BC SOCIETY
Saved by @Alex1Powell

I urge all followers who have read my criticisms of PCR mass testing in U.K. to carefully read Mr Fordham’s carefully worded letter. Note that the innovation minister in the Lords, Lord Bethel, already admitted that the PCR system doesn’t have the equivalent of an MOT. https://t.co/zXzeDMKCBb

 Without this information it’s impossible to interpret any result. If the oFPR is 4%, for example, and if the true prevalence is 0.3% (it’s probably less), then for every 10,000 tests, 400 positives would be false & 30 positives would be genuine. So 93% of positives are false.
As Mr Fordham points out, almost all policies pivot on PCR mass testing. Hancock previously admitted on talkRADIO to Julia Hartley-Brewer in late summer that the FPR was “just under 1%”. That was a flat lie (possibly inadvertent but he’s never corrected the record). The reason...
...we are sure Hancock told a lie is that they have never known the FPR. Those including Hancock who believe that the oFPR can be estimated by inspection of the lowest positivity ever recorded, while logical, is completely wrong. Changes in personnel, throughout, testing...
...architecture & the like can radically alter the oFPR. Since Hancock’s remark in late summer, PCR mass testing has moved into the Lighthouse Labs & this creates a new & urgent need to continually assess oFPR. I’ve good reason to believe it’s now VERY much higher now that the...
...testing is being done by people far less experienced than before & at considerably higher throughput. Both factors greatly increase oFPR. I believe almost all positives out of these favourites are false, most of the time.
This accounts entirely for the notion that we’re in...
...the midst of a lethal pandemic of a SARS virus, whereas the empirical data tells us for certain that we are bit. We are running at fewer respiratory illness calls to NHS111 & attendances to A&E. Yet this mass of false positives floods the deaths attribution system, making...
..,it appear that we’ve hundreds of covid19 deaths per day when we don’t. These deaths would be additional to other deaths for precautions to make any sense. Yet adjusted all causes mortality does not reflect this.
Not just me having severe doubts about the trustworthiness...
...of the PCR mass testing system in U.K. (note, I’m making no claims about what’s happening in other countries). Here’s my latest:
https://t.co/7tdvEaNSvN
Univ Surrey also:
https://t.co/uPMGdzpFvf
They’ve just got to halt this test ‘with no MOT’ before they kill anyone else.
Forgot to add that the lateral flow tests do have the test equivalent of an MOT. Whatever you think of them, unless you’ve read the entire 3rd party validation report (which the PCR testing system doesn’t have) its probably wrong. There’s a great deal of propaganda about LFT..
...possibly originating from those making pots of money from Lighthouse Labs or those who are “immunity deniers”, but it’s perfectly good enough to identify infectious subjects, and misses no more of these than does PCR, even done well. I’m aware of population tests with LFT...
...in Liverpool, the nations hotspot, and Merthyr Tydfil, and in both cases finding either very low prevalences (possibly zero, depending on where the line is drawn for oFPR when performed by the army rather than by Porton Down scientists). Same story in Vienna, by the way...
...despite their prevalence by PCR recently being the same as in U.K..
Then there’s the infamous recent case in U Cambridge, where all students initially testing positive by PCR were negative on retest, for a 100% false diagnosis rate. No virus.

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Yardley Yeadon
Yardley Yeadon
@MichaelYeadon3
@ukiswitheu I invite people to run the thought experiment: “what if the ‘cases’ data is inaccurate?”
Ignore ‘cases’, look instead only at excess deaths (per M Levitt’s tweet). Does that look characteristic of an epidemic? It’s completely diff from spring or any winter flu outbreak.
London:


Can anyone explain why there is no ‘2nd wave’ of excess deaths in London, without invoking herd immunity?
It’s not lockdown. See NW England:
This is the largest #SecondaryRipple (which I predicted).


https://t.co/b0rT5Lq9HI
Now check the 3 predictions I made months ago. They’ve all happened. Compare predictions from SAGE’s statements: they’re all wrong.
Even neutrals at this point might ask themselves “if he’s been right on all predictions, maybe he’s correct now?”


