Thursday, December 31, 2020

Great Barrington Declaration (2)

Sorry folks, more COVID-19, more anger. Again a screen shot from part way down this page here, published by the UK government.


It looks like this:












That dark blue, slightly wavering, rising line is the deaths of the over 60s with a positive PCR. Some really will be COVID-19. They should never have been exposed to the virus. Should they have wished to, they should have been allowed to stay shielding and they should have been helped financially and practically to do so. Anyone, of any age, who became seropositive in the first wave could safely be in close contact with them today, no need for loneliness this winter. This course should have been offered as an option.

It wasn't.

The lower, paler blue line is the deaths of the under 60s. This line runs along the x axis. Very, very few people in London under 60 years of age have died with a positive PCR this Winter. Not many in the Spring for that matter either.

Shutting down much of the country, including London, in to Tier 4 lockdown (welcome to my world) has done nothing to protect the vulnerable over 60s and wasn't needed for the under 60s.

This is exactly why I signed the Great Barrington Declaration, to avoid this. Focused protection for those who need/want it, lots of it. Throw money at them. Let the rest of us get on with life.

Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock are politicians. I expect nothing from them, they're not exactly bright. But Whitty and Valance have no excuse. They must know what the above graph looks like. They know. Both of them were taught immunology once upon a time (implausible though that seems nowadays).

The lockdowns have done nothing to protect Norfolk from our Winter catch-up. We have no focused protection for the elderly. It's wrong.

Sorry for the rant.

Happy New Year.

Peter

36 comments:

LA_Bob said...

Meet the New Year, just like the Old Year!

Good rant!

Happy New Year!

Peter said...

Hah, The Who, great track...

Happy New Year

Peter

Numbbum said...
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Numbbum said...
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Numbbum said...

Sorry Peter, I commented on the difference with our graph in Bristol but was mistakenly looking at cases. The deaths graph for the South West is exactly the same as the one for London.

It's a very frustrating situation as an under-60.

Happy New Year and keep up the good work!

Peter said...

East of England (us here) only reached 40/100,000 in the true pandemic, London peaked at 80/100,000, hence we have more problems currently, which we do. In truth though you do have to be remarkably cautious about the significance of one PCR+ve meaning that any individual person actually died of COVID-19. Even NHS labs (pillar I) are running PCR at 40 cycles. It's not just Bojo's mates running pillar 2 labs that do this. Some, but not all, fatalities will be Freds. Obviously hospital is a high risk place to pick up genuine COVID-19 too, sadly. And lots of people need A&E in December/January. Staff do the best they can to control infection spread but it's bloody difficult.

Peter

Stefan said...

Sorry to see this. I've actually signed it too, although I'm not British.

Regardless, I wish you a happy new year. Let's all hope all governments stumble on sanity soon.

LeenaS said...

Iäm also sorry to see this happening, but I see no surprises here.
This is why I did not sign.

As for the governments (or experts for that matter) I expect no sobering in my lifetime. If there would be any, we would have a strong push towards healing the metabolic epidemic without medications. I here none, not even here, where lives of the seniors (and refugees and foreign workers) are actually taken seriously. Too profitable, I guess?

But it is ok to be angry. It is a weird world that we live in.

Eric said...
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Eric said...
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Eric said...

So how do you proose to protect the elderly? I think what we are seeing again and again, once infection rates go up in the general population, you get increasing infection rates among the elderly about 4-6 weeks later and increasing deaths another 4 weeks later.

LeenaS said...

In the long run my only real hope would be a change in nutrition guidance,
of which there is not a word in the GB protocol.

However, virus outbreaks in supported senior housing can be (or rather have neen) broken with careful isolation tricks and old, trusted medication, in order to minimise fatalities. Hopefully vaccinations can help, too. Too old-fasioned?

However, Peter may have better solutions to this?

Richard B said...

I wonder sometimes about the focus on deaths rather than so called long-Covid and the sometimes debilitating effects people are experiencing. Numbers are all over the place for incidence but if it is sufficiently high then long-Covid alone would be a good reason to control the spread if possible and to vaccinate (as well as the D3 and minimising linoleic acid, which anyone sensible will have been doing anyway). Few of the lockdown critics have much to say about long-Covid. Any thoughts?

Eric said...

Haven't been to Italy for a few years, but ventured into a newly opened Italian food store that imported directly from Italy. Lot's of antipasti, Nutella-like spreads, pistacchio spread, cookies, cakes, chips (crisps): everything in that shop with the exception of the actual bottled olive oil was made with sunflower oil, some products also had a little palm oil. If that is representative of how foods are changing in Italy, it is definitely not the right direction.

