Fantasies can only be sustained for so long in the face of harsh truths. Net zero is one such. The political class – possibly starting with David Cameron’s efforts to “hug a husky” (and prior to him “cutting the green crap”) – allowed cuddly thoughts of sustainable living and renewable energy to get conflated with a harder line of extremist deindustrialisation. Vested interests jumped on the bandwagon, and over the course of a few years the eco warrior’s cry of “save the whales” got perverted into “whales are CO2 emitters”, the implication being that it is just a necessary – and acceptable – sacrifice if offshore wind farms mean these great sea mammals perish. 

Black is white, war is peace. Saint Greta’s creed is certainly not as pure as the driven snow.

This cognitive dissonance was never going to last, despite some extraordinary spectacles that we have witnessed over the last few years.  A prime example is Germany switching off perfectly operational (and low carbon!) nuclear power stations, only to switch to burning filthy lignite instead. What’s more, the nation is still suffering shortages, such that old aged pensioners were required to eschew heating their homes last winter.

With winter again approaching, much of Europe has already yielded to the inevitable and gently touched the breaks on the climate alarmists’ juggernaut. Our Prime Minister was hardly going to avoid doing the same, but it will have pained him to be bounced into this on the very day that the UN is hosting a ‘Climate Ambition Summit’ in New York.  These supra-national bureaucrats claim there is an “urgency to act” following the “latest scientific assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)”. Apparently, the “damage from the climate crisis is already extensive, and global greenhouse gas emissions remain at record levels”. 

This is just a load of hot air, perhaps emitted by panicked vested interests that are worried about missing out on copious quantities of subsidies that they have gotten used to. The nature of such climate overspending is a discussion that needs to be had, is long overdue, and it looks like we are finally going to get the chance to have it.

In yesterday’s speech, Sunak promised to replace imposition, obfuscation and ideology (not-so-tacitly acknowledging that this is what we’ve been subjected to for the last few years) with consent, honesty and pragmatism.  While he promises that his new direction will now be “accountable to the British public”, his announcement is a curate’s egg that will please very few, as he still claims he wants Britain to hit net zero by 2050.

The members of the climate alarmist cult will be devastated that heretics have ruined their nirvana.  But realists like me – who believe in scientific discourse and have now finally been promised consent, honesty and pragmatism – do not consent to allowing our children’s future to be sacrificed on the net zero altar and will insist on an open discussion as to whether this is even sensible. Net zero is built on a house of cards and relies on an assumption that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming, or climate change, or global boiling. This assumption is flawed.  More evidence supporting climate realists and pragmatists emerges by the day, including a fascinating journal paper published last week on causal links between temperature and CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere. Spoiler alert: it’s not the way round the UN would have you believe.

We have a long way to go yet. The foot has been lifted off the accelerator of the climate alarmist juggernaut, but the vehicle is still travelling dangerously fast and has substantial momentum. We need to find the courage to apply the brakes.

But at least Sunak has had the courage to say the previously unsayable, and we can hardly complain when a Prime Minister offers consent, honesty and pragmatism. It is now up to the nation to hold him to this promise and allow this discussion to take place – devoid of imposition, obfuscation and ideology. 

Dr Alex Starling is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexstarling77

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

In a hard-hitting polemic, Gerald Warner expounds on the “great fallacy regarding climate change”, namely “the assumption that because the perceived threat was global, it required a supranational, one-size-fits-all response”. From the Left, Thomas Fazi writes for UnHerd that “nightmares and elitist fantasies” have replaced “the actual material conditions of people as the basis for politics – ‘saving the planet’ becomes more important than saving actual human beings”. Similarly, Ralph Schoellhammer (“The human cost of Net Zero”) highlights the “dangerous, infantile outlook” of the climate alarmist lobby who “indulge in fantasies about the energy transition”.

One wishes that these voices had been raised before today, as the UK is committed via the Climate Change Act 2008 to rapidly decarbonising itself. The purported aim of this is to fast-track our society’s transformation into some sort of mythical evergreen carbon-free nirvana.  This single-minded demonisation of carbon (and carbon emissions) brings to mind various possible fallacies – what if we are missing the woods for the trees? 

It is an inconvenient and unfortunate truth that the momentum of a speeding juggernaut requires more energy and time to slow down. If only we could attach the Net Zero juggernaut to a generator to feed the grid. Ironically enough, in the wonderfully credulous world of the woke warriors against warming, it seems that such real-life parodies exist. 

Resistance to Net Zero groupthink has to date been limited to a lonely chorus of diehard sceptics who have been quietly and systematically removed from the public square. This is all the more surprising when one considers the extent to which history has been rewritten, and past misdemeanours forgotten. The 2009 story of “climategate” has been almost completely erased from the national consciousness. A reminder: the efforts of key players in the climate alarmist camp to produce data that supported the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hypothesis were shown to be somewhat irregular. Computer code that was used to produce temperature models required the application of copious quantities of “fudge factors” to produce the temperature hockey sticks that were needed to scare the populace.  

Don’t take my word for it: even George Monbiot remarked at the time that the behaviour was “unscientific”. He also pointed out that one of the key protagonists “seems to be advocating potentially criminal activity” when suggesting that emails subject to an FOI request be deleted. Monbiot then lapsed – true to form – back into the language that we are used to hearing from such commentators about “deniers” who deserve everything coming to them due to uttering heresies that challenge the state religion.

Rare as it may be for me to agree with Monbiot on anything, he did claim to be someone who has “championed the science” and stated that “we should be the first to demand that [the science] is unimpeachable”. I agree with this last statement. However, and here is where we disagree, the science he is promoting is most certainly not settled and, therefore, not unimpeachable, despite what the tellybox might be telling you.

One of the entities that controls this narrative is the IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change, a UN body. Through various working groups, this supranational religious order regularly publishes papal decrees that update the liturgy to be distributed to the masses by the priestly orders, such as the Behavioural Insights Team, aka the Nudge Unit. One of the fundamental tenets of this religion is that “one of the defining challenges of the 21st century [is] human-induced climate change”.  Specifically, there is an irreversible “tipping point” of warming due to the anthropogenic influence of greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, etc.) being released into the atmosphere. 

As I have written about previously, heretics who speak out against the priesthood’s wishes get quite rapidly closed down. In fact, it seems that the priesthood wishes to make such wrongspeak a criminal offence. To limit the chances of any questioning plebeian masses going off-piste, the UN works with popular search engines to ensure that top search results align with their orthodoxy. Thankfully, the flailings of the Monbiots and ludicrous talk of “global boiling” from old men in suits have provoked some modest pushback from certain quarters. The new head of the IPCC, Jim Skea, has struck a different tone from his predecessor: “The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees”.  Such words are in marked contrast to recent claims about man-made climate catastrophes and fatally undermine the justification for our aggressive Net Zero policies.

But the underlying articles of faith remain, as yet, unchanged. Apparently, we must still “battle against climate change”. The “short-term focus should remain expanding renewable electricity to reduce emissions from fossil fuel electricity generation and from internal combustion engine vehicles”.  Hmm.  Forgive my scepticism about throwing perfectly functioning vehicles into landfills to be replaced by a completely new technology. A new technology with a supply chain based on raiding the earth’s crust for rare elements with an as-yet untested post-processing/reuse/recycling infrastructure.

It is high time that the heretics get to say their piece. It is an article of faith for the IPCC that reducing CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emissions can somehow effect a reversal of recent climate changes. This is a sacrament upon which rests the whole Net Zero edifice. Sub-sacraments are threefold. Firstly, CO2 emissions have gone up materially over the last few hundred years. Secondly, this is primarily due to human activity since the industrial revolution. Thirdly, there is a direct causal link that these emissions have created most – if not all – global warming/boiling/climate change.  These all have to be true to justify the breakneck pace of decarbonisation efforts. 

The first point, that CO2 emissions have definitely increased, is generally accepted even though the absolute increase of CO2 in the air has gone up over the last 100 years or so from 0.03 per cent to just over 0.04 per cent. This level is substantially lower than the optimum for plant growth – just ask anyone involved in food production, but evidence for the subsequent points is by no means clear-cut. 

Going into specifics, CO2 is often a lagging indicator of temperature (both in the short, medium and longer-term), or seems disconnected from temperature variations. Moreover, if it is taken as read that CO2 levels are unprecedented in the current Holocene (i.e. since the last ice age), then we have a somewhat unsatisfactory scenario whereby the existing literature – both scientific and of professional historians – regarding the Medieval Warm Period (1 degree warmer, a millennium ago) and the Climatic Optimum (2.5 degrees warmer, 5-8 millennia ago) flatly contradicts recent alarmist claims that July 2023 was “quite likely the warmest month on Earth in 10,000 years”.

To overcome doubters, much work has been put in by adherents of IPCC doctrine to simplify the message and eviscerate previously published data that conflicts with the various sub-sacraments. For example, the Medieval Warm Period and Climatic Optimum have been dubbed the “Holocene Temperature Conundrum”, a thorn in the side of the faithful, as they fundamentally undermine the obsession with emitted CO2 and other greenhouse gases. 

The solution? Models! A recent Nature paper was able to erase the troublesome Conundrum by relaxing a previously stricter requirement on data points in the (vast) Southern Ocean “to increase coverage in this data-poor region” and smooth out temperature gradient over the last 10,000 years.  All this despite recognising that their model has a fundamental limitation that it is based on “priors from a single model … which are inevitably biased by model deficiencies, resolution and uncertainties in boundary conditions”.

Another attempt to discredit the historic literature is to claim that these periods of higher temperatures were actually localised events.  But this is hardly the killer argument that IPCC adherents think it is. It only highlights the current cherry-picking approach favoured by the media of highlighting isolated warm temperatures as being due to the climate, but ignoring low temperatures in other areas as being due to the weather. This is something that climate alarmists would do well to note.

The NASA analysis of the Maunder Minimum is another problem for the “global boiling” narrative. This analysis of the period from 1650 to 1710 when “temperatures across much of the Northern Hemisphere plunged when the Sun entered a quiet phase”, emphasises that in periods of overall lower temperatures, some particular geographies – such as the Atlantic and the Arctic – can in fact exhibit relative warming. So a milder Arctic could, of course, be consistent with stagnating, or even falling, global temperatures.

There are other problems for the simplistic sub-sacraments that undergird the IPCC’s creed. Water vapour is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. What of the 2022 Hunga Tonga eruption that spewed over 165 million tons of water vapour – not 50 million tons as initially thought – into the atmosphere? A combination of observations, including the earth’s recent waning magnetic field, warm localised patches of suddenly hot sea to the West of areas of subsea volcanism, lagging jumps in CO2 air concentration and the recent slowing of the earth’s rotation by unexpected microseconds (a non-trivial issue as angular momentum must be conserved – where did the energy go?), point to the conveyance of heat from the earth’s core, up through the mantle and to the surface.  The different heat capacity of air versus that of water discount the atmosphere as a source of this warming on such a rapid timescale.  

These are fascinating observations. A burning desire to explain the hugely complex interactions of our natural world should be driving a deep scientific urge to come up with creative hypotheses. 

However, the strictures of the dominant religion are not conducive to open-minded research. The peer review process is broken. We desperately need a “blue team” grouping of sceptical investigators that are not in the pockets of those who have pre-decided the outcome of such research. Quoting Gerald Warner: “The government should assemble a panel of genuine climate experts who have not taken the IPCC shilling, discounting computer ‘modelling’, when the result is dictated by the data fed in, in favour of empirical evidence… we need authentic, unbiased scientific information, not the extravagant propaganda of climate alarmists”.

Our current de facto accelerated Net Zero trajectory is going to be a bumpy ride. More worryingly, it seems that its proponents do not really want to discuss whether the sacrifice is worth it. Can we discuss whether it is just an almighty boondoggle? It may be worse. It could be a set of policies that will destroy society as we know it, and make our children’s futures incalculably worse.

We owe it to future generations to pause the current madcap pace of change and engage in an adult conversation to win over the rank and file. There are very, very good reasons to invest in sustainable and non-polluting clean energy, but as pointed out by sensible centrist commentators, there is no need for coercion. 

