Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson is an embarrassment to journalism

[frogwoman]

That's if the story is even true, which I suspect it isn't.

 

[TopCat]

Self isolating in halls would be hard no?

 

[Pickman's model]

Four or five days? Nevermind the immediate term, the long term issues that may arise for her son should concern her. No doubt she won't be answering the phone when he calls to tell her that the bout of covid he caught in halls has affected his health.

She'll slam the phone down and tell the cops she got a breathy call

 

[Poot]

Telling though that her experience of her son is that he only calls to whine or demand money

I got that far and thought, fuck that shit. Tarring every young man in the world with the same brush as your own selfish offspring? Nah.

 

[frogwoman]

I suspect the story is made up tho and her son doesn't have it.

 

[Chilli.s]

I suspect the story is made up tho and her son doesn't have it.

Freshers week hangover and needed to blag some cash from mater.

 

[two sheds]

Jesus though she must also be an embarrassment to her son if she's printing that sort of stuff about him.

 

[frogwoman]

Gupta was saying that we had herd immunity back in March lol. I don't think putting her in charge would change very much, just cause the likes of Pearson to whine about being let down and stuff when tighter restrictions inevitably came.

 

[andysays]

here you go

My son has Covid-19. Good. Everyone in his student house has it as well. Even better. Typically, the infected ones have had a rough four or five days featuring at least one forlorn phone call home to Mum (Experience teaches us that only self-pity or the need for sudden cash injections will cause the young adult male to ring his mother). Already everyone is much improved although the virus’s trademark loss of taste and smell (the one symptom those geniuses on SAGE forgot to put on the list) has lingered.

There is no cause for alarm. On the contrary, I am glad that my boy will now form a tiny tile on the vast human shield which will protect his grandparents and other endangered citizens as our country acquires community immunity. Apart from a vaccine (unlikely to show up any time soon), allowing Covid to run through the healthy population is the only way out of this loathsome epidemic which kills our old and murders the futures of our youth.


While unveiling a package of new restrictions which may delay the epidemic, but will never defeat it, the Prime Minister told the Commons that “the fight against this virus will continue ... we will not listen to those who say let it rip”. I feel more disappointed in him by the hour. We thought we voted for Winston Churchill and we got King Canute.

Boris really needs to start listening to Sunetra Gupta, professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford university and a world authority on infectious diseases. “As many young people as possible need to get the virus before winter,” says Professor Gupta. Not that chaps like Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty are listening to her. Their Scientific Advisory Group is an echo chamber.

Consider that grim press conference given by the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser and the Chief Medical Officer. Talk about an odd couple: imagine how Bill and Ben would have ended up if neither had got off with Little Weed. What was made all too clear by Whitty and Vallance is that SAGE is still giving credence to the madcap guesses (Oops, sober mathematical models) of Imperial College’s Professor Neil Ferguson, he of the “500,000 Covid dead” forecast.

Sir Patrick put up a now-infamous slide which showed almost 50,000 cases a day by mid-October if cases kept doubling every seven or eight days. “This is not a prediction,” insisted Sir Patrick disingenuously. Make no mistake, Bill and Ben were fully aware that this implausible viral trajectory (witnessed nowhere else in the world, certainly not in France and Spain as they claimed) would be the main headline on every news outlet. Sure enough. Our boffins and their worst-case-scenario-on- steroids guaranteed that the British public was both primed for another lockdown and scared Whittyless. I saw the proof for myself. By 3pm, the loo-roll locusts had cleared the Andrex aisle in Waitrose.

As a mother, I detest Professor Ferguson and his recklessly inaccurate model for laying waste to my children’s prospects. I despise those senior civil servants who have secure pensions and nothing to fear from the economic danger their myopic safetyism has wrought. And I am coming to hate the men in Downing Street who are so busy eliminating risk (mainly to their own reputations) that they condemn the elderly to wither in loneliness and treat students like cattle with foot and mouth.

