The U.K. COVID-19 Inquiry has been divided into six modules. It is in module one on ‘Resilience and Preparedness’ and in module two on ‘Core U.K. Decision-making and Political Governance’ that the inquiry will principally address the policy process that yielded lockdown. Module one public hearings were held in the summer. Module two hearings about the U.K. Government, as opposed to the devolved governments, began in October and have just ended. The pause in the hearings provides a useful opportunity to take stock of what has been done so far.
The COVID-19 Inquiry is the latest demonstration that U.K. public inquiries have long since been reduced to an unfunny joke at the expense of U.K. citizens, and one would have to be naïve in the extreme to expect to find much or anything of value in the conclusions they publish. One did, however, think that useful information might be found in the evidence inquiries gathered, but over the major issues which it should address the COVID-19 Inquiry will not even attain this more modest objective. For it seems likely that the inquiry will not yield any evidence allowing U.K. citizens to decide whether the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 constituted an emergency sufficient to justify lockdown.
It seems even less likely that the evidence one hoped eventually to obtain about the part scientific advice played in the decision to adopt lockdown will emerge from the inquiry. Scientific advice should, of course, not seek to make policy but confine itself to being advice offered to policymakers who weigh it alongside the economic, legal and social considerations that should be taken into account. But this is precisely what did not happen with lockdown, and denials of any involvement at all in the formulation of policy by scientific advisors who held the most important positions have been left unquestioned, even though they have turned on a flat untruth of the greatest consequence.
Sir Chris Whitty, the U.K.’s Chief Medical Officer, was, of course, one of the principal public faces of the presentation of lockdown, but more importantly for our purposes was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Emergencies (SAGE), the principal body advising Government over the SARS-2 outbreak. In his evidence given on June 22nd 2023, he told the inquiry that scientific advice could not actually be responsible for lockdown: “it would be very surprising” for “a scientific committee [to] venture … into that kind of extraordinarily major social intervention… without this being requested by a senior politician”. This claim was repeated in the evidence Professor Neil Ferguson gave to the Inquiry on October 17th 2023. Professor Ferguson of Imperial College London, a figure of remarkable influence in national and international research on infectious disease epidemiology, was also a member of SAGE and other advisory bodies, and the most important single person giving scientific advice over the outbreak. In his evidence he said:
I believe that scientists have a key role to play in advising policymakers on the potential impacts of different policy choices in a crisis, but that they should not use the public platform offered to them by that role to campaign or advocate for specific policies… for something as consequential as a pandemic. Where everybody is affected by the decisions, it is for… policymakers to make those decisions, not for scientists.
It is of the very first importance to note that this claim by Sir Chris and by Professor Ferguson completely contradicts what has long been known of the crucial event in the adoption of lockdown, an event in which Sir Chris played an important part, and to which Professor Ferguson was absolutely central.
U.K. planning to deal with epidemic respiratory infectious disease had long been based on ‘mitigation’ of disease. In a previous outbreak of, say, influenza or the common cold, the spontaneous steps which people would take to avoid infection themselves, to avoid infecting others and to cope with illness were to be supported by steps taken by Government to, for example, support self-isolation at home, or to provide extra care for those most vulnerable, generally the infirm elderly.
The extensive and long considered planning to this effect which was in place at the start was abandoned with extraordinary rapidity, with the major decisions perhaps being taken within a week, when on March 16th 2020 SAGE was presented with a report on ‘The Impact of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) to Reduce COVID-19 Mortality and Healthcare Demand’ which it had commissioned from a specially convened Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team. Reflecting his institutional dominance of the field, this team was led by Professor Neil Ferguson. Non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) does not mean lockdown; indeed this is what it had not previously meant. It means the ‘social’ steps that can be taken to limit infection and the impact of disease.
But SARS-CoV-2 was a new virus of which in March 2020, on the facts known so far, epidemiology had been aware for no more than six months. Almost nothing was known about it, and, of course, no vaccines had been developed to resist it. In these circumstances, the Imperial College Team predicted that “an uncontrolled” or “an unmitigated epidemic [would cause] 510,000 deaths in [Great Britain]”. The prediction for the United States was 2.2 million. Even if “optimal” mitigation measures were adopted, it was predicted that “there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB”. These numbers, it was claimed, could be reduced to the tens of thousands by NPIs which pursued, not mitigation, but the “suppression” of COVID-19 infection by massive restrictions on human contact. The detail of lockdown was not discussed in the report, but all the measures soon to be adopted, such as school, university and workplace closures, were considered, and overall, having set out the 510,000 and 250,000 figures, the report concluded “that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time [which] the U.K. will need to [adopt] imminently”.
