Passing away


  • Funeral service Tuesday, 11 February, 2025, 1030GMT link East Hill Baptist Church [see below for instructions if you need them. No login in required, but you must identify yourself.]
  • Committal link Tuesday, 11 February, 2025, 1210GMT link: East Chapel, Roehampton Crematorium, UserName: yami6838 Password: 415731

    Recordings of the services will shortly be available on these links.
  • Documents:
    The funeral service – here
    Daughter-in-law – here
    Eldest granddaughter – here
    Eldest son – here
This is the recording of the funeral service at East Hill Baptist Church.

A pdf copy of the funeral service is available here.

Most of the pictures in the YouTube video below are of Maisie, or they belonged to her. If you happen to be in one of the pictures, it is an accident, you may have been in the wrong place at the right time.

The music from Siegfried and Götterdämmerung is my choice. It was not hers.

Who was Maisie? Follow this link for a brief family history.


Whilst this is not the place for personal blogging, some of you will want to know of, and a few of you will have met my mother I thought I should say something here. When Abraham was living in Mamre1 near the Dead Sea, three men visited him. He welcomed them and they honoured him by eating with him. Two of them walked on. One remained behind to speak with Abraham about the reasons for their visit. My mother attained ninety-nine years in November, and on Sunday past whilst we waited by her bed-side, two such men visited her. The District Nurse had not long left. We did not see them, nor hear their footsteps, but she left the house with them to be taken to her eternal home. Though we did not see them come or go, they left her body without breath, so that we would know they had been.

The One who remained to speak with Abraham later said: In my Father’s house are many rooms. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I shall return to take you to myself.2

She was a good mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt and great-aunt to many as well as a friend. We thank God for her many years, and for giving her grace to persevere in weakness, illness and pain in her last days.

1 Genesis 18
2 John 14


The funeral service shall take place at East Hill Baptist Church conducted by Joe Long, pastor and neighbour for many years, followed by a committal at Roehampton Vale.

For further information, please raise a question in the comments below. Comments are private until I approve them. If you wish your comment to remain private, please say so.

Donations, please, if in lieu of flowers, should be made to the Royal Trinity Hospice, who provided care at home for her in her last weeks, or to OxFam. We thank those who have already made donations.


Further information about the funeral arrangements will be available from Ernest Larner, Funeral Directors. A QR code for use with your smart-phone is below.

To join the funeral service at East Hill Baptist Church, follow this link: Funeral service. Ignore the instructions on that page, unless you already have Zoom installed and are familiar with it. Instead do this:

  • Follow on that page the link Click Here (you may follow this link rather than the Funeral Service link above if you wish).
    • This opens the Zoom web page in your browser or on your smart phone etc
    • You are offered the opportunity to download the Zoom Workplace app to your device. You do not have to do this.
  • Follow the link Launch Meeting
    • If you have installed the Zoom Workplace app, the service will open in the app. If you have not move on to the next step.
  • A new link should appear on the screen:
  • Follow the link Join from your browser
  • You may see a message ‘Joining the meeting’ then you will be presented with the introduction screen. Please enter your name (this is important), and choose whether to allow Zoom to use your camera and microphone. You do not have to allow Zoom to use them, you will be able to see and hear what is going on anyway. If you do, the host, and other participants may be able to see and hear you. Normally your microphone will be muted by the administrators.
  • Follow the link Join the meeting
  • The host will admit you to the service.

We recommend that you join the service early, to allow time for anything that might go wrong; your device may decide that it needs an update and keep you waiting several minutes; you may have other connection issues; and to allow time for the host to admit you to the service.

Please note that this link presently connects you to the morning service at East Hill. The service starts at 1030 GMT each Sunday. You may want to connect to that before the funeral service if you wish to familiarise yourself with the set up. The link will be updated if necessary on the morning of the funeral service.

Instructions for joining the committal will be added when they become available.

https://www.dignityfunerals.co.uk/funeral-notices/29-12-2024-winifred-maisie-moffatt/

Ernest Larner Funeral Directors
Dignity Funerals

Lipedema – the debate

There is a debate in the world of Lipedema which Coco now spells not as Lipoedema in order to avoid the suggestion that oedema (water based fluid) is present in the dsytrophy which is called lipedema1. Coco has referenced the debate in other articles – here and here. The video referenced below produced by Colin Mockery (is that a pen name like Coco?) is quite long but an excellent literature review for anyone who has either the smallest interest in lipedema or who is looking for an example of how to review literature and present the results of such a review. The reader must understand that in saying this Coco is not condoning the conclusions of this particular review. Coco is merely saying it is a good example of a review. For an assessment of the conclusions of the review the reader must look elsewhere, in particular any reply that may have been prepared by any of those who were subjects of the review.

