1/ Covid… Summary evidence on lockdowns. For UK political pundits obsessed with spreading nonsense on Sweden/lockdowns, cf. SW econ did a bit WORSE than Denmark which locked down, AND far more deaths in Sweden: noahpinion.substack.com/p/yes-lockdown…
One of the biggest misunderstandings, spread by political pundits even now, is the ‘tradeoff’ argument. Fact: evidence clear that fast hard effective action best policy for economy AND for reducing deaths/suffering
4/ Best example: Taiwan. Also shows that if you REALLY get your act together not only is econ largely unscathed but life is ~ normal. But SW1 (Remain/Leave, Rt/Left) = totally hostile to learning from East Asia
5/ There's a general western problem based on nonsense memes like 'asians all do as they're told it won't work here'. This is what many behavioural science 'experts'/charlatans argued, disastrously, in Feb2020. This nonsense is STILL influencing policy, eg our joke borders policy
6/ Another confusion re Sweden: data shows despite no official 'lockdown' behaviour changed enormously. The closer your measures are to 'welding people inside homes' (per Wuhan at peak) the >> effect on transmission. Semantics of 'lockdown' obscure this really simple point
7/ If you are going to have to do measures ≈ lockdown to avoid health system collapse then the harder/earlier the better & the sooner they can be released. Pseudo 'lockdowns' w/o serious enforcement are hopeless: econ hit & people die anyway, nightmare rumbles on
8/ Waiting room, 1st jab. Remembered Vallance 24/3 amid disaster: will u support taking vaccines out of DH & a new Taskforce, we need different leadership & skills to drive it? CABSEC supported divvying up DH tasks. If not, normal Whitehall process, probably normal result
9/ Success seems to have blinded SW1 to important Qs. a/ We did it much better than Brussels, obviously, but Brussels is not a good comparison. How well did we do relative to ‘how well wd General Groves who ran the Manhattan Project have done it?’
10/ I think we’ll conclude we shd have done Human Challenge trials immediately & cd have got jabs in arms summer. This is not criticism of the VTF which has been constrained in ways they shdnt be. It’s cnctd to b/ where is the public plan for how the VTF will deal with variants?
11/ One of the most fundamental & unarguable lessons of Feb-March is that secrecy contributed greatly to the catastrophe. Openness to scrutiny wd have exposed Gvt errors weeks earlier than happened
12/ So why are MPs accepting the lack of a public plan now for VTF viz variants? Especially when rumours reach me that the silent entropy of Whitehall is slowly turning VTF back into a ‘normal’ entity?
13/ The best hedge re a variant escaping current vaccines is PUBLIC SCRUTINY of Gvt plans. This will hopefully show it’s been taken seriously. If not, better learn now that the Gvt has screwed up again than when ‘variant escapes’ news breaks
14/ I can think of no significant element of covid response that wd not have been improved by discarding secrecy and opening up. This was symbolised by e.g how COBR cd not be used: a constrained STRAP environment cd not cope with the scale/speed, another important lesson
15/ Having watched classified elements of covid response, Gvt cd make the vaccine plans 99% public without risks, ‘national security’ almost totally irrelevant to the critical parts of the problem, a few things cd be withheld while publishing all crucial parts of the plan
16/ These issues are relevant to c/ Who is writing the plan for ‘how we deal with something worse than covid?’ If we get this right now, we do not need to have this sort of disaster again. We’ll also be hedging vs future bioterrorism risks: cf: 80000hours.org/podcast/episod…
17/ The covid plan was supposed to be ‘world class’ but turned out to be part disaster, part non-existent. I urged inside Gvt to do a review of other contingency plans for more dangerous things than covid, a largely *open* process with e.g @wtgowers helping. Happening?
18/ MPs shd force publication of vaccine/variant plan & require mostly open review of other contingency plans before we find out the hard way they're as 'world class' as the covid plan...
