Dave B
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There was nothing disingenuous about comparing the first 13 weeks of 2018 to the first 13 of 2020.
As you say 2017-2018 influenza out break was at its peak around December as usual.
The ONS data was in yearly week one to week 52 spreadsheet type files.
Influenza outbreaks in the UK are supposed to kill 8000 to 30,000 so an extra 14,000 for a 3 month period of the end of a bad outbreak is to be expected.
Post event data correction is good but there is no evidence of anything dramatic here.
Just grumblings from the ONS that 10-15% of death data comes in too late eg more than 2 weeks after the event.
Nobody knows how many of the 5-7000 people who are dying with covid are dying from it.
Nobody, I asked ONS by email I was amazed I sent the email a 8pm got a reply by 10 am next day. I thought they would be busy.
Was planning to use a friend to ask who works on NHS databases and has an NHS email address in the “Manchester area” ; she provides stats to ONS.
She doesn’t believe it either and wants to put her name to a petition.
Doctors or groups of doctors of say 5 in intensive care units having filled out 30 covid death certificates might have and idea now?
We will have a better idea on the 14 april when the next set of UK ONS data comes out.
I really do not know what to expect.
As to peaks
if you look at china one and the italy one they are as a pattern similar
The peak after 3-4 weeks of a start and begin to tail off.
Do it youself!
look to the histograms at the end.
And then uk
Actually that pattern is typical of infectious or fast spreading coronavirus.
It reminds me of that Rockerfeller University guy grinding his teeth.
“ don’t ask me I am a scientist not a psychiatrist”
And bugs and nature dig Gaussian distributions
although it looks more like Poisson to me?
As to its fatality or it case fatality rate over the last 10 days or so it is being revised down even by the protagonists the Imperial college London.
It is now believed by all that its infectiousness or how fast it spreads is far greater than originally believed.
R0 and Rt numbers etc.
What that means is that as they know roughly when it started in any location they can extrapolate how many had actually had had it at any point in time.
These are real ballpark figures but that is ok;
they discovered nuclear fusion by using a black bucket of water and a thermometer left in the sun.
Having a guesstimate of how many people died “from” it at that point in time gives you fatality rate.
Hence Neil Fergusson of imperial college London who stampeded the herd has rolled back from 500,000 to 250,000 and to 20,000.
Two thirds of which would of died anyway according to him.
There was a scoffing article in the new scientist on that around 25 march.
The Oxford University team of Sunitra Gupta believes as of 10 days ago said
up to 68% of people had already had it.
There is bad blood there that hit the headlines; what a bunch of shits that work on the imperial team!
This is so fast;talking about stuff at peer review stage!
I have read the abstract.
Of course to do this properly you have to test a large random sample for covid to see how many people had it.
Iceland did it early on.
This corona virus Pandemic data has to be looked at with caution as it is heavily skewed by increasing testing amongst other things.
And that test results are 2-4 days late.
The apparently long incubation time etc etc it is highly unlikely any positive affect of lockdown will appear for another couple of weeks.
The false positive potential of RT-PCR testing you need clean working practices.
That big spike in the china data oops.
I have used it in the past for out sourced testing to pick up mandarin in orange juice and to identify rogue mannitol producing bugs from plant biofilm contamination.
So I can talk the talk even if I don’t do that shit myself.
But it is general to analysis, the test is very sensitive and you have calibration samples sitting around on the lab bench ; who hasn’t done it?
The Swedes , sensible people, have had no lockdown and have peaked and stabilised despite ramped up testing “seek and you shall find”.
In the table they have also sensible used a 7 day moving average to iron out statistical noise.
They are about 4 weeks into it.
7 day moving average deaths and case started to flatten on 5/4.
I believe at the moment, now, that this is highly infectious or very fast spreading and it is killing old and vulnerable people.
I suspect that there will be an extraordinary spike in deaths next week in the ONS UK data.
And that spike will be historically exceptional for April.
And it will be picked up and maybe the next outside the 2Z score or 5% probability of statistical noise or whatever.
Nobody, nobody knows how many of that 5 or 7 thousand in the UK actually died of covid.
Nobody knows how many people are dying of Covid without anyone knowing about it.
But they will be added to next weeks ONS data.
If this covid had started in September or October like the 2017-18 flu it could have equalled it and claimed 30K; I really didn’t and haven’t looked at the late 2017 data just assumed it would be ramping up to a peak at the beginning of 2018.
It is a bit disingenuous using 2018 as it was a bad once in 10 years one and 2019 was fairly good and 2020 started well.
This is the problem as you can’t speak rationally without being accused of being nazi Malthusian.
From 31 March 2020 these figures also show the number of deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19), based on any mention of COVID-19 on the death certificate.
It is undoubtedly very dangerous for very ill old people.
However my employer across sever manufacturing sites employs 7000 people.
HR informed me yesterday that we had had no covid fatalities.
Yes I know Flu isn’t nice.
