Herd Immunity or Eugenics - A Dangerous Unethical Experiment
In-depth analysis into the UK Governments' flawed handling of the Coronavirus Pandemic
On July 19, 2021, the UK Government removed restrictions on COVID in England. People were effectively left to make their own decision on whether to protect themselves or not. The rest of the UK followed suit a few weeks later. The ramifications of this remains to be seen.
Background
In a previous article, I explained the origins of COVID, emanating from China in the wake of its rapid economic development and how China has become a hotspot for zoonotic diseases (transmitted from animals to humans). I also pointed out the neoliberal connection and how ‘the current crisis has exposed the cracks in the system’. The Government has been working overtime papering over the cracks, hoping that nobody notices. They have been exposed, but not enough people are paying attention. Everyone else is left to their own devices, exposed to whatever the corporate media is churning out. Many probably don’t have a clue as to what’s really happening. Then as always there’s the crackpots.
It all started of course in China, back in December 2019. A report was published by the World Health Organisation (WHO), WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2, in early 2021, that consisted of a team of international scientists. The team visited various locations within China from 14 January to 10 February 2021, including the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, the wet market that was originally cited as the epicentre for the outbreak of the disease. As several early cases were reported that had no link to the Huanan market, it is likely that the market was not the original source of the outbreak. The report indicates that earlier tests in different countries detected the virus in the weeks preceding the first outbreaks in Wuhan. One hypothesis presented in the report is transmission of the virus through food:
Food-chain transmission can reflect direct zoonotic transmission, or spillover through an intermediate host. Meanwhile cold chain products may be a vehicle of transmission between humans. This would also refer to food-contamination events in addition to introductions.
The report concludes though that the probability of food borne transmission would have been unlikely back in 2019.
There have been conspiracy theories relating to release of the virus through a lab breakout (see below), but this has been discounted by WHO. The most likely medium of transmission would be through an intermediate animal host.
This is a comprehensive report from WHO. But there are still some missing links in the puzzle. An editorial from the Lancet has been critical of the methodology behind the report. It notes the preliminarily nature of the report. But perhaps most importantly, the veil of political bias:
because of ongoing tensions between political spheres of influence, an investigation led by a USA–EU consortium is unlikely to be as independent as it might like to appear.
The editorial cites some recommendations that include:
more time to find enough concrete evidence in the vast remnants of clues of an event that happened (at least) 16 months ago to identify the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
traditional Chinese remedies, which are increasingly prevalent in China and could have been used as first-line treatments for cold-like symptoms, were not considered by the WHO team.
a much more thorough sweep of domestic and wild animal genomes (curated in a purpose-built database) across China and east Asian countries, where horseshoe bat, pangolin, and other species susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 live, is needed to pinpoint the intermediate host, if any.
Other research covers a different perspective. A paper published in the Journal Food Control in May 2021, investigates Food products as potential carriers of SARS-CoV-2.
It’s been well established that certain pathogens can be transmitted via food products under certain conditions. But despite the WHO position, it may be feasible for COVID to find a transmission pathway via food, especially meat products, according to the paper. The basis for this hypothesis is evidence of viral particles in the faeces of patients. The authors argue that:
Because of this evidence, food matrices may act as a potential vehicle of SARS-CoV-2. Foodborne viral infections commonly can be transferred through the fecal-oral route (Miranda & Schaffner, 2019). Contamination of foods may happen via three pathways, including within the food processing, infected food staffs, and ingestion of animal-based foods that have a zoonotic virus.
The fact that the virus can remain stable on certain surfaces such as stainless steel for up to 3 days, reinforces the vulnerability to transmission. The following infographic outlines what is currently known about the virus:
The paper notes though:
So far, any document has not been reported about the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through foods and/or food packaging materials. Nevertheless, the probability of foodborne transmission cannot be excluded because of a study has demonstrated that the nucleic acid of SARS-CoV-2 has been found in the fecal paradigms of COVID-19 patients, whilst they indicated neither gastrointestinal signs nor correlation to the severity of lung infections.
But:
Accordingly, foodborne outbreaks principally may be caused by not only carry-over contaminations, for instance, food contamination through preparation by infected personnel, and contamination of food products within the manufacturing procedure, but also carrying-through contaminations, e.g. ingestion of meats, organs, and other products of animal origin harboring a zoonotic virus.
Further insight is provided by a paper published July 2020 in the Cambridge based Public Health Nutrition Journal. The paper focuses on the role of bushmeat, which is meat derived from wild animals. This was the predominant type of meat available at wet markets. It points out that indigenous and other local people’s are dependent on bushmeat as a vital source of food, especially if other foods are in short supply. It also emphasises that:
environmental impacts bred by factory farming are important drivers of outbreaks of foodborne zoonotic diseases in animal-based food systems.
