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Wales Will be Reopening Ahead of Schedule – Based on Data, Not Dates

Welsh hospitality business will soon be able to reopen – outdoors from April 26th and indoors from May 17th – as Mark Drakeford has accelerated Wales’s reopening schedule. The Telegraph has the story.

Pubs, restaurants, cafes and other hospitality businesses will be allowed to offer outdoor service again from Monday, April 26th, as restrictions are eased further in Wales. 

In addition, from April 24th, six people from six households will be able to meet outdoors, but meeting inside will not be allowed until May 3rd, when two households will be allowed to see each other indoors.

It comes as the reopening of gyms and leisure centres, and outdoor organised activities, has also been brought forward to May 3rd amid a drop in new Covid infections.

Indoor activities for children, indoor organised activities for up to 15 adults, such as exercise classes, and the reopening of community centres were also meant to happen on May 17th, but have been brought forward by two weeks.

Mark Drakeford, the Welsh First Minister, also said indoor hospitality and all tourism accommodation can reopen from May 17th, subject to confirmation by the party that leads the Welsh Government following the Senedd election.

Mr Drakeford told BBC Radio 5 Live that the improving Covid and vaccine situations in Wales meant an acceleration of the country’s exit from lockdown was possible.

The rates of coronavirus in Wales are now the lowest in the United Kingdom, our vaccination rates are the highest in the United Kingdom, and that has created some extra headroom for us to be able to continue what we’ve been doing now for quite a few cycles.

We continue to proceed in Wales in a cautious, step-by-step way. But the fact that we have these low rates is the product of that way of doing things.

It’s because we’ve done it in the way we have that we’re now able to accelerate some of the decisions because the prevalence of coronavirus has fallen to the lowest extent we’ve seen since the summer.

Boris Johnson, on the other hand, remains unconvinced that England’s unlock should be speeded up. Covid cases and hospitalisations continue to fall in England and the successful vaccine rollout means that 95% of the over-50s – that is, those who are most vulnerable to Covid – have been vaccinated. Despite this, ministers have suggested that the current level of lockdown could stay in place beyond May 17th.

The Telegraph’s report is worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Blower’s latest cartoon in the Telegraph demonstrates the foolishness of Boris and co sticking to dates not data.

By Michael Curzon  /  23 April 2021 • 16.01
     
43 comments

Over 20,000 Children Have Disappeared From School Rolls

More than 75,000 children are being educated from home – almost a 40% increase from last year’s figure – with over 20,000 children having fallen off the school roll over the past year due largely to health concerns relating to Covid. MailOnline has the story.

An estimated 75,668 children and young people are being home educated across England, according to figures gathered on the first school census day of the 2020/21 academic year.

This represents an increase of some 38% from the year before – with parents citing “health concerns relating to Covid” as the main reason for keeping their children at home. 

But it comes amid fears that vulnerable children are falling through the gaps. 

The Chief Inspector of schools in England, Amanda Spielman, said the figures were “concerning”.   

According to a report by The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), some 75,668 children and young people are being home educated across all 151 local authorities in England this year. 

The ADCS estimates that a staggering 19,510 students were taken off the school roll in September alone.

The largest increase in the number of electively home educated children and young people from 2019 was among children aged 7-11 in Key Stage 2 (6,427) followed by some 4,750 in Key Stage 3 (aged 11-14).

The largest percentage increase since 2019 was in the early years (85%). 

Internationally, the picture is even grimmer. A report by UNICEF published earlier this month found that 800 million children across the world are still not fully back in classes as schools remain closed or are only offering a mix of remote and in-person learning in at least 90 countries.

The MailOnline report is worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Fraser Nelson has written about the disappearance of tens of thousands of children from the school roll in his Telegraph column today.

By Michael Curzon  /  23 April 2021 • 14.26
 
8 comments

Official: Covid Pandemic Over in Britain

With the ONS reporting today that the number of people infected with COVID-19 in England has fallen to its lowest level since September, researchers at Oxford have said the vaccines are so effective that the UK is no longer in the midst of a pandemic. Sarah Knapton, Science Editor of the Telegraph, has more.

