No I’m trying to look at it from a balanced perspective.
It’s trying to balance the human / medical / societal / economic angles, that makes it such a challenge.
One angle that I think is very secondary indeed, is the political one - or at least, only in the sense of policy-making, not in the sense of politicking. I think Macron is handling it well because he’s looking at the whole picture, he’s explaining why he’s reached the decisions he has and putting his hands up to not knowing enough and to having to make the best decisions he can with incomplete information. I think the Tories are handling it badly because they can’t seem to get away from the blame-shifting and the self-justification and the praise-seeking, and that’s the side of politics that has no useful place here. The EU funding row could have turned into politicking but thankfully it turned into policy-making instead.
I’m sure there are unscrupulous politicians who are, or are dreaming of, manoeuvring to use this for their own political capital given half a chance. The US is behaving appallingly. China has the opportunity to behave well or behave badly. It’ll be an interesting history lesson in 10 years’ time.
Yes, that’s my read on it too.
My OP was based on the media reports mainly from the UK where I do not trust the politicians (or the media) further than I can throw a piano.
I am sure that quite a lot of pertinent information was witheld or “adjusted” in the early days, thus my conspiracy theory.
Looking back at your OP your conspiracy theory was based on your fixation with the low death rate at the time and an apparent lack of understanding of how the potential that the number of cases could rise rapidly. You don’t seem to appreciate how the actions carried out around the world have been used to maintain that growth at a manageable level.
An expert doctor was interviewed on German TV a few days ago and explained that having done REAL RESEARCH from door to door taking samples etc etc he found that even in a household with FOUR positive cases there were signs of Corona virus on many surfaces such as doorhandles, remote controls etc none of which were able to reproduce or SPREAD this virus any further.
It ‘seems’ that politicians have been in the club of those who are warned by ‘certain’ physicians resulting in this fanatical lockdown response.
The number of deaths resulting from this lockdown etc has been ignored since that would only irritate those who already feel they have been once again conned by those who are supposed to “help”.
“A general rule of thumb is now to not trust anyone who has clean fingernails”.
ONS to investigate why 8,000 weekly ‘excess’ death toll even higher than coronavirus figures imply
Nick Stripe, the health analysis and life events division at the ONS, gave a sobering interview to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire a few minutes ago about the latest mortality figures. (“Life events” presumably include dying.) Here are the key points.
Stripe said that the ONS death figures released this morning for England and Wales for the week ending 10 April were almost certainly an understatement. He said 10 April, was Good Friday, and only around a third of registration offices were open. He went on:
So actually that number is slightly deflated because if the registration offices had been open, maybe another couple of thousand, if not more, deaths would have been registered.
He said the ONS figures that were published showed around 8,000 “excess deaths” in the week ending 10 April. That meant deaths above the five-year average. Of those, only 80% were directly related to coronavirus, he said.
Compared to the five-year average of the same week in the year, it’s 8,000 deaths above that average, of which 6,200 - about 80% of of those deaths - involved Covid.
He said the ONS was carrying out a research project to establish what was responsible for the other 20% of excess deaths. They might be related to coronavirus, he said, or they might be related to people not going to hospital. He said fully establishing the reasons for these excess deaths might take months or even years.
He said that the the ONS’s figures for the Friday up to 10 April were 40% higher than the numbers that were officially announced by the government for coronavirus deaths the following day. And the ONS figures were about 20% higher than the latest figures for NHS England (which is now publishing figures showing how many people are known to have died from coronavirus in hospital on any particular day).
He said only around 80% of coronavirus deaths were in a hospital. In the previous week that figure was 90%, he said. He said 13% of coronavirus deaths were in a care home, and 5% were in a private home. In the previous week there were 217 coronavirus deaths in care homes. In the week up to 10 April there were just over 1,000.
He said the number of deaths in care homes, from all causes, was double in the week up to 10 April what it was two weeks previously.
