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Night Curfew May Have Increased the Spread of COVID-19 in Greece

During the pandemic, many countries have imposed night curfews in an attempt to reduce the spread of COVID-19. How successful have these measures been? According to a recent study, they may have actually increased transmission. 

Sotiris Georganas and colleagues took advantage of a natural experiment in Greece whereby the timing of night curfew shifted in one region but not in another. While a 9pm curfew had been in place throughout the country since November of 2020, a 6pm weekend curfew was introduced on 6th February in the Attica region (which includes Athens).

The authors used Google mobility data to examine how time spent at home, and time spent at groceries/pharmacies, changed in the Attica region and the Epirus and Western Macedonia region (where the timing of night curfew did not shift). Specifically, they examined mobility data in each region in the five weekends before the shift, as well as the four weekends after.

What did the authors find? Compared to the Epirus & Western Macedonia region, the Attica region saw a small and statistically significant increase in time spent at home, as well as a small and non-significant decrease in time spent at groceries/pharmacies. In other words, the shift in the timing of night curfew had – at best – a marginal impact on mobility.

Given that the shift reduced the time available for shopping by three full hours (a change of almost 20%), the overall effect will have been to increase crowding – by concentrating roughly the same amount of shopping into a shorter time period. As a consequence, it may well have led to a rise in transmission. 

In the authors’ words, “As more people were present simultaneously in high-risk places such as supermarkets, the early curfew backfired.” This finding suggests that governments should focus on protecting care homes and hospitals, rather than trying to control the epidemic by tweaking people’s shopping habits.

By Noah Carl  /  16 June 2021 • 08.37
     
20 comments

Euro 2020 and Wimbledon Matches Used as Pilot Events for New “NHS Covid Pass”

A new “NHS Covid Pass”, showing a user’s vaccine status, as well as recent test results, will be piloted at upcoming Euro 2020 and Wimbledon matches and could later be introduced at a range of other sport and entertainment events, despite the Government deciding against making Covid status certificates compulsory for attendance at mass gatherings. The Mail has the story.

The existing NHS App, which already provides details of a person’s vaccinations, has been modified so that there is an option to enter Covid test results.

Those who have not been double-jabbed will be able to do a lateral flow test at home and then log it on the app. Spot checks will be performed on a small number of spectators arriving at grounds to show they are being truthful about their negative result.

A Whitehall source said… “The NHS Covid Pass will help us to safely unlock capacity crowds at the Euros and Wimbledon and hopefully deliver a fantastic summer of sporting success.” …

Wimbledon and Euro 2020 matches will be used as pilot events as ministers consider whether the NHS Covid Pass should be used more widely.

The Government has ruled out making it compulsory for venues to make people share their coronavirus status. Instead, they are concentrating on giving organisers the option of asking fans to use the NHS Covid Pass so big sporting events can go ahead safely.

All courts at Wimbledon will operate at 50% capacity for most of the tournament, which kicks off in less than two weeks.

Both [only!] the women’s singles final on July 10th and the men’s singles final on July 11th are set to be played in front of full capacity crowds.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  16 June 2021 • 07.57
           
70 comments

News Round-Up

By Jonathan Barr  /  16 June 2021 • 02.44
 
54 comments

PHE’s Latest Vaccine Study Suggests Hospitalisation Risk INCREASES After the Second Dose

It’s not two weeks since Lockdown Sceptics was casting doubt on Public Health England’s alarming claim that the Delta (Indian) variant had more than double the risk of hospitalisation of the Alpha (British) variant. How long will they take to backtrack after the panic has done its damage, we asked?

Well, it turns out that even before Boris took to the podium on Monday PHE had already released a new study claiming that vaccines after all are more effective at preventing hospitalisation against the Delta variant than the Alpha variant. Here’s the story in the Telegraph:

Vaccines are more effective at preventing hospitalisation against the Indian/delta variant than they were against previous types, once people are double-jabbed, new data shows.

