I’m not usually a big fan of making predictions. I love the quote, reputedly from Nils Bohr: Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. But I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say I don’t think the graph showed by Boris Johnson’s ‘scientists’ recently, of over 6000 deaths a day in […]
Eugène Ehren can be contacted at eug.ehren@gmail.com“ Many moons ago, I found myself on the receiving end of a stern warning: stay away from the sun. The warning came from a dermatologist, and I’d ended up in her office by a fluke, since it was an ophthalmologist I’d wanted to see, and it was my eyes […]
Here are some new Covid-19 graphs from Christopher Bowyer. ONS data here. NHS England data here. (The ONS data is up to the end of week 42, 16 Oct. 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 […]
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.) Be aware that the positive test data comes from PHE/NHS Track and Trace, and the reliability of that data is questionable, to say the least. So […]
This article is based on a link and some notes Jeremy Harris sent to me. I’ve written my own analysis, but it’s pretty much the same (as far as I can tell) as Jeremy’s own thoughts. Actuary analysis shows that New Zealand’s all-cause death figures have dropped in 2020, by around a tenth. (If we […]
Christopher Bowyer has done a couple of new and very interesting graphs (each can be clicked to enlarge). Both graphs are scatter graphs of ONS weekly Covid deaths vs excess deaths, for all English regions (London, Mids, NW, East, SW, NE & Yorks, SE) and Wales. The first graph covers the ‘first wave’ (weeks 12-24 […]
Gavin Phillips sent this to me weeks ago, but it went into my spam folder, and Lockdown Sceptics ended up with it first. But not everyone will have seen it, and Gavin still wants me to publish it, so here it is. This is an interview with a nurse with over 20-years’ experience. Jessica (a […]
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 […]