Subsistence here is the key issue. External influences related to wildlife trade can exploit bushmeat causing conservation issues. Following the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, the banning of bushmeat was proposed. However, the paper argues against this proposal from the point of view that certain communities living in poverty rely on bushmeat and the wider issue that, ‘our westernised intensive industrial food system is a significant part of the problem.’ It makes this observation:
The analysis of epidemiological characteristics of viral transmission between animals and people shows that a series of high-risk human activities have allowed viruses to spread in the past, enabling the approximation between wild species, domesticated animals and people. Industrial livestock production is one of these activities. Much of the deforestation of tropical forests is justified by promoting areas for raising livestock.
This then opens up transmission routes via bats and intermediate hosts such as cattle. It cites an example from Australia where:
bats after the forest were cleared for pasture, remained perched in the trees cut down. This proximity to domesticated animals allows them to transmit coronavirus through their urine and faeces.
The general conclusion here is that humans are conflicting with natural ecosystems that can accommodate the transmission of viral infections through domestic livestock and ultimately through food supply chains. This opens up the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have found its way into the Huanan market via one of these transmission routes. As I noted in my previous article:
In China, there is a preference for freshly slaughtered meat. The focal point for these activities is the prevalence of wet markets. These markets 'sell live and freshly slaughtered domesticated and wild animals.' As such they have become the epicentre for disease outbreaks:
Wet markets are frequently underregulated, have unhygienic environments with inadequate sanitation, and are subject to poor surveillance and little biosecurity.
As a result:
Urbanization and associated land-use changes, in conjunction with rising meat consumption, have brought reservoirs of wildlife diseases into closer contact with livestock and people.
As with any major issue, there are always conspiracy theories, as mentioned above. Central to this is the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) that had been conducting research on previous Coronavirus strains, particularly SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome). The corporate media has been jumping on the anti-China bandwagon since the pandemic broke out. An article published by the New York Times on Jun 26, 2021, offers many examples of lab breakouts causing epidemics. The paper then speculates that:
Social media users in China were among the first to be more skeptical. Did the spread of a disease from bats just happen to start in Wuhan, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, one of the few top bat coronavirus research facilities in the world? And what about the Wuhan Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also carries out bat research, a few hundred yards from the seafood market?
The narrative continues to meander like some best-selling mystery novel, suggesting that the virus escaped from a Lab in Wuhan and could have been bioengineared. Finally near the end of the article, it states:
With so much evidence withheld, it’s hard to say anything about Covid-19’s origins with certainty, and even a genuine investigation would face challenges. Some outbreaks have never been traced to their origin.
But even if we are denied answers, we can still learn lessons.
Perhaps the biggest one is that we were due for a bat coronavirus outbreak, one way or another, and the research showing bat coronaviruses’ ability to jump to humans was a warning not heeded.
And the article concludes:
But a better path forward is one of true global cooperation based on mutual benefit and reciprocity. Despite the current dissembling, we should assume that the Chinese government also doesn’t want to go through this again — especially given that SARS, too, started there.
This means putting the public interest before personal ambitions and acknowledging that despite the wonders of its power, biomedical research also holds dangers.
To do this, government officials and scientists need to look at the big picture: Seek comity and truth instead of just avoiding embarrassment. Develop a framework that goes beyond blaming China, since the issues raised are truly global. And realize that the next big thing can simply mean taking great care with a lot of small details.
The day before the NYT article, the Washington Post published an editorial. The narrative here is similar in the sense that China is hiding something. In both narratives there is limited context or evidence, so the provenance isn’t clear.
The speculation originally started with an article in the Wall St Journal, based on a ‘previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report’. Like the other articles, its largely based on hearsay and speculative comments without any medical evidence to back up any of the claims. This is particularly encapsulated in a comment by a former US official:
David Asher, a former U.S. official who led a State Department task force on the origins of the virus for then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told a Hudson Institute seminar in March that he doubted that the lab researchers became sick because of the ordinary flu.
“I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in the hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus,” he said, adding that the researchers’ illness may represent “the first known cluster” of Covid-19 cases.
Asher has no obvious scientific background. Whether the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology or not should be the subject of investigation. But there are some important facts missing from the ‘mainstream’ narrative. Firstly, the original source for the WIV breakout was a paper published by Chinese scientists. But, as Full Fact reported back in 17 February 2020:
The paper hasn’t been peer reviewed, and it doesn’t offer any clear evidence that the outbreak began in a lab. It simply proposes it as a possibility.
