The Hump of the Camel

There are two alternative scientific “metanarratives” for the course of COVID-19 in Britain (both of which also apply in other western countries). The first is that Prof Ferguson’s modelling, which predicted 500,000 deaths unless drastic lockdown was instituted, was correct, and that Britain’s following of that policy, though a little belatedly, saved the day and resulted in, to date, a little shy of 50,000 deaths.

The other scenario is that, the decline in cases having started 10 days before lockdown, the virus was already rife, followed more or less its natural Gompertz curve, and therefore lockdown did nothing… except ruin the economy for generations and cause a currently estimated 75,000 extra non-COVID deaths over the next five years.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I won’t comment too much on the orchestrated, and of course unchallenged, fear-fest of the two government scientists’ explanation for the need for renewed lockdown yesterday. It was intended to prepare the way for Boris Johnson’s regretful announcement this morning, locking us all up again for another six months, without charge or benefit of clergy (needless to say unquestioned in Parliament in any effective way).

Epidemiology is a complex and often counter-intuitive science, as I discovered on a correspondence on prostate cancer screening with the head of the UK screening service some years ago. In the wrong hands, that can make it dangerous: as someone said, “epidemiology was invented to make economists look good.”

This title is really clickbait for “All you need to know about COVID false positives,” which is possibly the biggest un-publicised problem of this whole pandemic. I’m writing about the UK, but much the same applies across the world.

Another round of draconian restrictions has been introduced in the UK, restricting all social gatherings to six people, with threats of dictatorship-style curfews in future. This causes mayhem to our newly re-introduced church services, if we have to gather in (socially distanced) groups of six. And it cancels the restart of my saxophone choir, my only musical activity to have survived lockdown. Christmas too, just as in Narnia under the wicked Queen, looks like being cancelled for the sake of … well, we’ll see.