‘Trust the Experts on Coronavirus’. Sure. Which Experts?

James Delingpole

Britain could suffer more than 60,000 coronavirus death by July, warns the Daily Mail. But there’s a massive tell in the first sentence of the report: “…leading scientists say.”

And there’s an even bigger warning in the second paragraph:  “Modelling by researchers at the University of Washington predicted 151,680 people would succumb to the virus across the continent.”

Well maybe they will, maybe they won’t. No offence to the University of Washington but when I read the phrase “modelling by researchers” I know we are operating in the realms of purest fantasy.

That’s because I’m a climate sceptic and I’ve seen it all before.

The fact that computer models are unreliable — often based on the junkiest of junk data inputs; programmed with the shonkiest and most politically motivated algorithms, put together by people you wouldn’t trust to run a bath let alone dictate government policy — is the single most important thing you need to know about the entire global warming/climate change scam. This was the basis of the 2009 Climategate scandal: that the scientists were pushing a radical, disruptive, economically damaging agenda without any solid supporting evidence.

Everyone on the climate sceptical side of the argument knows this: the models are deeply suspect; the people behind them third rate; the scientific establishment pushing them arrogant,  intellectually and morally corrupt, driven by politics, money and power not by honest science.

That’s why climate sceptics like myself have often been much quicker to understand what the rest of the world is only slowly starting to grasp: that our governments’ response to coronavirus has been a wild overreaction; that the cure is in danger of causing much, much more damage than the disease itself.

Typical of this problem is Dr Anthony Fauci, the medic largely informing President Trump’s lockdown policy. Fauci often likes to say in the frequent interviews he gives that he wants to ‘overreact’ to the crisis.

For example, he told ‘Meet the Press’ last month:  “I think we should really be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting.”

This may sound forthright, proactive but hints at a toxic abuse of power and a misguided approach to policy. If you’re ‘overly’ aggressive, that means you are being unnecessarily aggressive.

If you’re ‘overreacting’ then, by definition, you are making the wrong reaction.  The correct reaction — again, by definition — is one that is neither under, nor over, but just right.

So what is the correct policy response to the global coronavirus pandemic? The answer depends, of course, on which experts you ask. And therein lies the problem. If so many serious, respected, credentialed figures are coming up with such wildly different judgements and policy prescriptions we should all be very worried.

What if the experts our governments are relying on to give them policy advice are the wrong experts?

If what I’ve seen in my years observing the climate science establishment is anything to go by, I’d say the experts currently dictating your life and my life probably are the wrong experts.

Take Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London — arguably the single most influential person in the world right now: it was on the basis of his doomsday report that both Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Trump were frightened, against their liberty-leaning instincts, into instituting the lockdowns which are killing jobs, businesses and the economy.

Ferguson’s predictions of mass deaths — 500,000 in Britain alone — would be huge if they came true.

But it has since emerged that Ferguson has a track record of getting things spectacularly wrong. For example, his recommended response to the UK’s 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic is now widely recognised as having led to the needless slaughter of millions of animals. (What’s the word for such an unnecessarily zealous response? Oh yes. ‘Overreaction’)

His modelling has been described by critics as ‘not fit for purpose.’ Worse — a breach of the most basic scientific etiquette — he has been reluctant to share the code which he used to model his doomsday conclusions.

According to Benny Peiser and Andrew Montford of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

"Several researchers have apparently asked to see Imperial’s calculations, but Prof. Neil Ferguson, the man leading the team, has said that the computer code is 13 years old and thousands of lines of it “undocumented,” making it hard for anyone to work with, let alone take it apart to identify potential errors. He has promised that it will be published in a week or so, but in the meantime reasonable people might wonder whether something made with 13-year-old, undocumented computer code should be used to justify shutting down the economy. Meanwhile, the authors of the Oxford model have promised that their code will be published “as soon as possible.”

Are we really sure that this is the ‘expert’ on whose advice we ought to be basing the future of the U.S. and the UK economies?

And even supposing for a moment that Ferguson’s modelling isn’t bunk, we still have another major problem: Ferguson is a scientist with a very particular set of priorities and areas of understanding which may have only passing relevance to broader public policy.

One of the stupid things you often hear people say these days is: “We should trust the epidemiologists. We should trust the virologists.”

