Don't follow the herd, Nicola, and don't let's "take it on the chin" - untold numbers of lives will be needlessly lost unless we radically change course and move into line with the WHO's recommendations

Here's a thread from Twitter that destroys the myth that the UK government are somehow just "following the science" with their insane plan to deliberately allow 60%+ of the public to be infected with a virus that has a reported mortality rate of 1-2%. It's written by Anthony Costello, a British former director of the World Health Organization, and it makes plain what has already become frighteningly clear to so many people over recent days - that the UK, and the UK alone, is ignoring the WHO's recommendations and is hellbent on letting the virus spread at the cost of heaven knows how many lives. Costello clearly doesn't think the strategy will 'work', even on its own warped terms, and understandably feels that the huge loss of life will be ethically hard to justify. I think we all know how hard it is for the Scottish government to move out of lockstep with London in a time of crisis such as this, but let's not mince words - it's simply got to be done, and it's got to be done quickly. If we don't change course and move into line with the WHO's advice, we'll be sleepwalking into catastrophe. This would be a man-made tragedy of unimaginable scale that would haunt Scotland's collective memory for decades to come.

(Note: I've copied and pasted the tweets below, because embedding a full thread is a bit tricky. You can see it in its original form HERE.)

"Unlike all other countries, the UK strategy aims to build herd immunity by allowing the steady spread of #COVID19. The government argue it will block a second peak in several months time. Here are EIGHT questions about this HERD IMMUNITY strategy: 

1. Will it impair efforts to restrict the immediate epidemic, and cause more infections and deaths in the near term? Evidence suggests people shed virus early, and those without symptoms may cause substantial spread...
...this argues for policies against mass gatherings, for school closures, and for strict national and local measures for social distancing. 

2. Will it weaken containment systems (testing, screening, radiography, isolation)? China quickly built a robust nation-wide system of mobilised communities/workers for identifying cases promptly, isolating contacts + treating vulnerable people promptly to contain the outbreak. 

3. Does coronavirus cause strong herd immunity or is it like flu where new strains emerge each year needing repeat vaccines? We have much to learn about Co-V immune responses.

4. Doesn’t this herd immunity strategy conflict with WHO Policy? After the announcement of this being a pandemic, Dr Tedros, Director General WHO, said “The idea that countries should shift from containment to mitigation is wrong and dangerous.” 

5. Shouldn’t we wait to see the China situation? They've contained the epidemic after 7 weeks of intense national effort. Will their strengthened systems not contain outbreaks quickly? What is their herd immunity? We don’t have serology available yet? It might be substantial. 

6. Without an all-out national mobilisation plan for social distancing, are the UK government behavioural and nudge strategies really evidence-based to flatten the peak? Or simply based on models? 

7. On the precautionary principle shouldn’t we go all-out to snuff this UK epidemic out, with national mobilisation at all levels, using all possible preventive measures (whether evidence is strong, uncertain or weak) and worry about herd immunity when we have more evidence? 

8. Vaccines are a safer way to develop herd immunity, without the risks associated with the disease itself. Is it ethical to adopt a policy that threatens immediate casualties on the basis of an uncertain future benefit?"

World Health Organization: "Do not just let this fire burn"

The best hope is that "social distancing from the bottom up" builds up enough economic pressures that the govt start considering the South Korean strategy. It's clear any change won't come from the govt's medical advisers, who are hellbent on ignoring the WHO's recommendations.

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 13, 2020

In a live press conference, @WHO chief @DrTedros just had the following message for world leaders:

“Not testing alone.
Not contact tracing alone.
Not quarantining alone.
Not social distancing alone.

You must do it all.”

How precisely does @BorisJohnson know better? https://t.co/jNXefhuUyB

— Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) March 13, 2020

"Do not just let this fire burn" says the head of the WHO to European countries. Unfortunately it seems the only people not listening to him are the UK government's scientific advisers, who think they know better and want a huge epidemic to produce "herd immunity".

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 13, 2020

Will the complacent media people saying "we must listen to the science" please, for the love of God, listen to this man, the head of the WHO, who is telling the UK government and its advisers to change course urgently?https://t.co/0xYQ5aTI2s

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 13, 2020

Two days ago, "taking it on the chin" was just a wacky theory. Now, it's being put into practice under the pretext of achieving "herd immunity."
Guys: herd immunity only works when the herd has been vaccinated. Otherwise, we call it "natural selection."

