[OneBox has snipped the word “pneumonia” after “viral”.]
I also saw something on Twitter, about a week ago, showing a graph of the rising number of patients who are currently on ventilators (in some region of the NHS), but I’m afraid I couldn’t find it again when I searched.
Hi Twirlip,
so, I think we would be wise to take seriously what Dan is saying from his experience of the situation in London. It’s rare to have an eyewitness on the ground that I believe is trustworthy…
As far as the number of patients on ventilators in England is concerned, I just grabbed that info straight from the UK data portal, with the following web link
It’s definitely rising, again. Here’s a chart showing the evolution since March
Cheers
PP
Actually, it would be interesting to try and get some data for influenza hospitalisations in the UK for the last few years. That would give us a baseline as to what we might expect to be normal.
I’m still in two minds about just how far herd immunity has progressed in the UK. I want to believe that a large population is already immune, but I’m not convinced that is so. There are a number of reasons why, but one of the more compelling for me, the last time I looked at this, was the ratio of positive to total tests in the early days (and indeed now) stayed pretty low. If the illness was very widespread through our population, I would expect a high number of people who got tested would show a positive result (after all, not matter what brought them to hospital in the first place, if the 'rona is sweeping through the population, they most likely have it, right?).
If the illness is very widespread, I expect the ratio of positive to total tests to rise pretty steeply, and to reflect how widespread the disease is. That didn’t ever really happen though, from memory. And it’s not the case now either, hovering around the 2% mark (again, from memory). As far as I can work it out, this ratio should be not be particularly influenced by the actual number of tests we do - the ratio should be more or less independent of the raw numbers.
That means we have to rely on a Friston-style pre-existing immunity that we got from other coronaviruses… There is some evidence that this is a real thing, but how widespread is still a matter of debate.
Anyway. I have nothing conclusive, but I still have a wide-open mind as to how many people are still vulnerable to this illness. Personally, I’m still erring on the side of caution…
Cheers (again)
PP
Dan’s responding to me there and I think the problem is we’re talking at crossed purposes. I can’t speak for anyone else but I wouldn’t deny the virus is real, is a real threat, is serious for a certain sector of the population or that something should be done. It’s a question of what. There’s 20 people in ICU with viral pneumonia in two hospitals in Dans area, for October this is unprecedented. There are some 300 people across the UK in a similar position, therefore the economy must be destroyed, the arts extinguished and millions thrown out of work all in the name of a strategy that has no demonstrable effect other than negative ones. The bunch of crooks in govt aren’t going to to do the right thing here, we’re not going to get anything like what south Korea managed to achieve, our lot will be making hay while they can and buggering off when it’s done. To answer my own question regarding why they would wreak such destruction on the capitalist system that they are, on paper at least wedded to, maybe they’re a bunch of amoral no nothings who haven’t a clue what’s going on, taking direction from a specific group of intellectuals who are themselves locked into group think and convinced of their own infallability. Maybe politicians actually have very little power to dictate events and are simply figureheads there to put an official stamp on whatever policies the real power centres in the world want. The declaration from Gupta et al seems perfectly sensible and humane to me and is the way we’ve dealt with and deal with viral infections every winter. The approach has to take in the totality of risks; throwing all effort at somehow eradicating the disease is a terrible long term strategy that will keep us in a rolling hysteria as long as one person has the disease, meanwhile everything else will lie in ruins and millions more will be dead because the structures of society have been destroyed, normal human relations will have been subverted, social life, indeed, the aspects of life that make it worth living will have been permanently disrupted, all in pursuit of an unachievable and fatuous goal.
But what of those 20 people in ICU now? Do I want them to die? Does questioning the handling of this crisis equate to an almost sociopathic indifference on my part? Fuck them, they deserve to die for the greater good? Well , what about me? I have cancer, a cancer that I had to discover myself because normal services had been disrupted and examination were, laughably, taking place over the phone. If I found it too late, I’m going to die; hell maybe i’ll get to ride one of those ventilators before I check out. When I go out my front door, what do you think I’m thinking about, as a fit healthy 47 year old? It’s not Covid, it’s cancer. And that’s just me, one amongst tens of thousands in the same place; a million women who didn’t have mammograms because of this farce. Do you understand? Covid must be faced and dealt with alongside every other disease, risk and fucked up situation that life throws at us, not exclusively at the cost of everything else.
To recap: The virus is real, the virus is dangerous, people are dieing from the virus and steps should be taken to ameliorate the inevitable consequences of such a disease. However, the virus is not the black death and it’s not the Spanish Flu. Take a look at this excerpt from wikipedia regarding the infection and consequences of the spanish flu -
’ The most famous and lethal outbreak was the 1918 flu pandemic (Spanish flu) (type A influenza, H1N1 subtype), which lasted into 1920. It is not known exactly how many it killed, but estimates range from 17 million to 100 million people.[15][204][219][220] This pandemic has been described as “the greatest medical holocaust in history” and may have killed as many people as the Black Death.[202] This huge death toll was caused by an extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms.[220] Symptoms in 1918 were so unusual that initially influenza was misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid. One observer wrote, “One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred.”[219] The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung.[221]
The 1918 flu pandemic was truly global, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. The unusually severe disease killed between two and twenty percent of those infected, as opposed to the more usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1%.[204][219] Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old.[222] This is unusual since influenza is normally most deadly to the very young (under age 2) and the very old (over age 70). The total mortality of the 1918–1919 pandemic is not known, but it is estimated that 2.5% to 5% of the world’s population was killed.
