Talk:Operation Moonshot

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On 10 September, the British Medical Journal quoted a leaked document that forecast the process would cost £100bn. Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, commenting in the same journal, said that the plan was characteristic of a government "whose ambition far exceeds its ability to deliver. ... This plan transmits unbounded optimism, disregarding the enormous problems with the existing testing and tracing programmes. Worse, it envisages a major role for Deloitte, a company that has presided over many of these problems. It focuses on only one part of the problem, testing, and says nothing about what will happen to those found positive, a particular concern given the low proportion of those who do adhere to advice to isolate—in part because of the lack of support they are offered. What parliamentary scrutiny will there be of a programme that would cost almost as much as the annual budget for the NHS [in England]?"

Professor Jon Deeks of the University of Birmingham and Cochrane pronounced himself "horrified that the plans are devoid of any contribution from scientists, clinicians, and public health and testing and screening experts. These are plans from the world of management consultants and show complete ignorance of many essential basic principles of testing, public health, and screening". He further commented on the consequences of false positives that might go along with testing such a large number of people: "Even if you have a test which is 99% specific, so only 1% of uninfected people get a false positive result, if you then test 60 million people we will be classifying a group the size of the population of Sheffield wrongly as having covid ..."; having over half a million people self-isolating, along with their close contacts, Deeks said, would cause "substantial economic harm and massive need for further testing."

A SAGE paper showed that the government was warned by its own scientists that the scheme would generate so many false positives that within six months, 41 per cent of the UK population would be forced to self-isolate needlessly. The paper warned of potential school closures and of workers' losing their wages due to wrong test results.

Thoughts? These comments by leading academics, voiced in the British Medical Journal, have been reported in papers across the entire political spectrum – Guardian, Times, Telegraph etc. --Andreas JN 466 20:46, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * While this is worth a brief mention as it was reported by several media outlets, the text as it stands above gives this subject undue weight and is speculative anyway. The Telegraph headline reads "Moonshot testing plan 'could send 28 million into needless self-isolation'", the word "could" being important here. It may happen, it may not happen, but since we don't have a crystal ball or a time machine it's impossible for us to know how things will turn out. The project may not even get off the ground. As an experienced editor, I really don't know what you're playing at. I get this is perhaps a topic about which you feel quite strongly, but Wikipedia isn't a soap box. This is Paul (talk) 21:13, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I think we'll have to wait for other people to weigh in. For my part, I don't understand why you'd consider widely reported comments by leading academics in the British Medical Journal to be undue weight in the Reception section of an article on a UK medical matter of national importance. --Andreas JN 466 21:24, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It doesn't need to quote every academic, because that will make it unbalanced, but a brief quote from one of them could be ok. For example, "Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, suggested the plan was characteristic of a government "whose ambition far exceeds its ability to deliver"." There are, after all, concerns about whether the whole thing is actually feasible. Going on to discuss Deloitte and having somebody express their horror (not encyclopedic language, btw) is all unnecessary, particularly in such a short article. The important thing is for articles on this subject (i.e., COVID-19) to be neutral. But let's wait for someone else, and they can decide. I'd like to find more quotes in support of the project, and perhaps those will emerge as more information becomes available. This is Paul (talk) 21:35, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Look, you've taken all the quotes from non-government academics out. This is a "reaction" section; it's supposed to reflect what other people than the government have said. And given that it's a public health matter, prominent public health experts outside the government should have their say in the article. I see little merit in arguing that the tone of the BMJ should be too low-brow for Wikipedia. Anyway, please let's just wait to see what other people say, otherwise we'll do this all night. Thanks for creating the article, at any rate. Regards, --Andreas  JN 466 21:47, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It is a matter of public health, but they don't need to be quoted at such great length. Similarly with the Deeks entry, as the matter of false positives is already discussed by the sentences covering the SAGE report, we could say something like "Professor Jon Deeks of the University of Birmingham and Cochrane suggested such a situation would lead to "substantial economic harm and massive need for further testing"." But anyway, since we don't appear to agree on this, and the article is subject to sanctions because it's a COVID article, I thought it would be appropriate to request a third opinion. I've just done that, so hopefully someone can offer their thoughts. This is Paul (talk) 21:55, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Selection of UK sources, from across the political spectrum, quoting these comments

 * Operation Moonshot: What does moonshot mean? PM announces plans for mass testing (Daily Express): quotes McKee and Deeks at length
 * Coronavirus: 'Waste and corruption on a cosmic scale': Plans for 10 million COVID-19 tests attacked (Sky): quotes McKee at length
 * Doubts cast on Boris Johnson’s ‘moonshot’ (The Times): quotes McKee and Deeks
 * Coronavirus: £100 billion testing expansion will see everyone in country tested once a week from early 2021 (Herald (Scotland)): quotes McKee and Deeks
 * Moonshot: 'Horrified' scientists slam Boris Johnson's coronavirus testing plan (The National (Scotland)): quotes Deeks at length
 * UK considering rapid-result Covid tests for up to 10m people a day (Financial Times): quotes McKee
 * Moonshot testing plan 'could send 28 million into needless self-isolation' (The Telegraph): quotes Deeks at length

This list could be added to ...

