Lest We Forget! Nobel Prize winner on COVID - June 2020

On 29 June 2020, at a Zoom conference organised by Lindau, Nobel Prize-winner for Chemistry in 2013, Professor Michael Levitt, said this:

"As a group, scientists have failed the younger generation... We let politics and encomics dedicate the science. The worst opposition I got was from very, very prominent scientists... The fact is that, almost all the science we were hearing, for example from organisations like the WHO, was wrong. We had Facebook censoring, the WHO showed contrary views. This has been a disgraceful situation for science...

We should have been talking with each other. Reports were released openly, shared by email, and all I got back was abuse. And you got to see that everything I said in that first six weeks was actually true. And, for political reasons, we, as scientists, let our views be corrupted. The data had very clear things to say. Nobody said to me, 'let me check your numbers.' They all just said, 'stop talking like that!'

If we had initially talked to each other, not about opinions but about the data. What is the population infection ratio? What is the severity? Does this thing grow exponentially? There were some very, very simple questions...

Epidemiologists see their job not as getting things correct but preventing an epidemic. So, therefore, if they say it’s a hundred times worse than it’s going to be, it’s okay. The mistake was that we listened to them. They said the same thing for Ebola; they said the same thing for Bird Flu. No-one shut down for them. We should never have listened to the epidemiologists. They have caused hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of suffering and damage, mainly on the younger generation. This is going to be a tragedy. It’s going to make 9/11 look like a baby story. This is much, much worse.

I am not against lockdown. I’m against stupid lockdowns without considering the full picture. That is, not just combating a virus that is exactly as dangerous as flu, but also avoiding the economic damage that every country has caused itself, except Sweden. We have really, really failed as a group. There have been smart people in Sweden, and that’s about it... The level of stupidity that’s been going on here has been amazing...

I’m not saying I’m right. But I would like people to contradict me on the details. Why is it not exponential? I can show you. Why is the case and infection ratio this, not that? There is data for this. In other words, everything is data-driven, but people have chosen not to look at the data. In many places, the politics has infected the scientists. Certainly in the USA the politics has infected the scientists’...

Every science needs problems to be worked over. This is not quantum mechanics. There are simple, logical assumptions. And in the end they got discussed, but they got discussed so slowly and so late.

Remember, unlike most of science, everything has a very limited shelf-life. To predict that Italy is over today is very easy. To predict what was going to happen in Italy at the beginning of March was very difficult. And it would have helped Italy to know that they were going to have no more than 500 per million deaths, rather than what they were expecting.

One final thing. The one good thing for me that came out of all of this was that, much to my own surprise, I discovered Twitter. And Twitter has much more intelligent conversation than the National Academy of Science, The Royal Society, Lindau or the Nobel Foundation. I actually said this in an early tweet. The criticism is wonderful, because [with] good science, you have to be able to stand up to criticism. Scientists expect to be torn apart. We circled the wagons against this, and it really, really hurt us.

I’m not saying that corona is like flu. But It has exactly the same excess death and age-ranges as flu, and flu is a very serious disease, so I’m not undermining COVID. I also agree that there’s been really good work on the biochemistry and the medical science of this. There’s also been amazing developments in the actual treatment, so doctors now probably would save twice as many people who are ill. The people who are generally dying are the older people. The age mortality of people under 65 is exactly 8 per cent. Over 85 is 50 per cent. Those are exactly the same numbers that we see for flu...

In the middle of March, Sir David Spiegelhalter wrote a Medium review equating the risk of corona with the natural risk of dying. And basically, he concluded that the risk of corona, using numbers that were coming out of Imperial College London, were about one year’s worth of death. I immediately wrote back and said he was wrong. My analysis suggested that it was not one year’s worth of death, but one month’s worth of death.

I then tried to communicate this to Neil Ferguson. He ignored my e-mails. I got in touch with the head of the Royal Society, and eventually got them to read the e-mails; and in the end, they said: no, I was wrong, it is one year. The fact is, two month’s later, the excess burden of death of corona is about three weeks of natural death. These scientists shut things down. The problem is not just with lack of communication with the public. Scientists are arrogant, and refuse to listen to people not in their fields. Scientists are getting away scot-free for causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage, and this is something which cannot be allowed to happen.

It’s not just the World Health Organisation. Ferguson wanted Sweden to lock down, and got Britain to lock down. And when the numbers become normal, exactly what you would expect without lockdown, he then says: 'ah, it’s because of lockdown'. This is terrible science. This is science which should go on trial. Scientists cannot cause damage like this and refuse to listen.

The fact is that epidemiology and modelling has been a disgrace. They have not looked at the data. They have been wrong at every turn. We’re going to see that, although coronavirus is a different disease, the net impact of death is going to be very similar to severe flu. And it’s going to be that way without lockdown...

Sweden is the only cofor political reasons, we, as scientists, let our views be corrupted.untry that has done the right thing by heading for what they consider herd immunity."

'We, as scientists, let our views be corrupted'... 'almost all the science... from organisations like the WHO, was wrong'... 'We had Facebook censoring'... 'They said the same thing for Ebola, they said the same thing for Bird Flu, no-one shut down for them'... 'They have caused hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of suffering and damage'... 'This is going to be a tragedy'... 'a virus that is exactly as dangerous as flu'... 'The level of stupidity that’s been going on here has been amazing'... 'the politics has infected the scientists'... 'This is not quantum mechanics'... 'The people who are generally dying are the older people'... 'Neil Ferguson... ignored my e-mails'... 'Scientists are getting away scot-free for causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage'...'This is science which should go on trial'... 'Scientists cannot cause damage like this and refuse to listen'... 'Epidemiology and modelling has been a disgrace. They have not looked at the data'... 'The net impact of death is going to be very similar to severe flu'...

You do not have to listen to me, I'm just an 18-carat idiot.

But it would be nice if, once in a while, you considered the opinions of a Nobel Prize-winning scientist or two.

P.S. Don't you think, even if you disagree with much of what Michael has to say, that his opinions, and those of many others like him, should have been given an airing in the mainstream media? You know, on the television stations of the western world, where the majority get their information from?

Don't you think, if that had happened, we might have been able to formulate a more rounded, considered and informed response to the narrative pedalled by the Fergusons, the Faucis, the Johnsons, the Whitties, SAGE and the Hancocks?

So the next question is, why didn't this happen?

Once you've figured that out, that's when we win back the world for the good guys.