SCIENTISTS: TIME TO TAKE BACK CONTROL
PROTECT OUR FREEDOMS
FACE masks and social distancing must end on June 21 and people must be allowed to “take back control of their own lives”, insist 22 top scientists and academics.
In an open letter in today’s Sunday Express, they say “a good society cannot be created by obsessive focus on a single cause of ill-health”.
And they demand all restrictions be lifted in June – on the final date of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s roadmap – or the damage to the nation will be too great.
The experts’ calls go further – masks should no longer be worn by schoolchildren after May 17.
And they want vaccine passports scrapped along with mass community testing.
Instead, the Government should focus on targeted testing, creating better incentives for staying home if sick, and promoting basic hygiene measures, such as handwashing and surface cleaning.
The scientists and academics, drawn from a broad range of specialities and all sides of the political spectrum, say the “theoretical risk” of vaccine-immune strains or a new Covid surge should not outweigh the harms caused by lockdown.
They cite damage to children’s education and the nation’s mental health.
The authors, including sociology professor Robert Dingwall, Oxford University professor Carl Heneghan, an expert in evidencebased medicine, and Professor Anthony Brookes, a health data scientist, say: “We are being told simultaneously that we have successful vaccines and that major restrictions on everyday life must continue indefinitely.
“Both propositions cannot be true.we need to give more weight to the data on the actual success of the vaccines and less to theoretical risks of vaccine escape and/or surge in a largely vaccinated population.”
Pointing to official data, the letter states that the vaccine programme will almost totally eliminate deaths and hospitalisations from Covid-19 and it will become “demonstrably less fatal than seasonal influenza viruses”.
It continues: “We can be very confident that they [the vaccines] will reduce Covid deaths by around 98 per cent and serious illness by 80-85 per cent” once uptake of the jabs among vulnerable groups is completed.
Face coverings should no longer be worn by schoolchildren after May 17.
And “all exceptional measures to control the virus should cease no later than June 21” because unproven benefits are outweighed by widespread “damage”.
It lists adverse consequences for “mental health, education of children and young people, to people with disabilities, new entrants to the workforce and to the spontaneous personal connections from which innovation and enterprise emerge.”
And it states: “All consideration of immunity documentation should cease.”
Continued virus surveillance as well investments towards better vaccines should continue. And there must be improved support for people who need to stay at home with respiratory symptoms.
The letter goes on: “Just as before the pandemic, it will remain desirable to promote general standards of public hygiene, such as thorough handwashing and surface cleaning, although neither has been shown to be particularly important in reducing SARS-COV-2 transmission.
“We have learned that a good society cannot be created by obsessive focus on a single cause of ill-health. Having endured the ravages of 2020, things are very different as we enter the spring of 2021. It is more than time for citizens to take back control of their own lives.”
Yesterday Prof Dingwall, who works at Nottingham Trent University, said: “This open letter is not the product of any organised group, alliance or coalition.
“The signatories do not share anything beyond their frustration that policy conclusions promoted
CRUSADE
from a limited set of scientific disciplines have constantly emphasised fear, anxiety and worst cases.
“Pandemics challenge the whole of society, not just medicine and
public health. Proportionate responses require all the expertise available to citizens and governments, especially as we begin to live with Covid-19 as an endemic infection in a vaccinated population. Citizens’ lives do not have to be micromanaged by government restrictions on human contact and tracked morning, noon and night.”
Signatory Mike Hulme, professor of human geography at Cambridge University, said: “It is increasingly clear that pursuing a strategy of virus eradication is delivering an increasingly unfavourable
risk-benefit ratio. Eradication is an unattainable goal. In the meantime, the damage to the country’s broader social, political and economic health caused by this misguided strategy deepens.
“We assimilate a wide range of public health risks into everyday life, without straining to eradicate them at enormous and indefensible economic, social and political cost. As much as containing the virus itself, part of this strategy must be to arrest the contagion of pandemic fear.”