Real world data shows the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is 94% effective against hospital admission from the variant after one dose, rising to 96% after two jabs.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was found to be 71% effective against hospital admission after one dose, rising to 92% after two jabs.

In both cases, two doses had a greater impact preventing hospitalisations than was the case with the Kent variant. 

The new study and the earlier study aren’t quite showing the same thing. The earlier study showed the risk of hospitalisation with the Delta versus Alpha variant for all those testing positive, not just the vaccinated, though subsequently adjusted the results for “vaccination status”. The new study specifically looks at the hospitalisation risk in those vaccinated with respect to the Alpha and Delta variants and compares them. However, the two studies should come to broadly the same conclusion, as they are both looking at how much more serious disease is with the Delta variant. At any rate, given that a large proportion of the vulnerable population is now fully vaccinated, we certainly shouldn’t see a doubling in the hospitalisation rate with the Delta variant if, as is claimed in the new study, the vaccines are better at preventing serious disease from that variant.

Ross Clark suggests the problem with the earlier data was that the sample size was small and biased. As he notes, PHE’s modelling misses the most obvious data point, that the rate of hospitalisations per case has not increased as the Indian variant has become dominant (see graph below). How then can the Indian variant have twice the risk of hospitalisation?

Spectator

Is the new study any more reliable than the earlier one? As usual with a PHE observational study, it’s hard to tell, as much of the method is hidden behind opaque statistical techniques with working that is not set out. All the reader knows is that raw data is taken and transformed by some statistical process into hazard ratios and vaccine effectiveness estimates that are all but impossibly to verify. What we can do, though, is look at the results of this largely concealed data-processing and see if it makes sense.

Below is the table from the study (there’s only one, it’s a very short paper), and it shows something very curious.

PHE’s Latest Vaccine Study Suggests Hospitalisation Risk INCREASES After the Second DoseRead More

By Will Jones  /  16 June 2021 • 01.41
       
43 comments

JCVI to Advise Government Against Vaccinating Children Over Safety Concerns

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is to recommend against the vaccination of under-18s until there is more safety data, according to the Telegraph.

Experts on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) are expected to make a recommendation against the vaccination of under-18s in the immediate future.

The committee is understood to be preparing an “interim” statement for release as soon as the end of the week following a meeting on Tuesday.  

At a meeting, members are understood to have voiced serious ethical concerns about vaccinating children, given that they rarely suffer serious illness from Covid.

The statement is set to say more time is needed to assess studies of vaccine rollouts in other countries where children are being vaccinated – including the US and Israel – before deciding whether such a programme should be launched in the U.K.

A Whitehall source said: “Nobody is going to green light the mass vaccination of children at this stage. Scientists want to see more data from the U.S. and elsewhere before taking a firm stand either way. Nobody is going to make a final decision at this point. The JCVI will want to weigh up the benefits against the risks before vaccinating children, and it wants more data.”

Under-18s very rarely suffer serious disease with COVID-19 and younger people are also affected more strongly by some of the rare-but-serious vaccine side-effects such as blood clots, meaning the risk-benefit calculation is less likely to be favourable. With data on children, who were not included in the trials, very sparse, this is the right advice. Let’s hope the Government follows it.

The Telegraph report is worth reading in full.

By Will Jones  /  15 June 2021 • 22.50
       
33 comments

“You Can’t Run Society Purely to Stop the Hospitals Being Full” – Cabinet Member Jacob Rees-Mogg Says Lockdowns Must End

Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg has said that the Government must stop taking charge of people’s lives “purely to prevent them seeing the doctor”. Speaking to Conservative Home, the Tory MP said:

Ultimately the NHS is there to serve the British people, not the British people there to serve the NHS. And therefore – we may need to spend more money on hospitals – but you can’t run society purely to stop the hospitals being full otherwise you’d never let us get in our cars and drive anywhere or do any of the other things that people want to do.

So there has to be some proportionality within that, that the Government doesn’t have the right to take charge of people’s lives purely to prevent them seeing the doctor.

