Comments by "Dale Crocker" (@dalecrocker3213) on "" video.

No, because they aren't wrong. You , on the other hand, are revealing your inner fascist by suggesting prison sentences for people whose opinions you disagree with.
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Efforts which have dramatically failed and many of which have made the situation worse.
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@peteryoungpeteryoung965 Your inner fascist is showing again, young Peter. Now, if the worthy inhabitants of the Forest of Dean happened to be black, you couldn't have said that, could you?
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t least 100,000 would have died anyway being in their eighties and nineties or suffering from an existing condition. Current death rates from all causes are in no way remarkable.
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@davidpowell6098 Careful. Your inner Nazi is showing.
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They have considerable scientific evidence to back them. Numerous peer reviewed studies have shown that lockdowns do not reduce death rates and only slow down infection rates to some degree. The coronavirus stopped "raging" some months ago. No more people have died this winter than in many previous years and the problem of excess hospitalisations should have been dealt with by training nurses up to ICU standards. This is what we should concentrate on now in preparation for next winter when there is the possibility that Covid 19 will once again emerge as the preponderant seasonal respiratory infection with a higher level of serious, but generally non-fatal cases to be dealt with.
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Their suggestions are far from lunatic, Destroying the economy and adding to world-wide poverty with measures that save politicians' skins but have no effect on deaths IS a bit silly though.
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@pauls3204 Are no people reaching retirement age to take over from those who have died? That is really amazing.
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Carl Stone Can you be more specific? I only have A level biology from many years ago and an understanding of evolution, I think. But it seems to me (and to several specialists also ) that when competition increases (ie in a lockdown) then any small advantage a variant may have comes immediately into play enabling that variant to become dominant. Statistical evidence backs this up. There is a steady upward climb in influenza variants as time proceeds but the number of covid variants has shot up steeply consequent upon lockdowns.
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What's really crazy is supporting policies which destroy the economy, cause babies to die of malnutrition, increase mental illness and alcohol deaths plus suicides and deaths from untreated cancers and other conditions while having no effect whatsoever upon this disease which in itself has less impact than many influenzas.
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@pauls3204 You obviously didn't read the second part of my post which covers this very point.
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@teddansonLA Working from the bottom up: This winter has been no worse than many previous winters in terms of deaths. The five year average is just a very small window, and you only have to go back to 2003 to find a similar death rate (10.2 per 1,000). In the previous century this death rate was exceeded very many times. In 2020, of course, we suffered the equivalent of TWO winter death rates when Covid 19 first hit the vulnerable population in the Spring. The point is that the chief problem with this disease is the very severe effects its novelty creates in a proportion of victims. Reasonably healthy young and middle-aged people can go through a very bad time. They are unlikely to die, but their suffering will be considerable. This is why it is essential to ensure ICU units are capable of being properly staffed in the event of Covid 19 becoming the main respiratory infection next winter. I dispute that death rates show a direct correlation with infection rates to the degree you suggest. The death rate from Covid 19 depends as much upon the number of people available to die as it does the amount of infections. Since the inefficiency of PCR testing makes the latter figure impossible to accurately estimate all we have to go on is the number of people who actually die and whom doctors judge Covid 19 to have been the underlying cause. This is around 80% of the number of people to die within 28 days of a positive test. A very detailed study published via the Lancet at the height of the pandemic concluded that lockdowns have no effects upon death rates. Subsequent studies have supported this conclusion, the latest being a peer reviewed study from Stanford. There is much confusion between IFR and Case Fatality Rate, as well as various other fatality rates which depend upon a variety of statistical inputs. The point is that the disease is highly selective in whom it kills. There are even some suggestions that lockdowns can actually INCREASE fatality rates, since the vulnerable elderly and frail can find themselves in social situations where they have increasing contact with potentially infectious younger people.
