Boris Cancels Christmas
Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday announced the Government’s latest humiliating U-turn, plunging London and the South East into a new “Tier 4” (lockdown in all but name), cancelling the Christmas amnesty for those areas and reducing it to just Christmas Day in the rest of the country. The Telegraph has the details.
Boris Johnson was forced to introduce a new tier with tougher restrictions last night as he warned that a new variant of the virus was spreading “significantly more easily” among the population.
The Prime Minister told the nation: “When the virus changes its method of attack, we must change our methods of defence.”
He placed 18 million people across London, the South East and East of England into new Tier 4 restrictions which closely resemble November’s lockdown.
It came after he received alarming new evidence that a variant strain of COVID-19 – called VUI2020/12/01 – was ripping through areas in Tier 3, where restrictions were failing to control the spread.
For the rest of the country, the five-day window to form a Christmas bubble has been scaled back to just one 24-hour period.
From Sunday, in tier 4 non-essential, gyms, cinemas, hairdressers and bowling alleys will be forced to close for two weeks in tier 4 areas, with people restricted to meeting one other person from another household in an outdoor public space.
The draconian measures will apply to London, Kent, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Surrey, Gosport, Havan, Portsmouth, Rother and Hastings, Bedford, Milton Keynes, Luton, Peterborough, Hertfordshire and Essex.
People under the new highest tier will also be banned from leaving their areas, and will no longer be allowed to meet up in Christmas bubbles of up to three households. The tiers will be reviewed at the end of the month.
For people living in tier one, two and three areas, the five-day window has also been drastically cut back to just Christmas Day.
It means millions of people hoping to visit and stay with friends and family now face having to cancel train tickets, flights and other travel plans.
It comes after Mr Johnson held an emergency Cabinet meeting this morning to sign off the changes, after scientists confirmed that the new strain is spreading more quickly and could be driving the surge in cases in the South East.
What a kick in the baubles, as the Sun says.
Yet even before the announcement yesterday afternoon scientists were pushing back against the Government’s scaremongering over the “new mutant strain”. Time For Recovery UK released a statement calling on the Health Secretary Matt Hancock to release more details of the strain, which it turn out is not new at all but has been around since at least September.
On Tuesday December 15th, Professor Nick Loman of the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG UK) consortium, identified the new set of mutations as VUI – 202012/0. He confirmed that it is not new, as COG UK identified it in September, and there is no proof that it is more infectious. As Professor Sharon Peacock, COG Director, pointed out: “We are still dealing with very thin evidence at the moment about this variant.”
Dr Maria van Kerkhove, the technical lead of COVID-19 response and the head of emerging diseases and zoonosis unit at WHO, has also confirmed that the strain involved has been circulating for many months, though she referred to it as N501Y.
Recovery is challenging Matt Hancock to answer these key questions:
– Why did he announce this as a new strain on the eve of the tier review when it appears to have been circulating for several months (and may have existed for months more before it was identified)?
– Why has he made headlines with the news that it’s more infectious when the experts who identified the strain say that we don‘t have evidence for that yet?
– Will he publish the evidence he has for that so his claims can be independently verified?
– In the words of the Washington Post, “At a news conference Monday evening, neither Hancock nor England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, released enough data to help the public understand the significance of the new variant.” Does he now regret the way that this announcement was handled, given that it has attracted international criticism?
– With millions of lives and livelihoods at stake, does he now consider that the statement he made to Parliament about the ‘new’ strain may have been misleading?
– Does he retain confidence in the Government advisers who briefed him on it?
– With even the experts at the World Health Organisation who are responsible for tackling the virus apparently confused by the information that the DHSC has provided over the details of the ‘new’ strain, will he remind his department to prioritise accuracy and the clear communication of the known facts over sensationalist language that makes headlines?“There is a lot of trivial diversity in the spike protein. Over 20000 variants have been reported,” commented Professor David Livermore, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia. “What is the hard evidence that this new variant really is so different against this background of great diversity? Apparently VUI202012/0 was first found in September. It’s not clear where it came from or how long it had existed previously. The delay before it expanded doesn’t fit with super-infectiousness. Any variant of SAR COV-19 might expand swiftly because it gets into a part of the country which has had a relatively low prior exposure to SARS-CoV2 – like Kent or East Anglia – rather than because it has any particular biological advantage. As ever, talk of ‘exponential spread’ is misleading. We have now repeatedly seen that as exposure rises, spread slows.”
