Moral Compass Spinning Like a Catherine Wheel

 It is hard to work out Rishi Sunak’s motives for his remarkable and belated revelations about his ‘opposition’ to the government’s Covid policies including lockdown, closing schools, terrorising the population and, perhaps most important of all, handing decision-making to an unelected bunch of ‘independent’ ‘scientific’ ‘advisers’, many of whom had personal agendas and interests.

Why has he decided to give his version of events more than two years after they happened, when it is too late to change anything? 
Why, even more importantly, has he chosen to admit that none of his supposedly profound concerns was of sufficient import for him to resign over? As Chancellor of the Exchequer wasn’t he the most senior member of Cabinet and the most responsible? 

What, after all, is the point of a Chancellor who cannot say no?

Perhaps he thinks that he will appear a good guy who did his humble best against the irresistible forces ranged against him? 

Perhaps he hopes this will give him the impetus he needs to overtake Liz Truss and become Prime Minister?

If that is really what he thinks, it is a terrible misjudgement. For if he had spoken out at the time, if he had taken the honourable course, resigned and opposed policy from the back benches, who knows how the course of history might have been different. 

Could Johnson have ignored his Chancellor’s warning that his measures would be a disaster for the country?

And that his unelected science and medical advisers were not just calling the shots but editing Sage meeting minutes to suppress contrary advice?

He could not. And the chances are that economy would not have been trashed, businesses would not have gone to the wall, ‘our’ NHS would not have been converted into a Covid-only service resulting in a backlog of millions of patients, hundreds of thousands of children would not have had their education and social lives damaged, in some cases beyond repair. It does not bear thinking about that a man with great power, the second-most important politician in the country, sat on his hands knowing that the policy he supported in public was ruinous.

In his interview with Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, Sunak says that when Neil Ferguson delivered his infamous prediction that lockdown could cut Covid casualties from half a million to 20,000, no cost-benefit calculation was carried out.

Nelson writes: ‘[Sunak says] “I wasn’t allowed to talk about the trade-off.” Ministers were briefed by No 10 on how to handle questions about the side-effects of lockdown. “The script was not to ever acknowledge them. The script was: oh, there’s no trade-off, because doing this for our health is good for the economy.” If frank discussion was being suppressed externally, Sunak thought it all the more important that it took place internally. But that was not his experience. “I felt like no one talked,” he says. “We didn’t talk at all about missed [doctors’] appointments, or the backlog building in the NHS in a massive way. That was never part of it.” When he did try to raise concerns, he met a brick wall. “Those meetings were literally me around that table, just fighting. It was incredibly uncomfortable every single time”.’

What does he mean by ‘I wasn’t allowed’? He is not a schoolboy. As Chancellor it was directly his remit, indeed it was his responsibility, to insist on the necessary cost-benefit analysis – and to resign if his advice was refused on a matter of such national importance and economic significance. He also recalls one meeting where he raised education: ‘[Sunak said] “I was very emotional about it. I was like: ‘Forget about the economy. Surely we can all agree that kids not being in school is a major nightmare’ or something like that. There was a big silence afterwards. It was the first time someone had said it. I was so furious”.’

If this is really what happened, it is beyond unforgivable that Sunak didn’t yell from the rooftops about the disaster he foresaw. Similarly with the campaign to terrify people about Covid, as recommended by Sage:

‘One of Sunak’s big concerns was about the fear messaging, which his Treasury team worried could have long-lasting effects. “In every brief, we tried to say: let’s stop the fear narrative. It was always wrong from the beginning. I constantly said it was wrong.” The posters showing Covid patients on ventilators, he said, were the worst. “It was wrong to scare people like that”.’

Why didn’t he say so at the time? Is there any material evidence he even raised these concerns (which says little for his leadership abilities)? He surely must have been aware of the many millions – upwards of one billion by the end – that were being spent, with the Treasury’s blessing, on the Cabinet Office’s deliberate fear-engendering campaign. 

Sunak reveals that Sage recommendations were implemented by No 10 without consultation with Cabinet members. This meant, writes Nelson, that whoever wrote the minutes for the Sage meetings – condensing its discussions into guidance for government – would set the policy of the nation.

But in the early days, at least, Sunak knew that the minutes of Sage meetings were being edited to silence dissenting voices, because unknown to the Sage members one of his staff was listening in to their conference calls.

His mole apparently told him: "Well, actually, it turns out that lots of people disagreed with that conclusion", or "Here are the reasons that they were not sure about it".

Nelson writes: ‘For a year, UK government policy – and the fate of millions – was being decided by half-explained graphs cooked up by outside academics. “This is the problem,” [Sunak] says. “If you empower all these independent people, you’re screwed”.’

It surely goes further than that. As lawyer Francis Hoar has tweeted, if the minutes of Sage were false, and Sunak knew they were false, there are grounds for criminal investigation into misconduct in public office.

This is absolutely shocking. If this is true then those responsible – and it is reasonable to suppose that Whitty and Vallance were at least aware – should face a criminal investigation for misconduct in public office.https://t.co/WEMTO0pWX9 pic.twitter.com/GuVPjsT2EB

— Francis Hoar (@Francis_Hoar) August 25, 2022

But Sunak said nothing. Worse, he gave every appearance of backing Boris Johnson and Sage until last December when Sage said that without a fourth lockdown, Covid deaths could hit 6,000 a day (a prediction soon proved to be rubbish). By this time, Sunak says, he had taken advice from elsewhere and met Johnson: ‘I just told him it’s not right: we shouldn’t do this.’ The unspoken implication is that his advice carried the day.

Nelson says he asked Sunak if he should have gone public or resigned. The answer: ‘To quit in that way during a pandemic, he says, would have been irresponsible. And to go public, or let his misgivings become known, would have been seen as a direct attack on the PM.

‘At the time, No. 10’s strategy was to create the impression that lockdown was a scientifically created policy which only crackpots dared question. If word leaked that the chancellor had grave reservations, or that a basic cost-benefit analysis had never been applied, it would have been politically unhelpful for No 10.’

Politically unhelpful for No 10?! Is that what mattered when the country was being ripped apart by useless if not deliberately destructive advice from biased ‘experts’ while people who really knew their business were being cancelled, smeared, ignored and ruined? When, he all but admits, the pandemic was one more of fear than microbe?

Sunak has shown himself by these revelations to be a man without moral character or understanding of his public duty. It is beyond doubt that he is not fit to be PM. It is equally clear that the same applies to everyone from the present regime.