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%.

It comes as infections continue to fall in Britain, dropping 7% in a week, despite the reopening of schools and shops. Deaths have also fallen by 26% and admissions by 19% over the last seven days.

New data from the ONS also showed that Covid was no longer the leading cause of death in March, falling behind dementia and heart disease, for the first time since October.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Just 6% of beds are now taken up by Covid patients at England’s busiest NHS Trust compared to 60% at peak of second wave, an analysis of NHS data by MailOnline shows.

By Toby Young  /  23 April 2021 • 14.20
     
35 comments

Students Appeal to Competition and Markets Authority Over Tuition Fees

Students’ unions have told the competitions watchdog that they have been “mis-sold” degrees as they demand blanket tuition fee refunds. Camilla Turner, the Telegraph‘s Education Correspondent, has the story.

A group of students’ unions have written to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), urging it to “take action to uphold students’ rights” over tuition fees and rent payments amid the pandemic.

The open letter, backed by student leaders at 19 universities across the UK, calls on the regulator to help students asking for blanket fee refunds as a result of COVID-19 disruption.

It urges the regulator to “explain to students how they can prove that the ‘quality’ of their course has not met the required standards for full tuition”.

The letter goes on to say: “Nobody understands what the Government means by poor quality courses, and the language seems to blame the academics delivering courses for lost education when it is the unavoidable result of the pandemic and ‘blended learning’ being mis-sold by universities.”

The student representative also asked the CMA to address the “broken” complaints process for students claiming refunds, and help advise students on their ability to withhold fee payments “if they have lost out” due to the pandemic.

The letter, which has been signed by students leaders from Oxford, Cambridge and a number of other Russell Group universities, says: “Students need an external organisation with no vested interest other than upholding students’ rights to step in and give them the power to seek collective fee justice.

The CMA must act now.” The plea came after the Department for Education (DfE) confirmed that all remaining students in England will not be allowed to return to in-person lessons on campus until mid-May at the earliest.

Most students in England, apart from those on critical courses, were told not to return to campus as part of the lockdown announced in January.

It is estimated that around half of university students in England are not eligible to return to campus for in-person teaching until May 17th at the earliest.

Worth reading in full.

By Toby Young  /  23 April 2021 • 14.08
       
2 comments

12 Year-Olds to Be Given Covid Vaccines from September

Children as young as 12 will be given Covid vaccines when they return to school after summer, according to leaked “core planning” documents. Even younger children could be vaccinated shortly afterwards, with Oxford University’s ongoing child vaccine study testing the AstraZeneca jab on 300 children aged six to 17. The Government reportedly wants to vaccinate the young to help the nation avoid a third wave of Covid infections. MailOnline has the story.

Children as young as 12 will get their coronavirus vaccines from September as the Government tries to avoid a third wave, reports say…

There are also reportedly plans for Britons over 50 to be given booster jabs in the autumn amid fears over Covid variants sweeping Europe…

A source told the Sun: “Plans are in place to vaccinate children aged 12 upwards, and senior Government officials have been briefed.

“Though controversial, it is deemed necessary to stop the U.K. regressing in its remarkable fight against Covid.”

Health officials are also said to be looking into jabbing children as young as five from July in a “worst-case scenario”.

The leaked report shows the Government’s contingency plan if the roadmap out of lockdown this summer leads to a surge in variants…

The Department of Health said no decision has been taken, adding: “We will be guided by experts once clinical trials have concluded.”

This comes in spite of the low risk presented by Covid to young people (as few as 14 people under the age of 20 in England and Wales have died of Covid in 2021) and the fact that a large proportion of those who are vulnerable – whom the Government fears young people could infect – have been vaccinated. (More than 11 million people have now received two doses of a Covid vaccine and 95% of over-50s have been vaccinated.)