— Joanne Harris (@Joannechocolat) March 13, 2020

Powerful ,authoritative contribution from Dr Michael Ryan of WHO

Speaking from experience of fighting epidemics says work closely with your community, move early and move fast . Leave no room for regret because if you don’t move fast the virus will

Anyone listening in No 10? pic.twitter.com/gS1gyWnrPu

— Bruce McD (@brucemcd23) March 13, 2020

No vaccine and no data on immunity following recovery. In that context talk of herd immunity amounts to social darwinism

— Darius Humperdinkt (@DHumperdinkt) March 13, 2020

It seems ages ago, but Chris Whitty said to MPs a couple of weeks ago that, whatever his personal feelings on the futility of containment, he'd have to take heed of international feeling on whether to attempt it. So why are the UK govt studiously ignoring what the WHO are saying?

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 13, 2020

If it's true that the UK's idiotic response to this catastrophe is being driven partly by "behavioural psychology", you'd think it would have occurred to someone that "wash your hands but we'll make sure you get the virus eventually anyway" isn't the most promising message?

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 13, 2020

Absolutely. And history will record that when some (not enough) of the right things started happening, it was in spite of the government, not because of them. That'll make the UK (sadly including Scotland) almost unique in Europe.https://t.co/ubPQe8tkgs

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) March 13, 2020

How the government are playing Russian Roulette with the public's lives by ignoring the World Health Organization's advice on containment

This is something that a lot of people haven't woken up to yet.  The World Health Organization's position on coronavirus is clear - it can and must be controlled, suppressed, contained, pushed back, got on top of...choose whichever form of words you prefer.  They point to China and South Korea as examples of countries that had significant outbreaks and still got the situation back in control.

The UK government are ignoring that advice.  The view of the government's advisers (which the likes of Johnson, Cummings and Hancock are all too eager to accept) is that containment isn't possible and that we therefore shouldn't even try.  We should instead deliberately have a large-scale 'managed epidemic' that affects a huge percentage of the population and thus builds up 'herd immunity' so there's much less chance of a second outbreak.  That will condemn untold numbers of people to a needless death.  The excuse for this utter insanity is that the NHS will be better equipped to deal with the epidemic in the summer than it would be if there's a second wave next winter.

If you want to know what a 'managed epidemic' will actually look like in this country, take a look at the situation in Italy, where the health system is already in virtual collapse in spite of the fact that the numbers infected are still relatively small compared to what we'd be facing here at the height of an epidemic.  In a nutshell, a 'managed epidemic' is in current circumstances a contradiction in terms.  The NHS is not equipped to cope with it in summer any more than it is in winter.

Who is more to blame for this impending catastrophe - the ministers, or their advisers?  Ultimately it comes from the advisers (particularly the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Adviser), but it's not hard to see why it suits the Tories down the ground to go along with it.  The alternative is to face a much longer period of disruption to keep the virus under control - in other words something akin to the situation in China and South Korea at the moment.  And that would get in the way of Johnson's plans for a glorious post-Brexit future, which is what he'd much rather be getting on with.  That's essentially what he meant the other week by his jaw-dropping musings about "taking coronavirus on the chin" and getting it over and done with by letting it move through the population.  That might suit him, but I don't think it suits the rest of us.

So what about the argument that the containment achieved in China and South Korea is a) not replicable here, and b) not even sustainable in those countries anyway in the context of a pandemic?  It's worth looking in detail at what the WHO have actually said about how containment worked in China.  I particularly recommend this interview with Bruce Aylward, who led the WHO's mission to the country.  He makes clear that in most of China containment wasn't achieved by total lockdown, but by the same public health measures that can be applied anywhere - closing of large gatherings, large-scale testing, fast and meticulous tracing and isolation of close contacts, and above all a high level of public awareness about the virus so that ordinary people can be used as a surveillance system.  It's exactly that high level of vigilance that will enable the Chinese to smother any fresh outbreak much more quickly - and just in case they're unable to do that, they're also using the time they've bought to dramatically build up the capacity of hospitals.  They're also testing and quarantining arrivals from other countries to prevent the virus being imported back in.  These are all steps we could take here if we actually got the virus under control by social distancing measures, and by ramping up testing to South Korean levels and tracing all the contacts quickly.

Instead, the government are trying to put you in a trance by making you think that what they are about to do by design is completely unavoidable.  The most despicable thing Matt Hancock said yesterday (and it was dutifully parroted by Robert Peston as if it was fact) was that the WHO's characterisation of the outbreak as a "pandemic" meant they were saying that nothing could stop it and that it would now reach every corner of the globe.  He must have known that was a lie when he said it - because in their press conference, the WHO were at pains to point out that the word "pandemic" was NOT an excuse for governments to give up on containment efforts and that they did NOT believe the virus would affect every part of the world, as long as the correct steps were taken.  They even specifically made the point that any government that gives up on containment and moves wholesale to "mitigation" will effectively be creating a situation where the health system will be overwhelmed.

