The re-introduction of tests for those travelling from China shows that nothing has been learned and authoritarianism is waiting around the corner. Tests are helpful only if they can identify contagious cases, which can be isolated and slow or interrupt transmission. If you have a few cases, that is. Not if you have 100,000 ‘positives’ daily and most of the population is vaccinated or had Covid, often more than once.
What evidence do we have that ‘test, test, test’ has made any difference in identifying the number of cases, i.e., transmission or mortality? Even the WHO considers travel bans are “usually not effective”, and that they may only be justified at the beginning of an outbreak, as they may allow countries to “gain time”.
Putting aside whether the strategy works (we will discuss that in a future post), the reintroduction of travel restrictions poses three contradictory questions.
1. If we now don’t trust Chinese data, why did we trust it so much at the beginning of the pandemic?
Chair of the Defence Select Committee Tobias Ellwood said, “We simply cannot trust Chinese data”, and Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, wrote on Twitter, “China’s lack of reliable Covid data means these sensible, proportionate and temporary measures are needed ahead of their borders reopening”.
However, why are we just discovering this now? China does not report any figures for excess mortality, does not cooperate with data requests and reports implausible estimates for Covid deaths. As an example, Chinese public health authorities claim to have screened nearly 10 million residents in Wuhan over two weeks in the spring of 2020. New Zealand’s Covid deaths per population are 180 times that of China despite similarities in their approaches.
Therefore, why is Chinese data only now “unreliable” given we used it so much in 2020 to guide Covid policies? Up to March 2020, 39 of 42 reproduction number estimates were based on Chinese data, as was the Imperial College report that predicted 510,000 deaths in the U.K., but with “suppression” (evidence-free and ideological), these deaths would fall to somewhere between 8,700 and 39,000.
2. If we now don’t trust the data coming out of China, how can we trust the testing used to get on the plane?
Interpol reports illicit sales of false negative COVID-19 test certificates in Europe. In France, seven people were arrested for offering fake negative COVID-19 test certificates costing up to €300 (£271). Also, fraud and wrong Covid test results is a big problem in China. Testing is big business.
3. If we can bring back public health restrictions so quickly, what’s next?
U.K. legislation sets out legal obligations and Covid restrictions enforceable by law. The U.K. has had hundreds of laws during the pandemic: Parliament refers to these as “lockdown laws”, and there have been several travel restrictions enforced that lapsed on March 18th 2022.
The Government’s Living with COVID-19 guidance, published on February 21st 2022, stated it “will retain contingency capabilities and will respond as necessary to further resurgences or worse variants of the virus”.
The travel ban sees the reinstatement of lockdown laws, which begs the question – what’s next?
At some point, the policy setting will have to accept the endemic nature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and move beyond panicked reactions that were the mainstay of policy throughout the pandemic. But, in the meantime, we have to keep paying the bill.
Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack blog, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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It comes from media agitation, imo. People really enjoy telling their fellow citizens what to do in the name of ‘safety’, and they want more and more of it. Saw a person in a car on their own with a plastic visor on yesterday, which begs the question ‘How big do you think the virus is? The size of, say, an apple..?’.
It’s also state officials under pressure to “do something”.
The annoying thing about this supposed pressure is that it isn’t very big. Most people couldn’t care less. A small, loud, obnoxious minority start braying for something to be done, the media support it and spineless officials are incapable of standing up to that.
I wrote to my MP to say more or less what you’ve said, but as I told her I would never vote for her or her party again, I expect she doesn’t care what I think.
I wrote to my MP about 8 times over the past three years with my concerns about Covid measures and vaccine passes etc saying I’d never vote for her again. I even had a zoom meeting at one point in which she spouted the usual junk science mantras and then boasted about being “friends with Matt” as in Fat Mancock. They are spineless fully paid off service bots to the global cartel.
We went to the top of Mt Etna last week – 3300 m up.
And yes, yes yes, 3 of the morons were diapered – crisp beautiful clean air.
Rona is a religion of the stupid, the cult belief in $cience and its endless f*ing propaganda.
