaced. If you’re doing it out of self-interest, because you think it will bring an earlier end to lockdown, ask what else you may be asked to submit to or sacrifice.
By not wearing a mask I will ensure the paranoid will stay much further than 2 metres away from me. It will also be a good way to get to the front of any queue.
Lily you say that ‘at your age covid-19 doesn’t class as a risk worth worrying about’. But you are prepared to take the vaccine. You really need to do some serious research on vaccines.
Precisely, nobody made unaccountable medics and scientists the government and I don’t answer to them and I will not be wearing a mask, agreeing to be tracked, or being injected, forget it. I’ll quite happily flush my smart phone down the loo too (just reading about facebook mobile app having some ‘off facebook’ tracking ability, so that’s been removed from my phone). As for our elected representatives, they do not have the legal power to do this to us, and I’m hopeful the courts will soon tell them that.
My second hand mobile is not compatible with tracking app technology- tee hee!
They’ll never catch me; I’m under the covid radar!
How do you find out which phones are compatible with the tracking app? I’m hoping my ancient iPhone isn’t otherwise I’ll be mothballing it.
Simple. Ditch your smartphone.
MG
Anything with bluetooth will be compatible. Which sadly is most smartphones.
Yep – mine is a decades old PAYG Nokia, only used in case of problems on car journeys!
They will when/if you ever want to get on a plane or ferry to go on your hols!
Interesting news from America, seems some justice has been done in regards to the Stasi callers:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/coronavirus-missouri-lockdown-breakers-details-online-st-louis-county-a9497271.html
The zealots who betrayed their neighbours, “friends” and colleagues are claiming that in having their names published they are being ounished for “doing the right thing”, well done Mr Totsch for recognising that such informing on innocent acts is wrong and doing your best to discourage such treacherous behaviour in future.
Hi Lilly,
Just a quick moderator’s note – please try to use the same name for posting comments in future. Pick one, and stick with it.
Also, have you considered reporting on this:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/03/coronavirus-health-passports-for-uk-possible-in-months
A dangerous government plan to use facial recognition apps to enable “identitifcation” by people who are likely to know you by sight anyway, and to enforce some unspecified testing regime. Can we expect gestapo thugs on every shop door demanding “your papers”. One has to wonder if the intent is more to test loyalty to the dear leader than anything relating to the transmission of viral disease.
Most shockingly the Guardian, off all places, is now talking about such oppressive surveillance entirely matter-of-fact-ly without so much as a hint of condemnation, and that from the paper which covered, only a few years back, Snowden’s revelations of government abuses.
The mere idea of this passport is shocking but not the fact it’s coming from the oh so woke Guardian. With the exception of Simon Jenkins none of the writers have been questioning the gov’ line in any way, shape or form. I actually deleted their app from my phone first week into lockdown as I couldn’t handle their own ads anymore touting their “independent journalism” only to read in the next article “79-year-old patient died of Covid-19, he was a lung cancer patient in his last stage”. This facial recognition app must be pushed back up into a very dark spot up the government’s backside.
This was all predicted, extolled and celebrated in this technocracy article back in mid-March. The article, in my opinion at the time, was so dark and discouraged my wide-awake 20-year-old son reading it. It’s now about to become reality:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/17/905264/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing-18-months/
Someone kindly posted this on the estimable Malcolm Kendrick’s blog – Neil Ferguson from 2006
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04795.pdf
I once considered writing a SF about a society in which everyone is implanted with a tracking device at a young age. The way things are going something like this could be seriously mooted in the near future.
Working as an MRI technician in a hospital would become a highly desirable job, no chip is going to survive repeated sustained contact with one of those superconducting magnets.
The Guardian says this about the passports: “proving which workers have had Covid-19”. I thought that even antibody tests aren’t foolproof, so the word “proving” seems wrong. Just another example of journalists being out of their depth writing about science or statistics?
https://coronavirusbellcurve.com/ Here is some good news. The risk of dying from Covid-19 if you get it is for a healthy person under 45 is 0.04%. Even with a health condition in that age group also not bad. But with a health condition (All health conditions in the table) 1 in 10 will die in the 65-74 group and 1 in 5 over 75. But if you happen to be a fit person, even in the elderly groups, not too bad. Here is even better news. That Table is based upon 6% death rate in confirmed cases in US. But everybody now believes that the true death rate would be in line with severe flu (Asiatic flu 1957) in the region of 0,5 %, as we have at least 10 times more cases than detected so the figures above should be 10 times better. This is also probably the main stream line of thinking in the assessment of the pandemic. But there is probably even better news. The amount of undetected cases has probably been enormous. Thousands of asymptomatic carriers have been found in confined prisons and also in homeless shelters in the US. In the shocking news yesterday from Russia… Read more »
Agree. I will also be smugly pointed out the asymptomatic numbers out to anyone who has challenged me on it in the past few weeks — which is almost everyone I have spoken to.
But if an asymptomatic person passes it onto someone’s grandmother, that’s murder! Stay home!
And herein lies the problem. Life is risk. Any day you leave the house, poke your head out from under your bed even, you risk something happening that can kill you. Technically if someone dies it isn’t automatically murder either.
The idiots who say that probably don’t realise that not having lockdown for severeal months during flu season also results in the same thing. While they’ve been enjoying their christmas gatherings and shopping they may have “murdered” someone.