If you agree with me that it would be better to put up with a year or two of moderate disruption rather than have God knows how many pointless deaths over the next few months, you could think about contacting your MP or MSP - in some cases, they may not even know that what is being presented to them as "the best scientific advice" is actually completely at odds with the WHO's directives.  Another thing you can do is keep an eye on Rory Stewart's Twitter account and retweet some of the things he's saying to ensure they reach the maximum audience.  I know I've criticised him many times in the past, but at the moment he does seem to be the only senior politician who truly "gets it".

Alex Salmond profile

Just a quick note to let you know I'm quoted in a profile of Alex Salmond for the Al Jazeera website, written by Alasdair Soussi.  I was asked to comment on a comparison between Mr Salmond and Nigel Farage.  You can read the piece HERE.

How the American TV networks are stitching it up for Biden

I'll make no secret of the fact that I'm a Bernie Sanders supporter, so I hope this isn't going to come across as sour grapes, but I've been watching in bemusement over the last few hours as CNN (and I presume the other US networks) have put on a Hollywood production intended to propel Joe Biden to the Democratic nomination. I have little doubt Biden will now be the nominee, unless he self-destructs as he has in the past. He'll owe his eventual victory to sheer momentum, but that momentum has been generated more by the networks than by the actual results overnight, which on any objective reading have been pretty close. So how are the likes of CNN stitching it up for Biden? There have been a few tricks -

1) Downplaying the proportional element of the delegate allocation and acting as if the states are winner-takes-all. It shouldn't really matter a damn whether Biden wins a small state like Maine by a couple of points or whether Sanders wins it by a couple of points, because either way the delegate count for each candidate would be virtually the same. Even in a much bigger state like Texas, it only makes a modest difference. But by treating the overall "winner" in each state as all-important, the networks make it seem hugely important for viewers and thus generate momentum for Biden after every coin toss "victory".

2) Pretending Biden's probable win in Texas is a monumental shock and repeating over and over again that nobody saw it coming, and using that as an excuse to make Texas "the story of the night". In the real world, plenty of people saw Biden's victory in Texas coming - he was actually the slight favourite in that state on the Betfair exchange at the start of the night. The reason was straightforward arithmetic - Sanders' lead over Biden in the polls didn't exceed the combined vote for Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, who left the race over the last 48 hours and urged their supporters to vote for Biden.

3) Comparing apples with oranges to make it look as if Bernie Sanders is doing worse than in 2016. For example, it was pointed out repeatedly that Sanders won Minnesota in 2016 and lost it this time, but what was barely mentioned is that Minnesota has in the interim switched from a caucus system to a primary system and the two results are therefore not remotely comparable.

4) Using all of the above to distract from what should be the truly salient fact - ie. that Sanders and Biden are probably going to end up with a fairly similar overall number of delegates from the night. Yes, Biden has done better than expected and it's reasonable to reflect that in the reporting, but a network doing its job properly would also be pointing out that the race is now relatively even-stevens and there's all to play for in the coming weeks. Instead viewers are being fed a fairy-tale about an invincible Biden sweeping all before him, which is seemingly based mostly on a couple of percentage points here or there in Texas (the equivalent of only a handful of delegates).

The Wings party remains a dead end

It got to the point where I had started to talk about the proposed Wings party in the past tense, because Stuart Campbell had announced a few weeks ago that he was thoroughly scunnered and that he no longer thought the idea would serve any purpose.  I should have realised that was just another tactic to prepare the ground for the launch of the party.  Even to contemplate putting up candidates against the SNP in the first place, Stuart had to do an Orwellian pivot from "trying to hack the voting system is a mug's game" (2016) to "hacking the voting system has always been possible and is a really great idea" (2019).  I suspect we're now about to see yet another retcon of that type - it'll no longer be said that the Wings party is there to "help" the SNP retain a pro-indy majority in Holyrood, and instead the stance will be one of outright hostility to the SNP.  The function of the little hiatus was to coax Wings supporters into a chorus of "but we need the Wings party, the SNP have betrayed us!", which neatly justifies the new pre-planned narrative.  