Many a Slip Twixt Cup (or Glass) and Lip

After Downing Street apparently pulled Grant Shapps from the media round yesterday (Sky said he'd been due to appear), the unenviable job of defending the Prime Minister was given to the Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis just after Jacob Rees-Mogg added fuel to the Partygate fire by describing Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross as a “lightweight“.

Speaking on Sky News, Lewis said:

“It’s difficult to explain, but the reality of how Downing Street works – and the garden is actually an integral part of Downing Street – I absolutely can see the logic of the Prime Minister going outside to talk to the staff who’ve been working together and focused on things around Covid all day…”

So not only did Mr Lewis follow his leader by failing to offer up any sort of clarification as to what a "work event" was (or is?) when there was nothing in the guidance other than instructions/orders telling us to go to work only if was essential or stay at home, he also claimed that the Prime Minister went "outside to talk to the staff who’ve been working together"; a statement made using the past tense!

Did he mis-speak? Was it a subconscious slip of the tongue because he's well aware that working staff tend not to hang around gardens sharing bottles of wine? Or has he simply assumed that it wasn't anything like a "work event" (whatever that means) and that's why he claimed the staff "had been" working together, not "were" as should have been the case had the gathering in groups (as it was described at PMQs yesterday) not been social when Boris went out to congratulate people on a job well done, even though not all the "attendees" even worked at Downing Street!!  

You've got to fight for your right to (deny a) party!

No one can deny, even among his fiercest critics (of which I admit to being one), that Boris Johnson's time as Prime Minister has been remarkable. We have not had an event as seismic as the pandemic in terms of impact on the UK since the Second World War, and the Prime Minister has had to make a number of hugely difficult decisions to steer the country through it.

However, no matter how difficult the circumstances, he must still be held to a certain standard expected of the office. The leaked email from his Principal Private Secretary (a man who at the time of writing is still in a job!) inviting Downing Street staff for drinks at a time when the rest of the country was confined to socialising with one person from outside of their household, is the latest in a number of controversies to hit the PM in recent weeks and months, and the public are growing not just angry, but tired.

Boris has always been a divisive figure, especially among his own party, but his ability to cut through the political noise and appeal to people on a personal level has allowed him to stand out. This personal appeal has also given him more leeway than any modern British leader. 

He often references Churchill and Churchillian rhetoric, yet his hero was ousted at the first possible opportunity after the Second World War, and his second period as leader from 1951 to 1955 saw the beginning of the period known as "thirteen wasted years".

Boris's personal appeal, along with his success in "getting Brexit done" has allowed him to swat away some controversies, such as the questions surrounding the renovation of his Downing Street flat, with relative ease. In an era when people ultimately care very little about politics because they feel it doesn't impact their lives, politicians complaining about decorating a flat doesn't resonate with people. Yes he might have made mistakes, but he's a "nice guy" and "got Brexit done" when others didn't.

The Owen Patterson scandal ramped the pressure on the Prime Minister up a notch. The image of Tory sleaze has always been a difficult one to shake, and with his initial defence of Patterson's conduct, followed by a swift change of direction, Johnson's appearance as a breath of fresh, jovial air, in comparison to Tories of old no longer fitted quite as well. But ultimately, when the issues at hand strike a clear chord with the public, that's an entirely different story.

The pandemic has touched everyone's lives, for many in the most devastating way. Losing loved ones is bad enough, not being able to say goodbye to them because of having to stay at home is something none of us could have ever imagined dealing with. So the latest scandals, both relating to the breaking of pandemic restrictions, and both at the heart of the Prime Minister's office, are not ones where Boris' charisma alone can pull him back from the edge of the precipice.

On their own, the images of Allegra Stratton laughing during a practice press conference in December 2020 alone were bad enough. Days before, a Christmas party is alleged to have taken place at a time when regulations would not have permitted such a gathering. Denials such a party ever took place continued even after Stratton's resignation ("but if it did then the rules were followed " etc !!!!), but to many, a business meeting with wine and cheese didn't cut it.

Add to this the latest Partygate at the height of the first lockdown where Boris is now admitting to attending a party he has previously said didn't happen  when the public were being urged to be ultra-cautious, the NHS was being clapped and deaths were beginning to rise, and you wonder how much more damage the Prime Minister can take.

Over the years, Prime Ministers have met their downfall for a variety of reasons. For Anthony Eden, it was Suez and a failure of foreign policy. For Callaghan, it was industrial militancy from the unions. For Major, it was plain fatigue with a Conservative Party that had been in power for 18 years. For Boris Johnson, it may be as simple as common sense. Even the most basic, fundamental logic should tell anyone (despite the Beastie Boys old exhortation to fight for it) when mass gatherings aren't allowed, you simply don't have them. The reaction "is this for real?" from one of those invited to that gathering at the centre of Partygate, conveys the disbelief of many. One Johnson loyalist was quoted in The Telegraph earlier this week as saying that the "distance between Downing Street and the public right now… it's so damaging."

Whether the Johnson train does or does not reach the end of the line on the back of Partygate remains to be seen. The issue of who would take over as leader is not as clear as when Theresa May resigned (with Johnson having been the obvious heir-apparent for some time), and the current 80 seat majority in the Commons would not have been achieved without his leadership. One thing, however, is abundantly clear: the pressure on the Prime Minister is the most he has faced in his entire period in office, and quite frankly, he has no one but himself to blame.

Despatch Box Delusions

I'm writing this not as someone who was worked in an advisory role for this and previous governments, and is upset at not getting any invites to Westminster/Whitehall parties last year, but as someone dismayed that anybody with a University education such as the man stood by the Despatch Box yesterday could possibly think anybody (everybody?) is so stupid that they'll believe any of the absurdities he told at PMQs. 

I've been given many elaborate and inconsistent excuses by HE students over the last 20 years of working in HE, but nothing like our PM's desperate attempts to tell the world that a party didn't happen, but if it did (which it didn't), then no rules were broken as he's been assured that the guidance was followed by the people who attended the party which wasn't a party even though it didn't actually happen!

(Un) Masking the Truth

Some users of social media are claiming that a “Stanford University” or “NIH” (part of the USA's Department of Health and Human Services) study has shown that face masks are ineffective against the Covid-19 coronavirus and even harmful. There’s one problem with that claim though. It’s not really a Stanford study or a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study.

OK, there are two problems with that claim: it’s not a Stanford study, it’s not an NIH study, and, in fact, it’s not even really a study. All right, there are three problems with that claim: it’s not a Stanford study, it’s not an NIH study, it’s not really a study, and oh, it didn’t really show that face masks are ineffective against the Covid-19 coronavirus. Check that, there are four problems with that claim: it’s not a Stanford study, it’s not an NIH study, it’s not really a study, it didn’t really show that face masks are ineffective against the Covid-19 coronavirus, and by the way it didn’t really show that face masks are even harmful.

