That isn’t evidence of course, not in the slightest, but that doesn’t mean I would rule out it coming from a lab.
Jesus, wake up sheeple! What part of 'the lab was round the corner' do you not understand? That's solid gold scientific proof!!!
Was listening to the radio after spoken evidence had finished been given. It seems now this lady in charge will come to her conclusions which may take years. A guy came on who's is an expert in planing for emergency situations and he said that Sweden had already concluded their enquiry and his office/ company or whatever were in limbo as to what to put in place for the next emergency which as he said 'was likely just around the corner'.
I was back in the London last week. The city appears even more over-populated, in need of a clean, shabby, under-invested, repairs just plasters over run-down damage and nothing working properly. When the second and third worlds are moving forward and developing, London is moving backwards and badly managed.
See, what more evidence do you need? Even the Swede's confirmed it was 'likely just around the corner'! Yes, our enquiry is a sick joke. Can you imagine a business in the real world working like that?
The terms of reference of the COVID inquiry seem to be getting lost in the political blamegame being played out, with the Government's big hitters taking swipes at each other on a daily basis. The inquiry was set up in order to assess the UK’s response to and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, so that lessons can be learnt, so as to aid planning for future pandemics. Presumably Baroness Hallett will focus on this in her report, otherwise the Inquiry will have been a redundant and expensive failure, as it has no powers to hold any decision makers to account anyway.
Sums up a lot of what's wrong with our country these days. Takes far too long to get stuff done, with valuable money, time & resource wasted and half the time spent blaming or swiping at others.
Not surprising the three key ministers all lost lots of WhatsApp’s , do you reckon they got together like the three musketeers. , so one isn’t singled out Quite a coincidence - what amazes me they are so aloof they probably don’t expect us to have noticed
Unfortunately true, and getting worse. Those of us living in such as ER are probably a tad fortunate as in some ways we are a lot of the time in a bit of a relative bubble. although then it's maybe easier to see the decline when you then go places. Sadly it's as much society (people) as it is the fabric of our cities and towns. Negative take perhaps but as a generality it's unfortunately true. I dread to think what it will be like in another decade or two unless something fundamental changes for the better.
The problem there is Ern as this bloke said, it might take two years plus for this report to be made public. Then they'll take another two years arguing about the recommendations or areas/departments deemed unfit for public purpose. And who is she to recommend if thats part of her remit.
The lockdown debate continues…. Was the Covid science wrong? What the Sunak documents tell us The PM told the Inquiry that the costs of lockdown are likely to be greater than the benefits. His evidence is worth looking at in detail Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR12 December 2023 • 9:04pm please log in to view this image At the Covid Inquiry this week, Rishi Sunak made a striking admission. The Prime Minister pointed out that, based on analysis by Imperial College and Manchester University, the costs of lockdown are likely to be greater than the benefits. The research was based on ‘quality-adjusted life years’ – the measure used by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) to determine whether any health intervention is worth the price. Sunak pointed to the report from August 2020, which warned that ‘treating possible future Covid-19 deaths as if nothing else matters is going to lead to bad outcomes.’ One might think such a statement – and the science behind it – would be worth exploring, but Hugo Keith KC shut down the comments, telling Sunak that he ‘did not want to get into quality-life assurance models.’ (sic) The exchange was telling, demonstrating a lack of scientific rigour from the inquiry barrister, while proving Sunak had a better handle on the evidence than many. Following his evidence, Sunak’s witness statement also proved eye-opening, showing that the country may have been locked down for too long because of bad science, data issues and poor modelling. It’s worth exploring his points. Advertisement The unreliable R number In spring 2020, the Government was heavily reliant on estimations of the R number, to determine whether Covid was ramping up or petering out. The figure describes the average number of people a person will infect, and it needed to fall below one to be certain that the virus was under control. Boris Johnson insisted that keeping the R below one was the most important of five tests that must be met before the country could return to normal. But according to Sunak, there were “errors in the collection and analysis” of data, which overestimated transmission and made the R number look “artificially high,” prolonging restrictions. please log in to view this image Sunak admitted that by December 2021, with the Omicron variant threatening another deadly wave of infection, relations between the Government and Sage were fraught One of the main issues was that a huge number of infections were being caught in hospitals and care homes, but it was impossible to distinguish just how many, meaning it looked as if community rates were soaring. Sunak said: “Rates of nosocomial infections (contracted in hospital settings) were of interest, as a high nosocomial rate and a low rate of infection in the community may have enabled us to start safely pursuing policies to open the economy and society, whilst focusing NPI (non-pharmaceutical intervention) efforts on reducing transmission within healthcare settings.” Advertisement He added: “Having access to accurate nosocomial rates was important as it would clearly be preferable not to impose huge additional economic cost if the source of the problem is in hospital and care homes “A Sage member recognised that bringing down R in all areas had a ‘huge economic cost, but sorting out R in hospitals and care homes should be possible at much lower economic cost’. On reflection, I am not sure whether this aspect was as rigorously understood, emphasised, or explored as much as it might have been.” According to Sunak, by the beginning of May, 30 per cent of all cases originated in hospitals, a proportion that rose to 80 per cent by June 2020. By June 18, Sage minutes acknowledged that the ‘errors’ meant that for some time they had