Let’s remember, CO2, the IPCC’s sworn enemy, is a life-giving substance that is present in trace quantities in the atmosphere and is contributing to the greening of our planet. It would be an unmitigated disaster if we back the wrong horse(s) by rushing to enforce a flawed doctrine derived from a mistaken demonisation of carbon dioxide.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

Such scaremongering is of course a free pass, as usually no one really checks up on what actually takes place, but the catastrophic outcome can be milked to its full potential. “Drizzly day in Derby” never did sell any papers. 

However, the fourth estate does have an obligation to present its viewers and readers with accurate information.  This is where the story gets interesting – this is not just a case of eye-rolling pushback against apocalyptic hyperbole.  Ranging from casual sloppy reporting to highly targeted attempts to influence the narrative, there is now a weight of evidence demonstrating the existence of a systemic bias towards catastrophising otherwise run-of-the-mill data.  

Consider the following vignettes.

It is currently hot in Southern Europe. Earlier this month the European Space Agency (ESA) issued an attractively-coloured map as part of a press release forecasting air temperatures of 48°C in Sardinia and Sicily that would be “potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe”. The quotable quote was suitably amplified by the media, only this time it was picked up by astute observers who pointed out that the ESA had conflated land temperatures with the much cooler air temperatures at the standard 2m measuring height (i.e. while you might be able to fry an egg on tarmac, the same egg suspended 2m on the ground will take much longer to become a culinary delight).  The ESA subsequently issued a clarification, with corrections being issued by media organisations such as Der Spiegel which had picked up the original story. 

A recent article in this publication also came to my attention. Walter Ellis wrote a piece about urban migration in Zaragoza in Spain. Fascinating though it was, he included some doom-laden forecasts regarding an ongoing summer drought: “It hasn’t rained here for months and the [official forecast] prognosis is for more – that is to say, less – to come… today, as a direct result of climate change, temperatures even in the more northerly regions, including Aragon, are at record highs”.  Walter is just relaying official forecasts – hardly a mortal sin and you would hope official forecasts could be relied upon. But a slightly inconvenient truth is that these forecasters managed to get these (very short-term!) predictions completely wrong – the Iberian Peninsula was given an absolute drenching throughout May and June.  Oops. 

None of this would particularly matter if this idle chatter about the weather was just that; reporting on meteorological curiosities du jour.  But quoting Twain: “A lie can travel halfway round the world and back again while the truth is putting on its boots”.  And these weather untruths – whether they be honest mistakes, sloppy reporting or cynical ploys – tend to have one thing in common: they are seemingly always yoked to a great article of faith. That is, they are always indicative of a climate ‘emergency’, or at least ‘climate change’ (the old term ‘global warming’ seems to have temporarily gone out of fashion following various postponements of the previously imminent Armageddon). 

Walter Ellis’s passing comment mentioned above lays the blame for an (incidentally totally incorrect) forecast of ongoing drought “directly on climate change”, begging the question about this direct causal link given that the prediction did not come to pass. The ESA is able to state that as “climate change takes grip, heatwaves such as this are likely to be more frequent and more severe, with far-reaching consequences”.  A Met Office spokesman recently produced this cryptic quote in The Times: “As we get this climate warming, the extremes are becoming more extreme”, in an article worrying about a temporary warm spell in Greenland when the actual data shows that the snow mass was way above average at the height of summer.  Even Reaction – if you can believe it – has managed to publish bold conjecture: “As temperatures continue to rise, heatwaves will become more severe. It’s crucial that governments worldwide take swift and decisive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately… while we can slow down the rate of global warming, the effects of climate change will continue to be experienced in the future”. 

These are not cherry-picked examples – this climate Lysenkoism is given blanket coverage. The message is ubiquitous (albeit sometimes subliminal) and in starker terms can be summarised as: “hot weather is caused by climate change, and mankind has caused climate change by producing CO2. There is an existential emergency!”. 

This ‘consensus’ is so consensual that it seemingly needs to be rammed home at every opportunity – almost as if this message (rather than the planet) is fragile, a complex construct that needs to protection from awkward questions or detailed analysis.  Grand proclamations and joint public statements are made by very serious organisations declaring The Truth that the faithful shall adhere to. Data is continually adjusted such that the graphs have suitable hockey sticks, and academics behind the scenes really know what they are doing.  Armies of sycophants can be trusted to hound those who merely report on the weather without anchoring it to a climate scare, and senior sympathisers within the BBC enforce ‘appropriate’ edits and encourage activists to “flag similar cases in the future so they can adapt the content accordingly”.  

Or consider Quentin Letts. He was court-martialled to have committed a “serious” breach of BBC rules on impartiality after producing a light-hearted Radio 4 programme entitled “What’s the point of the Met Office?”. The recording was so offensive that it was eviscerated from BBC Sounds, lest a member of the public should stumble on such heresy.  Not only that, the BBC has claimed that Letts had ignored a pre-production agreement “never to touch on climate change” – Letts categorically denies that this was ever agreed, let alone discussed. And in academia, even if the occasional journal paper with the ‘wrong’ conclusions does slip through the peer-review process, publishers can be relied on to create murky procedural grounds for retraction, especially when newspapers like The Guardian apply a modicum of pressure and editors are made to “think of the implications of publishing”.  

That is quite a statement. Scientific curiosity is sidelined by today’s regime, which is tough on thought crime and tough on the causes of thought crime. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command”:  do not, under any circumstance, ask questions about recent cold weather events and records – which have seemingly abounded of late. Did you know that the Antarctic has been particularly and persistently cold in recent years? That the snow pack in California has been at extraordinarily high levels, resulting in mind-blowing skiing and white-water rafting conditions? That China and much of Siberia experienced record cold earlier in 2023?  And that miserable and cold weather has persisted in Australia for many years now?

These are just anecdotes about the weather – our climate changes, after all.  We should keep a weather (!) eye on this, as it was not that long ago that we were warned of an imminent ice age, and the earth’s magnetic field has been waning over the last century. Why don’t the BBC and The Guardian investigate and report on these fascinating phenomena rather than regale us with anecdotes about hot weather, as decreed by ‘Group Sustainability Directors’ who get to post-edit technical output within their organisations?

Perhaps, though, we should be grateful that the green lobby – this veritable hydra of loosely aligned eco-activists, shrieking media and sustainable energy salesmen – are there to protect ‘The Science’ from coming to harm at the hands of the scientific method.  

Because surely – surely? – the public at large will eventually notice this pseudoscientific quackery and reject increasingly desperate attempts to apply cancel culture techniques to silence or ridicule heretics.  Consider Dr John Clauser, the recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, who recently criticised the climate emergency narrative, calling it “a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people” and that “there is no climate crisis and that increasing CO2 concentrations will benefit the world”. People with such credentials should have their hypotheses examined — not shouted down.

How much more hot air will we have to put up with until a more reasoned debate ensues? It is clear to many that nihilistic climate alarmism is stopping us from investing in reliable energy and pursuing economic growth.  If we continue down this Lysenkoist path, we risk deindustrialisation and pauperisation, which would spell an end to the quality of life that we have enjoyed in recent decades – and that our forebears could only dream of.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

Being something of a questioning soul, I have found mainstream news sources somewhat unsatisfactory in recent years – banal reporting, simplistic (and error-strewn) reporting and homages to vested interests have turned me off the commonly used channels for consuming the output of the fourth estate.

Having leafed through various fairly anodyne articles that mostly avoided the difficult questions of the day, tucked away on page 36 was a small article by the environment editor of The Times entitled “Antarctic Ice Melts to ‘Shocking’ Low”.  Intrigued – because there are some fascinating observations coming from the world’s oceans that are worthy of closer investigation – I read the article in more detail. I was genuinely astonished.

Not, I should say, by the quality of the article, or the incisiveness of the reporting. 

I was astonished by the extent – not of any ice loss – but of the twisting of facts to fit an agenda.  Bereft of nuance, we seem to be spiralling into a polarised world where broadsheet ‘journalism’ can see fit to distill context-free factoids into an easily-digestible apocalyptic pill to be popped down a reader’s gullet:

• Antarctic sea ice is apparently at a “‘shocking’ record low for the end of June“

• There is a “missing mass equivalent to an area about five times the size of Britain“

• “One reason… appears to be that the region is up to 4°C warmer than usual in some places“

• “We are concerned,” says Ed Blockley of the Met Office Polar Climate Group

• “the loss comes as scientists warn that the Greenland melt has been ‘off the chart’ as the area faces a heatwave“

• “Greenland records temperatures 10°C above average… melt rates were ‘punching off the charts‘”

And just to make sure you hadn’t taken the hint already, the implication is that it is bad humans that are at fault for gobbling up the earth’s resources and making all this bad stuff happen.  With a nod to natural cyclicality and a ‘get-out’ clause stating these cycles could be enhanced by global warming, Dr Blockley (PhD in applied mathematics from Exeter University) ladles on the invective to create this bamboozling logical fallacy (or should that be ‘content-free verbiage’?): “As we get this climate warming, the extremes are becoming more extreme”.

Panic! Abandon ship! Close the stand-by power station that might keep granny warm this winter!  Give orange-paint-spraying billionaire-funded cultists more coverage! Funnel more subsidies towards the (already rich) owners of estates of wind propellors and glitzy solar panels!

One can only despair, but not in agreement with Greta Thunberg’s handlers or Ben/Zak Goldsmith. I am reminded of the apocryphal tale of the child in Sunday school being asked: what is grey, has a furry tale and runs up and down trees collecting nuts?  Wide-eyed, the child answers “I know the answer must be Jesus, but it sounds like a squirrel!”.

I would normally assume there was no need to highlight the various rhetorical tools that are deployed by the environment editor, but it is worth pointing out that he has not limited himself to logical fallacies.  He uses appeals to authority (science agencies in the US and Dr Blockley from the Met Office, no less) to buttress out-of-context, generalised and cherry-picked statements without any attempt to provide a rational perspective.

Firstly, the “4°C warmer“ claim is qualified as being in “some places”, but that is a cherry-picked generalisation that misleads the reader.  Many of the temperature sensors on the Antarctic peninsula are outside the Antarctic Circle. For example the Orcadas Base is closer to downtown Buenos Aires than the South Pole.  Would we take readings from the Shetland Islands as being indicative of Arctic temperatures?

Much of the bulk of the Antarctic – which contains almost 90 per cent of the world’s (surface) fresh water locked in its ice cap – has in recent years been substantially colder than usual for long periods of time: “According to data kept by the British Antarctic Survey, the 2021 winter’s harsh temperatures were the lowest in more than 60 years. The research team, which is part of the Natural Environment Research Council, has been tracking temperature data in the South Pole since 1957 and had never recorded a winter this cold”. And, 2023 has also started abnormally cold.  

Second, the Greenland “10°C above average” claim is weapons-grade cherry-picking. For much of May and early June the temperature anomaly was more like 10°C below average. But surely it is obvious to everyone that such a claim is a weather variable, akin to comparing a spot price with a long-term average?

Thirdly, “Melt rates… ‘punching off the charts'” is missing critical context that makes the statement almost laughable. Consider the latest official Snow-Mass Balance (SMB) data from Greenland provided by the Danish Meteorological Institute, the Technical University of Denmark and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

I mean, what does the author expect at a time when the place gets almost wall-to-wall sunshine and the snow mass is unseasonably high (not only substantially above the 2011-2012 mean, but also at relatively high levels going back to 1981) due to exceptionally cold conditions through May and early June? Having seen a particularly unusual, and huge, net gain earlier in the month of several gigatonnes of snow mass, is it any surprise that the rate of melt is higher than usual for a few ensuing days? Might it not fit the author better to point out that the actual level of SMB (i.e. after the “punching off the charts” melt) still remains higher than normal and may well stay well above the 1981-2010 mean for the rest of the season?

Why this catastrophised reporting? Has the established news media completely lost any vestige of journalistic skill, or the desire to practice investigative reporting? Or has it just been bought off by so-called-green technology vendors? Or has an apathetic public finally been bludgeoned into submitting to these gross fantasy tales, perhaps in lieu of metaphorical bread and circuses? 