Last month, Sean O’Grady, the Associate Editor of the Independent, said that the vaccination of the young should be mandatory.

I would vaccinate every child old enough to receive it, as a condition of receiving a state education. …

Of course, in the end, we do not want to live in a country where gangs of officials grab unvaccinated children or adults, wrestle them to the ground and forcibly inject them. But we do want to live in a country where rights are balanced by responsibilities, and where mutual obligations need to be fulfilled. 

Incentives and penalties, taxes and fines, court orders and conditions of employment – restrictions on liberty – are commonplace in our daily lives; for the protection of the community as a whole. If we want to drive the wrong way down a motorway, then there are legal consequences for doing so.

Meanwhile, the reported risk of suffering from blood clots after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine (Britain’s primary Covid vaccine) has doubled in a fortnight, according to new data from the Medical Healthcare products and Regulatory Agency. The European Medicines Agency has also said that a warning about blood clots should be added to labels for the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine, which is likely to be approved for use in the U.K. in the coming weeks. Dr Alan Mordue, a retired public health consultant, recently wrote for Lockdown Sceptics that “the potential benefits [of vaccination] may not be justified by the potential risks” for people under the age of 50.

The Mail’s report is worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  23 April 2021 • 10.59
       
85 comments

News Round Up

By Jonathan Barr  /  23 April 2021 • 02.31
 
59 comments

Boris is the Great Appeaser Who Caves in to the “Experts” at the Expense of Ordinary People

There follows a guest post by Dr Timothy Bradshaw, a retired Oxford Theological Lecturer.

Allegra Stratton, Boris’s replacement for Lee Cain as policy communicator in No.10, has gone, to the BBC as an eco-analyst, after a short spell of announcing nothing, maybe she offended Carrie too? And that communications room, fitted out for a couple of million, won’t be used. So that “reset” of No 10 has itself been reset, maintaining that sense of fairground chaos so beloved of our leader.

But his utterances are, as Janet Daley has shown in her Telegraph column, less and less convincing and being taken as incoherent by a growing number of intelligent people, not just “conspiracy theorists”. He bizarrely proclaimed that the successful lowering of Covid cases and deaths in the UK was not caused by the vaccination programme but by… the lockdowns, which therefore must remain the chief weapon against the epidemic – if the epidemic should return. Hence the shutting of the Nightingale hospitals and no plan for future epidemics being developed. As Daley said, this statement was surely plain wrong, and also politically a gaffe as it portrayed his one massive success as an irrelevance. It also would discourage the population from offering to be vaccinated, a Macronic blunder. Why this idiocy from our leader?    

“Save lockdowning” is the only credible answer, combined with the fact of Boris being, apparently willingly like Patty Hearst, held hostage by that strange and frightening gang of “experts”. Boris is in effect their glove puppet. Their latest utterance through him is that “a third wave is definitely coming” – “hurricane Boris” is building up in India and will soon be blowing us away. Really, or is this just more “precautionary” weather forecasting to get us to board up the economy again, more fear-inducing talk?

At present we can hardly be said to be in an epidemic, but the “experts” are very keen to keep finding Covid wherever they can, and so “save lockdowning”, as if hoping to keep this phenomenon going to maintain their grip on the population. 

The grotesque plan is to keep perfectly healthy and non-vulnerable people taking two home tests per week, followed up by a PCR test for positive results, and these go to a central lab. These tests are for the Covid “genome sequencing” programme and can hardly be defended as a sensible use of the health budget. It is predicated on scanning for and locking down any tiny group of people infected with a new variant, and not on getting a medically based plan for treating future SARS viruses. It is clearly in line with keeping the lockdown hammer available, permanently. 

