I think the data collection is complete enough now to be confident of the trend in COVID-19 positive tests since UK Lockdown #3 began on 5th of January. Here is today’s chart:
Continue readingI’m reading a recent book by Carl Trueman, recommended by a Cambridge contemporary who read my e-book, Seeing Through Smoke (and generally liked it). It’s entitled The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Trueman is a Christian historian who seeks to explain the origin of our contemporary moral confusion. To capture his theme, how did a sentence like “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” come to make sense?
Continue readingSo 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 matter?
Continue readingIt’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:
Continue readingSARS-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.
Continue readingOne small effect of the events of 2020 has been to discredit the whole Charismatic prophetic movement, especially in the USA. The self-styled prophets foretold wonderful things for the year, entirely missing the slightly important COVID-19 outbreak, and then decreed with their pretended apostolic authority to cast it out, to absolutely no effect. Then they predicted a massive election win for Donald Trump, which whatever the election shenanigans were is now clearly false prophecy. They are blind guides – shun them.
Continue readingWe 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.
Continue readingPathologist 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.
Continue readingOne of the strangest things about the unfolding disaster of 2020 is the way in which so many, and especially Christians, seem to have acquired strongly rose-tinted spectacles regarding its final outcome.
Continue readingThe 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.
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