I’ve been saying since the Lighthouse Labs got up & running that I’m deeply sceptical about the trustworthiness of their ‘cases’ data. I showed how, at low virus prevalence, the PCR mass testing data was throwing out potentially 90% positives being

https://t.co/t4qQN4rH0u
I got ‘fact checked’ a LOT over that statement. This paper just published, about precisely that time period I speculated about. Turns out that high-80s% of Dr Healy’s positives by PCR were FALSE. This alone is sufficient in my view to throw severe doubt...
FOR LATER READ
Yardley Yeadon
Yardley Yeadon
@MichaelYeadon3
@DesmondSwayne Sir Desmond is right. SAGE makes mathematical predictions based on flawed models.
I chose to stick my neck out almost 4mo ago here:
https://t.co/b0rT5Lq9HI
I experienced much anxiety doing this, aware that, if I was badly wrong here, I would be destroyed as a contributor.

That said, I thought the immunology so clear that I made three, specific & testable predictions which should apply if I was right.
Please examine them, on the right, under the pie chart:


In particular, I predicted that the epidemic would not reignite in London. Obviously, we have many “cases” but I urge people to disregard these & instead to look at excess deaths, on the principle that a severe (occasionally lethal) respiratory virus would show itself this way.

Here is a chart showing the trend of deaths in London alone over recent years. A prominent peak of deaths is evident as the virus swept through in spring. Also visible the August heatwave. But there are no excess deaths now.
I submit this is a striking example of herd immunity.


I’m still waiting for SAGE or indeed anyone to provide an alternative explanation for the sharp nature of the spring excess deaths peak which doesn’t involve herd immunity or otherwise removing from the pool those vulnerable to lethal outcomes (same result). Given this sharp...
MATHS
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Yardley Yeadon
Yardley Yeadon
@MichaelYeadon3
In a number of Sunday papers:
Scientific advisers said it was “hard to see” when the restrictions would end as new variants continued to emerge, delivering a potentially devastating blow to the travel industry. The prime minister said that after progress with vaccinations...

...”what we don’t want to see is all that work undone by the arrival of a new variant that is vaccine-busting”.
The idea is planted in people’s mind that this virus is mutating in such a way as to evade prior immunity. This is completely unfounded, certainly as regards immunity..

...gained naturally, after repelling the virus (which well around 99.9% of the population do, fewer, obviously in the very elderly & already ill, more in those younger & well). It’s important to appreciate that upon infection, the human immune system cuts up an infectious...

...agent into short pieces. Each of these short pieces of protein are presented to other cells in the immune system, like an identity parade. Our cells have a truly astonishing range of abilities to recognise different protein structures, and there will be some which recognise...

...each of the pieces of the invader. The cells which recognise a piece are instructed to multiply selectively so that, after a few days to a couple of weeks, our bodies contain large numbers of virus piece specific cells. These have a range of functions. Some make antibodies...
SCIENCE
Yardley Yeadon
Yardley Yeadon
@MichaelYeadon3
@scottorandojin What if the false diagnosis rate was 90%?
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m a thorough believer in the existence of this virus.

To exemplify: the NHS is under severe winter pressure. Many staff are unavailable, largely due to forced isolation from testing. Also, I’m told the adaptations to the conditions make normal work almost impossible. Trying to keep apart patients in different categories must be...

...incredibly stressful. I doubt I could ever have coped. Add to this the real stream of sick people & it’s a complete nightmare. My sympathies won’t be accepted but I offer them anyway. As to “the deaths”, do you mean the reported count of “covid19 deaths”? Everyone is doing...

...their very best. But as to that count: it’s nothing to do with clinical judgement. A covid19 death is a death from any cause within 28d of a positive test. So once a person is labelled by a positive test, if they then die, they’re a covid19 death. Back to my substantive...

...question: how reliable is that labelling? It’s not a clinical diagnosis. We’re not used to this idea. Never before in medical history has someone had a disease (let alone cause of death) been defined by the result of a single year alone. Yet that’s where we are. I think that..
HEALTH
Yardley Yeadon
Yardley Yeadon
@MichaelYeadon3
https://t.co/xvP6tVlIaE
Quite a surprise. Ferguson isn’t qualified to comment on such things. He lacks understanding of basic biological concepts, partly explaining why his predictions are often so extreme.