19/ Such reviews shd seek out those were right & early on covid. Such people are more likely to spot that other plans have errors, gaps, that institutional planning has blind spots, failure to look at crucial operational details etc. E.g @MWStory
20/ P Vallance & I supported opening up SAGE much earlier than it happened. I argued before 1st lockdown to open up the CODE of SPI-M models for scrutiny. Barrier = SW1 cultural hostility to openness & this barrier means SAGE still too closed & too little of its workings public
21/ Looking at minutes does not give good insight to reality of discussions. E.g looking at minutes of crucial 18/3, which I attended, does not convey true situation, discussion, atmosphere, effects
22/ With something as critical as variants escaping vaccines, there is *no* justification for secrecy, public interest unarguably is *open scrutiny of the plans*
23/ This point is critical re Groves/Manhattan/vaccines & wider covid & wider issue of gvt performance: our civilisation is *abysmal* at seeking Groves/Bob Taylors & getting them into critical roles, *bureaucracies exclude & expel them*, as they did with Groves/Taylor!
24/ The public inquiry will at no point ask: how does the deep institutional wiring of the parties/civil service program destructive behaviour by putting the wrong ppl in wrong jobs with destructive incentives? It will all be about relatively surface errors
25/ If SW1 wanted to 'learn' there wd already be a serious exercise underway. The point of the inquiry is the opposite of learning, it is to delay scrutiny, preserve the broken system & distract public from real Qs, leaving the parties & senior civil service essentially untouched
26/ J Phillips, a brilliant young neuroscientist I recruited to no10, argued for immediate Human Challenge Trials, as did others. We were *far* too slow to listen to such advice. The science 'misfits' who urged this early were clearly right, the 'ethicists' disastrously wrong
27/ So true from @paulg, it’s amazingly rare to find people who *deeply care about results* at senior levels in politics/gvt, those who do are seen as mad/unreliable & are weeded out. SW1 incentives are ~all about rewarding *process + fake signals*. V relevant to covid fiascos
28/ Of the 20 ppl who I saw do most to save 1000s of lives, it's striking how many gone or leaving or planning to leave, & how many who were disastrously wrong/useless been promoted to jobs they can't do/given honours etc
29/ @pmarca on the west's covid failures ('the harsh reality is that it all failed') & the General Groves mentality needed, influential in no10, 4/20, as we pushed thro the vaccine taskforce a16z.com/2020/04/18/its…
30/ Crucial data generally ignored by those who want to downplay covid danger, many 1000s will have serious health problems for years because of our failure to act faster/harder in Feb/March & Sep. Those who predicted this issue wd be 'Gulf War syndrome bollocks' were wrong
31/ There was a PHE exercise called Exercise NIMBUS in a hypothetical future 14/4/20 with mock COBR slides. Assumed peak week 13/5 and >33M cases over 16 week wave, hospitals full by 14/4, >800K deaths, schools told stay open(!!). A/one know *when exercise happened* (think 3/20)?
32/ This, evening of 31/10 re lockdown2, from @wtgowers who was ahead of the game in 3/20, was spot on. If mass testing had been developed properly earlier in year as cd/shd have been, wd probably have avoided lockdowns 2&3 while awaiting vaccine
33/ True but also UK gvt did v badly, turned out we cd/shd have had these tests at millions p/day scale by Sep latest, instead of seriously *starting* in Sep, which wd have greatly changed q42020. Those screaming from ~Feb/March were ignored, months/lives/£ needlessly lost
34/ Mass testing same story as elsewhere: some brilliant/dedicated relatively junior officials (e.g Alex Cooper) + great young scientists (e.g @gaurav_ven) + entrepreneurs held back by senior management/DHSC/PHE (particularly awful) & Whitehall legacy procurement & HR horrorshows
35/ Even tho *the PM/CABSEC/I* all told 9/20 most senior HR & procurement officials to treat mass testing 'like a wartime project', ignore their usual bullshit multimonth processes, mass testing hugely hampered by Whitehall's optimisation for '[awful] process over results'
36/ So much ‘lockdown’ confusion. Obv they're ‘destructive’. But if you have to do it cos alternative is *100s of 1000s choking to death + no NHS for months for everybody else + econ sunk cos everybody hiding in terror* then earlier/harder is better for health AND econ
37/ If we'd had the right preparations + competent people in charge, we wd probably have avoided lockdown1, *definitely* no need for lockdowns 2&3. Given the plan was AWOL/disaster + awful decisions delayed everything, lockdown1 became necessary
38/ Media generally abysmal on covid but even I’ve been surprised by 1 thing: how many hacks have parroted Hancock’s line that ‘herd immunity wasn’t the plan’ when 'herd immunity by Sep' was *literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings* until it was ditched
39/ Yes the media is often incompetent but something deeper is at work: much of SW1 was happy to believe Hancock's bullshit that ‘it’s not the plan’ *so they didn’t have to face the shocking truth*. Most political hacks believe in 'the system'...
