The true mortality rate of covid-19 remains a matter of intense dispute, but it is undoubtedly true that a false public impression was given by the very high percentage of deaths among those who were tested positive, at the time when it was impossible to get tested unless you were seriously ill (or a member of society’s “elite”). When only those in danger of dying could get a test, it was of course not at all surprising that such a high percentage of those who tested positive died. It is astonishing how many articles are published with the entirely fake claim that the mortality rate of Covid-19 is 3.4%, based on that simple methodology. That same methodology will today, now testing is much more widely available to those who feel ill, give you results of under 1%. That is still an overestimate as very few indeed of the symptomless, or of those with mild symptoms, are even now being tested.
The Guardian’s daily graphs of statistics since January 1 illustrate this very nicely. It is of course not in fact the case, as the graphs appear to show, that there are now vastly more cases than there were at the time of peak deaths in the spring. It is simply that testing is much more available. What the graphs do indicate is that, unless mortality rates have very radically declined, cases tested on the same basis they are tested today would have given results last spring of well over 100,000 cases per day. It is also important to note that, even now, a very significant proportion of those with covid-19, especially with mild symptoms, are still not being tested. Quite possibly the majority. So you could very possibly double or treble that figure if you were looking for actual cases rather than tested cases.
I do not believe anybody seriously disputes that there are many millions of people in the general population who had covid and survived it, but were never tested or diagnosed. That can include people who were quite badly ill at home but not tested, but also a great many who had mild or no symptoms. It is worth recalling that in a cruise ship outbreak, when all the passengers had to be compulsorily tested, 84% of those who tested positive had no symptoms.
What is hotly disputed is precisely how many millions there are who have had the disease but never been tested, which given the absence of widespread antibody testing, and inaccuracies in the available antibody tests, is not likely to be plain for some time, as sample sizes and geographical reach of studies published to date have been limited. There is no shortage of sources and you can take your pick. For what it is worth, my own reading leads me to think that this Lancet and BMJ published study, estimating an overall death rate of 0.66%, is not going to be far off correct when, in a few years time, scientific consensus settles on the true figure. I say that with a certain caution. “Respectable” academic estimates of global deaths from Hong Kong flu in 1968 to 70 range from 1 million to 4 million, and I am not sure there is a consensus.
It is impossible to discuss covid-19 in the current state of knowledge without making sweeping assumptions. I am going here to assume that 0.66% mortality rate as broadly correct, which I believe it to be (and if anything pessimistic). I am going to assume that 70% of the population would, without special measures, catch the virus, which is substantially higher than a flu pandemic outbreak, but covid-19 does seem particularly contagious. That would give you about 300,000 total deaths in the United Kingdom, and about a tenth of that in Scotland. That is an awful lot of dead people. It is perfectly plain that, if that is anything near correct, governments cannot be accused of unnecessary panic in their responses to date.
Whether they are the best responses is quite another question.
Because the other thing of which there is no doubt is that covid-19 is an extremely selective killer. The risk of death to children is very small indeed. The risk of death to healthy adults in their prime is also very marginal indeed. In the entire United Kingdom, less than 400 people have died who were under the age of 60 and with no underlying medical conditions. And it is highly probable that many of this very small number did in fact have underlying conditions undiagnosed. Those dying of coronavirus, worldwide, have overwhelmingly been geriatric.
As a Stanford led statistical study of both Europe and the USA concluded
People <65 years old have very small risks of COVID-19 death even in the hotbeds of the pandemic and deaths for people <65 years without underlying predisposing conditions are remarkably uncommon. Strategies focusing specifically on protecting high-risk elderly individuals should be considered in managing the pandemic.
The study concludes that for adults of working age the risk of dying of coronavirus is equivalent to the risk of a car accident on a daily commute.
I should, on a personal note, make quite plain that I am the wrong side of this. I am over 60, and I have underlying heart and lung conditions, and I am clinically obese, so I am a prime example of the kind of person least likely to survive.
The hard truth is this. If the economy were allowed to function entirely normally, if people could go about their daily business, there would be no significant increase in risk of death or of life changing illness to the large majority of the population. If you allowed restaurants, offices and factories to be be open completely as normal, the risk of death really would be almost entirely confined to the elderly and the sick. Which must beg the question, can you not protect those groups without closing all those places?
If you were to open up everything as normal, but exclude those aged over 60 who would remain isolated, there would undoubtedly be a widespread outbreak of coronavirus among the adult population, but with few serious health outcomes. The danger lies almost entirely in spread to the elderly and vulnerable. The danger lies in 35 year old Lisa catching the virus. She might pass it on to her children and their friends, with very few serious ill effects. But she may also pass it on to her 70 year old mum, which could be deadly.
We are reaching the stage where the cumulative effect of lockdown and partial lockdown measures is going to inflict catastrophic damage on the economy. Companies could survive a certain period of inactivity, but are coming to the end of their resilience, of their financial reserves, and of effective government support. Unemployment and bankruptcies are set to soar, with all the human misery and indeed of deleterious health outcomes that will entail.
There is no social institution better designed than schools for passing on a virus. The fact that schools are open is an acknowledgement of the fact that there is no significant danger to children from this virus. Nor is there a significant danger to young adults. University students, the vast, vast majority of them, are not going to be more than mildly ill if they catch coronavirus. There is no more health need for universities to be locked down and teaching virtually, than there would be for schools to do the same. It is a nonsense.
The time has come for a change in policy approach that abandons whole population measures, that abandons closing down sectors of the economy, and concentrates on shielding that plainly defined section of the population which is at risk. With this proviso – shielding must be on a voluntary basis. Elderly or vulnerable people who would prefer to live their lives, and accept that there is currently a heightened risk of dying a bit sooner than might otherwise be expected, must be permitted to do so. The elderly in particular should not be forcefully incarcerated if they do not so wish. To isolate an 88 year old and not allow them to see their family, on the grounds their remaining life would be shortened, is not necessarily the best choice for them. It should be their choice.
To some extent this selective shielding already happens. I know of a number of adults who have put themselves into voluntary lockdown because they live with a vulnerable person, and such people should be assisted as far as possible to work from home and function in their isolation. But in general, proper protection of the vulnerable without general population lockdowns and restrictions would require some government resource and some upheaval.
There could be, for example, a category of care homes created under strict isolation where no visitation is allowed and there are extremely strict firewall measures. Others may have less stringent precautions and allow greater visitation and movement; people should have the choice, and be assisted in moving to the right kind of institution for them. This would involve upheaval and resources, but nothing at all compared to the upheaval being caused and resources lost by unnecessary pan-societal restrictions currently in force. Temporary shielded residential institutions should be created for those younger people whose underlying health conditions put them at particular risk, should they wish to enter them. Special individual arrangements can be put in place. Public resource should not be spared to help.
But beyond those precautions to protect those most in danger, our world should return to full on normal. Ordinary healthy working age people should be allowed to make a living again, to interact socially, to visit their families, to gather together, to enjoy the pub or restaurant. They would be doing so in a time of pandemic, and a small proportion of them would get quite ill for a short while, and a larger proportion would get mildly ill . But that is a part of the human condition. The myth that we can escape disease completely and live forever is a nonsense.
Against this are the arguments that “every death is a tragedy” and “one death is too many”. It is of course true that every death is a tragedy. But in fact we accept a risk of death any time we get in a car or cross a road, or indeed buy meat from the butcher. In the USA, there has been an average of 4.5 amusement park ride fatalities a year for the last 20 years; that is an entirely unnecessary social activity with a slightly increased risk of death. Few seriously want amusement parks closed down.
I genuinely am convinced that for non-geriatric people, the risk of death from Covid-19 is, as the Stanford study suggested, about the same as the risk of death from traffic accident on a daily commute. The idea that people should not commute to work because “any death is a tragedy” is plainly a nonsense.
The problem is that it is a truism of politics that fear works in rendering a population docile, obedient or even grateful to its political leaders. The major restrictions on liberty under the excuse of the “war on terror” proved that, when the statistical risk of death by terrorism has always been extraordinarily small to any individual, far less than the risk of traffic accident. All the passenger security checks that make flying a misery, across the entire world, have never caught a single bomb, anywhere.
Populations terrified of covid-19 applaud, in large majority, mass lockdowns of the economy which have little grounding in logic. The way for a politician to be popular is to impose more severe lockdown measures and tell the population they are being saved, even as the economy crumbles. Conversely, to argue against blanket measures is to invite real hostility. The political bonus is in upping the fear levels, not in calming them.
This is very plain in Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon has achieved huge popularity by appearing more competent and caring in managing the covid-19 crisis than Boris Johnson – which may be the lowest bar ever set as a measure of political performance, but it would be churlish not to say she has cleared it with style and by a substantial margin.
But when all the political gains are on the side of more blanket lockdowns and ramping up the levels of fear, then the chances of measures tailored and targeted specifically on the vulnerable being adopted are receding. There is also the danger that politicians will wish to keep this political atmosphere going as long as possible. Fear is easy to spread. If you make people wear face masks and tell them never to go closer than 2 metres to another person or they may die, you can throw half the population immediately into irrational hostility towards their neighbours. Strangers are not seen as people but as parcels of disease.
In these circumstances, asking ordinary people to worry about political liberty is not fruitful. But the new five tier measures announced by the Scottish government yesterday were worrying in terms of what they seem to indicate about the permanence of restrictions on the, not really under threat, general population. In introducing the new system, Nicola Sturgeon went all BBC on us and invoked the second world war and the wartime spirit, saying we would eventually get through this. That of course was a six year haul.
