Dominic Cummings – director of the Vote Leave campaign and former chief adviser to Boris Johnson – has written a pro-lockdown Twitter thread. However, I don’t find his arguments very convincing. What follows is a point-by-point response.
1/ Covid… Summary evidence on lockdowns. For UK political pundits obsessed with spreading nonsense on Sweden/lockdowns, cf. SW econ did a bit WORSE than Denmark which locked down, AND far more deaths in Sweden:
Not all sources indicate that Sweden did worse than Denmark in terms of GDP growth last year. For example, the IMF gives Sweden’s growth as –2.8% and Denmark’s as –3.3%. In fact, according to the IMF, only a handful of European countries had higher growth than Sweden last year.
It’s true that Denmark has had fewer COVID-19 deaths. However, it’s unlikely that lockdowns account for this difference. During the first wave, Denmark had zero days of mandatory stay-at-home orders, and did not introduce mandatory business closures until March 18th. But the country did introduce border screening on March 4th, followed by a total border closure on March 14th. Hence its success during the first wave is more plausibly due to border controls.
During the second wave, Denmark had about the same level of restrictions as Sweden, and in any case saw a moderate number of deaths.
More importantly, the argument that “we have to compare Sweden to its neighbours” isn’t very convincing. Sweden’s age-adjusted excess mortality up to week 51 of 2020 was just 1.7% – below the European average.
The epidemic in Sweden was already more advanced by the time its neighbours locked down. And since lockdowns don’t have much impact unless case numbers are low, locking down probably wouldn’t have made a big difference. What’s more, the Baltics are similar to the Nordics in terms of climate and population density, and once you include them in the comparison, Sweden no longer stands out.
Cumming’s tweet also links to an article by the economist Noah Smith, which argues that “lockdowns were good”. However, Smith doesn’t discuss any of the evidence contradicting his thesis, of which there is plenty. See here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
One of the biggest misunderstandings, spread by political pundits even now, is the ‘tradeoff’ argument. Fact: evidence clear that fast hard effective action best policy for economy AND for reducing deaths/suffering
The argument that lockdowns are good for both public health and economic output – that there’s no trade-off – only works if locking down enables you to completely suppress the virus.
Once complete suppression has been achieved, the lockdown must be combined with a well-functioning system of contact tracing, and a well-functioning system of border controls. In the absence of these measures, a new epidemic will almost certainly emerge once the lockdown is lifted.
There is strong evidence that the UK’s lockdowns were bad for the economy. Indeed, the UK had the second lowest GDP growth in 2020 out of all the major countries in Europe, and its worst recession for 300 years.
One could argue that the UK should have locked down earlier, but this is a bit like arguing China should have acted earlier to contain the epidemic in Wuhan. In other words, that ship sailed a long time ago.
What’s more, it’s doubtful whether the UK – which is much denser and more connected than, say, Australia – would have been able to contain the virus through measures like contact tracing and border controls.
4/ Best example: Taiwan. Also shows that if you REALLY get your act together not only is econ largely unscathed but life is ~ normal. But SW1 (Remain/Leave, Rt/Left) = totally hostile to learning from East Asia
I agree that Taiwan has handled the pandemic well, and I share Cummings’s concern that people in Whitehall are unwilling to learn from East Asia.
5/ There’s a general western problem based on nonsense memes like ‘asians all do as they’re told it won’t work here’. This is what many behavioural science ‘experts’/charlatans argued, disastrously, in Feb2020. This nonsense is STILL influencing policy, eg our joke borders policy
It’s not clear whether a greater tendency “to do as they’re told” explains why so few people in East Asia have died from COVID-19. However, evidence suggests that lockdowns are not a plausible alternative explanation.
For example, Japan saw an epidemic burgeon in the winter of 2020–21. Yet this epidemic retreated without any real lockdown measures being imposed, which indicates that some other cultural or biological factor accounts for the country’s success.
In a recent article dealing with the global distribution of mortality from COVID-19, The Economist suggested that people in East Asia may “benefit from ‘cross-immunities’ – a level of protection against SARS-CoV-2 conferred by past infection by other viruses circulating in the region”.