Umm, let’s start again.

Recently, there have been posts on social media, claiming that a “Stanford study”, “Stanford mask”, or a “Stanford face mask study” showed that face masks are ineffective against the Covid-19 coronavirus and may have “devastating health consequences”, and that the same “study” is from the NIH or was supported by the NIH.

But, and it's a big BUT, the sole author of the publication is someone named Baruch Vainshelboim, PhD who is not actually “from Stanford,” when it comes to properly designating from where the study came. It looks like the publication has him listed  as being affiliated with the Cardiology Division at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford University. However, that appears to be like a worn out underwear band as Stanford Medicine describe him as a one -year visiting scholar, and that's very different from being a true faculty member.

Also, the publication’s only connection with the NIH is that it can be found on PubMed. PubMed is a database and search engine maintained by the NIH’s National Library of Medicine (NLM). The database includes all articles that are published in a variety of biomedical and life sciences journals.

So rather than being published by, for, in, at, through, on, over, under, or on top of the NIH, the publication entitled “Facemasks in the Covid-19 era: A health hypothesis,” was actually published in a journal called Medical Hypotheses, one of over 5,000 titles that are currently indexed in PubMed which range significantly in type, quality, and focus. Some of the journals in PubMed don’t even publish scientific studies, instead focusing more on other types of papers such as commentaries, review papers, or, in the case of Medical Hypotheses: “theoretical papers.”

Yes, this journal actually published papers “which describe theories, ideas which have a great deal of observational support and some hypotheses where experimental support is yet fragmentary.” Can you imagine being asked or told to eat something with a caveat like “support that the thing is edible and won’t hurt you is fragmentary” or telling you just before a skydive that “the quality checks for parachute have been fragmentary?”

The journal description also states that that Medical Hypotheses will “give novel, radical new ideas and speculations in medicine open-minded consideration, opening the field to radical hypotheses which would be rejected by most conventional journals.” Would you feel reassured just before an operation by the surgeon telling you that he/she is "going to try a radical hypothesis that would be rejected by most conventional medical journals?”

After all, Dictionary.com indicates that “a scientific hypothesis is made before testing is done and isn’t based on results. Instead, it is the basis for further investigation.” It also says that hypothesis refers to “a proposition assumed as a premise in an argument,” or “mere assumption or guess.”

Medical Hypotheses is the journal that has published things like “Is there an association between the use of heeled footwear and schizophrenia”, “Ejaculation as a potential treatment of nasal congestion in mature males”, and “Losing weight by defecating at night.” Before you start wearing flip-flops all the time, masturbating furiously when you’ve got a stuffy nose, and sleeping on the toilet bowl, keep in mind that such articles, commentaries, and letters in Medical Hypotheses merely advance hypotheses without necessarily providing enough scientific evidence or any for that matter. After all, how many legitimate doctors will tell you, “hmm, to help us decide what treatment to give you, let’s take a look at Medical Hypotheses?” So if you have a radical idea that would be rejected by other scientific journals and a spare $1850 to pay the journal, you may be able to publish that idea in Medical Hypotheses.

Anyway, back to Vainshelboim’s article (which is not a study) about face masks presents arguments that fly in the face of scientific evidence and does so in highly flawed manner. First, when trying to claim that face masks are not effective against the Covid-19 coronavirus, the article interestingly focuses on studies of other types of respiratory viruses instead. It fails to mention the studies from 2020 that supported the use of face masks in preventing the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV2). As has been repeated over and over again, Covid-19 is not the flu. The SARS-CoV2 is not like influenza and some of the other respiratory viruses that Vainshelboim mentions. It seems to be more transmissible through the air, hence the face mask requirements.

Secondly, the article makes a number of leaps that really are not justified. For example, it claims that “trapped air remaining between the mouth, nose and the facemask is rebreathed repeatedly in and out of the body, containing low O2 and high CO2 concentrations, causing hypoxemia and hypercapnia,” and then cites some book chapters without really explaining how exactly these book chapters might support this claim. Is this a bit like claiming that you are an amazing lover and then citing The Joy of Sex?

Keep in mind that wearing a standard face mask is not the same as wearing a fish bowl or solid concrete and a microwave oven around your head. Oxygen and carbon dioxide should be able to move through the face mask material, assuming that you didn’t just take a condom and stretch it over your nose and mouth.

Then the article says, “severe hypoxemia may also provoke cardiopulmonary and neurological complications and is considered an important clinical sign in cardiopulmonary medicine.” How exactly would a standard face mask, which again allows oxygen to pass through its material, even cause “severe” hypoxemia, which is very low levels of oxygen in the blood, in most healthy people? If your oxygen levels have ever gotten that low, there’s a good chance that you would have already felt lightheaded, short of breath, and like you are going to pass out before experiencing any more longer term problems. This makes the next statement in the article potentially misleading: “low oxygen content in the arterial blood can cause myocardial ischemia, serious arrhythmias, right or left ventricular dysfunction, dizziness, hypotension, syncope and pulmonary hypertension.” A person doesn’t just develop conditions like a heart attack (which is apparently myocardial ischemia) or pulmonary hypotension just from wearing a face mask. These are conditions that develop over time from other factors. For example, a person typically has underlying coronary artery disease before suffering a heart attack.  

I'm all for debate and the sharing of information, but it needs to be open, honest and accurate. In this instance, it's surely theoretically possible that someone convinced by the article to not wear face masks, catches and transmits the Covid-19 coronavirus to someone else as a result? The other person could end up suffering or even dying. And that’s not just a hypothesis, given how much the article is getting shared on social media and used an ammunition in a war against mask wearing, it’s a real concern.

Tin Foil Hats Don't Protect Against Alien Abduction Either

I read in yesterday's Times about a Canadian study which claims to show that face masks can almost halve the number of new Covid-19 cases, but with the caveat that it has not yet been peer-reviewed. So, being more than mildly cynical about the efficiency of wearing non-medical face coverings to mitigate against the transmission of microscopic organisms, I've been and found it....

For the study, the authors looked at the difference in case growth rate between Ontario’s 34 Public Health Units (PHUs) and between Canada’s ten provinces during the period when some had mask mandates in force and some did not. They allowed two weeks for mandates to have an impact on reported cases, and did additional primary research to show that the mandates did in fact coincide with a change in reported behaviour (i.e. more people reported wearing masks).

