The Covid Inquiry Has Failed to Ask the Most Basic Question: Why Were People Dying?
The explosion of mainstream media headlines following the release of the Hallett Inquiry module two report has concentrated on the conclusion that 23,000 deaths occurred as a result of governmental delays in enforcing lockdowns. While I admire the precision (not 22,000, not 24,000) the 23,000 figure is, as the inquiry states, an estimate based on modelling.
Whose modelling? If that of Neil Ferguson, who had previously been alarmist to the point of hysteria over a foot and mouth outbreak, then the model is fit for the dustbin. Garbage in, garbage out. But Baroness Hallett may not be so wrong – indeed the 23,000 may be an underestimate, but not for the reasons she has wrongly adduced.
SARS-CoV-2 was a novel virus. We now know, but not at the time, that it was accidentally released in China, but the exact mechanisms leading to that need not bother us. What mattered was that it appeared to be both very infectious and potentially fatal. However the fatality numbers are missing something (ignoring whether the figures were of deaths from Covid or deaths with Covid but from something else). Why was it fatal, leading to the acute syndrome of respiratory and other organ failure we now know as COVID-19?
I have read the lengthy report published on November 20th. It is a remarkable catalogue of governmental goings-on, but there is a glaring omission: there is nothing about medicine. There is science, epidemiology, statistics, models, but the fundamental question should have been: what is happening when people get suddenly sick, and how do we treat them if they do? If an infection does not kill people it is usually unimportant: we don’t go berserk over the common cold. If it does we need to know why and fix it. This is not an investigation for epidemiologists, scientists, statisticians, public health doctors, politicians and others who have no experience of managing acute medical emergencies. It is for clinicians – front-line doctors who see an illness, do investigations and arrange treatment.
Where were they? And why has this report completely failed to ask the question – where were the clinical experts?
I have struggled through the full report. By a strange coincidence I submitted my own evidence to the inquiry three years almost to the day since this full report was published. It was an exposition of events and had recommendations. I stand by it years later. The inquiry chose both to ignore it and to not publish it. In the preamble to my evidence I pointed out that I was a physician, now retired, with extensive experience of immune-mediated diseases. As a rheumatologist I dealt with autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. Wearing my rehabilitation hat I managed people disabled by multiple sclerosis, who are prone to recurrent infections especially of the chest and urinary tract, which often led to sepsis.
I began blogging about the pandemic at the end of February 2020. Had I still been working I guess that I would have worked out the pathology of severe disease (for the sake of clarity I am calling simple infections SARS-CoV-2 and the severe complication of it COVID-19) earlier than I did, which was in mid-April 2020. Keeping a blog, a.k.a. a diary, I can be sure of my dates. By the end of April I had, based on my knowledge of immune disease, developed a protocol for treatment which, as it happens, was almost identical to that proposed in the USA at the same time. I had also read extensively about the complications outside the lungs that formed part of the COVID-19 complex and understood what investigations should be done in patients who exhibited early signs of serious illness. What we were seeing was a large outbreak of a hyperimmune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection, otherwise known as a cytokine storm.
I submitted this information in separate emails to Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance and Matt Hancock, following up the last of these with a hard copy. I also offered my services to the SAGE committee, pointing out that it did not appear to contain any clinicians who might understand the pathology. But I did.
I heard nothing and no action was taken on my recommendations.
Thus, when Lady Hallett in her preamble to the latest report says “I have considered whether their decisions were reasonable and justifiable in light of the information that was then known, or which ought to have been known, to determine if things could have been done better and to learn lessons for the future”, the first thing I would ask is: how could any decisions be reasonable and justifiable when they had ignored an expert who was an expert clinician.
Lady Hallett’s preamble contains an interesting statement on Module 1 of the inquiry: “In particular, it found that there were fatal strategic flaws underpinning the assessment of the risks faced by the UK.”
The major strategic flaw, in my view, was that the risk assessment was wrong and based on the wrong premise, namely that there was no way of recovering those who got really sick. As for those who did not, nothing at all needed to be done. In this report she says:
Although the pandemic affected everyone in the UK, the impact was not shared equally. Older people, disabled people and some ethnic minority groups faced a higher risk of dying from COVID-19. For example, when taking into account age, people from a Black African and Black Caribbean background had the highest rates of mortality during the first wave of the pandemic. From the second wave onwards, the highest mortality rates were among people of an Asian or Asian British background.
Correct. But why did no-one ask why this should be? One reason had already been identified and published. I admit I did not clarify this in my own mind until mid-April, when I discovered a seminal textbook published before the pandemic (Cron and Behrens, Cytokine Storm Syndromes, Springer, 2019). Its descriptions, identical to the problems of COVID-19, confirm that some of the significant elements of a cytokine storm depend for their severity on genetic makeup. And guess who was susceptible? I had seen such a case way back and successfully treated the patient. Hallett does not refer to this science; at the time the ethnic risk was attributed to racial discrimination and deprivation, though why one high-risk group of Asian doctors could possibly be described as deprived escapes me. In fact they died because other doctors had not recognised the cause of COVID-19 and therefore failed to administer the right treatment.
Hallett also states: “When faced with a virus with the potential for exponential growth, interventions must be imposed earlier and ‘harder’ than might be considered ideal.”
