LISTEN: CBC Radio cuts off expert when he questions Covid19 narrative
A phone interview with a respected physician appears to have been cut short by CBC Radio when the Doctor went off-script
Dr Joel Kettner phoned into the March 15th episode of CBC’s Cross Country Checkup podcast to discuss the Canadian (and international) reaction to the Covid19 pandemic. He was in the middle of making a point about statistics when the host abruptly cut him off.
While the two invited guests were very much taking the governmental line on the threat of Covid19, Dr Kettner was striking a different tone
To be clear, Dr Kettner is not a fringe or controversial character. He is professor of Community Health Sciences and Surgery at Manitoba University, former Chief Public Health Officer for Manitoba province and Medical Director of the International Centre for Infectious Diseases.
He was interviewed on Global News in January, when the pandemic was first hitting the news.
His comments are informative and interesting, but the host’s reaction perhaps more so. Listen below (starting at around 1 hour 12 minutes in), or we have transcribed them for you.
CBC Radio – Cross Country Checkup, March 15 2020
Duncan McCue (DM, Host): Dr Joel Kettner is on the line from Manitoba. Hi, Dr Kettner welcome to Checkup. You teach at the University of Manitoba and are former Chief Medical Officer of Manitoba, I understand. So what do you think of how we are coping right now?
Dr Joel Kettner (JK): Well I don’t know what to think, frankly, but I’ll tell you what I do think. First, I wanna say that in 30 years of public health medicine I have never seen anything like this, anything anywhere near like this. I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza. And other respiratory illness viruses, we don’t always know what they are. But I’ve never seen this reaction, and I’m trying to understand why. I have to say that I really feel for my colleagues that are in public health practice. it is easy for me to sit in the armchair of my office and look at this and observe it, and be critical and have ideas. But I really feel for them for three reasons.
One is that the data they are getting is incomplete to really make sense of the size of the threat. We are getting very crude numbers of cases and deaths, very little information about testing rates, contagious analysis, severity rates, who is being hospitalised, who is in intensive care, who is dying, what are the definitions to decide if someone died of the coronavirus or just died with the coronavirus.
There is so much important data that is very hard to get to guide the decisions on how serious a threat this is.
The other part is we actually do not have that much good evidence for the social distancing methods. It was just a couple of review in the CDC emerging infectious disease journal, which showed that although some of them might work, we really don’t know to what degree and the evidence is pretty weak.
The third part is the pressure that is being put on public health doctors and public health leaders. And that pressure is coming from various places. The first place it came from was the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) when he said “This is a grave threat and a public enemy number one”, I have never heard a Director-General of WHO use terms like that.
Then when he announced the pandemic he said he was doing it “because of a grave alarming quick spread of the disease and an alarming amount of inaction around the world” that puts a huge pressure on public health doctors and leaders and advisors and huge pressure on governments and then you get this what seems like a cascade of decision making that really puts pressure on the countries and governments – provincial, state – to sort of…to keep up with this action that Dr Hoffman [an earlier guest on the programme] said that we are trying to avoid, or should avoid, which is an overreaction. I don’t know what is an appropriate reaction, but I do know that I am having trouble trying to figure this out and I…
[INTERRUPTED BY HOST]
DM: …So I’m sure that your medical colleagues across the country are probably nodding their heads when you say they don’t have enough data, that they lack data. I suspect health professionals around the world wish they had more data, whether it is testing rates, severity rates, all that kind of thing. So it’s probably a valid concern. But you mentioned that you are not confident with some of the literature with regard to social distancing and its effectiveness […] What is the basis of your concern then? If social distancing is debatable in your mind, what do you worry about then?
JK: I worry about the consequences of social distancing. I worry about people who are losing their jobs. I worry about interruptions with the healthcare system itself. There are many doctors in Manitoba in quarantine right now, because they have returned from other countries. I worry about the message to the public, about the fear of coming into contact with people, being in the same space as people, shaking their hands, having meetings with people. I worry about many, many consequences related to that.
If you look at the data for what we are actually dealing with, I want to give this example. In Hubei, in the province of Hubei, where there has been the most cases and deaths by far, the actual number of cases reported is 1 per 1000 people and the actual rate of deaths reported is 1 per 20,000. So maybe that would help to put things into perspective, as to the actual rate and risks of this condition, because it is a lot lower in any other part of the world, including Italy, and certainly in Canada and the United States…
[INTERRUPTED BY HOST AGAIN, INTERVIEW OVER]
Many thanks to Cory Morningstar for bringing this to our attention. She is doing great work collating dissident voices on the coronavirus, follow her on twitter if you don’t already.
Correction 18/03/20 – The original version of this article incorrectly suggested Kettner was an invited guest of the programme, when in reality he phoned in of his own volition.
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CBC has actually EDITED (and poorly, I might add) the audio file since this article was posted! They censored the doctor’s last two paragraphs from the episode. Pretending Duncan is throwing to a different guest instead of asking a follow-up question…
Cory to the rescue, again! This is a keeper, to be added to my next blog post on covid 19. They, with the exception of the first post I did, are essentially just lists of links from alt/progressive sources or any sources that have interesting information. But I primarily focus on the alt/progressive community because, my theory is, that’s where I’m going to find the most truth and the most interest in the truth.
My first post on covid 19, which readers here may appreciate, is: “Corporate Media – A Terrifying Addiction.” I apologize if I’ve already mentioned it. I don’t remember.
https://arrby.wordpress.com/2020/03/16/corporate-media-a-terrifying-addiction/
I don’t do social media. Cory needs a website. It looks like she’s abandoned her own, sadly. As for The Wrong Kind Of Green, I find it very alarming that there’s one article on the website about covid 19, which is by Ann Garrison (who does great reportage on Rwanda). I’d use the article but I’m trying to avoid articles where there’s a willingness displayed to buy into the establishment narrative on this virus and a willingness to add to the panic, even if the article and the author and/or person being interviewed presents great info. I’m willing to make exceptions, but I’m trying to ‘not’ give the message that this epidemic (if that’s okay) is not the huge killer that corporate media is saying it is.
Proof Read Last Sentence, Please. I can’t not no what U not no Sayin’. I think I might agree, but I’m a little unclear. New England Journal of Medicine says virus is wimpy.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387?fbclid=IwAR31EHYsUHMR_A2CPmI2XUs5p-HqNRTVrwRPF7NImsT2xs6q9qGplKK07X8
I can’t edit what I wrote, Can I? Yep, I boobed. I wrote: “…but I’m trying to ‘not’ give the message that this epidemic (if that’s okay) is not the huge killer that corporate media is saying it is.” The second “not” should not be there. I completely reversed my meaning with that. And thanks! I hate it when I do that.
I don’t think you’ve uncovered some grand conspiracy of media suppression here. The CBC published a detailed article today about two prominent epidemiologists debating the appropriate response to the pandemic. It’s one of their most popular articles right now. They are providing balanced coverage but they’re not giving everyone with an opinion a platform to spout contrarian views that go against the scientific consensus. That would be irresponsible.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-covid-pandemic-response-scientists-1.5502423
Aren’t “contrarian views” what science is all about. Or are you defending some new absolutist faith?
“Aren’t “contrarian views” what science is all about.”
Of course. Provided those views are based in science and not extrapolating something a doctor said into something they didn’t say, or just insisting that it’s all “too coincidental”.
“based in science” is one of those phrases that sounds profound but has no content.
No-one is “extrapolating something a doctor said into something they didn’t say”.
And it is perfectly valid to note coincidences. And when they reach a certain volume, to consider them suspicious.
Yep!
“Based in science”???
*snicker*
Only someone very unfamiliar with the actual “Scientific Method” would say something like that.
“Science” is actually a VERB because it implies the always ENDLESS questioning and research into previous claims.
In other words, there is NO SUCH THING as “settled science” because those two words are mutually exclusive.
Of course, but the ‘contrarians’ need to bring some facts and evidence to the discussion. The anthropogenic climate destabilisation denial debacle is the supreme example of where debate can be sabotaged by massive vested interests.
People DO bring facts and evidence that goes against man made climate change but it always gets ignored. Or we get lumped in with some expert funded by big oil that we never even cited as a reference. That is because we are immediately accused of being supportive of oil industry. The propaganda funded by the oil industry is that they do no harm whatsoever. We know that is far from true. The pollution from the oil production is proven to be harmful and deadly. But the theory of CO2 killing the planet just doesn’t hold up if we apply real scientific analysis to it. It is assumed true because of the vested interests in climate change.
“It’s one of their most popular articles right now” (sigh…)
As if that was of any importance whatsoever…
“My Little Pink Fluffy Unicorn” is also the sort of title which can be extremely popular with certain groups, but that doesn’t mean it’s a rational choice for those interested in logic or reality.
Today’s mainstream media are justly notorious for manufacturing news and opinion, and there’s a reason for that notoriety. This expert isn’t “everyone with an opinion”. “Everyone with an opinion” doesn’t earn the title of doctor or expert.
On the other hand, everyone with an opinion laughs at genuine, critical, questioning science when it asks questions which makes them feel ignorant, gullible and prejudiced.
i’ve heard that one before abt cbc. balanced coverage, you must be joking. it depends entirely on where you put the fulcrum. cbc has blacklisted me for over 20 years. now they are blacklisting scientists who ask uncomfortable questions. as if there isn’t a $$political$$ agenda playing out!!!
What is grand conspiracy one should ask? I refer to the CBC as Radio Moscow. I called up Cross Country Check-up in the following week of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines MH370 and they took my statement with 40 minutes left to go and kept asking for more calls and never put me on the air. My opinion wasn’t in-line with what the CBC was trying to portray. This jet liner may have crashed and the pilot had problems. Our local (news)paper published a story about the jetliner on the front page and one in the back pages. Vastly different. The front story had arrows going in different directions and asked like where did this plane go? The back page story had a UK satellite with a transponder aboard the Boeing 777 and it had an electronic handshake every hour with the jet. Why didn’t the media go en masse and ask the UK satellite to show us where the jet was at every handshake. The media ideological and it doesn’t just disappear and fade back in.
Exactly! I too remember the manufactured fake fiasco surrounding MH370. Any individual who did the slightest bit of research would have discovered that there is basic data (regarding location and other basic data) constantly being sent from any major Boeing passenger jet to a Boeing “home base” site.
In other words, it is IMPOSSIBLE for a large Boeing jet to “disappear” because there is always telemetry data being sent out and monitored.
Everything we are told is a huge lie.
That wasn’t an article about a discussion! No real detail. No balanced coverage.
Two differing viewpoints, lack of supporting evidence, and I’m sure ionandis wouldn’t hesitate to provide, with a bias towards CoVidiocy.
I am spending a lot of time online these days, because where I live we are ‘working from home’ so the commute is gone from my daily life, save for ‘briefing meetings’ once a week. Quite absurd. And everyone in my field knows it, but my employers have been ordered from on high to set an example.
Anyhow, I’m noticing patterns of talking points emerging from the busy disinformation sources, which are interesting as they highlight for us the ideas and beliefs they want the population to internalize, but also those things they know to be the most egregious flaws in their narrative.
I’ll highlight a couple of them
Talking Point 1:This ‘novel’CoV is nothing like the flu
My Response: It is exactly like the flu, and people are aware of that and drawing obvious conclusions, and the sock puppet accounts are on detail to deny and obfuscate this most glaring gap in the COVID19 horror script.
It is just the flu, whatever name you call it. Same demographics for mortality, same or lower CFR, same population mortality,similar or lower infection rate and identical clinical presentation. The flu.
Talking Point 2: This virus is unique
My response: No it is not. Neither its structure (theorised) nor its alleged genome nor its longevity nor its infectivity have been shown to manifest anything unique. If it exists at all beyond being a laboratory induced artefact it is simply another coronavirus.
Talking Point 3:You can be reinfected and don’t develop immunity
My Response:Media drivel. Anyone who survives any virus invasion does so because their immune system has defeated the pathogen. You therefore have immunity by definition and are not going to fall ill with the same virus again. If a patient becomes ill immediately after apparent recovery – which is very common – we will assume either a relapse (a few virus remained and numbers temporarily return to a load level that can produce disease) or infection by a secondary agent. Both of these things happen all the time.
That’s just three sock puppet talking points of several. I may address more. The mere existence of these narrative managers pushing a certain and completely false idea about this alleged pathogen is only hardening my view – and the views of others I’m in touch with – that this is a scam on a massive scale.
Virus Guy,
I’m a bit at a loss here, based on the fact that Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) is caused by multiple pathogens and is not restricted to one virus group alone, much as the fact that the Common Cold is caused by more than one pathogen, i.e., the symptoms may express themselves in a similar manner but the root cause differ considerably.
Anyhow, one may not hold a PhD in Science, but this does not make us ignorant, nor able to understand medical research papers that are set out with clarity with multiple processes explained, such as in this paper here on the Common Cold: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC104573/ or the 39 Lectures delivered by the Pulmonologist Dr Roger Seheult focusing on what’s now referred too as Covid-19: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vMXSkKLg2I
Forgive me but the relevance of your remarks to what I said escapes me. Are you agreeing or disagreeing? Why the videos? Point?
You state that Covid-19 is just the flu, which, it is not, as the main factor causing fatalities in respiratory infections is ARDS, which is caused by multiple pathogens entering the respiratory tract and entering cells therein to propagate themselves, as all RNA virus do, the body then reacts to this and in certain instances, with our immune systems on overdrive we drown in our own fluids.
Whilst I certainly make no claims of being a trained scientist, virologist or medical practitioner, it is useful to glean an understanding and keep abreast of medical opinion as it develops, which is why I’ve noted the Lectures of Dr. Roger Seheult, which are highly informative for those not with a science or medical background as his work is highly accessible and certainly not alarmist.
“It is just the flu, whatever name you call it. Same demographics for mortality, “
Nope.
“Aches and pains, sore throat, fever – although they may feel similar to those suffering from their symptoms, the novel coronavirus is not the same as the seasonal flu, experts stressed Wednesday.
COVID-19, the illness caused by coronavirus, proves deadly in around 3.5 percent of confirmed cases.
While this is not the same as its mortality rate, given many people may be infected but not realise it, it is significantly higher than seasonal flu, which typically kills 0.1 percent of patients.
“There is still considerable uncertainty around the fatality rates of COVID-19 and it likely varies depending on the quality of local healthcare,” said Francois Balloux, Professor of Computational Systems Biology at University College London.
“That said, it is around two percent on average, which is about 20 times higher than for the seasonal flu lineages currently in circulation.””
“Disease experts estimate that each COVID-19 sufferer infects between two to 3 others.
That’s a reproduction rate up to twice as high as seasonal flu, which typically infects 1.3 new people for each patient.”
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-new-coronavirus-isn-t-like-the-flu-but-they-have-one-big-thing-in-common
“experts stressed” Well, That blows us all away for sure. Not. CDC is full of experts and that org is as corrupt as they come. (Even the guy who created the bio-weapons guide, or something, for the US military will tell you that.) You have to do better.
CanIndiaNews reported that 2 of 3 “Covid-19 patients” in Ontario’s I.C.U. beds were “presumed” – They had NOT been Tested, published Friday April 3 — Last Issue, Now their server is DEAD too! Covid kills Free Speech, much like University and Progressives. Communism Rebranded, People are dying from Poverty, not the Flu. Suicide and isolation kill people, couples, families and Brain Cells. Heart Attacks in Fat Assed Canadians will get blamed on the flu. If this shit was real Mass Transit would be the first thing to STOP!
