The Covid Inquiry appears to be “fundamentally biased” and is failing to examine the costs of lockdown, 55 professors and academics have warned. The Telegraph has the story.
In a letter to Baroness Hallett, the inquiry Chairman, the group of 55 professors and academics express their concerns that the process is “not living up to its mission” to evaluate the mistakes made during the pandemic, assess whether Covid measures were appropriate, and to prepare the country for the next pandemic.
They warn that a “lack of neutrality” means the inquiry “gives the impression of being fundamentally biased” and appears to have led to “predetermined conclusions, for example, to lockdown faster next time”.
In the letter, published on Tuesday, the group states that the inquiry is neglecting to hear evidence from those who suffered from the “negative effects” of pandemic policy decisions, or scientists who disagree with choices made by the Government.
As the second module of the inquiry comes to a close, they call for this to be urgently addressed and greater focus to be placed on the “economic and social cost of Covid policies to British society”.
The letter was organised by Dr. Kevin Bardosh, an expert in infection medicine at Edinburgh University and Prof. Sunetra Gupta, an epidemiologist at Oxford University.
It comes as Richard Hughes, Chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, warned on Tuesday that worklessness had become a “worrying trend” in the economy since the pandemic.
Mr. Hughes told the Treasury Select Committee that the economy had been growing as a result of net migration but now the it was suffering from a reversal in its workforce amid “rising levels of inactivity and a falling participation rate”.
He said: “It looks as though persistently high levels of inactivity seem to be a feature of the post-pandemic environment and one which is worrying from the point of view of human welfare.”
Worth reading in full.
The full letter with all signatories is reprinted below.
An open letter to Baroness Hallett, Chair of the U.K. Covid Inquiry
The Inquiry must urgently address its apparent biases, assumptions, impartiality and lack of evidence-based approach
We, the undersigned, are a group of U.K. public health scholars and academics in related disciplines, widely published in our fields, deeply concerned that the Covid Inquiry is not living up to its mission to evaluate the mistakes made during the pandemic, whether Covid measures were appropriate and to prepare the country for the next pandemic.
First, the Inquiry gives the impression of being fundamentally biased. The Inquiry originated in legal petitions brought by bereaved family groups. Yet there has been little opportunity for petitions to be brought by those who have suffered from the negative effects of pandemic policy decisions. This is preventing a more holistic assessment of impacts on population health and wellbeing. This lack of neutrality appears to have led to biased reasoning and predetermined conclusions, for example, to lockdown faster next time.
Second, the Inquiry is taking key assumptions for granted instead of examining and critiquing them in light of the evidence. The consensus position in pre-2020 pandemic plans was that non-pharmaceutical interventions, including lockdown, had weak evidence of effectiveness, and were predicted to cause substantial harm to society, especially if used for prolonged periods. This informed the initial response to Covid in early 2020. Yet, the Inquiry assumes that these measures are effective and appropriate. As a result, it downplays the harms to society caused by two years of emergency infection control mandates.
Third, the Inquiry lacks impartiality in the selection and questioning of expert witnesses. It has given preferential treatment to scientific advisers on SAGE, who have a vested interest in maintaining the justification for their policy recommendations. Very few scientists with an alternative position have been asked to testify, and the Inquiry has been confrontational rather than inquisitorial in its questioning of these views. The Inquiry has not seriously questioned the hypotheses and assumptions offered to government, especially from government appointed modelers, which were used to justify Covid policies. Neither has it seriously examined the social and economic costs of lockdown. It has also stuck to an agenda of UK exceptionalism failing to recognise the experience elsewhere in the world.
Fourth, the format of the Inquiry is impeding investigation into the key scientific and policy questions. The Inquiry has adopted a legal format that prevents a systematic evaluation of the evidence by biomedical and social scientists on the harms of restrictions to the British public, the impact on Covid from policies such as mandatory NPIs, and the state of evidence for best practice. It is focused on who did or said what, rather than asking fundamental scientific questions. Yet investigating the interplay between harms, benefits, and best practice is critical to preparing for the next pandemic. The Inquiry, as currently functioning, appears unsuited to this task of national importance.
Fifth, the Inquiry risks reducing public trust in the impartiality and independence of government accountability and oversight. Its size and cost (by some estimates £300-500 million) will make it the largest public Inquiry ever undertaken to date, and yet its shortcomings, if not addressed, risk compromising the credibility of future public inquiries.