Secondly, the WIV has received funding from the West. In the European Parliament, a Parliamentary question was asked by French MEP Jérôme Rivière concerning EUR 130 576.80 that was paid to the WIV from 2015 - 2019, by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 program. The answer to the question (from the EC) was as follows:
1. The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is a beneficiary in two Horizon 2020 grants supporting the European Virus Archive (EVA): ‘EVAg’ running from 1 April 2015 to 31 July 2020 and ‘EVA Global’ running from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2023. Under grant ‘EVAg’, WIV has received an advance payment of EUR 31.384,87. It also claimed costs of EUR 9.437,50 that were accepted but did not lead to additional payment. The total maximum amount that could be claimed by WIV under this grant is EUR 130.576,80. However, as the project has not yet delivered its final report, the total amount claimed by WIV under this grant is not known yet. Partner WIV delivered the first SARS-Cov2 genome sequence, which enabled partners of the European Virus Archive to design the widely used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) diagnostic test for COVID-19. Under grant ‘EVA Global’ WIV has received an advance payment of EUR 34.194,39. The maximum amount that could be claimed by WIV under this grant is EUR 88.433,75.
2. In all Horizon 2020 grants at the start of the project beneficiaries receive an advance payment. At regular intervals (usually every 18 months) beneficiaries provide a periodic report (i.e. technical report with the overview of the work done and financial report with financial statements and a use of resources report) which are systematically checked against a pre-defined set of standard criteria by the Commission services. Payments are made only if the costs claimed by the beneficiary can be accepted. Constant monitoring is ensured until the end of any project. In addition, even after the end of the project, the Commission may check its proper implementation and compliance with the obligations laid down in the grant agreement.
But it wasn’t just the EU that contributed funding to the WIV, the US also funded the Lab. An article from FactCheck.org, based at the University of Pennsylvania, cites a funding grant of $3.7 million awarded by the National Institutes of Health to the EcoHealth Alliance ‘to study the risk of the future emergence of coronaviruses from bats.’ $600,000 was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as part of a collaboration arrangement. But most revealing was the original source of the US funding, coming from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and a Pentagon agency.
EcoHealth runs a project called the Emerging Infectious Disease Repository (EIDR), which is ‘funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency [DTRA], and is partially funded by USAID's Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT initiative.’
DTRA is directly linked to the US Department of Defense. Its mission is ‘to counter and deter Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and Emerging Threats.’ USAID launched the Emerging Pandemic Threats initiative (EPT) in 2009. It ran for five years. In March 2, 2020, $37 million was released by USAID to combat COVID-19, according to a press statement.
According to a Daily Caller report:
EcoHealth Alliance has received at least $37.5 million from a Department of Defense subagency dedicated to countering weapons of mass destruction, federal records show.
While receiving funding from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to study and combat viruses in Malaysia, Western Asia and Africa, EcoHealth provided taxpayer funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct risky experiments on bat-based coronaviruses, records show.
EcoHealth President Peter Daszak played a key role at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in suppressing debate that the Wuhan Institute of Virology could have played a role in the virus’s release into the human population.
This poses some important questions. Why does USAID - a CIA front - appear to be engaged in funding the WIV? And why is the US military involved in funding the Lab?
An archived press release from the WIV from April 2018 outlines a visit by Rick Switzer, Counselor of Environment, Science, Technology and Health Section of the Embassy of the United States in China and the U.S. Consul General in Wuhan, Jamison Fouss. It noted Prof Yanyi Wang’s (Deputy Director General of the WIV) welcome of the US delegation (emphasis added):
She pointed out that for a long time the American scientific research institution is one of the major strategic partners that WIV continues to carry out international cooperation with. The Institute has established close cooperation with a number of well-known U.S. organizations including the National Science Foundation, the EcoHealth Alliance, University of Texas Medical Branch, and the Galveston National Laboratory, and has achieved a series of academic exchanges.
There was a clear commitment during the visit of future close cooperation between the US and China.
With the blame game against China’s role in the spread of the pandemic continuing, this has raised suspicions in certain quarters concerning US involvement in virus research. These suspicions are partly fueled by allegations that the WIV was involved in Gain-of-Function research. As the Factcheck article notes:
Gain-of-function is a term that could describe any type of virology research that results in the gain of a certain function. But the type that’s controversial, including among scientists, is research that causes a pathogen to be more infectious, particularly to humans.
A cable published by Wikileaks from 2009 sent by the US Secretary of State to the Australia Group indicates collaboration with the AG and the WIV:
The U.S. believes participants would benefit from hearing about your experiences assisting China in setting up a Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology from the export control and intangible technology transfer perspectives. We are particularly interested to [STATE 00067207 003 OF 004] know how China plans to vet incoming foreign researchers from countries of biological weapons proliferation concern.
