The Spartacist trade unionists are organising a Free Lucy Letby protest outside the Thirlwall Inquiry next month. The Lucy Letby case grows and grows as a public scandal. The legal establishment has again been caught out as not able to handle criminal cases concerning difficult scientific issues of clinical medicine and statistics. This is an issue that has plagued the courts and been constantly dodged by governments.
This Parliamentary report spells out the dangers of celebrity type ‘experts’ who can mesmerise a jury, over against a better scientist who is unattractive and boring: Dewi Evans was certainly an extremely confident performer, the reverse of a cautious scholar who will present all sides and possibilities of a case, as Judge Peter Jackson warned Judge Goss to no avail. The report says: “If the outcome of the trial depends exclusively, or almost exclusively, on a serious disagreement between distinguished and reputable experts, it will often be unwise, and therefore unsafe to proceed”. Since the defence did not put any of its instructed experts on the stand, Judge Goss could conclude that there was no opposing view against that of Evans and prosecution colleagues.
The Shoo Lee panel of experts from around the world with the highest possible credentials presented their findings on all the cases of which Lucy Letby was convicted, finding that no murders were committed and there are powerful alternative explanations for the deaths including sub-optimal care on the unit. Professor Neena Modi, a panel member, wrote a concise summary of the findings in the Guardian, including this paragraph:
The defence team inexplicably called no expert witnesses to give evidence, and although the judge was advised by Letby’s barrister that the prosecution lead witness was unreliable, it was nonetheless his opinion that formed the basis of his summing up. The jury were told that the babies were mostly healthy and well and that the deaths and deteriorations were unexpected. This is not the case; the babies were either overtly unwell, or at high risk of developing complications. Further, the significance of crucial information from the medical records and post-mortem examinations was not recognised. The jury therefore reached their verdict on the basis of information that was incomplete and misleading. This cannot be any basis for a fair trial.
Former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord Ken MacDonald told BBC’s World at One on the day of Shoo Lee’s bombshell presentation that the Criminal Cases Review Commission will “want to look at this very carefully” and that “if these 14 very high-level experts at the press conference this morning are right it will represent a comprehensive trashing of the prosecution case in the trials”. He also said that the Appeal Court was a frosty and hostile atmosphere for appellants and would be hard to convince even with this deconstruction of what the jury was told. The Criminal Cases Review Commission needs approaching first and needs to send the case to appeal, and the CCRC has a dire record in terms of slowness and helping innocent convicts along with all possible speed. And the CCRC has already stated that those campaigning for Letby only have a partial view of the facts, and also worryingly that the feelings of the grieving parents must be considered, not a normal test of truth but an instance of emotivism being used by the establishment.
The legal establishment finds itself in crisis as a result of this reckless prosecution lacking in any solid proof. Too many basic mistakes were made by the CPS, police, judges and much of the uncritical mainstream media. Abandoned were the principles of ‘presumption of innocence’, ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ and ‘burden of proof’. The NHS warned off nurses who wanted to testify for Letby. Attempts to warn the trial of the flawed statistics of the prosecution by two scientists were simply met with threats of contempt of court and prosecution. All the red warning lights were steamrollered. The resultant chaos and recrimination flows from incompetence all round, compounded by a very bad legal system for cases involving complex science.
At the time of writing, the Economist has penned a sobering editorial condemning the UK’s legal and health systems, finding them blind to what is going on and in need of radical improvement. The UK is very good at covering up miscarriages of justice and in this case it was only the New Yorker’s analysis that cut through – yet was promptly censored by the courts, while the vituperous attacks on Letby as evil and from hell poured forth freely.
The BMJ has also just published an analysis of where the case is, including a statement from Mark McDonald that the Shoo Lee panel has “demolished” the prosecution evidence. He adds “What the Lucy Letby case has done is expose how easy it is to get advice from experts who, according to the experts that I’ve instructed, simply did not know what they were talking about.” Dr Dewi Evans is also quoted in the BMJ as totally unrepentant on his diagnoses of the deaths: “I have not heard any criticism from any individual whose view I respect. And I have not heard any criticism from any organisation whose view I respect” – making himself the only legitimate scrutineer of his own diagnoses.
