What does it tell us?
“That lockdowns may not be a very useful tool in the long run.”
Watch the original interviewDid Sweden get Covid wrong?
By UnHerd
In our first interview, the Professor speculated that the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) could be as low as 0.1% and that over 50% of people would shortly be revealed to have already had the virus once antibody testing became widespread.
We now know that the IFR for countries like the UK and Sweden is between 0.5% and 0.9% and that antibody testing has persistently revealed disappointingly small prevalence. Even now, after tens of millions of people have had Covid in the UK and a further 32 million have been vaccinated, antibodies are only estimated to be present in 55% of people.
“Two things I really got wrong (there are probably more things, but two big things). One is that the vaccine came so fast. I had no idea that we would have a vaccine within a year… The other thing is the rate of spread — I overestimated it, I thought it would spread much faster than it did.”
Giesecke was critical, last year, of Prof Neil Ferguson’s forecasts of up to 510,000 deaths in the UK from an unmitigated epidemic, 250,000 from a mitigated epidemic and as few as 20,000 with a suppression strategy. But with over 130,000 deaths in the UK, I ask, Ferguson’s numbers don’t look so wrong any more, do they?
“You may be right,” he concedes. “There is quite a difference between half a million and 130,000 — but, yep.” Put together, I suggest, these errors — a wrong estimate of the fatalities, the wrong percentage of people infected and an overly pessimistic expectation of the vaccine roll out — add up to getting the overall picture very wrong. So does that mean that his rejection of lockdowns at that stage was wrong, too?
“No. Sweden has had rather severe restrictions, but we based them on voluntary participation by the inhabitants instead of using laws and police. A lot of people in the world seem to think that Sweden did nothing about the Covid pandemic. That’s wrong. The entire population changed their way of living and it had profound effects on daily life for millions of Swedes, even though you weren’t fined if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. So I would still advocate the Swedish model, even knowing all that.”
Although he concedes that some lives may have been saved, he believes that the successes of the Swedish approach over the past year should be considered in the balance:
“Look at the good things with the Swedish system…. One is the schools: we are not destroying the future for classes of children. Another is that Sweden kept to its international agreements — for example in the EU you are not supposed to close your borders with other countries, but that has happened in several countries in Europe. We have made it possible for small businesses like cafes or bicycle shops to survive the pandemic. We have kept democracy. We have trusted people. I think there are a number of benefits from not having a severe lockdown and more of them will come as we do research on this in the future.”
A year ago, Giesecke predicted that inhabitants of a democracy would swiftly tire of lockdown, and that long-term house arrest was not a viable option. But as it turned out, the policy remained highly popular among the majority across Europe for most of the period.
“People were willing to give up more freedom than I thought they would. It worries me — there are many democratic rules and freedoms that have been curtailed. I think that may be one of the dangerous results of this pandemic.”
He regrets the recent legislation in Sweden that makes lockdowns constitutionally possible for the future. “There is a new law — a pandemic law — which gives the Government more power than it had before, and curtails part of the freedom of the Swedish population… It’s shifted power away from parliament to some extent, which is a new thing in Sweden at least in peacetime.”
Looking to the future, Giesecke can see various scenarios playing out:
“The virus may mutate so it becomes less pathogenic than it is now. It may be that it comes back in a new shape every autumn. And it may be that we’ll all have to take a new coronavaccine every year, tailored for that strain. But it is here to stay — we won’t get rid of it.”
Which is not to say the pandemic heralds the beginning of a “new normal”, or is part of a “great reset”. In fact, he is confident that the old normal will return. Once vaccinated, he believes people should return to normal:
“If you are vaccinated with two doses and wait the right number of weeks, then… you should be able to live like you did before the pandemic. This disease is sometimes seen as something supernatural, mystical, mythical — but it’s a viral disease like all other diseases. More dangerous than some of them, but it’s not unique, Covid. So a proper vaccine used correctly protects you and means that you don’t infect other people as well…. No vaccine is 100% effective, but we don’t have this discussion about any other vaccine.”
He has been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab, and would be happy for everyone to take it: “If we really want to get down to small numbers — we won’t eradicate it, but to small numbers — then I think even children should be vaccinated… I can’t see why not.”
Giesecke had a long and prestigious career at the top of international medicine. Does he regret joining the debate so publicly, and becoming such a controversial figure?
“I hope I have done some useful things for the Swedish population. If it has been useful for me or not… the discussion in Sweden has been very politicised and very divisive.”
He believes that history will judge him kindly.
“I think I got most of the things right, actually.”
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Subscribe(As an aside, following the comments on UnHerd and elsewhere I have wavered on the issue of lockdowns – I have not been a person who has decided on one way and stuck to my decision through thick and thin. I have tried to be open to arguments from either side).
I have been involved in statistics and analysis of data for the whole of my life and I know that you can prove anything you want to prove. You can select particular figures, draw a couple of graphs, expand the scales to make the graphs look dramatic and then you have an opinion which seems to be backed up with facts. Then you can make money by publishing your findings.
All of the data shown above need to be altered to take account of at least five other facts and probably more:
1) Density of population. 2) Age of population. 3) Fitness of population (whatever that means but start with obesity and diabetes). 4) Do people live in extended family groups. 5) How doctors have been instructed to handle death certificates.
These are not minor issues. You can change the figures dramatically by including the five issues.
But if you are against lockdowns you will choose the figures which support your views. If the site (UnHerd) is generally against lockdowns, the daily articles will reflect this too.
Or you look at all cause mortality (intelligently)
Something sadly missing from much of the debate – maybe Unherd will heed the cry.
Exactly.
Spot on Chris.
One could also look at (1) death rate from previous years – for dry tinder impact (2) international flight patterns (3) different international Covid death accounting methods (4) climate (5) GDP per capita.
That ‘dry tinder’ hypothesis so expertly advocated by Ivor Cummings has been completely demolished – at least when used as he did to advocate no winter lockdown this year. He asserted that there would be no second wave of serious illness and that all the weak people – the dry tinder had already died. He was UTTERLY WRONG. The second wave was much worse in most places last winter, partly because the disease mutated into a more infectious variant, and partly because he vastly over estimated how many people had protection from the first wave of infection.
I must say I didn’t hear this. I heard dry tinder being the 2019 low death year in many European countries accounting for more deaths in 2020.
Talking about experts getting it wrong: Swedish epidemiologists Giesecke and Tegnell believed herd immunity would arrive quickly. In a Lancet article, Giesecke claimed about 21% of residents of Stockholm county had already been infected by the end of April; Tegnell predicted 40% of them would have antibodies by the end of May. When initial studies showed the number was actually about 6% in late May.NOV 3 2020. “We have a very serious situation,” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven warned, saying the virus was “going in the wrong direction”. A bit like saying trains have had to be cancelled because of the wrong kind of snow.
Hi Tom. Nobody is right about everything, and I think his contribution was interesting. Statistically the ‘dry tinder’ effect is real – and very apparent if you look at Euromomo. This has logic. If you have a year of low excess deaths where less people die than you might expect, it is very likely that the situation will be reversed the following year. The opposite is also true. You can see this in the UK stats quite clearly. Maybe as much as a 0.2% swing in % death rate see 2015 vs 2016 and 2018 vs 2019 for example.
2015 = 0.93%, 2016 = 0.91%, 2017 = 0.92%, 2018 = 0.93%, 2019 = 0.91%, 2020 = 1.01%
My point was not to sing the praises of Cummings per se. I think he was missing the pub more than anything! But rather to add to Chris’s excellent list of factors which might help us explain why Covid death rates vary by country and to try to move the debate away from the intellectually lazy ‘if only we’d locked down 1 or 2 weeks earlier’ or ‘we should have had a circuit breaker’ type assertions which don’t get us very far.
Reversion to the mean. If excess deaths are random over time, as the term implies, then they vary around an average or mean.
It was bio-engineered to attack Westerners and South America, it was used to self destroy our economy by our Lefty Politicos and MSM to achieve what they want, the destruction of the middle classes and all to be poor, as poverty is the thing which will make the Labour/Democrats be in power for ever. It is 1984, under the guise of saving granny the young have had their education destroyed, the young their jobs gone, the middle class their pensions lost, the depression coming will be worse than any the world has seen. This was not to save granny, it was TO DESTROY YOU!
Cui bono?
Who really benefits from this? What is it that they gain which they don’t have now?
What’s in it for them?
In other words, is what you claim actually true, or just a wild conspiracy theory?
I have not met many conspiracy theories I have not liked, but then I believe the world is run by Global Elites who wish to return to a sort of Feudalism. (and/or possibly lizards)
Good question.
China lied to its own people in January , claiming the virus was not infectious. Then it silenced doctors in Wuhan from telling the truth about the virus and Chinese Communist Party officials then ordered the destruction of laboratory samples, while insisting there was no contagion. (The Sunday Times Nov 15 2020).
Following all this the CCP pressurised the WHO into agreeing it was not a dangerous epidemic. Knowing all this it allowed thousands of Chinese to return after the New Year to work and study in Europe and elsewhere, thus unleashing a global epidemic.
Whether this was all by accident or design, you have to ask yourselves this: Who profits?
The economies of the Western world are seriously damaged, confidence in governments shaken, there’s social instability, health systems at breaking point in many countries and there have been thousands of unavoidable deaths. And all without one bullet having been fired.
Sun Tzu the Chinese general, military strategist, author of The Art of War, would have been impressed.
I don’t think it applies. How do you compare this year to previous years? The shutdown of “non essential” hospital care. Not allowing families in to help care for dementia patients and the quality of healthcare in nursing homes under these conditions. This has never happened before. Nobody really knows what went on there… and what is still going on in a lot of places.
You don’t think what applies?
Well said. One other important variable is the % of the population with dark skin (for mid to high latitude countries). Vitamin D deficiency is widespread in dark skinned people at these latitudes (London, NYC) and at the same time strongly correlated with CV19 outcomes.
I am persuaded that there might be something in this. Places in Europe with serious levels of Vit D deficiency such as Italy and Portugal did very badly. It is counter intuitive that such places should have this deficiency, but people there avoid exposure to sunlight.
Anyway – I always take 20ug of vitamin D per day between October and late April. I never even had a cold since I started this regime four years ago and I was certainly exposed to Sars-Covid-2 at least once since I spent an hour in a room with someone who had it. I am 70, by the way and didn’t want the damned thing.
Doesn’t work for everyone. I started taking 1,000 units of vitamin D daily from 2012 to ensure my cancer didn’t return. It didn’t stop me from having nasty chest infections every year from then on, until last year. I was dreading another one or two chest infections with the Wuhan virus circulating, particularly as I was diagnosed with bronchiectasis in January 2020. I attribute avoiding doing so last year to the precautions I took to prevent Covid-19 infections. Always wearing a mask in public, wearing DIY latex gloves, never taking them off when touching supermarket baskets/trolleys self service screen and card readers and wiping down products with disinfectant at home. I was amazed for the first time in 7 to 8 years I didn’t get a chest infection or cold.
Had you put your gloved hands to your face……you would have gotten an infection. Gloves are for the birds……washing your hands is not.
Which is why I didn’t do it.
Correct. It’s not rocket science, but the WHO and CDC know this already.
yawn… Florida and California with its endless sun and people loving the sun did the same as the people in the North.
You clearly aren’t comparing NY to FL if you imagine that. Nature’s sun helps but you must go outside.
Without a doubt Vitamin D deficiency has played a huge part. And how many medics are prescribing it? Governments?
You can also change the figures by categorizing those who died WITH covid vs those who died FROM covid. The CDC in the US said the former was more than 90% of the deaths, and it was the few agency pronouncements that the media here ignored. Because it’s hard to scare people that way. The other points you cite also lend a measure of sorely-needed context. Way too many people act as if the only possible choices are eternal masking and lockdowns, or death.
What’s the differnce ?
If you hadn’t caught Covid you wouldn’t have become a death statistic at that particular time point.
How many bods does the NHS kill every year through medical negligence?
I would guess it is considerably more than the Police do.
The NHS kills many, many more people than the police and I wouldn’t even like to put a figure on it, although in fairness, they deal with more people. Police average 40-50 deaths per year in the UK, most of which are in custody (usually of natural causes or drug/alcohol abuse) or in pursuits. The real difference is that a death involving police will result in intense investigation and a hunt for an individual to ‘blame’, who will face prosecution and prison if they’ve made a mistake, while a death in hospital (or through lack of treatment) just results in a shrug and few repercussions for the staff.
Thank you.
Most Independent NoN hysterical Scientists reckon 5% of 127,500 deaths attributed to SARS2 is nearer 6,750 !! Trashing the economy , lib-dems,Labour ,SNP,Greens have been complicit in pushing Biometric iD Cards ,(Similar to Chinese Social credit Cards) these Can Stop you Accessing your Own Bank,Building Society Account/s ,Stop You Travelling,Purchasing Cinema,Theatre,Sports or Food shopping for example..See Paul Joseph Watson on Youtube , before they Cancel it..Not much of a legacy to leave to younger generation,but they are still obsessed by ”Climate change ”rubbish??.
You are of course correct that these malpractices in statistics could be done, but only by charlatans. I don’t think that there has been any distortion carried out by the official data bodies in the UK such s the NHS and the ONS. In any sphere of life malpractice can occur. The question we need to ask fairly (as you say) is ‘Did it happen?’
The difference between the approach you advocate here and what many contributors to these pages do, is that they simply deny that anything much happened and claim we have had some kind of flu like illness and a vast government conspiracy across the world to imprison people for no reason. Often these claims are made in association with insane conspiracy theories. Utter rot. Boris is squirming with horror at every restriction and has been berated for acting too late to restrict and too early to release. There was good reason to require less mixing. It matters hugely that well over a hundred thousand people were killed earlier than need be. The callous dismissal of the death of older people I regularly see here is utterly contemptible.
You don’t need all that guff. All you need to do is scrutinize the whole overall (total) annual mortality rate for your country over the last ten years and compare it to 2020.. Any “excess” deaths will immediately show up if what they are telling us is true (but it didn’t show any excess.) We’ve been lied to.
Nope.
Deaths are very country specific because of the variations in demographics, general disease burden, poverty, capabilities and capacity of the healthcare system etc. etc.
So it is only valid to compare one country with itself year on year (adjusting for the changes in size of the population and sometimes the age distribution)
No lies. You just have to be willing to take the time to educate yourself re: confounders / basic stats / variations in health care and what differences actually impacts on mortality / effects of public health measures / the confounders around poverty ….. if you kept at this long enough you could even end up as an epidemiologist.
You justify it, your 5 factors are pure justification and invented criteria. China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, 3 deaths per million, West 2000 deaths per million. Take your 5 criteria and stuff them down the toilet. You have been conned. You allowed the future of the West to be destroyed with your silly go along ways. In USA where children lost a year of school – 1/3 students NEVER even checked into on line classes and simply disappeared!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So now you have a 5th year kid who was doing really bad, he now should be entering 7th year but now has forgotten his 5 th year work by missing 100% of his 6 th year, and needs to re-do his 5 th year!! Wile he should be in his 7th!!!!!!!!!!
So basically he is unemployable as he will NEVER catch up!, and making up that will take tens of thousands of school budget, and where will the upcoming kids sit in classes filled with these poor students having to make up two years??????
Then the money printing is about to destroy the economy – an 80% market crash is coming!!! One which will make the great depression seem like nothing!!!!! (google Dalio, Dent, Peter Schiff, on youtube)
Take your vacillating 5 points and realist your sheep like going along has destroyed the world. You did not even save granny, but you destroyed the children!!!!
The painful lessons of past epidemics like MERS and Sars paved the way for Taiwan’s success in fighting this virus. As a result, its residents are acutely aware of disease-fighting habits like hand washing and universal mask wearing.
Other factors include closing the borders early, rigorous contact tracing and technology-enforced quarantine.
“Taiwan is the only major economy that has so far been able to keep community transmission of Covid eliminated,” said Dr Peter Collignon, an infectious disease physician and professor at the Australian National University Medical School, last year.
S Korea, with its previous experience of the Mers and SARS contagion reacted immediately in January by implementing lockdown, requiring facemasks to be worn
and testing. Number of deaths in the whole country by the end of October 300!
Many South Koreans, Japanese, Singaporeans and Chinese wear face masks as a matter of course (as well as practice good personal hygiene) following government campaigns in the wake of outbreaks of MERS since 2012 or SARS from 2002.
No, it is ‘Dark Matter Immunity’. East Asians just do not die of it.
Now Whitley and his 5 points really annoy my because:
1) The Chinese knew we were fat
2) knew we were diabetic
3) knew were old
4) Knew we would not behave well (We behaved 1000 times better than I had expected! Sheep Like even! I never wore a mask, I refused, I refused to lock down – but then I am a mid 60s, very rough looking, tradesman with wild hair and a full facial hair, crazy look, and the powers left me alone – who would have harassed a normal person.)
In other words if Chris Whitley’s 5 points mattered, then the Chinese knew that, and thus the virus was able to have 2000/million deaths attributed in the West to their 3. The 5 points just PROVE it was targeted at us!
East Asiasn just do not die of it. What’s your proof?
Worldometers USA 1746, India 127, UK 1867, China 3, Brazil 1726, Cambodia 2, France 1538, Japan 76, Italy 1923, Taiwan 45, Mexico 1628, Vietnam, 0.4, Portugal 1665, Thailand 1, Slovakia, 2022, Singapore 5
above are deaths per million
Starting to sense a pattern yet?
Africa is at the very low side too
So the virus is racist!
Or a Bio-weapon perhaps?
I think it is the tip of the iceberg. You need to look at health care availability, quality of nursing home care, denial of treatment. People are assuming all these old frail people died of covid. Did they? Why didn’t they die in Norway? What is the quality of care in Norway? What is the quality of care in the UK? All those empty hospital beds… What really happened? Carl Heneghan pointing out people dying of dehydration in care homes. How far does that go?
Could you give me sources? I’m interested in what you have to say.
Dehydration probably contributed to my Mother’s death. For the last 18 hours she was essentially delirious. She was offered water by me / the staff in the care home every 30 mins. on the button but just batted the bottle and straw away with enough force to cover my arm with bruises.
She had, thankfully signed an advanced directive prohibiting any intervention. Her choice and probably the choice of lots of other bods in the same position.
Carl Heneghan telling half the story … again.
Don’t remember where I came across this, but I’m sure it will interest a few people here. As one Swedish scientist said: “It’s a mad experiment involving 10 milion people”.
There’s no evidence for COVID-19 herd immunity – it’s pure speculation that it will be effective. The problem with generating herd immunity via infection is that you must inevitably hospitalise and kill many people to achieve 60% of the population infected. No other country is trying this approach – too risky.
