SARS cov2 and Covid 19


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  • #53204
    Clark
    Guest

    SA, if I ever get like that, please try and have me put to sleep. I don’t want to live on after my mind had gone.

    #53205
    Node
    Guest

    Bill, I am right, aren’t I?
    Of course you are Ben. I’m right too, aren’t I Ben?
    Yes, Bill. We’re both right, and Bert’s wrong isn’t he?
    Yes Bert’s definitely wrong Ben and we’re right.
    Only sometimes I wonder Bill, what if Bert’s right?
    Nah na na na na na I didn’t hear that Ben and anyway don’t say it again.
    Oh, OK Bill I won’t, anyway he’s definitely wrong isn’t he?
    Yes Ben and we’re right, aren’t we?
    Yes Bill and anyway Bert’s a spirasist and we don’t have to listen to spirasists.
    Yes Bert’s a big smelly spiracist so who cares if he’s right.
    Ben, what is a spirasist?
    Nobody rightly knows, Bill.
    But Ben, Mommy said we’re all spirasists.
    Well, maybe we’re good spirasists and Bert is a bad spirisist.
    But Ben, we don’t even know what a aspirisist is.
    Nah na na na na na. He just is, so there.
    OK Ben. But we’re right aren’t we?
    Yes, Bill, and Bert’s wrong, isn’t he?
    Yes Ben. Only sometimes I wonder … no … nah na na na ..

    #53209
    SA
    Guest

    It is such a shame that we are now beginning to sink to the level of comments that you find in OG. There they have a juvenile bunch of self congratulatory upvoters who make inane remarks with no intellectual content whatsoever. Let us hope this does not happen here.
    The purpose of my starting this discussion forum and the previous one was to focus on the poor performance of the Government of the UK and on the overwhelming incompetence of how it is dealing with Covid-19. This has been apparent from the start, and yet here we are still discussing whether there is an epidemic that has already officially killed over 30,00 individuals, some say over 50,000 and which is still not being taken seriously. Anyone claiming to be critical of international conspiracies by ‘the PTB’ should really be concentrating on those, not turning inwards to fight a self destructive fight. Some say that is typical of the left. Lenin’s worsts enemies seem to have been the social democrats and the labour party fights any trends towards socialism.
    I wish to have a grown up discussion, so I shall ignore any comments that do not contribute to better understanding and better ways to fight this disaster.

    #53210
    SA
    Guest

    From the outset it seems that Boris Johnson believes was born to rule, and not in the style of parliamentary democracy, but in an autocratic fashion. The engineered huge parliamentary majority has handed that to him. He chooses how to respond and when to respond. He did not attend the first 5 meetings of the COBR committee, delegating to others. His style in parliament is to deflect and to avoid scrutiny. Now there is a sense that government does not know what it is doing, that there are probably divisions within the government and that we are reeling towards disaster.
    To plough through the nonsense we need to understand the manipulations. Boris is hiding behind the science which is selectively being manipulated in order to be ultimately be thrown to the wolves and eventually be the scapegoat for what is government failure. Sadly scientists cannot break rank and come out and say that what is being said and done in their name is nonsense, because they will be marginalised. Even journalists, some long established favourites of the Tories such as Piers Morgan, are now blacklisted by the government because they ask searching questions and take no nonsense. For once the CTs may be right that the system seeks conformity. But this now has become very clear in USA and UK and no where else in the world, science has become politicised and is now the subject of attack, rather than the politicians. So please let us not help Boris and Dominic by attacking science, and let us distinguish between science, real science and the official government sanctioned science.

    #53211
    Clark
    Guest

    Node, Tony M, what has increased the death rate?

    #53213
    SA
    Guest

    May I recommend reading this? Kim in another discussion forum is doing great work exposing the inadequacy of the government, whilst here we are squabbling about basic science and attacking scientists instead of politicians. Please for your homework read and comment on Kim’s posts.

