Chris Whitty: I worry we overstated danger of Covid at start of pandemic

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...-inquiry-live/

Prof Whitty admitted that in telling the public to stay at home, officials did not make clear that the health service was “open”.

People’s reluctance to come forward as a result led to fewer patients attending A&E, calling 999, and a backlog of medical appointments on which ministers are still struggling to get a grip.

He also criticised “confusion” around face masks and admitted that he may not recommend shielding for the vulnerable again after they suffered “significant harm”.

Of course, we now know that the establishment "pandemic decision makers" partied throughout the lockdowns.

This is because Covid had a 99%+ survival rate, with an average age of death at 83 (with four comorbidities).

Adults only need to reply to this thread

No way should they have shut schools either, some 250,000 kids never came back….:shrug: don’t think any of my kids teachers are over 50 so what was the issue? I’d say anyone under 50 to keep the woke folk happy should have just been able to crack on and keep everything flowing. With the amount of oldies and lefties on here, your in for a rough ride with this thread…..:hehe:

15-0 to the critical thinkers. If it was a boxing match the ref would have stopped it ages ago! :hide:

The single most damaging event to our society for decades. First lockdown can be excused to an extent. The rest have caused far more problems than they solved.

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Originally Posted by goats

No way should they have shut schools either, some 250,000 kids never came back….:shrug: don’t think any of my kids teachers are over 50 so what was the issue? I’d say anyone under 50 to keep the woke folk happy should have just been able to crack on and keep everything flowing. With the amount of oldies and lefties on here, your in for a rough ride with this thread…..:hehe:

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I don't think it should have been quite as simple as shut everything but it certainly also isn't as simple as taking your own age as a predictor of whether you should carry on as normal. I lived with my parents at the time, my mum had pneumonia about 5 years before that and my dad was 75. If work had said, you are young enough to carry on going into the office and therefore you must, I would have quit.

Once you strip everyone out who probably shouldn't risk it, you likely don't have a functioning system and you can make a better case for shutting it down.

And I think it's worth saying that I remember pretty clearly the conversations going on on here as COVID was initially sweeping across Europe and some of the people on here who are now claiming some sort of intellectual victory around COVID got it completely and utterly wrong at the start and have since moved the goalposts to make themselves feel smart.

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Originally Posted by Eric Cartman

I don't think it should have been quite as simple as shut everything but it certainly also isn't as simple as taking your own age as a predictor of whether you should carry on as normal. I lived with my parents at the time, my mum had pneumonia about 5 years before that and my dad was 75. If work had said, you are young enough to carry on going into the office and therefore you must, I would have quit.

Once you strip everyone out who probably shouldn't risk it, you likely don't have a functioning system and you can make a better case for shutting it down.

And I think it's worth saying that I remember pretty clearly the conversations going on on here as COVID was initially sweeping across Europe and some of the people on here who are now claiming some sort of intellectual victory around COVID got it completely and utterly wrong at the start and have since moved the goalposts to make themselves feel smart.

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Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident. That’s where this board is an outlier which is why it’s dying on its proverbial.

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Originally Posted by Eric Cartman

I don't think it should have been quite as simple as shut everything but it certainly also isn't as simple as taking your own age as a predictor of whether you should carry on as normal. I lived with my parents at the time, my mum had pneumonia about 5 years before that and my dad was 75. If work had said, you are young enough to carry on going into the office and therefore you must, I would have quit.

Once you strip everyone out who probably shouldn't risk it, you likely don't have a functioning system and you can make a better case for shutting it down.

And I think it's worth saying that I remember pretty clearly the conversations going on on here as COVID was initially sweeping across Europe and some of the people on here who are now claiming some sort of intellectual victory around COVID got it completely and utterly wrong at the start and have since moved the goalposts to make themselves feel smart.

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Really fair post this is I think. It went on too long, and everyone was in different circumstances.

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident. That’s where this board is an outlier which is why it’s dying on its proverbial.

