Tag Archives: Sage

Top scientist condemns #Covid19 ‘lack of leadership’ and demands international #vaccination

He’s right, you know: Sir Jeremy Farrar quit Sage so he could tell you the government is wrong about Covid-19.

Isn’t it funny how scientists instantly start singing a different song, the instant they stop being employed by the government?

Sir Jeremy Farrar quit the Tory government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) last month.

Now he is joining the growing number of people calling for vaccines to be supplied internationally, rather than being rationed according to which countries can pay.

He accused rich countries of taking “a very blinkered domestic focus, lulled into thinking that the worst of the pandemic was behind us”.

“The longer this virus continues to spread in largely unvaccinated populations globally, the more likely it is that a variant that can overcome our vaccines and treatments will emerge,” he wrote. “If that happens, we could be close to square one.

“This political drift and lack of leadership is prolonging the pandemic for everyone, with governments unwilling to really address inequitable access to the vaccines, tests and treatment.

“There have been wonderful speeches, warm words, but not the actions needed to ensure fair access to what we know works and would bring the pandemic to a close.”

He’s right, of course – and the emergence of the Omicron variant has proved it.

It is believed to have developed in a country that has not been broadly vaccinated: Covid is much more likely to mutate in places where vaccination is low and transmission is high, while immunisation greatly reduces the change of new variants emerging.

So providing the vaccine to poorer countries is a matter of survival, not profit.

But just try telling that to Boris Johnson after he spent the last – almost – two years helping Tory donors and friends profiteer from Covid!

Source: ‘Lack of leadership prolonging Covid pandemic’ says top scientist warning UK is heading ‘back to square one’

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#NadineDorries take note: #SAGE predicted #Lockdown2 – but NOT with a crystal ball!

Nadine Dorries: The lights are on but nobody’s home.

The MP we all know as “Mad Nad” has struck again.

Nadine Dorries, who has miraculously managed to climb the greasy pole far enough to become a health – health! – minister, has performed another spectacular display of idiocy:

“Only a crystal ball could have predicted the need for a second lockdown”?

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies called for it on September 21.

Its acronym may be SAGE but that doesn’t mean it uses a crystal ball!

The reaction on the social media has been exactly what she deserved:

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Another Johnson Covid claim bites the dust: scientists say opening all schools is not ‘safe’

Boris Johnson: he seems to think we’ll accept any old nonsense that comes out of his mouth.

Isn’t it a good thing Tories like Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock don’t have any reputation of honesty to ruin?

If they had, the Covid-19 crisis would have scuttled them double-quick.

As it is, it should be no surprise to anybody that Johnson’s claim, last week, that “it is safe” for pupils to return to school is bunkum.

On Friday Mr Johnson, speaking at a primary school in Hemel Hempstead, said he wanted all year groups in all schools to return in September.

Minutes from the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) on May 21 reveal that extending the easing of restrictions through social bubbles or opening schools for all age groups would reopen transmission networks.

That means it would almost certainly ensure that more people started catching the disease again.

The minutes argue that although parents and teachers had a “relatively young age profile” which meant a lower level of risk of suffering from Covid-19, it urged “very careful monitoring and evaluation of infection in schools after any reopening”.

Reopening schools or non-essential retail “would require a significant effort to ensure that environments are appropriate to minimise transmission” such as distancing and hygiene measures.

Opening non-essential retail would lead to a “modest increase” in contacts of between 10 percentage points.

The minutes say: “Sage advised that overall public adherence with social distancing measures will likely be diminished by HMG signalling its intent to release even some of the measures.”

Source: Coronavirus latest: Scientists warn opening all schools will have a ‘large effect on the epidemic’

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Coronavirus: Outrage follows revelation that Dominic Cummings attended SAGE meetings (oh yes he did)

Not a scientist: Dominic Cummings.

What was the point of Dominic Cummings attending SAGE (the government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies) meetings if not to influence them?

And, considering his right-wing, eugenicist, economy-first, “if a few pensioners die, too bad” views, is it any wonder Boris Johnson is facing cross-party demands for Cummings to be barred from any further meetings?

Former Brexit secretary, David Davis, is among those calling for Dominic Cummings and Ben Warner, an adviser who ran the Tories’ private election computer model, to be prevented from attending future meetings.

He voiced the concerns of many when he said Cummings’s presence could alter the advice offered in meetings.

And he added: “We should publish the membership of Sage, remove any non-scientist members, publish their advice in full, and publish dissenting opinions with the advice.”

Other people who attend SAGE meetings have also said the Downing Street advisor’s presence made them uneasy.

According to another Guardian report, one said they felt Cummings’ interventions had sometimes inappropriately influenced what is supposed to be an impartial scientific process.

A second Sage attendee said they were shocked when Cummings first began participating in Sage discussions, in February, because they believed the group should be providing “unadulterated scientific data” without any political input.

Tends to indicate that Cummings is affecting what’s said at these meetings, doesn’t it?

And how can we trust the “science” that the Tories say they’re following if it come from him?

Downing Street has been (rather desperately) trying to claim that political “advisors” don’t make any difference, but then why would these two SAGE attendees say the following?

“When a very senior civil servant or a very well-connected person interrupts, then I don’t think anyone in the room feels the power to stop it. When you get to discussing where advice might be going, there have been occasions where they have been involved, and a couple of times I’ve thought: that’s not what we are supposed to be doing.”

“He was not just an observer, he’s listed as an active participant… He was engaging in conversation and not sitting silently.”

Another Downing Street claim was that it is “entirely right” for its political advisers to attend meetings of the group, implying – one may expect – that they have been at SAGE meetings from the start.

