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UK Covid-19 Inquiry - Module 1: The Resilience and Preparedness of the United Kingdom
Chapter 3 The Assessment of Risk
This third chapter is essentially based on the amazing discovery of decades of blinkered and box-thinking. Influenza was the only game in town. It’s not worth repeating the crocodile tears that flow through the pages of evidence summarised in the chapter.
Only to point out that readers of TTE are crushingly familiar with the games of confusion between the F word and influenza and the content of our Riddles series. The F word is used to confuse people, especially politicians, and pretend that influenza vaccines can prevent F word cases. That’s how you help create a market:
In 2009, Tom warned of the confusion between influenza-like illness and influenza. Using the F word, bundling up familiar signs and symptoms, fever, aches and pains, tiredness, cough, and runny nose due to numerous but uncountable microorganisms (a syndrome) and implying that it is due to a single agent (influenza).
In 2006, in the BMJ, Tom highlighted the reasons for the gap between policy and evidence and the over-optimistic tone supporting influenza prevention strategies.
“The optimistic and confident tone of some predictions of viral circulation and of the impact of inactivated vaccines, which are at odds with the evidence, is striking. The reasons are probably complex and may involve “a messy blend of truth conflicts and conflicts of interest making it difficult to separate factual disputes from value disputes” or a manifestation of optimism bias (an unwarranted belief in the efficacy of interventions).”
And in 2009, Tom gave a final warning in an interview with Der Spiegel:
We do not know how long it took the Inquiry to conclude that the advice may have been affected by ‘groupthink’. Box thinking and obsession with one or two agents are very dangerous, but at 190 THOUSAND POUNDS a day, we could have saved the taxpayer a few pennies if our warnings had been heeded.
But the Inquiry is thinking inside the box, aided by so-called experts and politicians who caused the recent disasters.
If you don’t believe us, re-read the post on Chapter 1.
The media and governments reinforce groupthink through the ongoing manipulation of respiratory viral data. Either consciously or unconsciously this creates new monsters as vaccines and other pharmaceuticals become available.
Another thread we noticed throughout the document is the omnipresent fear of a potential microbiological and clinical catastrophe. But the Hallett Inquiry does nothing to dispel this fear and put it into its proper context.
Take the issue of High-Consequence Infectious Diseases (or HCIDs), which is mentioned 24 times in 240 pages and cited an average of 1 time every ten pages.
Here is the definition:
“3.24 (A high consequence infectious disease is one that typically has a high case fatality ratio, may be difficult to recognise and detect rapidly, can transmit in the community, and may not have an effective means of prevention or treatment. It requires an enhanced, specialist response.)”
It is wholly unclear what an “enhanced specialist response” is. We hope it does not mean shoving everyone, regardless of age, into intensive care units. But that is a mere detail.
HCIDs appear mentioned everywhere, even in the nightmarish labyrinth of Figure 2 (bottom right green squares). However, the implication that COVID-19 is an HCID is false and shows either the desire to spin or sheer superficial work again.
In the UK government Guidance on High Consequence Infectious Diseases, the list of HCIDs mentions SARS in the last line, except that this is SARS 1, not Covid or SARS 2. On 16 January 2020, COVID-19 was first classified as an HCID in the UK. According to UK government Guidance, the definition of an HCID “typically has a high case-fatality rate” and is “often difficult to recognise and detect rapidly.” There are currently 16 diseases listed as HCIDs. As we have already mentioned, the list mentions SARS 1 in the last line, not Covid or SARS 2.
On 19 March 2020, Covid-19 was downgraded by the UK government. Their justification was:
So, what are we to make of these elementary mistakes in the Inquiry report? Why insist on mentioning HCIDs when the UKHSA say COVID-19 is NOT one of those?
Chapter 3 has one recommendation.
TTE’s take on this is that risk assessment has been dominated by modelling inside the group. This led to the worst-case scenario dominating the pandemic narrative; the risks of locking down were ignored.
Dame Deirdre Hine's Independent review into the response to the 2009 swine flu pandemic stated, "to assume the worst-case scenario and resource the response accordingly". But she suggested an alternative approach, "which is to take a view on the most likely outcome while monitoring events closely and changing tack as necessary".
Hine’s recommendations were ignored - she must have been outside the group. Hallett could have made recommendation three more evident if she had called for an evidence-based approach to risk assessment.
This post was written by two old geezers who will not charge you 190,000 Pounds a day.
References
Jefferson T, et al.Inactivated influenza vaccines: methods, policies, and politics. J Clin Epidemiol. 2009 Jul;62(7):677-86. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2008.07.001.
Jefferson T. Influenza vaccination: policy versus evidence. BMJ. 2006 Oct 28;333(7574):912-5. doi: 10.1136/bmj.38995.531701.80.
Thank you for your comment Nik. I am about to let you into a secret but you must swear secrecy on Matt Hancock’s head. Most of the folk who may end up in yet another body to add to Figure 2 have been following TTE either in person or through proxies. Shhhh. Silence! Tom.
Hi Marcus, thanks for the comment. The text has been fixed. This bit was written by me and I take the blame. My only excuse is my anger that as an outsider my repeated warnings were ignored, my family like all other families had to suffer from this madness and my reputation after 30 years’ work was attacked by charlatans, overnight experts and lobbyists. Oh and we got spied on and censored. TTE is the only way I have to preserve my integrity. Best wishes, Tom.