Studies which show social restrictions do not lead to lower Covid mortality and infection rates are numerous (see this collection of 31 from AIER, which is kept up to date).
We now have another paper to add to the collection. Published last week in Scientific Reports in Nature, it looks at whether the extent to which people stayed at home (measured using Google mobility data) is associated with Covid mortality in different countries. Doesn’t look like it, the researchers conclude. Here’s an excerpt from the abstract:
Countries with over 100 deaths and with a Healthcare Access and Quality Index of at least 67 were included. Data were pre-processed and analysed using the difference between number of deaths per million between two regions and the difference between the percentage of staying at home. … After pre-processing the data, 87 regions around the world were included, yielding 3,741 pairwise comparisons for linear regression analysis. Only 63 (1.6%) comparisons were significant. With our results, we were not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in around 98% of the comparisons after epidemiological weeks 9 to 34.
The authors add:
We were not able to explain the variation of deaths per million in different regions in the world by social isolation, herein analysed as differences in staying at home, compared to baseline. In the restrictive and global comparisons, only 3% and 1.6% of the comparisons were significantly different, respectively.
They explain that this is in line with the findings of others, and criticise the model-based studies which come to different conclusions.
Our results are different from those published by Flaxman et al. The authors applied a very complex calculation that NPIs would prevent 3.1 million deaths across 11 European countries. The discrepant results can be explained by different approaches to the data. While Flaxman et al. assumed a constant reproduction number (Rt) to calculate the total number of deaths, which eventually did not occur, we calculated the difference between the actual number of deaths between two countries/regions. The projections published by Flaxman et al. have been disputed by other authors. Kuhbandner and Homburg described the circular logic that this study involved. Flaxman et al. estimated the Rt from daily deaths associated with SARS-CoV-2 using an a priori restriction that Rt may only change on those dates when interventions become effective. However, in the case of a finite population, the effective reproduction number falls automatically and necessarily over time since the number of infections would otherwise diverge. A recent preprint report from Chin et al. explored the two models proposed by Imperial College by expanding the scope to 14 European countries from the 11 countries studied in the original paper. They added a third model that considered banning public events as the only covariate. The authors concluded that the claimed benefits of lockdown appear grossly exaggerated since inferences drawn from effects of NPIs are non-robust and highly sensitive to model specification.
The same explanation for the discrepancy can be applied to other publications where mathematical models were created to predict outcomes. Most of these studies dealt with COVID-19 cases and not observed deaths. Despite its limitations, reported deaths are likely to be more reliable than new case data. Further explanations for different results in the literature, besides methodological aspects, could be justified by the complexity of the virus dynamic, by its interaction with the environment, or they may be related to a seasonal pattern that was, by coincidence, established at the same time when infection rates started to decrease due to seasonal dynamics. It is unwise to try to explain a complex and multifactorial condition, with the inherent constant changes, using a single variable. An initial approach would employ a linear regression to verify the influence of one factor over an outcome. Herein we were not able to identify this association. Our study was not designed to explain why the stay-at-home measures do not contain the spread of the virus SARS-CoV-2. However, possible explanations that need further analysis may involve genetic factors, the increment of viral load, and transmission in households and in close quarters where ventilation is reduced.
No doubt it is counterintuitive that people staying at home more does not significantly reduce transmission of an infectious disease. This is one reason the sceptical case can be hard to make and sound to lockdowners like sophistry. They may assume there must be some hidden variable we haven’t accounted for, or that we are just exploiting the notoriously slippery nature of statistics. Indeed, for many sceptics (myself included) we originally expected that lockdowns would “work” in terms of suppressing the spread, but just thought they were pointless in that they delayed the inevitable and thus were harmful and unethical. The idea that lockdowns didn’t even manage to achieve the one thing they were supposed to came as a surprise to many of us, and the data had to convince us of something that at first seemed unlikely.