Anybody know the source?
That multi-variate analysis has yet to be done and must by done. Multiple teams need to be involved and the variants need to be quite public. The future pandemics need not rely on opinions.
It’s also given a small taste of how many citizens appear very comfortable with a police state.
99% will do as they are told as the MSM is Pavlov, and you the conditioned sheep. They ring the bell and you all begin salavating, they clap their hands and you all hide under your beds.
And the results quite disturbing. But we have been loosing the notion of self-determination for a long time and with that the ability to govern ourselves. People who refuse to assert their rights will result in control by others.
This part is truly terrifying.
Although I am pro vaccination in general and have been vaccinated, I am sceptical about vaccinating children and people in some parts of the developing world.
It is a long established principle of bioethics that we should not treat person A for the benefit of person B, particularly if the balance of risk for person A is negative.
Children are no real risk from COVID so treating them is questionable. Note: this is not my point, it has already been raised by bioethicists.
The same point applies to many parts of the developing world. Nigeria has reported 2000 deaths. This is a country with c.100k deaths from malaria a year. It isn’t ethical to divert resources to COVID vaccination in Nigeria.
The idea that everyone in the world must be vaccinated to suppress variants is becoming a kind of utilitarian mania that ignores all other considerations.
Yes, it’s entirely unethical to vaccinate children. Plus it’s an experimental gene therapy rather than a vaccine. Yes it provides immunity for old people and may benefit them, but for younger people there may be serious long term side effects.
Deaths from malaria, cancer, heart disease, dementia etc don’t count any more. The only disease that counts and that causes tragic deaths is Covid. Sinister.
It’s considered unethical to vaccinate children where they are at more risk from the vaccine than from the condition the vaccine prevents. It’s perfectly right and proper to vaccinate children against conditions such as Mumps, Measles and Rubella, for example – on balance the MMR jab is good for the child being vaccinated and for wider society. There may be unusually vulnerable kids (or adults) who should not be vaccinated, but for the most part, vaccination is a right and proper thing.
Although the risks from the AZ vaccine are very low, they are actually higher the benefits to children, which approximate to zero.
I would link to the academic source of this claim but that apparently isn’t allowed here.
I could see an argument for vaccinating children eventually with vaccines that have been studied for longer periods of time and fully gone through a typical approval process.
I understand that deaths and hospitalizations of children from/involving COVID aren’t zero, but they’re very low. I’m not sure how you’d get confidence that vaccines for children are a net benefit for them on anything like the same timeline that we’ve used in approving COVID vaccines for adults.
….and you never even touched on “informed consent”
Yes, I believe that Macron, Merkel and Johnson recently announced that we need to vaccinate the developing world for the developed world to be safe. Why would anyone in Nigeria consent to be vaccinated with only 2000 deaths? Only 50% of the French planned to get vaccinated last year and they were living under lockdown.
In the UK parental responsibility includes the right of parents to consent to treatment on behalf of a child when the child is unable to provide valid consent for himself or herself, provided the treatment is in the interests of the child.
The Children Act 1989 outlines who has parental responsibility
All people aged 16 and over are presumed in law to have the capacity to consent to treatment unless there is evidence to the contrary.
If the child is deemed not legally competent, consent will need to be obtained from someone with parental responsibility, unless it is an emergency.
Refreshing to see an interview holding someone accountable in such an open and honest way. A credit to both participants and a good advert for Unherd.
Unherd has pretty much become on the side of Mainstream. I do not know if it is to avoid being closed down by youtube and the other evil social media, or merely because they are MSM, so suffer from the same forces which has made MSM the enemy of the people, but Unherd is not the rebel it was, more the ‘lets take all in consideration, so find no truths are real, as all has a valid point to be made’.
Just look at two things: Sweden’s all cause mortality and the much smaller harms to the country and the measures are vindicated.
Except the Swedes, from the King down, don’t see it that way.
Because they are responding the same way as main stream media – emotionally and illogically. If they lived in a hard lockdown country in some sort of parallel experiment they would swiftly realize how good they have got it.
The polls in Sweden say differently!
Yea, well the Swedes are trying to destroy themselves through inappropriate immigration, so one may take anything they say about their own well-being with a grain of salt.
The King is a moron of French descent. QED.
It’s clear from the graph above that the pattern of COVID deaths in the UK and Sweden was basically the same, except that Sweden’s death rate was lower. Clearly that does not support the narrative that the lockdowns were the thing that made the difference, brought infection rates down etc. and that without them we would have had a catastrophic situation. There are clearly other things going on which affected both countries at the same times, e.g. the seasonal influence, perhaps the affect of the new strains etc. I am not saying that Sweden got everything right. A high proportion of their deaths were in care homes which, like ours, could have been better protected (it is unlikely that lockdowns, closing schools etc. would have made much difference to that). But the data above in no way justifies the hundreds of billions the lockdowns cost us. The pattern in all likelihood would have been the same i.e. decreasing in summer etc. There is no sense to the Sweden bashing. No evidence at all that lockdowns would have achieved a significantly better outcome. And it is clear to see they have not suffered the same amount of collateral damage as we have in the UK.
Sweden was the poster child for irresponsible behavior. Their inability to join the frightened hysteria and own it like the remainder of the lemmings drew attention from the bio pharma and health security apparatus. Consider this: one of the leading orgs in this event has been John Hopkins university and their illustrious center for “Health Security” . Those last two words should tell you a lot of the direction we are heading . An unwilling participant in a vaccine or “health” event will be classified as a bioterrorist . There are some particularly unpleasant human beings in the security and military spheres of influence that have big involvement in these types of affairs.
The two graphs you mention may not demonstrate that lockdown makes a difference.
What does demonstrate the difference, is the huge drop in case numbers when lockdown is introduced, and the increase which follows relaxation in the cases where (a) the pathogen is still relatively common in the population, with frequent new cases, and (b) the test, trace and isolate system is not doing its job, and (c) there is insufficient vaccine-based or other immunity, and (d) new cases and new variants are being imported without effective testing or quarantine.
Lockdown is a cost of failure of less drastic measures – we only needed it in the UK because we let Covid get out of control.
What you are stating is simply not true. Cases were already dropping when lockdowns were introduced, or they continued to rise after lockdowns. This has even been proven when looking at movements of people…. the digital world being what it is.
Rubbish,lies hysteria, Lockdowns The first two produced Spikes. 1) Warm weather & vaccination appear to have stopped worst of SARS2 2) until uK reverts to having isolation hospitals ( in 1940-70 called TB hospitals) 4.7million( &Tories lead Labour by 15% !) )on Waiting li. Cancer patients etc..st will Kill More than SARS2 ever does.!!.Rural areas of Uk mostly had lower infection rates,another reason for Stopping Vulture Capital developments?.Where will uK grow its food,40% imported, 55% Exported?..
Swedish epidemiologists Giesecke and Tegnell believed herd immunity would arrive quickly. In a Lancet article, Giesecke claimed about 21% of residents of Stockholm county had already been infected by the end of April; Tegnell predicted 40% of them would have antibodies by the end of May. When initial studies showed the number was actually about 6% in late May.NOV 3 2020. “We have a very serious situation,” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven warned, saying the virus was “going in the wrong direction”. A bit like saying trains have had to be cancelled because of the wrong kind of snow.
Sept. 2020: Sweden’s cases were rising again, and both Finland’s and Norway’s cases per population remained lower than Sweden’s.
By September 24 the strategy had clearly failed and Tegnell was talking about introducing lockdowns and use of face masks. All of which is current Swedish Health Authority policy.
They have lockdowns and are advised to wear masks and take other precautions.
Had Tegnell’s herd immunity strategy worked there would have been no need for the national Covid-19 vaccination programme introduced too late this year.
My sister-in-law in Sweden was relieved to have her first jab last week. One of her children (50) and two grand children were infected with the virus two months ago.
Everything is cases and deaths, never about the inherent trade-offs that come with draconian measures vs. less strict tactics. Some people hate the idea of trade-offs in general, but nothing happens in a vacuum. There are already studies predicting up to a million deaths in the US because of the lockdowns, not the virus. This also occurred after the great recession, because economic harm has this nasty habit of manifesting as harm to health.
It’s something that makes the debate a bit insulting to the term debate. The entire focus is on reducing risk as if no consequences will arise. That’s not how it works. Every action causes a reaction, and the reaction can at times be worse.
You don’t have to commit the perfect crime; just be in charge of the investigation that follows . The puppet masters will win with their appropriate narrative and army of fact checkers. The bewildered herd will just keep bleating…
I am Willing to risk Room 101…Mr O’brien, there mUST be hope in the proles?..
Meanwhile, of course, it was reported that the NHS waiting list has now grown to 4.5m for both essential and non-essential operations, its highest ever number since records began fourteen years ago, with cancer patients particularly hardest hit for obvious reasons.
Unfortunately #staysafe for them wasn’t much of an option in their parlous circumstances.
Cancer cures Covid.
Only in the sense that Covid cures stupidity.
Hence why their almost flat all cause mortality stats are so instructive. What we do expect though is that not all countries will yield the same sort of evidence from all cause mortality – precisely because of lockdowns and project fear. In South Africa, TB and HIV programs have been affected which immediately impacts death figures. And this excludes extra deaths through cardiac events and the like. Extra deaths through lack of regular screenings soon to be added.
It’s too glib to just focus on mortality. The problem for health services is that Covid frequently takes weeks of resource-intensive hospital care before the patient either dies or recovers. Not to mention long Covid, which is definitely a thing.
It’s not possible to provide normal screening, cancer treatments and so on while hospitals are bursting at the seams with highly infectious Covid patients. Unless you are proposing Covid patients should be left to die at home while elective treatments proceed as normal.
“…while hospitals are bursting at the seams with highly infectious Covid patients.”
“wards” not “hospitals”: constantly fewer beds available over last few decades whilst population grows; very high staff absences due to T&T etc, isolated wards with isolation measures (beds spread out etc), homes etc not wanting COVID patients back so abnormal ‘bed-blocking load’ and many other reasons.
It is not glib, it is pragmatic and cuts out most of the bluster.
In your example, the people dying for whatever reason including overrun health services will be picked up in excess mortality. As for the reference to long Covid, I don’t see why that or any other illness should be used as a reason to lock down society or fudge statistics.
Lockdowns have not been proven to have stopped transmission of disease – witness Covid for goodness sake. Did lockdown stop the epidemic curves? No it did not – they rose and fell as they have always done over time. Look at timings of interventions on the curves – they made no difference. As for flu, it has been posited that it was beaten out by the dominant virus.
Is it just coincidence that hospital admissions and mortality rates tend to peak 1 to 2 and 3 to 4 weeks respectively after severe restrictions are imposed?
I thought that’s why they used to have fever hospitals, and built the Nightingales, which they never used. Would it really have been so hard to segregate patients?
Some of the Nightingales were used but not for their original purpose as over-spill facilities. When they were created it was as a response to what was happening in Italy at the time – hospitals being unable to cope and there being nowhere to put patients. Hospitals in the UK coped, just, by converting lots of space from general use to intensive care or high dependency use and by diverting staff of all types (Physios, Surgeons, Dentists, etc.) to working in those units as care assistants.
Patients were segregated, private hospital beds were commissioned and hospitals and parts of hospitals were re-designated as Covid free or not free. However, this didn’t help with the problem of having enough staff to run normal services while also running with very high numbers of very sick Covid patients.
An unusually accurate assessment for these pages which are filled with loons denying the facts and quoting selectively chosen ‘information’ which is usually made up.
If hospitals are segragated into covid and no covid, there was no need for suspected infections to stay at home for two weeks (unless of course they actually felt ill enough that they needed time off). That would have solved a lot of the staffing problem.
And I remember numerous retired healthcare staff offering their services, yet none were used. Locking the country up was total incompetence and probably the worst way to handle things.
The hospitals haven’t been bursting at the seams, whatever else may be true. Bed occupancy last summer was way below normal levels, and even below normal levels over the Nov-Jan time when they are usually full with the regular winter virus peaks.
FAKE NEWS. Over Dec ’21-Jan ’21, ICU capacity in UK was 7x or higher than the worst flu season in the past several decades. The Financial Times reported this in detail. You can google and look at the data for yourself.
Please don’t use that that tawdry ‘fake news’ phrase. You mean something like ‘..That turns out not to be the case,’ or ‘Unfortunately that isn’t right.’ Shouting FAKE NEWS in all caps makes me want to scroll quickly past your post, and may I suppose have the same effect on others.
I can’t accommodate every snow flake in the world, so please replace the word you don’t like with “MISINFORMATION” if it makes it easier for you to process.
Here’s a source for you:
‘It’s not a bad flu season’ – Covid myths debunked with data
https://www.ft.com/video/0cd6f9f9-664e-40f9-bad4-dde59d7c746c
Hate to remind you, but that’s what hospitals and ICUs are for. If after 75 years of our NHS it couldn’t cope perhaps they’re no use. Them and the govt had at least a year to prepare for this winters Covid/flu increase so what have they been doing? If Johnson was a chief exec he’d be fired, or prosecuted.
They aren’t interested in data. Emotional response to everything.
They’re not interested in an alternative version to their viewpoints. It’s their way or no way.
Source?
“Long COVID” – not ready for prime time. It’s still a media, not a medical, phenomenon. The medical consensus is that we don’t know yet. I’m not dismissing it, just saying that the real answer is “we don’t know yet”.
Knowing that it happens, but not how it works, does not relegate it to being a media phenomenon.
post viral fatigue syndrome rebranded.
well ‘viral fatigue’ is real. It is very likely that a certain percentage of people who contracted this virus will end up in the ‘chronic fatigue’ group. Often their immune systems will be going nuts trying to kill something that is not there any more, but they are still looking ….
Why these malfunctions of the immune system happen we still have very little idea. File it under ‘no clue’. But we can expect a certain percentage of those who got covid to end up on this list. Why not? Other seasonal virus infections cause this …
I have had post viral syndrome that lasted 4 to 5 months after a coronavirus.
But sticking to statistics is important. I, my sister, my nephew, my 2 brothers-in-law, all had Covid. None of us had particularly severe symptoms, or any noticeable long-term effects.
“Hospitals bursting at the seams”..hahaha….really?
It’s a metaphor. Like “scraping the barrel” for something critical to say, perhaps.
No one gave a shit about post viral fatigue syndrome when it was triggere by flu. Now it has a rebranding and it’s cool again.
aha, I did not see this. I replied to you explaining what you already know. Apologies.
Someone plotted this for a few countries for the last few years.
https://oronu.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/mortality-statistics/
Thanks. Almost all flattish.
No and for the following reasons:-
1) Johann predicted deaths of between two and three times influenza (in Sweden its typically 2,000). Sweden has now been through two seasons of Sars Cov2 and the deaths are a little over 1-3.
2) They retained an adult approach and always sought to offer a moderate response rather than the emotional hysteria of the English Government and the media.
3) They emphasised the holistic nature of health considering other challenges and most importantly mental heath.
Now of course we know over 2,000,000 additional people are taking medication in the UK for mental health issues and over 1,000,000 operations have been postponed. The most damning stat from the ONS is that every week since May at least 800 excess deaths have occurred at home and only 2% are connected to Sars CoV2.
The pre occupation with keeping a large population of co morbid elderly people who are often demented alive will be the undoing of the West.
We urgently need to address Obesity which is now 30% all over the anglo saxon world and having a mature debate about the consequences of running a population of frail elderly who will always be vulnerable.
And just so we get the Long Covid into perspective after 12 weeks one is left with 10% of the original number many of whom are co morbid woman.
The first thing we need to do is stop pretending its tragedy that people in their 80’s die its not its what we do.
And my beloved Gov’t sanctioned 500,000 children to death in Iraq with our noble stateswoman Kirkpatrick saying it was worth the price. And now we are so remorseful that a virus with average age of death near typical life expectancy has claimed so many. Many of those deaths attributed to malfeasance with nursing home treatments and felonious Gov’t policy. The hypocrisy is suffocating.
Couldn’t agree more. Sweden on Tuesday, April 13, 2021 had the highest rate of new coronavirus cases in Europe, with a seven-day average of 587 new infections per million people on Monday, more than France on 556 and Poland on 540, according to the latest figures on Our World in Data.
At the start of Sweden’s second wave in November, Fredrik Sund, the doctor who heads the region’s main infectious diseases clinic, called on national television for a full “lockdown on society”, dismissing the country’s largely voluntary restrictions as “toothless”. Daily Telegraph, 14 Apr 2021.
Here’s what one expat living in Sweden thought about the new measures to curb the spread of coronavirus introduced by Stockholm’s regional infectious disease doctor Maria Rotzén Östlund in February, 2020.
“Once again timid half measures. For goodness sake, just shut everything down for 2 or 3 weeks, except for the bare essentials, and let’s be done with this. Never lived under such a timid, useless government!” Simon, in the Swedish online journal The Local (www.thelocal.se), 23 Feb 2021 13:10.
Incidentally, my nephew in Sweden is still recovering from Covid-19 after two months. He’s 50.
Do you know of any examples where COVID-19 has been eliminated from shutting everything down for 2-3 weeks?
No mention here about the exchange of lives that are the price of lockdowns – the poor and young pay the price. No mention of the near on 700,000 people in rent arrears in the UK, many that specifiaclly lost jobs due to lockdowns – others where housing benefits have not kept pace with rent increases. The government has had to suspend court evictions in the light of it’s own policies! – but for how long ? I attended on OECD forum yesterday on the mental health cost of lockdowns globally – I suggest that eveyone that can reviews that event – the figures – the % rise in suicides per country, which in my view are directly relative to the pityfully low levels of efficacy and trust, towards, and shown within, thisgovernment, lacking any self education in such a way as to make Imperial College into their one and only feeding bowl. (not forgetting the fiascao in 2000 on Creutzfeldt-Jacob – again, Ferguson and Imperial College modelling!) The real cost of lockdowns, in unemployment and health, apart from the fiscal cost will far exceed the ‘results’ in the management of Covid this past year. How can we trust, be fully behind, feel understood and properly governed by a government that wasted over 35 billion in track and trace – created the Nightingale Hospital in the Excel Centre with 4000 beds which could not function due to lack of staff ! that the goverment had no clue that ther were not enough ITC nurses ! How can this be !? – are they not a government ! to not have a clue about staffing levels in the HNS ! (dare we mention Brexit ! the thousands of nurses that retuned back to the EU!)
