Following Lord Sumption a couple of days back, Mervyn King adds his voice to what will hopefully become a chorus.
The UK is risking a public “rebellion” if lockdown measures continue for too long, the former governor of the Bank of England warned yesterday.
Mervyn King, who was in charge of the bank during the 2008 financial crisis, said strict physical distancing measures could not continue for “months and months”.
Will there be a ‘rebellion’ in the UK?
Lord King of Lothbury said that government rules designed to “help prolong life expectancy of older people” disproportionately affected the younger generation, who had already “suffered” from the financial crisis, The Times reports.
An exit strategy from the current lockdown “is going to become more and more urgent now,” he said.
“The idea that we can simply maintain this lockdown for months and months on end according to the development of the virus I think is unrealistic…the government needs to find an exit strategy which is going to be gradual and it may need to examine methods by which those people who have had the virus are able to go back, travel and go to work.”
He added that there would otherwise be a generation divide: “I also fear that if we maintain the lockdown for too long there will be a rebellion against it, because an awful lot of young people will say, ‘Well the younger generations have suffered in the last 20 years. Why on earth is our future being put at stake in order to help prolong life expectancy of older people whose life expectancy may not be very high in any event?’”
I’m not sure that I go along with the generational divide bit, but the rest of what he is saying is sound. This madness has already gone on long enough. A vaccine for this bug is at best, months away, possibly years. Immunity amongst the population will come naturally as people are exposed to it.
Yes, I understand that the long incubation period is a problem as people wander about for a couple of weeks symptom free while infecting others, causing a sudden spike once the symptoms kick in. However, despite the experts dire predictions, this one isn’t particularly lethal and in many cases, the symptoms are mild. Yes, some people will die. But death is a fact of life. Completely trashing the world economy is disproportionate and this will become increasingly obvious to those who sit there watching their jobs and businesses evaporating before their eyes.
This past few weeks we have witnessed a level of hysteria that has has been out of proportion to the risk, but has been driven by the news media in their quest for relevance. We need heads on spikes when this is over.
The ONS stats don’t show anything to be alarmed about.
How long before there is a realisation that a sizable percentage of the 1600+ people who die every day, die from a respiratory ailment of some sort.
Corona or flu – makes essentially no difference, once your bodies defences are that low, something will carry you off.
The only thing found to make a big difference is prophylactic dosing of hydroxychloroquine, which the US is doing but not here for some reason.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/490110-fda-issues-emergency-use-authorization-for-anti-malaria-drugs-amid
Well, quite. They never put “old age” on the death certificate, they have to have a cause of death.
I have a Death Certificate before me, for a death in England and Wales, dated 2013. It states the causes of death as:
I(a) Old Age
II Biventricular failure; Chronic Kidney Disease stage 3; Hypertension
This seems to me a sensible sort of description. It includes “old age”.
Best regards
Well, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that. Although, as you point out, the actual cause is in the failure of the organs.
Nessimmersion writes: “The ONS stats don’t show anything to be alarmed about.”
This should be interpreted with knowledge that the currently available ONS figures only go to 2020 Week 12. These figures have a delay of around 1.5 weeks to allow registration of deaths and processing by ONS. They also relate only to England and Wales.
UK deaths from COVID-19 as reported with one-day time lag by PHE and subsequently Wikipedia:
Week 10 (W/E 06 March): deaths 2
Week 11 (W/E 13 March): deaths 9
Week 12 (W/E 20 March): deaths 166
Week 13 (W/E 27 March): deaths 842
Week 14 (W/E 03 April): deaths 3,294
Note these COVID-19 figures are for deaths in hospitals only, and are for the whole of the UK and not just England and Wales. However it should be clear that ONS figures up to Week 12 are extremely unlikely to be affected at all noticeably by COVID-19 issues – irrespective of whether those causes of deaths are correctly or incorrectly identified.
There might well be an up-tick when ONS 2020 Week 13 data is included. There will be no up-tick if the 842 (or so) were going to die in Week 13 without COVID-19. There will be a marked up-tick if none of them were going to so die in Week 13. In-between up-ticks might well be indicative of the trend going one way or the other from ONS data. Let’s hope that Week 13 data does better for those of us who are inquisitive but recognise we are not fully enough informed. Otherwise we will be waiting for the ONS score from Week 14.
IMHO those who believe that there will be no noticeable up-tick in ONS figures for Week 13 – and especially worryingly for Week 14 – are in for a disappointment.
