Introduction
When the Chinese Covid19 emergency first started, I was broadly in support of Her Majesty’s Government’s handling of it. I had little problem, morally, ideologically or politically, with the government giving guidance on social distancing or engaging in preparations for a potential disaster, preparations such as building temporary hospitals for example. After all, the models that some of Britain’s biggest and most respected Russell Group universities were producing were pointing to a significantly large death toll from a disease for which there is currently no vaccine. The models had potential death tolls that showed that traditional and trusted ways of dealing with novel diseases such as allowing herd immunity do develop naturally and to accept that there will be some excess deaths in the population, may not have been acceptable to the public. Something that also gave me confidence in the Government’s handling of Covid19 came about because amongst other things, I’d read and digested the government’s 2014 pandemic flu plan which was a result of the government of the day, Public Health England and others ‘wargaming’ what would happen if there was a pandemic flu outbreak. I was impressed that plans for dealing with a flu-emergency were in place and also that the Government were using these plans to deal with Covid19.
Fast forward to today and my confidence in HMG’s handling of the Covid19 issue is much less than it was. In fact I’m coming around to the conclusion that the cure for the Covid19 situation such as lockdowns, a shattered economy, societal problems such as the growth of a ‘grassing culture’, the increasingly boorish and arrogant way we are being policed and the mental and physical problems that the Government’s policies are causing to be stacked up, might just be worse than just letting the disease rip. Yes it will kill people, but maybe far less than one might imagine or far less than what the various models might suggest. We need to ask ourselves are the problems that the Government’s Covid19 policies are causing causing troubles that may be best avoided.
Models and Reality
There’s been much attention on social media and among those who ask awkward questions about the record of those who have created the Covid19 death and disease models. You may or may not be aware that the same entities behind the Covid19 models were the same as those who were behind the damaging response to the Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001. These same entities, such as Imperial College and Professor Neil Ferguson the architect of the current Covid19 infection model, had also worked on projections for human deaths from vCJD which could be contracted by eating meat animals infected with BSE. Experts, including some from Imperial, had predicted in 1999, that BSE would cause neurodegenerative illness in up to half a million people and scared people off eating British beef as BSE had emerged in Britain possibly via feeding infected meat products to herbivore cattle.
In the case of BSE the experts were profoundly wrong. There has been nothing like the half a million deaths predicted and with an incubation period for the disease that BSE causes in humans Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease of up to 50 years it’s unlikely that it will affect that many people in the prime of their lives. The panic, fed greatly by the media about an epidemic of vCJD was such that people readily believed that we were all going to die foaming at the mouth because of BSE. However it has turned out that the number of people who have been killed by vCJD is tiny in comparison with other causes of death. The number is so low that the US National Institute of Health called the BSE/vCJD epidemic as ‘the epidemic that never was’. The actual number of deaths in Britain from BSE caused vCJD is 178, which is a world away from half a million.
With regards Foot and Mouth, whilst the UK government blindly followed EU rules on how to deal with Foot and Mouth, something that was not the case in the previous big outbreak in 1967. The same expert organisations as who have made predictions regarding Covid19 also predicted disaster there and may have influenced, as did the National Farmers Union in order to protect meat exports, the decision to go for mass slaughter rather than vaccination to stop the spread of Foot and Mouth and selective rather than wholesale slaughter. As an aside, EU rules also played a part in the spread of Foot and Mouth in 2001 as EU rules had caused the shutdown of a great many small local slaughterhouses which meant that animals were traveling significant distances to slaughter and spreading any disease into different areas of the country in the process. Unlike other nations such as the Netherlands, which used vaccination of animals which were later culled and kept out of the food system, Britain instead opted for what is thought by some today to have been an over the top response.
Models and modelling in relation to disease is really useful and important but it is important to remember that they can also be wildly inaccurate. As well as the above examples of disease models catastrophising the worse case scenarios, there is also the issue of predictions for HIV/AIDS. As someone who was around during the growth of the AIDS crisis I recall the grave and frightening predictions that HIV/AIDS would rip its way through the heterosexual population of Western nations, something that has plainly not been the case.
Heterosexuals took their cue from gay men and started to engage in sexual activities that were inherently safer than unprotected vaginal or anal intercourse. Condom use and condom sales soared among heterosexuals and women who would have previously relied soley on the contraceptive pill for birth control, started requiring their partners use condoms. The only places where there’s been a documented issue of mass heterosexual transmission of HIV/AIDS have been in poor countries and countries that are educationally backward such as many of the nations of Africa. The much promised and feared heterosexual HIV/AIDS epidemic in the West has not materialised. It’s still a problem in the gay community though and I’m saddened to see so many young gay men are forgetting the lessons, the very hard lessons, that the gay community of the 1980’s//90’s learned with regards to the importance of safer sex practices.
But, I digress. The point I am making here is that although modelling when it comes to infectious disease can be very useful in formulating a response to a disease, modelling can be wrong, sometimes spectacularly so. Also experts, whilst their advice should be listened to by Government, are all too human and can also get things wrong.
