Letter from Great Britain – 01-16-21

“The Financial Jigsaw” has been serialised here and now is replaced by this weekly “Letter from Great Britain.”

NOTE – If anyone would like an electronic copy of the complete book, I should be pleased to email a free PDF on request to: [email protected]. Also a hardcopy of the book, “The Financial Jigsaw” is available priced at £25 GBP plus P&P in A4, workbook format, bound with clear plastic covers, printed locally on demand.

This week I have been looking at our government statistics for total deaths in the UK.  I was prompted to do this because the BBC incessantly reports ‘Covid deaths’ each week but fails to put their numbers into the context of overall deaths to be expected at this time of year.  There are many health officers screaming that the NHS is being overwhelmed and is close to failure as the reported death counts are increasing. I think that the BBC should publish overall deaths as well as measuring excess deaths over the normal to be expected.

Encouraged by my doctor friend in Australia, who is an expert in this field, I was surprised to learn that our government publishes all this information freely available on the internet.  This 2 page report shows that a glance at the graph on page one should tell you all you need to know:  PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND – All-Cause Mortality Surveillance, 7 January 2021 – Week 1 report (up to week 53 data)

In week 53, 2020, no statistically significant excess all-cause mortality of death was observed overall in England through the EuroMOMO algorithm. In the devolved administrations, no statistically significant excess all-cause mortality for all ages was observed for Wales or Northern Ireland in week 53.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/950313/Weekly_report_mortality__w1.pdf   Make what you will of this revelation but clearly this report is not viewed by most of the public in general who naively rely on the MSM for their information.

Furthermore, according to government stats, on 6 January 2021 an amazing 1,364,821 people, nearly half of so-called “confirmed” cases, recovered from COVID-19 in a single day.  Last year, nobody could recover in England. They could in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland; but not in England. Why was that?  What goes on in the minds of the Boris and his team, who try to convince thinking people that a virus can disappear at 10.00 p.m., and when the virus has actually disappeared for good, get everyone vaccinated against it, is beyond the comprehension of mere mortals.

High-salaried gurus in government think-tanks must have come up with an idea that if nobody recovered from COVID-19 then everybody who died from any cause could be recorded as a COVID-19 death; but that was before a vaccine was available.  The problem now with previous thinking is that these untested vaccines are available and maybe killing or maiming people – there need to be signs of recovery or people will refuse to take the vaccine.  It would appear they never thought of that when they were falsely bumping up the death-rates from a virus with their “get COVID-19 and you’ve got it for life” philosophy.

I therefore have to question the extreme measures being implemented by our leaders.  Not only are lockdowns continuing but our public health authorities are requesting even more restrictions with increased enforcement.  Our police are active in the community herding people to remain in their homes for months to come.  Tough messages are still being issued by police in an effort to enforce the latest lockdown.

            “The police force urged people to “stay local” and avoid travelling outside their village, town or city.  Ex-Durham Police chief constable Mike Barton said politicians needed to keep their messaging “simple” around Covid-19 regulations and avoid changing the rules as much.  He made the comments after the two women were fined by Derbyshire Police after travelling separately to Foremark Reservoir from their homes in Leicestershire across their county border for a socially distanced walk.  They said they were surrounded by police officers before being told the two drinks they had separately bought from Starbucks constituted a ‘picnic’.

            Mr Barton told BBC Breakfast on Saturday: “I think personally Derbyshire will row back from this position, but sadly there will be some damage done here because, for the public to comply with the law, they have got to think and see the police are acting fairly.  “It’s called procedural justice. If police aren’t seen to be acting fairly, the public won’t comply.”  Lockdown guidance urges the public to limit exercise – including running, cycling, swimming and walking – to once per day, and says people can leave their home but should not travel outside their local area.”  https://www.inyourarea.co.uk/news/police-forces-across-england-issue-fines-for-lockdown-breaches/

The government are under pressure this week to tighten up the lockdown rules.  It seems that the current rules are confusing and causing people to mix a lot more than last March.  “Sources said the government was actively considering telling people to wear masks outdoors as the NHS faces its “most dangerous” point. A further 4,193 people were reported to have gone to hospital with coronavirus on Monday, bringing the current total to 32,294.

A ban on people in England walking or exercising with anyone from outside their household is also on the table, with sources saying it was “under active consideration”. Ministers have been urged by trade unions to focus on underlining the need for home working as figures show that traffic on the tube in London – often used by commuters – is more than three times higher than in the first lockdown.

            Asked about enforcing rules in supermarkets, one senior police leader said “we won’t be doing that”, adding: “Do people really want the police telling you: ‘that’s not above your nose’? There are no extra officers. Everything else [crime] is still happening. Where is the greater risk: do you put two people in a supermarket not wearing masks before a woman suffering domestic violence?  “You need clearer, consistent messaging, not new rules and more enforcement.”