Why? If that virus doesn’t kill substantial numbers of people the intervention you need is – nothing.
The next point I picked out is valid. Up to a point. Hallett talks about broadening participation in SAGE:
Open recruitment of potential experts and representation of the devolved administrations would ensure that advice to decisionmakers draws on a wide range of expertise. The inquiry also recommends extending the principles of transparency of scientific advice to other forms of technical advice provided to governments, so that the public can understand the range of factors beyond scientific advice that influence decision-making during an emergency.
Science? Technical advice? What about medical advice? Even so I will let this pass, as I offered my medical expertise free and no-one listened, in my opinion a literally fatal error. If you are dealing with a medical disease you need doctors. Actually I think I said that already. It is remarkable again that in the report’s section on understanding severity there is no reference to doctors.
This is, sadly, no new phenomenon. In 1921 the British Medical Journal published a comment on a report from the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, which had become a centre for facial reconstruction in the Great War:
We have received an exceedingly interesting publication… [from] the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, for sailors and soldiers suffering from facial and jaw injuries. … The report… gives an account of the last four years’ working of the hospital, and states that the end of its labours is now happily in sight. The admiration which we had for the Queen’s Hospital has, since reading this report, been greatly intensified, for it would appear… that the committee has achieved its thousands of brilliant results without the aid of any surgeons or dentists, except one honorary consulting surgeon and the presidents. … It does mention, it is true, that at one time some overseas medical officers were at the hospital… but otherwise the entire work of the hospital was apparently carried on by the vice-presidents, general committee, commandant, matron, honorary secretary and treasurer, accountant and auditor… absolutely no mention is made of the existence of any active surgical staff. A leaflet was enclosed in the report, printed in red ink, to which we turned eagerly as perhaps giving some explanation of this unusual method of staffing a hospital, but it merely expressed the regret of the honorary treasurer that, owing to an accidental omission, no mention had been made in the report of the Committee of the National Relief Fund. So the mystery – or the triumph – remains.
Sound familiar? Only 100 years ago! Substitute politicians, civil servants, bureaucrat doctors, statisticians and non-clinical scientists and one could very simply rewrite this antique piece to relate to the handling of the Covid episode.
The report in discussing strategy talks at length about public health measures with no reference to diagnosing severity (Para 1.39-47).
Throughout Section 2 there is detailed description of the political processes informed by non-clinicians. I cannot find any reference to the input of doctors who were either treating or knew how to treat those who became seriously unwell.
In Section 3 there is much reference to modelling, modelling and more modelling. Has no-one in the inquiry come across the well-known acronym GIGO? Garbage in, garbage out as I said at the beginning. That sums up modelling. Don’t get me started on climate change.
Para 3.35 starts us on an Action Plan which does not seem to address the immediate and urgent need there was for research into treatment. It summarises research to “better understand the virus and the actions that will lessen its effect on the UK population; innovate responses including diagnostics, drugs and vaccines; use the evidence to inform the development of the most effective models of care”.
I propounded the last of these, as I have outlined above. It’s no good working in a vacuum. I provided the evidence. It was not used. Why not? It goes on to say it must “provide the best care possible for people who become ill, support hospitals to maintain essential services and ensure ongoing support for people ill in the community to minimise the overall impact of the disease on society, public services and on the economy”.
Indeed it must. It didn’t. The right treatments were not widely introduced in the UK until November 2020, following a trial that only proved what we already knew and what I had outlined in April.
In Section 4.203 the report starts to talk about “scientific advice”. What about medical advice? In this panic situation do we not require it? Pull the other leg.
It was hard work getting through Volume 1, but the start of Volume 2 was depressing beyond belief. I recommend readers look at Section 9, and in particular the table in 9.31 (Table 39). Then see again what was said of Sidcup in 1921: “Absolutely no mention is made of the existence of any active surgical staff.”
Where, in this catalogue of participants, are the active medical staff? SAGE appears to have welcomed all sorts of administrative types, but no clinicians. Would you want a Chief Medical Officer, by definition a bureaucrat, supervising your acute medical care? By the time I reached 9.86. It’s all about science, science and more science. There was a faint hint of rationality. Lucy Yardley, a psychologist is quoted as saying: “There was no time or resource available in the early stages of the pandemic to undertake a systematic search for a wide, representative group or to engage in formal processes for selecting and inviting members… only people with the capacity to free up substantial time for SPI-B from their day jobs and home commitments could make a significant input.” Yeah, right. So I could have made a significant input, being retired and with few home commitments other than weeding the allotment and ironing my shirts. In heaven’s name I offered to help. I am an expert. No systematic search was necessary.
Section 10 covers differential risk. It is not proven yet, but I suspect the risk to elderly people is because their immune system is more volatile. The risk to obese people may be a hormonal issue; they have high levels of a pro-inflammatory hormone called leptin. I have already noted the ethnic issue; my first suggestion of a genetic predisposition was on April 24th 2020, but I was ignored (though ‘The Science’ was to prove me right) and there was much distraction setting up unnecessary committees to hunt for social and economic causes. Developing “cultural strategies” is a nonsense. While transmission may be increased in multi-occupied housing that does not translate to an increased risk of developing COVID-19. It’s the genes that matter, as was first outlined in print in May 2020, but then I suspect none of these bureaucrats know how to look stuff up on the internet.