I have previously written in Reaction calling for Net Zero policies to be parked while these are more fully assessed – we are currently on a trajectory that could cause immense suffering, impoverishment and pointless deindustrialisation.  But we will get nowhere if reporting on these subjects does not become more balanced, nuanced and evidence-led.  

If the professional forecasters, and consequently journalists, can get their short-term forecasts so completely out of kilter, how can they at the same time specifically ascribe every extreme temperature and weather extreme – free of context – to anthropological climate change?

What is all the more frustrating is that these banal and polarised over-simplifications miss some genuinely extraordinary observations that are worthy of more detailed coverage, such as the possibility of unexpected oscillations in the angular momentum of the spinning earth being a sign that ‘something else’ is influencing changes in sea temperatures.  This is a genuinely fascinating area, but see what has happened? This article is already 1,000 words old, clichéd AGW discourse displacing what could otherwise have been a far more interesting exploration of exothermic core theory, i.e. a new hypothesis that might be able to help us improve our view of the world.  

So here is an appeal to the masses and the media – please can we hold crony vested interests and inept (and corrupt?) politicians to account by at least having an adult conversation about these topics? Otherwise impoverishment and pauperisation loom.  

The West needs to have this discussion urgently otherwise we risk losing not just our metaphorical bread and circuses, but also our actual bread and butter.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life     

And – of course – correlation does not necessarily imply causation.

Mixing metaphors, the elephant is out of the bag – UK mortality stats have been running “hot” for much of 2022 and have persisted through the Christmas period. Something is awry. 

Quite rightly, the infernal lockdowns get much of the blame for the problems we are suffering. But it is frustrating that people are only now wringing their hands on this matter: as previously outlined and evidenced by Reaction, it was clear from mid-March 2020 (before they were implemented in this country) that non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs, i.e. lockdowns) would be devastating and – crucially – were not necessary.  

It is worth adding a quick sidenote: for the reasons outlined above it is wrong to blame lockdown collateral damage on “Covid”: note that countries that didn’t implement NPIs didn’t have much of a different outcome, and possibly even better. It was lockdowns what did it, not Covid, which has an incredibly low infection fatality rate. Certain Western countries – specifically the US – were more affected due to high levels of obesity, but that was then, and this is now – Covid deaths are few and far between. So why the elevated excess mortality across the board in Western countries, including the likes of Germany whose healthcare services are not under the same degree of strain as here in the UK?

This is somewhat of an embarrassment for the authorities, who have been keen to emphasise the “millions” of lives saved by their response to the crisis that should never have been turned into such a catastrophic disaster. If countries that didn’t lock down and didn’t vaccinate are doing better, how can their claim be true?

All sorts of hypotheses have been raised, such as a lack of exercise due to lockdowns, or even an increase in exercise (such as open water swimming). These are discussed at length elsewhere – perhaps a raised eyebrow will suffice.  

There is one particular matter that has joined the traditional banned dinner party topics of religion and politics on the verboten list – not unlike these, it is also a matter of fervent belief and tribal allegiance: yes, the Covid-19 injections. Many trusted news sources are quick – extremely quick, in fact – to dismiss these pharmaceutical interventions (the “jabs”) as a potential cause of our woes.

In addressing the mortality conundrum, mortality data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) is heavily confounded – the BBC is right in (a small) part of this article when they point out that there are “too many complicating factors”, but it then lets itself down by using the same entirely equivocal ONS data from the first half of 2022 to justify the thesis that there is “no evidence of vaccine effect [on mortality excess]”. Apart from the obvious “this data is too confounded for you to make your point, but I’ll use it to make mine” issue, they are actually glossing over the fact that there is substantial evidence that the jabs are in fact problematic.  

Regarding said ONS data, there has been some rather pathetic foot-shuffling from the ONS excusing the lack of subsequent data: if what it says is correct (and it is being “improved”), then it begs a couple of question: (1) is the ONS sitting on data yet to be released which could help people make crucial life-or-death decisions and (2) is the existing data that the BBC points to in fact incorrect?

All this is worrying, especially in the context of noted issues with the denominator of ONS data for numbers vaccinated (the ONS has previously claimed 8% are unvaccinated, which contradicts the UKHSA which has the number at closer to 20%, and the BBC’s own large survey which has that same percentage at 26%). I needn’t spell out the fact that if the UKHSA and the BBC’s surveys are closer to the truth, then the denominator would shift substantially and likely push the equivocal ONS data above into territory which looks decidedly tricky for those chanting the “safe and effective” mantra. The ONS is under substantial political pressure to “stick to the narrative” – consider this missive from Ed Humpherson, the Director General for Regulation at the Office for Statistics Regulation, castigating the ONS after it published wholly misleading data, which somewhat shockingly has not been removed. In fact, UKHSA data released in April 2022 indicates that hospitalisation rates of vaccinated people for non-Covid reasons was running at five times the rate of those who had not received the injection.  

Pharmacovigilance

The introduction of new medicines requires careful monitoring to help regulators ascertain – as quickly as possible – if there are problems. The Bradford Hill Criteria are recognised worldwide as a tool for establishing the possibility of harm. In the absence of omnipotence, since 1965 they have been the “gold standard” (with subsequent improvements as time has gone on) in terms of assessing whether red flags need to be raised: the precautionary principle then applies, the onus then being on the promoter of the novel pharmaceutical or intervention to prove definitively that they are safe. 

Bradford Hill criteria are not proof or sufficient condition to ascertain harm, but when applied to observational data, such as the Yellow Card system, they are a highly useful indicator of issues. The MHRA has now received the best part of half a million yellow cards related to the various Covid-related injections. The AstraZeneca one has of course since been phased out in the UK, and many yellow cards were related to that company’s offering. But the mRNA ones are still being “offered”, despite a large body of evidence showing the potential for a link to the blood and lymph systems, and the heart (especially in young males) and to disruption of the menstrual cycle in females (of all the things not to mess with… do we really want to find out in a few years that a generation of women of child-bearing age are permanently affected?). A typical rule of thumb has been that if around five of the Bradford Hill criteria are met, then red flag is raised until they have been investigated further. For these jabs, there is a case to argue that the first nine are all met (and the 10^th is essentially difficult to show, as heart damage can be impossible to undo). 

Kate Bingham, the vaccine tsar, tasked with procuring these vials, stated back in November 2020: “There’s going to be no vaccination of people under 18. It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable”. This point was emphasised by Reaction back in May 2021 – it is one thing to offer a medical intervention to those over 50 who might be at risk of respiratory disease (and who might be fine with the risk of an adverse effect), but it is a totally different matter to mandate it for younger people who are at essentially zero-risk from Covid.

Every death and adverse effect outside of the intended groups is therefore unacceptable. Both claims in the “safe and effective” mantra are highly suspect. It is high time this programme was fully halted until these worrying warning signals can be fully investigated. Burying our heads in the sand will not do. Establishing facts – and apportioning blame if need be – is a crucial defence against such mistakes being made again. We should have learned more from the 2009 Pandemrix scandal. There is nothing to be gained from shielding the manufacturers and other associated “promoter” of these injections in the face of this weight of evidence. 

Safety first. Or, as the song goes, If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

I am not trivialising Covid, nor its impact. It is clearly a nasty respiratory disease, and, if SARS-CoV-2 turns out to be a chimeric live attenuated virus funded by the US and manufactured in China, then it may well yet cause us problems in future, as well as a moral earthquake.

Be that as it may, it is – and, from the data available at the time, was – abundantly clear that lockdowns were a full-bore blunder of epic proportions; an unmitigated catastrophe.  

As pointed out by Professor Paul Woolhouse, a member of SAGE, it was already obvious in February 2020 that a universal “lockdown would not solve the problem… This is a highly discriminatory virus… It’s ageist, it’s sexist, it’s racist. And we certainly knew [that] before we went into lockdown”.  

This was not just obvious to those privy to secret government data sources. Prior to 23 March 2020 (the infamous date of the introduction of stay-at-home orders – “three weeks to flatten the curve”), it was crystal clear from the various petri dishes – outbreaks on the Diamond Princess, in Wuhan and in Bergamo – that we were not dealing with airborne novichok that might eviscerate humanity. Much like almost every seasonal respiratory disease epidemic (a rapid period of growth followed a rapid decline) the exponential growth phase was demonstrably over by the third weekend in March, well before the shutters came down.

The powers that be knew this. When Michael Gove claimed on 27 March 2020 that “we are all at risk… the virus does not discriminate”, he was either guilty of gross incompetence or untruthfulness. It is hard to believe the former – divisive as he might be, Gove is no idiot.

It seems that the government had been on the run during March due to organised manipulation of public opinion (the origin of which is unclear) and demands from unions. These were the true seeds of lockdown destruction: rather than stand up to this nonsense, the government chose the easy option of caving in to the hysteria. If the government – and its cheerleaders in the press – had instead chosen Churchillian leadership and a “keep calm and carry on” message, the Covid outcome would likely have been no different, but we would have avoided devastating lockdown damage. 

But by the end of March the “Schlieffen Plan” was in full flow. Retreat from the madness would have involved a recognition of the cowardly nature of some of the decisions made. A lack of official backbone – plus pressure from vested interests – meant that the die was cast. By early April, Parliament had surrendered unfettered power to Downing Street, the press and broadcasters had been muzzled by a combination of Ofcom dictat and the lure of taxpayer dollars for Covid advertising (this one-sided reporting persists, by the way: are you aware of the unfathomable developments in Canada’s current descent into tyranny?). 

Professor Woolhouse highlights the insanity: by April 2020 the ONS had opined on lockdown harm: “The best guess was that suppressing the virus would cost three times more [quality life] years [lost] than the disease itself”. Not only had the country embarked in March 2020 on a voyage into the unknown that would cause great harms – disproportionately affecting the poor, the vulnerable, the infirm – the ship’s captain and associated lackeys had made no attempt to quantify what we were letting ourselves in for. But rather than attempt to steer a safer course, attention turned to punishing any possible mutineers. Thus was formed the optimal conditions for the flourishing of the Covidean Cult, aided and abetted by the Four Horsemen of the Coronapocalypse:

1. A belief in the efficacy and value of lockdowns and draconian restrictions;

2. The crutch of highly questionable mass screening & testing programmes;

3. The promotion of universal vaccine mandates; and

4. Censorship, bad science and the stifling of rigorous debate (let’s face it, why should the editors of the British Medical Journal, founded in 1840, have to formally complain to Mark Zuckerberg about hapless factchecking by Facebook?).

Laura Dodsworth’s recent book, A State of Fear, has documented the obscene way in which the government followed SAGE’s advice to stoke the terror, thus rendering a rapid return to rationality nigh-on impossible. The malaise goes deep: consultant clinical psychologist Gary Sidley has outlined how government agencies shamelessly and unethically twisted public opinion. Layered onto these devious tactics, various officials and organisations that should know better promulgated preposterous lies. Well-heeled government advisors promoted excruciatingly outlandish – and repeatedly incorrect – doom-laden forecasts that should have resulted in professional humiliation, not knighthoods.  

Attempts to explain away these blunders (who remembers the “magic has started”?) are frankly embarrassing – but cognitive dissonance is pervasive, especially if the alternative is admitting error. 

With the usual checks and balances totally out of kilter, it was left to lonely voices to challenge union demands for further restrictions and subsequent lockdowns, to no avail. The outcome has been disastrous policy overreach and a huge misallocation of resources – the focus on “jabs in arms”, social distancing and movement curtailment (rather than the more important questions of whether lives and livelihoods are being a saved and life chances improved) is a classic example of the McNamara fallacy in action. How, for example, did it come to pass that an “adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable” almost became mandatory and is now being offered to 5-year-old children, despite unanswered questions about excess mortality in young people since the jab rollout?

Rational questions like this seem to be taboo, all because challenging the official narrative risks pointing out the madness of everything that has happened over the last 24 months.  

The spawn of this great folly (including misinformation such as “vaccinated people become “dead ends for the coronavirus”) has been an unbelievable overspend on vaccines, testing, lost economic utility and a medical tsunami of death, pain and separation. Those children that died alone? Those pensioners abandoned to their fate, dying of thirst? The wanton wasteful spend on testing, vaccines, plastic PPE that has been tipped into landfill or incinerated?

