9 December (Part 1) - Sage? Onions perhaps but more likely turnips
I despise Boris Johnson, there I’ve said it. I despise the man I voted to be
Prime Minister exactly a year ago because he is a very conspicuous example of what many of
us will have met while at work. Someone who is promoted to the level at which
total incompetence can no longer be hidden.
It took a pandemic to expose him. Reputedly not a details man he blindly relies on
advice from a small group of discredited experts. At first the Sage modeller who got it wrong on foot and mouth disease, variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and the various influenzas
that followed. More recently his Chief Scientific Adviser who admitted to
feeding the Bozo false statistics in order to scare the gullible who were not
looking at his source data and only yesterday we had the Office of National
Statistics announce that the figures upon which the last lockdown was imposed were inflated by a factor of two.
Worse
than being badly advised and not knowing it, is Johnson’s willingness to impose his
version of a police state. £10,000 fines for swapping tables in a restaurant as
reported yesterday is not the sort of country I want to live in. I have never
abstained in an election but if Boris Johnson is still in charge at the next
election it may be the only option.
And what is this Telegraph headline all about? One day we are rejoicing because
of a vaccine the next it is not going to improve our lives very much.
I whip my mask off the moment I get to the travelator out of Sainsbury’s. I
doubt my piece of flimsy rag makes the slightest bit of difference to anyone but
it makes the Bozo feel better knowing he can control my life with the aid of the
occasional uniformed thug.
What does someone more knowledgeable than me, and most of us, have to say about masks for ever? I stole this from Twitter…
Sir Patrick Vallance has said: “We don’t know yet how good all the vaccines are going
to be at preventing the transmission of coronavirus”.
Patrick: it doesn’t matter. You’ve seen the data from the vaccine 1st interim analysis (please don’t insult those of us
familiar with reading public summaries of trial protocols at
http://clinicaltrials.com,
not “the results”, which will be along in 2023. Stunning; with over 90% reduction in infections!
Oh, hold on, no, that’s not right. The vaccine is associated with a much lower
propensity to become PCR positive. Not infected. These aren’t the same at
all. If they used high cycle thresholds (& it isn’t stated that they didn’t)
then this is meaningless, because Thebes didn’t define the operational false positive rate. What a shame!
We can’t actually conclude anything definite about the performance of the vaccine from these
1st interims. Never mind, the MHRA have invoked their mythical foretelling
skills & decided this means superb protection against infection, severe illness & even death! We know this, because the NHS
promo ad (sorry, press release) this morning spoke of ‘this life saving
vaccine’. (I kid you not...its in my timeline that I complained to the NHS about the ‘inaccuracy’.)
Anyway back on topic. It won’t matter whether or not the vaccine reduces transmission, because we’ll
have protected those who need protecting. I hope this helped. You seem a little confused recently about basic
immunological facts. I can always lend you my copy of Roitt’s Essential Immunology, you know, the one we both used at university!
Anyway, keep it up. With SAGE in charge, what could go wrong?
The author is Michael Yeadon (@MichaelYeadon3) with 32 years of experience in respiratory
pharmacology and Pfizer’s Vice President for respiratory diseases until he
founded his own biotech company. I think he is saying much the same as I
have been. That Boris Johnson is a victim of bad advice from people who are paid
enough to distinguish an arse from an elbow but can’t.