British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday announced a new month-long lockdown for England
By Joe Davies For Mailonline – Published: 20:11 EST, 7 November 2020
Official data is ‘exaggerating’ the risk of Covid-19 and talk of a second wave is ‘misleading’, nearly 500 academics told Boris Johnson in open letter attacking lockdown.
The doctors and scientists said the Government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has become ‘disproportionate’ and that mass testing has distorted the risk of the virus.
They said tests are likely to be producing high numbers of ‘false positive’ results and the Government must do more to put infection and death rates within the context of normal seasonal rates.
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The Government and its scientific advisers were lambasted on Thursday for using ‘dodgy data’ to justify a devastating second lockdown, with Tory MPs warning SAGE’s doomsday predictions had echoes of the controversial dossier that sent Britain to war with Iraq.
It emerged a graph brandished at a press conference by Professors Doom and Gloom that claimed England could see up to 1,500 deaths a day by December had been secretly toned down ‘after an error was found’ with the data.
The prediction caused widespread alarm because, if true, it would dwarf the 1,000 daily deaths recorded during the peak of the first wave in April.