Search Results for: Asymptomatic

Has the Evidence of Asymptomatic Spread of COVID-19 been Significantly Overstated?

by Dr Clare Craig FRCPath and Jonathan Engler MBChB LLB

Abstract

Evidence of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from patients who remain asymptomatic (as opposed to pre-symptomatic) is found in a body of numerous meta-analyses. Evidence of asymptomatic transmission has been based on only a handful of instances which themselves are questionable. The existence of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from asymptomatic individuals has become an accepted truth but the evidence for this phenomenon being anything other than mistaken interpretation of false positive test results is weak. Examination of the underlying data from the most frequently-cited such meta-analyses reveals that the conclusions are based on a surprisingly small number of cases (six in total globally) and, moreover, the possibility that they are all coincidental contacts with false positive results cannot be ruled out. Transmission which is pre-symptomatic is rare and represents a negligible risk to the population. It is questionable therefore whether any of the extensive testing, tracing, isolation and lockdown policies have delivered any worthwhile benefit over and above strategies which seek to advise symptomatic individuals to self-isolate.

Introduction

Many of the world’s economies have been seriously damaged on the basis of alleged evidence that people with no symptoms can spread SARS-CoV-2. It is essential that all such claimed evidence is carefully scrutinised because of the immense and ongoing impact of that claim on public policy making. Much of the early evidence of asymptomatic transmission came from China. Chinese publications appear to be major outliers in the scientific discussion and their contributions are, it is suggested, seriously distorting the available evidence in this area.

Scientific papers from reputable institutions which attempt to summarise the evidence have taken certain Chinese papers at face value. This has arguably resulted in the establishment of a dangerous assumption. The assumption is that there is compelling evidence that people who never have symptoms are capable of spreading SARS-CoV-2 to others.

This paper reviews the evidence that people who are asymptomatic (defined in this paper as not only having no symptoms but also never developing symptoms) are capable of carrying SARS-CoV-2 and infecting others. This must be clearly distinguished from pre-symptomatic – there is evidence that some patients can be infectious for a brief period before developing symptoms.

To the extent that pre-symptomatic cases exist the evidence suggests that they must only account for a very small proportion of transmission and therefore they present a low overall risk. In fact, in one study of 243 cases in total, the maximum transmission from pre-symptomatic individuals was estimated to account for less than 7%¹ of transmissions. The secondary attack rate from pre-symptomatic transmission was estimated to be only 0.7% to household contacts in a large meta-analysis of 77,758 traced participants.² Transmission which is pre-symptomatic is rare and represents a negligible risk to the population. The evidence that asymptomatic transmission exists at all is tissue thin. It is questionable therefore whether any of the extensive testing, tracing, isolation and lockdown policies have delivered any worthwhile benefit over and above strategies which seek to advise symptomatic individuals to self-isolate.

The evidence of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 comes largely from case reports where specific groups of infected individuals have been traced in an outbreak and the transmission routes are then reported. Deducing transmission from outbreak data is not straightforward and assumptions need to be made about which of the contacts caused transmission. This is not an exact science.

Reports of instances of transmission are important and interesting enough to publish but on their own they are merely anecdotal. Anecdotal evidence alone is no basis on which to formulate public policy. To draw conclusions about transmission it is necessary to gather multiple instances, ideally all, of such anecdotes and weigh them all up as evidence reaching a conclusion based on all the anecdotes together, i.e. in a formal meta-analysis. However, meta-analyses suffer from the flaw that they can be hugely skewed by larger data sets.

There have been numerous meta-analyses attempting to answer the question of whether SARS-CoV-2 can be spread by people who are asymptomatic. These have been published by distinguished scientists from a range of respected institutions. To reach a conclusion, the evidence from all the papers included in a meta-analysis is summarised. However, only by going back to the underlying data can we understand what the real risk of asymptomatic transmission is. We identified the most frequently-cited such published papers and examined the data underlying their conclusions. The bulk of the Chinese literature on asymptomatic spread were excluded by these meta-analyses because they did not meet the quality criteria specified by the authors.

Results

Across the studies reviewed, a total of seven instances suggestive of asymptomatic transmission were identified, these being:

In Italy, two asymptomatic cases allegedly passing the virus onto two others.
In Brunei, two asymptomatic cases allegedly passing the virus onto three others.
In China, two asymptomatic cases allegedly passing the virus onto two others

Notwithstanding the small numbers, these case reports, given undue prominence in papers written by respected authorities, appear to have played a major role in the evolution of lockdown and test and trace strategies adopted by most countries over the past nine months.

Findings from each of the four papers examined:

Yanes-Lane et al, from McGill University in Quebec,³ found 6,137 studies examining the issue of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 transmission and rejected all but 28 of them (due to small size, or inadequate methodology). Only 5 included reports of asymptomatic transmission and were listed in table 5 (figure1). As it happened, these were all reports of pre-symptomatic transmission. The study by Park et al. included four asymptomatic cases and four pre-symptomatic cases (hence these were listed separately in the table reproduced below) and there was no evidence of transmission from any of them.

Despite the only evidence of asymptomatic transmission (all of which were pre-symptomatic) being from China, an average was taken, concluding:

Among five transmission studies, 18 of 96 (18.8%) close contacts exposed to asymptomatic index patients were COVID-19 positive.

That sounds high until you consider that the sample size is just 13 index cases, all of which were pre-symptomatic cases, transmitting to 18 people across five studies, none of which were outside of China.

Figure 1: Table 5 of the Yanes-Lane et al paper. The two references to the study by Park et al. were from South Korea and the remainder from China

Buitrago-Garcia et al., from the University of Bern,⁴ found 688 studies on asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic COVID-19 and 5 which commented on transmission. Rather than draw conclusions on the likelihood of asymptomatic transmission they compared the risk from asymptomatic with that from symptomatic transmission. Included were three studies showing asymptomatic transmission, one from Brunei and two from China and two showing no transmission from Taiwan and South Korea.

As regards the Brunei study, which will be discussed further below, it is not clear how the numbers in this table were derived from the paper which reported on 71 patients and 1755 total contacts. Of these there were four instances of pre-symptomatic transmission and two incidences of true asymptomatic transmission, accounting for 11 and 3 cases respectively.

The two Chinese papers each only claimed a single patient had contracted COVID-19 from an asymptomatic person. Luo et al. studied 4950 people up until March 6th 2020 who were quarantined in Guangzhou.⁵ They had up to 6 PCR tests each with a mean of 2.4. From all this testing they only claim to have found eight asymptomatic individuals. They report on a single asymptomatic individual spreading SARS-CoV-2 but do not make it clear whether they were pre-symptomatic nor what symptoms the secondary case had. Nevertheless this has been interpreted as evidence of asymptomatic spread.

Zhang et al.⁶ also reported from Guangzhou and two of the authors on this paper are the same as the Luo paper. Given the shared authorship, the possibility that this single case of probable pre-symptomatic transmission was the same individual reported in the Luo paper cannot be ruled out. This paper reported on the first 359 COVID-19 diagnoses and their 369 contacts up to 15th March 2020. Importantly, the single case of asymptomatic transmission was from a man to a male colleague who also remained asymptomatic (i.e. tested positive only, without symptoms). Given that the person said to have contracted COVID-19 had no symptoms this cannot be regarded as adequate evidence for transmission of disease.

Every test has a risk of producing an erroneous positive result, a false positive. A false positive rate of 1% would be very respectable for PCR testing and it is hard to find reports of false positives for PCR at lower rates than this. The UK Government’s own estimate for false positive results, based on other PCR tests for other viruses in non-pandemic situations is a median of 2.3% (range 0.8-4.0%),⁷ so a rate of 1% might be regarded as improbable given the speed of roll out of the test and other observations.

It is not clear how many of the people tested remained asymptomatic throughout, however, when testing 369 contacts a reasonable false positive rate of 1% would result in three to four false positive diagnoses. Given that all the contacts were tested because they had relationships with those that tested positive, any false positives found would by definition have been a contact with a case.

It is worth pointing out at this early stage that studies based on single figures such as this are no proper basis for policies affecting hundreds of millions of lives predicated on the questionable assumption that true asymptomatic transmission can regularly occur. It must be repeated that both studies so far contained a bare handful of alleged transmission without symptoms.

Figure 2: Figure 3 of the Buitrago-Garcia paper. The publications originated from: Luo and Zhang – China; Park – South Korea; Cheng – Taiwan; Chaw – Brunei. The first column shows the fraction of contacts contracting COVID-19 from an asymptomatic / pre-symptomatic individual and the second column shows the fraction contracting from symptomatic individuals in the same study.

Wee Chian Koh et al.⁸ also put great weight on the Brunei study but use different numbers for the same work. It is not clear why. No other cases of asymptomatic transmission were included in this analysis.

Figure 3: Figure 4 of the Wee Chian Koh paper. The columns labelled SAR shows the fraction of contacts that contracted COVID-19 in each study.

The Lancet pre-published a meta-analysis by Byambasuren et al.⁹ who found five studies from 571 met their minimum methodological criteria, two of which reported asymptomatic transmission. The first was a study of 4,950 contacts in Guangzhou⁵ who were quarantined.

The second study quoted was a Nature paper¹⁰ on an Italian study that did not actually report on asymptomatic transmission. Instead they extrapolated from the results of PCR testing to deduce how much virus was present and assumed that high viral loads on testing equated to a higher risk of transmission.

The Italian study reports on numerous asymptomatic ‘cases’ and goes on to propose lines of ‘transmission’ concluding that two asymptomatic people were infected by two other asymptomatic people, out of 2,812 tested initially and then 2,343 tested again two weeks later. In the first round of testing, 29 of the 73 positives were asymptomatic. A respectable false positive rate for the testing performed would be 1%, therefore, it is reasonable to expect at least 28 false positive results when testing 2,812 people. It is therefore fair to conclude that all the 29 asymptomatic positives in the first round were most likely false positives.

In the second round of testing at the beginning of March, there were 18 asymptomatic people who tested positive out of 2,343 people tested. Likewise, these were most likely false positive results. Deducing chains of transmission based on a high risk of material numbers of false positive results is bad science.

Brunei study

Due to the prominence afforded to it by those justifying policy choices on the basis of asymptomatic transmission, it is worth focusing particularly on the study by Chaw et al.,¹¹ from Brunei, which reported on a large outbreak which started with people who attended a religious festival and subsequently developed COVID-19. There were apparently six people who had no symptoms initially (of which, crucially for our purposes, two were asymptomatic throughout), but who allegedly spread SARS-CoV-2 from this outbreak to other people who did not attend.

There are two aspects of this paper that weaken this evidence:

Weak definition of a case (it appears any symptom of any severity was adequate)
High possibility of false positive test results

The same group published a further paper¹² where they describe two of the incidences of asymptomatic spread in more detail. First there was a 13 year old who attended the festival who is said to have spread SARS-CoV-2 to their teacher. The basis for this conclusion was that the teacher “had a mild cough for one day” along with a positive test.

The second was a father who remained asymptomatic but whose wife briefly had a runny nose and whose baby had a mild cough on one day.

In both these papers no details are given as to the testing protocols. A final paper¹³ reports on the first 135 cases to be diagnosed in Brunei. Thirteen of these first cases were asymptomatic. Without knowing the false positive rate of the testing and the numbers tested it is not possible to establish the significance of these asymptomatic ‘cases’.

Dr Chaw, the lead author of the Brunei transmission paper, was initially very helpful in correspondence with the authors. Thorough testing (with whole genome sequencing) was carried out for the first few cases but otherwise, as in the rest of the world, a positive PCR was considered sufficient. She was unaware (as are almost all doctors diagnosing COVID-19) of the criteria used in their laboratory to declare a test positive and has not responded to a request for further clarifications.

It is therefore at least arguable that the asymptomatic diagnoses in spring were all due to false positive test results. No testing system is perfect. Failure to acknowledge this and misinterpretation of positive results in patients with no symptoms has been hugely damaging. What is undoubtedly true is that the policy-making of governments responsible for the lives of billions of people around the world may in part be influenced by the dangerous assumption that there is persuasive evidence of asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2. It is far too soon to make that assumption and the evidence underpinning it is, at best, circumstantial.

Chinese Publications

During the early stages of the pandemic, many papers were published from China suggesting the frequency of asymptomatic transmission and its importance in SARS-CoV-2 spread. Notwithstanding that most of these were excluded by authors of the meta-analyses examined herein, their frequency, and the prominence afforded to these studies laid the foundations for this phenomenon being given undue salience in the scientific literature. This is despite asymptomatic transmission never having been a feature of previous respiratory pandemics and despite large studies showing no evidence of asymptomatic transmission outside of China. The reader will no doubt readily understand the challenges of relying heavily on the output of a highly controlled regime with an active interest in destabilising the economies and political systems of other countries.

It is notable in fact, that in what would seem to represent an abrupt volte face by the CCP, a further (presumably Government-approved) study from China was recently published¹⁴ which entirely contradicts the earlier conclusions regarding the phenomenon of asymptomatic transmission, which had been driven by Chinese data in particular, early in the pandemic.

Some might conclude that that study lacks the credibility one might expect for a paper published in Nature; it is claimed, for example, that they PCR tested 92% of Wuhan’s population (~10m individuals) over a 19-day period at the end of May, and found just 300 positive PCR tests, implying a false positive rate of no greater than 0.003%. Further, it is claimed that while 100% of the 300 PCR positive cases were asymptomatic, there were zero symptomatic PCR positive cases out of ~10m tested during a period only a few weeks after the epidemic had peaked in Wuhan.

If this seems incredible, then surely that has serious implications for the way in which earlier studies from China – data from which formed a significant part of the worldwide evidence base for asymptomatic transmission – should be regarded.

We do not claim to have included every meta-analysis that has been written on this subject, however the studies quoted here do represent the ones most frequently cited in support of the phenomenon of asymptomatic transmission. It is clear that these meta-analyses consist of highly questionable studies taken at face value.

What is an asymptomatic ‘case’?

Attempts to understand the phenomenon of asymptomatic COVID-19 have resulted in reports of asymptomatic cases accounting for between 4%¹⁵ and 76%¹⁶ of COVID-19 cases. An implausibly wide range such as this is evidence of an attempt to measure a phenomenon that is not a characteristic of the disease, in contrast to features such as symptoms.¹⁷

For completeness, it should be acknowledged that SARS-CoV-2 can be detected in asymptomatic people. They can test positive for SARS-CoV-2 virus and viable virus can be cultured from these individuals. In the past, this scenario of having virus onboard in the absence of symptoms would have been referred to as ‘immunity’ or else been attributed to a testing error. Someone with immunity cannot prevent virus entering their respiratory tract, however, when that occurs, their immune system invariably deals with the attack and they remain oblivious and have no symptoms.

It is for the above reasons that whereas reports of high numbers of asymptomatic cases, for example in cruise ship outbreaks,¹⁸ are cited as evidence of asymptomatic transmission, we contend that a more plausible explanation for most of these observations is in fact prior immunity. Several prominent papers made unsupported claims of asymptomatic transmission simply because they had found asymptomatic individuals who had tested positive during an outbreak.¹⁹ Asymptomatic transmission can only be proven by clear evidence that a patient has been infected by SARS-CoV-2 from a person who was asymptomatic. Finding positive test results in asymptomatic individuals is not evidence of transmission.

Normally, someone who is immune would not be considered to have a disease or to be a ‘case’ in an epidemic. It is only in the current crisis that mass testing of asymptomatic individuals has resulted in the detection of virus in asymptomatic individuals. Considerable further work would be required before it could be confidently stated that asymptomatic positives could ever transmit infection.

There is certainly no evidence of immune individuals (as historically defined) transmitting other respiratory viruses. Viral replication and shedding²⁰ is a prerequisite for viral spread and in immune individuals virus is prevented from growing exponentially so the viral numbers remain low. Attempts to deduce viral numbers present from the quality of the test results (viral load on PCR) is overinterpretation. However, no assumptions have been made here. The evidence as to whether immune individuals can transmit SARS-CoV-2 virus must come from actual studies that show, or do not show, real world transmission.

Aside from reported studies of transmission, those leading on the contact tracing response might have useful experience on the likelihood of transmission. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the World Health Organization’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit²¹ stated at the beginning of June:

Countries doing very detailed contact tracing …[are]…following asymptomatic cases and following contacts and they’re not finding secondary transmission onwards. It’s very rare. Much of that is not published in the literature.

It is worth noting that an early frequently-cited claim²² of pre-symptomatic transmission has been discredited²³ after it was revealed that the authors did not interview the patient accused of spreading infection who was in fact symptomatic at the time of transmission. This has not been retracted.

Conclusion

Medical evidence can be difficult to summarise. The medical literature is huge and constantly growing and it is impossible to say with confidence that everything of relevance has been read. This in itself can cause problems: it is difficult to say confidently that there is zero evidence for something. That is why this paper has been careful only to claim that it is a dangerous assumption to believe that there is persuasive, scientific evidence of asymptomatic transmission.

