Covid Inquiry: Sunetra Gupta's witness statement

As UsForThem threaten legal action against the inquiry, the GBD author faces accusations of rewriting history, and of major omissions including a behind closed doors meeting with MPs and journalists

There has been a considerable effort in much of the media to distort public perception of the UK Covid Inquiry, arguments are being made that it isn’t addressing the effectiveness of measures, the harms of lockdown and needs to take the views of alternative experts. Snippets of statements from the hearing have been quoted as if they were gotcha moments proving that a mass infection strategy should have been used.

The inquiry even faces a threat of judicial review from the group UsForThem calling for the inquiry to amend its terms of ref to examine topics like lockdown harm vs benefit, financial costs of lockdown, censorship and to provide a right of reply to authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD).

Sunetra Gupta, one of the authors of the GBD has already provided a witness statement to the inquiry which has now been released by the inquiry after Gupta breached protocol by already publishing it online combined with a piece in the Telegraph covering her criticism of the Inquiry.

Summary of issues with Gupta's Statement

• Claims the UK's peak occurred prior to March 2020 due to herd immunity being reached.

• Does state Omicron is not more “mild” than Wuhan strain, however doesn't believe there is any significant difference in severity or transmissibiliy between variants.

• Explanation of herd immunity contradicts interviews from 2020.

• Claims focused protection would have been successful but doesn't provide any details of how this would be accomplished in practice.

• Suggests herself and others were unfairly smeared while omitting key actions of her allies, or the sources of her own funding.

• Failed to mention meeting privately with MPs and journalists

But, while Gupta's views on the nature and future of covid does not have a strong evidence base to support it, her sense of vindication that repeated mass infection will tame covid is increasingly being accepted does have some truth, particularly in regards to the UK government's public health UKHSA and immunisation JCVI bodies.

The UKs winter vaccination programme has been an outlier in comparison to comparable countries, with eligibility limited to the over 65s and a narrow definition of at risk groups. These government bodies are now speaking in terms of booster infections to keep up population level immunity, a vaccine only strategy without vaccines with its head in the sand in regards to long covid and other harms.

Gupta's Witness Statement

https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/18143349/INQ000252725.pdf

Gupta begins by setting out her stance that national lockdowns aren’t weren’t the right strategy for covid, however its generally agreed amongst the covid cautious that lockdowns like those at the end of 2020 and the start of 2021 are a result of a failure to effectively implement other measures like clean air and contact tracing.

Gupta believes her views are becoming accepted practice, and there is some truth in that in regards to the approach taken by the UKHSA and JCVI of a vaccine only approach with only limited access to vaccines. While the idea that repeated infections will lead to immune systems becoming robust enough to shrug off any future variant isn't supported by the evidence base, this appears to be current thinking of those leading public health in the UK.

Gupta then sets out her alternative view on the dynamics of covid that the majority of infections occurred in February or earlier leading to the deaths in April because a temporary herd immunity had been reached. Cases only rose again later in the year because the natural immunity had waned.

Gupta states that NPI’s didn’t work because cases didn’t rise when they were removed, however this doesn’t take into account behavioural changes as the weather got colder and that reported cases began to rise a few weeks after schools in the UK returned in full with limited measures. However while Gupta doesn’t think NPI’s reduce community spread, she does think some are effective when used in settings like hospitals and care homes.

On the subject of covid’s evolution Gupta doesn’t believe that omicron was more mild, and that it only appeared so because of prior immunity. There are a number of studies that support this, however Gupta doesn't acknowledge that extensive booster campaigns helped blunt the impact of the initial omicron wave. Gupta doesn't believe that variants such as Delta were more severe than the original Wuhan strain.

Gupta also claims that covid is a standard textbook coronavirus no different to the other seasonal coronaviruses in circulation, covid isn't more naturally virulent than the common cold and that it is simply a lack of prior immunity that makes it appear more severe.

Waxing and waning immunity is an important factor in waves but variants matter and considering how covid is constantly throwing up new variants its a bold statement to claim covid will be predictable in the years to come.

Gupta witness statement is generally sympathetic towards SAGE, citing the difficult situation they faced due to uncertainty. She sets out the three main areas of uncertainty.

There is a lot of truth to the first statement; although Gupta mainly focuses in her statement on comparisons with the four common coronaviruses in circulation rather than SARS, the transmission of covid shouldn’t have been a subject of such uncertainty. There is now lots of documented evidence that governments knew covid was airborne by the end of January 2020, and the controversy around the WHO’s prevarication over airborne transmission could fill a book.

