An interview with Professor Norman Fenton
Norman Fenton is Professor Emeritus of Risk at Queen Mary University of London (retired as Full Professor Dec 2022), he’s a mathematician by training and his current focus is on quantifying risk and uncertainty using Bayesian probability
Don’t worry, this is not a mathsy interview!
He has published 7 books and over 350 peer reviewed articles and covers multiple domains including law, forensics, health and AI.
I wanted to ask Norman about various mistakes made by government during the Covid-19 pandemic as he was a very outspoken expert from the beginning.
First of all, it might be hard for you to be brief on such a huge topic, but could you give me a summary of the worst official mistakes and misconceptions about managing the Covid-19 pandemic? I’m interested in asymptomatic Covid-19 cases, Covid-19 mortality and vaccine effectiveness and safety, but you can surprise me too!
Mistake 1: In March 2020 the Government was assuming massively exaggerated Covid-19 fatality rates. This mistake drove many of the subsequent disastrous decisions.
By properly analysing the early publicly available international data we already found (even before lockdowns were properly in place) that Covid-19 was far less deadly than was being assumed by the Government.
Although almost all our many research papers since July 2020 have been censored, between March and June 2020 we published a few papers in peer reviewed journals reporting these low case fatality rates and that government statistics were failing to accurately present the situation.
Other researchers (such as Ioannidis at Stanford) were reporting similar low fatality rates but although our estimates have since proven to be far more accurate than what the Government was assuming (in fact the fatality rates were even lower than what we were estimating) our work was ignored.
Mistake 2: The Government made catastrophic changes to existing treatment protocols for viral infections that led to many of the excess deaths in spring 2020.
In addition to the excess deaths caused by moving elderly patients from hospitals into care homes, and the damaging use of intubation and ventilators for Covid-19 patients, the introduction of NICE Guideline NG163 was especially disastrous.
This was the guideline which recommended the use of deadly drugs like midazolam to a class of patients who never needed it (in my opinion), and which also stopped the use of antibiotics to Covid-19 patients; most people with a viral infection die from the bacterial pneumonia that follows it and antibiotics are a standard treatment for that.
Not only did many people die unnecessarily (or die earlier than they would otherwise have done) in that period but the massive spike in deaths attributed to Covid-19 created a sense of hysteria and further exaggerated the perception of deadliness of Covid-19. All of which fed into the demands for lockdown.
Mistake 3: The lockdowns were an unnecessary disaster. Even if the Government’s flawed assumptions and approved models had been accurate, no comprehensive risk-benefit analysis to support lockdowns was ever conducted.
After three years there is no evidence that lockdowns had any beneficial effect anywhere in the world.
Mistake 4: The Government relied far too heavily on ‘experts’ who had their own underlying social and political objectives. Many of the ‘experts’ on committees like SAGE appear to be leftwing and seemed to welcome increased levels of Government interventions.
Susan Michie on SPI-B said in the media that she wanted all the social distancing and masking to remain in place ‘forever’. They were especially excited that the lockdowns were helping to ‘combat climate change’ and ‘The Great Reset’.
Mistake 5: The mass testing of healthy (‘asymptomatic’) people starting September 2020 created the false narrative for the second lockdown and the notion that the vaccine was the only way out.
The so-called second wave of Covid-19, which was claimed to be much bigger than the first, was driven by the unprecedented mass testing of healthy people going back to work and school after the first lockdown.
I wrote a few articles about this, including ‘Don’t Panic’. Using the flawed PCR test the vast majority of ‘cases’ among asymptomatics were false positives – these people neither had, nor went on to develop, any viral illness.
All the independent data, most notably 999, ambulance and hospital data, indicated that there was nothing more than the normal seasonal increase in viral infections in the autumn-winter 2020-21.
Mistake 6: The track and trace scheme was an unnecessary and expensive disaster. Just before the pilot scheme was released in the Isle of Wight in May 2020, my colleague Scott McLachlan led research which explained why the scheme, as designed, could not possibly work even if it had been necessary.
Our paper on this was rejected by all the main journals (although a much watered down version was eventually published, with recommendations on how it could work that were ignored). We estimate that the scheme wasted almost £40 billion and achieved nothing other than unnecessarily quarantining millions of healthy people in their homes.
Mistake 7: False claims were made about vaccine efficacy and safety: It was the inflated Covid-19 case numbers at the end of 2020 which were used by the Government as the rationale for its argument that only the vaccine could end the lockdown.
But not only was the lockdown, and hence the vaccine, unnecessary but I set out that the vaccines were neither as safe nor as effective as claimed. Our analysis of the first ONS data published on mortality by vaccination status in March 2021 showed that not only was the data flawed but that the flaws were covering up obvious spikes in mortality shortly after vaccination in each age group.
