Good grief. Will they never give up? A major new evidence review from the prestigious Royal Society has concluded that lockdowns, mask-wearing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions were “unequivocally” effective in cutting COVID-19 transmission. Is such a confident conclusion warranted? Of course not. But then, much of the work was carried out in China and Professor Neil Ferguson was one of the peer-reviewers, so what would you expect?
Released this morning, the report had the desired impact in the media. ‘Lockdowns and the ‘Rule of Six’ did slow the spread of Covid‘ declares the Mail.
‘Lockdowns and masks helped reduce transmission,’ announces the BMJ. “Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were ‘unequivocally’ effective when rolled out in tandem during the Covid pandemic and led to ‘powerful, effective and prolonged reductions in viral transmission’, says a report by a team of experts brought together by the Royal Society,” it adds.
In the Times, Tom Whipple writes that the reduction from lockdowns was found to be “about 50%”:
The report involving more than 50 scientists from around the world, found that the strongest impact on coronavirus infections came from a full lockdown. Of 151 studies they considered that estimated an effect of stay at home orders, 119 found a substantial benefit, corresponding to a reduction in the ‘R number’ — the rate of spread of the virus — by about 50%.
And what about the harms, now widely accepted to be exceptionally high? That’s for others to look at, the report says. Why is it always someone else’s job to consider the harms? That was the excuse of SAGE and the Government advisers in 2020 and it’s the same excuse now from the Royal Society. To Whipple’s credit, he goes to Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at the Open University to make this point. “They seem to be saying, simply, that this kind of assessment is out of scope [for] this piece of work. If not the Royal Society, who is actually going to do it?”
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