It could be argued that adherence to ‘precautionary principle’ demands that public policy assumes the existence of significant asymptomatic transmission, in order to be ‘better safe than sorry’. However, given the increasing evidence of the harms caused by such policy, at some point the burden of proof must surely shift onto those advocating extreme measures. There is increasing evidence of harm from interventions, for example: there are over 100 excess deaths at home per day in England; accident and emergency attendances are well below normal levels; excess mortality in the under 60s is significant; prescriptions for heart medications are well below normal and there are excess deaths resulting from heart disease.

The Chinese Communist Party²⁴ has mandated that all scientific literature on COVID-19 must first be approved by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology or Ministry of Education before publication. This political interference means that all Chinese scientific publications should be regarded as suspect.

Additionally, there is an unknown but real risk of publication bias because studies, such as the many early Chinese ones showing asymptomatic transmission may find a quicker route to publication, whereas an article reporting the opposite may risk not having commensurate perceived salience when the editors of a journal are choosing papers for publication. It is important to note that much of the evidence relating to modes of transmission was shared via pre-prints prior to publication, and decisions had to be taken based on evidence that had not been peer reviewed, as is inevitable in a pandemic situation.

A claim is not being made that every meta-analysis has been included here and this article may be updated in due course with more data as it becomes available.

However, after examination of the most frequently-cited papers in this area available to date, we are struck by the paucity of persuasive evidence of anything but the most minor of symptoms resulting from supposed asymptomatic spread; most or all of which could be misdiagnoses and in any event are at no more than anecdotal level. There is no evidence, outside of China, that anyone has developed even moderate COVID-19 based on true asymptomatic spread, as opposed to pre-symptomatic spread.

I/we have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: None

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2 Madewell ZJ, Yang Y, Longini IM Jr, et al. Household Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JAMA Netw Open 2020;3:e2031756.

3 Yanes-Lane M, Winters N, Fregonese F, et al. Proportion of asymptomatic infection among COVID-19 positive persons and their transmission potential: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS One 2020;15:e0241536.

4 Buitrago-Garcia D, Egli-Gany D, Counotte MJ, et al. Occurrence and transmission potential of asymptomatic and presymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections: A living systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS Med 2020;17:e1003346.

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7 Mayers Carl And. Impact of false-positives and false-negatives in the UK’s COVID-19 RT-PCR testing programme. 2020.

8 Koh WC, Naing L, Chaw L, et al. What do we know about SARS-CoV-2 transmission? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the secondary attack rate and associated risk factors. PLoS One 2020;15:e0240205.

9 Byambasuren O, Cardona M, Bell K, et al. Estimating the extent of asymptomatic COVID-19 and its potential for community transmission: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Official Journal of the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada 2020;:e20200030.

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13 Wong J, Chaw L, Koh WC, et al. Epidemiological Investigation of the First 135 COVID-19 Cases in Brunei: Implications for Surveillance, Control, and Travel Restrictions. Am J Trop Med Hyg 2020;103:1608–13.

14 Cao S, Gan Y, Wang C, et al. Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China. Nat Commun 2020;11:5917.

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17 Arons MM, Hatfield KM, Reddy SC, et al. Presymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infections and Transmission in a Skilled Nursing Facility. N Engl J Med 2020;382:2081–90.

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21 WHO Says Covid-19 Asymptomatic Transmission Is ‘Very Rare’. 2020

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/ 19 December 2020 • 13.27

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Risk of Asymptomatic Spread Minimal. Variants Over-Hyped. Masks Pointless. An Interview With Professor Jay Bhattacharya

by Oliver May

New variants are of no concern. There is no need to cancel summer holidays. Millions vaccinated, coupled with immunity from millions of prior infections means we can surf on the crest of the third wave, rather than being remotely concerned about it. In fact, the UK should open now. And vaccine passports, certificates, or whatever name they are being given, will do nothing to improve the health of the population – all headlines we have read and heard over the past week or so.

Except, we haven’t. We have heard and read the opposite. And we are instilled with fear from TV and radio adverts, complete with ‘that scary voice’ all too eager to give listeners nightmares, be it your impressionable primary-school-aged daughter, or a frail older lady now terrified into wearing a mask outside while waiting for a bus with no one within a 50-metre radius. But the reality is that the above headlines could have been written – and all based on science. Jayanta Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, the report that called for the focused protection of the vulnerable and no lockdowns, signed by almost 14,000 medical and public health scientists, nearly 42,000 medical practitioners and close to 765,000 concerned citizens.

I interviewed him by email and he remains a staunch lockdown sceptic.

Why have the media, politicians and many scientists sought to panic the populace about SARS-CoV-2 far beyond what the evidence would warrant? The incentives include financial motives, political goals, the desire to protect professional reputations and many other factors.
The virus is seasonal and late fall/winter is its season. It is very unlikely, given that this is the case, that the virus will spread very widely during the summer months. It is also the case that a large fraction of the UK population has already been infected or vaccinated and is immune, which will greatly reduce hospitalisation and mortality from the virus in coming months.
There are tens of thousands of mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They mutate because the replication mechanisms they induce involve very little error checking. Most of the mutations either do not change the virulence of the virus, or weaken it. There are a few mutations that provide the virus with a selective advantage in infectivity and may increase its lethality very slightly, though the evidence on this latter point is not solid.
We should not be particularly concerned about the variants that have arisen to date. First, prior infection with the wild type virus and vaccination provide protection against severe outcomes arising from reinfection with the mutated virus. Second, though the mutants have taken over the few remaining cases, their rise has coincided with a sharp drop in cases and deaths, even in countries where they have come to dominate. Their selective infectivity advantage has not been enough to cause a resurgence in cases. Third, the age gradient in mortality is the same for the mutant and wild-type virus. Thus a focused protection policy is still warranted. If lockdowns could not stop the less infectious wild type virus, why would we expect them to stop the more infectious mutant virus?

According to the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration which, other than Dr Bhattacharya, include Dr Martin Kulldorff, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Dr Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, the UK Government is creating unfounded hysteria around SARS-CoV-2. Dr Bhattacharya said:

According to a meta-analysis by Dr John Ioannidis [Professor of Medicine at Stanford University] of every seroprevalence study conducted to date of publication with a supporting scientific paper (74 estimates from 61 studies and 51 different localities around the world), the median infection survival rate from COVID-19 infection is 99.77 per cent. For COVID-19 patients under 70, the meta-analysis finds an infection survival rate of 99.95 per cent.
The CDC’s [Centres for Disease Control] and Prevention] best estimate of infection fatality rate for people ages 70 plus years is 5.4 per cent, meaning seniors have a 94.6 per cent survivability rate. For children and people in their 20s/30s, it poses less risk of mortality than the flu. For people in their 60s and above, it is much more dangerous than the flu.

Even so, this hardly warrants a new Government drive urging families to carry out tests on their children twice a week in the hope of unearthing asymptomatic cases. Especially, as the vulnerable have already been vaccinated.

The scientific evidence now strongly suggests that COVID-19 infected individuals who are asymptomatic are more than an order of magnitude less likely to spread the disease to even close contacts than symptomatic COVID-19 patients. A meta-analysis of 54 studies from around the world found that within households – where none of the safeguards that restaurants are required to apply are typically applied – symptomatic patients passed on the disease to household members in 18 per cent of instances, while asymptomatic patients passed on the disease to household members in 0.7 per cent of instances. A separate, smaller meta-analysis similarly found that asymptomatic patients are much less likely to infect others than symptomatic patients.
Asymptomatic individuals are an order of magnitude less likely to infect others than symptomatic individuals, even in intimate settings such as people living in the same household where people are much less likely to follow social distancing and masking practices that they follow outside the household. Spread of the disease in less intimate settings by asymptomatic individuals – including religious services, in-person restaurant visits, gyms, and other public settings – are likely to be even less likely than in the household.

What about mask mandates?

The evidence that mask mandates work to slow the spread of the disease is very weak. The only randomised evaluation of mask efficacy in preventing Covid infection found very small, statistically insignificant effects [Danish mask study]. And masks are deleterious to the social and educational development of children, especially young children. They are not needed to address the epidemic. In Sweden, for instance, children have been in school maskless almost the whole of the epidemic, with no child Covid deaths and teachers contracting Covid at rates that are lower than the average of other workers.

In light of this, what conclusion can we draw from the fact that the UK Government wants the entire adult population to be injected against the virus, instead of just the vulnerable? And the possibility that we’ll need to produce vaccine certificates to access hospitality and sports venues or travel overseas?

Vaccine passports are a terrible idea that will diminish trust in public health and do nothing to improve the health of the population. Vaccine certificates are not needed as a public health measure. The Government had it right previously. The country should open up now that the older, vulnerable population has been vaccinated. The rest of the population is at much greater health risk from the lockdown than they are from the virus.

The author is a staff journalist at a national newspaper group. Oliver May is a pseudonym.

/ 25 March 2021 • 16.57

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The Diamond Princess Told Us About Pre-Existing Immunity, Asymptomatic Infection and the Infection Fatality Rate. Why Were Those Lessons Ignored?

A reader who’s just completed a PhD in biology has got in touch to point out just how prescient the data from the Diamond Princess cruise ship was. Why was that data ignored by public health panjandrums?

I thought to bring your attention to a paper published in MedRxiv by Russell et al from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the 9th March 2020. They were looking at data from the Diamond Princess to try and establish case fatality rates. They got it wrong, but they did give the original data they used.
3,711 passengers and crew were on the Diamond Princess. Median age 58.
The virus had circulated undetected for 2 weeks, so given that masked-up health officials had caught COVID on board (The Maritime Executive 12.2.2020), it’s probably safe to assume everyone on the ship (or possibly only almost everyone) had been exposed.
Everyone on board had a PCR test (eventually)
619 out of 3,711 tested positive (17%)
Of which:
Symptomatic: 301
Asymptomatic: 318
Observed deaths:
(70 – 79 age bracket): 6
(80 – 89 age bracket: 1
So, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that 83% of passengers and crew may have had prior immunity.
Of positive tests, half were asymptomatic.
Of those who tested positive, ~1% died. No one died under the age of 70.
In the light of all the data collected in the last year as this pandemic has ranged across the world, it’s startling to think that the broad outline of what we could expect was already known, just no-one wanted to see.

/ 27 March 2021 • 12.50

Diamond Princess Infection Fatality Rate Pre-Existing Immunity

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How Did a Disease With no Symptoms Take Over the World?

The WHO Says COVID-19 Asymptomatic Transmission Is “Very Rare”

There are two ways in which people are controlled: first of all frighten them, and then demoralise them. An educated healthy, and confident nation is harder to govern.
Tony Benn

Biologists tell each other stories. These stories might involve lots of acronyms and use strange and wonderful verbs and nouns but, unlike say mathematics, the mechanism by which biologists convey their science is at heart through the use of language. But unlike works of creative writing, the language used by biologists needs to be precise because bad English can lead to bad science. Which is why it jarred so much when I first read the following statement:

A third of people with COVID-19 have no symptoms.

The more technically correct statement (assuming that “a third” is accurate) is:

A third of people infected with [more correctly, testing positive for] the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus have no symptoms.

So why did the first statement raise my biological hackles so much when at first glance these two statements might appear to be essentially very similar? It is because from a biological perspective they are profoundly different. The first statement asserts the existence of a disease with no symptoms i.e., a sickness that is indistinguishable from being healthy, while the second statement asserts that a viral infection does not necessarily result in a disease. It is not a question of semantics but accuracy and mixing these two concepts up is the sort of thing that would have resulted in an ‘F’ if I were to have submitted it in an essay to one of my professors. Yet, this is exactly the inaccurate language that has been used throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and not by students learning their discipline, but by experienced senior scientists who, one assumes, are well aware of what they are saying.

One could argue that this is unimportant as surely the point is to convey the idea that you could be infectious with coronavirus and be unaware of it and the first statement is an easy way to do this for the layman. Not only does this assumption treat the public as if they were children unable to understand the nuances of infection and disease, but I’d argue that the second statement is just as easy to understand as the first. No, the reason to create a disease with no symptoms is based on a profound decision, one that I believe was made with the intention of ensuring compliance but has, since its inception, grown to dominate our entire response to COVID-19.

First, let’s see why defining having a disease based purely on the presence of a pathogen is a flawed concept. This is best illustrated by reference to another virus, Epstein-Barr Virus or EBV. You’ll be forgiven if you’ve never heard of this virus, but it could be argued to be one of the most successful human pathogens because almost everyone is infected by it. Most people are infected early in life and if this happens then EBV takes up residence in your B-cells (the cells in your immune system responsible for making antibodies) where it quietly persists throughout your life. Every now and then the virus goes into active replication and makes copies of itself which get shed into your mouth, a process that you are blissfully unaware is happening. The problems with EBV generally occur if you don’t get infected early in life but avoid infection until you’re much older. Now when you get infected with EBV, you can develop a disease called infectious mononucleosis or, more commonly, glandular fever. This often happens in young adults when they become interested in close physical contact with members of the opposite (or same) sex… which is why glandular fever is sometimes referred to as “the kissing disease”.

Now let’s apply the new asymptomatic COVID-19 orthodoxy to EBV where we define having a disease purely through the presence of a viral genome. So, according to this definition, almost everyone in the U.K. (and the world) is suffering from a new disease, asymptomatic glandular fever, and if we were to do a large-scale mass screening campaign we’d discover that there were millions of ‘cases’ of asymptomatic glandular fever in the U.K. alone!

Of course, this is complete nonsense. We aren’t all ‘suffering’ from asymptomatic glandular fever. Glandular fever requires infection by EBV, but EBV infection does not necessarily lead to glandular fever. The same is true of COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 and so the concept of asymptomatic COVID-19 as a disease is as ridiculous as that of asymptomatic glandular fever.

But as is the case with EBV, being infected with SARS-CoV-2 means that you can still pass it on even if you aren’t sick. However, it is a matter of degrees and the reason that people can be healthy carriers is simply because they have less viral replication and a lower viral load, which is why they aren’t sick. Of course, if the lower levels of SARS-CoV-2 in an asymptomatic individual were sufficient to mean such an individual was as infectious as someone with symptoms, then from an infectivity perspective the distinction between asymptomatic carriers and people with COVID-19 is unimportant and our statement would need to read:

A third of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus have no symptoms but are just as infectious as those with COVID-19.

However, this situation would mean that the R number for SARS-CoV-2 would likely be much greater than it is, and that coronavirus infection and COVID-19 would have crashed through the population in one huge tsunami at the start of last year. This wasn’t the case, and all the evidence is that healthy, asymptomatic carriers (and pre-symptomatic sufferers) are much less infectious than those with symptoms and a disease (see Will Jones’s summary of COVID-19 facts for links to supporting evidence).

Given that this is all so blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever been near a biology textbook, the only reasonable conclusion we can draw about the creation of an asymptomatic disease is that it wasn’t done by a biologist but instead by individuals (probably on the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B)) whose agenda is not to convey accurate information to the public but something different: fear and uncertainty.

The effect of the asymptomatic disease is to blur the lines between being healthy and being sick and means that people will consciously, or subconsciously, transfer some of their understanding of symptomatic COVID-19 and apply it to asymptomatic COVID-19. The implication being that the absence of symptoms is somehow not relevant and that just because you feel fine, you are in fact suffering from a deadly disease. This naturally creates fear, fear for oneself (what if I have it?) and fear of everyone else (they look O.K., but what if they have it?). This fear is useful if you now want to control the behaviour of people and drive compliance with policies designed to limit the spread of COVID-19, but the problem is that having created the asymptomatic monster as a mechanism to ensure compliance, it soon starts to consume everything because you now need to manage this disease with no symptoms.

The first thing asymptomatic disease needs is a way of identifying who has it. By definition, asymptomatic individuals have no symptoms and so in order to identify who is sick we need a test. Not only do we need a test, but because anyone who is healthy could be silently suffering from this illness, we will need a lot of tests. And because healthy people can become sick without any change in how they feel or look, then the testing needs to be endless. Also, because the disease is only defined by the presence of the virus, then positive screening results (real or false positives) naturally become ‘cases’, confirming the ongoing presence of the asymptomatic disease. Testing begets more testing.

The whole host of non-pharmaceutical interventions – including lockdowns – can also be seen as logical steps to take in fighting an asymptomatic disease. If sick people have no symptoms, then we need to employ strategies in everyday life to manage them. In effect, we have to treat the entire population as if it were ill and deploy measures across the whole of society with this in mind. This effectively leads to ‘reverse quarantine’ where we lock up the healthy to try and protect the few genuinely sick people.

Likewise, vaccine passports are also driven by the need to manage asymptomatic disease because it is only by proving that you’ve had a medical intervention that we can be sure that your lack of symptoms are not a cause of concern. But being immune doesn’t stop an individual from becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2, it just means their immune system more rapidly and effectively recognises and deals with this infection and as a result they may never develop symptoms. In other words, vaccination is no protection from asymptomatic COVID-19 and suitably sensitive screening will continue to detect asymptomatic ‘cases’ amongst the immune population. Proponents of vaccine passports acknowledge this and argue (correctly) that if immune individuals are infected with coronavirus, they will carry a lower viral burden and so are less infectious. However, they then go on to demonise unvaccinated, naïve healthy individuals because they might be asymptomatic carriers. In reality, healthy people are healthy and even if they are carriers are unlikely to infect other people in normal social situations regardless of vaccination status. In fact, if you support the notion of asymptomatic COVID-19 ‘sufferers’ being a significant source of infection, it could be argued that we need vaccination certificates to protect the non-vaccinated from the vaccinated!

