Looking forward to seeing this scene again in October! (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
How long will this virus be with us? Earlier this week, the scientific journal Nature published an international survey of 119 Covid-19 experts — immunologists, virologists and epidemiologists — about the likely future of the virus and the human race. Almost nine in ten of them thought it likely that Covid would become endemic in the human population, continuing to circulate at least in some regions for many years to come. Six in ten thought it “very likely”. Only 6% thought that an unlikely scenario.
This makes the goal of complete virus elimination — Zero Covid — look unrealistic, at least in the short term. But unfortunately for the Prime Minister, who is expected to announce Britain’s “roadmap” out of lockdown on Monday, it by no means answers the question of which route he should take.
When it took scientists less than a year from Covid’s outbreak to create a working vaccine, and not just one but several, relief was twofold. In one sense, the prospect of an end to both the disease’s merciless death toll and the atomised grimness of human life brought general euphoria to the darkness of November. But for politicians and others tasked with steering society between the Scylla of social destruction and the Charybdis of Covid itself, there was a different relief.
Without a workable vaccine, they faced the impossible task of extricating society from a cycle of lockdowns, knowing that doing so would probably mean a rise in deaths that could make the earlier stringent measures seem futile. With vaccines, though, normal life could return without sacrificing tens or hundreds of thousands more lives.
But, as Number Ten is now discovering, the introduction of vaccines creates an entirely new set of dilemmas for governments across the developed world. For if it is possible, even in theory, to bring the infection rate so low that “test, trace, isolate” is a practical way to control the disease on its own, the current lockdown is probably the last chance to do that. Yet doing so would mean continuing the current stringent measures for months, long after the most vulnerable have been vaccinated; there are even rumours that the Government wants to maintain the current lockdown until cases (not hospitalisations) fall below one thousand a day — less than a tenth of the current figure.
But the first, and subsequent, lockdowns were justified as measures to keep deaths and serious cases at a level that wouldn’t overwhelm health services. If vaccinating the most vulnerable parts of the population breaks the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths — bringing the impact of Covid down to the level of a seasonal illness like flu — does it matter if infections remain as common as its cousin, the common cold, which infects the average adult two or three times per year?
This is the new dilemma facing policymakers and, though science can and must inform it, it is at heart a political question. Even government scientists are starting to express frustration about the UK government’s apparent unwillingness to grasp that nettle. As Professor Dame Angela McLean, Chief Scientific Advisor to the MoD and a member of SAGE, told a Science and Technology Select Committee on Wednesday: “It’s one of the things we have cried out for again and again. Could somebody in a position of political power tell us: what is an acceptable level of infections?”
She was answering a question about whether, as Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has suggested, we will have to live with Covid as we do with flu and other infectious diseases. And she agreed that “other infectious diseases that we put up with are probably a reasonable starting point”. But this in itself still doesn’t solve the political question, because, as Professor McLean pointed out, bad flu winters can still be remarkably deadly. It still comes down to a matter of judgement.
In recent UK history, the worst years for flu deaths were 1976 and 1999, when more than 60,000 people in England and Wales died from influenza or pneumonia. The best year in the last century was 1948, with under 20,000 deaths. That leaves a range of 20,000-60,000 deaths per year, up to half the Covid casualties so far, and up to 10% of the pre-Covid annual death toll.
After the last year, would that feel like an acceptable number of deaths? Conversely, would we accept another year of lockdowns to reduce the toll of Covid from 60,000 to 20,000? As Professor McLean said: “The question of what is acceptable is not a scientific question. That’s a question for the whole of society.”
It’s worth noting, however, one caveat provided by epidemiologist Professor Mark Woolhouse, who is also a member of SAGE: “Whatever the answer is, it’s not zero.” That is, he explained, because if you take the view that every Covid death is unacceptable, “you are writing a blank cheque to do any amount of harm by the measures you’ve implemented to try and control it.”
Yet this, unfortunately, is the implicit view behind the Government’s policy, which makes it hard to rationally weigh the harms of lockdown measures against the reductions in risk from Covid. Indeed, Downing Street appears to still be following the alarming scenarios modelled by Warwick University, which show that any relaxation of social distancing measures before late 2021 will lead to another wave of deaths. But the authors of the Warwick models themselves acknowledge their assumption that vaccine efficacy applies equally to infection, mild and severe illness. However, they add, “if the vaccine has differential protection against the most severe disease this will impact our predictions for hospital admissions and deaths.”
And this is exactly what early data from Israel and elsewhere is indicating: vaccines may not prevent 100% of infections, but they do seem to prevent over 90% of hospitalisations and deaths. In effect, the Warwick assumptions about vaccine uptake, speed and effectiveness in preventing death, serious illness, and transmission are already being superseded by data. In Professor Woolhouse’s words: “Right now you should be looking at earlier unlocking, because the data is so good.”
This all sounds very positive. But while the R number is below one, it remains that the absolute case numbers are still comparable to those in spring last year. Official positive test results are over 10,000 per day, and the ONS estimates that over 700,000 people in the UK are currently infected, around 1% of the population.
The question now is: what is the end goal of the current social restrictions? Is it to keep hospitalisations within a level that the exhausted NHS can handle? Is it to keep deaths on a downward trend while restoring society to normality as fast as possible? Or is it to bring the rate of infection down to a level that could realistically be tracked, traced and isolated?
Only the Government can answer that question. It’s the responsibility of politicians, not scientists, to balance the risks of Covid against the social, economic and political impacts of the measures taken against it. Scientists themselves say so, again and again.