What do you think the UK government did right?
Almost nothing. I suppose that as they did allow England, Wales and Scotland to adopt different lockdown and vaccine mandate policies, at least England was spared the harsher policies adopted in Scotland and Wales.
Are there any countries you can hold up as examples of understanding the data and risks better?
It’s a bit of cliché to say Sweden as they never had any serious lockdown, but we should also think about all the so-called ‘third world’ countries (mainly African) which could not afford Covid-19 or the vaccines.
For example, whereas the weekly number of new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people was over 200 several times in USA, Canada and Europe, the highest weekly number in Africa was three.
How did your counter-establishment stance affect you professionally and personally?
It was pretty devastating. From being previously recognized as an internationally leading figure in probability and risk, I was publicly defamed as a ‘fraud’, ‘conspiracy theorist’ and ‘rabid misinformation merchant’.
These insults came from fellow academics as well as from random members of the public on social media (although some of this appeared to be operating through bot and troll accounts and seemed coordinated).
There were multiple demands for me to be sacked from Queen Mary and multiple frivolous complaints sent to Queen Mary that I had to answer to. I received no institutional support against these completely baseless attacks.
This is one of the reasons why I decided I had to retire at the end of 2022 (the other reason was the increasing care needs of my wife, whose dementia rapidly worsened after the Covid-19 vaccine).
Since July 2020 all my research papers relating to Covid-19 (and even some unrelated) were rejected without review from all journals we submitted them to and were even rejected from the preprint servers.
I was massively censored on Twitter and Youtube as well as by academic colleagues. My Wikipeda page was edited and then locked with libelous statements about me. Seminars that I have been invited to give have been cancelled after campaigns were mounted against me.
This includes seminars at major conferences like the NHS Data Analytics Conference in July 2023 where my seminar had nothing to do with Covid-19; I was cancelled as they felt my presence ‘would be a distraction’.
Some of my clinical academic colleagues removed themselves from papers in which I was co-author and also removed me from grant applications. My Fellowship of the Turing Institute was terminated and, other than Covid-19 case testimonies (which I provided for free), all my expert witness work dried up.
Personally I lost many friends and also fell out with family members – I was disinvited from functions for being unvaccinated and/or refusing to present proof of a negative PCR test.
There were, however, some positive professional and personal impacts. I have met many very good people who have become good friends who I would not otherwise have met. Becoming a campaigner in the ‘Freedom movement’ has also given me a much-need purpose and distraction from my very difficult personal circumstances.
What is your proudest and most important achievement?
Prior to Covid-19, my work with colleague Martin Neil on Bayesian networks was the most important because we developed and implemented software that enabled people to solve problems of probability and risk on a scale that was previously impossible.
Our algorithms and software have been used by major organisations world-wide to address critical risk problems in a wide range of applications.
During Covid-19 my most important work was exposing how claims of vaccine effectiveness and safety were exaggerated in every single study which claimed high effectiveness and safety. I showed how various statistical tricks and inappropriate definitions could create an illusion of efficacy and safety.
Describe your biggest epiphany and how it shaped you?
One that is especially pertinent to what is happening now was discovering in 2014-15 the extent to which the ‘man-made climate catastrophe’ narrative was driven by ideology rather than hard evidence.
At the time I was already feeling that academia was generally corrupt and dysfunctional and that the ‘official’ climate change narrative was exaggerated. I agreed to co-present a BBC documentary called ‘Climate Change by Numbers’ with David Spiegelhalter and Hannah Fry.
The filming lasted several months and I was hoping that I could insert some of my own somewhat sceptical views into the programme.
But, in my opinion, the programme ended up as a propaganda piece – the producer of the programme had made clear to us before we started filming that the BBC would no longer allow any sceptical commentary on climate change as it deemed the ‘science was settled’.
This policy was subsequently made public.
But my experience working on the programme, which included meeting many so-called climate experts, was that these people were first and foremost political activists rather than scientists. I also discovered that the IPCC report claiming ‘95 percent certainty that at least half the recent warming was man-made’ was flawed.
While none of my own material made it into the final cut, some material I was deeply unhappy with did. In particular, one statement that was scripted for me by one of their academic consultants was not correct, although I was assured at the time that it was.
We’re in strange, dark times. For me, both the Covid-19 pandemic and 7 October are Black Swan events which have revealed depressing truths about human nature. Covid-19 showed us how easy it is to obtain the compliance of the masses by weaponising psychological tendencies and using fear, shame and ego.
The evocation of mass hysteria and conformity was like a real life Milgram or Asche experiment. The response to the terrorism has been a painful lesson in how people relativise cruelty and cheer pain, destruction and genocide.
This has been especially apparent in the ‘Freedom’ movement. People who saw through one type of propaganda have fallen for another.
