Lee Cain, Boris Johnson’s Director of Communications during the early stages of the pandemic, has responded to ex-Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s claim that the U.K.’s lockdown policy was based on fear and questionable scientific advice, with the trade-offs not even discussed. Writing in the Spectator, he says none of it is true, labelling it “Covid revisionism”.
I know because I sat around the cabinet table as politicians, scientists, economists and epidemiologists agonised over the extent to which lockdown would devastate lives and livelihoods. It was not an easy decision for anyone. We locked down because we knew the cost of ‘letting Covid rip’ was far more damaging to both the health and wealth of the nation. But as the pandemic fades into our collective memory – and critics try to rewrite history – it’s clear that the biggest mistake we made was not locking down but doing so too late.
I vividly remember the morning of Saturday, March 14th 2020 when, as part of a small team of advisers gathered in the Prime Minister’s office, Boris Johnson was told that the initial plan for managing the pandemic was failing. Without urgent intervention, the country’s healthcare system would collapse under the strain of tens of thousands of seriously ill patients. The challenges facing us in that first wave were immense. We knew the NHS didn’t have enough beds, there was a massive shortfall in PPE and a severely limited number of ventilators.
The initial modelling used for crucial decisions, we found out, was very wrong. A review conducted by data experts recruited by Dominic Cummings uncovered that, unless we changed course immediately, the NHS would be overwhelmed within three weeks.
The PM sat in silence as three scenarios were sketched out on a whiteboard. The first looked at no restrictions, the second at social distancing measures and the third considered a national lockdown. Only under the last option would the NHS avoid collapse. But it took the PM a week to declare a national lockdown. That decision eventually saved tens of thousands of lives.
What I don’t recognise is the idea that, as Mr. Sunak suggests, lockdown’s trade-offs were never properly discussed. Since the interview, other lockdown sceptics have used his comments as evidence of a failed policy. Mr. Sunak is an incredibly talented politician and Covid remains his finest hour. The furlough scheme provided a safety net for which millions remain grateful and ranks alongside the vaccine roll-out as the high point of the Government’s pandemic response. However, the suggestion that the trade-offs were ignored is simply false.
As a Government we asked a huge amount from the people of this country. For more than three months we told them to “stay home, protect the NHS and save lives” because, having analysed the options, we knew that restricting social contact was the best action people could take to keep themselves and others safe.
But the trade-offs were highlighted daily by Chris Whitty in our morning Covid meetings. They weighed heavily on everyone involved. But we believed that – morally, politically and practically – lockdown was the right thing to do. Yes, it was a flawed, blunt tool, but it was the best one we had in a very limited toolbox. We desperately needed more time to improve NHS capacity, buy more ventilators, develop drugs, purchase PPE. And, of course, create a Covid vaccine. Lockdown gave us that time.
Or, I should say, the public gave us that time. They trusted the government. They stayed at home. They applauded NHS workers. They made a difference. It wasn’t these actions we should regret – it was the weeks wasted by a government too pusillanimous to act. The truth is that we locked down late because we had become paralysed by the fear of the trade-offs.
Opponents still say lockdown was a mistake. What do these critics think would have happened to transmission rates – rising exponentially – if we had failed to lockdown? What would they have done instead?
Lee Cain may have been there, but so was Rishi Sunak. I suspect the argument over whether alternative viewpoints were allowed comes down to the fact that Cain is talking about March 2020 whereas Sunak is probably talking about the period between then and December 2021, when lockdown became a go-to tool, imposed for months on end to ‘control the virus’, and dissent was routinely crushed and even demonised. Sunak knows what he experienced at Cabinet meetings during the pandemic when he tried to suggest alternatives to lockdown, and we don’t have to take his word for it as we know that censorship existed at all levels during the ’emergency’, and continues to be exercised against sceptics. We also know that, whatever Chris Whitty might have been mentioning to ministers behind closed doors, no proper cost-benefit analysis was produced by the Government in relation to Covid lockdowns or restrictions.