Excellent!
For those who keep talking about yearly flu deaths. Yes these exist and at the moment are of course much higher but they are spread out and do not show the degree of severity in some younger people than Covid19 does nor the degree of contagiousness. It is generally also caused by the same flu virus but with mutations every few years causing sometimes large alarming blips. But because the main flu virus is established there is a certain degree of immunity and also each year vaccines are developed to take account of mutations and are offered at least in U.K. to the elderly and vulnerable.
But Covid19 is new. There is no immunity to it. Although a lot of cases may be asymptomatic 5% of those infected require intensive care treatment and and almost half of those die. Another 14% develop serious infection and require hospital care. This places huge demands because in treatment of such demanding cases there is the added burden of containment and the risk of infection of health staff of whom several have died in China. This does not happen in flu even In bad years. So although we have a disease that may be mild, not necessitating hospital or any specific treatment in 80% of people with symptoms and probably infecting many more who do not show symptoms, it places a huge strain on health services and leads to paralysis of the whole system due to the sheer number of cases presenting in a short period of time. Younger people may start dying of diseases such as appendicitis or other treatable illness because of the swamped health facilities. This is a reality and has happened in Italy and is now spreading to Spain and maybe the rest of Europe and U.K. soon.
I add that the pattern in flu is also seasonal and predictable but there is nothing predictable about Covid19
Except the government/media/corporate panic it is engendering. That, I find entirely predictable, having dug a little more deeply into the nagging question of who is benefitting politically or financially from this.
Reporting for work early this morning, Agent Orage?
‘Must try harder’, George.
Yes he/she must.
Orage actually.
Your secret’s safe with me.
It says a lot about this site when the commentators all get together to upvote a completely empty, vacuous response.
Not so vacuous. Just appropriate to the content of the comment.
I’ve been reading your output, and you are quite obviously on detail to spread fear and disinformation. What else would induce a human being to spend so many hours at a keyboard talking this much drivel?
I can see you are a non science person of limited intelligence with some kind of bullet-point list of items you need to mention on a rotational basis. And your hours seem punishingly long.
The empty folly of your existence saddens me.
OMG how right you are. I have been rumbled!
” What else would induce a human being to spend so many hours at a keyboard talking this much drivel?”
Why not? You do.
Wow, as a parent, I’d go straight to Gail’s house and take my child. If Gail stood between my child and myself, Gail wouldn’t be worried about the Corona flu – she’d be worried about compound fractures.
Gail’s attitude is high-handed and paranoid.
The online community will strongly support Amanda’s actions to take her child from Gail’s house. We will sign petitions and write to members of parliament and organise mass rallies to free your child. (no guarantee that any of that will work)
Curiously though, who is Gail and why is your child is in Gail’s house? Was your child abducted by Gail’s agents? Is there enough food at Gail’s house? Does your child have any known allergies? What about the entertainment options over there? Does your child have access to game consoles and online games? Are there attempts to brainwash your child or trafficking risks?
What’s with the Gail thing?
I’ve obviously missed something here…
You don’t know about Gail? Seriously?
Well I live abroad, and don’t follow all the news in my homeland. Give me a clue… Like her second name?
You haven’t missed anything. Amanda is obviously a bored adolescent trying to have some fun by posting comments from ‘the far side.’
Thanks for the clarification … : )
Anyone working in the broadcast media knows that there are very strict time slots allocated to segments.
Without watching the whole thing it’s impossible to know if the preceding interviewee over ran or not, same with this guy.
Every time I watch Crosstalk on RT someone takes more time and Peter has to cut them off. It’s no conspiracy when he does that, it’s basic broadcasting time management.
So, I’d like to see proof of this allegation.
He wasn’t cut off, he was using too much time. This happens all the time. And clearly he’s not much help:
“I don’t know what to think, but I’ll tell you what I think” — that’s useful.
“I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza. And other respiratory illness viruses, we don’t always know what they are.”
So which is it? It’s influenza or you don’t always know?
Anyways the what the doctor said basically is “are we going to far in our prevention?” – which is perfectly valid and we can all relate, but the article is trying to push a, “It’s all fake news – it’s not real – it’s a conspiracy – something else is going on”, narrative with it in order to sell it to all those insecure people addicted to believing they know something the rest of the ‘sheep’ don’t. That’s garbage and no it’s not worth the $1/month you’re asking for “independent journalism”.
Look, when you’re trying to get ahead of exponential growth, if it doesn’t look like maybe you’ve gone too far, then you haven’t gone far enough – that’s the fact here. Yes some programs will go ‘too far’ and then we can recall them in time but you can’t cut unknown exponential growth off at the pass with more accurate measures that take too much time to calculate. You have to overplay the response or you won’t get ahead of it.
I would rather hear what the doctor had to say … rather than what you have to say about what he had to say.
Fair enough, I would’ve too. It’s not my intent to attack the doctors credibility either, but call in shows routinely must cut people off due to time or even trying to get enough callers in. The ‘narrative’ that this article is trying so hard to imply so overtly yet so non-directly, is that he was purposely cut off because… and that doesn’t add up.
My second point is that it’s not like the doctors point isn’t valid, but that doesn’t actually make the various closures and so forth unnecessary. Getting in front of an exponential growth requires speed requires ‘overkill’ because you don’t have time precisely calculate a more accurate response. By the time you do, you’re recalculating. You need to extend the net wide first, then draw it in (lifting restrictions as you go because you’ve bought yourself time to calculate).
https://youtu.be/p_AyuhbnPOI
https://www.wodarg.com/
Look at that. Germany’s SPD spokesperson on health. He was a medical doctor.
Viruses exist because they mutate. Every year there are new strains of viruses that cause the common cold. Should we do this every flue season? Get quarentined etc.
There are other political motivations for this scam. Maybe to hide the worst economic resession since 1929. As we will have the worst global economic resession ever after this anyway
“Should we do this every flue season? Get quarentined etc.”
For the exact same rate of infection? Yes.
“There are other political motivations for this scam. Maybe…. ”
(sigh). Whatever you say Will.
I was with you till this comment peter.It is already obvious that the major economic correction that was on its way will now have a convenient scapegoat in this virus.The scum that have caused it will likely get away with it again as a consequence.
“I was with you till this comment peter.It is already obvious that the major economic correction that was on its way will now have a convenient scapegoat in this virus.”
And I was with you up until you decided that the happenstance of a pandemic that may be used politically as a scapegoat for a predicted economic correction is, in itself, somehow not only proof (it isn’t), but inarguable proof somehow that it was created and dispersed for exactly that reason.
It isn’t. That’s the tail wagging the dog.
A little more honesty and truthfulness in your responses please Peter.I was very careful not to suggest that it was “inarguable proof somehow that it was created and dispersed for exactly that reason”,though I will continue to harbour suspicions about its origins till its origins are discovered and published.Kline’s “Shock Doctrine” provides all the explanation needed to support my comment,they are already well versed in the art of exploiting disasters.
“He was a medical doctor.”
And he’s also a politician. You know there are other doctors unrelated to WHO that have looked at this too, right?
Yes, that’s absolutely right. A case in point: “John P.A. Ioannidis is professor of medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics at Stanford University and co-director of Stanford’s Meta-Research Innovation Center.”
So what does John P.A. Ioannidis have to say about what is and isn’t known about covid-19, in terms of it actually being (or not being) a pandemic? A brief sample of an opinion piece that he published only yesterday, and that interested readers might want to go and read:
So you see, people talk about a ‘pandemic’ as if it’s an incontrovertibly proven fact. But not every doctor actually specializing in epidemiology is quite so certain.
You can find Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis’s opinion piece here, a piece, by the way, that Dr. Wodarg, the doctor-politician, references: A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.
(Other ‘experts’ that Dr. Wodarg references in support of his view are virologists Prof. Dr. Karin Mölling and Hendrik Streeck. Why not, then, navigate to Dr. Wodarg’s website and follow up on his references? It might just be that there is some substance to Wodarg’s opinion on the issue of ‘the corona panic.’)
The Ioannidis paper is a good one.
It is indeed the case that we don’t know what is going to happen with this disease,and will not know until it is nearly over.This makes it likely that we will “go too far” in our reaction.However,I don’t see that we have a choice,given the lack of hard facts available to those who decide policy.Should those policy makers prove to have under reacted,there will be hell to pay.
We live in world of microbes.
Viruses are all around us and inside of us.
These things are constantly mutating, and we consequently can never know when such mutations might produce a pathogen outbreak that might quickly metastasize into a pandemic.
Should we therefore make of the extreme measures currently being put into place permanent?
Not exactly.
Rather, we should have health care systems designed in a way that anticipates the possibility of one day having to deal with a pandemic.
That means that adequately spare capacity should be inherent to the systems, as it currently and obviously is not, since we now recognize the possibility of seeing the current setups and available resources possibly being ‘overwhelmed;’ and also inherent to these forward looking health care systems, there ought to be permanent monitoring capabilities of the kind that Ioannidis argues that we can and should have, but that we obviously do not.
In the meantime, there is no evidence that we are in the midst of an actual pandemic calling for the kinds of draconian countermeasures currently being rolled out, countermeasures that may actually be doing more harm than anything in which any actual pandemic might result, at least in so far as is suggested by the actually available evidence pertaining to covid-19.
The upshot of the opinion piece by Ioannidis is, then, that some things need to be done before we do others, and this isn’t happening.
To have effective countermeasures, you need to understand what it is you are dealing with.
But we don’t have that understanding because the means of attaining it have yet to be deployed.
But that’s what we should be doing: deploying the research that would help us grasp how we can effectively deal with any pandemic, rather than reacting in an unprepared, panicked and chaotic fashion, as is now the case.
This:
@ Norman Pilon , An excellent comment.
“and that interested readers might want to go and read:”
I agree with everything you quoted from that doctor. Unfortunately he isn’t saying what apparently everyone else believes he’s saying.
You people are claiming it’s either a hoax, or an exaggerated threat, or it’s a bioweapon created specifically to hide an impending economic correction.
Please note we have never claimed any deaths are being hoaxed – ed
What exactly is contained either in what the doctor on the radio show said, or what you quote from Ioannidis above that people think is proof of that is a mystery to me.
The doctor has doubts, and wants more information. Nowhere is he even implying that anything is faked, made up, or exaggerated without reason.
The mystery is easily dispelled: you are imputing a single set of limited viewpoint to everyone that does not appear to you to hold to your own narrow set of opinions.
But there are many different ranges of opinion being expressed in this thread, some more nuanced than others, and some less informed.
You summarily dismissed Dr. Wodarg’s views as being unworthy of consideration without even bothering to inquire as to what the substance of his views might be.
And you would lecture others about their unreason.
You believe there is a ‘pandemic.’
You believe this to be a fact.
If it is a fact, then there should at least be ‘excess deaths,’ that is to say, over and above the statistical baselines of known past averages. That is what reason dictates.
But what do we find?
Here, have a look for yourself: Mortality monitoring in Europe
As Ioannidis puts it:
Effectively, based upon the actually available data, one cannot remotely rationally conclude that we are in the midst of an unprecedentedly lethal pandemic.
To conclude otherwise is to exaggerate without reason: the very thing of which you yourself appear to be guilty, but of which you are quick to accuse others.
“The mystery is easily dispelled: you are imputing a single set of limited viewpoint to everyone that does not appear to you to hold to your own narrow set of opinions.”
Yeah I stopped reading right there. I’m getting this from a group of people who are pretending to be virus experts (when clearly they’re not) and who are claiming doctors they’re quoting are saying something they’re not. And what you say here is just a huge bluff so you can avoid failing to point out what this doctor says that helps prove any of the conspiracy theories flying freely here.
The only limited viewpoint in this comment section is coming from the “I don’t know how or why but I know it’s allllllllll a planned conspiracy” crowd.
“You summarily dismissed Dr. Wodarg’s views as being unworthy of consideration “
Oh when did I do that? When I start my post about his comments with:
“I agree with everything you quoted from that doctor. Unfortunately he isn’t saying what apparently everyone else believes he’s saying.”
That’s not “summarily dismissing anything”, but we all know the first and foremost thing a conspiracy theorist is, is dishonest.
Always the same with conspiracy theorists. They can’t be honest, and they make claims about what someone says that are almost always not what they said. In this case not only do you make out what the good doctor is saying to be something it’s not, you can’t respond without dishonestly mischaracterizing what I said. Nowhere did I “summarily dismiss” anything he said. If anything that’s what you’re doing by applying extrapolated meaning to his comments that aren’t there.
Let’s examine the extent of your consideration of Dr. Wodarg’s views:
Right. You did not summarily dismiss the good doctor as being a politician, and by implication, also whatever his opinions might be on the issue of the ‘pandemic.’
And you are so dedicated to the principle of reason, and presumably of rational discussion, that you won’t bother reading a reply to you in full, but instead — once again(?) — summarily dismiss it out of hand at the merest whiff of something contradicting your convictions.
As for theorizing conspiracies: what about the data, Peter?
Are the data points, too, being dishonest?
Are they also engaging in the spinning out of conspiracy theories?
No, really, have a look and do let us know: Mortality monitoring in Europe
“Let’s examine the extent of your consideration of Dr. Wodarg’s views:”
And again with the dishonesty, or a complete inability to read. Take your pick. I already quoted myself on Dr. Wodargs views here:
“I agree with everything you quoted from that doctor. Unfortunately he isn’t saying what apparently everyone else believes he’s saying.””
https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/17/listen-cbc-radio-cuts-off-expert-when-he-questions-covid19-narrative/#comment-129590
Again you prove in your first sentence that whatever else you have to say is worthless.
Dear Peter,
Except that I never quoted Dr. Wodarg, did I?
But okay, I can’t read very well.
And everything I say is worthless.
I’ll leave it at that.
Doesn’t matter. The point is the same: what the doctor says doesn’t support the conspiracy theories.
“Please note we have never claimed any deaths are being hoaxed – ed”
Phffft. I’m talking about the commentators silly. That’s pretty obvious since I’m replying to a commentator.
While we’re at it I never said anyone was claiming the deaths were hoaxes either so if you’re going to correct someone it would be really cool if you could endeavour to read properly.
It’s pretty clear that as much as this blog is trying hard to look professional it’s nothing more than one of millions of rumor and fake news factories.
Peter
Well done. But I think I am going to quit.
Give up.
It should be interesting to see how this restructuring goes. All media focused on a monolithic drone that saps the soul, services wrecked, families split apart through claustrophobic domestic tension, whole employment sectors annihilated, funds and pensions squandered, paranoia intensifying, the most brutal survivalist attitudes proliferating, final collapse of the NHS and the true contagion of privatisation freed from all chains, the “weaklings” weeded out, a return to medieval conditions for the majority – or as many as survive. Final outcome? A blasted hovel infested heath for the many with sparse lavish pastoral glades for a few.
On a positive note, with all this Covid-19 clatter at least young Greta Thunberg ain’t hogging the headlines anymore, so that’s something to be grateful for.
Tree hugging still legal in UK ….. Granny hugging probably covered by anti terrorism laws.
Greta wins.
Well, if CoVid 19 is a zoonosis, and not a bio-weapon, then ecological destruction, specifically the devastation of bat habitat, caused in large part by anthropogenic climate destabilisation, is very possibly implicated, so Grea might have something useful to add.