    #53214
    SA
    Guest

    Clark
    Sarcasm alert The death rate has increased because people have started to die of ennui, stabbing each and suicides amongst other causes of shutdown. But of course you wouldn’t know because most of these people are recorded as having died of covid-19 on government say so, after all you can no longer trust all these made up figures. Also we may now need to revise all our statistics and have categories of causes of death so perhaps we can have this: Died with pneumonia, or died of pneumonia, died with heart failure or died of heart failure. Ah but I forgot we already have all this, it is just written in a different way! Back to the drawing board.

    #53215
    Clark
    Guest

    SA, I think the political system might be fucked, leaving it up to the people.

    Lots of people walk past the front of my house because it is a public footpath, so I have a chance to speak with them. I also ‘phone around people I know. It seems that the brave guardians of free speech at this blog are not typical. Most people are stupid enough to put community health ahead of the economy. They are too dull-witted and conformist to realise that Ferguson is the real enemy, who forced China to shut itself down at the beginning of this year. We are lost; the minds of the majority are too enslaved by the MSM for them to break the social restrictions.

    #53219
    SA
    Guest

    Interesting to look at this table from ONS. You have to download the XLSX document then click on table one.
    What is interesting is that it gives the causes of death in March. There is no mention of ennui as cause of death. No murders, apparently and no suicides. But lots of deaths due to other conditions including Covid-19.
    Another interesting table is Table 5a which gives covid=19 deaths according to ages and underlying comorbidities. Overall there are 6-10% of deaths in people without underlying disease in the age groups above 70. Also in the 40-45 age group this proportion is 34% (although the numbers are small).

    #53220
    Clark
    Guest

    “You are claiming the excess death rate hasn’t been substantially inflated by those factors?”

    I thought you didn’t accept that the death rate had increase at all! You said that looking back from next year, the death rate would be “nothing special”, didn’t you?

    #53221
    SA
    Guest

    Clark
    You have not been following this carefully. The death rate was lower than the average for the last 5 years until about last bit of March and started to rise because the lockdown was introduced. Even before the effect of this lockdown were felt, people lost the will to live and started to die with covid-19 and not because of covid-19. In this way you can also have no increase excess mortality but increase in excess mortality specifically due to ennui.

    #53223
    Node
    Guest

    Ha ha, I’ve just seen the irony. For you it’s not science, it’s faith. Covid containment measures have ceased to make any sense at all so you just believe in The Word coming down from on High. It doesn’t matter what the excess death figures include – co-morbidities, suicides, seasonal influenza, lockdown casualties – you just chant the mantra “excess mortality.” Who cares whether the data is accurate, don’t think, don’t question, don’t worry, just have faith. Seek refuge in the Church of Covid and shun the disbelievers. Ha ha. it’s delicious. Now I understand your reaction when I attacked the High Priest Ferguson.

    #53224
    SA
    Guest

    So we can question government produced data, but where do we then get our data from? If we can’t depend on ONS then who can we depend on? Maybe we can each generate our own data and just use it to suit our purposes. Suicide has gone up. But how do you know? Well it is bound to go up with the lockdown. But is there any data? No you have to be a fool and a covid believer to think that suicide has not gone up because of the covid-19 lockdown, but the government is hiding it.
    I personally do not believe in high priests or godlike figures. I have never used this terminology and never believe in any one individual for all my information. I am sure Ferguson, like all humans, makes a lot of mistakes, but he has a large group working with him in a very reputable university. I am sure also that Ioannidis is very reputable and works in a very respectable institution. Neither is the first a high priest of anything, nor is the second one a godlike figure, they are both very fallible humans. They both produce data which adds to knowledge, and science always needs a challenge. But one thing I never do is get my data from OG, UK column or other political sources.

