UKH

Refreshingly illuminating article from a left wing journal. The thrust is that scientific debate is being suppressed by its politicisation.

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/coronavirus/2020/10/why-scientist...

From the article:

Funding Smears: she could have trivially demolished by providing a full disclosure and conflict of interest statement when attending a Champaign touting photo opportunity at the site of a libertarian think tank in the USA - travel to which appeared to require individual clearance from the state department or DoE etc at the time (I may be wrong on this point...).  Who paid for the flights?  Who paid for the champagne, accommodation and other expenses?  Who paid for the Barrington website?  Who paid for the publicity push?  Who arranged the White House visit afterwards?  Who paid for those flights?

Simply providing an honest disclosure statement on conflicts of interest and donations would leave no room for smears with the facts on the table.

Gupta has not done this.  So now she gets to play the victim card, but she is the author of her own smears through her own cowboy approach unrecognisable within functioning science.

Pseudiscience smears: She could always show us some actual science rather than media interviews, PR events and so on.

Totally agree. 
 

The problem of what to do about the problem is a political one. There should be debate about that.

The scientific problem isn’t really debatable, and there are scientist who have made up their minds on the best course of action and want to be part of the debate and use their scientific credentials to lend weight to their political argument. 
 

This isn’t new or unusual. 

When Gupta explains how to get round the following issues with the GBD declaration I'll listen to her:

1. How do we keep it out hospitals?

2. How do we keep it out of care homes?

3. How do we protect the vunerable in general considering millions of these people live in multigenerational households?

She is a total charlatan and deserves all the criticism she gets (I don't condone abuse and death threat though).

The anti-lockdowners always focus on the damage of Lockdowns (which those for lockdown never deny) and never what the Lockdown is done to prevent - the collapse of a health care system, something unheard of in modern western society.

Do they ever consider the impact of this happening on the economy and society?.....I've yet to hear it if so.

Political? You have to ask yourself why are countries across Europe of all political persuasions from Putins Russia to the liberal western democracies all broadly using the same playbook for dealing with this.....because they know if the health care system collapses in their countries the impact will be so big it would make a lockdown seem like a picnic.

You also have to ask why all the political systems in the West - with the exception of some very few notable examples - have managed to completely mess it up so far. The science is the same for all countries all over the world. 

Well that is pretty easy to address....(1) they were better prepared because of experience with SARS ( 2) lockdowns rigourisly enforced like in say NZ or Melbourne ( 3) autocratic countries like China where people do as told.

Not difficult.

For example ( I have brother in Vietnam) he just said citizens do exactly as they are told and so on.So if there is a lockdown everybody just follows the rules 100%.

Says the man who buys into every chance to politicise science available!

Quite. That’s not science is it? 

The trouble is that there is a political movement that is trying to undermine the current government strategy. We've seen the bots on here. It may well be that some scientists do have doubts over the accuracy of the currently accepted wisdom but unfortunately they seem to align with these disinformation campaigns and so people draw the obvious conclusion.

The other problem I have with the anti lockdown argument is that while they go to great lengths, often dishonestly, to discredit the current strategy they never offer an alternative past "we have to learn to live with it". I suspect that the reason for not offering an alternative is that any science based modelling of alternative strategies would show that a lot more people would die. In other words they are not being honest with us.

A 100% compliance with rules would *definitely* help with the modelling.

I'm struggling to see your point, we know how to suppress the virus...how hard a country tries to achieve this is I suppose is a political choice...but all countries are tightening restrictions when needed, even Sweden. 

The anti lockdown movement has no basis in science and appears to be politically driven....it offers no solution that doesn't put health care systems at severe risk. 

Or they are following the science.....

It would. But how you get people to follow the guidelines is a political decision. Every country has a different solution. None of them are ‘following the science’ whatever that means. 

During the war we evacuated millions of children from the cities. That was a political decision. There’s no reason we couldn’t isolate vulnerable people. We have the financial means. I don’t think we have the social willpower. 

How do you isolate vunerable people who require medical care? Who looks after their kids? That's after you ship them all off to enforced isolation centres (which would need staffing) It just doesn't work!

Vulnerable people is about 1/3 of the population if you include all those with diabetes, heart condition, obesity and other stuff. So how would you go about it then?Whats the plan. I am intrigued.

You do know that a few weeks later alot of them went back home as they missed their family and parents.......it is not reaaly a good comparision

Many of whom are also key workers, of course.

Thats very sad, but not a scientific problem.

Isolate them. Loads of them are furloughed or retired anyway. Separate them from the children for a start. 
 

But don’t pretend that’s a scientific problem. That’s entirely a socio-economic issue. 