Risk is too often treated as a purely mathematical problem, but it has other dimensions too: psychological, social and political. There is no mathematical formula to tell any of us whether to take a chance on starting a business, proposing marriage, or riding a bicycle on city streets. We weigh up the possible outcomes and then commit to a course of action, in the knowledge that the future is uncertain and unknown. And in the same way, our leaders are forced to choose a course of action for the country as a whole.
Let us, by all means, be led by data. But data is a sextant, not a destination. What are we being led towards? What level of risk from Covid are we prepared to accept, and what are we prepared to sacrifice to reduce that risk? These questions are not statistical, but political.
Thanks to vaccines, the extra risks introduced to all our lives by Covid will soon be reduced to more familiar levels. Yet, having abandoned a rational approach to risk in favour of the view that “no Covid death is acceptable,” our politicians seem to be struggling to re-establish a grown up conversation about what we value as a society.
Zero-risk life is not an option. When Johnson finally reveals his “roadmap” to freedom, he would do well to start by explaining what kind of risk he is willing to take, and for what purpose.
Timandra Harkness presents the BBC Radio 4 series, FutureProofing and How To Disagree. Her book, Big Data: Does Size Matter? is published by Bloomsbury Sigma.
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SubscribeThe distribution of risk of mortality from COVID is heavily skewed to the right, i.e. it falls largely on the over 80s. The economic risk from a blanket lockdown is evenly distributed – every one suffers. If anything it is skewed to the left, with the younger population likely to be affected more. Lockdown is universal prevention while the pandemic needed targeted protection of those most at risk. But caught between a hysterical media, narrow specialisms of SAGE membership (not a single economist) and the need to fight the image of uncaring Tories, Boris is trapped.
The only risk he needs to take is to speak to people as if they were grown ups. Some deaths are inevitable. Not everyone can be saved from COVID illness. But we can’t sacrifice everyone’s future to save a few already of advanced age or with multiple morbidities.
This requires both for politicians to speak the truth and the citizens to be willing to accept that life is a constant struggle between different risks.
The troubling thing is that it could be too late for the government to speak to the people as if they were grown-ups. They have spent nearly a year now treating us as troublesome toddlers, manipulating us (and freely admitting it!) into terror and isolation “for our own good”. The end result is that a huge percentage of the population now appear to actually WANT the government to arrange every aspect of their lives (especially when those aspects are neutral or beneficial to their individual circumstances, as in the case of lockdown or furlough for those with pleasant domestic circumstances), and seem to really believe that by doing this, *all* risk can be eliminated.
How on earth can this mindset be changed? It’s a real question.
there is something called the precautionary principle, which prioritizes risk avoidance or mitigation far above all else, to the point of absurdity. We were awash in politicians who insisted on various measures using the specious “if it saves one life” appeal to blind emotion. In the meantime, other lives were lost to suicide, overdose, or some other consequence of govt overreach.
The unelected oracle Dr Fauci is suggesting that ‘normal’ won’t happen until 2022 when he’s not telling people to double mask. Biden’s press secretary is talking about masks and distancing even after the vaccine. These people have had a taste of unlimited power and they like it. Much of the public, meanwhile, is like the proverbial frog in the pot, only now noticing that the water around us is boiling.
Indeed. The “If it saves even one life” is so embedded in the psyches of some that even if I say, as I have (unfortunately not allowed to meet them face to face to look them properly in the eye), well, I’m on the edge of suicide because of what the restrictions have done to my life, the answer is pretty much always a version of “Yeah, well, first-world problems etc etc; get a grip.” I honestly don’t think that many people have even felt the water heating up yet.
Sorry to hear that. Hope you can find someone to talk to.
Thank you.
K R despite what it feels like there are many many people who care about what you’re going through. I hope you can find strength in friends and family. And strangers are here for you too.
Sorry to hear you’re going through this.
As the death rate begins to plummet because of vaccines and growing herd immunity, the public will simply ignore the masking, distancing mantras and protest over the closed businesses. The efforts to perpetuate fear will abate. Many will then assess whether the scope of restrictions were justified and new (old) arguments will consume our press.
By the withdrawal of the furlough scheme. Lets have a little feel of the consequences.
“Some deaths are inevitable”.
All deaths are inevitable. The question is, when? And what resources are sensibly devoted to prolonging the life of as many people as possible for as long as possible. QUALYs have their critics, but they are at least a basis for honest appraisal of the choices we make as a society.
I entirely agree. NICE makes these decisions in all its guidelines. But when it comes to COVID, that approach is missing
Boris is a coward in this respect if his own view was not to lockdown ( we initially thought that he was against lockdown). He lost his nerve . If his response would have been different, the rest of the world too would have made a different assessment. We will never know . He is being led either by data ( which one can suit to one’s purpose) or by popular opinion (decisions deferred to the sheep like public) . Shame . And in my opinion vaccines are a waste of public money since there is STILL so much uncertainty surrounding them such that he cannot dare open up yet in case the virus start rising again!!!
It may be that his approach is also heavily influenced by his own experience of the virus. If so, that is understandable and in normal circumstances I would say that it provides an invaluable perspective. But even if his approach is coloured by the noble desire to save as many people as possible from the experience he had, that does not excuse the decisions to remove the choice of what risk to take from the rest of us. Nor does it justify the manner in which the government has avoided scrutiny by the use of emergency powers and confused the public and even the police by using unhelpful messaging which does not correspond to their own law.
We do not require vaccines to come up with a workable way of allowing society to manage the risk of infection or to break the link between case numbers and hospitalisation (see https://greenbandredband.com for an example of how). But now we have the vaccines, the reduction in the number of vulnerable means that an overdue rebalancing of risk assessment should take place.
