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No “Legal Compulsion” to Wear Face Masks after July 19th, Says Minister

The Telegraph reports this morning that mask-wearing in indoor settings will continue to be advised by the Government even after we leave lockdown (whether that will be on July 19th or later). But there will be no “legal compulsion” to wear a mask once restrictions are lifted, according to Environment Secretary George Eustice, who says he will personally ditch his mask when the rules are changed.

Sky News has the story.

George Eustice said the Government wants “all of the legal requirements to do things to be taken away completely” at step four of its roadmap for lifting Covid measures, which is currently scheduled for July 19th.

“Whether there will still be some people who might choose to wear masks or whether it may be advisory in some settings, that’s a separate matter,” he said.

“But the objective of that final stage is to remove the legal requirement to do these things.”

Asked if he would continue to wear a face covering beyond that point, the minister replied: “I wouldn’t, no. I have to be honest, once I’m told it’s safe not to, I want to get back to normal.

“I think a lot of people will want to shed those masks.

“But while it’s contributing to controlling the pandemic, yes I will wear my mask like everybody else and do my bit.”

Recent polling from Ipsos MORI suggests that, whether we are legally required to wear masks after July 19th or not, a significant proportion of the population will continue to do so. It showed that more than one-fifth of British adults aren’t looking forward to “not wearing a mask in public places”. Continued “advice” on the matter will likely ensure that this figure does not significantly drop.

The Sky News report is worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said he will ditch his mask “as soon as possible” once the mandate is ended. The Telegraph reports:

Rishi Sunak has said he will ditch his face mask at the earliest opportunity when it ceases to be a legal requirement. 

Asked if he would stop wearing a face covering if it only becomes advisory after July 19th, the Chancellor told a summit: “Yes, as soon as possible.” …

Mr Sunak also stressed his “strong expectation” that coronavirus restrictions will be lifted in England on July 19th, adding “things are looking good” for getting back to normal. 

By Michael Curzon  /  24 June 2021 • 09.32
       
108 comments

Why Hasn’t the Government Published a Cost-Benefit Analysis of Lockdown?

When considering a policy as unprecedented and far-reaching as a nationwide lockdown, you’d assume the Government would carry out a cost-benefit analysis. After all, such analyses are routine in policy-making. 

For example, the Treasury maintains a document called ‘The Green Book’, which gives detailed guidance on how to compute the costs and benefits of particular actions. It refers to concepts such as opportunity cost, discount factors and adjusting for inflation.

You might say there wasn’t much time to carry out a detailed cost-benefit analysis before the first lockdown last March. (Though the Government could have provided a few rough numbers for the public to scrutinise.) However, it’s now more than a year later, and there still hasn’t been any attempt to weigh the costs and benefits.

In a report for the Institute of Economic Affairs published last December, the economist Paul Ormerod argued that the Government’s refusal to crunch the numbers reflects a general overreliance on epidemiological expertise, at the expense of economic expertise. 

As Russ Roberts, another economist, has observed, “Knowing a lot about the human body does not make you an expert in risk analysis, tradeoffs, or unintended consequences.” Note: this is not to imply that all or even most economists are opposed to lockdowns, but simply that key insights from that discipline have been overlooked during the course of the pandemic. 

Several cost-benefit analyses of the UK lockdowns have been published by persons outside the Government, and each one has concluded that the costs almost certainly outweighed the benefits. 

Since the NHS typically pays up to £30,000 to extend a patient’s life by one quality-adjusted life-year, a reasonable estimate of the benefits of lockdown can be obtained by multiplying the expected number of life-years saved by 30,000. 

For example, if we assume (generously) that lockdowns saved 50,000 lives and prevented 500,000 people from getting long COVID, then the total benefits would be about £16.5 billion. This figure then has to be weighed against some measure of the costs (including effects on the economy, health, education and civil liberties). Given that the fall in GDP alone last year was over £220 billion, it seems very unlikely that lockdowns would pass a cost-benefit test.

The Government’s lack of interest in cost-benefit analysis was highlighted in a recent LinkedIn post by Daniel Fujiwara – an expert in policy evaluation. Fujiwara was apparently invited to “meet with senior Government officials to discuss the pros and cons of lockdown”. However, despite offering his advice and input pro-bono, he “never heard back from them”. 

In the post, Fujiwara goes on to say, “Lockdowns should have stopped at the point where an additional day of #lockdown causes more damage to our society than it benefits us… My analysis of the impacts of lockdown last year suggests that we have gone well beyond this threshold.” 