Jon Dobinson, Campaign Director of Recovery, commented, “The evidence suggests that Matt Hancock may have needlessly terrified millions of people by giving misleading information about a variant of the virus which has existed for months. With millions of lives and livelihoods at stake, it is imperative that the Government is seen to be carrying out a balanced and responsible public health campaign. This looks like irresponsible scaremongering. It increasingly seems as though Matt Hancock and his advisors are carrying out an all-out marketing campaign for harsh restrictions rather than taking a balanced and proportionate approach. It is now clear that he and the Government have been guilty of hugely damaging errors in tackling this virus. Are they trying to sustain the panic to avoid being held to account for the damage they have done? That would be criminally irresponsible, given the damage that their actions are causing. But it is increasingly hard to interpret their actions in any other way.”
The main evidence the variant transmits more easily appears to be the shape of the recent surge in London and the South East. But other parts of the country have had surges at other times. Why is it assumed this one must be due to a dangerous new variant? Worth recalling that December is always the busiest month for hospital admissions for respiratory disease and yet hospitals are currently quieter than last year.
Patrick O’Flynn in the Telegraph notes that the latest announcement fits a familiar pattern: “Isn’t it odd how these big, cataclysmic Covid U-turns always seem to get announced on a Saturday after the press-ganging of the PM by scientific advisers on a Friday?”
Paul Nuki brings, as ever, the voice of the global health establishment, arguing “Boris Johnson had no choice but to tighten restrictions” as “with the R rate above one, hospitals struggling, and a new strain spreading across the South East, the PM’s hands were tied”. Nonsense, of course. But towards the end he inadvertently blurts out a confession.
Almost every year British hospitals fill up in the weeks following Christmas threatening a crisis in the NHS. This is caused by a range of factors – including social care staffing issues – but a large part of it is dictated by Christmas itself and the rules of contagion.
Indeed. So are we going to do this every year now?
Leo McKinstry responds robustly to the latest round of scaremongering.
We have heard repeatedly heard such alarmist talk throughout the pandemic, and frequently the worst fears have not been realised. In their notorious press conference in September, used to justify the second lockdown, the Chief Medical Officer Christ Whitty and Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warned that there could be 4000 Covid deaths-a-day in the autumn. Nothing like that total was ever reached. Nor has there been any fulfilment of the continual forecasts about Covid swamping the NHS. In fact analysis published this morning of NHS data shows that hospitals are actually quieter than they were this time last year, while intensive care units have more room.
It’s the latest in the Government’s spectacularly incompetent handling of the pandemic.
The shambolic announcement is part of a pattern of inconsistency and incompetence. From the start of the outbreak, the Government’s approach has been riddled with epic contradictions, sudden reversals, gross mismanagement, spectacular waste and incoherent communications. In the autumn, Boris Johnson denounced Sir Keir Starmer for proposing the so-called “circuit-breaker”, then a fortnight later implement one himself. One week Ministers told us it is was our duty, for the sake of the economy, to get back to work. Soon afterwards they said that we should stay at home if possible. Similarly, Mr Johnson’s Government imposed a curfew on pubs, without providing any convincing evidence to support it, just as the bombast about a “world-beating” testing regime has proved shallow.
So many of the Government’s restrictive policies – including lockdowns, tiers, and compulsory mask-wearing – do not seem to be working. The failure of Tier 3 is not the cue for an alternative, but its elevation into Tier 4. Yet the evidence for the collateral damage caused by these controls is overwhelming – in economic meltdown, poor mental health, chronic loneliness and social anxiety. Only last week, new figures revealed disturbing rises in both unemployment and domestic violence.
Brendan O’Neill in spiked is similarly unimpressed.