Well said.
Looking at the stats for the mean age of those dying with Covid mentioned on the death certificate, they are (for both men and women) within a few months of the mean age at death from all causes in 2019.
Just slightly higher… The average age of death in the UK for 2018 was 81.3 years. The average age of death “with Covid” is 82.4 last time I looked.
I honestly don’t think he or this cabinet have any idea what their targeted endpoint is.
I had a lot of sympathy during the early phases of the the pandemic, but since then I don’t think I’ve ever seen such utter confusion and lack of strategic clarity.
The economic, societal, health and democratic wellbeing of the country has been decimated by their neverending and excessive lockdown policies, treating the public like children and deliberately engaging in a campaign to terrorize people with excessively negative messaging.
I didn’t think I’d ever encounter again my lifetime, an individual so utterly unsuited to the role of PM as Gordon Brown, but Boris Johnson has far far outstripped him. With members of his cabinet behaving more egregiously than he.
To the point the Conservative Party have been indelibly stained forever.
True. So which party should we all vote for in the next election? I welcome some advice on that.
I wouldn’t even start to claim my view is better than anyone else’s, so I don’t think I’m in a fit position to ‘advise’.
I actually had relatively high hopes for this Government, thinking that a PM as reportedly lazy as Johnson, would leave it to his ministers to drive policy within their own departments, with less overall paranoia about messaging and less foolish central control. As other more knowledgeable commentators have observed however, he’s surrounded himself with very low calibre ministers, hence we have a very low calibre government.
Just shows what I know.
Good reply. Thanks.
Who, exactly, on the Conservative backbenches, is of a higher calibre that Johnson is overlooking?
The only consolation from Boris’ ludicrous Cabinet appointments. has been Mad Matt Hancock’s deranged utterances. Remember him telling us not to sit on a park bench for even a second in case we passed the plague on? Remember him threatening to lock us all up 24/7 without even an hour outside? Then he was telling us all to behave as if we were already infected, though that might have been the ad agency putting words in his gob.
I have only ever voted twice, and not since 2001. However, I would certainly vote for Reform UK, as led by Nigel Farage and/or Richard Tice. Among other likely policies are:
Why do you see the Lords as a priority? What would you do with the place?
I certainly don’t want to see it replaced with a second-but-minor version of the Commons, with the kinds of sociopathic nitwits who make it as MPs. At least the Lords has some people who have actually done things.
I don’t necessarily see the Lords as a priority, it just happens to be something that Farage has always stressed. That said, the HoL is a long-standing insult to all of humanity and to democracy itself. New Labour and Blair, as with everything they did, took a HoL that was indefensible and made it even worse.
I don’t have a view on how to fix it. But we have to end the rampant and wicked cronyism as practiced by all PMs from Blair onwards.
I have a concrete proposal for the Lords.
NOT an elected house, at least not as in the way the Commons is an elected house. Instead, the selection of Lords should be distributed among institutions – the BMA, RCN, RIBA, RSA, the institutes that represent lawyers, engineers, actuaries; trade unions, retail workers – a wide span of institutions and they would each elect/select a member, who would then serve for life or until incapacity or voluntary retirement. This point – lifelong appointment – is vital is freeing people from needing to be answerable to any particular constituency. It works well in the US Supreme Court.
Hmmm… Just take a cool look at the individuals who are in charge of the vast majority of those institutions – almost invariably they are not in the least bit representative of those members they claim to represent. As I see it, doing what you propose would simply end up with a selection of “political” types almost indistiguishable from those in the House of Commons or the Lords.
My own suggestion would be to “elect” the members of a second chamber purely by lot from the electoral register (maybe ERNIE could be persuaded to do the job). Subject to a few basic checks of literacy and numeracy (which would probably rule out a goodish percentage of the HoC!) and possibly criminal record (as above for the HoC!) they would be appointed for (say) 12 years with 1/3rd replaced every 4 years thereafter, paid a decent salary and be statute-barred from being members of any political party or pressure-group. Couldn’t be any worse than the present shower.
I’ve heard something similar before. It’s suggest 1000 randoms, sat for a year at most. 12 years seems far too long, it shouldn’t be a 1/4 of someones working life.
With modern tech it should be possible to select a citizens jury for every single bill? No attendance in person just debate and vote online.
The crucial thing is that they must be entirely random – not chosen by ‘experts’.
Life peers from the doctors trade union, the BMA ? The same organisation that opposed the foundation of the health service ? Doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
Yes. The rotting of the House of Lords began in the 1990s, and accelerated under Blair, who quickly realised how useful it would be – both to reward donors and toadies, and to influence policy……most notably when the Lords nearly succeeded in thwarting the democratic decision of Brexit…..
……..so many left-wing apparatchiks were given peerages, which in turn ‘qualified’ them for appointments to quangos, academia, charities and media work…….all with the over-arching aim of promoting the leftist agenda.
It’s why we are where we are with Oxford & Cambridge Universities, the National Trust, museums, galleries and in terms of more prosaic fields such as the Environment Agency’s creation of the catastrophic floods in Somerset in 2014.
For 20-odd years, our ‘noble peers’ have been determinedly undermining the interests of Britain and the British people.
The damage Blair’s government did was multigenerational. You highlihght one
OIthers include his constitutional tinkering another. The EU fetish; donating vast sums for nothing (the abandonment of a big % of the rebate); the senseless immigration policy, the ECHR, the re-introduction of blaphemy laws in-all-but-name.
And then of course Iraq and the financial wreckage.
He and his cronies were never realyl held to account. And still he has the audacity (as do some of his co-conspirators) to seek to advise.
