THREAT OF LOCKDOWN ‘RIDICULOUS’
Idea of city-wide measures ‘simply won’t wash’, says ex-council leader
THE former council leader of Birmingham has said the city’s 1.1 million people should be “congratulated, not warned” over their response to Covid restrictions. John Clancy said Birmingham’s residents were being wrongly blamed over rising infection rates – yet there were no cases at all in most neighbourhoods.
And he blamed local authority figures for “ridiculously” putting the whole city on standby for a local lockdown, when the evidence does not stack up.
Instead he called for a ‘hyperlocal’ approach, targeting areas of concern, rather than widescale restrictions for all.
In a blog, Prof Clancy writes that, of 132 neighbourhoods across the city, 53 have not recorded a single positive coronavirus case for four weeks – and most of those, 47, had not seen a case in eight weeks.
Yet the entire city is now being threatened with potential lockdown and people’s behaviour challenged, adding to mounting anxiety, he says.
Prof Clancy spoke out as the city was placed on the national watch list by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, and rated in need of “enhanced support” to help prevent a restrictive local lockdown.
With an infection rate hovering around 30 cases per 100,000 people last week – the equivalent of around 320 new cases a week – and an increasing positivity rate (the proportion of people testing positive is now at 4.3 per cent), the Government and city decided it needed to act.
The measure that will affect most people is a partial restriction on households meeting together.
Adding Birmingham to the watch list was a blow to city retailers and the hospitality sector, already reeling from a loss of confidence in visiting shops, pubs and restaurant, despite the positive impact of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme.
But writing for the Centre for Brexit Studies, Prof Clancy – who was council leader from 2015 to 2017 before resigning over the damaging bin strikes and is no longer involved in local politics – said: “Birmingham is a city which has done significantly better than other cities in the UK when it comes to Covid-19.
“In the biggest city outside London, a place of 1.2 million people, people have responded and behaved appropriately throughout,” he writes. “The citizens of Birmingham should be congratulated, not warned. Other big cities and population areas have fared far worse than Birmingham.
“But local authority figures in Birmingham are ridiculously putting the city on standby, it would appear, for a local lockdown,” he added.
“We know lockdowns cause nonCovid-19 death too. And where the disease itself is not causing death, a lockdown will cause deaths in Birmingham, not prevent them.” He draws on government data that reveals that, as of last Thursday, 87 of the city’s 132 neighbourhoods did not record a single positive case of Covid19 in the last week.
“So 716,000 Brummies live in a neighbourhood where there were no positive tests in the last week,” he said.
He adds: “53 of the neighbourhoods (418,000 people) have not recorded a single case in the last four weeks, and 46 neighbourhoods (371,000 people) have not recorded a single case in the last eight weeks.” He concludes: “Birmingham cannot, as a city, be in any way regarded
as a Covid-19 hotspot. And rounding up from specific neighbourhoods where testing is now showing an increase and applying that to Birmingham as a whole simply won’t wash.”
Prof Clancy’s analysis also exposes the reality of the rate of infections, arguing that while the rate is rising, the number of people affected in a city of Birmingham’s size is minimal. “When you are dealing with such low (and unreliable) numbers, small changes might seem to become spikes.
“So the rate of infection per 100,000 in Birmingham went up from 16 per 100,000 people two weeks ago to 22 per 100,000 last week.
“That seems a jump of almost 40 per cent. But it’s actually just six more people in 100,000.
“These are micro-numbers... it is certainly not enough to spark policy change.”
He adds: “So-called ‘spikes’ are occurring here, there, and everywhere up and down the country because new testing regimes are causing them – either with false positives, picking up residual infections or...suddenly increased testing in specific areas. “Covid-19-related deaths are the only real reliable figure throughout this pandemic. Where a local area is showing a significant increase in deaths, there
is a problem that needs national intervention.
“You can’t let local officers and politicians who by definition look at very local contexts over-react. Which is what they have started to do.
“And where severe curtailing of civil liberty is involved, the decision has to be made by national government.
“What you can’t have is local lockdown panic without a wider context. Otherwise you’ll get ridiculous decisions to lockdown completely unrelated to the actual risk.”
Prof Clancy calls for ‘hyper local intervention in very local areas of concern’ which he says is a much better way forward, rather than the current city wide approach.
“If the so-called spikes in places
The citizens of Birmingham should be congratulated, not warned...
John Clancy
like Birmingham lead to reported Covid-19 hospital admissions or reported Covid-19 deaths, then there is cause for alarm.
“So we need to know if this is the case. But the reality is that increased and more widespread testing is leading, oddly enough, to finding more cases.
“This has not broadly led to increases in Covid-19 related deaths and hospital admissions in other socalled hotspots.
“Something else it at play.
“Until we get our testing, and track and tracing system, into proper, reliable shape we should not be basing policy on it.”
And he warns: “Just-in-case lockdowns are simply not an acceptable response to dodgy data. And lockdowns cause deaths.”