Oh, sure. But which epidemiologists and which virologists?

What about Professor Dr Sucharit Bhakdi — an infectious medicine specialist and one of the most highly cited medical research scientists in German, formerly head of the Institute for Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. Should we trust him?

If so then we are currently moving in the completely wrong direction with our lockdown policies which he has described as “grotesque, absurd, and very dangerous.”

In the unlikely event we can make up our minds which epidemiologists and virologists and other science experts to back, another problem arises: single objective function bias.

I recently discussed this with Professor Don Siegel, of the public policy department at Arizona State University. (You can listen to the podcast here, here or here).

Prof Siegel describes the coronavirus lockdown policy as ‘the grandest social experiment in history’ which has been ‘designed by public health officials’ in which we are all ‘unwilling subjects.’ This social experiment has been conducted without consent or proper ethical oversight — and all on the say-so of public health officials like Dr Fauci whose judgements are skewed by his ‘single objective function’ bias.

That is, he thinks like a scientist whose sole concern is to reduce coronavirus deaths to the barest minimum. What he does not consider, because it’s not his job, are the broader effects on the economy.

The history of science is littered with examples of vested interests, intransigent or dishonest Establishment shills (such as Stalin’s pet liar Trofim Lysenko), false assumptions, Appeals to Authority, and whopping errors. This is in the nature of science: an ongoing process of trial and error, conducted by flawed human beings who have got to eat and pay the rent.

That’s why, usually, few governments have ever been so stupid as to entrust vital policy decisions to such people. That way madness lies. Yet madness, currently, seems to have been the course most of the world’s great economies have adopted.

Trust the experts, the politicians tell us. But we don’t know these experts. We have no idea whether or not we can trust them or their models. And we certainly never voted for any of them — nor, unfortunately, do we have the ability to boot them out of office when they fail us.

That’s why we should all be concerned, very concerned about what’s being done to our countries in the name of dispassionate ‘expert’ advice.

President Trump’s first instincts — as they so often are — were right. ‘We can’t have the cure be worse than the problem,’ he said.

Amen, Mr President. So, sooner rather than later, please can we have our countries back?

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The Coronavirus has exposed the British health service's inflexibility and over-centralisation

The coronavirus pandemic has had two effects on British perceptions of the NHS. On the one hand, it has reinforced admiration of the staff. Nurses, doctors and other personnel have been like soldiers going into battle. They have got close to patients infected with the deadly virus and knowingly accepted a high risk of catching it themselves. The Government acknowledged last week that 19 NHS staff have died and that number is undoubtedly higher by now. Our clapping of NHS employees has been heartfelt and is well-deserved.

At the same time, another perception has been brought home to us. For many years, public debate about the NHS has been conducted as if there were only two healthcare systems in the world: the NHS and the American one. The American system has been depicted as heartlessly demanding to see your credit card on arrival in hospital and, in the absence of one, turning you away. Not surprisingly, the NHS emerged in these debates as a preferable system.

But the pandemic has been a vivid reminder that there are hundreds of other healthcare systems around the world and that many – or even most – have performed better than our own. Of course, it is early days and it will be a long time before a final reckoning is possible, taking into account the age-profiles of different populations, the density of how they live and such factors. But on the latest figures, the bald fact is that Britain ranks fifth worst in the world in deaths per million, coming after Spain, Belgium, Italy and France. We have become painfully aware that we have been behind the world in testing, too. Britain is struggling to build up to 100,000 tests a day by the end of this month whereas Germany was conducting 116,000 tests a day two weeks ago.

We entered the crisis with a lower proportion of intensive care units per capita than other countries and fewer ventilators. The more we admire and want to protect the NHS staff, the more we should be disturbed by the way that the NHS has not always managed to provide protective equipment for them. It is embarrassing to hear the Government resort to the excuse of “logistical problems” for this failing when other countries have overcome such problems. We find ourselves a charity case, being given a million masks by Taiwan.

Taiwan, along with South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong were all much closer to the source of the virus in China. To begin with, South Korea was one of the countries worst affected. But all these countries have managed to contain the spread of the virus to a remarkable degree. British deaths per million have been 190 so far. In these countries the figures have been 0.3, 4, 2 and 0.5 respectively. In due course, their figures may rise. But they have, at the least, bought time in which the researchers of the world may be able to develop an anti-body test, find treatments and, eventually, create a vaccine.

