COVID-19

Professor John Ioannides of Stanford University is considered by many to be the top epidemiologist in the world. In a paper published in the European Journal of Clinical investigation, he reviewed data from studies globally and estimated that the infection fatality rate (IFR) for Covid-19 to be around 0.15%.

It varies considerably by region (for reasons such as demographics and prior susceptibility) and between countries within regions. A recent estimate provided by Public Health England’s modelling group, with the MRC Biostats Unit, estimated the IFR rate to be even lower and comparable to flu at approximately 0.096%.

Economist John Appleby writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has shown that every year prior to 2009 was more deadly than 2020 in England and Wales once the size and age of the population are taken into account. The same analysis also shows that previous pandemics have not resulted in continued elevated death rates for more than a year or two despite not having vaccines for the diseases, indicating how the human immune system and the diseases adapt into a less deadly relationship.

Crucially this happened only a few days before SAGE and the UK Government decided to put the whole country into lockdown, a decision which has had disastrous far-reaching consequences. This one indisputable fact alone places the Government’s actions into the area of being unlawful as their experts had downgraded the threat.

You’ve no doubt seen the Government’s figures on Covid-19 deaths – in excess of 130,000, and increasing all the time and yet the Government’s own published figures for 2020 on the number of diagnoses by doctors of Covid-19 is just over 17,000. And even less pro-rata for 2021. How can there be such a disparity?

Maybe you’re already understanding our concern about the veracity of the figures and the narrative of the Government?

Covid-19 deaths have been counted and presented to the public in a way that is not comparable to previous recordings of respiratory deaths. Figures from 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 have been added together to give a cumulative total. This has never been done before and contributes to the distorted understanding of the deaths that Covid-19 has caused.

In terms of reporting, the ONS data includes any death where Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate, either directly, as an underlying cause; or as a contributory cause. Dr John Lee, a retired pathologist, wrote an article in May 2020 titled: ‘The way Covid-19 deaths are being counted is a national scandal’, stating,

“Normally, two doctors are needed to certify death, one of whom has been treating the patient or who knows them and has seen them recently. That has changed. For Covid-19 only, the certification can be made by a single doctor, and there is no requirement for them to have examined, or even met, the patient. A video-link consultation in the 4 weeks prior to death is now felt to be sufficient for death to be attributed to Covid-19.”

For deaths in care homes, care home providers, most of whom are not medically trained, may make a statement to the effect that a patient has died of Covid-19.

Daily reported deaths are collated on the Government’s Covid-19 dashboard. Since 12 August 2020, 2 measures have been published:

• Firstly, the number of people who died within 28 days of their positive test
• Secondly, the number of people who either died within 60 days of a first positive test or who died more than 60 days after a positive test but had Covid-19 mentioned on the death certificate

The distinction between dying with Covid-19 and dying due to Covid-19 is an important one. Consider some examples:

• An 87-year-old woman with dementia in a nursing home and a 79-year-old man with metastatic bladder cancer. They both develop chest infections and die. Both test positive for Covid-19
• Yet both were vulnerable to death by chest infection from an infective cause (including the Flu)
• Covid-19 might have been the final straw, but it has not caused their deaths
• Moreover, a Covid-19 death could be attributed on the basis of a positive test, even in the absence of any symptoms at all
• This is clinically dubious and has never been done before

This means UK certifications normally under-record deaths due to respiratory infections. It is also well known that respiratory viruses are incidentally present in nearly half of all deaths, giving ample opportunity for misattribution of causes of death in a way that is not comparable to previous years.