The COVID phenomenon in antibodies

Here’s an interesting graph, which is discussed in this article.

It looks superficially pretty much like the COVID case-numbers ONS data, but is in fact based on asking people who have had COVID, based on the presence of antibodies, when their symptoms appeared. A bit of tweaking to estimate likely time of infection produces a rather cleaner picture of infection trends since the end of 2019.

The most obvious thing to see is how it confirms the fact that all three UK lockdowns began after infections began to drop, and that infections had already started to rise before the second lockdown ended. The article also points out what I observed at the start of the year in posts here, that the final downturn began abruptly at the very time people were getting together at Christmas – the occasion that SAGE warned us would certainly trigger a new holocaust. If correlation meant causation, the opposite of SAGE’s soothsaying would be true – Christmas gatherings, and not the lockdown, reversed the peak that began, for no obvious reason, a fortnight after lockdown #2 started.

For myself, I would observe that the cleaner shape of this particular plot proves that there was no discernible alteration to what was already happening through either imposing or lifting lockdowns. There is no discernible effect on the slopes at all – except that with lockdown #1 in March 2020 there was a minimal and temporary slowing of the improvement in infections, and at lockdown #2 last November, an actual brief reversal of the improvement: neither is likely to be significant.

I’d also add that, although the onset of the mask mandate last July 24th is not shown, you certainly couldn’t pin the tail on the donkey using this graph – in fact the compulsory muzzling began more or less at the lowest point for infections, and a month later infections began to rise, only returning to a similar low level around now, when mask compliance is probably at its lowest point so far.

Both these findings are actually strong indications that neither asymptomatic nor presymptomatic spread, the only justification for lockdowns or masking, have played any part in COVID. But you knew that from numerous other evidence – oddly enough, most of the population still doesn’t.

The article makes the significant point that COVID infections producing antibodies began rising in November 2019, rubbishing the offficial Chinese narrative, but also leaving unexplained the sudden triggering of exponential growth at the end of February 2020, whose most reasonable explanation appears to be that novel infections reach some kind of critical mass in a population, but may have more mysterious causes like dormancy and/or complex weather interactions with the virus. It’s a reminder that the intensive study of SARS-CoV-2 opens up interesting new questions about viruses in general – though studying a lab-leaked chimaera to answer them could prove misleading.

One more recurrent pattern in this chart is the presence of small spikes and dips, as if the overall picture consists of overlapping “spikes” that combine to form an overall smoother shape. This would fit well with the observation that epidemics actually consist of local outbreaks, each with a characteristic Gompertz curve (as Michael Levitt showed early on), some of which rapidly spread to other areas presumably because of people-movements. It would be interesting to correlate the antibody data geographically to see if this is true, which might give indications of how the virus spread, and hence the principles on which such epidemics operate.

The “local spike” idea is significant in the current kind of situation, where finding some new variant cluster has led to local surge testing at the expense of more general testing. Obviously this would give a false impression of a general increase in infections, whereas in fact it is like counting ants round an ants nest and then generalising the population density to the whole field. Meanwhile, even my compliant brother has picked up on some of the nonsense surrounding variants and their supposedly different symptoms, mentioning that he developed mild hay fever symptoms whilst gardening, “or, as it’s called now, the delta variant.” Perhaps he is not far from the kingdom…

Isn’t is a pity, though, that with such instructive portrayal of real data easily available, the general public – meaning our friends and relatives – have to make do with the kind of fictional models trotted out by Dr Whitty and his cronies, provably wrong even as they were made public, to justify keeping the useless lockdowns in place?

