The Hallett Inquiry - Evidence given on 26 September 2024
An Overview of Professor Whitty's Responsibilities
Professor Sir Christopher Whtty's evidence starts on PDF page 14 of the 26 September transcript, corresponding to short page 56.
This post will explain Whitty’s responsibilities as England’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO).
From 2009 to 2015, Whitty was the chief scientific adviser (CSA) and research director for the Department for International Development (DFID). From 2016 to 2021, he was the CSA to the Department of Health and Social Care and Head of the National Institute for Health and Care Research. He took up his post as CMO on 1 October 2019 while still the head of the NIHR.
His predecessors, Dame Sally Davies and Sir Liam Donaldson, were accountable for the box thinking. Although it's unclear whether Whitty was part of this box thinking, his 15 years in government advisory roles suggest he must have been part of the machinery. As CMO, he inherited a system built around the inevitability of the next pandemic—influenza. We have explained the involuntary historical genesis of this distortion and its consequences: yearly obsession with poorly performing vaccines and the stockpiling of overpromoted and overrated antivirals.
Whitty’s background is that of a “consultant physician in infectious diseases and tropical medicine at UCLH.” So, it is odd that he seemed oblivious to certain aspects of what was to follow his appointment.
The right guy in the right place at the right time—except that influenza-like illness, the F word, and acute respiratory infections (call them what you wish) are primarily a primary care problem, and hospital folk only see the worst end of the spectrum—a tiny slice of the problem.
Whitty describes his part-time clinical work during the recent pandemic and how he saw the advent of vaccines as the light at the end of the tunnel. The critical bit comes when the KC checks with Professor Whitty whether his description of his CMO role is correct.
The CMO is a civil servant with a degree of independence from the government. As a civil servant with statutory responsibilities, the office holder reports to the permanent secretary in the DHSC. They have sometimes publicly criticised government policies, such as minimum alcohol pricing. However, questions have been asked whether a CMO who independently advises the government during non-crisis times can be the same person who acts independently as the government’s spokesperson during pandemics.
In the following exchange, Whitty talks about the “technical advice” he provided to NHS England as required.
but his non-role in the decision-making process due to the 2021 Act, which changed how the CMO interacted with the NHS.
The 46-page 2012 Health and Social Care Act states that NHS England is responsible for improving the quality of care, which is defined as safety, clinical effectiveness, and patient experience. However, we couldn't find anything in the Act that discusses the CMO's role and responsibilities.
Professor Whitty uses an unfortunate example: he says lockdowns were implemented to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed, but Professor Whitty states that there is no definition of “overwhelmed.” To him, it was something like when things did not work as usual.
Yet, as late as January 2022, Whitty warned that the NHS faced “very substantial pressure over the next couple of weeks” with the Omicron variant. Then, he used a “surge in mortality” as the marker of severity. In January 2021, he warned that the NHS was facing the "most dangerous situation" in living memory: "If the virus continues on this trajectory, hospitals will be in real difficulties, and soon. Staff-to-patient ratios - already stretched - will become unacceptable even in intensive care," he said
In the Inquiry, he said, “I think the key thing to remember, and I think people forget this, is that this was an exponentially rising -- in the technical sense of the term, an exponentially rising thing, where you have an epidemic, with a doubling rate of three to four days at the point we were talking about. Four doubling times more would have led us to an absolutely catastrophic situation”.
There are several serious problems with this statement.
First, the cases may not have been cases given the inadequate testing system, widespread panic and misdiagnosis.
Second, we have previously shown that the lockdown on March 27, 2020, drove down visits to supermarkets, shops, and parks and gave rise to falls in workplace attendance and transport, which is in line with a downward trend. However, infections in the community were already falling when lockdowns were enacted. Even Boris Johnson understood this effect in response to Hugo Keith.
Italy and the UK locked down as the peak of “cases” had been reached and was on the way down. Strangely, an infectious disease physician seems never to have heard of Farr’s Law of epidemics.
Third we know that a risk assessment of lockdown described as a “failed experiment” was not done and has not been done since.
With our readers’ help we built a framework of assessment of lockdown. Have governments so eager to trash civil rights looked at the consequences of their decisions in a systematic manner?
Many unanswered aspects of the CMO’s response require further examination. In our next post, we will delve deeper into the statements, especially given their influence on what happens next.
This post was written by two old geezers who have received so many Orders of the Boot they are overwhelmed. The two old geezers are also puzzled by the CMO’s response and would welcome a sanity check from TTE commentators.
For me Whitty's most egregious error was to ignore all advice on clinical management. In April/May 2020 he was told in writing that what mattered was the identification of those at risk from developing a cytokine storm, the identification of those developing a cytokine storm and the treatment of those who had developed a cytokine storm (I would add that Boris Johnson's latest offering suggests he was told by the doctors treating him that his severe illness was due to said cytokine storm). Who told him? I did. My input was totally ignored. By the time the unnecessary clinical trial of steroids/tocilizumab had been done - unnecessary because these were established treatments - two things had happened. First, the virus had mutated so that the immunogenic spike protein of the original variant had become substantially less immunogenic. Second, several thousand people had died due to delayed diagnosis of cytokine storm and incorrect and inadequate treatment.
I have said this (in writing) to the Hallett Inquiry and have not been called to give evidence. I would like to know why not. I have far more experience of treating immunologically mediated diseases than Chris Whitty, or indeed any members of the SAGE Committee, government ministers and those conducting the Inquiry.
My own Inquiry, conducted over the entirety of the pandemic, comes to this simple and overwhelming conclusion. The experts were the wrong experts; the right experts were ignored, no-platformed and abused and the focus on prevention of spread was unnecessary given the only issue was whether people would die from the infection, and if so whether they got given the right treatment. End. There follows no need to debate the origins of the virus, the accuracy of testing, the validity of vaccination etc. These are of academic interest only.
Follow-up... I thought I should find where the Inquiry had filed my evidence so visited the website. It's not there.
I have asked why not.