One can only assume that the Government’s failure to publish even basic estimates of the costs and benefits of lockdown is due to fear of what those estimates might show…

By Noah Carl  /  24 June 2021 • 08.43
     
67 comments

News Round-Up

By Jonathan Barr  /  24 June 2021 • 01.54
 
37 comments

The Imperial Graph that Shows Infections Declined Before Lockdown and Increased Under It

The above graph is the COVID-19 epidemic curve for England, reconstructed by Imperial College’s REACT antibody survey by asking those who tested positive in an antibody test when their symptoms began. I’ve added the start dates for lockdowns in red and the end dates in blue.

It’s a very useful graph because it does not involve any PCR tests at all, only lateral flow immunoassay tests, self-administered at home. This means it does not suffer from the problem of detecting non-infectious virus as it is not detecting virus at all but antibodies. (Its specificity is reported as 98.6%, giving it a 1.4% background false positive rate, which the researchers adjust for.) This means, for example, that the epidemic decline is much faster than in the familiar “case” curves, and the curves are more symmetrical.

What does it show? Here’s what I take from it. You might see more.

Firstly, it provides further evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating at low levels in England throughout December 2019 and to some degree also in November. This fits with widespread anecdotal evidence of people falling ill with Covid symptoms in December. It doesn’t fit with the original official timeline of an outbreak beginning in Wuhan in December.

Secondly, despite circulating widely during the winter of 2019-20, SARS-CoV-2 did not undergo fast spread in England until the end of February. Indeed, the winter of 2019-20 was the least deadly on record in terms of age-adjusted mortality, despite SARS-CoV-2 being around and infecting people.

Then, around February 25th 2020, it suddenly launches into a three-week long spike of extraordinary exponential growth. This abruptly comes to an end around March 17th, and after a short plateau till around March 21st it enters just as extreme a decline. This is all ahead of the first lockdown on March 23rd of course.

The mystery is: what happened on February 25th (or thereabouts – we don’t know whether Imperial’s assumptions about the incubation period are exactly right) to cause a virus that had been circulating for at least three months at a low level suddenly to go bang and spread like wildfire? It wasn’t panic – no one was panicking at the end of February. Mobility levels were still normal until around March 12th. There was nothing unusual about the weather. Suggestions on this welcome in the comments below.

The Imperial Graph that Shows Infections Declined Before Lockdown and Increased Under ItRead More

By Will Jones  /  24 June 2021 • 01.11
       
79 comments

Ivermectin: Oxford University to Trial Promising, Easily Available Drug as Early Treatment for COVID-19

The Principle trial at the University of Oxford has selected Ivermectin for inclusion in its study of repurposed drugs for treatment of COVID-19. It will be given to people with Covid symptoms to see if it can keep them out of hospital. The BBC has the story.

The Principle study will compare those given the drug to patients receiving the usual NHS care.

The drug has become controversial after being promoted for use across Latin America and in South Africa, despite being so far unproven.

Previous studies of Ivermectin have generally been small or low quality.

Most commonly used to treat parasitic infections such as river blindness, spread by flies, Ivermectin has also been shown to kill viruses in petri dishes in the lab – although, at much higher doses than would usually be prescribed to people.

Ivermectin has been championed by many doctors and scientists since its apparent effectiveness as a Covid treatment emerged early in April 2020, but has been snubbed by mainstream health bodies for reasons that are unclear, leading some to suspect ulterior motives such as sustaining a vaccine narrative or prioritising newer and more profitable treatments. Merck, which manufactures Ivermectin but also recently signed a $356 million deal to supply the US with a much more expensive, experimental anti-Covid drug, went so far as to issue a statement casting doubt on the drug’s safety, even though its safety profile is well known and mild. Scientists trying to publish studies on the drug found the door being shut in their faces with apparent political motives for the refusal. Finally in May, the American Journal of Therapeutics published a peer-reviewed article by Dr Pierre Kory and colleagues entitled “Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19“. Dr Tess Lawrie and colleagues’ meta-analysis, finding a 62% reduction in risk of death among those infected or at high risk of Covid infection (on moderate-certainty evidence), was published in the same journal last week.

While, in a pandemic, the precautionary principle would seem to recommend authorising the use of safe, repurposed drugs that (small) trials have shown appear to work, health authorities apparently did not agree and said there must be higher quality evidence for Ivermectin before it can be approved. Yet because there is little profit in a cheap, out-of-patent drug these higher quality trials have not been done, leaving the drug still without approval or definitive evaluation over 14 months after its apparent efficacy against COVID-19 was discovered. If it does turn out to be as highly effective as the early studies suggest, this will mean the delay will have been responsible for failing to prevent many thousands of deaths around the world.