We believe the Inquiry has a significant and important mission and we would like to see it succeed. However, if it is to do so, these shortcomings need to be urgently addressed. The Inquiry must invite a much broader range of scientific experts with more critical viewpoints. It must also review the evidence on diverse topics so that it can be fully informed of relevant science and the economic and social cost of Covid policies to British society.
We, the undersigned, believe this is an urgent national priority and fundamental to ensuring that future pandemic response is evidence- based and maximizes the health and well-being of all.
Drafted by
Dr. Kevin Bardosh, Collateral Global; Division of Infection Medicine, University of Edinburgh.
Prof. Sunetra Gupta, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford.
Signatories, arranged alphabetically by surname:
Dr. Colin Alexander, Department of Journalism and Media, Nottingham Trent University.
Prof. David Betz, Department of War Studies, King’s College London.
Dr Carlton Brick, School of Education and Social Science, University of the West of Scotland.
Prof. Daniel Briggs, Department of Criminology and Sociology, Northumbria University.
Dr. Jennie Bristow, Department of Sociology, Canterbury Christ Church University.
Prof. Anthony J Brookes, Department of Genetics and Genome Biology, University of Leicester.
Prof. Garrett Wallace Brown, Chair in Global Health Policy, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Leeds.
Prof. David Campbell, Professor of Law, Lancaster University.
Prof. Karl Claxton, Department of Economics, University of York.
Dr. Robert Craig, School of Law, University of Bristol.
Prof. Charles Dennis, School of Business, Middlesex University.
Prof. Kevin Dowd, Durham University Business School.
Prof. Fionn Dunne, Department of Materials, Imperial College London.
Prof. Bill Durodie, Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath.
Dr. Ashley Frawley, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, University of Kent.
Prof. Paul Frijters, Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics.
Dr. Alberto Giubilini, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford.
Prof. Toby Green, Department of History, King’s College London.
Dr. Peter Grove, Former Chair UK Department of Health’s Senior Economic & Analytical Review Committee (IASRC).
Mr. Clive Hambler, Department of Biology, University of Oxford.
Prof. Philip Hammond, Department of Media & Communications, London South Bank University.
Dr Cheryl Hudson, History Department, University of Liverpool.
Prof Marilyn James, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham.
Prof. Lee Jones, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London.
Dr Nicholas Joseph, College of Arts, Humanities and Education, University of Derby.
Prof. David Livermore, Department of Medical Microbiology, University of East Anglia.
Dr. David McGrogan, Department of Law, Northumbria University.
Prof. Paul McKeigue, The Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh.
Prof. David Miles, Department of Economics, Imperial College London.
Dr. Jose Lingna Nafafe, Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, University of Bristol.
Prof. Yossi Nehushtan, School of Law, Keele University.
Prof. George Ogola, Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies, University of Nottingham.
Dr Jason L. Oke, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford.
Prof. Paul Ormerod, Alliance Business School, University of Manchester.
Dr. Matthew Owens, Department of Psychology, University of Exeter.
Prof. David Paton, Nottingham University Business School.
Prof. Allyson Pollock, Population Health Sciences Institute, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University.
Prof. Peter Ramsay, Law School, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Prof. Matthew Ratcliffe, Department of Philosophy, University of York.
Prof. Mario Recker, Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter.
Dr. Andrew Shepherd, Chronic Poverty Advisory Network; Institute of Development Studies.
Prof. Karol Sikora, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Buckingham.
Sir Bernard Silverman, FRS, Emeritus Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford.
Dr. Edward Skidelsky, Director, Committee for Academic Freedom; Department of Philosophy, University of Exeter.
Professor Michael Stewart, Department of Anthropology, University College London.
Dr Luke Telford, School of Business and Society, University of York.
Prof. James Tooley, Vice-Chancellor, The University of Buckingham.
Prof. Ellen Townsend, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham.
Prof. John Watkins, School of Medicine, Cardiff University.
Prof. Roger Watson, School of Nursing, University of Hull.
Dr. Stuart Waiton, Division of Sociology, Abertay University.
Dr. Meron Wondemaghen, School of Criminology, Sociology and Policing, University of Hull.
Prof. Simon Wood, School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh.
Dr. Paul Yowell, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.
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A name that will live in infamy, along with the others.
Odd thing about Vallance, he never even looked as if he believed the crap they were all spouting. He simply isn’t as consummate liar as Whitty, Ferguson , …
Oh, Ferguson wasn’t a liar. Just completely deranged.
I am sure he is a liar. An off-the-scale psychopath as well, and entirely bought and paid for.