He said that around one in three of the death in the week ending 10 April involved coronavirus. In the previous week only around one in five deaths involved coronavirus.
I suspect that it is what a lot of us have worried about for some time. Very ill people are not going to hospital
No, they are choosing to die at home and I would not blame them.
I am not talking about Coronavirus patients I am talking about stroke, chest pain, etc that would not be fatal with treatment
This is one of the most interesting and clear interviews I’ve seen on COVID so far
Interview with one of world’s most senior epidemiologists
The following is the presenters overview of the interview:
"Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, advisor to the Swedish Government (he hired Anders Tegnell who is currently directing Swedish strategy), the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and an advisor to the director general of the WHO, lays out with typically Swedish bluntness why he thinks:
- UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
- The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
- This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product”
- The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better
- The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
- The paper was very much too pessimistic
- Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
- The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
- The results will eventually be similar for all countries
- Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
- The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
- At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available"
That’s a very predictable response from a representative of a country that has taken a very different approach to Britain. It will be years before anyone will be able to make an accurate comparison and prove who made the correct decision.
I hope that he has good evidence for those claims rather than just a statement of his own views.
Hi David, he finishes too by saying that this same interview should be redone in one year from now. The interview is really worth watching.
indeed. However, in fairness, anyone who has been asked to advise governments based on their senior expertise and experience has to have ‘his own view’ otherwise their experience would count for nothing…
As he is advising the Swedish government so he is giving his opinion to confirm that advice.
I agree that the results will eventually be similar for all countries when we view mortality rates in a couple of years. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the number who have had the disease is much higher than thought although 50% seems a bit extreme. Whether the infection fatality rate is 0.1% depends on how many cases have been asymptomatic but I also wouldn’t be surprised if the IFR isn’t well below 1%.
I disagree that COVID-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the 'flu as the 'flu is not a mild disease. Every year people are hospitalised with the 'flu & some of them die even young fit healthy people. It’s more like 'flu than anything else but it’s not the disease per se & there are some severe disease features we don’t normally see in 'flu it’s the fact that it’s so contagious & so many people are infected that the numbers of very sick people with breathing difficulties we are seeing is so many more than even the worst 'flu season
Flu also doesn’t leave you with lifelong heart problems or needing dialysis for the rest of your life. It is starting to emerge that the after-effects of those who survive a serious bout with this virus can be pretty severe too.
This response hasn’t been very well thought out…shouldn’t you be encouraging him to stay in more bearing in mind how dangerous it is!!!
I think the problem is that many people who read my post think I am referring to the clinical difference between the two viruses which do have different effects . I do not think that a virus can conspire anything, although I am not privy to their inner workings!
I was trying to pose the question as to why the governments response to this virus was so much more agressive than to that of the 'flu virus at a time when the figures were very much lower. Despite being apparently regarded as virtually harmless by all & sundry, ’ flu still manages to harvest a fair few souls annually.
As for staying in & other protective measures, I do not need to be told, not least because I work from home anyway, have most of the parts delivered & only have to shop for one - well, two if you count the dog.
Bob got it.
It all comes down to money and preventing panic.
There is sufficient “herd immunity” in the population for the Flu R-rate to remain reasonably low, so deaths among the most vulnerable will be spread out over a long season and doctors, hospitals, funeral directors, crematoria etc would not be suddenly overwhelmed.
If the same number of people were to fall ill within a few weeks, we would not be able to cope. Queues of ambulances with people dying before they were admitted to hospital. Bodies of those dying at home with nobody available to take them away. People with other illnesses unable to receive treatment. That’s what you get when a population has no immunity.
But we didn’t, did we?
We didn’t, because of the lockdown and social distancing.
But don’t take my word for it. Take a look at the USA where they ignored the science and now have the highest infection rate in the world. No time for funerals, they are burying them in mass graves, like medical waste disposal on an industrial scale.
You could go and see for yourself, except that the won’t let you in because they are afraid that YOU might infect THEM!