Finally, there is the whole question of variants. Clearly, a new, virulent more deadly strain of coronavirus that evades current immunity is a very concerning thing as it would essentially reset the clock back to the start of the pandemic: in effect it is a new disease. But because we have blurred the distinction between infection and disease and our focus is on the presence (and sequence) of viral genomes, every new variant is now treated as if it actually were a new disease. This in turn drives the need to continue to monitor (picking up more and more new variants) and manage ‘the spread of cases’ irrespective of the severity of disease they cause or the prior immunity within the population. Again, testing begets more testing in an endless cycle that will never stop unless we decide to stop it.

What all this means in practice is that the management of asymptomatic COVID-19 has become the the focus of the Government’s coronavirus policy, but if we go back to the original (mis)statement about asymptomatic COVID-19 and swap it around we get:

Two thirds of people with COVID-19 have symptoms.

Of course, this should read “three thirds (all!) of people with COVID-19 have symptoms” but the point I’m making is that hiding in plain sight is the fact that most people infected with SARS-CoV-2 get ill to varying degrees. We also know that people with symptoms account for the majority of onward transmission of the infection (again see Will’s summary for evidence). So, if we were designing an effective policy to manage COVID-19 we would focus our efforts on the sick as this is where we’re going to get the most bang for the buck.

What would this mean in practice? First, we would only need diagnostic testing capacity for the minority of the population with symptoms, rather than the industrial-scale screening that we have had to deploy to deal with asymptomatic COVID-19. Second, restrictions would be focused on ill people, and this would be much easier, not only because these individuals are easier to find, but because sick people behave as if they were, well, sick and as such may not require much encouragement to prevent others getting ill. (“Don’t come too close, I’m not very well.”) They also probably wouldn’t want to go to work, or the gym, or the pub, or visit Granny. These restrictions would be time limited as they only apply to an individual while they are ill. We could use the billions of pounds saved on not destroying the economy in a futile attempt to quarantine the entire healthy population to ensure that these individuals were supported until they got better. We could invest in extra capacity in the healthcare system to manage any increase in hospitalisations and focus resources on improved treatments rather than testing and managing healthy people. The need for vaccination certification becomes irrelevant because healthy people are treated as healthy people and new variants only become of concern if they make individuals sicker. Essentially, we could stop treating COVID-19 as a special case with all the collateral damage this causes to non-COVID-19 related health and manage it as we would any other potentially serious infection. None of this is surprising as it is based on centuries of accumulated wisdom about how to manage infectious diseases. Unfortunately, the creation and focus on asymptomatic disease has drawn our eye away from the real illness and devoured huge amounts of time, effort, and money.

Being told that you are sick with a major illness can be a devastating piece of news, not just for the individual themselves but for those around them. Even if this news is couched in terms of positive treatment outcomes, it would be impossible to not be fearful and run hundreds of ‘what if’ scenarios through one’s mind. Regardless of how you feel today, the worries are all about progression and how you will feel tomorrow. Normally, clinicians would have a duty of care to their patients and spend time in discussing a diagnosis and helping their patients come to terms with this news. But for COVID-19, people receive the results of their diagnosis with no support. Worse through track-and-trace they might even receive this news completely unsolicited; imagine if a complete stranger phoned you to tell you that you might have cancer? Then, rather than offer support and comfort, we demand that individuals cut themselves off from others (self-isolate); you’re ill but on your own. All of this has consequences, especially for those who have bought into the concept of asymptomatic COVID-19, and so is it not surprising that some people want to cling to mask wearing, social distancing and lockdowns. In the end, it turns out that – ironically – asymptomatic COVID-19 might not be asymptomatic after all because for any number of vulnerable people the very existence of this asymptomatic disease has the potential to make them sick – sick with fear, worry and anxiety.

The author, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a senior research scientist at a pharmaceutical company.

/ 22 May 2021 • 13.16

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Number of Infectious People Asymptomatic: Not 1 in 3, but 1 in 19

Lockdown Sceptics’ contributors Norman Fenton, Martin Neil and Scott Mclachlan, all at the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary, have produced a thorough analysis of how many people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic. Their conclusion: not one in three, as the Government would have us believe, but one in 19. Here is the abstract:

Over the period Dec 2020 – Feb 2021, the UK Government, and its scientific advisers, made the persistent and widely publicised claim that “1 in 3 people with the SARS-Cov-2 virus have no symptoms”. In this paper we use a contemporaneous study of asymptomatics at Cambridge University to show that the claim is contradicted by the government’s own case numbers over that same period. A Bayesian analysis shows that, firstly, if the “1 in 3” claim is correct then, over this period, the actual infection rate must be at least 11 times higher than the infection rate reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 0.71% ; and, secondly, if the reported infection rate of 0.71% is correct then the actual number of people with the virus, who have no symptoms, is at most 2.9% (1 in 34) and not 1 in 3. We argue that this contradiction can only be explained by the false positives being generated by RT-PCR testing. Hence, the published infection rate is estimating the number of people who test positive rather than the number of people with SARS-Cov-2 virus. When the false positive rate is correctly accounted for, the most likely explanation for the observed data, over the period in question, is an infection rate of approximately 0.375% rather than the ONS publicised claim of 0.71%. Likewise, we conclude that the actual number of people with the SARS-Cov-2 virus who have no symptoms is approximately 1 in 19 and not 1 in 3. We show that these results are robust under a sensitivity analysis that allows for a wide range of assumptions about testing accuracy and proportion of people with symptoms. Hence, the UK government and ONS claims cannot both be simultaneously true and the actual infection rates are significantly less than publicised.

The paper is worth reading in full.

To read a summary, click here and to see a six-minute YouTube video summarising the paper, click here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qm3zI0j_OA

/ 9 April 2021 • 18.14

Asymptomatic Spread Norman Fenton

19 comments

Latest News

Have yourself a Merry Little Lockdown

Christian Adam’s cartoon in the *Evening Standard*

The Prime Minister warned yesterday that he could not rule out a new lockdown and we do appear to be heading that way. The Telegraph has more.

Boris Johnson has put the country on notice that a third lockdown could be on its way in January as several Government scientific advisers warned restrictions could need to be tougher than before. While the Prime Minister said he hoped to avoid joining Wales and Northern Ireland in imposing new lockdowns after Christmas, he warned that “the reality is that the rates of infection have increased very much in the last few weeks”.
Speaking on a trip to Bolton, he also signalled that decisions on COVID-19 restrictions in the new year would depend on how people approach the five-day window when social distancing rules are relaxed…
It came as new estimates released by Sage showed the R number has risen from 0.9-1.0 to between 1.1 and 1.2, suggesting the virus is at risk of growing exponentially again.
In a statement, the Sage sub-committee SPI-M also warned that modelling suggesting that “additional mixing” during the Christmas period may have a “large impact on post-Christmas prevalence”, including a “slight shift towards a higher proportion of cases in older and more vulnerable age groups.”

One idea for avoiding Lockdown 3 appears to be calling it something else, the Daily Mail reports:

Shops could be shut and commuters ordered to work from home under a draconian Tier 4 regime. The plans are being drawn up as a way of avoiding a third national lockdown – but would contain curbs as tough as those seen in previous shutdowns.
A Government source last night told the Mail the proposal was back on the table. “The Department of Health is pulling out the folder marked Tier Four,” the insider said. “We are not there yet but we are clearly in a worrying situation. It probably starts with closing non-essential retail and strengthening the work from home message.
But there are lots of things you could add to that, it’s still early days.” Other sectors likely to be considered for closure in Tier Four include gyms, swimming pools and hairdressers.

Yesterday evening, it was reported in the Telegraph that London and Kent may not be in Tier 3 for very long – although it’s not good news.

An emergency toughening of COVID-19 restrictions could be announced as soon as Saturday after Boris Johnson was handed alarming new evidence of the transmissibility of a mutant strain of the virus.
The Prime Minister called an unscheduled meeting of senior ministers on Friday night to discuss how to contain the new variant, which has so far been largely confined to London and the South East.
Travel restrictions are among the measures under discussion, with one source suggesting the Government could even restrict travel between the South East and other parts of the country.
An alternative would be to ban commuters from travelling into London, after the mutant strain, which originated in Kent, spread rapidly to London and then the home counties.
Much of the South East was put into Tier 3 by the Government only on Thursday, but the new information about the transmissibility of the mutant strain was so worrying that ministers fear they may have to act immediately.
Government scientists at the Porton Down laboratory in Wiltshire have been conducting experiments on the new strain, and have confirmed ministers’ fears about it being far more infectious than the original strain of the virus.
One source in the scientific community said there were “concerns in Government” about the new strain after the evidence was presented to ministers on Friday afternoon.
“The evidence that the new strain of the virus more easily transmits from one person to another has hardened up,” said the source.
The meeting of ministers was expected to continue late into the night, with Whitehall sources refusing to rule out a press conference on Saturday to announce additional restrictions.

Mutant new strain? As Dr Mike Yeadon has pointed out, there are at least 10,000 variants of the dozens of respiratory viruses we refer to as the common cold. It’s completely normal for new variants of these sorts of viruses to emerge, dominate for a while, and then recede.

Meanwhile, the ONS produced a new report, which estimated that the virus surged by 86,000 in the week ending December 12th, suggesting the effect of Lockdown 2 wore off just days after it ended. MailOnline reports:

The Office for National Statistics today estimated that 567,300 people in England were infected with the virus by December 12th, up from 481,500 a week earlier.
The number marked the first time in a month that infections had risen after restrictions were tightened across the country to try and control the second wave.
These rules worked for a while, with ONS figures showing that total infections plummeted by almost 200,000 in the space of a month from a peak of 654,000, but cases are now rising again in the run-up to Christmas.

Tim Spector’s ZOE survey App, which counts symptomatic people testing positive, presents a less alarming picture, estimating that there 302,652 infected people in the whole of the UK on December 12th, representing 0.45% of the population.

Tim Spector is unsure why this should be.

https://twitter.com/timspector/status/1339956094047797249

Stop Press: Dr Clare Craig has summed up the story of Lockdown 2 in a single tweet.

https://twitter.com/ClareCraigPath/status/1339951534566756356

Has the Evidence of Asymptomatic Spread been Overstated?

Dr Clare Craig, a pathologist and regular contributor to Lockdown Sceptics, and her colleague Dr Jonathan Engler have examined the research evidence behind the claim that COVID-19 can by transmitted by asymptomatic individuals. They have written an important paper on the subject which we are publishing today. They have summarised their findings as follows:

Harmful lockdown policies and mass testing have been justified on the assumption that asymptomatic transmission is a genuine risk. Given the harmful collateral effects of such policies, the precautionary principle should result in a very high evidential bar for asymptomatic transmission being set. However, the only word which can be used to describe the quality of evidence for this is woeful. A handful of questionable instances of spread have been massively amplified in the medical literature by repeatedly including them in meta-analyses that continue to be published, recycling the same evidence base.

There are three types of evidence for asymptomatic spread: studies showing people test positive while asymptomatic (the bulk of the work); studies measuring viral load and concluding from it that people with no symptoms can transmit virus; and studies showing actual transmission.

The first two are not proper evidence that spread can occur.

It is important to carefully distinguish purely asymptomatic (individuals who never develop any symptoms) from pre-symptomatic transmission (where individuals do eventually develop symptoms). To the extent that the latter phenomenon, which has in fact happened only very rarely, is deemed worthy of public health action, appropriate strategies to manage it (in the absence of significant asymptomatic transmission) would be entirely different and much less disruptive than those actually adopted.

Many early studies which purported to demonstrate the phenomenon of asymptomatic transmission were from China, yet the fact that Chinese studies are only published following Government approval must bring their reliability into question. Nevertheless, the high volume of these studies spawned significant salience of the issue within the medical community, and an assumption of the likelihood of asymptomatic transmission being an important contributory factor. There then followed a number of meta-analyses examining the issue of asymptomatic transmission which tended to aggregate and give equal weight to studies regardless of origin or quality. In this way, these meta-analyses, given undue credibility by their association with reputable universities, amplified minimal evidence of asymptomatic spread to an importance the data did not warrant.

A review of the literature has been submitted to the BMJ and is included here as a preprint. In it the papers most frequently cited in support of the existence of asymptomatic transmission were examined. Despite our criticisms of the sources of the data above, we did in fact find only six case reports of viral transmission by people who throughout remained asymptomatic, and this was to a total of seven other individuals. However, all of these were in studies with questionable methodology. These were: In Italy, two asymptomatic cases allegedly passing the virus onto two others, in Brunei, two asymptomatic cases allegedly passing the virus onto three others, and in China, two asymptomatic cases allegedly passing the virus onto two others

In all these studies, confirmation of “cases” was made via PCR testing without regard to the possibility that any of the cases found might be false positives. The case numbers found, are in any event extremely small and certainly not sufficient to conclusively determine that asymptomatic transmission is a major component of spread.

It is also notable that, in what would seem to represent an abrupt volte face by the CCP, a further (presumably Government-approved) study from China was recently published which entirely contradicts the earlier conclusions regarding the phenomenon of asymptomatic transmission, which had been driven by Chinese data in particular, early in the pandemic.

Some might conclude that that study lacks the credibility one might expect for a paper published in Nature; it is claimed, for example, that they PCR-tested 92% of Wuhan’s population (~10m individuals) over a 19-day period at the end of May, and found just 300 positive PCR tests, implying a false positive rate of no greater than 0.003%. Further, it is claimed that while 100% of the 300 PCR positive cases were asymptomatic, there were zero symptomatic PCR positive cases out of ~10m tested during a period only a few weeks after the epidemic had peaked in Wuhan.

You can read the paper here.

Children Should Not be Demonised

A drawing done by a teenager after his first day at a new school

Today we’re publishing a contribution by Arabella Hastie. As well as being a regular reader of Lockdown Sceptics, Arabella is member of the child and clinical psychology group in UsforThem, a group which has actively campaigned to keep schools open, functional and free of masks. She writes of the devastating impact social distancing rules can have on children.

“Don’t Kill Granny” was the eye-catching phrase used by Preston Council to scare young people into sticking to the regulations back in August. Young people knew that the risk to themselves was almost non-existent. They had complied with five months of lockdown – missing out on education, exams and social development to help flatten the curve – and now they wanted to see friends in the sun. The Council and then the Health Secretary used this phrase as a deliberate policy to scare and guilt-trip our children and young people into compliance. More frighteningly, it marked a moment in the pandemic when children and young people have become the scapegoats for any increase in transmission rates. The Government has admitted that increasing fear in the general public was central to their strategy to ensure compliance. Still, it is low when this is targeted directly at children in a way that could scar them for life.
The calling by unions and local councils to close schools early or restart them later increases the sense that children are to blame. Indeed, Sadiq Khan was explicitly saying “if the government isn’t careful, these children will pass on the virus to vulnerable people because the rules are relaxed”. If Granny dies or is not able to visit because you have to isolate – then it is all your fault.

Worth reading in full.

Sweden Tightens the Rules

ICU admission are declining in Sweden, despite not closing a single pub

There was sad news from Sweden yesterday, with the Government announcing its toughest COVID-19 restrictions yet. They remain, however, lighter than Tier 3 and notably light on enforcement. The Spectator‘s Fraser Nelson has more.

Big news in Sweden this afternoon where Stefan Löfven, the Prime Minister, has just tightened COVID-19 restrictions. Still no lockdown, but there’s now a rule of four for restaurants (it had previously been six) and an 8pm curfew on the sale of alcohol in bars and restaurants (it had been 10pm). A cap is to be placed on numbers in shops, gyms and swimming pools: universities and sixth-forms will switch to remote learning until January 24th. But beyond that there are no new laws (or restrictions for private property). Löfven said he still has faith that Swedes will respond to his voluntary approach. “I hope and believe that everyone in Sweden understands the seriousness,” he said.

Anders Tegnell was notable by his absence at the press conference where the new rules were announced. The Prime Minister was joined instead by Johan Carlson, the chief of the Public Health Agency. There was new guidance on the use on masks:

From January 7th, face masks will be recommended on public transport, albeit only at certain times. Given Sweden’s status as pretty much the only country in the Western world not to recommend masks, this is quite a turnaround. In the press conference, journalists sought to tease out what Johan Carlson, director of the Public Health Agency, made of the u-turn. “There are no sanctions, just recommendations,” he said. He went on to restate his problem with masks: they can give a false sense of security and not much protection and discourage social distancing he said. Asked if he now believed there was scientific evidence for them, he said: in hospitals, yes. But outside of them, “we don’t think it will have a big effect. It might have a positive effect.” The problem, he said, is that wearing a face mask is easy; social distancing is hard. If you end up with more people travelling on crowded buses, feeling that the masks protect them, “then that’s not the outcome we want”.

Fraser Nelson’s article is worth reading in full.