6/ Another confusion re Sweden: data shows despite no official ‘lockdown’ behaviour changed enormously. The closer your measures are to ‘welding people inside homes’ (per Wuhan at peak) the >> effect on transmission. Semantics of ‘lockdown’ obscure this really simple point
Most lockdown sceptics accept that voluntary social-distancing affects the trajectory of the epidemic – I certainly do. Indeed, many people cite Sweden as an example of good pandemic management precisely because the country relied on voluntary measures (for the most part).
However, it isn’t necessarily true that the “closer your measures are to ‘welding people inside homes’ (per Wuhan at peak) the >> effect on transmission”. We know that very little transmission happens outdoors, so there’s essentially no justification for mandatory stay-at-home orders.
What’s more, reducing overall transmission may be less important than reducing transmission among high-risk groups. Asking healthy adults to stay at home won’t have much impact on mortality if the virus still get into hospitals and care homes, as it did in the UK.
Rather than focussing all our attention on the total number of cases, or the population “R” number, we should have done more to protect the most vulnerable. This would have involved expanding hospital capacity, improving ventilation, and requiring frequent testing of visitors.
Finally, there are some jurisdictions where the epidemic retreated without “behaviour changing enormously”. For example, case numbers in South Dakota began falling rapidly in mid November, despite almost no government restrictions and little change in people’s overall mobility. And they’ve stayed low ever since.
Because of overdispersion – i.e., the fact that a small number of individuals cause a large percentage of infections – overall mobility matters less than you might expect.
7/ If you are going to have to do measures ≈ lockdown to avoid health system collapse then the harder/earlier the better & the sooner they can be released. Pseudo ‘lockdowns’ w/o serious enforcement are hopeless: econ hit & people die anyway, nightmare rumbles on
To begin with, none of the Western states that didn’t lock down – Sweden, South Dakota, Florida (in the winter of 2020–21) – came close to “health system collapse”, which casts serious doubt on the epidemiological models that served as the basis for lockdowns.
It’s true that, if you are going to lock down, earlier is better. However, it’s unclear whether a containment strategy was ever viable for most of the countries in Europe, which do not enjoy the same geographic advantages as countries like Australia. And I’m not sure East Asia is a useful comparison here. As noted above, Japan’s winter epidemic retreated without any real lockdown measures being imposed.
It’s also not clear what Cummings means by, “Pseudo ‘lockdowns’ w/o serious enforcement are hopeless”. But if he’s referring to the UK’s lockdowns, then I’d agree that the costs almost certainly outweighed the benefits. Of course, the real question is what we should have done instead, and I’d argue that a focussed protection strategy is the most realistic alternative.
Cummings seems to believe that we should have attempted to contain the virus by closing our borders and locking down early. Even if this could have worked – which seems unlikely – the fact is that we did not contain the virus. The question then becomes, “Was a lockdown the right response?”, and I would argue that it wasn’t.
It’s possible that we could have prevented a second wave by closing our borders at the end of the summer. However, this is somewhat beside the point, as the UK’s second wave was less deadly than the first. And evidence suggests that infections were already declining before the third national lockdown.
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Just because he wasn’t asked didn’t mean he couldn’t have modelled the harms.
Had they modelled the harms there would have been none, just as they modelled without lockdowns zillions would have died.
Modelling supports any policy they like.
As with everything else to do with the scamdemic, they did not ask what they did not want to know. This seems to underscore the idea that lockdowns were coordinated across the world – lockstep, as it were. Decision makers were not asking how best to handle the situation, they were asking for models and arguments to support a decision they had already made (or rather, that had already been made for them).
Next time, perhaps scientists can stand together and speak a little louder. Had one major scientific/public health face publicy resigned, that alone would have spoke volumes. It is clear that quite a few had their doubts.
Next time the WHO and the IHR will decide everything so these poor hard up MP don’t have to, just like the good old days of the EU.
I can only dream of Ursula von der Leyen deciding everything for us.
She is going to take over NATO – can you believe it – with President Sleepy Joe’s approval.
After what she did to Germany’s Bundeswehr as Defence Minister [nearly destroy it as members of her own party acknowledge] I hear she is going to outsource NATO to a Putin’s favourite company – The Wagner Group.
