Day: 28 May 2020

Financial Times Elides Excess Deaths In UK with Deaths From Coronavirus, Triggers Call For Coup From Ex-SAGE Member Professor Anthony Costello, the former WHO Director and now a member of the "alternative" SAGE, got very over-excited on Twitter earlier today in response to an FT article showing the UK had the highest rate of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic among a group of 19 countries that produce comparable data. According to the article, the UK has registered 59,537 more deaths than usual this year since the week ending March 20th. In Costello's brain, this became: "The FT report the UK has the highest rate of excess COVID19 deaths in the world. 59,537 more deaths than usual with a rate of 891 deaths per million." Costello's tweet set off a chain of responses, each more hysterical than the last, with Robert West, a Professor of Health Psychology at UCL and a former member of the SP1-B subgroup of SAGE, seemingly calling for a coup on the back of it. "We cannot wait until this is 'all over' to find out what is going wrong," he said, referring to Costello's tweet. "But to learn from its mistakes the Government has to admit it is making them. This is something they appear completely unwilling to do. Time for NHS and public health to ...

In Singapore, the only thing that matters is our safety, not our lives. Despite a tiny number of deaths amongst the elderly, and despite evidence from around the world showing the true nature of the virus, Singapore still embarked on a four-week lockdown as late as April 7th. We were told to stay at home, and most businesses and schools were closed. We were fined $300 for stretching out on the grass. An app was circulated for reporting any non-compliance with the rules. A couple of days in, we were banned from leaving the house without a face mask. Adult masks were given freely out, but when I enquired about children’s masks I was told that there were none, and that my children should stay at home. Two weeks in, and cases of COVID-19 in the already-quarantined foreign workers were still increasing, so the government announced a four-week extension of the nationwide lockdown (now until June 1st) and told us we could only go out alone, not with our households – no fines though, so I could still escape with the kids. To date, about 26,000 workers have tested positive out of 325,000. This matters little, because had they done more tests (which they could have done, I’m sure) they would have found more cases. Not one has died. We’re ...