Well quite. But if there had been, say, criminal negligence in terms of the upkeep of the facility that led to higher mortality rates, it makes complete sense (i.e. there is a motive) why any organisations and people who were responsible for said upkeep might be interested in promoting the existence of a series of crimes that can be pinned on a scapegoat.
This is true, but it also relies on the existence of an 'unusual' pattern - but what if that pattern wasn't *all that* unlikely? Neither a serial killer or institutional criminal negligence would be to blame in that case.
The pattern wasn't all that unlikely. But it was striking and made people worry. It was reasonable to look for a cause. Look a bit, and the cause if obvious: the unit was accepting patients with much higher acuity. Good for hospital income - NHS pays by "seriousness" of patients, and of course also by number of patients. Whether the spike in acuity was merely random or deliberate policy is a very interesting question. https://gill1109.com/2024/09/03/what-went-wrong-with-the-nhs-went-badly-wrong-at-coch-and-its-not-a-coincidence/ I think it was not a coincidence. The spike was deliberately caused by ambitious consultants.
How we've become so beholden to statistical analysis is even to the exclusion of other evidence is staggering. There's multiple natural explanations for this uptick including death spirals in related communities or areas in what used to be known as the death in threes in a family phenomena. That happened in my family in 2016, 2016, and 2018. I happened to be the last person physically present in three of those cases, though two were visiting them in hospital/hospice before their bodies shut down of old age/natural causes. Some people attract to the energy of those dying for metaphysical reasons we don't entirely understand. and those dying attract to those people likewise. Beyond that of course, the hospital might have been trying to cover up high infection transmission rates, changes in management or administration or staffing or any other of number of issues that could have also led to a higher than expected number of deaths. I think it's criminal that the court didn't mention the other baby deaths which looks like malicious prosecution.
I shudder to think that if I had been on Derek Chauvin’s jury, I would have had to refuse to convict on the grounds that all the charges were degrees of homicide, and there was no proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and little evidence at all, that a homicide had taken place. I would not have relished being internationally known as the greatest racist in history for standing firm on that fact.
I’ve always thought it was a strange (but probably calculated and cynical) choice by the prosecution to not charge Chauvin with any crimes that lacked the causing-death element, denying the jury the option of a middle course. (I don’t take a position on whether he was guilty of such crimes.)
Yeah the death of St George of the Fentanyl was a tragedy but not, in my view, a murder.
I *do* think the police were negligent to some degree - they had a duty of care to their suspect, after all - but this should never have been ramped up to being a 'murder' charge to satisfy the mob.
The babies were poisoned either with the deliberate introduction of air via an intravenous tube or via the introduction of synthetic insulin which was subsequently detected. Letby hadn't realised that C peptide would be measurable and has no explanation for its existence. This case does not rest alone on statistics, and at least one parent caught Letby in the act. I can recommend a YouTube channel, Crime Scene 2 Courtroom where approved transcripts from court proceedings are read out. Listening to them brings all of the details into line which will assist with the doubts many have. Letby was gaslighting her colleagues, and setting up scenarios that she assumed would cover her tracks. The statistical evidence only supports all of the other evidence. The babies were murdered and suffered terribly. The descriptions given in court of the swelling and skin changes ,and screams are deeply distressing. Letby attempted to signal the culpability of others, but none of this stood up to examination. Having listened to hours of this material, I have to conclude that this was a safe conviction.
And how do you know these babies were murdered? The initial autopsies did not come to that conclusion in 6 of the 7 cases (and the 7th was not a case of 'definitely' unnatural either, but one in which unnatural causes could not be definitively ruled out).
It was only the spurious 'statistical' evidence - the absurd attendance chart, for example, and the *feeling* that this number of deaths could not have been caused by anything other than foul play - that led to the re-examination of the evidence with Letby in the crosshairs. You then have suspicion-led, rather than evidence-led, reasoning and from then on everything was fit into the narrative.
The air embolism theory has not been at all proven, and neither has the insulin supposed poisoning with the lab that did the testing warning that their tests were not adequate for forensic purposes.