Add caption

Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/canada/

The first point to be made is that the mask mandates came in during the general decline of the epidemic and the period of low prevalence in July and August when there were only around 400 cases per day nationally in Canada. This makes the data highly sensitive to the testing regime and susceptible to false positives. It is noteworthy that there was a substantial increase in testing in July, showing up as a bump in the otherwise declining cases curve. At the time Ontario was recording just 100 cases or so per day. Divided between the 34 PHUs, that’s just three each per day. At a time of very low prevalence and high levels of testing such data cannot be considered reliable.

From a big picture point of view, it is of significance that once masks were mandated everywhere in Ontario (from July 8th) and Quebec (from July 18th) by the end of August cases started climbing again and have continued to do so as autumn has drawn in. Additionally, if you look at the cases curve for each province the impact of increased testing is clear but there is no sign of any impact of masks (or other intervention), just a smooth curve. Neither of these points supports the hypothesis that masks make a difference.

The main graphs the authors present do show an average difference in case growth rate between mask mandate and non-mandate PHUs and provinces for the four weeks or so in July and early August when mask mandates were not universal. In line with the authors’ hypothesis, mask mandate PHUs and provinces had a lower overall growth rate, though this was not consistently the case. It is noteworthy that the time lag from the mandate dates to the divergence in case growth of mandate and non-mandate regions is very different on PHU level and province level – two weeks versus four weeks – again counting against a claim to causative effect.

The most obvious explanation for the divergence between the two categories (mandate and non-mandate) is that the different PHUs or provinces are on different trajectories and so when they move from one category to the other (non-mandate to mandate) this has a corresponding effect on the growth rates. There is strong evidence this is the case.

On the PHUs graph we see initially in the second week of July the few PHUs with mask mandates in place have a higher average growth rate than those without one – the opposite of the hypothesis. Then, as some of those without mandates impose mandates and switch categories in the following week, the mandate PHU average growth rate quickly declines while those remaining in the non-mandate category quickly begin to show a higher rate of growth. 

Finally, in the second week of August (when the study period comes to an end), most of the remaining PHUs impose mandates and switch categories, and the growth rate in the mandate PHUs spikes rapidly. The fact that this shift results in a spike rather than continued decline is indicative that any difference was an artefact of which PHUs happened to be in which category rather than the impact of masks. In other words, they brought their higher growth rate with them into the mandate category rather than seeing it curbed by their masks. In this regard it is significant that the remaining few PHUs with no mask mandate in the second week of August actually trend below those with mandates – again, the opposite of the hypothesis.

In the case of provinces, in addition to the problem mentioned above that the average difference takes four weeks to show up rather than two, the data is skewed by the fact that only two of the ten provinces adopt a mandate during the study period so the sample size is very small and, again, the effect could be merely a function of the different trajectories of the different provinces. As noted, there is no visible sign in the case curves of the mask mandates altering the trajectories, and most provinces have seen a large growth in cases during the autumn.

The paper includes an elaborate attempt to account for the impact of other government interventions, but as this is all modelling, based on a lot of estimates and guesses, it does not address the criticisms raised here.

The evidence that the general use of cloth masks by the general population is ineffective for preventing the spread of Covid-19 (and other similar viruses) is well established. This is why the World Health Organisation did not endorse them until June, and even then stated: ‘At the present time, the widespread use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence.’ . It listed 11 ‘likely disadvantages of the use of mask by healthy people in the general public’, including ‘potential increased risk of self-contamination’. It all but admitted to BBC medical correspondent Deborah Cohen on July 14th that the change of policy was due to political lobbying rather than evidence. Cohen said: 

    ‘We had been told by various sources WHO committee reviewing the evidence had not backed masks but they recommended them due to political lobbying. This point was put to WHO who did not deny.’ 

The study from Canada is the latest effort to produce evidence for something that has long been established to be false. Viruses are too small to be caught by pieces of cloth and the general public will never use masks properly or keep them clean. Airborne infection is largely a function of the viral load or concentration that has built up in a non-ventilated space, not the projection of droplets from cough and sneezes, and cloth masks are useless in preventing such a build-up of virus particles or protecting from the inhalation of them. They are also bad for health in multiple ways because they obstruct breathing clean air, are bad for social interaction, and particularly bad for social psychology. 

I've been told - repeatedly - that resistance to wearing masks (especially as they don't need to be medical grade and could in theory be fashioned out of old string vests)  indicates a susceptibility to conspiracy theories, possible David Icke related madness, selfishness or even a sign of low intelligence. However, when the evidence in favour of their use is either flimsy (no pun intended), or non-existent, they are not much more than the 2020 version of wearing tin foil hats to prevent abduction by aliens.

The "Positive" Impact of Nationwide Lockdowns..

Cherry Picked Information

Only 56 Million Cases to go until we reach H1N1 (Swine Flu) Cases from 2019!
Remind me again how long were schools shut down for?

What type of masks were popular back then?

Not having anything like as much data analysis to do as would be the case were we not in a pandemic, I've investigated the above meme which has appeared in my Facebook scroller due to posting by a Friend and getting liked/commented by enough other people to make it the first thing I saw.

The first thing that occurred to me was "is this data accurate"? I am not sure which data sources, location, or how recent it is, but as the poster has an intertest in US politics, it's probably about the US even though there are no citations to back up the statement.

However, it is consistent with the US CDC’s data. Over a period of one year (from April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010), the CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases of H1N1 in the United States [1]. Using the same source, the current cases of Covid-19 in the US are 4,920,369 (about 4.9 million) [2]. So as of today, we need roughly 55.9 million more Covid-19 cases (almost 56 million) to catch up on the 2009 H1N1 cases. So, yes, the data in the meme seems accurate.

Now, what about the argument? Although the conclusion is implied, the argument appears to be:

Premise 1: There were more 2009 H1N1 cases than the current pandemic

Premise 2: But we wear masks and close schools for this pandemic, but not for the 2009 pandemic.

Conclusion: we (or the US if my initial assumption is correct) are overreacting and don’t need to wear masks and close schools for this pandemic.

So on first reading, and without any sort or critical thought, it seems to make a sensible point, but a closer look shows it to be spurious. The argument rests on the hidden assumption that the case numbers are the primary determining factor for deciding if masks should be worn and schools should be closed.

But that doesn't make much sense as the average adult probably gets the common cold a few times a year, and given the US population, the cases of such a mild illness would be several hundred million a year. Clearly, other factors must be considered when deciding how to mitigate disease, whether that mitigation is with masks, closing schools, social distancing, or whatever else.

