The Telegraph‘s Business section leads on Rishi Sunack’s warning to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee yesterday that the country is facing “a severe recession, the likes of which we haven’t seen”. That red line shooting beyond Sunack’s nose is the number of unemployment claims triggered by different financial shocks dating back to 1970 – and the 857,000 new claimants in shown on the graph for 2020 is just for the month of April. The Telegraph points out this is the biggest surge in benefit claims since 1947.
The same point was made more bluntly on Channel 4 News last night by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. “The longer we stay on lockdown, the more companies will go bankrupt,” he said.
The Express has the same story, as does the FT, which quotes the Chancellor warning the Committee that the economy may not “immediately bounce back”.
No shit, Sunack.
Excess Cancer Deaths Likely to Increase as Result of Lockdown
The Edinburgh Evening News looks at just one of many human tragedies caused by the response to the virus – the story of Dalkeith mother-of-one Karen Hilton, whose life expectancy has been cut from 12 months to six after cancer trials were halted as doctors prioritised patients with COVID-19.
Karen, 48, who has already had to cancel her wedding due to the lockdown, spoke out as UK charity Breast Cancer Now launched a campaign to help thousands of secondary breast cancer patients who fear their lives could be shortened due to changes to treatment, scans and trials:
At the moment I’m on chemotherapy, but because of the nature of my disease, which is triple negative and very aggressive, there are only so many options that I can get. After you’ve exhausted all of the chemotherapies… my only options left are trials. Trials haven’t been happening, they’re not going to be focusing on research, and there’s already 450 cancer patients dying every day – but you don’t see those figures published along with the stats for Covid. It’s heart-breaking and sanity must prevail, in that you can’t just cut off the lifelines of all these hundreds of thousands of patients. Obviously they’re diverting attention away from breast cancer trials on to Covid and our issue is that it’s just another disease. Covid is going to be around for a long time but cancer patients won’t if we don’t get access to these trials. It just feels like they’re cutting off the stage 4 cancer patient’s lifelines – so it’s literally life or death.
The Guardian deals more fully with the impact of the lockdown on cancer patients, saying “thousands of people… could die early because so many hospitals have suspended surgery for the disease while the NHS battles the coronavirus”.
Schools’ Out For Summer
In its online edition, the Telegraph reports that “[t]he country is heading for a divide on the reopening of schools, with Government minister Robert Buckland this morning conceding a ‘uniform’ start from June 1st is unlikely.”
The Justice Secretary told Sky the “picture is a mixed one”, with at least 11 councils now refusing to open schools on the date set by the Prime Minister. He insisted conversations were ongoing but admitted there was “not a long time to go” to persuade teachers, unions and councils it was safe.
This is in spite of the paper’s splash, in which the British Medical Association now says schools can reopen on June 1st, or earlier, as long as it is “safe to do so”, and – in what is described as “an apparent softening of its stance regarding pupils returning to the classroom” – admitting that there is “growing evidence that the risk to individual children from COVID-19 is extremely small”. Today’s Telegraph also includes a comment piece by Dr Peter English, Chair of the British Medical Association’s Public Health Medicine Committee, pointing out that even though sending children back to school is not “risk free”, keeping them at home isn’t either.
The Guardian reports that “up to 1,500 primary schools in England are expected to remain closed on June 1st after a rebellion by at least 18 councils forced the Government to say it had no plans to sanction them”. And the Telegraph reveals that Scottish pupils may only return part-time when schools there reopen in August.
The Mail exposes what it calls the “cynical tactics” of a teacher’s union trying to stop schools reopening. It reports on Zoom video footage available on the National Education Union’s (NEU) YouTube account which shows leaders discussing how to “threaten” headmasters who try to get their staff back to work:
In a further sign of their hardline approach, they described their opposition to the date as a “negotiating position”. Mary Bousted, the NEU’s joint General Secretary, was even shown accusing children of being “mucky”, spreading germs and “wiping their snot on your trousers or on your dress”.
The paper says parents and teachers are at war over the issue:
At least 13 mainly Labour councils are actively opposing Boris Johnson’s plans to open schools in England on June 1st as parents who want their children back in class claim they have been branded “teacher bashers”.
Extraordinary rows have broken out on WhatsApp groups and online forums as it was revealed that up to 1,500 English primary schools are now expected to remain closed in 12 days’ time despite millions of children being at home for more than eight weeks.
On Mumsnet today a thread suggested that “parents aren’t allowed to criticise teachers anymore” and sparked outrage among those in the teaching profession. One parent wrote: “I’ve seen a lot of parents genuinely concerned about the teaching who were immediately accused of ‘teacher bashing’ and being ‘too lazy to teach their own children’. It’s ridiculous’”
Cambridge: No Face-to-Face Contact With Students For a Year
Cambridge University has announced all lectures will be online for the duration of the next academic year. Cambridge didn’t close during World War Two – and didn’t close during any of the recent influenza pandemics with a higher death toll than SARS-CoV-2, such as 1968-70. But the University’s administrators have decided that the risk posed by the current virus is simply too great.
“Given that it is likely that social distancing will continue to be required, the University has decided there will be no face-to-face lectures during the next academic year,” a press release announced.
This follows the disclosure from Manchester University that all its lectures will be online next term. Neither university has offered to reduce tuition fees as a consequence, which may be an oversight if they want to persuade students who’ve accepted places this year not to defer.
In truth, that will probably be less of a problem for Cambridge and Manchester than for low tariff institutions. If you’ve got a place at De Montfort University, for instance, why would you pay £9,250 a year to take an online course when there are cheaper, better-designed online courses out there? Even private schools have reduced their fees while pupils are taught from home (although not by much).
In a story in today’s paper, the Guardian lays bare the scale of the problem facing British universities, saying they face a £760 million hole in their finances from deferrals alone:
A survey of students applying for undergraduate places found that more than 20% said they were willing to delay starting their courses if universities were not operating as normal due to the coronavirus pandemic, which would mean there would be 120,000 fewer students when the academic year begins in autumn. The results, released by the University and College Union, come as universities are wrestling with how to reopen campuses for students while protecting them from COVID-19.
British universities are facing a perfect storm going into the next academic year: lots of students who were supposed to be starting this autumn will defer; applications for the following year will decline; EU students will have to pay full fees for the first time, meaning fewer will apply; and foreign students in general will stay away due to travel restrictions and fear of contagion. The sector is clearly hoping the Government will bail it out, but that may be naive. As the Guardian reported on May 3rd: “University leaders had asked the Government for a bailout running into billions of pounds to make up for lost international student and research revenue. But the plea on behalf of the sector was said to have ‘landed badly’ with the Treasury.”
If Britain’s universities don’t radically rethink their plans for the next year and the Treasury continues to play hardball, at least one third of them will end up going under. Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, predicted last year that up to 50 percent of America’s colleges and universities will go bankrupt in the next 10 to 15 years. I think the same is true of the UK, except that Covid has speeded up the process.
Gerard Degroot, a former member of the St Andrew’s History Department, sums up the situation in UnHerd:
Many universities were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. A lingering dispute over pensions had corroded morale. The over-emphasis on research, imposed largely by the Government, had warped priorities, leading to a decline in teaching quality everywhere. Mounting student debt led many young people to question whether the ‘ivory tower experience’ is worth the investment.
The virus is ruthless: it exposes and punishes those weaknesses. Over the long term, some institutions might be forced to close, while others will have to radically transform the product they offer.
Is COVID-19 a Nosocomial Disease?
There’s an interesting graph on Guido today showing the percentage of all Covid deaths that have occurred in care homes in different European countries. The data is from a new report from the EU’s Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDPC) on the prevalence of COVID-19 in long term care facilities, including care homes. I’ve looked at the report and the data in Guido‘s graph is correct.
