• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

If the Hallett Inquiry Says There Was No Alternative to Lockdown in Light of Neil Ferguson’s Apocalyptic Modelling, We’ll Know it’s a Whitewash

by Nick Rendell
12 August 2022 4:30 PM

The latest ONS figures show the number of deaths in England and Wales for the week ending July 29th to be 18.4% above the five-year average. As a consequence, we’re beginning to see hand-wringing leaders in national newspapers belatedly blaming the lockdowns for the current health disaster. Someone may correct me, but I don’t recall the mainstream media doing much back in spring 2020 to highlight the all-too predictable consequences of lockdown. We are also seeing doctors who spoke out at the time predicting what this calamitous policy would lead to at last getting a hearing. But it’s too little too late.

The defence of supporters of the March, October and December 2020 lockdowns is that criticism now is made with the benefit of hindsight and at the time there was no alternative. I would counter that it isn’t hindsight now but a lack of foresight then that needs examining.

The Independent Inquiry under Baroness Heather Hallett, if it’s to do anything useful at all, must rule out any future imposition of lockdowns, short of a return of bubonic plague! “Ahha!” say the zealots. “But, we didn’t know it wasn’t the equivalent of bubonic plague.”

Actually, despite the official narrative both then and now, we did know quite a bit about Covid’s likely virulence. The Diamond Princess, sailing serenely around the Western Pacific from January 20th to February 20th 2020 until it was struck by an outbreak of coronavirus, was a perfect petri-dish to study the impact on the 3,711 people on board. Of the 1,045 relatively young, relatively fit crew, 145 (14%) were infected and none died – a case fatality rate of 0%. Of the 2,666 relatively old, relatively unfit passengers, 567 (21%) became infected and somewhere between 9 and 14 subsequently died, a case fatality rate of about 2%. Bubonic plague it most certainly wasn’t.

“OK,” the zealots reply, “but, we’ve got 10 million old people in the U.K. If they all caught this thing, hospitalising many and killing 2%, that’s still 200,000 deaths and countless others in hospital.” Then up popped Neil Ferguson with his prediction of 500,000 deaths and the Chicken Lickens went into overdrive. It was at this point that someone in the bowels of the Department of Health might have gone to the shelf in the archive store marked “Inquiries best forgotten” and dragged out the 2010 Hine review of the U.K. Government’s response to the 2009 influenza pandemic. There are a few points to bear in mind about that pandemic:

• It mainly affected young people and children. Globally, 80% of (H1N1) pdm09 virus-related deaths were estimated to have occurred in people younger than 65.
• Neil Ferguson had predicted 65,000 deaths from this pandemic (actual number 457).
• 90 million doses of Pandemrix were ordered from GlaxoSmithKline, though the Department of Health managed to cancel some. However, it was subsequently discovered that Pandemrix caused narcolepsy, particularly in children, and the vaccine was withdrawn and compensation paid out by the U.K. Government.

In perusing the Hine report, if they’d got as far as p.68, they’d have come across this:

That’s interesting. Dame Deidre Hine, unlike those responsible for locking us down in 2020, had the nous to look back through the archives at reports on the Government’s response to previous pandemics and found that as early as 2003 warning flags were being waved about putting too much emphasis on models and recommending a broader approach to decision making.

On the previous page there’s another warning: Modellers are not “court astrologers“ it says:

Finally, just read the following extract from p.69 of the Hine report. Wouldn’t Professors Sikora, Heneghan, Gupta, Bhattacharya, Kulldorff and many, many others, recognise this trait?

Clearly, there was experience in the Health Department that should have come to the fore and recommended a more measured approach.

The lockdowns stand or fall on the credibility of Ferguson’s models and on the belief that, even if they were hopelessly wrong, as they were, the prudent thing was to assume they were right and proceed accordingly. The Hine report warns against this approach and the fact that the pre-existing pandemic response plan, eminent epidemiologists and doctors from around the world also warned against this will surely persuade the Hallett Inquiry to reject the notion that that there was no alternative.

Of course, apart from saving lives the other justification for imposing the lockdowns was to ‘save our NHS’. Well, we built the Nightingale hospitals between lockdowns one and two and never used them, so forgive me if I’m a little sceptical about this justification beyond the first lockdown.

Let’s just look at how effective lockdowns and other NPIs have been in changing the profile of hospital admissions with Covid. Did our enforced actions flatten the sombrero? Figure 1 shows Covid hospital admissions from March 2020 to the present for the U.K., Israel, Germany and France – I could have chosen any countries, they all tell the same tale. Regardless of whatever NPIs have been in place, regardless of any vaccination programme, the shape of each wave looks pretty much the same, no flat sombreros in sight, just KKK hoods!

It wasn’t hindsight that allowed Anders Tegnell in Sweden to avoid lockdowns. Professor Sikora didn’t have the benefit of hindsight when he warned of the all-too-predictable consequences of lockdown in terms of foregone cancer treatments. Neither was it hindsight that Professor Heneghan relied upon when he saw, during his weekend shifts in geriatric wards, that old people weren’t getting the care and advocacy that previously ensured they were kept hydrated. (Can I recommend the episode of the Brendan O’Neill podcast with Carl Heneghan? It’s exceptional.)

The acid test of the Hallett Inquiry will be if she accepts that either Ferguson’s numbers were credible or that it was reasonable to assume that they were. Defending either proposition will mean it’s a whitewash.

Tags: Baroness HallettHine ReportLockdownsNeil FergusonPublic Inquiry

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Karol Sikora: “I Was Called a Killer For Warning of Lockdown Harms”

Next Post

Salman Rushdie Stabbed in New York

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

18 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

Episode 36 of the Sceptic: Karl Williams on Starmer’s Phoney Immigration Crackdown, Dan Hitchens on the Assisted Suicide Bill and Tom Jones on Reform’s Local Council Challenge

by Richard Eldred
16 May 2025
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

15 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

16 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

16 May 2025
by Will Jones

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

29

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

25

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

19

News Round-Up

18

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

27

Trump’s Lesson in Remedial Education

16 May 2025
by Dr James Allan

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Renaud Camus on the Destruction of Western Education

15 May 2025
by Dr Nicholas Tate

‘Why Can’t We Talk About This?’

15 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

POSTS BY DATE

August 2022
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  
« Jul   Sep »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences