Lockdown Policy Is Destructive: UK Scientist Group (HART) Challenges Gov. Scientific Policy

The British based Hart Group are a collective of over 20 Professors and other specialists in a variety of fields of science, ranging from Psychology to Pathology, Medicine, Microbiology, Engineering, Economics, Nursing, Education and beyond. They have recently published a 'Review of the evidence' regarding COVID19 and the lockdown policy response in Britain - their essential conclusion being that "lockdowns serve no useful purpose and cause catastrophic societal and economic harms. They must never be repeated in this country.".

Despite being entirely counter narrative with regard to the general views shared by the mainstream thinkers in Britain (and in many other parts of the world), the UK's Express Newspaper has covered Hart, with Lord Sumption essentially agreeing with their observations. While they are perhaps more conservative and even 'optimistic' as compared to many of the critics of lockdown policy, they are essentially agreed that Lockdowns have not been beneficial and their cost has far outweighed any benefits.

The kindness offered by Hart is felt straight away in that they highlight the sunk cost fallacy that is present in the lockdown strategy - namely, that once an action has cost a vast amount of money, no-one involved will admit that it has been a terrible mistake, for fear of looking an idiot. Unfortunately for those people, everyone else who is paying attention can see the truth, clear as day. I say 'kindness' because the absurd amount of money that has been 'spent' by the UK government, not only to pay for lockdowns but also for it's obscenely 'expensive' (failed) 'track and trace' program can easily be viewed as audatious scams.

Sunk Without a Trace

The Track and Trace program alone is one of the most expensive projects ever undertaken in human history (using money as a measure), yet has achieved very little and was even exposed to have crashed due to having been written using Microsoft Excel (in a very bad and unprofessional way). The fact that many billions of government 'pounds' can just be written off in such a terrible way 'in the name of helping' seems to be meaningless to many people, but it literally means that those involved have received billions of pounds for nothing but failure. Obviously, this money could have gone into actual healthcare and saving many people's lives - but it didn't and the UK population continues on as if the government are somehow 'helping'.

What are Hart Saying?

The Hart Group's website is well written and speaks for itself:

Many international studies bear out that lockdowns have proven to be a complete failure as a public health measure to contain a respiratory virus. They did not succeed in their primary objective of containing spread yet have caused great harm.

Lockdowns were explicitly not recommended even for severe respiratory viral outbreaks in all pandemic planning prior to 2020, including those endorsed by the WHO and the Department of Health. The reasons for ignoring existing policies and adopting unprecedented measures appear to have been (i) panic whipped up by the media (especially scenes from China), (ii) a reluctance to do things differently to neighbouring countries and (iii) the unfaltering belief in one single mathematical model, which latterly turned out to be wildly inaccurate (Imperial College, Neil Ferguson).

We must find the courage to do things differently and to admit mistakes. The USA is leading the charge here, with more and more states turning their backs on lockdowns and mask mandates.

Moving forward, we would recommend the following steps:

1. Reinstate the existing pandemic planning policies from 2019, pending a detailed review of the policies adopted in 2020. Look to countries and states which did things differently. There should be a clear commitment from the Government that we will never again lockdown.
2. Stop mass testing healthy people. Return to the principles of respiratory disease diagnosis (the requirement of symptoms) that were well researched and accepted before 2020. Manufacturers’ guidelines state that these tests are designed to assist the diagnosis of symptomatic patients, not to ‘find’ disease in otherwise healthy people.
3. Stop all mask mandates. They are psychologically and potentially physically harmful whilst being clinically unproven to stop disease spread in the community and may themselves be a transmission risk.
4. Vaccination. Abandon the notion that vaccine certification is desirable and that children should be vaccinated. There is no logical or ethical argument for either.
5. Devise a public education programme to help redress the severe distortions in beliefs around disease transmission, likelihood of dying and possible treatment options. A messaging style based on a calm presentation of facts is urgently needed.
6. A full public enquiry into the extent to which severe/fatal COVID-19 is spread in hospitals and care homes. There is stark recent evidence on this from Public Health Scotland 3 and if true for the rest of the UK, there needs to be better segregation of COVID-19 patients and staff within these settings.
7. More funding and investigation of treatments for COVID-19, instead of only focusing on vaccination as a strategy. Given the high rates of hospital transmission, encourage a drive for more early treatment-at-home using some of the protocols discussed herein.
8. Divert funds. The not inconsiderable money saved from ceasing testing programmes can be diverted to much needed areas, such as mental health, treatment research and an increase in hospital capacity and staffing. The vast debts accrued during 2020 will also need to be paid off, a fact that seems to be worryingly absent from economic recovery plans.

I think many people will agree that the gist of this is common sense, that most people would consider to be 'clear as day' - and yet the governments seem to be magnetically repulsed by such thinking.

My regular readers will know that my position on the governemnt policies, particularly regarding health(s)care is that they are almost always devised with profit and control in mind, with health having very little to do with it. The Covid response is a massive signal of the reality of this and we ignore the many scientific voices who dissent from the government's thinking at our peril!

I highly recommend everyone to take time to read and share the full PDF of the Hart Group's findings, it is essential that the discussion is opened up globally to inlude such understandings now.

Wishing you well,
Ura Soul