Boris is the Great Appeaser Who Caves in to the “Experts” at the Expense of Ordinary PeopleRead More

By Will Jones  /  22 April 2021 • 23.35
       
75 comments

Imperial College’s Modelling is Even Worse Than We Thought

When Professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London have been challenged on their model’s miserable failure to predict the pandemic death toll in Sweden they have always pushed back saying they didn’t model Sweden, disavowing the work of the team at Uppsala University which adapted their modelling to the Swedish context. But it turns out this is not exactly accurate. Phillip W. Magness explains on AIER:

In the House of Lords hearing from last year, Conservative member Viscount Ridley grilled Ferguson over the Swedish adaptation of his model: “Uppsala University took the Imperial College model – or one of them – and adapted it to Sweden and forecasted deaths in Sweden of over 90,000 by the end of May if there was no lockdown and 40,000 if a full lockdown was enforced.” With such extreme disparities between the projections and reality, how could the Imperial team continue to guide policy through their modelling?

Ferguson snapped back, disavowing any connection to the Swedish results: “First of all, they did not use our model. They developed a model of their own. We had no role in parameterising it. Generally, the key aspect of modelling is how well you parameterise it against the available data. But to be absolutely clear they did not use our model, they didn’t adapt our model.”

The Imperial College modeller offered no evidence that the Uppsala team had erred in their application of his approach. The since-published version from the Uppsala team makes it absolutely clear that they constructed the Swedish adaptation directly from Imperial’s UK model. “We used an individual agent-based model based on the framework published by Ferguson and co-workers that we have reimplemented” for Sweden, the authors explain. They also acknowledged that their modelled projections far exceeded observed outcomes, although they attribute the differences somewhat questionably to voluntary behavioural changes rather than a fault in the model design.

Ferguson’s team has nonetheless aggressively attempted to dissociate itself from the Uppsala adaptation of their work. After the UK Spectator called attention to the Swedish results last spring, Imperial College tweeted out that “Professor Ferguson and the Imperial COVID-19 response team never estimated 40,000 or 100,000 Swedish deaths. Imperial’s work is being conflated with that of an entirely separate group of researchers.” It’s a deflection that Ferguson and his defenders have repeated many times since.

In fact, though, as Phillip points out, it is not true to say that the Imperial team never estimated 40,000 or 100,000 Swedish deaths. Hidden away in a spreadsheet in the appendix to Report 12, published on March 26th 2020, are the team’s estimates for other countries including Sweden. The projections are expressly intended to encourage those countries to follow suit with social restrictions. They write:

To help inform country strategies in the coming weeks, we provide here summary statistics of the potential impact of mitigation and suppression strategies in all countries across the world. These illustrate the need to act early, and the impact that failure to do so is likely to have on local health systems.

The predictions for Sweden are up to 90,157 deaths under “unmitigated” spread (Uppsala projected 96,000) and, under “population-level social distancing” (lockdowns), 42,473 deaths (compared to Uppsala’s 40,000). So, contrary to their repeated denials, Ferguson’s team did make predictions for Sweden very close to those made by the Uppsala team who adapted their model, and those predictions were just as way off. Sweden’s Covid death toll at the end of the first wave, on August 31st, was 5,821.

Phillip summarises further failures of the Imperial modelling in a table showing four non-lockdown countries (Sweden, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan) and the United States (most of whose states imposed a lockdown in the spring) with their one-year death toll and how it compares to Imperial’s projections.

Performance of Imperial College Modelling in Four Non-Lockdown Countries and the United States (AIER)

It’s worth saying, though, that the models for the ‘unmitigated’ scenarios predicted the deaths to occur over the course of a few months, not a whole year including another winter flu season. There will be another ‘wave’ of deaths every winter, possibly from (or with) COVID-19 if it remains the dominant respiratory virus (and if we keep on testing for it). If we keep on adding the deaths over several seasons then of course they will eventually reach the predicted figures. But that wasn’t what the models were claiming to show and would be a case of making the evidence fit the model.

The AIER article is worth reading in full.