I’m not quite sure why you blame the relatively powerless House of Lords for all these things…..
The universities are autonomous institutions, however ill advised some of their behaviour and policies may be. We don’t – fortunately – live in China.
Brexit was almost stopped by the House of Commons when Theresa May lost her majority in 2017. As we live in a Parliamentary democracy, with supreme sovereignty invested in that institution, a majority decision to do so would have been entirely legal and legitimate because no Parliament can bind its successor.
Many of the ranters on here seem not to have the faintest understanding of representative democracy, or sympathy for it, not surprising I suppose when their own views are so unrepresentative of the wider population!
Brilliant (seriously). Thanks for your reply.
More details when you follow Farage on his YouTube channel. And both he and Richard Tice are regulars on TalkRadio.
Like governments everywhere they are reacting to cases by tightening measures, as it’s the only thing they can think of. There is nothing proactive about this approach. Doesn’t matter if it seems to work or not, as long as they are seen to do something. The other benefit is that the public can be blamed for not following the rules.
You are right, nobody has an endpoint. But to be fair, how could he have done anything else given that pretty much all of the first world is doing this?
Well, it might be uncomfortable, but we should expect our leaders to actually lead, rather than just follow what everybody else does.
Any of us could do that!
That you indicate that you yourself have such low expectations of a PM, perhaps shows what a sad state of affairs we’ve reached with our politicians. Perhaps I’m being naive, but I did actually expect more from them. More fool me it seems.
Speaking from a U.S. citizen’s perspective, I share your frustration with the lack of vision and strategy from government. We share the common blights of the politicization of the discussion and the adoration and exaltation of certain “experts” by our media. That said, I must admit, UnHerd is where I go for a rational discussion of this and other topics. I can’t seem to find a similar outlet in the “States”.
If only the politicians would defer to the data! All the data from Sweden, Florida, Croatia and the Dakotas etc demonstrates that lockdowns and their other insane measures do not work.
A live example of the madness right now is the Netherlands. After a relatively sensible approach to lockdowns in March/April/May last year, the country has gone full-on authoritarian, even introducing a pointless and malicious curfew a few weeks ago. This is not doing much or anything to bring down infections, and there are currently no excess deaths in the Netherlands.
How are you so certain when the world’s leading experts with access to the latest data are not?
In any event, you miss the distinction the article makes between data/facts and policy.
What the data suggest is that there’s a lot of heterogeneity. And that the term “lockdown” is pretty meaningless.
It’s a very simple fact that viruses can’t spread between sufficiently distanced individuals. But social distancing data from eg Sweden and Florida shows very different behaviours and policies between those two places. The “no lockdown” label tells us nothing about what’s actually going on.
The world is complex. The point of this article is that policy makers cannot “defer to the data” as you suggest. Policy makers have to set policy based on what the data are telling them.
Florida has been fully open since the beginning of October. Since then it has seen much lower levels of infections and deaths per capita than NY, NJ and CA etc. These states were still pursuing demented lockdown strategies, albeit largely to make Trump look bad. Essentially, the Democrats shut down economies, killed people, and destroyed lives just to make Trump look bad.
Anyway, the excellent Ivor Cummins did a video, invoking Carl Popper, on Florida yesterday. As he says, lockdowns are the most disastrous health intervention of all time.
I live in LA, and life here has been pretty free throughout, other than a few weeks over Christmas when restaurants were closed. Incomparable with what my friends and family have been experiencing in the U.K.. I’m not prescribing any policy, but I hope you’re able to see my point about the meaningless of your comparison between places based on the use of the undefined word, “lockdown”.
I have worked with statistics for about 30 years. Basically you can create a graph based on real data to show anything you want to do. If you want to check the validity of that data you have to spend days looking at every possible angle. (We have all been fooled by the global warming hockey stick graph).
Most people on this site have a fixed view and they select the data which support that view. I do not support the lockdown but not because of the data which is incredibly complex and I haven’t spent hours looking at it. I am against the lockdown because it doesn’t feel right.
However, what I do know is that many governments have chosen the lockdown as a way forward and, basically, they have copied each other. Looking back in 10 years’ time BJ will be criticised but he can say that he just followed advice and so did a great number of other western governments. If he had chosen last March not to lockdown and carry on as normal, he would also have been criticised and he would be out virtually alone in the world. Seriously, what would you have done in that position?
Your right. He would have had to relied on the law. He could have argued that our unwritten constitution does not allow the state to enforce quarantine rules on health people. This is how both Japan and Sweden have avoided lockdowns.
You hit the nail on the head. BJ went for lockdown believing it to be the least damaging to his political future. He well knows that lockdowns do not work and this evidence gets greater by the day. But having committed to this course of disaster he is trapped. So more lies. More propaganda. More project fear. More democratic damage. More economic damage.
However when this disaster is over and the taxes rise and the unemployment bites we may at last see a uprising of discontent in the way BJ has mismanaged this crisis. Let us hope what he believes was the way to avoid blame comes back to bite him in the arse.
I wonder if it is futile to hope he has not political future.
I’d be amazed if he makes the next election. When this dies down, someone in the Tory Party stabs him in the back at some point.
No, they will stab him in the front.
I disagree with your lockdown views but agree with your analysis.
If there would have been no lockdown in the UK many other countries may NOT have locked down either . Lockdowns came cascading down after the UK’s decision which was so v distressing. But we shall never know the alternative scenario.
You make a good point….
