Five years down the line, many people, particularly those who became unwell or who lost relatives in the first wave, still have questions about the timing of the decision.
11:38 Matt Frei: Edmunds … should we be declaring a national emergency here?
Edmunds: No. For what gain? What gain would we get from that: We get people up into a panic? We want people to come with us in a stepwise way.
… “The only way to stop this epidemic is indeed to achieve herd immunity”
23:15 Edmunds “It’s true if you just look crudely at the numbers, that the numbers are doubling about every two and a half days, but that’s because they are doing more contact tracing. The actual underlying rate of doubling is more like about every five days.”
Even my wife, with no science but a strong intuitive understanding was appalled by Edmunds’ (official) position and you can see she wasn’t alone by the comments below the clip where most were on Pueyo’s side.
I had the advantage of some professional experience of dealing with modellers, who I believe perform a vital role but who are frequently insufferably adamant and narrow in their outlook (‘the map is not the territory’).
When Whitty was an adviser for DFID I attended his talk on climate change in E Africa at UCL– he insisted that it would be getting wetter (because that’s what the models said). I questioned him on it and still remember his disdainful reply. But he got it wrong there too - it got drier and more chaotic in subsequent years; the models were wrong.
The question is, why were so many who had the ear of government so bad, when i-Sage was so good?
Above all perhaps, modellers should NEVER take control of the debate when understanding of a new virus is so poor. Practical field specialists (e.g. for Ebola) should have been more prominent in decision-making. What happened to the Precautionary Principle?
Thank you, Kit. Locking down two weeks earlier would have saved many like me from getting Covid and subsequent Long Covid. We have now been ill for five years, with no treatment available.
Meaning you didn’t take it? FLCCC or World Council for Health has many resources if you haven’t seen these already. (Many haven’t because they are censored)
Btw what is the problem people have with admitting they took the jab or not now? If you took it, you didn’t hesitate to try to shame and humiliate and discriminate people like me who definitely didn’t. There should be some genuine curiosity as to who may be jab injured or whether ‘long Covid’ is valid as a diagnosis. Because guess what? I suggest it isn’t.
I’m sorry Kit but none of this makes sense to me. As I understand it, Covid-19 was a serious but rare consequence of SARS-CoV-2 infection affecting only those who were older and/or with comorbidities. Very similar to flu and subsequent complications. The majority of the population had nothing to worry about. As far as I understand the data, the spike in deaths occurred in care homes as a consequence of isolating frail older people and denying them access to essential care and medical treatment, assisted by inappropriate DNACPRs and end of life medications. Many deaths were wrongly attributed to Covid, not helped by the inappropriate use of PCR testing. What happened in 2020 was a diabolical mess but neither the UK or Scottish inquiries will explore what actually happened.
There was no health emergency outside iatrogenocide.
There is no evidence of any virus. There is incontrovertible evidence that nothing spread. There was no novel condition. No excess deaths until the PHEIC news. Then midazolam, morphine and incubator murder creating a small hump in March April 2020
Combined with the Bergamo fraud and the fairy tale of New York (See @jessica Hockett ) the myth of a deadly disease was spread. Nothing else did.
The lockdowns were catastrophic and known to be so. Masking is harmful and has no upside and was known to be so.
The jabs were toxic by design and nothing to do with health.
Covid was an operation - part of the larger push to create the new Multipolar Global Digital Technocracy.
This article is based on too many underlying assumptions that fall into 'narrative conditioning'
Norman Fenton has far far more accurate numbers and a stronger base in mathematical training as does Dennis Rancourt. Their conclusions are diametrically opposed to this author.
The article assumes that we had a definitive measure of deaths caused by Covid., I'm not convinced we did.
The question has got to be borne in mind did they die from Covid or with Covid? Because, if they died from Covid that is the only death that should be counted and I'm far from certain that we can separate deaths from Covid and with Covid. Hence we get an inflated Covid deaths number.
The death may be caused by the underlying condition associated with the hospitalisation, yet tested positive for Covid. Then we have poor medical treatment causing death attributed to Covid. Take New York - the use of midazolam and morphine - NY Governor derestricted the prescription to other health care professionals midazolam usage spiked to the extent that a shortage existed. Midazolam and morphine depress breathing - in a person with an existing chest infection this is not a positive!
Flu cases dropped to almost zero - really ? Or was the PCR test picking up more than Covid? Leading to an over estimate of Covid deaths.
