Just a quick post, possibly the last for a while as I have quite a lot going on off-blog at the moment and time will be scarce over the next couple of months.
I have downloaded this graph from the UK government website which can be accessed at
Obviously it will be out of date within 24h but, unless you are Whitty or Vallance, you will not be expecting the line to suddenly spike upwards to give (sarcasm warning) 4000 deaths per day for the whole of the UK next week.
These are the figures for London:
London is at herd immunity. Even with the second wave.
I'd like to perform a thought experiment. Let's imagine Fred. Fred lived in Lewisham and was a typical victim of the lipid hypothesis, but had not progressed to frank diabetes or significant metabolic syndrome. He contracted SARS-CoV-2 in mid February, coughed for three days and recovered. He wasn't tested, didn't go to A and E and was not a Spring peak statistic. He has 1) T cell mediated immunity 2) mucosal surface IgA immunity and 3) possibly some antibodies, neutralising, though these may not be at a level detectable in routine serology. He is, absolutely, not on the graph for the April peak in deaths.
Here comes the sad bit.
Fred has had recurrent stomach pain throughout the Summer. He keeps taking the Gaviscon and it does a bit of good but not much. The pain is never quite bad enough to go to A and E, certainly not in the face of the then current viral pandemic.
Fred's problems continue on and off until early November at which point he collapses with incapacitating stomach pain and profuse vomiting. He is still immune to SARS-CoV-2.
He is admitted to hospital and worked up for acute pancreatitis. It is difficult to describe how appalling this is as a medical emergency, and yes, it is triggered by polyunsaturated fatty acids, thank your cardiologist. After a day or so on a medical ward he is transferred to the ITU, just after his SARS-CoV-2 PCR result comes back positive.
Fred is immune to SARS-CoV-2. His respiratory system is covered in IgA. Any SARS-CoV-2 he picks up in the hospital will simply stay there, bound and unable to invade.
But if you take a swab from his throat/nasopharynx, especially in a hospital area with even minor exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the fact that that some viral particles are bound by IgA in a fully immune person makes no difference to a PCR machine running at 40 amplification cycles. He will come up positive.
Pancreatitis comes with a significant death rate. Fred dies (he's imaginary, no need to be sad, for Fred anyway) on the 28th of November 2020. What did he die of? Obviously he is in the stats for COVID-19, second wave, London. At the right hand end of the graph at the top of the post.
Here in the UK deaths at home have been running at 1000/week above normal levels since the lockdowns started in March and this has not diminished. Over 75% of these do not get COVID-19 mentioned on their death certificate. Fred made it to hospital, bound a few stray SARS-CoV-2 particles to his IgA and so died with COVID-19 by PCR amplification, which does get mentioned on his death certificate.
The chances of London not having reached herd immunity in the Spring seems vanishingly small. Certain pockets appear to have been missed and are catching up at the moment, the virus is, absolutely, still around and, absolutely, still making some people very, very ill.
But I think Fred is also common.
It is easy for anyone with a smattering of immunology and basic knowledge about PCR technology to access the data for London, which make this clear.
I'm loathe to attribute motive but SAGE has been after an extended full lockdown ever since before lockdown 2 started and they needed more than genuine infection figures, or even deaths, to get it.
I got three rapid sequential texts at 11pm on Saturday night explaining about the "new, 70% more contagious" strain of virus spreading in the South East and the essentially total shutdown of the area, just to the south of us here on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, which was going to happen at midnight.
I couldn't get back to sleep.
I was angry.
I'm well aware of the state of COVID-19 around the UK and how areas spared in the Spring are catching up now. Norfolk will be one of these. This is not trivial.
But those late night texts about a massive change in policy based around a mutation and what I guess is garbage modelling (you think that the 70% increase in transmission rate comes from some sort of data? Haha. I would bet Ferguson modelled this. It will be as good as his previous models. And then it won't be a prediction, just a "scenario", when it turns out to be bogus) are frank psychological manipulation using fear. Bullying on a national scale.
I'm left wondering if those people who control the Prime Minister and used this "tweak" to force the lockdown they so desperately wanted were actually expecting the channel crossings to be immediately closed?
They should have been, given that we are living through times of a global pandemic of stupidity. But then, they are part of the problem.
Peter