The percent increase in total cases by state is … instructive. Almost all 0%!
I wrote a comment for yesterday’s post outlining some thoughts on the testing amongst other things in which I was deliberately conservative in my approach, since no more aggressive stance was necessary. However, having watched the increasing absurdity of comments in the MSM and the apparently wilful ignorance of vast numbers of our fellow citizens if Twitter is anything to go by, I thought that I would post an addendum. The data being released by HMG includes a subset defined as, “Swab testing for health, social care and other essential workers” a vague description to be sure so I will have to make certain assumptions. It is by no means clear exactly who these essential workers are but it is not unreasonable to assume that the Government has been logical and are using the same definition as that for the wider lockdown rules and so including for example policemen, delivery personnel, emergency services personnel, transport workers, construction workers etc. it might therefore be considered a representative sample of the entire population. Yes I am well aware that it is a giant leap of faith too far to assume logicality in politics but let us try it anyway. The second major… Read more »
Oops, Sorry, it appears my formatting has not transmitted properly.
Key workers do include all those people you mentioned – but only if they have symptoms. I work in IT (and journalism- but as I’m freelance it doesn’t apply to me there I don’t think). My boss has sent us an email saying we are eligible for testing.
Would be a bit pointless though, so you get a test and come up clear, you could catch it the day after the test though. You might even catch it at the testing centre. At which point you think you’re clean but you end up spreading it. Anti-body testing in the wider population would be useful, mail out several tests to each household and have an anonymous submission portal online where people can say if they are immune or not and manually type in a location accuracy of the first two letters of the postcode. But anti-gen testing isn’t all that helpful, unless we could all test at home daily it can’t keep up with the disease. And if we could all test at home daily then the only humane approach would be to rely on everyone to just tell thr truth about their tests and act responsibly, no draconian enforcement could be premitted by a civilised people. Makes a lot more sense just to learn to live with the risk while we wait for a vaccine, the disease causes (at worst case, if spread is much wider than predicted then the death risk is much lower) a typical increase… Read more »
Exactly, it’s dumb. The only test that’s of any use right now (except maybe to healthcare workers – who would still have to be tested literally every day for it have any use) is a serological test.
Oh no that would never do. How DARE you even think that anyone could become immune other than from the Holy Vaccine???
I suspect that is why antibody tests are being disparaged, nothing to do with their accuracy
What’s worse is getting tested and a false-positive result. And the effect this will have on any family or friends you’ve come in contact with: in Scotland, this is to mean a 14-day self-isolation (ie. no leaving their homes, at all) for them. For you – the false-positive person, it’s only 7 days.
“There has been no successful vaccine for ANY coronavirus.” Professor Hendrick Streeck, University of Bonn.
did he say that in German? I’d like to find the direct quote for attribution. Thanks!
Large scale UK-wide antibody testing would definitely settle things very quickly!
…which has to be precisely why they’re not doing it. The official objections I’ve seen to these tests is that they’re not always accurate. No one seems to want to discuss the highly inaccurate tests they’re already doing.
“Is this how fascism begins – when a quiescent population abjures the right of the individual to speak and think for him or herself and accepts the status quo without question?”
No.
This is merely the outward symptom of a virus that has been replicating internally for decades.
I read a really good blog post on this that suggested the “disease is our behaviour” and this whole exercise is to flatten, change, remove our behaviours.
Can you link?
This Is The Government’s Draft Plan To Ease Coronavirus Lockdown Measures In The Workplace
https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/alexwickham/governments-draft-plan-to-ease-lockdown-workpace-in-full?__twitter_impression=true
Basically, go back to work but keep the 2m distancing rule going. How long before this crazy unsubstantiated 2m distancing is consigned to the bin?
It’s depressing to hear so many in the media talking as though, whatever we do in the future, we’re going to spend the rest of our lives at least 2m apart, and so many of the public brainwashed into believing it.
And not even the WHO say 2m.
• Hairdressers operating 2 m from their clients. How does that work?
• Physios like me doing – what, distant healing?
• Optometrists no longer able to use ophthalmoscopes; lots of undetected eye disease slipping through.
• Dental hygienists doing scale & polish from 6 feet away; lots of tooth decay problems coming up.
• Tattooists using inked darts, perhaps?
• Un-inked darts for acupuncturists?
• Bespoke tailors using laser ranging equipment to measure inside leg.
• Chiropodists giving clients supervised instruction on how to extract their own ingrowing toenails whilst the practitioner shouts encouragement from the other side of the room.
• GPs doing all consultations by Zoom
• Do-it-yourself blood extraction kits to replace phebotomists
And so the insanity goes on…..and on…..
Someone really needs to do a comedy sketch with these
One wonders how mammograms would be handled 🙂
Speaking of which, good news from Michigan (!) where I live in a tiny town in the Upper Peninsula where there are more trees and bears than people: my hospital called me to make a mammogram appointment (which had been cancelled two months ago due to the coronavirus).
DIY gynaecology for the more adventurous: extended long distance speculum plus magnifying glass.
Yesterday I watched 1 x police officer and 2 x paramedics having a relaxing chat sitting on a wall outside a police station (no tasking) no PPE no 2m distance just good humoured banter by the looks of it. No criticism of them, normal behaviour, it illustrates the fact that many front line think this is nonsense too.