The most optimistic thing that can be said is that we have lived through a gigantic collective delusion that lasted far longer than it should have done. As for the pessimistic view… well, as painful as it is to admit it, there are various conspiracy theorists out there who have recently got more things right than wrong. 

So to those who settled down to a quiet period of working from home or furlough-subsidised rest and recuperation back in the sunny spring of 2020, I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. But spare a thought for those whose lives were totally smashed up and trashed by draconian policies that will haunt them until the end of their days. Yes, you were tricked into thinking that you were doing the right thing. But you went along with a policy that caused untold harm and did little – if any – good.

Dr Alex Starling (@alexstarling77) is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies.

It is time to consult our collective consciences and demand the immediate cessation of all – and any – plans for the unilateral imposition of vaccine certification/passports.  Those demanding their introduction have singularly failed to produce any evidence that – despite immense associated cost as confirmed by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport – they would be of any benefit to society.  On the contrary, they will impoverish those who are unable to comply and further alienate those who are already distrustful of government diktat.    

Reaction has previously covered this in the context of mandating vaccination for care home workers – a deeply unethical decision, especially when the UK government’s own data shows that Covid rates are higher in the vaccinated.  Vaccinated people typically have higher viral loads, potentially making them more infectious.  We also now have the first admissions from the government that “N antibody levels appear to be lower in people who acquire infection following two doses of vaccination” – hopefully this is merely an outlier data point rather than an early sign of vaccine-induced original antigenic sin, otherwise we may be in line for a winter not just of discontent, but also of wailing and gnashing of teeth.  On top of all this, the evidence is increasingly compelling that – as expected – natural immunity is superior to vaccine-induced immunity.

How, then, can a “stick and carrot” approach be acceptable in a free society to coerce individuals to undergo a medical procedure that they might wish to weigh up dispassionately prior to giving informed consent?  After all, there is no “try before you buy” option.  And at what point did an adult vaccine to protect the vulnerable morph into a mandated subscription to a twice-yearly booster shot, against the better judgement of the former director and deputy director of the Office of Vaccine Research and Review at the FDA, who resigned in protest and published this letter in The Lancet denouncing the decision?

This is not the backdrop that justifies a headlong rush to Jim Crow laws to demote the unvaccinated – the Great Unwashed – into a second tier of society.  As The Spectator puts it bluntly: “Will Javid really fire 106,000 NHS workers?”.  These workers – by no means all front-line workers, but many will be – are no doubt fully aware of the risks and capable of making up their own minds.  Escalating the question – should society stand by while its government not only invites these front line workers to leave their jobs, putting the NHS under even greater pressure in the process, but then also exclude them from society by putting arbitrary limits on who they can socialise with, and what social events they may attend?

One should not dismiss these concerns as shrill exaggerations. The Prime Minister of New Zealand is openly agreeing that her policies will create two classes of people.  It took a group of Polish politicians to publicly call out developments in Australia as totalitarian – why are others silent?  In Australia, vaccinated people are free to spread disease, yet immune non-vaccinated are still subject to draconian restrictions – and those that protest are being shot with rubber bullets, tear-gassed and brutally beaten by riot police.  On the pretext of “prevent(ing) rising coronavirus cases from overwhelming the healthcare system and to protect people who cannot get vaccinated”, Lithuania introduced ruthless segregation in September.  Perhaps someone can explain to me how the trajectory of their autumnal epidemic varies from neighbouring Latvia or Estonia, or even very much unvaccinated Romania.

It is then all the more extraordinary to hear Hillary Clinton interviewed by Andrew Marr at the weekend, calling for the Prime Minister to “implement draconian rules and sanctions around vaccine uptake” and that he “he does need to mandate vaccines”.  Forgive me, but what has this got to do with Clinton?  Is this about people’s health, or a crude attempt to keep the UK toeing the line, lest it become obvious that draconian policies are not necessary?  After all, if the UK joined the Nordics in successfully rescinding Coronavirus restrictions, it would be harder for the health junta to ignore.

I am well aware of Godwin’s Law, but given 20^th century historical precedent, surely we should be hugely wary of restrictions that are introduced on the pretext of “keeping everyone safe”?  Especially if this segregation is imposed by emergency legislation without full debate and a vote in the House of Commons?  Speaking of which, the verdict of the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee is unequivocal on the matter – non, Monseigneur Johnson.  

Given the role that vaccine passports play in the enforcement of vaccine mandates – coercion by another name – we should steer well clear of them.  One only has to look at the righteous passion being roused amongst communities that have previously been subjected to segregation, e.g. Floyd Mayweather’s recent vocal support for Kyrie Irving, a basketballer who is currently barred from playing due to his vaccination status.  These wealthy individuals are able to stand up for what they believe in – but what of those who cannot afford to take a stand?  The hardest hit by segregation are the poorest.

We live in a reality that seems to have consistently undershot the direst predictions of the doomsday modellers.  Given that backdrop, we should step back from the brink.  The country should choose to face future challenges together and reject calls for a segregated society.  For therein lies a path to ruin: the minority that are cautious and doubtful would – at a stroke – find justification for their concern, and might well dig in for the long term.  Trust in healthcare services would be severely dented.  And everyone would lose, not least economically.  

Vaccine passports – alongside their ugly sibling, vaccine mandates – are harmful, divisive and totally contradictory.  They should be scrapped.  The authorities should try to win the argument, not resort to the tactics of petty tyrants.  

Dr Alex Starling (@alexstarling77) is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies.

In short, the testing frenzy that has engulfed the UK has resulted — predictably — in a blizzard of false positives and negatives. What does it all mean, apart from a stupendous amount of money being funnelled away from primary care and in the direction of diagnostic test providers? 

PCR has been treated as the “gold standard” ever since the so-called Corman-Drosten paper that characterised the SARS-CoV-2 PCR assay was peer-reviewed and published in double-quick time in January 2020. PCR — run on a lab-based diagnostic machine — is known to be quite sensitive (does not miss many infections, i.e. has a low false negative rate) but is also claimed to have a relatively high specificity (low false positive rate). Despite numerous challenges to these claims, its use has been the bedrock of the world’s response to the pandemic, perhaps most importantly to confirm the very few (nine) cases of Covid-19 in the active arm of the Pfizer Phase III trials. 

LFTs, on the other hand, are simple to use, and are very specific (unlikely to give a false positive), yet with relatively low sensitivity (so may often incorrectly give the all clear). LFT has had a very bad rep. While two new providers have recently been introduced in the UK, for many months the only supplier has been Innova, despite the US FDA issuing a Class I Recall Notice, the most serious type of recall for such devices.  Users are instructed to “Destroy the tests by placing them in the trash or return the tests to Innova using the FedEx return label that was included with the recall letter that Innova sent to customers”. Yet these LFT devices are still a core part of the UK’s eye-wateringly expensive “Operation Moonshot” screening programme.

The pros and cons of both types are a stark reminder that there is usually no such thing as an accurate test — performance depends on background prevalence and what one is trying to rule out or rule in.  Ideally, a test is both highly sensitive and highly specific.  LFT and PCR have different weaknesses: even if virus is present, (an incorrect) negative LFT will be relatively common.  Similarly, if you are not ill, then a PCR positive test should be treated with caution.  Drosten himself — speaking back in 2014 during the MERS outbreak — was unequivocal: “asymptomatic people should not be tested with PCR”. But that is another story.

Back to the Observer article. Co-authors Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters discuss the two diagnostics in a scenario where both testing methods are on firm ground: an individual has a positive LFT followed by a negative PCR.  Which to believe — the quick “at home” LFT or the “gold standard” PCR?  The question was triggered by the suspension of a test centre for issuing numerous negative PCR tests after positive LFTs.  It seems this testing centre was a bad egg, but it has crystallised a question that many have been asking — what is the point of all this screening? The ethics of mass screening decree that great care should be taken: the costs can very quickly outpace the benefits.  Not a trivial matter when waiting lists for life-saving treatments are getting longer.

Using a Bayesian likelihood ratio (LR), Spiegelhalter and Masters calculate that out of a cohort of 100 people who have all tested negative PCR after a positive LFT, around 40 of these 100 — i.e. a minority — are likely to have been incorrectly “exonerated” by the negative PCR, while the negative PCR would have correctly “exonerated” the rest, i.e. a majority of the cohort. This is for an assumed background viral prevalence of 1 in 60 cases in the initial sample of tests — at last week’s reported case rate for the UK, 1 in 224, the numbers shift considerably and the negative PCR would have incorrectly “exonerated” around 15 of every 100 of those that had tested LFT+ and then PCR-.

It is probably also worth mentioning at this stage that the very idea of “harbouring virus” being linked to the legal concept of “guilt” is a path that — given historical precedent — should be trodden with great care.  While the authors correctly explain how their LR calculation might be used in a (hypothetical) legal case to infer “moderate evidence in favour of you having an infection…”, they might also have emphasised that this is a relative measure that a court of law would apply to modify its prior views on “guilt” or “innocence”. The legal system, of course, starts with the presumption of innocence or, in this case, might take into account background prevalence and reports of any symptoms at the time the tests were taken, as well as any uncertainties associated with the quoted test sensitivities and specificities.   

Professor Norman Fenton, Professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary (University of London), explains this in an article published in Law, Probability and Risk: “One of the greatest challenges to the use of probabilistic reasoning in the assessment of criminal evidence is the ‘problem of the prior’, i.e. the difficulty in establishing an acceptable prior probability of guilt. Even strong supporters of a Bayesian approach have often preferred to ignore priors and focus on the likelihood ratio (LR) of the evidence. But to calculate if the probability of guilt, given the evidence, reaches the probability required for conviction (the standard of proof), the LR has to be combined with a prior”.

It is therefore curious that the authors’ overall conclusion is that “the negative PCR does not outweigh the positive LFD”.  This may be semantics.  But it would be wrong to interpret their phrase to mean that it is “moderately likely” that a person after LFT+ and then PCR- would — in absolute terms — be more likely than not to be “with virus”.  A criminal court requires proof “beyond reasonable doubt”; a civil court settles matters “on the balance of probability”, i.e. over 50 per cent. Only were background viral prevalence to rise to 1 in 40 (i.e. 2.5 per cent of every person is “with virus”) would one then expect half of our 100-strong cohort to actually be “with virus” following their sequential LFT+ and PCR- test results.

Perhaps the bigger question, therefore, is whether we should be spending all this money on testing.  If the NHS is under such pressure, would it not be better to direct this resource away from mass testing in the community and instead shore up critical care facilities? 

Given the numerous downsides (mostly cost but also, as outlined above, data that are anything but clear-cut), it is not abundantly clear why we do it — even after two tests per head, our 100-strong cohort is ultimately none the wiser regarding whether they are ill or not.  In the olden days (i.e. pre 2020), one would have just stayed at home if one was ill – a far cheaper method of stopping the spread.

Perhaps it is time for a David to slay the Operation Moonshot goliath… or is mass community testing now an untouchable shibboleth? 

Let us sincerely hope not — it is a frivolous luxury we can ill-afford.

Dr Alex Starling (@alexstarling77) is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies.

This is irrational. In September 2020, I described the path we were on as one that would destroy the life chances of the living. I suggested we should instead “First, Do No Harm”, because interventions – however well-intentioned – have unquantified harms which can end up having devastating consequences, especially if they do not yield the hoped-for benefits.  

Yet here we are again, and it is extraordinary that something I wrote thirteen months ago could be equally applicable to the coming winter, the only fundamental difference being that the nation’s finances have since been crippled.  
So where do we go from here? Surely not down the same road? 

The narrative of fear is shakily supported by four spindly constructs, each of which should be dispensed with. Let’s call them the Four Horsemen of the Coronapocalypse:

1. Lockdowns and draconian restrictions, such as test & trace, mask mandates and enforced isolation. Let’s face it, they don’t work.  Just compare relatively free England to highly vaccinated yet restricted Scotland – excess mortality has been excessively high this last summer.  Across the world, waves of epidemic have come and gone regardless of their severity (and in fact were usually waning prior to their imposition). Masks do not stop aerosol spread – breathe deeply within miles of a farm: when conditions are right, that bovine smell of country air will not have reached your nostrils telepathically. But the known harms of all restrictions are huge, and are amplified if these ‘one-size-fits-none’ non-pharmaceutical interventions are viciously enforced. Such over-bearing state control is known to cause serious supply-chain problems – empty supermarket shelves were commonplace behind the iron curtain.  