Actually otherwise we’d never be allowed in our kitchens would we, where a disproportionate number of accidents in the home take place, or our bathrooms, so we’d become very hungry and very smelly on that basis.

This is one of the first signals of discontent among members of the Government about the interminable lockdowns the U.K has experienced since March 2020. Let’s hope more of the genuine liberals and conservatives in the Government will come out against lockdowns and the emerging public health tyranny.

Listen to the full interview here.

By Will Jones  /  15 June 2021 • 21.12
     
88 comments

A Doctor Writes: Chris Whitty’s Slide Show Yesterday Was a Blatant Exercise in Biased Data Selection

The following is a guest post from Lockdown Sceptics’ in-house doctor, formerly a senior medic in the NHS.

In early November, Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty were summoned before the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and questioned about their presentation of data to justify a second lockdown. Following their appearance, the government was obliged to ‘correct’ a number of misleading graphics which portrayed the situation as being far more serious than it actually was. The Government was officially criticised by the U.K. statistics watchdog for the misleading presentation.

After last night’s Downing Street press conference I expect Greg Clark, the Committee Chair, will be scheduling a repeat appointment.

Professor Whitty’s presentation was a blatant example of data selection. At the risk of image overload, I will run through a few points he made and quite a few more that he somehow overlooked. This is by no means a comprehensive critique – to be frank, I don’t have time and I doubt the readers have the patience to go through all the egregious errors and data manipulation that went on last night. We will have to leave that to the Science and Technology Committee.

Let’s start with hospital admissions. The official slides measure admissions per 100K population. Here it is, showing an alarming rise in admissions in the North West of England in Graph One.

A Doctor Writes: Chris Whitty’s Slide Show Yesterday Was a Blatant Exercise in Biased Data SelectionRead More

By Toby Young  /  15 June 2021 • 18.40
       
138 comments

16% of Pregnant Women in U.S. Have Been Vaccinated Against Covid

Just over 15% of pregnant women in the U.S. have had at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Black and Hispanic mothers are up to four times less likely to have been vaccinated than white and Asian mothers. The CDC believes that vaccine hesitancy (or refusal) is likely caused by there being limited safety data available on the new vaccines. The MailOnline has the story.

Vaccination rates diverge significantly by race: 25% of Asian pregnant women and 20% of white women were vaccinated compared to 12% of Hispanic women and only six per cent of black women…

The CDC researchers expect vaccination coverage among pregnant women to increase as vaccine access continues to improve and more information on the shots’ safety becomes available.

When Covid vaccines went through clinical trials, they were not tested in pregnant or breastfeeding women despite their increased risk of severe illness or death.

Such a practice is common in clinical trials because researchers don’t want to risk the health of expecting women.

But it left these women with limited information on safety risks that the vaccines may have posed. 

Regulators said the evidence on these vaccines did not raise safety concerns, yet without data specifically on pregnant women, they could not make guarantees.

Despite the limited data, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorised the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use in early December, the agency said that pregnant women could choose to get vaccinated.

At the time, some scientists saw this as a major step forward for pregnant women – they could make their own healthcare decisions…

But the new data from the CDC suggest that many pregnant women in the U.S. chose not to get vaccinated, at least, not in the early months of the vaccine roll-out…

Why the low vaccination rate? The CDC researchers suggest that pregnant women may have been hesitant to get vaccinated due to the limited safety data available on the new Covid vaccines as well as potential access issues.

Older pregnant women were more likely to get vaccinated than younger women. Pregnant women between the ages of 35 and 49 had a 23% vaccination rate, compared to just a six per cent rate for ages 18 to 24.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  15 June 2021 • 17.45
     
10 comments

Lockdown “Likely” to be Extended in Scotland, Says Nicola Sturgeon

Scotland is set to follow in England’s footsteps in delaying the easing of its lockdown. Nicola Sturgeon says that restrictions will “likely” be maintained for three more weeks from June 28th to “buy ourselves sufficient time” to fully vaccinate more Scots. The Independent has the story.