Ultimately, everything you need to know about what’s going on is contained in the following video, from 7.45 to 10.58.
It’s directed at a US audience but the message is global:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KLODGhEyLvk
(watch from 7.45-10.58)
All I’ve seen from lockdown zealots throughout this is “this isn’t like flu” and we shouldn’t compare it. Now though its fine to compare it from their point of view, “we shouldn’t end the lockdown too soon, the Spanish flu had a deadly 2nd wave”, even had the Hong Kong flu 2nd wave mentioned. What did SARs and MERs do, did they have waves ?
When someone tells me “it isn’t like the flu” I say “you’re right – it’s a common cold with brass balls”.
I’ve been meaning to get around to collecting a list of all the quotes I’ve seen from absolutely top people in the fields relating to this saying precisely that flu is the appropriate comparison, to throw in the faces of those who ridicule that comparison. Here’s the easiest one to hand (Google translation of German):
“I expect about 0.1 or 0.2 percent, the same mortality rate as with influenza. I think this virus is comparable to influenza, but it could be a little more dangerous. If influenza were a new disease, nobody had it yet, and it had suddenly come into the world, the reaction of most countries would be the same as that of the corona virus.”
Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, advisor to the Swedish Government (he hired Anders Tegnell who is currently directing Swedish strategy), the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and an advisor to the director general of the WHO
https://www.addendum.org/coronavirus/interview-johan-giesecke/
If the shoe fits……
“those who ridicule that comparison”. I think a key tactic in any sort of political dispute these days is for ‘them’ to identify any irrefutable argument that they cannot beat and to pre-ridicule it; make it a given that the argument is wrong even though no one has actually demonstrated that it is wrong. The comparison between Covid-19 and flu is obvious – it is even described a having ‘flu-like symptoms’. It shares many characteristics including, it seems, flu’s level of approximate lethality. The irrefutable argument is the one that says “You never even thought about flu in its previous outbreaks – even the ones that killed 80000 people – so what’s different about Covid-19? Why does it make sense to wreck the economy now, when you never mentioned it before for flu?”. It is essential that no one be allowed to ask that question, because it isn’t one that can be waved away with scientific blather – it’s a direct question of logic and rationality. It shows the stupidity of this whole thing in rational terms. It calls into question the lockdown; the national holiday that many people are enjoying – for now; the virtue-signalling concern for Our NHS.… Read more »
Exactly. This is why I make the common cold comparison because a) it’s actually technically a coronavirus so…. but more importantly b) it downgrades the threat even further and completely knocks them off base. Also forces them to think a bit before we even go into any details about how many just comparisons there actually ARE between this and a general flu season.
I think it counts as manflu.
Here are a few more I’ve added to my list: “There is no evidence to show that the 2019 coronavirus is more lethal than respiratory adenoviruses, influenza viruses, coronaviruses from previous years, or rhinoviruses responsible for the common cold.” Dr Pablo Goldschmidt, an Argentine-French virologist specializing in tropical diseases, and Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry of the University of Buenos Aires and Faculty of Medicine of the Hospital Center of Pitié-Salpetrière, Paris. – Interview on Clarin.com, 9th March 2020, quoted in https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/28/10-more-experts-criticising-the-coronavirus-panic/ “That is the main fear: the disease is presented as a terrible disease. The disease per se is like the flu in a normal winter. It is even weaker in the first week.” Dr Karin Mölling, a German virologist whose research focused on retroviruses, particularly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). She was a full professor and director of the Institute of Medical Virology at the University of Zurich from 1993 until her retirement in 2008 and received multiple honours and awards for her work. – Interview on Anti-Empire.com, 23rd March 2020, quoted in https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/28/10-more-experts-criticising-the-coronavirus-panic/ “Personally, I view this Covid outbreak… Read more »
Keep them coming!
Yes great stuff.
Only difference is that covid seems to be very specific in who it kills, flu discriminates less. How to not be one of those people would be a good plan.
Also, the models and even the legislation where all made for… you guessed it FLU!
I always point out, “but it spreads the same way as the flu. The flu kills people also. We don’t lockdown to stop it spreading.”
Or course, the typical response is “but there’s a vaccine for the flu”. So, why does it still kill so many?
There’s a vaccine for *certain strains* of the flu each year. Why do people not seem to get this??
I had the flu jab for three years in a row, and still ended up getting flu – or at least a very bad cold – during two of those three flu seasons. (Coincidentally one was 2018 which looks to have particularly bad). So…. pretty sure those jabs didn’t do me much good. As a result I have avoided flu jabs ever since and er….. no flu! So yeah. I won’t be taking any vaccine for any common seasonal disease again until I’m aged considerably.
This is interesting reading: Search Results
Imagehttps://www.bmj.com › bmj.m626
Web results
Tamiflu & influenza vaccines: more harm than good? | The BMJ
19 Feb 2020 · Does this mean that they prevent a significant proportion of all viral respiratory infections? … urging annual flu shots are mathematical estimates of deaths caused by influenza, provided by the CDC.
I’m sure many of the NHS staff who’ve died from corvid 19 will have been routinely having the flu vaccine for years as NHS trusts would aggressively coerce staff into having in their target drive. culture. I always refused as I was sceptical about the efficacy and didn’t want to be injected with something every 12 months. I’ve never had the flu and rarely have a cold.
