Lockdown Boris violated SAGE advice
The Johnson Lockdown order of 23 March was made against SAGE Advice
As I wrote of Simon Dolan’s legal challenge to the Lockdown in WORLDS ENDS: Coronavirus, Frankenstein and Other Monsters, Chapter 9 Anarchy in The UK: “This is one of the most important legal documents to have been written this century.”
The release of the SAGE Minutes, under pressure from Simon Dolan’s legal case, has proved these words prophetic.
We now have a clear timeline which supports all that was written in Chapter 3 of WORLDS ENDS: Coronavirus, Frankenstein and Other Monsters .
At that time of writing, all that was available from SAGE was its carefully manipulated selection of pre-April 2020 documents.
However:
if one were aware that all along since 2011, Govt UK had in place a SARS-CoV2 Pandemic Plan.
If one were aware that the 2011 Plan was re-issued and endorsed by Govt UK on 27 February 2020:
If one were aware that the 2011 Govt UK SARS-CoV2 Pandemic Plan was again re-issued and endorsed by Govt UK on 3 March 2020.
If one were aware that the 2011 Govt UK SARS-CoV2 Pandemic Plan was stated in the Govt UK 26 May Plan To Rebuild, as being the plan which Govt UK had been following since Lockdown on 23 March.
Then one could see, as through a glass darkly smudged with the panicked palm-prints of Boris Johnson, the transparent reality.
The true story of how Britain was put into Lockdown,
by TV announcement on 23 March 2020.
The 3 critical days from 19-22 March when SAGE was closed.
The trio of days in which the decision was made to kill a country.
Not following science. Surrendering to panic.
FOLLOW THE SAGE MINUTES
COUNTDOWN TO LOCKDOWN
17 DAYS TO LOCKDOWN DECISION
5 March SAGE Minutes
Summary
1. There are currently no scientific grounds to move away from containment efforts in the UK.
2. There is epidemiological and modelling data to support implementation – within 1-2 weeks – of individual home isolation (symptomatic individuals to stay at home for 14 days) and whole family isolation (fellow household members of symptomatic individuals to stay at home for 14 days after last family member becomes unwell) to delay Covid-19 spread, modify the epidemic peak and reduce mortality rates.
3. In addition, there is scientific data to support implementation – roughly 2 weeks later – of social isolation (cocooning) for those over 65 or with underlying medical conditions to delay spread, modify the epidemic peak and reduce mortality rates.
4. SAGE agreed an updated set of reasonable worst case scenario planning assumptions for Covid-19.
Something critical must be about to happen within SAGE over the next 17 days.
We turn the pages of the SAGE Minutes, eagerly anticipating the words “SAGE unanimous recommendation is that Britain must suffer immediate and total Lockdown.”
Govt UK was always following the science. It is inconceivable that Boris Johnson would have killed his own country, without such clear advice. Isn’t it?
12 DAYS TO LOCKDOWN DECISION
10 March SAGE Minutes
21. Social distancing ("cocooning") is for those 70 and over, as well as those of any age in vulnerable groups.
22. The modelling concludes that restricting this group to 70+, rather than 65+, would not cause a significant increase in numbers of deaths.
23. SAGE agreed cocooning could be tiered, covering those at the highest risk, and those at increased risk but not in the highest risk.
24. The social distancing expected of those in the intermediate risk group may be less stringent. SAGE should review the policy proposal developed around this to consider any impacts (the trade off between stringency and compliance was noted).
So, social distancing is for the elderly: those 70 and over.
Indeed, as you read the SAGE Minutes in March, the mantra that the elderly - and they alone - require protection, is repeated.
That was scientific and common sense.
32. A summary of triggers and timings for the 3 interventions under consideration is set out in the table below.
What Social Distancing meant to SAGE on 10 March
Here you can see that even the concept of whole population Lockdown has not even occurred to SAGE.
At this stage, SAGE was still acting in the domain of actual science, not the Boris panicked fantasy land of Hyper-Sience.
We then find an extraordinary statement:
Reasonable worst case scenario
35. SAGE agreed that, for planning purposes, it is not useful at this stage to produce a "most likely" scenario until more UK data are available.
36. The reasonable worst case remains the most useful scenario for planning, but a most likely scenario will be more viable as additional data become available within 1-2 weeks.
Next meeting of SAGE
37. SAGE noted that public gatherings pose a relatively low but not zero public risk. People are more likely to be infected by people they know, not strangers. But it acknowledged the importance of advice in this area and agreed to review it and to look at different types of gatherings/meetings.
You might reasonably ask how anyone, even a panicked charlatan, could decide to kill a country, when his most eminent scientific advisors are telling him that there is not enough data to say how the epidemic might go.
9 DAYS TO LOCKDOWN DECISION
13 March SAGE Minutes
2. The science suggests that household isolation and social distancing of the elderly and vulnerable should be implemented soon, provided they can be done well and equitably. Individuals who may want to distance themselves should be advised how to do so.
SAGE is maintaining the consistent advice from the start of March: shield the elderly.