Perhaps the King of Sweden has intervened behind the scenes. The Financial Times reported on Thursday that King Carl XVI Gustaf has branded the country’s COVID-19 approach a failure:

Sweden’s king has admitted that the Scandinavian country has failed with its coronavirus strategy, which has left it with a far higher death toll from the pandemic than its Nordic neighbours. Carl XVI Gustaf told Swedes in his annual Christmas address that the country had suffered “enormously in difficult conditions” and that it was “traumatic” that many relatives of the almost 8,000 people to die with COVID-19 had not been able to say goodbye to them. “I think we have failed. We have a large number who have died and that is terrible. It is something we all have to suffer with,” the king added, in comments released on Thursday and due to be broadcast in full on Monday.

The royal court later clarified that the king was not criticising Sweden’s coronavirus strategy but was referring “to the whole of Sweden and the whole society. He is showing empathy for all those affected.”

Anders Tegnell declined to comment on the King’s remarks, but did defend his approach.

Asked by the Financial Times if he should have done more to reduce the spread, Mr Tegnell said that many countries with strict lockdowns had had high infection rates, and that the situation was “very complicated”. He added: “In Sweden we do the same as all other countries: we do our best to keep the spread as low as possible. We can see countries using a lot of different measures, and we cannot see any clear correlation between measures and the stop of the spread.”

Worth reading in full.

Indeed. Where is the correlation between the severity of the restrictions imposed and the containment of the virus?

The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Panic

A few days ago, tagesschau reported that Austria’s mass-testing programme has failed to attract the masses.

The COVID-19 situation in Austria remains tough. In order to get the numbers under control, the Government has provided rapid testing, but there was limited uptake. The testing essentially came to an end in five of Austria’s nine federal states last Sunday, but participation fell short of expectations. In Vienna, just 14% of the population took part, in Salzburg around 20% and in lower Austria under 38%. The Government has expected 60% of the country to take part…
In response to the relatively low level of participation in rapid testing, the Government is considering incentives to encourage a greater participation in the next round. The Ministry for Health is considering an incentive system. Residents of Tyrol could have themselves tested free of charge from December 19th until the New Year, Governor Günther Platter has said. Upper Austria also wants to extend testing.

Yesterday, it was announced that Austria is to re-enter lockdown on Boxing Day, but with an eventual get-out-jail-free card. The Local.at has the story.

Austria announced on Friday it will enter its third coronavirus lockdown on December 26th, but those who take part in a planned series of mass testing programme in January will be allowed more freedoms. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced on Friday evening that Austria would enter a three-phase lockdown process in order to “return to normal”.
“We have decided that we will spend Christmas as planned, but then tighten the measures again,” said Kurz. The goal is to likely to achieve a seven-day incidence of less than 100 cases per 100,000 residents and then keep the numbers low through mass tests, Kurz said. Currently, Austria’s seven-day incidence is at 205 per 100,000 residents.
Austria relaxed lockdown measures somewhat on December 7th, but case numbers and fatalities have remained high. The measures were “the only possible way to re-open tourism, cultural life, restaurants and cafes during the pandemic and at the same time avoid numbers exploding again”, Kurz said.
Movement outside the home will once again be restricted to purposes such as buying food or taking exercise. The lockdown measures include distance learning in all schools when they return on January 7th, with face-to-face lessons again allowed from January 18th. The big request is, from December 26th on, don’t meet anyone again, said the Chancellor…
There will however be another round of mass tests from January 16th to 18th, with those who test negative allowed to go shopping and meet people again. “For all those who are not willing to be tested, the lockdown rules apply for a week longer,” said the Chancellor.
Hotels and cultural venues will be expected to check test results on arrival, while the police will carry out random checks in other areas, Kurz said…
Those who do not take part in the mass tests will also have to wear FFP 2 masks where otherwise a simpler face covering would suffice, for example while at work or buying food. Rules surrounding how and whether to allow outdoor sports, including skiing, will be left for local authorities to determine.

Worth reading in full.

Round-up

“Hospitals busier with Covid now than they were in first wave” – Misleading headline on this Times story. The first sentence begins: “A fifth of hospital trusts in England are dealing with more coronavirus patients than at the height of the first wave…” So, in fact, 80% of hospitals are less busy than they were in March/April.
“Brazil’s supreme court rules COVID-19 vaccine can be mandatory” – The Telegraph reports on Brazil’s supreme court ruling that Brazilians can be “required but not forced” to take the vaccine
“Brits don’t appear to have been influenced by anti-vaxxer” – Writing for the Spectator, Ross Clark analysis the recent ONS survey which suggests that 78% of adults are likely to take the vaccine
“Covid: We Persist in Having the Wrong Debate“– Omar S. Khan attacks the notion that we must obviously sacrifice so much in life to tackle Covid
“How to stop the NHS being overwhelmed” – We should look to expand NHS capacity and resources, writes Ann Bradshaw in Spiked
“Mass testing in schools on brink of collapse as unions back heads who refuse to take part” – The Telegraph reports that the plans for mass testing in schools is already coming apart at the seams
“Are hospitals REALLY creaking under the strain of Covid before Christmas?” – MailOnline debunks the idea that the NHS is full. It has more space than it did 12 months ago
“Join me, parents, to fight mass testing in schools” – Anna Rayner in the Conservative Woman, issuing a rallying cry against mass testing in schools
“The credulous cult of lockdown” – Julian Mann on how lockdown appears remarkably like a religious cult, in the Conservative Woman
“The PM must set an end date to the inevitable cycle of lockdowns” – Patrick O’Flynn in the Telegraph says that Boris must tell us when this is all going to end
“Is Covid a high risk to younger adults?” – Donald J. Boudreaux examines the question on the AIER blog
“The work from home boom is here to stay. Get ready for pay cuts” – Noah Buhayer in Bloomberg reporting on a new trend to emerge from COVID-19. White collar workers are heading to the coast and companies are reducing their pay
“James and Laura’s Chinwag 6” – James Delingpole and Laura Perrins have another chat, each giving it both barrels on the matter of lockdowns
“It’s not up to the Government to cancel Christmas” – Juliet Samuel makes a good point in the Telegraph
“End the COVID-19 Lockdowns? Two Epidemiologists debate” – A Soho Forum Debate by the Reason Foundation, pitching Professor Martin Kulldorff, of Great Barrington fame, against Professor Andrew Noymer, signatory of the John Snow Memorandum

Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers

Five today: “Nowhere to Run” by Martha and the Vandellas, “The End” by the Doors, “Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads, “Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of The Screw” by Opera North and “Pointless“, the theme tune to the TV quiz show.

Love in the Time of Covid

We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.

Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.

You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.

Woke Gobbledegook

We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, from News 1130, the announcement of an all new and inclusive policy at the Provincial Court of British Columbia.

In an effort to be more inclusive of transgender people, the Provincial Court of British Columbia has created a new policy asking lawyers to provide pronouns when introducing themselves and their clients in court. While some lawyers have already started including pronouns in their introductions, the court will now expect everyone to share how they wish to be referred to.
In a press release, the provincial court provided an example of such an introduction: “My name is Ms Jane Lee, spelled L-E-E. I use she/her pronouns. I am the lawyer for Mx Joe Carter who uses they/them pronouns.”
The court said the policy change will improve the experiences of gender diverse people in the legal system and would help avoid confusion and the need for corrections when someone is misgendered.
“Using incorrect gendered language for a party or lawyer in court can cause uncomfortable tension and distract them from the proceedings that all participants should be free to concentrate on,” the press release said.
“I think it’s a fantastic development for the court system in B.C.,” said Lisa Nevens, a Vancouver-based civil litigator who is gender non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. Nevens said they already introduce themself with pronouns and the “Mx” title, but this new policy will take the onus off people who may be more likely to be misgendered.
Having a practice where everyone just does it, you don’t have to make assumptions, you don’t have to stand out in order to be properly addressed in court. It will make the system more inclusive for everyone and more accessible for lawyers and witnesses and other participants alike,” they said. They said the courts still have more work to do, including moving away from gendered titles for judges such as “my lord” and “my lady”.
Wednesday’s policy change is a step in the right direction, according to barbara findlay, a queer feminist lawyer with more than four decades of experience who does not capitalize her name. “Up until now, courts, like everybody else, have judged the gender of counsel either by how counsel looks or by the kind of name they have: a boy name or a girl name,” she said. “First of all, those judgments are often wrong – and second, male and female do not exhaust the categories.”
Findlay said she has seen judges misgender lawyers in court, creating a “difficult situation” in which the individual doesn’t want to contradict the judge but also doesn’t want the mistake to remain on the record uncorrected.
“So, really the only way for a court – or for anybody – to know what someone’s gender is, is to ask,” findlay said.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: On Thursday, Woman and Equalities Minister Liz Truss gave an address at the Centre of Policy studies to announce the Government’s new equality agenda. She tore into identity politics.

Today, I am outlining a new approach to equality in this country. This will be founded firmly on Conservative values. It will be about individual dignity and humanity… not quotas and targets, or equality of outcome. It will reject the approach taken by the Left … captured as they are by identity politics, loud lobby groups and the idea of “lived experience“. It will focus fiercely on fixing geographic inequality… addressing the real problems people face in their everyday lives… using evidence and data.
Study after study has shown that unconscious bias training does not improve equality, and in fact can backfire by reinforcing stereotypes and exacerbating biases. That’s why this week we announced we will no longer be using it in Government or civil service. Whether it’s “affirmative action”… forced training on “unconscious bias”… or lectures on “lived experience”… the Left are in thrall to ideas that undermine equality at every turn. The absurdity was summed up just this week by the Mayor of Paris being fined for employing so many female managers she had breached a quota.

Worth reading in full.

The speech got good reviews from Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph and Brendan O’Neil in the Spectator.

“Mask Exempt” Lanyards

We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (takes a while to arrive). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £1.99 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.

Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face masks in shops here.

A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p, and he’s even said he’ll donate half the money to Lockdown Sceptics, so everyone wins.

If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.

Stop Press: There is a story in both the Irish Times and RTE of a man given two months in jail for failing to wear his mask properly while on public transport, shortly after it became mandatory in Ireland. LifeSite, meanwhile, says the individual concerned was convicted for failing to give his name and address to the police officer and an additional charge of using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” was considered.

The Great Barrington Declaration

The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched in October and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)

You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over three quarters of a million signatures.

Update: The authors of the GDB have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.

Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.

Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.

Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here.

Judicial Reviews Against the Government

There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.

First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here. Alas, he’s now reached the end of the road, with the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear his appeal. Dolan has no regrets. “We forced SAGE to produce its minutes, got the Government to concede it had not lawfully shut schools, and lit the fire on scrutinizing data and information,” he says. “We also believe our findings and evidence, while not considered properly by the judges, will be of use in the inevitable public inquires which will follow and will help history judge the PM, Matt Hancock and their advisers in the light that they deserve.”

Then there’s the Robin Tilbrook case. You can read about that and contribute here.

Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.

There’s the GoodLawProject’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.

The Night Time Industries Association has instructed lawyers to JR any further restrictions on restaurants, pubs and bars.

And last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review last week, but the FSU may appeal the decision. Check here for updates.

Samaritans

If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.

Quotation Corner

We know they are lying. They know they are lying, They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And still they continue to lie.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Mark Twain

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay

They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…
Ideology – that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get into the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man, who knows where it hurts, is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialist.
Sir Winston Churchill

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
Richard Feynman

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis

The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
Albert Camus

We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan

Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius

Necessity is the plea for every restriction of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt the Younger

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Joseph Goebbels (attributed)

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken

I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
Thomas Paine

Shameless Begging Bit

Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)

And Finally…

As Christmas is likely to look a bit different this year, Spectator Life has published Santa’s guide to staying safe by Andy Shaw.

Letter to Santa
Due to age and obesity, Santa has been deemed ‘at risk’ and has been shielding with a support bubble of elves for most of the year. As part of his mission to save Christmas, Boris Johnson is rumoured to have let Saint Nick jump the queue for a vaccine.
Nevertheless, letters sent to Santa are screened for pathogens by elves retrained as Covid wardens. Non lick envelopes are requested wherever possible.
Santa has binned all requests for board games (SAGE stipulates that sharing dice and cards could be lethal). Likewise balls and equipment for team sports have been scrupulously crossed off lists. Father Christmas is keeping a close eye on the next round of government regulations in case they include a quota for the number of presents allowed per household.
Santa’s visit
Santa used to love visiting poorly children in hospital and old people in care homes. This year, he fears becoming known as Santa The Super Spreader, St. Nicholas of Covid or Father Christ-All-Mighty Keep Your Distance.
Santa may land his sleigh on your roof, but he won’t venture down your chimney. Touching stockings or consuming mince pies prepared by those outside his bubble is strictly forbidden. However, it is hoped that the elfish Matt Hancock is left out for Santa to take with him back to the North pole. He can make up for his appalling behaviour by packing presents for next year’s Christmas.

Very funny and worth reading in full

/ 19 December 2020 • 04.16

2484 comments

Latest News

Hotel Quarantine to Open on February 15th

The UK is set to follow Australia and New Zealand within the next two weeks in requiring all UK residents to put themselves up in guarded quarantine hotels when returning from abroad. The BBC has the details.

UK residents returning from coronavirus hotspots abroad will have to quarantine in hotels from February 15th, Government sources have told the BBC.
Owners will be asked to provide accommodation for more than 1,000 new people every day, documents suggest. Passengers will have to stay in their rooms for 10 nights, with security guards accompanying them outside.
Labour called the measures “too little, too late” to deal properly with new overseas strains of Covid. “It is beyond comprehension that these measures won’t even start until February 15th,” said Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds.
Speaking on BBC’s Question Time, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said the Government was “aiming to see” February 15th as the date new hotel quarantine plans for arrivals into the UK will be introduced.
Asked why it had taken so long to implement he said: “We want to make sure that we get this right so that when people go to those hotels, the hotels are in place, the transport is in place.”
The airports thought to be under consideration as locations for quarantine hotels are Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.
The rules are expected to apply to UK nationals and residents returning to the country from 30 “red list” COVID-19 hotspots, including several South American and African countries where new Covid variants have been detected in large numbers of people.

Travellers will have to foot the bill themselves, and they will be forcibly prevented from leaving by security personnel, who will accompany them on any periods outside of the room.

According to documents seen by the BBC, the Government wants quarantine hotels to be made “available on an exclusive basis”.
Guests will have three meals a day – hot or cold – in their rooms, with tea, coffee, fruit and water being available. Security will “accompany any of the arrived individuals to access outside space should they need to smoke or get fresh air”, one document says.
One hospitality industry source said the Government estimated the cost at about £80 per night per person. “If they are taking rooms for 1,425 passengers per night until March 31st, that is a bill of £55m,” they added.
Government sources confirmed to the BBC that travellers coming home will be expected to pay for the costs of their accommodation in quarantine hotels. Ministers are also likely to increase the fines for people who break the rules around quarantine.

No indication of an end point to these extraordinary measures, or what criteria will be used to decide when to lift them, has been given. If the Government has thought this through, they’re not letting on.

The Case Against Lockdown: A Reply to Christopher Snowdon

Bob Moran’s cartoon in the *Telegraph* on September 10th 2020

Toby has replied to Christopher Snowdon’s attack on lockdown sceptics. Like Snowdon’s piece, Toby’s article appears in Quillette, where Toby is employed as an Associate Editor. He doesn’t bother rebutting Snowdon’s detailed criticisms of Ivor Cummins and Dr Mike Yeadon because he doesn’t think the case against the lockdown policy stands or falls on whether their analysis is correct. I’ll let him explain.

We can quibble about the reliability of industrial-scale PCR testing, whether the “second wave” in Europe and America has been ameliorated by naturally acquired immunity and whether deaths due to other diseases have being wrongly classified as deaths due to novel coronavirus. But that is largely beside the point. Sceptics could concede all of Snowdon’s points—acknowledge that the threat posed by SARS-CoV-2 is every bit as grave as the most hard-line lockdowners say it is—without endangering the central limb of our argument. Our contention is that the whole panoply of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) that governments around the world have used to try and control the pandemic—closing schools and gyms, shutting non-essential shops, banning household mixing, restricting travel, telling people they can’t leave their homes without a reasonable excuse, etc.—have been largely ineffective.
Sure, there are some peer-reviewed studies published in reputable journals seeming to show that these measures reduce COVID-19 infections, hospital admissions, and deaths. (See here, for instance.) But most of these rely on epidemiological models that make unfalsifiable claims about how many people would have died if governments had just sat on their hands—and some of these models have been widely criticised. The evidence that lockdowns don’t work, by contrast, is not based on conjecture but on observing the effects of lockdowns in different countries. (You can review 30 of these studies here.) What these data seem to show is that the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in each country rises and falls—and then rises and falls again, although less steeply as the virus moves towards endemic equilibrium—according to a similar pattern regardless of what NPIs governments impose.
The factors that affect a population’s vulnerability to the disease are things like distance from the equator, previous exposure to other coronaviruses, and genetics, not how nimble or smart their political leaders are. (Although the timely introduction of port-of-entry controls for visitors from China may have contributed to the low COVID mortality in some Asian and Oceanic countries.) If lockdowns work, you’d expect to see an inverse correlation between the severity of the NPIs a country puts in place and the number of COVID deaths per capita, but you don’t. On the contrary, deaths per million were actually lower in those US states that didn’t shut down than in those that did—at least in the first seven-and-a-half months of last year. Trying to explain away these inconvenient facts by factoring in any number of variables—average age, hours of sunlight, population density—doesn’t seem to help. There’s no signal in that noise.
Incidentally, Snowdon’s claim that the first British lockdown reduced COVID infections is easy to debunk. You just look at when deaths peaked in England and Wales—April 8th—go back three weeks, which is the estimated time from infection to death among the roughly one in 400 infected people who succumb to the disease, and you get to March 19th, indicating infections peaked five days before the lockdown was imposed. Even Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, acknowledged that the reproduction rate was falling before the first hammer came down.
By contrast, the evidence that the policy responses to the pandemic have caused—and will cause—catastrophic harm is pretty strong. Shutting schools causes significant harm to all children, but particularly to the least well-off. Telling people they’re not allowed to socialise—no restaurants, bars, or café, no festivals or sporting events—has contributed to a mental health crisis that has seen “deaths of despair” spike up. Closing non-essential businesses and ordering everyone to stay at home has caused jaw-dropping economic contractions—the UK economy shrunk by 20.8 percent in Q2 of 2020—that have sent unemployment soaring and triggered a global economic recession that the World Bank estimates pushed between 88–115 million people into extreme poverty last year, with the total expected to rise as high as 150 million in 2021. Governments across the world have mothballed huge swathes of their economies in a largely futile attempt to mitigate the impact of the virus, burdening future generations with unmanageable national debts.