@Richard le Sarc, You comment a great deal so it may behoove you to become a little more acquainted with the basic data. A great deal is riding on this. I have been reading Peter Hitchens and agree very much with him and with Catte Black that we are being railroaded into de facto martial law on the back of these utterly empty scare stories. I strongly urge you to look at the very easily available data that shows you this is not a killer bug or a bio-agent. It is a mild flu. And quit spreading these totally baseless ideas around. There are enough mainstream sources of this nonsense
The evidence that I have seen is that this is twenty or so times more deadly than seasonal flu and more easily transmissible. As for my comment, and I have many fewer than you on this topic (your gift for projection is obviously well-honed)i6t was about zoonoses and ecological destruction. Any amazingly insightful comments on that topic?
I probably should nip this in the bud, since I read all the comments! Richard you currently have 2,344 comments approved, total. Virus guy has 47.
Where are you getting 20X more deadly from, Richard?
[Edited: corrected post numbers. A2]
“Final outcome? A blasted hovel infested heath for the many with sparse lavish pastoral glades for a few.”
Wot? Same old same old?
If this virus hits all you doubting Thomases like it has us in Italy, we are owed an apology especially the brave and hard working doctors and nurses. Your attitudes are scandalous, in fact the only help we have had is from China who has sent us doctors and a very big supply of masks, ventilators etc. We also have doctors coming from Cuba and Venezuela. I believe China is now helping Spain because the virus is raging there.
I believe you are members of something called the European Union. Didn’t that help?
Anyway, it’s good to see that three socialist countries provided help.
I was also intrigued to see a UK Conservative minister in a BBC website headline praising socialist Cuba for its help.
Funny how things turn out.
Masks and other equipment were ordered and paid for from Germany and France and were blocked at their side of the frontiers and our government had to waste precious time trying to get them released, so much for solidarity from our EU neighbours! Italy is on good terms with China and I think was the only EU country that would not sign on to recognise america’s puppet, Guaido.
Well said Lynette.
This news site used to be full of good intellectual debate, now it’s been allowed into yet another conspiracy loon forum. By not moderating the loons they’ve allowed them to take over the asylum.
It’s a pity, but thankfully there are still a few intelligent contributors here such as BigB, although he’s getting increasingly ground down by the loons.
So examining the lock step narrative is not intellectual debate ? It’s loon behaviour .
During the weirdest move toward global authoritarianism we have possibly ever experienced, isn’t it responsible to question this narrative? Before tanks start rolling across London, why not at least try to propagate some ‘good intellectual debate’ BTL, rather than name-calling and withdrawing into our fragile shells?
The narrative always needs interrogation, but not blanket denial. The machinations of the malevolent ruling elites to take advantage of the disaster are, on the other hand, pretty transparent and malign. It is more less the same situation as with anthropogenic climate destabilisation.
Exactly my view too.
Indeed it’s worthy of debate, and no doubt that our “elites” will be taking full advantage of this hysterical situation to laden us with even more debt, remove our rights, etc.
That’s always happened.
That said, for some “people” to endlessly repeat here that the whole thing is faked, that people are not really dying…well, you then get the audience and community that you deserve.
As I’ve said countless times here, this kind of lunatic level of “conspiracy theory” is a deliberate PSYOPS designed to bring genuine concerns and debate about governmental conspiracy into disrepute.
By 77th Brigade types of agencies placing these extreme lunatic comments on this site, they bring this site into disrepute in the short term, and then get it closed down in the longer term. Now THAT would be a great pity.
Under ‘special measures’ no one needs to provide justification for memory-holing this site, and a lot of others besides.
Who is suggesting there are no deaths? Of course there are deaths. And so far these are entirely within the normal range expected from seasonal flu and other infections. If they were able to lie about the deaths they would no doubt have inflated them to be on a par with the ‘threat’ they are trying to make us believe in. But they can’t, because there are rigid protocols to protect from large scale fraud like that. So they are forced to try to manufacture a ‘pandemic’ out of seasonal flu. And they do so in the way I have previously described.
Surely you know the difference between a real serious event and the way the establishment deals with it are two different things, or don’t you?
Of course we all have to continue questioning the reaction of the authorities, who incidentally have very clearly been caught unprepared, but without pretending that this is not a serious pandemic.
May I say that as I live in Italy, the motivation for all these restrictions have been applied to protect us from a situation that is already out of control in Lombardy and is spreading. We don ‘t have tanks rolling across our cities, but yesterday I saw a convoy of military trucks taking away the dead in Bergamo. These inaccurate remarks by many people do not do your reputation any good.
Thanks for clarifying what you’re doing here
My very thought, expressed earlier. They ( the lions) think they know better and cherry pick whom they want to believe and ignore the experts.
Ah the “loons/tin-foil hats” and the “experts”. Back into our regiments! Well done Agent Orage.
The loons not the lions!
And the Guardian sewer and its resident compradore correspondent in China, are sneering at China’s aid, painting it as a sinister plot, as ever.
@lynette, you are not being hit by a virus, you are suffering normal seasonal flu and a great deal of dishonest propaganda to convince you that what is normal is not. The vast majority of the deaths claimed in the media to be caused by nCoV are NOT SO DESCRIBED in the official documentation. They are merely listed as people who died with evidence of the virus in their bodies. But as 99.3% of them also had other diseases, it has not been determined which killed them.
Indeed since the PCR can’t accurately assess viral load we can’t even determine if these people had active COVID19 or were just carrying a couple of germs in their airways.
What are you trying to prove. Even influenza is a virus, but the difference is that this virus is much more dangerous and very infectious and many people end up in ICU and they are not all old and ill. Obviously the elderly and those with other health problems are more vulnerable. Do you think we should just sit back and accept 500 deaths each day and without more controls many more to come?
The UK’s transport secretary has met with airline representatives to try to work out how to get stranded citizens home amid a host of border closures around the world.
Grant Shapps also said the Department for Transport and the Treasury are working on a plan to support the struggling industry.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/18/coronavirus-live-news-updates-outbreak-us-states-uk-australia-europe-eu-self-isolation-lockdown-latest-update?page=with:block-5e72827f8f085e564ad86b7a#block-5e72827f8f085e564ad86b7a
It’s absolutely breathtaking that a known criminal like Grant Shapps is taking part in managing this crisis.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tory-party-chairman-grant-shapps-sacked-from-the-uk-cabinet-2015-5
And people believe everything these feckers are telling you?!
I despise Shapps too, but at the end of the day, go stand for election and do a better job yourself then.
Frank Speaker, I accept your point.
Tomorrow in the Commons, Bojo is expected to announce the most breathtaking measures in modern history.
Will you agree to live in a total police state?
@RobG, I note that Mr Speaker did not respond to your cards on the table question.
Credible insights into the Corona-panic by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, English overdub.
Wow this is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing! I had always suspected it was either the test itself that was wrong!
Not really. Some old guy who is out of date and dangerous.
You are very ageist aren’t you…
Listen to someone who tells you to amass those bog rolls…
Self hating too!
“Self hating”? Well that recalls the language of patriotic neo-conservative war mongering.
One has to look a bit into Dr Wodarg’s background. Although he qualified as a doctor his main activities now seem to be as a politician as shown in his Wikipedia page
This of course may or not be relevant but is interesting background and it does not seem to me that he is on the coalface so not very likely to be an expert on the subject.
The metric to watch is the number of deaths weekly with respiratory illness as the underlying cause.
That includes everybody who dies as a result of pneumonia.
The normal trend is that deaths peak around mid January (the height of the flu season) and then decline through spring and summer before picking up again in autumn.
So far this year that’s exactly what’s happened. And because it was such a mild winter in the UK there have been fewer deaths with respiratory illness as the underlying cause in the first two months of this year then there were in the first two months of last year.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales
The data only goes up to March 6th and the next set will be released on March 24th.
That set will give us the first real idea (in the UK at least) of whether these deaths are ‘people who would have died of flu anyway’ or whether these deaths are above and beyond what we normally face.
A few more weeks results after that and we’ll start to get a true picture.
If the decline stalls or reverses then covid-19 could genuinely be a problem.
If it does so dramatically perhaps we’ve not been hearing hyperbole.
If it continues as per normal then this is all unnecessary.
If they stop publishing the data then I guess it’s NWO time.
It’s also worth noting that the number of annual flu deaths in the UK can vary substantially.
In the last ten years we had one year where deaths were as high as 28,000 and another where they were less than 2,000.
“In the last ten years we had one year where deaths were as high as 28,000 and another where they were less than 2,000.”
– And it’s not deemed newsworthy.
‘It’s also worth noting that the number of annual flu deaths in the UK can vary substantially.
In the last ten years we had one year where deaths were as high as 28,000 and another where they were less than 2,000.’ – ahh yes, who, apart from all of the MSM can forget the 28,484 influenza related deaths in 2014-2015 ?
“Significant increases in excess all-cause mortality, particularly in the elderly, were observed during the winter of 2014/15 in England. With influenza A(H3N2) the dominant circulating influenza A subtype, this paper determines the contribution of influenza to this excess controlling for weather. A standardised multivariable Poisson regression model was employed with weekly all-cause deaths the dependent variable for the period 2008-2015. Adjusting for extreme temperature, a total of 26 542 (95% CI 25 301-27 804) deaths in 65+ and 1942 (95% CI 1834-2052) in 15-64-year-olds were associated with influenza from week 40, 2014 to week 20, 2015. This is compatible with the circulation of influenza A(H3N2). It is the largest estimated number of influenza-related deaths in England since prior to 2008/09.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29743125
I don’t recall Dave Cameron pumping a cool £350 billion into the economy to deal with this particular outbreak and as memory serves the supermarkets were not imposing restictions on certain essential items.
Go figure …..
The problem with any data is that it can be messed with. Ultimately, it’s just words on a screen. The figures already in circulation are all over the place and confusion is one of their key tactics. You will be presented with whatever information they want to present you with. They might make it look completely ludicrous, just for kicks, the figures might scream loud and proud that this is not worse than any other year, that there are no real discrepencies to speak of and no way should we be taking all these crazy measures. They might do that just so you know that they can do that, that they have the power to change the world on the back of a total hoax and there’s zip you can do to change that.
You think the people behind 9/11, 7/7 and the subsequent slaughter of millions of innocent people all over the Middle East can’t get some willing, senior, “reliable” doctors from “The Lodge” to sign off a load of fraudulent stats? Or get all their spooky stooges and plants in the media to pen masses of articles containing complete lies. That’s just business as usual for these entities, water off a duck’s back. They will do whatever is necessary to achieve their goals and they will be laughing in your face as they do it saying “yeah, and what are you gonna do about it?”. They could brazenly say that 10,000 people all called Fairy Nightingale all died of covid19 in a village of only 250 people and there would still be nothing you could do about it, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. That’s how they roll. The figures mean jackshit, same as the obituaries,they can just make them up and they would probably just find it funny and have a good old laugh to celebrate the roaring success of their latest scam.
“These are our official figures, dear boy, government figures, anyone who suggests otherwise is soe kind of deranged conspiracy theorist. Of course we wouldn’t make them up, to suggest otherwise is downright offensive, we’re respectable pillars of the community don’t you know?”
It’s like the 330 billion business bailout gangster loans. They made that as Masonic as possible just to rub your nose in it. Then today, for those of us paying attention, every single front page in the UK said 350 billion, not 330 billion which was announced. Maybe they thought it was a bit too obvious, so better just chill on the numerology for a moment, while they’re having such fun. There’s another 18 months of this to come.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Interesting. So if we say the flu season is 6 months – October to March Inclusive, then divide 2,000 by 6, giving 333, i.e. an average of 333 per month (although we know that most of those are in reality in the cold months), we then note that to date we have had 104 deaths, and most of those have been in March. There are 13 days left in March from tomorrow, so obviously the numbers could go up dramatically, or they could stabilise.
Let’s say it does stabilise:
Maximum deaths per day so far is 20, so 20*13=260. Add the 104 we’ve already had, that is: 364. So that is a bit above 333, the average of the low flu season deaths, but not dramatically so.
hmm….
In case you have not been reading the news, the curve of those infected is rising at a rapid rate on a daily basis, it has just started and with a doubling time of 6 days.
Dr. Kettner’s concerns are valid. The panic mongering and draconian measures so far applied are, in themselves, bound to cause a systemic and societal collapse. I work in a care centre and we have gone so far as to ban parents and carers from entering the building they are escorting their charges to. This defies all logic. If the carers are infected the charges are infected and vice versa. And that is just one miniscule example of the absolute social rupturing that is taking place. Isn’t it interesting? If you wanted to divide people against each other, inspire universal suspicion, make all collective interaction impossible, subject the public services to relentless strain – and, most importantly, put an absolute ban on skepticism (not for the sake of loyalty or patriotism but for the sake of public health), then you could not have chosen a more effective tool.
Good points. And all achieved in less than a week.
But not in France. Watch next Saturday, which by happenstance is the first day of Spring.
Epidemiologists can’t fight this, since they are observers and not trialists. They are also quite slow and never on call for ‘acute epidemiology’. There has never been such a thing that needed acute epidemiology. Until now.
So let me tell you a little bit about my day. I am a clinical epidemiologist, as everyone is nowadays, with the difference that epidemiology is also my profession.
So what are my observations in the hospital?
First you have the doctors. They are fighting this fight courageously since they really think COVID19 is for real, including that they can die from it. But the feeling of doing things together, fighting the cause so to speak, gives them strength. They are also trained not to be scared of death, as they see death everyday and see it as a part of life. All that makes it quite nice to work with doctors. The only problem with doctors is that they are severely trained in obeying orders from top down. So if the clinical professor (who went through the same schooling as his co-workers) is saying that this virus means WAR, they will consider that this virus is war and fight it accordingly without further thinking.
Then you have the clinical epidemiologists. They are trained in medicine and often still see patients. And so they have experience with death (and are therefore not afraid of it). They have more freedom than the doctors in terms of thinking critically and debating with the professor, since rationality, at least in theory, should always win from authority. This is what clinical epidemiologists teach and (speaking for myself) also believe and act upon. They are open for criticism and I can actually debate things like that the sensitivity of the CV19 test is no good, or that quarantine measures may not explain the fall in death rate only in China and Italy, since Spring arrived in those countries. They are also quite skeptical themselves about the realness of CV19, like saying that we should see that the chances of dying due to CV19 are very low and that what we see now is hysteria. Yet, when it comes to what they believe, they still hold to what is been told to them by the mainstream media (which includes lancet, science, NEJM). It’s puzzling, but it is probably related with the fact that society, as we are supposed to believe that society functions, with rulers who are always working in the interest of the population, has been kind to them. It feels good to believe in that good society and I understand. I have been there myself, until I started to doubt that narrative (and the rest is history).
Then you have the epidemiologists who are trained in a medical field, yet never saw patients. They are an interesting lot: none of them arrived at work lately, and the last time I saw them they were completely convinced that CV19 is for real. Some of them are self-isolating and still work from home through email, Skype, etc. Others stopped doing that too. I guess they fear their own mortality (cannot handle death) and that this explains their irrational behavior.
Then you have the theoretical epidemiologists: they are not trained in medicine, but in some related ‘life sciences’ and either act the same as the epidemiologists (don’t show up at work, too scared) or do show up at work, but act weird, I.e., are completely drained into their usual theoretical business. They are the ones I pity most: fearing both CV19 and trying to ignore it by doing ‘rational’. If you propose to them to do something that could be useful for this ‘epidemic’, they freeze.
