There is no evidence that shielding benefited vulnerable people during the Covid pandemic, according to a study, with the high rate of in-hospital transmission blamed for the failure of the policy. The BBC has the story.
Swansea University compared 117,000 people shielding in Wales with the rest of the population of three million. The study found deaths and healthcare usage were higher among shielding people than the general population.
The Welsh Government said shielding was introduced on medical and scientific advice and it will continue to review evidence from the pandemic.
The study also found the Covid rate was higher among those shielding – 5.9% compared to 5.7%.
The researchers said the data raised questions about whether the policy worked.
They concluded that a “lack of clear impact on infection rates raises questions about the success of shielding, and indicates that further research is required to fully evaluate this national policy intervention”.
However, they did say those shielding were tested more as they used healthcare more often.
The majority of people who shielded had a severe respiratory condition, were having immunosuppressive therapy or had cancer.
Speaking to BBC Radio Wales, Prof Helen Snooks, who led the research, said: “If shielding was going to be effective in reducing deaths and serious illness from Covid, then it really needed to reduce the infection rate, but unfortunately we didn’t find evidence of that in the study.
“We have to remember that people who were included in the shielded list were clinically vulnerable and having a lot of contact with health services so if they were for instance admitted to hospital, they’d be having a Covid test.
“Whereas in the general population, Covid tests were fewer – we can’t find a positive test if there was no test done. There is some uncertainty around these results.”
Prof Snooks also emphasised that the shielding group was “a lot sicker than the non-shielding group”.
“There were more deaths and there were more hospital admissions. We are, at this point, thinking that perhaps it was impossible to shield people effectively when there was such a high level of healthcare transmission at that time,” she said.
“For a particular person, it may have been the best thing to do. What we evaluated was the policy of writing to people and recommending very strongly that they stay at home. It wasn’t underpinned at that time by any evidence.”
“It was sort of made up at the time and implemented.”
“We will continue to review evidence as we learn from the protective interventions and mitigations applied during the COVID-19 response.”
Thousands of people consigned to miserable isolation for months or years for a policy that was just “sort of made up” and it turns out did nothing to help. The Science, ladies and gentlemen.
With studies finding no appreciable benefit from lockdowns, masks, school closures and now shielding, will any of the novel draconian policies implemented to ‘control the virus’ be found to have achieved anything? It’s not looking that way.
Worth reading in full.
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“Disinformation is one of the gravest threats weighing on our democracies,” he says.
This is absolsutely true, but it is the Governments who are using it to push narrative and silence opposition. Ergo, the Governments are the gravest threats to our democracies.
I must say, I’ve had doubts about how far Musk will go in his ‘free speech’ campaign. I dont think it reasonable for him to withdraw from the EU, so I expect he will sail somewhere close to the line, without actually crossing it.
Withdrawing from the EU might get people’s attention, though most likely people would blame Musk not the EU.
Musk can’t take on the EU by himself.
If the population were ready to see him as a champion and rally behind him to fight for free speech, then obviously he could.
But we’ve seen how spineless the population is. Many of them have offered up their children as guinea pigs for untested jabs to appease a menacing state bureaucracy, so…
I think it would do more harm than good for him to take that step, yes.
There’s little support for freedom of speech, at least in the UK and Europe, among people I speak to. People will tell you they like the idea, but when you start quoting types of speech (“hate”, “misinformation”) and ask if they should be allowed they will tell you “no of course not”.
It would also probably be suicidal.
I don’t see Twitter’s withdrawal from the EU’s code of practice an empty gesture. It is a signal. Now, one can debate what the signal is.
It might just be to try to look good. Or it might be a signal of measured defiance which says – ok, you might be forcing me to comply by turning a code into law, but I will t least, with my gesture, show you I don’t agree with it or like it.
I don’t know how committed Musk really is to free speech. I doubt few do. But if one assumes he is, how he plays his cards is anything but simple. It would be fiendishly complicated to try to runTwitter as a free speech platform in today’s regulatory environment, if that was what one wanted to do, without being destroyed by the heavy hand of ever more oppressive and authoritarian states.
My guess is that he’s trying to do his best, but I am ready to be disappointed and discover I’ve been naive.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again – Musk doesn’t give a flying duck about Free Speech.
Surely Twitter need to replace the display of offending content with a message saying banned in the EU. If people are really interested they can use a VPN to avoid this. If enough people are annoyed then there will be push back.
The EU appears not to want Twitter being what it is but wants something else instead.
The EU should build its own ‘service’ as it wants it to be – I’m sure they could make it just as popular eventually.
I hope Elon has the power and the balls to withdraw Twitter from the EU territory.