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Coronavirus


Bjornebye

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7 hours ago, Colonel Bumcunt said:

Cases. 

 

I think they probably got the deaths right, but the cases v deaths ratio should be the same now as it was then, no?  

I'm sure some sort of correction would be applied in the models they use, but they can't really go back and just change the public figures, they are what they are. Also, there's enough muddying of the waters done already by conspiracy theorists and bellends desperate to prove whatever bullshit the Spectator and Spiked wankers have come out with. Changing recorded figures would just give them more ammunition to say it's all fake.

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18 minutes ago, Colonel Kurtz said:

The Wall Street journal has reviewed historical death rates for all countries that publish this information and  they say extrapolating that, the global death toll is nearer 2.8 million for 2020. 

Yeah, but 2.5 million of those were hit by busses and the rest were made up by the Powers That Be.

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My sisters lad has it now he lives in Liverpool and apparently is in a bad way only 41 , my brother has just told me .

We haven't spoken for years now to her or  any of her immediate family and I haven't seen him for about 5-6 years I'm thinking .

Obviously im not a heartless bastard and hope he pulls through but I doubt if she would give a toss if i or my lad had it strange situation all round got my fingers crossed for him 

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Seeing more and more of a well deserved backlash against all the cunts who have downplayed this. And not just by the people you’d expect, this is by the son of Nigel Lawson. Not that any of this will stop them, they’ll just pivot to wanting all restrictions lifted the second things improve on the hospital front. 

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-second-wave-of-covid-has-drowned-the-sceptics-delusions-f6xznkn6h

 

The second wave of Covid has drowned the sceptics’ delusions

 

Anti-lockdowners cling to their pet experts, who have been horribly wrong

 

There’s an old joke concerning someone sceptical about the effect of gravity. He throws himself off a tall building, and as he falls past each floor, he says, with undiminished confidence: “So far, so good.” I am reminded of this by the Covid-19 sceptics (or lockdown sceptics, as some call themselves).

 

When the reported infection rates began soaring at the beginning of winter, their go-to expert, a former Pfizer executive with a PhD in respiratory pharmacology, Michael Yeadon, declared this was a “casedemic” rather than a pandemic: these were almost all “false positives”. Then, as the ICUs began filling up at an alarming rate, he asserted that the increased numbers were people with other conditions: Covid-19 was not really the cause of their hospital admission. Yes, any increase must be happening because so many more old people have been falling over and suffering broken hips this winter. Whatever.

 

And this month, as the Covid deaths escalated, Yeadon — who has denounced as unsafe and unnecessary the vaccine made by his erstwhile employer — took to Twitter to assert,“We do NOT have EXCESS DEATHS”. To put it most politely, his opinion does not tally with the findings of the Office for National Statistics, which released figures last week showing that in 2020 the number of “excess deaths”, as a proportion of the population, amounted to a 12.1% rise over the average of the previous five years. As Sky’s outstanding data analyst, Ed Conway, wrote: “That’s the biggest leap in any year since 1940 ... the only other years that came close — save for 1940 — are 1929, in which there was a global flu pandemic on top of an economic crash; 1918, year of the Spanish flu; and 1915, during the First World War.”

 

But was Yeadon referring only to the winter deaths? Well, the official England and Wales figure for mortality over the last five weeks of 2020 was 59,195, compared with an average of 48,901 over the past five years. Which might explain the inability of some hospital mortuaries to meet demand, and the opening of emergency facilities for storing the bodies.

 

But, confident in the wisdom of Yeadon, Toby Young, the creator of the Lockdown Sceptics website, declared this month: “If you compare mortality in December of 2020 with average December mortality over the last five years, there doesn’t appear to be any increase at all.” The Conservative MP Neil O’Brien, citing the actual figures, accused Young of lying. This might be to overestimate Young’s intellectual grasp of the matter: to lie — as opposed to being merely ignorant — means you understand what the truth is, and choose to deny it.

 

Funnily enough, I had a (courteous) email from Young last week, critical of some of my columns, which had supported the government’s policies of mandatory social restrictions and attacked the so-called lockdown sceptics, not least for their dismissing so many victims as old or vulnerable folk who were due to meet their maker soon anyway. Young told me, “I’m not sure you’ve fully grasped the case [of lockdown sceptics], but I think the case you make is often against a caricature of our position.”

 

Well, Toby, you did write, in March: “Spending £350bn to prolong the lives of a few hundred thousand mostly elderly people is an irresponsible use of taxpayers’ money.” Leave aside the moral issues, he, in common with others of this opinion, never attempts to calculate the counterfactual: what would be the economic consequences, not least for the hospitality industry, of adopting a so-called herd immunity strategy and letting the virus rip. A number of serious economists — free-market ones, not lovers of big government — have done so. I’m thinking of Sam Bowman of the Adam Smith Institute, Julian Jessop of the Institute of Economic Affairs, and Ryan Bourne of the Cato Institute. They have all supported the policy of government-mandated social distancing.