There are a number of important metrics in epidemiology such as incident rates, morbidity rates, mortality rates, hospitalisation rates, and many others, so only focusing on the cases is ridiculous, especially when these two diseases, H1N1 and Covid-19 are very different.

Going over each metric would be take way too long when there's cricket on the television, but we can clearly see that these two diseases are different by looking at the deaths in conjunction with the cases. The US coronavirus deaths to date attributed to COVID-19 is about 160,220 since January 2020, with an estimated 4.9 million cases.

However, H1N1 had substantially fewer (12,469 deaths from April 2009 to April 2010), from a whopping 60.8 million cases. But there is something else to think about. The death data for H1N1 is for one year, whereas the COVID-19 numbers are for only 8 months—and it may not slow down for several more months. Moreover, the H1N1 pandemic had relatively few precautions to attenuate its spread. Few people wore masks, there was little social distancing, etc.

So what does this mean? This means that over a period of 8 months, with social distancing, Covid-19 has more than 12 times the deaths (with social distancing and masks) from less than 1/12 the number of cases H1N1 had over one year. Though the 2009 pandemic was concerning, it was clearly nowhere near as deadly as this current pandemic. Therefore, at least concerning how society should react to the two diseases, it doesn’t make sense to compare these two diseases as equal.

So therefore this meme, which probably took seconds to compose, and maybe a couple of hours to pull apart with cited sources, makes a fallacious argument by using cherry-picked data from two very different diseases, and hyper focuses on case numbers as the sole metric for these decisions.

Who would have that sort thing would be all over T'Internet eh? :)

1. CDC website. 2009 H1N1 Pandemic (H1N1pdm09 virus). Last reviewed: June 11, 2019. Accessed Aug 12, 2020.

2. CDC website. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID19). Cases, Data, and Surveillance. Last updated. Aug. 8, 2020, 07:00 PM. Accessed Aug 12, 2020.

Cummings and Goings On

Reproduced in its entirety (almost) from https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1265449109449777160.html

Written by: @RussInCheshire

1. Dominic Cummings, one of the few men to have ever been found in contempt of Parliament, moved onto contempt for everything
2. When the story broke, and he was accused of doing things that look bad, he said he didn't care how things looked 
3. Then ministers said press outrage meant nothing, only the opinion of the people mattered
4. Then polls showed 52% of people wanted Cummings to resign
5. So Cummings decided to show the public some respect, by turning up 30 minutes late to make his explanation 
6. He began by saying he wasn't speaking for the govt, which must be why he was in the Rose Garden of 10 Downing Street
7. Then the self-styled "enemy of the Islington media elite" said his wife, who works in the media, had been ill in their house in Islington
8. But she was only a bit ill, so he popped home, got himself nice and infected, then went back to Downing Street for meetings with lots of vitally important people in the middle of a national crisis
9. But then he got ill too, so then it was suddenly important 
10. Sadly he couldn't get childcare in London, even though 3 immediate relatives live within 3 miles of his London home
11. So because he was carrying a virus that can cross a 2 metre distance and kill, he immediately locked himself in a car with his wife and child for 5 hours 
12. He then drove 264 miles without stopping in a Land Rover that gets maybe 25 MPG
13. Then the scourge of the metropolitan elites made himself extra-relatable by describing his family's sprawling country estate, multiple houses and idyllic woodlands 
14. He explained that he'd warned about a coronavirus years ago in his blog
15. Then it was revealed he actually secretly amended old blogs after he'd returned from Durham
16. And anyway, if he'd warned years ago, why was he so massively unprepared and slow to react
17. Then he said he was too ill to move for a week
18. But in the middle of that week, presumably with "wonky eyes", he drove his child to hospital
19. Then he said that to test his "wonky eyes" he put his wife and child in a car and drove 30 miles on public roads 
20. Then it was revealed his wife drives, so there was no reason for the "eye test", cos she could have driven them back to London
21. Then it was revealed the "eye test" trip to a local tourist spot took place on his wife's birthday
22. Then cameras filmed as he threw a cup onto the table, smirked and left
23. And then it emerged his wife had written an article during the time in Dunham, describing their experience of being in lockdown in London, which you'd definitely do if you weren't hiding anything
24. A govt scientific advisor said "more people will die" as a result of what Cummings had done.
25. Boris Johnson said he "wouldn't mark Cummings " down for what he'd done. 
26. The Attorney General said it was ok to break the law if you were acting on instinct
27. The Health Minister said it was OK to endanger public health if you meant well 
28. Johnson said Cummings' "story rings true" because his own eyesight was fine before coronavirus, but now he needs glasses
29. But in an interview with The Telegraph 5 years ago, Johnson said he needed glasses cos he was "blind as a bat" 
30. Michael Gove went on TV and said it was "wise" to drive 30 miles on public roads with your family in the car to test your eyesight
31. The DVLA tweeted that you should never, ever do this 
32. Then ministers started claiming Cummings had to go to Durham because he feared crowds attacking his home. The streets were empty because we were observing the lockdown.
33. And then a minister finally resigned 
34. Steve Baker, Richard Littlejohn, Isabel Oakeshott, Tim Montgomerie, Jan Moir, Ian Dale, Julia Hartley Brewer, 30 Tory MPs, half a dozen bishops and the actual Daily Mail said Cummings should go
35. The govt suggested we can ignore them, because they're all left-wingers 
36. Then a vicar asked Matt Hancock if other people who had been fined for doing exactly what Cummings did would get their fine dropped. Matt Hancock said he'd suggest it to the govt
37. The govt said no within an hour. Cummings' statement had lasted longer than that 
38. And if the guidelines were so clear, why were people being stopped and fined for driving to find childcare in the first place?
39. Then a new poll found people who wanted Cummings sacked had risen from 52% to 57%
40. Cummings is considered the smartest man in the govt 
41. And in the middle of all this, in case we take our eye off it: we reached 60,000 deaths. One of the highest per capita death rates worldwide.
42. We still face Brexit under this lot.
43. It's 4 years until an election
44. And it's still only Wednesday

"Yeah but yeah but yeah but Stephen Kinnock"
1 Kinnock wasn't infected, so wasn't self isolating
2 Kinnock was delivering food to elderly parents: permitted
3 Labour didn't make the policy breached
4 Kinnock isn't an advisor to Starmer
5 Kinnock didn't attempt to hide it
6 Kinnock didn't break regulations on staying overnight
7 Kinnock's friends didn't say it was OK for *him* to break the law, just not everyone else
8 When Kinnock did it, two senior govt advisors in the UK hadn't already had to resign for the same offence
9 Kinnock's wife didn't write an article in The Spectator describing his experience of lockdown in London, which mislead the public
10 Kinnock wasn't required to inform the Number 10 of his whereabouts, meaning there's a bigger cover-up.