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@teddansonLA Here are links to the Lancet approved study and a Newsweek article on the Stanford study. As to the potential increase in Covid deaths due to lockdowns, this certainly fits in with my layman's assessment of what is likely to be actually going on in the real world, When people are at work or children are at school they are less likely to come into contact with vulnerable elderly people than when they are wandering round the streets or visiting granny. There are nor supposed to do these things, but they will. The point was made in a study published in the BMJ some months ago. It is in fact a projection based on some of Neil Ferguson's figures, of all things; but I feel it might have some validity https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext Lancet on lockdowns. https://archive.vn/QGyET Stanford U on lockdowns Jan 12 Newsweek article
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Been trying to send you links to the BMJ article I mentioned plus some expert views on the inadequacy of PCR but YouTube keeps turning them down Can't imagine why,
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@teddansonLA No. I'm saying that at least one study has supported my view that lockdown situations can lead to increased social contact between potential carriers and the frail vulnerable, rather than less. I don't understand your assertion that lockdowns have completely reversed the trends over the past five months. Surely the trends have generally followed a normal winter progress up until the point where the new UK variant kicked in - itself a product of evolutionary response to the earlier pigs breakfast of on/off tiered regional lockdowns?
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@teddansonLA Once again I have to say there is a considerable body of medical opinion which disagrees with this view. My little library of PCR doubters seems to have been corrupted for some reason, but this one I have managed to rescue. He is only an assistant professor at Harvard, but I don't think you could describe him as a conspiracy theory nut job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vvgefwKgSU
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@teddansonLA This is where I get a bit bemused. As a non mathematician (indeed as someone in awe of the incomprehensible power and magic of numbers) I find it hard to accept that a failure rate of 1 in 15 cannot seriously undermine any conclusions based up the data obtained - even more so since this is an average number and there may be even more substantial failure rates in geographically separate samples. When this suspect information is fed into a model based upon an entirely different scenario - ie influenza epidemics as opposed to a novel covid epidemic - then is strikes me that any conclusions drawn from this exercise deserve to be treated with considerable caution. I have brought Professor Carl Heneghan back to life and he seems to me to be expressing similar views, though obviously in a far more technically informed way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ5GKKvOVlo&t=66s
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@teddansonLA Hmm. I still think the tools you are using are probably too crude and cobbled together and are leading to dangerous situations. Are you aware of the paper below? I cannot pretend to have read or understood more than a fraction of it, but it makes it pretty clear that for insurance purposes at least it is safe to assume that lockdowns have little or no effect on the welfare of the under 60s and can lead to increased deaths among the over 60s once they are lifted. That's how I interpret it anyway. I have always tended to pay heed to actuarial opinions in these matters. They earn their living by being right, unlike politicians and government scientists who have considerable more leeway. Worth a quick browse I would have thought. The initial abstract is meaty enough but there are plenty of surprises further along. The very fact that they consider it is a commercial proposition for insurance companies to offer policies indemnifying people against inadvertently infecting others is actually indicative of how relatively remote a possibility this is. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.09.20210146v3.full-text
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@teddansonLA Alas, we must agree to differ. I think it is possible that the simple cause and effect model you rely on is overly crude, and lends itself too readily to a process of continual self justification. Anyway, I personally can't see the dramatic consequences you claim. The fluctuating death and infection rates could just as easily be the result of the natural progression of the disease. The maths in the paper I sent you are of course completely beyond me but the tools they use seem a tad more sophisticated. It is no surprise to me that their models postulate that freedom of contact among healthy under sixties would result in a sufficient approximation of HIT to reduce the risks to the more elderly and vulnerable. For this reason the alleged uncouth behaviour of the Brits as opposed to the sober Swedes is of no great relevance. Belarus, for example, has imposed very few restrictions and their death and infection rates are in no way remarkable. Even Florida, with a very large elderly population has abandoned lockdowns and masks and appears to be doing no better or worse than states where severe restrictions continue to be imposed. The disaster of Covid 19 isn't such a disaster when you step back from it. It is a culling disease and almost without exception those who have died had a very short life expectancy anyway. The other major impact - severe symptoms among some otherwise healthy people - continue to be addressed by the therapeutic treatments which are constantly being devised. Vaccines should ensure infections are kept to a minimum and herd immunity must surely be very near. Constant lockdowns are an hysterical over-reaction and, at best, only put off the inevitable and may very probably make the inevitable worse when it does arrive. And this is apart from the incredible damage they undeniably do to economies, livelihoods and, indeed, general health. There will hopefully be a full investigation into how we have handled the pandemic when it is all over. The debate will doubtless continue but I for one hope that the next time something similar happens we will deal with it in a more restrained and thoughtful manner.
