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For what it’s worth, here’s my 20 thoughts on what has been and is happening on Covid:-
1. Covid exists - I’m no denier! The Govt is not, however, being open, honest and balanced about their strategy, the danger and progression of the virus, the condition of the NHS and what they can and cannot do to control the virus. There is a lot of political smoke and mirrors.
2. The Govt’s strategy seems to be controlled spread; the Govt’s actions certainly do not demonstrate an elimination strategy. This lack of clarity and the ridiculously timed global Build Back Better political initiative makes it all feel very muddled and a bit weird.
3. I don’t know if the U.K. was ever in a position to have an elimination strategy like NZ so I cannot come to a view on whether hard lockdown and closed borders at the start would have led to a better result as so many people attest. This is a key issue for the Inquiry.
4. The virus probably killed most of the people recorded as dying from it in the Spring of 2020 though many of them would have died imminently in any case. The numbers were akin to an extreme flu year. The impact on hospitals, however, was much greater than flu.
5. The demographic and health of our population, and no significant flu outbreak for two years, may have left us with more susceptible people contributing to a high death toll. This is a matter for the Inquiry to establish: how many years of expected life were actually lost?
6. The initial outbreak left old and vulnerable people who would die in the next season who were isolated from their families in the last months of their lives to “protect them” and others. However, this policy of criminalising social contact has been particularly cruel on them.
7. The first 3-4 weeks of the first lockdown seemed a reasonable period for the Government to assess and plan. The reasoning for it continuing for almost four months is not clear. The vaccine adds a perspective to the current lockdown that adds weight to it.
8. The virus will probably be seasonal so that’s probably why we saw a massive reduction during the summer and a resurgence when the schools went back in the autumn and through winter as is normal with flus and colds.
9. The difficulty with this year is that Covid did not spread evenly in the spring of 2020 when it hit so there are spikes out of and in season. Ultimately, it seems that we are going to see it return ever year but with lesser effects. It is a major issue this year.
10. Immunity to some degree should technically be achievable but it takes time. There is also a death toll with immunity which is unpalatable especially when it is all presented as avoidable death (which it is not). The health and other impacts of lockdowns is the balance.
11. The vaccine will help reach immunity levels faster as it reduces impacts on the NHS and the death toll. This is why the vaccine is imperative to the U.K. in order to reduce the impact of our controlled spread and immunity policy.
12. Lockdowns in the way used by the U.K. are not specifically to save lives, they are to ensure the NHS does not get overloaded. The virus is still transmitting at high levels and is not being eradicated in U.K. lockdowns. That’s why it returns when we re-open.
13. Masks and distancing are not really to save lives, but to slow transmission - the protection given to individuals by these measures is highly questionable. To save lives we need to isolate indefinitely from one another - or until the virus is eradicated from the U.K. and seal
14. 10pm curfew, substantial meals, masks in pubs, table service, are really of marginal impact on transmission and are substantially made up controls to create an illusionary system of community infection control by the Govt.
15. The testing is not 100% reliable. To what degree it is wrong we do not know because the Government refuses to divulge key information to enable that to be ascertained.
16. “Case” figures are not accurate as individuals can have multiple positive tests which each form the count of cases and there is no diagnosis by doctors unless a person is admitted to hospital. Each case does not equate to an individual person who definitely has Covid.
17. The official Covid death toll since Spring, say a further 50,000, is not a reliable number because of the above points. That appears evident because Covid deaths in some months exceed the number of excess deaths meaning some likely mis-attribution to Covid.
18. There is a deliberate fear campaign and the true nature of Govt strategy, the accuracy of testing and the data are not questioned by mainstream TV in particular. Further, the full adverse impacts of lockdown are hardly addressed at all. There is ridicule and shaming.
19. Hospitals are desperately busy not specifically because more people are getting ill than normal, but because severe Covid is treatment intensive, beds have been reduced and staffing is lower because of Covid isolation arrangements. We also ordinarily have a limited NHS.
20. The evidence for the significant impact of asymptomatic transmission, long Covid and the new variant being more transmissible and more deadly is not clear. None of this may transpire to be of significance, but it would undermine current Govt strategy to address this now.