Boris lost his bottle. For all his faults I previously admired him for his bravery and boldness. His first mooted path over Covid made much more sense – social distancing, wash hands, protect those at risk – and would have cost far less lives in the long run…. anyone can figure out the devastation that lockdowns will cost to generations. And that means lives too. So Boris caved and his reputation will never recover. He will be remembered as the PM who devastated the economy and the future of millions. And despite the draconian measures, the people died anyway.
I agree with your basic assertion- lies, damn lies and statistics, but am nevertheless surprised at the dearth of modelling on lockdown impacts.
From Neil Ferguson onwards there has been no shortage of predictions about Covid death rates, notwithstanding next to no knowledge of the disease at the beginning.
We must have data on the impacts of economic recession and isolation on suicide and mental health issues. Where is the modelling on that? No doubt that data could be manipulated as well but it seems odd we’re getting no either/or comparisons.
On lockdowns, my father died of it. He was 87 but very fit (did a charity parachute jump at 85) and had a good 10 years left. He went on a coach trip to Blackpool in October, caught it and died 3weeks later. If the illuminations were in January he wouldn’t have been able to go and would still be alive.
The assertion they just don’t work is, to me, patently false. Whether they are worth it is essentially a cost benefit question. It seems we only ever get data on one side of that equation.
It should be recognised that this pandemic is, now, being totalled over two winters.
It is statistically inaccurate to state that 20-60,000 influenza deaths is half the Covid total.
The Covid total now encompasses two winter seasons.
History will judge the death toll very differently when looking at long run mortality analysis without any vested interests at stake.
That rather depends on who gets to write history.
As in Winston Churchill’s classic comment – History will be kind to me because I intend to write it.
History will also have to include the deaths that arise from the economic harm being done. A trio of researchers in the US has already put forth an estimate. The number dwarfs those who have died either WITH the virus or FROM the virus.
I agree with you but this is being wise after the event. When panic set in last March very few people had such definite opinions.
History is easy because it all happens after an event.
https://oronu.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/mortality-statistics/
There is the total death toll for the last 20 years for a few countries. In many cases it’s not noticeable.
Very interesting
Very interesting link. Thank you
In the long run we’re all dead.
I have had friends claim that it is 10 times worse than flu based on comparing two seasons of covid to one season of flu.
It doesn’t sound like you understand what IFR measures.
How do you work that out? First wave kicked off towards end of last winter season – 12 months ago. How did we manage two whole winters in a year?
I suggest that the winter period covers that period based around the winter solstice.
Mental health struggles (particularly among the young), financial difficulties, (particularly among those least well off), social isolation (particularly among the old), the deaths. Covid has extracted a terrible price. Vaccines have given us a hope that must not be squandered. The prospect of zero covid is completely unrealistic and we must face up to an ongoing death rate, as we do with flu and cancers. We are at the point where the risks to society (in my first sentence) is greater than the ,post vaccine, risk of covid. People have been frightened to die, we must not be frightened to live.
There have been a number of phrases that have entered the English language over the last number of years that are very worrying. The two which are most dangerous are:
Science is not a fixed point that everyone agrees on, it is (or at least it should be) in constant flux, developing as our understanding and our knowledge develop. Unfortunately with Covid this has not happened. For instance the Today program had Prof Ferguson on this morning and introduced him as “the man who modelled the path of the pandemic”. There was no mention of the substantial differences between his model and reality or the fact that he has a long (and undistinguished) history of significantly overestimating the effects of virus.
This reverence for models (which are not scientific but mathematical and suffer from programmer bias in their assumptions and operation) has prevented any meaningful discussion of the cost/benefit of the Lockdown policy and our exit strategy from it.
To the BBC, the Bonking Boffin is a respected authority. By the same token, Dominic Cummings’s famous trip to Barnard Castle was a reckless threat to human life in that town. Both beliefs are equally flawed but all too typical of BBC journalism.
On top of your valid comments, there is the consideration that multiple “sciences” could be taken into account when considering policy options. Has anyone weighed economic advice as to the impact of the hundreds of billions we are pouring into this bottomless bucket? Anyone weighed up pedagogic or paediatric or psychological advice on the impact on children and their education and long term futures?
‘the disease’s merciless death toll’
overall a sensible article but you could not avoid overstating the power of the disease. Over 99% of those affected have recovered using the vast majority of which relying in their own immune systems
( perhaps you were being ironic )
And that is not counting all the people who seem to have had it (based on test results) and didn’t even notice.
Good piece, but I don’t like this phrase……
With vaccines, though, normal life could return without sacrificing tens or hundreds of thousands more lives.
‘Sacrifice’? No lives are being sacrificed with a disease that claims the elderly and sick who are most likely in the last few weeks and months of their lives anyway.
No, the sacrifice is to those dying because of termination or lack of access to medical treatment, those who have taken their own lives in despair, those who have died of loneliness and neglect……and those who will suffer through the destruction of jobs, social bonds and education.
Covid is NOT killing these people – NEVER let anybody get away with saying this…….the politicians and advisers’ demands are doing this.
Let’s also not forget those in other countries, whose livelihoods and lives depend on tourist dollars and exports…….most of whom have absolutely ‘furlough’ payments.
Yet this, unfortunately, is the implicit view behind the Government’s policy, which makes it hard to rationally weigh the harms of lockdown measures against the reductions in risk from Covid.
First, it’s not really that hard and second, lockdowns are what comes when people are in a panic and treating this virus as the new black death. It won’t end because people insist on precautions “until it’s safe,” but no one can define safe.
But back to the first part – studies in the US show that about a half-million people died after the great recession ten or so years ago. And another study projects up to one million US deaths as a result of the economic harm being inflicted this time around. The recession had no govt lockdowns; it was a purely economic event but economic harm has this habit of later harming health. So, no; it is not “hard..to weigh the harms of lockdown measures” at all.