So what next? The establishment is once again likely to dig in and dig itself a deeper hole still. Even if the CCRC does quickly send the case back to appeal, the Court of Appeal is likely to stick to its procedural game of chess, minimise the devastating reasoning of the Shoo Lee panel, ignore the many unfairnesses of the two trials and keep Lucy Letby locked up despite the fact that the jury was given crucial misinformation and prevented from having exculpatory evidence. The second trial was a show trial, precondemned by the judge in his words to the jury. The appeal judges who turned down the application said that Evans’s evidence had “some worth” and the defence failed to put up expert witnesses of its own. So bad luck on Lucy, however unjust.
If the CCRC does send the case back to the Court of Appeal a retrial may begin, but it will surely be impossible to hold a fair retrial in view of the very deep and wide public discussion of a febrile and emotive nature. The reviling of Letby, started by the prearranged police arrest photo and amplified by the image of supposedly damning post-it notes during the trial, permitted to be publicised by the judge at the request of the BBC, has continued. But a growing body of opinion is now sure that either she is innocent or that she cannot possibly be considered guilty ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ – there is the deepest doubt now that the medical evidence of the prosecution has been demolished. The tide is turning fast in the mainstream media.
I fear there can be no fair retrial for Letby. The loathing whipped up by the populist and indeed respectable media rules out any jury which could possibly be fair and neutral. The situation now is so febrile as to constitute a culture war akin to France’s Dreyfus Affair. A Jewish officer in the French army was falsely accused and convicted of treason and sent to Devil’s Island in 1894. Then it emerged that another officer was the guilty party, but senior officers suppressed this information and Dreyfus remained in prison. Fresh false charges were brought against him – similar to Operation Hummingbird which is ongoing and inflaming yet more parental feelings. More charges against Letby are surely another device to shut down debate and criticism. It is time the CPS and police stopped digging their own graves.
The Dreyfus case enraged his supporters over against the antisemitic Catholic establishment. Emile Zola wrote his open letter ‘J’Accuse’ in 1898 condemning the unjust treatment of Dreyfus and highlighting legal malfeasance. The letter was printed on the front page of the newspaper L’Aurore, addressed to the President of France and accusing his Government of antisemitic chicanery in unlawfully imprisoning an innocent officer. The letter caused uproar. Zola was prosecuted for libel and fled to England. Dreyfus was finally pardoned and exonerated in 1906.
Can such exoneration happen now for Letby in the UK justice system as it stands? A European Court might agree that this case is a total scandal. Letby’s trial was unfair and she was never given any benefit of the very deep reasonable doubt surrounding her conviction. My guess is the establishment will fight every inch of the way to maintain her conviction. If the UK system cannot give her justice, will a European Court step in? Whatever happens next, it’s going to be messy.
Dr Timothy Bradshaw is a retired Lecturer in Theology at the University of Oxford.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that “Former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord Ken MacDonald told BBC’s World at One the day after Shoo Lee’s bombshell presentation that this evidence ‘comprehensively trashes the prosecution case’.” In fact, he said this that this outcome depended on the 14 experts assembled by Mark McDonald being correct. The article also incorrectly said that: “The BMJ has also just published an analysis of where the case is, including another statement from Ken MacDonald that the Shoo Lee panel has ‘demolished’ the prosecution evidence. He adds ‘What the Lucy Letby case has done is expose how easy it is to get advice from experts who, according to the experts that I’ve instructed, simply did not know what they were talking about’.” In fact, these quotes came from Mark McDonald. We apologise for the errors.
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“The important point is the big picture: the fact that in one big country with lots of different regions taking different public health responses, there was no obvious relationship between interventions and outcomes. “
That’s absolutely key. Unless lockdowns can be clearly shown to make a decisive difference, then, in scientific terms, the support for what was always an unlikely idea doesn’t exist.
For sure. And makes Boris Johnson out to be the bare faced liar we all know he is.
“it was the lockdown which brought the cases down”
Liar.
Trouble is, BBRC, is that millions of people believe him.
That is what politicians strive for and what they are paid to do. Our job is to say the truth, of the two measures that can affect infections (lockdown and vaccination) vaccination is best at present.
No substantive evidence for vaccines, either.
Again – the null hypothesis stands.
Vaccines for the over-60s, and that’s assuming proper vaccines, and not these experimental ones.
PHE would beg to differ based on an analysis of 300k subjects and follow-up. The degree of protection from vaccination from symptomatic disease is far from the null.
See the plot, the effect is obvious, no need for dumb-arse hifallutin Latin.
I fell off my bike ten days ago.
Since then, Covid infection rates and deaths have gone down substantially.
Behold, I can work miracles.
