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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All the national lockdowns came after infections had peaked.
For their enormous and catastrophic cost, the most anyone can claim about lockdowns is that they accelerated already declining infection numbers.
And looking at the virus curves even that modest claim appears to be bogus.
Any other argument is just hand waving. Lockdowns have been an unwarranted and disastrous assault on our liberties and social fabric.
The point is that they had never been used in far worse (or real) situations of real epidemics.
Why take this much notice of a certified idiot?
Taking Cummings seriously is like wanting Neal Ferguson to be your health guru.
Sweden GDP -3% with gov.debt/ GDP increase of 8%age points = -11%
UK GDP -8% with gov. debt/GDP increase of 18% age points = -26%
All Swedes have a future, suffered no collateral damage and QALY losses from lockdown and have zero responsibility for the 120 million newly poor, hungry and dead due to Western lockdowns alone.
The UK’s collateral damage and multiple of QALY losses is well known, obvious and undisputed.
Its responsibility for and share of those newly poor, hungry and dead in the 3rd World due to Western lockdowns amounts to 5 million people.
Not that anyone here would care about the latter.
Least of all the do gooders, left, green, ethics professors, woke and church leaders.
Has Sweden created a nation of petrified scaredy cat little morons who think life is only possible with PCR testing and mask wearing and obeying ridiculous nonsensical directives from fascists who wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire?
This from a man that drove hundreds of miles with Covid. In a car with his family (hello air con) and then spent how long testing his eye sight. Hubris.
He knows. He knows.
Psycohpathic technocrat, covering his arse and desperate to prove himself right. “Lockdowns DO work, if only they are done right”. How many trillions must be spent on real-world experiments before they admit that it just cannot be done.
If the mastermind of Vote Leave is indeed a “psychopathic technocrat” that would ironically make him much like the Brexiteer propaganda stereotype of a hardline Remainer!
These people are delusional and dangerous and they need removing from public view, before they do any more harm with their mentally ill assessment of the Covid situation. Can someone please approach this tweeting, twatting tosser and his former twatting colleagues, who have lost all sense of proportion and mental stability, and let them know what has been known for over a year now, because this is ridiculous….
Covid19 has a mortality rate, also called an Infection Fatality Rate, which is in line with other common seasonal viruses like influenza. This information comes not from conspiracy theorists, but from one of the most respected and decorated Data Scientists on Earth, Professor Dr John Ioannidis. Coronaviruses are actually quite common and are “known” to our immune systems, one of the many reasons that we did not all drop down dead in the past 14 months.
John Ioannidis has gone on record, several times, following several major studies, to conclude that the IFR of Covid19 is 0.15% – 0.2%, which is unremarkable for seasonal respiratory illness ie it is a normal IFR. Therefore, destroying the lives of every man, woman and child, creating a dystopian “New Normal” with vaccine passports for vaccines which are still under clinical trial is totally bonkers. The under 70s are barely affected by Covid19. We are literally treating something akin to the common cold as if it were Ebola, which is completely and utterly ridiculous, mad and wrong.
Global perspective of COVID-19 epidemiology for a full-cycle pandemic
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eci.13423
Global infection fatality rate is 0.15-0.20% (0.03-0.04% in those <70 years)
It has reached the stage where the refusal of these people to deal with and accommodate the most basic fact of the matter, that Covid19 is not a dire health threat, and that all the actions taken in its name have been absurd and unnecessary, signifies that people in power and the media have got something wrong with them which is preventing them from seeing things that are obvious, like they are brainwashed. Because the damage they are inflicting is no joke. The reality is that for the small minority who get ill from Covid19, there are effective, safe, cheap, freely available drugs which can be used with great effect, which do not risk exposing the entire population to the horrific risks they are taking with the experimental, approved for “Emergency Use Only” injections.
The government, its advisors, the media and other tentacles of the establishment which are promoting this evil pose far more of a threat to the British people than Covid19. It is crucial that we expose their madness, their insanity, and get these dangerous nutcases and their fantasies about mega killer viruses sweeping the world off our screens and off the front pages of the national media.
If the vaccinees of the UK were informed that the injections are experimental, that Covid19 is not a dire threat to health, that the jabs are under clinical trial until 2023 and come with a litany of potentially very serious health consequences, which may not be detectable for years, including a credible likelihood that they will suffer more severe forms of Coronavirus in the future due to pathogenic priming and Antibody-Dependent Enhancement as has been seen in every historical animal trial for Coronavirus vaccines which all failed and never even reached human trials due to these very serious issues, these “vaccines” would have been chased out of town aeons ago. But what we are witnessing is nothing to do with fact or rational thought, it’s a bunch of brainwashed victims, who have been manipulated by nefarious but sophisticated brainwashing techniques, who have taken a snake oil standard of medicine, now feeling empowered to start telling other people that if they are not as stupid as they are, they should be expelled from society.