Before Coco says any more he should declare that he is not unbiassed and if you have read any thing else you, the reader, will understand the bias. Coco also understands that none of the parties to the debate promoted either directly or indirectly, the review or the production of the video.

It is a fascinating story. Coco understands why some at the ILA or the Concensus would want to either suppress or advertise the video, but Coco would wish to be cautious about the way it is done. Whilst the review has at its foundation a good literature, in the broadest sense of that word, review, the tone in which the conclusions are presented, do not become a cautious, intelligent enquirer into truth, but rather more speaks of the polemical promoter of a particular cause. A suppression of the video would be seen as an attempt to silence free speech, whereas a promotion could so easily be perceived as a gloating over the ‘enemy’. We must not rejoice over the fall of others nor seek to find ways to make them fall, for we are as frail as they are, so concerning promotion of the video, Coco would want to add a statement something like (whilst the author himself makes much the same point close to the end of the video, you yourself must judge the manner in which it is made.):

‘whilst we agree with the scientific conclusions of this examination of the literature, at the same time recognising the limitations in our knowledge, we do not endorse any attacks upon any of the individual practitioners mentioned who, we believe, intend only the best for their patients even if it may appear that they may have been misinformed or may not have used or promoted the most appropriate treatments in their practices. Attacks upon individuals merely strain relationships and hinder our efforts to work towards a common evidence-based understanding of the underlying causes and best treatments available for this debilitating condition, which we call lipedema. We must remember that each one of us has taken a journey to reach where we are today, having ourselves also made mistakes and having been in need of correction by others.  Our understandings are limited, and any criticism we make must be made with both humility and compassion, and with the recognition that we may also be found wanting as understanding of the condition develops. ‘

Coco can see at least one cultural problem though for whilst Luther and his contemporaries would happily speak directly against persons for the ideas they hold and promote – indeed Luther himself was likened to a bull by the Pope of his day, and perhaps such personal attacks could be used effectively with the response ‘If I be a bull, let me show what kind of bull I can be’ – such an approach is not the best to use today in some societies. Could a modern German be asked to speak in such a way that if, whilst he is attacking the teaching of Mein Kampf, at the same time he would be defending the writer thereof? Surely that would be completely counter cultural. We must be careful that we do not impose our own cultural judgements on others in the particular forms of words they choose to express disagreement. If even native English speakers can be misunderstood when speaking across different English speaking cultures, those who are native English speakers must bear with the frailties of those who are translating into another foreign language and do not understand that the form of words chosen, which may be understood in Birmingham, Alabama, may not be understood in the same way in Birmingham, Warwickshire.

There were some other aspects than the attacks upon the individuals, with which Coco was not happy in the video for example, the use of the comic music behind some of the video clips of Dr Karen Herbst and Linda-Anne Kahn(?) were prejudicial, unhelpful and disturbing. Coco could see why it was thought appropriate, but it was unnecessary (unless the music was also behind the original videos of course). The words used were enough in themselves to get across the point that was being made. Secondly, the use of irony in the apparent pretence of a denial that there was a commercial motive behind their public statements despite the presentation of evidence that suggested quite clearly that there is a financial conflict of interest may not be what you want to find in a literature review, even though there are good examples of it in English literature itself; Shakespeare used the very technique in Mark Anthony’s speech after the murder of Caesar, perhaps with good cause for if he had not Mark Anthony may himself have become the object of a second murder. It may be a good literary or oratorical technique, but it behoves the scientist to avoid it.

Coco commends the video for your close attention. There is much to learn from it, not just about lipedema, but about what we do not know, and about how not to present your findings. Listening at 1.25 times normal speed will work, and reduce the viewing time, but there are sections in which the review is quoting from the literature during which you will need to slow the video down to normal speed in order to properly grasp the sense of the speakers being quoted.