UK deaths in normal times run at circa 650,000 pa - 1800 per day -
I'm not at all sure lockdowns were even necessary, let alone needed earlier.
We absolutely did have measures, during the acute phase of the pandemic, of people dying as a result of covid. The ONS published weekly data on the number of deaths with covid on the death certificate. A cause doesn’t go on the death certificate unless it contributed to the death.
For the first time in medical history we had something vague, amorphous and undefined as the cause of death on death certificates.
The cause of death on this most important of legal documents has always been highly medically specific.
Examples:
* acute kidney injury due to acetaminophen toxicity
* cerebral venous thrombosis
* acute left/right ventricular failure
* neutropaenic sepsis
* cardiorespiratory arrest
* ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm
The medical establishment doesn't do 'vague'.
Putting "Covid" on a death certificate was the equivalent of writing "died".
Never before has this been acceptable medical or legal practice.
It was a first (as there were so many "firsts") and a complete departure from the norm.
Add to that, that grieving families were being intimidated, coerced, and sometimes even paid to agree to this, and we created manufactured "proof" that people were "dying" from a made-for-TV soap opera.
This fact alone (along with a thousand other red flags) was an indicator this was all being contrived.
The reason that flu cases dropped to almost zero can be easily explained by a realization that the lockdown measures were also exceptionally good at preventing the spread of flu...
This isn't surprising as prior thinking about lockdowns had been based on containing a flu-like pandemic.
My preferred "definitive" measure is actually "all-cause excess deaths", compared with the same time in the previous years which sidesteps the need to definitely categorize cause of death. Before the lockdowns being implemented, you can see excess deaths rising almost exponentially - and after a short lag, after implementation of lockdown, you see the figure drop sharply. So yes, lockdowns were effective at reversing the pandemic spread, and necessary.
Your suggestion about only counting those who died *from* Covid seems inappropriate. How would you define that ? Causes of death could be multiple in those infected, with the virus triggering fatal conditions. Those with existing conditions might well have survived but acquiring covid was the final nail. Do we ignore those ?
From Kit's viewpoint here, we were looking at statistical information (I was certainly following iSAGE). The Italian information was a huge alert on what was to come. Forget the niceties on the direct or indirect cause, when you have an exponentially increasing situation, you act.
I am sure the decisions at the time were the correct decisions based upon the available evidence, but with 20/20 hindsight perhaps there was an alternative route that would have been less economically costly. We should learn and improve for next time.
Alternatively our government response was both pitiful and as it turned out in some cases profiteering. The stupidest thing they did was to assume that we had to accept a higher infection rate and death tariff to save our economy. Lower infection rates, ie fewer people off school, off work, unable to be productive, and fewer sequelae would only ever have been better for the economy. In which case air hygiene as a way of preventing transmission - both relatively accessible and affordable - should have been paramount. Japan - similar pop’n size - installed HEPA in many public spaces and had 10% - TEN PERCENT - of our death toll. Incidentally on counting deaths we reduced our accountability from 60 days illness to 28 fairly early on, thus almost certainly undercounting, plus COVID proved to be a huge trigger for unaccounted for autoimmune disease, strokes, and heart attacks. IMV we almost certainly under not over-counted.
Christina Pagel's substack she just posted is relevant here. We should not have needed subsequent lockdowns. We absolutely need to plan and equip for the future.
Deaths in the UK are roughly slightly less than 1% per annum, actually about 0.9% per annum, so your figure is about 10% out. In 2019, the population of England Scotland and Wales was about 65,060,600. In 2019, there were 530,841 deaths in England and Wales and 57,691 in Scotland - total 588,532. In 2020, there were 607,922 deaths in England and Wales and 62,415 in Scotland - total 670,337. This is a 13.9% increase over the previous year. The 2018 figure for comparison is 598,768 - less than a 2% variation from 2019.
If COVID-19 hadn't happened in 2020, it's reasonable to assume that there would have been about 75,000 fewer deaths in 2020, i.e. that's the figure of deaths "due" to the pandemic.