But the most curious group of people are the statisticians. They are the magicians at my department, the smartest of all, yet when it comes to counting they cannot see that 1+1+1=3 and not that 1+1+1=the reason to be afraid for CV19 (aka epidemiology on CV19 as presented in news papers).
We are quite a strange bunch. We are trained to see through this thing by training, yet cannot see it. I think what I see in my colleagues (all nice people by the way), into how they are bamboozled into believing all this COVID19 nonsense is due to a combination of indoctrination of following authority and fear of death. They take CV19 far too personally. They cannot stand above this matter. Having observed them for a while I come to the conclusion that they truly can’t.
Now all of this quite interesting for an epidemiologist, like me, who likes to observe, yet is not trained as an acute epidemiologist (as that profession did not exist until recently).
Epidemiologists fight against very shrewd people. They always do, but usually it is unrelated to their own life, like fighting against claims from a drug company which drugs they don’t use. But CV19, man that is just coming too close. These shrewd people are able to bamboozle my collegues through biased samples, samples without control groups, faulty test methods and the only thing that may lead to their ‘treatment’ is by staying rational and giving the good example. I am working on that.
Yes, lies, damn lies and statistics. From RT no less: “21 year old Spanish football coach dies from CV” Wow! click on the story. He had leukemia!! I deal with Doctors every day in big Hospitals in South Australia. Everyone single one says the same thing. It’s no worse than a mild case of flu, if that. Even the PM said so only yesterday.
Another example: 2500 people die in N Italy from CV. Okay, over what period, how old? how many would have died anyway during a normal flu outbreak. It’s a smoke and mirrors and song and dance act. Finally identifying what CV actually is is another huge issue in it’s own right. I suspect based on their test criteria it doesn’t even exist.
This is something else folks. Nothing to do with CV, probably more to do with the bubble bursting and everyone is watching the birdy.
‘…the fall in death rate in…Italy..’. Are you sure?
Not sure. But collegues told me that and I believed them.
Unfortunately the death rate is still going up, the most so far to-day with over 400 deaths, we are hoping that with the lock down we will reach the peak soon.
Well, daily death rate in Italy has gone down slightly in the last 3 days, according to this:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy
( See the graph headed “Daily New Deaths in Italy” )
Crude death rate data are meaningless in the absence of representative infection-rate data from the broader population, information about how cause of death is classified is different countries/health systems etc. I suggest you read this article by John Ioannidis:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
You might also like to ponder the comparatively low death rate in Germany.
Willem
Excellent post – much of which I can relate to in different settings.
It is fascinating and one of my ambitions is to study this type of behaviour in various professions. There’s alot of material and perhaps I’ll have some time now.
In my experience there is a lot more doubt and question below the surface than above it. Our department is running on a skeleton crew now and we rotate manning the office in an infuriatingly inefficient manner and mostly ‘work from home’, but this is not by choice, we have been ordered by government.
On the surface people talk and office email about the ‘risks’, but in private we share doubts and the raw data, which simply tells its own unambiguous story. Department heads come and talk bullshit to us that they have clearly got from a memo and share because they know they will be fired if they don’t. We listen and the more we listen the more we are looking at each other sideways and knowing there is something extraordinarily wrong with all of this.
Incredibly draconian laws recently set in Denmark. From an article in the Frankfurter Rundschau on March 14:
My translation:
“With immediate effect, health authorities may now order forced tests, forced vaccinations and forced treatments, and to effect these orders may deploy the military and private guards in addition to the police.”
That is waaaay overboard. A total invasion of privacy both domestic and bodily has been written into law on the back of a virus that has killed something like 9,000 globally in about three months. I believe testing on a vaccine began today.
That number is so low those people could have died of ordinary flu. Nobody is vaccinating me for some BS bogus crock of a virus.
Hopefully Denmark’s excess is a trial balloon that will backfire massively as Denmark remembers it viking ancestry.
yes ….all Forced now…..so, what percentage of the population can we rely on to make a stand against these pathetic little toads – the more the better, though I fear the vast majority will cave to authority, sad it is…. .
Darken their light – lay them to waste.
Well here’s a funny thing. Thinking that a few of the ones posting here may be forerunners of those “armies of sock puppets on every social media platform drowning the discussions in fear porn”, as noted by the Admin, I thought I would try and access figures for mortality rates. And I went on a little excursion that led me here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate
which refers to the “ten countries with the highest crude death rate, according to the 2016 CIA World Factbook estimates”
The CIA World Factbook?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook
We are relying on the CIA to provide statistics on mortality rates?
Why not? They are responsible for a fair bit of mortality.
Well you might be George. I wouldn’t trust the CIA.
I’m looking at worldometers.info and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US. I think the corona figures are released by governments.
They don’t usually try to count each flu related fatality. It’s a pointless exercise and nobody is that interested.
There are several related issues here. One is that the coronavirus does not kill healthy people.
It just seems to hasten the death of people who are already quite poorly. I’m not sure if it has been reported as killing any otherwise healthy people.
There have been rumours that perhaps a tiny number of otherwise healthy individuals have died due to cytokine storms, which I think basically means that the immune system overreacts to the virus but I don’t think that can apply to many people and my understanding is that it is only an idea at present.
There’s also the inevitability of people misdiagnosing themselves as having this when they have something else. It is soon the hay fever season and the flu season has not yet closed.
It’s either the CIA Factbook or Wikipedia. Choices.
You’re relying on Wikideceivia to provide any sort of reliability at all? Especially as something so odd as this crisis?
I’m a Canadian living in Northern Italy. I’m from Halifax and I live in the city of Bologna, in Emilia–Romagna, just 30 minutes by train from some of the most highly infected areas. Bologna has not been hit as hard as some of the nearby towns and cities.
My question is, can this virus be spread through smoke, because so many people here in Italy smoke. It’s incredible.
Also, I haven’t heard this mentioned but the North of Italy has some of the worst air quality levels in all of Europe. Despite all its beauty, it’s a very industrial area. Emilia-Romagna, often referred to as The Motor Valley due to it being the home of Ferrari and Lamborghini, is also nicknamed the packaging valley. Seeing as how this is a respiratory issue, it seems there may be a connection between the high numbers of cases and deaths in Italy’s northern regions, and the poor quality of air.
The air quality has improved now due to the lack of traffic. The water in Venice has cleared, and dolphins have come back to a busy port in Sardinia as the ferry services there have been halted.
One thing we need to take from all of this is that it is not humans who are destroying the planet, it is our systems and the way we live. We can’t just go back to it again when this is over. We need to learn from this. We need to find a way to let nature come back and stop accepting polluted air, rivers and streams as normal and acceptable.
In fact, these epidemics are too often the result of humans exploiting animals. Swine flu, mad cow, avian flu, the Coronavirus and more. We need to change. We need to stop destroying the planet because of our addiction to animal products. Please realize that animal rights activists have been saying for years that these outbreaks are going to happen, and we are saying it again. If we don’t change, it’s going to get worse and worse. Antibiotic Resistance is also a huge growing issues resulting directly from what we feed to farm animals.
If you care about this epidemic and others like it, or if you care about any of these issues: health, environment, animals, justice, human rights, and the future of our species, please look at what is on your plate. If you are still consuming animals, you are directly consuming and contributing to the very cause of these epidemics. There is no sensible reason to keep perpetuating animal sand every reason to wake up, recognize the damage it’s causing, and make a lifestyle change that no longer includes exploiting, killing, and consuming animals.
Please take this seriously. Avoid what happened here in Italy. Stay home. Prepare for 3 weeks, or possible even a few months at home. Stay calm and be smart. Support each other. But please stop contributing to the cause of the problem.
Wise words but probably falling on deaf ears here where most thing the virus is no worse than the flu.
Smoking and pollution do give rise to chronic lung and airways injury and therefore increased susceptibility to respiratory infections and also to complications from these. Certainly air pollution in Wuhan and other industrialised areas of China was commented on being a serious problem. I even heard a comment that when Wuhan industry was shut down, the air quality vastly improved. Yes we are damaging our planet with our careless way of living.
NO. It is not in the air. It is spread by close human contact. This from the very wise cardiologist Thomas Binder, who is based in Switzerland:
“When you are walking outdoors, especially when warm and in the countryside, some meters away from others the risk of being infected should be close to zero. When you are locked in 24/7 your risk for getting depression is high & there are negative psychoneuroimmunological effects too.”
Which roughly translated means get out of your house as much as possible. You don’t have to go anywhere. Just walk around the block if you can’t access the countryside.
And at this time of year, in the UK, you should be getting some (but not a fantastic amount of) vitamin D, if out in the mid-day sun (10am-2pm), if you are lucky enough to have sun where you are.
(They should be getting more sunshine and a reasonable amount of vitamin D in Italy and Spain by now, which might help). In northern latitudes, it’s definitely worth supplementing, and/or using a good-quality UVB lamp (after seeking advice on how to best use it).
Meant to add this:
https://www.grassrootshealth.net/document/sunshine-calendar
My understanding is that the sun has to be at 5o degrees and higher in the sky, and you have to be 50% exposed (skin) to its UVII rays. I don’t think the sun gets that high in the UK until mid April.
If you put your mushroom in the sunshine, before consuming, they produce Vitamin D in their skins, as do we. Alternatively, you could try cannibalism.
Right, but that close human contact is silica. Water droplets when we speak, cough, sneeze. I’m wondering if it’s possible for particles to be present in smoke, not only spit.
do you represent the new World Order tourism board?
Ha ha. Not currently. I would love to see us find a way to come out of this and maintain cleaner air and water. Who wouldn’t? But without that being at the cost of our freedoms and civil liberties. Death to the NWO!
Italian virologists have said that pollution is contributory but not the real cause.
Tobacco/nicotine is a pretty strong insecticide/disinfectant.
It is very telling that no one from OffGuardian has commented on my post regarding cherry picking of what suits their agenda from a two hour programme. Any commentOG?
Perhaps they have figured out that the 17 comments on your post suffice?
I take it you would like to comment about this cherry picking?
Good idea for once Orage. Cherry picking sounds like a very healthy outdoor activity. Maybe you are seeing sense at last …
Well now that you mention it, yes: thank Christ somebody out there is swimming against the opportunistic Hellfire and Brimstone bandwagon.
OMG you counted them? Have you nothing better to do?
What else would he have to do, while waiting to die…?
Just emphasising the fact that you have hardly been ignored, Agent Orage.
Note it Orage, French for storm. Nothing to do with Monsanto. I now know why I get so many downvoted. A case of mistaken identity.
I responded.
Are you a genuine OffGuardinista?
The virus is spreading rapidly in France, Prof Jérôme Salomon, director of the French health authority, has said.
There are 9,134 people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in France, and there have been 264 deaths – an increase of 89 in the last 24 hours. Of those infected, 2,626 are in hospital; 931 of them in intensive care, half of whom are under 60 years old.
There are still lots of people in the streets with masks and we can understand their worry … but it is completely useless for those in the the streets. Only health workers and their patients need to wear masks. There is not sense in others wearing masks.
Everyone who has masks for different reasons, if you have a stock of masks that you are not using please given them to health clinics, hospitals or even your local pharmacy who will pass them on to health workers.
Salomon thanked the Chinese authorities who had given France one million masks.
France has carried out 4,000 tests today (42,000 since the beginning of the epidemic).
The fine for ignoring the order to stay at home was raised to €135 (£126.11) on Wednesday and those fined were told it would rise to €375 if not paid within seven days.
In and around Paris, the police and gendarmes reported they had stopped 10,000 people and verified if they had the necessary documents allowing them to be out.
The French health minister, Olivier Véran, said most people come into contact with around 50 people per day in normal circumstances. He called on everyone to reduce this to five people.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/18/coronavirus-live-news-updates-outbreak-us-states-uk-australia-europe-eu-self-isolation-lockdown-latest-update?page=with:block-5e726a9d8f085c6327bc283c#block-5e726a9d8f085c6327bc283c
Where are all these figures coming from? At first glance it’s all complete bullshit, because they are conflating seasonal flu deaths with covid 19, and most other elderly deaths with covid 19.
If you’re 60 years or younger the chances of covid 19 killing you are much less than a grand piano falling from the sky and killing you. 60 to 70 years old also have a very good rate of survival, depending on what health conditions you have.
This is no different than any other flu pandemic.
Except that this time the psychopaths who rule us are making a move…
I notice that according to Worldometer, in France (where I happen to be now), the daily new cases is down slightly, while the new deaths is up slightly. In the UK, it’s the other way around. I assume that the UK daily deaths will (sadly) go up again slightly, although not dramatically (for the time being).
“Documents allowing them to be out”. Very chilling.
God bless the yellow vests !
I have got no solution to this problem, except to turn our green lawn into a food garden, and get our Grandchildren round, to get digging too, now they can’t go to school. Fortunately Nana is completely brilliant with them. It’s about survival, and they will get a much better education in our family home.
Maybe Rhys Jagger can advise, though my wife, is already pretty good at this, despite getting run over by a car a few years ago. She’s O.K. now, but all her dance and yoga classes, have been closed down, and she is a bit pissed off, which I can completely understand.
We may maintain a bit of our lawn, for the audience, when the musicians come round, when all the pubs are closed down.
Life goes on.
Stay calm, and don’t panic.
Smile, and invite your friends round. They can help dig your garden too.
“From the Archive: Dig For Victory”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35NpLveVZDg
Tony
Rob,
My folks have an allotment and have been growing their own food for 40 years, much of which gets frozen for future use. However, allotments now in our area are scarce and most of our fields are now covered in Wendy houses with gardens the size of an inflatable swimming pool, its does not help that Hill Farming has died a death, so there’s another source of local food gone.
It is to be hoped that this virus can be used as a wake-up call for our masters to embrace a more localised, sustainable way of existence, rather than what we have, which is extended supply chains with multiple systemic risks reliant on oil, paupers wages and vagaries of the market.
Chris Rogers,
My name is Tony, and I thought you were in Hong Kong or was it Japan?
Tony
Tony,
Yes, I noticed I’d put wrong name in my posted after I sent the response.
Yes, I live on a small Island a few miles off Hong Kong Island and have a foot both here and in Wales – thus far I’ve had 4 planned trips back home to the folks cancelled and that’s just until the first week of June, so, stuck here until flights to the Middle East resume, these being cheaper than direct flights, that and the fact I won’t use Virgin Atlantic as not a fan of putting cash in Richard Branson’s pockets.
Chris
With good husbandry for a few years, 50sqm of well maintained soil can provide a healthy soup once a day for a family of 4 all year round. And fresh salad leaves every day from early May to late November. And some seasonal veg fresh every day from early May to November.
It is amazing how much you can grow in a small area if you are inventive. You can grow 1 month’s supply of spring onions in a 0.5*0.5m area – 25 clumps of up to ten young alliums picked on a day. You can grow enormous amounts of radish in a small area and eat the leaves too if you wish. 1,5sqm will yield 60 beetroot planting out seedlings in mid May and harvesting before end July. 0.5sqm will give you daily lettuce leaves for 10 weeks (a second sowing will do another 10 weeks).
When you ignore the old sowing distances used when ploughing horses ruled and follow the Parisian market gardeners of the 19th Century, you can grow in excess of 20lb food per square metre per season.
https://www.rt.com/news/483437-coronavirus-vaccine-trials-start-who/
makes me very, very suspicious.