And what about the other 10 babies who died on the unit? Just a statistical anomaly?
Do you seriously think they wouldn't have pinned these on Letby if they could? But their classification of what constituted a 'suspicious' event was driven by the bogus 'evidence' of that statistical attendance chart. It was all a kind of confirmation bias with the evidence fitted in to a pre-determined conclusion.
Without that attendance chart do you think they'd be looking for a baby killer? I very seriously doubt it - and that's a rather key point. Indeed, one of the suspicious events she was accused of she wasn't even there on the day, so they concocted some story that she had 'prepped' the event on the day before.
There are too many holes in the prosecution's case for this conviction to be considered 'safe' in my view.
There’s probably a formula somewhere (maybe locked in a safe in the Tower of London) that can predict the rate at which embarrassment over imprisoning an innocent woman will increase, while embarrassment over the systemic stupidity and/or mendacity that put her there decreases with the passage of years. When those lines cross, Letby will be released. It’s politics and public relations, not law or justice, that will hold sway.
Who at that hospital is out to get her for personal reasons, or who is out to get her, to cover up the real crimes (negligent care, cutbacks, downsizing of staff, poor procedure due to hiring lowest bidder temps, et cetera)?
That's where my mind goes.
Finding me standing over someone with an axe - let's say one of mine - between their C4 and C5 sure looks bad. Fingerprints, oh yes - it's my axe. Victim's blood on my pants, boots, gloves? Oh yes, I turned the victim over to check for a pulse, breathing and such. connection between me and the victim? Sure, why not say I owed him money, that works.
And none of that is proof I did it. It points to it being probable - maybe even likely, if the victim is some pedopolitician enemy of the people (internet outbursts are regularly used in courts as proof, you know).
But that my prints are on my axe ain't weird, I use it every week. Every day, in winter. Sometimes with gloves on, sometimes not, dep. on what the job is. And so on.
It is at this point police will bring you in to "help with inquiries", i.e. you're arrested if you don't comply. Then the prosecutor arranges for incarceration while the investigation is ongoing (in Sweden, such a stay has no time-limit, but if you are convicted it is counted against the sentence). And that's when the fun begins. Questioning for hours, same questions over and over. Police claiming you've been changing your answers (you do know it is allowed for police to lie to you during questioning, if they do it the way politicians and journalists lie?). Refusing you toilet breaks when you ask for one. Refusing you water. Taking you back to the cell for half an hour, then bringing you back to interrogation just before your scheduled outdoors walk (normally, on top of the jail, 10th floor or so, a wire cage with roof). Keeping you in interrogation so that you miss chow call.
There's a metric f-tonne police can do, fully legal, without it counting as "enhanced interrogation", unless you:
A) Are protected; B) Can afford good private counsel; C Have friends on the outside who can raise Hell in the media; D) Are on the force yourself; E; any and all of A-D.
I have zero reason to believe the plod in the UK are any different.
I know little about this case, but find it ethically fascinating that several of the premature babies were born at a gestational age where it would be completely legal in my state for them to be aborted if their mothers hadn’t wanted them. I guess the difference between being medical waste and the focus of a national outcry is whether a single woman wanted you to live or not. But it is unlikely the people who are pinning their targets on Letby are thinking either rationally in terms of statistics or philosophically in terms of where they might get the most bang from their moral outrage buck.
The pattern wasn't all that unlikely. But it was striking and made people worry. It was reasonable to look for a cause. Look a bit, and the cause is obvious: the unit was accepting patients with much higher acuity. Good for hospital income - NHS pays by "seriousness" of patients, and of course also by number of patients. More cots filled equals more income! Whether the spike in acuity was merely random or deliberate policy is a very interesting question. https://gill1109.com/2024/09/03/what-went-wrong-with-the-nhs-went-badly-wrong-at-coch-and-its-not-a-coincidence/ I think it was not a coincidence. The spike was deliberately caused by ambitious consultants. That conclusion is of course mere speculation. But in any case: the consultants should have expected the spike! It did happen and it wasn't just coincidence!