As you say UK excess deaths are 75,000 - what we don't know is the cause of death, and that is where it get complicated. Don't forget that Covid is a viral respiratory infection that nearly always results in a bacteria respiratory infection. Viral resp infections are not new and from my reading patients are given antibiotics - even though antibiotics are not effective against a viral infection - but it is in anticipation of the bacterial infection. My understanding is that antibiotics were expressly not given on instruction from the establishment - whether this was Fauci/US I suspect but don't know. Fauci hasn't seen a patient in 4 decades yet 'made' the science. So the cause of some deaths are iatrogenic and could have been prevented., and therefore wouldn't be counted as a Covid death - because death wouldn't have occurred.(Iatrogenic - adverse event caused by medical treatment)
In the early days it was stated that the only treatment was a ventilator - personally I find this hard to believe, viral respiratory virus are not new - but there is a driven panic and a driven need to promote the novel, inadequately tested 'vaccine'. To be ventilated required sedation - midazolam and morphine - a recognised breathing suppressant - so we give some one with an already impaired breathing function a further load, is it any wonder they died! , Again iatrogenic.
Were the LFT and PCR tests for Covid adequate, or where they picking up other virus eg common cold? Prof Martin Neil https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/the-fallacy-of-trust-revisiting-the posted a few days back that on reflection LFT and PCR tests where not as good as we were told in identifying only Covid, and we were never told they were perfect, and therefore Covid numbers are overcounted. On other posts he goes as far as to say that we didn't have a pandemic - we had infection as we do every year with flu.
So between poor testing performance and iatrogenic events the excess deaths are less than 75,000, but how much less ?
The New York Times 16 March2025 published a interesting article about some of the the shenanigans that went on during Covid. Its paywalled, but John Campbell does a good job of explaining with references https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSt-4mrKzjY&t=931s
I suggest that the numbers of excess deaths just cannot be trusted as a measure of the severity, and are likely to be significantly less than reported.
What, out of interest, do you think people died of during ‘waves’ of covid? How old were they on average? Did they have any access to early treatments that were tried and tested? If they did get any ‘treatment’ what was it? We are 5 years on, it’s time for some reflection and humility. Acknowledgement of the manipulation is crucial. Only then can victims get some accountability.
They never had a virus in the first place. People get ill for sure but to say they had 'covid' is not possible. The list of symptoms of covid is so long and similar to any respiratory illness as to be meaningless. To digress slightly bird flu (another viral thing which has never been proven to exist) presents as certain symptoms but look up a list of things that can go wrong with your chickens and it's all on there!
I waited anxiously in March 2020 for ambulances & paramedics to carry me or my neighbours off to most likely certain & distressing death but nothing happened. It took until January 2021 to hear of anyone I personally knew who had anything like a bad cold or flu and still don't know of anyone who 'died of covid'. I do know people with vaccune injuries.
Public Health England took it off the High consequence infectious disease list on 19/3/20. Whitty and Harries said 'dont wear a mask it will do more harm than good'
WHO advice was always don't close down society & physical interventions don't work.
Early treatment is always best - stay home until you get really ill goes against medical ethics. No wonder all cause mortality at home has been up since march 2020. Unfortunately people in care homes died of broken hearts, neglect, dehydration, end of life pathways. Almost as bad as US medical protocols with all the perverse incentives to 'treat' people with kidney destroying remdesevir or ventilators plus as Prof Rancourt pointed out the destruction by the measures of the support system of millions of poor people.
The whole episode brought to light the existence of Government Behavioural units which had been going even before covid. That's shocking. More behavioural scientists than medics on SAGE.
The messaging - everything in threes. Do people not think it odd that Johnson was saying build back better ( and every PM across the world) before anyone knew how this was going to play out! When I did believe in viruses I thought this could be over in a week or two, you can't predict but here is Johnson sure that society will be changed for ever, some will fall by the wayside. The new normal! How did ge know?
The declining legacy media got a massive shot in the arm from gov messaging revenue.
Footage from China - people dropping dead in the street and guys in hazmat suits coming to clear up - c'mon. Italy, rows of coffins. A picture stolen from a boating tragedy.
Mass graves in New York? Actually a burial ground for unfortunate homeless folk.
Apparently Northern Italy suffers from high levels of air pollution (like Wuhan) and a 3rd world health system. Low vitamin D levels.
To be honest after the initial worry it occurred to me that covid was another crack at a pandemic after Swine Flu of 2009 didn't take off. They managed to make a ton of cash out of Pandemrix and Tamiflu by scaring the pants off governments but the public were oblivious. Having learnt from that they made sure the media was soaked with the 'one voice' messaging and all contrary opinion was censored/villified/smeared for covid. A psy-op for sure.