Why does lockdown not significantly suppress the virus? One suggestion is that people are already voluntarily social distancing sufficiently, so Government diktats don’t add anything. But the present study looks at whether people are actually moving around less, not just whether Government tells them to, and finds no relationship with Covid deaths. So that seems to rule that one out.
One reason will be that much of the spread, particularly which leads to serious disease and death, occurs in hospitals and care homes. Forty per cent of Covid deaths in England and Wales in spring were care home residents, while Public Health Scotland found that between half and two thirds of serious infections were picked up in hospital. PHS also found that shielding – essentially an extreme version of lockdown – was ineffective, largely because of household transmission. But that prompts the question of where, under lockdown and social distancing, other household members are picking it up from?
In terms of community transmission, even during a stringent lockdown such as in the UK this winter, around half the workforce are travelling to work, while only around a third work exclusively from home. Add to that that many people still use supermarkets and other shops, and many children still attend school (even where the schools are only open for key workers’ children), and that’s a lot of social interaction. It appears that this level of interaction is enough to allow the virus to reach about the same number of people, particularly among those who are susceptible to serious illness, regardless of what other interaction is avoided.
Masks, of course, have little or no effect on transmission, mainly because they do not (and cannot, since people must breathe) prevent virus-carrying-aerosols from filling the air in a poorly ventilated space such as most rooms we spend any amount of time in (we are after all trying to keep them warm). Breathing such air is the main mode of transmission.
It might be thought that it is asymptomatic carriers who are spreading it unawares, since that is the message the Government has been pumping out. However, contrary to early reports from China, recent studies suggest that, as with other viruses, asymptomatic carriers are barely infectious and account for just 0.7% of transmission. This means community transmission must be being driven by symptomatic people who are not currently self-isolating – perhaps because they cannot, or cannot afford to, or because they think it is just a mild cold.
Whatever the reason, the data is consistent and clear. Lockdowns (including voluntarily staying at home) are not associated with reducing Covid mortality or infection rates. This new study is just one more piece of research evidence testifying to that fact.
Stop Press: Yesterday an “Editor’s Note” appeared on the paper, suggesting some people are not happy with it.
Readers are alerted that the conclusions of this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the Editors. A further editorial response will follow once all parties have been given an opportunity to respond in full.
That’ll be an interesting one to watch out for.
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The decision not to charge Nick Lowles is bizarre and definitely has all the aroma of two tier politically motivated justice. That Allison Pearson warranted the heavy hand of the law and Lowles zilch demonstrates all we need to know about impartial application of the law
All I can say is that Hope not hate appears to have the same phrase book as War is peace, Slavery is freedom. In other words they are the very opposite of the name on the tin
Hate not Hope.
Peace in Europe is war!
Left Wing Lawyers Hate Britain
I think all Lefties hate their countries and yearn for a Far Left communo-fascist one world government that can be remote and remove them from all blame and authority. We saw how the EU did this here and has given us nothing but pygmies in government and Parliament.
Excellent detective work, Laurie Wastell, on the past life of this Lord of the Realm and lawyerly henchman of the Enemy Within.
Now please turn your sleuthing skills to the past lawyerly life of the Man Himself in Person, Sir Two-Tier.
SO Hermer is actually Two Tier’s subconscious voice , what a thorough traitorous Barsteward, .
Radical past?
Doesn’t that include every member of Starmer’s cabinet?
We are led by Communists it is blatantly obvious
Why do the choices always have to be between Hitler or Stalin? The communists pushing their agendas are no better ethically or morally than the fascists.There are 100’s of millions of us that want nothing to do with either. We just want common sense governess, equal treatment under the law, fair taxes, Governments not run by extremist nut jobs from either end of the political spectrum. So one while one side is uncovering the ills of the other, they are ignoring the ills their own ideology creates.
Makes you wonder if the Wall coming down in 1991 was a good idea!
In East Germany they regret it and would love to rebuild it to keep out western Far Left fascism.