University term starts this week. It’s the ideal time for freshers to socialise, swap mobile details and microbes. Far from relations who may be vulnerable to Covid, they live in promisingly fetid halls of residence where they can easily get the virus during Match of the Day and be rid of it in a week.
Alas, far from seeing uni as the perfect Petri dish in which the virus can be cultured – and ultimately curbed – the authorities have imposed restrictions so draconian you wonder why any young person would want to be there at all.

Glum reports reach me from Exeter and Edinburgh where freshers have to stand two metres apart in a queue for the dining halls and then – get this – sit on their own at an exam-type desk far away from their nearest neighbour, a cordon sanitaire marked out by hazard warning tape. “My daughter hasn’t done this yet,” emails Diana, “as the thought of standing on your own followed by eating on your own is far too anxious-making. Our other daughter, who is in the second year, tells us the dining hall was the chief place to make friends. How is this going to work for our youngsters?”
“All Edinburgh courses are online,” says one dad who is worried that his shy son is isolated in distant lodgings – after the A-levels fiasco, university halls of residence were hugely oversubscribed. “So, he’s on a computer in his room all day followed by solitary dining and can’t go to the pub because he just missed out on being invited to join a group of six. And seven is breaking the rules. WHAT kind of experience is that?”
Rank, as my own son would say. Totally rank. St Andrews has taken the higher-education leper colony to its logical conclusion and invited students to “voluntarily isolate”. Amazing value for their £9,250 a year, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Do Bill and Ben the Pol Pot Men care about the effect their exorbitant graphs and terrorising models are having on actual people, both young and old? I’d like to see Professor Whitty, a monkish bachelor, try and reassure a tearful eighteen-year-old for whom Freshers’ Week, never the easiest experience, has turned into a socially-distanced ordeal.
“I am feeling so upset and cross about the whole thing and am not alone amongst my friends,” says Diana, who describes herself angrily as an ex-Tory voter. “We are on the verge of marching or chaining ourselves to some railings!"

Believe me, Diana, I feel like chaining myself to some railings with you. How dare our PM say that “nothing is more important than the education of our young people” when our offspring are having their studies wrecked by wholly disproportionate measures. Covid cannot harm students but adult paranoia about Covid certainly can.

How dare the Government’s chief scientific adviser show people who are just starting to rebuild their confidence a graph indicating a possible massive spike in Covid cases which has no credible basis in fact. It’s garbage. Insulting, manipulative, cruel garbage.
Whitty and Vallance have shafted science by turning it into spin. They should be replaced immediately on SAGE by Professors Gupta and Carl Heneghan, two superb scientists who have dared to challenge the conspiracy of dunces and this week signed a letter to the Prime Minister requesting a new, evidence-based approach to the epidemic.

I predict that Professor Gupta will turn out to be as right as Professor Ferguson was wrong. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the virus is now passing rapidly through 20- to 29-year-olds like my son, but there is much less incidence in the vulnerable 70-plus age group. Grandparents are using common sense to assess their own risk while their beloved grandchildren take one for the team.

Forget panicky politicians. Do our senior citizens really want youngsters to be confined and made miserable on their behalf when Covid makes up just one per cent of all UK deaths and they are 10 times more likely to perish from flu? I know from your defiant letters and emails that you want no such thing. Nor do you want a Conservative government which punishes the next generation in your name.

Instead of forcing students into sterile silos, we should rejoice when they do what comes naturally. The virus poses least threat to their age group and many are in the perfect position to protect rather than kill their Gran. Let Freshers have their fun and to the virus we say, Go forth and multiply! Community immunity can’t come a moment too soon.

"so you go and you stand on your own, and you eat on your own, and you go home and you cry and you want to die"

 

[LDC]

Gupta was saying that we had herd immunity back in March lol. I don't think putting her in charge would change very much, just cause the likes of Pearson to whine about being let down and stuff when tighter restrictions inevitably came.