But what really worried me was the Scottish government’s new five tier system with restrictions nominated not 1 to 5, but 0 to 4. Zero level restrictions includes gatherings being limited to 8 people indoors or 15 people outdoors – which of course would preclude much political activity. When Julian Assange’s father John was visiting us this week I wished to organise a small vigil for Julian in Glasgow, but was unable to do so because of Covid restrictions. Even at zero level under the Scottish government’s new plans, freedom of assembly – an absolutely fundamental right – will still be abolished and much political activity banned. I cannot see any route to normality here; the truth is, of course, that it is very easy to convince most of the population inspired by fear to turn against those interested in political freedom.
What is in a number? When I tweeted about this, a few government loyalists argued against me that numbering 0 to 4 means nothing and the levels of restriction might equally have been numbered 1 to 5. To which I say, that numbering the tiers of restriction 1 to 5 would have been the natural choice, whereas numbering them 0 to 4 is a highly unusual choice. It can only have been chosen to indicate that 0 is the “normal” level and that normality is henceforth not “No restrictions” but normal is “no public gathering”. When the threat of Covid 19 is deemed to be sufficiently receding we will drop to level zero. If it was intended that after level 1, restrictions would be simply set aside, there would be no level zero. The signal being sent is that level zero is the “new normal” and normal is not no restrictions. It is both sinister and unnecessary.
UPDATE I just posted this reply to a comment that this argument amounts to a “conspiracy theory”. It is an important point so I insert my reply here:
But I am not positing any conspiracy at all. I suspect that it is very easy for politicians to convince themselves that by increasing fear and enforcing fierce restriction, they really are protecting people. It is very easy indeed to genuinely convince yourself of the righteousness of a course which both ostensibly protects the public and gives you a massive personal popularity boost.
It is argued that only Tories are worried about the effect on the economy in the face of a public health pandemic. That is the opposite of the truth. Remarkably, the global lockdowns have coincided with an astonishing rate of increase in the wealth of the richest persons on the planet. That is an effect we are shortly going to see greatly amplified. As tens of thousands of small and medium businesses will be forced into bankruptcy by lockdown measures and economic downturn, their assets and their markets will be snapped up by the vehicles of the super-wealthy.
I am not a covid sceptic. But neither do I approve of fear-mongering. The risk to the large majority of the population is very low indeed, and it is wrong that anybody who states that fact is immediately vilified. The effect of fear on the general population, and the ability of politicians to manipulate that fear to advantage, should not be underestimated as a danger to society.
There has been a substantial increase in human life expectancy over my lifetime and a subsequent distancing from death. That this trend should be permanent, in the face of human over-population, resource exhaustion and climate change, is something we have too readily taken for granted. In the longer term, returning to the familiarity with and acceptance of death that characterised our ancestors, is something to which mankind may need to become re-accustomed.
In the short term, if permanent damage to society is not to be done, then the response needs to be less of an attack on the entire socio-economic structure, and more targeted to the protection of the clearly defined groups at real risk. I greatly dislike those occasions when I feel compelled to write truths which I know will be unpopular, particularly where I expect them to arouse unpleasant vilification rather than just disagreement. This is one of those times. But I write this blog in general to say things I believe need to be said. I am very open to disagreement and to discussion, even if robust, if polite. But this is not the blog to which to come for comfort-reading.
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I see a correspondence between this article and the latest policies emanating from PM Johnson. The problem is that the instruments he uses to deal with the situation are naff – putting test and trace in the hands of the likes of Serco, making Dido Harding head of it etc – and just compound the problems. With the USA also in mind there are no doubts in my mind that differences in incidence and mortality rates etc are the result of differences in political management. The principles of Covid-19 infection control remain the basic principles of controlling any infectious disease outbreak and are pretty simple to follow if put across in the right way. Unfortunately it is the politicians that mess it up.
Conspiracy theory is a term someone thought up to belittle those who do not share a mainstream view. I agree that Craig is not a conspiracy theorist. Me neither. On this issue people should learn about the PCR test before criticising those who, like me, believe that it should never be used for diagnostic purposes. Neither did the Nobel laureate, Kary Mullis, who devised the test.
I certainly agree that people should learn about PCR tests … from the right sources, in the right educational context.
My advice would be if you’d never studied (or even heard of) PCR testing until this pandemic, and don’t know what an ROC curve is, then it’s best not to circulate snippets of information found on other websites, as you can’t tell whether they’re misleading or not. If that’s asking too much, then at least try a quick search for evidence that might disconfirm the gossip.
Fact check: Inventor of method used to test for COVID-19 didn’t say it can’t be used in virus detection
Social media users have been sharing a quote attributed to the inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, currently being used to detect COVID-19, which says “PCR tests cannot detect free infectious viruses at all”. This quote has been falsely attributed to the inventor, Kary Mullis, and has been taken out of context to falsify its original meaning.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-idUSKBN24420X
Or we could just refer to the person that invented the test, and received a Nobel Prize for his work.
Fact checking the fact checking sites reveals that their findings are most often the direct inverse of the truth, with the straw man argument the most popular method of ‘debunking’. At best they should be considered practitioners of sophistry; at worst, simply propagandists employed to reinforce the message of the MSM, particularly in matters of political bias, and the disparagement of anything the opposing faction happens to state.
– The statement by the OP was regarding the incorrect use of the PCR test for ‘diagnostic purposes’.
– The ‘fact check’ quoted by the respondent claims that the claim is that ‘PCR tests cannot detect free infectious viruses at all’. In fact, the PCR test not only detects, but if improperly implemented and interpreted over-detects because the sample is just amplified until a positive result is obtained even if there are only fragments of dead virus, or even other viruses similar to the one targeted.
Anyway, Nobel Prize winner for PCR, Mr Mullis himself, in a short discussion: (the original YouTube video was removed for violating YT’s ‘terms of service! That didn’t take long.)
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Sy6rQEqTMF84/
Thanks for engaging and elaborating, Roberto. Yes, I’m happy to refer (but not defer) to the crazy genius of Kary Mullis, if you wish. He was quite an eccentric and interesting personality with some very weird beliefs:
The Man Who Photocopied DNA and Also Saw a Talking Fluorescent Raccoon
“It may be surprising to learn that the credited inventor of the most important workhorse in molecular biology—the polymerase chain reaction or PCR—once claimed he had seen a talking fluorescent raccoon near his cabin, which may or may not have been an alien. He also disagreed with the science on climate change, believed in astrology, and thought HIV was not the cause of AIDS; rather, he hypothesized that AIDS resulted from an overwhelming accumulation of distinct microorganisms that could be harmless on their own.
“[ … ] There are many more interesting tidbits to be found in Kary Mullis’ life, like his love of LSD and his claim that he chatted with the “non-substantial form” of his recently deceased grandfather one day over beers (Mullis had to drink his granddad’s beer, as the latter’s ghostly form did not take kindly to liquids). The two stories may be tied in some way, it’s hard to tell.”
Maybe the Nobel Prize went to his head a bit! I hope you can appreciate that I’m reluctant to endorse an argument along the lines of “The Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis said it, so it must be true”. 🙂 It’s a salutary lesson in the fallibility of authorities.
On a similar note, I agree that fact-checking services aren’t infallible either and might have hidden political agendas. However, it’s the evidence and arguments they offer that are relevant to evaluating the truth of the “fact” being checked, not (so much) their reputation. The fact-checking page I linked to contains enough information to substantiate the claim that PCRs actually can be used for diagnostic purposes – with some important semantic provisos.
It’s true that Mullis’s interviews are a bit more nuanced than the bold quote misattributed to him in social media, but it’s important to note the context: he was talking about HIV/AIDS, which is very different to SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19. It’s entirely irrelevant to the current pandemic, because he expressed misgivings about the possibility of false positives in relation to retroviruses. Coronaviruses are a different ball game altogether. At no stage did Mullis say or imply that PCR tests are unsuitable for detecting coronavirus infections.
Mullis was keen to emphasise that PCR wasn’t initially conceived as a diagnostic test for a disease. PCR itself is actually just an amplification process: a means of making more of a particular genetic sequence. You can determine exactly what you want to multiply – but there needs to be some quantity of it there in the first place; if it’s absent, PCR can’t synthesise it.
It was a natural progression to use the PCR methodology to test for the presence of viral genomes in small quantities. If a sample contains a trace of virus too dilute to trigger a detector, then PCR can make more of it (or rather, parts of it) so that the quantity of viral material exceeds the minimum level required for test sensitivity. It works fine for binary qualitative tests, but because the process increases the quantities of the copied material, it’s virtually useless as a quantitative test. In other words, it can tell you if a certain virus is present, but it can’t tell you how much of it there is.
The point Kary Mullis was making in the context of HIV/AIDS (a human retrovirus) is that there are so many retrovirus variants in the human virome that there would be a high risk of over-emphasising the significance of one type. He didn’t assert that there was a flaw in the PCR method: it isn’t flawed (which is why he got a Nobel Prize for it!). Instead, he argued that there could be misunderstanding of the results and a simplistic cause-effect interpretation might be mistaken. He conjectured that other factors might be involved as well. And that’s all. He didn’t identify what those other factors might be. (Since then it has emerged that anti-retroviral drugs which specifically target HIV-1 and HIV-2 manage to suppress AIDS quite successfully, so those misgivings can be laid to rest.)
Retroviruses function very differently from coronaviruses: instead of building new copies of themselves, they compile a strand of DNA which is then inserted into a host cell’s genome, so that it’s reproduced if and when the cell divides (making them very difficult to eliminate, like HIV). Retroviruses are ubiquitous: they comprise over 5% of your genetic material. The DNA sequences they insert can be almost any nucleotide permutation (mostly inert “junk” DNA), which is why there are innumerable variants, most of them harmless.
