These are very interesting and thank you for the summaries. It's clear that some public health measures are needed, but I noticed your group's main site was against lockdowns (of course I agree they were very poorly done in terms of ordinary businesses). From the trends, have you noticed a measure which addresses spread without having such deleterious effects on other aspects of life?
Before tackling what may have worked, the principal point for us (and we hope for everyone) is that we are told in a modern society that we have freedom. If we do have freedom, that freedom comes from within you, from your power and your judgements. If you have "freedom" which can at any moment be restricted by government, then western societies are not free - we have conditional permissions. That is the wider point - EVEN IF some things might have worked, governments should never have the power to enforce those upon free people. They can suggest, they can recommend - they should never be able to eliminate freedom. Nothing good is at the end of that road.
On the specific point of what to do - all of that work had already been done. Pre-2020 ALL of the guidelines of health bodies around the world had studied such measures (right up to and including the WHO), and had written them off as not being effective, and additionally too damaging to society. Given those historical conclusions it's incredible to us that these were rapidly hauled out, and that happened not once but virtually every country made the same "mistake".
Recall that these were never intended to save anyone - and indeed they cannot - they were clearly announced as "flattening the curve". That means the same number of people will die or be hospitalised, but it will happen over a longer time and hospital capacity will not be overwhelmed.
In fact what we saw was (a) hospital capacity was never close to overwhelemed, and we dismantled the Nightingale's unusued. (b) The denial / restriction of healthcare over a long period of time has ended up killing more people overall - hence Scotland is enduring the second consecutive summer of +20% mortality in the elderly, the very people we were told we were saving.
The trouble is with every country moving in lock-step is there's very little comparative data - we can't take Country A who locked down and Country B who did not, and compare them. There are some examples - for example of all the countries that report into the Human Mortality Database, Sweden has second lowest excess mortality rate across the whole of 2020-2022 behind Taiwan. It suggests Sweden (who had minimal measures) acted more appropriately than Germany, Spain, Scotland etc - the countries with worse mortality. Sweden did worse initially, but has done much, much better since - suggesting we did more long-term damage with lockdowns, than the short-term impact we tried to avoid.
Sweden also practised 'recommendations' for their people rather than attempting to seize their freedom. It still was not ideal, but back to the first key point, it was at least a better approach than we saw here.
Metatron also has a good analysis of the UK mobility data here
In the end we feel a collaborative approach between people and state would have been better. The state explains the risks, offers to support people if they want to stay at home, but in the end it is up to people of they wish to continue to live their lives. (Bear in mind that for EVERY age group, the risk from COVID is at most 1/10th of their normal annual mortality risk. So for example an 80 year old has a 10% annual risk of dying. Since 2020 they also had a 1% risk from COVID. Is it meaningful to give up to years of year life (20% risk of dying...) to avoid a 2% risk from COVID? Every person should have been free to judge that for themselves, and live their life in knowledge and acceptance of the risks.
How is your feeling, if given the time again how would you like to have acted? Or been treated?
Yes, very much agree with all of this. Just about every aspect of the covid policies, lockdownsm masks, restrictions, has been unscientific madness. The data from non-lockdown Sweden has blown a big hole in the idea that lockdowns saved lives, in both the short-term and especially in the longer term. Data from many countries around the world, and the three RCT studies in Florida, Bangladesh and Denmark have also demonstrated that masks and mandates had no significant effect in reducing transmission.
The abuse of emergency powers in the UK and in Scotland has been especially unsettling for many of us. I don't remember voting for any of this and I don't know anyone who did. As you rightly say, when our freedom to think and act can be curtailed by a capricious and hysterical political class then we can no longer consider ourselves a free people. It's hard to see how we can prevent this happening again within our current 'representational' democracy.
"The denial / restriction of healthcare over a long period of time has ended up killing more people overall." I have not seen evidence supporting this statement, at least not in actuarial or ONS data.
What we have is data that shows broad public health measures employed early in the pandemic worked and the "personal responsibility" belief doesn't. I am genuinely asking what the group's suggested alternative is in order to prevent ongoing and unnecessary death and disability. "Personal responsibility" can't be applied to the elderly, children, and in continuous exposure in workplaces which do not practice safe air policies. Death is a lower risk than disability, obviously.
