Gupta, Heneghan etc - the claims that didn't age well - one year on

[bob sterman]

March 24th 2020

An early classic from Sunetra Gupta - just one day into the first UK lockdown and she's reassuring us that half the population have probably already been infected - and we're tantalizingly close to something that rhymes with "turd impunity"...

Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population
https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd ... bea055720b

[snoozeofreason]

September 20 2020

There is “no evidence” of a second wave of coronavirus and the government cannot afford a “harsh” second lockdown, a top scientist has said.

Professor Carl Heneghan, director for the centre of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, called for Boris Johnson to take a “a slower, analytical approach” ahead of a “long winter” beset by Covid-19 and other flu-like infections.

It comes after the prime minister warned a second wave “is coming” on Friday, as he hinted further restrictions were likely to follow this week.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ ... 79b6765e92

[bob sterman]

September 20 2020

oooh - you've jumped ahead to their 2nd wave of denialism. I was planning to post all the golden oldies first. Starting with more classics from Gupta such as...

"We've almost reached herd immunity" (April), "Now we've almost reached it" (May), "No seriously I mean it this time, we really are nearly there" (June) etc etc.

Building up to Heneghan's unforgettable claim in August that, after the first wave, COVID-19 had become a "low impact, weak disease"

[sTeamTraen]

A period of silence on their part (parts?) would be most welcome.

[bob sterman]

March 24th 2020

Heneghan before he drank the Kool-Aid and lost all touch with evidence - actually talking sense and warning of the dangers of asymptomatic transmission, almost emphasising the importance of the asymptomatic testing he began to ridicule later....

https://twitter.com/carlheneghan/status ... 0113980418

This one only doesn't age well in the sense that it doesn't hint at the 2nd wave of dangerous Heneghan stuff to come.

[bob sterman]

Can't find the right point in Cummings' testimony today - but apparently he's confirmed that PM's decision to delay lockdown measures in the autumn were due to him listening to Heneghan and Gupta arguing that we were already at "herd immunity" and ignoring Whitty, Vallance and (self-aggrandisingly?) Cummings.

https://twitter.com/Takeastepback16/sta ... 3721805828

[bob sterman]

An absolute classic from Gupta...

May 21, 2020

Sunetra Gupta: Covid-19 is on the way out

The author of the Oxford model defends her view that the virus has passed through the UK's population

https://unherd.com/2020/05/oxford-doubl ... interview/

[raven]

This bit from that Gupta article:

In almost every context we’ve seen the epidemic grow, turn around and die away — almost like clockwork. Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet what we’ve observed is almost a uniform pattern of behaviour which is highly consistent with the SIR model. To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the build-up of immunity. I think that’s a more parsimonious explanation than one which requires in every country for lockdown (or various degrees of lockdown, including no lockdown) to have had the same effect.

That's a question I've been pondering too - only not just about Covid. I've seen graphs from 1918 that have that same meteroric rise and then sudden fall, and I'm sure that pattern is not unique 1918 and Covid. So what is it that limits outbreaks like that, cutting them off quite suddenly? Because, given that in both 1918 and now there were further waves, it seems to happen without herd immunity.I'd venture to suggest it's behavioural change.

You see people you know getting sick, or hear about friends of friends getting sick, you start to be more careful.

[Herainestold]

This bit from that Gupta article:

In almost every context we’ve seen the epidemic grow, turn around and die away — almost like clockwork. Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet what we’ve observed is almost a uniform pattern of behaviour which is highly consistent with the SIR model. To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the build-up of immunity. I think that’s a more parsimonious explanation than one which requires in every country for lockdown (or various degrees of lockdown, including no lockdown) to have had the same effect.

That's a question I've been pondering too - only not just about Covid. I've seen graphs from 1918 that have that same meteroric rise and then sudden fall, and I'm sure that pattern is not unique 1918 and Covid. So what is it that limits outbreaks like that, cutting them off quite suddenly? Because, given that in both 1918 and now there were further waves, it seems to happen without herd immunity.I'd venture to suggest it's behavioural change.

You see people you know getting sick, or hear about friends of friends getting sick, you start to be more careful.

I keep thinking about that point, but nobody seems to have a very good explanation. One thing this pandemic has taught us that lockdown is the only thing that can stop transmission. Look at China and Australia for case studies. The other NPIs , masking, distancing, ventilation, can only mitigate but not suppress transmission. Vaccines are excellent at saving lives and reducing hospitalizations, but not so good for transmission.

