The following is a brief introduction to an article by Malcolm Kendrick, a doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. ..His book, 'Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,' is available HERE..

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"One year since it began, there are still more questions than answers about Covid-19. Just about the only reliable data on it are the mortality rates for various countries. In a murky world, they give us clarity.

I’ve not written much about Covid-19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion, the world has simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, written back in the 14th century.

In it, Dante describes the outcasts, who took no side in the rebellion of angels. They live in the vestibule. Not in heaven, not in hell, forever unclassified. Naked and futile, they race around through a hellish mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner, symbolic of their pursuit of ever-shifting self-interest.

I find this description of the desperate pursuit of an elusive wavering banner an apt description of where we are today. Which banner are you following?

The one that says, ‘Covid-19’s the most terrible infection ever, and we must do everything in our power to stop it, whatever the cost’?

Or the other that states: ‘What on Earth are we doing? This is no worse than a bad flu, and we are destroying the world economy, stripping away human rights and killing more people than we are saving’?

There may be others.

Between these two completely incompatible positions lies the truth. It’s in poor shape. It’s been crushed, bent out of shape, and left as a broken heap in the corner. I search where I can to find the fragments in an attempt to bring together a picture that makes some kind of sense....."

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His full article, with some of what he's sifted through and the possibilities he has come up with, can be read HERE.. ..Well worth your time if this 'pandemic panic' we're in the midst of has you questioning..

Interesting theory as England starts its third national lockdown. We are all in it.........good luck.

"...Lockdowns don’t work.." I agree completely. They make a big deal about how many people have died from it (and make no mistake it IS a big deal) but they don't mention the millions of people who have had their lives ruined the restrictions the have implemented supposedly because of it. Jobs lost, small businesses going out of business, some of them run by third or forth generation family members, people who have lost their homes because of it, kids who's lives have been permanently damaged because they can't go to school and socialize with other kids. I don't think there is a single person in the country that has not been negatively impacted by this thing. I'm actually one of the lucky ones, I'm disabled/retired, and my house is paid for. My kids are grown, my son in law still has his job, and hopefully by the time my grandchild is old enough to go to school this will be over. But it will never, ever be the same again. Most of the small businesses will be gone, and the big businesses will be even bigger. Places like Walmart and Amazon are making HUGE profits off this.

Knowing that money follows mortality here in the US, I'd argue that even that data is tainted and only "directionally correct" at best.



Good article, the graphs he presents are illustrative of just how messy this really is.

Dr. Kendrick ends his well considered article with the following, which is worth repeating here..

".....So, again, what have I learned about Covid-19? I have learned that all governments are floundering about, all claiming to have exerted some sort of control over this disease and ignoring all evidence to the contrary. In truth, they have achieved nothing. As restrictions and lockdowns have become more severe, in many cases the number of infections has simply risen and risen, completely unaffected by anything that has been done.

The official solution is, of course, more restrictions, as the British prime minister suggested again yesterday. Essentially, ‘We just haven’t restricted people enough!’ Sigh. When something doesn’t work, the answer is not to keep doing it with even greater fervour. The real answer is to stop doing it and try something else.

I would recommend that we stop testing – unless someone is admitted to hospital and is seriously ill. Mass testing is simply causing mass panic and achieves absolutely nothing. At great cost. We should also just get on with our lives as before. We should just vaccinate those at greatest risk of dying, the elderly and vulnerable, and put this rather embarrassing episode of mad banner-waving behind us.

Hopefully, in time, we will learn something. Which is that we should not, ever, run about panicking, following the madly waved banners… ever again. However, I suspect that we will. This pandemic is going to be a model for all mass panicking stupidity in the future. Because to do otherwise would be to admit that we made a pig’s ear of it this time. There are far too many powerful reputations at stake to allow that."

Governments are floundering about.......... India with a population of 1,386,938,083 reports 150,151 deaths due to Covid-19. The U.S. population is 331,997,424 and reported deaths are 363,803. Gotta wonder what the heck.