But Cain’s argument here is interesting mainly because it shows that lockdown proponents are still stuck in March 2020 and no amount of contrary evidence will disturb the serenity of their self-congratulation. Cain repeats the discredited claim that “Covid’s exponential growth meant that for every day that decisive action was delayed, the magnitude of the problem would soar”. The Spectator even kindly printed immediately below Cain’s letter this week a letter from Edinburgh mathematician Professor Simon Wood, which sets out once again (as he has numerous times before, including in the Spectator) the clear evidence that new daily infections in England, far from “rising exponentially”, were already falling before lockdown on March 23rd 2020. This crucial point is shown in Professor Wood’s chart below, taken from his peer-reviewed study on the subject. Yet rather than conceding that his entire argument is built on a falsehood, Cain expanded his letter into a full-length article which the Spectator published Thursday morning and which repeats the demonstrably false assertion that lockdown was necessary to address “exponentially rising” infections. Why the Spectator editors have allowed him to publish the unsubstantiated claim (twice) without addressing the contrary evidence, which they have themselves published beneath it on the letters page, is frankly baffling. At what point does this qualify as spreading misinformation?
Professor Wood also notes in his letter that Imperial’s React-2 study, which asked a sample of those with Covid antibodies when their symptoms started, gave similar results.
Professor Wood is far from alone in making these observations. Already in April 2020, Oxford’s Professor Carl Heneghan noted in the Mail that by projecting back from the peak of deaths on April 8th it could be inferred that the peak of infections occurred around a week before the lockdown was imposed. Indeed, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty himself told MPs in July 2020 that the R rate went “below one well before, or to some extent before, March 23rd”, indicating a declining epidemic. Yet Cain remains blissfully unaware of this evidence, still clinging to the falsified belief that without the “blunt tool” of lockdown, infections would have risen “exponentially” and “overwhelmed” the NHS, causing it to “collapse”.
Professor Wood points out that the modelling on which Cain relies for his counterfactual projections predicted that more than 80% of the population would be infected in the first wave of an unmitigated epidemic, whereas in fact no more than 10% were infected across European countries, including Sweden where no lockdown was used, irrespective of what restrictions were imposed. Modellers also assumed that up to 2% of the infected would require critical care, which was much higher than was actually the case, and so wrongly predicted an overwhelmed NHS.
Many published and peer-reviewed studies have looked empirically at the general question of lockdowns and found no relationship between restrictions and outcomes. Here is a sample:
- “Full lockdowns and wide-spread COVID-19 testing were not associated with reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality.” “A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes” by Rabail Chaudhry, George Dranitsaris, Talha Mubashir, Justyna Bartoszko, Sheila Riazi. EClinicalMedicine (Lancet) 25 (2020) 100464, July 21st, 2020.
- “We find that shelter-in-place orders had no detectable health benefits, only modest effects on behaviour, and small but adverse effects on the economy.” “Evaluating the effects of shelter-in-place policies during the COVID-19 pandemic” by Christopher R. Berry, Anthony Fowler, Tamara Glazer, Samantha Handel-Meyer, and Alec MacMillen, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA, April 13th, 2021.
- “Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate.” “Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation” by Quentin De Larochelambert, Andy Marc, Juliana Antero, Eric Le Bourg, and Jean-François Toussaint. Frontiers in Public Health, November 19th, 2020.
- “Comparing weekly mortality in 24 European countries, the findings in this paper suggest that more severe lockdown policies have not been associated with lower mortality. In other words, the lockdowns have not worked as intended.” “Did Lockdown Work? An Economist’s Cross-Country Comparison” by Christian Bjørnskov. CESifo Economic Studies, March 29th, 2021.
- “While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs.” “Assessing Mandatory Stay‐at‐Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID‐19” by Eran Bendavid, Christopher Oh, Jay Bhattacharya, John P.A. Ioannidis. European Journal of Clinical Investigation, January 5th, 2021.
It’s well past time lockdown proponents were asked to address this contrary evidence and no longer given a free pass in making the unwarranted assumption that lockdown restrictions are necessary to control an outbreak or even effective at doing so.
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.
That is the billion dollar question
What is weird is that I found this article via Twitter. It isn’t on the DS home page. What I see on the home page though are 2 identical article links to the crown jewels Roger Watson article. Hmmm….It’s because I was slagging off the spying spooks isn’t it? lol
I don’t understand this Mogs.
Do you mean my post? Just earlier this article wasn’t here on the home page. I could only access it via an external link from someone’s Twitter page. Must’ve just been yet another mystery glitch.