It will be seen that many had never had it so good during lockdown – which Gupta refered to as “a middle class luxury” – kept jobs – had money coming in – and were able to save as Sunak admitted, who is looking forward to those savings being spent! They lost nothing that would fundamentally change their lives as have the millions of poor and the young who have no voice and have conveniently been ‘dissappeared’ in Junta-like style – Its more than a disgrace.
Now that the Covid death percentages are known (within reason because there is fudging) and given that as a percentage they are low and mainly affect the elderly and ill, and now that we know case rates are fudged because of inefficiency of PCR test application, and now that we know that the vaccines are not 100% effective in preventing disease and do not stop transmission of disease…
I would like to know from the pro-hard lockdowners how they can still defend their position?
To lock down ALL of society, keep children out of school (some of them will never regain what they have lost), condemn millions to poverty as livelihoods and businesses are lost with the knock on from the middle classes downwards, as hundreds of thousands lose out on critical healthcare (and please don’t quote overflowing hospitals – there are ebbs and flows in epidemic curves), as people look at ruined futures.
How do you conceive of paying back the money and saving societies? How does your model work? How long is it going to take? How are you going to protect your health care systems with no money? How are you going to ramp up social services with no extra money? Please tell me your plan.
well the same crowd that wears this event like a virtual signaling emblem would cry systemic racism if their criteria were consistent as people of color and lower economics are not vaccinated as quickly as the more affluent members of society.
Have you not noticed the US economy is roaring back to life and debt borrowing costs of Western countries is dirt cheap?
All the hysteria about lockdowns/strong social distancing causing an economic disaster is not matched by reality. That is not to deny, of course, that a lot of individuals have suffered terribly, but I am talking about overall economic trajectory.
Indeed, it is perfectly possible to argue that the pandemic will be the catalyst of a huge change in attitudes and huge improvements in the US, in favour of better healthcare and vital infrastructure spending that has been neglected for decades. Time will tell. But clearly your unsophisticated lockdown vs the economy dichotomy is a false one.
Moreover, one only needs to look to South Korea, China, Australia etc (or, on the flip side, Brazil) to see that the best economic outcomes have been in countries that closed their borders and prevented Covid from taking hold until they vaccinate.
“Indeed, it is perfectly possible to argue that the pandemic will be the catalyst of a huge change in attitudes and huge improvements in the US, in favour of better healthcare and vital infrastructure spending that has been neglected for decades. Time will tell. But clearly your unsophisticated lockdown vs the economy dichotomy is a false one.”
There will undoubtedly be a huge economic boom in the developed world as society reopens due to widespread vaccination. Much of this boom is, however, fueled by massive government spending and by ultra-low interest rates. Most of the real economy (apart from tech companies) is in tatters as are many people’s finances.
The effects of lockdowns might not be fully felt for a year or two due to governments printing money, but they will eventually appear as high levels of inflation. All we’ve done is kicked the economic can down the road for a year or two, and, again, it will be young people who bear most of the burden in the form of lost job opportunities and income.
You are very confident in your predictions. Even Larry Summers, not known for his modesty, uses caveats.
Print that money! Borrow a whole lot more! And who are you indebted to? Certainly time will tell that you cannot stall an economy for a few years and think you are hunky dory. You are going to pay it back. No wait! Maybe in your world you can just do it for another year? Two years? And yes, sorry about the millions of people who have lost their livelihoods in the meantime and been pushed into poverty that you brush off in the end of one sentence. Millions.
Stop with this attitude that children are now lost because of disruption to education. I gad a friend who was off school for a year due to illness and got a degree and postgraduate qualification and has not been adversely affected by the year off. Stop with this hysteria. I hope you are not telling children their lives are over before they start. Nonsense. Snowflake whingeing.
Please don’t quote one person’s success as the trend. It is bereft of any logic at all. And anyone who has any knowledge or imagination, knows it is not the rich kids who have suffered the most, it is the poorer children. Some of these children will never see the inside (or outside) of a classroom again… they have been lost from the system. This is happening in the West and is happening to a much higher degree in Africa where I live. Entitled?
Schools in UK have been open for children of key workers and those classed as vulnerable at risk. I hope the schools are able to identify those children. Some schools will also take in the children who are having huge difficulties learning at home, but I suspect it is up yo the individual school and circumstance. Poor children inevitably slip through the net in this issue and many others. UK needs to address why so many socially/economic deprived children get left behind Covid or no Covid. I am concerned about children’s social development and mental health and every effort must be made to address this. It’s why I worry about the young generation being told their education is ruined and that there is nothing for them afterwards. We need to do all we can to encourage them and not demoralise them. That is more my point. Passing the negativity down the line won’t necessarily help. Don’t write them off – they’ve had enough to deal with already.
First, I don’t think he is talking to the children, and second, if missing a year or two of school doesn’t matter, why do we spend obscene amounts on public schools? We’re constantly told that without more funding, children will be left behind and won’t be able to compete in the global marketplace, blah, blah, blah.
No one is saying the disruption doesn’t matter. Everything that happens in the world matters in one way or another. You again have missed my point. Passing the negativity down will not help – and children pick up very much on atmosphere. Not sure what your rant about public schools is? In UK these are the private education establishments so really don’t understand what you are blah blah blahing about.
Covid and lockdown sceptics seem almost desperate for there to be bad outcomes longer term, almost as if theyre trying to compensate for all their errors over the past year in predicting how the pandemic would pan out.
Indeed, Giesecke is essentially saying “I got it wrong now, but I think I’ll be right because something bad will happen in future”.
Meanwhile, US economy performing strongly and it looks like poor Americans will benefit long term from huge changes in attitudes in favour of a decent social safety net and healthcare for all.
Obviously a freak, but good luck to her. Most of her contemporaries face a far bleaker outcome.
Darwinian Self Selection as we say.
She’s 60!
Comprehensive Education?
No
Good.
I did though. A stonking massive comprehensive. Set me up for life.
As a Brit married to a Swede and living in Sweden I have supported Gieseke and Tegnell’s approach throughout and have been annoyingly amused reading the reactions of the rest of the world’s largely uninformed pronouncements on the Swedish Approach. The only serious mistake Sweden has made has been nothing to do with G ‘n T as I call them. It is the political decision of the craven Swedish government to tie itself to the disastrous EU vaccination programme even while its two largest members, Germany and France are busy circumventing it. Already causing hundreds more unnecessary deaths why hasn’t Prime Minister picked up the phone to do a deal with the Swedish chairman of AstraZeneca to save Swedish citizens’ lives? My wife and I, both over 70, only managed to get our first jab of AstraZeneca yesterday and a vague indication of getting the second jab at the end of June. Meanwhile all our friends and relatives in the UK and US have long been vaccinated many of them twice. This is the real scandal and who will be held responsible either at the EU or the national level for the additional deaths? Unfortunately in Sweden there is no evidence that there will be political repercussions either for the government even less so for the its continuing EU membership.
Do you think that if every European country had procured vaccines separately, there would have been enough vaccine for everyone to have the same rate of vaccinations as the UK and the USA? It seems to me that the basic problem is the difficulties in expanding production of vaccines rapidly.
In the beginning we didn’t know what we were dealing with. In a few weeks enough data became available to begin to understand that the COVID19 was a Corona virus. “It is a viral disease like all other diseases. More dangerous than some of them, but it’s not unique”.
The problem with this virus is that it was politicized. It was seized by a political ideology as a means to force their political agenda. High ranking party members announced early on in January 2020 that the pandemic was “their opportunity”. These are people who believe the end justifies the means and will do anything to achieve their end.
It was seized by governments and acquiescent, unthinking members of societies.
”Build back better” Davos February 2020 by Dr Edwin Schwab-Strangelove ”mein Fuhrers I Am Walking@” Apologies to Peter Sellers..
I’m in no way capable of dissecting the modelling or the subsequent avalanche of data on my own, without deferring to more learned individuals and institutions. So criticism of anyone presenting these things needs to be given the necessary caveats, specifically that I am only recycling sometime else’s opinion on something that I can’t give an accurate, informed view on myself.
What Ferguson said so memorably, was that it was decided, after witnessing the acquiescence of the Italians, to follow the Chinese model of top-down psychological manipulation to essentially frighten a cowering populace into obedience. I consider that a turning point in the way I regard our government and every word that comes from their general direction.
Let the scientists, mathematicians and more independent minded, principled journalistic bodies investigate and disseminate the subsequent findings of future enquiries. I wait with baited breath, if not in anticipation of transparency.
But I will certainly not forget the day we were so casually shown that our government are entirely willing to follow the previously unthinkable Command & Control approach upon their own people. I learned so much about both this country’s government and its people on that day.
Back last year in Hamburg, Pr Putsch, against Robert Koch institute’s advice, autopsied 100 people who had died with a Covid infection and were rated Covid deaths. Age ranged from late 20’s to over 90.
Not one died of COVID …..when they all died with COVID.
Sweden where I spent 3 months last year right at the beginning of this crisis and again one month ending this week…….is the only country that preserved the welfare of its people.
Here in France where people are pretty much number the champions of neurosis, there has been absolutely no social life, child and domestic abuse like you would not believe it and despite Macron’s promises, there is no end in sight …….top of it, people refusing to be vaccinated with AstraZeneca when they first refused to be vaccinated with Pfizer. In short, a padded cell right in the heart of Europe.
Walking through the streets of Stockholm is a bliss compared to Paris or any other french city, enjoying a meal in a restaurant a welcome break……shopping normally without having to discover that washing machines have suddenly become…….non essential items, therefore cordoned off in appliances stores……a return to normality.
Swedes who whinge and wish for tougher measures don’t know what they are wishing for and the rippling effects it would have on their society.
You might want to check the statistics for Sweden’s ICU units. They have had exactly the same problem as the NHS, except initially Sweden discouraged the elderly from being taken to hospital (they were given palliative treatment in homes), which is why the average age of Swedish ICU patients was so much lower than in the UK.
As for your questioning of Covid fatalities, I refer you to the work on excess deaths by world class statisticians such as Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter.
Its still too soon to use excess death numbers. 100000 extra deaths in 2020 is 1/6th more than the previous average for 5 years. Compared to the last 20 years its is average. If we have some tens of thousand fewer deaths per year for the next 5 years we might find that there have been no extra death from COVID. Its just that those who were likely to die of a nasty respiratory disease have done so a bit earlier than usual. It’s a horrible mathematical function but life years lost to COVID might very well not justify lockdown etc.
I’ve been checking the ONS crude death figures every week for a year. There were less deaths (Total) in England and Wales for 2020, than any of the previous ten years, barring 2019, which was particularly low.. There is no sign of those 90.000 plus “excess” deaths reported by the government and BBC.. We have been conned.
https://oronu.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/mortality-statistics/
This shows that there was an increase, but not enough to justify any of the nonsense we have had to endure for over a year now.
No conning here.
ONS. Deaths registered monthly in England and Wales
2010 to 2019 range : 492,214 – 541,589
… total deaths from all causes in England and Wales, as of week 51 (week ending 18 December) is 592, 525 deaths. This is the latest data available.
Remember final death stats for 2020 won’t be complete until at least May 2021 because of a 5 month delay in coroner’s cases.
Really?….what excess deaths would that be then?
Sweden crude death rate. deaths overall per 1,000 population. 2020 shows the lowest death count ever. Where is the pandemic? DATE VALUE CHANGE, %
2020 = 9.1-0.25 %
2019 = 9.1-0.35 %
2018 = 9.2-0.41 %
2017 = 9.2-0.49 %
2016 = 9.2-0.56 %
2015 = 9.3-0.64 %
2014 = 9.3-0.74 %
2013 = 9.4-0.83 %
2012 = 9.5-0.92 %
2011 = 9.6-0.99 %
2010 = 9.7-1.07 %
2009 = 9.8
Where / how on earth do you generate these figures ?
From Statista all deaths Sweden :
2011 – 2019 range 88,976 – 92,185
2020 97,941 (provisional)
Eurostat Number of deaths by week (absolute number) – interactive graph shows a pattern that would square with the Statista figures
Ourworldindata has a series of interactive graphs which show plenty of all cause excess mortality. Try “Excess mortality during COVID-19: Number of deaths from all causes compared to previous years, Sweden”
EUROMOMO z scores : Weeks 1 – 11 in minus territory, 12 – 34 in plus territory (up to 12.93), 35 – 45 in minus territory, 46 to end of year in plus territory (up to 6.56). 21 weeks in minus territory 31 weeks in plus territory.
Who are you kidding ?
2019 was a very low mortality year compared to other years (meaning many vulnerable people did not die), so combining 2019 and 2020 you get an average figure that is perfectly reasonable for a country in the middle of a global pandemic. You really are an alarmist, aren’t you.
E G-L just gave you the figures. For years 2011 to 2019 the highest was still below 2020. What’s alarmist about that?
Nope. I just read the data and I don’t use averages / means without many caveats because it is such a slippery / useless statistic to use without knowing the shape of the distribution and all the inputs.
My two big take home messages from Giesecke april 2021 are:
When is “covid” not covid? In the USA the CDC have admitted that 96 per cent of people registered as “covid deaths” did not die because of covid! Will this make the Big Pharma Bill Gates funded main-stream news?
https://ourtube.co.uk/watch/QJDYCVPMV2G2M5M
And we constantly hear so much of vaccines. But virtually nothing of successful, early use preventative home treatment. High dose Vitamin D & C and Zinc. Hydroxychloroquine + Zinc, or Ivermectin. ((HCQ doesn’t work when Big Pharma sponsors the trials – but works very well in unbiased hands.)) It would stop most hospitalisation, and by all accounts HCQ and Ivermectin work against “variants”. There is an urgent and important debate to be had to take “health” care out of the hands of the Medical Mafia aka Big Pharma and find the best and most appropriate treatment for whatever disease needs to be treated. This should not be a profiteering gravy train for no liability vaccine makers pushing an experimental vaccine with humanity as the lab rats in phase three of the on-going trials. There are already – in the UK – over 800 deaths from covid vaccines and thousands of adverse reactions from the vaccine – found under “Vaccine Analysis Reports” hidden deep (why?) in Govt files. No mention to patients about the possibility of pathogenic priming where corona vaccination (in all animal trials over the past umpteen years eventually made the animals sicker). A compassionate caring health system is sorely needed that gives the right medicine to the right person at the right time. Profiteering Big Pharma is clearly not fit to be an advocate of the Hippocratic Oath.
And the irony is the guinea pigs who serve as experimental data have little recourse. What moral compass indemnifies billionaire companies while practicing their drugs and vaccines on an uninformed citizenry!
If the CDC had actually said that, you’d think there’d be a link to the statement on their website, rather than a far-right network’s video that misrepresents the statistics.
One other comment on vaccination. It is obvious that one should vaccinate the vulnerable: i.e. those over 60 or those with co-morbidities that predict a severe outcome of a COVID infection. But vaccinating those who are young and healthy, and at minimal risk of severe consequences (i.e. deaths) following infection, seems problematic. Particularly worrisome is the reported increased incidence of disseminated intravascular coagulation that has led to stopping or pausing the AZ and J&J vaccines. The key, however, is whether this is due to the vector (i.e. the adenovirus vector for AZ and J&J) or to the actual spike protein. If the latter then similar blood clotting/bleeding disorders should be observed for the mRNA vaccines. If one looks at the VAARS database it would appear that the same types of clotting/bleeding conditions have indeed been observed with the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. Unfortunately, it would appear that the mRNA vaccines are being protected by the NIH and the FDA. Perhaps not surprising given the involvement of the NIH in development of the Moderna mRNA vaccine.
Johan Giesecke says: He has been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab, and would be happy for everyone to take it: “If we really want to get down to small numbers — we won’t eradicate it, but to small numbers — then I think even children should be vaccinated… I can’t see why not.”
Does this guy have a clue what he’s talking about?
If children and others aren’t seriously affected by SARS-CoV-2, why should they be subjected to years of COVID-19 vaccination throughout life? This would interfere with their own natural and effective immune response.
How can Giesecke suggest this?
The vaccine industry is setting up the global population for COVID-19 vaccination for life. According to media reports:
The CEO of Pfizer says people will likely need a third dose of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine within a year of being fully vaccinated.”The likely scenario is there be a likely need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months,” Albert Bourla said. And from there, there will be an annual vaccination. But all of that needs to be confirmed. And again, the variants will play a key role.”*
It’s mind-boggling that this is being accepted at face value, with no critical analysis…
* Third vaccine jab ‘likely needed within a year’ Pfizer CEO says
Small taste? This is the real deal and it is only going to get worse.
I’m constantly dismayed at comments that call Sweden’s approach ‘irresponsible’. It seems like anything less than an administration taking full control of people’s lives is acceptable to such people. It seems remarkable that so many people are not just OK with this, but applaud it. A state that calls for cooperation and protects the sovereignty of the individual, and communities, is now the outlier. We’ve gone from being adults to infants.
I think Sweden knew the character of its people well enough to put in appropriate measures for Sweden, ie they did not need to be so overly authoritarian to be effective. The character of UK is different and I feel a more authoritarian approach was justified in the early days, still far less authoritarian than many other EU countries. What is disappointing in UK is that we have not found ways to reduce the authoritarianism in our approach, ie allow more personal decision making based on a better understanding of risk. What is also disappointing is Sweden’s approach has become more authoritarian over time, when it was designed to endure over time. Sweden’s approach is still far less authoritarian than UK.
I believe that there a lot of misconceptions regarding the view of Swedes as conformant and trusting people. In general they are definitely more trusting where a fair majority have probably followed the Covid guidelines and accepted the fairly stringent measures imposed although lighter and less idotic than some of those in the UK. There is however a large section of the population who are not so conformant, the younger generations including teenagers and some of the affluent middle class who give the impression of being immune and carrying on as normal. As Tegnell and others have stated over the last few weeks with steadily increasing case numbers and hospitalisations, it’s not a question of implementing further measures (deemed to be largely ineffective) but instead adhering to the measures already in place. There’s not a lot more he can do other than imposing lockdown and police state enforcement which will thankfully never happen and wouldn’t make any difference in the long run. Crowding in ski resorts, private parties (one reported on today with 20 infected out of 20), students ignoring guidelines on distancing, celebrations with 100+ guests in immigrant communities have been some of the reasons in addition to the infection spreading in care homes and hospitals.
It is hardly surprising that those at less personal risk are becoming less compliant. Arguably this is as it should be. If you look at Swedish excess deaths they are getting something right and have been throughout the most recent rise. The ultimate answer is to get as many people vaccinated as possible. Sadly for Sweden it is caught by the EU policy of making sure all EU countries do equally badly, despite any sovereign advantages they may have (AstraZeneca is Anglo Swedish).
