Scotland’s Real Corona Virus Crisis
The SARS-CoV2 virus has swept it’s way across the world from its humble nascence in Wuhan at the beginning of the year. It was advertised as the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse incarnate.
Professor Ferguson prophesied millions of deaths from the ‘novel’ virus. No world saving vaccines could be developed in time to save humanity from imminent destruction.
What was then proposed was essentially the end of civilisation as we know it.
Project ‘Lockdown’ was conceived on the basis of 15,000 lines of undocumented computer code by a man who has cried wolf on many previous occasions.
No longer is homo sapiens ‘πολιτικὸν ζῷον’. Social interaction is now ‘social distancing’. The inalienable right to walk the earth has been supplanted by a diktat to ‘stay in your house’, if indeed you have one to stay in.
Democracy has been cancelled until further notice. Please pay by card ‘if you can’. You may need an ‘immunity passport’ to travel. Presumably anywhere outside your house.
And of course, we have yet another ‘fight’ against an unseen enemy that can only be undertaken by the leaders of the free world.
I do find it odd that just five nations have experienced the brunt of the fatalities in this brutal fight.
What sickens me most is the exhortations to ‘Protect our NHS’.
Watch the telly for twenty minutes and see the number of appeals to give money, which you can’t earn because your are stuck in your house, to the NHS. Bang a pot or draw a rainbow and stick in your window to celebrate how great a job they are doing to protect us from this evil virus thingy.
It has never been made plain exactly what the NHS needed protection from unless you count cuts to funding over the last 10 years. To be blunt. Protecting the NHS is a government problem and it should not have to rely on charity from the public.
I am sure that you have heard all this before. But I wonder sometimes what the difference is between herd immunity and well, just herding.
The ‘lockdown’ policy will continue to affect people long after it has gone. Was it the right approach?
So what do the numbers say?
On the 10th of May..
“SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford tweeted:
“What @BorisJohnson announced tonight applies in England. It does not apply in the devolved nations where all three nations will continue with the central message of stay home to support the NHS and to save lives.” ”
I live in Scotland. It’s a small country with a population of 5.5 million or so. I write about Scotland in particular, not because I don’t care about the rest of the world, but because when I step out of the door that is where I am.
The age demographics for Scotland are represented in the chart below:
As you would suspect, population falls off quickly the older you get. As we all know by now, the virus has a greater Case fatality with increasing age.
Charts are great. But to help you make sense of it, here are the numbers:
The Scottish Government figures for all deaths in 2020 is 24,960
The Scottish average deaths for the first 4 months is 20,655.
The Scottish Government figures for deaths in April 2020 is 7,403
The Scottish average deaths in April is 4,586
A bit of children’s arithmetic gives a ball park figure (7,403 – 4,586) of 2,817 which we could attribute to COVID19. The Scottish Government figure is 2,795 for COVID19 deaths.
I think we can agree that the numbers closely match. The standard deviation for historical total deaths for the period January to April is 1,273. The Scottish Government figure for Non-COVID19 deaths in 2020 is 22,165. Roughly 1 SD away from the average of 20,655.
The following chart shows all deaths recorded in Scotland in 2020. The proportion of COVID19 related deaths are shown in blue. To state the blindingly obvious. The older you get, the greater the chance you have of dying.
As I say graphs are fine, but let’s look at the numbers. They tell a more complete story.
Over 90{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of COVID19 related deaths are in the age range 65 plus. 41{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} were in the over 85 years age group. Now there’s a surprise.
75{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all COVID19 related deaths are in the +75 years age group.
Out of the total of 2,795 deaths, 2,097 have been in an age group of 75 and above!
4,997,455 Scots have been locked down by Government diktat with almost ZERO probability of dying from the disease.
Even in the susceptible age groups, you have less than 0.5{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} chance of dying from the disease based on population totals.
Critics may say that if it wasn’t for the ‘lockdown’ then more people would have died.
Look again at the numbers. 1,195 of the 2,795 deaths were in Care Homes. 43{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}!!
That leaves 1,600 poor people who have died from the virus in the ‘wild’. Mostly people older than 65.
The Abject Failure of the Scottish Government Lockdown Policy
The ‘corona virus crisis’ in Scotland is exemplified by the following graph showing deaths in care homes.
Even the most imbecilic nincompoop could see that on week 13 of 2020 something was going seriously wrong in Care Homes throughout Scotland.
The number of deaths had risen from the previous week by some 181 (the Mean of weeks 1 through 12 was 282 per week)
Here are the numbers for those that are interested:
The real ‘corona crisis’ in Scotland is firstly in the Care Homes for the elderly.
Secondly, it is in the care of the elderly who are not in Care Homes.
There is not a shred of evidence in the numbers to warrant a ‘lockdown’ of the whole of Scottish society or for the absolute carnage this will cause to the Scottish economy for years to come.
My Government has failed utterly and completely to understand what has and is happening to the elderly in our society and has through stupidity, fear or just sheer pig headedness, implemented policies which have not helped those most vulnerable to a ‘virus’ outbreak.
In fact, looking at the number of Non-COVID19 deaths in care homes, there was a quantum leap from an average of ~282 to 393 in week 13. It is only from today (10th May) that Sturgeon has ordered the military (of all organisations) to set up testing stations for care home residents and workers. 2,000 staff are to be hired to carry out the tests.
The question must be asked if it was the ‘lockdown’ policy which contributed to this.
Millions have been spent and Billions will be lost in the ‘fight’ against a virus that has managed to shorten the life span of the over 75 age group by a few years. 2,079 people.
What went wrong?