As so many, especially medics and scientists, have been coming to see over the last 15 months, it is absolutely impossible that SPI-M-O and Co (right across the civilised world) have been unable to see for themselves the uselessness of lockdowns. So the only explanation is conscious deception by named suspects. As the press now begins to regurgitate what it has been fed about the fearful “Nepal Variant,” the “Delta Variant” resolving into a damp squib plus hayfever, it’s clear that the whole mutation story has the same political purpose – because it certainly has nothing to do with legitimate scientific concerns:

Avatar photo

About Jon Garvey

Training in medicine (which was my career), social psychology and theology. Interests in most things, but especially the science-faith interface. The rest of my time, though, is spent writing, playing and recording music.
This entry was posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science. Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to The COVID phenomenon in antibodies

  1. Elizabeth B. says:

    Jon,

    Fascinating information. The links you provide lead to sources which I have bookmarked. I really don’t have anything to add to what you have written here.

    On the Covid subject, I was curious about how our U.S. CDC would proceed with their so-called “emergency” meeting to discuss potential myocarditis in the under 30 age group, post vaccination. At first, it seemed that there might be a new advisory for this age group. It was an Emergency meeting after all.

    Well, Emergency until our President on 17 June issued an order for Juneteenth (19 June ) to be a federal holiday, effective immediately. Despite the fact that agencies such as the US Postal Service could not and did not just shut down at such short notice, the CDC managed to do so. This moved the Friday 18 June emergency meeting to the 23rd because in the US, no holiday falling on a weekend can pass without federal workers taking off the Friday before or the Monday after.

    An emergency meeting shuffled and a meaningless new warning added to the fine print of the comforting, possible rare side effects of a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. Here is a link to one of your UK sites you are probably familiar with. https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/06/24/u-s-medicines-regulator-to-add-warning-to-pfizer-and-moderna-vaccines-over-link-to-heart-inflammation/

    Meanwhile, here in the US, the young will still be encouraged to get the vaccine. From the CDC: “CDC recommends everyone 12 years and older should get a COVID-19 vaccination to help protect against COVID-19.”

    Our CDC is so politically motivated, it is even more compromised than the WHO.

    How else to explain why the WHO states, “Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults, so unless they are part of a group at higher risk of severe COVID-19, it is less urgent to vaccinate them than older people, those with chronic health conditions and health workers. More evidence is needed on the use of the different COVID-19 vaccines in children to be able to make general recommendations on vaccinating children against COVID-19.”

    Our American bureaucrats and corporate media really are sickening. And no, I am not an anti-vaxxer. We always did all of the vaccines that were recommended. I’ve known someone who lived with polio induced paralysis, so I was always a believer in vaccinations.

    I do not appreciate being railroaded, hoodooed, and abracadabraed by these people who have sinister or ignorant motives for pushing the Industrial Covid19 Hysteria. Question everything.

    • Avatar photo Jon Garvey says:

      Elizabeth

      It’s worth recording these instances of madness if only for posterity – assuming my German web host isn’t bought up by Amazon and my posts wiped!

      Our “Delta variant” is, we are told, causing more cases among the young (cue urgent calls to vaccinate school kids). It might partly be because the more elderly have already been vaccinated, but it’s also because nobody took up the offer of free twice-weekly testing (the anaemic version of the original 10 million tests a day Moonshot” that was stopped by a court order before they could spend £400 bn on it!)), but school children are being compulsorily tested twice weekly, despite being at risk neither of disease or spreading infection. Test more, get more results – especially when you surge test.

      Consequently I hear today that my son’s 8 year old step-son has been sent home from school to quarantine again because somebody tested positive. It seems there are 250,000 similar kids off school for the same reason – all tested by the Innova lateral flow test that your country has withdrawn because it is so inaccurate. Son’s long-delayed holiday shortened as a result.

      Meanwhile, I read today (maybe you did too, if you follow Lockdown Skeptics) that there are more children on antidepressants here now than at any time before. The lockdowns are driving them mad, and the Health Service, having been converted to a one-disease religious institution, has no support to offer them – 5 million people are now waiting for appointments.

      The public in general seems incapable of sober judgment: church prayer request talks of the 200,000 who have died in the last Delta variant wave in India. Each one a tragedy, etc – but in a population of 1.2 billion that’s 1:6,000, which is tiny: for British readers, the equivalent of 1,000 deaths here – the number in an average week.

Leave a Reply