Misleading models based on the Spanish flu cannot be allowed to dictate our policy on lifting lockdown
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/01/no-evidence-suggest-coronavirus-second-wave-coming/
The Telegraph
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When you think about it, there is something very odd about the farrago of the last week. Endless numbers of MPs, many of them Conservative, and a similarly vast array of media outlets received outraged demands for the sacking of the prime minister’s adviser because he allegedly transgressed the rules which have damaged the quality of life of ordinary people. Those who complained said that the deprivations and sacrifices which they have endured at such cost to their personal happiness and welfare were mocked by Dominic Cummings’ actions.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/30/sleepwalking-one-denial-liberties-even-insidious-phase/
Rather than trusting in our innate common sense, ministers are getting caught up in pointless lectures about how we can host a barbecue
We have detonated the global economy to pursue a lockdown experiment that may not have worked, according to the latest evidence. This diabolical revelation should be a world scandal. It should also be a sobering moment of enlightenment for Britain, as we seek to salvage our economy while learning lessons on how to better protect the vulnerable. Instead the Covid narrative becomes ever more surreal.
The broadcast media is more interested in scalping lockdown flouters than questioning whether shutdowns have served any useful purpose. World-class studies that suggest lockdown did not alter the pandemic’s course are mysteriously vanishing into internet obscurity on first contact with the official narrative. Our greatest minds have resorted to unpicking the issue on offbeat YouTube webinars.
Lockdown caused more deaths than it saved, a Nobel laureate scientist said on Saturday, as he predicted the UK would emerge from Covid-19 within weeks.
Michael Levitt, a Stanford University professor who correctly predicted the initial trajectory of the pandemic, sent messages to Professor Neil Ferguson in March telling the influential government advisor he had over-estimated the potential death toll by “10 or 12 times”.
The Imperial College professor’s modelling, a major factor in the Government’s apparent abandoning of a so-called herd-immunity policy, was part of an unnecessary “panic virus” which spread among global political leaders, Prof Levitt now tells the Telegraph.
[P]harmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced a $1.2 billion deal with the US government to produce 400 million doses of the unproven coronavirus vaccine first produced in Prof Hill’s Oxford lab.
Meanwhile, the British Government has agreed to pay for up to 100 million doses, adding that 30 million may be ready for UK citizens by September.
Project leader Prof Hill warns against ‘over-promising’, as vaccine success is far from guaranteed
Social distancing is a fantasy…like it or not, every individual citizen is going to have make their own risk assessments, use their common sense and make their own decisions about how to live their lives. “Stay away from everyone” is a clear message but not credible.
During the surreal early weeks of the lockdown, the notion of long-term social distancing seemed logical and sensible, but as the weeks rolled by, the utter ludicrousness of it became apparent. Matt Hancock helped to emphasise the absurdity of it all when he said that it will not be possible to hug anyone outside of our household until the virus was “totally sorted”.
Two samples taken from the same patient are being recorded as two separate tests in the Government’s official figures
Experts said the major study, which included all patients hospitalised with Covid-19 over 10 weeks, showed that diabetes – which is often fuelled by obesity – is driving Britain’s death toll.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/19/one-third-covid-19-deaths-england-have-among-diabetics/
“Lockdown is having a significant impact on our economy and we are likely to face a severe recession, the likes of which we haven’t seen”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/19/lockdown-uk-news-coronavirus-boris-johnson-update/
The Oxford University vaccine tipped as a “front runner” in the race to develop a coronavirus jab does not stop the virus in monkeys and may only be partially effective, experts have warned.
- All of the vaccinated monkeys treated with the Oxford vaccine became infected.
- Vaccine data suggests that the jab may not be able to prevent the spread of the virus between infected individuals.
Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost.
The argument for a lockdown was overwhelming. When Boris Johnson addressed the nation eight weeks ago, it appeared as if a killer virus was about to engulf the population at astonishing speed. You had to be mad or bad, it seemed, not to back the Prime Minister as he urged us all to stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives. The moral justification for collective action was crystal clear. “Squashing the sombrero,” as Johnson colourfully put it, was needed to buy time for the NHS to fight this thing. And we did it. Britain achieved that aim.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/16/moral-case-blanket-lockdown-fading-fast/
The biggest political ruse of our time has now spiralled so far out of control that it has become almost impossible to distinguish fact from deception. Every day we are besieged with such a selective and biased artillery of “scientific” assertions that it makes a mockery of expert insight.
Every day we are subjected to yet more bitesized epidemiology that gives an utterly false impression of risk. And every day we are bombarded with terrifying death figures so out of context that they are effectively meaningless.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/14/official-covid-story-biased-selective-point-deceit/
But if we are going to be served up with the daily death toll from Covid-19, isn’t it about time we were also provided with the number of deaths caused daily by the national lockdown? If you are prepared to dig around a bit, it is already possible to work this out from officially released figures.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/13/can-no-longer-ignore-excess-deaths-caused-lockdown/
The risk of coronavirus for the young is “staggeringly low”, the UK’s top statistician has said – as he condemned the government’s “embarrassing” handling of Covid-19.
He made withering criticisms of the Government’s handling of the crisis, saying its treatment of statistics was “not trustworthy” and amounted to “number theatre” rather than an attempt to properly inform the public.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College “stepped back” from the Sage group advising ministers when his lockdown-busting romantic trysts were exposed. Perhaps he should have been dropped for a more consequential misstep. Details of the model his team built to predict the epidemic are emerging and they are not pretty. In the respective words of four experienced modellers, the code is “deeply riddled” with bugs, “a fairly arbitrary Heath Robinson machine”, has “huge blocks of code – bad practice” and is “quite possibly the worst production code I have ever seen”.
New study analysing dozens of actual Covid-19 clusters from around the world shows enclosed spaces are hotbeds of the virus
- The overall infection rate was six per cent, but it was much higher among friends (22 per cent) and family members (18 per cent).
- In terms of location, the main risk factors were homes (13 per cent) transport (12 per cent) and dinner and entertainment (seven per cent).
- Risk of infection is much higher within households or other enclosed environments in which contact is close and sustained.
- In the outdoors, it falls to something in the 0-5 per cent range.
- Children, it seems, are not only better able to resist the infection within the home but also less likely to bring it back with them.
- Close and prolonged contact is required for transmission of the virus.
- Risk is highest in enclosed environments such as houses, care facilities, public transport, bars and other indoor spaces where people congregate.
- Casual, short interactions are not the main driver of the epidemic.
- Susceptibility to infection increases with age.
A decade of painstaking fiscal repair-work was undone within the first few hours; and that was just the start. The direct cost of Britain’s stimulus package is £70 billion which, as Alok Sharma, the Business Secretary, confirmed on Friday, is considerably higher than in other countries.
The indirect costs are harder to assess, but will surely be gargantuan. The first nine days of the crisis pushed half a million more people onto the dole, wiping out five years of rising employment. With every day that our shops remain shut, the benefits bill will rise – just as tax revenues dry up.
I don’t think we yet understand how vast a hit we are taking. It has become commonplace to compare the coronavirus to the Second World War, but our domestic economy continued to function even at the height of the Blitz. Shops, pubs and schools stayed open, and cinemas were closed for only two weeks.