I suspect Stuart will still only put up candidates on the list, but that won't primarily be to avoid harm to the SNP or to the independence movement - it'll simply be because he knows that standing constituency candidates would be an even greater waste of time and money than standing on the list.  There'll be some tokenistic complaints about the SNP not being genuinely pro-independence anymore, but the main line of attack on the SNP will be related to the trans issue, which is now Stuart's first passion and preoccupation.  The vast majority of his tweets these days are about the trans debate, and independence very much plays second fiddle.  Probably Stuart will pretend that the Wings party is absolutely essential to ensure that people angry about self-ID aren't "forced to vote for a unionist party", and we've already seen him carefully preparing the ground for that argument in a couple of blogposts.

It's a nonsense, of course.  People overestimate the extent of the anger that's out there due to the Twitter bubble.  I agree that the SNP are going down a foolish road on self-ID, but the number of votes they stand to lose as a result is pretty modest.  A largely single-issue anti-self-ID party is unlikely to have enough support to be viable - and the same, incidentally, would be true of a single-issue pro-self-ID party.  The vast bulk of the population don't care enough about the issue to allow it to change their votes - and, no, polls showing big majorities against self-ID don't disprove that point.  Those polls don't measure depth of feeling.  And even if there was a sufficient reservoir of support for an anti-self-ID party, a female leadership that could plausibly paint itself as feminist would be needed to take advantage of it.  In other words, the right sort of party would look absolutely nothing like a Wings party led by the Reverend Stuart Campbell.

If you want the SNP to take a more moderate and balanced position on the trans issue, there's something you can do that is far, far more constructive than voting against the SNP next year and potentially making a unionist majority at Holyrood more likely.  You can respond to the Scottish government's consultation on GRA reform HERE.  The deadline is 17th March, and if you need a template response, one possibility can be found HERE.

East of Eden

‘The last time a Labour leader other than Tony Blair won a UK general election, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy hadn’t yet been born.’https://t.co/MVmqjFWjMp

— Stephen Daisley (@JournoStephen) February 24, 2020

I'm not sure what this says about Stephen's beloved Scottish Tories, because the last time a Tory leader other than Sir Anthony Eden won a general election in Scotland was half-a-century before Stephen was born. In 1935. But hey, that's completely different, yeah?

It's "journalism", Jim, but not as we know it : comically amateurish Scotsman article contains multiple wild inaccuracies about the YouGov independence poll

There's still no clarity on whether yesterday's YouGov poll showed a 50/50 split on independence after Don't Knows are excluded, or whether (as some newspapers claim) it was Yes 49%, No 51%.  Neither do we yet know whether 16 and 17 year olds were interviewed for the poll.  I checked the What Scotland Thinks website, which often has access to information that isn't otherwise in the public domain, and it states that only over-18s were polled - which, if true, would cast doubt on the headline numbers and might suggest that Yes have been slightly underestimated.  But a commenter on this blog's previous thread pointed out that there is a discrepancy in the datasets between the total number of respondents and the combined total of respondents from all of the listed age groups.  The most logical explanation is that there are also respondents from an additional age group, which would obviously have to be 16 and 17 year olds.

What I can say for certain, though, is that a Scotsman article about the poll (which has been online for five days because the results on some of the supplementary questions were released early) contains a series of extraordinarily wild inaccuracies.  It's tempting to call them lies, although I suspect they're probably inadvertent blunders caused by either sloppiness or wishful thinking, or possibly by a blend of both.  The writer seems to have allowed himself to be duped by a propaganda press release, or perhaps he just didn't bother to read it carefully enough.  This is one of the offending segments -

"Half of Scots (50 per cent) blame the SNP for the divisions, according to the findings. The prospect of a second referendum is blamed by 41 per cent of respondents, while 26 per cent say everyone bears some responsibility."

Not only is that untrue, it's not even within light-years of the truth.  The YouGov datasets make abundantly clear that only respondents who said that Scotland is divided (57% of the sample) were asked the follow-up question about "blame".  That means only around 28% or 29% of Scots "blame the SNP for divisions" - not 50% as the Scotsman claim.  The prospect of a second independence referendum is actually "blamed" by around 23% of the sample - not 41% as the Scotsman claim.  And only around 15% say everyone is "responsible" - not 26% as the Scotsman claim.

Even the headline of the piece is misleading, to put it charitably.  It states: "Half of Scots believe independence and Brexit division will last generation, finds poll".  Er, nope.  It's not half of Scots, but just under half of the portion of the sample who think the country is divided.  The correct figure for the whole sample is therefore around 26%.

That's misreporting on a truly colossal scale, and there's absolutely no excuse for it.  But on past form, a correction and apology is probably extremely unlikely.