‘Starting a vaccine trial’ on March 18th 2020?
We only first heard of the outbreak in China in late 2019.
Then they had to isolate the virus, sequence it to know what they were dealing with.
Now they have apparently optimised production of something to use in vaccination, either an inactivated virus or a viral protein.
Have they produced antibodies yet to whatever part of the virus they are using as the antigen?
Do they have production facilities ramped up enough to produce clinical grade material in a safe manner?
To me, this reads very much like that they already had most of the research reagents in place, which does beg the question as to whether they already knew about the virus before November 2019.
I would ask scientists to put an absolute timeline on all the technological milestones hit since 2019 in getting from not even knowing the viral DNA sequence to miraculously having a vaccine ready for trial.
Any evasion from them: lock them up without food and water until they tell the truth……
If this is an indication that the whole thing was planned in advance, then the head of the WHO goes to prison without trial, indefinitely and with no hope of appeal.
The WHO cannot be party to any kind of collusion in pandemic creation because if it ever has been, it must cease to exist.
I will not listen to the WHO until they prove to my satisfaction that they really have achieved all these things in 4 months.
If this is fraud, the hell can have no fury like the consequences reined down on what would be the ultimate betrayal of the Hippocratic Oath….
Why not? US doctors routinely plan and supervise torture sessions in US concentration camps.
Yeah – bloody quick work!
So, what is the Hippocratic Oath akin to…?
The Bookies have something similar, it is called the LesterPiggott Oath, whereby they swear a Holy and binding oath to always preserve the bookmaking fraternity and to never give poor odds to a punter.
Whether by luck or fate, the Galilee Research Institute was already working on a vaccine for a similar virus when the Covid-19 outbreak began.
https://noqreport.com/2020/02/28/israeli-researches-plan-to-have-coronavirus-vaccine-in-a-few-weeks/
I won’t go near the bloody thing. However, I probably won’t be able to stop various members of my family going for it. If they make it compulsory, I will still resist, unless the fine is obscenely large. If it’s choky, then one might as well give in, because once inside, they’d probably force you to have it anyway.
I’m with you all the way here. Just a small reservation about the Hippocratic Oath, which has become pretty much the equivalent of a politician swearing on the Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, while lying his head off.
We live in atheistic times and I can’t imagine many modern doctors seeing a religious dimension to the conclusion of their studies, much as I wish it were otherwise. I am not belittling the profession here, just drawing attention to modern times. Unfortunately, there is, nevertheless, a parallel to politics in the fact that many doctors benefit financially from over-recommending and over-prescribing medications, and of course some put that consideration above whatever conscience they might have.
Lets look at it those way. Suddenly austerity is a thing of the past. Government has money for everyone and everything. Money presses working full time.
Well, if only the tories had realised they had this money they wouldn’t have needed to kill 140,000 with austerity…The Wuhan Zoo Flu death figures pale into insignificance…
Dr Kettner has to be correct from the outset of his recorded interview. He has observed in his 30 years experience of pandemics that they have been labelled simply as influenzas. It’s only in relatively recent years that they been specifically identified (such as coronavirus, swine ‘flu or H2n1, etc). I would like to see, when figures are publicised on infections and coronavirus deaths, alongside those figures published are the numbers of those fatalities through what is regarded as normal influenza.
The CDC website has good estimates for the USA. Notice that the figures are not precise. It’s presumably because it would be too time consuming to keep a track of it all:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
Puts it all into a bit of proper perspective I think.
UK is now shutting down schools.
Think about these questions:
1. Who looks after U14s now they are not going to school?
a. Parents? Only by not going to work.
b. Child minders? Simply not enough of them.
c. Grandparent?? Just the people children should not be in contact with.
Telling 70+ year olds to lol around doing nothing is one thing.
2. When was the last time you cooped up energetic children all day without giving them the chance to run about, let off steam, scream and shout etc etc?
How soon before we hear about ‘mass child hysteria syndrome’?
3. Given that you have about a 1:15 ratio of adults to children at school, but a 1:1 ratio of adults to children at home, would you not think that children are more likely to infect more adults at home than they are at school?
There is no cognitive thinking by these ‘top scientists’ who focus solely on the disease and not on the wider ramifications.
I want answers on what to do about 10 million children staying home and I want politicians strung up if they try and spout claptrap to deflect the question.
Perfectly legitimate questions to which little thought has been given.
But why worry about ‘just-about-managing’ families especially when you’ve got sexy predictions being made scientists using ‘models’ (even though these models are built on limited, perhaps even incorrect data).
Sod the economy.
Sod the precariat.
Sod education.
Sod the death tally from previous flu outbreaks.
The only thing that really matters in this crises is not being made to look bad on telly.
Hi Rhys
I usually really rate your posts. However …
Anyone tells me, for whatever reason, that I should not be in contact with my grandkids is the enemy.
I’m sure that was not your intent, so maybe you want to rethink ? For people to accept Boris Johnson, of all fucking people, telling us to suspend family life is unbelievable.
I think Rhys is just saying out loud what has been implied elsewhere.
The condition barely affects children, it’s mostly a disease of the over 70s. But there have been concerns expressed that the (pointless and unneccessary) closure of schools means more contact of children with the elderly, increasing the chances of the high risk group, the elderly contracting the virus.
John,
Care to explain the latest data in Hong Kong, which is contrary to what you’ve been saying, indeed, most infections notified on Wednesday are in those well below 70, that is children and those under 40 and these persons are all hospitalised – maybe they are fake!!!!!
https://wars.vote4.hk/en/cases
Chris,
Common influenza is not selective about the ages of the people it affects. Just saying!
It can only work if if they are prepared to turn the machine guns on us. They know it won’t hold so what are they planning?
C’mon, dude … video games! Especialy first-person shooters …
Number in Italy now exceed 31,000
31,000 what?
Can you please clarify what you’re saying?
How many tests have they done, when there are still no real tests for covid 19?
Why have all elections been suspended in Spain, France, Italy and the UK?
It’s so obvious where the Frankenstein flu rollocks is going.
This is a website from John Hopkin’s that collates all the data. Confirmed cases means cases tested with a PCR test that has now been available since January. If you like to question that then I am afraid I can’t help you.
Here is the website, now over 35,000 confirmed cases,
Good source. Didn’t they run one event 201 pandemic exercise featuring a novel Corona virus at the end of last year? The one that’s on YouTube?
Good luck. You can help yourself to the propaganda.
I repeat: why have all elections been suspended in Spain, France, Italy and the UK?
35,713 according to Worldopedia. But I notice that daily new cases and daily new deaths seems to have stabilised in the last 3 days or so. So it could be a turning point.
And I still don’t see your point.
According to a doctor on today’s Going Underground (at about 6 minutes in) Italy is relying more on symptoms than testing to decide whether people have Covid-19.
https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/483378-giovanni-guaraldi-coronavirus-pandemic/
Golly. You think that’s bad. You should see the CDC flu stats. 36,000,000 to 51,000,000 flu illnesses in the US since 1st October.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
Here are a list of folks in whose interest it is to hype up CoVid19:
1. Researchers studying coronaviruses.
This is an absolute goldmine for them. So they will be champing at the bit to write grant proposals including statements of how unprecedented the virus is. Even though it is not……..
2. The WHO: they want to be global dictators in medicine.
A global pandemic is just what the WHO wants to make politicians dance to their tune rather than the other way around.
3. Biotechs developing vaccines against SARS-CoV2.
The worse the panic, the more they can charge for creating a vaccine quick. Including indemnity if speed means they kill a few people with an unsafe vaccine…..
4. The super rich: the super rich absolutely want to stop ordinary folks travelling, talking with each other, organising globally. They have global capital under their control. No way do they want organised labour on a global scale. They would kill millions to prevent that. CoVid19 is perfect cover to smash the entire global travel industry for the masses. If the global population lets them get away with it.
5. The bankers: the stock markets were way overpriced and the whole financial shebang was up the creek, so blaming CoVid19 to get another bail out is just what they want.
6. Politicians: they long for autocratic control and this is a perfect excuse for a power grab. Folks need to be implacable that temporary measures are just that: TEMPORARY.
Feel free to add more.
Just do no believe that ‘we are all in this together’.
We absolutely are not.
Further to what I was saying in the previous thread…
http://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200317-france-coronavirus-sanctions-travel
Many of those “100,000 extra police” are not even French police. They’ve been drafted in from other parts of Europe, or else they are French military pretending to be police.
Another glorious blue sky day here in south west France, so I haven’t been out and about today; just a bit of gardening.
I have a sun tan that you’d die for; but whatever you do, don’t die from covid 19.
Tomorrow I’m heading into my nearest big town, to try to get a better idea of what’s going on. Yesterday, when the ‘state of emergency’ was first introduced, things were very subdued in my little neck of the woods. Today has been much more vibrant, with most of the shops in my nearest big village open for business.
Bars and restaurants are still closed. When the plebs do manage to gather together, the muttering is that Acte 71 next weekend will be a massive finger up to President Macron.
(Remember, that all elections have now been suspended in France, as they have in the UK, and tomorrow Boris & Co are going to pass ’emergency laws’ that might make your eyes water)
Agreed. I personally hope that the gilets jaunes will be giving Macron a huge middle finger salute.
How can we know where we are in the infection curve if ‘People will no longer be tested for the virus unless they are in hospital.’ ? (The minority)
This therefore skews the numbers massively and not knowing who in the wild already had it (the majority). Which also means these who are no longer at risk of catching it and are beyond spreading it are being kept out of employment and locked up at home.
We can’t. It really is not that serious an infection to get.
The recommendation is self isolation for a week. Then you can release yourself from your confinement.
I guess it’s tough if you live alone and get hungry.
I’m really tired of this relentless brainwashing about the virus, as though we were facing the Black Death, or Spanish flu, as though plagues in the distant past did not have a lot to do with the absence of clean water and decent food. All this is soon to be followed up by forced vaccination, with a vaccine not tried and tested, and who knows what it will really contain? In any case the vaccine will exchange a small risk for the elderly and infirm for a real risk to the healthy and young, not only as concerns their health but also – I suspect – as concerns their fertility.
I think cancelling the song contest Eurovision 2020 is an anti-semitic act. As a remedy, with cancelling the competition, the organisers ‘must’ designate israel as the winner.
That fits pretty very well with giving the Police sweeping powers and exempting the authorities from prosecution in case of extraordinary stuff-ups.
Seek How can Israel even be in the Eurovision? Israel is not in Europe; it is in the Middle East.
Money can buy you anything today.
It has participated since the 1970s. It is by no means the only non-European country to do so.
It’s not even a country, it is a project.
Also a Mafia hide-out.
But it CONTROLS Europe, you see
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation editor-in-chief is Jennifer McGuire, and she can be reached via email. If the CBC Ed does not reply to your complaint you can email the federal minister in charge of the CBC.
CBC merely promulgates Government of CANADA operating agenda that is predefined by the PMO.
Health CANADA also has an agenda going forward with the COVID-19 social psychological contagion.
NATO & Five Eyes plus One are more than likely leading the Information Operations-IO.
CBC is not benevolent, and has no track record of being benevolent. Jennifer McGuire is the unapproachable top executive in the whole organization. CBC is largely unaccountable and merely operates as yet another Crown Corporation that is dependent upon the federal government for their livelihood.
MOU
I’ve recently started drifting back towards the “something very fishy here” camp over the last couple of days, but I cannot for the life of me figure out any planned/intended end goal that holds water.
Anyway, for those who speak German, here’s an interview with epidemiologist (among other areas of expertise and experience) Wolgang Wodarg, in which no interruptions take place. In his view, this is a very overblown reaction, and if I caught his words correctly right at the beginning of the interview, he suspects covid-19 to have been manufactured and released. His explanation of overrun hospitals in e.g. Italy and now the UK is panic, fuelling fear, setting off a kind of chain reaction.
Main points:
As I’ve stated before, I am not an expert. But the extremely draconian measures sure have aroused my suspicions of late. I know it’s been said they were coming, but I believe things when they happen rather than before. In the end though, I cannot know for sure. For me, a weak point in his argument is how hospitals are being overrun, now in northern England also. But who knows? Maybe a combination of fear and well-crafted disinformation is sufficient…
“I cannot for the life of me figure out any planned/intended end goal that holds water”
Kissinger:
YOU CANNOT HURT CHINA WITHOUT HURTING THE US.
According to the FIVE EYES+1 exceptionalists:
Hurting everyone is worth it.
Admin, how can i post in the future so the spacing would appear more eye-friendly?
I think your spacing looks lovely 🙂 (other than adding manual spaces between letters or additional line returns, I don’t believe there’s a specific way)
Troubleshooting: Spacing looks correct in Opera browser. In Firefox, it adds one extra blank line between paragraphs when there shouldn’t be.
This is true.
The US, Kosherstan infected Iranian computer equipment with the Stuxnet virus through Siemens control equipment. The virus then spread uncontrollably to Siemens equipment throughout the world.
They couldn’t care less – just a bit of collateral damage.
The same applies to the global drugs trade run by the Cocaine Import Agency.
Who cares if a few more blacks rob a few more liquor stores to get their crack?
Just so long as the CIA gets the black money to fund its dirty little wars and regime changes.
They also counterfeit their own currency for the same reason and blame it on Iran or DPRK or whoever.
And they run their own bio-warfare operation. Much ‘privatised’.
‘Bringing China down’, one way or another, is a Holy Crusade for the Zioatlanticist claques who rule the West. Five hundred years of Western global dominance, genocide, pillage and arrogance, all ordained by God himself, is at stake. Judging by the hate invective spewing out of the Right in the USA, war is inevitable, and this ‘Chinese virus’ may become the casus belli.
Just imagine what the fallout from the expected popping ofthe over inflated asset bubble would be like without the cover of Covid toilet paper people off the streets coincidental diversion?
Thank you for posting the link to the Wolfgang Wodarg interview. Germany is a country I have lived in and I salute the German respect for logic and reason that permits a few dissenting voices – and a very eminent one here – to be heard.
I think the most important point he made was that the statistics do not show any greater numbers of deaths than normal anywhere from flu and flu-like causes, not even in China or Italy.
I liked the image he used in answering the question about whether there was a need to analyse Covid cases separately. He said imagine you blindfolded 100 people and forced them to cross a busy multilane highway. This would then be like turning round and examining which make of car everyone had been run down by, when the real task at hand is halting the danger (from all dangerous viruses).
Except that the German government has now fallen for the hype, too, and shut everything down this week. 🙁
But we’re not talking about a requirement to believe anything. When you’ve been hurt by a regular series of authoritarian measures which your government has carried out since 911, always to the advantage of those “authorities” and never to YOUR advantage, you KNOW that trusting your government to have your well-being at heart in all matters is foolish. Belief is simply not required to come to that conclusion.
Ok, but I don’t trust my govt, or any organisation or institution that has that sort of power over our lives, and haven’t for maybe 15 years or more. I didn’t mean “believe/trust what the govt says”, I meant generally speaking, on all sides of this issue.
I don’t yet see how these super draconian measures and market collapse and the economy being driven into a brick wall helps any one. If it’s towards “total control”, what is total control? Do the infamous elites really want that? We’re all uninteresting puppets to them they control and ignore as it pleases them? In other words, I don’t see what the end game is here, assuming for argument this entire thing is wholly orchestrated. But I can make some sense of it as a mix of various factors, including opportunistic and cynical power grabs and incompetence and even risk taking etc., but wholly stage-managed chaos towards total control of everything and crashing the economy on purpose? I don’t see it, personally.