2. Mass screening/testing. There is a very large body of literature that discusses the ethics of mass screening campaigns – contrary to popular belief, they are not a harmless intervention. Both false negatives and false positives can have repercussions. It is therefore crucial to take into account the opportunity cost – i.e. what that money could be spent on instead – when constructing such a programme.  £1 billion on a few weeks of lateral flow testing, or a shiny new hospital?  Why were the experts – the UK National Screening Committee – totally excluded from the planning for Operation Moonshot?  Additionally, the use of a diagnostic test to determine the health of a person is anathema to pre-2020 medicine: it is for a doctor to diagnose illness.  Diagnostic tests are useful tools to confirm, or assist, this process of medical diagnosis – but they are just tools, and should not be used for primary diagnosis. Testing obsessively for SARS-CoV-2 means we don’t see the woods for the trees: roughly 10,000 people die every week in England & Wales, of which a small proportion involve Covid – if every life really mattered equally, would we not proportionally look at root causes? 

3. Vaccine mandates/passports. Coercing someone to undergo a medical procedure is grievous bodily harm.  Doing this by threatening penury because they lose their current employment is abhorrent. If it is possible to stoop any lower, some fear that vaccinated people are more likely to be super-spreaders (c.f. Marek’s disease).And if it is possible to compound such a terrible matter even further, it is particularly sick (sic) that naturally immune frontline healthcare workers (heroes in 2020) are the ones being turfed out of their jobs due the vaccine mandate imposed by the government, thus further undermining the NHS. Not only does coercion make a mockery of everything the West stands for, surely it has the potential to undermine confidence in medical authorities? And given popular messaging in the 80s and 90s, is it that unexpected that some will “just say no” to a drug pusher?  Especially when the government’s own data shows that Covid-19 rates are higher among the fully vaccinated in all age cohorts over 30 years old.

4. Censorship, bad science and the stifling of rigorous debate. This one is probably the most corrosive of the paper tigers, but it should be tamed nonetheless. Western society has had an incredible run of success based on individual freedoms and appropriate checks and balances to avoid state overreach. Each of the G7 industrialised nations is currently subject to a form of totalitarian rule: power has been exceptionally concentrated in the hands of very few individuals. For some reason the doomsday modelling is trotted out again and again, despite being consistently wrong. The press has been neutered or brought to heel with both stick (OFCOM’s iron control of media output) and carrot (taxpayer dollars spent on advertising). This is precisely the kind of lop-sided polity that the West has patronisingly criticised in developing countries in recent decades.

If it wasn’t for the news blackout, it would be common knowledge that: 

• The Nordics have essentially completely rescinded all Coronavirus restrictions, and are practically getting on with life. The Nordics are seeing ‘normal’ mortality rates;

• The USA decision to proceed with boosters led to the resignation of the two highly respected FDA senior vaccine team members, who then published a paper in the Lancet questioning this decision.  Instead, yesterday we were hectored by the Health Secretary to “get your booster jab or risk your freedoms”;

• We would know more about safe off-label treatments, for example Ivermectin, a very cheap and Nobel prize-winning antiviral drug.  After a history of veterinary use, it was approved by the FDA for human use in 1996, has been on the WHO’s list of essential medicines since at least 2015 and was described in the Journal of Antibiotics in 2020 as an antiviral “wonder drug”. The Nebraska Attorney General has issued a recent detailed opinion explicitly permitting the prescription of off-label Ivermectin for Covid-19.  So why do news outlets like the BBC publish hit pieces entitled “why people are using a horse drug”? We would also know more about Indian regions such as Uttar Pradesh that have very successfully utilised treatments – including Ivermectin – to cost-effectively limit the impact of Covid-19, despite very low vaccination rates.

If these Four Horsemen of the Coronapocalypse are taken out of the equation, SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 become an entirely manageable problem.  Endemic viruses cannot be suppressed or eradicated with leaky vaccines.  We can’t unspend the outpourings from the treasury since March 2020, but we most certainly should cut our losses.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has demanded a complete stop to testing of children. The vaccines should be made available to those who are at risk, not squeezed into every arm.  We don’t need to hobble the economy – or infringe liberties – with vaccine passports. We should rescind vaccine mandates to avoid health services being hit by staff losses.  

Most importantly, we must restore democracy by returning to “business as normal” in the House of Commons, which should include reforming legislation in the Public Health Act 1984 so that HM Government – or any petty tyrant for that matter – can never again unleash the Four Horsemen of the Coronapocalypse.

Dr Alex Starling (@alexstarling77) is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies.

Some of the language used by the PM and his advisors yesterday hints at an underlying irrationality in the government’s approach – it seems contingencies will be adopted if it is not possible “to keep the virus at manageable levels”.  What does this mean?  There is now no point in attempting to artificially suppress spread of the virus for evermore, otherwise we are accepting that both vaccine-induced and natural immunity do not exist, and would call into question both the cost of the vaccine rollout and the justification for the economic damage inflicted by 18 months of on-off restrictions. 

That aside, Plan A almost sounds like an appropriate way to balance the risks of living while protecting the vulnerable – “stay at home if you are ill” being the stand-out piece of common sense in this section, as well as an encouraging section on antivirals and therapeutics. 

What is still not clear is why certain quack measures based on flimsy evidence still feature – for example those related to the highly suspect droplet theory of transmission.  Presumably this is to justify the inevitable cheerleading for that most pointless of non-pharmaceutical interventions, cloth face masks.  In the absence of any real-world examples of them making a demonstrable difference, perhaps the nation is destined for this to become a tribal matter of disagreement for months and years to come.

It is also unclear what the point of ongoing mass testing is.  A little-known fact is that an excellent leading indicator of Covid-19 hospitalisation has been the government’s Respiratory DataMart system, established after the Swine Flu epidemic in 2009.  The rest of the mass testing infrastructure that we have put in place at huge cost just seems to generate lots and lots of case counts.  Surely this could otherwise be spent on tooling up “our” NHS to cope with winter demand?  What is the point of ascertaining asymptomatic infections if most people have now been exposed to the virus, and all vulnerable people have been offered vaccination? 

Overall, while Plan A is not unreasonable, I have various concerns:

·       Booster vaccines.  Everyone aged 50+ is going to be offered a mRNA booster vaccine – even those who previously got the AstraZeneca vaccine.  This mix-and-match approach has not been extensively tested, and in any case goes against the opinion of Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, one of the developers of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.  This fast move to mRNA boosters – already underway in Israel and being proposed in the US – also led to the resignation of the senior vaccine team at the FDA at the end of August.  Marion Gruber and Philip Krause, formerly director and deputy director of the Office of Vaccine Research and Review, have just published a letter in The Lancet that casts doubt on the wisdom of pushing the booster button now: “There could be risks if boosters are widely introduced too soon, or too frequently, especially with vaccines that can have immune-mediated side-effects (such as myocarditis, which is more common after the second dose of some mRNA vaccines)”.  These are strong words, spoken by revered experts.  Note that the Pfizer booster is exactly the same formulation as was designed for the Alpha variant and potentially – as per the July SAGE long-term evolution document – makes vaccine escape more likely.  It is always worth looking at the canaries in the coalmine, and data from Israel is showing rampant growth in case load “despite” its booster programme.

·       Vaccinating children.  I have written about my objections to this policy previously, but it is worth scotching the idea that vaccinating children will be of overall benefit.  In fact, there is likely to be a lot of school disruption due to adverse effects (let us hope that disruption to girls’ menstrual cycles will not cause lasting damage).  In any case, it is more diversion of resources – these vaccines do not inject themselves.  And why are we doing this anyway?  Rates have plummeted since the English schools went back.  Another failed forecast from the doom-mongers and their models.

·       For some inexplicable reason, Covid Passports have not been completely and finally abandoned.  Why?  The House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee is dead-set against, and it would be an appalling travesty for the government to push them through using emergency powers. They would alienate people and add cost, complexity and red tape to an already overburdened economy.  And as we saw from the “Boardmasters Affair”, it is not as if they help hamper transmission.  Consider the Marek’s Disease disaster: vaccinated people can be just as infectious (if not more so!) than unvaccinated people.

However, it is Plan B – the contingency plan – that seriously worries me.  It is almost as if the government is itching to redeploy interventions that previously did not work particularly well.  Still there is no attempt to outline a credible cost/benefit plan.  It may be fine for those that quite like working from home, but tell this to those that are still being forced – inhumanely – to stay apart from family in their final days.  To turn the evangelical catchphrase on its head, we must believe in Life Before Death.

And why should restrictions be on the cards in any case? Their effectiveness has surely now been debunked after 18 months?  Look at Sweden.  Look at Denmark, which has just removed all Coronavirus restrictions and gone back to normal life.  Many participated in the vaccination programme to allow the country to return to normal, and the Prime Minister should keep that bargain.

The root of the problem is obvious – the country is operating in a very bizarre way, which is putting services (and social care) under massive pressure.  In the summer, respiratory disease typically results in deaths of 800 people a week, and that rises to around 2,500, or even 3,500 a week (out of around 10,000 deaths per week from all causes) in winter.  Those passing away will often “test positive” for the respiratory disease of the season, be that influenza-like illness, Covid or respiratory disease caused by one of the other coronaviruses.  They might well go to hospital and then subsequently pass away “with Covid”, much as many do “with vaccine”, as per ONS data.  We must accept that some people will come to the end of their lives over the course of the next months, and we have a moral duty to ensure that they can live this life to the full.  Grandparents must be free to choose to see their grandchildren.  And those that need healthcare should not be excluded from hospitals, or have treatment delayed, because of an obsession with a particular virus.

Finally, the winter plan magnanimously talks of relinquishing “legal provisions [of the Coronavirus Act 2020] that are no longer necessary or proportionate”, but allowing the government to retain its emergency dictatorial powers.  This is a sop.  We need the checks and balances on executive power more than ever – it is high time there was a return to full democracy.  MPs should politely decline the offer to extend the Coronavirus Act 2020 and start debating how we can get people’s lives back to normal. 

Dr Alex Starling is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexstarling77

So now it’s official: the choices made over the last 18 months to “follow the science” were optional.  On Monday – against the scientific advice of the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) – the UK Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) gave the green light for 12-15 year-olds to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

What has the science to say on the matter?

·       Boys in this age group are many times more likely to be hospitalised with myocarditis – serious heart disease that can be fatal – than with Covid-19;

·       “Once most adults are vaccinated, circulation of SARS-CoV-2 may in fact be desirable, as it is likely to lead to primary infection early in life when disease is mild”; and

·       The benefits of vaccination with mRNA vaccines (the ones proposed for use on our children) are inferior and less durable than natural immunity gained from being exposed to SARS-CoV-2.

This should be an open and shut case.  In medical terms, the benefits of any intervention must exceed any associated risks: First, do no harm.  The precautionary principle applies.  Covid mortality in the young is so low that even a single vaccine-related fatality might well exceed the casualty rate related to SARS-CoV-2.  Is this a risk worth taking?  In an effort to control waning immunity, Israel is already on a 3^rd dose of Pfizer for those aged 12 and over – triple helpings of heart failure, anyone?

Despite all of this, the CMOs presented convoluted spreadsheet modelling that claims vaccinating secondary school pupils will result in fewer Covid-related missed school days, including an ominous threat that otherwise school closures might be needed as a “contingency”. 

This is twisted and perverse.  Since when is this an acceptable line to take?  It is a poor attempt to justify the indefensible.  Full of caveats and conjecture, these models are a stupendously poor effort.  And the grand conclusion?  Apparently a full vaccine roll-out might save one day – yes, one day! – of in-person teaching per 20 children.

Chillingly, the CMOs have in mind that a “child-centred approach to communication and deployment of the vaccine should be the primary objective”.  This is code for aggressive marketing to children to coerce participation.  And parents will lose the right of veto. 

Why do this?  Even if the known and unknown adverse effects are acceptable (and the science tends to indicate they are not), the JCVI points out that delivery of a vaccine programme for children and young people is likely to be disruptive to education, with adverse reactions leading to time away from school anyway. 