How will you isolate a third of the population? Who will look after them/police them from escaping from the detention centres? 

Separate them from the children....wtf.....you mean cart them off from their parents to some camp or similar?

Of course it's a partly scientific problem.

Many vulnerable people need physical interactions for support in their day-to-day living and in their medical needs.

The people they meed may have covid.  More scientific work is required to develop tests with a high enough sensitivity and a short enough turn around time that the people with whom they have close physical contact can be accurately screened.  PPE is not a complete solution and good screening is required too.

Although I think there are bigger problems with this suggestion than the scientific side of it...

Whatever. Do you still not see my point? That is a political decision. It’s scientifically possible to do and works. 
 

The Chinese held their people at gun point. 
The Swedish let the grim reaper take the old people. 

Not if we have dedicated covid secure hospitals and care regions with isolated staff. 

Right, now as well as a third of the population in enforced isolation we now have a huge amount of staff in isolation to care/police them, you're ending up with nearly as many isolating as not! Sounds like you're advocating a pretty harsh lockdown....

But how do you make them “covid secure” without sufficiently accurate and rapid testing to clear every single person coming in?

If it was that simple we wouldn’t be seeing lots of care home outbreaks...

I’m not advocating anything. I’m suggesting that if you want to protect your vulnerable like you seem to want to then you’re missing the point. 

You’re missing the point. 

I have literally no idea what you're point is so you are certainly correct. 

My point is that it is impossible in both scientific and social terms to isolate the vunerable in the UK. I am happy to be proved wrong on this though and would love to see a clear plan or examples from other countries how this can be achieved.

You are saying the only problems with an effective isolation strategy are financial and political.

I am saying that the technology this would require in terms of screening does not exist, and that more science is therefore required to implement it.

I don't think I am missing the point.  Which is that you're claiming something to be easy without presenting any sign that you recognise even the most obvious of flaws in it.

I think that if there were no scientific barriers to implementing this scheme, the state of science and technology around the pandemic would be sufficiently advanced that we could go for an effective elimination strategy.  If it could be eliminated from the significant fraction of the population who are vulnerable, without compromising society, it could be eliminate from all in much the same way.

Quite.

Perhaps not quite what you suggest but it does seem to me that more measures could be implemented but our governments are reluctant to implement them.

Covid was stamped out in China by putting Wuhan into quarantine and the population into a very harsh lockdown. Even afterwards this who had to self isolate were tagged to make certain they really did comply with the rules. Draconian yes but it was certainly effective and in hindsight I wonder how many of us would have preferred that kind of restriction on personal freedom if it meant that today we were pretty much getting on with life as normal?

Are our governments now facing a backlash because their strategies have been too accommodating to public sentiment?

I doubt the personnel exist to replace all the vulnerable that are also key workers, or important parts of the economy.

No. I’m saying the isolation is a political decision not a scientific one. 
 

No one is following the science. There is no science that says ill people must be treated. The science says we are able to treat them to a point. 
 

I’d go as far as to say the science actually says we shouldn’t retreat them. Epidemics are a natural way of thinning the herd in the absence of predators. 
 

All the time we spend time nursing the weak who are unlikely to make recoveries we tie up resources. 
 

That's the science. 
 

The political side deals with the moral side of things. 
 

We are making moral and political decisions in order to try and beat nature we are not ‘following’ the science we are doing the exact opposite. And the longer we do it, the bigger the crash will be when the next pandemic comes along, because we will have even more vulnerable people to try and cure and protect. 
 

So while we are arguing about who is ‘following the science’ and who isn’t, I’d suggest no one is. It’s all just a political game of who is taking the most moral high ground. 

I didn't get that far as the science and technology isn't there to achieve this idea, let alone problems like who is going to do the jobs of all the people carted off to Camp Vulnerable...

And I have said quite clearly you are wrong because the science does not exist to achieve effective isolation.

So, part of the problem is scientific.  The Barrington lunatics suggest isolation as the best way forwards.  They do not present the science required to achieve this.  The science is not there.  If the people and the politicians unanimously agreed tomorrow to activate an isolation strategy, it would fail.  Because science.  Not politics.  

If you choose to see it that way, that's your business.

I believe that lockdowns are less economically harmful and less socially harmful if used before cases get to the point where we are only one or two pieces of bad luck away from healthcare overload.  This is not influenced by a political leaning one way or the other but be me doing my best to understand everything that is going all, all the different interacting parts of the problem and the causes and effects at work.   Beyond that I firmly believe being more pro-active and more responsive with control measures could be more effective at avoiding more "lockdown" like measures.

