‘You don’t copy the losers’; a provisional list of institutions and individuals who pushed “zero COVID”

A partial list of institutions and individuals who pushed the pernicious idea that you could “suppress” or “eradicate” SARS-CoV-2 with social measures follows.

(Article by Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan republished from TrustTheEvidence.Substack.com)

Some of them have since apologised, but most of them are carrying on, pretending nothing happened, all is sweetness and light, the birds are singing in the trees, pigs are flying, and hopefully, they think we will all forget what they instigated.

Listing on this post is not dictated by the fact that some of the names launched personal attacks on us; we are not the Count of Monte Cristo out for revenge.

We include the names because, despite their impressive credentials (in some cases), it was quite clear to us by 8 April 2020, that “zero covid” was pie in the sky – poisoned pie. You cannot suppress an endemic respiratory virus, at least not until you have understood its ecology and routes of transmission. Neither of these boxes has been ticked.

Read more: COVID-19 – The Tipping Point, The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, 8 April 2020

The acceptance or pushing of this folly had two catastrophic consequences.

First, it gave backing to restrictions.

Second, some or most created a witch hunt climate in which few people felt like knuckling down and studying what was going on, thus missing the golden opportunities the situation presented to solve some of the riddles.

Third, those listed below showed crass ignorance of respiratory viral epidemiology and they are likely to approach other topics with the same facile attitude in the future: small hands, long tongue. So here we go in no particular order (with thanks to the source in brackets):

1. Deborah Birx from minute 7.25
2. The Australian government (Premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews).
3. Devi Sridhar and the Scottish government
4. Zero Covid (Stéphane Bilodeau, Dr. Malgorzata Gasperowicz, Karl Parkinson) Dr. Irfan Dhalla
5. Dr. Andrew Morris, author of the immortal quote: “You’re not going to be a winner if you follow the losers. You go and try and replicate, or at least figure out, what the winners do. And right now, we’re pursuing a losing strategy.”
6. Dr. Samir Sinha
7. Bill Gates
8. Attendees  of the conference for Zero Covid. Supporters of Covid Action UK, formerly known as Zero Covid UK.
9. UK Zero Covid conference attendees: Jeremy Corbyn MP, Diane Abbott MP and Jeremy Hunt MP
10. ‘Zero Covid’ Catastrophe: Participating Nations See New Records Across the Board, Jordan Schachtel, 16 July 2021, American Institute for Economic Research
11. America’s Coronavirus Endurance Test. To defeat the virus, we will have to start thinking in years, not months. Howard Markel, 6 August 2020, The New Yorker 
12. Anatomy of the Hong Kong Disaster. Ian Miller, 19 March 2022:  Brownstone Institute 
13. Inside Shanghai’s Zero Covid Camp, 7 April 7, 2022, Unherd
14. Coping With ‘Zero Covid’. Our correspondent takes you inside Shanghai’s Covid lockdown. Ian Prasad Philbrick, 19 May 2022, The New York Times 
15. Trudeau needs a Covid-19 Emergency Order. Here’s how to do it, Amir Attaran, 27 November 2020, Maclean’s.  Amir Attaran is a biomedical scientist, lawyer, and professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. Macleans
16. Who Pushed for Lockdowns? 101 Leading Voices, Michael Senger, 15 April 2022, Brownstone Institute (see table below).

17. Scientific consensus on the COVID-19 pandemic: we need to act now. Published online 14 October 2020, The Lancet (see image below).

18. Signatories of the John Snow memorandum; “more than 6,900 scientists, researchers & healthcare professionals.”
19. Endorsers of the John Snow memorandum
20. Honourable mention to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (“APPG”) on Coronavirus, chaired by Member of Parliament Layla Moran.  A group that has now folded despite being well-funded.  [For a list of members see HERE and an archive of the website on the Wayback Machine HERE.] Conservative MP Dan Poulter, vice-chair of the APPG on coronavirus, said:

The OECD data is very concerning and helps show the danger of thinking that the coronavirus pandemic presents us with a binary choice between saving the economy or saving lives.

This is a false dichotomy, and the truth is that minimising community transmission will allow a faster and stronger economic recovery. This is why the APPG on coronavirus has been pushing government to aim to reduce Covid-19 transmission to as close to zero as possible in preparation for the difficult winter months ahead.

Saving lives or UK economy from Covid a ‘false choice’, MPs warn, The Guardian, 26 August 2020

21. Depressingly, even Sponge Bob pushed for lockdown.