    #53226
    SA
    Guest

    Again we have not kept eyes on the ball. Boris is playing fast with facts and science whilst we have this discussion. And off course there will be a second peak and off course those who want to take whatever lesson there is to take will decide that the lockdown was wrong. But let us get something straight, the terminology.
    Lockdown: what does it mean? In China it meant as Clark likes to point out, welded doors and people literally incarcerated. In France it meant that you had to download a form and fill it in before you went out of your house, stating the reason for leaving your house, and if stopped by the police, you could get fined if you have not filled a form or if your reason was not valid, these are just two examples. In UK it meant a mixed message, people can go out to supermarkets, only to buy essential things but this was purely voluntary. If you wanted to travel many miles for a walk, you could do so. If you were a PM, you shook hands with many people provided you then washed your hands whilst specifically singing ‘happy birthday to you’. If you are a government minister you could self isolate after having a positive test for the virus but then go to TV centre to mingle with others after one week. The lockdown was not really a lockdown.
    Now what should have happened is what one would call a curfew. That is no body leaves the house for any reason whatsoever. They should have food and provisions delivered through specifically organised networks preferably through the councils, who appear to have had a minimal role in this crisis. In that way in 2 weeks you would have had a real sharp drop in R, but provided you also practised quarantining. Again we advocated self isolation if you had any symptoms. This means that you stay at home. If you live with others, you have to isolate in a room alone and use separate facilities, in order not to infect others. That’s OK if you live in a house with several ensuite toilets and shower rooms and perhaps even a kitchenette, but for most people, living in small flats, self isolation means sure infection for as many people as possible living in the same address. What we should have done is quarantining. That means anyone with symptoms should be tested and if positive, then transferred into an isolation unit, commandeered hotels would do, where they can be cared for their basic needs whilst those providing this care have adequate PPE.
    If these were adopted, plus a vigorous contact tracing as happened in South Korea, the R would have been slashed to near zero in a very short time. And this is not just theory, it was demonstrated in China, after the epidemic was in full swing, in Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea, before cases started to climb sharply, and in Taiwan in a semi preventative early stage. Bringing down R to the lowest level was the highest priority and had to be down quickly.
    But we have now suffered the worst of both worlds, we will suffer a continued but rather wishy washy ‘lockdown’ which is open ended and with no clear exit strategy and will suffer both the worst health and economic consequences. And for what? Because the Johnson Regime does not want to spend money on PPE, testing, contact tracing and proper quarantine. Whether this is economic or ideologically driven or just sheer incompetence does not matter. Why introduce silly apps within even having adequate testing? Why trying to obtain ventialtors when you can’t provide PPE? In France, Spain and many other countries the government has provided face masks for the general population, delivered free. In UK we are still debating their virtues and being precious about them, and in any case they are not available.
    So please let us stop this nonsensical theological discussion and get on.

    #53232
    Clark
    Guest

    Node, accusing me of faith is the most offensive thing you could have done due to religious indoctrination throughout my childhood that took me decades to escape. Apparently you barely read my comments so it is not worth writing more.

    #53233
    Clark
    Guest

    SA, I read the headlines while I was shopping and saw the new rules. I am very concerned that R will rise above 1 and infections will start increasing again.

    I agree that local authorities have been sidelined. I agree that curfew and food distribution would be highly effective, and they are desperately needed, but only in the areas of high infection density. It is a huge mistake to apply restrictions equally across the entire country; see this map. In high infection areas, and among some key workers, and especially among key workers in high infection areas, R probably never fell below 1. In those places and groups it will rise way above 1 now, under the new rules. The country could soon find itself with its entire key worker population incapacitated by covid-19, and new clusters spreading from around key worker populations.

    Proper quarantine and segregation are also desperately needed. The stay-at-home rule made the problem manageable and prevented absolute catastrophe, but is in no way a solution.

    My guess is that contact tracing is only practical in areas of low infection density.

    We need widespread testing, and we need masks.

    This is not complicated FFS. The government response is close to useless; they are clueless.

    #53235
    SA
    Guest

    Yes of course some of these measures need targeting, especially in big cities with many living in flats with limited capacity for staying at home with the kids in cramped accommodation. I am not sure how those in high rise flats manage to observe social distancing if they have to use lifts.
    What was really bizarre is that after 2 months of having open borders we have now discovered that we must check visitors coming to UK. In fact the rest of the world will probably want to ban visitors coming from UK as posing extremely high risk of spreading the infection.

    #53242
    Clark
    Guest

    I’ve reviewed the new rules on-line and I’d gained a wrong impression from scanning the headlines. I think these new rules will make little difference. Rt will increase a little bit but not get much closer to 1, and it won’t help the economy much either.

