I have now performed my civic duty
I have listened to the very long Yeadon interview. He is obviously very earnest not a nutter. He is not a mad conspiracy theorest. I think there are a number of things wrong with what he says, but there are also so many things we hear from the media that are wrong too. I think there is a lot right in what he says too
Time will tell if he is right...or wrong ...
So here are the problems
He says 30% of country has had Covid19 in the first wave, 30% have a natural immunity (to other Coronovirus I assume). The rest are vunerable but not enough to fuel a pandemic. ...but those people are your granny, your friends mother (in my case), your ill child. They may still die
He says there is no excess deaths, now. He is wrong they are now rising, (I checked figures and there are excess deaths for last 3 weeks). But an increase in excess deaths must come from somewhere (these are often people who were going to die in the nearish future)...so there will be a dip and there was during the summer, when we had less than normal death but they are now rising. He says these are due to non-respiratory deaths caused by restricted access to NHS. He maybe right on that. But Covid also causes non-respiratory deaths...due to thickening of the blood, so you get stroke and heart disease. So he cannot really say that. I am sure that over the next 4 weeks we will have rising death rates, and more and more will be identifiable as "Covid".
But he is so right there will be a lot caused by ill people not using the NHS, late Cancer detection. Heart problems not diagnosed etc...and suicides.
He says that the false positives in the PCR test are fuelling this response to the second wave. Now he has a real point here. When you are testing 20-30 million people and you have a false positive rate of 1%, then you will get 30,000 false positives. This is a disasterous result in a disease in which nearly half people are assymptomatic. In scientific research, you retest the sample and then you go back and get a second sample (near immediately) and retest. Because the trace and track system is not run by scientists but by managers and company people like Harding, this is not done. The Trace and Track system will not release their specificity/ sensitivity results to SAGE...they just give out the manufactures sensitivity/specificity figures, which were obviously run under laboratory conditions. That is a disgrace
Alternative SAGE have been asking for a different testing regime from the start
He assures you that you are immune if you have had it before....now this is partially wrong.
We get the common cold 2 or 3 times a year, that is caused by a coronoavirus. There are only 6 human coronovirus, so we get multiple infections through our life time. Covid 19 is a new virus though. We keep getting common cold time and time again. However what he should have said is you probably have partial immunity and so you still get a respiratory disease and can pass it on (especially dangerous if you pass it onto your granny, who has been isolated and gets the "full blown...I have never seen this before" attack )
He is right the presence of antibodies is not the be all and end all. I have said this myself here. T cells are the important ones, and memory B cells. In the vaccine trial this is tested. We will know this soon. I am pretty confident that the vaccine will give us partial immunity and so they will reduce a Covid19 infection down to a dose of the common cold
He mentioned the fact that the vaccine trials are not been run effectively, but he meantioned himself why. We cannot test vaccinate people and then give them Covid . That is against human rights. So we vaccinate peopl (like my daughter and now son-in-law) and just allow them to live their lives. They are/will be closely monitored for years to come. So that comment is not fair.
He says he does not trust the BBC as they portray false information. They are given the information from the Government, from Valance and Witty and from the Trace and Track system. If they did not give out that information they would be attacked by all sides, but there are beginning to get "freedom of information" requests through, which is highhlights the U turn in March when we went from herd immunity to lockdown in the first U-turn.
So I think he is wrong in saying the pandemic is over, it is still here. It will be there every winter until vaccine/herd immunity/herd partial immunity takes over. Should we shut the coutry down again...now you are talking politics/not science
But I question I would ask him (and he wouldnt answer because he doesn't know...fairly) WHY
And WHY would the Tories do this, and ruin the monetary basis of this country.
I really fear that the government has become increasingly reactive and not at all proactive.
I may be beginning to believe, we will soon be dying of lack of leadership and not Covid.
You are probably going to ask me what I would do if I was PM QPRBeth.
I think I would ask the old and vulnerable to self isolate over the winter, (and that would be a personal decision). I would put in place a lot of social services to look after these people, there would be no stigma if you chose to isolate. I would let everybody else get on with their lives. If you showed symptoms, then you isolated and got a series of verified tests. All your contacts were then told and they were monitored correctly. Masks should be worn appropriately. There would be a lot more to think about...the gist is I am not sure this lockdown is going to help the country very much...and is unfair on the east and soth west of England