Good argument for overhauling our economic systems, then.
Our economic systems have been the most successful in human history. Every first-world country uses roughly the same approach, but any enterprise involving human beings is going to have occasional problems. The meltdown of the previous decade was the work of people, not a systemic flaw. Same with this; it’s people pushing the mandates and forcing the closures.
Whether and how you measure success? If an economic system leads to repeated global economic collapse that leads to high deaths and higher inequality (WW1, WW2, 1929, 1974, 2008, 2020 – just examples) then you might want to question the efficacy of the system, or your objectives.
And the alternative is? Socialism, as in the USSR, the pre-Deng PRC, North Korea or Cuba?
Careful! You;re “dissing” Mark’s idea of Utopia! 🙂
No, just a revised version of a managed market economy, with democracy and with underlying objectives of equal distribution of resources rather than maximisation of individual wealth.
Equating world wars to economics is odd. Western prosperity has certainly moved much of the world into greater economic security.
Not if the world wars were the result of tensions caused by the dominant political and economic system (individualist capitalism within the Nation State)
No, there’s something very wrong with your comparison of preventable deaths in this pandemic against previous deaths. You might as well say because all those people died in the Hiroshima bombing that somehow there is a yardstick for what’s ‘acceptable’.
People do this all the time – dream up some number and say ‘well that’s ok then, we shouldn’t lock down’.
In fact lockdowns, distancing, masks and hygiene are all we had until the vaccines arrived. The fact they don’t always work is probably to do with external factors we don’t fully understand yet. For example aerosol spread, mask construction, the population density (metres per person of living space, not per city area).
So it’s too simplistic to dismiss precautions and set some arbitrary number of deaths – there’s a long way to go still and, apart from idiots like Trump, I think politicians are trying to do the best they can.
Great piece. The government have never clearly articulated the ultimate aim of the restrictions. They’ve justified them with more short-term goals, such as protecting NHS capacity or reducing the R-Rate, but no one has dared spell out the criteria by which they will end completely because that would mean the government no longer deferring to ‘the science’ but taking responsibility for a free-standing political and moral decision. That is not a decision they can avoid making for much longer though.
One good thing is that the consensus is shifting away from the lunacy that is Zero Covid (this should be regarded as no less crackpot than the ravings of Icke etc). But that leaves the government with the task of deciding what is an acceptable level of Covid mortality – because these restrictions cannot continue forever.
We need to have a national conversation about death and risk, which we appear to want to eradicate all together. Is this the natural end point of science, medicine and politics; that we should live on indefinitely as members of a mollycoddled and overprotected populace? I hope not. What a sad and sterile world that would be.
This is a question politicians, the media and the public have avoided from the very start. That’s understandable at the start, you don’t know what you are dealing with.
That’s not the case now. That debate needs to be had, politicians outlining the options and costs and dare I say it?
A referendum.
Because I’m convinced this round of vaccines isn’t going to be the silver bullet people are being led to believe they will be.
What would the referendum question be?
The referendum question wold be: ‘Do you want freedom and personal responsibility, or do you want to be locked up and looked after for the rest of your life?’
Sadly, I suspect most people would opt for the second option.
I want personal freedom and responsibility and I’m prepared to sacrifice some freedoms for a time for the common good. And I’d like to be looked after when I need to be. I guess my voting paper would be ‘spoiled’.
I’m absolutely sure they would
Your argument is powerful. However, the media loves lockdown and Johnson is terrified that every death post end of lockdown will be pinned on him by the press (which it will be). In two years’ time we’ll all be aware of the real costs you outline. We need politicians who can balance risk and benefits…and those with an attention span beyond a press deadline or an essay crisis.
The media loves the Government money pouring in from all these hysterical ad campaigns. Especially newspapers whose circulation has been steadily falling for decades.
There is also the lies damn lies and statistics to consider. We compare seasonal deaths not total deaths to date. So that means all pre summer covid deaths are last seasons (2019-2020 deaths (40K) and this seasons are 70K. Bringing the numbers much closer to flu. In addition flu in the past was not put on the death certificate if the person died within 28 days of being tested positive. That adjustment would also have a significant affect on the numbers. Now we can only guess but even a moderate reduction brings the deaths from covid way down to be the same as flu.
We also need to consider who is dying. Over 90% of Covid deaths are people who were not well and would have died within a year due to other causes. My guess is we could do the same with flu from previous years.
Taking both of the above into consideration presents Covid as as an “end of life disease” of little consequence to healthy people under 70. In fact flu is far far more dangerous to healthy under 70’s than Covid…..now there’s a scary thought! But please don’t tell the government becasue they will lock us up forever so we can be “safe”.
Can I suggest we make mon,wed,fri mask days with everyone masked up not travelling, hiding from each other! On tue,thu, sat and sun we make these non mask days, just like we used to have. People from each group can stay well away from each other. If the non maskers must go somethere in an emergency on mask days then they can do so fully masked (and we won’t care, it’s an emergency). Likewise the mask sheep can still go out on non mask days, they can wear a mask and trust me we non maskers will stay well away, God knows what disease they have with their weakened immune systems.
The gap between people who have died WITH covid and those who have died OF covid is ignored. The CDC put the ‘with’ figure at about 90% of the deaths, with most of those involving older people who were already sick. Lockdowns have caused increases in domestic and child abuse, mental illness, and deaths from other causes.
An acquaintance has recently caught covid and died. I have to ask, was it worthwhile that they lived the last year of their life as a virtual prisoner under house arrest separated from family and friends.
