New research of the WuFlu “gene” lineage in the UK show that the virus kept being introduced via planes, trains and cars. The entire time that UK residents were being restricted in lockdown, tens of thousands of people were allowed to bring virus in through the border. Sabotage or Incompetence? The single failure to quarantine arrivals in the UK means the lockdown has gone on longer than it needed, cost more than it had too, has been less successful, and now, as the UK reopens, it does it with infections still running, when it could be doing it “like New Zealand”.
The BBC news mentioned that there were a lot of imported cases, that the biggest variety of genetic variants came from Spain, France and Italy and not China. But one tantalizing finding was that the UK transmission lines now appear to be “very rare or extinct”. Which surely implies that the lockdown is working, the UK lines are dying out, and that … by golly, the new infections must be regular incoming virus?
Three Key Conclusions:
- The UK epidemic comprises a very large number of importations due to inbound international travel2. We detect 1356 independently-introduced transmission lineages, however, we expect this number to be an under-estimate.
- Many UK transmission lineages now appear to be very rare or extinct, as they have not been detected by genome sequencing for >4 weeks.
- We estimate that ≈34% of detected UK transmission lineages arrived via inbound travel from Spain, ≈29% from France, ≈14% from Italy, and ≈23% from other countries. The relative contributions of these locations were highly dynamic.
Instead, according to the BBC the big surprise in this study was that there was “no patient zero” who went on to give 300,000 people in the UK Covid, though it’s hard to believe anyone older than six thought that was even possible.
In February a quarter of million people flew into the UK — that’s not in February “the month”, — it’s every single day. In a world of exponential rising infections surely even preschoolers can figure out the odds that millions of travellers were flying in from a world of sick, and somehow were not sick themselves.
In March, 20,000 people a day were flying in from Spain, where the infection was running rife. Many of these would be British people returning home. The study shows the incredible folly of keeping borders open.
Coronavirus came to UK ‘on at least 1,300 separate occasions’
James Gallagher, BBC, Health and Science Correspondent
The study, by the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium (Cog-UK), completely quashes the idea that a single “patient zero” started the whole UK outbreak.
They found the UK’s coronavirus epidemic did not have one origin – but at least 1,356 origins. On each of those occasions somebody brought the infection into the UK from abroad and the virus began to spread as a result.
“The surprising and exciting conclusion is that we found the UK epidemic has resulted from a very large number of separate importations,” said Prof Nick Loman, from Cog-UK and the University of Birmingham.
“It wasn’t a patient zero,” he added.
The big surprise for me was that the number was so small. But the full study shows this is the tip of an iceberg. They analyzed data from 16,506 UK genomes, and another 12,000 genomes from other countries. So they looked at about 5% of the known coronavirus infections in the UK (which is still an impressive sample). So when they say 1,300 separate infections arrived, the researchers admit “We expect the number is an underestimate”. But it could be that 30,000 cases arrived across those open flowing borders. The researchers certainly don’t say that. They add that they do not attempt to measure the contributions of importation versus local transmission, nor to model the impact of the public health interventions. There are many caveats, and many assumptions. They have to estimate how fast the mutations are happening, how quickly they spread, how long it took to detect them, and how many of the subsequent transmissions they sampled.
The graph shows that the variants detected in early March have largely disappeared
…..
Most of the 1,356 lineages lasted for a month or so and died out. If those variants had successful spread and mutated they would look different to what they did on March 1 but there would still be a continuous chain of changes. The lineage wouldn’t have died out.
Figure 5: Estimated total number of inbound travellers to UK per day (black line) and the estimated number of infectious cases worldwide (dashed red line).
New cases in the UK are about 1,300 per day
How many of these new cases are from planes, trains and cars? How low would this tally be if instead the UK had put in border controls at the same time as it started major restrictions at the end of March? Mobility trackers show the UK was slowing down for most of March, and by the last week of March reached a full lockdown.
UK Cases Worldometer
UK Borders are Still Not Closed
Even though, as of this week, the UK government is demanding all arrivals self-isolate for two weeks, they are only collecting names and addresses and promising to check on some of them. There’s a £1,000 fine for breaches, but only a £100 fine for people not filling in the form. (Seems like a cheap alternative to two weeks quarantine). The isolation is not only not enforced, it is not even a full 100% requirement — as those in self isolation are asked not to visit pharmacies and what not, unless they absolutely have to, and can’t find a friend to do it for them.
Individuals quarantining will be permitted to shop for food essentials and medicines but only if it is not possible to rely on others, and will be able to take public transport to their designated accommodation.
About a fifth of people are expected to receive a spot-check to ensure that they are staying at the address or addresses they have provided to the authorities, the Guardian understands.
Australia tried this kind of weak border control in March, and learnt quickly that it didn’t work. When Victorian police tried to check on arrivals, even though there were $1,652 dollar fines for breaches, 10 to 20% of those in self isolation were not home when police turned up, and some had given false addresses. By March 28th all incoming travellers were put in enforced hotel quarantine. They were escorted to the hotels, separated, guarded, fed, and tested.
As I’ve said before, and this study shows, the biggest mistake the UK Swamp made — apart from being unprepared was leaving the borders open. Which are still not closed. The UK aimed for Herd Immunity (that was the excuse for keeping the borders open, while the rest of the world closed them), a deadly mistake that killed tens of thousands of people who didn’t need to die, and also cost billions upon billions of dollars in pointless damage to the UK economy.
Have you got Coronavirus, do you live in the third world? Where’s the best place you could fly for safety and healthcare? — London.
Many caveats:
Since the sizes of transmission lineages vary considerably, this result does not imply that 34% or 29% of UK cases were descended from importations from Spain or France, respectively.
On average, about 50% of inbound travellers during 2020 are British nationals.
For example, we assume that the probability of a traveller from country X being infectious is the same as that of a member of the general population of country X on the same day. This may be unrealistic when prevalence and rate of inbound travel vary among regions in a country.
Identifying UK-specific transmission lineages of SARS-CoV-2 is a complex problem. The estimated number of introduced lineages is likely to be conservative because we have virus genome sequences for only a small fraction of UK infections (perhaps 1-5%), hence many transmission lineages will have gone undetected; larger lineages are more likely to be detected than smaller ones. Furthermore (i) under-sampling of genomes from other countries will result in the mistaken aggregation of separately-introduced UK lineages, reducing the number of detected lineages, and (ii) 42% of UK genomes (n=6954) cannot be allocated to a UK transmission lineage on the basis of virus genetic relatedness (singletons). However, given the rate of SARS-CoV-2 genome evolution and the low fraction of sequenced, some of these singletons are likely to belong to UK transmission lineages (detected or undetected).
REFERENCES
O. Pybus et al. (2020) Preliminary analysis of SARS-CoV-2 importation & establishment of UK transmission lineages, Preprint at Virological https://go.nature.com/37ieyvw.
TMRCA (time of the most recent common ancestor)
Things worth knowing about Coronavirus:
- Quarantines work: 12 days after lockdowns, quarantines and isolation, Coronavirus slows. This is text book microbiology.
- Many countries tracking to zero coronavirus all over the world
- The stroke virus? Covid causes hundreds of microclots throughout the lungs (and everywhere else)
- Coronavirus causes clotting: hold the ventilators, stop blood clots instead
- Coronavirus can affect brains, may increase stroke risk.
- Solve Vitamin D deficiency first to help beat Coronavirus.
- New York is “like mass casualty event”: coronavirus and other deaths are up three-fold
- Coronavirus may be man made. Why did the CCP destroy the evidence?
- Looks like we can extinguish Coronavirus: Australia and NZ tracking to zero.
- Large coronavirus random tests in Austria show only 1% infected
- Read Crush the Curve — save the economy
h/t Bill in Oz.
Meanwhile, the antipodeans are emerging from lockdown.
‘Scott Morrison has changed national coronavirus guidelines to allow fans to go to the footy and music lovers to attend festivals from next month. Mr Morrison said stadiums with fewer than 40,000 seats will be able to host 25 per cent of their capacity, paving the way for 10,000 fans to return to sports games.’ Daily Mail
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Jo you’ve made good use of that hat tip I provided the other day.
Glad it was useful
Bill
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Make good use of this Bill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=611&v=L8EL5AwimwE&feature=emb_logo
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Thanks for posting that, Broadie.
That reminded me of some stories from the hospitals in the former Czechoslovakia.
11
Video was from a comment on wattsupwiththat. Another video about to disappear from youtube no doubt.
Most of interest to me was the Nurse said COVID-19 infected people were easily recognizable.
https://depts.washington.edu/labmed/covid19/
Washington State has had a sudden jump in those being tested though the COVID-19 remains at 2% of those being tested.
They are really ramping up the testing without finding COVID-19, may be another type of flu epidemic in their summer.
01
Some proof that the standard of health care in the US is correlated with your bank balance. Probably a significant factor in the age profile of CV19 deaths in the US being lower than in other countries – something I predicted a couple of months ago.
