Covid 19: Where Are We Then?

 What exactly is going on in the UK today? Having only 9 months experience of a new strain of a known branch of coronavirus, our scientific experts are still of the opinion that what we should do is hide. It didn't work before, but they assure us, that was because we didn't lockdown everyone hard enough and the public keep disobeying their masters. 

Evidence suggests the virus was receding before lockdown commenced in March, but science today seems to rely exclusively on predictions and ignores evidence. At the outset, when some science was involved, we knew we had to take care, but wait for herd immunity to do it's thing.

Then someone had a great idea; why don't we get some modelling done on the likely path of the disease. Why not get a known failure to work out what he thinks will happen. He can gather all the data we have on how infectious the virus is (none), any likely existing immunity (unknown), what the fatality rate is (unknown) and various similar parameters that were, at the time completely beyond us.

Using this almost total absence of data, a figure of 510,000 deaths if we don't lockdown was produced. Cue Boris Johnson panicking. 

In the early days, hospitals were the main source of infections and the staff some of the only people allowed to travel and work. To clear space in hospitals for the undeniable tsunami of Covid cases, medically trained people saw no issue with sending people who may, or may not have the disease we are terrified of, to care homes. (To help things along, care homes' PPE was diverted to hospitals).

Hospitals have, of course a terrible record for infection control and so it proved again, killing many of their own. Now, with our sophisticated approach to this disease, we know that we should shut pubs and restaurants, when as many as 5% of infections are thought to come from there. Hospitals remain uncriticised, even though recent figures for those hospitalised with Covid 19 included up to 24% who caught it there!

Students have returned to their universities, a time when we see all kinds of infections soar. But imagine our surprise when this included coronavirus! So, a cohort who are resolutely not ill with the virus leads to all kinds of renewed panic. More dire predictions and lamentation. Lockdowns follow.

Just what are we basing our continued pursuit of lockdown, with all its concomitant misery, economic destruction and unnecessary deaths, on?

Well, we are testing vastly more than previously, targeting where we expect to find it, like university towns and then even more so, the contacts of those testing positive. So we are finding loads. But we don't know if it's 'loads more' or not.

We know that the PCR tests are grossly inaccurate and do not tell us who among them are infectious, which is actually all that matters (it's probably around 10% of the total). Hospitalisation means a patient in hospital, with Covid 19 - but many didn't go into hospital with it. so it is not a representation of the public at large, being infected. 

Then the bizarre notion that we should include anyone who a doctor felt, not definitely knew (they could have tested positive, or had a cough) had coronavirus within the 28 days before they died. Even where the coronavirus had no role whatsoever in their death. And some who were going to die anyway.

Again, the 'died of' Covid will be very much lower than the government figure, which strangely they seem keen to inflate.

We are left with inaccurate tests, leading to unknown numbers of hospitalisations and an unknown number of deaths which causes our politicians and not least, their scientific (!) advisors to go into an absolute panic. There is no other way of describing it.

The other point is; we could be more accurate but we don't seem to want to. We could factor in the inaccuracies but we don't and the public are certainly not alerted to any of this (and the media, outrageously, don't ask).

Me And My Shadow

 So, we have now long known what should have been blindingly obvious from the outset, that the charlatan Neil Ferguson's modelling was, once again, a million miles off track. 500,000 deaths without lockdown. So we shut our country down on his say so.

The test though was Sweden, who didn't lockdown and ran numbnuts programme for their country, producing a figure of 90,000 dead by the end of May. Slightly out Neil, slightly out. By which I mean parallel universe out.

Currently, something interesting is going on as the virus seems to not be as killy as it was. Hospitalisations are down over 96% since the peak and reducing. Deaths are running at 10 a day. But Boris the Weak is absolutely terrified because the massively increased testing is finding more infected souls. Which apparently, no one expected. 

The infected are not getting ill, but that doesn't matter any more! Wear face masks to show your loyalty to the regime. They are pointless as the scientists told us before, but now they are a symbol of those committed to being frightened of their shadow.

However, I hear nothing about what we think is happening with the virus, has it weakened? Have we virtually achieved herd immunity (all that would ever save us - hiding as we did guaranteed a 'second wave')/ If we have got that deplored and laughed at herd immunity, then even the second wave won't happen. 

