The start of the endgame?

[Workingman]

Shell, obviously I am saddened to learn of the loss of your friend's mother. Not being a doctor it is hard to comment but going by your description she had co-morbidities and Covid was the straw on the camel's back and so was a factor. Maybe?A far as I am aware the cause(s) of death include any diseases / complications the person had at the time of death, even though they did not directly cause the death

The comment you highlight was not aimed at any individual 'You' was used as a pronoun. The fact is that the 'of / with' issue has always been heard, but only from a very small minority. However, in the past month or so it has become more mainstream, especially with anti vaxers and anti makers using it to justify their views and promote 'freedom' from restrictions. I am talking a lot more broadly than VV such as the press and Internet.

I unreservedly apologise if you, or anybody, found it insulting, it was not intended that way.

[Suff]

Rubbish. Very high levels of flu were seen in 1999/00, when there were 48,000 excess winter deaths, not all of them flu. ONS report. On average flu deaths are between 10,000 and 25,000 - December to February.

Excess. Almost ALL being attributed to Flu. "normal" is well within the 17,000 difference.

Not rubbish at all. I got flu that millennium holiday thanks to my SIL who brought it over form Ireland. I know exactly how bad it was for it took me off my feet for a week. It was the first time I'd ever consciously had flu.

There comes a point at which the controls put in place for a pandemic become overkill for the situation at hand. That point is coming fast.

[Suff]

I unreservedly apologise if you, or anybody, found it insulting, it was not intended that way.

I don't find it insulting at all or take offense. Granted I'm a bit irritated that my point of view grates so much. But it is that for us both. Our viewpoint. We are fairly robust in defending it.

I agree I am anti mask. But only really because I have first hand experience of the mental damage it does to the deaf community and nobody seems to give a crap about it. I've been regaled for nearly 2 decades about how deafness is given short shrift and lip service and is rarely "really" shown as a real disability. After all so many people say "yeah I've lost some of my hearing too". I am saddened to have such first hand experience in finding out just how right Mrs S was.

I do hope that the journey Rose had on Strictly has adjusted a few attitudes. The problem is that Mrs S acquired hear deafness after the large dose of tetracycline she got at the age of 21. So she speaks perfectly and her mind can adjust by filling in the gaps. So she seems even less disabled than she really is.

Nobody has addressed this and it is illegal to ignore this disability. So, yes, I'm anti mask. It never lived up to the hype, yes it helps, but no it is not a panacea for stopping transmission.

I'm neither scared nor too intimidated to fight my corner.

I'm sorry to hear about your friend's mum mm. These things happen and it's always horrible.

It would be a perfect opportunity to verify what we believe as our friend's daughter has just been given 2 months to live. Her resurgence of cancer was missed due to the focus other things. It's highly likely that she will contract omicron in hospital and it is highly likely that she will wind up with that on her death certificate.

The thing is her parents are in pieces over this. I'd never ask. It would be far beyond the pale.

[Workingman]

The flu epidemic of the millennium killed roughly 65,000 people.

That is what I called out as "rubbish". Excess deaths, including flu, were 48,000

Excess. Almost ALL being attributed to Flu. "normal" is well within the 17,000 difference.

And wrong again.

BMJ report into the 2011 epidemic.

It is important to put this into perspective. A normal seasonal flu kills around 5000 people in the UK, although in 1999-2000 there were
19 000 deaths related to flu. This winter has seen the highest spike in cases since 1999-2000.

[miasmum]

Suff I am sorry to hear about your friends daughter.

I dont suppose anything else really matters does it, except people are losing their much loved family members

[Suff]

Suff I am sorry to hear about your friends daughter.

I dont suppose anything else really matters does it, except people are losing their much loved family members

No it doesn't mm.

Second time in a year we've seen this horrible miss in diagnosis. Never gets any better.

[Suff]

In terms of the endgame and exiting the restrictions. There is one figure which is driving these moves to get back to normal.

Numbers of cases on ventilation beds.



As you can see the 7 day trend is down and we are close to half the November peak of over 1,000.

You can also see that whilst the lockdowns worked before we had general vaccine availability, the waves had a crushing impact with over 4,000 people per day on ventilation.

I've been watching the trend and we are about to hit a speed bump in the numbers. Namely that the number of people in ventilation beds is likely to drop below the number of people recorded of dying of covid. This is because we still have 3m active cases within the 28 day "catchment" statistic and enough of these will be terminal anyway for the deaths stats to remain high. But the truth is that admissions with covid are falling, inpatients who catch covid are falling and people who are serious with covid are also falling.

I shall be watching. But nothing in the stats are leading towards a new set of lockdowns or restrictions. The opposite in fact.

[Workingman]

One caveat.

Deaths, despite the slight drop in critical (vent) cases, are not dropping. They have been at about 250+ per day for three weeks. We need to see them coming down.

I sincerely hope they will, but there is currently no data to quote.

[Suff]

Deaths will come down as the 3 million Omicron cases flush out of the system. Because, as we have been saying, most of these deaths are not from people who are suffering critical Covid bronchial symptoms. These are people who, in a large part, died with covid. Those dying of covid continue to drop.

As the numbers of people with covid, who are dying, reduce, the number of reported covid deaths will fall. That will take another 4 weeks to flush out of the system.

You really want to make this hard for me. So here we go. From today's Worldometer, the Worldometer history and the UK covid stats.



Since this Omicron wave kicked in, early Dec, we have.

2.96 times as many active cases as we had at the beginning.
3.18 times as many deaths recorded as covid
63% as many serous or critical. Yes 27% LESS serious/critical than when we had 1m actively infected.

There is a near 100% correlation between the actual number of cases active and the number of people recorded as dying with Covid.

Yet.

At the same time people who are seriously ill with Covid, not something else, are reducing. In fact the ratio goes like this.

Serious cases per infected person:

Dec 2nd: 0.084
Jan 27th: 0.017

That is 470% less people seriously ill with Covid, after being infected, than was the case at the beginning of December.

If there are 470% less people seriously ill with covid; why are the number of people dying and recorded as covid deaths an almost 1:1 correlation with the number of people infected? The ratio of infected to deaths has not changed at all.

Now for the next fact which proves that these numbers are going to go down dramatically. The Omicron wave peaked out at 3.6m people infected. It is falling, dramatically. Today there were 83,000 more people recovered than newly infected. The number of active cases is dropping. As the number of active cases drop, the number of deaths will drop. As we have already proven, the number of active cases is directly proportional to the number of Covid deaths reported. Regardless as to whether they are serious or critical or not.

There is only one way this is going.

Down.

[Suff]

Next move by the government.

IF and it is a fairly big if, numbers continue the way they are going, the government will remove the legal restrictions on us over Covid. The big one is the legal requirement to isolate.

By Feb 21st by the looks of things.

I would also believe the legal requirements for testing will also go away at that time. Which should drop our new case levels to hundreds instead of thousands. This has to be a goal or the numbers will never go down. It's like trying to test for 0 instances of the common cold.

Of course we'll need to wait for the final announcement. But it looks like the government has no interest in waiting till March 24th to not renew the restrictions.

This means, for all intents and purposes, that England is "back to normal". I shall wait for the MSM howling when people continue to die of covid.