A second wave so deadly that the doctors and consultants I personally know at major northern hospitals are still carrying out routine work? Are they busy? Yes. Clearing the backlog of surgery/procedures resulting from a genuine epidemic in the spring (that massive orange spike)? Yes. Are they overwhelmed? Absolutely not. So don't tell me I'm wrong about hospitals just because the people you read about or know offer a different opinion.
I don'y know why you are going on about IFR to me, I have hardly mentioned it recently. I did back in the spring when I believed all the modeling. However, I can now look at real world data and understand how that fits in with some fundamental science.
You'll stick with PCR? I'll assume you are aware of the problems with PCR as a "mass testing" procedure? It is junk for that purpose. The CMO cannot even state the false positive rate
is for goodness sake!! If that can't be done the test is utterly meaningless! Could be 0% false, 10%, 100%. Which is it? It does matter and can be figured out. I can only assume they have chosen not to.
The YouTube video is a public lecture by Chris Whitty, not a conspiracy theory video. In it he explains the actions often taken during a respiratory virus epidemic. One of those quotes was that "airport screening and travel restrictions are utterly pointless" (or pretty much pointless). I posed a simple question as to why we have introduced these measures. The same for masks. The same for track and trace (as it is pointless for a highly infectious respiratory virus, great for other diseases) which was not recommended by WHO until late 2019. Is it unreasonable to ask why?
The role of SAGE is a discussion for a longer thread but you are very naive if you would never question advice to government. The BMJ have just published this (though you'll probably just accuse them of being conspiracy theorists:
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4425
I'll just leave you with this Statto..........
The media constantly shoves X number of deaths a day in our faces. We are seeing reports of hundreds of covid deaths a day so maybe a couple of thousand over a week? And yet there is no significant change in excess deaths? If we weren't using a PCR test for which we don't know its limitations would we know anything was out of the ordinary in hospitals in many parts (not all) of the country?
Quick reply to the rest, but excuse me if I don't give that much time, after that graph you posted as some sort of defence (it was evidence for your prosecution).
I don't think I said they were overwhelmed at the minute? I said we would be overwhelmed if there wasn't a lock down or very strict measures.
You admit they're busy now, yet somehow would not get busier if we just left this to run free? Give your head a shake, saying crap like this and posting the graph you did, loses you what little credibility you have.
I know they've increased the amount of covid wards and ICU beds though, so those beds and staff have had to come from somewhere. Not sure about backlogs, but they had those before, without a pandemic, so I would expect that's not got any easier to clear.
You've looked at data and gone down the rabbit hole, that's fine, good luck with that.
You quoted a post from me, where I wasn't talking to you?
It's not all about you, you know. The post was in general to the nutters, who all agree with each others posts, yet they contradict each other. I wouldn't mind if you all had the same argument, that would work mathematically, but it doesn't. If you all agreed on the points below or had some sort of consensus for "the other side", then it would be simple to debate, but you don't.
Are we immune or not?
Is PCR useful or not?
Is IFR high or low?
Are cases high or low?
Are covid deaths high or low?
Do we have 60k excess deaths or not?
Do we have 40k covid deaths or not?
Have covid deaths gone up in the last month, rapidly?
I expect PCR is not 100%, I don't think anyone says it is? I'm saying it doesn't need to be 100%,. Would rather there were a limited number of false positives, it's better than false negatives. It would be better if we got the results back quicker though.
The PCR test, combined with known contacts and known symptoms will help, it's helping all over the world, we don't have an alternative and there's probably been a billion of these tests taken. You seriously think that a billion tests would have been bought if it was useless?
Each pandemic is different, every one is handled differently, there can be no broad advice that would apply to every one, especially ones that have not yet been discovered. The stance changed on masks as they hadn't really been considered for stopping viral load out, I think they were more looked at for protection previously, but this has been covered a thousand times.