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&minPopulationFilter=1000000&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&hideControls=true&Metric=Vaccine+doses&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=GBR~ITA~DEU~SWE~HUN
Hungary stuck 2 fingers up and bought Russian, but has yet to see the beneficial effects (would not really expect to see much yet). It also looks like the Germans are also beginning to break ranks and get ahead of the rest by relatively recently vaccinating at almost the same daily rate we are. They are also talking to Putin about Sputnik. Despite this week, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen taking the stance of claiming the EU will soon begin making sure all vaccines they use are made 100% within the EU. Only using 100% EU vaccines is however, not possible at the moment, because a UK firm in Yorkshire, Corda International, is the company which provides a number of essential competent parts for the Pfizer vaccines upon which the EU is relying. Just more proof if we needed any that the EU does not give a toss about the peoples of its member states and would much rather undermine UK out of abject fear that we will succeed without them.
agreed on issue of personal risk but these groups and the UK variant are fuelling the infection spread affecting others more vulnerable
Good article. The Swedish approach much better than the U.K.,we need rid of SAGE, PHE et al.
Had you ever been to a police state (Russia China, Albania in the 60s, Iran and Turkey), you’d realise how ignorant it is to describe this country as being one.
I imagine were you to be in France, Germany or Italy during a lockdown you’d find it to be a far more authoritarian experience than in the UK.
Hear hear. The hysteria among some commentators is not productive to an informed discussion.
The UK measures have had overwhelming popular support, and have been scrutinised by the independent courts. Rather than some kind of mass-incarceration/dictatorship emerging, it seems far more likely that had the UK population decided en masse to ignore the rules, the government would have been forced to change its policy. Some say the UK population were cowed into subservience by a government exaggerating the risks, others say that the population saw the real-world evidence from all over the world and decided on balance that social distancing was the lesser of two evils. Reasonable minds can disagree.
I’m not saying there aren’t reasonable and serious concerns regarding civil liberties, but we need to be rational and have a sense of proportionality.
It’s worth noting:
Singapore, one of the world’s most densely populated places, made it a crime to be too close to another person.
In Spain the lockdown last year was quite strict (NB don’t know if it still is PL), with more than 100,000 fines handed out for breaches of rules (people are on board as mobile phone footage shows residents applauding from balconies as joggers are arrested). Although, it is said some are hiring out their dogs so stir-crazy neighbours can walk outside without fear of being fined.
Professor Leila Choukroune, director of the University of Portsmouth’s Thematic Area in Democratic Citizenship, said liberal governments were walking a “tightrope” having to balance the inherent freedoms with the need to tackle what is now a global threat.
Professor Jimmy Whitworth, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said for some Western leaders – including Boris Johnson – imposing wide-ranging restrictions on freedoms “goes against the grain”. It is, he said, a possible reason why many European governments were slow to lockdown communities until the scale of what they were facing became abundantly clear.
I am a little bit confused by your comments stating that Spain has had a strict lockdown for a year. I live in Madrid, and I have not experienced anything like that. All shops, restaurants, bars, schools have been opened since June 2020 up to now!
Hi idazbiro,
I came across the information here:
How and why has the approach to coronavirus differed in Asia and Europe? Cultural, social and political differences have altered how each country has tackled the crisis thus far
By Steve Bird ; Dominic Gilbert ; Henry Samuel ; Sophia Yan ; Nicola Smith ; James Badcock and Julian Ryall Daily Telegraph 28 March 2020 • 7:00am
“European countries were slow to impose lockdowns. While the UK is only now seeing police enforce the regime, France, Spain and Italy now even have military units now enforcing the policy.
“The government in Spain, a country consisting of folk who vehemently defend their liberties, dithered over any lockdown. It refused to cancel marches for International Women’s Day earlier this month. Hundreds of thousands of people took part. Two female cabinet ministers and the wife of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tested positive days after attending the Madrid event.
“Now, the lockdown is stricter, with more than 100,000 fines handed out for breaches of rules (people are on board as mobile phone footage shows residents applauding from balconies as joggers are arrested). Although, it is said some are hiring out their dogs so stir-crazy neighbours can walk outside without fear of being fined.”
Just because lockdown was popular in that most people fell for it ie were terrorized, does not make it right.
But the government, establishment and authorities have acquired powers hitherto unheld and seem to want more. Surely you must admit this is not healthy. Perhaps you like being ordered around by the powers that be – it gives you an unwarranted sense of security.
“An unwarrented sense of security”? Don’t be silly.
Perhaps you think we should have followed the example of Brazil: 7 April 2021 • 10:10am The country of 212 million people has registered an average of 2,757 Covid-19 deaths per day over the past week, the highest by far worldwide.
It has recorded 160 deaths per 100,000 people, behind countries such as the Czech Republic (254) and the UK (187) but still one of the 10 highest rates in the world.
Miguel Nicolelis, professor of neurology at Duke University and the former coordinator of the pandemic response team for north east of the country said: “It’s a nuclear reactor that has set off a chain reaction and is out of control. It’s a biological Fukushima.”
“Brazil now is not only the epicentre of the pandemic worldwide, it is a threat to the entire effort of the international community to control the pandemic on the planet,” he added.
President Jair Bolsonaro, doesn’t believe in lockdowns and regards the Wuhan virus as a little flu” and those afraid of it as “sissies”. A nutter in my opinion.
Try and be less long-winded next time. On second thoughts, don’t bother.
While I understand your point, we have been prohibited from leaving the country for months now. That, to me, is the mark of a police state. You cannot escape even if you disagree with the policies of the country you’re living in.
“People were willing to give up more freedom than I thought they would. It worries me — there are many democratic rules and freedoms that have been curtailed. I think that may be one of the dangerous results of this pandemic.”
It is this, and not the deaths, that is the damage that Covid has wrought.
Why politicians and the media portrayed the virus as an existential threat? Why the narrative spun by only a select few scientists was considered to be the only narrative? Why opposing views and those who spoke them were maligned and silenced? Why politicians and the media chose to be ruled by science and then only one questionable sub-discipline? Why people in liberal democracies were willing to curtail their freedoms in the face of an selectively dangerous virus?
These are all pressing questions for future historians to address.
The takeaway:
“We have kept democracy. We have trusted people. I think there are a number of benefits from not having a severe lockdown and more of them will come as we do research on this in the future.”
You are making a mistake when you try to claim the Swedish strategy was wrong, it was not. The Professor was correct when he said lockdown would not make a difference, as several studies have shown. The latest data shows deaths per million in the UK at 1866 versus 1359 for Sweden but ONS has recently stated that 25% of the UK recorded deaths from Covid-19 were not from this disease. So, correcting the figure we get 1399 versus 1359 or no difference within the margin of error. The difference is that Sweden did not trash their economy, destroy jobs and lives or remove citizen’s freedoms, and nor have they ended up with almost 400,000 persons waiting for operations and a death rate from other causes linked to the lockdowns that are equal to those from Covid-19 or destroyed the education prospects of children all based on false data from SAGE and a Prime Minister lacking the ability to make rational decisions.
I live in Finland part of the year and there are many differences with Sweden – a large country with a more dispersed elderly population largely in rural areas in small care homes , more persons living in single households, a culture where they do not mix much outside family, frequent use of sauna, foods fortified with vitamin D, an exercise culture with a lot of cycling to work, low numbers of high risk immigrants living in crowded conditions and even the towns are more dispersed with more persons living in suburbs giving a low population density and probably important a good health service that correctly diagnoses real Covid-19 cases and not with Covid-19 plus highly trained personnel in care homes. Also they were very quick to isolate Helsinki when Cov-2 first arrived there to stop the spread to other parts of the country and this was helped by the fact that most international flights are from there and not other parts of the country. As the Professor said it any and all of these factors but I would put money on the high levels of vitamin D and exercise giving them a good innate immune response.
On vaccines the curves for the UK and Portugal can be overlaid yet Portugal has only vaccinated one sixth of the numbers of persons as the UK and in both cases vaccination coincided with the down slope of the Gompertz curve. So whilst one hopes it is the vaccines that have caused the drop in the UK I would not celebrate too soon, especially as the Indian and South African variants have now arrived against which the Pfizer and AstraZenneca have considerably lower efficacy, especially for those vulnerable elderly and immune suppressed who did not produce high antibody counts from the vaccines.
When one talks about how many persons have been infected you cannot use antibodies as one does not expect antibody levels to last beyond weeks when T and B cells are the main determinant of resistance and these have not been measured.
There is evidence that lock downs and vaccinating the elderly and immune suppressed are the cause of the mutations. As such the strategy adopted by the UK and other countries will be self defeating. It is notable that the most dangerous variants have arisen in the countries where the vaccines were tested and those areas or countries with the hashes lock downs, like California.
Well said.
An important theme unmentioned in this discussion is the fear-mongering by government and media. It has been deliberate, shameless, relentless and continues unto this very hour. It is extraordinary to think that Western governments, nominally democratic, have gone out of their way to terrify their populations. Fear is a long-lasting poison that will be with us for many, many years, warping human interaction, warping whole societies. I regard official fear-mongering as psychopathic and criminal. If dramatic steps are not taken to dismiss and punish the perpetrators and change laws and constitutions to ensure that lockdowns etc can never be imposed by fiat again, then I’m afraid we are lost. To claim that these measures and behaviors have been successful and are a legitimate basis for a “new normal” is insane. They should be the basis for prosecution a la Nuremberg.
The author and beneficiary of all this, btw, is unmistakably China. The virus came from China, the first fearsome images from China, the totalitarian methods from (totalitarian) China. China is in better shape than a year ago, while the once-free West is in disarray. China has called these shots. They have played their hand with great skill. They have conned us into slitting our own wrists. Who is the global hegemon now, the USA or China? I submit that the answer is obvious.
This is a great shame. This is a destroyed man. Lost his confidence, lost his strength, frightened.
Sweden followed the same curve as others. That’s the point. Right there. End of discussion. He doesn’t say this. Doesn’t try to protect himself.
And then he goes on to say he can’t see why not vaccinate children! With realms of evidence children are virtually proof against the thing and don’t infect adults!
He’s simply saying do what you like, I’m stepping to one side.
When attacked on the grounds of discrepancy between Sweden and other nations he doesn’t point out that across the world there’s an enormous – fantastic wouldn’t be too strong a word – difference in the apparent potency and spread of the virus. Meaning that there are factors, very large powerful factors, in play that we know nothing about! Nothing! That’s an immense argument. He makes no use of it at all.
He’s a beaten frightened man and this Freddie Sayers now reveals himself somewhat, I think.
The world has descended into madness. There is no other way to describe it. We daily see Youtube clips of outdoor meetings – dignitaries, leaders, police, whatever – and there’s people sitting on stages, rostrums, metres away from everyone else and wearing masks! Please – where is the sanity in that??
But it is the norm today all around the world apparently. All around the world!
Sweden stood out against that illogical unreasoning hysterical insanity and he should be proud of himself and his nation for it.
And the ‘facts are in’ at this stage so they do this interview but he fails to protect himself with any reference to excess deaths which I believe I saw a video about the other day saying the UK the excesses are being followed by a trough which is indicating that as you’d expect the figure will recede towards the norm when seen over a longer period.
And in fact the figures remain highly questionable – highly, no nit picking, but highly – because we have the famous zero influenza deaths which are hidden in there of course and we have all deaths with any positive pcr which is quite truly and quite scientifically and unarguably not a true indicator of disease. And there’s more. But that’s enough. But he doesn’t seek to protect himself (and reason, sanity, science, truth, individual freedoms) with any of that.
He doesn’t protect himself at all. That’s a great shame. An even greater shame that he doesn’t protect the Swedish path which was reason, calm, science, sense, truth, preservation of national character and individual rights.
It is a shame. A shame.
I have to agree with your observation. He completely folded on rightfully defending his earlier assertions and even his wrong predictions. It was the same in his interview on Swedish TV a week or so ago. Considering he was part retired when Covid broke out and since then has been subjected to abuse on social media, apparent death threats and criticism by some of his peers (the 22) in Sweden it’s not surprising that he’s a changed man. He’s also a man of few words which was apparent in his first Freddie-interview, which makes it impossible to counter the barrage of assertions which Freddie had assembled this time. Not only a shame but a tragedy for a man more competent and respectful than most in this nightmare we are living through
Given the alarm about COVID-19 during the past year, I’m confused by the statement below from Public Health England, can someone please clarify?
Status of COVID-19 – As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK.
The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCIDcriteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID. (My emphasis.)
See: High consequence infectious diseases (HCID) Guidance and information about high consequence infectious diseases and their management in England.
Subsequent summaries don’t even mention COVID-19, see: High consequence infectious diseases: monthly summaries These reports detail high consequence infectious disease (HCID) events that are detected during PHE’s epidemic intelligence activities.
Am I misinterpreting this? With all the alarm about COVID-19, why isn’t it classified as a high consequence infectious disease?
Government statement on that below:
“Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.”
From Full Fact Website.
I included that info in my first comment about the HCIDs…
My point is, there has been extreme alarm about COVID-19, panic about ‘cases’ and deaths etc, and yet it’s not considered a high consequence infectious disease by Public Health England, and mortality is considered low overall…so what is going on?!?!
It’s been obvious since summer 2020 – the politicians are doing everything they can to con the sheeple.
The hospitals are no longer bunged up with Covid cases and probably won’t be again, until maybe autumn 2021
Why are they not “bunged up” with that astronomical number of cancer patients and others we heard much about? Or is that another myth?
Because admitting patients to a hospital isn’t something you turn on like a tap.
The bottleneck seems to be diagnosis – that includes tests and investigations like CAT and MRI scans – all slowed down because of cross infection concerns.
The 3 pals I know of who have been battling cancer over the last year have all continued with their treatment unrestricted.
So we have a Catch 22 scenario?
Turn up for a CAT scan and get Covid?
Rather like the recent past when attending for a MRI scan meant C-difficile or MRSA was more than a possibility.
Another reason to get vaccinated.
Agreed.
Fergusons’s model predicted 96000 deaths in Sweden by May 2020 unless strict Lockdowns were immediately put in place. Death from all causes in Sweden for the whole year was 98000 (!)
Here is an article, which is also my source, diving deep into Sweden’s official statistics for 2020.
https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/final-report-on-swedish-mortality-2020-anno-covid/
To my eye, it really doesn’t matter what one does. If you lockdown you just prolong the agony but in the end the area under the death curves vs time ends up being the same.
As an example, if one looks at the deaths per million for Sweden, the US and Germany one finds some interesting things. The situation last March/April was clearly different between these countries with Germany having many fewer deaths/million. But look at the second season from Oct 20 to the present: The curves for deaths/million are basically superimposable for the US, Germany and Sweden, including the so-called bumps for Thanksgiving, despite the fact that neither Sweden nor Germany celebrate any holidays over the Thanksgiving period. In other words, now that COVID-19 is endemic, the results in terms of deaths/million are much the same no matter what one does. Peaks may come a little earlier as in France and Austria, but the end result is the same.
The other fascinating finding is that if one compares the US and Germany from oct 20 to the present for number of cases per million, the curves for Germany are about a 1/3rd of those in the US, despite superimposable curves for deaths/million. Given that healthcare in Germany and the US are comparable, and there is nothing that is being done differently in the US vs Germany in terms of hospital treatments, it follows that the difference in cases/million is simply attributable to the amount of testing. For example, Germans may only go and get tested if they are really ill or need to go to hospital, while in the US a lot of healthy people are being tested and asymptomatic positives (many of which are likely to be false positives if 35 or more cycles of rtPCR are used) are adding to the numbers.
When people point out that Sweden had higher number than it’s neighbours, its worth noting that Norway and Finland’s “lockdowns” were very mild. They were closer to Sweden that to mainland Europe by a long way. Denmark was a bit more in line with mainline Europe. Finland basically closed schools and public buildings and that was all.
First, thank you Freddie and Unherd for allowing me to keep my sanity over the past year. I’m glad I found you at the start of the pandemic. As a Ph.D. microbiologist with over 30 years of experience, including working with SARS CoV2, Sweden is one of the few that got this right. Aside from all the easily measured collateral damage that will be accounted for in the coming years (e.g. suicides, over-doses, deaths from neglected “other” diseases, etc.), there will be other far-reaching collateral damage, such as epigenetic effects and societal costs of lockdowns, that will be harder to trace back to these terrible lockdowns.
NYTimes reporting today that suicides fell 5% in US in 2020.
And Sweden’s press today reporting delayed routine medical care as they are too overstretched by Covid patients.
Not sure the facts fit your narrative…
It’s early days, give it time, be patient.
You’re willing things to get worse in the face of evidence that Covid deaths and economic damage is reducing?
No, I’m just sceptical, as you should be.
I wish commentators here better understood the meaning of scepticism.
Perhaps you need a dictionary too.
routine care delayed 2 weeks now in some — not all regions.
Mostly in Uppsala where they have a bad shortage caused not by bad covid but bad local council decisions resulting in not enough health care.
Even there non-routine things – like cancer — not at all.
Of course it it is annoying to have to have your hip replacement surgery delayed 2 weeks. I totally understand. But some surgeries, mostly cancer ones, cannot wait. I understand that, too.
That may be a mismeasurement.
I’ve looked at the underlying information. (I would post a link, but that triggers moderation hiatus. Google “US 2020 deaths by category”).
U.S. suicides in 2020 were down ~3,000 in raw numbers. “Unintentional injuries” – which notably include drug overdoses, plus various other categories (e.g., traffic accidents) – were up ~19,000. It’s the category where you’d expect to see unidentified suicides.
Here are the 5 year totals for the sum of those two categories, unintentional injuries plus suicides. Unintentional injuries account for ~80% of each year’s total.
2020: 237k
2019: 221k
2018: 215k
2017: 217k
2016: 206k
Your disinformation (and false narrative promotion) is noted, Eva.
Released this week by the Centers for Disease Control, the figures show that at least 87,000 people died from overdoses from October 2019 to September 2020. This amounts to a 29 percent increase from the same period in the previous year.
NYTimes – yeah, right.
I would add that the total numbers of suicides won’t tell the full story. We will also need to look at demographics. There is no shortage of headlines about young kids in a mental health crisis.
Is there any research going on into how countries with initially high recorded covid death rates are now seeing them fall markedly, whereas those with initially low recorded covid death rates are often now seeing quite the opposite?
In Brazil they keep going up. Hence Giesecke’s rowing back from claims of herd immunity without vaccines.
Brazil is an interesting case because they are responding differently to other non hard lockdown countries like South Africa – refer second wave. Both have a ‘wild, mutant’ variant but SA’s epidemic curve plummeted. No vaccines, close living conditions, inconsistent restrictions that could not make a blind bit of difference.