Last year around February I had to go into hospital for the first time in 30 years and I wasn’t happy about it as people die in hospitals.
They wanted to keep me in there for a couple of days for observation as things were quiet.
I was amazed I expected to be left sleeping on a corridor.
There was a really nasty influenza virus lurking around at the time but it wasn’t very infectious.
I got it there though and ended up much more ill than I went in.
They tested me after I got worse rather than better.
And was whisked out of the ward I was in to an isolation ward at 4am in the morning as the on site RT-PCR lab, I think it could have been serological, night shift picked it up.
It almost killed me.
how about Stateless Socialists ?
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/soc-anar.htm
see if links still don’t work
By week 13 2020
which ends 27<sup>th</sup> march
According to UK office of national statistics
week 13 2020 = 150,017 have died
including 642, by then , covid deaths .
By week 13 of 2018 which ends 30<sup>th</sup> march
Week 13 2018 = 164,625 had died.
This high figure was generally attributed to an influenza outbreak.
[Which actually seemed to run on a bit for another 3 weeks or so
if elevated deaths above the normal for that time of year is any indication.]
Anyway by this time in 2018 14,500 more people than now had died ; because of a influenza outbreak.
As covid in the UK does look like peaking
[ using say South Korean data and time frame as a model]
And 7000 have died with it to date.
It is highly unlikely that the high 2018 [influenza ] annual UK deaths is going to be exceeded this year.
There was no lockdown in 2018 and who even remembers the flu epidemic?
The ONS data is only available up to week 13. and in that week only 539 people suspected of covid 19 infection died.
And although there is a detailed breakdown etc there were too few deaths by that week to make any firm conclusions apart from perhaps the deaths were a little bit high for that time of year.
And that about 85% of covid deaths were amongst the over 65’s, which is typical from other national datasets.
The ONS are going to include a more detailed breakdown of associated causes of death very soon.
[personal communication]
There is controversy over the encouragement of doctors etc to mention covid on death certificates even when there is uncertainty over it being a cause of death or even a significant contributor.
It is highly likely that there will be another waves of lockdown deaths later that will impact the annual death data.
Eg
Suicides , the annual rate is about 5000 I think , data is often quite delayed. Although there are already reports of spikes in suicide data in the US. They estimate that there are about 70,000 deaths of despair per year in the US [ suicide and drug overdose].
Delayed and postponed necessary medical treatment and delayed early diagnosis
eg cancer treatment
will produce premature deaths.
The NHS will continue to be overloaded for sometime due to backlog.
After the end of lockdown.
And that will continue to cause further deaths.
To say nothing of stuff like delayed hip replacements.
It will obviously much worse in the US as millions more unemployed workers will no longer be able to afford basic medical care for themselves or their family.
The affects on mental health and just general misery of and economic collapse will be incalculable.
And probable incomprehensible to people who have no direct experience of it.
Sweden had no lockdown.
And appears to have almost got through the worst of it without any serious problems.
Ok
They are not testing people who are asymptomatic.
They are testing people who are symptomatic ie got a cough high temp or whatever.
Go to hospital and say I am feeling fine and asymptomatic but I would like a bat flu test for piece of mind please.
The will tell you fuck off out of here you git.
Unless you are Prince Charles , Boris Johnston, the minister for health or Niel Fergusson who said 500,000 are going to die from it.
They are testing nurses etc who may have come into contact with it I will have to remember to come back to that.
Asymptomatic; symptomatic ratio for bat flu; what is it and why does it matter?
What is it is just the number of people who have it that have no symptoms as a % or whatever of the snowflakes who are laid up in bed.
I am giving my opponents a chance here by winging it.
I think the Princess Diamond dataset indicated that 85% of the cases where asymptomatic,
And in the village of 3000 called Eugano in Italy near Venice ? isolated and tested it was 75%
Actually with even two different haplotypes of the virus ; I think that is the right spelling it might be halotype or something- this is a really interesting subject but will save that for later as they say.
There were empirical and theoretical reasons why it could be higher.
Some are arguing at 90%
But anyway for every symptomatic case there are 4 times as many asymptomatic.
So from that any number you want to come up eg 1% should be divided by 4.
We don’t know or I don’t know who these symptomatic cases are that are being tested.
I don’t have the data.
Are they mostly over 70?
Do they live in cities with high nitrous dioxide [car exhaust] pollution.
It is weather, does the wind blow and geography as much as anything, so watch Madrid.
Are there lots of old fogies still on 40 unfiltered a day?
There is data of up to 8% mortality rates for common colds in old peoples homes; never mind flu.
Ah yes nurses!
I think it is 8% of nurses are tested positive and asymptomatically self isolating.
That is a really interesting number!
That is overloading the NHS.
The evidence is stacking up that about 5% have it over a time period that might rank up to 30% had it and with ‘herd immunity’.
I seem to remember scanning thro posts people emotionally trashing that; there is nothing horrible about it and is wrapped with R0 .