The AG was set up in 1985. Its principal objective:
is to use licensing measures to ensure that exports of certain chemicals, biological agents, and dual-use chemical and biological manufacturing facilities and equipment, do not contribute to the spread of CBW [chemical and biological weapons]. The Group achieves this by harmonising participating countries’ national export licensing measures.
There are similarities here to USAIDs EPT - coincidentally launched in 2009. It’s clear then that the US has been involved with the WIV in some capacity for a long time, possibly up to the initial outbreak of the pandemic.
The fact remains, even though some scientists aren’t ruling out an outbreak at the WIV, the origins of SARS-CoV-2 remain unproven. An article in the Lancet points out that:
there are at least 3200 coronaviruses that infect bats. Moreover, there are over 1400 species of bat. Figuring out which ones are susceptible to which coronaviruses is no small task.
Another article published by Nature outlines a nuanced and balanced assessment of the overall situation. The article cites some key points:
Scientists don’t have enough evidence about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to rule out the lab-leak hypothesis, or to prove the alternative - that the virus has a natural origin. Many infectious-disease researchers agree that the most probable scenario is that the virus evolved naturally and spread from a bat either directly to a person or through an intermediate animal.
In theory, COVID-19 could have come from a lab in a few ways. Researchers might have collected SARS-CoV-2 from an animal and maintained it in their lab to study, or they might have created it by engineering coronavirus genomes. In these scenarios, a person in the lab might have then been accidentally or deliberately infected by the virus, and then spread it to others - sparking the pandemic. There is currently no clear evidence to back these scenarios, but they aren’t impossible.
Outbreak-origin investigations often take years, and some culprits remain unknown. It took 14 years to nail down the origin of the SARS epidemic, which began with a virus in bats that spread to humans, most likely through civets.
Virology labs tend to specialize in the viruses around them, says Vincent Munster, a virologist at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a division of the National Institutes of Health, in Hamilton, Montana. The WIV specializes in coronaviruses because many have been found in and around China.
…a coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan isn’t surprising, because it’s a city of 11 million people in a broader region where coronaviruses have been found. It contains an airport, train stations and markets selling goods and wildlife transported there from around the region - meaning a virus could enter the city and spread rapidly.
Several researchers have looked into whether features of SARS-CoV-2 signal that it was bioengineered. One of the first teams to do so, led by Kristian Andersen, a virologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, determined that this was “improbable” for a few reasons, including a lack of signatures of genetic manipulation.
The Pandemic Response
On 30 March 2020, Declassified UK ran the article Coronavirus fake news: How the British government misled the public for weeks. Coming at the beginning of the first UK lockdown period, it was a damning and revealing exposé of how the UK Government downplayed and misled the public about the real threat inherent from COVID-19. What was particularly damning about the whole affair was the revelation later that the Government saw it coming years before.
The article notes that initially ‘coronavirus posed a “very low” or “low” risk’ and that ‘Cabinet ministers have also assured the public on at least 16 occasions that the UK health service was “well prepared” to cope with coronavirus’, emphasisng that the UK ‘was a “world leader” in public health, with the “expertise” to help less advanced countries.’ The reality was that the NHS was in poor shape with inadequate PPE (personal protective equipment).
When the virus ran out of control in China and began to expand globally, Chief Medical Officer for England Professor Chris Whitty proclaimed that:
The UK is well prepared for these types of incidents, with excellent readiness against infectious diseases.
This mantra from the Government continued well into March. So what was Boris Johnson’s inspired advice to the country when the first cases broke out? ‘Wash our hands with soap and water for the length of time it takes to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice.’ This was followed by a TV announcement:
One of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population without taking as many draconian measures.
This was the first hint that the Government had committed itself to the discredited herd immunity theory. This was confirmed on March 13 when ‘chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme the government’s aim was to “build up some kind of herd immunity”.’ Meanwhile the media started spreading conspiracy theories blaming the Russian’s for spreading disinformation - a classic deflection strategy to shift attention away from problems at home. Indeed in the days leading up to lockdown, the Government was more preoccupied in dealing with ‘Russian misinformation’, as cases of COVID-19 began to rise sharply. Finally on the 23 March, Johnson announced to the nation that the country was moving into lockdown. After systematically playing down the threat for weeks, he began by saying:
The coronavirus is the biggest threat this country has faced for decades – and this country is not alone. All over the world we are seeing the devastating impact of this invisible killer.
As mentioned above, the warnings that a major pandemic was imminent and that the UK was ill prepared to deal with such an outbreak was well established. In 2016, Exercise Cygnus was ran over a period of three days in October. It involved all the countries in the UK. It ran a scenario whereby after seven weeks of an influenza pandemic, up to 50% of the population was affected, causing between 200-400,000 excess deaths in the UK. COBRA was directly involved in the exercise. The general conclusion was that:
The UK’s preparedness and response, in terms of its plans, policies and capability, is currently not sufficient to cope with the extreme demands of a severe pandemic that will have a nationwide impact across all sectors.