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That's pretty clearly a load of bollocks, loads of things that are true are accepted instantly because the evidence is overwhelming.

I think if you are flipping this the other way around and living in denial that every time somebody ridicules you, you must be right, then you are in for a shock.

I don't think this board is an outlier at all, if you think wider society now views COVID as nothing and lockdowns as a complete undeniable overreaction, then you are definitely existing in an echo chamber.

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Originally Posted by JamesWales

Really fair post this is I think. It went on too long, and everyone was in different circumstances.

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I think we locked down too late initially and that led to an overcompensation down the line. It is mad to think we used to have daily press conferences and these sort of performative cosplay appearances which I guess we're supposed to create confidence i.e. I'm the chief nurse, so I am wearing a nurses outfit.

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...-inquiry-live/

Prof Whitty admitted that in telling the public to stay at home, officials did not make clear that the health service was “open”.

People’s reluctance to come forward as a result led to fewer patients attending A&E, calling 999, and a backlog of medical appointments on which ministers are still struggling to get a grip.

He also criticised “confusion” around face masks and admitted that he may not recommend shielding for the vulnerable again after they suffered “significant harm”.

Of course, we now know that the establishment "pandemic decision makers" partied throughout the lockdowns.

This is because Covid had a 99%+ survival rate, with an average age of death at 83 (with four comorbidities).

Adults only need to reply to this thread

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A ****ing Telegraph article. Next please.

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Originally Posted by Eric Cartman

I think we locked down too late initially and that led to an overcompensation down the line. It is mad to think we used to have daily press conferences and these sort of performative cosplay appearances which I guess we're supposed to create confidence i.e. I'm the chief nurse, so I am wearing a nurses outfit.

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Milgram experiment, 65% will comply with authority even when it's a load of made up bollocks. Governments know this, scientists know this, and even some normal people know this.

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Originally Posted by JamesWales

The single most damaging event to our society for decades. First lockdown can be excused to an extent. The rest have caused far more problems than they solved.

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Nope, that was Brexshit.

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Originally Posted by az city

Nope, that was Brexshit.

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😂👍

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident. That’s where this board is an outlier which is why it’s dying on its proverbial.

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How do we know if you were ridiculed back in 2020 when the poster called TWGL1 didn’t exist until August 2021?

It’s worth noting as well that one of those giving it the I told you so, disappeared off this Board for around a year around 2020/21.

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Originally Posted by the other bob wilson

How do we know if you were ridiculed back in 2020 when the poster called TWGL1 didn’t exist until August 2021?

It’s worth noting as well that one of those giving it the I told you so, disappeared off this Board for around a year around 2020/21.

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I’ve no idea of the nuances of a posters activity of nearly 4 years ago and if you do that’s more accurate representation of how you spend your time. How you spend you time is up to you of course.

If you think I’m going to come on here just to say “ I told you so “ then you are sadly mistaken . The government spent billions on behavioural research etc to convince the public to “follow the science “ and it’s understandable why most people did. The fact is many people didn’t( and it was a hard choice at the time )when you think of the amount of abuse and harassment they encountered.

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

I’ve no idea of the nuances of a posters activity of nearly 4 years ago and if you do that’s more accurate representation of how you spend your time. How you spend you time is up to you of course.

If you think I’m going to come on here just to say “ I told you so “ then you are sadly mistaken . The government spent billions on behavioural research etc to convince the public to “follow the science “ and it’s understandable why most people did. The fact is many people didn’t and it was a hard choice at the time.

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For someone who has almost reached the stage where you don't poist about anything else but Covid, it doesn't half come across as I told you so at times and, of course, the thing is with your posting history, no one can tell for sure whether you did tell us so or not.

We've had the guy who went missing during so much of the 20/21 period claiming another great triumph for the "critical thinkers" in this thread. However, I would have thought that the vast majority of us thickos who felt differently at the time would have said back in 2020 if they'd been asked what do you think will be said by the Chief Medical Officer when.he is interviewed by a public enquiry into the pandemic in 2024, it would be that mistakes were made and he took some decisions back then, that he wouldn't have done given what he knows now.