Before the lockdowns there were 4.2 million people on NHS waiting lists for treatment. It's now 8 million. In the UK, prior to the lockdowns, on average around 30,000 people were referred by their GP for cancer screening, every month. That stopped in most health board areas in March 2020, for many months. And services are still not back to anything like normal. Even SAGE admitted that the lockdowns world probably cost 200,000 lives in the longterm, through belated diagnosis/treatment. The NRS and ONS data confirm that we have had 10-15% more people in the UK dying just about every week now since July 2021. That's nearly an extra 100,000 deaths in the UK, compared with the 2015-2019 average. Very few of these deaths were 'covid'. The lockdowns achieved nothing except harm as the virus had stopped spreading exponentially in the UK in March 2020. This was pointed out in April by Simon Wood at Bristol and Prof Michael Levitt at Stanford. Even Witty agreed that the lockdown was probably not necessary when he gave evidence at a Parlimentary committee. Do some research.
What you're saying is not reflected in the figures. There are indeed longer waiting lists now which will impact health and mortality. However, that knock-on is not a primary cause of death — yet. Actuarial analysis does not show cancer, for example, as a leading cause of death in the breakdowns. The 'unexplained' deaths have a number of causes, the main ones of which are increasingly likely (eg heart/vascular) to be covid related. "The virus had stopped spreading exponentially in the UK in March 2020" — no.
I'm not interested in debating the nature or impact of the virus. These discussions do not answer the question I was originally and still am asking ie what can be done now as acceptable public health measures?
"The 'unexplained' deaths have a number of causes, the main ones of which are increasingly likely (eg heart/vascular) to be covid related." - that's an assumption and an incorrect one. Over 95% of UK population have antibody immunity to 'covid' and have had for a year now (ONS data). The problem here is that the tests being used to decide if someone has 'covid' are a joke, and essentially fraudulent. (look up the study of Cambridge University students). And 'covid' itself is just a list of symptoms (which the government changes periodically, (depending on the scarient) which can be attributed to a number of virus and even bacterial infections. A key problem is how the cause of death is attributed. If a patient has stage 4 cancer, what usually gets them in the end is pneumonia - but for decades, doctors have rightly classified such deaths as due to cancer on the death certificate, as otherwise the cancer statistics would be worthless. Same for heart disease, sepsis etc. Since the covid madness, all deaths of all patients who tested positive for 'covid' were classed as covid deaths, irrespective if they had any 'covid' symptoms. Look up the all cause deaths data, only a few more thousand people died in 2020 compared with previous years. And no more than very bad flu years like 1999 and 1989-90 (when 36,000 people died FROM FLU in just 4 weeks in the UK).
As to your final question. There does not need to be any public health measures. We should have done as Norway did from the start - no testing of asymptomiatics, and as they did nearly a year ago now, we should end all restrictions and public health measures, and treat covid as just another flu type virus. Which it is. Look up coronavirus in a pre 2020 medical dictionary, it will say likely 'the common cold'. You have been scammed.
"I have not seen evidence supporting this statement, at least not in actuarial or ONS data"
Evidence on this is very clear in mortality data. A simple example is Scotland relative to Sweden, where Sweden's excess mortality in the elderly has been negative (below normal) for 18 months now, whereas Scotland's still remains over 20% excess. If you believe the measures have worked, how do you explain Scotland has huge ongoing excess mortality in the very people supposed to be helped by the measures, yet the lightest touch countries have not? There are many more examples like this. Note too that Scotland's excess is far from over - the NHS is on it's knees, waiting lists simply for diagnostic imaging are over double what they were pre-2020, never mind the waiting list to be treated once something is finally imaged and the diagnosed. Our outcome is already one of the worst, and will continue to get worse.
The alternative we explained above - personal responsibility - you disagree, which is fine, you could then be one of the people who stays at home - by your choice. Perhaps in the end the outcome would be almost exactly the same, huge numbers would choose to stay at home, but the important thing is that it is their free choice.