Worth reading in full.

Inside the Zero Covid Cult

Piers Morgan, Devi Sridhar and Nicola Sturgeon

UnHerd‘s Freddie Sayers reports on the worrying growth in popularity and gathering strength of the Zero Covid cause.

As I discovered last week, the first rule of ZeroCovid Club is: do not talk about ZeroCovid Club. “ZeroCovid” is, after all, a term that elicits confusion and, sometimes, outright hostility. Perhaps that’s why, when leading members of the global ZeroCovid movement met for a three-day international conference last Wednesday, it had a far more innocuous title: the “Covid Community Action Summit”.
But even though this increasingly popular school of thought – which holds that we must not return to normal until the virus is completely eliminated within a country – wasn’t explicitly on the billing, its presence was made clear from the outset. In her introductory remarks, the moderator confirmed to the more than 600 registrants and speakers from across the world that “we are here to end Covid through ZeroCovid and CovidZero policies”. More often at the event, held over Zoom and organised by American scientist Yaneer Bar-Yam, speakers preferred to refer to ZeroCovid as an “elimination strategy”.
Yet the purpose of the event was clear: to share evidence and political advice to help campaigners lobby Western governments to abandon any notion of living alongside the virus, and instead to follow the lead of Asia-Pacific nations in aiming to eliminate the disease entirely within their borders. This group is crucially distinct from people who support ongoing lockdown measures to suppress the virus to a level where it is safe to reopen – for ZeroCovid believers, we cannot rest until that level is zero.

Extreme it may be, but it is no fringe movement.

Their advocates are among the most regular faces in broadcast media; Professor Devi Sridhar, one of its most outspoken advocates, has appeared on Channel 4 News 21 times during the pandemic – more than any other expert.
There’s a UK ZeroCovid chapter, which last month hosted its own well-attended online conference; the Scottish Government is committed to their campaign, alongside Independent SAGE, British trade unions and Labour MPs such as Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott. Meanwhile, influential Tory MPs like Jeremy Hunt advocate a strategy of “zero infections and elimination of the disease” and routinely refer to the Asian model. Google search results in the UK and US for “ZeroCovid” are at an all-time high. The campaign has momentum.

Sayers spies the fatal flaw for any country that values its freedom.

ZeroCovid is a totalitarian aim, best delivered by a totalitarian state. Even in Australia, last weekend there was panic buying in Perth as the city re-entered lockdown in response to a single positive test result. So far at least, British voters have not chosen to reject liberal democracy, no matter what the epidemiological allure of a ZeroCovid regime.
For now, the British Government has resisted the campaign’s logic, and the Prime Minister continues to make encouraging signals about easing restrictions and even summer holidays. But as the impact of the vaccine is felt and the number of cases continues to fall, the politically difficult question of what constitutes an acceptable level of infection will have to be addressed.
Whatever that level is, expect well-spoken ZeroCovid campaigners to say it is too high. At each hesitant step towards opening up society, expect it to be called irresponsible and short-termist. No doubt ZeroCoviders sincerely believe their campaign for a Covid-free world is a noble one. But how successful they are at influencing policy will affect the shape of our society for years to come.

Worth reading in full.

Does a Single Dose of the Oxford Vaccine Really Cut Transmission by Two-Thirds?

Earlier this week there were excited reports that a single dose of the Oxford vaccine had been shown in trials to prevent “two-thirds of Covid transmissions”. In itself, this result would not be surprising, once you remember that asymptomatic infection is not a major driver of transmission, and the vaccine has been shown to reduce symptomatic infection. However, the study drew this conclusion, not because it accepted that premise, but because it maintained the opposite, namely, that asymptomatic infection is a major driver of transmission, and thus it claims to have shown that the vaccine reduces the incidence of asymptomatic infections.

We asked pathologist and regular contributor Dr Clare Craig to take a closer look at this study and have published her findings on the right-hand side. She was not impressed.

On February 1st the Oxford Vaccine Group published their latest findings on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. While the findings are encouraging, the way they have been interpreted is questionable. The study is underpowered for the conclusions that are being drawn from it and there has been extensive data mining undertaken retrospectively in an attempt to draw more powerful conclusions.
They concluded that in the vaccinated group two thirds fewer people were infected. Despite admitting that they did not study transmission, they still commented on it. The conclusions reached were the overall percentage testing positive was 54% lower “indicating the potential for a reduction of transmission”. The 54% figure was deduced from positivity including asymptomatic positives. This is not a reasonable conclusion to draw on two counts. They have assumed that asymptomatic positives are a major source of transmission and there is minimal evidence to support that assertion; and they failed to account for false positive test results.
Asymptomatic positives were looked for only in the UK participants. They have not stated how often these people were tested, but it can be inferred that they were tested 10 times each on a weekly basis for follow up from day 22 to day 90. That is 82,070 tests. A remarkably low false positive rate of 0.16% would be enough to account for the asymptomatic positives that they found. Repeat testing will only exclude false positives if a negative result is used to overrule a previous positive result. The criteria for calling a positive were not disclosed in the paper and it is assumed that a single PCR positive test was considered significant.
Instead of realising this there has been over-interpretation of the results.

The problem is that the results are all over the place, leaving no confidence in the research group’s conclusions.

Note that the difference between the two control groups in the symptomatic positives is significant – 2.7% infected vs 3.6% infected. If there is potential for that much difference between the control arms, then the impact of the difference between the control and vaccine arm has to be called into question. There does appear to be an effect of vaccination in the symptomatic group, but the effect is not as dramatic when considering that one control arm had a 25% reduction in symptomatic positives by chance alone.
For the asymptomatic positives, again, the difference between the two control arms – 2.2% vs 1.5% – is of the same order of magnitude as the difference it is claimed was due to the vaccine in the low dose arm – 1.2% vs 2.2%. Furthermore, when two standard doses were given, no difference was observed at all – 1.5% were asymptomatic positives in both control and vaccine arms.
How can the vaccine be having an impact if it is possible to find the same impact by randomly assigning people to two different control groups?

Worth reading in full.

Is the UK Complying With WHO Guidance on PCR Testing?

A Lockdown Sceptics reader wrote to his MP to ask whether the UK was complying with new WHO guidance, published in January, about how to use PCR tests correctly for COVID-19.

The MP put his questions to the House of Commons Library. The answer that came back was basically no, or rather, we leave it up to the labs to decide what to do. Here it is in full.

An article in the journal Science explains the cycle threshold in the following way:
“Standard tests identify SARS-CoV-2 infections by isolating and amplifying viral RNA using a procedure known as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which relies on multiple cycles of amplification to produce a detectable amount of RNA. The CT value is the number of cycles necessary to spot the virus; PCR machines stop running at that point. If a positive signal isn’t seen after 37 to 40 cycles, the test is negative (see “One number could help reveal how infectious a COVID-19 patient is. Should test results include it?“, Science, September 29th 2020)“
The cycle threshold (Ct) value can broadly tell you the concentration of “viral genetic material” in a patient sample following testing by RT-PCR. The Public Health England (PHE) publication on Understanding cycle threshold (Ct) in SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR (October 2020) explains that:
“A low Ct indicates a high concentration of viral genetic material, which is typically associated with high risk of infectivity.
“A high Ct indicates a low concentration of viral genetic material which is typically associated with a lower risk of infectivity. In the context of an upper respiratory tract sample a high Ct may also represent scenarios where a higher risk of infection remains – for example, early infection, inadequately collected or degraded sample.
“A single Ct value in the absence of clinical context cannot be relied upon for decision making about a person’s infectivity.“
The Library is not in a position to know if the laboratories across the UK that are processing COVID-19 tests are providing information on Ct values to a central point (such as Departments of Health across the devolved administrations, Test and Trace in England); I cannot see that there is information publicly available detailing how each laboratory runs its PCR machines.
There is, however, more general information about Cycle Thresholds published by PHE. Its publication on Understanding cycle threshold (Ct) in SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR explains that there are “many different SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR assays/platforms in use across the UK” and that “each assay will have a slightly different limit of detection (LoD) – the lowest concentration of virus that can be reliably and consistently detected by the assay”.
The document goes on to caution against directly comparing cycle threshold values:
“Ct [cycle threshold] values cannot be directly compared between assays of different types due to variation in the sensitivity (limit of detection), chemistry of reagents, gene targets, cycle parameters, analytical interpretive methods, sample preparation and extraction techniques (p7). The same document states that ‘a typical RT-PCR assay will have a maximum of 40 thermal cycles’ (see p6). Further background on cycle threshold values can be found on pages 3 & 6 of the PHE document.“
Separate guidance published by PHE states that “All laboratories should determine the threshold for a positive result at the limit of detection based on the in-use assay” (PHE, “Research and analysis: Assurance of SARS-CoV-2 RNA positive results during periods of low prevalence“, Updated October 16th 2020).
Wales
Regarding the situation in Wales, the Welsh Parliament Research Service has produced a briefing on PCR testing in response to a petition considered by the Petitions Committee on “Abandon the rt-PCR test for covid-19 testing as its unfit for purpose” (see Welsh Parliament Research Service “Testing for COVID-19 using the rt-PCR test“, December 15th 2020). This notes that:
“The TAC report on the RT-PCR test confirmed (p.10) that multiple platforms (representing equipment from different manufacturers) were being used by Public Health Wales (PHW) to support the testing regime. In terms of the number of amplification cycles involved in RT-PCR, PHW responses to Freedom of Information requests (FOI 451 and FOI 461) indicate that: The real-time PCR assays in use in Wales for COVID-19 diagnostics all run for 45 cycles however, the cycle number where the sample is defined as RNA NOT DETECTED varies by platform and target gene detected by the system. This is defined by the manufacturer.“
Asymptomatic testing
The constituent also asked if those who are asymptomatic and receive a positive COVID-19 result are retested. I cannot see anything suggesting that those who are asymptomatic, and are tested using the RT-PCR test, would be retested on receipt of a positive result. There is guidance, however, that those who are asymptomatic and receive a positive result after using a lateral flow test would be required/offered to have a PCR test to confirm the result (see, for example, Birmingham City Council, “Covid-19 lateral flow device (LFD) testing information“, not dated).

Tribute to a Father

Lockdown Sceptics reader Andy Smith has written to tell us the sad story of his dad’s death on Wednesday.

I gave these low grade politicians the benefit of the doubt with their initial three week lock down, in the face of “a new virus”, to “flatten the sombrero and save the NHS from being overrun”. In my mind, a stated incubation period of up to 14 days should have seen seen the methodology of a three week lockdown vindicated. As soon as Johnson and his henchmen continued the lockdown, without evidence to substantiate it, it became obvious to me that we were being governed by the equivalent of a bunch of double glazing salesmen, dating back to the 1970s (apologies to those guys) who refused to leave your home without a pressurised sale.
My dad: Herbert Bruce Smith –“Bruce” to everyone – was taken by ambulance from his home just outside Norwich to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on January 11th with a suspected water infection (diagnosed by the ambulance crew). Upon being admitted to hospital we (my mum Janet, my sister Wendy and I) were horrified that he had been put in a Covid ward being suspected of having the virus. Two days later his test came back negative and he was moved out of the Covid ward into his own room.
He was expected to return home on January 21st but was refused as he had now tested positive for Covid – obviously caught in hospital. I would stress here that I do not blame the hospital. I blame Johnson and Hancock for the way they are governing the NHS and I hope I live long enough to see their day of reckoning when the world regains its common sense.
Bruce was subsequently transferred to Dereham hospital. I am in Costa Rica, Wendy is currently self-isolating in Norwich having tested positive for the virus and my mum was allowed access to my dad’s bedside. We had a family video conference call on the morning of February 2nd. It was harrowing because it is a memory of my dad that is not consistent with his life and it is one that my mum, Wendy and I will replace in our minds with much better ones over time.
Today, February 3rd, Bruce (husband of my mum for 68 years and our dad) died. What world are we living in where travel and quarantine restrictions do not allow me to return home and be together with my my mum and my sister to say goodbye to a wonderful man?
My initial observation is that my dad will have contributed to Hancock’s statistics twice, firstly testing positive in hospital and secondly his death certificate will, I am sure, record the virus as the cause of death.
Like many families, I do not want my father to become another Government statistic, so I hope you publish this as a tribute not only to “Bruce” but to all the other expendable casualties.

Spot the Pandemic Year

Source: FOI request supplied by a *Lockdown Sceptics* reader

Can the Government Force You to Be Tested?

There follows a guest post by Dr John Fanning, Senior Lecturer in Tort law at the University of Liverpool, addressing the worrying prospect of forced testing for COVID-19.

The Department of Health announced this week that it will deploy door-to-door “surge testing” in parts of England to “monitor and suppress” the spread of the South African variant of COVID-19. This “testing blitz” will apply in Bristol and Liverpool and in specified postcode areas in the East of England (EN10), London (W7, N17, CR4), the North West (PR9), the South East (ME15 and GU21) and the West Midlands (WS2). Residents over the age of 16 in these target areas will be asked to take a COVID test, regardless of whether they have symptoms. Liverpool’s return to the naughty step is particularly irksome: it is the second time in three months that the city has hosted a mass asymptomatic testing programme. Last time, the results cast doubt on claims that the city had a serious problem: of the 108,304 asymptomatic people tested in Liverpool between November 6th and 26th 2020, 703 tested positive for COVID-19 – or 0.6%. This time, health officials in Liverpool and in other “surge” areas will ask residents to take a test, perhaps even on their doorstep, to “come down hard” on the new variant.

All this raises an interesting question: if a health official knocks on your door, do you have to be tested? As things stand, it doesn’t appear so. In general, anyone who “inflicts” unlawful force on another person commits the tort of battery (Collins v Wilcock [1984] 1 WLR 1172), sometimes also known as a “trespass”. Any form of bodily contact exceeding the jostling of (normal) everyday life will qualify as a trespass; e.g. a punch in the face, an unwanted kiss, a swab forced up the nose, and so on. What makes the “infliction” of force lawful is the presence of the other person’s consent. This is why a doctor must be sure that she/he has a patient’s consent before beginning a medical examination or administering treatment – without it, she/he will be acting unlawfully. In spite of the Health Secretary’s gung-ho rhetoric and the impression cultivated by the media, the mass testing programme seems ultimately to rely on the consent of its participants: the Department of Health “strongly encourages” people in the target areas to participate and talks of tests being “offered” to those who must leave their homes for essential reasons. The Government evidently prefers the ‘carrot’ approach, perhaps fearing the optics of a scheme buttressed by compulsion. Mercifully, the prospect of being wrestled to the ground as a local authority functionary forces a swab down your throat remains – at least for now – the stuff of libertarian nightmares.

The problem is that the Government does have a “big stick” at its disposal in the form of the Coronavirus Act 2020. Schedule 21 to that Act contains powers that the state can deploy against “potentially infectious persons”; i.e., those who are, or may be, infected or contaminated with coronavirus and who might therefore infect or contaminate others – which, during a global pandemic, could be just about anyone. Where a public health officer or a police constable considers it “necessary and proportionate” in the interests of the person, for the protection of others, or for the maintenance of public health, she/he can deploy the powers under Schedule 21. These include the power to remove a potentially infectious person to a place for “suitable screening and assessment” (para.6), to hold that person at that place for up to 48 hours (if held by a public health officer) (para.9) or for renewable 24-hour periods (if held by a police constable) (para.13), to require that person to provide a biological sample (para.10), and, in the event of a positive test result, to detain that person for up to 14 days (paras. 14 and 15). A failure to comply without reasonable excuse with these requirements will constitute a criminal offence (para. 23).

