Notable by its absence from the House of Commons’ pro-lockdown report was any mention of cost-benefit analysis. Indeed, the authors sidestepped the single most important question – was the lockdown worth it? – and went straight to saying that we should have locked down sooner!
Had they attempted to weigh up the costs and benefits, their report’s conclusions might have looked very different – assuming, of course, that they didn’t bungle the analysis. Remember: there are things to consider other than Covid outcomes.
Cost-benefit analyses published since the summer of 2020 have not been kind to lockdowns (which may explain their lack of inclusion in the House of Commons’ report). In a new paper, Ari Joffe and David Redman review 11 studies, each of which estimated impact using a common metric (e.g., the QALY).
Their results are shown in the table below. Each study’s main finding is given in the right-hand column.
All 11 studies found evidence that lockdowns do more harm than good. Among the nine that directly compared costs and benefits, the smallest ratio of costs to benefits was 2.5, and the largest was 26.
What’s more, the studies generally made assumptions favourable to lockdowns (e.g., that they have a large impact on the epidemic’s trajectory). Hence, in the authors’ words, their results “strongly suggest that lockdowns do not have a favorable cost-benefit balance”.
Joffe and Redman’s paper not only reviews cost-benefit analyses of lockdown, but also sets out an alternative plan for dealing with Covid (or, perhaps, with a similar pandemic virus in the future). Their plan specifies that the goal should be minimising harm to society “as a whole”, rather than – say – minimising the total number of Covid deaths.
It contains a number of appealing elements: increasing surge capacity; providing focused protection for the elderly; and reporting relevant information with context (e.g., number of deaths from all causes alongside the number of Covid deaths).
The paper by Joffe and Redman contains a lot of useful insights, and is worth reading in full.
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What do Vallance’s diary entries say about those exponential growth curves he presented to the nation along with the other chuckle brother?
Yes Vallances mate ! I think he was in Gerry Anderson’s Stingray ! What a pair of Chunts !!…
Follow the script, collect the gong, then say you were always on the side of truth. Keeps your grip on the greasy pole every time, and saves the discomfort of speaking out at the time.
..they are forever frozen in my mind as Witless and Unbalanced..
It sounds a bit like the kettle calling the pot block at this stage doesn’t it?
Vallance was the one calling for quicker, harder, wider initiatives…when (Boris, quite rightly at the time..and yes it pains me to say it..) was looking toward going the same way as Sweden.
It behoves Unbalanced to tell us what ‘cherry-picked’ data changed that course as he now knows, or should admit…that he was totally wrong…
I don’t care what these reprehensible, immoral, Government crony’s have to say..any more…they have been unmasked to millions of us as the shyster’s they are…
In June, Sir Patrick a was appointed as a non-executive director in ARIA…the Advanced Research and Invention Agency…he plays “an integral role supporting ARIA’s mission to fund high-risk, high-reward research” along with other members that include “the former Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, a Nobel Prize winner and policy experts.”
Backed by an £800 million investment from the UK Government….which means OUR money….more jobs (and cash) to the boys…..
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/02/new-uk-science-body-could-be-used-as-cover-for-cronyism
Was there any self-reflection as to whether his financial interest in a vaccine producing Big Pharma company should disqualify him from providing advice on restrictions and covid ‘vaccines’?
“Carbon offsetting is a waste of time”. i could have told you that. The most threatened habitats in lowland UK, are chalk grasslands, heathland, neutral unimproved grassland, fenland, marshes and not brood-leaved woodland. Since WW2, something like 95% to 99% have been lost, but broad-leaved woodland has remained the same. So what do they? Plant trees on these rare habitats. Plus grassland, and definitely heathland is pretty good at capturing carbon any way.
and usually the clowns plant spruce – non native in most areas and destructive. you need to plant the local eco system and what it needs, wants, but that it too much work for the self congratulatory tree huggers
The numpties were probably responsible for wiping out two and possibly a third native tree species. All because they religiously followes EU policy and imported saplings with non-native diseases.
“Sir Patrick Vallance’s pandemic diaries claim experts were used as “human shields” for the Government, whose officials “cherry-picked” science to justify Covid decision-making, says the Mail.”
