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Great Barrington Vs independent SAGE

@PontiusPrimate thanks for your response it’s certainly difficult to pin down but I looked up the reference in the very detailed study here :
https://hcqtrial.com/
and used googletranslate to get this-

“ from Pleno.news

Rafael Ramos - 12/07/2020 13h00 | atualizado em 16/07/2020 12h20

Cuba stands out in combating Covid with hydroxychloroquine

Country defends the use of the drug in the early stages of the disease

With 2,420 confirmed cases, 87 deaths and 2,254 recovered patients, Cuba has stood out in the fight against the pandemic of the new coronavirus. The Central American country has been using low doses of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 at an early stage. The country’s residents have also followed the control measures established by the state health system.

  • We are aware of the controversies surrounding this product. Doctors here in general have a good opinion of the results achieved, as long as they are used early in low doses and only in patients without comorbidities, which can be complicated by hydroxychloroquine - said consultant to the president of BioCubaFarma, Augustin Lage Davila.

Read too

1 21 Covid-19 vaccines are already being tested in humans

2 Acting President of Bolivia Tests Positive for Covid-19

3 Eliana heals from Covid and embraces her children again 4 Patient defends chloroquine: “In five days I was fine”

5 “There is practically no risk of arrhythmia with chloroquine”

In addition to hydroxychloroquine, five other drugs are being used to treat the new coronavirus. Davila lists recombinant human interferon alfa-2b, which combines alpha interferon and gamma; biomodulin T; the CIGB-258 peptide and the humanized monoclonal antibody Itolizumab. Some of them have been used in the treatment of dengue and cancer.

BioCubaFarma is a Cuban organization of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Three medical brigades composed of 11 collaborators were sent from the country to work in Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe and Sierra Leone.”

You’re right as to limited info on hcq use but not sure how hcq use compares to the 5 other drugs mentioned nor how all of them impacted results.

cheers

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“Used in this way, the dreaded PCR would have been an excellent tool in the efforts to minimise the impact of covid. Unfortunately it wasn’t.” As you guys know my strength is profiling (or you may have been able to work that out by now), and the profile here is one of deliberate obfuscation…the efforts of the “more traditional public health modellers” were always going to be a threat… those countries most deeply implicated in the “drive to compliance” like the U.K broke the cardinal rule of pandemic response…speed of reaction…and then consistently failed to address the further requirements of the traditional response…how on earth can this be accidental?

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Exactly. And this is exactly why they ignored the Indy SAGE.

Nicely put.

Edit actually @GKH, the more I think about your point, the more there is to be said. The traditional pandemic approach favoured by Indy SAGE, whilst being the best in minimising the impact of the virus, is clearly far from optimal in the only dimension that matters to Boris, Cummings and the rest of the goon squad:

  • will this optimise the amount of money we can steal?

Disaster capitalism dictates that an effective solution to the problem should be ditched immediately in favour of one that allows private corporations to loot the public purse.

Hence local, community run NHS based track and trace was ditched in favour of billions paid to Boston consulting group and Serco for useless apps. Ivermectin and HCQ are ditched in favour of massively expensive and under-tested perpetually updated vaccines.

The Great Barrington proposal got some traction as it was seen as a business first approach, and laissez faire healthcare is really the only kind that capitalists favour. That was the basis of the “eat out to help out” scheme.

The tried, tested, real world solutions of Indy SAGE never got a look in.

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Hi PP,

Just a couple of comments as a reply.

Yes, what Cuba did/does sounds sensible. It does of course require a functioning health service with many community health workers – something distinctly lacking in the UK – and should be done right at the start. Once many tens of thousands of people are infected at a given time, it’s difficult to see tracking and tracing still working properly.

I agree with your point about data from Haiti. I do suspect the figures are quite meaningless. Of course, it begs an interesting question: what is the real death rate from covid there? I mean, a country without a functioning health system, no lockdown or other strong measures in place https://ht.usembassy.gov/covid-19-information/ (a bit of unenforced mask wearing seems to be all), it ought to have a massive death rate from covid (if one believes any of the usual fear-laden predictions). Yet, it doesn’t – at least if it was a catastrophe, the news would have come out. In fact, if there was even a hint of a disaster, pro-lockdown governments would be very keen to point out how dreadful the consequences are of not taking draconian measures.