That said, I’ll take him as an ally. It’s clear we’re already at herd immunity. How can I be sure? London had a huge peak of excess deaths in spring. The timing of peak deaths showed clearly that the pandemic was self-limiting. Recall much debate about whether the interval...

...between lockdown & peak deaths was long enough for lockdown to have been the cause of reducing deaths? The answer was “no”. But it was close & I can understand people thinking “well, it’s close, so perhaps it was lockdown that did it?”, thereby establishing a foundational...

...myth favoured by those who genuinely believe lockdown saves lives (it clearly doesn’t).
I’ll get to London & here immunity. But those wavering about the evidence about lockdown in spring really will benefit from cogitating on this graph.


In blue are the 30 trusts with the earliest date of peak deaths in spring. In red, the 30 with the latest peak deaths. For me, this is proof that national lockdown, which began Mar 23, played no role whatsoever in turning the pandemic. You’ll see some areas had peak daily...
SCIENCE

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I've been wanting to write this thread for a while. It has been inspired by hearing a common thought: why can't people just "listen"? If people just followed the rules, we wouldn't be in this mess. I think this is oversimplification of the problem with COVID: 1/

It is true, there are people who haven't been following guidelines (by definition that happened a LOT at Christmas/NYE in my region), but even before, we know transmission in private gatherings happens. 2/

These private gatherings are pictured to be big raucous parties, but in reality, even before lockdown, this is just people having dinner, watching TV, doing things we did before on a daily basis. These little ripples when added across the country make a big wave.. 3/

...and little can be done about this apart from positive messaging. You can't very well have police patrolling neighbourhoods across the country. 4/

Next thing is we keep hearing over and over and over, stay home. There are diminishing returns with this advice, but also, most people who can stay home ARE. So what's the issue? There are a HUGE # of people who can't stay home because they work in essential jobs 5/
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Funny thing is the guy is quite young. He can't be more than 25. How can someone that young have this sort of mentality?

I actually did not think that the guy could have wanted to get away with my car at the time. Now that I think of it though, that's a big possibility. We need to be careful out there. These thieves now have different ways of operating
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Krugman is, of course, right about this. BUT, note that universities can do a lot to revitalize declining and rural regions.


See this thing that @lymanstoneky wrote:

And see this thing that I wrote:

And see this book that @JamesFallows wrote:

And see this other thing that I wrote:
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Diyora Shadijanova \U0001f1fa\U0001f1ff \U0001f1f9\U0001f1ef (\u0414\u0438\u0451\u0440\u0430 \u0428\u0430\u0434\u0438\u0436\u0430\u043d\u043e\u0432\u0430)
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@thediyora
at some point we have to recognise that the financial anxiety young people are living through is not normal. monetising all your hobbies is not normal. hustle culture is not normal. glorifying precarious work is not normal. self-optimisation is not normal.

all these issues have a single root and guess what? it's the economic system we live under!! but we're too fucking exhausted to even see an alternative to capitalism because we're so broken and fatigued by it. it doesn't have to be this way, we can seek a different future.

As Mark Fisher argued, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism. We've been utterly brainwashed by every part of our society to think that everything we're experiencing right now is extremely normal! But clearly, capitalism is failing us.

How about instead of “manifesting” money on TikTok, we work towards building a more equal society? Just a thought.

Incredible! People in the replies to this are like “people who hustle will be relaxing when they get wealthy”. That’s IF and not when and still, that’s not a given. The fact we don’t see having a regular full-time job as enough “hustling” or whatever is so scary to me.
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Paul Matzko
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@PMatzko
Having spent 2020 telling covid denalists that they were overly optimistic about the pandemic, I now look forward to spending 2021 telling covid maximalists that they are overly pessimistic about the end of the pandemic.

Telling a denialist in May that we shouldn't open bars back up = telling a maximalist in February that we should open schools back up.

Look, folks, the math is straightforward. ~13% of Americans have been vaccinated as of this

And the 7 day average continues to rise; we're approach 2 million vaccine doses per day. Meaning that we'll double that ~13% much faster than the two months it took us to get there.


So it's entirely reasonable that absent any other intervention, we should expect to hit ~30% vaccinated by the end of March.
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