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- Why lockdown even matters 14/01/2021
- Lockdown – a nationwide prospective study (update 1) 13/01/2021
- Commercial motives for prolonging COVID 11/01/2021
- A prophetic word (maybe) from 2019 10/01/2021
- Interesting stuff from ONS test stats 09/01/2021
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- Jon Garvey on Lockdown – a nationwide prospective study (update 1)
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Post Archive
Category Archives: Medicine
Why lockdown even matters
So today’s ONS data look even more confirmatory of a sharp improvement in national positive COVID tests beginning on January 1st. Assuming it takes 6-8 days for sudden changes in infections to show up in test patterns, it can’t be due to a lockdown starting on Jan 5th, and is very late for Tier 4 beginning on 19th December. In fact, the most obvious event in chronological terms is everyone getting together at Christmas, which is unlikely to be credited for the downturn by SAG! Most likely, as ever, it is the natural course of this particular combination of local surgesthat is the real explanation. But why does it even … Continue reading
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
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Lockdown – a nationwide prospective study (update 1)
It’s hard to be sure as yet, but there now seems a definite downturn in the latest overall ONS “cases” data, for 4th January. The problem is that if it’s real, it begins on 1st January, 4 days before lockdown. Therefore if it continues, without a clear change in slope, lockdown is both ineffective and unnecessary. I’ll keep updating. Here’s the chart:
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
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Commercial motives for prolonging COVID
SARS-CoV-2 is a rather magical virus, and COVID policy displays an unprecedented degree of magical thinking. For example, unlike every other epidemic in history experts somehow knew from the start that nobody would be immune. Furthermore, no immunity would ever develop, so that we were told back in the spring that we would be required to adjust to a new normal, helpfully already prepared for us by bodies like the UN and WEF.
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
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Interesting stuff from ONS test stats
We all know that the overall ONS testing stats, so useful for scaring the public, are pretty useless for knowing what’s going on. Apart from the questionable nature of the (predominantly PCR) tests themselves, which may be hiding a casedemic, they are subject to a varying number of tests being done (so at least half of the present increase in cases is due to the increasing number of tests), to testing being concentrated on hot-spots rather than a consistent sample population, and increasingly to their consisting of an unspecified mix of PCR, LFT and antibody tests.
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
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The official case for a UK casedemic
Pathologist Claire Craig (whose excellent work I’ve mentioned before) has collated a remarkable page of official UK statistics for the whole of 2020, now that Public Health England has released the end-of-year data. Actually it’s game-changing, but let’s avoid hyperbole. Essentially, the PHE data gives official information on the clinical reason for every hospital admission this year, plus every other health contact that didn’t lead to admissions. Let me elaborate.
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology
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Lockdown – a nationwide prospective study
Abstract The imposition of a third national UK lockdown today presents a unique opportunity for gauging the effectiveness of lockdowns in managing the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. It is unique because both the previous lockdowns began after deaths had already peaked, meaning that cases had reached their maximum perhaps 3 weeks before that.
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
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2021 – still the year of the lie
This is just to keep you aware that the “new COVID strain crisis” in the UK, or another country near you, is still just more of the same spin, and still has the same underlying agenda.
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
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Bird Flu update
I haven’t kept many of my computer files connected with the old life as a GP, but I did recently come across a poster I did for the surgery notice-board in October 2005, on the Big Health Scare of the time, Avian Flu.
Posted in History, Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
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We have always been at war…
…with Eastasia I think the most sinister image I have seen during the whole of this debacle over SARS-CoV-2 during 2020 is this one:
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
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Asymptomatic transmission
An expert on BBC news this morning was decrying the high false negative rate of “lateral flow” COVID tests, in the light of a study which re-tested negative asymptomatic students with PCR tests, and found half a dozen positives. This suggested that statistically 60 students in the group were in fact infected, rather than the three (if I remember rightly) revealed by the original test.
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
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