Letter in Telegraph About the Damage Done By Imperial’s Alarmist Modelling
There was a good letter in the Telegraph today co-signed by Lockdown Sceptics contributor David Campbell and his colleague Kevin Dowd. It was a pithy summary of a piece they co-authored for Spectator Australia earlier this month.
SIR – Matt Ridleys criticism (Comment, June 21st) of the distorted presentation of scientific predictions in order for those predictions to have political impact identifies the worst feature of current public policymaking.
Amazingly, however, in the case of Covid policymaking his criticism is insufficient. The crucial prediction was that of the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, which said that 510,000 deaths would occur in the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour. This was misleading in the extreme, for there was absolutely no possibility that the outbreak of this disease would not be met by widespread spontaneous changes in behaviour, or that the Government would not take extensive measures to support them.
The world has been turned upside-down by an absurd, alarmist prediction of what was always a zero-probability event, as it was this prediction which panicked the Government into adopting a suppression policy.
Professor David Campbell
Lancaster University Law School
Professor Kevin Dowd
Durham University Business School
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BBC
In January, people aged over 65 made up the vast majority of hospital admissions, Nadhim Zahawi says.
Now they make up less than a third.
That’s because they are all dead, you killed them you useless fuck
what an arse
Mr Logic! Got a German colleague who looks exactly like him and is as much of a bedwetter. Loves quoting daily case and vaccination stats.
Surely it’s about time the British public dragged these fuckers (Whitty, Valance, Johnson, Hancock, Gove, Van Tam et all) into the street and hanged them from lampposts,
It isn’t going to happen, is it? Because the Covid disciples in the GBP have some responsibility themselves, and ‘mea culpa’ is a rare utterance. So stop idly wishing. It’s pointless.
It may never happen, but it’s wonderful to contemplate.
As much as many of us would like them to – they will keep going.
Look how often that disgusting cockroach Blair keeps crawling out.
[SMH] The government did not ‘panic’ into imprisoning the entire population of this country. Why do we keep getting these ridiculous claims? We’re letting the criminal swines off the hook by suggesting they’re malleable, fragile and impressionable to bad advice.
They’re evil crooks!
I haven’t seen a copy of Viz for years (Is it still published?), but the cartoonists should have a field day;
One character that I remember was Terry F×ckwit who by the standards of Witless and Vacuous would be Einstein by comparison.
And who would Salter The Mad Scientist be …..
I have the 2020 edition ‘The Trumpeters Lips’. All the favs are in there. Brilliant.
Great to hear it’s still in existence.
Thank goodness for these people. Every time people speak out, it gives hope to others. It gives hope to us all.
Would my behaviour spontaneously change if 510k people happened to have started dying from covid? Would I support a Government who took measures to support this?
Assuming the letter writer means yet more pointless social distancing rules, masks, lockdowns then no to both!
The modelling is embarrassingly bad but even if it was accurately predictive then it still doesn’t mean that we should adopt their damaging and unethical policies because of it.
Indeed, they could have provided people with rational advice, allowed people to decide what action to take based on their own circumstances, and run trials of repurposed existing drugs with known safety records.
Yes great plan. Considering what’s been spaffed on furlough and dodgy loans etc it prob would also have been cheaper to just put everyone who wanted to isolate and couldn’t up in a hotel room for a few months whilst the rest of us partied and spread genuine herd immunity 😂
Lockdowns are probably morally wrong in any circumstances, though it is possible to construct some hypothetical that might justify them
In practice I think they have to be ruled out because it is clear nobody can be trusted with the power to decide what circumstances justify them
My point at the time. This was always a zero probability prediction. It was no more likely that government and public would ignore a viral pandemic than people would not jump out of the way if they saw an out of control bus mounting the pavement This was why the prediction amounted to a lie. It was something used to frighten and deceive. Why? And who paid for Ferguson’s trip to North America in March 2020 to spread fear and loathing there as well.
What was different this time was that government conspired in creating panic and hysteria among the general public, put the interests of the NHS above all else, treated old people callously (helping spread the disease), failed to put in place travel quarantine measures and ran from the field when their sensible herd immunity strategy was politically discomforting. They then went on to waste hundreds of billions on test and trace, furloughs and mass vaccination.
Yeh. But they saved the NHS and that’s all that counts. Let’s all go outside and bang a few saucepans to scare away the virus.
NHS saved – when there are millions of missed treatment/appointmenst/operations – how is that “saving the NHS”?
NHS medics are exhausted, many are by their own admission “broken” because of the lack of planning to deal with mass illness; these are the professionals who are going to deal with the backlog? The state of the NHS will only deteriorate and when they are overwhelmed because of a lockdown caused flu epidemic this winter, how will that pan out…a poorly managed behemoth, lack of staff, poor motivation, senior medics leaving/retiring because of the Tapered Annual Allowance….perfect storm ahead.
I would in general agree but I don’t think the government gives two hoots about the NHS other than for appearances
They’ve not saved it, they’ve shafted it
Even if Ferguson’s prediction had been correct, lockdowns were not justified
“it was this prediction which panicked the Government into adopting a “suppression” policy.”
And it was the Government’s crass stupidity and misplaced sense of superiority that meant they couldn’t and still can’t admit to making a mistake.
If as a clinician I made such profound errors which resulted in harm I would be subject to investigation by the GMC subject to civil litigation and possibly criminal prosecution. Just a thought?