The contrast between the evidence sessions of Prof. John Edmunds (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, SAGE modeller) and Prof. Carl Heneghan at the Covid Inquiry yesterday was absolutely shocking and raises huge questions about the professionalism of the Inquiry.
The King’s Counsel in the morning spent hours questioning Edmunds in a friendly, at times obsequious manner, as he explained how misunderstood the modelling was, how it wasn’t needed to justify lockdowns – as the indicative Basic reproduction number (R0) and Indicative Fatality Rate (IFR) were enough – to justify earlier and harder lockdown measures. Yet, according to Edmunds, the modelling would still be needed in the future. Truly an “all things to all men modelling” – useful when needed to justify future lockdowns, yet hides in the corner when retrospectively scrutinised and compared with real-world data. Three key flaws in the Covid modelling have been highlighted:
- Over-estimation of the effect of mandatory NPIs versus under-estimation of the effect of voluntary NPIs.
- Over-estimation of ICU per hospitalised rates, where the Imperial College team doubled the rate of hospitalised patients going into ICU to 30% based on flawed data from China.
- Failure to take into account the impact of prior and innate immunity in the population, especially children and the asymptomatic.
These aren’t flaws that can be explained away by saying the scenarios changed with the reality of lockdowns. For example, ICU rates are unaffected by shelter-in-place orders and school closures.
The dangerous implication here is that the Covid Inquiry is lining us up for future restrictions based on indicative RO and IFR, a lockdown hair-trigger switch that gives more authority to the modellers.
The soft-ball questioning and praise from the Inquiry continued as the discussion moved to Summer 2020, circuit breakers and the elision from “flatten the curve” to “zero Covid”.
Then the Inquiry moved on to the Downing Street Summit, where other voices – counsel highlighting as the ‘let it rip’ brigade – were invited at short notice. The big reveal was that Angela McLean, who has replaced Sir Patrick Vallance as Chief Scientific Officer, referred to Carl Heneghan as a “f*ckwit” in a contemporaneous WhatsApp chat, while Edmunds challenged Heneghan’s epidemiological knowledge. In my view, the Inquiry raising the point in this way is indicative of a lack of professionalism.
The Inquiry was also keen to include another pet villain – Doctor Death – the sobriquet applied by McLean to refer to Rishi Sunak, for the perceived crime of pushing for Eat Out to Help Out to reinvigorate the pub and restaurant industry, and providing a much needed morale boost to the nation.
The questioning continued for hours, covering the narrative classics of Long Covid, why the Vaccine rollout should have been broader, etc., all carried out in a cosy relationship included Baroness Hallett’s freely-given praise for Edmund, Ferguson and the whole modelling team.
By contrast, the interrogation of Carl Heneghan started out with a blatant attempt to undermine his credentials, strongly re-buffed by Carl, setting a tone for the only adversarial evidence session I have seen at this Inquiry so far. Any discussion that strayed from the narrative was met with aggressive and hostile demands for ‘yes/no’ answers.
Counsel objected to Carl’s answer rightly pointing out the danger of lockdowns to care homes, as he wanted to concentrate on focused protection and the misrepresentation of it by Counsel as hermetically sealing up the old and vulnerable. The minimum of critical thinking could have told Counsel that it was about reducing risk where it was highest, rather than across the board.
Carl was challenged on his views on the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) – he broadly agreed with it, he explained, but didn’t sign at the time as he needed more evidence on the details as you would expect, before Counsel dived into the Downing Street conference call.
Carl was challenged on his definition of ‘Endemicity’ on that call (presumably Edmunds’ gotcha epidemiological point), with Counsel demanding that the spread of infection be “broad and predictable” for it to qualify as endemic, when seasonal spikes shown on a graph means it wasn’t. This was rebuffed in a strong response from Prof. Heneghan, emphasising the seasonal pattern of endemic respiratory viruses and the variability of testing data and evidence on the ground.
Carl’s response to being challenged on the “f*ckwit” comment was dignified and professional, indicating it signified a lack of professionalism from the author as well as a lack of willingness to engage in debate, and an assumption of certainty where there was great uncertainty. He further pointed out that the entire lockdown response was driven by modelling and failed to take into account empirical data or the reality on the ground. Counsel scuttled along to that favourite fallback of the lockdown zealots – Long Covid – where Carl educated the Inquiry by telling it there was no greater risk of lingering disease from Covid than from any other seasonal respiratory disease.