First point: as you say, 1 and 3 are indistinguishable in terms of covid deaths, so clearly option 1 is preferable over 3 and we could have been in the same situation without all the lockdowns, attacks on our liberty and new police powers. That’s in itself a huge gain.

Option 2 sounds reasonable, but how quickly will the subgroup become huge and unmanageable – especially if this is based simply on positive tests? Will it morph into option 3 before long? Especially with a media with screaming headlines telling us “something must be done”. I do think there has been a deliberate fear mongering going on.

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My contention is that the situation was designed that way…let’s face it Boris and crew are no instigators (mostly), but they are followers and (as you say), opportunists…easily led…the whole test-and-trace app thing really stinks…are they seriously telling us that a workable app wasn’t feasible? Holy cow we can kill people in foreign countries from our own armchairs with impunity but we can’t get the mobile-phones to work…personally I’d ditch the lot (#FalseEconomy), for the traditional approach even so by the PtB’s own standards this was an epic fail…

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Thanks @Willem, for an interesting discussion. I appreciate it.

Yes, I agree. Anthony Costello has said several times that it would be a matter of a few weeks to set up the NHS infrastructure and local track and trace that Indy SAGE has recommended from the start. So he believes that we have the capability. @GKH has brought up the way that the UK threw out the traditional pandemic response rule book at the start. It seems pretty obvious to me that they were initially going for a Great Barrington style herd-immunity strategy, but changed their minds after a few weeks when it was already far too late. We’ve never recovered from that initial blunder. Or perhaps that was the disaster capitalist policy all along.

We could have acted immediately - as many countries did. We have the advantage of being an island too, so we were naturally protected. The Govt chose to put the interests of their friends above public health, and here we are.

Only if these are the only two options. Both are disastrous in terms of the effect, and both have killed untold people unnecessarily. Sweden is by far the worst hit country in it’s neighbourhood. It’s far worse than any country that followed the Indy SAGE advice. It’s policy is a total failure in comparison to the Indy SAGE model that has been used around the world. That the UK is even worse is not a reason to view Sweden as any kind of success.

Well, let’s take a look. There are a LOT of countries that have followed the basic pandemic advice that I call the Indy SAGE model:

  • Japan - no national lockdown in a year, 9K deaths
  • Taiwan - no national lockdown in a year, 10 deaths (Holy shit!)
  • Vietnam - no national lockdown in a year, 35 deaths
  • Singapore - 1 national lockdown right at the beginning, no others in a year, 30 deaths
  • Cuba - no national lockdown in a year, 400 deaths.

We could also include South Korea, China itself, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and a host of other countries. These are all real world examples of countries that have decent government and health systems and reporting that seems reasonably trustworthy. They cover a range of climates and are spread around the world.

In none of these countries did the virus get away from them to the extent it did in Europe. There is no apparent reason to believe that this virus cannot be managed in a way that leaves the majority of people un-bothered, but still keeps the hospitals working and the deaths low. I haven’t looked, but I would also wager that the economic costs in all these countries is far lower than in Europe. Any European country could have chosen this policy, and for some reason, none did.

Wherever Great Barrington was applied (Sweden, some parts of the US, the early days and the Summer in the UK) it was a disaster in comparison. As I said above, socialist style healthcare beats laissez faire hands down.

We could have avoided the deaths, the overwhelmed hospitals, the lockdowns and everything that went along with it by following the advice of Indy SAGE. A year on, every country that implemented the basics of the Indy SAGE policies have by and large avoided lockdowns, kept their hospitals open and have far, far fewer recorded deaths. I acknowledge, again, that there are a lot of factors at play, but I still think the primary one is whether the government decided to protect it’s citizens or not.

Cheers
PP

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What’s the flu-jab take up in these countries (as compared to Europe or the U.S for instance)?

