Exponential Rise in the Wrong Use of The Term Exponential

I would like to say that its only people like Sonia Sodha who use the term exponential incorrectly, but, unfortunately, it isn't.  Sodha is one of those journalists whose method is to simply repeat ad nauseum badly understood, ill conceived and overwhelmingly vague mantras, without any facts to back them up, or any rational argument in support of them.  Indeed, whenever she is presented with facts to contradict her wild, vague statements, she simply ignores them, and again repeats her unsupported assertions.  Her comments, for example, on Sky News's Paper Review about an "exponential" growth in COVID19 cases and deaths, is a case in point.  But, there is not an "exponential" growth, as a look at the meaning of the term exponential - which you would think a highly paid journalist, and even leader writer for the Observer would first do - shows.  Sodha uses the term "exponential" simply to mean that the number of cases is increasing a lot, which in itself means nothing.  But, she is from from alone in that.  Many proponents of lockdowns use the term "exponential" wrongly all the time.

Its quite likely that the growth of infections of COVID19 have, in fact, been more or less exponential, because, given that 90% of people who contract the virus are asymptomatic or have symptoms not bad enough to seek medical attention, they never get tested.  So, they have continued to spread the virus amongst others in the population, 90% of whom are similarly asymptomatic and so on.  That is why the so called r number is a complete fiction, and why, although the lockdown may have slowed the spread of the virus somewhat, during the Summer, its main effect was to stop the spread of the virus to the vulnerable 20% of the population.  But, that could have been done far more effectively, and without destroying the economy, simply by ensuring that the 20% of the population at risk were isolated from it.

The main reason that the rate of infection and the number of deaths has risen since the lockdown has been lifted is purely and simply because, all of those older and more vulnerable members of the population again came out of lockdown, and started to go shopping again, went into town centres and pubs and restaurants, and started to mix with their children and grandchildren again, and so began to fall prey to a virus that had spread silently amongst the younger population in the intervening period.  Its only these older and more vulnerable people who become ill, and as more of them became ill, so they went to get tested, so that the number of positive tests also increased, and that is the same reason for the increase in hospitalisations and deaths.

But, its also clear that even against the much higher recorded number of infections, hospitalisations and deaths have not increased "exponentially".  look at the chart provided by Sky News.  It shows daily reported infections, and daily deaths.  The highest number of deaths per day was back in April, a month after the lockdown had started.  On 10th April, there were 1122 deaths, whilst the number of reported new infections was 5706.  Compare that with the 137 deaths reported on 14th October, as against the 19,700 infections reported on the same day.  Not only is the current death toll of 137, which the media has got worked into a frenzy over, only a little more than 10% of the number of deaths on April 10th, but it is on the basis of reported cases that is 4 times greater.  In other words, on a comparative basis as against infections, the current mortality rate is just 2.5% of that back in April!

If we measure the daily mortality rate on 10th April, it was 1122:5706 = 19.66%, a shockingly high number, though still some way off the 90% mortality rate of something like Ebola.  Of course, the truth is that this 20% figure is totally bogus.  Back in April, very little testing was being done so that the 5706 figure for new infections was probably out by more than a factor 10, not just because 90% of infections are asymptomatic leading to no testing, but also because even fewer tests were don then than now.  So, the true figure then was almost certainly less than 2%.

If we take the situation, now, this fact that 90% of infections go unreported, then the figure of 20,000 new infections on 14th October, means that the true figure is likely to be around 200,000.  Even based on the reported infections, the mortality rate has fallen to just 137:20,000 = 0.685%.  But, take into consideration the likely real number of new infections, and the current mortality rate falls to around 0.07%, or less than the mortality rate for flu.  Indeed, currently there are indeed, more people dying from flu than are dying from COVID19.

As the graph shows, deaths from flu exceeded those from COVID between January and March.  Flu deaths as usual declined, in the Summer.  Now moving back into Winter, flu deaths are again exceeding those from COVID, and have been doing so since the middle of June.  In fact, the only time that COVID deaths have exceeded flu deaths has been during the height of the lockdown!  Moreover, this overstates the truth in relation to COVID v Flu.  The reported COVID deaths are those where COVID is mentioned on a death certificate, i.e. the person who died had the virus.  But that does not at all mean that COVID was the cause of their death.  They could have been hit by a bus.  The figures only indicate who has died within 28 days of having been tested positive.  But, the mean average age of death of these people is now 82, up from 81 a few months ago.  The average life expectancy in the UK, is currently 81.16 years, which is lower than the average age of the people dying from COVID.  In other words, its highly likely that many of the people who have died "with" COVID, did not die "from" COVID at all, but simply from old age, and the various conditions that go with it!

What is more, if you then separate out all of these old people, many of whom were going to die anyway, and then look at the number of people under 60 dying from COVID, and compare that with deaths from flu, a completely different picture emerges.  Of the total 40,000 plus people who have died "with" COVID, only around 400 people are people under 60 who also do not have other underlying medical conditions.  That is because COVID 19 is a virus that almost exclusively targets the elderly.  Currently, if you are under 60 you are approximately 5 times more likely to die from flu, which targets across the age range, and often affects the young more seriously than the old, and if you are under 40, you are approximately ten times more likely to die from flu than from COVID19.