Guido highlighted this to show that the UK has fared better at protecting its care home residents than other European countries, but it points to something else, too, which is the degree to which COVID-19 is primarily a nosocomial disease. This is a theme taken up in a Medium post by the banker Jonathan Tepper called ‘Ground Zero: When the Cure is Worse than the Disease‘. The post includes lots of interesting facts and quotes pointing to hospitals and care homes as the main vectors of transmission:
- Data from five European countries suggest that care homes accounted between 42% and 57% of all deaths related to COVID-19.
- A group of doctors from the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo warned of nosocomial infections in the New England Journal of Medicine: “We are learning that hospitals might be the main COVID-19 carriers. They are rapidly populated by infected patients, facilitating transmission to uninfected patients.”
- Nearly 14% of Spain’s reported COVID-19 cases are medical professionals.
- The ECDPC has warned hospitals: “It is likely that nosocomial outbreaks are important amplifiers of the local outbreaks, and they disproportionately affect the elderly and vulnerable populations.”
- Today, almost all new cases in Spain are in hospitals and retirement homes.
Tepper asks whether many of these deaths could have been avoided if politicians and their scientific advisors had realised sooner that COVID-19 was primarily a nosocomial disease, as does a leader in today’s Telegraph. He also discusses the fact that people under 60 in good health are at minimal risk of dying from COVID-19 and draws the obvious conclusion:
If hospitals and retirement homes are one of the main transmission vectors and the disease and the virus overwhelmingly affects the very old and sick who have multiple existing conditions, shutting the entire economy will not solve the problem.
Government Stocks Up on Hydroxychloroquine
While the chattering classes on both sides of the Atlantic continue to mock Trump for disclosing he takes a daily dose of hydroxychloroquine – and social media companies are busy removing any content that promotes it as a possible treatment for COVID-19 – the British Government is planning to buy the anti-malarial drug in bulk. According to the Guardian, ministers are seeking 16 million tablets in packets of up to 100 as part of a £35m contract put out to tender last Friday:
A Whitehall source said the purchase of hydroxychloroquine was related to current clinical trials to evaluate it as a treatment for people with COVID-19, adding that it should only be taken on prescription or as part of a controlled clinical trial.
It’s worth pointing out that the Government’s purchasing of a drug is no guarantee that it’s effective. Britain spent £424 million stockpiling Tamiflu, hoping it could be used to treat both bird flu and swine flue. This was partly on the advice of Liam Donaldson, then the Chief Medical Officer for the UK, who had seen the modelling from Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College predicting that bird flue could kill up to 200 million people worldwide and swine flu could kill 65,000 in the UK alone. AT the time, Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, was refusing to release all the data from its clinical trials and only agreed to do this in 2013, long after the money had been spent. This followed sustained pressure from the lockdown sceptic Carl Heneghan, among others. When Heneghan and his team were able to review the Tamiflu data, they concluded the drug is marginally useful in shortening a bout of flu by half a day, but does not prevent complications, keep people out of hospital or reduce the spread of infection and does have side-effects, some of which are alarming. The Guardian has more.
I’ve discussed the evidence surrounding hydroxychloroquine, both as a prophylactic against and as a treatment for COVID-19, in the page entitled ‘What Are the Most Effective Treatments‘ on the right-hand side. For what it’s worth, I started taking chloroquine when I thought I had COVID-19, but stopped after three days when I started getting heart palpitations. It may or may not have contributed to my own speedy recovery.
Lawyers Turn on Lord Gumption
There was an article in the Law Society Gazette yesterday by Jonathan Compton chastising Lord Sumption for straying into the political arena. In particular, he takes issue with Sumption’s civil liberties argument that it should be up to individuals to assess whether they want to take the risk of leaving their homes, not the Government:
The risk of exposure to the COVID-19 is indeed an individual risk. But it does not follow – as Lord Sumption suggests – that it must be solely in the hands of the individual to decide to take that risk or not. The “individual risk” argument risks underplaying, indeed ignoring, what we may call the “societal risk” argument.
The “societal risk” argument may be put thus: if we leave it in the hands of individuals to decide whether they choose to run the exposure risk, then we run the risk that infection levels will increase to the point where basic supply chains start to break down, less/no food in shops, less people/no one on the tills, fewer/no petrol deliveries, no imports of medicines, food stuffs, critical levels of agricultural workers, bus, rail and tube drivers. By this time, of course, the NHS would have been over-run some time ago. This is a risk to the fabric of society itself. A risk to society poses grave risks to the individuals in it, surely?
I’ll save Lord Sumption the trouble of having to respond to the “societal risk” argument and do so myself. If we end the lockdown tomorrow, there is zero risk of basic supply chains breaking down, shops running out of food, check-out clerks leaving tills unattended, petrol deliveries stopping, or any of the other calamities the lily-livered Compton envisages. None of those things have happened in those countries that have ended their lockdowns, nor have they happened in those countries and US states that never locked down in the first place. As Sumption has repeatedly said, the burden falls on those who want to suspend our liberties to show that not doing so would be catastrophic – for instance, that not doing so will cause a net loss of life. To date, the British Government has come nowhere near meeting that threshold.
Luckily, not all lawyers hold their manhoods as cheap as Jonathan Compton. There’s a robust comment below his article which has got more thumbs-up than any other:
I support Lord Sumption. He doesn’t mince his words, and he has no time for high-emotion, low-intellect, entitled muppets who demand protection from everything. I am confident that those cowering behind their sofas, demanding that they be wrapped in cotton wool at the expense of others, are quite happy to accept NHS treatment and to shop at supermarkets – workers there aren’t cowering at home: you’re not better than them.
Graph Porn
A reader has compiled this graph showing that infections peaked in both London and the country at large on March 14th and 18th respectively – nine days before the lockdown in one case and five days in the other. He also sent me the source for all his data, which look robust to me. In other words, placing more than 66 million people under virtual house arrest wasn’t necessary to “Save Lives” or “Protect the NHS”.
Round-Up
And on to the round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- ‘This is not a natural disaster, but a manmade one‘ – Staunch sceptic Lionel Shriver’s latest column in the Spectator
- ‘The UK’s public health response to COVID-19‘ – Damning assessment of the UK Government’s response to the pandemic in the BMJ. But the thrust of the criticism is that the UK should have locked down earlier, without offering much evidence that that would have resulted in fewer deaths from COVID-19
- ‘Under the Corona Act, Dr Shipman could have got away with more murders‘ – Ronan Maher in the Critic digs into the changes the Government has made into the regulations surrounding the reporting of death and finds much to be alarmed about
- ‘We’re all in the big numbers now‘ – The always dependable Alistair Haimes sums up everything we’ve learnt so far. Includes the under-statement of the century: “Imperial College haven’t had a good war.”
- ‘Every person prosecuted under Coronavirus Act was wrongly charged‘ – I missed this story last Friday, but it’s a marmalade-dropper. Literally every person prosecuted under the Coronavirus Act in April was wrongly charged, says the CPS
- ‘It is fear – not science – that is stopping our children being educated‘ – Robust column in the Telegraph by the redoubtable Allison Pearson. She refers to a new petition you can sign if you think chidden should go back to school
- ‘UK coronavirus death figures fall for third week in a row‘ – Good news in the Times. According to one expert, it may be “difficult to find” anyone with the virus on their death certificate by the end of June
- ‘The Results of Europe’s Lockdown Experiment Are In‘ – Bloomberg does what we did on Lockdown Sceptics last week, which is to use the Blavatnik School of Government’s table ranking countries according to the severity of their lockdowns to see if there’s any correlation between that and the number of Covid infections and deaths. Answer: No, although there is a positive correlation between the severity of a country’s lockdown and damage to its economy
- ‘WHO to be investigated over coronavirus pandemic response‘ – The World Health Organisation has agreed to an independent investigation into its response to the pandemic. Can I be one of the investigators please?
- ‘National Trust faces £200m loss as it closes for summer‘ – The Times has alarming news for National Trust members. Will they get a rebate? And if the charity’s in trouble, why shut down for the summer?