Police are being quicker to issue fines to those they believe will not comply with the rules but are wedded to an approach of trying to encourage people. Police in England and Wales have issued around 30,000 penalty notices, while counterparts in France have issued over 1 million.”  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/11/police-in-england-say-they-wont-enforce-masks-in-supermarkets

What is actually in doubt is how effective lockdowns are in controlling transmission of Covid.  “Naturally, proponents of lockdowns have long said that strong government action prevented all kinds of horrors. If anything, the poor outcomes we had in the spring and the fall indicated that we didn’t do enough. Skeptics, on the other hand, said that lockdowns did nothing but harm our societies ‒ physically, economically, and mentally ‒ and that infection rate curves moved the way they did regardless of what strong-worded politicians implemented, and often before their strong policies took effect. The August NBER paper by Andrew Atkeson, Karen Kopecky and Tao Zha, ‘Four Stylized Facts about COVID-19’ spells out the uncomfortable position for most policy-makers: the virus seems to spread rapidly, kill selectively, and in no way responds to anything that well-meaning politicians have thrown at it

The general corona debate quickly became a battle of pointing to this or that country: Lockdowners picked Australia and New Zealand; skeptics picked Sweden and Taiwan. The angry feuds in political arenas and editorial pages were off to the races. Death rates in Sweden far outstripped those of its neighboring countries, a topic on which we already in August tried to bring some clarity. To an American and British audience who couldn’t tell Bergen from Ystad, or slurred Danish from Finnish diphthongs, higher death rates and weaker restrictions were conclusive evidence that Sweden’s slightly-more-open strategy had failed. Never mind that the Nordic countries may differ in other respects. One-variable statistical analysis at its worst while practically no one compared Sweden to the much worse-performing UK, Belgium or France.

Maybe countries greatly differed from one another in ways that would make such naive comparisons completely misleading: demographics, population densities, the size of the Covid-shock, the effect of government advice, the soft cultural values of how real people interact and how they responded to the pandemic. Besides, all these countries introduced so many new policies and behavioral changes that even those of us who tried to make sense of them quickly lost track.”  https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-dont-prevent-coronavirus-spread/

AND here is Dr Malcolm Kendrick, medical doctor and author, who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England:  “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’?  What to believe? Who to believe?

            I have stripped away at the accuracy of PCR Covid-19 testing. I found myself left with nothing I could make any sense of. I hacked down to establish the way that Covid-19 deaths are recorded. All I found were assumptions and difficulties.  Did someone die with Covid-19, of Covid-19 – or did it have nothing to do with the virus? Who knows? I certainly don’t, and I’ve written some of the death certificates myself.  Have we overestimated deaths, or underestimated deaths? I do not know

            Is Covid deadlier than influenza? Well, it is certainly deadlier than most strains of influenza. However, Spanish flu was estimated to have killed 50 million, when the world’s population was about a fifth of what it is now. So it is definitely less deadly than that; about as deadly as the influenzas of 1957 and 1967, probably?  Will it mutate into something worse? Who knows. Will the current vaccines work on mutated strains?  Can it be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers? How effective are the current vaccines going to be?  What are we left with?

            If you have had a positive Covid test (which may, or may not, be accurate) and you die within 28 days of that test, you will be recorded as a Covid-19 death. I may not know much for sure about Covid-19, but I do know this is complete nonsense.  There are so many cases where – even if the test was accurate – Covid-19 would have had nothing to do with the death. Another that we probably know is that the vast majority of people who die with the virus had many other things wrong with them.”  This is an authentic article from a qualified doctor – worth a read:  https://www.rt.com/op-ed/511467-covid-confusion-deaths-lockdown/

UK has agreed a trade deal with the EU. I will comment on the progression of this deal as it affects the UK economy. 

This is a good article about why the Brits actually found the courage to leave the EU.  “For decades a parade of prime ministers implored the E.U. to halt its efforts for the closer integration of nations. Their entreaties fell on deaf ears.

On came the E.U. flag, the E.U. anthem, rules and regulations on literally every facet of human life. Officials began talking about a “federation” of states, with a common foreign policy and army. And then the common currency: the euro, a fraud of monumental proportions because it sought to replace national currencies that are based upon the economic realities of each nation with the illusion of fiscal strength based on “solidarity.” It is, in reality, deeply dishonest with a distinctly anti-American flavour. Ever suspicious of Continental combinations, the British looked on in anger. When they finally had their say, they wanted out.

Brexit sent shock waves throughout Europe because it was the beginning of the realization among Europeans that it didn’t have to be this way, life could be different and it was in their power to make it so. In an interview following the referendum the very pro-E.U. French president was asked if he would hold a similar one for the French. “Non,” he replied: But why not – “because we might lose.”

https://www.takimag.com/article/the-slow-implosion-of-the-european-union/ Perhaps this is a lesson in democracy that America will eventually learn as the States exert their own policies of independence and eschew the current farce that the elites call freedom.

To be continued next week.

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Author: Austrian Peter

Peter J. Underwood is a retired international accountant and qualified humanistic counsellor living in Bruton, UK, with his wife, Yvonne. He pursued a career as an entrepreneur and business consultant, having founded several successful businesses in the UK and South Africa His latest Substack blog describes the African concept of Ubuntu - a system of localised community support using a gift economy model. View all posts by Austrian Peter