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@teddansonLA But I don't think my assessment of "normal winter deaths" or my reservations about the value of PCR are nonsense. Deaths this winter are no higher than in many previous years and it could be said that it has been the low number of winter deaths in some of the previous ten or so years which have been "abnormal." And of course there is a considerable body of informed professional opinion which has grave doubts about the usefulness of PCR - certainly to the degree which is relied upon at present. The two opinions I sent you are only two among many, as I am sure you are aware. As to that paper I'm sure it is heretical enough to get a tough ride when and if it goes to peer review. That doesn't mean it may not be largely right though.
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@teddansonLA We're going over the same ground. I concede, obviously, that Covid 19 has killed many people - it's just that I suspect my definition of "previous" may be more extended than yours. Fringe or not, those who hold reservations about the validity of PCR vis-a-vis Covid 19 are expert enough and experienced enough to be entitled to their opinion. I am entitled to choose it over other opinions -because it makes more sense to me. As far as the contentious paper and London are concerned, you may be right but in my ignorance I thought that scenario was a projection based on assumptions other than those which have actually occurred. I'm not holding this study our as gospel by any means, but it certainly provides food for thought.
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@teddansonLA PCR obviously has its uses, but "excellent" might be putting it a bit strong. "Like saying you've got a Derby winner by looking a hair from a horse's mane," as one doctor rather graphically put it. I'm afraid it's stuff like that which gets to me, rather than a procession of figures and statistics. Anyway, aren't there better tools on the market now? Rapid antigen testing for instance?
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@teddansonLA Do you know what? I'm getting rather turned around by your faith and devotion to your cause. Obviously there is no absolute way to decide for certain if anyone has the disease, and if PCR is the best we've got, then I suppose it will have to do - as long as it is recognised that results are not precise. What we do with this information is of course another matter!
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@teddansonLA Same here. Adieu.
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@Justa Numba Thanks to covid lockdowns the rich have indeed got richer and the poor got poorer. Your view of what rich people do with their money does amuse me somewhat, however. You seem to imagine them sitting on piles of it on some exotic island, smoking cigars, swigging champagne and cackling all the while. It's not like that. Somewhere along the line that money has to work for them, and unless they are in the near criminal trade of hedge fund short selling, that means employing people to ensure the companies they have invested in show a profit. These people will be paid wages to allow them, hopefully, to put food on the table. Obviously capitalists often have a vested interest in keeping wages as low as possibly, but not so much that their employees starve.
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@Justa Numba I think you are grossly exaggerating the impact of covid. There is no reason to suppose that anything like 20% of the population will suffer long-term effects. That's more than the percentage of the active population who have actually had it. The number of people disabled from it will be almost negligible - and certainly no more than those disabled as a consequence of influenza. There is no doubt though that capitalism is changing - and being made to change by those capitalists who are at the top end of its current incarnation. The New World Order and the Great Reset are very real and take the form of an unholy alliance between the mega-rich and socialist principles of organisation. Socialism is being successfully commandeered by the one per cent to further its aims. What these aims are they won't be telling us. The only thing you can be sure of is that whatever they tell you they are will be a lie.
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@peteryoungpeteryoung965 Presumably if they voted him in they have already done their bit.