Personal responsibility can absolutely be applied to the elderly and to children, in fact the most strongly. In children the risk from COVID is so small as to be effectively zero. In the elderly the normal risk from living life is so high that it makes no sense to restrict from the small added risk that is COVID. If you were in your 90s you have a 23% chance of dying every year - in two years there's a 50/50 chance you won't be alive. Would you give up those two years with family, Christmas, holidays, birthdays, grandkids - to reduce a 2% risk from COVID in that age group? That makes no sense.
You appear to have a completely different view of the risk, which is understandable as that is what the media have pushed. Would you be surprised to know that for most Scots, that March-May 2020 period wouldn't even make the top 5 of the worst periods of excess mortality in their lifetime. They lived through five worse periods, with no lockdowns, no action - even no awareness. Spend time with the data and it becomes very clear COVID risk was hugely overstated.
- the UK data does not support the remark that restrictions are killing more people than covid. That may change. I have discussed it in another comment
- Sweden does not include deaths 30 days after testing positive
- Sweden has the fourth lowest population density in Europe
- Sweden has the highest number of single-living households in the world
- Sweden was notorious for denying the elderly oxygen and euthansing them with morphine
- Swedish deaths per million are higher than those of its neighbours
- Giesecke's comments directly addressed the elderly stats
- the risk from covid includes a significant risk of illness and disability. Children cannot practice personal responsibility. They are children. They rely on others. The elderly also rely on others. The disabled rely on others. Actually, we all do, tbh. It's just society. We have a responsibility to others. We are not islands.
I asked what public health measures would improve the situation. You have only restated government policy and provided a breakdown of its policy of eugenics. The same arguments can be used for polio.
Shared on twitter. The number / proportion of 'other' does seem high. I take it most are still not being autopsied? But I am not aware of the context; and it would be good to know what the typical percentage of 'other' was in the pre-covid years? Thanks for all you do, its important that the all these premature deaths are not ignored or swept under the carpet. I added some annotations to your cumulative pandemic deaths & births graph, and will tag you when I next post it on twitter.
These are very interesting and thank you for the summaries. It's clear that some public health measures are needed, but I noticed your group's main site was against lockdowns (of course I agree they were very poorly done in terms of ordinary businesses). From the trends, have you noticed a measure which addresses spread without having such deleterious effects on other aspects of life?
Thanks for the reply, and it's a big question!
Before tackling what may have worked, the principal point for us (and we hope for everyone) is that we are told in a modern society that we have freedom. If we do have freedom, that freedom comes from within you, from your power and your judgements. If you have "freedom" which can at any moment be restricted by government, then western societies are not free - we have conditional permissions. That is the wider point - EVEN IF some things might have worked, governments should never have the power to enforce those upon free people. They can suggest, they can recommend - they should never be able to eliminate freedom. Nothing good is at the end of that road.
On the specific point of what to do - all of that work had already been done. Pre-2020 ALL of the guidelines of health bodies around the world had studied such measures (right up to and including the WHO), and had written them off as not being effective, and additionally too damaging to society. Given those historical conclusions it's incredible to us that these were rapidly hauled out, and that happened not once but virtually every country made the same "mistake".
Recall that these were never intended to save anyone - and indeed they cannot - they were clearly announced as "flattening the curve". That means the same number of people will die or be hospitalised, but it will happen over a longer time and hospital capacity will not be overwhelmed.
In fact what we saw was (a) hospital capacity was never close to overwhelemed, and we dismantled the Nightingale's unusued. (b) The denial / restriction of healthcare over a long period of time has ended up killing more people overall - hence Scotland is enduring the second consecutive summer of +20% mortality in the elderly, the very people we were told we were saving.
The trouble is with every country moving in lock-step is there's very little comparative data - we can't take Country A who locked down and Country B who did not, and compare them. There are some examples - for example of all the countries that report into the Human Mortality Database, Sweden has second lowest excess mortality rate across the whole of 2020-2022 behind Taiwan. It suggests Sweden (who had minimal measures) acted more appropriately than Germany, Spain, Scotland etc - the countries with worse mortality. Sweden did worse initially, but has done much, much better since - suggesting we did more long-term damage with lockdowns, than the short-term impact we tried to avoid.
