One of the most surprising things to emerge from the pandemic, at least from a lockdown sceptic’s point of view, is how overwhelmingly the British public has backed the lockdowns. For example, a YouGov poll taken in March of 2020 found that 93% of people supported the first lockdown. Another poll taken in January of 2021 found that 85% of people supported the third lockdown.
While some lockdown sceptics claim these polls can’t be trusted, I suspect they’re not too far off the mark. And even if they do overstate support for lockdowns (due to unrepresentative samples or social desirability bias) the true number is unlikely to be more than 10 or 20 percentage points lower.
The high level of public support for lockdowns may explain why they’ve lasted as long as they have. Politics is notoriously short-sighted, so why would the Conservatives ease up on a policy that’s kept them ahead in the polls for most of the last 14 months?
Aside from the public’s longstanding reverence for the NHS, an obvious reason why support for lockdown is so high is that millions of people have been paid 80% of their wages to stay at home. In the absence of the Government’s unprecedented furlough scheme, many of these people would be out of work, and presumably much less supportive of lockdowns.
However, there might be a more important reason why support for lockdown is so high: the public overestimates the risks of COVID-19, especially the risks to young people. Let’s review the evidence.
In July of 2020, the consultancy Kekst CNC ran a poll asking Britons what percentage of the population has died of COVID-19. The correct answer at the time was around 0.1%. However, the median answer among respondents was 1%, and of those who ventured a guess (rather than saying “don’t know”) one in five said at least 6% of the population had died.
Last year, Gallup ran a poll for Franklin Templeton in which they asked Americans what percentage of people who’ve been infected with COVID-19 need to be hospitalised. Less than 20% of respondents gave the correct answer of “1–5%”. And a staggering 35% said at least half of those infected need to be hospitalised. Interestingly, Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to overestimate the risk of hospitalisation, as this chart reveals:
It should be noted that the poll also revealed some underestimation of risks on the part of Republicans. For example, 41% incorrectly stated that flu causes more deaths than COVID-19. This shows that results can vary depending on exactly which question you ask. (Notice that Republicans did overestimate the risk of hospitalisation; just to a lesser extent than Democrats.)
Likewise, a survey carried out by Ipsos MORI for Kings College London asked Britons what are the chances of needing hospital treatment if you catch coronavirus. The median answer among respondents was 30%, and of those who ventured a guess, one in four said the chances are at least 50%.
In March and April of last year, the economist Arthur Attema and colleagues carried out two surveys of the French population: one two weeks after the first lockdown began, and the other two weeks before it ended. They asked respondents, “Out of 100 people who are infected with the Coronavirus, how many of them die from the disease?”
In both surveys, the average answer was 16 (whereas the correct answer for Western populations is less than 1). The fact that the average in the second survey was no lower than the average in the first indicates that people’s understanding of the risks did not improve over time, despite more evidence accumulating that the IFR is less than 1%.
Members of the public seem to have a particularly skewed perception of the risk COVID-19 poses to younger people. The aforementioned Gallup poll asked Americans what percentage of those who’ve died were aged 24 and under. The correct answer at the time was around 0.1%, yet the average answer among Republicans was 8%, while the average among Democrats was 9%.
Likewise, a poll taken by Ipsos MRBI for The Irish Times asked people what percentage of those who’ve died were under the age of 35. The correct answer was around 1%, yet the average among respondents was 12%.
In November of 2020, Savanta ComRes ran a poll on behalf of The Conservative Woman and asked Britons to guess the average age of people who’ve died after testing positive for COVID-19. The correct answer is around 82. However, the median answer among respondents was 65.
Incidentally, one problem with asking people to estimate very small quantities (like the percentage of people who’ve died from COVID-19) is that humans have a tendency to revise small percentages upwards when they’re not sure. This “uncertainty-based rescaling” probably accounts for some of the overestimation in the surveys mentioned above.
However, taking all the evidence together, people – particularly in Britain – do seem to overestimate the risks of COVID-19. And this may help to explain their high level of support for lockdowns.
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Couldnt give a rats arse old boy
I guess the downvoters are protesting the absence of correctly placed apostrophe?
I couldn’t give a rat’s arse either. Trying to buy success, they should have known better.
They bought the contacts. Or rather, not any more.
“It’s politics, man. If you’re hanging on to rising balloon, you’re presented with a difficult decision: let go before it’s too late, or hang on and keep getting higher… posing the question, how long can you keep a grip on the rope?”
Have an upvote Marcus
Thank you, prick. Was it the Withnail & I quote?
…
ICL are in the University Challenge final on BBC2 next Monday. I earnestly hope that they’re trounced by their opponents, Reading University.
And I hope so too, for two reasons, as I’m a maths tutor, and the captain of Reading (Hutchinson) lives near me and teaches four of my Year 9s.