I’m sorry you fell off your bike, but it’s a stupid claim, missus, hence are we to assume you are stupid? Explain the link, or find a better theory.
If you need it explaining, you are the stupid one. Look at the definitions of correlation and causation, anybody with half a brain can see that the drop off in a seasonal virus is nothing to do with ‘vaccines’ or NPI’s.
*please note, I don’t think that Annie actually fell off her bike, probably apocryphal fellah.
Sorry you don’t understand standard English. Another item to catch up on.
“PHE would beg to differ”
How true that is. They’re into misleading – as noted by the CEBM, if you recall.
Just quote to me the ARR figures, that I’m sure they’ve published
For many reasons we use relative risk reduction. You’re obsessed with unmeasurable absolute values.
what about this for you null hypothesis, a plot assymptotically trending to zero? You think it’s just good luck? yeah right. You are demented with bitterness. No problem spurn the vaccine, and get lockdown, harder, longer, sooner…. you are the perfect author of your own misery, too stubborn/stupid for your own good.
Getting those blinding lights again where you can’t see anything but this monotonously repeated graph which simply describes the expected curve?
Which curve is interesting on the upward slope in suggesting that the introduction of the vaccines might well have caused a rise in mortality that may have actually delayed the natural decrease.
You are quite entitled to buy into the vaccine mythology that gives the Covidevils more power – but don’t expect others to do so.
Oh … and simple logic is another thing to try to get a grasp of. As well as the folly of resorting to ad hominem (now that is Latin) gibberish when you’re losing an argument. It’s always a tacit (from the Latin) admission of defeat or ignorance.
Earlier to-day you were claiming that self-imposed lockdowns had resulted in a 70% plus decline in the infection rate (See Oxford study post).
That, of course, was complete nonsense. There is no evidence that lockdowns have any more than a marginal effect on infection rates as we see from the US.
There are two measures that might account for it, lockdown, vaccination or both. It does not matter which dominates, and there is presently no way to tell anyway. if they work, I’m happy..if you’re not happy, too bad.
Neither lockdown nor vaccines can satisfactorily explain the 2 peaks or the subsequent declines.
1/ The declines began BEFORE lockdowns could have taken effect.
2/ This means that infection rate was slowing several days before that (dynamics of virus transmission)
3/ ZOE is useful as a leading indicator but it doesn’t capture hospital and care home infections which caused a big chunk of the deaths in Dec & Jan.
4/ The most reliable data are the figures related to DATE of Deaths since they are not influenced by scale of testing. This shows a peak on or about Jan 21st 2021 (using 7 day moving average) .
The Mean time from initial infection to death follows 2 Gaussian distributions, i.e. ;
Incubation Period ~5.1 days
Symptoms to Death ~17.8 days
Total Time ~23 days.
This puts peak infection at the end of December – possibly a bit later since many of the over 80s died following the Pfizer vaccine which significantly suppressed their immune systems.
Further to my other reply to you, Tim Spector (ZOE) actually supports my point about cases falling before lockdown. The UK introduced the second lockdown on Nov 5th. On November 6th, TS writes
https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/over-the-second-wave
Before every lockdown the “COvid death” curves were on a downward trend
“There are two measures that might account for it, lockdown, vaccination or both.”
Errr … So what happened in April 2020 when neither applied??????
> to what happened in April 2020 when neither applied?
in April 2020, the PM was in critcal care and 1,000 a day were dying with covid19.
If you look at deaths rather than infections then the decline last spring was almost as steep as this year. Obviously the decline last year wasn’t due to vaccines, so it makes no sense to claim this years decline was.
Yes – I’m afraid the key point was entirely missed. As usual. I don’t think the fact of a steep ‘unaided’ decline from a higher point in a similar curve was noticed, either.
Hopefully fon has had his jab just like a good boy should.
He / she will be dead within twelve months.
Enjoy it while you can.
I can show lockdown probabley did buy a very small advantage here, but at huge cost, not really worth it.
There are only two measures, lockdown and vaccination, both have some effect. Vaccination has the biggest effect now, in conjunction with better weather.
False dichotomy: there is another skywalker, sorry, way, the way in which we protected the vulnerable and took basic precautions, banning large indoor events but otherwise letting people get on with their lives like a liberal democrasy should.
you can vote on it…
No, we can’t.
Look at the graph. Read the article. Lockdowns don’t work to control the virus spread. They may temporarily delay it, that’s all, if everyone, absolutely everyone is confined to their homes, but you destroy the economy, people would die from other causes, and the virus would spread around again as soon as lockdown is lifted.