.”He simply isn’t as consummate liar as Whitty, Ferguson ,” …..Bozo, Handicock, van Tam, Jabbit, Michie, Raine…and on and on…
“Sometimes it’s better to play dumb, rather than open your mouth and prove it,”
Who said that?
I’ve always heard it as “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” This quote is credited to either Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain. Given the humourous nature, my vote would go to Mark Twain.
Thank you. I am most grateful.
He didn’t seem to have the qualifications of a political spinmeister, did he? That said, the impression to me back then was that it all looked like another election campaign, as it was only just after the 2019 GE.
The M in Johnson’s PM title obviously stands for muppet.
Love it.
so what can we make the ‘P’ into then?
How about P1SS?
Priapic.
His name is near the top of the evergrowing list of incompetent ,corrupt liars who have conned us all .He will not b forgotten .
Not forgotten by the likes of us but for the majority he is already a distant memory.
Spot on .They are now being groomed on Monkeypox and China/Taiwan .
Nothing to see here….
Crazily he is actually the more personable of the harbingers of covid Armageddon.
Quoting one of the many people who ended up as victim of the Great Daily Sceptic Unpaid Contributors Cull[tm]:
Wouldn’t it be nice if Unbalanced unbalanced and fell below an ambulance?
The head of HM’s torture chamber may well be an affable person in private. One just shouldn’t encounter him in his official capacity.
Good riddance!
The worry is who will replace him? Is it going to be an even more hardcore WEFer?
At the Natural History Museum he’s going to be able to preach woke crap to the children to brainwash them into believing the green climate change crap. That is more scary than his GSK extra money.
It’s a bit rich MailOnline referring to him as Dr Doom given they have willingly been one his chief message conduits. Despicable ‘journalism’ but no surprise there.
Yes, the Mail was disgusting. I remember how they used hidden cameras to photograph people walking out of B&Q with headlines saying ‘Is this essential shopping?’ They helped make things much worse.
Just now and again the Mail likes to be a bit more objective. Of course it never lasts.
It was clear something was very wrong when the Mail was stoking the paranoia, yet columnists were attacking the lockdowns. The same happened at the Telegraph (of course they’d made the mistake of accepting a £3 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which funded Paul Nuki’s propaganda outfit, the Global Health Security Team.) And there was that weird trio of articles across the Mail, Telegraph where Andrew Neil and Philip Johnston wrote vicious articles out of the blue about people who hadn’t had the clot shot, with almost the same turn of phrase, echoed in The Sun by Karen Braddy.
I did quite a bit of work for Patrick Vallance and his department in the past (Van Tam too). I respected him, which is why I gave him the time of day for a short while before the lockdowns. It’s with great sadness and a sense of betrayal that I now equate him to senior members of Hitler’s Nazi regime of the 1930s.
He might not have the harsh German accent and the jackboots, but he evinces an Eichmann-like blandness. The most evil actions are often countenanced by the blandest people, which is why we should always fear the rule of technocrats.
I’ve never been scared of COVID-19. I’m scared of Vallance, the freak Whitty and the other members of Sage, though. I used to have a sick feeling of dread in my stomach when those press conferences were announced. What more abuses were these lying creeps about to inflict on a credulous public?
When I read Johnson’s panegyric dedicated to Vallance, it reminded me of why I’m glad that frizzy-haired bastard is on his way out of Downing Street.
Interesting to note that Vallance’s predecessor as head of R&D at GSK, Moncef Slaoui, headed up the USA’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout…
Vallance, Whitty and Van Tam are all highly intelligent and educated. As Mike Yeadon pointed out, they’d studied the same things he did.
They knew what they were saying was a pack of lies.
Exactly. That’s why I loathe them so much. They are pure evil.
Weirdly though, vaccine R&D was never part of Vallance’s remit (unlike Slaoui). He is superficially nice enough but incredibly political and somewhat narcissistic. I don’t believe he ever thought any of it made sense, but he would swear black was white and up was down if it advanced him in any way. Not the kind of scientist one can believe in (which is probably one of the reasons GSK’s pipeline is considered weaker than most of its peers).
he would swear black was white and up was down if it advanced him in any way.
Yep, that’s my reading of Vallance – entirely motivated and driven by self interest.
Whitty thought – there’s something different about him, as if he’s some demon thrown up from the Abyss
Whitty always looked nervous to me, like he knew he was talking nonsense. Vallance and Van Tam were the smoother performers.
No TV license in the TJN household, so we missed out on direct viewing of most of these public-interest pronouncements.