Coronaviruses don’t insert themselves into your DNA. They are independent RNA units that replicate quickly after invading the cell. There are fewer possible variants, so it is much easier to design a test that’s specific to one virus.
Single-strand RNA genomes for coronaviruses are very long and complex (around 30,000 nucleotides) with many unique sequences. You’re right to highlight that PCR tests don’t try to match the entire genome; instead they try to match shorter sequences unique to one particular virus. Some cynics suggest that they can also match with random bits of floating genetic material, but the maths says different. For a sequence consisting of 100 nucleotides, the number of possible permutations would be 4^100 = 1,606938044×10^60. The analysis is laid out in detail at Moon of Alabama.
Consider testing a library for a chapter of a book. The likelihood of there being a book with a different title containing exactly the same chapter is infinitesimal (except perhaps for a revised edition of the same text, which to all intents and purposes would be a new “strain” of the original).
As it happens, the specificity of PCR tests can be easily verified against a laboratory “gold standard” using alternative signifiers (e.g. antibodies). For SARS-CoV-2, the candidate sequences used in the PCR test have also been checked for uniqueness against the GenBank library of viral signatures. So you’ll be pleased to know that, according to a systematic review, the specificity of SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests in documented studies is very high, ranging between 89% and 100%.
In practice, the sensitivity of the tests (i.e. false negatives) depends on various external factors including the patient’s viral load and the reliability of the sampling method. Some infected people could be given the all-clear, depending on the stage of the infection (ideally, a few days from symptom onset) and the quality of the swab.
There’s an additional complication to bear in mind: the difference between detecting the presence of a virus (in whole or in part) and diagnosing an illness – paralleling the difference between an infection and a “case”. Those distinctions sometimes get mixed up in the mainstream media. Can the PCR test diagnose Covid-19? No, it can only detect a SARS-CoV-2 infection. (In principle, as it detects unique viral fragments, it could return a positive result if the immune system has already blasted the virus particles to pieces, leaving behind only traces of debris; but that’s statistically unlikely, due to the viral load required to garner the particles in a swab.) Does a positive result indicate a “case”? Yes, according to ill-informed news reporters; but actually, no, if the person isn’t ill.
The PCR test is a very reliable indicator of a SARS-CoV-2 infection, which would certainly contribute to a physician’s diagnosis of Covid-19 disease in the presence of associated symptoms (such as fever and atypical pneumonia). Accordingly, it is useful for “diagnostic purposes”. More importantly it’s a crucial tool in epidemiology, which helps to identify, track and reduce the spread of the virus in the community; in the proper hands, it could help to attenuate or prevent further lockdown measures.
Have you read Kary Mullis`s book `Dancing Naked in the Mine Field’ ? If you have you would have realised he tells porkies.Most likely he did not take enough LSD to explore the higher dimensions of of his conscious awareness otherwise he would have stuck to telling the truth.
Reading this from Australia, it sounds like rambling Libertarian nonsense. And I say that with the utmost respect because it’s the first time I disagree with Craig Murray, whose writing and actions I consistently admire.
Craig admits nearly 400 people have died of Covid who were under 65 and had no underlying conditions. And that has happened with UK restrictions of some sort in place. So how many more will die if the economy opens again? What is an acceptable number? For me it is zero.
Craig also fails to compare the UK govt response with what has happened in other countries like Australia. Trump and Johnson are criminally negligent and many thousands are dead as a result. The goal from Day One should have been to totally eradicate the virus and keep it out of the country. Indeed, it should never have been allowed out of China: the WHO should have been supported in locking down Wuhan, but instead Western nations rushed to “get our people out of there”. Global leaders should be thinking about what happens in the NEXT pandemic but nobody is even talking about it.
I don’t think the UK or USA will do anything useful while Trump and Johnson remain in charge. This is a failure of Neoliberalism. Australia has been very lucky that State health departments were in charge of the response, not the federal govt.
Hundreds of thousands die of common flu every year. Tell me your theory for getting that figure down to “zero” Jaraparilla. I’m sure the WHO would be comforted to know.
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/flu-how-many-people-die-each-year-death-toll-influenza-uk-world-explained-668381
Covid-19 is a cold virus, not a flu virus. What exactly is the comparison you are trying to make? You might as well compare it to Ebola.
I agree with Jaraparilla, every life matters, and zero deaths should be the goal – though it will always be *effectively* zero in reality.
“zero deaths be the goal” You mean Zero Covid deaths? Are you not yet aware that the lockdown cutbacks are causing deaths from other illnesses? Not to metion misery for the ones of us that actually like to get out and mix with other people and see their families?
Always good to hear the voice of reason Ben in a locked-down asylum of mad people.
I’ll put it another way then. Tell me your theory for getting that figure down to “zero” for colds or Ebola. With a virus if you got it down to zero the virus would not exist.
It’s infectious & contagious diseases term – that’s why I said ‘effectively’ zero – there is never zero. It’s a goal. My comment was also a follow-on from some of what I said below too, I’ve no idea why you are challenging me for my theories because I think there shouldn’t be any unnecessary deaths – or suffering. I already said that in my comment.
I say very clearly in my comment below that there shouldn’t be lockdown, and some basic ways to start controlling spread. We don’t need lockdown.
My point to you is that flu is not an equal comparison – just like Ebola isn’t – in controlling infection and achieving ‘near enough’ zero deaths. Different types of infection, different ways of spreading, different mechanisms of reproduction, different immune responses to them – just different. If someone wants to achieve zero deaths from Covid-19, there is no point in challenging them to tell you how to achieve it for flu – you wouldn’t do the same things.
And, to be frank, this forum is hardly the place to seek those answers anyway.
“‘Near extinction’ of influenza in NZ as numbers drop due to lockdown”
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/near-extinction-influenza-in-nz-numbers-drop-due-lockdown
“Many countries in the southern half of the globe have instead experienced either record low levels of flu or none at all, public health specialists in Australia, New Zealand and South America have said, sparing potentially tens of thousands of lives and offering a glimmer of hope as winter approaches in the northern hemisphere.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/17/falling-flu-rates-in-southern-hemisphere-offers-hope-as-winter-approaches-coronavirus
So lockdown “near extinguishes” ‘flu in the south while it has no effect on rising Covid deaths in the north, is that it? Some accurate stats would be extremely helpful here, I believe ‘flu was never the problem in warm climates that it is here, moreover according to the way UK stats are kept, ‘flu deaths were never relatively high here either. Pneumonia is the problem. I have a rough compilation of the nomid data. E & W deaths 1200 in 2019.
See Figure 1 for the number of deaths due to influenza, pneumonia or COVID-19 by sex, England and Wales, occurring between 1 January and 31 August 2020 and registered by 5 September 2020. The deaths from Covid are far, far higher where it was either the direct cause or the underlying cause.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsduetocoronaviruscovid19comparedwithdeathsfrominfluenzaandpneumoniaenglandandwales/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31august2020#death-occurrences-due-to-covid-19-influenza-and-pneumonia
Jaraparilla, in his binary approach to fighting illness, is in good company. The majority of the world’s poplation, united in thought now by social media, and MSM, are being taught that a virus is something you can eliminate simply by telling people not to touch each other. Once they have taken on this argument I fear nothing can de convince them except a complete about face by above media factors,, which will never happen as long as scary news stories, risk aversiveness by politicians, and the economic factors Craig has mentioned, continue to prevail. The only good news for us all, is that the binary theory is completely wrong and Covid will die out anyway, if it isn’t already dying. If the world is set on a course of more of these stupid mistakes, it might come to civil disobedience by the non binaries.
Death enables birth: without death we would not have the resources for birth. Are you happy to condemn your children as the spawn of tradegy? Do you know how many births and deaths there are every day? Your thinking that every death is a tradegy is nonsense.
Perhaps that means every unexpected or untimely death. Suicides and drug deaths in the young are much more affecting than the natural end of a natural life.
Well, Craig is right on a lot of things. On this, there is convincing evidence written by a large number of his fans – and I am one – that he is wrong.
Reading back to his initial post I would dispute his graphs. That is a selective ‘y’ axis and does not represent the article:
Here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/25/covid-cases-deaths-today-coronavirus-uk-map
Either this is an existential threat or summat or it is not. Frankly the comments below the line divide into those that love Craig Murray and those that also love him but see him as more than a tad fallible.
On this, which is well outside of the scope of an ex-diplomat, his spidey sense that everything is a conspiracy, fails.
I like to think that I would have the bravery that Craig Murray has presented to the world on human rights issues. I doubt that I am strong enough.
On this, well, respect for allowing the overwhelmingly negative views to be given equal space.
Best wishes.
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”
Arnold J. Toynbee
I had a nasty bout of the first variant of covid in March (no test) which took several weeks to fully recover from. Then, when I was ill again a few weeks ago (and generally am very rarely ill), put it down to “just a big” albeit a particularly nasty one.
When I lost my smell for a day or so, and then read there seems to be another strain/variant of covid, it made sense that was it. After 4-5 days I was fine. (Again, no test – but this time out of choice and principle.)
The lockdown is utter nonsense and I agree with everything in the blog – except for the IFR which I believe will be much lower than 0.66. It’s interesting that “long flu” has never been regarded as ‘a thing’ (as they youth say): https://www.health.com/condition/cold-flu-sinus/flu-long-term-effects
Keep saying what needs to be said Mr Murray, always interesting, always informative.