And what of the cost?  Jabbing around 2.5 million otherwise healthy children has a direct cost of roughly £100 million (just think how many cancer treatments that could pay for).  And the programme will of course cause substantial stress on an already overloaded health service. 

In summary, this comes across as a severe case of not seeing the wood for the trees (or perhaps wilful obscuration of the wood?).  All rationality has been abandoned.  The implicit threat of school closures is cynical – even before Covid vaccines had been deployed, those countries that kept schools open had better outcomes than those that didn’t. 

At Monday’s press conference, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty stated that it is “very important people stick to what they are good at and don’t try and bring in novelties”. 

Well, quite.  First – and last – do no harm.  Those novelty models and threats to withdraw schooling have no place as a justification for children being subjected to an unnecessary – and potentially harmful – medical intervention.  

Dr Alex Starling is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexstarling77

At the start of this week, Sky News, The Independent and The Standard, all ran essentially identical articles proclaiming that “Almost three quarters of people under 50 who needed hospital treatment for the COVID Delta variant last week in England were unvaccinated, figures have revealed”. (Italics added).

Despite being very similar – an odd matter in itself – the articles also happen to be complete hokum.  At best a shoddy interpretation of data; at worst a terrible twisting of important facts that could have life and death implications.

I make no criticism of the underlying data from the recently released Technical Briefing 22 from Public Health England (PHE) regarding SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern, covering data from 1 February to 29 August 2021. This period of time is not seven days; it is just shy of seven months.  But it is actually the source of the phrase “last week” in the above-quoted sentence, as per the second paragraph of Sky’s article: “Data released by Public Health England showed 9,472 people were admitted to hospital with the highly transmissible coronavirus variant in the seven days up to 29 August”. 

This sentence is totally false – you can check for yourself and find that 9,472 figure in Table 5 of the report (page 22).  Given that vaccination of the under-50s only started about half-way through this period, and prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been relatively low for the second half of that period, the data presented is hardly surprising. But are there any underlying signals that warrant further investigation?

As one can easily tell from the incremental numerator in the Technical Report’s title, it is published regularly.  The predecessor, Technical Report 21, includes data to 15 August.  It is therefore a fairly straightforward exercise to compare the difference, which shows a completely different story.  It seems that in the fortnight to 29 August, the proportion of those admitted to hospital in this category (unvaccinated) fell in each of these categories – under 50, over 50 and all cases.  And just to make the obvious leap: this means that the proportion of those vaccinated rose in each of these categories.

Is this meaningful?  I don’t know.  I don’t have enough data to say – but I would say it warrants more detailed analysis.  The population started out as being 100 per cent unvaccinated, and this proportion has shifted over time.  More accurately age-stratified statistics would be helpful.  The data presented by PHE is for all sequenced samples where the variant has been identified as the Delta strain, which may not be an unbiased sample of all cases.  Hospitalisations are important, of course, but if people are being admitted, successfully treated, and then released, then this might actually be a good thing.  It would seem that hospital death rates are not “flashing amber”, unlike non-Covid excess mortality at home, which is on a “code red”.

But back to the published material from the Terrible Trio, which was brought to my attention by Alex Groundwater, a programme director working in bio-tech. You will not be surprised to hear that the rest of the articles are similarly riddled with errors and misinterpretations, as well as making leaps of faith that defy rationality.  

It’s almost as if – given that these different news publishers have managed to print these essentially identical articles – they were prepared elsewhere and issued to them for publication.  What is therefore particularly troubling is the content in the latter parts of the articles.  The Independent has subsequently corrected the time period, but not changed the tone of the rest of its article, which switches to emotional blackmail based on the erroneous conclusions from their previous incorrect calculations.  Both The Standard and Sky use the infamous passive voice to deliver the same message: “the government has been urged to ‘get on’ with the vaccine booster programme”. 

Why?  Who is running the show here?  If the proportional number of younger people being admitted to hospital is rising, are we sure that this is a good idea?  Is it appropriate to use emotional blackmail – and tacitly endorse the coercion of younger people – to participate in a medical programme that has no wider societal benefit but could have terrible long-term consequences for those individuals?  By the by, information released by the CDC on 30 August 2021 indicates that post mRNA vaccination, the rate of observed myocarditis (a serious long-term heart condition that has a high fatality rate) is ten times greater than expected in young females, and one hundred times greater than expected in young males.  Oh, and what is happening in highly vaccinated Israel versus mostly unvaccinated India?  The vaccine saviour narrative is not looking as compelling as some have claimed… unless you are in the business of yoking the inhabitants of the world on a twice-annual booster shot subscription.  Is the cure worse than the disease?

These are the kind of questions that I would expect an enquiring Fourth Estate to be exploring.  Not parroting a nebulous “party line”.  Who provided those scripts for the Terrible Trio to apply some whitewash and then publish with some window dressing?  Why the reticence to correct what is obviously wrong?  Where are the fact checkers, otherwise so keen on stifling what should be vigorous scientific debate? 

Perhaps there is a clue to be found in the Coronavirus Act 2020 and Ofcom’s iron control of media output, essentially requiring the media to regurgitate what the government requests it to say.  The danger here is that the checks and balances on the levers of power have not so much been eroded as totally obliterated.  Reaction has previously reported on this descent towards the pariah status of a banana republic and the terrible toll this would have, both in terms of lives and quality of life.

What seems particularly galling from this little example is that there seems to have been little attempt from The Independent, Sky and The Standard to even attempt to provide objective information to the public. 

They must do better than this.  Truthful and accurate reporting matters.  It is literally a matter of life and death.

Dr Alex Starling is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexstarling77

Elsewhere in the world, cognitive dissonance is rife.  Despite being previously lauded for virus eradication and suppression strategies, countries like Australia and Vietnam are seeing rapid increase in cases of Covid-19.  Despite these approaches being patently futile, these regions have now seen stringent restrictions imposed, including the absolutely pointless imposition of face masks while outside, even when walking alone.  Police have taken enforcement action that borders on masochistic cruelty.  In certain parts of Vietnam you are not even allowed to go outside to buy food, with people having to rely on soldiers to drop off food parcels.

Do you remember the John Snow Memorandum, published in The Lancet in October 2020 and actively promoted by the zero-Covid crowd? It stated that “Japan, Vietnam, and New Zealand, to name a few countries, have shown that robust public health responses can control transmission, allowing life to return to near-normal, and there are many such success stories”.  I am not sure about you, but having to beg the military to remember to throw a food parcel at my door is not “near-normal”, nor can I mark these down as successes.  It is almost as if there is a news blackout on the fact that the likes of Sweden, Norway and Denmark – which took a light-touch (but by no means uniform) “we’re in this together” approach to the Covid crisis – have essentially got through the last 18 months without destroying their economies or ripping the fabric of society asunder.  Schools have remained mostly open and children unmasked.  Oh, and without overburdening their healthcare systems or suffering material excess mortality.  I wonder why?  Denmark has in fact declared that Covid is no longer a “socially critical disease” and is dropping all restrictions as of 10 September.

Closer to home, the madness continues unabated.  The government quietly announced that it was going to proceed with vaccine passports – also known as Covid-status certificates – despite there being no quantifiable or rational reason to do so.  This flies in the face of a damning report by the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee: the “decision to launch the Covid-status certificate function on the NHS app for international travel, without notifying and consulting Parliament, could be construed as contempt for Parliament and this Committee”.  The report is well worth a more detailed perusal, as it outlines just how pointless – and costly – these vaccine passports are likely to be.  They introduce a form of medical segregation that is likely to have some terrible societal consequences.  Why is government not listening to Parliament?  The obvious answer is that the Coronavirus Act 2020 has stripped Parliament of its powers, but why is this situation allowed to persist?  After all, Parliament sat through two world wars and the duration of the Spanish ‘flu – truly devastating times.

What is more, recent data continue to indicate – as many had suggested right at the start of this debacle – that immunity acquired from infection is longer-lasting (and potentially more robust) than immunity conferred by vaccination.  If vaccine-induced immunity lasts less than six months and there is a material increase in cases of myocarditis following the vaccine especially in the young, surely we should be pausing, rather than accelerating the rollout?  Myocarditis is not just a minor inconvenience: a previous study in the Japanese Circulation Journal found that over time “the overall early mortality of all patients with myocarditis was 38 per cent in spite of aggressive treatment during hospitalisation”.  And with the majority of adults vaccinated, why does the government’s own data show non-Covid cases of cardiac arrest running at over ten times higher than the equivalent period last year?  Nothing to see here: it looks like the government wishes to press ahead with coercive tactics such as banning the unvaccinated from attending nightclubs. 

Those that play along with the vaccination game in order to travel – or, like Michael Gove, to throw some shapes on the dancefloor – might consider that Israel has already automatically rescinded “green pass” rights from those that have not yet had their first Pfizer booster jab.  If it was that good (remember “the magic begins”?), why does one need a 3^rd vaccination within the space of 12 months?  Hardly a compelling proposition.  In any case, a group of researchers have just published the following research paper that concludes that “the introduction of vaccine passports will likely lower inclination to accept a Covid-19 vaccine”. 

On 23 August, the Senior Editor of the BMJ, Peter Doshi, reiterated a call he made earlier in the year to the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to “slow down and get the science right—there is no legitimate reason to hurry to grant a license to a coronavirus vaccine”.  His piece makes for sobering reading – it does not seem that originally planned and adequately controlled safety studies are being carried out as initially promised.  This worries me.

If we listen to the wrong voices, the next few months are going to be daunting.  Yet we must remember that every autumn – since time immemorial – we have seen a rise in mortality from respiratory disease.  The run-in to Christmas will be no different.  So let us reject the absurd doom-laden forecasts generated by over-zealous computer modellers. 

Instead, let us hold on to our humanity and ensure that we live our lives to the full.  Unilateral, undemocratic and unworkable restrictions are – demonstrably – not the answer.

Dr Alex Starling is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexstarling77

First came a paper from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) considering the long-term evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Even taking into account previous hyperbolic “scariant-mongering” from this source, the paper is both somewhat extraordinary and ultimately borderline hysterical.  Yet the document repeated a nugget previously raised by SAGE in July: “current vaccine failure” is “almost certain”.  

SAGE are no strangers to cognitive dissonance, and this paper does not disappoint in this regard. There is a suggestion that future vaccines should be designed to “induce high and durable levels of mucosal immunity in order to reduce infection of and transmission from vaccinated individuals”, more than a tacit admission that the current crop do not actually do this. What is more, this would apparently “reduce the possibility of variant selection in vaccinated individuals”, neatly puncturing the trope that the unvaccinated are variant factories and confirming fears that the more you vaccinate, the greater the evolutionary pressure on SARS-CoV-2 to mutate in an unnatural fashion.  

This brings us to last week’s surprising decision by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to announce routine vaccination of 16 and 17-year-olds, a reversal of their position only two weeks previously: “JCVI is of the view that the health benefits of universal vaccination in children and young people below the age of 18 years do not outweigh the potential risks”.  Professor Wei Chen Lim – the chairman of the JCVI Covid sub-committee and a leading academic – presented no convincing new evidence to justify this U-turn.

This is the kind of muddled thinking that could have serious repercussions.  Why expand a vaccine programme to a cohort for whom the risks outweigh the benefits both to the individual and to society as whole?  Especially if that action also increases the likelihood of accelerating variant selection as per SAGE’s concerns? Any medical intervention – even a saline injection – carries risk of complication. If the medical procedure has net downsides to both the individual and the overall population, surely there are serious ethical questions about such a recommendation, let alone the coercion of young people to undergo this intervention? Reaction has previously outlined how and why coercive vaccination mandates and compulsory vaccination are wrong. 

It is worth noting that Israel, one of the world’s most vaccinated populations, is seeing rapid growth in hospitalisations of fully vaccinated people, despite rolling out a Pfizer booster jab (i.e. a third vaccination within 12 months). Is this wise? What about unknown long-term effects or SAGE’s concern about vaccine escape? Many other countries and regions seem to be managing just fine using the vaccines as they were initially intended, namely to protect those at risk. Kate Bingham, the UK Vaccines Czar, stated unequivocally in October 2020: “People keep talking about ‘time to vaccinate the whole population’, but that is misguided. There’s going to be no vaccination of people under 18. It’s an adult-only vaccine, for people over 50, focusing on health workers and care home workers and the vulnerable”.