Non essential medical treatment has been suspended including hip replacements and chemotherpathy for cancer put on hold.
I have just talked to a friend and said I can’t deal with this shit and bat flu drones telling me to get back in the house.
I am going to bail out now I have had enough.
If you want data
Google
2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United Kingdom Wikipedia
They do one for each country.
The more you test the more you find of course so you need to watch that.
Testing can be completed in about 2 hours but samples need to be sent to the places that can do it and they go into a queue so it seems to be taking 2-4 days.
It is a hoax
Some of the most famous academics in the field are hopping mad about at s real science is going to be dragged thro the mud on this by L Birds later on!
Eg
Professor Sucharit Bhakdi,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBB9bA-gXL4
most of the good material on this with a plentiful supply of links is appearing on the site below. And is updated each day.
eg
March 27, 2020 (II)
- German researcher Dr. Richard Capek argues in a quantitative analysis that the „Corona epidemic“ is in fact an „epidemic of tests“. Capek shows that while the number of tests has increased exponentially, the percentage of test-positive people has remained stable and mortality has decreased, which speaks against an exponential spread of the virus itself.
- German Virology professor Dr. Carsten Scheller from the University of Würzburg explains in a podcast that Covid19 is definitely comparable with influenza and has so far even led to fewer deaths. Professor Scheller suspects that the exponential curves often presented in the media have more to do with the increasing number of tests than with an unusual spread of the virus itself. For countries like Germany, Italy is less of a role model than Japan and South Korea. Despite millions of Chinese tourists and only minimal social restrictions, these countries have not yet experienced a Covid19 crisis. One reason for this could be the wearing of mouth masks: This would hardly protect against infection, but would limit the spread of the virus by infected people.
- The latest figures from Bergamo show that total mortality there almost quadrupled in March 2020 from typically 200 to 300 people per month to around 900 people. It is still unclear what proportion of this was due to Covid19 and what proportion was due to other, locally specific factors or other causes (see above).
- The two Stanford professors of medicine, Dr. Eran Bendavid and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, explain in an article (Paywall) that the lethality of Covid19 is overestimated by several orders of magnitude and is probably even in Italy only at 0.01% to 0.06% and thus below that of influenza. The reason for this overestimation is the greatly underestimated number of people already infected (without symptoms). As an example, the fully tested Italian community of Vo is mentioned, which showed 50 to 75% symptom-free test-positive persons.
- Dr. Gerald Gaß, President of the German Hospital Association, explained in an interview with the Handelsblatt that „the extreme situation in Italy is mainly due to the very low intensive care capacities“.
- Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, one of the early and vocal critics of a „Covid19 panic“, was provisionally excluded by the board of Transparency Internantional Germany, where he headed the health working group. Wodarg had already been severely attacked by the media for his criticism.
- NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warns that governments are using the current situation to expand the surveillance state and restrict fundamental rights. The control measures currently put in place would not be dismantled after the crisis.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Professor Sucharit Bhakdi,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBB9bA-gXL4
mortality rate
Robbo is going on about the mortality rate.
This of course is really important; in fact it is everything.
That is because although they might have a good idea of how many people have died with it, they don’t know how many people or what % of people have it or have had it.
Because they have up to now had limited RT-PCR testing capability and they have been focusing on testing people who have serious symptoms of it or people who they believe have been exposed to it.
What the should have done was suspend a days testing and tested 5000 people randomly selected from the population and seen how many had it.
We can jump forward now to some background to recent scientific material on the subject.
In Epidemiology what you need to know for a virus or disease is its Basic reproduction number or R0.
Plugging it into computers along with other known population parameters will give you an estimate how fast it will spread through a population from a “patient Zero” how many will become “infected” or “exposed” to the virus etc etc.
They have a good estimate for the R0 value of corona virus from data collected from the Princess Diamond cruise ship case where they had a patient Zero and everyone was tested etc etc
Eg;
The international journal of infectious deceases by Zhang et al feb 2020.
A team a Oxford University have used this and other data to estimate R0 values and ranges.
Its paper is being peer reviewed now.
It estimates that a huge number of people in the UK have already had it even going as far as up to 50% although the range is quiet large.
Even if it was 2% or a million people the mortality rate would be lees than a common cold and certainly less than flu.
RT-PCR tests for tell tale fragments of RNA
[ I think this corona virus is one of those that has RNA rather than DNA]
It tells you if you have virus in your sputum or whatever.
There appears to be another different type of test about to be rolled out which is based on immunoassay for antibodies method.
That tells whether or not you have had it in the past eg your body has had it , produced the antibodies for it and have recovered as well as if you are in the process of doing the same and have it active.
So we will see soon I expect.
The UK makers of the kit are not happy about rolling it out because it hasn’t been validated and often the prototypes for this kind of thing can be disappointing.
Neil Fergusson of imperial college London who told us that 500,000 would die of it has already rowed that back to 20,000.
Approx 600,000 die every year in the UK a lot of them with or from respiratory illnesses with 2 or more underlying conditions.
