The words I’d use, E - with all the smooth diplomatic tact of a classic aspi - are ‘mediawhores’, ‘pocket-pols’, ‘gics’ and ‘gic-servants.’ Cringing goodthinker sods the lot of 'em - apart from the gics, who are just sods.
The mention of non-covid cases denied access to medical services - de facto - prompts me to remark that that has been haunting me a bit lately. I virtually never contact my GP, and only go to hospital if fairly seriously injured (not for bleedin’ scratches; hot brine and a doctor dog if there’s one around are fine for those), or if having a cardio-vascular incident, of which there’ve been three in the past two decades.
It’s grown very clear to me, tasting the deranged flavour of this year, that lots of us are on our own now, regarding health, with no clear end date for this suspension of the main work of the NHS. Bloody good job that I’m a devotee of ‘Doctoryourself.com’; and of shamanic work to help the world and yourself, as needed. Probably all that - and being a prize goat - is what caused me never to buy into this ersatz panic at any time that it’s been running. I believe that I had covid earlier in the year, and starting with an immune system always robust - thanks to my sturdy ancestors - and already armed to the gills with heavy ammo against unwelcome intruders, plus the long-standing veteran familiarity with shamanic practices, I’ve been able to cope, both physically and spiritually. But - as JMGreer points out in his writings about the Long Descent - this is the sort of syndrome that all of us are going to have to get used to in the coming decades: self- and mutual-aid, barefoot folk medicine, and… a much changed philosophical posture regarding fate and death.
PS: Reading your prescriptions above, P, I’d say that we should shove Hancock into the nearest skip, and give you the combined job of Health Sec. and PM, so that you’d have something like the clout that VVPutin clearly has in Russia with his colleagues. Then you could put those eminently wise tactics you outline into practice, ASAbleedin’P, and kick as many arses as needed to get the bendable careery bloody technocrats back down off their hind legs; and as for the shysters on the make…
And yes, it’s a great relief that we can have different views and yet go on being civilised friends here, in the old-fashioned way. It won’t ever go out of fashion; not amongst the grown-ups!
OK. So here’s a few questions for all you scientific types.
First on the question of transmission. I read about a well documented experiment some years ago (I’ll try and find the details if you insist) where they were testing the transmissability (if that’s a real word) of flu. The experiment was quite gruesome and included collecting snot and passing it on to those without flu. There was a complete absence of transmission of “the virus” in the entire experiment.
Assuming one accepts the outcome of this, the questions then become:
Are there experiments that show the opposite for flu?
Are there experiments that show the opposite for other viruses?
Are there actually documented cases of asymptomatic transmission of Corona viruses (of any variety) and I don’t mean BBC/Fox News/etc documented
Next, on the issue of excess deaths. I have neither the time or concentration span to analyse the deaths. However, I have real trouble (having watched Ivor Cummings and others), finding a simple, explanation of excess deaths other than the lockdown and shutdown of the NHS must be cause. Except for the spikes just after lockdown, the total mortality seems to me to be completely in line with what one would expect based on the 5 year averages.
My question here is simple. Am I wrong? If so, explanations using words of 1 syllable or less would be nice!
I suspect that you may prove to be right, Pat. (Sorry about that single two-syllable word in the foregoing sentence! ). Time will tell. At the moment, we seem to be running up towards a time when the actual overall impact of the covid pathogen - whatever it is - will prove to have been no very great upheaval - apart from what we’ve created ourselves gratuitously by going extravagantly overboard about it through TDS; whooped on in calculated fashion by opportunistic shysters on the make, of course.
No firm conclusions yet. Reality will govern the final judgement. But I’d give you shorter odds on a ‘no biggie’ final conclusion, in hindsight, than any other rival assessment. That’s to say:
A rather nasty killer of unfortunates, but nevertheless a not disastrously lethal, novel illness, already quietly around in 2019, making its panic-inducing initial-spike debut in the 2020 Spring, exacerbated again now, this Winter, by seasonal factors which always operate; and also by wholly inappropriate responses - whether caused by flatulent bozoid incompetence, or by unadmitted dirty agendas. Or both.
I’d give you shorter odds on that being the final judgement of history than on any of the rival hypotheses. This is not the Black Death.
I’ve no answer to your question on flu transmission. Hopefully someone else will jump in.
There was an early paper in the NEJM that recorded the first (I think) case of asymptomatic transmission of covid. It was a German study involving a Chinese woman visiting an office in Germany and infecting several of her work colleagues whilst showing no symptoms (or at least very mild symptoms) herself. I think a fair bit more studies have been done since then. I’ll have a look around.
On the subject of excess deaths. Here is a chat from Euromomo - the source favoured by Cummins himself.
2020 is just not comparable to the last few years. Of those excess deaths, a large number have covid on the death certificate, but many - as Walter showed above - are very likely non-covid deaths. This is exactly what everyone expected to happen if hospitals became overrun.
It’s one reason that I prefer the approach I outlined above for trying to minimise the spread of the infection, rather than take the Great Barrington approach which seems to be trying to hang on to the tail of a wild tiger…
Cheers
PP
EDIT: Here is the NEJM study that I mentioned. Here is a pretty balanced assement in a BMJ editorial on asymptomatic transmission. They reckon that about 20% of people have a truly asymptomatic experience. The other 80% have some sort of symptoms. They reckon it’s not clear exactly how infectious a truly asymptomatic person is. But people can be infectious before they themselves go on to develop symptoms. Finally, here is a note in Nature that more or less agrees with the BMJ one.
It seems that truly asymptomatic “cases” are much less likely to be infectious. But people can take a while to develop symptoms, and during that time (although they look asymptomatic) they are infectious… It’s annoyingly complicated.
Wolfgang Wodarg’s account of what’s happening is illuminating. If he’s right, the level of mendacity, including all the stats, is huge: the Big Lie, so big, it feels too preposterous for anyone to believe it really is a deliberate lie: “They’d never do that - surely!”.
Notice too, that he’s describing a repeating BigPharma racket which has already been run several times before in this century, as he describes; only “this time it’s much bigger,” says the prof. No wonder such a slag-storm has been thrown at him. The gics must loathe him almost as much as they loathe and intend vicious vengeance against Julian Assange. But - you know - “it’s just business”:
