The Story of the UK’s “100,000 Deaths Is Ok” Covid Strategy
The Times, 22nd March (see below)
Sometime around 4th March 2020:
“Councils had been warned [by the U.K. government] to expect around 100,000 deaths from COVID-19.”
Yet, now since the release of papers from the government’s own group of expert pandemic modellers we know that the government had been advised just days before to expect 250,000 – 500,000 deaths:
(https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/888778/S0379_Eleventh_SAGE_meeting_on_Wuhan_Coronavirus__Covid-19__.pdf)
Even though on March 2nd, the U.K. government could have taken measures to prevent most of those predicted deaths, it had decided not to take such measures.
The limited measures the U.K. had decided to take at a government emergency committee meeting on March 2nd 2020 were designed to keep the number of deaths to that figure of around 250,000 – 500,000.
Those were 250,000 – 500,000 anticipated deaths of people who at that point in time had yet to be infected appear to have been an acceptable price to pay for not having to shut down the economy.
The government has publicly said that it was only when modelling presented at a government emergencies’ committee (COBR) meeting on 12th March showed the actual expected death rate would be between 250,000 and 510,000 that the government decided, to change the “100,000 deaths is ok” strategy.
Yet, it’s clear that despite warning councils to expect “100,000” deaths, the government already had been given modelling results from its expert group on modelling pandemics that predicted 250,000–500,000 deaths on 27th February 2020.
Think about that: you’re told by your country’s preeminent pandemic modellers that between 250,000 and 500,000 people will die unless you introduce stringent measures. What do you do?
Well, you take NO action until you write to councils to tell them to expect 100,000 deaths. And it’s a full three weeks before ANY of the advised stringent measures are introduced.
This “it’s okay to tell councils that we expect 100,000 deaths (even though our experts have told us to expect 250,000–500,000 deaths)” policy appears to have been decided at or after this meeting chaired by the U.K. PM on 2nd March 2020:
On 31st December 2019 reports of the first cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan were published.
On 2nd March the U.K. PM chaired his first emergency committee meeting about the virus.
In between these dates, the UK government appears to have knowingly, negligently and catastrophically accepted as deliberately inevitable at least 100,000 of its residents would die.
Compare the story of how the Hong Kong government reacted between 31st Dec and January 25th – I set it out here from the publicly available press releases by the Hong Kong government:
Why Didn’t the West Pick Up China’s Covid Signals?
Throughout January and February 2020 the U.K. had not forced, persuaded or even tried to get U.K. manufacturers to produce PPE (in fact it had actually sent PPE to China in an act of solidarity).
- It did not have scaleable virus Test, Track, Trace and Isolation systems in place.
- There was no system to enable the removal of suspected Covid-19 patients in care homes.
- A lockdown was not put into place until March 22nd.
The government defends itself. “How could we have them known about the severity of what was about to hit us?”
Well, try picking up the early warning indicators in publicly available press releases from Hong Kong from 31st December onwards.
And here’s the thing: on February 10th 2020 the UK government published the draft Coronavirus Regulations in the UK Parliament. As I note here, of the then little noticed Regulations, they empowered the police to detain you – For sneezing! That such unprecedented powers were drafted in time to be introduced by Feb 10th 2020 is clear evidence that the government DID know what was coming down the line. They just chose to do nothing to prevent these unnecessary events. This is so hard to fathom.
As of April 24th 2020 in hospitals alone there have been almost 20,000 Covid-19 deaths:
On April 22nd 2020, the Financial Times reported that according to their analysis of Office for National Statistics data, the number of actual deaths is double the official rate:
Part of the reason for this is that the government does not even include carehome residents in their counting of the dead.
What has gone wrong?
Well, according to my analysis of a variety of sources, nothing has gone wrong – from the government’s own standpoint:
On February 27th 2020, the government’s own group of expert modellers predicted 250,000–500,000 deaths, unless “stringent measures” were taken (see https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/888778/S0379_Eleventh_SAGE_meeting_on_Wuhan_Coronavirus__Covid-19__.pdf)
Yet, even about this figure the government obfuscated: remember, the government told councils publicly to expect 100,000 deaths, while its collection of the U.K.’s most expert modellers, who were advising the government’s own Scientific Advisory committee, including the U.K. PM’s Senior Adviser, envisaged up to 500,000 deaths.
