The arrival of SARS Cov2 on British shores has been devastating. Not only has it caused or been a contributory factor in the deaths of 129,000 Britons but the disease has also infected over five million just in Britain alone. In addition to the direct medical problems and deaths caused by Covid, the response to it by Her Majesty’s Government has created many other problems which I believe will take a least a decade to sort out. There is the obvious economic damage that has been caused by shutting down businesses for month after month but there have been future physical and mental health problems created by lockdown and exacerbated by the National Health Service focussing almost entirely on the issue of Covid. Socially and politically we’ve seen some terrible damage and watched as the Government stripped away many liberties from British subjects, liberties that if they are to be returned will have to be fought hard for through Parliament and the courts.
In a way this article is somewhat of a ‘mea culpa’ as like many others I, for a while, bought into some of the erroneous information put out by what the writer Christopher Snowdon calls the ‘Covid cranks’. These cranks put out rather convincing appearing if erroneous information about Covid. Such erroneous information took the form of minimising the seriousness of Covid by claiming that it only killed 0.2%, or it was the same as the influenza that we see every year, that people were not dying in such large numbers from covid and that there was a ‘casedemic’ created by testing. I was wrong to take seriously a group of people who have by now been proven to be utterly wrong. It was only after I sought out information from those outside the bubble of the cranks that I changed my mind. The information from sensible molecular biologists, medics, science commentators and quackbusters that I found ran counter to the information from the cranks and which was so much more credible than the alternatives that it tipped the scales for me. I’ve had to change my mind on many things as I’ve been presented with evidence that has forced me to change my mind. When evidence changes and disagrees with a particular world view then I believe it’s correct to follow the evidence and change one’s world view. Where I stand now I find that the only thing that I still completely believe now compared to when the emergency started, is that vaccination is the only way out of this problem. That is because the evidence shows that it is vaccination that is solving the Covid problem and that is something that can be seen by looking at the numbers of hospitalisations and number of deaths that in the UK at least, because of vaccination are going down.
I’ve been aware of the writer Christopher Snowdon for a while through his blog Velvet Glove Iron Fist but have only recently started to read his stuff about Coronavirus and the response to it. He’s been following the evidence about Covid and has been extremely and justifiably critical of those who do not. His recent Twitter threads on the absolute shitfest of anti vaccination types, promoters of ‘lizard overlord’ conspiracy theories, discredited nurses and anti-5G nutters, that made up the recent ‘Freedom Rally’ in London’s Trafalgar Square is a masterpiece of very justified criticism.
However, Mr Snowdon’s article for Quillette magazine that was published earlier this year on the rise and fall of the Covid cranks is one that I’d advise everyone to read. In this article he writes eloquently and with the use of evidence about how individuals like Ivor Cummings and Mike Yeadon have got Covid badly wrong. Commentators like Cummings have had his claim that there would not be a second wave of Covid and Yeadon’s claim that the tests for Covid have massive levels of false positives, not only been seen to be wrong but have been proven to be wrong.
Mr Snowdon said:
A rise in the number of excess deaths would be compelling evidence that the people dying “with COVID” had died of COVID and would not have died of anything else that year. The ONS has recorded excess mortality every week since mid-October, with the north-west hardest hit at first followed by London and the south-east more recently. In total, there were 71,731 excess deaths in England last year and 76,610 people had COVID-19 mentioned on their death certificate. Coincidence? Why yes, say the sceptics. They claim that the excess deaths were not caused by COVID-19, but by the lockdowns themselves. In any case, they say, the rate of excess mortality is lower than it was in the spring and the current rate is not without historical precedent. Any suggestion that there would have been even more deaths without lockdowns is dismissed as impossible because “lockdowns don’t work.”
With the delusions of September colliding with the reality of a second wave that will kill more people than the first, true believers have had to double down or flee the scene. Many have doubled down. Ivor Cummins, who once insisted that there could be “no second wave without a second virus” now claims that he “foretold the second wave” and has shamelessly accused governments of not preparing for it. Yeadon, who claimed in October that the pandemic was “over” in London and was “most unlikely to return” still insists that PCR testing is “wildly unreliable,” but has made his argument more technical so his lay followers have to accept it on trust.
Mr Snowdon is broadly correct here. The hard core sceptics who were against both lockdowns and who believe that Covid is not that serious, made claims that later evidence showed to be untrue.