Milo,
(Again, no test – but this time out of choice and principle.)
What principle would that be?
Please, I wish you well, but your logic is faulty, which appears to be yet another potential impact of this virus.
I’d agree with that, especially mortality rate being even lower, and with the gist of Craig’s article. But you can’t assume things with a virus. There are good arguments from Knutt Wittkowski that if Covid had been unchecked it would have spread further among healthy people and naturally weakened, becoming much less fatal. We have never studied the progression of a virus on such a scale and have no idea whether it will spread to 70% to what that would result in. I have to seriously doubt Craig’s worst case assumption of 300,000 deaths.
“Going out to eat with members of your household this weekend? Don’t forget to keep your mask on in between bites. Do your part to keep those around you healthy.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom
Your analysis of Covid-19 is spot on, and some people including myself have been saying the same thing for a while ( https://wordpress.com/view/irishmarxism.net and https://boffyblog.blogspot.com/ ). Your proposed approach to dealing with it also correct. In my own blog, because I live in Belfast, I have wanted to compare the approaches across the UK (with the exception of Wales) and also the Irish State. The Irish Government, just like the Scottish one, has smugly considered its approach much superior to that in London. In fact they are all much the same and, as you have laid out, wrong. I didn’t know Sturgeon had also employed the WW2 analogy, but it reinforces the point that she is just simply better at selling the same crap as Johnson, but then even the dysfunctional Stormont Executive has been better. Where we part is that I think exactly the same considerations apply to nationalism of the Scottish and English variety.
I have to disagree. This confuses percentages with actual hard numbers. If enough people are infected, which they will be under fewer/no restrictions then those hard numbers increase. Instead of 400 dead it’s 4000 dead.
Back in March we saw the government do something we never thought we’d see, a full lockdown to prevent spread of disease. I predict that regardless of the number of deaths or infections they will never do this again. They simply don’t want to spend the money. With the few restrictions still left and the few monetary assistances still provided the public gets a bare minimum help and protection. As soon as any of this becomes ‘voluntary’ employers will make returning to work, the office and the frontline risk areas mandatory. In other words voluntary only applies to the middle classes and upper classes. Everyone else is forced to take the risks anyway and, as ‘viral load’ is a risk factor they are always at greater risk.
I’m disappointed in your argument, it appears to ignore some basics as I’d said and also the plight of working class people.
Well. Possibly Craig has paid as much attention to public Heath officials and infectious & contagious diseases experts as our governments have? But I think he’s right about the restrictions, with caveats.
Others have noted Long Covid, and there are indicators of rare conditions in children becoming more prevalent, and an unusual increase in strokes in younger (30s type younger, not actually young) people. All I’m saying here is that no one actually knows the long term consequences of having had the disease. Death is not necessarily the outcome, but there could be other health problems. The best thing to do would be to avoid catching it.
Covid-19 is not a flu virus, I have no idea why people keep making comparisons with the flu. It’s a cold virus, but unusually lethal.
I thought all people were big parcels of disease before Covid-19, and they are, so nothing has changed there. I try my best to not spread any of my diseases, and I expect others to do the same – though most people don’t seem to care and ignore this courtesy.
The government measures of lock-down and control-freakery are short term emergency (panic) measures – these are not long term ways of dealing with it. And it’s a cold virus – I mean, great if they find that elusive cure for the common cold, but looking at the complexity of the immune response, I wouldn’t be holding back for a vaccine, all the money going into reasearch is a great thing, and I’m sure many developments will result – just seems unlikely it’s a cure, not one that lasts longer than 6 months anyway.
So much could have been done already – educate people (on hygiene and infection control) – and upgrade our infrastructure: get minimum ventilation rates regulations set up for indoor spaces (why is outdoors safer? Because the sir MOVES) – get that air con blowing a gale. Buses and trains – bring back compartments, and put in less seats etc (and gale-force air con). Get regulations in place for minimum number of hand cleansing stations in public areas. Get training cleaners in deep clean methods, start paying cleaners decent wages, and get teams of cleaners out there regularly cleaning all surfaces in public places.
Those are just the obvious basics – easy to implement, easy to come up with, and easy for a government to do. Most businesses will go along with the regulation – better than going bust I’d say.
Has the government done any of this? No. And why not? To keep the fear going, to keep the public compliant. Why hasn’t the public been informed of the basics of infection control? Because they are too thick? They want you to think so, keeps you compliant, means you don’t take control of your lives yourselves.
Craig, you almost-praise NS on her clarity (I agree the comparison with Boris is hardly a high bar), but she has made the briefings purely political, grandstanding how truly hand-wringingly sorry she is and how much she cares – that, to my mind, isn’t helpful. Those daily briefings could be used to actually inform people, to educate, to gradually make people understand the implications of their behaviour in spreading of colds.
Some basic infrastructure changes and some basic education on infection control, means we could reduce the risk and be back living life and the economy running; and it would make me much happier that all you parcels of disease are at least not trying to spread it in my direction. Courtesy.
And no, I don’t think cloth face coverings are an effective preventative device. I wear one under sufferance.
So, yes, the emergency procedures implemented are now a poor solution – only useful for the first couple of months. The way we get back to living life is not to just let that <1% be culled, because every life does matter, even if death is part of it, but to actually stop spreading the fecking thing.
Big pharma has a lot of (or the whole in fact) blame to take in our lackadaisical attitude toward infection spread – they have spent decades punting their remedies to allieviate symptoms of colds so you can 'keep going' – that is, you take your diseased hide straight back into work and spread it to all your colleagues instead of taking a few days off and recover properly, in isolation, like you are supposed to. And guess what? That big pharma company has another 20 customers waiting to buy their overpriced remedies, who do the same and,,, oh, that'll be 400 next. Big profits, big pharma, no cure.
There's No profit in educating us, is there?
The mad sets of complex rules they are coming out with – and I do comply because there is no choice until people start educating themselves – are just control-freak stuff, and it is designed to make us compliant and stay stupid and to stop dissent and gatherings. A truly caring government would already have implemented infrastructure and regulatory changes to make it possible for us the live our lives.
No mention of Long Covid, which is very widespread and very damaging.
I have two previously very fit and healthy friends under 40 who are reduced to the fitness of frail OAPs.
It’s stated that “All the passenger security checks that make flying a misery, across the entire world, have never caught a single bomb, anywhere.”. That’s untrue, even for cases in the public domain. For example, security guards stopped the 1986 ‘Hindawi’ attempt to blow up an ElAl plane flying from Heathrow. In 2017, a Manchester Airport employee was caught trying to carry a viable pipe bomb, hidden in a suitcase’s lining, onto a flight to Italy. For sure, some airplanes have been blown up despite the security, such as the Russian plane flying from Sinai in 2015. And an attempt by a Nigerian to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in 2009 was not picked up by security but failed in the air.
But missed cases are surely not a reason to remove security at airports, which acts as a deterrent, and has prevented recurrences of previous hijackings and terrorist attacks, such as the 1972 Japanese Red Army massacre at Tel Aviv airport, but to learn lessons and remove the weak points in the system.
I have discussed this rather tangential point at length because, if it is so manifestly wrong, what confidence can I place in the rest of the argument, which is along similar lines?
I also noted that rather tendentious element within the blog post-although one must also recognise that the deterrence measures may be out of proportion relative to the risk. Having created the infrastructure of airport security it is easier to leave it in place than look for security alternatives which are less onerous.
I think we have to remember the main purpose of the lockdowns, which is to give the health services breathing room. One of the reasons why the number of people killed by the virus is not as high as original estimates is we have learned how to treat people with at least two effective drugs.
Without lockdowns it is almost certain that hospitals would be overwhelmed and percentage deaths will rise, maybe as high as 1%. If you also include others who were ill with something else but could not be treated due to full hospitals. Last winter the NHS was already under pressure from flu in December, having to create extra beds. With flu and novel coronavirus hospitals will be easily overwhelmed. The one saving grace is that the flu and coronavirus usually kill the same demographic.
Sweden, South Korea, Japan had no mandatory lockdowns, had no overwhelmed hospitals and had no dramatic contractions in the economy such as the U.K. or the US which contracted by over 25%, 32% respectively resulting in a dramatic increase in poverty, homelessness because of millions upon millions losing their jobs for a pandemic which statistically doesn’t cause as many deaths as worldwide automobile accidents.
South Korea has had lockdowns and quickly developed a track and trace system. While Japan has requested a number of lockdown measures which while not mandatory were followed by the majority of people. It was common for many in Japan and South Korea to wear masks before the pandemic.
Sweden has quite a high infection rate and again like Japan it is has not enforced a dramatic lockdown (though there are some restrictions backed by law), people have responded by changing their behaviour.
The government was at one stage very keen to “open up” and “get back to normal”, to stop people working from home, to get them back on the commuter trains and into the offices, and that against their own wishes. What happened? Were the politicians lock-down happy or weren’t they? Which explanation fits better, your one, or the much less exciting story that the government was presented with advice from the scientific and medical sectors that there would be a far worse catastrophe if they didn’t bring back some restrictions? I’m not saying you are a consipracy theorist but there are a plenty of them applauding in your peanut gallery. There is a lack of rationality here, the government does not want to perpetuate this situation, alternatives have been explored such as those you suggest but it simply is not feasible and not because of mortality directly but because intensive care wards fill up with covid patients and degrade the healthcare system. You can say “it’s your choice” if you are elderly and don’t want to shield but if they get sick can you then refuse them treatment? I don’t think so. It just isn’t a simple matter of individual choices when there are population level consequences for individual behaviour.