Gupta’s second point regarding being treated as a heretic doesn’t acknowledge the UK’s media landscape, a large proportion of the press were consistently opposed to measures being implemented and published many articles praising Gupta.

The third point is still a matter of uncertainty, its difficult to disentangle the impacts of covid from the impacts of lockdown. The long term culmulative impacts of austerity and the current cost of living crisis confuses the issue further. For instance mental health issues in children have risen but this was on the same trajectory prior to the pandemic.

The common argument about the precautionary principle being ignored is made by Gupta, however doing nothing in the face of covid was not a neutral decision without consequences.

Gupta suggested that in an act of global cooperation New Zealand after shutting its borders should then have provided the facilities for conducting a trial rather than maintaining its self-congratulation in keeping the virus out.

Gupta argues that due to what she considers a low IFR, NPIs have a negligible impact at the individual level and so there is no point in preventing infection. This does not take long covid or any harm besides death into account.

The final sentence above is interesting logic. Applying NPI’s only in vulnerable settings is effective, but applying this to the whole population is like letting it rip. The principle will be that preventing infections in the wider population will mean more infections in the vulnerable group before herd immunity for that wave is reached. This requires NPI’s to effectively keep infections out of vulnerable settings whilst covid is raging in the wider population, and for a herd immunity threshold to be rapidly reached leading to a period of low case rates.

Gupta questions the efficacy of many NPIs, however states that focused protection would be effective due to the use of NPIs, at no point beyond mentioning isolation does she explain which NPIs should be used in hospitals or care homes.

Gupta begins the next section with her concerns about a reliance on mathematical models to make predictions.

She then continues by explaining how her own mathematical modelling allowed her to suggest the first wave had already peaked prior to March, this requires the average time between infection and death to be much greater than the scientific consensus.

While Gupta has complained that her views were dismissed, she states that she was in conversation with SAGE members privately and that some of them supported her ideas. She doesn’t say which SAGE members she was talking to, however its likely the sociologist Robert Dingwall would have been one of them as he attended the launch event for Gupta’s Collateral Global organisation. At the start of the pandemic Dingwall suggested families should consider if allowing covid to kill their elderly and vulnerable relatives might be more humane than letting them live for a few more years to then die from another illness.

Gupta's argument that the majority of the population had been infected by March 2020 does not fit the data from antibody testing. There is a possibility that covid was in circulation earlier than is generally assumed, however if it was, then it would have been a tiny percentage of the population. Gupta suggests cross immunity from other seasonal coronaviruses explains why sero surveys didn't match her predictions.

Gupta states that on the meeting on 20 September with Johnson and Sunak everyone besides John Edmunds was in support of a Swedish style strategy including SAGE member Angela McLean. This would seem to contradict McLean's evidence to the inquiry who said that her input to the meeting was that the government needed to “get a grip at this stage of things and it would be great if this happened.”

Smears?

Gupta covers the writing of the Great Barrington Declaration, and meetings in Washington DC and the White House. She says that there the GBD being produced at the AIER's premises was purely coincidental and describes how she and her fellow academics became targets of a smear campaign, citing her support of the welfare state as evidence she wouldn't be involved in a right-wing project.

Gupta doesn't mention that in April 2020 she received over £90,000 in funding from the Georj and Emily Von Opel Foundation, Georj Von Opel is a billionaire donor to the Conservative Party. The foundation also provided over £100,000 in funding to Gupta's Collateral Global in its first published accounts.

Gupta also failed to mention that in October 2020 she joined Pandata's scientific advisory board alongside Trump advisor Scott Atlas and Scott Jenson who was a Republican candidate in the mid-terms.

Scott Atlas was the subject of a report of the US Covid Oversight sub-committee which provided evidence that Atlas sought to undermine public health measures in pursuit of herd immunity via mass infection. This included accusations of bullying and attempts to rewrite guidance for political purposes. Two other reports were produced regarding the actions of Atlas and his Pandata colleague Paul Alexander, describing “a knife fight with the FDA” regarding their efforts to bully through approval of hydroxychloroquine.”

Gupta's GBD co-author Jay Bhattacharya was guest speaker at a Council for National Policy (CNP) dinner. The CNP is the organising force behind the more extreme elements of the Republican Party and a leaked call in 2020 revealed they had organised the creation of America's Frontline Doctors.