We have emphasised ‘only’ in this quotation to draw attention to the way this conclusion sought to compel the adoption of lockdown. ‘Epidemic suppression’ necessarily required lockdown. The use of ‘only’ closes off all alternatives. Such language requires reaching a judgement about the economic, legal and social consequences of lockdown that Sir Chris and Professor Ferguson are indeed incompetent to make, should never make, and now deny ever having made. But to deny that they made such a judgement is a flat untruth. In full the Imperial College Team report said:
We therefore conclude that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time. The social and economic effects of the measures which are needed to achieve this policy goal will be profound. Many countries have adopted such measures already, but even those countries at an earlier stage of their epidemic (such as the U.K.) will need to do so imminently.
Coming within a report that prided itself on being the latest result of Imperial College “epidemiological modelling which [already had] informed policymaking in the U.K. and other countries in recent weeks”, the report completely contradicts Sir Chris’s and Professor Ferguson’s claim about the advice they offered. Professor Ferguson and his colleagues in the Imperial College Team advocated and intended to advocate lockdown. To maintain otherwise is demonstrably false. It is vitally important not to allow these false claims to go unchallenged.
It is, incredible to say, even more concerning that the Imperial College Team’s policy modelling was wildly inaccurate and conceptually nonsensical. Fear of the possibility of 510,000 deaths figure would appear to have been the catalyst for the panicked change from a mitigation to a suppression policy. But by “an uncontrolled” or “an unmitigated” epidemic, the report purported to predict what would happen “in the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour”. But there was, of course, never any possibility that a serious outbreak of respiratory infectious disease would not be met with spontaneous responses and Government measures in support of these. To describe this as ‘unlikely’ is extremely misleading; it is a zero-possibility event, which, nevertheless, the Imperial College Team somehow modelled. If during a 35°C heatwave everybody in the U.K. goes outside in bathing costumes, and if there is a sudden fall in temperature to minus-5°C, then we can confidently predict universal health problems if people continue wearing their bathing costumes. But what have we learned of the empirical world from Imperial College-style modelling when obviously we already know that everyone would put on warm clothing instead?
As with the rest of the world, the Imperial College Team had extremely imperfect information when it addressed an outbreak of infectious respiratory disease caused by a virus only very recently known, the medical effects of which were only very inadequately reported. But instead of taking a lack of knowledge to be the ground for cautious, hesitant analysis and policy prescription, the Imperial College Team advocated an intervention which Sir Chris Whitty described as “extraordinarily major” as “the only viable strategy”. The advocacy was based on statistics which were conceptually nonsensical or which, clearly erected on a wholly inadequate evidence base, have proven to be wildly inaccurate. The presentation of these statistics was intended to have a dramatic impact on policy, and the Imperial College Team succeeded in this respect beyond its dreams.
Imperial College researchers led by Professor Ferguson had advocated the suppression policy to deal with outbreaks of infectious respiratory disease long before the new SARS virus and the response to it by communist China gave it an opportunity to promote lockdown. The COVID-19 Response Team report is an extremely tendentious attempt to compel adoption of that policy, which succeeded in turning the world upside down. Sir Chris Whitty’s and Professor Neil Ferguson’s claims to the contrary are demonstrably untrue. The COVID-19 Inquiry should expose this falsity for the whole world to see and gather the evidence which would allow U.K. citizens to understand how flawed scientific advice came to pay such a massive and utterly malign role not just in the U.K., but around the world.
David Campbell is Professor of Law at Lancaster University. Kevin Dowd is Professor of Finance and Economics at Durham University Business School.
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‘The Science’. Professors, ‘Experts’, Modellers, ‘Scientists’, power mongerers one and all. They assume that their narrow and limited expertise plus pretty happy dude degrees confer a divine right to rule. Technocratic Fascism. Real science was long ago destroyed, corrupted and coopted by the criminal and megalomaniacal.
Ferguson is an egotistical knob and a criminal whose policies killed and maimed.
All true but way too kind to Ferguson. He is human excrement made flesh whose very existence has killed tens if not 100s of thousands world wide needlessly.
Sure, the man is a no-ability creep. But such people exist, we all know that. I prefer to blame those who placed this huckster in a position of influence, namely the people in charge at Imperial College. Who appointed him a professor? And why is he STILL in a job there?
Why is he still in a job there? Might have something to do with Mr B G’s checkbook.
Carefully selected I suspect.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your diligent testimony, a first draft of history.
Ferguson’s behaviour over the last 25 years, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of UK herds and populace alike, is beneath contempt.