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Love an off topic comment, particularly when it hits at number 1
06
Please note that a PM cannot force Premiers to lift restrictions imposed by them based on constitutional law, State powers and responsibilities, sovereignty.
PM Morrison should be applauded by disbanding the Keating Labor Council Of Australian Governments (COAG) in favour of the National Leaders Cabinet however, while the new forum format is a major improvement for discussion and reaching agreements, Federation of States remains a problematic situation and the “Cabinet” lacks the rules of State and Federal government such as cabinet solidarity once a decision is reached by a majority.
NLC’s spokesman is of course PM Morrison but progressing decisions is entirely up to the Premiers state by state.
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Jo, I heard there was the start of a second wave in the USA this week, affecting the stock market.
Is that correct?
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It does not show up on worldometer.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Daily new cases diminishing slowly. Daily deaths diminishing. Total cases flattening out.
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The US is like 50 different countries (but all with borders open). Some states are doing better than others.
TExas, California looks “not good” and Florida is on a second wave.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/texas/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/california/
But other states could wipe this out in a few weeks, like Washington, HAwaii, Montana, Vermont, West Virginia, Alaska, Maine.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/washington/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/louisiana/
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Hillsborough County Florida, has an official population of 1,229,226.
As we are nine years out from our deccianial census, the number may safely be estimated at 1.3MM, I’d guess.
This typically grows by 30% seasonally as part time residents makes their way from Canada and the northeast; a surprising
number seem to be here now out of season having fled some dense cities.
There is a banner each morning on our weather listing COVID along with wind, rain, and pollen, it is now that routine.
84 deg F feels like 95 (at 9AM EST)
Wind calm gusting to 4kt
Pollen moderate
Air Quailty 27
UV 11 (ed!)
COVID cases 3174
COVID DEATHS 96
Hillsborough County is home to the city of Tampa, a town of modest size, about 400,000.
It is about 1/3 urban in total, and has between 40 and 100 miles of seacoast, depending on how you wish
do to the cartography of all the bays and inlets.
It has a huge retirement poplulation, and not only nursing homes, but entire assisted living communities of thousands.
The numbers are above for your to judge, but here on the ground Florida’s first wave felt like a ripple.
There are 50 states, but there are 3141 counties in in the US and Hillsborough is not extreme in either land area or population.
We are far more diverse than those not familiar with our geography can imagine.
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And the Commonwealth of Australia, Federation of States is like five different countries and two colonies.
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And that is bloody marvelous !
03
Err Dennis?
That was the first edition Funk & Wagnalls you were relying on for your information on this subject.
The Australian States and Territories have submitted to National and World Standards and Treaties. The National Employment Standards (NES) for instance means that if you employ someone you will go broke in any State.
In other words you have to submit and be standardized where ever you live.
Only the pig ignorant would not know of the disaster this lack of competition between our States has been to our industries.
11
Sorry,
Quick apology to those who use their concession funded railway tickets. The track gauge still has different standards.
01
I think you confuse parochialism with diversity
10
Well let’s celebrate parochialism then.
Makes it worthwhile to travel to another community to experience something different.
https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/company/Pages/company-history.aspx
Something like Lincoln Electric’s employment guarantee could not happen in Australia under the parochialism of our Fairwork Act. We would have to go back in time and to OHIO to build such a workplace culture.
Just like treatment of COVID-19 in Elmhurst where this nurse claims patients having panic attacks ended up on ventilators. Step outside the approved response or in the case of Lincoln Electric the accepted industrial relations standard and you risk being consumed by the legal profession, de-funded, de-platformed, discredited and demonized.
11
01
‘The stocks mega-rally hit a roadblock: A somber economic outlook from the US Federal Reserve and the 2 millionth coronavirus case in the United States has investors questioning whether they had boosted the stock market too far, too fast.’ CNN
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They have.
Wave III down has probably commenced.
20
The ASX has also taken a breather.
‘Just 11 companies finished the session in positive territory as fears of a second wave of COVID-19 infections in the US sparked a flurry of selling. Investor sentiment had already taken a hit after the US Federal Reserve poured cold water on stimulus-gorged equity markets.’ SMH
21
Although a factor, talk of a second wave has been around for a while now. The main reasons for the sell off is a combination of a number of factors:
1. Profit taking
2. Selling by long term holders waiting for the rally to reach their sell orders (eg, fund managers).
3. Realisation that the economy is not likely to return back to normal so quickly – might take 2+ years (only about 60% of job losses to be recovered in the medium term, more bankruptcies to come, etc.).
Time will tell if this is the resumption of a major bear market, or just a correction in an ongoing bull market. I find it hard to understand how it’s the second one given the fundamentals, but not impossible given the belief the Fed can “print” as much money as they like. Some say the Fed is also buying stocks. We already know they have been buying bonds and junk bonds. Also, state and local governments are being offered free money. Illinois is the first one to receive it. Clearly the Fed will do just about anything to avoid a depression. Time will tell if they succeed.
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The key question to ask about the economy is ‘where’ ?
There is no one global economy anymore.
In lots of different ways we are now in a process of DE-GLOBALISATION.
Some nations are already emerging from the COVID pandemic.
(Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Czechnia etc.
Other nations have been largely Covid free and want to reboot their economies. )
But other nations are still in the midst of the pandemic and suffering all the stresses that this brings.
Among this group are the USA, the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Russia, Brazil, Sweden, Belgium etc.
In these countries the economic toll will continue to be high.
And no one will want their travellers without a substantial quarantine.
And China ? Well no one knows how honest their statistics are.
Without trust of the CCP regime most nations will treat China with a vert long spoon.
34
yep and a number cities getting looted and vandalised and the uncertainty around how far that will go.
01
It is more anticipation of a second wave. At this stage it is only a hint of a second wave with the number of daily cases edging above 20k again but that could be just part of the weekly reporting cycle.
Will need at least another week to see if the riots have increased the spread.
Reproductive rate in California is still above 1.
11
Some New York City stats on covid deaths
0-17 0.06% 9 deaths, 6 with underlying conditions
18-44 3.9% 601 deaths, 476 with underlying conditions.
So people under 45 without underlying conditions represent 0.8% of the total deaths.
So why lockdown entire populations instead of just over 45s who represent 99% of people at risk?
So wouldn’t it have
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Good data.
Incomplete analysis.
00
Locking down over 45s would need to be in place for months. (Look at Sweden).
There are also still people at risk under 45 — diabetics, high blood pressure, cancer patients, overweight.
That would surely wipe out a big slab of the economy for a long time.
Sweden admits it failed to protect old folk. https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1915636/sweden-admits-failure-to-protect-elderly-in-care-homes. Do we only have 45+ year olds looking after the old folk, and must they be isolated too?
Some people under 45 will not go out to resturants or shops while the virus spreads. They don’t like the idea of a disease that might cost them a month, and has a chance of giving them permanent lung, kidney or other damage. The effect on the economy is substantial and long.
It’s hard to see why any business would prefer that option to the one where people do a 6 – 8 week clean hard lockdown and then go back to life as normal.
Sweden only did half the lockdown, but it is going to last far more than twice as long.
PS: All those death % don’t mean much if the virus mutates, and in many countries the death % of young are a much larger proportion — mainly because they don’t have as many old dead bodies to dilute the count. If we somehow limit all deaths entirely in the 45+ category, then 100% of deaths will be under 45. It’s not that useful a metric.
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There are many cases where people have been incapacitated for long periods (months) from CoViD-19 and this includes those with no underlying conditions. I am on a triathlon forum and have seen quite a few accounts of people of were ironman and 70.3 competitors who are now barely capable of running, often citing breathing difficulties even a couple of months after being “recovered”. If people who keep fit and healthy and do a lot of outdoor activities get struck down, I’m confident that the general population are affected at least to a similar degree.
Not dying can still have a huge impact on society
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This comment on Dr. John Campbell’s YouTube channel three days ago is a reminder to self (and wife in particular who hates swallowing pills) to keep up with our Vitamin D and Zinc supplements:
“My daughter, who lives in London and is 42 years old, arrived home from working to reduce landslide risks in Armenia in early March 2020. She felt extremely fatigued and later developed breathing difficulties and chest pains, but never any fever. She is still not recovered from presumed Covid-19. The UK healthcare system has never tested her for Covid-19 apparently because she was never hospitalized and resources have been limited. She has been told that she cannot be tested for SARS CoV-2 until she has “recovered”. The GPs have said she must keep herself and her family in quarantine until she no longer feels unwell. It is very stressful for the family to be confined in a tiny London flat for going on 3 months. Humans need to be alerted that the outcome from a Covid-19 infection is not binary -recovered or dead.”
30
Any chance of getting to Ireland and getting a test there ?
Or getting a test privately ?
Confront the idiots !
15
More than one test, and more than one independent test media.
