Covid Induced Madness: First Case Confirmed

 The British Government, under the Premiership of recently recovered Covid19 victim, Boris Johnson, has embarked on a program to conduct up to ten million Covid tests a day at a cost of £100 billion, or $130 billion US, which is almost as much as the Government currently spends annually on Britain's gargantuan National Health Service. 

This is so weird that I for a moment suspected that the date on the British Medical Journal article reporting this extraordinary Government decision must be April 1. But no, the article clearly bears yesterday's date: September 9. 

As further proof, if any were needed, that the British Government is headed by a dangerous madman is the report that as of next Monday, September 14, social gatherings of more than six people are to be banned in England, the penalty for breach of this law starting at £100, and doubling with each subsequent offenses to a maximum of £3200.

All this to control an illness that is now reported to be killing fewer people than flu, and which the Swedes shrugged off with no worse consequences than locked-down, panic-stricken places such as Britain and America. 

Yes, poor old BoJo is clearly a case of Covid-induced insanity. The sooner the Brits gather what collective wits they yet possess and boot the old fool out, the better it will be for them. 

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How many Covid diagnoses are false positives?

By Professor Carl Heneghan*

The Spectator, July 20, 2020: Test, test, test said the WHO. And globally, that’s what everyone did: nearly 300 million tests have been done to detect more than 14 million cases of Sars-CoV-2 so far. The thinking goes: turn up, have your test, and if positive, you must have the disease. But that’s far from the truth. When virus levels in the population are very low, the chances of a test accurately detecting Covid-19 are less than 50 per cent – for reasons that are not very widely understood.

There are two issues about tests to get your head around. The first is the sensitivity of the test: the proportion of people who test positive, out of the population who have the virus. The second measure, specificity, is about the proportion of people who test negative, out of the population who should have tested negative. Finding out the actual values for these two measures is tricky. The Office for National Statistics admits they do not ‘know the true sensitivity and specificity of the test because Covid-19 is a new virus’.

Estimates suggest that roughly 80 per cent of infected people will have a positive test (the sensitivity). Based on the latest data, specificity may be as high as 99.9 per cent for those who test negative. I think this is a bit high, but let’s run with it for now.

How the Covid-19 Epidemic Spreads and How It Will Die

Epidemics result when each person infected by a disease infects more than one other person. Then the number of persons infected grows day by day. But if those who are infected survive to become immune to the disease, then, as disease spreads through the population, the number of persons that each infected person infects must fall, ultimately falling below one. At that point the population is said to have achieved herd immunity. From there on, the number of persons infected daily declines until the spread of disease is entirely extinguished.

Because infectious diseases have an incubation period during which an infected person remains in apparent good health, observable or reported infections follow actual infections by the duration of the incubation period. In the case of Covid-19, the incubation period is usually between one and two weeks. Thus the occurrence of Covid-19 herd immunity precedes the peak of observable infections by one or two weeks and the peak in reported deaths by as much as a month.

Many communities in North America and elsewhere, are reporting declining daily totals of new  Covid-19 infections. That means that herd immunity has been achieved and the epidemic is dying. In New York City, herd immunity is reported to have been achieved with just 21% of the population having been infected.

The spread of the disease depends, however, on social dynamics and other measures to control disease spread. Currently, social dynamics in most communities have been radically altered by so-called social distancing in public places, lock-downs, and quarantines. The use of face masks and the use of disinfectant both indoors and out have also affected disease spread. Once such measures are relaxed or eliminated, disease spread among those still susceptible will occur more readily and the number of persons infected by each newly infected person will rise.

Relaxing or ending measures to control social dynamics thus raises the number of persons that each newly infected person infects to a number greater than one. As a result herd immunity is temporarily lost and the rate at which new infections occur will increase. However, the continued rise in the number of those infected will increase the proportion of the population with immunity, so that herd immunity will be regained, but with a higher proportion of the population infected.

The rise in the proportion of the population infected that occurs during transition from a period of controlled social interaction to a new period of normality is unavoidable. Adverse consequences of the transition to normality from the current period of controlled social interaction can be limited in two important ways.

First, by a progressive transition that prevents a spike in new infections that overloads hospital capacity to treat those who suffer serious adverse reaction to the disease.

Second, measures to to protect those most likely to suffer severe illness or death as a result of infection. Mostly, that means protecting the elderly, who account for the vast majority of those killed by Covid-19.

Also in need of special protection are those with conditions such as a respiratory disease, obesity or diabetes who may suffer particularly adverse reactions to the disease and should, therefore, be held in quarantine for their own protection until the epidemic ends.

Currently, the death rate due to Covid-19 in North America is probably close to 0.3% of those infected. Of those who have died, almost half in the United States, Canada, Italy and probably most other countries are elderly people suffering multiple other diseases and resident in a care home.

The future death toll due to Covid-19 could therefore be greatly reduced by better protecting the elderly, particularly those in care homes, from infection. The most important measure to achieve this would be repeated testing of care home workers and residents for Covid-19 infection to insure infected individuals are promptly quarantined.

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How China Ended the Corona Virus Epidemic -- If It Has Ended

Infectious diseases cause epidemics when infected individuals infect, on average, more than one other person, causing the total number of infections to grow despite recovery or death of those previously infected. The number of individuals infected by each infected person is call the Reproduction number (R0).

Epidemics end when R0 falls below one. The COVID19 epidemic in China went exponential in January, with an R0 peaking at almost 4.0, and then tailed off throughout late January and February.

Why did it tail off?

Simple: quarantines and sequestrations.

Quarantine means restricting people's movement. This may mean restricting or prohibiting travel from one city to another, often referred to as a "lock-down,"or it may mean closing schools, universities, and places of business, thereby keeping people largely confined to their homes, rather than crowding together in the streets, on trains and buses, and in all places of assembly where those who are infected but asymptomatic can pass on the infection.

Quarantines may extend to ordering people to stay home, or even physically barring them from leaving their homes.

Sequestration means keeping the infected out of contact with the uninfected, including their own family or others with whom they share accommodation. In Wuhan, that was achieved by the creation of many thousands of beds in isolation facilities. These facilities are not primarily treatment facilities, they are simply places where sick people are put together out of contact with healthy members of their family and community.

The effectiveness of sequestration can be greatly enhanced if infected and infectious, but asymptomatic, individuals can be identified. Simple and rapid COVID19 tests have been developed, although control of the epidemic in China seems to have been achieved prior to widespread use of testing.

China's success in controlling COVID19 is proof of the effectiveness of China's authoritarian form of government in handling a crisis of the kind that would be experienced in the event of a biological WMD attack. As the virus spreads around the world, we will learn whether Western governments are can achieve by gentler means, China's remarkable success in containing this novel Corona virus.

But China's success remains to be confirmed. As reported here, some in China say the victory over the bat flu is FAKE.

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Moon of Alabama: Coronavirus - The Hidden Cases - Why We Must Shut Everything Down And Do It Now
Zero Hedge: WHO Declares Covid-19 A Pandemic, Deeply Concerned At "Alarming Level Of Inaction"
WSJ: Italy, With Aging Population, Has World’s Highest Daily Deaths From Virus (Corona virus has killed 5% of known cases in Italy)