Tens of thousands of avoidable Covid deaths: is Cummings right?

[Northerner]

One of the most shocking allegations made by Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings during Wednesday’s joint parliamentary committee hearing was his claim that “tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die”, because of the way the government handled the Covid pandemic.

His claims have some support from scientists, who have estimated that the toll from government delays could be as high as 33,000 lives.

Throughout the pandemic, scientists have accused the government of delaying the introduction of Covid restrictions, at the cost of lives. In June 2020, Prof Neil Ferguson from Imperial College London told MPs that had the first lockdown been imposed a week earlier, this would have saved at least 20,000 lives.

A month later, he and his colleagues warned of a potential new wave of Covid infections, which, combined with winter flu cases and a backlog of patients needing NHS care, posed a serious risk to health in the UK. Using a worst-case scenario, in which the reproduction number, R, rose to 1.7 in September, they predicted a peak in hospital admissions and deaths during January and February, and an estimated 119,000 associated hospital deaths between September 2020 and June 2021.

Tens of thousands of avoidable Covid deaths: is Cummings right?

Scientists agree with the former adviser’s claim, with one calling the estimate ‘conservative’

www.theguardian.com

Of course if, as predicted, Johnson overturns the fixed-term Parliament Act and calls an election in 2023, then the public inquiry will still be ongoing and the impact of current cuts and Brexit will not be fully felt The electoral system needs reform, but as long as the Conservatives can rule as a minority (i.e. on 40% of the vote) things won't change Maybe the Scots will have escaped by then though, and NI is not going to be looking pretty for a while yet.

 

[Drummer]

There are quite a few homes in this area and, having worked in one myself, the way that the staff worked was ideally suited to spreading things throughout the home. I got fed up of having to treat myself for scabies - 'senile eczema' they called it - well I have got a microscope, and it was right there waving its little legs in the air.
All the following is just hearsay, but it rings very true.
The managers of the homes were threatened with having their funding cut off if they did not accept people from hospitals.
The normal deliveries of gloves, masks and aprons were all stopped with no notice. There were people carrying used PPE home on busses to sterilise them overnight to use again.
Younger people working in the homes were running away, moving back to live with parents, going to their sisters, rather than go back to work in the homes once things were getting really bad and almost everyone seemed to have got Covid.
There were elderly people being sedated because they could not be sent back to hospital.
Everyone sent out of hospital to the homes had DNR on their notes.

 

[mikeyB]

The public inquiry will be forced on the government before too long, particularly as the recent “revelations” from Cummings has sent the press rumbling. If Johnson delays the inquiry and attempts to repeal the fixed term Parliament Act, he will be crucified by the press, because doing so would almost be an admission of guilt, or at least an admission that some things will reflect badly on him. Teflon eventually wears out. For sure, there are more than 120,000 families who won’t be voting for him again, and those who did vote him in last time will be haviving second thoughts. That’s if they are capable of thinking. After all, many voted for Brexit to stop South Asian immigration. So much for geography education in England.

 

[nonethewiser]

We didn't need Cummings to tell us that it was widespread knowledge, govn screwed up & didn't lock down early enough or close borders soon enough, all will come out in inquery.

 

[Northerner]

We didn't need Cummings to tell us that it was widespread knowledge, govn screwed up & didn't lock down early enough or close borders soon enough, all will come out in inquery.

I think that's why, whatever you think of Cummings, you can't dismiss what he said because it fits in very well with what we all know. Even in the best of times Johnson is a totally unsuitable person to govern a country - just because he's a vote-winner doesn't make him a wise leader Back in the 1980s I wondered if the Conservatives could possibly do more long-term harm to the country for the sake of short-term gain (selling off housing stock and public monopolies etc.). With austerity, Brexit, 150k deaths, and with a very inexperienced government led by a narcissist, they've shown me they can

 

[pm133]

In a few weeks, it'll be summer, all restrictions will hopefully be removed, the Euros will be in full swing, England will be discussing another failure in a penalty shoot-out and nobody will be talking about this anymore.

A couple of months down the line, virtually everyone will be doubly vaccinated and all this covid talk will die down too. If we get through next winter relatively unscathed (no reason why we wouldn't) then it'll be all over bar the shouting.

In a couple of years we'll be back to discussing whether the UK can continue to keep Scotland tethered, things will move on and we'll barely even remember this last year.

