Cluedo for coronaphobics
It was the professor, in the library, with the help of the butler
I had been working on detailed analyses, trying to fit pieces of a very smelly jigsaw puzzle together.
Then the SAGE papers (well, 26% of them) were released. Then the nasty picture on the box cover came starkly into view. There was clarity.
It’s a simple enough story.
Once upon a time there was an Astrologer. He wasn’t very good, or very lucky. He got everything he tried wrong. He liked to entertain himself by writing computer programmes to simulate chaos (stochastic modelling; the Monte Carlo technique) in what’s now 30 year old code on a computer that your 5 year old would throw in the bin.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/
In 2009, a new coronavirus came along. The Astrologer hurried to the royal court of Gordon Brown (PM 2007-2010). But Govt UK had their 2007 National Pandemic Strategy plan in place. The Astrologer managed to worry a few junior ministers. But the stern McChurchillian Prime Minister of the day stuck to the Plan.
The wicked witch Dame Hine later dismissed the Astrologer’s pathetic efforts:
4.36 Early and emerging data should always be of some use, but its employment should be carefully managed. This is not to reject the use of models, but to understand its limitations: modellers are not ‘court astrologers’. Time spent at SAGE and the CCC to discuss modelling produced using emerging data may have been better spent on other issues.
That awful, ignorant sceptic even wrote of the Astrologer’s 2003 model effort:
4.37 Interestingly, the use of modelling in informing disease control policy was the subject of a report in 2003 commissioned by Defra in the context of the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak. It states that ‘The fact that a stochastic model predicts a range of possible “futures”, reflecting the unpredictability of real life, means that it must be used with care as a decision support tool. Decision-makers must not rely on the model to make a decision for them but be prepared to use it as part of a process in which other factors, such as the “riskiness” of a policy, are weighed.’
The Astrologer fumed: How dare the demented Dame write these things in an official Govt UK report? In 2001, my calculations persuaded Tony Blair’s government to order a pre-emptive cull of farm animals to stop the spread of foot and mouth disease. Some 6.5 million animals were killed. That was a success !
Yet scientists at the University of Edinburgh were later scathing about Ferguson’s models, calling them ‘not fit for purpose’.
The next year, Ferguson was back to claim that vCJD, the human form of mad cow disease, could kill between 50 and 50,000 Britons – a range so broad as to be almost useless for policy-makers. He also said the human death toll could rise to 150,000 if the disease passed to sheep.
That apocalypse never came: today the death toll from vCJD stands at just 178.
Undaunted, the prophet of doom returned in 2005, this time warning of bird flu. ‘Around 40million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak,’ he declared. ‘There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200million people probably.’
No you couldn’t. To date, according to the World Health Organisation, H5N1 avian flu has killed just 455 people globally.
In 2009 Ferguson claimed that the mortality rate from swine flu was in the range of 0.3 per cent to 1.5 per cent, but was ‘most likely’ to be 0.4 per cent. Based on this figure, the Government’s ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ suggested that Britain would suffer 65,000 deaths.
By the end of the year it was reported the actual mortality rate had been just 0.026 per cent. The UK death toll at the time was 283.
A decade later, and the Astrologer was still fiddling around in his bedroom with his ancient computer code (when his polyamorous blonde friend couldn’t pop round).
He seemed chastened and depressed with his lack of progress at Court, while co-authors (of reports you’ve never heard) like Professor Chris Whitty had scaled the dazzling heights of the Whitehall medical establishment.
Just for interest, watch Professor Whitty’s 2018 lecture:
Prof Chris Whitty: How to Control a Pandemic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn55z95L1h8
10 October 2018: just 16 months before Corona panic hit Britain. Just watch it to see how many times, and for how long, he enthrals his audience, with dazzling expert information about Locking Down your own country in How to Control a Pandemic.
OK, I’ll save you watching 53 minutes. The answers are:
· How many times: 0 times.
· How many minutes: 0 minutes.
Because Whitty, like Ferguson, was a fully paid up subscriber to the 2011 SARS Coronavirus Pandemic Plan.
In February 2020, some silly Chinese people started dying a bit from a silly little SARS Coronavirus.
Now Whitty, the executive boss of SAGE, and his fellow lickspittle, lackey, unprincipled, scientific prostitutes (sorry, lost it for a moment there), took a short look at the situation.