No!

Sage was first convened to advise on swine flu in 2009, and there had been almost 50 meetings between then and the start of the coronavirus crisis.

And guess what? “There is no evidence in the publicly available minutes of those meetings of any Downing Street officials or political advisers attending.”

Coming back to Cummings’s remarks about pensioner deaths, it should be clear that neither SAGE nor the “science” the Tories say they’re following will have any credibility until that committee is given back to the scientists.

Source: Top Tories join calls to bar Cummings from scientific advisory group | Politics | The Guardian

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Is this the reason Lancet editor said government advisors were lying on Covid-19?

Dominic Cummings: he can’t give advice on science, so why has he been attending Sage meetings on handling coronavirus?

Dominic Cummings and a data scientist from his Brexit campaign, Vote Leave, have been influencing the scientific group advising the government on coronavirus, it has been revealed.

Is this the reason Lancet editor Richard Horton reckons “supposedly independent medical advisors” have been telling “manifest untruths” – lying – to support a “political regime whose credibility is rapidly collapsing”?

We have already heard that Cummings was involved in a meeting in late January, when Covid-19 was played down as “just a bit of flu”.

He apparently said the UK would be better able to resist a second wave of the disease next winter if 60-80 per cent of the population became infected and the survivors developed “herd immunity”.

Cummings was paraphrased after speaking at a private engagement at the end of February, in which he said the government’s strategy was “herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad”.

Now The Guardian has claimed that both Cummings and Warner have been taking part in meetings of the group, raising questions about the independence of its scientific advice.

The government’s former chief scientific adviser Sir David King is quoted in the article, saying Cummings may have been reporting his own “interpretation” of Sage advice to Boris Johnson.

Mr Horton wrote in the Lancet criticising Dr Jenny Harries, England’s deputy chief medical officer, at the end of March. She had stated that England had a “perfectly adequate” supply of Personal Protective Equipment.

We all now know that this was not true.

Mr Horton wrote: “I am sure Dr Harries believed what she said. But she was wrong and she should apologise to the thousands of health workers who still have no access to WHO-standard PPE.”

On Sunday, Dr Harries seems to have made matters worse by saying: “The UK, regardless of the position that we may be in now, has been an international exemplar in preparedness.”

It sounds like propaganda.

And what about when government ministers say they have been “following scientific advice”?

If they’ve been getting this advice from Dominic Cummings, then it cannot be considered to have any value at all.

Source: Revealed: Dominic Cummings on secret scientific advisory group for Covid-19 | World news | The Guardian

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Why is turncoat Lord Warner still allowed to say he’s a LABOUR peer?

Odious old git: Lord Warner.

Odious old git: Lord Warner.

Calls for Maria Miller to resign have dominated the news this week, but there is one other person who should be ejected, if only from the political party they claim to represent.

That person is the closet Conservative, Lord Warner.

He is a man who has united with the right-wing thinktank, Reform, to demand that members of the public should pay £10 a month for NHS services, calling it a “suggested” “membership fee”.

It should come as no surprise that this odious old git has his claws very firmly into private healthcare and is only interested in lining his own pockets. That’s a Conservative attitude – not Labour.

Jacky Davis, co-editor of NHS SOS, writing in The Guardian, explains why Warner’s attitude is wrong: “Charges of this sort deter the poor and the elderly – the very people who need the NHS most – and as a result they present later with more advanced illness. To Warner and the pundits at Reform £120 a year may not look much, but it will feel like the last straw to those already struggling with the consequences of austerity. The public understand this and, as a recent survey shows, are overwhelmingly against upfront payments.

“The most efficient and the fairest way of funding it is through progressive central taxation.

“No politician with any sense would publicly endorse these proposals for charges, but nevertheless they have served their purpose: they have reinforced the myth that the NHS is “outdated and unaffordable”, and re-animated the zombie policy that it could be saved by upfront individual payments.”

To understand Lord Warner’s role, we need only look to former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott’s column in the Mirror: “The professed Labour supporter’s call, in his pamphlet and a newspaper article, is in direct opposition to the principle of treatment based on need, not the ability to pay.

“He rules out further taxation to fund the £30 billion gap in funds for the NHS. Perhaps he could consider, for a similar amount of our money, scrapping future spending on the Trident nuclear deterrent.

“Lord Warner, a career civil servant, was actively involved in advising private healthcare firms who have lucrative contracts in the NHS.

“Last year he was the only Labour peer to vote with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on proposed NHS regulations to allow companies to bid for almost all health services.

“When he was called before a ­parliamentary select committee to discuss his lobbying as a peer for private ­healthcare, he said: ‘The point I’m trying to make is that we do not have constituents. There is not a group of people who have voted for us… We are not elected to represent a particular geographical area and we are not paid a salary.’

“But he was nominated by Labour to be one of its peers.

“Warner admitted he does not represent the people. Instead he speaks up for the private healthcare industry through his private consultancy firm Sage Advice Ltd.

“Labour created the NHS – against ardent opposition from the Tories – to make healthcare free at the point of delivery to anyone who needs it, not just those who can afford it.

“I fear the constant dismantling of the NHS by the ConDem coalition.

“But I also worry about people like Warner who use the Labour Red Flag as a flag of convenience to peddle the right’s privatisation agenda.

“I will fight tooth and nail with every last breath in my body to make sure his heartless and repugnant views are never made policy.”

Lord Prescott also made clear something that Tories like Warner tend to forget: The NHS already does charge people – “it’s called National Insurance and general taxation.”

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