The lateness of the lockdown also meant that the number of infections quickly reached the level which was beyond the scope of Test & Trace to control, even if it had been effectively managed which it wasn’t. Also the 3-4 day doubling time was faster than the week or so it took for cases to be tested and traced which meant that the epidemic was outrunning the only means of control we had beyond lockdown. Lessons for future pandemics include the necessity to have enough testing capacity to deal with the infection level before lockdowns are needed, much more rapid backward tracing to identify superspreader events/individuals, and a practical and enforceable isolation protocol that compensates those affected.
Thank you for an excellent piece. It brings back uncomfortable memories. I remember the week prior to lockdown our community was terrified. My daughter took our grandchildren out of school on 16th March because it was clear on the ground what was happening. I came out of hospital after a hip replacement on 10th March and I remember nurses being very concerned and they were discussing then being moved to different areas to cater for increased hospitalisations. They were also concerned about those retired HCPs coming back and the impact it might have.
The fear was as important part of the Nudge Units strategy. It’s time to wake up to how you’ve sadly been manipulated. What are you going to do about it?
"Locking down even a week earlier might have cut the UK’s first wave death toll down to a quarter of its size, saving tens of thousands of lives."
The first half of this sentence may well be true - but the second half doesn't follow. What you have is not the saving of tens of thousands of lives, but the delaying of the deaths of tens of thousands of people, many of whom, because of their susceptibility would die from COVID-19 eventually.
The deaths you save (as opposed to the deaths you delay) are purely from those that would never ever have caught the disease, or those that would have been able to get a better quality of care that meant they would have survived the infection, because of improved knowledge of treatment that comes with experience.
I suppose there are two points in response to your reply.
Prolonging the lives of tens of thousands of people is a worthy goal, especially since it would have relieved pressure on the NHS meaning even more lives could have been saved through better quality of care/the NHS not being overwhelmed (which it undoubtedly was).
It’s not a given that people’s whose lives were saved in the first wave would have died in a later wave. Remember that we were vaccinating people by December 2020. Had we been able to keep cases low through better FTTI, ventilation/other mitigations then absolutely more of these could have been lives saved and not just deaths postponed.
I agree with your first point - life prolonged is effectively the same thing as death delayed - glass half empty / glass half full - and generally making it longer is a good thing.
But you didn't talk about lives prolonged, you talked about the lives that would have been saved if lockdown had started a week or two earlier, with the assumption that died just before lockdown took effect would be alive today, and I think there are confounding factors that make that figure a lot lower.
Yes, it's not a given that they would have died whenever they caught COVID-19, lockdown or no lockdown, but in the absence of different care for those that caught it, it seems highly likely that they would have died if they caught COVID-19. The vast majority of those that caught COVID-19 don't die, and yet all of these did, whether due to to comorbities or other susceptibility.
Another confounding aspect is the compliance with lockdown rules, which we're remarkably high, as people could see that it was blatantly obvious that it was necessary. Two weeks earlier, and I don't think it would have been so obvious, and I suspect that compliance levels would have been lower, leading to a less rapid slow down of new cases, and thus more deaths amongst those that would die as soon as they contracted the disease. G
I'm not saying that the overall figure wouldn't have been somewhat lower, at least in the first phase, simply that the way that calculate that figure is flawed, and quite a few are not “lives saved” but deaths postponed.
In the initial wave, do you know roughly what percentage of the population caught COVID-19?
The Observer published weekly data on Covid cases and deaths in February 2020 and March and beyond, including data from Italy and UK. By early March it was obvious that we were 2 weeks behind their curve, just using that data. Perhaps the advisors had too much data, and failed to notice the news reports from Italy.
Please define a ‘Covid case’ and what the symptoms and risk of death was. I think you need to reflect on some realities, not BigPharma WHO propaganda from the Nudge Units.
Good summary! I well remember that time – I was shortly to have an operation at what turned out to be the peak of the first wave.
I remember too being gobsmacked by the Mar 13 Channel 4 programme with Matt Frei, J Edmunds & T Pueyo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C98FmoZVbjs
[Commentary about it here: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ihuman/blog/what-does-covid-19-mean-expertise-case-tomas-pueyo ]
11:38 Matt Frei: Edmunds … should we be declaring a national emergency here?