- ‘Even Pakistan is more relaxed on coronavirus than Britain‘ – My friend James Delingpole thinks Imran Khan might not be such a villain after all
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
Last week, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have reopened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have reopened near you. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet. We’re up to 500+ now – keep ’em coming.
Theme Tune Suggestions
More suggestions from readers about theme tunes for this site: “The Distance” by Cake, “Every Day Should Be A Holiday” by the Dandy Warhols and, of course, “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. I’ve now got two journalists helping out and I’d like to pay them something, so if you feel like donating please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, email me here. The site’s total page views have now passed one million and it’s averaging 54,000 visitors a day. We’re changing hearts and minds…
And Finally…
A reader has dug up a picture from an Italian magazine that published a story in 1962 about what the the world might look in 2022. The illustration is uncanny…
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
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The (Un)official Covid-19 Swear Jar
Persons caught saying any one of the following phrases, especially when used in a morally superior “tutting” way, is subject to a payment or £10 into the swear jar and a slap round the face with a wet kipper:
– Self isolate
– Social distancing
– Flatten the curve
– Guided by the science
– The new normal
– We must wait until we have a vaccine
– Any positive referencing of Neil Ferguson and his “model”
– We risk having a second peak
Anything else I have missed…?
“Oh, so you’re happy for all the old people to die?”
People won’t even look at the evidence from the epidemiologists against locking down.
Mark is simply stating what the pro-lockdown herd say to our arguments. The correct response to which is: “I’m not happy for the old to be trapped at home with their mental and physical health declining and no chance of seeing their loved ones before old age does its thing, and I’m not happy for the terminally ill to spend their last weeks to months unable to live their remaining life ot its fullest.”
I wonder how many of the over 70s actually want to be “shielded” and be forced indoors for an indefinite period? Have they actually asked them?
@Sam – Exactly.
@Mark – I originally misunderstood your comment; I thought you were attacking me! Until I realised you were just quoting a typical lockdown zealot retort.
Security without liberty is prison. Our liberties have been removed we are now a slave race living in fear of a form of a virus that by many people’s expert opinion is no worse than seasonal flu because the state tells you that is the only way to protect the NHS, an NHS that is currently not providing the service it was designed for – the hospitals are empty for god’s sake. Answer one question when our economy collapses totally and millions are unemployed who will pay for social care for the elderly and for the NHS? There will be no MONEY. Last point Ferguson is funded by Bill Gates, Mr illegal vaccine, if you will let your children have a Bill Gates vaccine then shame on you.
Agreed with EVERY word, right until Bill Gates got mentioned, that sort of paranoid anti-vaccine talk only undermines our anti-lockdown cause.
You don’t have to be anti vax to realise that vested interests are potentially a massive issue though. For example, Neil Ferguson does have interests in a company that manufactures both vaccines and Covid 19 tests. The contract for the NHS contact tracing technology has been awarded to the brother of someone who sits on SAGE, Bill Gates is now the biggest funder of the WHO and has huge vaccine interests. He also uses the WEF to push digital identity which will require comms infrastructure in which he’s also significantly invested. Critical analysis of media, texts and science has to include assessment of potential underlying bias as a result of vested interest. We shouldn’t label this “conspiracy”.
Haha, beautifully illustrated by Raab’s announcement on Twitter
https://twitter.com/WillowWyse/status/1255105437525041162?s=20
Ask the Indian government about this paranoia. Ask the additional 490,000 children damaged irreparably by Gates’ one-eyed vaccine programme. Ask their parents.
Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean Bill isn’t out to make money off your concerns for your health. And if he is, then it’s your lack of paranoia that is aberrant.
Being aware that unscrupulous people are attempting to garner immoral profits from this situation is not paranoia, nor is it “anti-vaccine” but thanks for a good demonstration of the standard rhetorical tactic of “Dissent=Insanity”.
Or, “It’s worth it if it saves just one life.”
“It’s not worth it if it causes just one suicide.”
Ferguson rules OK-or not OK
Stay home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives -.-
Stay safe?
What a massive wet let down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRgtzZ-mOQo
The lockdown song
In no man’s land-indefinitely, it now seems.
Not as good as this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdcS0Nbo7Ng
Very disappointed. The PM said, “..we are passing through the peak.” The peak was on 8th April according to the data, nearly three weeks ago. The lock down needs to start being eased this week.
That should be the question everyone asks at PMQs. What are you talking about Boris? The peak was April 8th. Everyone is saying so. Your own data says so. Stop saying we’re at the peak now when we’re past it!!!!
This is definitely a case of “say it enough times and it becomes the truth”. Unf after a particularly frustrating Zoom convo last night with three friends (two in UK, one in Italy), people do just imbibe whatever the BBC/politicians say apparently. Does anyone even read newspapers any more? ? ? (Not that they’re particularly skeptical but at least they’re beginning to publish skeptical voices now and at least some of the data which backs them up).
Newspapers are not “essential purchases” so you can be arrested for going to buy one. Though to be honest I have relocated the Sun, Daily Express, Daily Mail and Torygraph to the empty bog roll shelves.
During the era when I was a Remainer standing against Brexit I’d have enjoyed the sport of shifting those “papers” to the loo-roll aisles. Since the lockdown began, though, the papers I did like have not published sense, they’ve all gone pro-lockdown. So have the papers I despised, although oddly enough the papers I despised have given some column space to a few voices I have strongly agreed with on their anti-lockdown stance. I’ve always been a centrist, as much right-wing as left-wing, I follow, at any time, whoever is standing for individual liberty, something that neither left nor right seems to have any long-term attachment to. P.S. Any purchase you make from an “essential”* shop is an essential purchase
* Isn’t any shop that provides employment to staff and products or services to customers, essential?
Which newspaper is giving the actual data and science most coverage and is most questioning of the narrative? I thought maybe the Telegraph but even then it’s only on and off. I opened the app the other day to read a piece that was basically Bliar telling us we all needed to forget civil liberties and embrace surveillance to beat CV. It put me right off!!
Get your questions in https://www.gov.uk/ask
Great! Going to submit a question every day, need to feel useful.
Anyone got any nice lines for questioning, guessing the more along a similar vein one will get chosen? I have a few simple ones, better questions that the public can understand might get more attention, which mine might not be?
-How many of the people in the governments numbers actually died as a result of the virus, and not just ‘with the virus’?
-Which modelling are they using to predict the virus, and what IFR are they using, how many people do they think are asymptomatic?
-Bearing in mind the peak was reached on 8th April, with the lag between infection and the results, does this mean the curbs made before the lockdown were actually effective enough?
-There have been figures releases suggesting that 150,000 people could die as a result of the lockdown and figures suggestion >2,000week dying of the lockdown (lasting long after it has finished) Has the government made any calculations on this? If the government does not believe in these models….why are they relying on a questionable model for the lockdown?
Can all people involved in the decision-making process demonstrate that they have no financial or other links to organisations that stand to benefit from promoting a universal vaccine as the only exit strategy?
Basically, this stinks to high heaven.
Particularly in relation to Prof Ferguson, Imperial College and Bill Gates.
Particularly in relation to Prof Ferguson, Imperial College and Bill Gates.
If the incubation time for the virus is 2-3 weeks, what use is locking down for longer than 3 weeks?
Prime Minister, why is it necessary to talk to the British people like children, when the Swedish government talks to its people as adults?
Prime Minister, is it the case that the immune system is strengthened by sunlight and day-to-day interactions with other people, but is weakened by isolation indoors and excessive hand washing? Is it the case, therefore, that the the lockdown is tending to make the British people’s immune systems weaker, not stronger?
Prime Minister, is it the case that provided social distancing guidance is followed, sitting on a park bench, sunbathing, or dog walking in remote countryside is no threat whatsoever? Why then, are the police moving people on who are indulging in these beneficial activities? Why is it necessary to close parks and tape over benches? Why is it necessary to trap people in their houses except for a token period for exercise each day?