11
or a substrate ..employed by a test…
01
In Australia, there is very little first hand experience of the impact of CV19. My son was scheduled to do a work cycle in a dedicated COVID ward in a large Melbourne hospital beginning at the end of June but that appears less likely as the hospital is reducing the medical teams involved in COVID treatment. It appears there are only 2 patients in critical care in the whole of Australia.
Activities in Australia are getting back to normal. Our local farmer’s market was busier today than I have ever seen it – admittedly it was the first time for three months and they have unique offerings not available in supermarkets so demand would have been building during the quarantine. All the store holders offered non-contact payment and a number advised that they now had online stores up and running. The market is just set up in a grassed paddock, operating from vans and tents but still offering cashless payment method; the wonders of modern technology.
31
Interesting indeed Rick.
00
My daughter was horrified that she was not quarantined on her arrival in the UK in early April having worked in Spain and Northern Italy during March.
She self-quarantined with us (back bedroom and bathroom – plenty of anti-viral sprays, hand wash, wet wipes, and masks!!).
We are all fine, thanks to appropriate Vitamins and Minerals, distancing, exercise, and a dried frog worn as a pendant to ward off evil spirits.
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Well that’s all good, but you need to also need to utter this age-old evocation:
Evil spirit be thee gone
no more to roam amongst this throng.
Take thy three, unclean they be;
leave thy dragon, that thee may see
thy beast is nought, nothing more
Not unlike the frog Al Gore.
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Speak not of A* ***e, lest he should appear!
61
Watching news this evening about the demonstrations tonight, and over the weekend. And the commentators are all saying how terrible this is, and how the majority have made huge sacrifices, and it’s being undone by these selfish people, and how this could lead to a 2nd wave. No one has remarked, that that is almost certainly the object. They’re just another trojan horse, attempting to bring society to collapse. The object is to get a second wave.
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That is part of their agenda. They will fail because the left will fall from right wing firepower. Make no mistake. As for female impersonators…..
31
Wow! That’s an interesting post. If I would get really conspiritic, I’d say it reminds me me a little of the standard russian news channel confusion technique. Just throw any mad theory at a story, and it will get bogged down in a swamp of ideas.
03
It this a conspiracy ?
That old question again !
Answer NO !
Are they selfish dingbats with a messiah like desire to push their dopey cause down our throats ?
Yes
The best solution is to completely shun anyone we know who goes to these ‘protests’
There is a time for everything under Heaven – even to protest for a tiny, tiny minority.
Now is NOT the time
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“The single failure to quarantine arrivals in the UK means the lockdown has gone on longer than it needed, cost more than it had too, has been less successful, and now, as the UK reopens, it does it with infections still running…..”
Yup. By design. Social engineering appears to be the main aim….masks on public transport – for how long? Ad infinitum? Its like a scene from “The 12 Monkeys”
We keep hearing “things will never go back to normal…”
Yup.
Social engineering…
Face masks the new symbol of the rank of Serf in the new fuedalism….
Youre welcome….
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But are we all lucky that Jo has pounded the drum here on this blog since February :
1: GO early and . Go hard
2: Stop importing this foreign disease via travellers with out any quarantine.
3: Wear masks & social distance whennout of our homes
And thus..
WE GET OUR NORMAL LIVES BACK
And that is exactly what is happening.
I’m sorry to say ( as a bloke born in the UK )
The British government has been utterly bloody hopeless.
But Britain’s finest hours always come about from their own bloody minded incompetence.
So maybe Boris can pulls his balls out of the fire before they are totally burnt to ashes.
And actually take command from the experts & bureaucrats who have created this shambles.
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I have to admit that I was wrong about the hardline on lockdown and border controls that Jo proposed
(in the case of Australia , but by implication elsewhere )because I feared that the economic effect would destroy
jobs permanently in the UK and make the Brexit impossible because of a collapse of the economy.
However the death rate in the UK as a result of the laxity of the controls proved in actual fact to be far worse than
I could have imagined. In, say, France, with a strict lockdown , and certainly in Germany, even in Italy and Spain the crisis is over, but in the UK we cannot open the schools until Sept and I suspect there will be objection even then, such is the fear generated by the appalling death rate.
Why we continue to admit known cases and have such difficulty controlling and tracking them is beyond me.
It is almost as if the Civil Servants and the academic “advisors ” are deliberately conspiring to extend the crisis and complete the destruction of the UK economy – and bewildered Boris and his carnival of clowns do not realise what is happening.
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Mike
We are back to that old problem of what is a covid death and what is a death attributed to covid, in that respect prof Sikora is worth listening to. He points out the different methods of recording the virus in Germany and The UK which flatters Germany’s performance and makes britains look worse. He reckons the death toll in the UK actually from the virus is probably less than half the official figures.
Add in the report today whereby it is likely that care homes will account for half of britains virus deaths.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8414265/Care-homes-afterthought-coronavirus-response-damning-report.html
So we have Lack pf quarantine by closing borders, combined with decanting old people from hospitals into care homes that let the virus loose amomgst the most vulnerable, and hospitals themselves being a major cause of infection, so people entering them might catch covid but although not dying from it, died with it, so were included in the stats and people being scared to go into hospital in case they caught it who may have then died
If you are not intending to be ensconced in a care home nor need to go to a hospital (although things have much improved) anyone in reasonable health has always had an extremely small chance of catching the virus.
The vulnerable need to be protected biut the rest can mostly go about their business with sensible precautions such as not attending indoor crowded places. I would not go to a theatre for instance.
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Excess-death-analysis comparing prior years is the best way to quantify Covid-19 deaths. Indeed, a study by the Office for National Statistics suggests the reality is actually far worse than official U.K. figures:
1) From early March 2020, 62,000 more deaths were recorded in the UK than the average of the same weeks over the past five years;
2) These excess deaths are much higher than the 39,904 people who officially died of the disease in the daily count, or the 48,000 who had Covid-19 mentioned on their death certificate.
3) Why? ONS evidence of the data to date suggests undiagnosed Covid-19 in the elderly as the most likely explanation: 1) difficulty of diagnosis due to other illnesses; 2) testing for Covid-19 simply wasn’t available.
https://www.ft.com/content/2e0a7116-5930-4c7c-aa7b-05a5bd554113
20
4) people not getting diagnosed for other illnesses, or not seeking treatment for existing serious conditions
01
There are many potential factors but the discrepancy is mainly caused by the elderly dying of Covid-19 undiagnosed, explaining most of the 50+% difference between excess deaths and officially recorded deaths due to the virus. This according to the Office for National Statistics, their analysis and quotes in the article.
10
Such a civilised country the K is -NOT.
The NHS has become a killing machine for the elderly.
10
Yeah while the initial lockdown was necessary, the ongoing restrictions may be less to do with disease and more to do with social control.
82
The Dems, Big Pharma must be delighted that a few Trump fans have adopted an anti-mask aymbolic totem, against the evidence. They are helping to keep an economy damaging virus running in the lead up to the US election.
As a nice side benefit it might kill off a few Trump voters as well. “Bravo” eh?. But that’s just icing. The real win is stopping the US from reducing the viral burden in the cheapest way possible, and keeping the economy from flourishing in the lead up to the election.
44
I am not sure who has adopted anti-mask. Antifa activists wear them to conceal their identity, when they are on public view. How do masks actually work? Probably by containing the sneeze to the wearer.
It might kill off a few Trump voters, but given their geographic distribution I suspect that the damage will be much greater in the Blue states.
Blue states seem to be suffering much more economic and social damage at present due the activity of the BLM activists. How much suffering must they endure?
Trump says No More. He will fix it if the Dem Mayors will not. What sort of a message does that send? A good one I hope.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/06/12/president-trump-extensive-interview-discussing-state-of-u-s-law-enforcement/#more-194243
41
Who has adopted an anti-mask attitude?
In die-hard Trump fan territory, only sissies wear masks. I quote a commenter on this blog:
“Face masks the new symbol of the rank of Serf in the new fuedalism….”
10
I should think that the real wins for the left are several.
First they can manage political gatherings. Thus they can interfere with the Republican convention and avoid one of their own. This is extremely important in
ways perhaps not obvious to those not steeped in American History. It was the mob violence at the Chicago nominating convention in Chicago in 1968 that probably
cemented the law and order appeal of Richard Nixon, a man almost as unpopular as Mr. Trump, when Mayor Richard Daley’s police clashed violently with the police for several days. Some of the mob leaders arrested became “the Chicago Seven”. The were unrepentant radicals, but nonetheless commanded support from all orthodox democrats, to the horror of center left voters, who deserted a very moderate and decent Democratic nominee in droves.
Prolonging COVID will enable them to cancel their Wisconsin convention in a town renowned for street violence, and avoid images of tens of thousands of marchers being turned into a mob by a few radicals and the absence of firm policing. Every Democrat knows they would lose badly if their convention city burned; and it would.