That's more or less what Chris Whitty is saying, to think that he and people like him would have come through the greatest medical crisis the world had faced in a century without a feeling that mistakes had been made and there were things we needed to learn from is completely unrealistic and yet we now have someone who was showing his "critical thinking" capabilities by indulging in all sorts of wild theories about Covid in the early part of 2020 claiming he told us so before he did a runner for a year :hehe:

But it was just his opinion I presume but he was probably hounded off the board by people like you.

Anyway it’s the weekend so enjoy!

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident. That’s where this board is an outlier which is why it’s dying on its proverbial.

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What is freaky, is that Schopenhauer first posted that on an obscure football message board….along with some of his theories on the physics of football wing play.

I’ve just remembered the paper. It wasn't about the physics it was ‘The Philosophical Pessimism of the Inverted Winger in a 4-4-2 System’

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Originally Posted by JamesWales

The single most damaging event to our society for decades. First lockdown can be excused to an extent. The rest have caused far more problems than they solved.

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I think that part of the problem and in countries at either end of the political spectrum (e.g. the USA and China) and everywhere inbetween was knowing that even though deaths would be weighted amongst the old and vulnerable the piling up of corpses would have resulted in chaos if Covid were permitted to let rip.

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Originally Posted by Taunton Blue Genie

I think that part of the problem and in countries at either end of the political spectrum (e.g. the USA and China) and everywhere inbetween was knowing that even though deaths would be weighted amongst the old and vulnerable the piling up of corpses would have resulted in chaos if Covid were permitted to let rip.

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Yeah exactly. My experience of critical care in the NHS is overwhelmingly positive despite the problems elsewhere in the service. Logic would suggest though that there is a tipping point at which the NHS would have essentially have to decide to write people off, '80 years old? You are in the carpark waiting to die so that we can treat people with a higher chance of survival'. My memory is a bit fuzzy, we may have reached that during the initial outbreak anyway. But the principle remains, the more you let the virus spread, the more people get ill enough to go to hospital, the lower that threshold for prioritisation falls. Not by any stretch an expert on the NHS but when my mum fell severely ill with pneumonia and sepsis, it looked like there were maybe 20 beds in critical care at our nearest hospital serving potentially hundreds of thousands of people.

It would be interesting to know how many people entered critical care and survived, because my thinking is that once that side of the NHS fails/falls, we would have been losing a significant amount of people who would otherwise (with proper care) have survived.

This discussion reminds me of a lot of situations. You take mitigating actions to avert disaster and then when they work and a complete disaster is averted, people cry 'see, nothing happened, what a waste of energy'.

It's also worth saying that next time people are tempted to throw around the usual 'party political' accusation, people should remember this thread and other threads around COVID. The majority of people on this board who I would consider to be non-conservative voters, supported the governments actions and we're quite happy to say so (even if there were criticisms of specific elements of their approach).

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Originally Posted by the other bob wilson

It’s worth noting as well that one of those giving it the I told you so, disappeared off this Board for around a year around 2020/21.

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Maybe they just went off to live their best life, while also avoiding the 65% who are susceptible to totalitarian propaganda campaigns? BTW, I hoped they lived to tell their tale after openly flirting with their own self-extinction.

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Originally Posted by Taunton Blue Genie

I think that part of the problem and in countries at either end of the political spectrum (e.g. the USA and China) and everywhere inbetween was knowing that even though deaths would be weighted amongst the old and vulnerable the piling up of corpses would have resulted in chaos if Covid were permitted to let rip.

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You think China and the USA are the extremes? Not North Korea, Turkey, Russia ...?

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Originally Posted by az city

You think China and the USA are the extremes? Not North Korea, Turkey, Russia ...?

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We tended to hear more about the US and China but I think most people would have got the gist of my post whatever.

