Nadhim Zahawi has come out with a set of numbers projecting another “exponential” rise in COVID infections, illness, hospitalisations and deaths, resulting from the Omicron variant. The numbers are highly questionable, at least, and, in reality, spoof. They show the problem of the Malthusian/catastrophist method of simply applying mathematical formulas without any connection to material conditions and the real world.
According to Zahawi, if we take a simple mathematical progression of the current rate of infections with Omicron, then, by Christmas, 1 million people in Britain could be infected, and using the same progression, this could double every couple of weeks, thereby, rapidly rising to several millions. Well we saw that wild and fantastical method of calculating right at the start of the pandemic, which produced figures of likely numbers of UK Covid deaths ranging from 500,000 to 5 million, and global deaths of 45 million, within a year. In fact, 2 years out, UK COVID related deaths are only 140,000, and, of those, only about 10%, or 14,000 are deaths caused by COVID, as against people who died from other primary causes, mainly old age related illnesses, such as Alzheimer's, Dementia, Stroke, Heart Disease and so on. Put another way, that 14,000 deaths from COVID is equal to 7,000 per year, over the two years, which is the same figure as the average annual deaths from flu!
The figure for COVID related deaths globally remains at just 5 million, a small fraction of the 45 million projected figure by the team at Imperial College, who, as with their predictions for Swine Flu, in 2009, massively overestimated potential fatalities, but whose numbers and views have been used more or less unquestioningly by politicians and media alike, usually for their own short term ends.
Zahawi goes on to predict that, without further action, even considering the milder effects of the Omicron variant, this large rise in infections would lead, by mathematical certainty, to a much larger number of serious illnesses, hospitalisations and deaths. Is that true? No.
First of all, lets take the numbers for infection. The number of people infected, depends upon two things, the rate of infection and the available population to be infected. You can't infect more than 100% of a population, other than for multiple infections, i.e. people get infected, recover, as a result of natural immunity or vaccination, and then subsequently get infected again. At any one time, however, its impossible to have more people infected than there are people to infect. In practice, the percentage is never going to be close to that number.
So, in Britain, taking the population as 60 million, that is the maximum number of people who, at any one time, hypothetically, could be infected. No matter how much you believe in the magic of compounding, and in exponential progressions, it cannot exceed that limit. But, what is the real limit, as against this hypothetical limit? First of all, we know that its only 20% of the population who are actually at risk from COVID, though the latest information indicates that, whereas young children were unaffected by previous variants, they do seem more likely to be affected by Omicron, making it more like the coronavirus responsible for the common cold. Secondly, we know that those that have been fully vaccinated are pretty much immune to Omicron as with previous variants. Fully vaccinated, here, means two doses for those under 60, and no underlying medical conditions, and three for everyone else.
So, given that around 90% of people are fully vaccinated, and many even under 60 have had 3 jabs, the actual potential size of population available for infection, becomes not 60 million, but just 6 million. However, even that figure would be an overestimate, in terms of who might become seriously ill from such infection. Firstly, other than the case of young children, as described above, it remains the case that COVID targets primarily the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems. That is around 20% of the population, or about 12 -13 million people. Of the other 80%, even those that have not been fully vaccinated are unlikely to suffer serious illness from Omicron, just as they were unlikely to suffer serious illness, let alone hospitalisation or death, from previous variants. Indeed, they are less likely, because everything we know, already, about Omicron, from across the globe, shows it to be a milder form of virus than previous variants, though, for the reasons I described recently, more virulent, i.e. more easily spread.
So, the relevant population is not really 60 million, but only around 12 million, and, of those, a much larger number are actually fully vaccinated, including having had a third jab, precisely because they are mostly in the over 60 age range. But, even, just taking the 90% figure for vaccination, and ignoring any natural immunity gained from previous infection, by people in this cohort, by no means all of whom would fall victim as a result of infection anyway, that gives a likely maximum figure for a peak of infections of around 1.3 million, or about the starting figure that Zahawi was citing to be reached by Christmas.
Of course, as I have said before, infection rates have been played up to cover for the fact that the actual number of serious illnesses, hospitalisations and deaths have been more or less continually falling, compared to what they were a year ago, certainly in proportion to infections. Moreover, there is no evidence whatsoever that having applied lockouts and lockdowns, for the last two years, in Britain, as in other places where those methods were used, that serious illness, hospitalisation or mortality rates have been any better than in, for example, Sweden, which did not apply such lockouts and lockdowns. On the contrary, Sweden has a much better mortality rate than the UK, and other countries that applied lock downs.