So they were following orders? But the politicians say they were following the science? They are all big fat grown up boys and girls with years of experience in senior leadership roles, but none of these tossers spoke up and said what they really thought, that the wrong direction was being followed? Jog on, the lot of you – you’re all guilty as hell. Joint criminal enterprise.
I’m sure the “experts” were used as shields by govt, just as the “experts” used the govt as their own kind of shield (“We can only give advice, the government decides what to do”). But the idea that someone as powerful as Whitty or Vallance couldn’t stand up and speak out if they weren’t happy is ridiculous. On the rare occasions the govt went against their advice, they were more than happy to spout off in the papers the next day about the evil Tory govt, happy to kill people and only caring about the economy.
From what I recall in relation to jabbing children, not a single child would have been given the Covid-19 injection if it were not for the Chief Medical Officer for England – Whitty – overruling the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation which had previously concluded the benefits did not outweigh the risks. Unforgivable and in my opinion he is despicable.
What an excellent open letter to Sunak here. Excerpt;
”You continue to insist publicly that your overall goal is a “pragmatic” Net Zero by 2050. You have provided no details of how you think this can be achieved (it can’t). You continue to deceive the British public about the true costs – £2.5 Trillion at 2022 prices by my own estimate. Approximately £90,000 per household, not the £10-15,000 per household you claimed in your press conference a couple of weeks ago. You have given no serious indication that you intend to unwind any of the legislation that mandates both the 2050 end goal or interim 5 yearly carbon budget obligations. You have taken no action to curtail the far-left alarmist propaganda from the Climate Change Committee, far less disband this dystopian quango entirely. And you have appointed Claire Coutinho – a political rookie with no experience of the energy industry – as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Your credibility is in tatters Prime Minister. No one believes you.
So, finally, why would someone who has been so deceived on (or perhaps complicit in?) so many scientific and political frauds believe for a moment that they have not been deceived on the greatest issue of them all – that of civilisation-threatening anthropological climate change?
I have news for you Prime Minister. There is no “climate emergency”. The entire thing is a fiction cooked up long ago by Long March neo-Marxists in order to destabilise society, so as to free the path to “proper communism this time”. It was based on a kernel of truth – that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas – but there is, and has never been, any genuine evidence either that CO₂ is the principal driver of climate or that a small increase in global temperature will be exclusively (or even primarily) a bad thing.”
https://metatron.substack.com/cp/137634702
Brilliant.
Fabulous, Mogs. I go back to my local council every month and ask them the same questions about why they declared a climate emergency. They are unable to answer. they mumble about IPCC/UN etc but the IPCC never declared a climate emergency so why them. They are clueless but they and others like them are apparently the people in local power and get to tell us how to live our lives. All based on lies and all heading towards the same goal of global tyranny.
Sorry, this is a terrible open letter. Why? I agree with all the points it raises, but it isn’t a genuine letter to Sunak – rather it’s posing to the gallery offering up a home team polemical wank – so of course I agree with it. It’s like a sugar candy rush for people of my political beliefs. It indulgently hits multiple valid points without providing the proper evidence that is actually there and can be referenced with some further effort. “£2.5 Trillion at 2022 prices by my own estimate” is the most ridiculous line, and completely lets Sunak off the hook. Was this on the back of a fag packet? It may be true, and probably is, but goodness, you couldn’t make up a better argument for Sunak roundly ignoring the statement. This kind of letter is EASY for Sunak to ignore and just adds to the weight of open letters in his in-tray lending justification to a future excuse that he didn’t answer it because he receives so many of them.
It’s fun reading it, and I applaud that the author bothered to write it – that’s more than most do, but we have to do MUCH better to shift the political goalposts.
Oh, now I get it. It’s not the vaccines causing sudden death in young athletes. It’s the host response to them.
In other news, 13% of Norwegian women are now trans-women with totally inexplicable menstrual failure, since it doesn’t interfere with their ability to father children.
https://reduxx.info/netherlands-woman-censored-after-trans-identified-male-bdsm-fetishist-files-police-report/
I struggled with the terminology trans-identified male, wondering is it a he/she or a she/he – until I saw the picture. He’s clearly a man, despite whatever delusions of grandeur he has and whatever he thinks he is. He’s a man. Masquerading as a woman, demanding he be allowed to invade into women’s spaces because he has a belief he is a woman. A tough reality check is urgently needed!