Second, they can poke at religion. If you can keep the churches closed, you can provoke those you see as extreme on the right to do extreme things. Getting a church to
defy a government order, then having a congregation member come down with COVID, can be cast as murder by the right. Demonstrations by those wishing to reopen allow you to photograph pale faces and clall them demonstrations of white supremacy, such is the state of American politics.
Third, the Democrats can keep their own presumptive candidate sequestered. One of his potential disadvantages is an ability to withstand the rigors of the campaign, another his acutiy facing hostile questioners. He has not appeared in public nor faced a hostile question during the lockdown.
The COVID Lockdown is gods gift to Democratic electoral politics, and they’ll not give it up easily. USA freedom day is the first Wednesday in November.
31
And they can push for a mail in ballot too. Imagine if there is too much Coronavirus in late October?
You’re almost right when you say: The COVID Lockdown is gods gift to Democratic electoral politics,
Instead, a sabotaged lockdown is gods gift to Dems.
A short proper lockdown would have been the Dems worst nightmare. America could have led the way, been triumphant, saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and their economy would be starting to recover now, like ours is, in time for election day. Trump would be a hero.
Shame.
20
Jo
Trump would never be a hero to democrats even of no Americans had died and everyone had been given ten free gold bars.
Did you see this study that seems to indicate it was an especially virulent strain that hit the UK US and Italy?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
Our area in torbay south west england had some of the first cases traced to a local school returning from a skiing trip to Italy. However there has not been a new case now for four weeks.
21
Yes . a great shame.
But that is what happens when an infectious pandemic disease gets politicised.
And Trump ?
Sorry to say it Jo,
But he is history.
01
I didn’t say Trump would be a hero to Dems. He could have been a hero to his country.
It’s the voters in the middle that decide the election.
Tonyb — yes, it’s possible there was a nastier strain in the US, UK, and Italy. Or that could be a convenient cover for stupid decisions to keep borders open, be arrogantly over confident, under prepared, and to use a 100 year old Flu plan because the Expert Swamp believed the CCP propaganda line “it’s just the flu”.
20
Perhaps these fans are anti-mask b/c they were initially told by scientists that, based on evidence, masks are ineffective and shouldn’t be worn. Many were gov’t scientists who weeks later publicly endorsed laws requiring masks to be worn. Which is it!? Of the 63M people that voted for Trump at least a few must be good people. I would hope their deaths aren’t thought of as a side benefit.
01
JCW — that would seem reasonable, except that these are the same people generally who don’t believe the scientists and doctors saying this is a diabolical virus that we need to stop.
10
Shocking that when you lock down economy, that what has occurred, and will continue to play out, will also kill.
Of course, as long as your masked & safe distancing, being homeless & starving is allowed.
Not a prayer they would be able to do a 2nd shutdown. The carnage this has done to families is incredible.
I know of one person with Wuhan. I know countless families that are now jobless, main street in shambles.
Wall street minus trillions of fed money = main street.
90
That sounds like an incompetent style of lock down
I;m glad we did slightly better here in Oz
With Job Keeper & Job Seeker subsidies from the Commonwealth government.
$1500 a fortnight per person who qualified.
And no foreigners with temporary visas did not qualify.
But then why is Australia responsible for the income support
For foreigners who are not permanent residents of Australia ?
16
The next six months will be a revelation.
40
KK, sure glad you used lower case as opposed to The Revelation…
The vision of plagues and horsemen and earthquakes and the dead arising from their graves almost made my blood boil. Then again, John of Patmos obviously found some magic mushrooms or succumbed to the dreaded ergot of rye (and got high with the Most High).
As ‘doomers’ are wont to say: the end is nigh.
41
And the nigh is doomed !
24
Something for all my conspiracy believer friends on the blog:
https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ConspiracyTheoryHandbook.pdf
25
Thanks. How is it that the dud duo Cook and Lewandowsky cannot see that the rank tawdriness of this publication can only further devalue what remains of their reputations?
22
I stopped reading after this:
These statements are so laughable, you are too, Bill, that you posted this, but perhaps you’re just an incompetent disinfo agent.
[Boris, quit the personalized attacks OK? This one backfires on you. If you’d read this site for longer than a few covid months, you’d know Stephan Lewandowsky is one of my main bread-n-butter targets of mirth, mockery and fun. Though it has been while. Must get back to it. :- ) John Cook is another. You may well enjoy. Both are well known to most readers here. — Jo]
11
That said, Bill in Oz was baiting people with that comment at #8 which had nothing to do with the post. It should not have been posted here.
Can we try disagreement with respect please?
11
WE have been deluged with the comments of conspiracy promoters Jo.
It’s time wasting, distracting and takes energy from other aspects of this infectious disease.
So there is a need to respond to such stuff.
As for being off topic, I waited till 7 hours after your post appeared.
( Your post at 5.00 pm Friday. My comment after midnight Friday night )
That’s reasonable I think.
01
And I see the filter is hard at work censoring again.
01
Just so. Even Philip Adams confided to his readers that ‘some’ conspiracy theories are “100% true”. Philip seemed confident that he knows which are true and which are false. Amazing.
21
Come on Rob
! Phillip Adams is good for a laugh a minute.
But for anything serious ?
Not at all.
13
Some will be true. The derogatory term “conspiracy theory” is just another liberal word game to instantly devalue other opinions, buy infering that other views are inherently foil hat material. Its overused and misused.
11
You can’t be serious! The Stephan Lewandowsky and Peter Cook tainted Survey.
https://climateaudit.org/2012/09/08/lewandowsky-scam/
01
Here in my small town we had no cases for a long time. Then there were a few but no more than you can count on one hand. Much like green energy jobs..he..he. There were no deaths and it was among young people with ties to collage towns. Everybody thinks its winding down and they are letting their guard down.
Then suddenly when the newspaper came out at the beginning of this week, it was announced that there had been a doubling of new cases. What the ….? Then I heard on the local radio there were five more new cases a couple days later. Then five more the next day. Then 13 new cases the day after that. I haven’t heard any more since then. The county health nurse says that she thinks its caused by people getting together for graduation parties, and Memorial Day BBQs which normally kick off the summer, and with friends and relatives travelling around and coming in from far away places.
People appear to be completely unaware of these developments locally. They pay no attention to the local news. If it’s not on their iphones it doesn’t exist. The legacy media has cried wolf so long about imagined climate change and pushing anti-Republican propaganda that nobody listens to them anymore.
One can easily see how a voluntary lock down could allow the pandemic to flourish, given human nature, but I don’t think people will accept a lock down now.
50
Yes, people in the US would need one extraordinary (perhaps impossible) campaign to accept a lockdown now.
The Swamp + Dems + open borders have ensured the best shot the US had has failed, and the rolling cycles of infection will hurt the economy far more than one proper short lockdown would have. This takes away one big winning claim Trump could have used in the election. Dems and Big Pharma will be happy about that.
It also stops Trump riding what would have been a huge popularity wave had he be seen to be the strong man who saved the US from the virus. He would have been unstoppable.
Trump may yet win anyway due to the absurd overreach of riot-related politics. But those helping (unwittingly) to spread the virus are de facto helping the dems.
34
Why should he not win on his policies? He advocates sensible policies and explain what they are effectively (at least I think so).
71
I disagree with you a bit here, but tangentially.
Politics goes on all the time in the US. However, I would suggest that it is mostly transactional;
23% of our GDP runs trough government and budgets are annual, at the local state and federal levels.
Also, budgeting and appropriation are often done separately. Even our most severe differences resolve
very quickly to money; as an example there is in the immediate present discussion in the city council of New York
diversion of about 1/6 of the police budget, meaning 1 Billion dollars is being reallocated. Elswhere in
America, all demands from police reform to riot restoration, are being monetized.
Our elections, I believe starts about 60 days before the even, with the decision of those who can be “got”:
1. Usually settled emotionally
2. Usually tipped by large forces but secured at the grass roots, often by mobilization around an event with personal impact
3. Often tipped in the last few hours, and in a significant number of cases decided emotionally within an hour of voting
Only about 15% of our electorate will change sides from vote to vote; this is why our parties typically spend more than half their assets on
finding new or inactive voters and getting them to the polls.
The ground game, and direct contact are far more important than ever before. There is essentially no neutral media left that reaches both sides
and is trusted where you might advertise and persuade.
Polling has become extremely difficult. In a cancel culture, where a stray word can cost one one’s job, there is little motivation to tell one’s political views to a stranger and no inclination whatsoever to do so if your views run counter to your herd. Thus interview polling, which has historically been very important to party professionals tho too expensive for media, is effectively gone.
I think I know which small groups of people will determine the election. I think both parties do, too, and are terribly frustrated that there is little they can do to change the course of events; both fear they will spend billions and have no impact.
20
Cases.
Deaths.
In the US, we set out to Flatten the curve, with a soft shutdown.
Our hospital system was not overwhelmed.
Flattening the curve does not necessarily change the are under the curve — -extending the extant into a different season may.