As presented, the answers to the "crime / no crime" and "guilty / not guilty" questions appear to rest upon trust, in who and in what do you believe to arrive at the "most likely" conclusion. Remembering the recent sub-postmaster scandal, I'm not much inclined to trust the prosecution here.
Was thinking about this thing about using statistics in court as some kind of proof of an act having been performed. (Stacking firewood is very good for the mind.)
What if - total tinfoil time - what if there's a group of someones somewhere inside the UK judicial system and its attendant political branch, that is trying to establish precedence for using statistical analysis as proof/aggravating circumstances in the courts?
Like this:
Henry Wilt sometimes vents his frustrations online. Recently, he wrote a piece on how annoyed he is with women who acts as if they are going to put out, if he just pays for drinks and dinner and movie and nightclub and taxicab, and then he doesn't even get a peck on the cheek.
Sure, we and Henry both knows the girls are under no obligation to do anything. But we also know that there are women and girls that do dangle the promise of at least getting your knob polished, if you just pay for everything during a night out.
Internet being internet, Henry's thread explodes and becomes a juggernaughty of pent-up frustrations, feminist counterattacks, religious pontificating and all the rest. So far, so normal.
But in Henry's town (let's say he lives Colchester) there's a sudden outbreak of gropings, assault, flashing, and finally a rape.
Is it really that far-fetched that police under the Starmer-regime, with officers like Lady Sue Sniffin' Glue, would use Henry's posts as proof positive he incited the assaults et c?
That way, the poo-poo don't need go looking for anyone, they can just bung Henry in the clink and sod off for tea and biccies.
Just your average random thought that may pop up when you're stacking firewood a September afternoon.
Yes, the NHS; CoCH management; the consultants. Many babies were likely to die anyway. The number of excess deaths due to mismanagement, not being cared for at a proper level 2 or level 3 unit, unrecognised sepsis, etc, statistically could be anything between 0 and 9. The expected number is about 4
Well quite. But if there had been, say, criminal negligence in terms of the upkeep of the facility that led to higher mortality rates, it makes complete sense (i.e. there is a motive) why any organisations and people who were responsible for said upkeep might be interested in promoting the existence of a series of crimes that can be pinned on a scapegoat.
This is true, but it also relies on the existence of an 'unusual' pattern - but what if that pattern wasn't *all that* unlikely? Neither a serial killer or institutional criminal negligence would be to blame in that case.
The pattern wasn't all that unlikely. But it was striking and made people worry. It was reasonable to look for a cause. Look a bit, and the cause if obvious: the unit was accepting patients with much higher acuity. Good for hospital income - NHS pays by "seriousness" of patients, and of course also by number of patients. Whether the spike in acuity was merely random or deliberate policy is a very interesting question. https://gill1109.com/2024/09/03/what-went-wrong-with-the-nhs-went-badly-wrong-at-coch-and-its-not-a-coincidence/ I think it was not a coincidence. The spike was deliberately caused by ambitious consultants.
How we've become so beholden to statistical analysis is even to the exclusion of other evidence is staggering. There's multiple natural explanations for this uptick including death spirals in related communities or areas in what used to be known as the death in threes in a family phenomena. That happened in my family in 2016, 2016, and 2018. I happened to be the last person physically present in three of those cases, though two were visiting them in hospital/hospice before their bodies shut down of old age/natural causes. Some people attract to the energy of those dying for metaphysical reasons we don't entirely understand. and those dying attract to those people likewise. Beyond that of course, the hospital might have been trying to cover up high infection transmission rates, changes in management or administration or staffing or any other of number of issues that could have also led to a higher than expected number of deaths. I think it's criminal that the court didn't mention the other baby deaths which looks like malicious prosecution.
Aaaand … George Floyd.
I shudder to think that if I had been on Derek Chauvin’s jury, I would have had to refuse to convict on the grounds that all the charges were degrees of homicide, and there was no proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and little evidence at all, that a homicide had taken place. I would not have relished being internationally known as the greatest racist in history for standing firm on that fact.