Whitty put his hands round the Astrologer’s shoulders in consolation:
“Sorry old chap, there’s nothing for us here. There’s a low risk that Chinese rubbish will arrive on our shores. But if it does, we have the 2011 SARS Coronavirus Pandemic Plan to follow.”
“Thing is, the 2011 Plan is a bit, you know: ominous. We don’t want to have to tell the boss what we all worked out a decade ago: that a nasty SARS-CoV bug could kill quarter of a million Brits in 3 months. You know what he was like when he was Mayor of London. He’d panic if someone told him there’s going to be a shortage of bicycle lanes in Camden this summer.”
“So, Fergie old chap, just knock us up something quick and dirty. You know, like do with that German dolly. Sorry. A lovely little model. Just scribble it on a fag packet and drop it in when you’re next passing. I really need it. You know I do. Then I can file the packet and make very needed use of the contents.”
“And look: don’t want to bother the boss with this. You know, he’s awfully busy dealing with that bugger Barnier over the Brexit negotiations thing. And taking his absences from COBRA meetings. So: all quiet on the epidemiological front, OK?”
So, our disappointed little Astrologer got out his second best crayons, and drew Model (2): above. As you saw from the SAGE papers in Chapter 3.
Then something happened: a bit of panic in Focus Groups.
Then someone happened. I don’t know who. That’s for you to find out.
That someone had a rather different conversation with the Astrologer, sometime around 3 March:
“Why aye man. I’ve been watching you at these SAGE and stuffing meets. It’s OK, nobody’ll ever find out I was here. That’s how multi-genius Svengali’s operate.”
“Now look hinny. You seem a canny lad. Would you like to come to Downing Street and meet the Wizard of Loss? You would? Great. So get your crayons out and draw me a proper eppy-dimmy-thingy Report. With lots of graphs like.”
“Say? What do I want it to say? Why man, there’s a bus needs a poster on it. A bloody big one, with big letters. No, of course it doesn’t matter if it’s true. What are ya: some kind of scientist or something?”
“I want a big number. A great number. Don’t make it too rounded: that looks fake. Say, I dunno, something like 510,000 people will die. Summat like that. A number the boss can get his head around.”
What do ya mean, there’s already a Plan with a Model? With 250,000 deaths. That’s no good man! That’s just half amount of people die every year. Even more in a rough night of a Friday in my part of the world.
“Why no man. It’s gotta be a big, bold number. One that’ll scare the living shit out of them. I mean him.”
“And while you’re at it, drop him a nudge that them hospital places are getting chocca. They’re gonna overflow like your German dollies knickers when you show her your new floppy discs. Sorry. Just tell him them ICU wards are bustin.”
“I know you don’t know anything about it. You’re an Astrologer, not a consultant intensive care physician, or a hospital trust administrator. But if I had to run Britain by actually knowing the facts, I wouldn’t need Focus groups, would I?”
At last! After 10 years of banishment. Living only of $21 million dollar grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Astrologer’s time had come. He popped out his best set of coloured crayons, stuck his tongue between his lips, and came up with Model (3). Triumph!
Then he realised that the deadline figure didn’t match what the Svengali had ordered. So he got out a bumper pen and scribbled the magic 510,000 figure. It’s not as if anyone’s ever gonna notice, he comforted himself.
Next day, passing poor od Whitty in the SAGE corridor, the Astrologer had a shudder of pleasure. Putting his hands round Whitty’s shoulders in consolation:
“You’ve heard then? No more watching from the touchline for this big beast anymore? I’m up there in the Premier League old son. There’s an open goal at Number 10. He’s asleep on his line. So: meet the new boss. And when (praise him) the King asks who among you agrees with my Astrologer, you bloody say “We all do”. Or the Svengali will have your guts for garters.”
Whitty, with one last thimble of integrity left to his Professor title muttered: “But I’ve been on TV, telling everyone that nobody can really get it and if you do, it’s no worse than you get from your wife’s cooking.”
The Astrologer doffed his spectacles, and polished them on the rag pinned to his chic new clipboard: “What can I say old, son. Shit happens.”
I know. It will make a brilliant Channel 4 drama documentary. Do you think the wonderful Benedict Cumberbatch will get to reprise his role?
It will be really great if the C4 screen writers can get hold of the top secret SAGE meeting minutes and the after- 23 March stuff. It’ll really help them fill in the gaps. You know, bring authentic voices to the screen.
But it’s not a big deal. I mean: it’s not like it’s a matter of life and death for 65 million people of a nation, is it?