So after success in flattening the curve, and teaching some public health habits we are opening.
There are still cases and deaths.
They seem most significant as an opportunity for political finger pointing in a fact-free media environment.
Our public media have herd immunity from intelligent thought.
101
Once again you confirm that lockdowns are pointless.
New Zealand did have a patient ZERO slip through, well probably ZERO-A to ZERO-G or whatever, it did die our/would have anyway, in about 4 weeks – lockdown irrelevant and pointless.
Of course in the UK letting more infected people come in was dumb, letting it get into care homes when the risk from flu in such settings is well known/planned for was dumb. Changing tactic 3 times was dumb. The dumbest thing of all was imposing a lockdown. As you have shown, and as was suspected early on, each seeded focus burns out all on its own most of the time.
Flick a single lit match into a straw field surrounded by green grass, you’d be unlucky to start a fire. Keep flicking matches in, sooner or later it will go up. Catapult a bucket full of coals in, it will certainly go up. Regardless, it will stop when the straw is consumed, i.e. sooner or later the virus hits a dead end in every direction – and fails to propagate.
“a deadly mistake that killed tens of thousands of people who didn’t need to die” – the vast majority were not lives lost but lives cut short by a few weeks at most. And yet again, you are only considering immediate deaths, not the longer term consequences like cancer treatment where thousands of people that stood a chance of a total cure will now die.
“and also cost billions upon billions of dollars in pointless damage to the UK economy” – entirely the result of the irrelevant/inappropriate lockdown which you support.
“They don’t like the idea of a disease that might cost them a month, and has a chance of giving them permanent lung, kidney or other damage.” – exactly like flu then, add in hepatic damage too.
You’ve now got things so out of proportion that by your values/justification, on the numbers of lives you want to ‘save’ and the level of illness you want to protect people from, this chaos will need to be repeated every time there is a hint of a meaty flu season.
As I’ve already said and you agree on the first, Sweden’s issues were care homes, plus the half of the story the hyper-sensitive MSM ignores:-
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/21/sweden-coronavirus-anti-lockdown-immigrants/
The soft option has worked for Sweden on every level – whatever you think, it would have been better if these 2 problem issues had been addressed, they will still do the same next time – no hard lockdown, but with modifications.
In case you missed it I’ll post it again – yes just like bad flu.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Bill, hope your angina spray is handy.
103
Isolating those seeded focal points is important; pounce on the virus with quarantine.
Komplete lockdown seems too vague and smells of political expediency to be taken seriously.
61
“Once again you confirm that lockdowns are pointless.”
MrGrimNasty, once again, you fail to provide one coherent argument to back up your claim. Obviously the lockdown extinguished chains of transmission.
But we already knew nothing I say and no graph on Earth can convince you otherwise.
Hope you don’t catch it.
53
The goalposts are ever shifting.
From CNBC “From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said at a news briefing from the United Nations agency’s Geneva headquarters. “It’s very rare.”
Asymptomatic spread was the entire reason why world authorities demanded lockdowns, social distancing and masks, too. It was also the underlying justification for demanding mandatory vaccinations and contact tracing. After all, if the spread of coronavirus were limited to only those who obviously showed symptoms — and could therefore be easily identified and avoided — there would be no logical need for lockdowns, social distancing, masks, contact tracing or mandatory vaccines, since spreaders of the pandemic could be easily identified and avoided (or isolated with selective stay-at-home orders only for the symptomatic). (Mike Adams of Natural News)
Skeptics! Please remain true to your innate skepticism. Maintain your rage (er skepticism).
11
She withdrew her comments are wrong days ago.
Time to stop peddling out dated information.
01
From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noAPR03VHpE
Pandemic Taught Us Humility – Can Give Us Purpose: Back to Village, Communal Therapy
5,929 views
•May 18, 2020
01
Goodness sake Jo…there is only one graph that i can see is promoted…
There is as far as i can see, there is only one graph that is oft quoted, that of one which calls itself a meter of graphs and used often and is as if a world of graphs. geneva or other…,,
01
please let me know if there are other graphs other than the one from the wrld of graphs.
01
If there are other data other than from the world of graphs, or if the world of graphs has other data that is different for us and is as it were, ‘cutting edge’..
01
it is called ‘world of meters’ and hope i got that right…are there any other meters or graphs? Jo//
If so, please let me know. 🙂
01
I am embarrassed that all our info seems to only come from one source. lol 🙂
More sources would help me feel more reassured.
01
There must be other sources of information and so i digress again. Even the Spanish Flu digressed until it disappeared. as it were.
01
Perhaps we must digress?…and then it will be history as per usual.
01
ES — thread bombing and fake info? and 8 comments to say nothing?
I read the whole 17 page paper I quote from, but you don’t even read the post before you make things up.
Notice the first two graphs?
PS: Threadbombers comments will be moderated to stop them littering.
20
Thanks Jo.
I saw it happening but did not know that it had a name.
Know I know.
BTW, It’s been happening for a while not just on this post/thread.
But maybe ES can now go back to feeding his possums ?
It’s a nice custom which helps avoid them eating out the fruit trees.
01
Odds are he wont with 7302 out of 25,000,000 so far , most likely he will be in the better than 99.99% group
00
It’s a global conspiracy
The lovely nurse in New York says so.
Sure Glum & Narky !
We ‘believe’ you.
But billions don’t.
Have you taken your “calm down” pill yet ?
17
Bugger I got confused G& N
That reply should have gone to ‘Broadie’.
16
Welcome back Captain.
03
we nay need to re-think…https://youtu.be/noAPR03VHpE?t=154
01
Sweden is among the worst of the basket cases. They will still be treating cases for months if not years. The number of daily cases is not yet reducing.
http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries&highlight=Sweden&show=25&y=highlight&scale=linear&data=cases-daily-7&data-source=jhu#countries
In fact it is accelerating but they may be the result of more testing. The death rate has reduced since the aged care homes were quarantined.
Someone might write up a paper on Taiwan’s pandemic response and get it peer reviewed so Anders will have a future reference for what he should have done. What he has done is oversee a mildly mitigated disaster. Taiwan was the most exposed to China, The last death there was a month ago; one of 7 in total. Sweden reported 40 deaths yesterday with total now at 4854. The number in intensive care is now increasing; up to 2299 cases today.
Sweden is now isolated from its neighbours and the economic harm will continue for months, if not years. Anders always stated Sweden was in it for the long haul. He achieved what he promised.
By the end of 2020 it will be possible to determine which countries had effective responses. Taiwan already the gold standard.
54
Rick, your theory would be more believable if there were multiple independent gatherers of corona data of all kinds. Even a Stevenson Screen cannot do much if the instrumentation is dubious and entirely questionable. Mostly, those who caught the flu died of pre-existing diseases. It’s just the way it is and has always been i suspect.
The one thing that is common to mostly all the main stream media data about the new flu is the complete lack of granularity. Age, gender, pre existing conditions and so on.
32
It’s a global ‘CONSPIRACY’ !
04
Or maybe it is more like being on a boat with boat people with a broken motor and no supply of water so that the resident boat people stranded in the vastness of the ocean by the lockdown have to draw straws on who gets to eat next, unable to feed their family far away, earn an income and so on..I do not know about a conspiracy, but the effect is clear.
32
The vastness of typo* sorry 🙂
Or maybe it is more like being on a boat with boat people with a broken motor and no supply of water so that the resident boat people stranded in the vastness of the ocean by the lockdown have to draw straws on who gets to eat next, unable to feed their family far away, earn an income and so on..I do not know about a conspiracy, but the effect is clear.
12
Maybe they would resort to CONSiderPIRACY??
22
Thread Bombing again E S ?
10
Its a bit like the liberal venom for any enity that dares venture off the PC tach
01
tach=path
01
” – the vast majority were not lives lost but lives cut short by a few weeks at most. ”
A remarkable example of hyperbole, or perhaps you are omniscient MrG&N.
20
India new cases/current cases 111/1317= = 8.4% increase/day https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/
……
Brazil 305/3374= 9% increase/day https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Brazil
…….
Mexico 49/150= 32.7% increase/day https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Mexico
….
Chile reported numbers are way haywire but average about 56/354= ~16% increase/day https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Chile
….
Nigeria 68/900= 7.5% increase/day https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Nigeria
……..
South Africa 31.5/229= 13.8% increase/day https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/South-Africa
40
Age, gender, pre-existing morbidity issues etc ??
Does your world of meters have that data?…if not, then it most definitely should have that data to be more helpful.
30
“Isolating those seeded focal points is important; pounce on the virus with quarantine.”
I agree with you on this KK, but also believe that a tight lockdown is appropriate in ther early stages of a pandemic such as this until such time as you can be confident that the “those seeded focal points” have been isolated.
