2+2 = 9, if you’re a SAGE scientist!

The scientists have been publicly lecturing the Government, which is not their role. Their place is to offer guidance, not drive policy. This clearly shows how weak our leaders are. Their strategies throughout the COVID pandemic are nothing less than an omnishambles.

The list of mistakes they’ve made is too long to list here, I recommend this article from the Spectator, The ten worst COVID decision-making failures

I rarely make forecasts, the scientists do, and whether they call them predictions or projections they have been spectacularly wrong about COVID from the start.

Without going into all the details, scientists have led the Government, with the collusion of Hapless Hancock, into dangerous territory.

I believe the new national lockdown will cost a lot more lives than COVID ever could and destroy countless businesses and livelihoods. Many aspects of our culture are threatened with destruction, which could take years to rebuild.

The crappy charts the scaremongering duo Whitty and Vallance mis-presented (next slide please!) at Saturday’s press briefing are neatly laid out here

I want to look at how believable some of these doomsday scenarios are.

First let’s look their mid-September statement, "At the moment we think the epidemic is doubling roughly every seven days. That’s exponential growth and “if that continued you would end up with something like 50,000 cases in the middle of October per day.”

What happened?

In the first two weeks of the four, cases increased by 57%, not even doubling, when the forecast was for a fourfold increase. Then, around 20,000 cases were found that had fallen off the maximum number of rows an outdated excel spreadsheet can hold, which boosted counted cases. Even including these miscounts, cases only rose by 125%, increasing by a factor of 2.5, not another fourfold rise as predicted.

At the end of the four weeks, cases had increased from around 4,500 daily to around 16,000 versus the 50,000 cases used as justification to introduce the rule-of-six and advice to work from home again if possible.

Surely children going back to school and hundreds of thousands of students returning to Universities nationwide from their hometowns spread the virus more widely, that’s just common sense.

It seems to me that this first wave of new restrictions had little, if any, discernible effect

Then 2-3 weeks ago, Tiers 1, 2 and 3 restrictions came into play, as scientists warned we’re a coronavirus 'tipping point'. Here’s a timeline of their introduction.

Here’s what’s happened since then.

Growths in cases and deaths have risen steadily, hospital admissions more rapidly. However, as the scientists keep telling us, there is a 2-3 week lag before restrictions can effect growth rates. Why are cases and deaths now not accelerating? Evidence these restrictions didn’t work and weren't needed

What Excess Deaths?

At peak pandemic there were around 12,000 excess deaths a week above the five year average. For months now the number of weekly deaths from all causes has actually been lower than average, last week there were only around 500 excess deaths.

A COVID focussed health system.

Although at its peak COVID accounted for a lot more deaths than other diseases effecting the respiratory system. Over months since then COVID deaths were around a tenth of those from other diseases like flu and COPD. Recently there have been over twice as many deaths from non-COVID related respiratory diseases, even last week this figure was around two-thirds.

Who is most likely to die?

Of the 54,609 reported deaths in the latest ONS figures 61% were aged over 80, 84% are over 70. There have been 15 COVID related deaths in people under 20. COVID deaths are highly polarised towards older people, the vast majority of whom had underlying health conditions.

Hospital admissions, what’s happening?

There are around half the number of COVID cases in hospital right now than there were at peak pandemic. However, there are a quarter of the number of hospital deaths. We have clearly got better at treating the most seriously ill from the virus. When hospital cases double, which they may well do, why can’t we use all that capacity in the Nightingale Hospitals?

Around 10% of those in hospital are on ventilators now, down from 15% previously. It looks like around a third of patients on ventilators die, which has remained consistent. Only the most severe COVID cases are put on a ventilator, however, we are currently doing so less often.

The implied death rate for people who are hospitalised with COVID is 1% if using the governments stats on the number of cases.

However as our testing & tracing is so appalling bad, despite promises to make it “World Class”, it is highly likely daily cases are much higher than 23,000 in official figures, meaning the real mortality rate is much lower. The New Scientist has reported that by mid-October up to 73,000 were being infected daily

If there are around 80,000 cases daily, that would mean the real likelihood of someone who contracts COVID has of dying from it 0.3%, three in one thousand. Much lower than the ludicrous 1.15% current prediction of Professor Lockdown, Neil “He’s always wrong” Ferguson and his team.

For the UK to reach 4,000 deaths a day, a key plank of the scientist’s case for a new comprehensive lockdown, there would need to be around million new infections daily. There is no growth trend I see in the stats that could lead to that. This in my opinion is at best a distortion to get their own way with the government. At worst it is a gross incompetence, and a cheap shot to give them a get-out when the big enquiry comes into how disgracefully badly the pandemic’s been dealt with

Why is COVID being treated as if it’s so dangerous? Other health issues are side-lined, the majority of people will not be severely impacted by COVID. However, many, many people would still be thriving if it weren’t for these hugely damaging lockdowns. How many people will be forced into bankruptcy, poverty, despondency and death, while our scientists frogmarch an incompetent government to worship at the altar of COVID.

You can forget any gentle growth in the economy to recover from the worst it’s been for 20 years, we’re in for a double-dip recession, and that’s a forecast!

I am v cross, and I think a lot of normally sensible people could be driven to rebel!

I'll be back on this topic in 2-3 weeks, when we'll see what's been happening, before the effects of the latest Lockdown Lunacy has kicked-in on the stats.

Full dashboard of all the stats above and more