Cancer is on the rise in the UK and everywhere , chemotherapy is often the only hope, it nearly always suppresses the immune system
Thus dying with it and dying from it is another issue.
I think 2 or 3 people in the UK have died from it so far and they reckon about 50 in Italy.
Eg no underlying conditions.
About 8000 to 30,000 people die each year in the UK from flu with an average of about 18,000 I think.
A Swiss medical doctor provided the following information on the current situation in order to enable our readers to make a realistic risk assessment. (Daily updates below)
***
According to the latest data of the Italian National Health Institute ISS, the average age of the positively-tested deceased in Italy is currently about 81 years. 10% of the deceased are over 90 years old. 90% of the deceased are over 70 years old.
80% of the deceased had suffered from two or more chronic diseases. 50% of the deceased had suffered from three or more chronic diseases. The chronic diseases include in particular cardiovascular problems, diabetes, respiratory problems and cancer.
Less than 1% of the deceased were healthy persons, i.e. persons without pre-existing chronic diseases. Only about 30% of the deceased are women.
The Italian Institute of Health moreover distinguishes between those who died from the coronavirus and those who died with the coronavirus. In many cases it is not yet clear whether the persons died from the virus or from their pre-existing chronic diseases or from a combination of both.
The two Italians deceased under 40 years of age (both 39 years old) were a cancer patient and a diabetes patient with additional complications. In these cases, too, the exact cause of death was not yet clear (i.e. if from the virus or from their pre-existing diseases).
The partial overloading of the hospitals is due to the general rush of patients and the increased number of patients requiring special or intensive care. In particular, the aim is to stabilize respiratory function and, in severe cases, to provide anti-viral therapies.
(Update: The Italian National Institute of Health published a statistical report on test-positive patients and deceased, confirming the above data.)
The doctor also points out the following aspects:
Northern Italy has one of the oldest populations and the worst air quality in Europe, which has already led to an increased number of respiratory diseases and deaths in the past and is likely an additional risk factor in the current epidemic.
South Korea, for instance, has experienced a much milder course than Italy and has already passed the peak of the epidemic. In South Korea, only about 70 deaths with a positive test result have been reported so far. As in Italy, those affected were mostly high-risk patients.
The few dozen test-positive Swiss deaths so far were also high-risk patients with chronic diseases, an average age of more than 80 years and a maximum age of 97 years, whose exact cause of death, i.e. from the virus or from their pre-existing diseases, is not yet known.
Furthermore, according to a first Chinese study, the internationally used virus test kits may give a false positive result in some cases. In these cases, the persons may not have contracted the new coronavirus, but presumably one of the many existing human coronaviruses that are part of the annual (and currently ongoing) common cold and flu epidemics. (1)
Thus the most important indicator for judging the danger of the disease is not the frequently reported number of positively-tested persons and deaths, but the number of persons actually and unexpectedly developing or dying from pneumonia (so-called excess mortality).
According to all current data, for the healthy general population of school and working age, a mild to moderate course of the Covid-19 disease can be expected. Senior citizens and persons with existing chronic diseases should be protected. The medical capacities should be optimally prepared.
Medical literature
(1) Zhuang et al., Potential false-positive rate among the ‚asymptomatic infected individuals‘ in close contacts of COVID-19 patients, Chinese Medical Association Publishing House, March 2020.
(2) Grasselli et al., Critical Care Utilization for the COVID-19 Outbreak in Lombardy, JAMA, March 2020.
(3) WHO, Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019, February 2020.
Reference values
Important reference values include the number of annual flu deaths, which is up to 8,000 in Italy and up to 60,000 in the US; normal overall mortality, which in Italy is up to 2,000 deaths per day; and the average number of pneumonia cases per year, which in Italy is over 120,000.
Current all-cause mortality in Europe and in Italy is still normal or even below-average. Any excess mortality due to Covid-19 should become visible in the European monitoring charts.
Winter smog (NO2) in Northern Italy in February 2020 (ESA)
Updates
March 17, 2020 (I)
- The mortality profile remains puzzling from a virological point of view because, in contrast to influenza viruses, children are spared and men are affected about twice as often as women. On the other hand, this profile corresponds to natural mortality, which is close to zero for children and almost twice as high for 75-year-old men as for women of the same age.
- The younger test-positive deceased almost always had severe pre-existing conditions. For example, a 21-year-old Spanish soccer coach had died test-positive, making international headlines. However, the doctors diagnosed an unrecognized leukemia, whose typical complications include severe pneumonia.
- The decisive factor in assessing the danger of the disease is therefore not the number of test-positive persons and deceased, which is often mentioned in the media, but the number of people actually and unexpectedly developing or dying from pneumonia (so-called excess mortality). So far, this value remains very low in most countries.
- In Switzerland, some emergency units are already overloaded simply because of the large number of people who want to be tested. This points to an additional psychological and logistical component of the current situation.