Following “the science” indeed!
If the government was actually “following the science” this means it was comfortable, privately, with between 250,000–500,000 deaths and publicly with 100,000 deaths from early March.
We now have the minutes of the government’s own expert group of pandemic modellers, SPI-M (another debt we owe to Neil Ferguson is that by providing his papers to the Guardian for its April 29th 2020 chronology of this debacle, he forced the government to publish all of the evidence it considered from the first meeting in January about Covid. No wonder he was then smeared.).
SPI-M’s “brief” Consensus Statement agreed that without “stringent measures” (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/873713/01-spi-m-o-consensus-statement-on-2019-novel-coronavirus-_covid-19_.pdf):
“SPI-M’s best estimate of the death rate was 0.5% to 1%: between 250,000 and 500,000 people. Of those requiring hospital treatment, 12% were likely to die.”
Quite why, given this analysis by its expert group on modelling the virus’s spread, the government advised councils to expect “around” 100,000 is a question for another day!
There is scant evidence that the U.K. government was put on anything like the war footing that would have been necessary to reduce that number of deaths, before the U.K. went on lockdown.
For example,
“On March 7 the [PPE] guidance [for medics] was revised, advising that workers on Covid wards needed only plastic aprons, surgical mask and eye protection based on a ‘risk assessment’ within 1 metre of a patient. Many doctors quickly saw the guidelines were less stringent than those of the WHO and EU Centre for Disease Control, deepening suspicions – strongly denied by the government – that the guidelines had been tailored to fit the stockpile.”
(How poor planning left the UK without enough PPE | https://www.ft.com/content/9680c20f-7b71-4f65-9bec-0e9554a8e0a7?shareType=nongift
The (London) Times reported on March 22nd that at a SAGE meeting on 12th March a new predictive model was presented to the Advisory Group:
In that same report, it is said (though apparently it is vehemently denied by the U.K. PM’s senior advisor) that:
On the 18th April 2020 in a now famous London Times article entitled “38 Days When Britain Sleepwalked Into Disaster” it was reported that at a SAGE meeting on Wednesday, 22nd January:
The same Times report notes that one of the participants in the 22nd January SAGE meeting, Imperial College London Professor Neil Ferguson presented evidence on 24th January to a meeting of the government’s highest level committee to coordinate emergencies (COBRA) (participants include senior government figures and leaders from the devolved assemblies) that:
The horrific conclusion I draw from this evidence is that, given the warning to Councils in the first week of March, to expect “around 100,000” deaths, the UK government was comfortable with this number, provided that it meant it didn’t need to take action that might negatively impact on the country’s economic performance.
The government’s public line now is still that it was only when modelling on March 12th showed that instead of 100,000 dead people, it might be between 250,000 and 510,000. The government claims that it was only this “Imperial report” which persuaded the government finally to change tack.
Yet, we know now that the government’s own expert group of modellers made a similar prediction on February 27th 2020. We also know that the government chose at the early March COBR meeting not to take the “stringent measures” its expert group of modellers, which included Imperial’s Neil Ferguson, advised would need to be taken to avoid 250,000–500,000 deaths.
Even publicly, the government’s position of being willing to sacrifice those 100,000 people, without putting into place PPE provision, testing systems, carehome resident isolation systems, etc. is extraordinary.
Its only justification is the “theory” that by doing so it might avoid a “second peak”. So sacrificing vast numbers of people in a perpetual wave of peaks, in order to avoid a hypothetical peak in the Autumn, which itself, even inside the government’s own twisted logical capsule, could be avoided, with further or prolonged “stringent measures”.
Prior to that 12th March briefing, rather than putting the country into a temporary lockdown, the government appears to have been prepared to publicly admit (by writing to councils) to lay down the lives of 100,000 of its citizens and privately, secretly to cull 250,000–500,000 of its citizens.
Even the wording of the post-12th March change in policy reeks of immorality, as all the government was trying to do was prevent the NHS from being oversubscribed by “persuading” occupants of carehomes to commit to not being transferred into hospitals if they became ill.