 

[Jojo catwoman]

Northerner I totally agree with you. I fear the NHS is dead on its feet and we are returning to the past, where people just died. I think it's what this Gov want, get rid of the old and the sick to save money and increase their own coffers.

 

[pm133]

Northerner I totally agree with you. I fear the NHS is dead on its feet and we are returning to the past, where people just died. I think it's what this Gov want, get rid of the old and the sick to save money and increase their own coffers.

?

You genuinely think the government actively want old people to die to save money and fill their own pockets?

Leaving aside the cynicism here, you think they want to wipe out their core voter group?

 

[Jojo catwoman]

pm133

 

[pm133]

pm133

Wow. What a bizarre thing to post.
I hope that whoever wrote that "poem" has another source of income. 🙂

 

[pm133]

And it is for those reasons I believe lockdowns were brought in for more than just protecting the NHS and saving lives.

If just saving lives and protecting the NHS was their aim, they could of used similar draconian measures like banning smoking, alcohol, betting and casinos.

Tobacco death globally each year 8 million, every single year.
Alcohol related deaths globally each year 3 million, every single year.
Who knows what damage gambling does?

And besides, what lives did they even save when all those elderly hospital patients were thrown out of hospital?

When you ban things, you allow criminal gangs to take over the supply. Then you are left with a much bigger problem because not only have you not solved the original problem, you can now add organised crime and quality control issues to the pot. You also hand over the entirety of control over the problem to organised criminals but we still have to deal with the results. How that could ever be described as solving anything is beyond me.

You have to learn from history.
The USA tried this with alcohol and the result was absolutely catastrophic.
We're seeing this with drugs.
Bans don't work. I can't think of a single instance where it has worked.
If I was king, I'd remove the ban on all drug use as well. I guarantee that you'd see an improvement in the current drugs crisis. Unfortunately, they won't let me have access to the crown. 🙂

Incidentally, given that the discussion was about the UK government, I'm not sure why you've quoted global death figures.

 

[pm133]

Not a problem @pm133 we can just use lockdowns to stop the supply and distribution. 🙂 They seem to have worked really well at closing bars, restuarants, schools, workplaces, shops, businesses etc no reason it can't work to stop criminal gangs too.

I'm going to assume you are joking. 🙂

I believe banning alcohol in the USA resulted in an increase in alcohol consumption. It certainly resulted in a massive increase in criminality. A problem that many parts of the USA are still trying to recover from in terms of gangs and organised crime. Once organised crime gets a foothold, you've got a nightmare of a job getting rid of it. They move from one banned thing to another, which is why banning things in general is a bad strategy.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

They seem to have worked really well at closing bars, restuarants, schools, workplaces, shops, businesses etc no reason it can't work to stop criminal gangs too.

The problem with criminal gangs is that they tend not to follow the law. I'm sure they've been disrupted a bit by lockdowns but I imagine they've adjusted.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

If just saving lives and protecting the NHS was their aim, they could of used similar draconian measures like banning smoking, alcohol, betting and casinos.

I think the drive was always to protect the NHS enough that it didn't break too badly. (As things were, it was stressed enough that lots of non-COVID work just stopped happening for a while.)

The fear (back last March) was that we had infections doubling every few days and we knew the mess that parts of Italy had had dealing with the infection there (because it was shown on TV regularly). (And whatever the government might like to claim the NHS is worse equipped. We have fewer beds, fewer ICU beds, not as many nurses, doctors, GPs, etc., proportional to our population.)

That's quite different to road traffic accidents, smoking, alcohol, drugs, etc. Those are chronic issues, and governments can pretty much ignore them with reasonable confidence that if they do start spiking they'll have months to react.

Maybe governments ought to care more about such long term things. They can avoid doing so.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

One could argue that that is the very reason the uk had to lockdown?

It made things worse, sure, but other (better equipped) countries had to do much the same.

The issue is that infections behave exponentially, so if we had twice as many hospital beds, staff, etc., that would just have given us an extra few days. (The specific problem with this virus seems to be that around 10% of infected people need hospital treatment (now seems to be about 5% because it's mostly younger people now that older ones have been vaccinated) and once that became clearer I think the govt had little choice. Though DC claimed that Johnson wanted to be the Mayor in Jaws who kept the beaches open and not to lock down.)

Sweden was able to do some different things, but Sweden's a different country in lots of ways. (And it's not entirely clear how good a strategy it was anyway.)

long term strains on our health service from alcohol and tabacco related health problems haven't been dealt with at source.