 

Of course such calculations involve considerations of the cost of preserving lives. One of the most familiar critiques of the government has been that it “sacrificed the lives of cancer sufferers”. It is true that during the first wave of the virus, the NHS, to a much greater extent than was necessary, cancelled thousands of procedures to clear the decks for Covid-19 cases — and the ejection of the elderly from hospitals back into care homes without checking if they were infected was, as I wrote at the time, “protecting the NHS but writing off the most vulnerable”.

 

However, we are now seeing exactly what the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, warned about in September: the extent of the second wave — a second wave that Young, along with the rest of the “lockdown sceptics”, adamantly insisted would never happen — has led to thousands of cancer procedures being postponed, as hospitals are inundated with those at risk of immediate death from Covid-19.

 

I am interested to know what Sunetra Gupta thinks of this. She is the professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford, regarded as some sort of goddess by the “sceptics”. In March she published a paper with a model purporting to show half the population of the UK had already had the virus, and so we were near herd immunity. In May she said Covid-19 was “on its way out” — later adding that it would not resurge in London — and that the infection mortality rate was “definitely less than one in 1,000 and probably closer to 1 in 10,000”. When she said this, we had already seen 36,000 Covid deaths. So, even if 100% of our citizens had been infected, we would have to have had a population of 360 million for her low-end estimate to be right.

 

Yet Gupta, the principal academic critic of lockdowns, has never retracted anything and was consulted by Boris Johnson when the PM rejected the advice of Whitty (an epidemiologist himself) to reintroduce a lockdown in October.

 

The point is that journalists such as Young, and others in my trade who take the same line, rely almost entirely on the spurious authority of Gupta and Yeadon for the unshakeable confidence they have in their own opinion. Their now ridiculous articles confidently dismissing the dangers of Covid-19 stemmed not from any original thought but from blindly trusting what they took to be experts. This is quite funny, as it’s the same accusation they make about those of us who trusted Whitty.

 

But there are consequences. On the day I heard from Young, I also got an email from a hospital doctor: “Not just me but every doctor I work with in acute care has treated people sick or even dying with Covid-19 who point-blank refused to believe it was real or that they had it, because of what they read or heard on social media or from certain commentators.” And there are no jokes to be made about that.

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And this from a Tory MP. 
 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/17/id-love-to-ignore-covid-sceptics-and-their-tall-tales-but-they-make-a-splash-and-have-no-shame?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

I’d love to ignore ‘Covid sceptics’ and their tall tales. But they make a splash and have no shame

Neil O'Brien

 

If you had opened certain newspapers over the past year, you would have read the following. In spring, you’d have been told the virus was fizzling out. You might have been treated to the views of epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, who claimed: “The epidemic has largely come and is on its way out in this country.” This wasn’t due to the lockdown, she argued, but “the build-up of immunity”, which government advisers were apparently underestimating.

 

By the summer, you would have read that it was all over. In June, Toby Young, editor of the Lockdown Sceptics website predicted: “There will be no ‘second spike’ – not now, and not in the autumn either.

 

The virus has melted into thin air. It’s time to get back to normal.” Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson wrote: “The terrible Coronabeast will be gone from these isles by September.”

 

By July, the sceptical narrative had changed. According to Ross Clark in the Daily Mail, there was nothing to fear. Boris Johnson’s warning of a possible “second wave” was an unjustified “emotive” use of language. Rising cases in countries such as Spain were “little more than a statistical illusion” due to increased testing.

 

Globally, countries taking the toughest measures were getting great results. Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan and Taiwan all saw case rates at about a 20th of the EU average. The Covid sceptics trashed their approach as “sheer panic”.

 

Instead, libertarian Sweden was all the rage. Never mind that its death rate was 10 times that of its neighbours. They would have no second wave because they had wisely built up “herd immunity”. In fact, there was a brutal second wave; Finland and Norway offered emergency medical assistance as Stockholm’s hospitals overflowed. Even the king slammed the failed strategy.

 

As infections built up again in the autumn, the story changed once more. Though it looked like cases were rising, it was a “casedemic” brought on by faulty tests. “At least 91% of ‘Covid cases’ are FALSE POSITIVES,” thundered Talk Radio host Julia Hartley-Brewer in September. “There is no evidence of a second wave.”

 

By autumn, there were more people in hospital with Covid but several papers ran pieces saying our hospitals weren’t unusually busy in November. Some continued the pretence for an absurdly long time. On 29 December, Pearson wrote: “ICU occupancy is 78% today. Remarkably low for this time of year” and that “winter 2020 is the lowest hospital bed occupancy for 10 years. Yes, really.”