Edmunds: No. For what gain? What gain would we get from that: We get people up into a panic? We want people to come with us in a stepwise way.
… “The only way to stop this epidemic is indeed to achieve herd immunity”
23:15 Edmunds “It’s true if you just look crudely at the numbers, that the numbers are doubling about every two and a half days, but that’s because they are doing more contact tracing. The actual underlying rate of doubling is more like about every five days.”
Even my wife, with no science but a strong intuitive understanding was appalled by Edmunds’ (official) position and you can see she wasn’t alone by the comments below the clip where most were on Pueyo’s side.
I had the advantage of some professional experience of dealing with modellers, who I believe perform a vital role but who are frequently insufferably adamant and narrow in their outlook (‘the map is not the territory’).
When Whitty was an adviser for DFID I attended his talk on climate change in E Africa at UCL– he insisted that it would be getting wetter (because that’s what the models said). I questioned him on it and still remember his disdainful reply. But he got it wrong there too - it got drier and more chaotic in subsequent years; the models were wrong.
The question is, why were so many who had the ear of government so bad, when i-Sage was so good?
Above all perhaps, modellers should NEVER take control of the debate when understanding of a new virus is so poor. Practical field specialists (e.g. for Ebola) should have been more prominent in decision-making. What happened to the Precautionary Principle?
Thank you, Kit. Locking down two weeks earlier would have saved many like me from getting Covid and subsequent Long Covid. We have now been ill for five years, with no treatment available.
Are you ‘vaccinated’ ? Maybe you could seek help from practitioners specialising in jab-injury? There is help out there.
Thanks but it's not vacc-injury, it's Long Covid from 2020, which was before vaccinations.
Meaning you didn’t take it? FLCCC or World Council for Health has many resources if you haven’t seen these already. (Many haven’t because they are censored)
Btw what is the problem people have with admitting they took the jab or not now? If you took it, you didn’t hesitate to try to shame and humiliate and discriminate people like me who definitely didn’t. There should be some genuine curiosity as to who may be jab injured or whether ‘long Covid’ is valid as a diagnosis. Because guess what? I suggest it isn’t.
I’m sorry Kit but none of this makes sense to me. As I understand it, Covid-19 was a serious but rare consequence of SARS-CoV-2 infection affecting only those who were older and/or with comorbidities. Very similar to flu and subsequent complications. The majority of the population had nothing to worry about. As far as I understand the data, the spike in deaths occurred in care homes as a consequence of isolating frail older people and denying them access to essential care and medical treatment, assisted by inappropriate DNACPRs and end of life medications. Many deaths were wrongly attributed to Covid, not helped by the inappropriate use of PCR testing. What happened in 2020 was a diabolical mess but neither the UK or Scottish inquiries will explore what actually happened.
There was no health emergency outside iatrogenocide.
There is no evidence of any virus. There is incontrovertible evidence that nothing spread. There was no novel condition. No excess deaths until the PHEIC news. Then midazolam, morphine and incubator murder creating a small hump in March April 2020
Combined with the Bergamo fraud and the fairy tale of New York (See @jessica Hockett ) the myth of a deadly disease was spread. Nothing else did.
The lockdowns were catastrophic and known to be so. Masking is harmful and has no upside and was known to be so.
The jabs were toxic by design and nothing to do with health.
Covid was an operation - part of the larger push to create the new Multipolar Global Digital Technocracy.
This article is based on too many underlying assumptions that fall into 'narrative conditioning'
Norman Fenton has far far more accurate numbers and a stronger base in mathematical training as does Dennis Rancourt. Their conclusions are diametrically opposed to this author.
I call bullshit.
The article assumes that we had a definitive measure of deaths caused by Covid., I'm not convinced we did.
The question has got to be borne in mind did they die from Covid or with Covid? Because, if they died from Covid that is the only death that should be counted and I'm far from certain that we can separate deaths from Covid and with Covid. Hence we get an inflated Covid deaths number.
The death may be caused by the underlying condition associated with the hospitalisation, yet tested positive for Covid. Then we have poor medical treatment causing death attributed to Covid. Take New York - the use of midazolam and morphine - NY Governor derestricted the prescription to other health care professionals midazolam usage spiked to the extent that a shortage existed. Midazolam and morphine depress breathing - in a person with an existing chest infection this is not a positive!
Flu cases dropped to almost zero - really ? Or was the PCR test picking up more than Covid? Leading to an over estimate of Covid deaths.