I’ve noticed Professor Karol Sikora seems to be sending out quite sceptical tweets! Wasn’t he pushing pro-lockdown views until recently?
On another note last week we had a meeting in my lab group about getting back to work. I just can’t see how we can have a functioning society and economy with long-term social distancing. This is utterly insane, 2m separation everywhere… But this seems to be the line from the government with their sinister ‘new normal’..
The increasingly sceptical articles in the Torygraph might be a good sign that discontent is building within our governing party!
Yes, Sikora led the pro-lockdown side in the Cambridge Union’s proto-debate on the issue a couple of weeks ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wOU0GiQWog&t=104s
Thanks that was just the event I couldn’t quite recall when writing that!
Never thought I would agree with Peter Hitchens, but these are unusual times…
Indeed. On the separation distance it might be worth flagging this up to your lab group: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/two-metre-rule-being-reviewed-amid-hope-relaxed-restrictions-could-allow-schools-to-reopen/ar-BB13udcW?ocid=ientp ““Prof Robert Dingwall, who sits on the Government’s scientific advisory body New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, which feeds into Sage, said it “made sense” to reduce the distancing rule to 1.5 metres, bringing it into line with nations such as Germany and Australia. “Standing in line two metres apart outside supermarkets does not make a lot of sense,” Prof Dingwall said. “The two-metre rule does not have validity and has never had much of an evidence base. I’ve tried to trace it myself. “There is a fairly solid evidence base for a transmission rate if indoors and within one metre of someone with a respiratory infection for 15 minutes, but that time detail has been lost somewhere along the way. “It is extraordinarily unlikely that any transmission will occur in the few seconds you are standing next to someone as you both reach for the instant coffee. “It means that people are worrying unnecessarily when a jogger brushes past them in the park, for example, when transient contact is not an issue.” Some experts believe there is no airborne transmission… Read more »
Thanks, I get a sense from the media today that we may be getting prepared for a new set of ‘guidance’ to come out.. I always suspected there was an element of ‘give the peasents a number’. I do fear as well these spacing rules will be the perfect excuse for the various flavours of trouble and mischief makers that infect most workplaces to cause strife and trouble….
The other missing factor is that it doesn’t matter how far apart you are if neither of you has it.
It’s rare in Suffolk and even less common in the south west but we are under the same heavy manners as London
Using the WHO’s 1m separation guidelines, productivity could be at least quadrupled!
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public
Exactly – we can have 2m distancing or we can have a fully functioning society – we can’t have both. Time to ditch the 2m rule.
Agree but would drop the word “fully”. Society cannot function in any meaningful way with everyone 2m away from everyone else. I think we must either drop this craziness or say goodbye to civilisation.
You could just show them this, from the WHO:
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public
“Maintain at least 1 metre (3 feet) distance between yourself and others. Why? When someone coughs, sneezes, or speaks they spray small liquid droplets from their nose or mouth which may contain virus. If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including the COVID-19 virus if the person has the disease.”
1m apart is a normal distance to stand from someone you’re in conversation with, assuming you don’t already have sex with them…
More crucial wisdom about pandemics to be found here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JSbT7JVNEU4
One problem we’re facing here is that journalists appear to honestly believe the COVID = deadly-plague-zombie-apocalypse-of-the-millenium story. I had a long talk with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal yesterday. The WSJ is actually a bit more sensible than the other U.S. mainstream papers, but even she came at the story from the “of course it’s deadly and everyone is unsafe” angle. She wanted to know my feelings about SC opening up, and whether I thought it was safe. I told her that I was coming at it completely from the other direction, and that I thought lockdowns mostly unjustified, the deadliness of COVID not remotely what’s being reported, the notion of locking down states with tiny numbers of cases preposterous, and my main problem with the way things are opening that it feels inhospitable to be served by people wearing masks and gloves. Of course I fret that I didn’t make myself sufficiently clear, and who knows what she’ll report. But the thing is, if the people telling the story – and they are the ones with the actual power here – believe that COVID is worse than killer bees, then it’s nigh unto impossible to turn the… Read more »
I’ve no idea what the state of international travel will be for the rest of this year, but this has turned into a ‘business’ concern for us for various reasons, but word I’m hearing from Swiss collaborators seems positive and upbeat!
I love your username beyond all reason! And thanks for the upbeat message! Really helps!
Glad I can be of some help, hopefully someone else might have some more specific knowledge but I think in general most continental European countries seem to have some sort of concrete plan going forwards! This might ultimately tip the balance of the debate here in gulag UK if other countries start opening up without problems!
“Today on paranoia network news, broadcasting live from my bedroom. We bring you the latest reports of angry criticisms we’vre read on twit-book-gram and an exclusive investigation into what keeps scaring people who are picking up landline polling calls…”
Journalists won’t be reporting rationally until they go out into the street and see the people who aren’t afraid.
If the ONS start reporting the number of non covid deaths, it might give the media a different scaremongering story they can push, only thing that will make them move is something else bad.
Ref Alps this summer. We’re due to be out in the northern part of the French Alps (just south of Switzerland) in August. At present, I doubt that we will be going.
