Written by Rodney Atkinson

 

 

This article was first published in Free Nations, and we re-publish with the kind permission of the author. 

(Read Part I here) 

According to Worldometer statistics hardly anyone in Britain recovers from coronavirus! Despite having over 17,000 cases only 135 have, according to the statistics, recovered. By contrast in France 7,900 and in Germany 15,800 have recovered. Either our health service is a disaster or we have some very incompetent statisticians!

VIRUS FLIGHTS AND THE  HEATHROW SCANDAL

A leading London virologist said some weeks ago that there might be no great problem if the “virus did not land in some place like Heathrow Airport”. But that is what the British Government deliberately allowed to happen – because their “experts” told them planes landing from infected areas of the world was not a great threat!

On the 30th March the following number of flights which landed in Heathrow from COVID-19 hotspots were:

From Madrid 12

From Shanghai 4

From Milan 12

On January 1st 175,000 left Wuhan, the centre of the coronavirus in China. By the end of January 7m Wuhan residents had left for other cities and human to human transmission had begun in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. Wuhan locked down on the 23rd January.

But international travel continued as normal. 900 to New York every month on average, 2,200 to Sydney, 15,000 to Bangkok (first overseas case in mid January). The USA confirmed the first case in Seattle. By the time the USA shut down flights for Chinese, 30 cities in 26 countries had been infected.

So both within China – as the virus spread from Wuhan to surrounding towns and other major cities – and between China and the rest of the world it was aircraft flights which carried the infection.

But British “experts” thought differently.

AND NOW THE PANIC OF THE EXPERTS

Professor Whitty the Chief Medical Officer for England told the British people in January when the first cases were identified that the NHS was ‘extremely well-prepared for managing infections’. But not apparently this one with its modest number of deaths.

On the BBC’s Question Time the Editor of the Lancet said Richard Horton said the coronavirus was

“a national scandal…we knew this was coming…with pandemic potential to hit cities”

Unfortunately for him he had said in January:

A call for caution please. Media are escalating anxiety by talking of a “killer virus” + “growing fears”. In truth, from what we currently know, 2019-nCoV has moderate transmissibility and relatively low pathogenicity. There is no reason to foster panic with exaggerated language.

The Times noted that just five weeks ago, on 21st February, Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London was a member of a Public Health England Committee which judged Coronavirus was only a “moderate risk” to Britain.

He then caused the Government to abandon its strategy (of social distancing, protecting the old and vulnerable and allowing “herd immunity” to defeat the virus) and instead impose complete social and economic lockdown as he predicted 260,000 dead and even with a lockdown 20,000 dead.

A week later he said that “it could be a lot less than 20,000 dead”. Shortly after that Ferguson said that the dead would probably total 7,000 “but it could be much less”.

Is that consistent advice? Is that calming the situation? Is that giving Government confidence in their “experts”?

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION

When Taiwan reported the existence of a novel coronavirus with potentially widespread effects to the WHO this organisation for world health ignored it.

In early March the WHO grossly overstated the fatality rate for the coronavirus by manipulating flawed statistics and assumptions. The death rate WHO said was 3.4% for the virus while the flu killed less than 1%.

But in the USA alone this season 2019-2020 (to 16th March) confirmed cases of flu (through testing) are 222,552 while deaths were 22,000 – a 10% rate! As testing rises for coronavirus the number of cases will rise and so the death rate will probably fall even further.

TIME WILL TELL

Time will tell which country’s strategy has been successful. Different countries had different forms of lockdown and at different times on their coronavirus “infection curve”.

I believe there will be remarkable little difference in the progress and dying out of this virus (since the standard curve will apply regardless, deaths will not be greatly different from annual flu and herd immunity will develop) but there could be a big difference in the condition of the economies of each nation – and the devastating effects of the lockdown on most individuals and families could be far worse than the virus itself.

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