See more here thefreemind.co.uk
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Tom
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The pandemic and everything about it was faked from day one.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Tom,
Is it people like you with your ‘one liners’, based upon no other effort than writing it, that destroy the intellectual efforts of people like Norman and mine. John O’Sullivan has published many of my essays based upon unquestionable data provided by governmental projects and PSI readers like you continue to ignore it and provide no evidence to refute the data to which I have referred.
I just asked Saeed if he understood that good Science can never prove an scientific theory to be correct and instead good Science can only prove an accepted idea to be wrong. We (i) will have to wait to see what his answer might be; if there is an answer.
Have a good day
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Robert Beatty
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IMO the most important lesson to come out of the Covid19 incident is that there is a serious problem with our form of democracy. We are reliant on a top- down system leadership which provides a very sanitised view of what is best for the whole community.
The alternative to top-down is bottom-up leadership. In this model, the people have the right to question, via a referendum process, any decision or edit delivered by the ruling class. It also includes a replacement mechanism for any leader who goes it alone during the term of government. Another benefit is it unlocks the combined intelligence of the whole community when faced with a critical problem.
Where does such a system of leadership exist? Try Switzerland where a form of bottom-up government has kept that nation safe since 1291.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Robert,
You wrote: “The alternative to top-down is bottom-up leadership. In this model, the people have the right to question, via a referendum process, any decision or edit delivered by the ruling class.”
Once one includes a voting process in a governance system; one has a top-down system and the only alternative is anarchy.
I grew up in Deuel County, South Dakota; which was opened to settlement by nonnative peoples by a national government which had bought the land from an European government which never (to my knowledge) bought the land from the natives who occupied the “Americans” when it was discovered .
I lived in Deuel County 22 years and my family have lived there continually for about 160 years So I know, from experience, there is one word which best describes the people of this county–NEIGHBORS–fellow men with many differences. In a city, many do not know the name of the person who lives on the other side of a wall. That’s the problem; not the government system.
Have a good day
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Robert Beatty
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Hi Jerry,
“Once one includes a voting process in a governance system; one has a top-down system and the only alternative is anarchy.”
Here you miss a basic understanding of how Bottom-up government works, and is certainly not the Swiss experience.
The US is in a dangerous place at present. My view on how this might be avoided is at https://bosmin.com/ICS/CIR-USA.pdf
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Robert,
I remind you that the British Empire and other nations fought WWII and the Korean War to protect our freedom to have LIBERTY while the Swiss sat on the sidelines. It seems in the Swiss mind there are no evil people.
Have a good day
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Jakie
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The Swiss Canton system of governance was the reason for their success…that kept a small central .gov with little authority…except to do as they’re ordered by the Cantons. Cantons were directly controlled by their electorate.
That radically changed now via a series of globalist initiatives,
Over the last little while, to centralize power at the top…
The demise of Swiss Secrecy by giving in to the USA Federal Authorities over tax haven accts signaled sumpin rotten in Denmark.
It’s been downhill for their neutrality and independence since then.
When the USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK & EU get ‘reset’, it’ll be time to purge the Globalists & their Stooges 100%. All c19 Hoax & Bioweapon mass murderers & enablers – stooges tried and Shot, Hung…
defenestrated…executed. No Appeals.
All their gains clawed back.
Then reorganize under a Confederation with the Canton concept. Every Polity.
Death penalty for anyone attempting to change, it to consolidate power, by any means.
Then haul out the “free” energy inventions and miracle medical discoveries…and all else hidden…
NO PATENTS.
Allow knowledge to blossom…like the Golden Goose it should be.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Robert,
I believe I have written that I am slow but I get there; so I must add that Albert Einstein was a pacifist and a JEW. And he chose to fight!
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MattH
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If you have a herd of marauding elephants that hate people and you sit in front of them and tell them you are a pacifist and you love elephants those elephants will still trample you and use their trunks to dash you.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi MattH,
The difference between out two comments is that yours is pure fiction and mine is not.
Have a good day
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MattH
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Hi Gerry. My comment is not fiction but an analogy.
denis dombas
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Jerry, are you ever wrong on anything?
Jerry Krause
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Hi MattH,
A difference between your comment and mine is that yours is pure fiction and mine is nor.
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ChoppedDog
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Jerry Jerry Quite Contrary…
Youz beez mucho Smart Boi, eh?
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herb
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MASSIVE FRAUD: Evidence shows that covid data is 100% false
EXPOSING GLOBAL COVID FRAUD
It is hard to believe that such a global deception could occur, yet the evidence is all here. Thousands of medical doctors, nurses, and patients around the world testify of completely false covid registrations. Funeral directors confirm countless false death certificates.
Check the evidence for yourself…
https://stopworldcontrol.com/fraud/
Reply