Key points noted were:
Because the preparedness and response to an influenza pandemic covers multiple sectors and functions, a central repository of this information and overview of the entire response is required. Feedback from the planning and conduct of the exercise shows evidence of silo planning between and within some organisations and a lack of understanding about the potential impacts of a pandemic in which 50% of the population may be affected.
Understanding across Whitehall about the possible impacts of pandemic influenza should be improved and the government should review the legislative options, which might include easements and regulatory changes, that would assist with the operationalisation of health care surge arrangements and keeping essential services running.
Feedback from the exercise indicates that, in a number of areas, the reaction of the public to a pandemic approaching the severity of the one described in the Cygnus scenario was not well understood. […] This was particularly evident around consideration of mass burials and the potential use of population triage by the NHS. Both issues raised moral and ethical questions in addition to those about the potential response of the general population upon hearing that such measures were being considered or used.
The lack of joint tactical level plans was evidenced when the scenario demand for services outstripped the capacity of local responders, in the areas of excess deaths, social care and the NHS.
The Government buried the report for three years. It only came to light following a Freedom of Information request, as reported by the Independent. The paper has also revealed that other scenarios have been conducted, but these are being kept under wraps.
Needless to say, as we now know so well, keeping the report out of sight also kept it out of mind, meaning the Government learnt nothing from it. But the Government had no intentions of learning anything from it and from whatever else they’re hiding.
A National Scandal
On March 28, 2020, just as the country had moved into lockdown, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, published a scathing editorial in the journal. He accused the Government of failing to follow WHO advice and taking appropriate steps to deal with the threat, that ‘basic principles of public health and infectious disease control were ignored’ and that the NHS was ‘wholly unprepared for the surge of severely and critically ill patients that will soon come.’
He noted misleading comments from England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Jenny Harries:
“The country has a perfectly adequate supply of PPE.” She claimed that supply pressures had now been “completely resolved”.
But Horton underlined the real state of affairs at the time:
I receive examples daily of doctors having to assess patients with respiratory symptoms but who do so without the necessary PPE to complete their jobs safely. Health workers are challenged if they ask for face masks. Even where there is PPE, there may be no training. WHO standards are not being met. Proper testing of masks is being omitted. Stickers with new expiry dates are being put on PPE that expired in 2016. Doctors have been forced to go to hardware stores to buy their own face masks.
…The NHS has been wholly unprepared for this pandemic. It's impossible to understand why.
In a Twitter thread in May, Horton effectively called out the Governments response to the pandemic as ‘criminal’:
But this was only the tip of the iceberg. The Government response to the PPE shortage was to award their chums. The Byline Times has been exposing a network of ‘VIP fast-lanes’ and crony contracts. It reports ‘that contracts awarded to Conservative Party donors and associates’ exceeds £3 billion, all carefully crafted by the Government through ‘a loophole in EU law that would allow contracts to be awarded without competition in the event of an emergency.’ It notes that:
VIP suppliers were 10 times more likely to win a contract than other firms, according to the NAO, yet the Government failed to extensively track any potential conflicts of interest.
The investigation found links:
between COVID-19 contracts and firms connected to members of the House of Lords, current MPs, former political aides, current Government advisors and people closely associated with the Prime Minister’s former chief advisor Dominic Cummings and the Vote Leave campaign.
The recently disgraced Matt Hancock was himself well immersed in the PPE scandal:
Derek Johnston, the chairman of EMS Healthcare, a company awarded a £5.5 million contract for COVID-19 mobile testing units, is a former business partner of Shirley and Robert Carter – Hancock’s mother and stepfather. Johnston and Hancock’s stepfather, Robert Carter, were also one-time mutual directors at GB Mailing Systems.
And it goes on… a who’s who of former and current Conservative Alumni who have close links to companies involved in contracts.
Just how much of tax payers money was wasted in dodgy contracts? The Byline Times reports here that as the pandemic took hold, global prices for PPE soared. Such was the situation that in order to secure some contracts, ‘the Government was even told that bribes were being paid to secure PPE deals on its behalf.’ Fraud was also prevalent. In one case, the company Purple Surgical was defrauded out of $27 million by a US/Hong Kong supplier. This highlights a major problem with public procurement data:
while the contracts that were signed can be viewed, there is no way of telling if the contract was actually fulfilled unless the company is contacted and asked this.
Ultimately of course:
the Government ran the procurement operation and all responsibility for the selected contracts, and the associated investment of public money, lies with officials and ministers.