 

However, as the new variant exploded and television news showed ambulances queuing outside hospitals that were full of people gasping for breath, the story had to change again. Yes, people were now dying but not in unusual numbers. On 4 January, Hartley-Brewer reassured us: “The virus kills. It just isn’t causing excess deaths anymore.” This was rather difficult to square with the Office for National Statistics saying 2020 saw the largest increase in deaths in England and Wales since 1940. So, others resorted to a different argument. Yes, 89,000 extra people had died but they would have died anyway. They were old or had “prior conditions”, so were already on the way out. They didn’t mention that 8,300 of them were of working age or that many “prior conditions” were non-fatal, such as asthma, diabetes, mental health or learning difficulties.

 

Powerful Covid-sceptics in the media have got it wrong at every stage. They fought to stop or delay every measure necessary to control the virus. They opposed masks, resisted travel restrictions, fought local lockdown tiers as well as national measures, often with conflicting arguments. Clark wrote again in October that local tiers were unfair and the PM wanted to “trash the northern economy”, but when national measures proved necessary, he complained “we are going to close down restaurants in Cornwall to try to fight an epidemic in Manchester”. In December, he said we should prioritise vaccinations in “the parts of the country which add most to the economy, London especially”.

 

They rubbished those who knew what they were talking about. Professors Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance were “Messrs Doom and Gloom”, “fear-mongering” and “self-serving”. That Whitty and Jonathan Van-Tam used their tiny amount of spare time to volunteer in hospitals suggests that’s not true. Now, as the death toll still rises, the same people crawl from the woodwork to demand we lift all restrictions as soon as the most vulnerable are vaccinated.

 

It’s great that we are leading Europe in vaccinations and lockdown has meant cases are starting to fall back. But if we drop our guard, we could still risk many lives agonisingly close to the finish line.

 

Because they are still dangerous, I have pointed out the mistakes of some Covid-sceptics on Twitter. They regard this as outrageous. An MP shouldn’t be getting involved in this. I “must not have any constituents who’re struggling”, says Hartley-Brewer. Young deleted all his tweets from last year and, in a joint podcast with alt-right conspiracy theorist James Delingpole,accused me of being “a wrong un”, a “fascist”, while comparing me to Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrenti Beria. (I didn’t know you could be a Nazi and a Commie.) I’ve touched a nerve, it seems. Politicians are used to accountability. The guilty people within the media are not.

 

The truth is, the Covid-sceptics aren’t really sceptics at all. They engage in motivated reasoning; they make stuff up and double down on disproved claims. They are powerful figures, not used to being questioned. But the truth is that they have a hell of lot to answer for.

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17 minutes ago, Istvan Kuntstain said:

So the cunting thing has put me ma in hosi, the doc agreed the ventilator is a no no so she's on the nasel tube, she had no covid symptoms (as such) just a kidney ache but that made her collapse... 

Ah FFS mate, best wishes, hope everything works out.

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24 minutes ago, Istvan Kuntstain said:

So the cunting thing has put me ma in hosi, the doc agreed the ventilator is a no no so she's on the nasel tube, she had no covid symptoms (as such) just a kidney ache but that made her collapse... 

Thoughts with you and your ma. What a fucker this virus is. 

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30 minutes ago, Istvan Kuntstain said:

So the cunting thing has put me ma in hosi, the doc agreed the ventilator is a no no so she's on the nasel tube, she had no covid symptoms (as such) just a kidney ache but that made her collapse... 

Fucking hell, hope all goes well.

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43 minutes ago, Istvan Kuntstain said:

So the cunting thing has put me ma in hosi, the doc agreed the ventilator is a no no so she's on the nasel tube, she had no covid symptoms (as such) just a kidney ache but that made her collapse... 

Fingers crossed for you all hombre; absolute fucker this virus. 

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2 hours ago, Istvan Kuntstain said:

So the cunting thing has put me ma in hosi, the doc agreed the ventilator is a no no so she's on the nasel tube, she had no covid symptoms (as such) just a kidney ache but that made her collapse... 

Sending her my best wishes mate 

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2 hours ago, Istvan Kuntstain said:

So the cunting thing has put me ma in hosi, the doc agreed the ventilator is a no no so she's on the nasel tube, she had no covid symptoms (as such) just a kidney ache but that made her collapse... 

The Covid is a bad fucker

Best wishes for you & your ma, mate!

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In terms of the new variant not being fully understood, Balloux has been tweeting quite a bit the last 24 hours. 

 

It seems it may have had a temporary competitive advantage which has now ceded. There's not enough evidence to be talking the way the government has, as though it is scientific fact that this variant is 70% more contagious.

 

 

 

Worth clicking on for the discussion and other observations.

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