The BBC reports that Wales’s First Minister Mark Drakeford has told the Covid Inquiry that local Covid lockdowns were a “failed experiment”.
He could have said it was a failed policy or intervention, but Drakeford chose to say lockdowns were an “experiment”.
An experiment is a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery and test a hypothesis.
However, at the time, lockdowns were a policy enforced by law.
Mark Drakeford announced in May 2020 that the maximum fine for repeated breaches of the lockdown rules in Wales rose from £120 to £1,920. Up to June 8th, 2,282 Fixed Penalty Notices were issued for – as it seems now – failing to participate in an experiment. People in Wales were twice as likely as English to be fined for breaking lockdown rules. Some experiment.
We are at a loss to explain how the people who set the laws can do so based on experiments. As for experiments, where was the consent procedure, where was the control group and where was the evaluation?
The Welsh Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser for Health, Rob Orford, read from the evidence Drakeford provided to the inquiry that “in hindsight perhaps they weren’t the best idea”.
Yet again, we learned that policy wasn’t based on any evidence. “I’m not sure where the origin of the idea around local interventions came from, whether that was the U.K. Government or Welsh Government.”
We utterly reject the “hindsight” argument, which Sir John Edmunds also used as an excuse for some of his most extreme advice.
We reject it because we pointed out the obvious on April 8th 2020: you cannot affect the circulation of an endemic respiratory virus with any of the interventions known to us, including vaccines, which were not on the table then.
We pointed out that wrecking society and the economy to chase an evidence fallacy was the stuff of nightmares. We and the rest of society have paid a heavy price for this temerity.
Policy must be based on expertise and evidence. If there is no evidence, you either generate it or sit on your hands as the precautionary principle suggests, until such time as the costs and benefits of alternative actions are clear.
No amount of boot licking, spin and hiding from the public can give us back what this mob of politickers, modellers and activists have taken.
The post will not self-destruct or self-delete; it isn’t an experiment.
Prof. 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, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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‘…where was the consent procedure, where was the control group and where was the evaluation?’
And where was the cost/benefit analysis (central to any application of the ‘precautionary principle’) that only Jesse Norman, out of the entire cabinet, asked for?
Does this admission mean that that they won’t do it again? Since it’s a ‘failed’ experiment? In chemistry or physics, if an experiment fails, you don’t do it again. I think they’ll try. It’s just a matter of time waiting for the perfect moment. Like another pseudo health emergency. What gets me is that this ‘experiment’ was carried out throughout the world bar a few exceptions without much thought or any oversight about any of the possible consequences. It therefore follows that either our leaders were working to a plan or not very bright. I would say it’s both. The plan was to see if they could do it. And they succeeded in that and subsequently ruined lives, businesses, relationships, hopes and dreams. That was the plan, in my view, to set us on a course of destruction. Destroy society, cut the ties, break us on a wheel. Drakeford and his ilk, in fact the whole rotten lot of them, deserve nothing but jail and no parole.
Next time they want to ‘experiment’ on us, I suggest they show us how it’s done first and when they’re in their homes with their masks on, twitching at the net curtains, we’ll weld them in and feed them insect burgers down the chimney.
Absolutely bang on the money Aethelred. 👍
Cheers HP!
People do repeat failed experiments, sometimes they give a different p value. That is why CERN, having been bitten in the past, uses a very low p value. There is a behaviour called p value hacking in which people try to reduce their p value so that they can get published, get their drug approved, etc.
Point taken, Zeb!
I think he just means that local lockdowns weren’t “enough”, and we should have been in an earlier, longer and tougher national lockdown instead. But the nasty old Tories wouldn’t let Wales have one!
I’m sure you are right
His handlers, if he has any, will not be happy with his choice of words, but I think the damage is limited. People will think the experiment was worth it. The implication is that the national “lockdowns” were not an experiment but were based on solid science. Interestingly the only “evidence” I’m aware of for “lockdowns” came from China and that one was local, but an actual lockdown, unlike ours which were a dog’s breakfast. Assuming that what we saw from China actually happened.
I think “covid” had experimental aspects but these were nothing to do with public health but rather to discover what control measures they could get away with. I think “covid” is best thought of as an exercise rather than an experiment.
Did Wales even have local lockdowns anyway? The main controversy I remember was the ridiculous two week “circuit breaker” Wales had in Autumn 2020 (I think, it’s all a blur), which had zero effect on anything much but was used to highlight how reckless the English were for not doing the same thing. He is not even admitting that circuit breakers were pointless, and if Wales didn’t even do local lockdowns anyway then all he is doing is further criticising English policies (I believe Leicester was the first to enjoy being locally locked down by Wancock, for months on end while its case rate stayed stubbornly high…).
That’s a lie. In reality it was a failed policy, and gross abuse of power. Within that, they lost the plot and led to establish organisations losing their reputation, with various follow on problems via that route. Some might say that Drakeford should spend time with his kid in the slammer to start with.
Malfeasance in a Public Office – an Offence under Common Law.
Those responsible should be charged.
Carries a maximum sentence of Life Imprisonment.
Just charge one of the pro lockdown brigade aka most of SAGE. They touted themselves as “experts”. They persuaded a too willing Government to implement lockdowns. They wheeled themselves into and were lauded by the MSM. They traduced anyone who disagreed with the “Science.”