We've been told that 'lockdowns must be in place' to keep hospitals from reaching impossible occupancy levels with masses of people dying of Covid. But if these levels are barely above normal, not anywhere near impossible to manage, what then? What if lockdowns, as more and more Doctors are reporting, do nothing to keep the levels down anyway?

We can check and verify this hypothesis in Florida. There is no lockdown or mask mandate in place there. People are arriving in droves from other states to vacation, attend conferences and live. If lockdown advocates are right we'd see hospitals bursting at the seams - if in fact these levels rise when mandatory lockdowns and mask requirements aren't in place.

The fact is that when we look at Florida we barely see any increase in hospitalization levels compared to previous years. The presently reported level is basically on par with 2018 flu season levels, which was more of a pandemic type of flu than other flu episodes we've had in recent years. In 2018 the nation did nothing to suspend our liberties, so why all the 'red flag waving' and panic promotion we see from 'those in charge' today?

There's lots of debate over how to count Covid hospitalizations, given today's widespread testing compared to past flu epidemics. One easy comparison to past flu seasons is to measure the overall average daily level of hospitalizations we're experiencing now to previous years, adjusting those numbers per capita to the existing population at the time. In other words, if all of today's hospitalized 'Covid patients' are in fact there 'because of Covid', we'd see a huge excess in the number of people hospitalized at any given moment. Florida, where lockdowns are unknown and people aren't required to wear masks, simply isn't seeing any such increase.

The government keeps track of total daily hospital levels in all 50 states dating back to Jan. 1, 2020. Looking at the average daily total hospitalization levels in Florida for the fourth quarter of 2020 we find the average occupancy level to be 43,150. Measuring number that against levels in previous years, starting with the first quarter of 2018, which included the worst flu season we'd had in a decade, we find that 41,094 people were hospitalized on an average day. Taking Florida's population at that time into account, that would be 1,972 hospitalizations per 1 million people, compared to 1,998 hospitalizations per 1 million people the last quarter of 2020, when Covid was promoted as the most worrisome flu like illness.

Hospital numbers for the fourth quarter of 2020 were approximately 6% to 8% higher than in the fourth quarter of the previous two years, but barely higher than the first quarters of those years. Comparing the latest 2020 hospitalization levels to the worst months of previous years makes it clear that the flu isn't a factor this year. Covid-19 in reality is this year's version of the flu. So, with traditional flu cases down almost 99%, we're safe to assume that the January census will not grow as it does during typical peak flu seasons.

In states with lockdowns and mask restrictions in place, these measures are pointed to as the reason hospital numbers aren't worse than they are. Control advocates loudly parrot the idea that these reduced numbers are directly attributed to the strict control measures they've put in place, completely ignoring the massive economic and social costs associated with such heavy handed highly restrictive measures - and of course not acknowledging that such claims have been broadly exposed as void of any real truth.

Florida serves as the ideal control group when evaluating such 'shut it down and stay home' claims, given that the Sunshine State imposes no lockdowns, and there have been no restrictions whatsoever on life and living in place there for many months.

I will only say that my sister-in-law is a Nurse in Miami and it is not good. What we hear, unless you have someone on the inside, is only as good as what is reported or what the controlling interest want you to hear. Florida is not better than anywhere else in the US. We also have friends who are retired Doctors, husband and wife, have houses in New York City (Long Island) and Miami. They went south to their house in Miami when NYC was in bad shape and are now back at their house on Long Island. Lock downs do work, just look at New Zealand for the best case.

rocmoc n AZ

Florida's population is 21,477,737 and reports 22,200 Covid-19 deaths. California's population is 39,512,223 and reports 27,430 deaths.

Interesting case/death ratio by population with the main difference being lockdown and mask mandates.

Florida has a history of suppressing Covid data, so it's difficult to view the comparison as apples/apples.