An early attempt to explain what was happening with covid
Thoughts from March 2021
[Further to the lockdown letters from January 2021, this was an early (and somewhat naive) attempt to explain some of what was happening with covid, several months before I put together and circulated these twenty covid-related questions]
Dear Church Leaders
For several months, I’ve been trying to explain what I think is happening with covid. But I’ve had little indication that people get what I’m trying to say.
So I thought it worth trying something different. No links. Just five minutes worth of prose below. See what you think…
The government’s extraordinary vaccination campaign has got me thinking. Apart from anything else, why would anyone get vaccinated against a respiratory virus in Spring? I’m more pro-vaccination than most. I’ve been paying for a flu vaccine for years. But if I’d called at the local pharmacy in March to book an appointment, they would surely have looked at me strangely and told me to call back in September!
“Ah, but covid is different,” I hear you say… Well, our response to it has certainly been different. But as to the health aspects of covid, I'm not so sure. I checked out some ONS figures. [For reference, this is what I was referring to.] The average age of people dying from covid is over 80, i.e. not much less than the average age at which people normally die. And the number of people under 60 with no underlying conditions whose deaths were recorded as “involving covid” is low: under 600 in March-June 2020, at the height of the pandemic. Note the phrase “involving covid”. And note too that the main covid test [PCR] has no official false-positive rate, and so would thus ordinarily not be admissible as a diagnostic test. But let us not digress. To put the “under 600” figure into context, the total number of under 60s who die in an average year between March and June is between 15,000 and 20,000.
“Well, I still don’t fancy catching it,” I hear you say. Well fair enough. But what are the chances of catching covid now? For several weeks the results of lateral flow tests, which do have an official false-positive rate, have been showing close to zero covid in the community and in schools. And that in turn tells us something that is actually obvious when you think about it: we must have reached herd immunity. And we must have reached it a while ago. How else could we explain covid all but disappearing in peak respiratory virus season?! It’s inconceivable that we could have somehow stopped (rather than slightly slowed) the transmission of a respiratory virus. The pandemic is plainly over.
“Well, I still worry…” Hmm, well yes, and you’re not alone. But maybe we are not being told the truth. Or at least not the whole truth. For example, the fact that we have reached herd immunity is consistent with there being: (i) many people who cannot become ill with covid because of prior immunity due to previous exposure to coronaviruses (SARS-CoV-1, cold viruses etc); and (ii) many people having acquired natural immunity from a mild infection of covid. Both these things should make people feel less worried. So why are they rarely mentioned at government briefings these days?
People worry because they think that there is something to worry about. But if there is nothing objective to worry about, and people are still worrying, maybe it’s because they have been conditioned to be fearful. And remarkably, if you look into it, you’ll find that increasing the perceived threat level has actually been government policy. And as SAGE’s behavioural psychologists know all too well, one of the means by which fear is maintained is the wearing of masks. The irony is that mask-wearing makes little difference to a person’s chances of catching a respiratory virus such as covid. That’s why we didn't wear them before 2020, and why we were advised against wearing them even at the height of the pandemic in Spring 2020. We may thus reasonably ask: What changed, and why?
More broadly, given the above, and given that everyone over 60 has been offered vaccination, why do SAGE and the government not say that we can now return to normal, like some parts of Europe and many parts of America? No more restrictions. No more masks. No more mass-testing. And even no more vaccination, at least until Autumn.
A full answer to that question would require much more space than this short piece permits. But following the money is often instructive. Consider the economics of importing masks. And mass-testing. And vaccination. Try working out some rough numbers. An absolute fortune is being made in each of these areas. In contrast to the millions of ordinary folk who have been immiserated and impoverished, covid has made some people — and their associates — wealthier beyond their dreams. And a continuation — let alone an extension — of the status quo offers to keep the riches rolling in. Especially in the area of vaccination.
Masks for school children? Mass-testing healthy people? And vaccinations for a respiratory virus in Spring? The strangeness now makes a little more sense. But can we really be expected to believe that covid restrictions are still about health?
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