# Tens of thousands of avoidable Covid deaths: is Cummings right?



## Northerner (May 29, 2021)

One of the most shocking allegations made by Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings during Wednesday’s joint parliamentary committee hearing was his claim that “tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die”, because of the way the government handled the Covid pandemic_._

His claims have some support from scientists, who have estimated that the toll from government delays could be as high as 33,000 lives.

Throughout the pandemic, scientists have accused the government of delaying the introduction of Covid restrictions, at the cost of lives. In June 2020, Prof Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London told MPs that had the first lockdown been imposed a week earlier, this would have saved at least 20,000 lives.

A month later, he and his colleagues warned of a potential new wave of Covid infections, which, combined with winter flu cases and a backlog of patients needing NHS care, posed a serious risk to health in the UK. Using a worst-case scenario, in which the reproduction number, R, rose to 1.7 in September, they predicted a peak in hospital admissions and deaths during January and February, and an estimated 119,000 associated hospital deaths between September 2020 and June 2021.









						Tens of thousands of avoidable Covid deaths: is Cummings right?
					

Scientists agree with the former adviser’s claim, with one calling the estimate ‘conservative’




					www.theguardian.com
				




Of course if, as predicted, Johnson overturns the fixed-term Parliament Act and calls an election in 2023, then the public inquiry will still be ongoing and the impact of current cuts and Brexit will not be fully felt  The electoral system needs reform, but as long as the Conservatives can rule as a minority (i.e. on 40% of the vote)  things won't change  Maybe the Scots will have escaped by then though, and NI is not going to be looking pretty for a while yet.


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## Drummer (May 29, 2021)

There are quite a few homes in this area and, having worked in one myself, the way that the staff worked was ideally suited to spreading things throughout the home. I got fed up of having to treat myself for scabies - 'senile eczema' they called it - well I have got a microscope, and it was right there waving its little legs in the air.
All the following is just hearsay, but it rings very true.
The managers of the homes were threatened with having their funding cut off if they did not accept people from hospitals.
The normal deliveries of gloves, masks and aprons were all stopped with no notice. There were people carrying used PPE home on busses to sterilise them overnight to use again.
Younger people working in the homes were running away, moving back to live with parents, going to their sisters, rather than go back to work in the homes once things were getting really bad and almost everyone seemed to have got Covid. 
There were elderly people being sedated because they could not be sent back to hospital. 
Everyone sent out of hospital to the homes had DNR on their notes.


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## mikeyB (May 30, 2021)

The public inquiry will be forced on the government before too long, particularly as the recent “revelations” from Cummings has sent the press rumbling. If Johnson delays the inquiry and attempts to repeal the fixed term Parliament Act, he will be crucified by the press, because doing so would almost be an admission of guilt, or at least an admission that some things will reflect badly on him. Teflon eventually wears out. For sure, there are more than 120,000 families who won’t be voting for him again, and those who did vote him in last time will be haviving second thoughts. That’s if they are capable of thinking. After all, many voted  for Brexit to stop South Asian immigration. So much for geography education in England.


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## nonethewiser (May 30, 2021)

We didn't need Cummings to tell us that it was widespread knowledge, govn screwed up & didn't lock down early enough or close borders soon enough, all will come out in inquery.


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## Northerner (May 30, 2021)

nonethewiser said:


> We didn't need Cummings to tell us that it was widespread knowledge, govn screwed up & didn't lock down early enough or close borders soon enough, all will come out in inquery.


I think that's why, whatever you think of Cummings, you can't dismiss what he said because it fits in very well with what we all know. Even in the best of times Johnson is a totally unsuitable person to govern a country - just because he's a vote-winner doesn't make him a wise leader  Back in the 1980s I wondered if the Conservatives could possibly do more long-term harm to the country for the sake of short-term gain (selling off housing stock and public monopolies etc.). With austerity, Brexit, 150k deaths, and with a very inexperienced government led by a narcissist, they've shown me they can


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## pm133 (May 30, 2021)

In a few weeks, it'll be summer, all restrictions will hopefully be removed, the Euros will be in full swing, England will be discussing another failure in a penalty shoot-out and nobody will be talking about this anymore.

