Penny Mordaunt is currently running to be the leader of the Conservative party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Over the last few weeks, a number of serious issues have been raised about her qualifications for the role. So much so, that it is hard to keep up with all the controversies and what is and is not partisan.

Broadly, the problem with Penny Mordaunt becoming Prime Minister can be split into two areas - issues of competence and issues of honesty. In this blog post, I wanted to outline Mordaunt's issues in both of these areas by highlighting well-referenced case studies in both areas.

Competence: Homeopathy

In 2010, Penny Mordaunt signed a motion claiming that there is "overwhelming anecdotal evidence that homeopathy is effective."

Given that there is clear scientific evidence showing that homoeopathy does not work (any better than a placebo), it is concerning that a potential Prime Minister could believe such pseudoscience. This shows a clear inability to filter and make judgements upon evidence.

Moreover, Britain's defences against COVID-19 and future pandemic diseases are largely reliant upon the development of new vaccine technology and the ability to rapidly acquire and apply evidence around pharmaceutical treatments. This is not to mention the other areas of policy which require a detailed understanding of scientific evidence. The inability of a Prime Minister to be able to make judgements on scientific evidence poses a significant danger to national security.

Competence: Undermining Critical National Infrastructure

Given the recent threats to energy supply in Europe, and rising energy costs for British consumers, energy supply remains a key part of Critical National Infrastructure.

As a Government minister, Penny Mordaunt campaigned against the AQUIND Interconnector project, connecting the British and French energy grids. The construction of which may have caused some temporary disruption for her constituents.

A Ukrainian-born British businessman who owns part of the project has since threatened to bring legal action against Penny Mordaunt, describing her as a "threat to national security".

Competence: Employer References

Often when being hired for a job, future employers will make an offer conditional on acceptable references being provided by previous employers and colleagues. Mordaunt has received some substantial criticism from her previous colleagues.

Most notably, recently Lord David Frost has been extremely critical of her time as his deputy, saying he has "grave reservations" about her being Prime Minister and that "she did not master the detail that was necessary when we were in negotiations".

Lord Frost added: "She wasn’t always visible. Sometimes I didn’t even know where she was. It became such a problem that after six months I had to ask the prime minister to move her on."

Mujtaba Rahman, a leading Brexit analyst, told The Independent that Lord Frost’s view on Ms Mordaunt “is widely shared in Brussels – with one important qualification. One senior EU official tells me she ‘was even less qualified than Frost’.”

Lord Moylan, who formerly was the deputy leader of Kensington and Chelsea council where Mordaunt was hired as a Director of Communications, claimed: "we had to get rid of her after a few months because she was incompetent."

Mordaunt was also made deputy chairman of the Exiting Operations Committee as Britain left the EU. An official who attended the meetings is quoted as saying: "It was woeful. Mordaunt was incapable of steering the committee to the right outcome. It became embarrassing. She would just read out pre-prepared civil service briefs. She couldn’t answer questions or raise any interesting points. She often wasn’t there, and when she was others had to take over."

A Civil Servant who worked in the Ministry of Defence when she was Defence Secretary claimed she was incapable of mastering the technical side of her work, saying: "I’m sorry she was just out of her depth".

Major Robert Campbell has criticised Maudaunt for backing the failed Iraq Historic Allegations Team, stating: "Now she is depicting herself as the armed forces champion but she never did anything for me. She needs to apologise for how we were treated."

Major Campbell added: “When she had the opportunity to do something meaningful about IHAT, she failed spectacularly. She failed us as armed forces champion.”

However, it should be noted that Penny Maudaunt has secured the support of former Prime Minister, Theresa May. Though, I'm not certain if that truly has a wholly positive effect as an endorsement.

Honesty: False Claims she "Fought in the Navy"

Penny Mordaunt's campaign is keen to play up her military credentials, with one of her supporters George Freeman MP falsely claiming she "fought in the Navy". Mordaunt has even given fuel to Scottish nationalists by claiming her Royal Navy experience has given her the tools to "defeat the nationalists".

Senior officers have now pushed back against these claims, with a highly-decorated former senior Royal Navy officer saying: "She isn’t [currently] a trained or paid reservist, she’s never qualified or been commissioned. She’s been banging the naval drum for days and enough is enough. How she has presented herself – and how she has allowed herself to be presented – have been deeply misleading."

She does not fulfil the Royal Navy's training commitments or receive any salary, as confirmed by her entries on the MPs register of interests.

Defence sources suggest she was made an honorary captain to save embarrassment from being thrown out of the Navy: "She was made an honorary when she became minister for the Armed Forces because she was about to be thrown out." The source added that this was as she was: "timed out on sitting the relevant exams... So everyone was polite and made her an honorary".

A Naval source also told the Mail that: "She had a set time period to attend the Britannia Royal Naval College but failed to do so."

Honesty: Support of Self-ID

Penny Mordaunt is on video, at the dispatch box, claiming that "transmen are men". However, with this view being unfavourable to the party she has now sought to pretend that she had a different position.

Although Mordaunt claimed that she did not attempt to introduce self-ID whilst a Government minister, this claim has now been undermined by both Kemi Badenoch and Liz Truss undermining these claims. Badenoch said at a TV leadership debate: "When I took over equalities minister in 2020 what was being pushed was self-ID. I don’t understand how that would have changed unless someone else did it. My understanding was the previous minister who had the role had wanted (Ms Mordaunt) self-ID."

