It’s the biggest question in the world right now: is Covid-19 a deadly disease that only a small fraction of our populations have so far been exposed to? Or is it a much milder pandemic that a large percentage of people have already encountered and is already on its way out?
If Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College is the figurehead for the first opinion, then Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, is the representative of the second. Her group at Oxford produced a rival model to Ferguson’s back in March which speculated that as much as 50% of the population may already have been infected and the true Infection Fatality Rate may be as low as 0.1%.
Since then, we have seen various antibody studies around the world indicating a disappointingly small percentage of seroprevalence — the percentage of the population has the anti-Covid-19 antibody. It was starting to seem like Ferguson’s view was the one closer to the truth.
But, in her first major interview since the Oxford study was published in March, Professor Gupta is only more convinced that her original opinion was correct.
As she sees it, the antibody studies, although useful, do not indicate the true level of exposure or level of immunity. First, many of the antibody tests are “extremely unreliable” and rely on hard-to-achieve representative groups. But more important, many people who have been exposed to the virus will have other kinds of immunity that don’t show up on antibody tests — either for genetic reasons or the result of pre-existing immunities to related coronaviruses such as the common cold.
The implications of this are profound – it means that when we hear results from antibody tests (such as a forthcoming official UK Government study) the percentage who test positive for antibodies is not necessarily equal to the percentage who have immunity or resistance to the virus. The true number could be much higher.
Observing the very similar patterns of the epidemic across countries around the world has convinced Professor Gupta that it is this hidden immunity, more than lockdowns or government interventions, that offers the best explanation of the Covid-19 progression:
“In almost every context we’ve seen the epidemic grow, turn around and die away — almost like clockwork. Different countries have had different lockdown policies, and yet what we’ve observed is almost a uniform pattern of behaviour which is highly consistent with the SIR model. To me that suggests that much of the driving force here was due to the build-up of immunity. I think that’s a more parsimonious explanation than one which requires in every country for lockdown (or various degrees of lockdown, including no lockdown) to have had the same effect.”
Asked what her updated estimate for the Infection Fatality Rate is, Professor Gupta says, “I think that the epidemic has largely come and is on its way out in this country so I think it would be definitely less than 1 in 1000 and probably closer to 1 in 10,000.” That would be somewhere between 0.1% and 0.01%.
Professor Gupta also remains openly critical of the Government lockdown policy:
“The Government’s defence is that this [the Imperial College model] was a plausible worst case scenario. I agree it was a plausible — or at least a possible — worst case scenario. The question is, should we act on a possible worst case scenario, given the costs of lockdown? It seems to me that given that the costs of lockdown are mounting, that case is becoming more and more fragile.”
She recommends “a more rapid exit from lockdown based more on certain heuristics, like who is dying and what is happening to the death rates”. She does not believe that the R rate is a useful tool in making decisions about government policies, as an R rate is “principally dependent on how many people are immune” and we don’t have that information.
She believes that deaths are the only reliable measure, and that the number of cases should not even be presented as it is so reliant on the amount of testing being done.
She explains the flare-ups in places like New York, where the IFR seems to have been higher than 0.1%, through a combination of circumstances leading to unusually bad outbreaks, including the infection load and the layout of the population:
“When you have pockets of vulnerable people it might rip through those pockets in a way that it wouldn’t if the vulnerable people were more scattered within the general population.”
She believes that longer-term lockdown-style social distancing makes us more vulnerable, not less vulnerable, to infectious diseases, because it keeps people unprotected from pathogens:
“Remaining in a state of lockdown is extremely dangerous from the point of view of the vulnerability of the entire population to new pathogens. Effectively we used to live in a state approximating lockdown 100 years ago, and that was what created the conditions for the Spanish Flu to come in and kill 50m people.”
Commenting on the Government response to the virus, she suggests it erred on the side of over-reaction not under-reaction:
“I think there’s a chance we might have done better by doing nothing at all, or at least by doing something different, which would have been to pay attention to protecting the vulnerable, to have thought about protecting the vulnerable 30 or 40 years ago when we started cutting hospital beds. The roots of this go a long, long way back.”