Oh I see.
I must admit the Crown Jewels article appeared as a double entry most of the afternoon.
Probably just that the homepage hadn’t been updated when the article was added to the site.
Good article. Just immensely frustrated it’s still only in publications likes of the Daily Sceptic and TCW and not in publications like The Telegraph yet. We know why of course.
It is quite incredible, isn’t it, that the Telegraph have been meticulous in their investigations and exposure of the various other scandals, like the Lockdown Files, the Twitter Files, Party Gate, Snog Gate, etc. but is silent on vax harms. I am now firmly of the opinion that if you find some significant development to be true, while at the same time we get radio silence in the mainstream about the same topic, you can be certain there’s some cover up going on further up the “chain of command”.
Why aren’t they investigating why their policy is killing people? I wonder.
It’s a mystery, isn’t it…
Why investigate when you already know the answer.
You may recall recently I posted about the new ‘SKYCovian’ Covid jab that has been authorized by the MHRA, and I was wondering why it stated on the gov website that it was to be a ”primary vaccine”. Fortunately Prof Fenton has looked at this in more detail and it is supposed to be for developing countries. So why is the MHRA giving it the go-ahead? Because it will also be used on the British public but they just won’t know what they’re getting. The short 2min vid he shares has more info. Prof Fenton reveals some concerning findings and I’m glad he’s going to challenge June Raine on this and raise these issues;
”You state that this vaccine was approved “after meeting the MHRA’s required safety, quality and effectiveness standards”. Yet your own guidance document makes clear that there is no efficacy data, and minimal safety data for this vaccine. So what exactly are the required safety, quality and effectivness standard?
As the vaccine is primarily intended for people previously unvaccinated why did you authorise its use for a country like the UK that is highly vaccinated?
Are you dispensing the vaccine to already vaccinated people in the UK? if so what studies have been performed to show that it is safe and effective to be used in people previously vaccinated with AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and other vaccine combinations?
As the vaccine is licensed to over 18’s, and appears to be not recommended to women who are pregnant or breast feeding, what information do you have about the effect of the vaccine on women who become pregnant some time after vaccination?
What information do you have about the impact on sperm count of men who receive this vaccine?
What studies have been performed on the sensitivity to safety and efficacy of the different dose accuracies that will inevitably result from the complex mixing process?
Did the change of role of the MHRA from regulator to enabler impact your decision to authorise this vaccine?”
https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/the-new-skycovion-vaccine-more-questions
First I have heard of SKYCovian, despite living in a developing country. Vaccine uptake here is minuscule, even if you want it most has expired or has been returned to sender. Couldn’t give it away to the rest of Africa. It’s over folks.
You are on the Billy and Klaus ‘to do pile.’
Probably because a lot of Africa hasn’t wanted the death jabs and fared better as a result. However, I noted that there are some mini mRNA factories en route to, think it was Uganda…or was it Kenya, somewhere in Africa anyway, courtesy of BioNTech.
Oops, it was Rwanda;
https://merylnass.substack.com/p/more-on-the-mini-vaccine-factories
The government is refusing to investigate because it will reveal their culpability
The following is from Dr Sam White’s Telegram channel & relates to a friend of his’ experience at a large A&E in East Birmingham UK. Bear in mind that the population in this particular area has a relatively young demographic overall & life expectancy lower than the UK average.
“These stories are very sad indeed. My recent visit to A&E was a stark reminder that so many healthy people who got jabbed and suddenly and unexpectedly died. During my recent 6 hour stint at Heartlands Hospital Accident and Emergency Department following my recent freak accident on the golf course. I was tended initially by 2 nurses. When they asked me what I did work wise and I told them that I coached a lot of doctors, scientists and lawyers who have been censored, de-platformed and suspended for speaking the truth. They wanted to know more so we talked about the experimental mRNA jabs, one nurse said that she had got one jab only and regretted it and that she had been bullied and coerced into this. The other nurse told me that she was also being bullied to get it, so she managed to book some holiday time she was owed off, when she returned the NHS mandate policy had been reversed and that way she avoided being jabbed. I asked if they had seen a lot of ‘jab related injuries’ they said ‘lots’ but a lot of the doctors were still in denial and most of the injuries were not being linked to the jabs. They told me that over half the nurses in their hospital were awake! Later, I got chatting to the doctor who stitched up my head wound and had a similar conversation. She told me she was looking to retire early because of the recent excess stress. She said “I am stressed out by seeing 3 to 4 young men every week with sudden, often fatal heart issues! Before the covid jabs we would see 3 to 4 young men with cardiac issues in a whole year, now it is every week!” She had a tear in her eye as she spoke and I gave her a hug. “Please finish writing your book and help the new leaders we need, I have a young son and I want him to have a future.” It was very moving. I told her I would and I thanked her for stitching up my head as I left.”