40/ In week of 9/3, No10 was made aware by various people that the official plan wd lead to catastrophe. It was then replaced by Plan B. But how 'herd immunity by Sep' cd have been the plan until that week is a fundamental issue in the whole disaster
41/ All those referring to the Sunday Times story 22/3/20 re me dramatically 'changing my mind' at SAGE on 12/3: *there was no SAGE on 12/3*! It's an invented meeting & invented story repeated for a year by political hacks as 'fact'
42/ No10 decided to lie: 'herd immunity has never been... part of our coronavirus strategy'. V foolish, & appalling ethics, to lie about it. The right line wd have been what PM knows is true: our original plan was wrong & we changed when we realised
43/ Lots of hacks have lost their minds. Herd immunity wasn’t ‘a secret strategy’, it was THE OFFICIAL PUBLIC EXPLAINED ON TV/RADIO STRATEGY! Halpern, on SAGE, literally explained it on radio explicitly, 11/3/20, as did others!!
44/ The whole 'flatten the curve' plan A was to get herd immunity by summer & avoid 2nd peak during annual NHS winter crisis. That's why our official graphs had *ONE peak over by summer*! COBR docs/graphs describe herd immunity as ‘the optimal single peak strategy’ etc
45/ What happened is a/ panic about the phrase, ‘comms disaster’. b/ We ditched the herd immunity plan and shifted to Plan B, suppression, which previously the Gvt said/thought would be worse cos it wd lead to a 2nd peak in winter 2020 during the annual NHS crisis
46/ A COBR doc from week of 9/3/20 explains official thinking behind Plan A: ie. suppression either won't work or wd lead to 2nd peak during NHS winter crisis, so the advised herd immunity approach was what DHSC/Cabinet Office described as 'single peak optimal strategy'
47/ In that week it became clear neither Hancock/CABOFF understood herd immunity effects: 100s of 1000s choking to death + no NHS for *anybody* for months + dead unburied + econ implosion; so we moved to Plan B: suppression + Manhattan Project for drugs/vaccines + test&trace etc
48/ Critical as I am of the PM in all sorts of ways, it's vital to understand the disaster was not just his fault: the official plan was disastrously misconceived, DHSC/CABOFF did not understand this or why, & a PlanB had to be bodged amid total & utter chaos
49/ Jenny Harries told us, the same week herd immunity was the official plan, masks are a 'BAD idea', 'we don't want to disrupt people’s lives’, acting ‘too early we will just pop up with another epidemic peak later’. So Whitehall has promoted her, obviously
50/ ‘Herd immunity’ was officially seen as UNAVOIDABLE week of 9/3. It wd come either a) in a single peak over by Sep, or b) in a 2nd peak in winter. (a) was seen as easier to manage & less of a catastrophe so it was Plan A. Cf SAGE 13/3: ‘a near certainty’ suppression>2nd peak
51/ It was in week of 9/3 that we started to figure out Plan B to dodge herd immunity until vaccines. Even AFTER we shifted to PlanB, COBR documents had the ‘OPTIMAL single peak strategy’ graphs showing 260k dead cos the system was so confused in the chaos, see below
52/ Hodges = wrong: *there was neither an intention to lockdown nor as of Fri13/3 any official plan for doing so*. The SAGE minutes show the opposite of what Dan says they say...