The neo-Cromwellian edict has been issued. The thing that Boris Johnson said would be ‘inhuman’ just a few days ago has now been done. For the first time in centuries people in vast swathes of England – London and the South East – will be forbidden by law from celebrating Christmas together. The government’s promise of five days’ relief from the stifling, atomising, soul-destroying lockdown of everyday life has been snatched away from us. It’s too risky, the experts say; the disease will spread and cause great harm. You know what else will cause great harm? This cruel, disproportionate cancellation of Christmas; this decree against family festivities and human engagement.
But will people comply?
I’m hearing from so many people that they intend to go ahead with their Christmas plans. Political leaders and the miserabilist media will no doubt brand them ‘Covidiots’, thoughtless pricks who don’t care about others. On the contrary, it is precisely because they care for others – for their happiness, their social needs, their thirst for human connection – that they will defy this edict and celebrate Christmas. Our politicians may not understand that the purpose of life is to be with and around and there for other people, but millions of us still do.
The Spectator‘s Isabel Hardman draws attention to the lack of Government accountability in these decisions and the effect this is having on Conservative MPs.
Johnson will not have to face Starmer before the new policy comes into force: the regulations will be published tonight and the Coronavirus Act means Parliament does not need to be recalled to approve them. This will enrage a number of Conservative MPs who are already furious at the way the government is handling the pandemic and who feel ministers are getting addicted to governing without scrutiny. Mark Harper, chair of the Covid Recovery Group, has demanded a recall of Parliament, issuing a statement saying: “More immediately, given the three-tier system and the initial Christmas household rules were expressly authorised by the House of Commons, these changes must also be put to a vote in the Commons at the earliest opportunity, even if that means a recall of the House.”
At Lockdown Sceptics we wish the CRG and other conscientious MPs every success in bringing this out-of-control Government to heel.
Stop Press: A reader points out that although Tier 4 is being reported as having become legally enforceable as of midnight last night (Sunday), in fact there is no sign anywhere of a legal instrument, and until that appears Tier 4 rules are wholly advisory and have no legal basis (you can read the current legal basis for the three-tier system here and it makes no mention of a Tier 4). This means if the police try to stop you getting on a train you should ask them to specify which law you are breaking.
New “Kent Covid” Variant Less Deadly, Data Suggest
What follows is a guest post by Professor Anthony J. Brookes, Professor of Genetics at the University of Leicester.
This new variant is most likely just an “asymptomatic variant” i.e., a strain that causes no or very mild illness. This is exactly what natural selection would throw up and what would have been given a massive advantage when trying to suppress the virus by lockdowns and Test and Trace.
As such, it is likely a good thing, as it will help us achieve herd immunity more quickly, with far less illness. Thereafter, the virus will go away all by itself.
All viruses naturally evolve towards strains that are more transmissible but which cause mild or no disease. By lockdown and Test and Trace we have accelerated that natural process dramatically. One third of detected examples of this strain (or rather its clade) are in Essex, one third in London, and one third elsewhere in the UK. That is not consistent with a new strain with massive transmission advantage arising in one place (such as Essex) and spreading out from there. Hence this first “scary” graph actually proves that the new variant is not the cause of the prevalence increase in the claimed “problem” regions. It had the same percentage representation in three very different regions in early November. Whereas, if it were a new variant with rapid spread advantage it would instead have been ahead in one region and spread to the other regions later on.
In short, the new strain is spreading everywhere, as a background variant that causes no or mild disease, enabled to recently increase its relative abundance on account of lockdown and Test and Trace.
Something else is causing the apparent increase in the claimed “problem” areas. The “surge” in these regions is instead largely an artefact of massively increased testing in those regions – combined with reporting the misleading case rate (i.e., a simple count of detected positives, which consequently doubles if you double the amount of testing undertaken). The proper metric to look at is positivity rate (i.e., the percentage of people tested that got a positive result). And here it all is for Havering, one of the main “problem” regions in London, showing cases increasing with testing, but the positivity rate heading in the opposite direction.
This final Government “chart of doom”, showing new hospital admissions in the “problem” areas, simply reflects the fact that they have massively increased testing in those parts of the country over the last few weeks – so creating more positives. The “new hospital admissions” measure is simply a count of how many (not what fraction) of new admissions had a positive test within the last 14 days. So it is exactly the same artefact as the case rate artefact. You can see this by comparing the admission curve to the amount of testing done in Havering.