A couple of months down the line, virtually everyone will be doubly vaccinated and all this covid talk will die down too. If we get through next winter relatively unscathed (no reason why we wouldn't) then it'll be all over bar the shouting.

In a couple of years we'll be back to discussing whether the UK can continue to keep Scotland tethered, things will move on and we'll barely even remember this last year.


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## Jojo catwoman (May 30, 2021)

Northerner I totally agree with you. I fear the NHS is dead on its feet  and we are returning to the past, where people just died. I think it's what this Gov want, get rid of the old and the sick to save money and increase their own coffers.


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## pm133 (May 30, 2021)

Jojo catwoman said:


> Northerner I totally agree with you. I fear the NHS is dead on its feet  and we are returning to the past, where people just died. I think it's what this Gov want, get rid of the old and the sick to save money and increase their own coffers.



?

You genuinely think the government actively want old people to die to save money and fill their own pockets? 

Leaving aside the cynicism here, you think they want to wipe out their core voter group?


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## Jojo catwoman (May 31, 2021)

pm133


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## pm133 (Jun 2, 2021)

Jojo catwoman said:


> pm133


Wow. What a bizarre thing to post.
I hope that whoever wrote that "poem" has another source of income.


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## pm133 (Jun 2, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> And it is for those reasons I believe lockdowns were brought in for more than just protecting the NHS and saving lives.
> 
> If just saving lives and protecting the NHS was their aim, they could of used similar draconian measures like banning smoking, alcohol, betting and casinos.
> 
> ...



When you ban things, you allow criminal gangs to take over the supply. Then you are left with a much bigger problem because not only have you not solved the original problem, you can now add organised crime and quality control issues to the pot. You also hand over the entirety of control over the problem to organised criminals but we still have to deal with the results. How that could ever be described as solving anything is beyond me.

You have to learn from history.
The USA tried this with alcohol and the result was absolutely catastrophic.
We're seeing this with drugs.
Bans don't work. I can't think of a single instance where it has worked.
If I was king, I'd remove the ban on all drug use as well. I guarantee that you'd see an improvement in the current drugs crisis. Unfortunately, they won't let me have access to the crown. 

Incidentally, given that the discussion was about the UK government, I'm not sure why you've quoted global death figures.


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## pm133 (Jun 2, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Not a problem @pm133  we can just use lockdowns to stop the supply and distribution.  They seem to have worked really well at closing bars, restuarants, schools, workplaces, shops, businesses etc no reason it can't work to stop criminal gangs too.


I'm going to assume you are joking.  

I believe banning alcohol in the USA resulted in an increase in alcohol consumption. It certainly resulted in a massive increase in criminality. A problem that many parts of the USA are still trying to recover from in terms of gangs and organised crime. Once organised crime gets a foothold, you've got a nightmare of a job getting rid of it. They move from one banned thing to another, which is why banning things in general is a bad strategy.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 2, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> They seem to have worked really well at closing bars, restuarants, schools, workplaces, shops, businesses etc no reason it can't work to stop criminal gangs too.


The problem with criminal gangs is that they tend not to follow the law. I'm sure they've been disrupted a bit by lockdowns but I imagine they've adjusted.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 2, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> If just saving lives and protecting the NHS was their aim, they could of used similar draconian measures like banning smoking, alcohol, betting and casinos.


I think the drive was always to protect the NHS enough that it didn't break too badly. (As things were, it was stressed enough that lots of non-COVID work just stopped happening for a while.)

The fear (back last March) was that we had infections doubling every few days and we knew the mess that parts of Italy had had dealing with the infection there (because it was shown on TV regularly). (And whatever the government might like to claim the NHS is worse equipped. We have fewer beds, fewer ICU beds, not as many nurses, doctors, GPs, etc., proportional to our population.)

That's quite different to road traffic accidents, smoking, alcohol, drugs, etc. Those are chronic issues, and governments can pretty much ignore them with reasonable confidence that if they do start spiking they'll have months to react.

Maybe governments ought to care more about such long term things. They can avoid doing so.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 2, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> One could argue that that is the very reason the uk had to lockdown?


It made things worse, sure, but other (better equipped) countries had to do much the same.