By Will Jones  /  22 April 2021 • 22.31
       
17 comments

Royal College of GPs Opposed to Mandatory Vaccination

Forcing health and social care staff to take a Covid vaccine would lead to “resentment and mistrust”, says the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), which boasts a membership of over 50,000 British GPs. The group “strongly urges” that all professionals (and members of the public) have a vaccine when offered, but says that making vaccination mandatory would be a step too far. Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of the RCGP, is quoted on GP Online:

While overall take-up [of the vaccine] is high, among groups where it is not, this needs to be identified, understood and addressed.

We would strongly urge all health and care professionals to have the Covid vaccine, unless there is a medical reason why they shouldn’t, and the vast majority have. Healthcare professionals are at high risk of contracting Covid and getting vaccinated will help protect themselves, their colleagues and their patients.

However, we don’t agree with making Covid vaccination mandatory as informed and educated choice about health interventions would be more beneficial long-term than enforcing them, which risks leading to resentment and mistrust.

The Covid vaccine is our most important tool in protecting people from the virus, and helping to get life back to normal. All vaccines that we’re currently using in the U.K. have undergone rigorous testing to ensure they are safe and effective – as such, we’d urge anyone who is offered a jab to have one.

GP Online has more on the current position of Britain’s vaccine rollout among healthcare professionals.

Polling by the BMA shows that the vast majority of GPs have now been vaccinated – 93% of GP partners, 86% of salaried GPs and 84% of locums have now received both doses of Covid vaccine.

However, increased vaccine hesitancy among some healthcare workers has been reported, and not only among staff working in care homes. In care homes, the Government says that just 53% of care homes for older adults currently meet the required level of vaccination coverage among staff and residents to protect against Covid outbreaks.

Earlier this month, the Royal College of Nursing, which has a membership of 450,000 registered nurses, also came out against mandatory Covid vaccination for health and social care staff, saying it would be wrong for staff to be “coerced” into having the vaccine. Professor Karol Sikora, former Chief of the Cancer Programme of the World Health Organisation, has also suggested that we stop focusing all of our attention on vaccine passports, mass testing and other “grand schemes” (of which mandatory vaccination is certainly one) and instead target our sights on the health-related issues which have been left behind during the Covid era.

The GP Online report is worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  22 April 2021 • 17.39
     
69 comments

Fifth of Government Covid Contracts “Raised Red Flags for Possible Corruption”

The awarding of 73 Covid contracts worth more than £3.7 billion by the Government “merits further investigation”, according to an anti-corruption campaign group. Transparency International UK said some companies – vying, as an example, for contracts for the supply of PPE – were referred into a “VIP lane” because of their political connections, adding further weight behind accusations of a “chumocracy” at the heart of Government. The Guardian has the story.

One in five Government Covid contracts awarded between February and November 2020 contained one or more red flags for possible corruption and require urgent further investigation, a respected campaign group has warned…

The group said Boris Johnson’s Government must urgently disclose the identities of companies awarded public money through the VIP lane, which was set up by the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care in the early days of the pandemic…

Transparency International UK said its analysis indicated “apparent systemic biases in the award of PPE contracts that favoured those with political connections to the party of Government in Westminster”, contrary to denials by civil servants and Conservative ministers.

The group said it had identified 73 Covid-related contracts with multiple factors that would ordinarily be treated as red flags for possible corruption, such as the company being politically connected. Twenty seven PPE or testing contracts worth £2.1 billion were awarded to firms with connections to the Conservative Party, it claimed.

The group said it had also identified £255 million of contracts awarded to companies that had only been incorporated within the previous 60 days. The figure is surprising because the short lifespan of the companies suggests they cannot have had any track record of actual business.

Many of the contracts were awarded without competitive tender. The Government has acknowledged suspending tender processes for Covid procurement, arguing that the urgency of the pandemic required it to move more quickly than a tender process would allow.

The report, Track and Trace, is compiled by researchers working for the UK chapter of the international organisation Transparency International. The group is respected in anti-corruption policy circles and publishes an annual corruption perceptions index that frequently informs national anti-bribery strategies.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  22 April 2021 • 14.40
   
17 comments