I would be hard pressed to say yes.
But also, how did they contract it? What is the point of the isolation, is you end up catching it one ( presumably) of the few times you did venture out?
Also I wonder how much fight you have in you when all you can look forward to is more loneliness and boredom?
“ it remains that the absolute case numbers are still comparable to those in spring last year. “
They are comparable, but last spring the levels of testing were a small fraction of what they are now. So the actual infection rate now must be very much lower than it was then.
But forget cases- concentrate on deaths (if you think that data is in any way reliable).
To continue to justify locking us down past March, Boris will have to consider actively killing hospital patients with alleged Covid infections.
I’m sure it has occurred to him!!!
They have been killing non-Covid patients by infecting them with Covid for over a year now. When all his began I warned my parents not to go anywhere near an NHS hospital.
Really? Or just exaggerating for effect.
Yes, really… The latest figures indicate that between 25% and 40% of Covid infections are initiated in hospital. The NHS is the #1 disease vector.
The main vector is people to people transmission. By your own figures most transmission is in non healthcare settings. It’s also dangerous to tell people who are sick not to seek healthcare, which is what Fraser said he had done. I know people whose lives were saved by hospitals in the last 12 months who would have died if they hadn’t gone to hospital. I don’t know of anyone with a non Covid related minor healthcare issue who died because they went hospital and caught Covid there – though I’m sure there are examples.
And of course, people are in hospital because they are sick or injured, so they are much more susceptible to infection, and much more likely to suffer badly from an infection.
It appears that we are being softened up for mass control of our lives, what we can do, where we can go, who we can see. And the worrying thing is how easy it has been to exercise mass control over millions and imbue in them, us, a sense of guilt about even questioning the extent of what is happening. Mass advertising showing grim faces of patients, clearly only designed to frighten us into making us feel responsibility for their situation. Hoardings exhorting us to do our duty. Old people rather than children the gazing out from advertisements to remind us to stay alert.
Vaccination which was the route to the easing of restrictions is not enough. Masks, social distancing, limitations on all manner of things are deemed to now be part of the new normal that is something we will have to live with, if we are not to die.
Populations across the world are being de-socialised, useful only to consume, courtesy of on-line shopping, whilst the physical infrastructure crumbles around us. Those fortunate enough can work from home, those less so must take what is on offer to keep them just content enough not to notice or care what is happening to them. Rather like Brave New World crossed with 1984 but with a vaccination replacing Soma whilst Big Brother keeps us safe. From exactly what now always just out of reach.
As fear subsides, the public will soon tire of the controls. Sadly the spectre of 1984 remains possible.
Thanks for the article, Timendra. Especially the mention of 1976. The overwhelming thing I remember about 1976 was the months of sweltering heat – it might have been the summer which cured the hysteria about global freezing. We were sweating buckets in the office (no air con) and just about everywhere else. Flu?? 60,000 deaths?? I can’t remember a mention. Maybe we were fretting about global cooling.
The only place where the article even hinted at money was in this passage;
“because if you take the view that every Covid death is unacceptable, “you are writing a blank cheque to do any amount of harm by the measures you’ve implemented to try and control it.””
A commentator below an earlier unHerd article suggested that the pandemic has cost us at least £800 billion already – perhaps £400 billion Government borrowing plus maybe £400 billion in countless private losses. There is absolutely no way this extravagance could be justified. But if you mention money, it is instant proof that you are a materialist brute who cares only for cash.
‘When Johnson finally reveals his “roadmap” to freedom’…….
Roadmap to freedom??? There is only one worldwide roadmap at this moment and that is the roadmap to total control of the virus aka the roadmap to hell. Total control of the virus means per se the obliteration of freedom. There can be no freedom without risk. A life without the threat of a virus, is no life at all. The rest is b*sh*t.
Never understood why so many countries put up with lockdowns [lockups]. I do prefer the more relaxed version here in Sweden where we wash our hands and keep some distance. Forget those foul face masks, they are only for show at best. By the way, where did the normal flu go? That once used to be a killer, now it’s gone apparently if one is to believe what the news tells us.
Surely part of the issue is the difference in motivations between Scientists and the general population.
Scientist do not want to be seen as wrong, so they will constantly err on the side of caution, as they have no ‘skin in the game’ to use Talebs analogy. They have no incentive to promote a more rapid easing as their salaries and pensions are protected irrespective of their decisions, while their reputation could suffer by seeing to be wrong.
The general population are in the opposite position as they are bearing the brunt of the disruption and will suffer either way.
It is the role of politicians to balance these contradictory agendas, but regrettably their agenda is closer to the scientists than the general population.
Case numbers rise because we are performing more PCR testing . Remember if a patient enters hospital for an appendicitis and is swabbed positive, his care pathway is changed and care will be compromised . He may even die of peritonitis, but this will be classified as a Covid death .. many more examples show that staff levels are impacted and resulting care reduced!
In a country with an average life expectancy of 82 and an average age at death from C19 of 84 the data is obvious. Unfortunately Jonson is a second rate hack who makes decisions based on what will get him likes on social media. He and his pack of clowns are living proof that expensive educations at the right schools and universities may allow you to join the elite clubs but they do not make you smart or truly educated.
The average life expectancy of an 81 year old is ten years. Using life expectancy at birth rather than at the age Covid is contracted doesn’t really tell us about the disease’s impact.
Unfortunately all the bodies involved government, SAGE, PHE, NHS Providers, DHSC have all failed us and caused death and economic disaster. They should all hang their heads in shame for their pathetic advice and the terrible restrictions on our liberty and financial health and public health.