I did an engineering PhD at Imperial.
Great technical uni let down by medical knobs and snowflake admin.
I’m surprised they’re happy to be called ‘Imperial’ what with the association with the British Empire and slavery and all that.
I thought the same with Imperial Leather soap.
OMG both empire and animal skin in a single product – enough to make a woke he/she/them cease washing.
Ha! It’s only a matter of time and an article in the Guardian. Or … maybe they have protection?
It’s early days… Plenty of time for someone, somewhere to want to remove the “Imperial’ bit.
I covered a Q&A talk in their hall at the Sherfield Building once. Was promised certain lighting and seating arrangements. I learned a lot that day…
Please stay in touch with us in the forums oblong when the system crashes and we need kids, nieces and nephews to be taught practicals.
Academia. A bastion of covid nonsense. A consequence of funding, conformity of thought, effeminacy, all of the above?
The education system as a whole is essentially a process for selecting the high functioning conformists in society.
Well it damn well failed with me and many of the rest on here.
Yep. It’s not a perfect process. But it does a pretty good job, I would say.
Wasn’t always that way.
So you don’t think it has a function for the rest of the population who don’t get to boss anybody about and who mostly do the same thing at work every day?
Conformism, to use your terminology, is bashed into littl’uns when they’re five and nowadays younger too.
Once they’ve cashed your fees payment then you can just go and get lost.
Less whinge, more sue. “Loss of enjoyment” is an actionable thing.
Because Ed U Kay Shun
Seems the rot started a long time ago…
My uncle, a graduate of Chemistry from ICL over fifty years ago, is completely spell-bound by the COVID BS. He simply won’t engage in any discussion about it. Tells me I am “behaving terribly”.
As a graduate of chemistry he probably knows little about viruses.
What happens then is the scientist says ‘I’ll trust those that do know’ — in the case of covid this is a mistake, because he’s being denied access to the full spectrum of opinion.
What he should do is employ is ‘generic scientist skills’ to investigate the facts that he does have access to and can interpret, and compare the results with what he’s told.
But for some reason many scientists are unwilling to do this, and will instead just rely on the science-priests’ preachings.
Maybe because they’re not really scientists, but just people with degrees in science subjects.
People with bachelor, even master degrees, don’t really do much scientific enquiry. They just learn a bunch of stuff and show they’ve learned it.
In fact, I would say that intellectual curiosity is by no means a requirement to do well. It may even be a bit of a handicap.
^^^
Absolutely so. My last attempt at studying anything in earnest (at a German university) came to an aprupt end once I noticed that not even the lecturer was familiar with the content of the secondary literature we were supposed to read. Barring COVID, typical students life is (as far as I could determine) drunken partying for two months, memorizing stuff for one month, write it all down from memory in a few days, be off for three months[*] to forget it all again. Repeat.
[*] German academic year which is composed to two so-called semesters of three months with two three month long breaks in between.
I went to “Uni” along with all my peers after Sixth Form. Indebted to the eyeballs, my peers laughed at me when I refused to get a single credit card. The campus had its own branch of NatWest, FFS. They were handing them out like hot cakes.
They all borrowed thousands, handed it all to the “Student” Bar and then urinated or vomited their purchases down the toilet.
I lasted less than a year, it all felt a complete waste of time. Went and got a job. Never felt better.
Sounds like me except the get a job part. I decided to be a rock star instead. You could call that a failed career move. Seems you need talent and perseverance.
I decided to be a famous actor after two years of the job. That didn’t work out either, but I did learn a lot about life!
I think the push for all to have further education has made it a career choice rather than a calling of curiosity and excitement.
No, it’s a philosophy thing, not a scientific knowledge.
Though not a graduate in chemistry, I learned a lot of it as part of my degree but others on the same course as me, who got better qualifications from it, subscribed to the Branch Covidian cultism.
So what? I expect someone with a science degree to not only be expert in their own field but have a pretty impenetrable armour of scientific common sense which should immediately alert them to the slightest whiff of horse shit. There’s always a jolt when you encounter someone with an impressive degree who outside of their field, turns out to be a normie moron.
I expect the opposite — in general, the higher the qualification the less knowledge there is outside of the speciality.
It wasn’t always this way. In my youthful days the intellect at universities was ferocious. Not so much these days — the age of the polymath has pretty much gone.
This is the authoritarian cooperation: “I don’t question your expertise you will not question my expertise”
There seems to be a lot of bad scientists lacking curiosity and having too much trust.
Suggested reading: Carlo Cipolla on stupidity and Gustav Le Bon on crowd psychology.
Herds are always f***ing stupid – whether it’s a herd of lorry drivers, priests, scientists, highly skilled philosophical logicians, people who left formal education without qualifications, people who got PhDs, etc. etc.