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@peteryoungpeteryoung965 Deaths "with" covid, not from. And covid has largely replaced influenzas as the dominant respiratory infection. And the fact that it first hit in the Spring, taking out an accumulation of frail elderly who had survived the preceding two or three years of mild flu seasons, meant that 2020 had the equivalent of two winter killing seasons. Despite this the death rate was only 10.2 per 1,000. This was the worst death rate since 2003. Before that similar death rates were generally the norm. Having said that, I have every sympathy for your daughter. Death rates are not what this should be about. The most traumatic effect is the number of generally fit people who have a serious reactions to the illness. They suffer unbearably without extremely considered treatment. Generally they will not die but easing their suffering uses up ICU resources which are inadequate for the purpose. Lockdowns should only be used to enable health services to be geared up to meet such a demand. This the government did not do. They threw up some emergency hospitals and filled them with beds but did nothing to ensure they were staffed properly. I have heard it said that it would be entirely possible to train up ward nurses and even nursing assistants to a sufficient level of competence to be able to safely monitor covid ICU patients. I wonder what your daughter's reaction to this suggestion might be?
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@peteryoungpeteryoung965 I do not support the present government. Far from it. And I have, as it happens, spent a couple of years on the sharp end in the NHS as a theatre porter in a heart and lung hospital, taking patients down to theatre, being on call to fetch bloods and equipment, assisting in various ways and if things didn't go well, wheeling their bodies down to the morgue. Thankfully this was rare. What I dislike intensely about the present situation is the way in which it is being exploited for political purposes - by all sides. We have lost all sense of perspective. We are being bullied and frightened into accepting a new way of thinking and behaving which does not fit the circumstances and presents far greater dangers than the disease itself. Covid 19 has meant that in terms of population more people died last year than any year since 2003. Thar's all. It's not great news but in terms of impact and years of useful and enjoyable life lost it is far less significant that the Hong Kong Flu of 1968/69 which killed many children and young people. I was a young man myself at the time and had other things on my mind, but I don't remember anyone making much of a fuss about it. Situations such as this require courage and clear thinking. We should not allow it to be used to herd us into an uncertain and potentially dreadful future.
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Lockdowns create the variants. Fact.
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@matbritton6816 Herd immunity is the only solution, whether aided by vaccines or not. The NHS won't crumble under the strain because the pandemic is over. This is just the endemic stage and although severe covid infections are harder to deal with than severe influenzas new treatments are being found all the time.
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@matbritton6816 Many studies have shown that a healthy body and a healthy mind have far more effect on reducing the impact of Covid 19 than the nonsense of lockdowns. I'm not surprised to learn that Siva's medicine is of help in this regard.
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@matbritton6816 It's a question of matching one thing against another. Lockdowns have terrible widespread effects. The WHO estimates 1.6 billion people in the poorest countries of the world will be pushed over the line into untenable poverty as a result of the economic effects of lockdowns in developed countries. That means malnutrition. That means babies starving to death. How many dead babies are worth an extra month or two of life for a senile and incontinent Western 90-year old? The equation is even more grotesque when you realise that lockdowns are probably not having that effect anyway. They often mean more social contact between carriers and the vulnerable elderly, rather than less.
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Carl Stone Wrong on every count. In terms of deaths to population the Hong Kong Flu of 1968/69 killed as many as covid - but is was much, much worse since many of them were children and young people whose lives were cut short. Your second sentence makes no sense at all.
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Carl Stone No more than anyone else. No more than you, I bet.
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@teddansonLA I refer you to my answer to your other post. No-one is saying that Covid 19 has had no effect on deaths, but the chief effect has been the result of the Spring anomaly when thousands of frail elderly who had escaped mild flu seasons in previous years had no resistance to the novel coronavirus. The concept of "excess deaths" is merely the difference between the amount of deaths which actually occurred and projections of what that amount should have been if various trends had continued. Obviously the Spring anomaly has knocked these projections for six, but the fact remains that the extreme old age of the majority of victims means that their life expectancy was severely limited. They didn't die in 2016-19 say, but they would almost certainly be dead by 2026. Current death rates are in fact not remarkable other than compared with very recent years. Daily deaths from all causes are generally between 1,500 and 2,000+ a day at the height of winter and the only thing that is odd is that at the moment up to three-quarters of those who have died have tested positive for Covid 19.