I think there is a combination of effects fron NPIs and certainly personal behaviour is part of it.The greater the fear factor, the more people will voluntarily not associate with each other, and transmission drops. Unfortunately the effect is temporary, people go back to their old behaviours, and we have another spike and the whole process starts again.

[raven]

One thing this pandemic has taught us that lockdown is the only thing that can stop transmission. Look at China and Australia for case studies.

Well, there's lockdown and then there's lockdown. What Australia and China have done, I think, is use geographically focused, short sharp shock lockdowns to break transmission. Along with some old fashioned quarantining, good contact tracing etc. That works quite well to contain outbreaks and limit economic/mental hardship.

UK style lockdowns are much less focused and longer, mostly because we keep delaying too long to start them. Sure, they damp down on cases but they come with much wider harm.

[Woodchopper]

One thing this pandemic has taught us that lockdown is the only thing that can stop transmission. Look at China and Australia for case studies.

Well, there's lockdown and then there's lockdown. What Australia and China have done, I think, is use geographically focused, short sharp shock lockdowns to break transmission. Along with some old fashioned quarantining, good contact tracing etc. That works quite well to contain outbreaks and limit economic/mental hardship.

UK style lockdowns are much less focused and longer, mostly because we keep delaying too long to start them. Sure, they damp down on cases but they come with much wider harm.

China and Australia were able to do that because they closed the borders except for limited exceptions and so enormously reduced the numbers of cases they had to deal with. The UK surveillance has been good, but because new cases keep arriving and starting clusters all over the country it hasn't been able to contain them.

[raven]

We're also not very good at getting people to self-isolate. Someone on Question Time yesterday was saying only 10% of people managing to isolate.

Although that said, I'm sure some of the 90% who don't are people who manage to mostly isolating for the 10 days but have to go out once for something like food.

[Herainestold]

One thing this pandemic has taught us that lockdown is the only thing that can stop transmission. Look at China and Australia for case studies.

Well, there's lockdown and then there's lockdown. What Australia and China have done, I think, is use geographically focused, short sharp shock lockdowns to break transmission. Along with some old fashioned quarantining, good contact tracing etc. That works quite well to contain outbreaks and limit economic/mental hardship.

UK style lockdowns are much less focused and longer, mostly because we keep delaying too long to start them. Sure, they damp down on cases but they come with much wider harm.

China and Australia were able to do that because they closed the borders except for limited exceptions and so enormously reduced the numbers of cases they had to deal with. The UK surveillance has been good, but because new cases keep arriving and starting clusters all over the country it hasn't been able to contain them.

Yes, strict lockdown and tight border controls. Difficult to implement but very effective. The test, trace , isolate protocol can only work when there are small numbers of infected to deal with. Its the only way to buy enough time to get everybody to 2 doses.

[Sciolus]

We're also not very good at getting people to self-isolate. Someone on Question Time yesterday was saying only 10% of people managing to isolate.

Although that said, I'm sure some of the 90% who don't are people who manage to mostly isolating for the 10 days but have to go out once for something like food.

Yes, the further you get down the Test, Trace, Isolate, Support chain, the worse the UK performance is. Partly because the government would rather cause trillions of pounds of economic damage than risk giving £500 to a poor person* who doesn't deserve it.

*As opposed to a mate of Matt Hancock's.

[bob sterman]

Perhaps inspired by this thread, Comedy Carl has apparently been wiping his Twitter history - to hide some of his best predictions...

https://twitter.com/_johnbye/status/1402034988267212808

Thankfully, the Internet Archive remembers and we can look forward to celebrating the anniversary of his classic "No sign of a second wave up to 9th October" tweet (17,540 cases reported on Oct 8th - vs < 1000 daily in July).

When crossing the Atlantic you wouldn't want him looking out for icebergs would you?

[Little waster]

Perhaps inspired by this thread, Comedy Carl has apparently been wiping his Twitter history - to hide some of his best predictions...

I’ve heard this described as “doing a Jobbins” however the internet provides no insight into the original etymology of the phrase ...

[bob sterman]

Heneghan is actually doing a good job of promoting his own claims that didn't age well.

He's just tweeted...

https://twitter.com/carlheneghan/status ... 1760137217

A link to his April 2020 classic...

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19- ... swine-flu/

In which he claims it wasn't really a "pandemic" because mortality was higher in the elderly, but that....

The data support the theory that the current epidemic is a late seasonal effect in the Northern Hemisphere on the back of a mild ILI season.