Of interest is that here in OZ, there would appear to have been no spontaneous cases, as would be anticipated if the disease had become endemic through an animal host that is likely to transmit to humans. Particularly as we have entered the winter season. Maybe there have not been enough cases in OZ for this to become apparent, at what is still an early stage. However one can be hopeful.
21
Victoria has a number of Covid infection cases
Where the line of transmission has not been found.
And this state’s ‘privacy ;laws make it almost impossible to acheive this goal
16
I guess only time will tell Bill. Such cases may be a cause for concern.
10
Yes. There must be a short lockdown to get sorted and locate outbreaks, but two months and counting is damaging in many ways.
21
That is the price of going late
And importing lots of infected people instead of quarantining them in February.
We had the option of going early and hard.
But the Unis and the travel industry pushed the government into doing zip.
Until in Mid March SloMo saw the writing on the wall :
“Go now you fool,
Sacrifice the Unis and travel industry,
Or destroy your government and country both”
15
Meanwhile in the UK, the NHS is being sued for it’s incompetent policy of ‘evacuating’ elderly Covid 19 patients out of hospitals
And packing them into Aged care homes where they infected other aged residents.
This will indeed show up who did ‘what’, ‘when’ & ‘why’.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-53012565
44
Bill, it does make sense. Fill the old care homes with CV-19 carriers is one way to reduce the cost of running aged care homes. The way countries like the UK and the USA are reacting to the CV, given the outcomes, the most likely explanation is that whoever it is wanted to spread CV around as much as they could. Other theories as to why the situation was handled like it was dont explain the outcome as well.
50
No sensible person would treat even a dog like that Jane.
A simple injection does give a quick & painless death.
But for the elderly in aged ‘care’ homes
The death was slow and painful taking weeks
Such human ‘charity’ is beyond reason or belief.
The families of these victims cannot shoot the utter bastards
Who did this to their mothers, fathers & grandkids.
So sue the bloody pants ( & skirts) off all of them.
14
We have got used to the idea that Europe is a sort of single entity.
The Covid oandemic has shown us and Europeans that it isn’t at all
Each of the 34 + nations of Europe has devised and implemented it’s own response to Covid 19.
Some have had strong quarantines and lock downs.
Others have done very little.
And suffered or benefited accordingly.
Here is a longer list of what is happening in many of Europe’s nation states at the moment :
https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-52575313
04
Well Bill, what that goes to show is that the EU is just a Federation of states but without a Constitution or a Representative Parliament at the Federal level.
The EU’s “states” behave as do the Australian ones.
The worst of all possibilities. But then again, the Europeans seem to have a history of quite liking living under fascist dictatorships, especially the French and the Germans.
11
Actually Steve
The EU Not having that strait jacket meant they got lucky.
PS Please note there are 27 countries in the EU. The other 7 are independent.
01
Well thank god there are no conspiracies going on. I’ve seen the light, and really I can’t think of anyone who would benefit from more chaos in the western societies, and I am humbled by peoples’ sincere need to demonstrate for refugees, at a time like this. And people who have spent years trying to ‘white ant’ their society, would never consider using a golden opportunity to turn up the heat. Haven’t we heard faintly recently, that barely audible murmur, ‘ don’t ever waste a good disaster’. ??
Does ‘years attempting to ‘white ant’ their society’ amount to the c word? Can it be added it to the list of words that can’t be spoke?
10
Before jumping to any conclusions, i would very carefully look at where and how these alleged graphs are being obtained or it will just all be more bollocks.
In my opinion, the virus has burnt out and is over for this flu season.
12
Is there a Corona survivors Facebook page? Somewhere that Corona survivors share survival tips and their own experience?
22
From WUWT, a very informative presentation on world energy production, and projections, in 2020. I know facts don’t seem to be very useful, and there are lots and lots of them here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=T2pNzREpJ-8&feature=emb_logo
01
We would need to look at what the military industrial manufacturing complex is doing. For example, steel production and other kinds of production might experience a massive increase, soaking up any excess manufacturing capacity globally.
01
Care to tell us what China been doing recently in that area ES ?
14
Bill…To answer that in the present instance, we would need a machine that could determine typos* For example, i was completely unaware the thread had conducted the routine verification of my handle known as “Environment Skeptic”, NOT “Evironjment Skeptic”. Bill, you should hardly be surprised that if a machine/Ai (artificial intelligence) to determine a full deck of typos has thus far not been invented, then it should hardly follow that i should know what China is doing in its entirety/absolutely.
21
We can point the finger at the UK and say their COVID response was “cavalier” – letting international flights in while the rest of the population was in lockdown. I get that. In Australia and New Zealand we can be proud of our response to crush the curve etc. Which we did in spades, maybe too much. But, we cant stay locked up forever isolated from the rest of the world. As soon as international travel re-opens those countries , like the UK, may have higher herd immunity and be more resistant to normal life. Whereas we will be sitting ducks. The only hope is that the virus has mutated in a good way and maybe not as virulent. I dont have great faith in vaccine development for COVID – in fact I am concerned they could rush the process and the anti vaxxers will have a field day.
31
Fully agree Ross.
And while I’m very much a believer in vaccination the current annual flu shot and the potential new COVID19 needle don’t have my full confidence.
KK
11
G’day Ross,
“The only hope is that the virus has mutated…”.
Don’t agree. There is hope, via preventative and cure, some of which are already available viz:
# hydoxychloroquine + zinc, administered early in my Phase 2;
# massive dosage of vitamin C, intravenously, early, in Phase 2;*
# Vitamin D, built up to sufficiency in Phase 1; and
# Quercetin + zinc + vitamin D in Phase 1.
…
* A new proposition from me.
Cheers
Dave B
10
For a post about UK and borders, its amazing how far you have to scroll dow to see any comments directly related to the post.
Guess it shows just how little such a topic is viewed on this site.
Today’s poll
A are the UK authorities deliberately undermining their health professionals
B does the performance of the square mile override health concerns
Red Thumb for A, Green Thumb for B
110
poor Peter, seeking attention via thumbs,
…. by offering inane false dichotomies.
42
We do know that the whims of left-wing rioters, looters and hoodlums overrides health concerns.
61
Now watch as he uses his false dichotomy to try to prove a point,
Hint: You get red thumbs because you make idiotic and delusional comments. !
Red thumb does NOT mean people are choosing “A”.
32
What are you talking about Andy. Don’t tell me you read it?
I always just give him a red thumb.
Chronic insincerity never gets green.
31
What can I say … I like slap-stick comedy,
Even if it is a very poor attempt at it.
41
I always give Fitz a thumbs up, to help him standup to the mob.
There was no patient zero in the UK, the place leaks like a sieve.
20
“are the UK authorities deliberately undermining their health professionals”
They do have a far-left deep swamp in the UK, you know.
Would not be surprising.
50
What about the (in)actions of our state premiers re. those protests? Are they daft enough to assume there will be no harm risking spreading the Wuflu or is it something else?
40
‘ … are the UK authorities deliberately undermining their health professionals?’
Yes, it was a big mistake to let the virus run rampant and put the medical professionals in danger, unnecessarily. A class action maybe on the cards.
Australia’s health system was not overwhelmed at all, thanks to Morrison.
10
“deliberately” ??
Or could it be just plain incompetence. !
Very hard to tell, with “the leftist swamp” / public bureaucrats.
30
Indifference?
11
(A) No. The Health Care “Professionals” undermined themselves.
The NHS identified a nationwide cohort of 1.3 million people especially vulnerable to Covid-19.
The “professionals” failed to attain this target figure.
Success would have relieved the pressure on our Hospitals and Aged Care homes.
These so-called “professionals” were unable to live up to the Golden Rule of the NHS:
“Thou shalt not Kill – but needst not strive, officiously, to keep Alive.”
—
(B) Not where the NHS is concerned.
Every year Capital Expenditure is transferred to Day-to-day Expenditure – to flag that the NHS is short of cash, again.
This year Coronavirus brought them a £6bn handout.
All to be accounted for, of course.
20
How far from herd immunity are we today?
Uses June 11th 2020 Worldometer data.
Presuming only 20% of cases are known, and 80% who had it, but showed no illness symptoms:
7,754,343,259 Global Population:
7,583,891 Current total infected, to date:
So 0.098% of humanity is known to have been infected, so far.
The known plus the 4 ties larger unknown infected fraction, totals to ~0.489 percent of humanity infected so far.
Thus, at a global level, we’re a bit less than 120th of the way to 60% herd-immunity, right now.
So if we multiply the current death toll, by that 120th, this is about how many will die to achieve the now defacto herd-immunity ‘policy’ target (defacto, as this is what occurs if you ‘coexist’ with it.).
Total number of OFFICIALLY dead from COVID-19 = 423,081
423,081 * 120 = 50.7 million dead to reach 60% global immunity level.