At this point, Counsel decided to end the very short proceedings, presumably to shield the carefully constructed narrative to live another day.
It was hard not to notice the stark contrast in the attitude and approach to the two witnesses and it raises further serious questions on the ability of this long and expensive public inquiry to professionally and impartially challenge the decision making that led to lockdowns.
Kieran Saxon is a member of UsForThem.
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Will wait to hear how Carl found the session.
But asking how he felt about being called a ‘F….,,’ by Dame Angela?
What kind of question is that for an inquiry?
Has nothing to do with the inquiry, just shows the level of person Dame Angela McClean is.
Dr Heneghan was not called a f#ckwit by McLean. She used that term to refer to Fishy.
It still does not remove the rightful accusation that she is a dreadful, uncouth POS who has no place at the heart of any decision making processes.
Sorry to disagree huxleypiggles I understood the term was used by McLKean about Heneghan. The Mail stated “While giving evidence to the inquiry this afternoon, Professor Heneghan was asked about email exchanges which said his approach was ‘half-baked nonsense’, being called a ‘f***wit’ by Dame Angela and being accused of not understanding ‘basic epidemiology’.”
The article did imply that the term was used about Prof H.
All it tells me is that this guttersnipe’s opinions will not inform my future actions in any way whatsoever.
Dear God – it will be Dame A McL soon….
Too late – she already is……
It’s getting so the gong is now almost a sign of a bad character.
There has always been such a suspicion.
My apologies.
Some clarification of who said what about whom:
UK Covid Inquiry: WhatsApp Messages Unearth Advisers Called Sunak ‘Dr. Death’ During Pandemic
By Nimrah Khatoon 2 days ago
“Divisions within the Advisory GroupFurther messages reveal more than just internal nicknames. ……. Similarly, Prof Edmunds confirmed that the derogatory term “fuckwit” was targeted at Professor Carl Heneghan, the director of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. Such exchanges paint a picture of a fragmented advisory group, riven by disagreements on the best approach to manage the pandemic.”
Hi huxleypiggles
I see you are attracting the mindless downvoters.
Shame on them. Downvoting should be banned. It is a form of cancel culture.
Most especially when done disrespecting another’s point of view.
I appreciate you may not have been bang on the money this time around but you did accept correction.
But there she is the “POS” (good description by the way). It speaks volumes about the whole charade.
Will the proletariat get to know/see/hear about the fraudulent farcical mockery of an investigation that is taking place here at great cost to them?
No, they will only get to know/see/hear the preordained headline results of this SHAM.
Please accept my apologies.
They practically threw their pants at Ferguson earlier this week, counsel almost got down on their knees for him.
What to that Fuckwit?
Now, there IS a fu**wit !
“There ain’t nothing like a Dame” and she ain’t nothing like a Dame.
She was setting the scene, getting it into people’s minds that he was a gibbering idiot, before he had even really spoken. Thus anything awkward he said could immediately be discounted.
It’s not about “professionalism”. The whole thing is just theatre, and the participants (apart from people like Heneghan) are just actors playing roles.
It’s about as neutral as the trial of Blackadder for the murder of speckled jim. Counsel is like Captain Darling, obsequious little toe rag.
“obsequious little toe rag“.
Just think of the money. He is.
Theatre? Burlesque!
I didn’t watch it, but then I haven’t watched a minute of it. I know it’s just going to whitewash everything. I’m not surprised to hear what happened.
Bridgen made a fantastic speech today in Parliament, highlighting the 15-44 age group. The response from the minister was that there’s been an increase in flu deaths.
Nobody wants to listen. You know that many of your friends don’t want to listen. They just want to bury it all and move on.
Indeed a lifelong exceptionally intelligent friend of mine just had his 3rd or 4th jab after 2 or perhaps 3 bouts of covid. Words fail me.
Intelligence is domain-specific. Perhaps in the area of scepticism of authority (“conspiracy theories”) he’s a bit deficient and that has not served him well.
Intelligence has never equated to wisdom.
The supposedly intelligent husband of a friend is about to have his 4th jab after two heart attacks and one blood clot in his leg …. all post the Pfizer third jab.
Apparently, according to my friend, he’s doing it “to be on the safe side.”
