By Ross Clark
With the nation’s health at stake, it was revealed this week that GCHQ has embedded a team in Downing Street to provide Boris Johnson with real-time updates to combat the ‘emerging and changing threat’ posed by Covid-19.
The intelligence analysts will sift through vast amounts of data to ensure the Prime Minister has the most up-to-date information on the spread of the virus.
But what exactly should Mr Johnson be looking for? Here, ROSS CLARK reveals what he should be asking…
How accurate were the Government’s grim predictions?
The short answer is: not very. In a July report commissioned by Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, scientists estimated that there could be 119,000 deaths if a second spike coincided with a peak of winter flu. Yesterday, that figure stood at 54,286 – less than half that.
In fact, the second peak seems to have passed – over the past week there has been an average of 22,287 new infections a day, down from 24,430 the week before.
In mid-September, Sir Patrick made the terrifying claim that the UK could see 50,000 new coronavirus cases a day by mid-October unless more draconian restrictions were introduced. Yet we have never got near that figure.
What about its prophecies on deaths?
Ditto. Its warnings simply don’t bear any relation to reality.
During the ‘Halloween horror show’ press conference used by Sir Patrick and Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty to scare the Government into implementing a second lockdown, one of their slides suggested that daily Covid-19 deaths could reach 4,000 a day by December.
With ten days to go, we’re still at less than 15 per cent of that figure. In fact, as the graph above shows, the current death rate is significantly below almost every modelled winter scenario.
Are hospitals close to full capacity?
The answer is ‘no’ – contrary to what the Government experts would have you think after they last month published a chart that gave the impression that hospitals were close to overflowing, when at least half didn’t have a single Covid-19 patient.
Currently, only 13 per cent of NHS beds are occupied by patients with Covid-19.
On Monday this week, 16,271 hospitals beds across the UK were taken up with patients who had tested positive for Covid-19.
This did show a steady rise from the previous Monday, when there were 14,279 patients with Covid.
But to put this figure into perspective, the NHS in England had 101,255 general and acute beds available in March of this year plus 15,392 in Scotland and 10,563 in Wales.
How does it compare with last year?
Remarkably, as the graph shows, the number of NHS England beds currently occupied is lower than last year’s average.
On November 5, the most recent date available, there were actually 1,293 fewer patients in hospital beds than last year’s November average.
Surely intensive care beds are full?
Some hospitals are under pressure but that is not the picture everywhere as the chart above shows. On Wednesday, 1,430 people with Covid-19 were occupying beds with mechanical ventilation.
Given that before the crisis there were 4,119 intensive care beds in England plus 269 in Scotland and 153 in Wales, roughly only 31 per cent of ICU beds – not including those which have been recently converted from normal beds – are currently occupied by patients with Covid.
In fact, on November 8, the number of occupied critical beds was actually lower than five-year average for 2015-19.
Even at the height of the first wave in the spring, the percentage of mechanical ventilation beds in existing NHS hospitals that were used never exceeded 62 per cent, according to a study by University College London.
But wasn’t that because of the Nightingale hospitals?
Not at all. In fact, despite all the fanfare surrounding the Nightingale hospitals’ rapid construction, they were never more than 1.23 per cent full.
Moreover, doctors are now far better prepared to treat Covid-19, such as knowing when and when not to put patients on ventilators.
So who is Covid-19 killing?
To put it simply, the victims are overwhelmingly the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions.
Of the 37,470 Covid-19 deaths recorded by NHS England up to November 18, 53.7 percent were of people aged over 80.
In comparison, there have been just 275 deaths (only 0.7 per cent of the total) in people under 40
In Utah (as an example) there had been (past tense) a huge media ad campaign to get people to go back to their doctors and hospitals for routine (non-covid) medical care like heart stents, colonoscopies and other non-emergency surgeries.
Now, all of a sudden, these same people in media are acting like it would be selfish to use up space in medical care because…..covid.
There are fewer than 10 total deaths in Utah of people under 40 by covid alone.
Our political leaders, however, are still making it impossible to get known, accepted as effective, treatments here in Utah.
Come on, man. If a guy falls off a ladder in Croatia, that is death by COVID-19.
Most deaths these days are due to COVID. It pays to report COVID deaths.
Non-COVID deaths are not worth anything.
The important thing is to scare people. Drive them inside. Totally control their access to information. Control MSM. Propaganda broadcasts 24/7. Tell everyone Biden is President-Elect. Tell them that often. It is wrong, but who cares?
Tell everyone there is no election fraud. There is no fraud: the Biden team cheated fair and square. A lot more ballots than voters, but who cares?
He won.