Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

News News Analysis

Covid-19: UK government must “get its act together” as modelling suggests 85 000 deaths in second wave, experts say

BMJ 2020; 371 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4242 (Published 30 October 2020) Cite this as: BMJ 2020;371:m4242

Rapid Response:

This is not a rational basis on which to act

Dear Editor

I also note the article by Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson in the Mail on Sunday based on the advice they delivered to the Prime Minister [1]:

“ Our strategy would be to tackle the four key failings. We must address the problems in the Government's mass testing programme; we must tackle the blight of confused and contradictory statistics; we must make real efforts to protect and isolate those who are vulnerable; and we must inform the public about the true and quantifiable costs of lockdown...”

We are in an exceedingly dangerous position while we are at the mercy of endless worst case scenarios which do not have to be proven. Moreover, the wreckage of the policy is far more quantifiable than any benefit i.e we do not really either know how bad Covid is going to be or how much the policy will mitigate it, while we do know the catastrophic damage to everything else. To institute policy on this basis is without rationality.

[1] Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson, ‘There is another way to beat coronavirus, PM - and here it is...’, 31 October 2020, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8900897/Oxford-experts-DR-TOM-J...

Competing interests: AgeofAutism.com, an on-line daily journal, concerns itself with the potential environmental sources for the proliferation of autism, neurological impairment, immune dysfunction and chronic disease. I receive no payment as UK Editor

02 November 2020
John Stone
UK Editor
AgeofAutism.com
London N22