53/ Dan says the SAGE minutes show ‘The strategy was to wait for the optimum moment to lockdown’. No. SAGE said *literally the opposite*: lockdown = suppression = ‘near certainty’ of 2nd peak & this was thought to be much WORSE than single peak/herd immunity by Sep, hence graph
54/ On 14/3 one of the things being screamed at the PM was ‘there is *no plan for lockdown* & our current official plan will kill at least 250k & destroy the NHS’. Cf the graph: ‘optimal single peak strategy’ with 3 interventions. That was the official plan, which was abandoned
55/ Another reason we ditched Plan A was it became clear the official system had given ~no thought to all the second order effects of 250k dying, almost all without ICU care. True deaths wd clearly be much >250k cos there would be *no NHS for anybody for months*
56/ On 12/3, the most surreal day of 18 months in Gvt, it was argued to the PM that a/ individual isolation be delayed (‘we’re not ready’), b/ we might not do household quarantine *at all*, c/ given Halpern’s interview on 11th, the PM shd publicly explain the ‘herd immunity’ plan
57/ Re D Halpern: a/ on 11/3 he was simply explaining the OFFICIAL plan, not freelancing; b/ unlike many he supported the switch to Plan B in the next week & told the CABSEC & DHSC that…
58/ NB. Even at SAGE on 18/3 it was *not* all clearly agreed ‘must do national lockdown ASAP’. Halpern supported it with others. Senior DHSC officials were saying even on 18/3: lockdown just means it pops back up again in 2nd wave so why change strategy?
59/ Even at SAGE on 18/3 some argued: even if lockdown needed, delay, finesse timing. Others argued: there's no alternative *so sooner must be better*. The latter were right (I think) & that argument prevailed
60/ Re 'herd immunity': the *official pandemic preparation plan* spelled out explicitly why the 'optimal strategy' was defined in Feb/March as 'single peak', herd immunity by Sep. When crisis hit, this assumption governed thinking:
61/ One way to sift the journalists writing about the inquiry is: if they quote childish military metaphors like ‘grenades’ from supposed ‘allies’, they’re inventing either the quote or the ‘ally’ or probably both. Many journalists want you to believe nonsense...
62/ One of the worst failings in Feb/March, less discussed than lockdown, was the almost total absence of a serious plan for shielding/social care. As in general, there was widespread delusion we HAD a great plan. It turned out to barely exist…
63/ E.g In week of 16/3 the official plan was ‘don’t put a helpline number on the shielding letters because we haven’t sorted out the helplines’. What about the ~1m who will need food/help? No plan until...
64/ Thank god a BRILLIANT young woman working in GDS, Jen Allum, hacked together a team, a plan & & a tool and started turning it around - without her, this would have been an even bigger crisis, >1m wd have been without food/help
65/ First sketch of Plan B, PM study, Fri 13/3 eve - shown PM Sat 14/4: NB. Plan A 'our plan' breaks NHS,>4k p/day dead min.Plan B: lockdown, suppress, crash programs (tests/treatments/vaccines etc), escape 1st AND 2nd wave (squiggly line instead of 1 or 2 peaks)... details later
66/ How to shift to a better regime? What I wrote re COBR, disaster response etc & what’s needed: different selection/training/incentives to get radically better people AND new institutions, each alone won’t work: dominiccummings.com/2019/06/26/on-…
67/ As shown to PM, his study, Sat morning, 14/3, by Ben Warner/me: 'Current plan' = disaster vs 'actual plan'. The PlanB whiteboard is just behind. 'The official plan is a disaster, we need Plan B'
68/ Don’t listen to pundits on science, covid etc when they’re repeatedly incompetently confident making awful judgements on their supposed area of ‘expertise’ & never learn. We need an entity to keep score on these clowns' bullshit. E.g Rentoul
69/ Instead of pundits, follow people like @hsu_steve who warned me 25/2/20 US policy was 'very stupid' & I shd push UK to be much more aggressive, reject herd immunity etc. People like Steve & @MWStory, unlike pundits, know *how to think*
70/ I asked Prof Gowers, Fields medallist, for help week of 9/3. His advice & paper helped convince me to try to bounce policy from Plan A/herd immunity to Plan B (suppress, vaccines etc). He's not on official minutes but he also was on phone for 18/3 SAGE theguardian.com/world/2021/may…
71/ In 2014 I explained how SW1 programs dysfunctional institutions & poor performance. Most big things on covid were here including today’s issue: destructive feedback between EU procurement/judicial review/ Whitehall management: dominiccummings.com/2014/10/30/the…
72/ JR summary: ‘there is no suggestion of actual bias’ but instead of telling officials to focus on the worst crisis since 45, a disease x2 in 2-3 days, I shd have told officials to focus on creating a Potemkin paper trail to negate campaigners claiming ‘appearance’ of bias