Bloody hell. That brought a lump to the throat.
It’s a tough read. I used to work that community patch, young strokes in that age range were incredibly rare so would fit with the low numbers pre bioweapon injection quoted by the awake doctor.
Hang on, she’s seeing cardiac issues in young men up from about 1 per quarter to 52 per quarter! So a 50 times increase?!
And presumely these young men were jabbed some time ago, so these numbers indicate the damage that is building up over time.
It’s horrendous. This indicates that a 44% increase in heart deaths is a gross underestimate for this part of Birmingham.
But why are they not speaking up? Why this continued wall of silence?
If the health professionals are not speaking up, what are they doing? Continuing to vaccinate, whilst not vaccinating themselves?
The mind boggles.
Myra those are really pertinent questions which I’d love to have the answers for. Some may be raising questions, sowing seeds by asking awkward questions. The fact that more staff are waking up is a positive thing. Change can only come about when there is a critical mass in favour of the change.
The biggest problem is the management who will be right behind the evil agenda.
Because medicine is a ‘Guild’. The Guild is controlled by a relatively small club of Senior Consultants and Professors, who think with one mind. They are at the top of the ladder, no further to go except to retire with a knighthood and maybe become an ‘advisor’ to Government or Big Pharma, and so will happily brown-nose the Government goons and support whatever the official narrative is.
The medical profession has been captured by the pharmaceutical industry, which lavishes billions on its members in grants for research, grants to attend conferences, support and help to write and have published papers (essential to have on your CV when applying for a new position), money for local meetings and sponsorship for larger conferences, donations for and gifts of equipment particularly for private practitioners. In return for these Earthly rewards, all they have to do is sign over their soul to the Devil.
The path up the career ladder depends entirely on the good graces of these few. Any junior doctor, registrar who does not toe the official line will not be allowed to advance. Nursing is different as the profession is not controlled by a handful of higher-ups.
The same is true for science, which is why although there is great deal of dissent about the climate change scam, all but a few dare speak out.
A friend’s brother-in-law works in a large hospital in Liverpool. She told me he has said they are seeing a huge increase in myocarditis cases.
It’s so sad. These live needlessly damaged or lost because of a psychopathic reign of terror unleashed by the government & Parliament, the defence of the people being one of it’s primary stated objectives…. They failed abjectly at that.
“The Office for Health Improvements and Disparities reports that heart failure deaths…”
WTF are these lot and who gave birth to them?
“Mike Batayeh, known for playing the manager of a laundromat turned meth lab in Breaking Bad, has died aged 52, US media reported.
The actor and comedian’s family told TMZ he died at home in Michigan in his sleep on 1 June after a heart attack.
Batayeh did not have a history of heart issues, according to the family, describing his death as very sudden.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65851444
There seems to be quite a lot of famous people dying much younger than expected for no apparent reason.
When I finished watching the Belgian series Public Enemy on Netflix ( 3 series in total ), at the end they showed that three of the cast members had died. I searched to see what I could find, all of them were in their 50s and I could only find the cause of death of one which was a heart attack. You occasionally might watch a series and see one ”In memory of..” because a person from the show died but I’ve never seen three, especially only in their 50s. Call me paranoid but whenever anyone dies suddenly or decades before the expected end of their life I always think the obvious but the problem is this particular detail is never disclosed publicly is it, so we’re just left wondering.
Dr Peter McCullough explains that two danger points for the jabbed are adrenaline-related activities (which is why so many professional sportsmen have keeled over) and for anyone it’s the the stage of sleep when you are starting to wake up and the body is preparing, naturally, for increased activity.
It’s a ticking time-bomb every time you go to sleep.