As the Coronavirus emergency has gone on I’ve noticed that there are those who are not at all ‘tin foil hat’ and who are much better than me in analysing death rates etc who are starting to ask awkward questions about the Covid19 death rate and comparing it with normal death rates. One of these excellent, educated and sensibly questioning individuals is the blogger Hector Drummond. Mr Drummond is an ex-academic and also a well published writer as well as being a novelist and a composer. This particular polymath has been doing some digging into Office of National Statistics data with regards annual death rates and what he has discovered is interesting to say the least. Mr Drummond’s methodical and evidence based approach to the issue of Covid19 infection and death rates is not something that I wish to hurriedly precis, but something I would urge you to read to make up your own minds on the matter.
However, what Mr Drummond does seem to be uncovering is that the deaths from Covid19 may not be as excess as some, including some behind the disease transmission models, may have thought. Whilst I cannot go along with the lunatics who claim that Covid19 is a ‘hoax’, it is not, it’s a very real disease that causes those who catch it some distress and may well kill those who are elderly or who have co-morbidities or whose immune system or bodies may have been weakend by previous disease or constitutional weakness. I suspect that at least some of the documented spike in infections in the Asian communities may be down to social matters such as overcrowding along with cultural and religious ones such as fatalism preventing individuals taking care to avoid the disease. Physical issues that may plague Asians and in particular Muslims, such as prior or current damage to the body caused by Tuberculosis and the negative effects on the body that go along with being significantly inbred, may also be a factor in increased susceptibility to Covid19 infection and death in this cohort.
What is plain to see however is that on the whole, Covid19 is hitting those people who are elderly, have comorbidities and who for whatever reason have difficulty fighting off infection, are the primary victims of Covid19. This does not look to me to be anything that unusual. We should not forget that influenza also carries off those who are old, ill or who have poor constitutions. Covid19 is therefore very different from pandemics like the 1918 Influenza pandemic which hit the young, fit and healthy the hardest.
After reading around the whole issue of death rates, infection levels and similar matters, I’m currently starting to come to the tentative conclusion that the risk to the young, the fit and the healthy may well have been significantly overstated. The possibility that the models of Covid19 may be wrong and that potential death rates have been overstated has been given some credence by a recent Breitbart article that alleged that the computer model that Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College was not up to the task.
The claim is that the code that the computer program is built upon, is being shrouded in unnecessary secrecy and that background coding records for it have not been retained. According to James Delingpole who wrote the Breitbart article, such code that has apparently been supplied by Imperial College from Professor Ferguson’s original program, does not look right. The code that has appeared online in various places has apparently been tampered with or at least converted from the original programming language ‘C’ to much more current programming language. Professor Ferguson’s model was created over 13 years ago to model influenza pandemics. What looks suspicious to me is that the original code has not been released and that causes me to ask why? Was it just poor management of records either by Professor Ferguson or by whoever he may have subcontracted to write the program? Or, and this is what is most concerning: ‘Is there an obvious flaw in the model that was previously not noticed, maybe because the code had not been properly tested?
If the question that is answered in the affirmative is the second one and there is a big flaw in an application that was written well over a decade ago, then Imperial College’s advice to the government may well have been significantly overstated. This overstatement of potential death rates caused by any hidden flaw would have in that case propelled the Government to chuck everything including the kitchen sink at the problem.
The Government’s response
As I said earlier, having read the 2014 influenza pandemic response document from Public Health England. I had some confidence that the policy was evidence based and created a management structure with defined decision making points meaning that action could be taken quickly and not get bogged down with administrivia. I have little confidence left in Public Health England now.
It has plainly proved itself not able to manage the current situation. Their public statements are often vague and they have handled the issue of testing really badly from the start. Public Health England have also ended up with a lot of Covid19 test kits, bought with public money, that are unfit for use outside of very specific circumstances. Public Health England were forced to admit to the public that the tests that they’d purchased from China, were effectively useless. It was found that the tests PHE purchased were only acceptably reliable when testing those who were severely ill with Covid19. It was unsuitable for use in the field to identify those who were suffering from a mild form of Covid19.
Public Health England has failed badly. Maybe if they’d been spending less time and less of our money on being ‘woke’ and playing the health nazi with things like the sugar content of drinks or lecturing about or even hyping up the problems of obesity, then PHE might have been able to prepare better for a novel infectious disease? I have been deeply unimpressed by how PHE have managed the Covid19 situation.
I’m also getting less and less impressed by how our elected representatives are handling this issue nor am I impressed with how those who are advising the ministers may be carrying on. Her Majesty’s Government’s big mistake here has been to panic and to a large extent it appears they may have worried about mainstream media criticism. This is the criticism that would inevitably occur if HMG took a more hands off approach, should Professor Ferguson’s figures be accurate and Britain had a high death toll.
The second big mistake that I believe that HMG has made is to put so much trust in one modelling source. There are other academics and research entities that undertake similar research and modelling into infectious diseases both at home and abroad. Were any of these entities or academics invited by HMG to provide their input to the debate within government about Covid19?