And it is not corruption. She actually thinks it is a good idea.
Only joking – [but only half – I think she would do it if no one was checking up on her].
It’s hard to get somebody to disagree with something their job depends on.
I think for a lot of people this went beyond keeping their jobs. The head of the ICUs here, the head of the public health authority, they wouldn’t have lost their jobs (they’re both top doctors in a country with a chronic shortage). PM Rutte forever uses the “we’ve agreed”, “we can disagree, but we must show a united front” crap, it takes backbone to stand up to that and be the odd man out. That is the real reason no one spoke up here, no one had the guts to take the flack that Tegnell did.
That’s right…lockdowns were coordinated.
In Australia we were put into lockdown based on modelling out of the Doherty Institute, which was influenced by the notorious Ferguson modelling.
It is absolutely stunning to think about how the world was turned upside down by the likes of Ferguson and others who colonise the universities, the power these people exercised over our lives…without our informed consent.
It’s time for accountability for this diabolical shambles…
“without our informed consent”
Without any shred of democracy.
Our elected representative are cowards almost to a man, transman, woman and transwoman.
Don’t vote. The government always wins.
Don’t vote. It only encourages them.
There were enough organisations, charities and support groups screaming about the risks of lockdown before they were implemented for even the most obtuse ‘scientist’ – and I use that word very loosely – not to miss the signals. It was deliberately implemented and all this ‘not me guv’ schtick is utterly sickening.
The Human Rights groups must’ve been self isolating because they did sweet FA over the fascist Lockdown.
The ‘I was just following orders.” defense.
I’m sure there were not asked. But then neither were any of us. That didn’t stop lockdown sceptics from speaking up to whoever would listen, repeatedly, while being told we were Literally Hitler etc. Weak. Like Sunak and Truss piping up after the event. All big grown up boys and girls quite capable of speaking up for themselves.
It appears that he followed the tactic of only answering the barrister’s questions, and avoided adding any titbits, as it were. He has made a profit from it though – I actually bought a copy of his book, “The Year the World Went Mad” published in 2022, via A.
Was giving people eight times the recommended dose of HQC in the Oxford study, where vulnerable patents were killed, just a mistake? or how about the Morphine & Medazolam ‘Pathways’ that were supposed to be stopped — They were called the Liverpool Pathways before, but they just changed the name and carried on as usual.
Naturally Lady Hallett will be calling for the death penalty when her inquiry ends [in 2155].
Only joking.
It was in the Government’s Pandemic Plan – don’t lockdown as it will have no benefit but will have harmful social, economic and health ill-effects.
Why didn’t they just read the damned plan and follow its recommendations?
Are these folk so brain-dead they need to ‘model’ what happens when you shut a society and economy down for months on end?
I think these people are mentally ill.
So specialised that they have a kind of academic tunnel vision. No clue of the big wide world.
They read the plan, they were told not to follow it.
Sweden followed the original plan, the Netherlands did to a great extent – until November 2020, when it changed course (imo on instruction from Brussels). The head of the public health authority always maintained that masks were pointless – they were forced on us by the tw*t who was minister of health – a former primary school teacher with zero scientific background. Even then the advice of the RIVM was that masks did nothing.
In November 2020 the same head of the RIVM tried to get parliament to agree to a night curfew, even though Spain’s disastrous incarceration had proven not to work – even that of next door Belgium, far more strict than NL, could show no better infection, hospital or death rates. When Wilders pushed the head of the RIVM as to what good a night curfew was supposed to be, he just muttered something about getting people to take things more seriously. In other words, he had absolutely nothing to support the human rights violation in terms of public health. He is one of the people I am certain knew full well a lot of this was nonsense – had he publicly, loudly stepped down it would have sent a signal. I doubt it would have changed anything, but he could have held his head high and maintained scientific standards instead of joining in with a public health response more suited to the Middle Ages. This was not the time to be a team player.
You’re being kind. They were and are and continue to be evil.
Evil is a much underused and much needed word these days.
In my job, if I see a problem highlighted by the data, or a problem with the data itself, or a problem with the way the data is collected, and I don’t draw attention to it, I have FAILED.