Yes. I live in a place where control of the virus has been remarkably effective, in part because most people are pretty diligent about doing their part, which is a good thing. But at the same time, lack of awareness or consideration of the trade-offs for democracy has been a little worrying, and seems to point to a society with a dangerous kind of passivity to its leaders.
Glad I’m not the only one who noticed that. This sentence was really surprising. Where did those numbers come from? The IFR of 0.2% seems largely unchallenged since the Ioannidis paper, with the Imperial College figure of 0.9-1.1% being widely recognized as far, far too high. Quite a few other authors have come out with ranges in the 0.1-0.3% range too, it’s not just Prof Ioannidis’ meta-study that claimed that. In fact the higher numbers date from January 2020, when virtually no mass testing was being done! IFRs do fall over time as more mild cases are discovered and a lot of mild cases were discovered over the past year.
Of course like all COVID statistics this one is built on a sandcastle because of the way COVID deaths are defined. Even 0.1% is likely too high if you insist on a definition of “people who are killed by COVID and would have lived otherwise”. It just isn’t a deadly disease as the experience of Sweden shows (age adjusted mortality equal to ~2012, when nothing much was happening).
What is the point of this debate? People in Florida and in nearly all the rural areas of the USA are living normal lives and ignoring this nonsense. Are the numbers even real? Do we even know how all these people died? Carl Heneghan has presented evidence care home residents were dying of thirst during the coronavirus. Deaths from diabetes, dementia, cancer, heart attacks, strokes, etc. all up. Why are Finland and Norway numbers better? Maybe they didn’t murder their elderly. Look at what happened in NYC. They were literally murdering people at the start of this by intubating everybody. Do we even know if the care they are providing ever improved? They shut down hospital care and according to Fauci there are no treatments for this only a vaccine. The majority of doctors have gone along with this nonsense. I suggest people choose their doctors carefully. The for profit health care system has been a complete failure and left the population at the mercy of oligarchs and big pharma. That is the real danger we face. Covid is the excuse to bring Western populations to their knees. Unfortunately it has been a remarkable success for the powerful.
Please cite sources.
Not sure about NYC intubating ‘everybody’ but apart from that it pains me greatly to upvote your comment Dennis.
The IFR is an almost useless statistic, particularly with Covid because in order to calculate an accurate ratio you need to know how many people are infected in the population at a specific time. This can only ever be an estimate with Sars Cov 2 as you are relying on a random seroprevalence sample of the population.
Also most notably with Covid 19 the IFR changes according to how old you are – the risk of catching and dying from Covid19 varies 10,000 fold from the age of 1 – 100.
Quoting an overall IFR for Covid is a perfect example of a meaningless mean.
Intra country comparisons using a snapshot of cases per million is highly misleading because most countries case counts are incorrect!! France, for instance, vastly understated cases in January and February as so many people were virtually “locked down” at home that they were not being tested.
Lockdowns may delay or defer cases but,absent full vaccination, they do not stop an endemic virus from spreading.
Until a country’s CFR begins to approximate its likely IFR, cases can only give you an idea of trends. Sweden, Denmark and the UK are among those with CFR close to likely IFR. Elsewhere, in more populous European countries, cases are still being seriously undercounted.
There are those who don’t like the government response. There are those that do. There are those that don’t like the government regardless of viruses and those that do.
I am yet to see anyone either pro or against lockdown change their mind. Like Leave and Remain their heels are dug in.
Sweden with its population mainly in and around cities has lost over 13,000 people. London, watching the news, seemed deserted with over 14,000. Both have similar population sizes. We locked down making London virtually a population island.
Take this back to the first paragraph and guess who’d vote Sweden. Add Scotland’s 9000 with 5.5 million population far worse per million and guess who’d still vote Sweden? Personally, I like Sweden far more than the other two but I’m not sure they’ve done so much better compared to us and never Norway and Denmark, of Scots sized populations.
Sweden crude death rate. deaths overall per 1,000 population. 2020 shows the lowest death count ever. Where is the pandemic? DATE VALUE CHANGE, %
2020 = 9.1-0.25 %
2019 = 9.1-0.35 %
2018 = 9.2-0.41 %
2017 = 9.2-0.49 %
2016 = 9.2-0.56 %
2015 = 9.3-0.64 %
2014 = 9.3-0.74 %
2013 = 9.4-0.83 %
2012 = 9.5-0.92 %
2011 = 9.6-0.99 %
2010 = 9.7-1.07 %
2009 = 9.8
As John Donne would have it: “O death, where is thy sting?”
Where is unherd’s story on Belarus? Where is the Christi Noem interview!!!!! The South Dakota Governer – the one who refused lockdown – BUT had the same outcome as the States who did lockdown!!!
Where is the Florida/California, the South Dakota/North Dakota debates?
This poor Swede, he has had to undergo a year of ‘Struggle Sessions’ till he has become a Stockholm Syndrome zombie.
From CDC (with all the attendant problems of how certain states are very slow about reporting deaths of any sort). A league table from a couple of weeks ago for all cause excess mortality compared with population adjusted average from the last 5 years :
1st Arizona +31%
5th N Dakota +25.3%
6th S Dakota +24.4%
21st California +19.9%
25th Florida +19.3%
62nd N Carolina -7.6%
Worth revisiting the previous pandemics of 1957 and 1968/9 to get some perspective on this, both in terms of numbers who died during a time where numbers were less likely to be accurately recorded and in terms of the ages affected.
Both those pandemics targeted the young as much as the old and vaccinations barely figured as a meaningful response to either, not least because they arrived too late.
Granted, again, times were different, but not necessarily in a bad way.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(2031201-0/fulltext
UK Was less built up in 1957/58 &1968 ..Rural areas have fared better in SARS2 pandemic,its just they are building on Farmland & Green areas
This is as much an opinion piece as an interview. The next person accepting an interview from this author needs to know it’s actually a debate.
Article (Biased) Title: “Did Sweden get Covid wrong?”
Better Title: “How did Sweden do with Covid?”
Question from the interviewer: “I ask, Ferguson’s numbers don’t look so wrong any more, do they?” The author wrote immediately prior to that that Ferguson’s numbers were wrong by a factor of 4x(!). So despite the opinion/”question”, I think we can all agree actually Ferguson’s numbers look quite wrong.
The author attempts to leave the reader with the impression that Sweden screwed up, even though their numbers are significantly better than the UK’s. This with vastly more repressive lockdowns in the UK – the effects of which are entirely ignored in the article. In fact, the author claims that the lockdown “policy remained highly popular among the majority across Europe”. Really?
How about a different interview title: “Did Lockdowns do any Countries any good?” (and even if so – what were the corresponding harms?)
Giesecke did his country a service, which the interviewer seems to be determined to overlook.
Strange comment. I think you need to check out Mr Sayers’ interview the other week with Christopher Snowden. Sayers is a lockdown sceptic, and UnHerd pushed minority epidemiological opinions such as Giesecke’s/Levitt’s/Tegnell’s from the outset.
Indeed. The coverage of this issue and many others on unherd in general has been excellent. It has been well balanced and Freddie has a great way of getting views out of knowledgeable people without becoming confrontational. What is amazing is how many different people from both sides of the debate have been only too happy to come on and talk freely.
In all far better than the overly politicised and highly polarised coverage in MSM. It is not lockdown fanatics Vs lockdown sceptics, there are a range of views and we should be able to listen to them all and more importantly have the deciders listen to them all. It is a great shame when Great Barrington declaration proponents end up sharing a platform with lunatics like David Icke and become cast in the same light so they can be ignored.
Ultimately I hope a sensible review is done across the whole scientific, political and social aspects of this to learn the real lessons for future crisis management. This includes relearning the lesson that the next crisis won’t be the same as the last and if you try to manage the new crisis as if it was the last, you will make just as big a mess as you did last time.
Glad to see at least a bit of discussion of seasonality (shortly after the 28 minute mark). It’s not been discussed enough in my view. I see little if any evidence that it’s been taken into account in formulating or evaluating policy responses.
You can approach the Corona-Crises by trying to understand medicine/epidemiology, but you can also try to understand the possible irrational aspects of human behaviour. The more you hold yourself to be familiar with the latter, the more you will rely on this kind of analyses in your understanding. Sweden is an interesting example (also) in this context. I believe there are one aspect and one event in the history of Sweden which may have contributed to the Swedes going their own way. Sweden is a non-allied country which stayed out of both world wars in the 20th century. Sweden may have been less inclined to follow the international Corona crises lead. Sweden in 1986 also suffered the trauma of seeing their Prime Minister (Olof Palme) murdered without being able to hold anybody responsible. The Swedes may be less inclined to mix up the state with God.
Turning to epidemiology, Giesecke has some problems, but personally I am relieved that he stands by his basic view from the 2020 interview and maintains he got it by and large right.
Giesecke has some problems, though, because epidemiology has some problems. As Giesecke touches on in the interview, epidemiology has a lot of behavioural aspects. (Giesecke referred to social sciences.) However, the 2020-21 Corona crises is unique in the history of mankind. It would not be surprising if the life-long epidemiology experience of Giesecke and others comprise some assumptions about human behaviour which changed in 2020. Even everyday medicine is partly based on “crude experience”, the doctors sometimes remind us. As the spread of an infectious disease obviously depends just as much on human behaviour as on the strictly medical characteristics of a virus, epidemiology is very vulnerable to change in the experience-based assumptions about human behaviour, especially to mass change. I listened to a press conference with the leader of the German Robert Koch-Institute in March-April last year. He “complained” about the (elderly) population failing to take the annual standard vaccination against flew. In 2020 he and others may have landed in the opposite problem. Instead of seeing themselves not taken seriously enough, they suddenly found themselves followed in a way completely new to them.
In the interview Sayers try to sum up the most important mistaken predictions made by Giesecke a year ago and their consequences. “Fair enough” – but I would say literally speaking NOT fair enough. Sawyers points to a higher infection/mortality rate than predicted. A fairer question would be if the infection/mortality rate has turned out to be HIGH (which could lead to further questions serving Giesecke’s defence). The interview attends greatly to the ranking of the nations. However the pandemic may have had relatively small death tolls in ALL countries, even if some countries have twice as high a rate than others. Giesecke rightly compares with the Black Death and the Spanish flew. Rightly, because his point is to show how relatively small the death rates of the Corona virus is. Rightly also because the dreads of those historical examples have occurred in public debate without the sobering reminder of the now much smaller death rate pointed to by Giesecke.
I’ve been both astonished and perplexed by the measures taken in the UK and the apparent blind acceptance of these in the population. The costs and burden of furlough and business support will be immense in the coming years leading to a crisis much greater than the current one, and furlough coupled with scaremongering on an unparalleled scale are definitely contributing factors to the general indifference of the population to house arrest, the instant creation of a police state and lack of freedom. It’s very unfortunate that Giesecke didn’t feel inclined or have the energy to defend his beliefs, proven assertions and even his predictions which didn’t turn out as he’d thought. He is not a prattler but a man of few words and he’s more knowledgeable in the subject matter than most including some of the ”astute” commenters on this thread. His main legacy will be in helping Tegnell and the Public Health authority here in Sweden from adopting panic measures, instead avoiding the contagion of fear and irrationality in the government and population so evident in the UK by following established WHO guidelines for pandemic management, , introducing common sense and scaled measures. He rightly stands up for the Swedish strategy (scaled incline of measures as opposed to roller coaster lockdown/attempted back to normality) but has little part in the failings of the care home sector in protecting those in the twilight of their lives and those with threatening health conditions.
Some replies point me to other articles, and don’t address my comments regarding this one. Mr. Sayers may be a “lockdown skeptic”, his work elsewhere might reflect that, etc. I am, however, less concerned with who claims to be where at this point than I am with de-spinning the actual information presented in any given article.
In this one, Mr. Sayers appears to be trying to get Giesecke to admit that he’s made a mistake, with questions that are really observations (e.g. “Ferguson’s numbers don’t look so wrong anymore, do they?“) and general criticism (e.g. telling G. that his estimates “add up to getting the overall picture very wrong“). Why is Mr. Sayers attempting to nurture G.’s self-doubt?
Giesecke courageously stuck to a position that he thought was the correct one (and was), in the face of overwhelming Swedish and international criticism. It would have been far easier/safer, etc. for G. to have done what so many other leaders did – cover their asses by taking exaggerated precautions which insulated them from immediate criticism. (aka “We’re doing all we can” aka “safety theatre”)
This was politically expedient for your average politician, but ignored the collateral harms that were quite real, but harder to criticize. G. did not engage in this politically expedient ass-covering, and will probably pay for that for the rest of his life. (Both directly from external criticism, and internally, where no one can fail to occasionally question the correctness of their previous actions.)
With respect to policy, the Covid lockdowners already have a great number of devil’s advocates on their side. Perhaps interviewers could resist the impulse to join them, and if feeling absolutely compelled to weigh in with their own opinions, give credit where it’s due.
With respect, I think you are missing the point that Giesecke was being interviewed by UnHerd last April for his expertise as an epidemiologist, not for the broader range of political and philosophical viewpoints he shares.
On the former (IFR, herd immunity, second wave etc) he was completely wrong and rightly admits that; on the latter, reasonable minds can disagree, and probably always will to at least some degree.
I have not forgotten that initially the UK and Sweden were both following the same strategy. Chris Whitty did an excellent interview in Feb 2020, on LBC I think, explaining it and it made perfect sense to me. The pressure to lockdown was mostly political as ‘everyone else was doing it’. I am convinced the virus was already circulating in the UK and Europe for much longer than the early figures would suggest, plus the UK’s status as a global travel hub, a less healthy population (diabetes/obesity) and high population density, not to mention cultural factors, all contributed to give us a higher death toll than others. The effects of such draconian laws affecting livelihoods, lives, and a direct challenge to centuries of hard-won freedoms is not something we should have swallowed so lightly. I am STILL convinced Sweden had the best approach – treading a line between caution and liberty, I just wish we’d had the temerity to stick to our guns too – but it is hard when you have the hysteria and grim political reality that accompanies the deaths of 1000s of citizens. A no-win situation in many ways.
If only we had such sensible non shrieky public figures. I believe that in a few years we will find that even with vaccines (which I believe we should all have) we will probably find that death rates were about similar whatever measures different countries took. We will also find that the average numbers of deaths over 5 year periods will be marginally up.
The differences will be on young people. Sweden’s youngsters still went to school while ours festered at home. Then, of course there’s the excessive waiting lists for basic medical care that will take a generation to wash out.
Are you saying that Sweden is not going to have a backlog in routine medical care? I suggest you take a look at today’s headlines in Sweden. There is no silver bullet, and Sweden’s healthcare system is struggling just as UK’s was, as Giesecke himself says.
In Sweden, in the most overstressed places, people who need elective surgery are complaining because it it is being delayed 2 weeks. And why not! Pleanty reason to complain. Our health care system is discovering that redundancy was a nice thing we used to have and do not now. The newspapers are full of this, but the healthcare system here is not *struggling*– some of us are badly overworked, but that is not a struggle — and many of us are using this particular crisis to argue that Black Swan events must be prepared for. One hell of a lot better than we were this time.
All 16 + and university students in Sweden were online until September 2020. Online again with the new wave in December.
excessive waiting lists for basic medical care need not take a generation to wash out – but they may if health continues to be as underfunded and under resourced as it was pre-covid.
It’s absurdly manipulative for Johan Giesecke to compare Swedish infection and death rates to those in the UK. He claims Sweden fared better because it didn’t lock down. Are lockdowns the ONLY variable in the spread of Covid? Really? Since it’s spread from human to human, shouldn’t population density be considered? The UK has 275 people per sq. kilometer. Sweden has 25. Imagine how well they could have done if they had employed lockdowns and masks!
If I remember correctly Covid deaths in Sweden was mainly in Stockholm. Not throughout the country. I live in South Africa where most of the population live cheek by jowl, there was no hard lockdown in the last wave and it plummeted as other epidemic curves do.
Although Sweden has a much lower density than the UK, the far, far majority lives in the south.
A caveat: it’s possible that the bottom end of Freddie’s range and the Ioannidis number could be largely consistent with each other because COVID risk is so age-stratified. Ioannidis’ number is global.
That said, I also was taken aback by Freddie confidently stating that we *know* the IFR to be in that range, especially without linking to a source. It being in that range for countries with the age distribution of Western Europe wouldn’t surprise me, but I think we still have a fair amount of uncertainty about IFR. Not sure we’ll ever be too sure of it because I think we’ve passed the point where really high-quality serology sampling over time would have given good estimates.
It would have been interesting to hear his views on the UK and Sweden Excess Mortality graph.
You can get it by selection here:
https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid
Basically it is the same story ie Sweden and UK in sync but Sweden lower. Until it diverges in early Jan, but in the opposite way to cases, hospitalisations and to some extent confirmed COVID deaths. Sweden’s excess mortality went negative in early Feb and has stayed negative. UK did not go negative until Mid Mar, but all other indicators show a worsening situation in Sweden from Feb.
Whilst you have the Excess Mortality graph open, add Belarus – the country that did not have lock down but has very few confirmed COVID deaths. Excess Mortality grows up until End Jun (40% Belarus Vs -3% in UK) compared to virtually exactly equal 7 day rolling average confirmed deaths at end Jun. Then the excess mortality data from Belarus ceases. The clearest case of a country outright lying about its figures, yet the ardent scamdemicits still love to use Belarus in their argument.
The problem is the stats themselves. If Sweden’s test regime was unreliable like the UKs the figures mean nothing. If the ideology that wrote up the tests is unreliable (or mendacious, like the UK) the figures are meaningless. Assuming Swedish medicos didn’t record motorcycle crashes as “covid” like the UK did they got hit very badly. With exceptions in the drug using and middle east migrant communities in my exp modern Swedes are a nervous bunch and tend to be nesh. This may explain the high death rates or fake stats, Eric XIV is spinning in his grave.
“record motorcycle crashes as “covid” like the UK did”
Who ? Where ? When ? Did you see the death certificate ?
Well at least they didn’t claim that H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh was a Covid death,(unlike Sir, Captain Tom).
so all is not quite lost.
Today’s headline in Sweden:
“Close to catastrophe”: How Covid-19 is affecting other healthcare in Sweden
https://www.thelocal.se/20210416/close-to-catastrophe-how-covid-19-is-affecting-other-healthcare-in-sweden/
This has only been recently and not throughout the pandemic. You are misleading people again.
Wrong. Sweden also delayed routine healthcare during the first wave in spring 2020 and then in the second wave at the end of 2020 (see articles below).
In any event, the point is more that where Covid spreads widely, general healthcare suffers.