1 Coco is not suggesting that oedema is absent in the presence of lipedema, it may be, and perhaps often is, present, but it is not intrinsic to the condition. The presence of oedema is a different condition which may be lymphoedema, the consequence of inflammation or some other oedemic condition.

2 Warning: As always do not take medical advice, or understanding, from Coco. Whilst Coco may be able to think scientifically, his hypotheses are often untested and perhaps some would say ill-founded.

Euthanised

Coco has no wish to pass judgement, and he hopes that there is no sense of that in the following, but the circumstances of the disappearance and subsequent demise of the squirrel afford an opportunity for a couple of comments.

It was that that “multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets” had been received by the Department for Environmental Conservation (DEC in the USA). The consequence for the squirrel was that it was taken from an allegedly unsafe house, which it appeared to be happy, to a safe house where it died.  

The concern for the welfare of wildlife is not to be derogated, but it does lead one to wonder where the equivalent organisation is for people who live in ‘potentially unsafe housing’ and why they are not removed from such places though of course not with similar consequences as in the case of the squirrel.

The second comment follows from Coco’s first, though it requires a slight rephrasal of what had happened, for it speaks of events which take place frequently and against which a protest such as was made in favour of the squirrel are in some places illegal. Whilst we do not have an equivalent of the DEC, we do have the legalised removal of people from safe housing with the same consequences as for the squirrel.

They are people for whom their environment is perfectly suited to their development and growth, and yet they are torn out of it and are quietly euthanised. The womb should be the safest place on earth for a human being.

Job in his distress cried out: Why then have you brought me out of the womb? Oh, that I had perished and no eye had seen me! I would have been as though I had not been. I would have been carried from the womb to the grave Job 10:18-19.

Most of us would not cry out in such a way wishing for a still-birth. Perhaps the words of King David are better for you: For you formed my inward parts; you wove me [together] in my mother’s womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret, and skilfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed, and in your book they all were  written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them Psalm 139:13-16.

It is a big issue. It may make a difference on November the 5th 2024 in the USA.


A black man is allowed to say things that white men cannot.

Lipedema

Sometimes it is hard to obtain a list of the things that can go wrong after or during surgery, though best practice dictates that patients should be provided with full information in order that they may give informed consent to the intervention – it occurs to Coco that perhaps the insurance standard of the utmost good faith should be applied to the contract – but at the ITALF 2024 conference held in the auditorium at the Atheneum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum in Rome we were presented with such a list,

Trattamento riabilitativo termine e getione dei problemi: E Fiengo, Pomezia, RM

Complicanze
Incompleta risoluzione del dolore
Dipendenza dall’indumento compressivo
Parestasie, ipoestasie, iperestasie, e compressioni nervose
Discromie e disturbi circulatori distrettuali
Linfedema secondario
Edema e fibrosi post-operatoria
Cicatrici e alterazioni fasciali
Lipedema regrowth

ITALF 2024 at APRA, Rome. Presentation by E Fiengo, Pomezia

It goes without saying that the list itself is ‘incompleta’ and there are other perhaps much more serious risks which are not listed here, but which are not directly related to the problem which the surgery is attempting to solve, but it is good to hear an acknowledgment that some of the outcomes may be considered to be a complete failure of the surgery itself, for the final condition of the patient will be worse than at the beginning. Surely it is not inappropriate that the words of our Lord may be paraphrased about them:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. Matthew 23:15

Coco leaves it as an exercise for the reader to produce a suitable paraphrase. Please leave it in the comments should you think it apt.

Incomplete resolution of pain
Compression garment dependence
Parastasia, hypostasia, hyperastasia, and nerve compression
Dischromia and district circulatory disorders
Secondary lymphedema
Postoperative edema and fibrosis
Scars and fascial alterations
Lipedema regrowth

Lockdown (too)

The following post may provoke a response from the censers(sic!), and a lockdown which is far from useless, though perhaps needless, may be imposed here, after which you shall be glad never to hear from me again.

What do you think of what was orated by the Lord Hannan of Kingsclere?

The story about the people of Ohio is quite entertaining..


Lord Hannan of Kingsclere speaking in the House of Lords. Published 3rd September 2024

Further comments may be found here: Fake News?

