"Due to Covid"

A re-release from early 2021

We who follow the pandemic debates would know of the “of covid” or “with covid” distinction. For the benefit of the uninitiated this is to say that when a death is recorded as a covid death, in almost no case has a single pathologist descended on the corpse to answer the question if it was the virus that struck the fatal blow as opposed to pre-existing comorbid serious illness, let alone the relative contribution of multiple blows towards those final moments the physiology passed the point of no return. As essentially all of the claimed 3.8 million taken by the virus are now at rest and thoroughly beyond the point the pathologist would be of use, that opportunity is forever lost. Consequently we will never know if many died “with” or “from” the virus, or even with nothing more than a falsely positive PCR test.

Contra the “from covid” claim, we have extreme examples abounding if one only takes the care to cast a critical eye. Take for example emeritus professor of microbiology Dr Sucharit Bhakdi’s informing us that the one of the first (if not the first) German covid “death” was in a terminal oesophageal cancer patient in palliative care, the positive test being returned after the patient had passed away. Had the test result been lost in transit would anyone have called into question cancer be the cause recorded on the death certificate? Or take the covid death attribution formally adopted throughout the world to be a death from any prima facie cause in the presence of a positive PCR result in the preceding 28 (sometimes 60) days, PCR not being a test fit for purpose. One might also be astonished to read it not unusual for the age of death “from covid” to equal or exceed the average age of life expectancy, northern Italy being a case in point. In the case in Sweden (the land of almost no restrictions), those whom death passed over in 2019 inevitably were claimed a year later. Regarding many assumed to have been taken by the virus, we might ask who amongst them would have survived another year still if SARS COV-2 did not exist, or even a month a week or a day? Does this imply I deny none were killed from the virus? Surely not! That said we might pass from astonishment to bewilderment at seeing Sweden’s 2020 deaths essentially identical to 2012, adjusting for population growth of course and since 2015 when Angela Merkel opened the doors to Europe. Even the UK has an age standardised mortality in 2020 not unusual for the 21st century, coming in 9th place. I could bore you with other examples enough to make one wonder just where in the numbers if not the world the covid deaths really were hiding. And I am reminded of the master biostatistician Austin Bradford Hills comment (I’m paraphrasing) that if one requires statistics (if not the incessant propaganda too) to find an effect that effect must surely be small. For me it is an article of faith that the virus kills at all, this faith sufficient to be rendered immune from accusation of being a “covid denier”. It is enough a sin in these times when “the science” is non science secular religion to be a “lockdown sceptic”. And so we move on.

What I wish to identify is a new and heretofore unrecognised distinction of “from covid”. You see as a practicing doctor I have encountered this past 16 months perhaps a couple hundred patients whose notes pass my way and whose cases refer to the virus. Some have lost employment. Some have lost businesses. Some as a consequence of financial strain have lost mortgages or marriages and some have been stranded behind state or international borders, isolated from home and loved ones. Some have been brought to the point of almost killing themselves. To all but the ears of a heartless and monomaniacal government the distress and impact has been highly significant. Strangely, what I have observed on each and every occasion is a reading of colleague’s notes that impact X is “due to covid”. This is, to be frank, a lie. Now I’ll grant that we might squabble over what comorbid pathological organic factors ends life more than any other. But I know of no virus that closes a border. I know of no virus that causes the arm of the infected to spasm into hanging up a closed sign and shutting up shop. I do know of government policy and diktat of chief medical officers being capable of effecting such economic and social impact. I do know that cowards and narcissists who would want preserve their ego will often do so at the expense of taking responsibility for their own actions. And I do know of propaganda machines being able launder the impact of lockdowns through the fearmongering over the virus and spin uncomfortable facts of human action down the memory hole. And so I might have the gall to ask my colleagues why I am the only doctor of which I am aware who writes “due to the government’s response to the virus” or “due to restrictions”? This distinction is far from trivial and yet is necessary to opening the psychological door to the possibility now borne out by facts that lockdowns need be neither inevitable nor necessary. These harms require a just redress. It is unbefitting of any who would call themselves ethically minded critical thinkers to assume otherwise, ignorant of the lessons from the Diamond Princess onwards that lockdown is hardly required for all, even in those who believe that draconian policy is called for to protect bare biological life. Nor is it forgivable to shy away from the fact lockdowns are metered out without consultation of the person locked down, or due process afforded those who oppose them. Lockdowns and other restrictive manoeuvres, where practiced, have not been shown to have benefit. The reader may not like this fact but fact it is. Are the government’s actions also “due to covid”? Might the reader seriously believe my writing this piece is also “due to covid”? After all, without the virus I would not be writing this. Yet human action is not viral action. and only humans bear responsibility for human action. We would do well to remember this as lockdowns take their toll