However, note that in France today the death percentage is 18.9% of all known cases have died, so 1 in 5 of all known French cases have died so far. This suggests either the French are exaggerating the death rate, or the total deaths are being widely under-reported in other countries. Either way, by the time COVID-19’s global spread declines the total number of deaths is likely to match or exceed the 1918 to 1920 Spanish Flu pandemic. What people (globally) seem to not grasp is that pandemics take years. But the popular delusion now is to think this virus can be stopped by being stubborn and resisting the things that will slow an eliminate it, saving many millions of lives in the process.
Apparently the, “Save muh bloated debt-bubble ‘economy’ …”, as Religion, means much more to some, than the means-to-an-end it’s meant to be since the beginning of human civilization. It was supposed to support all human life, but it’s morphed into a conscienceless ideological people-eating monstrosity of unfulfilled greed and ‘self-justifications‘ for anything occurring, in its revered and holy name.
We’re still at just 0.5% of humanity infected, the death toll is likely to rise exponentially for about 18 months at a gradually accelerating (and sometimes slower) rate. It’s taken ~7 months to kill half a million people. And during the delusional period where people (especially in the USA and UK) have come to believe the worst is over (i.e. from about the 23rd of April to present), the number of new-cases increased by 5 million, regardless. This denial and stupidity for economic purposes will continue in G20 countries, until it can’t.
There were 140,917 new cases yesterday (highest 1 day total so far) and it’s getting faster. This coming week it will reach 150,000 per day, etc.
141,917 * 7 = 986,419 … about 1 million new-cases every week from here.
But that is accelerate into probably many hundreds of millions, or billions of cases, during the next 12 to 24 months.
2021 will be when the main infection and deaths occur — not 2020. It will probably burn-out and tail-off during 2022, but in 2021 COVID-19 should produce most of the coming 50 million deaths.
The now defacto policy of ‘herd-immunity’ in most countries means no ‘recovery’ is coming — for years.
54
Isn’t the world a dangerous place.
17
FRIDAY DATA
Countries with more than 3.0 % daily spreading, more then 250 active cases, more than 150 new cases per day — sorted by new cases.
New Cases | Country | Active Cases | % New v Act | % Died
1,541 … UK … N/A … #VALUE! … 14.16 – declined to provide full data for comparison
502 … Spain … N/A … #VALUE! … 9.35 – declined to provide full data for comparison
205 … Sweden … N/A … #VALUE! … 9.77 – declined to provide full data for comparison
210 … Netherlands … N/A … #VALUE! … 12.49 – declined to provide full data for comparison
New Cases | Country | Active Cases | % New v Act | % Died
27,221 … USA … 1,158,163 … 2.4 … 5.52
24,253 … Brazil … 391,309 … 6.2 … 5.05
11,320 … India … 146,482 … 7.7 … 2.87
8,987 … Russia … 235,338 … 3.8 … 1.31
6,754 … Chile … 26,618 … 25.4 … 1.78
6,397 … Pakistan … 83,223 … 7.7 … 1.96
5,961 … Peru … 107,308 … 5.6 … 2.86
4,790 … Mexico … 19,966 … 24.0 … 11.90
3,921 … Saudi Arabia … 38,020 … 10.3 … 0.74
3,471 … Bangladesh … 63,179 … 5.5 … 1.34
3,359 … South Africa … 25,567 … 13.1 … 2.19
2,369 … Iran … 29,217 … 8.1 … 4.74
1,646 … Colombia … 26,598 … 6.2 … 3.30
1,577 … Egypt … 28,773 … 5.5 … 3.44
1,517 … Qatar … 23,222 … 6.5 … 0.09
1,391 … Argentina … 19,236 … 7.2 … 2.73
1,338 … Ecuador … 19,271 … 6.9 … 8.36
1,195 … Turkey … 21,338 … 5.6 … 2.73
1117 … Oman … 13,486 … 8.3 … 0.46
1,111 … Indonesia … 21,145 … 5.3 … 5.63
1,095 … Iraq … 10,406 … 10.5 … 2.79
884 … Bolivia … 13,260 … 6.7 … 3.30
704 … Belarus … 24,462 … 2.9 … 0.57
683 … Ukraine … 15,316 … 4.5 … 2.92
656 … Afghanistan … 19,172 … 3.4 … 1.89
627 … Nigeria … 9,891 … 6.3 … 2.63
625 … Panama … 5,031 … 12.4 … 2.19
612 … Philippines … 18,281 … 3.3 … 4.24
612 … Armenia … 9,384 … 6.5 … 1.69
602 … Bahrain … 5,330 … 11.3 … 0.21
571 … Dominican Republic … 8,686 … 6.6 … 2.58
520 … Kuwait … 9,619 … 5.4 … 0.82
513 … UAE … 15,266 … 3.4 … 0.69
498 … Ghana … 6,887 … 7.2 … 0.44
463 … Singapore … 11,785 … 3.9 … 0.06
456 … Germany … 6,788 … 6.7 … 4.73
448 … Nepal … 4,169 … 10.7 … 0.32
376 … Poland … 13,550 … 2.8 … 4.28
366 … Moldova … 4,479 … 8.2 … 3.47
340 … Guatemala … 6,660 … 5.1 … 3.90
336 … Azerbaijan … 3,989 … 8.4 … 1.23
314 … Kazakhstan … 4,973 … 6.3 … 0.50
309 … Honduras … 6,538 … 4.7 … 3.83
297 … Sudan … 4,030 … 7.4 … 6.29
280 … Ivory Coast … 2,376 … 11.8 … 0.96
270 … Portugal … 12,475 … 2.2 … 4.16
245 … Ethiopia … 2,417 … 10.1 … 1.61
226 … Israel … 3,207 … 7.0 … 1.60
222 … Romania … 4,579 … 4.8 … 6.45
163 … North Macedonia … 1,836 … 8.9 … 4.62
New Cases | Country | Active Cases | % New v Act | % Died
—
New Cases | Country | Active Cases | % New v Act | % Died
5 … Australia … 405 … 1.2 … 1.40
64
How long has the USA been top of the pops WX ?
Feels like months to me.
Always beating off any other country that attempts to compete with it.
But that is just a feeling.
(Yes a sarcastic way of asking but I am interested in how long the USA has been at the top.)
07
USA took over from Italy around the 26th of March — ~10.5 weeks so far.
31
Thanks for that WXc.
I thought it was a while ago.
They seem to be good at being the ‘biggest’ at anything.
And the USA’s politics has guaranteed
that the USA is the ‘best’ ( or worst) with Covid 19 disease.
🙁
45
Worth keeping an eye on the anti-body tests.
The UK Office for National Statistics claims 6.78% of people have had Covid-19 as of May 24th 2020. The data is preliminary, not yet representative of the general community, but will be eventually as more anti-body testing is done.
Nonetheless, apply 6.78% to 66 million UK population = 4.47 million cases versus the official 260,000 on May 24th (17x greater). The same analysis could also be applied to similar countries, France etc.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/12june2020#antibody-tests-for-covid-19
Furthermore, if most of these cases are asymptomatic, and asymptomatic people aren’t contagious (latest WHO research, cough-cough), then your 50m death projection will hopefully be avoided.
01
If herd immunity was the goal in Britain, why did they lock down at all? Herd immunity was not a goal: there might have been some talk of it for a few days, but it was abandoned very early on.
The per capita Covid infection and death rates in Britain surpassed that of Spain in early or mid April. From that point on, there would have been no point in stopping travel from Spain to Britain; anyone flying in from Spain would have been less likely to be carrying Covid than the average person on the streets of London.
24
A strange sort of logic, Bradd.
If a country actually wanted to eliminate the virus they’re never going to achieve that via keeping the back-door open to the UK, who’s public-service clearly does not give a stuff about eliminating COVID-19, or else they would have stopped importing it during the past 3 months.
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I agree that is a bizarre sort of logic WXc
But then we have been invaded by dingbats
Parading their bizarre conspiracy theories
Since about March when the USA became
Top of the pops for Covid 10 disease.
16
Low IQ + Mobile phone = Dingbat
33
just a little bit deadly–Meet a dozen PLA high officers getting military tech from their friends abroad
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/06/meet-dozen-pla-high-officers-getting.html
20
I was under the illusion control of borders and incoming was a major aim of UK people who voted for BREXIT, which vote the political class and ‘public service’ did all it could to ignore and make go away.
Looks to me like that internal anti-democratic 5th-Column scum are still working against the people and economic interests of the UK, wherever they can, when it comes to an actual border control policy, and its implementation.
63
What angers me is how a soccer match between Liverpool and Atletico Madrid was allowed to proceed on March 12th with 3,000 travelling fans from Madrid, the Spanish epicentre of Covid-19 spread at the time. [The Australian Grand Prix was cancelled March 13th].
More so this quote, to justify the decision and his proven utter incompetence of protecting the most vulnerable since:
Explaining the government’s approach that week was Sir Patrick Vallance, England’s chief scientific adviser, who said that if potentially 60% of the population – 40m people – contracted Covid-19, Britain could generate “herd immunity” to the virus. Vallance explained that while the “vast majority” of people would suffer only a mild illness and herd immunity could thereby be built, “at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable”.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/mar/22/liverpool-atletico-madrid-coronavirus-champions-league
20
The DMO ( Dingbat Medical Officier ) Supremo !