The issue is that infections behave exponentially, so if we had twice as many hospital beds, staff, etc., that would just have given us an extra few days. (The specific problem with this virus seems to be that around 10% of infected people need hospital treatment (now seems to be about 5% because it's mostly younger people now that older ones have been vaccinated) and once that became clearer I think the govt had little choice. Though DC claimed that Johnson wanted to be the Mayor in Jaws who kept the beaches open and not to lock down.)

Sweden was able to do some different things, but Sweden's a different country in lots of ways. (And it's not entirely clear how good a strategy it was anyway.)


Amity Island said:


> long term strains on our health service from alcohol and tabacco related health problems haven't been dealt with at source.


I don't know how significant that is. Tobacco use has been falling for decades now, and I'm not sure how significant a problem alcohol is. Weight is presumably an issue.

All things that governments don't like to talk about beyond blaming people for not eating right, drinking too much, etc., a strategy which we know doesn't work. Because they're all things that are tricky, and good solutions involve doing things like reducing inequality. So something that a Labour government might think about, but it's hard to do effective things because the benefits will mostly come many years later.


Amity Island said:


> There has been whispers about in the future refusing healthcare to smokers and drinkers with related health problems.


It's been talked about now and again but never seriously as far as I can tell.


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## pm133 (Jun 2, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> The issue is surely deaths and severe illness? not infections?


Agreed.

The problem is though that they'll be worried about two things.

1) That the link between cases and deaths has not been broken completely.
2) That the more a virus circulates the greater the chance of another variant which might defeat the vaccines.

I understand both but neither is a reason for continued restrictions right now. Open things up and if a new variant appears we'll deal with it then. If we're wrong about the link between cases and hospitalisations/deaths we'll deal with it then. If it turns out the vaccines aren't enough and we can't find a new vaccine then it's tough luck I'm afraid - we're just going to have to live with it.

All this endless, relentless caution, caution, caution is just so frustrating. Nobody wants to be the one in charge of these decisions if things go wrong. It's cowardice. Pure and simple. And our liberties and our economy are being curtailed because of it.

We simply cannot live like this forever and it';s staggering to think that people genuinely believe we can just continue restricting everything indefinitely.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 2, 2021)

pm133 said:


> We simply cannot live like this forever and it';s staggering to think that people genuinely believe we can just continue restricting everything indefinitely.


I don't think anyone's proposing that. More a delay of a couple of weeks to be more confident of what this delta variant is doing (and a couple of extra weeks of vaccinations).

And (I suspect worst case, if this variant looks bad) we wait until more adults have been fully vaccinated (if I understand correctly Israel is only recently entirely raising restrictions at about 70% of adults), so (I guess) some time in August for complete lifting of restrictions (presuming they continue reducing the gap between doses and so on).


pm133 said:


> All this endless, relentless caution, caution, caution is just so frustrating.


I don't think anyone could fairly accuse our government of having been overly cautious. Maybe they will be in this case, but I suspect they'll go ahead with their roadmap on time regardless of what the data say.


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## pm133 (Jun 2, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> I don't think anyone's proposing that. More a delay of a couple of weeks to be more confident of what this delta variant is doing (and a couple of extra weeks of vaccinations).
> 
> And (I suspect worst case, if this variant looks bad) we wait until more adults have been fully vaccinated (if I understand correctly Israel is only recently entirely raising restrictions at about 70% of adults), so (I guess) some time in August for complete lifting of restrictions (presuming they continue reducing the gap between doses and so on).
> 
> I don't think anyone could fairly accuse our government of having been overly cautious. Maybe they will be in this case, but I suspect they'll go ahead with their roadmap on time regardless of what the data say.



Don't forget that I'm in Scotland so things are a bit different up here.
Half of our country is stuck in level 2 and will remain there until the end of this month at the earliest.

Unlike England, we don't have an end date at all for all restrictions up here. We're expecting level 0 at some time in July but that still requires heavy restrictions, masks etc.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 2, 2021)

pm133 said:


> Don't forget that I'm in Scotland so things are a bit different up here.
> Half of our country is stuck in level 2 and will remain there until the end of this month at the earliest.


Ah, right. And Scotland _has_ been more cautious (at least, as much as the money permitted).