The overwhelming evidence demands that justice of some form or other will be served on the man – but along with many others, I’m now far more interested not in the assassin, but in who paid for the bullets.
Greasy pole-climbers wouldn’t get to the top of the pole without being highly skilled at taking credit where none is due and avoiding blame when directly responsible.
Deep down, they ALL know lockdown was a huge mistake, but nobody has the cojones to admit this. Scum.
We knew before it started that this would be a whitewash. The govt has plenty of form and leopards can’t change their spots.
It took 20 years for the truth about Hillsborough to come out and until then they gaslit the Liverpool fans blaming them for the tragedy.
Just enough time for those responsible to retire/bank their pensions/shuffle-off. So perhaps in my lifetime? Perhaps not.
A lockdown inquiry that isn’t just not interested in net QALYs gained or lost, but doesn’t even know what that means, is not an inquiry but a show trial.
Nothing else, as everything else is objectively just noise in that context.
Ultimately, whether due to ignorance, arrogance or deliberate alarmism for other motives, the abuses of mathematical modelling you catalogue undermine the critical goal of constructive, empirically-grounded policy discourse. It is sure to meet resistance from those invested in the status quo, but crystalizing these failures can hopefully restore sanity, humility and ethical standards around using science to guide society’s choices. We must rid these snake oil salesmen who pushed results as gospel when the underlying model was not fit for purpose.
Whilst I agree with the article in general, the writer is misreading this quote from the Imperial College report (which I have put in bold font):
But by “an uncontrolled” or “an unmitigated” epidemic, the report purported to predict what would happen “in the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour”.
It is the absence of control measures or spontaneous changes that is unlikely. In other words, the Imperial College team expected that there would be control measures and spontaneous changes, but they were outlining what would happen in the unlikely event that these did not occur.
The authors have perhaps unwittingly put their finger on the heart of the problem. Nobody seems to have noticed that pandemic infections are diseases. These are treated by doctors, not by scientists. The SAGE committee was stuffed with the wrong experts; look at the list, and try and find a clinician. Look at the people who have given evidence to the Hallett Inquiry, and try and find a clinician. It’s medical advice that was required. I tried to give it…
Yes Doctor, in fact we all did. I have tried to give advice over electricity supplies, our total inablility to have resilaince of a 24/7 supply with wind and solar. “They” are simply not interested, even when faced with the consequences of total grid failure. I am now of the opinion that “they” are NOT our Government, or our people. The plan is, as predicted by Dr Vernon Coleman, to destroy Britain one way or another. SAGE was a load of placemen, who were deluded by power. They had an agenda, probably driven by bribes, at least at some level, and a complete lack of understanding of the needs of a country. The BBC and MSM piled in, spreading propaganda which was exactly false. Anyone who said anything else was threatened, cancelled, and suppressed.
Whitty was not just a member of SAGE. Along with Vallance he determined the membership of SAGE. His role in the advice that was given to government was absolutely central.
Ferguson’s statement that
“[Scientists] should not use the public platform offered to them by that role to campaign or advocate for specific policies… for something as consequential as a pandemic. Where everybody is affected by the decisions, it is for… policymakers to make those decisions, not for scientists.”
is absolutely astonishing gaslighting.
Here he is taking to the airwaves in April 2020 to demand lockdown:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8258043/Professor-Neil-Ferguson-warns-100-000-UK-coronavirus-deaths-lockdown-lifted-soon.html
Once again, this article ignores the FACT that the Government, on the advice of its medics/scientists in the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens, downgraded Covid from a High Consequence Infectious Disease on 18 March – five days BEFORE the first lockdown.
The reason given: they had more data and they knew it had low mortality rates.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
All the western nations in the 5 Eyes and NATO imposed a version of lockdown at virtually the same time. I think the Order came from the CIA who had funded the research and wanted to carry out a mass human experiment with the gene therapy technology. I think Johnson was told to lockdown and Ferguson’s model was created and used to justify it ….. not to trigger it.
But then, unlike the writers of this article, I’m just a conspiracy theorist
The ACDP actually downgraded the virus threat on 13th March. This was covered up and highjacked by Van-Tam & Co. I have all the evidence, including certain emails, which I submitted to the Covid enquiry. Despite acknowledging my input, they did not raise the matter. I will publish all the information in the near future.
Have they forgot that Mystic Meg broke his own lockdown mantra to get his leg over. Merry Chriswhittymus to all
“The presentation of these statistics was intended to have a dramatic impact on policy, and the Imperial College Team succeeded in this respect beyond its dreams.” So Ferguson’s dishonesty is a side-issue. It looks rather as if the government panicked instead of governing.