I skimmed most of the rest. It’s all about irrelevant political process. Maybe I missed in my skimming any reference to those clinicians who had correctly diagnosed the pathology of COVID-19 and sorted out treatment, but I doubt it. It is of interest that the two images of the Prime Minister Boris Johnson (para 12.21, figs 40 and 41) carry the message that staying at home will save lives. This is, of course, incorrect. The public were encouraged to stay at home even if they became ill, which ensured that if they had developed COVID-19 they would be at a higher risk of dying, because hospital admission at a late stage with cytokine storm syndrome has a much worse prognosis. As a corollary to this the one thing that would have saved lives but was not administered in the first six months of the pandemic was the correct treatment for a cytokine storm. Neither has it been commented upon that the suggestion that the NHS be protected from patients is an oxymoron.
In an alternative universe this would have happened:
At the end of April 2020 the Secretary of State, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Officer, were presented with a protocol for the management of the outbreak. Dr Andrew Bamji, a retired consultant rheumatologist with a wide knowledge of immune-mediated disease, outlined the process by which COVID-19 developed, described the investigations that would indicate pending severe illness and presented a comprehensive management plan. He pointed out that in the majority of SARS-CoV-2 infections serious illness did not appear, and thus that all that was required was to correctly treat those who developed COVID-19 and ignore everyone else. He suggested further that particular groups at risk with a genetic predisposition should be withdrawn from front-line medical care. His proposal was backed by existing research confirming that the features of COVID-19 were identical to those already described in other infections, and also that chromosome anomalies were likely to be responsible for differential risk.
The SAGE Committee invited Dr Bamji to join. His arguments were convincing and his strategy was adopted. As a result of early intervention based on diagnostic testing and the immediate administration of appropriate immunosuppressive treatment to those patients who had developed COVID-19, patients rapidly recovered. The fatality rate dropped precipitately. It was agreed that no further measures, such as masks and lockdowns, were necessary. As a result, plans for mass vaccination were deemed unnecessary.
I wish.
Subsequently we have learned that the immunogenic part of SARS-CoV-2 is the surface spike protein, and this is responsible for the systemic features of COVID-19 including vascular damage, coagulation disorders, myocarditis and stroke. It is thus difficult to understand the rationale for vaccination which involves, effectively, getting the body’s cells to generate variable quantities of spike protein for a variable time. Furthermore it is apparent that mutations have diminished the immunogenicity of the spike protein, so it no longer causes the same severe disturbance as the original.
May I turn now to planning? Paragraphs 15.3 et seq. are remarkable in their naïvety. They assume that you can plan how to cross a bridge before you come to it, but worse, plan how to cross a bridge before you even know there is one. With the right experts you don’t have to do this, because the right experts will work “at pace” to match a solution to the problem that is actually there. The only framework required is a list of the right experts.
Finally I reached the end. In Appendix A1.9 comes the statement that consideration must be given to “the initial understanding of, and response to, the nature and spread of COVID-19 in light of information received from relevant international and national bodies, advice from scientific, medical and other advisers”. Indeed. So, given that there appears to have been no medical advice from clinicians who understood the problem, why does the report not castigate the government for not only failing to consult clinicians but turning a blind eye to those clinicians frantically banging on the door?
Following publication there has been a great deal of comment in the press (in particular Lord Frost in the Daily Telegraph was scathing) but the same old tropes emerge: a blind belief in modelling prophesy and a blind belief that the Covid vaccines were safe and effective. Frost wrote:
The fundamental question that we still need answered, and which this report does not answer, is whether lockdowns saved lives. Were they the right response to a disease with a fatality rate of between 0.1 per cent and 0.5%? If we don’t learn this then the whole inquiry is a waste of time, because it has given us no guidance as to what to do if it happens again.
But actually the fundamental question is why, when all that was needed to stop the panic was the adoption of the correct treatment for the seriously ill, were the experts who directly advocated such treatment cast aside?
Lord Sumption wrote in the Times:
The main problem seems to be that Hallett relies almost entirely on the evidence of the government’s advisers. They were contemptuous of outside experts who rocked the boat by proposing different approaches. This is the worst possible kind of groupthink. Yet the inquiry uncritically adopts their line. Experts do not like being contradicted and understandably seek to justify the advice they gave at the time. But rather more is expected of an inquiry chairman who is supposed to be taking an independent view of these matters.
On September 1st 2020 I wrote a letter to the Times saying:
I first suggested protocols for the early diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 in a letter to the Chief Medical Officer in late April. I had no acknowledgement of my original letter, nor to subsequent communications. I proposed the use of steroids in a detailed note to the British Medical Journal on April 28th. Four months later steroids are still not part of treatment guidelines. Had my suggestions (based on scientific evidence) been adopted at the start I estimate that around 11,000 lives might not have been lost. This is the consequence of the government choosing the wrong advisors. If clinicians versed in cytokine storm management had been involved at the start we would not be where we are.
It was not published. Later I revised my estimate to 20,000. Which is, of course, not far from Lady Hallett’s estimate of 23,000. Just a different reason.
