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Evidence Suggests People Overestimate the Risks of COVID-19

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.

By Noah Carl  /  21 April 2021 • 10.58
     
76 comments

NHS England Tells GPs Not to Give Pregnant Women AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine

GPs at sites that are only administering the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine have been told to cancel all appointments for pregnant women. This is in contrast to the advice issued by the Government last week, which was that pregnant women should be offered a Covid vaccine regardless of what stage they were at in their pregnancy. While the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said that it would be “preferable” for pregnant women to be “offered” the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines “where available” due to there being more real-world data on these vaccines, it said the AstraZeneca vaccine should still be administered where an alternative was not available. This is in spite of the fact that the JCVI also said “more research is needed” on this vaccine because pregnant women were not included in the trials. NHS England has taken a more cautious approach, telling GPs to direct pregnant women to sites where alternative vaccines are available. MailOnline has the story.

A letter sent by NHS England bosses to practices on Saturday specified sites that do not have Pfizer or Moderna vaccines in stock should cancel all scheduled first doses for expectant mothers. 

It takes a more cautious stance than Number 10’s vaccine advisory panel, which says pregnant women should be offered jabs at the same time as their peers.

The JCVI originally said mothers-to-be should hold off on getting jabbed until there was more evidence. But it performed a U-turn last week after data from the U.S. showed they were safe.

It advised pregnant women should be offered Pfizer or Moderna vaccines in the first instance – but did not ban expectant mothers from getting AstraZeneca’s jab…

But the NHS England letter to practices the following day instructed all practices to direct pregnant women to primary care network sites, if they were unable to offer Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

It said all “sites should implement screening procedures to ensure pregnant women are identified and offered the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine”. 

The letter added pregnant women who have already had a first dose of AstraZeneca should continue with their second dose as planned, in line with guidance for the rest of the population. 

NHS England told MailOnline that patients who have their AstraZeneca appointment cancelled would be rebooked instantly for an alternative.

A spokesperson insisted the cancellation policy would not result in pregnant women receiving their first dose later…

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says pregnant women are no more likely to catch Covid than others, and that most have no symptoms or suffer mild cold or flu-like warning signs.

But there are a small number who can become unwell with the virus, and may be at increased risk of becoming severely ill compared to other women.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  21 April 2021 • 08.44
     
40 comments

Boris Warns of Third Wave – as He Finally Gets Round to Looking at Treatments for Covid

Boris told the country yesterday that, despite the vaccines, there is going be “another wave of Covid” at some point this year. Speaking at a Downing Street press briefing, he said:

As we look at what is happening in other countries with cases now at record numbers around the world, we cannot delude ourselves that Covid has gone away. I see nothing in the data now that makes me think we are going to have to deviate in any way from the roadmap, cautious but irreversible, that we have set out. But the majority of scientific opinion in this country is still firmly of the view that there will be another wave of Covid at some stage this year and so we must – as far as possible – learn to live with this disease, as we live with other diseases.

The warning came as he announced a task force to find new ways of treating COVID-19 before winter, with the aim of developing a tablet that can be taken at home to provide crucial early treatment. He said:

This means for example that if you test positive for the virus that there might be a tablet you could take at home to stop the virus in its tracks and significantly reduce the chance of infection turning into more serious disease.

The task force is welcome, of course, but the question is why is it only just being set up, when we first knew of this virus in January of 2020? Why wasn’t finding effective treatments a priority from the start? Why did none of the journalists at the press conference ask this question? Treatment should always be the first solution reached for when faced with a disease, as unlike lockdowns and vaccines they provide a way of making sick people better.

While the idea of learning to live with the disease, including through the use of treatments, should be reassuring, what the politicians mean by the phrase in the past year has typically turned out to be quite different to what most of us mean by it. We mean getting back to normal. They mean setting up a new “normal” of vaccine coercion, biometric ID passes, permanent screening programmes, face masks, closed borders, and restrictions on social contact and basic freedoms that loosen and tighten depending on the questionable results of mass testing. No thanks.