Should the following link fail, you may be sure that a response has been provoked:

Famine in Africa

Digging riverbeds to find water

The article posted by the BBC Digging riverbeds in Zimbabwe in desperate search for water reminds us of the dire famine in much of south central Africa. The Zimbabwe Partnership Trust has for several years supported communities in Zimbabwe including by financing the drilling of bore-holes to provide water for agricultural projects and schools in remote regions. ZPT is focussed this year very much on the relief of famine in those communities where it has been working through trusted local partners.

Fake News?

Coco had only visited the site in order to check whether British or US spelling was being used to describe the class of medical facility which are called health centres, and not to examine whether fake news were being promoted, and whilst the video may contain much accurate information about the response of the government to the outbreak of covid-19, it began on a rather bad foot.

Coco is talking about this item on YouTube:


It is at 19 June 2024 on the home page of the Ministry of Health, Uganda but may be replaced at any time.

In the Ministry of Health Covid-19 response documentary, which was released on the 1 September 2023 we hear:
This virus killed more people in the first twenty-five weeks than HIV/AIDS has killed in twenty-five years.
These words, corrected here by Coco, appear in the transcript at c0:18

That is an interesting claim. It was followed by a reference to the 1918 Spanish ‘flu death toll after which you may see 100,000,000 appear briefly on the screen. Read that carefully: More than 100,000,000 infected. In the context you may be forgiven for thinking that it was a claim that there were 100 million deaths. Coco thought to investigate the claim. Be patient we have to look at a number of sources, some of which may be more reliable than the others.

In brief

According to a study in PubMed: Estimates of global SARS-CoV-2 infection exposure, infection morbidity, and infection mortality rates in 2020 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34841244/) in which it is stated that If left unchecked with no vaccination and no other public health interventions, and assuming circulation of only wild-type variants and no variants of concern, the pandemic would eventually cause 8.18 million deaths. According to Wikipedia the estimated actual number of deaths to June 2024 was 7.05 millions.

On the other dies of the coin we have the table at Deaths from HIV/AIDS by age, World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-from-hiv-by-age which provides figures for all years since 1980.  The total number of deaths since 1980 taken from these tables is c.34 millions.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-from-hiv-by-age?time=earliest..2021&showSelectionOnlyInTable=1

Using these statistics, if we take the first twenty five years of AIDS there were 16m deaths. In the last 25 years there were 28m deaths. Both of these numbers are greater than both the estimate provided by the PubMed paper for the potential total number of deaths, and the actual number reported by Wikipedia from Covid-19.

On what basis then can the YouTube video claim that Covid-19 has killed more in 25 weeks than HIV/AIDS in 25 years? Is this not fake news?

Further resources

By way of comparison, there are other tables of statistics available for both Covid-19 and HIV/AIDS related deaths, which give higher figures than Coco has used above.

According to the Global HIV & AIDS statistics — Fact sheet  https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet 40.4 million [32.9 million–51.3 million] people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic. This data does give range rather than simply one figure, into which, though at the lower end, the figure on ourworldindata.org falls.

The table at Total number of AIDS-related deaths worldwide from 2000 to 2022 https://www.statista.com/statistics/257209/number-of-aids-related-deaths-worldwide-since-2001 indicates, by interpolation, that there have been closer to c.31m deaths in the past twenty five years from AID/HIV.  The figures I have used in the interpolation are given in italics in the list below:

99000102030405060708091011121314151617181920212223
1,61,71,71,81,81,92,01,81,71,61,41,31,41,41,31,21,11,00,940,770,690,690,660,630,60
Total number of AIDS-related deaths worldwide from 2000 to 2022 (with Coco’s interpolations)

This table provides smaller figures for the most recent years, but the differences between the two sources amount to less than 500k, which is an insignificant difference in the context of several millions.

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_HIV/AIDS also quotes higher figures for deaths.

Concerning totals deaths from Covid-19 Wikipedia reports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_deaths: There have been reported 7,050,691 (updated 17 June 2024) confirmed COVID-induced deaths worldwide. As of January 2023, taking into account likely COVID induced deaths via excess deaths, the 95% confidence interval suggests the pandemic to have caused between 16 and 28.2 million deaths. Even if these higher figures are correct, which we must remember are for a period of more than three years, then it is unlikely that This virus killed more people in the first twenty-five weeks than HIV/AIDS has killed in twenty-five years. In the first 25 weeks the highest figure we could have for Covid-19 deaths is 28,2*25/156, say 5 millions, and the lowest estimate of HIV/AIDS deaths over twenty-five years is 16 millions.

