Professor Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson have launched a Substack newsletter called ‘Trust the Evidence’. As regular readers of this site will know, they are two of the most authoritative sources when it comes to COVID-19, as well as other viruses. Unlike many medical doctors and public health scientists, they are strictly guided by the evidence and call it as they see it, regardless of whether it complements or contradicts the prevailing consensus. The article below was first published on their Substack account, which you can subscribe to here. The staff of the Daily Sceptic strongly encourages all our readers to subscribe.
Some of us started reviewing the evidence of the effects of physical interventions on the spread of viral respiratory infection two decades ago. The Cochrane review, now in its fourth update, concludes there is still uncertainty about the effects of face masks.
“Physical interventions” include hand washing, distancing, disinfection and barriers, including all types of masks.
SARS-CoV-2 had not been identified when we did the last update (published in November 2020), so we reviewed what physical interventions did to affect the spread of influenza and influenza-like illness. Most identify these two as “Flu”. We have already shown the lack of knowledge that accompanies this microbiological simplification.
Influenza-like illness is a syndrome made up of a constellation of signs and symptoms: fever, cough, runny nose, malaise, fatigue and so on, with which everyone is familiar. It is a multiagent syndrome caused by scores of known viruses (including seasonal coronaviruses) and many more which are unknown; Influenza (which cannot be distinguished clinically from the rest of influenza-like) illness is caused by two specific viruses (Influenza A and B) that can be diagnosed only after a laboratory test.
Before the pandemic, clinical trials in widely different settings and using different types of masks show no clear-cut effect against Influenza-like illnesses and influenza.
Although trials of medical/surgical masks are logistically challenging, the message is unequivocal: they do not appear to do much. Their effect on the broader community is unknown. These are broadly the same conclusions of the only two available randomised trials of masks conducted on COVID-19.
In previous versions of the Cochrane review, we included observational studies; some carried out after the 2003 SARs-1 epidemic. These lower quality studies showed an apparent effect, which higher quality studies failed to confirm. This is not an unusual situation that we find ourselves in Evidence-based medicine.
Who should you believe? Those that espouse low-quality evidence and its certainties or those rely on higher quality trial evidence – as we did in version 4 – with its inherent message of uncertainty.
The bottom line for evidence is to address the uncertainty. Throughout this pandemic, many seem to have had difficulty coping with uncertainties; they have jumped on any evidence that provides an element of certainty – at the time, this can feel reassuring. However, we have a tried and tested way of dealing with uncertainty in science: randomised trials.
It is a terrible indictment of the current leadership that no such trials have been planned or done, those which are on the stocks have had problems with funding and recruiting enough participants, and some researchers have been subjected to malicious personal attacks.
Any government “following the science” should have sponsored a range of trials testing different types and mixes of physical interventions in various populations and settings. They should have mandated genuine scientific efforts to diminish uncertainty. But politics, social media and the fatal attraction of spurious certainty underpinned by low-quality studies seem too much to overcome.
Dr. 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.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I must be a lot older than I thought. I can still remember when banks looked after your money, and paid you a bit of the interest they made by lending it to other people who were good risks.
This woke stuff starts out with one or two fairly reasonable plausible things, but just gets pushed and pushed to absurdity and beyond. Each step into folly justifies the next one.
We shouldn’t discriminate against women. Agreed. Or Gay people. Agreed. and many steps later, we are giving special rights to people who’s sexual pleasure is putting hedgehogs up their backsides, and calling themselves Fifi, and any word to the contrary is at the pain of being labelled a bigot.
My only hope is that there is a line of maximum woke, where everyone just goes ‘hang on a minute. WTF is this all about.?’ and abandons it as a ludicrous waste of time and money. We don’t seem to be anywhere near there yet. Maybe next year.
The trouble is that it’s much more than just being nice to whatever minority groups you pick as your pet causes – it also includes being nasty to other groups, especially if they dare to challenge any of this nonsense.
I’m done with totalitarians pretending they are nice. Please bring back people who are just unashamedly selfish and we all know where we stand.
“and many steps later, we are giving special rights to people who’s sexual pleasure is putting hedgehogs up their backsides, and calling themselves Fifi”
So are they also going to pay for HRT for the women, sorry, “people with vaginas” who are going through menopause?
I’m on YouGov and I often get questions about what my firm’s policy is on supporting people going through menopause, and a variety of other specialist conditions/groups. It appears to be a thing, to have a policy for everything. I always answer that my firm’s policy is to offer what support we can to all our staff, whatever their issues, treating each one as an individual.
Cat flaps in the walls for those identifying as a cat
What about those of us who self identify as a giraffe, paid leave until our employer makes all of their doors and ceilings 12 feet high so we can safely go into the office?
“…[Goldman Sachs] became the first company in the U.K. to offer to ship working mothers’ breast milk home if they work overseas.”