Sweden also practised 'recommendations' for their people rather than attempting to seize their freedom. It still was not ideal, but back to the first key point, it was at least a better approach than we saw here.
Metatron also has a good analysis of the UK mobility data here
https://metatron.substack.com/p/does-reducing-the-mobility-of-healthy
In the end we feel a collaborative approach between people and state would have been better. The state explains the risks, offers to support people if they want to stay at home, but in the end it is up to people of they wish to continue to live their lives. (Bear in mind that for EVERY age group, the risk from COVID is at most 1/10th of their normal annual mortality risk. So for example an 80 year old has a 10% annual risk of dying. Since 2020 they also had a 1% risk from COVID. Is it meaningful to give up to years of year life (20% risk of dying...) to avoid a 2% risk from COVID? Every person should have been free to judge that for themselves, and live their life in knowledge and acceptance of the risks.
How is your feeling, if given the time again how would you like to have acted? Or been treated?
Yes, very much agree with all of this. Just about every aspect of the covid policies, lockdownsm masks, restrictions, has been unscientific madness. The data from non-lockdown Sweden has blown a big hole in the idea that lockdowns saved lives, in both the short-term and especially in the longer term. Data from many countries around the world, and the three RCT studies in Florida, Bangladesh and Denmark have also demonstrated that masks and mandates had no significant effect in reducing transmission.
The abuse of emergency powers in the UK and in Scotland has been especially unsettling for many of us. I don't remember voting for any of this and I don't know anyone who did. As you rightly say, when our freedom to think and act can be curtailed by a capricious and hysterical political class then we can no longer consider ourselves a free people. It's hard to see how we can prevent this happening again within our current 'representational' democracy.
"The denial / restriction of healthcare over a long period of time has ended up killing more people overall." I have not seen evidence supporting this statement, at least not in actuarial or ONS data.
What we have is data that shows broad public health measures employed early in the pandemic worked and the "personal responsibility" belief doesn't. I am genuinely asking what the group's suggested alternative is in order to prevent ongoing and unnecessary death and disability. "Personal responsibility" can't be applied to the elderly, children, and in continuous exposure in workplaces which do not practice safe air policies. Death is a lower risk than disability, obviously.
Before the lockdowns there were 4.2 million people on NHS waiting lists for treatment. It's now 8 million. In the UK, prior to the lockdowns, on average around 30,000 people were referred by their GP for cancer screening, every month. That stopped in most health board areas in March 2020, for many months. And services are still not back to anything like normal. Even SAGE admitted that the lockdowns world probably cost 200,000 lives in the longterm, through belated diagnosis/treatment. The NRS and ONS data confirm that we have had 10-15% more people in the UK dying just about every week now since July 2021. That's nearly an extra 100,000 deaths in the UK, compared with the 2015-2019 average. Very few of these deaths were 'covid'. The lockdowns achieved nothing except harm as the virus had stopped spreading exponentially in the UK in March 2020. This was pointed out in April by Simon Wood at Bristol and Prof Michael Levitt at Stanford. Even Witty agreed that the lockdown was probably not necessary when he gave evidence at a Parlimentary committee. Do some research.
What you're saying is not reflected in the figures. There are indeed longer waiting lists now which will impact health and mortality. However, that knock-on is not a primary cause of death — yet. Actuarial analysis does not show cancer, for example, as a leading cause of death in the breakdowns. The 'unexplained' deaths have a number of causes, the main ones of which are increasingly likely (eg heart/vascular) to be covid related. "The virus had stopped spreading exponentially in the UK in March 2020" — no.
I'm not interested in debating the nature or impact of the virus. These discussions do not answer the question I was originally and still am asking ie what can be done now as acceptable public health measures?