This piece is the kind of crap these crazy, misinformed, dumb-fucks produce. These injections do not claim to offer sterilising immunity, they are “leaky” vaccines so the notion that they prevent spread of disease is completely bogus and false. Facts mean zilch to fanatics like this:
This is what we do about anti-vaxxers: No job. No entry. No NHS accesss
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/antivaxxers-vaccine-coronavirus-nhs-b1849437.html
What shall we do about the anti-vaxxers? A presumptuous question, I know, because they’re human beings, same as the majority of the population who choose to take the Covid-19 vaccines, and we’re all entitled to do what we will or won’t with our own bodies.
But the time has come when the hard choices are looming closer. If we don’t want this Covid crisis to last forever, we need some new simple, guidelines: No jab, no job; no jab, no access to NHS healthcare; no jab, no state education for your kids. No jab, no access to pubs, restaurant, theatres, cinemas, stadiums. No jab, no entry to the UK, and much else
Yeah and how about we stop paying taxes and obeying your laws? No taxation without representation.
These people are clinically insane.
Sean O’Grady, right? I knew before I even clicked the link, from his steaming, foetid prose.
The man’s a lunatic. Also Associate Editor of the Independent. Which tells you everything you need to know about the “Independent”.
The people we should be really frightened of are those who promulgate these seriously deranged ideas that no punishment is great enough for those who decide not to take a vaccine. They are dangerous because these ideas are infectious – maybe they should be quarantined. I can only hope that even those who are vaccinated wish to remove themselves from these neurotics and see that they are the really dangerous people. It’s interesting that having reached my mid-60s without even having had a speeding ticket, I have become one of a small group of ‘dangerous criminals’ for whom no punishment is great enough!
I agree entirely with your assessment of what has happened.
I disagree that those pushing this broken agenda cannot see it.
It’s DELIBERATE, and is the conduit to force humanity down the ramp & onto the vaccine passports database.
That affords the controller of that database absolutely tyrannical power over us.
What they’ll do with that power is unclear, but it certainly could include mass extermination, using the fiction of needing top up vaccines.
Wow! Quite a rant that. Well put, well said and spot on.
Agreed, brilliant!
Who cares, this technocrat is no longer in a position where he can hurt anyone ever again.
Of course an unelected Svengali still thinks his idiotic opinions are somehow relevant to the average person.
The empirical evidence is irrefutable. Countries that closed their borders early, were able to control entry very strictly and imposed severe internal measures to contain the spread of the virus succeeded in having low infection and mortality rates.
That’s just a fact.
But without a truly effective vaccine they are trapped in that situation indefinitely.
For countries which can’t close their borders effectively and impose radical entry controls, lockdowns are a waste of time.
Are NZ watching watching how well the Seychelles are rolling out the vaccine?
Cummins is a total jerk. Fucking eye test excuse was embarrassing and he should be ignored. Little weasel.
MUST READ. Change by CDC to record Vaccinated and Non-Vaccinated differently.
Clear attempt at differentiation by PCR test.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/18/how-the-cdc-is-manipulating-data-to-prop-up-vaccine-effectiveness/
Taiwan, NZ, Australia. Icebergs in the Covid Ocean.
Admirably pure, clean and beautiful, but doomed to eventual Covid breakthrough.
Sadly, but inevitably, Taiwan has succumbed. In the past two weeks, locally acquired cases have skyrocketed, almost doubling the May 1 total.
Interestingly, Taiwan appears to have an exceptionally strict screening process before confirming Covid diagnosis. Although confirmed cases is 2,260, a total of 279,650 suspected cases have been reported. Of these, 253,155 were excluded, leaving about 24,200 under evaluation.
Just before the current explosion of cases, Taiwan routinely excluded over 99%. At the beginning of the month, when the number odf cases was about 1,000, the total excluded was over 200,000, so only about 0.5% of reported cases were confirmed.
Taiwan CDC website
https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En
It had me thinking of how one (non-celebrity) zero-covider I follow was bragging back in February about how Taiwan was reopening to (quarantining) foreign visitors — I wonder what they’re thinking now?
There’s a good reason why most zero-covid countries banned foreign visitors outside of a tiny number of exceptional cases (such as professional sportspeople): hotel quarantine isn’t airtight!
As Devan Sinha pointed out (on a Twitter thread referenced earlier here on Lockdown Sceptics), Australia and New Zealand suffered roughly one breach of quarantine for every 20,000 people entering the country.
Dominic Cummings is literally the last person in the world I want lecturing me (or anybody else) about lockdowns.
What about Winnie the Pooh and Governor Whitmer?
Cummings wanted to immitate the blundering and insane methods of a totalitarian regime in communist China – the man is a complete bloody lunatic.
The further he stays away from levers of political power the better – he sounds like a tyrannical crank.
I’m not usually a reader of the Independent but I was heartened by the angry reponses below this evil and divisive article – it was like reading something from the Nazi regime of 1930’s Germany.
I found it incredible that an article that comes dangerously close to calling for the kind of fascistic policies one would expect to read about in the history books regarding the totalitarianism of the Third Reich got published at all in a British mainstream newspaper..
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/antivaxxers-vaccine-coronavirus-nhs-b1849437.html#comments-area
I hope this bears repetition from yesterday, but Mr Cummings is clearly far too busy to research real facts, data (which has been the problem with the government’s interventions all along):
Denmark:
‘‘Due to de-institutionalisation, care for frail older people is more often provided in the home.