Benjamin Cohen, the Chief Executive of PinkNews, has also highlighted this apparent inconsistency, saying: "At the minute I am struggling to reconcile the views of the person I have known for a decade and who has collaborated with PinkNews for the last five years with the views she has expressed in recent days. As someone who first met Penny a decade ago, it’s the first time I’ve heard that she didn’t agree with self-identification."

Competence: Meeting with Extremists

In 2009, the Labour government broke off all ties with the Muslim Council of Britain with the Lib Dem/Conservative coalition and the later Conservative governments maintaining this policy. Therefore, a “non-engagement” policy for ministers toward the group has existed since 2009.

As Paymaster General, Maudaunt met with the Secretary General of the MCB, Zara Mohammed. Dr Alan Mendoza of the Henry Jackson Society described this meeting as "shocking".

A Government spokesperson told The Jewish Chronicle: "The UK government has a long-standing policy of not engaging with the MCB and that has not changed."

The MCB has been criticised for not representing the full spectrum of opinion across Muslim communities. Former Home Secretary, Sajid Javid has suggested members of the council had made 'favourable' remarks about extremists in the past.

Conclusion

Putting aside the partisanship that affects the light in which someone is viewed, the truth appears to be that Penny Mordaunt may well be one of the worst Prime Minister's in British history and could spell the end of the country as we know it.

As Gideon Rachman tweeted: "She is strikingly unqualified to be prime minister."

On the 11th of February, the Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police Service resigned, she claimed her hands were tied as the Mayor of London no longer had confidence in her. Far from this story just being about the police force in London, this has significant national implications.

The Metropolitan Police plays a critical role in national policing, including heading up a number of counter-terrorism functions. Unlike other English and Welsh police forces, Section 99 of the Police Act 1996 even grants Metropolitan Police officers jurisdiction in Scotland and Northern Ireland when designated to protect people or property there. Despite the creation of a National Crime Agency in 2013, these responsibilities remain with London’s police force. Furthermore; despite the National Crime Agency commonly being referred to as “Britain’s FBI” in the media, their officers face different limitations on their powers depending on which part of the United Kingdom they are in and face requirements to follow orders from Scottish Government officials when exercising powers in Scotland (Schedule 5 Part 4 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013).

This is just one example of how unnecessarily complex the UK’s devolved constitutional settlement has become. This constitutional settlement raises a profound and serious question: how can citizens make informed decisions about their politics if it is unclear which Government is responsible for the decisions in an area of public policy?

This is however further complicated by the fact that the UK Government also serves as the English Government. Whilst metro-mayors have allowed for some quasi-devolution in limited parts of England, the only Parliament that legislates for England is the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

For example; in England and Wales, large shops can only open for 6 hours on Sunday. In Scotland, this restriction does not exist (albeit, Scottish employees do also have the right to refuse work on Sunday). In 2016, despite a majority of England and Welsh MPs supporting piloting reforms of Sunday trading laws in England and Wales, Scottish SNP MPs were able to block the move.

However, the case for further devolution in England is not just about granting equity to English democracy, it is also about allowing for effective democratic decision making in devolved parts of the UK. When a minister of the UK Government speaks in public, how is a Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish citizen to know what applies to them (instead of just England)?

This lack of visibility as to the proper role of the UK Government in devolved regions means citizens will likely struggle to attribute success and failure to the correct government. It may well simply not be feasible for a Prime Minister to both concurrently and separately address the whole of the United Kingdom and the English population.

The current devolution settlement faces issues that would simply not exist in a completely unitary state or a fully federalised country. These problems make the current devolution settlement uniquely challenged. This in turn could be a major factor in the breakup of the United Kingdom.

Given it is hard to imagine that the pandora's box of devolution can now be closed, the only option to save the British state from a breakup may well be to continue with devolution until the people of England are represented in the same way as those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Back in August, I wrote about how essential the decisions of vaccine dosing and intervals were to avoiding future lockdowns. Indeed, the fact the UK has conducted clinical trials on dosing intervals and mix-and-match doses, then executed upon the results in nationwide clinical guidance, may well be the reason the UK hadn't seen the winter waves that appeared on the European continent despite England having no restrictions (until the precautionary ones which were recently introduced for Omicron).

It seems the Vaccine Taskforce has played another blinder here. Recall from my previous blog post how critical I was of the decision to cancel orders of the Valneva vaccine. Indeed, I am still critical of this decision on the basis that it may undermine the UK's domestic vaccine production capability - however there may have been more reason to this decision than previously understood.

This morning, the results of the COV-BOOST study were published in The Lancet. The study found that all vaccines tested boosted boosted antibody and neutralising responses after an initial course of two Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines. However, after an initial course of two Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, the Valneva vaccine was unable to boost immunity. All other booster vaccines were able to boost responses.

Yesterday, the day before this study was published, the UK Government announced procurement of the 114 million vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.

Johnathan Van-Tam is named as one of the authors on the COV-BOOST study and the study was funded by the UK Vaccine Taskforce, meaning they were likely able to see the results prior to the procurement decisions being made.

If the Government was able to successfully procure vaccines on the basis of this data before it was published, they have played a blinder and successfully gotten ahead of the curve on countries waiting for the evidence from the UK to inform them on which vaccines to buy for boosters.