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Originally Posted by Wales-Bales

Maybe they just went off to live their best life, while also avoiding the 65% who are susceptible to totalitarian propaganda campaigns? BTW, I hoped they lived to tell their tale after openly flirting with their own self-extinction.

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The government had access to the data from the Diamond Princess, the US aircraft carrier, and the Italian village of Po, long before it became an issue here.

Whitty knew that it was an irrelevance, it didn't affect large number of people, and of those it did affect, few if any were seriously harmed, unless you had 4 or more co-morbidities.

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

The government had access to the data from the Diamond Princess, the US aircraft carrier, and the Italian village of Po, long before it became an issue here.

Whitty knew that it was an irrelevance, it didn't affect large number of people, and of those it did affect, few if any were seriously harmed, unless you had 4 or more co-morbidities.

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You make it sound like it was part of a bigger plan!

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Originally Posted by Wales-Bales

Maybe they just went off to live their best life, while also avoiding the 65% who are susceptible to totalitarian propaganda campaigns? BTW, I hoped they lived to tell their tale after openly flirting with their own self-extinction.

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Course you did. Trouble is, many on here can still remember how you and Organ Morgan were all over the place trying to find something, anything, to justify your ploughing on with your critical thinking/conspiracy crap - there was no empathy for those who were suffering, just desperate searching for proof that fitted your oh so predictable position on the pandemic.

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

The government had access to the data from the Diamond Princess, the US aircraft carrier, and the Italian village of Po, long before it became an issue here.

Whitty knew that it was an irrelevance, it didn't affect large number of people, and of those it did affect, few if any were seriously harmed, unless you had 4 or more co-morbidities.

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There have 7 million plus COVID induced deaths.

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Originally Posted by Taunton Blue Genie

We tended to hear more about the US and China but I think most people would have got the gist of my post whatever.

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And I did insert an e.g.

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Originally Posted by the other bob wilson

There have 7 million plus COVID induced deaths.

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Explain what you mean by “covid induced”, and then when you do , we can chat about it .

Have you got the figures for “influenza or pneumonia induced “

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Originally Posted by the other bob wilson

Course you did. Trouble is, many on here can still remember how you and Organ Morgan were all over the place trying to find something, anything, to justify your ploughing on with your critical thinking/conspiracy crap - there was no empathy for those who were suffering, just desperate searching for proof that fitted your oh so predictable position on the pandemic.

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I behaved much better than Boris & Co, and my health has never been better. Sadly, I can't say the same for many of those around me who are always ill with something or other, and quite a few are no longer with us. It appears to be on ongoing scenario too, which is quite worrying.

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

Explain what you mean by “covid induced”, and then when you do , we can chat about it .

Have you got the figures for “influenza or pneumonia induced “

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No, because I’m not interested in them.

It’s in the second paragraph here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_deaths

And there is a mention of more than five times that figure a little further down.

I’m not interested in debating those figures because I’m happy to accept them - I’ve no desire to be thought of as a “critical thinker” as defined by the likes of Gluey.

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Originally Posted by Wales-Bales

I behaved much better than Boris & Co, and my health has never been better. Sadly, I can't say the same for many of those around me who are always ill with something or other, and quite a few are no longer with us. It appears to be on ongoing scenario too, which is quite worrying.

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Except I never get the impression that, if what you say is true, you worry about it - on the contrary, you, as you have earlier in this thread, take it as an opportunity to say I told you so. I’ve always thought the term I told you so says so much about a person who uses it, because many of the people who are in the habit of being right about things most of the time are not in the habit of using it - they don’t feel the need to. I didn’t comment or reply to you a week or so ago when you said you like telling people I told you so in another thread on here, but it didn’t surprise me in the slightest.

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Originally Posted by the other bob wilson

No, because I’m not interested in them.

It’s in the second paragraph here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_deaths

And there is a mention of more than five times that figure a little further down.

I’m not interested in debating those figures because I’m happy to accept them - I’ve no desire to be thought of as a “critical thinker” as defined by the likes of Gluey.