But should we blame the politicians? In truth they are medically illiterate and so rely on their medical advisors, who in turn were clinically illiterate (and still are, it seems). The failure to introduce proper treatment regimes for COVID-19 is a failure of those advisors. They are the ones who should be held to account.
I submitted a substantial paper to the inquiry. As I said at the start my paper was politely cast aside, and because I was not called to appear before the inquiry in person it does not appear on the inquiry’s website in the list of evidence. The inquiry interviewed a large number of clinically illiterate bureaucrats and while I feel deeply for those who attended having lost relatives, their experiences are only from a lay perspective. The fact remains that people died because clinicians were ignored, as a result of which the seriously ill were wrongly treated (or in the case of those ejected from hospital to care homes, not treated at all) and many died. This second instalment of the Hallett inquiry report concentrates on process, devised and recalled by people with no medical knowledge who thought fit to exclude experienced clinicians from their discussions. I would be happy to hear from anyone who finds fault with my analysis as submitted and my recommendations for the future.
Dr Andrew Bamji is a retired Consultant Rheumatologist and was President of the British Society for Rheumatology from 2006-8. He blogs here.
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Interesting.
Politicians are basically producers and purveyors of narratives. What they certainly are not is truth seekers.
Once they had their COVID narrative, they couldn’t be less interested in the actual truth.
Politicians are also not very bright.
I disagree. I think they develop a selective way of viewing things that enables them to be convincing. They are able to ignore inconvenient truths subconsciously.
That is exactly what they want us to think.
You are too kind just calling them “not very bright”.
It seems this applies to medics as well as politicians because the reactions to doctors suggesting alternative treatment regimes were viscious or viscious. Scorn was poured on repurposed (and cheap) drug efficacy with trials sabotaged. Top epidemiologists, like Gupta and Battachayra treated like cranks.
I guess a cynic would say: if the mortality rate could have been reduced with easy and inexpensive treatment, the panic would have subsided and the emergency control measured could have been avoided.
But would the ruling elites have wanted that…?
Had the PTB accepted a simple solution, they would have had to subject the vaxx to proper testing, as the whole point was to get their ‘miracle’ vaxx into as may people as possible, they could not and still won’t countenance the likes of HCQ or Ivermectin.
Why wouldn’t they have?
The problem I see is that once most of them had been corralled into pushing the narrative of the new, super lethal virus that can only be controlled with a vaccine,, there was no stepping back from that.
After the insane extreme measures they had forced on us, what were they supposed to do? Say, actually guys, false alarm, looks like it’s not as bad as we thought, so, carry on as usual? Some may have wanted to, but I’m sure the vast interests that stood to profit from it all were standing behind them with pointy bayonets making sure there was no retreat from the narrative.
As long as the public could be made to believe it, there was no retreating from the story. It only collapsed when people were still “testing positive” after multiple jabs and realised (mostly to themselves) that they were being had.
We’ve done this post-mortem to death on this site. They could have just asked us and saved 200m quid. (If they really wanted to know what happened and why.)
There are still quite a lot of people who still think it was a deadly existential threat and welcome the Hallett report, and agree we acted too late and didn’t go far enough.
To those people I would say, you do what you want, hide away in your hermitically sealed homes, disinfect everything, and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives.
But inexpensive treatments were available, especially HCQ which has never killed anyone in its many years of use as a anti-malaria prophylactic.
My GP refused to prescribe me HCQ. Even when I said it was for a trip to Africa. I think he had Yellow Fever.
This is a brilliant article. I really feel for Dr Bamji. His expertise should really have been recruited in the fight against the disease, but he was ignored. How frustrating for him, and how tragic for those whose lives could have been saved. The people in positions of power at the time (and, it appears, now as well) were so focussed on the idea of “prevention is better than cure” that they carried it to the logical extreme: “all prevention, no cure”.
The Hallett inquiry is similarly blinkered, as we always knew it was bound to be. It started from the premise that the actions taken were the correct ones. No contradictory evidence was to be taken seriously, and so we are condemned to repeat the same mistakes again the next time a novel virus is released/discovered. I fear that, with weakened economies and growing poverty, the outcome of another such “pandemic” will be even more deadly than the last.
The reason that the authorities’ response was so very bad was that an extremely rich and powerful lobby – the international pharmaceutical industry – was determined to get mRNA technology into as many arms as possible. As many of that lobby’s agents were working in the corridors of power – and were seen as ‘expert scientists’ – that industry was ideally placed to pull off its great coup. Dr Bamji, and others with equivalent experience, would obviously have been far better advisers in the circumstances but they don’t have a rich and powerful lobby pushing them forward.
“governmental delays” – or political over-reaction? Whatever the numbers are, it looks as if a lot of damage has been done, especially for the more vulnerable.
Great article. In my (admittedly limited) experience, computer models don’t work unless there is a great deal of accurate data, but what does work is the “gut feel” of people who have a long track record in working in the field. In this case, tapping into the empirical or intuitive knowledge of people like Dr Bamji would have yielded far better results than SAGE government officials, scientists and statisticians.
They were and are still working to a plan….Vaccination cures everything,
Thanks Doctor.
Anyone who reads this who has half a brain will be fuming with rage and disgust at how this advice was ignored either through stupidity or evil or both.
I would be interested to know from the Doctor what the correct treatment protocol is.