Peter said...

Unknown,

Long COVID is probably real. So is long influenza, though that would previously been (wrongly!) described as malingering. At least COVID leaves thrombotic markers which show up on imaging. Plus, if you contract common-or-garden pneumococcal pneumonia and end up in the ITU on a ventilator for a month, you are not exactly going to return to your pre-pneumonia squash game by 3 days after discharge. Let alone after 6 weeks of IPPV for COVID. Should we close the country on this basis?

Eric, if we spent as much time and money on the elderly as we have on PCR testing I'm sure we could come up with some something which might work better than doing nothing.

Leena, it would be lovely to see some metabolic health interventions. But the parallels between the past 50 years of metabolic mistakes and the past 9 months of epidemiological mistakes are unavoidable. I felt the cardiologists got away with their stupidity because it takes decades of ill health prior to premature deaths for saturophobia and cholesterophobia to actually kill people.

With COVID Whitty and Vallance are doing the same over a few months. Other countries may have been better managed than us to avoid the 1000/week of excess home deaths. I hope so. Imagine being put through enough mental anguish so as to complete suicide. And our chief medical officer doesn't even appear to have considered this! That's his job, for goodness sake.

Peter

LA_Bob said...

Eric,

Sad news indeed. I assume the trend -- excuse me, tsunami -- toward seed oils is based more on economics than medical advice, though I'm sure the latter "justifies" the former. In the long run, we pay more in medical costs.

Like the old US oil filter commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij1yDpfZI8Q

raphi said...

i cannot say it better myself

https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/12/30/what-is-left-to-say/ "I have not written much about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, written many hundreds of years ago.

...

There is a special prize for anyone who can match up the severity of restrictions in various countries, to the Z-score. I say this, because no correlation exists.

So, again, what have I learned about COVID19? I learned that all Governments are floundering about, all claiming to have exerted some sort of control over this disease and ignoring all evidence to the contrary. In truth, they have achieved nothing. As restrictions and lockdowns have become more severe, in many cases the number of infections has simply risen and risen, completely unaffected by anything that has been done.

The official solution is, of course, more restrictions." - Dr.Malcolm Kendrick

Peter said...

raphi, yes

"the world has simply gone bonkers"

What else can you say? In some ways I wish I could believe Whitty, Valance, Ferguson. It would be so nice to be able to believe that the fear and the devastation are appropriate and effective respectively.

Sadly I can't.

Peter

raphi said...

this just popped up in my feed. interesting article from 2003 on masks for the SARS-1 epidemic https://www.smh.com.au/national/farce-mask-its-safe-for-only-20-minutes-20030427-gdgnyo.html

"Retailers who cash in on community fears about SARS by exaggerating the health benefits of surgical masks could face fines of up to $110,000.

NSW Fair Trading Minister Reba Meagher yesterday warned that distributors and traders could be prosecuted if it was suggested the masks offered unrealistic levels of protection from the disease.

"I'm sure everyone would agree that it is un-Australian to profiteer from people's fears and anxieties," Ms Meagher said."

Peter said...

Haha! and Pfizer??????? A first of its kind, incompletely trialed vaccine being administered off protocol (at Tony Blair's suggestion??!!??) or in sequence with a totally different, also partially trialed vaccine... What could go wrong? Still, profits must be made and if fear is needed, so be it.

There is some debate here as to whether Neil Ferguson might oust Tony Blair as the most hated person in the UK. But I'm old enough to remember living under Margaret Thatcher. Tough choice...

Peter

Passthecream said...

The iron Lady with the bronze likeness ... we even felt the hardness in the antipodes.

https://youtu.be/v17_3GkkFkU

Brrr, gibber gibber, gibber

Peter said...

Nice how she was stabbed in the back by the Tory party after the Pole Tax fiasco. Then we had to pay back all the rebates she had bullied out of the EU. But just politics rather than fatalities.

Lovely video btw. But does she compare to Tony Blair being told by (his) god to invade Iraq? Weapons of mass destruction etc etc...

I guess Ferguson has killed far fewer people overall, so maybe Blair is safe...

Peter

Peter said...

Actually, Ferguson has influenced the whole world (outside of China) to lock down, so maybe he is still in the running for total peak fatalities?

Peter

Peter said...

Oops, that will be Poll tax, not Pole Tax!!!!

Peter

cavenewt said...

"...that will be Poll tax, not Pole Tax!!!!"

Whew. For a minute there I thought it was a tax on barge poles to maintain social distancing.

Peter said...

More like Poll Evil... Though barge poles might be more appropriate.

Peter

Passthecream said...

Maggie was a great Poll dancer!