In the short term, admiration for NHS staff understandably overwhelms all else and we have to face the crisis as best we can. But when things have settled, we owe it to those staff as well as ourselves and those we love to look more closely at other systems. A truly independent inquiry with experts from around the world should be established to see where the NHS did well and where it fell short.

The most notable characteristic of the British system is that it is the most top-down, centralised one of any advanced country. In contrast, in Germany, 132 different laboratories – publicly-owned and private – got testing quickly. Their system is based on compulsory, individual health insurance which everyone has. It is diverse in its organisation and ownership. This diversity has endowed it with a flexibility and readiness to innovate that is not so easy in our command and control system.

I have just emerged from having 10 days of Covid-19 symptoms. It was, to be honest, scary: the first time in my life that I have thought it possible that I might imminently die. Believe me, that kind of experience makes one want Britain to have the best possible healthcare system, regardless of all prior tradition or prejudice.

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Just 19 patients treated over Easter weekend at 4,000-bed NHS Nightingale hospital in London

Bed shortage?  What bed shortage?  This removes one of the major rationales for the lockdown

The new 4,000-bed temporary NHS Nightingale hospital in East London treated just 19 patients over the Easter weekend, it has emerged.

Leaked data shows the tiny handful of patients were treated at the massive overflow facility as intensive care capacity at existing London hospitals never went above 80 per cent.

It comes as an NHS chief in the North East of England predicted the Nightingale hospital under construction there is unlikely to be needed.

Occupying London’s Excel conference and events centre, NHS Nightingale London was built in just nine days after a massive operation involving military planners.

Including 2,900 intensive care beds, it is principally intended to be a critical care facility for seriously ill but stable Covid-19 patients who have transferred from permanent London hospitals....

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Cardinal Pell and the Ladies of the Left

The next time you hear some strident feminist sounding off about glass ceilings and the supposed exclusion of women from decision-making, think of the case of George Pell. No connection? Oh yes there is. Gender quotas were not only filled but arguably exceeded by the volume of female participation in the long and sorry saga of Pell’s persecution.

All that blather you still hear on places like Radio National about men being in charge of everything and women chained to the sink is no longer true, if ever it was. Very powerful, high-achieving women had a big say in cooking up the case against Pell and in putting him away. Their involvement shows that the notion of male domination in the professions is a straw – I suppose we should say – person, set up by feminists to foster the myth that women are “oppressed” (by white conservatives males like Pell, presumably; as paid-up members of the Left, feminists would naturally believe that).

Let’s see, who shall we start with? Well, Louise Milligan of the ABC hurled herself into the fray very early on. As a reporter, she has more opportunity than most people to air her views, courtesy of your tax dollars. But not content with that, she wrote a book as well (on the taxpayer’s time?) telling the world how guilty Pell was, or more accurately, how guilty she had decided he was, since her literary effort appeared some time before any accusations against Pell had been made in court.

Then there was the woman who published the book, Louise Adler. She used the once respected imprint of Melbourne University Press to disseminate Louise’s anthology of vicious tittle-tattle, which conceivably did its bit to prejudice the minds of any potential jurors who read it. It might be noted that Adler’s other name is Mrs Max Gillies. She is married to the comedian emeritus of the elderly Dismissal-fixated Left, once a virtual fixture on the ABC – where else? – for his unflattering impersonations of Sir John Kerr and John Howard, two of the most noir of the elderly Left’s bêtes noires. Perhaps he has added George Pell to his repertoire, using Louise’s book as a source, if Mrs Gillies brought him home a copy.

Next in line chronologically is Belinda Wallington. She is the magistrate (indeed, the Supervising Magistrate for Sexual Offences at the Magistrates Court of Victoria) who sorted out the original charges against Pell, chucking out the flimsiest and sending him for trial on the others, which it now turns out were not much less flimsy. There is a photograph (below) of Belinda and Louise together in May 2017, when they took part in a cosy ABC natter-in called The Conversation Hour, with the topic “George Pell allegations and Law Week”. There is, of course, no known photograph of the Wallington with Pell.