73/ I.e if I’d said as the Cabinet Office imploded around me, let’s spend days writing a RAG-rated scorecard for ‘objective criteria’ to guard vs bad PR, then a/ more dead, but b/ it wd have been ‘lawful’. Court is saying: I/officials shd have focused on (b)
74/ On this basis the courts shd rule that many 2020 decisions were similarly ‘unlawful’ as I & the Cabinet Secretary repeatedly told officials ‘focus on imminent threats to lives/destruction, not process/lawyers/Potemkin paper trails’
75/ Court is telling SW1: even in a crisis like a once-a-century pandemic, your real focus shd ALWAYS be the paper trail. This is already a hugely destructive problem & today’s judgment will make it even worse. If covid doesn't justify focus on outcome>process, nothing will
76/ Officials often tell PM 'we need a Potemkin meeting repeating what we've just decided for a paper trail in case of a JR'. Ditto across Whitehall many times a day. I've said for yrs this causes chaos, today guarantees the problem gets more destructive
77/ When it became clear DHSC/PHE/CABOFF weren't gathering vital data, I acted urgently. This data immediately helped key decisions & saved lives. But *our JR process values paper trails over effective action* & this incentivises officials + is very destructive as I wrote 2014
78/ Media coverage today inevitably abysmal. In 12/20, even after covid made our EU-based procurement system a life/death issue, there was *zero coverage from the entire political media* of the procurement Green Paper, such is SW1 antipathy for the dread word ‘management’
79/ Why? High status MPs, officials & hacks see procurement/management as low status + boring. Finkelstein put it well after I advised officials to read Grove’s management classic so they'd learn how to get stuff done: management is ‘really boring’. SW1's attitude killed 1000s
80/ Heywood told SW1: we can't afford serious early warning systems for major disasters & Whitehall has 'nothing to learn from the private sector' on management/data/digital. SW1 believed him. I said this attitude wd kill people: dominiccummings.com/2019/03/01/on-…
81/ Guaranteed: a No10 happy as a DailyMediaEntertainmentService will drop the JR reforms I began & will barely pretend to deal with a problem that’s intellectually tough, no cake headlines just bad ones, & generates ferocious opposition from smart incentivised lawyers/officials
82/ Substack - pls subscribe... Hancock 'no PPE shortage'... Evidence... And if you work for covid victims campaigning for MPs to launch *immediate open inquiry* pls get in touch, I'll help campaign for free, as will others... dominiccummings.substack.com
83/ Horrifically familiar - nobody there at 1700 in biggest crisis since 1945. Hancock tried to delay doing household quarantine in COBR on 16/3 'because the hotline isn't ready'. I knew he wd, had warned PM who overruled thank god #SackHancock, subscribe dominiccummings.substack.com
84/ Re the data dashboard that Faculty built with NHS-X/Palantir. N.B It did NOT use ANY personal data, none went to Faculty/Palantir to make it. It worked on metrics like ‘no of cases in each hospital’. It was for *management decision-making*, nothing to do with individual data
85/ There are big questions re NHS-Digital & plans for *patient data* but this must NOT be confused with *covid dashboard which has NO patient data*, abandoning it wd be disastrous & kill people. Sadly some campaigners deliberately conflate all this & spread misinformation
86/ Evidence on the covid disaster: as the PM said himself, Hancock's performance on testing, procurement, PPE, care homes etc was 'totally fucking hopeless', & his account to MPs was fiction: dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-pm-on-ha…
87/ A few simple Qs to ask the PM:
88/ On 3/5/20 the PM's office thought DHSC care home failings was still 'negligently killing the most vulnerable who we are supposed to be shielding' & No10 was not being told the truth about it. An emergency mtng was called by No10 & confirmed our fears dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-pm-on-ha…
89/ If hacks want to understand what went wrong on mass/fast testing & how Whitehall screwed it again spring 20 until No10 alerted July - I v v highly recommend asking @gaurav_ven, a brilliant young scientist who explained to No10 what DHSC got wrong, why & the solution
90/ Also NB. @gaurav_ven had a great covid proposal but couldn't get it funded spring 2020 cos of HORRIFIC WHITEHALL SCIENCE FUNDING BUREAUCRACY so went to @patrickc & @tylercowen whose v fast funding helped him. Case study for why UK needs ARIA...
91/ In spring 2020 I got @UKRI_News to speak to the Collison/Cowen funding entity for lessons on *moving fast*. Some changes happened including on drugs/vaccines. BUT MPs shd inquire into the details: how exactly, what metrics, show UKRI & other funders improving??