There is no ‘correct’ protocol because we’re all different and have different levels of immune system function. It’s more a treatment ‘concept’ rather than a specific protocol, if you get what I mean.
Well sure but there must be some generalisations to be made. From what I know, most autoimmune disorders are treated with similar medicines, for example.
Nothing was/is allowed to interfere with Gates of Hell’s mad plans…..
Steroids. It’s in the article.
There is a series of tests that indicate the developing of a cytokine storm. These include certain blood tests that are markers of immune overactivity and the use of pulse oximeters to assess blood oxygen levels (these last very cheap, and I arranged for all my family to have one). If the level falls below 90% trouble is coming. The whole set of cytokine storm symptoms and signs can be stopped by a single high dose of corticosteroids and, given the excess relapse of an inflammatory chemical called IL-6, a specific blocker called tocilizumab. Supportive treatment may be necessary including antibiotics if there is evidence of a coexisting bacterial infection. This regime was finally recommended officially towards the end of January 2021. The government saw fit to organise a trial of steroids in May 2020 despite my pointing out that the evidence for success already existed.
Thanks
Are you basically saying that the only true “Covid” deaths were largely preventable with this approach and that the true number of “Covid”’deaths was in the tens of thousands?
Dr John Campbell did an FOI on the number of death certificates that had only Covid written ot it. I believe the number was about 17,000.
The onflated numbers came from the elderly with other co-morbidities and the antics of midazolam Matt.
I thought that the asthmatics/COPD sufferers would be the first to die, however, as many of them were on steroid inhalers this didn’t happen. At the time there was a push for giving budesonide(a steroid) via an inhaler to those that were ill. For some reason it was dismissed.
The whole episode was a sh1tshow and common sense went out of the window.
At a very early stage I found an Italian study that suggested people with rheumatoid arthritis on biologic therapy (which is immunosuppressive) had a lower risk from COVID-19. In other words, having your immune system suppressed was beneficial. This of course fits the hypothesis that severe disease is caused by the immune system going into overdrive; if it’s suppressed, it can’t do that.
Thanks for that information.
I believe that true Covid deaths were preventable. We will probably never know how many, in the early stages, we’re with rather than from, and this problem is underlined by the apparent fact that the right tests were not employed. Dr Pierre Kory wrote an excellent piece on why ventilation was the wrong treatment. Ventilation undoubtedly contributed to the death toll.
Very sad, and the reasons for this (stupidity or evil) very troubling. Thanks for the info.
Covid was a vehicle to introduce tyrannical control of the Western population. All countries were in lockstep, same propaganda, same lies, same threats. Some more brutal than others. It was chilling to see. I wonder when the next one has been arranged for.
As mad as that sounds, that is exactly what they are upto.
Viruses don’t exist. If you do believe in those magic fairies you have to produce proof which was never offered. bat -> pangolin -> recombinating -> seafood market -> human host -> transmitted by ? -> induces illness how?
Dead RNA cannot cause illness or death.
These people were murdered by stabs, midazolam, morphine, pillow over the face, stress, existing conditions or all the above.
Thank you, Doctor. You have the patience of a saint to be able to watch helplessly whilst the government and its ‘experts’ waffled and floundered for nigh on two years. You have certainly saved us the effort of reading any more Hallett
It is peculiar how a few people, including those of us who were around at the opening of this site [then called Lockdown Sceptics] knew back in Spring 2020 that the whole thing was being handled incorrectly, and was either a cock-up, or a conspiracy. Although Toby probably still tends to the former, I look at Net Zero and tend to the latter. The political landscape has changed, of course, and a Marxist Energy Minister would want to deliberately destroy our economy – which he is doing by using Net Zero [= Tory legislation]. I can quite see how Toby credits BoJo with ‘management by cock-up’; BoJo is a dreadful manager, the worst possible candidate we could have been saddled with
Net zero was Liebour legislation from 2008 with the Climate Change Act and then May’s deranged forcing of the 2050 deadline into law.
Many laymen knew much of this viscerally and their indignation and exasperation was and still is almost unbearable. For an experienced, informed, highly trained medical professional such betrayal, arrogance and wilful ignorance must exceed incredibility. Almost. The comparison with The Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup is too kind – that was more a matter of stealing credit for something. What Dr Bamji describes so vividly appears to be the banality of evil.
”What mattered was that it appeared to be both very infectious…”
Was it? Most people didn’t get it. What was very infectious was the PCR Testing disease – now that was a a pandemic.
Observation from Diamond Princess cruise ship showed many did not get infected despite close proximity of everyone on board and a shared ventilation system.
100%….eventually the penny will drop for the masses who have been brainwashed.
We now know that at best the Drosten PCR test recipe returned 86% false positives, and probably nearer 90+%. Of course the reality was that what it was finding in the remaining 10-14% of tests is the Moderna-patented spike protein from 2016 which was used in the “vaccines” that were seeded from mad US ex-military types. See Paula Jardine’s articles about the Origins of Covid at The Conservative Woman website. Not a real pathogen, one created as a bioweapon.
I am still seething with anger over this, indeed incandescent with rage would be a better description. The people concerned who did this should be strung up from lampposts with piano wire and left to rot with notices all around explaining exactly what they did.