I was particularly struck when he said something like “Nobody cares, and nobody cares that nobody cares.” Which sums up the entire murderous charade. Sadly that phrase also relates to many other pressing issues.
Yes “move on”, but little do they know what they’re trying to move on to, and that is bloody scary for the rest of us who see through the facade.
When 95% of frightened petty commissars supported the State’s authoritarian measures
So when the State has an enquiry into how well it did
Should we be surprised when it pats itself on the back?
Not sure why anyone would expect anything different.
The enquiry is set up by the establishment and run by the establishment in order to whitewash the horrors perpetrated by the establishment.
What are they going to say: sorry folks, we f***ed up? Yeah right.
It’s also essential to further cementing the narrative that “covid” was an exceptional “public health emergency” – have a big long inquiry that costs £££s. Obviously only something Really Important merits such a thorough post-mortem. In some ways it almost doesn’t matter what comes out of the inquiry as long as the basic premise of an “emergency” is preserved.
“Carl was challenged on his views on the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) – he broadly agreed with it,..” I remember when Carl Henegan was chatting on Talk Radio, quite some time ago, Julia H Brewer made the mistake of claiming that he had signed the GBD. He looked annoyed, and corrected her.
All fairly obvious that lockdowns did not work very much, as the shape of curve followed a fairly Gompertzy path in most countries with no inflexion- at least in the first wave. I remember saying when Italy locked down, that in a couple of weeks things would look better- but it did not work like that. But then loads of ****hit was talked about- for instance I remember Italy was doing really well in Autumn 2020 and FT said that it was because they were well behaved or some such nonsense. Then boom, the cases went crazy- as bad as us, but a different shape and later. However, the most disturbing fact that is ignored is that there was no European pandemic in 0-14 nor 15-44 in 2020/21 – just look at Euromomo. Not sure you would say that about the end of 2022.
Ah yes, those heady days of picking any country with temporarily low case rates, claiming it was because they were better more obedient people/wore masks to bed/weren’t allowing children out to exercise/ate less meat and dairy/had a left-wing government/locked down 5 minutes before us or whatever else – take your pick – and subsequently sticking fingers in ears and saying “la la la” when cases inevitably “soared” a few weeks later.
Counsel is clearly a lefty ****wit who would claim gravity worked up if that was the received establishment wisdom. Imagine an inquiry into the gassing of Jews in Nazi Germany, they would pat themselves on the back but bemoan that a less environmentally damaging gas than cyclone b could have been used.
“…if that was the received establishment wisdom.”
And he was in receipt of the appropriately stuffed brown envelope.
They don’t use brown envelopes that’s very 20th century, bribes are paid as research grants/sinecures from big pharma.
Surely you had realised I was writing tongue in cheek style?
I know
The Covid Inquiry is proving to be as big a scam as the Scamdemic it is pretending to investigate.
Well looking at the turn out today in parliament for the debate about excess deaths tells us all we need to know. Confirmation they couldn’t give a rat’s arse about the impact of any of the Covid-related garbage on ordinary folk, who happen to be the ones coming off worst, it would appear. Another ‘Proof your government hates you’, episode 965, and counting…It’s just beyond insulting, don’t you think?
https://twitter.com/LozzaFox/status/1715368481380573551
The useless Tories have just lost two more by-elections and yet they still could not send MP’s to the chamber to listen to Andrew Bridgen; you would have thought that perhaps attending a speech on a subject of national concern would have roused a few of the toe rags but no. Does it not cross the minds of these useless people that some of their constituents have probably been affected by the ever increasing tide of excess deaths?
What a massive indictment of our political system and grotesque insult to the people of this country.
Indeed what is more useless the Tories or a chocolate tea pot?
You can eat a chocolate teapot.
[I suppose you could also eat a useless Tory.]
Andrew Bridgen and his parliamentary speech thanks to John Campbell….. How many MPs present do you think….
https://youtu.be/97qRUqYLNu0?si=6rOzC3g-BZ-WsAGg
Compare Bridgen explaining about all the people still being killed and injured by Covid injections with this:
Letter currently being sent to parents of schoolchildren telling them: “Covid-19 vaccination has a proven safety record. It gives better protection than any immunity from a previous infection.”