Prime Minister, is it the case that after you were treated by Our NHS a couple of weeks ago, you went to stay at your second home in the country to convalesce? Is this a course of action you would recommend for anyone who thinks they may have had the Covid-19 infection and has a place to stay in the country?
Does anyone else think that this will be as rigged as a Question Time audience?
One question is what use is the much-trumpeted testing, given that all it tells you is whether you have the virus on the day you are tested, and you shouldn’t request a test unless you have symptoms, in which case you are meant to self-isolate anyway, and in any case huge numbers of carriers either never get symptoms or they only manifest after several days, so I don’t see how it helps. Are we all meant to get tested every day for the rest of our lives?
Another is what does the Imperial model say now, based on the latest data suggesting the IFR is much lower then originally thought?
Another would be what weight did the govt put on the reduced life expectancy and degradation of quality of life that is being and will be caused by current policy, when balanced against the lives they claim to be saving?
Answered my own question, data is on the ONS, however, they state:
“In the majority of cases (3,372 deaths, 86%) when COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, it was found to be the underlying cause of death”.
If you don’t consider the lazy answers, the the death toll in the UK from COVID is around 15% lower straight off the bat.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19englandandwales/deathsoccurringinmarch2020
And if you dig a little deeper:
‘Of the 3,912 deaths that occurred in March 2020 involving COVID-19, 3,563 (91%) had at least one pre-existing condition, while 349 (9%) had none. The mean number of pre-existing conditions was 2.7.
The most common main pre-existing condition was ischaemic heart diseases…’
Your reference above
To emphasise: The mean number of pre-existing conditions for all ages within 91% of deaths ‘involving’ Covid 19 was 2.7………but they died ‘from’ Covid 19. So how credible, really, is that number? Not very……..
No wonder the Office of National Statistics has not hitherto been much regarded for its expertise in pathology…….
The page says an independent polling organisation picks the question to be asked from among submited ones, so how can we get on the list of people that org will ask? Our votes added together could get some reasoned critiques of the dangerously extreme aspects of government policy nicely to the top of the pile.
Apparently YouGov, according to the Guardian’s coverage of the new questions service. Not sure how to sign up for this specific polling though.
They won’t choose our questions. Maybe we should submit exactly the same question every day. It could be a poll on this website to vote on possible questions and next day everybody would ask the same. This would make us seen rather than anything else.
Any thoughts?
I think that’s a good idea, that they get flooded by one question. Don’t know how to go about it, would have to be an addition to the site added by Toby Young where the questions are submitted and voted on by members? Or a new reddit sub?
Unimpressed doesn’t even begin to cover it. Hopeless is a recurring feeling these days. Especially now that there are more platforms publishing REFERENCED information that questions the lockdown measures –> http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/
I don’t want to believe conspiracy theories but it really does seem like the UK government is being held hostage by this quack Ferguson so that he can advance his messed up agenda.
Churchill would never have been so weak. For a student of Churchill, Boris is looking like a scared man and not the leader we need at this time. I voted for him – he needs to bring in other experts and remove Ferguson immediately, also all papers on how Ferguson’s work is funded need to be released.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/who-controls-british-government-response-covid19-part-one
This might direct you towards an answer re Neil FerguCON’s funding. It definitely reads like a conspiracy theory though
What has happened to us, how do we get so easily manipulated. For some reason we think the phrase conspiracy theory is bad or made up fake, look at the definition of the word conspiracy….the activity of secretly planning with other people to do something bad or illegal……..do people really believe that this is not how things happen, not every conspiracy is a 9/11 type scenario. Look at Gates that man openly admits he wants to depopulate the planet, he openly admits he has requested that vaccine producers should be immune from prosecution (therefore above the law) is it so hard to believe that such a man may have secret meetings with people to try and achieve his aims by unethical means?
I guess it’s a bit of a difficult pill to swallow when you’re in the thick of it. Delving into conspiracy theories is not the most uplifting of activities. Personally I’m struggling to come to terms with how blindingly obvious it has become that we have little to no control over our lives right now.
Rather nuts as an article. The premise is oddly that researching infectious diseases and trying to combat them is somehow sinister. They then go the Full-Icke with:
“…in order for the stand-alone AI-powered command center to work without a hitch, and for purposes of calculating everyone’s potential contribution, and threat to the system.”
Appalling shower of hogwash. Distinct impression that he might have written (or just made it up) himself.
Watch the interview and you’ll see Ferguson knows his stuff and talks about stopping the lockdown. He is not a quack, fool, alarmist or idiot. The US is following a similar path, as is most of Europe, and he’s not there.
Sky News today
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-which-are-you-britons-are-accepting-suffering-or-resisting-lockdown-11979288
9% of people responding to a poll say they are “resisting” the lockdown, effectively admitting to breaking the law.
Is the lockdown an actual law?
No, it’s just a turn of phrase. But the Coronavirus Act 2020 is the Act of Parliament that provides the government and the police the powers to enforce elements of the lockdown.
Thank heaven that some academics are willing to keep survey results anonymous, only then can they get the truth. Else they’d just have a survey where everyone appears to be supporting the idocy.
Apparently the public are being asked to ask questions at PMQs, perhaps some good questions can be put forward:
https://www.gov.uk/ask
Edit: Just seen someone else post the link.
When Boris said “I can see the long term consequences of the lockdown as clearly as anyone” I threw my flipflop at the tv.
Is 5,000 April cancer diagnoses instead of the usual 30,000 not enough for you Prime Minister? That’s potentially 25,000 people a lot closer to being dead as a result of the lockdown, right there. Already more than the (highly questionable) Covid death rate. Just latent cancer cases alone.
I can’t watch the news any more. For want of a better phrase, it sends me batshit. It’s absolutely dementing.
correct…you cant watch the news, no one seems to understand maths anymore…and we have gone full woke. no one is allowed to die.
Oh the pro-lockdown lobby are happy to see deaths, but only of patients who die from non-covid-19 conditions and are being miserably trapped at home and made to suffer the indignities of not having any chance for enjoyment or seeing family before such a patient’s end comes.
If you think the lockdown strategy makes no sense in the UK, it makes even less in India. According to worldlifeexpectancy.com
648,220 Indians die each year from influenza and pneumonia (640 per million)
896,779 Indians die each year from lung disease (969 per million)
Lung disease includes tuberculosis, a serious infectious disease.
On March 21st the Indian government imposed lockdown on India’s population of 1.3 billion people. To date, according to worldometers, India has had 884 deaths from covid-19, a rate of 0.6 per million. When they risk catching TB, which is obviously far more lethal, Indians seem to be allowed to go about their daily business. It seems strange that they should have to stay at home now.
I’d question that data. Global deaths from flu are around 500,000-600,000 a year.
So far this year they’re sitting at around 156,000. Which is very interesting. It’s almost as if deaths that would normally have been attributed to the flu are being classed as something else.
Flu yes, but these are deaths from “flu and pneumonia” which are lumped together in the statistics.
Doctor Strangelove. Made me laugh.
If Dominic Cummings being on SAGE will put pressure on the poor experts, how come Ferguson can publicly make his apocalyptic pronouncements to the media?
That undoubtedly puts pressure on the Cabinet.
Ferguson was clear that the advisors are observing and don’t influence the discussion. Calling him Stranglove is a bit silly. Watch the interview and you’ll see he is an academic.
Why are some replies ‘awaiting moderation’?
Because we want to check that comments are reasonably sensible before publishing them, in order to foster a good discussion. Please try not to re-post comments if they don’t appear instantly.
Ok. Thanks
For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a link to a video by two ER physicians in the USA, calling for an end to lockdown. The salient points they raise are in the article transcript.
https://www.aier.org/article/open-up-society-now-say-dr-dan-erickson-and-dr-artin-massihi/
These guys have come under fire for their statistical analysis of the IFR. I have a total blind spot with maths so I can make no comment on this; they may indeed be wrong.
