A Country Unhinged

This will not be a popular posting, I have no doubt! But I do honestly believe that the UK is engaged in madness over Covid19. First we have a government which initially appeared to want to follow a policy of riding out the pandemic. Then we have a view (it is no more than that) from an Epidemiology Modeller [Prof. Neil Ferguson] suggesting that up to 500,000 people could die if stringent measures were not taken i.e. “Lockdown”. The fact of the “Modellers” track record not being reviewed is lamentable incompetence on the government’s part. Facts as to “track record”:

{In 2005, Ferguson said that up to 200 million people could be killed from bird flu. He told the Guardian that ‘around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak… There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably.’ In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009.

In 2009, Ferguson and his Imperial team predicted that swine flu had a case fatality rate 0.3 per cent to 1.5 per cent. His most likely estimate was that the mortality rate was 0.4 per cent. A government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ was that the disease would lead to 65,000 UK deaths. In the end swine flu killed 457 people in the UK and had a death rate of just 0.026 per cent in those infected.

In 2001 the Imperial team produced modelling on foot and mouth disease that suggested that animals in neighbouring farms should be culled, even if there was no evidence of infection. This influenced government policy and led to the total culling of more than six million cattle, sheep and pigs – with a cost to the UK economy estimated at £10 billion.

It has been claimed by experts such as Michael Thrusfield, professor of veterinary epidemiology at Edinburgh University, that Ferguson’s modelling on foot and mouth was ‘severely flawed’ and made a ‘serious error’ by ‘ignoring the species composition of farms,’ and the fact that the disease spread faster between different species.

In 2002, Ferguson predicted that between 50 and 50,000 people would likely die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. He also predicted that number could rise to 150,000 if there was a sheep epidemic as well. In the UK, there have only been 177 deaths from BSE.

Ferguson’s disease modelling for Covid-19 has been criticised by experts such as John Ioannidis, professor in disease prevention at Stanford University, who has said that: ‘The Imperial College study has been done by a highly competent team of modellers. However, some of the major assumptions and estimates that are built in the calculations seem to be substantially inflated.’}

(Spectator 16^th April)

All of this information was available at the time! Nevertheless the government panicked and took the “lockdown” decision. Maybe others (from the perhaps inaptly named SAGE committee) agreed but nowhere have I been able to find countervailing views which is strange to say the least! At this point it is right to point out that the excess winter deaths in England and Wales is around 24,000 each year (ONS). Currently (24^th May 2020) deaths from Covid19 are 36,000 and both the rate and daily absolute numbers are declining. The estimated economic cost of a “lockdown” are between £300bn and £500bn. Given this information it is right to review whether the “lockdown” is the most effective means of tackling the pandemic.

In this context the row over Dominic Cummings can only be seen as the lowest sort of politics and self inflated media importance. Of course there would be calls for his resignation – many are afraid of his capabilities and others are old enemies. I believe he has at least not followed the spirit of the advice and instructions but the reaction is just sickening. Political foes cannot stoop low enough – and Labour/SNP/LibDems want an even longer, more strict “lockdown”. The twitterati and faux Facebook crowd will scream but what is required is to engage brain not “gob off” at the earliest and any opportunity.

Now tell me that the country is not un-hinged!