COVID-19; a reality check.

The weekend before lockdown, we were all isolating at home, suffocated with the panic our media were propagating and utterly paralysed by fear that one or more of us would be dead by the end of the week.

Photo by Tonik on Unsplash

My birthday (also Mother's Day) was a day to remember, for all the wrong reasons. Our youngest son had been unwell with a bad cold, slight temperature and really stingy, painful eyes. Nothing major - like a mild flu. He has reduced immunity so it was all very normal and the sneezing was not a feature of COVID-19. Then his 18 year old brother got sick - and this was different. A temperature of 41C which wouldn't budge on paracetamol, mild cough and shortness of breath. By day 3 - Mother's Day - he was coughing up blood spatters and with his eccentric droll sense of humour he was drafting his final words.

Except it wasn't funny at all.

We had to call 111 that night, it took FOUR HOURS to get an initial response, which turned out to be from an advisory team only. We'd picked the wrong option on the initial call. (This was infuriating, since we picked the "concerned about COVID" option, which we very clearly were!!) Another THREE hours later we got a call. Yes it sounded like COVID, despite the fact that with ASD, ADHD, OCD and anxiety he never left the house. (Even more odd the only other person in the family who was ill was his younger brother - yet we've all heard that children can't pass this on to adults.) They offered no advice, except to call back if we were concerned and they would call an ambulance. By this point we had figured you either needed an ambulance or you didn't, and we would be calling 999 not 111 if we did, since no one could wait that many hours for emergency care!

I didn't sleep for three nights, I barely ate. I have honestly never been so terrified, utterly convinced I was going to lose a child. Three days later he asked for pizza, and we knew he was over the worst!

In retrospect, our panic was not in line with the level of threat before our eyes. Our anxiety fed that of our son's and he also believed he could die. And as the country waited with bated breath our government seemed unable to plan for the epidemic coming our way and we gradually lost all perspective. We lost our comprehension of relative risk, convinced we are all going to die without extreme measures and government control.

I'm not scared now. But I am very, VERY angry, and I think you should be too.

It's understandable that a new disease would precipitate extreme caution, and promote fear of the unknown. But governments the world over - and especially ours here in the UK - have clung to modelling which has been proved to be wrong time and again, listened to "experts" who have been discredited a significant number of times in spite of clear research and factual information saying otherwise.

This is akin to rigidly sticking to the weather forecast and forgetting to look out of the window!

The modelling
Neil Ferguson from Imperial College, London based his modelling in March on the Foot and Mouth epidemic modelling he used in 2007 - where he also got it badly wrong. It’s one thing modelling and predicting, but when the view outside your window is sunshine you cannot keep forecasting torrential rain. He advocated contiguous culling, which cost the farming industry between £1 and 2.4 billion, was later deemed unnecessary and contradicted the available information at the time.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In March, Ferguson admitted that his Imperial College model of the COVID-19 disease was based on undocumented, 13-year-old computer code that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic, rather than a coronavirus. Ferguson declined to release his original code so other scientists could check his results. He only released a heavily revised set of code at the end of April, after a six-week delay. The public have NOT been told this clearly - yet Ferguson's modelling was the reason our government initiated lockdown.

So the decision to go into lockdown was based on panic precipitated by a discredited epidemiologist who was so wide of the mark in other circumstances it would be quite hilarious. Worse still, a steady stream of chaos and government incompetence has continued since.

Lockdown
We locked down our country's residents, yet kept the borders open. 1300 vectors of disease entered the country during the last two weeks of March! There is some evidence that lockdown has not helped and that given the delay from spread to peak it was too late to achieve anything. Certainly no country which locked down has avoided the now all-too-familiar "curve" and the only country in Europe which seems to have managed the disease effectively is Sweden. Their economy and services have remained intact, have not been overwhelmed and whilst they will suffer from the wider European recession have come out of this remarkably well.

Lockdown was enforced on the premise that we were "saving the NHS" and "Flattening the curve". The former was quickly disproved, with hospitals deserted except from busy COVID wards in some parts of the country. I have friends who are consultants who have had little to do for months, and are deeply concerned about the long term impact of deferring non urgent care. We haven't saved the NHS anything - we've postponed 90% of care and will now not have the finances to address this new crisis. Waiting lists are rocketing and the suspension of chronic illness and non-urgent care has created a ticking time bomb in our health service.

Lockdown itself has contributed significantly to the number of excess deaths according to the British Medical Journal. They estimate only ONE THIRD of excess deaths are clearly attributable to COVID 19. There is evidence people avoided seeking treatment during lockdown prompting doctors to plead publicly to encourage people to seek help. We literally "saved our NHS" by dying at home.

