LAURA DODSWORTH | 5 Dec 2023
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. As a British Jew, he has lots to say about the recent events in Israel.
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% 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. Researching the origins of the Zionist and antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories isn’t hard (Jake Wallis Simon’s book Israelophobia is great) but they absorb and repeat them instead.
Some people think the events are linked in terms of shadowy cabal plotting and running the world. I think they are linked in terms of human fallibility. Do you agree?
It is deeply ironic that so many people in the ‘Freedom movement’ who knew never to trust mainstream media were prepared to accept without question the anti-Israel narrative presented by the likes of Aljazeera, the BBC and The Guardian. Even more bizarre is that, while people who said ‘question everything’ did indeed question (and reject) everything coming from Israeli sources, they accepted as true every single statement coming from Hamas-controlled sources. This had led to a belief by many that either the 7 October massacre did not happen or that it was Israel who planned and executed it – the ultimate victim blaming.
As you say, many in the freedom movement also claimed that the conflict was engineered by globalist forces with many suggesting ‘the Zionist cabal’ at the top. Now you clearly dispute the Zionist conspiracy claim (as I do) but you suggest that human fallibility played a major role; by that I assume you mean that failure of Israeli intelligence enabled the massacre to take place. Well, I think that this massively underestimates both the capability of Hamas, the sophistication of technology and weapons provided to them by Iran and Qatar, and the genocidal nature of many Palestinians (and the Iranian regime) toward Israel. It also underestimates the impact of an attack taking place on one of the holiest days of the year that coincided with a Sabbath.
How has it affected you as a Jew, and as someone who had commanded a great deal of respect for counter-establishment Covid-19 views?
The first time I came out ‘publicly’ as a Jew during Covid-19 was to defend Andrew Bridgen MP against claims of antisemitism in March 2023. I abhor the tactic used by leftists and establishment figures to slur anybody using the word ‘globalist’ or criticising people like George Soros as antisemites. I had even been called an antisemite myself for challenging the globalist agenda and criticising Soros’s role in it. Because I was defending somebody in the ‘Freedom movement’ against claims of antisemitism, my popularity increased within the movement. Up until 7 October I had never expressed any views publicly about Israel other than to criticise their Covid-19 policies and to accuse the Israeli Ministry of Health of corruption and cover up over the efficacy and safety of the Pfizer vaccine on the population. So, it is likely that many who did not know of my very close family connections to Israel may even have regarded me as an anti-Zionist.
I was totally shocked that, while the massacre was still taking place, many people I knew or followed started posting tweets either praising Hamas, justifying what they did, or claiming it was an inside job or just an Israeli psyop. I felt I had to speak out then. Now while I strongly support the need to completely eliminate Hamas I have said nothing publicly about the Israeli response other than to point out that Israel always tries to avoid civilian casualties and that the information coming from Hamas should not be trusted. What I have done is regularly post evidence of the 7 October atrocities, some of the worst of which were witnessed by one of my nieces. For doing this and for coming out as a ‘Zionist’ I have been subject to ferocious attacks from previous supporters whose cognitive dissonance and antisemitism is so great that they feel I have betrayed the freedom movement.
There are many people who are not antisemitic, but are simply reposting anti-Israel stuff because they just assume that is the ‘correct’ narrative – even though they have no personal interest in or knowledge of the conflict. To avoid claims of antisemitism they often post material by Jews not knowing that these are radical anti-Zionist Jews. People like Max Blumenthal, Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappe and Miko Peled are the most commonly cited. I communicate privately with the people I know to give them the ‘full picture’ including material highlighting why those anti-Zionist Jews are not credible sources. This often stops them posting anti-Israel material and in some cases they even start reposting my material. However, there are many genuine antisemites who will never be turned no matter how much evidence you put in front of them. It is a pathological hatred.
If you were an absolute monarch for a day, what law would you introduce?
I’m reluctant to talk about introducing new laws because what the recent years have shown us is that we have far too many laws and government controls already. Instead, I would remove all laws relating to Net Zero, and I would withdraw all government funding and support for international bodies and NGOs including: the UN (and all its subsidiaries like UNWRA, UNICEF etc), WHO, IPCC, WEF, and all the international politicized charities (like the corrupt Oxfam, Save The Children, and International Red Cross). If individuals want to support and fund organisations like that then fine, but not a penny should ever come from tax payers.
What is the most interesting thing you have learned in the last year?
Unfortunately, that there are more latent antisemites than I previously assumed and that this includes many people who in many respects are excellent critical thinkers, but who lose all ability at critical thinking when it comes to Jews and Israel.
What is next for you?
While my time will be increasingly taken up by looking after my wife, I will continue to campaign on two fronts: opposing The Great Reset/Net Zero agenda and exposing the lies behind Israelophobia (which is simply antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism).