“Influenza vaccination rate refers to the number of people aged 65 and older who have received an annual influenza vaccination, divided by the total number of people over 65 years of age. This indicator is measured as a percentage of the population aged 65 and older who have received an annual influenza vaccine. The data come from administrative sources or surveys, depending on the country.” https://data.oecd.org/healthcare/influenza-vaccination-rates.htm

"ECDC is via the network VENICE (Vaccine European new Integrated Collaboration Effort) collecting, sharing and disseminating information on national immunization programmes and provides guidance for improving the overall performance of the immunisation systems in EU/EEA Member States.

The latest data on vaccination coverage by country in the EU/EEA of different risk- and target groups are available in the following report:" https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/seasonal-influenza/prevention-and-control/vaccines/vaccination-coverage

"‘In 2009, Health Ministers from across the EU signed up to modest target: to vaccinate 75% of older people against flu. 10 years on, no EU country has kept its promise’

On 22 December 2009, health ministers from every EU Member State made a new commitment: to vaccinate at least three quarters of all residents aged 65 years and older. Now new data from Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, shows governments have failed.

Story highlights

  • 44% of people in Europe aged 65 years and older are vaccinated
  • No EU country has hit its target to vaccinate three out of four people in that risk group
  • There are no penalties for missing this target
  • Older people are just one key target group
  • WHO says pregnant women are the top priority, followed by health workers and people with chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma and heart failure

No EU Member State has reached its 75% target and the rate across the EU is 44.3%. However, there are no political consequences: while there are penalties for breaching EU rules on carbon emissions, budget deficits or employment regulations, there is no sanction for missing vaccination targets.


The flu vaccination targets are considered to be ‘soft law’ rather than ‘hard law’, meaning they are not legally binding. Strict EU health targets are rare because health is a matter for national governments rather than a European responsibility."…

“While the ECDC guidelines follow the European Council’s target of reaching 75% of older people, the WHO lists pregnant women as the top priority for flu vaccination. Some countries in Europe are rolling out campaigns aimed at boosting flu vaccine uptake during pregnancy, but others are less active.” https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/flu-vaccine-did-your-country-hit-its-target/

N.b During the seventies, eighties and nineties vaccination for flu was rarely performed (if at all), but I don’t recall any panics concerning flu epidemics occurring in the U.S or Europe during these decades (?), but I do recall how threats like H1N1 began to become prevalent after the turn of the millennium.

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Good question, @GKH - I don’t know the answer. Worth a look into

Have done a bit (see edit)… I’d like to see the global figures…!!!

Significantly (re: Korea); " Experience counts

**‘**MERS helped humongously,’ agrees Hyunmi Park, a UK-trained colorectal consultant surgeon, now a visiting professor in robotic surgery at Korea University Hospital. ‘It’s helped in the track and trace but also in the regulations that were introduced for small and medium pharmaceutical companies to produce test kits very quickly,’ Prof Park adds. ‘As soon as we had a sample of the virus they were able overnight to start making test kits. We produce and even export as many as we need.’

This measure meant 120,000 tests could be carried out daily almost straight away, says Prof Park, as the UK struggled to hit its initial target of 10,000.

On the front line, patients with any symptoms are tested in pre-assessment areas, away from hospital front doors. Any booked for elective surgery – and their families – are tested too. Results return in hours.

We had maximum protection. But I’ve been feeling very guilty when messaging my friends in the UK

Prof Park

‘We didn’t cancel anything,’ says Prof Park. ‘We never had a lockdown. No business or hospitals got shut. The Korean people are also very obedient and very responsible towards their fellow humans,’ she adds. ‘It was described as a “big snowy day”, an extended one, obviously. On such days, Korean people just stay at home.’ While restaurants remained open, few had much business, she adds.

Social-distancing advice was issued by its Government to reduce meetings, travel and contacts and to encourage hygiene measures such as regular handwashing and the etiquette of coughing into sleeves with masks on." https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/prepared-for-the-worst-how-south-korea-fought-off-covid-19

Irony if the compromised immune system of those who’ve had the flu jab makes them more susceptible to Covid (and why wouldn’t it -#interventionism-?), you’ve got to catch it though…

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Hi folks,

I’ve now forgotten where I saw the book below but I’m quite taken with it and will be buying it (Thanks to @KarenEliot for the link to the Library) . See what you think.