But of course I could be wrong…
The elite (sic) have the uneviable task of handling a massive pandemic of individualistic narcissism, believed to have been caused by centuries of exposure to organised capitalism, first expressed in early Romanticism and greatly exacerbated by more recent, rapidly spreading, pathologically associated plagues of rampant, neoconservative, highly financialized global consumerism. In the individual this presents as an understanding that everything they have, including their view of themselves, is theirs by right because they “like that” so therefore they “deserve it.” A comcomitant symptom is the unshakeable conviction that each of them, individually, constitutes the end point of all history, which points unequivocally to them alone; a world view which acknowledges all others only as holographic robots of deceptive intent (see also ‘Personalized Fukuyamism’).
ATTENTION: You are currently at the epicentre of an especially concentrated cluster of near-terminal cases. Please don your face mask immediately. If you believe you might have been infected, you are required to self-isolate immediately and call our Freephone number 0800 123 ∞rME (0800 123 ∞763) for further advice.
Excellent! End-stage narcissism: I like (x), therefore I deserve (x).
I think of it as an addiction, like any other addiction: Nicotine, Sugar, Amphetamines, etc. etc. You end up just wanting more, and not knowing, or caring, why.
There is no “end game” in addiction. It is simply there, and it controls you.
So, in this case, the addiction is to power. I have actually heard people say that they absolutely love the world of government. To me that’s a horrifying statement, no more exalted than an admission that you are addicted to a psychotic need to control other people. Rather than crashing the economy on purpose, they cannot help themselves from seeking the personal gratification (a.k.a. greed) which leads to crashed economies. It is currently fashionable, and not altogether misguided, to refer to addictions as sicknesses rather than life choices. At any rate that satisfies my own desire to make some sense of the chaos we are currently experiencing on the world’s political stage.
I agree with your analysis here, and have seen capitalism as a logical outgrowth of addiction for a long time now. Capitalism is, perhaps, addiction’s best possible champion, its Lancelot. I would add, though, that undergirding addiction is fear, and the (now rampant) control-freakery that fear engenders.
Perhaps, if you haven’t heard of him or listened to / read any of his work, you might find Gabor Mate interesting on this pivotal idea.
Dr. Kettner is absolutely wrong in saying that the rates are lower in Italy, we have a mortality rate of 8% whereas China has a mortality rate of 3.5%. We are in lock down with the emphasis on avoiding contact with other people which has proved very efficacious in Wuhan as this virus is very contagious.
Is that true for all cities in Italy?
Yes, the whole of Italy is in lock down. It feels haunted.
Well it would feel haunted if it was on lock down.
Lynette,
I want to know whether the mortality rate is the same for every city in Italy.
Can you tellme that?
The worst effected region is Lombardy by far, then Emilia Romagna and then the Veneto and Piemonte. The central regions much less and the south have a few cases that have been caused by people coming down from Lombardy. In Sicily where I live there are few once again caused by people coming down from the north. Men are effected more than women, 70% as against 30%. There is no explanation as yet as to why Lombardy has been so effected so much where it arrived like a bomb. The death toll ovearll to-day was more than 400. We hope and pray that we will reach the peak soon because this lock down is hard and so damaging to the economy.
Thanks Lynette for that better information – it would help also to cite the source for satisfaction of future historians.
You have DEBUNKED your own statements of Italy (as a whole) suffering a 8% cfr, haven’t you?
There are more deaths and cases in Lombardy rather than Lodi as shown by this graph
Because of the way Lodi reacted earlier.
Equally many aspects of Italian demographics explain the Italian experience. The science is undeniable. Such as the generally high proportion of the elderly there compared to say China; the high concentration of close living family groups and commuting from such areas etc. The male ratio being higher is equally explicable.
The facts show that the blind panic assertions and generalisations are indeed misguided. All that does is fall into the hands of the authoritarians who seek ever more control of the many by the few by walking into their prisons rather than being dragged there against our will.
The virus is real. There is plenty fake around it.
Lodi is in Lombardy, ,the city in Lombardy worst hit at present is Bergamo. What is wrong with stating an 8% mortality rate in Italy even if the greatest concentration is in Lombardy. The whole purpose of the lock down is to try and contain this very contagious virus. Maybe there is fake around it somewhere but certainly not in Italy.
Never have words so impacted me moreso than the words of this expert:
“I don’t know what to think but I’ll tell you what I do think!”
I’m sorry but people really are grasping at straws here to build their own narratives. So what is it?
1. A genuine pandemic that could unescessarily cause the death of many vulnerable and old people unless we take some drastic action by closing down the economy for a couple of weeks, with world leaders not completely sure of what, when or how to do it?
Or is it:
2. A mass conspiracy by the ‘Elite’ using various methods (5G!!!) to make us sick, so they can hand out mass vaccinations that will actually kill us!!! Spreading worldwide panic making us think we are deathly sick from the flu so that they then have something to blame the next financial crisis on and continue shafting the little man, which coincidentally is as it has always been and ever shall be?
Sorry, but I have to go with the less crazy option on this one.
which is?
Glorf72
Really?
You think there are only two scenarios? I actually think there are alot more – some completely innocent and genuine and fitting in broadly with official narratives, many which may be taking advantage of events and total incompetence and failure in the science and recklessly misleading – and then some outright criminal. If you believe there are only two scenarios I fear you may have alot of catching up to do in the thinking department.
No, but due to the serious implications I am asking the question that we all are should we be worried about this Virus? Or is it Some Dasterdly plot to trick us all into a life of servitude or some other neferious plan?
Of course this could have been a bio weopon released by accident, it could have have been an intentional release by US backed elements to teach China a lesson, it could have been China releasing a bioweapon in order to shut down the Hong Kong Riots, all others could be jumping on this to shut down their own countries unrest and rioting/protesting, it could be the initiation of a silent war in a new age of germ/virus/biological warfare, it could be the first sign of the antichrist and the first head of the beast showing it’s crown (corona) and bringing pestilence upon all of mankind.
Yeah it could a lot of things my friend but lets all take a deep breath and pretend like not everyone is in control of all things at all times and that maybe just maybe this is just a bunch of people trying to do the right thing by the vunerable and old of this planet.
I’m just trying look at this as soberly as I can no I’m not the brightest tool in the shed but have a little look in the mirror yourself my old codger and maybe say that word you’ve just said to me.
Really?
I say you are one of the brightest bulbs in this shed.
Wells shucks thanks, I do like to mix my metephors … *flutters eyelids*
False dichotomy there. I think something else. Coronoviruses have been infecting humanity for milenia. The human imune system becomes immune to them each time, so the viruses must mutate and come back in a different form each time. Coronoviruses are behind the phenomena we call the common cold and the flu. So, yes, a new form of coronovirus is doing the rounds. This aspect of the narrative is true. No “elite” is making people sick. However, new forms of coronovirus do the rounds each winter causing colds or flus, and this one is no different and by all accounts no more deadly than usual. There is no big deal, yet the media virtually without exception is serving this up to the public as a major calamity and, yes, I believe there is some kind of political agenda behind this.
Exactly. The facts, which are still available, e.g. from Gary below, paint a picture which the media have clearly been instructed to avoid. Why on earth would they do that, unless, as you say, there is some kind of political agenda behind this?
Tim I take it you have proof for this or have you just made it up?
An article by Pepe Escobar that asks the right questions and points out some of the unspeakable (at least in Western MSM) inconvenient facts on the ground:
https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/china-locked-in-hybrid-war-with-us/
Below is one excerpt:
(“When Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, voiced in an incandescent tweet the possibility that “it might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan” – the first blast to this effect to come from a top official – Beijing was sending up a trial balloon signaliing that the gloves were finally off. Zhao Lijian made a direct connection with the Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019, which included a delegation of 300 US military.
He directly quoted US CDC director Robert Redfield who, when asked last week whether some deaths by coronavirus had been discovered posthumously in the US, replied that “some cases have actually been diagnosed this way in the US today.”
Zhao’s explosive conclusion is that Covid-19 was already in effect in the US before being identified in Wuhan – due to the by now fully documented inability of US to test and verify differences compared with the flu.
Adding all that to the fact that coronavirus genome variations in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they do not belong to the variety that infected Wuhan, Chinese media are now openly asking questions and drawing a connection with the shutting down in August last year of the “unsafe” military bioweapon lab at Fort Detrick, the Military Games, and the Wuhan epidemic. Some of these questions had been asked – with no response – inside the US itself.
Extra questions linger about the opaque Event 201 in New York on October 18, 2019: a rehearsal for a worldwide pandemic caused by a deadly virus – which happened to be coronavirus. This magnificent coincidence happened one month before the outbreak in Wuhan.
Event 201 was sponsored by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum (WEF), the CIA, Bloomberg, John Hopkins Foundation and the UN. The World Military Games opened in Wuhan on the exact same day.”)
Meanwhile here in the belly of the beast it is “business as usual” in terms of ramping up our inhumane sanctions against the poor of the world, and blatant corporate capitalizing on human suffering for financial gain:
https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/17/italy-uk-help-cuba-china-venezuela-coronavirus-us-sanctions/
All of which inconvenient FACTS are immediately and hysterically denounced by the craven presstitute curs of the Austrailian MSM as ‘conspiracy theories’.
As someone has mused in response to the endless propaganda for America’s absurd “Russiagate” operation; for the “Skripnal” – (“two perfume bottles full of novichok” – slap-stick anti-Russian propaganda operation; and for the OPCW’s completely corrupted report peddling the baseless – “Assad is gassing his own people” – nonsense – (“it is now ‘reality itself’ that is simply dismissed as – ‘a conspiracy theory’ – here in the West.”) How true.
Ok here is finally a statement by a senior clinician in the UK.
‘ Just want to say – I’ve seen quite a few people with Covid 19 since Sunday. The vast majority are fine. They seem to have one week of fever, a few days of dry cough and then sometimes breathlessness on day 8 or 9. Most people are fine to stay at home and recover in about 10 days. If it is going to be bad it is around day 9 or 10 and the breathlessness gets rapidly worse at that point. We have had five patients who needed ITU but they all have heart or lung disease, and are quite elderly. Thankfully children seem to be invincible.’
&
‘I’ve never known anything like this – but we’re planning for huge numbers of people needing intensive care and working out how to cope. We’ve managed to segregate our whole hospital into unknown (in single rooms), positive and negative areas. We’ve moved a whole intensive care unit and 4 other wards in 3 days flat – this sort of change usually takes at least 6 months to get agreed!’
————-
Now I say this to us btl, the dumb bickering that denies the reality of BOTH the above paragraphs by the SAME GENUINE EXPERT FROM THE FRONTLINE IN THE UK, needs to stop if we are to get into the politics and economics of this event.
Covid is not so mighty that it will lay flat the mountains of the earth – nor is it so beningn that it will not leave the hospitals and carers overwhelmed during the peaking infection – can that be agreed by everyone please?
I welcome your call for a calm appraisal of all the facts we can get our hands on.
For me, as before, two things could be true: 1. the outbreak is real and somehow unusual but not really worrying; and 2. the reaction is a heady cocktail of cynical and very troubling draconianism (to coin a word), botched management aplenty, a massively over-inflated stock market and financial world, and mass ignorance all around.
I do find it hard to believe that a nigh-on (seeming) unity of medical frontliners speaking with one voice on this issue, is somehow faked.
Just now, higher up than DG’s comment, I reported on an interview with someone equally expert who calls for calm and asserts that the hype is in the interests of virologists. This could well be true AND the hospital stresses be real as well.
Toby,
And with due respect to other posters, most medical services in the advanced economies are alert to Seasonal Flu and the stresses this places on modern health services and are generally geared up for the Winter influx of cases from Influenza, however, we now have a new pathogen, on top of Seasonal Flu doing the rounds, the mortality rate of which is far greater than Seasonal Flu, now, as is the case in the UK, we’ve seen a large decline in the number of hospital beds and conveyer like system introduced to treat illness, with a rapid turnaround of patients in beds, by way of efficiency cuts and privatisation of services, we’ve also seen a significant rise of infections occurring in hospitals caused by a lack of adequate sanitation, which has already been causing alarm.
Now, faced with the realities on the ground, we now have a new pathogen introduced into the mix, one which is quite contagious and one that leads to some 5% of infections requiring medical intervention, with extreme cases requiring intensive care. Alas, most of our intensive care units are already taken by many suffering from regular, Seasonal Flu, effectively meaning our health system is overwhelmed even by a small number of Covid-19 infections, given we’ve already been running at near full capacity. And this fact should worry us, particularly with what went down in Wuhan, which lest we forgot is a modern city of some 10 million with modern infrastructure.
So, when it comes to the UK, and more specifically Wales I’m certainly alarmed, alarmed for my family and for others, which is why I’m grateful I’m actually stuck in the HKSAR presently, and not Wales, who’s health service has been gutted by 40 years of underinvestment and significant bed reductions – COVID-19 will bite us in the arse, that’s for sure and needlessly so in my humble opinion.
It’s fair to note this is conjecture. Perhaps the statistics will confirm your opinions, in time to come. It’s fair to point out, though, that symptomless patients and inaccurate tests may change these mortality rates considerably.
NHS UK is under extreme pressure to react very cautiously at the moment, and it’s fair to include this in any assessment of the situation. For instance, this example from NHS leaflet ‘Standard operating procedure for Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Priority Assessment Service (version 3)”:
I think it’s fair to say that the above precaution alone might add considerable stress to an already stressed healthcare system, even without factoring in an increased flow of patients, due to high levels of public anxiety.
With regards expectations for Wales NHS I actually went to a very senior administrator to get the actual figures they are prepared for. However, and given the rapid acceleration of infections in Wales and virtual inactivity of our devolved government I was of the opinion to him that the figures presented were extremely conservative and that his Department would be best advised to liaise with peers in the HKSAR, which as stated has a health care system similar to that of Wales, with a few notable exceptions based on the HKSARs experience with SARS.
Thanks for adding your opinion on this.
Patients who are merely ‘anxious’ won’t make it past Emergency triage.
The latest figures from South Korea indicate clearly that of all known cases of Covid-19 to-date – they tested aggressively, the mortality rate is 1%, which is greater than the mortality rate associated with Seasonal Influenza, but significantly lower than death rates associated with MERS and SARS.
However, when we look to Italy, a different picture is painted, thus, of 26,000 known infections, some 2,500 persons have died, giving Italy a mortality rate that resembles that of SARS, which is 10%, rather than the Coronavirus mortality rate doing the rounds in Asia.
Its this dichotomy between the figures that causes both confusion and alarm, particularly given the mortality rate in the Wuhan outbreak was significantly lower than what’s transpiring in Italy, and by extension, Europe.
It may be that the Italy figures are less mature, and also that many who have had and easily survived the virus are not in the statistics at all – S. Korea had a very aggressive testing campaign. But yes, no doubt such stats feed fear. Most of us are learning as we go here.
Chris that is explained by the late reaction to it in a PART of Italy.
Go have a look at MoA with two
infection graphs from two cities there.
Dungroanin,
We do seem to be getting mix messages on Off-Guardian, I’m absolutely opposed to much of the hysteria presented in the MSM, at the same time I believe its wrong to downplay this Coronavirus outbreak to that on par with Seasonal Flu, which it certainly is not.