But what I WOULD like to flag up are the guys’ comments – in the transcript – about the immune system and herd immunity. This has been the elephant in the room for me all along; nobody mentions the immune system in the narrative, it’s all about miracle vaccines.
Now that we have evidence (not basing it on these docs; their stats might be flawed, but from other researchers) that this pandemic is nowhere near as deadly as first feared, and that most people’s immune systems can deal with it, we should be aiming at herd immunity – lockdowns prevent us achieving herd immunity in any reasonable time (which, I’m sorry to say, I increasingly fear is the game being played on us.)
This MIT article was written on 17th of March. It very darkly, but strangely enthusiastically, outlines that the world will need multiple lockdowns until a vaccine is ready. Along with contact tracing apps and “health passports”. It’s almost as if this was planned all along.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/17/905264/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing-18-months/
Why does anyone think there will be a vaccine ever? There isn’t one for the common cold, there probably won’t be one for Covid-19.
Johnson is a disappointment all round. His appalling, big state reaction to this crisis is of a piece with his neo-Heathite agenda: big state, tax and spend intervention. It failed then; it will fail now. We didn’t vote for this and he’s got to go.
“he’s got to go”. Maybe that’s his plan. Maybe he now realizes that it’s a bigger job when there’s a crisis involved.
This speech from PM is very frustrating. He acts as nothing happened and we should keep doing the job to achieve something when the reality is different. I cannot believe that the government doesn’t see the facts. They obviously see it. I think they just want to do something that is supported by the majority of people. They don’t want to go against the public will. The problem is just this these people have no idea what’s going on. Only a very small proportion of media tell the reality and try to open eyes. Maybe just because people don’t want to hear it. I know a job for the government. Let’s educate people about the truth and see what they will think after that.
rem acu tetigisti
The fifth test is impossible to meet:
Fifth test: Being confident any adjustments would not risk a second peak
The government has dug itself a real hole with this. Any adjustments carry at least some risk of increasing the infection rate. But the only way to find out for sure is to try.
Enforcing total isolation of the entire population until we have each been vaccinated is the only strategy that carries no risk of increasing the spread of the virus. The government knows this. It has deliberately introduced this impossible test to obfuscate the fact that it hasn’t the faintest idea how we are going to emerge from lockdown.
The tactics of New Zealand are absolutely ridiculous, but the mainstream doesn’t seem willing to call out the lack of logic being shown there because the female prime minister is “compassionate”.
She’s claiming they’ve eradicated the virus. Ok, well done. Now, what will happen the second you allow the economy’s biggest driver, tourists, back into the country? Oh, you expect each tourist to go into quarantine for 2 weeks? What, even the entirely asymptomatic ones? Ok, sure thing. Expect tourism to fall off a cliff.
As one article, critical of her government’s strategy, pointed out, she’s effectively created a prison colony: no one can leave and visitors aren’t allowed.
The fifth test is deliberately designed not to be met, the ‘Stay in Gaol free card’ just in case the other 4 are demonstrably met
The five tests were always intended to be as vague and meaningless as the five tests set by the last Labour government for joining the euro.
Exactly. Noone can ever know.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s kinda inevitable. All it takes is the wrong person getting on a plane, infecting everyone on there, and them all getting off in some other country. None of them need show any symptoms in their two week quarantine. (A joke really considering people say the asymptomatic incubation time can be anything from 1-3 weeks, and then of course most people probably don’t even get notable symptoms). So unless you’re consistently testing every person not only in quarantine but for a few weeks after they leave….. It’s just impossible to control.
It’s kinda like holding waves back from a beach. The only way forward is herd immunity. No matter what anyone says. It’s actually amazing how basic biology is being denied here. (Although considering there are now people who fully claim that men can menstruate, I don’t know why I’m surprised).
The latest is the rare disease in Children being linked to the virus by everyone, one major problem though
“ Some, but not all, tested positive for coronavirus.”
Maybe they were all in lockdown though…
Coronavirus alert: Rare syndrome seen in UK children https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52439005
This is potentially serious and alarming. SarsCov2 could potentially be infecting macrophages (immune cells that destroy pathogens by engulfing and digesting them). There’s already some research on this :
https://www.immunology.ox.ac.uk/covid-19/literature-digest/alveolar-macrophage-activation-and-cytokine-storm-in-the-pathogenesis-of-severe-covid-19
The feline coronavirus that causes feline infectious peritonitis does so in this way – it infects monocytes (presursor to macrophages) and causes pathology very similar to that being described in these cases in children.
Is it possible that a Sars-Cov2 mutation driven by lockdown itself is occurring? Could there be an interaction between Sars-Cov2 and coronaviruses carried by domestic animals? I’m not remotely qualified to comment. But locking people indoors just seems more insane by the day.
I’m delighted to have found this community. I am an academic scientist becoming, alarmed, at what is going on.
I have always had an element of doubt about Boris Johnson – I did think last year that although I didn’t have a high degree of respect or confidence in him, at least he would be a laugh. How hollow that seems now, as he has effectively turned our nation into a Corbyn-esque basket case and police state; and now shows no sign of wanting to extricate us from this dire situation. My anger levels are mounting, quickly, made worse today by the apparent suggestion they are thinking of making this farce stricter!
The only hope we have is more sensible voices in the Tory party doing the necessary and getting rid of him as the economic and social problems mount – like them or loath them the Tories have a limited tolerance threshold of leader incompetence. There does seem to be an element of backbench dissent brewing.
It’s interesting to see where friends, family and colleagues lie on the ‘lockdown’. The strong lockdown supporters fall into three groups:
1. People very happy to sit on their backsides collecting furlough – they are being kept in line at the minute by the ability to order cheap tat online and sitting in the garden, many not realising their jobs may vaporise quite rapidly. Some public sector employees ‘working from home’ also fall into this category.
2. Extreme left wingers i.e. Momentum/Extinction rebellion types. Quite keen to use this to foster some sort of social/economic collapse to further their ends. Infest Twitter and BTL comments in the Guardian. Some cross-over with the public sector/arty/media part of group 1 who want to weaponise the death rate to attack the ‘evil Tories’ whilst not actually obeying the lockdown requirements.
3. The loonier fringes of the Brexit movement. I don’t know quite what their game is
I have sensed a change may be in the air in terms of public opinion – many of my colleagues in academic la-la land are becoming alarmed – many of us are also a bit concerned about the ‘following the science’ line which sounds suspiciously like ‘we’ll blame the scientists for this mess’. The distribution of likes and upticks in the Daily Mail and Telegraph comments is interesting, and I get the sense some in the Torygraph are starting to turn against Boris a bit.
How many British scientists have publicly expressed concern about the lockdown approach? If there really are some who are alarmed they should speak up. They shouldn’t complain about scientists being blamed if they’re unwilling to express their concerns.
That’s a good question Sally, Professor Gupta of Oxford is the main one who has stuck her head above the parapet – the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine also have some good resources. I think there are some resources on this site covering some more ‘sceptical’ interpretations of the available data. For a lot of us, we’re worried about our throats being jumped down on social media. Bear in mind that many scientists of an academic bent have little wider life experience and are reluctant to comment outside our immediate fields – this is often not well received by ‘experts’ in the field you intrude into. I have read the Ferguson paper and am a bit wary of many of his conclusions, as his models are very sensitive to the input parameters, which might explain why he has been so wrong in the past. Personally, I suspect his estimate of IFR is far too high. His model doesn’t account for the ‘negative’ effects of lockdown – suicide, delayed treatments. On the flip side, it seems he may not have taken into account the terrible situation in care homes. This brings me to why ‘following the science’ isn’t an acceptable excuse for a politician – they are supposed to synthesise scientific advice into something that works politically, economically, ethically and socially, none of which is happening here.
On average around 9 million people die every year from starvation. That already dwarfs the number of deaths from this attention-seeking flu bug.
