By Dr Ros Jones Retired Consultant Paediatrician and Dr Edmund Fordham Fellow of the Institute of Physics Many promising treatment options have emerged over the past year. We must ensure access to these is facilitated, in order to optimise COVID-19 outcomes. Disclaimer: This is not medical advice. It is information for policymakers, or to take […]
News
The ONS Infection Survey: a re-evaluation of the data
By Dr Paul Cuddon Healthcare and Life Sciences and Dr Clare Craig Diagnostic Pathologist Are early warning signs from the UK’s ONS Infection Survey a missed opportunity in predicting outbreaks? Mass testing of a healthy population is another intervention explicitly not recommended in any pandemic planning for respiratory viral pathogens before 2020. HART’s view is […]
Mortality data & COVID-19
By Joel Smalley Quantitative Data Analyst Modelling can accurately predict excess mortality associated with COVID-19 outbreaks. Policies can therefore be tailored to minimise collateral harms and maximise benefits. Mortality data can help us unravel the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak and the effects of associated interventions. When we try a new experiment such as lockdowns on the […]
Lockdowns – do they work?
By Professor Marilyn James Professor of Health Economics When an intervention has never been tried before, it is particularly important to carefully assess the potential harm it may inflict. Lockdowns have never previously been used in response to a pandemic. They have significant and serious consequences for health (including mental health), livelihoods and the economy. […]
Psychological impact of the Government’s communication style and restrictive measures
By Dr Damian Wilde (Chartered) Highly Specialist Clinical Psychologist HART believes that the most effective step to meaningfully reduce the widespread mental health crisis would be a relaxation of all COVID-19 restrictions, with the assurance that they will not return. A year of COVID-19 restrictions and a relentless media campaign to enhance compliance has led […]
Masks – do benefits outweigh the harms?
By Dr Gary Sidley Retired Clinical Psychologist and Dr Alan Mordue Retired Consultant in Public Health Medicine & Epidemiologist Whilst masks are a successful psychological tool to remind the public to remain alert, they are not effective in preventing the community spread of disease. In the summer of 2020, mandates were introduced to compel healthy […]
‘Zero Covid’ – an impossible dream
By Professor David Livermore Professor of Medical Microbiology It is not realistic to eliminate a respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2, any more than it is to eliminate the ‘flu or the common cold. Zero Covid is the public health strategy that seeks to eliminate COVID-19. It has influential backers,1 notably Nicola Sturgeon,2 Devi Sridhar,3 Independent SAGE,4 […]
Mutant variants and the futility of border closures
By Dr Gerry Quinn Post-doctoral Researcher in Microbiology and Immunology Mutant variants, emerging overseas or domestically, are an inevitable biological reality once a virus is in the population. On 9 February 2021, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that travellers from ‘hotspot countries’ will be expected to pay £1,750 to stay in one of 16 hotels […]
Economic impacts – the true cost of lockdown
By Professor Marilyn James Professor of Health Economics and Professor David Paton Professor of Industrial Economics “To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you, and that’s a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again.” (Ronald Reagan) Devastating economic impacts from […]
Asymptomatic spread: who can really spread COVID-19?
By Dr John Lee retired Professor of Pathology A respiratory virus needs associated symptoms in order to be clinically relevant. One year ago, this belief would have been universally accepted by the wider medical community. The Health Secretary, addressing the nation on television on 20 December 2020 stated that ‘If you act like you have […]
Vaccine certification – an ethical minefield
We have grave concerns regarding the proposal of any sort of vaccine certification as a ‘way out’ of repeated lockdowns.
24 March 2021
There is no emergency
COVID-19 cases are low and all-cause deaths are now back to normal pre-pandemic rates and falling. All vulnerable groups have been offered a vaccination. There are no longer any justifiable or ethical reasons for prolonging Covid-related statutory ‘emergency powers’.
It is anticipated that all phase 1 priority groups (approximately 32 million people) will have been offered a vaccine by 15 April, a group accounting for 99% of the deaths last spring. This will be an amazing achievement. The virus is now endemic and will circulate at very low levels this summer and is then likely to join the range of respiratory viruses circulating each winter. Talk of continuing social distancing and masks for several years is therefore unnecessary and unhelpful. We urgently need to reduce fear and increase hope as we recover from this crisis…
COVID-19: an overview of the evidence – March 2021
The data is in: lockdowns serve no useful purpose and cause catastrophic societal and economic harms. They must never be repeated in this country. The ‘sunk cost fallacy’ is a well known one. World War 1 is the classic example. By Christmas 1914 it was obvious to all that the war was a catastrophe, but […]
COVID-19 vaccination in children – major ethical concerns
By Dr Ros Jones Retired Consultant Paediatrician Known potential, late-onset effects from vaccines that have not yet been ruled out could take months or years to become apparent. The development of new vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 to the point of temporary approval1 has been the main tool promoted by the Government in the management of COVID-19.2 […]
Covid policies and harms to children
By Dr Ros Jones Retired Consultant Paediatrician and Dr Zenobia Storah Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychologist In all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration (Article 3 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child). We should put children first in all that we do. Children and young […]
11 March 2021
Parliament is due to debate vaccine passports on 15th March, triggered by an online petition. After consideration of the arguments for and against below, HART strongly contends that any vaccine certification or passport would create a precedent of eroding informed consent. An independent group, the UK Medical Freedom Alliance, has prepared a detailed open letter on the topic, which is well worth reading…
5 March 2021
From next week, secondary pupils across England will be asked to take rapid lateral flow tests to help identify anyone who might be infectious. According to PHE and the University of Oxford, lateral flow tests have a false positive rate of around 0.3%, which in a clinical setting would be acceptable, but when testing 4 million healthy, asymptomatic schoolchildren twice a week will mean 24,000 false positive tests. When you add in their contacts this could see up to 700,000 children out of the classroom every week (based on classes in quarantine rather than whole year groups). This clearly undermines the “national priority” of ensuring British schoolchildren have the education that they deserve. It is also important to note that after conducting 1.9 million tests in secondary schools throughout January and February, the results have shown no genuine COVID-19…
25 February 2021
Welcome to our latest weekly bulletin.
Good news from the NHS – COVID-19 like symptom triages through 999 and 111 calls dipped this week to 3,734 – the lowest since the 8th August, when few non-pharmaceutical interventions were in place.
UK restrictions among strictest in the world
It may be a surprise to learn that, compared with all other nations for which a stringency index of NPIs was calculable, the UK ranks fifth most severe behind only Cuba, Eritrea, Honduras and Lebanon. See the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker for their methodology…