I don’t care if people stab and die. Do it. Stab every fooking day. Wear the diaper shit catcher. And then please die.
Middle class metropolitan virtue signalling couple took same route as we did to Tate Britain yesterday, face nappies on the tube and on the (outdoor) walk to the gallery. I turned round at one point and the man had taken his off to have a fag.
‘They walk amongst us’ eh? The only mask I wear is that of total disdain when seeing and observing the antics of ‘these’
crackpotspeople.London art galleries seem like a hotbed of virtue signalling. I guess you’d expect that.
I’m happy to let individuals follow whatever daft protocols they wish, as long as they do not try to force their stupidity on me and my family.
The thing is, it is highly likely that the masktards will be first in the queue to bring back mandates. They are a walking commercial for covid evil, and as such they are my enemies. Especially the virtue signallers.
Entirely agree tof.
The nature of the COVID pandemic stage drama is that the only thing which stops these people from forcing their stupidity on you and your family
is the regrettable realization that they presently can’t get away with it, this to be remedied by keeping the propaganda going as soon as possible. With the possible exception of mentally terrorized elderly people, every masktard is a public enemy in waiting and ought to be treated as such.
And this is for a virus whose latest mutations have a ludicrously low case fatality rate.
If rational thought was applied, testing would also need to be done for all strains of influenza, RSV, as well as any other seasonal respiratory viruses with a propensity to kill the elderly or chronically unwell.
It seems the MSM and Big Pharma call the shots with public health policy.
If rational thought was applied, healthy people wouldn’t ever be tested for presence of RNA fragments of possibly viral origin, as the outcome of such a test means absolutely nothing beyond RNA fragment were or were not present at the time the sample was taken in the location it was taken from.
First: Test Chinese Arrivals
Next: dictatorship
Stand in the Park
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Make friends & keep sane
Elms Field (near Everyman Cinema and play area)
Wokingham RG40 2FE
If anything it shows Sunak is an effing idiot totally under the spell of the medical blob.
Well, at least some of the medical blob (JCVI) advised against it.
It was the left wing media, some of the right wing media that likes to bash foreigners, some loony zero covid people, and a larger portion of the general public who are easily led – the left love to have a reason to bash the Tories, and the dimwits on the right who equate controlling immigration with imposing covid tests.
Good article but it sort of assumes that the intentions and actions are rational and based in public health concerns. Obviously they are not. The crucial point is question 3, and I think we know the answer to that one – nonsense will be imposed if deemed expedient unless there is pushback. China is an easy target. Domestic lockdowns, less so these days I reckon.
“Chair of the Defence Select Committee Tobias Ellwood said, “We simply cannot trust Chinese data”, “. Yes, and we can’t trust Tobias Elwood either. He’s a double talking spook. And a politician, take your pick.
Ellwood is a traitor. Simple as.
Britain, the U.S., Europe are all now run by democratic socialist fascist governments.
The only course of action available to us is to annihilate each party of government in turn, rocking their cosy little lives every five years until they finally get the message.
Really?
Indeed – I’ve noticed how even sceptics are so often blind to the problem that all the reporting of the evils of regimes far away is done by media we know to be habitual liars on things closer to home.
The much more interesting question is: Why did Sunak order people from in China to be tortured[*] as reaction to the Chinese goverment finally abandoning the Zero COVID nonsense? Will Sunak tomorrow again order more people to be tortured, say – extremely popular in 2021 – school-age children because teacher’s unions deem them an expendable inconvenience to the lifes of their members?
I sense another democrat with a deeply ingrained respect for other people’s human rights here.
[*] Forcing someone to undergo a physically unpleasant and potentially even harmful procedure is torture.
Nobody seems to be noting the MAIN thing about the Chinese ending Lockdown – that it demonstrates without doubt that NO measures can prevent an RSV completing its natural cycle. Ergo – Lockdown can only be damaging. Witness the massive rise in ‘flu and RSV admissions to hospitals.
Words fail me. And the ones that don’t are unprintable.