So. What happens next? Johnson will hope this blows over, and in a couple of weeks we'll all forget. But how likely is it people will forget their mum died alone?
Or that they couldn't meet their grandkids for months?
Or their business failed cos nobody could leave home?
They say everyone remembered where they were when Kennedy was shot, or 9/11 happened.
Well this is similar, but it didn't happen miles away - it happened in your home.
We will all remember Covid19, even if we lost nobody.
And Cummings is a key event.
It won't be forgotten.
The instinct for Johnson will be: make something big happen that drags attention away.
But what big announcement could there be?
His schools thing yesterday was totally ignored.
Any "we're opening" announcement will be met by distrust and fear. That route out is closed ..

Raging Against the Machine is Rational, not Heartless

There was an article in yesterday's Times where one of the columnists tried to make a case that supporting governmental panic and the imposition of arbitrary authority by enforcing the current lockdown is a rational position.

Melanie Phillips lauds the Prime Minister's refusal to offer any serious prospect that the deprivation of personal liberty and economic strangulation may be nearing the end. She goes as far as to state that "Urged days ago to announce a speedy exit from lockdown, he has refused to be pushed. He'll set out his plan next week amid signs that restrictions will be lifted only slowly. This has taken courage."

I don't know anything about Ms Phillips's background or expertise, but in my opinion, this is ridiculous: we've not been supplied with any evidence to support claims that the lockdown policy has succeed. Even the government's official figures, now exaggerated by imprecise recording methods and the inclusion of categories not thought necessary a week or so ago, align more to my predictions from early March than those of the Imperial College model.

The much-vaunted new intensive care hospitals haven't been needed - 100 patients treated in total at the London Nightingale when there are 4000 beds! - and nor in my opinion will they be. Any assertions that this is because of the lockdown doesn't have any obvious basis. Just because B follows A doesn't mean that B caused A. It doesn't take "courage" for a largely pointless policy to have its outcome smoothly misrepresented as a success, courage would be the admission that the draconian restrictions on our civil liberties are an error.

The case against the PM's panic policy is not some arbitrary transient choice between compassion and money/freedom, or the worry that governments given or allowed the powers ours now has have always been reluctant to part with them. Melanie Phillips doesn't appear to care: "Yet among people for whom damage to the economy outweighs all other considerations, there's no acknowledgment of Johnson's complex balancing act. For such people, lockdown must end immediately. Some of them claim, moreover, that there never was any need for it in the first place. The virus, they say (with scant regard for either humanity or settled facts) poses no serious threat because it only kills relatively few old people or those who would have died this year anyway." and adds that "A dismaying number of these "economy-firsters" have seized on certain statistical studies to claim that the virus death rate is lower than had been forecast and therefore Covid-19 is not so dangerous after all."

Well I'm most definitely not an "economy-firster", and would like to think that I'm compassionate, sensitive and understanding (although my wife may disagree!), but you don't need statistical studies to know that the forecasts on which the Panic Policy was based were flawed: the empty Nightingale Hospitals show that.

The question is simply whether the government’s actions have caused the death rate to fall to "manageable levels", or whether they haven't, despite Ms Phillips assertion that "it's only because of the lockdown that it's under control". At the moment, without any evidence whatsoever to back that claim up, the jury is still very much out on that one.

Ms Phillips adds: "But all these statistical calculations are suspect because we still don't know how many have been  infected, nor how many have died." Well, it is true that we won't really know how many have died until the outbreak is over, but even then it will be almost impossible as there is no rigour to the way deaths are attributed to Covid-19: They appear to be have been simultaneously over-estimated (in general) and under-estimated (in care homes).

I've got no doubt that there are heartless individuals "with scant regard for either humanity or settled facts", it is very, very wrong to suggest that they are the only people who oppose the PM's policy.
Some of us are not materialist. We simply analysed the data we had available and came to a very different conclusion, and we've yet to be proven wrong.

Nobody I know, and nobody any of them knows, has had, let alone died from Covid-19, which strongly suggests that the Lockdown Panic Measures are an unnecessary danger to the long-term life and health of the British public. We are going to end up living in a country which will not be able to sustain the health and welfare services we currently take for granted and which won't be able to afford the living standards which sustain health.

And all in response to a problem which even the government's chief advisor knew was never the size he'd claimed it to be, otherwise he'd have kept to his own social distancing values wouldn't he?

Terminal or Terminology Error?

I was triangulating some background research as part of a series of "What-If" planning scenarios for College Based Higher Education from September onwards (student numbers, financial impact on partner HEIs, etc) and when looking at the government's own High Consequence Infectious Disease page was surprised to discover that Covid-19 isn't one of them.

Had I been reading the website two days ago, I might have thought it to be some sort of April Fools joke, but we're apparently in full stay-at-home lockdown for something that the 4 Nations Public Health HCID Group and the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) do not consider Covid-19 to meet the following criteria:
•acute infectious disease
•typically has a high case-fatality rate
•may not have effective prophylaxis or treatment •often difficult to recognise and detect rapidly
•ability to spread in the community and within healthcare settings
•requires an enhanced individual, population and system response to ensure it is managed effectively, efficiently and safely

So what's really going on, and why?

 

Orwell's 1984: From Novel to Manifesto

I wasn't aware that Boris was going to make an announcement of any kind last night due to binge watching Bulletproof2 all day, so it was just a coincidence that I started watching ordinary TV just as "ordinary" life disappeared: The Prime Minister was addressing what until 8:30pm had been a free country and telling its population that we now live in a police state.

I, all my family and all my friends, have been placed under house arrest without even being accused of a crime - we're guilty of ??? Well what exactly ???? I went out yesterday and didn't see one single person stood closer than five feet to anybody else: in my locality social distancing was more than just observed, it was respected.

Boris said it was "for own my good". Really? Confined to the house, deprived of social contact, restricted diet, no exercise except walking once a day or going for a bike ride (that'd be nice - I live at the top of a very steep hill: Chris Hoy would have issues!), unable to replace anything unless it's on his list of essentials?

My analysis of currently available (publicly anyway) data suggests that Covid-19 might end up being responsible for around 2500 UK deaths, not the 250,000 or so which could possibly justify "solutions" which as Donald Trump has said may be worse than the problem.