In addition, contracts were procured that ended up as useless junk. For example the DHSC:
bought 2.7 billion non-sterile disposable nitrile gloves for £302 million from Yancheng New Cloud Medical Equipment. This works out as £0.17 per item – 70% above the Efficio guideline of £0.10 per unit.
Further investigation on the issue estimates Government expenditure at around £54.2 billion, with a third of the total going to just five companies. It notes that:
IMF data shows that the UK has spent a larger proportion of its GDP on its COVID-19 response than any other European country. Only the US has spent a larger proportion of its GDP.
And ‘at least £25 billion of deals have been awarded without competitive tender', under the ‘emergency’ loophole. The article concludes:
Even despite this, it is incredibly difficult for the average citizen to work out how much money the Government has spent on private sector suppliers during the pandemic. There are also serious questions about why the UK has witnessed one of the worst health and economic impacts from the pandemic, while spending so much money on it.
A Shadowy World of Pseudo-Science and Misinformation
Behind the shady deals and crony contracts, it gets even more sinister. Investigative journalist, Dr Nafeez Ahmed, who has been contributing to the Byline Times, has been investigating the shadowy world that the UK Government has been occupying, in an initial series of articles called Sagegate. Evidence from the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) clearly show:
a Government decision, from the outset, to refuse to consider the goal of suppressing the Coronavirus as a viable option.
Social distancing and other preventative measures that were eventually adopted ‘were constantly and repeatedly pitted against economic considerations.’ Modelling adopted by the Government focused mainly on the economic implications of the pandemic. In short:
the Government did not ‘follow the science’. Neither social distancing nor test and trace were modelled for their public health ramifications by SAGE until mid-March. Data on NHS capacity, too, only hit the Government’s radar around this time. Why was this scientific research hamstrung for months as the Government watched COVID-19 sweep through the country?
One key answer to the question was the strong orientation towards herd immunity by the Government indicated in the SAGE minutes. Figures on fatalities varied. Government figures indicated around 500,000 deaths. But an estimate by the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) quoted a much higher figure of 1.3 million fatalities.
The Government apparently thought that a large proportion of the population would be asymptomatic and that this would help achieve herd immunity. A key player here was the Prime Minister’s chief advisor Dominic Cummings. The basis for initially engaging with the pandemic would be based on behavioural science, driven by a sub-group, SPI-B (Scientific Pandemic Influenza – Behaviour), “to provide behavioural science advice via SAGE throughout this incident”, without any scientific insight:
The idea of “immunity” was not based on scientific research within SAGE, but was described by members of the SPI-B group as a public messaging strategy to help quell confusion about a Government policy of “not applying wide-scale social isolation at the same time as recommending isolation to at-risk groups… One view is that explaining that members of the community are building some immunity will make this acceptable.”
Ultimately though, events caught up with with the Government and SAGE was compelled to change its approach. Not only that, but SAGE was confused about how to implement the correct course of action because nothing had been properly investigated:
The minutes noted that “further analysis and modelling” of potential school closures and many other social distancing interventions was required for the Government to make its next decisions.
In other words the Government was utterly clueless. This begged the question:
why hadn’t this analysis and modelling been done much earlier? These minutes can be read as an inadvertent admission that, until this time, the Government’s scientific understanding of the efficacy of social distancing measures was lacking in substance and inadequate to underpin its policy decisions.
It took about a month for SAGE to wake up to the reality of herd immunity:
SAGE belatedly conceded that there was “no evidence pointing to high levels of population immunity in this stage in the pandemic”; that it was unclear how long immunity lasted; and that therefore the idea of opening up the economy via mass distributing of immunity passports for people recovered from the Coronavirus was premature. By the end of April, SAGE had driven the final nail in the coffin for the herd immunity fantasy.
What is clear from the investigation is that the Government was stuck in an ideological silo. The Government was warned that:
if lockdown restrictions were eased too early without a robust ‘Test, Trace and Isolate’ system in place, this would lead to a resurgence of the virus, with a high risk of new deaths.
When a test and trace system was finally implemented, it turned out to be a shambolic failure. Germany and South Korea had already a successful system in place for five months. This was supposed to be what the UK model was to be based on.
Throughout lockdown, SAGE persistently warned the Government its strategy would not work. But the Government insisted that SAGE should revise its advice. As the article concludes:
In reality, the Government was cherry-picking and manipulating the science to pursue an incoherent chopping and changing of strategies, with no real scientific foundation at all – beyond the overriding assumption that protecting the economy would require sacrificing public health, or vice versa.
The irony lost on the Prime Minister’s A-team of herd immunity fantasists is that it is their own abject incompetence that has sacrificed both the economy and public health on the altar of laissez-faire ideology.