After all, from the Swedish experience, we should be pretty much done with deaths. If you think we had too many deaths already, then you need to concentrate on the geniuses who decided to ship elderly people out of hospital, untested into care homes, so they could introduce the virus there and kill many. Another outstanding example of the leadership of our wonderful NHS.

Also, causing many more deaths from ignoring the sick, while waiting for the tsunami that never came. But the sloth with which it started return to it's usual role, whilst blaming people for not going to hospital if they were ill, tut!

What this virus has really done is shown up the weaknesses in our public sector and its supposed experts, the talent in the Civil Service for deflecting blame and the ineptitude of government and the mentality of politicians today, who concentrate on entitlement rather than service. Root and branch, Root and branch.

Conservative Confusion

Well this is weird. I distinctly remember a Conservative victory at a General Election, but incompetent panicking has defined the government's reaction to the Covid pandemic. And these are primal Labour characteristics.

Obviously, there is way too much to cover in detail, but let's look at face masks. Originally, we were told these were unnecessary and possibly harmful, they would give people false confidence. We were told about the science behind the decision.

This was handy, because there was a desperate shortage of face masks at the time. But we looked and we saw that it was good. And calmness prevailed.

Then, to ease our way out of the now fairly recognised mistake of lockdown, but without admitting that, we were told we could go to shops again. Then, a while afterwards we needed to wear masks in shops. But not the shop staff. And you don't have to wear them in a restaurant or bar.

I'm assuming that the new update is that coronavirus has become very picky about who it will infect, not people enjoying themselves for instance, and that masks are suddenly efficacious because coronavirus has put a lot of weight on.

But we don't know for sure because we don't need to know the science any more. Just some panic activists and invested scientists saying, 'yeah, blimey you need to wear a mask, because we know it stops large amounts of the deadly big droplets'.

Yes, a mask will help catch a sneeze and smear it over your face, rather than over other people. If you have Covid 19, I'm not sure why you are wandering about, face mask or not, but there you go, that is what 'scientists' fear. If you sneeze, you could try putting your hand over your face, or go really old school and use a handkerchief.

Personally, I don't remember the last time someone fully sneezed over me without trying to stop or mitigate it at all, which is the scenario the 'scientists' present. Remember the government ads telling you that you would die if you hit a brick wall at 30mph, so slow down? Why would you drive into a brick wall at 30mph? If I lost control of a car and was heading at 30mph for a wall, I might press the brake pedal somewhat.

In 2010, the University of Alabama tested face mask efficacy, mainly aimed at pollution and dust. They tested a surgical face mask (one that fits over your nose, closely to the sides of your face and down the neck), a bandana, or piece of folded cloth and a dust mask from a DIY store.

The median particle size was 1.6 microns, which is pretty small. Unsurprisingly, the surgical mask did best stopping around 33% of particles. The 'dust mask' only managed 6.1%!

Coronaviruses however, tend to be 0.1 microns or smaller, so none of the masks would stop it.

So, the masks are useless, except against a sneezing, infected person who isn't quarantining themselves. And currently, your chance of meeting an infected person, assuming they all go out is about 1 in 2500. How many people do you meet a day? And with the rate of false positives in tests, it is reckoned that only around 44% of those listed as positive, actually are.

So yeah, face masks in shops. Great idea. Should see this problem virtually disappear overnight I should reckon.

WHO?

Well, I suppose if someone was going to tell the truth about the emperor and his unclothed state, it was going to be Trump

The World Health Organisation is a United Nations body and like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations itself, it is simply a corrupt non-entity.

In the current Covid 19 crisis they are merely talking and trying to tell you just how important they are. But actually, the boss owes his position to the backing of China, who insisted he be given the role and boy, is he happy to do whatever is necessary to repay the debt.

This pompous carbuncle Ghebreyesus, has colluded with the Chinese authorities to hide and lie about the coronavirus, despite any worldwide consequences. Just as the UN is basically a talking shop of no importance for First World countries, but an excellent cover for despots and dictators.

Again, the IPCC is another make-work project to energise anti-capitalist agendas. Interestingly, the whole Climate Change scam is based entirely on computer modelling (which to be on the safe side, is predicated to find climate change), just like the modelling that terrorised our government into closing down our economy.

In this instance, with no substantive information about the virus being available, a model by Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, said 500,000 would die unless the government did what he said. He was also part of the team that decided in 2001, we should slaughter 6 million animals to end a foot and mouth outbreak, against the prevailing worldwide advice on dealing with outbreaks.