This is how Elizabeth, a former volunteer at Bletchley Park, speaking from a residential carehome about why she signed a Do Not Resuscitate Form put it in an interview on BBC Radio 4:
“You didn’t have to. You were asked to agree. And I thought I would rather be in the carehome than go to hospital. The local hospital is much overworked and it has the virus there. I’m not afraid of dying. But I’m rather afraid of how I might die. I’d rather die here than go to hospital.”
“Did you feel pressured?”
“Not at all. But I would like to know where it came from and who authorised it.”
Health minister Hancock, interviewed directly after Elizabeth, as much as admitted that everyone in every care home had been “nudged” into signing such a form.
Indeed now, because the government’s own “Lessons Identified” report from its pandemic simulation of December 2016 has been leaked, we know that the government itself knew there would be a problem in carehomes in the event of a pandemic:
Cygnus pandemic simulation report, Dec 2016:
“…not possible to collate an accurate picture of social care capacity because much of that capacity lies with private providers…It is understood that the social care sector is under significant pressure during business as usual…There was little attention paid to this sector during COBR meetings [during the simulation]. Any extra pressure [on the sector] would be challenging…”
https://www.scribd.com/document/460161101/Cygnus-Redacted-Annex-01scribd-Redactedv3#download
There’s this sense that among the policy makers and those advising them the human suffering of those with the disease and those having to treat them without, for example, appropriate PPE was given no weight at all.
Provided you could keep the disease at just below boiling point (~100,000 – 500,000 deaths or thereabouts) and NHS capacity at below boiling point, everything was okay by them.
Just don’t shut the economy.
And don’t worry about carehome residents (who are not part of the NHS and appear never to have featured in the policy makers considerations).
The government’s reasoning was that letting the virus run rife then might prevent a hypothetical second wave of the virus later in the year.
On March 15th in the wake of the furore caused by the publicity around the U.K. government’s strategy to “mitigate” the virus by letting 100,000 – 510,000 die, Harvard epidemiologist, William Hanage, wrote in the Guardian:
The bitter irony is that had the U.K. government, from March 2nd, done everything it could have to prevent those 100,000 – 500,000 deaths it anticipated as an inevitable by-product of keeping the economy open, it would not have had to shut the economy down.
It was this “do nothing” paralysis approach between January and February, right up until March 12th, which was not only a lapse in ethical discipline, it has worsened the extent, intensity and duration of the economic damage.
I don’t think we need to wait for a public inquiry to get to the bottom of what happened.
In summary, the price we are all paying is a result of the following causes multiplied together.
Why those responsible for these missteps should still have invested in them any authority to get us out of this mess is a mystery:
1 Virus
2 Slow/no response/‘Johnson spends February at Chevening sorting out private life-taking selfies’
3 Unqualified (morally, skills’ wise) people left in charge during Feb, who try to recover from doing nothing by labelling “doing nothing” as “mitigation” with the added “bonus” of “herd immunity”
4 No-one thinking through during January: okay, PPE, respirators, re-agents, dialysis consumables, carehomes,..
5 Surrender-monkey approach to test, track, trace and isolate: it’s just TOO hard and analogue and manual and anyway, let’s not suppress the virus; it’s just like flu (only it’s not: times more deadly; presymptomatically transmitted; hardcore effects on organs; novel virus without a playbook of treatments yet;…)
6 No-one read the openly available data coming out of China (Hong Kong – press releases available show the escalating epidemic from 31st Dec and a competent response: https://medium.com/geopolitical-impact-of-early-warning-covid-19/why-didnt-the-west-pick-up-china-s-covid-signals-ed03659da551)
7 No “political” capital left with other nations after EU-Brexit farce so intl cooperation and trust impossible and weakened herd of ministers after Brexit-related culls
8 At each stage trying to do on-the-cheap what would’ve been cheaper had they started earlier
9 1–9 virus gets out of control
+10 Right-thinking people refuse to accept that 1–5% of population dying because during 1–9 govt didn’t get its shot together is acceptable
1–10 necessitate lockdown = trillions in costs/100,000 avoidably dead.