So may I offer up the one and only Sir (Christ) John Edmunds as one who most certainly should face trial. Oh, and as an added incentive, never forget that he vociferously advocated on/in the MSM that schools should be closed to children until vaccinated.
It seems he has very little knowledge of immunology/vaccinology/mRNA therapies. Personally I’d have thought some knowledge thereof must be an essential prerequisite for any epidimiologist.
Apparently not.
Never forget that people like him are direcly responsible for a large part of the utter mess the western world is in.
Power without responsibility does not mix well.
SAGE needs to be made an example of.
By redefined as a Prohibited Organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000, perhaps.
Covidians were/are extremists!
“SAGE needs to be made an example of.”
I don’t disagree but it is the height of naivety to believe that the people nominally running this scam were actually in charge. Bozo and his bunch of murderous traitors were simply order takers for the likes of the WEF, UN, World Bank, IMF and the Blackrock gang. Put this lot in court and their defence will be “only taking orders m’lud.”
The same destructive actions occurred in Lockstep throughout the West. Thousands of establishment persons didn’t arrive at the same murderous enterprises at the same time without a high degree of coordination. Such a belief defaults to cock-up theory and what has happened since March 2020 is certainly not cock-up. Some conspiracy realists prefer to borrow Charlie Chuckles’ terminology and refer to it as the Great Reset.
I agree wholeheartedly but unfortunately there’s zero chance of the RPTB meeting justice on this earth.
But it is perfectly possible to charge the bag carriers in the UK but at the moment the justice system is still in clown world.
When it emerges, those in a Public Office should begin to worry….a lot.
In 1840 Dr Farr said that epidemics do not grow exponentially. In 1927 Kermack-McKendrick said the growth was logistic – their work was the basis for the computer models during Covid-19.
The Common Cold Unit said masks don’t work before they closed in the 1980s. The Cochrane Review said and continues to say they don’t work.
And that unit in Salisbury did a lot more good work. They actually invented the term “coronavirus” following electron microscopy studies, and realised that vaccination (using the older definition) was unlikely to be effective, given the number of various viruses, both a group of coronaviruses, and many more rhinoviruses, that have a habit of mutation as they develop. But as you say, it was obvious given the small physical size of the viruses that masks were a useless idea.
Thank you.
Short, sharp, brutal but not nearly brutal enough.
Thank you Professors Heneghan and Jefferson for all you have done and continue to do.
Hear hear.
My modelling, of last year, shows that flattening the curve leads to extended duration and reduced acquired immunity so that when you unlock you get another wave – unless you extinguish the virus or have an effective vaccination programme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4kWbYlopN4
Surely the paid advisers could have told Drakeford the same thing at the time?
“unless you extinguish the virus or have an effective vaccination programme.”
It is not possible to vaccinate away from a viral respiratory infection.
The evidence agrees with you, the modelling is neutral as it is only a SIR model so it has no knowledge of vaccination. If it did then you would have to guess at extra parameters and then it could be pushed one way or another.
Indeed and they knew that
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/vaccination-video-is-emotional-blackmail-and-dishonest-too/
Not exactly giving up are they? Still cynically using indoctrinated children to manipulate parents in to taking their youngsters for a dangerous jabbing. And when June Raine is in charge we know this is as crooked as F.
Despite all the deaths and miseries unleashed by the C1984 fake injections they are still pushing poisons.
“Lessons will be learned” is definitely NOT an excuse this time.
Rather cringeworthy than evil, although the intent behind it doubtlessly is. I’ve been vaccinated against polio and smallpox when I was a child. At that time, measles was considered a benign childhood disease children will invariably get sooner or later. Whooping cough was a bit more exotic but still nothing seriously out of the ordinary, such as scarlet fever (I got the latter, my brother the former).
Apparently, readily available vaccination products cause illnesses to become much more dangerous.
This is a plain lie. At the height of Corona madness, all of the measures were marketed as tried and trusted NPIs whose value had been proven in the real world and was obvious to everyone but conspiracy theorists. Drakford wasn’t experimenting when he prohibited the sale of non-essential goods in supermarkets in Wales, he claimed to be following the scientific consensus of the finest minds on the planet re: infection control when being confronted with an extremely dangerous disease.
Experts also advised that women should not be allowed access to sanitary products in shops! This idiocy alone showed the “experts” were clueless and no idea of unintended consequences.
Clueless idiots? I don’t think so. These are criminals who were making it up as they went along; all the time laughing up their sleeves at the ‘plebians’ and ‘useless eaters’ sucking up their maniacal evil agenda. They still are. It must be hilarious for them, watching the masses blindly foxtrotting to their delirious composition.
Mr. Drakeford why not just go the whole hog and admit that you and your silly collectivist government and every other central planning bunch of busy body’s are all “failed experiments”, and to show some contrition why not tear down all those daft 20mph signs.
We could perhaps experimentally hit Drakford with 20mph signs for some time, just to see if this will improve his health and well-being.
Anyone remember this?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54662795
Indeed. Bloody unbelievable then. Off the scale now.
Yes. Like it was yesterday! It’s long past time these criminals were made to face the consequences of their crimes.
On May 7th 2020 I wrote to my member of the Welsh Senedd and my Westminster MP saying that we needed to stop lockdowns etc immediately and gave a list of 10 reasons. I will NOT accept “in hindsight” excuses from these officials and so-called experts.
*10 reasons based on those put forward by Dr John Lee at the time.