The test and trace system that was adopted was one of those crony contracts that would become a hallmark of Government policy. It tied into a contact tracing app that was launched by NHSX, a NHS subsidiary. NHSX was directly linked to Faculty AI, which had been hired by Dominic Cummings as part of the Vote Leave campaign. By remarkable coincidence, Faculty AI’s co-founding chief executive Marc Warner just happened to be the brother of Ben Warner, a Government advisor on digital solutions who was previously involved with the firm. Not only that, but the company had indirect links with the infamous Cambridge Analytica. It transpires that, ‘Both the Warner brothers and Dominic Cummings have attended meetings of’ SAGE. In addition, Faculty was working with US based Palantir, a company that sparked a scandal when it was revealed that the Government had given it access to NHS patient data. But another major scam was yet to unfold.
In the US a high profile think tank with links to the Koch brothers and a well oiled climate denial machine was pushing the herd immunity fallacy. On 3 October 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) established the The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), named after the town Great Barrington, Massachusetts where it was set up. According to its website it currently (August 2021) has 14,879 signatures from ‘Medical & Public Health Scientists’ and 43,804 from ‘Medical practitioners’. But it turns out that the signing up process is a farce. Anyone can sign up and claim to be in one of the categories. The process isn’t properly vetted.
The AIER’s funding doesn’t just come from the Kochs. A who’s who of fossil fuel, financial and various other corporate neoliberal backers support the declaration. The whole thing is an elaborate PR and propaganda exercise that has been thoroughly discredited by the wider scientific community. And who is behind the scam?:
The GBD was drafted and supported by a UK defence contractor funded by the MOD since 2017, with direct ties to Canadian fossil fuel interests and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists.
…former investment banker Alexander Caccia, CEO of Animal Dynamics – a ‘bio-inspired engineering company’ funded by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) – wrote the Declaration at the meeting on 3 October.
Caccia is the partner of Professor Sunetra Gupta an Oxford epidemiologist, one of the key signatories of the GBD. But Gupta’s relationship with the Government was much closer. She directly advised Boris Johnson and his Cabinet, specifically on the herd immunity issue and was apparently responsible for persuading the Government to reject a ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdown on the basis that ‘herd immunity could be achieved “in the order of three to six months”’. This decision effectively brought on the ‘second wave’ that hit in the winter of 2020, ultimately forcing the second full lockdown. In the background, Gupta was being funded by a major Billionaire Tory donor:
Georg von Opel, the Swiss-based great-grandson of the German car manufacturer, and his wife Emily were key Tory funders during David Cameron’s time as prime minister. The couple – who last donated to the Conservatives in 2016 – were given personal access to Cameron and enjoyed private dinners with the then prime minister and his family.
Another high profile character was Professor Robert Dingwall, who sits on NERVTAG and advises SAGE. He began tweeting about pushing herd immunity amongst children:
He produced and signed an open letter that was co-signed by Gupta and others representing the GBD, calling for an end of restrictions. It appears that the lobbying connected to these groups contributed to the lifting of restrictions on July 19, 2021.
An article published in the Lancet was adamant in its response to mass infection and population immunity strategies. It states that ‘unmitigated transmission will disproportionately affect unvaccinated children and young people’. With new variants of the virus appearing:
exponential growth will probably continue until millions more people are infected, leaving hundreds of thousands of people with long-term illness and disability.
This could become especially acute in schools and universities. An important consideration is the inevitable wearing off of vaccine immunity. The article states unequivocally:
In light of these grave risks, and given that vaccination offers the prospect of quickly reaching the same goal of population immunity without incurring them, we consider any strategy that tolerates high levels of infection to be both unethical and illogical. The UK Government must reconsider its current strategy and take urgent steps to protect the public, including children. We believe the government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment.
Lessons can be learnt from history. And one of the most poignant is the story of ‘Typhoid Mary’. Mary Mallon was born in Ireland in 1869 and emigrated to the US when she was 15.
During the 1900’s there were unexplained outbreaks of typhoid fever, a food borne illness, in New York. Her plight was unearthed by sanitation investigator George Soper, who realised that outbreaks of the disease were occurring wherever she worked.
Mallon was a cook, who was employed by wealthy New Yorkers. Soper tracked down a pattern of infections. He eventually approached Mallon with his evidence and asked her for urine and faeces samples, but ‘she surged at Soper with a carving fork.’ She was finally detained by police and escorted to a hospital where she tested positive for the disease. The problem was that:
Mallon herself had no symptoms of typhoid and didn’t believe she could be spreading it. It’s likely Mallon never understood the meaning of being a carrier, particularly since she exhibited no symptoms herself.