Indeed, I’ve followed with interest responses taken in my neck of the woods, and those taken in Europe, USA and Canada.
The fact remains, a do nothing approach, or ignoring realities is as dangerous as manufacturing mass hysteria.
Christ, lets just suppose for a moment the Chinese authorities in Wuhan, Hubei and indeed China at a Beijing level did nothing, just imagine where China would be today if much of its 1.2 Billion population was exposed to Covid-19, which certainly is more than a fantasy given the amount of modern infrastructure built in China allowing fast movement of people to all corners of its landmass these past 30 years.
Given that ‘manufacturing mass hysteria’ enables a draconian totalitarian shutdown of society, I must beg to differ.
No pubs, restaurants, visiting grandparents, concerts, cinema, festivals, sporting events, travel. In France you need state-issued documents to walk the dog. Fuck that.
Quite frankly I can live with thousands, or even tens of thousands, of deaths. Cancelling normal life is so over the top, I’m amazed more people aren’t at the storming the barricades stage.
Apologies, bolder than I had intended. 🙂
Those Italian figures from the BLTs on MoA underscore perfectly why Bojo the Clown wanted a do nothing approach and allow the pathogen to run its course unimpeded – no doubt a slide rule was put over the number of elderly with chronic conditions, and those folk who are not elderly, but also suffer chronic conditions, meaning they can’t contribute to the Capitalist bounty that Bojo adores – Bojo must have been salivating at the expected death totals and cost savings achieved by these deaths, savings that would go right into the back pockets of greedy fuckers like Richard Branson. Mind you, Bojo don’t seem so keen on culling his own parents or elderly rich exploiters, such as Rupert Murdoch.
Exactly!! CoVid19 can put Tory social cleansing of the ‘useless eaters’ into high gear. It took ten years for Tory austerity to kill 140,000 untermenschen, but with this killer, they can exceed that target in months, God willing.
I think it’s worth bearing in mind that a great many people die from the flu every year. Between 22,000 and 55,000 in the USA alone this season according to CDC estimates.
They are not counting it accurately as there is a lack of interest – it’s just another statistic.
But this is being focused on with a magnifying glass. Every single death is recorded.
Nope.
My reasonably well educated layman’s perspective on this is that it is essentially the same as the modern flu. Except that unlike the flu it cannot kill children.
That said, even the modern flu doesn’t even begin to compare with the Spanish Flu. My 2 year old great aunt was a victim of the Spanish Flu in 1918. She died on 4th November 1918 in Scotland. Her death certificate reads “influenza 7 days bronco-pneumonia 4 days”. The other two on the same page a 28 year old woman and 45 year old woman also died of the Spanish flu.
If this affected children the panicking would be orders of magnitude worse. If that’s possible.
The symptoms – if you check the government’s website – are like that of a mild bout of the flu. A great many people are likely to be self isolating thinking they have this when they have the flu.
Do the math. Go figure. People are being told to self diagnose and stay at home. It really is not that serious. The Center for Disease Control estimates (well who’s counting?) that this flu season has claimed between 22,000 and 55,000 Americans.
Too many people who should know better are buying into these disaster narratives.
And I take my health seriously. I don’t smoke and I don’t drink. I walk in the countryside for exercise. I now imagine – in my worst case scenario – that I will be arrested on sight by a police helicopter crossing a field.
Run for the woods ! 🙂
May I enjoin a little rational thinking here. Please pause and reflect.
A virus that is mostly benign and inflicts serious illness only in an elderly and sickly minority cannot also, despite your somewhat nonsensical claim, be unprecedented in clinical experience. How could it be? What is inprecedented? The infection rate? No. The CFR? No. The symptoms? No. The incubation time? No. The demographics? No.
Nothing, repeat NOTHING is unprecdented about this alleged novel pathogen or the disease associated with it. It’s a standard profile, virtually identical to flu and a host of other pathogens, identified and not. You’re permitting yourself to accept an irrationality simply because you perceive it as coming from the mouth of an expert.
If you pause to think for a moment maybe it will become clear to you that the only way his two statements make sense is if the second is not referring to the clinical picture but to the protocols being required in response. These are absolutely unprecedented, and criminally absurd. This at least is my best guess as to his meaning, assuming the man is not a fool.
The reason why the mortality rate in Italy is higher than in China, is because Italians have a higher life expectancy than the Chinese.
It’s like comparing Sweden with Panama in terms of which people die more.
– You know where: Sweden!
– You know why: because older age is a risk factor dying. And the average age in Sweden is higher than in Panama
See also https://www.amazon.com/Epidemiology-Introduction-Kenneth-J-Rothman/dp/0199754551
Willem you are correct in saying one of the reasons for the higher mortality rate is because we have a higher life expectancy, it could also be that the virus strain in Italy is different from the strain in China.
VG
Actually a woman, and she is likely no fool, being a Consultant in Respiratory & Acute Medicine as well as the Clinical Director for Acute Medicine.
She also says
‘I think we need to worry about our elderly relatives but not our age group or our kids. It seems pretty clear that a large proportion of the UK will get this, hopefully spread out over months rather than all at once like Italy. Once enough people have had it then herd immunity will mean it dies out. So if the frail elderly can hibernate for a few months hopefully we can keep mortality down.’
So you need to see that while you gnaw away at the bone there is also actual meat there – it can overwhelm the hospitals because it is NEW and in ADDITION to the usual flu which is expected and mitigating with annual vaccinations for the most vulnerable, which still leaves hospitals at a dangerous occupancy at this time of year.
It is as clear as that.
I do understand that for various political reasons that how it is dealt with means that the Money equation is as usual the main culprit.
This is the Facebook (I think it was) posting that someone showed me, and to which I referred to elsewhere. Just to add that she gave her full name (and probably title, although I did not make a note of either), and the name of her hospital. So this was not just some anonymous person on t’internet.
I must have missed the part where she said it was NEW; and ADDITIONal to ‘normal’ flu.
And no, nobody has the right to tell other people to ‘hibernate’.
This is indeed the promotion of infecting 40 million people with the new coronavirus, in the UK alone. On the other hand, they are giving the Police powers to detain infected people. Meaning, 40 million people are faced the threat of arrest according to the new laws.
Don’t you love the ‘authorities’?
lol, good one. I never thought of that. (I expect the government didn”t either).
Love the logic too. It means a limited number of coppers are going to be forced to deal with (by definition) a large number of infected people. No doubt they will wear the full hazmat suits for theatrical effect, but some are bound to get infected nevertheless. Would be funny of the Police Federation called a strike….
The UK Gov will introduce new powers for police and immigration officers that would be give them power to detain people and put them in isolation facilities “if necessary to protect public health,” under the proposed new law due to be introduced in parliament on Thursday.
Simultaneously it will also relax the rules on the number of doctors needed to detain and treat patients suffering from a mental health disorder if there are staff shortages.
Meanwhile the Pound is tanking against the Dollar and Euro so welcome to the Brexitainian full lock down. Nowhere to go, no one to see and money not worth the paper its printed on…
“Regulations around deaths will also be stripped back.
Doctors will no longer be required to see the body of the deceased before issuing a death certificate. Senior health professionals other than doctors will be permitted to sign off death certificates themselves, and the necessity for coroners to hold jury inquests will also be removed.
Regarding cremations and burials, the government said in a draft: “In a reasonable worst-case scenario the death management industry will be rapidly overwhelmed. There is a significant gap in body storage requirements to ensure we are prepared.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/fioj3n/with_uk_death_toll_increasing_police_are_expected/
Harold Shipman must be laughing in his grave.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Meaningless quote in this context. (And mostly meaningless in any context where sound statistical methodology is used).
The problem here is there are NO meaningful statistics because there is NO coherent data to base any on.
Thanks for your time.
Absolutely. This gives the lie to the authorities’ position. They claim the ability to test for this yet have not done so in a randomised large scale endeavour. This would supply the mortality rate and this is the most obvious thing to do. it is an excruciatingly poor hoax because of this alone.
There is another stupidity that has crept in and that is what the UK government called ‘modelling’. As they say with statistics RIRO, rubbish in rubbish out. Of course the UK government have produced they model they want but have not published the methodology for others to look at and critique.
But this have all been corroborated by other scientists and the WHO has commended China for its openness and cooperation. There are also more than 31,000 cases in Italy. Last time I looked Italy was not classified as authoritarian.
The extrapolations are not just crystal ball figures, we already have actual experiences in China, Italy, South Korea and now Spain and other parts of Europe. All of these experiences conform with the previous observations and make these predictions less like guesswork.
Please direct me to where I described Italy as authoritarian.
I described the Peoples Republic of China as authoritarian. Not a controversial description. And I said that the UK government of Boris Johnson is planning to give itself authoritarian new powers which will be in place for two years according to Robert Peston, who is usually regarded as sympathetic to the Tories.
The facts regarding China. 3237 deaths in a country with a population of 1,437,748,659 (both from worldometer). That is 0.0002 percent of the population of the PRC. Am I worried? No.
Not ‘controversial’ among Sinophobes and arrogant Orientalists, that’s for sure.
People don’t even use the same language any more.
“the crisis is reportedly more or less over in authoritarian China”
Do we know how things are going in un-authoritrian China?
You mean Taiwan, Republic of China? Not so bad, only one death so far.
Compradore Taiwan, the home of the Westernised Oriental Gentleman-that Taiwan?
One death = Global Health Hazard, according to the US foreign policy office. It makes the country eligible for sanctions and regime change as they recommended for Venezuela.
‘Authoritarian’ China-also efficient, far-sighted, socially supportive and generous to others as we see in Italy and France, where they have delivered large quantities of PPE and ventilators. And, in what way are the countries of the Glorious West not ‘authoritarian’? And without the social solidarity and efficiency to boot.
I just want to make something clear as many are confused about this.
STATISTICS are actual (or estimated) figures assessing events which have already happened.
Estimated figures are usually based on sound reasoning if the source is credible.
Statistics can be used – with caution – to assess what might happen in the future, but are subject to manipulation and faulty thinking. There are no statistics about future events. None. Only guesses. Generally the more wild the guess the bigger the headline.
Some look at the charts showing a rise in numbers. But those people do not understand that these graphs level off at some point. It’s worth bearing in mind that the crisis is reportedly more or less over in authoritarian China.
Governments and media do not have crystal balls. Anyone that tells you how many will (in the future) be hospitalised is guessing.
Yes, you will die. I guarantee it. But probably not from coronavirus.
This might all be over quite quickly, but will you still have a job? And the Tories are giving themselves new authoritarian powers that will be in place for two years. Yet the fearmongers are rolling over and asking Boris to save them!
“the Tories are giving themselves new authoritarian powers that will be in place for two years”
2 years? We still have the BS from 911 in place. Meanwhile sell your chidren’s futures to cover the current bailouts to the politicos’ corporate owners.
Back in 2009 the H1N1 virus was popular. In the US, 60 mill were infected and over 12,000 died, yet I can’t remember anything about that flu bug, because the MSM wasn’t screaming H1N1 24/7, and inferring that this might be the Black Death v.2
Fast forward to now and it appears to me that deliberate panic is being sowed by govt officials for some nefarious reasons.
And what’s with people’s obsession with hoarding TP?
It’s almost as if some Deep State types wanted to play their mighty Wurlitzer organ and see how many people they could frighten and get to buy TP, fine-tuning this WMD for the next mass panic.
But having incompetent boobs like BoJo and Tubby the Grifter in charge doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in our respective govts.
The way to identify motives is to ‘follow the bail out money’. Bail out money tells you who is getting a Get out of jail Free card and who is being left to rot.
So the UK Government immediately announces support for mortgage payers, but says nothing about renters. Renters are more likely statistically to be less well off, younger (and hence with fewer savings) and living from pay cheque to pay cheque. Those with mortgages will be middle class folks or richer. So the first conclusion to draw is that bailing out the better off is a higher priority than helping the poorer in society. Ho hum: so much for the Tories being the new ‘party for the working class’.
The second question is whether ‘bail outs’ are loans, equity injections or bungs. I am strongly of the opinion that it is illegal for Boris to give bungs to corporations of turnover >£100m: any bail outs for them must exclusively come through taxpayer ownership and/or repayment of loans. If TNCs cannot repay, their executives must reduce their pay by 95% until they can. They can all live on £100k per annum instead of £5m. Boris must believe in capitalism: big corporations stand on their own two feet and wait until the little guys have been helped. Far more folks work for SMEs than work in corporations. So treat the little guys first, then the big guys. The big guys should have bigger and deeper pockets and banks should be more prepared to let their loans be rescheduled.
The third issue is whether the public sector will keep feeding whilst the private sector is looted. I do not want any BBC executive on more than £40k a year until the crisis is over. They should not be reporting on disaster whilst stuffing themselves at the taxpayers’ trough. Because tax revenues will be falling off a cliff, so government spending on luxuries (like the BBC) should be falling off a cliff too.
Follow very closely who is getting bailed out. It will tell you the true nature of Boris Johnson’s government.
Agree with a lot of that, but not that government spending should be falling. Putting money into the (real) economy is exactly what the government should be doing now. (not bailing out banks or large corporations though).
For whatever reason they are renters, renters have avoided themselves being guilty of the enclosure of the commons piracy of “private” letting. Real estate, and in the first instance, residential real estate, is community infrastructure. Henry George differentiated some exceptions, but with insufficient cautions exercised in the public good–if such exceptions can be meaningful. Marx dismissed him as a ‘pancea-breeder’, totally ignorant of any understanding of ‘surplus value’, and his theories as being “the capitalist’s last ditch.”
(OTOH, George went on to descibe Marx as ‘the prince of muddleheads.”…)
“Only the little people pay taxes.” Leona Helmsley-Queen of Mean
“There is a sucker born every minute.” P.T. Barnum
“Never give a sucker an even break.” W.C. Fields
“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” Maynard Keynes
MOU
For what it’s worth, here is an extension of the renters situation:
https://www.change.org/p/boris-johnson-prime-minister-of-great-britain-robert-jenrick-mp-secretary-of-state-for-housing-coronavirus-protect-renters-now?recruiter=24726324&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_initial&recruited_by_id=90998710-c4f3-012f-fe9c-4040aa777426&utm_content=fht-20788728-en-gb%3Av2
Be very afraid. The Telegraph has been mentioning ‘socialism’ a lot this week.
We know what that means with their standards of journalism, don’t we? Yup, fascism here we come…
This from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) helps put this into a bit of perspective:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
The figures are estimated, annual and only for the United States. The flu kills thousands each year in the USA alone.
This coronavirus has killed nobody under 10 and even in the over 80 age group six out of ever seven recover from it.
If you want to continue fearmongering go ahead. We will all be paying the price in terms of crashed economies and the loss of civil liberty.
Even Robert Peston is worried about the new law that the Tory government has planned for us for the end of the month.
“This coronavirus has killed nobody under 10 and even in the over 80 age group six out of ever seven recover from it.”
Thank God for small mercies?, with the emphasis on the “?”.
