Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer, and Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientific Adviser should resign or be sacked.
Each has played a significant part in the disastrously bad so-called "science" which has caused tens of thousands of avoidable deaths in the United Kingdom from Covid-19.
See, for example, my post of 24th November 2020:
The background to this post is contained in a post on my Corona Shock blog: Disastrously bad so-called "science" at the World Health Organisation has caused over 1,300,000 avoidable deaths.
Disastrously bad so-called "science" at the World Health Organisation expressed in the International Health Regulations (2005) allowed the SARS-CoV-2 virus to spread freely internationally.
Without that failure at the WHO the Covid-19 pandemic would not have become established.
Without that disastrous failure at the WHO more than a million deaths from Covid-19 could have been (and should have been) avoided.
Do the failures by the World Health Organisation absolve UK scientists and politicians from blame for the tens of thousands of deaths in the United Kingdom from Covid-19?
I don't believe so.
The WHO failures allowed the pandemic to become established.
The UK scientists and politicians had a Duty of Care to protect the Public Health in the United Kingdom despite the existence of a pandemic.
To understand the criticism of UK scientific advisers that I seek to make in this post you need carefully to distinguish the Covid-19 pandemic from the Covid-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom.
UK scientific advisers had no direct responsibility or ability to stop the Covid-19 pandemic.
UK scientific advisers, in my view, did have a direct responsibility, a Duty of Care, to protect the Public Health in the United Kingdom.
One part of that Duty of Care, in my view, was carefully to consider whether an epidemic of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom could be prevented.
My view is that the Covid-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom could have been prevented.
If the United Kingdom border had been closed on or around 31st January 2020 (with limited exceptions for essential deliveries of food etc), as outlined in June in this post: The United Kingdom's border should have been closed on 31st January 2020 entry of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into the United Kingdom would have been stopped.
If the SARS-CoV-2 had been stopped from entering the United Kingdom, Covid-19 infection in the UK would have been stopped and deaths from Covid-19 would not have occurred.
In other words, all, or essentially all, of the tens of thousands of Covid-19 deaths in the United Kingdom were avoidable.
Those tens of thousands of Covid-19 deaths could have been avoided by closing the UK Border (with tightly limited exceptions for essential food deliveries etc) on or around 31st January 2020.
In future posts I will seek to set out the reasons I see for the disastrously bad so-called "science" that has caused tens of thousands of avoidable deaths from Covid-19 by failing to secure a closure of the UK border on or around 31st January 2020.
In my view serious criticism can fairly be directed at
among others.
I expect it to take me multiple posts to set out all the disastrous mistakes which have led to so many thousands of avoidable deaths in the UK from Covid-19.
As I write this early on 23rd November 2020, the media is full of stories that Boris Johnson is planning to remove or reduce public protections against Covid-19, in part so that the public in England can have a less abnormal Christmas. An announcement is expected in the House of Commons later today.
In this post I want to ask a basic question.
Is it lawful for Boris Johnson to remove or reduce public protections against Covid-19?
Boris Johnson must know that removing or reducing public protections will result in an increase in Covid-19 infections.
In turn, Boris Johnson must know that an increase in Covid-19 infections will cause an increase in Covid-19 deaths.
So, is it lawful for the Prime Minister to act in a way which he knows will cause deaths in the population of England?
If it's supposedly lawful, what is the reasoning that produces a conclusion that reducing public protections against Covid-19 with the effect of causing avoidable deaths is lawful?
If it's not lawful, what should it be called?
Might it be Gross Negligence Manslaughter?
Might it be Murder?
The fundamental mistakes on the Covid-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom made by Boris Johnson, including his failure to close the UK Border on or around 31st January 2020, have caused avoidable damage to the UK public finances to the tune of £100 billion.
Some suggest that the wasted money already exceeds £200 billion. And it's still going up.
This money will, eventually, have to be paid back.
The United Kingdom faces decades of Boristerity - austerity caused by the infantile incompetence of the United Kingdom's worst ever Prime Minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
Think about it.
In my most recent post I showed that the number of cases of Covid-19 in England is doubling roughly every 14 days, not every 7 days as falsely claimed yesterday by Patrick Vallance.
