Category Archives: Medicine

Children, young and old

When the NHS was, in effect, closed down in March to make it a dedicated COVID-19 Health Service, it could be predicted (and was, even by me) to result in many excess deaths from other under-treated illnesses. There have already been official and academic reports on excess coronary disease and cancer deaths, as well as articles on the enormous waiting times in what, even before COVID, was an under-performing service.

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False positives unpacked

Here’s an interesting extract from the official UK government website:

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Stop Press: how the models worked out in data

There has been surprisingly little mention in the news (ie none that I have seen) of the first major analysis of the world data from the COVID-19 pandemic, published in The Lancet on July 21st, before H.M. Government started to panic over increased positive PCR tests, executed local lockdowns, and threatened national ones if the “R-number” virtual canary begins to look green around the gills.

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Getting wet in the dry

When Mrs G. and I were on our honeymoon in the West Country, a whole sapphire ago last month, we took a trip to the remote Doone Valley on Exmoor.

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UK COVID stats and policy

After the UK government halted the lifting of lockdown with a screech of brakes, because of an increased number of cases over the last month, I’ve taken a closer interest in the official stats. It’s better than reading endless e-mails about the exact meaning of the regulations on wearing facemasks in church, but leaves me equally bemused.

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Doubling the fear

As the largest recession in British history begins to bite, the government has decided to spend a good chunk of its debt on campaigns (and more “draconian” legislation curtailing freedom of advertising, etc) on fighting obesity. The justification? That it has emerged that obese patients are perhaps twice as likely to die from Coronavirus infection as others.

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More on revolving-door exit strategies

Currently, two days before the wearing of face masks becomes compulsory in shops, the UK tally of COVID-19 deaths has dropped to only 65 daily. Where I live, in England’s west country, there have been no deaths at all for over a fortnight. Absolutely the right time to curtail liberty, then.

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This is the Night

Here’s another lockdown video for you , once more from a remix of an old recording of one of my songs. The views of The Vegetable Man have been encouraging, so the effort seems worthwhile. This one’s in darker vein than the last, and would probably be more effective when countries produce their first emergency budgets after lockdown and, in the UK particularly, reveal just how big a knife we’ve stuck in the economy. The Nobel Prizewinner Michael Levitt estimates that, whereas the usual averaged cost of a death (using “quality added life years,” or “QUALYs”), and therefore the “economic” health cost of saving it medically, is £40,000, the cost … Continue reading

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Optimophobia in science

The leader of the UK opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, was quoted on the BBC news today as saying that if there is any increase in the Coronavirus “R-number” it will be the direct fault of the government. And therein lies much of the cause of the current fear pandemic across the world.

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The New Normal – a Brave New World

YouTube algorithms gave me a “blast from the past” last week, in the form of videos by Dr Vernon Coleman. Vernon was writing for the same medical periodicals as I was back in the early eighties, though he started five years before me, and because he gave up clinical practice, was also writing for the major newspapers and producing books long after I eased off on that aspect of my career.

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