It’s not a simplistic “lockdowns v. routine healthcare” dichotomy that so many commentators here seem to think.
https://www.thelocal.se/20200623/how-sweden-doubled-intensive-care-capacity-to-treat-coronavirus-patients/
https://www.thelocal.se/20210109/hospitals-in-sweden-forced-to-delay-necessary-operations/
https://www.thelocal.se/20201216/stockholm-and-skane-postpone-all-planned-care/
You are mistaken. Postponement of routine healthcare also happened in Sweden during the first and second waves in spring 2020 and winter 2020.
I have just posted links to articles in Swedish press last year about how Covid was causing health care to be cancelled. However, my post is now “awaiting for approval” from the moderator. You can take a look at the links once the post is approved.
‘Severe pressure’ == 2 week delay for surgery, that surgery not being for Cancer and other surgeries for which a delay is not recommended.
I.e like he problem I had, needing a surgical hernia to be stitched up. Annoying that I had to wait an extra 12 days this summer. Not the same thing as people needing cancer or other life threatening surgery postponed.
Hospitals in the U.S. are at 85% capacity during a normal flu season. What’s amazing is that they have been able to deal with a pandemic with existing capacity.
The lockdown response elsewhere has “postponed” healthcare – nationwide – for many months.
Because the succumbed to the UN WHO/WEF Davos pressure to comply. Now they have no option but to follow orders their masters.
PS Try and investigate who are the Shareholders and their links.
Hospitals saved my mother’s life, mine too, potentially my son’s, gave my father the utmost care for 5 months following his stroke – left hospital in a wheelchair, physio got him out of it,he’s still here 17 years on. Yes FB. Hospitals are dreadful nasty places that just want to hurt us.
Have you forgotten C-difficile and MRSA? or didn’t you get it in Wales?
My decrepit mother went into the JR in Oxford a few years ago for minors repairs. Three days later killed by MRSA, bravo!
For JR read Scutari.
It is not just Sweden that has a lower Covid death rate than the United Kingdom – ALL the nations that did NOT lockdown have a lower Covid death rate than the United Kingdom. Even very poor countries such as Belarus and Nicaragua. Nor is it just the United Kingdom – some other lockdown countries had an even worse record of Covid deaths.
The lockdowns have done terrible harm in many countries – and very large numbers of people will die because of the long term damage they have done. The excuse for the lockdowns was that they would reduce the Covid 19 death rate – and we now know that this justification is false.
Paul,
Belarus is falsifying its figures. Nobody knows how horrendous the real death toll is there because it stopped reporting excess deaths when they hit 40% at the end of Jun – a time when UK excess deaths were -3%.
It is a complex issue and simplistic analysis will give the wrong answer. Using exemplars that falsify the data definitely gives the wrong answer.
Regarding differing outcomes (i.e., per capita COVID mortality) between countries (or their regions, U.S. states, etc.): do we have historical records indicating if this is really so unusual?
For example, if we look back at the flu pandemics of 1968 and 1957, did flu-related mortality vary by multiples between harder-hit and lesser-impacted areas? I don’t know the answer, but I’m very curious to know.
Maybe the records aren’t good enough to assess it? I understand that any available records certainly aren’t as detailed as what we have for COVID. I’d think, though, – at least for countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Western European nations – there are good enough death records to look at excess mortality, by month, down to the level of specific states/regions.
The idea, of course, would be to see how much mortality varied even for a respiratory virus pandemic where the policy response was basically the same across countries. (Specifically, my understanding is that the policy response was essentially doing nothing until the arrival of vaccines, other than perhaps closing schools when a lot of teachers and students were home sick.)
When a clock strikes 13 all its previous strikes come under suspicion and send it back to the clock makers. When a clock then strikes 13 five or six times, it is time to seek a new clock smith!
Just watched the interview and what strikes me is how Johann Gieseke appears to be the no fuss, right to the point bloke. I was wrong he says on a couple of subjects………most scientists …..tv doctors…..would rather choke than admit they were wrong and precisely, this is when one admits one has been wrong that one can get out of the ego deadlock and move on. This is how science progresses……based on intuition and science based evidence.
I would agree that Pr Gieseke has overall been right. Closing schools was stupid on Norway s and Denmark s parts……their own health authorities were overruled by populist governments and this is were the Swedish system is one of a kind. Taking away powers that might be used on the electoral arena. Of course, you then need civil servants of the highest calibre…….like in France………just kidding. Actually, in all fairness to the guy, Macron has fought tooth and claw to keep schools opened after witnessing the damage it did during the first lockdown.
A friend of mine in the Gendarmerie told me about the time she was spending these last few months, auditioning kids after child abuse, something the government is acutely aware of. As to depression and suicides among the youth, the tally, if not cooked in the books, will be frightening.
Germany however has chosen to close schools since January and the social price to be paid for this will be astronomical…….leading the newspaper Die Welt to title “ the chancellery is run by a sect” ……Merkel and cronies wanting to lock the country even more severely to to show a clean slate when she will leave office in September.
I would very much like to see Pr Gieseke again next year.
Sweden did not fare as well as its supporters were hoping for. But neither as badly as its critics predicted. “Hospitals under pressure = the country locked down” (lockdown meaning more or less severe restrictions on contacts and movements together with large scale closings) seems a fair principle at the start. But in a pandemic with multiple waves and persisting stress on the health care system for years, as many leading epidemiologists and virologists have been predicting for months, you start with a temporary Emergency Act but end up with what seems more like a shift in the political system and society. Most epidemiologists are very uncertain that it will be over with a large and swift vaccination campaign, because of virus variants, waning immunity (especially in the vulnerable parts of the population), and the ca. 3-4% of the people that get the virus who need hospital treatment (which is a fairly small percentage but leads to overwhelming absolute numbers). The cheerful images from Israel an increasingly from the UK make a lot of people confident about the future. But the real test will be autumn and winter 2021-2022, when the virus and, as a result, the lockdown principle could very well return.
By all the things that Giesecke as one of the architects of the Swedish model had wrong in hindsight, he was right on the point that fighting a virus that spreads like a cold with large scale and long lasting restrictions on freedom is not a harmless thing to do. That these measures proved more or less possible in almost all European countries may be hopeful from a strictly medical point of view, but it is not equally reassuring from some other angles. I think that this is the point that at least some of the people who support the “Swedish way” (or non lockdown measures in general) are trying to make.
I guess proponents and critics of Sweden and, conversely, lockdown policies will disagree forever whether the covid figures show that Sweden was a failure or a success. But maybe this: epidemiologists noted that the SARS-CoV-2 has spread much more slowly than previously assumed (something also Giesecke admits as one of the mistakes he made in April 2020). Apart from some hotspots, nowhere (not even in Sweden) a nationwide infection of more than 20% of the population in the course of the past year seems likely. In the light of the fact that covid is considered to be highly contagious, this is a remarkable success. Strangely enough, no epidemiologist or government claims this as their success or even as surprising and good news. Moreover, just like in the UK and many other countries there was no spread of the flue in Sweden, for the first time since records began. Which is a further clue that even voluntary measures can achieve quite something. In the end, mandatory measures without mass police surveillance (for which no European country has the means, not even close) need some kind of voluntary cooperation of the population. So in the end, the difference between lockdown and voluntary measures is (in Europe) smaller than it seems. Apart from the fact that imposing serious restrictions on personal freedom and responsibility by law is a risky game, and the longer it lingers on, the more dangerous it feels to be.
Sayers goes on, rather nagging, about the number of deaths. With 70% to 80% of deaths being of those over 70, and an average Covid death age in the mid 80’s, it is obvious that many, many of those Covid deaths were just double counting. Those were people who would have died anyway or shortly thereafter.
Appalling. Prof. Giesecke wants children vaccinated. Freddie Sayers, please, PLEASE interview Michael Yeadon on this!
Compare Sweden’s suicide rate to everyone else’s, and you’ll see who truly did right w/r/t lockdowns.
Please do share those stats with us
Sweden has a suicide rate which is below the OECD average.*
Source: Wikibeast.
Sam, in the year 2022-2023 that may be of interest.
NYTimes reporting today that suicide rate fell 5% in US last year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/health/coronavirus-suicide-cdc.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20210416&instance_id=29310&nl=the-morning®i_id=116298684&segment_id=55696&te=1&user_id=bfb49bbc808955c9c59c24d83ef1704d
Well they would don’t you think. They are paid to do just that. Spout rubbish.
The statistics are garbage. Intentionally inflated falsified garbage in, garbage out
So where is your data ?
I‘ve come to the conclusion that Sweden’s lax handling of coronavirus has been “ineffective” and its controversial approach to the pandemic should not be given credence in the UK.
“Dr Tegnell said on Thursday that the autumn resurgence in infections had changed his agency’s understanding. “I think the obvious conclusion is that the level of immunity in those cities is not at all as high as we have, as maybe some people, have believed,” he said. Oct 10 2020.
In other words: “Playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order!”
Andrew Ewing, an analytical chemist at the University of Gothenburg said: “I worry that countries around the world are going to say, ‘We can try what Sweden did.’ But we have killed too many people already.” Oct 10 2020
“We have a very serious situation,” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven warned, saying the virus was “going in the wrong direction”. A bit like saying trains have had to be cancelled because of the wrong kind of snow. Nov 3 2020
In December the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters: “Of course the fact that so many have died can’t be considered as anything other than a failure.” !!!!
April 13 2021 More Covid-19 patients are currently being treated in intensive care in Sweden than at any other point in 2021, according to the latest figures from Swedish authorities.
That’s approximately a 65 percent increase since the start of March, and a higher number than the peak of the second wave which hit Swedish intensive care the hardest in early January.
What will be interesting to see is what happens to the excess death rate in the coming two or three years and whether it remains high.
‘People can’t die twice’ as I’m fond of saying, but presumably, particularly in advanced economies, more and more people who might otherwise have lived will now die of non-covid issues due to a lack of access to life saving and prolonging treatment thanks to these current covid measures.
Should this not be the case I shall be rather suspicious of these future figures to be honest.
Either that or imagine that these generally accepted treatments for well known illnesses to date amount to little more than quackery or be of the opinion that covid, whilst undeniably a killer, and as has been said facetiously many times before, must somehow bizarrely be saving lives at the same time as it has been taking them.
I don’t follow your logic.
Are you suggesting that overall healthcare would be better if Covid was left to spread?
Only today Swedish news is reporting that routine healthcare is being delayed because their hospitals are too burdened with Covid patients. Places like Brazil are even worse.
By contrast, countries with strict measures and low Covid cases, like Australia, Norway, and South Korea, are not delaying routine healthcare, because their hospitals are not under pressure.
https://www.thelocal.se/20210416/close-to-catastrophe-how-covid-19-is-affecting-other-healthcare-in-sweden/
There’s also likely to be a “people can’t die twice” effect that pushes in the opposite direction, however.
The question is how many deaths that were likely over the next 2-3 years were “pulled forward” by COVID. It looks like quite a few based on stats such as the age-stratification of COVID deaths and the percent occurring among residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. I’m not intending this to be wholly sanguine – in a philosophical sense, every death is “pulled forward” because we all die eventually – but it’s a statistical effect that pushes against any increase of the sort mentioned by G Harr.s
I suspect he has been put under pressure by the same people that made Squalid Boris Johnson do a 180° on his initial position.
The King of Sweden is part of the Elite cabal (Monarcy) and that demand was passed downwards to Stefan Löfven who told Giesecke to comply or else. He was threatened with a colour revolution… e.g Belarus or worse….Tanzania’s President John Magufuli who The European Union gave 27 million euros to Tanzania to impose COVID-19 measures prescribed by the WHO like strict lockdowns, masks and mass-scale vaccination. Tanzania took the money, then declared the country coronavirus free after demonstrating PCR was a load of hogwash…. disappeared and poof dead … a few days later. Then we have “The disappearance of Ivorian Prime Minister Hamed” https://axadletimes.com/ax-eye-on-africa/ax-west-africa/hamed-bakayoko-the-disappearance-of-a-charismatic.html5 … Dies later in Germany form a heart problem. Then we have Burindi…..https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/burundi-says-president-nkurunziza-has-died-of-heart-attack
Eswatini says Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini, (Premier of African Monarchy Is First Leader to Die of Covid) rather sudden suspect he was not very happy with the UN “build back better” policy? Then we have
Where do the numbers come from… our world in data. direct from their site…..”Our World in Data is supported by grants from the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom, a grant from the German entrepreneur, businesswoman and philanthropist Susanne Klatten, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
From 2015 to 2016 we were supported by a grant from the London-based Nuffield Foundation.
Another tidbit -https://greatgameindia.com/who-offered-20m-bribe-to-poison-covid-19-cure-madagascar-president
The WHo don’t like what is happening. So I don’t agree with the author. The whole thing stinks of coercion.
Those complaining about the measures taken by the UK government to control the pandemic should note what’s happening in Rawanda.
Rwanda has been both praised and derided for its aggressive pandemic response. It has committed to identifying every COVID-19 case, and provides most testing and treatment for free. It also implemented one of the earliest and most stringent lockdowns in Africa.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, you couldn’t move,” Munyakindi said. “There was police everywhere. You had to have a very good reason to go anywhere and you had to be able to prove it. It was really tough.”
There was a 7pm curfew. If you were caught out you were taken to a stadium where you had to spend the night.
From Five Countries, Five Experiences of the PandemicCitizens from around the world share their coronavirus stories.Dhruv Khullar New Yorker January 17, 2021. Extremely good article.
Local Swedish news today. On the plus side, the age of those in ICU has massively fallen (a third are under age 50) because vaccination is now protecting a lot of the elderly/vulnerable, and younger people in ICU of course have a much higher survival rate than the elderly.
Hopefully we’ll continue to see the relationship between cases/hospitalisations/deaths disconnecting as the vaccine rollout gathers pace.
https://www.thelocal.se/20210421/yes-its-really-that-bad-several-swedish-regions-have-reached-maximum-intensive-care-capacity/
Well done Freddie Sayers (whose father I know) for getting Johan Giesecke back. And to Giesecke for doing this. Had Freddie been brutal we would have had no repeat interview.
Always best to let people like Giesecke (he makes me think of a lovechild between Reinhard Heydrich and Gollum, but without either the looks or the charm) prattle on and hang themselves with their own words.
This whole debate has now rapidly become hyper-politicised and highly toxic. Just look at the other comments – some excoriating Sweden, others lauding to the heavens. It is good and important to hear all views and perspectives, which is why giving him a platform is right.
Restricting the spread of the virus in its surge mode was needed EVERYWHERE otherwise health services would have run out of beds and drugs very fast – in the first few weeks – as we have seen in Brazil, in Lombardy and New York – and people in large numbers would have died at home very rapidly. Most healthcare systems, and certainly the under-funded and badly prepared ones like the NHS and the Swedish public system, buckled initially, and then struggled to catch up.
If health services were run in normal times not at 99% capacity but at say 80% then there would not have needed to be the big panic response over here. Lockdown in the UK done 2 weeks earlier would have saved 50% of the deaths in the first wave. Important when people carp on about “lockdowns not working”. Of course if you lockdown after everyone is dead, there will be no lives saved. Of course, if you launch life-boats from a sunken ocean liner, there will be no lives saved. The lock-down in the UK was 10-14 days later than was advised, caused by the arch-ditherer in chief, Johnson.
Nightingales and surge capacity look re-assuring but they don’t do as much as you think (there are no more staff from the magic staff training tree) so normal services then become highly reduced – again something that is not commented on – happening in the UK with longer waiting lists for treatment than ever before. And in Sweden too. In Sweden, it seems like many older people in care homes were euthanased – given no oxygen but plenty of morphine. Now we are over some of the worst of it, we are facing a tsunami of more heart attacks, strokes, dialysis and cancer. Happening here in the UK (over 400,000 patients now waiting for 12 months plus for treatments).
Of course lockdown has very many serious downsides. It is a “choose your poison” moment. Not right or wrong, which is a facile lens through which to view these matters. Facile trite analyses abound with people incapable or unwilling to do the mental effort to plot the whole episode out.
A pity Sayers did not probe the Great Barrington Declaration enthusiasm in some parts of Sweden. And here too. It will take many more years to understand well enough what worked and what didn’t. There has been large-scale indifference to the loss of life in Sweden, at least as expressed in public. A very Swedish response, but one well suited to GBD strategies. Sweden failed badly to protect the elderly. Many died. Much of this was preventable, but, it seems no-one really cares that much. “Dry tinder” is harder to shed tears over, than poor demented defenceless old timers.
Overall, the excess mortality tells the story best of all. But even there, it is a net impact, who does better (survives more than expected), and who does worse than expected (a lot). Who gains, who loses? And who gets to choose? This is displaced mortality – but it needs to be taken into account, and honest conversations had with the populace.
Giesecke got key things wrong by being blinkered, stubborn, arrogant and unfeeling. He is of course Swedish and so these attributes can often taken as national characteristics and entirely to be expected! That’s quite unfair of course as that does not really represent the real Sweden. Actually, Giesecke is just a blinkered foolish old man, long past his retirement. Remember, Social Democracy in Sweden legislated for coerced and forced abortions in 66,000 Swedes who were mentally feeble or unable to support themselves between 1934 and 1976, when the legislation allowing that was finally repealed when the Social Democrats lost power. It took a further 23 years (1999) for Sweden to admit its mistakes and offer some feeble compensation to the few surviving victims.
And so it will be here; now there is no question of suggesting that the response was anything other than pitch perfect, but when Carlson and Giesecke are dead, and Tegnell in a home, then it will be time to admit the mistakes. Most critically, the absentee landlord, the vicar of vacuity Prime Minister welder-in-chief Lofven, will have retired by then (or been overthrown). The Corona commission part 2 when it reports in late 2021 / early 2022 might surprise us all there. It will either castigate the terrible trio of Carlson, Giesecke and Tegnell, or, laud them to the heavens, and recommend that they all are awarded Order of the Seraphim medals!
Let’s see in another 12 months.
”A few comments:
Not that different from a lockdown, then, except they worked by moral pressure instead of clear rules.
Sounds like political choices to me. What authority and expertise does he have as a politician as opposed to an epidemiologist?
Denmark is not – yet still did much better than Sweden. Cherrypicking?
Be really interesting to hear what the medical effect of that was supposed to be.
There are also much fewer people who were born outside Europe living in these two countries.
There is a cultural effect as well as medical.
Please elaborate
I suspect, differences in eating together, differences in socialising, differences in the will to follow rules, differences in the enforcement of rules (I will cite Sinn Fien for this). If you say I have not done my research, I agree.
