We look at Swindon council candidate Martin Costello's claims about Covid-19

The 20 candidates in the group – each standing as an independent in wards across Swindon – say they’ve put their names forward because they feel politically homeless.

For Martin Costello, well-known as a former UKIP parliamentary and local election candidate and Brexit Party supporter, the new group had come together because they were “very concerned about what’s happening currently”.

That thing, in a nutshell, is the response by government’s across the world to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Costello, who although a spokesman for the Independent Alliance was at pains to stress the candidates’ individual independence, said: “We want to turn this into a referendum to democratically give people the chance to express their anger at this [the coronavirus restrictions]. There’s no other way of doing it.

“This has been imposed upon us against our will, the government haven’t asked us if we want this and there’s no opposition party speaking about it.

“We’ve got a wide range of people, very diverse set of people who are very concerned about this. People get closed down on different platforms and things when they try to talk about their concerns.”

Here, we look at some of Mr Costello's claims...

Vaccine

Mr Costello said: “We do not agree with mandatory vaccines that people may need for jobs, because these vaccines are still in clinical trials and will be for another two years and we don’t know what the effects are of this.”

He added: “We don’t believe health people should take this vaccination that’s still in clinical trials.”

The candidate raised a number of side-effects but also claimed that the vaccine could make people infertile – a popular claim for which the Association of Reproductive and Clinical Scientists and the British Fertility Society has said there is “absolutely no evidence”.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the MHRA, has licensed three vaccines for use in the UK.

Typically, it would take years for researchers to run through the three phases of clinical trials – with data checked after each phase of the trial, as the vaccine is given to incrementally more people. With the Covid-19 vaccinations, regulators have conducted rolling reviews – with data submitted as the trials are taking place rather than once the clinical trials are complete. The vaccines have still been checked for safety, quality and effectiveness. The widespread impact of the virus and the amount of money given to medicine companies have helped speed up the process.

Any side-effects from the vaccines continue to be reported to the MHRA (in the UK) – and you can report any ill effects yourself via the MHRA’s Yellow Card website.

Last week, the MHRA issued new guidance after a review of 79 cases where people given the AstraZeneca virus suffered blood clots. 19 people died, 11 of whom were under-50. However, the MHRA concluded that the “benefits of vaccination continue to outweigh risks” – but urged “careful consideration” be given to those at higher risk of certain types of blood clots as a result of pre-existing medical conditions.

Not anti-vaccine

Asked if he had had the vaccine, Mr Costello said: “I’ll never take it [the covid vaccine]. It’s still in clinical trials It’s not approved. To make it clear, we are not anti-vaccine at all. We are not anti-vax. We’re pro-choice. People have got a choice whether to take it or not and we support vaccines that have been approved in clinical trials. These vaccines have not been approved in clinical trials

"If any of us were ill we wouldn’t be here today. We would be at home recovering from any virus. We certainly wouldn’t want to pass any virus on; that would be awful.”

He added: “If people are afraid of the virus, then perhaps carry on shielding. But [if] other people want to go out and enjoy their lives while they have it then they should be free to do that as well. It’s all about pro-choice.

“If people have been wearing their mask and had their jab then why are they concerned about other people that haven’t. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

He said it “boggled the mind” why the country was still in lockdown when 32 million had been vaccinated. The government says 32,121,353 first doses of the vaccine had been given by 4.30pm on Sunday – 7,466,540 second doses had been given.

Mr Costello questioned why the healthy should be vaccinated, telling the Adver: “Why would healthy people need to be jabbed? It doesn’t make sense, there’s no need for it. As Chris Whitty himself said – the Health Secretary [sic, Chief Medical Officer for England] – the vast majority of people...will have very minor symptoms if any at all. Why is that a reason to lock down an entire country? That does not make sense at all.”

One of the arguments for vaccinating otherwise healthy people is to achieve herd immunity.

Vaccine-induced protection in people who do not have a current SARS-CoV-2 infection effectively reduces the proportion of the population that are susceptible to the virus. Once a sufficiently large proportion of the population has acquired immunity then the whole population is effectively protected as there are too few susceptible people for the virus to spread, a state commonly known as ‘herd immunity’.

Herd immunity can also arise from infection-induced protection. However, it is likely to have substantially higher death and disease rates and does not eradicate disease. For example, the 1918 influenza A(H1N1) pandemic was curbed by sufficient levels of infection-induced herd immunity, after more than 2 years, 500 million infections and 50 million deaths worldwide. Because variants of that influenza virus are still present, resurgence of the H1N1 subtype remains a persistent concern.

Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, Covid-19 vaccines and virus transmission, April 1, 2021

Vaccine passports

Mr Costello raised concerns about vaccine passports, with the government currently testing how certificates showing whether you have been vaccinated or have recently tested negative could be used to get crowds back into theatres, sports events and nightclubs.

Those concerns are shared by a number of MPs. More than 40 of Boris Johnson’s own MPs have signed a cross-party letter opposing vaccine passports. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer described the passports as un-British, while his shadow health secretary said the party was “very sceptical”.

Ministers have insisted that they would never be required for essential services like going to the supermarket.

