The deadly initial Spring 2020 Covid wave
Discover more from Where are the numbers? by Norman Fenton and Martin Neil
The deadly initial Spring 2020 Covid wave
The iatrogenesis hypothesis
22 Feb Update: An article by Will Jones in the Daily Skeptic has strongly challenged the iatrogenesis hypothesis. We have published a response to it.
3 March Update: The BMJ published the NICE NG163 guidance, in 20 April 2020. In reaction a rapid response letter was sent by eminent experts in palliative care warning of the dangers of administering treatment more appropriate for end-of-life care to covid patients.
6 March Update: Daily Mail article - Elderly and vulnerable people are still being put on an end-of-life 'death pathway', hard-hitting report reveals – even though it was officially abolished almost a decade ago.
26 July Update: A paper was published in the BMJ in August 2021 providing an analysis of primary care prescription trends in England during Spring 2020 and concluded that there was a dramatic increase in end-of-life care drugs such as Midazolam.
It has long been hypothesised that deadly health policies were a major factor in the wave of deaths attributed to covid in the Spring of 2020. This is also referred to as the iatrogenesis hypothesis.
Jonathan Engler looked at what had happened in Lombardy, Italy and concluded that many of the “deaths which occurred in the aftermath of the cataclysmic changes to the delivery of healthcare — especially of the frail and elderly — might have been caused by policy, rather than virus.” Anna Farrow made a similar convincing case that this happened in Canada while @NellyTells reports it was happening in Spain. This especially revealing account is from South Carolina. Likewise, there has been a long-term concern that excessive use of Midazolam was a contributing factor in the UK and the Daily Mail newspaper reported on it as long ago as July 2020.
NG163 Death Protocol
More detailed evidence to support the iatrogenesis hypothesis for the UK (and elsewhere) has been provided in twitter threads by Jikkyleaks and this recent thread is particularly revealing:
The most damning evidence can be found in this NICE Rapid Guideline (NG163) (published 3 April 2020) that has since been deleted. However, it can be found via the wayback machine here. Jikkyleaks refers to this document as the “death protocol”:
In particular, Section 6.5 seems to support Jikkyleaks’ claim that, while many elderly covid patients only needed three antibiotic tablets and standard post-viral pneumonia care, UK GPs were instead “told to euthanise them - care of @NICEComms”.
In case the deleted NICE NG163 protocol ‘vanishes’ again here is another link to it:
The role the UK Health Secretary, Matt Hancock (dubbed #MidazolamMatt), played in this has been very well documented and summarised by @chrislittlewoo8:
Watch this chilling video A Good Death? by Jacqui Deevoy who interviews family of those deceased in the UK and exposes the DNR scandal back in December 2021.
Link to Excess Mortality
These charts show the very close correlation between the Midazolam doses and excess mortality rate as reported by
in this tweet:
The fact that NICE deleted the guidelines - and that it can only be found with difficulty on the wayback machine is revealing in itself.
This chart of negative excess non-COVID respiratory deaths prepared by Joel Smalley suggests many COVID deaths were simply incidental because we were missing deaths from other causes. When covid deaths started falling those deaths started to reappear:
Covid Deaths Exaggerated
On a related issue, we have been providing evidence since the summer of 2020 of the extent to which the number of genuine covid deaths have been exaggerated. One of the key resources that we used was the NHS pathways coronavirus triages dashboard** which provides an accurate representation of actual illness due to Covid-19. It does so because it combines all emergency 999, 111, online and ambulance calls relating to Covid-19 triages and the pattern of genuine cases it showed was very different to that of the ‘official’ figures provided by the UK government - see E.g.
** the NHS pathways coronavirus triages website is no longer available. After asking readers if they could shed any insights about it, David Paton informed us that they stopped publishing it in July last year. He says they did consult and he put in a plea for them to keep going with at least a weekly or monthly publication but they responded saying they had had virtually no other interest.
…..STOP PRESS
John Campbell has helpfully also produced a video on this issue:
This individual account by Nicola Lund is very pertinent: Accept nothing the hospitals tell you – my lesson for patients’ families
The deadly initial Spring 2020 Covid wave
There is conclusive evidence that The Virus was circulating in Europe, particularly in Italy, since December 2019 at the very least, probably even since September 2019. It seems counterintuitive that the worst plague of all times had already been circulating for several months without anyone taking notice, and then suddenly became much more lethal shortly after the media mass hysteria took off.
This makes it even more plausible that the rise in excess deaths was, at least partially, due to iatoragensis and lockdowns rather than Covid itself.
when even sensible people like you start believing they basically killed the old folk then I can take my tinfoil hat off and say that I am not a crazy conspiracy theorist. It's disgusting that the midazolam scandal has failed to be a scandal because nobody at the BBC will report it.