Now I’m somewhat of a lockdown sceptic but even I cannot deny that when you reduce contact between people you also reduce the ability of a contagion whether that be bacterial or viral to spread. We will probably have to wait until there is some form of future Royal Commission into the subject of Covid to find out exactly how much lockdowns have affected the spread of Covid but it’s just possible that they might have bought us enough time for the vaccines to come on stream and deal the killer blow to Covid.
As regards vaccines we have been damned lucky that Covid arrived when it did. The technology of mRNA vaccines has been worked on either theoretically or practically since the mid 1970’s but it was only in recent years that biotechnology techniques have advanced enough to make an mRNA vaccine possible. If SARS Cov2 had arrived at any time prior to our own we would not have had such an effective weapon against it.
Mr Snowdon knows the data and knows how data is managed with regards Covid and his article is one that I would heartily recommend that you read. It is an antidote to the Cummings and Yeadon’s of this world who have gained such a loyal set of followers and who are misleading such followers.
You can read the entire article by Mr Snowdon via the link below and it is one of those articles that I strongly suggest that you do read as it is highly enlightening.
https://quillette.com/2021/01/16/rise-of-the-coronavirus-cranks/
I’ve been sceptical about lockdowns, masks, 2 metres and hand sanitising mainly because I believe that it is all completely futile. All we are acheiving is spreading roughly the same number of infections over a longer period and making the problem worse as a result. The argument that we could delay the spread of the illness until we had time to vaccinate people was sound. Beyond that, the only way that these methods could work would be if we could isolate so completely that the bug couldn’t spread at all and therefore stop it in its tracks. This is clearly impossible. Now that most have been vaccinated, I’m not sure what further lockdowns are likely to acheive.
I don’t think that you need to be a conspiracy nut to believe that the government and the BBC are lying most of the time. So not believing them on the rare occasions when they tell the truth is a fairly rational approach.
The spreading out of infections is something that has concerned me as well. Has it extended the problem or has it alleviated it? I don’t think we will properly know until the enquiries start and I’d like to see the enquiry in for form of a Royal Commission with the power to compel evidence and witnesses. The problem with the ‘let it rip’ idea is that even with restrictions the UK has had an IFR of 2.5% without restrictions it could have been as bad as Yemen with IFR of 17%. I do believe that things would have been far better had the UK shut its borders far earlier than it did. It’s likely that keeping the borders open allowed a greater spread of original variants and also the import of new ones. I agree that buying time in order to vaccinate is a sound idea.
We still have some way to go to ensure that at least 90-95% of adults are vaccinated which would severely hamper the spread of disease but also curtail hospitalisations and deaths. Once that level of vaccines are achieved then lockdowns are a busted flush.
I’m with you on the BBC and Govt. Because both these entities have been less than honest over things like migration, Islamic Rape Gangs and other matters, it’s likely that they won’t be believed even when they are telling the truth. However, although I believe that there is a need for public debate on how the covid issue has been handled, the tin foilers have not helped. It’s difficult to get a sane discussion going when the loudest voices are amplifying the messages put out by anti vax cranks like Joe Mercola or the pushing the lunacy put out by the likes of David Icke.
Interesting (possibly self-serving) article at Spiked by the Great Barrington Declaration authors that touches on elements of COvid scepticism.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/02/the-smear-campaign-against-the-great-barrington-declaration/
It is indeed an interesting article but as you say a bit self serving. There’s is now no doubt in my mind that the lockdowns have caused damage but how much is difficult to say. There is a lot that the authors leave out such as that it wasn’t only Cummings and Hancock who criticised the GBD, medics from the USA, unconnected with the UK healthcare system have also criticised it. Whilst focused protection might have done less harm to the economy and to education there’s the possibility that as Focused Protection was by its nature more wooly than full lockdown, the public might not have taken it as seriously as they did lockdown? It’s easy to forget that in early March 2020 less was known about covid and there were no vaccines available, which meant that a government that was afraid of the media, which Johnson’s government so obviously is, would look at the policies, such as lockdown, that looked the most simple and least complex.
I can see one situaiton where focused protection might be useful and that’s if smallpox reappeared. In that case the older people who’ve been vaccinated for smallpox and who might have some residual, although not complete, protection and could go about their business whilst younger people who have not been vaccinated because this disease was thought to be eradicated, would need to be shielded until vaccinated.
GBD might have worked for a known disease but maybe not for a disease that is novel?