What's more, the EU have just secured their order for Valneva vaccines, right before the results of this study have shown them to be useless following two Pfizer vaccine doses. Yet another win from not being in the EU vaccine procurement scheme.

The past few years have shown the outstanding ability of biotech to counteract the most devastating effects of the pandemic, and the leading role the UK's science base has played in these efforts. From finding the first life-saving treatment for COVID to creating an at-cost vaccine, Britain has led the world.

Unfortunately, over the past few weeks, it's clear that the Government has become dangerously incompetent in its approach to handling the biotech sector, something that could not only be catastrophic for the UK but also cost many lives around the world.

Kate Bingham recently spoke about how the UK Government cancelled the contract for inactivated whole-virus vaccines potentially in "bad-faith", potentially damaging the UK's ability to combat pandemics in future. The manufacturer of the vaccines, Valneva, had run UK clinical trials whilst investing its manufacturing operations in Scotland. Some scientists believe that this whole-virus vaccine could be "variant-proof" and Phase III trial results have been positive.

Today the FT has also reported that the UK's pioneering Vaccine Manufacturing Innovation Centre (VMIC) is being put up for sale by the UK Government, despite the public investing £200m in the plant. This could be catastrophic for future variants or pandemics as the VMIC is designed to have "capacity to produce enough vaccine doses to serve the entire UK population in as little as six months".

University of Southampton spin-off company, Synairgen, last year posted positive preliminary trial results for their COVID-19 trials, finding their SNG001 treatment "reduced the odds of developing severe disease or dying by 79%". Trial results have also shown positive results in COPD patients, raising hope this drug could be stockpiled not just for handling not just future variants but also future respiratory pandemics and winter flu. The phase III results for SNG001 are expected early next year. This is even more important given Merck recently reported that their COVID pill is far less effective than initially reported. Despite the Government having an Antivirals Taskforce, it appears that no orders have yet been placed for SNG001.

There is talk that this new variant may well be a "good variant", more transmissible but less lethal, but this is very far from certain. Sarah Gilbert has also previously written that it is unlikely that any variant will be able to fully defeat the vaccines, but this this variant contains more mutations than any of us previously imagined on the very part the vaccines target. In any event, the damage being done to the UK biotech sector by the current Government approach is likely to have consequences in future healthcare emergencies, with pandemics likely to become more common in future.

Even more concerning, there seems to be a void of expertise to understand these issues at the elected layer of Government. The current PM is a classics graduate whilst the current health secretary studied economics and politics. This current approach should be politically devastating for the Government, but the opposition leader is a lawyer and the Shadow Health Minister studied politics and philosophy. The opposition has found itself contributing nothing positive to the Vaccine Taskforce under Kate Bingham's leadership, so I doubt they will have anything positive to contribute going forward.

There is time to avert disaster here, but I doubt the opportunity will be seized.

As my historical posts on this blog will attest, I am profoundly optimistic about the ability of science to ultimately handle COVID-19. This is a point that has been proven through advances in treatment and vaccination.

Nevertheless, despite progress, parts of the world may find themselves returning to lockdown despite vaccination. Even more perversely, blame for this phenomena may be directed at ordinary citizens instead of Government officials.

For the purposes of this article, I'll be using the United States and United Kingdom as examples; but much of this is applicable to many countries around the world.

Recent news articles have pointed to how a surge of COVID-19 has driven ICU occupancy in Texas to 90%. This seems particularly alarming given the high coverage of vaccination in the United States.

Twitter experts will be quick to blame this on vaccine uptake caused by hesitant members of the population, but this is a naive understanding of the situation.

Indeed, there is only a 10-11% gap in vaccine rollout progress between the United States and the United Kingdom, and when the UK reached 0 COVID deaths for the first time, it was when vaccine coverage was lower than what the US currently has.

The vaccines used in both countries are largely comparable - both use mRNA vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna) alongside an adenovirus option (Oxford/Astrazeneca in the UK and Janssen in the US). Indeed, the US have more rapidly adopted novel mRNA vaccine technology, whilst the more tested Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine did the bulk of the UK's early heavy lifting.

So why does there remain this apparent gap in COVID fatalities?

Strict Age Prioritisation

The UK adopted a strict approach to vaccine prioritisation, in order to simplify the rollout as much as possible, age was the primary driving force in determining the order of vaccine rollout. The other priority groups were largely based around shielding the elderly population (medical and social care workers).

By contrast, the US has adopted an approach whereby it was preferable to ramp up the overall percentage of people vaccinated, including offering vaccines to younger people. Whilst there has been a degree of age prioritisation, it has certainly not been as strict as that in the US.

On the face of it, this would mean that younger more tech-savvy individuals would be able to secure bookings ahead of older individuals. In the short term, this would increase the number of deaths given that COVID primarily discriminates upon age in fatalities.

However, this also causes a longer term problem too - it limits people's enthusiasm to get vaccinated. In behavioural psychology exclusivity is an important mechanism to getting people to choose a particular course of behaviour.

When older people are prioritised, they feel the vaccine is more exclusive and thus will be more likely to adopt it. Indeed, the UK is currently struggling to ramp up vaccine uptake amongst its youngest population with vaccinations now available to everyone.

The Government is even resorting to other behavioural science interventions targeted at this group, including incentives and threatening vaccine passports for nightclubs. Such measures are often more associated with the US and haven't been needed in the UK so far.

Dosing Intervals

Not all vaccinations get the result you're after. A strong antibody response isn't guaranteed for all individuals who are vaccinated.