Saw the following the other day:
“French president Emmanuel Macron in a video call with other European leaders warned that the ban [on travel into Europe] could even run until September, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has warned people not to book summer holidays.
Leaders are concerned about the situation in countries including the United States, as well as the possibility of a ‘second wave’ of infections in Asia.”
From https://www.thelocal.fr/20200415/when-will-i-be-able-to-travel-to-france-again
Politicians in lots of pro Lockdown countries will be doubling down for some time to come I suspect. They need to ensure cover for their irrational decisions.
Or until their economies are sufficiently broken to justify pressing the big red reset button.
My guess? Unlikely. I have a son in NC and don’t expect to be seeing him in 2020….
I have a ticket to see Yes at the Royal Albert Hall next month? Will that still be on? Yes? No!
I am currently at work and it is grand.
A sentence I never thought I’d say in this lifetime.
Lucky you, and may we all be able to say that soon in our futures.
But I’m bored enough to be reading this:
https://policing-the-corona-state.blog/2020/05/04/2-3-may-update/
Scary stuff. I wonder how the police will react to any new ‘guidance’ they will be issued. Will they be issued ny new ‘guidance’ I wonder? Will they be allowed to drag us off if we’re not wearing a mask in the park, for example?
The talk of ‘social distancing’ enforcers in workplaces is giving me the willies.
“On Saturday, it was reported that the Crown Prosecution Service plans to review every charge brought under new emergency coronavirus laws after wrongful convictions were highlighted. The CPS has said this is the first time it has reviewed every charge under a specific piece of legislation.”
Good news.
Toby posted on his twitter an account from an ICU doctor detailing how busy the ITU was with covid19 patients ,This is valid for ITU s in some DGH s in London , Birmingham , Manchester etc but the ICU in my local hospital covering a population of 250,000 has 3 patients on ventilators and a staff of 1300 in the hospital trying to fill their time . As for masks I have worn them in ” line of duty ” for many years and find them highly uncomfortable ; can make people feel light headed and are totally ineffective . They are a placebo.
I call BS on any claim that ICUs are busier than normal. In Greater Glasgow (Glasgow itself has a population of 1 million) there are 39 CV19 patients in the numerous ICU wards.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-daily-data-for-scotland/
Fear is the main issue at the root of the problem here, I feel. We have become a fear-ridden society so scared of death that we cannot resist panic in the face even of objectively quite small risks. And the government, together with our social elites who set the agendas in our social and mainstream medias, have actively chosen to promote fear as a means of “getting people to take [more] seriously” a disease they assumed people weren’t taking seriously enough to satisfy the demands of their own fearfulness. Lord Sumption made the following astute observation in a recent interview: “If you ask: what is the real difference between the Swedes and ourselves, in Sweden all the polls show that people are not frightened of covid19, whereas the polls suggest that a lot of people are very frightened here, and this is largely, I think, down to a difference in the tone of government statements on this subject. If you inspire panic and fear in people you are going to get extreme reactions.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqrR11HNFp8 What’s comical is that if you asked them separately from this issue, I’d be willing to bet each and every one of the fear-filled panickers, from… Read more »
I agree about the fear thing, that is the root of the issue. It’s weird but I fear the irrational reaction and outworking of the unnecessary fear that’s been created! I find the best antidote to be the worse of the apostle John, ‘there is no fear in love for perfect love casts out all fear’.
That should be words not worse!
Can I suggest that you put a link into your next newsletter to the Crowd Justice website to support Simon Dolan who is the guy seeking a Judicial Review ? There are a lot of interesting comments from donors on that website.
Let’s remember in this fight for freedom that the resistance in France (1940-1944) was a very small minority of the FRENCH population!
I’ve just been chatting elsewhere about risk. Could we create a risk list with Covid ranked in that list? I appreciate the IFR is different per age range, but it must be possible. So where in the rankings would covid be in comparison to: – dying in a car crash – slipping in the shower and breaking my neck – choking on a peanut – dying of cancer – being swept away by severe weather events – being kicked to death by a donkey – being struck by lightning – dying in a house fire – being murdered (in the UK) – dying of a severe reaction to hair dye You get the idea …. I think the more ridiculous and funny some of the list is the better (e.g. on the RoSPA website, it says 6,000 people die in household accidents, some silly number of people die putting their socks on by falling off the bed, or electrocuting themselves by accidentally drilling through a cable). Us Brits do have a wicked sense of humour, and a good sense of the absurd, and the macabre. Can we make people just laugh at it? Years ago The Mary Whitehouse Experience used… Read more »
That’s a good idea. Also severe reaction to hair dye – lol
Haha It happens, my hairdresser, if i haven’t been for colour for six months, makes me do a patch test, and I have to wait 24 hours to make sure I don’t die of anaphylaxis. Which is bonkers as they’ve been putting the same chemicals on my head for the last twenty years …. But it’s a misunderstanding of risk (and maths) that is the issue here I think, people think the risk is bigger than it is, and it’s not contexualised at all. My mum is a worrier, when I was in my twenties and living in London I came home for the weekend wearing a long woollen scarf, literally the first words out of her mouth were ‘you’ll get that trapped in a tube door and strangle yourself to death’ (before she even said ‘Hi, love’). When I said ‘I’m thinking of going to Thailand’, she said, ‘You can’t you’ll get murdered’. You get the idea. It’s become a joke in my family, my mum constantly emoting all these possible grisly ways we’re all going to die. ‘Here’s my new flat, mum’ and she’ll say ‘what are you going to do if there’s a fire?’. People are scared,… Read more »
Cricket ball hitting you in the head
Falling over because you clapped too hard last Thursday
Hahaha, fell off a post box bashing a saucepan with a wooden spoon.