Care is provided by formally employed and well-trained staff.
The majority of nursing homes are public and modern in providing an individual abode.’
https://ltccovid.org/2020/05/28/new-country-report-the-covid-19-long-term-care-situation-in-denmark‘
Greece is now fully open to tourists, 11,000 ‘covid’ deaths only. Why?
For various reasons, most of the elderly in Greece are looked after by their family.
‘Due to the crisis and economic hardship, families opt to look after the elderly at home as pension benefits are a major source of income particularly among households with unemployed members.’
https://eurocarers.org/country-profiles/greece/
The Sweden response, along with so many U.S. States that also refused to lock down, overall all cause mortality rates no different to the European or U.S. average respectively, is, quite clearly, an exemplar, excepting, as the Swedish Health Authority itself admits, its failure to protect care homes.
That is the reason for the difference in overall all cause mortality between Denmark and Sweden and, quite clearly, nothing to do with lockdown since Sweden’s all cause mortality is similar to European states with similar population densities, with the exception of Denmark, explained by differences in care for the elderly and infirm – lessons to be learnt there…..as Greece also clearly demonstrates.
So: Covid problems have been caused, in the main, by nosocomial infection of the vulnerable in hospitals, exacerbated by the failure to protect the elderly and infirm in care homes. Future government policies might best encourage the family, which is best placed to look after their own members.
Lockdowns, masks, are silly, pooterish, nonsense.
And, with Budesonide inhalers, Ivermectin, readily and cheaply available over the counter, the common cold coronavirus, SARS CoV 2, along with over 100 other common cold viruses should no longer be lethal to the elderly, infirm, immunosuppressed.
End government non pharmaceutical interventions now! They are pointless (absurd, ridiculous, risible)!
The trouble is that we now live in a world where people (and more importantly our leaders) have lost all sense of proportion and perspective and in which rational discourse is treated as heresy. How did we descend to this? A starting point is a prophetic interview on US TV with Aldous Huxley. It is on you tube (for the moment). I recommend it.
Do you have the link perchance?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alasBxZsb40
Interview with Mike Wallace, CBS
The main argument against lockdown is the restraint on our freedoms and the wasting of our precious lives. Let those who are sick isolate themselves, as well as those who wish to, as we did FOR ALL PREVIOUS EPIDEMICS.
Why is anyone putting this much effort in responding to mr. Cummings lockdown advice. It didn’t work, we all know that. The great Barrington declaration spelled out the way forward, it was ignored.
Re. complete suppression working, the Isle of Man ‘completely suppressed’ the virus twice – yes, twice – and had rigorous restrictions and tracing etc, yet the virus still came back (possibly due to vaxxing, but that is never discussed). Now we are mitigating, which should have been the policy a year ago, not acknowledged either.
Didn’t do our economy a whole lot of good, waiting lists for medical treatment are even worse than usual and cultural life is a shadow of its former self.
You only need one infected person to start a cluster of cases – especially if that person is confined inside. All the evidence proves this and explains why outbreaks occur sporadically and pop up in different places. So unless you immediately confine everyone to their home (and I mean everyone – no exceptions for essential workers etc) you cannot stop an epidemic by lockdowns. It is impossible. So what you must do is prevent the vulnerable from exposure. This was not done; indeed the biggest failure is arguable not to realise the extent of nosocomial transmission and to discharge untested aged people back to their care homes. Indeed the likelihood of relatives bringing it in there was remote, but the focus was then on excluding them.
My prediction is that outbreaks will continue to occur for a while. It may well be that one returnee from India brought that variant to Bolton; the chance of similar importation from anywhere is very high (remember that the first cases in the UK were almost all acquired in Europe and not from Wuhan). So all this talk of locking down each time there is a little surge is, frankly, mad. What matters is whether a rise in “cases” translates to a rise in hospitalisation and deaths. With vaccines this risk is hugely reduced. But in all of the ongoing argument there remains one giant hole. How do you treat those who get severely ill? The answers are all there, and don’t need trials, but they are not being implemented. This is where the focus should be now.
Why would anyone pay attention to a non scientific political campaigner on a highly technical matter?
I just can’t get my head around why you would.
By the way, there were always ultra low numbers of good, infectious sources out & about in the ambulatory community. The reason is that it’s necessary to be symptomatic in order to be a good source. But that is always accompanied by symptoms, and that is what we used to call “unwell”. Such people deselect themselves because they feel ill, so remain at home.
Even if they were out & about, you’d usually avoid them because their symptomatic condition cues you to step around them instinctively.
Bottom line: lockdown doesn’t work because is doesn’t reduce the number of infective contacts, only harmless contacts.
Wrecking of the economy & civil society was deliberately done & was for absolutely no gain.
Where do most infections occur?
Wherever there are symptomatic people close to susceptible people. Hospitals, care homes & to a small extent, the domestic setting.
There are exceptions like presymptomatic, and a few who struggled on despite being unwell, but their contribution was always small vs the bulk of institutional transmission.
He doesn’t once mention civil rights