After watching this pattern play out for over two years there finally seems to be an admission that covid is worse in winter. Fauci has said he expects an autumn and winter wave starting in October and peaking in January.
COVID Data
The impact of synthetic spike protein
The weekly tally of deaths above expected levels from non covid causes is finally being started to be reported in a few mainstream media outlets. There has been a wide range of speculation about the cause, with a number of mechanisms postulated including post covid sequelae and lack of access to healthcare during lockdowns in 2020 and early 2021.
What do Portugal, Ireland and the UK have in common?
The trajectory for hospitalisations and ICU admissions in the UK does appear to show benefits of vaccination since early 2021. The peaks in hospitalisations were comparable with autumn 2020 with the exception of Scotland’s large peak in March 2022. However, the intensive care admission peaks were much smaller than prior peaks.
A (Possibly Unpopular) Null Hypothesis
H0SARS-CoV-2 was nasty, but not unusually so, and certainly not particularly novel. The cure was worse than the disease. It is difficult to bottle up truths forever, and it will be instructive to see whether this hypothesis is still in the running when it comes to writing the definitive history of the Covid epoch.
Long covid myths busted
The claims that long covid could be a “mass disabling event” are totally unfounded based on the data from two recent papers.
Why are so many people dying?
The disappointment from Covidean doom-mongers about the recent – and entirely expected – downtick in cases of respiratory disease has been palpable, presumably because this has happened without recourse to ‘clever’ public health interventions.
How many injections prevent one covid death?
Risk is notoriously difficult to communicate effectively. It is especially hard when referring to an emotive subject like the risk of dying as the emotional response prevents rational interpretation of complex numbers. To simplify understanding of the benefits of interventions the number of people who need to be treated to prevent a death can be measured, the number needed to treat (or “NNT”). The same
Impact of vaccination on covid death
Authorities continue to claim that vaccination provides 80% protection from covid death. The data that these calculations are based on are measured in sample populations subject to different biases.
The SARS-CoV-2 and influenza see-saw
Covid and influenza appear to have a reciprocal relationship. When a covid wave occurs influenza disappears and when covid recedes influenza returns. The fear of having to cope with covid and influenza at the same time over winter as warned in a report from Imperial this time last year, was not valid.
Laundering the death numbers
The ONS have released the latest update on their data for deaths by vaccination status. Superficially it appears to show residual protection against death in the vaccinated but only a little digging reveals that there is likely hidden information that could turn that observation on its head.
Imperial fantasy of 20 million lives saved
Imperial College has produced a new fantasy number to test people’s gullibility. This time they are claiming that 19.8 million lives have been saved by vaccination.
Imperial College now have a global reputation for making provable wrong claims based on modelling and they appear to want to bolster that reputation.
Updated analysis of deaths in males 15-19 years of age
Cumulative total deaths in young males have stopped deviating from the 2015/2019 baseline and have been running parallel with it.
Covid-19: The Evidence Now – Part 4
If you have enjoyed the recent Evidence UPdates, here are two more on vaccine passports and ONS infection surveillance data.
The ONS Infection Survey: a re-evaluation of the data
Whether this is Omicron or cross reactivity with previously endemic coronaviruses is uncertain. What is clear from the Ct values in the ONS Infection Survey is that neither “non-pharmaceutical interventions” or vaccines have had any impact on waves of infectious SARS-CoV-2 carriers and that neither economically destructive lockdowns or mandating experimental vaccines should ever have been attempted.
Rise in long-term sickness
The ONS have published their survey data on the number of working aged people who are economically inactive. The levels are higher than in the past and many commentators were quick to blame the rise on long covid. It is worth looking a little more closely before jumping to that conclusion.
Covid-19 : The Evidence Now PART 3
Last week we published Part 2 of our evidence updates, focusing on ethics, masks and elderly care. This week, we take another detailed look at the collateral damage caused by lockdowns and rather topically have reworked the piece on covid vaccines for children.
A picture tells a thousand words: or does it?
This rather beautiful graph was tweeted by @EthicalSkeptic. Some key information from it has been obscured for now to assist with making a particular point.
Data shenanigans as Sweden misleads its public over vaccination-related mortality data
In December 2021 Norman Fenton, Martin Neil, Clare Craig, Josh Geutzkow, Joel Smalley, Scott McLachlan and Jonathan Engler published an article casting doubt on the vaccine efficacy implied by the UK’s official mortality statistics as they related to vaccination status, raising miscategorisation of vaccinated deaths soon after injection as unvaccinated as a possible significant factor.