92/ Hancock claimed to MPs a/ 'no PPE shortage', b/ 'everybody got treatment they needed'; c/ he was a heroic success on testing, d/ HMT hampered him on procurement, e/ 'protective ring around care homes'. His claims = false. Evidence here, more to come... dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-pm-on-ha…
93/ Everybody interested in how we can radically improve research funding or covid response or both -- VERY STRONGLY recommend this by @patrickc@tylercowen , I got F.G to help UKRI last spring, helped with covid, much much more needed future.a16z.com/what-we-learne…
94/ New! Why did I throw 'due process' out the window? Why is Jolyon the-kimono-wearing-fox- killer Maugham a menace to society? SHARE, SUBSCRIBE! dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-uks-proc…
95/ New: am accused today of throwing 'due process out the window'. GUILTY! To get the Vaccine Taskforce going, to get PPE for NHS staff, I insisted *all usual processes out the window*. If we had not, then no vaccines end of 2020 & even bigger disaster... dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-uks-proc…
96/ Blog on how our laws killed ppl. CABOFF must appeal recent judgment: judge has created a common law obligation to conduct a form of competition when statute expressly rejects such a need cos of urgency! Judgment is wrong & disaster for Whitehall dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-uks-proc…
97/ Effect of flawed judgment in recent case = 1000s of officials told 'even in a crisis killing people, your priority is creating a paper trail, not the crisis'. The court has made our terrible system that killed people *even worse*. And judicial review needs radical surgery
98/ My rushed instructions on how to change Vaccine Taskforce from another Hancock shitshow to low-friction-fast-decisions success: removing Hancock/normal DHSC clearance processes from £££ decisions *crucial* to success: dominiccummings.substack.com/p/the-uks-proc…
100/ What did the PM say when I told him Hancock's test-trace plans were hopeless, care home testing not happening...? 'Totally agree'... Hancock's plan 'feels like whistling in the dark... imaginary clouseaus'... #InquiryNowdominiccummings.substack.com/p/more-evidenc…
101/ One of the many things No10 shd be pushing on super-aggressively instead of focusing on being a Media Entertainment Service: a DNA detector to monitor air, not just for covid but for future threats, via @geochurch - arxiv.org/pdf/2105.11949…
102/ Another data point on lab leak hypothesis: Nature paper pointing out that covid was well-optimised for human infection *from the start* nature.com/articles/s4159…
103/ To understand why Whitehall did so badly on covid, contra disgracefully incompetent IfG reports, consider that chunks of the OSS(CIA) sabotage manual cd pass today as 'best practice' in Whitehall & eerily describe being 'in the room' 3/2020 gutenberg.org/files/26184/pa…
104/ Jeremy Farrar confirms what I told MPs and what Hancock and PM have denied. Hancock's claim that everybody got the treatment they needed was false, & the PM knows it's false as he & I were told the truth by Vallance/Whitty after Wave 1 in Cabinet room
105/ One of best things Ive seen on omicron. Ignore Gvt happy talk or hi profile pundits saying small omicron numbers now are 'reassuring'. Balls. EXPONENTIAL GROWTH. We SHD be on wartime footing for vaccines/drugs but Gvts are delaying as always metaculus.com/notebooks/8801…
106/ All year Ive warned re Gvt letting vaccine taskforce atrophy. 🤡 Also Gvt has not ordered enough antivirals. 🤡 NHS/999 already collapsing. No10 farce, experts in despair.🤡 Unless we get lucky we're heading for another🛒shitshow, plan accordingly dominiccummings.substack.com/p/startup-gove…
107/ Best thing I think u can do if you have leverage is pressure No11 (can execute), NOT No10 (farce), to push with all urgency on procuring updated vaccines/drugs. Without fast action omicron wave cd smash NHS before we've got new vaccines etc dominiccummings.substack.com/p/startup-gove…
108/ Quite possible Gvt will have to lockdown again in Q1 cos of NHS collapse so also think about your xmas movements & where you may be spending 8 weeks plus. These discussions are happening in Whitehall but *they aren't telling the public* cos No10 wants only happy talk...