This led to the British Prime Minister and those acting on his behalf, including the police to break the law of the time. (Tony Blair subsequently introduced a new law, making his actions legal and that was also retrospective!)

The needless slaughter of healthy animals, not only showed no understanding of animal disease, but additionally led to huge financial loss and upheaval in UK farming. This kind of disruption seems to be a desired dramatic outcome of a Ferguson projection, as if it is a goal.

Tony Blair gave him an OBE.

A lockdown, such as that which this strange individual insisted was the required action, does absolutely nothing in relation to the disease, except hide from it. This protects the NHS from being swamped of course, which makes sense to buy time to increase capacity. But what did Ferguson suggest from there? It seems, stay in lockdown forever. Pray. And, oh yeah, keep paying his salary.

Naturally, the Western media has gone into overdrive about how ridiculous it is to turn your back on the leading international health organisation leading the way on coronavirus. There is no evidence to support this assertion, but it's what WHO is supposed to do so, well it must be doing it (big government never does anything wrong in the minds of the Left media - look at Soviet Russia and China, Venezuela and North Korea).

But then PHE, a kind of mini-me WHO is supposed to protect the UK from things exactly like coronavirus, but working for a living doesn't seem to have occurred to them. Have you ever seen Yvonne Doyle actually answer a question?

Wouldn't it be lovely if our leaders acted decisively and cut all funding to the WHO, sacked the leadership at PHE and told Neil Ferguson to go and clean toilets.

Give Me Hope, Help Me Cope, With This Heavy Load

Apologies to the late George Harrison for stealing his lyrics, but they seem to fit the times.

It is the essence of the absence we are faced with currently; a lack of hope. Hope is the prospect of things getting better, the light at the end of the tunnel.

What hope is the government giving us? It's going to get worse? Nope, don't think that would cut it. Their strategy for dealing with the outbreak? Well, if they have a strategy it's a closely guarded secret, with less leaking than at any time in the history of government.

The indicators to look for, as to when we can start returning to normal? No idea.

Whilst the information from and indeed even the access to the senior medical figures to answer media questions (even if none of them seem to think any analysis of the issue, leading to proper and searching questions, should trouble their empty little heads), is laudable, when did they get to make policy?

Surely anyone would realise that 'this thing will last six months at least, reviewed every two to three weeks' would be interpreted as 'lockdown for six months'. Because actually, that's what you said.

The government urgently needs to get the message across that there is hope. And then explain why. Now if the reason they can't is because they don't have a plan then we probably are all doomed, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

May I help?

The challenges are - stopping too many people getting seriously ill at once

limiting the disease transmission

planning for future prevention

increasing medical preparedness for higher levels of demand

We can only deal with this virus with knowledge. In the long term a vaccine, but in the short term lethality and spread. We don't have this information. Also, we could do with dialling down the panic in the NHS. The theme is that this is apocalyptic and a tsunami is coming, so doctors and nurses live in fear of that.

Then there is the fear of catching it. I'm not sure why we are hearing so much about how scared medical staff are, whilst the general public (well, the young) don't see what the problem is. Maybe it is because the media, with the goal of sensationalism constantly harp on about it and the BBC only interview union representatives, to get expert medical opinion (about what the [Tory] government is doing wrong).

Politicians have said they don't like the term lockdown and so I offer an alternative that is at least more accurate - hiding. By locking ourselves away and avoiding associating with others (or avoiding non-essential travel, as the police have interpreted it), we are not catching Covid 19.

We are also not building herd immunity. Why is this important? Well, flu could be just as troublesome, but it isn't because we have had long exposure to it's like and many of us are immune (I'm getting on and I have never had flu). That means the virus struggles to find people it can infect and kill.

Don't get me wrong, it kills loads of people every year, but you don't hear much about it. Apparently, if you have a pre-existing condition and catch flu, which then finishes you off, it gets recorded as death from your pre-existing issue (cancer, for instance). Not flu.

But with Covid 19, anyone dying who tests positive is a coronavirus death. It's illogical and doesn't help us understand the lethality of the disease. How many people does it kill? And it is part of the NHS panic. Another is the closure of hospitals to anything else and often, if you turn up with a temperature they want to send you away, rather than you bring this dangerous disease into their hospital (as happened to my one year old granddaughter).