As far as I can tell, none of these Schedule 21 powers has been invoked in England – they are, if you like, “plugged in” but the Health Secretary is yet to switch them on. If they were engaged, however, a person who refused to submit to a doorstep test could potentially be arrested, taken to a suitable facility, and required by law to undergo COVID-19 testing. The imagery this evokes is utterly chilling; the Coronavirus Act is like a dystopian fantasy in statutory form. There are few laws on the books that can rival it. I suspect only the Mental Health Act 1983 – which allows doctors to detain persons with mental disorders and forcibly treat them in hospital – could be said, pound for pound, to be more coercive. This raises an interesting question about why the Government believed that such a high degree of coercion was necessary in the first place. The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, enacted with outbreaks of “notifiable” diseases like anthrax, plague and smallpox in mind, makes its powers to remove, isolate and detain infectious people contingent upon a magistrate’s warrant. What is it about COVID-19 that justified a more robust legislative response than that afforded to smallpox? Why are the liberties of a person suffering from a disease with a 30% mortality rate afforded greater protection by the law than those of a person with an illness that kills only around 1% of the people it infects? Schedule 21 reveals much about the government’s bizarre calculus as it butted the Coronavirus Bill through Parliament in those mad March days.

Sceptics Under Fire

Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson – himself a lockdown supporter – has come to the defence of sceptics in their struggle against Witch-Finder General Neil O’Brien MP in his Telegraph column this week.

Covid is distinguished by how little we still know about it, how even the greatest experts can be confounded. This time last year, experts on the SAGE committee were unanimous in advising against a Wuhan-style lockdown. China had been foolish, said its memo: it was “a near certainty” that a second peak would strike once it unlocked. This did not happen. Jonathan Van-Tam and others rubbished the need for face masks, which are now mandatory. This is not to question any of their credentials: it was a new and fast-moving situation that wrong-footed everyone. Myself very much included.
But rather than emphasise the need to be open-minded, and consider all new angles, we somehow reached a situation where faith in lockdown is complete – and those who question its efficacy are disparaged. This shift is embodied by the behaviour of Neil O’Brien, a think tank chief turned Tory MP, who over the summer started using social media to highlight claims made by critics of lockdown. He applied his forensic mind to the pursuit of errors, and started to acquire quite a following.
But this all mutated into a targeting of academics who had been effectively – and accurately – criticising aspects of lockdown. With some like-minded others, O’Brien created a website listing the offenders and their wrongthink. A new label was applied to the bloggers, journalists and professors: “Covid sceptics”.
One is Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, who balances his academic work with weekend work as an urgent care NHS doctor. When Heneghan spotted flaws in calculating Covid deaths, it led to a change in Government policy. Yet this world-class academic, who in his spare time sees elderly patients suffering from Covid, has found himself denounced.
A few months ago, Heneghan was being consulted by the Prime Minister – who wanted him to test the arguments of the (many) lockdown advocates in Government. Also invited was Sunetra Gupta, a Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford and an energetic critic of lockdown. She now joins Prof Heneghan on the official list of heretics, pilloried on a website whose various sponsors include a well-regarded Tory MP tipped for promotion. It’s all very odd.
Ministers don’t appear to mind the heretic-hunting one bit. When O’Brien’s efforts were hailed as “fantastic” by Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the Commons, it started to look like a semi-authorised campaign against Government critics. It can even claim to be an effective campaign, insofar as the academics in its sights do seem to have taken a lower profile.
The professors might be talking the most appalling rot – or they might come to be completely vindicated. But what matters, and what we’re losing, is the upholding of rigorous debate. The point of Parliament is to talk, hence the name. But when parliamentarians seek to close down discussion (O’Brien has said he won’t debate Heneghan so as not to give him “the publicity”), then it marks a deeply worrying turn.

Worth reading in full.

Round-up

“Boris Johnson ‘over-cautious’ in keeping schools shut until March 8th” – SAGE member Professor Robert Dingwall breaks ranks to tell the Telegraph: “It’s very hard to resist the conclusion that the English are being a little over-cautious this time. If you have the first three years of primary coming back immediately after half term that is not now going to create an explosive third wave.”
“Households should be allowed to mix again NEXT MONTH, expert says” – Another pro-reopening scientist, Professor Paul Hunter, as reported in the Sun
“Tomorrow will be a good day” – In the latest episode of the Telegraph‘s Planet Normal podcast Allison and Liam speak to Rod Grant, Headteacher of Clifton Hall School, who says he’s more concerned now than he’s ever been in his 30 years in the classroom about the effect the pandemic is having on children’s mental health
“Can we boost immunity with the vaccines we have now?” – Ross Clark in the Spectator on the new Oxford University study that is recruiting 820 volunteers to receive mixed doses of different vaccines to see if this will improve the efficacy. Question is, how can a study of 820 people achieve statistically significant results? Why are the doses only being spaced by two weeks when studies have suggested longer is better? Does the Government care?
“Proof the peak HAS passed: Daily deaths drop to 915 and cases to 20,634 – down 30% from last week – as all but THREE local authorities in England see Covid infections fall and pressure on NHS intensive care units finally eases” – More good news in the Mail
“Even with vaccines, an unreformed NHS may force us back into lockdown” – Sherelle Jacobs in the Telegraph with more cracking analysis: “The bottom line is that the NHS has broken under the weight of our expectations. Thus, further winter lockdowns remain a serious possibility”
“Covid and Kids: The Evidence” – The Swiss Doctor with a characteristically comprehensive and concise rundown of the facts and studies
“Seven indicators that show infections were falling before Lockdown 3.0” – HART member Professor David Paton in the Critic with a thorough summary of the evidence
“Sweden to develop ‘vaccination passports’ that allow you to travel and meet friends” – Depressing report in the Telegraph of the country that prized liberty in 2020 apparently turning its back on it in 2021
“Weaknesses in the Covid data” – In the latest episode of the Pandemic Podcast, Andy is joined by Emily Barley, co-founder of the Covid Data Dashboard
“A good citizen or a badass. How to choose” – Antonia Rolls ponders what really makes a good citizen in Covid land
“Why schools must open – and stay open” – Tim Black in spiked says we need to treat schools as we do hospitals and supermarkets – too important to do without
“Flawed democracy” – Strong leader article in Spectator Australia coming to the defence of Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly and his opposition to masks and support for Covid treatments such as HCQ and ivermectin
“WHO team in Wuhan sees data ‘no one has seen before’ – and does not rule out coronavirus escaped from a lab” – Sky News update on the investigations into the virus’s origin
“Macron’s Lockdown Conundrum Will Decide France’s Recession Fate” – To lock down or not to lock down, that is the question, says William Horobin in Bloomberg
“The Cost of Lockdown” – New site cataloguing the collateral damage
“Israel’s rapid rollout provides the first real-world proof that COVID vaccination works as well as promised” – Despite current high infection levels, a large-scale investigation of 163,000 people finds that those not vaccinated were 11 times more likely to test positive than those vaccinated, Yahoo! News reports
“The impact of national non-pharmaceutical interventions (‘lockdowns’) on the presentation of cancer patients” – New peer-reviewed study in ecancer that finds an 18.2% reduction in new cancer diagnoses (987 cancers) in 2020 compared with 2019, particularly prostate (51.4%), gynaecological (29.7%), breast (29.5%) and lung (23.4%) cancers
“Why I refused to clap for Captain Tom” – Beverley Turner in the Mail says she finds it it impossible to view the events surrounding the centenarian’s latter days “without looking through the prism of COVID-19, the Government’s response to it and the various ways in which our country has been manipulated and controlled with no clear metrics to escaping lockdowns”
“The nonsense of ‘unessential work’” – Michael Curzon in Bournbrook on a very dubious distinction
Life has returned to normal in the Isle of Man, save for the fact that visitors from the mainland aren’t allowed

https://twitter.com/joshuastokesitv/status/1356975403173371904?s=21

Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers

Three today: “Boy in a bubble” by Paul Simon, “Let Us Out” by Marble Statues and “What the world is waiting for” by the Stone Roses.

Love in the Time of Covid

Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell in *The Americans*

We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums as well as post comments below the line, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email Lockdown Sceptics here.

Woke Gobbledegook

We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, we bring you the story of Jess Krug, the white professor who posed as black for years, until she came clean last autumn. The Washingtonian has the story.

“I am a coward.” Jessica Krug’s confession started ricocheting across screens one brutally muggy afternoon in late-summer Washington. “For the better part of my adult life,” it began, “every move I’ve made, every relationship I’ve formed, has been rooted in the napalm toxic soil of lies.” Krug, a faculty member at George Washington University, had taken to Medium, the online forum, to reveal a stunning fabrication. Throughout her entire career in academia, the professor of African history – a white woman – had been posing as Black and Latina.
“I have thought about ending these lies many times over many years, but my cowardice was always more powerful than my ethics. I know right from wrong. I know history. I know power. I am a coward,” she wrote. “You should absolutely cancel me, and I absolutely cancel myself.”
The statement, posted September 3rd, 2020, went viral immediately, unleashing a tidal wave of Oh, my Gods across the text chains of Krug’s GW colleagues and other academics. “We were all blindsided,” says GW history-department chair Daniel Schwartz. Distraught emails from Krug’s students – less than a week into a virtual semester already upended by the coronavirus pandemic – began piling up in faculty in-boxes. Meanwhile, an online mob went to work churning up old photos of Krug and tanking the Amazon ratings of her book. By the end of the day, a now-infamous video of Krug calling herself “Jess La Bombalera” and speaking in a D-list imitation Bronx accent was all over the internet.
The next morning, Schwartz convened an emergency staff meeting on Zoom. The initial shock of their colleague’s revelation had quickly given way to anger, and now the GW professors who logged on were unanimous: The department should demand Krug’s resignation right away. If she refused, they’d call for the university to rescind her tenure and fire her. That afternoon, they issued their ultimatum in a public statement. Five days later, Krug quit.
It was a dizzyingly fast fall for a woman who’d been among the most promising young scholars in her field. The 38-year-old had a PhD from one of the nation’s most prestigious African-history programs. She’d been a fellow at New York’s famed Schomburg Center, done research on three continents, and garnered wide praise for her book. She’d achieved all of it, as far as her GW colleagues knew, despite an upbringing that was nothing short of tragic. As Krug told it, she’d been raised in the Bronx, in “the hood.” Her Puerto Rican mother was a drug addict and abusive.
The tale was just the latest version of one Krug had been evolving for more than 15 years, swapping varied, gruesome particulars into the made-up backstory (a rape, a paternal abandonment) for different audiences. It was a heart-tugger – and, it turns out, incredibly flimsy. Minimal online sleuthing would have unravelled any of the lies in minutes—something Krug, who was still an undergrad when Facebook debuted, surely knew. But she’d also learned that the harrowing history she’d crafted was a useful line of defence against the kind of probing that could have easily exposed her. After all, who wanted to pry into such a delicate situation?
“To everyone who trusted me, who fought for me, who vouched for me, who loved me, who is feeling shock and betrayal and rage and bone marrow deep hurt and confusion, violation in this world and beyond: I beg you, please, do not question your own judgment or doubt yourself,” Krug wrote in her confession. “You were not naive. I was audaciously deceptive.”

Worth reading in full.

“Mask Exempt” Lanyards

We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to obtain a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card – because wearing a mask causes them “severe distress”, for instance. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and the Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. And if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.

And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here and Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson’s Spectator article about the Danish mask study here.

The Great Barrington Declaration

You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over three quarters of a million signatures.

Update: The authors of the GBD have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.

Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.

Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.

Judicial Reviews Against the Government

There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.

The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road. The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. You can read about that and contribute here.

Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.

There’s the GoodLawProject and Runnymede Trust’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.

Scottish Church leaders from a range of Christian denominations have launched legal action, supported by the Christian Legal Centre against the Scottish Government’s attempt to close churches in Scotland for the first time since the the Stuart kings in the 17th century. The church leaders emphasised it is a disproportionate step, and one which has serious implications for freedom of religion.” Further information available here.

There’s the class action lawsuit being brought by Dr Reiner Fuellmich and his team in various countries against “the manufacturers and sellers of the defective product, PCR tests”. Dr Fuellmich explains the lawsuit in this video. Dr Fuellmich has also served cease and desist papers on Professor Christian Drosten, co-author of the Corman-Drosten paper which was the first and WHO-recommended PCR protocol for detection of SARS-CoV-2. That paper, which was pivotal to the roll out of mass PCR testing, was submitted to the journal Eurosurveillance on January 21st and accepted following peer review on January 22nd. The paper has been critically reviewed here by Pieter Borger and colleagues, who have also submitted a retraction request. UPDATE: The retraction request was rejected yesterday.

And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.

Samaritans

Shameless Begging Bit

And Finally…

In his Spectator column this week, Toby suspects he might not be first in line for a peerage from Boris, despite a promising start.

Watching Lord Hannan of Kingsclere being introduced in the House of Lords on Monday was a bittersweet moment. On the one hand, I’m delighted for Dan. He is one of the heroes of Brexit, and his impromptu speech about Margaret Thatcher in the pub following her memorial service brought a tear to my eye (you can find his speech on YouTube). But on the other, I can’t help thinking: where’s my bloody peerage? I’ve edited this and that, co-founded four free schools, served on the boards of numerous charities and set up the Free Speech Union. I was the chief exec of a high-profile charity, for Christ’s sake, and my immediate predecessor got a CBE. I haven’t even got a lousy MBE. All the more surprising given that I must be one of the few potential recipients who wouldn’t denounce the British Empire as soon as he pocketed the gong.
I thought my elevation to the Lords might happen when Boris became Prime Minister. Up until that point, I’d given him more tobacco enemas than any other journalist in Fleet Street. (Blown smoke up his arse.) I even wrote a 5,000-word hagiography for an Australian magazine entitled “Cometh the hour, cometh the man“. Indeed, I laid on the oil so thick in that piece I’m now worried that when I’m standing in front of St Peter at the Pearly Gates he’s going to bring it up: “You did plenty of good works, you’ve been a decent husband and father and you always gave money to beggars. But on the other hand, you did write that 5,000-word piece about Boris in which you compared him to Nietzsche’s Übermensch. Sorry mate, it’s down you go.”
It was Boris who got my hopes up. In September of 2011, when he was Mayor of London, he opened the first free school I helped set up. He made quite a good joke as he cut the ribbon. ‘The Secretary of State for Education has given a new word to the English language,’ he said, referring to our mutual friend. “We give, they gave, he Gove – he Gove us this school.”
Afterwards, as he was getting into his chauffeur-driven car, he asked me if I’d like to be in the House of Lords. “We need more people like you,” he said.
“Don’t I have to give a million quid to the Tory party first?”
“Leave it with me,” he said, touching his nose.

Problem is, then came Covid.

Given how critical I’ve been of Boris since the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis, I’ve now abandoned all hope. Bloody typical of me. I’ve been a massive Boris backer since I campaigned for him to become president of the Oxford Union in 1985; then, 35 years later, when he’s finally in a position to reward his loyal supporters, I start attacking him in the press.
It was the same story with David Cameron. We were at Brasenose together and when he was still prime minister I told him about the shock I’d received when I returned for a college reunion and Dave Ramsden – a contemporary of ours and now deputy governor of the Bank of England – let slip he’d been given a knighthood. “Come on, Prime Minister,” I said. “You’ve got to stick me in the Lords so I can one-up him at the next Brase-nose gaudy.” He laughed, but I told him I was in deadly earnest. I thought there might be a sliver of a chance until we ended up on different sides during the EU referendum. Another bridge burnt.

Worth reading in full.

/ 5 February 2021 • 04.27

1635 comments

Latest News

Lockdown 2.0 to End in Tiers

Boris is expected to announce his post-lockdown Covid plans on Monday. The Telegraph has the details.

England’s national lockdown will end on Dec 2nd but be replaced by a new harsher three-tier system, Boris Johnson will announce on Monday.
More areas will be placed into the higher tiers than before the lockdown after warnings from SAGE scientists that the previous levels of restrictions were not strong enough and a tougher regional approach was needed.
The Telegraph can also reveal that everywhere from factories and offices to towns and cities will be blitzed with mass testing if cases start to rise, under plans to be set out this week.
The Prime Minister’s “Covid winter plan” is expected to place more areas into the higher tiers to ensure further restrictions are not needed.
While some local measures will be similar to those in the previous system, some tiers will be strengthened to safeguard the gains made during the national lockdown.
Last night it emerged that the 10pm curfew for restaurants and pubs – which has been severely criticised by Tory MPs – is likely to be extended to 11pm when the tiers are published on Monday.
Final details will be signed off at a meeting of the Cabinet today. Details of the new tougher tiers system, which comes into force on Dec 3rd, will be announced on Monday, with the final decision on which areas are in which tiers on Thursday. The plan will set out how people will be able to spend their Christmas, but ministers have made clear that the festive season will be different to normal, with some restrictions expected to remain in place.

This is sad news indeed, not least as it suggests the lockdown logic of the likes of Professor Ferguson is still dominating Downing Street thinking, with small relief to be taken from the curfew on bars being moved to 11pm. Happily it looks like Boris can expect stiff resistance from the Conservative back benches.