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@teddansonLA We seem to be largely in agreement on detail, but not on interpretation. From the bottom up again: Covid seems to be replacing influenzas (as well as, remarkably other CODs) The stats are going to need thorough investigation to explain this and several other anomalies. This goes back to the point that those who die from Covid are those who can generally be expected to die anyway. This is not seeking to dismiss the disease, it is to put it into perspective. Once again, although Covid has undoubtedly wreaked its share of havoc that can almost entirely be traced to the Spring anomaly. The gradual decrease in mortality that has taken place this century has been far from an even decline (it never is) but the trend had already begun to change anyway. The Covid 19 pandemic has knocked us back 20 years, certainly, but it seems very likely that its impact will not become so apparent in the future. It will become incorporated into the long list of those things sent to try us. Lockdowns are another matter. They destroy economies and livelihoods. The knock-on effects on the Third World are horrendous. Babies are starving to death as a result of them. And they don't seem to do much good anyway. We will be suffering from the effects of lockdowns long after Covid 19 has become just another component of the common cold. You are familiar with the term "dry tinder" I'm sure. That was all I meant in my first paragraph.
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@teddansonLA We are arguing over the same ground. I do not dispute your figures, but merely wish to put them into a historical perspective. Lockdowns are only recommended by the WHO as a means to buy time to enable health services NOT to be overrun. This we have clearly failed to do, largely by failing to train ward nurses up to ICU standard. In any event the idea that there is a direct and predictable relation between the number of infections and the number of hospitalisations and deaths is clearly not apparent. I am no mathematician but I have just about managed to grasp the distinction between homogenous and heterogenous models and this clearly fits in with my layman's instinct of what happens on the ground. In a situation where the disease is as selective in its effects as Covid 19 it clearly makes more sense to isolate those likely to be severely affected than to treat the entire population as though they are likely to suffer severe outcomes, or even to individually be equally likely to pass the infection on to vulnerable subjects. Under these circumstances a 200-500,000 death toll seems totally untenable. For this to be true surely the entire population would have to be equally capable of contracting the disease and equally capable of dying from it, which is clearly not the case.
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@teddansonLA I am obviously not qualified to argue with on the maths in any detail. All I can do is ask if you are familiar with the work of Prof Gabriella Gomes and her team? In August they came up with a model which predicted that if an R number of 1.4 is maintained herd immunity could be reached by October. I can however dispute the impossibility of bringing nurses up to ICU standard. If training was restricted to monitoring respiratory illness patients most ward nurses and even nursing assistants could be made capable of fulfilling these functions if properly supervised. And this is what is needed more than anything else, just in case Covid does come up with some nasty surprises next winter.
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@teddansonLA As I said, I can't argue the maths, only point out mathematicians with different views. Professor Gomes, for instance, seemed to insist that 1.4 could well be maintained without lockdowns and since the R number remains uncertain, given the uncertainty of the accuracy of infection rates, she could well have been right. As I am sure you are aware some very qualified people have called PCR tests into question, both in terms of their accuracy and in terms of the statistical anomalies they seem to produce. I also notice that you admit the models are based upon previous experience with influenzas. I don't think that Covid's infection and mortality rate broadly follows similar age-range patterns at all. The number of people who have died under the age of 70 is far less proportionately than has been the case with any preceding influenza I am aware of. This must surely influence mortality predictions to a considerable extent. My point with regard to ICU nurses remains valid. It would cost far less to bring existing nurses up to suitable ICU standard, or even bring in agency nurses from abroad, that it is to pour out billions into lockdown relief measures. The job really consists in monitoring patients very closely and responding to any significant changes into their condition. At the height of hospitalisations this winter one nurse was having to monitor three patients at a time. This is clearly unsatisfactory the ratio should be as close as one to one as possible and there were probably enough ward nurses in empty wards to do the job if they had been given sufficient training.
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There were 44 million people in the UK in 1942. There are 70 million today. Those who died in World War II were young and healthy with all their lives ahead of them. Those killed by covid have been pretty exclusively of very advanced age or with short life expectancies due to pre-existing medical conditions.
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@neilmchardy9061 Pretty much.
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