I think it would be helpful if the various governments were more open about what, specifically, they're looking for in data. 

We know they're all getting advice from the Joint Biosecurity Centre but as far as I know that doesn't publish minutes, has not public membership, etc. So is much like SAGE was.


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## pm133 (Jun 2, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> Ah, right. And Scotland _has_ been more cautious (at least, as much as the money permitted).
> 
> I think it would be helpful if the various governments were more open about what, specifically, they're looking for in data.
> 
> We know they're all getting advice from the Joint Biosecurity Centre but as far as I know that doesn't publish minutes, has not public membership, etc. So is much like SAGE was.


We're not being told exactly what they are looking for in order to drop all restrictions.
They are FINALLY understanding that cases are irrelevant as a standalone statistic as long as deaths/hospitalisations are flat (which they have been for many weeks).
Sturgeon and Leitch up here are finally acknowledging this which is why many areas will go down to level 1 (whatever that means) this weekend.

We're asking a very simple and perfectly reasonable question up here and it is this.
If vaccines are not enough, what's the end game? Restrictions for ever? Or do we live with it?


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## mikeyB (Jun 3, 2021)

There are 114 patients in hospital in Scotland with Covid 19. That's out of a population of approximately 5.5 million. Not exactly swamping NHS Scotland. I think the answer to your question is becoming apparent. We just have to live with it, and carry on vaccinating adults. In children, the death rate is lower than measles.


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## pm133 (Jun 3, 2021)

mikeyB said:


> There are 114 patients in hospital in Scotland with Covid 19. That's out of a population of approximately 5.5 million. Not exactly swamping NHS Scotland. I think the answer to your question is becoming apparent. We just have to live with it, and carry on vaccinating adults. In children, the death rate is lower than measles.


Oh the answer is obvious to most people. It's politicians who need to explain clearly why they are behaving they way they are.

This week they are opening soft play centres for kids in level 1 areas but not in level 2 areas. Some areas border each other so people in level 2 are taking kids to level 1 play areas as they are allowed by the rules to do - you are explicitly allowed to travel between areas at different levels for any reason.
Yesterday our Health Secretary warned parents in level 2 areas that they could kill kids in level 1 areas by doing the very thing his own government has explicitly allowed them to do.
This is the sort of nonsense we're living with up here and I know it's the sort of rubbish the English are having todeal with as well. The Welsh too. I remember them taping off non-essential sections in Tesco for example.

We were told that this was all about saving the NHS, which we all agreed with but it's way past that now and they haven't updated us about the grand plan as regards why we are still under restrictions with empty hospitals.

All of our governments need to justify what the hell they are thinking with this stuff because very little of any of these restrictions make sense any more.


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## pm133 (Jun 3, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> pm133,
> 
> So given it doesn't make any sense, have you been able to draw your own conclusion on why the governments are doing this, still.



Right. Grab a mug of tea. This is lengthy.

In my experience, when you see things like this happening, it's almost always incompetence.
Don't get me wrong here. I wouldn't know how to fix this problem without people dying either but the idea that Hancock and Johnson know what they are doing is frankly laughable.

Same goes for Sturgeon and Leitch up here.

None of them have the faintest idea what they are doing and they're making it up on the hoof. The people in charge have no experience whatsoever to call upon and those who are advising them are jostling for influence and power so they can't be trusted either. That's why so many loopholes are being discovered. Nothing has been thought through properly. Not one of them can explain the science behind why they think masks work. They have no idea. They don't know about pore sizes. They haven't an answer to the question about how they can possibly be doing anything when the masks leak 99% of all our outgoing breath going out the sides (because otherwise we'd suffocate). They talk knowingly about "droplets" without addressing the fact that this only helps with the relatively tiny amount of droplets produced when you cough or sneeze. They don't know about the vast majority of smaller aerosoled water particles which escape out the sides of the mask with every breath and are small enough to hang in the air for days carrying all your bacteria and viruses with them (which is why people get sick in offices). They don't have answers to points like these because they don't understand the basics of science. 

So why make us wear masks? I believe they know full well that they don't work as they say they do. They know full well they are mandating them because it's a visual reminder to people that there's a pandemic but they won't admit this for fear of non-compliance with social distancing (which absolutely is worth doing).