Unless you do what Australia and NZ did of course: lock down until the virus is eliminated (easier for them to do because seasonality meant it didn’t get very prevalent in the first place) and then seal the borders to stop it getting back in.
Most countries don’t have that capability though.
I vaguely aggree with that, it’s a good plot, but tells us little.
Unfortunately, that won’t change their minds, or stop them from imposing them again.
They’re not going to let data get in the way of a good narrative.
The plot tells us it’s not worth doing lockdown, but ut tells us that in a complicated way! It’s a good plot that tells us nothing. In conclusion, there appears to be no material difference between doing lockdown or not doing it, it is best to not do it since lockdown is disruptive.
Two of the main things that differentiate various states are their relative populations and their climate. So let’s look at this graph, in particular the 4 outliers at the right which all did winter lockdown, and had high death rates, and the outliers on the left which did no lockdowns. Sometimes in statistics, the outliers tell the story.OK, first the high fatality outliers
Rhode island, 1,057,125, climate cold
Massachusetts, 7 m, cold
New York 20m, v. cold (see midNight Cowboy)
New Jersey, 9m, v cols (see above)
So big populations, relatively, and all cold and damp (maritime).
So no obvious answers leap out yet, so let’s see low mortality outliers
Hawaii, 1.5m, v. warm.
vermont, .6m, very cold
Alaska, .75m, very cold
Maine 1.3m, v cold
So again nothing obvious. The size/climate number on the outliers do not give the game away. So I’m stuck. What IS going on. What’s the big difference? The plot’s colour pattern says the distribution of outcomes wrt lockdown/no lockdown is random.
There are 20 states with below average mortality that did lockdown, and 14 states, with above average average mortality that did lockdown. It is too close to call, but it slightly favours a lockdown approach. But let’s see the other side of that. There are 9 states with below average mortality that did not lockdown, and 8 states, with above average average mortality that did not lockdown. it is too close to call, but it favours a slightly no lockdown approach.
So certainly no at all clincher in the plot. It’s a good plot that tells us nothing. In conclusion, since there appears to be no material difference between doing lockdown or not doing it, it is best to not do it since lockdown is disruptive.
There is a real virus around, its called ‘fon’.
It’s harmless.
Well at least you’ve acknowledged this here. Elsewhere you blather on about lockdowns and vaccinations being the only two ways of dealing with disease. It’s obvious lockdowns cause at least as much damage in the short term as they prevent, and in the long term far more.
>lockdowns and vaccinations being the only two ways
please tell us the others.
Growing natural population immunity; seasonal effects – the basic nature of viruses.
The fact you even need to point this out to him/her/they demonstrates the worthlessness of continuing a discussion with him/her/they. I tried to yesterday, but it’s just a waste of keyboard time.
Fon has hit the bottle.
Hilarious.
There are two ways to deal with fon, who is clearly a 77 Brigade amalgam:
take the piss or ignore the dozy ducker.
Dr Fauci says the people in the states that locked down didn’t obey the lockdown. And he seems to think he is making a point in his favour by doing so, which is worrying.
And in the states that didn’t lockdown, people just did it anyway, more rigorously than the ones that had it but didn’t obey? amazing
Surely the main reason lockdown doesn’t work is that people with a high viral load generally feel pretty unwell so stay at home without being told to do so. Therefore anyone who feels well enough to go out is unlikely to be highly contagious and it’s therefore pointless to make them stay home.
Isn’t Oregon the state which kills old people?. If it’s the one I am thinking of, hospice care also suffered after this started. And now… you see where crimes against humanity lead.
Brilliant article on the US ‘case study’. I know nothing is really new but for the less informed these are the key arguments that go against the lockdown strategy as a viable or successful one. The real ‘negacionists’ are the ones (MSM/politicians/experts) who either don´t want to see this evidence or find funny arguments to, in desperation, try to counteract it. Trouble is: this is the REALITY and you cannot pretend it doesn´t exist!
The argument most people use against this kind of data is this:
‘Yeah but those states still had SOME measures like masks/social-distancing and without those? The deaths would have gone up! And if those non-lockdown states had locked? Their deaths would be even lower.’
‘And anyway the population density is different so you can’t compare them.’
Not my argument but it’s what people always say to me. People appear to not want to believe the counter arguments.
Not sure why I got downvoted for that. I’m just relaying what people say to me!