Citing an interview in May 2020 Gupta claims her comments in the run up to the second wave was misunderstood and that she always believed there would be a second wave. This is because her current interpretation of herd immunity is of short term immunity that requires being boosted with regular reinfection, however this appears to be a rewriting of history.

Gupta believed the threshold for herd immunity was much lower than many predicted due to cross-immunity from other coronaviruses, claiming this made a substantial proportion of the population immune to infection, this isn't supported by the size of a number of waves we've faced and that only a small proportion of people still not taking covid precautions have avoided being infected at least once.

However, in another interview in July 2020, Gupta doesn't appear to be suggesting that immunity would be short term, repeatedly saying that once people were infected they would be immune to infection. Claiming herd immunity had been reached in many parts of the country she did not suggest this immunity would wane quickly leading to other large waves of infection.

“There is also the possibility, as we suggested in March, that a large swathe of the population has been exposed. Some have become immune, and therefore exhibit antibodies, or don’t because those antibodies have decayed. And some were resistant to start with. Under those circumstances, no, we shouldn’t see a huge surge in infections in those regions like London and New York where we’ve had a major incidence of infection and death.”

“When you think of the US as a whole, you’re missing the fact that the epidemic appears to be over in the north east and growing in the south west.”

https://reaction.life/we-may-already-have-herd-immunity-an-interview-with-professor-sunetra-gupta/

Focused Protection

Gupta’s witness statement does not explain how focused protection would be carried out.

The FAQ’s on the Great Barrington Declaration’s website does explain how to protect care homes.

“A focused protection strategy would include frequent testing of nursing home staff members that are not already immune, testing of visitors, and less staff rotation so that residents only interact with a limited number of staff people. COVID-19 infected individuals should not be sent to nursing homes, and all new residents should be tested. Sequestering of care home residents who have COVID-19 is also important.”

This again suggests that once infected people will be immune to infection, the GBD states that reinfections would be rare.

“You can see this in the fact that that despite an estimated 750 million worldwide to date after 10 months living with the virus, we have seen only a handful of reinfections. If the virus is like other corona viruses in its immune response, recovery from infection will provide lasting protection against reinfection, either complete immunity or protection that makes a severe reinfection less likely.”

Herd immunity according to the GBD would result in low levels of transmission, not the multiple waves experienced this year, it does not mention waning infection leading to large waves.

Interactions with MPs

Gupta lists interactions with MPs, however this is not a complete list.

Gupta has chosen to omit attending a private meeting held at the end of January 2021 when a group of sceptic academics briefed a selection of GBD supporting MPs and journalists. The behind closed doors meeting revealed in the leaked chat logs of the HART group, an organisation of anti-vaxers and conspiracy theorists, shows the meeting was organised by Ellen Townsend (Pandata, HART, Collateral Global, PCRclaims) and Lucy Johnson ( Daily Express health editor).

Carl Heneghan also failed to mention in his witness statement that he attended this meeting. Robert Dingwall who sat on various UK government advisory committees also attended.

Around the same time HART were organising their own meetings with; mainly the same MPs and journalists, this would result in HART writing a weekly briefing document for political and media allies leading to coordinated messaging aimed at undermining public health policies.

It’s worth noting that UsForThem who have threatened the inquiry with legal action have been supported by Ellen Townsend since their creation in May 2020 and are intertwined with HART, in their book on the pandemic their founders thanked Gupta for her support. They have also had the PR support of Ed Barker whose services are usually preserved for leading Conservative politicians like Boris Johnson and opaquely funded right wing lobby groups including Legatum which is an owner of GB News. Baker also worked with Vote Leave and the sceptic Covid Recovery Group of MP’s that set up its own covid All Party Parliamentary Group which has Jemma Moran of HART as its secretariat.

Influence

Gupta might claim to be a victim of censorship, but very few academics outside the government tent have had the opportunity to meet with the prime minister. Gupta had uncritical support from many newspapers, if these publications hadn't raised her profile in April 2020 would she have been invited to the 20 September meeting?

She certainly has had media influence, and the Conservative MPs who supported her were a large enough group to apply considerable political pressure on Johnson. That these MPs and journalists met with Gupta at the start of 2021 shouldn’t be dismissed when considering how the UK ended up with Freedom Day and then its current “living with covid” strategy.