Just googled, that’s happened: Death. During the afternoon session of the Sheffield Shield match between South Australia and New South Wales at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 25 November 2014, Hughes, batting at 63 not out, was struck in the neck by the ball after missing an attempted hook shot to a bouncer from New South Wales bowler Sean Abbott.
Absolutely! See the latter of the two George Carlin videos I tagged in my posts above.
Love George Carlin.
Spuds can be lethal if allowed to sprout! Worthy of a health warning .
Being struck down by a murderous gull and sustaining skull fracture: don’t eat chips in public.
Unsuspected current surge while having electrolysis: pluck instead.
Choking on a throat sweet.
Loo lockdown: door jams, stranded for days, death ensues.
Coital exertions leading to death on the job.
That made me properly laugh out loud, we need more of this.
That reminds of a true story I read in the paper awhile ago. A larger lady got trapped in a portaloo at a festival. It wasn’t until the sanitation company had come and winched the all the hire loos onto the lorry, driven it down the motorway, got it back the depot, hauled them off again, and were emptying them that they found her, distressed, covered in effluent, and very embarrassed.
And in Greece, nursing care (apart from meds and vitals) are provided by the family, washing, feeding, dressing, loo. A friend of mine had to nurse her father in law in intensive care, where he was for a heart attack induced by having sex with his (much younger) Albanian mistress.
I think at some point the risk discussion has to be had but it is very difficult. Who dies and how matters a lot. We all accept that cigarette smoking is diabolically bad compared with not smoking. But we let people do that. Air travel is massively safe but it puts the willies up so many of us. With the virus, others behaviour change your risk like drunk driving. It will be a tough one to get across. I too find people crossing the street in rural settings bizarre. We haven’t got bubonic plague.
Caswell Bligh’s model has now been confirmed by researchers. This from the Speccie:
Research: Covid-19 vulnerabilities
How many people would have to fight off Covid-19 to achieve collective (or ‘herd’) immunity? So far, we have heard that it’s around 60 per cent. But this assumes a uniform population with everyone mingling equally and being equally at risk of catching the virus. A new study, led by academics at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, adjusts for the fact that they don’t and they aren’t. The virus, they argue, could quickly infect the more susceptible part of the population – which will then become immune and stop spreading the disease. As Matt Ridley puts it, ‘if the virus runs out of highly-susceptible segments of the population (elderly, hospital settings etc), it may struggle to keep going in the rest of the population’. Adjusting for this, says the study, and the threshold for Covid-19 herd immunity falls to between 10 per cent and 20 per cent.
That is definitely very significant, and probably explains why the epidemics seem to have started to slow down pretty uniformly from country to country before lockdowns even took effect.
Very interesting. Lot of suspicion that only 15% are suceptible(the cruise ship).Also the curves are bending globally and the last five days decreasing deaths in the world. Is the paper available in a link?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v1
Many thanks.Very interesting.The fixation of achieving 60% herdimmunity might not be relevant. The antibodies produced might vary significantly.Today saw paradoxically a scientist mentioning an asymptomatic patient with very high levels but a severe case with low levels. I think the distinguished Prof Levitt in Israel already was spot on in early February by just studying death data that there was unknown resistance in the population just by looking at the growth figures of the curves.
Over the course of this I’ve seen a number of commentators (mostly non-medics looking just at the numbers, interestingly) – observe that the epidemics seem to follow a pretty standard path, with an early downturn, regardless of state policies, which has always been counter-intuitive and hard to explain. This is one way to explain it, imo.
See, for instance, this guy three weeks ago:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-israeli-prof-claims-simple-stats-show-virus-plays-itself-out-after-70-days/
I have found this rather interesting graph about the outbreak which seems to mirror very much the SARS outbreak 2003. I have no idea really how accurate this is but it is plotted daily to follow the world curve and the US curve with his R values
https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1257102409572265984/photo/1
See my comment below regarding the trend of Rt over time. Seems to fit with this hypothesis. If my calcs are correct, Rt has been falling since 23rd February in England. This is so early that it cannot be related to lockdown or even news coverage, surely?
From New Zealand: https://envirowatchrangitikei.wordpress.com/2020/04/23/an-open-letter-to-jacinda-adern-re-covid-19/
Varying Reactions to Disaster :Boccaccio writing from Florence in 1348 as the Black Death took its toll.
“…Such fear and fanciful notions took possession of the living that almost all of them adopted the same cruel policy, which was entirely to avoid the sick and everything belonging to them. By so doing, each one thought he would secure his own safety“
“One citizen avoided another, hardly any neighbour troubled about others, relatives never or hardly ever visited each other. Moreover, such terror was struck into the hearts of men and women by this calamity, that brother abandoned brother, and the uncle his nephew, and the sister her brother, and very often the wife her husband. What is even worse and nearly incredible is that fathers and mothers refused to see and tend their children, as if they had not been theirs.“
Just to put our current meltdown into perspective.