Imagine that - 50% infection rate, deadly across the board but particularly deadly to people in the prime of life. Bleeding from the ears, internal bleeding and on and on. If that fucker was rampaging through the populace then I’d have the military in Hazmat suits delivering food and water while I cowered behind my curtains and as for societal damage and all the negative consequences listed above, well, they would fall by the wayside because such a virus would pose an existential threat worthy of such measures. Covid is not this, it’s not even close and our response must reflect this. I had to have a biopsy yesterday and in order for the procedure to go ahead I had to have a Covid test. If I had tested positive I wouldn’t have been able to have the biopsy which is crucial in finding out how to proceed in terms of operations and treatment, I’d have had to wait a further two weeks, as if the cancer will take a break while we all wait for me to be clear. I mention the cancer again not to garner sympathy but to further impress upon you the real world consequences of the paralysis that has afflicted the society since March and that’s just me, there are thousands more like me. This virus must be integrated into our lives as another thing we must learn to live with, it’s the only sane approach.
Apologies for the shrill nature of this post. I agree with @Twirlip, I’m worn out trying to work out what’s going on and wish i could just ignore it, but I can’t and the frustration I feel as people who i’d normally consider allies apply the ‘denailist’ tag to an honest questioning of what’s going on is depressing.
Cheers.
I think you can delete the word ‘maybe’ from that sentence. 
As for the next bit:
- that’s what I really doubt. I don’t think anybody wanted this pandemic (or a belief in a non-existent pandemic), not even whoever is really in power behind the figureheads.
Of course, and do keep the updates coming.
I was already planning to ask (after waiting for reactions to the title of another thread I started recently):
If the term ‘denialist’ seems offensive (incidentally, I don’t see it as applying to you), do suggest alternatives. It doesn’t seem offensive to me, but then, I’m not the one on the receiving end of it. The only alternatives that have occurred to me are “unbeliever” or “disbeliever”, and while I wouldn’t much like the connotations of being tagged as a “believer” (which suggests irrational gullibility, dogmatism, and authoritarianism), I think I could live with it. I don’t wish to use the term “sceptic”, partly because it suggests a general mental attitude rather than disbelief in the reality of a particular phenomenon, and partly because the term has become corrupted in the context of billionaire-funded opposition to the EU and corporation-promoted disbelief in the reality of anthropogenic climate change.
[Discussion of suitable terms could be broken off into another thread.]
Hi @spike
no need for any apologies mate. This is a crucial subject, and it’s really not clear what the fuck is going on. To be honest, that, in itself, is suspicious. I don’t think we get this level of confusion by accident - I wonder who is benefiting from the confusion level…?
You own personal situation is a nightmare, and to make matters worse, I am 100% sure that you are not alone in that horrible situation. The way the NHS has been systematically destroyed over the last 20 years, and the criminal response of the UK gov in the early part of this pandemic have undoubtedly led to this awful situation. The tories (and their red-tory counterparts) should hang for this. And in the middle of it all, we’re still passing bills in parliament to make it easier to carve up whats left and sell it off after Brexit. Arseholes.
Comparisons with the Spanish flu are interesting, and I think revealing. I don’t think there is any doubt any longer that the 'rona is less deadly than it was first thought to be, but it’s not yet totally clear just how deadly the 'rona is. Of course, there is also the little mentioned fact that we already have therapies that are shown to work. But that’s another story.
Despite the fact that I am open minded on the issue of how dangerous the 'rona is, I also get frustrated by the sneering dismissal of one side by the other. It’s exactly like the insults that fly to and from the 9/11 “truthers”. The certainty of the established position is disingenuous. The certainty of the off-guardian sceptics is similarly so.
Really, the only question here is the one you open with:
Exactly. What is the actual danger, and what is an appropriate response? This is the question…
@spike I have two things to say. One about the original post and the second about your personal sitation.
On the original post, none of the “covididiots” I know are questioning the reality of the disease. What Dan does not say anything about in his hospital, is the demographics of the patients, the co-morbidities, or especially the treatment the people with Corona virus (not the “cases”), actually get. There is a frigging overwhelming weight of real world situations where Corona virus if treated early, with any one of a wide range of different low cost protocols made rapid recoveries, do not need ventilators and never ever end up on the mythical “long haulers” list. I’ll lay 20 to 1, that Dans hospital do not use any of these at an early stage. Any takers?
Second, on your personal situation, there is a DVD series called The Truth About Cancer, where a whole host of alternative treatments are discussed, many for late stage cancers. I’d be happy to put a copy onto disk and post to you if you can contact me. I think Rhis may have my email.
@Twirlip. Hi, only have a couple of minutes before work…
Just on the denialist question, I’m not sure about alternatives I’ll have to have a think. The term bothers me because it’s far too close to holocaust or climate change denier for my liking and I think is used deliberately by John Hilley amongst others. A true denialist would be someone like David Icke who purports to believe it’s coming from 5G towers, or something like that whereas I think the strategy laid out in the Barrington declaration is broadly speaking the right one. That’s not ‘denialism’, that’s proposing a different strategy. To me, labeling alternative strategies as ‘denialism’ is classic in/out group behaviour; we, the good people do not need a label for our beliefs because we are ‘in’ and our beliefs are self evident. They, the evil ones, do require a lable because they are ‘out’. John Hilley stops just short of bunching people like me in with flat earthers but I bet it was in his mind to do so.
I thought that also. I imagine if all 20 were in their mid 30’s he’d have certainly have brought it up to bolster his argument
On the DVD, actually I’d really appreciate that - my email is meeanthropos@gmail.com - thanks man
