Moar covid + moar money = inflation

Yesterday evening some extraordinary ‘Covid News’ were published. I was going to talk about the ongoing Brexit Trade negotiations, but they will keep for tomorrow. Promise! Let me just remark here that both the Brexit negotiations and the following covid reports come under ‘Whitehall business as usual’ because our dearly beloved Whitehall mandarins who run the various departments clearly hold us in such contempt that they believe they can get away with anything. 

And so to these Covid News. Yesterday, after the Wednesday vote by the Covid MPs for Lockdown we read in a ‘DT Exclusive’ that a government office was forced to issue corrections to the V & W shock-horror graphs. We’d already learned that wrong, out-of date data had been used, we’d already heard from Messrs V &W that their ‘models were a mean of six other models, and now this:

“The Government Office for Science has now corrected two of the slides, reducing both the upper end of the range for deaths and that for hospital admissions by one third. While the presentation suggested daily hospital admissions could reach up to 9,000 in early December, the upper end of the range has now been cut to 6,000 in the updated slides.” (paywalled link)

Yes, well, a bit late for stopping Lockdown now, isn’t it! But let’s ask what SAGE is there for if they cannot or will not use government data properly, data supplied by the Government Office of Science!

Professor Carl Henegan and Dr Tom Jefferson of the CEBM had this to say in their article published last night in the DT:

“these failings do not come to light because of Government transparency, but rather when painstaking analysis, eagle eyes, and sometimes even the simplest of questions are enough to expose major faults. Recent events show that nothing has been learned. Moreover, they point to a system that is failing.” (paywalled link)

Asking why and how it’s possible that the government could rush out ‘such shoddy data’, they continue:

“The Office for Statistics Regulation is also concerned – it has warned that the use of data has not consistently been supported by transparent information provided in a timely manner and, as a result, there is the potential to confuse the public. We are also concerned: the use of data  is not just confusing, the errors are positively misleading.” (paywalled link)

In their critique of this scandal, of the methods used, they are perfectly polite but do not mince words. This is devastating. Every sentence is a hammer blow:

“To understand and interpret the current Covid-19 data is proving nigh on impossible. The publication and presentation of data is confusing, and at times it is unsound. The methods and data underlying the models used to generate “scenarios based on assumptions” are inscrutable and decisions taken on their basis are unaccountable. While the fog of a pandemic – with events taking place in real time – can justify or at least excuse some of these mistakes, nothing can justify the lack of transparency and humility.” (paywalled link)

Their conclusions should rightfully lead to a disbanding of SAGE. That the BJ government will rescind Lockdown is now impossible, but any further measures surely cannot be justified as long as this political ‘covid science’ is kept going. They conclude:

“The growing number of errors seem to occur in only one direction (the worst case scenario) which underpins the point. Undeclared changes in projections based on undeclared assumptions clearly mislead. Key decisions can only occur when the underlying data has been made available and checked independently, when methods and key assumptions underlying any models have been published. And only when these have been communicated clearly and coherently can effective and equitable policy decisions be made.” (paywalled link)

Just so! But, cynical old cow that I am, I don’t believe that the various government scientists in their various Whitehall offices – or rather, their WFH ‘home’ offices – were incapable to see what Prof Henegan and other scientists have been pointing out for months now. Perhaps, in good old lefty fashion they refused to read anything that is published elsewhere and doesn’t come from ‘approved’ sources?  