There is increasing evidence lockdown is actively killing people.The government now estimate the long term impact of lockdown will cost 200 000 lives. The mental health impact of lockdown is also considerable with the Royal College of Psychiatrists disclosing that people with no history of mental illness are developing serious psychological problems for the first time as a result of the lockdown, amid growing stresses over isolation, job insecurity, relationship breakdown and bereavement. They state that adults and children are having psychotic episodes, mania and depression, with some taken to hospital because of the heavy toll on their mental wellbeing. Even the NHS website states that loneliness and isolation actually kills people yet our government has failed to recognise this appropriately!

As for protecting the elderly, we had direct experience of the fiasco that was the one hour clinical discharge policy and the impact of no visitors. My dad with advanced dementia was sent to hospital with no advocate, no idea why he was there, then sent to a Covid ward “in error”.  Then, in line with a government policy I have now seen they attempted to compulsorily discharge him to a care home he’d never been to- we were so lucky to learn this by accident and get him home.

Statistics - the context
But what irritates me most is the daily quoting of statistics with absolutely no provision of context. In England, roughly 10 000 people die every week. The range varies from around 9000 to 11 500 but is pretty static. Any excess over this range is viewed as "excess death" and this is the indicator for an unusual event happening which is impacting society. It doesn't specify causality, just numbers of deaths. Did you know 2017/18 had 49 410 “excess deaths” due to swine flu? Most of us carried on as normal, oblivious. Our economy continued to thrive and we did nothing to shut the country down. And once you account for the fact that many excess deaths are believed to have been caused by lockdown, and not COVID 19, that total is in fact higher than the number who have died from COVID in 2020 in the UK. Yet we’ve destroyed our economic future and will have no resources to pay for any future “curve”- and those who will suffer most are least at risk due to a reliance on incorrect and flawed modelling and an over-reaction by government.

Photo by Laura Anderson on Unsplash

Then there are all those who have tested positive for COVID 19, and died months later of something entirely different. Public Health England count COVID deaths by checking all positive tests, then checking to see how many of those people are still alive. If they are dead, they are recorded as a COVID death - but you might recover then get hit by a bus 3 months later, but you would STILL be counted as a COVID death! Thankfully Matt Hancock has now ordered an enquiry into this but it just goes to show how the stats get inflated. Loughborough and Sheffield Universities have estimated that government COVID death stats exaggerate the total by 54-63%.

Similarly, emeritus professor of epidemiology Beda M Stadler has explained why those who have recovered from COVID can still sometimes test positive due to viral debris. It was this which led to the (now retracted) claim by the Korean government that there was evidence you could get the virus more than once. With increased and more frequent testing it is hardly surprising we are getting more positives, what SHOULD concern is admissions to hospital and the IFR - case fatality rate. These are NOT rising. (He also explains why it's not possible for asymptomatic people to be infectious - pain is one of the five cardinal symptoms of infection and at the very least a person would have a sore throat.)

Indeed, the "surge" in cases last month is likely attributed to the start of Pillar 2 testing, as explained by Carl Heneghan from the Oxford University's Centre for Evidence Based Medicine.

In an interesting article in the Spectator by Carl Heneghan also explains the specificity of testing which is often not mentioned, since focus is usually on sensitivity. Even assuming a high specificity of 99.9% the chance of accurately detecting the disease is actually below 50%, with false positives and negatives. As the prevalence of disease falls and false diagnoses increases this rises, and with current testing practice it's actually possible the disease would never disappear due to the persistence of false positives! (The article is free for three months and makes for an interesting read.)

Masks
Regarding the wearing of masks, there again we are being offered limited and frequently conflicting information. Even the World Health Organisation page on masks is inconsistent and still states:-

At the present time, the widespread use of masks everywhere is not supported by high-quality scientific evidence, and there are potential benefits and harms to consider. 

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Studies by one membrane specialist at Eindhoven University found that while the coronavirus particles are caught by an electrostatic layer in medical masks, they can penetrate bigger pores found in cotton and even vacuum cleaner bags. Dutch scientists have decided the information on face coverings is limited and contradictory, and their government have decided not to enforce the wearing of them after review by the country's National Institute for Health. There is more here, where it's noted that COVID 19 particles are only 0.06-0.14 microns, about half the size of most viruses and too small to be blocked by fabric masks and even some medical masks. Curiously, while cloth masks and face coverings are far less effective for blocking respiratory droplets, the WHO recommends that cloth or non-medical masks "should only be considered for source control (used by infected persons) in community settings and not for prevention". Alarmingly, social and political reasons are instead cited for mask wearing:-

Masks in Schools 
One of the largest studies in the world on coronavirus in schools carried out in 100 institutions in the UK confirms “there is very little evidence that the virus is transmitted” there. Professor Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and a member of the government advisory group Sage, said:

“A new study that has been done in UK schools confirms there is very little evidence that the virus is transmitted in schools. “This is the some of the largest data you will find on schools anywhere. Britain has done very well in terms of thinking of collecting data in schools.”

