In previous Pandemics there were no Lockdowns. The vulnerable were isolated, serious cases in Sanatoriums, there was one locally just outside Cranham. In this Pandemic, for reasons no doubt connected with Davos inspired The Great Reset project, the strategy for tackling the Pandemic was based on “The Science”. This seemed to consist of the collective advice of a few selected ‘scientists’ using unverified computer simulation tools to try to predict the future course of the Covid-19 epidemic. What could possibly go wrong ?
Each time it became blatantly obvious that their predictions were wildly inaccurate they attempted another ‘automated guess’ at a disaster scenario and presented this to the Politicians who then decided what action to take. The result of repeating something stupid again is to get the same kind of result; hence more panic. All the time these erroneous predictions were being used to frighten the Public into conforming to Government orders to Lockdown, stay at home and basically not to socialise in any way.
FEAR = False Evidence Assumed Real
The First Wave of Infection
In March 2020 Imperial College warned of 500,000 deaths due to Covid-19 and that the NHS would be overwhelmed. Unfortunately by accepting these figures two major mistakes occurred. Older Patients were discharged from Hospital back to Care Homes, thus spreading the infection to the most vulnerable. This was a Public Health 101 basic blunder. Secondly the Government imposed Lockdown, they shut schools which are the main child care providers and closed the economy. Suddenly it became possible to ‘work at home’ for millions of people, whilst they looked after their children. By June 2020 this drastic action caused cases to fall but by October the Scientists were back with more dire predictions of 4,000 deaths per day. In reality it was 1,400 at the peak and this was for deaths with Covid-19 not necessarily of Covid-19 due to co-morbidities (the main cause of most deaths). A Modeller from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is quoted as saying that “modelling a Pandemic in real time is like doing engineering on a collapsing building”. The great and good of Science failed dismally.
The Second Wave
A new strain of the virus popped up and caused another panic reaction, Christmas was cancelled. Fortunately the vaccination scheme had started. The doom-mongers predicted even higher death rates. Up to 25,000 Hospitalisations were predicted but in reality were less than 8,500. The hospital system wasn’t swamped, in fact the much publicised Nightingale Hospitals were build but not used for Covid-19 patients, they were quietly dismantled or used for other purposes. Squabbling broke out amongst the modellers.
The Great Barrington Report was smeared and ignored.
The Third Wave
Now a year into the panic in March 2021 more dire warnings of nearly 60,000 imminent deaths. The modellers hadn’t taken peoples innate common sense (and so changes in behaviour) into account. The effect of Natural Immunity and of course the effects of vaccination. Imperial predicted 7,000 hospitalisations a day, in reality it was about 1,000, once again fear was being used to manipulate a weary population who were beginning to smell a rat. The end of the Lockdown was suspended, Imperial predicted over 200,000 deaths in the next 12 months, about 16,600 a month. They ignored the known fact that the vaccine reduced the severity of the illness and drastically reduced Hospital stay lengths. That caused, again, a six fold error in the figures; notice always overestimates of doom laden outcomes. Imperial’s Prof Neil Ferguson, the Father of this “Science”, predicted a million infections a day, again wildly inaccurate.
The Fourth Wave, Omicron to the rescue
In November 2021 the Omicron variant flared up, initially from South Africa. This again caused a huge panic from the ‘Scientists’ and Government. It was spreading at 100,000+ cases a day with predictions of 10,000 hospitalisations a day and up to 6000 deaths. The UK team had ignored the excellent Scientific Papers from South Africa, freely available on the Internet, which made it clear there were LESS hospitalisations than with previous variants, and only 16% of the death rate. The fast spreading of the Omicron variant should have been welcomed. Mother Nature had saved the day and delivered a blunted version of Covid-19, a typical evolution for any potent virus.
The predictions of 75,000 deaths were quickly withdrawn and the Politicians had at last realised that they were being fed terrible advice by the Scientists and SAGE (LOL) Committee.
Conclusions – what can we learn
1. The wisdom gained from thousands of years of global experience with previous Pandemics should not be ignored, it was.
2. The Lockdowns were ineffective, they just prolonged the epidemic, with huge costs to the economy, the education of children and the millions of NHS pnon-Covid patients awaiting treatment. The NHS was never overwhelmed because they basically shut down huge amounts of treatment for non Covid-19 patients. The sad cost of that is likely to be at least as many deaths as from Covid-19; cause of death ‘planned neglect’.
3. Never rely on software written by medical Academics.
4. Never rely on software intended for Safety Critical use that is not rigorously verified as reliably accurate with consistent results.
5. Never, never, never consider that simulated predictions of chaotic systems could be accurate. Estimated error ranges must always be part of such endeavours. They were not stated.
6. Always, always check back regularly to see whats happening in reality and adjust the Strategy accordingly ! That is science.
7. Never, never, never use the above techniques in Safety Critical situations where lives depend on the results.
8. The Great Barrington Declaration summarised advice and the approach used in previous Pandemics. Even though signed by hundreds of thousands of medically qualified people, mainly practitioners, it was and still is ignored. As a consequence it’s probable that in the UK over a hundred thousand people died “early”, i.e. the elderly vulnerable and ones with strong co-morbidities.
9. A HUGE risk has been taken. We do not know how much damage the new vaccines may do in the longer term to the Nation’s immune systems. Fingers and toes crossed,… research urgently needed.
10. People’s Natural Immunity to Covid-19 was ignored by the Scientists. Also people’s defensive changes in behaviour as a means of self protection were ignored.
Prof Medley who handled the liasion between the SAGE Committee and the modellers/risk assessors is quoted as saying
“The idea that models have some kind of control is wrong”
Blindingly obvious from the beginning!
And also
“I think we now have got the Government to understand that we cannot make predictions about what is going to happen”
Note the attempt here to shift the blame onto the Government.
If they had been decent scientists and honest they would have advised the Government that their modelling and risk assessment were wildly inaccurate from the beginning and so should certainly NOT be used as a foundation to base Safety Critical decisions about Public Health policy on. This Contrarian wonders whether the Health and Safety Executive were asked for their advice?
All in all this is a living tragedy; literally the incompetent leading the misguided.
The “Science” wasn’t scientific, the “Scientists” were consistently incompetent, and they completely failed to communicate with the non-scientifically literate and mainly Humanities-educated Politicians.
A recipe for disaster if ever the was one, and that’s what we got.