March 17, 2020 (II)
- Italian immunology professor Sergio Romagnani from the University of Florence comes to the conclusion in a study on 3000 people that 50 to 75% of the test-positive people of all ages remain completely symptom-free – significantly more than previously assumed.
- The occupancy rate of the North Italian ICUs in the winter months is typically already 85 to 90%. Some or many of these existing patients could also be test-positive by now. However, the number of additional unexpected pneumonia cases is not yet known.
- A hospital doctor in the Spanish city of Malaga writes on Twitter that people are currently more likely to die from panic and systemic collapse than from the virus. The hospital is being overrun by people with colds, flu and possibly Covid19 and doctors have lost control.
March 18, 2020
- A new epidemiological study (preprint) concludes that the fatality of Covid19 even in the Chinese city of Wuhan was only 0.04% to 0.12% and thus rather lower than that of seasonal flu, which has a mortality rate of about 0.1%. As a reason for the overestimated fatality of Covid19, the researchers suspect that initially only a small number of cases were recorded in Wuhan, as the disease was probably asymptomatic or mild in many people.
- Chinese researchers argue that extreme winter smog in the city of Wuhan may have played a causal role in the outbreak of pneumonia. In the summer of 2019, public protests were already taking place in Wuhan because of the poor air quality.
- New satellite images show how Northern Italy has the highest levels of air pollution in Europe, and how this air pollution has been greatly reduced by the quarantine.
- A manufacturer of the Covid19 test kit states that it should only be used for research purposes and not for diagnostic applications, as it has not yet been clinically validated.
Datasheet of Covid19 virus test kit
March 19, 2020 (I)
The Italian National Health Institute ISS has published a new report on test-positive deaths:
- The median age is 80.5 years (79.5 for men, 83.7 for women).
- 10% of the deceased was over 90 years old; 90% of the deceased was over 70 years old.
- At most 0.8% of the deceased had no pre-existing chronic illnesses.
- Approximately 75% of the deceased had two or more pre-existing conditions, 50% had three more pre-existing conditions, in particular heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
- Five of the deceased were between 31 and 39 years old, all of them with serious pre-existing health conditions (e.g. cancer or heart disease).
- The National Health Institute hasn’t yet determined what the patients examined ultimately died of and refers to them in general terms as Covid19-positive deaths.
March 19, 2020 (II)
- A report in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera points out that Italian intensive care units already collapsed under the marked flu wave in 2017/2018. They had to postpone operations, call nurses back from holiday and ran out of blood donations.
- German virologist Hendrik Streeck argues that Covid19 is unlikely to increase total mortality in Germany, which normally is around 2500 people per day. Streeck mentions the case of a 78-year-old man with preconditions who died of heart failure, subsequently tested positive for Covid19 and thus was included in the statistics of Covid19 deaths.
- According to Stanford Professor John Ioannidis, the new coronavirus may be no more dangerous than some of the common coronaviruses, even in older people. Ioannidis argues that there is no reliable medical data backing the measures currently decided upon.
March 20, 2020
- According to the latest European monitoring report, overall mortality in all countries (including Italy) and in all age groups remains within or even below the normal range so far.
- According to the latest German statistics, the median age of test-positive deaths is about 83 years, most with pre-existing health conditions that might be a possible cause of death.
- A 2006 Canadian study referred to by Stanford Professor John Ioannidis found that common cold coronaviruses may also cause death rates of up to 6% in risk groups such as residents of a care facility, and that virus test kits initially falsely indicated an infection with SARS coronaviruses.
March 21, 2020 (I)
- Spain reports only three test-positive deaths under the age of 65 (out of a total of about 1000). Their pre-existing health conditions and actual cause of death are not yet known.
- On March 20, Italy reported 627 nationwide test-positive deaths in one day. By comparison, normal overall mortality in Italy is about 1800 deaths per day. Since February 21, Italy has reported about 4000 test-positive deaths. Normal overall mortality during this time frame is up to 50,000 deaths. It is not yet known to what extent normal overall mortality has increased, or to what extent it has simply turned test-positive. Moreover, Italy and Europe have had a very mild flu season in 2019/2020 that has spared many otherwise vulnerable people.
- According to Italian news reports, 90% of test-positive deceased in the Lombardy region have died outside of intensive care units, mostly at home or in general care sections. Their cause of death and the possible role of quarantine measures in their deaths remain unclear. Only 260 out of 2168 test-positive persons have died in ICUs.
- Bloomberg highlights that „99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says“
Italy test-positive deaths by prior illnesses (ISS / Bloomberg)
March 21, 2020 (II)
- The Japan Times asks: Japan was expecting a coronavirus explosion. Where is it? Despite being one of the first countries getting positive test results and having imposed no lockdown, Japan is one of the least-affected nations. Quote: „Even if Japan may not be counting all those infected, hospitals aren’t being stretched thin and there has been no spike in pneumonia cases.“
- Italian researchers argue that the extreme smog in Northern Italy, the worst in Europe, may be playing a causative role in the current pneumonia outbreak there, as in Wuhan before.
