Government to ease Covid restrictions...

[dutchman]

Covid lockdowns 'have proven to be an utter failure': Head of Medicine at Stanford Medical School

[dutchman]

If my experience is typical (and I'm not claiming it is) the effects of lockdown are getting worse, not better: absenteeism, delays, supply shortages, inflated prices, domestic violence, access to medical treatment, etc.

[rebbonk]

I would suggest that you are seeing the reality of things, Dutchman.

There was little justification for the lockdown (other than the word of Ferguson, who has yet to get anything right; and a set of power crazed politicians that didn't believe that things were as they told us and didn't follow their own rules) and the ramifications are going to last for years.

Personally, I'd like to see the lot of them face the courts for what I always saw as an illegal act.

[dutchman]

[dutchman]

Covid lockdown ‘prevented only 0.2pc of deaths in first wave’



Lockdowns prevented just 0.2 per cent of deaths in comparison with simply trusting people to do the right thing, a new study suggests.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, in the US, Lund University, in Sweden and the Centre for Political Studies, in Denmark, said the costs to society far outweighed the benefits and called for lockdown to be “rejected out of hand” as a future pandemic policy.

The team even found that some lockdown measures may have increased deaths by stopping access to outdoor space, “pushing people to meet at less safe places” while isolating infected people indoors, where they could pass the virus on to family members and housemates.

“We do find some evidence that limiting gatherings was counterproductive and increased Covid-19 mortality,” the authors concluded. “Often, lockdowns have limited people’s access to safe outdoor places such as beaches, parks, and zoos, or included outdoor mask mandates or strict outdoor gathering restrictions, pushing people to meet at less safe indoor places.”

To calculate the benefits of lockdown, the researchers looked at 24 academic papers estimating their effectiveness as well as other interventions such as wearing masks, business and school closures, border closures and stay-at-home orders.

However, the researchers found that legally enforced lockdowns were only a tiny bit better at cutting deaths than allowing the public to follow recommendations including working from home and limiting social contact, as happened in countries such as Sweden.

The first lockdown prevented just 0.2 per cent of deaths, they concluded – which for Britain in the first wave would mean it saved about 100 lives out of 52,000 – when compared to letting people take precautions themselves.

Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University and another of the study’s authors, said: “Lockdowns in Europe and the US decreased Covid-19 mortality by a measly 0.2 per cent on average, while the economic costs of lockdowns were enormous. I find zero evidence to support lockdowns.”

[rebbonk]

for Britain in the first wave would mean it saved about 100 lives out of 52,000

It would have been less than that as the 52000 was people dying WITH covid, not BECAUSE of covid. Many people still haven't cottoned to the fact that there is a big difference.

[dutchman]

COVID-19 expert claims he was told to 'correct his views' after criticising 'implausible graph' shown during official briefing

A senior epidemiologist who advised the government during the coronavirus pandemic claims he was told to "correct" his views after he criticised what he thought was an "implausible" graph shown at an official briefing.

Professor Mark Woolhouse has also apologised to his daughter, whose generation "has been so badly served by mine", and believes that closing schools was "morally wrong".

The Edinburgh University academic is deeply critical of the use of lockdown measures and says "plain common sense" was a "casualty of the crisis".

Speaking to Sky News, Prof Woolhouse seemed concerned about a possible "big-brother" approach to the control of information about COVID.

He says he was told to watch what he was saying following a briefing given by Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) Sir Patrick Vallance on 21 September 2020.

Sir Patrick said at the time: "At the moment, we think that the epidemic is doubling roughly every seven days."

Fifty thousand cases a day were being predicted by mid-October.

"There was a lot wrong with the projection," Prof Woolhouse says. He calculated the doubling period as every 10 or 11 days, rather than seven, and, in his opinion, there was "no reason to expect the epidemic to accelerate suddenly".

He observes: "If this projection had been extended for another week we would be talking about one hundred thousand cases per day. Another month would have given us close to half a million. Per day. An exponential projection will give you any number you like if you run it for long enough."

Prof Woolhouse felt the predictions were "so implausible" that he was concerned about a loss of scientific "credibility".

After seeing the graph, he says he "quickly posted what was intended to be a reassuring comment through the Science Media Centre saying it was highly unlikely that the UK would see so many reported cases per day by mid-October".

"As it turned out, we barely reached half that," he says in his new book on the pandemic called The Year the World Went Mad.

However, his "objections did not go down well".

"After a flurry of emails I was invited to 'correct' my comments," he says.

"The invitation was passed on to me by a messenger so I cannot be sure precisely where in the system it originated."

Nor did it end there, he says. "A couple of weeks later I was asked to give evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee. This generated another flurry of emails over an October weekend from two senior government scientists concerned that I might criticise the CSA's graph before the MPs."

When asked where the message telling him to "correct his views" came from, he says he simply doesn't know the source, but it was "not from a random person".

Clearly angry, he insists it "wasn't my views that needed correcting, it was the projections".

[dutchman]

Boris Johnson: I cannot rule out another Covid lockdown



Boris Johnson has refused to rule out a further Covid lockdown if a new variant emerged that badly affected children, despite admitting some restrictions were “inhumane”.

The Prime Minister played down the prospect of another shutdown but said it would be an option in the event of a damaging new mutation.

He decided against imposing another lockdown at the height of the omicron wave, instead introducing work-from-home guidance and mandatory masks, and saying the UK could “ride out this wave without shutting our country once again”.

In an interview for GB News with Esther McVey and Philip Davies, his fellow Conservative MPs, Mr Johnson was asked whether any future lockdowns would be imposed.

“I want to avoid any such thing ever happening again and I can’t rule out something,” he said. “I can’t say we wouldn’t be forced to do non-pharmaceutical interventions again of the kind we did.

“I think it would be irresponsible of any leader in any democracy to say that they’re going to rule out something that could save life. And I believe the things we did saved lives.”

The Prime Minister warned: “There could be a variant that affects children badly that we really need to contain.

“I’m not going to take any options off the table, but I don’t think it will happen. We’re now in the phase, and this is the view of all the advisers I talk to, where the virus is losing its potency overall and we’ve got a massively vaccinated UK population.”

[dutchman]

Asked whether he agreed with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister for Brexit opportunities, that some of the Covid restrictions between March 2020 and July 2021 had been “inhuman”, Mr Johnson said: “I do. I do.

“I understand why people feel that, and I think people felt that particularly the loss of the ability to see their loved ones in care homes, or to meet properly for funerals... I mean, it was just appalling, to say nothing of the loss of religious services that matter so much to people’s spirit. So, I totally understand that.”

And yet he went along with it!

[rebbonk]

My views on Johnson are unprintable. The sooner he is removed from office the better. Problem is, who would replace him?