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7 million deaths based on financial incentives, inaccurate testing ,people with four or more underlying illnesses, and even with this amount the average Covid death was STILL higher than the usual average death. You’re not thinking clearly , and never will.

If it was as dangerous as you think it was , why would the government break the rules as frequently as they did. They knew they were in no danger that’s why.

FWIW the elderly and infirm are just as much at risk as they are with the usual influenza virus groups.

Got the figures of deaths with just Covid as a cause of death as I don’t have any to hand ?

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

7 million deaths based on financial incentives, inaccurate testing ,people with four or more underlying illnesses, and even with this amount the average Covid death was STILL higher than the usual average death. You’re not thinking clearly , and never will.

If it was as dangerous as you think it was , why would the government break the rules as frequently as they did. They knew they were in no danger that’s why.

FWIW the elderly and infirm are just as much at risk as they are with the usual influenza virus groups.

Got the figures of deaths with just Covid as a cause of death as I don’t have any to hand ?

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You ask for figures, I produce them and you come out with gobbledygook to suit your agenda, ‘‘twas ever thus.

Entirely predictable that those applying the "I told you so" retrospective did so on a cherry picked quote from hours of Whitty's testimony.

During that time, following harrowing testimony from Professor Fong on the impact of Covid on ICUs, he stated the following:

I think the scale of the second wave was actually under appreciated in the general public. I think people who had relatives, obviously people who were sick fully understood that this was in fact a larger wave, in terms of total numbers of people who were severely ill and indeed who sadly died. And the first two waves were the ones which had the extraordinary mortality in the very large numbers in ICU.

I think the key thing to remember, and I think people forget this, is that this was an exponentially rising – in the technical sense of the term, an exponentially rising thing, where you have – epidemic, with a doubling rate of three to four days at the point we were talking about. Four doubling times more would have led us to an absolutely catastrophic situation.

But for the UK, not for the world, but for the UK, this is a one in 100 years event because the last time there was something this big was back in 1919 – 18-19.

So I’m not certain that loading an additional risk on would in itself be useful. However, I think that the thing which this absolutely blows an absolute hole in, if it need any further, is the arguments for things like the Great Barrington Declaration, that all you need to do is isolate a few people and everywhere else can just carry on with their lives because they are at limited risk. That is obviously not true in this case and those kinds of arguments are not strong ones to advance in any future pandemic unless you can demonstrate it.

https://ukcovid19inquiry.dracos.co.u...sor-sir-whitty

So Whitty spent time emphasising the scale of the epidemic and rubbishing the central tenet of the The Great Barrington Declaration that has been parotted here as the alternative, none of which appeared in The Telegraph Summary.

Even the Headline of this Post is a distortion. What Whitty actually said was,

I still worry actually, in retrospect, about did we get the level of concern right? Were we either overpitching it, so that people were incredibly afraid of something when in fact their actuarial risk was low, or were we not pitching it enough and therefore people didn’t realise the risk they were walking into.

I think that balance is really hard and arguably some people would say, if anything, we overdid it rather than underdid it at the beginning. I’m just saying that there – certainly there is a range of opinions on that.

It used to be that the critical thinkers parotted that they only used "Source Documents" to explore their flights of fancy..........how standards have slipped!

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Originally Posted by the other bob wilson

I’ve no desire to be thought of as a “critical thinker” as defined by the likes of Gluey.

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You can't just be one, you have to be born one! :hehe:

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Originally Posted by the other bob wilson

I didn’t comment or reply to you a week or so ago when you said you like telling people I told you so in another thread on here, but it didn’t surprise me in the slightest.

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It's a bit of banter, just like when you call people critical thinkers and conspiracy theorists. BTW, have you got something against people being being right? Does it mess with your belief system or something?

:fishing:

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Originally Posted by cyril evans awaydays

Entirely predictable that those applying the "I told you so" retrospective did so on a cherry picked quote from hours of Whitty's testimony.