So why now? Is the Government only turning to treatments at this point because its fears are growing about variants that can escape the vaccines (for which there is some evidence)? Is this a further sign that the Government and its scientists are losing confidence in the vaccines?

In fact, as Professor Philip Thomas argues, there is unlikely to be a “third wave” now that we have the vaccines to top up our acquired and pre-existing immunity (and I doubt there would be a “third wave” without the vaccines). The remarkably low Covid hospitalisation rate for people who’ve been vaccinated that was reported yesterday adds to that hope. However, there is always going to be a winter flu season, and Covid and its potentially immunity-stretching variants are always going to be around. Who knows what the future will bring? Certainly not SAGE and its discredited modelling teams, whose alarmist predictions have consistently fallen flat. (Even in winter they predicted a much bigger surge and failed to anticipate that it would peak before lockdown.)

The question that has never been answered in this crisis is how safe do we need to be from Covid before we can go back to normal? Actually, it was answered once. In the Government’s original Pandemic Preparedness Strategy we know that a death toll of up to 315,000 within a few months from a pandemic virus was envisaged as being acceptable – still far more than we have seen with the (PCR-inflated) Covid death toll of the past year. That scale of mortality was not deemed to warrant any of the unprecedented measures we have experienced since March 2020 (which in any case were, correctly, judged not to be effective).

But since that sensible, science-based plan was ditched, the key question of when we can return to normal – the old normal, not the new normal – has never been answered. Is it because to do so would mean the politicians and scientists would have to grow a spine and endorse an acceptable level of risk and bring the emergency – and their status in it – to an end?

By Will Jones  /  21 April 2021 • 01.30
         
111 comments

News Round Up

By Jonathan Barr  /  21 April 2021 • 01.19
 
31 comments

Just 32 people in Hospital with Covid After Vaccination

Just 32 vaccinated people were hospitalised with COVID-19 in recent months, according to “extraordinary” real world data showing the effectiveness of Britain’s immunisation programme. Scientists are preparing to hand findings to the Government’s advisers on Thursday, showing the dramatic impact of first doses on hospitalisations and deaths. The Telegraph has more.

The findings revealed by the Telegraph will… raise questions regarding the Government’s caution about the return to normality, and reluctance to promise any new freedoms for those who have been vaccinated.

On Tuesday, Mr Johnson said he saw no reason to deviate from the “cautious but irreversible” roadmap.

He said “science is helping us to get back towards normality” as he set out aims to develop at least two new treatments that people can take at home if they test positive for COVID-19.

The research on COVID-19 patients admitted to UK hospitals examined the outcomes for all patients – including those who had received at least one jab, and had sufficient time to build immunity. Early findings show that of 74,405 COVID-19 cases admitted to hospitals between September and March, just 32 had received a vaccine at least three weeks before.

Scientists said the findings – which amount to around one case per 2,300 patients – showed that vaccines worked “extraordinarily well”, offering protection far above the levels which had been anticipated.

The full data is due to be handed to ministers later this week, after updated findings are passed to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) on Wednesday.

Worth reading in full.

By Toby Young  /  20 April 2021 • 22.43
   
49 comments

Mass Covid Testing a “Waste of Time and Money”, MPs Told

Biostatistics Professor Jon Deeks has criticised the Government’s mass Covid testing plan as a waste of “time and money”, highlighting that in some areas only one positive case has been found after 10,000 tests. Professor Deeks, a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Applied Health Research at Birmingham University, told the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Coronavirus that there is “no evidence” to show mass testing works. He is quoted in the Telegraph:

“For this mass test, the Innova test, we have the Liverpool study and the University of Birmingham study, that’s a total of 78 cases where we know how well it detects (positive cases).

“That is absolutely outrageous that we are now testing the whole population based effectively on data from 78 people, which actually showed it doesn’t work very well…

“In the South West at the moment, I think we are down to 0.09% prevalence and that probably means we would be using 10,000 tests to find one case in the next few weeks.