And she believes it is a “strong possibility” that if we return to full normal tomorrow — pubs, nightclubs, festivals — we would be fine, but accepts that is hard to prove with the current evidence:
“So what do we do? I think we weigh that strong possibility against the costs of lockdown. I think it is very dangerous to talk about lockdown without recognising the enormous costs that it has on other vulnerable sectors in the population.”
On the politics of the question, Professor Gupta is clear that she believes that lockdowns are an affront to progressive values:
“So I know there is a sort of libertarian argument for the release of lockdown, and I think it is unfortunate that those of us who feel we should think differently about lockdown have had our voices added to that libertarian harangue. But the truth is that lockdown is a luxury, and it’s a luxury that the middle classes are enjoying and higher income countries are enjoying at the expense of the poor, the vulnerable and less developed countries. It’s a very serious crisis.”
Freddie Sayers is the Editor-in-Chief & CEO of UnHerd. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of YouGov, and founder of PoliticsHome.
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SubscribeAn inconvenient truth that practically all of our greatest pop’n’rock artists didn’t go to uni and that the post 92 meat grinder money making universities don’t give a toss about the students as long as the numbers are high, and in fact many students are thrown on the scrap heap
It has been obvious for some years that higher education in the UK and the US is primarily – and often solely – about money.
If you come out of university with a degree that does not gain you employment, you are forced to take any job available, however menial, Your schoolmates, on the other hand, have had three years’ experience in the workplace and so are at an advantage.
It is in the best interest of the students that courses are assessed and students are aware of the job opportunities that are available for graduates with only limited academic ability..
You are quite right Iris. In fact I’m reminded of the old joke ‘What do you say to a media studies/social sciences graduate? – A big mac and fries please.’
entrepreneurs who create the wealth that employs graduates more often than not, did not go to university… as has always been the case.. It is often just a wage slaves academy!
It’s very simple. Make universities responsible for student loans. That will encourage them to produce employable graduates. Close any university with a dropout rate of over 20%.
Carpenters, Plumbers, Electricians, Engineers, Transport Professionals, etc. Some need a degree, some need an apprenticeship, some need on-the-job training or vocational training. Far better than a degree in ” ” Studies.
I keep saying that there is nothing useless or non-vocational about a humanities degree per se. I read history at university, and I would defend that discipline against all-comers as being a training in considering evidence, establishing the relevant facts, and drawing conclusions, i.e. a training in reasoning, which is essential for any profession and especially for management and leadership roles. A high-level training in, say, mathematics, certainly imparts logical rigour and attention to detail, but it has little to do with the more intangible, but vital, skill of good judgement.
I agree, Jonathan, a good humanities degree from a good university is a valuable thing and usually leads to enhanced earning potential. Unfortunately, the reckless expansion of the sector has resulted in a profusion of graduates with second class degrees from third rate universities. This helps no-one, except of course the ridiculously well remunerated Vice Chancellors.
I believe it was Vince Lombardi who corrected the saying “practice makes perfect” to “perfect practice makes perfect”. If you are studying any subject to a high level, you will be developing valuable skills. If you are not, you may merely be practicing errors. In technical degrees the errors are immediately obvious and cannot be hidden.
I think you need both good judgement and some attention to detail (from your remarks I’m quite sure you have both).
However, there is a belief in this country (and the US and many others) that you do not need technical competence or experience in the relevant industry to be a good manager or leader – i.e. that “management” is a generic discipline that is portable across industries. I strongly believe this to be false and my experience in technology businesses shows that those which succeed and survive are the ones whos leaders have both deep domain (technical) skills and experience with leadership and management skills.
My experience is that the number of people with both exceptional technical and leadership and management skills is very small. But these are the people you certainly need these days.