“Aid organisations warn that far more people“ will die from the economic consequences of the measures than from Covid-19 itself. Forecasts now predict that 35 to 65 million people will fall into absolute poverty, and many of them are threatened with starvation.”
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
815 million people were starving in 2018. How many more will starve and die due to this hobbled economy?
Could we have an opinion poll for people aged over 70, on the following question:-
“Would you prefer to see your family and friends and risk dying of Covid-19, or live the rest of your natural life indoors and in isolation?”
How much would it cost to do, and could it be crowd funded through this site?
This is a GOOD idea.
This is definitely needed. I don’t fall into the over 70s cohort but if this was the case and I had no health problems, wasn’t on medication and rarely saw my GP I’d be furious about being incarcerated in my house and definitely wouldn’t comply. I’d rather enjoy a good quality of life and risk infection from Covid-19 than suffer the longer-term health problems which prolonged self isolation will undoubtedly cause.
https://www.poll-maker.com/
Maybe the poll could be created and added to the website as a link for people to go and answer.
Or a petition with a similarly worded question, those that sign would be the ones who subscribe to the view that they would rather take the risk if it means seeing friends and family.
I was thinking of a professional poll by YouGov or whoever, which would get picked up in the mainstream media. But a free online poll could be used as a start, and a way of getting crowd funding donations.
Another referendum then? But this time on life or death but without the data or a sensible risk analysis. “Will you drink this fluid? It might kill you or you stay home for some time. You need no more data and we will not show our workings and I’m not telling you what some time means. Now answer.”
So much of this site has so many comments looking for simplistic answers. It just isn’t simple or easy. I agree we are not in a bloodbath and that we need to get out of the lockdown.
Anyone else sick of all the clone-like TV ads at the moment? Basically a montage of camera phone selfie-videos saying, “Strange times these,” “We’re here for you.” “We’ll get through this together.”
The WHO one is particularly sickening. “Everyone has a higher purpose in life, and right now our purpose is to stay home.”
Even channel 4 has a permanent watermark top left, reminding us to “Stay at Home”.
Seriously, just stop!
Claire Fox made a great point: we’ve got to comply with their rules, but no one should be celebrating lockdown culture. These adverts, and the programmes that revel in ‘staying at home’ just make it more likely that it’ll be imposed again in future.
Please don’t promote the idea of future lockdowns as a way out of the present one. This is exactly what Dr Strangelove is going to press for at every opportunity. And what do you think is going to happen once they roll out their massive testing program? An uptick in cases, which will lead to calls for lockdown.
You might also examine the longer term effects on the NHS of all this. There will be a tsunami of pent-up demand once access to services is restored, and the waiting list will increase to over 5 million. So much for saving the health service.
Just jaw dropping. I was aware of most of the components of this, but brilliantly compiled and presented. Thank you so much Toby Young! I am really struggling to believe there is not more to this than immediately meets the eye at present. What’s to be done?
Is it now your policy to moderate all comments, or have I specifically done something wrong? If the latter, I’ll just go away if you like. A shame, because I liked the idea of this website.
The former, just to keep things informative and sane. Not a personal slight!
I’m getting a really, really weird feeling about all this. It’s like there is a wall around the government and SAGE and no data from out here is getting in there. They are just carrying on regardless. As Kit Knightly from Off Guardian says:
“The most peculiar thing about COVID19 so far has been that they are not hiding the data […] The data is right there, and yet it is separate from the narrative, which never references the data; the data never references the narrative.”
The same thing is happening in the US too. I believe Fauci has now come out denouncing serological tests as meaningless.
The extent to which the narrative is being controlled and censored too is really disturbing. I’m certain I’ve come across several 77 Brigade accounts on Twitter and I had one of Prof. Knut Wittkowski’s videos silently deleted on Facebook.
If this source is correct, there’s been a concerted campaign against his material
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2020/04/27/against-the-corona-panic-pt-v-a-hero-of-the-hour-dr-knut-wittkowski
I’m starting to feel extremely on edge about the whole thing. We know now what the IFR is, we know when cases peaked, yet here we are, still in lockdown despite catastrophic health and economic effects, there is a mad rush for a vaccine, a surveillance and tracking infrastructure is being constructed… is it me or is it no longer (if it ever was) about the virus?
I hope I’m wrong.
Hanlon’s Razor (‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity’) explains just about everything that is going on, I think…….
There is a brilliant post on here near the bottom of the ‘How reliable is Imperial College’s modelling’ thread written by Hugh Osmond which seems to make a great deal of sense.
The wider diplomatic situation (this dithering muddle has ‘foreign office’ written all over it!) may also be worth bearing in mind. It is a U.S. Presidential election year so HMG will do little without agreement in Washington. It is also brexit year and the British PM is already greatly beholden to Germany and France for his agreement late last year, and needs their forbearance again this year.
But this shambles is unlikely to play well in the bright light of hindsight that will illuminate the next general election in this country.
Well, which one do you think is better for the pharmacy industry: vaccination or herd immunity? I would bet there is a massive lobby from the pharmacy industry against herd immunity. I’m not saying vaccination is wrong, if its purpose is saving lives and not making money. I hope in our situation it goes in the right direction.
Why are people choosing Neil Ferguson over Wittkowski?
Dr Erickson’s briefing video has been taken down by YouTube.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xfLVxx_lBLU
This is disturbing news.
Is that a surprise…? No. Is it a disgusting overreach into free speech? Yes. Most YouTubers engaged in critical thinking have been predicting this for a while. Free speech censorship has been in full swing for weeks now, sceptical voices in many countries are deliberately silenced and sidelined, governments are doing their utmost to shape the narrative to their liking, using it for maximum political gain. A critical debate isn’t happening.
And yes – where are the petitions for an independent investigation into Covid-19 deaths and accurate recording of true cause of deaths, handling of the pandemic, a critical look at the hysteria caused by the media, etc., etc.? Are they still “pending review”?
No it hasn’t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndL0uSmKTQU
Gone.
To be fair there is still quite a bit of uncertainty about the IFR. If we look at Iceland, who have good data, it looks like it’s somewhere around 0.1%, but it could be twice that, and certainly no higher than 0.7% (which is the CFR there). But in NYC 0.2% of the population are actually recorded as dead of Covid-19. Assuming it’s endemic there, it means 50-60% of them have been infected which would put the IFR at at least 0.4%. This is also consistent with their serology study. But they probably aren’t done dying yet so this 0.4% minimum will get higher.
I find it hard to believe it’s as high 0.9% because that would mean it started dropping in Spain, the UK and Italy several weeks before we had lockdowns.
It isn’t the same everywhere. It depends on the age and comorbidity of the population and, probably more significantly, on how the deaths are classified and counted. That could easily account for a factor of 2 or 3 difference. So it’s a vaguely defined term to start with. Accounting for all this is could be anywhere between 0.1% and 0.7%, which is a huge range in terms of the actual number of deaths.
In the early days people were throwing around numbers like 2% or 3%, which are way off. The WHO may still be quoting something like that. But most serious “alarmists” in the debate now are not going higher than 0.8% or so. It’s somewhat reminiscent of the climate change debate which started with predictions of 6 degrees and higher of warming and has gradually settled down to bitter arguments over fractions of a degree too small to determine with any accuracy and what the consequences of that will be.
But I agree that the UK government is not being remotely honest with us. If you watch the interview with Ferguson on unherd he comes across as more of a politician than a scientist. He claims that everything the UK government did was exactly the right thing at the right time, fudges on Sweden, deliberately misleads, and refuses to say what strategy he actually recommends. A complete contrast with that Swedish guy who was a real scientist trying his best to be diplomatic and not mention herd immunity.
Note also that the UK government already has access to quite a few serology results from Porton Down, which they’re keeping secret.