There are also comments by David Spiegelhalter ("Statisticians are just sort of banging their heads on the wall at this") and former World Health Organisation director Anthony Costello ("waste/corruption on a cosmic scale") that are widely quoted in the press and in my view should be included here.

Just a reminder: NPOV doesn't mean abstaining from representing positive or negative opinions, it means "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." These opinions by leading UK academics, published in the British Medical Journal and widely quoted by others since, are the very definition of "significant views", and representative of the academic reception of the Moonshot idea to date, which has been overwhelmingly negative. --Andreas JN 466 06:52, 11 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I still don't think we need to quote them to the degree that they're quoted in the passage above, but adding mention of them does add to the understanding of the subject. I also like the piece from The Times. This is Paul (talk) 16:06, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Give me an hour ... I'll try to come up with a shorter version. I think I just saw a couple of tumbleweeds passing through WP:3O. :) --Andreas JN 466 16:16, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Request for Third Opinion

 * Yes, we're good, thanks for looking in. Cheers, --Andreas JN 466 09:54, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes all sorted. Cheers, This is Paul (talk) 11:28, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Carry on then, I shall be on my merry way. Cheers.--Astral Leap (talk) 13:36, 14 September 2020 (UTC) strike sock

Draft Reception section
Paul, I've had a go. I've shortened the quotes and added some new points. See what you think:

Reception
The announcement quickly attracted scrutiny from scientists and health experts, who voiced their doubt as to whether testing several million people daily with a quick turnaround was achievable with laboratory capacity as it stood at the time. Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser said it would be "completely wrong to assume this is a slam dunk that can definitely happen", while Dr Jenny Harries, England's deputy chief medical officer, said the programme's success would depend on how it was handled.

Opposition politicians, including Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Secretary of State for Health, questioned its viability when the system was struggling to cope with the volume of tests already required of it. Responding to concerns, Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport, said that the technology to implement the system did not yet exist.

On 10 September, the British Medical Journal quoted a leaked document that forecast the process would cost £100bn—relatively close to the £130bn total annual cost of NHS England. The fact that the plans appeared to involve a substantial proportion of this sum being paid to private businesses raised concerns. Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, wondered what parliamentary scrutiny there would be on spending. Similar concerns were expressed by Devi Sridhar (University of Edinburgh), who said, "There is a case for giving the extra billions to the NHS and asking it to deliver. I have concerns around the bidding process for these contracts. The procurement process isn’t clear, and it allows for a lot of people getting rich off this crisis." Anthony Costello, a former World Health Organization director, spoke on Twitter of "waste/corruption on a cosmic scale". The government said in response to queries that £500 million had been committed so far, and that final costs were as yet unknown.

Another issue raised by statisticians such as David Spiegelhalter (University of Cambridge) is that mass testing is known to generate false positives. Professor Jon Deeks (University of Birmingham, Cochrane) stated that even if a test were to achieve a very good specificity of 99%, meaning that only 1% of healthy people would be wrongly identified as infected, testing the entire population of the UK would result in over half a million people being told they had to self-isolate, along with their contacts. A paper published by the government's own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) suggested the programme could lead to 41% of the UK population having to self-isolate needlessly within six months due to false positives, and warned of potential school closures and workers' losing their wages through incorrect test results. On 11 September 2020, these concerns were echoed by the Royal Statistical Society, which warned in a letter to The Times that the plan "does not seem to take account of fundamental statistical issues" and risked "causing personal and economic harm to tens of thousands of people."

(Note that Costello wasn't a Director-General of the WHO, but WHO director for child, adolescent and maternal health. I you can think of a short way to make that clear to the reader we should. I don't want to overstate his credentials.) --Andreas JN 466 19:12, 11 September 2020 (UTC)


 * That flows much better, and the section doesn't seem too long now. It won't matter so much when the history section expands as well, which will no doubt happen in the not too distant future. Happy for you to add this if you want to. This is Paul (talk) 19:33, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've added this because it seems ok, and it can always be tweaked to include the stuff you've mentioned below. I'll let you do that. This is Paul (talk) 19:44, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's kind. --Andreas JN 466 19:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

The non-involvement of experts raised in the Deeks quote at the top of this page is another point that we should accommodate. In the same vein, out just a couple of hours ago, a Guardian report saying "The National Screening Committee, which advises ministers and the NHS about “all aspects of population screening”, has not been consulted on the £100bn plans for mass surveillance involving up to 10m coronavirus tests every day." Deeks is quoted again, making much the same point as above. (Deeks is also a co-author of the Royal Statistical Society letter in the Times.) --Andreas JN 466 19:22, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It may be that we'll need to split this into multiple sections discussing the different points, as there's more than one issue here. Some of the fears may not come to fruition, but only time will give us those answers. As we've pretty much agreed a way going forward I don't think we'll get a third opinion in the official sense now, but we could still do with someone coming along to help out re how to organise this. Perhaps someone else from the COVID project may do that. This is Paul (talk) 19:38, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. --Andreas JN 466 19:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)