Speaking in Holyrood, the First Minister did not rule out the further relaxation of rules – moving to Level Zero – on June 28th but said the Scottish Government wanted to “buy ourselves sufficient time” to allow the vaccination programme to continue its work.

She suggested that Scotland would not return to “much greater normality” until later in July at the earliest.

“Given the current situation – and the need to get more people fully vaccinated before we ease up further – it is reasonable to indicate now that I think it unlikely that any part of the country will move down a level from June 28th,” Ms Sturgeon said.

“Instead, it is likely that we will opt to maintain restrictions for a further three weeks from June 28th and use that time to [vaccinate] – with both doses – as many more people as possible.

“Doing that will give us the best chance, later in July, of getting back on track and restoring the much greater normality that we all crave.”

Ms Sturgeon said it was a “difficult and frustrating” development but “while this setback is not easy, it is worth remembering that we are living under far fewer restrictions now than was the case a few weeks ago”.

She added: “The current situation is not what any of us want – but equally it is not lockdown. And vaccination is – with every day that – helping us change the game.”

Level Zero is described as “near normal” but a number of restrictions still exist, including limits on the number of people individuals can meet socially in groups, and people are still advised to work from home where possible.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  15 June 2021 • 16.51
       
35 comments

Has the Time Come For a Boston Mask Party?

I have written a piece for the Mail today in which I say it’s becoming increasingly clear that the only way we’re going to get our freedoms back is if we take them back – and we should start with masks. Here’s an extract:

I’m sceptical that any of the lockdown measures reduce transmission of the virus – we’ve had three lockdowns and still have one of the highest Covid death counts in Europe – but the evidence that masks protect people who are wearing them is particularly thin.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Jenny Harries, the then Deputy Chief Medical Officer and now Head of NHS Test and Trace, cautioned against members of the public wearing masks, saying they could do more harm than good.

A scientific study in Denmark last year involving more than 6,000 people, in which half wore masks for a month and the other half didn’t, found those who didn’t wear them were no more likely to become infected than those that did.

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Adviser to the U.S. President, admitted last year that store-bought masks were ineffective. In an email that came to light after a freedom of information request, he wrote to a friend that masks were “not really effective in keeping out [the] virus, which is small enough to pass through material”.

I have decided enough is enough – and I will simply refuse to wear them. If a security guard stops me entering a shop or building, I will explain that I am refusing to wear a mask as a protest against the continuing restrictions and that I will wait outside until they change their mind.

If I’m told to put on a mask when I get up to go to the lavatory in a pub or a restaurant, I’ll ask the waiter to explain why it’s necessary to wear a mask when I’m standing but not when I am sitting. If they fall back on the excuse that they’re just following the rules, I’ll point out that some rules are so silly they don’t deserve to be followed.

I’ve waited 15 months for my liberties to be restored and I’m not prepared to wait another month, even if I believed Boris’s assurance that life would return to normal by July 19th.

No, the only way to get our freedoms back is to take them back. And I will start by throwing out my masks on June 21st.

Worth reading in full.

How about this? A large group of anti-lockdown protestors take a trip to Boston, Lincolnshire on June 21st and hurl our masks into the River Withan? I suggested this on Mike Graham’s show on talkRADIO today.

As Lord Sumption said, “Sometimes, the most public-spirited thing you can do with despotic laws like these is to ignore them.”

Stop Press: Last year, the Czech Republic was universally praised for getting its infection rate under control in Prague by enforcing a draconian mask policy. See this USA Today article, for instance: “In this capital city of 1.3 million, among the first in Europe to decree mandatory universal mask-wearing almost four months ago, life has now returned to normal.” Fast forward to June, and now we’re seeing headlines like this: “Czech Republic: What’s behind world’s worst COVID infection rate?”

Masks don’t work. Period.

Stop Press 2: Israel has dropped the requirement for masks in enclosed spaces. The Jerusalem Post has more.

By Toby Young  /  15 June 2021 • 13.46
   
183 comments