How Deadly is COVID-19?
A new study in the Lancet concludes that COVID-19 is around three times more deadly than flu. This is based on a comparison of in-hospital mortality in France between the 2018-19 flu season and the spring SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. It finds 16·9% (15,104 of 89,530) of Covid patients died vs 5·8% (2,640 of 45,819) of flu patients.
The authors, Professor Lionel Piroth and colleagues, claim the study “highlights the importance of all measures of physical prevention”. But is that so? A disease under three times more deadly than flu would not seem to warrant wrecking the economy for, or demolishing millions of people’s liberties and livelihoods.
And is Covid really three times more deadly than flu? Here are three compelling reasons for thinking the study overestimates the death rate.
First, the in-hospital mortality rate of Covid has already reduced considerably since the spring when there was more uncertainty about how to treat patients and a rush to use ventilators (which often made things worse). It’s also possible hospital admissions were more selective in spring over capacity fears, raising the average severity of Covid illness in hospital and hence the fatality rate. Oddly, Piroth et al do not allow that treatment has improved, claiming that “no treatment has been shown to be effective for the COVID-19 clinical course”. This is a bizarre claim given the large and growing clinical and scientific evidence for the effectiveness of Ivermectin, Vitamin D, HCQ and other treatments.
Second, the flu mortality rate in recent years has been reduced by the annual flu vaccination programme. Without widespread vaccination flu would kill many more, as can be seen from winter mortality before vaccination was common.
Third, and perhaps most tellingly, Sweden had no excess mortality between July 2019 and July 2020, as demonstrated by researchers at the University of Oslo. The excess deaths in the spring epidemic were cancelled out by the mild 2019-20 flu season to leave overall mortality no higher than normal. The only increase was a 1% rise in mortality among the over 80s. If COVID-19 is three times more deadly than flu, how can a country which took only mild precautionary measures end up with deaths no higher than normal? This suggests that the higher estimates for Covid mortality are a result of not taking into account the “dry tinder” or mortality displacement effect of a build-up of frail elderly after a mild winter, plus a misclassification of deaths as “due to” COVID-19 when some other cause is primarily responsible.
Sweden, like many other countries, is currently experiencing an autumn surge. However, as elsewhere, its scale is being exaggerated by excessive testing and attention, as Dr Sebastian Rushworth, who is based in Stockholm, explains.
Here in Stockholm, the number of people being treated in hospital for Covid has been stable since late November, with around 800 people being treated simultaneously for Covid in hospitals (in spring around 1,100 people were simultaneously being treated for Covid in Stockholm at the peak).
Since the total number of hospital beds in Stockholm is around 3,850, it should be plain to everyone that the healthcare system has never been close to being overwhelmed, in spite of claims to the contrary in media. And while it is true that hospitals are currently at 100% capacity, it is false to claim that that situation is in any way unusual. Sweden has among the lowest number of hospital beds per 100,000 population in Europe, and the hospitals are always running at 100% capacity this time of year.
Despite introducing only light measures compared to other countries, ICU admissions in Sweden have been falling since the end of November.
Excess mortality also began to fall at the end of November, surprisingly a full week before ICU admissions began to decline.
This scale of mortality hardly seems to warrant closing down a country, which itself causes immense harm. Sadly, as Lockdown Sceptics reported yesterday, the Swedish Government now seems to have decided otherwise and is imposing stronger measures, despite their own example suggesting this is unnecessary.
Incidentally, antibodies have been sharply on the rise again in Stockholm, an indication of an active epidemic as immune systems encounter the pathogen and produce the antibodies either for the first time or from T-cell memory (antibodies tend to fade over time when not in use, but the immunity remains in memory T-cells). Dr Sebastian Rushworth again:
One thing that I think is very interesting, that has received little mention in media, is that the proportion of people with antibodies has been rising by 2-3 percent every week. In Stockholm, 37% of those tested for antibodies in week 49 were positive (up from 20% six weeks earlier). That suggests that the level of immunity is rising very rapidly in the population, and makes it questionable whether the vaccine will arrive in time to have any meaningful impact on the course of COVID-19 in Sweden, even if people start to get vaccinated shortly after Christmas, as is currently planned
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