From:
Dr Nikita Kanani MBE
GP,
St John’s Medical Director of Clinical Integration,
NHS England Deputy SRO,
NHS COVID-19 Vaccination Programme
Visiting Professor, School of Medicine, University of Sunderland
Same wording about safe and effective is in an email from this evil woman [IMHO] sent recently to all over 65s.
Compare to what Andrew Bridgen said in Parliament yesterday about the people still being killed by these injections:
FULL TRANSCRIPT OF ANDREW BRIDGEN – FROM HANSARD THE OFFICIAL RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT
“It gives better protection than any immunity from a previous infection.”
Yep, being dead stops you getting infected. So its really really effective but perhaps not so safe.
Being dead is the bad news.
But the good news is you then won’t have to wear a mask, be locked down or worry ever again.
Cool.
Arrogant and high handed officialdom, nut zero, bloated public sector, massive tax burden, ECHR……slaughter at the polls……
Are the conservatives really too dim to join up the dots……?
I cannot believe they are that stupid. They simply don’t care. Sunak is going ahead with banning “conversion therapy” and wants to ban smoking. He cannot possibly think this will appeal to his voter base. Like most/all Tory leaders since Thatcher, he almost certainly despises his voter base – unlike for example Donald Trump. Trump clearly thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread but I don’t get the impression he looks down on his nose at people in quite the same way that most MPs and most of our “middle class liberal goodthinking establishment” look down their noses at/are scared of “gammons”.
Exemplified by the comments of the ‘Empress of Blandings’ regarding ‘white van man’.
But America certainly has it’s own arrogant and entitled functionary class: Hilary Clinton spoke for them with her ‘deplorables’ comment.
?
Why would they care, it doesn’t matter which of them wins, they are both cheeks of the same arse.
I hope so! I liked to see at the next their MPs reduced to as many as could fit into a min cab.
As we now have a uni party State the argument that Labour would be worse is getting weaker by the day.
Thank you for reporting the disaparity.
Disappointing but not unexpected.
It is always hoped that eventually, if much too late, the “truth will out.”
Perhaps it will. If anyone remains who is interested in the truth.
My hunch is that some historian will one day write a study, not only about Covid, NPIs, excess deaths but also about the Climate “Crisis”, Ruinable Energy, importation of masses of Excitable young adherents of the Religion of Peace and a score of other wonders that have been imposed on us and for which we have paid and will long continue to pay.
I suggest that the most apt title for such a study is likely to be the revealing words of Professor Pantsdown:-
“WE REALISED WE COULD GET AWAY WITH IT.”
Andrew Bridgen made his excess death speech to an empty house with a deputy speaker this afternoon !!
https://youtu.be/3Zbtj_hLhEQ?si=fYXO82YSNkwNbOmF
Richard Vobes discussing Andrew Bridgen in Parliament today. No mincing of words he refers to the depopulation agenda and directly accuses all MP’s of being guilty of murder.
Eight minutes.
The moment this inquiry decided to PCR-test those giving evidence it nailed its colours to the mast.
“this inquiry decided to PCR-test those giving evidence“
I’d like to see that. Where can I find that online? Is it in the records of the proceedings or somewhere else?
Correction: lateral flow. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/12/covid-inquiry-virus-tests-lateral-flow/
My Grandmother, a committed Welsh Baptist would always say that good manners cost nothing. Dame Angela obviously has not collected this bit of sage advice in her passage through academia and a whole range of government advisory positions. She is an extremely ill mannered, arrogant invidual, with an inflated view of her own experience. The fact that she’s noted as an expert in mathematical modelling says it all.
If she had a shred of emotional intelligence then she would know her “f**kwit” comment is a resigning matter. But expecting humility and self awareness from her would be as likely as turkeys voting for Christmas.
When someone of her ilk is promoted to a position of such influence then the game is really up for the governing class.
Does anyone think this extraordinarily expensive enquiry will reveal the truth?
From the outset it was obvious that it would be used to back up the official narrative with the usual smoke and mirrors. I could have summed up the conclusions that will be reached by the enquiry without the expense of this ludicrous and long drawn out charade. The final report will in any case be totally irrelevant by the time it is released and scarcely a handful of people will actually read the massive and irrelevant verbiage.
Perhaps they could hurry it through in time for the pantomime season.
At least then it might garner a cheap and vacuous laugh!
“Does anyone think this extraordinarily expensive enquiry will reveal the truth?”
Yes. But not as you expect.