Teachers are uniquely privileged, working with the only group in society with virtually no evidence of transmitting the virus and almost exclusively not at risk. The government is abundantly clear that pupils should not wear masks, yet still teachers' unions complain, egged on my social activists. There is also some evidence that immunity gained from exposure to colds further protects children since some immune cells that recognise coronaviruses that cause the common cold also respond to SARS-CoV-2. A letter from two consultant anaesthetists to the BMJ flagged up that every single discarded mask is a potential biohazard which should be disposed of like a hypodermic syringe. And whilst the medical "jury" is very much still out on whether face coverings are the best route forwards, Public Health England is absolutely clear that children should not be wearing masks in school - yet still the unions are pressurising the government to enforce mask wearing in children.

Source - Public Health England

There have also been NO EXCESS DEATHS in England for 5 weeks now. Which means yes, even accounting for lockdown caused and COVID caused deaths we are at normal level. Which is why it seems so odd that our government is only now enforcing face coverings and dialling up the fear factor again. In fact, recent data coming out of India suggests the CFR would not change without a lockdown. Whilst 57% of slum inhabitants tested positive for COVID, the CFR was no higher.

It’s been very hard work, but here are the results of the Mumbai sero-prevalence commissioned by @mybmc @NITIAayog and @TIFRScience, which @IDFCinstitute was part of. 57% aero-prevalence in slums, 16% non-slum, implying an IFR of 0.05-0.10%, which is incredibly low. https://t.co/IA7Ob78IiG

— Reuben Abraham (@nebuer42) July 28, 2020

Shielding
The shielding programme is also seriously questionable. It was initially proposed to protect the 15% of the population who were deemed "vulnerable", whilst the 85% achieved herd immunity. Yet it still happened despite herd immunity plans being abandoned. As the Guardian mentions here, shielding is often not possible due to multigenerational living, and isolating elderly people leaves them needing more visits and contact with strangers providing services a small family group may have previously provided. It actually increases you risk of exposure! This certainly proved true in our case. We were isolating thinking we had had COVID 19 and my parents had less care, both ended up in hospital, needed significantly more contact and were exposed to very real - and avoidable risks.

My kids all received shielding letters due to their reduced immunity. Thankfully, I checked with the government website and our GP - they had received letters erroneously, I simply dread to think of the adverse impact on my children's mental and physical health had I locked them up at home for 5 months, it doesn't bear thinking about. Then there's my elderly mum with severe atrial fibrillation who is the carer for my 92 year old father with end stage vascular dementia - she had been missed off! My eldest son only received his shielding letter in the last week of June, rendering it completely and utterly useless, but he has however had a call from the Leicestershire shielding service, where he is a student. The rest of us have not had any contact from anyone, and I have had to deliver all my mum's shopping throughout lockdown as she was denied access to the supermarket delivery slots.

Progress in treatment
We understand the virus better now too. It’s not a respiratory virus but a vascular one with respiratory entry.  It causes massive hikes in clotting factors such as D-Dimer which can precipitate strokes and brain damage in a tiny minority. Certainly some people are at increased risk, with those who are overweight being most at risk. Better understanding also brings better treatment- we have literally been killing people by ventilating them, assuming it was poor lung function contributing to low oxygen saturation when it was in fact a vascular clotting issue.

So it's really time we got a grip and learned about this disease from the experts, not the politicians.

Photo by Habib Ayoade on Unsplash

As human beings we have to live with relative risk, there is a risk doing anything - crossing the road, buying a sandwich, flying in a plane - singing in a choir. Everything has a level of risk. Currently, for 99.3% of the population COVID does not present a significant risk. One thing you can be absolutely sure of though, whilst we are all so scared at home accepting this "new normal" this government will sneak through a No Deal Brexit, just as China is imposing harsh restrictions on Hong Kong and Russia is threatening Ukraine once more. Politicians always have an agenda, and rarely have a handle on what matters to individuals like you and me.

Boris Johnson is said to have exclaimed whilst driving through London:

"Where are all the people?"

He simply has no understanding of what he has created. A broken country which our children will pay to rebuild. With their physical health, their mental health, their education, their future careers and their economic wealth. We’ve destroyed our economic future and will have no resources to pay for any future “curve”- and those who will suffer most are those most at risk whose lives we might have done a better job at protecting.