Fair point ! But initially the videos of people in China dropping dead in the street were scary. The Diamond Princess outbreak data got lost in the hysteria.
I managed to read about the Diamond Princess, I think thanks to this site which I arrived at via someone responding to comments on the Peter Hitchens blog. I am a recovering hypochondriac though so I did extra research to understand what the threat was and concluded I was better off ignoring covid than worrying myself to another nervous breakdown about it.
Of course the inquiry should be answering the question as to why people were dying from covid. But, if it had asked that question, it would have found that people were dying in pretty much the same way they did every year since time immemorial, from ‘the old man’s friend’, pneumonia. That would have led to a very short and relatively inexpensive inquiry. The reason, of course, for that question not being answered is that the inquiry head, Lady Hallett, was invited to set her own terms of reference. Why? Because neither she nor any other relatively distinguished lawyer would have accepted the appointment under any other set of circumstances. The inquiry is a poisoned chalice. No-one, least of all Lady Hallett, clearly a dyed in the wool ‘pandemic’ believer, and most particularly not Mr Johnson, who appointed her, wanted to hear the unvarnished truth regarding the virus and its associated illness. As we all (on here) now know (the information available from at least as early as 06 Feb 2020), covid was a novel common cold coronavirus that killed the elderly and infirm, as all common colds/influenza like illnesses do, more often than not as a consequence of secondary… Read more »
There was no ‘disease’, pandemic or pathogenic virus. This is not why people become sick and has repeatedly been falsified using the scientific method. Germ theory is exactly that, a theory which is finally being exposed as the money-grabbing pseudo-scientific fraud it always was. The solution to the virus existence dichotomy is to properly isolate and purify one using Koch’s Postulates (i.e logic). This has never been done. The solution to the pathogenic virus dichotomy is a suitably powered challenge study (contagion study) using the previously isolated and purified virus. This has never been done because of the above. That said, contagion studies that have purportedly used an isolated (but it wasn’t) virus falsify contagion (of course it did). The solution to the vaccine ‘safe and effective’ dichotomy is to test the vaccine using a suitably powered double-blinded RCT against an inert placebo (e.g saline) and other treatment protocols. This has never been done for any vaccine on the current US childhood vaccine schedule. As a scientist, I find people’s lack of enthusiasm for demanding good quality, transparent, and logical scientific research alarming. If those in power fail to reverse the continuing pseudo-scientific methodology and circular reasoning that’s weaponised by… Read more »
Why no consideration of treatment? The answer is quite obvious: treatment occurs in hospitals, and hospitals are untouchable to a woke left wing public inquiry, except where there is involvement of the private sector, such as the supply of PPE.
The Vaxx was supposed to solve all problems…..except is made everything way worse.
The last thing Gates of Hell and Co wanted was experienced clinicians around, they would have diagnosed what was going on……what they wanted was a full on panic, so they could jab everyone, with their new wonder vaxx…the only problem was the Vaxx did more damage than the virus….and now we have a full on Cancer epidemic, tks to the vaxx wrecking peoples immune systems.
The next enquiry should be into what really happened and why and whether we hang them, or just keep vaxxing them, until they die.
Because they were old, mostly but some were generally ill with weakened immune systems.
The evidence that large numbers of people were killed by a weird and wonderful virus as opposed to neglect or outright murder in hospitals is patchy to say the least.
What’s more, having survived Covid in 2020, nineteen residents at The Sands, a nursing home in Morecambe, died within 3 months of the first Covid jabs being administered:
“At The Sands, 19 of these people lost their lives during the third national lockdown from January to March this year. [2021]”
https://www.lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/lancashire-care-homes-saw-most-21115762
lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/lancashire-care-homes-saw-most-21115762
Having read this article I feel moved to share my experience of Covid. I was and still am a lockdown, masking, vaccine, social distancing etc sceptic and had read the Lockdown Sceptic avidly since becoming aware of it quite early on. I did not experience COVID first hand all through the initial crisis, including travelling masked by air to Tenerife for which I was required to be tested. Until the summer of 2024, when as a very fit 65 year old I travelled by air again, no test or mask required, to Tenerife. I knew on the plane that I had caught something, which I expected to be a head cold which I had often experienced while flying long haul for work . Tickly nose, sneezing, eyes watering etc. and over the next 3 or 4 days it descended into my chest. After 3 days I was coughing agonisingly, I was wheezing, my chest was sore, I had a horrible pounding headache, I couldn’t swallow at all, so no medication or food and even worse, no water. I couldn’t sleep. And I was dehydrated and weak, on my own in a sweltering hot apartment. Luckily there was a hospital 400… Read more »
How do you know it was “covid”?
Sounds like bad flu to me.
Why did they give you steroids?
Tested positive for Covid at the hospital.
I have had a bad flu. The most recent bad flu that I had previous to Covid lasted longer, had a much higher fever including night sweats, coughing and phlegm, musculoskeletal aches, but not “razor blade” throat or difficulty swallowing. This was not it.
Steroids in line with Dr Bamji’s protocol mentioned in his article. Steroidal anti inflammatories. For the inflammation in my upper respiratory tract and lungs which was impeding my breathing and especially swallowing. And they took effect within minutes. I walked away in a much better condition than when arrived.