in all probability been overestimating the rate of transmission”, making it look ‘artificially high’. Public Health England (PHE) analysis later showed that up to a quarter of Covid infections had been caught in hospital in the first wave. Sunak added: “Had the high proportion of nosocomial infection been better understood at the time, our policy development might have had a lesser economic and social impact.” Modelling mishaps Models played a pivotal role in the Covid pandemic, frequently used to justify the removal of freedoms as fundamental as being allowed to walk in the open air, or hold the hand of a dying loved one. Yet according to Sunak, they were often based on erroneous data. He pointed out that modelling submitted by Sage when determining the impact of lifting restrictions in spring 2020 had vastly overestimated the number of people attending work and school. While Sage had assumed that 11 per cent of children would remain in school, just 2.5 per cent actually did. Likewise, modellers estimated that there would be a 20 per cent increase in workplace contacts, yet there was only a four per cent uptick in people travelling to work. Sunak said: “Necessarily, when undertaking their modelling, Sage had to use assumptions which, again unsurprisingly, did not always prove to be correct.” The Prime Minister told the Inquiry this week that there had been “genuine issues” about the robustness of the data. Scientific dissent Sage may have styled itself as a united bastion of scientific truth, but behind the scenes there was often conflict and disagreement about the evidence and how to proceed. In his witness statement, Sunak pointed out that there was often not ‘a single, unanimous view within Sage’ and that scientists often expressed views in public which differed from the majority of experts giving advice to the Government. “I suspect that there was, unsurprisingly and understandably, more debate within Sage than was appreciated by the outside world, who considered their recommendations as the product of one unanimous voice of scientific truth,” Sunak said. “It was also probably underappreciated more widely how uncertain the science itself was, and how capable of changing it was, as new information came to light. “Just because it was scientists rather than politicians making recommendations, it did not mean they were perfect, incapable of error or evolution in their thinking.” Sunak claims that scientists were divided on the issues of face masks, when infections would peak and what measures should be introduced. Sunak used the start of his evidence to apologise to bereaved families CREDIT: AFP/Getty While Sage initially thought closing schools was an important intervention, by the autumn of 2020 scientists had changed their mind, fearing that lack of education was far worse for youngsters than the virus. Even by October 2020, there was a “strong sense that the evidence base on what measures do and don’t work was lacking,” Sunak said in a statement. “I am unsure as to whether the range of opinions within the scientific body was fully appreciated more widely,” the prime minister wrote. He added: “I believe that Sage advice was valuable and important, but the significant status and prominence attached to it did have, in my view, an unfortunate consequence, which was that less consideration was given to other factors outside of their focus, despite the serious impacts that we would see in a number of areas of society, including non Covid-related health outcomes.” Sunak admitted that by December 2021, with the Omicron variant threatening another deadly wave of infection, relations between the Government and Sage were fraught, with scientists advising another lockdown. In the end, the data proved so uncertain that the Government held its nerve, the first time politicians had chosen not to ‘follow the science’. They were correct, and Omicron cases soon started to fall. A better way forward Sunak was dubbed ‘Dr Death’ for daring to suggest that keeping the economy going was the best way to help the public. His restaurant boosting scheme was dismissed by Professor Chris Whitty as ‘Eat Out To Help Out The Virus.’ Yet it is becoming clear that while other ministers ignored the devastating consequences looming at the other end of lockdown, Sunak had his sights set clearly on the horizon. He worried about the impact of courts being closed, leading to a backlog of nearly 32,000 cases and fretted over the impact of NHS backlogs for cancer, heart and mental health patients. “Many of these impacts are not felt immediately,” Sunak told the inquiry this week. “They are felt over time. And that was a tough thing to deal with.” It is still a tough thing to deal with and the county will be dealing with it for many more years to come. It is time for a new module to be added to the Covid Inquiry, one that focuses specifically on the evidence of what worked and what did not. Until then, fingers will be pointed, but no lessons will be learnt. Related Topics Covid Inquiry, Rishi Sunak, Sage, UK coronavirus lockdown, Pandemics and epidemics, Coronavirus commenting policy. 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That's clearly a very emotive and biased piece. We have some great balanced media in this country and we also have some laughably biased newspapers. For some reason, conspiracy theorists who go on about the evils of the mainstream media, love to lap up the very worst of it.
It’s more interesting, to me anyway, that the inquiry seems to be happily agreeing with people that said there was no plan. As far as I’m aware there was a plan, but I’m less sure people in central Govt/central civil service read it. Plans were in place for pandemic flu. While those plans didn’t cover other decisions due to the volume of cases, they did, as far as I’m aware, cover things like lockdowns. Or rather they covered not locking down, but having focussed tracking and isolation of cases and those at high risk instead.
I had a few squints at the inquiry, and it seemed more like a personal bitch fest than any serious attempt to investigate what worked and what didn't to improve things for any future situations. I think there were too many **** ups, that were pointed out at that the time, for people to have the dignity to actually be honest. Has it improved any?
At the time AND before the time; in 2016 there was a table top exercise, operation Cygnus, to forecast how the UK would fare in a pandemic situation - the 1000 or so people involved came to a conclusion that UK planning, policies and capability were all insufficient to deal with this imaginary new virus strain that had emanated in Thailand. This is all a full three years before Covid! It's a shocking read but really not for discussion here, far too political.