We should not knock the uni’s. They do a remarkable job on their inmates, training them in the virtues of being hyper-sensitive non-resilient weaklngs, quick to take offence at almost anything, seeing micro-aggressions in the blink of an eye (someone else’s), for ever feeling ‘unsafe’, requiring an endless stream of trigger-warnings (from Beowulf through Lear — King , but probably Edward as well –to Pride and Prejudice and onward), shutting out debate, by violence if necessary, and so forth — and that is not to mention vilifying as much of our history as imagination can manage, and hating our country, all accompanied by narcissistic self-flagellation for white, or any other, guilt.
Do you want your, or anyone else’s, child to emerge from uni in that state, part of a failed generation?
Reopen polytechnics teaching career subjects at night school and day release
Sadly this educational fiasco can firmly blamed on John Major Esq, and his 1992 ‘Further & Higher Education Act’, and not on the wretched Tony Blair, as is so often assumed.
The damage done is probably terminal.
I think it began even earlier. It was in the late 1980s when I first noticed that even the dimmest offspring of the middle classes were going to university, and referring to it as ‘uni’.
It must have some relation to the destruction of the Tripartite education system. Once everyone went to comprehensives then they must all go to university. All that is needed is the willingness to drop academic standards and to drive up public and private debt.
The late 80s was when norm referenced marking was ditched,
The problem is exacerbated by the quasi religious desire to overrepresent certain groups at what were great institutions.
I would put forward the view that allowing polytechnics to become universities made little difference as they had long forgotten their remit of providing technical education and training with a vocational focus and had been churning out graduates in Marxist drivel for years. But you may have a point that Blair only ramped this up.
You are right to highlight John Major’s policies as starting the rot. It was under his premiership that the polytechnics, which provided excellent vocational training programmes and educational qualifications, including degrees, were converted into universities, many if not most of which became second rate and remain so to this day. Tony Blair substantially worsened the situation by decreeing that 50% of school leavers should attend university – an approach enthusiastically adhered to by David Cameron, who likewise tripped out on diversity and inclusion rather than academic prowess. Both Blair and Cameron introduced tuition fees, which have crippled many graduates with debts for degrees that they struggle to pay off in low paid job just above the threshold for non-payment.
The over-expansion of higher education in the UK is turning the country into what I would call a “Dunning-Krugerland” – i.e. a society with a huge number of people who are educated just enough to believe they are experts, but not sufficiently to realise they are not. Social media makes this painfully visible.
You can see the mediocrity and ignorance all around you. The quality of analysis, debate and discussion in newspapers, TV and radio is vastly inferior to the 1970s and 1980s. “Presenters” constantly interrupt and try to make it all about them and “build their brand”. No politician is allowed to talk for more than one or two minutes without some trite question or interruption. Almost all questions are leading ones. Original and challenging ideas are condemned out of hand.
It is time that universities suffered financial penalties if the graduates they produce are not up to scratch. Those that aren’t good enough need to close.
There is a real – and huge – opportunity cost in tieing up people and resources in wasteful activities. But even more so by mis-educating people – persuade me that the majority of today’s “protestors” and “campaigners” – the ones gluing themselves to roads – aren’t or negative value to society as a whole.
Then add in the massive student loan debt default being built up which will fall back on the taxpayer.
Blair may be gone, but the evil he engendered lives on.
You can defund the humanities at the government level without abolishing them. Plenty of people who do stuff in the humanities make their living by selling books, talks, and obviously, university courses. The “barbarous” idea that without government funding the humanities would disappear seems to imply that nobody cares about them and have to be forced to fund them, which if true, is by itself an excellent reason to defund them.
A reevaluation of the university system is long overdue. Humanities degrees have a place. Society should always be producing people who write well. I totally agree that where possible all degrees should entail a wage earning element as part of a condition for admission. I hope Sunak seeks to defund all these wacky lefty courses that exist now. I doubt this will happen however.
The Heritage Site | Adam McDermont | Substack
There is a simple way round all this – if you want to do a Humanities degree, then before you can do that, you do a year min three max, in the workplace, anywhere in the country, paid min wage, but with government provided student dorm style subsidised accommodation. Govt responsible for placing you, but system similar to UCAS. Businessess who take on young people at 18 in this way to get tax breaks. No such requirement on STEM degrees, for the simple reason that you would not want to lose any of the most creative STEM period in young people, which starts at around 18.
