Boris is due to meet with Sir Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty later today to discuss what additional Covid restrictions to impose, if any. We already know that he doesn’t want schools to close again and, according to today’s Times, weddings and funerals will also be exempt from any new rules. But what about large sporting events, like football matches? The new rules in Scotland mean that only 500 people can attend games and in Wales they’ll be played behind closed doors for the foreseeable future. Will the Prime Minister be tempted to follow suit?
I sincerely hope not. As I’ve said many times before, the thing I missed the most during the previous three lockdowns was not being able to go and see my beloved QPR. Since we were allowed back into football stadiums in August of last year I’ve tried to go to every single QPR game, home and away, and to date I’ve only missed four. Indeed, my son Charlie and I started a Substack newsletter about following QPR this season that you can find here. The thought of having to go back to watching games on an iPad again is beyond depressing.
So, Prime Minister, if Sir Patrick and the soon-to-be Sir Chris urge you to ban attendance at large sporting events, here is some evidence that you can point to suggesting that such a measure would be pointless:
- Last year, Chris Whitty said: “The evidence is very clear that outdoor spaces are safer than indoors.”
- A systematic review of five studies found that “a low proportion of reported global SARS-CoV-2 infections occurred outdoors (<10%)”.
- A rapid review of 14 sources of evidence “found very few examples of outdoor transmission of COVID-19 in everyday life among c. 25,000 cases considered, suggesting a very low risk”.
- An Italian study concluded that “the probability of airborne transmission due to respiratory aerosol is very low in outdoor conditions”.
- Official figures in Ireland showed that, of the “232,164 cases of COVID-19 recorded in the state up to March 24th this year, 262 were as a result of outdoor transmission, representing 0.1% of the total”.
- A paper by the PHE Transmission Group noted: “Evidence continues to suggest that the vast majority of transmission happens in indoor spaces; recent reviews considering data from several countries found very little evidence of outdoor transmission for SARS-CoV-2, influenza or other respiratory viruses.”
- This study from early cases in China found only one outbreak (of two cases) out of a sample of 7,324 infections that could be traced to an outdoor setting.
- The Cheltenham Festival on March 10th-13th of 2020, which drew crowds of around 250,000 people, has entered folklore as a “superspreader event”, but in fact the evidence that it led to a spike in infections in the locality is threadbare. As the Racing Post pointed out in April 2020, Gloucestershire was one of the parts of the U.K. least affected by Covid: “HSJ statistics for reported COVID-19 positive deaths in England per 100,000 people put Gloucestershire comfortably in the bottom half of a table headed by The Black Country and West Birmingham. … Gloucestershire actually has a lower number of confirmed COVID-19 cases than surrounding counties – the south west itself is very low and within that Gloucestershire is below average.”
- 25,000 fans were admitted to the NFL Super Bowl in Florida on February 7th, at the height of America’s ‘second wave’, along with 12,000 staff. Even though only a third of fans had been vaccinated at the time, U.S. health officials only found three people who were infected as a result of attending the game.
God willing, Boris will stick to his guns and not impose any further restrictions, as the Daily Mail recommends in a strong leader this morning. But if you’re tempted to do something, Prime Minister, please leave football alone. Like all the other non-pharmaceutical interventions recommended by SAGE scientists, banning attendance at football games will make zero difference to Covid transmission.
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40 % owned by the taxpayer. I hope they go teats up and that people move their money elsewhere. Their actions are criminal, immoral, if not illegal. Nigel for PM.
People just need to take their money out. That will do everything that’s needed. Don’t need any stupid “investigations”.
Might end up being a lot more than 40% if it goes bust after a bank run, along the lines of the Northern Rock one in 2008.
Share price drops, taxpayers are ripped off for millions. How so bloody predictable. Insider dealing? Oh, it couldn’t possibly be so.
Given the utter necessity of having a bank account unless you are very enterprising or belong to a subculture (certain ethnic groups prefer cash transactions as well they should) I think you could very easily make a legal argument to say that a bank account is a protected right and should be protected by law and that ‘debanking’ as it is called should be ruled completely illegal without the writ of a judge and a criminal conviction.
Contagion is affecting all banking shares…Time to buy, but NOT NatWest, on principle!
Is it just me or does Alison Rose look like Heather Hallett’s sister……
All part of the same British establishment self gratification fest.
Get those tumbrils warmed up……
Write to your MP and demand that Rose’s outrageous golden handshake of £11.3M is revoked. Crime doesn’t pay, or does it?
I don’t have a personal Nat West account to close.
I am, however, Treasurer for a Not-for-Profit ….. and am in the process of switching our bank to Lloyds.
The arrogant lefties at Nat West need to be punished. Every little helps.
Didn’t the FCA already conduct an investigation by asking Coutts/NatWest whether they believed there had been any improprieties (and then taking the answer as the truth)? Are they now saying that they will conduct a real investigation?
Directors have a duty to enhance shareholder value. 40% taxpayer owned. Why isn’t the Government suing NatWest directors on behalf of we stockholding taxpayers, for breach of fiduciary duty in that it has failed to enhance shareholder value and done the reverse?
As the tax payer was forced to prop them up the last time their shares took a dive how is this time good as surely we will be stuck with the bill again?
So in this case it’s “go woke go running to the treasury for more of a bung, again” unless our PM gabs it by the neck and says no more and I doubt that he will.