Posted on 04/03/2020 5:49:32 AM PDT by daniel1212
I was wrong. Or I think I was. I heard Boris Johnson on 3 March leap into war mode and publish 28 pages of emergency plans, should coronavirus take hold in Britain. There were reports that “half a million could die”. I was sceptical.
I noted that in 1999 it had been said that BSE “could kill” half a million. Sars in 2003 had a “25% chance of killing tens of millions”. In 2009, the British government said 65,000 “could die” of swine flu...Everywhere people were told to “listen to the science”...
Ministers were clearly panicked by a report from Imperial College London under Prof Neil Ferguson, the most alarming document I have read outside the realm of nuclear war planning. In a welter of graphs and statistics, it rubbished the government’s mitigation strategy and advised full-scale “suppression”. Even if the virus was suppressed, the report warned it could return and would be as bad or even worse. The report estimated that deaths could range from 20,000 in the best-case scenario to the familiar half-million in the worst..
The same weekend Johnson did his volte face, an Oxford University team led by Sunetra Gupta, a professor of theoretical epidemiology, pointed out that figures on the morbidity of Covid-19 were virtually meaningless in the absence of testing..
The maverick – but frequently accurate – pandemic forecaster at Stanford University John Ioannidis called the data collected so far on the pandemic “utterly unreliable ”. It would one day, he claimed, be regarded as “an evidence fiasco”...
Yet more scepticism was expressed by a former NHS pathologist, John Lee , who suggested deaths of elderly people were being very differently recorded in different countries. How many were really dying “of” Covid-19 rather than of something else “with” it?...Science was plainly suffering herd disagreement...
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Ministers were clearly panicked by a report from Imperial College London under Prof Neil Ferguson, the most alarming document I have read outside the realm of nuclear war planning...
The maverick – but frequently accurate – pandemic forecaster at Stanford University John Ioannidis called the data collected so far on the pandemic “utterly unreliable ”...
Yet more scepticism was expressed by a former NHS pathologist, John Lee
High blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease are so commonplace everyone likely knows somebody with at least one of these maladies.They are also the “underlying conditions” most associated with severe cases of COVID-19
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/these-underlying-conditions-make-coronavirus-more-severe-and-they-are-surprisingly-common/
Top underlying health conditions in COVID-19 deaths include diabetes, obesity
As COVID-19 cases continue to rise across Louisiana and deaths jump by record numbers, many deaths are attributed to underlying health conditions.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/top-underlying-health-conditions-in-covid-19-deaths-include-diabetes-obesity/ar-BB11OhMe
Age is not the only risk for severe coronavirus disease
WASHINGTON — Older people remain most at risk of dying as the new coronavirus continues its rampage around the globe, but they’re far from the only ones vulnerable. One of many mysteries: Men seem to be faring worse than women. https://www.effinghamdailynews.com/news/age-is-not-the-only-risk-for-severe-coronavirus-disease/article_a95ca128-738f-11ea-b7f1-979100d2700f.html
It will be interesting to compare the results of countries that have shut down with those that just practiced sensible controls. Will there be a significant difference in the death rate? This of course is something we won’t know until this is all over.
Personally, to be truly realistic, I think all the deaths resulting from the economic collapse to be caused by the shutdowns should be attributed to COVID...
Huh, a good article from the Guardian. Who’d thunk it?
Scientists must really be whores with the way they exaggerate for money on “climate change” and on Chinese coronavirus. Either that or our dumbest liars are becoming scientists.
There is a galaxy of data and history out there:
Of what complete economic collapse does to societies.
Revolution, bloodshed, disease, depravity, etc. Yes indeed, plenty of data and history there.
This virus? Not so much.
If you don’t predict it and millions do die, then you really screwed up, and everyone knows it.
If, on the other hand, you predict large numbers of deaths, and everyone gets scared and takes drastic precautions, you can say, see, the precautions worked! We really dodged a bullet there...
Yeah, but did you read the author’s/Guardians comments at the end of the piece? What a filthy Leftist rag it is.
Your theoretical comparison wouldn’t be too much use from a cause and effect perspective: most countries in the West started with a mild approach and only toughened it when the numbers got out of control.
Yes, most Asian countries had already been through SARS and have different ideas of individual rights, cracked down more harshly sooner.
E.g., Korea broadcast all positive test names through the victims’ communities, so as to help the most important social distancing. With HIPAA we can’t begin to do something like that.
“Oxford University team led by Sunetra Gupta ... figures on the morbidity of Covid-19 ... virtually meaningless in the absence of testing”
“Stanford University John Ioannidis .... data collected ... on ... pandemic “utterly unreliable”
“NHS pathologist, John Lee ... deaths of elderly people ... differently recorded in different countries”
All such clinicians and health scientists as above are ‘controversial, ‘right-wing’, etc.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3831207/posts?page=16#16';.
These are always the worst-case scenarios, the result if nothing is done to mitigate the disease. In every case, measures were taken to mitigate which resulted in the actual numbers of deaths falling below the projected worst-case scenario numbers. For example, in 2009 during the H1N1 pandemic, vaccine companies immediately began work on developing a vaccine--which is straightforward with flu, since they only have to tweak existing flu vaccines. And people started taking other precautions, for example placing disinfectant wipes in gyms and hand sanitizer dispensers in public places. The 2009 pandemic influenza virus is still circulating, still causing higher than average flu deaths every year.
For BSE, entire herds of cows were culled and testing was implemented in slaughterhouses. Currently, if a single cow comes up positive in a slaughterhouse, the production line is halted for sterilization of all equipment, the entire meat production for that day is destroyed, and the origins of the infected cow are traced back so that the source of BSE can be identified and destroyed.
Never assume that because the actual number of cases/deaths came in lower than predicted that it happened spontaneously. It did not. It took a lot of behind-the-scenes work to make it happen.
and yet, he’s still right
Do not count revolution out, nor bloodshed.
Pinochet wasn’t an American, and he didn’t do the job at hand thoroughly as Americans would.
the numbers never got out of control. they’re still not out of control. it was the modelling that they all depended on that is wrong
“Herd disagreement”. LOL
Perhaps. My future vision is a bit murky.
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