:)

Puddleg said...

For herd immunity to work, it's not enough to isolate the vulnerable, because this can't last.
It's necessary for most of those those who think they are not vulnerable to be exposed as quickly as possible.
For example, if the healthy population could all be infected within a fortnight, it just might work. If they keep trying to prevent infection by other means, then it'll be dragged out forever.
No-one is going to try this option, so the point is academic, which is an interesting expression to use when one means "futile".

Afifah said...

You don't have to apologise Peter. These are not even rants, actually. You are pointing out important data, and that's definitely the right thing to do, not something to apologise for.
We love ya!
Stay sane!

Passthecream said...

I suspect that the mythical herd immunity is another academical construct and might be as elusive for this virus as it is for influenza and common colds, in that different variants will circulate around the world and through the seasons in perpetuum. Obviously if the vaccines do save more than they first make mad there will be something resembling herd immunity at various points in time.

Viruses mutate a lot, constantly, and some of those mutations are viable and some viable mutations are advantageous. With our current approaches to it, ie the political and modelling solution, I think that there is definitely selection pressure for it to become more contagious but I'm not so sure that what we're doing rewards it for being less harmful. If we control it, medicate it and lock people away there will not be any selection pressure via host mortality. If a bug is too harmful and very contagious, it would likely kill it's host faster and be self limiting. Probably a possibility of getting faster and nastier than this one currently is anyway. It still has some evolution to catch up on.


Was smallpox a worse sort of plague than this current beast? It certainly had terrible long term consequences when it was raging in Europe. Polio was really getting going too, ramping up, at the point in time when they produced the first vaccines.

Passthecream said...

Btw I second what Afifa wrote. Peter, you never need to apologise for anything.

Let 'er rip.

Passthecream said...

Oh I had a thought about the durability of viruses - a relative was working on Duck hepatitis virus DHBV. Genetic studies show that it has descended from a variety that infected dinosaurs. It's still with us.

Puddleg said...

@Passthecream
You're right, Future Covid will circulate like the cold and flu forever and most people won't be stuffed getting re-vaccinated unless it mutates into something more scary.
like cold and flu, most people will have partial antibody coverage from infections by past relatives, it'll be bearable.
Plus, we've been reminded that handwashing and mandatory sick leave can have a huge effect on cold and flu rates, likely to be same for Future Covid.

Half-hearted vaccine coverage can make a disease worse. In Greece they vaccinated about half of kids against Rubella. This resulted in a rise in congenital rubella a few years later. Why?
Because rubella is relatively harmless in the young. Suppressing spread in this age group meant a later drop in herd immunity protection for unvaccinated women of childbearing age.

Because rubella infection in pregnancy brings a greatly increased risk of autism, this may be the only time in history a vaccine caused autism.

LA_Bob said...

Puddleg,

I heard a talk-radio discussion yesterday between Ben Shapiro and some doctor guest, and the doctor noted the US government was holding back a significant amount of vaccine to ensure a second dose for those who've had their first shot. The complaint was that so many more people could be vaccinated if they'd just forget about the second dose.

This sounded wrong to me. Is this another flavor of half-hearted vaccination coverage? But it's a proposed solution to slower-than-expected vaccine rollout.

Is this like tempting the Ghost of Covid Yet-to-Come?

LA_Bob said...

News article warning against skipping the second dose.

https://www.10news.com/news/coronavirus/what-happens-if-you-skip-the-second-dose-of-the-covid-19-vaccine

MedicalXpress article suggesting skipping the second dose has better population level results.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-dose-vaccine.html

Maybe if the public skips the second dose it's a bad thing, but if the "leadership" says to skip it that's okay.

Richard B said...

Peter wrote "Long COVID is probably real. So is long influenza....Should we close the country on this basis?"

No, we should not. Here in Dubai there was a severe lockdown applied for 4 weeks in April. Since then, mandatory masks and some social restrictions, admonishments to keep your distance and wash your hands. Apart from that life has been reasonably normal. I guess the case load has been manageable. Another factor here is that 85% of the population are foreign workers and 99% of them are under 60. Not only that but anyone can go and get the Sinopharm vaccine any time they like.

I cannot speak for conditions in such a demographically different country as the UK. We can let the numbers do that and I agree with your analysis. However, if covid creates more severe long term effects than say "malingering flu", this has to be considered in the analysis too. And given the strong evidence that D3 reduces severity significantly I am almost at a loss as to why the Faucis of the world are not actively recommending it. Whether its medical snobbery against nutritional remedies or something more sinister, I have no idea.

I seem to be stuck with the moniker "Unknown" Its Richard B just to put a name to the words.