Yersinia pestis is still one of the most lethal pathogens known, and while it can be treated with streptomycin and chloramphenicol, it is developing resistance in some parts of the world.
My personal GOAT (and the only person or thing to whom I’d ever consider erecting a shrine to/statue of) Dante Alighieri often called liars and lies “diseased”, “feverish”, “delirious”. I’m sure he’d view the current hysteria and delusion as a far greater malady than any actual illness. Even and especially because he lived back when…. you know…. plagues were plagues.
I’d be up for some civil disobedience but the irony is there’s little scope for that, pubs and restaurants and closed, no sporting events. I could drive a lot I suppose but that doesn’t appeal.
The frankly bonkers suggestion of immune passports where those that have had it can go out and those who haven’t stay in (and presumably never get it) just shows how far from reality our politicians and their advisers have strayed.
In theory we could have a protest rally on any open space. But we’d be reliant on electronic media to organise it and get people to come, with the possibility and risk that we’re being spied on. Going out in our cars en masse risks backfiring if emergency vehicles get held up by the congestion.
Immunity passports could have a use; if people were generally allowed out to go to work and get on with their lives but vulnerable elderly people continue to be isolated, an immunity passport could show that you are safe to visit an elderly relative, or anyone who is desperate for some human contact.
Fraser Nelson, The Spectator’s Editor, suggesting today that Sweden’s R number is the same as the UK’s and therefore we could/should follow their lead. I reckon that Fraser is a fellow Lockdown Sceptic.
All in the magazine’s daily podcast https://audioboom.com/posts/7573430-could-a-return-to-normality-come-before-a-vaccine
There’s something a bit odd in the stats. Thoughts welcome. Based on the NHS England data available at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/ It is possible to do a crude forecast of actual end-state deaths per day (which becomes increasingly accurate over time, of course) and hence to calculate a crude rolling estimate of Rt. I did this by calculating a 7-day moving average and then dividing R(t) by R(t-6), assuming a 6-day contagion cycle. Obviously this would then need to be time shifted back around 3 weeks to estimate the true date of R(t). Anyway, the odd thing is that the R(t) has been decreasing continuously since the peak R, which was 12.4 about 3 weeks before 12/03 (albeit too small a sample size for this to be a realistic true estimate of R) down to 0.72 “today” (i.e. about 3 weeks before today in terms of infections). It was 0.76 1 week ago, 0.84 two weeks ago, and 1.02 three weeks ago. Why would R(t) be continuing to fall even now? I would expect, with people getting weary of lockdown and some gradual un-locking-down, that R(t) would remain constant and not continue to drop? And why did it start dropping long before… Read more »
Maybe Something to do with the fact that the virus may be getting less….. virulent as time goes on? So not only are less people circulating and transmitting it, but even the level of transmission in…..viral load terms is also getting smaller and therefore it’s also less transmitt*able over time as a result. ?
This makes sense in my head lol – it’s probably complete bollocks
Improved the calcs a bit and corrected for the lag and the effect is even more apparent. Rt 3 weeks ago was about 0.64; 4 weeks ago it was about 0.73; 5 weeks ago it was about 0.79. Rt dropped below 1 on 21st March but the peak of Rt was on around 23rd February!!!
It’s not reliably possible to calculate Rt for more recent days because of the lag time so it’s conceivable it could start rising again of course, although if that was happening you’d expect to see leading indicators such as increases in hospital admissions, which we’re not seeing.
Anyone want to check my logic?
Would it make a difference if the virus was in the country earlier than previously thought?
It might make the peak a bit less peaky, especially if you assume there were some undetected deaths before the first detected ones, but in terms of the timing of the peak it seems the most rapid spread was around 23rd February regardless of whether there were some earlier cases.
It would be good if you could keep a track on this going forward and update us regularly. Thank you
R is never a single number but different for different sub groups of the population as well as varying over time. For the 75% or so of households who are wholly staying at home and complying with the lockdown, it is effectively zero. Any ongoing transmission of cases is among the 25% of people still “in circulation” where at least one member of the household is still going out to work. Your observed value of Rt applies to this subset only, and is falling as there are fewer susceptible people in circulation. A value below 1 would indicate that herd immunity has already been achieved within this group.
The question is, what happens when the locked-down majority, who are overwhelmingly still susecptible, are released back into circulation.
Hopefully a good proportion of them already were exposed in January/February. Hopefully.
Yeah I get that, but why did overall Rt peak sometime mid-late February? On 3rd March when the first death occurred it was already dropping sharply and by the time the ICL model was released on 16th March, and the news coverage went into overdrive, it had already dropped to around 1.5?
I would have expected Rt to have peaked around the time the ICL model was released because there was minimal social distancing before then, as confirmed by the Apple Mobility Trends.
Seems to me that the explanation is that only a small proportion of the population is highly susceptible, as per the other post about the LSTM modelling.
Earliest Covid 19 case in France now shown to be 27 December.
‘Dr Yves Cohen, head of the emergency services ward at the Avicenne and Jean-Verdier hospitals near Paris, says he went back through the files of patients who had been admitted with flu symptoms in December 2019 and January 2020.
