Professor Gupta

[LadyLindaT]

May I just point out that this Oxford Professor who is all over the media at the moment is a Professor of Zoology?

Professor of epidemiology within a department of zoolology. Not quite the same. But is she in the news?

Prof of theoretical epidemiology, with an educational history including a bachelors from Princeton, and PhD from Imperial College London on the spread of infectious disease.

I might disagree with some of her findings, but this isn't the right way to discredit her...

makes a very good argument against lockdown

Sunetra Gupta is an Oxford professor and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration. She argues that lockdown is ineffective as a means of controlling infection and that it has an unacceptably harmful effect on society, especially the poorest and youngest.

Her views have been sidelined by the media in favour of sensationalist headlines demanding another lockdown. Please look up online and read her views. I find her arguments sensible and humane.

What people seem to be not appreciating regarding the Great Barrington Declaration is that it would require all vulnerable people to shield.

Unfortunately, they are the ones that tend to require significantly more hospital, personal and medical care and it Covid was uncontrolled within the population, they would catch it anyway from medical staff, carers or other patients in hospitals. They suggest that only care staff who have COVID antigens be allowed into care homes, but there aren't enough care staff as it is - never mind immune ones.

”an unacceptably harmful effect on society, especially the poorest and youngest”

This is where her arguments fall apart. It seems she's basing her recommendations not only on her STEM expertise but also he personal politics. If people stuck to advising based purely on the matters that they were expert in then we'd all be much better off.

I don't disagree with her btw.

Furier, it is worth noting that your quote picks up my words rather than hers.

The Great Barrington Declaration looks holistically at the effect on society of our response to covid. The government are choosing only to look at views about passing on infection, and not at the future cost of repaying vast loans, having to limit welfare and pension payments, cutting health and education services. I think this is what Prof Gupta and her associates say is unacceptable.

Also Furier, you mention that advisors should advise based on their area of expertise. Isn’t this exactly the problem?

We keep hearing about advice from the SAGE committee, where S stands for Scientific. The committee doesn’t include economic experts, even though U.K. surely need an economic view to plan for the future. Policy is being made by a narrow group of people, which looks to me like a serious mistake.

What people seem to be not appreciating regarding the Great Barrington Declaration is that it would require all vulnerable people to shield.

There are millions of vulnerable people in this country, many of them with jobs, many of them children. This would have a huge impact on the economy, government spending and those young people who are vulnerable too.

What if we didn’t shield enough people? What if we shielded too many?

People with chronic illness cannot be sacrificial lambs.

But, NotVery, the youngest generation are being made sacrificial lambs. We assume that costly public services - the NHS, schooling for all, universal pensions and welfare payments - are enshrined in society. This is not the case and they are all fairly new - less than a century old. It is entirely possible that they will no longer exist in future. I find this an unacceptable price to demand of our children.

Aren’t vulnerable people shielding anyway, for the most part? No change?

I appreciate her contribution to the national discussion. She is a theoretical epidemiologist at Oxford. I think she is qualified to give an opinion.

A lot of her work is purely theoretical and model-based. Much is later discredited, as the facts don’t match her assumptions.

In addition, her politics seem to influence her work.

I wouldn’t put much stock in her.

Niel Ferguson hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory. This is serious. We are all affected on multiple levels. It deserves vigorous debate. This enriched by as many informed opinions as possible.

If you don’t like her points, answer them. Don’t discredit her.

But Paddy, work from Imperial, now founding government policy, has been discredited. In the mid 1990s they forecast some millions of U.K. deaths from vCJD. To date there have been fewer than a thousand.

When we look back at their covid disaster-predictions which caused us to shut down society, I am sure we will find that they were woefully wrong again. But it will be too late.