OffGuardian
Do you know what you just did? You took a whole programme of almost two hours discussing the Covid-19 crises and with Doctors and others with actual experience dealing with the virus on the front, and cherry picked the piece that you wanted to illustrate a point. This is also propaganda I am afraid. My interpretation of why Dr Kettner was cut off is not that he was on or off message but that the irrelevance of what he was saying. He is an ex Chief Public Health in Manitoba Canada, not exactly affected yet much by the epidemic and he kept saying things that were frankly dangerous and nonsensical. Maybe the irrelevance of his experience was what made the announcer cut him off, as he had nothing but ignorant misinformation to add. I would have understood that your zeal for dealing with this issue would also extend to analysing what the Italian doctors in the same programme were saying, about unnecessary deaths even of younger people because the health system was overwhelmed.
The problem of course is that this is a new virus with no immunity in populations worldwide but some knowledge is beginning to immerge. It is for example known that the problem with this virus is that it is highly contagious so that the rate of people infected doubles every 6 days. There is also data that shows that 20% of those who get the disease have a serious illness with a pneumonia that makes it difficult for those affected to get oxygen into the system and that this can also progress rapidly to multiorgan failure and death. Those with multiple previous illnesses and the elderly die more because they cannot recover despite the support in a critical care unit (CCU). So it is really a case of simple arithmetic. If you have 1000 cases today 200 of them will need CCU beds. Next week it will be another 400 beds (1000x2x.05), the following week it will be 800 and so on. In a month the whole system will be overwhelmed because there are not that many beds or clinical staff to run this at short notice. If you do not believe me then look at what happened in Italy and it is exactly that. Although the death rate is said to be around 2-3% this is in patients properly treated and will increase, as it has done in Italy to 6% because of the swamping of facilities. The only way to stop this is therefore to reduce transmission and there are two most effective measures: wash your hands and avoid exposure by social distancing.
Disclaimer: I am not a government employee or shill for any organisation. I have great respect for the work of OffGuardian especially in exposing the duplicity of the Guardian, the BBC and the MSM. But on this issue I think you need to stand back and act more responsibly or at least in a more balanced way. I think you seem to be attracting a lot of conspiracy theorists by your stance and this should be a danger sign.
I appreciate that you may not wish to publish this, that is your choice, but knowing the otherwise quite solid analyses in your website I hope you will for balance.
Try reading the link I just posted and stop fearmongering.
You obviously haven’t read, or if you have, have not understood what I have written. Flu may kill so many people and in fact in UK the so called winter NHS pressure is due to the increase in Flu cases. But flu hardly ever requires so many CCU beds and in such a fast accelerating manner. Wake up.
I’m sorry, but I am not buying into your doom laden narrative on this. You believe what you want. I don’t agree with you.
The flu is estimated to kill thousands each year in the USA alone. That is FACT.
I suggest that you get this into it’s proper perspective.
Does flu ‘overwhelm the healthcare system every year?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-10/virus-spread-pushes-italian-hospitals-toward-breaking-point
Also comparing mortality of a stable disease known for over a century with a quickly evolving disease only known for 3 months is not valid. I tell you what, you believe what you want to believe and do the same. Perhaps we can compare notes later.
As far as I can tell, the healthcare systems are overwhelmed by the estimation of the disaster. Not the virus itself.
You’re obviously intent on panicking though, so, have a wonderful time. I’ll see you when this fizzles out, or when the government seizes control in the name of quarantine.
I thought scrutiny was bred into communities like this, but it seems you’re willing to take propaganda at face value when it’s something you agree with.
The health are systems are overwhelmed as it is – before this came along. We are looking at really struggling hospitals – if you don’t believe me go take a look!
John Pretty, come to Italy to get the proper perspective!
Therein you have it. It’s not the mild virus per se that is killing people. I was interested to see advice given by an Italian doctor in the Independent only a few days ago saying that
‘UK hospitals should plan now for the influx in patients, stressing some of those who needed care were young and healthy, forcing overwhelmed hospitals to make ‘difficult choices’ ‘.
My immediate reaction was to wonder why ‘young and healthy’ people were being hospitalised in Italy when all the medical advice is that people in that category are highly unlikely to need any medical intervention at all and, now, certainly in the UK, don’t even need to seek a confirmatory diagnosis, just as would happen if they had ‘standard’ flu.
I tried to find out on line, amongst all the statistics telling us how many millions of people could expect to be hospitalised and how many thousands should expect to die, how many people are currently hospitalised as a result of Covid-19 alone (i.e. no serious pre-existing condition) and guess what? I found absolutely no figure whatsoever. Yet I heard an ordinary member of the public say on the radio this morning about how awful this ‘catastrophe’ is. All I can say is God help us if we are ever caught up in a real emergency.
Please be specific as to your sources.
Fair enough
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762130?guestAccessKey=bdcca6fa-a48c-4028-8406-7f3d04a3e932&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=022420.
I have to admit making one error and that is that critical cases are 5% not 20% of cases. The later figure includes severe as well as critical cases. Nevertheless the exponential nature of dissemination still mean that facilities will be swamped.
John
Sorry, I couldn’t find the link when I posted above but I have it now:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-italy-hospitals-doctor-lockdown-quarantine-intensive-care-a9401186.html
Thank you.
Maybe. We’ll never know. In the meantime I’m sure you can put us in touch with more televangelists for the true gospel.
Neither like tele evangelists nor do I like conspiracy theorists, both blinkered.
Conspiracy Theorists are open to alternative explanations that generally implicate those who are in power with the ability to control the narrative.
Kind of makes them NOT blinkered, at least as compared to the general population.
“Conspiracy Theorists are open to alternative explanations”
Cautious skepticism is what is open to alternative theories but conspiracy theories pick and chose what facts to believe to fulfil their beliefs.
Orage Conspiracy theorist is a term invented by the CIA to silence/discredit anyone critical of official narratives.
That’s not very Occam of them but the truly possessed amongst them choose their theories–or construct new ones–to fit their Occams, so on the absolute scale of such things it’s not such a big deal.
Some ‘conspiracy’ theories are, in fact, conspiracy reality. Many others are deliberate disinfo from the powers that be, intended to discredit the real conspiracy facts. The ‘conspiracy theory’ narrative is that NO conspiracies have ever occurred, and the most ludicrous series of coincidences represent reality.
“Some ‘conspiracy’ theories are, in fact, conspiracy reality. Many others are deliberate disinfo from the powers that be, intended to discredit the real conspiracy facts.”
And that’s it? You’re skipping over the largest source? The mental effluent of variously deranged fruit loops?
Oh, there’s that, too.
It’s the Coincidence Theorists who act as if mesmerised, but then again, in the MSM, their jobs depend upon it.
You don’t like televangelists. Is that why you linked to this guy?:
https://www.physicianspeaking.com/
Thankyou! This website is promoting dangerous misinformation.
Thank you Orage for the only sane comment. All those who cannot understand that this virus is not a normal influenza virus, should come to Italy, the death rate is atleast 300 a day, the excelllent hospitals and health service is at breaking point, a large pavilion in Milano is hurriedly being prepared as an ICU with 500 beds. We are in lock down and afraid, but we are firmly convinced that we must keep away from other people in order to stop this terrible contagion, it worked in Wuhan. Europe has deluded us and we are getting much help from China who have flown in doctors, their assistants and huge supplies of masks, ventilators etc. we cannot make enough ourselves, Doctors are also coming from Cuba and Venezuela.
Phew! Lemme see it I can these one by one:
No she didn’t. She provided the ENTIRE 1 hour 50 min. audio file for us to listen to ourselves.
Well now, which is it? Is he being irrelevant? Or is he being dangerous? (And by the way, most people would equate being “off message” with being irrelevant.)
If his experience were so irrelevant–that seems to be one of your favorite words–then why was he invited onto the program in the first place? And it seems pretty gutsy of you to characterize a doctor and a professor of Community Health Sciences and Surgery at Manitoba University as ‘ignorant’. I mean, look: maybe his professional opinion will happen to be right or wrong in this particular instance. But surely the man’s not just plain ignorant! He has studied this issue and apparently has decades of experience in the field, so give him a little bit of respect.
But is that a function of the Corona virus? Or a defect in Italy’s healthcare system? Or a predictable consequence of irresponsible media hype? Shortages of hospital beds alone, without any further qualification, tell us precious little about the Corona virus per se.
As for your other point about the “20%” of COVID-19 sufferers who need hospital care, I see you have already revised that figure downward (to 5%) in your comments below.
I doubt that many of the frequenters of this website have ploughed through the nearly 2 hours of discussion on this topic in that podcast. So OffGuardian kindly cherry picked the bit they wanted their audience to listen to, not only outlining the time but transcribing it. If OffGuardian was interested in balance why ignore about 100 minutes of a two hour broadcast? Because it was talking about the real crisis elsewhere. And the article’s title urged you to go that way.
My assessment of what Dr Kettner said and his ignorance is that he stated that this or that was not known when in fact there was data on these topics. He starts of on the wrong footing by stating that he has been through 31 pandemics in his career, meaning the yearly flu virus infections in winter. If he is a public health doctor he should know what the definition of a pandemic is and it is not the yearly flu infections.
The essay here lacked balance because it presented one point of view and ignored the rest of the podcast because the rest of the podcast did not agree with the agenda , which is to down play the effects of this virus. Now I am afraid my comments has stirred a pandemic of counter comments from people who do not exercise their analytic power to look at various data because their starting position is that they do not believe any data presented by MSM, governments or even neutral people like me, just because they do not want to believe them, irrespective of the data presented.
That Dr Kettner is speaking from a district “not exactly affected yet much by the epidemic” is irrelevant since he is talking about the details that he has seen from elsewhere and he is saying that it does not match up to the astonishing vehemence of the rhetoric coming relentlessly over the media.
And “the irrelevance of his experience” and “ignorant misinformation”? It seems that no-one has relevant experience until they experience an unstoppable contagion. And any information that contradicts or even calls into question said unstoppable contagion must be ignorant misinformation. You could “prove” the existence of fairies by similar reasoning.
Since the Italian doctors’ case i.e. the case FOR unstoppable contagion is being echoed everywhere BUT on Off-G, OG is quite justified in passing it over.
Your next paragraph just goes over the ground that has been echoed and re-echoed everywhere – and it amounts to proclamations that we are just supposed to take at face value.
Your “disclaimer” is interesting for that old conspiracy-phobic angle. I always use this as a litmus test. The moment anyone dismisses “conspiracy” by using it as a self-negating term and indeed a kind of intellectual leprosy is either clueless or manipulative.
I suspect the corona-thingy script could have been finalised at Davos at the end of January less than two months ago. I just don’t believe anything about this “pandemic” is real, though as an exercise in total social control and the huge public bailouts to the markets are real enough.
I looked at the stats again this morning. 8000 dead worldwide since this began. Sounds like a big number until you start looking at seasonal death flu rates.
This from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) helps put this into a bit of perspective:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
The figures are estimated, annual and only for the United States.
You don’t understand how much more deadly the coronavirus is and about exponential growth? “I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year”
He must be using his own definition because we have not had a pandemic every year.
Look:
“Influenza pandemics have struck about three times every century since the 1500s, or roughly every 10-50 years. There was one in 1957-1958 and one in 1968-1969. The most infamous pandemic flu of the 20th century, however, was that of 1918-1919.”
What are you talking about? Yes, we have had a flu pandemic as the Center for Disease Control says. It’s just not been big news for the MSM.
The coronavirus is not more deadly than the flu. Please stop fearmongering.
In operational terms we effectively have a flu pandemic most years because of viral mutation. By its nature such a pandemic can be contained within the official systems of contagious endemic disease control. Novel infectious pathogens, by actuality (whatever the official definitions of ‘pandemic’ and ‘endemic’ and any qualifications are) are not endemic. The debate here is partly about the continual disagreement between practitioners between the meaning of almost any medical term but mostly about the most fundamental nature of the phenomena behind any of them.
“I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year”
He must be using his own definition because we have not had a pandemic every year.
Look:
“Influenza pandemics have struck about three times every century since the 1500s, or roughly every 10-50 years. There was one in 1957-1958 and one in 1968-1969. The most infamous pandemic flu of the 20th century, however, was that of 1918-1919.”
The Center for Disease Control in the USA says there has been a flu epidemic for the past ten years. It’s just not been newsworthy.
Well it is almost as if they have discovered a comet heading for the Earth or some such cataclysm and are using this pandemic to get everyone in doors and stop all the planes from falling out of the sky…
But if its all doomed or not lets make some omelettes with all the broken eggs…
I’ll start with this comment on Richard Murphy’s analysis of the Sumak sticky plaster for a burst artery.
Heres my tuppence.
As we are to be subjected to mass systematic unemployment, terror and/or illness and death why are we expected to keep paying money to our creditors and ultimately the banks?
If all interest payments were immediately banned and all capital repayment ceased then life would be survivable for all borrowers currently- these with mortgages, loans and credit cards.
So what about renters?
All rent payments must be cancelled immediately and the creditors must do without for the duration. That means Councils, Housing associations, private landlords will not collect or demand that rent – in effect granting a rent holiday for the duration of the emergency.
What about gas/elec/water/telephone and internet/transport/TV licence?
– All charges for such basic utilities to immediately cease for all individuals and homes.
What about subsistence costs?
(Food,travel, toilet paper…)
All should be paid a minimum equal amount to spend at shops to get that.
A basic income must be paid out to EVERYONE and covered by the state. If employers want to pay out more than that it is upto them if they can afford it without bankruptcy but the extra will not be covered by the state.
What about the companies who provide free utilities/ the private landlords , the mortgage and loan companies?
– All these will be excused from paying their current taxes and capital and interest payments as above thus reducing themselves to providing a national service! They will not go ‘bust’.
The private landlords will be excused making loan and interest payments on their buy to let mortgages, along with everyone else. Their tax liabilities on these lost profits won’t need paying. And they will all be entitled to the same subsistence as the rest of the population.
But what about …. the poor bankers that lose their revenue and guaranteed profits from their magically invented money?
Let them make do with the same as everyone else as above – it is after all a Emergency and making profits is not a priority.
That is what Labour should demand today at pmq’s along with emegeny recrutment of NHS staff and nationalisation of private empty beds and a massive import of Chinese kit and experinced staff
We’d have this cracked in weeks (whatever it is) and be left better off with a continued systematic change!
Or be dead in our own houses without having suffered financial torture in our last days.
👻
This would be true communism in its real sense without a ruling rentier class.
The poor Bankers? Poor!? My suggestion is let the bastards eat cake. Then tar and feather them. At the least.
However, regards your comment: excellent idea’s D which I agree with. Also liked your pithy little comment further down about what the masses think IS what the MSM tells them.
Have you heard of Interferon Alpha 2B, developed by Cuba & China btw?
That was my implication Gezzah.
And incase you may miss my latest comment above this is the latest from a UK expert
‘ Just want to say – I’ve seen quite a few people with Covid 19 since Sunday. The vast majority are fine. They seem to have one week of fever, a few days of dry cough and then sometimes breathlessness on day 8 or 9. Most people are fine to stay at home and recover in about 10 days. If it is going to be bad it is around day 9 or 10 and the breathlessness gets rapidly worse at that point. We have had five patients who needed ITU but they all have heart or lung disease, and are quite elderly. Thankfully children seem to be invincible.’
————-
There is more in my lates comment and response would be better thread there than here. Cheers.
Thanks D… We are strange times indeed.
The banksters need not be eliminated on the spot. Make them work hard, physically, for the rest of their lives, if they refuse to repent. If they do, let ’em go, but keep a close eye on them, and, most definitely, strip them of all the loot they have stolen in their lives of blood-sucking.