As such, she didn’t take the whole affair lying down:
In 1909, she sued the New York City Department of Health and the case was brought to the Supreme Court. In the court of public opinion, Mallon had stirred a debate over individual autonomy and the state’s responsibility in a public health crisis. In the court of law, her lawyer argued she had been imprisoned without due process.
The court declined to release her, saying “it must protect the community against a recurrence of spreading the disease,” but Mallon was freed early the following year by the city’s new health commissioner. He agreed on the condition that she stop cooking.
But she had no other way to earn a living. Still refusing to accept her condition she worked under an alias. The result? Further outbreaks of Typhus. Soper was again brought in to investigate and managed to track her down. This time she was kept in isolation permanently for the rest of her life. The crux of this tale is summed up in the articles conclusion:
The legacy of “Typhoid Mary” as an asymptomatic vessel for disease led to the theory of “superspreaders” that has surfaced in disease outbreaks ever since. “Since ‘Typhoid Mary’ was discovered, the whole problem of carriers in relation to infectious diseases has assumed an immense importance,” Soper said in a speech in 1913, “an importance which is recognised in every country where effective public health work is done and in every army where communicable disease has been brought under control.”
Back to the Future
In September 2020, The British Academy was asked by the Government Office for Science to produce an independent review on the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19. The result was two reports, the first being The COVID Decade: understanding the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19. One of the key findings was that:
the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities and differences and created new ones, as well as exposing critical societal needs and strengths. These can emerge differently across places, and along different time courses, for individuals, communities, regions, nations and the UK as a whole.
Three areas were identified:
Health and wellbeing – covering physical and mental health (including young people and work), wellbeing, and the environment we live in
Communities, culture and belonging – covering communities and civil society, cities and towns, family and kinship, and arts, media, culture, heritage and sport
Knowledge, employment and skills – covering education (compulsory and tertiary), skills, knowledge and research, and work and employment
The report identified nine areas of long-term societal impact:
1. Increased importance of local communities
2. Low and unstable levels of trust in governance
3. Widening geographic inequalities
4. Exacerbated structural inequalities
5. Worsened health outcomes and growing health inequalities
6. Greater awareness of the importance of mental health
7. Pressure on revenue streams across the economy
8. Rising unemployment and changing labour markets
9. Renewed awareness of education and skills
A second report Shaping the COVID Decade: addressing the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19, was produced to accompany the first report. This report is aimed at policy makers. It identifies seven strategic goals that policymakers should follow:
1. Build multi-level governance structures based on empowering participation, engagement and cooperation to strengthen the capacity to identify and respond to local needs.
2. Improve the way we develop, share and communicate knowledge, data and information to enable all decision-makers to work from shared understanding of the facts.
3. Prioritise investment in digital infrastructure as a critical public service to eliminate the digital divide, improve communication and joint problem solving, and create a more equitable basis for education and employment.
4. Reimagine urban spaces to support sustainable and adaptable local businesses, amenities and lifestyles.
5. Create a more agile, responsive education and training system capable of meeting the needs of a new social and economic environment and acting as a catalyst to develop and enhance our future.
6. Strengthen and expand community-led social infrastructure that underpins the vital services and support structures needed to enhance local resilience, particularly in the most deprived areas.
7. Empower a range of actors, including business and civil society, to work together with a sense of social purpose to help drive a solid strategy for recovery across the economy and society.
The conclusion from this research suggests that the effects of COVID could last up to a decade. Whether the Government pays any attention to these reports remains to be seen. Given their track record, we shouldn’t hold our breath.
The Final Picture
What has become clear during the pandemic is that highly neoliberalised countries like the UK, have prioritised the economy over health. The US under Trump’s administration followed a similar path, as documented in this Counterpunch article. By contrast, China and other Asian countries quickly imposed total restrictions. These countries have brought the virus under control. The UK Governments’ role in handling the pandemic has given it enough rope to hang itself several times over along with every serving minister. Its response serves as an insight into distorted and delusional ideological perceptions rooted in dangerous and misguided conspiracy theories. Herd immunity, for example, didn’t appear out of nowhere. It has its links to Eugenics theory - courtesy of former government adviser Dominic Cummings. As this article outlines, Cummings views were exposed back in a February 2019 blog, in which he had a vision of a privatised NHS effectively becoming a latter day Eugenics experiment. Cummings’ legacy offers an insight into the mentality of this current Government. As the article sums up:
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dominic Cummings and his fellow ideologues in Government are hell-bent on pursuing a pseudo-scientific vision that has been years in the making. They are using the COVID-19 crisis to erect a corporate superstate powered by mass surveillance and AI. Their grim ambition is to reach into the very DNA of every British citizen.
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