Still, better late than never, and credit to Oxford for including it in its study despite the politics around it. The Principle trial should provide the definitive answer as to whether Ivermectin is effective at preventing the progression to serious coronavirus disease when used at an early stage.

People aged 18-64 with an underlying health condition or experiencing breathlessness, and anyone aged 65 or over, can sign up to the Principle trial within 14 days of having Covid symptoms or receiving a positive test.

By Will Jones  /  23 June 2021 • 22.14
       
58 comments

Vaccines Minister Makes Bizarre Claim That Postponing Freedom Day Has Saved “Thousands of Lives”

Nadhim Zahawi was in rare form at today’s Downing Street press conference, claiming the Prime Minister’s decision to “pause” the easing of lockdown restrictions had saved “thousands of lives”. Eh? The Telegraph has more on the bizarre reasoning behind the Vaccine Minister’s claim.

Nadhim Zahawi said the Government had been right to delay the lifting of all Covid restrictions by a month to allow more people to be fully vaccinated.

He told a Downing Street press conference: “Last week we took the difficult, but I think essential, decision to pause Step 4 in our roadmap for four weeks with a review of the data after two weeks.”

He said: “Two weeks ago there were over 2 million people aged over 50 in England who had a first dose, but not their second dose. Now that number, two weeks later, is 900,000.

“This pause has saved thousands of lives and will continue to do so by allowing us to get more of the second doses into arms of those most vulnerable to Covid before the restrictions are eased further.”

Mr Zahawi added: “We’re going to use these four weeks to give our NHS that bit more time so we can get those remaining jabs in arms of those who really do need them.”

He said that overall more than 14,000 lives had been saved by the vaccination programme so far, while 44,500 hospital admissions had also been averted in England, which is 2,500 in the past two weeks.

The underlying assumption behind Zahawi’s claim is that had Boris not pressed the “pause” button, the vaccine roll-out would have ground to an abrupt halt on June 21st. Eh? Surely, it would have continued on its current trajectory? In which case, it’s not clear that the pause should have saved a single life, let alone “thousands”.

Needless to say, not a single journalist in attendance picked up on the Vaccine Minister’s tortuous reasoning.

By Toby Young  /  23 June 2021 • 21.00
   
128 comments

Chinese Scientists Deleted Almost 50 Test Samples from Covid Patients in Wuhan That Suggested Virus was Circulating Before Seafood Market Outbreak

The debate over the origins of Covid has moved in the direction of the lab leak theory today after it emerged that Chinese scientists deleted dozens of test samples from patients in Wuhan from an international database used to track the evolution of the virus. The files are said to include some data that suggest the virus was circulating in people before – possibly even months before – it was linked to wet markets. The MailOnline has more.

The American professor who spotted their deletion and managed to recover some of the data said they suggested Covid was circulating long before China’s official timeline.

He found the early samples of the virus were more evolved than would be expected of a pathogen that had recently jumped from animals to humans – but did not say it gave more weight to the “lab leak” theory.

Professor Jesse Bloom, a virologist from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said he believed China had removed the files to “obscure their existence”.

British scientists told MailOnline the findings confirm Covid was spreading in people before being linked to wet markets, “perhaps months before”.

The latest cover-up comes amid mounting suspicion the virus may have accidentally leaked from a high-level biosecurity laboratory in Wuhan…

The cover-up was detailed in a scientific paper titled “Recovery of deleted deep sequencing data sheds more light on the early Wuhan SARS-CoV-2 epidemic” today.

45 positive samples had originally been uploaded to the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Sequence Read Archive by the Wuhan University in early March 2020.

The NIH is a U.S. Government agency responsible for biomedical and public health research.

The samples were published as part of a study into diagnosing Covid patients using PCR tests – just days before the Chinese Government issued an order requiring approval of the publication of all coronavirus data. 

Professor Bloom noted all 45 samples have since been pulled from the database, with “no plausible scientific reason for the deletion”.

He said the most likely explanation was to “abuse” and “obscure” the truth about the origins of the pandemic.  

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  23 June 2021 • 17.44
     
38 comments

Letter in Telegraph About the Damage Done By Imperial’s Alarmist Modelling

There was a good letter in the Telegraph today co-signed by Lockdown Sceptics contributor David Campbell and his colleague Kevin Dowd. It was a pithy summary of a piece they co-authored for Spectator Australia earlier this month.