As we know, the first trial was a washout and a second trial was held, which led to Pell’s conviction. This gave another of our ABC ladies, Leigh Sales, a thrill of joy. Introducing her programme she announced in ringing tones, categorically and as though she was the bearer of great good news (which indeed it was to people like her), “George Pell is a convicted paedophile.” Leigh was clearly untroubled by any of the doubts as to the justice of the conviction, doubts that more than a year later would lead the High Court to overturn it.

Our fifth influential female is Chief Justice of Victoria Anne Ferguson. She it was who presided over the Appeal Court that turned down Pell’s appeal against his conviction, an action for which the Victorian court was reproached by the High Court in no uncertain terms. Ferguson and a male judge were two-to-one in this against a third judge (male) whose dissenting judgment anticipated much that the High Court had to say.

Ferguson was appointed to her post as Chief Justice of Victoria by the Labor government of Daniel Andrews, which seems to have decided that substantial experience of the criminal law was not necessary for the post and that a former commercial solicitor would do as well. Andrews, one imagines, is not been best pleased by Pell’s acquittal, given that he thought it was “shameful” for Tony Abbott even to visit Pell in prison. Has he never read Matthew 25:36?

Andrews issued a statement after the acquittal that pointedly ignored the judgment and assured all “victims” of child abuse, and by implication Pell’s accuser, that he “believed” them. Apart from the fact that you can’t believe Pell, as the High Court does, and believe his accuser at the same time, Andrews hasn’t heard, and probably never will, what most of those other “survivors” have to say, so how can he “believe” it?

It is this perverse willingness to accept any and every abuse allegation made by anyone, anywhere, whether motivated by truth, vindictiveness or vengeance, that has led not only to the legal shambles deplored by the High Court, but to the growth, aided and abetted by sinister lawyers posing as compassionate champions of the “hurt” and the “damaged”, of a bloated child-abuse industry which has yielded a harvest of destroyed careers among the wrongfully accused to set against the numbers of genuinely abused for whom it has obtained justice and compensation.

Although supposedly a Roman Catholic, Andrews comes across as viscerally anti-Pell – the two positions seem not to be irreconcilable, such is the power of Pell’s conservatism, religious and secular, to excite hysteria and loathing in the ranks of the Left. Only Tony Abbott seems to possess this weird, almost shamanic, capacity to the same degree.

Back to our catalogue of inquisitorial females, so let’s not overlook eminent jurist Kerri Judd, Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions and another Andrews appointment. Kerri was resolutely opposed to Pell’s appeal being upheld by the High Court and informed the bench that the best thing to do was to send him back to Victoria for another of those trials they do so well there. The court declined to accept this sage advice, which it described as “specious”.

Our national broadcaster seemed to delude itself that it constituted an alternative branch of the law vis-à-vis Pell, one that could influence the mind of the High Court through one of its mendacious “investigations” of the sort it made a fool of itself with when it tried to convict President Trump of colluding with Russia. The reporter behind that, Sarah Ferguson (“I’ve spent my professional life understanding power and trying to give succour to the weak when abused by power,” as she sanctimoniously informed an ABC in-house puff) presented three programs on child abuse by Catholic clergy, full of recycled “revelations”. It is perfectly possible that the ABC calculated that this would persuade the court to weigh very carefully the consequences in adverse public opinion, whipped up partly by itself, of any decision to acquit Pell. If so, it would only show how hubristic the ABC is. Certainly, Sarah’s programs were timed to coincide with the High Court’s deliberations, and either rain on the parade if Pell were cleared or give one last slam to the prison door if he were not.

The ABC is always crying poor but spent vast sums sending Sarah around the world to put her nasty snipes together, a vindictive squandering of taxpayers’ money that makes reform of the ABC even more urgent.

I haven’t touched on the female lawyers and “victims’ advocates” who gathered around the scaffold in the hope of seeing Pell’s head roll. Consider instead some of the many women who took his part – three female justices among the unanimous seven-to-zero of the High Court bench, the nuns who gave him hospitality on his first night of freedom, the female journalists such as Rita Panahi, Janet Albrechtsen and Miranda Devine who stood up for him and maintained his innocence when the pack was baying for his blood. It’s non-feminists who’ll be proud of them.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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