Here’s a very important and timely article from Thomas Galen. Thomas took a degree in Medical Sciences and then spent thirty years working with models and numbers in finance and with large businesses. In the last few weeks those who claimed that the reduction in Covid infections in March was caused by herd immunity have […]
Mark Ashby is an independent researcher interested in upland and farmland ecology, and evidence synthesis. Dear readers, I began reading Hector Drummond Magazine in March this year, which is about the point at which Hector started to publish articles from guest authors. I’ve been extremely impressed by both the variety and quality of the articles […]
The media never tires of telling us what a wonderful success story New Zealand and its zero-Covid strategy is, what a modern saint Jacinda Ardern is. The scientific/academic press is full of praise as well. You’ve seen Jeremy Harris’s more realistic take on matters here recently. But you may still be under the impression that […]
Christopher Bowyer is away so he isn’t able to do his usual graphs this week (except for the Vallance one I put up earlier), so I’ve done a few graphs myself from the figures at https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk. First of all, here’s Covid positive ‘tests’ (ie. SARS-CoV-2 positive tests) vs Covid deaths for the UK. […]
Dear Prime Minister, I supported the initial national lockdown and move to quarantined borders. Over the last six months the situation has changed markedly in four respects: Firstly, the Infection Fatality Ratio can now be calculated to be much lower than thought at the time (3.4% then), likely it is a maximum of 0.30% and […]
Here you go. His ‘predictions’ in red. The reality in blue. Graph by Christopher Bowyer (click to enlarge). That 10pm pub curfew was amazingly effective, wasn’t it?
I’ve previously looked at some of the issues that can arise with PCR ‘tests’. Another issue is that samples can get contaminated by the SARS-CoV-2 virus from the sampling environment, or from the workers doing the swabs, or from the lab, and this can cause a positive result. Remember that because of the amplification […]
I’m going to take a closer look at the Covid/SARS-CoV-2 PCR test, starting with this post in which I provide a basic introduction as to how a PCR test works. The long name for it is a polymerase chain reaction test. The inventor of PCR was Kary Mullis in 1983 (he won the Nobel Prized […]
New Covid-19 graphs from Christopher Bowyer. ONS data here. NHS England data here. (The ONS data is up to the end of week 39, 25 Sep. The NHS data is generally more recent, see each graph for the date.) All graphs can be clicked to enlarge. England deaths with Covid-19 by absence (yellow) or […]
This is a continuation of my ‘A Beginner’s Guide to False Positives’ from two days ago. In that post I described how false positives can swamp true positives when the prevalence of the disease or condition in question is low. This was the situation in Britain with Covid for quite a few months. However, more […]
Hector Drummond Magazine reader and contributor Christopher Bowyer has done some more Covid-19 test result graphs based on the data at https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/. The data was downloaded yesterday, 6 October, so it’s very up-to-date. (All graphs can be clicked to enlarge.) First, a health warning. The positive test data comes from PHE/NHS Track and Trace, and […]
I had been meaning to write a primer on false positives for ages, because it’s a topic I knew well from my risk institute days, but then a few other websites and magazines started writing about it, so I thought there was no point. (I am slightly kicking myself for not getting in earlier with […]
Reader Tom Walsh has sent me a graph of Dutch deaths for 2020, set against previous years (click to enlarge): He got the numbers from here. You can see that there was a spring spike, but it wasn’t that much worse than the slightly earlier spike in 2018. (There’s also a small spike in week […]
New Covid-19 graphs from Christopher Bowyer. ONS data here. NHS England data here. (The ONS data is up to the end of week 38, 18 Sep. The NHS data is generally more recent, see each graph for the date.) All graphs can be clicked to enlarge. England deaths with Covid-19 by absence (yellow) or […]
Andrew Mahon is a writer based in London, who has written for the Spectator, the Daily Wire, Human Life Review, New English Review, Brexit Central, Catholic Journal, Conservative Woman and others. Apparently, there’s a second wave in Canada. Cases are soaring and more quarantine restrictions are needed. More self-isolation, more lockdowns, more social distancing, more […]
Hector Drummond Magazine reader and contributor Christopher Bowyer has done some more Covid-19 test result graphs based on the data at https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/. (All graphs can be clicked to enlarge.) First let’s remind ourselves of the ridiculous graph presented by Vallance and Whitty on September 21 – this version is adjusted to apply to England only […]
My eleven year-old daughter is currently under house arrest. She is not allowed to leave our home to attend school, to exercise, or to visit friends or family. She is not able pop to the shops to spend her pocket money, take her bike for a spin around the park or participate in her (beloved) […]
On Saturday I took my youngest daughter swimming for the first time since March. She’s a bright and loving child but quite nervous and lacks the confidence of her older sister. As such, swimming has been something of an uphill struggle and though she made progress over eighteen months of lessons, these gains naturally fell […]
This is an article by Nick Rendell. nick.rendell@gmail.com When John Ashworth, the Labour Party’s Shadow Health Secretary, was interviewed at 07:35 on September 18th on the Today programme he said “We shouldn’t consider any levels of death acceptable”, and agreed with the interviewer that any economic sacrifice was worth it to save lives. It isn’t […]
Mark Ashby is an independent researcher interested in upland and farmland ecology, and evidence synthesis. Leaked documents have revealed the details of Operation Moonshot, the UK governments newly proposed COVID-19 mass testing program1-4. The program involves dramatically increasing testing capacity from the current level of 350,000 COVID-19 tests per day to ten million tests per […]