Daily Sceptic’s Below The Line is the only crowd I have ever been part of. And it’s hard to be f***ing stupid along with them when your fingers are too big for the bloody touchscreen keyboard.
It’s odd how some seemingly intelligent people have just accepted the narrative (even when illogical) and won’t consider other points of view let alone check the data for themselves.
I guess it is that mass formation psychosis. But why did I do the exact opposite? I’ve never questioned the mainstream until now but covid set off alarm bells. No one was dropping dead around me, it seemed obviously wrong and I simply went and looked at data. Conclusion – no worse than a bad flu season. Then when they kept going I fell down the rabbit hole, well more jumped in looking at everything. Came to some horrible conclusions that simply fit the data and observations better. I still hope I’m wrong.
It’s quite similar to in the USSR, about which it was often observed both inside the country and by those looking at it from the outside that there was extremely strong discouragement of public criticism of ANY aspect of the reigning society, because that would be like pulling on a string and ALL of the lies would start to unravel.
That’s why “glasnost” (“openness”) was such a big thing, why there was even such a concept.
A typical Soviet joke was “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
The word “opposition” was extremely strong in that country, not just before Gorbachev but under his leadership too, right up until near the end of the regime.
There’s no glasnost in Britain. There’s no glasnost in any country in the world right now, on the specific issue of Covid or on anything else that’s important, such as children’s education, or the disgusting and utterly inhuman advance of technology that no decent person who is able to form an opinion about it for themselves would ever want, either for themselves or for future generations.
Nor is the huge social problem which is smartphone addiction – especially among young people – being seriously publicly addressed by any “respectable” group anywhere, as far as I am aware.
Nor is the sky-high level of personal indebtedness in countries where it exists, such as Britain. Even looked at through narrow “economist’s” spectacles, the (related) insane market value of houses isn’t being looked at either. That definitely won’t avoid ending in tears, just as every huge financial bubble does.
Tug on one string and… ?
Orwell was so astute when he wrote that freedom is the freedom to say two plus to makes four.
Two plus to?
Orwell is shaking and rolling, Star
Sorry to distract from your excellent comment about Glasnost. Have a tick from me.
I’m a graduate of IC (BSc Hons ARCS for what it’s worth). We used to do science and were expected to have questioning minds. Soothsaying was not on the curriculum. I’m honestly ashamed to admit to most people now that I was ever near the place.
In other news we’ve just received the following from the Royal Opera House about a performance this weekend. There’s plenty that just won’t let this go, either just plain evil or stupid. Luckily we won’t need to have the debate as we can’t afford those from row stalls seats anyway.
“Some seats in our auditorium are very close to our staff members and artists. Our staff welcome thousands of visitors every day, and we continue committed to the safety of everyone while in our building.
The front row of the Orchestra Stalls, as well as some seats near where our ushers and camera operators sit during the performance are clearly marked with a mask sign, and we ask those sitting in those seats to wear a face covering if you are able to. On behalf of our staff and artists, thank you.”
This obviously works both ways: Staff and artists are very close to members of the auditorium sitting there. Considering that they necessarily talk loudly and might even sing loudly, they should wear face coverings to protect the paying audience, many of which are probably even going to be members of vulnerable groups. Should this render the performance inaudible, staff and artists will – unfortunately – in the long run, need to find a job which doesn’t involve performing on a stage in front of a room full of people.
Judging the quality of output from their departments, I hope the degrees have been printed on something soft, strong, and thoroughly absorbant…
And non-reflective. Makes it easier to show the birthing parents over Zoom.
And featuring a QR code. Everything of any importance simply must have a QR code.
It is about time that people recognised that there’ll be cases of covid in the UK forever — it is not going to be eradicated.
Anyone that uses the excuse ‘there are still cases of covid around’ for whatever activity are being naive.
You’d think that Imperial College would recognise this — but I’m afraid that like establishments everywhere, the upper echelons are a bit thick and don’t get science. IC has it worse because they employ Ferguson who is now in too deep and can’t easily get out of the hole he’s dug by admitting that it was all a terrible over-reaction.
Ferguson is up to his neck in the reset – let’s at least be honest after all this time. The cock-up theory is well past its use by date.
I think it’s about time we realised that certain institutions are quite happy for covid to be around forever, available as a tool to further whatever they want furthered.
Even if the govt said covid was nothing to worry about now, millions would not believe them.
We’re going to be living with corona madness for the rest of our lives, millions in the UK will go to their graves being worried about covid.
A nice current example of that would be
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/31/charging-covid-tests-england-infections
That’s a rundown of everything from start to finish again, with no evidence of having learnt anything about COVID since March 2020. A few key points:
Looking at the picture accomanying this load of venomous and socially (in its intent) extremely harmful tripe suggests that lady may want to get her stomach ulcer (or whatever else she’s suffering from) treated instead of lashing out at others in order to cause them some pain as well. I’d really like to have a personal talk with this female non-human being in order to tell her a little about how it feels to start to doubt if people like her will ever again allow me to meet my parents before they (or I) die because that’s just too unsafe for them.