See Did Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty lie to the public in their briefing yesterday?
Patrick Vallance hinted at 50,000 cases a day by mid October, if the false claim of a 7 day doubling time were to continue.
The Government's own data show that the Covid-19 epidemic is increasing but that it is doubling at a much slower rate - roughly every 14 days.
If the number of cases continues to double roughly every 14 days then we can expect around 19,000 cases per day in England in mid October, not the 50,000 cases publicised by Patrick Vallance.
It seems to me that Boris Johnson is likely later today to announce measures relating to Covid-19 based on a false claim.
For Boris Johnson to do so risks further undermining any remaining credibility that he may have.
Yesterday, 21st September 2020, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer for England, Chris Whitty, gave a televised presentation on Covid-19.
A transcript of what they said is online here:
It seems to me that Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty lied to the public about the Covid-19 epidemic in the United Kingdom.
Their claim, expressed by Patrick Vallance, was that the Covid-19 epidemic in England is doubling roughly every seven days.
Patrick Vallance said,
At the moment, we think that the epidemic is doubling roughly every seven days. It could be a little bit longer, maybe a little shorter, but let’s say roughly every seven days. If, and that’s quite a big if, but if that continues unabated and this grows, doubling every seven days, then what you see of course, let’s say that there were 5,000 today, it would be 10,000 next week, 20,000 the week after, 40,000 the week after. And you can see that by mid-October if that continued, you would end up with something like 50,000 cases in the middle of October per day.
Is it true that the epidemic is doubling "roughly every seven days"?
I don't think so.
The Government's own data shows that it is doubling roughly every 14 days.
For example, on the second slide shown at the presentation the rate of new cases per 100,000 of the population doubled roughly every 14 days.
The slides are online here:
Slides to accompany coronavirus press conference: 21 September 2020
In the age group 20-29 the number of cases for 24th August to 30th August was about 31 (reading the graph by eye).
For the same age group for 7th to 13th September there were about 62 cases (again reading the graph by eye).
Similar increases can be seen in the other age groups.
If cases increase from 31 to 62 in two weeks that means that cases were doubling roughly every 14 days (not every 7 days as Patrick Vallance claimed).
Perhaps there is more recent data that shows the doubling time is getting shorter.
The most recent data that I can find is online here:
The second graph on that page shows daily numbers of positive tests.
By mousing over individual dates you can see a number of positive tests for that date and the rolling 7-day average at that date.
The graphs are in ongoing process of updating. The following description reflects the figures shown in the version I downloaded a little before 06:00 on 22nd September 2020.
There is no sign of doubling every seven days that I can see.
If we look at positive tests on individual days we see the following:
If we look at the 7-day rolling average again there is no sign of doubling every 7 days:
On no date was there a 100% increase over the examined 7 days periods.
The highest increase was 82% from 4th September to 11th September.
But that was followed by a 22% increase from 11th September to 18th September.
So, even if it were true that cases were close to doubling every 7 days from 4th to 11th September, the figures on 18th September show that any such doubling had slowed markedly.
If the number of cases isn't doubling every 7 days (and hasn't been in the recent past) it can't "continue" to double at that rate.
It seems to me that Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty have seriously misled the public.
If they had data showing doubling every 7 days surely they would have shown it.
Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty should apologise for misleading the British public and provide a detailed explanation of why they did so.
2. Only a month of additional preparation time for the NHS would be meaningful. It would also be meaningful if the outbreak were pushed out of usual winter respiratory season.and
18. An extra month for the NHS and wider HMG to prepare for a WN-CoV epidemic – and to reduce the pressures arising from seasonal influenza – would offer a significant advantage.
ACTION: SPI-M to consider whether the estimates on the impact of travel restrictions agreed by SAGE can be refined.What do these bland comments mean?
In the event of a novel influenza virus causing significant outbreaks ofOn 3rd February 2020 SAGE is stating that a partial Border Closure would buy a month's preparation time for the National Health Service.
human illness elsewhere in the world, it is unlikely that the UK could
prevent importation (except by closing all borders); even a 99.9%
restriction of travel into the country would only be expected to delay
importation of the virus by up to two months.
And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.
Where did the supposed "bizarre autarkic rhetoric" come from?And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role.”