Other nonsense includes having neighbouring areas at different levels from each other but allowing people to travel between both. One has pubs open and the other hasn't so you see people travelling to the lower level area for a pint. This continues to catch out their ever-so-clever behavioural experts whether it be pubs, restaurants or soft play centres.

The list of examples of this type of stupidity is long and I thnk I've made my point.

Let's be absolutely clear here. We have been incredibly lucky. Despite successive governments running science and healthcare into the ground, we have scored a massive fluke. It's proper, credible scientists who have dug us out of this - those who designed the various working vaccines. Proper, credible scientists who have not indulged in media whoring and power grabbing because they've been too busy actually working on solutions. We should have been clapping THESE people on our doorsteps. My fear is that they will simply be overlooked as others claim the credit for saving our skins. Many of them won't even have permanent employment contracts. That's worth letting sink in for a second.

One final point. Those scientists who actually found a solution via vaccines have been telling us repeatedly that their vaccines absolutely smoke every known variant out there, virtually ending transmission and infection. And yet we are still being told by idiots in government and a handful of computational modellers who wouldn't recognise a real virus if it bought them a pint, that we just don't know. And STILL we insist on listening to the wrong people.
I want our governments to shut the hell up now and get the vaccination program ramped up to the hilt and let the rest of us get back to our lives in the meantime. We need nothing more from them.

Right I've done enough wittering on. 
Now it's your turn to say what you think is going on here.
Let's be having you...


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 3, 2021)

pm133 said:


> I want our governments to shut the hell up now and get the vaccination program ramped up to the hilt and let the rest of us get back to our lives in the meantime.


Yes to the first part. I'm obviously more cautious than you about the possibilities of significant harms to people before they're able to get vaccinated.

But yes, overall the evidence is still that the vaccines are working just fine. From the latest PHE variants they say
During the period of time that Delta became prevalent, there has been no increase in PCR-positive participants in the SIREN cohort overall (Figure 8) and reinfections remain at very low numbers in individuals previously either PCR positive or seropositive (Figure 9).​That's on page 34, talking about a cohort of (now) fully vaccinated healthcare workers who get tested every couple of weeks.

So while they also warn that Delta is more transmissible and (they think) significantly nastier (2.6 times more likely to put someone in hospital if I read it correctly, though with a big confidence interval), the answer's still basically to get vaccines to everyone as quickly as we can.


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## Docb (Jun 4, 2021)

Much in what you say @pm133.

I find the way terms like "risk" and "safe" are banded about by people who have no idea how to go about assessing risk level or safety very irrittating.  Equally annoying are the journalists who let them get away with it largely because they have no idea either.


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## pm133 (Jun 4, 2021)

Docb said:


> Much in what you say @pm133.
> 
> I find the way terms like "risk" and "safe" are banded about by people who have no idea how to go about assessing risk level or safety very irrittating.  Equally annoying are the journalists who let them get away with it largely because they have no idea either.



Yes it's very frustrating.
The problem with journalists is that they are under pressure to write attention grabbing articles so they are then writing stories they think people will want to read and unfortnuately fear and panic sells - good new stories don't. We can't depend on them to ask good searching questions about the validity of continued restrictions.

We should be going through a period of national rejoicing over the success of vaccines. We should be rejoicing at yet another variant being utterly smoked by our vaccines beyond what even the most optimistic amongst us had predicted. We should be lauding those charts showing numbers of cases against age groups when we see that all the vulnerable groups are now showing virtually no infection, transmission, hospitalisation or deaths. It's an stunningly successful outcome. An absolute triumph for proper, credible science.

Instead we're being bombarded with wittering, garbled, poorly researched nonsense about vaccine-avoiding super-variants when there's no evidence that any of those exist. Honestly, if I hear one more uneducated politician using the phrase "we just don't know" I'm going to completely lose my shit. 

Believe it or not, I'm not actually a ranter in real life. I'm a very positive person and I can put up with a lot. Masks have tipped me over the edge. It's funny to see what tips us into ranting buffoons. I wasn't expecting to be so enraged. It's probably the feeling of having my intelligence insulted by people who know considerably less about this stuff than I do. I remember hearing the news about it and, totally out of character, shouting "Are you f****g kidding me with this?" I remember my daughters coming into the room to find out what I was talking about. My eldest is a Physicist and she absolutely exploded when she found out. She's even angrier about it than I am.
I've certainly learned something about myself this last year.