Too true. In fact, all parts of civil society which might have been checks on tyranny have failed us. The law, the joke Opposition in Parliament, the media, the churches, civil liberties groups, charities? Don’t make me laugh.
I subscribed to Simon Dolan’s well argued legal challenge to Boris’ abuse of the law on infectious diseases and it was squashed. That was the only chance ordinary people had to object to this outrage in a civilised legal manner. Less civilised street protests?? Spreading the virus, mate.
Well, the other Human Coronaviruses (HCovs – around 4 different ones, HCov-NL63, HCov-229E etc) that cause diseases, normally called ‘common colds’ are still endemic. I don’t think there’s any complex classification for the ‘colds’ though! We’re guessing, but there’s a fair bit of shorthand, in effect. Covid-19 is the full-on disease name, not ‘Covid’ as if it was unique, but a proportion of ‘common colds’ are also Covids, in effect.
We also have to appreciate that training in Basic life Support in hospitals now , post Covid , reduced our ability to save lives .
trust,,,,,,,,,,,,first
upstairs downstairs,,, silly me
open up
A lot of deluded and rather immature views on here. The UK variant of COVID is highly contagious and will spread like wildfire as soon as we lift restrictions. We literally proved this, as if it was a mass experiment, in December. Within a couple of weeks of partly ending the second lockdown we had exponential growth that resulted in 70K daily infections by Jan 1st and thousands of daily deaths a week or two later. It took over a month of lockdown to get the situation back to where we were.
The only reason we would expect this to be different this time is the vaccination strategy. So we may as well wait until we are largely vaccinated before opening up, otherwise we shall just repeat December. It’s a shit situation. But this is almost a different pandemic to the one we had last year.
If we had no vaccination option, then I would agree we should be opening up and taking this ‘on the chin’. But we do, we have a very successful vaccination strategy, so we may as well exploit this to the maximum. It looks like we only need a few more weeks.
For what’s it’s worth, I would open up retail before schools and ‘household mixing’. The focus on ‘the children’ and ‘our loved ones’ is a load of sentimental left wing nonsense that completely ignores the economic reality. Economic prosperity drives civility and compassion, not schools or having picnics in the park.
I mostly agree with this piece. Time to have the discussion about what level of risks of infection/illness/deaths are considered acceptable and what the costs of minimisation of these are. I disagree with the bit about the UK Government having already decided.
I’m on the suppression as far as possible side but fully accept that has consequences and want to hear and read them discussed. That discussion will get emotional and heated and scientific models will be vital in informing it.
This idea of discussion depends who is involved. As I say to the point of tedium, UnHerd is a site of intellectuals. The population as a whole can’t analyse and write succinct critiques of political views – they probably can but they can’t be bothered. This relates also to your referendum point above – what question?
I would see that about 90% on UnHerd are anti-lockdown because they see themselves as free thinkers and don’t want to be told what to do. This does not reflect the 74% pro-lockdown of the general public.
Which discussion forum is apt? Probably a referendum is correct but then you have to wait two years to discuss the question.
‘The population as a whole can’t analyse and write succinct critiques of political views..’
The population as a whole can’t even get through a supermarket checkout without some form of confusion or delay. The notion that they could write a succinct critique of last night’s Coronation Street, never mind the political views of a given party or individual, is absurd.
Blimey. Never thought Unherd readers (or more realistically, commenters) were more intellectual than the people I talk to (or did) in everyday life. More opinionated, little bit more anxious, more likely to throw a few half misunderstood theories into the pot, but not more intellectual. I speak for myself.
But as a woke lefty I doubt I’m judged capable of self examination. In fact, I’m probably virtue signalling right now.
So it’s you who is tutting and sighing behind my mum in the queue!
It does strike me that the dominating philosophy behind European society for 300 or so years has been individualist capitalism within the nation state and the necessity of inequality to sustain that system and yet, people supporting that philosophy consider themselves free thinkers.
I think you are saying what I am saying, that all of the anger and indignation regarding the lockdown is not even free thinking. It is the idea of being told what to do which rankles with the free thinkers – the subject of the thought itself is not as important.
It seems that the normal person in the street is not important – personal freedom of thinking only applies to those who er… think.
Ahh. Got you. And missing the possibility that they’ve been told what to do their whole lives and only notice when told to do something different.
Yep.
It was only a sample of one, but the unnamed guy in the street whom the BBC interviewed a few weeks ago on Radio 4 is probably not alone. He declared that no cost was to high to save a life in this pandemic – a trillion pounds, whatever. That’s seven times the annual NHS budget. I’m sure he was 100% in favour of lockdown.
Oh great, more models from Neil Ferguson…!
There are still, if not more, unknowns about this virus than there were a year ago. The main difference is the fact that vaccines are available and can offer some relief/hope to increasingly desperate populations around the globe. For decision-makers, this is an impossible situation as there are no quick, tried and tested long-term guarantees. Would anyone like to be accountable for the consequences of decisions that may or may not be workable? At the same time, we all have to try to move forward.
My point is that the yo-yo effect of confinement followed by a lifting of restrictions has to date taught us that the general population has yet to grasp the basic reality that a sudden lifting of restrictions is a huge gamble unless everyone is firmly committed to maintaining the essential codes of social distancing for however long it takes. Strict adherence to the wearing of masks and all the other proactive measures have been shown to help contain constant widespread contamination. Each individual has to play his/her part and that is clearly not being observed by many people. How to convince people to accept responsibility for their actions is not an issue politicians or anyone else for that matter has any control over.
No it hasn’t. Stop blaming the public for the spread of this virus, that’s exactly what those in power want you to do.