Vic Rolfe
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Blog Comments posted by Vic Rolfe
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I have finally had enough of the Financial Times and have now cancelled my subscription.
When asked for my feedback, this is what I gave them:
QuoteI was not happy with the ft's poor quality reporting of Sweden's handling of the corona virus pandemic. I wrote to the Editor pointing out that Sweden's approach can in no way be considered an "experiment."
A few days later, an article appeared in your paper referring to "Sweden's failed experiment..."
Leaving aside the discussion as to whether or not Sweden's handling of the crisis can be considered as an experiment, we are all aware that this crisis is far from over. So how can their so-called "experiment" possibly be considered to have failed?
I could have added that in the good old days, the ft was a highly respected "paper of record."
Nowadays, I have better things to spend my money on.
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Here's someone talking some sense, for once, in this crisis:
You don't need to take my word for it. This is from a former Supreme Court Judge in the UK:
For the record, I do not consider Lord Sumption's comments extreme in the least. I would place his views firmly in the middle ground when it comes to the great lock-down debate.
I agree with every single word that Lord Sumption wrote. I would like to go even further and bring in the following points:
- Firstly, I believe that Lord Sumption was far to kind to Niel Ferguson and his team, with his comments regarding the Imperial College pre-print that caused the UK Government to do an overnight U-turn. The media in general seem to think that it was a scientific paper when presented to the UK Government? It was not a scientific paper at that time because it had not been peer-reviewed at that time. It was nothing more than a pre-print from one team of scientists. (As far as I am aware, that is all it is to this day? If I am wrong, please do leave a comment and enlighten me...)
- Lord Sumption touches on the national economic dimension of the UK lock-down. But I would take the discussion further - specifically with regards to how this will affect the final death toll.
- I would also like to bring in the international dimension to the debate - in terms of both health and economics. We seem to have forgotten that this is a world-wide pandemic and it needs world-wide coordinated actions - not selfish national ones that will bring hundreds of millions of people around the world back into poverty and starvation.
- Finally: when governments around the world shot their own and each others economies in the foot, did they even stop to consider the added threat that we now have to international peace and stability?
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Well worth a read
International Center For Journalists (ICFJ) - report from a webinar with Anders Tegnell:
https://www.icfj.org/news/swedens-top-epidemiologist-challenges-conventional-wisdom-covid-19
And well-worth watching
Johan Giesecke's LockdownTV video conference interview for The Post, at Unherd.com:
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A while back, antibody testing was all going to be a big thing. Boris, before he got totally lead astray by his advisors, reckoned at one point that it was going to be a "game-changer..."Now, all of that has disappeared from the daily propaganda because extensive anti-body testing throughout a representative sample of the UK population is liable to prove that the UK Government didn't do their homework. They put too much faith in a single, grossly flawed model - and then they made a complete and utter mess of things.And don't tell me that we don't have a reliable antibody test for SARS-Cov-2, available in sufficient quantities yet:I also note with deep regret that the lead author of the paper that touted the grossly flawed model in which the UK Government placed far too much trust, Prof. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, has since resigned from his position as a Government advisor. And this; after having been caught undermining the very lock-down that he, more than anyone else, was instrumental in engineering for the whole country.The UK Government would get more respect from me if they were to just come clean and say:Hey Guys... We are really sorry about this... It's a new virus. There are wildly differing models out there and no one has had enough time to do full and exhaustive research. We should have taken all of the available research and the wildly different models into account, in formulating our plans to get the country through the pandemic. We should have weighed-up all of the available models and assessed them on their various strengths, methodologies, merits, demerits and stated weaknesses and insufficient data. We should then have made a reasoned judgement based on ALL of the available information.But no. We allowed ourselves to be panicked by Prof. Neil Ferguson and his one single, ridiculously flawed model. We said that we were looking at all of the available models and research. But, actually, that was a bare-faced lie because they didn't fit in with the course of action that we had already committed ourselves to.Sorry, we made a complete hash of it! We did our best but we got it wrong.So let's now put an end to this pathetic charade and all get back to work before we completely destroy what's left of our economy?Now, that would get my vote!!Here we go:(This just about say's it all...)
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Anders Tegnell - my hero!!
(And I want one of those T-shirts!!)
From Prospect Magazine, May 01, 2020:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/will-swedens-herd-immunity-experiment-pay-off
QuoteAs Anders Tegnell, the country’s unflappable state epidemiologist has repeatedly argued, it is the rest of the world that is running the experiment. No previous pandemic has seen countries shut down to the extent seen in 2020.