“I don’t think that’s a good use of people’s time or money or public health capital to do that. There are far better things we could be doing.”

The APPG is chaired by Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who said: “[Mass testing] seems to be the panacea at the moment… [but] how reliable is it?”

Earlier this month, the Government promised twice-weekly Covid tests for everyone in England. Sky News had the story.

The Government says the offer is currently for England only and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will make their own decisions.

A major marketing campaign encouraging people to take up the offer of twice-weekly lateral flow tests will also start in England this Friday…

The programme is effectively the long-delayed “Operation Moonshot” of 10 million Covid tests a day, costing an estimated £100 billion, promised by Health Secretary Matt Hancock last summer.

When he told the Commons it would start as early as December, MPs laughed, prompting Mr Hancock to brand them “nay-sayers” and telling them to “get with the programme”.

Now the Government says that alongside vaccination, regular Covid testing will be an essential part of easing lockdown restrictions and help quickly suppress the spread of variants.

The Telegraph report is worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  20 April 2021 • 20.13
     
18 comments

Civil Service Job Advert Confirms Covid Passports Are In Development

Michael Gove is visiting Israel to review its ‘green pass’ scheme as part of his ongoing review into Covid passports – but new civil service job ads suggest that the introduction of ‘Covid Status Certificates’ (both digital or non-digital) is already underway. Guido Fawkes has the story.

Multiple jobs have now come up in both London and Leeds with NHSX [the tech arm of the NHS], which spells out they are: “Developing both digital and non-digital options to enable U.K. residents to assert their Covid status, including both vaccination history and test results.”

The ad also confirms a rapid timetable, given applicants must be able “to start with us by Tuesday, May 4th, 2021“. The consultation document released by the Government a fortnight ago merely said they had “committed to explore whether and how Covid-status certification might be used to reopen our economy”. Sounds like the “exploring” is over…

It doesn’t take an incredible memory to remember back to February when [Vaccine Minister] Nadhim Zahawi was confidently telling Andrew Marr Covid passports would be “discriminatory”.

In a recent article for the Telegraph – in which he asked readers to give their thoughts on Covid passports and received some great (though not, for him, agreeable) responses – Gove praised Israel’s ‘green pass’ scheme and considered whether something similar could be introduced here.

In Israel, which is one of the few countries to have vaccinated a higher percentage of the population than we have in the U.K., they have been using a ‘green pass’ to get back to normal more quickly. This green pass system allows citizens who’ve been vaccinated, recently recovered from the virus or who’ve had a recent negative test to congregate in venues which had been closed for months such as theatres and nightclubs…

If we do accept that Covid certification is going to be required to travel abroad, the question then follows can these certificates help in other ways? If Israel can accelerate its citizens’ returns to nightclubs, football stadia and theatres with these certificates, might we?

The Guido Fawkes report is worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  20 April 2021 • 18.12
     
75 comments

Warning About Blood Clots Should be Added to Labels for Johnson & Johnson’s Covid Vaccine, Says E.U.’s Medicines Regulator

There is a “possible link” between the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Covid vaccine and blood clots, according to the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The regulator says that a warning should be added to labels for the vaccine. Sky News has the story.

The EMA says it has found a possible link between the J&J Covid vaccine and very rare cases of unusual blood clots.

European regulators say that unusual blood clots with low blood platelets should now be listed as “very rare” side effects of the vaccine.

But they stressed that the “overall benefits of the vaccine in preventing Covid outweigh the risks of side effects”.

The new warning is based on eight “serious” cases in the U.S., one of which resulted in the person dying.

All eight people were under the age of 60 and developed clots within three weeks of vaccination, the EMA said, with the majority of cases being women.

They were “very similar to the cases that occurred with the Covid vaccine developed by AstraZeneca”, it added.

The Guardian has more on the next steps for the J&J vaccine.