I’d agree with you Craig, were it not for the fact that I doubt the ability of Johnson’s government to implement workable policies for protecting vulnerable people. If it were tried, I suspect we would end up with an overwhelmed health service in next to no time. The death rates you are estimating are death rates for people with access to medical care, but many more would die if the NHS were to be overwhelmed.
“For what it is worth, my own reading leads me to think that this Lancet and BMJ published study, estimating an overall death rate of 0.66%, is not going to be far off correct when, in a few years time, scientific consensus settles on the true figure.“
There’s an error with that link.
An article in the Lancet did estimate the IFR as 0.66%. It was published on 30 March and analyses data from China.
In Britain, schools being “sealed off” with the inmates inside is probably what’s coming soon. The whole discourse about schools feeding poor children during the school holidays is fork-tongued. With responsibilities come rights, just as with rights come responsibilities. I am all in favour of free food, but that isn’t what this is about. It’s about the right of the state. Has anyone in the MSM or the Labour party leadership even thought to ask whether there is actually much demand for free school meals in the holidays? Or are they sailing in a tsunami of marketing bullsh*t almost completely oblivious of how real working class people live? “Free school meals” is in any case Tory code for children born in the lower orders who are ipso facto considered to be genetically inferior. Not just inferior but germ-spreaders too. That’s how the Tory mind works, and it’s there in black and white in Thomas Malthus. “FSM” is used in a degrading way, as are phrases such as “special needs” and “individual attention”. (How about renaming schools “strategic hamlets”? The boards at Tesco and G4S would love it!) Tories have never been, are not, and never will be keen on feeding hungry mouths in the lower castes [*], and any leftwing person who is planning to celebrate the almost inevitable “U-turn” when it comes must have thrown their critique of propaganda out of the window or something.
Note
*) Banner seen hung from a bridge over the M74 in Scotland: “Karabakh is Azerbaijani”. Tories want to feed those who can’t afford to buy food about as much as those who made that banner care for the plight of the Armenians. That slogan appeals only to those who either welcome or are ignorant of the crime against humanity that is “ethnic cleansing”.
This is the most misguided post by Craig that I have ever seen, by an order of magnitude.
Craig, I am at a loss to understand why you have published something so badly wrong; I know you have access to good information which you have not published here.
Readers, the SARS-CoV-2 virus very probably escaped from laboratory research (it can barely transmit between bats, which it supposedly jumped species from). It is potentially extremely dangerous; it won’t be known just how bad it really is for months yet, when widespread reinfection has been observed. Studies indicate that it attacks blood, liver, kidneys, nerve cells; it may decrease IQ and halve sperm count.
Please do everything in your power to prevent transmission of this virus. And no, I don’t give a damn about government rules, many of which are nonsensical. Use your own and each other’s brains; that’s what they’re for.
Stay safe.
I reluctantly agree. This is worse than the “I don’t care about polar bears either” post – this directly feeds into C-19 denialism which will feed this pandemic. Of course governments use every opportunity to grant themselves greater power, and of course they are utterly cynical about the way they do it – that does not mean that C-19 is not a severe danger to everyone, particularly the most vulnerable in society.
It’s a pretty shocking, to be honest. All these people who have ranted on about “Agenda-21”, NWO, crap like that – they’re suddenly willing to dismiss this genuine danger to humanity.
I get it Glenn, pour scorn upon things that you don’t agree with and cast them as “conspiracy theories”, whilst agreeing with “conspiracy theories” that happen to agree with your own fears.
I there was to be widespread reinfection, we would have seen it by now. The WHO estimates that about 750 million people have been infected with the virus world-wide to date. The number of documented reinfections we have seen? About 5, last I heard. This is normal with any disease–there are some small number of people who have ineffective immune systems. The overwhelming evidence is that SARS-CoV-2 is apprehended by the human immune system like other viruses. Once you have had it, you are unlikely to get it again, probably for years, maybe for life.
“I there was to be widespread reinfection, we would have seen it by now.”
Oh come on! How can you possibly make such a lazy assertion? Nobody knows how long immunity lasts from an infection, and nobody knows how this virus will mutate.
This sort of sheer stupidity is what promotes pandemics. “The overwhelming evidence” indeed, which dates back to precisely far less than a single year, to draw such sweeping conclusions about a virus than nobody – absolutely nobody – has any business concluding that one is “unlikely to get it again”.
The only overwhelming evidence is that this virus is spreading, and every time the notion pops up that it’s no big deal, it spreads that much worse. This is a virus that thrives on ignorance, laziness and stupidity – your post being a data point in evidence.
glenn-uk, “The only overwhelming evidence is that this virus is spreading”
did your TV tell you this? Based on massive increase in dodgy PCR tests with a massive false positive rate, that the inventor himself said were not to be used for infectious diseases…current deaths and hospitalisations absolutely in line with previous years…nothing to suggest that there should be a second severe spike in this disease…the curve perfectly followed the well documented annual corona virus curve (see the old work of Edgar Hope-Simpson)
Did my TV tell me this? No – I went door to door, visiting every house in the entire world to find out for myself. Isn’t that what you did?
glenn_uk you are the one that asserted that The only overwhelming evidence is that this virus is spreading so the onus is on you to say what you base this on. If it is not dodgy PCR positive results then please enlighten us
Sorry, Uzmark, it’s not clear what you mean about a “massive false positive rate” for PCR tests? PCR tests can be done in a multitude of ways, and the specificity can be refined up to virtually 100% by increasing the number of target sequences. Can you please identify your source for these “dodgy PCR tests”?
If you could outline what you know about evaluating the reliability of medical test procedures, and how much experience you have in that area, it might help to simplify the subsequent explanation. Thanks.
– “did your TV tell you this?”
The biggest fool in the world can say that the sun has risen, but that does not make it night time. I don’t even have a TV.
In county after county, region after region, country after country, we have seen case numbers and hospital admissions soar, followed about two weeks later by a soaring fatality rate – both then arrested by social restrictions.
For this to be a fake on behalf of “the MSM and their overlords”, hundreds of thousands of medical staff and local statistical office staff would have to be “in on it”. I do not trust the Establishment. I do trust the basic integrity of the public.
Dredd – If you are not aware of the massive false positive problem with PCR tests for this virus it is difficult to see how you think you can add anything to this discussion given that it is so widely known, and so central to the whole virus issue. Even the mass media could not avoid the issue with Kay Burley pushing Matt Hancock on the question of being asked to isolate by “test and Trace” when the original pcr test in question could very likely be a false positive. he acted? stupid and ignored the question. Julia Hartley Brewer had a similar interview, with similar results. The Nobel prize winning scientist that invented the PCR test, Kary Mullis, himself said it was not to be used for this purpose. I’m guessing he knew a thing or two about it.
As for my relevant expertise on the matter – why don’t you deal with the information and not try to dismiss the messenger? If you prefer to be ruled by self proclaimed “experts” favoured by the mass media, usually funded by the same sources, predicting all sorts of horse shit in this situation then please ignore my posts. Here is one analysis on the subject, and if you can’t find many more by yourself then I believe you are pulling my chain https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/09/28/false-positive-tests/
Uzmark, the “massive false positive problem with PCR tests” is isn’t quite what you think it is. And Kary Mullis never said or implied that PCR shouldn’t be used for testing for the presence of coronaviruses. I explained these points in an earlier exchange here:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/10/covid-19-and-the-political-utility-of-fear/comment-page-3/#comment-961886
The reason I asked whether you were familiar with evaluating medical tests is because some of the technical concepts are difficult to grasp and if you don’t already understand them then little progress will be made by couching explanations in those terms. It’s very common for people to make gross misjudgements in their estimates of risk from test results, sometimes with potentially serious consequences. In 2006-7 a landmark study by Gigerenzer demonstrated that even medical experts make wildly wrong predictions about the genuine mortality risk associated with positive test results, with potentially serious implications for patient health. You need to do the maths to calculate the actual risks. The implications are usually easier for people to comprehend when presented as icon arrays; I worked on one such project at Oxford.
The arguments Yeadon presents rely on judgements of specificity and sensitivity (which I mentioned in that earlier post). He does calculations on the basis of questionable assumptions and produces figures that sound dramatic but really aren’t. Here is a very good outline of the numbers and calculations involved, with clear diagrams, and an explanation of why Yeadon drew the wrong conclusions:
No, 90% Of Coronavirus Tests Are Not ‘False Positives’ And This Is Why: Experts explain why a theory doing the rounds about the number of people wrongly diagnosed with Covid-19 is simply not true.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/false-positives-coronavirus_uk_5f686da4c5b6de79b677e909
Dredd, I looked at you Huffington Post article, and it does nothing to allay the talk of false positives. The article is based on the assertion that there is a higher prevalence in the people being tested than the population in general. The number of tests are going through the roof because you need a test to travel, to go to hospital, because you think you are supposed to, because you are being bribed to. Even if it is marginally higher than 0.11% there can still be a massive amount of false positives being used as propaganda. The last paragraph from huff post “but why oh why would they want to do this…” gives them away, but is no surprise.
A five year old could see that there were positives with deaths in April, and positives with only seasonal normal deaths now.
So much for “some of the technical concepts are difficult to grasp” shut up and obey the experts BS
And your evidence that once infected, we will all be immune to it is exactly what? Not a single piece of evidence. There is no evidence of lasting immunity against corona Viruses associated with the cold to which we are all susceptible but luckily it rarely kills anybody. The potential for mutation, though it has not occurred so far, is also another worry.
Clark
I fully agree with you this is a misguided post. Interestingly, the argument in the post have similarities with the Great Barrington declarations, but it looks like Craig has taken exception to this and admits to deleting a post earlier that criticised it on the basis that he has not mentioned the GBD.