Sweden and covid

https://www.bookdepository.com/search?searchTerm=sebastian%20rushworth&search=Find+book

Amazon censored it!

Covid: Why most of what you know is wrong by Sebastian Rushworth

Covid-19 has triggered a pandemic, and a panic. Many people are bewildered by the avalanche of information, often contradictory. On his blog, Sebastian Rushworth has been a voice of calm reason throughout, trying to help people make sense of what is going on. As a front line doctor in Sweden he has had a front-row seat, and keen understanding of the disease, and our response to it. He takes the reader though some of the science, in order to explain what he is talking about. It is clear, it is reasoned. He believes that the Swedish response, although widely critizised, has been based on good evidence, and may end up being seen as the best way to have handled the pandemic. If you want a guide to what is really going on with Covid-19, then I fully recommend this book. You will end up with a much more complete understanding, which is what we are all looking for, I think.
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick

“ If we take what we have learned overall from these three studies, it seems pretty clear that lockdown is ineffective. But if that is the case, how come Sweden had so many more Covid deaths than other Nordic countries in the spring of 2020?

  1. Stockholm had holiday break 2 weeks after other Scandinavian countries in the Alps just when covid kicked off. Malmö and Gothenberg had earlier breaks and far less covid. Stockholm has 24% of Swedish population but 40% of covid in first wave.

  2. Malmö hardly experienced any cases at all, and showed a pattern much more similar to Denmark than to Stockholm. This is in spite of the fact that Denmark had tough restrictions while Malmö had the same restrictions as the rest of Sweden. Then winter came, and both Denmark and Malmö experienced an explosion of Covid. It doesn’t make sense that lockdown would work in spring, but not in winter. Thus lockdown wasn’t the reason that Denmark had so few infections in spring. Case closed.

  3. Apart from having a later spring break, Swedes travel internationally far more than their Nordic neighbours, which would have resulted in significantly more cases of Covid being brought into the country at the beginning of the pandemic.”

  4. The second hypothesis concerns the fact that Sweden has a much bigger population of immigrants than its Nordic neighbours.

19% of Sweden’s population is foreign born, as opposed to 14% for Denmark and Norway, and only 8% for Finland.

What this means in practice is that Sweden has a bigger population of people with darker skin, and it has been clear since early on in the pandemic that darker skinned people in western countries are much more likely to develop severe Covid than lighter skinned people.

As an aside, much of the media debate around this phenomenon has centred around the idea that darker skinned people generally have lower status, higher rates of poverty, worse access to health care and so on – basically, that the difference is due to institutional racism.But there is one big problem with that idea. It doesn’t fit all the facts. An article in The Washington Post on May 20 reported that 27 of 29 doctors who had died of Covid in the UK up to that point belonged to ethnic minorities.2 In other words, 93% of doctors who had died at that point came from ethnic minorities, even though they only constitute 44% of all doctors in the country. Why is this important? Because doctors with darker skin are still doctors, which means that they are members of a high status, well paid, well-off segment of society.

Note, I’m not saying that institutional racism doesn’t exist. I’m just saying that it can’t explain why darker skinned people in western countries are hit much harder by Covid than lighter skinned people.

Vitamin D deficiency could explain this , though. Darker skinned people in northern Europe are more likely to be vitamin D deficient for the simple reason that their skin isn’t as good at producing vitamin D from the feeble sunlight we get in this part of the world.A number of observational studies have shown that people with low vitamin D levels do worse when infected with Covid, and there is even a randomized trial, published in The Journal of Steroid Biochemisty and Molecular Biology in October, in which patients treated with high dose calcifediol (the activated form of vitamin D) did much better than the control group.3 In that study, the proportion of patients requiring intensive care decreased by over 90%. Funnily enough, that study gained pretty much zero media attention, while remdesivir, a highly expensive drug that is almost completely useless against Covid, has been talked about endlessly.Anyway, what the authors are saying is that Sweden has a larger ethnic minority population than its Nordic neighbours, and people from ethnic minorities do worse when they get Covid.