UK deaths in normal times run at circa 650,000 pa - 1800 per day -
I'm not at all sure lockdowns were even necessary, let alone needed earlier.
We absolutely did have measures, during the acute phase of the pandemic, of people dying as a result of covid. The ONS published weekly data on the number of deaths with covid on the death certificate. A cause doesn’t go on the death certificate unless it contributed to the death.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi6602
For the first time in medical history we had something vague, amorphous and undefined as the cause of death on death certificates.
The cause of death on this most important of legal documents has always been highly medically specific.
Examples:
* acute kidney injury due to acetaminophen toxicity
* cerebral venous thrombosis
* acute left/right ventricular failure
* neutropaenic sepsis
* cardiorespiratory arrest
* ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm
The medical establishment doesn't do 'vague'.
Putting "Covid" on a death certificate was the equivalent of writing "died".
Never before has this been acceptable medical or legal practice.
It was a first (as there were so many "firsts") and a complete departure from the norm.
Add to that, that grieving families were being intimidated, coerced, and sometimes even paid to agree to this, and we created manufactured "proof" that people were "dying" from a made-for-TV soap opera.
This fact alone (along with a thousand other red flags) was an indicator this was all being contrived.
The reason that flu cases dropped to almost zero can be easily explained by a realization that the lockdown measures were also exceptionally good at preventing the spread of flu...
This isn't surprising as prior thinking about lockdowns had been based on containing a flu-like pandemic.
My preferred "definitive" measure is actually "all-cause excess deaths", compared with the same time in the previous years which sidesteps the need to definitely categorize cause of death. Before the lockdowns being implemented, you can see excess deaths rising almost exponentially - and after a short lag, after implementation of lockdown, you see the figure drop sharply. So yes, lockdowns were effective at reversing the pandemic spread, and necessary.
Your suggestion about only counting those who died *from* Covid seems inappropriate. How would you define that ? Causes of death could be multiple in those infected, with the virus triggering fatal conditions. Those with existing conditions might well have survived but acquiring covid was the final nail. Do we ignore those ?
From Kit's viewpoint here, we were looking at statistical information (I was certainly following iSAGE). The Italian information was a huge alert on what was to come. Forget the niceties on the direct or indirect cause, when you have an exponentially increasing situation, you act.
I am sure the decisions at the time were the correct decisions based upon the available evidence, but with 20/20 hindsight perhaps there was an alternative route that would have been less economically costly. We should learn and improve for next time.
Prof Martin Neil's presentation to the Scottish Covid Inquiry is useful to come to a rounded view of the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBjalO8b2EI
Given Covid cost UK £300+ billion, we simply can't afford another to be treated in the same way - we need to get smarter!
Alternatively our government response was both pitiful and as it turned out in some cases profiteering. The stupidest thing they did was to assume that we had to accept a higher infection rate and death tariff to save our economy. Lower infection rates, ie fewer people off school, off work, unable to be productive, and fewer sequelae would only ever have been better for the economy. In which case air hygiene as a way of preventing transmission - both relatively accessible and affordable - should have been paramount. Japan - similar pop’n size - installed HEPA in many public spaces and had 10% - TEN PERCENT - of our death toll. Incidentally on counting deaths we reduced our accountability from 60 days illness to 28 fairly early on, thus almost certainly undercounting, plus COVID proved to be a huge trigger for unaccounted for autoimmune disease, strokes, and heart attacks. IMV we almost certainly under not over-counted.
Christina Pagel's substack she just posted is relevant here. We should not have needed subsequent lockdowns. We absolutely need to plan and equip for the future.
Thanks, subscribed now
Deaths in the UK are roughly slightly less than 1% per annum, actually about 0.9% per annum, so your figure is about 10% out. In 2019, the population of England Scotland and Wales was about 65,060,600. In 2019, there were 530,841 deaths in England and Wales and 57,691 in Scotland - total 588,532. In 2020, there were 607,922 deaths in England and Wales and 62,415 in Scotland - total 670,337. This is a 13.9% increase over the previous year. The 2018 figure for comparison is 598,768 - less than a 2% variation from 2019.
If COVID-19 hadn't happened in 2020, it's reasonable to assume that there would have been about 75,000 fewer deaths in 2020, i.e. that's the figure of deaths "due" to the pandemic.