The best analogy I can think of is making the choice between removing a cancer when it's first discovered or deciding to wait until it's metastasised because that way the inconvenience and economic costs of going in for surgery are delayed by a couple of years.

The key political question to me is "do we have the strength of character to explain clearly to people in advance that we should all take our lumps early as it is in every measurable and conceivable way better, or should we wait until the body counts and news coverage scare them into asking us to do it?".  Get this wrong once and it could be incompetence, get it wrong twice and its hard to see it as anything but cowardice or the utmost stupidity.  Our second lockdown was teetering on the brink of getting it wrong a second time.

Assuming you want effective isolation. 

Are you saying you want a policy of ineffective isolation?

To have such a density of factual errors, logical fallacies, and syllogism in one post is quite an achievement.

I'm afraid Gupta's sob story didn't really tug on my heartstrings so much.

She's been invited onto national TV and radio to justify to skeptics of the GBD that she isn't a complete prat, and when given the opportunity to get her message across, she's just fallen on her arse, because she's talking bollocks. There's a way out of this for Gupta: be right! Say something that clearly aligns with the objective reality we share. Give us a good graph, a compelling explanation, and conclude something we can make sense of. That's how you earn credibility. 

If she wants to be respected as a credible voice we should be taking notice of, here's a little tip for her:

When someone asks you a question on the telly, give them an answer. To the question. The one they asked. Address the concerns. Explain your case. Make it convincing. Don't sound like an f*cking idiot.

If you align yourself with the opinions of Nigel Farage, you've got work to do. Alarm bells are ringing real f*cking loud, so step up. Yes, it's more difficult to make a case to an informed audience that aligns with Farage than one that aligns with Starmer (or even Johnson!), so make sure you're up to the job. Don't fail because what you're saying is incorrect, and then blame it on political prejudice. Have some integrity and moral courage: look into the mirror and say "people think I'm crap, because what I did was crap. I'm not up to this, I'll find the place where I can succeed and make a positive difference". Learn from it, and move on.

I don't believe this really is a political problem at all, I don't think people's objectives are really any different. The problem is that there is a lack of information to take a thorough, truly convincing scientific approach, so in the vacuum of evidence, people are reaching for politics as a substitute way of reasoning, when it's totally irrelevant, because we all share the same goal.

To go right down to the underlying philosophical basis, I think there is a utilitarian consensus on the response to the pandemic: we all (except people like Nigel Farage, but lets leave them out) want to reduce the amount of suffering.

I think it's completely accepted across the political spectrum that deaths is not a good measure of suffering. There isn't really anyone proposing a religious "sanctity of life" type position, that saving lives of people who are nearly dead anyway is more important than ruining the lives of others. I haven't heard that feature seriously in the debate

The "pro-lockdown" position is that the economic and social pain paid up front in a lock down will save worse economic and social pain in total, because without lockdown policies the healthcare system will crumble, people will have to care for dying family without state support, followed by economic armageddon. So the "pro-lockdown" position gives a net result which is pretty bad, and has to be paid right now, but better than the alternative (which hasn't even been set out in a way that makes it possible to evaluate, for reasons to follow).

The "anti-lockdown" position is that we can avoid paying the economic and social pain now, and that it'll all be alright somehow. We'll "protect the vulnerable" - but no one knows how. The healthcare system won't be overwhelmed - but no one knows how. Or it will be but it won't matter - but no one knows how. The anti-lockdown position is like a religious belief "somehow, a benevolent force exists that will make the reality we live in, not the reality we live in". 

Because the "anti-lockdown" is faith-based, it needs to be bolstered with dishonesty, because faith doesn't cut it in the modern world. So the dishonesty includes:

 - Use bad science to say that the pandemic isn't real/ the second wave isn't happening/ we're all immune, etc. This is not going so well.

 - Misrepresent the opposition: pretend that the "pro-lockdown" position has failed to understand the misery caused by the economic and social costs of lockdown. Which it hasn't, it has considered what we know and concluded that there will be more misery from social and economic costs by delaying the inevitable.

Both positions value exactly the same things. Both sides can see that schools are pretty much the number 1 priority: the kids need to be there in order to have a decent start to their lives (and even to be fed and sheltered from abuse in the worst cases); and then the parents can work. To be blunt, no one on either side cares about the 85 year olds who'll die from the virus. They're 85 for god's sake. But the "pro-lockdown" position has bothered to consider the practicalities: if someone's 85 and gets the virus, what do we do? They need care in their last days, and they need to be buried. Modern families are not equipped to do this without support from the state. The NHS is the system for this (not the actual burial, but that system has finite capacity too). It is incredibly important that its capacity is not exceeded. The "pro-lockdown" position understands this, whereas "anti-lockdown" just hasn't managed to look it square in the face. What does a family do when two parents are dying of covid and the ambulance does not come? Who deals with it? What happens? What is the impact?