During that time, following harrowing testimony from Professor Fong on the impact of Covid on ICUs, he stated the following:

I think the scale of the second wave was actually under appreciated in the general public. I think people who had relatives, obviously people who were sick fully understood that this was in fact a larger wave, in terms of total numbers of people who were severely ill and indeed who sadly died. And the first two waves were the ones which had the extraordinary mortality in the very large numbers in ICU.

I think the key thing to remember, and I think people forget this, is that this was an exponentially rising – in the technical sense of the term, an exponentially rising thing, where you have – epidemic, with a doubling rate of three to four days at the point we were talking about. Four doubling times more would have led us to an absolutely catastrophic situation.

But for the UK, not for the world, but for the UK, this is a one in 100 years event because the last time there was something this big was back in 1919 – 18-19.

So I’m not certain that loading an additional risk on would in itself be useful. However, I think that the thing which this absolutely blows an absolute hole in, if it need any further, is the arguments for things like the Great Barrington Declaration, that all you need to do is isolate a few people and everywhere else can just carry on with their lives because they are at limited risk. That is obviously not true in this case and those kinds of arguments are not strong ones to advance in any future pandemic unless you can demonstrate it.

https://ukcovid19inquiry.dracos.co.u...sor-sir-whitty

So Whitty spent time emphasising the scale of the epidemic and rubbishing the central tenet of the The Great Barrington Declaration that has been parotted here as the alternative, none of which appeared in The Telegraph Summary.

Even the Headline of this Post is a distortion. What Whitty actually said was,

I still worry actually, in retrospect, about did we get the level of concern right? Were we either overpitching it, so that people were incredibly afraid of something when in fact their actuarial risk was low, or were we not pitching it enough and therefore people didn’t realise the risk they were walking into.

I think that balance is really hard and arguably some people would say, if anything, we overdid it rather than underdid it at the beginning. I’m just saying that there – certainly there is a range of opinions on that.

It used to be that the critical thinkers parotted that they only used "Source Documents" to explore their flights of fancy..........how standards have slipped!

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Witty's evidence becomes misleading and disingenuous "Sir Chris said it was classified as a high consequence infectious disease. This meant staff could treat patients in “environments which are relatively highly protective, with highly trained skilled staff who are used to dealing with high levels of PPE and therefore at a much lower probability of coming to harm themselves”. However it was later declassified to just an infectious disease."


Leaked What’s app messages from the Health secretary Matt Hancock stated that Covid was a
“Mild disease”

Daily death reports and waiting for reveal the R number. It was a shameful period of over-governance that we must ensure never happens again. Scotch eggs? Sing happy birthday twice while washing your hands? Closing golf courses? Unbelievable power grab which many lapped up without thought.

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Originally Posted by TWGL1

Witty's evidence becomes misleading and disingenuous "Sir Chris said it was classified as a high consequence infectious disease. This meant staff could treat patients in “environments which are relatively highly protective, with highly trained skilled staff who are used to dealing with high levels of PPE and therefore at a much lower probability of coming to harm themselves”. However it was later declassified to just an infectious disease."


Leaked What’s app messages from the Health secretary Matt Hancock stated that Covid was a
“Mild disease”

Daily death reports and waiting for reveal the R number. It was a shameful period of over-governance that we must ensure never happens again. Scotch eggs? Sing happy birthday twice while washing your hands? Closing golf courses? Unbelievable power grab which many lapped up without thought.

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Why do you and Wales-Bales keep mis-spelling his surname, is it a groupspeak thing?

I see that rather than go to the "source document" you pull another Telegraph distillation as justification. In the transcript I attached it deals with the rationale for declassifying Covid as an HCID at length, you should give it a read, you might learn something!

Whenever you resurrect this topic we end up in the same endless loop. Covid risk overegaggerated, lockdowns too widespread and uneccesary, ppe, testing and social distancing a sham and vaccines a greater risk to life than a benefit.

It's an opinion of course but thankfully there are less impressionable people who hopefully will draw the right lessons from that horrible time!