Boris Johnson’s plans for a new toughened three-tiered system to replace the national lockdown next week is under threat after 70 Conservative MPs threatened to veto the plans in Parliament. The Tory MPs on Saturday wrote to the Prime Minister saying they could not support further new restrictions if the Government does not publish an economic analysis of the impact of the restrictions… The number of signatories to the letter is more than enough than the 43 Tory MPs to defeat the Government’s 85-strong working majority in the Commons if Labour votes against the plans when they are put to MPs next week.
Referring to the previous tiered system of restrictions, which were not as onerous as the ones set to be proposed this week, the Conservative MPs told Mr Johnson: “The tiered restrictions approach in principle attempts to link virus prevalence with measures to tackle it, but it’s vital we remember always that even the tiered system of restrictions infringes deeply upon people’s lives with huge health and economic costs.”

It is also worth listening to the Planet Normal podcast interview with Steve Baker, Vice-Char of the Covid Recovery group, on the prospects of a back bench rebellion.

Stop Press: A Telegraph survey has found that one in four will break the rules at Christmas.

There is No Asymptomatic Spread

A new paper in Nature has struck a blow against the Covid orthodoxy of asymptomatic spread. Following the lockdown, the city government of Wuhan conducted a city-wide nucleic acid screening for SARS-CoV-2. It was carried out on an impressive scale:

There were 10,652,513 eligible people aged ≥6 years in Wuhan (94.1% of the total population). The nucleic acid screening was completed in 19 days (from May 14th, 2020 to Jun 1st, 2020), and tested a total of 9,899,828 persons from the 10,652,513 eligible people (participation rate, 92.9%). Of the 9899,828 participants, 9,865,404 had no previous diagnosis of COVID-19, and 34,424 were recovered COVID-19 patients.

The results make good reading for lockdown sceptics.

The detection rate of asymptomatic positive cases was very low, and there was no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced close contacts. There were no asymptomatic positive cases in 96.4% of the residential communities.
Previous studies have shown that asymptomatic individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus were infectious, and might subsequently become symptomatic. Compared with symptomatic patients, asymptomatic infected persons generally have low quantity of viral loads and a short duration of viral shedding, which decrease the transmission risk of SARS-CoV-2. In the present study, virus culture was carried out on samples from asymptomatic positive cases, and found no viable SARS-CoV-2 virus. All close contacts of the asymptomatic positive cases tested negative, indicating that the asymptomatic positive cases detected in this study were unlikely to be infectious.

The report in Nature is a bit technical, but very much worth reading in full.

Lockdown Sceptics readers will recall that Dr Maria van Kerkhove, the technical lead of COVID-19 response and the head of the emerging diseases and zoonosis unit at the World Health Organisation, said the same thing about asymptomatic transmission at a WHO press conference on June 8th:

Question: It’s a question about asymptomatic transmission, if I may. I know the WHO’s previously said there are no documented cases of this. We had a story out of Singapore saying that at least half of the new cases they are seeing have no symptoms and I’m wondering whether its possible this has a bigger role than the WHO initially thought in propagating the pandemic.
Dr Maria Van Kerkhove: We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They are following asymptomatic cases, they are following contacts and they are not finding secondary transmission onward. It’s very rare and much of that is not published in the literature.

The comment drew sharp criticism at the time, and the WHO swiftly explained that there had been a “misunderstanding”. We will look out for a further update.

Stop Press: The Centre for Disease Control might also want to take a look at these results. They have just released new guidance saying that “Most SARS-CoV-2 infections are spread by people without symptoms“. Not in Wuhan they weren’t.

Covid Immunity is for the Long Haul

Another good news study. This time on the long-term immune responses to Covid. Details in Nature:

The immune system’s memory of the new coronavirus lingers for at least six months in most people. Sporadic accounts of coronavirus reinfection and reports of rapidly declining antibody levels have raised concerns that immunity to SARS-CoV-2 could dwindle within weeks of recovery from infection. Shane Crotty at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California and his colleagues analysed markers of the immune response in blood samples from 185 people who had a range of COVID-19 symptoms; 41 study participants were followed for at least 6 months. The team found that participants’ immune responses varied widely. But several components of immune memory of SARS-CoV-2 tended to persist for at least 6 months.

The study has not been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal but it is the most comprehensive long-range study on immune memory to the coronavirus to date. The New York Times has further details.

Eight months after infection, most people who have recovered still have enough immune cells to fend off the virus and prevent illness, the new data show. A slow rate of decline in the short term suggests, happily, that these cells may persist in the body for a very, very long time to come.
“That amount of memory would likely prevent the vast majority of people from getting hospitalized disease, severe disease, for many years,” said Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology who co-led the new study.

The research squares with findings from elsewhere.

The findings are consistent with encouraging evidence emerging from other labs. Researchers at the University of Washington, led by the immunologist Marion Pepper, had earlier shown that certain “memory” cells that were produced following infection with the coronavirus persist for at least three months in the body.
A study published last week also found that people who have recovered from COVID-19 have powerful and protective killer immune cells even when antibodies are not detectable.

This is happy news, but it came as no surprise to Dr Yeadon, commenting on the NYT article:

Genuinely good news, but not a surprise. Per the article, those recovered from SARS still have vigorous T-cell responses 17y later. Humans are good at becoming immune to this virus. That’s great. That’s why vaccines work yet will be needed by so few.
Twitter, @MichaelYeadon3 17 Nov 8.47 pm

The NYT article is worth reading in full.

You can read the study here.

Protests Spreading Faster than the Virus

A protestor holds aloft a quote from Dr Mike Yeadon at a rally in Bournemouth

Hundreds came out to march against the lockdown yesterday in Bournemouth, Liverpool, Basildon and Hyde Park. The Daily Mail has a full report.

At least 22 people have today been arrested after anti-lockdown protesters clashed with police when hundreds took to the streets in an ongoing fight against coronavirus restrictions.
Rallies were held in Bournemouth, London and Liverpool, where a growing crowd chanted “freedom” as they marched through the city centre in the rain this afternoon.
The group in Merseyside were shepherded by police, who later moved in to make arrests, with some demonstrators seen being pepper sprayed as they grappled with officers on the ground. It is thought that the protest began at 1pm and started with around 100 people gathered on Church Street before the group grew significantly in size.
At least 13 people were arrested during the demonstration in Liverpool, Merseyside Police confirmed. Among those detained was a 36 year-old man from Kirkby, who was arrested on suspicion of assault of an emergency worker after an officer was pushed to the chest on Church Street.
Rallies were also held in London, where the Metropolitan Police confirmed four were arrested for breach of COVID-19 regulations after gathering at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park.
Officers confirmed those detained remained in custody this afternoon while the “remainder of the crowd have been dispersed”.
Michael Walsh, of the Central West Command Unit, said: “We take reports of breaches of COVID-19 restrictions seriously. We are still in a pandemic and it is extremely selfish of a small minority of people to carry on without regard for the regulations.”
There were similar scenes on the south coast, with social distancing nowhere to be seen as activists marched through the seaside town of Bournemouth, holding placards reading “freedom” and “the pandemic is over”.

As street protests are repeatedly being met with arrests and dispersal orders, here’s an idea from a reader, previously posted in the comments, but worth flagging here following yesterday’s item.

Shall we set in motion “unarrestable” protests?
Say, on 1/12/20, i.e. before they renew lockdown from December 2nd, an en masse sit in in cars outside of parliament hooting horns.
Or in the queues caused by extra London cycle lanes.
Or on motorways (a go-slow, like when they tried to increase fuel duty).
Or even everyone, everywhere in the country wherever they are but at a given time (will have to be co-ordinated) all hooting their horns.
A bit like the gilets jaune protests but no-one is breaking the law

On the subject of protests, another reader has asked an interesting question.

Just curious in light of all the news about retailers going into administration. Why do you think they are not taking out full-page adverts in the major newspapers to complain about the lockdown?
Locally, various retail-park retailers including the Range, Poundland and B&M are still open and crammed to the gunwales with COVID-19-transmitting (ahem) people bringing their kids for a trip out, while TK Maxx, Debenhams and Ikea are closed.
Why have clothes and shoes shops been closed? Are they not selling essential items? All it’s done is force people who need ‘essential’ coats and shoes into the food retailers. It feels like the major non-food retailers are somehow benefitting from the enforced lockdown. How? Why? And why are the other retailers not complaining loudly?
Your comments welcomed! Sending this to my MP who will ignore it.

If anyone has thoughts on this, and feels like stepping in for the MP, do please get in touch here.

Round-Up

“The infantilising of the population over Covid is both medieval and immoral” – Janet Daley, in the Telegraph, tackling the infantilism lurking beneath the suggestion of a lockdown trade-off for family gatherings at Christmas
“Our lives belong to us, not the state. It’s morally wrong for government control freaks to tell us what can do at Christmas” – The reliably brilliant Lord Sumption in the Mail on Sunday
“Ellen Townsend – how lockdown harms children” – Laura Dodsworth talks to Professor Ellen Townsend of the Self-Harm Research Group at the University of Nottingham on the impact of lockdown on children and young people. Latest edition of her excellent podcast Freethinking
“The real coronavirus scandal is not corruption. It’s shocking state failure” – The Telegraph’s Juliet Samuel in fine form on the saga of PPE procurement
“Almost 200,000 COVID-19 tests are going unused every day” – New update from the Daily Mail on the ongoing palaver that is “test, test, test”
“The blizzard of bogus journalism on Covid” – Blistering piece on the blog of the AIER. Includes recent reporting on the Covid cases in supermarkets in its sights
“Covid updates with Dr Tim Spector” – Excellent interview with Dr Tim Spector of King’s College, London, covering the data collected from his ZOE App and how the actual data differs from Government Reporting. A Must Watch on The Energy Blueprint podcast. Transcript available here
“Talk of ‘beating Covid’ was always nonsense” – Matthew Parris in The Times calling for humility in the debate about Covid
“Not wearing a mask in New York – even on a jog – is akin to sporting a MAGA cap” – Dispiriting story from Rosie Hopegood in the Telegraph on the state of maskism and other Covid restrictions in the Big Apple
“Rishi Sunak plans raid on tax relief for higher earners” – A hint of things to come, reported in The Times
“Most Covid curbs should stay after national shutdown ends or infections will ‘rebound’, Professor Lockdown Neil Ferguson warns” – Our favourite epidemiologist carries on banging his drum
“The Covid Cult” – Watch Tom Woods attack “the greatest public health fiasco in the history of the world”. Includes an entertaining analysis of the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of wearing masks
“More than a QUARTER of students ‘self-censor’ their opinions because they fear their university’s woke cancel culture ” – A Mail on Sunday poll that’s a sad indictment of the state of free speech in our universities
“Ministers need a winter care plan for mental health that’s more than just hot air” – Bryony Gordon in the Telegraph on the need for more action to protect mental health
“Nationwide vaccination could end social distancing in April” – Analysis in the Spectator from James Forsyth. We can only hope that old fashioned common sense will do the job first
“It doesn’t matter how you vote… the Greens always win – as Britain looks more and more like the old East Germany” – Latest from the formidable Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday
“The ridiculous cost of Britain’s cycle lane mayhem: Just one new biker is attracted for every £5,000 spent on empty bikeways” – A cost benefit analysis of the Government’s bike-centred transport policy
“Big Brother fury as the government uses Twitter as a propaganda tool to attack the Mail’s coronavirus analysis” – The Department of Health and Social care attacks Ross Clark’s excellent Covid myth-buster on Twitter and sparks a ferocious backlash
Watch a clip from Toby on Maajid Nawaz’s show on LBC yesterday explaining why censoring anti-vaxxers is a bad idea

https://twitter.com/lbc/status/1330170991272734720?s=21

Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers

Just one song today: “Don’t fence me in” by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters.

Love in the Time of Covid

Sharing stories: Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics. The answer used to be to first click on “Latest News”, then click on the links that came up beside the headline of each story. But we’ve changed that so the link now comes up beside the headline whether you’ve clicked on “Latest News” or you’re just on the Lockdown Sceptics home page. Please do share the stories with your friends and on social media.

Woke Gobbledegook

We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today we’re flagging up an item from the Society books section of the Guardian: “How ‘woke’ became the word of our era.”

But what is ‘woke’? Most online dictionaries define it as a perceived awareness of inequality and other forms of injustice that are normally racial in nature. A few describe the term as characterising people who are merely ‘with it’– as in, every cool kid you knew at uni. And increasingly, these days, many use it as a pejorative term to describe someone who is a slave to identity politics. How can all three possibly be the same? It’s a sensibility, a quality, a state of being, a feeling backed up by a set of actions, sometimes all these things at once.
I can’t think of a word that reflects the era as well as ‘woke’ does. There is its relative newness (it was born and grew up alongside social media), its popularity as a hashtag and its political implications and activist leanings. There’s also its journey from black culture to the internet and mainstream news. All theses qualities are extremely particular to this moment.
Confession: I dislike the word (especially since 2016, when MTV declared the term the new “on fleek”.) Ironic, considering I am textbook woke. I identified with what it was but cringe at what it has come to mean, and bristle at the way the word is now weaponised. The disparity compels me to interrogate the term and its evolution. As Susan Sontag writes in Notes on ‘Camp’, which inspired this essay, “no one who wholeheartedly shares in a given sensibility can analyse it; he can only, whatever his intention, exhibit it. To name a sensibility, to draw its contours and to recount its history, requires a deep sympathy modified by revulsion.” So let’s consider what woke is, and what it isn’t…

If woke gobbledegook is the sort of thing you enjoy, this article is most definitely worth reading in full.

Alternatively, read John Redwood’s latest post on his blog: “Politically correct speaking.”

Stop Press: Another literary giant has fallen foul of woke standards. This time its Ted Hughes. The British Library has flagged the poet as implicated in the slave trade thanks to the actions of a distant ancestor.

“Mask Exempt” Lanyards

Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face masks in shops here.

A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.

If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you want be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.

And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry.

The Great Barrington Declaration

The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched last month and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you Googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)

You can find it here. Please sign it. Now approaching 700,000 signatures.

Update: The authors of the GDB have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.

Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.

Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.

Judicial Reviews Against the Government

There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.

First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here.

Then there’s the Robin Tilbrook case. You can read about that and contribute here.

Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.

The Night Time Industries Association has instructed lawyers to JR any further restrictions on restaurants, pubs and bars.

Christian Concern and over 100 church leaders are JR-ing the Government over its insistence on closing churches during the lockdowns. Read about it h e re.

And last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. You can read about that and make a donation here.

Samaritans

Quotation Corner

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Mark Twain

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay

They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…
Ideology – that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get into the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man, who knows where it hurts, is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialist.
Sir Winston Churchill

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
Richard Feynman

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis

The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
Albert Camus

We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan

Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius

Necessity is the plea for every restriction of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt the Younger, House of Commons 18 November 1783

Shameless Begging Bit

And Finally…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzlD3EwxGXk&feature=emb_logo

Check out this bit from Simon Evans’s set at Comedy Unleashed. He performed the same set at the Free Speech Union’s comedy night, but this was the following day – on November 4th, our last day of freedom. Should raise a smile.

/ 22 November 2020 • 03.28

1609 comments

Latest News

Handy Cock’s Brilliant Solution to Ending the Covid Crisis – Even More Tests!

Matt Hancock’s plans for ramped-up COVID-19 testing were soon underway at a brand new world-class facility with members of the public jubilantly lining up

In a move that will surprise no one, Matt Hancock has announced that the Government will carry out even more tests in an attempt to better understand how prevalent the virus is. The BBC has the story.

The Office for National Statistics’ Infection Survey will test 150,000 people a fortnight in England by October, up from 28,000 now.
The survey is separate from the mass testing programme of people with symptoms to diagnose cases.
For the survey, a random sample of the general population is tested.
That means it can provide estimates for the true spread of the virus.
The diagnostic testing programme, which provides daily totals, largely relies on people with symptoms coming forward.
Some people do not display symptoms when they are infected so the daily totals are an underestimate of the amount of infection that is around.
As part of the expansion of the programme, data will also be gathered in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the survey was the “single most important tool” the government had for making policy decisions around coronavirus because it helped it understand how the disease was spreading.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Mr Hancock said expanding the ONS survey would allow the government to be “more accurate and more localised” in its response.
He added that it would help the government with its “biggest challenge”, which was finding people who were asymptomatic but could still pass the virus on.

Finding people who are asymptomatic but who can nonetheless pass the virus on may well be a “challenge”. Let’s not forget that at a World Health Organisation (WHO) press conference on June 8th, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on the pandemic, said the following:

We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They’re following asymptomatic cases, they’re following contacts and they’re not finding secondary transmission onward. It’s very rare and much of that is not published in the literature.
From the papers that are published there’s one that came out from Singapore looking at a long-term care facility. There are some household transmission studies where you follow individuals over time and you look at the proportion of those that transmit onwards.
We are constantly looking at this data and we’re trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question. It still appears to be rare that an asymptomatic individual actually transmits onward.

The WHO immediately attempted to “clarify” Dr Van Kerkhove’s comments, saying it simply didn’t know whether asymptomatic people are infectious because not enough studies have been done (even though those that have been done show there’s little or no secondary transmission). And here’s some new evidence – a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on August 13th.