    The international travel quarantine is rubbish too, just pandering to xenophobia. Why two weeks? I suppose it’s because of shortage of PCR tests. Four days and a PCR test would be better wouldn’t it? Now I suppose we’ll see the quarantine done all wrong, inadequate isolation leading to a whole outgoing crowd of travellers with carriers among them, infected by someone new to quarantine or more likely UK resident key workers.

    #53244
    SA
    Guest

    The new rules are full of ambiguities and personal interpretations. They are not meant to help industry but to offload any responsibility to employers and employees away from government, do that furlough could be cut.
    But the greatest thing is that aboris has now been effectively reduced to a local governor of England where Scotland, Wales and N Ireland have their own rules.

    #53250
    Clark
    Guest

    The ICL model for Sweden has updated; Rt now about 0.8, 95% certainty that it’s less than 1.

    #53270
    michael norton
    Guest

    We must keep in mind, that whatever we think of Boris or the conservative government, this is probably the most difficult set of circumstances any of them or any of us would ever have had to think through and try in any of our lifetimes.
    The most surely will not get it all right, let’s hope they get most of it right.

    #53271
    Clark
    Guest

    This article seems to have made an impression on Dave, who was adamant that covid-19 is a hoax.

    #53277
    SA
    Guest

    The article by Mercouris is a very good summary I think. No wonder Dave has gone of The Duran.

    #53279
    Clark
    Guest

    May 11, 19:29, #53242 – I spoke too soon. There are reports that the London Underground is packed.

    #53317
    Dave
    Guest

    Apologies I posted on another thread, late evening, a link I found, which I took on trust, without examining it, showing some Scottish mortality figures, which appeared pertinent to this blog, (as the UK figures show 50% mortality from London), but which I’m informed by Mods are clearly wrong. Sorry about that.

    #53381
    Clark
    Guest

    Dave, I saw that comment of yours and replied to it, but my reply vanished upon posting because yours had been deleted.

    It looked to me as though the April figures you found were probably incomplete. As best I remember, on the spreadsheet charts available from the page you linked, there was no data for April 2020; the most recent was March 2020. From memory, March 2019 deaths from all causes were 4700 or so, and March 2020 was over 5000 – maybe 5300 or something? Anyway, it was a clear rise, whereas February 2020 was about the same as February 2019, so a sharp, anomalous rise clearly started in March 2020.

    Here’s the latest graph for Scotland:

    https://squonk.tk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/dscot19.png

    That’s from this document:

    https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/covid19/covid-deaths-report-week-19.pdf

    I think the spreadsheets from the page you linked were hospital records. The graph above is “Deaths by week of registration”. There’s probably an administrative delay from hospital records to registration.

    It’s good to see the death rate coming down at last. The governments of the UK acted far too late. I’ve been watching this coming since the third week in January; China doesn’t just shut down its entire economy for nothing. 760 million people were under some form of quarantine at one point; that’s 10% of the entire global population! The effect was so big that reduction in air pollution over China was recorded from satellites. China’s electricity production was 60% of normal.

    The UK government had over two months to prepare but took precisely fuck all preventative action, though they did set up emergency hospitals and morgues! Fucking cynical tossers. I’m furious. Test manufacture could have been set up. We could have had millions of masks at the ready. The care homes could have been reorganised ready to quarantine infected residents. Local food distribution could have been implemented to keep people from infecting each other in supermarkets. A universal basic income could have been implemented ready so that ill people could miss work and so not infect their colleagues, and because so many businesses would need to be closed. A national infection map could have been set up so that people knew where to avoid. We could have made the UK a very hostile environment for SARS-CoV-2.

    We’re now over seven weeks past the “lockdown” ie. the stay-at-home order, and still there has been no intelligent response. What the hell are they all doing; snorting coke with Boris? I have never seen such utter, wilful incompetence in my life.

    #53382
    Clark
    Guest
    #53384
    Clark
    Guest

    I strongly suspect that what has actually happened is that thousands of old folk have been effectively euthanised by nurses in the care homes, because there was simply no way of getting them into hospital for breathing and oxygen support – palliative drugs increased until permanent unconsciousness resulted.