Also fixations on Average worldwide IFR and CFR with data that is not mature yet is not helpful and ignores the burden of morbidity, absence through sickness and sequelae. COVID-19 is the main cause of disruption of the economy not anything else.
Also as I mentioned earlier this government has so badly mishandled the crises, we still do not have an effective test and track system, nor is proper isolation Carried out or enforced and people with symptoms go home in unsuitable surroundings to infect their families. This has meant that we have suffered from both the health and the economic consequences, whereas China for example is already functionally back with no cases. The bad application of a principle should not discredit The principle, it should discredit the poor application thereof.
Clark, you may be right that this was released from a lab and it could have lasting effects (although the flu also has lasting effects), but that makes no difference – analysis of the actual numbers is what should guide the response. Regardless of its provenance this virus followed the predictable seasonal curve for all corona viruses as pointed out by Edgar Hope-Simpson as regarded for decades.
We CANNOT prevent general transmission of this virus. Analysis of different lockdown regimes demonstrate this. Individuals can hide from this (and life in general) if they want. Supporting lockdown rules created by the people that released it in the first place (if indeed it was released) would also be barmy
Other processes are available for prevention of transmission, apart from lockdown.
Lockdown, as I said above is an initial reaction emergency measure.
Long term we should be looking at education and infrastructure changes.
Contrary, why do we need anything apart from individual common sense measures given the current death and hospitalization rates. Where does this disease rank in terms of causes of deaths – don’t think it gets in the top twenty. We don’t do much to deal with the risk of falling pianos
Well, it’s the ‘common sense’ part that a lot of people have difficulty with with – hence the education part. I’m not blaming folk, it’s the way they are told to behave and it suits say big pharma if people are spreading mild diseases.
What I’m suggesting is, as you say, common sense – just make it a bit more common and a bit more sensible,,,
Contrary, I would agree that education could help – like telling people how to be metabolically healthy therefore be at less risk from any virus (they will never do this). But before educating with facts they should stop fear mongering with nonsense. By common sense measures I mean the same common sense people use to reduce risk of any other infection, being hit by traffic, avoiding falling pianos etc and adults don’t need governments to tell them these things
Not sure you’re one to preach about common sense, seeing as you’re comparing the risk of catching an infectious disease to the risk of a piano falling on your head.
Ah well, the common sense of risk perception – that’s one most people get wrong too. For instance, flying in a plane is the least risky way to travel, but most people fear it the most, then think nothing of jumping in their car and hurtling down a motorway at 90 mph. (Obviously it’s more complex than that, but roughly, we don’t usually get the actual risk of an activity right).
And, in reality, most people don’t even know what a virus actually is, so,,, education.
And governments are the last people you want telling you anything – woeful ignorance and compulsive lying aren’t the best educational tools! A government could implement an educational programme – hand over the dosh and delegate it to hopefully someone with some,,, common sense.
Kev “Not sure you’re one to preach about common sense, seeing as you’re comparing the risk of catching an infectious disease to the risk of a piano falling on your head.”
I thought it was clear that I was making the point that there proportionality in the measures being taken compared to the risk. Devastated economy, all but closing down the NHS for any other health issues for almost zero death risk for the vast majority of the population. The at risk could be looked after in 5 star hotels at a minute fraction of the economic cost
Here is my previous comment on a possible course of action to make the world a safer place (infection-spreading wise):
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/10/covid-19-and-the-political-utility-of-fear/comment-page-3/#comment-961772
One issue I have is the risk-perception of every individual person is different – so, even among friends that have say the same level of knowledge as me, we all have different risks we are willing to take, and different ways of dealing with each risk. One friend, who has in a past career worked in a virology lab, works with the public and accepts she’s likely exposed to many things, and has never been bothered too much about not ‘keeping going’ while having a cold, while I insist on never meeting up with people if I’m at the spreading stage of a cold – that’s as a matter of course, not a Covid-19 reaction. I missed a lot of Christmas celebrations last year due to a cold – a strange dry cough etc – and I’m glad I did now, otherwise many of my family might have caught something unpleasant that I still suffer from. At the time I was poo-poohed by a lot of them and they all thought I was pathetic. That’s the social pressure we are up against when employing our common sense and deciding the risks to take – other opinions matter to us.
So, I’m just saying it needs a more formalised approach, with everyone on near enough the same page. (And then you have a better idea of the risk you are taking. As far as I’m concerned, every single door handle and handrail in public area is smeared with a plethora of diseases – touch at your own risk. If I touch a public handrail, say, I will not touch anything after that until I’ve washed that hand – that is, I don’t spread anything. And there needs to be a balance of using all the hand cleansers – the alcohol based ones not only kill nasty things, it also kills your own good natural fauna and flora on your skin that actually give you some protection by competing for space on your skin. The best thing to use is hard soaps and hot water for washing your hands, because some of the good stuff that lives on you can survive that, it just kills virus and things that don’t naturally live on skin. Liquid soaps can also be too ‘stripping’, that’s why I say hard soap – a bar of soap – warm soapy water, and lots of it.)
There will always be some risk and some level of infection spread – we can’t live our lives in hermetically sealed bubbles – but people need to be aware of how they are spreading in order to minimise it; and at the moment, the general public really isn’t aware.
If you don’t understand what it is that is a risk – your risk perception will be flawed – and common sense to one person with the knowledge is very different to that of someone without the correct knowledge.
– “We CANNOT prevent general transmission of this virus”
New Zealand has. Through their winter.
“New Zealand has. Through their winter.”
How do you know? did they do a double-blind randomised control study of what would have happened without with different measures? Different lockdown regimes in otherwise comparable countries showed no difference in outcomes
– “this virus followed the predictable seasonal curve for all corona viruses…”
That is not so; numbers did not rise simultaneously all over the Northern Hemisphere with the changing seasons. No. The virus clearly first spread in Wuhan, then Hubei Province, then China as a whole. This pattern was repeated over and over again; the virus reached certain countries, those close to China at first, and then proliferated there. Spain and Italy saw rapidly rising numbers before the UK, and then the US was affected later, again from centres that subsequently spread.
For each infection centre, numbers also rose much faster than for endemic coronaviruses, so they were clearly heading for a peak about an order of magnitude higher.
– “lockdown rules created by the people that released it in the first place…”
This tastes of conspiracy theory; “it’s all part of a plan, and there’s one unified secret group controlling it all. Whatever effects it has must have been what they wanted” – a self-validating proposition. Different governments have deployed different restrictions, many of them nonsensical or contradictory. I expect SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab rather than having been released, since no one has any defence against it apart from self-isolation.
Clark “That is not so”
It is so, this may have been a bad corona virus, but look at the European curve compared with Edgar Hope-Simpson’s seasonal corona virus curve – it matches exactly
“This tastes of conspiracy theory”
You stated it came from a lab
– “the European curve compared with Edgar Hope-Simpson’s seasonal corona virus curve – it matches exactly”
Look at the other curves here:
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries
So we can cherry-pick the European curve and it’ll fit some seasonal coronavirus curve; so what? You wouldn’t even expect a new virus to which no one has any immunity to spread in the same fashion as endemic viruses.
Yes, the characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 seem most consistent with it having arisen in human virology research; it is best adapted to humans as if multiple generations of it had been cycled through human cell cultures; it is poorly adapted to other species; thirty years of its evolution seem to be missing, as if its adaptation to humans had been accelerated by fast cycling its generations but leaving no trace in the wild… These are matters of virology.
But the phrase “lockdown rules created by the people that released it in the first place…” implies that all the world’s governments worked in lockstep despite coming up with very different restrictions, ie. they are conspiring, and that they commissioned the development of SARS-CoV-2 and had it released. It implies that this whole sorry mess is the successful, intentional outcome of an ongoing conspiracy, so it’s conspiracy theory.
You make some good points there Clark, I think this is a purpose built bio weapon, intentionally designed to cull a significant portion of the World population, and then be used to implement draconian measures that would never be accepted under normal conditions.
Like the common cold, there will be no cure, anytime soon. The economic reset will be blamed on it, as will many other things.
Millions will die from of it, and millions more will die because of the global overlords response to it.
This is text book classical Hegelian Dialectic, Problem-Reaction-Solution.
I doubt that SARS-CoV-2 was released deliberately because no one has any defence against it; possibly eco-facists who’ve decided that their personal suffering is worth the overall ecological benefits, but such fringe groups are unlikely to have bioweapon laboratories.
“There has been a substantial increase in human life expectancy over my lifetime and a subsequent distancing from death. That this trend should be permanent, in the face of human over-population, resource exhaustion and climate change, is something we have too readily taken for granted. In the longer term, returning to the familiarity with and acceptance of death that characterised our ancestors, is something to which mankind may need to become re-accustomed.”
Just death by disease, or death by starvation too? Then there is degraded antisocial behaviour, to complete the Malthusian triple.
If you assume human overpopulation then it is not surprising what the conclusion will be. But the problem is not the size of the cake or the number of mouths – it’s the size of most of the population’s spoons!
Great reporting ? The world needs more truth like this. It’s went on to long, and time to take our lives back!
Yah! Take our lives back, open things up! Whoo-hoo! Oh, just don’t look at the deaths and the overwhelmed hospitals.
glenn_uk. Deaths are not more than usual and the hospitals are not overwhelmed…why are you spreading this nonsense?