The UK made a decision early on during the rollout to use a 8-12 week dosing interval for vaccines to maximise the amount of people who got their first jab.

By contrast, the US has stuck to using a dosing interval of typically 3 weeks.

The evidence has mounted that a 12 week vaccine dose interval produces the best results, yet the US hasn't followed in adopting this approach:

• Delaying second Pfizer vaccines to 12 weeks significantly increases antibody responses in older people, finds study
• Timing of Booster Dose and Efficacy of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 Vaccine
• Single-dose administration and the influence of the timing of the booster dose on immunogenicity and efficacy of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine: a pooled analysis of four randomised trials

Despite this evidence, the World Health Organisation also stuck to recommending a maximum of a 6 week interval of vaccine doses.

As a bonus, the UK's use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine (which creates a robust T-Cell response) ‘may protect against Covid for longer and eliminate need for booster’ - thus offering high levels of protection without people needing to come back for boosters (as is already planned for mRNA vaccines).

Incidentally, South Korea started mixing and matching doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca. A recent study has found that having a first dose of AstraZeneca followed by a dose of Pfizer offers a superior immune response than vaccination with just one brand.

Paying for 'Expert' Decisions

Accountability matters. Decisions about whether societies face further deaths or lockdowns currently largely depends on the decisions of experts. These decisions affect people's willingness to be vaccinated and the effectiveness of the vaccines once when they receive them.

It is not sufficient anymore for Twitter experts to pass the blame to antivaxers - they must own the decisions that drive the results we see, particularly during COVID vaccination programs.

Instead of gaming the numbers for the percentage of the population vaccinated, it is vital instead to consider the percentage of the population who have been effectively vaccinated.

When France originally enacted mask mandates in 2020, I went to look for the law that prohibited religious face coverings (e.g. Islamic hijabs). To my surprise, it remained in full effect in the law - meaning that whilst it was criminal to wear a religious face covering, it was legally mandated to wear surgical masks. During the PPE shortage, I briefly humoured myself my imagining how French politicians would react to a brand of hybrid hijab and surgical mask face coverings.

Fast forward to the tail-end of 2021 and we see undeniably that face masks are now fully politicised.

Prior to epidemic modelling and expert hysteria being proven wrong on the extent of the August 2021 wave of COVID-19 in the UK, mask policy became particularly contentious. Indeed; it remains the case that whilst mask mandates continue to exist in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - they have been removed in England (without catastrophic outcomes).

Randomised Control Trial evidence has now shown that the benefit of mask recommendations is practically non-existent to the wearer. At the same time, observational evidence has shown that FFP3 respirators may be highly effective at cutting COVID-19 transmission. In such circumstances, evidence-based public policy would likely lead us to the suggestion that as COVID-19 measures were being lifted, we should recommend the most vulnerable in society use high-grade FFP3 respirators, whilst removing mask mandates. With the global PPE shortage over, Government could even supply them to the vulnerable. The fact such policy wasn't even suggested shows the extreme politicisation of this matter.

This could also generally be seen in lockdown policy during the lifting of measures. The centrist voice of the creators of the Oxford vaccine, who called for shielding of the vulnerable to be re-introduced, was completely drowned out by the organised political hysteria of "experts" with hoards of Twitter followers.

Why then have expert groups sought to continue to insist on the wearing of face masks? In Laura Dodsworth's excellent book, A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, she talks about how Government behavioural scientists insisted on face masks as they liked it as a sign of "solidarity". In a recent piece entitled Faith Masks, Dodsworth quotes World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saying: “The mask has come to represent solidarity.”

The dangers of mask policy is however just beginning. In a previous blog post I highlighted the scientific evidence demonstrating that face coverings can play a role in affecting social cohesion and crime rates. One Randomised Control Trial involving children wearing Halloween masks found that face coverings can “can serve to elicit a state of deindividuation”, lower restraints and increase antisocial behaviour. Another observational study found a positive relationship between mask wearing and aggression.

I therefore was not also surprised today to see the news that the Victims' Commissioner for England and Wales saying that face masks have led to increase in stalking and making it harder for detectives to positively identify and prosecute suspects using CCTV footage.

The global security picture continues to worsen; the security picture continues to degrade in Afghanistan, with the chief of MI5 warning that this could lead to further terrorist attacks. Cultural conservatives, concerned for national security, are feeling increasingly that such matters aren't being taken seriously. For example; given the recent increase in crossings across the English channel (during the summer months), immigration has become the top concern amongst UK Conservative voters with the percentage of the British public who say the Government is handling immigration "badly" reaching a record high.

Against this backdrop; vaccines have nearly eliminated the risk of severe disease or death from COVID-19, and for all the claims of variants, no variant has been able to defeat any one of the approved vaccines. Indeed, the designers of the Oxford vaccine believe that no variant can fully defeat their vaccine. In any event, modified vaccines for variants are already in clinical trials. A variant-proof vaccine made by Valneva is in the late stages of being trialled and manufactured within the UK, with further studies announced yesterday in New Zealand.

As the risk of COVID-19 disappears, we are starting to see the security harms of face masks. The politicised nature of face mask policy will inevitably lead to an outcome whereby legitimate concern of the security risks of face masks will be ignored by proponents. Whilst behavioural scientists thought face masks would instill a sense of "solidarity" they risk tearing societies apart whilst exposing society and vulnerable individuals to huge security risks.