I’ve always thought it was a strange (but probably calculated and cynical) choice by the prosecution to not charge Chauvin with any crimes that lacked the causing-death element, denying the jury the option of a middle course. (I don’t take a position on whether he was guilty of such crimes.)
Yeah the death of St George of the Fentanyl was a tragedy but not, in my view, a murder.
I *do* think the police were negligent to some degree - they had a duty of care to their suspect, after all - but this should never have been ramped up to being a 'murder' charge to satisfy the mob.
The babies were poisoned either with the deliberate introduction of air via an intravenous tube or via the introduction of synthetic insulin which was subsequently detected. Letby hadn't realised that C peptide would be measurable and has no explanation for its existence. This case does not rest alone on statistics, and at least one parent caught Letby in the act. I can recommend a YouTube channel, Crime Scene 2 Courtroom where approved transcripts from court proceedings are read out. Listening to them brings all of the details into line which will assist with the doubts many have. Letby was gaslighting her colleagues, and setting up scenarios that she assumed would cover her tracks. The statistical evidence only supports all of the other evidence. The babies were murdered and suffered terribly. The descriptions given in court of the swelling and skin changes ,and screams are deeply distressing. Letby attempted to signal the culpability of others, but none of this stood up to examination. Having listened to hours of this material, I have to conclude that this was a safe conviction.
And how do you know these babies were murdered? The initial autopsies did not come to that conclusion in 6 of the 7 cases (and the 7th was not a case of 'definitely' unnatural either, but one in which unnatural causes could not be definitively ruled out).
It was only the spurious 'statistical' evidence - the absurd attendance chart, for example, and the *feeling* that this number of deaths could not have been caused by anything other than foul play - that led to the re-examination of the evidence with Letby in the crosshairs. You then have suspicion-led, rather than evidence-led, reasoning and from then on everything was fit into the narrative.
The air embolism theory has not been at all proven, and neither has the insulin supposed poisoning with the lab that did the testing warning that their tests were not adequate for forensic purposes.
And what about the other 10 babies who died on the unit? Just a statistical anomaly?
Do you seriously think they wouldn't have pinned these on Letby if they could? But their classification of what constituted a 'suspicious' event was driven by the bogus 'evidence' of that statistical attendance chart. It was all a kind of confirmation bias with the evidence fitted in to a pre-determined conclusion.
Without that attendance chart do you think they'd be looking for a baby killer? I very seriously doubt it - and that's a rather key point. Indeed, one of the suspicious events she was accused of she wasn't even there on the day, so they concocted some story that she had 'prepped' the event on the day before.
There are too many holes in the prosecution's case for this conviction to be considered 'safe' in my view.
There’s probably a formula somewhere (maybe locked in a safe in the Tower of London) that can predict the rate at which embarrassment over imprisoning an innocent woman will increase, while embarrassment over the systemic stupidity and/or mendacity that put her there decreases with the passage of years. When those lines cross, Letby will be released. It’s politics and public relations, not law or justice, that will hold sway.
Who at that hospital is out to get her for personal reasons, or who is out to get her, to cover up the real crimes (negligent care, cutbacks, downsizing of staff, poor procedure due to hiring lowest bidder temps, et cetera)?
That's where my mind goes.
Finding me standing over someone with an axe - let's say one of mine - between their C4 and C5 sure looks bad. Fingerprints, oh yes - it's my axe. Victim's blood on my pants, boots, gloves? Oh yes, I turned the victim over to check for a pulse, breathing and such. connection between me and the victim? Sure, why not say I owed him money, that works.
And none of that is proof I did it. It points to it being probable - maybe even likely, if the victim is some pedopolitician enemy of the people (internet outbursts are regularly used in courts as proof, you know).
But that my prints are on my axe ain't weird, I use it every week. Every day, in winter. Sometimes with gloves on, sometimes not, dep. on what the job is. And so on.