It is as they say a ‘schoolboy error’ to trust completely any single source. It’s something that is or rather should be drummed into every junior journalists skull that corroboration should be sought when dealing with a singular source of a story. Also, if you do have no alternative but to accept a single souce, then you should examine that source’s reputation and validity quite closely. HMG has given a lot of trust to one single source and have failed to examine Professor Ferguson or his department of Imperial College’s professional reputation. An examination of this reputation would have uncovered the fact that there are allegations that not only did he and his department predict hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid19, but that they also failed by overestimating the number of cases of both Avian Influenza and BSE related new variant CJD. His department also allegedly mishandled the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak as well. This issue of getting the preductions wrong has also been highlighted by the American commentator Stephen Crowder where he ripped into the reputation of Professor Ferguson.
I cannot for the life of me understand why either the Prime Minister nor any of his Ministers trusted so strongly in one source when common sense would have suggested that these models from Imperial were properly tested. But they didn’t think, they panicked and now we are in a huge mess. The only reason I can think of as to why the Government jumped too high was because those who advise ministers, not the Special Advisors or other wonks, but instead the Senior Civil Service, gave too much weight to Professor Ferguson’s model when advising ministers. If that is indeed what has happened, then we have a government who is not governing but merely following the instructions of their unelected Civil Servants to a slavish degree. That is not how a democratic country should be run.
The damage that is being done.
I’m coming around to the conclusion that the supposed ‘cure’ for the spread of Covid19, the nationwide lockdown, is doing more damage to our nation that the disease itself would do. The economic damage alone from the lockdown is horrific. I’m getting told by self employed builders, engineers and others that they are in a very dire position at the moment because their work has all but dried up. Other small businesses such as pubs, cafes and some specialist retail companies are also being hit badly as these are not businesses that are suitable for trading online. We could come out of this Covid19 disaster with a shattered economy and all because of bad data and an even worse interpretation of that data.
Socially Britain is also being seriously damaged by Covid19. We have seen a rise in stomach churning ‘state worship’ most notably in the form of the regular Thursday activity of ‘clapping the NHS’. As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m no great fan of the NHS, in fact I think it’s a compete pile of shit that gives piss poor service to its customers, therefore I will not join in with the morons who applaud the NHS. Thankfully, people seem to be coming to their senses over this and I’ve noticed that in my area of the Welsh Marches, the level of clapping for the NHS seems to be subsiding.
Another social damage that has come about due to Covid19 is the rise of an East German style ‘grassing culture’ where neighbour informs upon neighbour and children inform on their parents over alleged ‘breaches’ of the ‘guidance’ regarding social distancing. To give one personal example: The local council where I live didn’t lock up all the children’s playgrounds when the panic began and I managed to find a playground that had not been sealed so I took my son there for some well deserved exercise. The very next day my wife took our son to the very same playground and found it sealed with cable ties. Someone overlooking the playground had obviously seen me and Laughing Boy in the playground and had informed on us and got the playground sealed. This strikes me as the sort of petty informing that no free society should be afflicted with. It also shows a profound lack of common sense. I can understand the closing of indoor play facilities as there are often lots of people in very close contact with each other in them. But outdoor playgrounds where adults can supervise their children and socially distance themselves? This just doesn’t make sense.
The lockdown has damaged relationships in many areas and made people suspicious of one another for no good reason. I suspect that when the lockdown is lifted there will be some form of reckoning, possibly in the form of ‘sending to Coventry’, the many grasses and petty informers that have arisen during the lockdown. I do foresee that the snitches will get metaphorical stitches when this is all over and that will be something that the snitches will have brought on themselves by their own actions.
The Media
The media has had a generally awful time during the Covid19 period. They have not properly and dispassionately reported the news, they have engaged in hyperbole and catastrophising of the situation. They’ve provided no context such as comparing normal death rates from respiratory diseases with Covid19. Media has not asked intelligent questions of government and they’ve taken the old journalistic adage of ‘if it bleeds it leads’ to it’s illogical conclusion. Every story is either a ‘shock and horror’ one or is lazily promoting a story pushing a political agenda given it by various activists such as the ‘BAME are hit harder by Covid’ one. It is little wonder that the population of the United Kingdom is losing trust in its mainstream media to accurately report stories and to hold the government to account.
Conclusion
When this emergency started out, I was a supporter of the Government’s position that because this is a novel disease then drastic actions were needed to stop its spread. As time has gone on I’ve modified my position radically. I no longer believe that Covid19 is an instant killer for the young and the fit, but is more along the lines of the influenza outbreaks that we get every winter which carries off the old and the sick and those whose immune systems are compromised. I’m really pissed off with a lockdown that may not have any appreciable effect on either infection rates or death rates among the general population.
My position now is that the lockdown has gone on long enough and may not have much effect on a disease that may well have been in the United Kingdom since December 2019/January 2020. I suspect that a lot of people, especially those who live in or have dealings with those from large cities, may have already been exposed to Covid19 and will have either had a mild experience with it or were unaffected by it. My view now is that it is time to end this damaging lockdown and get the country back to work and to try to repair the damage that Professor Ferguson’s less than satisfactory predictions has created.