  1. The third hypothesis, and from my perspective the most important, concerns the fact that Sweden had a much larger vulnerable population at the beginning of 2020 than its Nordic neighbours. This can be seen in multiple different ways in the statistics.

The first is that Sweden has a large nursing home population.

Relative to population size, Sweden’s nursing home population is 50% larger than Denmark’s. And in Sweden, people don’t go to nursing homes until they are very near the end of life.

The second way this can be seen in the statistics is by looking at overall mortality for the immediately preceding year, 2019. If unusually few people die in one year, then unusually many will die during the following year, since there is a carry forward effect (due to the fact that humans are not immortal). 2019 was, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, an unusually un- deadly year in Sweden, and the early part of 2020 (pre-Covid), was also unusually un-deadly, which means that there was an unusually large number of very frail old people in the country when Covid struck. This same effect was not seen in Sweden’s Nordic neighbours – for them 2019 was normal in terms of overall mortality.

To clarify exactly how big this difference is, let’s look at the numbers. In Sweden, the overall mortality rate in 2019 was 5.7% lower than the average for the preceding five years, after adjusting for changes in population size. In Norway, mortality was exactly in line with the average. Denmark and Finland both had mortality rates that were 1% above the average.

Denmark, Finland, and Norway were thus in a much better position in relation to Covid from the start. Sweden was always going to have more deaths than usual in 2020, regardless of the actions it took.

As I think I’ve made clear, there were a number of big differences between Sweden and its Nordic neighbours at the beginning of the pandemic, which together certainly are sufficient to explain the big difference in Covid mortality. Correlation is not causation. Many people have chosen to see a causative relationship between Sweden’s lack of severe lockdown and a relatively high number of deaths, because it supports their prior beliefs about the effectiveness of lockdowns. Those beliefs are, however, not supported by the evidence.”

I am not sure whether in the end Sweden was really different from Indie Sage both seem to have downplayed the impact of alternative treatment regimens relying like most public health systems on just dealing with emergency ICU cases with oxygen and antibiotics, please correct me if I have this all wrong. Sweden does however seem to have kept mostly open for most of the time which will obviously reduce the stress factor which I think is always an issue for upper respiratory problems.

Rushworth ends his book with the thought that Governments knew they were making a big mistake with lockdown but that the media and public opinion forced them to double down and they see vaccines as the only way out of the hole they had dug for themselves. They can claim vaccines are a magic bullet and low and behold covid is no longer a great problem, aren’t we enormously clever!

cheers

PS. Rushworth’s book was the subject of @rippon ’s topic : “As a front line doctor in Sweden he has had a front-row seat” , thanks for the link.
Also, Amazon appears to have reinstated the book!

‘As soon as we had a sample of the virus…’ says Prof. Park.

Oh goodie! Perhaps he can supply samples to all the other people who’ve been looking for AUTHENTIC purified PHYSICAL samples - the real, electron-microscope-visible article, not a computer-aided theoretical rendering of it - and who affirm that they have yet to find an actually-convincing, trustable example of anyone doing it. Amongst the sceptical experts this still seems to be a thing not seen to have been done.

Disclaimer: I have no idea whether it really has been done. I just know that there’s a collection of appropriately-qualified dissidents who insist that they can find literally no single case where the claims stand up to serious critical nitty-gritty examination. By now it just seems to be one of those highly-questionable assumptions-without-question of the current propaganda storm about the - alleged - pandemic.

(W&S… :slight_smile: )

Do they fear a true trace of the lineage of this thing? If not what is the problem with providing a detailed profile?

