A rare voice of sanity in one of the newspapers today:
Arguably, the Covid crisis is being presented in such a one-sided, misleading and alarmist manner that the public is effectively being lied to. But the lie is now so dramatically compelling, so morally powerful, that, like the virus itself, it may be impossible to defeat and prove endemic. The best we can do now is to manage it in a targeted fashion. We might do this by setting “The Official Version” against the fundamental facts (as we know them so far) in two particular areas.
The first regards the true scale of the Covid crisis. An FT study that estimates Britain has suffered 41,000 coronavirus-related deaths has been widely circulated in recent days. So too the latest ONS figures that put the weekly Covid death rate up to May 1 at 6,035. At first glance, these figure are horrific.
But let’s put them in perspective: forty-one thousand is below the number of excess winter deaths in 1998, 1999 and 2014, which immediately raises questions about whether this crisis is truly “unprecedented”. And 40 per cent of Week 18 Covid-related deaths reported by the ONS occurred in care homes, which immediately rings alarm bells about whether it was right to pursue blanket lockdown rather than a more targeted strategy of protecting the vulnerable.
The tragedy is we have blown coronavirus out of proportion to such a degree that it is obscuring our view of another epidemic – surging non-Covid excess deaths. Warnings from cardiology experts that soon the daily excess deaths related to illnesses untreated during lockdown – from heart disease to cancer – could soon be greater than the daily Covid death rate remain dangerously unheeded.
Which brings us on to the second area of the official narrative that demands further scrutiny: the risks of lifting lockdown. Prof Neil Ferguson may be destined for the dustbin of history, but mainstream appetite for garbage-in garbage-out modelling is, if anything, becoming even more rapacious. My latest favourite is an Imperial College study which gloomily warns of a possible second wave in Italy; its projections are based on the strange assumption that the only change in public behaviour after nearly two months of lockdown will be to travel about less.
A correlation also seems to be emerging between how one-dimensional modelling is, and how much traction it generates. Take the much-dicussed study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), which warns 100,000 may die if lockdown is lifted too early. A more sophisticated study would also project the death toll if lockdown is lifted too late, by combining data about the economy and health.
The latter is exactly what some experts, such as Prof Philip Thomas at the University of Bristol, are exploring. He suggests that hundreds of thousands could die if lockdown is ended too slowly – and yet his findings have not enjoyed nearly as much publicity.
We are being brainwashed into a view of the risks around lifting lockdown that is not only one-dimensional, but also downright wrong. The most disgraceful example of this is misinformation regarding the R number. Much of the public now accept the PM’s misleading insinuation that reducing the R number to lush green Zero is our only path to freedom, and Britain is doomed if the R number grows above vampire-red Number One.
So too outlets like the Guardian, which are now furiously tracking R numbers in countries such as Germany, which have been foolish enough to start unwinding lockdown. But this Crayola-coloured impression of science misses one little fact: the R number falling straight to zero is not the only way for an epidemic to end, it could rise before falling; such is the logic behind “herd immunity”.
Which just about captures the spirit of the deceit. Throughout this crisis, our post-Blair leaders have had countless opportunities to level with the public that finding a solution to this crisis might involve taking a risk. Instead it has sold them the old managerial lie that the only solution is to avoid all risks. We may have a new leader, but nothing has changed in British politics