In this study, a team of Chinese researchers looked at 3,410 close contacts between infected and uninfected people that mainly took place in Guangzhou. That is, they looked at the contact that 391 infected people (some symptomatic, some asymptomatic) had had with 3,410 other people. They found that of these 3,410, 127 became infected. But here’s the kicker: 126 of them were infected by symptomatic people and only one by an asymptomatic person. And to infect that one person, the asymptomatic group had to have close contact with 305 other people. So that’s a secondary transmission rate for asymptomatic people of 1:305.

The researchers conclude:

Our results showed that patients with COVID-19 who had more severe symptoms had a higher transmission capacity, whereas transmission capacity from asymptomatic cases was limited. This supports the view of the World Health Organization that asymptomatic cases were not the major drivers of the overall epidemic dynamics.

Limited! That’s one way of putting it. Hat tip to Phil Kerpen, who flagged up this study on Twitter yesterday.

Incidentally, one of the researchers’ findings, duplicated numerous times in other studies, is that the secondary attack rate was highest in household settings. Does this mean that locking people down in their homes, making transmission within households much more likely, may not have been such a good idea? Who would’ve thunk it!

New Zealand Lockdown Unlawful

The Toothy Tyrant wipes away a tear after losing in the High Court to a plucky lockdown sceptic

Congratulations are due to Andrew Borrowdale, a Kiwi lawyer who brought a Judicial Review against the New Zealand Government alleging, among other things, that the restrictions introduced by the Director-General of Health on March 26th were unlawful. The High Court released its judgment today and found that, on that point at least, Borrowdale is correct. Here is the relevant paragraph:

By various public and widely publicised announcements made between March 26th and April 3rd 2020 in response to the COVID-19 public health crisis, members of the executive branch of the New Zealand Government stated or implied that, for that nine-day period, subject to limited exceptions, all New Zealanders were required by law to stay at home and in their “bubbles” when there was no such requirement. Those announcements had the effect of limiting certain rights and freedoms affirmed by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 including, in particular, the rights to freedom of movement, peaceful assembly and association. While there is no question that the requirement was a necessary, reasonable and proportionate response to the COVID-19 crisis at that time, the requirement was not prescribed by law and was therefore contrary to s 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

I like that final sentence – no question indeed! Needless to say, the NZ Government has since passed a law prescribing the draconian rules so any attempt to JR the present restrictions would probably fail. Nonetheless, Borrowdale has scored a significant victory, showing that – for nine days at least – Saint Jacinda was in breach of the NZ Bill of Rights.

Andrew Borrowdale is my Sceptic of the Week.

Ship of Fools

There’s a good piece by the Telegraph’s Jeremy Warner on the hapless fools running the country.

In Plato’s The Republic, Socrates describes a ship on which the sailors mutiny and try to pilot the vessel with no knowledge of “the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his [a pilot’s] art”. Success on this “Ship of Fools” is defined not by having the skills to navigate the vessel but only by the ability to persuade others that such skills aren’t actually necessary and that the job can be done regardless.
The story is intended as an allegory on the downsides of democracy, of the danger that in such a system of government, ignorant fools elect persuasive fools and are then led to ruin. After the Government’s latest shambolic, Covid-related failing, it seems an appropriate description of today’s political leadership.
I’ve used it before, admittedly, but make no apology for repetition; each day brings further confirmation of its legitimacy. No doubt much of the blame for the myriad misjudgments lies with the incompetence of the public sector and its accompanying quangocracy, the latter seemingly deliberately created to absolve the politicians from responsibility for day-to-day management. However, the fish rots from the head. Buck-passing is itself a symptom of poor leadership.

After giving numerous examples of the Government’s financial incontinence and warning of the dire reckoning to come, Warner says we shouldn’t expect a policy shift any time soon.

Ministers cannot bring themselves to admit they got the Covid response wrong. Too many egos, too many careers are now fully invested in the strategy adopted. Rudderless, the ship of fools sails on.

Warner’s piece reminded me of the verdict a reader sent in yesterday, summing up why the Government, its most senior officials and their advisors have made so many mistakes:

It’s what’s to be expected when you place incompetent people in positions where they have authority, but no real responsibility, where there are no sanctions for poor performance and where people do their best rather than doing what they’re best at.

If you think that doesn’t apply to senior civil servants, think again. Today I’ve published a piece by an anonymous senior civil servant on how Whitehall has mismanaged the crisis. Here’s an extract:

There are few among our political elite and the supporting Senior Civil Service who have STEM degrees and the consequence of this narrow pool is a failure to understand basic concepts, e.g. they believe “the science is settled” when it comes to climate change, and that they’re “following the science” regarding COVID-19. What they fail to appreciate is that science is rarely settled. By its nature, it is about investigating and challenging assumptions, collecting and evaluating evidence to test hypotheses, and seeking to avoid bias and misrepresentation of results. The current narrative regarding testing and ‘cases’ is a classic example of this lack of numeracy and statistical knowledge. If you test more you are likely to find more occurrences and they may be actual positives or false positives.

Worth reading in full if you want to understand why the Government has made such a complete hash of everything.

Ireland Introduces More Pointless “Containment” Measures

“Yes, this is the Taoiseach. I’m here with my Keystone Kabinet. How can I help?”

The Government of Ireland has announced another raft of measures prompted by an uptick in the number of cases – 533 last week, up from a low of 61.

The measures include:

All outdoor events limited to 15 people, down from 200
Indoor events limited to six people, reduced from 50
All visits to homes limited to six people from no more than three households, whether indoors or outdoors
Football matches and other sporting fixtures can only take place behind closed doors
Restaurants and bars can remain open, but must close by 11.30pm

Needless to say, the rise in cases is almost certainly due to a rise in the number of PCR tests being done. In the week from August 10th to 16th, more than 50,000 tests were carried out, a significant increase.

As of Noon today, the total number of cases in Ireland is 27,499 and the total number of deaths 1,775.

Stop Press: I suggest the Taoiseach and his Keystone Kabinet read this piece in the Conversation entitled “Seven Ways to Manage Your Coronaphobia“.

Supermarket Sales Decline, Thanks to Mandatory Face Nappies

Colour me shocked. According to Kantar, there were two million fewer supermarket visits after mandatory face coverings were introduced in England and Scotland. The Guardian has the story.

Supermarket sales have begun to slow in Great Britain since the easing of lockdown restrictions, as the introduction of compulsory face coverings in stores in England and Scotland initially deterred some shoppers.
Growth in total take-home grocery sales slowed to 14.4% year-on-year in the three months to August 9th, from 17% in the three months to July 12th. Supermarkets felt the impact as more shops and hospitality venues reopened, making consumers less reliant on food retailers, according to the data analysis firm Kantar, which examined shopping trends in England, Scotland and Wales.
Kantar said there were two million fewer supermarket visits in the week after the face-covering rule was introduced in England than otherwise have been expected.

Meanwhile, online shopping continues its upward trajectory, with a record 13.5% of all grocery sales ordered through the internet.

The online delivery firm Ocado, which will start a new contract supplying Marks & Spencer food instead of Waitrose products from September 1st, has been a significant beneficiary of the switch to online food shopping, according to Kantar.
Ocado had a 1.8% share of the grocery market in the 12 weeks to August 9th, up from 1.4% a year earlier. Its sales were up 45.5%, compared with the same period last year.

False Positives in Care Homes

A reader has made an interesting observation about his mother’s care home.

I want to tell you about the care home my mother lives in. As you know, residents are effectively imprisoned in these for the foreseeable future. The residents undergo Covid tests and my mother was recently tested positive and placed in isolation for 14 days as per PHE’s rules, I am told. She has no symptoms, has not been outside the home, and if she has Covid it can only be through transmission from a member of staff. Under these circumstances one would expect to see a widespread outbreak in that home. There is not.
There have been similar occurrences there recently and the care home has admitted that there has been no Covid outbreak and confessed to a number of false positive test results. It would seem from my simple analysis that at this home the number of positive test results that are actually false positives is 100%, because no one testing positive has had any symptoms of COVID-19.
If this is applied to community testing, what does this say about the apparent increased number of infections (cases)?

The reader may be on to something. I’ve published a piece on false positives today by a Professor of Genetics who believes that about 0.17% of tests yield false positives, almost certainly due to contamination in the PCR testing labs. Here’s his conclusion:

A hidden/ignored contamination positive rate of 0.17% would lead to authorities declaring (on average) a minimum of 170’cases’ per 100,000 tests. Curiously, this is exactly the kind of rate that is being declared in many regions, and is very close to the level at which travel quarantines kick in.

Worth reading in full.

Give Yourselves a Smoked Salmon Treat

I’ve never done this before, but I’m going to give my readers a food tip: A side of smoked salmon from Bleiker’s, a family business established in 1993 by Jürg Bleiker, a Swiss chef who settled in the Yorkshire Dales. I ordered a side of the Yorkshire peat-smoked salmon a couple of months ago and it was so good I’ve just ordered it again. Postage and packing is free. Place your order here. Highly recommended.

Postcard From the Algarve

A reader has sent me a short postcard from the Algarve. Sounds heavenly.

We are very lucky to have a property in the Algarve but sadly had to make the decision to come on holiday for the summer without the children and grandchildren as Portugal is still on the naughty list and they are unable to quarantine due to not being able to work from home.
All the cafes, restaurants, shops and beaches are open and dare I say it it but life is so lovely and normal here. People do not jump six feet in the air when you walk past them but are more than happy to pass the time of day.
Sitting down at a cafe you are not presented with a sheet of paper with all the new government restrictions and asked for your name and mobile number. You’re presented with a menu.
The only negative is that you have to pop a mask on in the shops and if you go into a restaurant to pay the bill. But even we have decided that it’s a small price to pay to be treated like a human being again and to have our sanity back.

Round-Up

‘Are you sitting comfortably? This is Not the Six O’Clock News‘ – Must-read column by Allison Pearson in which she imagines what a conversation between a numerate Hugh Pym and his innumerate co-newsreader Sophie Raworth would be like on the BBC Six O’Clock News. Comments are hilarious too. And here’s a YouTube video of an actual interview between a Raworth-like, bedwetting newsreader on Spanish TV and a hospital doctor who knows his onions. It’s spookily like Pearson’s imaginary exchange
‘Argonaut’s Norris: “Fraud” lockdown was the “biggest policy error since WWI”‘ – Good piece in Investment Week about top financier and leading lockdown sceptic Barry Norris
‘Gaining Immunity From Propaganda‘ – YouTube video in with Tony Heller debunks the CDC’s claim that Covid antibodies only give you immunity for three months
‘Scientists see signs of lasting immunity to COVID-19, even after mild infections‘ – And here’s a new paper showing the CDC is wrong – once you’ve had it, you’re immune
‘NYC is dead forever – here’s why‘ – Depressing blog post by James Altucher on why New York is unlikely to ever recover from being locked down
‘Is there science or fiction behind the Government’s COVID-19 decisions?‘ – Good article by Oliver Watson in Hector Drummond Magazine
‘Gavin Williamson may sound like a nitwit… but has he just pulled off a strategic masterstroke?‘ – Funny piece from Michael Deacon, the Telegraph‘s parliamentary sketch writer
‘Mel Brooks is cancelled‘ – Not a spoof – it’s actually true. HBO Max forces anyone watching the film to endure a three-minute health warning from a film professor, according to Paul du Quenoy in the Critic
‘We can’t lock down forever‘ – Good piece by Fraser Myers in Spiked on the ineffectiveness of the lockdowns in Argentina and Peru, among other places
‘Farewell, Public Health England‘ – It’s good riddance to PHE from Christopher Snowdon, Britain’s leading opponent of the nanny state
‘Dido Harding’s unstoppable upward rise is an egregious example of the chumocracy at work‘ – Ross Clark again, this time on Dido Harding, the new head of the Institute for Health Protection, PHE’s successor
‘Why weren’t we wearing masks at the start of the crisis?‘ – And here’s Ross Clark in the Spectator posing a question to which he knows the answer
‘In defence of Claire Fox‘ – The redoubtable Ruth Dudley Edwards comes to the defence of Free Speech Union Advisory Council member Claire Fox
‘History to “vindicate Swedish COVID-19 strategy”‘ – Good piece on Sky News Australia’s Outsiders
‘Countries using hydroxychloroquine have far fewer COVID-19 deaths than countries that don’t, study from Association of American Physicians and Surgeons shows‘ – More evidence HCQ is effective (although treat source with caution)
‘Pizza Express closures: The full list of chain’s restaurants shutting down in the UK‘ – Pizza Express, one of my favourite high street restaurant chains, is closing 73 branches and making 1,100 employees redundant
‘Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional: week ending August 7th 2020‘ – The ONS’s weekly data release showing deaths in Week 32 were below the five-year average for the eighth week in a row. Incidentally, all-cause mortality in private homes was 702 higher in Week 32 than the five-year average. Why? Collateral damage from the lockdown. More on that here

Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers

Two today: “Lousy Reputation” by We Are Scientists and “No More Waves” by Nigel.

Love in the Time of Covid

We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums that are now open, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We’ve also just introduced a section where people can arrange to meet up for non-romantic purposes. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.

Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened

A few months ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have re-opened, 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 opened near you.

Now that non-essential shops have re-opened – or most of them, anyway – we’re focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. As of July 4th, many of them have re-opened too, but not all (and some of them are at risk of having to close again). 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 – particularly if they’re not insisting on face masks! Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.

A reader has made a good suggestion.

I was wondering if your map of businesses who have opened could be expanded to businesses who display “No mask? We won’t ask” sign? That would allow us mask-refusers to know where we are safe to visit without risking a drama with a Covid loon, and also reward those plucky businesses with our custom. It’s been interesting to see how the Covid terror only seems to last as long as financial necessity allows (note previously hysterical pub landlords get much less worried when they are allowed to re-open) so I’d be interested to see if a line of mask free customers outside one shop tempted its neighbours to risk the plague.

“Mask Exempt” Lanyards

I’ve created a permanent slot down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (now showing it will arrive between Oct 3rd to Oct 13th). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £3.99 from Etsy here.

Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face nappies in shops here (now over 29,500).

A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.

And here’s a round-up of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of mask (threadbare at best).

Stop Press: The BBC has flagged up a story of a mask exempt woman with an autistic child being harangued in a supermarket by a mask Nazi in Whitley Bay. She had a panic attack and had to leave the supermarket. The BBC’s advice, echoed by the National Autistic Society, Asthma UK and the Alzheimer’s Society, is to treat non-mask wearers with courtesy and understanding. Meanwhile, in Connecticut, the Governor has signed an order requiring non-mask wearers to get a note from their doctor to prove they should be exempt.

Shameless Begging Bit

Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is a lot of work (although I have help from several people, including one indefatigable techie who doesn’t want to be named). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here.

And Finally…

/ 19 August 2020 • 15.33

1532 comments

New Oxford Study Confirms Spike in Infections Following Vaccination

We were greeted by good news yesterday. A new UK population study from the University of Oxford, based on the ONS Infection Survey, shows that in fully vaccinated people asymptomatic infections were down 70% and symptomatic infections by 90%. The Telegraph has the story:

In the first large real-world study of the impact of vaccination on the general population, researchers found that the rollout is having a major impact on cutting both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases.
Sarah Walker, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at Oxford and Chief Investigator on the Office for National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Survey, said that Britain had “moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation” where the virus is circulating at a low, largely controllable level in the community.
The new research, based on throat swabs from 373,402 people between December 1st last year and April 3rd, found three weeks after one dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca jab, symptomatic infections fell by 74% and infections without symptoms by 57%.
By two doses, asymptomatic infections were down 70% and symptomatic by 90%.

But is it all as it seems? I wrote last week about vaccine studies that have glaring issues that everyone, including the authors, seem content to gloss over. Sadly, the same appears to be true of this study.

Here’s one of the key figures. Look at diagram A in the top left. The dots represent the infection rate in seven different groups of people defined by how long before or after vaccination they are and whether they’ve had Covid before.

It starts at the top with the group of people who are more than 21 days prior to being vaccinated and who haven’t had Covid before (and who may not have a vaccine booked or even be eligible yet for a vaccine). This group is the baseline so is given the value 1, and the number of infections in other groups are compared to this as a proportion. So the next group are those people who are less than 21 days before their first jab and who haven’t had Covid before, and they had 0.28 of the rate of infections that the first group had (once adjusted for various confounding factors such as location, age and sex).

This is the first oddity. Why do those less than three weeks before their first jab have around a quarter of the infections of those more than three weeks away from their jab? What is it about crossing that three-week threshold that has such a massive impact on infection risk, by far the biggest effect in the study?

The authors do offer a brief explanation, putting it down to “changes in behaviour due to either receiving the vaccination invitation letter or knowledge that individuals from their age or risk group are about to get vaccinated in their area”. But they offer no evidence of this mass change in behaviour triggered by the approach of the vaccination, and the vaccine invitation letter includes no advice to make any new effort to avoid people. In any case, it means the headline finding of the study should probably have been that being less than three weeks before your jab cuts infections by 72% – even more than being fully vaccinated!

New Oxford Study Confirms Spike in Infections Following VaccinationRead More

/ 24 April 2021 • 02.12

Asymptomatic Spread ONS Vaccines

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