He’s never had to before, why would he start now? The more wrong he gets it, the more gigs he’s guaranteed by the Profits of Doom.
They get it all right, but their primary motivation is funding streams and BMGF is one huge funding stream. They are official gauleiters of the UK Branch of BMGF propaganda.
Words, apart from FFS, fail me.
How much did Imperial make from this student, Mr Grace, over 3 years?
The headline photo looks like an indoctrination ceremony. A bit worrying Mr. Grace, a Civil Engineering graduate (we need more engineers), hasn’t worked out his age demographic hardly die from Covid-19, but group life insurance companies are paying out from deaths in this young working age group after vaccinations…
Controlled demolition folks.
I wonder how much they paid in tuition for the privilege of having their course delivered over a zoom conference call and then being dictated to about graduation attendance. It seems that authoritarianism as well as Covid is transmissible and virulent.
I have to note the front row, and point out that for many student visitors to these shores, it’s a pure financial transaction: pay money for a degree that gets more money.
The quality of education that they may or may not receive is simply irrelevant, because once you’re in the corporate door, you can fake it until you make it. Purchasing essays is simply costed in to the price.
Mail order degrees should really be the order of the day. Very profitable for those dishing them out, and much cheaper for “students”.
Meagre offerings of a budget, growing pigs, heroes & villains, gammon racism, how brexiteers are perceived, Ukraine and much more+you meet Penny for the first time…enjoy!
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1268768/10348674-ep-45-rishi-s-dirty-dishes
If this is an example of one of the top universities in the UK,then I’m relieved that I left school aged 15 with no qualifications to my name.
ZOE R value has gone below one for the first time this ‘wave’
Has it? I thought it was 1.1 today.
Cut all Central UK Government funding immediately until they reverse this nonsense.
If Ferguson is the best of Imperial who would want to graduate from there anyway?
Lest we forget!
Make £££ by creating bullshit for the government with a computer program you wrote for this purpose and with no responsibility for the real-world effects of that whatsoever[*] is probably many a graduate’s wet dream. People don’t go to university to learn about stuff they’re interested in or to do stuff they care for, they go to uni because they’re from the social stratum where this expected (and can be financed) and ultimatively want to get a work little earn much job by doing that.
[*] for the typical prospective math/ physics/ computer-science graduate, it gets better: And get illegally laid while doing so. What’s not to like?
He studied at Oxford.
but teaches at Imperial
It was a truly great college once.
I can’t help but wonder if Imperial’s fall from sense and truth has been a result of its Chinese connections. I’m out on a limb as I don’t know the current situation but back in the day it had a lot of Chinese students and rumoured funding.
Anyone know its funding breakdown?
Does anyone else remember when there was talk of merging Imperial with UCL, with the LSE probably joining soon after? That was when all three were colleges of London University, before Imperial left.
The merged entity would have been the top research university in the world by some measures.
So you can imagine there’d be opposition from Oxford and Cambridge and probably from across the Atlantic too.
The reason I mention this is because there’s a theory that Glaxo was behind the merger plan.
There are various rumours too about less important aspects, such as that certain parties with strong connections with UCL tried to fool the bods at Imperial about the value of UCL properties in Bloomsbury but the Imperial people found out and got furious.
The 15 perfumed ponce’s
My son attended his graduation from Imperial in October.
The authoritarian communist regime led by the woke American woman in charge dictated that it was unsafe for parents to attend the Royal Albert Hall.
The very same venue that held capacity crowds to music events the day before and the day after.
My son’s experience, as a non-leftie, was one where he had to keep his opinions to himself – and so avoided the university where possible. Luckily his Computing degree is of very good standing and so he can out-earn all the woke left leaning morons!
We need to realise that the UK university system is there to educate foreign kids (many of whom do not have the qualifications they say they have) who pay the exorbitant fees that fuels the production of more left-wing thinking.
It’s time to very heavily regulate these establishments to ensure that British kids get a fair proportion of places.
The college should rebrand themselves as “LIMPerial” now they have completely sold out to the wokerati. Winkers!
It’s odd that Imperial College restrict numbers in the Albert Hall now when you could have crowded in during the Proms or pack yourself now into the Royal Opera House.
I also was baffled by their expression “largely under control”. Does it mean it’s “under control” or not? And what does “under control” mean? As many recover on any day as succumb to the virus? Numbers going down? Numbers going up but not quickly? Zero Covid? Under ten cases? Everyone masked? Everyone jabbed? Everyone masked, jabbed and boostered?