109/ Gvt shd have used 2021 to build properly incl NHS capacity. Instead they tried to rewrite history & failed to rebuild NHS. SW1 pretended they cd 'get back to normal' & stop thinking re pandemics. Now Whitehall is in panic meltdown again. Rotten rotten system & parties...
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1/ Thread on failure of old parties, academia, media, think tanks, government bureaucracies on UKR war
The Cadwalladr of IR, Prof Obrien, has been one of the most extreme and delusional. After every failure he just creates a new fake story, blames a lack of willingness to risk nuclear war, and goes again.
Here he combines two essentials - vast delusion over the counteroffensive, which he kept saying was a triumph long after it had failed - & anybody who disagrees is a Putin stooge.
Irony: many of the most aggressive pro-UKR propagandists like Obrien & Snyder are loudest in denouncing people like @elonmusk (a liberal who voted Obama), @DavidSacks, me who disagree on UKR & think the Idiocracy West has monumentally blundered as 'fascist' and an 'enemy within' -- i.e *exactly what actual fascists did*
Obrien adds snotty credentialism - to people pointing out his blunders he replies that he's a professor and they lack 'credentials' - exactly the attitude among public health 'experts' that was so disastrous in 2020
When others shuffle away from the disaster, he will keep doubling down & demand direct NATO attacks on Russia - if we avoid nuclear war, he will claim in years to come that we 'would have' won if only we'd not been so frightened of nuclear war
2/ PM-zero-agency
A crucial aspect of UKR war propaganda and how NPC swarms work is *narrative whiplash* - the Official Line suddenly flips 180 degrees but the old media just download the software patch and parrot the new line without ever explaining how/why it changed
So in Feb 2022, No10 briefed - the war has nothing to do with UKR joining NATO, it isn't our policy, Putin is lying.
Then the line flipped to - obviously UKR shd join NATO.
And Stoltenberg then flipped the script 9/23 to - Putin offered no war if we promised UKR wd NOT be brought into NATO *and we said NO & preferred war*! Obviously this has got no coverage as it totally undermines the entire official NATO story.
Below you see PM-zero-agency do similar.
In early 2022, PM-trolley cut off Russian energy & bragged it wd scupper the Russian economy & war effort & UK consumers wd suck it up 'for democracy'. I.e WE cut off the gas and bragged about it...
NPCs who'd said repeatedly 'Boris is a liar' instantly believed & retweeted all his faux Churchill bullshit, swallowed claims on sanctions that were obvious rubbish
2022-24 Sanctions main effect was to help *China* (selling Russia loads at higher prices), exploited by India which resold Russian stuff to us mugs at higher prices, laughed at everywhere outside NATO-media-sphere & contributed to rapid decline of NATO/EU diplomatic influence globally, failed to stop Russian war effort which has adapted better than NATO (which continues en masse refusal to change shitshow procurement even after covid & during a war)
As I pointed out wd happen early 2022, e.g
UK 2024, PM-zero-agency says 'PUTIN cut off the gas supplies & it had a devastating impact', UK consumers are sick as chips but blame Putin not HMG!
And obviously the NPCs, often keen on 'fact checking' and 'disinformation', just downloaded the software patch & parroted the new line even though it is blatantly entirely factually untrue. NOBODY CARES ABOUT THE BASIC FACTS because it's a war and we've defined the goodies/baddies. (Do you see likes of Professor Useful Idiot for the Worst Regimes Portes 'fact checking this? Obv not)
You can only understand the war propaganda if you understand that ~100% of hacks just follow *memetic dynamics* - if a meme crosses a threshold in their network, they boost it to signal their agreement with the swarm. The process acts to suppress critical faculties and boost in-group tribalism. Those who disagree are idiots or fascists. Left-Remain-trans academia is particularly prone to this, which is no surprise if you studied Stalin and Soviet propaganda in 1920s/30.
The same happened with extreme-Remain on Brexit in 2019 and led to their self-sabotage, and on covid 2020 where Guardian and Telegraph each mobilised NPC Remain/Brexit networks for ad clicks then *their hacks started believing the fake news* they each generated (e.g Telegraph: 'Boris was pushed into lockdown by scientists' (fact: SAGE et al OPPOSED lockdown); Guardian: rapid tests are more Cummings corruption, they don't work (fact: rapid tests were a huge success & Guardian performed narrative whiplash by flipping to support them, without ever explaining to their readers the flip)
3/ General Ben Hodges, 6 Jan 2023: ’Ukraine is going to liberate Crimea by the end of August [2023]. We know from history war is a test of will and a test of logistics. Clearly Ukrainian soldiers and the Ukrainian people have the superior will. The Russian logistics system is frail… The sanctions are having a significant impact… Not everybody has their head around the idea Russia is actually going to be defeated the old fashioned way on the battlefield.’