- In a new interview, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, a world renowned expert in medical microbiology, says blaming the new coronavirus alone for deaths is „wrong“ and „dangerously misleading“, as there are other more important factors at play, notably pre-existing health conditions and poor air quality in Chinese and Northern Italian cities. Professor Bhakdi describes the currently discussed or imposed measures as „grotesque“, „useless“, „self-destructive“ and a „collective suicide“ that will shorten the lifespan of the elderly and should not be accepted by society.
March 22, 2020 (I)
Regarding the situation in Italy: Most major media falsely report that Italy has up to 800 deaths per day from the coronavirus. In reality, the president of the Italian Civil Protection Service stresses that these are deaths „with the coronavirus and not from the coronavirus“ (minute 03:30 of the press conference). In other words, these persons died while also testing positive.
As Professors Ioannidis and Bhakdi have shown, countries like South Korea and Japan that introduced no lockdown measures have experienced near-zero excess mortality in connection with Covid-19, while the Diamond Princess cruise ship experienced an extra polated mortality figure in the per mille range, i.e. at or below the level of the seasonal flu.
Current test-positive death figures in Italy are still less than 50% of normal daily overall mortality in Italy, which is around 1800 deaths per day. Thus it is possible, perhaps even likely, that a large part of normal daily mortality now simply counts as „Covid19“ deaths (as they test positive). This is the point stressed by the President of the Italian Civil Protection Service.
However, by now it is clear that certain regions in Northern Italy, i.e. those facing the toughest lockdown measures, are experiencing markedly increased daily mortality figures. It is also known that in the Lombardy region, 90% of test-positive deaths occur not in intensive care units, but instead mostly at home. And more than 99% have serious pre-existing health conditions.
Professor Sucharit Bhakdi has called lockdown measures „useless“, „self-destructive“ and a „collective suicide“. Thus the extremely troubling question arises as to what extent the increased mortality of these elderly, isolated, highly stressed people with multiple pre-existing health conditions may in fact be caused by the weeks-long lockdown measures still in force.
If so, it may be one of those cases where the treatment is worse than the disease. (See update below: only 12% of death certificates show the coronavirus as a cause.)
Angelo Borrelli, head of the Italian Civil Protection Service, emphasizing the difference between deaths with and from coronaviruses.
March 22, 2020 (II)
- In Switzerland, there are currently 56 test-positive deaths, all of whom were „high risk patients“ due to their advanced age and/or pre-existing health conditions. Their actual cause of death, i.e. from or simply with the virus, has not been communicated.
- The Swiss government claimed that the situation in southern Switzerland (next to Italy) is „dramatic“, yet local doctors denied this and said everything is normal.
- According to press reports, oxygen bottles may become scarce. The reason, however, is not a currently higher usage, but rather hoarding due to fear of future shortages.
- In many countries, there is already an increasing shortage of doctors and nurses. This is primarily because healthcare workers testing positive have to self-quarantine, even though in many cases they will remain fully or largely symptom-free.
March 22, 2020 (III)
- A model from Imperial College London predicted between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths in the UK „from“ Covid-19, but the authors of the study have now conceded that many of these deaths would not be in addition to, but rather part of the normal annual mortality rate, which in the UK is about 600,000 people per year. In other words, excess mortality would remain low.
- Dr. David Katz, founding director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, asks in the New York Times: „Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease? There may be more targeted ways to beat the pandemic.“
- According to Italian Professor Walter Ricciardi, „only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus“, whereas in public reports „all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus“. This means that Italian death figures reported by the media have to be reduced by at least a factor of 8 to obtain actual deaths caused by the virus. Thus one ends up with at most a few dozen deaths per day, compared to an overall daily mortality of 1800 deaths and up to 20,000 flu deaths per year.
March 23, 2020 (I)
- A new French study in the Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, titled SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data, concludes that „the problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably overestimated“, since „the mortality rate for SARS-CoV-2 is not significantly different from that for common coronaviruses identified at the study hospital in France“.
- An Italian study of August 2019 found that flu deaths in Italy were between 7,000 and 25,000 in recent years. This value is higher than in most other European countries due to the large elderly population in Italy, and much higher than anything attributed to Covid-19 so far.
- In a new fact sheet, the World Health Organization WHO reports that Covid-19 is in fact spreading slower, not faster, than influenza by a factor of about 50%. Moreover, pre-symptomatic transmission appears to be much lower with Covid-19 than with influenza.
- A leading Italian doctor reports that „strange cases of pneumonia“ were seen in the Lombardy region already in November 2019, raising again the question if they were caused by the new virus (which officially only appeared in Italy in February 2020), or by other factors, such as the dangerously high smog levels in Northern Italy.