I'm starting to agree that i go down is a bad idea, and I've obeyed all the rules so far. There is a huge trade off here. The people who are not hardest are the working poor. The people looking their jobs and livelihoods. Not being g able to pay rent/mortgage or indeed having to use the deposit they had saved towards a mortgage. No decent job prospects. Untold damage to health in terms of treatments not being carried out, routine checks not being carried out, operations cancelled not to mention the increase in damage to mental health, suicide rates up. The lock down will not eradicate the virus it will still be there. Do the elderly want to live out their last remaining years like this, alone and bored? Or would they prefer to take their chance and live knowing their children and their children will have a better quality of life. If the NHS wasn't so vastly underfunded then we could carry on as normal.

That’s a good phrase, Empress - ‘deserves vigorous debate’. So true. Tragic that it is not happening.

We have to remember that lots of well-qualified people disagree violently on these issues. There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ camps into which we can sort people. She is a very clever and well-qualified woman. I don’t know whether or not she is right.

That’s a great summary emilybronte. It is not just about reining in infection. Families deserve to make a living and children deserve to inherit a functional future world. Or at least not to be hampered in contributing to one.

@emilybrontescorsett

I'm starting to agree that i go down is a bad idea, and I've obeyed all the rules so far. There is a huge trade off here. The people who are not hardest are the working poor. The people looking their jobs and livelihoods. Not being g able to pay rent/mortgage or indeed having to use the deposit they had saved towards a mortgage. No decent job prospects. Untold damage to health in terms of treatments not being carried out, routine checks not being carried out, operations cancelled not to mention the increase in damage to mental health, suicide rates up. The lock down will not eradicate the virus it will still be there. Do the elderly want to live out their last remaining years like this, alone and bored? Or would they prefer to take their chance and live knowing their children and their children will have a better quality of life. If the NHS wasn't so vastly underfunded then we could carry on as normal.

Yes!

...and can I say, I appreciate the intelligent exchange of views on here. We don’t have to agree, but it is important to acknowledge that discussion needs to be had. to you all.

Both my mum and MIL have said they cannot carry on like this, alone, suffering. They both have a home with a garden so there will be 1000s of people worse off than them. I am now having to tell my mum that I cannot take her to see her granddaughter , that the overnight trip I had booked for us will not go ahead. She was so looking forward to it as I was. All I have now is working full time in a stressful job. My longed for break is not going to hapoen. At least I have a job unlike 1000s of others who dont. My mum has been out twice since lockdown both times to the coast. Yes she can go in her garden, although it's far too cold for her now. Yes I can go and sit in her garden with her, at least I think I can. But how boring is that? And for what? We are not saving the lives of millions of healthy fit people here are we.
We can't keep doing this. It's untenable. It's not worth it. Sad fact but it's true and I'm no covid denier. I go to work and come home, day in day out. No pleasure in life anymore. If I feel like this Lord knows how millions of others feel.

If the NHS wasn't so vastly underfunded then we could carry on as normal.

What, like the countries which fund their healthcare systems better (whether privately or publicly) like Germany and France? France that went into lockdown last week and Germany which is locking down tomorrow?

Of course the NHS is in a much worse position than it would be if it were funded properly, but it's clearly not true that a well-funded health service means we can carry on as normal.

And no, no lockdown will eliminate the virus: it's an effective vaccine that will let us get back to something closer to normal. Staying alive until that is available is the name of the game right now.

The working poor are dying from Covid too, and losing their income while being sick (sometimes longterm sick) too. Not locking down doesn't protect the poor.

There isn't some either/or choice here: all options are deeply shit.

There is no good solution, we’re between a rock and a hard place. It’s not about protecting the elderly or giving them a choice about how they want to live. It’s gone far past that point. The issue is if we don’t do something pretty radical the NHS is going to collapse entirely and no one will be getting effective treatment for Covid or anything else. We also run the risk of a whole generation of NHS staff suffering ptsd or leaving in droves. It’s shit, but I don’t think at this point there’s an alternative. That ship sailed when track and trace was fucked up.

It's very important that diverse views are aired. We need to be able to look back & decide we seriously considered all sorts of alternatives and couldn't find a clearly better way thru this awful situation than (whatever will have happened).