Following the death of His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Twitter has been awash with those comparing Britain to North Korea - so much so that "North Korea" was trending this morning in the United Kingdom. These include claims that Britain "is getting as bad as North Korea" and that “North Korea is a liberal paradise compared to the vile little Nazi island of England”:

The BBC has been receiving so many complaints "about too much TV coverage of the death of HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh" that they have had to route these individuals to a dedicated webform to reduce operational overhead.

Thomas Buergenthal served on the International Court of Justice and survived Auschwitz. After chairing a panel on the matter, he concluded that North Korea’s concentration camps are 'worse' than Nazi camps.  Satellite images of these concentration camps can be found on Google Maps.

Alongside execution after forced labour, testimony from North Korean concentration camps details after human experimentation in gas chambers: "The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing."

Evidence shows that torture is widespread within these camps: "The sadistic keepers torture inmates in detention all day long. The keepers force them to kneel with a thick wooden bar inserted between their legs and buttocks. The legs begin to rot after a week because the wood cuts off the blood supply. Those lucky enough to be released cannot walk and must be carried by family members. They usually die within six months."

Victims survive on rats and and forced abortions are standard practice. South Korean intelligence found that the death penalty has been inflicted for Coronavirus rule breaking.

This is only a small taste of the unbearable torture that victims of North Korean concentration camps face for being political dissidents. It is advisable to only read the full UN report on this subject on an empty stomach.

By contrast, the United Kingdom "hosts one of the largest communities of North Koreans outside Northeast Asia" and certainly the largest in Europe. In fact, just a "small corner of south London is the home of the world’s largest North Korean refugee population outside South Korea".

Indeed, in this May's UK local elections, Jih-yun Park will make history as the first North Korean election candidate in the UK. She is standing for the Conversative party, stating: "I fled a brutal socialist regime so of course I'm a conservative."

Header image via Colin Crooks, UK Ambassador to North Korea: "This photo was taken when he visited Panmunjom, on the border between South and #NorthKorea, during HM The Queen’s State Visit to the Republic of Korea on 21 April 1999."

Yesterday, I covered how New Zealand and South Korea are drawing from humanitarian COVAX vaccine supplies due to their failures to order their vaccines sufficiently in advance. The initial distribution forecast from the COVAX facility shows that:

• New Zealand is to receive 249,600 doses of the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine
• South Korea is to receive 2,596,800 doses of the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and 117,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine

In total, there are only 4 OECD countries drawing from COVAX vaccine supplies; New Zealand, South Korea, Canada and Singapore. The Canadian Government has since come under the most sharp criticism for drawing of COVAX supplies and have defended their decision on the basis of their financial contributions to COVAX.

I have provided the COVAX AMC contributions for New Zealand, South Korea and Canada; alongside the United Kingdom as a comparison. I have also provided calculations for these countries on a per capita basis too. Singapore is not included as they are not listed as a GAVI donor, so is not calculated below.

New Zealand comes out clearly at the bottom of this list both on an absolute and a per capita basis. British citizens have contributed $8.17 per person to the COVAX AMC, not drawn any COVAX vaccine supplies alongside paying the R&D costs and volunteering for clinical trials for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to be sold globally at-cost. By contrast, New Zealand has only contributed $0.71 per head to the COVAX AMC and New Zealand is not even manufacturing vaccines, let alone developing one of its own.

New Zealand's entire GAVI contribution is represented in this $0.71 per head figure. Canada's total GAVI contributions per head amounted to $14.87 whilst the United Kingdom's contribution amounted to $39.37. In absolute terms, New Zealanders have contributed only 0.03% of donor contributions to the GAVI vaccine alliance.

Whilst New Zealand's isolationist policy extends to their limited contributions to international vaccine efforts, they have shamelessly drawn from the same supplies limiting supplies for poorer countries where COVID-19 transmission is high. This draws further ethical questions on their "Zero COVID" strategy employed by the New Zealand Government, which purports to be left-wing and internationalist.

COVAX AMC $ Contributions (% Compared to all Donors)

• New Zealand: $3.5 million (0.2%)
• South Korea: $7.5 million (0.5%)
• Canada: $148.8 million (9.2%)
• United Kingdom*: $544.4 million (33.8%)

* The UK is not drawing any vaccines from COVAX supplies and is included only for comparative purposes.

COVAX AMC $ Contribution per Capita

• New Zealand: $0.71
• Canada: $3.96
• South Korea: $6.89
• United Kingdom*: $8.17

* The UK is not drawing any vaccines from COVAX supplies and is included only for comparative purposes.

GAVI $ Contribution per Capita (Total National Contribution as a % of all Donors)

• New Zealand: $0.71 (0.03%)
• Canada: $14.87 (5.5%)
• South Korea: $1.77 (0.3%)
• United Kingdom*: $39.37 (25.8%)

* The UK is not drawing any vaccines from COVAX supplies and is included only for comparative purposes.

Much has already been written about the contrast in approach between the UK and the European Union in vaccination approaches. As of the 2^nd February, the UK has vaccinated 15.5% of its population whilst the EU has vaccinated 3.16% of its population. Attention was drawn to this after German government sources attempted to spread misinformation about the University of Oxford's COVID-19 vaccine, whilst EU officials demanded supplies from UK factories and attempted to ban vaccine exports to the UK whilst creating a hard border on the island of Ireland. This is broadly well covered in the following BBC News piece on the subject:

An area which is not so well covered is the vaccine supply of those countries which have sought to engage hard lockdown policies.

