She's also a behavioural psychologist and has no public health or epidemiology qualifications yet is still asked on the media as an "expert". Always introduced as SAGE not the subgroup.
FWIW its her group that wrote the playbook for compliance about needing to make people be afraid and increasing perception of personal risk.
The sage NPI document from March on compliance...
So this whole strategy of over-stating, deliberate scaremongering, dodgy graphs etc all stem from Michie's subgroup.
its not just Mitchie but a bag-full of behavioural scientists from the Behavioural Insights Team and other places. Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), is led by David Halpern who is naturally on SAGE. Its worth looking up their home pages and publications. Behavioural knowledge and psycology of course has great benefits to individuals and groups but the flip side is that is underpins manipulation, propaganda and distortion. It is where such debatable benefits as Crititical Race Theory has come from and the place we were sold masks. and where the term 'covidiots' was coined
'SAGE was put on a pedestal... but their models clearly didn’t reflect reality': Tory MP slams scientific advisers as damning documentary reveals they relied on WIKIPEDIA data and wrongly predicted virus would peak in June
Thank you to the contributors here - some great detailed analysis.
BUT Have we got it wrong?
What I mean to say is - it is pretty obvious, as shown from the posts below, that the reputable data shows that we should not be in a lockdown or anything like it, if we look at the 'final' outcome ie number of deaths currently being stated in the ONS figures - the numbers above the 5 year average are really not that significant, statistically. Certainly not to validate the draconian restrictions that the Government have put in place.
I think we may have been missing the focus of our consternation ie we need move away from the detailed review of the testing procedures, messages from SAGE etc etc. I think the focus of our concern behind why we have these restrictions is unbelievably simple, just HOSPITAL BED CAPACITY. Matt Hancock alluded to this in Radio 4's Todays programme, early this morning:
At the peak of the first outbreak in March time, we had 19,000 people in beds from Covid related illness and currently today we have 18,000.
ie we have nowhere to treat the Covid patients as the infections go up. This is exacerbated when we do not have lockdowns. This along with increasing survival rates ie only 17% of admissions were surviving in the first few weeks of the epidemic whilst now we see most people surviving increases the residence time in hospital and so increases the demand on beds. So basically we are suffering lockdown as we do not have enough beds to treat Covid patients.
I would appreciate contributors thoughts on this idea. If as suggested here that bed capacity is the key issue, then surely aligning our Governments minds to this and finding some innovative solutions eg using empty beds in the unused hotels for Covid patients with minor care requirements should be more useful.
focus of our concern behind why we have these restrictions is unbelievably simple, just HOSPITAL BED CAPACITY. Matt Hancock alluded to this in Radio 4's Todays programme, early this morning:
At the peak of the first outbreak in March time, we had 19,000 people in beds from Covid related illness and currently today we have 18,000.
Yes staffing and bed capacity are stretched but a lot of the government figures deliberately do not include context.
Every single year at this time of year hospital beds are at or over capacity - its the normal seasonal variation that our ill equipped and inefficient health service struggles with every year.
Remember the photos of people being treated on trolleys in hospitals 2 years ago? This never gets mentioned....
This isnt COVID related - its entirely season related. Current data from most of the country shows us running slightly *below* normal for this time of year.
The government loves giving figures of the now, with no historical context.
The other issue is "with" and "because of" covid.
We know in some places 1 in 75 people in general circulation have covid. That would mean as a baseline we'd expect 1 in 75 people admitted to and in hospital to HAVE covid but that doesn't mean its the reason for their admission.
If they test positive those people, even if they're in for a broken leg, become a covid patient and a covid admission even if they have no symptoms at all (and with PCR, maybe had it weeks ago).
We also know one of the best places to catch covid currently is IN hospital. And again if that happens you get reclassified as a covid hospital.
Ultimately with the way data is released we have no idea how many people are in hospital *because of covid* or how many die *because of covid* because those figures simply dont exist.