Worryingly and quite annoyingly I've got a GP friend with sound politics who's started to be more in favour of a 'no-lockdown and protect the vulnerable strategy' and approvingly quoting her and that letter some doctors and a fuck load of economists signed very recently.

 

[Lord Camomile]

We thought we voted for Winston Churchill

Haven't read the rest of the article yet, but full of stupid thought it will inevitably be, this is an early frontrunner for "stupidest sentiment expressed in this article".

 

[MrSki]

I heard a midwife on 5Live yesterday who had a relatively mild covid infection in March. Went back to work in April but has been off since May with long covid. Poor woman could hardly breathe. The long term effects of this are still to be seen but it does not look good.

Is this not the same journalist who was moaning about school fees when the schools were shut?

 

[killer b]

a sizeable portion of top epidemiologists

How are you assessing the size of the portion of epidemiologists represented by that letter, and their top-ness, out of curiousity?

 

[ska invita]

How are you assessing the size of the portion of epidemiologists represented by that letter, and their top-ness, out of curiousity?

32 signed one letter

Covid-19: Experts divide into two camps of action—shielding versus blanket policies

Two open letters sent to the UK’s four chief medical officers signal the polarisation of opinion among medical professionals over how the government should tackle the emerging “second wave” of covid-19. One group of doctors and academics is calling for segmentation and shielding of the most...

www.bmj.com

 

[killer b]

32 signed one letter

Covid-19: Experts divide into two camps of action—shielding versus blanket policies

Two open letters sent to the UK’s four chief medical officers signal the polarisation of opinion among medical professionals over how the government should tackle the emerging “second wave” of covid-19. One group of doctors and academics is calling for segmentation and shielding of the most...

www.bmj.com

Sure, but is that a 'sizable' portion of epidemiologists? In fact they don't all seem to be epidemiologists at all, never mind top epidemiologists.

 

[ska invita]

Sure, but is that a 'sizable' portion of epidemiologists? In fact they don't all seem to be epidemiologists at all, never mind top epidemiologists.

agree

 

[frogwoman]

I see Karl Sikora has signed.

 

[NoXion]

Bunch of fucking economists. Institutional sociopaths.

 

[Spymaster]

How are you assessing the size of the portion of epidemiologists represented by that letter, and their top-ness, out of curiousity?

By general reading. She's not the only one who disagrees with the UK strategy, or do you disagree? There are plenty advising the Swedes.

 

[ska invita]

BBC


Posted at 9:429:42
Is UK policy 'moving towards Sweden'?

Bars and restaurants have stayed open throughout the pandemic in SwedenImage caption: Bars and restaurants have stayed open throughout the pandemic in Sweden
An Oxford University epidemiologist and practising GP has said he believes yesterday's announcements show the UK is making a "move towards Sweden" in its pandemic policy.
Prof Carl Heneghan told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that there was a "slow shift" towards trying to control the spread of the virus rather than suppressing it, while minimising social disruption. Sweden provoked much debate about its pandemic approach in March when it rejected a strict lockdown and kept shops and restaurants open.
He said he hoped it would mean an end to "the changes almost daily that are becoming utterly confusing for the public".
Many people still do not understand what social distancing means and about half do not understand what the symptoms of coronavirus are, Prof Heneghan said. "If you don't have this clear message now right through the winter we will have confusion reign," he said.
He said the UK should not "panic" at the "inevitable rise in cases" during winter and reinforce the messaging by building trust, not using a "mantra of fear" and punitive measures.


hard to argue thats what they're doing - pubs close at 10pm is a joke unless seen in light of the above

 

[LDC]

By general reading. She's not the only one who disagrees with the UK strategy, or do you disagree? There are plenty advising the Swedes.

You could also very easily find a letter disagreeing about climate change being not really a problem to worry about signed by a load of people, some quite qualified and knowledgeable in the field, and going back further there were plenty of doctors etc. were signing letters about how there's no real link between smoking and cancer. But what looks like a load on paper is a tiny fraction of the total, and they often have some political and/or financial interest that's not obvious at first glance.