You’re a denialist, Uzmark. Just waving away facts doesn’t make them magically vanish, I’m afraid, despite people like you and Trump believing that it does.
glenn_uk I am aware of the facts. I am responding to your assertions about deaths and overwhelmed hospitals which are dangerous nonsense. Compare them to seasonal averages for recent years before spouting forth.
Again you resort to strawmaning and name calling
Deaths were way above usual in the UK’s first peak; 55,000 excess deaths – “more than usual” is what “excess” means. Most hospitals were not overwhelmed but they did fill nearly to capacity (two hospitals required excess patients to be moved elsewhere); they avoided being overwhelmed because elective surgery had been postponed and wards had been cleared in advance.
Disappointing to see your thinking on this has not improved since your first glib dismissal of what you perceived as fear and overreaction in the early days of the outbreak. A couple of serious errors in your post: first, deaths are a lagging indicator, so a cursory look at the current daily figures is not nearly as revealing as you imply. With a lag of several weeks between an increase in cases and the corresponding increase in mortality, we are still some time off seeing the deaths resulting from the current surge in cases. Second, fatality rates are not a static variable, they depend on a multitude of factors, including availability of timely treatments, hospital care, etc., so mortality rates increase substantially once hospital capacity is exceeded, as happened in the first wave in many places and as will soon likely happen again. And third, you ignore completely the issue of morbidity, which remains a largely unknown factor, but it is becoming very apparent that so called “long covid” is a major problem for many people who survive, and not simply confined to the old and infirm.
Your argument is essentially a repeat of that of a small fringe of scientists for “herd immunity” through an uncontrolled epidemic in the young, and “shield” the vulnerable in order to avoid the perceived harm of response measures on the economy. You might be interested to know that this argument is being pushed aggressively by corporate interests including the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a Koch-funded “libertarian” think tank connected to the Tufton street lobbying network in London. But as a group of senior scientists and public health experts recently wrote in the Lancet, “This is a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence.” The basic premises of the argument are badly wrong. Not only would the public health cost be enormous, and not confined to “only” the old and infirm as you claim, but the economic cost would also be huge. There is overwhelming evidence, confirmed recently by the IMF, that it is the severity of the pandemic, not the response, that is responsible for harming the economy. The East Asian and Pacific countries provide us with a very clear example of how best to protect both public health and the economy. Short, strong lockdowns, social distancing and masks, combined with aggressive testing and case isolation can and have all but eliminated community transmission in many countries, allowing life to return to close to normal with no need for indefinite, harsh restrictions. The failure of half measures to contain the virus and the rank corruption at the heart of the shambolic test and trace system are to be lamented, but simply letting the virus loose is not a rational response, it is extremely dangerous folly.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32153-X/fulltext
https://blogs.imf.org/2020/10/08/covids-impact-in-real-time-finding-balance-amid-the-crisis/
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/15/how-the-white-houses-herd-immunity-strategy-would-destroy-the-us-economy/
https://bylinetimes.com/2020/10/09/climate-science-denial-network-behind-great-barrington-declaration/
some say those east asian and pacific countries would have fared even more successfully if they had followed the advice of the koch brothers.
Some? Who?
are you kidding? it is the essence of all denier logic.
Thank you for this post that is better argued and referenced than what I have tried to convey In my comment on page 1.
JPR “but simply letting the virus loose is not a rational response, it is extremely dangerous folly.”
nonsense. Comparisons of different lockdown regimes repeatedly tell us that they don’t work
Uzmark — at what seems to be a very high risk of wasting my time — allow me to attempt to demonstrate with basic logic and some simple calculations that you are wrong, even deluded, if you think international comparisons show lock downs don’t work (provided they are supported by travel restrictions and an effective testing system). China — along with it’s East and South East Asian neighbours, plus NZ and Aus — have had some of the most stringent lock down measures, so I will base my comparison on them.
It’s widely recognised by statisticians that excess deaths are the best way to measure the impact of a pandemic on a population. The Financial Times report data for excess deaths in the US — where lock down measures have been among the weakest and most inconsistent in the world — up to 22 August of 273,000, which equates to a total fatality rate of 0.8 per mille for the US population (obviously this is still growing and will continue to do so until the pandemic ends, perhaps in a year or two). Since China implemented far stronger lock down measures, then for your argument to be true, we would expect them to have the same or worse death toll as the US. However this is not what we observe in the real world. Multiplying the US total fatality rate by the China’s population gives 1.12 million deaths, and that would be only by the first few months, since the US data is only up to 22 August. Similar calculations could be done for the rest of the countries that have been successful in suppressing or eliminating the virus, which would obviously greatly inflate the death toll, all the while considering that this is only for the first six months! What we see in those countries that locked down hard and early and used the bought time to establish effective testing and isolating systems with rational travel restrictions is minimal excess deaths, in some cases such as NZ, their total mortality is actually 5% lower during the pandemic due to the ancillary benefits of their lock down also virtually eliminating their regular yearly deaths from endemic flu and other respiratory diseases.
We can expect the very wide disparity between countries to continue to grow, since the counties that locked down hard and pursued aggressive testing to suppress or eliminate community transmission have effectively dealt with it more or less as well as could be done, while the situation has spiralled out of control in the US and Europe (and those other bastions of neoliberalism and authoritarian nationalism, Brazil and India), with no apparent appetite for a serious attempt to regain control. The Trump administration has in fact announced it has no intention of controlling their epidemic, “because it is a contagious virus,” as Mark Meadows put it. It should be clear to anyone paying the slighrest attention what the results of such an approach are.
Japan didn’t lock down – inconvenient to your argument, but there you go. Japan has a death rate from Covid of 14 per millon.
“while the situation has spiralled out of control in the US and Europe ” – not in sweden – < 200 deaths since aug 1st
In Italy – no. of deaths to Aug 1st 35,000; since Aug 1st 2,000 deaths – doesn't look like spiralling out of control to me
FranzB — on the contrary, for my argument to be undermined the countries that imposed the rapid, strict lockdowns would have to have fared worse than those that did not. China, Vietnam, Thailand, New Zealand, Australia more than suffice to demonstrate the efficacy of the response.
Japan did not impose a strict lockdown (my understanding is Japan’s political system prevents the govt. from taking such action) and has had a relatively larger epidemic compared to the abovementioned countries, with the exception of Australia, which has been similar in magnitude to Japan, although they have done much better recently, coming very close to eliminating community transmission with the lockdown in Victoria, while Japan is still recording hundreds of cases, and thus is at much greater risk of further outbreaks (it is far easier to stay at zero than any other number). Nevertheless, Japan has still fared much better than Europe and the US, because it responded very early with limited closures to reduce transmission, near universal masking, and rapid establishment of an effective testing and isolation system with a focus on backwards tracing that accounts for the overdispersed transmission dynamics of covid-19.
The US and Europe did none of this, and hence allowed huge epidemics to grow before they were forced to respond. Europe drove transmission very low eventually, but were far too hasty to attempt to “get back to normal”, inciting high risk behaviours (eat out to help out, encouraging international travel for the sake of the tourism industry, etc. etc.), while still leaving substantial residual community transmission that their testing systems were unable to contain. The shit show in the US speaks for itself. Sweden hardly deserves comment. Its mortality has been comparable to the UK and US, adjusting for population size — and that with a Scandinavian social welfare and health system! Compared to its Nordic neighbours it has been a catastrophe: around ten times the mortality, a massive epidemic in its care homes, and in fact a very similar contraction in GDP to its neighbours. So much for the naïve attempt to protect the economy by refusing to counteract the virus. A lot of this can be attributed to hubris. Sweden’s chief epidemiologist was among those claiming at the outset that the virus was unstoppable and hence it was irrational to attempt to do so. When last I checked he was still absurdly claiming that the countries that locked down early and pushed to eliminate the virus would eventually see the same scale of mortality as Sweden. This has been handily disproved by the experience of many countries, some mentioned above, yet I’m not holding my breath for any admissions of error. That would require a degree of humility that is sorely lacking in many.
As for numbers of deaths at the present moment and in recent weeks, I have already explained above that deaths are a lagging indicator. They track increases in cases by something like 3-6 weeks, so the surge we have seen in the last week or so will be reflected in far higher deaths in the weeks ahead. We can already see a very rapid escalation of hospitalizations, sadly these include many of the deaths we can expect to see in a few weeks time. All this with many months of winter to get through.
For an interesting discussion on the role of hubris, see here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02596-8
JPR – put otherwise comparable European countries’ curves on top of each other and see that they are basically the same. Even more so when you see that the countries which suffered slightly more in 2020 had lower than average excess deaths in 2019. There were more frail people to be affected
Israel had a particularly tough lockdown. When they abandoned it and allowed large gatherings there was no spike.
Look at the early perfect data sets in the cruise ship, Ruby Princess, and US aircraft carrier that were hit in March. Thousands of people living on top of each other – the deaths were not particularly high.
Studies of supermarket workers in different countries on the proverbial “front line” for 8 hours a day – no increase in deaths for them.
Ludicrous to think you can hide indefinitely from a virus. They told us in March it was for 3 weeks to flatten the curve, maybe. If they told us it was to escape the virus completely they would have been laughed out of office at the time – why do people accept it now?
