In Lessons from Lockup I have summarised what we should learn from the insane government response that killed so many people and so wrecked our economy. Unfortunately, except for saying “it should never happen again”, and “those responsible should rot in jail”, there is not a lot we can benefit from now, as hopefully, it will be a long time before anyone is so stupid again.

We are now at a position, where the “second wave” is peaking with almost no appearance as excess deaths, meaning that this is a pretty normal autumn in terms of infectious diseases. As such, the emergency is over, the human rights acts now take precedence over any silly covid legislation, and we can legally go about our normal business ignoring the huffing and puffing of politicians.

But, the question now, is should we, as a society, now just say “it’s over everyone just return to normal”. Because I don’t think it may be that easy. The problems are: Continue reading →

We are now at a stage, where more and more people are accepting that the second “wave” is amounting to not much at all as it barely registers as any excess deaths. And with multiple signs of it peaking, those who look at the data are no longer scared. But what now?

Lockups increase covid deaths

Continue reading →

Sweden with a very mild form of reduced social interaction, got community immunity over the summer at a death rate equivalent to 40,000 deaths in the UK. This is significantly lower than the death rate in the UK, and in addition, it is clear that either the UK was still a significant distance from community immunity or some new epidemic mistaken for covid has occurred. Either way, locking up society caused greater deaths, but how.

It is tempting to blame the higher UK death rate on the appalling behaviour of our politicians in that they callously sent infected patients from hospital into care homes and thereby almost deliberately spread the virus. However, reports suggest that similar behaviour occurred in Sweden such that they also had a lot of infections in care homes.

Thus, the main difference between the UK and Sweden appears to be that the UK had a very draconian, human-rights infringing lockup, whereas Sweden did not.

The conventional wisdom is that lockups save lives, because it appears that by stopping the virus spreading, that people will not get infected. But unfortunately, due to the non-homogenous nature of society, there is no single R number such that the concept of “R number suppression” is totally worthless. Instead, R number suppression, doesn’t act in the way it is believed to had to reduce the death rate, but the evidence shows it increases it. Continue reading →

Press Release

For release: 00:00AM (GMT) 15^th March 2020

We can beat coronavirus: we need to turn and face it.

A tsunami of infection is about to swamp our health services if we allow it. We cannot beat it if we all hide; like a ship our society & economy will be swamped if we attempt to run away, instead we must have the courage to turn to face it.

The vast majority of young people have nothing to fear from CV19 except the chaos in our health services caused as older people swamp that service leaving nothing for the young. So those most responsible for this destructive tsunami, must isolate ourselves, to give the maximum chance to those younger people for whom CV19 poses the least risk to “take it on the chin” and power their way through the CV wave by heading towards it: letting or perhaps even encouraging them to get the virus while our health services are relatively free of cases from others.

They will suffer least interruption to their lives, they will then keep the economy going, the food deliveries to those in isolation, whilst generation by generation, the rest of us can rejoin and take our chances from CV19, albeit higher than the young.

Notes for Editors

• Young people under 50 are likely to represent 10% of all demand on the health care services and that can be reduced significantly by isolating the few people in this group who have pre-existing illnesses making them susceptible.
• Whilst still difficult, present health services could cope with just those under 50 who get CV19
• Young people under 50 who under this plan can carry on much as normal, make up about 70% of the workforce.
• People over 70 are likely to create around half of the workload on the health services and represent less than 1% of the working population
• There is very little risk to children and to young parents, so there is very little rationale in a “lock down” that closes schools or in other ways curtails their future life prospects.
• A full plan may entail other measures to reduce demand on the NHS such as limiting the sale of alcohol & reducing speed limits to reduce demand on A&E.
• In April 2015 there were 31.05million employed. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/2015-04-17

Detailed Plan: Plan

In January, when SAGE said the risk of Covid was “Very low” I was writing to politicians telling them it was coming and we should be looking at getting hospitals and ventilators ready

In February I was writing saying that that doctors needed PPE

In March the figures looked grim with an 80% infection rate meaning there would be a tsunami of cases which could overwhelm the low-capacity of intensive care beds in the UK. So I was in favour of a short lockdown for one to two weeks on 23rd March when it finally came.

But when a couple of weeks later at the beginning of April we started to see dancing nurses in empty hospitals, something was very wrong. There was absolutely no need to “save the NHS” and the huge cost of lockup and the very low chance it would actually save lives meant we should have returned to normal.

Mid April, the evidence that lockup was pointless came when Sweden, with a very mild lockup which only reduced meetings of over 50 people, started to peak and then fall. This showed that the 80% infection rate that had been predicted based on a “novel” virus, was a fiction. It was actually closer to only 20% who were being infected. This changed the lockup from a “the cost benefit does not warrant it”, to “It is F£&King insane”.