Let me get this straight folks..
So we know the vaccines are a kill job (Moderna patent on key part of SARS-COV-2 granted in 2016, evidence of gain of function research via EcoHealth Alliance).
We know they knew what they were doing (serious adverse events at a rate of 1 in 800 per Pfizer’s own clinical research data).
So we know they are murderers. Sick. Psychopaths. Evil.
And we now expect to do what, reveal to the population that they are heinous criminals?
By the way, anyone in the ‘oh no this was a cock-up and not a conspiracy, there’s no plan’ – please do challenge any of the above, by all means.
In short – our own governments have plotted to murder us. Us and our children.
We are at war with the deep state.
“We are at war with the deep state.”
I and one or two others on here have been banging this drum for many months.
My default assumption now is that any announcement or policy that emanates from the state and its cronies is designed to or likely to harm me and my family
Absolutely agree.
That’s a pretty sound position to take tof. I also take the view that any announcement from the state or its cronies will be lies.
Yes. We are at war, have been for some considerable time – The People v the Government.
Those in Government know this which is why the programme of fear where we are moved from one potential doom to the next to distract us, and why the media has been co-opted to broadcast and amplify the message and why any dissent is silenced.
Unfortunately not enough of the People realise their Government allied with a global coalition is waging war on them… but there is some hope, as more and more are waking up.
Sound like a conspiracy theory? We’ll see.
5th generation warfare, we don’t even know who the enemy is.
Oh we do alright.
Anyone who actively promotes and facilitates the Net Zero / CBDC / Digital ID / Covid pass / Facial recognition / Social credit score agenda is an enemy and wants to completely subjugate and exterminate us.
Why else would they be giving a bio-weapon to millions of innocent people?
Add Universal Basic Income, 5G & LED street lighting to your excellent summary list.
Add in unifrog, a ghastly personal data logger school children are forced to sign up to, school records databases and university loans, a treasure trove of data, surveillance and tracking.
Government.
Cock-up is one off incident; conspiracy is serial incidents. Twice is coincidence, thrice is conspiracy.
https://www.farminguk.com/news/dairy-farmers-urged-to-look-out-for-heat-stress-as-temperatures-soar_62765.html
Won’t be long now and we’ll have cows dying of Sudden Cardiac Arrest.
NFU are also now insuring against “heat stress.”
Jesus wept. So what do they do with their herds over in India, Africa..basically all of the places in the world that are consistently hotter than the UK? Talk about insulting people’s intelligence..
You couldn’t make this shyte up Mogs.
Direct Energy Weapons being used against livestock? That’s what 5G is…. It’s what those nasty LED street lights are too. Slowly raise the temperature to cause harm, like the frog being slowly boiled.
Wondered why they were so busy building 5G towers in rural areas during lockdown?
Foot and Mouth or another outbreak of BSE.
https://www.farminguk.com/news/elon-musk-slams-irish-climate-plan-to-cull-thousands-of-cows_62721.html
Who knew about this?
Elon Musk has come out in favour of Irish farmers and has condemned the slaughter of their herds.
Welcome news.
Please don’t fall for this Musk guff.
I know what you mean but for now this is good news.
I have no doubt Musk is for Musk. However, any contrary voice against the chaos and madness is welcome.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/migration-watch-hero-deserves-all-the-support-we-can-give/
Alp Mehmet’s Migration Watch and his petition calling on the government to get a grip of the scandal that is Bliar’s legacy.
I’m sure we can all get behind this.
Dr Peter McCullough explains why, here:
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/dr-mccullough-testifies-in-the-pennsylvania?r=ylgqf&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
The Government knows full well what’s happening, and why. But it doesn’t dare admit the cause, any more than the US, Australian, NZ or Canadian Governments will, who are experiencing similar levels of excess mortality.
Sanctimonious tosh puts it far too kindly. It’s a view taken by a load of cowardly lickspittles who are doing everything they can to hide their liability for killing people.
If you already know the answer, why would you investigate?
Why is the Govt refusing to investigate? Because those in Govt, past and still, their lackeys and cronies in Big Pharma would have to take the blame and most likely criminal prosecution.
Why do you ask?
Put these 4 pieces of logic together:
… And what is the most obvious conclusion we can come to? I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence by revealing the answer!