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## pm133 (Jun 4, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Thanks @pm133
> 
> All sounds very much like typical office politics, power grabbing, promotion seeking, who shouts the loudest gets heard and noticed etc etc
> 
> ...



The problem is that you can tie yourself in knots over what you do or don't know for certain.

The reality is that right now Boris is sticking to the 21st June thing.
If he removes everything then Scotland will follow.

The key I think isn't the media contract.
It's the removal of furlough.
If they extend that then you can have a good degree of confidence that we're pretty much looking at next year before removing all restrictions.
In that context, yesterday's stuff with Sturgeon asking for an extension and Gove being open to that was very worrying.


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## trophywench (Jun 4, 2021)

I was wondering about the general efficacy of masks this very morning as my glasses steamed up yet again before starting to do the 'grocery' shopping in Tesco.  How much of anyone's breath is actually caught ......


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## pm133 (Jun 4, 2021)

trophywench said:


> I was wondering about the general efficacy of masks this very morning as my glasses steamed up yet again before starting to do the 'grocery' shopping in Tesco.  How much of anyone's breath is actually caught ......



Almost none or you would suffocate. Try pressing the sides of the mask to your face to "seal it" and see how easy it is to breathe. That'll give you an idea how much of what you are breathing in and out will be going in and out the sides. Alternatively, try blowing really hard at a lit match through the mask and see how much breath gets through. If you can blow out the match you've got a stronger pair of pipes than me.

It's really only going to capture large cough or sneeze droplets which people rarely do anyway. If people coughing and sneezing was a regular thing in shops, I'd turn round and walk out anyway.


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## pm133 (Jun 5, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> The other thing I would add that hasn't been said is, are those unnecessary deaths due to covid or did they just get the usual covid19 positive test treatment as so many others have during this pandemic.
> 
> What were the policies used in care homes? How were all those 25,000 elderly people from the hospitals treat in the care homes? How many had food and water withdrawn? Had their medical treatments stopped? How long will someone live without food and water? Does anyone have any answers on this?



Do you have any evidence that food and water were withdrawn?
That would be murder unless there was a good medical reason for it.


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## pm133 (Jun 5, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> pm133,
> 
> These types of stories (below) are becomming more frequent, particularly as we head toward the 21st June. Double vaccinated and negative tested but still put into quarantine.
> 
> ...



You can get tested at, say, 9am. By 9.05am you've come into contact with someone who is infected and now you have the virus. Your test result was from the time you were infection-free and so you get a negative result even though you have the virus. So, whilst a positive test result means you definitely have the virus (excluding false positives), a negative test means absolutely nothing. It's one of those "Absence of proof doesn't mean proof of absence" things.

You may well ask why we are mass testing perfectly healthy people. I understand the thinking behind track and trace but I'm not convinced that it's doing any good whatsoever. By the time you show a positive test, an asymptomatic person (the vast majority of covid cases are by the looks of it), you could literally have come into contact with hundreds or thousands of others. By the time all of those people have been tested, they would have done the same. The problem of isolating all of them is intractable. Then you have the problems of continual isolation where you come out of isolation only to be informed that you've passed a positive case in the street and back into isolation you go. Again, it's an intractable problem. There seems to be a desire to be seen to be doing something and this seems to be replacing the ability to think the problem through. It's morbidly fascinating to see this happening in real time.

As for doubly vaccinated people, the government are doing this because for some reason they are struggling to accept that all the evidence suggests that doubly vaccinated people don't seem to transmit the virus to any great degree.


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## mikeyB (Jun 5, 2021)

If you vaccinate just over 90% of the population, and accept that folk who have had the illness will have immunity, then you will have herd immunity. The virus won't have the ability to spread. That is the aim of a vaccination program. That position may be reached by the end of July. 

So the UK will probably be the only country that will have that herd immunity. Meanwhile, Brazil and India are letting the virus run wild, brewing up variants, so you have to keep the borders closed or quarantine visitors assiduously.


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