The title of the article is a little misleading, since Anders himself has said that Sweden is not running an experiment - and allowing the building-up of a widespread immunity to the SARS-Cov-2 virus among the Swedish population was never a part of the the plan...
(Sorry, I just can't bring myself to use that "H" word, when referring to widespread immunity to a particular virus, in a population of people. Call it "crowd immunity," if you must. We are not cow's, thank you!?)
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From the Spectator - 4th May, 2020:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-tames-its-r-number-without-lockdown
(My emphasis...)
Quote"The virus, it turns out, has been spreading at a fraction of the speed suggested. So Imperial College’s modelling – the same modelling used to inform the UK response – was wrong, by an order of magnitude.......The 30 March claim that Sweden had spent weeks with an R near 4 now seems to have vanished without explanation. I asked why: better data, it says, became available. Quite."And they, (the UK Government,) still don't seem to get it?The only question now, in my mind, is why has the UK, despite all of its efforts with a full-on lock-down for weeks on end, had a much higher death rate than Sweden, where they never did go into lock-down? (Social distancing and several other measures, yes - but not a full-on lock-down by any stretch of the imagination...)Possibly, Sweden's much lower population density might have something to do with it? And a better funded and equipped health service? A fitter population? Cleaner air? (I read somewhere that the effects of air pollution and obesity appear to be showing a coincidental, (IE not yet proven to be causal,) relationship there...)Anyway, we won't know, until both Sweden and the UK have carried-out some extensive antibody testing throughout representative samples of their populations.If - and it's a big if - but if, as I strongly suspect, it turns out that the infection rates between the two countries are broadly similar, then both the UK Government and the team led by Prof. Neil Ferguson at Imperial College will have an awful lot of explaining to do.Could it be that the UK Government's crazy experiment in locking down the country has actually caused more deaths? As I have said throughout this fiasco... high levels of stress, (like losing your job or going bankrupt, for instance,) is not at all good for your immune system. -
I see that Thailand have extended the ban on international passenger flight arrivals, (with the usual minor exceptions,) until the end of May.Oh... And British Airways are about to cut 12,000 jobs.
Which totally pales into insignificance, of course, behind the World Food Program's analysis:
WFP Chief warns of hunger pandemic as COVID-19 spreads
Quote...due to Coronavirus, and additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020.
And that's on top of the existing 135 million who are already in that position. Bringing the grand total to over a quarter of a billion...
I would just rephrase that bit about "due to Coronavirus..." (It wasn't the virus that caused total economic melt-down. It was the collective insanity of the majority of governments around the world, in doing their best to turn a developing worldwide crisis into a complete and utter worldwide catastrophe... They buried their heads in the sand for weeks on end, until it was already far too late. And then, of course, they went into full-on panic mode and totally over-reacted to the whole thing....) -
Look after your immune system!
- Healthy diet
- Plenty of exercise
- And less stress
Healthy diets and less stress will be easier to achieve all round if we don't completely destroy our economy?
The human immune system is a pretty amazing thing - but you do need to look after it. A basically healthy person can get away with a few vitamin tablets to substitute for a less than ideal diet. And you can also get away with some halfhearted exercise - at least, as far as your immune system is concerned. But what your immune system doesn't need is stress.
So let's all get back to work before we end up turning a crisis into a complete disaster?
Here's some interesting reading on what 'they' know so far - and, more importantly, what they don't know. It's quite a long article so, if you don't have time to read the whole thing, I would highly recommend scrolling down towards the end, where there is some very interesting stuff on testing, anti-bodies and immune responses, in connection with SARS-Cov-2.
Needless to say, I wouldn't have posted the link if I didn't happen to agree with the article - especially with reference to the bit where it says:
QuoteIf more people have been infected than known — a strong likelihood, given the number of mild infections that might have been missed and testing limitations in countries including the United States — then more people are thought to be protected going forward.
Anyway, I am open to alternative points of view. That is why I have enabled "Guest Posting" on my site. So do feel free to give me a piece of your mind, if you think that I am talking out of my "puet." (It's a tagalog word!)
'No need to register with the site to post a comment. You just need to wait for me to approve the comment before it becomes visible on the site. (This is purely a spam/hacking defense mechanism and I will not delete comments just because I don't happen to agree with them. You just have to be nice, how you say it!!) ?