My goodness me. I had to read that sentence five times before I understood it. And now I do, I still can’t believe it.
It’s like companies are trying to outdo each other on the absurdity scale.
The behaviour of the banks at the moment is akin to a psychopath trying to make friends.
They know it is in their best interests, so they they smile, pat people on the back, ask people about their family — but always end up saying exactly the wrong things at all the wrong times.
I imagine that the important bit is ‘they know it is in their best interests’ — it suggests to me that there are problems ahead, and the banks want to be able to say ‘I know we’re screwing over customers, businesses and even countries — but we’re very inclusive and just look at our efforts on climate change!’
Indeed – anyone who thinks the people that run these things really cares much about their staff, or cares especially about trans people or whatever, needs their head read (to quote the late, great Kerry Packer).
I wonder how much they pay their cleaners.
I think it’ marvellous the way the banks are becoming more inclusive, and that includes opening their doors to billions of pounds of laundered drug money from all around the world. Bravo!
“…when it was bailed out by the government for £45 billion…” – it wasn’t bailed out by the government, the government has no money of its own, it was bailed out by the taxpayer. The government took our money, my money, your money, and gave it to NatWest. The government didn’t ask us, the government doesn’t ever feel the need to, because the government treats the people with contempt. The government demands our money and does what it wants with that money – bailing out banks, paying furlough, paying Sharon to stay at home with her 8 kids, paying for bend-the-knee training, paying for experimental shots that are killing and maiming people, paying to promote hatred and division of those that didn’t do as they were told. It doesn’t, however, bother to use our money to fix the roads, to get people back to work, to ease the self-imposed cost of living crisis, to put food on the damn table. The government has not only failed us, it is actively engaged in a silent war against its own people, and it using our money to wage that war. It is well past time that the people clearly drew the battle lines. I want this mob out of my home and I want my f*ckin money back.
Brilliant.
Unless I’m much mistaken, the government is also at least moving towards manufacturing crop failures by prohibiting irrigation in summer due to climate change and then claiming crop failures were caused by climate change. And that’s decidedly crossing the line from being disorganized and incompetent to being outright evil as food production cannot be reduced without people dying. Even when it’s (very likely) not going to hit us first. Rather the people in food exporting third-world countries, at least for a while. But killing black people in Africa is something even the most ardent anti-racist is always fine with.
Alright, I know I am delving into the realms of total fantasy here, but one could almost imagine that, sometime in the fairly recent past, we were invaded by an alien species that is ruthless, acquisitive and dual, or even multiple gendered. Slowly they have worked their way into every part of our lives and are trying to make us accepting of all things trans so they can blend in better. The WEF young leaders would be another battalion tasked with creating a totally digitally managed world and population.
Okay, a bit of daftness for a Sunday morning, but when I look at people like Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Whitty and Bill Gates, I do wonder if they have just zipped themselves in!
And Tony Blair – the lizard features are literally breaking out on his face.
Could just be the monkeypox, I suppose.
Honestly! I couldn’t give a bloomin’ toss what pronouns, sex, clothes, ideas, interests the staff at Halifax, or any other bank have.
I just want them to do good banking!
–
–
–
If you guys want to hear our latest podcast, then check it out and subscribe below:
Ep. 51 BANNED FROM TWITTER (Find out why)
We’ve been banned from Twitter for a week…find out why! Plus we talk Canada and Justin Trudeau, your first ‘Listener Rant’, Climate change madness, University PHD’s gone mad, Scotland’s gone crazy, The return of the Big Breakfast and MUCH MORE!
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1268768/11142910-ep-51-banned-from-twitter-find-out-why
‘Stale, male and pale’: racist and sexist in four words! If there was any bank in the UK that refused to engage with this woke crap, I would move my personal and business accounts there right away, as clearly they don’t want a hard-working, conservative man as a customer! Unfortunately, I don’t know of any banks in the UK not up to their eyeballs with this nonsense.
I suppose from their point of view it isn’t a big deal: they’re owned by the state, they can offer staff the silly badges and pronouns at no cost and very few employees are likely to have any trans work done on them, given how trans people represent a tiny percentage of the population, no matter how many groomers in schools are messing with our children’s heads!
But if there were an alternative, I would tell NatWest to shove my old Woody’s Wobbly Wallchart and piggybank up their behinds and go elsewhere after 40 years of custom!
And if the trans people Nat West fund subsequently decide they made the wrong decision and were badly advised, I trust it will be Nat West paying the compensation as well.
I’m glad I’m not a customer of Nat West. It’s such a pain switching bank accounts.
I’ll never knowingly save or invest at NATWEST.
As wacky as this is; it’s an issue for the bank’s shareholders and management. If they agree then so be it. Those members of the public who still bank with this useless company and disagree are free to withdraw their money.
Drat, I was going to open a current account with the Nazi West after taking AndyM’s advice and closing my Halifax account but my cash is not funding Pagan activity. Byeeee.