"The 'unexplained' deaths have a number of causes, the main ones of which are increasingly likely (eg heart/vascular) to be covid related." - that's an assumption and an incorrect one. Over 95% of UK population have antibody immunity to 'covid' and have had for a year now (ONS data). The problem here is that the tests being used to decide if someone has 'covid' are a joke, and essentially fraudulent. (look up the study of Cambridge University students). And 'covid' itself is just a list of symptoms (which the government changes periodically, (depending on the scarient) which can be attributed to a number of virus and even bacterial infections. A key problem is how the cause of death is attributed. If a patient has stage 4 cancer, what usually gets them in the end is pneumonia - but for decades, doctors have rightly classified such deaths as due to cancer on the death certificate, as otherwise the cancer statistics would be worthless. Same for heart disease, sepsis etc. Since the covid madness, all deaths of all patients who tested positive for 'covid' were classed as covid deaths, irrespective if they had any 'covid' symptoms. Look up the all cause deaths data, only a few more thousand people died in 2020 compared with previous years. And no more than very bad flu years like 1999 and 1989-90 (when 36,000 people died FROM FLU in just 4 weeks in the UK).
As to your final question. There does not need to be any public health measures. We should have done as Norway did from the start - no testing of asymptomiatics, and as they did nearly a year ago now, we should end all restrictions and public health measures, and treat covid as just another flu type virus. Which it is. Look up coronavirus in a pre 2020 medical dictionary, it will say likely 'the common cold'. You have been scammed.
"I have not seen evidence supporting this statement, at least not in actuarial or ONS data"
Evidence on this is very clear in mortality data. A simple example is Scotland relative to Sweden, where Sweden's excess mortality in the elderly has been negative (below normal) for 18 months now, whereas Scotland's still remains over 20% excess. If you believe the measures have worked, how do you explain Scotland has huge ongoing excess mortality in the very people supposed to be helped by the measures, yet the lightest touch countries have not? There are many more examples like this. Note too that Scotland's excess is far from over - the NHS is on it's knees, waiting lists simply for diagnostic imaging are over double what they were pre-2020, never mind the waiting list to be treated once something is finally imaged and the diagnosed. Our outcome is already one of the worst, and will continue to get worse.
The alternative we explained above - personal responsibility - you disagree, which is fine, you could then be one of the people who stays at home - by your choice. Perhaps in the end the outcome would be almost exactly the same, huge numbers would choose to stay at home, but the important thing is that it is their free choice.
Personal responsibility can absolutely be applied to the elderly and to children, in fact the most strongly. In children the risk from COVID is so small as to be effectively zero. In the elderly the normal risk from living life is so high that it makes no sense to restrict from the small added risk that is COVID. If you were in your 90s you have a 23% chance of dying every year - in two years there's a 50/50 chance you won't be alive. Would you give up those two years with family, Christmas, holidays, birthdays, grandkids - to reduce a 2% risk from COVID in that age group? That makes no sense.
You appear to have a completely different view of the risk, which is understandable as that is what the media have pushed. Would you be surprised to know that for most Scots, that March-May 2020 period wouldn't even make the top 5 of the worst periods of excess mortality in their lifetime. They lived through five worse periods, with no lockdowns, no action - even no awareness. Spend time with the data and it becomes very clear COVID risk was hugely overstated.
- the UK data does not support the remark that restrictions are killing more people than covid. That may change. I have discussed it in another comment
- Sweden does not include deaths 30 days after testing positive
- Sweden has the fourth lowest population density in Europe
- Sweden has the highest number of single-living households in the world
- Sweden was notorious for denying the elderly oxygen and euthansing them with morphine
- Swedish deaths per million are higher than those of its neighbours
- Giesecke's comments directly addressed the elderly stats
- the risk from covid includes a significant risk of illness and disability. Children cannot practice personal responsibility. They are children. They rely on others. The elderly also rely on others. The disabled rely on others. Actually, we all do, tbh. It's just society. We have a responsibility to others. We are not islands.
I asked what public health measures would improve the situation. You have only restated government policy and provided a breakdown of its policy of eugenics. The same arguments can be used for polio.
When it suited them, they will inflate or deflate figures. People should have figured them out by now...
Shared on twitter. The number / proportion of 'other' does seem high. I take it most are still not being autopsied? But I am not aware of the context; and it would be good to know what the typical percentage of 'other' was in the pre-covid years? Thanks for all you do, its important that the all these premature deaths are not ignored or swept under the carpet. I added some annotations to your cumulative pandemic deaths & births graph, and will tag you when I next post it on twitter.