The EMA has said a warning about very unusual blood clots should be added to labels for J&J’s Covid vaccine…

J&J advised European governments to store their doses until the E.U. drug regulator issued guidance on their use; widespread use of the shot in Europe has not yet started.

The delay is a further blow to vaccination efforts in the European Union, which have been plagued by supply shortages, logistical problems, and concerns over blood clots from those who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The Sky News report is worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  20 April 2021 • 17.17
     
20 comments

Ministers Created Confusion by Not Differentiating Between Lockdown Guidance and Law, Police Watchdog Says

The Police have not been given enough notice about changes in the law and Government guidance relating to Covid over the past year, and confusion has been added by ministers failing to differentiate between the two, according to Britain’s police regulator. A report published by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services says that “mistakes were made” by the police because of unclear messaging from the Government.

[Officers’ difficulty in enforcing the law was made difficult] by a widespread confusion in relation to the status of Government announcements and statements by ministers. Ministers asserting that their guidance – which had no higher status than requests – were in fact “instructions to the British people” inevitably confused people. In some cases, police officers misunderstood the distinction, and appeared to believe that ministerial instructions were equivalent to the criminal law. 

For example, the two-metre distancing “rule” has only ever been in guidance (aside from some requirements on the hospitality sector such as licensed premises and restaurants). The request to “stay local” has never been a legal requirement. The suggested limits on the number of times a person could go out to exercise in a day and for how long were only ever in guidance, not regulations.

Some forces told us that they sought legal advice on the regulations so that they could produce clear guidance for their workforces. But the speed with which regulations were made and amended (usually by being added to) was great. And to many, the distinction between law and guidance remained uncertain.

In these circumstances, mistakes were made. During the initial lockdown, there was significant media coverage of what was often described as police overreach. High-profile examples included road checks to identify unnecessary journeys, drone surveillance of people in open and almost deserted places, and police action in relation to non-essential shopping and what was thought to be excessive exercise.

The exhortation only to take “essential journeys” was no more than guidance; it was not the law.

The report adds that the muddling up of the law with Government guidelines in these high-profile cases damaged public confidence in the police.

It is not the function of the police to treat Government guidance, however well-intentioned (as it undoubtedly was), as rules of the criminal law. Ministers may create criminal offences only if authorised by parliament to do so; they may not do so by the simple expedient of demanding action from a podium or behind a lectern. 

And as difficulties arose and some well-publicised mistakes were made, public confidence in, and support for, the police were inevitably put at risk.

Worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  20 April 2021 • 11.49
 
58 comments

More Than 810,000 UK Workers Have Lost Jobs Since March 2020

56,000 Brits lost their jobs last month, taking the total number of losses to 813,000 over the past year of lockdowns, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). While the continued existence of the furlough scheme is likely masking the true impact of lockdowns on the unemployment rate, ONS officials say there are some reasons to be optimistic. The Mail has the story.

More than 813,000 workers have lost their jobs since the start of the Covid crisis, it emerged today…

But there were further signs that the jobs sector is stabilising, with the first quarterly fall in the unemployment rate since 2019 between December and February and statistics signalling a near-16% jump in vacancies in March.

The unemployment rate eased back further to 4.9% from 5% in the previous three months, the ONS said.

Darren Morgan, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said: “The latest figures suggest that the jobs market has been broadly stable in recent months after the major shock of last spring.

“The number of people on payroll fell slightly in March after a few months of growth.

“There are, though, over 800,000 fewer employees than before the pandemic struck, and with around five million people employed but still on furlough, the labour market remains subdued.

“However, with the prospect of businesses reopening, there was a marked rise in job vacancies in March, especially in sectors such as hospitality.”

BBC News reports that young people continue to bear the brunt of the crisis due to damage done to the hospitality and retail sectors.

People under 25 accounted for more than half of the payroll jobs lost in the year to March, it said – some 436,000 positions.

The Mail‘s report is worth reading in full.

By Michael Curzon  /  20 April 2021 • 09.13
     
34 comments