It took the South Korean Government until December to secure supply agreements for merely 88% of their population. The New York Times reports that "those over 65 will not start receiving inoculations until May". Whilst the Government claims to want herd immunity by November, medical experts in South Korea have questioned this ambition claiming they have "failed to secure enough vaccines and has also been slow to train staff for storage, distribution and inoculation" and "also lagged in making decisions over vaccination sites".

New Zealand only secured enough contracts to vaccinate their entire populations in late December 2020, placing them to the bottom of the queue for vaccine supply. With no current capacity for domestic manufacturing, New Zealand health officials were petrified of the prospect of EU vaccine export restrictions.

New Zealand politicians have claimed the reason for their slow vaccine deliveries is because countries worse affected in the pandemic were being prioritised instead, unfortunately this is simply not true. In fact, the country is so poorly prepared for vaccination that their early deliveries are dependant on orders from the COVAX humanitarian project to receive vaccines for Q1 2021.

The initial distribution forecast from the COVAX facility shows that:

• New Zealand is to receive 249,600 doses of the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine
• South Korea is to receive 2,596,800 doses of the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and 117,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine
• "Zero-COVID" North Korea is to receive 1,992,000 doses of the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine

The biggest donor to GAVI is the UK Government (accounting for 25.8% of all funds). The UK Government provided 33.8% of the total funds needed for COVAX to secure Advance Market Commitment to manufacture vaccines for unprepared countries, amounting to $544.4m.

Since March 2020 the UK Government has been the largest global to donor to vaccine research efforts, with funding standing at £250m by the end of March. It goes without saying that the fact the University of Oxford vaccine is widely available at-cost is due to UK public universities, UK Government funding, trials conducted in UK National Health Service hospitals and business risk undertaken by Anglo-Swedish firm AstraZeneca.

Much of the additional human sacrifice to developing vaccines has come from those engaging in clinical trials in the UK, US, Brazil, South Africa and India. Many hundreds of thousands of lives globally have already been saved by clinical trial volunteers improving treatment for COVID-19.

Given an absence of robust Randomised Control Trial evidence for non-pharmaceutical COVID-19 interventions, individuals often cherrypick countries to use as examples. From India and Portugal to Hong Kong and Germany, these examples of perfection have been systematically destroyed as the pandemic has spread.

However; one country does continue to have 0 COVID-19 cases and deaths. If Sweden is the holiday resort of the lockdown sceptic, this country is paradise for the lockdown fundamentalist. This country is North Korea.

At the start of November, North Korea reported 5,368 "suspected" COVID-19 cases but 0% of the 18,472 COVID-19 tests undertaken in the country have been returned as positive. Accordingly, there are 0 confirmed cases.

Alongside an existing high-voltage electric fence, the border lockdown has been achieved by planting 1 million landmines across the North Korea/China border with dozens of soldiers being blown up in the process of laying them. Measures have also been "beefed-up" along the coastline and the prices of basic commodities has surged. South Korea's National Intelligence Service has claimed the price of items like sugar and other condiments has quadrupled.

Whilst food prices have soared and fears of famine mount, 110,000 tons of rice provided by China as aid is currently sitting idle in the port of Dalian due to fears of importing COVID. As Chinese exports to North Korea plummeted by more than 90% in August and imported products dry-up, observers report that this may simultaneously increase food costs for working class citizens whilst the middle and upper classes become disquiet about the lack of access to imported goods.

North Korea already had tough restrictions on internal movement but has additionally boosted the number of internal border checkpoints. The death penalty has been imposed on at least one North Korean man for violating the harsh COVID-19 restrictions that are in place. Far from being a holiday resort, the extreme lockdown restrictions (such as city-wide lockdown measures) have led to multiple countries closing their embassies and repatriating their staff.

The lack of COVID-19 cases means the country is unable to run Randomised Control Trials to discover COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, leading to the country attempting to hack into British and American research efforts. Kim Jong Un and his family have reportedly taken an experimental Chinese vaccine.

North Korea's COVID-19 experience goes far deeper than some simple moral on lockdown extremism; it speaks to how we measure the pandemic itself. In North Korea, surgery is often performed without anaesthesia, hospitals lack running water and one defector recently reported how hospitals only have a single needle used for all patients.

Dying of COVID-19 is a luxury in a country which has an official life-expectancy that is 12.4 years lower than that in Japan. Excess death rate metrics also ignore the reality of how millions within the country have died from famine in modern history (due to the effect of displaced mortality).

North Korea's brutal COVID-19 lockdown strategy has not only led to many needless deaths, but has caused concern amongst the internal community with seven members of the United Nations Security Council claiming the lockdown measures go too far in degrading fundamental human rights.

With North Korea providing a model of the true impact of a Zero COVID policy, lockdown fundamentalists must be prepared to justify why they think this is a desirable ideal outcome.

New data from the University College London's COVID-19 Social Study (Week 32-33) shows that lockdown compliance is lower amongst wealthier, younger, urban-dwelling, university-educated and BAME groups - despite the fact there is no real disparity in compliance by living arrangements (living alone vs not living alone):

The study shows us these trends replicate perfectly across Government confidence metrics too - with confidence lower amongst wealthier, younger, urban-dwelling, university-educated and BAME groups despite being no change by living arrangement:

Analysis by King's College London during the easing of the first lockdown referred to those who felt the Government lockdown measures did not go far enough or were being eased to fast as falling within the "The Dissenting" group. This group is wealthier, younger, located in urban Labour/remain-voting areas, university educated and has increased representation from BAME groups.