- Danish researcher Peter Gøtzsche, founder of the renowned Cochrane Medical Collaboration, writes that Corona is „an epidemic of mass panic“ and „logic was one of the first victims.“
March 23, 2020 (II)
- Former Israeli Health Minister, Professor Yoram Lass, says that the new coronavirus is „less dangerous than the flu“ and lockdown measures „will kill more people than the virus“. He adds that „the numbers do not match the panic“ and „psychology is prevailing over science“. He also notes that „Italy is known for its enormous morbidity in respiratory problems, more than three times any other European country.“
- Pietro Vernazza, a Swiss infectious disease specialist, argues that many of the imposed measures are not based on science and should be reversed. According to Vernazza, mass testing makes no sense because 90% of the population will see no symptoms, and lockdowns and closing schools are even „counterproductive“. He recommends protecting only risk groups while keeping the economy and society at large undisturbed.
- The President of the World Doctors Federation, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, argues thatlockdown measures as in Italy are „unreasonable“ and „counterproductive“ and should be reversed.
- Switzerland: Despite media panic, excess mortality still at or near zero: the latest testpositive „victims“ were a 96yo in palliative care and a 97yo with pre-existing conditions.
- The latest statistical report of the Italian National Health Institute is now available in English.
March 24, 2020
- The UK has removed Covid19 from the official list of High Consquence Infectious Diseases (HCID), stating that mortality rates are „low overall“.
- The director of the German National Health Institute (RKI) admitted that they count all test-positive deaths, irrespective of the actual cause of death, as „coronavirus deaths“. The average age of the deceased is 82 years, most with serious preconditions. As in most other countries, excess mortality due Covid19 is likely to be near zero in Germany.
- Beds in Swiss intensive care units reserved for Covid19 patients are still „mostly empty“.
- German Professor Karin Moelling, former Chair of Medical Virology at the University of Zurich, stated in an interview that Covid19 is „no killer virus“ and that „panic must end“.
- In Italy, overall national mortality of the 65+ age group until March 7 remained below the level of earlier years, especially due to the rather mild winter (see red line in chart below).
Italy: Overall mortality of 65+ age group (red) compared to earlier years (March 7, 2020 / MdS)
March 25, 2020
- German immunologist and toxicologist, Professor Stefan Hockertz, explains in a radio interview that Covid19 is no more dangerous than influenza (the flu), but that it is simply observed much more closely. More dangerous than the virus is the fear and panic created by the media and the „authoritarian reaction“ of many governments. Professor Hockertz also notes that most so-called „corona deaths“ have in fact died of other causes while also testing positive for coronaviruses. Hockertz believes that up to ten times more people than reported already had Covid19 but noticed nothing or very little.
- The Argentinean virologist and biochemist Pablo Goldschmidt explains that Covid19 is no more dangerous than a bad cold or the flu. It is even possible that the Covid19 virus circulated already in earlier years, but wasn’t discovered because no one was looking for it. Dr. Goldschmidt speaks of a „global terror“ created by the media and politics. Every year, he says, three million newborns worldwide and 50,000 adults in the US alone die of pneumonia.
- Professor Martin Exner, head of the Institute for Hygiene at the University of Bonn, explains in an interview why health personnel are currently under pressure, even though there has hardly been any increase in the number of patients in Germany so far: On the one hand, doctors and nurses who have tested positive have to be quarantined and are often hard to replace. On the other hand, nurses from neighbouring countries, who provide an important part of the care, are currently unable to enter the country due to closed borders.
- Professor Julian Nida-Ruemelin, former German Minister of State for Culture and Professor of Ethics, points out that Covid19 poses no risk to the healthy general population and that extreme measures such as curfews are therefore not justified.
- Using data from the cruise ship Diamond Princess, Stanford Professor John Ioannidis showed that the age-corrected lethality of Covid19 is between 0.025% and 0.625%, i.e. in the range of a strong cold or the flu. Moreover, a Japanese study showed that of all the test-positive passengers, and despite the high average age, 48% remained completely symptom-free; even among the 80-89 year olds 48% remained symptom-free, while among the 70 to 79 year olds it was an astounding 60% that developed no symptoms at all. This again raises the question whether the pre-existing diseases are not perhaps a more important factor than the virus itself. The Italian example has shown that 99% of test-positive deaths had one or more pre-existing conditions, and even among these, only 12% of the death certificates mentioned Covid19 as a causal factor.
March 26, 2020 (I)
- USA: The latest US data of March 25 shows a decreasing number of flu-like illnesses throughout the country, the frequency of which is now well below the multi-year average. The government measures can be ruled out as a reason for this, as they have been in effect for less than a week.
USA: Decreasing flu-like illnesses (March 25, 2020, KINSA)
- Germany: The latest influenza report of the German Robert Koch Institute of March 24 documents a „nationwide decrease in activity of acute respiratory diseases“: The number of influenza-like illnesses and the number of hospital stays caused by them is below the level of previous years and is currently continuing to decline. The RKI continues: „The increase in the number of visits to the doctor () in adults cannot currently be explained either by influenza viruses circulating in the population or by SARS-CoV-2.“
Germany: Decreasing flu-like illnesses (20 March 2020, RKI)
- Italy: The renowned Italian virologist Giulio Tarro argues that the mortality rate of Covid19 is below 1% even in Italy and is therefore comparable to influenza. The higher values only arise because no distinction is made between deaths with and by Covid19 and because the number of (symptom-free) infected persons is greatly underestimated.