Perhaps the effect of the interventions has saved less than 1m lives (the earlier estimate was for 8 millions but the outcome was 7 millions) over the four years if the PubMed figures are to be believed.

The economic impact

An article in the Grauniad reminds us of the value of a prevented fatality (VPF): £2m in the UK US$11,6 in the USA: Are Smart Motorways Safe

On the basis of those figures the amount to be spent to save those 1m lives would be £2 billion in the UK or US$11,6 billion in the US (which in unconventional language would be £2 or US$11,6 million million). We may well want to ask, How much did they actually spend?

Reports indicate that the US has figures of US$8-14 billion (The COVID-19 Pandemic and the $16 Trillion(sic.) Virus (this article provides alternative measures which indicate lower values of a life), the UK up to £400 million (Covid-19: How much has it cost?). Both of these figures are of course open to discussion and argument. It is likely that the basis on which they have been prepared is far from agreed, though there may be a consensus amongst those who prepared the reports. That they are large and not insignificant costs is hardly however disputable, and as we shall see even if they are out by as much as 50% (ie twice the actual real cost) they are significantly higher than we would expect using the VPF figures.

The following table using figures extracted from the data sets available at Our World in Data: How many people die and how many are born each year? and Explore the global data on confirmed COVID-19 cases (set the metric to confrmed deaths, the interval to cumulative and uncheck Relative to population) shows the estimated expected local cost of saving 1 million lives globally.

Covid-19 Total casesDeaths
WorldWorldUnited StatesUnited Kingdom
31/12/202080,318,4161,897,597342,92090,475
31/12/2021200,298,4853,549,359469,66785,684
31/12/2022424,017,3771,249,137267,38939,186
31/12/202369,382,441323,72884,45916,767
31/12/2024               1,634,76334,72624,1330
(2024 is to early June)         
Total775,651,4827,054,5471,188,568232,112
Anticipated deaths (PubMed)8,180,0001,378,187269,142
Saving by interventions(?)1,125,453189,61937,030
Value of a prevented death (VPF)$11,600,000£2,000,000
Expected costs of prevention (millions)$2,200,000£70,000
Actual estimated costs (millions)$16,000,000£400,000
Extracted from the actual data set on GitHub which is presently called owid-covid-data.csv

Conclusion

Assuming that the number of deaths saved in each of these two countries is proportional to the actual number, and that the estimate provided by PubMed is reliable (but we have no other), then the expected spend, based upon the VPF figures would have been US$2,2 billions and £70,000 millions. Both countries based upon their own working VPF models (whatever shortcomings may be seen in the computation of those figures) have spent six or seven times those amounts.

Post-script
As noted elsewhere, the covid-19 infection was not the Spanish ‘flu in its impact. The death rate has settled down to about 2% of those infected. Contrariwise influenza causes 200-500,000 (possibly as high as 700,000 as we see at the end of the article) deaths per year according to data provided by Our World in Data. A different article in Our World tells us that Yet, data on the flu is limited but such as there is suggests that Influenza occurs all over the world, with an annual global attack rate estimated at 5-10% in adults and 20-30% in children (WHO). Taking these estimates there would be about 300-600 millions in adults and 400-600 millions in children of infections each year.

Fearful

Yet again Coco finds himself in agreement with a sociologist. Robert Dingwall has written about the inappropriate use of fear to coerce specific behaviours at the beginning and during the passage of the covid-19 crisis. Coco must admit to being one of those complacent ones who did not ‘feel sufficiently personally threatened’ due to a personal examination of ‘the low death rate in [the] demographic group’ to which Coco belonged. Coco must confess however that Coco has been taken to task several times by more than one individual of more than merely competent medical standing for holding such a position.

Coco had long thought that the language used to convey the message promulgated by governments and their advisors promoted fear, and that therefore a different language should have been used, given that it always seemed to magnify the risks and dangers of the virus. Coco was not ready to conclude that the language had been deliberately chosen by governments and their advisors to promote such fear.

Richard D concludes very clearly in the opposite way and Coco is quite inclined to agree with him.

Elephantiasis et al

At the Makerere University Environmental Health Students’ Association 19th Scientific Conference in April 2024 Dr Arthur Bagonza presented qualitative results from a study funded by the ILF into the burden and prevalence of lymphatic filariasis in Uganda.