Professor Ferguson must shoulder most of the blame for the outrageous over reaction by our Government. Without a total lockdown, he prophesied 500,000 deaths in the UK based on the virus having an R0 of 2.4.
Remarkably, given his record of dire predictions which all came to nought, Governments listened to him.
Ferguson’s report was the fox in the chicken coop. Politicians became the headless chickens.
Money and resources were directed to where they would not be needed. The NHS Louisa Jordan ‘field’ hospital at the SEC in Glasgow rushed to completion that may well be waiting for it’s first patient, is a prime example. Similar follies were created in England.
Their was panic and fear that the NHS would not be able to cope with a rush of critical patients on death’s doorstep. Not enough ventilators. Not enough face-masks. Not enough test kits. In the end there hasn’t been enough patients!
The Main Stream Media hyped the situation out of all proportion. Never have I seen so many many flies swarming around one small pot of faeces.
Yet still our ‘leaders’ wade about aimlessly in a crisis of their own making. Like Ian Blackford continually repeating the same inane mantra. ‘Stay at home. Protect our NHS’. At least our NHS ‘heroes’ still have a job to go to and a wage packet to look forward to.
Let’s see what happens in May and June. As Hegel said, ‘The owl of Minerva spreads it’s wings only with the falling of dusk.
All the data used for this quick analysis can be found at:
The National Records of Scotland
Data was ‘munged’ in Python and Libre Calc was used for the tables and charts.
About the author: Graeme McMillan graduated with Honours from Edinburgh University (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) then gained further qualifications in Business Analysis, Project management, Statistics and Programming. He has had a long career in the UK mining industry in mine planning, geological modelling and computer systems management and programming. He then moved to the metals and minerals sector developing simulation modelling of materials handling (scrap, slag, semi-finished and finished products) as well as financial modelling of large mining and steel plant projects. Latterly, he ran his company’s Middle East and North African division. Graeme is now retired.
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Alan Stewart
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Excellent Graeme, a tour de force of effort and precision. Now, look at this from an entirely different slant. Apparently the Corona brewery has stopped production of their product. About 60 years ago a cigarette brand failed because of it’s name ‘Condor. ‘ It was finally understood that people related it to the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War.
People WANT to be led. Emotion is everything and the pols and the media know this.
Cheers
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catattack999
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Dr. Mikovits believes one of the reasons older Italians got hit so hard in northern Italy is because the vaccine given there was grown in dog kidney cells, which she claims are contaminated with coronaviruses. The Italian Health Ministry pushes this vaccine on people over 65, with heart problems, diabetes and obesity (which are the majority of people dying from coivd19, coincidently). I looked up the company that makes this flu vaccine, Seqirus, and the vaccine is called, Flucelax. Guess what countries they sold it to? (listed on their site) USA, UK, Italy, Germany, and Spain – the countries with the highest cases of covid19 (except France). Could it be there is a correlation with this flu vaccine and having a person more susceptible to the coronavirus? Seems to point in that direction. Plus, a Pentagon study published in the January 10, 2020, issue of the Vaccine journal, which found you’re 36% more likely to get coronavirus infection if you got the influenza vaccine in 2017 or 2018.
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richard
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“MUST WATCH Debunking the Narrative With Prof Dolores Cahill”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9GbVZOcT18
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Graeme Mochrie
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As another Graeme living in Scotland I found this a good read. Back in March I commenced a similar exercise using ONS data for England and Wales. I did this because from my observation of the Chinese experience, the virus did not seem as great a problem as the media were painting it. Supposedly reputable radio programmes like Radio 4’s Today programme or Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland spent inordinate air time focusing on the epidemic, numbers of dead, the horribleness of the deaths and generally scaring the population. People I work beside – scientists – became increasingly scared, some quite terrified. In such situations, numbers and logic don’t matter, fear has overridden the critical thinking facility and everyone wanted to hide in their cave.
Meanwhile I was trying to tell everyone that lockdown was stupid. In a situation where there is a novel virus and no vaccine, the virus can be used as the vaccine, so long as the vulnerable groups are protected i.e. in the case of this virus, the old, people with diabetes, severe asthma and heart conditions. Other people them need to mingle, cuddle, have sex and generally do all they can go catch the virus. Some get a bit sick, but in the end they are immune, at least for a while and with most of the population immune, the protected can again rejoin society.
I got lots of abuse for suggesting this and our course we locked down everyone and failed to protect the vulnerable. The BBC and other media continue to waffle nonsense, hours of nonsense and lots of scare stories. Our politicians, none of who appear to be science trained, have been clueless. They seemed to be getting it right with testing stations, but then abandoned a good strategy and went for lockdown, magically producing £400bn from thin air. They wanted to control the flow of people who needed hospital treatment. Now they seem to be trying to get infection down to zero before they unlock, even though their lockdown has not prevented deaths, possibly caused deaths and the hospitals are empty, pleading for patients to come along.
People who are attracted to politics are people who like power and have studied how to gain and retain power. In the UK, they are seldom science trained, possibly because science training is hard work and requires degrees of discipline that is often lacking in other subjects. The skills they have are not in analytics and so when something that comes along requiring expertise, they have no facility to be able to judge the quality of advice proffered. They probably choose pals, or people with a reputation for advice, rather than seeking the opinions of true experts. In this case it seems that they watched other nations and copied them, not quite understanding why these nations were doing what they were doing.
My findings for the ONS statistics are similar to yours for Scotland. I intend to keep recording for at least a year. We have seen an increase in deaths to this point of the year, but there is a long way to go yet. I heard that in South Africa, the death rate was likely to go down, because the murder rate has dropped dramatically.
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