As you say UK excess deaths are 75,000 - what we don't know is the cause of death, and that is where it get complicated. Don't forget that Covid is a viral respiratory infection that nearly always results in a bacteria respiratory infection. Viral resp infections are not new and from my reading patients are given antibiotics - even though antibiotics are not effective against a viral infection - but it is in anticipation of the bacterial infection. My understanding is that antibiotics were expressly not given on instruction from the establishment - whether this was Fauci/US I suspect but don't know. Fauci hasn't seen a patient in 4 decades yet 'made' the science. So the cause of some deaths are iatrogenic and could have been prevented., and therefore wouldn't be counted as a Covid death - because death wouldn't have occurred.(Iatrogenic - adverse event caused by medical treatment)
In the early days it was stated that the only treatment was a ventilator - personally I find this hard to believe, viral respiratory virus are not new - but there is a driven panic and a driven need to promote the novel, inadequately tested 'vaccine'. To be ventilated required sedation - midazolam and morphine - a recognised breathing suppressant - so we give some one with an already impaired breathing function a further load, is it any wonder they died! , Again iatrogenic.
Were the LFT and PCR tests for Covid adequate, or where they picking up other virus eg common cold? Prof Martin Neil https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/the-fallacy-of-trust-revisiting-the posted a few days back that on reflection LFT and PCR tests where not as good as we were told in identifying only Covid, and we were never told they were perfect, and therefore Covid numbers are overcounted. On other posts he goes as far as to say that we didn't have a pandemic - we had infection as we do every year with flu.
So between poor testing performance and iatrogenic events the excess deaths are less than 75,000, but how much less ?
The New York Times 16 March2025 published a interesting article about some of the the shenanigans that went on during Covid. Its paywalled, but John Campbell does a good job of explaining with references https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSt-4mrKzjY&t=931s
I suggest that the numbers of excess deaths just cannot be trusted as a measure of the severity, and are likely to be significantly less than reported.
What, out of interest, do you think people died of during ‘waves’ of covid? How old were they on average? Did they have any access to early treatments that were tried and tested? If they did get any ‘treatment’ what was it? We are 5 years on, it’s time for some reflection and humility. Acknowledgement of the manipulation is crucial. Only then can victims get some accountability.
"Many people just swallowed this four-week figure without too much thought".
As you have my friend. Swallowed the whole shebang - hook, line, and sinker.
There was no pandemic.
There was only a billion dollar theatre production.
They never had a virus in the first place. People get ill for sure but to say they had 'covid' is not possible. The list of symptoms of covid is so long and similar to any respiratory illness as to be meaningless. To digress slightly bird flu (another viral thing which has never been proven to exist) presents as certain symptoms but look up a list of things that can go wrong with your chickens and it's all on there!
I waited anxiously in March 2020 for ambulances & paramedics to carry me or my neighbours off to most likely certain & distressing death but nothing happened. It took until January 2021 to hear of anyone I personally knew who had anything like a bad cold or flu and still don't know of anyone who 'died of covid'. I do know people with vaccune injuries.
Public Health England took it off the High consequence infectious disease list on 19/3/20. Whitty and Harries said 'dont wear a mask it will do more harm than good'
WHO advice was always don't close down society & physical interventions don't work.
Early treatment is always best - stay home until you get really ill goes against medical ethics. No wonder all cause mortality at home has been up since march 2020. Unfortunately people in care homes died of broken hearts, neglect, dehydration, end of life pathways. Almost as bad as US medical protocols with all the perverse incentives to 'treat' people with kidney destroying remdesevir or ventilators plus as Prof Rancourt pointed out the destruction by the measures of the support system of millions of poor people.
The whole episode brought to light the existence of Government Behavioural units which had been going even before covid. That's shocking. More behavioural scientists than medics on SAGE.
The messaging - everything in threes. Do people not think it odd that Johnson was saying build back better ( and every PM across the world) before anyone knew how this was going to play out! When I did believe in viruses I thought this could be over in a week or two, you can't predict but here is Johnson sure that society will be changed for ever, some will fall by the wayside. The new normal! How did ge know?
The declining legacy media got a massive shot in the arm from gov messaging revenue.
Footage from China - people dropping dead in the street and guys in hazmat suits coming to clear up - c'mon. Italy, rows of coffins. A picture stolen from a boating tragedy.
Mass graves in New York? Actually a burial ground for unfortunate homeless folk.