    #53385
    SA
    Guest

    The problem about our government is that it never really departed from its original policy of ‘mitigation@ rather than ‘suppression’ as discussed here:

    This way of building up resistance through widespread infection is often referred to as achieving “herd immunity”, though governments which practice the mitigation strategy tend to avoid public use of the term and sometimes deny that it is their objective.
    Since the ultimate objective of mitigation strategies is to achieve herd immunity, whether this objective is admitted or not, social distancing tends to be encouraged rather than enforced, and is less rigorous, whilst mass testing for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus does not happen, since it is deemed unnecessary.
    The country in the West most identified with the mitigation strategy is Sweden, though it was also the strategy followed for a time by Britain.

    And this really explains why this government is behaving the way it is doing. Is it incompetence, or is the pursuit of the policy to achieve herd immunity?

    #53386
    SA
    Guest

    And there is too much distraction about discussing ‘the science’ and that the policy is led by the science. It is clear that with a new epidemic that there is little light that science can directly shed and therefore policies of containment of infectious diseases should reflexly be implemented as these are well known tried and tested principles. Some of these anomalies exist to this day:

    If you have a respiratory virus it is axiomatic that you should take adequate precautions to contain the spread through aerosol and droplet transmission. This is the most important route of transmission. Of course droplets can also land on various surfaces and cause infection if someone touches an infected surface, but that is secondary. But it looks as if the emphasis has been on hand washing and less on avoiding droplet transmission by widespread use of face masks. This si absurd. And the reason to me appears to be that the government has neglected to plan for a supply of face masks to the general public. Other countries supply those free to citizens. In Spain they are distributed to the public and in France they are sent to home addresses. You can’t even buy masks here.

    Testing, isolation, contact tracing, is also a longstanding public health principle for dealing with epidemic respiratory disease, but non of this is taking place. In fact I think that ‘science’ has been used to divert from basic public health principles. Science in the shape of modelling and calculating the death rate is irrelevant in the first stages but sadly has been used in the wrong way by some governments.

    #53387
    Clark
    Guest

    SA, how much is known so far about covid-19 causing neurological damage?

    #53388
    Clark
    Guest

    The ICL model hasn’t updated for days. Daily infections and daily deaths are stuck on May 7, and Rt is stuck on April 30.

    Surely the government’s policy must leave it open to legal action?

    #53421
    SA
    Guest

    Clark
    Sorry not coming back to you about neurological involvement in Covid-19. There are a couple of papers mainly reviewing findings but no definitive studies. There is evidence that some patients experience loss of smell and taste at the beginning of infections. There is also some evidence of encephalopathy and such like that occur in patients who are very sick. Most of what I can see is non-specific and probably transient, but there is nothing definitive yet.

    #53424
    Clark
    Guest

    SA, covid-19 and neurological effects – link.

    #53430
    SA
    Guest

    Yes Clark. This is a review not a systematic study. Yes cases have been described with two mechanisms, an encephalitis or encapholopathy and immune activation. Not very definitive and no hard data. Of course further study will show whether this is something to worry about and specific to covid-19

    #53461
    michael norton
    Guest

    Interesting that our last prime minister was diabetic one
    and the new prime minister is obese, though it has not been said he is diabetic two.
    Boris was seventeen and a half stone when he caught covid-19.
    Boris is now determined that we all reduce our weight.

    #53473
    N_
    Guest

    A nurse in the US blows the whistle on how patients “with Covid-19” are being murdered.

    Meanwhile in the holy NHS in Britain all non-urgent surgery has been cancelled, and many wards in many hospitals are empty, while GPs send out “Please sign ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ forms” letters to patients suffering from chronic illnesses.

    From what @Clark says, it seems that ambulance workers are being given a lot of makework, scrubbing their vehicles for hours on end. It is unclear whether more person-hours are being worked by nurses than before, but surely the answer is no, given that Intensive Care Unit use has risen but not hugely, whereas much of the other stuff has mostly shut. Using nurses who haven’t had much training to work ventilators may be connected with how the use of ventilators is killing people, as described in the above video.

    And you ain’t seen nothing yet.