Meanwhile, another piece of astonishing covid ‘news’ has also sunk below the ‘news horizon’. See this:

“Around 30,000 NHS staff are either off with Covid-19 or having to self-isolate, the health service’s chief executive Sir Simon Stevens told a Downing Street press conference today. […] Referring to the growing number of staff struck down by Covid-19, he added that the slogan – stay home to protect the NHS and save lives – means “help us to help you”.” (paywalled link)

Who knew – the good old ‘quarantine rulz’ are the perfect skiver’s charter, even affecting ‘Our NHS’! There’s more:

“Medical experts also warned that Nightingale hospitals are not the solution to easing the burden on the NHS’s intensive care units as cases continue to rise. Two senior intensive care specialists said opening field hospitals to help the health service during the second peak of coronavirus puts pressure on the system and risks poaching staff from already over-burdened hospitals.” (paywalled link)

Of course ‘Our NHS’ is overburdened, as always, especially when so many are off, in quarantine with the Coof! Obviously we’re not told if those ‘30,000 staff’ are all frontline NHS workers … but never mind: they’ll all be paid, as will anybody else because Sunak has found another money tree. He is now going to prolong that ’furlough scheme’ until March 2021.

That made my antennae twitch. (A cow with antennae? Really? Come on, Viv!) Doesn’t it look as if BJ and his covid government are planning to have us under covid rulz, tiers and lockdown included, into Spring next year? Why? Perhaps it’s about getting us to comply with constant testing:

“Holding out the prospect of rapid mass testing being piloted in Liverpool as a “real way forward through the crisis”, Mr Johnson said in Downing Street: “People will have as normal a Christmas as possible.” (link, paywalled)

‘Get tested and you can have Christmas’ – never mind handing over your personal data to government! No need to worry about that awkward quarantine rule: this may be reduced from 14 days to five. Above all, no worries about money! Sunak has found more – or was ‘bounced’ into finding it, according to The Times:

“Sound economics can be lousy politics, however, and the remorseless rise in the infections and need for more lockdowns mean that the tide is now too large to countenance. A series of course corrections in policy was completed today and now describe a full U-turn on the repeated pledge not to extend full furlough that would, Mr Sunak repeatedly claimed, leave people in “zombie” jobs.” (link, paywalled)

Well, let’s not ask if the Treasury mandarins are aware that this ‘need for more lockdowns’, now extended to March 2021, is based on discredited numbers now corrected by government departments! It is wonderful though to note that even Treasury mandarins can have their arms twisted when it’s about ‘covid’! There’s more: 

“Mr Johnson was never as keen as his chancellor in withdrawing the wage support in the first place and was pressing for a more generous approach well before the decision on a national lockdown. By accident or design he turned up the pressure on Mr Sunak in the Commons on Monday by appearing to make an open-ended promise to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast to fund wage support beyond the end of the English lockdown on December 2. It’s hard to avoid the impression that Mr Johnson has bounced his chancellor into abandoning what was supposed to be a Treasury red line.” (link, paywalled)

Ah – it’s about pacifying the leaders of those devolved nations … what sound economic reason! Rounding up this economic ‘miracle’, let’s look at the opinion piece by Matthew Lynn in the DT who explained yesterday evening that the BoE has come to Sunak’s rescue:

“Along with keeping interest rates at record lows, it pumped another £150 billion into the economy through another round of ‘quantitative easing’, otherwise known as printed money.[…] In effect, the Bank will be funding the Government’s entire deficit for the year, and it will be doing it with little more than a few keystrokes on Andrew Bailey’s [Gov of the BoE] computer.’ (paywalled link)

Mr Lynn reassures us that therefore the money for paying for lockdown and other covid measures won’t run out thanks to the BoE printing more of it. Other countries with central banks are doing so as well. However:

“There are constraints. If a country consistently consumes more than it produces then after a while either the trade deficit spirals out of control, and there is a currency crisis, or you end up with rampant inflation, because too much money is chasing too little stuff.” (paywalled link)

‘Economics 101’, isn’t it. And guess who’ll be paying for this in the end? All us prudent peasants who will suffer from the triple whammy of higher taxes, negative interest rates on savings and inflation. ‘Buy now, buy often, and let the devil take the hindmost’.

Never forget: all this prospective misery is caused by a government whose covid decisions are based on false, spurious, scientifically untenable numbers. But we will have some sort of Christmas if we ‘behave’ …

KBO