I don't know how significant that is. Tobacco use has been falling for decades now, and I'm not sure how significant a problem alcohol is. Weight is presumably an issue.

All things that governments don't like to talk about beyond blaming people for not eating right, drinking too much, etc., a strategy which we know doesn't work. Because they're all things that are tricky, and good solutions involve doing things like reducing inequality. So something that a Labour government might think about, but it's hard to do effective things because the benefits will mostly come many years later.

There has been whispers about in the future refusing healthcare to smokers and drinkers with related health problems.

It's been talked about now and again but never seriously as far as I can tell.

 

[pm133]

The issue is surely deaths and severe illness? not infections?

Agreed.

The problem is though that they'll be worried about two things.

1) That the link between cases and deaths has not been broken completely.
2) That the more a virus circulates the greater the chance of another variant which might defeat the vaccines.

I understand both but neither is a reason for continued restrictions right now. Open things up and if a new variant appears we'll deal with it then. If we're wrong about the link between cases and hospitalisations/deaths we'll deal with it then. If it turns out the vaccines aren't enough and we can't find a new vaccine then it's tough luck I'm afraid - we're just going to have to live with it.

All this endless, relentless caution, caution, caution is just so frustrating. Nobody wants to be the one in charge of these decisions if things go wrong. It's cowardice. Pure and simple. And our liberties and our economy are being curtailed because of it.

We simply cannot live like this forever and it';s staggering to think that people genuinely believe we can just continue restricting everything indefinitely.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

We simply cannot live like this forever and it';s staggering to think that people genuinely believe we can just continue restricting everything indefinitely.

I don't think anyone's proposing that. More a delay of a couple of weeks to be more confident of what this delta variant is doing (and a couple of extra weeks of vaccinations).

And (I suspect worst case, if this variant looks bad) we wait until more adults have been fully vaccinated (if I understand correctly Israel is only recently entirely raising restrictions at about 70% of adults), so (I guess) some time in August for complete lifting of restrictions (presuming they continue reducing the gap between doses and so on).

All this endless, relentless caution, caution, caution is just so frustrating.

I don't think anyone could fairly accuse our government of having been overly cautious. Maybe they will be in this case, but I suspect they'll go ahead with their roadmap on time regardless of what the data say.

 

[pm133]

I don't think anyone's proposing that. More a delay of a couple of weeks to be more confident of what this delta variant is doing (and a couple of extra weeks of vaccinations).

And (I suspect worst case, if this variant looks bad) we wait until more adults have been fully vaccinated (if I understand correctly Israel is only recently entirely raising restrictions at about 70% of adults), so (I guess) some time in August for complete lifting of restrictions (presuming they continue reducing the gap between doses and so on).

I don't think anyone could fairly accuse our government of having been overly cautious. Maybe they will be in this case, but I suspect they'll go ahead with their roadmap on time regardless of what the data say.

Don't forget that I'm in Scotland so things are a bit different up here.
Half of our country is stuck in level 2 and will remain there until the end of this month at the earliest.

Unlike England, we don't have an end date at all for all restrictions up here. We're expecting level 0 at some time in July but that still requires heavy restrictions, masks etc.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Don't forget that I'm in Scotland so things are a bit different up here.
Half of our country is stuck in level 2 and will remain there until the end of this month at the earliest.

Ah, right. And Scotland has been more cautious (at least, as much as the money permitted).

I think it would be helpful if the various governments were more open about what, specifically, they're looking for in data.

We know they're all getting advice from the Joint Biosecurity Centre but as far as I know that doesn't publish minutes, has not public membership, etc. So is much like SAGE was.

 

[pm133]

Ah, right. And Scotland has been more cautious (at least, as much as the money permitted).

I think it would be helpful if the various governments were more open about what, specifically, they're looking for in data.

We know they're all getting advice from the Joint Biosecurity Centre but as far as I know that doesn't publish minutes, has not public membership, etc. So is much like SAGE was.

We're not being told exactly what they are looking for in order to drop all restrictions.
They are FINALLY understanding that cases are irrelevant as a standalone statistic as long as deaths/hospitalisations are flat (which they have been for many weeks).
Sturgeon and Leitch up here are finally acknowledging this which is why many areas will go down to level 1 (whatever that means) this weekend.

We're asking a very simple and perfectly reasonable question up here and it is this.
If vaccines are not enough, what's the end game? Restrictions for ever? Or do we live with it?