The Dutch Safety Board today presented the first of three sub-reports of its investigation into the approach to the corona crisis. The goal is to learn lessons for any future pandemics. When reading it, a strange feeling creeps up on me. As if the investigation into the collapse of an apartment building only looks at the procedures of contractors and the municipality, while the architect is kept out of the picture. His calculations are not subjected to critical scrutiny for a moment, while they may be all-important.
The presentation of this first part of the three-part report could be followed live on Radio 1. Leafing through the report, too, it is mainly about procedures, organization, roles and structures. No attention is paid to the most important issue in this virus war: the quality of the "intel". "Intel" stands for crucial information at the service of tactics, strategy, communication, analysis, interpretation – in short: if things are wrong there, little can go right later in the process. It is the source of all policies, communications, procedures and measures. Where were the explorers who reported changes in the scientific landscape?
A silent disaster
If you are in a war situation based on the available Intel digging ditches against tank attacks while bombers are on their way, then things go wrong with safety, even if the procedures are in order.
The report speaks with some sense of drama of "a silent disaster" in the nursing homes. It is entirely due to wrong Intel. This has very little to do with being prepared for the organisation or procedures and structures in the implementation.
Of course, directors like to think and write in terms such as "connection", "protocols" and "securing knowledge". "Support" and "embracing" are also part of it. There is no question of ordinary calculation or honest data, and yet it is precisely these that are fundamental to the information provided.
Where it turned out to go wrong at an early stage was in the spread routes of a virus like corona. The fact that respiratory infections spread almost exclusively through the air was (and is) unknown to the OMT members. Wrong packages of measures have grown out of this ignorance. The responsible minister indiscriminately repeats the incorrect (because long outdated) statements of their incompetent advisors: "science".
We knew it all along
I myself, just an interested layman, wrote a Blog about aerosols in which I refer to a study in Nature from February 2019. Maurice de Hond wrote about it earlier: at the beginning of April it was already clear that science actually agreed on this. At least, scientists who understand something about micro-droplets, fog and vapor. Those are not the virologists.
Excerpts from two of the Thousands of studies on aerosols give an impression:
Worrying quotes from Jan Slagter and Ernst Kuipers
Immediately after the presentation of the report, Jan Slagter said on Radio 1: "Let's, for all those vulnerable people in nursing homes, at least maintain the one and a half meters and the face masks!".
Poor Jan, he does not know that he is sending vulnerable elderly people to their deaths, as the OMT has done for two years. Especially in nursing homes, which are kept nice and warm (little fresh air, residents close cracks against the 'draft') it is precisely there that the false security of one and a half meters and face masks is deadly. Scientifically proven (I'm not going to look for the most recent links again).
This creates an image among the population that encourages infections and thus drives up fatalities.
Ernst Kuipers also mentioned in the Q&A session after the liberation speech on February 15 (yesterday!) that washing hands in particular is very important. That is not true. Clean hands are only hygienic; Fresh air is a bit life-saving at the time of a "severe epidemic". Now I don't agree with Marc van Ranst when it comes to vaccination, but in terms of ventilation, the Belgians are clearly ahead of us.
Marc van Ranst: "They would be better off spending the billions that will be spent on testing on a ventilation plan"
Marc van Ranst, Radio 1, 15 February
Infectious disease from Group A
The report assumes an infectious disease from group A. A basic fact that is not questioned. How that A-status can be reconciled with omicron, which has a lethality that comes close to a bad cold (I'm exaggerating), is not denounced because of course it is only about the first six months. But asking that question is always legitimate, especially when more is known about, for example, the IFR of the disease, an indicator of the lethality of a disease. If you don't ask that question regularly, you will never find out when it should have been justified. Please note: The last time the House of Representatives extended the A-status was "because otherwise the measures cannot be maintained". That is the world upside down: you have to assess the seriousness of the disease and depending on that you come to measures and determine powers.
Broader or better information?
The report does state that the cabinet could be "more widely informed" in the next crisis. But it's not even just about 'broader', i.e. involving more disciplines. It is also about the quality of the specialist advice. The cabinet pretended to base itself on science. For the cabinet, an advice from the OMT was sufficient for this. However, that OMT based itself on their own "expert opinions" which by definition is too meager a basis for weighty decisions. Sometimes there is no other way: if no research has been done yet, for example, and a decision has to be made about something. That was by no means the case here. There were already sufficient scientific studies in mid-2020 on transmission routes, effectiveness of lockdowns, face masks and social distancing.
The most important measures from the beginning of 2020 are still the most important measures for the OMT in early 2022 – with a minimum addendum of opening a window twice a day. In a fast-forward changing scientific landscape with an explosion of Covid-related studies, this is no less than hard evidence of incompetence.
Severe long-term epidemic
The Dutch Safety Board speaks of a long-term severe epidemic with as many as 10,000 Covid victims in the Netherlands. That is only about 500 more than in the flu year 2017-2018. You would say that this is not necessarily compatible. Not to mention factors such as the mortality wrongly registered as Covid and the further aging boomers. If the measures are to be taken in the fight ("otherwise it would have been much worse"), then I refer to a pile of studies that show that those measures have resulted in about a 0.2% improvement.
If the Intel had been correct, the epidemic would have been short and light. If the intel had been correct, billions would have been spent on stimulating ventilation instead of nonsensical experiments, ramshackle testing, controversial vaccinations and causing inhuman suffering and other social and economic disasters.
In short: so far I find it a bit disappointing, what the Dutch Safety Board had to report. I hope they do better when it comes to other forms of security: cybercrime, for example, or infiltration of interest groups in democracies.
Best Dutch Safety Board:
No matter how well prepared you are, no matter how tightly the procedures are: if the guidelines for scientific integrity are to continue to be ignored, your report will also be thrown in the bin at the first next crisis on the advice of a minister who considers more powers necessary.
I hope that the Safety Board will also test the actions of the RIVM/OMT, which cooperates with the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, against the Guidelines for Scientific Integrity.