 

[co-op]

We already tried that "herd immunity" bullshit, and the care homes got fucked. Viruses don't give a shit whether they infect the young and healthy or not.

But care homes are precisely the places where we don't do herd immunity (if such a thing exists). Nearly every country in Europe fucked up protecting the elderly who are clearly highly vulnerable. Among the wider population the risks seem much much lower and might well be out-balanced by the costs of the current strategy. I'm not sure why people get so angry about this - it's just a fairly standard attempt to try and get the costs and benefits balanced.

 

[LDC]

Bunch of fucking economists. Institutional sociopaths.

Totally. Find yourself as a doctor signing a letter alongside a load of economists? Have a fucking long look at yourself.

 

[frogwoman]

Kinda think people who argue we should copy Sweden don't actually pay much attention to what measures they actually had there

 

[frogwoman]

If they actually went there they'd be crying about freedom lol

 

[killer b]

By general reading. She's not the only one who disagrees with the UK strategy, or do you disagree? There are plenty advising the Swedes.

One guy who signed the letter is a professor of micromechanics. A top, top epidemiologist. One of the best.

Fionn Dunne is Chair in Micromechanics and holds the Royal Academy of Engineering/Rolls-Royce Research Chair at Imperial. His research is in the fundamentals of deformation and failure particularly relating to hcp polycrystal and Ni alloys and includes experiment, characterisation, computational crystal plasticity and discrete dislocation plasticity. Applications include micro-deformation, fatigue crack nucleation, microstructure-sensitive crack growth, and polycrystal sonics for NDE.

 

[chilango]

Kinda think people who argue we should copy Sweden don't actually pay much attention to what measures they actually had there

Is "Sweden" the new "Norway+"?

 

[frogwoman]

There seems to be a weird idea among UK right wingers that they did nothing at all to stop the spread of covid

 

[Plumdaff]

But care homes are precisely the places where we don't do herd immunity (if such a thing exists). Nearly every country in Europe fucked up protecting the elderly who are clearly highly vulnerable. Among the wider population the risks seem much much lower and might well be out-balanced by the costs of the current strategy. I'm not sure why people get so angry about this - it's just a fairly standard attempt to try and get the costs and benefits balanced.

But "the wider population" includes many people who were, or probably ought to have been shielding. The whole point is it's impossible to divide society into segments and lock one group up and everyone else can get on with life unaffected because a really high percentage of our population has underlying health conditions. We can already see that transmission amoung the young and 'healthy' invariably ends up travelling up the age ranges, because we don't live in isolation from one another.

No one wants another lockdown. But they work to put the breaks on when covid gets too far ahead of us. The NHS is largely running routine appointments, and is far better prepared to deliver them remotely if needed over the winter.

The only demonstrable way to get ahead of this bloody thing long term is to test test test and trace trace trace, to offer generous furlough and sickness compensation, and these also help with all the other concerns we have about mental health and isolation. I work in mental health, I really fear what a lockdown in winter would bring. But I've also spent the past few months assessing people with PTSD from their time in ICU, massive physical and mental health problems with long covid, and those who were bereaved. I want to avoid that too.

 

[Spymaster]

One guy who signed the letter is a professor of micromechanics. A top, top epidemiologist. One of the best.

Fionn Dunne is Chair in Micromechanics and holds the Royal Academy of Engineering/Rolls-Royce Research Chair at Imperial. His research is in the fundamentals of deformation and failure particularly relating to hcp polycrystal and Ni alloys and includes experiment, characterisation, computational crystal plasticity and discrete dislocation plasticity. Applications include micro-deformation, fatigue crack nucleation, microstructure-sensitive crack growth, and polycrystal sonics for NDE.

So that's indicative that Gupta is a lone voice among epidemiologists?