They started the lockdown too late to have much effect on the epidemic and the reason for it was pure populism. Now that most of the deaths are out of the way, they can shape the narrative how they want. They won’t row back on the 500k claim because now they can take the credit for reducing it to whatever it turns out to be in the end. They can lift the lockdown just as they feel popular opinion is turning against it. Right about the time it looked from Spain and Italy data that around 20k was where the UK would peak, Ferguson and/or the government announced that through our hard work and devoted clapping we might just get it down to 20k from 250k.
In many ways this is a much better hand to play than somewhere like Germany where the lockdown may have actually been early enough to be effective. Now they are faced with lifting it and watching deaths possibly go up. Much harder to spin that. It’s all downhill from here for Johnson. He needs to drag it out just long enough that we’ve forgotten the actual number of deaths, only remember the recovery narrative, and are slightly more pissed off by the lockdown than we ever were by the actual virus (for most of us here that was before the lockdown even started, but he has to get the general population to that point).
Sorry to reply to my post, but I have to correct a mistake I made. I said the population fatality ratio in NYC was 0.2%. This was 17328 deaths / 8.4 million. But checking Wikipedia, the 17328 deaths were in fact in a population of 19,745,289 (the whole state). If we just look at NYC, the correct figure is 12287 / 8443713 which is a population fatality ratio of 0.15%. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_New_York_(state)
These “experts” the media wheel out for us, they only ever offer their opinion on the virus. No actual science they’ve done, no actual data they’ve collected, etc. Yet the likes of Prof. John Ioannidis are stuck on YouTube, I’ve gone to show family and friends and they’ll just dismiss it because it’s YouTube – all conspiracy nuts on there apparently.
The phrase “following the science” is used a lot, but it seems no-one is apart from a few. I mean is the data from the antibodies studies from around the world (which are all coming to the same result about the IFR) all wrong? Is the data from the cruise ships and aircraft carriers wrong?
Is Witty, Vallance and the government looking at other science? Why isn’t anyone in the media pinning them down on the above in the daily press conferences?
I’m really starting to get frustrated by the whole thing.
That’s not true. The likes of Ferguson & Whitty are analysing and “doing science”. I agree hardly any of the media cover it. I think if Ioannidis and Ferguson did a YouTube together you would fine that they agree on a lot. Ioannidis takes the science and his findings to a policy conclusion. Ferguson does not. This is the big difference. The gap is not the scientists. It is the politicians.
Hi, This is my first post, I don’t normally do this sort of thing but feel compelled to do so given the current situation.
Thanks to Toby for setting up this site, if nothing else it’s confirmed I’m not going crazy in my thought process about this whole fiasco.
Is it me, or has the government changed its figures on excess deaths? Yesterday I read on the BBC page (which I try to avoid) that of the 8,000 or so excess deaths, 1,700 or so were not attributed to Covid19, yet last week I seem to recall figures being released saying that about half the excess deaths were non-Covid19 related. Did anyone else pick up on this? What am I missing?
I’ve always struggled with politics and with the rhetoric of politicians, but when I heard Mr Johnson say yesterday that we are at the ‘point of maximum risk’ I was furious. It’s in the public domain that it peaked on 8th April yet the government continues to insist on its campaign of fear and control, which I feel much more threatened by than by Covid19.
The government seems to be ‘shifting the goalposts’ with respect to the criteria for easing the lockdown. We have heard that we need to pass the peak (which, as we know, apparently happened on 8th April), flatten the curve (it’s falling), have enough PPE, not risk a second wave (which incidentally seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy since our immune systems have been compromised by being forced to stay at home), optimise the ‘R’ number, etc.
Also, does anyone know what is happening with the petition to Parliament? It still seems to be pending review.
Thanks.
The GOV’s stance that we are only just in the peak is a smokescreen to hide the fact that the virus was at peak transmission in the community before the lockdown. If they truly believed we are in the peak (in Hospitals and care facilities) why would they (finally) open up cancer and other care now? It would make no sense whatsoever. This is about politics and not health. Locking populations in their houses and crashing the economy is an obvious way of inflicting staggering short and long term damage on a global population.
Thanks for the reply. Can anyone make sense of the latest ONS stats saying that deaths are 108 percent of the five year average?
The Ferguson interview is excellent. I recommend it to everyone here – particularly the second half, when the end of lockdown is discussed. He doesn’t say lockdown cannot end until a vaccine. He talks about social distancing measures. He even points out it’s not his job – it’s a political decision. His key metric is watching the capacity of the NHS to handle Covid and standard stuff.
It’s not what Toby describes at all. He is very open and honest. He explains the Swedish figures well. He knows that the mortality rates in New York and Stockholm are lower – younger populations. He discusses the difficult of working out one overall mortality rate because the virus hits sections of populations so differently. He is clear about the limitations of his model. (None of this is surprising – he is a world expert in the field.) He agrees that a long-run lockdown is not viable.
He points out that as a scientist he has no special place in moral and political decisions. He can tell you what might happen, taking different paths. He agrees that you can lift the lockdown. You will get more deaths but with the right measures you can have an NHS that works for all. BUT this is not his call. He is highly sceptical that you can “shield” care homes. Nobody has, anywhere in the world: it’s extremely difficult.
I felt encouraged having heard this that the advice is good and sensible. The big issue is “What now?” Transmission is down in the UK. The NHS is in OK shape. The scientists say we can get out of lockdown. It won’t be fully normal until medicine develops and the elderly are a major issue.”
Please watch it.
I get all that BK, but I suspect that (as with a lot of good modellers) Ferguson might not be as good at interpreting and, in particular, presenting his results to non-modellers, as he is at building models. As I understand it, he’s taken an old model and plonked some reasonable first guess parameters into it. The outputs are purely a function of the inputs, and so I would have expected to see lots of sensitivity tests around each of the inputs, not just the R but the others as well.
6 weeks on and I would now also expect to see the model “back cast” to see whether it still fits. I suspect that the initial parameters overstated the IFR, perhaps understated the R0, and assumed that susceptibility was 100% whereas in fact it is probably about 60%-70% because young people don’t seem to be very susceptible at all. I haven’t seen any evidence that this back casting has been done.
Finally, the model should be open source. No excuses for this one.
I think you’ve got it wrong. Why is the model “old”? I’ve heard this a lot. Epidemiologists are modelling all the time and changing their models and code. You suggest he “guessed” the inputs. They used the best available data – which is not great but it is better than any guess. Yes. The outputs are a function of the inputs – this is is self evident. The models are models – not reality in code and not accurate predictions. They are better tools than simple maths.
The model I think is available. There’s data here.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/covid-19-planning-tools/
The models are being improved all the time as is the critical base data. They will back cast to try to get it to model what has happened. Reality though is massively shaped by what we all do. The lock down has changed the course of the virus – I agree the question “Was it worth it?” isn’t answered but that’s not Imperial’s task right now.
I urge you to listen to the interview that Toby links to. It is really excellent.
“Why is the model “old”?”
Ferguson himself tweeted:
“I’m conscious that lots of people would like to see and run the pandemic simulation code we are using to model control measures against COVID-19. To explain the background – I wrote the code (thousands of lines of undocumented C) 13+ years ago to model flu pandemics…”
https://twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1241835454707699713
He has (still) not released this code, the “control measures” model in C, unless you know otherwise?
If the model is being improved and back-cast, I look forward to seeing the outcome. I have listened to the interview and my comments stand.
Want to add the next Tweet from 22 March…
“I am happy to say that @Microsoft and @GitHub are working with @Imperial_JIDEA
and @MRC_Outbreak to document, refactor and extend the code to allow others to use without the multiple days training it would currently require (and which we don’t have time to give)…”
I think you can get it here. You’ll see it warns that you need to know what you’re doing with it.
https://github.com/mrc-ide/covid-sim
Let’s remember there are many, many such models. Ferguson is not a world guru. He is one leader in the field. Others are getting similar results.
Thanks. Looks like that is the full model. Let’s see what others make of it.