Van Tam seemed to me to be in love with himself, but I always thought Vallance looked the most shifty, in a sweaty guilty sort of way.
For me though the worst of the lot was Whitty.
And he was the one who over-ruled the JCVI to authorise the stabs for children. Of all the acts in the last two-and-a-half years of tragedy, this was surely the most purely evil.
That was my approach: the press conferences were clearly overseen by the Behavioural Insights mob and used linguistic programming – emotive words, combinations of words, repetition of words and phrases to terrify anyone watching them. A couple of people I know who watched every press conference religiously are now agoraphobic. There arguably needs to be a series of press conferences using similar techniques to deprogramme anyone who watched the originals.
Whitty is evidence of what a nice, incredibly generous people the British are. When the man overseeing the incarceration of 67 million people (on the basis of claims newspapers routinely debunked within an hour of his pronouncements) was accosted by citizens in the street, he was pushed around a bit, laughed at and that’s it. In many countries, he would have stabbed, shot or strung up from a lamppost. We just called him a twat and let him go about his day!
Good riddance. Don’t come back, you lying SOB.
Vallance and Van Tam and the revolving doors:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/12/06/tom-jefferson-the-uk-turns-to-witty-vallance-and-van-tam-for-leadership-revolving-doors/
I think it was Mark who previously shared this on here.
Given that the BMJ published this, what in hell’s name were they doing cheerleading all the Corona nonsense?
Mike Yeadon publicly accused him of lying and invited him to sue. Enough to tell me *exactly* the worth of the CSA.
He should fit in at the Natural history museum, an old dinosaur with nothing in his thick skull.
Unfortunately like Bill, Chris and the rest he’s played the people of this country like the Pied piper of Hamelin Town and the rats were more than happy to follow.
“It is impossible to fully convey the impact Sir Patrick has had…”
Bit of an understatement, that.
Boris Johnson said: “Sir Patrick may not have bargained for becoming a household name when he signed up for the job.
“But I am immensely grateful for him giving me an excuse to destroy Britain.“
His next position should be serving a life sentence in a Category A prison for Mass Murder…..or facing a death sentence for Treason, either sounds like his next best step re career path
Yes, an impact like a meteorite!
It may take a while but I hope to see these charlatans held accountable one day.
Please keep us posted, DS, about whether Sir Pat does step into a role with the pharmaceutical industry (one of his old jobs, maybe, plus promotion?)
I agree that all this governmental bragging about the phenomenal success of the rollout of COVID vaccines could turn out to be a BIG mistake in the medium- term future. Cue much reverse-ferreting.
It’s encouraging to read about the inception of a parallel body of medical professionals in Australia (AMP?) to rival the highly-politicised AMA and it’s unchallengeable yet unevidenced public health messaging. I wish it would happen here!
If you want to be really upset by the machinations of ‘Big Pharma’ please read ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’
I’m three-quarters through it! Not a good bedtime read if you want to be soothed to sleep
One of the Guilty Men.
I hope he rots in hell because sadly, there’s unlikely to be any justice in this world.
Not that I’ve ever had much faith in the MSM’s ability to search for the truth, but what did it for me was listening to this expert virologist/vaccinologist telling the nation via the BBC that covid was new, dangerous and that everyone must be jabbed because antibody levels waned dramatically post infection.
Every O level biology students know that antibody levels wane quite naturally post any infection.- that’s because they’ve done their job and your immune system has a memory, thus obviating the need for vaccination.
Obviously the immune system’s memory seems better than that of Vallances. Heaven forbid that he told lies.
He’s in a very long list of people who deserve everything they’re going to get, on this earth and in hell.
He saved no one, modelling isint real, and no one can ever prove how many people did NOT die or how many were ‘saved’. He was part of the draconian nightmare forced on the nation and part of the collapse of the economy due to lockdowns, ‘vaccine’ rollouts, testing, nightingale hospitals, furlough scheme and now he can walk away……
Ok – never was very good at sums but 650million doses of the jabs divided by the UK population including children and babies I work it out at about 9 jabs per person.
As they appear to be in multi-dose vials lets reduce it to 8 jabs per person to allow for wastage.
Which bright spark decided that the UK needed so many Jabs? Back-handers anyone?
Happy to be corrected re the sums.
Good riddance.
“the U.K. has used just 142 million of the stockpile of 650 million vaccine doses it purchased”
Is that 650 million figure correct? And if so, does anyone know why the government would buy *ten* doses for every person in the country? Seems bizarre!