Apparently Northern Italy suffers from high levels of air pollution (like Wuhan) and a 3rd world health system. Low vitamin D levels.
To be honest after the initial worry it occurred to me that covid was another crack at a pandemic after Swine Flu of 2009 didn't take off. They managed to make a ton of cash out of Pandemrix and Tamiflu by scaring the pants off governments but the public were oblivious. Having learnt from that they made sure the media was soaked with the 'one voice' messaging and all contrary opinion was censored/villified/smeared for covid. A psy-op for sure.
The lateness of the lockdown also meant that the number of infections quickly reached the level which was beyond the scope of Test & Trace to control, even if it had been effectively managed which it wasn’t. Also the 3-4 day doubling time was faster than the week or so it took for cases to be tested and traced which meant that the epidemic was outrunning the only means of control we had beyond lockdown. Lessons for future pandemics include the necessity to have enough testing capacity to deal with the infection level before lockdowns are needed, much more rapid backward tracing to identify superspreader events/individuals, and a practical and enforceable isolation protocol that compensates those affected.
Thank you for an excellent piece. It brings back uncomfortable memories. I remember the week prior to lockdown our community was terrified. My daughter took our grandchildren out of school on 16th March because it was clear on the ground what was happening. I came out of hospital after a hip replacement on 10th March and I remember nurses being very concerned and they were discussing then being moved to different areas to cater for increased hospitalisations. They were also concerned about those retired HCPs coming back and the impact it might have.
The fear was as important part of the Nudge Units strategy. It’s time to wake up to how you’ve sadly been manipulated. What are you going to do about it?
"Locking down even a week earlier might have cut the UK’s first wave death toll down to a quarter of its size, saving tens of thousands of lives."
The first half of this sentence may well be true - but the second half doesn't follow. What you have is not the saving of tens of thousands of lives, but the delaying of the deaths of tens of thousands of people, many of whom, because of their susceptibility would die from COVID-19 eventually.
The deaths you save (as opposed to the deaths you delay) are purely from those that would never ever have caught the disease, or those that would have been able to get a better quality of care that meant they would have survived the infection, because of improved knowledge of treatment that comes with experience.
I suppose there are two points in response to your reply.
Prolonging the lives of tens of thousands of people is a worthy goal, especially since it would have relieved pressure on the NHS meaning even more lives could have been saved through better quality of care/the NHS not being overwhelmed (which it undoubtedly was).
It’s not a given that people’s whose lives were saved in the first wave would have died in a later wave. Remember that we were vaccinating people by December 2020. Had we been able to keep cases low through better FTTI, ventilation/other mitigations then absolutely more of these could have been lives saved and not just deaths postponed.
I agree with your first point - life prolonged is effectively the same thing as death delayed - glass half empty / glass half full - and generally making it longer is a good thing.
But you didn't talk about lives prolonged, you talked about the lives that would have been saved if lockdown had started a week or two earlier, with the assumption that died just before lockdown took effect would be alive today, and I think there are confounding factors that make that figure a lot lower.
Yes, it's not a given that they would have died whenever they caught COVID-19, lockdown or no lockdown, but in the absence of different care for those that caught it, it seems highly likely that they would have died if they caught COVID-19. The vast majority of those that caught COVID-19 don't die, and yet all of these did, whether due to to comorbities or other susceptibility.
Another confounding aspect is the compliance with lockdown rules, which we're remarkably high, as people could see that it was blatantly obvious that it was necessary. Two weeks earlier, and I don't think it would have been so obvious, and I suspect that compliance levels would have been lower, leading to a less rapid slow down of new cases, and thus more deaths amongst those that would die as soon as they contracted the disease. G
I'm not saying that the overall figure wouldn't have been somewhat lower, at least in the first phase, simply that the way that calculate that figure is flawed, and quite a few are not “lives saved” but deaths postponed.
In the initial wave, do you know roughly what percentage of the population caught COVID-19?
The Observer published weekly data on Covid cases and deaths in February 2020 and March and beyond, including data from Italy and UK. By early March it was obvious that we were 2 weeks behind their curve, just using that data. Perhaps the advisors had too much data, and failed to notice the news reports from Italy.
Please define a ‘Covid case’ and what the symptoms and risk of death was. I think you need to reflect on some realities, not BigPharma WHO propaganda from the Nudge Units.