YouGov survey results (from the 22nd - 23rd September 2020) shows us those who are most likely to think the Government has "Got the balance about right" between the economy and healthcare are those who are Labour/remain-voting, younger and live within London. Whilst less in C2DE rather than ABC1 social groups were likely to think the Government has "Got the balance about right", note that the "Don't know" responses for that poll question raised 16% to 24% from the ABC1 to C2DE group.

This post is not about the risks/benefits of lockdown measures, this is about fairness and intellectual consistency. Shaming and "lockdown fundamentalism" has had a negative impact on society during this period (in one case, setting up lethal traps for those those taking exercise outside their home); but as we look at lockdown compliance data, we see that those who are most likely to virtue signal and demand tougher measures are they themselves the least likely to comply. They criticise the Government for not going far enough, when they don't even follow the laws they advocate for (despite being the best financially equipped to do so).

In other words; they won't put up, so they must shut up.

Wales has entered their so-called "fire break" lockdown and become an international laughing stock in the process. Supermarkets have been banned from selling non-essential goods like winter clothes, stationery and books. The Welsh Labour government not only successfully managed to ban the sale of cleaning supplies during a global pandemic but there are now even reports of those in areas plagued with power cuts being unable to buy candles as they are considered non-essential.

Mark Drakeford justified his ban on the sale of such non-essential sin purchases as bins, greeting cards and bedding by claiming to do so in the interest of fairness for high-street shops that are subject to shutdowns which supermarkets are not. It seems that he has forgotten to do anything about the Amazon fulfilment centre in Swansea, Wales and such malignant evil products remain available for next-day delivery from Amazon. Indeed, the genius Supreme Leader, Mark Drakeford, has managed to shrink the Welsh economy further by directing the money of Welsh consumers from local Welsh employees into the hands of the Irish treasury and investors of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust.

Oh; and the Supreme Leader's proclamation is such that whilst alcohol is considered an essential purchase, hairdryers are not. Whilst the Welsh Labour government successfully keep their populations in drunken compliance whilst unable to buy a copy of any of George Orwell's literature from their local supermarket, at least the ICU beds will be empty of potentially lethal hair dyer accidents.

Today, Eurostat have updated their deaths by week & age dataset, their dataset contains the death rates for most European countries to Week 35 (though some countries, like Italy, have yet to report). Using Eurostat population data, it is therefore possible for us to calculate deaths per million to Week 35 of 2020. I have previously shared this data to Week 26 and Week 32 of 2020.

Today, I thought it would be interesting to also show these mortality trends split between COVID deaths and non-COVID deaths. OWID (Our World In Data) via the ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) make public COVID-19 death rates across Europe, as reported by local authorities. We can use the OWID data from the 30^th August 2020 (end of Week 35) to help our understanding.

In the chart below, you will see non-COVID deaths as black bar charts and the deaths reported as being from COVID in red.

This chart re-iterates a number of key points:

• Eastern European countries (e.g. Bulgaria, Serbia & Latvia) maintain the highest death rates in Europe whilst higher-income small countries maintain the lowest death rates (Iceland, Lichtenstein & Luxembourg). This shows that strong national economies remain the key component in having strong healthcare systems.
• Portugal and Germany are often praised for their response to the pandemic, but they still have a higher all-cause death rate than countries like Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom.
• Even amongst countries reporting a considerable number of COVID-19 deaths, COVID-19 still represents a small fraction of deaths - I make no claim however as to why this is and Randomised Control Trial evidence is needed to actually understand the merits of any interventions.

It is important to re-iterate that the metrics used here are All-Cause Mortality data, the most comprehensive measure of death data of a nation - but I have provided some additional commentary below on additional metrics.

On Attribution of Deaths

It is also interesting to note that there is a negative trend between the 2020 All-Cause Mortality rate and the % of 2020 Deaths from COVID-19. As the death rate in a given country increases, the likelihood of a death being reported as a COVID-19 death goes down. For example, to Week 35 of 2020; Sweden has reported 6204.64 deaths per million with 9.3% as being from COVID-19 whilst Bulgaria has seen 10329.02 deaths per million but only 0.84% as being from COVID-19.

It is well known that COVID-19 death reporting practices differ greatly region-to-region, let alone country-to-country, so I won't reiterate such points here.

"Excess Deaths" vs All-Cause Mortality

Finally; I have previously written about why All-Cause Mortality (adjusted for population) is the best metric for measuring deaths during a pandemic. This view is also held by the UK's Chief Medical Officer before the pandemic took root, but I wanted to provide some visualisation of this.

Below I have plotted the All-Cause Mortality rate to Week 25 of 2020 (as orange bars) against the complete 5-year average of death data from Eurostat (as the blue lines). The part of the bar chart that is visible above the blue line crudely indicates the extent of any excess mortality.

Due to differences in approaches to measurement, we know COVID-19 deaths is a poor metric for international comparisons so some have turned to using "Excess Mortality" metrics which are even worse. "Excess Mortality" is where a country compares their own performance that year to a 5-year average, this metric is then used for an international comparison.