“Twenty-four percent of patients had symptoms which could have corresponded to Covid-19,”
http://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200504-france-first-covid-19-case-dates-back-to-december-flu-retest-shows-pneumonia
And what goes on in France is unlikely to have stayed in France.
There are anecdotal suggestions that Britain had Covid 19 cases as far back as November 2019…….
To answer your last question, because it was freely among us for much longer than originally thought. If we believe the claim that it spreads like wildfire, it was running amock amongst us for around 6 weeks prior to lockdown. As a result of that, plus the subsequent lockdown (and remember, most of us are still going shopping etc, hence being around other people) there are fewer people to newly infect.
I registered as a COVID-19 volunteer before the lockdown started to help out those in isolation and also to deliver medication between hospitals and pharmacies. I was able to use the system from the 4th April and respond to alerts in my local area, but since this date there has not been one COVID-19 alert to help anyone. Other people have also commented in Facebook groups asking if the app is working as they’re not getting alerts either, but everyone is seeing the same, there has been no COVID-19 alerts.
I’m a bit bemused bit it all as there is meant to be this huge crisis going on with all these people ill at home and self isolating with this great need for volunteers, yet in the 4 weeks that have been the peak of the disease we have seen nothing of the sort!
Well the peak of the disease was pretty clearly back in early/mid-March, based on the death numbers alone. Either they suddenly got dramatically better at keeping people from dying after early April, or the rising case numbers after that are just an artifact, presumably, of increased testing. Otherwise, something very odd is going on.
In yesterdays blog very late was posted this new report in English from Robert Koch Institute about the Covid-19 in Germany. It is a must read so I take the liberty to reupload the report.
https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-05-03-en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
Highest priority to put in front of Boris Johnson. Remember, the full lockdown in Germany was 22nd March and anybody reading the curves would see that was AFTER the peak of infection. There were notably very few cases in kindergarten, schools etc. The median age of deaths was 82 years and that is the normal life expectancy in Germany. 87 % of deaths were in over 70. And now the last thing. They had almost the double amount of deaths over 100 years compared to deaths under 40 years.
For heavens sake, it must be possible to protect and quarantine the elderly instead of quarantine the working population. This is insanity. End the lockdown now.
Might we have a referendum on Lockdown-exit, proving the polls yet again wrong?
You mean let the sheeple decide? I think not!
Is there any better way to truly split a population into mutually loathing portions than have a referendum? And on something which is directly visible in their lives at every second? The EU referendum got half hating half, and back, for a question on matters of high politics and distant supply chains, imagine what the fury would be like if both sides actions at every moment of their daily lives drove the other to fury. The only right way to ask the public on this would be to ask each of them, and let each of them make the lockdown/freedom decision for themselves, which funnily enough is what us anti-lockdowners have been saying throughout.
Read Matt Ridley’s article, do some sunbathing, take some Vitamin D and within days the country can get back to normal.
On Star Wars day (May the fourth be with you…) this Quote from Star Wars – The Phantom Menace is especially apt, given the lockdown and the cult-like clapping for ‘Our NHS’.
“So this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause”
Another anthem for lockdown sceptics:
Gimme Some Truth
by John Lennon.
NYT had a great piece on how many corners we would need to cut to get to a vaccine in 2021 and not in 2036….
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/opinion/coronavirus-covid-vaccine.html
Are people really willing to inject themselves or graciously first their elderly parents with a vaccine that hasn’t had enough longterm trials and testing to show it is actually working and protecting them from Covid-19 and not destabilising their immune system any further? No need to be an anti-vaxxer to have alarm bells ringing here.
Maybe we need Toby to start a follow up site http://www.antiwufluvaxxers.com
NO! Lets concentrate on opposing the dangers of lockdown and the dangers of surveillance apps. Saying anything against vaccines gets one tarred with the anti-vaxxer brush and makes it far harder to find sympathy for anything ele you say.
The point was made at the end of the article that after 40 years we still have no effective vaccine for AIDS, but the disease has been effectively controlled via drug “cocktails”. The authors suggest that something similar may be the best way forward for Covid19.
Yes, I would agree that oral drugs are VASTLY better than the horrendous potential fallout from a rushed vaccine (more lethal than the virus, probably), BUT….BUT….BUT…
It’s the friggin’ elephant in the room again! How about optimising people’s chances of surviving any infection (and in healthy under 65s, the fatality risk is tiny anyway) by such things as checking vitamin D levels and tackling metabolic syndrome / insulin resistance via dietary advice? This article, for example?
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/04/13/how-to-defeat-coronavirus.aspx
IOW get people friggin’ healthier! Do people REALLY believe that the secret of good health comes in a bottle from Merck or Glaxo?
According to my GP, they do. Explains a lot.
Because GPs will only look at symptoms and not the cause (i.e. vitamin and mineral deficiencies)
Do GPs actually get paid to promote a certain company’s pharmaceuticals.? I don’t know but this guy seems to think so…
https://www.patrickholford.com/advice/how-gps-are-paid-to-prescribe-ineffective-drugs
Yes indeed. It is the “underlying” conditions that increase the risk incredibly. If obesity weren’t such a problem and we (and the USA) were healthier as a population then Covid would be less of an issue.
Given that the first in the queue will be the quivering extendthelockdownistas I’m all for it as a means of cleansing society of this panicdemic