He should be sued till he bleeds and is reduced to utter poverty.
He is responsible to the deaths of 35,000 Britons sonce march.
15
I call BS on the theory of “herd immunity”. There are plenty of diseases for which “herd immunity” never happens, so why Covid? The arrogance and immoral culpability of just deciding that hundreds of thousands of people should die and huge numbers suffer long term consequences because of the ideas of one scientific advisor, just not OK on any level by me. And the precautionary principle?? Good for Global Warming and the UK will spend multi billions and intend to cripple the economy for that, but no precautionary principle for an immediate threat like Covid where huge numbers of people will die in the short term? The governments of most of the worlds countries have gone completely dingbats insane over the last couple of decades.
80
The GP was only cancelled on the first day of the event with people at the gate, and not by the government. Anyone that was going to travel had done the travelling so really its pretty much in the same bucket as the soccer game.
20
Except Premier Andrews had the guts to ban spectators as they lined up at the gates for the first practice session at Albert Park. Imagine that happening at Anfield?
March 13, 8.45am: Hundreds of fans queuing up to get in to Albert Park are turned away.
March 13, 9.10 am: Andrews says the public will NOT be allowed to watch the race at Albert Park. “On public health grounds there will be no spectators at the Grand Prix this weekend if a race happens at all – [but] that’s a matter for them.”
March 13, 10.00 am: Grand Prix cancelled. “The Australian Grand Prix Corporation confirms the Formula One Australian Grand Prix is cancelled immediately,” Organisers say in a statement.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rumours-reassurance-then-cold-reality-of-a-race-that-won-t-be-run-20200313-p549x8.html
20
Victoria got lucky.
The GP organisers did the right thing.
Brave Dan was disappointed.
Yet another indication of just how stuffed the Vic government is.
11
There is now open speculation that there will be a political coup in Brazil, the pandemic being the final straw.
‘Brazil’s coronavirus death toll has now overtaken Britain to become the second highest in the world with 41,828 deaths.
‘Despite the country recording 909 deaths in the past 24 hours, with 828,810 confirmed infections among a population of 212 million, plans to ease quarantine restrictions and reopen shops are still going ahead.
‘Experts say the true number of cases could be 10 or 15 times higher.’ Daily Mail
11
Civil War might be more likely.
Apparently the thousands of graves in Brazil were not enough. Activists dug 100 shallow graves on the Copacabana beach to protest the policy of President Bolsonaro!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/11/bolsonaro-supporter-destroys-brazil-beach-memorial-40000-coronavirus-victims
Can you desecrate a protest symbol? It was not consecrated, it was just an activist symbol. And why did they need to make it if there were thousands of real graves to decorate or photograph?
00
There is already Civil unrest.
A coup may be the easiest way out of the huge mess
Bolsanaro has lead Brazil into.
Waiting too long may indeed lead to civil war
As the provinces badly effected act to
Deny the President any authority at all.
05
This is a link called “A Deadly Comparison”, which through great graphics shows the growth of Covid relative to other causes, and the numbers are deaths, not the number of infections. A very worrying perspective. I don’t know what GI Inf Dz means. Can anyone shed some light? ToM
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2637725
20
Best to ignore it Tides.
Too factual.
It just another attempt to prove that Covid 19 is not a conspiracy to take away our liberty.
Sarc/
04
Would be meaningful if you has confidence that cause of death was consistently assigned accurately. As a guess I would say GI Inf Dz is Gastro Intestinal Infammatory Disease.
21
Detail is emerging about why Victoria is stuffing up the strategy against Covid 19
And it seems that the D[t of Health is the weak link again.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/quarantine-hotel-covid-19-outbreak-could-have-been-prevented-workers-20200612-p551y8.html
04
New outbreak in China is of concern, because they don’t know how some people became infected.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202006/13/WS5ee40a64a310834817252c2b.html
21
What actually worked here in Australia? Was it Lockdown, or was it Quarantine?
The two are similar but have different policy implications. In Lockdown, everyone is confined. In Quarantine, known cases and their contacts are confined. Contacts includes travellers from infected areas.
As far as I can make out Quarantine has been effective in Australia, despite repeated failures. It was reported in The Age today that cases from the quarantine hotel (Rydges on Swanston) were due to poor training and equipment for the staff. Quarantine for Cedar Meats contacts was poor compared with overseas arrivals, even though they were in the same hotel and the Cedar meats people had higher risk.
Also it has to be noted that Rydges Hotel on Swanston is not a very good quarantine station. I would hate to be confined there for 14 days in a single room. It would be very hard, similar to solitary confinement.
We actually have a much nicer quarantine station in Victoria at Point Nepean. It has been repurposed several times and was for a while an Army training base. That is when I went there. I enjoyed it immensely for 2 days and I think I could have survived 2 weeks. Why do we not reopen it for its original purpose? It offers open space, accommodation, kitchens and eating areas and also reasonable recreation for the poor people who are cooped up there.
40
The point of locking down inbound travellers in their hotel rooms
is to prevent any infected persons infecting other travellers waiting out the quarantine.
That’s how it works.
Point Napean dates from a previous era when this aspect of eliminating an infectious disease was not known.
PS Lock downs in each state were essential because SloMo brought in quarantine so very late.
That the travel industry for that & the Unis wanting their golden eggs from the golden foreign student geese.
25
That is a very good point. It is essential that non infected people in Quarantine don’t get infected from others.
As far as I can make out the Rydges Hotel did not achieve that for multiple reasons, including the layout and the procedures.
The Pt Nepean site is quite a large area and can easily be divided up. It would make a much better facility. It may be needed for some time to come.
30
Why use hotels? because it was required immediately, public servants want simple solutions, and politicians like to be seen to be keeping businesses open.
10
Staffing the site, and entry and exits are also more controllable, on short notice. Once you start it’s much more expensive to move them elsewhere. Inertia takes over.
10
Bali is ready to emerge, should we allow them into the bubble?
‘With 235 confirmed cases, 121 recoveries, and four deaths at the beginning of May, Bali did not emerge as the coronavirus hotspot that contagious disease experts had predicted. Rather, it had one of the lowest fatality rates in Indonesia. At the same time, however, it has been widely reported that Indonesia has had one of the lowest per capita testing rates in the world, with Bali being no exception.’ The Diplomat
21
No. There are no border controls with the rest of the world in Bali.
So Australian tourists will be importing the disease here again
01
If I hear “we are all in this together” one more time, I will throw my beer at the TV screen.
All those people who have lost their businesses and gone bankrupt while the bureaucrats and public servants keep their income is a national shame.
71
It is rather puke inducing, as is all the feelgood corporate brand advertising, and email from insurance companies and the like telling they are “here for me”
31
Even on this blog there’s been a willingness to dismiss any consideration of the need for balance in fixing the virus.
The assessment of the real damage done to people will be evident over the next six months.
32
You need to get your ‘scale’ calibrated Keith, this virus has the potential to kill more people than WWII did. Until that changes, preventing the worst outcomes are what’s balanced.
10
You have to watch this
Why NK has such high death rate.
https://banned.video/watch?id=5ee13c3cc7a607002f0c8187
11
NY
01
I looked at the statistics and see that Singapore (deaths 4 per million) and Taiwan (0.3 deaths per million), with limited lockdowns, were similar to Australia and NZ (each with 4 deaths per million) with severe lockdowns. What gives? And have we done the right thing?
Back in europe:
Sweden. with negligible lockdowns, has 481 deaths per million, whereas, the UK has 611 deaths per million. However, the UK GDP has gone down by 20%, whereas, Sweden is tracking in positive territory. Many historical pubs, in the UK, have been forced to close down permanently because of these totalitarian lockdown laws. So, where is the sense of shutting down the economy instead of sensibly targetting those in the 2 risk groups of the sick and aged (over 65 years old)?
Remember Australia and NZ are island countries, so shutting down their international borders was easy.
Nigel Farage, on his youtube channel, has highlighted the massive illegal immigration ‘trade’ between the French and the UK navies. Hundreds of these illegals are let into the UK, and who knows how many have COVID-19.
42
John the facts are what they are.
And reflect the competence of the various governments’ strategies.
The UK government has not been competent at all.
The best strategy has always been “GO Early, GO Hard”
The UK went late & soft which is the worst of all.
The bleeding hearts have infected the UK public servants
So illegal entrants boating across the channel get a welcome instead of being sent back to the perfidious French.
Brexit was intended to stop this nonsense.
01
So is the UK.
20
Or you could just eliminate it and keep it out — like we have.
10
But that undermines the CONSPIRACY theorists ideology WXC.
So it will be ignored as a fact not worthy of being a fact.
02