SIR – Matt Ridley’s criticism (Comment, June 21st) of the distorted presentation of scientific predictions in order for those predictions to have political impact identifies the worst feature of current public policymaking.

Amazingly, however, in the case of Covid policymaking his criticism is insufficient. The crucial prediction was that of the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, which said that 510,000 deaths would occur “in the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour”. This was misleading in the extreme, for there was absolutely no possibility that the outbreak of this disease would not be met by widespread spontaneous changes in behaviour, or that the Government would not take extensive measures to support them.

The world has been turned upside-down by an absurd, alarmist prediction of what was always a zero-probability event, as it was this prediction which panicked the Government into adopting a “suppression” policy.

Professor David Campbell
Lancaster University Law School
Professor Kevin Dowd
Durham University Business School

By Toby Young  /  23 June 2021 • 17.18
     
23 comments

60% of Brits Fully Vaccinated Against Covid

More than 60% of U.K. adults have been given two doses of a Covid vaccine, but the Government’s view is that this isn’t enough to justify the easing of lockdown restrictions. The Prime Minister hopes that two-thirds of the adult population will be fully vaccinated by July 19th, creating a “wall of immunity“. Even then, he warns that “a proportion of the elderly and vulnerable may still succumb [to the virus] even if they have had two jabs”. The MailOnline has more on the latest milestone reached in the national vaccine roll-out.

More than 31.7 million over-18s have already had both doses, while 43.4 million – or 82.5% – have had their first jab, official statistics show. 

Health Secretary Matt Hancock hailed the figures, claiming the U.K. was now “so close to ensuring the entire adult population is protected”.

Number 10’s Vaccine Chief Nadhim Zahawi – who will likely brag about the achievement at a 5pm Downing Street press conference tonight – hailed the “extraordinary feat”.

Ministers have once again urged Brits to come forward for their vaccines, with the roll-out now on the final phase with all over-18s able to book an appointment. 

Mr Zahawi said getting two doses was “absolutely vital” because of the rapid spread of the Indian variant, adding: “I urge everyone eligible to get their jab and help us get back to normality.” …

Number 10 has now pledged to offer a first dose of a jab to all over-18s by the new “terminus day” of July 19th, and have a separate goal of fully vaccinating two-thirds of adults by the same date.

Although the target is not a pre-requisite of easing lockdown, the Prime Minister stressed the urgent need to jab as many people as possible to finally end restrictions.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  23 June 2021 • 17.05
     
96 comments

New Variant Alert

Scientists in India have upgraded the ‘Nepal’ variant to a variant of concern which they’re calling ‘Delta-plus’, having detected nearly two dozen cases in three states. The Telegraph has more.

On Tuesday, the variant was found in 16 cases in the state of Maharashtra, according to the Federal Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan.

The Ministry said Delta plus showed increased transmissibility and advised states to increase testing.

India vaccinated a record 8.6 million people on Monday as it began offering free shots to all adults, but experts doubted it could maintain that pace.

“This is clearly not sustainable,” said Chandrakant Lahariya, an expert in public policy and health systems.

“With such one-day drives, many states have consumed most of their current vaccine stocks, which will affect the vaccination in days to follow.”

Under the projected vaccine supply for the next few months, the maximum daily achievable rate is four to five million doses, it is estimated. The effort has so far covered about 5.5 per cent of the 950 million people eligible, even though India is the world’s largest vaccine producer.

However, according to the MailOnline British scientists think ‘Delta plus’ is nothing to worry about.

Scientists today called for calm over the emergence of the potentially vaccine-resistant ‘Delta plus’ variant, claiming that there are no signs it will take off in the UK.

India upgraded the strain – sometimes known as AY.1, or the Nepal variant – to a “variant of concern” amid fears it is better at escaping jabs than the original Delta version.

But one of the UK’s top genetics experts said the development was not a “particular cause of concern” because the mutant strain has been in Britain for months and has shown no signs of outcompeting other strains.

Professor Francois Balloux, director of University College London’s Genetics Institute, said: “Cases of Delta+ in the UK remain at a very low level.

“The first case was observed on April 28th 2021. The lineage has remained at very low frequency since with no sign of expansion.

“It has been found in several countries but has remained at extremely low frequency, with the exception of Nepal.”

He admitted that “nothing” is known about how transmissible, vaccine-resistant or deadly the new strain is.

Worth reading in full.

By Toby Young  /  23 June 2021 • 16.43
   
33 comments