Influenza

Asked whether he acknowledged there was a virus that was killing people, Mr Costello said: “Of course there is, just like the influenza virus but you’ll see on average the early rate of influenza virus there will be 20,000 deaths. There have been zero this year so that’s disappeared.

“Two years ago, 50,000 people died of the influenza virus [and] there was no lockdown then. That killed far, far more people than this virus did.”

50,000 people did not die of influenza – or flu – in 2018 or 2019. Office for National Statistics figures suggest that 29,103 people lost their lives to influenza and pneumonia in 2018 and 25,406 in 2019. That was still lower than the 48,168 deaths “due to Covid-19” between January and August.

A government report published last June pointed to 22,087 deaths associated with influenza in 2017/18 – the worst flu season in recent years. There were 7,990 deaths associated with influenza in the 2019/20 winter season. The equivalent report for the 2020/21 winter season is yet to be published by Public Health England.

The ONS did record around 50,000 excess winter deaths in England and Wales during the 2017/18 winter – the highest recorded since 1975/76. The ONS cited as reasons for the increase: prevalence of the flu, a less effective flu vaccine and colder temperatures than average. Excess winter deaths are calculated by comparing deaths between December and March with the average in the four months before and after.

Since the start of the pandemic there have been almost 150,000 deaths where Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate as a cause of death. 127,087 people have died within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test in the UK.

On tests

“The tests aren’t very accurate. They’ve tested fruits and things. They’ve all come back as positive. A lot of countries have banned them because they don’t work,” Mr Costello said.

It’s been suggested on social media that an orange and a kiwi fruit have tested positive for Covid-19 using a lateral flow test. It is likely that the acid in the fruit breaks the test, causing a positive result. Dr Alexander Edwards told Full Fact: “If you completely ignore the manufacturer’s instructions or in fact use the test for something completely different, then you shouldn’t really be surprised if you get a silly result.”

Mr Costello added: “The guy who invented the PCR test said it wasn’t designed for this for one thing.”

Dr Kary B Mullis invented the polymerase chain reaction – or PCR – process for testing genetic material. The technique itself is not new – Dr Mullis died in 2019. He did not say that PCR testing wasn’t designed for testing particular diseases, organisation Full Fact concluded. You can read their report here.

“The actual false positive rate is terrible, it’s extremely high, so some people who have never had it are testing positive for it,” Mr Costello said.

“It’s not accurate enough. And once again, who’s making money from selling the test at £50 a shot twice a week, you know? This is tax-payers’ money that is getting thrown up against the wall. Clearly, there’s a lot of people profiting from this and it’s got to stop, you know?”

Evaluation of the Innova lateral flow test by scientists at Porton Down and the University of Oxford found a very low “false positive rate” (in other words where someone tests positive for Covid-19 even though they don’t have the virus) – just 0.32 per cent or 22 out of 6,967 tests. However, the test’s “sensitivity” dropped significantly when administered by self-trained members of the public rather than by a member of lab staff.

An early Covid-19 testing site at the Swindon County Ground Picture: DAVE COX

Profits

Mr Costello alleged:

“You’ve got some people in the government getting very wealthy off of this. Let’s take Matt Hancock for example, giving PPE contracts to his friends.

“We’ve had Track and Trace – they’ve given that to their pals in Serco. All those billions of pounds on something that failed.

“There are a lot of people in government and their friends are getting very wealthy off of this. And it’s in their interest to keep us locked down, because we’ve seen small businesses shut down and ruined. People put their blood and sweat into these businesses; they’ll probably never open again. A lot of pubs won’t open again.

“You’ve got the likes of Amazon cashing in and all the big supermarkets cashing in. It’s embarrassing, they’ve completely destroyed the economy for their friends, basically.”

The government’s early procurement efforts have been criticised, with some accusing ministers of cronyism and lack of transparency. Analysis by the New York Times of 1,200 central government contracts that have been made public and together worth around $22bn, roughly $11bn went to firms run by associates or friends of ministers, those with no experience of the field or with a “history of controversy”.

In February, a High Court judge ruled that the government’s failure to publish details of contracts for things like PPE that were awarded without following competition rules was unlawful. The Good Law Project, which took the case to the High Court, was reported to be bringing other challenges to contracts awarded to those with links to ministers.

The National Audit Office’s review of NHS Test and Trace, which found improvements could be made, recorded that Serco’s contract was worth £277m by the end of October 2020 (for national call handlers and test sites). The largest contract was held by the Office for National Statistics, which received £616m for “infections prevalence surveys”.

Local priorities

Asked about the group’s local priorities, Mr Costello said: “This will look highly embarrassing to the national government when they see Swindon come out and send a strong message. We can talk about local issues, but fundamentally things about potholes, saving the Oasis, this should be done anyway.

“What we also aim to do is get a few foxes, as I call them, into the henhouse and start shaking things up a bit.

“I mean all these people are sick to death of party politics. It’s got us nowhere. It’s wrecked this town.

“Party politics isn’t really acceptable at this level of council and all it’s done is pulled our town down with their bickering with each other.

“We are concerned about our community and the demise of it. We see our council tax go up, our services go down. They’re all angry tax payers here and we want to go in there and investigate exactly what they’re doing with our money and start spending it wisely.”

The local elections will be held on May 6. Find a full list of candidates here.