Wouldn’t it be easier to insist that Humanities and Social Sciences courses require 3 As at Alevel, one of which must be maths. Those that don’t are not eligible for Student Loans.
STEM and vocational courses and apprenticeships are funded as now.
The objective should be that only the very brightest and most committed do history or psychology etc and these courses make up 5-10% of university placements.
Crikey, the Maths stipulation would rule out literally everyone wanting to take a Humanities or Social Sciences degree. Of course, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
Latin in preference to Maths perhaps?
Nice idea
That would certainly have suited me. I was good at Latin, whereas my maths stopped when confronted with long division, aged nine.
There are quite a lot of people from the humanities side of things who have contributed greatly to society but were crappy at maths.
I like the idea of a higher grades requirement, but 3 As seems harsh. Perhaps allow leeway for a B or even a C if you get an A* somewhere else.
I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek but the grade requirement should be raised and the ratio of these courses to STEM/ vocational should be 1 in 10.
I also like the idea of people having to have a “difficult” A Level too – maths or Latin would be acceptable.
The current option of mediocre A Levels in psychology, English and media studies and then a 2:2 in sociology at the University of Nowhere is a waste of the student’s time and the taxpayer’s money.
Minimum university entrance requirement: one of: one A-level in a STEM subject, a qualification in a trade with work experience, a year in the armed forces or on a ward on the NHS, or a foreign language to B2 level. (I started the comment as a joke, then realised there might be something in it)
I agree there might be something to it.
From 2000 to 2016 I taught part-time at University of Bradford, Yorkshire UK. I saw the quality of the intake gradually go down during that time. Similarly, the motivation and enthusiasm of the students began to wane – it was totally pointless for at least a third of the students I reckon. And that was in engineering! Eventually the department was wound up and remaining staff redeployed. It was a standing joke that while the official entry requirement was 2 Bs, we would accept any student with 2 Ds who didn’t need life support systems. Just a failing industry doing the “bums on seats” exercise to justify it’s existence. The best teaching I ever did was three years (1973-1976) at the Kenya Polytechnic where the students were keen as mustard to learn real skills for their jobs in telecomms and electronics.
A very good blog, Frank, and spot-on with regard to our need for respected, high quality technical/vocational education, and on the fact that our universities are full of young people with no real interest in their studies, who also provide a depressing milieu for those fellow-students – and there are plenty – who DO have that interest. (And I speak as a former university lecturer). My only quibble might be regarding the German situation. Having just spent a week with two Germans, one of whom spent some time teaching in a technical school, I was made aware that lack of interest and motivation has also become prevalent amongst many young Germans in such schools.
The expansion of tertiary education was a genius move by Tony Blair. Get young people to take out huge loans to pay to remove themselves from the youth unemployment figures, at the same time creating a huge number of jobs for lecturers, most of whom would vote Labour. Brilliant.
Whether the degrees themselves would be useful for those taking them was beside the point.
Cracking good blog!
I’d welcome some kind of action around worthless degrees, but the idea that their worth would be decided on the basis of what kind of income the degree leads to is crazy.
Then what is your alternative ? How would you measure “worthless” ?
As a former full-time lecturer (second career after a lifetime in senior/top management) in a UK university business school and a BA graduate in English (from a world class university in its day), I feel I have some basis for adding to the discussion. Some points for consideration:
The fundamental purpose of the university is to be a collection of scholars looking for truth. And to train younger people to replace them, or who will benefit in their eventual work from learning from them.
That sound high-falutin’ but that’s it. The other things the university does stem from this basic purpose.
So a good program involves serious, rigorous thought, original ideas, involves people who are real scholars not just in one area but have a wide basis of scholarship.
The degrees that are worthless are those that undermine this. In humanities and sciences, those that have poor standards, mainly.
But also the proliferation of professional qualifications that are basically cash grabs by universities are a serious problem.
I utterly loathed every second of Kings College London… nearly as much as my fellows who actually wanted to be ‘ slisters’.. I did not finish the law.
Yeah