2019 was, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, an unusually un- deadly year in Sweden, and the early part of 2020 (pre-Covid), was also unusually un-deadly, which means that there was an unusually large number of very frail old people in the country when Covid struck Always when the health of the body politic is approaching emergence… “thorn” in the FUTHARK…the “wait a bit”…but these b**gers have been a thorn-in-the-side long enough…

Sorry @GKH I just can’t untangle the meaning of your words, its probably due to my pedantic poetry-free legal training :slightly_frowning_face:

cheers

The “data-vampires” know when “health” might be achieved…they live off sickness so prevent health…in the runes “Thorn” is that thing that prevents you “moving on” #FUTHARK:smiley:

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Well, with the exception possibly of Korea and northern China, these all have far warmer climates than Europe. But the trouble I have with believing that eg Indie Sage was instrumental in keeping the virus under control is that there are so many countries, some nearby those you mention where I suspect there is not much of a functioning track and trace system, yet the numbers of deaths are similar to the “best” countries. I’ve already mentioned Haiti, which you discount. But then we could look at most others in the Carribean. Or say, Morocco (<9K deaths, pop 37M), Algeria (3K dead, pop. 45M), or many other countries in Africa, or the Middle East. Are these all following Indie Sage? I find that hard to believe they’re all doing it successfully.

No, I think. like the flu, this hits cold countries far more, and for me it looks pretty clear that much of the world didn’t/doesn’t need to do anything special to combat this infection. It has been blown out of all proportion thanks to panic driven medical officials, politicians and a willing media and not to forget the WEF and its friends behind the scenes.

As for Sweden, CJ’s post explains pretty well the differences with its direct neighbours. Then of course, there’s Belarus with its non-existent measures…

Clearly, the current hyper-ballsup wasn’t just driven by panic. Hear Mike Yeadon on the Delingpod linked by CJ a few threads down. He affirms pointedly what any awake observer understands now: that the whole thing has been beset by a massive lying and censorship campaign, most glaringly in the matter of criminal suppression of the effective prophylactics/cures that were improvised very early on, and found to be highly effective.

The obvious conclusion is that - despite all the lying, fiddled statistics - it’s been mostly a massive con, on the back of a real but not particularly apocalyptic new illness, all most probably set up with malice aforethought, as the law courts used to put it. Certainly, hindsight confirms that there have been dry runs for this debacle in the previous ‘epidemics’ that came to very little in the event; and - clearly - there was prior planning before this panic was set going: all those conferences of the questionable that have come to light lately.

Hear Mike in particular on the threats to which knowledgeable professionals in the field have been subjected, to keep them toeing the line, with their mouths well-buttoned shut. The whole thing is obviously a con. He too affirms my steadfast position: believe absolutely nothing too strongly yet, because we’re awash with deceits right now.

The picture that seems to be emerging is still that covid is a more than usually nasty flu, and - in reality - nothing much more than that. (Flus are always lethal to some, every year, remember.) The rest all seems to have been a wilful and deliberate experiment in the generation of Terror Derangement Syndrome, to see just how far we plebs can be stampeded in the direction that the gics would like to herd us, all under a blanket of plausible deniability, of course: “We were just trying to do what seemed like the best at the time, when we were all in uncharted waters. Sure, mistakes were made, but in good faith”.

Been rather successful, hasn’t it? Still masses of suckers buying into it, though as the Spring progresses, I fancy it’s going to get more difficult for the gics and their servants to hold us all to the worst of the ‘panic’ measures. People are simply voting with their feet. My guesstimate, fwiw.

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Hi Willem

the problem with “cold countries get hit harder” is that plenty of hot countries have been hit very badly. As I said above the climate feels like a second order effect, that is less significant that the steps that a government took to protect their population.

We have a large group of countries that clearly did follow indy sage - they all had a very good result. We have a large group of countries that clearly didn’t follow indy sage -they all had a pretty bad result. And we have another group of countries that did something in the middle which had a mix of results.

On balance it still seems clear to me that following the indy sage advice has very little in the way of a downside, and what looks to me like a clear positive result. Following the great barrington advice clearly leads to misery and more death. That was the comparison I made in the beginning and it still seems to stand…I guess what we would need to find is a country that followed the Great Barrington advice and did better than a country that followed Indy SAGE. So far I have found zero candidates to fill that spot.