…and what’s all that about being a lesbian transthingy? A man, who not only thinks he’s a woman but wants a close encounter with a woman, as a woman and not as a man? Have I got that right? The world is going to pot. It is rapidly becoming an alien space for normal folk.
I’ve always thought – and been taught – a woman is an adult human female. I will continue to think that way, too. Furthermore, playing their game, my belief is also that a woman is an adult human female.
What’s good for the gander is good for the goose…
I’m the same, ellie. I think they should just say ”man who’s trans”, meaning he’s pretending to be a woman, and ”woman who’s trans”, meaning a woman who’s pretending to be a man, though we don’t tend to hear so much about the latter do we? Maybe it’s just my brain but whenever I hear ”trans woman” I’m picturing a woman but it’s a bloke parodying a woman. I find that insulting actually because it’s a p*ss-take. It also puts the onus on us by using terminology like that that puts us in a position to play along with the person’s fantasy and acknowledge them as a woman. Bollocks to that, I refuse to enable anybody’s mental health issues by validating their fantasy.
I don’t think my ”man who’s trans” would ever catch on though because by stating a biological fact first in saying ”man” I’d probably be found guilty of hate speech or some nonsense, as in the story. Haven’t seen any trespassing schlongs in the women’s changing rooms of my gym though. That story, however, is just insane. The law is literally on the side of disturbed fantasists and is complicit in abusing women’s rights and erasing our gender into insignificance.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12589393/Covid-guru-Sir-Patrick-Vallance-claims-experts-used-human-shields-Government-officials-cherry-picked-science-justify-decisions.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/10/03/downing-street-pandemic-covid-vallance/
The Quad (Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove and Matt Hancock) were supported by the trio of the Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Scientific Officer and the deputy chief medical officer – Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance and Jonathan Van Tamm aka Witless, Unbalanced and wee dram – and many others, all political parties, far too many ‘scientific’ and medical / health-care personnel – all who should have known better – cheering them on in the gross deception.
No matter what autobiographies / memoirs / diaries are produced and / or published in the ‘great cover-up’ operation, ‘we’ know what they did or didn’t do. No hiding place.
As I objected to the nonsensical measures, including shutting down our church, I was told, “I’d rather believe the country’s top scientists.” Nobody would have believed the politicians if the “top scientists” hadn’t been mere toadies.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/23/coronavirus-lockdown-covid-van-tam-chris-whitty-vallance/
Where are the covid crew now?
It’s a paywall but can be read if copy / paste the web address to:
http://archive.today/
I completely agree, however the issue of their hiding or not hiding is sadly irrelevant. They will never be held to account, at least by the state, and they will live on to enjoy the fruits of their memoirs, autobiographies, book tours, after dinner speeches and ‘consultancy’ to the private sector and developing world. Following the model of Tony Blair.
Baby Corbyn has demonstrated his core misogyny for many years now. Still, at least he’s not an anti-Semite, unlike his “daddy”
“Electric car charging chaos rages on with drivers vowing to ditch EVs and ‘go back to diesel”
At last, the EV dream is dying on its feet!
Common sense may yet prevail!
“Bashing the bishop” – Pope Francis really takes the communion wafer for being the most Left-wing and unconventional pontiff. Why then is the Bishop of Middlesborough following suit, asks Prof. Roger Watson in the New Conservative.
Prof Watson’s article caused me to consider my usual response to the bi-annual Family Fast Day organised by CAFOD and endorsed by the RC dioceses of England and Wales.
CAFOD is an acronym for Catholic Agency For Overseas Development. On their above linked website we find:
and then, among other things, we find:
CAFOD decries UK government U-turn on green policies20 September 2023
The UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has announced the government will backtrack on essential steps to fight the climate crisis.
and:
Fossil fuel companies offered ‘architects of the climate emergency’ blue plaques15 September 2023
A group of campaigners from faith groups have unveiled mock ‘blue plaques’ outside the offices of Shell and BP, pronouncing the fossil fuel companies ‘architects of the climate emergency’.
So much for Overseas Development. CAFOD seems to have been captured by climate alarmists.
I will be finding other recipients for my donations from now on.