I don't think it should be beyond the intellect of our government to realise that Northern Italy has some of the worst air pollution in Europe (at least until the last two weeks according to European Air Quality Index), so is it not likely that after decades of breathing it, the local elderly develop respiratory problems?

Nearly all Covid-19-related fatalities have "underlying health issues" (or so we're told), and thousands die globally infected with some type of coronavirus such as influenza, so we the people of the UK have now had our civil liberties removed in what may be just an attempt to prevent one particular coronavirus, (Covid-19), from replacing others as the bedfellow of those "underlying health issues"?

I can't find any worst-case predictions for Covid-19 causing a massive increase over and above the current coronavirus situation, and we haven't been told how many ‘corona-deaths’ were of people infected with Covid-19 but didn’t necessarily die of it, just what appears to be an assumption that without Covid-19 they'd still be alive.

When we have so many unknowns, and so little reliable data, how can last night's announcement be justified? What will be the results of shutting down the economy? It's very likely that unemployment will rise dramatically, and crime will rise along with it. Mental Health issues will increase, families with dysfunctional or dangerous relationships will begin to collapse, and the elderly all this is supposed to be protecting get a worse quality of life due to isolation, so may end up with reduced life expectancy anyway.

An economic depression will definitely result in poverty, pain and death which may vastly outweigh the current pandemic crisis, and that may just re-set and re-start when our brave new world has its draconian restrictions lifted.

And what if they're not?
What if our government decides that going back to how we were just a few days ago isn't safe for other reasons? Civil unrest due to the inevitable shortages of whatever goods, services and products we've come to expect or rely on? Climate change? Maybe they'll just get to like the privilege, power and authority?

I'm sat here blogging instead of doing anything more productive, or simply playing golf in the sunshine, because isolation is "for my own good", and that's precisely what many of the vulnerable students I used to teach told me was something their abusive parents said to them as a justification for their cruelty or neglect.

None of this feels as if it's for my benefit, and that's without me thinking that the pandemic effects haven't been modelled on statistically robust data (unless of course Boris is privvy to information we've not been given), so on balance I'm already leading towards contracting Covid-19 and seeing what happens as a preference to eventually standing in front of an army tank because I want to see my daughter and seeing if that really is safer.

The Way I See It

The media (and the UK government earlier today) is calling Covid-19 a once-in-a-century pandemic, but it might also be a once-in-a-century series of interconnected chaotic global responses to a problem that hasn't been adequately defined.

Many countries have introduced draconian measures in an attempt to counteract the disease, but as far as I can tell, there just isn't enough reliable evidence as to the numbers infected, or continuing to become infected, for governments and modellers to make such monumental decisions or to monitor their impact.

If the pandemic dissipates, whether that's on its own or as a result of social distancing and lock-downs, the impact of it may allow the world to return to something like "normal", whatever that will mean for the next decade or so. However, if the pandemic continues to spread around the world, how will those making the decisions be able to ascertain whether they've made a positive or negative impact when the consequences of long-term lockdowns are unknown and vaccines or affordable treatments take years to develop and test properly.

The data collected so far (or at least the information I've been able to find), on the number of people infected and how the epidemic is evolving don't appear to be particularly reliable statistically speaking as it's probably safe to assume that some deaths and the vast majority of Covid-19 infections are being missed due to the limits on testing. Therefore, it's impossible to state with any degree of confidence if we are failing to capture instances of coronavirus by a factor of three or 300 as few countries, if any, can test a large number of people and so don't know how prevalent the virus is in a random sample of the general population.

This creates a tremendous amount of uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19 as the reported fatality rates (according to the World Health Organisation it's 3.4%) don't just create fear and panic, they're completely meaningless. As far as I can tell, those who have been tested for Covid-19 are disproportionately patients of some description with severe symptoms and bad outcomes, and since few health systems have unlimited testing capacity, this sample selection bias will only get worse.

There has been only one instance of testing an entire, closed population, that of the passengers and crew of the Diamond Princess cruise ship where the case fatality rate was 1.0%, but it needs to be noted that this was a predominantly elderly demographic for whom  the Covid-19 death rate is thought to be higher than the general population.

Taking the Diamond Princess mortality rate and applying it across the age structure of the UK, our death rate of people from (or possibly with) coronavirus would be 0.125%. However, we need to caveat that as this calculation uses what I consider to be extremely thin base data (7 deaths from 712 out of almost 4000 on board) the true death rate could be one fifth of that (0.025%), or five times higher (0.625%).

We also need to consider the possibility that some of those infected may die later, and that cruise ship tourists may not be truly representative of the rest of the developed world (i.e. their lifestyle, on or off ship, may mean they have different frequencies of chronic diseases) so if we say double those base estimates we get a varying case fatality ratio somewhere between 0.05% and 1.25% across a country like ours.

That difference indicates the risk of what is being done as a population-wide fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza, which if it is the true proportion, the world's global lock-down and its likely social and financial consequences is not at all rational.

Now of course the Covid-19 case fatality rate isn't likely to be that low, and there are many common-cold-type viruses that have case fatality rates up to 10% when they infect the elderly, particularly if they're residents of nursing homes, but these “mild” coronaviruses may be implicated in several thousands of worldwide deaths every year without the vast majority being tested for their existence.

We've had successful influenza surveillance systems for decades, and typically something like 20% of laboratory tests confirm its presence in the samples sent for testing, while the estimated number of annual influenza-like deaths in the UK is between 4,500 and 11,000, therefore a positive test for coronavirus should not mean necessarily that this virus is always primarily responsible for a patient’s demise.

If we take a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis of say 0.3% as the case fatality rate of individuals with Covid-19, and assume that 15% of the UK gets infected (7,000,000 people), that translates to about 30,000 deaths, but without anybody knowing there was a new virus this would just get buried in the annual noise of deaths due to an influenza-like illness.

According to the Office for National Statistics, this year's death rate remains below its five-year average, and a long way under the levels of 2017-18, but even if the 2,100 were to be added to that total we might casually just note that this season's flu seems to be a bit worse than average, and the media coverage would be proportionate to that which accompanies the marriage of two minor celebrities.

It's obvious from the empty shelves in our local supermarkets that many people are worried that the 104 deaths from (or with as it should probably be more accurately labelled) Covid-19 in the UK as of right now is going to increase exponentially to 520, 2600, 13,000, 65,000 ... and that the pattern will be similar all over the planet, but is that realistic? At what point will the curve flatten as our Chief Medical Officer keeps talking about every time he's on TV?

