London Imperial College Vaccine

It was a scientific decision. I know people like to pretend it wasn’t because the scientists got it very wrong in the first instance and then changed advice, but it was a scientific decision.

 

Honestly, I feel like you’re splitting hairs and playing with semantics.

The unpalatable fact is that lockdown and associated policies have set in chain events causing a huge number of deaths that simply would not have happened otherwise, a fact that some of us were derided and bizarrely told we didn’t care about people when we pointed this out before it came to pass.

You and others may still think that it saved more lives than it has cost; you might be right. I still do not think so, particularly as we’ve barely started to count the costs of all those who are currently missing diagnosis, having early stage care postponed or are yet to feel the knock-on health consequences of the forthcoming economic depression.

 

Based mainly on the pseudo-science of a discredited lunatic who’s been proved wildly wrong again and again and again and whom his peer group have ridiculed his work as being littered with fundamental errors.

 

Jesus, it's obviously meant to refer to the new order of things, as in "the new state of play" rather than a shadowy cabal of lizard people.

 

So political decision based on scientific advice?

 

If you like

 

Got any papers where this happens? From a credible scientist? I admit I probably haven’t been looking for that specifically, but I’ve tried to keep on top of things and the only reports I’ve seen that reference the paper by Professor Ferguson are ones agreeing with it, but saying it should have been known a week sooner.

 

Not if I like, that's actually what it was.

 

It’s the same thing though. That’s all I meant.

Whereas closing hospitals to cancer patients wasn’t scientific advice. It was lunacy.

 

I agree, but it was a result of the lockdown which was a political decision. In essence I believe that the lockdown was too extreme. Many think it wasn't extreme enough or enforced strictly.

 

And the flipside of that is that you have no alternative solution. You can provide no evidence that any given alternative would have a better all round outcome.

The virus exists - and most of the worlds governments chose some variance of lockdown combined with track and trace - some relied on the tracking, some shut down harder than others, but there was no appetite amongst the worlds greatest minds to just let the virus run it's course. The reason you're derided is that you have no idea how many extra deaths you are promoting as an alternative.

 

It wasn’t a result of the lockdown though. That’s my point. It was a separate decision, completely unrelated, surely?

Proponents of lockdown advocated for the closure of non-essential business. Not the closure of medical facilities. Like I said earlier, the only justification for stopping medical procedures would be a shortage of staff, so people have to be reassigned. But that’s nothing to do with lockdown, is it? It’s a result of Covid. There’s a massive difference.

 

Our deaths are higher than most comparable countries - how many extra deaths would you be happy with?

 

Agreed. This was why I was absolutely delighted that Boris Johnson got it. I'm sure that they wouldn't be slowing down the economic restart if he hadn't.

 

Of course, no problem. The main problem seems to be that people can’t replicate his findings, which is a serious worry:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technol...wn-totally-unreliable-buggy-mess-say-experts/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.da...essor-Neil-Ferguson-branded-mess-experts.html

The main competing model was of course the Oxford University model, which predicted that the ‘Vid was already far more widespread within the community than Ferguson had taken account of, and that consequently lockdown impact on spread would be much less significant; this is a great balanced article that explains the differences (and therefore the dangers in taking Ferguson’s word as gospel; it’s just an opinion at the end of the day)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thecon...dels-but-none-can-have-all-the-answers-135137

 

How many deaths caused as a result of lockdown are you happy with?

 

I think we will see more deaths longer term that are result of the lockdown. People not getting referred for Cancer treatments, things not getting picked up. Not all of that is down to the removal of services, some of it from people too scared to access services. Some people have been too scared to leave the home for months.

 

I don’t have time to read them right now, I’m actually in a meeting, but I want you to know I’ve seen them and will read them with an open mind in a couple of hours. Thanks.

 

Well if the total of lockdown caused deaths plus Covid mitigated by lockdown is less than than the number of Covid deaths without lockdown I'd describe that as a positive result.

Simple maths.

 

Spot on, if they start a trial where I live I will be volunteering.