It reveals the truth about the corruption in the judiciary which enables the establishment to wheel out a Judge like Baroness Hallett to whitewash the Establishment and its Covid shambles.
The bias yesterday and contrast between the way in which Professor Heneghan was questioned compared to Edmunds was black side-by-side against white.
Hallett was so on Edmunds side commenting to him at the end of his
‘evidence’misinformation on oath about him not being the first scientist to be ‘misunderstood’.Yep like all those dead and injured Brits who queued up foolishly rolling up their sleeves believing they were having their lives saved by the usual bent government and scientists [IMHO].
Thanks for the report, Kieran. Are any of us suprised?
I guess it takes a f**wit to recognise one although Carl is definitely not. It sadly shows the low quality and intelligence of those that crawl into top posts.
Please please please take note that ‘modelling’ of any kind to forecast the future cannot ever work.
So please stop being duped by people who talk about it as if it can ever reliably forecast what is going to happen.
I explain why here and this is reliable ‘science’.
The classic example we all know about is weather forecasting. We can forecast weather not because of modelling and despite using the most powerful computers we can find but because we can tell from what is already known to happen, what is very likely to happen by relying on satellite pictures and monitoring high and low pressures, cyclones and anti-cyclones, wind directions, speed and temperatures what is going to happen somewhere in a few days time.
This is all because and only because we can literally ‘see’ the big picture in real time. The fancy computer models cannot be relied upon and no amount of mathematical modelling will ever change that.
And here is why.
There is a fundamental scientific reason why modelling does not work.
Complexity.
Classical reductionist science fails when confronted by complexity.
Classical reductionism is exemplified by the classical “The” scientific method – testing x against y whilst [theoretically] holding all other variables invariant throughout the testing.
The “The” scientific method fails abysmally when all other variables cannot be held invariant.
It has only ever worked in specific cases in the “exact” sciences like inorganic chemistry and in some branches of physics.
The problems complexity brings are manifold.
It is impossible to test to try to establish a theory because the results will include results which do not conform to the theory even if they include results which do – this is typical in the biological sciences which commonly have many variables in living organisms which cannot be identified let alone controlled and held invariant.
This means most science theories are invalidated [falsified] by all the aberrant results occurring alongside the conforming results – and it only takes one – the one white raven or the one black swan.
Another problem is it is impossible to predict outcomes. One can at best only say what might be the probability of a particular outcome but not predict what the outcome will be.
This is a consequence of the probabilistic nature of most scientific theories [ie. those outside the theories taken to be established in the exact sciences].
It is only possible to forecast and that is based on probability.
However, forecasting has a major problem. It is the ‘prediction horizon’. For time sensitive forecasts – which are most of the ones we are interested in – the forecast becomes in effect exponentially unreliable with time.
The typical example is a weather forecast. We can only look so far ahead before forecasts become so unreliable as to be useless.
And there is worse to come.
Professor Philip Tetlock’s 20 years of research proves that expert forecasts are less reliable than forecasts based on the outcomes achieved by dart throwing chimpanzees.
So we cannot rely on experts for their opinions about what is going to happen. As Professor Daniel Kahnemann demonstrated, we are lulled into a false sense of security by experts because the media wheel them out to explain why events which have already happened did happen. The explanations are so convincing we are led to think the experts can then tell us what is going to happen when they are proven to be the worst people to ask.
Some people Tetlock has proved have great skill in making forecasts but none of them are experts in the specialist fields in which they make their forecasts.
More on this here:
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/10/11/the-ukhsas-evidence-for-covid-restrictions-is-a-complete-mess/#comment-908965
And here:
Experts Are Worse Than Non-experts at Forecasting Cases and Deaths, Study Finds
BY NOAH CARL 27 OCTOBER 2021
The “Inquiry” has one purpose and one purpose only: to find that everyone involved acted in the best interests of the country and all their moronic policies were justified.
Just like the original Iraq Inquiry.
Any credibility this inquiry had – and it was scant, to say the least – evaporated on Thursday afternoon when it demonstrated for all to see that it’s a cover up, designed purely to save the faces and reputations of the perpetrators of the insanity that was inflicted on us.
Bias? This inquiry is a joke and a terrible waste of taxpayers money. It is more like a clown show, not a legal investigation. And the clowns are well and truly an embarrassment to their profession. Shame on all of them.