It is at this point police will bring you in to "help with inquiries", i.e. you're arrested if you don't comply. Then the prosecutor arranges for incarceration while the investigation is ongoing (in Sweden, such a stay has no time-limit, but if you are convicted it is counted against the sentence). And that's when the fun begins. Questioning for hours, same questions over and over. Police claiming you've been changing your answers (you do know it is allowed for police to lie to you during questioning, if they do it the way politicians and journalists lie?). Refusing you toilet breaks when you ask for one. Refusing you water. Taking you back to the cell for half an hour, then bringing you back to interrogation just before your scheduled outdoors walk (normally, on top of the jail, 10th floor or so, a wire cage with roof). Keeping you in interrogation so that you miss chow call.
There's a metric f-tonne police can do, fully legal, without it counting as "enhanced interrogation", unless you:
A) Are protected; B) Can afford good private counsel; C Have friends on the outside who can raise Hell in the media; D) Are on the force yourself; E; any and all of A-D.
I have zero reason to believe the plod in the UK are any different.
I know little about this case, but find it ethically fascinating that several of the premature babies were born at a gestational age where it would be completely legal in my state for them to be aborted if their mothers hadn’t wanted them. I guess the difference between being medical waste and the focus of a national outcry is whether a single woman wanted you to live or not. But it is unlikely the people who are pinning their targets on Letby are thinking either rationally in terms of statistics or philosophically in terms of where they might get the most bang from their moral outrage buck.
The pattern wasn't all that unlikely. But it was striking and made people worry. It was reasonable to look for a cause. Look a bit, and the cause is obvious: the unit was accepting patients with much higher acuity. Good for hospital income - NHS pays by "seriousness" of patients, and of course also by number of patients. More cots filled equals more income! Whether the spike in acuity was merely random or deliberate policy is a very interesting question. https://gill1109.com/2024/09/03/what-went-wrong-with-the-nhs-went-badly-wrong-at-coch-and-its-not-a-coincidence/ I think it was not a coincidence. The spike was deliberately caused by ambitious consultants. That conclusion is of course mere speculation. But in any case: the consultants should have expected the spike! It did happen and it wasn't just coincidence!
As presented, the answers to the "crime / no crime" and "guilty / not guilty" questions appear to rest upon trust, in who and in what do you believe to arrive at the "most likely" conclusion. Remembering the recent sub-postmaster scandal, I'm not much inclined to trust the prosecution here.
Was thinking about this thing about using statistics in court as some kind of proof of an act having been performed. (Stacking firewood is very good for the mind.)
What if - total tinfoil time - what if there's a group of someones somewhere inside the UK judicial system and its attendant political branch, that is trying to establish precedence for using statistical analysis as proof/aggravating circumstances in the courts?
Like this:
Henry Wilt sometimes vents his frustrations online. Recently, he wrote a piece on how annoyed he is with women who acts as if they are going to put out, if he just pays for drinks and dinner and movie and nightclub and taxicab, and then he doesn't even get a peck on the cheek.
Sure, we and Henry both knows the girls are under no obligation to do anything. But we also know that there are women and girls that do dangle the promise of at least getting your knob polished, if you just pay for everything during a night out.
Internet being internet, Henry's thread explodes and becomes a juggernaughty of pent-up frustrations, feminist counterattacks, religious pontificating and all the rest. So far, so normal.
But in Henry's town (let's say he lives Colchester) there's a sudden outbreak of gropings, assault, flashing, and finally a rape.
Is it really that far-fetched that police under the Starmer-regime, with officers like Lady Sue Sniffin' Glue, would use Henry's posts as proof positive he incited the assaults et c?
That way, the poo-poo don't need go looking for anyone, they can just bung Henry in the clink and sod off for tea and biccies.
Just your average random thought that may pop up when you're stacking firewood a September afternoon.
There are dead babies. It HAS t be somebody's fault! See John 9:2
Yes, the NHS; CoCH management; the consultants. Many babies were likely to die anyway. The number of excess deaths due to mismanagement, not being cared for at a proper level 2 or level 3 unit, unrecognised sepsis, etc, statistically could be anything between 0 and 9. The expected number is about 4
They were very likely all jabbed. Isn't that the most straightforward explanation?