Thanks for the info
I’ve been ill a few times since “COVID” with varying degrees of discomfort but I couldn’t honestly say it was much different from other vague sets of symptoms I’ve had in the past
If covid exists I guess I must have had it by now but perhaps it didn’t trigger the same thing in me as it did in you
Clearly. Amongst other things like genetics, it also appears to be more severe with increasing age and with co morbidities. I was a healthy 65 at the time.
Didn’t you just read the article? Dr Bamji specifically advocates steroids to treat the auto-immune and inflammatory issues caused by Covid
Well yes but I was looking for confirmation that this was specifically in response to the “Covid”
Two reasons why steroids are good for- first, that they are anti-inflammatory and second (as I realised with some of my sepsis patients) the body’s own adrenal response was inadequate. Glad someone there had some sense!
At what point did steroids become part of the standard practice for treating “Covid”, if indeed that is the case? Has anyone done a study of the effect on mortality/outcomes of “Covid” patients?
No idea. This was in 2024 in Spain, in a private/paying hospital. And there was no hesitation, it was not their first rodeo. It’s not like they had a specific antiviral to pump me full off, which they could have done if it was a bacterial infection. They were treating symptoms, and the symptoms causing the greatest discomfort and risk were inflamed respiratory tract and lungs. Plus hydration, pain relief and glucose. Perhaps the successful use of steroids is being kept a secret to keep the Covid mystique and “vaccine” uptake alive.
Interesting – thanks. Glad they sorted you out.
👍
Having avoided catching covid until summer 24, I came back from France on a crowded ferry with a bloke coughing his guts up in the gents next to me. 2 days later I became ill with a headache and raging sore throat which tested positive with an LFT. It was totally unlike flu, which I had 7 years before. I doubled my anti viral cocktail based on the Zelenko protocol- Quercetin, vit B3, vit C + zinc, nattokinase. I recovered after a few days but missed the only child’s wedding despite having no symptoms.
November 2020 in the UK, after an unnecessary trial proving what was already known, namely that cytokine storms responded to steroids. Tocilizumab was added by February 2021. The classic acute outbreak of CSS was precipitated by an experimental drug, TGN1412, at Northwick Park Hospital. See https://nibsc.org/about_us/worldwide_impact/tgn1412.aspx. The clinical features are unmistakable. I was a spokesperson for the British Society for Rheumatology at the time and was contacted by the Daily Telegraph to ask what had happened, and believe I was the first person to correctly identify the pathology. It was correctly treated and nobody died. If you look on the Net for the clinical features of cytokine storms you will find many causes, including bacterial sepsis, other viral infections and even Ebola and Marburg. Drs Kory and Marik in the USA should take credit for designing the first protocol but my very similar one was the first in the UK. It helps in making a diagnosis if you have seen the syndrome before, as I had, and any reasonably competent physician should be able to put two and two together, even in the abstract (quite a bit of learning is from paper based case histories) in that situation. As an… Read more »
Interesting. I don’t remember any big fanfare about that. The focus was on “vaccines” by then. I do remember in the early days a couple of medicines with anti inflammatory properties were suggested as low cost, safe treatments but those suggesting it were labelled as evil or incompetent or conspiracy theorists. At least one of those medicines was withdrawn from sale in France in the very early days.
It would be interesting to subject those involved to truth drugs and lie detector tests.
Because if there was an existing effective treatment, for example hydroxchloroquin (mentioned by the bad orange man) or ivermectin (horse paste) or as we have seen above, steroids they could not have used an emergency use approval to bypass normal regulatory safety protocols for the experimental genetic biotoxin jabs.
It’s hard to avoid that conclusion
Me too, thanks, they were quite impressive, apart from the masking police. But as Dr Bamji said, it was protocol. Which seems to have been kept a secret. In any case I was back to about 70% fit within a hour, once the iv bag had run in, I had been quite unwell, not to put too fine a point on it.
From the ONS
Death from flu and pneumonia in 1999. – 60,018 and in the 7 years from 1993 to 1999 an average of 55,000 /y – a
total of 387,384 over the 7 years.
Death from Covid in 2020 – 73,766 and in 2021 67,258 – an average of 70,000 /y
I can’t remember a lockdown or face masks for flu in the 90’s to save all those hundred of thousands of lives – I’m not advocating there should have been one!
I decided I would take some measures to dampen any cytokine storm but otherwise carry on as usual.
I printed out my protocol in preparation to force A&E staff to give me or my wife steroids should we have got sick, together with a list of the necessary tests. We both acquired SARS-CoV-2 despite two vaccine shots but didn’t develop a cytokine storms you…
I was concerned that I might not be sent to hospital ( I am now in my mid 70’s ) my own approach was to take high dose vitamin D 4,000 units and selenium, if Covid had progressed to a point that recovery was in question I had considered nicotine ( Dexamethasone as a prescription only medicine was not available to me )
I did get Covid but it was relatively mild.
Are you able to explain in layman’s terms how the “vaccine” is meant to work. As someone with a history of fairly acute autoimmune disorder, now thankfully in long term remission. I decided to steer well clear of the “vaccine”.
I’m not qualified to give any detailed response but i’m glad that you don’t have that dilemma. I stopped taking the vaccine after the the third dose when the evidence started to build up that it was not particularly effective and might even be deleterious to health.