Best regards
What will be interesting to see is a drop in other causes.
I expect there will be an uptick in week thirteen, but even if the all-deaths figure kicks up by a couple of thousand it will still be no more than is seen in a bad flu year.
Week 13 is something of an anomaly in that if you look at the highest weekly figure in the period 2010—19 that week is quite low low. A statistical quirk, probably caused by the date of Easter and hence the drop in registrations in bank-holiday weeks.
The ONS weekly provisional figures do not show causes other than Respiratory diseases. Analysing death certificates and getting the classification right cannot be done accurately and in a hurry. Showing Respiratory Disease is an exception, justified because *every winter* it is that cause that pushes up the death rate.
I wholly agree with your stance on this, however it may interest you to find out, if you haven’t already, who owns the blame that its gone on for this long – Public Health England. The Devil nails it quite well I think:
https://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2020/04/public-health-england-has-blood-on-its.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheDevilsKitchen+(The+Devil%27s+Kitchen)
Not only this, but Philip Morris International have recently donated 50 ventilators to the struggling Greek government, and PHE have been screaming about this being ‘nothing but a publicity stunt by big tobacco’, despite PMI keeping it out of the news.
British American Tobacco have also developed a vaccine from tobacco plants and they say they can be making 3 million doses per week by June. Same reaction from PHE. Read about this here:
https://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/news/vaping-news/2020-04-02_big-t-s-covid-response.html
To borrow from the man himself, PHE needs to be defunded, burned to the ground, it’s inhabitants flogged through the streets before being hanged drawn and quartered and their heads placed upon spikes outside Traitors’ Gate. Then the ground where they stood salted.
I have believed this for years – possibly not the burning/flogging/hanging part but certainly the defunding. Their behavior, carried out mostly by proxy through the quangos they fund such as ASH, has been inexcusable for decades.
The company I work for, jointly with Dyson – Ford, Rolls Royce and JLR are producing ventilators, and I’m just hearing stories now about how difficult it has been to get acceptance from PHE. They have fought every step of the way.
Why ever not???
Why ever not???
Okay okay I’ll agree to the flogging and hanging, but burning – nah – don’t you know smoke kills?
Stoning could be a good option, I already have 3 flats and a bag of gravel.
All-Cause Mortality Surveillance 02 April 2020 – Week 14 report (up to week 13 data)
As Prof Ferguson admitted a few days ago “they’d have died in next nine months anyway” – imo excess this week (no numbers) of over 65 probably delayed from prev week and some brought forward and will balance out by EoY
It will be interesting to look back on the death stats for 2020 (I hope I will be able to!) and see whether the numbers were increased noticeably by this virus. If it is just accelerating imminent deaths, the numbers for the year will not show any significant increase.
Though against that is my belief that China’s death rates for 2020 will be well up. But I doubt we’ll ever know.
Perhaps we should stick to the advice of the medical professionals, instead of retired judges and retired bankers eh?
You would have thought that made sense wouldn’t you? The problem is that such people have such an unenviable record of being wrong.
That’s an appeal to authority fallacy. The medical professionals over-egged the pudding back in February and are now back peddling. However, you don’t need to be a medical professional to recognise the wider societal issues that will arise, just as I don’t need to be a professional pilot to recognise a poor landing when I see one.
What, people like Prof Neil Ferguson, for instance?
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/03/29/crowd-sourcing-a-ferguson-history/
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/03/30/soap-opera-science/
A prime example.
“Well, the younger generations have suffered in the last 20 years”???
Scratches head!
Who cares about the 70 somethings just as long as I can have my nightly Jaegarbombs and look a complete prat
On average the older one is the fewer years one has left. There must be a lot of older people whose plans have now been put on indefinite hold and now, perhaps, they won’t live to see them realised ever as they die of ‘natural’ causes in their own homes. The same could be true of younger people, but not to the same extent.
Where are the judges that were concerned about prisoners losing their ECHR ‘right to family life’ now that we are all ‘prisoners’?
@Jim S
+1
My mother’s 80th Birthday is next Saturday. Originally siblings and some nieces and nephews were coming over from NI and a private party late lunch booked at hotel
All gone now, she’ll spend day alone with my stepfather in their retirement flat – he’s high risk as liver transplant
Her booked holiday to Madeira in May to visit friends gone too. Media have made her distraught with panic even though she knows the facts & figures
Unless they just hide the figures, there is going to be an amazing, miraculous?, drop in numbers of deaths caused by certain other causes.