- Sir David Spiegelhalter suggested the Government tried to ‘manipulate’ Britons
- Cherry-picked ‘worst-case scenarios’ to ‘instill a certain emotional reaction’
- No10 lambasted for its apocalyptic graphs and spurious data shown to public
Category: News
Browse the articles related to this topic below.
- Despite the fearmongering, the number of Covid-19 deaths is significantly lower than the peak back in April
- Latest ONS estimate shows that in the week ending November 14, new infections were already levelling off
- GCHQ has embedded a team in Downing Street to provide Boris Johnson with real-time updates of Covid-19
- Analysts will sift through vast amounts of data to ensure Boris Johnson has the most up-to-date information
PHE researchers believe people with high levels of T-cells likely to have picked up immunity from coronaviruses like common cold
A quarter of people may already be immune to coronavirus even though many of them have never been infected, a new study by Public Health England (PHE) suggests.
- SAGE admitted early virus modelling based on figures from online encyclopedia
- Committee of scientists advising PM also had no expert on human coronavirus
- Dubious data formed the basis for the group’s calls for first national lockdown
- Experts predicted that the peak would be in June – but it actually came in April
- Impact of care home staff spreading Covid by working in multiple sites not considered
- Scientists failed to consider the impact agency workers would have on spreading Covid in care homes by moving between several different sites to work
- There were more than 30,000 excess deaths in care homes because of Covid in 2020
Professor Mark Jit, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and member of SPI-M, said the group used data from Wikipedia in the UK along with hospitalisations in China and Northern Italy to inform their modelling.
Experts working inside Cabinet Office to sift through data that can inform policy-making
GCHQ has embedded a team in a Downing Street cell to provide Boris Johnson with real-time intelligence to combat the “emerging and changing threat” posed by Covid-19, The Telegraph can disclose.
GCHQ analysts have been given access to mobile phone data to track the public’s movements during the national lockdown. The up-to-the-minute reports on compliance are passed to the Prime Minister.
- Government relaxed procurement rules to allow officials to award contracts
- PPE team of 450 staff handed out more than 6,900 contracts worth £12.3billion
- Officials paid £3.8million into the wrong bank account in one instance
- Sabi Mokeddem, 23, was given £880,000 to supply 55,000 coveralls
Our investigation – distinct from from today’s NAO report – uncovers how blundering officials paid £3.8million into the wrong bank account in one instance and handed an £880,000 contract to a 23-year-old with no relative experience in another.
Article date: Monday 6 April 2009
At stake at one point last year was more than $8bn in punitive damages being sought in a string of cases, as well as potential jail terms in Nigeria for several Pfizer staff. “There has been a complex web of cases with proceedings in Connecticut, New York, Lagos, Abuja and Kano,” Mr Etigwe said. “The strategy of big companies when they are dealing with smaller opponents is to stretch the process, to overwhelm us until we are ready to accept whatever they want to offer.” Trovan never became the blockbuster that Pfizer had hoped for and it is no longer in production. The EU has banned the drug and it has been withdrawn from sale in the US.
A provocative study suggests that certain colds may leave antibodies against the new coronavirus, perhaps explaining why children are more protected than adults.
It’s been a big puzzle of the pandemic: Why are children so much less likely than adults to become infected with the new coronavirus and, if infected, less likely to become ill?
A possible reason may be that many children already have antibodies to other coronaviruses, according to researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London. About one in five of the colds that plague children are caused by viruses in this family. Antibodies to those viruses may also block SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus causing the pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/health/coronavirus-children.html
A four week delay in cancer treatment increases the chance of dying by as much as 13 percent new “staggering and sobering” research reveals.
The research published last week online in the BMJ, was put together in the light of treatment delays resulting from the pandemic and have led to calls for more attention to be given to other deadly health conditions whose treatment is being put at risk by national measures to contain the virus.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1357434/Lockdown-latest-cancer-warning-treatment-coronavirus-news
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why PCR positive cases are a very poor indicator of how prevalent covid is in the population, and why we should instead be basing decisions on the rates of hospitalization, ICU admission, and death. If we just look at the PCR tests, we will continue to believe that the disease is widespread in the population indefinitely, even as it becomes less and less common in reality. And that is assuming the rate of testing doesn’t increase. If we combine this built-in problem with accuracy, with a massive increase in testing (as has happened in most countries over the course of the pandemic), then we can create the impression of a disease that is continuing to spread wildly through a population, even when it isn’t.
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/06/how-accurate-are-the-covid-tests/
The increase in coronavirus infections appears to be slowing around the UK, latest data from the Office for National Statistics show.
Although the number of people with Covid continues to rise, the growth is levelling off.
In the week to 30 October, ONS says new daily infections in England stabilised at around 50,000.
The government has been criticised by the official statistics watchdog for the way it presented data to justify England’s second lockdown.
The UK Statistics Authority highlighted the use of modelling at Saturday’s TV briefing showing the possible death toll from Covid this winter.
It said there needed to be more transparency about data and how predictions were being made.
The projections were out of date and over-estimated deaths, it has emerged…
It is understood the graph was used by the two senior advisers in meetings last week where the decision to impose a nationwide lockdown in England was made.
Johnson’s speech announcing a new lockdown on Saturday reminded me of how Tony Blair deployed fear to justify drastic state action over foot and mouth disease, and – warning that Saddam Hussein’s arsenal put the UK “45 minutes from doom” – in support of the Iraq war. It is the same blind fear exploited in every debate on immigration, crime and prisons.
Shelley Tasker, 43, from Camborne, Cornwall, resigned from Treliske hospital
Healthcare assistant made speech outside Truro cathedral and revealed what’s been going on behind closed doors of NHS hospitals
Claims she had no work for three weeks at height of pandemic due to no patients
“I can tell you on Friday in Treliske there were three people in with Covid. No extra deaths, three – and that covers Treliske, West Cornwall and Hayle hospital…The total deaths from these three hospitals in seven months, is 76 people – that’s about ten people a month over the last seven months, and we have locked down.”
Government forced to reissue key charts used to justify second lockdown after admitting projected fatalities were overstated
Official projections which pushed the country into a second lockdown have been quietly revised to no longer suggest deaths could soon overtake those at the peak of the first wave, The Telegraph has learned.
Dr Jonathan Morgan is Director of Law at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge
He has put forward an argument around whether the Government can be sued
Says legal precedent suggests the amount of compensation could be billions
Comes after former Supreme Court judge said the Government had twisted law
* Beds have never been less than 85% full for a three-month period since 2010
* Spring this year was the first time, because patients were turfed out for Covid-19
* And occupancy remains below average levels despite second wave, stat shows
* Boris Johnson has returned to his ‘protect the NHS’ slogan for second lockdown
NHS hospitals in England appear quieter than usual for this time of year even though they are treating more than 9,000 patients with coronavirus.
Update seen by Telegraph shows capacity tracking as normal for beginning of November, with usual numbers of beds available
Hospital intensive care is no busier than normal for the majority of trusts, leaked documents have shown, raising more questions about whether a second national lockdown is justifiable.
Death toll forecasts used by the government as grounds for another nationwide lockdown are out-of-date and could be four times too high, experts have said.
A Downing Street press conference led by Boris Johnson on Saturday included data suggesting that England could be seeing up to 4,000 deaths each day by early December.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13082035/death-forecast-national-lockdown-four-times-too-high/