Cheers
PP

I think the Great Barrington approach suffers from being far too passive, aggressive measures to promote health would be useful if you were looking to improve the immune system of the body politic…something Indy Sage is light on too…"

I managed to secure a “Smart Cities” card from the Southampton Unitary Authority only because I paid my G.P £30 to write a report stating that I need to have access to less-expensive (nb. not free), swim sessions in the city’s various public facilities, in the past being a recipient of PIP would have been enough but now the claimant must receive certain components of the PIP award to qualify for a free Smart Cities card (although the holder is still only entitled to “half-price” access to swimming and/or gym sessions), or seek what is basically a “doctor’s note” (the G.P surgeries now charging for such services). What this means, of-course, is that my physician recommends that I engage in certain forms of therapy regularly and that I have a “smart-chipped” card with my photograph on it that entitles me to greater access to such therapy.

As a result of not undergoing therapy I over-strained two old injuries one of which (to my back, pelvis and leg), has become considerably more troublesome (I can be virtually unable to move for days at a stretch). The A&E doctor prescribed a change of pain medication that increased my opioid dose from 4/day Co-codamol 8/500 to 4/day 30mg Dihydrocodeine and I reported to the doctor that the worsening of my condition had induced a self-harm episode. My G.P has since concurred with the decision to increase my opioid dose and I now receive Dihydrocodeine on repeat prescription (not a solution for chronic pain but medical marijuana -nb. not useless CBD “extract”-, is still not available on prescription in Britain). As I have been shielding I was unable to attend my appointment with Southampton NHS neurology last year but do intend to attend one in May (with various aspects of my conditions worsening -and having already attended A&E twice-, I don’t intend to wait any longer).

It is my contention that provision should be made during pandemic for patients who require access to prescribed/recommended therapies and if this means only letting those who can prove (and with a Smart Cities card such verification is easy), their status have such access then so be it (this may sound harsh but remember I’ve had to attend A&E twice, whilst shielding, during lock-down)!

Clearly our government was not properly prepared for Covid-19. Institutions need to be prepared to run as normally as possible during pandemic this means prioritising and the health of the body politic comes first, a triage system only works if physicians are able to correctly prioritise response. If you want to get your priorities right from the start your modelling needs to be accurate and given that any government’s first priority must be the welfare of the citizens it governs its modelling must reflect this, as E.F Schumacher pointed out the economy is dependent on the health of each individual, each must be treated equally and proportionately to their needs. Needs not wants! Our current government only serves the wants of the few"…
“We need to seek a moratorium on re-assessments for those on PIP, ESA and LCWRA during pandemic, the risk of inflicting lasting harm (including death), on claimants, who do not have the resources to respond to the increased stresses imposed by lock-down, by forcing them to undergo re-assessment or to have to re-apply for entitlements, is far too great. If you are a PIP, ESA or LCRWRA claimant (or were), who has been affected by Covid-19 pandemic lock-down restrictions (esp. with regard to seeking advocacy), please contact Disabled People Against Cuts (“DPAC”). If we need to challenge our government’s actions in the international courts so much the better (in many ways), these are human rights issues and the solutions to the problems should be enshrined in international law.” Extract from first draft of my benefit moratorium article…

What I’m saying is those things that promote health in normal times also promote health during pandemic…a lot of the lock-down measures cut off- the nose to spite the face…I’ve had to attend A&E twice, whilst shielding, because of lock-down restrictions…exposing others and exposing myself to the virus, where’s the logic in that?

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Yes, not all driven by panic, but I often think back to this Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t - The New York Times and those medics pressing the panic button – completely without help from any politicians or outside forces. (Unless that’s still to be uncovered!)

Very successful unfortunately. I hope you’re right about it getting more difficult for them. At the same time, the longer it goes on for, the more difficult it becomes to reverse the measures. Masks, social distancing, temporary lockdowns I suspect will all make a comeback in the Autumn/Winter. Various universities have already decided to have online courses only. And the “vaccines”, despite not protecting the population, look like they may become compulsory if you want to travel, or want to do “non-essential” things.

Yes, good stuff from Mike Yeadon, especially as he actually worked at Pfizer.

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