Statistically speaking, we can't answer those questions without knowing the current prevalence of the infection in a random sample of a population, then  repeating the exercise at pre-defined time intervals to estimate the incidence of new infections, but unfortunately that's information we don’t have.

So in the absence of data, we've got prepare-for-the-worst reasoning which has led to lock-downs and social distancing without knowing if these measures have any sort of positive impact. Closing the nation's colleges may reduce transmission rates, but it may backfire if students socialise anyway, and the school closures might mean children spend more time with susceptible grandparents, or disrupt their parents ability to work.

And looking further forward, with the caveat that I know next to nothing about virology, might school closures also have the potential to reduce the nation's chances of developing long-term herd immunity in an age group that is apparently free of serious disease?
"Flattening the curve" to avoid overwhelming the NHS as our country is apparently attempting to do is admittedly conceptually sound because it theoretically means that other common diseases and conditions can be adequately treated. However, if the epidemic does overwhelm the health system and these extreme measures have only modest effectiveness, flattening the curve could make things worse by crippling the NHS for longer instead of a short, admittedly acute, period of time.

The bottom line is that we simply don't know how long lock-downs and social distancing can be maintained without irreversibly crippling our economy, and  destroying the fabric of society for generations, possibly even to the extent of civil unrest and long-term mental health issues.

The very minimum we need right now is unbiased prevalence and incidence data, and that means not prioritising testing for those suspected of infection, but a true random population sample so that governments can make evidence-based decisions, not ones based entirely on theories and models.

The most pessimistic scenario I've had on my TV this week, and one that my maths mean I really don't subscribe to, is that Covid-19 might infect 60% of the population before we develop a herd immunity and if only 1% of infected people die, there'll be more than 40 million deaths globally. And since that would make Covid-19 as deadly as 1918's Spanish Flu (although in this case the deaths would be mainly the elderly or people with pre-existing conditions), this is the justification for lock-downs and social distancing, making them not just desirable, but imperative.

Hopefully, rather like back in 1918, life as we know it can continue, at least in something resembling civilised societies, but lock-downs of months and years have consequences we can only guess at, and the lives of billions, not just millions, will be impacted, so we really ought to have some data before continuing with these plans to jump off the cliff just in case there is a chance of actually landing somewhere safe.

Putting Panic into Context

Sanity and Sanitisers

A friend of mine has asked if I'll send him some hand sanitiser as all the shops where he lives have run out, and there is still some on the shelves in my local ASDA. At first, I didn't think he was serious as he's way too intelligent to get caught up in the Coronavirus panic, but apparently not: he genuinely wants me to post him as many bottles as I can get.

It may be that his family are pressuring him, but mine are far more grounded, as are all my friends living locally. Maybe it's a Yorkshire thing? Maybe we'd rather risk death than pay inflated prices for scented squirty soap? Or maybe as my daughter put it, Yorkshiremen would rather die than suffer the embarrassment of being thought panic shoppers?

I accept that Coronavirus (Covid-19) is a pretty virulent virus, but not in the contagious-imminent-danger-to-everybody's-health way.

As I type this there are 125,743 confirmed cases worldwide, almost 81,00 of which were or are in China, and 3,169 deaths in China plus another 1441 elsewhere in the world. So 4,610 deaths in total and half the planet is in lockdown.

Why? What has driven this hysteria? Two years ago, all the way back in 2017-18 the Office for National Statistics recorded 50,100 ‘excess winter deaths’ but it was business as usual. The explanation (for the deaths, not the lack of hysterical reaction), according to the ONS, was probably ‘the predominant strain of flu, the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine, and below average winter temperatures’. Across the pond where Donald Trump has just announced a flight ban from mainland Europe and the golf I'm watching on TV is discussing the ban on spectators from tomorrow onwards, according to the US-based Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, over 80,000 died.

In both countries most of the victims were geriatric, many with compromised immune systems, as is the case with the UK Coronavirus deaths - or as I prefer to refer to them as a statistician, deaths of people with Coronavirus (not necessarily from, due to their age, health and underlying conditions)

And seasonal flu? According to an estimate by the CDCP, it causes somewhere between 291,000 and 646,000 deaths globally a year. To put it another way, if the number of deaths from coronavirus rises a hundredfold in the next few weeks or months, it will only have reached the lower bound of the estimate for existing strains of flu. How many of us wear face masks because of winter flu? How many planes and trains are cancelled? Does the stock market slump?

There is some justification for being more wary of Covid-19 than the flu as the former is an unknown quantity which we've not evolved with and don’t yet have a vaccine. But we know more about it by the day, its death rate is under 3 per cent and it is mostly killing people with pre-existing health conditions.

And probably more importantly, if it can, or does, spread quickly and easily, why don't we all have it already? In the past week, I've been on 8 trains (all crowded) and four buses (two full), attended a conference, a rock concert and a football match (1000, 2000 and 30000 people respectively) and been to the gym where nobody has cleaned down anything, sanitised between exercises, or avoided personal contact four times. And I'm ok. As is everybody I know and know of, but if the virus is virulent then surely this wouldn't be the case?

So where is the evidence that closing large gatherings of people makes anyone safer or slows the spread of disease? Is it logical to assume that Covid-19 can be passed on easier at a football match or the now-cancelled Australian Grand Prix than in a gym?

Maybe I'm missing something about Coronavirus and the attitude of people like me will only compound the problem, but it feels like this is just the latest "end of the world" phenomenon to trouble the populations of developed countries along with other apocalyptic portents such as climate alarmism, nuclear Armageddon and financial collapse.

At the end of January, Brexit had just been completed (sort of anyway) without incident, the standoff between the US and Iran had fizzled into nothing, the Australian bush fires had largely gone out, so did the media need something else to worry us about?

Reactionary hysteria has taken hold all over the world. Saudi Arabia has suspended religious pilgrimage trips to Mecca (oh the irony that the praying won't make the most devout any safer!), the Italian Prime Minister has ordered the lockdown of the country’s northern region, Ireland has closed schools and colleges, and Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said today it was 'inappropriate that we continue as normal' and will recommend the cancellation of gatherings of more than 500 people to protect front-line services from Monday. She didn't supply any information as to why Monday and not tomorrow if the measure is so necessary, or why allowing gatherings at the weekend was appropriate, but common sense does seem to be in short supply.

As the great Homer Simpson once said "you can prove anything with facts" so why haven't the governments of the world provided some which justifies their extreme actions?

Or is that there aren't any and this hysteria is the result of a media frenzy which has caused the "leaders" of some countries to be scared of not being seen to "do something" whether or not it makes sense?