Or take another metric.  Around 165,000 people die from cancer in the UK, each year, or around 450 per day.  That is four times the number of people dying from COVID19.  Yet, despite the fact that death from cancer is a far greater existential threat to the population than is COVID19, it is cancer patients who have had their appointments and surgery cancelled, in order to provide resources for COVID!  Perhaps that is why UK cancer specialist, and world authority on cancer, Dr. Karol Sikora, signed the Great Barrington Declaration. 

If we look at the high number of COVID deaths back in April compared to today, despite the fact that the number of recorded infections then was only a quarter of that today, and we might expect the proportion of actual infections to remain somewhat similar, being approximately ten times more in each case, it is fairly obvious why this discrepancy arises.  Firstly, back in April when the number of deaths was at its highest, nearly all of those deaths was of old people in care homes and hospitals.  That in itself makes a mockery of the argument in favour of lockdowns.  Who is more locked down, who should be more protected against infection than someone in a care home or a hospital?  But, of course, those institutions did not provide that protection, because instead all the attention was on limiting the spread of infections amongst the general public, whilst little or no attention was paid to putting in place focused protection of the 20% of the population actually at risk.

Secondly, as is the case with all exponential growth of viruses or bacteria, at a certain point the exponential growth stops, simply because the population into which it can expand is exhausted.  This is also what happens with financial bubbles, when the number of bigger fools runs out.  The lockdown may have slowed the exponential growth of infections during the Summer, but didn't stop, it, and so the fact that a larger number of "reported" infections, today, has resulted in a much lower number of hospitalisations and deaths is just a reflection of this fact, that in reality, we almost certainly have a much larger number of people who have actually previously been infected with the virus, and who were asymptomatic, and now have immunity against it, than the official data is reporting.  The official data is necessarily wrong, both because of the inadequacy and unreliability of the tests and testing, and because 90% of those infected are never tested!

Hospitals acted as super spreaders of the virus; they failed to protect their own staff or patients; they brought back elderly staff putting them at increased risk; they failed to establish isolation hospitals or wards; they failed to provide adequate PPE, and so on.  They infected large numbers of people who came into hospital with other illnesses.  They sent old people infected with COVID, knowingly back to care homes to die, where, with those care homes also not having proper measures in place, those old people then spread the virus through those homes, killing many more people.  So, its no wonder that the mortality rate was much higher then than it is now.

Yet, the media still refuse to tell the truth.  They bang on about the number of deaths from COVID, but refuse to compare it now with April, when it was ten times higher.  Instead of giving the facts about the ratio of flu deaths to COVID deaths, they quote a statistic that only covers the period when COVID deaths exceed flu deaths, i.e. during the Summer, and so on.  And, the latest distortions comes in relation to the position relating to hospital admissions and occupancy.  The media said nothing about the fact that the white elephant Nightingale hospitals remained as good as empty barns having been opened with great fanfare.  They said nothing about the fact that as a result of telling people to stay away from hospitals, as well as scaring them shitless, because they were about to be overrun with COVID patients, in fact, during much of the period, occupancy in most hospitals fell to around 40%, meaning a huge waste of resources.  Now they are saying that hospitals are again about to be overrun, and they make the implication that this is due to COVID, when it isn't.

They seem to have conveniently forgotten that every Winter, the question is asked as to whether this will be the year that the NHS collapses because of being able to cope with the inundation of patients due to  seasonal flu and other, illnesses that flourish during the Winter.  Anyone who has been to an A&E knows that they had already essentially collapsed years ago, long before COVID19, as thy were incapable of dealing with the numbers of people coming in to them, who were faced with waits lasting into days rather than hours.  The usual condition for hospitals has been to have occupancy rates of over 90%, long before COVID.  So, to tell us that hospitals are facing such rates now, and that they may not be able to cope over the Winter, and to then try to blame that on COVID is thoroughly dishonest.

According to the Department of Health around 680 people are being admitted to hospital, per day, with COVID symptoms.  A total of 4,650 are currently in hospital with the virus, and of these 516 are on ventilators.  In total, 150,000 have been in hospital with the virus.  A look at the numbers shows that, despite the much higher levels of recorded infections today, compared to back in April, this is a fraction of the numbers hospitalised back then.  Its about a fifth.  But, as I've reported previously, in an average year, the NHS takes in 16 million hospital admissions.  The idea that, even 150,000 COVID patients should put a dent in that capacity is ridiculous.  It represents just 0.9% of the total admissions.  Of course, some COVID patients will require intensive care, and this may be a higher proportion than for overall admissions, but the number requiring intensive care for things like the seasonal flu is likely to be a far greater factor.

The fact that the NHS is falling over, yet again, during a Winter Flu Season is nothing new.  It is not a reflection on COVID 19, but on the fact that the NHS is pretty crap, has been crap for years, and has been made much worse as a result of ten years of Tory austerity, designed to inflate the asset prices of the rich.  Its not the fault of the workers in the NHS that its crap, they do he best and more they can given its limitations, but the fact remains that, as an institution its performance has been abysmal, and it is not designed to meet the needs of workers in the first place, so its no wonder that it doesn't!