‘Politicised nature’ of lockdown debate delays Imperial report

[dufus]

Neil Ferguson’s team has sent modelling findings to government but not released them to the public
 

Neil Ferguson, head of Imperial’s modelling team, was forced to resign from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) earlier this month after it was revealed he had broken social distancing rules 

 

The publication of a long-awaited report from Imperial College London that models the impact of coming out of lockdown has been delayed for several weeks, following criticism of the team’s methods as the debate around the UK’s coronavirus restrictions has become increasingly politicised.

 

Imperial’s MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis told the Financial Times at the end of April that a new report, which modelled the effects that easing various lockdown restrictions would have on future deaths from Covid-19, was due to be published some time the following week.

 

However, the report has yet to be released, although its findings have been shared with government, according to two people associated with the Imperial team.

The delay comes as the rightwing press and some Conservative politicians question the need for such stringent lockdown measures in the UK.

 

 A number of Tory figures, including former minister David Davis and Eurosceptic MP Steve Baker, have cast doubt on the Imperial team. They accuse the scientists of using an outdated computer code in an influential March report that predicted the UK could suffer 500,000 deaths during the pandemic if the government failed to take action.

 

The Telegraph newspaper suggested last week that Imperial’s modelling could be “the most devastating software mistake of all time”.

 

Personal attacks have also been made on Neil Ferguson, head of Imperial’s modelling team, who was forced to resign from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) earlier this month after it was revealed he had broken social distancing rules.

 

A senior member of the team told the Financial Times that the report would not be made public for another few weeks, and then it would be released as a publishable scientific paper rather than a “preprint” as the famous “Report 9” had been on March 16.

 

 “Examining exit strategies from lockdown remains a top priority of the team, and we currently are supporting multiple governments in their planning for this,” the person said.

 

“Given the increasingly politicised nature of debate around the science of Covid-19, we have decided to prioritise submitting this research for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and will release it publicly at that time.”

 

 Criticism of Prof Ferguson following his departure from Sage has unfairly undermined the public reputation of the Imperial modelling team, Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, Britain’s senior scientific body, said earlier this week.

 

“I think one has to distinguish between science and scientists. They can have lapses in their personal lives — and these should not be interpreted as failures of policy,” he said.

 

Sir Venki added that the public had a false impression that the Imperial model dominated government decision-making in mid-March, when ministers decided to impose a lockdown.

 

“Theirs was not the only model considered,” he said, “and we didn’t need a model to know what would happen when this highly infectious virus arrived. Italy’s healthcare system had already reached its limits and they were begging us to act.”

 

Sir David Spiegelhalter, the statistician who is not a member of Sage but has attended one of its meetings, said there was a difficult trade-off between ensuring transparency around government policy and ensuring that scientists were not subjected to personal attacks or had their reputations compromised.

 

“I don’t necessarily think all Sage papers should be released immediately, because they are sometimes produced extremely rapidly, and it’s not fair on the reputation of the scientists involved that they are subject to possibly extremely harsh criticism,” he said.

 

“At the same time I do think that very important documents, such as the original March 16 Imperial report, should be public. Major analyses — modelling exercises and evidence reviews — should be made public as soon as possible.”

 

John Edmunds, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who also sits on Sage, defended Imperial’s research. He said the nature of the crisis meant work that would normally take months, or even a year, was having to be done in a matter of days, and that therefore “some shortcuts happen”.

 

He added that Imperial was not deciding government policy. “There are four groups independently looking at this. I think there’s a misperception here that Imperial are running the country. They’re not,” he said.

 

“There are lots of steps and lots of people contributing. Neil Ferguson is not making government policy. Please understand that.”

ft.com

 

circle the wagons  .... the plebs are pissed !

[dMog]

 This is nothing compared to to the  censure, muzzling/gagging and interference of actual scientific research and suppression of results that doctors and scientists are experiencing in the USA by the white house. Unless you listen to FOX NEWS, Then you will of the mind set that scientists and doctors involved in covid19 are political hacks working for the democratic election campaign and trump haters, and that they  need to silenced to greater good. 

[dufus]

it.s world wide ..... and were never going to get the truth !

[dMog]

yes it is world wide and China will never let the world know how stupid they were initially. BUT that country controls the press with no less than the threat of death, the democracies of the world get their stupidity exposed on the front pages  and also every day on the news...so there is no ability to deny the shortcomings exposed... most can see how bad their governments handled the outbreak but some for partisan political reasons either pretend to not see or refuse to admit. Both are dangerous for democracy because one leader in one country is fast-stepping his way to fascism.

[dufus]

democracy is kabuki theater .....

[dMog]

20 hours ago, dufus said:

democracy is kabuki theater .....

But STILL, by far a hell of a lot better for the people than ANY of the other alternatives.

[dufus]

we shall see ..... when the ability to print money to infinity is no more  ......  then were going to find out whats behind the curtain !

[dMog]

nobody prints money to infinity, ever since Germany did that after World War one. Even trump had to be told why he could not do that and it seems it is ONE of the very few things he actually understood. the jury is still out on him knowing or not knowing he cannot use atomic weapons like other people drink water though.

Reality though, the world is in deep trouble, the economic problems form covid19 are going to take 5 to 10 years to fix

Reality though, the world is in deep trouble, the economic problems form covid19 are going to take 5 to 10 years to fix

[dufus]

30 - 50  yrs it,s all downhill from here ...

[dMog]

Economic warfare is also real, why hold a shooting war you will most likely lose when you can apply economics to overtake your enemy. Look where China and Russia were in the early 1950s. Russia ATTEMPTED and totally failed to become militarily superior the USA. Russia made no attempt to grow their world influence by making themselves an economic giant. They had everything they needed, people, resources space, all they lacked was the political will to make it happen. China succeeded economically where Russia failed so miserably. The result,  Russia is NOT a world power in any sense of the word economically speaking. Russia is a light weight with their economy close that of Italy who has a dismal economy, it can also be argued that even given the strength of Russian military might, they also know their economy CANNOT sustain any shooting war against a large country. China on the other hand holds a lot of aces and trump cards, not because of their military but more so because of their economic might that rivals that of America at it's heyday... and they ARE NOW working on their military. That is a major part of why suddenly the USA is trying to keep China in check, not simply because trump is in power. You will see every successive American government doing what they can to slow Chinese power for the next 30 years or more

 

More importantly, on the flip side of this coin, If two or three major powers are benefiting economically form trade with each other, they not likely to go war are they. Wars happen when one country get shut out from growing their economy by another country. Yes hopefully saner heads will prevail.

[dufus]

MARCH 26 2019

The Asian century is set to begin    ask the bankster,s