Google up “Coronavirus came to Sweden from countries that were under our radar” from thelocal.se . Sickness came to all of the Scandinavian countries from returning travellers who contracted the disease abroad the last week of February. This is a week when relatively few people in Denmark or Norway are travelling — they have their winter break one and 2 weeks earlier in the year. The people of Malmö (who vacationed at the same time as the Danes) and Göteborg (who vacationed at the same time as the Norwegians) did not get sick when they were travelling on their winter break vacations — at any rate they did not head for the hospitals.
It was the people in Stockholm who returned home sick. The last week of February is the second heaviest week for international travel in Sweden. Many, many more sick people returned to Sweden, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. Over 10% of the population was out of the country at this time.
And while genetic examination of the covid variants responsible was able to determine that most of the sick Danes and Norwegians were suffering from an Italian or Austrian variant (which they got on a ski vacation), the Swedes did not find this. Skiers were expected to be the main vector into Sweden and people returning from Italy (and very shortly thereafter Austria), Iran, China and South Korea who had symptoms (this is back when we thought you had to be symptomatic to spread the disease) were instructed to call the health authorities and isolate at home. It worked a treat — hence the fact that Sweden mostly did not get its covid beginning with people who caught it in the alps. Instead they caught it from people who were in the UK, and the Netherlands, and USA, and Thailand and ….
Sweden has a much greater proportion of immigrants than Norway or Denmark, by a very large margin. Thus there were more people here who were visiting ‘the old country’ just in time to get sick there — which is a large reason why Sweden had so many covid variants in the country compared with Norway and Denmark.
First I hear of this – but it does sound reasonable.
Another reminder that this situaton is way too complex to allow simple conclusions.
People from ethnic minorities have died at a greater rate everywhere in Europe & North America. I think that is established fact.
Whether that is due to vitamin D deficiency due to dark skin, prevalence of multi-generation families, tendency to live in higher density in city centres or “white supremacy” is TBD.
add “are more likely to work in industries where you cannot work from home” to this list of factors to adjust for.
The first is apparently accurate – dark skin is linked to higher D deficiency. Governments should have been shouting vitamin D from the rooftops. I am very fair and I’ve in a sunny country and have been taking D throughout.
I speak of that medical effect of having more immigrants later in a differnt reply to you, but the Swedish pattern of ‘how the nation got infected’ looks like the UK and not like Norway. Lots of start points from differing virus strains, instead of 1 or maybe 2.
Whether this matters or not depends on whether getting exposed to 2 slightly different versions of the virus means you are more likely to get sick. Epidemiologists hand wave a lot about this, but they mostly say “yes under most circumstances”. Some, of course, say that only significantly different versions matter. Then they argue what is the meaning of ‘significantly different’ — but this you cannot know in theory. In practice, you know. A new variant shows up and either a whole lot of people get sick or they don’t. If they do, it was significantly different, and if not it wasn’t.
Why don’t you look at other countries that did not follow the WHO, Like Tanzania? Nepal, Madagascar, Taiwan, Belarus? All have had very low rates. Besides having a leader murdered like Tanzania. Let’s watch their data suddenly change. I’ll put money on that for sure..
The most obvious conclusion comparing Giesecke’s various public statements to what has actually taken place is that Giesecke is a blowhard and and an entirely unreliable source. This was obvious to many at the time. His attractiveness was solely that he said things that many liked to hear.
I wonder what the point of interviewing him again is. Nothing he says is at all reliable. One may as well interview David Icke or Piers Corbyn. Or do I get to read those too if I pay for membership?
As Mr Sayers discussed the other week with Christopher Snowden, the problem with most lockdown sceptics, save for the likes of Lord Sumption, is that they tried to fix the epidemiology around their world view. Sumption sensible has stuck to political/philosophical arguments.
It is indeed odd to interview an epidemiologist like Giesecke, who is supposed to be giving us an informed steer on the epidemiology, only in effect to be told that he’s completely wrong on the epidemiology (IFR, herd immunity, second wave (plus his ignorance over vaccine prospects)) but that doesn’t matter because he raises reasonable political and philosophical arguments.
(For the avoidance of doubt before the lockdown sceptics here attack me, I do think his concerns are reasonable).
Of course, I still think there’s merit in interviewing Giesecke again — not least to put the nail in the coffin of his initial theories on how the pandemic would pan out — but it is intellectually a bit dishonest of Mr Sayers to try to create false balance between his epidemiological and philosophical views. Giesecke was interviewed as an epidemiologist, not a political philosopher or statistician who can comment on wider socioeconomic effects.
Exactly!
Well that’s a surprise [NOT]
Freddie Sayers softens you up by talking about ‘admitting mistakes’ to make his argument more persuasive.
And then he trots out exactly the same stuff as a year ago.
Wouldn’t it be great if a website could actually give you content that helps you to make up your mind , rather than this opinionated bilge.
Waste of electrons.
Population denseness? Denmark id 8 times as densely populated than Sweden, and they have a much lower deathrate.
Giesecke was wrong, and still is. Scientist that are so devoid of criticism of their own failed predictions, and still maintain that they are right, are not scientists, but delusionists
Credit to Mr Sayers for identifying Giesecke’s gross errors on IFR, seroprevalence, vaccine prospects, and outcomes in Norway/Denmark/Finland — not to mention his mistaken belief that Sweden (now in its third wave with full ICUs) would not experience a second wave.
Reasonable minds can differ on the philosophical/political issues that Giesecke raises; we must certainly be ever vigilant about the potential eroding of civil liberties and democratic oversight of the executive.
But in a pandemic, we need epidemiologists with good judgment on the epidemiology, and evidence-based decision making.
Regrettably, Giesecke’s poor epidemiological advice a year ago did not prepare us (or the Swedish government) for what was to come; he arguably gave the most extreme lockdown sceptics in the UK and US false hope, and at worst actively undermined public health messaging.
By contrast, the March 2020 Imperial College report proved a far better guide of what would happen over the past year than Giesecke’s predictions, as anyone who has actually read it knows.
It is depressing to already see comments here questioning the Covid death toll, in the face of all the world class statistical analysis from Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, Tim Harford and others on excess deaths. As Mr Sayers alluded to in his interview with Christopher Snowden the other week, one of the major reasons I think the lockdown sceptics lost the political argument so decisively was that they had to resort to misinformation to make their case. Lord Sumption is an honourable exception: a rational man with a very big brain, he wisely stuck to philosophical and political arguments, rather than question the epidemiological facts.
A gross error on vaccine prospects? A year ago there was an almost unanimous consensus among experts that a viable vaccine would take a minimum of two years, but the probability was that it would take longer or perhaps would never emerge.
If what all the experts were saying had come to pass and we were here today after the socially and economically devastating lockdowns and other restrictions with no vaccine on the horizon, who would be the wiser – the Swedes who had maintained their economy and society were on their way to herd immunity or the lockdown countries sitting on enormous debt, mass unemployment and business insolvency, medical treatment backlogs for severe conditions in the millions, children going uneducated, and no end in sight?
To smugly assert that the Johan Giesecke made a gross error in the rapidity of the production of a viable vaccine is rewriting history and neglecting to recognise that the speed at which vaccines that have been produced is unprecedented and a year ago would have been regarded as miraculous.
In the beginning no one knew anything for sure. Many epidemiologists – not only in Sweden – thought that COVID (like SARS) would never get to Europe, or would have almost no effect if it did. Giesicke thought that COVID was spreading much faster and was eight times less dangerous than it proved to be. We are all entitled to our guesses, and he (and Sweden) could have got lucky. But it is irresponsible to gamble thousands of lives on your personal guesses when the situation is so obviously uncertain. More cautious people at least allowed for the risk that COVID might be much more dangerous than they hoped. Giesicke did not. One wonders whether he based his policy recommendations on independent estimates – or whether he (subconsciously?) adjusted his estimates so he could recommend his preferred policies.
When Sweden decided its policy there were years of study of coronaviruses by epidemiologists and there was have substantial data from China and elsewhere indicating the communicability of the Virus and death rates. It was clear from the very first published study in January 2020 that the Virus was a serious risk only to the elderly and infirm. Epidemiologists knew they were not dealing with something deadly such as Ebola, but simply a serious respiratory illness. The Swedes were not, as you suggest, taking a gamble in the dark as to what they were dealing with.
The point that Johan Giesecke and others made, and has subsequently been proven correct, is that lockdowns simply delay infections; immediately after they are lifted the spread of the Virus resumes.
Starting from the position of knowing that they were dealing with a coronavirus which. although more dangerous than others, had a very high percentage of survivability (97%+) and that lockdown were socially and economically destructive temporary fixes, and a vaccine was in all probability years away – the approach of the Swedes was entirely logical and correct.
Up till now I’d say that Denmark has been doing rather better. Data from Denmark (let alone Taiwan, Korea, China, New Zealand) do not yet show that you get the same number of deaths with or without lockdown. In what way has that been proved, then? To be sure we might still get there in a few years, but I’d say the point is very much in doubt for now. There is certainly no way it could have been known for certain back then.
I will ask a simple question: if we were in the position we are in now and there was no vaccine in sight. would you advocate for continuing the cycle of lockdowns and restrictions and relaxations indefinitely until a vaccine hopefully emerged?
The current cycle of lockdowns and too-early relaxations could only make sense as a holding exercise while you got the health service up to scratch and hoped for a vaccine. Failing that you would have to either go for zero-COVID with test-and-trace (as China, Taiwan, Korea, etc. have managed), or accept openly that everybody will get it and x-hundred-thousand will die. Neither is a great choice. If possible I would probably prefer zero-covid with its civil liberty problems to let-it-rip with its many dead, but either choice can be defended. *Provided* you are willing to take responsibility for the expected consequences and do not try to fudge it.
The question I would like to ask – of Giesicke – is: If you had know a year ago that your estimates for fatality rate, infectivity, and herd immunity were quite wrong,what difference would it have made to your decisions? If the answer is ‘none at all’, it would suggest to me that he decided on different (political?) basis and adjusted his data to fit.
I wish you would stop looking for ‘bias and adjusted his data to fit’ and started looking at ‘chinese lies about covid and how long it took us to uncover them’ — because ideas as to whether the virus is airborne or not matter enormously, and the chinese insisted that it was surface droplets only until we could prove that lie, one of many.
See my comment below.
you, like me are catching each others comments. 🙂 Meet you at the top sometime if we can find it.
I think we are right now indicating the best that unherd can offer — people who have a tiny amount of understanding where the hidden truth lies and who want to discuss it, and attempt to discuss truth here as opposed to ‘knowing what narrative they want to win and backing it what so ever the truth is’.
But if we keep meeting like this, the rules will mean we only get 12 CHARS or so soon…..
Indeed. I have already learned several interesting things from you. Thanks.
You are most welcome.
“The point that Johan Giesecke and others made, and has subsequently been proven correct, is that lockdowns simply delay infections; immediately after they are lifted the spread of the Virus resumes.”
But the point is, what policy decisions do you make based on that scientific assessment? Delaying infections turns out to be a smart thing to do, both from the point of view of preventing healthcare systems being swamped and because a vaccine can arrive sooner than you thought.
Yep. They gambled that their much reduced critical care bed capacity would be enough to cope with their serious cases combined with :
a compliant population
a policy of just palliative care for the majority of the elderly (a good bolus of something calming in the last few hours – still illegal in the UK)
smallest average household size in the OECD (1.99)
40% of households are single person
largest age group 25 – 34 years (in 2019)
…. and they lucked out.
er, not the majority of our elderly, but the majority of the elderly in hospital-home care. And by god we had only 2 years ago a report that we should stop sending people from elderly hospital homes to be inkubated because, under 1% of those sent lived through it.
I know that he based his recommendations based on data from China, where this thing started. We now know 2 things — First — people in SE Asia whether they had strict lockdown (i.e. China, Singapore) or weak lockdown (i.e. Japan, Laos, Vietnam) all were much less likely to get severely sick from Covid than other places. Since SE Asia is the home of corona viruses (nearly all of them start here, as opposed to the Americas or Europe) it makes sense that fewer people there become severely sick — either they have been exposed to a different corona virus that gives partial or complete immunity, or their genes have been subject to evolutionary pressure to make them less susceptible to corona viruses in general. So Chinese estimates of how dangerous the virus was to the Chinese, if true, would still underestimate the danger to those not in SE Asia.
Second — the Chinese lied, lied, lied, lied and lied to the WHO. They lied when they said that you needed to be symptomatic to spread the disease — they were well aware that this was not so. They lied about transmission paths — they said that it was not airborne. The policy recommendations were based on the idea that the Chinese would not lie about this. We now know this is wrong.
Giesicke — and everybody else — were not making personal guesses. They were believing the Chinese numbers. Either the virus is much less dangerous to people in Wuhan or in se asia in general as compared to the rest of the world, or the Chinese lied about it. Or, what we now know — both are true.
There were a lot of people from various countries who thought that COVID was unlikely to be a big problem in Europe. The Danish health authorities for one. Based on general knowledge of viruses and/or what (Chinese) data were available that was clearly not an unreasonable position. The thing is that as more data came in and things deteriorated in Italy etc. most other countries fairly quickly decided that they did not know enough to dismiss the risk that it might be quite a bit worse than that. I believe that the Danish government overruled the Danish health authorities, for the first measures. The British government held out a bit longer, I seem to remember, but people kept asking how come their ‘science-based’ policy told them to keep it low-key, when the same science told other countries to take rather more drastic measures. In the end they changed tack.
The Swedish health authorities stand out because they were remarkably certain that they had got it right, and they stuck to that view for a remarkably long time. And of course because the Swedish government chose to delegate the policy decisions to the health professionals. The fact that ever more scientists and countries took a different view did not seem to make anybody re-think. As it sounded in other countries, the Swedish attitude seemed to be that if Sweden acted differently from the whole rest of the world, that obviously meant that Sweden was right and nobody else understood what was going on.
My opinion at the time was that with luck the Swedish approach might well prove superior in the end, but that there was not enough reliable information to prove that it might not be a disaster. No matter how reasonable their views were, they were taking unacceptable chances in not allowing for the risk that their views might be wrong. I still stand by that opinion. Maybe it is unfair to suggest that Giesicke decided mainly on a non-scientific basis. (even if his current argumentation sounds notably non-medical). Maybe, as Ferguson said, he decided on the first evidence, and then married himself to his first opinion and refused to reconsider it later. To me the whole affair suggests that scientists are the people you need to get hold of the available data, but that they (we) are *not* the best to take decisions when the situation is uncertain. And Giesicke, Tegnell et al., are the prime exhibit.
It is very clear that covid variants in SE Asia have not succeeded as well as other places. This is whether or not there has been strong lockdown or not. Nobody knows why, of course, but a change between SE Asian populations vs European ones is indicated.
Preliminary evidence from California seems to indicate that it is not genes, but exposure — native born californians of se asian parents get covid at the same rate as any other californian, while those born in SE asia do not do so.
But we need more data. It is still ‘small sample size’ time.
How does your theory fit with all those white Brits recently moved to HK, Australia or NZ in the past few years not getting COVID? You’re grasping at straws. The most plausible explanation for why Covid didn’t swamp Asia is that those countries closed borders and implemented SARS plans, whereas the West kept borders open and implemented flu plans (hence Giesecke initially assumed Covid spread rapidly like flu, when it does not).
In fairness, both factors could have an influence – even if I, too, think that their policies were more important than their previous exposure.
Yep, though I think it is very clear on the best available evidence right now which is the more likely of those two factors.
It is human to err and especially so when it comes to a new disease. But to propagate views with absolute certainty that later prove to be wrong is unforgivable. Unfortunately that is what Giesecke did and most likely influenced Tegnell et al. to follow a similar track.
Your memory is playing tricks. A year ago, Vallance said it was possible, at a stretch, that a vaccine would be available within a year. Fortunately, the UK Government acted on that assumption.
Indeed. It is telling that European civil servants and politicians from Giesecke and Tegnell to Macron said a quick vaccine wasn’t possible. Meanwhile, with the support of the US gov, the private sector in the US, harnessing European innovation from BioNTech, got to work — a similar story with AZ and Oxford too of course — and secured one of history’s outstanding scientific achievements. Thank goodness the world is not full of the likes of Giesecke.
The March 2020 paper from Imperial was predicting 12,000 deaths per day at a peak together with a sustained period of a month where deaths were at over 10,000 per day if the government did nothing.
It also claimed that a combination of case isolation+home quarantine+social distancing, school/universityclosure+case isolation+social distancing would reduce the figure of 510,000 fatalities to 48,000
Over-estimating the original risk and massively over-estimating the effectiveness of the non-pharmaceutical interventions, it was a disastrous piece of analytical modelling with appalling consequences still to be experienced.
As I keep saying, if you accept the sort of IFR that Sayers quotes (applicable in a country with lots of old fatties) there’s no need for fancy modelling to get your 500,000 deaths, you can do it on the back of an envelope (given the R0 value). If you can’t do it on the back of an envelope, you’ve no business commenting on more complex models like Imperial’s.
That is one of your less intelligent interventions (and there are a number to choose from).
The 510,000 figure would be unconvincing as a back-of-envelope calculation, but what is worse is the concentration of death predicted by the Imperial modelling within a four week period. For that level of fearmongering you need a model and a deeply flawed one to boot.
Maybe you could share your back of the envelope calculation with us?
If the UK population is 65m, you assume 75% of the population catch the virus before herd immunity is achieved that and 0.9% of those die, you get just under 440,000 deaths. Bear in mind that the IFR figure here assumes some sort of functioning health service. If cases had been as high as this, the NHS truly would have been overwhelmed, so the number of deaths could well have been over 510,000. Of course, in reality, people would take precautions and shield themselves, even without any formal lockdown. The Imperial paper acknowledged this, which is why 510,000 was never a prediction.
UK population is 70 Million England 58m Scotland 5m Wales 3.5m Nireland 3.5m 9UN Figures) 127,000 SARS2 attributed deaths is Way over 5% of that closer to 6,750 deaths..the rest had Underlying illnesses ..4.7million on waiting list will kill far more than sARS2
It is a while ago now but wasn’t the Imperial modeling done on spreadsheets (the scientific equivalent of a fag packet) and when they were forced to publish (after weeks of cleansing) didn’t it get torn apart by modeling specialists
Initially yes.
If you would like to read a more throrough and nuanced account of what went on I commend to you an article that appeared in Nature in June :
Critiqued coronavirus simulation gets thumbs up from code-checking efforts by Dalmeet Sing Chalwa
Always more complicated than the MSM make out.
John Carmack says no: it was originally a C file (he was part of a team who did the public release).
Some anonymous person on Lockdown Sceptics said the code was scrappy. I’ve not seen much criticism of the model itself.