Countries which achieve low average mortality rates can often be at risk of having high "Excess Mortality" rates as they have more vulnerable members of the population and it becomes costlier to introduce measures that lead to reductions in mortality rates year-over-year. Countries with less developed healthcare systems are able to introduce low-cost measures to reduce mortality rates year-over-year whilst countries with more developed healthcare systems must invest more for the same benefit.

A prime example of this the United Kingdom and Germany. To Week 35, Germany had a death rate over 9% higher per head of population. Germany has both higher 5-year average death rates and 2020 death rates than the UK. Despite the UK having a universal free-at-the-point-of-use National Health Service which was capable of finding the first and only known life-saving COVID-19 drug, the UK had a higher "Excess Mortality" rate precisely because of the success of the healthcare system in previous years.

It is also critical to remember the mortality displacement phenomena; following a pandemic, as there are less vulnerable members of the population, deaths rates will grow less fast.

All-Cause Mortality represents the real risk to death within the population of a nation, the metric that matters most and precisely the metric a healthcare system exists to reduce.

A few weeks ago, I provided analysis of the Europe-wide All Cause Mortality data from EUROSTAT. The data provided by the UK to Eurostat nows goes up to Week 32 of 2020, this is the week ending the 9^th August 2020. Whilst 30 countries have now provided data to Week 26, 20 such European countries have provided data to Week 32. For example; Italy has provided data to Week 26 but not to Week 32.

We know COVID-19 deaths are recorded differently in different parts of the same countries, let alone from country to country. We further know that excess death metrics are effected by baseline death rates and flu seasonality. All Cause Mortality provides the best impact for understanding death rates from country-t0-country during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the basis of the best mechanism to compare different countries performances. In essence, the all-cause mortality rate is the amount of the population that died in a given interval of time.

The data used is the Eurostat deaths by week & age, updated to the 11^th September 2020. Population data is obtained using Eurostat's population on 1^st January data. The chart below provides updated EUROSTAT all-cause mortality rates to Week 26, 2020:

Below provides a comparison chart to Week 32, 2020 - there are less countries but the overall trend largely remains the same. The one exception is that Spain now sits between the UK and Germany for mortality rates - this indicates that UK mortality has improved in relative terms to Spain. Given the pandemic arrived in the UK later than Spain, this improvement may continue due to the effect of displaced mortality. Data from Italy is not yet available.

In conclusion - high all-cause death statistics in countries like Portugal and Germany continue to cover the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst countries like the UK, Spain and Italy have higher death rates than is typical - they continue to perform better than such countries. Sweden continues to outperform similar countries and has one of the lowest mortality rates in Europe.

Over the past few months, Europe has focussed on how countries with relatively low levels of mortality have slightly increased their death rates. Perhaps the real challenge for public policy to address is why there is such grave disparities in mortality rates between East and West Europe, and why it is seen as acceptable for Germany and Portugal to continue to have such high baseline death rates.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical to separate medical advice from politics. Doctors are subject to high regulatory standards, can be struck off for ethical violations and are bound by a common standard. Politics graduates aren't bound by such standards. It is further important to note that political academic material should not be treated with the same weight as scientific evidence (especially Randomised Control Trial evidence).

Devi Sridhar is a notable COVID-19 commentator who holds a position as a Professor of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh and is a notable advocate of a ZeroCovid policy.

She holds a BSc in Biology from the University of Miami and a DPhil in politics from the University of Oxford. Neither of these qualifications allow someone to practice as a medical doctor.

The UK's General Medical Council holds no record for a Devi Sridhar having a license to practice medicine in the UK. Her Google Scholar profile indicates she is well versed in writing political pieces on global health, but she has no experience whatsoever of conducting clinical trials or scientific evaluation of treatments.

Whilst I am not aware of instances where Devi herself has directly claimed to be a doctor, she has made worrying claims that should be left to qualified medical professionals. She has commented on the symptoms of COVID-19 and made comments on treatment. Her comments on treatment showed a dire lack of understanding with evidence based medicine, comparing dexamethasone, a drug proven in Randomised Control Trial evidence, to other drugs in other studies which are based on weak observational data. The fact she could only consider the scientific material on the basic of whether it was published in an academic journal shows she possesses a complete lack of understanding on the design of scientific experiments (for the record, the RECOVERY trial's results on dexamethasone are not only now published but also validated in a published systematic meta-analysis).

Aside from her lack of understanding of evidence based medicine; it if further important to note that Professor Peter Horby and Professor Martin Landray, who are Co-Chief Investigators of the RECOVERY trial, are medically qualified doctors unlike Devi Sridhar.

Devi has also repeatedly made comments on non-pharmaceutical interventions; this includes her making a u-turn on school re-opening in Scotland despite all UK Chief Medical Officers warning: "against a certainty of long-term harm to many children and young people from not attending school." She has appraised the rigour of evidence on face masks despite the fact that Professor Carl Heneghan (of the University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, both an actual scientist and an actual doctor) warning that we were masking lack of evidence with politics and that there is currently an absence of Randomised Control Trial evidence in favour of mask wearing.

When the general public base their medical understandings of the COVID-19 epidemic on the basis of professional evidence (which, in itself, scientists consider to be a very weak form of evidence), they should at least have the understanding to know which professionals are qualified and regulated to give such professional advice. Do not risk your own health by taking advice from pretend doctors.