Didn’t he use the data from the Princess Diamond in the model? Which is what Ioannidis suggests. And it’s hardly representative of any country in the world.
I cannot see any evidence that Ferguson would use data from a cruise ship to model a country. I can see that he works as part of a large community developing data. This paper from the Lancet has over 25 authors of which Ferguson is one. Take a look.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext
Why would his view be given any prominence at all? He may have been doing this for years but he has been equally, catastrophically wrong for years.
It is now clear from data, rather than speculation, that the lockdown will kill more people globally than Covid, probably by an order of magnitude. Our immune systems are being undermined that will make us susceptible to otherwise harmless pathogens and the economic damage will result in millions of deaths, most likely of children – we are collectively committing a crime against humanity of biblical proportions.
Here is the bottom line from Professor John Ioannidis. It says it all really:
“He (Ferguson) reiterated that the only viable exit strategy is a vaccine.”
This is an outright lie and he knows it. This alone ought to disqualify him from any further part in public policy.
But it won’t.
It’s a big lie in that Ferguson did NOT say that. In fact he talks about getting out of the lockdown prior to vaccines and seeing the lockdown as untenable in the longer term. Toby Young is whipping-up distrust in Ferguson to undermine him. Do watch the interview. It’s good.
If Ferguson wanted to come and explain himself that would be one thing. Since you seem to be a big fan, why not ask him? Otherwise I wish you’d go away. There are plenty of places you can indulge your fandom, but most of us come here to get a break from lockdown rhetoric.
If you watch the interview with him on UnHerd he prevaricates on the strategy (because he knows that’s a decision for the government to make). He fudges on Sweden and New York. He refuses to go back on his alarmist predictions but stops short of endorsing the actions they imply. I don’t think he’s influencing public policy at all. He’s just a tame “scientist” the government are using to reinforce their narrative (which is that there would have been 10x as many deaths but lockdown is going to have prevented them). No doubt his credentials and background on Wikipedia are fine but right now he’s just coming across as a government spokesman.
I think the government do want to release lockdown fairly soon (which is why Ferguson is not speaking out against that) and that the timing is all about politics. When they say “lockdown phase 2” that’s Johnson cake speak for it being released, although no doubt there will be dozens of ineffective, unenforceable and annoying regulations on every little aspect of life for at least the next year.
Toby, I just noticed it was you who called Professor Ferguson Dr Strangelove. My opinion of you sinks even further. Name calling? Trump style name calling, Little Baldy? That’s ridiculous. The tragedy is that there is a need to push back hard on assertions that “the worst is yet to come” or “we MUST stay locked down”. With no real data an no discussion of the pros and cons just simple statements. I think we do need to lift carefully to reduce its negative impacts & avoid people just ignoring it anyway – a “black economy”.
This site is of use and I’ve learned a fair bit. The public debate is very weak and the case for a continued lock-down needs to be stated to get buy-in from those locked-down. I think most gave the benefit of the doubt at the beginning. We could see that the rising numbers of cases and deaths were an issue. Now we have some stability, more data & understanding it’s time to share that in a discussion.
Professor Ferguson is highly skilled at what he does and I would take his word over Toby’s every time on the topic of disease control. He is one person on what is a large committee. Strangelove was…oh Lord I’m not even going to make a comparison. There are other factors than controlling the spread of disease which is Ferguson’s bit. We don’t save lives “at any cost” ever. The balance needs to come from others. It’s not Ferguson’s fault. I don’t think Toby understands how science works like so many of our politicians and journalists. We have a severe lack of technically trained in our government. PPE at Oxford is super for a debate. Not so good for running things.
What I find so troubling is that people like Toby Young trivialise and denigrate experts in the field like Ferguson. They try to convince us that he is wrong. He is not infallible but what he has is the best we can do. What needs to happen is for his outlook to be tempered by other perspectives. These need not be epidemiological – Prof versus Prof. Economists can point to other issues. Medics can raise other issues. Ferguson is not an expert on everything and doesn’t claim to be. He can tell you how to slow the disease by contact reduction. Remember Ferguson knows as we all do that the transmission mechanisms aren’t fully understood. There’s the to-and-fro on masks which is partly tempered by there not being enough in the UK anyway. Ferguson won’t be opining on medical treatments or masks- like, Trump say – these are not his specialisms.
Lay off our scientists and look at the bigger picture. Calling them names is truly pathetic.
Ferguson is “highly skilled”??? Are you serious or is this a parody post? His “models” are so inaccurate and his prognostications so doom laden as to be beyond parody.
If his ineptitude at the outset (500,000 deaths) weren’t enough, now in the light of real data, his doubling-down with a prediction of another 100,000 in a second wave is worse and one might be forgiven for believing he is being mendacious.
Professor Ferguson is one of the world’s leading epidemiologists. So yes, he is highly skilled. You might want to check him out on Wikipedia. He is not always right. He is not a fortune teller. He cannot tell you the future. Like most scientific fields there are differing ideas and theories. That doesn’t make Ferguson a fool or mendacious. The problem here is that many don’t really understand the field at all.
Hi BoneyKnee. I have no reason to question Prof. Ferguson’s ability to advise on how to control the spread of the disease by contact reduction, which is what you say his job is and where his expertise lies. The point that many are making is that his advice is not about the impact of relaxing a particular aspect of the lockdown has on R, but is seen to be that 500,000 people would die if we did nothing, and that we could expect 100,000 deaths if we lifted lockdown. It is these supposed results of his modelling that are driving government policy (and I imagine it is this that leads to Toby’s colourful characterisation of him as Dr S.). I would argue that this, at least initially, is the fault of government and the media not Prof. Ferguson.
There are those who would say that the way to generate attention, bring in the research funding is to generate a good scare story, but I couldn’t possibly comment. My experience as a (lapsed) modeller suggests a rather more innocent explanation: that in order to run the simulations the model needs some starting assumptions, critically the IFR. Looks like a deadly virus to me, seen this before, crunch some numbers from Italy. 0.9 looks like a good number. Multiply by an estimate of the virulence of the virus. Bingo. Half a million deaths. Use that as a starting point for the model to simulate the impact of controlling the spread of the disease by contact reduction. Fair enough. But the message that gets picked up and amplified by relentless, ill-informed media and politicians eager to be seen to do something (whilst acting on the best scientific advice) is half a million will die unless we do something drastic. Point is though that half a million to die is not a prediction, it is not what the science is saying, it is not even what the modelling is saying – it is an *assumption*, based on very limited evidence. It is not Ferguson’s fault that his work is misinterpreted this way, although he has not exactly sought to distance himself from this interpretation of his work, probably because he believes it to be true: that the virus is akin to Spanish flu in its lethality. Can’t help thinking of the Life of Brian: ‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy’.
Fatal flaws in the model :
1. Epidemic seed date – no basis for it, much, much too late. Genetic research from Iceland now shows that virus was widespread, yes widespread in UK very early on. Ferguson may not be a virologist but if he’s modelling an infectious virus, he should get his assumptions checked by one. It was probably spreading globally before the Chinese even “discovered” it. The infection seed date was way off.
2. The worst case scenario was never going to happen because it made a flawed assumption about human behaviour – namely that humans had no agency, that human behaviour would not change in response to a threat. If you like, the worst case scenario, even if other variables were correct, could only have come about if humans were entirely ignorant of the virus’ existence.
3, 4, 5 Proportion likely to become infected, infection fatality rate, proportion of infected likely to need hospital care. Clearly Ferguson could only use the data he had at the beginning. That’s fair enough, but there’s no indication at all that he’s changed his assumptions in line with emerging data. This is very clear by what happens when the model is used to generate predictions for Sweden. They are just comically off. Ferguson needs to use actual data. He needs to calibrate the model so it’s predications fall in line with reality.
But he doesn’t, he just churns out more and more rubbish. That’s what I find inexcusable. It’s not science, it’s petulance.