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'Interesting article in STATnews:
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/
In discussing the use of ventilators in treating acute respiratory distress in severely ill covid-19 patients:
Quote“Instead of asking how do we ration a scarce resource, we should be asking how do we best treat this disease?”
and:
QuoteOne reason Covid-19 patients can have near-hypoxic levels of blood oxygen without the usual gasping and other signs of impairment is that their blood levels of carbon dioxide, which diffuses into air in the lungs and is then exhaled, remain low. That suggests the lungs are still accomplishing the critical job of removing carbon dioxide even if they’re struggling to absorb oxygen. That, too, is reminiscent of altitude sickness more than pneumonia.
The noninvasive devices “can provide some amount of support for breathing and oxygenation, without needing a ventilator,” said ICU physician and pulmonologist Lakshman Swamy of Boston Medical Center.
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All India's lock-down has achieved is spreading the virus from the cities to the provinces, as people have being walking home in their millions...
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The Imperial College report was correct in stating:
QuoteThe global impact of COVID-19 has been profound, and the public health threat it represents is the most serious seen in a respiratory virus since the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic.
and:
QuoteThe last time the world responded to a global emerging disease epidemic of the scale of the current COVID-19 pandemic with no access to vaccines was the 1918-19 H1N1 influenza pandemic.
What the report does not make clear, though, is that the tragic death toll of the 1918 flu epidemic was made far worse by the effects of stress on the immune systems of whole populations.
Stress caused by the four years of World War I.
Stress caused by severe malnourishment after all the years of war.
So now, we are going to get stress on a massive scale, caused by the total collapse of economies around the world...
People should stop worrying quite so much about just exactly how deadly SARS-CoV-2 is - and start thinking a little bit more about how all of this stress is going to effect their immune systems? Especially if, as the Oxford University report seems to suggest, the virus is already out in the wild - and it has been since the middle of January?!! (Which does make perfect sense to me...)
It does seem that no age group is perfectly safe from covid-19 but the vast majority of healthy adults who do catch the disease will be anything from asymptomatic to feeling like death warmed up for a week or so - as long as they are not one of the unlucky ones and as long as they have a good healthy immune system in the first place.
It's the economy, silly!!
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Two very different scenarios, were presented by two very different reports. Only time - and a serious program of testing for antibodies in, at the very least, a representative sample of the population - will tell which one was closer to the mark...
Quick links:
The preprint (draft) of the University of Oxford study led by Prof. Sunetra Gupta
(Which may or may not turn out to be correct in its postulation that a large percentage of the UK population may already have been infected? In which case, that would bring the actual death rate per head of population way down, compared to some of the numbers that have been banded about in all the recent hysteria...)
and the
The Imperial College report led by Prof. Neil Ferguson that forced the UK government to change tack
(As the report states:)
QuoteHere we present the results of epidemiological modelling which has informed policymaking in the UK and other countries in recent weeks.
My biggest problem with how the UK and many other countries have handled the crisis so far is that they seem to have totally ignored this bit of the Imperial College report:
(My emphasis)
QuoteWe do not consider the ethical or economic implications of either strategy here, except to note that there is no easy policy decision to be made. Suppression, while successful to date in China and South Korea, carries with it enormous social and economic costs which may themselves have significant impact on health and well-being in the short and longer-term. Mitigation will never be able to completely protect those at risk from severe disease or death and the resulting mortality may therefore still be high.
Maybe now, before it is too late, we need to start thinking about the economic repercussions of our actions.
And maybe, Imperial College could run another model, taking into account the effects of an economy in collapse on the health and well-being of the population?
And that's just for the UK... The Imperial College report clearly states:
QuoteWe present results for Great Britain (GB) and the United States (US), but they are equally applicable to most high-income countries.
Nowhere in that report does it even suggest that their modeling is in any way appropriate for any of the grossly overcrowded, under resourced developing countries where:
a) Large swathes of the population simply have nowhere to go, when you kick them off the streets
b) Many of those who do have homes to go to, already live in unbearably overcrowded conditions. So if you kick people off the streets, the overcrowding at home becomes even worse.
c) In some of these countries, anything up to a third of the population earn a living in the 'informal economy'. Living hand-to-mouth, day-to-day.
So suddenly burst into panic, lock down all forms of public transport without any prior notice. Bring your entire economy to a complete standstill overnight. And then watch literally millions of people start the long trek back to their villages, without even enough food and water for the journey.
Madness. Madness. Shear and utter collective madness - all around the world...
A message to Meimei
in Ramble on
A blog by Vic Rolfe in My ramblings
Posted
Just for the record, here is a copy of my youngest daughter's epitaph for Meimei:
And here was my reply. It's basically a Message to Meimei, wherever she is now! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️