4. The behavioural science suggests openly explaining to the public where the greatest risks lie and what individuals can do to reduce their own risk and risk to others, even if this is ahead of measures announced by the Government – but SAGE recognises that taking individual measures may be more feasible for some than others. Greater transparency could enable personal agency, send useful signals about risk and build trust.
This is the complete opposite of Lockdown.
It is voluntary: encouraging individuals to understand risks to themselves (in 99.6% of the population: none), and to others (with proper cocooning of the over 70’s: none).
6. SAGE is keen to make the modelling and other inputs underpinning its advice available to the public and fellow scientists.
Govt UK was obviously not keen. Everything possible has been done to suppress this information. Even the science documents underlying the 2011 Plan (endorsed and re-issued on 3 March 2020) remain censored.
12. It is clear that household quarantining would lead to increased risk of others within the household becoming infected, as described in the modelling.
Read and re-read this: with 9 days to the Lockdown decision, SAGE was telling Govt UK that locking people down in their own households would increase infection risk.
24. SAGE was unanimous that measures seeking to completely suppress spread of Covid19 will cause a second peak.
Read and re-read this: Govt UK responded by ignoring SAGE advice.
ACTION: DHSC Moral and Ethical Advisory Group (MEAG) to be invited to consider the ethical ramifications of household quarantine, given the increased risk to other residents where one resident is symptomatic
If any consideration was ever given, plainly Govt UK ignored it.
6 DAYS TO LOCKDOWN DECISION
16 March SAGE Minutes
Summary
1. On the basis of accumulating data, including on NHS critical care capacity, the advice from SAGE has changed regarding the speed of implementation of additional interventions.
2. SAGE advises that there is clear evidence to support additional social distancing measures be introduced as soon as possible.
3. These additional measures will need to be accompanied by a significant increase in testing and the availability of near real-time data flows to understand their impacts.
4. SAGE will further review at its next meeting whether, in the light of new data, school closures may also be required to prevent NHS capacity being exceeded.
5. SAGE did not review the work on intermittent application of measures nationally or geographically in detail but will do so.
16. SAGE cannot be certain that the measures being considered by HMG will be sufficient to push demand for critical care below NHS capacity but they may get very close under the RWC scenario.
18. SAGE agreed that its advice on interventions should be based on what the NHS needs and what modelling of those interventions suggests, not on the (limited) evidence on whether the public will comply with the interventions in sufficient numbers and over time.
You know from the previous SAGE Minutes what additional social distancing measures means.
Not Lockdown
Protecting the elderly by ‘cocooning’
Read carefully the line: SAGE cannot be certain that the measures being considered by HMG…
You see what this means. “Measures” are at this time being considered by Downing Street, which have zero input from SAGE.
The real discussion on Britain’s future is being taken outside SAGE altogether.
4 DAYS TO LOCKDOWN DECISION
18 March SAGE Minutes
4. Reliable data on the health impacts of existing interventions will only be available in 2-3 weeks. This would not be in time to inform judgements on additional interventions to limit NHS pressures, which are likely to be significant within 2-3 weeks. It may be possible to collect intermediate data, and this should be a priority.
Your SAGE scientists tell Boris on 18 March that it will take 2-3 weeks before they can advise him on the effect of social interventions.
That science would not be in time to inform judgements on additional interventions to limit NHS pressures. So if the measures being considered by HMG (see Minutes of 16 March) include things like Lockdown, there is no science to support that.
THE 3 DAYS BEFORE LOCKDOWN DECISION
19-22 March
No SAGE Minutes. No SAGE Meetings.
The three days when SAGE did not meet
No science was being minuted.
There was no science to follow.
As hinted at in the SAGE Minutes for 16 and 18 March, the HMG decisions were being made elsewhere. By people who were not following the science.
Questions Boris Johnson Must Now Answer
In this trio of days between 19-22 March 2020:
who was making the decisions about Britain’s future?
where are they minuted?
what non-SAGE scientific advice was provided?
or was there no scientific advice at all? (This rather answers itself)
why was the SAGE advice ignored?
LOCKDOWN ANNOUNCED
23 March SAGE Minutes
The single most important science-followed decision since the Manhattan Project.
But the chief scientists of Govt UK do not even mention it in their Meeting Minutes.
SAGE now meets in hyper-reality. It is as if the Lockdown had not been announced at all:
SAGE is still whittling on about social distancing.
Even more disturbingly:
SAGE itself has no idea as to how social interventions have affected numbers of cases. The scientific answer could of course be Zero.
These 3 paragraphs completely destroy the claim of UK Govt to be following the science:
Lockdown cannot save those many who are expected to die within a year
Lockdown will cause excess deaths
HYPER-SCIENCE
Once we have reached this point, reading later SAGE Minutes has the educational value of watching a circus troupe of performing monkeys.
We know who the ringmaster is.
The SAGE monkeys simply dance to his tune. They are lying lackeys to the power which pays and employs them. They are to science what Goebbels was to information.
Their hyper-scientific subservience to power has set off a social chain reaction which will kill many more Britons than the employer of Goebbels ever managed to. That is their tragedy and their shame.