So, the strategy as I see it should be, test as widely as possible to discover the extent of the disease today. If we find a significant proportion of the population have already had it (and I gather something like 40% would confer herd immunity, or something like it), then bingo! Let's reopen the doors.

If it is only partial then get the 'immune' who have had it back to work wherever possible. But we need to know and we need to stop mis-recording deaths and we need to get our strategy across to the public.

If you go back to the early days, all the warnings fell on deaf ears because we have heard it all before; SARS was going to be the apocalypse, Avian flu would kill us all and the delight at the WHO that this time their claims of doom seemed to be getting wings, didn't help. People were getting it and soon got over it, barely noticing.

The simple point that, as a new virus we could all get it at once and swamp the NHS was never clearly enunciated until Boris' broadcast about lockdown. Now, they are keeping from us how we get over the herd immunity issue, all hiding at home.

This crisis has shown there are some truly great people in the NHS, that many things 'impossible' in our medical system can be in place in hours and that large numbers of the administration is entirely unnecessary. Actually creates problems.

We have also seen the talent of politicians to talk to the wrong experts too often and take on what they are told rather than asking searching questions and making the decisions themselves. Boris originally wanted to get herd immunity as quickly as possible and so tried business as usual.

 Now this would risk swamping the NHS, but the reason he really did a U turn on this, was the loudness and shrillness of the 'experts', predicting 250,000 or even 500,000 deaths if he didn't do as they said. Something which, having got their way, their day in the sun, they are now backing away from.

Judge For Yourself

The Daily Mail is carrying a story about Dr Clare Gerada and her experience with Coronavirus. What she says is that she was in New York for a conference and just as she left, New York had declared a state of emergency due to coronavirus. On the Monday she worked as normal with a slight cough. Tuesday she felt very unwell and, unable to get through to 111 went to a coronavirus testing pod. Initially, they refused to test, we are told, because she hadn't been somewhere seen at that time as a threat.

The ex Chairwoman of the Royal College of GP's knew she had coronavirus though, as she never gets ill. She then goes on to describe the horrendous experiences she had as the virus ran through her, including the very rare sore throat. As you can guess from the story being out there, this plucky 60 year old fought it off and is alive and well today.

There are no dates given in the article, so let me fill in some detail. New York declared a state of emergency on 7th March when they had 89 confirmed cases. This means the onset of symptoms occurred on Tuesday 10th March. As today is the 17th, I will assume the story was compiled yesterday, the 16th.

So, our good doctor, ex leader of the GP's union, caught coronavirus in a city of 8.5 million where 89 of them had been confirmed as infected. Let's ignore the going to work with a slight cough, physician first heal thyself, and concentrate on the experience. She caught, suffered immensely and completely recovered in six days.

She went to a pod for testing. The article is very careful here. It says she was initially refused, but she knew she had coronavirus because she is never unwell. I wonder what she would say to a patient running with that line. It doesn't say she was ever tested and I don't know why they would relent. Plus Public Health England guidelines are that if she had the virus the whole pod needs decontaminating.

Plus their first reaction would have been to give her a phone to speak to 111!

So, as you can see none of this story hangs together very well. It seems likely that she is not amongst the 'confirmed' and probably had something else, despite never being ill before.

As an interesting technical detail, which is pertinent when we are talking about the testimony of a doctor, there is also something very casual about her use of language. In a study of the Covid 19 outbreak in China, the analysis states that persons found to have coronavirus almost definitely didn't have Covid 19. Dr. Gerada repeatedly refers to having coronavirus and doesn't mention Covid 19.

Perhaps she is unaware of the research, or doesn't think it matters when addressing the general public. Personally, I like my doctors to be precise and correct in their pronouncements. I figure it kinda goes with the territory.

I leave it up to you as to what you think of this story of an ex union official.

Noble BBC And Coronavirus

Hands up if you think the BBC has done what it sees as it's core responsibility, in a situation like Covid 19 is presenting and that is, to spread as much panic as humanly possible. I don't think they've missed any opportunity, failed to exaggerate and push the narrative.

It is a fabulous organisation, with guaranteed funding, stuffed only with Left ideological staff and certain of it's righteousness and just how benign it's instructions to the population are.

They say they have to pay their senior management huge salaries, to attract the best talent. My question would be, when do you intend to start recruiting talent?