Sweden is now back to normal. Sweden has the same sized main cities as Scotland. They have the same urban density. We are at the same latitude. We have similar nordic cultures (much of Scotland was settled by norse). In contrast the two countries that are often compared to Sweden are very different. Denmark is very flat, Norway the settlements are squeezed between sea and mountains. Scotland is the nearest comparable country in the world to Sweden, and with a slightly higher death rate (probably due to sending infected people into care homes), we are so close to community immunity that it is insane that we are still locked up. Yes, there are still infections, but those infections are in the young and health which lock up stopped getting infected. But being young and healthy, they do not add to the deaths. In contrast, the grim reaper has already had her crop of the elderly with multiple conditions close to death (the average age of death with covid is nearly the same as that from normal deaths).

And because Scotland (despite the rantings of the SNP) had the same policies applied as the UK, and because the UK followed the same epidemic curve as Scotland. What is true for Sweden, which is true for Scotland is also very much true for the UK. The whole UK is also so close to community immunity, the only sane policy is to go back to normal (whilst providing voluntary protection the vulnerable)

Introduction

CV19 didn’t just kill directly although bad enough in itself, there were far more people were killed by the policy response. In a sense, both had one cause: the body (politics) response to the virus, which is to wage an all out war against the virus, but in doing so the body (country) gets trashed by “friendly fire”. But all viruses and other scares have the potential to do that, so why was CV19 so deadly?

The simple answer is that it was deadly, because it by and large wasn’t deadly. To explain, if CV19 had caused a serious infection in everyone who got it, so that 100% were seriously ill and perhaps 20% died. Then the body politic would not only have reacted swiftly but also with the right type of draconian measures. And because everyone was serioiusly ill, it would have been extremely easy to indentify who had the virus, so where it was geographically, and to quarantine those involved. Lockdown measures kill, but when the death rate is very high and the “enemy” is obvious, the deaths can be minimised to those directly at threat.

And, even if the virus had leaked out of the original quarantine area, it would VERY SOON be obvious and VERY SOON contained again. So, there is not the slightest doubt, that whilst a lot of people in the immediate area involved would have died, it would have been very quickly contained and killed off.

That did not happen with CV19 because it now turns out that for every person who has an illness serious enough to see a medic, perhaps 50 to 100 other people have had the virus with either no or  minimal symptoms. Indeed, it may be higher. Sweden is peaking along with most other countries. But early anti-body testing is only picking up around 25% of people with the virus when if it is peaking it should be closer to 50%. That may indicate, that in perhaps the majority of people, the illness is so mild, that the response cannot even be picked up by the testing. This is born out by the total fatality per head of population that is increasingly looking like coming in below 0.1% (the value oft cited for flu). This compares to original death estimates of 1-4%. That indicates that the “medical radar” was only picking up 3 – 10% of all cases.

CV19 is a totally benign virus in the overwhelming not majority, but almost everyone. That made it deadly

Background

CV19 was an ice-berg.

Continue reading →

The UK, like many economies, has just destroyed its economy for a bug that was not much worse than flu and indeed, it could still turn out to be less severe than flu.

The insane policy was created by academics, based on untested, unchecked models which the public could not scrutinise. The recommendations were made by academics without the public having any involvement or chance to cross-examine those involved. And the outcome is a total unmitigated disaster which far from saving lives has increased the death count and wrecked the economy.

However, as this is relatively small compared to climate policies, which are also based on the same untested, etc. models from academics, CV19 is very much a dry run for the climate madness. So, for that one reason, it may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Because after the CV19 debacle, there is not a chance in hell the public will ever go along with any academic pushing economically destroying policies based on their untested models.

It is now clear that coronavirus has been the biggest public policy disater, arguably in human history, because never have so many governments deliberately shot themselves in the foot, but even if we just consider outcomes and cost, it is certainly the maddest example of utter scientific and government incompetence since WWII (although climate is obviously a strong contender for that position).

Failure to plan

The single biggest failing, was very simple: the government had no viable plan for what was a supposed deadly pandemic, but then, when it turned out to be nothing of the sort, it had no plan for coming out of the greatest assault ever imagined of our human rights.

Two obvous examples support this: when people came back to the UK and were asked to “self quarantine” no one had even thought how they supported themselves. So anyone with a mild cough who had just been on an expensive holiday with lots of photos to show the family – almost certainly ignored the government. The other obvious examaple was the failure to provide home deliveries as a priority to over 70s (what?)

Intentionally keeping the public mis-informed

I put it as strongly as that, because we were denied all the basic information we needed:

• prior knowledge of intended actions
• Timescales of likely action
• Sight of the models or evidence supporting their action
• The number of patients in hospital
• A comparison of predicted versus actual

This resulted in a massive panic by the public, because the government were clearly either totally ignorant of what was going on, or worse were criminally negligent. When gov says “there’s nothing to worry about” …and the evidence says clearly there is …then the rational thing is to totally ignore the government and to second guess what is necessary for each individual & family. Indeed, I assumed the panic buying was a deliberate policy by government to scare the population into panic buying. If it wasn’t then they are just the dumbest …

As for one day just announcing that all clubs and pubs will shut … if I owned a pub I would have been absolutely furious because with a bit of forwarning a lot of the economic damage could have been reduced. Likewise for families who were left without a clue about the timescale or intended action of the government.