    Reminder: reported Covid-19 deaths divided by reported Covid-19 cases (what is known as the “case fatality rate” is SIXTEEN times higher in Britain than in Russia.

    #53474
    N_
    Guest

    PPE is what media consumers and also nurses are being “nudged” to think is a crucial issue. Similar propaganda is run in the army. In the general population for a while it was toilet paper. How the Behavioural Insights Team must laugh. I seriously wonder how much critics know about propaganda sometimes,

    Meanwhile, the harvest won’t come in. That’s a bit of a bigger issue than a flu-type bug going round.

    #53483
    Clark
    Guest

    Covid-19 is a SARS-like illness, not a flu-like illness. Covid-19 is caused by a virus called SARS-CoV-2, a relative of SARS-CoV which causes SARS. Covid-19 has an infection fatality rate of between 1% and 1.5%, over an order of magnitude higher than seasonal flu.

    PPE is a crucial issue because covid-19 disproportionally kills medical staff. In the UK, 10% of staff are absent due to covid-19. Covid-19 has been killing medical staff since it first emerged in Wuhan. It killed the young doctor, Dr. Li Wen-Liang, who defied Chinese authorities to alert the world to this new disease. Try watching this:

    Coronavirus: How the deadly epidemic sparked a global emergency – 46 minutes, with citizen phone video from within the Wuhan lockdown, including a visit to an overwhelmed hospital, where staff were in despair:

    If you have any genuine interest in the use of ventilators, the latter part of this article is informative:

    The Great Ventilator Fiasco of COVID-19 (MedPage Today)

    I suspect that what has happened is that the UK NHS prepared for ten times as many cases due to the UK government’s initial policy of mitigation, before it was persuaded to implement the more suppressive policy of the stay-at-home restriction and closing pubs and other non-essential businesses.

    It is misleading to consider Intensive Care Unit capacity and occupancy in isolation because serious (as opposed to critical) cases are accommodated in “general acute beds” rather than intensive care. There are currently 1,559 critical cases in the UK. The following article is from April 13; pressure on hospitals has eased since then, partly because so many patients have died. Link to article:

    * – Figures from the national NHS operational dashboard, seen by HSJ, show that 40.9 per cent of NHS general acute beds were unoccupied as of the weekend — 37,500 of the total 91,600 relevant beds recorded in the data. That is 4,500 more than the 33,000 the NHS said had been freed up on 27 March, and nearly four times the normal amount of free acute beds at this time of year.

    * – Despite hospitals remaining relatively empty overall, according to the dashboard data, certain services and settings, especially in some regions, are under high pressure, and maintaining service levels is becoming more difficult with high levels of coronavirus-related staff absence.

    * – The dashboard confirms hospital pressure is concentrated on critical care. Across England, 3,228 patients were in critical care beds — representing 78 per cent of the total of 4,122 critical care beds which were available in February. More have since been opened, but it is not known how many.

    * – On top of this, thousands of covid-19 patients are receiving basic oxygen support but are not on full critical care ventilation. The dashboard data show this number to be more than 8,100 nationally, or about half of the coronavirus cases currently in hospital.

    RUSSIA

    Moscow went under lockdown on March 29, at which time there had been only eight deaths in Russia. By comparison, the negligent UK government waited for 359 deaths before locking down. In Russia, much stronger restrictions than the UK’s had been applied progressively throughout March. The earlier restrictions are applied, the less deaths follow; see my table in the latter part of this comment.
    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

    N_, it took you moments to reinforce the right-wing distortions and disinformation. It has taken me over an hour to gather evidence to counter your damaging contribution. Please tell me, what is your attitude toward human suffering?

    #53582
    N_
    Guest

    “<i>CTs are rife and deter from proper discussions.</i>”

    No, but people who say things like that do. They want any kind of criticism of the medical, scientific or other “professional” priesthoods (and of the elite that they all serve) that actually GOES SOMEWHERE to be thrown out alongside stories about Elvis Presley living on the Moon. Anti-conspiracism is mostly not honest, but when it is honest it demeans the person who is coming out with it. It makes them not worth discussing with.

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