In case you're wondering about the story behind this poll, the datasets imply it was commissioned by Hanbury Strategy, which is described on Powerbase as "a Conservative-led lobbying firm set up by ex-David Cameron adviser Ameet Gill and Brexit campaigner and former British Bankers' Association director, Paul Stephenson in September 2016.  In June 2017, it hired Lizzie Loudon, former press secretary to the Prime Minister, Theresa May".  Strangely, though, when Gordon Brown fronted the release of some of the results a few days ago, it was reported as being a poll for the think-tank Our Scottish Future.  It's pretty clear that it was intended to be an anti-independence propaganda poll of some description, which might explain some of the oddities about it - the non-standard question wording, the highly unorthodox question sequence, and perhaps also the ambiguity over the headline results with Don't Knows excluded.

Misery for Boris as another YouGov poll finds a clear majority of the Scottish public demand an independence referendum within five years

I was oblivious to this for most of the day, but the fourth independence poll of the year has been published - and perhaps of most significance is that it's the first post-Brexit poll.  However, it should be stressed that, strictly speaking, it's not directly comparable to the three polls conducted in January.  There are a couple of reasons for that - a) the question asked was non-standard, and b) it appears from the datasets that a supplementary question about whether Scotland is "heading in the right or wrong direction" was asked before the main independence question, which is highly irregular and might conceivably have affected the result by putting respondents into a certain mindset.  For my money, the second problem is far more important than the first, because although the wording of the main question is non-standard, it's not leading in any obvious way.  (That said, it's perfectly reasonable for us to wonder why the client seems to have insisted upon unusual wording.)

YouGov/Hanbury poll:

If another Scottish independence referendum were held today, how would you vote?

Yes to an independent Scotland: 45%

No to an independent Scotland: 46%

Some of the insanely biased newspaper reports of this poll (which are probably lightly rewritten versions of a press release) suggest that with Don't Knows excluded, the figures are Yes 49%, No 51% - but there are no such numbers in the datasets.  If this is simply based on a crude recalculation of the 45 and 46 figures, it may well be inaccurate due to rounding issues, because it comes out very close to Yes 49.5%, No 50.5%.  In other words, until and unless we hear definitively from YouGov, it shouldn't be assumed that No are actually in the lead in this poll on the rounded figures excluding Don't Knows.  It might be a 49/51 split, but it could just as easily be 50/50.

The drop in support for Yes since the last YouGov poll is therefore either one percentage point or two percentage points.  It's not statistically significant either way.  There are three possible explanations for the slight drop.  It could just be random sampling variation (if Yes are on around 51%, you'd expect some polls to put them on 49% or 50% due to the margin of error). The unorthodox question sequence might have distorted the result.  Or there could have been a real but modest slip in support for independence due to the 'Brexit lull' - ie. in some voters' minds, Brexit is 'done' and nothing disastrous seems to have happened, but in reality the cliff-edge is looming at the end of this year when the transitional period finishes.

As things stand, though, an average of all four polls this year continues to show a slight pro-independence majority.

Contrary to the impression you might have got from the press relea....sorry, original newspaper reporting, the poll actually detected considerable enthusiasm for a second independence referendum.  55% of respondents want it to take place within the next five years, and 40% want it by 2022.

UPDATE: It's far from clear whether 16 and 17 year olds were interviewed for this poll.  The datasets for the last YouGov poll specified that over-16s were the base, but this time it just says "2587 Scottish adults".  If by any chance 16 and 17 year olds were excluded, the media narrative about this poll would be completely bogus, because the Yes vote may well be underestimated by 1%.

The flexible laws of unionist mathematics

Just a quick note to let you know that I'm quoted in a new article by Alasdair Soussi on the Al Jazeera website about whether there should be an artificial threshold for a Yes victory in the next independence referendum.  You can read it HERE.

I must say that the views from Kenny Farquharson quoted at the end of the piece are truly extraordinary.  As far as I can gather, this is how he thinks the rules should handle various close results -

Yes 47%, No 53%: VICTORY FOR NO, SCOTLAND REMAINS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Yes 48%, No 52%: VICTORY FOR NO, SCOTLAND REMAINS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Yes 49%, No 51%: VICTORY FOR NO, SCOTLAND REMAINS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Yes 51%, No 49%: VICTORY FOR NO, SCOTLAND REMAINS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Yes 52%, No 48%: VICTORY FOR NO, SCOTLAND REMAINS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
Yes 53%, No 47%: VICTORY FOR NO, SCOTLAND REMAINS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Hmmm. Round our way, we call that cheating.  And this is supposed to be the antidote to division and grievance?  Good luck with that, Kenny.  If Scotland votes for independence and is then told that it's remaining in the UK because 47 is a bigger number than 53, you'd soon have civil disobedience on a scale that wasn't even seen during the poll tax era.