Shortly after Berlin wall came down in 1989, Helmut Kohl (CDU, chancellor of the FRG) held a speech in Berlin where he mentioned the possibility of German reunification. This was rudely rejected by Walter Momper (SPD), then the so-called governing mayor of West-Berlin, with the words (quoted from memory)
Warum quatschen sie denn jetzt von „Wiedervereinigung“, das will doch hier überhaupt niemand hören!
[Why are you blathering about “reunification” now, despite nobody here wants to listen to that?]
At the earliest opportunity, Momper’s party had formed an East-German branch ‘cunningly’ named SDP so that nobody would notice that it was really the same party and they had loved to keep two German states and thus, have twice the amount of government positions at their disposal. The SED (former state party) quickly transmogrified itself into the PDS¹ which is meanwhile (current name Die Linke, The Left) a force to reckon with on the German left and behind-the-scenes responsible for much of the leftward lurch of Germany under Angela Merkel, former MfS² informer and daugher of a family who voluntarily immigrated into the GDR from the FRG.
We should maybe have kept the wall to keep the communists out. But on the other hand, we were (and are) all Germans and not just pawns of parties named with some combination of the letters S, D, and P (and Ö).
¹ This means for a short while we had the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Social-Democratic Party (SDP) and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). These are obviously all completely different.
² Ministry for Security of the State, the Stasi.
Additional bit of information: The name SPD goes back to the 19th century and by that time, democractic didn’t have the positive meaning it has gained meanwhile. Originally, it mean dedicated to overthrowing the established political order¹ in order to replace it with some kind of people’s republic.
¹ Constitutional monarchy.
People getting shot by soldiers (or torn to pieces by mines) for trying to escape from a state imprisoning them is quite obviously such an ideal state of affairs that no one could ever want to change it .
Why do you believe you could chose Hitler in the unlikely event you would want that?
In 1939, Germany and the USSR jointly invaded Poland. This caused England and France to declare war on Germany but not on the USSR they ultimately married while handing Poland over as wedding gift (plus everything in Europe eastward of the current German eastern border and westward of the current Russian western border). Hence, you (so to say) quite voluntarily chose Stalin and that’s why you’re still haunted by his political heirs today. The communists never kept their intentions to take over all of the world in order to remake it in their own image secret.
I do enjoy a good demolition job. Excellent work.
The conclusion that Hermer is clearly another traitor is unavoidable.
““if Western societies objectify women by sexualising them then it’s no wonder that some Muslims have fallen into temptation”……..Well they’re already sexual so that is BS for a start.
What he meant to say is allow them to walk around stark naked (for Muslim standards) in public, marking this a the oldest rapist’s excuse in the world: She was really asking for it! She wore a miniskirt and I just couldn’t control myself!
I think I have an idea or two what to do with people who suffer from this overcome by an immoral alien culture-problem and it would have to do something with avoiding avoidable exposure by reducing intercultural mixing by wide¹ spatial separation.
¹ About 4967 miles, the distance between London and Karachi.
If this was happening in Germany, there would be no reason to write an article about it as that’s probably the biography of almost all SPD, Die Linke and Green Party politicians and a sizeable subset of the CDU/CSU and FDP as well.
The likes of Hope Not Hate are going to be looking very sad soon….as the USAID money spigot has run dry…..
If Harmer is looking for more work representing prisoners whose human rights are being abused then, perhaps, he might like to take up the case of Tommy Robinson.
It is quite clear that Robinsons treatment is not prison as it should be but is Cruel and Unusual punishment. This is obviously contrary to the Human Rights legislation, and I am amazed that the Attorney General has not taken any action against the Justice dept, or whoever is responsible. In fact we should crowd fund action against both He and the PM for this failure to act, the failure is clearly political in nature, and Britain often acts against other Countries for such violations in the UN. Elon and Trump may well mention it in the UN, putting Britain in the Piriah state category!
It should be noted that Hope not Hate is one of the bete noise of the Trump administration and Musk, so any Gov’t association with it doesn’t do us any favours.
PS shouldn’t it be “Hope not – HATE” ?