13 Aug: Head Topics: from UK Telegraph: We are massively overreacting to new Covid ‘outbreaks’
New research confirms that the Government’s reliance on case numbers is driving an unnecessarily draconian response
by Ross Clark
The Imperial College study published this morning claiming that 3.4 million people ( six per cent of the UK population) have antibodies indicating that they have been exposed to Covid-19 provides no great revelation. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has already published similar figures suggesting that 6.5 per cent of the population has been infected. Nevertheless, it is yet more confirmation of how irrelevant are the official statistics for Covid 19 cases – and what a nonsense it is to rely on them for policymaking.
According to the Government’s Covid “dashboard”, updated at 4pm on Wednesday, 313,798 people in Britain have had the disease. This is less than one tenth of the number suggested by the Imperial study. In other words, for all Matt Hancock’s efforts to ramp up testing, the vast majority of cases have not been detected...
The vast disparity between actual and recorded infections matters hugely because the Government keeps acting as if the recorded cases do reflect reality. A small percentage increase in recorded cases in Leicester and in Greater Manchester led quickly to a return to partial lockdown in those areas. Daily, the Foreign Office scans infection rates in other countries to decide whether or not to quarantine people returning from those places. People and businesses are being put to huge inconvenience on the back of a small uptick in a statistic which is pretty well meaningless.
What the official recorded statistics on Covid cases are really measuring is the extent and effectiveness of a country’s testing programme. The more tests you conduct, the more of those silent Covid infections – the 90 per cent which would previously have gone unrecorded – you will pick up...
Leicester’s “second wave” came after mobile testing vans were sent to the city. When you see graphs of new infections on Britain you need to read them in conjunction with the ever-increasing numbers of tests being conducted – 15,000 a day in mid-April rising to 164,061 on Tuesday.
There is a moral here. If you are a country whose economy relies on UK tourists, don’t test more people than you need to; let those very mild and asymptomatic cases go unrecorded. If you are resident in Britain and value your freedom to meet relatives, go down the pub and so on, think twice about getting yourself tested – your reward may well be to have your whole town locked down.
https://headtopics.com/uk/we-are-massively-overreacting-to-new-covid-outbreaks-14963168
9 Aug: Daily Mail: IAN BIRRELL: Why Sweden, pilloried by the whole world for refusing to lock down - with schools staying open and no face mask laws - may be having the last laugh as experts say Stockholm is close to achieving herd immunity
•Swedish health experts say struggle against pandemic is ‘marathon not a sprint’
•The country has one of the highest death rates from coronavirus in the world
•Anders Tegnell’s refusal to impose lockdown is held up by critics as a warning
•But is it possible the Scandinavian nation made the right call in the long-term?
Yet Sweden is seeing a sustained drop in cases, with some experts even suggesting it may be close to herd immunity in the capital Stockholm.
The number of deaths, new cases and patients in intensive care has fallen dramatically.
On one key measure – percentage change in new confirmed cases over the past fortnight relative to the previous 14 days – Sweden is down more than a third.
This contrasts with sharp rises in neighbouring Denmark, Finland and Norway, along with countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.
Meanwhile, the latest data suggests Sweden is suffering less severe economic trauma than most major European nations, while it has, almost uniquely among Western countries, kept schools open...
Prof Ekstrom added that evidence from elsewhere indicated that lockdowns were unsustainable. ‘You go crazy after a while,’ she said...
It fell 8.6 per cent over the second quarter compared with a 12 per cent fall across the Eurozone. Analysts fear the UK economy may shrink 20 per cent over this period.
‘It’s grim by any normal standards but compared with other parts of Europe they have done well,’ said David Oxley, senior Europe analyst at Capital Economics. Sweden’s big exporters are seeing profits decline smaller than anticipated while there are fewer bankruptcies than feared...
‘If a business can stay open, it’s clearly better than closing,’ said Esbjorn Lundevall, an analyst at Scandinavian bank SEB.
He added that keeping schools open provided a significant economic boost...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8607731/Why-Sweden-pilloried-world-refusing-lock-having-laugh.html
N&V: something to add to your “Bring out your Dead” posts.
And of course it appears the Brits still have not discovered that HCQ and ZINC work hand in glove. Why are the S. Koreans and some French so much smarter?