But those IFRs are wrong. Moreover they were clearly going to be wrong at the time because they were based on tiny datasets, and because observed IFRs always fall with time. That’s been well known in epidemiology for years (there are papers discussing it from nearly a decade ago, at least, if not longer).
Anyone can multiply the population of a country by some large number and get a large number. That’s not science. Scientists are paid to know what the correct numbers are, but they have failed totally and completely in this case. If IFRs were anywhere near what Ferguson claimed then Sweden, Florida, South Dakota etc would all be drowning in bodies by now and the debate would have been over a year ago. The “debate”, if you want to call it that, is still raging because pro-lockdown people inexplicably refuse to accept the evidence of their own eyes – no mass death in places that didn’t lock down.
The Imperial paper did not predict anything. It suggested a range of outcomes (in March 2020) based on a range of mitigating actions. Some of the mitigating actions were taken, some weren’t and the outcome was broadly in the range suggested.
Sophistry.
The suggested range of outcomes amount to predictions.
In any modelling there is a concept called “validation” whereby you run known scenarios with known outcomes in order to test whether your model is anywhere close to those outcomes. The “do nothing” scenario and the “case isolation+home quarantine+social distancing, school/universityclosure+case isolation+social distancing” scenario would both indicate that the Imperial model was not valid. That is much easier to say now, but it was apparent to modelling professionals even back in March 2020.
Back then there were not enough data to start with, let alone known scenarios with known outcomes. Around that time another group of scientists (politically anti-lockdown) did a model calculation assuming that COVID was very contagious, very widespread and not very dangerous. They showed that that model, too, fit the available data, which would have meant that Britain was almost at herd immunity even then. This proved not to be the case.
Nothing wrong with either group. There were not enough data to do detailed predictions, and between them they were helping to show what the plausible range of outcomes might be, I’d say that Ferguson got somewhat closer than the other guys, though.
What known outcomes in March ?
China – according to other people on this forum all lies, lies,lies.
And Italy (where I was living at the time) – overwhelmed in Lombardy and almost in a state of shock.
National character. The Tuscans have made panic an art form.
The Tuscans were pretty calm – there has been one riot in the last 18 months (in September) that lasted all of 30 mins.
I meant historically speaking, also tinged with more than a hint of barbarism.
”Models” are as ‘Accurate’ As Mystic Meg, Proved wrong as had 45/60 Climatic Apocalypses ,the others will also be disprov ed …
And independent reviewers of that antiquated code made it clear it was very poorly written. my understanding is that the modeler is not a high quality asset in the epidemiologist tool chest
See this for a more accurate description of what was going on at the time :
“Critiqued coronavirus simulation gets thumbs up from code-checking efforts” by Dalmeet Sing Chalwa Nature June 2020
Always more nuanced than the MSM make out.
This is an example of the seen and unseen. The sickness and deaths are the seen. The damage to health of others being denied treatment, children missing school, businesses damaged and jobs/lives disrupted, and deaths due to social unrest and even future government actions, are the unseen, which can never be fully accounted. The damage to our love of freedom is immmeasurable.
If you look at excess deaths in the UK – see below – you have to question the Covid death toll. I like Harford and Spiegelhalter, but they have accepted the with/from Covid numbers a little too uncritically in my opinion. Using 0.92% death rate as an average benchmark, you end up with 62,000 excess deaths in the UK in 2020 – not insignificant by any measure – miles away from the supposed Covid headline number.
2015 602782 65110000 0.93%
2016 597206 65648100 0.91%
2017 607172 66040200 0.92%
2018 616014 66435600 0.93%
2019 615455 67530172 0.91%
2020 686000 67886011 1.01%
Harford has been completely uncritical of with/from Covid numbers and that he works for the BBC is probably a factor.
What’s the difference ?
If you didn’t have Covid you wouldn’t have died at that particular moment – straws, camels backs etc.
What gross errors? His original prediction of 0.1% is pretty much bob on given the many papers since claiming IFRs within that range and of those, many of them are biased high by various factors. If anything his original IFR estimate looks remarkably good and it’s unclear where Freddy got this much higher figure or why Giesecki appears to have agreed with it.
As for outcomes in Norway/Finland etc, again, what errors? As he points out, it’s those countries which are outliers, not Sweden. Should we be asking the Norweigan authorities why they made such gross errors of expecting COVID to matter for them? Well, probably not because despite epidemiology being well funded for many decades they have no idea whatsoever why countries are reporting such differing data. Epidemiology also can’t explain why Sweden is fine despite having not locked down, and many other basic questions. It’s a trash pseudo-science, in other words. In the current environment there are hardly any “epidemiological facts” that can be relied upon because the field is so corrupted by bad science and low standards.
Your arguments about lockdown skeptics are in a fantasy land I’m afraid. Those who argued against lockdown have won that completely – how could they not when Sweden and other regions are living proof that the predictions motivating lockdown were wrong? It’s ICL/Ferguson’s team that had to rely on misinformation. Read the criticisms of the Flaxman paper or the Ferguson model: those are exceptionally serious problems, grounded in facts and won’t simply go away because you wish them to. The Flaxman paper is basically fraud and yet it supposedly represents the cream of epidemiology as a field.
As for politics the lockdown skeptics were never given a chance to win a political argument to begin with because, as a lot of people have noticed, no political argument has been allowed at any point. Parliament voted itself out of existence and the entire set of policies invented by epidemiologists were imposed upon the world without even any normal form of political debate at all. “Lockdown skeptics” are now so numerous exactly because their many points have never been actually rebutted – just dismissed or ignored.
If Giesicke accepts the much higher IFR figure that sounds pretty significant to me.
Plenty of ideas as to why different countries have had different outcomes. You clearly haven’t been doing much reading.
Sweden :
Incidentally Sweden isn’t doing so well at the moment – surf’s up.
So from 24th of December:
Feb 25th : and yesterday asked restaurants to close… at 20:30.
Flaxman’s paper. Have you bothered to read his rebuttal to Stoltesz in Nature ?
Did Sweden fail? According to many Swedes, the Swedish media and even the King, yes.
Sweden’s King On Coronavirus: ‘We Have Failed’ (forbes.com)
But, of course, the armchair epidemiologists of Unherd will know better.
Many people have suggested we should have followed the Swedish model in the mistaken belief that Sweden didn’t have a lockdown. At least Giesecke puts this myth to rest. But the Swedish restrictions were not as extensive as elsewhere and the effects are obvious. If Giesecke thinks it’s more appropriate to compare Sweden with other European countries rather than with his Nordic neighbours, let’s look at Germany. The Swedish fatality rate in the first wave was four times that of Germany – hardly success.
Of course, this is not all over yet. In the long run, the excess deaths statistics will determine the international Covid league table. I have believed from the start that positions on this table will be largely determined, not by lockdowns, border closures and so on, or their absence, but by the population’s density, age profile, and crucially its general health going into the crisis. Those few countries with a successful vaccination programme may be able to achieve a better position than otherwise but these will be exceptions.
The virtue signalling king. He has been watching too much mainstream media and should up his game and read the majority view of the Unherd commentary.
Actually, articles like the forbes one cherry picked what he said, and quoted him out of context, in order to support things he never meant. He’s really unhappy that, because we had a forced lockdown of those in hospital care facilities, people there had to die without being able to see their families. He’s really unhappy that successive governments (both of the right and the left) decided to save money by shrinking the size of ICUs, making the mistake of believing that Black Swan Events needing a whole lot more capacity in ICUs could not happen. He’s angry that people in the hospital care facilities were given palliative care instead of being sent to the hospitals. (Aside: but then, early on we only knew to intubate people with severe covid and the frail elderly people in hospital care , where your life expectancy — if you aren’t there for reasons of dementia — in pre-covid times was ‘under 2 years’ — are already known to not survive intubation. The policy of not intubating such people is longstanding and not covid-specific.) And he is really unhappy that Sweden did not have enough protective equipment, because our disaster preparedness people warned about this in January, but still no extras were bought.
If you listen to the real interview, you will find that the King did not play up to the ‘Sweden: Poster Child for Covid Failure’ narrative. So you take a soundbyte here, and one there, do your own translation, and then explain what he said in terms of what you wish he had meant, and poof! you get the story that you want, rather than ‘we need to return to a less efficient and more redundant way of doing things’ which is what I got out of his speech. But then I very much believe this. Maybe I would.
Well this is refreshing ! someone who actually went to the source materail and looks as though they actually live in Sweden and know what went on in the spring of 2020.
Too many immigrants seems to be Ms Laura Creighton’s solution. How very refreshing!
??? If your only goal in life is to reduce the number of infectious variants, fine, do away with immigration. Not sure how else you think that I fit ???
You misunderstand me. I applaud your courage to mention the fact that immigration maybe a factor.
In the toxic times we live in, such honesty is unusual.
Thank you.
Thank you. All true. I live in Göteborg.
I live in Göteborg, yes. Thank you.
Read Dr Stephen Rushworths translation of a Swedish care home doctors account of the profile of residents in Sweden care homes and what happened in the care homes in 2020. It is a long, detailed essay.
“If Giesecke thinks it’s more appropriate to compare Sweden with other European countries rather than with his Nordic neighbours, let’s look at Germany”
Why Germany? Why specifically Germany..Why? Isn’t this what you call cherry picking to make your point? (especially when you KNOW that Germany’s approach was different to most other European countries). Look at ALL other European countries, especially ones with a similar demographic, specifically, ageing population, care homes etc….like Belgium, UK, Italy etc.
You sound desperate, Malcolm. It’s Giesecke doing the cherry-picking.
Of course, this is not all over yet.
It will never be over. That should be obvious by now. For more than a year, the goalposts have been steadily moved.
It will be over…eventually!
“War is the father of all things”.
If Boris,Michael Gove introduce ID Biometric cards then its death of privacy,Democracy,Globalist bast&&&& like UN,WHO,EU,try to skewer Freedoms, ”Its theirs they think to take ” ..Lib-Lab-Cons-Greens do little, SNP says it Actually welcomes,The Chinese Style Credit Card
Who cares what their king thinks? Is he an epidemiologist?
Sweden has, depending on how you calculate it, either no excess death in 2020 at all (if you believe the record breaking low 2019 was a one off), or quite small amounts (if you believe 2019 was the “new normal” for Sweden after about 8 years of stability).
In absolute numbers it was about the same as 2012.
This is fine. Therefore it doesn’t really matter what some king believes, or what some Swedish people think. The data speaks for itself: most epidemiologists were wrong, Tegnall and Gieseke were in fact correct. There was no need to lock down and never was. However, the policy was so extreme and so many people hocked their own self-worth to obeying it that there’s now a small army of people in denial about this. The list of ludicrous excuses for why Sweden isn’t a bloodbath keep changing every day, I think I’ve lost track of them all by now. These people will probably remain in denial for years.
It’s not surprising in fact it’s utterly predictable that Giesecke should defend Sweden’s catastrophic policies which have sentenced literally thousands of his compatriots to an early death..
He’s unwilling for Sweden to be compared to its Scandinavian neighbours for obvious but tendentious reasons but then absurdly compares it to the UK which is demographically absolutely dissimilar.
As a result of our government’s policies – some spot on, some absolutely not – we now have the lowest infection rate and the lowest death rate in Europe and are the European country soonest likely to return to the normality we all crave.
I live in Sweden so am presumably better placed to talk about it than you. The major mistake that was made was in elderly care that can account for half the deaths. This is admitted by Tegnell & co. Lack of provision of protective clothing early on and lack of control over visits. But the absence of general lockdown enforced by law and the police has been a success. Every individual death is a tragedy but Sweden has done well on that count. We’ve all had restrictions that have majorly impacted our lives but they’ve been a sensible balance with less economic impact. The UKs current relative success is 100% a product of purchasing the vaccine in greater numbers, earlier and the successful rollout. Nothing to do with the harder lockdown.
Yes, lowest rates now after having exported the UK variant pest to the rest of Europe where the curves are 2-3 months behind the UK curve, and this thanks to the vaccines and not lockdown or any of the idiotic measures imposed on the population. Spot on ? I think not.
Doctors have put Covid as the cause of death on 150,000+ death certificates.
But what do doctors know about medicine, compared with loudmouths on fringe websites?
Only yesterday the ONS said that up to 25% of those deaths were with covid but not from covid. So maybe some of the doctors were encouraged just to take the easy route… they are human after all
No.
All this information from a consultant in geriatrics and acute medicine in Manchester who writes for the BMJ and who used to oversee the “Learning from deaths” programme at the RCP :
Completion of death certificates is a serious and regulated part of a doctor’s responsibility. The consequences for professional registration or in the courts for deliberately falsifying certificates would be very serious. We are also very aware of just how upsetting the content of death certificates can be for bereaved families and the questions they can then have.
The rules require us to complete the certificate ‘to the best of your knowledge and belief’ and, barring exceptional circumstances, requires the certificate to be completed by a doctor who knew and was attending to the person before death.
Death Certificates contain causes 1a (cause directly leading to death) 1b and 1c (causes leading to 1a) and 2 (causes contributing to death but not directly related).
If Covid-19 is in our clinical assessment of the person we have assessed and treated the main cause of death, we will put it as cause 1a.
In other cases, someone might die from a complication of Covid-19 – for instance a pulmonary embolism (blood clot) or a bacterial pneumonia in which case that will be 1a with Covid as 1b or c.
In other cases, the person may have had Covid contributing to a death from another cause – perhaps by making the person weaker or more susceptible or starting a chain of events and may appear as 2.
If someone has a serious exisitng morbidity and then catches Covid and ends up in critical care, it is very unlikely that their virus has NOT contributed to them ending up there.
Bear in mind that death due to Covid can occur 3 months or later after discharge from hospital – myocarditis, kidney failure, thrombotic events post anticoagulant therapy and ICU. This is a multiorgan disease.
Wasting your breath here. Most commentators prefer to believe that the medical profession are lying to us – for some reason, don’t know what they gain from doing so but there it is. Whatever you say will make no difference sadly. I applaud you for trying.
Ahaha, is this the ‘daughters of Glendower’ I see before me?
Before Shipman you may have had a case. No longer.
See Chris Milburn’s post. Testimony from a doctor at odds with what you claim.
You are plainly wrong even by your own account. ‘bear in mind… due to covid… months later..’ By the same token death by cancer, tb or whatever could occur months later… And with a nudge from covid, does.
the plain first cause of death is birth. you apparently are choosing to step into the chain where you see covid (or think you see covid) and then claim that as the cause. this is not legitimate.
The doctor looking after the patient makes the final determination.
What does any doctor in the UK get out of filling in 1a,b,c or 2 with the word Covid ?
They aren’t paid to use this word on the death certificate.
Do they get some sort of thrill do you think ?
Bear in mind … that is why the 2020 stats are still provisional.
My Father was a GMP. He used to bemoan the fact that he was not allowed to fill in the words “died of a broken heart” on death certificates because of the number of spouses who died shortly after their partners.
Chris – I’m a doctor in Canada. In my hospital we had a lady in her late 70’s, with end-stage, metastatic cancer, admitted to the palliative care ward for what would be her last week of life for pain control. Day 2 she developed a temp. COVID positive. Died day 4. She was a COVID death. Similarly our other COVID deaths were all end of life. What does an 88 year old with 5 serious medical problems actually die of when their immune system is too weak to fight off a bug? Did the bug kill them? The death certificate will say “pneumonia” or “sepsis”. In 2020 it says “COVID”.
“pneumonia” so something like Klebsiella ?
“sepsis” so a Strep infection ?
2020 – Sars Cov 2
All external agents – so just a different favoured beastie in 2020. Nothing magic or exceptional about that, it is whatever is most prevalent at that particular time in that particular care home / hospital.
And all of us know one or two people that this happened to. People who are not in the medical field. Grift.
Hi loudmouth!
Well, that’s a good question. What do they know? I suspect many are completely clueless on how the immune system actually works. Sure they have an overall basic understanding, but when I asked my Dr what he would do to prevent a patient getting to the cytokine storm stage, he looked very flustered and said there was no treatment. (which is bullshit). The thing is Chris, medical science and biology is free to anyone who cares to study it. It’s not the sole preserve of doctors.
Yep. the thing is doctors are not deities. they are ordinary fallible human beings. That’s about the only generalisation that can be applied to them.
https://youtu.be/bHfOcGm5xiA
excellent. thank you. ‘most rigorous’ – and includes ‘suspected’ !
Yourself included…
Doctors? Like good old Bodkin Adams or Harold Shipman perhaps?
The problem with this Scamdemic is that one Doctor/Scientist only has only to open his/her mouth for another to condemn them.
Mind you ‘we’ used to believe a man rose from the dead so anything is possible, although definitely not plausible.
Yourself included?
not much. I’d be a fringe loudmouth I suppose. seeing i hold views contrary to those who seek to make it compulsory to wear a mask when jogging on the beach, etc..
and I went to my doctor and asked him for ivermectin.
he hadn’t even heard of it, he claimed. hadn’t even heard of it. and I saw him google it. upon which he said it was for scabies and he couldn’t prescribe that for me.
it’s for worms and he could prescribe it to me for worms.
after a week of importuning he came back with the opinion of his clinic and it was that there was no way they could prescribe it. they couldn’t find it on some list. so i think they were saying it couldn’t be found on the list of drugs the government will pay for or perhaps a list of recommendations.
neither matter. the truth is they can prescribe off label and I would pay whatever. so they lied or they are very ignorant.
as an oldie and a member of the group most at risk with covid i’d naturally feel some fear an apprehension. exacerbated by this treatment at the clinic.
their hippocratic oath says firstly do no harm. they did harm to me by denying a drug on plainly spurious grounds. they further did harm by failure to take any steps to ameliorate my agitation, my fears. I stand as surrogate for thousands others in this case, of course. there are well known things that can ‘strengthen’ the immune system and it’s fairly certain compromised immune systems are a leading cause of mortality with covid and compromised immune systems are a natural concomitant of aging.
Hence it would have been realistic medicine and at the very very least a valid placebo to advocate to me that I take Vitamin D, zinc, Vitamin C and get sunshine. Instead of which his/their advice was: zero. Nothing. Not a word.
Not a single word. Nothing was forthcoming from them that looked like therapy, medicine, or even truth and honesty.
They are third world doctors. Came here to benefit themselves and are plainly hungry for money. Happy to order at the drop of a hat a whole range of tests for anything at all – each test necessitating a return visit to their clinic.
They are par for the course today, unfortunately, in many places.
They know in at least some particulars less than loudmouths on fringe websites and regarding the overall question of medicine vis-a-vis the hippocratic oath, they know, apparently, nothing.
A common ground you have there with them.