These people don’t think “covid” was novel: Vascular Symptoms Caused by COVID-19 are Utterly Unique and Unusual… Just Like Every Other Respiratory Pathogen Ever
You are right. But I have to ask, ‘why did the medics on the ground not use steroids? Why did they not look at treatment suggestions? Why the use of ventilators? They could have made a difference without political
interference.
Because effective therapies (dexamethasone, Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine) would have prevented the issue of emergency use authorisation for the experimental genetic biotoxin injections, thus sidestepping the usual regulatory oversight and process. And big, medium sized and small pharma or their shareholders, not to mention any stakeholders in receipt of a kickback, would not have been happy
What I mean is that medics could just have made a clinical decision to use steroids. They use steroids all the time. That would have been easy. They could have made the decision not to use a ventilator. All within the clinical decision making.
So why didn’t they?
Because they are ruled by protocols which are top down, administrative and ultimately political. Medics don’t just make clinical decisions any more, they follow protocol or get cancelled. They would not be allowed to undermine the sanctity of the poisoned jabs.
Why were people dying. First of all, mentioning Professor John Ioannidis, Stanford, who very clearly explained the IFR of covid would have been a start. Sadly, he was not given a mention by ms hallett. Here is a very good article from Joel Smalley, data analyst, from his substack of Nov 24, 2025. “Uk did too little too late”, leading to thousands more covid deaths says inquiry. Actually “doing more, sooner would have resulted in even more deaths” says Joel Smalley, with the data to prove it. Have a look. And finally please read a Martin Neil and Jonathan Engler paper “Vascular symptoms caused by Covid-19 are utterly unique and unusual…..just like every other respiratory pathogen ever”. Nov. 24, 2025. One of their points about covid was it is not a “novel” virus. It is very similar to all other ILI’s(influenza like illnesses). one of the few to testify at this inquiry with a soupçon of intelligence was Professor Carl Heneghan, Oxford, and look what they did to him! If you have not watched the lawyer who interviewed him, I beg you to watch. How on earth was this lawyer’s one sided questioning and commentary allowed? We just witnessed an… Read more »
Dr Tess Lawrie was another clinician who wrote to Boris with information about early treatment using ivermectin and was totally ignored. This must have lead to thousands of additional deaths.
Taking the year as a whole there were no excess deaths.
The only pandemic was one of fear of ILI’s generally aka “Flu” – which disappeared, maybe taking a rest in care homes.
Lol.
I agree with Dr Bamnji but should add the need for pathologists! In 2020 I was recently retired as a pathologist (Dr Amanda Herbert) specialising in diagnosis, screening, and keeping people alive rather than finding out why they died — and believed that many lives were lost by not treating people with dark skin with Vitamin D — which was regarded as a ‘racist’ thing to say. Back in the day when I read the Guardian, I wrote the attached letter explaining this fact. Needless to say it was not published — so here goes at this rather late date.
I had a friend, younger than me (more of an aquaintance I hadn’t seen him for a while) of West Indian heritage who died very early during the first wave of Covid. Which always puzzled me, until yesterday when I read this article, your letter confirms it, in my mind.
In support of my recent comment from Dr Amanda Herbert, I should explain that I am a keen supporter of Toby Young using my married name. But Amanda will do.
There was no pandemic only 5% of death certificates had just Covid on them so 95% died from other causes. Even if the final figure was 200,000 deaths that’s only 10,000 over a 3 to 4 year period i.e. 2,500 to 3,500 per year. Tragic though those deaths were that in my book is NOT a pandemic. And that’s if you believe Covid was not rebranded flu.
The Doctor is absolutely right to call out the astonishing absence of early treatment that could be administered at home. I am surprised that he does not mention Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin as very suitable medicines for this purpose, being used in the US.
What was more surprising was the suppression of these drugs by the regulatory bodies to give a clear path for the toxic Covid injections.
That was a red flag that could not be ignored and started one of the biggest medical crimes in our history.
I didn’t mention ivermectin because I know nothing about it. Hydroxychloroquine is used in inflammatory joint disease but isn’t terribly effective and I don’t believe it has much of a place. Admittedly the trials done proved it was highly toxic but it was employed at a ridiculously high dose. Its mode of action is slow, far slower, I think, than would be helpful in cytokine storm syndrome. But you are right; in sensible doses neither is particularly dangerous and the crackdown on them, given that, is still something I don’t understand. However, it nudges me towards conspiracy from cock-up.
You didn’t mention vitamin D3. Prof Angus Dalgleish told Whitty about fhis but was ignored of course. This far North we are all short of D3 but dark skinned people particularly. Cheap, available and increases the body’s immune response
Vit D Actively suppressed like HCQ and Ivermectin.
Agree.
Doctors who had experience with respiratory infections knew what drugs to use and that it was a good idea to treat covid before it got right down in the lungs. But anyone who mentioned drugs other than those specified was censored on podcasts. Same with any criticism of the experimental injections
Good to see someone else calling out the elite SAGE “experts” as a bunch of clowns. Funny how they appeared out of nowhere, over a hundred of them, noses in the trough, utterly useless academic puppets for their Government masters. Track and trace, a complete farce for £34Bn.