This would be a completely rational approach. Some observers have previously noted the success of various islands that have succeeded in suppressing SARS-CoV-2.  But following extensive breakthrough cases, Iceland’s chief epidemiologist confirmed a few days ago that it was pointless attempting to eradicate a virus that is becoming endemic. Instead, he recommends allowing the virus to spread and protecting the vulnerable, vindicating the proponents of Focused Protection and the UK’s pandemic preparedness plan as of February 2020. An entirely sensible approach, given that more and more evidence is emerging that natural immunity is long lasting and has “greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination”.

The final word should probably go to Professor Sir Andrew Pollard of the Oxford Vaccine Group, and also a member of the JCVI, speaking this week: “One of the strongest arguments that has been repeated is to vaccinate children to protect adults, but vaccinating children is not going to completely block transmission, so it doesn’t achieve that goal”. Aside from the fact that this “strongest argument” is in any case ethically unsound (what kind of society deploys its children as human shields?), why would one proceed down this path until safety issues – such as the risk of myocarditis in young people – have been fully bottomed out?

Phew – we’re still a few days shy of the middle of the month, but at this rate there will be plenty more silly season madness to report. Stay tuned.

Dr Alex Starling (@alexstarling77) is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies.

With England’s footballers giving us all a well-needed boost, it is perhaps tempting just to hang in there for a bit of normality to return while we dream of football – potentially – coming home again.

But it doesn’t require the insights of Marcus Rashford to realise that something is not right when sweating football fans can sing, mingle and party away in and around Wembley, but children are being excluded from school for 10 days because an asymptomatic classmate has tested “positive” when the likelihood of anyone being infectious is actually very low.

Judge a society on how it treats its children. And the last 16 months have been a timeline of misery for the youngest in our society. Houston, we’ve had a problem – one hell of a problem. Yes, hospitalisations are soaring. No, not because of Covid-19: mental health issues are stacking up, with 70 per cent of child admissions to hospital due to mental illness.

Thankfully, we are seeing some pushback from the Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, calling for an end to the use of pseudoscientific “bubbles” in schools. They were an initial stab at dealing with Covid-19 when we were grappling in the dark back in the early days of the pandemic. They are not a long-term solution for a disease that we now know has very little effect on children. In the absence of ill children, the closure of whole year group bubbles because of a positive test here or there is – quite frankly – lunacy. Children – and parents – are at breaking point. This has to stop.

There are serious implications associated with an unhealthy focus on seeing children as a reservoir of disease, for multiple reasons. Firstly, we now know the role of children in transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in school settings is limited. Secondly, as this paper in the British Medical Journal attests, once most adults are vaccinated, circulation of SARS-CoV-2 may in fact be desirable, as it is likely to lead to primary infection early in life when disease is mild. It is now very clear that natural immunity is powerful and long-lasting, and arguably provides a more flexible arsenal than vaccination in dealing with Covid-19 and future variants. To paraphrase: in order to add to Chris Whitty’s wall of vaccinated people, society should be welcoming an additional wall of immune young people to help protect the vulnerable from future waves of respiratory disease. 

As many have said – including Boris Johnson – we need to learn to live with SARS-CoV-2. This will not be as daunting as some are making it out to be. Given what we know about our incredible immune systems, it seems highly likely that the various variants will circulate like common colds. More and more treatments will become available, and vaccinations may remain an option for primarily older age groups. 

This brings us to the third – and arguably the most important – reason for allowing schools to revert to normality. Given what children have been forced to put up with for the last 16 months, it is just frankly inappropriate for a society to continue treating its young in this way. 

Rather than loosening restrictions entirely, it has been mooted that daily testing could be introduced to reduce isolation times for children. What would be the point of this? The principle of more and more testing – referred to as “mass screening” in the literature – has serious ethical issues attached, none of which have been considered since early 2020. As Angela Raffle, a consultant in public health at the University of Bristol, writes in the BMJ: “The UK National Screening Committee (NSC)—the recognised source of expert, independent, and conflict free advice to ministers on screening—had played no part in the decision making process” regarding the set-up of the UK testing regime. And Operation Moonshot, the government’s eye-wateringly expensive mass testing scheme, risks the “demolition of hard won frameworks for protecting the public from ineffective, poorly delivered, and unethically practised screening”.

We should follow the lead of countries that rightly deploy testing to confirm a diagnosis after the onset of symptoms. To top it all, the lateral flow tests procured by the UK government have been banned by the US Food and Drug Administration as they are not fit for purpose. 

It is high time that we put our children first, and put a firm stop to the doublethink that allows one rule for adult footballers, G7 delegates and business travellers, yet imposes onerous restrictions on the youngest and most vulnerable amongst us. 

Let children be children, and be done – now – with these ridiculous bubbles and testing regimes, as they are morally repugnant and helping no one. Children might be resilient, but if we persist in imposing harsh and nonsensical, pseudoscientific measures on them, we might live to regret it when it is their time to look after us.

Dr Alex Starling is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexstarling77.

Whoosh. That was the sound of Pandora’s box opening at the mention of this most polarising of topics. On the one (far) side are those that see all vaccinations as inherently evil.  On the other (far) side are some fairly mainstream personalities that liken vaccine refusal to drink driving.  

We all know the story: successful trials with wonderful results, developed at warp speed (US), restoration of a bit of national pride (UK); Covid essentially eliminated for the season. They demonstrably work – post vaccination, the levels of relevant antibodies created in vaccinated individuals boosts the humoral immune system to such an extent that Chris Whitty’s “wall of vaccinated people” should help prevent any future epidemic. 

Open and shut case? If you like simple answers it is probably best to stop reading here. The answer – as so often in life – is that a simple binary answer doesn’t adequately reflect the nuanced complexities. 

Let us take a very quick diversion into the maths. As per the British Medical Journal, the clinical trials were set up to succeed, and were “not designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospitalisations, intensive care use, or deaths”. The various efficacies (relative risk reduction, or RRR) quoted for the various vaccines (all > 50 per cent and some in the 90s) are, as the name implies, relative values, which neglect to take into account the absolute risk reduction (ARR) across the whole population. 

Writing in the Lancet, Olliaro et al from the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health at the University of Oxford make this point succinctly: “ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs: 1.3% for the AstraZeneca-Oxford, 1.2% for the Moderna-NIH, 1.2% for the J&J, 0.93% for the Gamaleya, and 0.84% for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines”. In summary: relative efficacy (as reported in the popular press) is not the same as overall effectiveness.  

And herein lies the crux of the issue – the “risk of Covid” to an individual is hugely skewed by other factors, in particular by age, but also of course whether or not one has already had the disease (or indeed been exposed previously to it). What is good for the goose might not be so good for the gander.  Medical ethics – guided by the “first do no harm” principle – considers that the risk of any intervention (e.g. a Covid-19 vaccine) needs to be comprehensively lower than any risk of inaction, i.e. not being vaccinated. 

Consider three different subsets of possible vaccine candidates:

1.       An 80-year-old grandparent who does not think they have previously had Covid-19 decides to get vaccinated.  This is a rational course of action.

2.       My daughter – a child under 10 with no underlying health issues – is currently at essentially zero risk from Covid-19. It would take a lot to persuade me to allow her to be vaccinated with any of the above vaccines due to the precautionary principle: given zero risk of inaction, any risk of intervention is unacceptable. This is a rational approach, and is endorsed by the BMJ (Covid vaccines are “hard to justify right now for most children in most countries”) and by many medics, including this group of 40 UK doctors, citing short and long-term safety concerns, as well as a lack of demonstrable benefit to the overall community.

3.       I am 43; I have most certainly been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and have previously exhibited all the symptoms of Covid-19. Given what we now know about natural immunity, the risk to me from further exposure to the virus (and any variants) is low. 

It is easy to imagine the decision-making process for potential vaccinees in categories (1) and (2) being relatively straightforward. But what about me? I would be delighted to take one for the team if it could be unequivocally shown that I was less likely to be a future burden on the NHS or a transmitter of the disease. But it seems perverse to take up a vaccination slot ahead of others (anywhere in the world) whose need is greater and who might wish to have one.

Where the benefits to the individual and the herd are not clear cut, the case in favour of the jab is weaker. The long-term effects are not – cannot – be known, and there are plenty of reports of adverse effects, which of course do burden both the NHS and the taxpayer (the vaccine manufacturers having been indemnified). There is also the potential of negative impacts on the herd: antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) is a process whereby the presence of specific antibodies can be beneficial to a virus.  The trial data is silent on the matter of biodistribution, a greater understanding of which could help shed light on some of the possible adverse effects being noted. The much-vaunted “vaccine effect” in early 2021 celebrated by the UK media is not as unambiguous as it should be. One would expect the divergence of cases/admissions/deaths for vaccinated age groups to be in that order, but instead was the other way round: consistent with what one might have seen in a naturally ending epidemic. Then there is the unexplained phenomenon of increases in Covid-19 cases post-vaccination. Are we missing something?

But… “vaccines work”. Well yes, they do – but the question is at what cost, both to the individual, and the herd. We don’t know all the answers. The humoral immune system is not the only game in town, and the arguments against childhood vaccination do not instantaneously go away on an adult’s 18^th birthday – life’s complexities invariably manifest themselves on a sliding scale. There is no point invoking the precautionary principle to encourage across-the-board vaccination now if there is even a sliver of doubt about the possibility of an “own goal” ADE-enhanced epidemic next winter. 

In the post-epidemic – virus-endemic – scenario we find ourselves in, “circulation of SARS-CoV-2 may in fact be desirable, as it is likely to lead to primary infection early in life when disease is mild, followed by booster re-exposures throughout adulthood as transmission blocking immunity wanes but disease blocking immunity remains high”, as per Lavine et al in the BMJ, who go on to state that “the marginal benefits should therefore be considered in the context of local healthcare resources, equitable distribution of vaccines globally, and a more nuanced understanding of the differences between vaccine and infection induced immunity”.

The science is nuanced. We should note that a group of doctors – including those who have actively promoted the safety of the Covid vaccines – not anti-vaxx cranks – have suggested that vaccination should be limited to those over 65 years of age plus any additional “at risk” categories.

In conclusion, and based on observed data to date, the argument in favour of universal vaccination – using the current crop of vaccines – is not unequivocal. 

The principle of informed consent exists for a reason, as it protects both the integrity of medicine and public confidence in it. Woe betides us if these go by the wayside.

Dr Alex Starling is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexstarling77

But wait – what is this? A frisson of tension is in the air. Despite the (expected) seasonal abatement of respiratory disease, with excess mortality in the UK running comfortably below average, apparently a new Indian variant is running rampant in Bolton. This claim seems not to be supported by the government’s own data. Nevertheless – according to HM Government ‘ministers’ – a full reopening on the first day of summer is ‘at risk’ due to ‘vaccine refusers’. This is an extraordinary leap, especially given the absolute numbers involved: Bolton NHS Foundation Trust reported a grand total of 12 patients with Covid-19 have been admitted to hospital since the beginning of May.

And to add fuel to the fire, note the tone: ‘vaccine refuseniks’ are being ‘targeted’. Given the specific historical references to Soviet repression of minorities, and noting the exhortations of a notorious cavalcade that took to cruising the north London streets at the weekend, one might naively have expected more nuanced language. But perhaps this is too much to expect from a government that seems to be drinking deep from the populist well.

This is a very sinister development, and raises the bar regarding the use of menacing language to achieve ends unknown. After all, everyone who is at risk has been offered a vaccine; levels of natural immunity are very high. There is a high degree of confidence that the vaccines protect against the Indian variant, and as reported in Nature, we can and should expect very high post-infectious T-cell immunity in those who have recovered from Covid-19. In fact, as argued in the BMJ in an article published last week, “once most adults are vaccinated, circulation of SARS-CoV-2 may in fact be desirable, as it is likely to lead to primary infection early in life when disease is mild, followed by booster re-exposures throughout adulthood as transmission-blocking immunity wanes but disease-blocking immunity remains high”. Along these lines, it will not have escaped people’s notice that many places in the northern hemisphere have been operating without restrictions now for many months, helping to boost natural immunity in the younger population. 