Let us suppose that the total number of infections with Omicron did reach this figure of 1.3 million, what does that actually mean? It certainly does not mean that 1.3 million such people are going to die. Even of those in the most at risk groups for COVID, only about 1% of those infected actually died from it. The figures for those dying with it, as against from it, are much higher for the reasons previously set out. Nor even does it mean that 1.3 million would even become seriously ill, let alone require hospitalisation. The term “infection”, in fact, is very vague. As used by Zahawi and the government, it simply means those that have had a positive test for it. Well, firstly, those tests have been shown to be very inaccurate, being out by as much as 30%, some showing false positives, and others false negatives. For months, people who had never suffered any symptoms from the virus, were still giving positive test results, simply because the test did not distinguish between live and dead Covid cells in their nasal cavities!
And, that is significant, because the whole point about herd immunity, whether gained by natural infection or by vaccination, is that whilst you might still be infected, i.e. you might still have your body invaded by pathogens, your immune system is able to prevent them from spreading in the body out of control, and subsequently to kill them off. Immunity does not work like a condom, preventing sperm from entering the vagina, but more like a spermicide that kills it off when it already has. So, the numbers for “infections” , i.e. the number of people receiving a positive test, may rise dramatically, and yet be totally meaningless. A large number of such “infected” people will be in population groups that did not have any susceptibility to serious illness from COVID in the first place, let alone its milder Omicron variant; others will have been previously infected, and, in any case, therefore, have built up natural immunity to it; others have obtained immunity as a result of vaccination.
If we look at the figures for those “infected” with Omicron, and the real number is much larger than the official estimate, precisely, because, as with previous variants, all those infected, but who have not been ill, and so not been tested, will be invisible to the numbers, then, until the weekend, not one of them had been hospitalised. Now, even with the number of Omicron infections running into thousands, the Department of Health tells us that, in the whole country, the grand total of such people hospitalised amounts to just 10! What is more, it was reported, last week, that hospital doctors have become increasingly angry about the fact that every single one of the people they are treating for COVID – of all variants – are people who have not been vaccinated! In other words, as stated above, the risk of serious illness, hospitalisation and death from COVID is one that impacts a small minority of the population, who also have increased their risks significantly by not getting vaccinated. The answer to that does not lie in imposing continued or renewed and further restrictions on the rest of the population, but on ensuring the more rapid vaccination of the population, and specifically those in these at risk groups! If restrictions are to be applied to anyone, it should only be those that refuse to get vaccinated.
There is a final part of Zahawi's numbers that need to be debunked. He takes into consideration the milder form of Omicron, but does so in a way that is irrational. Zahawi says, assume that it is 50% milder than previous variants. In that case, he says, if, out of 1 million people, 1%, or 10,000, became seriously ill, then, it would still mean that the milder variant would cause 5,000 to be seriously ill. The importance of that is because of equating such serious illness with the requirement for hospitalisation, thereby, threatening the NHS that “must be protected”, though the Tories do not seem to have worried about that over the last ten years of austerity measures imposed upon it. But, this method of arguing is nonsensical.
Suppose we index the level of illness of people with the virus on a scale of 1-10. Anyone with a level of illness over 5 is seriously ill and requires hospitalisation. We might have 80% below 5, and 20% above five, this 20% spread evenly as 4% each at 6,7,8,9 and 10. But, if the virus is 50% milder, then those in the 80% below 5 will simply be less ill than they are currently likely to be from existing strains, whilst those in the 20%, will, now, largely fall below it. In other words, everyone below 10, will fall to an index level below 5 (i.e. 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5), and so no longer be categorised as seriously ill at all. Rather than reducing the number seriously ill by half, it would reduce it by 80%, and might virtually obliterate it altogether! In fact, that is being indicated by the current data relating to hospitalisation of those with Omicron.
The COVID data continues to be misused by a range of groups for their own short-term interests. For the media, like their tittle tattle stories about Xmas parties and celebrities, it is a cheap alternative to political journalism, a gift that keeps on giving; for unprincipled, opportunist politicians like Starmer and the Labour Party, it serves as a similar cheap alternative to real political criticism of the Tories, given their own increasingly identical ideological stance; for sections of the crude economistic and catastrophist Left, represented in a range of organisations and academia, it acts as a similar stick with which to beat the government, but also offers them what they think is the prospect of the kind of economic catastrophe that will fulfil their dreams, but which would, in reality, prove a nightmare for the working class itself; for NHS bureaucrats, and elements of the Medical Industrial Complex, it offers the prospect of building their empires even further, and of large new profits; for those, within the state, protecting the interests of the top 0.01%, and the price of their assets/fictitious capital, it acts to slow economic activity, and the rise in wages and interest rates; and for Boris Johnson it offers an immediate distraction from all of the media stories about the sleaze engulfing his government.
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