I go out of my way to disprove my assumptions and those of others.
It’s called…. SCIENCE!
Professor Mark, you should have done more. You did a lot, but you had the means, the motive and the opportunity to do more. A lot more.
The simplest thing you could have done was point out that it wasn’t a goddamn pandemic in the first place. Instead, you blithered about it not being feasible to eliminate SARS-CoV-2. You’re a loser, I’m afraid, a loser.
I can’t argue with that. If he clearly saw what a disaster the policies were, he should have fallen on his sword and resigned. That way he could genuinely hold his head high now.
I don’t think we should be surprised by this, the last few hyears have taught us that many people will carry about their job despite misgivings because it suits them to do so.In a lot of cases the misgivings would’ve been drowned out instantly by the ‘protect my own ass’ instinct.. How many people refused the death jab when threatened with loss of employment. Less than half I would wager. We shouldn’t insult such people. We don’t have some ideal or normative level of courage. The essence of our culture likes to keep this away from us. This propaganda model has existed since the Boer War and was powerful for seventy years before that. What would an average Englishman living in 1700 have made of this centralisation? It was more about your town and your county and the people close to you. We should be grateful that there is any dissent left at all given the onslaught. Most of these people aren’t nasty they are just utterly overwhelmed.
We cannot even rely on good old-fashioned corruption where people did it for suitcases full of cash.
These days they just do it.
So dishonest IMHO.
Just joking.
You either see a path of circumventon or you don’t. We all know tha these types run our world and we don’t really know what to do about that but we know that it is an urgent situation. Many arch atheists have changed a lot in recent years, people such as Susan Blakemore and others have embraced the idea of pan-psychism. This is halfway to the realm of the spirit and these were the most arch atheists. I can say with confidence that despite a rocky road we are moving to something much higher.
Very interesting viewpoint. I thought I was atheist but although not religious I am not atheist I think there is malevolence, and like all forces, is capable of coalescing and becoming organised. Looking at the Nazi party, or the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Stalin, they behave like a group of Fred Bundies, only with nice uniforms.
There is a scientific basis [modern physics] for pan-psychism but not a lot of people know that.
And it has its origins ~400 years ago incredibly.
Professor Mark Woolhouse of the University of Edinburgh, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M-O).
Considering how this has all turned out, how much money did the learned professor spend on his education? This question applies to all who are pushing net zero, ESG, Gender ID, The Great Reset, or any UN global policy. I get the strong impression that many treat education as a means to get qualifications, which is not the same as knowledge and does not replace experience, but those qualifications confer status and a kind of ‘access all areas’ pass, which on the face of it seems logical, but how is that turning out?. Klaus Schwab has a long list of qualifications, such as a Doctorate in Engineering, a Doctorate in Economics, a Master of Public Administration, and he also has 17 honorary Doctorates, 16 National Distinction Awards from various countries and 14 selected awards. Not bad for someone who spent 4 years on the shop floor of several German factories and 3 years as assistant to the Director-General of the German Machine-building Association (VDMA). He hasn’t made anything, managed his own business or made a fortune, and yet he is revered.
You can trace a post-war boomer psychopathy starting with the dubious parenting practiced of Dr Spock and then the instant fulfilment of consumerism and the idea that it was perfectly acceptable to dodge the draft. Not conscienscious objection but using certain techniques to dodge the draft that only affluent draftees knew how to navigate. You can get away with this for a while, during the supremacy of the Anglo-Americans. Not any more. I try to alert people of the situation.
The stuff that is being purveyed to use really is destined to fail. How many have any understanding or anticipation of this? Frankly I speak to very few these days. There is nothing for me to say to dulled minds These were fine minds not that long ago.
They weren’t focusing on school
closures because they thought children were at risk. What’s the average age of teachers? What % had to shield themselves? In a country where only 8% live with someone vulnerable did the teaching profession live with shielders in disproportionate numbers? Charlatans and self-serving cowards; some professions have a higher purpose than self-preservation. I do know a small number of teachers and doctors who thought the whole thing was bollocks; they’d have been targeted in the staff room. Most people are not brave or principled enough.