On 22 June 2023, he repeated: ‘Ukraine could actually still liberate Crimea by the end of this summer.’
Many, many generals and other senior ranks have said similar things, all across the old media & TV 'news'. The old media NEVER says to them, or academics like Obrien & Freedman & Snyder, 'when you were last on you said X would happen, it didn't, why did you get this wrong, what have you consequently changed your mind about?'
New blog: Midterms. Trump's blunder, DeSantis' chance. Why it's in @AOC's interests to challenge Biden. 2024 dynamics. Elite polarisation, Cicero, fishponds & civil war. Prof Sides' book on 2020...
2/ Trump favourable ratings still remarkably high with GOP voters. Whether he's beaten for nomination will depend a lot on whether there is a big field he can pick off or GOP elites/Fox can get behind DeSantis dominiccummings.substack.com/p/2-regime-cha…
3/ The midterms was not a vote for Biden to stay after 2024. DEM voters want him to stand down and to see an open primary competition.
But Newsom & Kamala wd be MORE likely to lose to Trump dominiccummings.substack.com/p/2-regime-cha…
1/ New blog: The Human Handgrenade & Kami-kwasi fiasco - the Remain-PM + ERG totally on brand... Ignore MSM drivel from Telegraph, Economist - 'Truss underrated, will surprise on upside'. No No No dominiccummings.substack.com/p/snippets-8-t…
2/ NB. How SW1 is largely ignoring that UK pension funds nearly blew up cos of massive hidden leveraged positions that No10/11 didn't know about or understand (like 2007-8)! How many MPs have a Scooby Doo what's going on?!
3/ the Tories installed probably the only MP more media obsessed than even the🛒. Hard to get a worse take than from the pundit with the highest 'pretentious crap to just crap' ratio
New blog: Sunak has run a Cameroon-Establishment campaign, ‘fiscal conservatism’ is a *crazy* focus. 2023: best chance since ?1850s to build a replacement for the Tories when they sink in 2024 dominiccummings.substack.com/p/snippets-7-a…
Particularly crazy for Tory establishment to focus on 'fiscal conservatism' when they're *also* supporting breaking the manifesto guarantee on 'no tax rises'! Why would anyone believe your claims on tax/spend after that?!! dominiccummings.substack.com/p/snippets-7-a…
Tory MPs are *already* discussing a new party for 2024 after the deluge. Good! Why try to rebuild a rotten brand that millions wd never support on principle? Best chance since 19th C to replace it with something focused on public, NOT the rentier class dominiccummings.substack.com/p/snippets-7-a…
1/ Fantastic to see efforts from so many officials, scientists, deep state, & misfits pay off with something left/right/remain/leave can all support.
Science must be core priority of UK + of No10.
And science funding must become much more diverse with much less friction #ARIA
3/ Alan Kay, one of the PARC alumni present at the creation: this video explains the history & explores crucial Q: why so little learning from ARPA/PARC?
1/ How sanctions will soon be seen. Public already shifting cos cost of living (US too). Last to see? Social-science-#FBPE-twatter, always the easiest to fool with propaganda, believe what they read in papers, perpetual groupthink & hysteria dominiccummings.substack.com/p/snippets-4-a…
2/ What happens when you make privileged lefty Ivy league/Oxbridge grads/postgrads super-powerful in politics? E.g a/ Brexit! b/ Trump! Look at DEMs now, *absolute shitshow*. Delusional on Trump, again! The last ppl on earth to trust CNN/NYT 🤡 dominiccummings.substack.com/p/snippets-4-a…
3/ Nuclear war = 100s of Auschwitz's in hours then more from poisoning/starvation. For? East UKR?! NATO expansion?! We shd try to REDUCE potential for disaster from nuclear miscalculation, not EXPAND no of ways we get 100s of Auschwitz's dominiccummings.substack.com/p/snippets-4-a…