We should note, of course, that we do not live in a risk-free world – an asteroid could obliterate us at any moment. But that should just encourage us to live out the days we do have. The chances of a few cases of the Indian variant in Bolton triggering an epidemic are infinitesimally small, especially at this time of year – viruses that cause respiratory disease are currently themselves in lockdown, waiting for autumnal cold and humidity. This is especially true given the progress of said variant in India itself, with a sharp downturn in new cases despite negligible progress on the vaccination front.

Against this background, the pressure being brought to bear seems out of place. The concept of asymmetric risk has been discussed at length. The ‘My Body, My Choice’ crowd seem curiously quiet: an individual’s decision to proceed with an injection should be a matter of informed consent, not something decreed by top-down diktat and laced with veiled threats. Resorting to such foul means risks huge damage to the credibility of vaccines, one of the most miraculous cornerstones of medical advancement since Louis Pasteur’s discoveries in the 19^th century. If it is possible to achieve 90 per cent plus take-up of a vaccine that protects from measles (a horrific childhood disease) by ‘winning the argument’, then we should be doing the same here. In the words of our Chief Medical Officer, Covid-19 now faces a ‘wall of vaccinated people’.

In the fight to encourage people to accept the prick of a needle, it is not acceptable to threaten the use of blunt instruments for those that will not (or indeed cannot). The use of threatening language to unjustifiably scapegoat these groups is vile, unethical and likely to be hugely counter-productive. The government should not be a playground bully; it must try to win the argument.

Dr Alex Starling is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexstarling77

Nice catchy lines – not bad for a lawyer. The scene was set: oppositions thrive on governments that are in crisis and fail to protect the country from disaster. Rather presciently, Sir Keir also had this to say about the imposition of further draconian restrictions: “It would be a sign of government failure, not an act of God. It would take an immense toll on people’s physical and mental health and on the economy. We need a national effort to prevent a national lockdown”.

Well, quite. Whether you are in favour of draconian restrictions to help fight respiratory disease or not, it is hard to disagree with those words. The toll on people’s physical and mental health and on the economy has indeed been stupendous – a sign of government failure. Grateful as we all are for a booming – though probably inflationary – economy for now, I am reminded that the easiest way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one. And statistics do deceive: reduce an economy by 20 per cent and then a subsequent 20 per cent increase from the nadir still leaves you 4 per cent short of where you started.

But we are where we are.  And, superficially, it seems odd that Labour, under Sir Keir’s stewardship, has not benefited from Tory woes. On top of the collateral damage from lockdowns (which other countries managed to avoid) and a trashed economy, we have had the flat refurbishment scandal, the ‘chatty rat’ and of course good old-fashioned sleaze: huge questions remain regarding government procurement while Parliament has been neutered by the 2020 Coronavirus Act. 

One would have thought this would be fertile ground for the former Director of Public Prosecutions, a certain Sir Keir Rodney Starmer KCB QC. “Mr Forensic” should be able to run rings around the Prime Minister at PMQs, and he has indeed scored some notable victories without managing to eviscerate his opponent.

But… now Hartlepool. You can’t run, you can’t hide. The ruling Conservative Junta winning a by-election in the formerly Red Wall with over half the votes cast is an absolutely devastating result, whichever way you look at it. Yes, turnout was low, but this is baked into by-election calculus.

Where has Labour gone wrong? Is the party too centrist? Some are urging Starmer to tack left, but this approach was roundly rejected by the voting public in 2019. 

I think the answer to this question can be found in Starmer’s Doncaster speech. In it, he promised to be a “constructive opposition”, noting that Labour is “not going to win back those we’ve lost with a single speech or a clever policy offer. Trust takes time. It starts with being a credible opposition. With taking the job seriously. That’s what we will do”.

Which is nothing more than a bland restatement of his job title: Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. It is his job to oppose, which he has promised to do constructively and credibly. But he cannot deliver on this with the Coronavirus Act in force, leaving a small cabal of men able to impose unfettered restrictions, unchecked by Parliament and with the fourth estate forced by OFCOM to parrot the government’s narrative.

There is one person responsible for this: Sir Keir. Even the Liberal Democrats voted against the six-month extension to these tyrannical powers in March, and there is plentiful backbench opposition in Tory ranks to extinguish the Tory majority in the house. But with Labour waving the legislation through, power continues to be concentrated in the hands of Boris and his cronies. 

Perhaps the public has sensed this, and wants more than warm words from Starmer. They want a credible opposition, not one that wafts more power into the hands of the Tories.

This publication has repeatedly called for Parliament to be fully recalled (any MP that is at risk should now have been offered a vaccine). Let’s get the mother of democracies working again. There is no excuse for us to be ruled by diktat any more.  “Trust takes time” – yes, and probably the most important thing that the Labour leadership can do over the next few months to build trust is make it crystal clear that they will vote to suspend the Coronavirus Act 2020 when it comes up for renewal in September.

The time has come, Sir Keir, to arise and oppose. You’ve got work to do.

Dr Alex Starling is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexstarling77

The news is good. Mortality associated with Covid-19 has – again – made its seasonal departure and is essentially absent from these shores compared to typical levels of respiratory disease. As of the week ending 12 March 2021, data from the ONS shows that overall mortality was below the five-year average and is trending downwards.

Similar things have also happened in other parts of the world, notably without the imposition of tyrannical law-making. Mortality is also flat in countries that have imposed inhumane and draconian restrictions on normal life, despite the fact that these interventions are no doubt causing substantial collateral damage; non-Covid mortality, for instance.

Worldwide, plummeting mortality rates have not correlated with vaccine rollouts, meaning that hopefully there is more good news on the horizon for countries whose vaccination programmes are yet to get motoring.

But let’s not quibble. All the various criteria for opening up have been met. We must cry freedom.

Except – for some reason, we are not. And not only is international travel now also verboten, rumours abound of a plan to introduce mandatory vaccines for care home workers.

This is an abomination. If this does not ring alarm bells, then possibly nothing will. Care home workers are not necessarily in a position to choose not to work. The current crop of vaccines have been given conditional marketing authorisation, i.e. are not yet fully approved. As I have outlined previously, there are many reasons why someone in a low risk category might well wish to wait before having one of these vaccines. Choice is an essential part of democracy. 

Article 6 of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights states that: “Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be expressed and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice”.

We have not had mandatory vaccination in the UK since the 1800s, and for good reason. Mandating vaccinations for certain parts of the population is completely wrong and one of the first steps towards 21^st century segregation. It will never be possible to vaccinate everyone in society, as there will always be some people who are unable to take it for totally legitimate reasons. And was that not the point of a vaccination programme, namely to protect people, not to exclude them from gainful employment?

I am as pro-vaccination as any rational being on the planet, but I am also pro-vaccination safety, as well as not wanting to create a scenario whereby coercion leads to a backlash from those that resent the imposition. There might be a glimmer of justification for such coercion if Covid-19 was running rampant in unvaccinated populations. 

But it is not. In these febrile times, let us not allow the fever to interfere with the functioning of our moral compasses.

Dr Alex Starling is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies. Follow him on Twitter: @alexstarling77

Here in the UK, infections were decreasing well before the third national lockdown in January.  In terms of overall mortality, seasonal epidemics in neighbouring countries have been broadly similar.  Many claims have been made that vaccinations have been responsible for these abating epidemics (“the magic begins”), but this misses the point.  The clinical trials of the current crop of vaccines set out to prove that they make symptoms less deadly.  The vaccines (and indeed their clinical trials) were not designed to ‘stop the spread’, though it is hoped that they will.

Perhaps worried that this important topic was at risk of being seen as too mundane by the powers that be, the EU seems to have managed to create a public relations disaster of the most epic proportions, which has resulted in a nasty spat regarding the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine.  There is no need to provide a detailed rundown here, but it is worth pulling out some of the salient facts and toning down both the ‘anti-vaxx’ and the ‘vaccine saviour’ rhetoric.  After all, we are all mortal: the sheer number of vaccinations means that some people’s appointment to meet their maker will – entirely coincidentally/by divine intervention – occur shortly after receiving their jab (and never the other way round, of course).

However, in some countries, use of the AZ vaccine has been temporarily suspended due to serious adverse impacts in seven individual cases “in temporal association” with the jab, all in people aged between 20 and 50, i.e. “not the population at high risk for a severe or even fatal Covid-19 course”.  This conclusion was reached by the Paul Ehrlich Institut, The German Federal Institute for Vaccines and Biomedicines – given they have been in this business since 1896, they can hardly be considered an anti-vaxx mouthpiece.  Their point is therefore highly rational: every medical intervention is a calculated risk between likely benefit and possible harms, both to the individual and the population at large.  

In the EU, the AZ vaccine is being administered under a what is known as a conditional marketing authorisation from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) while longitudinal data (long-term observation of the clinical trial cohorts) is gathered.  It is therefore only right and proper that possible serious side effects are carefully considered, and it is ethically entirely appropriate to pause a vaccination programme while salient data points are analysed in more detail.

Such a pause is not necessarily cause for alarm.  In fact, the AZ trial was briefly halted in 2020 when it emerged that two patients had suffered transverse myelitis.  Again, we should be pleased that serious side effects like this – which may have nothing to do with the vaccine – are investigated in meticulous detail, however much one might wish for a clinical trial to be successful.  Correlation does not imply causation, but when the data is fuzzy, care must be taken.  Anyone who has a problem with this should research the thalidomide tragedy, as well as numerous other medical reversals (the industry’s equivalent of a ‘reverse ferret’) that have occurred throughout history.  

So what happened next? Yesterday, Professor Pål André Holme, chief physician of Oslo University Hospital, announced the results of an investigation into three time-correlated cases of unexpected blood clots in patients (one of whom died) in Norway: “We have the reason.  Nothing but the [AZ] vaccine can explain why these individuals had this immune response”.  This was followed hours later by the EMA announcing its findings, namely that while “the vaccine may be associated with very rare cases of blood clots”, the “benefits of the vaccine … continue to outweigh the risk of side effects”.  

Given the hugely asymmetric risk profile of Covid-19 (the risk of severe outcomes is heavily skewed towards older generations), this is not an irrational verdict.  Individuals should be in the position to make their own decisions, and ‘at risk’ age groups may well wish to receive the vaccine if it is available, and others may wish not to.  This is fine.  The differential effect on the overall population, post epidemic, is not likely to be particularly impactful, especially given the high levels of immunity now present within various European populations.

In a similar vein, any minor delays to the UK vaccine supply are irrelevant.  Run any comparison you like, but every country that has had a Covid-19 epidemic is seeing mortality rates collapse (despite the SARS-CoV-2 virus remaining prevalent in these populations), in many cases to below seasonal trends.  This cannot be solely due to the vaccine rollout, for the obvious reason that these programmes have progressed at hugely varying rates.

An idea that has been floated – and has so far stubbornly failed to go away – is the concept of a vaccination certificate (or passport).  What would they actually achieve, apart from segregation according to a medical intervention that currently only has conditional authorisation for use? These passports could introduce an unethical pressure on an individual to get vaccinated, and most certainly would skew the concept of ‘informed consent’.  We would do well to steer well clear of such nonsense.  The UK’s Health Advisory & Recovery Team, an independent group of UK doctors, scientists, economists, psychologists and other academic experts, has just published a detailed dossier in which they flesh this out in more detail and think the same.  Hopefully HMG’s Covid-Status Certification Review – Call for Evidence (scheduled to close by 29 March) will also swiftly come to this conclusion and park the idea once and for all.

Given the high degree of population immunity, and the similarity of disease progression in countries and regions that have stringent lockdowns versus those without, it seems perverse for the cabinet office to be wasting time on such matters.  Surely the collective intellectual heft of Sir Humphrey’s grey matter could more usefully be deployed plotting the accelerated opening up of society, and all the health benefits that would bring.

Dr Alex Starling (@alexstarling77) is an advisor to and non-executive director of various early-stage technology companies.