Both positions seek exactly the same outcome: to reduce overall suffering, including grieving those lost to the virus, and job losses and poverty, and social isolation. It all counts, to both sides. The "pro-lockdown" position is prepared to pay upfront to lessen the total impact. The "anti-lockdown" position wants to try to wing it based on faith and dishonesty and a failure to face the facts. One argument is strong, and one is weak.

(There is also the issue of bad faith actors, e.g. Nigel Farage, but that's really a side-show).

No. Why would I want that? I didn’t say that I didn’t. I said assuming you did. 

The only wild animals who modify their behaviour to look after their elderly are whales and dolphins. Presumably there’s some evolutionary advantage for them to do that.

That’s from scientific evidence as far as I can see. 
 

Is that a logical fallacy, factual error of syllogism?

Have you swallowed a dictionary? 
 

Just because science doesn’t provide you with morals doesn’t mean you can’t use morals, it just means that when you are using morals - don’t pretend they’re scientific reasons. 

So you are proposing to completely isolate 1/3 of the population which is vulnerable. 

I appreciate that this is a political decision not a scientist one. 

You mentioned children. What about the children who would be classed as vulnerable because of their medical conditions. Those having cancer treatment or those with diabetes for example.

I reckon you only view the elderly as vulnerable and have not really widened your thinking. 

Many children are looked after by vulnerable people. Including a few teachers.

I’m not proposing anything. I know how many are vulnerable and who looks after who. 
 

I am, and continuing to point out. That no one is using a science lead approach. Everyone is using the science to fit their moral agenda.  
 

We are just kicking the can down the road until the next virus, which will wreak even more havoc. 

It would only become a political decision once the idea was established as being practical. At the moment we have the "political choice" of damaging, painful measures (restrictions); or something that has not been thought through and cannot be implemented. 

Does that sound like a genuine political choice to you? Or more like the fact that some people just can't face up to reality? It's completely normal: I don't like my life, so Brexit/no lockdown/the afterlife will make it better. No it won't. Grow up.

That’s not true though. 

It can’t be implemented.  The science isn’t there to implement isolation.  To which you have countered:

So you are either arguing for something where science is a problem and needs to be part of the decision making and the solution, or you are arguing we should do ineffective isolation.  Which is then not a solution.

I am very pragmatic so I ask what is the track record of isolating the vulnerable from Covid circulating in the rest of the community?

Which countries have done this?

In contrast Covid elimination in the whole community to protect the vulnerable and then restore more normal life has a track record.

NZ, Taiwan, Isle of Man, Guernsey. Australia is getting there.

Being pragmatic, I tend to regard a political theory/policy with a track record in not even one single country as probable nonsense.

Show me. 

No. U.K. not advocating anything. I’m pointing out we are looking at it from a limited view point based on moral. And hiding behind science. 
 

The Australians don’t have lockdown. They quarantine. There’s nothing stopping us from quarantining and isolating wide areas for example. 

I'm pragmatic. I'm interested in specifics that might offer a solution or improvement and not vague waffling diversions.

If so probably because they have locked down when necessary.

"Covid in Australia: Melbourne to exit 112-day lockdown"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-54686812

Doesn't do any good if you don't eliminate community transmission (see Melbourne lockdown above) within the area you isolate.

Again you quote no track record in any country successfully isolating the vulnerable from Covid in wider society.

Yes it is a logical fallacy, that one is called whatabourery. You know you’ve reached peak absurdity when your only argument left is that most other mammals don’t care for their elderly so why should we care..

Nobody said that there is a scientific justification for wanting to avoid to crash the health system or prevent mass deaths. That one is just common sense, which is something you seem to have a serious lack of.

One additional problem is that we don't really seem to know who is 'vulnerable'. Especially when it comes to 'long covid'. Think you're fit? Marathon runner? Mountain biker? Hill walker? No guarantee you won't suffer from long covid.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54793726

'Data analysis by Kings College London suggests about one in 20 of those people who contracted Covid-19 in the UK are suffering long-term symptoms. One in 10 are suffering for three weeks or more.'

'Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College and leader of the Covid Symptom Study app, says about 300,000 people in the UK have reported symptoms lasting for more than a month - so called long Covid. Data from the app shows about 60,000 people have been ill for more than three months. He says the more we know about Covid "the weirder it gets".'

I'm sure the Oz contingent on UKC might beg to differ.

https://www.google.com/search?q=australia+lockdown

I don't have a clue what point you're trying to make, but I think you've failed to make it.