- UK: The authors of the British Imperial College study, who predicted up to 500,000 deaths, are again reducing their forecasts. After already admitting that a large proportion of test-positive deaths are part of normal mortality, they now state that the peak of the disease may be reached in two to three weeks already.
- UK: The British Guardian reported in February 2019 that already in the otherwise weak flu season 2018/2019 there were more than 2180 flu-related admissions to intensive care units in the UK.
- Switzerland: In Switzerland, the excess mortality due to Covid19 is apparently still zero. The latest „fatal victim“ presented by the media is a 100-year-old woman. Nevertheless, the Swiss government continues to tighten restrictive measures.
March 26, 2020 (II)
- Sweden: Sweden has so far pursued the most liberal strategy in dealing with Covid19, which is based on two principles: Risk groups are protected and people with flu symptoms stay at home. „If you follow these two rules, there is no need for further measures, the effect of which is only marginal anyway,“ said chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell. Social and economic life will continue normally. The big rush to hospitals has so far failed to materialize, Tegnell says.
- German criminal and constitutional law expert Dr. Jessica Hamed argues that measures such as general curfews and contact bans are a massive and disproportionate encroachment on fundamental rights of freedom and are therefore presumably „all illegal“.
- The British magazine OffGuardian reports on „12 experts questioning the corona virus panic“.
- In his famous book „The Plague“ (1947), French Nobel laureate in Literature Albert Camus wrote: „The only way to fight the plague is honesty.“
Albert Camus, The Plague (1947): „The only way to fight the plague is honesty.“
Ozy is correct it is a load of bollocks
There are two example links below I have been following it and understand the science and statistics.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
I have been trying to post but nothing getting thro
I think, for what it matters, labour’s defeat wasn’t a case of a rejection of his ‘leftist’ position.
I personally know two Corbynists who held their noses and voted conservative because of their strong pro brexit opinions.
Personally I just can’t connect with any of that idea.
I suppose there is some kind of irony that probably the rightwing of labour, still entrenched in the bureaucracy and members of parliament, lost labour the election by dragging it towards more of a remain position?
And now, along with the talking heads of the BBC and Guardian, they are blaming the ‘exaggerated failure’ on Corbyn’s ‘leftist policy’.
I think all that is well ‘understood’ at the grassroots level and even though that might be a mystery to many in the matrix of the mainstream media which has a totally different message.
On Brexit I think it will be back to square one; with the EU continuing with the Teresa May deal or no Deal.
The EU are going to continue with punitive alternatives to remaining; to dissuade others from following the example.
On another issue we may find ourselves a bit flat footed.
We have traditionally argued for a system change and an ‘economy that is not based on profit and endless growth’ because it involves the exploitation of the individuals who are members of the working class etc?
And been ignored.
There now is a mass spontaneous movement that has the potential to transition to the same place?; motivated by something else?
“…Our aims: We aim to identify the roots of our current climate crisis and uproot them, denounce pseudo-solutions (like emission trading or the belief in technological miracles) and advocate real alternatives to the status quo. We want to pioneer the transition to a socio-environmental society. This includes a transformation to an economy that is not based on profit and endless growth, but one that respects ecological limits and enables a “good life” for everyone…..”
https://systemchange-not-climatechange.at/en/who-we-are/
I suppose it is interesting as that general thing can be seen as having quality of deferred, in the future, selfless aesthetics to it?
Or; it will be a bit shit to see or think about things turning out like that; but what the hell I will be dead by then?
But, as one of those conservative voting Corbynista’s said to me on election night, climate change is rattling along faster than they ever thought it would and it will now be no place in 30 years for ‘old men’ like us; or women for that matter.
Which as regards Greta Thunberg etc cuts across the trans generational divide if nothing else.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/17/letter-from-britain-why-labour-lost/
The issue of ownership of wealth can be distorted somewhat as ‘ordinary’ workers can have pension pots of 200K+, and houses etc.
But it would be a bit of stretch to describe them as part-capitalist; although it has been suggested before.
There are obviously, as they say lies, damned lies and statistics
But recently in the US the top 5% of households had income of over $250,000.
But mean number of earners was about 2?
So two earners getting 125K each would just scrape in.
That would include 2 well paid ‘workers’ ; presumably like doctors and computer programmers etc?
To get into the top 1%, household income needs to 475K.
Which might be moving more into the area of the capitalist class and CEO area?
Eg;
…..What is the top one percent household income in the US in 2019?
To be top 1% in the United States in 2019, you had to earn $475,116.00 or more as a household between January and December 2018…..
https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/
There probably isn’t a necessarily direct correlation between ownership of wealth and ‘income’.