Uzmark — I don’t dispute the fact that nearly all European states have failed more or less equally badly, because they have all responded in a quite similar way. I don’t think any serious person disputes this. However, that is beside the point, and you are still ignoring what I actually said. China, Vietnam, Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, and others have shown very clearly that you can in fact protect the vast majority of your population from infection — i.e. “hide indefinitely from a virus”, ludicrous as that may seem to you. If you think what they are doing is impossible, perhaps you ought to question your understanding of how covid is transmitted, rather than outright denying reality. There’s absolutely no reason to suggest their populations are less vulnerable than Europeans and Americans. Similar demographics, in some cases worse overcrowding and air pollution. The difference is the response. Strict social distancing to trim contact networks with aggressive testing and isolation drives exponential decay in cases, we’ve seen this in many many countries now. Some have continued to zero cases and then kept it out at the borders, responding rapidly to any outbreaks with their testing systems. Others have given up with large residual community transmission, trying to maintain R = 1 with half measures and soft lock downs which don’t work. It should be obvious by now what the best strategy is. Every one wants to get back to their lives, but there is a very strong scientific consensus on how that can be best done, from the John Snow Memorandum, to WHO, to the IMF — preventing community transmission, following the examples of countries that have shown how to do it.
Cruise ship Ruby Princess – at least 900 infections, 28 deaths. That’s over 3%.
– “Ludicrous to think you can hide indefinitely from a virus”
SARS has been wiped out in the wild. So has smallpox. Thank god.
According to a survey REACT-2 only 6% of population had antibodies by 13 of July (London 10%). So 40,000 deaths are needed to achieve 6% . If I am not mistaken 60-70% would be 400,000-500,000. What is the going rate for a human life so we can calculate cost-benefit analysis. There are some data (worldometer) that total positive tested are 880000 and deaths 44000 which would give even worse outcome. With big numbers little tweaks make a big difference. Craig’s 0.64 becoming 1% is couple of 100’s thousand lives.
Stay safe
As so often the case – some excellent thoughts from Mr Murray on this.
My fear if we introduce selective and voluntary shielding, though, is that those vulnerable people who elect to go into shielding would be more or less permanently stuck there. If Covid-19 then becomes more common outside the shielding facilities and the rest of the, not-so-at-risk, population learns to live with it. You’d be relying on a vaccination coming along eventually to get at-risk people out of shielding, and that’s not at all a given.
Still – not sure what other options there are. Current general lockdowns and government support are neither sustainable nor particularly effective. They, too, are really just hoping for that magic vaccination bullet.
As late as March 2020 the Government advisers seemed to favour a comparable “herd immunity” strategy. What spooked them was the realisation that the hospital services would be completely overwhelmed as it nearly was despite a rapid uturn on their part. The second time round Mark Drakeford has now imposed a lockdown for the same reason. Would not your strategy destroy the health service and lead to the exhaustion and death of hundreds of health workers?
I sympathize with Craig’s positions, which is not to be callous about risk but to be wary of counterproductive measures and fear mongering. His analysis, while good, could be improved.
Always more to be said, but will pause here.
Paul
I fully agree with but would also like to add two points.
SA, yes, well observed. That such measures could have worked, or might still, if well executed seems at risk of being lost or deliberately discarded..
Wow! well done Mr Murray, very brave to venture an opinion or thought on this subject.
I’ve been appalled at the degree of hatred, anger and name calling being propagated around this issue and suspect that a great many decent & trusted commentators have been self censoring, or simply ‘keeping their heads down’, in order to avoid the ridicule and animosity of the baying haters.
Incredibly (for me!), I’ve done much the same myself as I’ve heard close friends sound almost ‘extremist’ in their intolerance of alternative opinions, thought or analysis.
The degree to which civilised discussion of this epoch defining issue has been curtailed, in favour of that crusty old trope that “you’re either with us or against us”, has been startling and more than a little unnerving.
I’m a British islander who’s been out & about in the world for almost 7 years now, pottering through 17 odd countries on 3 or 4 continents. I’ve ended up being kind of ‘stuck’ in Vietnam since all this brou ha ha kicked off and mighty thankful for it.
Being away from Blighty, I can’t presume to know exactly what’s what over there, especially in relation to a medical situation for which I’m not qualified, but I can say that nothing I’m hearing from friends, far & wide, and nothing I’m seeing firsthand compares to the utter sh!tshow that seems to have enveloped my native lands.
The censorship, the profiteering, the incompetence and ‘spun’ narratives, the self serving promotion of existing agendas and further trampling of civil liberties, the promotion of fractious divisions and utter disregard for the collateral damage (that’s “dead poor people” to you and me), is all scarily familiar.
This crisis didn’t emerge out of a vacuum and to consider it as if it did is the height of insanity. After 20 years of a divisive, destructive & manufactured war on terror, are we now to subject the world to a 20 year manufactured war on a virus, mutating every month or 12, necessitating unquestioning obedience to those same proven liars, thieves & murderers?
Are we that stupid & selfish?
We are not, but that might not stop us acting as such.
Skepticism is not an anti social crime, it is an intellectual and moral imperative in these times.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Benjamin Franklin
p.s. sorry for this egregious abuse of Mr Murray’s web space, but I don’t do that virtual Face or Twittering into the ether business and I’m a little anxious over all this. I would like to come home some time so please don’t let the usual tossers fk the place up completely :-))
In the meantime, I’m happily exchanging conversation, smiles, physical contact and close social interaction with my fellow humans and we’re not dead !? imagine that !!
Craig, first I am glad that you emphasis that targeted protection of at risk (mainly elderly) has to be voluntary. Locking up someone with a couple of years to live is stupid or evil, take your pick.
You are wrong that there could have been 300,000 deaths, because any analysis of lockdowns, comparing areas with different methods, show that they have almost zero effect. Our leaders can only be, possibly, excused for the initial 3 weeks lockdown to SLOW the initial cases. After that everything was known that needed to be known and general lockdowns scrapped.
The vulnerable could have been put up in five star hotels with a personal butler (wearing a space suit if necessary) and the cost would have been one thousandth compared with shutting down the economy.
Further, corona viruses hit the northern hemisphere between late December and mid April EVERY year. 2020 was no different. see the old work of Edgar Hope-Simpson. There has been no pandemic here since May at the latest. Talk of a second similar wave this winter with the same virus is pseudo-science.
Of course there are “conspiracy theories” given the nonsensical fear-porn on the mass media
Numbering the tiers as 0 to 4 was done so that 1, 2 and 3 matched the English system.
Restrictive covid measures aren’t always about preventing death. The government is also trying to avoid high levels of sickness since that would leave society unable to staff important services such as healthcare, police and fire brigade.
The WHO now estimates that roughly 10% of the word’s population has had the virus. https://time.com/5896734/10-percent-world-infected-covid-19-who/ Given a total world population of 7.8 billion, that’s 780 million who have already been infected. Last time I checked, fewer than 1.2 million were reported to have died from COVOD-19, leading us to a mortality rate of somewhere around 1.2 / 780 = 0.15%.
Realistically, you don’t close down the world for a virus with a 0.15% lethality. rate However, if you were a world leader, you might find it a useful pretext to bring about various changes that you felt were “necessary”, such as Klaus Schwab’s “Great Reset”.
A disasters emergency committee appeal on behalf of the people of Wales, please help https://youtu.be/uVjZr8WKYkQ
I think the below linked heat map of all deaths per month – using ONS data – dating back to 1996 disagrees with your analysis, Craig. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how the next 3 months shape up, but the April-May 2020 Covid “spike” is little different from January 1997, 1999 & 2000 (in fact those three months all had slightly higher death rates). Otherwise all deaths this year quite closely parallel those of previous years.
https://twitter.com/AlistairHaimes/status/1320313613870112768
I also think that the argument put forward by various experts that there was a pre-existing T cell immunity in the population due to prior year Coronavirus outbreaks needs to be taken into account.
It looks to me, based on various sources (Prof Carl Heneghan for example) this year seems not exceptional, although the government’s response has been the most extraordinary of my lifetime (and I’m in my 70’s).
“scientific consensus settles on the true figure.” If it is allowed to.
“must beg the question, can you not protect those groups without closing all those places?”
It also begs the question, does closing all these places protect those groups?
“Unemployment and bankruptcies are set to soar, with all the human misery and indeed of deleterious health outcomes that will entail.”
Part of the Great Reset.
https://www.stalkerzone.org/the-imf-proposes-to-dump-the-world-economy-once-again
A very thought provoking article, as I have come to expect. There are many things to balance, which is the nature of policy formation.
Firstly, SARS-CoV-2 is real, and its not some ‘engineered’ virus. What I do believe is that various groups have had plans in place for how to best be able to use such a pandemic for their own purposes. For me, as a person who studies geopolitical power, this is where my interest lies.
Whilst mortality rates vary it certainly is far more dangerous for the elderly or those with underlying conditions. However, what appears to be the case is that it does have long lasting effects on many organs including the heart. COVID-19 is a very strange disease and extreme cases are caused by an overly aggressive response by one’s own body’s defense mechanisms. But, in milder cases there seem to be these longer lasting effects. We wont know the details for some time.
One the other hand, the pan societal restrictions have had many dangerous side effects of depression, job loss and other deleterious outcomes. Some industries, for example travel and tourism, have been almost obliterated. These have knock on economic effects. Unsurprisingly in some places, USA in particular, the government response has been to further enrich the rich. Craig has already highlighted the graft by the Johnson government to award huge contracts to people with no expertise who didn’t even deliver.
I think that Craig’s point about ‘0’ is very important. This is a politics of fear to create a ‘new normal’. Within that is the restriction of political activity and that is a very great threat.
One commenter says they believe that a vaccine will be around soon, and so, lets wait for that. I pretty much agree, but watch carefully about how that vaccine is delivered and all of this ‘vaccine passport’ stuff. A global surveillance system may be being built.
To there are some of the elements to be balanced; personal and public health, economics, exploitation of the pandemic by powerful groups, changes in society, threats of people based political power and an increase in power by the wealthy and large institutions.