To put it simply, next time a pandemic looms, I’m just going to assume the government won’t tell us anything and we must just go out any buy everything we might need for a six month (totally useless) lockdown.

Criminal failure to sample test

The key information for planning the response to the epidemic and therefore which would have supported the early end to the denial of human rights, was to know how many people had had the virus. And in order to know that, there had to be sample testing of random people to determing the level of infection at any one time in the population. Let’s suggest that 100 random people are tested a day, then within a week we have 700 tests and we can know to level of infection with a standard deviation of 4%. If we then also determine the length of infection for the ordinary population (by repeating the test), we can determine the total number of people who have had the virus. This then allows us to determine not the “case fatality rate” (those who require medical attention who die), but the far more important total Infection Fatality Rate (IFR). Because the number of deaths is easy to determine if we know the total number with the virus (and when they got it), we can work out the IFR.

If we had done the necessary sample testing, then even by the time the government started their knee jerk policies like closing bars, we may have known that the IFR was nowhere near the 1-4% originally being quoted and was actually around the 0.1% of normal flu. That would have stopped the criminal denial of human rights and the wholesale destruction of the economy.

The other thing this sample testing and early understanding of the very low IFR would have shown is that the vast majority of cases are entirely benign. This explains why the R0 value was about 10 (Not the 2.3 academics told as. The 10 is shown by the way it increased 10x by the peak day of transmission from person to person). With very high levels of asymptomatic carriers and very high contagion, it would be obvious any form of “contact tracing” or “social distancing” would never end the epidemic The end will come, whatever the politicians or pathetic academics say, by herd immunity.

Letting the criminally negligent academics run the country and decide government policy

Academics as a group cannot be trusted to advise on critical timely economically important government decisions. THEY ARE USELESS IN A CRISIS and run about like headless chickens imagining the worst possible scenario. In contrast, people like the army and industry are trained to manage in a crisis. Boris let the headless chicken morons of academia dictate government policy – we let people with not the slightest interest in job losses (because they have secure jobs) throw away millions of jobs for a virus no worse than flu. It happens time and time again and it’s time it stopped.

Criminal disregard for human rights

We have a centuries long tradition of no detention without a trial or at least the evidence being heard and cross examined. Government are allowed to quarantine people who are ill, but to detain people who are not ill was a direct contravention of human rights.

If there was an emergency – then for as long as that emergency exists and no longer – it is possible to justify denying human rights so long as the evidence for the action is available for public scrutiny and challenge. But the emergency was over almost before the lockdown started as we very quickly saw the NHS was not being overwhelmed as had been predicted. As such the legal requirement to lockdown should have ceased and the emphasis should have been on “strong advice & government assistance” to isolate.

In the long run, I think the way fundamental human rights were just thrown away for something that was no worse than flu, will be the biggest concern of most people.

The Selfish generation

One of the most shocking aspects of this calamnity, has been the way I’ve seen NHS staff clambering over each other to try and get themselves PPE, whilst sending old patients with coronavirus to care homes, where the other patients had no PPE. And medics getting PPE for themselvse without a thought for the home helps going around to see older people in their homes, again without PPE so making those most at risk, most likely to catch it because unlike the selfish generations, the old could not isolate from their carers.

Indeed, it was appalling to see medics attacking the government because they didn’t order enough PPE (whose job was it to know whether PPE is needed for a MEDICAL emergency) … not for the vulnerable but for the young and fit medics who I am told did not suffer any more deaths than the general pupulace.

Likewise, to see young fit adults hiding away in their homes scared to come out, scared to send kids to school, when almost no children died and almost no one from their own age group. Whilst they clogged up the home delivery for older & vulnerable people and who was it who was supposed to keep working in the supermarkets, who was it who was supposed to enforce the denial of human rights that they so eagerly sought to reduce an insignificant risk?

Apologies

In that regard, I have to apologise for my own actions in early articles. Whilst I only had access to government stats and my intention was to ensure we didn’t “crash the NHS”, it is now obvious in retrospect that we should never have had the lockdown at all. Instead we should have solely concentrated on protecting the old and vulnerable. I apologise for my part.

SNP

Finally the SNP. What can I say? It became pointless even reading the latest nonsense they came up with. It was just the UK version a week later with unnecessary “scotification”.

They destroyed enthusiasm for the great ideas of community help groups & people volunteering to hel the NHS.

In part that was clearly because, whilst the UK scheme was developed at a time the NHS was thought to need help, the Scottish version was “developed” at a time it was increasingly obvious the NHS had no problem coping. Yet despite knowing the NHS coped, the SNP are now floating the idea of a longer lockdown in Scotland. So, the SNP know the NHS doesn’t have an emergency, they know the only moral basis to deny human rights went away weeks ago, yet they still intend denying our human even longer than the draconian, anti-science bullshit measured of the UK gov. The UK gov response was appalling, the SNP was a lot worse.

If there’s ever another pandemic, the first thing (if not done before) must be to suspend devolution.